A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Viadana, Ludovico
VIADANA, Ludovico, was born at Lodi about 1565. Of his education we know nothing save that he adopted the monastic profession. In or before 1597 he was in Rome, to which city his musical style is properly affiliated. He was chapelmaster in the cathedral of Fano in Urbino, and at Concordia in the states of Venice; but the order of his preferments is doubtful. All that is certain is that he occupied the same office ultimately at Mantua, where he is known to have been living as late as 1644. He composed and published a number of volumes of canzonets, madrigals, psalms, canticles, and masses: but the work upon which his historical significance rests is a collection of 'Cento concerti ecclesiastici a 1, a 2, a 3, e a 4, voci, con il basso continuo per sonar nell' organo. Nova invenzione comoda per ogni sorte di cantori e per gli organisti,' Venice 1603 (or, in some copies, 1602) in five volumes. In consequence of this publication Viadana has been commonly regarded as the inventor of the (unfigured) basso continuo to accompany the voice on an instrument—a judgment expressed, but, as [1]Ambros thinks, unfairly, in the remark of a contemporary, Prætorius. As a matter of fact, basso continuo had been employed in the accompaniment of recitative some years earlier by Caccini and Peri and others before them. Viadana however was the first thus to accompany solemn church-compositions, and therefore the first to use the organ for the purpose. He is also the inventor of the name basso continuo. Nor had any one previously thought of writing pieces for a solo voice, or for two or three voices, expressly with the object of their being accompanied by a thorough-bass.[2] The way thus opened by Viadana enabled him to employ a freer and lighter style than his contemporaries of the Roman school. Building up his compositions (in his 'Cento concerti') from the bass instead of from a cantus firmus, he succeeded in creating real self-contained melodies; and if he cannot be justly regarded as the inventor of the notion of basso continuo, he at least was led by it to a not far-off view of the modern principle of melodic, as opposed to contrapuntal, composition.
[ R. L. P. ]