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• Cavaccio: Pavana + Saltarello

Cavaccio: Pavana + Saltarello

for 4 instruments.

This pavana-saltarello pair comes from Giovanni Cavaccio's Musica .. ove si contengono 2 fantasie... canzoni alla francese pavana co'l saltarello, Venice, 1597, which, as the title suggests, is a rather varied collection of different kinds of instrumental pieces. Giovanni Cavaccio was born in Bergamo around 1556 and died there in 1626. He was for a time maestro di cappella at the cathedral there, and also worked at the church of S. Maria Maggiore. Naturally he produce a reasonable amount of church music, but two collections of purely instrumental music have survived, the collection containing the present piece, and his Sudori musicali of 1626, which includes among other things a rather attractive double-choir canzone da sonar (printed in EMI, 160).
The present pavana is based on the old passamezzo antico bass, which is stated three times in all. The saltarello begins with two straightforward statements of the bass, over eight bars each, but continues by developing cadential progressions, forming a kind of coda to the pair of pieces.
The fact that the pavana is of the passamezzo type has implications for performance: such pieces were taken faster than normal pavane. I would recommend two slow beats in a bar, perhaps at semibreve = 66-72: at this tempo the bass can be heard for what it is, and the figuration in the upper parts sounds exciting and varied.
In this edition the original note values have been retained in the pavana and halved in the saltarello, where the original time-signature is 0 312. The original clefs are soprano, alto, tenor and bass (C1, C3, C4, F4).