©2017 Lynette Bowring ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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©2017 Lynette Bowring ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ORALITY, LITERACY, AND THE LEARNING OF INSTRUMENTS: PROFESSIONAL INSTRUMENTALISTS AND THEIR MUSIC IN EARLY MODERN ITALY By LYNETTE BOWRING A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Music Written under the direction of Rebecca Cypess And approved by ____________________________________ ____________________________________ ____________________________________ ____________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey May 2017 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Orality, Literacy, and the Learning of Instruments: Professional Instrumentalists and Their Music in Early Modern Italy by LYNETTE BOWRING Dissertation Director: Rebecca Cypess The literacy of instrumentalists underwent a revolution in the sixteenth century. Previously, musicians who specialized in instrumental performance were often excluded from literate musical cultures: they were artisans operating within oral traditions of improvisation and formulaic playing. As a result, relatively few written compositions survive from instrumentalists prior to 1500. By the end of the sixteenth century, instrumentalists were benefitting in many regions from a vast growth in general literacy, and were frequently intersecting with the educated cultures of churches and courts—as a result, they could notate with precision the music that they played and created. This trend contributed to the pedagogical methods used to train instrumentalists. As instrumentalists transitioned from a largely artisanal and oral culture into a musically literate mainstream, new printed repertoires and pedagogical materials offered a complement to traditional teaching methods, necessitating the acquisition of new skills and vastly broadening the musical experiences of student instrumentalists. Although existing studies have probed in detail the emergence of print culture in the early modern period, there remain important issues to be considered about the intersections between printed objects and literacy, the relationships between writing, printing, and oral cultures, ii and the ways in which these developments shaped the ways musicians thought about and created music. In this dissertation, I argue that the emergence of a literate musical culture among instrumentalists in sixteenth-century Italy had far-reaching implications. The acquisition of literacy coincided with instrumentalists‘ entries into and participation in the literate musical milieus of churches and courts, and newly literate instrumentalists provided a bridge between earlier oral practices and an expanding written culture. Through writing down or codifying previously oral practices and taking advantage of the new possibilities of writing and print, instrumentalists began to open new pedagogical possibilities for students, and reshape instrumentalists‘ thought processes and musical understanding. I propose that instrumentalists trained in late sixteenth-century Italy developed a new compositional consciousness as a result of this, and tensions between the oral and written cultures of these musicians are responsible for some key characteristics of progressive instrumental compositions in the early baroque period. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to extend my utmost appreciation to my advisor at Rutgers, Rebecca Cypess, who has provided so much encouragement and assistance throughout my time at Rutgers. Her influence on this dissertation has been immense, and I owe much to our discussions of ideas and the painstaking attention she has lavished upon my work. Her own scholarship and career have been hugely inspirational to me, and I look forward to our friendship and collaboration continuing past my graduation from Rutgers. I would also like to thank a number of other teachers and professors who have helped to shape both this project and my scholarly vision more generally. The rest of the Rutgers musicology faculty members have brought much inspiration and encouragement. Douglas Johnson and Floyd Grave, who served on my dissertation committee, devoted much effort to reading through my work, for which I am very grateful; their classes and advice throughout the program have been greatly appreciated. Rufus Hallmark and Eduardo Herrera have also been stimulating and welcome mentors at Rutgers, as have the theory faculty. The staff of the Rutgers libraries, in particular Jonathan Sauceda, also deserve thanks for handling my numerous requests for obscure materials. I am extremely grateful to Massimo Ossi from Indiana University for agreeing to serve as the outside reader for my dissertation; his perceptive feedback and questions were extremely welcome, and I enjoyed our discussions about this and other topics during the final weeks of work on this dissertation. I also wish to thank my professors at previous universities who encouraged me to follow this path. At the Royal Northern College of Music, David Ledbetter, David Horne, iv Martin Harlow, and David Vickers all encouraged me to turn to musicology, and my violin teacher, Thomas Kemp, was always supportive of my scholarly pursuits. During my master‘s degree at the University of Manchester, Barry Cooper‘s broad knowledge was very inspiring. I am particularly grateful to my adviser from Manchester, Rebecca Herissone, whose thorough and rigorous approach and sophisticated scholarship made a huge impression on me; I thank her for turning me from a performer into a musicologist, and I have been appreciative throughout my doctorate of the grounding she gave me in musicology. Finally, I wish to thank my first violin teacher, Kenneth Mitchell, who encouraged me to listen to Castello and Marini as a teenager, and whose passion for and knowledge about the early violin repertoire continues to be an inspiration. My friends and fellow students at Rutgers have been ceaselessly supportive, and I have appreciated the convivial atmosphere that we share. I am particularly grateful to the students who participate in the Rutgers University Musicological Society, where I have presented early versions of these ideas and received valuable feedback; I have also been continually inspired by the development of the students around me. I am also appreciative of the students who joined me to play this (and other) repertoire in the Rutgers Baroque Players; the chance to perform pieces that I had loved for years was extremely welcome, and I was lucky to be able to develop my interpretations with this ensemble. I wish to deeply thank my parents, whose love and support I have never doubted; I owe everything I have achieved to them, and cannot hope to express the extent of my appreciation fully here. I also wish to thank my boyfriend, who has showed unwavering encouragement and confidence in me; his companionship throughout this degree has meant a great deal to me, and undoubtedly helped me reach this final stage. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv List of Figures viii List of Musical Examples ix Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Education and Literacy as Agents of Cultural Change in the Sixteenth Century 12 Literacy as an agent of broader cultural change 16 The emergence of literacy in sixteenth-century instrumental cultures 19 Some educational contexts for Renaissance musicians 27 Schooling, education, and pedagogy in early modern Italy 41 Chapter 2: Artisanal Instrumentalists and Their Development of Musical Literacy in Cities and Churches 52 Civic instrumentalists as artisans in sixteenth-century Italy 54 Instrumentalists intersecting the civic and the sacred 59 Artisanal pedagogies of instrumentalists within sacred establishments 67 Print cultures and repertoires in the church 76 Chapter 3: Sixteenth-Century Contrapuntal Study between Texts and Instrumental Practices 85 Hidden pedagogy in the oral realm: the improvised counterpoint tradition 89 Theoretical texts and pedagogical texts, from Zarlino to practical pedagogy 95 vi Species counterpoint and musical examples 109 Hidden pedagogy in composition, arrangement, and practice 119 Chapter 4: Diminution Manuals as an Oral-Literate Interface: From Improvisation to Composition 139 Positioning early diminution manuals between the oral and literate traditions 143 Pedagogical principles in diminution manuals of the 1580s–90s 155 Methodical practice, structuring, and indications of ―compositional‖ hearing 168 Development of an instrumental compositional style through the writing of diminutions 176 Chapter 5: Literacy, Pedagogy, and Compositional Approaches in the Stile moderno Instrumental Repertoire 195 A route to a new instrumental idiom: Giovanni Gabrieli 197 Counterpoint and diminutions for organists: Giovanni Paolo Cima 203 Orality and literacy among string players at the Gonzaga court: Salamone Rossi and Giovanni Battista Buonamente 211 Venetian piffaro traditions and the stile moderno sonata: Dario Castello 228 A virtuoso violinist at the oral-literate interface: Biagio Marini 238 Bibliography 258 Musical Scores Cited 272 vii LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1.1: Marguerite de Valois dancing La Volta at the Valois Court, Anonymous, late sixteenth century (Rennes, Musée des Beaux-Arts). 21 Fig. 1.2: Piffari at the coronation of Pope Pius III, Bernardino Pinturicchio, c. 1504 (Siena, Libreria Piccolomini). 22 Fig. 4.1: Sylvestro di Ganassi, Fontegara, frontispiece. 147 Fig. 4.2: Rognoni Taeggio, diminutions ―con diverse inventioni‖ on ―Vestiva i colli.‖ 190 viii LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES