Improvisation in Spanish Renaissance I

Sixteenth-century performers usually played with improvising the long breve to make the music more interesting and exciting. This division is called diminutions, passaggi, or gorgie. Various artists have prepared elaborate decorative formulas that explain how and where players are to improvise. Notable among these are instructions by Silvestro di Ganassi for recorder players, Diego Ortiz for viol players, Girolamo Dalla Casa for wind instrumentalists. In addition, Giovanni Bassano for a treatise to instrumentalists while Francesco Rognoni’s treatise is addressed to violinists and vocalists and Giovanni Battista Conforto wrote improvisations for vocalists. Each one has a different style of ornamenting the passage; however, they all agreed that players should improvise at a cadence.

In particular, this article will discuss the treatise of Diego Ortiz and make a comparison between him and other players who talked about improvisation. In his book Trattado de Glosas, his musical examples present numerous ways of ornamenting music. Specific methods of ornamentation from his treatise will be applied to a few of his compositions and then compared with the original composition.