1 ‘on peut dire qu'il ait toute sa science aux bouts des doits.’ Letter from Doni to Mersenne, 22 July 1640. Cornelius de Waard, Correspondence du P. Marin Mersenne, 9 (Paris, 1965), 488.

2 ‘…havend'io composto il mio primo libro di fatiche musicali sopra i tasti’, Frescobaldi, Toccate e partite…libro primo (Rome, 1615).

3 Howard Mayer Brown, Instrumental Music Printed Before 1600: A Bibliography (Cambridge, MA, 1965); Claudio Sartori, Bibliografia della musica strumentale italiana, 2 vols. (Florence, 1952, 1968).

4 Heather F. Windram, Terence Charlston and Christopher J. Howe, ‘A Phylogenetic Analysis of Orlando Gibbons's Prelude in G’, Early Music, XLII (2014), 515–28; Rebecca Herissone, Musical Creativity in Restoration England (Cambridge, 2013).

5 Robert Judd, ‘The Use of Notational Formats at the Keyboard’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Oxford, 1989); and Paul A. L. Boncella, ‘The Classical Venetian Organ Toccata (1591–1604): An Ecclesiastical Genre Shaped by Printing Technologies and Editorial Procedures’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Rutgers State University, NJ, 1991).

6 Rebecca Cypess, ‘Frescobaldi's Toccate e partitie…libro primo (1615–1616) as a Pedagogical Text. Artisanship, Imagination, and the Process of Learning’, Ricercare, xxvii (2015), 103–38.

7 Alexander Silbiger, ‘Frescobaldi's Two Books of Toccatas (1637): Student Exercises or Monuments of Art?’, forthcoming in Bruce Gustafson, ed., The Worlds of the Harpsichord and Organ: Liber amicorum David Fuller (New York).

8 Banchieri, Conclusioni nel suono dell'organo (Bologna, 1609) Facsimile edition (Bologna, 1968), 24. See also Lee Raymond Garrett, ‘Adriano Banchieri's Conclusioni nel suono dell'organo of 1609: A Translation and Commentary’ (DMA dissertation, University of Oregon, 1972), 60.

9 Lodovico Zacconi, Prattica di musica, part II (Venice, 1622; facsimile edn. Bologna, 1983). Contrapunto alla mente is discussed in Ernst T. Ferand, ‘Improvised Vocal Counterpoint in the Late Renaissance and Early Baroque’, Annales musicologiques, 4 (1956), 129–79; Julie E. Cumming, ‘Renaissance Improvisation and Musicology’, Music Theory Online: Journal of the Society for Music Theory, 19 (2013) http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.13.19.2/mto.13.19.2.cumming.html More specific applications of mental counterpoint are referenced below.

10 Rebecca Cypess, Curious and Modern Inventions: Instrumental Music as Discovery in Galileo's Italy (Chicago, 2016), 22–4.

11 Massimiliano Guido, ‘Con la mente e con le mani: Teaching and Learning the Art of Counterpoint on the Keyboard (1585–1671)’, Philomusica on-line, 11 (2012); Peter Schubert, ‘From Voice to Keyboard: Improvised Technique in the Renaissance’, Philomusica on-line, 11 (2012); Edoardo M. Bellotti, ‘Composing at the Keyboard: Banchieri and Spiridion, Two Complementary Methods’, Studies in Historical Improvisation: From cantare super librum to partimenti, ed. Massimiliano Guido (Abingdon, 2017), 115–30; Cory M. Gavito, ‘In Search of the Improvising Froberger’, Avec discrétion: rethinking Froberger, ed. Andreas Vejvar and Markus Grassl, Wiener Veröffentlichungen zur Musikgeschichte, 14 (Vienna, 2018), 187–203.

12 Some of the key texts include: Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, MA, 1960); Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London, 1982, rep. 2014); Eric A. Havelock, The Muse Learns to Write (New Haven, 1986); Isidore Okpewho, African Oral Literature: Backgrounds, Character, and Continuity (Bloomington, 1992); Veit Erlmann, ed., Hearing Cultures: Essays on Sound, Listening, and Modernity (Oxford, 2004); Mark M. Smith, ed., Hearing History: A Reader (Athens, 2004); Andrew Dell'Antonio, Listening as Spiritual Practice in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, 2011); Carol Harrison, The Art of Listening in the Early Church (Oxford, 2013).

13 ‘qualche volta si usa un certo ordine di procedere, nelle compositioni, che non si può scrivere, come sono il dir piano, & forte, & il dir presto, & tardo, & secondo le parole, muovere la Misura per dimostrare gli effetti delle passioni delle parole, & dell'armonia…’ Nicola Vicentino, L'antica musica ridotta alla moderna pratica (Rome, 1555), Lib IV, cap 42, f.94 v http://ks4.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/9/94/IMSLP114662-PMLP210243-lantica_musica.pdf (accessed 23 July 2018). Translated by Maria R. Maniates, Ancient Music Adapted to Modern Practice (New Haven, 1996), 301.

14 The close relationship of musical and literary orality and their relationship to print is a rich area of investigation, but see especially Christopher Marsh, ‘The Sound of Print in Early Modern England: The Broadside Ballad as Song’, The Uses of Script and Print, 1300–1700, ed. Julia Crick and Alexandra Walsham (Cambridge, 2004), 171–90; Luca Degli’ Innocenti, I ‘reali’ dell’ Altissimo (Florence, 2008) and ‘The Singing Voice and the Printing Press: Itineraries of the Altissimo's Performed Texts in Renaissance Italy’, The Italianist, 34 (2014), 318–35.

15 Todd Borgerding, ‘Preachers, “Pronunciatio,” and Music: Hearing Rhetoric in Renaissance Sacred Polyphony’, The Musical Quarterly, Special Issue: ‘Music as Heard’ 82 (1998), 586–98 http://www.jstor.org/stable/742340.

16 Jessie Ann Owens, Composers at Work: The Craft of Musical Composition 1450–1600 (Oxford, 1997); Rebecca Herissone, Musical Creativity in Restoration England (Cambridge, 2013).

17 Diruta, Il transilvano (Venice, 1593, 1609) Facsimile edition, ed. E. J. Soehnlen and Murray C. Bradshaw (Buren, 1983); Banchieri, L'organo suonarino with a new introduction by Giulio Cattin (Amsterdam (nd)) Reprint of the edition of Venice 1605 (complete) plus parts of 1611 and 1638 editions; Donald E. Marcase, ‘Adriano Banchieri L'organo suonarino: Transcription, Translation and Commentary’ (PhD dissertation, Indiana University, 1970); Banchieri, Conclusioni nel suono dell'organo (Bologna, 1609) Facsimile edition (Bologna, 1968); Spiridionis a Monte Carmelo, Nova instructio pro pulsandis organis, ed. Edoardo Bellotti (Latina, 3rd edn, 2018); Bruce A. Lamott, ‘Keyboard Improvisation According to “Nova instructio pro pulsandis organis” (1670 ca.–1675) by Spiridion a Monte Carmelo’ (PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 1980).

18 Silvestro Ganassi, Opera intitulata Fontegara (Venice, 1535), trans. Hildemarie Peter (Berlin, 1956).

19 There is a growing literature on the issues relating to the interpretation of printed embellishments, particularly in vocal music. One argument is that some composer-performers deliberately withheld the critical information that would allow others to ‘read’ and recreate their performances and so undermine their status as virtuosi. See for example Tim Carter, ‘Printing the “New Music”’, Music and the Cultures of Print, ed. Kate Van Orden (New York, 2002), 3–37 and Richard Wistreich, ‘High, Middle and Low: Singing Monteverdi’, Passaggio in Italia: Music on the Grand Tour in the Seventeenth Century, ed. Dinko Fabris and Margaret Murata (Turnhout, 2015).

20 Lodovico Zacconi, Prattica di musica Prima parte (Venice, 1596; facsimile edn. Bologna, 1983), 64–75.

21 Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, On Copia of Words and Ideas, trans. Donald B. King and H. David Rix (Milwaukee Wisconsin, 2012). See also, Bettina Varwig, ‘“Mutato Semper Habitu”: Heinrich Schütz and the Culture of Rhetoric’, Music & Letters, 90 (2009), 215–39.

22 Stefano Lorenzetti, ‘“Arboream inspicias figuram”. Figure e luoghi di memoria nel pensiero e nella pratica musicale tra Cinque e Seicento’, Memory and Invention: Medieval and Renaissance literature, art and music, ed. Anna Maria Busse Berger and Massimiliano Rossi, Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, 24 (Florence, 2009), 99–150.

23 Roger North, ‘An Essay of musicall ayre, c.1715–20’, ed. J. Wilson, quoted in Herissone, Musical Creativity in Restoration England, 369–70.

24 Anna Maria Busse Berger, Medieval Music and the Art of Memory (Berkley, 2008); Mary J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1992); Stefano Lorenzetti, ‘“Arboream inspicias figuram”. Figure e luoghi di memoria nel pensiero e nella pratica musicale tra Cinque e Seicento’.

25 Busse Berger has compared such lists of patterns to artists’ model books that would have been used as generic types to be drawn on and embellished to suit the specific contexts in which they were used. Anna Maria Busse Berger, ‘Models for Composition in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries’, Memory and Invention: Medieval and Renaissance Literature, Art and Music, ed. Anna Maria Busse Berger and Massimiliano Rossi. Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, 24 (Florence, 2009), 59–80.

26 Massimiliano Guido, ‘Counterpoint in the Fingers: A Practical Approach to Girolamo Diruta's breve & facile regola di contrappunto’, Philomusica On-line, 11 (2012) http://riviste.paviauniversitypress.it/index.php/phi/article/view/1452.

27 Diruta, Il transilvano, 1:36 ‘le toccata son tutte diminutioni’.

28 Bruce A. Lamott, Keyboard Improvisation According to ‘Nova instructio per pulsandis organis’, 52.

29 Cristle Collins Judd, Reading Renaissance Music Theory: Hearing with the Eyes (Cambridge, 2000).

30 Kate Van Orden, Materialities: Books, Readers and the Chanson in Sixteenth-Century Europe (Oxford, 2015), 206; Albert Hiller, Music for Trumpets from Three Centuries (c.1600-after 1900), Cologne music series (Cologne, 1993), 6–7; Edward H. Tarr, ‘The Trumpet Before 1800’, The Cambridge Companion to Brass Instruments 84–102, ed. Trevor Herbert and John Wallace (Cambridge, 1997), 84–5; Girolamo Fantini, Modo per imparare e sonare di tromba (Florence, 1638). See also Igino Conforzi, ‘Girolamo Fantini, “Monarch of the Trumpet”: New Light on his Works’, Historic Brass Society Journal http://www.historicbrass.org/Portals/0/Documents/Journal/1994/HBSJ_1994_JL01_004_Conforzi.pdf.

31 Johannes Menke, ‘“Ex centro” Improvisation: Sketches for a Theory of Sound Progression in the Early Baroque’, Improvising Early Music. Collected Writings of the Orpheus Institute, ed. Dirk Moelants, 11 (Leuven, 2014), 69–91.

32 Julie E. Cumming, ‘Renaissance Improvisation and Musicology’, Music Theory Online: Journal of the Society for Music Theory, 19 (2013) http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.13.19.2/mto.13.19.2.cumming.html.

33 Rob C. Wegman, ‘From Maker to Composer: Improvisation and Musical Authorship in the Low Countries, 1450–1500’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 49 (1996), 409–79, doi:10.2307/831769, http://www.jstor.org/stable/831769.

34 Bonnie J. Blackburn and Edward Lowinsky, ‘Luigi Zenobi and His Letter on the Perfect Musician’, Composition, Printing and Performance: Studies in Renaissance Music, ed. Bonnie J. Blackburn (Farnham, 2000), 61–107.

35 Phillipe Canguilhem, ‘Singing Upon the Book According to Vicente Lusitano’, Early Music History, 30 (2011), 55–103. doi:10.1017/S0261127911000052; James H. Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's. Music of Alessandro Grandi, Giovanni Rovetta and Francesco Cavalli, 2 vols. (Ann Arbor, 1981).

36 Peter Schubert, Modal Counterpoint, Renaissance Style (New York, 2008); Massimiliano Guido and Peter Schubert, ‘Unpacking the Box in Frescobaldi's Ricercari of 1615’, Music Theory Online: Journal of the Society for Music Theory, 20 (2014), http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.14.20.2/mto.14.20.2.guido_schubert.html.

37 Bellotti, ‘Composing at the Keyboard’, 125.

38 Banchieri, Conclusioni nel suono dell'organo, 24.

39 ‘Mais sur tout ce grand Friscobaldi fit paroitre mille sortes d'invention sur son clavecin, l'orgue tenant toujours ferme. Ce n'est pas sans cause que ce fameaux organiste de Saint Pierre a acquis tant de reputation dans l'Europe; car bien que ses oeuvres imprimées rendent d'assez bon témoignage de sa suffisance, toutefois pour en bien juger, il faut l'entendre à l'improviste faire des toccades pleines de recherches & d'inventions admirables.’ André Maugars, ‘Discours de la musique d'Italie et des operas’, Divers traitez d'histoire, de morale et d'elequence (Paris, 1672), 162–3, https://ia902605.us.archive.org/27/items/diverstraitezdhi00sain/diverstraitezdhi00sain.pdf.

40 See note 13.

41 Jeffrey Kallberg, ‘The Rhetoric of Genre: Chopin's Nocturne in G Minor’, 19th Century Music, 11 (1988).

42 Andrew Dell'Antonio, Syntax, Form and Genre in sonatas and canzonas 1621–1635 (Lucca, 1997).

43 My analytical principles are derived from analytical studies by among others: Gregory Barnett, ‘Modal Theory, Church Keys and the Sonata at the End of the Seventeenth-Century’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 51 (1998), 245–81; Carl Dahlhaus, Studies on the Origin of Harmonic Tonality, trans. Robert O. Gjerdingen (Princeton, 1990); Susan McClary, ‘The Transition from Modal to Tonal Organization in the Works of Monteverdi’ (PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1976); Bernhard Meier, The Modes of Classical Vocal Polyphony, trans. Ellen S. Beebe (New York, 1988); Harry S. Powers, ‘Tonal Types and Modal Categories in Renaissance Polyphony’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 34 (1981), 428–70.

44 ‘works in large sections built up of contrasting units’, Frederick Hammond, Girolamo Frescobaldi (Cambridge, MA, 1983), 141–6; ‘having “stock” type sections’, Paul A. L. Boncella, The Classical Venetian Organ Toccata (1591–1604), 162–83; ‘a repertory of opening formulas’ Alexander Silbiger, Italian Manuscript Sources of 17th Century Keyboard Music (Ann Arbor, MI, 1980), 32.

45 Anthony Newcomb, ‘Guardare ed ascoltare le toccate’, Frescobaldi nel IV centenario della nascita, ed. Dinko Fabris and Sergio Durante (Florence, 1986), 281–300 suggested a ‘flexible procedural paradigm’ (‘un paradigma procedurale flessibile’) consisting of a chordal opening, followed by sections of increased rhythmic movement, motivic development and cadential activity.

46 Diruta, Il transilvano, 1: 13–35.

47 Diruta, Il transilvano, 1: 8–10.

48 The function or purpose of large-scale toccatas such as those of Frescobaldi is an area for further research, but if they were intended to provide liturgical links and introduce a pitch to be followed by a choir or cantor, this might explain Frescobaldi's instruction in the preface to his Toccate e partite…libro primo that they may be terminated at any cadence.

49 See especially Peter van Kraneneberg and Johan Zoutendijk. ‘A Pattern Recognition Approach to the Attribution of Early Seventeenth-century Keyboard Compositions Using Features of Diminutions’, Networks of Music and Culture in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries, ed. David J. Smith and Rachelle Taylor (Farnham, 2013), 169–84.

50 Murray C. Bradshaw, The Origin of the Toccata. Musicological studies and documents 28 (American Institute of Musicology, 1972).

51 Alexander Silbiger, Italian manuscript sources, 191; and ‘Is the Italian Keyboard “intavolatura” a tablature?’, Recercare, 3 (1991), 81–103.

52 For the purposes of these data analyses, toccatas in the durezze e ligature style were not considered, as they appear to operate under different principles as a sub-genre. The elevation toccatas are considered however, as their construction conforms to the patterns of other toccatas in the sample, although they do represent a sub-genre in terms of implied affect. The data used in the analyses and graphs presented here are part of a larger-scale ongoing investigation that will eventually collate information for toccatas from Merulo through to Froberger (approximately 1600–1660). The sample here is drawn from Ferrini, Toccatas from Ms Vat Mus 569 in Composizioni per organo o clavicembalo, ed. Loreggian (Padua, 1995); Frescobaldi, Toccate e partite libro primo (Rome, 1615–16) ed. Christoper Stembridge (Kassel, 2010); Frescobaldi, Toccate e partite libro primo, facsimile edition, ed. Laura Alvini (Florence, 1980); Frescobaldi, Secondo libro di toccate…(Rome, 1627), Etienne Darbellay, ed., Monumenti Musicali Italiani’, 3 (Milan, 1979); Frescobaldi, Secondo libro di toccate…. facsimile edition, ed. Laura Alvini (Florence, 1980); Froberger Libro secondo, 1649 and Libro quarto (Ms Mus Hs 18706) Siegbert Rampe, ed., Neue Ausgabe samtlicher Clavier-un Orgelwerke 1 and 2 (Kassel, 1993, 1995); Merulo, Toccate d'intavolatura per organo libro secondo (Rome, 1604) Facsimile edition, ed. Laura Alvini (Florence, 1981); Merulo, Toccate per organo, ed. Sandro della Libera (Milan, 1959); Michelangelo Rossi, Toccate e corrente (Rome, 1657) Facsimile edition, ed. Laura Alvini (Florence, 1982); Michelangelo Rossi, Toccate e corrente, ed. J. B, White, Corpus of Early Keyboard Music 15, American Institute of Musicology, 1966; Salvatore, Ricercari a 4 voci, canzoni francesi, toccate,…libro 1 (Naples, 1641), and MS Naples 73 (I-Nc-Conservatorio di San Pietro, Ms Mus.str 73), B. Hudson, ed., Collected Keyboard Works, Corpus of Early Keyboard Music 3, AIM, 1964; Alexander Silbiger, ed., Vatican, Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, MS Chigi Q.IV.25 (New York, 1988); Silvia Rambaldi and Barbara Cipollone, ed., Libro di fra Gioseffo da Ravenna (Ms. I-Rac Ms Classense 545) (Bologna, 1999).

53 In order to avoid confusion created by missing barlines and by bars with different numbers of beats, each measurement is by tactus. The general tactus of each toccata is taken as the minim, and in compound sections the dotted minim. The editions used for this study have significant differences in barring, hence the unequivocal use of tactus avoids any distortion of the result.

54 It is probably worth noting that one of the major manuscript sources for the Merulo toccatas (Biblioteca Nazionale diTorino, Raccolta Giordano, 2) leaves out a number of contrapuntal sections. These are noted in Merulo Toccate per organo, ed. della Libera, preface (n.p).

55 This does not include the intervals usually associated with tonal imitation.

56 While there is inevitably an element of interpretation here as the analysis is not extracted from digitally coded scores, I have tried to be consistent in the application of this nomenclature.

57 Claudio Annibaldi, ‘Frescobaldi's Primo libro delle fantasie a Quattro (1608): A Case Study on the Interplay Between Commission, Production and Reception in Early Modern Music’, Recercare, 14 (2002), 31–61.

58 In this sample, the elevation toccatas were excluded as the affective demand for chromaticism and therefore movement by semitone is likely to skew the statistics. The pedal toccatas were likewise excluded as the harmonic implications of the sustained pedal may likewise affect interval choice.

59 Diruta, Il transilvano, 10.

60 As the toccatas by Frescobaldi and Froberger are identified by number order only, in the following examples, the upper-case Roman numeral indicates the book number and the lower case numeral of the specific toccata in that book.

61 Motivic structures are discussed in more detail in my PhD dissertation, Analytical Issues in the Toccatas of Girolamo Frescobaldi (Royal Holloway, University of London, 1995).

62 Claudio Annibaldi, ‘La didattica del solco tracciato: Da “klavierbuchlein” d'ignoti a prima fonte fresocbaldiana autografa’, Rivista italiana di musicologia, 20 (1985), 44–97; ‘Ancora sulle messe attribuite a Frescobaldi: proposta di un profittevole scambio’, Girolamo Frescobaldi nel IV centenario della nascita: atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Ferrara 1983, ed. Sergio Durante and Dinko Fabris (Florence, 1986), 125–52; ‘Musical Autographs of Frescobaldi and his Entourage in Roman Sources’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, XLIII (1990), 393–425; Was Frescobaldi a Chameleonic Scribe? Early Music, XL (2012), 172; Etienne Darbellay, ‘The Manuscript Chigi Q.IV.24 of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana as Frescobaldian Source: New Criteria for Authenticity’, Fiori musicali: liber amicorum Alexander Silbiger, ed. Claire Fontijn (Michigan, 2010), 23–38; Hammond, Girolamo Frescobaldi, 258; Christine Jeanneret, L'oeuvre en filigrane (Florence, 2009), 287–303; G. Leonhardt, ‘Johann Jacob Froberger and his Music’, L'organo, vi (1968), 15–40; Silbiger, Italian Manuscript Sources, 123–5; ‘The Roman Frescobaldi tradition c.1640–1670’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 33 (1980), 42–87; B. Van Asperen, ‘Drei Toccaten in der Handschrift Chigi Q.IV.25: U˝berlegungen zu einer möglichen Zuschreibung an Johann Jacob Froberger’, Concerto: Das Magazin fur Alte Musik, 26 (2009), 34–41.

63 ‘Learning the Trade: What was Froberger Doing in Rome?’ in Avec discrétion: Rethinking Froberger, ed. Andreas Vejvar and Markus Grassl, Wiener Veröffentlichungen zur Musikgeschichte, 14 (Vienna, 2018), 205–21.

64 Warren Kirkendale, ‘“Circulatio”-Tradition, “Maria Lactans”, and Josquin as Musical Orator’, Acta Musicologica, 56, Fasc. 1 (Jan.–Jun., 1984), 69–92, DOI:10.2307/932617, http://www.jstor.org.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/stable/932617.

65 Christine Jeanneret, ‘Un cahier d’ébauches autographe inédit de Frescobaldi (F-Pn, Rés.Vmc 64)’, Recercare, 17 (2005), 135–59 and ‘Places of Memory and Invention: The Compositional Process in Frescobaldi's Manuscripts’, Interpreting Historical Keyboard Music, ed. Andrew Woolley and John Kitchen (Farnham, 2013), 65–81 (74).

66 Sancta Maria, Libro llamado arte taner fantasia (Valadolid, 1565) facsimile edition. (Farnborough, 1972), 58–9; Silvestro Ganassi, Opera intitulata Fontegara (Venice, 1535), https://ia800706.us.archive.org/13/items/imslp-intitulata-fontegara-ganassi-sylvestro/PMLP46423-001ganassi.pdf; Ganassi, Opera intitulata Fontegara, trans. Hildemarie Peter (Berlin, 1956).

67 Dell'Antonio's conclusions drawn from examination of early sonata and canzona publications could perhaps be applied to keyboard and lute music. See Dell'Antonio, Syntax, form and genre.

68 Newcomb, ‘Guardare ed ascoltare le toccate’, 286.

69 Busse Berger, ‘Models for Composition in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries’, 69–75.