CHAPTER 20CHAPTER 20

POPULAR POPULAR MUSIC IN MUSIC IN

FLORENCE, FLORENCE, 1475-15401475-1540

THE LATE RENAISSANCETHE LATE RENAISSANCE

• Strictly speaking, the word renaissance means “rebirth,” but it also connotes “recovery” and “rediscovery”.

• Nineteenth-century historians invented the term to describe the great flowering of intellectual and artistic activity that occurred first in Italy and then elsewhere in Europe during the years 1350-1600.

• What we in music call the “late Renaissance” occupied the years 1475-1600.

CHARACTERISTICS OF LATE CHARACTERISTICS OF LATE RENASSIANCE MUSICRENASSIANCE MUSIC

1. Development of the expressive power of music, as a result of:a. new interest in the text.b. desire to intensify the meaning of the text through

music generally.

2. Sense that music might not only be for religious purposes, but also for personal enrichment and entertainment.

3. Invention of music printing allowed access to a larger segment of the population.

4. Music shifts in perception from the sciences to the fine arts.

5. Growing perception of the composer as a special sort of human being

- an artist- one worthy of special honors and financial rewards.

ART MUSIC AND POPULAR ART MUSIC AND POPULAR MUSICMUSIC

• Historians dub the fifteenth century in Italy the quattrocento (Italian for what we call “the 1400s”).

• Much of the learned polyphony (Masses, motets, and chansons)—what we might call “high art music”– written in Italy during the quattrocento – was composed by northerners, many from the Burgundian

lands.

• Native Italians, however, cultivated musical forms and styles that approximated what we might call “popular music.”

• Much of this music was not written down, but improvised on the spot according to long-standing oral traditions.

• Quattrocento music tended to be – lighter in style– more popular in expression.

• Music with the Italians (especially the Florentines) tended to not incorporate complicated counterpoint.

THE CARNIVAL SONGTHE CARNIVAL SONG

• In Florence during carnival season (immediately before Lent) masked groups of men and boys would go through the streets singing a type of song appropriate for these revels, specifically called a carnival song (canto carnascialesco).

• Often the text of the carnival song was full of sexually explicit references.

• Once such song is the Canto de’ profumieri (Song of the Perfume Sellers), the text of which is by Lorenzo de’ Medici (the Magnificent) who controlled Florence from 1469 until his death in 1492.

The beginning of Lorenzo de’ The beginning of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Medici’s

Canto de’ profumieriCanto de’ profumieri

Typical of the carnival song is that the music is for the most part homorhythmic and homophonic in texture.

The chords are almost all what we would call “root position” triads.

Likely a clue that this piece was originally an improvised bit of street singing that only later came to be preserved in written notation.

THE LAUDATHE LAUDA

• The secular carnival song had its sacred counterpart in the lauda.

• A lauda (Italian for “a song of praise”; pl., laude) was a simple, popular sacred song written, not in church Latin, but in the local dialect of Italian.

• Hundreds of lauda texts survive, but few melodies.

• Most lauda were sung to pre-existing melodies.

SAVONAROLASAVONAROLA

• The most famous, or infamous, writer of laude was Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498).

• Savonarola was a fanatical Dominican monk who, by 1497, had gained control of the government of Florence.

• Savonarola was a religious purist who insisted that all objects of worldly pleasure, including music books, musical instruments, cards, dice, chessboards perfumes, pictures, and the like, were rounded up and burned in what came to be called a bonfire of the vanities.

• Ultimately, after he lost control of the government, Savonarola himself was burned in a bonfire in central Florence.

The beginning of The beginning of Giesù sommo Giesù sommo confortoconforto with text by Girolamo with text by Girolamo

SavonarolaSavonarola

Like the carnival song Sian galanti di Valenza, this lauda is comprised exclusively of what we would call root position triads, perhaps a suggestion that the music was originally improvised.

Savonarola instituted the “bonfire of the vanities” to rid the city of objects of personal adornment and enjoyment. Eventually, the citizens of Florence rid themselves of Savonarola by subjecting him to the same fate. This anonymous painting shows the burning of Savonarola and two of his followers in 1498.

THE FROTTOLATHE FROTTOLA

• The term frottola (Latin, “frocta,” a collection of random thoughts) was a catch-all word used to describe a polyphonic setting of a wide variety of strophic Italian poetry.

• The frottola began life as poetry sung to an improvised string accompaniment most often played on a lira da braccio.

• Frottolas could be fully sung in parts as well as performed by a solo voice with accompanying instrument.

• It flourished in Italy between the years 1470 and 1530.

• Like the carnival song and the lauda, the frottola usually consists of several stanzas of verse in Italian.

An Italian An Italian lyra da bracciolyra da braccio of 1563 of 1563 now preserved in Vermillion, South Dakotanow preserved in Vermillion, South Dakota

It has five strings and two drone strings off the fingerboard.

Played on the shoulder.

Instruments such as this were used to accompany singers of the frottola.

JOSQUIN’S JOSQUIN’S EL GRILLOEL GRILLO

• Perhaps the best known of all frottole today is El grillo (The Cricket; c1500) by Josquin des Prez.

• It is primarily homophonic in texture and comprised of root position triads.

• As to the meaning of the text, perhaps it alludes to– sexual activity in the heat of summer– perhaps to the singer Carlo Grillo– perhaps it is simply a fun song about a cricket.

The text of Josquin’s The text of Josquin’s El GrilloEl Grillo

El grillo è bon cantoreChe tiene longo verso.Dale beve grilo canta.El grillo è bon cantore.

Ma non fa come gli altri ucelli,Come li han cantata un poco,Van’ de fatto in altro loco,Sempre el grillo sta pur saldo.Quando là maggior el caldoAlhor canta sol per amore.

El grillo è bon cantoreChe tiene longo verso.Dale beve grillo canta.El grillo è bon cantore.

The cricket is a good singerWho has a long cry.The cricket sings of drinking.The cricket is a good singer.

But he is not, like other birds,When they have sung a little,Go off elsewhere,The cricket stays still.When the weather is hotterThen he sings for love.

The cricket is a good singerWho has a long cry.The cricket sings of drinking.The cricket is a good singer.

The beginning of Josquin des Prez’s The beginning of Josquin des Prez’s frottola frottola

El grilloEl grillo consists entirely of root consists entirely of root position chordsposition chords

THE EARLY MADRIGAL IN FLORENCETHE EARLY MADRIGAL IN FLORENCE

• In the sixteeth century the madrigal, like the frottola, was a catch-all term used to describe settings of Italin verse.

• The sixteenth-century madrigal is invariably through composed

(new music for every line of text), rather than strophic– each line and phrase of text must receive its own special musical

setting, something not possible with strophic form.

• The madrigal was generally chosen to be the recipient of a more lofty style of poetry than the frottola.

• Indeed the madrigalists took their texts from the finest poets in the Italian language, their favorite being Francesco Petrarch.

• Originated in Florence and spreads to other Italian cities, the Low Countries, and England.

TEXT EXPRESSION IN THE MADRIGALTEXT EXPRESSION IN THE MADRIGAL

• The chief aim of the madrigal was to express the poem as vividly and intensely as possible.

• Madrigal composers engaged in text painting in music– the music overtly sounds out that meaning of the

text, almost word by word.

• Text painting (also called word painting) became all the rage with madrigal composers in Italy and later in England.

• Even today such musical clichés as sighs and dissonances for “harsh” words are called madrigalisms.

JACQUES ARCADELT’S JACQUES ARCADELT’S IL BIANCO E DOLCE CIGNOIL BIANCO E DOLCE CIGNO

• Jacques Arcadelt (c1505-1568) composed the first important collection of madrigals when he published his Primo libro di madrigali d’ Archadelt (First Book of Madrigals by Arcadelt) in 1538 or 1539– which was reprinted more than fifty times by the end

of the century.

• Opening Arcadelt’s Primo libro di madrigali is his Il bianco e dolce cigno (The gentle white swan).

• It has moments of text painting in music,– among them the sudden chord shift on “weeping”

(“piangendo”) and the seemingly endless imitation on “a thousand deaths a day” (“di mille morti il dì”).

ORAZIO VECCHI’S ORAZIO VECCHI’S IL BIANCO E DOLCE CIGNOIL BIANCO E DOLCE CIGNO

• Orazio Vecchi (1550-1605) paid homage to, or perhaps parodied, Arcadelt’s famous madrigal with his own setting of Il bianco e dolce cigno (1589).

• Here there are so many instances of word painting that the madrigal almost becomes an example of “cartoon music” – using an extreme expressive device to convey

the meaning of nearly every poetic image.

The beginning of Orazio Vecchi’s madrigal Il bianco e dolce cigno, which exhibits a clear instance of text painting: on the word “cantando” the upper two voices break into florid singing.