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• Bermudo, Juan: Tientos amd Hymns (1555)

Bermudo, Juan: Tientos amd Hymns (1555)

for 4 instruments.

These five pieces come from Juan Bermudo´s Declaración de instrumentos musicales, published in Osuna, Andalucia in 1555 (and available in facsimile pub. Bärenreiter). The Declaración, which is partly a compilation of two earlier works by Bermudo from 1549 and 1550, is a substantial work that includes sections on plainsong, on polyphony, and instructions on the playing of plucked and keyboard instruments. In Book 4 Bermudo includes some 4-part settings of plainsong hymns, and a handful of untitled pieces of the sort that were generally called “ricercar” in Italian or “tiento” in Spanish. Although these pieces were presumably intended primarily for keyboard instruments, they are printed in choir-book format (four parts on a single opening), and the polyphonic writing contained in them is smooth enough to be effective on quartets of viols, recorders, or similar instruments.
There are a few points in the tientos where we have transposed a few bars in the tenor part (and, in one instance, the bassus) up an octave, to achieve better spacing between the parts, it would seem that Bermudo compromised his polyphony slightly in order to accommodate a single pair of hands. The original note values have been halved. One or two editorial accidentals have been added, printed small above the stave, and applying to the one note only. It has to be said that Bermudo´s use of accidentals is occasionally a little eccentric, at least when judged by the standards of classic Renaissance polyphony, but the same is true of the work of other Spanish musicians, who clearly were not bound by the same rules as Palestrina or Lassus.