I'm in the process of preparing an edition of the Keyboard works of Bernardo Storace. It's based on his only known output, published in Venice in 1664. I've come across a mystery, and I'd like to mine the collective wisdom of the list to help me solve it. For reference I've uploaded a special setting the first page of the Recercar in e minor to
http://www.geocities.com/pchpublish/srecep1.pdf Storace used the "old" convention where accidentals only applied once and did not carry through a bar, and also he used the relative accidental convention. This means he rarely had need for a natural, and in fact, except for this piece and another in e minor with some of the same types of mysteries, I don't think there are any other naturals in the whole 100 pages of the facsimile. The example typeset page is "special" in that (barring editorial mistakes) it contains accidentals exactly as Storace notated them, whereas in my edition I've modernized all accidentals. The mystery is in the meaning of the F-naturals. If they mean anything like what a modern F-natural means, then there would be no need for any of them, since there's no F sharp in the key signature (and even if there were, to cancel it would require a flat, not a natural). Besides, they simply sound wierd, starting with the subject in bar 1. In fact they would all sound better if played as F-sharps. They only seem to be used when descending to the note. And look at the shape of the subject in the next two entrances, the tenor in Bar 1, and soprano in Bar 3. It's consistent with that F-natural having been an F-sharp. Can anyone shed any light on this? --Don Simons _______________________________________________ TeX-music mailing list TeX-music@icking-music-archive.org http://icking-music-archive.org/mailman/listinfo/tex-music
