Vocal Genres in Italy at the Turn of 16th and 17th Centuries: The Birth of the Monodic Style

Author(s):  
Ildikó Heltai-Duffek

This essay examines vocal genres at the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th, such as the villanella, aria, motet, madrigal and opera. The changing features of the genres, which include the monodic style and the recitative are at the centre of these changes. The features of the late Renaissance, for example, notation ornaments, and the Early Baroque period are beginning to be formed in those changes. By demonstrating these changes, the essay offers audiences and performers an opportunity to know and understand better the vocal music of this time and to perform it authenticly. Keywords: monody, madrigal, motet, ornaments, Italy

2019 ◽  
Vol 66 (1 SELECTED PAPERS IN ENGLISH) ◽  
pp. 19-31
Author(s):  
Barbara Niebelska-Rajca

The Polish version of the article was published in “Roczniki Humanistyczne,” vol. 59 (2011), issue 1. Modern theoretical-literary treatises, defined as normative poetics, are usually connected with the dominance of the convention and normativism, with obligatory rules, canonical concepts and restrictive directives hampering originality. The present text tries to revise the conviction that convention is a dominant tendency in the development of the old theoretical thought; it tends to show the avant-garde aspects of modern poetics and to present the relations between what is conventional and what is innovative in the most original theoretical texts of late Renaissance and Baroque. Examples of two avant-garde modern poetics—Francesco Patrizi’s theory of wonder formed at the end of the 16th century and the 17th century Emanuele Tesauro’s conceptistic theory—show that tradition and convention are necessary elements of inventive theories. The avant-garde of poetics of the past, contrary to the avant-garde of the 20th century, is not born from the defiance of the earlier theories but is formed by way of modernizing and transforming them. Old inventive theories—despite all the departures from tradition—are still part of the classical paradigm. Hence, the avant-garde character of late-Renaissance and Baroque theoretical reflection consists in a peculiar synergy of convention and novelty.


2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-14
Author(s):  
Kovács András

The on-going restoration works of the Făgăraș castle have revealed a carved stone measuring approximately 70×100 cm, which bears the fragment of the coat of arms of Gabriel Bethlen, prince of Transylvania between 1613 and 1629. By comparison with the stamps used by the prince one can date the heraldic composition quite accurately between 1618 and 1619. In the afore-mentioned period, written sources attest certain construction works for the enlargement of the residence within the fortress, in the area of the Red-tower. Late renaissance window frames, adorned with ornamental gables were fitted at the second floor of the western wing, erected by Gabriel Bethlen as well as at the same level of the southern wing, towards the loggia built by Balthasar Báthory (1561– 1594). The afore-mentioned, late medieval cylindrical tower had been heightened towards the end of the 16th century with octagonal storeys topped by an open platform with crenellated parapet. Under prince Gabriel Bethlen the platform was closed and transformed into a summer chamber for the prince. A stonemason from Cluj, Stephan Diószegi carved these frames, as well as the triple window frames of the Red-tower, in Cluj. He must have carved the recently found coat of arms as well, which was set aside presumably around 1639-1640, during the construction of the chapel at the first floor of the western wing.


Muzikologija ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 151-175
Author(s):  
Milena Medic

In the Renaissance period, melancholia emerged as a dramatic cultural phenomenon among the intellectual and artistic elites, with a locus in elegy it gave form to the Renaissance poetics of loss, pain and shedding of tears, expressing essentially the fantasy about death as a prerequisite for revival. The possibilities of confronting the threats of death were being found in its very nature whose inherent ambiguity was determined by the principles of Thanatos and Eros. The creative act of the troping of elegy proved to be an effective literary and musical strategy for the transcendence of death including the procedures of homeopathization, pastoralization, heroization and erotization of elegy. The elegiac tropic transcendence of death found its most complex expression in the madrigal which in turn added to its basic polyphonic procedure the opposing stylistic elements of the pastoral genres (canzonettas and villanellas) or heroic solo or choral recitations and it consequently acquired a hybrid form in the last decades of the 16th century, and thereby proved to be a cultural trope itself. The aim of this article is to examine the musical implications of the tropic strategies of facing death within Francesco Petrarch?s, Torquato Tasso?s, and Battista Gurini?s poetic models of the art of loving death, using the remarkable examples of the Italian madrigal practice of the late Renaissance.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-20
Author(s):  
Mykola Bevz

The town of Zhovkva (Żółkiew) belongs to the late Renaissance foundations of private resident cities in Halychyna in the late 16th century. Urban-spatial structure of the town was designed according to the Renaissance ideal city. The city consisted of two conjugated parts: the owner’s castle and the fortified downtown. The combination of these two parts was of a specific nature – when the central square of the town is combined with the facade of the castle complex. On the base of the historical and urban studies presented the hypothesis that town of Zhovkva (Żółkiew) is an unique example of late Renaissance urbanism. The start of town build was in 1594 according to a project based on the concept of “ideal town”. We are thinking, that the author of the project and plan of town was Paolo Clamensi – Italian architect, worked in Lviv at the end of 16th century. The towns have a well-preserved original Renaissance planning structure and a number of architectural monuments that are connected with it. Reconstruction of the original historical town plan allows us to express the hypothesis of its similarity to the projects of cities published in the treatise of the Italian architect of the 16th century Pietro Cataneo.


Author(s):  
Jakub Niedzwiedz

The paper is devoted to the problem of imitation of maps in the late Renaissance Polish poetry (between 1580 and 1630). The author first discusses the special interest in cartography that existed among the Polish elite and poets of the period. The main thesis of the paper is that poets widely used map-based techniques in constructing their poems. Imitation (imitatio) played a crucial role in this process. To illustrate this concept, the author analyses the work of five poets: S.F. Klonowic, K. Miaskowski, S. Petrycy, M.K. Sarbiewski and Sz. Szymonowic. Looking at the shared topoi used in poems and maps and investigating how the late Renaissance poets described the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, allows the author to draw a similarity between controlling space in poetry and maps. This suggests the idea of ruling over space might be related to the 16th-century idea of a God-like poet.


Music ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Bane

The air de cour (courtly song) is a genre of secular vocal music produced in France during the late 16th and first half of the 17th century. The term first appeared in a collection of twenty-two solo vocal pieces with lute accompaniment published in Paris in 1571 by Adrian Le Roy. Le Roy stated that the origins of the new genre lay in the courtly appropriation of a popular vocal form, the vaudeville, and contrasted its lightness and simplicity with the “arduous” chansons of Orlande de Lassus. These and subsequent airs de cour are marked by brief, usually bipartite forms, limited vocal ranges, homophonic textures, strophic texts, syllabic text settings, and the elevated, serious tone of poetry. Unlike Le Roy’s airs, however, most 16th-century examples are for four or five voices without lute accompaniment. Some also exhibit rhythmic features suggestive of musique mesurée à l’antique. The genre peaked in both production and popularity during the reign of Louis XIII (1610–1643). Many of the era’s preeminent composers contributed to the genre, including Pierre Guédron, Antoine Boësset, and Étienne Moulinié. Airs de cour of the 17th century appeared in three forms, all published by the Ballard firm: four- or five-voice polyphony; arrangements of polyphonic airs de cour for solo voice with lute or guitar accompaniment (the most popular form); and solo voice without accompaniment of any kind. The poetic texts of airs de cour are usually anonymous, and they most often treat themes of love with a limited and precious vocabulary then current among courtly circles. A number of 17th-century editors also produced sacred parodies of popular airs de cour. Amateur musicians were the primary audience of airs de cour, but professional singers performed them as well, often with improvised ornaments and diminutions. Around mid-century the air de cour began to lose ground to new vocal genres in France, in particular the air sérieux, which featured more regular meters and basso continuo accompaniment intended for theorbo or harpsichord. Despite its disappearance from French music publishing, the reserved melodies, conservative harmony, and poetic language forged in the air de cour continued to undergird French vocal music throughout the 17th century and into the 18th. This bibliography limits itself to the air de cour proper, excluding both the air sérieux and the minor vocal genres (such as the chanson à boire, chanson à danser, and récit de ballet) contemporaneous with the air de cour.


2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mykola Bevz

The town of Zhovkva (Żółkiew) belongs to the late Renaissance foundations of private resident towns in Western Ukraine (Halychyna region) from the late 16th century. In accordance with historical sources, this city was founded by Stanisław Żółkiewski [2] in 1594. Urban-spatial structure of the town was designed according to the Renaissance ideal city. The city has a well-preserved original planning structure and a number of architectural monuments that are associated with it. The city consisted of two conjugated parts: the owner’s castle and the fortifi ed middletown. The combination of these two parts was of a specifi c nature – when the central square of the town is combined with the facade of the castle complex. On the base of the historical and urban studies presented the hypothesis that town of Zhovkva (Żółkiew) is an unique example of late Renaissance urbanism. The start of town build was in 1594 according to a project based on the concept of “ideal town” from the book of Italian architect Pietro Cataneo. We are thinking, that the author of the project and plan of town was Paolo Clamensi – Italian architect, worked in Lviv at the end of 16th century. The towns have a well-preserved original Renaissance planning structure and a number of architectural monuments that are connected with it.


Author(s):  
L.E. Murr ◽  
V. Annamalai

Georgius Agricola in 1556 in his classical book, “De Re Metallica”, mentioned a strange water drawn from a mine shaft near Schmölnitz in Hungary that eroded iron and turned it into copper. This precipitation (or cementation) of copper on iron was employed as a commercial technique for producing copper at the Rio Tinto Mines in Spain in the 16th Century, and it continues today to account for as much as 15 percent of the copper produced by several U.S. copper companies.In addition to the Cu/Fe system, many other similar heterogeneous, electrochemical reactions can occur where ions from solution are reduced to metal on a more electropositive metal surface. In the case of copper precipitation from solution, aluminum is also an interesting system because of economic, environmental (ecological) and energy considerations. In studies of copper cementation on aluminum as an alternative to the historical Cu/Fe system, it was noticed that the two systems (Cu/Fe and Cu/Al) were kinetically very different, and that this difference was due in large part to differences in the structure of the residual, cement-copper deposit.


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