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Complete Madrigals (review)

2003; Music Library Association; Volume: 59; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/not.2003.0015

1534-150X

Giuseppe Gerbino,

Diverse Musicological Studies

With this recent edition of two books of his five-voice madrigals,thenobleman,courtier, and composer Alfonso Fontanelli (1557-1622) can at last leave the limbo of a historiographical reputation based more on his contemporaries' praises than on a direct appreciation of his music. The name of Count Fontanelli recurs in the writings of almost everyone who, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, became involved with the various musical avant-gardes of the time. The best-known example is certainly that of Claudio Monteverdi, whose brother Giulio Cesare included Fontanelli among the champions of the new style in the Dichiaratione della lettera that he wrote and published as an appendix to Claudio's Scherzi musicali (Venice: Ricciardo Amadino, 1607; reprint [with introd. by Iain Fenlon, Bibliotheca musica bononiensis, sec. 4, no. 80], Bologna: Arnaldo Forni, 1998). The first list of seconda prattica composers brought forward in this text is admittedly a little suspicious, and I am not the first to notice it. With the exception of Cipriano de Rore (the true founding father), no professional musician is mentioned. The names are all of noblemen: Carlo Gesualdo Prince of Venosa, Emilio de' Cavalieri, the Count of Camerata (Geronimo Branchiforte), Giovanni del Turco, Tomaso Pecci, and Count Fontanelli. By enlisting such personalities in his cause, Monteverdi obviously erected a social bastion more solid than any theory of style. Nobody would openly attack these noble dilettanti and the cultural elite they represented for not following the rules of good taste. They made the rules. It is also true, however, that the lineage invoked by Monteverdi reflected the role that a new generation of aristocratic connoisseurs played in the formulation of a hypersophisticated search for musical expressivity, whether in the capacity of patrons or occasional composers. Fontanelli's music embodies this special brand of musical sophistication.