Antonio Valente

Intavolatura de Cimbalo

Antonio Valente "blind", Neapolitan by antiquity according to the classification of Neapolitan musicians drawn up by Scipione Cerreto and organist of S. Angelo a Nilo in Naples, is known to us for two volumes of keyboard music: the Spiritual Verses published in 1580 and, a few years earlier, the volume we are dealing with, the Intavolatura de cimbalo, published by Giuseppe Cacchio in 1576.
The volume has numerous features of originality: the first tablature for keyboard printed in Naples, it is not compiled in notes but adopts a numerical system that does not appear in practically any other print or manuscript, Italian or not. The dedication of the volume, by Fra' Alberto Mazza, attributes to Valente the invention of this method of writing that would make musical reading and execution very simple, so much so as to allow anyone, even "rough young people who knew neither music nor keys", to get to play in two months.
The repertoire of the Tablature is very varied: one fantasy, six sought-afters, a Salve Regina on cantus firmus, four tablatures of more or less diminished vocal chansons and 9 variations, dances and dances/variations that use long-lived "tenors" such as Romanesca or Zefiro. There is a lack of compositions for liturgical use, both because of the amateur destination of the volume and perhaps because it was the subject of Valente's subsequent publication.
The Intavolatura is a kind of bignami of the keyboard repertoire of the period, similar to earlier Spanish and later Neapolitan publications, such as those of Trabaci and Majone and in the opposite direction to the Verses and contemporary Ricercate by Rocco Rodio, which contain a single genre of compositions.