Into the Galant: Tartini, Telemann, Quantz, and Zuccari

Abstract

The final ornamentation module deals with examples by Giuseppe Tartini, Georg Philipp Telemann, Johann Joachim Quantz, and Carlo Zuccari. Tartini’s treatise on ornamentation contains a clear and systematic approach to ornamentation, dealing with grace notes, trills, vibrato, turns, and mordents, and giving many examples of embellished cadences. Telemann’s Methodical Sonatas contain embellished slow movements in both French and Italian styles. They are categorized, and an exercise is devised for assimilating them. Quantz wrote one of the most comprehensive interval-based ornamentation tables of the entire Baroque period, relevant above all to the Style Galant and including note-by-note instructions for performance. Examples are given with these instructions reproduced. He also composed an Adagio with instructions for almost every note: these have been transcribed from the instructions for ease of study. Quantz also offers advice on cadenzas, of which two are reproduced. To conclude, a page of Carlo Zuccari’s 1760 True Method of Playing an Adagio is reproduced.