Latin and Vernacular Song in Medieval Italy

Abstract

A song is a composition for one or more voices, usually accompanied, and written in a fairly simple style, designed so as to enhance the poetic text it is set to. This bibliography concerns the Western secular and religious song in medieval Italy (ninth to fifteenth centuries). In the case of Latin religious songs (hymns, sequences, conductus, tropes, versus, prosulae, etc.), it is difficult to establish their Italian origin since many melodies and texts sung in the Italian peninsula circulated widely throughout Europe. Furthermore, there is not a clear definition of what territory could be called “Italy” in the Middle Ages. In medieval Italy there is a very strong presence of French and Franco-Flemish music, in langue d’oc (troubadours)—two thirds of surviving Provençal song books were originally written in the northern Italian region of Veneto during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries—and d’oil (trouvères), as well as French forms (chansons: rondeaux, virelai, ballade). This repertory was performed by Italian or French musicians; the extreme mobility of clergy, schoolmasters, and musicians throughout Europe, and thus of songs, is one of the main characteristics of medieval culture. The main song forms in medieval Italy are those of (1) liturgical chant in Latin: hymns and sequences; and (2) songs in the Italian vernacular: canzone, ballata (monodic and polyphonic), caccia, madrigal, lauda, cantare, as well as the performance of extended poems on stereotyped melodic formulas. A key role in the dissemination of religious songs (in Latin and the vernacular) was played by schools and lay confraternities, with a strong involvement of singers of all ages, thus including children. It is necessary to remember that our knowledge of Italian medieval music is based solely on the very few surviving written sources, while the melodies and texts of most Italian medieval songs, transmitted almost exclusively by oral tradition, are now lost. The second necessary remark concerns the relationship between the manuscript transmission of songs with notation and their performance practice. For example, in the performance of both sacred and secular monodic repertoire, it is evident that many songs were performed with the accompaniment of a second, improvised voice, i.e., extempore polyphony. This practice is described in many terms: secundare, succinere, organizare, biscantare, discantare and so on.