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• 2 Fantasias from the Caioni Codex

2 Fantasias from the Caioni Codex

for 4 instruments.

The Caioni Codex is a large collection written over two or three decades in the middle of the 17th century in German keyboard tablature. An eclectic collection, it contains much Italian music (Viadana, Grandi, Banchieri, Valentini), and German music (Hassler, Schütz, Hammerschmidt, Hieronymus Praetorius), as well as some French, Italian and Hungarian dances and other simple tunes; it even includes a setting of the English tune “Bonny sweet Robin” (written as “Bonjour de almor”). It has survived at the Margita History Museum at Miercurea-Ciuc in Rumania, and is available in facsimile (Musica Danubiana, vol. 14a, Bucharest / Budapest). The compiler of the collection, Johannes Caioni, was Franciscan monk who was an important figure in the cultural life of Transilvania.
Alessandro Grandi (1575-1630) was one of the finest Italian composers of church music of the generation after Gabrieli. If the present piece is actually by him, it must surely be an early work. Nothing is known about Wolfgang Getzmann: his piece is similar to the work of Italian organ composers such as Costanzo Antegnati.
Generally speaking these pieces transferred from tablature to polyphonic notation quite easily. However, in the Grandi piece some adjustment had to be made in dividing the material between the two top parts, especially at bar 24 (both times).