| Music Encyclopedia: Estampie |
Medieval term applied to certain textless melodies which may be instrumental dances and which consist of a number of versicles, each repeated. The last portion of the first versicle, varied at the repeat, is re-used at the end of each of the later ones. A few vocal works have forms resembling that of the estampie and a number of French poems called ‘estampies’ could have been sung to melodies of the same type.
| Wikipedia: Estampie |
The medieval dance and musical form called the estampie in French, the estampida in Occitan, and istampitta (also istanpitta or stampita) in Italian was a popular instrumental style of the 13th and 14th centuries.
Contents |
The estampie consists of four to seven sections, called puncta, each of which is repeated, in the form
Different endings (ouvert (open) and clos (closed)) are provided for the first and second statement of each punctum, so that the structure can be
Sometimes the same two endings are used for all the puncta, producing the structure
A similar structure was shared with the saltarello, another medieval dance.
The earliest reported example of this musical form is the song "Kalenda Maya", supposedly written by the troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras (1180-1207) to the melody of an estampida played by French jongleurs. All other known examples are purely instrumental pieces. 14th century examples include estampies with subtitles such as Lamento di Tristano, La Manfredina, Salterello, Isabella, Tre fontane.
Though the estampie is generally monophonic, examples of two-voice compositions in the form of an estampie are also reported.
The idealized dance character of all these pieces suggests that the estampie originally was a true dance. There are no surviving dance manuals describing the estampie as a dance. Illuminations and paintings from the period seem to indicate that the estampie involves fairly vigorous hopping. Some estampies, such as the famous Tre fontane ("Three Fountains") estampie, contain florid and virtuosic instrumental writing; they may have been intended as abstract performance music rather than actual dance music.
The etymology of the name is disputed; an alternative name of the dance is stantipes, which suggests that one foot was stationary during the dance; but the more widely accepted etymology relates it to estamper, to stamp the feet.
 |
|
||||
| Problems listening to this file? See media help. | |||||
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
 | Istampita (music) |
| Ductia (music) |
| Ductiae (Classical Work) |
 | What type of instruments where in the music estampie? |
Copyrights:
 |
 | Music Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Estampie". Read more |
Mentioned in
