Sfessagna: Neapolitan lute music of the Renaissance

Description

The lute repertory of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is an invaluable source for understanding the interplay between performance practice, written transmission and socio-cultural context in early-modern Europe. As the emblematic instrument of the Renaissance, the lute was at home in both learned and popular spheres, reflecting a taste that embraced cultivated contrapuntal textures, orally transmitted dances and intabulations of sacred and secular vocal repertories. In an age of intense cultural exchange, Italy, France and Spain produced a markedly interconnected corpus, evidenced by the activities of musicians such as Alberto da Ripa (Albert de Rippe), who served at the court of Francis I of France, and Giovanni Paolo Paladino, who introduced the Italian lute notation at Lyons. Their editorial and musical undertakings facilitated the dissemination of Italian practices on French soil, fostering a fruitful cross-fertilisation of stylistic and notational idioms.
In Naples the lute was employed in both public and private settings and enjoyed the favour of every social class—most notably the nobility, who regarded it as a modern emblem of Orpheus’ mythical lyre. In this tradition the word liuto also encompassed the viola da mano, akin to the Spanish vihuela, with which it shared repertory and function despite differences of form. Their interchangeability is already documented in Francesco da Milano’s Intavolatura de Viola o vero Lauto (1536), the earliest known Neapolitan collection for these instruments.
Neapolitan aristocrats considered musical accomplishment indispensable, as exemplified by figures such as Luigi Dentice (c. 1510 – 1566)—theorist and musician—and his son Fabrizio (c. 1530 – 1566), a virtuoso admired throughout Europe. The nobility frequently assumed responsibility for their children’s musical education, engaging renowned masters and thus contributing decisively to the city’s artistic efflorescence. Within this milieu we must also place Scipione Cerreto (1569 – 1633), who in Dell’arbore musicale compiled a list of the most celebrated instrumentalists of his day.
A central role in our understanding of the period’s instrumental literature is played by the “Barbarino” manuscript, a Neapolitan codex of c. 400 pages. Its vicissitudes are themselves noteworthy: now preserved in the Biblioteka Jagiellońska at Kraków (P-Kj Mus. ms. 40032), the manuscript had previously been housed in the Preussische Staatsbibliothek (now Deutsche Staatsbibliothek) in Berlin and was among the many treasures that disappeared during the Second World War, re-emerging more than thirty years later. The stamp of the Bibliotheca Regia Berolinensis on the cover attests to its long tenure there.
The Barbarino is a key witness to musical exchange among lutenists active in Naples, Rome, Parma and Spain. The codex may be the work of a castrato-lutenist known as Barbarino, active in Naples between roughly 1580 and 1611. Its repertory mirrors the contemporary Neapolitan climate: under Spanish rule, Naples was a crucible of Italian and Iberian influences, and lute practice was distinguished by highly virtuosic fantasies and ricercars. Further evidence for a Neapolitan provenance lies in the frequent use of Spanish names and spellings in the headings scattered throughout the manuscript, together with compositions of Spanish origin or modelled on Spanish prototypes. Illustrative of this linguistic intermingling are titles such as Conditor alme sobre il Canto llano (p. 3), Pedazo de fantasia del ottavo di Luis Maimón (p. 15) and Sobre il Canto piano dell’Ave Maris Stella del Sig. Fra[ncesco] Aguyles (p. 53), in which even the composer’s surname appears to be Spanish. Other composers in the manuscript who may be of Spanish extraction include Francesco Cardone, Castillo and Luis Maymón.
The sole clue to the identity of the compiler and owner is an erased inscription on p. 406. Both the inscription and its cancellation seem to be in the same hand as the rest of the codex. The surviving text records a cash payment of eighteen giulii on 22 February 1611 to the castrato Barbarino (his Christian name is illegible) for services rendered to Alfonso Br[…], a patron who must remain unidentified owing to the trimming of the page during restoration.
The hypothesis that the Barbarino incorporates a pre-existing lute manuscript belonging to another player rests on the rubric at the end of the sixth system on p. 105, “Finis de Flores para tañer de Luis Maymon”. Several factors—above all the distinctly anthological Spanish title, reminiscent of collections such as the poetic Ramillete de flores (E-Mn Ms 6001), itself containing a vihuela tablature fascicle—suggest that this notice marks the conclusion of an entire manuscript rather than of a single piece.
The codex is a miscellany intended for solo use: it contains no texts, only tablatures. The notation is the Italian lute system (also employed for the viola da mano), with numbers indicating fret positions and mensural symbols for rhythm. There is no alphabetical index in either appendix or introduction; pieces follow one another seemingly at random, perhaps in chronological copying order, though certain thematic clusters (sequences of fantasies or dance pieces) are discernible, and the copyist’s hand appears uniform throughout. The manuscript preserves intabulations of polyphonic madrigals interspersed with purely instrumental works. Notable examples include Giulio Severino’s tablature of Palestrina’s madrigal Da poi che vidi vostra falsa fede, rendered with almost literal fidelity. Elsewhere the music is fully original—multi-sectional imitative fantasies and ricercars, toccatas, ostinato-based dances (such as the Folia, the Tenore di Napoli or the Ruggero) and balleti. These works reflect both popular and courtly trends current in Spanish and Italian centres; the version of La Batalla in the Barbarino (fo. 368) reworks material found in other European manuscripts.
The lute’s role as compositional aid was intimately linked to its pedagogical and recreational uses, fitting into the broader network of interactions between lutenists and vocal polyphonists in the sixteenth century. At the time, the divide between these two categories was far less clear-cut than we might assume today: there were lutenists who composed vocal music and vocal composers who played—or even wrote for—the lute. Some applied the principles of vocal polyphony with great refinement to instrumental writing (Francesco da Milano, Valentin Bakfark), while others, known chiefly as instrumentalists, also produced vocal works—John Dowland, Philip van Wilder, Fabrizio Dentice, Luyz de Narváez. A crucial reference is a 1578 letter from Don Annibale Capello to Guglielmo Gonzaga, mentioning Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s own intabulation of sections of the Missa Dominicalis, implying an active rôle for the lute in the work’s very genesis.
Palestrina’s incomplete madrigal Da poi che io vidi vostra falsa fede was until recently known only from the tenor and bass parts in Il terzo libro delle Muse di Antonio Barré (Rome, 1562). Its intabulation in the Barbarino—the sole one known—is assigned not to Palestrina but to his arranger Giulio Severino, yet it testifies eloquently to the function of intabulations in transmitting vocal repertory during the Cinquecento and to the robust musical ties between Naples and Rome. Severino’s version almost certainly derives from Barré’s original print. Barré, a former papal singer turned publisher, maintained close links with Orlando di Lasso and the circle of Neapolitan exiles in Rome, including the Dentice family and the book’s dedicatee, Don Indico Piccolomini, Duke of Amalfi.
Among the leading figures represented in the Barbarino stands Fabrizio Dentice, a consummate composer and inventive polyphonist. Although much of his career unfolded outside Naples, Dentice exerted significant influence on colleagues and pupils—most notably Giulio Severino, likewise featured in the collection. Their compositions, rich in counterpoint and formal sophistication, epitomise Neapolitan taste of the period. Luigi Dentice, presumably born in Naples between 1510 and 1520, is remembered chiefly for his theoretical treatise Duo dialoghi della musica, delli quali l’uno tratta della theorica et l’altro della pratica (Naples, Matteo Cancer, 1552). Immersed in the cultural milieu of the Neapolitan aristocracy, he frequented the palace of Ferrante Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno, where in 1545 he and his son Fabrizio took part in the theatrical performance Gli ingannati.
What is most striking about Fabrizio Dentice—a proud figure who refused to perform before non-aristocratic audiences—is the pivotal rôle he occupied across the diverse musical environments and genres he encountered. His villanelle, essentially eloquent monodies of refined, even tragic, poetic content, remained models of perfection in Naples well after his death. During his Roman sojourn his Miserere a falsi bordoni entered the official repertory of the Sistine Chapel, becoming a touchstone for subsequent Roman composers; even in the seventeenth century it served as the basis for vocal diminutions and polychoral adaptations. From his years in Spain (c. 1559 – 1565) only a single fantasia for vihuela survives, copied in a late manuscript. In Spain, where keyboard tablature functioned as a form of ciphered score, Dentice likely learned—and later introduced to Naples—this notational practice. It is surely no coincidence that beginning with Rocco Rodio’s 1575 collection of ricercars (Rodio was artistically connected with Dentice) all Neapolitan keyboard publications adopted the score format, retaining it until the end of the seventeenth century although elsewhere the Italian tablature model had become ubiquitous. Such a tradition cannot be explained solely on commercial or habitual grounds. Given Neapolitan society’s strong Spanish influence, it is plausible that each composer sought to emulate the stance of Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa.
A vivid portrait of Gesualdo is sketched by Count Alfonso Fontanelli, invited to Ferrara for the marriage of Leonora d’Este, in a letter of 18 February 1594:
“He is devoted to hunting and to music, and declares himself a professor of both… As for music he has said to me more in a day than I have heard in a whole year. He professes it most openly and displays his pieces, set out in parts, to all in order to induce them to marvel at his art…”
Thus did Fontanelli encapsulate the flamboyant yet scholarly spirit that also animates the Neapolitan lute heritage preserved in the Barbarino manuscript.
Gabriele Zanetti © 2025

Note
– Titles missing in the source have been supplied in square brackets [ ].
– Titles suggested based on the numbering of the pieces in the publication Neapolitan Lute Music by John Griffith and Dinko Fabris (A-R Editions, Middleton, Wisconsin, 2004) are given in parentheses ( ).
– Elements that were difficult to interpret are marked using square brackets, parentheses, and a question mark [?].
– The spelling of the titles has not been modernized.