Chasing Voices, Hunting Love: The Meaning of the Italian Caccia

The fourteenth-century Italian genre of the caccia has received attention largely for its peculiar musical construction and idiosyncratic texts. A typical caccia (pl. cacce) is a three-voice piece in which a lower voice (tenor) supports two upper parts written in canonic counterpoint. In this musical technique, the voices sing the same melody at a given distance in time, musically "hunting" each other. The poetic texts describe hunting scenes, including technical terms, call and response patterns, and onomatopoeia. It is quite clear, though, that the hunt represents a metaphor for the quest for love.

The production of cacce spans about a century, from the first generation of fourteenth-century composers (Magister Piero, Jacopo da Bologna) to the beginning of the Quattrocento. Although their number is not as large as other genres such as madrigali and ballate, they are consistently transmitted in all the major musical anthologies of the Trecento.

This article re-examines the caccia repertory, focusing on what I believe to be some significant issues: (1) the meaning of their texts in the broader context of medieval literature; (2) the metaphorical significance of the genre and its effect on the understanding of individual pieces; (3) the Trecento theory of musical genres and the contemporary perception of the caccia as an autonomous form. Lastly, I address individual cases the analysis of which implies methodological approaches of more general interest for future research.

1. The hunt in medieval literature

The concept of intertextuality, as elaborated by the French post-structuralists in the 1960s (Kristeva, Barthes), employed the allusions of a given text to other pre-existing ones as a fundamental exegetical tool. The concept can be applied in musicology as well, but in the case of secular vocal music two elements have to be included: a poetic text and its musical setting. First of all, we need to decide if it is possible to apply this approach not only to the artistic product as a whole, but also to the two elements separately. More generally, the question implies an evaluation of the concept of poesia per musica and its independence—or interdependence—from the musical setting.

Most of the texts of cacce, as well as of madrigali and ballate, were written to be set to music, as shown by many rubrics in literary manuscripts: e.g., madriale tonato or caccia da cantare. Nevertheless, the existence of independent transmission in literary sources supports the perception of their poetic text as an autonomous artistic product. In some cases, such as Niccolò Soldanieri's A poste messe, the musical manuscripts preserve only one of the two stanzas, whereas the more complete version has only a literary transmission.¹

In the broader context of medieval literature, caccia texts reveal meanings not evident otherwise. The hunt is an extremely widespread topic, as demonstrated by two important studies: Marcelle Thiébaux's The Stag of Love: The Chase in Medieval Literature (1974) and the more recent one by Giovanni Barberi Squarotti, Selvaggia dilettanza. La caccia nella letteratura italiana dalle origini a Marino (2000).

From ancient literature onwards, the hunt had different meanings, ranging from the religious quest to the spiritual journey towards virtue.² The act of hunting can represent the bravery of the hero, but the metaphor may be also be reversed to mean humankind as "hunted" by vice, temptation, and death. By far the most common allegory is the erotic one, present since Greek and Latin literature, as in, for example, Horace's Ode I.23 (lines 1-4):

Vitas inuelo me similis, Chloe,quaerenti pavidam montibus aviismatrem non sine vanoaurarum et silvae metu.

[You are running away, Chloe, just like a fawn / seeking on the remote mountains her terrified / mother not without needless / fear of forest and fitful breeze.]³

Dido's passion for Aeneas is represented by Virgil in Book IV of the Aeneid as an arrow stuck in her side:

Uritur infelix Dido totaque vagatururbe furens, qualis coniecta cerva sagitta,quam procul incautam nemora inter Cresia fixitpastor agens telis liquitque volatile ferrumnescius: illa fuga silvas saltusque peragratDictaeos; haeret lateri letalis...