Times Literary Supplement, April 24, 1981

MUSIC TLS APRIL 24 1981: 467 At the cou~t of the Gonzaga scene in masterly fashion, allowing the interest to English readers is the fact that alium", whereupon the duke, after hear sixteenth century, but they certainly left reader to asses , and even experience to Alessandro Striggio, who thought nothing ing it sung, presented Tallis with a gold many an impression on Aorence and By Denis Stevens some extent, the remarkable effects of of perform ing four-part polyphony on the chain. The Striggio motet was later per Mantua. Isabella d'Este's devotion to the arts. viola da braceio (and was highly praised formed at the marriage festivities of the Duke of Bavaria and Rente of Lorraine IAlNFENWN: Where would the frotlola composers have for so doing by Cosimo Banoli), wrote a Unexpected light is thrown upon minor been without her constant encourage fony-pan motet for the reception in Aor in 1568 (the conductor being Orlando di figu res among the Mantuan musicians, Millie: aDd Patrouge in Shteenth-Cmtury ment? Sometimes they were so anxious to ence of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, making Lasso), while Tallis's polyphony sounded Mutua such as the virtuoso singer and performer serve her that they wrote in haste and use of a specially wri tten text, "Ecee forth with a new English text at the coro on many instruments, Laura Bovia from 233pp. Cambridge University Press. £25. almost in regret, as Marco Cara did in beata m lucem". That was in July 15b l ; nation of Charles I, who was soon to pur Bologna, chosen as a suitable companion 0521229057 April of 1503 when she was away on a and si nce fony-part motets are not the chase some of the Gonzaga art treasures, for the ill-fated first wife of Vincenzo, short visit to Ferrara. kind of thing to be tossed off on a lazy still to be seen at Hampton Coun. Margherita Farnese. She seems to have summer afternoon and then forgotten taken part in music-making not only in When the fourteen-year-old Mozart heard Ercole Gonzaga, Isabella's brilliant and about, the resourceful Striggi<r-who Mantua, less flamboyant than Aorence, Mantua, but also in Aorence, Bologna what might charitably be described as an learned son, carried her inspiring example could just as easily set to music the chat less seductive than Venice, clearly played and Parma, yet surely her career is cut off indifferent performance of Hasse's of maternal benevolence onwards and tering of washerwomen or the animated a not unimportant part in the musical too soon by stating that the last trace of Demetrio at the opera in Mantua, the upwards, seeking out composers of the conversation of card-playerr-ventured counterpoint that straggled across a disun her occurs in the title of a " Canzon La artistic life of the city had been a ghostly calibre of Jacquet, originally from Brit into the well-kept field of contralactum ified continent. It has drawn to it not only Bovia" in an organ book by Merulo, pub legend for well over a century. Wrested tany but later so closely identified with his cardinal patron that he became known and substituted a new text suitable for a researchers-Canal, Davari, Bertolotti, lished in 1592. Her name, if not her mor by force from the Bonacolsi family in wedding. This new as Jacquet of Mantua. One of Ercole's venion was sent as a and in our own times Claudio Gallico and tal self (she would have been about 1328, Mantua alternately languished and gift honouring the wedding of Guglielmo Pierre Tagmann, but also distinguished sixty-seven or eight), re-appears in 1635, in a flourished under the Gonzaga rule until, memoranda about Jacquet appears here Gonzaga and Eleonora of Austria in authors who have brought its occasional volume of s..cri concerti by the Bolognese by weakness, it perished some three in facsimile (P66) and in transcription 1561 , and in view of its unusual nature it glories to a wider public, notably Maria composer Guglielmo Lipparino: a sonata for hundred years later. Not a bad innings, (P174}-where "via commetto" should may well have crossed the English chan violin and violone with the title "La one might say, for a largely crooked, cor surely read "vi commetto"-and it shows Bellonci (I segreti dei Gonzaga) and how concerned was the cardinal with his nel inside Striggio's baggage wh en he set Henry Reed, whose radio feature "Vin Bovia". rupt, and violent team; and they met with out for what was to be a highly successful cenzo" was a masterpiece of its genre. One the ignominious end · that such tyrants servant's well-being. If Maestro Jacquet requires money for writing or performing visit to London in 1567. There he would of our early music groups made its debut Inevitably a few names are miSSing in a deserve. Had the macaronic Folengo's have met at least some of the Queen's music, then let him have it at once with at the City of Bath Festival twenty yean work that sets out to be selective. Fran Baldus sung of a later age, he might well musicians and almost certainly the most out recourse to me. What a difference ago with a programme entitled " Music at cesco Campagnolo, one of Mantua's fin have found the Gonzaga either go-go or illustrious of their number, Thomas Tallk ga-ga, depending on their current mania . between this attitude of enlightened the Coun of Mantua". These materials est singers, played a small but not in were all concerned in the main with the for religion, sex, alchemy, dwarf-culture generosity and that of Duke Vincenzo Three years prior to this, a similar significant part in the preparations for II final phase of Mantuan artistic glory or spendthrift Iibertinism, but as it was he and his three sons, who treated their meeting could have taken place in Lon paslor fido in 1592, for h~ took the child contented himself with songs in Italian, composerr-Monteverdi in particu under the inspired though often wayward role of Silvio, a name that crept into the don between Tallis a nd Antonio de guidance of Duke Vincenzo. French and Spanish, in which he was lar- with such meanness and neglect! Cabez6n, then a member of the chapel of play because one of its most enthusiastic joined by his three companions. Dr Fenlon's footnotes, richly endowed Philip II of Spain; and it was Cabez6n's protagonists was Agnese de Argotta, throughout the book with references to music that dominated Henestrosa's collec The last chapter of this book does Marchioness of Grana, whose illegitimate tion of sacred and secular works pub much to explain the sometimes bizarre son by Vincenzo was christened Silvio. This delicate tint of internationalism in archival sources as well as to general bib liography, include a hint that Opriano de lished in 1557 and featuring a forty-part m~lange of patronage and pusillanimity The index too is selective though Catholic (and to a lesser extent Jewish) that chardcterizes Vincenzo's "perhaps generally useful. The Invaghiti are omit artistic culture in Mantua during the six Rore may at one time have been in anonymous motet prefaced with the tag Ercole's service. It would be a welcome Unum coUe Deum. The notion of music yes, perhaps no" view of court entertain ted, but Vice is included (a reference to teenth century is echoed in some of the ment. Despite the elaborate nature of the Vice and Virtue, two of the allegories of texts set by Giaches de Wert, one of the contrihution to scholarship if further in a multiplicity of parts was very much in the air at this time, and it is highly likely work done by Guarini, working with Correggio; and happily Virtue is also greatest composers to serve the Gonzaga. proofs of this association could be found, that the Italian "song of thirty parts" musicians and actors in the hope and indexed). He, a healthy transplant from the north for Rore's biography is far from being a mentioned in Thomas Wateridge's com expectation of a wonhy performance of /I of Europe, put down roots in Mantua and clear and sharply-focused picture. Yet he must have had something to do with the monplace book (reporting a conversation pastor fido, it never really amounted to If the most diaphanous phantom of a drew up into himself the rich distillations very much. The rival Aorentines always dissertation haunts this volume, it is no of its musical past: yet he was not imper Gonzaga as early as 1543, perhaps even harking back to the time of Thomas Duke of Norfolk) was Striggio's re seemed to be able to do better, as the loss to the reader who (if he is fluent in vious to the Spanish influence of nearby slightly earlier, for hi s second book of vised five-part madrigals ( 1544) contains a wed version of his Aorentine motet. The author suggests in his excellent account of reading Renaissance Latin and Italian) Milan, or to the French blandishments of the in.ermedi of 1589. Striggio was also will derive much information from the Savoy, as his delightful four-part songs ding song, "Cantiamo lieti il fortunato change from forty to thirty parts could to an error of transmis present on this occasion, as executant generous selection of documents in readily prove. giorno", which ends with a reference to "il have been due fiero Marte e I'unica Gonzaga".

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