Micrologus; The Art of Song: Italy

85-07 THE ART OF SONG: ITALY

Everyone thinks of Italy as having a very musical language, so it is no surprise to find that solo song has played an important role in the musical life of that country. What is surprising is that it took so long to manifest itself. France, Germany, and Spain all have repertories of monophonic song dating from the 12th and 13th centuries and consisting of hundreds of works. The earliest surviving songs in Italian come from two manuscripts from the end of the 13th century. Nor do these 150 songs follow the tradition of courtly love which had so moved the poet-composers of France and Germany, and which was by that time inspiring Italy's native son and premier poet, Dante Alighieri. Rather, they are semi-sacred, devotional songs to the Virgin, the saints, the Holy Spirit, and so on. Laude—songs of praise—they are called. At least as early as 1233, there were guilds in some north Italian towns for which the lauda probably served as a type of congregational song.

A secular form which seems to have had some connection with the lauda, even in the late 13th century, was the ballata. Both forms, for example, make use of a refrain. The term ballata probably comes from the Italian verb ballare (to dance) and indeed, around 1304, Dante tells us that a ballata requires a "singing dancer." No music survives for the ballata, however, until the middle of the 14th century, in a manuscript which is now in the Vatican library. By that time, scribes were able to notate precisely the rhythmic values of the music using what we call "Ars Nova" notation. So, while there are formal similarities between the lauda and the ballata, the definite rhythmic character of the latter and its worldly, usually amorous, text sets it apart from the older chant-like lauda.

Here is “I’ vo' bene" (I love who loves me, and love not who loves not but me), a mid-14th century monophonic ballata by Gherardello da Firenza, performed by Esther Lamandier.

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Around 1360, the ballata grew into a polyphonic form (as were already by then the madrigal and the caccia). But since those other forms required more than one singer in every case, the ballata continued to be the most song-like, by our standards. Francesco Landini is justly the most famous of Italian ballata composers during the late 14th century heyday of that form.

For some reason, however, the production of songs by native Italian composers came to a virtual standstill in the early 15th century. It is not at all clear why this should have happened, although it may be due in part to the rise of an improvised song tradition of which no musical trace has survived. Landini’s musical descendants, instead, were northerners like Ciconia and Dufay, Franco-Flemish composers who spent a good part of their lives in Italy. Here is the refrain from Johannes Ciconia's 3-voice ballata, “O rosa bella," sung by Willard Cobb with the Early Music Quartet, under Thomas Binkley.

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Sometime after 1450, Italian song was revitalized, largely through the patronage and encouragement of Isabella d'Este, the Duchess of Mantua. She brought together at her court a circle of talented poets and musicians, and in that stimulating environment they brought forth the first fruits of native Italian musical art in the Renaissance, the frottola. There is actually quite a variety of types of frottola, each with its characteristic pattern of music and text repetitions. The texture was in three, then later in four parts, usually only one with text. While sometimes the text fits in all the parts, it is generally supposed that the lower ones were instrumental, accompanying the song in the upper voice. Sometimes the tenor and bass were even published in arrangements for lute, thus anticipating the texture of voice and lute, which became so popular at the end of the Renaissance.

Here is "Ostinato vo seguire" by Isabella d'Este's favorite frottola composer, Bartolomeo Tromboncino, sung by Joseph Cornwell with the Consort of Musicke, under Anthony Rooley.

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The story of Italian Renaissance vocal music after 1525 is also the story of the madrigal. The 16th century madrigal is, of course, a much more thoroughly equal-voiced type than the frottola, and therefore more likely to have been intended for an ensemble of voices than for a soloist with accompaniment. But much of the melodic interest does reside in the top voice, and there is evidence that madrigals were occasionally performed as accompanied songs. After 1550, the madrigal also became the raw material for increasingly florid ornamentation and, again, the focus was on the top voice. One of the most favored madrigal composers for this kind of treatment was Cipriano de Rore. Here is his "Tanto mi piacque," as ornamented by Girolamo Dalla Casa and performed by soprano Ellen Hargis with Les Filles de Sainte Colombe.

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That was from a concert on the campus of Case Western Reserve University, by the way.

Towards the end of the 16th century, there was a rise in interest in accompanied solo song, largely because the so-called Florentine Camerata believed that to be the texture of song in classical Greek drama which they wished to emulate. Their champion was Giulio Caccini, who in 1602 published the first collection of madrigals and strophic arias for solo voice and continuo. Caccini's title for the collection was Le Nuove Musiche (The New Music), and while he did include florid passaggi (like the ones in the piece we just heard), he also introduced a range of subtle, dynamic ornaments, and was very careful to specify the placement of all embellishments, so as to heighten the emotional and dramatic effect. This monody, as the genre is called, takes a singer of uncommon technique and subtlety. With harpsichordist Colin Tilney, here is Julianne Baird.

[MUSIC: Soprano Julianne Baird and harpsichordist Colin Tilney performing "Ardi cor mio" from Caccini’s Le Nuove Musiche]

Again, that was a concert performance.

Caccini’s usage of the terms madrigal and aria for his songs persisted among composers until the 1630s, when the terminology—and the forms—were supplanted by the larger cantata. At mid-century, the cantata, as practiced by such masters as Giacomo Carissimi, was usually a highly sectionalized piece for voice and continuo, with changes of meter and character as the text demanded. The style of these sections varied from declamatory all the way to dance-like. One continuing tradition was the preference for the soprano voice as the best medium for solo singing. In at least two celebrated cases, virtuoso sopranos, both daughters of composers, became song composers themselves: Francesca Caccini and Barbara Strozzi. Here is a portion of Strozzi's cantata L'Astratto, sung by Judith Nelson with Concerto Vocale.

[MUSIC: An excerpt from L'Astratto (The Distracted One) by the virtuoso singer-composer Barbara Strozzi, performed by Judith Nelson with Concerto Vocale]

The dominant figures in Italian secular vocal music in the 17th century were Stradella, Steffani, and [Alessandro] Scarlatti. As the 17th century wore on, the distinction between the declamatory sections and the song-like sections within the cantata increased to the point where they were no longer as integrated. The declamatory sections became full-fledged recitatives and the song-like sections became longer with more recognizable forms. Scarlatti's contributions by the strength of his over 600 cantatas and 75 operas include the standardization of the movements of the cantata as recitative-aria-recitative-aria, an arrangement which persisted until the end of the 18th century, and the establishment of the Da Capo form as the virtually exclusive aria form in cantatas and operas for the rest of the Baroque era.

Handel's operas and cantatas would be unthinkable without Scarlatti, but the crowning achievement of Italian secular vocal music in the Baroque are the arias of this younger German master. Performed with ornamentation appropriate to the time, they must scarcely have a superior for beauty in all of vocal literature.

[MUSIC: Soprano Julianne Baird with harpsichordist Doris Ornstein and gambist Wendy Gillespie in a concert performance of "Lascia ch’io pianga" from Handel's opera Rinaldo]

Again, that was from a concert on the campus of Case Western Reserve University.

You have been listening to a program exploring the art of song in Italy from the 13th to the 18th centuries.