“Todos echarán contrapunto a la folla”: collective improvisation in Spain during the baroque era (ca. 1600-1750).

Abstract

Several sources from the 17th and 18th centuries suggest that in Spanish cathedrals, during the liturgy, a sort of collective counterpoint was usually performed over plainchant. Unlike what happened in concerted counterpoints, described in musical treatises from the 16th century onwards, collective counterpoints could be performed by an undefined number of musicians, even by all the singers and instrumentists of a chapel. Besides, this mass of musicians improvised without concert, that is without having previously planned the strategies to be used during the performance and the main characteristics of the improvisation, according to the rules provided by the treaties of the time for performing concerted counterpoint. While references to this improvisation practice are scarce and generic in treatises of counterpoint written in Spanish, Italian theorists such as Scipione Cerreto (ca. 1551- ca. 1633), Lodovico Zacconi (1555-1627), Adriano Banchieri (1568-1634) or Giovanni D’Avella (fl. 1657) describe in some detail the techniques for collective improvisation. In this article, using both documentary sources and music theory treatises, the practice of collective counterpoint will be studied to establish its effective use in the liturgy, emphasizing its differences with respect to the concerted counterpoint of the time. Additionally, a proposal will be made, based on the reading of music theory treatises, to reconstruct the techniques and sound of this collective praxis of improvisation.