Out of Italy by Braudel Fernand; Reynolds Siân;

Author:Braudel, Fernand; Reynolds, Siân;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa Editions
Published: 2019-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

Eyes or Ears?

Lucien Febvre was perhaps the first to ask whether, at different periods of history, men and their civilizations have accorded more importance respectively to the eyes or the ears, to the sense of sight or the sense of hearing, which, like gold and silver for economists, have always been related alternatives.118 In the sixteenth century, he thought, the ear mattered more. André Chastel, repeating the same question, gave the opposite answer: in his opinion, the eye ruled supreme.119 But with the coming of the Baroque, who could deny that the ear triumphed? “Is not all music, the music of every age, baroque?” wondered Eugenio d’Ors.120

These debates are by no means idle. Let us give honor where honor is due: music dominated the Baroque because it dominated Italy, before conquering the world. Leonardo Olschki, one of the finest connoisseurs of the Italian genius, is right when he says that to ignore music, “as people frequently do when writing the history of the Italian Baroque, is to deprive the Baroque of its essential element and to fail to understand its most obvious features.”121 Is he right to add that with the constraints that would soon be imposed on Italy, “music was to become the only free and autonomous sign of the artistic life of the Italian people”? We shall return later to the acute problem of Italian freedom. For the moment, what is most striking in the fascinating and diverse history of music is the survival of popular music-making as a thriving infrastructure; this was essential if music was to accompany for instance songs and dances during Carnival, or the popular or rural verses composed for the frottole, sung in several parts, the strambotti, and the villanelles. This was music-making by local bands, who played at festivals and public ceremonies.122 The music of the élite on the other hand was addressed to princely courts and aristocratic circles, but depending on the date this recherché music, highly sensitive to current fashions, and often borrowing wholesale from other countries, might flourish or fade in importance.

During the high age of humanism, the words of Italian poetry had thus tended to be detached from the music with which it had so long been identified. This was a time when the eye asserted its rights, promoting the figurative arts that gave it such pleasure. Poetry increasingly shook off any form of musical accompaniment, deeming it to be suited only to lesser lyric forms. It was not until about 1530—that date again—that “serious music” recovered its status in Italy. Until then, Italian music in Italy had been overshadowed by French, Flemish, and English musicians, the defenders of and experts in counterpoint and polyphony. The foreigners had made their fortunes in Italian courts and cities, in Milan, Mantua, Ferrara, Rimini, Florence, Naples, Venice, and Rome, and they were indeed often the first to re-create the link with popular Italian music. One of the most celebrated composers in Italy in the early fifteenth century, Johannes Ciconia, a canon of Padua, was a native of Liège.

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