Lamento

(It.: ‘lament’).

Usually, a vocal piece based on a mournful text, often built over a descending tetrachord ostinato (see Ground, §2) and common in cantatas and operas of the Baroque period.

Originating in ancient Greek drama and further developed in Latin poetry, the lament topos enjoyed a privileged status in European literature. Set apart as an exceptional moment of emotional climax or particularly intense expression, it provided an occasion for special formal development and for the display of expressive rhetoric and of affective imagery. Laments were most often associated with female characters and the female voice.

Madrigals designated ‘lamento’ appeared occasionally during the 16th century; Stefano Rossetto’s Lamento di Olimpia (1567) and B.S. Nardò’s Lamento di Fiordeligi (1571), for example, each set appropriately dramatic stanzas from Ariosto’s Orlando furioso. The genre assumed musical importance around the turn of the 17th century as a focus of the theoretical justifications of the new monodic style. Indeed, in defining the cathartic purpose of that style, theorists such as Giacomini, Mei and Vincenzo Galilei singled out the lament; because it expressed a height of emotional intensity, it was the type of text best calculated to move an audience to pity, thereby purging them of strong passions.

Librettists and composers of early opera acknowledged the special dramatic position and affective responsibility of the lamento, distinguishing it from the narrative flow of its context: librettists imposed greater formality through using more strongly metred and rhymed texts in which particularly affective lines often recurred as refrains; and composers interpreted these texts with greater freedom, repeating or otherwise enhancing specially affective words or phrases with melodic sequence, dissonance or textural conflicts, often imposing an overall tonal coherence to create structural self-sufficiency.

One of the most effective and clearly the most influential of early 17th-century lamenti was Monteverdi’s Lamento d’Arianna from his opera to a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini, performed in Mantua in 1608. The musical isolation of this lamento from its context was recognized immediately in contemporary descriptions of the opera’s performance and confirmed by the publication of monodic Ariadne laments by Severo Bonini (1613), Possenti (1623) and F.A. Costa (1626) and, most conclusively, by Monteverdi’s own reworking of the piece as a madrigal (1614), the publication of the monodic version (1623) and his adaptation of the madrigal to a sacred text (1640). His madrigal publication may well have inspired the madrigal laments of Ariadne published by Claudio Pari and Antonio Il Verso in 1619.

Monteverdi’s monodic lamento, though self-contained, is not a closed form. Its organization develops out of the internal exigencies of its text: no superimposed formal structure determines its shape. It is not an aria, for arias, by definition, were fixed, predetermined musical structures and therefore inappropriate to the expression of uncontrolled passion in a lament. Clear distinctions between laments and arias persisted for some time. Claudio Saracini’s second and fifth monody books (1620 and 1624) each contain one lengthy dramatic monologue entitled ‘lamento’, in addition to madrigals and pieces marked ‘aria’. Sigismondo D’India’s fourth and fifth books of Musiche (1621 and 1623), in addition to a large number of ‘arias’, characterized by strophic structure and simple rhythmic and melodic style, contain a total of five monodic ‘lamenti in stile recitativo’, highly expressive, irregular settings of lengthy dramatic texts by the composer himself. In a context in which most lamenting characters were female, portrayed by the soprano voice, three of these are notable for being scored for tenor and expressing the grief of male heroes: Orpheus, Apollo and Jason. The tradition of the extended, dramatic recitative lamento persisted until nearly the middle of the century and is exemplified in such works as Peri’s Lamento d’Iole (1628), Abbatini’s Pianto di Rodomonte (1633) and Rovetta’s Lagrime d’Erminia (1649).

At the same time a new stage in the development of the Baroque lamento was achieved in Monteverdi’s Amor, generally known as the Lamento della ninfa, published in his eighth book of madrigals (1638). The central section of a dramatic scene ‘in stile recitativo’, Amor is constructed over a descending tetrachord ostinato. Although probably anticipated by other tetrachord laments – including the Lamento di Madama Lucia published in 1628 under the name ‘Il Fasolo’ and almost certainly by Francesco Manelli – its full exploitation of the affective implications of the pattern asserted a relationship between tetrachord and lament that soon became fundamental to the genre.

In the Venetian opera repertory of the 1640s a definitive association between lament and tetrachord became explicit. Cavalli’s 27 operas, the most comprehensive surviving musical documentation of Venetian opera from 1640 to 1660, confirm this association. Cavalli’s earliest lamenti, like those of Monteverdi’s operas, are in continuous recitative style, heightened by dissonance and affective text repetition and structured primarily by refrains. But after Apollo’s lamento from Gli amori di Apollo e di Dafne (1640), partly in free recitative, partly based on the descending tetrachord, Cavalli began to employ the bass pattern consistently in lamenti, which initially occupied a specific position at the dramatic climax immediately preceding the resolution of the plot. Characterized by a slow tempo, highly accented triple metre and usually accompanied by strings, they use the tetrachord in a variety of ways, ranging from strict ostinato treatment of the simple pattern to freer treatment of one of its variants, such as a chromatic or inverted version. All these lamenti exploit the tetrachord as a source of harmonic, melodic and rhythmic dissonance created by suspensions, syncopation and overlapping phrases between the voice and the bass.

The popular success of such arias is indicated by their proliferation – accompanied by a loss of specific dramatic function – during the 1650s and 60s, to the point where some operas contain as many as four lamenti spread over their three acts (e.g. Cavalli’s Statira, 1655, and Eliogabalo, 1667). Similar lamenti, many either partly or entirely based on the descending tetrachord, occur frequently in aria and cantata collections from the 1640s onwards by such composers as Benedetto Ferrari, Luigi Rossi, Carissimi and Cesti. Although a few were written for specific occasions (e.g. Rossi’s Lamento della Regina di Svetia) most are settings of pastoral texts involving the amorous trials of nymphs and shepherds.

Pathetic lament arias, many of them associated with some form of the tetrachord bass, continued to occur in operas, oratorios and cantatas of the late 17th and early 18th centuries; indeed, with the development of other aria types, they tended to reassume their former specific dramatic position. Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and The Fairy Queen each contains a lament based on a chromatically descending tetrachord just before the resolution of the plot, and several Handel operas, such as Orlando (1733), contain similarly placed laments in which the tetrachord bass plays a significant role.

The term ‘lamento’ also appeared in conjunction with instrumental music of a programmatic nature in the late 17th and eariy 18th centuries. Froberger’s Suite in C (1656) bears the title Lamento sopra la dolorosa perdita della Real Maestà di Ferdinando IV; several sets of sonatas including Biber’s Mystery (or Rosary) Sonatas (c1676) and Kuhnau’s Biblical Sonatas (1700) contain occasional ‘lamento’ movements; and Bach’s Capriccio in B (c1704) ‘sopra la lontananza del suo fratello dilettissimo’ contains an ‘allgemeines Lamento der Freunde’. Although the term generally refers to the expressive musical language and dramatic intentions of these movements, in Bach’s capriccio it also refers to the descending tetrachord on which the movement is based.

The persistence of an association between lament and descending tetrachord in the 19th century is attested by Jérôme-Joseph de Momigny (Cours complet d’harmonie, Paris, 1803–5). In his analysis of Mozart’s Quartet in D minor k421/417b, which opens with a descending tetrachord in the bass, Momigny applied to the first violin part the text of a lament of Dido (see Analysis, §II, 2).

See also Planctus.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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EMc, xxvii/3 (1999) [‘Lament’ issue ed. T. Carter. Articles by L. Stras, L. Holford-Strevens, T. Carter, A. MacNeil, J. Brooks, S. Cusick]

ELLEN ROSAND