A Conjunction of Rhetoric and Music_Structural Modelling in the Italian Counter-Reformation Motet

A Conjunction of Rhetoric and Music: Structural Modelling in the Italian Counter-Reformation MotetAuthor(s): Michele FromsonSource: Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 117, No. 2 (1992), pp. 208-246Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Royal Musical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/766314 .Accessed: 26/10/2011 11:20

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A Conjunction of Rhetoric and Music: Structural Modelling in the Italian

Counter-Reformation Motet

MICHELE FROMSON

FOR there can be no doubt that a great part of art lies in imitation. Discovery clearly came first, and is of first importance. But it is none the less profitable to follow up other people's successful discoveries. And every technique in life is founded on our natural desire to do ourselves what we approve in others. Hence children follow the shapes of letters to attain facility in writing; musicians look for a model to the voice of their instructors, painters to the works of their predecessors, countrymen to methods of growing that have been proved successful by experience. In fact, we can see that the rudiments of any kind of skill are shaped in accordance with an example set for it. Certainly we must either be like or unlike those who excel. It is rarely that nature makes one man like another: but imitation often does.'

According to Thomas Greene, 'the imitation of models was a precept during the Renaissance which embraced not only literature and poetry but also pedagogy, grammar, rhetoric, esthetics, the visual arts, music, historiography, politics, and philosophy'.2 In music of the sixteenth century, imitative compositional procedures were used not only in the parody Mass, whose motivic material derives by definition from a pre-existing work, but in virtually every major genre.3 Chanson composers, for exam-

This article was completed at the Villa I Tatti Center for Italian Renaissance Studies through grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Robert Lehman Foundation. Earlier versions were delivered at the national meeting of the American Musicological Society in Austin, October 1989; the University of California, Davis; Northwestern University; and Columbia University. I would like to thank Profs. Shadi Bartsch, Howard Brown, Salvatore Camporeale, Ruth DeFord, Ralph Hexter, Massimo Ossi and Leeman Perkins for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.

' M. Fabius Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, Book X.2, 1-3, trans. Michael Winterbottom, An- cient Literary Criticism: The Principal Texts in New Translations, ed. Donald A. Russel and Michael Winterbottom (Oxford, 1973), 400.

2 Thomas M. Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven and London, 1982), 1. Other basic studies of literary imitation include H. Gmelin, 'Das Prin-

zip der Imitatio in den romanischen Literaturen', Romanische Forschungen, 44 (1932), 83-360; Ber- nard Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago, 1961), vol. i; Izora Scott, Controversies over the Imitation of Cicero (New York, 1910); and the works cited in Greene's comprehensive bibliography.

' Extensive secondary literature exists on the use of imitatio in Mass composition (see, for instance, Michael Tilmouth, 'Parody', The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, London, 1980, xiv, 238-9). The most important recent examinations of the subject are by Lewis Lockwood: 'A View of the Early Sixteenth-Century Parody Mass', The Department of Music Queens College of the City University of New York: Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Festschrtft (1937-1962), ed. Albert Mell

(New York, 1964), 53-77; The Counter-Reformation and the Masses of Vincenzo Ruffo (Venice, 1970), esp. chap. III; and 'The Counter-Reformation and the Sacred Music of Vincenzo Ruffo'

(Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1960), chap. 3. See also Leeman L. Perkins, 'The L'homme arme Masses of Busnoys and Okeghem: A Comparison', Journal of Musicology, 3 (1984),

A CONJUNCTION OF RHETORIC AND MUSIC 209

ple, imitated existing works by adopting similar or closely related phrase structures, cadence patterns and melodic material, as Howard Brown has pointed out in his seminal article on musical imitation in the Renaissance and its relationship to classical theories of rhetorical imitatio.4 Much the same procedures have been found in sixteenth-century madrigals, for example in the late works of Gesualdo, which Glenn Watkins has shown were modelled on Pomponio Nenna's settings of the same texts, or in English madrigals of the period, where composers sometimes borrowed wholesale from another work but called the imitation their own.5 Com- positional modelling also appears in contemporary motets, as demonstrated by Patrick Macey for mid-century settings of Infelix ego and by Roland Jackson for Marenzio's motets of the 1580s.6

Imitation is especially prevalent in the special group of motets that con- stitutes the subject of the present essay - parallel settings from late sixteenth-century Italy of two unusually popular liturgical texts: the anti- phon O sacrum convivium, which celebrates the Elevation of the Host, and the Christmas text Quem vidistis pastores. In the numerous settings that were published during the closing decades of the century (see Appen- dix 1) an array of different imitative procedures was used, as I have shown in an earlier study;7 however, my focus here will be on structural modelling - that is, those procedures by which composers imitated distinctive formal characteristics of their models.

363-96; J. Peter Burkholder, Johannes Martini and the Imitation Mass of the Late Fifteenth Cen- tury', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 38 (1985), 470-524 (esp. pp. 470-504); and more recently M. Jennifer Bloxam, 'In Praise of Spurious Saints: The Missae Floruit egregiis by Pipelare and La Rue', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 44 (1991), 198-211.

4 Howard Mayer Brown, 'Emulation, Competition, and Homage: Theories of Imitation in the Renaissance', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 35 (1982), 1-48; and 'Clemens and Claudin', Liber amicorum Chris Maas: Essays in Musicology in Honor of Chris Maas, ed. Rob C. Wegman and Eddie Vetter (Amsterdam, 1987), 245-59.

5 On compositional modelling in the Italian madrigal, see, for instance, James Haar, 'Pace non trovo: A Study in Literary and Musical Parody', Musica disciplina, 20 (1966), 95-149; Glenn E. Watkins, Gesualdo: The Man and His Music (London, 1973), 211-24; Glenn E. Watkins and Thomasin La May, ' "Imitatio" and "Emulatio": Changing Concepts of Originality in the Madrigals of Gesualdo and Monteverdi in the 1590s', Claudio Monteverdi: Festschrift Reinhold Hammerstein, ed. Ludwig Finscher (Laaber, 1986), 453-87; and of course Alfred Einstein, The Italian Madrigal, trans. Alexander H. Krappe, Roger Sessions and Oliver Strunk (Princeton, 1949). Compositional modelling is discussed extensively in Joseph Kerman's classic study The Elizabethan Madrigal: A Comparative Study (New York, 1962). For the polyphonic dialogue, see David Alan Nutter, 'The Italian Polyphonic Dialogue of the Sixteenth Century' (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Not- tingham, 1978), i, chap. 3; for the canzone villanesca, Donna G. Cardamone, The Canzone villanesca alla napolitana and Related Forms, 1537-1570 (Ann Arbor, 1975), i, 196-200 and 215-22; for the chanson spirituelle, Howard Mayer Brown, 'The Chanson Spirituelle, Jacques Buus, and Parody Technique', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 15 (1962),

161--6; and for

the instrumental ricercar, John M. Ward, 'Parody Technique in 16th-Century Instrumental Music', The Commonwealth of Music, ed. Gustave Reese and Rose Brandel (New York, 1965), 208-28 (pp. 219ff.), and James Haar, 'The Fantasie et ricerchari of Tiburtino', Musical Quarterly, 59 (1973), 227-37.

6 Patrick Macey, 'Savonarola and the Sixteenth-Century Motet', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 36 (1983), 422-52; and RolandJackson, 'I primi motetti di Marenzio', Corale Goriziana: Atti e documentazioni (Gorizia, 1979), 23-49. On the use of imitation in the Masses of William Byrd, see Philip Brett, 'Homage to Taverner in Byrd's Masses', Early Music, 9 (1981), 169-76, which describes how the contrapuntal layout and cadence points of the four-part Mass are based on Taverner's 'Meane' Mass.

7 Fromson, 'Imitation and Innovation in the North-Italian Motet, 1565-1605' (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1988), i, chaps. 2-5.

210 MICHELE FROMSON

In order to examine the formal relationships between individual motets, two preliminary theoretical issues need to be addressed. The first is how formal articulations should be identified in this essentially contrapuntal repertory; and the second is how to distinguish between resemblances that reflect the direct influence of one work upon another and those that manifest the existence of text-specific musical conventions.

In the period under consideration, a cappella motets generally con- sisted of a series of overlapping contrapuntal segments, each presenting a meaningful semantic or syntactic unit of text in all of the active voices. By 1560 these contrapuntal segments were delimited less by their characteristic and unified motivic material, as had been the case earlier in the century, than by the words being presented and the cadential articulations.8 In the analyses to follow, cadences will be identified on the basis of the definitions appearing in the most influential music treatise of the period, Gioseffo Zarlino's Le istitutioni harmoniche of 1558 (see Ex-

ample 1).9 Here Zarlino established five different cadential formations: (a) the unison cadence, whose two structural voices move by conjunct contrary motion from a minor third to a unison; (b) the octave cadence, whose voices move by conjunct contrary motion from a major sixth to an

Example 1. The cadential formations of Zarlino. Source: Le istitutioni harmoniche (1558), 222-6.

A (a) unison (b) octave (c) disjunct (d) imperfect (e) evaded

C F C

All cadential arrivals are indicated by an asterisk and the scalar degree, if any.

octave; (c) what I shall term the disjunct cadence, whose voices move from a major third to an octave or unison (the upper voice must ascend conjunctly and present the linear semitone 7-1); (d) the imperfect cadence (la cadenza imperfetta), which can close on any imperfect con- sonance or a perfect fifth so long as its penultimate sonority is a major or minor third and its upper voice ascends by conjunct motion; and (e) the evaded cadence (fuggir la cadenza), whose two voices constitute an octave

8 More extended explanations of sectional structure in mid- to late sixteenth-century polyphony are available in KnudJeppesen, Counterpoint: The Polyphonic Vocal Style of the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1939), 241ff.; Herbert Kennedy Andrews, An Introduction to the Technique of Palestrina (London, 1958), 174-91; Lockwood, The Counter-Reformation and the Masses of Vincenzo Ruffo, esp. pp. 142ff.; Ellen S. Beebe, 'Text and Mode as Generators of Musical Structure in Clemens non Papa's "Accesserunt ad Jesum" ', Studies in the History of Music, I: Music and

Language (New York, 1983), 79-94; and Jessie Ann Owens, 'The Milan Partbooks: Evidence of

Cipriano de Rore's Compositional Process', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 37

(1984), 283-5.

9 Gioseffo Zarlino, Le istitutioni harmoniche (Venice, 1558; repr. New York, 1967), chaps. 53, 54 and 61. Modern scholars have experienced considerable difficulty identifying cadences, and as I show elsewhere ('Cadential Structure in the Mid-Sixteenth Century: An Examination of Two Recent

Approaches', forthcoming in Theory and Practice), diverse and at times conflicting terminology has been proposed. To date, the most complete examinations of Renaissance cadential structure are


or unison cadence up to the final sonority, at which point an unexpected note or rest intervenes.'0

Regarding the second preliminary issue - how to distinguish musical convention from imitation - the essential analytical problem has been summarized by Howard Brown as follows:

It is always difficult to be certain that a composer really intended such [inter- compositional] references in a style so filled with cliches and conventions. Before asserting positively that such allusions were part of the composer's con- scious intent, we should attempt to demonstrate that the relationship between the model and the imitation is significant."

The optimal approach, of course, would be to begin by comparing each motet with earlier settings of that text, as I have done in an earlier study for both O sacrum convivium and Quem vidistis pastores, for this will bring to light any text-specific conventions that may have existed and thereby facilitate the identification of significant anomalies shared by individual motets.'2 Nevertheless, even without undertaking protracted comparisons of this sort, one sometimes discovers two works with such striking musical resemblances that an imitative relationship must be presumed. This is the case, for example, if one composer quoted at

length from an earlier composition, as Marenzio did in his imitation of Palestrina's motet Veni sponsa Christi.'3 But imitation is equally recognizable when two works have elaborate formal characteristics in common, as in all the motets to be discussed below.

TECHNIQUES OF STRUCTURAL MODELLING

When composers set the texts O sacrum convivium and Quem vidistis pastores in the decades after the Council of Trent, they devised various strategies for imitating the formal plan of an earlier setting of the same text. They imitated the internal organization of the prominent opening or closing sections, the contrapuntal elisions between successive phrases of the text, or on occasion the sectional arrangement of the entire motet. The first procedure, to imitate the beginning of the model, can be seen in Costanzo Porta's four-voice setting of O sacrum convivium (1580), whose opening was based on Victoria's more famous motet from 1572 (see Ex- ample 2).14 Not only did Porta select nearly the same pitch system as Vic-

Bernhard Meier, Die Tonarten der klassischen Vokalpolyphonie (Utrecht, 1974), trans. Ellen S. Beebe as The Modes of Classical Vocal Polyphony Described According to the Sources (New York, 1988), chap. 4; and Karol Berger, Musica ficta: Theories of Accidental Inflections in Vocal Polyphony from Marchetto da Padova to Gioseffo Zarlino (Cambridge, 1987), chap. 6.

10 In each of these formations, the intervals between the two cadential voices can be displaced by one or more octaves.

" Brown, 'Emulation, Competition, and Homage', 14. 12

My research indicates that in the late sixteenth century recognizable musical conventions arose for several of the most popular motet texts. Typically convention would govern the number of voices and the pitch system that was selected (the finalis, hexachordal system and cleffing arrangement), alternations between duple and triple mensuration, the segmentation of the text and its general rate of declamation, and whether melodic material was likely to be derived from the plainsong on that text. See my 'Imitation and Innovation', i, chaps. 2-5.

" Jackson, 'I primi motetti', 25-6.

14 Costanzo Porta, Liber quinquaginta duorum motectorum (Venice, 1580); Victoria, Motecta

(Venice, 1572). Madrigal composers also imitated the beginning of their models as described, for instance, in Watkins and La May, ' "Imitatio" and "Emulatio" '

212 MICHELE FROMSON

Example 2. O sacrum convivium, opening section: Victoria (1572), bars 1-7; Costanzo Porta (1580), bars 1-7; Marenzio (1585), bars 1-6. Sources: Tomais Luis de Victoria, Opera omnia, ed. Felipe Pedrell (Leip- zig, 1902-13), i, 34-6; Costanzo Porta, Opera omnia, ed. Siri Cisilino

(Padua, 1964-; 2nd edn, 1971), v, 10-12; Luca Marenzio, Collected Works, ed. Bernhard Meier and Roland Jackson, Corpus mensurabilis musicae, 72 (Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1976-), ii, 37-40. Victoria (1572)

A 5

O sa-crum con-vi vi v- um, in

O sa crum con - vi - vi - um,

Ssa- crum con-vi - - - vi - u, in quo

O sa-crum con-vi - - - vi - umrn, in quo

Porta (1580)

Ssa - crum con- vi - - v i - um , in

Ssa - crum con - vi - vi - um, in

O sa - crum con - vi - - - vi - um, in

O sa - crum con-vi - - - vi - urnm, O sa - crum con - vi- vi - um, in

O sa - crum con - vi vi - um,

O sa - crum con - vi - vi-um, in

0Ia- rm colevi i-m i u


toria (an F finalis, the soft hexachord and voci mutate cleffing), but he presented the first phrase very similarly, using homorhythmic textures and an unusually long melisma on the noun 'conVIvium', constructing an opening section of precisely the same length (six and a half breves in all) and closing with a perfect cadence on F.'5 Victoria's lovely opening was also imitated by Marenzio, this time in a five-voice arrangement from 1585.'6 Indeed, Marenzio nearly quoted his model by emulating its homorhythm, declamatory rate, harmonic progression and, perhaps most notably, the prominent suspension formula in the tenor part.17

Lest the existence of three such similar openings suggest that the first phrase of 0 sacrum convivium was normally treated this way, Example 3 presents the much more conventional opening in Andrea Gabrieli's motet, first printed in 1565.'8 As in most settings of the text, contrapuntal textures are the rule, the text declamation is more leisurely and melismatic with at least two complete iterations in each voice, and the opening section is significantly longer, normally spanning 10-20 breves. Among the numerous other settings that begin this way are those of Wert (1566), Palestrina (1572), Marc'Antonio Ingegneri (1576, 1591), Lassus (1582), Guglielmo Gonzaga (1583), Claudio Merulo (1583) and Giovanni Croce (1601).19

Although it was more common for a composer to imitate the beginning of his model, the same could be done for the closing section as indicated by Figure 1, which analyses in a graphic format the formal plans of the closing alleluias in three Venetian settings of O sacrum convivium, by Andrea Gabrieli (1565), Claudio Merulo (1583) and Giovanni Croce (1601).20 Each alleluia begins with a section ten bars long in triple time, reworks the same contrapuntal material for an additional nine and a half bars, and ends with a plagal extension in duple time.21 Interestingly, although these formal schemes are nearly identical, each composer

" The clefs in these two motets differ slightly; Victoria chose C1-C3 clefs whereas Porta used C4-F4. On Renaissance conceptions of voci mutate cleffing, see Frank Carey, 'Composition for

Equal Voices in the Sixteenth Century', Journal of Musicology, 9 (1991), 300-42. '6 Luca Marenzio, Motectafestorum totius anni (Rome, 1585). '7 In his imitation Marenzio shortened the static triad that Victoria had sustained across bar 3,

thereby making his own opening more dynamic and concise.

'8 Andrea Gabrieli, Sacrae cantiones (Venice, 1565). '9 Giaches de Wert: Collected Works, ed. Carol MacClintock, Corpus mensurabilis musicae, 24

(Rome, 1969), xi, 94-7; Pierluigi da Palestrina, Opere complete, ed. Raffaele Casimiri and others

(Rome, 1939-), vii, 27-31; Mary Laurent Duggan, 'Marc Antonio Ingegneri: Motets for Four and Five Voices' (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Rochester, 1968), ii, 69-73 and 81-5; Lassus, Siimtliche Werke, ed. Franz Xavier Haberl and Adolf Sandberger (Leipzig, 1894-1926; repr. New York, 1973), v, 68-70; Guglielmo Gonzaga: Sacrae cantiones quinque vocum, ed. Richard Sherr, The Sixteenth-Century Motet, 28 (New York, 1990), 143-50; and Claudio Meruli musica sacra, ed.

James Bastian, Corpus mensurabilis musicae, 51 (Rome, 1977), iv, 44-8. Transcriptions of the set-

tings by Ingegneri (1591) and Croce are in my 'Imitation and Innovation', ii, 207-30 and 255-64. Lassus has been included among the Italian composers because of his many trips to Italy toward the end of the sixteenth century and his longstanding relationships with musicians and clerics in Rome.

20 All three composers were directly associated with St Mark's cathedral in Venice. The motets by Merulo and Croce first appeared in Claudio Merulo, II primo libro dei motetti (Venice, 1583) and Giovanni Croce, Sacrae cantiones quinis vocibus (Venice, 1601). The chronology of these publica- tions suggests that Merulo imitated Gabrieli's motet but that Croce could have emulated either earlier setting or even borrowed from both.

21 An especially fascinating instance of this type of formal imitation is described in James Haar, 'Pace non trovo', 127-49. As Haar explains, in the madrigal cycle Pace non trovo Palestrina derived the closing bars of each of 14 madrigals from Ivo's setting of the same words in his single madrigal by the same title.

214 MICHELE FROMSON

Example 3. Andrea Gabrieli, O sacrum convivium (1565), bars 1-11. Source: L'arte musicale in Italia, ed. Luigi Torchi (Milan, 1897), ii, 117-22.

o= O sa - crum con-vi - vi-um,

O sa - crum con vi-vi -um, O sa•

Icrum con- vi vi um, O-I

O - crum con - vi - vi- um,

Ssa - cru con vi- vi-uvi,

(evaded)

7 O sa - crun con vi vi - um, in

O sa-crum convi - - vi - - urn, in quo

sa - crum con - vi um, in quo Chri -

sasa crum con - crum co v i -um, in quo

sa - crum con - vi - vi - urn, in quo

C

plagal A A' extension

A. Gabrieli

(1565)

bar 50 60 69 72 I II II I

no. of bars 10 9.5 3.5

plagal A A' extension

Merulo (1583), Croce (1601)

I II II

no. of bars 10 9.5 5.5

Figure 1. O sacrum convivium: Three Venetian alleluias.


featured different melodic material, as shown in Example 4, where the outer voices of each alleluia are given.

The third imitative procedure, to emulate the contrapuntal elisions with which an earlier composer had connected adjacent phrases of text, is illustrated by Victoria's Quem vidistis pastores (1572), which is modelled on Palestrina's setting from 1569.22 Reproduced as Example 5 are the elisions that link the first imperative in the text, 'dicite' ('Tell [whom you have seen]'), to the second, 'annunciate' ('Announce [to us on earth who has appeared]'). In addition to emulating Palestrina's declamatory

J J J J J. . JJ4 J rhythms (di - ci - te; an - nun - ci - a - te no - bis), homorhythmic textures and prominent movement by fifth in the lowest voice, Victoria joined the im-

peratives similarly. He constructed a fully voiced homorhythmic cadence to draw attention to the final iteration of 'dicite' and shifted to higher and thinner textures for the phrase 'annunciate nobis' (Palestrina, bars 20-1; Victoria, bars 16-17), which he then reiterated as in the model.

Victoria also emulated the way Palestrina had connected 'collaudantes dominum' to the alleluia (see Example 6). Once again, the two passages have significant features in common. They use a lilting triple-time homorhythm for the joyous phrase 'collaudantes dominum' ('praising the Lord together'), mark the final syllable of 'domiNUM' with a fully voiced cadence (in Palestrina's case on C and in Victoria's on G), and return to a contrapuntal duple time for the alleluia, where they present two re-

markably similar motives: a disjunct, four-note syllabic motive generally placed in the lower voices (Ml) and a longer, more melismatic motive first stated in the highest voice (M2).

Interrelated elisions of this kind are properly included among tech-

niques of formal imitation because their central purpose is to ensure that adjacent phrases of the text are projected as they had been in the model. To take a specific case, where Palestrina joined the sentence 'Natum vidimus et choros angelorum collaudantes dominum' ('We saw the birth and choruses of angels praising the Lord together') with the alleluia, his elision conveys perfectly the syntactic and semantic relationship of these two textual units. The fully voiced arrival on C concludes the sentence, the crotchet rest separates this sentence from the alleluia, the sustained C-E-G triad links these interconnected ideas together, while the three active voices introduce the alleluia. Victoria's close imitation of this elision ensures that the meaning and syntactic relationshp of the two textual units will come across as clearly in his new setting as it had in his model.

Other more intricate examples of interrelated elisions can be found in Lassus's and Luzzaschi's settings of O sacrum convivium, first published in 1582 and 1598.23 Shown in Example 7 are those that link 'in quo Christus sumitur' ('in which Christ is received') with 'recolitur memoria

22 Palestrina, Liber primus... mottettorum (Rome, 1569) and Victoria, Motecta (Venice, 1572). 23 These works first appeared in Lassus, Sacrae cantiones quinque vocum (Munich, 1582) and

Luzzaschi, Sacrarum cantionum . . liber primus quinis vocibus (Venice, 1598). The biographical connections between the two men are well known: Lassus visited Ferrara, where Luzzaschi was employed, on several occasions during the 1580s. For more information see Wolfgang Boetticher, Orlando di Lasso (Kassel and Basle, 1958), i, 543; and Anthony Newcomb, The Madrigal at Ferrara, 1579-1597 (Princeton, 1980), i, 175.

Example 4. O sacrum convivium: Andrea Gabrieli (1565), bars 50-71; Claudio Merulo (1583), bars 46-69; Giovanni Croce (1601), bars 59-82. Sources: L'arte musicale in Italia, ed. Torchi, ii, 117-22; Claudio Merulo: Musica sacra, ed. James Bastian, Corpus mensurabili? musicae, 51 (Rome, 1977), iv, 44-8; Fromson, 'Imitation and Innovation', ii, 255-64.

A. Gabrieli (1565) al - le -lu - ia, al - le - lu - ia, al - le - lu - ia, al - ie - lu - ia, 50 Al-le- lu - ia,

Al-le-lu - ia, Al - le - lu - ia,

SI

Al - le - lu - ia,

B -

'I Al - le - lu - ua, - ia, al-le - lu - ia, al - le- lu - ia, al l - lu - ia,

C. Merulo (1583) 46 Al le - lu - ia, al - le lu - ia, al - le - lu

- ia,

Aif,- - ia

a.

l -T

l " ia al

" I -lu -"a i

al - le - lu - ia,

I" z" z zI?r'

I • 1 ?rlr?

i • r"I

I

Al - le - lu-ia, al - le - lu - ia, al - c lue - - ia,

G. Croce (1601) Al-le -lu - ia, al-le lu - ia, al- lu ia, le -lu - ia, 59 0

'', al

- le

-lu - , [" I I . I

Al - le - lu - ia,

.P I I I I Al-le-lu - ia, al - le - lu - ia, al-le -lu - ia, al- le -lu - ia, al - le -lu - ia,

I first statement I

0,

0 z

Example 4 (cont.) al - le- lu - ia -ia, al le - lu ia.

w id J

[ri.

restatement '6 I ]

" I

of bars 52-8 '

F" al -le - lu - ia, (T) - 7

[--- 7 -

-ia, al-le -lu - ia, al -le-lu - ia.

al - le- -ia, al le - lu - ia. 65 1 I restatement ;.

of bars 48-54

-7

- - - - - - - -

- - - - al -

le - lu - ia,

.I al - - le lu - ia.

al - le - lu - al - le - lu - - ia.

SrestatementIhi of bars 61-7

al - le - lu - ia 7 al - le -lu-

+ _ ___f___•________. ____

_ _ _ _ al - le - lu - ia, al- -ia, al - - le-lu -

- ia. restatement Iplagal extension

0 z z H 0

z 0

H

0

z

Cj

218 MICHELE FROMSON

Example 5. Quem vidistis pastores: Palestrina (1569), bars 16-23; Victoria (1572), bars 13-19. Sources: Palestrina, Opere complete, ed. Raffaele Casimiri and others (Rome, 1939-), v, 184-8; Victoria, Opera omnia, i, 90-6. Palestrina (1569) 16

-te, di - ci - te, di - ci - te di - ci-te,

di ci - te, di - ci - te, di-

di - ci - te, di -

di - ci - te, di - ci - te, di -

te di - ci - te, di - ci - te,

di - ci - te, di -

triads: C G d

20

an-nun - ci-

- ci -te an-nun-ci - a - te no - - bis,

- CI - te, an - nun -ci-

- ci - te, an - nun - ci -a -te no - te, dibis,

an - nun - ci -a - te no - - bis,

- ci - te, an-nun - ci- a *


Example 5 (cont.)

Victoria (1572) 13

di - ci - te, di - ci - te, di-

di - cite, di - cite, di -

di - ci - te, di - ci - te, di -

(di-) - ci - te, di - ci - te,

(-o-) res, di - - ci - te, di -

(di-) - ci - te, di - ci - te, di triads: D G C

16

- ci - te, an - nun - ci - a - te no - bis,

I J I,-

- ci - te, an - nun - ci - a - te no - bis,

- ci - te, an -nun - ci - a - te no - bis,

di- ci - te, an-nun

-ci

- a - te

FI (o)F-

ci - t

a•i

-

ci - te an - nun ci -

F D A

220 MICHELE FROMSON

Example 6. Quem vidistis pastores: Palestrina (1569), bars 60-7; Vic- toria (1572), bars 51-8.

Palestrina (1569) 60

col lau dan tes do mi num. Al le

col - lau - dan - tes do - mi - num. Al -

M1

A

col - lau - dan - tes do - mi - num. Al- le lu - ia

col - lau - dan - tes do - mi - num.

M2 a65

al - le - lu - ia,

- col - lu - ia, al tes do mi num. Ale - lu - ia

-- Ji aalp

Al - le - lu - ia,

A E

6 tT%?


Example 6 (cont.) Victoria (1572)

51 M2

col - lau - dan - tes do - mi - num. Al - le

col - lau - dan - tes do - mi - num.

col - lau - dan -tes do - mi - num. Al - le

col - lau - dan - tes do - mi- num. Al -

col - lau - dan - tes do - mi - num. Al - le - lu - ia,

M1 1. I

col - lau- dan - tes do- mi - num. Al - le - lu - ia,

G (imperfect)

56

lu - ia, al - le

Al - le

- lu -ia, Al - le - lu

- le - lu - ia,

al - le - lu - ia,

al - le - lu - ia,

G (imperfect)

222 MICHELE FROMSON

Example 7. O sacrum convivium: Lassus (1582), bars 12-15; Luzzaschi (1598), bars 12-15. Sources: Lassus, Sdimtliche Werke, ed. Franz Xavier Haberl and Adolf Sandberger (Leipzig, 1894-1926; repr. New York, 1973), v, 68-70; Fromson, 'Imitation and Innovation', ii, 248-54.

Lassus (1582) 12 00 d

-tur, re - co - li

- tur, re - co -

A

(su-) - - mi - tur, re - co- li - tur, re - co -

quo Chri-stus su - mi-tur re - co

su - - mi - tur, re - co -

Chri-stus su - mi - tur, re - co - ii - tur

F F

Luzzaschi (1598) 12 o=

-tur, re - co - li

- tur me-

re - co - li

- tur me - mo-ri-

(Chri-) stus su - mi - tur, re - co-

T ,.M; . ,,

su - mi - tur, re - co - li-

su mi - tur, re - co - li-

d

passionis eius' ('(and) the memory of his passion is re-enacted'). (In Ex- amples 7 and 8 the full-size notation highlights contrapuntal ideas that are shared by both settings.) In emulation of his model, Luzzaschi ter- minated the phrase 'in quo Christus sumitur' with a cadence in the lower three voices and introduced the words 'recolitur memoria' on a dotted figure that ascends a perfect fifth from F to C or from A to E. This figure


first appears in the outer parts and only later in the inner voices of both motets.

Luzzaschi also emulated the way Lassus connected 'et futurae gloriae' ('and of future glory') with 'nobis pignus datur' ('to us [as] a pledge is

given') (see Example 8). As Lassus had done, Luzzaschi concluded the

phrase 'et futurae gloriae' with an F cadence and introduced 'nobis

pignus datur' on a motive that descends conjunctly from c" to g'. Then, for the syllable 'piGNUS', he constructed in his outer voices an evaded cadence like the one Lassus had used to articulate the same syllable in his

upper voices.24 Example 8 reveals that Luzzaschi did not imitate Lassus's elision one

voice at a time but instead rearranged its counterpoint substantively. For the octave cadence on F, he shifted the descending fifth from Lassus's alto voice down into the bass part to provide harmonic support for the cadence above and transferred the 7-1 cadential ascent from Lassus's tenor voice up into his own alto part. Only in his cantus and tenor voices did Luzzaschi imitate the equivalent voices (cantus and quintus respectively) of the model.25 This rearrangement of Lassus's counterpoint strongly suggests that Luzzaschi had scored up the elisions in his model in order to see how they had been constructed. Such a score could easily have been written on an erasable slate (cartella) like those described by Jessie Ann Owens in her research on Rore's Miserere mei.26 Indeed, Luz- zaschi claimed to have inherited a cartella from Rore, as Owens and others have pointed out.27 Luzzaschi could have copied Lassus's elision on the upper part of the slate, examined its voice-leading, constructed his imitation below, and later transferred individual voices to the appropriate partbook in precisely the manner Owens has described.28

The fourth imitative procedure is the most elaborate encountered thus far: to devote the same number of breves to each important unit of the text, as can be seen in Orazio Vecchi's Quem vidistis pastores from 1590, which is based on Giovanni Maria Nanino's setting of the text."9 Not only

24 The proper construction of an evaded cadence is illustrated in Example 1(e). 25 These voices constitute the structural soprano-tenor framework in both elisions. 26 Owens, 'The Milan Partbooks', 270-98. Owens conjectures (pp. 289-93) that with an erasable

slate Rore could have coordinated individual voices in his complicated counterpoint by 'working on one short, two- or three-voice segment at a time'. She speculates that Rore used his cartella to construct the main voices in an imitative point and then copied each voice into the appropriate partbook.

27 Ibid., 276-83. 28 The elision would have been easy to locate in each partbook because in motet prints of this

period each phrase of text is normally entered into all the partbooks the first time it is sung. It would seem most expedient for Luzzaschi to design the structural voices of the elision before completing the

counterpoint in either of the surrounding sections. 29 Inasmuch as Nanino's setting remained unpublished during his lifetime, the chronology of these

two works needs to be reviewed. For many reasons, it seems likely that Nanino composed the model and Vecchi the imitation. By the time Vecchi's motet was printed in 1590, Nanino was a highly regarded church composer, while Vecchi was known for his secular works. Vecchi could have ac-

quired a copy of his model as a result of Nanino's visit in 1586 to Mantua, not far from Correggio where Vecchi was employed. Perhaps Nanino brought a copy with him or sent one north after return-

ing to Rome. (Indeed, Iain Fenlon has determined that in 1586 Nanino sent several madrigals to Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga of Mantua; see Music and Patronage in Sixteenth-Century Mantua, Cam-

bridge, 1980, i, 88.) Further information on Nanino's life is in RichardJoseph Schuler, 'The Life and

Liturgical Works of Giovanni Maria Nanino (1545-1607)' (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Min-

Example 8. O sacrum convivium: Lassus (1582), bars 36-8; Luzzaschi (1598), bars 35-7.

Lassus (1582) Luzzaschi (1598) 36 o=35 o=

-ae, no - bis pi - gnus da - no - bis pi - gnus da-

A A k I I I I I I A

-rae glo - ri-ae, no - bis pi-gnus (glo-) - ri - ae, no

no - bis pi-gnus da-tur, (glo-) - ri - ae,

-I2 ,i h

F wig I ? 1 I .jI I . I T | I I

-rae glo-ri- ae, (glo-) -

ri - ae,

no - (glo-) - ri- ae, no - bis pi -

F (evaded) F (evaded)

ct-

t-D

ITI

C

0 z ? ?


did Vecchi make his new setting almost the same length as Nanino's (82 versus 80 bars), but he devoted nearly identical numbers of bars to each idea (see Table 1).

TABLE 1

QUEM VIDISTIS PASTORES: THE FORMAL PLANS OF NANINO AND VECCHI

Note: This tally is given in bars rather than breves because the notation in the two motets differs. Vecchi selected C and the minim as the basic rhythmic unit, whereas Nanino used 0 and the semibreve.

Nanino Vecchi (in bars)

1. QUEM VIDISTIS PASTORES DICITE: 35 (1-35) 35 (1-35) ANNUNCIATE NOBIS IN TERRIS QUIS APPARUIT:

Whom you have seen, shepherds, tell! Announce to us on earth who has appeared!

2. NATUM VIDIMUS 8 (36-43) 8 (36-43) We saw the one who was born,

3. ET CHOROS ANGELORUM COLLAUDANTES 39 (44-82) 37 (44-80) DOMINUM ALLELUIA.

and choruses of angels praising the Lord together. Alleluia.

If one measures up to the cadence with which each idea concludes, then both composers spent 35 bars on the commands to the shepherds that they describe the miracle they witnessed; eight bars on the shepherds' answer that they saw the birth of Jesus; and 39 and 37 bars respectively on their description of the angels' joyous response to this news.30 As a result, these motets have another unexpected feature in common: in both, the phrase 'natum vidimus' ('we saw the one who was born') occupies the middle of the composition. In effect, each motet is organized symmetrically around the central event celebrated during the Christmas season." Vec- chi's reliance on his model also extends to lower architectonic levels, for although the counterpoint in the two motets is by and large unrelated, for the words 'natum vidimus' Vecchi closely imitated Nanino's textures, declamatory rhythms and cadences (see Example 9).

The interrelationships of these motets raise challenging questions about compositional practices of the period. Did either man design the

nesota, 1963), 2 vols., i, chap. 1. A biography of Vecchi is in Evaristo Pancaldi and Gino Roncaglia, 'Orazio Vecchi, la vita e le opere corredata da documenti, elenco delle dediche e prefazioni', Orazio Vecchi precursore del melodramma (1550-1605) (Modena, 1950), 7-79.

30 Vecchi ended his motet by repeating the phrase 'collaudantes dominum et choros angelorum', whereas Nanino concluded with an alleluia.

" Symmetrical formal plans have recently been found in polyphonic Masses of the sixteenth century; see Nors S. Josephson, 'Formal Symmetry in the High Renaissance', Tyjdschrzft van de Verenig- ing voor nederlandse muziekgeschiedenis, 41 (1991), 105-33 (esp. p. 112).

226 MICHELE FROMSON

symmetrical arrangement in advance, presumably before composing the counterpoint for individual voices, or might these symmetries have arisen fortuitously, in Vecchi's motet by virtue of his having imitated Nanino's motet section by section? Additional music-theoretical questions are sug- gested by Vecchi's emulation of Nanino's cadential degrees, which have different tonal functions in each work (see Table 2). In Nanino's setting

Example 9. Quem vidistis pastores: Giovanni Maria Nanino (MS), bars 34-45; Orazio Vecchi (1590), bars 34-45. Sources: G. M. Nanino: Four- teen Liturgical Works, ed. Richard Schuler, Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance, 5 (Madison, 1969), 33-9; Fromson, 'Imitation and Innovation', ii, 192-206. Nanino (MS)

34 O=

ap-pa-ru - it? Na - tum vi - di - mus, na -

VU r i j (ap-) pa - ru - it? Na - tum vi - di- mus,

-pa - ru - it? Na - tumrn vi - di - mus,

-it? Na - tum vi - di - mus, na -

ap - pa- ru -it? Na - tumrn vi - di- mus,

_ I - II

quis ap-pa-ru - it?

C C

Vecchi (1590) 34 c0=J

-ris quis ap - pa-ru-it? Na - tum vi - di - mus,

-ris quis ap - pa-ru-it? Na - tum vi - di - mus, na-

-ris quis ap - pa-ru-it?

-ris quis ap - pa -ru- it? Na - tum vi - - di - mus,

- I I ' Ii , -

-ris quis ap - pa-ru-it? Na - - tum vi - di - mus,

II II

(in ter-)ris quis apparuit? natum vidimus,


Example 9 (cont.)

tumrn vi - di - mus, et cho-ros an-ge-lo - rum,

na tumrn vi di - mus, et cho-ros an-ge- et cho-ros

na - tum vi - di - mus,

tum vi di-dmus, et cho-rosan-ge - lo - rum,

na - turn vi - di - mus, et cho-ros an-ge - lo num,et

Na - turn vi - di - mus, et cho-ros

na turn vi di- mus, et cho-ros an-ge-

tum vi - - di - mus, et

I #.

na - turn vi di-mus,et cho-ros an-ge-lo - rum,

et cho-ros an-ge-lo - rum

na - rum vi - di - mus, et cho-rosan-ge- lo - rum,

G A II ,

natum vidimus, et choros angelorum.

the central cadences on C and G fall on degrees that are emphasized elsewhere in the motet (Table 2, column 1), while in Vecchi's motet these degrees contrast with those found in surrounding passages, which em- phasize A and to a lesser extent E (Table 2, column 2). From a modern perspective, tonal contrasts of this sort are unsettling because they raise questions about the coherence of Vecchi's motet.32 Did Vecchi adopt

32 In the last 30 years a great deal has been written about tonal coherence, or the lack thereof, in music of the late sixteenth century, and heated controversy has been generated. The most influential examinations of these issues are Siegfried Hermelink, Dispositiones modorum: Die Tonarten in der Musik Palestrinas und seiner Zeitgenossen (Tutzing, 1960); Carl Dahlhaus, Untersuchung iiber die Entstehung der harmonischen Tonalitait (Kassel, 1968), trans. Robert O. Gjerdingen as Studies on the Origin of Harmonic Tonality (Princeton, 1990), esp. pt II; Leeman L. Perkins, 'Mode and Struc-

228 MICHELE FROMSON

TABLE 2

CADENCES IN NANINO'S AND VECCHI'S QUEM VIDISTIS PASTORES

Nanino Vecchi bar/beat degree type bar/beat degree type

5/1 C octave 8/3 C disjunct

10/1 C octave 11/1 G octave 11/3 C disjunct 13/1 C evaded 13/1 A octave 14/1 G disjunct 16/3 G octave

17/1 G octave 18/3 C unison 19/1 F octave 19/1 D disjunct

21/1 - imperfect 23/1 C octave

25/1 C evaded 27/1 A octave

30/1 C octave 30/1 E octave 32/3 C unison 33/1 E octave

35/1 C octave + disjuncta 35/3 C octave

39/1 C octave + disjunct 39/1 C disjunct 43/1 G octave + disjunct 43/1 G disjunct

45/4 A octave + disjunct 47/1 A octave 48/1 C octave + disjunct 50/1 A octave + disjunct

51/1 C octave 53/1 G unison 54/1 - imperfect 55/1 C octave

(. . ) (. . ) 75/1 A octave

75/3 - imperfect 76/1 D octave + disjunct Plagal extension to bar 80.

77/1 C octaveb FINIS 78/1 G unison 79/1 C octave + disjunct Plagal extension to bar 82. FINIS

a Octave and disjunct cadences on the same scalar degree occur simultaneously. b In bar 77 of Schuler's transcription, the first note in the cantus part should be c " rather than b '.


Nanino's cadence points in order to call attention to a passage that performers and astute listeners would recognize as alluding to the model, or was this shift toward C and G designed to highlight the textual reference to Jesus's birth?33 Yet a third explanation can be inferred from Harold Powers's recent work on Rore's Quando signor lasciaste: that Vecchi's cadential scheme is simply a manifestation of modal mixture, which Powers would probably see as falling well within the bounds of late sixteenth-century modal practice.34

The fifth technique of structural modelling is related to the previous one: to imitate the number of breves that another composer had spent on individual units of the text but in so doing to increase or decrease those numbers by a fixed ratio. I have found this procedure in two motets, the first being Pallavicino's polychoral imitation of Wert's O sacrum convivium for five voices (1566)." (Pallavicino's motet was published posthumously in 1605 but is thought to date from around 1590, when he was working with Wert at the Mantuan court of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga.) As demonstrated in Table 3, Pallavicino devoted four thirds (or 1.33 times) as many breves as Wert to each important idea in the text. Pallavicino spent 20 breves versus Wert's 14.5 on the opening exclama- tion 'O sacrum convivium'; 23 breves versus Wert's 17 on the asyndetic phrase 'in quo Christus sumitur recolitur memoria passionis eius'; and 53.5 breves versus Wert's 41 on the concluding idea 'Mens impletur gratia et futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur alleluia'. (Examples 10(a)-(b) present the cadences that conclude the first and the second ideas in each motet; the third idea, of course, ends at the final cadence.) Further evidence that Pallavicino systematically expanded his model by a third is found in his setting of 'nobis pignus datur' across breves 56-64 (see Example 11), for here Pallavicino nearly quoted the distinctive hemiola that Wert had used in the proportionally equivalent place, breves 42-8 (42 x 4/3 = 56; 48 X 4/3 = 64).36 Although Pallavicino retained the durations in his model, he transformed the duple time that is merely im- plicit in Wert's hemiola into an explicit alla breve mensuration.

ture in the Masses of Josquin', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 26 (1973), 189-239; Meier, Die Tonarten, pt I; and the influential work of Harold S. Powers, especially his 'Mode', The New Grove Dictionary, xii, 376-450, 'Tonal Types and Modal Categories in Renaissance Polyphony',

Journal of the American Musicological Society, 34 (1981), 428-70, and 'Modal Representation in

Polyphonic Offertories', Early Music History, 2 (1982), 43-86. " This second explanation would probably be preferred by Bernhard Meier, who believes that

modally anomalous passages usually served text-expressive purposes (see Meier, Die Tonarten, pt II).

"4 Monteverdi's Model for a Multimodal Madrigal', In cantu et in sermone: For Nino Pirrotta on his Eightieth Birthday, ed. Fabrizio Della Serta and Franco Piperno (Florence, 1989), 185-219. Modal mixture is discussed on pp. 188-91.

" Giaches de Wert, Motectorum librum primus (Venice, 1566) and Benedetto Pallavicino, Sacrae dei laudes octo et una . . . (Venice, 1605). Biographical information on Pallavicino is in Peter Flanders, 'The Madrigals of Benedetto Pallavicino' (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1971), i, 13-37; and Kathryn Bosi Monteath, 'The Five-Part Madrigals of Benedetto Pallavicino' (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Otago. New Zealand, 1981), i, esp. pp. 19-27. The standard account of Wert's life is Carol MacClintock, Giaches de Wert (1535-1596): Life and Works, Musical Studies and Documents, 17 (Rome, 1966), esp. pp. 47ff.

36 Howard Mayer Brown has found much the same technique, which he calls melodic allusion, in late fifteenth-century chansons ('Emulation, Competition, and Homage', 12ff.).

230 MICHELE FROMSON

TABLE 3

0 SACRUM CONVIVIUM: WERT (1566) AND PALLAVICINO (c.1590)

Sources: Giaches de Wert: Collected Works, xi, 94-7; Fromson, 'Imitation and Innovation', ii, 270-92.

Pallavicino Wert (in breves)

0 SACRUM CONVIVIUM 20 14.5

O sacred banquet, 20:14.5 = 1.379

IN QUO CHRISTUS SUMITUR RECOLITUR 23 17 MEMORIA PASSIONIS EIUS: 23:17 = 1.353

in which Christ is consumed (and) the memory of his passion re-enacted.

MENS IMPLETUR GRATIA ET FUTURAE 53.5 41 GLORIAE NOBIS PIGNUS ALLELUIA. 53.5:41 = 1.305

The soul is filled with grace and a pledge of future glory given us. Alleluia!

TABLE 4

QUEM VIDISTIS PASTORES: PALESTRINA (1569) AND MASSAINO (1580)

Sources: Palestrina, Opere complete, vii, 27-31; Fromson, 'Imitation and Innovation', ii, 67-73.

Massaino Palestrina (in breves)

QUEM VIDISTIS PASTORES DICITE: 13 20 Whom you have seen, shepherds, tell! 13:20 = 0.650

ANNUNCIATE NOBIS IN TERRIS QUIS 12.5 18.5 APPARUIT: 12.5:18.5 = 0.676

Announce to us on earth who has appeared.

NATUM VIDIMUS ET CHOROS ANGELORUM 15.5 24.5 COLLAUDANTES DOMINUM: 15.5:24.5 = 0.633

We have seen the one who was born and choruses of angels praising God.

ALLELUIA 19 18 or the previous sentence repeated 19:18 = 1.055

In Massaino's setting of Quem vidistis pastores (1580), which was modelled on Palestrina's setting from 1569, much the same imitative procedure is found.37 This time Massaino reduced the formal units in his

37 Palestrina, Liber primus . . . motettorum (Rome, 1569); Tiburtio Massaino, Sacrae cantus

quinque paribus vocibus ... liber secundus (Venice, 1580). Among the other features these motets have in common are their rates of declamation, motivic material, timbral contrasts, segmentation of the text and shifts from duple to triple mensuration.


Example 10(a). O sacrum convivium: Giaches de Wert (1566), breves 14-16; Benedetto Pallavicino, breves 19-21. Sources: Giaches de Wert: Collected Works, ed. Carol MacClintock, Corpus mensurabilis musicae, 24 (Rome, 1969), xi, 94-7; Fromson, 'Imitation and Innovation', ii, 270-92.

Wert (1566)

14 -crum con - vi - vi - um, in quo Chri-

MII -

-um, in quo Chri - stus su - mi -

(-vi-) -vi - um, in quo Chri - stus

-Vvi vi - um,

(-vi) - vi - um,

G

Pallavicino (c. 1590)

?o =j 19 (-vi-) - vi - um,

,- con - vi - vi - um,

- crum con - vi - vi -um,

(-vi-) - vi - um,

(-vi) - vi - um, in quo Chri -

crum con - vi vi i - um, in quo• Chri -

(-vi) in quo Chri -

S(-vi-) vi - umIJ•

•

(-vi-) - vi - um, in quo Chri -

G

232 MICHELE FROMSON

Example 10(b). O sacrum convivium: Wert, breves 31-32.5; Pallavicino, breves 42-4. Wert's setting has one 'extra' semibreve.

Wert (1566)

31 (e-) ius. Mens im-

A rd

e - ius. Mens im-

e - ius. Mens im-

e - ius.

e - ius.

D

Pallavicino (c. 1590)

42 (-nis) e - ius. Mens im-

e - - ius. Mens im-

(-o-) nis e ius. Mens im-

(e-) - - ius. Mens im-

-Si- o - nis e - ius.

-o - nis e - ius.

u-ius.

e - - ius.

A

model by a third, thus spending roughly 0.67 times as many breves as Palestrina on each sentence in the text (see Table 4)."8 In the closing section of the two motets, this ratio is disrupted, presumably because

38 Significantly, Massaino emulated the way Palestrina had projected the syntactic structure of his

text, while Pallavicino did so for Wert's semantic units. Pallavicino's focus on textual meaning rather than syntax is not unexpected given his highly affective presentation of the text in madrigals of the same period.


Example 11. 0 sacrum convivium: Wert, breves 42.5-45; Pallavicino, breves 56-8.

Wert (1566) 42.5 o=

no - bis pi - gnus da - tur,

Pallavicino (1605) 56 o=

no - bis pi - gnus da - - tur,

Palestrina ended with an alleluia whereas Massaino repeated the third sentence. (The articulations that conclude the first three sentences in both settings are given in Examples 12(a)-(c)).39

The formal relationship between these two motets acquires greater significance through comparison with other unrelated settings (see Table 5; here, the closing sentence has been excluded from the calculations because Palestrina and Massaino's texts end differently). Lassus, Vic- toria, Nanino and Ingegneri devoted rather different percentages of breves to individual sentences; it is only in the motets of Massaino and Palestrina that the percentages are the same.

From a modern perspective, the practice of expanding or reducing the formal plan of a compositional model by a fixed ratio raises several questions. One is a purely practical matter: how alterations by fractions like four thirds or two thirds might have been carried out. In fact, this is readily accomplished in mensural notation since an expansion to four thirds simply entailed substituting four breves for every three in the model while a reduction to two thirds could be achieved by introducing two breves for every three. The more challenging question is why composers replicated the formal proportions of their models at all. Although we might assume that they wanted to construct a longer or shorter motet but devote the same proportionate amount of time to important units of the text, this explanation is almost certainly incorrect. The essential difficulty is that motets with interrelated formal proportions contain a different number of breves notated in sesquialtera major, which in the late sixteenth century would have been performed two to three times faster than the tempo as notated literally.40 Thus even if important units of the text occupy the same proportional number of notated breves in two motets, those units will not take the same proportional amount of time to perform.

"9 While most of these articulations are accomplished by formal cadences, as indicated in Ex- amples 12(a)-(c), others are not.

4* One new re-examination of this issue is Ruth DeFord, 'Tempo Relationships between Duple and Triple Time in Late Sixteenth-Century Music', paper presented to the Greater New York Chapter of the American Musicological Society, 16 April 1988.

234 MICHELE FROMSON

TABLE 5

QUEM VIDISTIS PASTORES:

THE PERCENTAGE OF BREVES DEVOTED TO EACH SENTENCE

Sources: Lassus, Sdmtliche Werke, v, 1-3; Victoria, Opera omnia, i, 90-6; G. M. Nanino: Fourteen Liturgical Works, 33-9; Fromson, 'Imitation and Innovation', 110-26.

(in breves) Sentence: 1 2 3

Palestrina (1569) 32% 30% 38% Massaino (1580) 32% 30% 38%

Lassus (1569) 25% (1-11) 32% (12-25) 43% (26-43.5) Victoria (1572) 30% (1-16) 24% (17-29) 46% (30-54) Nanino (MS) 33% (1-20) 25% (21-35) 42% (36-60) Ingegneri (1589) 29% (1-8.5) 37% (9.5-19.5) 34% (20.5-29.5)

Example 12(a). Quem vidistis pastores: Palestrina (1569), breves 20-2; Tiburtio Massaino (1580), breves 12-14. Sources: Palestrina, Opere com-

plete, vii, 27-31; Fromson, 'Imitation and Innovation', ii, 67-73. Palestrina (1569)

20 (di-) ci -te: an nunci-a -te no-

(di-) ci - te:

(di-) ci -te: an nun - ci-a -te no

"

an - nun - ci- a - te no

(di-) ci - te:

Massaino (1580)

12 (di-) - - - ci - te:

I ,R%- ,.a I I . "

di di - ci - tete: an - nun-ci-a - te

di - ci - te: an - nunci-a - te

di - ci - te: an - nun - ci -a - te

G


Example 12(b). Quem vidistis pastores: Palestrina (1569), breves 38-40; Massaino (1580), breves 25-7.

Palestrina (1569)

to =J 38 (-pa-) ru - it?

(-pa-) - ru - it? Na - tum vi - di-

(-pa-) - ru - it Na - tum vi - di -

(-pa-) - ru- it? Na - tum vi - di-

-it?

(pa-) ru it? Na tum vi di-

(pa-) - ru - it? Na - turn vi - di -

a

Massaino (1580)

25 (-pa-) - ru - it?

(quis) ap -pa - ru - it? Na - tum vi - di-

ap - pa - ru - it? Na - tum vi - di-

(quis) ap- pa - ru - it? Na - tum vi - di-

-it ?

G

To cite a specific case, when Palestrina set the third sentence of Quem vidistis pastores, he used 14.5 breves alla semibreve and 10 breves in sesquialtera major (see Table 4). If the sesquialtera breves are performed, let us say, three times as fast as those notated alla semibreve, the entire sentence will last for 17.8 breves alla semibreve (17.8 = 14.5 + 3.3 (10 divided by 3)). When Massaino set the same sentence, on the other hand, he used only 5.5 breves alla semibreve but the same number of sesquialtera breves, 10. If this sentence is performed with the same changes of speed as were adopted for Palestrina's motet, then it will take only 8.8 breves alla semibreve to sing (8.8 = 5.5 + 3.3). The net result is that for the third sentence, where the ratio of notated breves in the two motets is 0.633 (see Table 4), the temporal ratio as performed is much lower, only 0.494 (8.8:17.8). The same discrepancy exists in Pallavicino and Wert's settings of O sacrum convivium: here too the proportional interrelation- ship is exclusively notational.

236 MICHELE FROMSON

Example 12(c). Quem vidistis pastores: Palestrina (1569), breves 61-4; Massaino (1580), breves 39-42. Palestrina (1569)

61 o=0 o= Al - le - lu - ia,

-dan - tes do - mi - num. Al - le- lu- ia,

Al - le - lu-

-dan - tes do - mi - num. Al-

Al - le - lu - ia,

_II__ _ _ _ _ ..a _H

e. . rJ

-'J I

- -dan - tes do - mi - num.

Massaino (1580)

39

'3< J

--. -dan - tes do - mi - num. Na - tumrn vi - di-

-dan - tes do - mi - num. Na - turn vi - di-

-dan - tes do - mi - num. Na - turn vi - di-

G (repetition of

sentence --)

The technique of altering the notated dimensions of a polyphonic model by a fixed ratio prompts more questions about compositional practices during the late sixteenth century primarily because such intercom- positional references would surely have been all but inaudible to listeners and performers alike. Above and beyond forging a symbolic connection with an older composer or an admired work, one wonders what purpose such a cumbersome numerical manipulation might have served. And were these abstract formal interrelationships planned out in advance, perhaps as isorhythmic designs had been in earlier centuries, by counting the number of breves that had been devoted to individual phrases of text in one or several partbooks of the model? Once again, such questions are difficult to address; however, one potentially fruitful approach is through musical and rhetorical treatises of the period, which sometimes provide


detailed information about the way the formal structure of a compositional model could be imitated.

CONCEPTIONS OF IMITA TIO IN CONTEMPORARY MUSICAL AND

RHETORICAL TREATISES

As we have seen, motet composers emulated the formal plans of their models in various ways: by imitating the opening section (O sacrum convivium: Porta, Marenzio); the closing one (O sacrum convivium: Merulo, Croce); the elisions between successive phrases of text (Quem vidistis pastores: Victoria; O sacrum convivium: Luzzaschi); or even the number of breves that had been accorded large semantic or syntactic units of the text (Quem vidistis pastores: Vecchi), perhaps in an expanded or reduced format (O sacrum convivium: Pallavicino; Quem vidistis pastores: Mas- saino). Although these procedures were not discussed explicitly by Renaissance musicians, three theorists, Pietro Pontio, Lodovico Zacconi and Joachim Burmeister, did broach the subject of imitation in more general terms.41 Pontio stated in his Dialogo of 1595 that imitative procedures were best reserved for the Missa ad imitationem or the ricercar; nevertheless for polyphonic Mass composition he advocated several techniques we have already discovered in contemporary motets.42 For the

Kyrie (and other movements of the Mass) he urged composers to keep all borrowed melodies in their original order by beginning with melodic material (inventione) from the opening of the model and ending with inventione from its concluding section.43 The analogous procedure in motet composition, of course, was to emulate the opening or closing section of another setting of the same text.

Zacconi also dealt with musical imitation in his Prattica di musica (1622).44 In the course of exhorting young musicians to copy exemplary musical excerpts into their commonplace books, he provided a prolix but remarkably concrete description of compositional modelling:

What aspiring musicians should do, first of all, is acquire and study thoroughly all the good music they can get hold of; next they should score it, a tiresome but necessary task if the secrets of the music are to be thoroughly revealed. . . . The young composer should arrange his commonplace book so

"' Pietro Pontio, Ragionamento di musica (Parma, 1588; repr. Kassel, 1959), 155-8; Pietro Pon- tio, Dialogo, ove si tratta della theorica e prattica di musica (Parma, 1595), 44-5: Lodovico Zacconi, Prattica di musica seconda parte (Venice, 1622; repr. Bologna, 1967), 161-2; and Joachim Burmeister, Musica poetica definitionibus et divisionibus breviter delineata (Rostock, 1606; repr. Kassel, 1955), chap. 9.

42 According to Pontio, composers who used imitatio in genres other than the Mass or ricercar would be deemed persons of little skill and no value: 'Et in questo proposito voglio dire, che, trovan- dosi una cantilena simile de figure, & d'intervalli A quella di qualche altto [sic] compositore, esso sarebbe giudicato huomo di poca scienza, & di niun valore' (Pontio, Dialogo, 45). This and related passages are discussed in Lockwood, 'On "Parody" as Term and Concept in 16th-Century Music', Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music: A Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese, ed. Jan LaRue (New York, 1966), 560-75 (esp. pp. 570ff.).

43 Pontio, Ragionamento, 156. Pedro Cerone repeated this idea in El Melopeo: Tractada de musica theorica y pratica (Naples, 1613; repr. Bologna, 1968), 687. Lockwood has related Pontio's statements on imitation to the procedures used in Ruffo's parody Masses in The Counter- Reformation and the Masses of Vincenzo Ruffo, esp. pp. 153-4 and 176-7.

44 Zacconi, Prattica di musica seconda parte, 162.

238 MICHELE FROMSON

that under each scored passage there are empty staves; thus he can add thoughts of his own, or can vary those of the compositions before him by ex- changing entries [cambio delle partz], lengthening or shortening rests [isminuitione ed accrescimento delle pause], adding another point of imitation [di cavarne un'altra parte dalle parti originali che Ii sia somigliante e conforme piit che sia possibile].4'

Although these instructions are clearly intended for the young or amateur composer, the procedures Zacconi was describing closely resemble those that Victoria or Luzzaschi could easily have used to emulate the elisions of Palestrina or Lassus. Indeed, either composer could have proceeded ex- actly as Zacconi recommended, by scoring up passages of special interest and after some study composing an imitation on the empty staves below.

The most complete description we have of musical imitation was provided by the German theorist Joachim Burmeister, who devoted the final chapter of his Musica poetica to the subject.46 Borrowing heavily from contemporary rhetorical theory, he defined imitatio as 'the study and attempt to fashion our musical songs according to exemplary works skilfully examined through analysis'.47 He went on to distinguish between imitation by genus, which involved emulating the works of many excellent composers, and imitation by species, which occurred when a composer took one exemplary work as his model. Imitation by species, he said, 'con- sists of a similar invention and joining together of sententiae and periodi'.48 In this context the rhetorical term sententiae can be translated simply as musical ideas, but the word periodi calls for a fuller explanation. Claude Palisca has proposed, on the basis of the way Burmeister used the term to analyse rhetorical figures in Lassus's In me transierunt, that periodi refers to contrapuntal segments that are longer and more complete than sententiae and that end with a cadence.49 If so, then Burmeister's definition of imitation by species encompasses at least three of the imitative strategies we have seen in contemporary motets: to imitate individual musical ideas (sententiae) in the model, longer musical segments (periodi) and the elisions between them. Furthermore, if a composer were to follow Burmeister's guidelines systematically, he might well replicate the sectional arrangement in extended passages of his model, as Vecchi did when imitating Nanino's Quem vidistis pastores.

4' Zacconi's prose as summarized by James Haar in 'A Sixteenth-Century Attempt at Music Criticism', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 36 (1983), 191-209 (esp. pp. 197-8).

46 Burmeister, Musica poetica, 74-6. Biographical information on Burmeister is available in Martin Ruhnke, Joachim Burmeister: Ein Beitrag zur Musiklehre um 1600, Schriften des Landes- instituts fiir Musikforschung Kiel, 5 (Kassel and Basle, 1955), 9-51.

47 Burmeister, Musica poetica, 74: 'Imitatio est studium et conamen nostra carmina musica ad Artificum exempla, per analysin dextre considerata, effingendi et formandi'.

48 Ibid.: 'Consistit autem ea in simili sententiarum periodorumque inventione et connexione'.

4 As used in Latin rhetoric, the term sententiae refers to pointed or epigrammatic statements, and periodi to extended and grammatically complete units of text, typically 'organized paragraph[s], with some grammatical connection between the clauses' (George Kennedy, The Art of Persuasion in Greece, Princeton, 1963, 101-11). In an earlier treatise entitled Musica autoschediastike, Burmeister equated periodi with the affections, which he defined as 'a period in melody and harmony ter- minated by a cadence that moves and affects the souls and hearts of men'. This and related issues are discussed in Claude V. Palisca, 'Ut oratoria musica: The Rhetorical Basis of Musical Mannerism', The Meaning of Mannerism, ed. Franklin W. Robinson and Stephen G. Nichols, Jr (Hanover, N.H., 1972), 37-65 (esp. pp. 41 and 63-4).


While Burmeister, Zacconi and Pontio identified several important types of structural modelling, none of them addressed the issue that is of greatest interest to modern analysts and historians: why motet composers chose to imitate formal characteristics of their models at all. One way to address this question is from a broader cultural perspective. As noted earlier, imitatio was by no means restricted to the field of music during the sixteenth century; it had been practised throughout the Middle Ages for the composition of Latin prose and in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it experienced a strong resurgence as Italian humanists explored newly discovered texts from ancient Greece and Rome.5o In fact, many influential rhetorical and educational treatises of this period, including those of Juan Luis Vives, Philip Melanchthon, James Ledesma and Erasmus, include remarkably complete descriptions of imitatio, replete with lengthy passages explaining how the formal structure of a literary model should be emulated."

De tradendis disciplinis (1531), by the internationally renowned humanist Juan Luis Vives, recommends that students practise imitating the structure of their Latin models, including the organization of individual sections and the transitions between them.52 This process ought to commence, Vives said, by examining the effect the author produced in each section of his oration, particularly the opening one (exordium). Next the student should 'study how the author joined together the more excellent things intended to be committed to posterity, what words bound together single parts, what was the structure'."5 Vives advised his students

50 For secondary literature on the use of imitatio in the Renaissance see above, note 2. More detailed information about Renaissance imitations of Ciceronian Latin will be found in John Mon- fasani, 'Humanism and Rhetoric', Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, ed. Albert Rabil, Jr (Philadelphia, 1988), iii, 171-235.

" Basic studies of Renaissance education include William H. Woodward, Studies in Education

during the Age of the Renaissance, 1400-1600, Classics in Education, 32 (Cambridge, 1906; repr. New York, 1967); Giuseppe Manacorda, Storia della scuola in Italia (Milan, 1913); Eugenio Garin, L'educazione in Europa, 1400-1600 (Bari, 1957), esp. pp. 96-118 and 160-218; Kenneth Charlton, Education in Renaissance England (London and Toronto, 1965), 105-16; and Paul Oskar Kristeller, Medieval Aspects of Renaissance Learning, ed. and trans. Edward P. Mahoney (Durham, N.C., 1974). A new hypothesis explaining why humanist pedagogy became increasingly systematized from 1510 on is presented in Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), chap. 6. Recent surveys of the secondary literature on rhetorical training in the Renaissance are provided in Brian Vickers, 'On the Practicalities of Renaissance Rhetoric', Rhetoric Revalued: Papers from the International Society for the History of Rhetoric, ed. Brian Vickers (Binghamton, N.Y., 1982), 133-41; andJohn Monfasani, 'Humanism and Rhetoric', iii, 171-235. For information about how Latin grammar and rhetoric were taught in Italy, see Paul Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300-1600 (Baltimore and London, 1989), pts 2 and 4. Imitatio was also used in the composition of Latin letters as Grendler has made clear (pp. 217ff.). See also Judith Rice Henderson, 'Erasmus on the Art of Letter-Writing', Renaissance Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Renaissance Rhetoric, ed. James J. Murphy (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1983), 331-55.

"5 The standard biography of Vives is Marian L. Tobriner, 'A Renaissance Textbook', Vives' In- troduction to Wisdom: A Renaissance Textbook, ed. Marian L. Tobriner, Classics in Education, 35 (New York, 1968), 1-46. The relationship between the rhetorical theories of Vives, the musical theories of Juan Bermudo and the Missa liber secundus of Morales (1544) has been examined by Jo- Ann Reif in 'Music and Grammar: Imitation and Analogy in Morales and the Spanish Humanists', Early Music History, 6 (1986), 227-43.

"3 Vives: On Education, A Translation of the 'De tradendis disciplinis' ofJuan Luis Vives, trans. Foster Watson (Cambridge, 1913), 195. A summary of Vives's pedagogical methods is in Woodward, Studies in Education, 180-210.

240 MICHELE FROMSON

not to copy the model but instead to transform it so as to make it their own:

supposing someone intending to thank a certain person were to repeat the same speech as Cicero made to the Senate, . . . he would be stealing; but it would be imitation, if he were to consider what effect the author aimed at producing in the opening of his speech, what in the second part, what in the third, and so on in succession ... let him copy the same workmanship, but not the same words or conceptions.54

In order to illustrate just how this should be done, Vives presented the

following Ciceronian period along with his own sixteeenth-century imitation of it."5

CICERO O M. Druse, patrem appello: tu dicere solebas sacram esse rem-

publicam: quicunque eam violavissent, poenas

esse ei ab omnibus persolutas:

patris dictum sapiens, temeritas filii comprobavit.

(0 Marcus Drusus, I mean the father; you were accustomed to say

that the republic was sacred; and whoever had violated it should

be punished by all.

The saying of the father was wise, the rashness of the son has confirmed it.)

VIVES O dive Paule, Tharsensem appello: Tu semper praedicare consuevisti

magnas esse vires charitatis, quicunque secundum eam non

viverent, nec pertinere ad regnum Christi.

Apostoli sententiam piam consuetudo scelerum abdicavit.

(O holy Paul, I mean, Paul of Tarsus: you were in the habit of preaching

that great was the strength of charity, and that whoever was not living in

accordance with it did not belong to Christ's kingdom.

The familiarity men have had with crimes has rejected the Apostle's wise precept.)56

Not surprisingly, Vives's imitation has all of the desirable characteristics he had mentioned earlier. It begins and ends like the model, opening with the same short incisive clauses ('O Marce Druse' = 'O dive Paule' and 'patrem appello' = 'Tharsensem appello') and concluding with the same double trochee ('com-pro-ba-vit' = 'ab-di-ca-vit'). Moreover, while

retaining the overall syntactic structure of the Ciceronian original, Vives's imitation substantively alters the syntax, ideas and wording of individual phrases.

Similar imitative procedures were advocated by other illustrious educators. Philip Melanchthon, the influential Protestant scholar and Luther's interim successor, supplied in his Elementorum rhetorices (1542) step-by-step instructions for emulating the form of a Ciceronian

oration.57 First he explained how to imitate its invention, arrangement,

4 Vives: On Education, 195. " A concise description of periodic structure in Ciceronian Latin is in Grendler, Schooling in

Renaissance Italy, 215-17. A fuller explanation is provided in Aldo Scaglione, The Classical Theory of Composition from its Origins to the Present: A Historical Survey (Chapel Hill, 1972), 28-34.

56 Vives: On Education, 196.

7 Melanchthon's text has been translated in Sister MaryJoan La Fontaine, 'A Critical Translation of Philip Melanchthon's Elementorum rhetoricaes libri duo' (Ph.D. dissertation, University of

Michigan, 1968), 302-9. A brief biography of Melanchthon is available in Kurt Aland, Four


words and diction; later he dealt with form, which he termed composing (componendz).5 Like Vives, Melanchthon recommended that students keep Cicero's ideas in their original order, embellish and link ideas

together in the same way, and organize their oration similarly.

All scholars, therefore, must be encouraged to read Cicero as much as possible, at first to borrow from him both words and diction. Next he (sic) should observe his method of invention and arrangement. Finally, he should try to imitate the entire form of his speech, that is, the arrangement of ideas, the richness of embellishment, as his ability and zeal permits.59

The same exercises are described in Jesuit educational treatises of the time, the most influential being the Ratio studiorum, which was com- piled between 1560 and 1575 under the supervision of James Ledesma and sought to establish a standardized liberal arts curriculum for all

Jesuit schools. Here, students completing their last year of Latin are instructed in the art of imitating a Ciceronian oration:"6

Take a speech of Cicero, ... study its component parts, its structure and argument. Then on a similar theme, compose an oration in close imitation of his exordium, narration, confirmation, figures, tropes, etc. At another time write an oration on the same subject but develop it with different arguments, figures, tropes, and external structure, yet striving to equal Cicero, even though this is not attained. Finally, take up a cause against Cicero, but nonetheless in imitation of its style and structure.61

Additional imitative exercises were recommended in Erasmus's De copia, the most widely disseminated rhetorical textbook of the sixteenth century, reprinted no less than 150 times between its first appearance in 1512 and the turn of the seventeenth century. Here Erasmus explained to his readers how they might develop a rich and fluent Latin idiom by learning 'to include the essential in the fewest possible words [so] that nothing is lacking, or so to enlarge and enrich [their] expression of it that even so nothing is redundant'.62 For this purpose, Erasmus recommended four simple exercises: to 'take a group of sentences and deliberately set out to

Reformers: Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, Zwingli, trans. James L. Schaaf (Minneapolis, 1979), 55-80. See also Woodward, Studies in Education, 211-43.

58 La Fontaine, 'A Critical Translation', 318-41. On conceptions of musical form in early seventeenth-century Germany, see John Brooks Howard, 'Form and Method in Johannes Lippius's Synopsis musicae novae', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 38 (1985), 524-41.

" 'Quare studiosi omnes adhortandi sunt, ut quam plurimum legant Ciceronem, et ab eo primum

verba ac phrasin mutuentur. Deinde consilia eius in inveniendo ac disponendo considerent. Postremo totam orationis formam, hoc est, sententiarum ordinem, exornationum copiam, atque modum quantum ingenio ac studio consequi poterunt, imitari conentur' (quoted in La Fontaine, 'A Critical Translation', 341).

60 Allan P. Farrell, The Jesuit Code of Liberal Education: Development and Scope of the Ratio studiorum (Milwaukee, 1953), esp. pp. 166-87. For background on religious education in the Renaissance, see Paul Oskar Kristeller, 'The Contributions of Religious Orders to Renaissance Thought and Learning', American Benedictine Review, 21 (1970), 1-55, and A History of Religious Educators, ed. E. L. Towns (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1975).

61 Farrell, The Jesuit Code, 177. Concise definitions of these rhetorical terms are available in George A. Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric and its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times (Chapel Hill, 1980), chap. 5.

62 Erasmus, Copia: Foundations of the A bundant Style: De duplici copia verborum ac rerum com- mentarii duo, trans. and annotated by Betty I. Knott, Collected Works of Erasmus, ed. Craig R. Thompson, xxiv (Toronto, 1978), 301. A standard biography of Erasmus is Roland H. Bainton,

242 MICHELE FROMSON

express each of them in as many versions as possible'; to do the same for a

complete argument or line of thought; to paraphrase in Latin admired

passages from ancient Greek texts; and lastly 'to emulate a passage from some author where the spring of eloquence seems to bubble up particularly richly'.63 In each exercise two essential rhetorical strategies were

amplhficatio, the ability to expand ideas or statements in a model, and minutio, its opposite.64 Amplhficatio could be accomplished variously, by presenting a succession of increasingly intense images, through com-

parison with something more striking or powerful, by piling up synonyms in order to reach a heightened emotional pitch, or by inventing as

many propositions or arguments as possible, while minutio would be

accomplished in the opposite manner.6' As fundamentally literary strategies, these rhetorical devices have no direct counterpart in the realm of musical composition; nevertheless one straightforward way for a com-

poser to achieve an analogous change in the dimensions of a polyphonic model would certainly have been to enlarge or reduce successive sections

systematically, as Pallavicino and Massaino did when expanding and con-

tracting the formal plans of Wert and Palestrina. In sum the imitative strategies advocated by Vives, Melanchthon,

Ledesma and Erasmus have a great deal in common. Of paramount im-

portance is the ability to emulate the formal structure of the model - the order of its ideas, the layout of the opening section, the transitions between adjacent sections, and the overall argument, perhaps in an

amplified or compressed format. For each rhetorical strategy an

analogous procedure can be identified in the motet: borrowed musical ideas were presented in their original order, the arrangement of the opening (or closing) section was emulated, adjacent sections were elided

similarly, and the overall plan on occasion replicated, perhaps on a larger or smaller scale. But is it appropriate for us to associate methods by which

young men learned to write Latin prose with the compositional practices of mature church composers? It would appear so, for several reasons. What extant information we have about how sixteenth-century com-

posers were educated outside the field of music suggests that they were well trained in Latin grammar and composition, which they would un-

doubtedly have learnt through imitatio.66 Classes in Latin featured pro- minently in highly regarded music schools of the day. At the Seminario Romano instruction in humanitas was required of all students, as Casimiri revealed long ago; at the cathedral of Cremona, where Monteverdi is

Erasmus of Rotterdam (New York, 1969). On the influence De copia had in Italy, see Marcella and Paul Grendler, 'The Survival of Erasmus in Italy', Erasmus in English, 8 (1976), 2-22 (esp. pp. 17ff.).

63 Erasmus, Copia, 303.

64 A classical definition of amplificatio is in Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, Book VIII.4, 26-9; and of minutio in Book VIII.4, 1.

65 Erasmus, Copia, 592-605. 66 On the training of musicians attending the German College in Rome, see Thomas D. Culley,

Jesuits and Music (St Louis and Rome, 1970). The standard survey of music education in the univer-

sity is Nan C. Carpenter, Music in the Medieval and Renaissance Universities (Norman, Oklahoma,

1958). A classic study situating music education in a broader humanistic context is Paul Oskar Kristeller's 'Music and Learning in the Early Italian Renaissance', Renaissance Thought and the Arts

(Princeton, 1964; repr. Princeton, 1990), 142-62.


believed to have studied under Ingegneri, choirboys learned Latin from a maestro di grammatica.67 In the cathedral school at Saint Mark's, where many north-Italian musicians were trained, the putti received extensive training in Latin, as Paul Grendler has shown in his recent study of education in Renaissance Italy.68 For the representative year of 1587, Grendler provides the following information:

Father Marc'Antonio Zambon, aged 24 and newly appointed to the post [of master], taught 35 to 45 boys in 1587. Although Zambon did not give his pupils' ages, Zambon's instruction suggests that they ranged in age from 6 or 7 to the mid-teens. He divided his school into four classes. Five putti (little boys) learned to read and write in the first class, while the next class studied Latin grammar, Terence, and the catechism. Zambon instructed the third class in more Terence, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Horace, Caesar's Gallic Wars, and Latin grammar. He led the fourth and most advanced class through book one of Cicero's Epistulae ad A tticum, more Horace and Ovid, plus Plautus's Aulularia.69

Musicians were also educated in the small church schools run by the papacy or individual religious orders and there too extensive training in Latin composition was required:70

Future clergymen received the same education as laymen during the Renaissance; if church and lay society were two branches of one tree, the same education would serve both future lay leader and cleric. A humanistic education helped a priest to advance. Boys had to learn a great deal of Latin in order to enroll in a university and study canon law, a sure path to prefer- ment. In similar fashion, popes and bishops . . . wanted servants capable of drafting a letter in Ciceronian Latin or delivering an oration that followed the norms of classical rhetoric.7

For church composers, whose professional responsibilities were likely to be administrative in addition to musical, a humanistic training would have served very well indeed, and after they had spent long hours learning to imitate Ciceronian orations, would it not have been instinctive for them to use similar procedures to set Latin texts to music?

The techniques of structural modelling that we have seen in the Counter- Reformation motet raise a host of aesthetic, cultural and historical issues,

67 Denis Arnold, Monteverdi (London, 1963; 3rd edn rev. Tim Carter, London, 1990), 2. Raf- faele Casimiri, 'I diari Sistini', Note d'archivio, 12 (1935), 1-26 and 73-81. On p. 6, Casimiri cites the following informatione from 1580 (f. 18V): 'Quelli che la loro eta e ingegno lo comportera, potranno attendere non solo alle lettere di Umanita, ma anco alli Studii di Filosofia e Teologia pidi lungo tempe, e piu esattamente; ma tutti almeno impareranno Grammatica, canto, il computo Ecclesiastico, ecc.'.

68 Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy, 56-61. 69 Ibid, 56. 70 A preliminary tally I have made of some 70 Italian composers who published at least one book

of motets in the late sixteenth century reveals that nearly half were priests or were affiliated to a religious order. There were ten priests, seven Franciscan friars, three Benedictine monks and four members of smaller religious orders; in addition, three other composers are known to have received extensive humanistic training outside the church. No doubt these numbers would be greater if additional biographical details were extant. For a discussion of the ecclesiastical status of musicians in the Baroque era, see Francis Burkley, 'Priest-Composers of the Baroque: A Sacred-Secular Conflict', Musical Quarterly, 54 (1968), 169-84.

7 Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy, 61.

244 MICHELE FROMSON

many of which were vociferously debated by literati of the same era. According to Greene, the debate over the proper modes and goals of imitation

became a kind of storm center drawing into its vortex debates over the an- cients and the moderns, over the questione della lingua, over the psychology of literary creation, over the propriety of rules, over the value of a single classic as a model rather than many, over the relation between the classics and 'nature' as an object of imitative endeavor, and over the usefulness of imitative exercises as a pedagogic method. ... At issue also were the proper power of literary tradition over artistic originality, the status of the approved canon of authors, the continuity of human genius, ... the significance of historical difference.72

Despite their importance, these complex issues have not been addressed by music historians primarily because so little is currently known about compositional modelling in Renaissance polyphony. Indeed, apart from the research cited above and the evidence presented here, comparatively few examples of imitation have been identified; if modelling procedures were as widespread in music as they were in literature and of course in the visual arts, then many important questions await consideration.73

The use of formal modelling in Counter-Reformation motets raises questions of a more specific nature, many bearing on the compositional practices of late sixteenth-century church musicians. One wonders how common formal imitation was in the motet and whether young or inex- perienced musicians were more likely to rely on a model than those with greater expertise or experience. Did post-Tridentine composers imitate pre-Tridentine motets, as frequently occurred in polyphonic Masses? If not, might the text-setting guidelines that were drawn up after the Coun- cil of Trent have worked to discourage such activity in this genre, where the correct and concise declamation of the text was expected?74 Whose motets were imitated most frequently - those of Palestrina or Victoria, who worked in papal Rome and whose contrapuntal idiom was idealized and reified in the mid-seventeenth century under the rubric stile antico? Or were compositional models provided by the larger and more geographically diverse group of composers lauded in music treatises of the time?75 Other questions have to do with what function formal imitation might have served within the post-Tridentine church. It seems possible

72 Greene, The Light in Troy, 171. A succinct explanation of the controversies arising over the

proper use and methods of imitation can be found in Harold Ogden White, Plagiarism and Imita- tion during the English Renaissance: A Study in Critical Distinctions (Cambridge, Mass., 1935), chap. 2. See also Greene, The Light in Troy, chap. 9.

3 A stimulating discussion of compositional modelling in the visual and literary arts during the mid- to late sixteenth century will be found in Eric Cochrane, Italy, 1530-1630, The Longman History of Italy, ed. Julius Kirshner (London and New York, 1988), 69-105.

"7 On at least one occasion a post-Tridentine composer (Palestrina) imitated a pre-Tridentine set-

ting of Quam pulchra es (by the ubiquitous Lupus), as detailed in W. Kurthen, 'Ein Zitat in einer Motette Palestrinas', KirchenmusikalischesJahrbuch, 19 (1934), 50-3.

" A new overview of the theoretical issues surrounding seventeenth-century usage of the term stile antico will be found in Renate Groth, 'Italienische Musiktheorie im 17. Jahrhundert', Italianische Musiktheorie im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert: Antikenrezeption und Satzlehre, Geschichte der Musiktheorie, 7, ed. Frieder Zaminer (Darmstadt, 1989), 321-9. Two re-evaluations of Palestrina's reputation as princeps musicae are presented in Lorenzo Bianconi, Music in the Seventeenth Cen-


that such procedures would have proven especially useful during the 1580s and 90s, when widespread consolidation of Counter-Reformation institutions and theology took place, by forging links with venerated musical traditions without unduly constraining the creative impulses of individual composers.76

Answers to these and related questions lie far in the future because so little is currently known about post-Tridentine music in general and the motet in particular.77 For unlike sacred music from the first half of the century, which is now widely available in modern editions, that from the late sixteenth century remains difficult to obtain and has therefore been little studied.78 At present, the motets of many prolific composers - Marc'Antonio Ingegneri, Pietro Vinci, Giammateo Asola, Giovanni Maria Nanino, Orfeo Vecchi, Tiburtino Massaino, Giovanni Bassano and Giovanni Croce, to name just a few - are available primarily through Ph.D. dissertations, while the works of other influential church musicians - most grievously Andrea Gabrieli - are just beginning to appear in modern edition.79 Even in the case of the greatest and most often studied Counter-Reformation composers - Lassus, Victoria and Palestrina - their motets are usually found in transcriptions whose editorial practices and notational formats have fallen seriously out of date. Perhaps it is not en- tirely inappropriate, then, to conclude the present paper with a call for new research on this vast but little known body of music, for it is clear that the issues arising in this study can be most effectively addressed through a broadly based examination of the post-Tridentine motet as a genre.

Villa I Tatti, Florence

tury, trans. David Bryant (Cambridge, 1987), 105-19; and Helmut Hucke, 'Palestrina als Autoritit und Vorbild im 17. Jahrhundert', Congresso internazionale sul tema Claudio Monteverdi e il suo tempo, ed. Raffaello Monterosso (Venice, Mantua and Cremona, 1968), 253-61.

76 On tensions in Renaissance literature between individual artistic expression and the influence of literary canons inherited from classical antiquity, see David Quint, Origin and Originality in Renaissance Literature: Versions of the Source (New Haven and London, 1983). Historians of music, like those in other disciplines, have taken a fundamentally negative view of Counter-Reformation history since the mid-nineteenth century. In recent years this view has been undergoing dramatic revision and change, as discussed by Eric W. Cochrane perhaps most extensively in 'Counter Refor- mation or Tridentine Reformation? Italy in the Age of Carlo Borromeo', San Carlo Borromeo: Catholic Reform and Ecclesiastical Politics in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century, ed. John M. Headley and John B. Tomaro (Washington, D.C., London and Toronto, 1988), 31-46. It remains to be seen how our ideas about late sixteenth-century church music will be modified as new conceptions of this era emerge.

77 A recent survey of secondary literature on the sixteenth-century motet is Ludwig Finscher and Annegrit Laubenthal, ' "Cantiones quae vulgo motectae vocantur": Arten der Motette im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert', Die Musik des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts, ed. Ludwig Finscher (Laaber, 1989), ii, 277-370. For an overview of early seventeenth-century church music, see Jerome Roche, North Italian Church Music in the Age of Monteverdi (Oxford, 1984). "

Among our most pressing needs is a comprehensive index of this repertory. I have constructed a database, organized by textual incipit, of settings published between 1560 and 1610 of approxi- mately 700 well-known motet texts. A much more extensive database of sixteenth- and seventeenth- century sacred music is currently being supervised by David Bryant at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice.

" Andrea Gabrieli, Edizione nazionale delle opere di Andrea Gabrieli, ed. Gino Benzoni, David Bryant and Martin Morell (Milano, 1988-). The new Garland motet series under the editorship of Richard Sherr will improve the situation though it, too, features music published before 1560.

246 MICHELE FROMSON

APPENDIX 1

0 SACRUM CON VI VIUM

A. Gabrieli 1565 Ingegneri 1591 Wert 1566 Massaino 1592 Ciccarelli 1568 Giovanelli 1593 Palestrina 1572 Moro 1594 Victoria 1572 (2) Bianciardi 1596 Ingegneri 1576 (2) Felis 1596 C. Porta 1580 Croce 1597 Vinci ?1580 Molinaro 1597 Canali 1581 Luzzaschi 1598 Corfini 1581 Cartari 1600 Lassus 1582 Puliti 1600 Merulo 1583 Giulio Belli 1600 [Gonzaga] 1583 Viadana 1602 Asola 1584 Gesualdo 1603 Marenzio 1585 Moro 1604 Mensa 1585 G. Croce 1605 Gabussi 1586 Pallavicino 1605 Ingegneri 1589 Crotti 1608 Orazio Vecchi 1590 Molinaro 1609 (2)

QUEM VIDISTIS PASTORES

Lassus 1569 Casolani 1599 Palestrina 1569 Giulio Belli 1600 Victoria 1572 Mortaro 1602 Massaino 1580 Viadana 1602 C. Porta 1580 Canali 1603 Corfini 1581 Vernizzi 1603 Asola 1584 DeLorenzi 1604 A. Gabrieli 1587 Balbi 1606

Ingegneri 1589 Massaino 1606 Orazio Vecchi 1590 Baglione 1608 Vinci 1591 Stefanini 1608 Felis 1596 G. M. Nanino (MS) G. Bassano 1598

A Conjunction of Rhetoric and Music_Structural Modelling in the Italian Counter-Reformation Motet

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