The modern state of Italy did not come into being until
1561, though the roots of music on the Italian Peninsula can be traced back to
the music of Ancient Rome. However, the underpinnings of much modern Italian
music come from the Middle Ages.Contents
[hide]
1 Before 1500
2 Renaissance era, 16th century
3 Baroque era, 16th – 18th centuries
4 19th century
5 References
6 Notes
[edit]
Before 1500
Italy was the site of several key musical developments in
the development of the Christian liturgies in the West. Around 230, well before
Christianity was legalized, the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus attested the
singing of Psalms with refrains of Alleluia in Rome. In 386, in imitation of
Eastern models, St. Ambrose wrote hymns, some of whose texts still survive, and
introduced antiphonal psalmody to the West. Around 425, Pope Celestine I
contributed to the development of the Roman Rite by introducing the
responsorial singing of a Gradual, and Cassian, Bishop of Brescia, contributed
to the development of the monastic Office by adapting Egyptian monastic
psalmody to Western usage. Later, around 530, St. Benedict would arrange the
weekly order of monastic psalmody in his Rule. Later, in the 6th century,
Venantius Fortunatus created some of Christianity's most enduring hymns,
including "Vexilla regis prodeunt," which would later become the most
popular hymn of the Crusades.[1]
The Guidonian Hand
The earliest extant music in the West is plainsong,[2] a
kind of monophonic, unaccompanied, early Christian singing performed by Roman
Catholic monks, which was largely developed roughly between the 7th and 12th
centuries. Although Gregorian chant has its roots in Roman chant and is
popularly associated with Rome, it is not indigenous to Italy, nor was it the
earliest nor the only Western plainchant tradition. Ireland, Spain, and France
each developed a local plainchant tradition, but only in Italy did several chant
traditions thrive simultaneously: Ambrosian chant in Milan, Old Roman chant in
Rome, and Beneventan chant in Benevento and Montecassino. Gregorian chant,
which supplanted the indigenous Old Roman and Beneventan traditions, derived
from a synthesis of Roman and Gallican chant in Carolingian France. Gregorian
chant later came to be strongly identified with Rome, especially as musical
elements from the north were added to the Roman Rite, such as the Credo in
1014. This was part of a general trend wherein the manuscript tradition in
Italy weakened and Rome began to follow northern plainchant traditions.
Gregorian chant supplanted all the other Western plainchant traditions, Italian
and non-Italian, except for Ambrosian chant, which survives to this day. The native
Italian plainchant traditions are notable for a systematic use of ornate,
stepwise melodic motion within a generally narrower range, giving the Italian
chant traditions a smoother, more undulating feel than the Gregorian.[3]
Crucial in the transmission of chant were the innovations of Guido d'Arezzo,
whose Micrologus, written around 1020, described the musical staff,
solmization, and the Guidonian hand (image, right). This early form of do-re-mi
created a technical revolution in the speed at which chants could be learned,
memorized, and recorded. Much of the European classical musical tradition,
including opera and symphonic and chamber music can be traced back to these
Italian medieval developments in musical notation,[4] formal music education
and construction techniques for musical instruments.
Even as the northern chant traditions were displacing
indigenous Italian chant, displaced musicians from the north contributed to a
new thriving musical culture in 12th-century Italy. The Albigensian Crusade, supposedly
to attack Cathar heretics, brought southern France under northern French
control and crushed Occitan culture and language. Most troubadours fled,
especially to Spain and Italy. Italy developed its own counterparts to
troubadours, called trovatori, including Sordello of Mantua. Frederick II, the
last great Hohenstaufen Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily, encouraged music
at the Sicilian court, which became a refuge for these displaced troubadours,
where they contributed to a melting pot of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim
musical styles. Italian secular music was largely the province of these
jongleurs, troubadors, and mimes.[5] One important consequence of the
troubadour influence during this period, in Italy and across Europe, was the
gradual shift from writing strictly in Latin to the local language, as
championed by Dante in his treatise De vulgari eloquentia; this development
extended to the lyrics of popular songs and forms such as the madrigal,[6]
meaning "in the mother tongue." Also around this time, Italian
flagellants developed the Italian folk hymns known as spiritual laude.
Between 1317 and 1319, Marchettus of Padua wrote the
Lucidarium in artae musicae planae and the Pomerium artis musicae mensuratae,
major treatises on plainchant and polyphony, expounding a theory of rhythmic
notation that paved the way for Trecento music (Italian ars nova). Around 1335,
the Rossi Codex, the earliest extant collection of Italian secular polyphony,
included examples of indigenous Italian genres of the Trecento including early
madrigals, cacce, and ballate. The early madrigal was simpler than the more
well-known later madrigals, usually consisting of tercets arranged
polyphonically for two voices, with a refrain called a ritornello. The caccia
was often in three-part harmony, with the top two lines set to words in musical
canon. The early ballata was often a poem in the form of a virelai set to a
monophonic melody.[7] The Rossi Codex included music by Jacopo da Bologna, the
first famous Trecento composer.
The Ivrea Codex, dated around 1360, and the Squarcialupi
Codex, dated around 1410, were major sources of late Trecento music, including
the music of Francesco Landini, the famous blind composer. Landini's name was
attached to his characteristic "Landini cadence," in which the final
note of the melody dips down two notes before returning, such as C-B-A-C.
Trecento music influenced northern musicians such as Johannes Ciconia, whose
synthesis of the French and Italian styles presaged the "international"
music typical of the Renaissance.
During the 15th century, Italy entered a slow period in
native composition, with the exception of a few bright lights such as the
performer and anthologist Leonardo Giustinian. As the powerful northern
families such as the d'Este and Medici built up powerful political dynasties,
they brought northern composers of the Franco-Flemish school such as Josquin
and Compère to their courts. Starting in the last decades of the century,
Italian composers such as Marchetto Cara and Bartolomeo Tromboncino wrote
light, courtly songs called frottole for the Mantuan court of Isabella d'Este.
With the support of the Medici, the Florentine Mardi Gras season led to the
creation of witty, earthy carnival songs called canti carnascialeschi.
[edit]
Renaissance era, 16th century
For more details, see also Roman School, Venetian School,
Venetian polychoral style, Music of Venice
Saint Mark's in Venice. The spacious, resonant interior was
one of the inspirations for the music of the Venetian School.
The 16th century saw the advent of printed polyphonic music
and advances in instrumental music, which contributed to the international
distribution of music characteristic of the Renaissance. In 1501, Ottaviano dei
Petrucci published the Harmonice Musices Odhecaton, the first substantial
collection of printed polyphonic music, and in 1516, Andrea Antico published
the Frottole intablate da sonari organi, the earliest printed Italian music for
keyboard. Italy became the primary center of harpsichord construction, violin
production started in Cremona in the workshop of Andrea Amati, and lutenist
Francesco Canova da Milano earned Italy an international reputation for
virtuosic musicianship.[8]
Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa.
Music achieved new heights of cultural respectability.
Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier recommended proficiency at music as a
courtly virtue, and Santa Maria di Loreto, the first music conservatory, was
built in Naples. Adrian Willaert developed music for double chorus at St. Mark's
in Venice. This tradition of Venetian polychoral music would reach its height
in the early baroque music of Giovanni Gabrieli. Unlike the earlier, simpler
madrigals of the Trecento, madrigals of the 16th century were written for
several voices, often by non-Italians brought into the wealthy northern courts.
Madrigalists aspired to create high art, often using the refined poetry of
Petrarchan sonnets, and utilizing musically sophisticated techniques such as
text painting. Composers such as Cipriano de Rore and Orlando di Lasso
experimented with increasing chromaticism, which would culminate in the
mannerist music of Carlo Gesualdo. In 1558, Gioseffo Zarlino, the premier
musical theorist of the period, wrote the Istitutioni harmoniche, which
addressed such practical musical issues as invertible counterpoint. Lighter
music was represented by the villanella, which originated in popular songs of
Naples and spread throughout Italy.
Music was not immune to the politically charged atmosphere
of Renaissance Italy. In 1559, Antonio Gardano published Musica nova, whose
politically pro-republican partisan songs pleased the northern Italian
republics and riled the Church.[9] In 1562-1563, the third portion of the
Council of Trent addressed issues of music in the Church. Most paraliturgical
music, including all but four Sequences were banned. An outright ban on
polyphonic music was debated behind the scenes, and guidelines were issued
requiring that church music have clear words and a pure, uplifting style.
Although the tales of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina "rescuing"
polyphony with the Missa Papae Marcelli are no longer accepted by scholars,
Palestrina's music remains the paradigm of the musical aesthetic promoted by
the Church.[10] Shortly afterwards, in 1614, the Editio medicea (Medicean
Edition) of Gregorian chant was released, rewriting the Gregorian chant
repertory to purge it of perceived corruptions and barbarisms, and return it to
a "purer" state closer in style to Palestrinian melodies.
In the late 16th century and early 17th century, composers
began pushing the limits of the Renaissance style. Madrigalism reached new
heights of emotional expression and chromaticism in what Claudio Monteverdi
called his seconda pratica (second practice), which he saw originating with
Cipriano de Rore and developing in the music of composers such as Luca Marenzio
and Giaches de Wert. This music was characterized by increased dissonance and
by sections of homophony, which led to such traits of the early baroque as
unequal voices where the bass line drove the harmonies and the treble melody
became more prominent and soloistic. This transitional period between the
Renaissance and baroque included the development of the Sicilian polyphonic
school in the works of Pietro Vinci, the first extant polyphony written by
women, the fusion of Hebrew texts and European music in the works of Salomone
Rossi, and the virtuosic women's music of Luzzasco Luzzaschi performed by the
Concerto delle donne in Ferrara.
[edit]
Baroque era, 16th – 18th centuries
Claudio Monteverdi
The exact nature of ancient Greek musical drama is a matter
of dispute. What is important, however, for the later development of Italian
and European music is that poets and musicians of the Florentine Camerata in
the late 16th century thought—in the words of one of them, Jacopo Peri--that
the "ancient Greeks sang entire tragedies on the stage".[11] Thus was
born the musical version of the Italian Renaissance: paying tribute to
classical Greece by retelling Greek myths within a staged musical context—the
first operas. The works emerged in this period with relatively simple melodies
and the texts about Greek mythology sung in Italian. (Opera may have deeper
roots in the Tuscan maggio drammatico tradition[12][13]). Three cities are especially
important in this period in Italy: Venice, as the birthplace of commercial
opera; Rome, for Palestrina's school of Renaissance polyphony; and Naples, as
the birthplace of church-sponsored music conservatories. These conservatories
evolved into training grounds, providing composers and musicians for Italy and,
indeed, Europe as a whole. Claudio Monteverdi is considered the first great
composer of the new musical form, opera, the person who turned Florentine
novelty into a "unified musical drama with a planned structure."[14]
The years 1600 to 1750 encompass the musical Baroque. A new
dominance of melody within harmony at the expense of text led to great changes,
including the expansion of instrumental resources of the orchestra. The
keyboard was extended, and the making of stringed instruments by Antonio
Stradivari became a great industry in Cremona. Instrumental music started to
develop as a separate "track," quite apart from the traditional role
of accompanying the human voice. Instrumental forms include such things as the
sonata, symphony, and concerto. Important names in music within this period in
Italy are Alessandro Scarlatti, and Antonio Vivaldi, representing the
importance of Naples and Venice, respectively, within this period.
The San Carlo theater (building on right in photo) in
Naples.
The physical resources for music advanced greatly during the
18th century. The great opera houses in Naples and Milan were built: the Teatro
di San Carlo and La Scala, respectively. It is the age, as well, of the rise to
prominence of the Neapolitan—and then Italian—Comic opera. Important, too, is
the restoring of balance between text and music in opera, largely through the
librettos of Pietro Trapassi, called Metastasio.[15]
Important Italian composers in this century are: Domenico
Scarlatti, Benedetto Marcello, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Niccolò Piccinni,
Giovanni Paisiello, Luigi Boccherini, Domenico Cimarosa, and Luigi Cherubini.
It is also the age in which Italian music became international, so to speak,
with many Italian composers beginning to work abroad.
Giuseppe Verdi.
[edit]
19th century
The 19th century is the age of Romanticism in European
literature, art, and music. Italian opera forsakes the Comic opera for the more
serious fare of Italian lyric Romanticsm. Although the generally light-hearted
and ever-popular Rossini was certainly an exception to that, Italian music of
the 19th century is dominated at the beginning by the likes of Bellini and
Donizetti, giving to Italian music the lyrical melodies that have remained
associated with it ever since. Then, the last fifty years of the century were
dominated by Giuseppe Verdi, the greatest musical icon in Italian history.
Verdi's music "sought universality within national character";[16]
that is, much of what he composed in terms of historical themes could be
related to his pan-Italian vision. Verdi was the composer of the Italian
Risorgimento, the movement to unify Italy in the 19th century. Later in the
century is also the time of the early career of Giacomo Puccini, perhaps the
greatest composer of pure melody in the history of Italian music.
Frontispiece from the score of Cavalleria Rusticana, a
masterpiece of Italian Verismo from 1890.
Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of Italian musical form
in the 19th century, and that which distinguishes it from musical developments
elsewhere, is that it remained primarily operatic. All significant Italian
composers of the century wrote opera almost to the exclusion of other forms,
such as the symphony.[17] There are no Italian symphonists in this century, the
way one might speak of Brahms in Germany, for example. Many Italian composers,
however, did write significant sacred music, such as Rossini a Stabat Mater and
his late Petite Messe solennelle and Verdi Messa da Requiem and Quattro Pezzi
Sacri.
Romanticism in all European music certainly held on through
the turn of the century. In Italy, the music of Verdi and Puccini continued to
dominate for a number of years. Even the realistic plots and more modern
compositional techniques of the operas of Italian Verismo, such as Mascagni's
Cavalleria Rusticana, did not greatly affect the extremely melodic nature of
Italian music.
[edit]
References
Atlas, Allan W. (1998). Renaissance Music. New York: W. W.
Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-97169-4.
Crocker, Richard L (1966). A History of Musical Style. New
York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-486-25029-6.
McKinnon, James, ed. (1991). Antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Eaglewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-036153-4.
Hiley, David (1995). Western Plainchant: A Handbook.
Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-816572-2.
Ulrich, Homer; Paul Pisk (1963). A History of Music and
Musical Style. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanoich. ISBN 0-15-537720-5.
Gallo, Alberto (1995). Music in the Castle: Troubadours,
Books and Orators in Italian Courts of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Centuries. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-27968-5.
Hoppin, Richard (1978). Medieval Music. New York: W. W.
Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-09090-6.
(Italian) Magrini, Tullia (ed.), ed. (1992). Il maggio
drammatico: una tradizione di teatro in musica. Bologna: Edizioni Analisi.
Palisca, Claude V. (1985). Humanism in Italian Musical
Thought. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-04962-5.
