(It.: ‘testing of the strings’).
A
term used in the 16th century for a short introductory composition
corresponding to the contemporary Toccata or Tiento. Its history seems to be
limited to a single collection of lute music published in Venice in 1508, J.A.
Dalza’s Intabolatura de lauto libro quarto, whose title-page lists among
the contents ‘tastar de corde con li soi recercar drietro’. Its function, as
the name implies, was both to check the tuning and the ‘tastatura’ of the
instrument (the temperament between the movable frets) and to loosen the
player’s fingers before a more complex contrapuntal piece such as a ricercare.
Dalza’s collection contains five pieces with the title ‘tastar de corde’, four
of them followed by a ricercare. The first and fifth are in G, the second in C,
the third in D (with F
) and the fourth in C (with E
). The first tastar is the shortest,
at 16 bars, and the third and fourth the longest, both with 42 bars. Their
structure is very similar to that of the prelude-toccata or Spanish tiento for
organ (see Prelude, §1), in which long, static chords marked
with a fermata alternate with short, rapid but rarely virtuoso passages.
Isolated examples of the tastar de corde’s survival are the tastata in P.P. Melli’s Intavolatura di liuto attiorbato, libro secondo (1614) and, later still, the tasteggiata in Bernardo Gianoncelli’s Il liuto (1650). The latter in particular has the quality of a simple but attractive toccata introducing a suite of dances.
L. Schrade: ‘Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Tokkata’, ZfM, viii (1925–6), 610–35
R. Murphy: ‘Fantaisie et recercare dans les premières tablatures de luth du XVIe siècle’, Le luth et sa musique: Neuilly-sur-Seine 1957, 127–42
H.C. Slim: The Keyboard Ricercar and Fantasia in Italy, ca.1500–1550, with Reference to Parallel Forms in European Lute Music of the Same Period (diss., Harvard U., 1961)
R. Chiesa: ‘Storia della letteratura del liuto e della chitarra: il Cinquecento (IV–VI)’, Il fronimo, i (1973), no.4, pp.20–25; no.5, pp.15–20
DINKO FABRIS