Canzona La Padovana

Published in 1610, Canzona "La Padovana" is from Viadana's only purely instrumental collection, his Sinfonie muscali for eight voices, op. 18. Each of the eighteen canzoni therein is named after an Italian city such as Rome, Naples, Venice, Milan, and in this instance Padua. Typically, this canzona is composed in two contrasting sections: a slower opening section in duple time that uses frequent imitative entries in a flowing polyphonic style and a following section in triple time that is by contrast in a simpler, homophonic genre.