The Cinquecento Italian Madrigal in Theory and Practice: The Case of Filippo Massini (1559–1618)

I

The second half of the sixteenth century was the period of greatest popularity of the Italian Renaissance poetic madrigal. Poet and jurist Filippo Massini greatly contributed to this development, providing, in addition to an extensive production of madrigals, a theorization of this verse form. His academic lecture Del madrigale (On the Madrigal), composed in the early 1580s, carefully analyzes all the key characteristics of the madrigal and also provides practical suggestions on its composition. Massini's comprehensive reflection on the madrigal takes into account the interplay between theory, practice, and mainstream aesthetic preferences. Although it is proposed as a summary of Pietro Bembo's theories, the lecture actually expands them, bringing them into line with the transformed literary scene and widespread compositional practice of the second half of the sixteenth century. This keen interest in the practical side of the verse form is easily explained in light of the vast output of madrigals he produced during his life. He left three collections of this verse form and included more than one hundred madrigals in his main collection of Rime, published in 1609.

Unlike some of his contemporaries, Massini did not develop any particular interest in the madrigal as a musical composition. His few notes in the academic lecture on the madrigal's musicality and harmony (which will be analyzed below) are indebted to Bembo's theories, and still contemplate the madrigal exclusively as a literary composition. Contemporary composers similarly overlooked Massini's madrigal production, which has never been set to music. For this reason, this essay will be devoted to Massini's academic lecture in the light of contemporary debates on the literary madrigal, and will not reflect on the madrigal as a musical composition. Analyzing this theoretical piece of writing, I will address the following questions: How should Massini's position be considered within the aforementioned debate on this verse form? What are the main distinctive characteristics of Massini's concept of the madrigal? More specifically, how loyal is Massini to Pietro Bembo's theories, of which he declares himself a follower? The second part of this paper will assess whether Massini was consistent in translating his theory into practice. In other words, I will consider whether his literary production corresponds to the idea of the madrigal that emerges from the lecture. To assess this, I will provide an outline of Massini's madrigal production and compare his compositions to the suggestions given in the lecture.

II

The rediscovery of Filippo Massini's literary production is due to Quinto Marini and Mirko Volpi.¹ These two Italian scholars recognized the Perugia-born poet as one of the most important men of letters active in the Milan area at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. Marini and Volpi have observed the capacity of Massini's poetry to merge and balance the more established Petrarchan tradition with the innovative, and to some extent controversial, rhetorical features characteristic of the emerging Seicentesco poetry. More recently, Uberto Motta has recognized in Massini's literary production a clear intent to defend the freedom of poetic expression, and Roberta Ferro has traced his presence in the literary milieu of Milan at the beginning of the Seicento.²

Born in Perugia on May 1, 1559, Massini devoted his life to his career as a jurist and his vocation as a man of letters. After graduating in 1580 in utroque iure, he taught law at the local University of Perugia. He left his hometown in 1590, moving to Fermo on the Adriatic coast. He was later appointed law professor at the universities of Pisa, Pavia, and Bologna, where he died in May 1618 at the age of fifty-nine.³ In the sixteen years spent in Pavia, Massini had the chance to play an active part in the cultural life of the city, participating in the prestigious academies of the Affidati and the Intenti, and republishing in 1611 his volume of academic lectures, entitled Lettioni. The first edition of this collection had been...