Renaissance Period Flashcards
(31 cards)
Ockeghem (c. 1410-1497)
Franco‐Flemish composer.
Sometime around 1452 was at the French court, where he stayed for the rest of his life, serving three successive kings. Travelled on court missions to Italy and Spain.
Leading composer of period between Du Fay and Josquin, but only 14 Masses, fewer than a dozen motets, and about 20 chansons survive, enough though to show his stature.
Style noted for contrapuntal richness. His Missa ‘Fors seulement’ was one of the first parody Masses, based on one of his own chansons. His Missa pro Defunctis is earliest surviving polyphonic requiem, Du Fay’s having been lost. His chansons were the ‘popular songs’ of his day
Busnois (c. 1430-1492)
French composer.
May have been pupil or colleague of Ockeghem.
Was long in the service of Charles the Bold (who became Duke of Burgundy in 1467). After Charles’s death in 1477, he served his daughter, Mary of Burgundy, until her death in 1482.
He became an official member of the chapel staff in 1470. This position involved extensive travel in northern France and the Low Countries, both in peacetime and during military campaigns. Regarded as one of the leading composers of his day, ranking next to Ockeghem, with whom he shared a penchant for elaborate melody, the use of canon, and lively rhythms.
His Missa L’homme armé is one of earliest based on this secular tune, but some of his most original work is to be found in his chansons, of which over 60 survive. For some of these he wrote the words.
His motet Anthoni usque limina has a part for a tenor who sings the note D in imitation of a bell. Its text has a reference to his name in the line ‘… in omnibus noys’.
Busnois is famous above all for his many polyphonic chansons, some of their poetic texts are almost certainly his own work.
Imitation Mass (or Parody Mass)
A musical setting of the five movements of the Ordinary of the Roman Catholic Mass that is unified by the presence of the entire texture of a pre-existing polyphonic work, represented by borrowed motifs and points of imitation. The relationship is usually clearest at the beginning, middle and end of each movement.
• The designation ‘imitation mass’, more in keeping with the terminology used in the 16th century to describe this type of composition, has been adopted by some scholars.
Paraphrase
A compositional technique, popular particularly in the 15th and 16th centuries, whereby a pre-existing melody (usually chant) is used in a polyphonic work; it may be subjected to rhythmic and melodic ornamentation but is not obscured.
• Examples can be found in settings of the Mass Ordinary from the 14th and 15th centuries. In early 15th-century settings of hymns, antiphons and sequences based on chant, the borrowed melody usually appears in the upper voice and was not subject to much alteration. In cyclic masses, however, borrowed melodies (mainly restricted to the tenor) could be extensively paraphrased (e.g. Du Fay’s Missa ‘Ave regina celorum’).
• In masses of the late 15th century and the 16th, paraphrased melodies appear within an imitative texture, moving from voice to voice (as in Josquin’s Missa ‘Pange lingua’ or Palestrina’s masses based on hymns). It has been suggested that 15th- and 16th-century composers consciously included in their works short citations or paraphrases of sections of well-known chants or even of works by other composers for interpretative or symbolic purposes.
Obrecht (c. 1451-1505)
Franco-Flemish composer.
Worked throughout Europe, including Italy (Cambrai, Ferrara) and Bruges.
Obrecht’s career, unlike that of his contemporary Josquin des Prez, was focused on the Low Countries, and that may partly account for the fundamental differences between the two men, who are generally regarded as the towering figures of their age.
Was a church-based musician, a prolific composer above all of masses, and had fewer opportunities to encounter or be influenced by Italian humanism than Josquin, whose work was also more readily accessible through printing.
In the 1480s and 1490s, he was Europe’s leading composer of cyclic masses, of which he wrote nearly three dozen. In addition he left a sizeable oeuvre of motets and songs, many of which continued to circulate widely, along with his most famous masses, during the first half of the 16th century.
In the last years of his life, Obrecht was frequently mentioned in the same breath as Josquin, who outlived him by 16 years and has come to be seen as the more significant representative of his generation.
Used secular cantus firmus in his masses, e.g. Missa super Maria Zart.
He also used number symbolism in his works (cabalistic significance having been discovered in many of his structures, e.g. the number of tactus in his Missa ‘Sub tuum praesidium’ is 888, the symbol of Christ).
Josquin (c. 1450-1521)
French composer.
He was one of the greatest composers of the Renaissance, whose reputation stands on a level with those of Du Fay, Ockeghem, Palestrina, Lassus, and Byrd.
His music spans the transition between the late Middle Ages and that of the High Renaissance and served as a model for much of the 16th century.
His biography, which has never been easy to pin down, was substantially revised during the 1990s through the discovery that it conflated the lives of two different musicians. As a result of this disentanglement, it is now clear that Josquin des Prez was born at a later date, and resident in Italy for far fewer years, than had previously been thought.
He was possibly a pupil of Ockeghem.
Often regarded as the most gifted and influential composer of his time. He was not a radical innovator, but successfully developed existing and unexplored techniques.
He was particularly successful in giving dramatic emphasis to the texts he set by means of word‐rhythms and imitation.
Although his early masses used a cantus firmus, later ones employed parody techniques and were sometimes based on a motto theme or a series of canons. Similarly, in motets, he abandoned a plainchant cantus firmus in favor of imitative devices.
Some of his chansons were on erotic and frivolous texts and he was one of the first to appropriate tunes from court and theatre for his serious works. His work was so popular that many forgeries were published.
He wrote 18 masses (the best‐known being Ave Maris Stella, L’homme armé, and Pange lingua), nearly 100 motets, and over 70 secular works.
The collected edition of Josquin’s music gives the impression of a prolific composer. Opinions vary, however, about the authenticity of many of the works attributed to him in 16th-century sources; doubts have even been cast over pieces that were once thought to be firmly his, such as the motet Absalon fili mi, which has now been tentatively reassigned to Pierre de la Rue. The problem arises from the fact that Josquin’s music won international recognition during his lifetime, and was widely imitated.
Motets (general discussion of the motet from the medieval period to the 20th century in the medieval section of terms)
During this time, with the abandonment of strict isorhythm in motet writing, a shift in the primary function of the motet occurred.
In the first half of the 15th century, composers had already begun to return to the liturgical and devotional contexts in which the genre had originated, thus diminishing the relative significance of its role as a festal piece or a vehicle for social comment (occasional function).
Three functions for motets:
• Liturgical
• Devotional
• Occasional
Tinctoris (c. 1434-1511)
Franco-Flemish theorist and composer.
His early career was spent at Orléans, Chartres, and perhaps also at Cambrai, as a singer under Dufay.
Only a small quantity of Tinctoris’ music has survived, including five settings of the Mass.
His theoretical writings are numerous; they include a dictionary of musical terms (Terminorum musicae diffinitorium, c.1473) —the first ever to appear in print (Treviso, 1495)—and at least 11 other treatises variously concerned with notation, contrapuntal technique, and philosophical matters. Popular and influential in Tinctoris’ own time, these books are important today for the information they provide about the craft of composition and methods of music education in the late 15th century.
Music Printing/Petrucci
Italian music printer and publisher.
He was the first to use movable type for printing polyphonic music, beginning in 1501 in Venice with his Harmonice musices odhecaton A, which consists mainly of chansons by Franco-Flemish composers.
Over the next eight years he published polyphonic music by the leading Franco-Flemish and Italian composers of his day. By 1511, he had returned to Fossombrone; he continued printing there until about 1520, after which he opened a paper mill and ceased printing activity. He returned to Venice in 1536.
In France, Attaingnant followed Petrucci’s lead.
Chorale
The strophic congregational hymn of the Protestant Church in Germany.
• The German term originally signified a plainchant melody sung chorally, but from the late 16th century its meaning was widened to include vernacular hymns.
o The term most commonly used for such hymns in early Reformation times was geistliche (or christliche) Lieder (‘spritual songs’). Strictly speaking, the word ‘chorale’ means both the text and the melody of a hymn, considered as a unit, but not infrequently the term is used to describe the music alone—either a single-line melody or a fully harmonized version as in the four-part settings of Bach.
• From the outset of the Reformation the chorale proved to be one of the most powerful means of disseminating the ideals of the new Confession, crystallizing its message in simple language and providing an opportunity for congregations to take a central role in liturgical worship.
• Martin Luther was much involved in the creation of the new hymns, writing some 36 himself and encouraging others to follow his example. The texts and melodies of most of the earliest chorales, however, were adaptations of various older sources, particularly Gregorian hymns, antiphons, and sequences, and medieval German religious songs—the latter frequently requiring radical ‘purification’ from a doctrinal point of view.
• In addition to translating and adapting Latin hymns Luther produced some magnificent psalm paraphrases, such as ‘Aus tiefer Not’ (Psalm 130), and a number of hymns based on the medieval Leise (e.g. ‘Nun bitten wir den heiligen Geist’). He also wrote several liturgical hymns designed as substitutes for parts of the Latin Ordinary of the Mass, such as ‘Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott’ to replace (or, at times in the liturgy, to supplement) the Credo.
Contrafactum
A vocal piece in which the original text is replaced by a new one.
• In Latin plainchant, texts for new feasts were frequently adapted to the melodies of existing chants.
• Contrafacta make up a significant portion of the surviving repertories of 12th- and 13th-century Western monophonic secular song (i.e. of the troubadours, trouvères, and Minnesinger), enabling a limited group of melodies to be applied to a much larger body of texts with the same rhyme scheme.
• The motet and other genres of medieval polyphony also include many adaptations of sacred compositions to secular texts and vice versa.
• After the mid-15th century, contrafacta tended to replace a secular text with a sacred one.
• In the Reformation the texts of many Lutheran chorales and Calvinist metrical psalms were fitted to existing melodies. The Protestant reformers, eager to provide appropriate music for their devotions, drew on both popular and courtly secular music as well as older sacred music, altering texts as needed.
Chorale motets
A polyphonic vocal composition in two or more parts based on a German chorale.
• During the 16th century, the chorale motet was the leading form of chorale composition; although it could be performed a cappella, instruments (like the organ) were frequently used either to reinforce or to replace one or more vocal parts.
• At first, the chorale melody was usually treated as a rather clearly differentiated cantus firmus, but towards the end of the 16th century and into the early 17th, each line of the chorale was normally presented in fugal imitation.
• After its eclipse by the chorale concerto and the chorale cantata in the 17th and 18th centuries, the a cappella chorale motet experienced a significant revival in the late 19th century and in the 20th.
Cantional style
The word ‘Cantional’ never gained general acceptance as a formal definition in German, although it has been used occasionally to indicate a collection of sacred songs (cantiones) or chorales for ecclesiastical use.
• The word ‘kancionál’ (pl. kancionály) arose in Czech in the early 16th century as a name for a book of sacred songs. In the course of time it replaced the older Czech term ‘písně’ (‘songs’), which was too broad.
• For those of non-Catholic denominations, the kancionál was a liturgical book; for Catholics who used Latin and plainsong during the church service, it was a non-liturgical book, which contained liturgical elements only in exceptional cases.
• Since the kancionál was designed above all for laymen it was made up mainly of Czech strophic songs, and the presence of compositions of any other type (plainsong, or its translation into Czech and polyphonic compositions) was not a decisive factor.
• It is a characteristic of every kancionál that at least part of its contents was made up of songs designed to be sung by the whole congregation.
Calvin and the other Protestants
Strictly speaking, Calvinist music is limited to music composed for use in the reformed churches adhering to Calvin’s doctrines; as such it comprises unaccompanied, monophonic settings of the psalms (metrical psalms) and some canticles in rhymed vernacular translations, designed for congregational singing.
William Byrd (1543-1623)
English composer.
He was likely a pupil of Tallis. From 1572, joint organist with Tallis at the Chapel Royal.
In 1575, he and Tallis jointly published a collection of motets, Cantiones sacrae, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I. Elizabeth had granted the two composers exclusive rights to print music in England and import foreign publications.
From 1587 to 1596, Byrd published several important collections of English music. Around this time, he left London for Essex as a member of the household of his patrons, the Petres.
By 1591 he had effectively abandoned court life, turning instead to the patronage and protection of the Catholic nobility. Taking up residence in Essex, Byrd set to work on his largest project: a cycle of music for the Roman Catholic Mass, intended for use in the private chapels of English recusants. Three settings of the Ordinary were completed and published in the early 1590s, one each for three, four, and five voices, while music for the Proper was composed over a period of some 20 years, published cumulatively in two books of Gradualia (1605, 1607).
Wrote some of his Gradualia for undercover masses held in Ingatestone Hall.
Little is known of Byrd’s life apart from various lawsuits over property and the fact of his Roman Catholicism, from the consequences of which he seems to have been protected at a time of anti‐Papism by his fame as a composer and by friends in high places.
In his motets and masses, Byrd showed himself the equal of his French and Italian contemporaries as a contrapuntist. He was an innovator in form and technique in his liturgical works, the finest of which is the Great Service. His madrigals are also of exceptional quality, and there is superb music in his solo songs and songs for the stage.
In his Fancies and In Nomines for string instrument, he established an English instrumental style of composition, but perhaps even more significant was his music for virginals, in which he developed variation form, and his series of pavanes and galliards for keyboard.
Among his pupils were Morley and Tomkins, and probably Weelkes, among many others.
Council of Trent
A council of the Roman Catholic Church convened by Pope Paul III in 1545 in Trent; it concluded the last of its 25 sessions in 1563.
It was an important embodiment of the ideals of the Counter-Reformation, held with the intention of clarifying doctrine and legislating disciplinary reforms within the church.
The council’s pronouncements on music included rather general condemnations of unintelligible and ‘impure’ settings. The implementation of its liturgical directives was left to the papacy, which issued uniform editions of the Breviary (1568) and the Missal (1570). Celebration from these volumes, which eliminated most of the tropes and sequences in liturgical use, was compulsory for those not possessing a rite more than 200 years old or otherwise granted a special dispensation.
Despite several attempts, a comparable standardization of Roman chant was never achieved. A project undertaken by Palestrina and Annibale Zoilo for Pope Gregory XIII was left incomplete, while the humanistically inspired Editio medicaea of Felice Anerio and Francesco Soriano (printed 1614–15) was never imposed throughout the church. (The story that Palestrina ‘saved’ church music by composing the Missa Papae Marcelli, which overwhelmed the cardinals with its beauty, is untrue.)
Palestrina (c. 1525-1594)
Italian composer.
He ranks with Lassus and Byrd as one of the towering figures in the music of the late 16th century. He was primarily a prolific composer of masses and motets but was also an important madrigalist.
Among the native Italian musicians of the 16th century who sought to assimilate the richly developed polyphonic techniques of their French and Flemish predecessors, none mastered these techniques more completely or subordinated them more effectively to the requirements of musical cogency.
His success in reconciling the functional and aesthetic aims of Catholic church music in the post-Tridentine period earned him an enduring reputation as the ideal Catholic composer, as well as giving his style (or, more precisely, later generations’ selective view of it) an iconic stature as a model of perfect achievement.
In 1555, a new Pope, Paul IV, dismissed Palestrina and two others from the Sistine Choir because they were married. Palestrina was appointed choirmaster of St John Lateran in 1555, in succession to Lassus. For this church he wrote his Lamentations. He resigned in 1560 over dissatisfaction with the way the choirboys were fed, becoming choirmaster of S. Maria Maggiore in 1561.
He published his first book of motets in 1563. In 1567, he resigned to enter the service of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este (who had a music establishment at his palace in Tivoli), having become dissatisfied with the papal reforms of church music, which rendered 2 of his masses unliturgical because they contained words foreign to the mass. In addition, others of his masses included secular songs, such as L’ Homme armé.
In 1571, Palestrina became director of the Cappella Giulia. Over the next few years he lost both his sons and his wife through epidemics and decided to become a priest. After a few weeks, he changed his mind and married again, his new wife being the rich widow of a fur merchant. Palestrina formed a partnership with one of the men in the business and made a fortune which enabled him in the last 13 years of his life to publish 16 collections of his music.
Orlando di Lasso (c. 1532-1594)
Franco-Flemish composer.
At the age of 12, he was allowed by his parents to enter the service of Ferrante Gonzaga, with whom Lassus went to Paris, Mantua, Palermo, and Milan. When his voice broke he went to Naples in the service of a minor nobleman, and there he became a member of the Accademia de’ Sereni, a literary and artistic circle. He then visited Rome as a guest of the influential Archbishop of Florence and obtained the important post of maestro di cappella at St John Lateran when he was only 21.
In Rome, he was again involved with a group of intellectuals, who were interested in modern ideas including the use of chromaticism in music. He stayed in this post only briefly before being called home to visit his parents who were ill; they had both died by the time he arrived in Mons.
In 1555, he was in Antwerp, and it was at that time that he began to publish his works, showing an extraordinary versatility in putting together a book of elegant madrigals for Antonio Gardano in Venice and a mixed set of madrigals, bawdy villanellas to Neapolitan dialect texts, French chansons, and Latin motets for Tylman Susato in Antwerp.
Lassus’s reputation was well established by the publications of the 1550s, and in 1556 he was invited to become a singer at the Bavarian court of Duke Albrecht V in Munich. Within a few years he was head of the musical establishment, in the place of the then unfashionably Protestant Ludwig Daser; he held the position until his death.
Some of Lassus’s church music from this period reflects the good fortune he was enjoying. The parody masses are based so closely on their models that the secular words must often have sprung to mind. However, it was also about this time that the gloominess and intensity of Counter-Reformation ideas began to affect his music, most especially in his settings of the seven Penitential Psalms.
The publications of the 1580s are largely concerned with church music, including settings from the book of Job, the Penitential Psalms, and the Lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah.
His fifth book of madrigals (Nuremberg, 1585) sets verses by Petrarch on the passing of youth and religious sonnets by Gabriele Fiamma. In 1585, he made a further visit to Italy, significantly making a pilgrimage to Loreto; a couple of years later he dedicated a madrigal volume to the Munich court physician, who was growing concerned for Lassus’s mental state.
By 1590, Lassus was suffering from melancholia, sometimes scarcely recognizing his wife, and was beset by thoughts of death. In 1594, he published a volume of six-part motets, which the preface refers to as his swansong. Nevertheless, he accompanied his master to Regensburg in the same year, and was preparing for publication his cycle of religious madrigals, the Lagrime di S. Pietro, when he died.
Villancio
“peasant” – type of secular polyphonic song from Spain especially associated with Christmas.
Frottola
A form of secular song popular in Italy in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, the most important forerunner of the madrigal.
• The frottola developed from the widespread practice of reciting poetry to an improvised musical accompaniment.
• Frottolas set verse, often lighthearted love poetry, in many different forms and rhyme schemes, some lighter, bawdy or sentimental, such as the frottola or barzelletta, oda, and capitolo, and some more serious, such as the sonnet, strambotto, and canzone.
• Frottolas are generally strophic, repeating the same music for successive stanzas, and may include repeated lines of verse and their accompanying music within each strophe, often in the form of a refrain.
• Key difference between the frottola and the madrigal – the frottola was strophic, which limited the use of word painting.
• Settings are for three or four voices, mainly syllabic and homophonic, with the melody in the top voice. Often the text is written out only in the top voice, which suggests that as well as being performed by a group of singers, frottolas could be performed by one singer with the three lower parts taken by viols or by a single instrument such as a lute or keyboard.
Madrigal (16th century - 17th century)
The term ‘madrigal’ has two distinct applications, which are not related in anything other than name: 1) a poetic form and its musical setting as a secular song cultivated in Italy in the 14th century. 2) a type of secular song that flourished in Italy in the 16th and early 17th centuries, also spreading to most other European countries, one of the most important genres of the late Renaissance.
• The 16th-century madrigal set a variety of verse types, usually a single verse without a refrain.
• Initially, the madrigal was essentially a serious form, setting verse of a high quality, much of it the courtly love poetry of Petrarch, which was enjoying a new wave of popularity.
• The style is formed from a mixture of elements: the contrapuntal writing and smoothly flowing melodic lines of the motet; the more lively and rhythmic melodies and tendency towards harmonic thinking derived from the frottola; and from the chanson short, memorable themes and chordal textures that made the music easy for amateur musicians to perform, combined with such programmatic writing as the imitation in music of sounds of nature. The result is a work that is typically for between three and six voices, uses both polyphonic, often imitative textures and chordal writing, and places strong emphasis on tunefulness and on reflecting the mood and meaning of the text in its music.
• Several important developments in the madrigal occurred in mid-century: The range of note-values available increased with a new style of notation that involved the use of note nere (‘black notes’, i.e. crotchets and quavers) in addition to the existing ‘white notes’ (minims, semibreves, breves). This allowed composers greater flexibility in text-setting, making rapid declamatory patterns and quick imitative entries possible, and also increased the possibilities for contrast against slower, sustained notes.
• The most renowned composer of the mid-century style, was Cipriano de Rore. Music: Minor intervals express sadder emotions, major ones joy; ascending notes symbolize such words as ‘heaven’, low registers ‘earth.’ Rore uses dissonance and wide, jagged leaps to express pain or struggle, and places melismas on words, which, though not suggesting programmatic expression, require emphasis.
• Other important composers active after the mid-16th century include Lassus, who wrote both serious madrigals that show the influence of Rore’s style and lighter, often humorous Neapolitan villanescas. In Rome, Palestrina wrote both secular and spiritual madrigals, published in his own collections and in anthologies.
• By the time of Rore’s death in 1565, the range of expression possible in the madrigal was widening rapidly, and the genre developed in several different directions. One involved a rapprochement between the serious madrigal and such lighter forms as the canzonetta and villanella. The lighter madrigal style remained very popular for several decades both in Italy and in northern European countries.
• The madrigal also developed in a more serious direction. In the 1580s, two of the most important centers for madrigal composition and performance were the courts at Mantua and Ferrara. Wert’s madrigals (from the 1560s onwards) are particularly intense and dramatic, using chromaticism, dissonance, and sudden and extreme contrasts of range, rhythm, and harmony to portray every nuance of the text; he also used a pared-down, chordal declamatory style.
• The 1590s saw the further exploitation of this range of expressive devices at the hands of Marenzio, Gesualdo, and Monteverdi, among others. Some of the best madrigals from this time set texts that were not merely ‘poesia per musica’ but poems of the highest quality by such contemporary poets as Tasso and Guarini.
• Monteverdi coined the term seconda pratica to describe the new expressive style of composition, which originated with the madrigals of Rore, in which, as Monteverdi put it, ‘the words are mistress of the harmony’. The aim was for music to express as richly as possible the words being sung, and composers achieved this by developing an expanded and more complex musical language that more conservative critics (notably Artusi) considered a violation of the rules of harmony and counterpoint. Whereas the madrigal of earlier decades had been a popular form of entertainment among amateur musicians as well as courtly and professional musicians (indeed, the lighter ‘hybrid’ style continued to be popular), these madrigals were more likely to be performed by professional singers.
• Gesualdo’s madrigals are well known today for their extreme style
• Monteverdi’s madrigals, while equally expressive, use a greater variety of technical and emotional resources. Chromaticism, dissonance, wide melodic leaps, and bold harmonies all have their place in Monteverdi’s musical language, but are combined with a strong dramatic sense, the use of declamatory rhythms and recitative-like passages, and a focus on large-scale structures as well as on small-scale attention to individual words. The result, notably in his fourth and fifth books (1603 and 1605), is a constantly evolving style that, unlike Gesualdo’s, was full of potential for future musical developments.
• While polyphonic madrigals continued to be written into the 17th century, the rise of the basso continuo and of monody had important implications for the madrigal’s development as a piece for one or two voices (sometimes more) with continuo. In fact, it is likely that ensemble madrigals had been performed throughout the 16th century not just by groups of unaccompanied singers but also in arrangements for different forces, with such instruments as viols or lute or chitarrone doubling or replacing some vocal parts—even replacing all but the top line and acting as an accompaniment to a solo voice. Monteverdi’s fifth and sixth books of madrigals contain a mixture of ensemble madrigals, in which an added basso seguente part is optional, and new ‘concerted’ madrigals, which include sections for vocal solo or duet with continuo accompaniment. The presence of the continuo part (sometimes using strophic basses) and the reduced textures left the solo voice(s) free to explore much more virtuoso embellishment or dramatic representations of speech than was possible in the ensemble madrigal, as such works as Monteverdi’s Zefiro torna and his Lamento d’Arianna demonstrate.
Villanella
A three- or four-voice strophic song, setting comic or rustic texts in the Neapolitan dialect, which became popular about 1535.
• Musically it was characterized by its ‘ungrammatical’ use of consecutive 5ths, perhaps deliberately caricaturing the elegant harmony of the madrigal and certainly reflecting the genre’s roots in the popular, often bawdy songs of Naples.
• The text-setting was generally syllabic, the texture mainly homophonic, and a new musical phrase was used for each line of verse, with the opening and closing lines often repeated.
• The principal composers of the villanella in this form were di Maio and da Nola. By about 1545, the genre had reached northern Italy, where such composers as Willaert and Donato created reworkings of Neapolitan villanescas for four voices. Lassus, who spent some years in Naples before moving to Rome in 1551, was the finest composer in this vein, writing witty villanellas that are sometimes bawdy or satirical, sometimes more serious. These pieces could be performed either by a group of singers or by one singer with instrumental accompaniment.
• From the 1570s, in the hands of such composers as Ferretti, Marenzio, and Wert, the villanella became still more respectable, losing both dialect and bawdiness and becoming virtually a small-scale madrigal. The term ‘canzonetta’ was often applied to such pieces, and the distinction between the two forms became less clear-cut.
Canzonetta
From the late 16th century to the 18th, the term was applied to short vocal pieces in a light, often dance-like, style.
• The term found its way to England mainly through the collections of Italian canzonettas made by Thomas Morley (the first appeared in 1597), whose own canzonets tended to match the seriousness and the form (single-stanza, through-composed) of the madrigal. Germans, for example Hassler, also used the term.
Balletto
An Italian dance of the 16th and 17th centuries, occasionally called ‘bal’ or ‘ballo’. There seem to be three periods of development, two instrumental and one vocal: for lute during the second half of the 16th century; for voice from 1591 to about 1623; and for chamber ensemble from about 1616 to the end of the 17th century.
