Influence of the Taste for Comedy
An illuminative fact in the history of the madrigal drama is the growth
of the comic element. Poliziano's dream of Arcadia was perhaps neither
deep nor passionate, but it was at any rate serious and for some time
after its production the lyric drama aspired to the utterance of high
sentiments. But the incongruous mingling of Arcadian shepherds and
shepherdesses with the gods and heroes of the classic literature in a
series of musical actions, conceived with the desire to gratify that
passionate sensuality which governed Italian thought, was sure in time
to lead the typical insincerity and satiric view-point of the Italian
mind to the delights of physical realism, and the free publication of
mocking comment. Photographic musical imitations of the noises of
battles, the songs of birds and the cries of a great city were certain
to be succeeded by the adaptation to the uses of dramatic action of the
musical means developed in these and this adaptation led the way
directly into the realm of the comic lyric drama.
The pomp and circumstance of the gorgeous spectacles which we examined
in the preceding chapter were cherished by the traditions of the Italian
court stage and were not obliterated even in the new species of lyric
comedy. But there was far less to dazzle the eye in the comic
performances, and even in this they offered a certain novelty to the
consideration of Italian audiences. The court spectacles, to be sure,
did not go out of existence. We meet them in all their brilliancy in the
early years of the seventeenth century, and at the same time we find
them copied in a somewhat modified form in the spectacular productions
of the young Italian opera houses. On the other hand, when the
Florentine coterie created dramatic recitative, it was to use it in a
drama wholly serious and poetic in purpose. It was not till some years
later that recitative acquired sufficient flexibility to fit itself into
the plan of the rapidly growing opera buffa. Yet even in this lyric
species we discern something of the large influence of the humorous
madrigal play, for in time the comic opera and the ballet spectacle both
found homes after public opera houses had been thrown open to an eager
public. Physical realism, the humors of the streets and satiric assaults
upon the life of the courts made excellent materials for the
entertainment of the Italian mind, especially at such a time as the
close of the sixteenth century, when the country had reached the
completion of that state described by Symonds:
"The intellectual and social life of the Italians, though much
reduced in vigor, was therefore still, as formerly, concentrated in
cities marked by distinct local qualities and boastful of their
ancient glories. The courts of Ferrara and Urbino continued to form
centers for literary and artistic coteries. Venice remained the
stronghold of mental unrestraint and moral license, where thinkers
uttered their thoughts with tolerable freedom and libertines
indulged their tastes unhindered. Rome early assumed novel airs of
piety, and external conformity to austere patterns became the
fashion here. Yet the Papal capital did not wholly cease to be the
resort of students and artists. The universities maintained
themselves in a respectable position--far different, indeed, from
that which they had held in the last century, yet not ignoble. Much
was being learned on many lines of study divergent from those
prescribed by earlier humanists. Padua, in particular, distinguished
itself for medical researches. This was the flourishing time,
moreover, of Academies in which, notwithstanding nonsense talked and
foolish tastes indulged, some solid work was done for literature and
science. The names of the Cimento, Delia Crusca and Palazzo Vernio
at Florence remind us of not unimportant labors in physics, in the
analysis of language, and in the formation of a new dramatic style
of music. At the same time the resurgence of popular literature and
the creation of popular theatrical types deserved to be particularly
noticed. It is as though the Italian nation at this epoch,
suffocated by Spanish etiquette and poisoned by Jesuitical
hypocrisy, sought to expand healthy lungs in free spaces of open
air, indulging in dialectical niceties and immortalizing street
jokes by the genius of masked comedy."
We shall perceive, then, in the productions of some representative
masters of the madrigal drama in the latter half of the sixteenth
century, an expression of this Italian eagerness to abandon even the
external attitude of serious contemplation, which the spectacular
delights of the intermezzi and the serious lyric drama had made at least
tolerable, and to turn to the uses of pure amusement the materials of a
clearly defined form of art. We shall find the dramatization of the
chatter of the street and the apparition of types familiar to the
farcical comedies and operas bouffes of later days. In the washerwomen
of Striggio we are not far from _Madame Angot_, and some of the
personages whom Vecchi humorously treated in his "Amfiparnaso" are
treading the stage of to-day. In these madrigal dramas, as we shall see,
the attempts to overcome the musical unsuitability of polyphonic music
to the purposes of dramatic dialogue led composers further and further
from the truth which had stood at the elbows of Poliziano's
contemporaries and immediate successors. Musicians went forward with the
madrigal till they found themselves in Vecchi's day confronted with a
genuine _reductio ad absurdum_. It was only at this time that the
experiments of the Florentines uncovered the profound musical law that
the true dramatic dialogue is to be carried on by single-voiced melodies
resting on a basis of chord harmony.
In the meantime, we must delay our approach to the golden era of the
madrigal drama (when indeed it faced that _reductio_) to look for a
moment at the representative work of a Mantuan master of the lyric
comedy. Alessandro Striggio, born in Mantua, about 1535, died in the
same city in 1587, was for a time in the service of Cosimo, but for at
least fifteen years of his life was known simply as a "gentleman of
Mantua." Striggio was one of the most active and talented of the
composers of his time, and his creations are found in both religious and
secular fields. He utilized instruments freely in connection with voices
and his works give an excellent insight into the general condition of
vocal composition in Italy in his day. He became prominent as one of the
early composers of intermezzi and he was employed also to write church
music for wedding festivals. One of his motets calls for an orchestra of
eight trombones, eight violas, eight large flutes, a spinet and a large
lute. Without doubt his most significant work in the domain of the lyric
drama was "Il Calamento delle Donne al Bucato," published at Florence in
1584.
This is a series of rustic scenes, of which the first begins with an
introductory recitation by the poet, set for four voices: "In the gentle
month of May I found myself by chance near a clear stream where some
troops of women in various poses washed their white linen, and when they
had spread it to the sun on the grass, they chattered thus in lively
repartee, laughing." Then begin the action and the dialogue. The
scenario may be set forth in this wise: boisterous salutations,
hilarious talk and accounts of flirtations; tittle tattle about
neighbors and lively scandals; exchange of commiserations on the
insupportable humor of masters and the fatigue of service; cessation of
laughing, kissing and shouting, the day being ended; quick change of
scene to a levee of washing mallets; one of the women steals a trinket
from another, and a general riot ensues, after which there is a
reconciliation as the sun goes down and the women disperse with
embraces, tender words and cries of adieu.[34]
[Footnote 34: Something suggestive of a similar train of musical
thought is found in some reflections of George Moore on Zola:
"I had read the 'Assomoir,' and had been much impressed by its
pyramid size, strength, height and decorative grandeur, and also
by the immense harmonic development of the idea; and the fugal
treatment of the different scenes had seemed to me astonishingly
new--the washhouse, for example: the fight motive is indicated,
then follows the development of side issues, then comes the fight
motive explained; it is broken off short, it flutters through a
web of progressive detail, the fight motive is again taken up,
and now it is worked out in all its fulness; it is worked up to
_crescendo_, another side issue is introduced, and again the theme
is given forth." ("Confessions of a Young Man.")]
One can have no difficulty in imagining how this story, furnished as it
must have been, with some very free action, was set to music in the
madrigal style. The contrast of moods provides an excellent background
for variety of musical movement and for a generous exercise of the
expressional skill which the composers of that period had acquired.
Lovers of the ballet of action will perceive that the scenario of
Striggio's musical comedy could also serve perfectly for that of a suite
of pantomimic dances.
Nor can the reader fail to discern in this story some of the germs of
the opera buffa. What is lacking here, to wit, the advancing of some
individual characters from the choral mass to the center of the stage,
was better accomplished in the earlier or more serious works. The
Orpheus of Poliziano was doubtless a striking figure in the minds of the
Mantuan audience of 1484. While perhaps there was a distinct decline in
directness of expression in the attempts of later lyric dramatists, the
departure was possibly not as large in the case of the serious writers
as in that of the humorists. We shall in all likelihood better
understand this after a survey of the labors of the dominant figure of
the artistic period of the humorous madrigal drama.