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The Festive Madrigals of Alessandro Striggio

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1980

David S. Butchart
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Extract

Alessandro striggio was the major composer working in Florence between 1560 and 1590. His musical production, as a whole, has not attracted a just degree of attention up to now, but several scholars have described, and, more recently, critically evaluated his role in the main Medici festivities of the period. Striggio's madrigal books, seven in all, together with selections of his work printed in anthologies of the time, represent an important source of music used in a great variety of festive occasions; and although scholars have dipped into this material, it has not yet been examined systematically. What now survives of Striggio's work in this field consists of over thirty compositions, about one-fifth of his total output. As a percentage, this is higher than that of most other contemporary madrigalists. The surviving quantity probably accounts for less than half of Striggio's festive production, if we remember the almost complete loss of sources for the main celebrations.

Type
Research Article
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Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 107 , 1980 , pp. 46 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

NOTES

1 The only critical assessment of Striggio's work in general remains that of Alfred Einstein, The Italian Madrigal (Princeton, 1949), ii, 761–78. On Striggio as a festive composer, see Ghisi, Federico, Feste musicali della Firenze Medicea (Florence, 1939), xxv-xlvi; Leo Schrade, ‘The Festivities at the Wedding of Francesco dei Medici and Bianca Cappello’, Leo Schrade, De scientia musicae studia atque orationes (Bern-Stuttgart, 1967), 325–59 (originally in French in La fètes de la Renaissance I, ed. Jean Jacquot (Paris, 1956), 107–31); Wolfgang Osthoff, Theatergesang und darstellende Musik in der italienische Renaissance (Tutzing, 1969), i, 332–56; Howard Mayer Brown, Sixteenth-Century Instrumentation: the Music for the Florentine Intermedi, Musicological Studies and Documents, xxx, American Institute of Musicology (Rome, 1973), 96–107; and Nino Pirrotta, Li due Orfei (2nd edn., Turin, 1975), 200–75.Google Scholar

2 See list on pp. 55–6.Google Scholar

3 There is no direct evidence of Striggio's birth date. According to the Registro necrologico of 1592 in the Archivio di Stato, Mantua (ASMN), Striggio died on 29 February 1592, aged 55.Google Scholar

4 Cf. Archivio di Stato, Florence (ASF), Mediceo del Principato 631, c 3v.Google Scholar

5 On Corteccia, see Fabbri, Mario, ‘La vita e l'ignota opera-prima di Francesco Corteccia …’, Chigiana, xxii, Nuova Sene 2 (1965), 185–217.Google Scholar

6 Cf. letter of 25 February 1560, from Florence, in ASF, Mediceo del Principato 483a, c. 645r; and letter of 1 June 1560, from Venice, in ASMN, Archivio Gonzaga, Busta 1493.Google Scholar

7 Only in the madrigals added to successive reprints does a text written for a specific occasion occur: ‘Rosa eterna, immortal sacro giacinto’, a eulogy of Cardinal Antonio Trivulzio, papal legate in Paris for the signing of the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, who died suddenly on his return from France in 1559.Google Scholar

8 Einstein, The Italian Madrigal, ii, 763.Google Scholar

9 Cf. Giovanni Cipriani, Il mito etrusco nel rinascimento fiorentino, Biblioteca di storia toscana e contemporanea, xxii (Florence, 1980), esp. 71ff.Google Scholar

10 Cf. Ettore Allegri and Alessandro Cecchi, Palazzo Vecchio e i Medici. Guida storica (Florence, 1980), esp. 55ff. On Medici ideology and the political use of the spectacle, see Zorzi, Ludovico, Il teatro e la città (Turin, 1977), 63ff.Google Scholar

11 Cf. James Haar, ‘The Note Nere Madrigal’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, xviii (1965), 22–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Cf. Furio Diaz, Il Granducato di Toscana. I Medici, Storia d'Italia, xiii/1 (Turin, 1976), 183ff.Google Scholar

13 For bibliography of descriptive accounts and summaries, see Ghisi, Feste musicali, xxv–xxxiv; and Brown, Sixteenth-Century Instrumentation, 96–105. Pirrotta discusses these festivities in Li due Orfei, 203–16.Google Scholar

14 Cf. Michel Plaisance, ‘La politique culturelle de Côme Ier et les fêtes annuelles à Florence de 1541 à 1550’, Les fêtes de la Renaissance III, ed J. Jacquot and E. Konigson (Paris, 1975), 133–52.Google Scholar

15 ‘… una canzona a 40 voci composta per messer Alexandro Striggio … che fu tenuta cosa beilissima’. In Agostino Lapino, Diario fiorentino dal 252 al 1596, ed. Giuseppe Odoardo Corazzini (Florence, 1900), 132.Google Scholar

16 See Iain Fenlon and Hugh Keyte, ‘Memorialls of Great Skill: a Tale of Five Cities’, Early Music, viii (1980), 329–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 ‘Et Leon et Clemente et Cosmo et Pio’. The verse refers to the Medici Popes Leo X(1475–1521), Clement VII (1478–1534), Cosimo I himself, and the current Pope, Pius IV.Google Scholar

18 Described in his letters of 3 March 1567 (from Augusta), 18 May 1567 (from Paris), and 20 August 1567 (from Milan), in ASF, Mediceo del Principato 526, c. 518r-v; 528, c. 561r; and 530, c. 341r, respectively.Google Scholar

19 For an account of the occasion, see Lapini, Diario fiorentino, 158–9.Google Scholar

20 ‘Ecco scesa fra voi nuova angioletta,/Di cui si pregia il Reno e l'Arno honora:/Che scettro e regno come basso e vile/Così di beni eterni s'innamora…’. The seconda parte describes how the ‘santo pastor’ has therefore bestowed on her a ‘Sacra Rosa … alma e pregiata’.Google Scholar

21 '… macchie più o meno estese di colore strumentale e vocale …“: Pirrotta, Li due Orfei, 256.Google Scholar

22 First printed in Musica di diversi auttori illustri per cantar et sonar in concerti … (Venice, 1584); modern edition in Osthoff, Theatergesang und darstellende Musik, 11, 122–31.Google Scholar

23 Cf. Brown, Sixteenth-Century Instrumentation, 97–8.Google Scholar

24 Dr F. W. Sternfeld first noted this text's presence in the anthology Musica di diversi auttori illustri, op. cit. I am grateful to him for passing on this information.Google Scholar

25 The other setting that survives from these celebrations, not discussed here, is the lament of Psyche, ‘Fuggi, speme mia, fuggi’, from the fifth intermedio of 1565, for which see Brown, HowardMayer, ‘Psyche's Lament: Some Music for the Medici Wedding of 1565’, Words and Music … in Honour of A. Tillman Merritt (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), 1–28. This setting belongs to a tradition of laments in Striggio, of which ‘Nasce la pena mia’ is the most famous.Google Scholar

Regarding the 1569 festivities for the visit of Archduke Charles to Florence, no music seems to have survived in a complete state. Surviving parts in manuscript are discussed by James Haar, ‘Madrigals from Three Generadons: the MS Brussels, Bibl. du Conservatoire Royal, 27.731’, Rivista Italiana di Musicologia, x (1975), 242–64; esp. 252–5, 263. Another setting from Striggio's Secando libro a6 (1571), ‘Da quest’ altere soglie', has the kind of festive text that can be associated with one of the more particularly Florentine celebrations held in Archduke Charles's honour: the Mascherata delle bufole, presented on 5 May 1569. The only other comparable occasion is the similar Bufolata of 1566; but there is no direct evidence to support the text's inclusion in the 1569 festivity.Google Scholar

26 Cf. Diaz, Il Granducato di Toscana, 188.Google Scholar

27 Cf. Lapini, Diario fiorentirio, 165–9.Google Scholar

28 See Coronatione del Serenissimo Signore Cosimo Medici Gran Duca di Toscaria, fatta dalla S. di N.S. Pio V in Roma, sotto Dì V di Marzo M DLXIX … (Florence, 1569 [= 1570]); and Della Solenne Incoronazione del Duca Cosimo Medici in Gran Duca di Tascaria fatta dal Som. Pont. S. Pio V. Ragguaglio di Cornelio Firmano Cerimoniere Pontificio riprodotto … dal Canonico Domenico Moreni (Florence, 1819).Google Scholar

29 Originally printed in Misica di diversi auttori illustri, op. cit. One part, the canto of the second choir, is missing.Google Scholar

30 Cf. Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence (BNCF), Fondo Magliabechiano VII. 328, p. 124.Google Scholar

31 ‘Mille anchor Siene, et Flore, et mille Rome’.Google Scholar

32 Cf. Andrea Gabrieli's ‘Asia felice, hor ben poss'io chiamarmi’, for twelve voices, in three four-voice choirs who represent Asia, Europe, and Africa; sung at the 1572 Carnival in Venice, celebrating the victory at Lepanto (1571). The tutti finale has not survived. Discussed in Einstein, The Italian Madrigal, ii, 523–4.Google Scholar

33 Cf. Diaz, Il Granducato di Toscana, 238–9.Google Scholar

34 See especially Vincenzo Galilei's Primo libro de madrigali a quatro et caique voci (Venice, 1574), dedicated to Bianca. Striggio's posthumous collections contain similar texts, all written by Florentine poets, including Giovan Battista Strozzi the Younger, Antonio Buonaguidi, and Vincenzo Buonanni, not by Francesco de' Medici, as has been suggested (cf. Paolo Galletti, Poesie di Don Francesco dei Medici a Madonna Bianca Cappello (Florence, 1894) – followed by Schrade and others).Google Scholar

35 Cf. Zorzi, Il teatro e la città, 70.Google Scholar

36 Main accounts in two contemporary chronicles, recently published in modern editions: Bastiano Arditi, Diario di Firenze e di altre parti della Christianità (1574–1579), ed. Roberto Cantagalli (Florence, 1970), 135–40; Giuliano de' Ricci, Cronaca (1532–1606), ed. Giuliana Sapori, Documenti di filologia, xvii (Milan-Naples, 1972), 206ff.Google Scholar

37 Cf. BNCF, Fondo Nazionale, II. 1. 397, c. 206r: ‘… Composto in Musica a X voci dallo Eccellentiss.mo M. Alessandro Striggio, e cantò in persona del Sig.r Conte Ulisse da una voce di Tenore sola sopra diversi strumenti di corde, e fiati, sonati da i Virtuosissimi Musici del Ser. mo Gran Duca di Toscana, et in persona della Sig.ra Pellegrina, cantò un putto in sua voce puerile, essendosi divisi in due Cori dall’ un capo della tavola all'altro, et nell'ultimo ambe dua i Cori insieme con voci e detti strumenti …'.Google Scholar

38 Cf. Ricci, Cronaca, 208–9; and BNCF, Fondo Nazionale, II. IX. 45, c. 312v, c. 313r.Google Scholar

39 Cf. Arditi, Diario di Firenze, 140: ‘… comedia molto disonesta recitata da uomini pratesi pratichi …’.Google Scholar

40 Cf. Ghisi, Feste musicali, xxxvii-xxxviii; Schrade, ‘The Festivities …’, 350.Google Scholar

41 Musica di diversi auttori illustri, op. cit.Google Scholar

42 Tnonfo di musica di diversi a sei voci. Libro primo (Venice, 1597) Modern edition of Striggio's madrigal in Vier Madrigalen von Mantuaner Komponisten zu 5 und 8 Stimmen, ed. Denis Arnold, Das Chorwerk, lxxx (Wolfenbüttel, 1960), 27–34.Google Scholar

43 ‘Sempre Bianca s'udrà, Bianca sonare’. Text in BNCF, Fondo Magliabechiano VII. 328, p. 226.Google Scholar

44 For a reconstruction of this spectacle, see especially Schrade, ‘The Festivities …’, op. cit.Google Scholar

45 The same may be said of Schrade's other suggestion, ‘Ninfa che dal superb'Adriaco seno’, not a single, independent composition, as would be required or expected, but the first section only of a twelve-part canzone praising Bianca, first included in Novi frutti musicali, madrigali a cinque voci (Venice, 1590).Google Scholar

46 Raffaello Gualterotti, Feste nelle nozze del Serenissimo Don Francesco Medici Gran Duca di Toscana et della Sereniss. Sua Consorte la Sig. Bianca Capello (2nd edn., Florence, 1579).Google Scholar

47 ‘Si sentirono molte voci creare una dolcissima armonia’, Gualterotti, Feste nelle nozze, 17; cf. Schrade, ‘The Festivities …’, 336.Google Scholar

48 The text runs: ‘Giovani che ‘1 gran Dio/Delle nozze pur hoggi affrena et cinge/Siam di lontan paese et bel desio/Di far festa sovr'Arno hoggi ne spinge;/Arno ch'ensieme string'hor tant'Altezza,/Valor, senno, e bellezza/Che non pur quant'ha ‘I mondo Ninfe et Dive/Ma quant'ha Numi il cielo/Colmi d'ardente zelo/Tragg'alle sue sempre festose rive’.Google Scholar

49 The text of Striggio's madrigal is as follows: ‘Qual bianchezz'o splendore,/Qual possanz'o virtù d'amica stella/Maggior s'udiò già mai quel c'hor gode/Con l'Adria, l'Arno, e ‘l picciol Ren'ancora,/Con tanta speme di perpetuo amore/Della sua chiara e bella/Messagiera del sol, candid'Aurora?/Ogni spirto gentil e pellegrina/Alma lei canti e scriv'ogni sua lode;/E dal paese Tosco/Falso timor, ruina,/Et ogni pensier fosco/Si part'homai, poscia ch'un lieto giorno/N'ha res'il ciel di sì bel lum'adorno’.Google Scholar

50 For example, in the final ‘Viva’ sequence of ‘Eran le ninfe e pastori’ from Il trionfo di Dori; the setting is included in Luigi Torchi, L'arte musicale in Italia (Milan-Rome, 1897-), i, 357–62.Google Scholar