Program Notes on The Second Circle – Love Songs of Francesco
Landini
“This way I went, descending from the first
Into the second circle…”
–Dante, Inferno, Canto V [1]
The fourteenth century was a time of
religious and social upheaval in western Europe – constant war, the exile
of the
papacy in Avignon and, of course, the Black Death. Italy suffered
no less than any other land, but amidst the unrest and terror she produced
a constellation of literary stars that outshone all of Europe in its day.
This was the trecento, or “three hundreds,” as the Italians called the
fourteenth century. It was the time of Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio, and
of a new lyrical way of writing poetry (the heritage of the Provençal
troubadours) called by Dante the dolce stil nuovo or sweet new style. The
subject was love and desire – exalted by Dante the young lover in the Vita
Nuova (1292–94), and transcended by the mature poet in the Divine Comedy,
where lustful lovers were tossed and blown about in the second circle of
hell. At the same time, a sweet new style of musical composition came into
being, almost without precedent: a wave of talented composers produced
polyphonic songs based on lyrics either playful or romantic, comical or
serious, but always highly personal in expression.
It is our great loss that no examples survive
of the trecento art of setting poetry (of Dante and Petrarca, among others)
to musical recitation. But we are fortunate that about 600 musical works
have come down to us, preserved in a number of fine manuscripts. Almost
all of these are secular – there are only a small handful of sacred polyphonic
pieces – and although the most frequent theme is that of courtly love,
some texts deal with the natural world or the supernatural world of classical
deities. There is even an occasional moral sermon.
In Boccaccio’s Decameron (1355), each
day’s storytelling ends with the singing of a ballata, which in its earliest
form
was a simple call-and-response dance tune. By the latter half of the
century, composers began to favor the ballata over the
nearly forgotten madrigal (an ornate duo or trio on a fanciful text)
and the caccia (a canonic song on a lively outdoor theme), and it became
artfully stylized. The structure of the ballata’s stanza is most easily
shown by a scheme where the letters A (a) and b represent the two alternating
musical sections:
A
ripresa
verse 1 (refrain)
b
piede
verse 2
b
piede
verse 3
a
volta
verse 4
A
ripresa
verse 1 (refrain)
In the early trecento, ballate were composed
as unaccompanied melodies; later, composers set them in great numbers
for two and three voices. Our program consists of seventeen ballate
of Francesco Landini, in whose hands they became
creations of subtle refinement and emotional revelation, with a harmonic
richness unknown before in Italian music.
A prolific composer and virtuoso organist
who attained near-mythic status in his day, Francesco Landini (born c.1335)
was fortunate in his home town, for literature and the arts in Florence
were amply supported by a wealthy and cosmopolitan
merchant-nobility. As a child, Francesco was left blind by smallpox,
but he mastered singing and several instruments, eventually becoming chief
musician at the church of San Lorenzo. An early “renaissance man,” Francesco
(whose surname was not used in contemporary manuscripts) was counted among
the neo-humanistic intellectual elite of Florence. He was an honored poet
as well, and certainly wrote some, if not most, of his own song texts.
His expressive powers were legendary, as witnessed by a contemporary account
of a day amongst the leisured classes:
“…the sun was coming up and beginning
to get warm; a thousand birds were singing. Francesco was
ordered to play on his organetto to
see if the singing of the birds would lessen or increase with his
playing. As soon as he began to play,
many birds at first became silent, then they redoubled their
singing and, strange to say, one nightingale
came and perched on a branch over his head.”
– Giovanni de Prato, Il Paradiso degli Alberti (1389) [2]
Nearly a quarter of the entire surviving
trecento repertory, 154 works, are by Francesco, and of these, 140 are
ballate in two or three voices. Almost all their texts are intensely
personal meditations on topics of courtly love, or courtly lust: desire,
hope, rejection, misery. Their musical style is a combination of the Italian
melodic grace that characterized the first generation of trecento composers,
including Francesco’s younger self, and elements of contemporary French
songwriting: complex harmonies, a strong tonal center, and regular meter,
to name the most notable. This influence from abroad is not surprising,
since Florentine merchants, clerics and scholars had strong ties to their
French counterparts. Francesco and his fellow composers also began to borrow
French notational methods, verto (open) and chiuso (closed) endings (what
we call first and second endings), and showed a preference for three-voice
writing, including the very French “accompanied song” texture, where one
voice part, the superius, clearly takes on a solo role. The result of this
marriage of Italian and French taste and technique in the ballata was a
richly nuanced hybrid capable of a wide range of expression.
Scholars have attempted to “chronologize”
Francesco’s works, based in part on some scant biographical references,
but mainly on the increasing French influences. Thus the two-voice
ballate are in general probably older than the three-voice
works, and those that show remnants of dance rhythms (Echo la primavera,
Per allegreça, Angelica biltà, La bionda
treçça) may be earlier than duos with a more emotionally
sophisticated response to the text (e.g., Ochi dolenti mie, Nella
partita, Abbonda di virtù, or the playfully mannered Se pronto
non sarà). Three-voice songs with the most Italian and the
fewest French characteristics, and with all three parts texted (Cara
mie donna, Quanto più caro faj, Lasso! per mie
fortuna, Muort’ oramai) are probably earlier than those with two parts
texted in the original sources (Che chos’è
quest’amor, Gran piant’ agli ochi). Three-voice songs with a single
texted part and “instrumental”-sounding accompanying
voices (Non dò la colp’ a te, Nella mi’ vita, Non arà
ma’ pietà) are considered most French-influenced, and might
represent the latest stage of Francesco’s compositions. The careful
listener will hear that we occasionally add text to an
untexted line – as was also done in Francesco’s time. In spite
of the foregoing analysis and classification, the fact is that a
ballata by Francesco, whether early or late, simple or complex, in
two voices or three, is unmistakably his and no other’s. And the miracle
is that within each ballata Francesco creates a unique musical and emotional
world, consistently transcending the formulaic structure, with music perfectly
matched to the mood of the text.
Francesco died at Florence in 1397 and
was buried in the church of San Lorenzo, where he served for over 30 years.
In the fifteenth century his tombstone was removed and “recycled” –
to be found again in the mid-nineteenth century in the
convent chapel of San Domenico at Prato. It was returned to San Lorenzo
in 1890, where it is now. His epitaph reads:
Luminibus captus Franciscus mente capaci
Cantibus organicis, quem cunctis Musica solum
Pretulit, hic cineres, animam super astra reliquit.
(Francesco,
deprived of sight, but with a mind skilled
in instrumental music, whom alone Music
has set above all others, has left his ashes here, his soul above the stars.)
[3]
–Susan Hellauer
FOOTNOTES:
1. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Vol. 1: Inferno, trans. Mark
Musa, The Penguin Classics, 1984, p. 109, lines 1–2.
2. Quoted by L. Ellinwood in New Oxford History of Music vol. III, p.
36
3. Quoted and trans. L. Ellinwood, op. cit. p. 79
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