Rore's selva selvaggia: The selva selvaggia of 1542

Abstract

This study attempts to develop a new perspective on the styles of the mid-century Italian madrigal represented by Rore and Willaert through examination of the literary contents and musical expression of Rore's Primo libro of 1542 and a comparison of its character with that of Willaert's Musica nova, written about the same time. Textual exegesis demonstrates the boldly Dantean character of some of Rore's poetic choices in an age troubled by Dante's often harshly graphic descriptions in the Inferno. Musical analysis shows how Rore translated this concrete style of language into a distinctive madrigalian idiom whose declamatory irregularities and pictorial liberties matched those of the verse. When considered alongside the restrained style of Willaert, two divergent expressive alternatives suggest themselves. Conceived within a broad dialectic, they offer a key to Italian musical aesthetics of the time. The opposed sides that literati in Florence and Venice took in the quarrel over Dante add a further, regional refinement to this dialectic: they help explain how socially oriented genres of literature and music were shaped by expressive tensions, tensions that were themselves governed by civic tastes and born of civic allegiances.