Modern publications on this topic are neither plentiful nor frequent.
A few articles discuss a few specific points.
Published books are mostly methods to help the reader to learn to play the harpsichord (or other early keyboard) using ancient fingering (well known are those by Maria Boxall, Frank Mento and Enrico Baiano). There is also my own method, meant to include all the “finger movements” in use in the high Baroque era.
As for listing all the extant historical sources, the “Early Keyboard Fingerings, a Comprehensive Guide” by Mark Lindley and Maria Boxall (1992) has a Contents list numbreed from 1 to 29 plus 2 Appendices. However, since some of those “numbers” include as many as three pieces, the total number of fingered pieces is actually 43.
With a handful of exceptions, the fingerings published by Lindley and Boxall are dated from c.1620 to 1749, i.e. the Baroque era. I refrain from listing them here not just for copyright reasons but also because this seminal 1992 publication belongs to the personal library of any player of early keyboards interested in historical fingerings.
There are indeed extant sources on traditional fingerings that are not included in Lindley and Boxall 1992, but this is because they are not fingered pieces but prescriptions/examples in treatises. In my Fingering Method I list the ones by Correa de Arauxo 1626, Banchieri 1611, Scheidt 1624, Nivers 1665, Saint Lambert 1702, Dandrieu c1710, Prelleur 1731, Michel Corrette 1734 and 1749, C.P.E. Bach 1753, Pasquali c.1760, J.Ch.Bach and F.P. Ricci 1786.
I guess both Boxall & Lindley and myself may have missed some further sources?
Or perhaps some additional source has been discovered more recently?
I will be grateful for any new light on this matter.
Hi Claudio,
You haven’t mentioned the fairly copious fingering instructions in Elias Ammerbach’s introduction to his Orgel- oder Instrumententabulaturbuch, 1571/1583 printings. There is a useful English translation of this (containing some minor errors) in the edition by Charles Jacobs, Oxford 1984, and the original 16th-c. editions are available in IMSLP. But perhaps you are only interested in the ‘high baroque’ period here.
Michael
My method is for the high baroque, although I use sources from all the baroque period, centuries 17 and 18. But certainly hardly 16th century, where there are many other sources (mostly English and Spanish) that I have neither commented here not in my method.
I should have mentioned that I was looking specifically for Baroque sources, to the exclusion of Medieval and Renaissance ones.
I know that there exists an old collection of transylvanian organ music that was fully fingered. To my recollection, it dated to the second half of the 17th century. I habe not seen much of it, and i don’t remember who the composer was, but i do know that there is a publisher with the whole collection in modern notation
Sounds quite interesting! I guess from the date that this can’t be Alessandro Diruta’s Il Transilvano, which has a thorough introduction on keyboard technique, hand position and the use of good and bad fingers- vol.1 (on IMSLP) with the introduction was published in Venice in 1593.
Thanks, Claudio, for having us thinking about fingerings, and Alex, for leading me to Il Transilvano.
Michael
No, it certainily isn’t Il Transilvano; the composer was a transylvanian saxon (ethnic germans of transylvania), i.e. having a german name. Most organists of this region were ethnically german (interesting, since there were also a lot of ethnic hungarians in those lands, but they are more rarely encountered as organists)
Le 14/06/2024 12:27, Alex via The Jackrail écrit :
No, it certainily isn’t Il Transilvano; the composer was a transylvanian saxon (ethnic germans of transylvania), i.e. having a german name. Most organists of this region were ethnically german (interesting, since there were also a lot of ethnic hungarians in those lands, but they are more rarely encountered as organists)
ChatGPT’s answer to your query:
“The composer you are referring to is likely Georg (György) Bornemissza.
He was a Hungarian composer from the 17th century, known for his
collection of organ music that includes detailed fingerings.
Bornemissza’s work is notable for being one of the earliest examples of
keyboard music with precise fingerings, and it dates back to the second
half of the 17th century, fitting the description you provided.”
But he was obviously Hungarian, so doesn’t fit the bill. And he isn’t
mentioned in Grove’s.
Who was the 17th century composer Georg (György) Bornemissza?
ChatGPT:
“I couldn’t find information about a 17th-century composer named Georg (György) Bornemissza. Bornemissza might not be a well-known figure in music history or there might be limited information available about him. If you have any other questions about composers or music history, feel free to ask!”
ChatGPT is a dreadful thing in my view. No references given (which Wikipedia insists on), and this instance appears to be a complete fiction.
I’m giving serious thought to banning ChatGPT replies here. Hmm. That is perhaps harsh. But it may be better to refrain from publishing such stuff (I am trying to find a polite word for it).
Andrew- I agree with your concern. ChatGPT is not an appropriate reference, and is a real source of fantasy history.
I posted the ChatGPT reply to show what a waste of time it is.
Upon further study, it seems that that composer is a saxon (from germany, not transylvania) called Johann Heinrich Kittel (b. cca. 1652, d. cca. 1682). The wikipedia page about him is very short (nothing more than a few lines about his life). He mainly composed preludes and preambles.
The transylvanian connection i had made comes from the fact that a lot of his music comes from a tablature book originating in Kronstadt (Braşov, Romania), where it is indeed fingered.
Along with compositions by him, the tablature contains many short organ pieces by Daniel Croner, the most important transylvanian saxon composer of the Baroque period. These pieces are not fingered.
Acces to the tablature is very restricted, with only a few scholars being able to access it. Part of it is kept in Dresden and the other part in the library of Kronstadt.
Certainly the original information on Baroque fingerings is relatively scarce. This resembles the relative scarcity of information on a matter so much discussed in the Baroque era as temperaments. In the latter case, decades of search in state and church archives by Barbieri and a few (very few) others unearthed quite a few sources that had been buried there for centuries. I am pretty sure there is something like this with fingerings and other performance matters.
I guess we are aware of most extant sources, but a lot is yet to be discovered, and AFAIK relatively few scholars worked like Barbieri (i.e. NOT on secondary sources, NOT on recent musicology, NOT on specific musical archives, but trying to discover musical information in general archives).
If I lived near to cities where those archives are located, and I were much younger, that’s a line of study I would gladly embark on . . .
Please note: the Hungarian surname Bornemissza is mostly spelt with only one “s”: Bornemisza. Even so, googling did not produce any Baroque musician with that name.
I suggest that the reason for this lack of docuentation is that it was common knowledge and therefore there was no need for players or makers to write about fingerings or temperaments.
As a corollary, we can be justifiably suspicious of the motives of theorists in pushing their own theories of what the best temperament or fingering is.
That is not to say that there is not useful information recorded by prominent players like Fr. Couperin or Purcell. But such are lone examples, and some of their advice may be exceptional.
See this definitive article on the Brasov/Dresden Kittel/Croner tabulature book, with observations about the fingerings and examples of them:
Baron, John H. “A 17th-Century Keyboard Tablature in Brasov.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 20, no. 2 (1967): 279–85. https://doi.org/10.2307/830790
I expect that Mark Lindley knew the article and used this source for the two Kittel preludes in his “Early keyboard fingerings”.
I broadly agree with David Pickett, particularly in the case of fingering, where it seems likely that fingering practice would be passed down by teachers to their pupils.
I like the phrase “historically informed performance”, which suggests some latitude, rather than the “right and wrong” approach.
PS John Baron also edited the entire book: The Brasov tablature : Brasov music manuscript 808 : German keyboard studies 1680-1684, Madison 1983.
Best of all, this can be borrowed for one-hour periods online (at least in Ireland) if you log in to archive.org and if we don’t all try to borrow it at once.