Polychoral Culture at San Marco in Venice
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
SINGING THE REPUBLIC: POLYCHORAL CULTURE AT SAN MARCO IN VENICE (1550-1615) Masataka Yoshioka, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS December 2010 APPROVED: Bernardo Illari, Major Professor Graham Phipps, Minor Professor Margaret Notley, Committee Member Eileen M. Hayes, Chair of the Division of Music History, Theory, and Ethnomusicology Lynn Eustis, Director of Graduate Studies in the College of Music James C. Scott, Dean of the College of Music James D. Meernik, Acting Dean of the Robert B. Toulouse School of Graduate Studies Yoshioka, Masataka. Singing the Republic: Polychoral Culture at San Marco in Venice (1550-1615). Doctor of Philosophy (Musicology), December 2010, 262 pp., 3 tables, 69 examples, appendices, references, 154 titles. During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Venetian society and politics could be considered as a “polychoral culture.” The imagination of the republic rested upon a shared set of social attitudes and beliefs. The political structure included several social groups that functioned as identifiable entities; republican ideologies construed them together as parts of a single harmonious whole. Venice furthermore employed notions of the republic to bolster political and religious independence, in particular from Rome. As is well known, music often contributes to the production and transmission of ideology, and polychoral music in Venice was no exception. Multi-choir music often accompanied religious and civic celebrations in the basilica of San Marco and elsewhere that emphasized the so-called “myth of Venice,” the city’s complex of religious beliefs and historical heritage. These myths were shared among Venetians and transformed through annual rituals into communal knowledge of the republic. Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli and other Venetian composers wrote polychoral pieces that were structurally homologous with the imagination of the republic. Through its internal structures, polychoral music projected the local ideology of group harmony. Pieces used interaction among hierarchical choirs – their alternation in dialogue and repetition – as rhetorical means, first to create the impression of collaboration or competition, and then to bring them together at the end, as if resolving discord into concord. Furthermore, Giovanni Gabrieli experimented with the integration of instrumental choirs and recitative within predominantly vocal multi-choir textures, elevating music to the category of a theatrical religious spectacle. He also adopted and developed richer tonal procedures belonging to the so-called “hexachordal tonality” to underscore rhetorical text delivery. If multi-choir music remained the central religious repertory of the city, contemporary single-choir pieces favored typical polychoral procedures that involve dialogue and repetition among vocal subgroups. Both repertories adopted clear rhetorical means of emphasizing religious notions of particular political significance at the surface level. Venetian music performed in religious and civic rituals worked in conjunction with the myth of the city to project and reinforce the imagination of the republic, promoting a glorious image of greatness for La Serenissima. Copyright 2010 By Masataka Yoshioka ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In order to complete this study, I received an abundance of help from numerous people. First, I would like to express my gratitude to my committee members at the University of North Texas. In particular, my major professor, Bernardo Illari, gave me continuous guidance and support from the beginning to the end of this process. Both Graham Phipps and Margaret Notley helped me a great deal with their expertise. I have also received the support of all the music history faculty at UNT. I need to mention here the names of Jean Harden and William McGinney for their assistance with the art of writing in English.. I am also grateful for the financial support provided by the Robert B. Toulouse School of Graduate Studies. I would like to express my thanks to the staff of the Archivio di Stato di Venezia, the Biblioteca del Civico Museo Correr, and the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana for their helpful and patient assistance during my research there. I also would like to thank David Bryant for making time to meet with me on short notice and providing significant information. My research could not have been done without the generous help of these people. Finally, I would like to thank my parents for their support. Even though they are far away in Japan, their unending encouragement has helped me through this whole project. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... iii Chapters I. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................... 1 II. IDEOLOGY, POWER, KNOWLEDGE ..................................................................... 8 1. Ideology ................................................................................................................. 8 a. Marxist Ideology................................................................................................ 9 b. Hegemony and Ideology .................................................................................. 10 c. Meta-Ideology ................................................................................................. 12 2. Power and Knowledge ........................................................................................ 13 a. Forms of Knowledge ....................................................................................... 14 b. Power Relations ............................................................................................... 17 3. Ideology, Archaeology and Genealogy in Music ................................................ 19 4. Polychoral Culture............................................................................................... 20 III. A POLYCHORAL REPUBLIC ............................................................................. 23 1. The Venetian Social Structure............................................................................. 24 a. The Social Groups of the Republic .................................................................. 25 b. The Venetian Government............................................................................... 28 c. The Guilds ....................................................................................................... 32 d. A Socio-Political Republic .............................................................................. 34 iv 2. The Venetian Republic ........................................................................................ 35 a. The Republic and Its Foundation..................................................................... 36 b. St. Mark ........................................................................................................... 38 c. A Religious Republic....................................................................................... 40 IV. THE PRACTICE OF VENETIAN RELIGIOUS MUSIC ..................................... 43 1. Venetian Liturgy and Music Chapel ................................................................... 43 a. San Marco and Its Liturgy ............................................................................... 45 b. The Music Chapel of San Marco ..................................................................... 48 c. Other Churches ................................................................................................ 50 2. Polychoral Practice and Repertories ................................................................... 52 a. Origin and Development of Polychoral Motets ............................................... 53 b. Willaert‟s Double-Choir Psalms (1550) .......................................................... 58 c. Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli Concerti (1587) .............................................. 58 d. 1597 Giovanni Gabrieli‟s Sacrae Symphoniae (1597) .................................... 59 e. Giovanni Bassano‟s Concerti Ecclesiastici (1598 and 1599) .......................... 60 f. Giovanni Gabrieli‟s Posthumous Symphoniae Sacrae (1615) ........................ 61 g. Anthologies ...................................................................................................... 61 h. The Function of the Religious Compositions .................................................. 62 V. POLYCHORALISM, COMPETITION AND HARMONY ................................... 65 1. Polychoral Texture .............................................................................................. 67 v a. Dialogue........................................................................................................... 71 b. Repetition......................................................................................................... 75 c. Polychoral Textures and Genres ...................................................................... 81 2. Tonality and Harmonic Progressions .................................................................. 87 a. Tonal Procedures ............................................................................................. 87 b. Harmonic Motion by Fifth in Alleluia Sections ............................................ 107 3. The Use of Instruments and Solo Vocal Writing .............................................