An archive of my presentation abstracts.
Lowering the Tone: Strophic Song and the Performance of Gender and Class in Italian Academies
What was the role of music in Italian academies? Madrigals and motets honouring ranking academicians
were likely performed during inauguration ceremonies and perhaps also in funerals, but more generally
performance tuition and informal music-making opportunities provided a space for the performance of
educated, sophisticated identities. The blend of eroticism and politics often found in printed
collections of lowbrow strophic songs associated with Italian academies might have provided
opportunities to ‘test’ gentility. In the light of the bawdy conversation and music-making
described in Antonfrancesco Doni‘s
Dialogo della musica (Venice, 1544), this paper considers
the likely performing context and function of publications associated with the Costanti of Vicenza
(especially Filippo Azzaiolo‘s
Il primo libro de villotte alla padoana con alcune napolitane
. . . intitolate villotte del fiore [Venice, 1557]) and considers how such songs might reflect and
project the noble masculine identity of the Vicentine Costanti.
The gift of music between friends
In dedicating his
Primo libro de villotte (Venice, 1550) to Girolamo Fenaruolo,
Antonino Barges mentions the role friendship played in its composition and publication. Barges
publishes the book in order to be a good friend rather than an ungrateful musician. Gratitude points
to a further element of the dedication: the circulation of the music as a gift between friends.
Martha Feldman places these songs within Domenico Venier’s social and literary circle--Fenaruolo
and Venier were close friends--and situates their sexually suggestive content within the salon’s
erotic literary output. Feldman suggests the dedication to Fenaruolo might be a cover for the
book’s ‘true’ dedicatee, Venier, because it would have been improper to dedicate
the work to a man of that stature. The book is likely to have found a happy audience in Venier’s
salon, yet Barges’s identification of Fenaruolo’s friends, and his careful inscription of
himself within Fenaruolo’s circle suggest that Fenaruolo may indeed have been Barges’s
intended dedicatee. Moreover, while it is common for a Cinquecento music dedication to operate in the
gift mode, it is less common for friendship to be so carefully articulated. As Alan Bray has
demonstrated, material gifts between friends relate to the physical gift of the friend’s body
constituted through shared physical intimacy and public embraces. This paper examines the poetry
and music associated with Fenaruolo and his friends in this light, and considers the relationship
between the material gift of music between friends and the physical performance of that gift and
friendship.
Wine, Women and Song: Female Vocality and the Villotta.
Alvise Castellino’s
Il primo libro de villotte (Venice, 1541) is dedicated to Ercole II
d’Este and indeed the songs might have been performed at Ferrarese banquets similar to those
described by Christoforo da Messisbugo. This paper explores links between Castellino’s songs,
civility books and comic theatre associated with Ferrara, paying particular attention to songs
concerning female speech and sexuality. While noblewomen and noblemen alike seem to have enjoyed
these types of ‘rustic’ entertainments, the context of their active participation
differs considerably. Although noblemen might strengthen their noble identity by patronizing or
performing strophic dialect song, in theory (if not in practice), noblewomen had to be more
circumspect.
Sprezzatura, hierarchy and noble identity
In Baldessare Castiglione’s
Il libro del cortegiano,
sprezzatura is
famously described as the art that hides art. More recently,
sprezzatura has been interpreted
as the art of simultaneous concealment and revelation. It is akin to a glove that reveals the shape of the
hand it hides. The most common understanding of
sprezzatura in a musical context is in noble
amateur performance: noble performers must be good, but not so good as to reveal an unseemly time commitment
to music practice. The extent of their effort must be concealed lest they be mistaken for low-status
professionals.
Sprezzatura is therefore intimately connected to another
cinquecento concern: hierarchy.
The
villotte of
Antonino Barges and
Perissone
Cambio, both associated with the literary circle around
Domenico Venier, show
two different manifestations of
sprezzatura. Barges’
villotte require
familiarity with a vast erotic lexicon, which simultaneously conceals and reveals sexual content to knowing
participants.
Perissone Cambio’s careful word-setting in his
villotta, ‘Zuccharo porti dentro assa buccucia’ demonstrates a further
musical application of
sprezzatura, for his splitting of the words reveals sexual
indecencies otherwise hidden in the text.
Members of Venier’s informal academy espoused Pietro Bembo’s division of Italian vernacular
poetry into high, middle and low styles. The
villotta, with its ‘popular’
connotations, is firmly in the lower end of the spectrum. But of course, such categories are co-dependent:
in order for there to be a ‘high’ style there must be a ‘low’ style.
A similar hierarchical concern is evident in
Alvise Castellino’s dedication
to
Ercole II d’Este of his
Primo libro de villotte (Venice:
Gardano, 1541). Acknowledging that his pieces are not ‘run off in the way of Josquin’,
Castellino likens his songs to coarse and rustic flowers and fruits. Castellino’s works deal with
sexual relationships using straightforward language with a minimum of sophisticated double entendre. While
Barges and Cambio demonstrate competent handling of polyphony, thus complicating the status issue,
Castellino’s settings are resolutely homorhythmic.
When performed by nobility, Castellino’s
villotte might be considered to
function as a disguise that conceals and reveals noble identity. It is not necessary for nobility to worry
about
sprezzatura while masked, partly because the mask imparts a certain licence but also
because disguise literally serves to conceal and reveal identity. To give an example from Castiglione’s
Il cortegiano, a young man appearing as an elderly man might wear a costume that enhances
his lithe physique. Such a costume does not obscure the true identity of the performer, but rather helps to
reveal that identity. Noble performance of low status villotte might function in a similar way to masquerade.
Sprezzatura is, therefore, an integral feature of
cinquecento songs
concerned with sex: whether in the simultaneous concealing and revealing of sexual content through the
use of metaphor, the disclosure of hidden indecencies through skilful word-setting, or the revelation
of noble status through noble performance of ‘base’ songs. Thus
sprezzatura,
the ability to do two things at once, is related to the ability to construct two things at once: the
categories of high and low.
Imitating the rustic and revealing the noble
Alvise Castellino called ‘the Venetian furrier’ dedicated his
Primo libro delle
villotte (Venice: Gardano, 1541) to
Ercole II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara.
The dedication demonstrates Castellino’s preoccupation with hierarchy: he contrasts his own base
status to the exalted rank of the Duke, and declares his pieces are not ‘run off in the way of
Josquin’, but are an imitation of rustic flowers and fruits. These in turn are contrasted with
foods of a royal banquet. Indeed, Castellino’s
villotte might have been
sung at courtly banquets: the songs share subject material with the comedies of
Ruzante
(Angelo Beolco), who is known to have delighted Ferrarese banquet guests in 1529. Castellino’s
texts present a male view of heterosexual relationships in which all women—daughters, wives, widows
and courtesans—are sexually available, although some only for the right price.
Male power—exerted or thwarted, appropriated or resisted—is a central theme of the book,
from the opening text which simultaneously celebrates and criticises
Ercole,
through to the many songs that concern sexual relations. A country girl’s rape by a city man
‘In un bel pra fiorito’ apparently reinforces traditional power
relations between the city and the countryside it dominates: however, the attack is not consequence-free
(in this context, perhaps alluding to Ferrarese determination to resist the attempts of outside forces
to meddle in their affairs). Female power is presented as a destabilising force in
‘La mi fa balare’. Drawing on the contemporaneous erotic lexicon and
on humoral theory, this song can be understood as an expression of male anxiety over heterosexual
intercourse: the first person speaker loses all his power to a sexually dominant woman.
Castellino’s association of his villotte with the base and rustic is consistent with
Pietro Bembo’s division of Italian vernacular poetry into high, middle
and low styles. The
villotte, with their depictions of sexual activity improper
to noblemen (according to the Ferrarese writer
Giraldi Cinzio), are firmly in
the lower end of the spectrum. ‘Low’ and ‘high’ are co-dependent—there
cannot be one without the other. Indeed, these binarisms are co-constructed, as the discussion of
masquerade in
Castiglione’s
Il libro del cortegiano
demonstrates. A young man appearing as an elderly man might wear a costume that enhances his lithe
physique. Castellino’s
villotte might have functioned as a disguise
by means of which nobility revealed their true identity.
Castellino’s consistent emphasis on low status and rusticity suggests this may have been a useful
selling-point rather than a source of shame. That Castellino obtained a printing privilege further
suggests the collection held some intrinsic value. If
Ercole II enjoyed the songs
at his court and sponsored the publication, he had a hand in this construction of the low and rustic. By
sponsoring Castellino’s imitation of rustic flowers and fruits, Ercole constructed his own identity
as masculine ruler. More importantly, the Duke’s patronage served to sanction and contain the threats
to masculine authority in the songs. By demonstrating he was impervious to such threats, he displayed the
extent of his own masculine power.
Power, Pornography and Entertainment in a Cinquecento Academy.
Although controlled by Venice from 1404, mid-
cinquecento Vicenza was a
city of independent spirit. As in other republican cities in the Veneto,
the structure of the academy replaced the court as the space for fostering
both culture and identity. The
Accademia dei Costanti—a group of Vicentine
noblemen whose families harboured anti-Venetian feeling—attempted to regain
an element of autonomy by pursuing courtly ideals in their work as in their
play. In addition to philosophical discussions and literary pursuits, the
academicians made music and played games in an intimate setting reminiscent
of the modern gentlemen’s club.
The Costanti’s political sympathies are reflected in a volume
of
villotte alla padoana that bears their
impresa.
The collection includes references to treason and exile; however, throughout the political
allusions are overshadowed by playful sexual metaphors. The villotte’s bawdy dialect verse
challenges our preconceptions of “academic” activites, suggesting private rather than public
performance, for entertainment rather than edification. Publication problematizes
these works, for sentiments acceptable in private may become significant and
unacceptable when placed in public space.
As Paula Findlen has demonstrated, the audience for what we now
term “pornography” and “art” was one and the same: the literate, monied
élite. The Costanti may have commissioned madrigals from prominent composers, but they
were also involved in the anonymous production of obscene songs. Giorgio Vasari’s
comments on the erotica of Marcantonio Raimondi, differentiating between
onesto
and
disonesto, provide a framework for a culturally sensitive approach to these
songs—which bind politics and pornography for entertainment.