Ricercar

The ricercar is an instrumental form of the Renaissance and early Baroque, its name from the Italian ricercare, 'to seek out': the player searches out the mode and the instrument's possibilities. Early ricercars for lute or keyboard are free, toccata-like preludes; from the mid-sixteenth century the term denotes a serious imitative counterpoint piece, in which a subject is worked through successive sections — the direct ancestor of the fugue. Leading composers include the lutenists *Francesco da Milano* and *Marco dall'Aquila*, the Venetian organists *Andrea Gabrieli* and *Girolamo Frescobaldi*, and *Diego Ortiz* for viol.