Guitar Passacagli and Vocal Arie

1 Richard Hudson’s extensive work on four ostinato patterns culminated in his The Folia,the Saraband, the Passacaglia, and the Chaconne: The Historical Evolution of Four Forms thatOriginated in Music for the Five-Course Spanish Guitar, 4 vols., American Institute of Musicol-ogy, Neuhausen-Stuttgart 1982. Hudson, Alexander Silbiger, and Giuseppe Gerbino con-tributed to the relevant articles on “ostinato” and “ground bass” in the New Grove Dictionaryof Music and Musicians, 2nd rev. ed., Macmillan, London 2001-2002 (www.grovemusic.com).Silbiger’s most recent contribution to their appearances in the keyboard repertory is AlexanderSilbiger, On Frescobaldi’s Recreation of the Chaconne and the Passacaglia in The Keyboard inBaroque Europe, ed. Christopher Hogwood, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003,pp. 3-18. I would like to thank Professors Hudson and Silbiger for their astute and indispensa-ble comments on earlier versions of this paper.

MARGARET MURATA

GUITAR PASSACAGLI AND VOCAL ARIE

We are all familiar with ground bass patterns that are commonly grouped as“bassi ostinati”, such as the folia, the romanesca, the Ruggiero and the ciaccona.Stemming from popular music, their earliest manifestations have not been easyto uncover.1 But whatever the individual origins of these basses, by the early Sei-cento those origins no longer seemed to matter, although the patterns with morethan two component phrases, such as the Ruggiero and bergamasca, probablyretained their associations with song. Consisting of regular phrases, such basseseasily supported new songs with similarly equal-length (isometric) lines. Otherbasses like the ciaccona and folia have only one or two shorter repeating unitsand retain a characteristic strong sense of meter – a trait we often describe as“dance-like”. Vocal lines set to them can easily and attractively move in congru-ent phrases or engage in cross phrasing. We are also familiar with the notion ofboth melodies and/or chord successions functioning as arie, that is, as promiscu-ously suitable models for reciting fixed poetic forms like the Spanish romance orItalian ottava or sonetto, more or less all’improviso. Such arie typically take onthe rhythm of poetic scansion. This, too, can yield musical forms with isometricphrases; but individual poetic lines can also be rhythmically “distended” in per-

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2 Alexander Silbiger, Passacaglia, in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians cit.,s.v.

3 Girolamo Frescobaldi, Primo libro d’arie musicali per cantarsi nel gravicembalo, e tiorba,Landini, Firenze 1630; facsim. ed. SPES, Firenze 1982, pp. 32-35. Richard Hudson edited itin his Passacaglio and Ciaccona: From Guitar Music to Italian Keyboard Variations in the 17thCentury, UMI Research Press, Ann Arbor 1981, Ex. 25, pp. [199-203].

4 Girolamo Frescobaldi, Primo libro d’arie musicali cit., pp. 31-32.

formance, by embellishments and other aspects of vocal declamation or fantasy,whether these are improvised or notated as if improvised. We often say thatthese arie are formulaic, but in fact, they are not so, since they are many in num-ber and do not bear designations beyond “aria per cantar…” They can resembleeach other and are not necessarily either memorably tuneful or harmonically re-markable in themselves.

One of the most recognizable ostinato basses is the four-note stepwise descentidentified today with the passacaglia. It seems to have emerged as a linear pat-tern with what Alexander Silbiger calls «generic markers» only sometime in thesecond quarter of the Seicento, even though Spanish and Italian guitarists hadbeen playing pasacalles as “vamps” or ritornelli to songs since the previous cen-tury.2 One important transitional example is the «Aria di passagaglia» fromGirolamo Frescobaldi’s 1630 Primo libro d’arie musicali.3 The continuo line of«Così mi disprezzate?» begins as a variant of the stepwise descending tetrachordin “minor”, but with Frescobaldi’s unique fantasy the bass strays from it, modu-lates away from it and has its triple-meter progress interrupted with two recita-tive passages that set stanzas two and four. Clearly such artfulness does not markthe beginnings of a genre, nor does this aria seem a likely representative of apopular oral genre.

In the 1630 print, the aria just before «Così mi disprezzate?» is the much bet-ter known «Se l’aura spira», which is simply called an “aria”.4 Its stanza is also intriple meter and in four regular four-bar phrases. It does not open with a de-scending tetrachord, but this bass figure is the essence of phrases 2 and 4. Theform of the first stanza is retained and varied in parts two and three. Since thebass in «Così mi disprezzate?» isn’t linearly repetitive – I asked myself – why is-n’t «Se l’aura spira» a passacaglia, too? In its strophic, always melodious form, it

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5 This resemblance was first observed by John W. Hill in his Roman Monody, Cantata,and Opera from the Circles around Cardinal Montalto, 2 vols., Oxford University Press, Ox-ford 1997, chapter 3. It is further explored, with additional examples, in his L’accompagna-mento rasgueado di chitarra: un possibile modello per il basso continuo dello stile recitativo?, inRime e suoni alla spagnola, ed. Giulia Veneziano, Alinea, Firenze 2003, pp. 35-57.

6 They were first published extensively in Richard Hudson, Passacaglia cit., nos. 13, 29,41, 43, 44. There are others not so designated in their sources.

would seem to be closer to the kinds of songs that could have used instrumentalritornelli. To be a vocal passacaglia, must the bass be predominantly and persist-ently the same melodic phrase as well as a harmonic ostinato? This is not eventhe case with Frescobaldi’s own «aria di passagaglia».

In the context of instrumental music, Silbiger forbears from equating formslike the passamezzo, romanesca, and ciaccona with either chordal or melodic-bass formulas solely, in part because single attributes on their own are commonand migratory elements of the language of sixteenth-century music. Althoughgenres, then, may be identified by recurring complexes of attributes, it is alsoconceivable that some common idioms never become so special as to provokerecognition by name. Was Frescobaldi’s «aria di passagaglia» elaborating a sim-ple bass that everyone already knew? If so, where are its antecedents? Or was itthe case that in the course of 30 or more years a general notion of pasacalles anda variable practice became reduced to a single musical figure in triple meter, aprocess we begin to witness in «Così mi disprezzate?».

John Hill has shown that accompaniments on Spanish guitar in sixteenth-cen-tury Spain and Naples could have influenced the style of continuo performancein early Florentine monody. The guitar chords were sometimes widely and irregu-larly spaced over several syllables of text, a feature of continuo accompanimentsto the solo madrigals and recitatives of Peri and Caccini.5 The present inquiry in-to passacagli in vocal music also begins with the guitar but goes instead in the di-rection of canzonetta. Its starting point is consideration of the guitar pasacalles aswe know them from the first decades of the Seicento, in two of their early as-pects: 1) as riprese or ritornelli, and 2) as sets of transposed phrases known as pas-sacagli seguiti. These are short successions of chords, usually of equal length, per-formed in chains or cycles.6 Because most notated examples of riprese and

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7 Tyler now has pushed back the emergence of Italian alfabeto chord symbols to the lastdecades of the sixteenth century (as seen in I-Bu ms. 177/IV); see James Tyler and PaulSparks, The Guitar and its Music from the Renaissance to the Classical Era, Oxford UniversityPress, Oxford 2002, pp. 39-45.

8 Juan Carlos Amat, Guitarra española de cinco órdenes..., Lérida 1626 and 1627, based on alost 1596 first edition. Pitches are given in terms of octave registers. “Middle C” is C4; the stepbelow is B3, the step above D4. For the principal sources on guitar tuning, see Gary R. Boye,Performing Seventeenth-Century Italian Guitar Music: The Question of an Appropriate Stringing,in Performance on Lute, Guitar and Vihuela, ed. Victor A. Coelho, Cambridge University Press,Cambridge 1997, pp. 180-194. Amat’s tuning is the same given in Girolamo Montesardo, Nuovainventione di intavolatura, Marescotti, Firenze 1606 and implied in Foriano Pico, Nuova scelta di

passacalli appear in printed tutors, scholars have considered them exercises writ-ten down for beginners to practice chord progressions in different transpositions.That may well be the case for series of similar passacalli diverse. Passacagli seguiti,however, are well joined and have both phrase groupings and harmonic markersfor phrase shifts that resonate in the vocal repertory, as will be shown later.

I. Passacagli for guitar

Guitar accompaniments and bass lines. We know from the tuning of the five-course guitar and the appearance of alfabeto tablature for it at this time that themodel guitar passacagli in tutors and songbooks could not project linear, descend-ing bass lines.7 At their simplest, guitar chords consist of the three tones that makeup a triad with the possibility of two doubling tones. The registers of the chord-tones depend on two things. The obvious constraint is how the left hand can posi-tion itself on the frets. The second, more variable factor is the tuning of the stringsof the five-course guitar (strung 2 + 2 + 2 + 2, with either one or two strings forthe highest-tuned, first course). Even though the series of intervals from course tocourse appears fairly standard (4th, 4th, 3rd, and 4th up from the starting pitch ofthe fifth, lowest course), the different tuning systems of the first half of the Seicen-to had the lowest-tuned open string in different places. In a much-cited Spanishtreatise reprinted in the 1620s, the two strings of both lower courses are tuned inoctaves, with the lowest-tuned string sounding the interval of a twelfth below thehighest-tuned first course (yielding A2-D3-G3-B3-E4).8 Gary Boye reports that

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sonate..., Paci, Napoli 16[9]8, who gives no indications of octave tunings for any courses. For alist of tuning sources, see Gary R. Boye, Performing Seventeenth-Century Italian Guitar Musiccit., pp. 193-194 and James Tyler, The Guitar and its Music cit., appendix II, pp. 184-186. See al-so Massimo Preitano, Gli albori della concezione tonale: aria, ritornello strumentale e chitarraspagnola nel primo Seicento, «Rivista Italiana di Musicologia», 29 (1994), pp. 27-88.

9 Gary R. Boye, Performing Seventeenth-Century Italian Guitar Music cit., p. 192.10 A third system tunes only the fourth course in octaves, giving it the lowest-sounding

string (yielding A3-D3-G3-B3-E4). Tyler and Boye both agree that this octave tuning of the4th course only first appears in Antoine Carré’s Livre di guitarre (Paris 1671). Ivano Cavalliniand Hudson use the “Amat” tuning in their transcriptions; James Tyler, The Guitar and itsMusic cit., p. 40 transcribes the alfabeto symbols using the “Briçeno” tuning.

11 Ibidem.12 Thomas Christensen, The Spanish Baroque Guitar and Seventeenth-Century Triadic Theory,

«Journal of Music Theory», 36 (1992), pp. 1-42: 3.

this tuning with the possibility of true bass pitches was favored in the north of Italyuntil well past the mid-century.9 A 1626 treatise by Luis Briçeno represents Span-ish and often southern Italian practice. It has all five courses tuned in unison, butwith the third course tuned down a fifth from the second, instead of up a fourth.This makes the middle course a step lower than the open fifth course (yielding A3-D4-G3-B3-E4). It also shrinks the total range of the instrument, as the interval be-tween the lowest and highest open courses is only a major sixth.10 None of this af-fects the pitches (pitch classes) in any chord, but it can change which pitch is thelowest-sounding tone in a chord. Thus for the same left-hand fingering, a G-majorchord in Amat’s tuning sounds as a G6 chord of six tones that cover a range of athirteenth, but with Briçeno’s all-unison tuning, it comes out as a G root-positiontriad covering the space of an octave. In strictly chordal textures, then, chord qual-ity was important and registral order negligible; notional inversions had no voice-leading implications. Speaking from experience, James Tyler observes, «When thechords are played on a guitar without bourdons [octave strings in any course], anyinversions are virtually inaudible. Even on a Baroque guitar strung with bourdons,the effect is still one of nearly inversion-free block harmonies».11 Thomas Chris-tensen puts it more positively by saying, «The rich and percussive resonance of theguitar courses allowed a chord’s functional sonority to remain essentially constantno matter which particular note happened to be on the bottom».12

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Ex. 1Marco Antonio Aldigatti, «Passacalli diverse», in Gratie et affetti amorosi (Venezia 1627),p. 3. Two passacalli with chord positions on five-course guitar (Amat-type tuning). Uni-sons are not indicated. Every measure has three strokes, down-up-down.

13 Richard Hudson, Passacaglia cit., p. xxviii.14 Victor A. Coelho, The Manuscript Sources of Seventeenth-Century Italian Lute Music,

Garland Publishing, New York and London 1995. Of the three or four lute examples amongCoelho’s sources that might date from before 1630, the one that opens with C-Bb-Ab-F-G inthe bass follows a Ballo di Mantova and lacks its own title (I-Fn Magl. XIX.45, nos. 1-2). It isCoelho who has designated it “Passacaglia”.

15 Six bars given in Alexander Silbiger, On Frescobaldi’s Recreation of the Chaconne andthe Passacaglia cit., p. 16, from ms. Prontera 1 (private collection, Lecce), which contains sixpassagalli.

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A succession of chords, then, that in modern terms could be described as a I-IV-V-I progression would have a different series of lowest-sounding pitches (or“bass line”), depending on how the guitar was tuned and what chord was thetonic. None would make a linear, descending tetrachord (Ex. 1). Richard Hud-son correctly emphasized that «the passacaglia ostinato in guitar music is alsomainly a matter of continually changing bass-lines, even though, due to the na-ture of the style, the basses themselves are often only vaguely implied».13 «Con-tinually changing bass-lines», however, is somewhat exaggerated. Given that thelowest three courses are tuned in fourths (notionally A-D-G), the easiest avail-able pitches on any course range up a major third (e.g. A up to C#). For exampleMontesardo’s 1606 alfabeto tablature gives 27 chords. In Amat’s tuning, the low-est-sounding tones of the first 22 chords are accordingly the pitches A, Bb, B, Cand C#. Only the twenty-third chord offers a D3 as the lowest tone, made by fin-gering the 5th fret on the fifth and fourth courses, in a G 6/4 chord.

Because the lute has more strings and easily plays stepwise motion in the bassregister, one could look for stepwise bass patterns in passacaglias for lute. Butsurprisingly, there are far fewer than might be expected in Victor Coelho’s cata-logue of manuscript sources of Italian lute music.14 This may be because pas-sacaglias were generally too simple or too functional to be notated or, becausebefore ca. 1630 they were still largely a category of guitar music. One early key-board passacaglia, in a yet-unpublished Italian source that likely dates from be-fore 1630, very clearly opens with phrases on a G-C-D-G bass pattern, in a du-ple meter. Silbiger has observed that none of the passagalli in this source has afixed ostinato bass.15

16 Thomas Christensen, The Spanish Baroque Guitar cit., p. 4, calls this the «paradigmaticstructure of the Spanish passacalle», but it is the basis of the earlier Italian ripresa or ritornello,and is the component of other arie such as the bergamasca and Ruggiero. Chord content alonedoes not determine these varieties. Boye has recently argued that Pico’s print, though datableto 16[9]8, is a poorly printed plagiarism of Millioni’s posthumous Nuova corona d’intavolaturadi chitarra spagnola of 1661; Gary R. Boye, The Case of the Purloined Letter Tablature: The Sev-enteenth-Century Guitar Books of Foriano Pico and Pietro Millioni, in «Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music», 11 (2005) at <http://www.sscm-jscm/jscm/v11/no1/boye/html>.

17 Ivano Cavallini, Sull’opera Gratie et affetti amorosi di Marcantonio Aldigatti (1627),«Quadrivium», 19 (1978), pp. 145-302. Marcantonio Aldigatti, Gratie et affetti amorosi, can-zonette a voce sola, Gardano, Venezia 1627; facsim. ed. Ivano Cavallini, AMIS, Bologna 1979(Antiquae Musicae Italicae Studiosi, 2).

Passacagli as chord progressions. It is pointless to search for the stepwise tetra-chord as a bass line among guitar passacagli. Furthermore, the guitar manuals showthat the notion of what was a pasacalle was not rigid and that within the simplefour-chord framework, a variety of chords were possible and probably usual.

The most basic examples are represented in tutors by Girolamo Montesardo(Firenze 1606), Pietro Millioni (Roma 16[24]/27) and Foriano Pico (Napoli16[9]8). Their «passacaglie o ritornelli» and «passagagli diversi» are simple four-bar successions of four chords each, in both what we would term “minor” and“major” flavors. All equal the progression I-IV-V-I, but sounding on the five-string guitar with different inversions.16 It is clear from multiple sources, howev-er, that in practice, passacagli were hardly limited to the one plain sequence ofchords. Pico’s Nuova scelta di sonate per la chitarra spagnola gives three short«passacagli diversi». One consists of two cadential statements cycling CM-FM-GM-CM-FM-GM-CM; he also gives an identical transposed version beginningwith an FM chord (both on p. 10). The third is more colorful: Dm | Am-BbM |GM | AM-Dm |. This progression, which resembles the second Aldigatti examplein Ex. 1, contains both the minor dominant (Am) opening out from the tonic anda penultimate A-major dominant for the close. The move from a Bb-major chordto a GM chord creates a nice B-flat to B-natural chromatic touch (Pico, p. 13; thesame succession of chords on p. 15 has a different pattern of strokes). This «pas-sagaglio» is in the same family as the harmonically diverse passacagli that makeup Aldigatti’s «passacalli diverse» of 1627, first published by Cavallini.17

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Ex. 2Marco Antonio Aldigatti (1627), «Passacalli diverse», p. 3. Transcribed from alfabeto tablature, “normalized” to root position and figures added.

18 See the transcriptions from Giovanni Ambrosio Colonna, Intavolatura di chitarra allaspagnuola (Colonna, Milano 1620), in Richard Hudson, Passacaglia cit., nos. 11, 33, and 39a.Colonna issued a compilation of his four volumes under the same title (Gariboldi, Milano1637; repr. Forni Editore, Bologna 1971).

19 Richard Hudson, Passacaglia cit., no. 27, p. 23, from Carlo Milanuzzi, Secondo scherzodelle ariose vaghezze (Vincenti, Venezia 1622). Here in these and subsequent diagrams,rhythm and stroke indications have been omitted.

Passacagli passeggiati. Aldigatti gives eight progressions for a guitarist to prac-tice. All are contained within four measures, but some have six chords and somehave seven (Ex. 2). These are passacagli passeggiati, that is, the basic pasacallevariously decorated with extra chords. Four are in “major”; four are in “minor”.Only two of the eight move from the tonic directly to a chord a fourth above(nos. 6 and 8). The other six move from the opening tonic to a chord a fifthabove (four in major to their dominants; two in minor, nos. 4 and 5, to their mi-nor dominants). Six of the eight close with three chords of a IV/iv-V-I cadence.The two remaining – in minor – insert a tonic between the cadential iv and V(nos. 4 and 8). No single version is given special prominence; all are just exam-ples of how one could elaborate the basic framework.

The manual that perhaps demonstrates the importance of harmonically variedpassacagli is Giovanni Ambrosio Colonna’s first Intavolatura di chitarra spagnuolaof 1620. After presenting four-chord passacalli beginning with each chord avail-able on the guitar, he gives six passacalli passeggiati to G minor, three to C major,three to D minor, and so on for twenty-four more; some require chords createdby “shifting” a chord-position up the fingerboard.18 In fact, in any one “mode”,guitarists could harmonically vary the repetitions, four-bar phrase by four-barphrase. Carlo Milanuzzi’s 1622/25 songbook gives three passagalli as pairs offour-bar units, one pair in G major, one pair in A major, and one pair in A minor.

Hudson 27a: GM - CM - DM - GM | FM - CM - DM - GM |Hudson 27b: AM - DM - EM - AM | AM - Dm - EM - AM |Hudson 27c: Am - Dm - EM - Am | CM - Dm - EM - Am |19

In these, the second group of each pair either changes the major or minor quali-ty of the IV chord, or, take note, substitutes a subtonic or mediant (given in bold)

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20 Ivi, no. 29b, p. 23, from I-Fr ms. 2951, f. 18.21 Ivi, no. 8, p. 18.

for the opening chord of the second phrase. Milanuzzi’s two-phrase progressionsare not only passeggiati; they represent the minimum for passacagli seguiti.

Hudson 29b: BbM - EbM - Eb-FM - BbM | FM-Gm - DM-EbM - Bb-FM - Bb |20

For the more elaborate set of chords that is Hudson’s Example 29b, from aFlorentine manuscript, it is necessary to know their rhythmic organization. In thethird bar, the Eb and F chords sound a short-long pattern (underlined) that isthen echoed in the chord pairs FM-Gm and DM-EbM, as well as the penultimateBb-FM (underlined). The four-bar cycle of two closed phrases is not altered.

Rhythmic variety. The Aldigatti and other examples in Hudson’s studies am-ply illustrate that before 1640, the four-chord/four-bar basis of passacagli was notrestricted to one chord per bar. Hudson pointed out that passacagli used as ritor-nelli could be in duple or triple meter, since ritornelli would need to be in themeter of the song to follow. He supplies two duple meter examples fromBenedetto Sanseverino’s Intavolatura facile (Milan 1620).21 The teaching exam-ples are most frequently in triple meter (with down-down-up stroke patterns)and often with the opening tonic forming a two-beat “anacrusis”. With such ananacrusis, the opening tonic would seem extended, even though the remainingchords still fall on the next three downbeats. In triple meter, a chord changecould come on the second “beat” of a bar, as in Hudson’s Ex. 29b above. Thisgoes hand in hand, as it were, with the down-down-up stroke pattern. Phraseone of Hudson 29b simply displaces a chord change by a beat. When there areembellishing chords, as in the second phrase, color and accent create a set oftwo-chord replications that is almost stronger than the underlying chord scheme.The variable placement of the defining chords within the four-bar phrases againmakes the guitar passacagli different from the later “descending tetrachord” osti-nato. Indeed, the closer one looks at the four-bar guitar passacaglia in its capaci-ty as an instrumental ritornello, its adoption as an ostinato seems less and lessobvious. Yet several of the early guitar sources offer a manner of performing pas-sacagli that does consist of repeated, if varied, passacaglia phrases.

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22 Ivi, pp. xviii-xix.23 Ivi, no. 43, pp. 28-29, from I-PEc ms. 586, f. 3v. James Tyler and Paul Sparks, The Gui-

tar and its Music cit., p. 94 date this source later, ca. 1640, and attribute it to Antonio Car-bonchi.

24 The arie de passagallo reprinted in Colonna’s collected re-issue of 1637 are p. 45 (fromBook I; Hudson 39b), p. 52 (from Book II), p. 57 (from Book III; Hudson 45). Hudson dis-cussed them in Richard Hudson, Passacaglio and Ciaccona cit., pp. 38-40. The aria in Book Iof 1620 (Hudson 39b) is given at two pitch levels, the first closing to G minor, the second to Aminor.

Passacagli seguiti. As mentioned, passacagli seguiti consist of two or more phras-es in a chain. Hudson observes that «these can be simple passacagli mixed withpassacagli passeggiati. Other examples – he notes – employ modulation, ... ending... either in a different key or returning to the opening tonality. Some of thesepieces move to a key a step lower, a step higher, or both. Others ... [move] from amajor key to its relative minor or the reverse, or [move] between keys a fourthapart».22 A good illustration is one of Hudson’s examples from a manuscript in Pe-saro, dated ca. 1635 (pairs of chords in a short-long rhythm are here underlined):

Hudson 43: Gm - Cm - Cm-DM - Gm | FM-Bb - FM-Gm - Cm-DM - Gm |AM - Dm - Dm-EM - Am | Am - CM - DM - Gm |23

One pair of 4-bar phrases cadences to G minor; the third moves to A minor,and the fourth phrase returns to G minor. Note how the two internal phraseshifts are marked by harmonic “disjunction”: Gm to FM marks the shift fromphrase 1 to phrase 2; Gm is succeeded by AM between phrases 2 and 3! Similarshifts up and down a step occur earlier in Pietro Millioni’s Mutanze di passacaglijof 1627 (Hudson no. 44). A G-minor statement occurs as a ritornello in phrases1, 4, and 7. Phrases 2 and 3 cadence to Am; phrases 5 and 6 to FM.

Three pieces entitled «Aria de passacallo» occur in the volumes of Colonna’sIntavolatura, appearing among the «suonate» and not the generic exercises.24

They illustrate well the main point here that chains of passacagli easily form thebasis for larger, non-additive forms. In the Colonna examples, the «Aria de pas-sacallo» from his second book consists of four 4-bar passacagli passeggiate, twoto BbM and two to Gm, but the second phrase uses shifted chords, which gives

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its closing Bb chord (N3 fingering) quite a different interval structure and sonor-ity than the previous Bb tonic (H fingering). Similarly, the third phrase demandsshifted chords BbM-FM | Gm-CM | Gm-DM | up to the DM dominant in “nor-mal” position that closes to G minor. The «Aria de passacallo» from Colonna’sBook three has three repeated strains of 1 + 2 + 2 mutating cycles (Hudson no.45). Using shifted chords, it opens and closes in B minor. The aria in Colonna’sfirst book of 1620 takes a binary form (Hudson no. 39b, p. 27).

Giovanni Ambrosio Colonna, «Aria de Passacallo» (Hudson 39b)

||: phrase 1 | phrase 2 :||Bb -Eb-Eb-FM - Bb | Bb - EbM - Eb-FM - Bb :||

||: phrase 3 | phrase 4 | phrase 5 :||Bbm -Bbm -Bbm-CM- FM | Fm - Fm - Fm-GM -Cm | Cm-EbM - Cm - Cm-DM - Gm :||

In the binary example represented above, after eight bars of the basic cycle inBb (which are repeated), phrases 3, 4, and 5 cadence to FM, Cm, and Gm, notreturning to any phrase in Bb. The mutanze are pivot-chord modulations fromlater theory. Each closing major triad is altered to serve as the minor subdomi-nant in the following phrase. For the fifth and final phrase, the C-minor tonic ofphrase 4 briefly moves to an Eb-major chord and back (instead of altering to atemporary CM chord). This audibly signals the new phrase and the mutanza, asin the other modulations. Colonna’s use of the term “aria” in these two examplescould have meant two things. The aria could be simply the basic passacaglia for-mula. But the title and location of these arie among the «suonate» also suggestthat the combination of statements created a composition, that is, somethingmore than an open-ended ritornello. In the 1620 first edition, the piece is amongthose associated with specific individuals. The «Aria de passacallo» is dedicatedto a singer (cantore) at Santa Maria della Scala in Milan.

As ritornelli, not only the simple but also the more elaborated passacagliwould have been in the ears of both amateur and professional guitarists. There isno reason to imagine that musicians inclined to write down their music (com-posers) would not also have known these patterns, this rasgueado idiom. The va-riety of passacagli in the guitar tutors points to 1) harmonic improvisation as nor-mative within the plain chordal framework; 2) a four-bar phrase structure with-

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25 Instrumental variations on the passacaglia with tonic chords in the fourth bar inRichard Hudson, Passacaglia cit., are notably not for the keyboard. Pieces with closing tonicchords are Hudson, no. 50 for lute by Alessandro Piccinini (1639), and for guitar, no. 51 byAntonio Carbonchi (1640); no. 52 by Michelangelo Bartolotti in minor and in major (1640);and no. 53 by Giovanni Paolo Foscarini (ca. 1640).

26 Richard Hudson et alii, Bergamasca, in New Grove Online at <www.grovemusic.com>,accessed 20 May 2005.

27 From Matteo Coferati, Corona di sacre canzoni, 2nd ed., Eredi Onofri, Firenze 1689.The Coferati version seems likely to have been “Italianized”, since it lacks the tronco line endingsthat would surely have been in any bergamasque text.

out predictable metric placement of the internal chords, except for 3) a tonicchord in the fourth bar;25 and 4) the potential of utilizing a repetitive series asthe basis for the invention of arie. Rather than calling passacagli perfunctory ortoo labile to constitute a genre, we can regard them as a resource that encour-aged “composition” and could form the basis for songs or dances. The searchhere, then, is no longer for any stepwise descending bass line, but rather for theuse of passacagli seguiti as a type of aria, whether named as such or not.

II. Arie from passacagli (seguiti)

«Franzeschina me garbada», bergamasca (8.8t.8.8t + 8t.8t). One of the mostobvious examples of the chords I-IV-V-I repeating as an ostinato to accompany asong is the traditional bergamasca.26 The model “aria” given in the New Groveentry for “bergamasca” provides only four melodic phrases, of which the secondand fourth are the same.27 No phrase is transposed. Nobody has called thebergamasca a passacaglia, but the air shows that the same simple progressionreadily sustains a more or less syllabic song of several phrases. The version belowapplies the four-chord scheme in duple meter (of the 1689 Coferati model inNew Grove Online) to the Bergamasca text as sung by Zanni in a 1639 opera.

GM CM DM GMFranzeschina me garbada,

GM CM DM GMe chi lò ’l tò Zanno - lin,

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28 Transcribed from I-Rvat Fondo Barb. lat. 4386; facsim. ed., New York, 1982, Act 2,scene 4, ff. 114v-115.

GM CM DM GMzentil’ hom della vallada,

GM CM DM GMquel che t’ama senza fin?

GM CM DM GMMa voraf far colaziù,

GM CM DM GMse t’ha fatt’i maccharù.

What makes the song a bergamasca, of course, are not the repeating chordsthat make up its accompaniment but the succession of similar melodic phrases induple meter that carry the song’s poetic lines. Any pair of ottonari could success-fully be sung over two statements of the chord cycle, using any two melodicphrases that sounded “complementary”. In this case, the identity of both melodyand harmony as a duple-meter bergamasca is stronger than the relation of thesong to a passacaglia vamp.

The bergamasca on an unchanging ostinato can be compared with MarcoMarazzoli’s air for the bergamasco Zanni, who sings it in the 1639 Roman operaChi soffre speri (Ex. 3).28 Its ritornello is the passacaglia chord scheme of the air,leading into the first four lines, which are sung straightforwardly as two phrase-pairs over the bass pattern. Note, however, that phrases two and four in Maraz-zoli’s setting begin with the tones A-B in the bass line, in place of a single Gchord, joining the two phrases as in pairs of seguiti. The closing two lines of thesong are sung twice, in order to create a second half that also consists of fourphrases in eight measures. But instead of continuing with the ostinato in C,Marazzoli transposes two statements in the manner of the passacagli seguiti at thesame time that he altered the two-bar units of the basic cycle. Measures 11-12break the harmonic pattern, after which measures 13 and 14 contain not one,but two one-bar passacaglia units, one to A minor “hooked” into one to D ma-jor. This, in turn, hooks sequentially onto the same progression in back in G (m.15). One-bar repetitions then smoothly ease back into the original ritornello pat-tern, which remains at the lively double-time rate.

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Ex. 3Marco Marazzoli, from Chi soffre speri (Rome 1639). Zanni’s bergamasca, Act 2, scene 4,I-Rvat Fondo Barb. lat. 4386, ff. 114v-115.

29 Richard Hudson, Passacaglia cit., Plate II, p. xlv, from I-Vnm ms. 11701, f. 44v (olimItal. Classe IV, no. 1910); listed in James Tyler, The Guitar and its Music cit., p. 95 as havingbelonged to Francesco Riccio.

Anonymous, «Mal cambio par che sia» (7.11.7.11). Richard Hudson repro-duces a folio from a manuscript source of ca. 1630, of a kind that still remains onthe margins of musical research.29 These are song texts with only guitar chordsindicated in alfabeto tablature. For 27 of the songs in the manuscript, alfabetoprogressions of four chords marked «Pass» are given as ritornelli. In the case of«Mal cambio par che sia», the chords GM-CM-DM-GM are indicated as a ritor-nello for its four quatrains. The guitar chords given to accompany the song itselfalso consist of four chords per vocal phrase (the rhythm is unknown).

Pass[acaglia]: GM - CM - DM - GM

GM Am GMMal cambio par che si- a

GM CM DM - GMque- sto che iò con voi, a- ni- ma mi- a:

FM Dm EM - Ampoi ch’io vò da- to il co- re

Am CM DM - GMe voi mi date in re- com- pen-sa un fio- re.

These accompanying chords do not simply repeat the opening passacaglia,but they do make three passacagli seguiti on the model of one of Milanuzzi’s ex-amples (Hudson 27a, given above). Poetic lines 1-2 are set within a single pas-sacaglia statement to GM, in which the first chord is “expanded” by a GM-Am-GM progression. Poetic line 3 opens with the subtonic VII chord that so oftensignals a complementary phrase. Rather than closing out as a cycle in G, howev-er, this FM chord introduces a Dm-EM-Am succession that defines line 3, muchlike mm. 13-14 in Marazzoli’s bergamasca. This “bridge” phrase then smoothlyconnects to a parallel, closing passacaglia phrase in G.

Since we do not know either the rhythm or the melody of «Mal cambio parche sia», this demonstration is purely schematic. It certainly does not suggest

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30 Luis de Briçeno, Metodo muy facilissimo para aprender a tañer la guitarra a lo español,Ballard, Paris 1626; facsim. ed. Minkoff, Geneve 1972, p. 15; rhythm omitted.

31 Johannes Hieronymus Kapsberger, Libro secondo di villanelle a 1.2.&3. voci con l’alfa-beto per la chitarra spagnola, Robletti, Roma 1619; facsim. ed. SPES, Firenze 1982, p. 4.

that all songs for which passacagli serve as the ritornello will continue this pat-tern in their accompaniments! But another example is the «Seguedillas muyfaciles» immediately following the twelve pasacalles given in Luis Briçeno’s guitartutor of 1626. The verses are preceded by the instruction to play the ninthpasacalle, which is the chord progression DM-GM-AM-DM. The song, whichscans 7.5+7.5 syllables, continues with this progression in the accompaniment:

DM GM-AM DM GM AM - DMNo me case mi madre con hom- bre ga- lan :||

DM AM DM GM - AM - DMque se haçe la bar-ba a lo es- car- ra- man. :||30

Briçeno’s stanza is made of basic, but more than sufficient, materials, and itmay have been a vivacious, rhythmic song, needing nothing other than rasguea-do pasacalles accompanying a tenor with a mock wail in his voice. Like an ostina-to bergamasca, Briçeno’s seguedillas use no transposed statements. «Mal cambiopar che sia», with one transposed statement, has a more articulated form, but itis also a poem with a less popular flavor.

Kapsberger, «La vita alberga» (10.5.5 + 11.5.6 ). Kapsberger’s villanella «La vi-ta alberga dov’è bellezza» was published with alfabeto chords for the Spanishguitar, as well as with a continuo bass line (Ex. 4).31 It is built on passacaglia cy-cles that have no extra chords. The irregular stanza of 10.5.5 + 11.5.6 syllables isregularized to four rustic, closed, four-bar phrases in the triple meter associatedwith passacagli. The cycles transpose from FM, to CM, to Gm, and back to FM.(A refrain that is not in Ex. 4 follows each of the three stanzas; it is sung over re-peated cadences to FM, much like the closing phrases in Marazzoli’s bergamas-ca). Certain stepwise movements in the continuo bass line are necessarily absentwhen the aria is performed with guitar accompaniment alone. The effect, howev-er, would be certainly unsurprising and also appropriate, given the pastoral na-

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Ex. 4Johann Hyeronimus Kapsberger, «La vita alberga», in Libro secondo di villanelle ... conl’alfabeto per chitarra spagnola (Roma 1619), p. 4, verse lines 1-6; guitar chords transcri-bed over original b.c.

32 «Natural proprietà delle Gratie è l’andar’ ignude, ne perciò avviene ch’elle dalla nudità... ricevan vergogna.» (Ivi, p. [2]).

33 There are several other settings of the text, which appeared in Remigio Romano’s Nuo-va raccolta ... parte quarta, Salvadori, Venezia 1625. The text appears with guitar chords onlyin the Casalotti manuscript, which I have not seen (GB-Lbl Add. ms. 36877, f. 128). A sololute setting not related to the tune in Rontani’s print is I-Rvat Fondo Barb. lat. 4145, f. 12v.

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ture of the duet. This villanella is simpler than Marazzoli’s bergamasca. It is sosimple and straightforward, drawing attention to its construction out of pas-sacaglia statements would defeat its artlessness. Opening his dedication of thevolume to the composer, Ascanio Ferrari wrote, «It is a natural condition of theGraces to go about nude, ... nor do they accrue any shame from this nudity».32

My next example is a more dressed up version of the same combination of pas-sacagli seguiti, triple meter, and melodic invention.

Anonymous, «Aure placid’e volante» (8.8.8.8.8.8). One popular song text ofthe early Seicento is «Aure placide», which has a stanza consisting of sixottonari.33 As with the bergamasca, isometric ottonari fit perfectly with any ofthe four-stress ostinato figures. A setting by an unknown composer appeared inRaffaello Rontani’s Varie musiche of 1614 (Ex. 5). The bass for this setting con-sists of eight passacagli seguiti of two bars each that cadence to Gm, to Bb, toCM, and GM for four ottonari; then to FM, DM, and GM for the final two ot-tonari plus a repetition of the final line (which are followed by a repetition of theclosing statements). None of the single 2-bar units is the same, yet they are near-ly all equal. The composer divides the song into two parts by the characteristicshift down a step from the GM close of phrase four to the FM chord (in m. 9)that heads phrase five. It is an audible marker, since all the prior phrasessmoothly begin on the same chord that ended the previous unit. In the secondhalf of the song, the joints between the phrases are different. They shift upwardby fifths. Phrase 5 in F major jumps to a CM chord (m. 11) to open phrase 6,which closes, however, in D. That DM final moves to a Gm chord in m. 13, atthe head of phrase 7. After the repeat of phrases 5 and 6 as phrases 8 and 9, thesame DM closing chord (m. 18) steps down to a CM chord. This stepwise shiftnow marks the final phrase in G.

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Ex. 5Anonymous, «Aure placid’ e volanti», in Raffaello Rontani, Varie musiche ... libro primo(Firenze 1614), p. 17, first of four stanzas.

34 Giulio Caccini, Nuove musiche e nuova maniera di scriverle, Pignoni e C., Firenze 1614;mod. ed. H. Wiley Hitchcock, A-R Editions, Madison 1978; Antonio Brunelli, Arie, scherzi,canzonette, e madrigali ... Libro primo, op. 9, Vincenti, Venezia 1613.

The series of strong, syllabic phrases is unmistakably characteristic of thechains of seguiti. The 1614 print makes no mention of realizing the continuo parton the Spanish guitar, and the continuo bass line to this song has more variety inits two-bar units than one could achieve on a guitar. Yet the chordal orientation,pastoral flavor of the text, and the rhythm of the song are easily imagined with abattente guitar accompaniment. At least one other canzonetta in Rontani’s vol-ume appears in a manuscript source with guitar letters.

Brunelli, «Amor ch’attendi» (5.5.5.5 + 5.5.5.5). The isometric canzonetta text«Amor ch’attendi» (possibly by Ottavio Rinuccini) appears in two printedscores, Caccini’s 1614 Nuove musiche and Antonio Brunelli’s first book of secu-lar music of 1613.34 The regularity of the stanza suggested to both composersequal, parallel phrases with mutating cadence points in the manner of passacagliseguiti. Caccini’s stanza is notated in eight tactus units in C3, one 3/2 measurefor each line. Brunelli interestingly enough sets the stanza in almost the samerhythms, but notated in duple, not triple meter. In both settings, each of the fourphrases takes 12 beats. Brunelli’s begins after a beat rest, Caccini’s on the beat.

As in «Aure placide», the first 12-beat phrase sets the pattern for the rest of thecanzonetta. Caccini’s first phrase clearly delineates the two short five-syllable linesin the melody; his harmonization joins them in an “expanded” passacaglia phrasein which the opening extends the initial tonic chord, as in the first line of theanonymous «Mal cambio par che sia» (Ex. 6a). As in Caccini, the pairing ofquinari is emphasized more by Brunelli with sequential repetition in the vocal line(Ex. 6b). Brunelli’s harmonization, however, is made up of two similarly sequentialpassacaglia statements, «Amor ch’attendi» to DM and «Amor che fai?» to AM.

Since the strophes of «Amor ch’attendi» consist of four pairs of five-syllablelines, Brunelli’s subsequent pairs continue with the same phrasing and rhythm asthe first pair. The two statements in each of the first three pairs end with chordsa fourth apart. Thus DM at the end of the first poetic line (m. 2) is IV of the AMthat finishes poetic line 2 («fai»). A CM chord ends line 3 («prendi»); GM line 4

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35 Spotted by Anne MacNeil in I-Fn Magl. XIX.25, ff. 20v-21 (private communication).36 Silke Leopold, Al modo d’Orfeo. Dichtung und Musik im italienischen Sologesang des

frühen 17. Jahrhunderts, 2 vols., Laaber-Verlag, Laaber 1995 (Analecta Musicologica, 29), II,pp. 129-381.

37 Giulio Caccini, Nuove musiche cit.; Giovanni Francesco Capello, Madrigali et arie avoce sola, Vincenti, Venezia 1617; facsim. ed., New York 1986, p. 18. The Capello consists ofequal phrases to FM, CM, Dm (or DM) and FM. Labelled “aria”, it is comparable to, thoughsimpler than, Kapsberger’s «La vita alberga». On melodic expansions of passacaglia bass lines,see Richard Hudson, Passacaglia cit., p. xvii. These “expanded” formations are widely presentin canzonettas before 1620, but need to be examined in actual metric and phrase contexts.Tracking them goes beyond the initial step essayed here.

38 Silke Leopold, Al modo d’Orfeo cit., II lists the text of this canzonetta under “Senari eendecasillabi” and gives its scansion as 11.11.6.6.6; the shorter lines, however, are heard be-cause of the rhymes. The Milanuzzi print gives them as short lines. Leopold discusses the ariain I, pp. 99-100 and gives a modern edition in II, Ex. 3, p. 4.

(«omai»). The GM and DM chords that close lines 5 and 6 («vendetta/saetta»)are heard in the same pattern, even though neither of these subphrases containsthree chords. The fourth and final pair of poetic lines (mm. 10-12) repeats thenow-familiar rhythmic pattern but makes a more continuous harmonic progres-sion to the final G cadence. This includes the use of a V6 of V chord in place of aIV, displaced by a beat to the beginning of the last poetic line (a chord thatBrunelli seems fond of). The point here is not to speculate whether either com-poser knew the setting of the other, but rather to suggest an implicit model forboth Caccini and Brunelli in the nature of an «aria di passacagli» whose fresh-ness and simplicity evoke guitar-accompanied music. The Caccini version indeedoccurs among the Magliabechiana with guitar letters.35

To see whether stanzas in isometric quinari would tend to “fall” into this samemusical formula, Silke Leopold’s catalogue of printed vocal music is a highly usefultool.36 A sampling of the sixty pieces in her list of stanzas in quinari piani certainlyuncovered settings not related to the pasacalle such as Caccini’s own «Al fonte alprato» (1614), which has several phrases that end on the dominant. The 1617 set-ting of the same text by Giovanni Francesco Capello, however, could be construedas four 12-beat phrases of a smoothly “expanded” passacaglia progression.37

Milanuzzi, «L’alma mi strugge» (5.3.3.3.8 + 3.3.3.3.3.3).38 On the surface, Mi-

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Ex. 6bAntonio Brunelli, «Amor ch’attendi», in Arie, scherzi etc. op. 9, Book I/5 (Venezia 1613),aria, transcribed in Karen Knowlton, The Secular Works of Antonio Brunelli, Ph.D. diss.,Kent State University, 1983.

Ex. 6aGiulio Caccini, «Amor ch’attendi», in Le nuove musiche e nuova maniera di scriverle (Fi-renze 1614), mm. 1-2, with guitar chords from I-Fn Magl. XIX.25, fol. 20v.

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lanuzzi’s «L’alma mi strugge» seems quite different from the preceding examples.Truly scherzoso, the stanza consists of eleven extremely short lines arranged overthe equivalent of four passacagli seguiti which are quite passeggiati. The staffmarked “model” in Ex. 7 reduces the chords specified by the alfabeto tablature totheir basic passacaglia design. Here Milanuzzi’s guitarist needs to play a chord onevery beat. This makes quite a vivacious effect, possibly with a downstroke andupstroke on each beat. As in the previous example by Brunelli, it is the regularityof the phrasing marked by cadences that resembles a set of mutanze di passacagli.

Brunelli, «Grazie e gloria al Re del cielo» (8.8.8.8.8.8) and «Mi command’Amor tiranno» (8.8.8.5.5.8.8). Two more examples by Brunelli should now seemsomewhat redundant. They are comparable arias from his first book of 1613with the same stanzaic form. One is marked «spirituale» and is charmingly sim-ple enough to be a lauda for Christmas (Ex. 8a). The popular 12-beat rhythm of

Ex. 7Carlo Milanuzzi, «L’alma mi strugge», in Quarto scherzo delle ariosi vaghezze, op. 11 (Ve-nezia 1624), p. 12, first of three stanzas; guitar chords transcribed from alfabeto tablature.

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Ex. 8aAntonio Brunelli, «Grazie e glorie al Re del cielo», in Arie scherzi etc., op. 9, Book I/12(1613), aria spirituale, transcribed in Karen Knowlton, The Secular Works of AntonioBrunelli cit.

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the ottonario line is repeated consistently for 5 + 2 phrases, each of which is apassacaglia phrase. The transpositions are restricted to G and C.

The secular aria «Mi command’Amor tiranno» has five ottonari with twoquinari as lines 4 and 5 (Ex. 8b). Brunelli turns the two short lines into a singlephrase (using the descending thirds of phrase 3 of «Grazie e glorie»), but markstheir metric difference by shifting meter briefly from C to 3/2. Otherwise, eachottonario is also set to a 12-beat passacaglia phrase, with the usual cadences to D,A, and C within a G frame. Again, it is the series of equal phrases all ending withstrong cadences that resembles a set of seguiti. As we have seen in other in-stances, the cadential definition of the phrases ignores grammatical relationshipssuch as those between verb and its object. Furthermore, in all these songs,melodic sequence and rhythmic repetition rather than variation by embellish-ment is the mark of the vocal line. Likewise, rhythmic repetition in voice andbass, rather than alteration, may be related to the rasgueado style, whether as atrace or evocation of songs accompanied by Spanish guitar.

Ex. 8bAntonio Brunelli, «Mi command’ Amor tiranno», in Arie scherzi, etc., op. 9, Book I/16(1613), aria, transcribed in Karen Knowlton, The Secular Works of Antonio Brunelli cit.

39 Giovanni Pietro Berti, Cantade et arie ad una voce sola…, Vincenti, Venezia 1624; facsim.ed. New York 1986, pp. 30-31.

Berti, «Tante guerre e tanti danni» (8.5t.8.5t.5.8). Berti’s 1624 Cantade et ariewere published with guitar chords. One last aria here illustrates how smoothlythe closed, 12-beat unit can shape the new lyric strophes.39 In «Tante guerre etanti danni», two pairs of an ottonario plus a quinario tronco, which amount totwelve syllables of text, are set in a 12-beat sequence: the ottonario moves to theIV chord, the quinario tronco provides the cadence; that is, the GM chord on«danni» is IV in D major; in sequence, the FM chord on «affanni» is a fourthaway from C major.

Am EM Am | DM GM | Dm AM | DMTante guerre e | tanti danni | a un cor fe- | del?

GM DM GM | CM FM | CM GM | CMHor quai pene e | quali affanni | Havrà un ru- | bel,

The guitar accompaniment points to the two-phrase passacaglia statement asthe model, as in Brunelli’s «Amor ch’attendi» (Ex. 6b above). In the continuo-accompanied version, however, the pattern of raised “leading tones” in the bassline (G#-A, F#-G in mm. 1-2) smoothes and obscures the Am-DM-GM progres-sion of the “first” passacaglia unit. The sequential bass in mm. 5-6 has the sameeffect. The chords for the closing syllables 10-12, however, move from root posi-tion to root position, AM- DM and GM-CM (Ex. 9).

The last two lines of the stanza reverse the poetic meter, with 5 + 8 syllables.Berti audibly separates the full quinario from the last line by shifting from a DMchord on «t’adoro» (a surprise in itself with a leap of a descending seventh in thevoice from E5 to F#4) to a D-minor subdominant on «languisco» (m. 11), achromatic shift heard in some of Hudson’s passacaglia models. The D-minorsubdominant then easily moves to the cadence in A.

[CM] | DM | Dm | EM FM-Dm EM | AMS’io che t’a- | doro, | Languisco e | mo- ro___ mise- | ro.

The flavor of the poem is querulous; the first and last phrases hover in the

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Ex. 9Giovanni Pietro Berti, «Tante guerre e tanti danni», in Cantade et arie (Venezia 1624),pp. 30-31, first of four stanzas; guitar chords transcribed from alfabeto symbols.

“minor” mode, but they both end on major chords (according to the guitar tab-lature), once again as if in complicit recognition of the artificiality of the text orsimply in amusement.

Frescobaldi, «Se l’aura spira» (5.5.5.5t + 5.5.5.5t) and «Così mi disprezzate?»(7.7.7.7.7.7). Does the hunt for guitar passacagli in vocal music illuminate thetwo Frescobaldi arias that began this search? One strong similarity is the regularfour-bar phrasing in both, in a familiar lyric triple meter. But unlike the songswith mutanze di passagagli, both Frescobaldi arias emphasize melodic variationin the vocal line. Although embellishments are not precluded for those canzonet-tas for which we only have one stanza of music, melismatic additions would ob-scure the rhythms and possibly soften the crispness of the harmonic changes,which lend so much vivacity to these songs. A stronger and more obvious differ-ence, however, are the phrases in both Frescobaldi arias that end with dominantchords, unlike the closed phrases that characterize passacagli seguiti (and alsoColonna’s «Arie de passacallo»).

The first extended phrase of «Se l’aura spira» slides down a descending tetra-chord and ends on a strong D, dominant-function chord, not on a tonic. It is notfollowed by a tonic chord when the next phrase opens. Despite the stepwise de-scending bass, Frescobaldi’s first, eight-bar phrase is more like the first phrase ofthe passamezzo antico than a passacaglia (Ex. 10). The second phrase of «Se l’au-ra spira» then neither jumps to III in m. 9 nor repeats m. 1 as the head of a com-plementary phrase, resolving the dominant of m. 8. Frescobaldi instead re-statedthe DM dominant in m. 9, just as he used the same FM chord in mm. 4 and 5,making a liaison between first two four-bar subphrases.

Gm | Dm | Gm | FM—| - FM | Gm | Cm | DM - -Se l’aura | spira tut-| ta vez- | zosa, | La fresca | rosa ri- | dente | sta.

- - - DM | DM | Gm | FM | CM Dm | Cm | DM | G ||La siepe om-| brosa di | bei sme-| raldi | D’estivi | caldi ti-| mor non | ha.

The corresponding F-major chord in m. 12 («smeraldi»), however, is not re-peated, but rather moves on to a C6 chord («d’estivi»). This gives the flavor ofthe closing phrase of the passamezzo moderno. In all three stanzas, Frescobaldiquickly cancels its fresh E-natural in the continuo line with an E-flat in the voice

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40 Robert Judd observed a similar chromatic play in keyboard passamezzi published inVenice in 1551; see Alexander Silbiger, Keyboard Music before 1700, Schirmer Books, NewYork 1995, p. 264.

41 The stanzas are called parti, which is usual for the sections in vocal variation forms.42 The descending bass is lightly present but not “thematic” in the performance on 8-

course lute alone by Ronn McFarlane with soprano Julianne Baird, on The Italian Lute Song,Dorian DOR-90236 (1996). The stately, archaic flavor of the harmony comes out in JamesBowman’s two-and-a-half minute performance with harpsichord and gamba on James Bow-man, Airs italiens & cantates, Arion ARN 68516 (rec. 1987, released in 1988 and 2000).

within a C-minor chord.40 Passamezzo is probably the most naturally-fitting ariato associate with «Se l’aura spira», whose stanza is clearly heard in two comple-mentary sections.41

It is also possible to break Aldigatti’s fifth guitar passacagli in D minor into twoparts at the second “dominant”; it is, however, a minor dominant in a minor modecontext. To consider Aldigatti’s passacaglia as a potential model also stretches aprogression conceived as a four-bar unit into a 15-bar complete stanza, a theoreti-cal operation that feels patently anachronistic. The two descending tetrachords inFrescobaldi’s two phrases are furthermore not congruent with the vocal phrases.They are rather simply the result of connecting tonic chords to subdominants, fill-ing in between the 2nd and 4th tones of the first phrase of the passamezzo anticoand between the 1st and 2nd tones of phrase two of the passamezzo moderno.42

«Così mi disprezzate?» is a different creature, and not just because two of itsstanzas are set in recitative style. Its first four bars also end on a dominantchord, which is appropriate for an interrogative clause (Ex. 11). It may havebeen this opening question, however, that set Frescobaldi’s passacaglia on a di-vergent track, to become the genre that it came to be outside of the guitar tradi-tion. The next chord is – not unexpectedly – a tonic; but coming in the fifth bar,it is clearly the beginning of the new phrase-unit, not the end of the first. Thearia is fairly consistent in this. In the first stanza (the first of five sestets), all nineof the four-bar phrases end with dominant chords; in the last stanza, all eightdo. What we hear in Frescobaldi’s «Aria di passagaglia», then, is the conflationor borrowing of the four-bar unit characteristic of the ciaccona, whose numer-ous models in guitar tutors have the dominant as the last chord in the cycle. AsJohn Hill has already pointed out in his search for antecedents of «Così mi dis-

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Ex. 10Girolamo Frescobaldi, «Se l’aura spira», in Primo libro d’arie musicali (Firenze 1630),pp. 31-32, aria in tre parti (in variation); four models for the bass.

Ex. 11Girolamo Frescobaldi, «Aria di passagaglia», in Primo libro d’arie musicali (Firenze 1630),p. 32, mm. 1-4.

43 John W. Hill, Frescobaldi’s Arie and the Musical Circle around Cardinal Montalto, inFrescobaldi Studies, ed. Alexander Silbiger, Duke University Press, Durham (NC) 1987, pp.157-194: 190-192.

44 Here uniquely, however, Frescobaldi’s passacaglia unit is three bars in length (each isnumbered in the source), but because adjacent pairs are similar, the listener effectively hearssix-bar phrases. Modern eds. in Richard Hudson, Passacaglia cit., no. 48, pp. 31-34; GirolamoFrescobaldi, Keyboard Compositions Preserved in Manuscripts, ed. William R. Shindle, AmericanInstitute of Musicology, s.l. 1968 (Corpus of Early Keyboard Music, 30/3, no. 14), pp. 46-49.

45 The sources of Hudson’s dominant-ending passacagli are largely I-Fr mss. 2793, 2804,and 2849, and I-Fn Landau Finaly 175; James Tyler, The Guitar and its Music cit., pp. 78-80;91-92, connects them all to one copyist, Francesco Palumbi. See also Id., The Role of the Guitar in the Rise of Monody, «Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music», 9 (2003) at <http:// www.sscm-jscm/v9/no1/Tyler.html>, parag. 2.10-11. I have not been able to consult the un-published dissertation of Massimo Preitano which discusses these sources (among others):Massimo Preitano, L’accompagnamento strumentale dell’aria a Firenze nella prima metà del Sei-cento, 2 vols., Università di Pavia, 1991-92; Id., Gli albori della concezione tonale cit., pp. 45-51.

prezzate»,43 Frescobaldi had already adopted a dominant-ending phrase in hisPartite sopra passacagli published in the first, 1627 edition of his second book oftoccatas and canzoni.44 Hudson published several passacagli from manuscriptsources that begin on the beat and do arrive at the dominant-function chord on-ly in bar four (Hudson nos. 14-25). James Tyler has interrelated and pushedback the dating of their sources to ca. 1610-20 and attributed their repertory toa southern orbit, conjecturally Neapolitan.45 It is not possible to say whetherthey represent an alternative or an idiosyncratic conception of the passacaglia,much less whether Frescobaldi knew it or simply made an alteration on his own.

At any rate, the text of «Così mi disprezzate?» seems forced into this notionof what the passacaglia is, since the text and music fit awkwardly, even poorly, inplaces. Each of the dominant chords in the first stanza is followed by a tonic,which sometimes makes a close that ignores grammatical relations between poet-ic lines (as we saw in other songs). Thus «love will do to your heart» is separatedfrom its object «that which you did to mine» by a full cadence in F major.

Furthermore, Frescobaldi is not consistent with his ostinato. In the first fourlines of the third stanza, the phrases revert to the typical passacaglia unit thatends on a tonic (vertical lines below mark the ends of each fourth bar). These

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46 John W. Hill, Frescobaldi’s Arie cit., p. 191.47 The Italian Lute Song cit., see note 42.

four lines are set in five cycles that all close to GM, although not congruentlywith the poetic lines:

Beltà sempre non regna,→DM-GM |

e s’ella pur v’insegna→DM-

a dispreggiar mia fé,-GM | →AM-DM-

cre - dete pur a me,-GM | →DM-GM |

che s’oggi m’anci- de- te,→DM-GM | →BM | Em

doman vi pentire- te.→BM | Em

For the last two lines of the sestet, however, two more cycles shift to E minor,but with the BM dominants in their fourth bars. The fact that «Così mi disprez-zate?» does not stick to its original passacaglia phrase in D minor was likely noteither a melodic or a harmonic innovation on Frescobaldi’s part, whether or nothe knew Colonna’s earlier «Arie de passacallo». The inconsistency of his pas-sacaglia units, however, in terms of harmonic-rhythmic markers contributes tothe bumpy, unsettled quality of each of the stanzas in aria style.

John Hill found «no single model or precedent for Frescobaldi’s “Aria di pas-sacagli”».46 Nevertheless, the short-breathed, light-hearted insouciance we haveseen in some of these earlier songs is a characteristic of «Così mi disprezzate?»,along with “variability” rather than “obstinacy” in the sounding bass line. This issuccessfully projected in Julianne Baird’s 1996 performance accompanied by aten-course lute, which takes a lively tempo and a tone both petulant and mock-ing.47 The next arias on the passacaglia bass both appeared in 1633 and, like

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48 «Usurpator tiranno» by Giovanni Felice Sances (in Richard Hudson, Passacaglia cit.,no. 49) and «O Dio, che veggio?» by Martino Pesenti (in Silke Leopold, Al modo d’Orfeo cit.,II, no. 57). The Pesenti is termed «cantato sopra il passacaglio»; its contrasting sections, in-cluding the instrumental ritornello, appear to be on three formations of the passacaglia. It isclearly the representation of a mad woman (named Eurilla by the narrator, who speaks only inthe closing section). I have elsewhere interpreted the Sances setting as a parody of an amateurlute-player venting his lovesickness in song.

Frescobaldi, mixed aria-style and recitative-style sections. They emphasized,however, the “naked” linear descending tetrachord, which is never heard inFrescobaldi’s aria.48 There are missing links, then, between Colonna’s «Aria dePassacallo» and «Così mi disprezzate?», as well as between Frescobaldi’s ariaand those by Sances and Pesenti. The Brunelli, Kapsberger, Milanuzzi and Berticanzonette examined here did not, of course, appear designated as «sopra i pas-sacagli». Yet they appear to be members of a song family from whose genealogi-cal branch can be heard the distinct and inviting sounds of rasgueado chords, inpassacagli both passeggiati and seguiti.

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Guitar Passacagli and Vocal Arie

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