Counterpoint in the fingers. A practical approach to Girolamo Diruta’s breve & facile regola di contrappunto
Massimiliano Guido · Università degli Studi di Pavia · 2012
Counterpoint, in the Seicento, was not a dead set of rules, but a living language used every day by learned musicians, refined singers, and keyboardists. The aspect that will be explored here is the learning process: how the treatises were read and learned at the keyboard. Evidence is collected from Girolamo Diruta’s Il Transilvano, where the short counterpoint rules have to be read in association with the other instructions in the treatise. I propose a reconstruction of a method of learning counterpoint, deriving theoretical principles from practical and physical situations such as fingering and hand position movements. This practice has roots in ‘counterpoint alla mente’, which was at the basis of musical instruction.