The Sacre Rappresentazioni
Leaving D'Ancona, Vasari and the others in their confusion of dates, we
find ourselves provided with a satisfactory point of departure and with
some facts well defined. The drift of Provençal ideas over the borders
into Lombardy may or may not have given some impetus to the growth of
certain forms in Tuscany and Umbria, but at any rate it is clear that
the Italian form of "Sacre Rappresentazioni" grew chiefly out of the
poetic form called "Laud."
This itself was one of the products of a religious emotion. To observe
it in its cradle we must go back to the beginnings of Italian
literature. The seemingly endless battle between Emperor and Pope, which
scarred the soul of Italy through so many years, was at that time raging
between Frederick II and Innocent III and Gregory IX. The land reeked
with carnage, rapine, murder, fire and famine. So great was the force of
all this that the people fell into a state of religious terror. They
believed that the vengeance of a wrathful God must immediately descend
upon the country, and as a penance the practice of flagellation was
introduced.
Against this horrible atonement came a violent reaction, and out of the
reaction attempts to continue in a soberer and more rational form the
propitiatory ideas of the flagellants. The chief furtherers of these
reforms were lay fraternities, calling themselves Disciplinati di Gesu
Cristo. From the very outset these fraternities practised the singing of
hymns in Italian, instead of Latin, the church language. These hymns
dealt chiefly with the Passion. They were called "Lauds" and they had a
rude directness and unlettered force which the Latin hymns never
possessed. Presently the disciplinati became known as Laudesi. The
master maker of "Lauds" was Jacopone da Todi and his most significant
production took the form of a dialogue between Mary and the Savior on
the cross, followed by the lamentation of the mother over her Son. Mary
at one point appeals to Pilate, but is interrupted by the chorus of
Jews, crying "Crucify him!" Many other "Lauds," however, were rather
more in the manner of short songs than in that of the subsequently
developed cantata. The music employed was without doubt that of the
popular songs of the time. It appears to have made no difference to the
Italians what kind of tune they employed. They "sang the same strambotti
to the Virgin and the lady of their love, to the rose of Jericho and the
red rose of the balcony."
Here, then, we find a significant difference between the liturgical
drama and the sacred representations. The chant, which was the musical
garb of the former appears to have had no position in the latter. We
shall perceive later that this difference marked a point of departure
from which the entire lyric drama of the fourteenth, fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, prior to the invention of dramatic recitative by
the Florentines, proceeded to move in a musical world of its own.
The sacred representations built up a method complex and pregnant
without chancing upon the defining element of opera. And this result was
reached chiefly, if not solely, because the ecclesiastic chant was not
employed. In its stead the musical forms practised by composers of
secular music and adopted by musicians of such small education as hardly
to be worthy of the title of composers, makers of carnival songs and
frottole, predominated and determined the musical character not only of
the Sacre Rappresentazioni, but also of the secular lyric plays which
succeeded them and which continued to exist in Italy even after the
"stile rappresentativo" had been introduced in the primitive dramma per
musica of Caccini and Peri.
A closer examination of the songs of this period and of the manner in
which they affected the lyric character of the sacred plays and the
succeeding secular dramas may be postponed until we have permitted
ourselves a glance at the character of the sacred plays as literary
products and have taken into account the manner of their performance.
The Disciplinati di Gesu began by intoning their lauds before a crucifix
or the shrine of some saint. Presently they introduced antiphonal
singing and in the end dialogue and action. By the middle of the
fourteenth century the laud came to be called "Divozione." After being
written in a number of meters it finally adhered to the _ottava rima_,
the stanza generally used in the popular poetry of the fifteenth
century. It was the custom to sing these dramatic lauds or "Divozioni"
in the oratories. Every fraternity had a collection of such lauds and
that they were performed with much detail is easily ascertained.
Records of the Perugian Confraternity of San Domenico for 1339 show that
wings and crowns for angels, a crimson robe for Christ, black veils for
the Maries, a coat of mail for Longinus, a dove to symbolize the Holy
Ghost and other properties had been used. By 1375 the "Divozioni" were
acted in church on a specially constructed stage, built against the
screen separating the choir from the nave. The audience sat in the nave,
and a preacher from time to time made explanations and comments. The
stage had two stories, the upper of which was reserved for celestial
beings.
The "Divozione" appears to be, as Symonds declares it to be, the Italian
variety of liturgical drama. The Sacra Rappresentazione, which was
developed from it, was a very different affair. Just when these
representations took definite individual form is not known, but the
period of their high development was from 1470 to 1520. It was precisely
at this time that their entire apparatus was adapted to the
dramatization of secular stories and the secular lyric drama came into
existence.
This whole subject has been exhaustively treated by John Addington
Symonds in the fourth volume in his great work "The Renaissance in
Italy." He examines briefly, but suggestively, D'Ancona's theory, that
the "Sacre Rappresentazioni" resulted from a blending of the Umbrian
divozioni with the civic pageants of St. John's Day in Florence. Civic
pageants were common and in them sacred and profane elements were
curiously mingled. For example, "Perugia gratified Eugenius IV in 1444
with the story of the Minotaur, the tragedy of Iphigenia, the Nativity
and the Ascension."
In the great midsummer pageant of St. John's Day there were twenty-two
floats with scenery and actors to represent such events as the Delivery
of the Law to Moses, the Creation, the Temptation, etc. The machinery of
those shows was so elaborate that the cathedral plaza was covered with a
blue awning to represent the heavens, while wooden frames, covered with
wool and lighted up, represented clouds amid which various saints
appeared. Iron supports bore up children dressed as angels and the whole
was made to "move slowly on the backs of bearers concealed beneath the
frame."
We are justified in inferring that ability to supply an elaborate scenic
investiture for the sacred drama was not wanting. When the sacred plays
began to be written, their authors were for the most part persons of no
distinction, but Lorenzo de Medici wrote one and Pulci also contributed
to this form of art. The best writers, according to Symonds, were Feo
Belcari and Castellano Castellani.
The sacred plays were not divided into acts, but the stage directions
make it plain that scenes were changed. The dramas were not very
artistic in structure. The story was set forth baldly and simply, and
the language became stereotyped. The "success of the play," says
Symonds, "depended on the movement of the story, and the attractions of
the scenery, costumes and music."
Symonds describes at some length "Saint Uliva" and the interludes of
Cecchi's "Esaltazione della Croce." The latter belongs to 1589, but it
is almost certain that the manner of presentation was traditional. That
similar splendors might have been exhibited in the fifteenth century we
shall see later. Symonds thus describes the introduction to the
"Esaltazione." A skilful architect turned the field of San Giovanni into
a theater, covered with a red tent. The rising of the curtain showed
Jacob asleep with his head resting on rocks, while he wore a shirt of
fine linen and cloth of silver stockings and had costly furs thrown over
him. As he slept the heavens opened and seven angels appeared sitting on
clouds and making "a most pleasant noise with horns, greater and less
viols, lutes and organ.... The music of this and all the other
interludes was the composition of Luca Bati, a man of this art most
excellent." After this celestial music another part of the heavens
opened and disclosed God the Father. A ladder was let down, and God
leaning upon it "sang majestically to the sound of many instruments in a
sonorous bass voice."
The other interludes were also filled with scenic and musical effects.
For instance one showed the ecstasy of David, dancing before the ark "to
the sound of a large lute, a violin, a trombone, but more especially to
his own harp." These references to the employment of many instruments in
accompanying the voice or the dance make us wonder whether our
historical stories of the birth and development of the orchestra are
well grounded. But we shall have occasion to consider this matter more
fully when we approach the study of the musical apparatus of the first
lyric dramas. It may be noted, however, in passing that the Italian word
"violino" was used as late as 1597 to designate the tenor viol. This
instance of uncertainty in terminology warns us to be careful in
accepting all things literally.
Perhaps what is of greater significance is the fact that there seems to
have been more uniformity of effort and style in the first secular
drama, doubtless owing to its great superiority as a piece of literary
art. That sacred plays were seldom written by men of literary rank and
ability we have already noted. That they were long drawn out,
cumbersome, disjointed and quite without dramatic design has also been
indicated. Their real significance as forerunners of opera lies in their
insistent employment of certain materials, such as verse, music and
spectacular action, which afterwards became essential parts of the
machinery of the lyric drama.
Indeed in the profusion of spectacular interludes one finds much that
resembles not only opera, but also the English masque and sometimes even
the French pastoral. Yet close examination will convince any student of
operatic history that almost every form of theatrical performance, from
the choral dance to the most elaborate festival show, exerted a certain
amount of influence on the hybrid product called opera. For example,
between the acts of "Saint Uliva," which required two days for its
presentation, the "Masque of Hope" was given. The stage directions say:
"You will cause three women, well beseen, to issue, one of them attired
in white, one in red, the other in green, with golden balls in their
hands, and with them a young man robed in white; and let him, after
looking many times first on one and then on another of these damsels, at
last stay still and say the following verses, gazing at her who is clad
in green." The story of Echo and Narcissus was also enacted and the
choir of nymphs which carried off the dead youth had a song beginning
thus:
"Fly forth in bliss to heaven,
Thou happy soul and fair."
On the other hand some few sacred plays showed skill in the treatment of
character. The "Mary Magdalen" is one of these. The Magdalen is
portrayed with power and even passion. But the general purpose of the
sacred play, which was to instruct the populace in the stories of Bible
history, precluded the exercise of high literary imagination. Fancy and
the taste of the time seem to have governed the fashioning of these
plays. Their historic importance thus becomes much larger than their
artistic value. Their close approach to the character of early opera is
beyond question.