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• 2 Passamezzi from the Hessen Books

2 Passamezzi from the Hessen Books

for 6 instruments.

These two passamezzi are nos. 2 and 3 in a large collection of 322 single dances or related pairs (pavans/galliards, for the most part), Viel Feiner Liebliche Stucklein... published in Breslau in 1555 by two brothers Paul and Bartholomeus Hessen, who describe themselves as bandsmen of that city. The anthology claims to consist of Spanish, Italian, English, and French dances in 4, 5, and 6 parts, which have never before appeared in print. The collection, in fact, rifles the dance books of Attaingnant as well as containing all but one of the pieces in Bendusi´s Opera Nova de Balli of 1553.
The dances are, as the compilers explain, basically in four parts, but 69 of them have an added fifth part (quintus), and 65 have two added parts (quintus and sextus). The sextus usually lies above the cantus, but sometimes both the quintus and sextus are between the tenor and the bassus, in which case the bassus is transposed down an octave. In their introduction the Hessen brothers remark that the added parts are shown by a trefoil printed after them, and that bass parts requiring to be played an octave higher in four parts are marked with an asterisk. This practice is indeed found in the collection, but by no means consistently.
Only four of the five part books have survived, the fifth, the cantus part being missing. As this usually has the tune of the dance, and as no titles are given, only numbers, there are problems in transcribing the collection. There is, however, an incomplete set of part books for the royal wind players in the Royal Library in Copenhagen (Mus. MS 1873) that includes approximately two dozen of these missing cantus parts; so from this cantus book and the fact that a large number of the other dances were well-known at the time it is possible to transcribe a considerable body of the pieces.
The first of the two pairs printed here also appears in another incomplete set of parts in Copenhagen (MS 1872), which contain three dances and include the cantus. However, our cantus follows Copenhagen 1873, which was almost certainly copied from the Hessen books.
In this edition the original note values have been halved, except in Gagliarda I, in which they have been quartered. In scoring these pieces it is important to remember that the sextus is an added part, which should not be allowed to obscure the cantus.