Canterino and improvvisatore: oral poetry and performance

Wilson, Blake

doi:10.1017/cho9781139057813.023

Cited by 15 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…This new industry required several decades to sort itself out, but by the 1530s there were important music printers in several European cities -32. On improvised monody, see Pirotta 1984, 51-79, andWilson 2015. including Venice, Paris, and Lyons -turning out ever increasing numbers of publications. 33 For the composers responsible for this new music, it was natural that interest in the procedures by which they composed should be complemented by an interest in the products that those procedures produced, and thus there arose a concern with the ontological status of musical compositions.…”

Section: Figure 3 Expanded Stavesmentioning

confidence: 99%

To Sing Upon the Book: Oral and Written Counterpoint in Early Modern Europe

Broude¹

2020

Textual Cultures

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During the fifteenth century, many musici thought of counterpoint as an improvisational practice in which certain procedures were employed to produce a musical texture in which interest lay in the interplay of two or more melodic lines. The improvisational practice was called singing upon the book (cantare super librum): it required one singer to realize a pre-existing melody (called a cantus firmus) inscribed in a text while one or more other singers (called concentors), reading from that same text, devised, ex tempore, a countermelody or melodies that obeyed the rules of counterpoint with respect to the cantus firmus. Similar procedures, applied in writing, produced res facta, contrapuntal texture in textual form. Counterpoint and res facta were alternative means of providing music for occasions both sacred and secular. During the sixteenth century, several factors combined to alter the relationship between improvised and written counterpoint, and by the end of the century the importance of the former was greatly diminished. The growth of music printing provided an abundance of music for a growing community of amateurs who could read music but were not interested singing upon the book. The composers responsible for this new music embraced emerging ideas that stressed the advantages of written music, which enjoyed permanence that improvised counterpoint lacked, which was usually more observant of the rules than improvised counterpoint could be, and which enhanced the reputations of the composers who created it. As a result of these developments, emphasis shifted from improvised to written counterpoint, from the procedures that produced a contrapuntal texture to the texture itself, and singing upon the book came to be seen by many not as an end in itself but as a way to sharpen composers’ skills. Marginalized by print, improvised counterpoint survived in a much reduced community, largely in Catholic France and Iberia, and eventually, for want of a musical community large enough to sustain it, ceased to be a living musical tradition.

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Section: Figure 3 Expanded Stavesmentioning

confidence: 99%

To Sing Upon the Book: Oral and Written Counterpoint in Early Modern Europe

Broude¹

2020

Textual Cultures

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Singing to the Lyre in Renaissance Italy

Wilson

2019

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Negli anni di Cristo mille dugento ottanta tre fu in Fiorenza grande e felice e buono istato, e molte feste e allegrezze se facevano per tutta la città ispesse volte, e di più paesi vi traevano giucolari e buffoni di più paesi. 1 [In the year of Christ 1283, Florence was in a great, happy, and good state of affairs, and often there were many celebrations and much merriment throughout the city, and there were giucolari and buffoni from many other places.]Performers and entertainers of all stripes were probably a common feature of medieval Italian urban life, but it is not easy to achieve a clear picture of their activities, or of how oral singer-poets fit into that picture. The documents are few (though not as few as some have claimed) and scattered, the nomenclature for secular musicians is notoriously vague, and the witnesses to their activities, mostly ecclesiastical and civic authorities, were predisposed to hold them in low regard. 2 ECCLESIASTICAL WITNESSESThe term used with greatest frequency and flexibility is ioculator (Italian: giullare, or giucolare), which at times designated secular entertainers of all sorts (along with the Latin terms histrio and mimus), but also seems to be the most common designation for singer-poets in particular. In his wide travels throughout Italy, the Franciscan chronicler Salimbene de Adam (1221-ca. 1290) frequently encountered ioculatores, who for him were singers or reciters whose verbal skills ranged from the frivolous to the witty and even dangerous. Salimbene himself took great delight in singing; he had two cousins who were "splendid singers," and an uncle who sang

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Introduction

2019

Singing to the Lyre in Renaissance Italy

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Canterino and improvvisatore: oral poetry and performance

Cited by 15 publications

References 1 publication

To Sing Upon the Book: Oral and Written Counterpoint in Early Modern Europe

To Sing Upon the Book: Oral and Written Counterpoint in Early Modern Europe

Singing to the Lyre in Renaissance Italy

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