A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Trasuntino, Vito
TRASUNTINO, Vito, a Venetian harpsichord-maker, who made an enharmonic (quarter-tone) archicembalo or large harpsichord for Camillo Gonzaga, Conte di Novellara, in 1606, now preserved in the Museum of the Liceo Comunale at Bologna. It was made after the invention of Don Nicola Vicentino, an enthusiast who tried to restore Greek music according to its three genera, the diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic, and published the results of his attempt at Rome in 1555, under the title of 'L'Antica Musica ridotta alla Moderna Prattica'. From engravings in this work illustrating a keyboard invented to include the three systems, Trasuntino contrived his instrument. A photograph of it is in the South Kensington Museum. It had one keyboard of four octaves C—C, with white naturals; the upper or usual sharps and flats being divided into four alternately black and white, each division being an independent key. There are short upper keys also between the natural semitones, once divided, which makes thirty-two keys in the octave, 125 in all. Trasuntino made a Tetracorda, also preserved at Bologna, with intervals marked off to tune the archicembalo by—an old pitch-measurer or quadruple monochord. When Fétis noticed Trasuntino (Biographie Universelle, 1865, p. 250), the archicembalo was in the possession of Baini. It was not the first keyboard instrument with enharmonic intervals; Vicentino had an organ built, about 1561, by Messer Vicenzo Colombo of Venice. There is a broadsheet describing it quoted by Fétis as obtained by him from Signor Gaspari of Bologna: 'Descrizione dell' arciorgano, nel quale si possono eseguire i tri generi della musica, diatonica, cromatica, ed enarmonica, in Venetia, appresso Niccolo Bevilacqua, 1561, a di 25 ottobrio.'
A harpsichord dated 1559, made by a Trasuntino, is cited by Giordano Riccati ('Delle corde ovvero fibre elastiche'), and was probably by Vito's father, perhaps the Messer Giulio Trasuntino referred to by Thomas Garzoni ('Piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo', Discorso 136) as excellent in all 'instrumenti da penna'—quilled instruments, such as harpsichords, manichords, clavicembalos and cithers. Of Vito, Fioravanti says (Specchio di Scientia Universale, fol. 273), 'Guido [or Vito] Trasuntino was a man of much and learned experience in the art of making harpsichords, clavicembalos, organs and regals, so that his instruments were admired by every one before all others, and other instruments he improved, as might be seen in many places in Venice'. These citations are rendered from Fétis. 'Manicordo', as in the original, is the clavichord. It is doubtful whether 'arpicordi' and 'clavicembali' here distinguish upright and horizontal harpsichords, or harpsichords and spinets.