Seconda Pratica Research Articles

Danielis Sartorii Musicalia Wratislaviensia by Tomasz Jeż

Reviewed by: Danielis Sartorii Musicalia Wratislaviensia by Tomasz Jeż Tomasz Górny Danielis Sartorii Musicalia Wratislaviensia. By Tomasz Jeż. (Fontes Musicæ in Polonia, vol. A/1.) Warsaw: Sub Lupa, 2017. [625 p. ISBN 9788365886118 (hardcover), PLN 45; also available as e-book.] Illustrations, bibliography, index. The life of Thomas Rehdiger (1540– 1576) was marked by traveling, meetings with intellectuals, and a passion for collecting. Despite his relatively early death before the age of thirty-six, Rehdiger managed to assemble an impressive collection of three hundred manuscripts of classical authors, six thousand books from diverse fields of learning, and a treasure trove of coins and mineral samples. He willed his collections to his younger brothers, Adam and Jacob, whom he also mandated to make those collections available to the general public. As a result, after decades of trying to overcome various stumbling blocks, the first public library in Wrocław (Breslau) came into being, named Bibliotheca Rhedigeriana (or Bibliotheca Rehdigeriana) to commemorate its originator and benefactor. The library was located in the so-called Auditorium Theologicum at Saint Elizabeth’s Church and was officially opened on 4 October 1661 (although Rehdiger’s collections had already been deposited there in 1589). Wrocław municipal authorities vowed never to divide them—any subsequent donations adjoining the library would lose their original names and be considered part of the Rhedigeriana. This was exactly what happened to a collection called Sartoriana, which included five manuscripts and 399 music prints, mostly Italian, from between 1606 and 1655. Traditionally, it has been associated with Daniel Sartorius (1612–1671), even though a significant part in creating that collection also could have been played by Ambrosius Profe (1589–1661), who was active in Wrocław and the nearby town of Jawor. Sartorius himself was a student of Saint Elisabeth School (Elisabetanum) in Wrocław between 1628 and 1630 and then went on to teach there from 1646 until 1667 (possibly longer, until 1670). Although there are no indications of any formal music-related posts he might have been appointed to, many documents (e.g., the epicedia written after his passing) point to his profound interest in music and the liberal arts. Sartoriana includes music manuscripts and many addenda to printed works written in Sartorius’s hand, which strongly suggest that the collection was used for musical practice, perhaps during private celebrations among Wrocław’s intellectual elite, such as the events hosted by the rector of Elisabetanum, Elias Maior (1587–1669), attended not only by Sartorius but also by Profe (Maior’s brother-in-law through his sister Maria) and numerous Silesian musicians. Sartoriana has a clear erudite flavor, and the collection forms a surprisingly coherent and well-rounded whole. Ninety percent of the prints originated from the Venice publishing houses of Alessandro and Giacomo Vincenti and Bartolomeo and Francesco Magni, [End Page 214] while the remaining works were printed in other Italian cities (Bologna, Florence, Rome, and Naples) or German and Austrian cities (Dresden, Frankfurt am Main, Freiberg, Ingolstadt, Leipzig, Ravensburg, and Innsbruck). The predominance of pieces in the seconda pratica is striking, which makes plausible an assumption that an interest in the new Italian style informed the selection of titles to add to the collection. An overwhelming majority of Sartoriana are works by a single composer, with only 5 percent being anthologies, which could speak to the musical maturity of the collectors. The collection includes numerous prints with pieces by Alessandro Grandi (20), Maurizio Cazzati (16), Orazio Tarditi (15), Ignazio Donati (14), Galeazzo Sabbatini (12), Giovanni Antonio Rigatti (11), and Giovanni Rovetta (11), but also by Claudio Monteverdi (9), Tarquinio Merula (7), Giovanni Legrenzi (7), and many others. Catholic religious music is amply represented in the collection through multiple and diverse arrangements of the Liturgy of the Hours, Masses, and church concertos. Numerous examples of madrigals and dramatic as well as purely instrumental music (e.g., canzonas, sonatas, fantasias, and dances) can also be found there. Sartoriana is thus an erudite compilation representative of the musical culture of Italy and could well have served teaching purposes, although the reason behind assembling it cannot be established with any certainty. Last but not least, a lion’s share of...

Melodia and the “Disposition of the Soul”

In 1607 Claudio Monteverdi’s younger brother, Giulio Cesare, published his Dichiaratione, arguably the most significant document of the famous and influential polemic known as the Artusi-Monteverdi controversy. He there attempted to rebut Giovanni Maria Artusi’s criticism of the technical “licenses”—especially with regard to dissonance treatment—that the great composer had sought to justify as essential elements of the new approach to text setting that he called the seconda pratica. In support of his argument, Giulio Cesare quotes passages from Plato’s Republic in order to claim the great philosopher’s authority for his brother’s revolutionary musical poetics. As I show in this study, the Platonic pronouncements concerning what the Monteverdis call melodia, that is, song (melos), provide Giulio Cesare with virtually the whole of his implicit argument for the artistic validity of Claudio’s subversive compositional practices. The article’s principal aim, however, is to demonstrate that Giulio Cesare exploits a lexical peculiarity in Ficino’s Latin translation of the Republic to misrepresent Plato’s thought on a point of great importance to the philosopher: the power of song to influence a people’s ēthos, their ethical or moral character. Ficino’s idiosyncratic rendering in the crucial passage of ēthos tēs psychēs as affectio animi (“affection of the soul”) enables, and indeed invites, Giulio Cesare to elide the true object of Plato’s concern and instead implicitly associate the philosopher’s dicta regarding the ethical force of melos with what the Dichiaratione identifies as the goal of the seconda pratica: “moving the affections of the soul.”

Lute and theorbo toccatas of seicento Italy: the historical significance of a sidelined repertory

Abstract A survey of the extant toccatas in the 17th-century Italian lute and theorbo repertories reveals that the toccata emerged as an important genre for these instruments in the early Baroque. The assumption that the toccata was primarily a keyboard genre has, however, meant that lute and theorbo toccatas have received little scholarly attention to date. Like the toccatas in the keyboard repertory, the lute and theorbo works in various printed and manuscript sources show the emergence of idiomatic instrumental music that was increasingly freed from vocal style and from contrapuntal traditions. Some lute and theorbo toccatas also reveal how instrumental composers working in different milieus grappled with the expressive possibilities of the new musical language of the seconda pratica. This article considers various musical and contextual aspects of the lute and theorbo toccatas in order to argue that this rich repertory not only deserves more prominence within a representative history of the toccata genre in particular, but also has much to contribute to musical and social studies of the 17th century in general.

Sangallo, Vignola, Palladio y la«Accademia de lo Studio de l’Architettura» romana.

Bernd Kulawik is a trained marine engineer who studied physics, musicology and philosophy at the Technical Universities of Dresden and Berlin. MA thesis in 1996 about Monteverdi’s «Seconda Pratica». PhD in 2002 with a dissertation about drawings in the Berlin «Codex Destailleur D» for Antonio da Sangallo the Younger’s last project for St. Peter’s in Rome. Since 1988 he worked in research libraries and institutes in Berlin, Rome, Berne, Einsiedeln and Zurich, mostly as developer for database projects. Since 2013 he could take up his research about the study of ancient architecture in Renaissance Rome which led to the rediscovery of the forgotten «Accademia de lo Studio de l’Architettura». This academy almost completely realised Claudio Tolomei’s ambitious program from 1542 formerly believed to be unrealisable. Other research interests are the history of philosophy, Renaissance music and the epistemic and technical preconditions as well as long-time perspectives of the Digital Humanities.

Review: Cipriano de Rore: New Perspectives on His Life and Music, edited by Jessie Ann Owens and Katelijne Schiltz

Book Review| December 01 2019 Review: Cipriano de Rore: New Perspectives on His Life and Music, edited by Jessie Ann Owens and Katelijne Schiltz Cipriano de Rore: New Perspectives on His Life and Music, edited by Jessie Ann Owens and Katelijne Schiltz. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2016. 507 pp. William Peter Mahrt William Peter Mahrt WILLIAM PETER MAHRT is Associate Professor in the Department of Music at Stanford University, where he teaches medieval and Renaissance music. His scholarship principally concerns music and liturgy, and music and poetry. He directs a Renaissance concert choir and a liturgical choir that sings chant and polyphony. He is president of the Church Music Association of America and editor of its journal Sacred Music. His book The Musical Shape of the Liturgy (Church Music Association of America) appeared in 2012. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the American Musicological Society (2019) 72 (3): 871–875. https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2019.72.3.871 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation William Peter Mahrt; Review: Cipriano de Rore: New Perspectives on His Life and Music, edited by Jessie Ann Owens and Katelijne Schiltz. Journal of the American Musicological Society 1 December 2019; 72 (3): 871–875. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2019.72.3.871 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the American Musicological Society Search Cipriano de Rore began his career following the styles of Arcadelt, Verdelot, and Willaert. In the space of just over twenty years, he established a reputation of innovation such that Monteverdi's brother could later call him “the founder of the seconda pratica.”1 His late works were imitated by his most significant successors, so that the status of the madrigal as the most outstanding innovative genre of the late Renaissance stems principally from him. The five-hundredth anniversary of his birth (1515 or 1516) was the occasion of the monumental volume of fundamental studies under review, which cast new light on his work and its significance. This lavish publication includes sixty-three musical examples and six scores of complete works; thirty-four photographic figures, including twenty-three full-color reproductions of Hans Mielich's illuminations; and a striking cover that features Mielich's portrait of De Rore. The essays provide important biographical information on his courtly... You do not currently have access to this content.

Monteverdi’s lamenti and lettere amorose and the pre-existing art of declamation

« Should the interpretation of Monteverdi’s lamenti and lettere amorose be closer to the pre-existing art of declamation? » Nowadays, Monteverdi has become so sacred to the Early musician, that we are afraid of disturbing his art in our interpretation of his written down musical lines. So we stick to what is written, respecting every pitch, every note value, and God forbid we change the tactus! For a lot of Monteverdi’s music, this is a respectable approach. However, when it comes to the interpretation of his lamentations (lamenti) and love letters (lettere amorose), one asks themselves whether it should perhaps be done in a more declamative way. These two genres are composed in the stile recitativo and carry so much unrepeated text that it seems almost improbable that one should approach these compositions from the notes rather than from the poetry. If the seconda pratica is the beginning reign of the text over the harmony in the composition process, then why not adopt this same concept in the interpretation process? Throughout this research, I will first observe the historical context of these two genres and their connections with the world of the Commedia dell’Arte. I will then discuss the very delicate question of the tactus. And finally, I will attempt to interpret a couple of Monteverdi’s compositions, basing myself on the declamation skills of a Commedia dell’Arte specialist with whom I worked closely.

Review: Curious and Modern Inventions: Instrumental Music as Discovery in Galileo's Italy, by Rebecca Cypess

Curious and Modern Inventions: Instrumental Music as Discovery in Galileo's Italy , by Rebecca Cypess. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. xxi, 307 pp. The emergence at the end of the sixteenth century of new ways of thinking about and making music—whether or not self-consciously styled seconda pratica or stile moderno —has generated a long and distinguished historiography that focuses largely on the debate between Giovanni Maria Artusi and Claudio Monteverdi over counterpoint. The focus was then, as it is now, on vocal music, its emphasis on text-setting reflecting the humanistic bias of those late sixteenth-century writers who, following classical precedents, regarded instrumental music as mere entertainment. As a result, early modern instrumental music was not the subject of much discussion, and has remained largely secondary even in modern scholarship. The appearance of the ensemble sonata, with its close ties to developing idiomatic instrumental technique, and the increasing importance of solo repertories for lute, harpsichord, and organ have been studied as virtuosic genres whose growing aesthetic ambitions could be measured by their borrowings from the more expressive vocal genres, such as cantatas, operas, and madrigals. Part of the problem, clearly articulated by such writers as Vincenzo Galilei, was class: vocal music was composed by trained contrapuntists, real “composers,” whereas instrumental music resulted from the improvisations of practicing virtuosos, technically gifted but lacking foundational training. Recent scholarship, however, has begun to look more deeply at the connections between instrumental music and the culture that produced it, revealing the ways in which untexted music carved out …

Looking Forward, Looking Back: Reconsidering the Study of J. S. Bach's Chorales in the Undergraduate Curriculum

The music of J. S. Bach has a long history in the instruction of harmony and counterpoint. His vocal chorales, in particular, are regarded as the gold standard in the study of four-part writing and harmony. While the medium of chorale writing masterfully illustrates Bach's approach to harmonizing hymn tunes, it presents myriad challenges to students. The modal tradition of the chorales, originating from the stile antico of the prima pratica, combined with their modern harmonic tonal language from the seconda pratica, befuddles even the keenest of admirers. Contributing to their difficult harmonic nature, Bach's manner of writing chorales suggests, at times, a greater latitude toward counterpoint principles than is found in current textbooks. In this article, I wish to indulge in a reexamination of Bach's chorales as a pedagogical resource, focusing on the undergraduate curriculum in the United States.

Monteverdi, Marino and the aesthetic of meraviglia

In his influential book, Monteverdi and the end of the Renaissance (1987), Gary Tomlinson argued that Monteverdi’s fidelity to the integrity of the poetry he set to music marked him as one of the last proponents of Renaissance Humanism. With the seconda pratica, the composer proved himself to be the most astute musical interpreter of Italian poetry, and the master of matching musical technique to poetic gesture. But following his introduction to the sensual poetry of Giambattista Marino (1569–1625)—often called ‘the poet of the marvellous’—Monteverdi did not always respect the formal integrity of his texts. Though it is generally agreed that the appeal of Marinist meraviglia prompted a change in Monteverdi’s compositional approach after c.1614, the way in which the composer engaged this new aesthetic in music has not been fully explained. In order to come to a nuanced understanding of the composer’s late style, this essay reconsiders how the traditional view of Monteverdi—the singularly perceptive interpreter of literature and the creator of the seconda pratica—can be reconciled with his vastly different approach to poetry and music in his settings of Marino, an approach based on contrast rather than resemblance.

Beyond Drama: Monteverdi, Marino, and the Sixth Book of Madrigals (1614)

Monteverdi's Il sesto libro de madrigali a cinque voci (1614) is often viewed as an outlier in his secular output. His Fourth and Fifth Books (1603, 1605) were firmly embroiled in the controversy with Artusi over the seconda pratica, while his Seventh (1619) sees him shifting style in favor of the new trends that were starting to dominate music in early seventeenth-century Italy: the Sixth Book falls between the cracks. But it also suffers—in modern eyes, at least—for the fact that it reflects the composer's first encounters with the poetry of Giambattista Marino, marking what many see as the start of a fundamental reorientation, if not downward spiral, in his secular vocal music. The problems are exposed by one of the Marino settings in the Sixth Book, “Batto, qui pianse Ergasto: ecco la riva,” in which an unnamed speaker tells Batto how Ergasto has been abandoned by Clori. The text has often been misunderstood. Uncovering the sources for the story—and the literary identities of Batto, Ergasto, and Clori—forces a new reading of the poetry and more particularly of Monteverdi's music. It also answers some profound questions in terms of how best to address issues of narration and representation, and of diegesis and mimesis, in this complex repertory.

Alfonso Fontanelli’s Cadences and the Seconda Pratica

In his brilliant studies and accurate editions Anthony Newcomb has shown Alfonso Fontanelli’s contributions to the definition of “the new Ferrarese style of the 1590s” and, therefore, to the birth of the seconda pratica. My article focuses on a specific aspect of Fontanelli’s polyphonic writing: the handling of cadences for not only syntactical and tonally structural but also expressive purposes. The literary-musical analyses of some of the most representative settings published in Fontanelli’s two books of madrigals (1595 and 1604)—including masterpieces such as “Tu miri, o vago ed amoroso fiore” (Anonymous), “Io piango, ed ella il volto” (Petrarca), “Lasso, non odo più Filli mia cara” (Anonymous), and “Dovrò dunque morire” (Rinuccini)—shows, above all, the unusually wide range of Fontanelli’s cadential palette. He used not only traditional models (such as the perfect, authentic, Phrygian, and half cadences) but also a great variety of alternative solutions (including what Newcomb has named “evaporated” and “oblique” cadences) that are often so experimental and bold as to escape rigid classification. In the context of a basically chromatic, dissonant, harmonically restless, and tonally unfocused polyphonic flow such cadential variety seems to reflect Fontanelli’s intention not only to underscore the conceptual and emotional meanings represented in the verbal text but also to sharpen their large-scale affective contrasts. In these and other experimental traits of his “cadential style” Fontanelli further developed (possibly through the mediation of Jacques de Wert, and also under the influence of composers such as Luzzaschi and Gesualdo) those basic compositional techniques and exegetic principles that Cipriano de Rore, the real father of the seconda pratica, had already established in his later madrigals, and that Vincenzo Galilei, in turn, had neatly codified in his treatise on counterpoint (ca. 1588–1591).

Cerberus Barks in Vain: Poetic Asides in the Artusi–Monteverdi Controversy

The numerous documents associated with the controversy launched in 1600 by the Bolognese music theorist Giovanni Maria Artusi (1546–1613) against the madrigals of Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) have been well studied by scholars. But no one has yet engaged with the encomia included in the front and back matter of the printed books lying at the heart of the dispute: three sonnets (two by Vicenzo Maria Sandri and one by Mutio Manfredi) and a Latin carmen (by Erycius Puteanus) in the treatise L’Artusi, overo Delle imperfettioni della moderna musica (1600), and two madrigals by the poet and theologian Cherubino Ferrari in Monteverdi’s Il quinto libro de madrigali a cinque voci (1605). Although one might dismiss them as mere “occasional” poetry flattering Artusi, on the one hand, and Monteverdi, on the other, as well as their respective patrons, close reading suggests that these encomia represent attempts to claim the high ground not just on musical but also on philosophical and even religious terms. Ferrari’s praise of the composer finds a clear echo in Alessandro Striggio the Younger’s libretto for Monteverdi’s opera Orfeo (1607). All this provides an intriguing footnote, and perhaps something more, both to the controversy over the seconda pratica madrigal and to Orfeo in their broader Ferrarese and Mantuan contexts.

Keyboard Seconda Pratica in Transmission: The Engraved Toccata ottava of Frescobaldi — from Pen to Print

Previous articleNext article No AccessKeyboard Seconda Pratica in Transmission: The Engraved Toccata ottava of Frescobaldi — from Pen to PrintMichael EisenbergMichael Eisenberg Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America Volume 104, Number 4December 2010 Published for the Bibliographical Society of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/680972 Views: 57Total views on this site © 2010 by the Bibliographical Society of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

EROS AND THANATOS: A FICINIAN AND LAURENTIAN READING OF VERDELOT'S SÌ LIETA E GRATA MORTE

The literary origins of the Italian sixteenth-century madrigal, as well as the presumed inexpressive nature of the so-called prima pratica as compared with the seconda pratica, perhaps represent two of the most abused commonplaces of modern musical historiography. Most scholars still believe that the linguistic, rhetorical and stylistic principles codified by Petrarchist humanists such as Pietro Bembo directly stimulated the birth of the new literary-musical genre. Even more problematic is the attitude of those who extract the dichotomy prima/seconda pratica from its specific cultural context - the Artusi-Monteverdi controversy - and apply it to an extended historical period, largely covering the whole history of the madrigal itself.

Two Monteverdi Problems, and Why They Matter

A close examination of Monteverdi's problematic settings of two texts, "Zefiro torna, e di soavi accenti" (1632) and "Su, su, su pastorelli vezzosi" (1638, 1651), raises significant issues concerning his poetic sensitivities and also the status of his literary and musical sources. This further calls into question the modern reception of his agenda for the so called seconda pratica, for all its role as an integral part of the stories conventionally told of the composer.

The Platonic Agenda of Monteverdi's Seconda Pratica: A Case Study from the Eighth Book of Madrigals

Monteverdi's late works have often seemed difficult. As early as the madrigals of Book V, the elegant ease of the madrigals of Books III and IV, which are generally placed at the centre of the Monteverdi canon, may seem to have been jettisoned in favour of an over-ascetic, rationalist aesthetics. And commentators often find the compositions in Book VIII (1638) puzzlingly fragmented. This is particularly true of the 'warlike' pieces featuring what Monteverdi calls the genere concitato, which contain lengthy passages articulating chords of G or C major for bars on end. The clearly demarcated formal structure of the madrigals in this book is interpreted by Gary Tomlinson, in his book on Monteverdi, in terms of a new aesthetics, based on pictorial representation and influenced by the poet Marino:

The Perfections of Modern Music: Consecutive Fifths and Tonal Coherence in Monteverdi

According to Carl Dahlhaus,* Monteverdi is able to lay claim to the chord that is the most famous in Western music after the Tristan chord.' This is the socalled 'unprepared dominant seventh' that occurs within a few bars of the beginning of Monteverdi's best-known madrigal, 'Cruda Amarilli', from his Fifth Book of 1605 (Ex. la, b. 13). If this chord has indeed managed to defeat the rival claims of other famous chords Schoenberg's or Scriabin's, perhaps it has done so, as Dahlhaus has pointed out, because Baroque writers, beginning with Artusi,2 traditionally cited this piece to show how Monteverdi's irregular, expressive dissonance treatment differed from the strict style and thus to define Monteverdi's 'seconda pratica' (this was still being done, for example, in the little-known detailed analyses of Monteverdi madrigals by Padre Martini);3 and because the chord came to occupy an important position in nineteenth-century accounts of the rise of tonality. The passage in question (Ex. la) may conveniently illustrate Monteverdi's typical dissonance treatment, which in this instance is not very complicated; the voice leading is indicated in Ex. lb. An F passing note between G and E (b. 13) produces a G-F-E third-progression, which doubles the 3-2-1 E-D-C descent (inner voice, bs 11-14) in tenths: the latter descent governs the cadence onto C. Such doublings in tenths are typical of the two upper voices in the textures of this period, which are generally three-voice in essence. The E-D-C descent has an irregular interpolated F (b. 13, Quinto) as a cambiata-type dissonance, which is also doubled in tenths, producing a leap in the top voice directly from an unprepared ninth (Canto, b.13, the A) to an unprepared seventh (the F in the same bar), which represents the famous 'dominant seventh' (labelled in Ex. la). Dissonance structures do not, however, provide a satisfactory basis for explicating the large-scale aspects of Monteverdi's compositions. They mostly introduce affective contrast, often taking individual words or phrases of the text