Intitulata Fontegara

Technically, “Intitulata” features relative temporal freedom within multiple strata that are to be interpreted flexibly within and across meters. This piece is a continuation of recent work that explores ornamentation – here based on a 16th century treatise on ornamentation by Silvestro Ganassi, dal Fontego Opera intitulata Fontegara (Venice, 1535).

In my composition, ornamentation occurs in two ways: 1) with typical Baroque symbols (trillo, mordant, cadence, dopplet-cadence, etc.); and 2) written-out ornaments from the collection of bizarre tuplets from the Ganassi treatise. These ornaments are not to be treated in a historical manner, but rather to extract the underlying idea that interface with an already abundant notation. A wisp of decay provided by such ahistorical archetypes provides frail evidence of a meeting between the distant past and today.