Harmonice musices odhecaton A is the title of a printed book containing 96 fragments of music published in Venice on 15 May 1501 by the printing house run by Ottaviano Petrucci. The majority of the publication contains French songs by composers such as Alexander Agricola, Loyset Compère, Jacobus Obrecht and Heinrich Isaac. There is nothing special about the collection, except that it is the first printed source of polyphonic music. This would never have been possible without Petrucci's invention of a technique that allowed canto figurato (measured music) to be printed in three separate stages. The first stage involved the printing of the staves, the second the notes and other musical indications and the third the text.
Clearly, in the case of Odhecaton, the text only appears in the incipit to the songs, which raises a difficult issue. Is this an instrumental repertory or simply a vocal repertory in which the text must be supplied? Both options may be correct, but the fact that there is not an abundance of instrumental repertory dating from around 1500, makes Odhecaton a very attractive collection for ensembles specialising in the performance of instrumental music from the Renaissance, Piffaro being one of the foremost instrumental ensembles active today.
This CD includes 29 pieces from Odhecaton, with a predominance of adaptations for woodwind instruments or alta cappella. The combinations are imaginative and varied and the interpretations spot on, although listening to the disc from the beginning to the end can become somewhat tiring. Even pieces that are authentic works of art turn into incidental music when performed exclusively by instruments. MARICARMEN GOMEZ