Gentlemen,
reading the liner notes of a CD, I just came across an interesting reflection on
sprezzatura:
After the first experiment with
recitar cantando towards the end of the sixteenth century, and despite the claims of other authors, Giulio Caccini was no doubt the first to define this new manner of singing and composing. His preface to
Le Nuove Musiche of 1602 provides an invaluable analysis of the subject. Despite strong opposition from conservative intellectual quarters, this essay by Caccini was epoch-making: music became a means of representing the
affetti, or human emotions; henceforth the singer's eloquence and expressive powers were of vital importance to the success of a work. The new style laid great emphasis on expressiveness, but also on
sprezzatura in singing, i.e. the art of making the difficult seem easy (
sprezzatura is often translated as 'nonchalance').
Caccini did not coin this term, although he was the first to use it to describe music. The idea behind it was one that had periodically resurfaced over the centuries (other important themes in Western culture have done likewise). Cicero and Quintilian state clearly that
Ars est celare artem. But the work
sprezzatura originated, in the context of social interaction, in Baldassare Castigliones' famous
Libro del Cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier) of 1528:
La gratia / È fuggir quanto più si pò (...) la affettatione, & per dir forse una nuova parola, usar in ogni cosa una certa sprezzatura che nasconda l'arte, & dimostri ciò che si fa, & dice venir fatto senza fatica, & quasi senza pensarvi (...)
'Having already given much thought to the origin of this grace (...), I have discovered a universal rule (...): namely, to steer clear of affectation at all costs, and - to use for it a word that is perhaps new - to practise in all things a certain sprezzatura, which conceals art and makes whatever one does or says seem spontaneous and almost effortless.'
Caccini first applied the term
sprezzatura to music in the preface to his opera
Euridice of 1600:
(...) Nella qual maniera di canto ho io usato una certa sprezzatura, che io ho stimato che abbia del nobile, parendomi con essa di essermi appressato quel più alla natural favella (...)
'And in using this matter of singing I have allowed a certain
sprezzatura - a certain play in the timing to give, as I consider it, a heightening effect - so as to come as close as possible to natural speech.'
Remarkably, here Caccini notes not only the importance of
sprezzatura, but also the need to bring singing closer to the inflections and rhythms of ordinary speech - an idea that he later confirmed and elaborated on in the preface to
Le Nuove Musiche:
Mi venne pensiero introdurre una sorte di musica, per cui altri potesse quasi che in armonia favellar, usando in essa (come altre volte ho detto) una certa nobile sprezzatura di canto (...)
'I conceived the idea of a new sort of music which enabled me practically to speak in harmony, allowing myself (as I have said elsewhere) a certain studied nonchalance in the manner of singing.'
The madrigal
Deh, dove son fuggiti, given as an example of style in the preface of 1602, includes a passage that is to be performed
'senza mesura, quasi favellando in armonia con la suddetta sprezzatura' - ('without regular rhythm, as if speaking in tones, with the aforesaid nonchalance').
The musician must therefore take into account the intelligibility not only of the words themselves, but also of the feeling expressed, and the dramatic and evocative qualities of the text. Signs of this new relationship between music and text and between the composer and the interpreter of his works are also found in the writings of Caccini's pupils, and in those of great masters such as Claudio Monteverdi. Francesco Rasi, a pupil of Caccini, who almost certainly created the title role in Monteverdi's Orfeo and was also the first Teseo, wrote in his advice to singers, included in the autograph manuscript (1612) of his
Musiche da camera e chiesa:
Le seguente gentilezze si possono cantare tanto in tenore come all'ottava sopra eccetto "O del sol" et cetera e si devono cantare con affetto e sopra tutto far intendere le parole.
'The following delightful songs, with the exception of
O del sol, may be sung either in the tenor or an octave higher; and they must be sung with feeling (
affetto) and above all the words must be intelligible.'
Franco Pavan, 2003
'La Bella Noeva' - Marco Beasley, Alpha 508
If anybody wonders how Maestro Caccini was composing - I have posted two songs from said CD here
http://www.thelondonlounge.net/forum/vi ... 647#p69647
cheers, david
