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Music and Dance in Boccaccio's Time: Part I: Fact and Speculation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2014

W. Thomas Marrocco
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Extract

The fourteenth-century Italian lived during turbulent and catastrophic times. Internecine warfare between Guelphs and Ghibellines, reprisals against foraging neighbors, conflict between church and state, and, as though political and religious dissension were not enough, the dreaded black plague, which descended over Europe periodically with devastating results, added to human misery.

Yet, in the face of such calamities Italy covered herself with glory, for in that century the arts blossomed as never before. In musical productivity no other country could boast of over 700 compositions during the period known as the Ars Nova (1330–1420). Francesco Landini, the most famous composer and organist, and a contemporary of Boccaccio, alone has left us over 150 compositions. The composition of music was encouraged by advances in musical notation, such as those described by Marchettus da Padua in his treatise Pomerium (1314), which made possible the precise recording of a much wider range of rhythmic figures.

Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , Spring/Summer 1978 , pp. 19 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 1978

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References

Notes

1. According to Filippo Villani, the fourteenth-century chronicler, one third of the Florentines died victims of the plague in 1348. Liber de origine civitatis Florentiae et eiusdem famosis civibus, ed. Galletti, , Florence, 1847.Google Scholar

2. Schrade, Leo. Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century: The Works of Francesco Landini, 4. Monaco: L'Oiscau-Lyre, 1958.Google Scholar

3. Origo, Iris. The Merchant of Prato. New York: Knopf, 1957, pp. 64ff.Google Scholar

4. Ballata and Madrigal were two of the poetic forms of Italian fourteenth-century poetry and music. The ballata poem varies in length, but it always consists of one refrain, two pedes (verses) and one volta. Musically it becomes a ternary form in which the music of the refrain (A) is repeated for the volta (B), thus producing an ABBA form. The poetic form of the madrigal consists of two tercets and one rhymed distich called ritornello. The two tercets are set to the same music, while the distich is set to new music. The subject matter of both types is generally erotic.

5. Marrocco, W. Thomas. Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, Italian Secular Music, 8. Monaco: L'Oiseau-Lyre, 1972, pp. 156–158.Google Scholar

6. Op. cit., 7, 1971, pp. 158 and 126.

7. Branca, Vittore. Boccaccio, Le Rime. Bari: Laterza, 1939, pp. 20, 44 and 57.Google Scholar

8. The edition used in the preparation of this essay is edited by Bianchi, Salinari and Sapegno. Verona: Valdonega, 1952.

9. Like Petrarch, Boccaccio's poems were rediscovered by sixteenth-century Italian composers as well as Flemish who were drawn to Italy. At least eighteen of them found Boccaccio's canzone from Il Decamerone ideally suited for musical settings.

10. This and all other similar abbreviations refer to the day and story.

11. Poeti Minori del Trecento, edited by Sapegno, N.. Milan & Naples: 1962, p. 559.Google Scholar

12. Nor did any other fourteenth-century writer think it useful to describe contemporary dances. Antonio da Tempo in his Summa Artis Rithimici Vulgaris Dictaminis (1332) gives detailed instructions in the construction of poetic forms. Of the ballata, he merely states “et tales ballatae cantatur et correizantur” [the ballata was so called because it was sung and danced]. The Summa has been edited by Grion and published in Bologna, 1869. Gidino da Som-macampagna writes in similar vein in his Trattato dei Rime Volgari (1384), “e perchè a lo canto de loro le persone ballano, elle sono appellate ballate” [since people danced at the sound of them, they were called ballate]. His treatise is also edited by Grion and published in the above mentioned volume. A search through Francesco da Barberino's Reggimento e Costumi delle Donne (c. 1315) was equally fruitless (ed. Manzi, G., Rome, 1815).Google Scholar Simone Prodenzani merely enumerates the various dances (choreographies) in his Il Sollazzo. They are: a bicchieri, a ranfo, a l'achine, la pertusata, la palandra, a la romana, l'alvadanza (saltarello), el trotto and la striana (ed. Debenedetti, S., Turin, 1922, pp. 169ff).Google Scholar For other contemporary references to music and dance, the reader may consult Wesselofsky, A., Il Paradiso degli Alberti … di Giovanni da Prato. 3 vols., Bologna, 1867Google Scholar; and Bongi, S., Le Croniche di Giovanni Ser-cambi. 3 vols., Lucca, 1892.Google Scholar

13. The page numbers refer to the Bianchi, Salinari and Sapegno edition. All translations are by the author.

14. “Der Decamerone des Boccaccio als musikgeschichtliche Quelle,” Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, 11 (1928): 399.

15. Boccaccio is also specific as to the kinds of dances danced by peasants: ridda and ballonchio (VIII—2). The Vocabolario della lingua Italiana (Nicola Zingarelli) defines the ridda as a “ballo tondo rusticano nel quale le persone tenendosi pei mano gitano e cantano” [a round dance in which the performers holding hands circle and sing]. Of the ballonchio: “ballo contadinesco, ballare e salti senz' ordine” [to dance with leaps without order].

16. Johannes de Grocheo. De Musica. (Preserved in the Grossherzoglich Hessischen Hofbibliothek, Darmstadt, MS. 2663, ff. 56r-69r. Translation by Carl C. Baumbach.) Grocheo writes of the stantipes: “Because of its difficulty of execution, the stantipes fully occupies the minds of the youths and maidens and prevents their harboring bad thoughts. The difficulty of the stantipes claims the mind completely of the performer and the listener as well and frequently diverts the minds of the wealthy from evil thoughts.” Of the Ductia he states, “It directs the hearts of the maidens and youths, prevents vanity, and is supposed to possess powers against the passion called love. It also excites the human mind to elegant movements according to the rules of dancing.”

17. Boccaccio is also aware that for intimate gatherings, stringed instruments were preferred–not wind, since these were used for dances al fresco for festive and ceremonial occasions.

18. The Story of Dance Music. New York, 1947, p. 61.

19. The treatise of Domenico, De arte saltandi & chorus ducendi, (fonds it. 972), and Guglielmo, De pratica seu arte tripudii vulgare opusculum, (fonds it. 973), are preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris: Antonio Cornazano's treatise, Libro dell' arte del danzare (codex Capponiano No. 203) is preserved in the Vatican Library.

20. According to Michel, Artur, “The Earliest Dance-Manuals,” Medievalie et Humanistica 3 (1945): 117Google Scholar, “During the first half of the fifteenth century, at least in Italy, the more dignified dances, the Danze, resolved themselves into a single dance-form, the so-called Bassadanza.”

21. Le Lettere di Messer Andrea Calmo, ed. by Rossi, Vittorio. Turin, 1888, pp. 232, 416, 419–20, and 428.Google Scholar In addition to the earlier mentioned stantipes, other instances of longevity are found in the saltarello and rotta. The former appeared on the scene in the fourteenth century. Eight examples are preserved in the British Museum, codex Add. 29987, ff. 56 to 59 and 60 to 63, and persisted until the sixteenth century; the latter, also preserved in the same codex, contains the Lamento di Tristano and La Manfredina, both concluding with a rotta. The name appears again in Catoso's Il Ballarino, 1600. One can surely pursue this analogism with other dances.

22. Pirrotta, Nino, “Zacharas Musicus,” Quadrivium 12 (1971): 166.Google Scholar

23. Plamenac, Dragan. Keyboard Music of the Late Middle Ages in the Codex Faenza 117. American Institute of Musicology, 1972.Google Scholar

24. World History of the Dance. New York, 1937, p. 300.

25. Concerning the date of this manuscript, Mabel Dolmetsch states, “Above the writing there appears in Roman characters mm cccc XVI. Assuming that the double ‘m’ represents a capital letter, I conclude that 1416 is the date of Domenichino's treatise” (Dances of Spain and Italy, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1954, p. 2). In my opinion, the manuscript was completed at least three decades later, despite the presence of the date, which, in all probability, was added later. The music notation employed is similar to that of the Canonici, misc. MS 213, Bodleian Library, Oxford (c. 1430), and the Trent codex 92, Staatsbibliothek, Vienna (c. 1475). In brief, void (unfilled) notes (white notation) of the early renaissance are used throughout as opposed to filled-in (black notation) of the Ars Nova period. The date, 1416, has already been questioned by Artur Michel and Daniel Heartz on different grounds; see Michel, Op. cit., p. 120, and Heartz, , Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music, A Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese, New York: Norton, 1966, p. 366.Google Scholar