Iacobus Leodiensis [Iacobus de Montibus, Iacobus de Oudenaerde]

3. Renaissance.

Historians have been puzzled by the sharp contrast between the apparent brilliance of 14th-century polyphony and the emptiness of that of the 15th century. Actually, the Ars Nova is magnified by its splendid manuscript tradition; when its thin support was all too easily washed away by a wave of humanistic distrust for all that smacked of scholasticism, secular society simply reverted entirely to kinds of music that were mainly committed to oral tradition. Such a humanistic attitude is epitomized by Leonardo Giustiniani (d 1446), a Venetian nobleman, who set out to recapture the spell of ancient music by singing dialect songs in a popular style. A whole class of songs came to be called giustiniane after him; his music is completely lost, however, as is that of many singers a liuto or alla viola, some professional, like Pietrobono of Ferrara (c1417–1497) and Serafino Aquilano (1466–1500), others amateur, like Lorenzo de’ Medici and many members of his retinue. Their techniques may also have included some kind of simple polyphonic accompaniment to the voice. Virtuoso playing on the lute or keyboard was also increasingly admired.

Many churches had organs and organists, but only a few had singers, most often foreigners, who sang and taught polyphonic music; S Pietro in Rome seldom had more than four. Sacred polyphony fared better in the cappella papale (papal chapel), particularly under Martin V (1417–31) and in the first years of the reign of his successor, Eugene IV; it then declined, mainly because of the latter’s drive for ecclesiastical reforms and austerity, which, however, may have inspired Du Fay to compose his remarkable cycle of hymns. Du Fay, who had previously been connected with the Malatesta family, was a papal singer, with some interruptions, from 1428 to 1437; in 1436, while in Florence with the cappella he composed the motet Nuper rosarum flores for the dedication of Florence Cathedral during the visit of the Pope. But after Du Fay no composer of stature entered the cappella until late in the century, when a renewal of interest (which was to culminate under Leo X) brought Weerbeke (1479), Orto (1484) and Josquin (1489). The cappella established in Naples in 1442–3 by King Alfonso I of Aragon, the most famous member of which was Johannes Tinctoris, a Netherlander, served as a model for a few other courtly cappelle; the most important among them were those of Ferrara and Milan, the former created by Leonello d’Este (d 1450), who employed English musicians, and later strengthened by Ercole I (1471–1505), and the latter founded in 1473 by Galeazzo Maria Sforza (Josquin was associated with Cardinal Ascanio Sforza and the ducal court in 1484–9). In nominally republican Florence, the Medici did not have a cappella but encouraged and exploited for their private use the presence of polyphonists in various Florentine churches, including Heinrich Isaac.

Numerous manuscript collections of the late 15th century indicate a more widely spread and intensified interest in polyphony, the extent of which is even more eloquently stressed by the appearance in 1501 of music printing, started by Ottaviano Petrucci in Venice and soon imitated elsewhere in Italy and abroad. Petrucci’s output, evidently addressed to a rapidly growing public of lesser nobility and upper bourgeoisie, mainly consists of secular music. His Odhecaton and two other collections of Franco-Flemish pieces, seemingly intended for instrumental performance, were soon followed by a series of 11 books of typically Italian pieces, whose markedly chordal (and possibly instrumental) accompaniment to a main vocal line apparently continued and developed previously unrecorded practices (two more of his prints contain similar pieces in arrangements for voice and lute). In addition to frottolas and strambotti, a more literary class of text – sonnets, ode, capitoli, Petrarchan canzoni and madrigals, as well as Latin poems – were also set in this style. These compositions, printed by Petrucci – and others preserved in contemporary manuscripts – clearly reflect and, in some cases, actually preserve in written form the oral practice of music-making from previous centuries in Italy. Bartolomeo Tromboncino and Marchetto Cara are the best known among the composers, many of whom served the courts of Ferrara, Mantua, Urbino and Rome. Also included in the prints are settings of mascheratas, certainly intended for courtly entertainment and requiring choral rather than solo singing; their Florentine equivalents, canti carnascialeschi, survive in manuscript form.

Early in this outburst of a new vitality two trends began to appear, both of which arose from a humanistic concern for the text but led to different conclusions. On one hand, the demand for higher literary standards and the revival of Petrarchism typical of the first decades of the century led to settings that concentrated on the effective delivery of the text by the upper voice, unobstructed by the subdued, basically chordal support of the other parts, often one or more instruments. On the other hand, the general interest in all artistic activities, also spurred by humanistic ideals, suggested that the literary refinement of the texts be matched by the musicians, summoning up all the resources of contrapuntal polyphony. The latter attitude gradually prevailed, leading to the madrigal (an old name for a new coalescence of poetic forms) becoming the main vehicle through which the composers set out to interpret musically the poetic content of their chosen or given texts; hence the recourse to so-called madrigalisms, a repertory of partly spontaneous, partly contrived associations of poetic and musical images, which, however, had its roots in the international motet style of the turn of the century. Madrigals were often intended to be performed in connection with the meetings of the academies, as musical interludes or to conclude learned speeches or discussions.

Early madrigals by Verdelot, Costanzo Festa and Arcadelt generally achieve a balance between recitative-like clarity and contrapuntal activity. Later a sharper alternation of contrapuntal writing and chordal passages developed, while a keen spirit of experimentation led to the faster rhythms of the madrigals a note nere, or (fostered by Vicentino’s speculations on the genres of ancient music) to Rore’s exploitation of dissonance and chromaticism for the expression of deep poetic feelings. The whole gamut of expressive resource, ranging from dramatic moods to sunny enthusiasm or to pastoral levity, was displayed at its best towards the end of the century by Marenzio, while extreme emotional tensions dictated Gesualdo’s sudden shifts from exaggerated chromaticism to melodious diatonicism. None of this ever completely erased the predominance of the upper part, as is also shown by performing practices; for although polyphony was now issued in partbooks – all provided with text – contemporary sources indicate that all-vocal performance could often be replaced by combinations of voice and instruments (even title-pages speak of ‘madrigali da cantare e da suonare’). Furthermore, frottolas and strambotti, dropped by the printers about 1530 (although they continued to be sung), were soon replaced by new popular genres, such as the villotta, the three-voice villanesca alla napoletana and later the canzonetta. Midway between the madrigal and the lighter genres are Striggio’s witty madrigalian narratives (e.g. Il cicalamento delle donne al bucato), to which Vecchi’s and Banchieri’s so-called madrigal comedies and other musical entertainments are related.

Less venturesome, and yet the main field of activity for many famous composers of madrigals, sacred music continued to be international in style and repertory. So too were many of the performers, including Verdelot, Arcadelt, Jacquet of Mantua, Jacquet of Ferrara, Nasco and Werrecore, whose church positions made them specially apt to influence new generations of musicians; in the 1530s, when the devastations of war were over, newly formed cappelle based on the model of the Cappella Giulia at S Pietro, designed in 1513 by Julius II, began to teach boys. Often, however, foreign musicians were so much involved in the Italian way of life as to become deeply italianate. The most relevant example is Willaert, who, after sojourns in Rome, Ferrara and Milan, succeeded Petrus de Fossis, also a Fleming, as maestro di cappella of S Marco, Venice, in 1527; during his 35-year tenure Parabosco, Vicentino, Rore, Zarlino, Andrea Gabrieli and Costanzo Porta were among his colleagues and pupils. With the pupils succeeding their masters, it became exceptional for foreign musicians (such as Rore, Wert or Victoria) to occupy leading positions in the second half of the century. From the combination of Willaert’s powerful personality and the standards of magnificence set by the Venetian government for its official church, the main features for which the Venetian school became one of the principal models of Italian (and foreign) church music were established: richness of sound, polychoral writing, colourful use of the organ (S Marco constantly used at least two) and later of other instruments and finally a relative lack of concern for all debates on the future of church music. Following a century-old tradition, motets were composed to celebrate important state festivities, as in the works of the great Venetian composers such as the Gabrielis. Contrasting with the open attitude in Venice, the leading Roman institution, the cappella papale, was slowly evolving a guarded attitude, partly protecting old privileges under the shield of tradition, partly reacting to mounting criticism of church polyphony from both outside and inside the Catholic church. Without being a conservative, Palestrina continued and brought to consummate refinement stylistic trends that he had come to know from his French teachers in the cappella of S Maria Maggiore. It is significant, too, that he usually based ‘parody’ masses either on his own motets and madrigals or on French models of the 1530s. Mounting concern that the Council of Trent might banish the use of polyphony from the liturgy led Palestrina and his Roman colleagues to write masses paraphrasing plainchant (or even treating it in chorale-like fashion); above all, however, they were careful to avoid polyphonic complexity that might obscure the liturgical text. Finally, while the organ accompanied the singing in most Roman churches, the model of the cappella papale, where purely vocal performance was traditional, suggested moderation in the use of instruments. Thus, while the Venetian school followed a course that was to lead to the concertato style of the next century, the stage was set in Rome for the concept of stile antico. However, the church music of Palestrina’s successors at S Pietro also reveals clarity of declamation and the use of vertical sonorities found in the works of their Venetian colleagues.

Music printing, of which Venice was the main centre, soon reflected a demand for instrumental music. In 1507 a series of prints containing vocal pieces (mostly secular, but also sacred), dances and ricercares in lute tablature was started by Petrucci. A privilege granted to him to publish keyboard music was assumed instead by Antico for his Frottole intabulate da sonare organi (Rome, 1517; see fig.3; printers always referred to all keyboard instruments as organi). The most famous performers and composers of lute music were Francesco da Milano and, later, Vincenzo Galilei; lute transcriptions of polyphonic works were performed by university students during the Renaissance. Organists were much more numerous, because of their church employment. Their music was sometimes printed in score to make performance by a group of instruments possible, but instrumental music was practised to an even greater extent simply by use of the vocal repertory; favoured instruments were recorders and viols (for which tutors were published) and the whole family of cornetts. A great variety of instruments, combining or alternating with voices, was also displayed in the spectacular intermedi performed between the acts of comedies or pastoral plays, the most famous of which were those given at the Florentine court in 1589 to celebrate a ducal wedding (see fig.5). A remarkable 16th-century collection of instruments is still housed in the Accademia Filarmonica in Verona.

An intense theoretical activity often led to debate. The most heated controversy was between supporters of a tuning similar to just (or harmonic) intonation, which was first taught at Bologna by the Spaniard Ramos de Pareia (b c1440), and defenders (including Gaffurius) of the traditional Pythagorean system, better suited to the needs of monophony. The former were later joined by Zarlino (1517–90), whose works cover a much wider range of philosophical, historical, aesthetic and compositional problems. Ancient theory was often summoned in support of tradition and as a justification for daring harmonic experiments in the direction of the ancient genera; further, it also helped critics of the current polyphonic style to foster the ideal of a new, essentially melodic, expressive immediacy. Vincenzo Galilei (d 1591) was the most outspoken critic, and yet it is an over-simplification to see his theoretical and musical works, as well as the discussions held from about 1575 in the Camerata of Count Bardi in Florence, as prime factors of a stylistic change to which many other elements contributed. Many of Galilei’s arguments – that polyphony obscured the perception of the text and that its imagery singled out individual words but lost sight of the real poetic message, so that its artistry reached no deeper than the ear – had been anticipated in the discussion on the fate of church music; his suggestion that music should emulate the intensity of reciting actors had precedents in such madrigals (often called ariosi) as aimed to recapture the pathos of popular singers of epic verse. In any event, emotional intensity was not the only issue. More difficult to explain was the ideal of a melodic spontaneity, which was not (as in successful villanesche and canzonettas) attained simply by playing on instruments all parts but one of a polyphonic piece, for the resulting vocal line did not have the poise and balance of a real melody. The latter depended, paradoxically, on deep-seated harmonic feelings and on the fulfilment of expectations aroused by its harmonic implications.

Italy, §I: Art music