Quintessential French attributes of the Lullian opera

Throughout his lengthy reign (1661-1715) Louis XIV systematically exploited cultural events as a means of focussing attention on the French court. The musical entertainment in the French court ranged from relatively unpretentious ballets de cour to sophisticated tragédies lyriques that utilized the full spectrum of available stage machinery and lavish costumes, not to mention singers, dancers and orchestral musicians – in the aggregate often numbering more than a hundred. As a legacy of a resplendent period of French culture, the music of Jean-Baptiste Lully, particularly his tragédies lyriques, has drawn much attention. Not surprisingly, though, that attention has centred on productions at court or by the Academie Royale de Musique, while performances in the French provinces, Germany, Belgium and Holland have received far less scrutiny.

Lully controlled every aspect of operatic composition and production in Louis XIV’s France. He was aided in this stupendous task by many individuals and groups: the king, Philippe Quinault, the Academie de inscriptions et belles-lettres, the composer’s assistants Jean-François Lalouette and Pascal Colasse, the ballet master Pierre Beauchamps, the machinist Carlo Vigarani, and others. Quinault took the initial step in the production of an opera by selecting several subjects and submitting them to Louis XIV for consideration. The monarch made the final choice of the subject. After Quinault had sketched a general design for the piece, Lully arranged the sequence of acts and conceived the special divertissements, dances, and spectacular scenes which he later worked into the operas. Quinault then composed the text. Although the final libretto was chiefly Quinault’s, the poet was obliged to adopt textual revisions made by members of the Academie. After having incorporated these modifications, Quinault turned the text over to Lully, who always had the last word. He always tried to maintain the same rigid standards and personal control over the performance of his operas that he exercised during their composition. He was a relentless drill-master with his orchestra and no less strict disciplinarian with his singers than with his instrumentalists. He always tried to forestall the popularity of an individual singer; he treated all as equals, having no favourites and sternly suppressing jealous rivalries among his performers.

However, despite Lully’s pre-eminence, the backbone of his operas was the libretto. The French opera was primarily a drama to which the embellishments of music and ballet were added – “Interest in the poem of an opera, and insistence that it should be of respectable dramatic quality, was one of the basic differences between the French and Italian viewpoints in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.”[1] Although he was criticized for corrupting traditional classical drama, Quinault openly emulated Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine. In spite of the numerous diversion scenes, which interrupted the flow of the drama, and the miraculous interventions of celestial deities in the plot, Quinault’s dramas unfolded with amazing clarity, unity and logic. He avoided unnecessary complications; excluded buffoonery after his second opera, Alceste; and aimed for the order, simplicity and coherence of the classical theatre. Even the ballets and spectacles were smoothly woven into the drama; they were logically justified by the action and fitted the context of the plot. Quinault also copied the meter and retained the Alexandrian couplets of classical tragedy. He was careful, however, to endow his verse with rhythmic accents appropriate to musical expression. He composed free verse for the recitatives to enable Lully to vary the flow of the verse according to his musical design. Moreover, Quinault used many of the same classical sources that the dramatists had employed – writings of the Roman poet, Ovid (Atys); from the Greek dramatist, Euripides (Alceste); and Renaissance poets, Lodovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso (Armide). Quinault’s characters were unfettered by complex or ambiguous motives; they express clear, undiluted emotions. Love dominates the hero’s behaviour, and conforming less to the realities of seventeenth-century conduct than to its aspirations, the hero personifies fidelity. He confronts the rivalries and jealousies of love, and falls victim, occasionally, to human frailty; in the end, however, he is loyal, and he recommends constancy to the audience. “The tragédie lyrique is not content to celebrate the tenderness and to sing about the joy of love,” wrote Quinault’s biographer, Etienne Gros. “It gives the rules of conduct; it counsels, directs, decrees the laws.” The hero’s love is seldom passionate and profound; it is delicate and discreet, in keeping with the play of manners in vogue at Louis’ court.[2]

Quinault’s free, elastic verse and his own experience as composer of ballets enabled Lully to compose diversified scores. His music lacked the harmonic audacity of the Italians: he avoided startling modulations, dissonant chords and abrupt rhythmic shifts; and employed standard musical ingredients in every opera. Nevertheless he blended his formula with a sufficiently variegated assortment of solo airs, choruses, duets, ballets and concerts to ensure variety. He also kept his audience interested by using a variety of machines, decorations and fancy costumes, and by contriving spectacular combats and awesome sacrifices. He likewise used a rich assortment of musical forms and techniques to give his operas colour and variety. He introduced stylised fanfares and marches to accompany the battles, sacrifices and infernal scenes. Scored for trumpets in four parts and drums in two parts, the Marche pour le combat de la barrière from Act I of Amadis, which accompanied a ballet for contestants in a mock battle, was typical of Lully’s diversion music.

Lully’s choruses were no less massive. Eschewing contrapuntal textures, he constructed four-part tonal blocks, which moved energetically, chord by chord, to a clear resolution. Lully was especially fond of antiphonal effects and often used large and small choruses in juxtaposition. In Act 3, scene I of Amadis, for example, he achieves a remarkable musical and dramatic contrast by alternating a chorus of jailors with one of prisoners. Again, although the public and the court were doubtless drawn to the opera primarily by the spectacle, the fundamental ingredient of the tragédie lyrique was the recitative. It was the recitative that welded music and drama into a unified composition. Lully’s paramount artistic aim was to project the text lucidly and directly. The first law of his recitative style, which was reminiscent of Baif’s, was that the music must conform to the rhythm of the verse: he, therefore, observed strictly syllabic diction and accentuation on the rhyme and on the caesura. The phrasing of the vocal line, the melodic curve, the inaudible shifts in meter – all were regulated by the rhythm of the verse, or, at times, by the emotions expressed in the text. Moreover, Lully abandoned clear demarcations between recitative and aria, a characteristic of Italian opera. The seed of a Lully air was planted within the recitative and germinated imperceptibly from it. The composer created this musical metamorphosis when the text called for emotional climax. Lully reserved agréments, dissonances, abrupt key changes, and appoggiaturas for especially affective movements in the drama, and his sparing use of such devices made them all the more striking when they did appear.[3]

Lully’s harmony was, thus, basically conservative: he used cross relations and parallel motion repeatedly; his chords were consonant, and his frequent and clear cadences were usually in the tonic. Generally, the airs were in either standard binary or da capo form, and they were accompanied. Most were enclosed by orchestral ritornelli. Removed from the context of the drama and divested in the interruptions of spectacle scenes, both the recitatives and the airs of Lully’s operas might seem dull and lifeless. The absence of counterpoint and the frequency of cadences gave his music a listless, static quality. Yet, Lully’s prolix recitatives and airs were the heart and soul of the tragédie lyrique; they carried the opera and differentiated it from both the classical drama and the court ballet. The important fact is that the tragédie lyrique was, indeed, a drama, and Lully’s music was dramatic music, not concert music.

Produced in 1673, Lully’s first opera, Cadmus, was a success at court and in Paris, and Lully followed it quickly with a new opera, Alceste. It was very well received by the courtiers but reactions from other quarters were less favourable. Among other things, Quinault was criticized for the feeble verse and boring subjects. In disputes of this type, it was the monarch’s verdict that really counted. Louis indicated his approval of Alceste by coming to Paris for performances and by ordering that it be produced at Versailles.

In many of Lully’s operas, the heroes are greatly assisted by gods and goddesses, but only after the heroes have overcome overwhelming obstacles and have defeated superhuman demons and jealous deities. In Alceste, however, the god Hercules is the only male character throughout the opera who displays the human virtues of bravery, honour and compassion. It seems probable that the audience was expected to associate Louis XIV with Hercules, who for years had served in artistic and musical compositions as a symbol of the French monarchy.[4]

The libretto of Alceste provided Lully with many opportunities to employ diverse musical effects. The recitatives, which had first become the identifying characteristics of Lully’s operatic style in Cadmus, were employed effectively in Alceste. Lycomède’s d minor recitative in Act I, Scene 5 contains bold melodic leaps and intervals of the fourth, fifth and octave; it moves rapidly into a bright air for voice and two violins but clings to the sombre key of d minor. In Act II Lully effectively contrasts Alceste’s lament in A major with Lycomède’s harsh declamatory air in d minor. The conclusion of Act I gave Lully the chance to compose a pictorial storm scene: Hercules prepares to pursue Lycomède, clusters of sixteenth notes played imitatively and in quick alternation by the strings suggests gusts of wind from the north.

Lully also took advantage of the siege of Scyros to insert a long combat scene; indeed, most of Act II is devoted to the siege. Alceste marked the beginning of Lully’s musical formula for military scenes: he made a great deal out of them, especially when as opera was performed during or following one of Louis’ successful campaigns, as Alceste was. He employed large double and triple choruses, instruments used in the battlefield (trumpets and field drums), fanfare and martial motifs, and, occasionally, a contrapuntal texture in the orchestral passages. Alceste, like Lully’s other operas, concludes with a pompous apotheosis in which the heavens open up, the gods of Olympus appear, and dances of celebration are performed.

Lully’s tragédies lyriques, created in a span of fifteen years, proved to be remarkable resilient until well into the eighteenth century. His immediate posthumous reputation rested on these works, because of them, his name was remembered by countless opera enthusiasts for many decades. In actuality Lully’s operas knew few boundaries, either geographical or chronological. In spite of the increasing popularity of attractive new genres such as the opéra-ballet, Lully’s tragédies lyriques continued to hold the stage with remarkable tenacity throughout the eighteenth century. A living legend during his lifetime, Lully was rapidly canonized after his death as the patron saint of French music – through the writings of Lecerf de la Vieville, Lully emerges as the very symbol of French style.[5] With Louis’ aid and encouragement, Lully became the absolute ruler of the musical world. In return, he gave his royal patron a musical drama that was distinctively French, and he made music a part of the general policy of national self-sufficiency.

References

[1] Donald J. Grout, A Short History of Opera
[2] Robert M. Isherwood, Music in the Service of the King: France in the Seventeenth Century
[3] Isherwood.
[4] Isherwood.
[5] James R. Anthony ed. French Baroque Music from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau

François Couperin and the French aesthetic sensibilities reflected by their musical language

‘Douceur’ is the word most commonly used during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by the French to describe their characteristic style of melody – vocal or instrumental. It suggests not only sweetness and gentleness, but also something unforced and simple. It was moulded from constraints imposed by the poetic text, by the figures of the dance forms and by the contours of the style inherited from the Franco-Netherlandish masters of renaissance times that held sway in France for many years into the seventeenth century.Of the nations of Europe, France managed best to resist foreign influences through the Baroque period. French musicians in the seventeenth century enjoyed a long period of relatively undisturbed civilization of their own soil. Even instrumental idioms – which, lacking a close tie to language habits, tend to be homogenized by border-crossing musicians, printed editions and instruments – preserved in France a distinct character. The reasons for this independence were several. King Louis XIV – during his long reign from 1643 to 1715 – concentrated on building up an image of France as the leader of Europe. Even the arts were subject to national policy. Another factor was the string guild of musicians, the menestriers, whose strict rules of apprenticeship and accreditation made it difficult for outsiders to enter the musical profession. The central social function performed by music in France was to accompany court dancing and ballet entertainments, and this also tended to channelize creative effort in one particular direction.

The central role played by the court in the musical life of France was strengthened through the publication and dissemination of court music by the royal printers – the Ballard family. Their high standard established France’s reputation as the leading nation for music printing throughout the seventeenth century. With musical life largely centred at court, and given the king’s personal tastes, it is small wonder that contemporary Italian baroque music excited little interest in France until towards the end of the century. Thus, while contemporary Italian composers were revelling in new ways to convey greater intensity and brilliance, those in France were looking at ways to refine their art. Growing up at a time when this process defined the French classical tradition in music, the young Francoise Couperin (1668-1733) absorbed its courtly style, its forms and genres with such spontaneity that, before the century was over, he was at the head of a movement which, from its encounter with Italian music, was to transform the French tradition that he had inherited.

Couperin and his Pieces de Clavecin

Couperin wrote 234 harpsichord pieces, all of which are contained in his four books and his L’Art de toucher le Clavecin. In place of the word suite Couperin described the twenty-seven groupings of his harpsichord works as ‘ordres’. It may well have been that Couperin envisaged right from the start that his collection would go well beyond the mere sequence of dance forms implied by the term suite, preferring instead the term ordre with its more widely embracing connotation of an ‘ordered arrangement’ of pieces. Such an arrangement is achieved largely through the unity imposed by the key schemes, each ordre being in one particular key – both in its major and minor versions. Only in the 25th Ordre, in C major/minor, is there a piece out of the prevailing tonality – La Visionaire, written in the key of E flat major, a procedure which Couperin felt impelled to explain in the preface to Book Four. The first of the four books appeared in 1713, and although the composer was by then forty-five years old and quite well-known, yet, apart from his songs in Ballard’s anthologies, this was his first engraved publication, for his two organ masses had been issued by Ballard in manuscript copies only. Book 2 is undated, but evidence points to 1717 as being the likely year of publication. The two remaining books came out in 1722 and 1730. They thus cover a span of seventeen years, the last of the collections appearing two years before his death in 1733.

Ornamentation: If in most vocal music of France ornaments were usually indicated by a little cross, the actual choice of ornament being left largely to the discretion of the singer, in harpsichord music, on the other hand, they were more specific, especially in Couperin's pieces. So that they could be embellished precisely as he wanted, he attached a list of ornaments and how to play them in his First Book of Pieces de Clavecin, three years later touching upon the same subject in his L’Art de toucher de clavecin. His irritation that performers were still not following his instructions some six years after that is clearly conveyed in the Preface to his Third Book (1722): "I am always surprised (after the care I have taken to indicate the ornaments appropriate to my pieces, about which I have given, separately, a sufficiently clear explanation in a Method under the title The Art of Playing the Harpsichord) to hear people who have learned them without following the correct method. It is an unpardonable negligence, especially since it is not at the discretion of the players to place such ornaments where they want them. I declare, therefore, that my pieces must be played according to how I have marked them, and that they will ever make a true impression on people of real taste unless played exactly as I have marked them, neither more nor less."

His explanations were necessary, not because his ornaments were very different from those in use, but because there was no universal agreement about how they should be notated. In his Explication des Agréments, et des Signes published in the first book were the relatively ‘standard’ signs for trills, mordents, appoggiaturas, turns etc., as well as some that were new.

Pictorial and Programmatic Elements: Couperin’s practice of giving fanciful titles to his harpsichord pieces had its origins in the music of Chambonnières and the earliest works of the French harpsichordists who, in turn had borrowed the habit from the lutenists of the late sixteenth century. Couperin added picturesque names to various movements in his ordres, a practice that increased as he moved more and more into the genre of the ‘character piece’.

Jane Clark has penetrated many of the mysteries surrounding the titles and in so doing has linked them very closely to the society in which Couperin moved. Thus Sœur Monique (18th Ordre) is a portrait of a woman of ill-repute.[1] Many of the pieces are coded satires of famous figures of the day as well as affectionate portraits of friends and references to literary and theatrical events. Undoubtedly, those in Couperin’s wide circle would have understood the veiled allusions that added an extra level to their enjoyment. But it may be questioned as to whether – at our distance – the titles are truly significant, when it may be recalled that the composer himself had no hesitation in changing the original titles of his early trio sonatas when they were published many years later as Les Nations. Yet, as Derek Connon points out: "the communicative power of the music is undoubtedly increased by an understanding of the titles, particularly when so many turn out to indicate an ironic stance or a hidden meaning, for, as well as adding an extra musical dimension, they may also clarify the implications of certain aspects of the music. If an understanding of the titles is desirable for the listener, it is surely vital for the performers, since it may well have a significant influence on the way a piece should be played."[2]

This, of course, is certainly true of pictorial and programmatic works which provide clues to interpretation and appreciation. ‘Our music, whether it be for violin, harpsichord, viol or any other instrument, always seems to want to express some sentiment’, claimed Couperin, pointing to the way that French composers, unlike the Italians, even regarded metre and tempo in terms of moods. The fanciful element is charmingly portrayed and readily appreciated in those pieces by Couperin which have a visual or onomatopoeic suggestion: Papillions (Butterflies), Le Réveille-matin (The Alarm Clock), Le Carillon de Cythère (Bells of Cythera), Les Petits moulins a vent (Little Windmills), just to name a few.

While their titles no doubt pique our curiosity, it would, however, be a pity to imagine that Couperin's music depends for its effects upon the presence of non-musical elements. To be sure, in a good number of pieces they add additional delight; but as in all fine music ‘meaning’ is revealed through the musical imagination of the composer – here in abundance.[3]

Forms: Most of Couperin's harpsichord pieces are in two-part (A B) form with repeat signs at the end of both sections. Sometimes the very last phrase of the piece is given an additional repetition at the reprise of B, and occasionally Couperin provides optional florid versions of the repeats, as in the Première Courante (1st Ordre) and Première Courante, with double (1st Ordre). This two-part structure dominates all but two of the named dance movements: allemande, courante, sarabande, gavotte, gigue, menuet, canaries, passepied, rigaudon, sicilienne etc. While these make up at least half the movements in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 8th Ordres, the later Ordres reveal a shift away from them towards more programmatic or ‘character’ pieces. Yet, the spirit, if not the form, of the dance may not be far away, as in some of these later pieces like La Régente ou La Minerve (15th Ordre), La Superbe ou La Forqueray (17th), L’Audacieuse (23rd), La Convalescente (26th), which are, in reality, all allemandes. However, there are also many movements which owe little to dance tradition. The trend away from dance forms can be seen as early as the 4th Ordre which contains no dances so called, even though the final piece, Le Reveil-matin is evidently a gigue.

The two dance movements not in the sectionalised A B form are the chaconne and the passacaille (passacaglia). The words themselves had become synonymous by the second half of the seventeenth century, so that it is not unusual to find the same piece described as chaconne in one source and passacaille in another; nor to find, as in La Françoise from Les Nations, a movement described as chaconne ou passacaille. Thus, as far as French music is concerned, the two terms must be regarded as interchangeable.

From the time of Chambonnières onwards, composers from the French clavecin school incorporated another musical form into their writings: the rondeau (A B A C A etc.). Thus the majority of harpsichord pieces called chaconne or passacaille feature a certain refrain (rondeau) with intervening episodes (couplets), retaining at the same time the features of the chaconne or passacaille. Couperin’s Passacaille (8th Ordre) is in this more typical form of the ‘rondeau passacaille’. La Favorite (3rd Ordre) is a ‘rondeau chaconne’, but this piece departs from the tradition by being in quadruple instead of triple metre, linked to the dance by virtue only of its grave and stately movement, and of course by its cyclic structure. At first sight, the bass line seems to go beyond the stereotyped patterns typical of the chaconne and passacaille, but in fact Couperin has disguised this through figuration of what is simply a descending chromatic scale segment common to countless ostinato types.

Another old dance often employing a characteristic bass melody was the romanesca, and although not so called, Couperin’s Les Barricades mystérieuses is a kind of romanesca in that it takes up the old dance melody in the bass for much of the time. However, as in La Favorite, Couperin changes its metre from triple to quadruple and employs the rondeau form. This is one of his finest works, the piece unified by the ubiquitous presence of a single figure developed in grand and sonorous expression throughout.[4]

Before leaving the cyclic-form pieces, mention must be made of Les Folies françoises; ou, Les Dominos (13th Ordre). This is composed upon a recurring melody and bas known as Les Folies d’Espagne, and as Pierre Citron has shown, the extraordinary affinity between Corelli’s famous La Folia variations for violin and continuo, and Les Folies françoises leaves no doubt that Couperin was paying a tribute to the Italian musician whom he admired so greatly.

There are, in fact, only a few examples of the ‘free’ cyclic forms in Couperin’s Ordres. The great majority of the pieces are in the A B form and the sectional rondeau (of which there are some forty examples). Couperin turned to the rondeau particularly for more extended music, although there are also a number of very short rondeaux, including some with only one couplet. The two-part and rondeau forms provide the structure for almost all the pieces, whether they be single movements or those comprising two or more movements.

Style: Some of the techniques of the French clavecin school had their roots in those of the seventeenth century French lutenists whose style brise considerably influenced the texture of keyboard writing. One aspect of this technique is that the notes of a chord are not all played simultaneously, but one after the other. A sense of movement, lightness of touch, and a melodic line which, shared by more than one part, is woven into the arpeggiated texture, are the chief features of the style and it is easy to see how such a technique admirably suited the harpsichord, especially as the quickly fading sonorities of that instrument could be kept alive by the constant sounding of different notes of the chord.[5]

Traces of the style brise are found throughout Couperin’s harpsichord pieces, but in some – such as Les Charmes (9th Ordre) – he actually describes them as luthé. The harpsichordist is instructed to hold the notes so that the chords achieve full resonance – as on the lute where the strings freely vibrate until the next notes are plucked. Here and elsewhere as well, Couperin employs the style brise to produce passages of eloquent dissonance, as each group of held notes becomes blurred against the others in ever-shifting harmony. The most celebrated of these is Les Baricades mystérieuses (6th Ordre), already cited above.

Couperin’s lyrical genius found many an outlet in the ordres for harpsichord, from the tuneful simplicity of Sœur Monique (18th Ordre) to the noble utterance of La Raphaele (8th Ordre); and while much of his lyricism is couched in the elegant and urbane language of French court music, there are works like La Superbe; ou La Forqueray (17th Ordre) which, through the gradual unfolding of long phrases and in the loftiness of thought, can be compared only with the music of J.S. Bach.[6] There are technical reasons too – these pieces are concerned with the processes of motivic development on which, so much Italian – and also German – music is based.

Couperin once wrote, “I love much better the things which touch me than those which surprise me.”[7] Thus, we should not expect to find daring harmonies in his music. It is more in its sense of tonal stability and forward thrust that shows how he absorbed the harmonic techniques of the Italians. Yet in his music, we constantly come across little ‘brushstrokes’ of harmony which add fascinating colours to the music, many of which would probably never have occurred to an Italian composer whose cast of mind tended to think in terms of modulation or key-change if striking effects were required. Below is a passage from La Mystérieuses (25th Ordre) in which the key of A minor is ruffled, yet not shaken by the curious appearances of B flat in the right hand, and the simultaneous use of D natural and D sharp in the next measure. To ears attuned to the style, these are fascinating little touches and all the more effective because they are not over-done.

The music of the four books of Pieces de clavecin has been classified and codified by dance types and structural organization, by melodic and harmonic analysis and by a systematic review of each of the ordres. The meanings of the often ambiguous and enigmatic titles have been thoroughly investigated by scholars like Mellers and Beaussant. All of this has significance, and yet it gives us little of the essence of the music and tells us almost nothing of the mysterious alchemy that makes Couperin’s harpsichord music so elusive and yet so compelling. As James R. Anthony points out, “in company of some of Chopin’s mazurkas and Debussy’s preludes, much of Couperin’s keyboard music is more a communication between instrument and performer in the intimacy of the music room than it is between the performer on the stage and an unseen audience. It reveals only gradually and only after repeated playing; it is wed to its instrument as is no other music. Only through such intimate acquaintanceship with the music do the many dimensions of Couperin’s art unfold.”[8]


References:

[1] Jane Clark and Derek Connon, The Mirror of human life: Reflections on François Couperin’s Pièces de Clavecin
[2] Jane Clark and Derek Connon
[3] David Tunley, François Couperin and ‘The Perfection of Music’
[4] David Tunley
[5] David Tunley
[6] David Tunley
[7] Couperin, Preface to Pieces de clavecin
[8] James R. Anthony, French Baroque Music from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau

Influence of Italian Musical Innovations on English Vocal Music in the Early Seventeenth Century

For our knowledge of English secular music before 1588, we have to rely entirely on manuscripts. Apart from a few isolated publications such as Whythorne’s Songs for Three, Four and Five Voices (1571), there was very little printed music. In 1588 however, there began a much more productive period of English music printing – in that year Byrd’s Psalmes, Sonets and Songs and Nicholas Yonge’s Musica Transalpina were published, and from then onwards there was a steady stream of publications, which lasted until the 1630s. It was within the context of this flurry of publishing activity that the tradition of the English polyphonic song reached its culmination in the collection of Byrd and Gibbons, and that two new species of composition enjoyed a brief but glorious heyday – the madrigal and the lute song.

The madrigal was an import from Italy and by the time it took root in England it already had behind it a long history in its land of origin. However, there were marked differences between the Italian madrigal and its English counterpart. The Italian madrigal grew out of a string literary impulse, and always maintained a close association with the poetry of major authors such as Petrarch, Sannazaro, Tasso and others. It was nurtured by composers and patrons who were sensitive to its literary content, and famous poems were set to music over and over again as composers endeavoured to make their music more evocative of the text. This respect for the poetry led to the composition of cycles of madrigals. In England, however, the madrigal was not motivated by the same literary impulse – it was a more musical phenomenon, and English composers tended to take the technique and style of the fully developed Italian madrigal at face value. Thus there are comparatively fewer settings of major English poets like Sidney, Spenser and others; there are also far fewer repeated settings and composers showed little interest in cycles of madrigals. Most English madrigal verse is of slight literary value, often translating or imitating Italian poesia per musica. The first two anthologies of Italian madrigals printed in England were Yonge’s Musica Transalpina (1588) and Thomas Watson’s Italian Madrigals 'Englished' (1590). The Italian composers most represented in these anthologies are Luca Marenzio, Alfonso Ferrabosco I and Claudio Monteverdi. Yonge’s collection contains fifty-seven pieces for four, five and six voices, including fourteen by Ferrabosco, ten by Marenzio and five by Palestrina; the second anthology contains twenty-eight pieces, of which no fewer than twenty-three are by Marenzio. These two anthologies presented to the Elizabethan public an image of the Italian madrigal that was serious and elevated, and English composers went to them not only for texts but sometimes for musical ideas as well.

Thomas Morley was the first English composer to issue his own madrigalian works in print, and until 1597 he was the only one to do so. He was prolific, and judging by the reprints, his work was popular and influential, and he espoused the Italian cause with enthusiasm. But the sort of madrigal that Morley preferred was not the serious one represented by Yonge and Watson but the ‘light’ madrigal which had always existed alongside it, as well as two related species – the canzonet and the ballet. His main collections were Canzonets, Or Little Short Songs to Three Voices (1593), Madrigals to Foure Voyces (1594), The First Book of Canzonets to Two Voyces (1595), The First Book of Ballets to Five Voyces (1595) and Canzonets or Little Short Aers to Five and Six Voices (1597). He also produced two more anthologies of Italian pieces (with ‘Englished’ texts) in 1597 and 1598, and compiled the famous collection The Triumphes of Oriana (1601). Despite the title, the contents of the 1593 set have very little in common with the canzonet, apart from their light-hearted character. They are mostly madrigals with regard to text, musical style and dimension. The texture is mainly contrapuntal, and homophonic declamation, as in the opening of ‘See, see mine own sweet jewel’, is exceptional. Most pieces consist of a series of contrapuntal ideas, each elaborated to a greater or lesser degree, and seasoned with conventional details of word-painting. Morley’s use of a three-voice texture is notable, since by this time five or six voices were the norm in Italy. The Madrigalls to Foure Voyces are in a similar style to the so-called canzonets of 1593, but with four voices Morley is better able to sustain this kind of polyphonic writing. His taste for such few-voiced textures influenced other madrigalists, and is one of the reasons for the generally lighter quality of the English madrigal. His textures put a limit on harmonic enterprise, but these light madrigals depend for their effect on rhythmic vitality, dazzling vocal interplay and variations of pace. These qualities are admirable illustrated in ‘Arise, get up, my dear’ from the 1593 collection, a narrative madrigal about a country wedding – the solemn opening with the leap on ‘Arise’; the syncopation and quavers at ‘Hark you merry maidens squealing’; more rhythmic displacement on ‘run apace’; sense of stagnation with the minims for the bride’s tears on ‘Alas my dear, why weep she?’, soon to be banished, however, by the lively dotted rhythm of the final dance. Such narrative madrigals with all their vivid evocations of everyday life, are among Morley’s finest works.

The Italian canzonet was strophic, but Morley set only a single stanza – another sign of the mainly musical approach. The usual form was AABCC with short, balanced phrases punctuated by clear-cut cadences; the texture, a mixture of homophony and light imitation. Morley’s Canzonets to Two Voyces (1595) was published in an English and an Italian edition, although no copy of the latter edition survives. Nearly all the texts are based on Italian poems, the chief source being Felice Anerio’s set of 1586, and in varying degrees the music is modelled on Anerio as well. For example, ‘Go ye my canzonets’ is somewhat based on ‘Gitene canzonette’, but the differences between the two works, however, are typical of Morley’s treatment to them. While in ‘Gitene canzonette’ the first phrase cadences in the tonic, Morley’s moves to the dominant; in the middle section Morley’s setting is longer and more contrapuntal, and in the final section the introduction of an E flat shows his interest in tonal variety.

Like the Canzonets of 1595, the First Booke of Ballets was issued in separate English and Italian editions, and in this case the Italian edition has survived. Again, in spite of the title, only fifteen of the twenty-one pieces contained in the book are ballets. The ballet was another species that Morley imported from Italy, and here his principal model was the famous collection by Giovanni Gastoldi issued in 1591. The essential features of Gastoldi’s balletti are that they are strophic, and the music consists of two repeated sections, each ending with a refrain. The verses (A and B) are dance-like and homophonic and the refrains are only slightly elaborated, if at all. Eight of Morley’s ballets have texts ‘Englished’ from Gastoldi, and all of these are modelled more or less on Gastoldi’s music as well. This is evident in the rhythms of the verse sections – for example, Morley’s ‘You that wont to my pipe’s sound’ remains faithful to Gastoldi’s ‘Vaghe ninfe’ throughout. It is in the treatment of the refrains that Morley differs markedly. Whereas Gastoldi’s are short – often four bars, sometimes fewer – Morley’s extend to as many as sixteen bars, and he makes them the opportunity for brilliant and exciting displays of counterpoint. The seven ballets not based on Gastoldi are settings of canzonet texts which still retain the two-part structure and refrain of the ballet, but the verses are much more contrapuntal, so that there is less contrast between verses and refrain.

Morley’s preference for the light types of madrigal is reflected in his two Italian anthologies, the Canzonets and Madrigals issued in 1597 and 1598. A similar swing in taste towards the lighter variety can be seen in Yonge’s choice of pieces for his second collection of Musica Transalpina in 1597. Around that year, changes in the hitherto restrictive conditions of English music-printing enabled a number of other composers to issue madrigal collections. The Canzonets to Fowre Voyces (1598) of Giles Farnaby and the four-part madrigals of John Bennet and John Farmer (both in 1599) show the influence of ‘Italianate’[1] Morley while at the same time exhibiting the tendency – also seen in Morley – to revert occasionally to a native style. Farnaby’s ‘Aye me, poor heart’ is in the manner of a consort song; Farmer’s ‘O stay, sweet love’ recalls the partsongs of the lutenists. Along with such minor figures, two major composers appeared at this time – Thomas Weelkes and John Wilbye.

Next to Morley, Thomas Weelkes was the most prolific of the English madrigalists and published four collections – Madrigals to 3, 4, 5 & 6 Voyces (1597), Balletts and Madrigals to Five Voyces (1598), Madrigals of 5 and 6 Parts (1600) and Ayeres or Phantasticke Spirites for Three Voyces (1608). Although only in his early twenties in 1597, the first set reveals him as a composer of great vitality. Weelkes’s imaginative response to the words gives each item a strong sense of individuality. Such commitment to the words is comparable to the approach of the Italian madrigalists, but in Weelkes it is combined with a typically English interest in form. His 1598 set follows the example of Morley’s Balletts of 1595 in containing a mixture of ballets and other pieces, and Weelkes continues Morley’s practice of making the ballet longer and more complicated. The 1600 set develops all the features found in Weelkes’s previous works – his habit of writing sections in contrasting tempi, in this case in duple and triple metre; passages in triple time, prompted by words such as ‘dance’ and ‘rejoice’ – are especially characteristic of the 1600 set and sometimes show the influence of instrumental music. His Ayeres or Phantasticke Spirites are mainly of a light nature, sometimes humorous or satirical, incorporating elements of the madrigal, canzonet and the ballet.

John Wilbye published two sets of madrigals – The First Set of English Madrigals to 3.4.5. and 6. Voices (1598) and The Second Set of Madrigales to 3.4.5. and 6. Parts (1609). He is pre-eminent among the English madrigalists for his sensitivity to the poetry and the elegance of his technique. Compared to Weelkes he is restrained, avoiding abrupt gestures and violent contrasts, and yet his music reveals a thoughtful insight into the text. Like all his fellow madrigalists, Wilbye sometimes drops the Italian guise and reverts to an indigenous style. Two characteristic features of his music are his major/minor contrasts and his use of sequence. An example of the former feature is ‘Adieu, sweet Amarilis’ (1598) which moves into the major mode at the end. Wilbye’s most characteristic type of sequence involves a series of pedal notes as in ‘Ye that do live in pleasures plenty’.

Dowland and Campion – the Lute Song

Although we know from literary and documentary references that singing to the lute or similar instrument was common enough throughout the sixteenth century, few sources survive that can be dated earlier than 1597 when John Dowland issued his First Booke of Songs or Ayres and thus inaugurated a series of such songbooks that lasted until John Attey’s First Booke of Ayres in 1622. The vigorous cultivation of the lute song was owing to a variety of factors. In the broadest sense it can be seen as part of a general movement away from the equal-voiced polyphony to a treble/bass dominated texture, a movement which characterized the late sixteenth century and which is seen most clearly in the creation of the Italian monody. Although one of the leading songwriters, Thomas Campion, was also a poet, there is no evidence that the lute song in general was much more ‘literary’ in inspiration than the madrigal. While poets probably preferred the lute song because it did less violence to the verse, they do not seem to have taken much interest in the works of Dowland and his fellow songwriters. Certainly there was nothing comparable with the close collaboration practised in French and Italian circles. Like the madrigal, the lute song seems to have been cultivated mainly for its musical qualities, and literary ideals were a minor issue. However, lute song verse is much more varied than that of the madrigal. Although many songs deal with the conventions of courtly love, there are many others which treat love in a more naturalistic way. There are humorous and satirical songs along with elegies and songs on moral and sacred themes.

The main reason for the vogue of the lute song was the genius and prestige of John Dowland. It was he who initiated the lute song movement, with a songbook which proved to be the most popular of all Elizabethan music prints, and then sustained it with three more fine collections. By the time Dowland published his First Booke he had travelled to France, Germany and Italy and as early as 1588 John Case in his Apologia Musices had listed him among the leading musicians of the day. He published four songbooks in all – First Booke of Songes or Ayres (1597, with further editions in 1600, 1603, 1606 and 1613), Second Booke of Songs or Ayres (1600), Third and Last Booke of Songs or Aires (1603) and A Pilgrim’s Solace (1612).

Many of Dowland’s airs are of simple construction, with balanced phrases – each corresponding to a line of verse – separated by clear-cut cadences. The most usual scheme is for the music to consist of two sections of unequal length, the second of which is repeated. Often there is some degree of elaboration in the second section, involving imitation, word repetition or extension of a phrase. Repetition of the second section and elaboration within it serve to underline the statement or the epigrammatic turn of thought that is often embodied in the final couplet of the stanza. But this is no more than a basic scheme, and a comparison of a few airs will give some idea of the great variety of treatment that Dowland brings to it. Although his music is mainly homophonic, it is animated by a great deal of detail in the accompanying parts. A few of his airs have the form and character of dances, and some of them survive elsewhere as instrumental pieces.

The consort song for voice and viols also played a part in the formation of Dowland’s style. This is apparent in songs that have a more contrapuntal texture and a more expansive treatment of the text, and where there is usually an instrumental prelude and interludes between the vocal phrases. His first song in this cycle is ‘I saw my lady weep’ at the beginning of the Second Booke, where the suspensions and the striking harmonic progressions generate a mood of great emotional intensity. An altogether different influence, and one that was to be of the greatest importance in the development of the English song in the seventeenth century, was the Italian monody. Since the purpose of the monody was to project the text, the subtleties of counterpoint were out of place, and in Italy the accompaniment consisted simply of a figured bass. Moreover, an elaborate accompaniment would impede the rubato (Caccini’s sprezzatura) essential to the performance of the monody. Dowland must have had opportunities to hear the ‘new music’ during his travels in Italy in the 1590s. Occasional declamatory passages occur in his early songs such as ‘Come, heavy sleep’ (1597). Such early works are, however, undoubtedly monody inspired with their continuo-like accompaniments and striking changes of harmony involving triads major third apart. A remarkable fusion of declamatory and consort song styles occurs in ‘In darkness let me dwell’ which has an emotional intensity almost unequalled at that time – the climax is an impassioned outburst on ‘O let me living die’ and at the very end Dowland returns to the opening phrase before breaking off inconclusively – an original and telling stroke.

Thomas Campion was both poet and composer, and these two roles are combined in his output – twenty-one songs in Philip Rosseter’s Booke of Ayres (1601), Two Bookes of Ayres (1613) and The Third and Fourth Book of Ayres (1618). He also devised several masques and wrote some of the music for them. His ‘light air’ is short, tuneful and uncluttered by counterpoint. His dislike for counterpoint recalls the traditional humanist belief in the special virtues of monody. Of course, as a poet, he would have preferred monody as doing less violence to the poetry. Repetition is the basis of his technique – repetition of rhythmic patterns (‘Shall I come sweet love to thee’), sequential repetition (‘Never weather-beaten sail’) and repetition of sections. In this last respect it is noteworthy that, far more than any other lute song composer, he repeats sections of music to different words. Although he ridicules excessive madrigalian word-painting, in some of his airs Campion manages to depict textual detail without disrupting the spontaneity of the melody. In ‘Follow thy fair sun’ ideas of light and darkness correspond with upward and downward movement. Again, in some of his airs, Campion has been at pains that suitable words and ideas occur at the corresponding places in later stanzas. Like Sidney and others, Campion experimented in writing English verse according to the rules of classical quantitative scansion, and he wrote a treatise on the subject – Observations in the Art of English Poesie (1602).

Light airs of the type favoured by Campion are scattered through the songbooks of other lutenists. The songs of his friend Rosseter make use of standard devices such as sequences, snatches of imitation between melody and bass, and the ‘chanson’ rhythm (crotchet followed by two quavers), but with a grace and delicacy which makes them a particularly attractive contribution to the genre.

[1] David Greer, Vocal Music: up to 1660

Caccini’s madrigals – an examination

Giulio Caccini in the preface of his Le nuove musiche emphasizes that music is not meant to be “preventing any clear understanding of the words, shatters both their form and content, now lengthening and now shortening the syllables to accommodate the counterpoint...” but to “conform to that manner so lauded by Plato and other philosophers (who declared that music is naught but speech, with rhythm and tone coming after; not vice versa) with the aim that it enter into the minds of men and have those wonderful effects admired by the great writers.”[1] He therefore introduces a kind of music in which one could almost speak in tones, employing in it “a certain noble negligence of song [sprezzatura], sometimes transgressing by [allowing] several dissonances while maintaining the bass note...”. And then he goes on to speak at considerable length about vocal ornamentation. However it should be taken into consideration that while discussing ornamentation Caccini speaks from the viewpoints of three different kinds of persons – composer, singer and voice teacher. Thus, as Hitchcock puts it, “to understand the nature and application of Cassini’s principles of vocal ornamentation, we must separate these alter egos, for we must be clear about when Caccini is explaining what he has composed, when he is explaining how to interpret what he as composed, ad when he is describing how her trains the voice.”[2]

In his preface to Le nuove musiche Caccini complained that other singers had not followed his precepts for improvised ornamentation and that his songs had been ‘tattered and torn’ by them. Accordingly, although his essay is full of enlightening advice on how gracefully to elaborate a song, he actually wrote out in the music of Le nuove musiche most of the embellishments formerly improvised. The incorporation into writing of much of the vocal ornaments that used to be improvised was one of the greatest innovations of Caccini, although he emphasized it only in his collection of 1614 – “the ‘new way of writing it’ of the title meaning ‘exactly as it is sung’.”[3]

Although Caccini’s name is inextricably linked to the creation of the first Florentine operas and although his setting of Euridice was the first such opera ever to be published, Caccini should primarily be viewed as a composer of songs. Limiting himself for the most part to ‘music for a solo voice, to a simple string instrument’, Caccini shaped the vocal part so as to ‘almost speak in tones’, partly through a somewhat declamatory setting of the words, partly through a very sensitive reflection of the poem's structure, and partly through a very flexible approach to rhythm and tempo. The accompanying instrumental part he indicated as a bass line but one conceived more as an underpinning of the voice than as a melodic counterpart: in all three of his publications he explained this indirectly in terms of allowing ‘false’ intervals (i.e. dissonances) between the voice part and the bass to go unresolved. The bass was to be harmonized in an improvisatory manner. Caccini indicated the harmonies with the shorthand method of figures that organists had developed earlier as a means of doubling accurately the vocal parts of motets and other choral works. But in Caccini's songs there is only one vocal part, and the bass is largely independent of it; thus he was one of the first to write a true basso continuo, and in his songs the ‘pseudo-monody’ gave way to true monody, with the vocal line largely sprung from its contrapuntal framework.

One of Caccini's proudest boasts was that his new style had more power to ‘move the affect of the soul’ than others – to achieve, that is, the highest aim of music according to the thought of the Camerata (and thereafter of the whole Baroque era). Another aim, however, was to ‘delight the senses’, and in late 16th-century vocal music this was often sought through various kinds of improvised ornamentation. Caccini incorporated the most spectacular of these – passaggi (divisions, diminutions) – into his monody but limited them mostly to accented syllables of the verse and to cadences at the ends of lines of text. He thus brought the virtuoso's art of embellishment into line with the Camerata's ideals of a speech-dominated song, ‘speech’ in this case being equated with the accentual and structural integrity of the poem.

In Le nuove musiche, Caccini speaks only once about teaching when he discusses the trillo and the gruppo (his terms for the tremolo and the trill respectively). The rule for the tremolo that he observes is the one that “begins with the first quarter-note, then restrike each note with the throat on the vowel a, up to the final double whole-note; and likewise the trill.”[4] This passage is obviously that of a teacher, not that of a composer or a singer. Caccini is illustrating a rule by which he trains his students’ voices to achieve the proper speedy articulation of the two ornaments.

Tremolos and trills are basically cadential ornaments. In one of the two model songs Caccini includes in his preface (a setting of Chiabrera’s madrigal “Deh, dov son fuggiti”), which he furnishes liberally with indications of ornamentation (unlike the songs of the collection proper), tremolos are suggested at three or four cadences in which the voice falls by step to the tonic note. In the body of the collection, however, not a single cadential tremolo is indicated, and the interpreter may add one whenever the voice fall from the second degree to the tonic. Cadential trills, on the other hand, are written into the music – in fact, at every single cadence where the voice rises from the leading note to the tonic. This difference in the treatment of the two cadential ornaments – one left for the interpreter to add and the other indicated explicitly (if symbolically) by the composer – leads us to inquire which of the many other ornaments discussed, illustrated or mentioned in the preface to Nuove musiche may be read in his songs and which must be read into them. Caccini speaks of several devices involving sonorous expressivity, as would a vocal coach. However, they are almost never indicated in his songs, and the interpreter must add them. They are l’intonazione della voce, l’escamazione, and il crescere e scemare della voce. Caccini discusses a number of other vocal ornamental devices in his preface. The question that arises here is whether they are written into his songs or whether they are to be added.

In his preface, Caccini explained at least four principal ways in which his strophic arias were new and differed from those of his contemporaries. In the first place, Caccini claimed that he set better poetry than most other composers of canzonettas. The majority of his arias are based on poems by either of Rinuccini or Chiabrera. Secondly, he claimed that he coordinated his embellishments with the words and with the ideas behind the words much more skillfully than his contemporaries did. Thirdly, he explained that he sometimes moved his melodies in dissonance against the bass, so that the bass lines were no longer so closely tied to the rhythms of the melody. In his strophic arias, Caccini did write more independent bass lines than his contemporaries. But in fact, there is scarcely a place for expressive dissonances or a really independent bass in most of Caccini’s strophic arias, which are set for the most part to cheerful and emotionally neutral poetry. When he needed to, especially in his madrigals, Caccini went to far greater lengths than he did in his arias to make the bass more independent of the melody and to violate the rules of 16th-century counterpoint for expressive reasons. And finally, Caccini claimed that his Nuove musiche exemplified a new manner of notating songs. He must simply have meant that he wrote out all his embellishments and that he published his monodies with a basso continuo and without inner parts. He boasted that with his new way of writing out music, “all the delicacies of this art can be learned without having to hear the composer sing.”[5]

One of the Le nuove musiche songs published in the Brussels 704 manuscript, Perfidissimo volto, seems to confirm Caccini’s complaint that singers were ruining his songs primarily by adding excessive ornamentation. Similarly, the final cadence of Dovro dunque morire is more ornamented in Brussels 704 than in the print. In fact, the Brussels 704 versions of Caccini’s songs are actually much simpler than those published. Caccini’s claim to have improved upon earlier ornamentation practices must therefore be examined carefully. He may have paid attention to the ideals of Bardi’s camerata, but he was first and foremost a singer, and apparently one who delighted in showing off his talents to an appreciative audience. Thus he seems to have sought a compromise between the camerata’s asceticism and his own natural flamboyance. To be fair to Caccini, however, he employs ornamentation much more discriminately than may have been the norm, usually reserving it for the appropriate (long) syllables with due regard for the presentation of the text. His patterns of ornamentation are also more refined and more subtle than those to be found in most earlier ornamentation treatises. Finally, it must be said that although most of the Brussels 704 songs are much simpler than their printed counterparts, there is no guarantee that they would have been so in performance, given a singer seeking to add ornamentation whenever and wherever possible.

Many of the differences between the versions of a song in Brussels 704 and Le nuove musiche can be seen as examples of how Caccini might have tidied up his compositions for publication. In the print, the delivery of the text is much tauter (through the speeding up the short syllables and using dotted rhythms) and the rather four-square rhythmic patterns found in the manuscript are more elegantly shaped to give a subtler grace, or sprezzatura, to the melody. Similarly, Caccini generally adds written embellishments and provides long notes for esclamazioni and other such vocal effects that he expected the singer to employ. The vocal line is often estranged from the bass, whereas in the manuscript they are, most of the time, moving closely together – a tendency that might have been inherited from earlier solo songs. The more obvious consecutives are avoided. The bass lines themselves are more effective, particularly through increased use of first inversion chords. Caccini also gives some interest to the bass at cadences to emphasize their importance to the whole structure. In addition, in Le nuove musiche Caccini often writes out a repeat of the second section, whereas in the manuscript the repeat is only indicated by a sign or omitted altogether. Sometimes, and especially in Amarilli mia bella to marvelous effect, he also adds an extended final cadence.

One conclusion that might be drawn from the above arguments is that Caccini’s songs would hardly allow for further ornamentations than what is written out. Such additions merely destroy the subtle balance between decoration and declamation achieved by Caccini; they also deny the composer his “new way” of writing music, “as it is sung.” Another conclusion to be drawn relates to the puzzling plain character of most of the manuscript versions of his songs. Most of them are virtually bare of any decorations, merely skeletons. This might be explained by the fact that most of these manuscripts left the improvisational ornamentations to the singers, and they performed the songs badly, according to Caccini, with a multitude of passaggi and using other ornaments indiscriminately, which possibly prompted Caccini to his “new way of writing music” and to the embodiment in print of his new kind of virtuoso song.

References
[1] Caccini, Preface to Le nuove musiche, translated by H. Wiley Hitchcock

[2] H. Wiley Hitchcock, Vocal Ornamentation in Caccini’s Nuove Musiche

[3] Hitchcock, Caccini’s “Other” Nuove musiche

[4] Grove Music Online, Works of Giulio Romolo Caccini

Conflicting Views of the Nature and Purpose of Music: The Artusi - Monteverdi Controversy

Claudio Monteverdi

During the middle of the sixteenth century, the madrigal emerged to dominate secular art-music. This was doubtless due to the succession of key musicians who devoted their talents to the genre: Verdelot, Arcadelt, Willaert and Rore were a formidable lineage whose achievements were later canonized in music prints and treatises. However, the tag of the greatest champion of the madrigals can undoubtedly be associated with Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643). His first two books of madrigals (1587, 1590) reflect his study under Marc’ Antonio Ingegneri (c.1547-1592), maestro di cappella at the cathedral of his home town, Cremona. Here one can see Monteverdi coming to terms with the various madrigalian manners of his period, although his setting of Tasso’s ‘Ecco mormorar l’onde’ in the Second Book cannot be called a mere student piece by any means. In 1590 or 1591, Monteverdi had moved to Mantua to join the musicians of the court of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga to whom he dedicated his Third Book of madrigals in 1592. The Third Book brought to an end a remarkably prolific series of publications marking Monteverdi’s studies with Ingegneri and his first maturity as a composer.

After the publication of the Third Book, there followed an eleven years’ silence, at least in terms of publishing – the Fourth Book of madrigals appeared only in 1603 and the Fifth Book in 1605. This silence may have been partly due to the pressure of Monteverdi’s duties in Mantua – he was closely in the day-to-day musical life of the court and also probably accompanied the Duke on at least two foreign trips. But there might be other reasons too. This seems to have been a time when Monteverdi explored and assimilated new idioms. The mid-1590s saw the appearance of Giaches de Wert’s pioneering L’undecimo libro de madrigali a cinque voci, and also an important series of madrigal prints from the Ferrarese circles, by Fontanelli, Gesualdo and Luzzaschi from 1594 to 1596. All these developments must have had considerable impact on Monteverdi. Indeed, he was in direct contact with Ferrara, and some of his new madrigals were apparently performed there in 1598. His music thus came to the attention of Giovanni Maria Artusi, a Bolognese theorist and pupil of Zarlino.

In 1600, Artusi published a treatise, L’Artusi, overo Delle imperfettioni della moderna musica – here the dialogue between “Vario” (“a gentleman from Arezzo” as spokesman for Artusi) and “Luca” is divided into two ragionamenti exploring the “imperfections” of modern music. The first discusses the combination of instruments in concerti and systems of tuning and temperament; in the second, Artusi deplores the irregular melodic, harmonic and modal practices of some modern composers who thereby satisfy neither sense nor reason. In particular, Artusi examines passages from anonymous madrigals later published by Monteverdi. There is also L’Artusi, overo Delle imperfettioni della moderna musica, parte seconda, which might have been prompted by the appearance of Monteverdi’s Fourth Book of madrigals in 1603, which included one madrigal criticized by Artusi in 1600. Here Artusi returns to the ground of the second ragionamento of his first treatise, further criticizing Monteverdi and the moderns.

In one sense it was the usual battle of the generations. Monteverdi rebelled against the strictures of his masters; Artusi, a generation older, stood by the standards of composition taught by Zarlino, among whose followers he was one of the most eminent. He expected dissonances to be introduced according to the rules of counterpoint, and he insisted upon unity of modality within a piece. These conventions had been challenged already in the middle of the sixteenth century. Artusi was not an outright conservative on his own accord. His own books often relaxed unnecessary strict rules on counterpoint. He recognized, as Zarlino did not, that dissonances were of primary importance in composition and devoted a whole volume to them. Yet it grieved him to see counterpoint, which had reached a point of ultimate refinement and control, become a prey to caprice and expediency. He honestly believed that the patiently created structure was under siege.

In another sense the controversy was a battle between two contemporary points of view. On one side were those like Monteverdi who accepted the advances of concerted instrumental music, improvised counterpoint, ornamented singing, the rhythms of dance music and the enlarged vocabulary of chromaticisms blended with the diatonic. On the other side were those like Artusi who felt that these innovations, mainly produces of relatively unschooled musicians, corrupted a pure, noble and learned art. One side held a single standard of counterpoint; the other followed a double standard, one for everyday sacred compositions and another for compositions on texts expressing violent passions. From the view of posterity, it can be said that neither side won an absolute victory. The strict standards advocated by Artusi returned by the mid-seventeenth century in a modified form, the modifications representing concessions to the other side.

In the dialogue of 1600, Artusi printed and analysed nine examples from two madrigals of Monteverdi that he knew from manuscripts, although he withheld both the composer’s name and the texts. The composer’s identity was not known in print until Monteverdi answered Artusi in the letter that opens his Fifth Book of 1605.of the madrigals criticized in the 1600 dialogue, Anima mia, perdona was not published until 1603 in the Fourth Book, and Cruda Amarilli and O Mirtillo not until 1605 in the Fifth Book.

Throughout the controversy the treatment of dissonances was the most bitterly contested issue. The dissonance effects Artusi objected to in Monteverdi’s madrigals are of three kinds: those caused by the application of ornaments to a consonant framework; those which, though accepted by usage in improvised counterpoint and instrumental music, were outside the norms of the severe style; and those outside these two categories that could be justified only in terms of the expressive demands of the text. The text, of course, was the principal motivating force behind all three kinds of dissonances. But it was possible to talk about the first two without the text, and this is what Artusi does in his first critique, even though some of his examples could not be explained adequately without the text.

Each of the examples cited by Artusi in the 1600 book violates one or more rules of the strict style as taught by Zarlino and Artusi in their counterpoint books. In Cruda Amarilli, for example, in bars 12-14, Vario (the spokesperson for Artusi) charges Luca (the advocate for Monteverdi) with failing to accord the upper part with the bass. Luca argues that the example should be regarded as ‘accented’ singing, that is, a written example of an improvisational practice. Vario protests that no author has yet spoken of accented music or defined what accents are. Luca finds the effects of the accents attractive. Compositions embellished by such ornaments “when played by various instruments or sung by singers skilled in this kind of accented music full of substitutions yield a not displeasing harmony which I marvel” (L’Artusi). Vario’s answer is doctrinaire, as expected. Composers and singers who use these portamentos, delays and turns, while they may avoid offensive sounds by instinct or deceive the ear by the quickness of their embellishments, corrupt the good old rules with their mannerisms.

Monteverdi accepts into written composition some of the fortuitous clashes that occur when the parts are moving independently around some common focus. One of the passages Vario points to as following the relaxed rules harmonic correspondence between parts is bars 41-42 of Cruda Amarilli, where the texture is divided into two groups, each of which corresponds harmonically with the tenor, but parts of the opposing groups may clash with each other. The composer takes advantage of the tolerance for free mixtures of intervals acquired through improvised music to introduce a variety of rhetorical effects. This device seems to be particularly fitting to illustrate the word ‘fugace’ (‘elusive’), as it affords at once smooth and independent voice movement. Again, the diminished fifth and seventh on the word ‘fera’ (‘fierce’) seem to serve both the function of providing a climactic cadence and to heighten the feeling of the word. In answering Vario’s objection that in bars 42-43 some of the quavers do not correspond either to the bass or the tenor, Lucas says that this license is derived “from perceiving that in instruments these [quavers] do not much offend the ear because of the quickness of movement.” Incidentally, Vincenzo Galilei in his manuscript treatise on counterpoint (1589-91) made precisely this observation about rapidly moving parts which he found “more appropriate for instruments than for voices.” Although it was customary, he said, to alternate consonance and dissonance in writing such runs, he declined to make a strict rule, showing rather that as many as three dissonances may occur in succession with impunity. By coincidence his example uses the very progression that Monteverdi employs in bars 42-43 in Cruda Amarilli between the two uppermost parts and the bass.

Three years after this dialogue appeared Artusi, having received letters from a defender of the anonymous composer who signs himself ‘L’Ottuso Academico’, published a second book. In the first part of this Artusi answers his correspondent’s letters. In the Considerationi that follows he defends Francesco Patrizi’s statements about Greek music against Ercole Bottrigari’s criticisms. The true identity of L’Ottuso remains shrouded in mystery. Critics are well divided as to the identity of L’Ottuso – many have surmised it was Monteverdi himself while Stuart Reiner is of the opinion that is was Giulio Cesare Monteverdi, the composer’s brother, a proposition which opens up wholly new channels for debate. Some are even of the opinion that L’Ottuso is fictitious character created by Artusi himself – somebody with whom he could debate in the first person about Monteverdi’s modernisms – something he was perfectly capable of doing, because he understood the modernists even if he disagreed with them.

Whoever he was, L’Ottuso finally brought the debate around to the main point – why the new harmonic effects were necessary. In his letter of 1599 he is quoted as saying, “The purpose of this new movement of the parts (modulatione) is to discover through its novelty a new consensus (concenti) and new affections, and this without departing in any way from good reason, even if it leaves behind somehow the ancient traditions of some excellent composers.” New affections call for new harmonic combinations to express them. This is the crux of the matter. The usages to which Artusi took exception may be considered in two categories: irregularities of ‘modulation’ or melody-writing, and irregularities of ‘harmony’ or vertical combination. Artusi objects to the melodic interval of a diminished fourth because it passes from a diatonic note to a chromatic one and is therefore unnatural to the voice, which, unlike instruments, is limited to a small number of consonant and dissonant intervals, through which it passes from one consonance to another. The interval occurs twice in the madrigal Era l’anima mia (Fifth Book) – in bars 28-29 in the quintus part and again in bars 58-59 in the tenor. L’Ottuso provides a weak reply: “It is a new voice progression (modulatione) for the sake of finding through its novelty a new consensus (concento) and a new affection.” Another usage that Artusi criticizes and L’Ottuso defends is that of following a sharpened note by a descending interval and a flattened note by a rising one. Artusi does not cite any examples in Monteverdi, but many can be found. “All the moderni are doing it,” says L’Ottuso, “most of all those who have embraced this new second practice” (questa nuova seconda pratica). This is the first time that the expression ‘seconda pratica’ appears in the controversy. The issue of modal purity and unity had already come out in the dialogue of 1600, when Artusi singled out O Mortillo as having been based on two modes. L’Ottuso defends the practice on the grounds that madrigals composed by noted composers before Monteverdi often employed more than one mode.

Monteverdi’s reply to Artusi in the preface of his Fifth Book was later elaborated by his brother Giulio Cesare in an afterword to Monterverdi’s Scherzi musicali (1607). Monteverdi avoided a trap by shifting the ground of the argument: instead of confronting Artusi, he diffused his claims by postulating two musical ‘practices’, one appealing to the intellect and the other to the emotions. As Giulio Cesare explains on his brother’s behalf, the First Practice was meant to “turn on the perfection of the harmony, that is, the one that considers the harmony not commanded, but commanding, not the servant, but the mistress of the words...”, and goes on to cite practitioners of the same – Josquin, la Rue, Gombert and others. On the other hand, the Second Practice is the one that “turns on the perfection of the melody, that is, the one that considers the harmony not commanding, but commanded, and makes the words the mistress of the harmony. Composers employing this new ‘practice’ included Gesualdo, Cavalieri, Fontanelli, Wert, Ingegneri and the like. Giulio also puts emphasis on the fact that Monteverdi called it ‘second’, and not ‘new’, and also ‘practice’ and not ‘theory’, because “he understands its explanation to turn on the manner of employing the consonances and dissonances in actual composition.”

Music history owes, although grudgingly, a great debt to Artusi, for he focussed attention on one of the deepest crises in musical composition and stimulated the composer who squarely confronted it to clarify his position. Without Monteverdi’s letter in the Fifth Book and his brother’s glosses upon it in the Scherzi musicali (1607), Monteverdi’s stylistic profile would be set less boldly in relief. The Artusi-Monteverdi controversy gives us a valuable commentary upon music history in the making, and also affects the course of musical evolution. Claudio Monteverdi and his brother Giulio Cesare, by publishing their manifestos for the new or the “second” practice, provided the ground for later composers to rally on. Further, this controversy also gives us a glimpse into the way composers thought about certain points of technique, how they justified them, what precedents they recognized, how they viewed the act of composition itself.

The Academie de poesie et de musique & Claude le Jeune

In 1570 Jean-Antonine de Baif, a member of the Pleiade, and Thibault de Courville, an otherwise obscure French composer, founded in Paris an Academie de Poesie et de Musique, the chief aim of which was the position and performance of musique mesuree a l’antique. Claude le Jeune was closely associated with Baif from the beginning of the Academy. Le Jeune set to music a vast quantity of Baif’s vers mesures a l’antique, and their association probably continued up to Baif’s death in 1589. Although Baif obtained Letters Patent for his Academie from Charles IX, whether his Academie survived the death of the latter, is doubtful. However, Baif, Mauduit and le Jeune continued with the main work of the Academie, the production of vers & musique mesures a l’antique.

Our chief sources for a picture of the aims and nature of this Academie are the Letters Patent and its Statutes. The musical and poetic theory and practice which these documents announce are dominated by two principles: first, that music and verse are to be firmly united; secondly, that this union is to produce a revival of the ethical effects of ancient music. Anyway, the ideals on which the Academie was founded seem to be lofty. Only musique mesuree was to be performed at the meetings of the Academy. The chief purpose of doing this was to revive the ethical power of music. Their aims were revolutionary. They did not wish to improve or modify ordinary verse and music, but to substitute for them a new art, new both in its style and in its effect on the listener. The members were of two kinds: the Musiciens, professionals, who performed the musique mesuree, and the "Auditeurs," gentlemen, who listened to it. The Musiciens were bound by strict rules of the Academie and were obliged to obey only Baif and Courville in matters relating to music.

The Academy's activities were not confined to performing and rehearsing musique mesuree; it was an educational institution, such as a university, rather than an arrangement for regular intellectual argument. It was meant to be both a "nursery" of young musicians and poets, and eventually, with the help of these, an aristocratic dictator of musical and poetic style. Its object was not to popularize musique mesuree, to bring it before larger audiences, but, on the contrary, to guard it closely within a small and powerful circle, powerful both intellectually and temporally, until its style is immutably fixed, its superiority recognized by this circle, and its exponents sufficiently trained. Hence all the rules guarding against unauthorized auditeurs, the copying of music or verse and the like. When this had been accomplished, then it would be possible to impose this new music from above to the general public.

Of those activities and projects not mentioned in the Statues or Letters Patents the most ambitious was that of reviving Greek drama in its entirety, complete with music and choreography mesures a l'antique. There is little doubt that it had no practical results, but Baif, in a poem published in 1573 implied that the written material was ready. He also conceived the more feasible project of arranging ballets in which the dances were to be exactly regulated by the rhythmic principles of musique mesuree. That drama should be musical was a principle solely based on classical authority; so was the close union of dancing, gesture and music. There was, apart from the expense, no great difficulty in putting them into practice. For the music, both the drama and ballet would follow exactly the rhythmic principles of musique mesuree, and, for the dance of both, existing steps could be used and easily made to fit any metre required. There was, therefore, a reasonable chance of either a drama or a ballet mesure being performed. It appears that practical experiments were made by the Academy. Some of these dances, together with the chansons mesurees, were probably performed from time to time in some of the many ballets and masquerades about which we know no details. That Baif succeeded in turning any of these into a ballet, tragedie or comedie mesuree is extremely improbable.

As well as being a school of the drama and ballet mesure the Academy, if Mersenne is to be believed, was also intended to be a kind of miniature university. An institution was to be created which contained everything necessary for the perfect education of a man's soul and body. For this purpose teachers learned in every kind of natural science were to be engaged, also instructors of languages, music, poetry, geography, mathematics, military exercises etc. It seems strange that none of these proposed activities is mentioned in the Statutes or in any other source. The vast scheme is, however, in accordance with the renaissance ideal of an education that should produce a man complete in every respect, and Baif himself certainly believed that a poet should also be a musician and a philosopher. Mersenne states that, although all these projects were approved by royal authority, they remained unfulfilled because of the ill-will of certain persons.

Another possible aim of Baif's Academy, not mentioned in the Statutes or Letter Patent, is the revival of the chromatic and enharmonic genera. Most musical humanists laid great stress on this revival and one would expect Baif's musicians to have made some attempt to achieve it. But there is no trace of the use of these genera in any surviving musique mesuree. It is, however, likely that experiments in this genera were made in the early days of the Academy and were so unsuccessful that they were never published.

Claude le Jeune, until the age of fifty, had published only a small amount of music: a collection of ten psalms and thirty-five songs. It is possible, as has been suggested, that as far as his musique mesuree was concerned, he was obeying the rules of Baif’s Academie which forbade publication without the consent of all the members. His fame as a composer really spread during the 1580’s. He published his first collection of musique mesuree in Paris in 1594 and his Dodecacorde in 1598. During this time he had entered the services of Henri IV where he seems to have occupied a privileged position. When Le Jeune died in 1600, only a small part of his works had been published. The greater part appeared during the first decade of the 17th century. For at least four years before he died, Le Jeune had been intending to publish considerable quantities of both his ordinary music and of his musique mesuree. His sister and his niece carried out his wishes, and by 1612 the Second Livre des Meslanges had appeared. Mersenne describes Le Jeune’s music as particularly interesting and attributes his popularity to the variety and liveliness of rhythms and to his gift for melody. To the modern ear two of the most striking features of his music are the great rhythmic variety achieved within the very narrow limits imposed by musique mesuree and, in his ordinary music, the lucidity and the vivacity of rhythm that is preserved even in the most complicated polyphonic passages. It is interesting to note Mersenne’s testimony that these qualities were equally striking to early 17th century listeners.

The work presented in the Publications of the American Institute of Musicology, Le Jeune’s Airs of 1608, consists entirely of chansons mesurees a l’antique, or settings of French verse written in classical metres. The metre of these poems was meant to be quantitative, but the rhythmical structure of the French language made this aim unattainable. Nearly all the settings, however, reproduced exactly the quantitative metrical scheme intended by the poet – a supposed long syllable being set with a minim (or its equivalent in notes of smaller value) and a short with a crotchet. All voices sang the same syllable at the same time, so that with very few exceptions, this music was strictly homophonic.

The origin of this kind of song was in the Academie of Baif and Courville, with which Le Jeune was closely associated. The humanistic theories on which it was based can be said to rest on two main assumptions: first, that music and poetry must be closely united, as in antiquity; second, that this union, if properly carried out, would result in a revival of the ethical effects of ancient music. Since the precise nature of the latter was unknowable, the mean of attaining those ends were conjectural. Most musical humanists arrived, however, at much the same ideal of music, founded to varying degrees of their picture of Greek music: a setting entirely subjected to its text, highly expressive of it, and free from any textual complications that might obscure its metre or intelligibility. On points of detail they varied widely: the use of modes and genera, the importance of the various systems of intonation, the musical imitation of particular words of the text and the like.

Le Jeune’s opinions were not those of an extreme humanist. From the dedication of the Dodecacorde it appears that he believed that the music of a nation was not a cause, but only a symptom, of that nation’s manners and customs. He seems to have believed that immediate specific emotional effects on the listener could be achieved. As for the Modes, Le Jeune is skeptical about the possibility of discovering which Greek mode corresponds to which species of the octave. In practice, however, he followed Zarlino’s system, and composed and arranged two of his major works, of which the Airs of 1608 are one, according to the twelve modes of this system.

In general it may be supposed that Le Jeune accepted the main tenets of the Academie, since he wrote a great quantity of musique mesuree, and in it, conformed, with very few exceptions, to the principles of syllabic homophony and the rules of attaching a minim to a long syllable and a crotchet to a short one. Unlike Mauduit, he not infrequently underlines, musically, particular words of his text, a practice of which the more extreme musical humanists strongly disapproved. He also evidently has the mood of the text, an aim which can be seen from his Airs. An interest in the revival of the ancient genera is perhaps indicated by the chromatic song “Qu’est devenu ce bel oeil”.

In 1583 the hitherto elitist art of musique mesuree a l’antique developed by the Académie was made public by the printing of airs by Le Jeune to ‘measured’ poems by Baif. The novel rhythmic vitality and variety of these pieces are matched in the 43 Italian pieces, published in the two books of Meslanges (1585 and 1612). Dealing with another facet of the Academie’s work – the attempted revival of the Greek genera – Le Jeune experimented in particular with the chromatic tetrachord approximately reproduced by two semitones and a minor 3rd. The tetrachord formula, found in Quelle eau (1585), gave rise to Le Jeune’s most remarkable chromaticisms, notably in his settings of Durand’s elegy "Qu’est devenu ce bel oeil?" (from the second book of Airs, 1608) and the chanson spirituelle by Guéroult Hellas, mon Dieu (from Second livre des meslanges, 1612). According to his friend Artus Thomas and the organist Jehan Titelouze, Le Jeune excelled his predecessors in his understanding of the modes, as illustrated by the alternate rousing and calming effects on a gentleman of two airs performed during the wedding festivities of the Duke of Joyeuse in 1581.

In comparison to Le Jeune’s Northern Chanson, in which a craftsmanlike exploitation of polyphonic techniques was more highly prized than subtleties of verbal expression, the Parisian Chanson of the 1560s was lighter and freer, aiming at an intimate unity of text and music by characterizing the spirit of the poem. This approach to word-setting undoubtedly contributed to Baïf’s experiments, though it was subordinated to his new syllabic prosody, the rapid pace of which often disguised a lack of tunefulness. From the time that he joined Baïf’s movement Le Jeune wholeheartedly embraced its ideals, to the extent that a certain esotericism cultivated by the group affected his work. Some delay in the publication of his ‘measured’ pieces may have been due to the restrictions on copying and circulating any works performed in the Academie. The Academie’s principal aim was the revival of the humanist ideal, based on Greek music, of a setting subjected to its text, expressing its sense and avoiding any textural complexity (e.g. canon and imitation) that might obscure the words or the metre. The introduction into poetry of a metrical scheme based on values doubled or halved was neither altogether new nor confined to the French language, since it had preoccupied first the troubadours and trouvères and later the humanist or didactic composers who had set Latin poems of Horace and Virgil in the early 16th century, as well as the more recent composers of Protestant psalms, hymns and chansons spirituelles. Le Jeune’s largely homophonic settings of vers mesure strictly reflect the quantitative metres prescribed by the Academie by equating the long syllables with minims and the short with crotchets, although both values are often varied by melismatic subdivision. The predetermined, extra-musical metres revolutionized the traditional rhythms of polyphony, often producing lilting patterns of great freedom and charm, while the simple vertical textures resulting from the strict alternation of two basic note values focused attention on the harmonic structure and encouraged experiment. Though originally unrhymed, the texts of Le Jeune’s Airs of 1608 and Pseaumes en vers mesurez (1606) have rhymes added, perhaps posthumously.