(It.: ‘old style’).
A term signifying a historically-conscious approach to composition, especially the use of elements of Renaissance style in later, usually sacred, works. The term has been applied to music from many historical periods, from the end of the 16th century to the 20th.
Stile antico generally indicates the presence of ‘old-fashioned’ features associated with Renaissance polyphony, such as alla breve metre (and a concomitant avoidance of dance rhythms), imitative textures, a traditional approach to dissonance, scoring for full choir (as opposed to solo voices and/or reduced forces) and a balanced melodic style reminiscent of Palestrina’s. It also suggests a historicized attitude on the part of the composer, an interest in establishing a connection with the musical past, particularly with the music of Palestrina.
It was long accepted that the origins of the stile antico lay in the perpetuation of Palestrina’s style, after his death in 1594, by his successors at Rome (notably the Naninos, the Anerios, Giovannelli and Francesco Soriano), partly in homage to him and partly to maintain the union of liturgy and music he had forged. This hypothesis seemed to be supported by the emergence in the 17th century of other terms denoting ‘old style’ and ‘new style’: first, early in the century, the Monteverdi brothers introduced the terms Prima pratica and seconda pratica; and secondly, composers such as Stefano Bernardi, Giovanni Ghizzolo and G.B. Chinelli began publishing sets of masses that included ‘da capella’ and ‘da concerto’ works. However, recent research into 17th-century choral music suggests that the distinction between stile antico and stile moderno is less tidy. There seems to be a substantial middle ground of stile misto that judiciously combines newer with older elements. More importantly, the assumption of a historicized attitude on the part of these 17th-century composers seems doubtful: the distinction between prima and seconda pratica essentially concerns the relationship between text and music, and that between ‘da capella’ and ‘da concerto’ probably turns on tutti or soloist performance; neither pair of terms presupposes a deliberate historicizing effort by composers.
The term stile antico did not appear until the 1640s. Marco Scacchi (Cribrum musicum, 1643 and Breve discorso sopra la musica moderna, 1649) and Severo Bonini (Discorsi e regole, c1651–5; ed. and trans. M. Bonino, Provo, UT, 1979) both used it but in ways that still do not fully accord with the positive notion of a historically informed style. Within a few decades, however, the stile antico had become a fully developed stylistic possibility. A crucial factor was undoubtedly the revival of interest in Palestrina’s music, advanced most forcefully in Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum (1725), and seen in related practical manifestations from Dal Pane’s Messe … estratte da esquisiti mottetti del Pelestrina (1687) to the masses ‘alla Palestrina’ by Alessandro Scarlatti and Francesco Durante.
The clearest examples of the stile antico are found in 18th- and 19th-century sacred choral works, particularly masses or mass sections, by composers such as Bach, Schumann and Liszt. Bach copied out and performed Palestrina’s six-voice Missa sine nomine (1590, now sometimes known as the Missa ‘Cantabo Domine’), and at Leipzig he made regular use of Erhard Bodenschatz’s Florilegium Portense, an anthology of 16th-century German and Italian motets. In his Mass in B minor Bach placed stile antico passages in positions of structural significance, for example in the ‘Credo’ and the ‘Confiteor’ choruses that frame the Credo. Recognition of the stylistic references in such passages – the alla breve metre, the omission of obbligato melodic instruments – is crucial to comprehension of Bach’s architectural rhetoric (see Wolff, 1968, 1991). The ‘Et incarnatus’ from Beethoven’s Missa solemnis also has stile antico features, such as the plainchant-style melody and use of the Dorian mode, that are important to an accurate interpretation of the movement as a whole. Again, the composer is interested in rapprochement with a historical style, while the deviations from that style are quite audible.
A different kind of historical approach appeared in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, broadly related to the Cecilian movement, in which composers aimed to create music informed by the Palestrinian model for use in Catholic liturgical services, a purpose obviously foreign to the extended concert masses by Bach and Beethoven. The 20th-century examples of the stile antico largely continue within the Catholic tradition, for instance Langlais’ Messe en style ancien. Such works however are more apt to draw on medieval and chant models rather than the Palestrina idiom. A number of other 20th-century works that utilize the term stile antico reflect neoclassical tendencies (Górecki’s Three Pieces in Old Style, Donaudy’s Arie di stile antico).
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F.W. Riedel: ‘Johann Joseph Fux und die römische Palestrina-Tradition’, Mf, xiv (1961), 14–22
J. Roche: ‘Monteverdi and the Prima Prattica’, The Monteverdi Companion, ed. D. Arnold and N. Fortune (London, 1968, 2/1985 as The New Monteverdi Companion), 167–91
C. Wolff: Der Stile antico in der Musik Johann Sebastian Bachs (Wiesbaden, 1968)
C. Palisca: ‘Marco Scacchi’s Defense of Modern Music (1649)’, Words and Music: the Scholar’s View … in Honor of A. Tillman Merritt, ed. L. Berman (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 189–235
S. Durante: ‘On Artificioso Compositions at the Time of Frescobaldi’, Frescobaldi Studies: Madison, WI, 1983, 195–217
J. Roche: North Italian Church Music in the Age of Monteverdi (Oxford, 1984)
N. Billio d’Arpa: ‘Musica sacra tra stile antico e moderno: la messa, vespro et compietà (Venezia, 1616) di Amadio Freddi’, RIMS, xi (1990), 287–322
C. Wolff: ‘Bach and the Tradition of the Palestrina Style’, Bach: Essays on His Life and Music (Cambridge, MA, 1991), 84–104
J. Butt: Bach: Mass in B Minor (Cambridge, 1991)
R. Shay: ‘Henry Purcell and ‘Ancient Music’ in Restoration England (diss. U. of North Carolina, 1991)
R. Boursy: ‘Historicism and Composition: Giuseppe Baini, the Sistine Chapel Choir, and Stile antico Music in the First Half of the 19th Century’ (diss., Yale U., 1994)
C. Buck: ‘Robert Schumann and the Stile antico’ (diss., Stanford U., 1994)
S. Miller: ‘Music for the Mass in Seventeenth-Century Rome: Messe piene, the Palestrina Tradition, and the Stile antico’ (diss., U. of Chicago, 1998)
STEPHEN R. MILLER