A term used by Praetorius (Syntagma musicum, iii, 2/1619) to refer to the Italian Quodlibet; he also used the term ‘messanza’. Misticanza is an archaic form of the modern Italian words ‘misto’ and ‘mescolanza’ (‘mixture’), but the derivation of messanza is obscure. From Praetorius’s definition it is clear that misticanza and messanza represented the Italian counterparts of the German quodlibet in the Renaissance, and thus belong to that genre of combinative composition that Italian scholars call the Incatenatura. The two examples mentioned by Praetorius, Mirami vita mia and Nasce la pena, are both six-voice choral works combining fragments from famous Italian madrigals and a few German lieder; they were included in Paul Kauffmann's Musikalischer Zeitvertreiber (1609). The term ‘misticanza’ also appeared in Misticanza di vigna alla bergamasca (1627) by ‘Il Fasolo’, a collection of solo songs with guitar accompaniment; there it simply means potpourri or miscellany, although one song combines different languages and Italian dialects for comic, quodlibet-like effect. The term ‘messanza’ was also used by W.C. Printz (Compendium musicae, 1689) to describe a particular ornamental figure.
For bibliography see Quodlibet.
MARIA RIKA MANIATES