THE SINGING VOICE AND THE PRINTING PRESS: ITINERARIES OF THE ALTISSIMO’S PERFORMED TEXTS IN RENAISSANCE ITALY

Abstract

In the early sixteenth century, the Altissimo was one of the major Italian oral poets: a laureate cantastorie singing his ‘improvised’ lyrical and narrative poems in Florence and in Venice, and publishing them in printed editions which often present their texts as live transcriptions of his performances. By analysing these editions (including a newly discovered booklet — his earliest known edition), this essay aims to investigate the Altissimo’s techniques of oral composition, his catalogue of subjects and styles, his sources and models, and the relations between the oral performance and the written transmission of his poetry. The essay also highlights the striking similarities that the Altissimo’s complex and multifaceted profile — which blended literature and music, fine arts and eclectic learning, performing skills and commercial enterprise, genius and craftsmanship — shares with figures such as Leonardo da Vinci, Pietro Aretino, Niccolò degli Agostini, and Niccolò Zoppino. The canonical perception of each of them as an artist, a writer, or a publisher is reassessed in the light of the clues that reveal their activity as oral performers, thus showing how pivotal and permeating oral poetry was in early modern Italian culture.