… in vece d’arco o di faretra, chi tien leuto, e chi viola o cetra. 16th Century Italian Lute Music

Description

This Da Vinci Classics album affords us the delight of enjoying a journey in time and space, through the medium of Renaissance lute music. The European Renaissance is certainly a period many of us would like to visit in a time-capsule, were it available. It was a period of extraordinary flourishing of the arts – visual, musical, literary – and of culture in general. It was a period when knowledge, philology, philosophy, and religious thought experienced major developments. It was also a period not untouched by bloody wars and battles, heavy epidemics, and profound crises. Still, we owe to the Renaissance much of what our modern culture is; and we can regret having lost much of what the Renaissance bequeathed to us – in terms of sources, artworks, but also of values, expertise, and knowledge.
Music was one of the arts which blossomed luxuriantly during the fifteenth and sixteenth century; this was also partly due to religious/cultural phenomena, which provided the aesthetic background and the philosophical justification for this exponential growth. Many religious reformers of the sixteenth century developed a thorough theology of music: first and foremost Luther, who was one of the greatest theologians of music ever, but even John Calvin, whose stance about music is much more prudent than Luther’s, left a thought-provoking collection of writings, along with a co-authored work, the Genevan Psalter, whose importance for the history of religious music cannot be overestimated. Culturally, the humanist movement’s reappraisal of ancient Greek sources contributed to the structuring of a comprehensive thought on music, and to the appreciation of its value in terms of mind/body health and relationships.
Major developments arose in both the sacred and the secular domain of music, with new instruments coming to the fore, new genres, and – another fundamental element – the contribution of the printing press to the dissemination of works from a corner of Europe to another.
Indeed, if this album invites us to the time of Renaissance, it also invites us to a large space, a dynamic space in movement. In spite of the difficulties of travelling at a time when no trains, cars or planes were available, people and ideas travelled a lot in the Renaissance. The known biographies of the protagonists of this album bear witness to a great flexibility in terms of places of residence and of employment, and, consequently, to a formidable capability to bring a country’s or a city’s fashions to others which could be very far in terms of geography and culture.
Indeed, sadly very little is known about the lives of several composers represented here. Still, what we do know invites reflections and thoughts about how music and musicianship were conceived at the time, and how gifted musicians could inhabit the major places of culture (e.g. the courts) as protagonists.
For instance, the biography of Francesco Spinacino cannot even be described as sketchy: we lack information about all events of his life, and the only date we can establish with any certitude is 1507, when his two books were issued in Venice. How old he was at the time, whence he came and for how long he outlived his printed works, this all is a matter of mere speculation. His two books, Intabulatura de lauto Libro Primo and Libro Secondo saw the light in Venice, where Ottaviano Petrucci published them both within the space of a month. These two books of tablatures currently survive in just one copy each in Krakow.
Some hints about Spinacino’s personality and standing can be derived from the laudatory poem found at the beginning of Bok One, and signed by one Christophorus Pierius Gigas Forosemproniensis, or Cristoforo Gigante, a literate from Fossombrone, in the Italian region of Marche. It has been surmised that Spinacino might have come from the same land. The refinedness of these books’ printing bears witness to the care with which they were created and printed. These two books have a capital historical importance because they are the earliest known (and possibly the earliest ever) books with printed tablatures. For this reason, they also include a “Rule for those who cannot sing”, explaining how to read tablatures. Petrucci, the printer, was so satisfied with this “how-to-do” guide that he constantly reprinted it, also within books by other composers.
Spinacino’s fame among his contemporaries is attested by some poems, in one of which he is listed together with Angelo Testagrossa and Francesco da Milano, described as forming a consort of excellent performers. The two books include original works by Spinacino and transcriptions after polyphonic works, both sacred and secular, of the early Renaissance and even late Middle Ages. The recercari, three of which are recorded here, are freshly composed works, purposefully designed for the lute. They typically consist of contrasting sections, with little or no consequentiality, and mainly conceived as juxtaposed tableaux. Being idiomatically conceived for the lute, the recercari probably had also a pedagogical function, which seems to be rather evident in the case of “experimental” works such as Spinacino’s Recercare de tutti li toni.
Pietro Paolo Borrono’s biography is sketchy in turn, but comparatively well-documented if Spinacino sets the standard. He came probably from Milan, since he is frequently indicated as Milanese in the sources. In 1531 he was at the court of Francis I of France, and he remained there until probably 1534. In 1536, a collection of lute pieces, called Intabolatura de leuto de diversi autori, and published in Milan by G. A. Casteliono, included several works signed by him; the two pieces recorded here come from this collection. In this collection, Borrono features along with other great masters of the era, several of whom are also represented in this Da Vinci Classics album. Among them, pride of place is given to Francesco Canova (Francesco da Milano) and Marco dall’Aquila, whose works contribute to the programme of this CD; they are collectively indicated as “Homeni grandissimi in questa arte, che non solo appartengono al liuto” (i.e., “very great men in this art, who belong not just to the lute”). One of Borrono’s pieces recorded here is a dance, and this is one particular trait of his personality as represented in the book by Casteliono: Borrono, in fact, was the only composer who included dance pieces, grouped by fours with one Pavane followed by three Saltarelli. These groupings by fours represent an amplification of an earlier model, by threes, whose paternity is ascribed to Joan Ambrosio Dalza (1508), who created mini-suites of Pavana, Saltarello and Piva. Borrono would feature side by side with Francesco Canova also in a later publication, i.e. the second volume of a collection of ten books of lute tablatures issued by G. Scotto in Venice in 1546. Curiously, Francesco da Milano is defined (as always) “the divine”, but Borrono comes a good second, being qualified as “eccellente”.
Indeed, Francesco Canova da Milano fully earned the label of “divine”, which is not easily attributed to artists (in the Renaissance, he shared it with Michelangelo Buonarroti). He was unanimously acknowledged as the greatest lutenist of the era, at an international level. Exceptionally, we know even the exact dates of his birth and death, bearing witness to the importance of his figure for his contemporaries.
Born in Monza, near Milan, to Benedetto Canova, who was also a musician, he owed his education as a lute player to Angelo Testagrossa, cited with him in the poem honouring the great virtuosos cited above. In such demand were his services that he worked as court lutenist for three Popes; the first of them was Leo X, in whose service was already Francesco’s father. Later came Clement VII, and then some secular employers, such as the great patroness of the arts, Isabella d’Este. Fleeing the sack of Rome in 1527, Francesco took refuge in Milan where he was a Canon at the Basilica of S. Nazaro (1528). By then, his international fame was already established. After some other jobs at secular courts, Francesco was invited by Paul III not only in Rome, but also in Nice where the Pope tried to mediate between Charles V and Francis I. The power of music and the skills of Francesco were such that both rival sovereigns wanted to hear him, albeit separately!
Back in Italy, Francesco got married and had a son; he died prematurely and was buried at the church of S. Maria della Scala in Milan, where today the Teatro alla Scala is found. The Fantasias recorded here are some among the 40 works in this genre written by Francesco and known to us; these, in turn, constitute approximately one third of his known output. The enigmatic title of Su Elizabeth Zacharie – La Faga is easily explained by considering that “Elizabeth Zachariae” are the first words of a motet dedicated to the parents of St. John the Baptist written by Jean de la Fage, and adapted by Francesco for performance on the lute. Other works, such as the Ricercari recorded here, bear witness to Francesco’s skill both as an inventor and as a polyphonist.
The name of Joan Ambrosio Dalza and his works collected in the fourth Book of Intabulatura de Lauto (Venice: Petrucci, 1508) were briefly cited a few lines above. His case is another example of biography which cannot even be defined as sketchy. We know that he was Milanese, as documented in the publication’s preface; his surviving output is mainly composed by dances, which are grouped so as to make short suites. A pedagogical aim may be surmised on the basis of the relative simplicity of his works, though Dalza himself stated, in the same preface, that he intended to issue more complex pieces in the future.
A manuscript is our prime source for knowing the works by Vincenzo Capirola, who was a nobleman. Notwithstanding this, the sparse documents we have seem to suggest that his financial situation was far from ideal. On the other hand, it is possible that Capirola travelled extensively, including a stay at the court of Henry VIII in 1515. His works are preserved in a magnificently decorated manuscript, edited and illustrated by a certain Vidal. Fearing that the tablatures’ value might be misunderstood, Vidal took care of decorating them with natural scenes, so that the manuscript be preserved for its visual beauty. This stupendous artwork is now digitized and can be freely admired on the web.
Another famous musician of the era was Marco dell’Aquila, who came probably from Abruzzo and later settled in Venice, where he requested and obtained a “privilege” for printing tablatures. Oddly, however, he seems not to have profited from it, and it was Petrucci who (as we saw earlier) would publish the first printed tablatures, a few years later. His musical activity spans more than three decades (1505-36), and it has been argued that he played a pivotal role in establishing a musical dialogue between the Italian and the German tradition; he also contributed to the creation of new fingering techniques.
The intertwining of pieces by these six musicians offers us a complex but complete, consistent and conspicuous view on the panorama of sixteenth-century Italian lute music: a music which was in dialogue with that of the wider European horizon, but which still possessed idiomatic features of its own, interpreted with a high degree of originality by all musicians represented here.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2024