(It.).
A type of polyphonic song based on a popular tune (or tunes) that originated in the Veneto in about 1520. A substantial repertory spread quickly to Lombardy, Tuscany and Rome, flourishing for about ten years in manuscript and in print. Thereafter villottas were usually published in small quantities within collections. The term is derived from the north Italian dialect word vilòte (‘peasant’), (see Italy, §II, 3). Printers sometimes used the terms ‘villotta’, ‘villanesca’ and ‘villanella’ interchangeably, although linguistic and musical distinctions can be drawn between them (see Villanella).
The earliest four-part arrangements of Italian tunes (‘proto-villottas’) were produced by Franco-Netherlanders active in Italy during the late 15th century (e.g. Obrecht's La tortorella and Compère's Che fa la ramacina). These composers and some Italians of the next generation developed styles of text-setting that have strong affinities with the ‘new’ chanson and chanson rustique, such as points of imitation on declamatory themes, rapid alternation of voice pairs and homorhythmic, chordal textures. Michele Pesenti established a model for the contrapuntal villotta in which fragments of the tune, normally placed intact in the tenor, permeate the other voices (e.g. in Dal lecto me levava, RISM 15044). These textually conceived forerunners are related to the villottas ‘in contrappunto arioso’ of the 1520s, which Torrefranca mistakenly dated some 40 years earlier and called the ‘ramo tardivo’ of the Ars Nova caccia. Important sources of the fully fledged villotta include the Venetian manuscript I-Vnm It.Cl. IV 1795–8, which contains the first pieces called ‘villotta’, and I-Fc Basevi 2440; some villottas are also found in Tuscan sources of the early madrigal (e.g. I-Fn, Magl.XIX.164–7; facs. in RMF, v, 1988).
Villotta texts are consciously rustic in diction and vocabulary, with occasional traces of northern dialects. According to Prizer, this ‘popularizing’ manner was adopted to provide a context for citations of popular material. Villottas typically have free rhyme schemes and shifting line lengths; they may open with alternating rhymes and may have internal rhyming lines. Some villottas conclude with a refrain (nio) set in contrasting metre. Sexually explicit references contribute to a crude and elemental tone, along with curses, threats of cuckolding and imitations of animal sounds; the amorous encounters of low-bred characters in the village or countryside are routine occurrences. Prizer described this as ‘a kind of play of the elite with the popular culture through a distancing from the notions of amour courtois’.
Textual categories within the repertory include quodlibet-villottas (notable examples are found in I-Bc Q21, c1526, in Werrecore's La bataglia taliana, 1549, and in Villotte mantovane, 1583), ingenious treatments of solmization syllables, spirited dance scenes, and satirical attacks on old people. This last type frequently opens with the tenor announcing the tune alone; narrative sections are declaimed in full chordal textures and rhyming lines are set off in dialogue between paired voices (ex.1).
During the 1520s villottas were sung at Ferrarese banquets to enhance comic skits presented by itinerant theatrical troupes: ‘First came the buffoons, Zuan Polo and others, likewise Ruzzante the Paduan, in peasant costumes who did acrobatics and danced very well, and six dressed as vilani putati who sang villotte’ (Marin Sanudo, I diarii, 1524). The ‘beautiful canzoni and madrigals in Paduan style’ that Ruzzante's troupe sang at Ferrara in 1529 probably typify the homophonic and imitative villotta types in circulation at the time. (Lorenzo Zacchia's painting Musical Group with Four Figures inscribes a villotta with refrains popularized in Ruzzante's comedies, and has been interpreted as a tribute to the popular singer and poet.)
In the 1540s a preference arose in Venetian academies for villottas that represented comic characters or situations. Willaert's Un giorno mi pregò una vedovella compares a love affair to navigating through stormy seas, for example, and his Sospiri miei d'oimè dogliorirosi re-creates the stammering of a lovesick suitor. Amusing vocal imitations of cackling and chirping in Barges's Canzon della gallina suggest the antics of Pulcinella. Similar works are found in the first printed collection of villottas, Il primo libro delle villotte (1541), dedicated to Duke Ercole II of Ferrara by the actor Alvise Castellino.
Willaert and his colleagues Perissone Cambio and Nasco who worked in Venetian territories often incorporated elements of the mid-century villotta into their villanesca arrangements (ed. in RRMR, xxx, 1978). The two genres co-exist and overlap stylistically in Azzaiolo's three books of Villotte del fiore (155718, 155919, 156924), which contain many familiar tunes and the harmonic patterns traditionally associated with them. His dance-song arrangements gained fame in intabulations (e.g. Ti parti cuor mio caro) and were held up as models by Vincenzo Galilei.
EinsteinIM
MGG1 (W. Rubsamen)
MGG2 (‘Villanella, villotta’, D.G. Cardamone)
F. Vatielli: Arte e vita musicale a Bologna (Bologna, 1927)
F. Torrefranca: Il segreto del Quattrocento (Milan, 1939)
W.H. Rubsamen: ‘From Frottola to Madrigal: the Changing Pattern of Secular Italian Vocal Music’, Chanson and Madrigal, 1480–1530, ed. J. Haar (Cambridge, MA, 1954), 51–87
N. Pirrotta: ‘Commedia dell'Arte and Opera’, MQ, xli (1955), 305–24
C. Palisca: ‘Vincenzo Galilei and some Links between Pseudo-Monody and Monody’, MQ, xlvi (1960), 344–60
C. Gallico: Un canzoniere musicale italiano del cinquecento (Florence, 1961)
K. Jeppesen: La frottola (Copenhagen, 1968–70)
H.M. Brown: ‘A Cook's Tour of Ferrara in 1529’, RIM, x (1975), 216–41
C. Cunningham: ‘Ensemble Dances in Early Sixteenth-Century Italy: Relationships with Villotte and Franco-Flemish Danceries’, MD, xxxiv (1980), 159–203
C. Gallico: Damon pastor gentil: idilli cortesi e voci popolari nelle ‘Villotte mantovane’ (1583) (Mantua, 1980)
I. Fenlon and J. Haar: The Italian Madrigal in the Early Sixteenth Century: Sources and Interpretation (Cambridge, 1988)
C. Slim: ‘Two Paintings of “Concert Scenes” fron the Veneto and the Morgan Library's Unique Music Print of 1520’, In cantu et in sermone: for Nino Pirrotta, ed. F. Della Seta and F. Piperno (Florence, 1989), 155–74
M. Feldman: ‘The Academy of Domenico Venier, Music's Literary Muse in Mid-Cinquecento Venice’, Renaissance Quarterly, xliv (1991), 476–512
W. Prizer: ‘Games of Venus: Secular Vocal Music in the Late Quattrocento and Early Cinquecento’, JM, ix (1991), 3–56
C. Gallico: Rimeria musicale popolare italiana nel rinascimento (Lucca, 1994)
DONNA G. CARDAMONE