COMPOSITION

This piece is intended to be sung by sophisticated vocalists. While it would be appropriate to distribute and learn at Pennsic, it would probably not be simple for a local "singers' guild" to perform. Each of the lines, and especially the cantus requires a virtuostic voice.

This text is from Dante's Divine Comedy, Inferno, III, 22-27. It is paired with my own word-for-word translation.

Diverse lingue, orribili favelle, Strange (diverse) languages, horrible dialects,

A native (modern) Italian has confirmed that my translation is both good and correct (see Appendix A), with the exception that he preferred diverse to translate as "different" and favelle to translate as "idioms". I chose to keep "strange(diverse)" because I believe it more closely conveys the intent of Dante and preserves the cognate, and kept dialects because it is more understandable to the average SCA performer than idioms.

Although Dante died in 1321, interest in his works, like Petrarch's, were rediscovered in the sixteenth century. This text is written in poetic form terza rima (lines 2, 4, and 6 rhyme). Counting elision,[1] each line has 11 syllables[2]. The amazingly vivid descriptions of Hell in this passage enticed many composers in the 1560s-80s to set it to music, a reflection of the popularity of word-painting-- even excessive word-painting had been taken to the extreme.

Meter: Quivi Sospiri is set in modern 4/4… White mensural notation (the notation which this piece and its contemporaries would have been written in the late 16th century) is very easy for the modern reader to read, but must be read at (what appears to be to the modern eye but is not) half of the tempo given. For example, a whole note in white mensural notation is equivalent to the modern half note, the white mensural half note a modern quarter, et cetera. In the interest of clarity, I will use the modern terms throughout this piece. Some madrigals were set in (modern) 2/4, which would give the appearance of there being one beat per measure. I know of no madrigals in triple meter, as it was common for triple meter to be reserved for sacred music.

Tempo: Quivi Sospiri should be sung as if it is written in 2/4 with a "heartbeat" or "walking tempo". The recording is recorded at 120 (quarter note beats) which is comparable. Performers should only vary the tempo slightly, and ideally only at the very end if at all.

Rhythm: The smallest notes in this piece are the sixteenth note, and they occur rarely. There are really only two beats per measure and so the majority of the notes are half notes or quarter notes. Occasionally there is a quick turn or run which can be notated with eighth notes or even sixteenth notes. A thirty-second note would be all but impossible at this speed for any but the most virtuosic of vocalists.

Range: This is an example of fairly extreme range in a late 16th century madrigal, although the extremes are seldom visited, and visited for effect. When I began writing this piece I thought that the low bass line was a nice parallel to Inferno, but I was shocked when I went to find a bass part this low and discovered that Luzzasco Luzzashi had a similar range for his bass line…and a similar topic. Actually, he had the same passage from Inferno. I had specifically avoided looking for settings of this passage because I feared I'd get one stuck in my head…so I was amused when I saw this.

Mode and Key: Quivi Sospiri is set in F AEolean, also known as F Minor mode, although it does have some brief expeditions into Gb Lydian back into F AEolean. Coincidentally, Luzzaschi's setting begins in G Lydian and ends in F AEolian. This was quite surprising to me as well, although with the 'un'-even temperament of the day, these pieces would have sounded quite different. As is typical of this period, the minor key ends with a raised third (commonly called a "Picardy Third").

Ornamentation: Italian 16th century ornamentation was fairly standardized by this point. Some examples of appropriate ornamentation are the turns

Rhythmic nuance: The skipping pulse of for example, a dotted eighth paired with a sixteenth note

Word Painting: I enjoyed the word painting very much. Here are some examples:

The madrigal was the most popular secular vocal music in Italy in the sixteenth century. The beginning of the madrigal can be seen in the early, sonorous works of Jacques Arcadelt, while the chromatic works of Don Carlo Gesualdo demonstrate the extremes the madrigal reached at the zenith of its popularity.

1. Italy at the Dawn of the Sixteenth Century

The Renaissance reached its height in Rome and Florence in art, literature, and music. Scientific discoveries provided valuable insights into the workings of the human body, and astronomers began to discover the secrets of the universe. Politically, Italy was a mess: it had been divided into many city-states, each of which was ruled by a powerful family. In 1527 the Florentine ruling family, the Medici, were driven from Florence. In that same year, Rome was sacked, and more than thirty thousand citizens were killed. The Italian Wars between the Hapsburgs and the Valois raged from the beginning of the fifteenth century through 1559 and caused a decline in the prosperity and autonomy of the Italian City-States. However, by the 1560s The Gonzaga family had taken power in Mantua and the Este family ruled in Ferrara. The salons of Domenico Venier in Venice became an intellectual and artistic meeting place, while the printers of Venice made it the music printing capital of the western world.

2. The Evolution of the Madrigal

During the first two decades of the sixteenth century the standard polyphonic frottola (structured with a verse and refrain) evolved into two new musical forms, the madrigal and the villanesca. .The more serious and academic frottola form developed into the madrigal, while the lighter form developed into the villanesca. The madrigal developed more quickly than any previous musical form, and the introduction of movable music type was the technology which facilitated its introduction to the rest of Europe and ultimately began the most popular secular musical form of the European Renaissance. (New Grove, v. 11, 463)

The first sixteenth century madrigals were written by composers in Italy, most of whom were Oltremontani. The Oltremontani style, also known as Ars Perfecta, was beautiful polyphony in which each of the voices was as melodious as the next. The main composers of this genre were the Flemish composer Verdelot, who worked in Venice and Florence, Jacques Arcadelt(whose origin is unknown and was either French or Flemish), and Flemish composers Adrian Willaert and Cipriano da Rore. The only native Italian composer who wrote in this style was Costanzo Festa, who lived in Rome. The first book of madrigals, Madrigali de diversi musici libro primo, was published in 1530 and included works by Philippe Verdelot, Costanza and Festa.

The madrigal was considered to be serious music and was set to intellectual poetry. Madrigals required a literary movement in the aristocracy and upper middle class. (Roche, 18) The form, style, and vocabulary of the Italian madrigal may have been inspired by the humanistic poetry of the fourteenth century Italian poet Petrarch, whose works were rediscovered and revived after 1501. Petrarch's sixteenth century imitators, now called the Petrarchian poets, were numerous and their poetry was often set by madrigalists in the first half of the century. In addition to poems by Petrarch himself, the poems of Machiavelli, Lodovico Martelli and Luigi Cassola were often set in madrigals[3]. Most madrigals were intended for performance by a small group for the enjoyment of the participants, while others were intended to be performed by professionals for the entertainment of a group of people. (NEW GROVE, V. 11, 463)

The text of the madrigal is a short, non-strophic poem without refrain, with a free rhyme scheme which usually consists of seven and eleven syllable lines. These free-form texts were a good partner to the madrigal style because the vocal lines overlap. Vocal declamation was terribly important and composers worked to produce music which supported the text well. (NEW GROVE, V. 11, 465)

The first madrigals were composed for four voices. It was not until the form had been established that the voicings grew to five and six parts. (New Grove, v. 11, 465) The early madrigal was through-composed and homophonic. At times counterpoint was used to express textual meaning or to individualize a voice. The cantus was the most important line, all cadential suspensions or deviations from the counterpoint were usually in this part. At times the cantus line was set much higher than the rest of the voices. (Roche, 19) The early madrigal was composed with harmonies which were homophonic and sonorous, much like those of the chanson. (For example, Sermisy's Tant que vivray and Arcadelt's Il bianco e dolce cigno). The influence of Des Préz is most probably a factor here.

Around the middle of the century the Italian students of the early madrigalists began writing their own pieces. The pieces which emerged have been labled "classical madrigal". Often, the number of parts increased from four to five or six. The style of the works, which until this time had been homophonic, became more polyphonic and imitative. Word painting was used much more often and much less subtly. The spiritual madrigal was developed.

The late madrigal was elaborate and experimental, and often used significant amounts of text-painting, chromaticism, monody, and dramatic effects which required a greater level of virtuosity from the singers. The late Italian madrigalists achieved lush overlays of sensuous sounds. The dimensions enlarged and the text was handled much more freely. The poems of Petrarch were used less often and the melancholy texts of Tasso began to be used. The madrigal, serious poetry set to serious music, reached England in 1588 through the publication of Nicholas Yonge's Musica Transalpina which was a collection of Italian madrigals with English lyrics. The emergence of the Italian madrigal into English and German music heavily influenced the English madrigal and German polyphonic lied.

Gesualdo was the most radical member of the chromatic school, which included Rore and Vincentino. His music was not a Nuovo Musica, but rather an innovative artifice. His writing encompassed the entire range of chromaticism (with the exception of F flat). Often influenced by Greek musical theory, his writing showed understanding of the tetrachord (four notes, descending, with separations of tone, tone, semitone). Gesualdo had probably heard the Arcicembalo, which was a harpsichord in which each octave had 31 keys, each being a quarter-step apart, which gave all the tones of ancient Greek theory in any tonality without having to deviate from Pythagorean tuning. The strange and new harmonies produced by this instrument probably gave Gesualdo an indication of the lengths to which he could stretch the boundaries of conventional composition. Standard fretted clavichords and other keyboard instruments did not allow such chromaticism so he could not have tried his pieces out at the keyboard. (New Grove,316) Gesualdo's harmonic style often included consecutive unrelated triads producing cross relations and chromaticism and his later madrigals have strong contrasts, innovative harmonic progressions and skillful use of dissonance..

Largely due to the harmonic trends set by Claudio Monteverdi, Gesualdo had no contemporary followers and few protégés within the two centuries following his death (Bartoli, d'India, and Cifra). However, his chromatic harmonic progressions have often been compared to those of Richard Wagner, and his harmonies meshed well with those of Igor Stravinsky, as can be seen in the twentieth century composer's setting of Belta, poi che t'assenti. (New Grove, 318)

Harr, James. Madrigal. In New Harvard Dictionary of Music, Don Michael Randel ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 462-464.

Harr, James. Madrigal, II. Italy, In New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians Stanley Sadie ed. (London: Macmilan, 1980), vol 11, pp. 462-474.

Roche, Jerome. Madrigal, IV. England. In New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians Stanley Sadie ed. (London: Macmilan, 1980), vol 11, pp. 478-482.

Atlas, Allan W. Renaissance Music: Music in Western Europe, 1400-1600 (New York: Norton, 1998), pp. 428-443 and pp. 634-651.

Gesualdo, Carlo. "Io Parto" in Norton Anthology of Western Music Claude V. Palisca, ed. (New York: Norton 1980) vol. I, p. 260-264

Arcadelt, Jaques. Io bianco e dolce cigno in Anthology of Renaissance Music: Atlas, Allan W. ed. (New York: Norton, 1998),

[1] Elision is a common device of vocal declamation in Italian. When a word ending with a vowel or dipthong is followed by a word beginning with a vowel, the last vowel or dipthong of the first word is slurred with the first vowel of the second word.

[2] Each line has eleven syllables: 11 (ed elided[2] with al-) – 11 (l'aer has 2 syllables, the apostrophe signifies an elided a) – 11 (ch'io elides with al) –11 (a stretch, lingue and orribili elide even over the comma) – 11 (again, elision over the comma) – 11 (Vo cial te-e fio che,e suon di man con el-le)

[3]The fourteenth century poems used were originally lyrics for the fourteenth century madrigal, which was similar in structure to its French contemporary, the ballade.. While the fourteenth century poems were used (or imitated) in the sixteenth century, the music had been lost and the two madrigal forms are completely unrelated musically.