A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Valentini, Pietro
VALENTINI, Pietro Francesco, a great contrapuntist, scholar of G. M. Nanini; died at Rome 1654. Various books of canons, madrigals, canzonets, etc., by him, were published before and after his death, of which a list is given by Fétis. His canons were his greatest achievement, and two of them are likely to be referred to for many years to come. The first, on a line from the Salve Regina, is given by Kircher (Musurgia, i. 402), and was selected by Marpurg, more than a century later (1763), as the theme of seven of his Critical Letters on music, occupying 50 quarto pages (ii. 89). He speaks of the subject of the canon with enthusiasm, as one of the most remarkable he had ever known for containing in itself all the possible modifications necessary for its almost infinite treatment—for the same qualities in fact which distinguish the subject of Bach's 'Art of Fugue' and the 'Et vitam venturi' of Cherubim's great 'Credo.'
The first subject is:—
which gives direct rise to three others; viz.—
Second subject, the first in retrograde motion.
Third subject, the first inverted.
Fourth subject, the second in retrograde.
Each of these fits to each or all of the others in plain counterpoint, and each may be treated in imitation in every interval above and below, and at all distances, and may be augmented or diminished, and this for 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 voices. Kircher computes that it may be sung more than 3000 different ways.
The second canon—'Nel nodo di Salomo (like a Solomon's knot) a 96 voci'—consists of the common chord of G,
