Terzi, Giovanni Antonio (EN)

Terzi Giovanni Antonio, Antonio del Pergamasco, Italian lutenist, singer, and composer, active in the fourth quarter of the 16th century. His father may have been a musician (professional or amateur), as Terzi published his galliard. The text on the title pages of Terzi’s works, as well as the dedication, suggest that he was active in Bergamo and was likely from that city. In the dedication of the 1599 print, Terzi writes about his “quiet” life and weakened strength, from which S. Court concludes that the artist may have been over 50 years old at the time. In 1664, D. Calvi of Bergamo, recalling his famous compatriots of old, mentions Terzi as an excellent lutenist and equally brilliant singer. The name Terzi recurs in the musical life of Bergamo – a certain Antonio Terzi sang tenor occasionally in 1626 in the Basilica of S. Maria Maggiore.

Terzi’s work encompasses genres typical of 16th century lute music: intabulations, autonomous pieces, and dances, including variations. What is unusual, however, is the great diversity of the lute’s role as a solo instrument and as part of various ensembles. It is also unusual for Terzi to emphasize his own authorship of many dances, as well as his use of a large number of instrumental pieces (including organ works) as models for intabulations is innovative and characteristic of the end of the century. The creators of these instrumental pieces are listed alongside those of the vocal models. Among Terzi’s 122 solo works, 14 motets, 16 madrigals, 2 instrumental canzoni francesi, and 5 chamber fantasias have survived, as well as a Preludio, Preambulo (unusually courant combined with a prelude) 11 fantasias, 2 toccatas, and 70 cycles and individual dances. Terzi arranged 5 madrigals and 5 instrumental canzoni francesi and Italian canzone for 2 lutes “in concerto.” He intended his intabulations of 12 chamber canzonas for 4 voices by F. Maschera (from a 1584 print) to be performed either solo or as accompaniment to an ensemble, and his arrangement of 12 canzonettas for 3 or 5 voices and a motet for 5 voices was intended as lute accompaniment for a solo vocal part, selected from the model (the text appears alongside the tablature in these works). In print, Terzi devoted his own two-choir canzone (for 8 voices), which may originally have been a chamber piece, to four lutes. The purpose of one of the Terzi’s pieces is unclear, namely a richly ornamented intabulation of a madrigal for 5 voices (A. Striggio) made “a modo di viola bastarda” to be played “in concerto con liutto grande,” but the part for the second lute does not appear. Solo intabulations of vocal pieces generally lack ornamentation, while Terzi retains the original harmony, including pentachords and hexachords. One of the parts of the intabulation for two lutes is constructed in a similar way, while the other, called “contraponto,” consists of extended virtuoso single-voice passages, using the entire scale of the instrument.

Terzi’s fantasies are imitative works, almost always monothematic, of a variational nature; two of them, named “in modo di canzon francese,” resemble the canzones of C. Merulo and G. Frescobaldi (several sections contrasting in texture and meter). The prelude (with a large amount of imitation) and 2 toccatas (containing chordal parts and virtuoso passages) are tonally related to the fantasies and motet intabulation that follow them, so that these six pieces can be considered pairs, which is not found in earlier lute tablatures. Terzi’s dances cover a wide spectrum, with 12 pairs of passamezzo + galliard or saltarello and 3 passamezzos (each piece consisting of 3 virtuoso variations on the antico or moderno pattern), 2 pairs of “German dances” (variations, one preserved in 2 versions) + galliard or saltarello, 23 galliards (Terzi distinguishes here between his arrangements of well-known melodies and new pieces written by him), 3 extended pavane, 6 courants, 4 voltas and branles, barriera, ten of “German dances” and one each of French, Italian and Polish dances. 

Literature: D. Calvi Scena letteraria degli scrittori Bergamaschi, Bergamo 1664; C. MacClintock Two Lute Intabulations of Wert’s Cara la vita, in: Essays in Musicology. A Birthday Offering for Willi Apel, ed. H. Tischler, Bloomington 1968; H.M. Brown Sixteenth-Century Instrumentation: the Music for the Florentine Intermedii, Dallas 1973; M. Padoan La musica in S. Maria Maggiore a Bergamo nel periodo di Giovanni Cavaccio (1598–1626), Como 1983; S. Court Giovanni Antonio Terzi and the Lute Intabulations of Late Sixteenth-Century Italy, thesis, University of Otago, 1988; S. Court The Role of the Lute in Sixteenth-Century Consorts. Evidence from Terzi’s Intabulations, “Performance Practice Review” VIII, 1995; S. Court Structure, Imitation and Paraphrase in the Ornamentation of Giovanni Antonio Terzi’s Lute Intabulations, in: Liber Amicorum John Steele: A Musicological Tribute, ed. W. Drake, New York 1997; C. Dupraz Le duo de luths sur modèle vocal à la Renaissance. Vers une typologie du répertoire, in: La musique, de tous les passetemps le plus beau: hommage à Jean-Michel Vaccaro, ed. F. Lesure and H. Vanhulst, Paris 1998; P. Canguilhem Luthistes et organistes en Italie à la fin du XVIe siècle. Les „canzoni da sonar” de Merulo et Guami arrangées par Terzi et Molinaro, in: Luths et luthistes en Occident, ed. P. et al., Paris 1999; S. Court Giovanni Antonio Terzi’s Venetian Lute Books. Fantasia, Intabulation and the Lute in Ensemble, “The Lute” XL, 2000.