Ricercare [ricercar,
recercar(e), recerchar(e), ricercata]
(It.:
‘to search for’; Fr. recherché; Sp. recercada).
In
its widest sense, a piece of an esoteric nature; a technical exercise either of
a practical nature or illustrative of some device of composition.
1. Introduction.
2. The preludial or
rhapsodic ricercare.
3. The imitative
ricercare.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
JOHN CALDWELL
Ricercare
1. Introduction.
The
general notion of musical composition as a process of seeking or finding is
ancient: it is referred to in the Vulgate by the very word from which
‘ricercare’ is derived (‘requirentes modos musicos’, Ecclesiasticus
xliv.5; Revised Standard Version: ‘those who composed musical tunes’;
Authorized Version: ‘such as found out musical tunes’) and is presumably the
concept expressed in the terms ‘troubadour’ and ‘trouvère’, although these were
primarily used of poets or poet-musicians rather than simply of composers. The
idea reappears in the term Invention, and there is much to be said for the
view that links the tradition of the didactic duet, often called ‘ricercare’
(see §3), with Bach's two-part inventions.
Originally
the term ‘ricercare’ was used for a piece of preludial character for lute or
keyboard instrument (as in the expression ‘ricercare le corde’, ‘to try out the
strings’), giving it a meaning comparable to that of ‘tastar’, ‘tañer’,
‘tiento’ etc. (see Toccata and Tiento). The commonest type
subsequently was the imitative ricercare, similar in scope to the fantasia and
fugue. Some uses appear to combine two different meanings of the word, as, for example,
imitative ricercares designed as exercises in vocalization, or elaborate and
technically difficult compositions for viol illustrating the technique of
setting a cantus firmus.
Few
early authors attempted a comprehensive definition of the ricercare. For
Vincenzo Galilei (Dialogo, 1581, p.87) it was a fugal form, comparable
in its excessive complexity to the verse form known as the sestina. For Michael
Praetorius also (Syntagma musicum, iii, 1618, pp.21–2) it was imitative,
the equivalent of the fuga, which by that date had come to acquire
something like its present-day meaning. Many 18th- and early 19th-century
compilers of dictionaries mentioned its preludial function, often without
referring to its fugal connotation; they include Brossard (1703), Walther
(1732; his is a fuller definition than most, citing among others Galilei,
Praetorius and Brossard), Rousseau (1768) and Lichtenthal (1826). All referred
to the literal meaning of the Italian verb, which is usually glossed by the
Latin ‘exquirere’ and similar words; and Rousseau, who gave only the French
form ‘recherché’, added that it was also used as the equivalent of ‘cadence’, a
cadenza or improvisatory flourish over a cadential pedal point (see the full
title of Giovanni Bassano's Ricercate referred to in §2 below).
Ricercare
2. The preludial or rhapsodic ricercare.
The
term first occurs in Spinacino's Intabulatura de lauto libro primo
(Venice, 1507/R). The 17 ricercares are placed at the end, and while in
most of them the title is unqualified, in two cases it suggests a preludial
function by referring to a chanson intabulated earlier in the volume (e.g. Recercare
de tous biens). There are another ten in Spinacino's second book of the
same year. In J.A. Dalza's Intabolatura de lauto libro quarto (1508),
four of the pieces called ‘tastar de corde’ are followed by ricercares, usually
called ‘ricercare dietro’ (‘following’). Thus there may already have been a
distinction between the most primitive kind of ‘trying-out’ and the more
artistic, purely rhapsodic piece. Most of these early ricercares, like those in
the Capirola Lutebook (see Capirola, Vincenzo), include both chordal and
scale passages and are as much ancestors of the toccata as of any other type.
The
preludial style of ricercare was transferred to the keyboard in M.A.
Cavazzoni's Recerchari, motetti, canzoni … libro primo (1523/R).
Here the two ricercares serve as preludes to two motet transcriptions, Salve
virgo and O stella maris respectively. They are extended
compositions of considerable interest, with passages of imitation but not
primarily based on an imitative principle. One of their chief attractions is
the idiomatic keyboard writing, chords and runs being blended together with
great skill into a full yet clear texture. Several similar pieces, including
another by M.A. Cavazzoni and one by ‘Jaches’ (perhaps Jacques Brunel, organist
at Ferrara, 1532–64) are found in a source from Castell'Arquato (see Sources
of keyboard music to 1660, §2(i)). That source also includes some of the earliest surviving
examples of the imitative ricercare, including one by ‘Jaches’ and four by
Giacomo Fogliano.
The
non-imitative ricercare did not entirely die out after the early 16th century;
examples for solo viol are found in the works of Sylvestro di Ganassi dal
Fontego and Diego Ortiz. The former included eight solo ricercares in his two
instruction books of 1542–3. Ortiz, in his Trattado de glosas (1553),
used the term ‘recercada’ not only in the sense of a rhapsodic piece for solo
viol but also for viol and keyboard works based on various grounds (in which
case the keyboard player added chords above the bass line), and transcriptions
of vocal polyphonic pieces for the same medium. The six pieces based on the
basse danse melody known as ‘La Spagna’ belong to a whole tradition of didactic
works using this widespread cantus firmus. Those of Ortiz are perhaps the first
to be designated ricercares; most of their successors, however, belong to the
imitative type rather than to the improvisatory type cultivated by Ortiz. The
close association between the ricercare and the Renaissance practice of
diminution is exemplified in Giovanni Bassano's Ricercate, passaggi et
cadentie (1585).
Ricercare
3. The imitative ricercare.
The
precise origin of the imitative ricercare is disputed. Many scholars have
assumed that it was the instrumental counterpart to the motet and derived
directly from it. The study of the earliest instrumental ricercares cast doubt
on this premise and suggested that the purely imitative type arose from the use
of occasional imitation in the rhapsodic type; but this hypothesis overlooks
the place of the ensemble ricercare in the development of the form. The
anthology Musica nova (RISM 154022) contains 18 compositions
(out of 21) labelled ‘R’ for ‘ricercare’, all of which (together with two of
the untitled works) are in motet style with pervading imitation. When it is
remembered that the term ‘motet’ does not exclude cantus firmus and chordal
techniques, its relevance to the history of the ricercare is seen to be
considerable. The ricercares of M.A. Cavazzoni are strikingly similar to what
one might expect of a keyboard arrangement of an inconsistently imitative
motet; they are indeed closely related in style to the motet arrangements that
follow them in the printed source. Thus the motet has a direct bearing on the
early history of both the imitative and (at least in the case of keyboard
music) the non-imitative or partly imitative forms. A similar transition from
the non-imitative to the imitative type of ricercare is found in lute sources,
probably through the influence of the keyboard form, as for example in the
publications of Simon Gintzler (1547), Bakfark (1552) and Galilei (Intavolature
de lauto … madrigali e ricercate, libro primo, 1563).
The
ricercares of Musica nova, by Julio Segni, Willaert, Girolamo Cavazzoni
and others, have the form of a consistently imitative motet. Several short
themes are given fugal treatment in turn. Although some works use more themes
than would a motet of the same length, the general similarity to the sacred
vocal style of the generation of Clemens and Gombert is unmistakable. The parts
(all but one of which have to be reconstructed from a French reprint, Musicque
de joye, RISM c155024) show severe melodic lines, but
these may have been ornamented in performance.
The
early type of imitative organ ricercare is represented by the four examples in
Girolamo Cavazzoni's Intavolatura cioe recercari canzoni himni magnificati
(1543). They differ from the ensemble form only in the provision of ornamented
melodic lines, notably at cadences. Sometimes the ornamentation blossoms out
into lengthy scales and runs, resulting in a climactic effect peculiar to the
early keyboard form, as, for example, towards the end of no.2. Although a few
organ works of this period are virtually unornamented in the sources, there can
be little doubt that they would have been embellished in performance.
The
title-page of Musica nova indicates that its contents could be sung, or
played on organs or other instruments, and the implied flexibility is found in
the title-pages of many of its successors. These include Jacques Buus, Recercari
… da cantare et sonare d'organo et altri stromenti (1547 and 1549);
Giuliano Tiburtino, Fantasie et recerchari … da cantare et sonare per ogni
instrumento (1549); Willaert, Fantasie recercari contrapunti a tre voci
di M. Adriano et de altri autori appropriati per cantare et sonare d'ogni sorte
di stromenti (1551); and Annibale Padovano, Il primo libro de ricercari
a quattro voci (1556). One of the pieces from the second volume of Buus's
work is actually included in his Intabolatura d'organo di recercari
published in the same year (1549); thus it is possible to compare an
embellished intabulation of the period with its plain original. The technique
of ornamentation, in this as in his other organ ricercares, is more elaborate
than in those of Cavazzoni. A written-out and embellished keyboard score of an
ensemble ricercare is a rarity in this period, and organists normally had to
make their own copies from the printed partbooks, until in the late 16th century
publishers took to providing an open score (‘partitura’), either in addition to
or instead of the separate parts.
Singers
could perform these works to the appropriate solmization syllables. The term
‘ricercare da cantare’ occurs as late as Claudio Merulo’s third book (1608),
while the four-part ensemble ricercare itself was cultivated at least until the
publication of Antonio Cifra's Ricercari e canzoni franzese … libro primo
(1619), published in four partbooks, with a separate organ score. (The second book,
also 1619, is in score only and was probably originally for keyboard, though
considered an ensemble work by Frotscher and Apel.) Of particular interest in
the history of the ensemble ricercare are the works on ‘La Spagna’ by Mayone
(1609) and Trabaci (1615). The element of vocal exercise is also provided by
numerous collections of duets in imitative style, such as Francesco Guami's Ricercari
a due voci (1588), Lassus's Motetti et ricercari (1585) and the
famous Ricercari a canto e tenore by Grammatio Metallo (possibly first
published in 1591; a 1595 edition, also lost, is mentioned by Fétis; for extant
17th-century editions see below). Such didactic duets do not always bear the
heading ‘ricercare’: there are no specific titles to the pieces in Eustachio
Romano's Musica duorum (1521) nor to those in Morley's A Plaine and
Easie Introduction (1597) (see also Bicinium).
The
use of the term Fantasia to denote a piece in fugal style probably arose from the
development of the monothematic ricercare, in which the main structural feature
of the motet, the contrapuntal treatment of several themes in turn, was
abandoned in place of a much stricter design. Later still, when the term
‘ricercare’ had acquired an archaic connotation, ‘fantasia’ was used even for
monothematic works (such as those by Sweelinck and Frescobaldi) if they were in
a modern style or contained elements of rhythmic liveliness. Nevertheless, at
least one of Sweelinck’s fantasias is called ‘ricercare’ in its two sources,
and one should not set too much store by the vagaries of 16th- and 17th-century
nomenclature.
One
of the earliest examples of a monothematic ricercare comes from Buus's first
book. It is an arid piece, as one might expect of a lengthy experimental
composition devoted to the exploration of a new technique. The form was further
developed by Andrea Gabrieli, whose four volumes containing ricercares were
printed posthumously in 1595, 1596 and 1605. The Libro secondo (1595)
contains 11 ricercares (together with two by his nephew Giovanni); the Libro
terzo (1596) has a further six; the Libro quinto (1605; a fourth
book of which the contents are unknown has disappeared altogether) gives seven
more, while the Libro sesto of the same year includes one. Gabrieli's
ricercares illustrate a gradual reduction in the number of subjects, five
actually being monothematic. Gabrieli made frequent use of inversion,
augmentation, diminution and other fugal techniques. Moreover, he was perhaps
the initiator of the device that can only be called the countersubject,
invertible and appearing with most occurrences of the subject. Although the
technique is not used with the regularity found in the later fugue, it clearly
foreshadows that treatment. Gabrieli did not introduce the countersubject until
the second entry of the subject (in other words, it is a continuation of the
first voice), but later composers introduced two, three or even four subjects
simultaneously from the outset. This technique is the ancestor of the double,
triple and quadruple fugue and is not to be confused with the earlier method of
working several themes in succession. In a sense, works such as these are
monothematic fugues on a single two-, three- or four-part subject.
Andrea
Gabrieli's fifth book contains seven works described collectively on the
title-page as ‘ricercari ariosi’. In the body of the book four of them are
designated simply ‘ricercar arioso’, while the remaining three are based on
French chansons: ‘Ricercar sopra Martin menoit’, ‘… Orsus au coup’ and ‘… Pour
ung plaisir’. Each follows a canzona based on the same material; but whereas
the canzonas are fairly strict intabulations of their vocal models, the
ricercares are rather freer fugal paraphrases and use longer note values. The
‘ricercari ariosi’ may also be based on vocal models. Although most organ music
of the 1560s and later tended to use shorter note values, semiquavers now being
as frequent as quavers had been in the works of Girolamo Cavazzoni, the
development in the organ ricercare stopped short at the point reached by Buus,
and in some cases reverted to a still plainer manner, perhaps as a conscious
archaism.
The
ricercares of Annibale Padovano, Sperindio Bertoldo and Claudio Merulo, like
those of Andrea Gabrieli, survive only in posthumous prints or reprints.
Merulo's ricercares (originally published in 1567) are not representative of
his best work and include no monothematic examples. The ricercares of the
Neapolitans Rocco Rodio (1575) and Antonio Valente (1576) are more significant.
Rodio, particularly, included passages requiring virtuoso technique and
extremes of chromaticism which recall the pedagogic significance of the term
‘ricercare’. The collections of Mayone and Trabaci follow in the same
tradition.
Volumes
six and seven of the Giordano collection in Turin (see Sources
of keyboard music to 1660, §2(iii)) are devoted to ricercares. Although the word is there also
applied to non-Italian works, given other designations by their composers,
there are genuine examples of the form, including six that may be attributed to
Giovanni Gabrieli with some confidence. These ricercares, like two by Giovanni
Gabrieli printed in Andrea's Libro secondo (1595), use shorter note
values than do those of his uncle and include antiphonal passages between high
and low groups of parts in a manner reminiscent of Giovanni Gabrieli's ensemble
music. While the Turin manuscripts separate the genres, several other sources
include ricercare-canzona pairs based on the same material.
The
high point of the organ ricercare was reached in the works of Frescobaldi. His Ricercari
et canzoni was first published in 1615 and was reprinted with the
capriccios in 1626. Some of the ten ricercares have several sections devoted to
different subjects; others treat one or more subjects simultaneously from the
beginning or nearly the beginning of the piece. In the first, three subjects
are combined in this way. The ninth is based on four subjects; the fourth,
sixth, seventh and tenth are based on solmization syllables; in the last case
the subject is repeated throughout in the top voice only, against a
multi-sectional ricercare that unfolds in the lowest three voices. The second
consists in effect of three double fugues in which both subject and
countersubject are treated alternately in their original form and in inversion.
The eighth is subtitled ‘obbligo di non uscir in grado’: that is, no part may
at any time proceed by step. These ricercares, in spite of their severity,
their archaic flavour and their comparative immaturity, are interesting for
their single-minded pursuit of the contrapuntal ideal. The ricercares of
Frescobaldi's Fiori musicali (1635), which were intended to replace the
liturgical offertory, give a rather different impression. Four are
multi-sectional in form. The sections are marked off by pauses, probably to
indicate possible terminations in the context of liturgical performance. The
ricercare of the first mass is an example of what may be called the variation
ricercare: in each of its two sections the main theme is combined with
different counterpoints. This technique is seen to perfection in the
magisterial ‘recercar cromaticho’ from the second mass, which is in three
sections and is preceded by a short toccata. The first ricercare of the third
mass is similar in scope. In the alternative piece from the second mass, on the
other hand, the main subjects, presented separately in the first three
sections, are combined in the last. The last of these works has an optional
fifth part, an ostinato which the performer must not only fit correctly into
the polyphonic texture but also sing himself.
The
tradition of the keyboard ricercare continued in Italy with such composers as
Giovanni Salvatore (1641), G.B. Fasolo (1645), Bernardo Storace (1664), Luigi
Battiferri (1669), Fabrizio Fontana (1677) and Gregorio Strozzi (1687). It
seems fairly clear that one of its main functions in this period was to replace
the liturgical offertory, and perhaps also other items of the Proper, when
these were not explicitly provided for in the numerous organists' handbooks of
the day; indeed, it is explained in Fasolo's Annuale that they may be
used instead of the short substitutes provided for both the Gradual and the
Offertory. Though the regular four-part ensemble ricercare virtually
disappeared after Giovanni Cavaccio's Sudori musicali (1626), the
two-voice type continued with G.B. Cali (1605), Giorgio Gentile (1642),
Cristofano Piochi (1671 and 1673) and Stefano Corti (1685), as well as with
Metallo’s ricercares, which passed through at least 12 editions between 1605
and 1685. Piochi's 1671 volume also includes three-part works, to which his
publication of 1675 is devoted. The character of a technical exercise is
preserved in the 12 short unaccompanied fanfare-like ricercares from Girolamo
Fantini's Modo per imparare a sonare di tromba (1638), and in such later
publications as G.B. Degli Antoni's Ricercate sopra il violoncello o cembalo
(1687) and Ricercate a violino e violoncello o cembalo (1690), as well
as in the manuscript Ricercari per violoncello solo by Domenico
Gabrielli (1690).
In
Austria and Germany the severe manner of Frescobaldi was continued by
Froberger, whose 14 ricercares are monothematic and employ the variation
principle. The works in C
minor and F minor exhibit the growing tendency towards tonal
experimentation (both the severity and the tonal adventurousness are reflected
in the fugues of J.C.F. Fischer's Ariadne musica). Other German
composers of ricercares include Johann Krieger and Pachelbel; but the form did
not undergo any rejuvenation until the time of Bach, who was probably thinking
of its monothematic aspect when he revived the term in the Musical Offering.
The king's subject, unsuited to stretto, is surrounded by a wealth of different
counterpoints in the three-part work which begins the collection and in the
massive six-part work which is its culmination. Though the latter exists in a
two-staff version in Bach's own hand and was certainly intended primarily for
the keyboard, he published it in open score and in so doing (as in the Art
of Fugue, where the term ‘contrapunctus’ is chosen) revived an old Italian
notation with all its implications of an idealized counterpoint irrespective of
medium. The few modern composers who have used the term have generally implied
by it a severe fugue with archaic mannerisms.
Ricercare
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ApelG
BrownI
FétisB
FrotscherG
MeyerMS
SartoriB
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H. Opieński: ‘Quelques considérations sur l'origine des Ricercari pour luth’, Mélanges de musicologie offerts à M.
Lionel de la Laurencie (Paris, 1933), 39–45
A. Einstein: ‘Vincenzo Galilei and the Instructive Duo’, ML, xviii (1937), 360–68
K. Jeppesen: Die italienische
Orgelmusik am Anfang des Cinquecento (Copenhagen, 1943, 2/1960)
G. Sutherland: ‘The Ricercari of Jacques Buus’, MQ, xxxi (1945), 448–63
W. Apel: ‘The Early Development of the Organ Ricercar’, MD, iii (1949), 139–50
H.H. Eggebrecht: ‘Terminus “Ricercar”’, AMw, ix (1952), 137–47
H.H. Eggebrecht: Studien zur
musikalischen Terminologie (Mainz, 1955, 2/1968)
O. Gombosi: Preface to Compositione di Meser Vincenzo Capirola:Lute-book (circa 1517) (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1955/R)
R.M. Murphy: ‘Fantaisie et ricercare dans les premières tablatures de luth du XVIe
siècle’, Le luth et sa musique:
Neuilly-sur-Seine 1957, 127–42
I. Horsley: ‘The Solo Ricercar in Diminution Manuals: New Light on Early Wind and
String Techniques’, AcM, xxxiii (1961), 29–40
H.C. Slim: The Keyboard
Ricercar and Fantasia in Italy, ca. 1500–1550 (diss.,
Harvard U., 1961)
H.C. Slim: ‘Keyboard Music at Castell'Arquato by an Early Madrigalist’, JAMS, xv (1962), 35–47
R.S. Douglass: The Keyboard
Ricercare in the Baroque Era (diss., North Texas State
U., 1963)
E.E. Lowinsky: Foreword to
Musica nova, ed. H.C. Slim, MRM,
i (1964)
S. Bonta: ‘The Uses of the Sonata da Chiesa’, JAMS, xxii (1969), 54–84
H.R. Chase: German,
Italian and Dutch Fugal Precursors of the Fugues in the ‘Well-Tempered Clavier
I’, 1600–1722 (diss., Indiana U., 1970)
D. Kämper: Studien zur
instrumentalen Ensemblemusik des 16. Jahrhunderts in Italien, AnMc, no.10 (1970)
H.M. Brown and E.E. Lowinsky: Introduction
to Eustachio Romano: ‘Musica duorum’, Rome 1521, MRM, vi (1975)
E. Selfridge-Field: Venetian
Instrumental Music from Gabrieli to Vivaldi (Oxford, 1975)
W. Kirkendale: ‘Ciceronians versus Aristotelians on the Ricercar as Exordium, from
Bembo to Bach’, JAMS, xxxii (1979), 1–44
A. Silbiger: Italian
Manuscript Sources of Seventeenth-Century Keyboard Music (Ann Arbor, 1980)
A. Silbiger: ‘The Roman Frescobaldi Tradition, c. 1640–1670’, JAMS, xxxiii (1980), 42–87
R. d'A.
Jensen:
‘A Computerized Approach to the Early
Italian Lute Ricercar’, JLSA, xvii–xviii (1984–5),
106–13