Embelishment Italian Tabulations

Embellishment in Early Sixteenth-Century Italian IntabulationsAuthor(s): Howard Mayer BrownSource: Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 100 (1973 - 1974), pp. 49-83Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Royal Musical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/766176 .Accessed: 31/05/2011 13:47

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Embellishment in early Sixteenth-Century

Italian Intabulations

HOWARD MAYER BROWN

WE ARE relatively well informed about both the theory and the practice of embellishing late sixteenth-century music. Treatises by Bassano, Bovicelli, Conforto, Dalla Casa, Rogniono and others supply numerous and elaborate decorative formulas which were intended to be superimposed upon the unadorned melodic lines of madrigals, chansons, and even motets by Cipriano da Rore, Alessandro Striggio, Philippe de Monte, Andrea Gabrieli, the 'inviolable' Palestrina, and their contemporaries. Most of the treatises offer as well examples of actual music embellished in this

way so that we can know for certain how virtuoso soloists, both vocal and instrumental, transformed apparently sober

polyphonic music into accompanied monodies filled with fioriture and the most extravagant virtuoso display.' The theoretical view of the performer's role in the late sixteenth

century is confirmed by a vast amount of lute and keyboard music in which the vocal models are sometimes virtually buried under an avalanche of divisions and graces. The notorious German Colourists have been singled out for

special attention through musicological caprice, although the decorative verbosity of their keyboard music is by no means

For a broader discussion of improvised ornamentation in the Renaissance, see Max Kuhn, Die Verzierungs-Kunst in der Gesangs-Musik des 16.-17. Jahrhunderts (I535-I650), Leipzig, 1902, and Imogene Horsley, 'Improv- ised Embellishment in the Performance of Renaissance Polyphonic Music', Journal of the American Musicological Society, iv (I95I), 3-I9. A complete bibliography of treatises on embellishment and collections of embellished compositions from 1535 to I688 can be found in Ernst T. Ferand, 'Didactic Embellishment Literature in the Late Renaissance: A Survey of Sources', Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music: A Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese, ed. Jan La Rue, New York, I966, pp. 154-72, which inc!udes alphabetical lists of composers and individual works represented in the manuals. Selected examples of decorated compositions can be found in Die Improvisation, ed. Ferand (Das Musikwerk, xii), Cologne, I956. The principles formulated in the various treatises of the late sixteenth century are discussed in Howard Mayer Brown, Embellishing Sixteenth-Century Music, London, 1975.

49

EMBELLISHMENT IN ITALIAN INTABULATIONS

unusual in an age of highly professional soloists, eager to show off their skill and dexterity, albeit at the expense of the doubtless despairing composer's original intentions.2 We are even

relatively well informed about how singers and instrumentalists added somewhat more discreet ornamentation when they performed together in ensembles. Giovanni Camillo Maffei's letter on the subject3 and the set of embellished madrigals by Girolamo dalla Casa4 are by themselves sufficient to form a clear impression of the techniques involved.

Much less information survives about the techniques of embellishment practised before 1550. Only one treatise, for example, Silvestro di Ganassi's Fontegara of I535,5 instructs us in detail about the art of ornamentation. But Ganassi, while he supplies numerous tables of decorative formulas-some of them very complex indeed-unfortunately does not say precisely how they were to be used in practice. Isolated examples of embellished music from the first half of the sixteenth century reassure us that musicians of all kinds embellished the music they performed, but the largest body of evidence by far of how performers during the first 50 years of the century treated composers' works consists of the numerous intabulations that were published, arrangements of vocal music for solo lute or keyboard.6 Modern scholars have by and large averted their eyes from this repertory, since, by modern standards, it shows a regrettable lapse of taste on the part of Renaissance musicians and because it violates the ideal that the highest goal of the performer (and hence, too, of the modern editor) is to reproduce as accurately and as

self-effacingly as he possibly can the composer's original intentions. But traditions were different in the sixteenth

2 On the Colourists see August G. Ritter, Zur Geschichte des Orgelspiels, I.eipzig, 1884, p. I i; Willi Apel, The History of Keyboard Music to 17oo, transl. and rev. Hans Tischler, Bloomington, Indiana, and London, 1972, p. 246; and Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance, rev. edn., New York, I954, pp. 665 f.

3 See Nanie Bridgman, 'Giovanni Camillo Maffei et sa lettre sur le chant', Reiue de musicologie, xxxviii (1956), 3-34.

4 II secondo libro de madrigali a cinque voci, con passaggi..., Venice, 1590. These evidently were intended to serve as examples of group embellishment. The unique set of part-books in Vienna, Osterreichische National- bibliothek, lacks the tenor.

5 Facsimile edn., Milan, I 934; very free German translation by Hildemarie Peter, Berlin, 1956; English translation from the German by Dorothy Swainson, Berlin, 1959.

6 The printed sources of intabulations are listed and described in Howard Mayer Brown, Instrumental Music Printed beforc s6oo, Cambridge, Mass., 1965; manuscript sources are listed in Wolfgang Boetticher, 'Bibliographie des sources de la musique pour luth' (unpublished typescript), Paris, 1957.

50


century, when the performer collaborated more directly with the composer. Intabulations made up a substantial part of

every player's repertory, and almost all were embellished in one way or another. The attitude of performers during the Renaissance is revealed by Hans Newsidler's remark at the end of his unembellished intabulation of Josquin's great psalm setting, 'Memor esto verbi tui':7 he clearly felt com-

pelled to justify his extraordinary behaviour in reproducing the composition literally. 'I have not decorated the Psalm', he writes, 'for it is in itself very good, and so that a beginner can also have something to play in this book.' By implication, then, a professional musician worthy of his stripes would as a matter of course have added embellishments to his arrangements of vocal music, ornaments that were considered a necessary spice to an otherwise overly bland literal transcription.

Performers everywhere evidently agreed about the necessity to vary the music they played; intabulations survive from Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, the Netherlands and eastern Europe, and virtually all of them include embellishments. I shall concentrate my attention, though, on Italian practices during the early sixteenth century, supposing that Italy was the country most Europeans looked to for guidance about the latest and most sophisticated styles, in ornamentation as in other things. In any case all of the treatises on embellishment and the largest body of intabulations come from Italy, and standards of musical performance seem to have been maintained at an extraordinarily high level at the various courts, where princes vied with one another to secure the best virtuoso singers and instrumentalists as well as the leading international figures among composers. Table I shows how the Italian lute and keyboard music that survives from before I550 neatly divides into two groups. The earlier group, from the first quarter of the sixteenth century, includes anthologies by the lutenists Francesco Spinacino, Joan Ambrosio Dalza and the great virtuoso Vincenzo Capirola, as well as anonymous keyboard arrangements of frottole printed by Andrea Antico. These men intabulated a repertory of music most of which had been published by Ottaviano Petrucci in the years shortly after I500, motets and chansons from the Odhecaton, Canti B and Canti C, as well as frottole, for example. The later and larger group of lutenists-there are

7 Der ander theil des Lautenbuchs, Nuremberg, 1536, No. 29.

51


TABLE I

Early sixteenth-century Italian sources containing intabulations of vocal music for solo lute or keyboard

I. Bologna, University Library, manuscript bound in with Pietro Borgi, Chi de iarte matematiche ha piacere, Venice, I484.

2. Paris, manuscript in the possession of Mme la Comtesse de Chambure (Genevieve Thibault), and described in G. Thibault, 'Un Manuscrit italien pour luth des premieres annres du XVIe siecle', Le Luth et sa musique, ed. Jean Jacquot, Paris, 1958, pp. 43-76.

3. Chicago, Newberry Library, manuscript lute book of Vincenzo Capirola, published as Compositione di Meser Vincenzo Capirola: Lute-Book (circa 15r7), ed. Otto Gombosi, Neuilly-su r-Seine, 1955.

4. Francesco Spinacino, Intabulatura de Lauto, Libro primo, Venice, 1507. 5. Francesco Spinacino, Intabulatura de Lauto, Libro secondo, Venice, 1507. 6.Joan Ambrosio Dalza, Intabulatura de Lauto, Libro Quarto, Venice, 1508. 7. Frottole intabulate da sonare organi, Libro primo, Rome, 1517. 8. Melchiore de Barberiis, Intabulatura di lauto, Libro quarto, Venice, 1546. 9. Barberiis, Intabulatura di lautto, Libro quinto, Venice, I546.

io. Barberiis, Intabulatura di lautto, Libro sesto, Venice 1546. 1. Dominico Bianchini, Iztabolatura de lauto, Venice, 1546. 12. Francesco da Milano, Intabolatura de lauto ... Libro primo, Venice, 1546. 13. Francesco da Milano, Intabolatura de lauto ... Libro segondo [sic], Venice,

I546. 14. Francesco da Milano and Pietro Paolo Borrono, Intabulatura di lauto . . .

Libro secondo, Venice, 1546. 15. Giovanni Maria da Crema, Intabolatura de lauto ... Libro primo, Venice,

I546. i6. Antonio Rotta, Intabolatura de lauto ... Libro primo, Venice, 1546. 17. Francesco Vindella, Intavolatura di liuto . . . Libro primo, Venice, 1546. I8. Francesco da Milano and Perino Fiorentino, Intabolatura de lauto . . .

Libro terzo, Venice, 1547. 19. Simon Gintzler, Intabolatura de lauto ... Libro primo, Venice, 1547. 20. Julio Abondante, Intabolatura di lautto, Libro secondo, Venice, 1548. 2I. Pietro Paolo Borrono, Intavolatura di lauto . . . Libro ottavo, Venice, 1548. 22. Francesco da Milano and Pietro Paolo Borrono, Intavolatura di lauto ...

Libro secondo, Milan, 1548. 23. Melchiore de Barberiis, Intabolatura di lauto, Libro nono, Venice, 1549. 24. Barberiis, Opera intitolata Contina, Intabolatura di lauto . . . Libro decimo,

Venice, I549.

52


no keyboard players among them-arranged music fairly recently composed, madrigals, for example, by the first generation of madrigalists, above all Philippe Verdelot and Jacques Arcadelt but also Costanzo Festa, Giachet Berchem and others, as well as chansons by the Parisian composers of the I53os and later, led by Claudin de Sermisy and Clement Janequin, and motets by the leading members of the post- Josquin generation, Gombert, Willaert and their contemporaries. Most of these lutenists burst into print in 1546, the year that saw as many publications of tablatures as had previously ever been printed in Italy.

With the exception of the great virtuoso Francesco da Milano, these mid-century northern Italian lutenists have been relatively little studied, and we know very little more about them than what we learn on the title pages and dedications of their publications. Melchiore de Barberiis came from Padua, and Antonio Rotta taught the lute in that city, gathering around him a circle composed mostly of foreign students from the university. Domenico Bianchini must have had red hair since he is called 'Rossetto' on the title page of his collection of music. Simon Gintzler worked for the Cardinal of Trent, and may himself have been Tirolean and a link between Italian and Germanic instrumentalists. Francesco Vindella came from Treviso, and nothing whatso- ever is known of Julio Abondante and Giovanni Maria da Crema.8 In short, none of these men except Francesco da Milano seems to have enjoyed an international reputation. We can take it that they represent the best local musicians scattered throughout Italy, or at least a very characteristic sampling of them. They reflect, therefore, the standards and

8 On these mid-century lutenists see Oscar Chilesotti, 'Note circa alcuni liutisti italiani della prima meta del Cinquecento', Rivista musicale italiana, ix (1902), 36-61 and 233-63. On Bianchini, see R. de Morcourt, 'Le Livre de tablature de luth de Domenico Bianchini (I546)', La Musique instrumentale de la Renaissance, ed.JeanJacquot, Paris, 1955, pp. 177-95; on Crema, H. Colin Slim, 'Gian and Gian Maria, Some Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Namesakes', The Musical Quarterly, lxxvii (1971), 562- 74, and the modern edition of Crema's anthology, ed. Giuseppt Gullino, Florence, 1955; on Perino, Elwyn A. Wienandt, 'Perino Fiorentino and his Lute Pieces', Journal of the American Musicological Society, viii (I 955), 2- 13, and Frank A. D'Accone, 'Alessandro Coppini and Bartolomeo degli Organi', Analecta musicologica, iv (1967), 49-50, where Perino is identified as the son of Bartolomeo; on Rotta, Elda Martellozzo Forin, 'II maestro di liuto Antonio Rotta (t1549) e studenti dell'universith di Padova suoi allievi', Memorie della Accademia Patavina (Classe di Scienze Morali, Lettere ed Arti), lxxix (1966-67), 425-43; and on Francesco, H. Colin Slim, 'Fran- cesco da Milano (1497-1543/44): A Bio-Bibliographical Study', Musica Disciplina, xviii (1964), 63-84, and xix (I965), 109-29.

53


values of everyday life in Italian cities and courts. Whether their publications were intended primarily for didactic

purposes or more simply as memorials to their art, most of the

anthologies include a representative cross-section of all the kinds of instrumental music current at the time: fantasias and other abstract instrumental pieces, dances, and intabulations of each of the chief types of vocal music, madrigals, lighter Italian pieces like villanelle and napolitane, chansons, motets, and even Masses.

These mid-century Italian lutenists are easy to discuss as a

group because they all followed a similar procedure in

arranging vocal music for their instruments, though they also reveal their own idiosyncrasies, personal preferences and distinctive temperaments. For the most part they reproduce the original melodic lines as exactly as they can.9 They are

usually able to counterfeit four- or five-voiced polyphony quite literally on the lute. To this basic transcription they added rather sparingly a relatively limited number of stereo-

typed ornamental patterns. In order to understand their technique, it is helpful to keep in mind Robert Donington's useful distinction between graces, that is, ornaments like mordents, turns, trills and filled-in intervals that affect single notes or the connection between two notes, and divisions, that is, running passage work applied to a line to form a continuous melodic variation, a distinction that should be

pushed back to the beginning of the sixteenth century and even earlier.10 The mid-century Italian lutenists used graces almost exclusively; their stereotyped ornamental patterns scarcely ever last for more than the value of a semibreve. In other words, their graces quite literally 'embellish' the music they performed without changing its original effect.

They added just enough ornaments to maintain the steady flow of the music, to sustain the sounds which might otherwise have died away too quickly on the lute. In fact their intabulations are so sparing in their use of embellishment that they 9 They not infrequently altered details, but literal transcription remained

their ideal, as the explanation of the technique for intabulating vocal music for keyboard instruments in .Juan Bermudo, Comienca el libro llamado declaracian de instrumentos musicales (Ossuna, 1555; facsimile edn. by Macario Santiago Kastner, Cassel, 1957), ff. 82v-85, and the explanation of the technique for lute in Vincenzo Galilei, Fronimo (2nd rev. edn., Venice, I584), if. 14-57, make clear. But note that Francesco Vindella invents an additional voice in bars 12-14 of Ex. i.

10 See Robert Donington, The Interpretation of Early Music, London, 1963, p. 96. For lute music a distinction should probably be made between graces in which each note is plucked by the right hand and those which are fingered by the left hand though the right hand plucks but once.

54


could easily serve as accompaniments to vocal performances (with one or more singers) as well as instrumental solos. None of the mid-century volumes explicitly claims that the intabulations can be used both as accompaniments and as solos, however, and it was not until the i58os and I590S that musicians like Emanuel Adriansen and Giovanni Antonio Terzi clearly labelled their much more heavily ornamented

arrangements as suitable for playing 'in concerto, e soo'.11 We can get a concrete idea of how these mid-century

lutenists worked by comparing the way four of them arranged the madrigal '0 s'io potessi, donna', composed either by Jacques Arcadelt or by Jachet Berchem. Ex. I shows the first half of the madrigal and its intabulations by (a) Melchiore de Barberiis, (b) Domenicho Bianchini, (c) Simon Gintzler and (d) Francesco Vindella.12 It is a typical and rather pedestrian composition by a member of the first generation of madrigalists. Its infusion of imitative technique does not quite hide the heavy-footed squareness of its rhythms; but it was intabulated more often than almost any other piece in the sixteenth century, and in truth it lends itself well to instrumental performance and to light ornamentation, with its 'polyphonically animated homophony' and its simple points of imitation.

The evident attempt of the lutenists to reproduce literally the vocal polyphony succeeds in spite of small variants of a sort we can expect from all lute music: ties are broken; some long notes are divided into notes of smaller value, or more rarely the reverse; a few rhythms are dotted or undotted; and the polyphony is occasionally rearranged slightly in order to make it fit better under the instrumentalist's hand. The sorts of stereotyped ornamental patterns that have been superimposed on the almost literal transcription can be seen in Ex. 2, which is a table of graces derived from the arrangements by Bianchini, Gintzler, and Vindella.13 This shows clearly that 11 See Emanuel Adriansen, Pratum Musicum, Antwerp, 1584, and Giovanni

Antonio Terzi, Intavolatura di liutto ... Libro primo, Venice, 1593 (listed in Brown, Instrumental Music, as I5846 and I5937 respectively).

12 The vocal version is taken from II primo libro de i madrigali d'Archadelt a quatro, Venice, 541, where it is ascribed to Berchem. The versions for lute are transcribed after the volumes listed in Brown, Instrumental Music, as (a) i5463, (b) I5465, (c) I547, and (d) I54617. 13 The table follows the pattern established by Ganassi in his Fontegara of 1535 and imitated numerous times later in the sixteenth century. The basic interval is given first without clef, to allow transposition to any pitch. The graces that follow are written in time values that correspond to the form of the basic interval; but they can be doubled or halved in value or added to the vocal original in some other rhythmic permutation.

55

56

Ex. 1


n<- I RL JJ- J J. I 0 s'io po - u si, dam - - - a,dit qu che ne mi-

0 s'i po - es-i, doa - M, dir qudche

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1 s

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c

EMBELLISHMENT IN ITALIAN INTABULATIONS 57

5

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8 el mi - - rar oi pro-v se - - o, in - i -

- ?-rr r r rr j-JJ J. dir qud cbc nd mi- rar voi pro- v'c ac- to in- -

4 rrrr p r rr r r r dir quelcbe el mi - ar' vi pro -'e s - - to, i- vi-

5 * *

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jfi r Lrr'r J'r - '-.

58 EMBELLISHMENT IN ITALIAN INTABULATIONS

10 I - J J * r 1.rb t lr - dio - o f :id dI-chCe m - - Spin-

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15

de d T - tro ri- io u vi - vo - - -

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59


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6o


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20 * * *

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25

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- -f r 6 r ,r r tmC-fe co - - re, chbcm'ar-d'e *sg-fe'l CD - - - re

k N jJ J t r -r f u - el oo - re, cbe 'r- d'e -el - - - re

25 *

/6^_^gT3 j _=J- ~J. J

r rf r r r v" r " r

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I ! 1

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62

I I I


each instrumentalist chose simple embellishments and limited his choice to relatively few stereotyped patterns; and that all four musicians used the same technique and even shared some of the same graces. Many of them are merely written-out mordents, turns and trills. Those by Bianchini and Vindella are perhaps slightly simpler than Gintzler's, although Gintzler's arrangement may give the impression that it is more elaborate only because most of his ornaments move in semiquavers, generally faster, that is, than the others, and he is the lutenist who makes the most obvious attempt to create an aesthetic effect with his embellishments by increasing their frequency and complexity towards the end of the madrigal.

Beyond their common repertory of graces, these four musicians share certain other traits. For example, they are all equally uninterested in ornamenting each entry of a point of imitation in exactly the same way. More often than not the imitation is obscured by the embellishments. In spite, then, of the advice found in some sixteenth-century treatises that performers should make a point of being consistent in their ornamentation of imitative music,"1 mid-century lutenists, at least, preferred to add their decorations without trying to bring out the structure of the music. Similarly they invariably embellished repeated sections of music in a new way. Bars 38-45 of 'O s'io potessi donna', for example, repeat the opening seven bars of the madrigal; all four lutenists vary the repetition, albeit only slightly (Ex. 3). Barberiis and Bianchini simply add a few new embellishments on to the ones they supplied for the original statement, a technique not infrequent among this group of instrumentalists. Clearly, then, mid- century lutenists prized variety more than structural clarity, consistency, or mechanical conformity.

None of the lutenists decorates the top line of the madrigal exclusively, or even much more than any of the other lines. All parts get their fair share of embellishment, even the bass. But whereas it is easy to see that the lutenists intended to enliven the texture more or less evenly from top to bottom, perhaps with some slight emphasis on the superius, it is impossible to formulate rules to decide which notes should be graced and which left bare. Naturally cadences are almost invariably decorated, especially the voice which carries the 4-3 suspension. Sometimes long or stressed syllables receive graces, especially when they coincide with long notes, but 14 See, for example, TomAs de Sancta Maria, Libro llamado arte de ta?ier

fantasia, Valladolid, 1565, Book I, chap. 23.

63


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EMBELLISHMENT IN ITALIAN TABULATIONS

sometimes they do not. Homophonic passages and sections where the texture thins out to two or three voices are sometimes embellished-even though the greater activity lessens the contrast with the more polyphonic passages and hence weakens the artistic intention-but sometimes they are left plain. In short, musicians must have learnt where to ornament by imitating models and by intuition rather than by rule; it is an area where good taste and imagination count for more than consistency or conformity to theory.

To stress the fact that these mid-century lutenists all used the same intabulating technique is not to deny them their individuality. Each had his favourite graces, for example. And in restricting themselves to a relatively limited number of decorative formulas they follow what seems to be the advice of various sixteenth-century theorists who appear to recom- mend that performers work into their fingers (or their voices) through daily practice a repertory of embellishments that best fit their own personalities. If Abondante, Bianchini, Vindella and the rest were not extraordinarily distinguished musicians, they were-all except one-at least capable and competent. Barberiis is the exception, whose bad example helps us to understand better the achievements of the others. In the first

place, he has misunderstood the harmony of 'O s'io potessi, donna' in a number of places; other lutenists rearrange the polyphony from time to time, but Barberiis changes the composer's music wilfully (and unsuccessfully). These passages are marked with asterisks in Ex. I and Ex. 3, and they cannot all be simple typographical errors. Secondly, his ornamentation is applied in an unusually helter-skelter manner; in some passages, as in bars 4-5, the ornamentation creates strikingly bad connections between two notes and a harsh and unnecessary dissonance, and in others his filled-in intervals are left with an awkward gap. Finally, he adds musica ficta with a conservative inconsistency that can only be characterized as incompetent; he ignores the leading note in cadential formations about which all the other lutenists agree, yet elsewhere, quite irrationally, he will add a musica ficta sharp in a series of chords that are not cadential. The quality of Barberiis's work is so low that it comes as a surprise to learn that he was responsible for as much as half of the great series of lute music published by a Venetian printer, probably Girolamo Scotto, between the years 1546 and I549.15 5 For a list of the ten volumes in the series, see Brown, Instrumental Music

pp. 76-77.

68

EMBELLISHMENT IN ITALIAN TABULATIONS 69

Having touched on musica ficta, I cannot forbear before leaving Ex. I from pointing out what intabulations can teach us about this difficult aspect of performing practice. Since tablature tells the player where to place his fingers, lutenists had to write in all the accidentals they wished to add. Thus intabulations constitute by far the largest body of evidence about the way sixteenth-century musicians applied the few relatively simple precepts of musica ficta in actual practice. We can assume, too, that the lessons learned from intabulations can be applied to vocal performances, for there is no evidence that instrumentalists followed a practice different from singers. Indeed, since instrumentalists regularly accompanied singers they had to agree about the accidentals; if the mid-century lutenists did not actually use the intabulations shown in Ex. I for combined performances as well as solos, then they must have played from very similar parts. Moreover, treatises on embellishment make clear that the same kinds of ornaments were meant to be sung as well as played, strengthening the argument that sixteenth-century musicians did not make as much of a distinction between vocal and instrumental practice as we do. Ganassi even says that instrumentalists should imitate singers in every possible way, a remark that we have no reason not to take literally and to apply to musicaficta as well as other aspects of performance. Naturally some caution must be used in applying conclusions drawn from lute intabulations to vocal performances. Very often, for example, the added embellishments modify the musica ficta in one way or another, and a chordal instrument like the lute does not have to follow the rules of part-writing as scrupulously as a choir does, a fact that can also alter the performer's choice of accidental.16

After all allowances are made for the differences between a solo lute arrangement and an a cappella performance, however, Ex. I demonstrates beyond doubt that sixteenth-century musicians agreed by and large about which accidentals to add in some musical contexts, and that they felt free to follow their personal inclinations in others. We learn, in short, what we had already suspected, that there are rules of musica ficta that were very widely obeyed, but that any one composition could be performed in more than one stylistically acceptable

16 All of these points are discussed at greater length in Howard Mayer Brown, 'Accidentals and Ornamentation in Sixteenth-Century Intabula- tions of Josquin's Motets', Proceedings of the International Josquin Festival- Confrence (forthcoming).


way. All four lutenists more or less agree, for example, to raise the leading notes at all the cadences in 'O s'io potessi, donna', whether or not they occur on the tonic of the mode. And there is wide though not complete agreement about how the rule that 'una nota supra la semper est canendum fa' affects the madrigal. Most of the lutenists have fairly consist-

ently flattened the E's at cadences, for example in bars 3, 7 and 11, the chief context where the rule applies in this

madrigal. On the other hand the sixteenth-century musicians apparently felt free to raise or not leading notes in non- cadential passages, for example in bar 2. When the musical context allows them the choice of either a Phrygian or a Dorian cadence, as in bar 7, they take whichever option their

personal fancy dictates. And they show the widest possible latitude and a freedom that all modern editors should avoid in the way they raise the leading note of the mode when it

appears in a half-close or as the third of a dominant triad (see, for example, bars 3, 8-9 and particularly I8-I9, and so on). Gintzler especially does not shy away either from chromatic sideslips or from cross relations, even when they are simultaneous. It is in studying examples like these, which represent the attitude of the middle-of-the-road musicians of the time towards music which is not extreme in any way, that we shall finally come to understand the performing practices of the Renaissance with regard to musicaficta.

Of all the lutenists whose music was published in the I540s, the oldest of them, Francesco da Milano, who died in 1543, received the most acclaim from his contemporaries. And his international reputation was as well deserved for those of his intabulations that show off his embellishing technique as for his superb fantasias, among the greatest of this time when abstract instrumental compositions first began to have importance equal to vocal music. To judge from his surviving works, which are now available in two modern editions,"7 Francesco showed less interest than some of his contemporaries in arranging vocal music for his instrument. Intabulations make up a relatively small percentage of his works, and some of them are almost literal transcriptions with only an occasional embellishment, for example his arrangements of two Arcadelt madrigals, Compere's motet 'O bone Jesu' and a handful of Parisian chansons like Claudin de Sermisy's 'Vignon vignette' 17 The Lute Music of Francesco Canova da Milano (1497-1543), ed. Arthur J.

Ness, Cambridge, Mass., I970, and Francesco da Milano, Complete Works for Lute, ed. Ruggero Chiesa, Milan, 1971.

70


and Mouton's 'Resjouissez vous bourgeoises' whose rhythms are sprightly and melodies tuneful enough to succeed without their words. Some of his intabulations, on the other hand, do include at least as many embellishments as those by his slightly younger contemporaries; in them Francesco uses the same techniques as his fellow lutenists, but with more skill and imagination. The richness and diversity with which he varies the identical beginning bars of the four parts of Clement Janequin's 'Le Chant des oiseaux,18 for instance, and the imaginative way he decorates with fresh graces each

entry within a single point of imitation, are eloquent indica- tions that the best Renaissance performers strove constantly to

diversify the decorative surface of their music in a way that obscures rather than clarifies the underlying structure. Francesco's gigantic intabulations of Janequin's great pro- gramme chansons, 'La Guerre' and 'Le Chant des oiseaux', must have been extremely impressive tours deforce; and their difficulty attests to Francesco's virtuosity as a performer, if in fact he played them exactly as they were printed. Similarly his intabulations of several of Josquin's motets are freer by far than those of his contemporaries. For example, he sometimes uses graces as motifs that dominate a whole section, and he even rewrites passages, in a way that shows his command of compositional technique rather than mere wilful tampering. In short, he uses the motets as a vehicle for comment and elaboration-for a virtuoso display of variation technique- and in so doing he transforms the original composition into an idiomatic instrumental piece, with a freedom that defies generalization."1 His intabulations can perhaps best be evaluated by considering his arrangement of Claudin de Sermisy's chanson, 'Las je me plains'20 (Ex. 4), a version in between a literal transcription and a highly idiomatic transformation, and hence closer in technique to the arrangements of 'O s'io potessi, donna'. The qualities that distinguish Francesco's intabulations from the others, albeit somewhat elusive, have most to do with his sensitivity towards rhythm:

18 See Janequin, Chansons polyphoniques, ed. A. Tillman Merritt and Fran9ois Lesure, i (Monaco, 1965), 5-22, and Francesco da Milano, Lute Music, ed. Ness, pp. 343-53.

*9 For further discussion of Francesco's treatment ofJosquin's motets, see Brown, 'Accidentals and Ornamentation'.

20 The chanson is reproduced after Isabelle Anne-Marie Cazeaux, The Secular Music of Claudin de Sermisy (unpublished dissertation), Columbia Univers- ity, New York, 1961, ii. 237, and the intabulation from Francesco da Milano, Lute Music, ed. Ness, p. 276 (note-values doubled).

7I

72

Ex. 4


4 j J I I ; j t rrr -; J ;. a j

* J -J j t jJ J J Jr) J _ Lu je m'y plains, ul ul-di-ctc s fo r - -u -

La ^

- Y p, mau di c so -r- r -

as y plains, maul - di - ce soit for -

L-- -

f MY J-lk-, ^maul-

- 4 - ri^i~-*-r---r re r r P p

- , Quanpourt -y- sC quant pour ay qt r -

J^ ;l ! sJ Jf r I - U - - - - _ - ncs Qunt pour ay -mr, quat

_a:r - r 1- f)r vr -di - c soit for - tu - - c, Qunt poury - r-

Ij^ . Ij Ir-i

'-~--~' F F t'-t'~~~~

_ je In'ayque des - pai - sir,

I J I J J J _-_ - mir c n' a y que des- p - ir, V

apoutr je 'ay'y que des - plai - sr, e -

, r J1 rr-r F r - e nary que ds - pwi - siti, Ve - -

10 10

tc.

$c.


he knows precisely when to add an ornament to keep the motion going forward without obscuring the salient features of the composition, and how to avoid relentless monotony while maintaining constant flow.

The kinds of embellishments and the way they were used that characterize the intabulations of all these men, not only Francesco da Milano and the four lutenists who arranged 'O s'io potessi, donna', but also the remaining members of their generation, Julio Abondante, Giovanni Maria da

Crema, and Antonio Rotta, must inevitably remind the student of sixteenth-century instrumental music of the advice

given to performers in Diego Ortiz's treatise on the viol, Trattado de glosas sobre clausulasy otros generos de puntos, published in Rome in I553.21 Ortiz devotes almost half of his treatise to a series of tables of graces, organized like those in Ex. 2, which show viol players how to embellish music when they play in ensembles. Ortiz does not give any examples of how these graces are to be applied in actual practice, but for-

tunately the mid-century lutenists do, since they make use of the same sorts of embellishments in ways that we can

suppose Ortiz intended. The resemblance between the theoretical explanation and the extensive repertory of practical examples gives us confidence that Abondante, Bianchini, Rotta and the rest represent a mainstream that is neither conservative nor avant garde. Apparently their attitude towards embellishment prevailed, at least in Italy, from the I53os until the florid virtuosi won the field later in the century. And the similarity between Ortiz's instructions and the lutenists' intabulations encourages us, paradoxically, to suppose that we may model experiments with ensemble embellishment on these arrangements made for solo lute.

The principal differences between this mid-century mainstream and the techniques prevailing earlier in the century immediately become apparent when we attempt to construct a table of graces for one of the intabulations by Francesco

Spinacino published in 1507, a table of the sort that was so

easy to prepare from the arrangements by Bianchini, Gintzler and Vindella. Ex. 6 presents what graces I could extract from

Spinacino's arrangement for solo lute of Hayne van

Ghizeghem's fifteenth-century chanson 'Mon souvenir', part

21 Modern edition with German translation by Max Schneider, Leipzig, I924. An English translation by Peter Farrell appears in Joural of the Viola da Gamba Society of America, iv (1967,) 5-9.

73


of which is given as Ex. 5.22 While a few of the embellishments are the same or similar to the later ones, most are longer and more florid. More important, Ex. 6 cannot show three fundamental differences between Spinacino's technique and that developed by the mid-century lutenists. In the first place Spinacino does not restrict himself to a few short stereotyped formulas; he seldom repeats himself and most of the ornaments in Ex. 6 appear but once in the intabulation. In the second place I have omitted from the table the many figuration patterns that do not connect two notes that originally appeared in the same vocal line but instead connect notes from different lines; Spinacino often ignores the original part-writing by inventing embellishments that run from one voice to another in his effort to adapt the music idiomatically to the lute. And in the third place Spinacino recomposes short passages of the chanson, for instance bars I-5 of Ex. 5, apparently to make his virtuoso display more effective and to ensure that the music falls more easily under the fingers. His independence from the model suggests that his intabulations could not all have been used to accompany partly vocal performances; some of them at least must have been restricted to solo use.

Spinacino does not invariably embellish his models to the

degree shown in 'Mon souvenir'. Some of his intabulations

Ex.5

e zJ J J i J r- Moa tou - Tt - ir me fit m -

?' r_ t -r4rJ _r r er -r e t Mo------ ou - e -r me & it

MM - W m Mom ou - ve - air

.r r F r F J%

22 The vocal version is taken from Harmonice Musices Odhecaton A, ed. Helen Hewitt, Cambridge, Mass., I942, p. 394, and the intabulation from Spinacino, Intabulatura I, No. 20. My discussion of Spinacino's technique is indebted to Henry Louis Schmidt III, The First Printed Lute Books: Francesco Spinacino's Intabidatura de lauto, Libro primo and Libro secondo (Venice: Petrucci, r5o7) (unpublished dissertation), University of North Carolina, 1969.

74


I I

' , _ J _-JJ . - J, -. . . . . . ..- r Pour

! i

l r-o r - - .<

mr r r J - f frr r POW rit -ou - rir -

2jJ - -

-j n '-r" " . "'-

'II4 f f,

F f r tr J r rr kb re - - gpctz qe 6 it moa crr I, Qe fi t

Poru le e _ (tz que fit ro s fi - t- ' r..r J

-,n, Pou ! e ~ - - . .

_ "" _.r r-zcIir . -,:

. J J J r r r ?:-r'~'r: ar-r

J ,__.J 1 r r f r . St -mo - Peu qu


Ex 6

(1) m[L=

(m,) I - II

N" - 11

(or)L_ . I Ii

(b)4J< 4lo II

h J IIJ^J 1 J I r -.1

11 I K IIJjf IT'-r F 1

1 ! i - IJ rj- II i e i J/ jT i

B^ n L LL1-- n TPflld

I., ;- l * :-:- , _ I_T _ 1 1

I li lq I1 i I-

O r r i -M I h --I l I c- J Jl -

im-^-~-r- II rrILf- i-

= = 3 "IJIE

76


are quite literal, but even in those, small passages are apt to be modified in drastic ways, as for example the first several bars of his version of Isaac's 'Benedictus' from the Missa Quantj'ay au cor (Ex. 7), an intabulation that is otherwise close to a

Ex. 7

P - - r f r - 5 r t' *rVf r *

w - ' , J ..

:~_ _ t JTO^^TT-.I

1 J m !'J ,'-T - r'-r-m -.

literal transcription.23 In his more elaborately decorated arrangements Spinacino does not really add graces to individual notes so much as apply fairly steadily moving figuration-much of it passage work made up of scale fragments in quavers interspersed with groups of semiquavers- throughout all parts of the texture. In other words he writes divisions that are capable of being analysed partly as graces; and his intabulations thus consist of a curious mixture of literal transcription, divisions, graces, and free recomposition. Spinacino's additions change completely the original impact of some of the pieces he arranges; the composer's part- writing gets buried under figuration patterns, especially turns and scale passages, some of which fill in intervals or connect two different voices of the vocal model, and some of which are essentially independent of the original melodies.

Most of Spinacino's intabulations begin with an upbeat grace identical with or very similar to the turn that introduces Ex. 5. And he tends to recompose the first few bars of a composition and to decorate them rather elaborately, instead of building towards a climax in the middle or at the end. But his most characteristic mannerism, perhaps, is his penchant for endless and aimless scale fragments, a feature he shares with some other early sixteenth-century instrumentalists, Marco Antonio Cavazzoni, for example, whose key-

23 The vocal version is taken from Odhecaton, ed. Hewitt, p. 379, and the intabulation from Spinacino, Intabulatura I, No. 2.

77

78 EMBELLISHMENT IN ITALIAN INTABULATIONS

board works published in 1523 are filled with similar runs.24 The perpetuum mobile character of some of Spinacino's divisions can be seen most clearly in his music for two lutes, such as his arrangement of Josquin's instrumental canzona 'La bernardina' (Ex. 8),25 in which the second lute plays the tenor and contratenor parts of the model virtually literally, while the first lute plays diminutions made up mostly of scale

Ex. 8

rrr- - r r rf

Lutcr r r r- s^-^--~--~-(rr_. ---d

f, T r f -4 J J Lute 11

r r r r-r r f F

, f J . _. I_ rr---

.

.r' -,'

( ' J - J J 1J J -- - 'L "1

24 See M. A. Cavazzoni, J. Fogliano, J. Segni ed Anonimi: Composizioni per organo, ed. Giacomo Benvenuti (I Classici musicali italiani, i), Milan, 194I; also Die italienische Orgelmusik am Anfang des Cinquecento, ed. Knud Jeppesen, Copenhagen, 1943 (rev. edn. I96o).

25 'La bernardina' is taken from Arnold Schering, Geschichte der Musik in Beispielen, Leipzig, 1931, p. 6I, and the intabulation from Spinacino, Intabulatura I, No. Io.


fragments, which are based so freely on the original melody that they obscure almost completely its character and shape.

Spinacino's two volumes of 1507 were the earliest lute music ever published, and hence his lute intabulations are among the first known. Only those in Madame de Chambure's manuscript and the fragment in the University Library at Bologna (Table I, Nos. I and 2) may date from before 1507. It is unlikely that many other lute tablatures existed before then, for the technique of polyphonic play using the fingers rather than a plectrum was apparently new in Spinacino's time. Thus there is every reason to suppose that his technique reflects earlier practice, a hypothesis strengthened by the fact that he chose to arrange the retrospective repertory published by Petrucci in the Odhecaton, Canti B and Canti C, especially late fifteenth-century chansons and stylistically related compositions. But if Spinacino modified late fifteenth- century techniques of embellishing single melodic lines in arranging polyphonic music for his instrument, we might legitimately expect his intabulations to resemble those found in fifteenth-century sources of keyboard music, that is, those German manuscripts like the Buxheim Organ Book that are virtually our only source of knowledge about earlier intabulating styles.26 And they do indeed share a number of features, in spite of the fact that the German arranger has concentrated his attention almost entirely on the top voice of his models. Both the German and the Italian begin most of their arrangements with similar upbeat graces, and both sometimes reflect the same rather carefree attitude towards the original vocal part-writing. Much of the embellishment in the Buxheim Organ Book can be reduced to relatively few stereotyped formulas used to connect two notes of the original melodic line, but in some pieces seemingly endless scale fragments in even quaver and semiquaver motion go their relentless way over one or two slower moving lower voices. German keyboard players were apt to devise such running passage work when they wrote counterpoints over rhythmically free cantus firmi, but they also sometimes embellished polyphonic compositions in the same manner. In spite of significant differences in style, then, the similarities between Spinacino's intabulating

26 Das Buxheimer Orgelbucb, ed. Bertha Wallner (Das Erbe deutscher Musik, xxxvii-xxxix), Cassel, 1958-9. All of the other fifteenth-century German keyboard manuscripts are published in Keyboard Music of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, ed. Willi Apel (Corpus of Early Keyboard Music, i), American Institute of Musicology, 1963.

79


technique and that used by the German keyboard players of the fifteenth century seem to justify the conclusion that the Italian reflects an earlier practice. Studying Spinacino's methods can help us to understand how late fifteenth-century musicians ornamented the music they performed.

On the other hand, Spinacino's aimlessly wandering figuration patterns contrast both with the embellishments used in arrangements of frottole and those with which the great early sixteenth-century virtuoso Vincenzo Capirola transformed sober polyphony into ornate and wholly idiomatic compositions for the lute. Capirola, like Francesco da Milano later in the century, used the same techniques as his contemporaries, but he incorporates his decorative super- structure more skilfully than Spinacino into the fabric of the

composition he varies. He imposes, in short, his own concep- tion on to the music with such force and personality that we are convinced in spite of ourselves. Hayne van Ghizeghem's famous chanson 'De tous biens plaine' is scarcely recognizable beneath the flurry of divisions and graces Capirola adds.27 Yet the new composition that results is so attractive and such a virtuoso display of variation technique-moreover, it fits the instrument so well-that we scarcely dare criticize the imaginative performer for his distortion of the composer's intentions.

Joan Ambrosio Dalza's intabulations offrottole for solo lute and those for keyboard published by Andrea Antico in I517 contrast with Spinacino's arrangements mainly because the

style of the music each chose to work with demanded funda- mentally different treatment. Neither the texture nor the

phrase structure of a typicalfrottola resembles those in the late

fifteenth-century Franco-Flemish music intabulated by Spina- cino. The emphasis infrottole on a principal melody sung by the

soprano and supported harmonically by the bass turns the inner voices into mere fillers, unimportant from a contrapuntal point of view but helpful in keeping the harmony full and the

rhythm active. The relatively short phrases of simple schematic

melody in the top voice of mostfrottole almost invariably come to a full stop at the end of each poetic line with a feminine

ending. And the highly conventional forms of the various sorts offrottole-barzellette, strambotti, ode and so on-involve as many repetitions of phrases as in fifteenth-century chansons, but over a much shorter time span. The simple Italian melodies lend themselves well to short graces that are much less amorphous 27 For the vocal version, see Odhecaton, ed. Hewitt, pp. 263-4; for the

intabulation, Capirola, Lute-Book, ed. Gombosi, pp. 31-33.

80


in shape than Spinacino's divisions; the written-out turns and filled-in intervals of thefrottola intabulations, in fact, are almost as stereotyped as those by the mid-century lutenists. The frequent cadences infrottole virtually invite the instrumentalists to devise figuration patterns that keep the motion going forward between phrases and add continuity. And the polarity of soprano and bass permits the performer considerable freedom in dealing with the inner voices. They can be substan- tially altered; both can be combined into a single embellished line; or one or both can be omitted altogether, on occasion to be replaced by a free division-like paraphrase in the manner of Spinacino. In every case the bass is apt to be stated literally, or nearly so, in order to make clear the harmonic progressions. Dalza usually adds his embellishments alternately to the top voice and to the inner voice of his models.28 Antico's arrangements for keyboard, on the other hand, maintain a fuller texture; they are more heavily ornamented and invariably reproduce both inner voices of the vocal versions. Indeed Antico's anonymous editor has sometimes been so ingenious in devising short divisions for the top voice, and the resulting texture is so busy, that the fragile dance-like character of the original frottola is often almost completely engulfed by the passage work, but without any of Capirola's compensating fire and brilliance.29 Antico's editor has taken pains, too, to vary his ornaments wherever a section returns, whereas Dalza, who likewise writes out all the repetitions of barzellette, retains the same ornaments each time.

Comparisons such as these illuminate the common practices of the time. Spinacino, apparently adapting techniques of division he learned from older musicians to the new art of polyphonic play on the lute, concentrated on keeping up a constant flow of motion by superimposing aimless scale passages upon unadorned vocal lines. Formulas and stereotyped figures play a minor role in his repertory of embellishments, and he felt free to take considerable liberties with the original part writing. That he shared the attitude most prevalent among musicians during the first decades of the

28 See for exampe Tromboncino's 'Poi che'l ciel' and Dalza's intahulation of it: Le Frottole nell'edizione principe di Ottaviano Petrucci, ed. Gaetano Cesari, Raffaello Monterosso and Benvenuto Disertori, Cremona, 1954, p. 18; and Le Frottole per canto e litto intabulate da Franciscus Bossinensis, ed. Benvenuto Disertori, Milan, 1964, pp. 225-7.

29 Some of the intabulations published by Antico are reprinted in Italienische Orgelmusik, ed. Jeppesen. See there, pp. 68-78, for a more detailed discussion of their ornamentation.

8i


sixteenth century is suggested by a comparison of his intabulations with those in the Capirola Book and Madame de Chambure's manuscript. On the other hand Italian instrumentalists embellished their own native music, frottole, in a different way, which better suited its character. Formulas, for example, play a more important part infrottola arrangements than in Spinacino's intabulations of chansons. By the 1540s, and doubtless earlier, these formulas had crystallized into a relatively small number of stereotyped graces which lutenists added to vocal polyphony to decorate it without changing its original character. And this new technique can be identified with the new musical styles that grew up in the 152os and 153os in the earliest madrigals, the Parisian chanson, and motets by the generation of composers immediately following Josquin.

The older practice of embellishing a melody with continuous figuration continued in modified form throughout the sixteenth century, but as a special technique of virtuoso soloists.30 It would lead us too far afield to explore that hypothesis, but it can be inferred from Ganassi's tables of ornaments, and it is made explicit in Ortiz's arrangements of secular vocal music for solo viol and keyboard and in various other examples from the latter half of the century, including Thomas Morley's brilliantly busy lute parts for his Consort Lessons.31 Florid passaggi became the prerequisite to success for any professional singer late in the century, as Lodovico Zacconi, among others, somewhat sourly pointed out.32 Musicians like Caccini and Monteverdi finally rebelled against the excesses of flamboyant virtuosi. In order to safeguard their rights, composers began incorporating as many ornaments as they could tolerate into the basic structure of their music, a process that created their

genuinely new Baroque melodic style. The discreet embellishment of vocal music by stereotyped

graces, on the other hand, led on to the systematic exploitation of mechanical figuration patterns in devising embellished intabulations as well as sets of variations. That is, some six-

teenth-century musicians began to use graces motivically to enhance the decorated surface of their intabulations; they repeated the same embellishments over and over again within

30 The history of continuous figuration applied to vocal music by virtuoso soloists in the sixteenth century is sketched in Brown, Embellishing Sixteenth-Century Muic.

31 The First Book of Consort Lessons Collected by Thomas Morley, 1599 and 1611, ed. Sydney Beck, New York, 1959.

S2 Prattica di musica, Venice, 1592 (facsimile edn., n.d.); see especially ff. 58 and 77.

82


one composition to form a network of motives independent of the original part-writing. Spanish musicians may have been the first to exploit this technique. Ortiz is a master at it, and traces of it can even be found in the works of Luis de Narvaez, who published the earliest arrangements of vocal polyphony for the vihuela in I538.33 But doubtless the simpler and generally non-motivic procedures of the mid-century Italian lutenists reflect the more common practices of their times. After Abondante, Bianchini, Crema, and the rest had distilled sets of stereotyped patterns from the freer embellishments of their predecessors, musicians in the second half of the sixteenth century developed ways of unifying sections of music by motivic passage work. This technique of figural variation was to reach its apogee some years later in the keyboard music of Sweelinck and the rich textures of the English virginalists.

a3 Los seys Libros del Delphin de Musica de Cifra para taiefr Vihuela, ed. Emil Pujol (Monumentos de la Muisica Espanola, iii), Barcelona, 1945. The music of Antonio de Cabez6n, published in Obras de musica para tecla arpay vihuela (Madrid, 1578), includes graces used as motifs with unusual artfulness.

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Documents

Embelishment Italian Tabulations