Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🎼 A musical piece 🔍 To search deeply
ricercare

ricercare

9.9
An old keyboard piece that repeats one musical theme in different voices
  • noun
  • /ˌriːtʃərˈkɑːr/
  • Archaic
translation icon : ricercare
  • During the lesson, we analyzed a famous ricercare by J.S. Bach for its imitative counterpoint.

Examples

  • The concert featured a beautiful ricercare that showcased intricate melodies and harmonies.

  • She played a lovely ricercare on her recorder, filling the room with rich, harmonious sounds.

  • We moved from the first ricercare to the canons that followed, my piano playing at times with one or more of the strings, strings and flute together, or not at all (as in the fourth canon, a duet between Gerald and the other violinist).

    Fiction book (1997)

Synonyms

canzone
vsricercare
  • Specialized
9.2

An instrumental piece from Renaissance or Baroque music based on songs

focuses on imitative counterpoint rather than on vocal models
canzona
vsricercare
  • Archaic
9.9

A piece of music without singing from the Renaissance or Baroque that sounds like a song

emphasizes imitative counterpoint instead of lively song-based style

Surface Forms

ricercare singular
ricercari plural

Etymology

Ricercare comes from Italian parts ri- 'again' and cercare 'to search'. A musical ricercare is therefore a piece that 'searches' a single theme, exploring it in many different ways.