Musica e identità nobiliare nell'Italia del Rinascimento: Educazione, mentalità, immaginario (review)

The courtier with his lute and the lady singing madrigals with her companions are familiar images from Renaissance court paintings. In this study of mentalités, Stefano Lorenzetti has taken them as a starting point for exploration of less familiar ground. He examines the ways in which music helped to shape court culture and noble identity in the Renaissance and ancien regime. The publications on court behavior and proper conduct that streamed from the presses of sixteenth-century Italy form his main body of sources. Production of these works, usually composed in dialogue form, rose from the early sixteenth century and accelerated with the appearance of Castiglione's Il cortigiano (1528); it peaked in the last decades of the century before fading in the 1630s. The act of reading had sufficiently high esteem that those of high social standing turned willingly to written advice to help navigate the often-treacherous shoals of court life; the authors of these works responded not only to changes in court culture but also to other authors.

Lorenzetti's main chapters move chronologically and topically in exploring a particular topic that contributes to a larger portrait. He begins with medieval courts and their troubadours. The performance of songs instilled virtue through both melody and text. Musical performance formed a type of courtly service by a lord to his lady. Renaissance courts kept these associations but added others, from both the liberal arts traditions and humanist pedagogy. Especially important was Aristotle's Politics, which advocated skills in musical performance as essential to social life. This ideal contrasted with the liberal arts tradition of the universities that defined music in terms of mathematical theory.

Lorenzetti then turns to models of the ideal courtier presented by Castiglione and others. Though some critics asserted that musical expertise was merely effeminate, Italian authors agreed that education and skill at musical performance were essential traits of successful courtiers, a way to display their grace and sprezzatura. Theirs was not the complex, formal polyphony of church music; rather, they favored the Italian tradition of song accompanied by instruments such as the viola da mano or the lute. These social performances could be compared to the art of conversation, also of great importance at court. These models raise gender issues in turn. While earlier humanist treatises had been equivocal about women performing, writers on courtly behavior considered it a necessary accomplishment, along with letters, painting, and dance. A woman making music rendered beauty to both ear and eye, serving as both image and metaphor of the ideal of courtly love. Finally, Lorenzetti discusses the perception of musical events. Instrumental music took the voice as model and guide, and an instrument's status rose according to its suitability for accompanying the voice. The rise of the madrigal, secular yet polyphonic, requiring musical literacy but accepting of amateur venues, correlates well with the rise of interest in courtly conversation. And these performances by and for fellow courtiers contrasted with larger court spectacles featuring professionals. These developments accompanied the gradual transformation of the courtier to the early modern gentleman and aristocrat.

Court music was described as a sensory giver of delight and pleasure, with ever less reference to its older theoretical role as a rational part of mathematics. Lorenzetti argues that this parallels the gradual diminution of the early modern courtier's function. His decision to discuss change as "spirals" or "conversations" avoids issues of the causes of change. So too, the study's focus on historical sources not primarily about music (though authors such as Pietro Aron, Franchino Gafurio, and Gioseffo Zarlino do make an appearance) has both strengths and weaknesses. The writings and debates of Renaissance musical scholars could shed light on a number of the transitions Lorenzetti describes. So too, more attention to musical genres could clarify the degree to which stylistic...