Major candences of minor key pieces in early Italian baroque

Somebody in the lute list commented the Agazzari article:

'The Agazzari material, delightful as it is, is a very good example of the old "prescriptive" vs "descriptive" argument in traditional musicology. Take Aggy's enchilada with a grain of salt, as it is prescriptive. How annoying the quote about major cadences, so clearly wrong. Why? Well, there are lots of tab parts with minor endings.'

Just for fun I made a small 'research' of what was claimed. I counted the pieces starting in 'minor', and the their ending chords in a few lute books . There is so much modality still, in music of early 1600, that talking about minor key is perhaps not proper.

I also took into account only the final chords, because it is not always clear, what is a medial cadence (and analysing this would have taken too much time for the moment!)

The 6 lute books I checked are:

1. Simone Molinaro: 'Intavolatura di liuto', libro primo, Venezia 1599 (this is still 'primo prattica', late renaissance style, I counted only up to page 80)
2. Girolamo Kapsberger: 'Libro primo d'intavolatura di lauto', Roma 1611 ('seconda prattica')
3. Michelangelo Galilei: 'Il primo libro d'intabolatura di liuto', Munich 1620 ('seconda prattica')
4. Alessandro Piccinini: 'Intavolatura di liuto, et di chitarrone', Bologna 1623 ('seconda prattica', I counted only the lute pieces)
5. Pittoni: 'Intavolatura di tiorba' (opera prima et opera seconda), Bologna 1669 (Italian "middle baroque")
6. Zamboni: 'Sonate d'intavolatura di leuto' Lucca 1718 (high baroque)

And here are the results:

            Molinaro Kapsberger Galilei Piccinini Pittoni Zamboni
              1599     1611      1620     1623     1669    1718
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
Pieces
starting       51      16         33       44       42       8
in minor
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
Final
chord:

in same
major          43      11         26       28       25       -

in same
minor           -       -          -        -       13       7

without
a third         8       4          7        9        4       1

in 4th 
grade           -       1          -        5        -       -
major

in 3rd
grade           -       -          -        2        -       -
major

So it seems to be very clear that in the lute music of Agazzari's time it was a norm to end pieces in a major chord! In those books printed before 1650 I didn't find any example of "lots of tab parts with minor endings".

It is interesting to see how Pittoni already allows minor chords at end, but still majority of his finals are in major. Zamboni was living in a new era, where major endings in minor pieces would perhaps been considered 'old fashioned'.

Arto Wikla