I
Our story has a direct connection with Chapter VII, where we spoke of the art of the Provençal troubadours. Though their influence was not felt in Italy till late in the twelfth century it bore a fruit as rich as it had in France. In the middle of the thirteenth a number of troubadours and jongleurs visited Frederick II at Milan, in the train of Raymon Berengar, Count of Provence. The Emperor extended his patronage to them, as did also Charles d’Anjou, the king of Naples. They became known among the people as uomini di corti, and ciarlatanti (because their chief theme was the exploits of Charlemagne), and the natives taught by them were called trovatori and giocolini. These soon cultivated native poetry in the Italian vernacular, the volgar poesia, which spread its influence to northern Italy as well and found representatives especially in Florence and Bologna. The thirteenth century records the names of Quittona d’Arezzo, Guido Guincelli and Jacopone da Todi, and upon the threshold of the fourteenth stands Dante (1265-1321), one of the greatest poets of all times, who with Petrarch (1304-1374) and Boccaccio (1313-1375) finally demonstrates the power of the Italian language as an artistic medium. In these three, Symonds says, ‘Italy recovered the consciousness of intellectual liberty.’ What is more to our purpose, they so clarified and amplified the Italian tongue that it became the vehicle for a national literature, in which were produced not only epics after the classic models, but also lyric gems in new and spontaneous forms, which would inspire the creation of melody.
Among these poetic forms we frequently meet with canzone and madrigals (then called mandriale, from Ital. mandra = hearth), which were evidently written to be sung. Their melodies, however, were no longer composed by the poets themselves but by a class of musicians characteristic of Italy during the Renaissance, the cantori a liuto, lutenists, who were essentially composers and singers, as distinguished from the trovatori, who were poets primarily. One of these cantori a liuto was Dante’s friend, Casella, whose name he has perpetuated in the Purgatorio.[99] The importance of the lutenists in this and succeeding periods of music calls for a brief explanation of their instrument. The lute was a plucked string instrument, somewhat resembling the guitar. Its origin was oriental. The favorite instrument of the Arabs, it reached Italy by way of Spain, and thence spread all over Europe. In the fifteenth to the seventeenth century it came to hold a place relatively as prominent as our pianoforte to-day—it was the household instrument par excellence and an important member of early orchestras. In shape the lute resembles the mandolin rather than the guitar, but it was made in various sizes, varieties, and ranges (chitarrone, theorbo, etc.). The number of strings was variable. Five pairs running across the fingerboard and an additional single one for the melody were fretted; the rest running outside were used only as open strings. The tunings varied at different periods, and, as in the case of the organ, a special kind of notation, or tablature, was used (cf. Vol. VIII, Chap. II).
It must not be supposed, however, that these lutenists were learned musicians in the sense of the contrapuntists who, at this same period, flourished in the Netherlands, and who had already begun to invade Italy. They were not familiar with the complicated musical science of the time. The ecclesiastical modes, mensural science, notation and its ramifications, ligatures, prolation and proportions, the theory of consonance and dissonance, the laws of voice progression, etc., all combined to form a science so formidable as to baffle all but those devoting their lives to its study. A boy put to school in childhood could achieve only in manhood the knowledge of a ‘cantor.’ As for composing, he would first have to be, as Kiesewetter says, a ‘doctor of counterpoint.’ The lutenists were none such; they were essentially dilettanti and hence their art, which was transmitted from ear to ear, has not been preserved to us. To gain a knowledge of the nature of their music we must turn to the more learned native musicians, who, we know, cultivated the same forms in the fourteenth century.
Here we meet with the most remarkable revelations. We will recall how music in its course of development under the guidance of the church ‘chose a path which led directly away from the solo style of the folk song or the song of the troubadours and into the realm of polyphonic imitation.’ It has been supposed, therefore, that the vocal solo had no place in the system and never appeared in the art music of the time. But recent investigators have unlocked for us a treasure of song by a school of Italian musicians of the early fourteenth century who perpetuated not only the solo style, but the solo song with instrumental accompaniment, which is the supposed ‘invention’ of the Florentine monodists of 1600! Fétis was the first to make known to the world the existence of the precious manuscript of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, dated 1375, which contains the specimens of these early Renaissance masters, among whom we should mention Jacopo da Bologna, Giovanni da Cascia (1329-1351), Francesco Landino (1325-1397) and Ghiradellus de Padua. Their worth was appreciated not only by Fétis who, in speaking of Giovanni da Cascia, says that ‘Guillaume de Machault, who was the most celebrated French musician of the same epoch, does not show greater ability,’[100] but also by other historians. Ambros says, ‘If their (the Italians’) works take an inferior position to that of the Netherlanders the reason is not lack of talent, but the fact that because of a disposition deeply rooted in the Italian nature and character, which later bore the richest fruits, the Italians were to develop certain sides of the art, before it had to be subjected to the indispensable school of contrapuntalism.’ But none of the historians were aware of the full significance of this music until Johannes Wolf’s[101] study of mensural notation appeared and until Hugo Riemann’s deductions[102] for the first time placed it in its true light. It is this school, which he characterizes as the Italian Ars nova, whose influence upon the French Ars nova and its chanson literature we have already emphasized.
The centre of this art is Florence, which Fétis calls ‘the cradle of modern music.’ Its principal representative is Francesco Landino, mentioned above. The facts of his life are brief. He was born in Florence about 1325, the son of a painter of some reputation. Having lost his sight in his youth, he sought consolation in the study of music. He learned to play all the instruments then in vogue and, it is said, even invented others. But it was his ability on the organ that made him famous. In this he surpassed his contemporaries to such an extent that he was aptly styled Francesco degli organi. The chief musicians of his time united to bestow upon him a laurel wreath, with which the king of Cyprus crowned him in Venice. He died in his native city in 1390.
What is true of his music applies in a great measure to that of his contemporaries—those named above and a number of others. The three principal forms into which their compositions are cast are the caccia, the ballata and the madrigal. The caccia is the one indigenous form of the three, being of truly Tuscan origin. It is a canon for two voices, with or without a third as bass foundation, which does not participate in the canon (like the drone bass of ‘Sumer is i-cumen in’). As its name implies (caccia = chase) it is a hunting song, though later it is applied to the humorous description of a market scene. The ballata is clearly derived from the dance songs of the troubadours. Its form as cultivated by the Florentines shows at the beginning a phrase whose text and melody serve as a chorus refrain (ripresa). This is followed by a middle section which is repeated (piedi) over a different text; then the opening section is again taken up with fresh text as a volta, after which it is repeated as refrain. Often there are a number of strophes (copla) which are alike except for the texts of the piedi.
The madrigal, too, originated in Provence, being derived from the pastourelle. While the latter, however, recounts amorous adventures with rural belles, the madrigal poems of Dante and his successors have for their subject the contemplation of the beauties of nature, with a whimsical, philosophical or sentimental conclusion. Its musical form is similar to the ballad and rondeau; it is divided into two parts with repeats and its melodic phrases are usually not of greater length than would be required for about five text lines. We shall see later a new development of the madrigal in the polyphonic a capella style, which became significant for the development of opera; the present form is, however, entirely monodic and accompanied.
Herein indeed lies the most remarkable feature of these early forms of secular music; in that they present a definitely thought-out combination of vocal and instrumental music, whose existence at this period was until recently unsuspected. But the latest research has definitely shown that the doubtful melismatic figures without words which precede and follow the individual phrases are nothing but instrumental preludes, interludes and postludes. Riemann[103] calls attention to the surprisingly definite harmonic basis of these songs; which seems far in advance of diaphony, faux-bourdon and all the primitive forms of polyphony. There is a remarkably varied combination of intervals—octaves, sixths, fifths, thirds, also sevenths and ninths used in the nature of passing notes or over a pedal—foreshadowing the manner of a much later day. Consecutive fifths and octaves occur rarely, and when they do are used in a way which is not very objectionable even to modern ears. A strictly modal character is avoided by the frequent use of chromatics. ‘Indeed this Florentine “ars nova” of the fourteenth century has no connection with the laborious attempts of the Paris school. This is evident from the fact that it does not build “motets” upon a tuneless tenor, or construct rondeaux and “conducts” in the clumsy manner of the organum, but that it appears with entirely new fundamental forms, and with such a certainty and natural freshness, that a theoretical process of creation seems absolutely out of the question. No, this Florentine New Art is a genuine, indigenous flower of Italian genius. If we nevertheless insist upon tracing its roots beyond the rich soil of Tuscan literature, we can only find it in the troubadour poetry of Provence.’[104]
According to our authority, there took place in the second half of the fourteenth century an active exchange of the achievements between the Florentines and the Paris school, in which France took from Italy a greater rhythmic variety, while Italy gained from France the manner of writing over a faux-bourdon foundation, the result being a decided detriment to the Florentine school, which lost much of its freedom in the invention of independent voices, though it gained in harmonic purity, while of course the consecutive octaves and fifths naturally disappear entirely. Examples of madrigals, cacci, etc., of the Florentine school may be examined in Johannes Wolf’s Geschichte der Mensuralnotation. A notable specimen by Giovanni da Cascia is ‘The White Peacock,’ quoted by Riemann (I²). The cantori a liuto, who flourished probably throughout the fifteenth century, performed, no doubt, the compositions of these masters, no less than their own inventions and the popular songs of the day, the frottole, the canzone, villanesche and villanelle, which resounded through the streets and the campagna of Renaissance Italy.