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Artist
Giovanni Amigone
5+ albums
italian17th century
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The manuscript Q.34, Spartitura generale, et particolare [...] Joannes Amigonus Mantuanus scribebat Romae Anno Domini 1613, is housed in the musica di Bologna and contains some of the earliest known sinfonias or sonatas for solo violin and basso continuo. Very little is known about the scribe of the manuscript. Probably born in Mantua (cf. “Mantuanus” on the title page of the manuscript) Joannes Amigonus (or Giovanni Amigone) became a member c. 1610 of the cappella of the church of Santo Spirito in Sassia, close to St Peter’s, in Rome. During his stay in the papal city he probably earned his living both as a singer and as a copyist of music. Some time after 1613—the year of his compiling Q.34—Amigonus returned to Mantua, where he is listed on the payrolls of the Gonzaga court, receiving a high salary in 1622 as a bass singer. The manuscript Q.34 with its highly varied contents of vocal and instrumental music and music theory can be characterized as a book of miscellanea, and perhaps served as a music teacher’s manual. Its contents include a mass, motets, Italian and French secular pieces, psalm tone formulas, instrumental pieces, canons, rules for playing the Spanish guitar, and a theoretical treatise entitled “Regole di Prattica Musicale". Among the composers who are represented in the manuscript we find Agazzari, Arcadelt, Josquin Desprez, Orlando di Lasso, Palestrina and Cipriano de Rore. The three short sinfonias are found on fols. 67v–70r with the common title Sinfoni