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Sigismondo d'India
An Introduction to His Life and Works
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
Of the early life of Don Sigismondo d'India, Nobleman of Palermo and Knight of the Order of St. Mark, we know next to nothing: we know neither the date of his birth nor where and with whom he studied music. An eighteenth-century document tells us that he was born in 1562 and died in 1630, and one or two present-day scholars have accepted these dates. I think, however, that they ought to be regarded with suspicion, for they happen to be the dates of birth and death of Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy, in whose service d'India spent twelve years of his life. Certain later events in d'India's life suggest that he was probably born about 1580. We do know for certain, however, that he was born at Palermo. Now, towards the end of the sixteenth century Palermo was already a fair-sized city: its population in 1593 has been estimated at 90,000. Yet neither there nor anywhere else in Sicily did the arts really flourish. Like most of the southern half of Italy, Sicily at this time was under Spanish domination: she was, as has been said, ‘a tiny ship towed by the great Spanish galleon’.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1954
Footnotes
1
It gives me pleasure to acknowledge the generosity of Mr. Arnold Hartmann, Jr., of Newton Centre, Mass. During a long correspondence about Sigismondo d'India and related matters he has made numerous valuable suggestions, some of which I have incorporated into this paper. He also placed certain microfilms at my disposal. I would also like to thank Mr. C. L. Cudworth for useful advice.
References
2 Turin, Bibl. Nazionale, MS qm. IV. 41, containing d'India's music for the pastoral Zalizura.Google Scholar
3 e.g. Stanialao Cordero di Pamparato, ‘I Musici alla corte di Carlo Emanuele I di Savoia’, Biblioteca della Societd Storica Subalpina, new series, CXXI, 1930, p. 85. This is nevertheless a useful paper.Google Scholar
4 Anon., Trattato di Sicilia, Naples, Bibl. Nazionale, MS X. D. 46, f. 5, quoted in Helmut Koenigsberger, The Government of Sicily under Philip II of Spain, London, 1951, p. 74.Google Scholar
5 Quotation in Ottavio Tiby, ‘The Polyphonic School in Sicily of the Sixteenth-seventeenth Century’, Musica Disciplina, V, 1951, p. 203.Google Scholar
6 Tiby, loc. cit.Google Scholar
7 Cf. the lists of composers and works in Tiby, op. cit., pp. 209–211.Google Scholar
8 Federico Mompellio, Pietro Vinci, madrigalista siciliano, Milan, 1937, p. 175, n. 5. The title derives from a line of Tasso with which each madrigal began and ended: ‘Specchi del cor, fallaci infidi lumi’.Google Scholar
9 Modern edition by Federico Mompellio, I Classici musicali italiani, X, Milan, 1942, with an informative appendix.Google Scholar
10 Reprinted complete in Federico Mompellio, ‘Sigismondo d'India e il suo primo libro di Musiche da cantar solo’, Collectanea historias musicas, I, 1953, pp. 114–115. This valuable paper (which I did not see until I had completed my own work on d'India's first book of Musiche) contains complete transcriptions of five songs and quotations from a number of others.Google Scholar
11 His word is ‘virtuosi’.Google Scholar
12 Forty-five in the first book (1609); sixteen in the third (1618); twelve in the fourth (1621); and eleven in the fifth (1623). Some songs are in two or more separate sections, but, unlike Mompellio in his inventory of the first book (Collectanea, pp. 117–118), I have treated each of these songs as only one item. No monodies by d'India are known to exist in manuscript. A complete list of printed music-books by d'India will be found at the end of this paper.Google Scholar
13 The full title reads: Le Musiche di Sigismondo d'India, nobile palermitano, da cantar solo nel clavicordo, chitarone (sic), arpa doppia et altri istromenti simili.Google Scholar
14 For an account of monody in Italy at this time the reader is referred to my paper ‘Italian Secular Monody from 1600 to 1635: an introductory survey’, Musical Quarterly, XXXIX, 1953, pp. 171–195. After about 1620 the kinds of song in the monody-books began to change.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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17 For a good account of his life and character cf. Roberto Bergadani, Carlo Emanuele I (1562–1630), Turin, n.d. (1933), especially chap. IX.Google Scholar
18 The Autobiography of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, ed. Sidney Lee, and ed., London, n.d. (1907), p. 86.Google Scholar
19 Cf. Angelo Solerti, ‘Feste musicali alla corte di Savoia nella prima metà del secolo XVII’, Rivista musicale italiana, XI, 1904, pp. 675–734. Solerti gives a complete list of productions and descriptions of productions from 1602 to 1662, with complete transcriptions of three of the descriptions.Google Scholar
20 Cf. Luigi Torri, ‘Il primo melodramma a Torino’, Riv. mus. it., XXVI, 1919, pp. 1–35, including a transcription of the text. The theory announced in Torri's title has been disproved by Pamparato, op. cit., pp. 86–88.Google Scholar
21 Cf. Giuseppe Rua, Poeti della corts di Carlo Emanuele I di Savoia, Turin, 1899. pp. 1–112.Google Scholar
22 e.g. the Ballo delle Donns Turche in Marco da Gagliano, Musiche, Venice, 1615.Google Scholar
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24 Rua, op. cit., p. 8.Google Scholar
25 Books 3–6. The sixth has not survived; it is possible, though, that d'India regarded his Musiche e balli as his sixth book of madrigals.Google Scholar
26 The only song that might dispute the claim of d'India's song is Peri's ‘Qual cadavero spirante’, Le Varie musiche, and., augmented, ed., Florence, 1619, p.∗ I; but Peri still set the first part of each verse as arioso rather man as true recitative.Google Scholar
27 Examples of the three kinds of writing in Fortune, op. cit., p. 191.Google Scholar
28 Letter written in 1618, quoted in Angelo Solerti, Musica, ballo e drammatica alla corte medicea, 1600–1637, Florence, 1905, pp. 127–128.Google Scholar
29 The monk Severo Bonini remarks that every musical household had its copy. Cf. the extract from his Prima parte de'discorsi e regole sovra la musica, Florence, Bibl. Riccardiana, MS 2218, in Angelo Solerti, Le Origini del melodramma, Turin, 1903, p. 139. In 1613 Bonini published a feeble setting of the same text as Monteverdi had set.Google Scholar
30 Mus. F. 1530.Google Scholar