Gabrieli: Sonata à3 (1615)

Description

For 3 alto recorders and continuo.
This impressive work, with its expressive falling figures, is an arrangement of the Sonata a tre violini.

Giovanni Gabrieli’s Sonata con tre violini appears at the end of his magnificent posthumnous collection of 1615, the Canzoni e Sonate. To bring it into the range of normal alto (treble) recorders in F, I have transposed the music up a minor third. Of course it can be done on other sizes of recorders, by reading as if for F instruments, provided the continuo players can make the appropriate transposition: for instance, a tone higher on G altos – the most likely choice in Gabrieli’s own time or a fourth lower on tenors.
To achieve the solemnity necessary for the opening, and to allow for the faster movement later on, I would suggest a steady minim (half note) pulse of around 80 to the minute. A few editorial accidentals apear above the stave: those apply to the one note only. The original accidentals are taken as applying to the whole bar.

(Bernard Thomas)