Valente, Antonio

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Valente, Antonio

Valente, Antonio , blind Italian organist and composer who flourished in the 2ndhalf of the 16thcentury, known as “il Cieco” (“the blind man”). He became blind as a child. He was organist at Sant’Angelo a Nido in Naples (1565-80). His first publication, Intavolatura de cimbalo: Recercate, fantasie et canzoni francese desminuite con alcuni tenori balli et varie sorti de contraponti…(Naples, 1575), is in Spanish keyboard tablature and contains early keyboard fantasias, written out in detail. His second book, Versi spirituali sopra tutte le note, con diversi canoni spartiti per suonar negli organi, messe, vespere et altri offici divini (Naples, 1580), represents an early type of keyboard partitura. I. Fuser ed. Antonio Valente: Versi spirituali per organo (Padua, 1958).

Bibliography

J. Burns, Neapolitan Keyboard Music from V to Frescobaldi (diss., Harvard Univ., 1953; includes an ed. of the Intavolatura de cimbalo).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire

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