The Orchestra in Early Italian Opera

Author(s): Robert L. Weaver

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Spring, 1964), pp. 83-89
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological Society
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STUDIES AND ABSTRACTS

83

but here the four parts are scored on two staves, making it suitable for keyboard performance. No text is given, only the title. It may be remarked that
the handwriting is the same in both manuscripts for those works which have
titles.
The relationship described above brings up several questions. Who originally owned these two manuscripts? Were Attaingnant prints used, or some
other source not now known? Were these prints (or other sources) in England at the time, or were the manuscripts in France (Paris?) when the parts
were copied? These questions cannot now be answered-and perhaps they
never will be.
Denton, Texas

KENTON PARTON

THE ORCHESTRA
THE CONVENTIONS

IN EARLY ITALIAN

OPERA

guiding the selection of instruments to represent the

stereotyped subjects of i6th-century intermedii have been described in

my article published in the July, 196i issue of the Musical Quarterly.' These
conventions were in a sense programmatic, though the evident reasons behind
certain of the associations between subject and instrumental representation
were less musical than perhaps allegorical, literary, or even sociological. Thus
scenes presenting the gods of Olympus were accompanied by an orchestra of
viols, trombones, cornetts, and traverse flutes or recorders, supported by lutes,
harps, harpsichords and/or organs. Pastoral scenes involving only shepherds
were accompanied by reeds: bagpipes, cromornes, dolcians, and pipes, though
occasionally rebecs or recorders might be used. Pan, nymphs and satyrs, and
other bucolic gods, when added to mortal shepherds' company, called for the
addition of plucked and bowed strings to the pastoral ensemble. Infernal scenes
were set by the somber color of trombones and bass viols. Battle scenes were
enlivened with the sound of trumpets, pipes, and occasionally drums.
With the advent of opera the multi-colored Renaissance orchestra declined.
However, the programmatic associations described above continued to be
observed sporadically in those courtly extravaganzas during the seicento which
drew upon the traditions of the intermedio orchestra. Monteverdi's Orfeo is an
oft-misunderstood monument in the intermedio tradition. His underworld
ensemble consisted of five trombones, two bass viols, a contrabass, a regal and
a positive organ; and to these, two cornetts were added at one point. Two
pastoral ensembles were heard, one colored by recorders and the other by
pochettes or rebecs, and the "heavenly orchestra" contained ten violins of all
sizes, two contrabass viols, two chamber organs, a reed organ, two chitarroni,
two harps, two citterns, and two harpsichords. Descriptions of the performances of Monteverdi's Ballo delle ingrate (Mantua, I607) and Arianna (Mantua, 16o8) indicate that the same apparatus was used.2 Prunieres deduces from
a letter written by Monteverdi from Venice in 1618 to Vincenzo Gonzaga that
Monteverdi was willing to use all of the resources available at Mantua for his
2
Angelo Solerti, Gli albori del melo1 Vol. XLVII, No. 3, P. 363.

dramma (Milan, 1904), Vol. II, p. 249.

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JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

lost Andromeda and that the results ought not to have been greatly different
from Orfeo.3 The ballet-opera, La liberazione di Ruggiero by Francesca
Caccini (Florence, 1625) contains a pastoral scene for three flutes, a chorus
of planets with five viols, an archiviolata lira, a chamber organ, and harpsichords, and an infernal scene for four viols, four trombones, a chamber organ,
and a harpsichord. The Liberazione was a festival ballet in honor of the visit
of Wladislaw Sigismund, Prince of Poland, an occasion to which the timehonored traditions of the intermedio were certainly appropriate. The many
hodge-podge festival pieces, composites of works by Caccini, Peri, Belli,
Allegri, Gagliano, Francescino, and others at the Florentine court may often
have called for such displays of the many-colored orchestra.4 In Cesti's II
pomo d'oro, performed for the marriage of the Emperor Leopold I and the
Princess Margareta of Spain in Vienna (i666), the realm of Pluto is duly set
to music of two cornetts, three trombones, a bassoon, and a regal organ; the
realm of Jove, to music of two violins, two violas, and a violone (to which
may be added continuo instruments). Trumpets appear for ceremonial scenes
such as the opening ballet of the Continents and for battle scenes. Two
fluti play a ritornel in a pastoral scene.
But in comparison with the intermedii of Striggio, Marenzio, Malvezzi,
and others, these examples from the first part of the 17th century are subdued
in their instrumentations. Moreover, with the exceptions of II pomnod'oro and
Monteverdi's compositions for Mantua, it should be remarked that the list
excludes both the major compositions and the major composers of the dramatic
music of Italy in that era. For the greater portion of the musical world in
northern Italy had turned to the exploitation of a restrained, comparatively
monochromatic palette of instrumental colors. The new orchestra was composed of violins (all sizes), lutes, harpsichords, and an occasional organ or
chromatic harp. In church music trombones and cornetts maintained an important position, but covered reeds vanished utterly. Even lip-vibrated reeds,
though they continued in use elsewhere, are not to be found in Roman and
Venetian operatic ensembles. The ensemble for Vitali's Aretusa (Rome, 1620)
was composed of two harpsichords, two theorboes, two violins, one lute,
and one viol. Cornacchioli specified only two violins and a bass arm-viol for
Diana Schernita (Rome, 1629) without describing the continuo except in one
chorus for which an organ was named in the bass. Stefano Landi, in II Sanalessio (Rome, 1634), employed three violins, harps, lutes, harpsichords, theorboes, contrabass viols, and a lira in various combinations. M. Rossi's ensemble for Erminia (Rome, 1637) consisted of four violins with a basso continuo
"for all of the instruments." Trumpets were possibly used in scene six of the
second act during a soldiers' chorus in the text of which trumpets are mentioned.
In Venice the picture is much the same. A tabulation made by Goldschmidt of the instruments mentioned in the publications and manuscripts of
112 Venetian operas from 1639 to 1692 contained in the
Library of San Marco,
reveals that violins lead other instruments. Trumpets and flutes are mentioned
S
Monteverdi, his Life and Work, ments in the Pitti Palace, Florence, i6o8translatedby M. D. Mackie (New York, I625," Musical Quarterly XXV (1939),
1926), pp. 135ff.

4Federico Ghisi, "Ballet Entertain-

p. 421.

STUDIES AND ABSTRACTS

85

occasionally, as are harpsichords. Viols and recorders are prescribed once each;
but reed instruments, trombones, and cornetts are never mentioned.5 An
illustration of the Grimano Theater toward the middle of the century shows
a twelve-membered orchestra with a harpsichord, one chitarrone, and one,
possibly two trumpets, the remainder being various sizes of the violin family.6
The causes and even the nature of the transformation of the intermedio
orchestra into the operatic are still not clearly understood by many historians,
chiefly because they have not recognized the programmatic use of instrumental
colors for the representation of the subjects of the i6th-century intermedii,
nor that these uses were independent of any specifically instrumental idiom:
that is, a trumpet may have been used to represent a battle, but the musical
function would nevertheless have been determined within a vocal part-system
and its individual idiom, in so far as the nature of the instrument would
permit, would have been molded by a dominating, ideal vocal idiom. The
modern error has been to assume an interdependence between color and
idiom. Wherefore, having observed the growth of specifically instrumental
idioms during the I7th century, historians have presumed that the same era
cultivated uses for instrumental colors. But in linking the two, they have
discovered what seems to be a paradox: in the 17th century a sensitivity to
instrumental colors awakened (one presumes); yet in fact in opera, where
one would expect to find the most effective and enthusiastic adoption of such
color, the use of a variety of instruments underwent a remarkable diminution.
The explanations of this seeming paradox have been many, but one of the
most common and most attractive has been that opera of the I7th century
was largely supported commercially and that it consequently practiced economy, of necessity. Henri Prunieres observes:
It was necessary that the grand-spectacle opera adapt itself to new conditions
of existence. It was necessary to be contented with a dozen bowed instruments,
and with two harpsichords,the one "di ripieno" for supporting the orchestra,and
the other played by the director, for the accompaniment of the recitatives. Two
trumpets might be added ordinarily to this modest ensemble to play in the overtures and the warlike and triumphantscenes.7
Egon Wellesz agrees with this point of view, saying:
The theatres of Venice were only held on lease by managers. They could
not afford the luxury of an elaborate production, a big orchestra and a chorus.
The main responsibility, therefore, fell to the musician, who had to achieve the
most intensely dramaticeffect possible.S
The theory speciously solves the paradox by attributing the lack of a
multi-colored orchestra to causes beyond the realm of aesthetics. Wellesz goes
so far as to suggest that commercial exigencies caused aesthetic changes by
closing an avenue to what otherwise would have been the natural mode of
expression. If it were true, rarely have so many positive theories of the nature
of dramatic expression in music been derived from such negative beginnings.
A sufficient rebuttal for the theory of the economic origins of the Baroque
7Cavalli et I'operavenetien au X VlIe
5 "DasOrchesterder italienischenOper
im 17.Jahrhundert,"Sammelbdndeder In- sidcle (Paris, 1931), p. 17.
ternationalen Musikgesellschaft II (1900),
s Essays on Opera, translated by Patricia Kean (London, 1950), p. 37.
p. 16.
6 Musica II (1943), plate XXII.

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SOCIETY
JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL

operatic orchestra might be the mere observation that any commercial theater
can afford what its clientele wishes to pay for, and, therefore, that taste and
ultimately aesthetics are still decisive factors. But the theory has such currency
and is yet such an obfuscation of the intentions of I7th century composers
that it deserves more detailed examination.
First, the theory may be demolished on the grounds that it is historically
inconsistent. The versatile Renaissance orchestra composed of multi-colored
solo ensembles was one of the most economical musical organizations in history. Instrumentalists were expected to play several instruments rather than to
specialize in the playing of one or two. The degree to which this practice was
carried is shown by a letter written by Vincentio Parabosco to a representative
of the Duke of Piacenza in 1546 on behalf of a group of six musicians who
were seeking employment. The musicians were capable of playing consorts
of trumpets, trombones, pipes, cornetts, shawms, recorders, flutes, and armviols, or anything else his Excellency might think of. In addition they could
sing passably well.9 The Elizabethan public theater evidently found it commercially feasible to maintain an orchestra of viols, cornetts, hautboys, recorders, trumpets and drums, all of which were played by nine to twelve instrumentalists.10
A second inconsistency is that the monochrome orchestra existed before
and elsewhere during the period of Venetian public opera and under the most
affluent conditions, as is amply demonstrated by the list of orchestras used
under the patronage of the nobility and the ecclesiastic princes of Rome from
i62o until 1637, which has been cited above. Even the court festival sometimes
abandoned its traditional multi-colored orchestra, for Cesti's festival music
for the birth of Cosimo de' Medici in Florence in 1642 was a scenic serenata
composed for solo voices, chorus, and an orchestra of six violins, four alto,
four tenor, and four bass viols, a contrabass, one large harpsichord, one small
harpsichord, a theorbo, and a chitarrone, the last three being reserved for the
accompaniment of the solos.11
The theory has continued to exist despite apparent lack of
contemporary
evidence. No word of complaint about the restrictions of economy upon the
available types of instruments by a composer or spectator has been cited
in support of it. On the other hand, we are not lacking in plain-spoken
opinions which indicate that a change in taste has occurred. Agazzari wrote in
1607:
Of (wind instruments), I shall say nothing, because they are not used in good
and pleasing consorts, because of the insufficient union with the stringed instruments and because of the variation produced in them by the human breath,
although they are introduced in great and noisy ones. Sometimes in small consorts, when there are organetti in the octave above, the trombone replaces the
double bass, but it must be softly played. All this I say in general, for in particular
cases there may be instruments played so excellently by a master-handthat
they
adorn and beautify the harmony.12
9 N. Pelicelli, "Musicisti in Parma nei
secoli XV-XVI," Note d'Archivio IX
(I932),

p.

42.

Manifold, "Theatre Music in

the r6th and 17th Centuries,"Music and
Letters XXIX (1948), p. 378.
10 John

11August W. Ambros, Geschichte der

Musik, 3rd ed. by Leichtentritt (Leipzig, 1909), Vol. 4, p. 658.
12Del suonare sopra il basso, translated by O. Strunk in Source Readings in
Music History (New York, 195o), p. 425.

STUDIES AND ABSTRACTS

87

A generation later Doni observed that some people, among them the Principe
di Venosa, considered wind instruments to be crude, and in the face of such
opinion he felt constrained to justify his own approval of recorders and muted
cornetts upon the basis of the practices of antiquity.'a
A more profound statement that goes beyond mere expression of taste is
to be found in a letter written by Monteverdi to Alessandro Striggio concerning a favola marittima for which Monteverdi had been asked to provide the
music:
The ensembles described in this favola are all base and earthboundand utterly
deficient in opportunity for any beautiful harmonies since the harmonies will be
blown up more than is proper for an operatic aria (aria della scena) in order that
they may be heard and concerted behind the scene. And I leave the verdict in
this matter to your fine taste and intelligence, since, because of this defect, instead
of one chitarrone, three will be required; instead of one harp, three; and so on,
and instead of a natural, delicate voice, a forced one would be necessary. Furthermore, the proper (vocal) imitation of the text would, in my judgment, be accompanied with wind instrumentsrather than with delicate string instruments;because
the music is for Tritons and other marine divinities, I believe that it should be
set for trombones and cornetts and not for citterns or harpsichordsand harps.
Since this action is a sea-piece it is outside the city; and Plato teaches that cithara
debet esse in civitate, et thibia in agris. Either one or the other: that which is
delicate will be inappropriate or that which is appropriate will not be delicate.
Furthermore, I have observed that the characters include some twenty Amoretti,
Zephyrs, and Sirens, and consequently many sopranos will be necessary. And in
addition, the winds must sing, that is, the Zephyrs and the Boreal winds; how, dear
Signore, shall I be able to imitate the speech of winds if they do not speak? And
how shall I be able to move the emotions by these means? Arianna was moving
because she was a woman; just so was Orfeo because he was a man and not a
wind; music itself imitates and not by means of the orations and noises of the
wind or the bleating of sheep, the neighing of horses, and so on, but it does not
imitate the speech of wind since there is none to be found. The ballets which
are scattered through the favola do not have the meter of a ballet. The whole
favola, then, does not seem to me in my not little ignorance to move me at all,
and I understand it with difficulty; nor do I feel that it carries me in a natural
order to an end which moves me. Arianna leads me to a true lament, and Orfeo
to a true prayer, but I do not know to what end this favola leads. ...
From Venice, the 9th of December, I6I6.14
...

In this letter Monteverdi does not question the validity of the traditional
relationships between subjects and instruments: indeed, one suspects that he
finds the traditions a convenient excuse to reject the whole allegorical theatrics
of the intermedio. He is no longer concerned with abstract, symbolic representation nor with the resulting sensuous spectacle in which the multi-colored
orchestra presents to the ears a "spectacle" to match the display of the visual
arts. Rather he is searching for the means to represent human conditions.
Plainly he feels the intermedio orchestra to be as inappropriate as the intermedio subjects.
Monteverdi's solution to the problem of representing human emotions is
clearly set forth in the well-known preface to the eighth book of madrigals
published in 1638, in which the Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda ap1xDe' trattati di musica (Florence,
Vol. II (Musica scenica), p. 107.
x763),
14G. Francesco
Malipiero, Claudio
Monteverdi (Milan, I930), p. 165. A par-

tial translation and paraphrase will be

found in L. Schrade, Monteverdi (New
York, 1950), p. 303f.

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JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

peared. He has nothing to say in the preface about instrumentation specifically,

but if the above letter and the preface are considered together, the positive
nature of the changes which created the 17th century operatic orchestra is
revealed.
To summarize briefly a few points in the preface, an excellent translation
of which is available in Schrade's Monteverdi,15 three emotional states are to
be observed: the excited, the moderate, and the gentle. The latter two, in
Monteverdi's opinion, were represented in music by appropriate existing
styles, but the corresponding style was lacking for the first state. Quoting
Plato again, he equates the excited state with the emotion felt by warriors in
battle. He feels that the proper representation of such an emotion is made in
music by the rapid repetition of a single note in pyrrhic meter (i. e., equally
stressed tones). It should be noted here that Monteverdi is being in some
degree unfair to his predecessors, for his pyrrhic meter, as well as the motto del
cavallo rhythms and sword-stroke syncopations that are to be found in his
Combattimento, can be found in battaglie and combattimenti of the preceding
century. But there are two important differences between Monteverdi's idea
and those of his predecessors. He mentions one indirectly himself; that is,
that the instruments may create the agitation independently of the voices. To
quote the preface as translated by Dr. Schrade:
I began to see . . . that the semibreve divided into ... sixteenth notes, beaten
one after the other, and connected with a text that contained wrath and indignation, could well resemble the affection of which I was in search, although the
text might not be able to follow the fast tempo of the instruments.
This dramatic idiom is, then, an instrumental idiom and not a vocal idiom.
By contrast, the earlier combattimenti subjected every musical idea, regardless
of its original source or inspiration, to a vocal discipline.
The second difference is that in a public representation instrumental color
is not a necessary part of the instrumental idiom, since the prescribed orchestra
for the Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda is composed exclusively of
stringed instruments. The idiom, therefore, must stand solely upon the effect
of its musical material, and all that it requires of its instruments is suppleness,
versatility, and homogeneity. In liberating itself from color, the idiom has
made a step toward being an expression of a general human emotional state of
agitation. Monteverdi has realized that the technique for expressing the affections is not to be found in the allegory of instrumental colors, which for him
places severe limitations upon expression because it calls forth associations
with stereotyped, mythological subjects and scenes and a concomitant grandiosity, but rather that the technique is to be found in the character of the
rhythms, motives, melodies, and harmonies which the instruments are capable
of producing.
Here is the root of that thought which generated the doctrine of figures,
which is no less than the definition of those elements of music which will
produce specific affections independently of the medium by which they are
used. Such a viewpoint places into perspective another late i7th-century characteristic: the interchangeability of individual and particular instrumental
idioms. Any new musical idea that was born of the exploration of instru15Op. cit.,
299f.

pp.

STUDIES AND ABSTRACTS

89

mental techniques was immediately appropriated by all media for its affective
value, the latter being the primary objective of the composer.
Bent upon the creation of a dramatic idiom, the early operatic composers
could hardly have preferred any other medium than the versatile yet homogeneous and monochromatic string orchestra. Instrumental color would be
re-introduced only after the dramatic idiom was so established that it could
master the individual characteristics of all instruments and make of color
merely another means of achieving the expression of the affections.
With such weighty things to think of, it seems doubtful that they would
bother their heads much about economics.

George Peabody College

Nashville, Tennessee

ROBERTL. WEAVER