FIG. 15-7 Jacques Buus, Ricercare no. 1 from Intabolatura d’organo di recercari, Libro primo (Venice: Gardane, 1549).
The differences between the two versions are the differences between, on the one hand, an idealized
conception or premise in writing from which all performances will derive (the piece set down for all
time), and on the other, an actual performance—that is, a once-only “oralized” and ephemeral realization
(the piece as we are hearing it right now). Our age tends to minimize the distinction and try to realize all
pieces in performance just the way they have been set down, thinking in this way to capture their timeless
essence. Such a performance is often called an “authentic” one. A better term for it might be a
“literalistic” one, were that term not burdened with a negative connotation in ordinary usage; for what
such a performance really represents is a fully “literacized,” text-dominated concept of music.
That was certainly not the sixteenth-century way, and we have to keep it constantly in mind that the
music we know from its written traces—the music we know by sight, so to speak—was not the music that
anybody in the sixteenth century actually heard. That great submerged iceberg of sound is gone forever
from today’s ear, hand and memory. All we have to go on if we wish to hear it again are a few didactic
guides, some scattered practical examples like the one in Ex. 15-9b, and our imaginations.
The didactic guides, especially, give a tantalizing glimpse of a lost world of music-making. The two
earliest authors of printed method books for instrumentalists were Silvestro di Ganassi dal Fontego
(1492-ca. 1550), who actually worked alongside Willaert in St. Mark’s, and Diego Ortiz (ca. 1510–ca.
1570), a Spaniard who worked at the court of Naples. Ganassi published two books. The first, a method
for wind players called Fontegara (Venice, 1535), deals mainly with the vertical whistle-flute or
recorder. The second, a double volume for string players called Regola rubertina (Venice, 1542–43),