Singing Games in Early Modern Italy: The Music Books of Orazio Vecchi by Paul Schleuse

Abstract

Reviewed by: Singing Games in Early Modern Italy: The Music Books of Orazio Vecchi by Paul Schleuse Massimo Privitera Singing Games in Early Modern Italy: The Music Books of Orazio Vecchi. By Paul Schleuse. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2015. (Music and the Early Modern Imagination.) [x, 373 p. ISBN 978-0-253-01501-3 (cloth), $50; 978-0-253-01054-3 (ebook), $49] Singing Games in Early Modern Italy is the more recent result of a long-term research project conducted by Paul Schleuse (an associate professor of music at Binghamton University, State University of New York) on the music of the Modenese composer Orazio Vecchi, (1550–1605). This research began as a doctoral dissertation at the City University of New York (2005) and has continued for a decade with several articles and the critical edition of the Selva di varia ricreatione (Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2012). Despite its subtitle (The Music Books of Orazio Vecchi), which refers to the whole of Vecchi's output, this monograph is not "a comprehensive account of the composer's life and works", as the author himself declares (p. 3), since nothing is said about Vecchi's significant books of sacred music, and little space is given to biographical accounts. The focus is centred on Vecchi's secular books, which are examined in chronological order, chapter by chapter. The first deals with the first and second books of his Canzonettas for four voices (1580), as well as the Madrigali a sei voci (1583), and special attention is given to the tripartite work for seven voices that concludes the collection, L'hore di ricreatione (the complete edition of which is provided by Schleuse in the Appendix). The second chapter is dedicated to Vecchi's remaining canzonetta collections of the 1580s and to the Madrigali a cinque voci [End Page 311] (1589). Schleuse then examines the four principal collections by Vecchi, which are characterised by the inclusion of different musical genres within a single print. The Selva di varia ricreatione (1590) and the Convito musicale (1597) are the subject of the third chapter, while L'Amfiparnaso (1597) and Le Veglie di Siena (1604) are discussed in the fourth and fifth chapters, respectively. In the sixth and last chapter, Schleuse analyses a few selected compositions by Vecchi in order to show "the means of imitation such music employs and the commentary it offers on class, frequently through its depiction of sexuality" (p. 245). Schleuse examines Vecchi's compositions in an innovative and evocative manner. Developing on the approach in the seminal article by Laura Macy ("Speaking of Sex: Metaphor and Performance in the Italian Madrigal", [Journal of Musicology 14, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 1–34]), Schleuse investigates the psychological and emotional condition of people performing Vecchi's music at the time of its publication in order to understand from within the special and original appeal it exerted on its contemporary consumers. In early modern Italy, the performance of secular polyphony played a very important social role: singing a vocal part in a polyphonic group signified above all the construction, together with others, of a shared, deeply meaningful, emotional, and intellectual world. It implied an interplay that was multifaceted: the "social acts of choosing music, singing it, and then discussing the pieces and their execution" (p. 176). Such interplay is described in some important texts cited by Schleuse such as Doni's Dialogo della musica and Castiglione's Cortegiano (not to mention the copious paintings representing groups of people performing music for their own pleasure). This complex interaction gained special status and significance between the late-sixteenth and the early-seventeenth centuries, and Schleuse's book is a successful attempt to demonstrate that Vecchi's output is one of the most interesting manifestations of that period. One of the most fascinating aspects of Vecchi's work is that he never repeats himself; he bestows a special and individual character to every one of his books. This is evident in the four main collections of his last period with their original and evocative titles, but it is also present, albeit perhaps less visible, in his earlier, more conventional, collections of canzonettas and madrigals. To point out...