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Italy has played a major role in the development
of Western music. Scholars can only speculate about what the
music of Roman antiquity sounded like; no notated music from
Roman times has been preserved. The earliest known Italian
music is bound up with the history of the Catholic church.
The two great centers of liturgical and musical reform in
Italy in the first millennium were Milan and Rome. Saint Ambrose
(c.333-97), bishop of Milan, imported several musical practices
from Syria, including the custom of antiphonal singing . He
was also the author of a number of HYMNS; Saint Augustine
credits him with the introduction of hymn singing in the West.
MIDDLE AGES
The most important figure in the reformation and codification
of musical ritual of the Church was Gregory the Great, pope
from 590 to 604. Though he is now admired more as an organizer
than a creator, the common custom of referring to all sacred
CHANT as "Gregorian" chant is a continuing tribute
to his efforts in this field. Another figure of great importance
for the orderly and uniform transmission of chant was the
Benedictine monk GUIDO D'AREZZO.
With the development of poetry in the vernacular, which made
use of rhythmic accent and rhyme, a new body of music arose
that was based on this poetry. Among the first pieces using
Italian texts are the laude spirituali, the earliest of which
date from the 13th century. The following century witnessed
a remarkable flourishing of secular music, with important
advances in rhythmic notation and POLYPHONY. Theorists of
the time spoke of a new art--an ars nova. The earliest known
notated polyphonic music in Italy comes from the 14th century.
The principal forms were the MADRIGAL, the caccia (a piece
dealing with the chase, or hunting), and the ballata. The
outstanding composer of this period was Francesco LANDINI.
Blind from childhood, Landini was widely admired as a poet,
philosopher, and astrologer as well as a composer and performer
on several instruments.
RENAISSANCE
During the 15th and much of the 16th century Italy functioned
largely as an importer of musical talent. Nevertheless, toward
the end of the 15th century, distinctively Italian secular
music began to reappear at some of the Italian courts. In
Florence, during the time of Lorenzo de'Medici (1448-92),
carnival celebrations were enriched by canti carnascialeschi
(carnival songs). In Mantua composers developed the frottola,
a homophonic (chordal), clearly phrased, strophic piece. The
carnival songs and frottole were significant in preparing
the ground for the 16th-century madrigal, one of the great
flowerings of Italian musical art.
In the earlier part of the 16th century madrigals were written
by French and Netherlandish composers as well as Italians
such as Costanzo Festa (1490-1545). The late madrigal, written
in the last third of the century, was dominated by the Italians
Luca MARENZIO, Carlo GESUALDO, and Claudio MONTEVERDI. Sacred
music developed in two main centers--Rome and Venice. The
Roman school is epitomized in the works of Giovanni Pierluigi
da PALESTRINA. Working under the influence of the Counter
Reformation, Palestrina wrote several hundred motets and 105
masses. The Venetian school had its founding father in the
Flemish composer Adrian WILLAERT, who was director of music
at Saint Mark's Cathedral from 1527 to 1562. Willaert, his
student Andrea Gabrieli, and Andrea's nephew Giovanni Gabrieli
developed a polychoral (multiple choruses) style of composition
that gave special force to the contrast and opposition (both
spatial and aural) of mixed groups of performers.
Venice was also an important center of music printing from
as early as the beginning of the 16th century. The Odhecaton,
printed by Ottaviano dei Petrucci in 1501, is the first printed
collection of part songs. Petrucci printed more than 50 volumes
of secular and sacred vocal music as well as a few volumes
of music for the lute.
BAROQUE
The period of Italy's greatest musical influence throughout
Europe lasted from the end of the 16th to the middle of the
18th century. During this time new attitudes toward the relationship
of text and music and toward the states of mind most suitable
for expression in music generated changes in the treatment
of dissonance, rhythm, and texture. The resulting style of
the BAROQUE MUSIC affected old genres and brought forth several
new ones, such as the opera, oratorio, cantata, concerto,
and sinfonia.
The earliest operas that have survived complete are Euridice
by Jacopo PERI and Giulio CACCINI, performed in Florence in
1600, and Rappresentazione di Anima e di Corpo by Emilio de
Cavalieri (c.1550-1602), performed in Rome in 1600. Peri,
Caccini, and Cavalieri were all associated with a group of
Florentine humanists called the Camerata, who hoped to achieve
in their own time the great effects attributed to music by
the ancient Greeks. To accomplish this goal they instituted
a style of reciting in music, the stile recitativo (RECITATIVE),
that allowed the text to be projected with clarity. The voice
was accompanied by chords notated in a shorthand called FIGURED
BASS. The full expressive possibilities of the new style were
first demonstrated by Monteverdi in his opera Orfeo (1607).
Rome was a center of operatic composition from about 1620
until the late 1630s. In 1637 the first public opera house
opened in Venice, and until the end of the 17th century, Venice
was the operatic capital of Italy. Some of the finest Venetian
operas were written by Monteverdi and his pupil Pier Francesco
CAVALLI. Other offspring of the new style were the cantata,
similar to an operatic scene, and the oratorio, a musical
presentation of a sacred subject.
One of the characteristics of baroque music was the development
of an idiomatic style of writing for various instruments.
The greatest keyboard composer at the turn of the 17th century
was Girolamo FRESCOBALDI, organist at Saint Peter's in Rome.
Throughout the baroque era Italy was preeminent both in the
manufacture of violins and in the composition and performance
of music for them. Some of the greatest violin makers of all
times flourished in that age; they were members of the AMATI,
STRADIVARI, and GUARNERI families, all of whom worked in Cremona.
The texture that was favored in the second half of the 17th
century called for two treble instruments, most often violins,
and a melodic bass instrument such as the cello with a keyboard
instrument filling in the harmonies. The term trio sonata
designated music written for such an ensemble, and some of
the finest examples were written by Arcangelo CORELLI.
Orchestral music also had its origins in the baroque era.
The interest in exploiting contrasting masses of sound was
brought to fruition in the concerto. The term concerto grosso
describes a piece built on the contrast between a larger and
a smaller group of instruments; Corelli composed some of the
best examples of the genre. The most important composers in
the development of the solo concerto, which contrasts a single
player with a group, were Giuseppe TORELLI, Tommaso ALBINONI,
and Antonio VIVALDI.
The most important composer of operas at the turn of the century
was Alessandro Scarlatti (see SCARLATTI family), who wrote
more than 100. Opera seria was cultivated by German composers
as well as Italians such as Niccolo JOMMELLI and Tommaso Traetta
(1727-79). Comic opera made great advances in the hands of
Giovanni PERGOLESI, Niccolo PICCINNI, Giovanni PAISIELLO,
and Domenico CIMAROSA.
Instrumental music was not abandoned in the second half of
the 18th century. The Milanese composer Giovanni Battista
SAMMARTINI won international fame for his symphonies. The
concerto was cultivated by Giovanni Battista VIOTTI, an Italian
working in France and England. Luigi BOCCHERINI, an Italian
who spent much of his career in Spain, wrote a large quantity
of chamber music.
19TH CENTURY
The most commanding figure in Italian opera at the beginning
of the 19th century was Gioacchino ROSSINI. In two decades
Rossini created nearly 40 operas, fairly evenly divided between
the serious and the comic genres. He is best known for his
comic masterpiece The Barber of Seville (1816). Rossini's
last opera, William Tell (1829), was written for Paris, where
he resided from 1824 until 1837 and from 1855 until his death
in 1868.
After Rossini's premature withdrawal from operatic composition,
two younger men, Vincenzo BELLINI and Gaetano DONIZETTI, came
to prominence. Bellini's art is one of refined and expressive
lyricism, although in his best works, such as Norma (1831),
dramatic values are not neglected. Donizetti's more robust
temperament was at home both in comic works such as Don Pasquale
(1843) and tragic works such as Lucia di Lammermoor (1835).
For a half century, beginning in the 1840s, Italian opera
was dominated by Giuseppe VERDI, the representative of the
musical and the nationalistic aspirations of the Italian people.
Verdi's career unfolded during the period in which Italy finally
achieved independence and unification; many of his operas
dramatize, implicitly or explicitly, the struggle against
tyranny and oppression. Verdi frequently drew the plots of
his operas from the works of the finest European playwrights--among
them Hugo, Schiller, and Shakespeare. The best known Verdi
operas include Rigoletto (1851), Il Trovatore (1853), La Traviata
(1853), Aida (1871), and Otello (1887). Most of his works
are tragic, but his final opera, Falstaff (1893), is a comedy.
The librettist for Otello and Falstaff was Arrigo BOITO, a
significant composer in his own right, whose major work is
the opera Mefistofele (1868). The heroic operas of Verdi gave
way in the 1890s to a style known as VERISMO (realism), which
emphasized sordid settings and violent contrasts. The landmark
works of verismo are Pietro MASCAGNI's Cavalleria rusticana
(1890) and Ruggero LEONCAVALLO's I Pagliacci (1892), but it
was Giacomo PUCCINI who achieved the most continuous success.
Puccini was an accomplished eclectic composer with an astute
sense of the theater. He blends veristic elements with sentimentality
in La Boheme (1896), with fancy costumes in Tosca (1900),
and with exoticism in Madama Butterfly (1904).
20TH CENTURY
Of the generation of composers who came to maturity at the
turn of the 20th century, the most significant were Gian Francesco
MALIPIERO, Ildebrando PIZZETTI, Ottorino RESPIGHI, and Alfredo
Casella (1883-1947). These men had in common an interest in
the renewal and active cultivation of instrumental music,
which had been comparatively neglected in the 19th century.
In a clear rejection of the works of the verismo composers,
they turned for their inspiration to compositions of the Italian
Renaissance and baroque period or to Gregorian chant. The
most important representatives of the next generation, Luigi
DALLAPICCOLA and Goffreddo PETRASSI, manifested in their works
closer contacts with contemporary composers outside of Italy.
Petrassi was most influenced by Paul Hindemith and Igor Stravinsky.
Dallapiccola, once he became acquainted with the works of
Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, incorporated TWELVE-TONE
techniques into a distinct personal style.
Italian composers today are working in virtually all the current
trends--SERIAL MUSIC, ELECTRONIC MUSIC, ALEATORY MUSIC, and
collage techniques. Most prominent among the avant-garde composers
have been Bruno MADERNA, Luigi NONO, Luciano BERIO, and Sylvano
Bussotti).
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