Madrigals, Part 4

Il quarto libro de madrigali a cinque voci, the fourth of six books of madrigals by the Florentine composer Marco da Gagliano, was published in 1606. The book is distinguished by the excellence of its music as well as by its varied settings of texts by some of the most celebrated poets of the day. Five of the madrigals use texts by Giovanni Battista Guarini, three by Giambattista Marino, one each by Gabriello Chiabrera, Cosimo Galletti, and Alsaldo Cebà, and a final two-part madrigal for six voices sets a sonnet by the great fourteenth-century poet Francesco Petrarca. In addition to fourteen madrigals by Gagliano, the book contains three by guest composers Luca Bati and Giovanni and Lorenzo Del Turco. Gagliano's madrigals in book 4, in contrast with those of his earlier books, are lighter and show the clear influence of the contemporary canzonetta, which is manifested in their brevity; the discrete sectioning of the music, frequently with concurrent rests in all the voices that separate the presentation of individual poetic lines; the omnipresent syllabic setting of words; and the simpler and shorter motives that are most often presented in a homophonic texture. In some of these madrigals, motives shaped by the melody and rhythm of spoken language might serve well in monodies. Indeed, in his magisterial study of the madrigal, Alfred Einstein went so far as to suggest that some of these madrigals have the effect of polyphonic, imitative arrangements of Florentine monodies.

Madrigals, Part 6

Il sesto libro de madrigali a cinque voci, Marco da Gagliano's final book in the genre, was published in 1617, nine years after its predecessor. In the book's dedication Gagliano indicated that its music was composed the year before, and not earlier in the gap between the two books. Book 6 was popular enough that it was reprinted in 1620, and although he lived another twenty-six years, Gagliano published no more madrigals. There are sixteen compositions in the book, fourteen of them by Gagliano, one by Lodovico Arrighetti, and one by an unnamed composer who was most certainly Ferdinando Gonzaga, duke of Mantua. The poets now recognized as authors of the texts are Giovanni Battista Guarini, Torquato Tasso, Francesco Petrarca, Ottavio Rinuccini, Gabriello Chiabrera, Gasparo Murtola, and Antonio Ongaro. In the diversity of their style, the madrigals of the Sesto libro provide a conspectus of the compositional craft evinced in Gagliano's earlier books: now the rush and brevity of canzonetta-influenced madrigals like those in the fourth and fifth books stand next to madrigals with the more traditional manner of text setting so often found in his first three books. There is also a drinking song that alternates duets with a refrain and a seven-voiced concertato piece, both taken from Medici court entertainments. One of the most telling madrigals in the book, “Filli, mentre ti bacio,” is an abbreviation and a recasting of the madrigal as it appears in his Primo libro, thereby disclosing the remarkable change in Gagliano's aesthetic thinking about the genre during the fifteen years that lie between his first and last books. Shortly after the appearance of the Sesto libro, a vicious attack on its madrigals and on Gagliano himself was made by Mutio Effrem. Although its condemnation of the book on theoretical grounds is misguided and without merit, Effrem's Censure seems to have damaged Gagliano's standing in Florence and to some degree may have influenced his decision to abandon the genre.

El animus de Francesco Petrarca: Materiales para una reconstrucción del vínculo de lo humano con el mundo

El signo de los tiempos indica una crisis existencial en la cultura occidental que se presenta, primero, hay una discontinuidad entre la experiencia subjetiva y el mundo, que a su vez se despliega en el mundo, específicamente en las problemáticas descritas en su dimensión ecológica y productiva. Por otro parte, hemos sido testigos del desplome de las narrativas que pretendieron cohesionar el mundo en un relato universal. En ese estado de cosas, este texto plantea la necesidad de incorporar narrativas capaces de actuar en todos los niveles de profundidad en los que opera el problema que aqueja a la humanidad contemporánea. Por ese motivo se revisarán los alcances ontológicos descritos en un soneto del poeta italiano Francesco Petrarca para conocer el estatuto de la humanidad en la cosmovisión del Renacimiento, gracias a la comprensión de su órgano primordial que es el corazón, el hegemonikon. Gracias a esto Occidente tiene la oportunidad de incorporar esta pieza perdida en la historia, lo cual proveerá nuevos materiales que provienen de una cosmovisión en la que lo humano estuvo arraigado al cosmos, todo para responder a un problema que es primeramente ontológico, es decir, que interroga la naturaleza y los alcances de la humanidad.

El medio es el paisaje: separación, acción, contemplación en el cine

El paisaje es “parte de una tierra” (en alemán landschaft, en inglés landscape) o “representación de un lugar” (en francés paysage, en italiano paesaggio). En ambos casos es el resultado de una selección de la realidad. Esta selección se realiza a partir de un sujeto. Históricamente, en Europa, el sujeto nace con el Humanismo: el hombre se percibe como separado de la naturaleza. El poeta Francesco Petrarca en 1336 observa la naturaleza desde lo alto de un cerro y, en una carta, describe las sensaciones que esta visión le provoca. La naturaleza se percibe a través de una cultura. A partir de aquel momento, la historia del paisaje es una historia de los medios de comunicación que separan al sujeto de la naturaleza, intensificando por lo tanto el paisaje mismo. La pintura de paisaje es un medium loci. La fotografía es un médium mecánico. El cine es un médium mecánico aun más abultado y poderoso. Por lo tanto el paisaje construido por el cine de los comienzos es la cumbre del paisaje como representación de un sujeto que se aleja de la naturaleza y la observa. El paisaje renace en lo sucesivo con el cine moderno (en especial el del Neorrealismo) cuando algunos personajes dejan de realizar acciones (como en el cine clásico) y se ponen a contemplar. El concepto de paisaje como naturaleza percibida a través de una cultura deviene con el cine el concepto de paisaje como realidad (extensión de la naturaleza: paisaje urbano, paisaje industrial) percibida a través de un médium; el médium mismo nos enseña a mirar el espacio físico y a transformarlo en un ambiente narrativo o un paisaje contemplativo.

The Mutilated Text

This chapter explores the history and affordances of personifying unfinished or materially altered books as violated and dismembered human beings. While medieval book catalogs sometimes alerted readers to books with partial contents, early Italian humanists such as Francesco Petrarca, Poggio Bracciolini, Leonardo Bruni, and Angelo Poliziano forged a new language for textual loss, using metaphors of mutilation to register their grief and to announce their project of cultural repair. Appropriating classical myths of dispersal and reassembly to lament damage done by the ravages of time, humanists cast the scholar-critic in the redemptive role of physician and healer, inventing in turn some the tropes for thinking about lost texts that textual critics still use today. If humanists shifted the language of mutilation from the book’s integrity to the text’s correctness, what poetic language do we use to register and experience textual loss in the digital age?