Concerto Delle Donne - Music

Music

The greatest musical innovation of the concerto delle donne was the multiplication of the ornamented upper voices, from one voice singing diminutions above an instrumental accompaniment to two or three voices singing varying diminutions at once. This practice, which listeners found remarkable, was imitated by many composers, including Carlo Gesualdo, Luca Marenzio and Claudio Monteverdi.

These composers wrote music either inspired by the concerto delle donne or specifically for them. Such works are characterized by a high tessitura, a virtuosic and florid style, and a wide range. Lodovico Agostini's third book of madrigals was perhaps the first publication fully dedicated to the new singing style. Agostini dedicated songs to Guarini, Peverara, and Luzzaschi. Gesualdo wrote music for the group in 1594 while visiting Ferrara to marry the Duke's niece Leonora d’Este. De Wert's Seventh Book of Madrigals à 5 and Marenzio's First Book à 6 were the first true musical monuments to the new concerto delle donne. Monteverdi's Canzonette a tre voci was probably influenced by the "Ladies of Ferrara". Although the only works clearly intended for or inspired by the concerto delle donne were works for multiple high voices executing written-out diminutions, in practice concerts with the concerto delle donne included the older style of solo ornamented madrigals with instrumental accompaniment. Peverara was singularly lauded for her skill in this genre. Works written for the concerto delle donne were not limited to music: Torquato Tasso and G.B. Guarini wrote poems dedicated to the ladies in the concerto, some of which were later set by composers. Tasso wrote over seventy-five poems to Peverara alone.

Luzzaschi's book of madrigals for one, two, and three sopranos with keyboard accompaniment, published in 1601, comprises works written throughout the 1580s. This music may have been kept back from publication in order to maintain the secrecy of Alfonso's musica secreta, and to maintain control over it. Newcomb considers this publication the exemplar of the ladies' signature musical style. In 1584, Alessandro Striggio, responding to requests from Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, described the ladies and composed pieces imitating their style so that Francesco could start his own concerto delle donne. Striggio mentioned an ornamented four voice madrigal for three sopranos and a dialogue with imitative diminutions for two sopranos. He added that he had forgotten the intabulation for the madrigal in Mantua, and noted that the skilled singer Giulio Caccini could play the bass part on either lute or harpsichord. This indicates both that male singers were probably not used after Brancaccio, and that instrumental accompaniments were a common and acceptable means of filling in the counterpoint.

The output of the ducal printer, Baldini, consisted largely of music written for the concerto delle donne, including the works of the foremost madrigalists: Luzzaschi, Gesualdo, and Alfonso Fontanelli. His first publication for the Duke was Il lauro secco (1582), which was followed by Il lauro verde (1583), both containing music by the leading composers of Rome and Northern Italy. Music in honor of the concerto was printed as far away as Venice, with Paolo Virchi's First Book à 5, published by Giacomo Vincenti and Ricciardo Amadino containing the madrigal which begins SeGU'ARINAscer LAURA e prenda LARCO / Amor soave e dolce / Ch'ogni cor duro MOLCE. This capitalization is in the original, clearly spelling out the equivalent of the names Anna Guarini, Laura Peverara, Livia d'Arco, and Tarquinia Molza.

With the obvious exception of Brancaccio, all the singers in the concerto were female sopranos. Although the music written for the concerto focused on high voices, there is no evidence that the ensemble used either castrati or falsettists. This fact is surprising, considering that castrati were shortly to become the biggest stars of a new art form, opera. In 1607, Monteverdi's Orfeo featured four castrato roles out of a cast of nine, showing the new dominance of this vocal type. It also contrasts with Margherita's father's court, where Guglielmo Gonzaga actively sought out eunuchs.

Polyphonic arrangements called for the women to sing diminutions (melodic divisions of longer notes) and other ornaments in consort. Diminutions were traditionally improvised in performance. However, to coordinate their voices, they transcribed and rehearsed the music in advance, transforming these improvisations into highly developed musical forms that composers would emulate. The singers may have used the more traditional practice in their solo repertoire, performing ornaments extemporaneously. Specific ornaments used by the concerto delle donne, mentioned in a source from 1581, were such popular sixteenth-century devices as passaggi (division of a long note into many shorter notes, usually stepwise), cadenze (decoration of the penultimate note, sometimes quite elaborate), and tirate (rapid scales). Accenti (connection of two longer notes, using dotted rhythms), a staple of early Baroque music, are absent from the list. In 1592 Caccini claimed that Alfonso II asked him to teach his ladies the new accenti and passaggi styles.