A melodic-harmonic formula used in the 16th and 17th centuries as an aria for singing poetry and as a subject for instrumental variations. Ex.1 shows the structural notes of the romanesca pattern: a descending descant formula supported by a standard chordal progression whose bass moves by 4ths. This scheme is to be viewed as a flexible framework, rather than as a fixed tune; it provided, though often disguised by elaborate ornamentation, the melodic and harmonic foundations for countless compositions labelled ‘romanesca’.
The origin of the romanesca is uncertain. Although the name would seem to suggest a connection with Rome, the earliest extant musical examples are found in non-Italian sources. The term appears for the first time in 1546, in Alonso Mudarra’s Tres libros de musica en cifra para vihuela (Romanesca, o Guárdame las vacas) and in Pierre Phalèse’s Carminum pro testudine liber IV. A set of variations on Guárdame las vacas, with no mention of ‘romanesca’, had appeared earlier in Narváez’s Los seys libro del Delphin (1538). In 16th-century Spanish collections of instrumental music, the romanesca remained associated with the text Guárdame las vacas, the first line of a popular villancico, at times indicated simply as Las vacas (e.g. Valderrábano, Libro … intitulado Silva de sirenas, 1547; Pisador, Libro de musica de vihuela, 1552; Venegas de Henestrosa, Libro de cifra nueva, 1557; Antonio de Cabezón, Obras de música, 1578). In Italy, instrumental settings and variations on the romanesca began to appear in the second half of the 16th century, in Antonio di Becchi’s Libro primo d' intabolatura de leuto (1568), in Antonio Valente’s Intavolatura de cimbalo (1576) and in various manuscripts, including pieces by Vincenzo Galilei and Cosimo Bottegari (see Palisca, 1969, and Apfel, 1976 and 1977). The relationship between Spanish and Italian traditions has never been adequately explained. For Francisco de Salinas, the melody that the Spanish called Las vacas and the melody that the Romans used to sing stanzas commonly called ‘romaneschae’ differed in metre only (De Musica libri septem, 348). The two descant tunes cited by Salinas are identical except for their rhythm; it is likely that the variants are due to the practice of accommodating the romanesca formula to different texts (Bella citella de la magiorana in Salinas’s example).
Although our knowledge of the 16th-century romanesca depends almost exclusively on surviving examples of instrumental music, in Italy the romanesca seems to have been primarily an aria for singing poetry, especially stanzas in ottava rima (the metre favoured for epic poetry), to the accompaniment of the lute or a bowed instrument. Scholars have debated for many years whether the aria di romanesca was an ostinato bass or a descant tune. The scant testimonies of the theorists appear to support the descant-tune hypothesis. Like Salinas, Galilei treated the romanesca as a melody by mentioning it among other popular airs, the soprano of which ‘principally provides the air, even when six or eight others are singing in harmony’ (Dubbi intorno a quanto io ho detto dell’uso dell’enharmonio, I-Fn Gal.3, trans. Palisca, 1960).
The chord progression of the romanesca is virtually identical to that of the passamezzo antico (see Passamezzo), with the exception of the opening chord (usually III in the romanesca and i in the passamezzo antico). This has generated some confusion about the nature of such formulae, confusion also fostered by the fact that there has been a tendency in modern scholarship to equate these formulae with their bass progressions. In all probability the romanesca, like many other stock tunes and dances of the Renaissance, was defined not by a simple chord sequence but by a complex of elements including metric patterns, reference pitches, characteristic melodic and rhythmic gestures and stylistic conventions tied to performance practice. Although deceptively similar in their bass lines, the romanesca and the passamezzo must have differed in other respects, equally vital to the identification of the genre. A clue may be found in Galilei’s Primo libro della prattica del contrapunto (1588–91), where the excited sound of the romanesca is compared with the quiet one of the passamezzo. The bass traditionally associated with the romanesca probably represents the standard accompaniment that the tune acquired over the years. It is not to be confused with the aria itself, however. Unfortunately, because of the improvisatory nature of the solo singing over discant formulae, no written examples of this vocal practice are extant.
At the beginning of the 17th century the unwritten romanesca tradition entered a new phase. Most of the composers cultivating the new monodic style began publishing solo songs and duets on the romanesca formula, continuing to set stanzas in ottava rima (AB AB AB CC). Ex.2 shows the first two lines of a romanesca by Antonio Cifra. Each of the four couplets forming the ottava rima coincides with a statement of the romanesca formula. Thus the music unfolds as a series of strophic variations, each of which is entrusted with the declamation of two lines. The articulation of the text is further emphasized by the repetition of the second line of each couplet. Unlike 16th-century instrumental examples, which are characterized by a clear ternary rhythm, 17th-century romanescas are usually noted in duple time. They tend to exhibit some rhythmic ambiguity, however: the phrase structure at times suggests different metrical groupings and the diminutions are often irregular in rhythm (Silbiger). Romanescas for one or two voices appear in most Italian songbooks of the first half of the 17th century, including pieces by Giulio Caccini (1601/2, 1614), D'India (1609), Cifra (1613, 1615, 1617, 1618), Pietro Pace (1617), Francesca Caccini (1618), Puliaschi (1618), Filippo Vitali (1618, 1622), Monteverdi (1619), Stefano Landi (1620), Rontani (1622), Banchieri (1626), Severi (1626), Frescobaldi (1630) and P.F. Valentini (1657). Sporadic examples for three and four voices may be found in Cifra (1613), Pietro Pace (1615 and 1616) and Giovanni Valentini (1621). Many of these pieces are titled aria di romanesca even though in some cases the vocal part does not seem to follow the romanesca tune. The tendency to isolate and use only the bass line in ostinato fashion may be observed in Sigismondo D'India, who explicitly names one of his songs ‘Musica sopra il basso della romanesca’ (Le musiche da cantar solo, 1609). Sets of variations for keyboard were composed by Ercole Pasquini (I-RAc 545), Mayone (1609), Frescobaldi (1615–37), Michelangelo Rossi (1657), Bernardo Storace (1664) and Gregorio Strozzi (1687); for guitar by Domenico Pellegrini (1650); for ensemble by Biagio Marini (1620), Salomone Rossi (1622, 1623) and Buonamente (1626); and for chitarrone by Kapsberger (1604). Anonymous lute and keyboard sets also survive in several Italian manuscripts (see Apfel, 1976 and 1977, and Silbiger).
Many dances of the 16th and early 17th centuries (in particular gaillards, pavanas and passamezzos, beginning with a gaillard in Attaingnant’s Dixhuit basses dances, 1530) are structured according to a scheme similar to that of the romanesca. The same scheme occasionally appears also under different titles such as la Favorita, Fantinella, La gasparina, Ballo del fiore, La canella, La comadrina, La desperata, L'herba fresca, El poverin, Il todeschin (or La todeschina), Tre damme alla francesa, La monella and El traditor, and, in England as Greenleeves, Hewyn anf earth, Queen Marie’s Dompe (or simply Dompe; see Dump). These may not have been associated with the romanesca, although scholars today tend to connect them. The chordal progression that forms the bass of ex.1 is widely used in the music of the Renaissance and cannot be considered exclusive to the romanesca formula.
MGG2 (M. Cafini)
J.M. Ward: The Vihuela de mano and its Music (1536–76) (diss., New York U., 1953)
C. Palisca: ‘Vincenzo Galilei and Some Links between “Pseudo-Monody” and Monody’,MQ, xlvi (1960), 344–60; repr. in Studies in the History of Italian Music and Music Theory (Oxford, 1994), 346–63
C. Palisca: ‘Vincenzo Galilei’s Arrangements for Voice and Lute’, Essays in Musicology in Honor of Dragan Plamenac, ed. G. Reese and R.J. Snow (Pittsburgh, 1969), 207–32; repr. in Studies in the History of Italian Music and Music Theory (Oxford, 1994), 364–88
E. Ferrari Barassi: ‘A proposito di alcuni bassi ostinati del periodo rinascimentale e barocco’,Quadrivium, xii/1 (1971), 347–64
E. Apfel: ‘Rhythmisch-metrische und andere Beobachtungen an Ostinatobässen’, AMw, xxxiii (1976), 48–67
E. Apfel: Entwurf eines Verzeichnisses aller Ostinato-Stücke zu Grundlagen einer Geschichte der Satztechnik, iii: Untersuchungen zur Entstehung unf Frühgeschichte des Ostinato in der komponierten Mehrstimmigkeit (Saarbrücken, 1977)
A. Silbiger: Italian Manuscript Sources of the 17th Century Keyboard Music (Ann Arbor, 1980) 39–44
D. Gagné: ‘Monteverdi’s Ohimè dov’è il mio ben and the Romanesca’, The Music Forum, vi (1987), 61–91
L.F. Tagliavini: ‘Metrica e ritmica nei “modi di cantare ottave”’, Forme e vicende: Per Giovanni Pozzi, ed. O. Besomi, G. Gianella, A. Martini and G. Pedrojetta (Padova, 1989), 239–267
G. Predota: ‘Towards a Reconsideration of the Romanesca: Francesca Caccini’s Primo libro delle musiche and Contemporary Monodic Settings in the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century’, Recercare, v (1993), 87–113
J.W. Hill: Roman Monody, Cantata, and Opera from the Circles around Cardinal Montalto(Oxford, 1997), 203–34
GIUSEPPE GERBINO