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Diego Pisador

Fantasía 18, del cuarto tono

 

Libro de música para vihuela (1552), fol. 26

pi049

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Source title Otra fantasia del quarto tono a quatro.
Title in contents   Fantasia del quarto tono.
Text incipit


Music

Category abstract

Genre fantasia

Fantasia type nIm

Mode 4

Voices 4

Length (compases) 114

Vihuela

Tuning G

Courses 6

Final V/4

Highest I/7

Lowest VI/0

Difficulty not specified

Tempo not specified

Song Text

Language

Vocal notation

Commentary

Rubric: “Another fantasia in mode 4 in four voices”. Here Pisador offers a non-imitative, through-composed fantasia. Unusual, it is the first by Pisador in this style. The work has quite a bit of mood due to its mode, but is rambling and shows little evidence of being connceived around a structural model. It has many technical weaknesses, and the result is a little boring. Some of the voice leading is defective, the cadences in first 15 bars show prominence of E–F–E idea. From b. 28 a second them emerges from the bass, noticeable due to its rhythm (dotted crotchet, quaver, crotchet). A breif imitative passage (in quavers) occurs in bars 40-42. The theme given as theme 1 is only the melodic incipit of the piece; theme 2 occurs only twice.
It might be stretching things a bit far, but the work is also possibly seen as based on a similar formula as the immediately preceeding fantasiasin untis of approximately 14 bars:
I 1-14 (E-F-E)
II 15-28 free
III 28-42 ((dotted crotchet, quaver, crotchet theme
IV 43-57 free
In performance, this structure is not readily audible, and might well be excessively formalistic.