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Musica profana a Napoli agli inizi del Cinquecento: i villancicos della Cuestión de amor (Valencia, 1513)

Online only

Author Alfonso Colella
Series Recercare - Rivista per lo studio e la pratica della musica antica - Journal for the study and practice of early music
Size 17×24, pp. 230
Year 2016
ISBN 9788870968996

Price 7,00 €

The Cuestión de Amor (Valencia, 1513), an anonymous chronicle-novel set in a Neapolitan context, includes a description of the performance of some villancicos, which arouse nowadays a historical and musicological interest not only because they show the strong political and cultural relationships  between Valencia and Naples during the first ten years of the sixteenth century, but also because they allow a comparison between the Spanish villancico and the Italian frottola. I analyzed one of the frottole (Si tu mi sierres amor) included in a rare printed musical collection (Fioretti di frottole barzellette capitoli strambotti e sonetti libro secondo, Naples, 1519), in order to identify relationships and stylistic interpenetration between the unwritten musical tradition, which inspires the villancicos of Cuestión de Amor, and written polyphony which inspires the frottole of the Neapolitan collection. Moreover, we can infer from the Cuestión de Amor that the Borgia family had adopted an identity model which was characterized by chivalric values and which therefore stressed the primary importance of war and military subjects, relegating music to a marginal role. Finally, the reading of this chronicle-novel brings out the way the cultural and linguistic background of the Neapolitan court contained the diffusion of villancico genre.