(It.).
A generic term applied at various times to popular songs that originated in Naples and flourished from about 1537 to about 1650.
4. Metrical and musical forms.
6. Arrangements for four or more voices.
DONNA G. CARDAMONE
The generic designation canzone villanesca alla napolitana (‘rustic song in the Neapolitan style’) was coined in Naples to mark the début in print of a local genre (RISM 15375). It was used consistently until 1565 to describe strophic songs for three or four voices in Neapolitan dialect that consciously imitated (or borrowed from) lyric traditions of the street and countryside. Venetian printers sometimes used the local equivalent, villotte alla napolitana, as a title or subtitle for their editions of villanesche. The term ‘villanella’ first appeared in the title of a Roman anthology (155530), but it was not applied regularly until the villanesca had been transformed by north Italian composers, who preferred the topos of pastoral life and a more refined diction. The terms ‘villanesca’, ‘villanella’ and ‘villotta’ were often used synonymously because of their similar etymological derivation from the Latin villanus (peasant, or person of humble birth), but distinctions can be drawn between them and related genres such as the bergamasca, giustiniana, greghesca, moresca and todesca. During the 1560s Neapolitan idioms were gradually replaced by stereotyped conceits in the Petrarchan or Arcadian vein, giving rise to the gentler designations ‘villanella’ and ‘napolitana’. After 1580 the term ‘canzonetta’ became standard for non-Neapolitan songs descended from the villanella. The villanella, in turn, was affected by the lively declamation, short imitative motifs and high tessitura of the canzonetta and gradually came to be called ‘canzonetta’ as often as ‘villanella’. During the 17th century solo songs as well as partsongs were sometimes described as villanellas. All the terms appear in the titles of Italian chapbooks to describe texts intended to be sung to familiar or improvised tunes (‘canzoni da cantare’).
Rustic and pastoral songs were both classified by Einstein as ‘lighter forms’ because they are comic reversals of the madrigal's serious discourse. Villanesche, for example, may be narrated by awkward lovers who aim to seduce stubborn, ill-bred women or complain about amorous deception. Some villanesche are ironic serenades, others are humorous anecdotes; virtually all explore the relationship between masculine frustration and feminine deceit, parodying character-types of both sexes – impudent maidens, over-protective guardians, scheming courtesans, cuckolded husbands, lovesick old men and jealous suitors. The actions of the characters are conveyed realistically in crude euphemisms and rustic metaphors, which serve as pretexts for harsh criticism of female vices and imperfections. Although some villanesche are set in a garden or village, urban locations are more common. The object of love might be a peasant girl or shepherdess in an idyllic pastoral setting, or a city woman or noblewoman: both are normally addressed in polite but casual terms.
Farces and rustic comedies that record the characteristic actions, songs and dialects of peasants flourished throughout Italy during the early 16th century, especially in aristocratic circles. By reasserting the legitimacy of natural instincts and the dignity of the supposedly vulgar, these plays provided a favourable climate for the introduction of the canzone villanesca and its construction of an alternative, more spontaneous world.
In the area around Naples, the rustic fool was a stock character in improvised farse cavaiole. These were presented annually at Carnival, which was traditionally celebrated in Naples with theatrical activities that encouraged the performance of songs rich in farcical invention and ethnic folklore, such as the villanesca and its offspring the mascherata alla napolitana. Masked musicians strolled through the streets improvising ribald songs, and famous court singers such as Luigi Dentice, G.C. Brancaccio and Scipione delle Palle doubled as actors in comedies staged at the Prince of Salerno's palace. Many villanesche are derisive in tone and were well suited to function as realistic insertions in the main action of these comedies. When Emperor Charles V visited Naples during Carnival 1536, he witnessed a broad range of comic entertainment and heard groups of musicians compete in singing villanesche and madrigals. Pirrotta has suggested that the first edition of villanesche (1537) was close enough in time to the imperial visit to be considered an expression of Neapolitan pride in a local genre that stood full comparison with the madrigal. When these newly developing genres spread simultaneously into the same social circles, the villanesca became the madrigal's comical companion, complementing rather than mocking its lofty Petrarchan discourse. Stylistic exchanges between the genres during the 1570s came about as composers explored ways in which elements from opposite worlds could subtly be combined. Intentional parody of madrigalian conventions was rare. The exceptions, which arose in theatrical contexts, are travesties of famous madrigals such as Rore's Anchor che col partire by the actor and writer of comedies Andrea Calmo, and Palestrina's Vestiva i colli by Banchieri (in his La pazzia senile).
Although it is difficult to tell whether comedy suggested characters and situations to the songs, or songs to the comedy, interactions were generated by musicians familiar with the stage. Among the most notable were Lassus and Troiano, both gifted performers trained in Naples. At the Munich court in 1568 they collaborated on an improvised comedy with music, Troiano playing the role of the country bumpkin from La Cava and Lassus the Venetian ‘magnifico’, a character already endowed with attributes of the commedia dell'arte character Pantaloon. Lassus's rendition of the Neapolitan serenade Chi passa per questa strada to his own lute accompaniment reveals a keen awareness of the traditional relationship between comedy and a song that sketches a character-type.
The key to understanding the genesis of the villanesca lies in the social structure of Naples, where nobles, artisans and servants had a long history of familiarity with one another's musical customs and languages. Peasants from the rural provinces were drawn to Naples by flourishing trades in wool and silk and by domestic employment in noble households. From the overlapping of social and linguistic boundaries there emerged a city vernacular which villanesca composers appropriated in creating their own poetry for music. In the earliest villanesche, dialectal and literary idioms converge in unmistakable patterns, confirming their origin in urban popular culture (and putting to rest romantic theories of ‘folk’ origin). The title-page of the Canzone villanesche alla napolitana (RISM 15375) features a woodcut of three female peasants tilling the soil, plainly labelled ‘bas. can. ten.’. Poised in this way, they signify the mingling of oral and written traditions; in the one, music is created instinctively according to nature; in the other, it is composed artistically according to rules. Moreover, the peasants represent the three ages of woman, their features corresponding to vocal ranges; they symbolize the characteristic high-pitched sound of the villanesca, the cantus singing in a medium range and the tenor and bass in a range about a 5th higher than usual.
Villanesca poems normally consist of four isometric strophes of between three and eight lines. Einstein developed the theory that the villanesca was initially a strambotto (a poem of four hendecasyllabic couplets) expanded by the insertion of a refrain: (1) AB + R, (2) AB + R, (3) AB + R, (4) CC (or AB) + R. Dialectal strambotti with the rhyme schemes ABABABCC (strambotto toscano) and ABABABAB (ottava siciliana) were the most common models for villanesca poets, who deliberately preserved their assonance and colloquialisms. The strambotto models consist largely of clichés and proverbial sayings strung loosely together, making a witty point in the final couplet. These features characterize villanesca poems too, confirming the main line of evolution and the continuing assimilation of oral traditions. Villanesca refrains typically consist of one hendecasyllabic line or a series of brief polymetric lines with short-range, jingling rhymes that evoke the humorous tone of popular singers.
Three types of rhyme scheme prevail in villanesca poems up to 1560. The predominant type has an unchanging refrain, and in most cases the last line of the couplet and the first line of the refrain share the same rhyme as far as the final strophe, for example ABb ABb ABb CCb or ABbb ABbb ABbb CCbb (upper-case denotes couplets that change in content, and lower-case the unchanging refrain). In the second type there is no linking rhyme between the couplet and refrain (e.g. ABc ABc ABc DDc). In the third type the refrain of the fourth strophe is modified to rhyme with the final couplet (e.g.ABb ABb ABb CCC). Between 1560 and 1570 the villanesca evolved into a non-refrain poem, coinciding with a change in generic designation to villanella. Short strophes predominate, often consisting of a free mixture of seven- and eleven-syllable lines and changing rhymed couplets (e.g. AABB CCDD EEFF GGHH).
Each line of the villanesca or villanella strophe is set to a different musical phrase, but phrases are repeated in many different patterns that resist classification. There was however a strong tendency to repeat the first and final phrases, so that a consistently popular form for a three-line strophe was 1–1 2 3–3 (with the central phrase commensurate in length with the outer ones), and for a four-line strophe 1–1 2 3–4 3–4. Bipartite forms such as 1–1 2–3 2–3 entered the repertory during the 1560s.
The musical formulae of oral culture are deeply ingrained in the villanesche tunes that emanated from Naples, which include a set of ‘arie napoletane’ published in Rome (c15378). Composers invariably put the tune in the top voice, which unfolds with a coherent sense of direction (a phenomenon Pirrotta designated ‘aria’). Characteristic Neapolitan devices include phrase-endings where a sequential passage of 3rds descends in conjunct motion to the final note, syllabic declamation reflecting accentual patterns in the poetry, and the truncation of single words or the fragmentation of phrases, which are then repeated afresh. The result is a comical stuttering that was a significant factor in the success of the villanesche sent to Venice for publication during the 1540s by Nola (2 books, 1541, reprinted 1545), Vincenzo Fontana (1545), Cimello (1545), Maio (1546) and Burno (154618). Neapolitan tunes are always supported by a discreet triadic background. When the tune moves by step the lower parts often follow in parallel motion, producing consecutive 5ths. Nola used 5ths discreetly, reserving them for the beginnings and ends of phrases, in contrast to the long chains preferred by Maio. Einstein claimed that ‘forbidden’ 5ths served to caricature contrapuntal mastery and to enhance elements of parody in the poems, but Pirrotta has proposed that 5ths reflect the habits of a popular singer moving his hand in a fixed position along the fingerboard of a rudimentary stringed instrument to harmonize tunes. Indeed, Zacconi (Prattica di musica, 1592/R) argued that villanella composers could disregard the rules of counterpoint when the tune moved by step because they were imitating untrained musicians who, ‘when singing, blend together by means of natural consonances’ and ‘do not know any other way of moving to neighbouring notes’.
The homophonic textures of villanesche were often enlivened by declamation on short note values and by short points of imitation with sequential expansion. Cimello (De perfettione) insisted that the minim could be the unit of measure as well as the semibreve. He complained that villanesche were not correctly performed in Rome, where they were published anonymously in 1557 in anthologies compiled by the printers Dorico (155719) and Barrè (155720). Lassus, who moved to Rome from Naples, played an important role in transmitting and encouraging the composition of Neapolitan songs, as can be seen in the anthology Villanelle d'Orlando di Lassus e d'altri eccellenti musici libro secondo (Rome, 155530), which acknowledges his leadership in the title. Anthology publishing shifted to Venice during the 1560s: Gardano published six books of anonymous Neapolitan songs (Villotte alla napolitana), drawing in part on a repertory that had circulated in Rome; Scotto introduced a new circle of composers from the Kingdom of Naples dominated by Primavera and Dell'Arpa, whose arioso tunes use short compact phrases that contrast sharply with the earlier sequential elaborations.
The first anthologies to contain napolitane by north Italians were edited and partly composed by Bonagiunta (156512, 15667). In modifying napolitane for the northern public, composers such as Dattari and Trombetti studiously avoided southern mannerisms such as parallel 5ths and truncation in favour of more spacious imitation and decorative melismas. At this time the texts of the ‘lighter forms’ circulated in manuscript copies independently of the music, which resulted in the variable ordering of strophes and the transfer of strophes between poems. The treatment of these poems as ‘open forms’ proved to be a significant factor in stylistic exchanges between villanella and madrigal. Scotto, for example, filled the second and third books of the series Corona delle napolitane (Venice, 1571) with his own settings of poems devised by reassembling texts from the first book, and he set an influential example by consolidating selected lines from a multi-strophic poem into one strophe, as in a madrigal.
Villanellas thrived in southern Italy, particularly in Bari under the aegis of Giovanni Giacomo de Antiquis, who compiled two books of pieces composed by himself and 20 colleagues (15745-6). In Rome Pompilio Venturi and Gasparo Fiorino explored a new social role for the villanella by setting reams of poems in praise of prominent local noblewomen (La nobiltà di Roma, 15718, 2/157319). Between 1584 and 1587 Marenzio, at the insistence of Roman friends, published 115 villanellas which typify the prevailing stylistic variety: pastoral idylls, short droll songs and longer ones with expressive devices borrowed from the madrigal. 50 of them were later copied into the Tregian Manuscript (GB-Lbl Eg.3665; facs. in RMF, vii, 1988), prompting Morley's enthusiasm: ‘If you think [villanellas] worthy of your pains to compose them, you have a pattern of them in Luca Marenzio and John Ferretti’. Marenzio's trademark is a polarized texture, with the bass moving independently of the upper parts, which are closely linked by imitation or motion in parallel 3rds. Between 1602 and 1618 villanellas were once again composed and published in Naples, with notable contributions by Montella, Francesco Lambardi and d'India.
The most successful villanella composer in Germany was Jacob Regnart, whose Kurtzweilige teutsche Lieder, nach Art der Neapolítanen oder welschen Villanellen filled three volumes (1576, 1577 and 1579) and were repeatedly reprinted up to 1611. In England the villanella (now known as ‘canzonet’) underwent an easy naturalization through conventions established almost singlehandedly by Morley. An interest in light Italian music had been established much earlier, however, in English royal circles. The Earl of Arundel, after a trip to Italy in 1566–7, ordered a set of 47 villanellas for his library at Nonesuch (GB-Lbl Roy. App.59–62), and about the same time someone connected with Elizabeth I, perhaps a suitor, commissioned the Winchester Partbooks (GB-WCc 153), which contain 55 villanellas.
From 1537 to 1565 the villanesca evolved along parallel lines: as high-pitched settings for three voices by Neapolitan composers; and as arrangements for the fuller sonority of the madrigalian quartet. The first arranger was Willaert, who established influential techniques for reworking Neapolitan models for four voices in his Canzone villanesche alla napolitana (Venice, 1545). In his literal arrangements the cantus and tenor exchange positions, the original bass is retained with small modifications, and the alto fills out the harmony. In his free arrangements the tune is in the tenor or migrates from voice to voice, imitative passages are converted to homophony (or vice versa), and new material is liberally inserted. Willaert and his followers (Barges, Perissone Cambio, Nasco, Baldassare Donato) were attracted to the villanesche of Nola and Vincenzo Fontana, whose brisk irregular rhythms also appealed to Lassus. His Quatoirsiesme livre a quatre parties (Antwerp, 1555) contains six arrangements and marks the début in print of the villanesca outside Italy; 12 more arrangements, dating from his youth, were published in Paris in 1581. These 18 arrangements are contained in RRMR, lxxxii–lxxxiii (1991). Lassus's arrangements range from literal transcriptions to free elaborations that allude to the model only at the beginning. His preference for placing the tune in the tenor freed the cantus part, inspiring effective changes of register, contour and speed to accommodate every flicker of meaning in the text. Others such as Waelrant, Severin Cornet, Scandello and Le Jeune, while not endowed with Lassus's keen sense of humour, contributed to the villanella's enthusiastic reception in northern Europe. Regnart and Leonhard Lechner followed Giovanni Ferretti's highly influential example in arranging villanellas for five voices, making sophisticated use of spritely rhythmic declamation and varied vocal groupings. Villanellas for four voices that were free compositions rather than arrangements of pre-existing models, were published first by Nola (1567) and then by Mazzone (1570). The five-voice villanella (called ‘canzone’) enjoyed a brief vogue during the 1570s with Conversi, Lodovico Agostini and Caimo (among many others), who took as texts the initial stanzas of villanellas and infused them with features typical of the madrigal.
Eye-witness accounts of the performance of ‘lighter forms’ indicate a preference for solo voice with instrumental accompaniment, even though all the parts are texted in the published editions. This performing practice is confirmed by the existence of numerous arrangements of villanellas for solo voice and lute and by a vogue for monodic villanellas accompanied by the Spanish guitar. Giulio Caccini clearly thought of villanellas as models for his strophic arias: their emphasis on a well-defined melody and bass moving in the same rhythm makes them well suited to solo performance. Moreover, Vincenzo Galilei cited villanellas, and the popular airs that inspired them, as models for the sort of monody he envisaged in his Dialogo della musica (1581/R).
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I. His: ‘Les modèles italiens de Claude Le Jeune’, RdM, lxxvii (1991), 25–28