(It.: ‘praise’; pl. laude [laudi]).
The principal genre of non-liturgical religious song in Italy during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. In its monophonic form, the lauda also constitutes the primary Italian repertory of late medieval vernacular song, and is distinguished from most neighbouring repertories in its strictly urban, non-courtly context. The religious lauda endured into the 19th century, and extant repertory remains an important source of popular Italian texts and music.
2. Repertory and performing practice.
BLAKE WILSON
Changes in the form and style of the lauda were conditioned largely by the shifting currents of religious devotion, politics and styles of music and poetry. The lauda arose in the city-states of central Italy during the 13th century, and was a product of the complementary forces of mendicant (especially Dominican and Franciscan) urban missionary zeal and the emerging guild-based communes of Tuscany and Umbria. The early lauda took shape in close proximity to the practice and the affective rhetorical style of mendicant preaching. The roots of the lyrical lauda tradition can be traced to the ‘Canticle of the Sun’ by St Francis of Assisi (1182–1226), Altissimu, onnipotente bon Signore/tue so le laude, la gloria, et l'onore (I-Af 338, with empty music staves). St Francis urged his followers to ‘go through the world preaching and praising God, … first one of them who knew how to preach should preach to the people and that after the sermon they were to sing the praises of God [laudes Domini] as minstrels of the Lord [joculatores Dei]’. Mendicant sermons and lauda singing shared many themes and goals: the creation in their listeners of the complementary devotional states of penance and praise (see the early lauda text Benedictu, laudatu et glorificatu lu Patre), and the promotion of Marian veneration, particularly in response to rampant heresies that tended, as did the Cathars, to deny the divinity of the incarnate Christ (see Raina potentissima). The two main contexts for lauda singing around the mid-13th century were both lay: Marian confraternities organized primarily by the Dominicans (particularly in response to the preaching of St Peter Martyr in 1244–5), and the great penitential processions of flagellants that were the product of millenarian hysteria, charismatic urban preaching (both authorized and unauthorized) and cities plagued by war and pestilence.
The popular devotional activities of lauda singing and ritual scourging assumed institutional form only after this time, however, and the lay confraternities of laudesi (compagnie delle laude) and disciplinati (battuti, flagellanti) arose in conjunction with the late 13th-century stabilization of the guild-based communal governments and the establishment of the mendicant orders in the same Tuscan and Umbrian cities. Throughout the 14th and 15th centuries relatively unbroken traditions of lauda-singing were maintained by both types of confraternity, but the paraliturgical services of the laudesi confraternities provided the lauda's primary context.
The earliest known laudesi company was founded in 1267 at the Dominican church of Camporegio in Siena (earlier dates are no longer tenable). Most of the laudesi confraternities were founded in the mendicant convents of Tuscan and Umbrian communes shortly after this time, and institutional lauda singing was soon legitimized by the granting of episcopal and papal indulgences. In Florence, which sustained a lauda-singing culture of unparalleled vigour and longevity, all but one of the city's 12 companies appeared during about 1270–1330, and were either newly formed or derived from the older Marian confraternities in which lauda singing had been at most an incidental, ad hoc activity. The evidence is scant for laudesi activity in cities outside Florence such as Lucca, Pisa and Siena, where the mid-century ravages of the Black Death may have severely damaged the infrastructures that supported confraternal institutions. 14th-century Florence remained a favourable environment for the laudesi, and here the once ad hoc devotion was rapidly transformed by several interrelated circumstances that converged with particular strength in Florence at this time: the proliferation of saint's day feasts in general; a dramatic rise in the number of bequests for lauda services (lauda ‘vigil’ or vigilia alle laude) on the feasts of these various saints; the professionalization and elaboration of laudesi activities brought on by the financial and legal obligations of these bequests; and the consequent rise of professional lauda singers, ornate service books (laudari) and a technically demanding repertory of paraliturgical songs. It is in this context that the remarkably florid laude in the Florentine laudario I-Fn BR18 (see ex.2) are to be understood.
The monophonic repertory of the 14th century was performed primarily in the daily ferial services (around the time of Compline) as well as in the annual festal cycles of the confraternities, which were conducted in a host church before a consecrated altar and altar painting. Most lauda vigils included some combination of prayers, readings, a candle procession and offering with lauda singing, a brief sermon and further lauda singing that led to confession. By the late 14th century, the laudesi companies increasingly focussed upon their festal services, particularly those of a patron saint, which might involve the hiring of civic wind and brass players (pifferi and trombetti), extra singers and instrumentalists, a procession with lauda singing and elaborate services on both the eve and the day of the feast with the performance of special laude proper to the feast. During the 15th century the Florentine laudesi companies at the churches of Santo Spirito (the proprietors of I-Fn BR18) and S Maria del Carmine continued to serve the obligations of their bequests for lauda vigils, but otherwise devoted their resources to the annual staging of elaborate sacre rappresentazioni in which one or two interpolated laude were sung. Most laudesi companies had adopted polyphonic singing by about 1430, and expanded their chapels to accommodate the subsequent shifts from two- to three- and four-part singing. Beset by declining membership and economic inflation in the early 16th century, few companies could sustain the expense of polyphonic choirs, and in the vastly changed devotional environment of the Counter-Reformation the laudesi companies ceded their ancient devotion to the clergy of their host churches.
Lauda singing occupied a distinctive if less central place in the activities of the disciplinati confraternities that arose in the early 14th century. No musical sources for the disciplinati survive, but the texts in the extant laudarii reveal a penitential tone and a powerful urge to identify affectively and actively with the suffering and death of Christ and the martyred saints as a means to redemption. Cultivating an ambience of darkness, secrecy and self-denial, the disciplinati singers appear not to have aspired to the elaborate, professional and public character of the laudesi singing; but surviving documents of companies from Bologna, Florence and, above all, Umbrian cities such as Assisi, Perugia, Cortona and Orvieto reveal the integral role of the lauda in a variety of contexts: funerals and suffrages of the dead, Holy Week services, processions and in the privacy of an oratory in conjunction with the central devotion of ritual scourging (the latter two a legacy of the 13th-century penitential processions). The early 14th-century statutes of the Confraternita di S Stefano in Assisi call for ritual scourging followed immediately by the singing of a vernacular lauda, the singer of which is charged with ‘[moving] the hearts of the brothers to tears more than words move the mind’. The lauda played a particularly important role in the disciplinati's Holy Week services, above all during the mandato (foot-washing) service on Holy Thursday. In Umbria the lauda, especially the narrative Passion lauda, underwent a distinctive transformation from devozione to rappresentazione, and by the early 15th century these dramatic laude were fully staged productions.
While laude were sung primarily during the services of laudesi and disciplinati companies throughout the 14th and 15th centuries, lauda singing was gradually adopted during this period in other contexts favourable to popular devotion. Laude were recited or sung in conjunction with mendicant sermons, particularly during Lent, and appeared with increasing frequency in private devotional and clerical settings. The great Florentine lauda poet Feo Belcari (1410–84) was informed of the death of his sister in a Florentine convent with a letter describing how in her final moments she ‘entered into a devout state and began singing the lauda that begins Partiti core et vanne all'amore, then upon her request her close companions gathered and sang a lauda that eased her passage from this life’. Widespread clerical appropriation of lauda composition and performance began near the end of the 15th century, however, when the polyphonic lauda was often promoted in the context of religious reform as a substitute for more complex styles of polyphony. In Florence, the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola advocated lauda singing throughout the churches and confraternities of the city, and thereafter the lauda was cultivated almost exclusively in Dominican convents in Tuscany loyal to the friar's memory. Most of the 15th-century sources of polyphonic laude (see §2(ii) below) come from monastic environments in Venice or the Veneto, many of which were connected with a Benedictine reform movement that rejected more complex polyphony. Petrucci's Laude libro primo (1508) is devoted entirely to the works of a Venetian priest, Innocentius Dammonis, and it is likely that this and Petrucci's next lauda collection contain repertory performed both in Venetian convents and by lay and clerical singers in the services of Venetian confraternities (scuole). Petrucci's Laude libro secondo (1507/8) contains a number of works by Mantuan court composers such as Cara and Tromboncino, probably for use in church services, processions and private courtly devotions in Mantua and perhaps also in other north Italian courts such as Milan and Ferrara. The final creative phase of the lauda took place in Counter-Reformation Rome, where the composition, publication and performance of laude for Filippo Neri's Congregazione dell'Oratorio was conducted, once again, in a clerical environment of religious reform.
Lauda, §2: Repertory and performance practice
While there are more than 200 extant confraternity laudarii that transmit texts, only two survive with musical notation, along with a number of musical fragments from dismembered laudarii. The late 13th-century Cortona laudario (I-CT 91) belonged to the Confraternita di S Maria delle Laude attached to the church of S Francesco in Cortona, but its 65 laude (with music for 46) were probably drawn by its scribe from the general area of Siena, Arezzo and Cortona. The Florence laudario (I-Fn BR18, olim Magl.II.I.122) was copied during the early 14th century for the Compagnia delle laude di Santo Spirito, a modest laudesi company that met at the Florentine church of Santo Spirito. It contains 97 laude (88 with music) that would have been performed by the one or two singers this company retained into the early 15th century. Ziino (1978) has demonstrated that a group of the surviving musical fragments come from a single laudario which belonged to the Compagnia di S Agnese, a Florentine laudesi company situated in the church of S Maria del Carmine. The paraliturgical function of these confraternity service books is revealed in their format and style: laude are grouped in sections devoted to Mary, a cycle for the liturgical year and, in the richly illuminated Florence laudario, a large sanctorale section. The notation in both collections is the rhythmically neutral quadratic notation used in contemporary chant manuscripts.
The only known authors of medieval laude are Jacopone da Todi, Guittone d'Arezzo and a certain Garzo. The otherwise anonymous poetic repertory is extremely varied in both quality and subject matter. Many texts are didactic in intent, such as some of the older Marian laude with their anti-heretical language (e.g. Madonna sancta Maria in I-CT 91) or laude that narrate the events of a saint's vita (e.g. Vergine donzella in CT 91 and Fn BR18). Most employ a vivid and affective language intended to draw the participant into a devotional state of penance or praise. The subject matter is adapted from a variety of sources, including the Bible, liturgical texts and more popular devotional literature such as Iacobus de Voragine's Legenda Aurea. Apart from the oldest 13th-century texts, which tend to be formally diverse, the medieval lauda repertory is distinguished by the pervasive application of the poetic scheme of the Ballata. Originally a dance-song with a choral refrain (similar to the French virelai and the English carol), the clearly secular ballata form was adapted to sacred texts during the later 13th century, probably within the institutional framework of the new confraternities, and held fast in the lauda repertory to the end of the 14th century when it began to be displaced by a new array of poetic forms linked to an emerging polyphonic practice. In its strictest and most frequent form, the lauda-ballata consists of a two-line, end-rhyming choral refrain (repeated after each successive strophe) and a four-line, soloistic strophe made up of piedi (two lines of identical versification and end-rhyme) and a volta (two lines that repeat the versification and, usually, the music of the refrain). Laude rarely follow this ballata minore scheme strictly, however, and particularly in the Florence laudario one finds not only more irregular line lengths but also variations upon the longer stanzaic forms of the ballata mezzana and ballata maggiore.
Like the texts, the melodies of the lauda repertory range freely in style and character from chant to popular song, variously showing traces of processional intonations, dance-tunes, indigenous popular song styles, litanic, hymnodic and sequential structures, troubadour song, the modes of ecclesiastical chant and an incipient major–minor tonality. Exx.1 and 2 show melodies in two contrasting styles. Onne homo ad alta voce (ex.1), in honour of the Holy Cross, appears in both laudarii and is an example of the simpler lauda style: the melodic motion is conjunct, the word-setting is mostly syllabic (with occasional two- to four-note ligatures on individual syllables) and it lies within the range of any male voice. Like many of the simpler mode 1 (protus) lauda melodies, it sounds rather austere and exhibits some structural irregularities (the piedi – lines 3–4 – differ, and the volta – lines 5–6 – is a varied recapitulation of the refrain). A lauda in honour of St Dominic from the Florence laudario, Allegro canto, popol cristiano (ex.2), reflects the professionalization of the Florentine laudesi: it demands control of a much wider range and engages in an effusive and florid virtuosity that is characteristic of many laude found in the sanctorale section of that Florence manuscript. The overall structure is absolutely regular (strict repetition among the three pairs of piedí, and between refrain and volta), and the major-tonality melodies tend to cascade within clearly-defined octave gamuts in a manner similar to the cantus parts in polyphonic madrigals by contemporary Florentine composers such as Donato da Cascia and Lorenzo Masini.
The two main sources share 20 texts and 14 melodies, and the Florence laudario contains nine melodies that appear two or more times with different texts (contrafacta). Ave, donna sanctissima is transmitted in both sources, and reveals the melodic plasticity of a repertory conditioned by oral and improvisatory traditions. Melodic intervals of a third or more might be filled in, and a variety of ornamental notes ranging from single anticipatory or appoggiatura-like notes to clusters of notes in stock formulae (abundant in ex.2 and other florid laude like it) might be applied. Entire phrases, including finals, might differ significantly, although this is not as common as was once assumed.
It is just this melodic flexibility that argues against the application to the lauda repertory of rigid or artificial rhythmic schemes, such as those proposed by Riemann (Vierhebigkeit), Beck and Aubry (Modal rhythm) and Anglès (‘modified mensural’). Rhythmic solutions to the performance of monophonic laude must be sought in the extra-liturgical environment of the late medieval Italian cities, where the possibilities ranged from unmeasured recitation to dance-song and flexible mensural applications. The rhythmic transcriptions in Liuzzi's monumental La lauda e i primordi della melodia italiana (1935) are untenable, and the facsimiles must be used with great caution. There are numerous scribal errors in both manuscripts with respect to clefs, custodes and melodic transpositions. The Florence laudario is especially problematic, for some time after its initial compilation the codex was damaged and the tops and sides trimmed and repaired, during which process the top staff on every folio was mutilated, the parchment restored and the music recopied. The recopied music is, however, entirely corrupt, a fact taken into account in only one recent edition (RRMMA, xxix, 1995), which proposes emended versions of these passages.
The 13 monophonic Latin songs in a mid-14th-century antiphoner (I-Tn Bobbiese F.I.4) are related to the lauda by virtue of their more popular melodic style and the use of the ballata form. The usual designation of these songs as ‘Latin laude’ is understandable but problematic given their anomalous features against the vast and relatively uniform backdrop of the medieval lauda repertory. As mensurally-notated songs in Latin emanating from environments unconnected with Trecento lauda production and lay confraternity performance (a Benedictine convent near Genoa), they stand outside the lauda tradition. One of these Latin songs, Vernans rosa, is also transmitted in I-Fn BR19, a 14th-century Florentine laudario, but is relegated to an appendix of Latin monophonic and polyphonic works and designated a ‘sequentia’.
Lauda, §2: Repertory and performance practice
Exceptional early examples of polyphonic laude are the two sacred ballata texts set by Trecento composers, Niccolò del Proposto's Dio mi guardi di peggio and Jacopo da Bologna's Nel mio parlar di questa donn'eterna. Though the melodic style of these works is simpler than that found in their composers’ secular compositions, it is unrelated to the contemporary monophonic repertory in the Cortona and Florence laudarii which was largely ignored by or unknown to polyphonic composers.
In Florence more than 60 extant manuscript and print sources from about 1380 to 1560 bear witness to a vast and continuous cantasi come tradition that was unique to that city. These are collections of lauda texts, some copied into private devotional miscellanies, others intended for a wider circulation, that bear the rubric ‘cantasi come’ (to be sung like) followed by the title of a song to which the lauda was to be sung. The oldest collections, such as I-Rvat Chigiano L.VII.266, contain the last appearances of monophonic lauda titles and secular polyphony drawn from late 14th-century Florentine sources. The approximately 65 laude in these early sources with cantasi come links to Florentine polyphony overwhelmingly favour the music of the formally compatible ballata settings and a traditional polyphonic texture of two voices with text in both parts. Landini's settings seem to have been great favourites – the laude O Gesú Cristo padre and Or che non piangi both called for the music of his La bionda trezza, for example – but the two-voice ballatas of Giovanni da Cascia, Gherardello da Firenze, Niccolò da Perugia, Andrea da Firenze, Bartolino da Padova, Guilielmus de Francia, Ciconia and Paolo da Firenze were called upon as well. The link between lauda texts and Trecento polyphony must have been forged in the wealthier Florentine laudesi companies such as that of Orsanmichele, where the elaborate musical establishment brought together as many as a dozen professional laudesi, a music master versed in polyphonic practices, lute and medieval fiddle players, and, from 1378 to 1426, the organist and composer Giovanni Mazzuoli.
In the course of the 15th century the lauda underwent a profound change as it lost its exclusive association with the lay confraternities and the ballata form and entered into the broader and shifting currents of emerging polyphonic styles and new poetic forms. This is most evident in the numerous sources from the next, Medicean period of the Florentine cantasi come tradition (c1430–90). Lauda poetry assumed the new and more varied forms of popular poetry found in the later Frottola (such as the strambotto, barzelletta and capitolo), the chief poets being Feo Belcari, Francesco d'Albizo, Lorenzo de' Medici and Lucrezia Tornabuoni (Lorenzo's mother). The cantasi come rubrics indicate a broad array of music: there are Italian and French songs and a handful of Latin, Spanish, Flemish and German songs, many in extant polyphonic settings found in Florentine sources as well as in sources from northern Italy to Naples. The regional unwritten traditions of viniziane, napolitane and siciliane also found their way to Florence, where they jostled with local repertories of festival music such as canti carnascialeschi, trionfi, May songs, music for Holy Week, the individual creations of singers such as ‘Benolio’ and Piero di Mariano, and a local aria fiorentina for the singing of strambotti, rispetti and balli. Chief among the non-Florentine tributaries are the veneziane or giustiniane, named for Leonardo Giustiniani (c1383–1446), whose laude and popularizing love songs are ubiquitous in late 15th-century cantasi come sources. The central document of this period is I-Fn Magl.VII.690, an autograph manuscript prepared by Feo Belcari between 1468 and his death in 1484, which appears to have determined for subsequent sources (particularly the printed sources, such as the four prints of 1486–1507 ed. Galletti, 1863) the general cosmopolitan nature of the cantasi come sources and many specific links. Belcari's lauda Tutto per noi is always paired in the later sources with the Frye-Binchois Tout a par moy, just as his Merzé ti chiamo Vergine Maria was always linked to the music of Giustiniani's Mercé te chiamo o dolce anima mia (a two-part setting survives in I-Bu 2216). Whereas the prerequisites for a musical model with a foreign text were generally compatibility of poetic form and perhaps a similar sounding incipit, a deeper process of travestimento spirituale was often involved in the borrowing of music associated with popular (or notorious) Italian secular texts. Florentine Carnival songs (e.g. Visin, visin, visin chi vuol spazzar camin, which lent its music to Iesù, Iesù, Iesù, ogniun chiami Iesù) were especially ripe for this treatment. Belcari's lauda Hora mai sono in età extols the virtue of monastic retreat, while its musical model, the Neapolitan barzelletta Hora mai che fora son (in a four-part setting in E-E IV.a.24) is a secular song about a girl who rejects the convent.
Parallel to (but interactive with) the Florentine lauda tradition was a written, modo proprio repertory of polyphonic lauda settings from the Veneto. The majority of manuscripts that contain 15th-century laude in musical settings, copied between about 1420 and 1500, come from monastic environments in Venice (I-Vnm Cl.IX.145) and the Veneto (I-Bu 2216; I-Bc Q15; I-PAVu Aldini 361 and perhaps I-Fn Panciatichiano 27), and from Benedictine monasteries belonging to a reform order, the Congregatio Sanctae Iustinae, that originated in the Veneto (US-Wc ML171 J6; ZA-Csa Grey 3.6.12; I-MC 871). The poetic forms are those popularized by Giustiniani's verse (and music): the strambotto, capitolo, ode, frottola and classical ballata. The laude in these sources are generally in two and three parts, and particularly in ZA-Csa, a retrospective Benedictine anthology copied around 1500, the textures vary from simple note-against-note settings (Giustiniani's Quando Signor Jesú) to contrapuntal settings with broken rhythms, cadence patterns and problematic text underlay that suggest (like the setting of Giustiniani's Piangeti cristiani) the travestimento of a northern-European chanson. The majority of the settings in these sources, however, are in what may be considered an indigenous style of Italian polyphony that emerged in written form during the 15th century: the text-setting is syllabic and homorhythmic, and there is a close rhetorical correspondence between poetic and musical phrases, with clearly articulated, simultaneous cadences in all parts. The two similar versions of L'amor a me venendo in ex.3 date from the first half of the 15th century, and suggest a transition from improvisatory to written practice. The comparatively refined mensural duet in I-PAVu appears to have been derived from the rudimentary, organal texture in the Vnm version through compositional adjustments to part-writing, text underlay and the rhythmic and melodic structure of the lines. This same text appears with new music in Razzi's Libro primo (a three-part setting), and in Petrucci's Laude libro primo (a four-part setting by Dammonis). Such simple frameworks lent themselves to a more florid treatment of the cantus, and works such as Con desiderio io vo' cercando (from I-Bu 2216) probably reflect an older 15th-century tradition of improvisatory singing associated with the musical settings of Giustiniani's poetry (the aria veneziana) that was known in both Venice and Florence (ex.4). Three-part textures were favoured in the later 15th-century lauda repertory, and were sometimes created, as in ex.5, by the addition of a lower part to an older cantus-tenor duet. Giustiniani's very popular lauda O Jesù dolce was strongly associated with a two-part musical setting found (with variations) in both ZA-Csa and Razzi; the Panciatichiano 27 version in ex.5 is a version of this cantus-tenor duet, adjusted to accommodate a bass part that provides a quasi-tonal, root-position movement. Later settings of this text include one for four parts in Petrucci's Laude libro primo, and a five-part setting by Palestrina (Ziino, 1975).
Petrucci's Laude libro primo (1508) and Laude libro secondo (1507/8) may be regarded as the culmination of this Venetian modo proprio tradition, when the lauda reached a height of popularity and influence in tandem with the closely related musical settings of the frottola (c1490–1530). Of the 66 pieces in Petrucci's first book, all by the otherwise obscure Venetian priest Innocentius Dammonis, 51 have Italian texts and 15 Latin. By contrast, Petrucci's second book is devoted mostly to laude by north Italian frottola composers such as Cara, Tromboncino and Lurano, and contains 23 settings of Italian texts and 31 of Latin. The two books exhibit a variety of styles: most of the works are for four voices, some stylistically related to the older three-part, note-against-note lauda textures. The majority are in a style closer to that of the frottola, with a melodic upper voice patterned after the text, moderately active lower voices and a functional bass part. But there are also works in more complex imitative and non-imitative polyphonic textures, which employ more learned devices such as canon, cantus firmus and soggetto cavato (see Glixon).
Petrucci's designation of these books as lauda collections is problematic, however. The fact that a lauda could stylistically resemble a frottola (some were contrafacta of frottolas) but also have a Latin text and complex textures (some of Petrucci's Latin pieces in his second book were lifted from his motet prints) obscured the contours of the lauda as a distinct genre; this may partly explain why it virtually disappeared from northern Italy not long after Petrucci's prints were published. Equally problematic, therefore, is the idea advanced by Osthoff and Lowinsky that the early 16th-century lauda influenced the new style of sacred music in mass and motet settings by composers such as Weerbeke, Compère and Josquin (the first part of whose homorhythmic motet Tu solus qui facis mirabilia was included in Petrucci's second book of laude with the text O mater Dei et hominis). Given the presence of motets and motet textures in Petrucci's two lauda books, and the generic ambiguity of the lauda and the Italian motet in the early 16th century, the extent and nature of the influence of the lauda upon the motet remains unclear.
The next printed collection of laude to appear after Petrucci's two books was Serafino Razzi's Libro primo delle laudi spirituali (1563). This, too, was the culmination of a tradition, the Florentine cantasi come practice, for in the dedicatory letter the printer Filippo Giunta declared that he had long wanted a collection of laude with music ‘abandoning that silly way of saying cantasi come this and come that’. Razzi also compiled four manuscript collections of laude (I-Fn Pal.173) and published the Santuario di laudi (1609). Many of the lauda texts in his Libro primo were written during the early 16th century by Dominican friars, most of them active at some point in Savonarola's convent of S Marco, among them Angelo Bettini, Niccolò Fabroni and Razzi himself. Razzi's publications are extremely important for their transmission of what he called ‘arie antiche’, two- and three-part settings from late 15th-century Florence, many of them travestimenti spirituali of such Carnival songs as Lorenzo de' Medici's Quant'è bella la giovinezza (with the text Quant'è grande la bellezza di te, Vergin santa e pia) and Poliziano's May song Ben venga Maggio (with Lucrezia Tornabuoni's text Ecco'l Messia).
Razzi's 1563 anthology was timed to coincide with the closing months of the Council of Trent, when the reform of sacred music was under consideration, and the Counter-Reformation provided the impulse to the final creative phase of the lauda in Rome. Lauda singing was introduced to the Roman churches by two Florentines, the composer Giovanni Animuccia and the priest Filippo Neri. Neri had sung laude as a boy at S Marco, Florence, in the 1520s, and was an ardent admirer of Savonarola; during the 1550s he introduced lauda singing to the informal gatherings in an oratory that eventually received papal recognition as the Congregazione dell'Oratorio. In his capacity as Neri's maestro di cappella, Animuccia published in Rome in 1563 (with Razzi's encouragement) his Primo libro delle laudi. This began a long series of prints written and published for Neri's Congregazione: Animuccia published another collection in 1570, and there followed another 11 books between 1577 and 1600, edited primarily by Francisco Soto de Langa and Giovenale Ancina. During this same period, post-Tridentine lauda collections were also printed throughout Italy – in Venice, Genoa, Turin, Ferrara, Brescia and Naples. A few of the Roman laude had narrative or dramatic texts and are antecedents of the early Baroque oratorio volgare that evolved primarily in the context of the spiritual exercises conducted in Neri's oratory.
The Florentine origins of the Roman practice are evident in both the text and music. The verse types are still those of the frottola, and the predominantly three- (and occasionally four-) part homophonic textures are similar to those in Razzi's 1563 anthology. Some of the repertory also derives, as does Razzi's, from Florentine practice of the period 1480–1520, including music for Belcari's Giú per la mala via and d'Albizo's Giovanetti con fervore. Animuccia preserved Belcari's original cantasi come link between the text of his Lodate Dio and the music (with a more elaborate melody) for Poliziano's Ben venga maggio.
The lauda declined at the end of the 16th century with the rise of the oratorio, but lauda prints continued to be issued into the early 19th century. Through these, the tradition of travestimento spirituale was perpetuated, as in Matteo Coferati's Corona di sacre canzoni, o laude spirituali (1675), which includes about 140 secular melodies with sacred texts for each.
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A. Tenneroni, ed.: Inizii di antichi poesie italiane religiose e morali: con prospetto dei codici che le contengono e introduzione alle laudi spirituali (Florence, 1909)
E.J. Dent: ‘The Laudi Spirituali in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, PMA, xlii (1916–17), 63–95
V. de Bartholomaeis, ed.: Laude drammatiche e rappresentazioni sacre (Florence, 1943/R1967)
B. Becherini: ‘La musica nelle “sacre rappresentazioni” fíorentine’, RMI, liii (1951), 193–241
F. Ghisi: ‘Strambotti e laude nel travestimento spirituale della poesia musicale del Quattrocento’, CHM, i (1953), 45–78
F. Ghisi: ‘La persistance du sentiment monodique et l'évolution de la polyphonie italienne du XIVe au XVe siècle’, L'Ars Nova: Wégimont II 1955, 217–31
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H. Anglès: La música de las Cantigas de Santa María del Rey Alfonso el Sabio, iii/2 (Barcelona, 1958), 483–516
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G. Corsi: ‘Madrigali inediti del Trecento’, Belfagor, xiv (1959), 72–83, 329–40
G. Cattin: ‘Il manoscritto Venet. Marc. Ital. IX, 145’, Quadrivium, iv (1960), 1–60
G. Cattin: ‘Le composizioni musicali del Ms. Pavia Aldini 361’, L'Ars Nova italiana del Trecento: convegni di studio 1961–1967, ed. F.A. Gallo, 1–2
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P. Damilano: ‘Laudi latine in un antifonario bobbiese del Trecento’, CHM, iii (1962–3), 15–57
F. Ghisi: ‘Antiche canzoni popolari nella “Corona di sacre laudi” di Matteo Coferati (1689)’, Liber amicorum Charles van den Borren (Antwerp, 1964), 69–81
S.W. Kenney: ‘In Praise of the Lauda’, Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music: a Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese, ed. J. LaRue and others (New York, 1966/R), 489–99
B.J. Blackburn: ‘Te Matrem Dei laudamus: a Study in the Musical Veneration of Mary’, MQ, liii (1967), 53–76
H. Anglès: ‘The Musical Notation and Rhythm of the Italian Laude’, Essays in Musicology: a Birthday Offering for Willi Apel, ed. H. Tischler (Bloomington, IN, 1968), 51–60
G. Cattin: ‘Le composizioni musicali del Ms. Pavia Aldini 361’, L'Ars Nova italiana del Trecento II, ed. F.A. Gallo (Certaldo, 1968), 1–21
G. Cattin: ‘Polifonia quattrocentesca italiana nel codice Washington, Library of Congress, ML 171 J6’, Quadrivium, ix (1968), 87–102
A. Ziino: Strutture strofiche nel laudario di Cortona (Palermo, 1968)
W. Osthoff: Theatergesang und darstellende Musik in der italienischen Renaissance (15. und 16. Jahrhundert) (Tutzing, 1969)
H.E. Smither: ‘Narrative and Dramatic Elements in the Laude Filippine, 1563–1600’, AcM, xli (1969), 186–99
G. Cattin: ‘Tradizione e tendenze innovatrici nella normativa e nella pratica liturgico-musicale della Congregazione di S. Giustina’, Benedictina, xvii (1970), 254–99
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G. Cattin: ‘La poesie di Savonarola nelle fonti musicali’, Quadrivium, xii (1971), 259–80
A. Ziino: ‘“Con humiltà di core”: ipotesi su un caso adattamento musicale’, Quadrivium, xii (1971), 71–9
A. Ziino: ‘Frammenti di laudi nell'Archivio di Stato di Lucca’, Cultura neolatina, xxxi (1971), 295–312
G. Cattin: ‘Nuova fonte italiana della polifonia intorno al 1500 (MS. Cape Town, Grey 3.b.12)’, AcM, xlv (1973), 165–221
A. Ziino: ‘Adattamenti musicali e tradizione manoscritta nel repertorio laudistico del Duecento’, Scritti in onore di Luigi Ronga (Milan and Naples, 1973), 653–77
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A. Ziino and F.Carboni: ‘Laudi musicali del 16 secolo: il manoscritto Ferrajoli 84 della Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana’, Cultura neolatina, xxxiii (1973), 273–329
G. Varanini: ‘Il manoscritto Trivulziano 535: laude antiche di Cortona’, Studi e problemi di critica testuale, viii (1974), 52–65
E.M. Cambon: The Italian and Latin Lauda of the Fifteenth Century (diss., Tulane U., 1975)
F.A. D'Accone: ‘Alcune note sulle compagnie fiorentine dei laudesi durante il Quattrocento’, RIM, x (1975), 86–114
A. Ziino: ‘Testi laudistici musicali da Palestrina’, Studi palestriniani [I]: Palestrina 1975 (Rome, 1977), 381–408
G. Cattin: ‘Musiche e le laude di Castellano Castellani’, RIM, xii (1977), 183–230
J. Jaenecke: ‘Eine unbekannte Laudensammlung des 15. Jahrhunderts’, Renaissance-Studien: Helmuth Osthoff zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. L. Finscher (Tutzing, 1977), 127–44
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G. Cattin: ‘I “cantasi come” in una stampa di laude della Biblioteca Riccardiana (Ed.r.196)’, Quadrivium, xix (1978), 5–52
V. Moleta: ‘The Illuminated Laudari Mgl1 and Mgl2’, Scriptorium, xxxii (1978), 29–50
A. Ziino: ‘Laudi e miniature fiorentine del primo Trecento’, Studi musicali, vii (1978), 39–83
J.H. Grossi: The Fourteenth Century Florentine Laudario Magliabechiano II, I, 122 (B.R. 18): a Transcription and Study (diss., Catholic U. of America, 1979)
B. Toscani, ed.: Le Laude dei Bianchi (Florence, 1979)
M. Fabbri: ‘Laude spirituali di travestimento nella Firenze della Rinascenza’, Arte e religione nella Firenze de’ Medici (Florence, 1980), 145–58
B. Toscani: ‘Contributi alla storia musicale delle laude dei Bianchi’, Studi musicali, ix (1980), 161–70
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C. Barr: ‘Musical Activities of the Pious Lay Confraternities of Quattrocentro Italy: a Chronicle of Change’, Fifteenth Century Studies, viii (1983), 15–36
G. Cattin: ‘“Contrafacta” internazionali: musiche europee per laude italiane’, Musik und Text in der Mehrstimmigkeit des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts: Wolfenbüttel 1980 (Kassel, 1984), 411–42
N. Pirrotta: Music and Culture in Italy from the Middle Ages to the Baroque (Cambridge, MA, 1984)
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C. Barr: The Monophonic Lauda and the Lay Religious Confraternities of Tuscany and Umbria in the Late Middle Ages (Kalamazoo, MI, 1988)
C. Barr: ‘Music and Spectacle in Confraternity Drama of Fifteenth Century Florence: the Reconstruction of a Theatrical Event’, Christianity and the Renaissance, ed. T. Verdon and J. Henderson (Syracuse, NY, 1990), 377–404
C. Del Popolo, ed.: Laude fiorentine: Il lauderino della Compagnia di San Gilio, 2 vols (Florence, 1990)
J. Glixon: ‘The Polyphonic Laude of Innocentius Dammonis’, JM, viii (1990), 19–53
G. Rostirolla: ‘Laudi e canti religiosi per l'esercizio spirituale della dottrina cristiana al tempo di Roberto Bellarmino’, Bellarmino e la controriforma: Sora 1986, ed. R. Di Maio and others (Sora, 1990), 663–849
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G. Cattin: ‘Le laude intonate sulle musiche del codice Squarcialupi/The Laude set to the Music of the Squarcialupi Codex’, Il codice Squarcialupi MS Mediceo Palatino 87, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana di Firenze, ed. F.A. Gallo (Florence and Lucca, 1992), 243–52
F. Luisi: ‘“Ben venga Maggio”: dalla canzone a ballo alla Commedia di maggio’, La musica a Firenze al tempo di Lorenzo il Magnifico: Florence 1992, 195–218
P. Macey: ‘“Infiamma il mio cor”: Savonarolan Laude by and for Dominican Nuns in Tuscany’, The Crannied Wall: Women, Religion, and the Arts in Early Modern Europe, ed. C.A. Monson (Ann Arbor, 1992), 161–89
P. Macey: ‘The Lauda and the Cult of Savonarola’, Renaissance Quarterly, xlv (1992), 439–83
W. Prizer: ‘“Laude di popolo”, “laude di corte”: some Thoughts on the Style and Function of the Renaissance Lauda’, La musica a Firenze al tempo di Lorenzo il Magnifico: Florence 1992, 167–94
B. Wilson: Music and Merchants: the Laudesi Companies of Republican Florence (Oxford, 1992)
P. Macey: ‘Some New Contrafacta for Canti Carnascialeschi and Laude in Late Quattrocento Florence’, La musica a Firenze al tempo di Lorenzo il Magnifico: Florence 1992 (Florence, 1993)143–66
T. Karp: ‘Editing the Cortona Laudario’, JM, xi (1993), 73–105
R. Nosow: ‘Binchois' Songs in the Feo Belcari Manuscript’, Binchois Studies: New York 1995
B. Wilson: ‘Indagine sul Laudario Fiorentino (Florence, B.N. Banco rari 18)’, RIM, xxxi (1996), 243–80
B. Wilson: ‘Madrigal, Lauda, and Local Culture in Trecento Florence’, JM, xv (1997), 137–77
B. Wilson: ‘Music, Art, and Popular Devotion at the Florentine Cathedral, ca. 1280–1480’, Cantate Domino: Florence 1997 (forthcoming)
P. Macey: Bonfire Songs: Savonarola's Musical Legacy (Oxford, 1998)
B. Wilson: ‘Song Collections in Early Renaissance Florence: the “Cantasi Come” Tradition and its Manuscript Sources’, Recercare, x (1998), 69–104
D. Fallows: A Catalogue of Polyphonic Songs, 1415–1480 (Oxford, 1999)
B. Wilson: ‘Hora mai che fora son: Savonarola and Music in Laurentian Florence’, Proceedings of the International Conference “Una città e il suo profeta: Firenze di fronte al Savonarola” (Florence, forthcoming)