Italian Secular Music Many of the Northern Composers Had Settled In

Italian Secular Music Many of the Northern composers had settled in Italy and the church music reflected the contrapuntal style of the North. However, just as there was a gradual reaction to the intensity of this learned style in the secular works in the North such as the Parisian Chanson, there was eventually a reaction in Itally as well. In the last quarter of the six- teenth century a new style developed especially in Mantua. This new style was a collaboration between poets and the musicians of the day. Poetry, a lot of it not of high quality, most commonly on themes of courtly love, were set to various forms, the most common called the frottola.These works were different in that they were intended for just one or two performers accompanied by instruments. The melody was usually symmetrical phrases of 2-4 measures, simple in shape, over a harmonic bass line. The music was not imitative and the vocal lines were usually not equal. Often the poems were strophic so the music would repeat for each verse. Chief composers of the Frottola were Bartolomeo Tromboncino and Mar- chetto Cara. The Frottola was popular for several decades, finally replaced around 1510 when literary tastes began to move towards more serious content. While the frottola continued for a while setting these new poems in the same manner as the old it was soon replaced by the Italian madrigal. The madrigal, while it could contain instruments, was intended for vocal performance, usually 4-6 voices. It adopted some characteristics from the northern contrapuntal style and so was more sophisticated than the frottola as well. The madrigal was music that was meant to involve the performers with the poetry. Often words included text painting—the text high might be set on a high note. Dark might receive a dark chord. Often the music was written in a way that was itself poetic on the page. In the madrigal every voice had text and important melodic lines were spread between the various voices. The madrigals, unlike the frottola, tended not to be strophic. They were through composed with new music for each section of text so that they could best wed the music to the meaning of the text. They might be chordal like the frottola in parts, but because of the text declamation and linear melody lines they have more in common with the Northern motets, only with secular subject matter. Early madrigals had so much in common with Northern motets because they were largely written by Northern composers who had come to Italy. These include Philippe Verdalot and Jacques Ar- cadelt. These madrigals were shorter than their Northern counter- parts, and the counterpoint was not as rigid. Also the relationship of the text to the music is more pronounced than in the earlier works. In the second half of the century, as Madrigals gained in popularity, there were more composers of Italian birth. These works began to attempt a closer relationship between the text and the musical setting. It is here were madrigalisms, the spe- cific painting of sections of text began to occur with more frequency. One of the important composers of this time period was Cipriano da Rore. He used the compositional craft to try to portray the varied moods of the poetry he set. Because of this attention to recreating the mood of the poetry, composers of this time period began to expand their compositional craft, allowing chromaticism into their language, larger intervallic leaps such as 6ths which were tightly controlled in the Northern style, less idiomatic spacing between the vocal parts, and rapid changes of texture, alter- nating fast and slow passages as dictated by the poetry. In this music it is the expression of the text that creates form for the music. In the later madrigals, composers continued to focus on the idea of expressivity. Madrigalisms pictori- alizing the text continued, as did an increase in chromatic writing including coloristic chord use. Andrea Ga- brieli and Luca Marenzio were composers in this last period, where textual madrigalisms, and coloring reached an expressive apex. At the end of the century several madrigal composers began to push the bound- aries of the musical setting. One, Nicolo Vicentino, became interested in quarter tones and had a special in- strument created to allow him to compose with this technique. Another, Carlo Gesualdo pushed his works well beyond traditional rules of contrapuntal writing to create his personal expression. Chromaticism freely alternates with diatonic chords. Textures are often low and dark, and dissonance control is not highly fol- lowed. This free approach to composition was also adopted by Claudio Monteverdi who would form a link to the Baroque Era. When the critic, G. M Artusi published an attack on Monteverdi’s music in 1600, Montever- di responded that earlier compositions were a “prima practica” in which the music was the mistress of the words, but he was following a new “secunda practica” in which the words were mistress of the music. In oth- er words, rules of composition might be set aside in order to fully express the meaning of the text. .

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