Le toccate per strumento a tastiera di Andrea Gabrieli: un riesame

Abstract

Andrea Gabrieli is rightly celebrated as one of the most significan instrumental composer of the sixteenth century, both for his own works and for his role as a mentor to younger figures, including his nephew Giovanni and the South German composer Hans Leo Hassler. Through transmission in manuscript copies and printed editions, keyboard works in the abstract genres cultivated by Andrea and his contemporaries (including the toccata and ricercare) eventually made their way north of the Alps, where they exerted a profound influence on instrumental composition throughout the seventeenth century and well into the eighteenth. While Andrea's works served as important prototypes in this evolution, questions surround the provenance of several of the keyboard compositions long credited to him. This essay endeavors to estabilsh which of the twelve toccatas ascribed to Andrea in early sources and modern editions can in fact be considered genuine.
Fours toccatas composed by Andrea originally appeared in the 1593 volume Intonationi d'organo di Andrea Gabrieli e di Gio: suo Nepote; the attributions of these works are beyond question, for the collection was edited by Giovanni Gabrieli himself. Seven additional toccatas, all of them taken from the seventeenth-century manuscript keyboard source known as the Turin Tablatures, were published in 1961, in a volume entitled Andrea Gabrieli, Toccate per Organo (edited by Sandro Dalla Libera). Only two of these seven compositions, however, can be confidently attributed to Andrea; the pair are transmitted also in the first volume of Girolamo Diruta's Il Transilvano (Venice, 1593). Abundant source-related and stylistic evidence supports the conclusion that the five remaining works were not composed by Andrea.
All sixteen Turin volumes were copied by a single scribe between 1637 and 1640, and a substantial percentage of the pieces entered by this scribe carry no composer attribution. After manuscripts were completed, a second scribe, working at somewhat later date, drew up a table of contents, or 'Tavola', for each volume, in which he indexed the works within by composer. Earlier scholars have found the Tavoleintriguing because they supply attributions for many dozens of works that were entered without composer name by the original scribe. Yet the Tavola scribe arrived at his attributions by application of an entirely arbitrary method. If, for example, he encountered an unattributed piece following a composition or compositions credited to Hans Leo Hassler, he would routinely assign the anonymous work to Hassler. If he encountered a group of unattributed compositions similarly disposed, the scribe invariably assigned each work of the series to Hassler, continuing until he reached a piece credited to another composer. While the unthinking application of this mechanical procedure at times brought correct results (albeit quite fortuitously), it also led to dozens of inaccuracies and contradictions. So it was in the present case: having arrived at a toccata carrying an ascription (incorrect, as it turns out) to Andrea (Turin G2, n. 6), followed by four unattributed compositions, the Tavola scribe simply awarded all five works in the series to Andrea.
These dubious attributions are further undercut by stylistic evidence drawn from the works themselves. All include features uncharacteristic of Venetian idiom, and several in fact offer numerous details that strongly suggest correspondences to northern repertoires, and to the specific compositional vocabularies of Sweelinck, Scheidt, Sheidemann, Steigleder, and contemporaries. While they seem Italianate in certain respects, these pieces appera to represent examples of the reception and development of Venetian idiom by northerners.
One further toccata ascribed to Andrea survives in a single copy in the Minoritenkonvent keyboard manuscript; this unicum has never been presented in an edition. There can be little doubt that this is a genuine work, however, for it appears to represent an alternate version of Andrea's Intonatio Del Quinto Tono from the 1593 Intonationi d'organo. The two pieces share considerable material in common, and it might even be argued that the Minoritenkonvent piece is in certain respects superior to the published Intonatio. This composition can be added with confidence to the Andrea Gabrieli worklist.
In sum, it is possible to fix the number of known toccatas composed by Andrea Gabrieli at seven. These works, along with Andrea's eight published Intonationi and several short toccata-like pieces from his surviving Mass settings, constitute the full extent of our knowledge concerning his toccata style.