Singing Lyric in Late Quattrocento Naples: The Case of a Neapolitan Songbook

Abstract

Singing lyric poetry in Aragonese Naples was a practice that spanned multiple levels of aristocratic and court culture. From the improvised performances of humanist poet-singers, like Serafino Aquilano and Benedetto Gareth, to the lyric creativity of Neapolitan barons and aristocrats, like Pietro Jacopo de Jennaro and Francesco Galeota, the varied strains of Neapolitan song created a complex oral tapestry of popular melodies, which often intermingled with other musical and literary traditions more rooted in written culture. As a result, many of the manuscript sources from late Quattrocento Naples embody a state of what Blake Wilson has called “mixed orality” in which both oral and written practices coexist and exert their influence in different ways. As testaments to this oral-literate culture, the three major literary anthologies of Neapolitan lyric produced from the late 1460s to the early 1490s—Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, f. it. 1035; Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vaticano latino 10656; and Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ms. 2752—reveal an expansive image of the poetic parameters of vernacular song that goes beyond what musical sources transmit. This paper investigates the oral performance tradition of singing vernacular lyric in late fifteenth-century Naples through a detailed case study of one of these literary anthologies—Paris, BnF, f. it. 1035 (also known as the Cansonero napoletano) — and its relationship to musical manuscripts and practices of the day. I argue that the Cansonero napoletano is a carefully constructed songbook with clear connections to the practice of singing lyric poetry within a vibrant community of poets from the Kingdom of Naples. In fact, a deeper analysis of this collection reveals a substantial body of Neapolitan songs that greatly exceeds the number of texts for which musical settings survive. As music scholars, our perspective is often skewed toward musical sources, even when investigating a primarily oral tradition like that of Neapolitan song; and yet, it is from literary sources like the Cansonero napoletano that we may construct the most vivid picture of that repertory and its performance practice.