L’arpa, lo stile italiano e l’autunno del madrigale

The article aims to deal with some compositions in stylus antiquus (‘ancient style’) included in Wolfang Caspar Printz’s manuscript Canzonetten und andere Musikstücke (1679). This source includes some compositions in which the harp is explicitly requested as a concerto or basso continuo instrument. The name of the Italian instrument arpa doppia (“double harp”) stresses the link between the stylus antiquus pursued within this group of compositions and the performance practice of some contemporary Italian academies. The exceptional nature of Printz’s manuscript, so detailed in its instrumentation even when compared to contemporary Italian sources, helps to reconstruct a reliable overall picture of the use of the harp in the courts of the German area. The context promotes the use of instruments that evoke the old style, including the double harp and the viola da gamba, and renews interest in a musical form that seemed to have exhausted its path, namely the madrigal. The cultural activity of the House of Habsburg — and of the more peripheral centers of power the holder of which emulate their symbolism — is the framework of this musical production, which, through a sophisticated path of Italianization of culture at court, tries to build a credible image of an imperishable and well rooted power.