Tactus Records
Paolo Quagliati: Toccata, Ricercari E Canzoni
About This Album
Paolo Quagliati was, like Girolamo Frescobaldi, a transitional figure in Italian music whose works span from the last bloom of the Renaissance to the early strivings of the Baroque. Unlike Frescobaldi, to whom keyboard music is the main course, Quagliati's surviving music is small in quantity and his keyboard music makes up the smallest part of it. Tactus' Paolo Quagliati: Toccata, Ricercari e Canzoni, featuring Aaron Edward Carpenè on organ and harpsichord, contains all of the keyboard music Quagliati is known to have produced -- a single Toccata on the eighth tone, published in 1593, and the 1601 print Ricercate e canzoni per sonare et cantare. This second publication contains 19 pieces that do not carry any indication of which ones are supposed to be ricercare and what others are canzone. Carpenè, also the annotator of this Tactus disc, states that it's "pointless to specify which of these compositions correspond to (these) forms." Hmm, it seems with a little effort one could try; is there an authority in the house?

To his credit, Carpenè varies these short movements through playing them on a fabulous restored seventeenth century organ, originally built by Luca Neri and situated in the Oratorio di Sant'Antonio da Padova in Rio Saliceto, Italy, while alternating others with a clavichord of modern build.
Track List

Toccata, For Keyboard
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Ricarcate, Et Canzone Per Sonare, Et Cantare (19), For Keyboard
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