Variazione as Musical Dialectic
Variazione is the process by which Bembist thinking finds its implementation in real compositional practice. In analyzing how the principle operated, Bembo and others presented readers with the means to create their own Petrarchan styles, their own simulacra of ideal models. For students of lyric and madrigal, these discussions offer remarkably detailed hints for understanding the sanctioned processes of generating new texts — or, in the case of music, new text settings.
Variazione as a precept proceeds from the stylistic levels delineated in ancient theory. Cicero's Orator rejected the plain, severe style of the Attic logicians (chiefly Brutus and Calvus) by boasting brilliant results for his three oratorical styles. In the
[91] See Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism 1:145-47 and 280-81.
[92] Indeed, Weinberg discusses this contribution of Parthenio in A History of Literary Criticism 1:281.
plain style the orator would adhere to common words and modest metaphors; his speech would be subdued in ornament, with few figures of speech, and "sprinkled with the salt of pleasantry."[93] The orator of the middle style would minimize vigor and maximize charm; though all figures of speech and ornaments could lie at his disposal, his language had above all to be "brilliant and florid, highly colored and polished."[94] The orator of the grand style was "magnificent, opulent, stately, and ornate."[95] But it was the diversity that the orator brought to each of these that gave the new brand of oratory its great appeal, as Cicero claimed in explaining the effects of his early attempts: "The ears of the city . . . we found hungry for this varied style of oratory, displayed equally in all styles, and we were the first, however poor we may have been and however little we may have accomplished, to turn them to an amazing interest in this style of oratory" (emphasis mine).[96]
A lucid reading of Bembo's Prose depends on understanding how far its seemingly disparate themes relate similarly to variation. Early in Book 2, Bembo explains the three styles and recasts variazione as a dialectical principle intended to guide all composition and criticism. "One could consider how much a composition does or does not merit praise, . . ." he claimed, "by means of . . . two aspects . . . that make all writing beautiful, gravità and piacevolezza " (gravity and pleasingness).[97]Gravità contains honesty, dignity, majesty, magnificence, and grandeur ("l'onestà, la dignità, la maestà, la magnificenza, la grandezza"), while piacevolezza encompasses grace, smoothness, loveliness, sweetness, playfulness, and games ("la grazia, la soa-vità, la vaghezza, la dolcezza, gli scherzi, i giuochi").[98]
The schemata by which gravità and piacevolezza intersect with high, middle, and low styles are deliberately imprecise — and nowadays widely misunderstood. Theoretically, each stylistic level is discrete and dependent on subject matter, while gravità and piacevolezza in turn function as extreme dialectical poles within any one of them. In explaining how various authors have actually used gravità and piace-volezza, however, Bembo implicitly links gravità, to the high style and piacevolezza to the middle or low. Some authors, he says, have dwelt excessively on one or the other — Dante on a style too often unrelieved in its gravità, Cino da Pistoia on one too piacevole. Only Petrarch had moderated the two with a perfect feel for variety, attaining "each of these qualities marvelously, to such a degree that one cannot choose in which of the two he was the greater master."[99] Ideally every author
[93] Orator 24.81-26.90.
[94] Ibid. 26.91-28.96.
[95] Ibid. 28.97.
[96] Ibid. 30.106. Cicero elaborates the performative aspects of this style not only in terms of varied language but of modulation of the voice, physical gestures, and facial expressions (ibid. 17.55-18.60).
[97] "Dico che egli si potrebbe considerare, quanto alcuna composizione meriti loda o non meriti . . . per . . . due parti . . . che fanno bella ogni scrittura, la gravità e la piacevolezza" (p. 63). These resemble the "mild and pleasing" and "emotional and vehement" styles in Cicero's De oratore 2.42.179-53.215, as Tomilnson observes, "Rinuccini, Peri, Monteverdi," p. 47 n. 104.
[98] Bembo, Prose, p. 63.
[99] Ibid.
would achieve the same equilibrium, choosing from the three styles "at times grave words tempered with light ones and temperate ones with light ones, and vice versa — the latter with some of the former, the former with some of the latter, neither more nor less."[100]
Slipping freely between the three styles and between gravità and piacevolezza, Bembo confounds the reader in search of a systematic theory. His treatment conflates two outwardly different systems — the one vertical and rigidly hierarchical, the other lateral and inherently dialectical. Yet in so doing he made tangible the real purpose of introducing gravità and piacevolezza in the first place: only through them is the constant intermixing and tempering process that Bembo believed necessary to the proper working of separate levels set in motion. The dual system enabled him to grant the concept of stylistic levels a certain dynamism, as long as each level maintained a baseline of decorum. In later adaptations of Bembo's model, paired, intersecting systems became a normative means to support the principle of variation, even for eclectics like Tomitano.[101]
Even though Bembo linked gravità and piacevolezza clearly to variazione, he reiterated the latter theoretically in enumerating three qualities that "fill out and comprise" the former pair: namely, "il suono, il numero, la variatione"[102] — a schematic duplication that suggests at once how much variation counted in Bembo's system and how very loose that system was. It will be useful to examine suono and numero more closely, since the rest of Book 2 is mainly devoted to an explanation of them.
Suono in Bembo's definition is "that concord of sounds and that harmony that is generated in prose by the arrangement of the words and in verse also by the arrangement of the rhymes."[103] Bembo built explanations of suono 's musical effects on a tradition that goes back to ancient times with Cicero,[104] and in the Renaissance to grammars like Fortunio's Regole grammaticali. Yet Fortunio had regarded sound mainly within the restricted sphere of orthographical and morphological questions.[105] For Fortunio gemination, for instance, was permissible in prose but not in poetry; without it the latter could "flow more sweetly" since "gemination of
[100] "[V]ariando alle volte e le voci gravi con alcuna temperata, e le temperate con alcuna leggera, e così allo 'ncontro queste con alcuna di quelle, e quelle con alcuna dell'altre né più né meno" (ibid., p. 55).
[101] See, for instance, the Ragionamenti, pp. 466-67: "Il poeta dovere co 'l giudicio dell'orecchie mescolare insieme le voci rotonde, con l'humili, l'humili con le sonore, le sonore con le languide, & queste con le gravi. onde la grandezza dell'una temperata con la humilità dell'altre venga à fare una mescolatura perfetta, & un condimento soave" (The poet must, with the judgement of the ear, mix together full-toned words with humble ones, humble with sonorous, sonorous with languid, and languid with grave; so that the loftiness of one tempered with the humbleness of another comes to make a perfect mixture and sweet seasoning). Further comments on variazione occur on p. 474.
[102] "[E] le cose, poi, che empiono e compiono queste due parti, son tre, il suono, il numero, la variazione" (Prose, p. 63).
[103] "[Q]uel concento e quel armonia, che nelle prose dal componimento si genera delle voci; nel verso oltre a ciò del componimento eziando delle rime" (ibid.).
[104] For Cicero's use of these terms see Orator, 48 to the end.
[105] Carlo Dionisotti contextualizes the orthographical questions raised by Fortunio in "Marcantonio Sabellico e Giovan Francesco Fortunio," Chap. 2 in Gli umanisti e il volgare fra quattro e cinquecento (Florence, 1968), pp. 23ff.
consonants is not without some harshness" and was thus to be avoided, "especially in amorous verse."[106] This is as far as Fortunio would go in connecting sound with meaning. Quite new in Bembo, by contrast, is the extension of sound's importance from simply a bearer of sensory traits to an actual signifier.[107]
Suono operated for Bembo through two main vehicles: the phonetic (letters) and the metric (rhymes). Letters make their effects both separately and in various combinations, with different criteria applied to vowels and consonants. Gary Tomlinson has shown how Bembo's hierarchical ranking of vowels according to the amount of air expelled to pronounce them followed the Ficinian theories with which Bembo had grown up, and which he had already popularized in Gli asolani.[108] The letter "A makes the best sound because it sends forth the most air, since this air is expelled with more open lips and more towards Heaven."[109] The other vowels descend from A in the order E, O, I, U, all of them making "a better sound when the syllable is long than when it is short."[110] The rules, however, are complex and contingent, dependent on context. Open O's, for instance, resound more than closed ones and hence sit higher in the hierarchy, accented E's sit higher than unaccented ones, and so forth.
Bembo also graded consonants for affect and in some cases for "spirito." The L is "soft and agreeable and the sweetest of all the letters in its family." The R has the opposite quality, "harsh," although of a "generous breath." Located somewhere between the two are the M and the N, the sound of which Bembo mysteriously describes as "almost crescent- and horn-shaped" within words — apparently a metaphor for their nasal, prolonged quality.[111] The sound of the F is "somewhat dense and resonant" but "quicker" than that of the G. C is equally dense and resonant but more "halting than the others." B and D, on the other hand, are "pure, graceful, and fluent," and P and T are even more so. Q has a "poor and dead" sound, but adds "resonance and flesh" to the letter by which it stands as kind of servant, that is, the U.[112]
[106] In verse "più dolcemente corrano: perche la geminatione delle consonanti non è senza alcuna durezza; & specialmente nell'amorose rime è da doversi schifare" (fols. 39-39'); quoted from the rev. ed. published by Manutius in 1545.
[107] The generalization also holds for Cicero, for whom "good" sonus meant euphony and smoothness in speech and numerus meant prosody structured in balanced metrical arrangements — both designed to win over the audience. In Cicero's usage the terms lack the quantitative, semantic, and dialectical dimensions that their equivalents have for Bembo.
[108] See "Rinuccini, Peri, Monteverdi," pp. 17-55, esp. p. 48.
[109] "Di queste tutte miglior suono rende la A; con ciò sia cosa che ella più di spirito manda fuori, per ciò che con più aperte labbra nel manda e più al cielo ne va esso spirito" (Prose, p. 100).
[110] Ibid.
[111] For Bembo's figurative usage of "lunato e cornuto" see the Nuovo dizionario della lingua italiana. The two terms had wider planetary associations that may relate to Bembo's Neoplatonic cosmologies.
[112] The complete passage on consonants reads: "Molle e dilicata e piacevolissima è la L, e di tutte le sue compagne lettere dolcissima. Allo 'ncontro la R aspera, ma di generoso spirito. Di mezzano poi tra queste due la M e la N, il suono delle quali si sente quasi lunato e cornuto nelle parole. Alquanto spesso e pieno suono appresso rende la F. Spesso medesimamente e pieno, ma più pronto il G. Di quella medesima e spessezza e prontezza è il C, ma più impedito di quest' altri. Puri e snelli e ispediti poi sono il B e il D. Snellissimi e purissimi il P e il T, e insieme ispeditissimi. Di povero e morto suono, sopra gli altri tutti, ultimamente è il Q; e in tanto più ancora maggiormente, che egli, senza la U che 'l sostenga, non può aver luogo. La H, per ciò che non è lettera, per sé medesima niente può ma giugne solamente pienezza e quasi polpa alla lettera, a cui ella in guisa di servente sta accanto" (Prose, p. 66). Bembo discusses the problems of S and Z on pp. 65-66, mainly in historical-linguistic terms.
On another structural level — that of multiple lines of poetry — a poem's relative weight results from the distance between rhyme words. More distant rhymes have a graver quality, closer ones are more pleasing.[113] By this reckoning sestine, lacking rhymes within stanzas, are the gravest of all. In all other verse forms, rhymes must not be farther apart than three to five lines, so as "to serve the propriety of time."[114] Unlike the fixed sestina and the nearly fixed sonnet and ballata, suono imparts considerable variety to canzoni and madrigals because their rhyme schemes and verse lengths can differ so much.[115]
Bembo explains numero in similarly hierarchic terms: "Number is none other than the time given to syllables, either long or short, created by virtue of the letters which make up the syllables or by reason of the accents which are given to the words, and sometimes by both."[116] Quantity in Italian is determined by accent, with tonic accents being long and syllables preceding them short. The arrangement of accents at the ends of verses also affects verses' numero. Antepenultimate accents give lightness ("leggerezza"), while final accents make verses heavy ("peso") — hence versi sdruccioli create piacevolezza and versi tronchi create gravità. Furthermore, words whose syllables abound in vowels and consonants lend verses a certain gravità those that have few create piacevolezza.[117] To exemplify the grave style, Bembo cited the second verse from the opening sonnet of Petrarch's Canzoniere, Voi ch'ascoltate in rime sparse il suono, for its diphthongs and consonantal clusters: "Di quei sospiri, ond'io nudriva il core," and at a far greater extreme the famous "Fior', frond', erb', ombr', antr', ond', aure soavi."[118]
The principal job of the poet, in short, is to create well-proportioned, felicitous mixtures of sonorous and articulative elements. In a charming analogy Daniello compares this process with the work of a mason.
[113] "[P]iù grave suono rendono quelle rime che sono tra sè più lontane; più piacevole quell'altre che più vicine sono" (ibid., p. 68).
[114] "[A] servare ora questa convenevolezza di tempo" (ibid. p. 70).
[115] "[L]e canzoni, che molti versi rotti hanno, ora più vago e grazioso, ora più dolce e più soave suono rendono, che quelle che n'hanno pochi" (ibid.). As examples of light canzoni with a proliferation of seven-syllable lines Bembo cited Petrarch's Chiare, fresche e dolci acque, no. 126, and Se 'l pensier che mi strugge, no. 125 (ibid., p. 71). Along these lines Dolce noted that even sonnets could have more or less "grandezza," depending on whether the tercets used three different rhymed endings (e.g., cde dce) or two (e.g., cdd dcc) (Osservationi, fol. 99). In the latter case the more frequent rhymes make the sonnet less high and grave.
[116] "Numero altro non è che il tempo che alle sillabe si dà o lungo o brieve, ora per opera delle lettere che fanno le sillabe, ora per cagione degli accenti che si danno alle parole, e tale volta e per l'un conto e per l'altro" (Prose, p. 73).
[117] "Gravità dona alle voci, quando elle di vocali e di consonanti, a ciò fare acconce, sono ripiene; e talora piacevolezza, quando e di consonanti e di vocali o sono ignude e povere molto, o di quelle di loro, che alla piacevolezza servono, abbastanza coperte e vestite" (Gravità is imparted to words when they are full of vowels and consonants that are conducive to it, and at times piacevolezza [is imparted] when they are stripped and destitute of vowels and consonants, or are sufficiently clothed and dressed with those that produce piacevolezza ); ibid., p. 74.
[118] Ibid., pp. 80-81. The line is v. 5 from no. 303, Amor che meco al buon tempo ti stavi.
I declare that number is none other than a disparate parity [or, balance of disparates] and harmony that results from speech. And therefore, I would commend you, lads, were you not to disdain to imitate in your writings the master stonemasons who, before setting themselves to the task of building . . . choose those stones or tiles which seem to them most suited to the composition of the wall. . . . And then, having chosen them, begin to adapt and compose them with one another — now a large with a small, now a narrow with a wide; now a whole with a broken; sometimes one lengthwise, another one crosswise, placing one one way, another another way, until the wall reaches that height which it must in order to be beautiful and well proportioned.[119]
Like Bembo, Daniello expected the poet to create suitable poetic mixtures, more sonorous words with less sonorous, "high and grave" with "low and light," and final accents with penultimate accents.[120] Nouns and verbs were to be used in different positions, with different vowels, persons, numbers, and in different guises. Even the positions of caesurae — like the landings placed every ten or fifteen steps apart to allow one to catch one's breath on the staircases of great palaces — should be variously interspersed depending on the accentual positions of the particular words found in the vicinity of the caesurae. With comune words (penultimate accented), caesurae will fall after the third, fifth, or seventh syllables; with mute (final accented) after the fourth or sixth; with sdrucciolose (antepenultimate accented) after the sixth or the eighth.[121]
All of this wisdom leads to a single broad axiom: that just as we praise youth for maturity and the aged for youthful delicacy, so we should greatly extol verse that resembles prose and prose that reflects the numero of verse.[122] Bembo had not made the equation between poetry and prose so precise. In doing so Daniello captured a great tangle of Bembist criticism in a single net, suggesting much about the proselike shape madrigals were to assume at the hands of Venetian composers.
By the 1540s theorists were expanding Bembo's observations on sound and number to account for ever more specialized cases, some of which will become relevant
[119] "[D]ico, il numero non esser altro che una dispari parità & harmonia, che risulta del parlare. Et per tanto vi loderei io figliuoli, che voi non vi deveste sdegnare d'imitare nelle vostre scritture i maestri di murare, i quali prima ch'a fabricar si ponghino . . . eleggono quelle pietre o que matoni, che loro pare che piu si confacciano alla composition del muro . . . . Et poi ch'essi scielte l'hanno, incominciano ad adattarle & comporle insieme l'una con l'altra, hora una grande, con una picciola, hora una sottile, con una grossa; hora una intera con una spezzata; quando questa per lungo, quando attraverso quell'altra & quale in una, & qual in altra guisa ponendo, insino a tanto che il muro a quella altezza che dee bello & uguale ne cresce" (Poetica, pp. 118-19).
[120] "[V]engasi . . . alla compositione di esse voci, ponendone quando una piu sonora, con una meno; & mescolandone hora un'alta & grave; con una bassa & leggieri; & le tronche con l'intere" (ibid., p. 119; cf. also p. 121).
[121] Ibid., pp. 123-24.
[122] "Oltre a tutto cio cosi come noi sogliamo spesse fiate molto commendar quel fanciullo, ch'alcuna maniera & costume di canuta etade in se ritiene: Et allo'ncontro quel vecchio nel quale alcuna cosa si scorga di giovenile delicatezza. Cosi etiando è da grandemente commendar quel verso che tiene della prosa: Et conseguentemente quella prosa che numero si veda havere di verso" (ibid., p. 126).
to my interpretations in later chapters. Tomitano for one noted that words having the consonants R, S, and T and the vowel O create greater numero, or, as he gives us to understand, greater gravità — words like "soggiorno, rapido, antro, ardori, acerbo," and so forth.[123]Collisioni also make lines more numerous, as in
Deh porgi mano all'affannato ingegno,
or the "full, melodious, grave, and magnificent"
Rodan' Hibero, Rhen, Sen' Albi' Her' Ebro.[124]
Sometimes a poet has to avoid ending with a sound with which the next word begins, since this creates too much noise. Thus it is better to say
Quand'io son tutto volto in quella parte
than to have the two words with T 's side by side, as in
Quand'io son volto tutto,
which generates a strange, bad sound.[125] At other times a poet will purposely draw a verse out so that it doesn't gather too much speed, as in
Aspro core, & selvaggio, & cruda voglia,
which is more hesitant than
Aspro, selvaggio cor' & cruda voglia.[126]
Occasionally a writer wants to "split the ears with noise" and at other times to create a "numero tranquillo," as at the beginning of an oration in order to "make listeners attentive." Tomitano exemplifies "tranquil number" with the start of Petrarch's canzone Nel dolce tempo de la prima etade.[127] At other times one should slip along with haste, which happens in a verse having two "voci sdrucciolose."
L'odorifero e lucido Oriente.[128]
[123] Ragionamenti, p. 469. Tomitano cited as poems that exemplify this Petrarch's sonnets Rotta è l'alta colonna, e'l verde lauro (no. 269) and Ite rime dolenti al chiuso sasso (no. 333).
[124] Ibid., p. 470. As Daniello explains, the poet may (in some cases) adjust the orthography and (in most cases) drop vowel endings of words so as to make them mute, comune, or sdrucciolose, and thus more or less grave, as happens here (Poetica, p. 122).
[125] Ragionamenti, p. 471.
[126] "Tiene alcuna volta il poeta il verso a bada co 'l sostenerlo in maniera, che non venga à precipitarsi per la troppa velocità, 'Aspro core, & selvaggio, & cruda voglia', che piu riposata divenne, che il dire 'Aspro, selvaggio cor'& cruda voglia', Il qual verso tanto divenne volgare, quanto quell'altro fu degno de gli orecchi di M. Francesco" (ibid., pp. 471-72).
[127] Ibid., p. 472.
[128] Ibid., pp. 472-73. The line is v. 2 from no. 337.
Petrarch never composed a whole verse out of these sdrucciolose words, Tomitano cautions — as here where he tempered "odorifero" and "lucido" with a word of "numero grave," "Oriente."[129] An excess of voci sdrucciolose could cause "languidezza" (poetic languor), so serene effects had to be achieved in alternative ways. Tomitano's perfect example of this is the famous opening quatrain from Petrarch's sonnet no. 164, Hor che 'l ciel et la terra e 'l vento tace. He described the evocative gloss on Theocritus's calm sea and silent night that opens the poem as lacking "noise." Even though inherently the material was prone to "languidezza,"[130] it embodied a "perfect tranquillity" through its ideal balance of gravità and piacevolezza.
The question of languor brings Tomitano to structural and affective questions involving caesurae. Although caesurae commonly occur at either the fourth or sixth syllable in an endecasillabo, the first of these is "the more magnificent and grave" and thus (implicitly) superior.[131] A caesura on the fifth syllable should be disdained as too languid.[132]
Additional structural repetitions, finally, may add to a verse's beauty. Alliteration generally creates greater number. Words not participating in the alliteration may be interpolated between those that are, and the effect is quite graceful when one alliterated word finishes a line and another starts the next.[133] This prose-like device calls to mind Daniello's claim that resemblance to prose is an asset to verse. Further, words that divide other words from one another, such as "et, hor, ne, si come," make a verse beautiful, as in the line "Et temo Et spero Et ardo Et sono un ghiaccio."[134]
Even Sansovino's Arte oratoria added to the wisdom on sound and number, although Sansovino was more concerned with rhetoric and less with poetry than Daniello or Tomitano had been. He affirms that the guidelines designating which words are naturally grave, pompous, base, and so forth — based largely on sound — had their origins in oratory. Despite the fact that it treats oratory, the Arte oratoria (like other rhetorics) exemplifies these guidelines with poetry. Sansovino concludes that old Tuscan words may add a certain gravità to one's style exactly because of their antiquity and their foreignness. Some words, such as "troba, heroe, anno, frôba," carry with them a natural grandeur that is pompous ("gonfie") by nature, while others, like "sante, veste, cinto, via fuoco," call up a base quality because of their languid sound.[135]
Like Daniello, Sansovino shows how words that are "mute," "comune," and "sdrucciolose" can be used by the orator to make greater or lesser harmonia.[136] Even
[129] Ibid., p. 478. In fact Petrarch never ended lines with parole sdrucciole.
[130] Ibid., p. 473.
[131] Cf. Ruscelli, Del modo de comporre, on accents; he assigns the principal accents in endecasillabi to the fourth, sixth, or eighth positions, in addition to the tenth (p. xlix).
[132] Ragionamenti, pp. 474-76.
[133] Ibid., pp. 486-87.
[134] Ibid., p. 489.
[135] L'arte oratoria, fol. 56.
[136] Ibid., fol. 56'.
more important, he explains the division of sentences and the formation of cadences. A cadence is "none other than a harmonious and sweet finishing of the period, more conclusive and easier in verse than in prose. This is because in verse one must not leave the listener in any doubt or in any way less than fully satisfied from a lack of number or a paucity of sound ["harmonia"]. And this sound depends on a well-proportioned joining of words, one with another."[137]
In the decade after 1550 Venetian rhetorics and poetics maintained a lively interest in Bembo's aesthetics, and this at a time when Willaert's students were still setting scores of Petrarchan sonnets. Parthenio's Della imitatione poetica, though not pitched to a vernacular readership, borrowed much of what Bembo had to say about sound, since (it explained) "words are chosen according to variety."[138] Marco Valerio Marcellino's first "Discorso" in Il diamerone invoked Bembo's authority in citing Petrarch and Boccaccio as vernacular models. Couched as an old-styled apologia, it defended the Tuscan vernacular for its especially melodious character.[139] The most ambitious of the midcentury writings was Ruscelli's Del modo de comporre in versi nella lingua italiana (signed in 1558 although not published until 1559), which applied Bembist norms to a wide range of lyric genres. A Viterban polygraph based in Rome before his move to Venice in 1548, Ruscelli was among the best known and respected of vernacular theorists in the city.[140]His Del modo de comporre tried to
[137] "[La] cadenza . . . altro non è che harmonico e dolce finimento del periodo, tanto piu nella prosa difficile, quanto nel verso è piu terminato e piu facile; perche in quello conchiudendo attamente non si dee lasciar l'ascoltatore dubbio e non a pien sodisfatto, o per il mancamento del numero, o per la poca harmonia che vi si ode; laqual harmonia risulta dalle commessure delle parole, l'una all'altra proportionalmente congiunte" (ibid., fol. 57').
[138] "Le parole secondo la varieta s'eleggerano" (p. 241). Thus, for example, A and O are the fullest, hence weightiest, vowel sounds; clusters of consonants make for gravità, sparseness of consonants makes for piacevolezza (see esp. p. 80 and in Book 4, pp. 191-93 and 199-201).
[139] The work was dated 10 April 1561 and published three years later. The discorsi published in Il damerone (Venice, 1564) were set in ca' Venier (cf. Chap. 4 above, nn. 31 and 65). For Bembist allusions see fols. [c], [c ii]-[c ii']. On the melodious quality of the vernacular, note the following: "le nostre voci volgari, sono quasi tutte composte d'una cosi ordinata mescolanza di vocali, & di consonanti, che acquistano un dolce cominciamento, un regolato mezzo, & un soavissimo fine. Per la qual cosa, se queste parole sono con giudicio da dotta, & leggiadra mano composte, & con una politezza gentile congiunte, & serrate insieme: il loro congiungimento, non puo divenir nè duro, nè aspro, nè molle, nè languido: ma fa riuscire l'oratione dolce, soave, composta, unita, & tutta uguale: in maniera, che ogni nostro concetto puo esser da noi partorito vivo, et quasi vestito di carne & d'ossa; quando egli ci comparisce avanti vestito di cosi ricca, & cosi ben tessute veste" (Our vernacular words are almost all made up of an ordered mixture of vowels and consonants, which acquire a sweet beginning, a regulated middle, and a most smooth end. For which reason, if these words are composed by a learned and graceful hand and joined and bound with a courtly polish, then their conjoining can become neither hard nor harsh, nor soft nor languid, but rather the speech will succeed in being sweet, smooth, poised, unified, and completely consistent in such a way that our every concept can be endowed with life and virtually clothed in flesh and bones, since it appears before us dressed in such a rich and well-woven vestment); ibid., fols. [b v]-[b v']. Following this, Marcellino gives examples of all the different sounds that Italian can make — long and short syllables in different combinations, different vowels, accents, and so forth — concluding that "da questo si puo comprendere . . . che la nostra favella ha perfettamente tutta questa numerosa armonia; che in essa i nostri moderni . . . hanno cominciato à scrivere" (from this one can comprehend . . . that our tongue contains perfectly all this numerous harmony with which our moderns have begun to write); fols. [b vi]-[b vi'].
[140] Parabosco was among those acquainted with him, as indicated in a letter to Anton Giacomo Corso discussing Corso's sonnet in Bembist terms: "Io hebbi dal dottissimo, & gentilissimo Ruscello, una di V.S. con la risposta al sonetto ch'io le mandai. io l'ho molto bene essaminato, & considerato; perche egli è degno di molta consideratione, & hollo giudicato degno d'infinita lode; ne voglio in questo caso cedere, di giuditio a nessuno, & non gli defraudere in parte nessuna il nome della sua bellezza, gravità, leggiadria, & facilità" (I received from the most learned and kind Ruscelli one of yours with the risposta to the sonnet that I sent him. I have examined and considered it well, for it is worthy of much consideration, and I have judged it worthy of infinite praise. In this case I do not want to cede judgment to anyone, and deprive it in any way of the labels of beauty, gravity, loveliness, and facility); Il primo libro delle lettere famigliari . . . (Venice, 1551), p. 6.
show how to write in all the standard lyric forms, as well as in versi tronchi and versi sdruccioli. The thoroughness with which he embarked on this task, with chapters devoted to each form, remains his most useful contribution and, for students of contemporaneous madrigals, his attention to the sonnet is especially helpful.[141]
Ruscelli mainly occupied himself with the sonnet's prosodic possibilities, principally enjambment. For, as he stated, "the breaking of the verse and then finishing the construction of the thought is the principal [source of] grandeur in style."[142] Because of this, a sonnet devoid of enjambments, like Piangete donne, et con voi pianga Amore (no. 92), embodied simplicity, or the humble style. Petrarch's Mentre che 'l cor dagli amorosi vermi (no. 304), broken as it is by continual enjambments, embodied the high style.[143] As a rule, however, enjambments were not to be made one after another in either sonnets or capitoli, since this "could generate a vexing continuousness of style. But above all one eschews [enjambments] in the first verses of quatrains [and] tercets."[144]
All these elaborations of variazione along Bembo's dialectical lines suggest we rethink Weinberg's dismissal of midcentury arts of poetry. The years 1525-60 produced some preliminary challenges to Bembo's views on models, imitation, and the choice of language; but more than that they produced a wealth of embellishments on the sonorous functions of vernacular poetry. The rhetorical concerns for harmony, number, sound, and structure all stood at the center of poetic criticism, since language and especially poetry had come to be conceived as vehicles for performance more than cognition and contemplation. Indeed there is a striking resemblance between the focus of cinquecento theorists and of modern ones (most notably Gianfranco Contini, as reflected in a famous essay of 1951), who have been
[141] A chapter on the sonnet may also be found in Dolce's Osservationi, fols. 96'-100', but Dolce's treatment is more perfunctory than Ruscelli's.
[142] "Lo spezzar . . . in verso, e quivi venir à finir la costruttione della sentenza, è la principal grandezza dello Stile"; Del modo de comporre, p. 113.
[143] "Et queste spezzature, che non lascino andar à finir le costruttioni, e le sentenze tutte piane nel fin de' versi, son quelle, che, come ho detto, hanno le principal parte nella gravità dello stile" (ibid., p. 115). Torquato Tasso's Lezione recitata nell'Accademia Ferrarese sopra il sonetto "Questa vita mortal" ecc. di monsignor della Casa, written ca. 1565-72, praised della Casa's O sonno, o della queta, umida ombrosa Notte precisely for its frequent enjambments. On the question of enjambment in this work see Edoardo Taddeo, Il manierismo letterario e i lirici veneziani del tardo cinquecento (Rome, 1974), pp. 233-37; and Tomlinson, "Rinuccini, Peri, Monteverdi," pp. 55-57. Tasso had met Ruscelli in Venice during a journey of 1559-60, after which he made Ruscelli an interlocutor in his Minturno.
[144] "[Q]uesto spezzar di versi si faccia spesso, ove commodamente può farsi, ma che non però si faccia sempre, cioè, in tutti i versi d'un Sonetto, ò d'un Capitolo, che, come dissi, potrebbe generar fastidio la continuata somiglianza dello stile. Ma che sopra tutto si fugga di non farlo ne' primi versi de' Quatternarii, nè de' Terzetti, che allora . . . parebbe importantissimo vitio, & con molta cura fuggito da tutti i Scrittori per ogni tempo" (Del modo de comporre, p. 117). (Note, however, that this is not true of Mentre che 'l cor nor of della Casa's O sonno. )
Aside from Ruscelli and Tasso, considerations of enjambment are rare in the sixteenth century. See also Weinberg's discussion of Vincenzo Toralto's La Veronica, o del sonetto (Genoa, 1589), in A History of Literary Criticism 1:228, and Crispolti's Lezione on "Mentre che 'l cor," mod. ed., Trattati 4:193-206.
gradually more receptive to recognizing the priority of rhythmic over semantic properties in Petrarch's poetics, or at least their interdependencies.[145]
Much of the motivation behind Venetians' literary theorizing during the first half of the sixteenth century stemmed of course from their anxiety to elevate the vernacular The new local culture linked with the press was shaped increasingly by Italian and less and less by Latin. Steps had to be taken to secure acceptance of the vernacular, improve it as a vehicle of communication, and give it a certain cachet. This way learned writers, once in print, could be made accessible to a less-learned reading public, and aspiring writers of humble origins could, conversely, be groomed for higher realms of literary discourse.[146] The welcoming attitude toward foreignness and archaism that Venetians assumed in codifying trecento Tuscan sprang from a desire to add luster to their adopted tongue. Such arcana were anathema to proponents of the lingua cortigiana who prized unruffled elegance. But in Venice a writer like Parthenio could claim (with Sansovino and others) that strange and little-used words gave living language a heightened gravitas.[147] Even though Parthenio was writing about imitation and drew examples from Latin and Tuscan, he shared with collectors and patrons like Antonio Zantani widespread attitudes that sought elite status by appropriating the cultural objects and instruments of distant times and places.
More than any other Italian city, Venice domesticated a foreign idiom for vernacular music, using a full-blown northern polyphony that was fundamentally sacred, austere, hieratic, and complex with which to set high-styled Tuscan texts. The linguistic equal of this polyphony was Petrarchan syntactic complexity, which endowed the new vernacular with its needed cultural capital.[148] The cachet attached to complex syntax goes a long way toward explaining the new status of the sonnet among midcentury poets, who often published almost nothing else in the copious anthologies issued around 1550 from the Venetian presses.[149] Many of these sonnets were conventional by literary standards, yet settings of them by Willaert and Rore adapted their linguistic possibilities to music in novel ways that transformed the symbolic relations of sacred and secular. Before considering this phenomenon more closely, we will attempt to mediate between theories of words and settings of words by considering how they were reconciled by Venetian music theorists.
[145] See Gianfranco Contini, "Preliminari sulla lingua del Petrarca," in Varianti e altra linguistica: una raccolta di saggi (1938-1968) (Turin, 1970), pp. 169-92. For related views see Umberto Bosco, "Il linguaggio lirico del Petrarca tra Dante e il Bembo," Studi petrarcheschi 7 (1961): 121-32; Giulio Herczeg, "La struttura delle antitesi nel Canzoniere petrarchesco," Studi petrarcheschi 7 (1961): 195-208; idem, "La struttura della frase nei versi del Petrarca," Studi petrarcheschi 8 (1976): 169-96; Fredi Chiapelli, Studi sul linguaggio del Petrarca: la canzone delle visioni (Florence, 1971); and Robert M. Durling, ed., Petrarch's Lyric Poems: The "Rime sparse" and Other Lyrics (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), pp. 11-18.
[146] On the relationships between the press, the standardization of the vernaculars, and their links to national identities see Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, "Printing and Language," Chap. 8, pt. 4 in The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450-1800, trans. David Gerard, ed. Geoffrey Nowell Smith and David Wooten (1958; London, 1976), pp. 319-32.
[147] "Le parole nuove, et inusitate aggiungono gravità, et maraviglia come anchora ricordò Aristotele" (Della imitatione poetica, p. 192).
[148] On this point see Floriani, "Grammatici e teorici," p. 165.
[149] I refer here especially to those in the Rime di diversi series; see Chap. 4 above, n. 21 and passim.