{"id":662,"date":"2015-02-10T13:16:26","date_gmt":"2015-02-10T13:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/microsites.ifagiolini.com\/betrayal\/?p=662"},"modified":"2015-03-31T09:47:08","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T09:47:08","slug":"spare-keys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microsites.ifagiolini.com\/betrayal\/spare-keys\/","title":{"rendered":"Spare keys"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thoughts on Gesualdo and his music: part three
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Robert Hollingworth<\/em><\/p>\n

The home of such harmonic experimentation was the court of Ferrara whose Duke was obsessed with music. The court had a history of employing top composers: Josquin, Obrecht and Brumel had worked here earlier in the century and later Willaert. It was the lesser-known Neapolitan musician Vicentino, though, who was present there in the 1550s and who fostered an interest in chromaticism. He invented a keyboard instrument with extra keys to allow differentiation between notes represented on a modern keyboard by one key (such as C# and Db) but which are actually slightly different notes if tuned to the acoustically pure intervals (which sound sweeter than the slightly out of tune intervals you hear on a piano). The chromatic keyboard didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t catch on (and those learning their grade 8 scales may be glad of this) but the understanding of how to tune pure intervals \u00e2\u20ac\u201c especially in a solo-voice ensemble – is a crucial part of unlocking the colour or chroma<\/em> in Gesualdo\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s music.<\/p>\n

\"Archicembalo<\/a><\/p>\n

Other posts on this subject from Robert can be found here: 1<\/a>, 2<\/a>, 3<\/a>, 4<\/a>, 5<\/a><\/em>, 6<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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