Singing Games in Early Modern Italy: The Music Books of Orazio Vecchi

386 Pages·2015·5.348 MB·English

by  Paul Schleuse

Singing Games in Early Modern Italy
Music and the Early Modern Imagination
Massimo Ossi, editor
Singing
N N
Games
in Early Modern Italy
The Music Books of Orazio Vecchi
PAUL SCHLEUSE
Indiana University Press
Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
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1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
© 2015 by Paul Schleuse
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University
Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from Library of Congress
ISBN 978-0-253-01501-3 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-253-01504-4 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15
for Prescott
with love and gratitude
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 The Four-Voice Canzonetta as (and in) Recreational Polyphony 10
2 Intertextuality in Vecchi’s Canzonettas and Madrigals, 1583–1590 43
3 Forest and Feast: The Music Book as Metaphor 90
4 L’Amfiparnaso: Picturing Theater and the Problem of the
“Madrigal Comedy” 132
5 Competition and Conversation: Games as Music 176
6 Representation and Identity in Musical Performance 245
Appendix: Vecchi, “L’hore di recreatione,” from Madrigali a sei (1583) 295
Notes 329
Works Cited 355
Index 365
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Acknowledgments
In a book about the pleasures of recreational singing it seems especially ap-
propriate to thank not only some of those who made it possible but also those
who made the process of writing it enjoyable.
Among many teachers I should first thank Rodney Haedge, my choir di-
rector at La Porte High School, who introduced me to the pleasure of singing
madrigals with Orazio Vecchi’s setting of “Il bianco e dolce cigno.” Many
years later in graduate school I arrived back at Vecchi through the guidance
first of Barbara Russano Hanning and then of my dissertation advisor, Ruth
DeFord. Both have been great sources of truly practical wisdom in my life as
a researcher and teacher.
Work on this book has benefited enormously from the thoughtful com-
ments of readers official and unofficial, including Massimo Ossi, Anthony
Newcomb, Laurie Stras, and Seth Coluzzi; their recommendations have
made the book you are now holding much better. Many other colleagues
have been generously helpful in ways large and small; I would especially like
to thank Allan Atlas, Bonnie Blackburn, Mauro Calcagno, Tim Carter, Lisa
Colton, Anthony Cummings, Roger Freitas, Giuseppe Gerbino, Leofranc
Holford-Strevens, Anne MacNeil, Melanie Marshall, John Milsom, Giulio
Ongaro, Jessie Ann Owens, Massimo Privitera, Dennis Slavin, Jeremy Smith,
Anne Stone, Andrew Weaver, and Anna Zayaruznaya.
Many of the ideas about recreational singing in this book came into focus
through singing polyphony by Vecchi and his contemporaries in the com-
pany of good friends and talented musicians at workshops led by Peter Phil-
lips, Andrew Carwood, Patrick Craig, Jan Coxwell, Deborah Roberts, Ghis-
laine Morgan, Don Grieg, and Jeffrey Skidmore. I am especially indebted to
the members of the CUNY Graduate Center’s informal Renaissance nota-
tion workshop, who have exemplified the fun of convivial singing from part
books.
The publication of this book is supported by subventions from the Margar-
ita Hanson Endowment and the AMS 75 PAYS Endowment of the American
Musicological Society, funded in part by the National Endowment for the
Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. At Binghamton Univer-
sity my work has been supported by a Dean’s Research Semester and travel