“The Courts of Europe” might well serve as an alternative title for this program, which features a variety of renowned composers who lived and worked in a number of different European locales during the transitional period between the Renaissance and Baroque eras. The decades surrounding 1600 were a period in which the traditional musical forms and compositional techniques of the 16th century intermingled with those of the so-called seconda prattica, the “new music” championed by Monteverdi that began to take hold in instrumental as well as vocal repertoires at the turn of the 17th century. But even as this new music explored entirely novel realms of musical expression, it often did so while still maintaining the familiar countenance of an old friend—a friend who, despite growing and changing over time, nonetheless held fast to the essential characteristics that defined her musical identity. Thus, in the spirit of the age, we offer a program that juxtaposes a variety of dances with one foot still in the musical world of the Renaissance in contrast to the sort of toccatas and fantasias that much more clearly and thoroughly embodied the new aesthetic that would go on to define the Baroque.
We begin the program with three pieces emblematic of the Renaissance style, drawn from the first edition of Vincenzo Ruffo’s Capricci in musica a tre voci and organized as a small suite. Ruffo was born and trained in Verona, and he spent much of his early career there before moving to Milan in 1563 to work as choirmaster of the cathedral. It was in the year after his appointment in Milan that Ruffo published his Capricci, which he dedicated to Marquess of Villachiara Marc’Antonio Martinengo (perhaps as part of a strategy to advertise his talents as a composer of instrumental music to the local nobility, among whom there was considerable demand for such music as private entertainment). Along with La Gamba and La Disperata, we conclude the suite with La Piva, a quick and lively dance form that may have been inspired by peasant dances accompanied by bagpipes. By the time of Ruffo’s Capricci, the dance itself had long fallen out of fashion, its former popularity evidenced only by sporadic appearances in collections of instrumental music.
The portion of the program dedicated to the Medici court composer Emilio de’ Cavalieri recalls the most notable musical innovation of the new century: the birth of opera. With his Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo, Cavalieri himself laid claim to the invention of the new genre, having been, in his opinion, the first to revive the Ancient Greek practice of melodic recitation in a full-length theatrical production. But even as Cavalieri’s precedent was acknowledged by his close competitor for the title, Jacopo Peri, in the introduction to his opera L’Euridice, debate continues as to whether the Rappresentatione is best considered an example of early opera or oratorio.
Cavalieri’s earlier “Ballo del Granduca” originated as part of the Intermedi della pellegrina, a group of six short musical-theatrical vignettes on classical and allegorical themes during the wedding celebrations of Ferdinando de’ Medici and Christina of Lorraine in 1589. Situated at the culmination of a long tradition of musical intermedi that had served as a key locus of musical and artistic experimentation in the decades leading up to the birth of opera, the 1589 Intermedi della pellegrina included contributions from several poets and musicians who would go on to become leading figures in the new genre, including Jacopo Peri, Giulio Caccini, and Ottavio Rinuccini. Following the 1591 publication of the Intermedi della pellegrina, Cavalieri’s “Ballo” rapidly took on a life of its own; it circulated widely both in Italy and beyond the Alps, and went on to serve as a compositional model for several other composers, including Banchieri, Kapsberger, and Sweelinck.
The galliard, of which we have three examples on the program, was a very popular dance around the turn of the 17th century. Built on a pattern of five dance steps arranged over six musical beats that we might best envision in modern terms as a 6/4 rhythm with an elongated fourth beat, its choreography could be quite varied and even virtuosic in its embellishment. It was usually preceded by a slower-paced pavane with a more processional character, and the form was quite popular as music intended purely for entertainment as well as for the accompaniment of actual dancing. “The Earle of Pembrookes Galliard” by Scottish musician Tobias Hume was included along with “The Lady of Sussex Delight” in his 1607 collection Captaine Humes Poeticall Musicke ... This collection constitutes the first repertoire composed for the lyra viol, a type of viola da gamba. Hume was a passionate champion of the viol, whose musical value he deemed to be at least equal to that of the lute, which had dominated English music since the Elizabethan era. His challenge was answered by no less than the eminent lutenist John Dowland himself, who published his 1612 collection A Pilgrimes Solace in part so as not to let Hume’s “imputation … passe unanswered.”
In addition to Hume’s, two more galliards with evocative epithets are included on this program: the “Galliard battaglia” by Samuel Scheidt, who worked in Berlin as Kapellmeister to the Margrave of Brandenburg, and the “Gallarda Napolitana” by the so-called “Blind Neapolitan” Antonio Valente, which concludes the program.
Scheidt’s galliard is here preceded by the anonymous but much-celebrated “Greensleeves” to a Ground, which highlights another important element of European music making in this era: composition or improvisation on a repeating basso ostinato, or ground bass as it was called in English, over which the other parts offered a series of variations on a melody—in this case the well-known English folk tune “Greensleeves.”
Another form that made ample use of musical repetition in this era was the canzone, which was largely developed in Italy around the turn of the 17th century and was described by the eminent composer and music theorist Michael Praetorius as “a series of short imitative passages (fugen) for an ensemble of four, five, six, eight, or more parts, in which the first imitative passage is repeated at the end to close the work.” The Ferrarese composer Girolamo Frescobaldi dedicated himself to the composition of numerous canzoni; the example on the program tonight is drawn from his first book of canzoni published in 1621 in Rome, where he worked for many years as the principal organist for St. Peter’s Basilica.
The ciaccona, or chaconne, is another vehicle for melodic variation over a short repeated harmonic progression, often with the use of a ground bass. Its presence in Spain is attested as far back as the end of the 16th century, where it had purportedly been imported from Spanish possessions in the “New World.” Traditionally accompanied by guitars, drums, and castanets in both Spain and Italy (especially in Naples, which was at the time under Spanish rule), the ciaccona was often included in theatrical performances of the commedia dell’arte. The Italian ciaccona is more exuberant than its Spanish cousin, with a faster tempo and a predilection for major tonality exemplified here in an example from a collection by Andrea Falconieri that was published in Naples in 1650. A more direct contribution from the “New World” to this program comes from Mexican composer Juan García de Zéspedes, whose lively Guaracha “Ay que me abrazo ¡ay!” is built over an ostinato that features a quick, repeated hemiola rhythm.
We continue the program with two variations on the folia, a harmonic framework for improvisation similar to the chaconne that remained popular with musicians for centuries after its standardization in the late 17th century. Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger—described by his contemporary, the eminent polymath Athanasius Kircher, as a “superb genius” who had “penetrated the secrets of music”—was the first to publish a large set of Folia variations in his Libro I d’intavolatura di chitarrone, published in Rome in 1604. The anonymous “Diferencias sobre la Folía” has survived thanks to the diligent efforts of Spanish theorist and organist Antonio Martín y Coll, who compiled four manuscripts in the early 18th century of works (almost all are now anonymous) covering mass movements, hymns, Magnificat settings, versets, and the complete panoply of secular genres from the previous century.
The final suite of the program begins with two passacaglias, a form that originated in Spain as a strummed interlude between instrumentally accompanied dances or songs. By the 1620s, it had evolved into the now-familiar triple-meter form of melodic variations with a repeating ostinato bass. The two passacaglias by Falconieri and the Brescian violin virtuoso Biagio Marini are paired with another chaconne by the Cremonese organist and composer Tarquinio Merula as well as the aforementioned “Neapolitan” galliard by Valente.
The viola da gamba, in various forms and in various instrumental combinations, is the true protagonist of this evening’s concert. Born in the late 15th century, it is an instrument that went on to carve out for itself a unique space in the musical world of the following centuries thanks to an incredible versatility that allowed it to shine in consort with other viols, in combination with a variety of instrumental forces, and last but not least as a solo instrument that could showcase the considerable virtuosity of the musicians who mastered it. This program, in addition to allowing us to experience the richness of the musical world around the turn of the 17th century, invites us to appreciate the many and varied nuances of the gamba’s distinctive voice.
Original Italian notes curated by Francesca Pinna in collaboration with the Dipartimento di Musicologia e Beni Culturali, Università degli Studi di Pavia, sede di Cremona.
Translated and expanded by Dan Donnelly.