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The manifestation of musical time in Italian ballatas around 1400: the case of Andrea da Firenze's Non più doglie ebbe Dido
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 September 2010
Abstract
The changes in time perception that emerged in the late Middle Ages have not only left their mark on musical notation or the isorhythmic motet, but also on the composition of polyphonic songs. This article proposes an analytical approach to late Trecento songs that takes these changes into account. A case study of Andrea da Firenze's ballata Non più doglie ebbe Dido reveals how the temporal structures of the text and the music interact.
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References
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18 Ibid., 255–67.
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21 Lütteken, ‘Zeitenwende’, 19.
22 Huck, Musik des frühen Trecento.
23 von Fischer, Kurt, ‘Sprache und Musik im italienischen Trecento. Zur Frage einer Frührenaissance’, in Musik und Text in der Mehrstimmigkeit des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts, ed. Günther, Ursula and Finscher, Ludwig, Göttinger musikwissenschaftliche Arbeiten 10 (Kassel, 1984), 37–54Google Scholar .
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26 It has to be conceded that the only source (I-Fl Mediceo-Palatino 87 (the ‘Squarcialupi codex’), fol. 193v) offers no exact solution for the text underlay at that specific passage concerning the position of the syllables per and E-[nea].
27 The function of syllable repetition in Trecento songs has been examined by Agostino Ziino, ‘Ripetizioni di sillabe e parole nella musica profana italiana del Trecento e primo Quattrocento: Proposte di classificazione e prime riflessioni’, and Dorothea Baumann, ‘Silben- und Wortwiederholungen im italienischen Liedrepertoire des späten Trecento und frühen Quattrocento’, both in Musik und Text, ed. Günther and Finscher, 93–119 and 77–92 respectively.
28 Hammerstein, Reinhold, Die Musik der Engel. Untersuchungen zur Musikanschauung des Mittelalters, 2nd edn (Bern, 1990)Google Scholar , originally published 1962; Huck, Musik des frühen Trecento, 321–7; idem, ‘The Early Canon as imitatio naturae’, in Canons and Canonic Techniques, ed. Katelijne Schiltz, Bonnie J. Blackburn und Ignace Bossuyt (Leuven, 2007), 7–18. On the subject, a dissertation by Janine Droese (Hamburg, Germany) is in preparation.
29 For viable reasons, Pirrotta as a rule avoided giving the Volta and Piedi 2 a definitive text underlay in his edition. There are no fixed rules to follow for the texting of the Volta in the Ripresa section, and a schematic solution (placing the syllables precisely under those of the Ripresa) is by no means historically more valid than a pragmatic one as long as it respects the text's formal and metrical qualities. In this case, it is fully possible to sing the word ‘melodia’ in the Volta again near the extraordinary rhythmic passage in bars 24–8, even this time with text repetition, as realised for example in the recording of Ensemble Tetraktys with Jill Feldman (see note 25).
30 An extensive analytical examination of this corpus is provided in Rotter-Broman, Komponieren in Italien um 1400.
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