Music and Humanism at the North Italian Courts during the Renaissance. |
By: Roger Hansford |
‘There was no real need here to exert oneself...court existence was easy: a little hunting, occasional war, and ample leisure for gracious living’. [1]
So Vincent Cronin describes ‘The Courtier’s World’ in his The Flowering of the Renaissance, a world which numbered music and music-making among its essential components. As I will show, the music, the music-making, and the renaissance culture in which they flowered, had embraced and relied heavily on the tenets of humanist education and ideals. The aim of this paper is not to detail the ways in which humanism affected individual courts and the composers therein; rather it explores the tenets of humanist education, and seeks to examine the generic musical effect of these tenets throughout northern Italy.
Today we use the term ‘humanism’ particularly in the sense of ‘a system of thought concerned with human rather than divine...matters’ [2]. In short, man’s faith in man, not man’s faith in God. While this approaches an understanding of the renaissance mindset, it fails to embrace the full range of issues involved. According to J.R. Hale, renaissance humanism ‘was convinced that man’s chief duty was to enjoy his life soberly and serve his community actively’; it was ‘more interested in worldly matters’ and ‘stressed earthly fulfilment rather than preparation for paradise’. This does not depart greatly from the modern meaning of humanism. However, sixteenth-century humanism was not just a concept but a ‘programme of studies’, which included ‘the reading of ancient authors and the study of such subjects as grammar, rhetoric, history and moral philosophy’. Far from being education for its own sake, this programme was an answer to the ‘steadily increasing pressure [from the growing business world] for a more practical kind of education than the one provided by the theological studies of the Middle Ages’, and enabled Italy to find ‘in the wisdom of Rome an answer to its own problems’.[3] Therefore, by bringing man’s activities to the fore, humanist ideals allowed sixteenth-century northern Italians to move forward by looking back.
The humanist education, Hale believes, ‘led to the growth of a social and intellectual atmosphere in which genius could flourish’ [4]. Other historians agree that humanism had a major effect. Cronin’s first sentence claims it brought ‘a new way of life’ [5], while for A.G. Dickens it was ‘truly dynamic’ and ‘fundamental’ [6]. Stephen Lee opens his book on Aspects of European History by asserting that ‘Humanism was a basic source of inspiration for all the cultural changes of the Renaissance, heavily influencing literature, history, painting, sculpture and political ideas’ [7]. Like many general historians, he neglects to include music in his coverage of renaissance art. However, many aspects of music and music-making were affected by the broad tenets of sixteenth-century humanist ideals.
Let us begin by addressing the ‘music-making’: issues of performance arena and performer. Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron suggests that the very lifestyle of the court, an important location for musical performance, can be linked to humanism. He describes how the courtiers ‘sat down to the music of a thousand birds’ before indulging in wine and sweetmeats, all feeling ‘the utmost mirth and satisfaction’ [8]. This shows that music was influential in creating a relaxed court atmosphere in which the courtiers could enjoy their lives: part of the humanist ideal which replaced the Medieval conception of earthly life as a “vale of tears”. Performances also took place at venues such as the Accademia Filarmonica di Verona, an academy begun in 1543 and ‘still in existence’ according to Martha Feldman.[9] Such academies met to debate and discuss as well as to hear music, and this links to the humanist passion for education and learning. Feldman explains how the academies ‘drew together diverse personalities with allied interests’ and describes the ‘loose structures [which] agreed with the variable comings and goings of natives and visitors alike’ [10], features reminiscent of Hale’s comment that ‘the humanist credo enjoined its followers to transmit as well as to accumulate knowledge’ [11].
A different type of performance was that required to celebrate special public occasions, such as a wedding or the visit of an important personage, and we can also view this as an aspect of humanism. Laurie Stras describes how members of northern Italian courts, such as Venice, Padua, Ferrara and Mantua, had to provide King Henri III of France with what Stefano Guazzo called ‘all the honours that can occur to the human mind’ during the King’s tour of summer 1574 [12]. One of the many ‘honours’ was a musical performance by over 70 musicians, including 25 trombetti and 43 tamburini [13]. The glut of performers employed suggests that the purpose of the performance was to impress the visitor by showing off the strength of the “host” court. This links to what Lee describes as ‘“civic” Humanism, or the replacement of asceticism by active involvement in civic affairs as the most worthwhile of human achievements’ [14]. In fact, court life itself was ‘linked by marriage alliances and...based on feudal estates yielding considerable wealth’ [15]. For this reason, public music, such as the intermedii performed at weddings, was highly important to the welfare of court society; it was an advertisement for the court and generated funding for the patronage needed for music to flourish. Therefore, music supported the society in which humanist ideals could be practised. Yet it was also dictated by them: a product tailored to the performing situations which the tenets of humanist education required.
Whenever in public, the performers were expected to adhere to codes of conduct which relied on humanist ideals. Baldassare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier (Il Courtegiano) is described by Hale as ‘perhaps the most influential of all the behaviour books produced in the Italian Renaissance’ [16]. That ‘behaviour books’ were produced is testament to the fact of human behaviour becoming a principal preoccupation within the ideals of humanism. The book dictates that the ‘perfect courtier’ should, amongst other virtues, be able to play on ‘divers [sic.] instruments’ to provide ‘refreshing spiritual food’ for the court, especially when ladies are present since ‘their aspect fills the listener’s heart with sweetness’! Castiglione explains that music is ‘helpful’ in ‘pursuits of peace and war’, ‘tames wild beasts’, ‘provides most sweet alleviation for our fatigues and troubles’ and ‘wards off...drowsiness’. It is also a ‘cheering pastime for poor sailors’, ‘tired pilgrims’ and ‘sorrowing captives’, and was taught by nature to nurse as ‘chief remedy for the continual wailing’ of children; therefore music was important for enriching the earthly life of every single person at court. Perhaps because of music’s importance to humanists, Castiglione is stern about performance etiquette: discretion is needed as the performer should only play when the audience is ready. Furthermore, women should not be performed love songs by old men, even if they are passable performers, because ‘love is a ridiculous thing in old men’, especially if they are ‘hoary, and toothless, [and] full of wrinkles’.[17] Vincenzo Giustiniani’s Discorso sopra la musica, while less famous, also shows a high degree of interest in the execution of performance: favoured are the women performers to be seen ‘breaking off sometimes with a gentle sigh’ and making ‘appropriate...glances, and gestures’, with ‘no awkward movements of the mouth or hands or body which might not express the feeling of their song’.[18]
Giustiniani was right when he stated that there must be ‘other particular devices which will be known to persons more experienced’ [19]; other tracts on behaviour are more technical than those by him and Castiglione, but no less dependent on humanism. The title of Giovanni Bardi’s Discourse on Ancient Music and Good Singing itself alerts us to his engagement with antiquity and his emphasis on human ability. He makes a ‘great distinction’ between singing alone or in company: those singing alone should contract or expand time at will; make divisions on the bass as little as possible; sing accurately, well, legato and in tune; use few unusual sounds due to the Olympian theory of economy of means; express the canzone properly and exactly; and sing sweetly, not boldly, according to the views of Aristotle, Plato and Dante. Requirements for those singing ‘in company’ are less antiquated and largely preoccupied with matters of teamwork; in particular, ensemble performers should avoid ‘exasperating excuses’ such as ‘that they have not slept the night before [or that] their stomach is not right’! [20] Similar are tracts by Lodovico Zacconi and Nicola Vicentino: while Zacconi offers detailed requirements for the execution of ornamentation - which must be correct in order to avoid ‘scoffing and bantering’ [21] - Vicentino stresses the need to appear a man of judgement and alter one’s performance according to the mood of the piece [22]. To modern eyes some of these requirements seem excessive, even funny. At the time such detailed interest in behaviour was part of the humanist ideal that learning should not only be acquired, but employed carefully in society. This view is effectively summarised by an extract from the programme of humanist education by Leonardo Bruni of Arezzo (emphasis mine):
To enable us to make effectual use of what we know we must add to our knowledge the power of expression...Where this double capacity exists - breadth of learning and grace of style - we allow the highest title to distinction and to abiding fame. [23]
One performer who had clearly taken these ideals on board was the famous musical patron Isabella d’Este. According to the poet Bembo, she ‘keeps the harmony on the lute and at once according her tongue and both hands with the inflections of the song’; not only would Orpheus and Amphion ‘be stupefied with wonder on hearing her’, but anyone who witnessed her performance would ‘be like those who heard the Sirens and forgot their native lands’ [24]. Thus Bembo unites antiquity and eroticism in his paean of praise: by adopting humanist ideals she had become the perfect performer, perhaps even the perfect courtier.
And so to the music: the compositions themselves. Perhaps the genre most famously associated with humanism is monody, typically attributed to the ideas of the Florentine Camerata which, in emphasising that the text should not be obscured [25], earned itself the enduring reputation of proclaiming ‘music in the service of the words’ [26]. Polyphony, however, did not necessarily go against this credo. Alfred Einstein argues that, unlike the frottola, the polyphonic madrigal brought text illustration and expression to the fore [27]. Dean Mace agrees, saying that the ‘urge towards expression’ was ‘bound to destroy’ the formal and homophonic frottola with its ‘easy’ tunes, and he goes on to describe how the madrigal achieved, in music, the poetic variazione of piacevolezza and gravità (variation between sweetness and gravity) in order to create an ‘affective sound’ [28]. Although James Haar’s ‘re-appraisal’ of the madrigal finds it to have ‘no advance in expressive language over the frottola’ [29], the complex and through-composed nature of the genre has typically made it seem a ‘higher’ and more learned form than its predecessors. Einstein recalls Doni’s description of it as ‘the fusion of invention, workmanship and harmony into one complete whole’ [30], and Mace quotes Bembo, who found that the madrigal contained ‘rare and ingenious conceits and pure and artful diction’ [31]. Feldman supports these views, stating that complexity was the aim of the genre and that this paralleled the move towards ‘intellectual sophistication’ [32], arguably a part of humanism.
In order to strengthen the link between the madrigal and humanism, we must examine the nature of the texts which the genre employed, especially since Haar has suggested that it was the texts of the madrigals, not the music, which sold them [33]. While the texts were based on classical authors such as Petrarch, the style in which they were set was ‘definitely...new’ [34]], reminding us of the humanistic desire to use historical features in creating something modern. Also, the texts were secular in subject matter, mentioning - for example - mythology which made Venice appear more desirable than heaven [35], a part of the humanist’s ideal that they were living in paradise on earth. But the madrigal’s most important link to humanism was its all-pervading subject of human love. According to Laura Macy, the madrigal relied on ‘well-placed code words [which] could lend a sexual subtext to a scene otherwise far removed from the bedroom’. Central was the convention that ‘death’ implied ‘sex’ since both were thought to involve spiritual emission from the body. This concept brings new meaning to the close of the Arcadelt madrigal Il bianco e dolce cigno, in which the lover hopes to ‘die a thousand deaths each day’! Macy suggests that such devices made the madrigal a form of ‘interactive flirtation’ in which the physically proximate group of performers themselves experienced sexual arousal, and she finds parallels in the music, such as where two voices delay the resolution of a suspension like a couple resisting sexual union.[36] So we can see that, through its texts, the madrigal genre was heavily infused with the tenets of humanism.
That secular forms like the madrigal were popular in the age of humanism is supported by Prizer’s statement that ‘courtly patronage of music was mostly lavished on the forces for instrumental and secular vocal music, for...the signori do not seem to have identified the maintenance of a chapel of singers with an expression of their power’ [37]. However, humanism did not turn sixteenth-century Italy into a nation of atheists. In fact, according to Lee, ‘Christian Humanism was undoubtedly the mainstream of renaissance thought, for the rediscovery of man did not necessarily mean the abandonment of God’ [38]. Cronin states that the ‘the courtier’s grace was also in an oblique way religious’, perhaps because being the perfect courtier made one in tune with the harmony of the spheres [39]. Even the eroticism of the madrigal can be seen in this way; as the Marriage Service has it, ‘those who live in love live in God’. Moreover, overtly sacred forms such as the lauda, the madrigale spirituale and the anti-Protestant Te Lutherum were composed and performed during the age of humanism, and often employed Latin - the language of the Liturgy, which was also favoured by humanists. Todd Borgerding draws our attention to the use of rhetoric, traditionally part of the humanist education, in the sacred motet. He explains that some of the traditional divisions of rhetoric can be assigned to elements of musical composition: dispositio, for example, represents form and elecutio stands for style and ornamentation. He suggests that music could be used to move listeners as a preacher would in the homily, and he analyses Lasso’s In me transierunt in this light.[40] Therefore we can see that traditional humanist studies like rhetoric affected even the sacred music of the sixteenth century, helping it to persuade in ways which would be essential during the Counter-Reformation.
So the broad tenets of humanist education and ideals underpinned the civic worlds of court and academy in which music was performed and discussed in Northern Italy, the ‘vessels’ which would shape the development of the music itself. It was a part of the sixteenth-century mindset which idealised the perfect courtier, living a pleasant earthly life in harmony with their music, their fellow courtiers, and themselves. Its classical studies encouraged monody but also helped develop polyphonic forms, like the motet, into more expressive genres. Most of all it flowered into the heightened marriage of music and poetry which was the madrigal. As Jonathan Glancey has it, thanks to humanism,
‘man was no longer impotent in the face of an omnipotent God, but an independent agent of God able to carry out his will through the arts’ [41].
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Atlas, Allan W. Renaissance Music: Music in Western Europe 1400-1600. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Ltd., 1998.
Bardi, Giovanni. ‘Discourse on Ancient Music and Good Singing’. Source Readings in Music History, ed. Oliver Strunk. London: Faber & Faber, 1952.
Boccaccio, Giovanni. ‘The Decameron’ in Readings in the History of Music in Performance, ed. Carol MacClintock. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979.
Borgerding, Todd. ‘Preachers, Pronounciatio and Music: Hearing Rhetoric in Renaissance Sacred Polyphony’. The Musical Quarterly 82, No.3/4 (1998).
Burton, Gideon, The Forest of Rhetoric: silva rhetoricae (Accessed [20/02/09] http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/Silva.htm).
Castiglione, Baldassare. ‘The Book of the Courtier’ in Readings in the History of Music in Performance, ed. Carol MacClintock. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979.
Cronin, Vincent. The Flowering of the Renaissance. London and Glasgow: Collins Press, 1969.
Dickens, A.G. The Age of Humanism and Reformation: Europe in the Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1977.
Einstein, Alfred. ‘The “Dialogo Della Musica” of Messer Antonio Francesco Doni’. Music and Letters 15, No.3 (1934).
Feldman, Martha. ‘The Academy of Domenico Venier: Music’s Literary Muse in Mid-Cinquecento Venice’. Renaissance Quarterly 44 (1991).
Giustiniani, Vincenzo. ‘Discorsa Sopra la Musica’ in Readings in the History of Music in Performance, ed. Carol MacClintock. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979.
Glancey, Jonathan. The Story of Architecture. London: Dorling Kindersely Ltd., 2000.
Haar, James. ‘The Early Madrigal: A Re-Appraisal of its Sources and Character’. Music in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Patronage, Sources and Texts, ed. Iain Fenlon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Hale, J.R. Renaissance from Great Ages of Man: A History of the World’s Cultures. Nederland: Time-Life International, 1966.
Hay, Denys. Europe in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. Second Edition. London and New York: Longman Group Limited, 1989.
Lee, Stephen J. Aspects of European History 1494-1789. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1978.
Mace, Dean T. ‘Pietro Bembo and the Literary Origins of the Italian Madrigal’. The Musical Quarterly 55, No.1 (1969).
Macy, Laura. ‘Speaking of Sex: Metaphor and Performance in the Italian Madrigal’. Journal of Musicology 14, No.1 (1996).
Palisca, Claude V. ‘Vincenzo Galilei and Some Links Between “Pseudo-Monody” and “Monody”’. The Musical Quarterly 46, No.3 (1960).
Prizer, William F. ‘North Italian Courts 1460-1540’. The Renaissance: From the 1470s to the end of the 16th Century, ed. Iain Fenlon. London: The MacMillan Press Ltd., 1989.
Stras, Laurie. ‘“Onde havrà mond’essempio et vera historia”: Musical Echoes of Henri III’s Progress through Italy’. Acta Musicologia 72, No.1 (2000).
Thompson, Della, ed. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English. Ninth Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Vicentino, Nicola. ‘L’antica Musica’ in Readings in the History of Music in Performance, ed. Carol MacClintock. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979.
Zacconi, Ludovico. ‘Prattica di Musica’ in Readings in the History of Music in Performance, ed. Carol MacClintock. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979.
NOTES
[1] Vincent Cronin, The Flowering of the Renaissance (London and Glasgow: Collins Press, 1969), p.97.
[2] ‘Humanism’, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English Ninth Edition, ed. Della Thompson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p.661.
[3] ]J. R. Hale, Renaissance from Great Ages of Man: A History of the World’s Cultures (Nederland: Time-Life International, 1966), pp.15-16.
[4] Hale, p.162.
[5] Cronin, p.15.
[6] A. G. Dickens, The Age of Humanism and Reformation: Europe in the Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1977), p.3.
[7] Stephen J. Lee, Aspects of European History 1494-1789 (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1978), p.1.
[8] Giovanni Boccaccio, ‘The Decameron’ in Readings in the History of Music in Performance, ed. Carol MacClintock (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979), p.22.
[9] Martha Feldman, ‘The Academy of Domenico Venier: Music’s Literary Muse in Mid-Cinquecento Venice’, Renaissance Quarterly 44 (1991), p.477.
[10] Feldman, p.476.
[11] Hale, p.24.
[12] Laurie Stras, ‘“Onde havrà mond’esempio et vera historia”: Musical Echos of Henri III’s Progress Through Italy’, Acta Musicologia 72, no.1 (2000), p.7.
[13] Stras, p.25.
[14] Lee, pp.6-7.
[15] Cronin, p.97.
[16] Hale, p.56.
[17] Baldassare Castiglione, ‘The Book of the Courtier’ in MacClintock, ed., pp.22-27.
[18] Vincenzo Giustiniani, ‘Discorso sopra la musica’ in MacClintock, ed., pp.28-29.
[19] Giustiniani in MacClintock, ed., p.29.
[20] Giovanni Bardi, ‘Discourse on Ancient Music and Good Singing’, (c.1580) in Source Readings in Music History, ed. Oliver Strunk (London: Faber & Faber, 1952), pp.298-301.
[21] Lodovico Zacconi, ‘Prattica di Musica’ in MacClintock, ed., pp.68-75.
[22] Nicola Vicentino, ‘L’antica Musica’ in MacClintock, ed., pp.76-79.
[23] Denys Hay, Europe in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries Second Edition (London and New York: Longman Group Limited, 1989), p.378.
[24] William F. Prizer, ‘North Italian Courts 1460-1540’ in The Renaissance: From the 1470s to the end of the 16th Century, ed. Iain Fenlon (London, The MacMillan Press Limited, 1989), p.145.
[25] Claude V. Palisca, ‘Vincenzo Galilei and Some Links between “Pseudo-Monody” and “Monody”’, The Musical Quarterly 46, No.3 (1960), p.346.
[26] Allan W. Atlas, Renaissance Music: Music in Western Europe 1400-1600 (New York: W.W.Norton & Company Ltd, 1998), p.643.
[27] Alfred Einstein, ‘The “Dialogo Della Musica” of Messer Antonio Francesco Doni’, Music and Letters 15, No.3 (1934), p.251.
[28] Dean T. Mace, ‘Pietro Bembo and the Literary Origins of the Italian Madrigal’, The Musical Quarterly 55, No.1 (1969), pp.65-86.
[29] James Haar, ‘The Early Madrigal: A Re-Appraisal of its Sources and Character’ in Music in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Patronage, Sources and Texts, ed. Iain Fenlon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p.189.
[30] Einstein, p.251.
[31] Mace, p.74.
[32] Feldman, p.492.
[33] Haar, p.180.
[34] Haar, p.180.
[35] Feldman, p.484.
[36] Laura Macy, ‘Speaking of Sex: Metaphor and Performance in the Italian Madrigal’, Journal of Musicology 14, No.1 (1996), pp.1-34.
[37] Prizer in Fenlon, ed., The Renaissance, p.136.
[38] Lee, p.3.
[39] Cronin, p.100.
[40] Todd Borgerding, ‘Preachers, Pronunciatio, and Music: Hearing Rhetoric in Renaissance Sacred Polyphony’, The Musical Quarterly 82, No.3/4 (1998), pp.586-598. Also see the online guide to renaissance rhetoric at humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/Silva.htm (Accessed [20/02/09]).
[41] Jonathan Glancey, The Story of Architecture (London, Dorling Kindersely Ltd., 2000), p.69.