(It.: ‘lullaby’).
A category of vocal Christmas Pastoral, comprising lullabies to the child Christ, cultivated in Italy at least from the 17th century. The term may in this sense be synonymous with ‘pastoral’. A ‘Nenia [sic] al bambino Giesù’ in the Pastorali concenti al presepe of Francesco Fiamengo (Venice, 1637) seems to be the earliest example of the category. A ‘Canzonetta spirituale sopra alla nanna’ entitled Hor ch’è tempo di dormire appears in Tarquinio Merula’s Curtio precipitato (1638); the basso continuo of its first section consists exclusively of the two-note motif shown in ex.1, a motif which resembles that found in Schütz’s Christmas History (Pastoral, ex.4). Manuscripts in Naples (at I-Nf and elsewhere) include ninne from the 1670s, exhibiting pastoral characteristics, by Cristoforo Caresana, and 18th- and 19th-century ninne by a number of composers, including Durante and Paisiello. Weinmann has described a Pastorale ossia ninna nanna by Cimarosa (from Naples and now at D-Rp), which he implausibly claimed as a model for F.X. Gruber’s Stille Nacht. The tradition has yet to be studied.
K. Weinmann: ‘Ein Vorläufer von “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht”: zum 100. Geburtstag des Weihnachtliedes’, ZMw, i (1918–19), 130–37
GEOFFREY CHEW