Liber secundus diversarum modulationum: Singulis, binis, ternis, quaternisque vocibus (1627) by Girolamo Frescobaldi (review)

The publication of the eleventh volume of Girolamo Frescobaldi’s Opere complete (complete works) has been eagerly awaited by musicians devoted to this early baroque master. It appears six years after the twelfth volume of the set, which started in 1975, and which now includes all of Frescobaldi’s works originally published during the composer’s lifetime or shortly thereafter (with a few small exceptions––see below). The eleventh volume presents what is probably the least known, and until now least accessible part of his compositional output: the concertato motets (or sacred concertos) for one to four voices and organ continuo, originally published in 1627 as a set of part-books with the unwieldy title Liber secundus diversarum modulationum singulis, binis, ternis, quaternisque vocibus. What makes the appearance of this volume particularly welcome is that while thirteen of the thirty-one motets have been available in print for some years (Mottetti a 1. 2 e 3 voci con continuo, ed. Christopher Stembridge, Capolavori musicali dei secoli XVIIo e XVIIIo [Padua: G. Zanibon, 1987]), the remaining eighteen, which survive incomplete due to the loss of the cantus secundus partbook (also containing altus parts), appear here for the first time, in a reconstructed version by the editors.

To add newly composed parts to these works was a bold undertaking––one that might even seem to contradict the essential nature of a critical scholarly edition, which attempts to present to us, to the extent possible, the original work, with a minimum of editorial intrusion. Of course that is an illusion, because any editorial work, even on small matters like accidentals, barlines, beaming, or continuo figures, involves interpretation. But it takes quite a few steps from there––giant steps––to add new parts to a contrapuntal texture. Before discussing how successful the editors have been as stand-ins for the composer, let’s take a closer look at the Liber secundus and its background, as presented in this edition.

Presumably the volume was preceded by a Liber primus, but of such a publication no trace has been found. In fact, if it were not for the unique surviving copy of the Liber secundus in the British Library––even if incomplete––we would not even have known of Frescobaldi’s extensive engagement with the concertato motet. Only four other motets credited to his name have come down to us in anthologies published in Rome between 1616 and 1625. One of these, Iesu Rex admirabilis, included in the collection Sacri affetti (Rome: L. A. Soldi, 1625), does also appear with some variants in the 1627 Liber secundus (no. 24). If we assume that, similarly, the other three pieces, surviving in anthologies from 1616, 1618, and 1622, were subsequently incorporated in a Liber primus, the earlier volume’s likely publication date would fall somewhere between 1622 and 1625.

With his collection of settings of sacred Latin texts for one to four voices and organ continuo (basso per l’organo), Frescobaldi was following a trend in sacred music production that had been gaining ground since the beginning of the century. The editors of the volume under review report that in the three decades preceding the publication of the Liber secundus, over forty collections of such works appeared in Rome, representing some twenty-five different composers. While many of these works betrayed their ancestry in the polyphonic motet, with the continuo bass often merely supporting the lowest voice or voices, the vocal lines, particularly in the motets for one and two voices and in...