Singing Dante: The Literary Origins of Cinquecento Monody

159 Pages·2014·2.08 MB·English

by  Elena Abramov-van Rijk

Singing Dante:
The Literary Origins of
Cinquecento Monody
This book takes its departure from an experiment presented by Vincenzo
Galilei before his colleagues in the Florentine Camerata in about 1580.
This event, namely the first demonstration of the stile recitativo, is known
from a single later source, a letter written in 1634 by Pietro dei Bardi, son
of the founder of the Camerata. In the complete absence of any further
information, Bardi’s report has remained a curiosity in the history of
music, and it has seemed impossible to determine the true nature and
significance of Galilei’s presentation. That, unfortunately, still remains
true for the music, which is lost. Yet we know a crucial fact about this
experiment, the poetic text chosen by Galilei: it was an excerpt from
the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, the Lament of Count Ugolino.
Starting from this information the author examines the problem from
another angle. Investigation of the perception of Dante’s poetry in the
sixteenth century, as well as a deeper enquiry into cinquecento poetic
theories (and especially phonetics) leads to a reconstruction of Galilei’s
motives for choosing this text and sheds light on some of the features
of his experiment.
ROYAL MUSICAL ASSOCIATION MONOGRAPHS
General Editor: Simon P. Keefe
This series is supported by funds made available to the Royal Musical
Association from the estate of Thurston Dart, former King Edward Professor
of Music at the University of London. The editorial board is the Publications
Committee of the Association.
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Heinrich Schenker and Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata
Nicholas Marston
Regina Mingotti: Diva and Impresario at the King’s Theatre, London
Michael Burden
Brahms Beyond Mastery: His Sarabande and Gavotte, and its Recompositions
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ROYAL MUSICAL ASSOCIATION
MONOGRAPHS
26
Singing Dante:
The Literary
Origins of
Cinquecento
Monody
Elena Abramov-van Rijk
First published 2014 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 2014 Elena Abramov-van Rijk
Elena Abramov-van Rijk has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and
are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Abramov-van Rijk, Elena, author.
Singing Dante : the literary origins of Cinquecento monody / by Elena
Abramov-van Rijk.
pages cm. -- (Royal Musical Association monographs ; 26)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4724-3799-0 (hardcover) 1. Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321. Divina
commedia. 2. Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321--Musical settings--History and
criticism. 3. Music and literature--Italy--History--16th century. 4. Vocal
music--Italy--16th century--History and criticism. I. Title.
ML80.D2A37 2014
780'.0851--dc23
2014013552
ISBN 9781472437990 (hbk)
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
ParT I The anCIenT Theory of PoeTICs as
InTerPreTeD In The CInqueCenTo
1 Performing Poetry in the Cinquecento and the
Neglect of Dante 15
2 Performing Epic Poems 25
3 The Problem of Dante’s Comedy: Genre and Performance 35
ParT II The sonIC effeCTs of ITaLIan Verse
4 The ‘Sound of Words’ as a Quasi-musical Experience 49
5 The ‘Sound of Verse’: Auditory Parameters 63
6 Syllable Length in Music Theory 75
ParT III GaLILeI’s MonoDy
7 Vincenzo Galilei’s Presentation of Dante 91
8 The Rhythm of Verses and
Ugolino’s Lament as an ‘Aria’ 107
9 Monody after Galilei 119
Appendix: Metrical Analysis of Two Music Examples 129
Bibliography 137
Index 145

Preface and
Acknowledgements
The idea of writing this book was already glimmering in my mind
while I was working on my doctoral thesis on the practice of reciting
verses in Italy. Because my interest then was mainly in the earliest
phases of this fascinating activity, especially in its development during
the fourteenth century, the latest stages did not receive the attention
they deserved. The recitation of verses in the sixteenth century has
been seen, and rightly so, as a culmination of long-standing practices,
brought to technical perfection and avidly discussed by literary figures.
This development, however, needed a more scrupulous investigation
than was feasible for the thesis. I have now come back to this topic and
give it fuller treatment here.
The book takes its departure from an experiment presented by
Vincenzo Galilei before his colleagues in the Florentine Camerata in
about 1580. We know about this event, namely the first demonstration
of the stile recitativo, from a single later source, a letter written in 1634
by Pietro de’ Bardi, son of the founder of the Camerata. In the complete
absence of any further information, Bardi’s report has remained a
curiosity in the history of music, and it has seemed impossible to
determine the true nature and significance of Galilei’s presentation.
That, unfortunately, still remains true for the music, which is lost. Yet
we know a crucial fact about this experiment, the poetic text chosen by
Galilei: it was an excerpt from the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, the
Lament of Count Ugolino. This knowledge enabled me to investigate
the problem through another angle. Investigation of the perception of
Dante’s poetry in the Cinquecento, as well as a deeper enquiry into
Cinquecento theories of poetics (and especially phonetics) has allowed
me to reconstruct, with a certain degree of reliability, Galilei’s motives
in choosing this specific text and some of the features of his experiment.
I want to express my deepest gratitude to Bonnie Blackburn, with
whom I discussed this work throughout its preparation. Her advice,
suggestions and critiques, from the most general to the subtlest,
contributed greatly to the finished version. I owe special thanks to
Leofranc Holford-Strevens for his help with the Greek texts.
Over a long time I have discussed the ideas in this book with
Dorothea Baumann during our frequent conversations, at the time
when they were gradually receiving their present shape. I am happy to
acknowledge her help.
My literary research would not have been feasible without the
encouragement I have had from literary scholar Aldo Menichetti, who has
always welcomed the discussion of any difficult philological question.
Singing Dante: The Literary Origins of Cinquecento Monody
I am also grateful to Agostino Ziino, who expressed his warm
interest in my research at an earlier stage of this work (presented
partly at the Congress of the International Musicological Society in
Rome in 2012).
And of course my work could not have been accomplished without
the constant support of my husband Meir van Rijk.
Elena Abramov-van Rijk
viii
Introduction
The new musical style of accompanied solo singing in Italy at the turn
of the sixteenth century evoked almost immediate interest in its origins
and early history. The prefaces to the editions of the first musical
dramas, written by the authors themselves or by someone else with
the authors’ consent,1 contain detailed explanations of the principles
of the new music; thus they provided a good basis, theoretical and
factual, for the earliest histories of opera. The first writings on this topic
from the outside, so to speak, such as Pietro della Valle’s Della musica
dell’età nostra (1640) and Severo Bonini’s Discorsi e regole sovra la musica
(1649–50), though paying homage to the rediscovery by Cinquecento
humanists of the ancient theory of musical affects and monophonic
singing, date the beginning of this practice to the first musical dramas –
Dafne, Euridice, Rappresentazione di Anima et di Corpo – and discuss the
question of priority claimed by the inventors of the so-called stile
recitativo, the two Florentine composers Jacopo Peri and Giulio Caccini,
and the Roman Emilio de’ Cavalieri.
However, the link between the ancient Greek theory of singing,
or rather the presentation of poetic texts with music in public, and
contemporary musical dramas was not clearly evident even to the first
writers on this issue. In his Trattato della musica scenica (1633–35), Giovan
Battista Doni noted several times the break between the contemporary
practice of musical drama and theatrical practice in ancient Greece,
as he understood it from his meticulous scrutiny of numerous works
of ancient authors.2 The gap between them has only partially been
bridged in modern musicological studies: how could ancient musical
and theatrical practices have resulted in the phenomenon of opera,
when it does not seem to be a direct realization of those practices?3
1 The examples of the former are the prefaces by Jacopo Peri, Giulio Caccini and
Ottavio Rinuccini to the Euridice, and for the latter the preface written by Allessandro
Guidotti for Emilio dei Cavalieri’s Rappresentazione di anima et di corpo.
2 Several chapters at the beginning of Doni’s treatise on theatrical music, and some of
his lectures, for example the Lezione del modo tenuto dagli antichi nel rappresentare le tragedie
e le commedie, reveal his doubts on the question.
3 The following quotation from ‘Orfeo (1607)’, by Joachim Steinheuer (in The Cambridge
Companion to Monteverdi, ed. John Whenham and Richard Wistreich (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 119–40), is especially relevant in this regard, also
for its summation: ‘Early opera is often regarded as a completely new genre, created ex
nihilo by a small circle of theorists and musicians in Florence and Rome as a conscious
attempt to reinvent Ancient Greek tragedy which, some believed in the later sixteenth
century, was sung throughout. Although this view has been justifiably criticized on a
number of occasions, it still tends to be the prevalent model for the rise of opera even
in recent encyclopedias and textbooks. However, none of the dramatic pieces which
were, or may have been, performed musically in their entirety between 1590 and 1608 in
Florence, Rome and Mantua, can be regarded as a tragedy in the Aristotelian sense …’
(p. 119).