1st Edition

Guarini's 'Il pastor fido' and the Madrigal Voicing the Pastoral in Late Renaissance Italy

By Seth Coluzzi Copyright 2023
458 Pages 98 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

458 Pages 98 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

458 Pages 98 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Battista Guarini’s pastoral tragicomedy Il pastor fido (1589) began its life as a play, but soon was transformed through numerous musical settings by prominent composers of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Through the many lives of this work, this book explores what happens when a lover’s lament is transplanted from the theatrical stage to the courtly chamber, from speech to... Read more

Introduction: Voice, Genre, and Perspective in the Italian Madrigal

Pastoral Personas in a Tragicomic Plot

 

1. Reading the Madrigal: Mode, Structure, and the Analysis of Late-Renaissance Music

On Mode

Modal Unity within Diversity: Commixtio Tonorum

Analytical Approaches to Late-Renaissance Polyphony

 

2. The Play and Its Early Audiences

Guarini’s Readings of the Early 1580s

Signs of Stagings in the Mid-1580s

Mantuan Efforts of the Early 1590s

The First (Confirmed) Productions

The Mantuan Productions of 1598 and the Madrigals of Gastoldi

Stagings in the Early Seventeenth Century

 

3. From Poetic Monster to Raccolta di madrigali: The Pastor fido Debate, 1586–1602

The First Wave of Debate: Denores and the two "Verrati," 1586–93

The Second Wave of Debate, 1600–01

 

4. Marenzio, Guarini, and the Origins of the Pastor fido Madrigal

Marenzio’s "O fido, o caro Aminta" (1595): An Introduction to Some Textual Conflicts

Marenzio and His Patrons in Rome

Guarini and the Lyric Madrigal

Marenzio’s Guarini Settings, 1580–99

Guarini’s Drafts and Salviati’s Lost Manuscript

Salviati’s Annotazioni and the Texts of Marenzio’s Madrigals

Scipione Gonzaga and Marenzio’s Pastor fido Settings

 

5. Beyond the Theater in Rome and Mantua: The Settings of Marenzio and Wert

Marenzio’s "O fido, o caro Aminta": The Integration of Text and Music

Marenzio’s and Wert’s Readings of "Cruda Amarilli" (1595)

Three Settings from Act 3

 

6. "Ahi, lasso!": Monteverdi, Il pastor fido, and a New, Mantuan Controversy

Monteverdi’s Early and Variant Readings, 1592–1603

The Monteverdi–Artusi Debate: Musical and Extramusical Provocations

 

7. Madrigalian Discourses in (and Beyond) Monteverdi’s Fifth Book

Modal Structure and the Temporal Worlds of Mirtillo and Amarilli

Interpersonal and Intertextual Dialogue in "Ecco, Silvio, colei che ’n odio hai tanto"

Inter-Madrigal Motives (and their Interpretative Consequences)

Monteverdi and the Madrigal as Discourse

 

8. The Settings of Pallavicino, Gastoldi, and Rossi, and the Afterglow of a Mantuan Pastoral Passion

Dilating Dissonances, Dynamic Structures, and Marenzian Ties in Pallavicino’s Sixth Book (1600)

Beyond Balli: Concision, Contrast, and Characterization in Gastoldi’s "Pastor fido" Settings

Salamone Rossi: Marenzian Cues on a New, Mantuan Stage

The Expectations of a "Pastor fido" Madrigal Reading and the Example of Artusi’s Failure

Biography

Seth J. Coluzzi is an Assistant Professor of Music at Colgate University and a scholar of the music, poetry, and culture of late-Renaissance Italy. His work focuses on issues of analysis, mode, interpretation, and text-music relations in the Italian madrigal and has appeared in Journal of Musicology, Music and Letters, Music Theory Spectrum, Early Music, Studi musicali, and other journals and collections.