Teaching Petrarch through music

“Another Petrarch”: Teaching Petrarch through Music.
Marc Vanscheeuwijck

“Io so forsi parlare qual Musico, ma non armonizzare. Diremo dunque, secondo nostra sembianza, che il Marenzio (per parlar de’ moderni) sia un’altro Petrarca.”

[I can perhaps speak as a musician, though I cannot compose. We shall say then, in our view, that Marenzio (among the moderns) is another Petrarch].
Torquato Tasso, in Alessandro Guarini’s dialogue Il Farnetico savio, overo il Tasso (Bizzarini 242).

That Petrarch’s poetry is closely related to music is no news to anyone. Although the poet probably never meant his verse to be set to music, dozens of composers set most poems from Petrarca’s Canzoniere, predominantly in the musical genre of the polyphonic madrigal, during the period 1520-1630.1 Still, when music historians teach the madrigal, they most often address an audience of music majors and they concentrate their efforts, first, on a quick demonstration of how composers “translate” the poetry into music, and second, on the development of the genre throughout the late Renaissance. Most literary historians on the other hand limit themselves to illustrating a few poems by playing a musical setting of, say, Zefiro torna (Canzoniere 310), by Luca Marenzio or Claudio Monteverdi, confessing an inability to go any deeper into the music than pointing out a few general ways in which meaning and expression are conveyed in the piece.
I propose to offer some suggestions for how the non-musicologist instructor can approach sixteenth-century madrigals on Petrarch’s poems in presenting them to a non-musically specialized audience. The main challenge is that I cannot here provide either score or recorded examples to demonstrate how I proceed. However, since the most obvious way to approach a discussion of such musical settings is through sound examples, I will refer to specific pieces in my comments and provide a basic discography in appendix. Following short historical considerations and a brief discussion of some recent controversies concerning the madrigal in comparison with other popular musical genres in sixteenth-century Italy, I will present some general listening techniques, using a recorded example. Finally, through the use of two short readings that instructors should assign before the presentation (for discussion purposes), I will bring the concept of listening to musical settings of Petrarch’s poems back to the broader ideas of Petrarchism and Bembism.2

Background on the madrigal.
A musical genre flourishing from c.1520 to c.1630 in Italy, the madrigal can be defined as a polyphonic secular composition written on any poetic text, for four or five unaccompanied solo voices. Its musical aim is to express as closely as possible the words and the general meaning of the text. For several decades after the publication of Alfred Einstein’s three-volume The Italian Madrigal in 1949, the commonly accepted view on the development of the genre emerged from his assertion that:

The genesis [of the madrigal] is known: the transformation of the frottola, from a 
accompanied song with a supporting bass and two inner voices serving as “fillers” 
into a motet-like polyphonic construction with four parts of equal importance, can 
be followed as easily as the transformation of a chrysalis into a butterfly. (I: 121)

Most of what Einstein asserts here is debatable, but the most problematic aspect of his claim is that, to judge solely by printed materials, the frottola3 ceased to exist around 1520 and that the madrigal began its development ten years later, leaving a gap which he calls an “artistic pause.” Einstein and others also thought that the Petrarchist (and Bembist) movement was responsible for the poetic choices composers made in creating their madrigals. A new taste for more serious texts and free-verse forms set for unaccompanied voices in a more complex polyphonic texture with an increased equality between the parts thus led to the creation of the madrigal. Such a type of more learned polyphony called for the compositional techniques introduced in Italy by the Oltremontani, the composers from the Low Countries, Germany, and France who established themselves in the Italian courts throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (e.g. Philippe Verdelot, Jacob Arcadelt, Adrian Willaert, and later Cipriano de Rore, Giaches De Wert, etc.). 
Fenlon and Haar were the first musicologists to challenge this theory, on the basis of both a reconsideration of the cultural factors explored by Einstein, and their study of frottole and madrigals transmitted not in printed sources but in manuscripts. They found that in the manuscript traditions, frottole continued to be produced into the early 1530s, and madrigals were already circulating before 1520, showing that the genres actually overlapped by at least a decade. Of great importance was also the fact that both genres rarely appeared in the same manuscripts: frottole and madrigals overlapped chronologically, but neither geographically, nor in musical or poetic style. The musical madrigal then became predominantly a genre cultivated in the Medici-dominated Florentine and Roman papal courts, whereas the various North-Italian courts continued to enjoy frottole. When Isabella d’Este, one of the great patronesses of such frottole, and her Mantuan court lost interest in the genre (during the 1520s) in favor of the poetry of the more academic Petrarchists, the madrigal began to be a favorite genre not only in Mantua, but also in the other North-Italian courts (Fenlon & Haar 5-10). The development from frottola into madrigal is now no longer generally accepted as plausible, although it still is a point of controversy. 
My proposed readings for the students oppose two important poles in this discussion: Iain Fenlon and James Haar introduce their monograph with a more subtle and elaborate description of what I have just summarized, whereas Dean Mace further develops Einstein’s ideas, restricting the poetic choices of the madrigal composers from a Petrarchist to a Bembist interest. Mace’s main thesis is that:

Since the madrigal cannot be explained logically as a “natural” development in 
the history of music, and since the use of polyphony with secular amorous verse 
has seemed an “aberration” to the principal historian of this form, does it not seem 
reasonable to understand the madrigal as the response of musicians to the new 
Bembistic reading of Petrarch? (74)

Listening to madrigals.
At this point, most students are not yet ready to discuss these opposing views. Having introduced the problem, I proceed to illustrate a sixteenth-century method for listening to madrigals, which differs fundamentally from the way we listen to madrigals today. We often hear madrigals sung by choirs, whereas the genre was fundamentally designed for solo performance (i.e. one voice per part), or we get to enjoy a two-hour concert with twelve to twenty compositions, in which one madrigal after another is performed. Having heard each piece once—and we are lucky if the original text (not just a translation) is provided in the program—we are then either looking at that text, missing many of the subtleties expressed in the music, or we enjoy the beauty of the sounds, not realizing how creative the composer has been in trying to express all the details in the poetry. If we manage to concentrate on both aspects of the composition, knowing that we will hear it only once, we end up either completely exhausted from the experience, or frustrated with our inability to concentrate intensely for two hours. This is not the way madrigals were received in their original context.
Before the seventeenth century, when madrigals began to be a genre performed by virtuoso professional performers, they were often referred to as madrigali da tavolino [table madrigals]. In the gatherings of the various academies of litterati in Italy, poets, philosophers, composers, and other intellectuals often organized sessions in which various musical settings (by member composers) of one given poetic text would be compared for effectiveness in expressing the meaning of the words. After a discussion of the poetic text itself, four or five members of the assembly would sing one madrigal two or three times, so all could get well acquainted with the way the composer set the text (composite scores were not available, as singers sang from part books containing only one vocal line each). Subsequently, they discussed the compositional techniques used, and the piece was performed again, and further scrutinized. The singer-members of the group would then present another musical setting of the same text, and the same procedure was observed again. In short, the academicians could easily spend a three- or four-hour session listening in depth to and discussing no more than two or three madrigals. 
I try to do this with my non-music students, but within an eighty-minute class session. Having chosen a short madrigal by Tomaso Cimello (c.1500-c.1580) on the commiato of Petrarca’s Canzone XXII (Canzoniere 268: lines 78-82), I begin with a short analysis of the text itself, isolating the most expressive or striking words.
Fuggi ’l sereno e ’l verde,
non t’appressare ove sia riso o canto,
canzon mia, no, ma pianto;
non fa per te di star fra gente allegra,
vedova, sconsolata, in veste negra.
[Flee the clear sky and greenery, 
do not approach where there is laughter and singing, 
my song, no, but where there is weeping; 
it is not fitting for you to be among cheerful people, 
disconsolate widow in black garments].4
Before listening to the musical rendition, I ask the group how they imagine a composer could express certain words musically. If they lack the verbal tools to describe compositional techniques, I offer some suggestions. For example, the verb fuggire [to flee] could be expressed by fast upward or downward scales, or by the musical device of fuga [fugue], in which the voices begin in staggered sequence and imitate each other’s melodies in quick succession. I ask how sereno [serene] and verde [green] could be rendered in music, particularly when opposed to pianto [weeping]. Even untrained listeners might come up with the contrast between consonant vs. dissonant harmonies (e.g. a wrenching sound on pianto). The last two lines of the stanza directly address the “disconsolate widow” admonitorily: “do not dwell among cheerful people!” An effective way to approach this in music that, up to this point has been predominantly imitative, is by having all the voices join and sing with equal rhythms, thus creating a homophonic or purely chordal texture. The contrast is strong enough to make these lines sound like an authoritative warning. 
I give the students a few hints of this kind, and ask them to try to explain what strikes them most and what happens musically on specific words. I then play the entire madrigal—using the compact disc In Morte di Madonna Laura performed by the Huelgas Ensemble (and I invite the reader to get the recording and to follow along)—while they see the text. After briefly talking about the general mood of the music (which is understandably fairly dark and sad in this case) I walk the listeners through the broader structure of the piece: lines 1-3 are only sung once, with a slight cadence (the musical equivalent of a comma or period in a text) at the end of line 1, a stronger cadence at the conclusion of line 2, a change of mood in line 3, again followed by a cadence. However, in moving to line 4, the composer connects the text swiftly, but he has the singers repeat that line, and the final line is sung three times. In doing so, Tomaso Cimello has clearly respected the poetic structure, but at the same time clarified with musical means (through harmony, cadential formulas, and simple repetition) what in his view should be emphasized in the text. In other words, we already hear, just after one listening, how the music forces interpretation of the short verse in one particular direction. 
In a second listening I look at the text again, glossing what the composer does, and I pause the recording after each line or even half line, calling the students’ attention to a few simple compositional techniques, based entirely on what they hear (no score involved). Fuggire is indeed expressed through quick imitation (fugue) in the voices, but all singers come together in a consonant cadence on verde. The second line, non t’appressare [do not approach] is imitative again, but the general pitch is higher, drawing greater attention from the listeners after the fairly neutral exordium. The voices use a closer imitation, expressing appressare, and the first little melisma (melodic ornament) occurs appropriately on the word canto [singing]. After a cadence on a major chord (expressing a happier mood), the contrast with the minor key that follows is quite strong, suggesting that the riso o canto [laughter or singing] is not the place to be for this widowed song, but pianto. The composer thus introduces what is to follow through a minor-key harmony, and then produces a wrenching dissonance and elongated note values on pianto itself. If time allows, I play this part of the madrigal again as a summary before moving on to the second section, in which the admonition is now direct, and set in a chordal texture. Such a musical rhetorical figure (noema) is a conventional musical way to call the listeners’ attention to authority, and Cimello uses it with circumspection and efficiency. The importance of the warning is expressed in the repetition of the line, but Cimello also emphasizes the character of allegra [cheerful] in his use of dotted (almost dance-like) rhythms. A new contrast comes as vedova sconsolata [disconsolate widow] is set on long notes in opposition to the quick syllabic setting of the previous line. The darkness of the widow’s garments is expressed again in the minor-key harmony, long note values (i.e. slow rhythms), low pitches, and in the three iterations of the line, the last of which slows the overall rhythm down even more. In this particular performance the Huelgas Ensemble then repeats the entire short madrigal, in which the soprano adds a few very tasteful improvised ornaments on canto and on gente allegra [cheerful people] thus helping to create a stronger contrast to what follows. The repetition also provides an uninterrupted listening through which the students can put all the information the have received together. 
In my experience a close listening of this sort makes listeners much more aware of what can happen in music, and how effectively a composer can actually offer his own interpretation of a poem through his compositional choices. After this introductory listening exercise, one can pick another madrigal or better even, two different musical settings for comparative listening: e.g., Zefiro torna e’l bel tempo rimena (Luca Marenzio and Claudio Monteverdi); I’ vo piangendo i miei passati tempi (Andrea Rota and Giaches De Wert); or Solo et pensoso i più deserti campi (Marenzio and Giaches De Wert or Orlandus Lassus). In taking the same approach to text and musical setting as I did for Tomaso Cimello’s Fuggi ’l sereno, teachers will be impressed at how much more the listeners will now hear in the madrigal.
Conclusion.
Having achieved this, we can return to our readings by Fenlon and Haar and Mace for further discussion of Petrarchism and Bembism, approaching Bembo’s doctrine of propriety and its accomplishment in vernacular poetry by use of the qualities of gravità [gravitas] and piacevolezza [pleasing quality] (Mace 69-70), addressing the question of how this ‘propriety’ can be achieved through a musical setting of a poem. In sum, if we accept Mace’s idea that the development of the musical madrigal was a result of a response to Bembo’s theories (Fenlon & Haar 11), we still encounter the problem that Bembism flourished primarily in Venice, under the patronage of Domenico Venier, whereas, as we have seen, the madrigal developed first in Florence and Rome, reaching the North-Italian courts only after the cultivation of the frottola had been abandoned. 
As it happens however, musical genres rarely develop as the result of one or two major influences, but rather of a variety of tendencies. Certainly the Petrarchist movement was quite important, as Bembism would be a decade later. However, these aspects should be combined with the fact that more Oltremontani immigrated into Italy at the time, thus introducing a taste for more complex polyphony; that Adrian Willaert (Maestro di Cappella at San Marco in Venice from 1528 to 1562) was gradually establishing Venice as one of the most important musical centers in Italy; that the frottola and the chanson began to be perceived as too limited in their expression, yielding to freer forms (the madrigal) which allowed an increase in experimentation, particularly in expressing the text; that an interest in codifying new rules of composition (Zarlino) was growing, thus setting a basic theoretical framework inspiring composers to go beyond these rules (Monteverdi); and that strong cultural differences existed between the smaller North-Italian courts vs. the Duchy of Tuscany and the Papal States.
In conclusion, interweaving a literary historical discourse with heightened appreciation for musical settings of Petrarch’s poetry is in a way a Petrarchist act in its own right. We can teach students to identify and relish the devices and gestures composers used to communicate poems musically, and do so without the specialized language of musicological analysis by cuing them to listen actively, as sixteenth-century listeners did. We should not forget that musical settings of his poetry continue to be composed even today, thus offering an additional dimension to Petrarch that is often overlooked when teaching his poetry.


NOTES
For a fairly exhaustive list of musical settings of poems in Petrarca’s Canzoniere, see Carlo Culcasi’s Il Petrarca e la musica (135-186).
2 In order not to overload students with musically technical essays, I use Dean T. Mace’s 20-page article “Pietro Bembo and the Literary Origins of the Italian Madrigal,” and the short introduction to Iain Fenlon and James Haar’s The Italian madrigal in the early sixteenth century. Sources and interpretation (3-14).
3 The frottola is a fifteenth-century soprano-dominated syllabic polyphonic closed-form secular (dance-)song written on a variety of poetic forms, usually set for three or four vocal or instrumental parts, which flourished mainly in Florence and Rome. Important composers include Marco Cara and Bartolomeo Tromboncino.
4 Translation from Robert M. Durling’s Petrarch’s Lyric Poems (440-441).

APPENDIX
A FEW MADRIGALS ON PETRARCH’S POEMS 
Canzoniere 1 (Voi ch’ascoltate): Giaches De Wert (1561), Sigismondo d’India (solo madrigal 1618). Hoste da Reggio (1554), Claudio Monteverdi (1640).
Canzoniere 35 (Solo et pensoso): Orlandus Lassus (1555), Luca Marenzio (1599), Giaches De Wert (1581).
Canzoniere 106 (Nova angeletta): Hoste da Reggio (1554), Luca Marenzio (1585), Benedetto Pallavicino (1579).
Canzoniere 164 (Or che ’l ciel): Sigismondo d’India (solo madrigal 1618), Claudio Monteverdi (1638).
Canzoniere 267 (Oimè il bel viso): Hoste da Reggio (1547), Luca Marenzio (1582), Claudio Monteverdi (1614).
Canzoniere 310 (Zefiro torna): Luca Marenzio (1585), Claudio Monteverdi (1614).
Canzoniere 353 (Vago augelletto): Andrea Gabrieli (1566), Giovanni De Macque (1576), Claudio Monteverdi (1614), Stefano Rossetti (1560), Giaches De Wert (1588).
Canzoniere 365 (I’ vo piangendo): Andrea Gabrieli (1562 & 1587), Orlandus Lassus (1567), Padre F. Mauro de’ Servi (1547), Andrea Rota (1592), Giaches De Wert (1561).

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY
Alessandrini, Rinaldo. cond. Il sesto libro de madrigali (1614). By Claudio Monteverdi. Concerto Italiano. Arcana (A 66), 1992.
Alessandrini, Rinaldo. cond. Madrigali a quatro voci. Libro Primo (1585). By Luca Marenzio. Concerto Italiano. Opus 111 (OPS 30-117), 1994.
Jacobs, René. cond. Madrigaux à 5 et 6 voix. By Luca Marenzio. Concerto Vocale. Harmonia Mundi (HMA 1901065), 1988.
Junghänel, Conrad. cond. Selva Morale et Spirituale (1640). By Claudio Monteverdi. Cantus Cölln, Concerto Palatino. Harmonia Mundi (901718.20), 2001.
La Venexiana. Concerto: Settimo libro de madrigali (1619). By Claudio Monteverdi. Glossa (GCD 920904), 1998.
La Venexiana. Il nono libro de madrigali (1599). By Luca Marenzio. Glossa (GCD 920906), 1999.
Nevel, Paul van. cond. In Morte di Madonna Laura. Huelgas Ensemble. Sony Vivarte (SK 45942), 1991.


WORKS CITED
Bizzarini, Marco. Marenzio. La carriera di un musicista tra Rinascimento e Controriforma. Rodengo Saiano (Brescia): Comune di Coccaglio, Promozione Franciacorta, 1998.
Culcasi, Carlo. Il Petrarca e la musica. Firenze: Bemporad, 1911.
Durling, Robert M., trans. and ed. Petrarch’s Lyric Poems. The Rime Sparse and Other Lyrics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976. 
Einstein, Alfred. The Italian Madrigal. 3 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949.
Fenlon, Iain, and James Haar. The Italian madrigal in the early sixteenth century. Sources and interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. 
Guarini, Alessandro. Prose. Ferrara, 1611.
Mace, Dean T. “Pietro Bembo and the Literary Origins of the Italian Madrigal.” The Musical Quarterly 55 (1969): 65-86.