Of Balletts to ,Five Voices: Balletts to Five Voices Remains Largely Unknown to Many Choral Musicians

It is likely that Thomas Morley's popularity with the majority of Th.omas Morley's First Book twentieth-century lovers of his music rests chiefly upon his balletts. In spite of this, the music of Morley's FirstBook of of Balletts to ,Five Voices: Balletts to Five Voices remains largely unknown to many choral musicians. 1 While a few of the pieces in the collec tion, such as "Now Is the Month of May An Introduction ing" or "Sing We and Chant It," have become fixtures in the repertory of For Conductors many choirs, many of the Balletts are rarely, if ever, performed. By David Taylor Morley's Balletts is a rich source of Director of Choral Activities literature well suited to the needs of Hendrix College many high school and college vocal Conway Arkansas chamber ensembles, literature which will make for interesting and entertain well as or even more than a musical ex Morley set the tone definitively for a ingprogramming and which will provide perience. The lighter Italian musical class of composition that is musical challenge and enjoyment for forms (canzonetta, villanelle, and ballet characteristic of the English books [of choir members and conductors. As an in to) were relished for their simplicity in madrigals] that came after him. The popularity and cultivation of the troduction to this music for conductors, contrast to the highly sophisticated English madrigal was inlarge measure this article will examine the historical madrigal, but this predilection for due to him alone. 3 background of the Balletts, survey the simplicity was still the attitude of court contents of the collection, discuss ap aesthetes, and had much the same This popularity and cultivation began plicable performance practice considera character as Marie Antoinette's fond with the publication of Morley's Balletts tions, and add some suggestions con ness for her "dairy farm" at Versailles in simultaneously-issued English and cerning performance of the Balletts centuries later. The focus of the can Italian versions in 1595. designed to facilitate use of this litera zonetta, villanelle, and balletto, like the The new English style which Morley ture by high school and college choirs. focus of the madrigal, was still on the and his successors established differed poem. from its Italian model in several Historical Background on the The consumers of madrigals in respects, most of which stemmed from " Balletts" England, however, were the new gentry the predominantly musical rather than Elizabethan England was deeply in and the rising middle class, as well as literary interests of the English com terested in the assimilation and imita the higher reaches of society; and since posers and music lovers. Since the tion of Continental culture, scholarship, these consumers did not know the long English composers were not as in and social conventions. During the last tradition of Italian poetry, and were terested in poetic subtleties of the same three decades of the sixteenth century hearing either Italian which they often kind, they preferred more musical the Petrarchan poetry of Italy and its did not know well or English transla elaboration and interest than could be allied musical form, the madrigal, tions which frequently obscured the found in the Italian forms, and tended to became extremely fashionable among sophisticated structure and content of prefer the lighter forms to the madrigal English artists and courtiers. This the originals, they were primarily in itself, since many of these lighter forms Italian influence was imported both by terested in the music rather than the were musically less subordinate to the Englishmen who had travelled abroad words of the new Italian pieces. In short, text. English compositions generally and by Italian musicians working in in England the madrigal was very much displayed more melodic interest than England. The influence of Italian poetry a musical and not a literary matter. their Italian counterparts (Reese refers was a strong factor in the "new poetry" Italian madrigals circulated in to their "songfulness"), and generally of Sidney and Spenser, and the Italian England both in manuscript and in in avoided devices of the Italian man madrigal, together with the lighter fluential printed collections, such as nerists such as extreme chromaticism or secular Italian forms such as the can Nicolas Yonge's Musica Transalpina monodic recitative. English composers zonetta and balletto, served as the model and Thomas Watson's Italian Madrigals preferred on the whole to set light and for the sudden and quite imitative Englished, for some time before English frivolous rather than great or serious development of the English madrigal, "a composers began to imitate the Italian poetry: the Italian tradition of setting to rare example," says Jerome Roche, "of models. William Byrd and his genera music the greatest native poets had no the naturalization of a foreign form."2 tion were cool to the new style, prefer English counterpart. In fact, English In Italy the spirit that generated the ring the native English secular song. composers were frequently content to madrigal was very much a literary mat Thomas Morley was the first composer set rough translations of the texts of ter: musical setting of serious poetry by to employ the Italian style. Says Joseph Italian pieces: the greatest Italian poets, such as Kerman, Although choral musicians tend to Petrarch and Tasso, was a highly refer to all sixteenth-century English sophisticated art primarily focused on No other musicians of Morley's secular vocal compositions in the structure, the meaning, and even the generation distinguished themselves discriminately as madrigals, there are verbal sounds of the poem. Purely in Italianate composition, and the actually a number of more or less musical considerations were secondary younger men looked instinctively to distinct varieties, as was also true in Ita him as their model. But Morley looked ly, and intelligent analysis requires that to the primacy of the word. Madrigals instinctively to Italy; his historic posi were composed for literary academies tion is that of a pioneer who digested these be recognized. Carelessness on the and for a highly cultured nobility who the Continental style, naturalized it, part of composers and printers often employed professional musicians and and presented it to his countrymen in contributes to modern confusion in this strove for the highest possible level of a form that they could immediately ap regard, since title pages of original artistic and aesthetic sophistication and preciate and utilize further. It is first prints often mislabel some or all of the rarification. For the Italians, madrig~ of all from this point of view that pieces they contain. This sort of confu singing was expected to be a poetic as Morley's work should be approached. sion in the original prints was perhaps APRIL 1983 PageS heightened by the fact that forms and to line, dwelling at the dictate of the albeit within a regular musical frame form names newly imported from Italy text on whichever phrase seems best, work, the canzonet bears some resem 6 were involved. An approach to Morley's with no fixed ending-point ahead. blance to the madrigal. Balletts, therefore, must necessarily in It displays no regular or pre-conceived The light madrigal differs from the volve consideration of the character musical pattern, is not strophic but serious madrigal primarily in text and istics which distinguish the ballett from through-composed, and is quasi-contra mood. It normally involves light and in the other late-sixteenth-century English puntal and quite variable in texture consequential poetry and a frivolous secular vocal forms. rather than homophonic. It attempts to musical mood. It remains a madrigal, Kerman's study of Elizabethan reflect in the music the sense and mood however, in that the text governs and no Jacobean secular vocal music distin of the poem and even of individual preconceived formal structure is pos guishes four main varieties of Italianate words within the poem. The poetry em sible. secular vocal compositions by English ployed is normally of a good quality and Morley himself defines the ballett in composers: the ballett, serious madrigal, a serious nature. this way: canzonet, and light madrigal.5 The canzonet borrows characteristics The ballett is normally strophic, from both the ballett and the madrigal There is also another kind ... which primarily homophonic, and usually they term balletti or dances, and are and is in some senses a hybrid of the songs which being sung to a ditty may dominated by an obvious and regular two. Like the ballett, it is strophic and likewise be danced . .. There be also dance rhythm. It is characterized by a subordinates the text to a pre-conceived another kind of balletts commonly bipartite division, and each of these two musical form. Here the division is usual called "fa-las." The first set of that sections ends with a fa-Ia-Ia or similar ly tripartite, and this is marked by the kind which I have seen was made by refrain and is repeated in its entirety, in repetition of the words and music of the Gastoldi; if others have labored in the cluding the refrain. The ballett is musi outer sections, with a non-repeated sec same field I know not, but a slight cally the simplest of the four varieties kind of music it is, and, as I take it, tion in the center. The text is also nor s and normally employs a predetermined mally light in character. But while the devised to be danced to voices. musical scheme of regular phrase ballett is primarily homophonic, the can lengths which takes precedence over the zonet is Kerman points out that Morley's defini poetry. The text is almost always of a tion notes both the general Continental light and frivolous character suitable for built up from brief phrases declaimed use of the term to denote any simple to .individual and characteristic little composition suited for dancing and also dancing and entertaininent.

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