Porta, Costanzo

(b Cremona, 1528–9; d Padua, 19 May 1601). Italian composer and teacher. He was praised as an exceptionally skilful composer by fellow musicians and theorists alike. Artusi extolled his mastery of contrapuntal complexity, while Zacconi named him first among the four most outstanding contrapuntists known to him. The extent and the consistently excellent quality of his music, sacred and secular, and his widespread influence as a teacher of many younger composers make him one of the major figures in Italian Renaissance music.

1. Life.

The approximate date of his birth derives from a letter dated 1 April 1592, in which he stated that he was 63 years old. The Franciscan Minorite Conventuals, of which he eventually became a member, demanded a thorough training in classics, philosophy and theology. It may be assumed that he received his first schooling at their convent of Porta S Luca, Cremona. Somewhat later he moved to Casalmaggiore, perhaps to enter his novitiate; the year of his ordination is not recorded. In about 1549 he was transferred to S Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice. He became a pupil of Willaert, maestro di cappella of S Marco; among his fellow pupils were Claudio Merulo and Zarlino. With Merulo he formed a lifelong friendship, which is documented in terms of great affection in Merulo's edition of Porta's five-part introits of 1566.

Porta took up his first professional position in 1552 as maestro di cappella of Osimo Cathedral, and he held the post for 13 years. This period brought him the patronage of the Della Rovere family, the ducal house of Urbino. Several of his publications, which began to appear in 1555, were dedicated to members of the family; Cardinal Giulio della Rovere, who was to be specially helpful in advancing his career, was twice honoured in this way.

On 9 January 1565 Porta was offered the position of maestro di cappella of S Antonio in Padua (Il Santo). After some bargaining – he requested that his appointment be approved by the entire monastic community – he was ready on 14 April 1565 to assume his duties. On 12 May 1565 the minister-general of the Franciscan order requested his services at the Pentecostal celebrations of the Franciscan General Chapter in Florence, where he met, among others, Duke Cosimo I de' Medici and his son Francesco and the cardinals Carlo Borromeo and Felice Peretti (later Pope Sixtus V). His 13-part Missa Ducalis, in which the 13th voice intones a cantus firmus throughout to the words ‘protege Cosmum ducem principemque Franciscum’, celebrates the event: it was placed in the Medici library on 8 June 1565.

Porta did not remain long at Padua. On 13 January 1567 Giulio della Rovere, as Archbishop of Ravenna, requested his transfer to that city. The development of the music at the basilica there, enthusiastically supported by Della Rovere, occupied Porta for the next seven years. His removal on 5 September 1574 to the Santa Casa at Loreto was again instigated by Della Rovere, who at the same time commissioned him to write masses in honour of the coming jubilee year 1575, ‘short and in a manner which would make the text easily comprehensible’. The resulting first book of masses was published in 1578, only a few weeks before the cardinal's death. Thereupon Cardinal Borromeo unsuccessfully attempted to win Porta's services for Milan Cathedral. Instead, on 30 June 1580 he returned to Ravenna, dedicating his important Liber quinquaginta duorum motectorum to the governor of Loreto as a parting gift.

During the following years Porta visited at least two important centres of musical activity: the Este court at Ferrara, where he was much taken with the famous ‘concerto di donne’ and where he met Luzzaschi, and the Gonzaga court at Mantua where he met Wert. In both places he was acclaimed for his madrigals. In 1585 he commemorated the election of his former protector Felice Peretti to the papacy as Sixtus V by dedicating to him his third book of six-part motets. By this time his fame was spreading far: in 1587 he was elected to membership in the Congregazione dei Signori Musici di Roma, a group that included such illustrious figures as Palestrina and Lassus.

Porta was also an important teacher of north Italian composers of the transitional period around 1600. The solid craftsmanship and control of contrapuntal writing exhibited in his students' works surely bear witness to Porta's gifts as a teacher. In addition to a number of lesser-known figures, he may have taught Diruta and Viadana.

In 1589 disunity arose in the chapel of Padua Cathedral, then under the direction of Giovanni Battista Mosto, and Porta was chosen on 1 May 1589 to replace him. In 1592 he was ordered peremptorily to move from his lodgings nearby to the Convento del Santo some distance away. His appeal against the order was rejected, and he moved to the monastery. In 1595 he once more became director of music at Il Santo. For his many years of devoted service to his order he was honoured on 10 June 1596 by having the title of ‘magister musicae’ conferred upon him. In contrast to his previous term at the Cappella, when he had been actively protected by Cardinal della Rovere, his life now became increasingly difficult through lack of support. Several letters from him bewail the fact that he was not assigned enough musicians to fill all the existing vacancies. He spent his last years in a dwindling chapel, beset by failing health and by jealousy and intrigue on the part of his assistant and eventual successor, Bartolomeo Ratti. He died on 19 May 1601.

2. Works.

Porta's lifelong service to the Franciscans is reflected in his music, the larger part of which consists of sacred works. Seven books of motets (a gap in the numbering indicates that one other is lost) appeared at regular intervals throughout his career, and it is possible to trace through them the development of his great skills as a contrapuntist in the tradition of Gombert and Willaert. With few exceptions, the motets are relentlessly polyphonic. They are flexible structures unfolding through a succession of richly varied imitative points, normally resulting in entirely through-composed works. His responsories include writing in double, and occasionally triple, invertible counterpoint in the repeated sections. A noteworthy feature of the earlier motet publications is the frequency of paired imitation; the later books show an increasingly intense polyphonic complexity. The famous book of 1580 includes the often cited Diffusa est gratia, in which four of the seven voices are derived by various canonic means (fig.2), as well as the six-part Vidi speciosam, with its mensuration canon. Even more consistently severe in their polyphony are the six-part motets of 1585, fully two-thirds of which involve the use of canon in three voices. Yet in the same motets descriptive passages in the texts are often mirrored in appropriate rhythmic flexibility and melodic movement. Another feature, apparent in the later motets for a large number of voices, is the inclination towards polychoral treatment, in which vocal colours are managed with considerable brilliance. The Marian litanies written for Loreto, the vesper psalms and Magnificat settings are other examples of his polychoral writing.

Porta wrote 15 masses, 12 of which were published in 1578. The print opens with six four-part masses named after the first six modes. The Missa secundi toni and Missa tertii toni are parodies based on Palestrina's madrigal Vestiva i colli and Rore's madrigal Come havran fin respectively. Stylistic features of the other four suggest that they too are parodies. Three other masses in the print are confirmed by their titles as parodies: the five-part Missa ‘Descendit angelus’ is based on a motet by Hilaire Penet and the six-part Missa ‘Audi filia’ on one by Gombert; the model for the six-part Missa ‘Quemadmodum’ is as yet unidentified. The remaining masses, both printed and manuscript, are cantus-firmus works, some using plainchant, some original melodies. The Missa Ducalis (whose 13 parts are disposed as three four-part choirs and a tenor cantus firmus) and the eight-part Missa ‘Da pacem’ have several features in common: both have cantus firmi that retain their separate texts throughout; both introduce quite unusual textual troping in their final movements (the latter work includes similar troping at the beginning as well); and both were written for special purposes, rather than for general liturgical use – the one, as has been mentioned, pleading for Duke Cosimo I de' Medici and his son, the other commemorating the Battle of Lepanto (1571). Cantus-firmus technique is also the basis of the five-part introits and the posthumously published Hymnodia sacra. The latter, with its 46 hymns, is among the largest vesper hymn cycles originating in the 16th century. Porta generally set the even-numbered stanzas of the hymn texts in an astounding variety of polyphonic treatments, leaving the odd-numbered stanzas to be chanted. As regards general stylistic features of the sacred music of the period – the nature of the melodic movement, highly regulated treatment of dissonance, modal usage, restraint in the use of chromaticism, rhythmic precision of the word-setting – he fully equalled the disciplined style of Palestrina; in polyphonic severity he exceeded it. Similarly, his treatise on counterpoint is traditional but assured: he uses some of the same cantus firmi as in Zarlino's Istitutioni harmoniche.

In his secular works Porta followed the general trends of Italian madrigal composition during the second half of the 16th century. Most of his settings are for five voices (the single four-part book reflects the personal taste of the dedicatee); the texts are partly by classic poets, including Petrarch, Ariosto and Tasso, partly lightly amorous and frequently occasional. The occasional pieces highlight Porta's close ties with the house of Della Rovere, many of them celebrating weddings, births, departures and returns and other festivities in the family, as well as commemorating occasions on which Porta received some favour or bounty from them. His madrigals are much less contrapuntal than his church music, with some harmonically adventurous text expression, as in the five-part Mentre nel tristo petto in the 1569 book. Such a piece suggests that the high regard in which Guglielmo Gonzaga and Alfonso d'Este held Porta's madrigals was not misplaced.

WORKS

Edition: C. Porta: Opera omnia, ed. S. Cisilino (Padua, 1964–70) [C]

sacred vocal

printed works, except anthologies, published in Venice unless otherwise stated

secular vocal

printed works, except anthologies, published in Venice unless otherwise stated

instrumental

theoretical works

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EinsteinIM

ReeseMR

G. Rossi: Historiarum Ravennatum libri X (Venice, 1589)

G. Artusi: Delle imperfettioni della moderna musica (Venice, 1600/R), 70

L. Zacconi: Prattica di musica, seconda parte (Venice, 1622/R), 130

G. Franchini: Bibliosofia e memorie letterarie di scrittori francescani conventuali (Modena, 1693)

L. Busi: Il Padre G.B. Martini (Bologna, 1891/R)

G. Tebaldini: L'archivio musicale della Cappella Antoniana (Padua, 1895)

G. Tebaldini: L'archivio musicale della Cappella lauretana (Loreto, 1921)

R. Casadio: ‘La cappella musicale della cattedrale di Ravenna nel secolo XVI’, NA, xvi (1939), 136–85, 226–37, 258–73, esp. 270

R. Casimiri: ‘Musica e musicisti nella cattedrale di Padova nei sec. XIV, XV, XVI’, NA, xviii (1941), 1–31, 101–214, esp. 114; xix (1942), 49–92, esp. 77

F. Hafkemayer: Costanzo Porta aus Cremona: Untersuchungen über seine kirchenmusikalischen Arbeiten (diss., U. of Freiburg, 1953)

A. Garbelotto: Il Padre Costanzo Porta da Cremona (Rome, 1955)

R. Lunelli: ‘Nota complementare sul musicista Costanzo Porta da Cremona’, Miscellanea francescana, lvi (1956), 282–8

E.E. Lowinsky: ‘Early Scores in Manuscript’, JAMS, xiii (1960), 126–73

L.P. Pruett: The Masses and Hymns of Costanzo Porta (diss., U. of North Carolina, 1960)

L.P. Pruett: ‘Parody Technique in the Masses of Costanzo Porta’, Studies in Musicology: Essays … in Memory of Glen Haydon, ed. J.W. Pruett (Chapel Hill, NC, 1969), 211–28

A. Sartori: Documenti per la storia della musica al Santo e nel Veneto (Vincenza, 1977)

I. Fenlon: ‘Music, Piety and Politics under Cosimo I: the Case of Costanzo Porta’, Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici nell'Europa del '500 (Florence, 1983), 457–68

LILIAN P. PRUETT