DANTE, ON THE WAY TO THE MADRIGAL

Abstract

T HE role of Dante's poetry in the vocal music of the 16th century1 was a very small one, especially when one compares it with the popularity which the Canzoniere of Petrarch enjoyed among Italian musicians. It may be said that these composers-when they were in a mood to set Dantesque verse-rather than turn to Dante himself, were more inclined towards the Trionfi of Petrarch, in which the singer of Laura still made use chiefly of the language and the lofty, imaginative style of his great forerunner. And that preference for Petrarch remained constant in the 15th and 16th centuries as in the 14th. The lyric expression of Petrarch was set to music by his contemporaries on many occasions. Of Dante's verses we know of only one setting that dates from the poet's own lifetime: that of the prayer of St. Bernard, from the Paradiso, which survives on the binding of a codex of Belluno. In the Quattrocento, the fame of Petrarch among musicians gradually increases, while Dante disappears into almost total obscurity. And in the Cinquecento the disproportion in the esteem in which the two men were held by musicians is still more striking, being far greater than that which obtains in the purely literary appraisal put upon them. The Canzoniere of Petrarch during this time goes through 167 editions; the Divina commedia, from the first print of 1472, at Foligno, through only 33-far less than the Petrarch, to be sure, and yet no inconsiderable number. But in madrigal literature, from the Frottole up to the earliest essays in monody, texts of Petrarch were set to music probably several thousand times, while the known settings of passages from the Divina commedia and the Canzoniere of Dante add up to less than a dozen.