Fronimo Dialogo

Last updated April 02, 2019

The Fronimo Dialogo di Vincentio Galilei (Vincenzo Galilei) is an instructional book on playing, composing and intabulating vocal music for the lute.

Vincenzo Galilei was an Italian lutenist, composer, and music theorist, and the father of astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei and the lute virtuoso and composer Michelagnolo Galilei. He was a seminal figure in the musical life of the late Renaissance and contributed significantly to the musical revolution which demarcates the beginning of the Baroque era.

A lute is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. More specifically, the term "lute" can refer to an instrument from the family of European lutes. The term also refers generally to any string instrument having the strings running in a plane parallel to the sound table. The strings are attached to pegs or posts at the end of the neck, which have some type of turning mechanism to enable the player to tighten the tension on the string or loosen the tension before playing, so that each string is tuned to a specific pitch. The lute is plucked or strummed with one hand while the other hand "frets" the strings on the neck's fingerboard. By pressing the strings on different places of the fingerboard, the player can shorten or lengthen the part of the string that is vibrating, thus producing higher or lower pitches (notes).

The first edition was printed by Girolamo Scotto in Venice with the full title FRONIMO DIALOGO / DI VINCENTIO GALILEI FIORENTINO, / NEL QUALE SI CONTENGONO LE VERE, / et necessarie regole del Intavolare la Musica nel Liuto. While the title page bears the date 1568, the final page confusingly bears the date 1569. Apparently, although the manuscript was completed by Galilei in the Autumn of 1568, the official letter of privilege allowing the publication of the book was received only in December, and the printing actually took place in 1569. In addition, still in 1569, Girolamo Scotto broke the book into two parts, selling a collection of 30 musical selections from near the end of the book and the Dialogo separately. A second edition of the complete Dialogo, with significant revisions, was printed in 1584 by the “heir of Girolamo Scotto,” under the title FRONIMO / DIALOGO / DI VINCENTIO GALILEI / NOBILE FIORENTINO, / SOPRA L'ARTE DEL BENE INTAVOLARE, / ET RETTAMENTE SONARE LA MUSICA / Negli strumenti artificiali si di corde come di fiato, & in particulare nel Liuto.

Girolamo Scotto was an Italian printer, composer, businessman and bookseller of the Renaissance, active mainly in Venice. He was the most influential member of the firm of Venetian printers, the House of Scotto, which existed from the late 15th century until 1615. At its peak in the 1560s, the Scotto firm under Girolamo was one of the preeminent publishing firms of Europe, producing volumes on law, scholasticism, philosophy, medicine, theology, and ancient literature in addition to music. Only the firm of Gardano produced more books of music in the 16th century than the House of Scotto under Girolamo; over half of Scotto's publications, 409 out of approximately 800 in total, were books of music.

Venice is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is situated on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The islands are located in the shallow Venetian Lagoon, an enclosed bay that lies between the mouths of the Po and the Piave rivers. In 2018, 260,897 people resided in the Comune di Venezia, of whom around 55,000 live in the historical city of Venice. Together with Padua and Treviso, the city is included in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area (PATREVE), which is considered a statistical metropolitan area, with a total population of 2.6 million.

Unlike other lute instruction manuals of the 16th century, each of the editions of Fronimo contains quite a large amount of music. Galilei provided examples in order to illustrate how he believed compositions should be structured and how intabulations should be made from existing compositions. The examples range from a few notes or measures in length up to complete compositions in either mensural notation or lute tablature. In the 1584 edition, for example, there are 48 pieces in tablature form sprinkled throughout the text (including a set of 24 ricercars in all the possible tonalities) and a collection of 60 more pieces placed all together at the end. The 1568 edition includes a total of 96 complete pieces, many of which are different from those chosen for the 1584 edition.

Sources

1568/69 edition
1584 edition
Dialogo sopra l'arte del bene intavolare
The Lute Society of America

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