Giovanni Ferretti - Works and Influence

Works and Influence

Ferretti's music epitomizes the lightness of texture and subject matter which was one of the several diverging trends in secular vocal music composition in Italy in the last half of the 16th century. While few of his compositions were titled "madrigal", they may be seen as part of the broad continuum of secular music of which madrigals were a part. Most of his works were canzoni alla napolitana, canzonas in the Neapolitan style, a light form of villanella (with a rhyme scheme of a a b c c, but with the individual lines elaborated in the manner of the madrigal). While composers had been writing villanelle for a long time, Ferretti was the first to bring madrigalian characteristics to the form.

The complete published output of Ferretti consists of books of canzoni alla napolitana. He published two books for six voices, in 1573 and 1575, and a total of five books for five voices, in 1567, 1569, 1570, 1571, and 1585; all works appeared in Venice. To say they sold well and established his fame is an understatement; reprints and new editions appeared throughout Europe, in places as distant as Nuremberg, Antwerp, and London (in 1588). Ferretti's canzoni, along with the works of Orazio Vecchi, are considered to be the most important musical influence on the English madrigal style of Thomas Morley, which commenced in 1588 with the publication in England of Musica transalpina, a wildly popular collection of Italian madrigals fitted with English words.

A few madrigals by Ferretti have survived, separately copied and not represented in his major printed editions. One of them is a celebration of the naval victory at the Battle of Lepanto (October 7, 1571), and is a coarse, abusive taunt of Sultan Selim, written in the dialect of the Venetian mariners who defeated his fleet.