Philippe Verdelot [c. 1480/85-1530/32]: O dolce nocte à 4.
Alamire | David Skinner.
A little secular gem.
H. Colin Slim and Stefano La Via worte about:
«I. Life.
Practically nothing is known of Verdelot's early career; it was
presumably spent in northern France before he went to northern Italy at a
fairly early stage. He may have been in Venice as early as the first
decade of the 16th century. According to Vasari (Le vite, 2/1568, later
followed by Vincenzo Borghini in Il riposo, 1584), shortly before
leaving Venice for Rome in 1511 the artist Sebastiano del Piombo painted
‘Verdelot franzese musico eccellentissimo’ together with ‘Ubretto suo
compagno cantore’. Despite much research this painting has not yet been
identified and dated with certainty, nor has any light been shed on the
identity of Verdelot's companion. Some (including Freedberg and Slim,
later questioned by Pirrotta and by Hirst) believe that Vasari was
referring to a painting (once housed at the Kaiser-Freidrich Museum in
Berlin, but destroyed at the end of World War II) that portrays Verdelot
at a little over 40 years old (30 according to Amati-Camperi) in the
company of the younger composer Hubert Naich (fig.1). Others (from
Friedeberg to Ramsden), however, believe the painting is the famous
Concerto at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, variously attributed to
Giorgione and Titian and dating from c1505, in which Verdelot and Jacob
Obrecht are depicted together with a younger, anonymous person. Yet
there is still no concrete documentary evidence to support these and
other hypotheses (e.g. by Prunières; Ravaglia; Einstein, 1949; Quitin,
Sidona). In particular, these two attempts to identify Ubretto are
hardly plausible: Obrecht, too well-known and influential to be named
after Verdelot and simply as ‘cantore’, died of the plague at Ferrara in
the summer of 1505 at the age of 52, while Naich, born around 1505–10,
seems to have been active in Italy only from the 1530s and outside
Venetian circles. It is more likely that the companion in Vasari's
picture is a third and less well-known figure, perhaps Verdelot's future
colleague in Florence, listed with him in the Libri di cassa of the
Opera of S Maria del Fiore as ‘Bruet’ (1 July 1523) or ‘Urbech’ (28 June
1527); later Verdelot himself mentioned his inseparable companion
‘Bruett’ in one of the conversions recalled by Antonfrancesco Doni in I
Marmi (1552).
If he was in northern Italy in the first decade
of the century, he seems to have moved south by the 1520s. Two of his
madrigals (Torela mo vilan and O singular dolcezza) may indicate
that he was in Venice and spent some time at Bologna; his music first
appears in sources from the Veneto dating from the early 1520s (Fenlon
and Haar). The provenance and dating of the manuscript motet Beati qui
habitant, however, suggest that he was already in Rome between 1510 and
1513 (Böker-Heil, and the presence of Non pò far morte ’l dolce viso
amaro» in a printed fragment (the Fossombrone fragment, c1520, see
Haar, 1981) points to another sojourn in Rome around 1520.
Verdelot arrived in Florence in May of 1521; he may have taken part in
meetings at the Orti Oricellari, where he would have met Machiavelli and
other republican intellectuals. It is unlikely, however, that he would
have participated in the Oricellari’s anti-Medicean plots against his
first and most important Florentine patron, Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici.
He was probably offered service at Cardinal Giulio’s court before
attaining two of the most prestigious musical positions in the city:
maestro di cappella at the baptistry of S Maria del Fiore (from 24 March
1522 at the latest to 7 September 1525) and at the cathedral (2 April
1523 to 28 June 1527). In this period Verdelot seems to have been away
from the city at least twice, once between 4 December 1523 and 16
January 1524, when he was chosen together with two singers of the
cathedral to accompany Giulio de’ Medici to Rome on the occasion of the
latter’s elevation to the papacy (as Clement VII). In the Dialogo della
musica (1544) and I marmi, Antonfrancesco Doni showed Verdelot’s
assimilation into Florentine social, artistic and political life in the
1520s, citing two seven-part madrigals and a frottola (all of which are
now lost), and noting that Verdelot’s name was a byword for superior
musicianship.
During the Florentine republic (1527–30) Verdelot
probably allied himself against papal and imperial forces seeking to
return Florence to the Medici. Doni observed in I marmi: ‘I know that
Verdelot did not willingly suffer these praises given to the Spanish, as
the partisans quickly discovered!’. Several of Verdelot’s motet texts
refer to the war, famine and pestilence which afflicted the last
republic. Like Michelangelo, Verdelot was apparently forgiven, perhaps
posthumously, for his anti-Medici position: the staunch supporter of the
Medici, Cosimo Bartoli, in his Ragionamenti of 1567 described Verdelot
as ‘amicissimo’ (probably referring to the period before 1527, when
Bartoli fled Florence).
It is not known whether Verdelot was in
Florence during the siege (1529–30), whether he survived it and, if so,
whether he remained in Florence afterwards or went elsewhere. It has
been suggested (Hersh, 1963) that the madrigal Italia, Italia, ch’hai sì
longamente refers to Rome under Paul III (1534–49), although like
Italia mia benché ’l parlar and Trist’Amarilli mia it could equally well
refer to the sack of Rome in 1527. There is no evidence for dating any
other of Verdelot’s music after about 1530. He was definitely dead some
time before 1552 for Ortenzio Landi (Sette libri de cathalogi, 1552)
wrote: ‘Verdelot, the Frenchman, was singular in his time’.
A
passage in Doni’s Dialogo della musica seems to imply that by 1544
Verdelot’s music (at least his celebrated setting of Petrarch’s Passer
mio solitario) was already regarded as old-fashioned; but other
16th-century commentators testify that it was still performed and highly
appreciated throughout the 1550s and 60s. His madrigals continued to be
reprinted almost without interruption until 1566. In 1534 Pietro
Aretino wrote approvingly of a performance of four singers and a
lutenist of Divini occhi sereni which, although first published in 1533,
did not appear in an arrangement for lute and voice (by Willaert) until
1536. Andrea Calmo (c1544, in 1548, and c1560) mentioned Verdelot among
great madrigal composers, including Arcadelt, Willaert, Rore and
Perissone Cambio. Around 1549 Antonfrancesco Grazzini (‘il Lasca’) spoke
of young people, presumably in Florence, who were singing ‘certain
five-voice madrigals by Verdelot and Arcadelt’. Lodovico Guicciardini
(Descrittione, 1567) included Verdelot among those composers between
Josquin and Clemens non Papa ‘who restored music to its true
perfection’, while Bartoli (Ragionamenti, 1567) believed Verdelot's
madrigals capable of expressing the ‘propriety of words’ with impressive
faithfulness and power.
II. Works.
Both of Verdelot’s
extant masses are related to Richafort’s four-voice motet Philomena
praevia. The Missa Philomena parodies it and quotes its opening point
of imitation as a head-motif in the superius at the beginnings of the
Kyrie, Gloria, Credo and Sanctus, and the motet’s opening motif appears
in the tenor of the five-voice Agnus Dei. The other mass borrows for its
Kyrie several motifs from the secunda pars of Philomena praevia.
(Böker-Heil conjectured that the scribe may have added Verdelot’s name
to the piece in the belief that he was copying Missa Philomena.)
Verdelot wrote about 58 motets, displaying the early 16th-century
preference for this genre. Böker-Heil proposed three main stylistic
phases. In the earliest he included Sancta Maria succurre miseris and Gaudeamus omnes in Domino; their melodic style with conjunct
progressions, considerable melismas, narrow-range and short, closed
phrases resembles that of Mouton (particularly his Non nobis Domine and Ave fuit prima salus, both composed around 1510) and led Böker-Heil to
suggest dates for Verdelot’s early style period as from about 1510 to
about 1520. Tanto tempore vobiscum sum honours Verdelot’s name saint,
Philip, and its opening motif, re re sol, corresponds to the vowels in
‘Verdelot’. Gaudete omnes et letamini is also written in this ‘early’
style. Dunning believed that it was written in celebration of Giulio de’
Medici’s election as Pope Clement VII in November 1523.
The
motets of Böker-Heil’s ‘middle’ period (c1520–25) reveal a more
declamatory style and a concern that the melody should adequately
express textual rhythms. Examples of this later style are Ad Dominum
cum tribularer and Gaudent in celis.
A final mature phase is
evident, chiefly in motets for more than four voices, including O
dulcissime Domine Jesu Christe and Si bona suscepimus and
particularly the motets such as Congregati sunt and Letamini in
Domino which celebrate Florentine revivals of Savonarola’s theological
and political doctrines during the last republic or relate to the
plague, famine and strife that beset Florence between 1527 and 1530. All
are characterized by fewer rhythmic contrasts and melismas in
non-imitative passages, longer note values, short phrases often
emphasizing one note and rarely exceeding a 5th or a 6th in compass, and
close attention to the unifying of text and music, both accentually and
symbolically.
Although not as prolific as Josquin, Mouton,
Gombert, Clemens non Papa or Willaert, Verdelot nonetheless influenced
his contemporaries and later motet and mass composers. Among others,
Arcadelt, Palestrina, Gombert, Lassus and Morales parodied his motets.
Si bona suscepimus appeared frequently in 16th-century sources: it is
found in at least six printed anthologies, 27 manuscripts and 11
intabulations. In 1545 it even served as theatrical music in a German
play.
The surprisingly small number of chansons by Verdelot
seems to confirm his early departure from France. Seule demeure et
despourvue is closer stylistically to Josquin than to the later
Parisian chanson and Qui la dira la peine, a virtuoso quadruple canon
(8 ex 4), resembles the work of Mouton. The addition of a voice to an
existing work, Janequin’s chanson La guerre, is another retrospective
trait.
Verdelot’s most important contribution is as a pioneer
of the genre of the madrigal. His partial setting of Petrarch’s sonnet Non pò far morte ’l dolce viso amaro appeared in the first printed
book of madrigals (the Fossombrone fragment) around 1520. The piece
bears the hallmarks of the earliest madrigals: largely homophonic
texture and syllabic text setting with a heavy reliance on melodic and
rhythmic repetition. In these features Haar (1981) saw traces of the
frottola, the improvisatory tradition and also the French chanson of the
early 16th century (as represented in the early Petrucci prints) – all
genres that have been thought to be sources for the early madrigal
style. Two Florentine manuscripts (I-Bc Q21, copied c1526, and the
Newberry-Oscott partbooks, c1528), both copied by Giovanpietro Masaconi,
together with a single alto partbook of Northern Italian provenance
(US-NH Misc.Ms179, c1525), contain many other early settings for four to
six voices. Many were composed in Florence and Medicean Rome around
1520–27, although called madrigals only in collections printed from
1530.
Occasions and composition dates can be conjectured for
several of the madrigals. The homophonic setting of Panfilo Sasso’s
strambotto Quando madonna io veng' a contemplarte may have been composed
as early as around 1520: not only are some of its stylistic features
typical of strambotto settings in Petrucci’s and Antico’s early books,
but its cantus part is included together with a lira da braccio in a
female portrait (Rome, Spada Gallery, no.52) by an unidentified artist
of north central Italy, perhaps Paolo Morando (‘Il Cavazzola’) who died
in 1522 (Slim, 1988). Haymè ch’abandonato and Mandàti qui d'Amor may
have been carnival songs for Florence, and if so, would date from about
1522–7. Ardenti miei sospiri and Non mai donna più bella, naming the
courtesan Tullia d’Aragona, and «Tu che potevi sol» may have been
inspired by Verdelot’s visit to Rome in 1523–4. Amor io sento l’alma, a
setting of Machiavelli’s ballata to his mistress Barbera Salutati, dates
from about 1523–7.
Five madrigals in the Newberry-Oscott
partbooks have texts by Machiavelli, four of them setting canzoni from
his plays, La Clizia and La Mandragola, first performed with their
canzoni in 1525 and 1526 respectively. (Machiavelli, in a letter of 3
January 1526, mentioned that the canzoni of La Mandragola had already
been set to music.) Verdelot also set choruses to two Florentine
tragedies, Orfeo’s lament by Poliziano and Tullia by Ludovico Martelli;
Slim (1983) suggested that the latter chorus, Quante lagrime, aimè,
quanti sospiri, was probably composed ‘in the mid-1520s when Martelli
and Verdelot were both in Florence’. Three pieces (Italia, Italia,
ch’hai sì longamente, Italia mia benché ’l parlar and Trist’Amarilli
mia) date from after the sack of Rome in 1527.
There are many
problems in the attribution of these pieces to Verdelot. Out of a corpus
of about 147 madrigals, ten bear unsolved conflicting attributions to
leading contemporaries and another 48 appear anonymously in printed and
manuscript collections in which, admittedly, Verdelot is the best
represented composer. Of the anonymous works, six survive only in
manuscript (three uniquely in the Newberry-Oscott partbooks), 29 are
mostly in printed anthologies of various genres, and the remaining 13
are unique in the so-called Primo libro a cinque, of which only two
parts are extant (without frontispiece, index or attributions) and only
seven pieces of 21 can be confidently attributed to Verdelot based on
concordances with other sources. Similarities of style among the early
madrigalists make definitive ascriptions difficult, but it is possible
to be reasonably certain about authorship in some cases.
The
madrigals are set to a wide variety of poetic forms: ballatas, canzoni
and their derivatives, 16th-century madrigals, sonnets (sometimes
shortened), ottave rime, Trecento-like madrigals and villottas; there is
one capitolo (O pessimo destino), one hybrid form similar to that of a
canto carnascialesco (Haymè ch’abandonato) and two works are in prose
(O singular dolcezza and Chi bussa?). The early madrigal was
sometimes strophic. Five canzoni and two ballatas have more than one
stanza in their poetic sources; La bella donna a cui donasti’ il core
requires its ensuing stanzas in order to make grammatical sense. The
majority of the poetic texts are of a clear petrarchist bent and are
dedicated to the sufferings of love, they make generous use of
antithesis, oxymoron and more or less obvious sexual metaphor.
It is possible to identify two opposing tendencies in Verdelot’s
musico-poetic exegesis: one formalist and little interested in a deep
‘reading’ of the poetic text, and the other more experimental and
already modern in expression. (These two approaches cannot, however, be
associated with distinct ‘phases’ of a linear stylistic development like
that reported by Böker-Heil in regards to the composer’s sacred
production.) In many ways Verdelot’s compositional practice is not very
different from that of his contemporaries active in Florence and Rome.
Homophonic chordal writing, sometime with textual declamation lightly
staggered, is employed with the same frequency as imitative
counterpoint, with ample display of florid melismatic figuration and
decorated cadences (especially in the five- and six-voice madrigals);
not infrequently the two types of writing alternate in the same setting.
Each poetic line is set by a single musical phrase, delimited more or
less clearly by cadences; similar cadential figures, or cadences on the
same pitch, are often used to emphasize textual assonance (Dentr’al mio
cor is one of the most notable examples). A high degree of tonal
coherence, a tendency towards a restricted melodic ambitus, a
straightforward harmonic language, substantial rhythmic uniformity and
the recurrence of small rhythmic and melodic fragments (or even entire
phrases and sections, which in some pieces give a semi-strophic
character) are among the expedients adopted to assure unity of form and
affect. Also typical is the adoption of cadential extensions in a
function of closure, a technique already found in the motet and chanson
of the period, but used here to expressive as well as structural ends.
The use of musical pictorialism, dissonance and false relations is still
contained and usually involves only a few key words, never seriously
disturbing the unity of the overall affect. While usually showing an
acute sensibility to the poetic text, Verdelot does not always
demonstrate an interest in preserving its intelligibility. The text of
Donna la fiamma sete, for example, is obscured by the pervasive
superimposition of different verses. Indeed, he sometimes seems little
interested in the poem's content, as, for example, in the unusually
restrained settings of two laments, Occhi infelici and La dolce vista
e ’l bel sguardo soave. Often the demands of superficial formal
symmetry or textual metre and prosody take precedence over expressive
considerations.
Elsewhere Verdelot experimented with every
possible compositional technique to exegetical and expressive ends. He
had at his disposal a rich cadential vocabulary – innovations such as
the deceptive and ‘evaporated’ cadence as well as the established
plagal, phrygian and half cadences – which he used in a highly
expressive manner. He also made extensive use of contrasting textures,
especially in the five- and six-part madrigals. Even in the four-voice
works, sudden reductions to a three-voice quasi-fauxbourdon texture are
used in a way that looks forward to the madrigals of Rore and even
Monteverdi. Also forward-looking is his treatment of syllabic
declamation with an attention to the text that approaches the later
‘recitative’ style, most evident in the four-voice works (La bella man
mi porse is a good example).
Like his motets, Verdelot’s
madrigals were widely known throughout the 16th century. In the
Intavolatura of 1536, Willaert edited personally the arrangement for
lute of 22 pieces from the Primo libro; Claudio Merulo, in the last,
1566 edition of Verdelot’s first two four-voice collections, tried to
adapt them to later taste. Parody by other madrigalists, including
Arcadelt, Berchem, Scotto, Gero and Doni, was also frequent. Razzi used
«Quanto sia lieto il giorno» for several laudi. There are parody masses
by Berchem, Guerrero, G. Alberti and Monte and A. Rosso.»
This little madrigal is an absolutely masterwork. The beggining is fantastic, with homophonic witting.
His four-parts are imbricated in wonderful manner. On only few bars, this pieces borns and ends in an unique melodic arc.
The performance of Alamire | David Skinner is absolutely amazing. All
lines are delicate and elegant in highest degree. The character of this
piece is easily assumed.
A wonderful example of music can be brief but incredibly intense.
