(It.: ‘carnival songs’).
A generic term encompassing several kinds of partsong, notably mascheratas, carri and trionfi, that were performed at festivals in Florence during the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The festivals were held during the pre-Lenten Carnival and the Calendimaggio, a season celebrating the return of spring that began on 1 May and ended with the Feast of St John, the city's patron saint, on 24 June. The groups of masqueraders from all classes of society who, singing, dancing and jesting, made their way through the crowded streets and squares of the city were typical of the festivities. There were also torchlight processions featuring elaborately decorated floats in which tableaux vivants were accompanied by appropriate songs. Some of the floats and costumes were designed by famous artists, and the song texts, written by noblemen and commoners alike, were set to music by well-known composers, foreign and native. The festivals thus provided ample opportunity not only for merrymaking and the expression of popular wit but also for artistic inventiveness and display. In this respect they were uniquely representative of the Florentine character.
The mascheratas, or canti carnascialeschi proper, were performed by groups of masked men and boys on foot, as for example, was ‘Donne, come vedete’ (text by Pietro Rucellai, music – only the bassus survives – by Bartolomeo degli Organi) in the 1508 mascherata La Dovizia. This featured an appropriately costumed youth impersonating ‘La Dovizia’ (Abundance), accompanied by a number of brilliantly dressed attendants, three singers and 13 grooms, ‘who kept back the crowd and brought up the rear’. The carri and trionfi were performed on floats by singers dressed either as artisans and tradesmen or as pagan gods and personifications of allegorical virtues. The texts of many mascheratas and carri are full of doubles entendres, if not outright obscenities. Some, like the canti de' sartori (see illustration) and the canzona degli spazzacamini, ostensibly extolling the merits of the tailors and street-cleaners, are thinly – or not so thinly – disguised offers of sexual favours to women. Others, like the canzona delle zingane and the canzona delle balie (songs of the gypsies and wet-nurses), mock the social customs of the time. Yet here too are implicit invitations to sexual intercourse. Possibly, guild members were among the groups who sang such texts but more likely they were performed by upper class people, that is, by those who had the means, training and leisure to organize the festivities. The canti de’ lanzi, which satirize the speech and manners of foreign mercenaries, are no less rife with phallic imagery and references to masculine versatility, as seen in the canzona de' lanzi tromboni. The trionfi and some carri are more serious in tone and deal with subjects like mathematical sciences and the four temperaments.
Many of the surviving texts, over 300, are anonymous, but known poets who contributed to the genre include Lorenzo de' Medici, G. Giambullari and G. dell'Ottonaio. The majority of the texts are strophic poems in ripresa (refrain) form, similar in structure to the contemporary Florentine ballata. A typical poem consists of a refrain of from two to four lines and stanzas (piedi and volta) of from six to eight lines. The lines are constructed either of seven, eight and eleven syllables exclusively or of a mixture of seven and eleven syllables. The few poems in non-refrain form are also strophic and display much variety in structure. Those with stanzas of seven lines are the most frequent, however.
Some 70 complete settings of the carnival songs for three and four voices are preserved in several manuscripts of Florentine provenance, among them I-Fn B.R.230 (olim Magl.XIX., 141, the principal source), Magl.XIX., 117, and Magl.XIX., 121. The three-voice pieces, dating from about 1474–90, are thought to represent the oldest known examples of the genre. They are quite similar in style and concept to the four-part pieces, many of which were written between about 1500 and 1515, and suggest that the musical features of the carnival songs changed only slightly over the 40-year period in which they flourished.
Musically the carnival songs are characterized by a homorhythmic chordal style in which all the parts are vocally conceived. In the four-part works the texture is sometimes varied by short duets or trios of a more animated character. The Florentine concern for clear enunciation and proper accentuation of the text is notable in the construction of all parts. Duple metre prevails, though some songs have closing sections in dance-like triple rhythms. A tendency to through-composition is evident in the refrain forms. Each line of the text, with the exception of the piedi, which share the same rhyme scheme and metrical structure, is often set to a new musical phrase. The non-refrain forms also display this tendency. The clearly delineated musical phrases, distinguished for the most part by well-directed harmonic progressions, are relatively short and end with well-defined cadences, usually on the tonic or on closely related degrees of the scale. Features such as these gave the music a distinctive style of its own. Many of them were subsequently to be carried over into the early madrigal, and perhaps even into the narrative style of the early Parisian chanson.
It is not clear whether the carnival songs were intended to be performed with instrumental accompaniment. But the fact that they were sung out of doors in a necessarily raucous manner suggests that some kind of instrumental accompaniment was desirable in order to help the singers keep their pitch. One manuscript of the time mentions singing to a lute accompaniment, while the above-mentioned account of 1508 speaks of three singers but no instruments.
It was during the time of Lorenzo de' Medici (ruled 1469–92) that the poetry and music of the carnival songs were brought to their first high level of artistic quality. A.F. Grazzini, who himself edited one of the earliest anthologies of the texts, reported that Lorenzo considered the traditional manner of singing monotonous and ‘thought to vary it, not only the texts but the ideas and the manner of writing the words’. Lorenzo also had the texts set ‘to new and diverse melodies’. It seems likely that both Isaac and Alexander Agricola, then employed in Florence, were called upon to furnish some of the new settings. Few of their compositions in this genre survive, however, as is the case with most of the music from Lorenzo's epoch. Grazzini's remarks are thus all the more significant because they make it clear that, though Lorenzo and his contemporaries were not the inventors of the carnival song, their contributions were of vital importance to the definitive formation of its style.
During Savonarola's regime (1494–8) all secular aspects of the festivals were abolished, and religious processions, accompanied by the singing of laudi, replaced the traditional revelry. Though this practice by no means originated with Savonarola, it became current in Florence in his day. For this reason the collections of laudi, particularly that of Serafino Razzi (1563), are of prime importance for the history of the carnival songs. They preserve the music of a number of works, several of them only recently recovered, which might otherwise have been lost.
In the years following Savonarola's death and the restoration of the Medici (1498–1520) the festivals were reintroduced and flourished with renewed vigour. It was during this period that the production of carnival songs entered a second, equally prolific phase. Older texts were apparently set to new music, as were contemporary ones by poets such as Lorenzo Strozzi and Pietro Rucellai. Much of the extant music dates from these years; though the bulk of it is anonymous, works by several local composers, notably Coppini, Bartolomeo degli Organi and Serragli, survive in complete form.
The festivals were suspended during the city's second revolt against the Medici but were resumed on their return and the establishment of the principate in 1530. The new political order and changing economic conditions, however, were not conducive to a continuation of the traditional popular celebrations, and the festivals gradually became infused with court ceremonial and princely pomp. There are several accounts of the festivals from this later period, as well as texts by A.F. Grazzini and Benedetto Varchi. But what little of the music has survived shows that the distinctive style of the carnival songs merged into the wider currents of Italian secular music.
In addition to the Florentine carnival songs, four others in MS PerBC431, there are three by Ansanus Senese printed in 1515, and 12, including works by Tromboncino and Cara, printed by Petrucci from 1505–07. The texts are similar in language and intent to the classic Florentine types, though the musical settings of the last are in the style of the north Italian frottola. The carnival songs that appear in the later collections of Antonfrancesco Doni and G.D. da Nola likewise have little in common with traditional Florentine works.
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P.Macey: Bonfire Songs: Savonarola's Musical Legacy (Oxford, 1998), 32–90
FRANK A. D'ACCONE