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Alessandro Grandi: A Case Study in the Choice of Texts for Motets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Jerome Roche
Jerome Roche*
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Extract

It is perhaps still true that research into sacred types of music in early seventeenth-century Italy lags behind that into madrigal, monody and opera; it is certainly the case that the textual aspects of sacred music, themselves closely bound up with liturgical questions, have not so far received the kind of study that has been taken for granted with regard to the literary texts of opera and of secular vocal music. This is hardly to be wondered at: unlike great madrigal poetry or the work of the best librettists, sacred texts do not include much that can be valued as art in its own right. Nevertheless, if we are to understand better the context of the motet – as distinct from the musical setting of liturgical entities such as Mass, Vespers or Compline – we need a clearer view of the types of text that were set, the way in which composers exercised their choice, and the way such taste was itself changing in relation to the development of musical styles. For the motet was the one form of sacred music in which an Italian composer of the early decades of the seventeenth century could combine a certain freedom of textual choice with an adventurousness of musical idiom.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 113 , Issue 2 , 1988 , pp. 274 - 305
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 Royal Musical Association

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References

1 Even in standard collected editions there is a paucity of attempts to tackle the problem of identifying sacred texts Notable exceptions include the motet volumes in The Byrd Edition (London, 1977–), Series A (Motels, ed Milton Steinhardt) of the new complete edition of Monte (Leuven, 1975–), and especially The Four-Voice Motets of Thomas Crecquillon, ed H Lowen Marshall (New York, 1970), i, 21–50. As regards early seventeenth-century Italy, textual identification is discussed in James H Moore, Vespers at St Mark's Music of Alessandro Grandi, Giovanni Rovetta and Francesco Cavalli, 2 vols (Ann Arbor, 1981), 148–53, 166–9, from the point of view of the Vespers liturgy at St Mark's.Google Scholar

2 This is the argument pursued in Anthony M Cummings, ‘Toward an Interpretation of the Sixteenth-Century Motet’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 34 (1981), 43–59Google Scholar

3 A good example of such a composer is Viadana, whose motet texts are identified in Federico Mompellio, Lodovico Viadana (Florence, 1967), Appendix III, 183–208.Google Scholar

4 The differences between the Roman and the St Mark's uses are not, as it happens, of great significance for this study, and are remarked mostly in notes to Appendix 1 Moore (Vespers at St Mark's, 148–9) argues that for a composer at St Mark's to set Roman texts was an admission of the ‘paraliturgical’ nature of their use in the St Mark's context, in fact, apart from in St Mark's itself, the Roman use was almost ubiquitous in northern Italy save Milan, and in any case a published repertory was clearly intended for general rather than local useGoogle Scholar

5 See Roche, Jerome, North-Italian Church Music in the Age of Monteverdi (Oxford, 1984), 42–4, especially the liturgical rubrics quoted from Gemignano Capilupi's Motectorum of 1603, which show a characteristic latitude in assigning texts to feasts and seasonsGoogle Scholar

6 Transcribed in Jerome Roche, ‘The Duet in Early Seventeenth-Century Italian Church Music’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 93 (1966–7), 47–50Google Scholar

7 Moore (Vespers at St Mark's, 144, 153) points out how many of the special psalm antiphons for the Feast of the Assumption of the B V M in the St Mark's use are drawn from the Song of Songs For more on the association of the cult of the Virgin with Venice, see Moore, , ‘Venezia favorita da Maria Music for the Madonna Nicopeia and Santa Maria della Salute’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 37 (1984), 299–355, especially pp. 302–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Moore (Vespers at St Mark's, 149) mistranslates the name as VictorGoogle Scholar

9 The music is edited by Friedrich Blume in Das Chorwerk, 40 (Wolfenbuttel, 1936), 8–12 In texts quoted in extenso, the symbols “ and† are used to denote repeated material.Google Scholar

10 See Roche, , North-Italian Church Music, 34–5, 38 Fuller discussion of the practice of substitution can be found in Stephen Bonta, ‘Liturgical Problems in Monteverdi's Marian Vespers’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 20 (1967), 87–106, idem, ‘The Uses of the Sonata da Chiesa’, ibid, 22 (1969), 54–84, and Jeffrey Kurtzman, ‘Some Historical Perspectives on the Monteverdi Vespers’, Analecta musicologica, 15 (1975), 29–86Google Scholar

11 See Strunk, Oliver, ‘Some Motet-Types of the 16th Century’, Publications of the American Musicological Society (1939), 155, reprinted in Essays on Music in the Western World (New York, 1974) Strunk pointed out how settings of responsories tended to be on a grander scale than those of antiphons in Palestrina's outputGoogle Scholar

12 Transcribed in Roche, ‘The Duet’, 44–6Google Scholar

13 Moore (Vespers at St Mark's, 176–8) mentions this possibility, and suggests that the normal modal concordance between a psalm or Magnificat and its antiphon might simply be ignoredGoogle Scholar

14 Roche, North-Italian Church Music, 43 In his Motetti of 1611, Andrea Bianchi designates this text for the Elevation.Google Scholar

15 That centonized texts were used in this way is suggested by a patriarchal ruling at Venice in 1628 that only the official words should be set See Moore, Vespers at St Mark's, 151Google Scholar

16 In particular, the Salve regina was used in Venice as a general ceremonial motet in honour of the Virgin (Moore, Vespers at St Mark's, 149)Google Scholar

17 The four-part setting edited in Gombert Opera omnia, v (Rome, 1961), 30Google Scholar

18 For example by Gasparo Casati, who worked at Novara, in his first book of motets (reprinted 1643)Google Scholar

19 Analecta hymnica medu aevi, ed Guido Maria Dreves and Clemens Blume, 55 vols (Leipzig, 1886–1922)Google Scholar

20 Hymnen des Mittelalters, ed F Wilhelm Emil Roth (Augsburg, 1887), Hymm latim medn aevi, ed Franz Joseph Mone, 2 vols. (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1853–5)Google Scholar

21 Analecta hymmca, xxxii, 38Google Scholar

22 Roth, Hymnen des Mittelalters, 60–1, lines 1–8, 43–50 and 67–70Google Scholar

23 For example, Frescobaldi, Liber secundus diversarum modulationum (Rome, 1627), Tarquinio Merula, Libro secondo de concerti spirituali (Venice, 1628), and Francesco Maria Marini, Concerti spiriluali (Venice, 1637) The last two set cycles of stanzas from the hymnGoogle Scholar

24 Moore (Vespers at St Mark's, 169) incorrectly identifies this text as the sole antiphon for First Vespers of Pentecost in the St Mark's use The latter in fact continues: ‘reple tuorum corda fidelium‘Google Scholar

25 Moore, Vespers at St Mark's, 151–2Google Scholar

26 Smither, Howard E., ‘The Latin Dramatic Dialogue and the Nascent Oratorio’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 20 (1967), 403–33. The vast majority of dialogues considered by Smither are biblical, and fall into three types the dramatic, the narrative-dramatic and the reflective.Google Scholar

27 For discussion of the music, see Roche, North-Italian Church Music, 63–4 and 93Google Scholar

28 See Moore, , ‘Venezia favorita’, 310–12, for more on the association of this Office hymn with Venetian ritual.Google Scholar

29 Banchieri, Adriano, Dialoghi, concerti, sulfonic e canzom (Venice, 1625)Google Scholar