itself. It, too, was probably a transcription of an unwritten virtuoso practice, and the whole book probably
served as a primer—a book of notated examples for emulation as a part of one’s training in that unwritten
practice—rather than a collection of finished texts.
Some of Spinacino’s ricercari have minuscule points of imitation, to show another kind of thing that
virtuoso improvisers were expected to toss off. Whether these impulsive little passages underlie the
development of the kind of ricercare that Buus practiced, which was composed “strictly”—that is, in
pervading imitation throughout—is hard to say. It is worth remembering, though, that a great deal of what
a church organist does today is still improvised—such as grinding out music by the yard to accompany
liturgical actions of indeterminate or unpredictable length: communions, for example, where the length of
the ceremony depends on the number of mouths to fill. That is where church organists probably played
their ricercari. The first organ ricercari were published in Venice in 1523 by Marco Antonio Cavazzoni,
then the organist at St. Stephen’s Church in that city. They still resemble the fairly raw written-out
improvisations of the lutenists. But eventually the Venetian organ ricercari began aspiring to the style of
the ars perfecta motet. And just as the first published lute ricercari appeared in Venice, the strict church
motet-ricercare seems also to have been a Venetian innovation and one perhaps attributable to Willaert
and his immediate circle.
The earliest strictly composed ricercari appeared in Venice in 1540, in a set of four partbooks called
Musica Nova. Eighteen of the 21 textless pieces in the collection are called ricercari. Although the title
page calls them “suitable for singing or playing on organs or other instruments,” and the partbook format
made possible home performance by ensembles, there can be little doubt that they were primarily
composed for the organ and for church, and that performance by ensembles was a secondary option
offered by the publisher to stimulate sales. All of the composers represented in the collection were church
men. Pride of place, naturally, went to Willaert. One of his ricercari is printed first, but only two of the
remaining twenty were his. The lion’s share, thirteen in all, were by a composer called “Julio da
Modena” in the edition, but identifiable by comparison with other sources as the organist Julio Segni,
who did indeed hail from Modena, but who from 1530 to 1533 served as Willaert’s first organist at St.
Mark’s and probably composed his ricercari at that time. (The remaining composers represented in
Musica Nova, Girolamo Parabosco, and Girolamo Cavazzoni, Marco Antonio’s son and a future luminary
of the instrument, were then teenagers receiving instruction from Willaert.)
So Buus, Willaert’s second organist at St. Mark’s, was following in a tradition perhaps established by
Segni, Willaert’s former first organist, in composing ricercari for the keyboard in the clean “perfected”
style of a Willaert motet—ricercari so nicely crafted and precisely voiced that they could be published in
partbooks and marketed as actual ensemble music. It was a complete about-face from all previously
known keyboard practice, and its justification cannot be sought within the domain of the keyboard. There
is no reason why keyboard music should ape the contrapuntal consistency of contemporary vocal music
save an ideological reason: that the perfection of style achieved by the high art music of the literate
tradition was held to be a universally valid achievement. The hegemony of the literate tradition had
begun. Academic music had been born.
ACADEMIC ART
An academic style is one in which the process of making is considered to be of paramount value, and
therefore one in which the maker’s technical apparatus is at all times on display. It is a species of tour de
force in that its “art” is demonstratively advertised, never concealed, but it has a different character from
other tours de force that we have encountered because the primary addressee of the compositional display