Embelishment Italian Tabulations

Embellishment in Early Sixteenth-Century Italian Intabulations
Author(s): Howard Mayer Brown

Source: Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 100 (1973 - 1974), pp. 49-83
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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 decora-
tive 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 doubt-
less
despairing composer's original
intentions.2 We are even
relatively
well informed about how
singers
and instrumental-
ists 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
arrange-
ments of vocal
music,
ornaments that were considered a
necessary spice
to an otherwise
overly
bland literal
transcrip-
tion.
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 intabula-
tions 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
13. Francesco da
Milano,
Intabolatura de lauto ... Libro segondo
[sic], Venice,
I546.
14.
Francesco da Milano and Pietro Paolo
Borrono,
Intabulatura di lauto . . .
Libro
15. Giovanni Maria da
Crema,
primo, Venice,
I546.
i6. Antonio
Rotta,
17.
Francesco
Vindella,
Intavolatura di liuto . . . Libro
I8. Francesco da Milano and Perino
Fiorentino,
Intabolatura de lauto . . .
Libro
terzo,
Venice,
1547.
19.
Simon
Gintzler,
20.
Julio Abondante,
Intabolatura di
lautto,
Libro
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
contempor-
aries. 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 intabula-
tions 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
flf- r
-
f f
o0 'io
po- tes-, do -
a,
1 s
fi;r
r,r
r
^
i m
L
f;s
pof-
ns
f
^ '
ff
r
r ^ rT
r r'
,?:
,
rr
rr
f
t
r f
'
^ J -'^ T^ ^
^
r
i~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~P
c
57
5
-nr
voi
pro-v'c
n
- - -
o voi
pro-ve Tc
- - -
ia i-
I
r
r1
r
r
r r
r r r
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
*
*
e-^ ^ 'r
-
,
J-- v.
Z
' r f1
l .
_ _r r
r
-
r
rE; 2
jfi r Lrr'r
J'r - '-.
58
10
I
-
J
J *
r 1.rb t lr
-
dio
-
o f :id dI-chCe
m - -
Spin-
Fr
r
r f-r crr r
"
1 -r
di -o
a ri s - Wm e - - 'e cto
Splc-
de ad
JL
r r--
gF r'
J
,
J
-
tr hr h-
r
r r
r
dio
- so fa - ib - i
-
-.
to
.-Tr'"t
'
.rr4Ir
r
r r r
-
_,
J
-
J
J
1 .
J
J _/
ro' r
""f
r ~_r'
r
r_r c r ~
'p"-- ---i
)i_
j j J I - J?J. J J J I
r
?
~
W
rF
,
-I
r M
t_.~-~ r1 ~r
$
r--
f
F :
EMBELLISHMENT IN ITALIAN
INTABULATIONS
15
de d T - tro ri- io u vi - vo - - -
o- t vi- mo0u vi - so - o o- -
i-r
rm
_*
Spla de ad
- $- - f
,
SpiS
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(
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.
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5-~ ''ill[: I
I
... J
.
t t
r
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... fi '~.=~
r I r 1 /
_
59
Eldi
be .g
ioc.ci pi
-
T
JJ-J-J
J J
4'
Val* - tro iri so an v so - B Edai be -oc-chi
pio
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v-",
i- - r b--c .-
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p
i- _ o i- i - o E dri be - lioc-chi pio
-
214
r-
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r J'r r r
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20
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,t jj :J ~j __J
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t' r- - Fr i r r-
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i
25
.
JJ
J
J
I
iJ
I
j / J
fe-co ds - m de Wu-4 el m- 0
- - r
f r -, cJ 'r Tr r
S g- gcl co -re, che m'u
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trlu.I1
o - - -
re
-
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r 6 r ,r r
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co - -
re, chbcm'ar-d'e
*sg-fe'l
CD - - - re
k N
jJ
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r
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f
u - el oo
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re
25 *
/6^ _^ gT3
j
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r rf r r
r v"
r
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3;r~J ,
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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
64
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"--
E:
lz
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4
c,
t-
. 0
1.4
0
cu~~u
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141.
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Z,
EMBELLISHMENT IN ITALIAN
INTABULATIONS05
._
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_x
7 : r
r
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r" r r r
r
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0
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40
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Ex. 3
A
40
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I J
r
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rr r
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(b)
(c)
(d)
IV,
I
r------r-
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66
A I . , I I
67
45
- . I k i I I I I
-a'l- tili o di fo
-
c'va
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di fo -e
vc
- -
t
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r r -rl
rr T
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r
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f
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:-
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r f
rr p r r r l
.r
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to,
45
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^ 1^ --
P^ ^
EMBELLISHMENT IN ITALIAN TABULATIONS
sometimes
they
do not.
Homophonic passages
and sections
where the texture thins out to two or three voices are some-
times 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 ornamenta-
tion 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 intabula-
tions 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
perform-
ance.
Naturally
some caution must be used in
applying
conclusions drawn from lute intabulations to vocal
perform-
ances.
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 some-
times 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
arrange-
ments 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
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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
main-
stream 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
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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
75
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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
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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
frag-
ments 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
instrument-
alists,
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
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
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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 intabu-
lating 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
arrange-
ments 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
idio-
matic
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
imagin-
ative
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
arrange-
ments 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 stereo-
typed figures play
a minor role in his
repertory
of embellish-
ments,
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 intabu-
lations with those in the
Capirola
Book and Madame de
Chambure's
manuscript.
On the other hand Italian instru-
mentalists 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
gener-
ally
non-motivic
procedures
of the
mid-century
Italian luten-
ists 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.
83

Embelishment Italian Tabulations

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Embellishment in Early Sixteenth-Century Italian Intabulations

Author(s): Howard Mayer Brown

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