Savonarolan Laude, Motets, and Anthems (review)

Savonarolan Laude, Motets, and Anthems. Edited by Patrick Macey. (Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance, 116.) Madison, Wis.: A-R Editions, c1999. [Acknowledgments, p. viii; introd., p. ix-xxi; texts and trans., p. xxii-lxxiii; 3 plates; score, 213 p.; crit. report, p. 215-36. ISBN 0-89579-436-5. $100.]

The late-fifteenth-century charismatic Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola is usually remembered today for his "bonfires of the vanities." His followers, adolescent boys known as fanciulli, roamed the streets of Florence during carnival time, collecting "vanities"--dice, games, wigs and makeup, paintings of nudes, musical instruments, and books of love poetry and polyphonic music--throwing them into great bonfires around which they circled, holding hands and singing laude. Savonarola was later condemned as a heretic by church authorities and burned at the stake. A substantial collection of "Savonarolan" polyphonic music therefore comes as quite a surprise.

As Patrick Macey explains in the introduction to his edition Savonarolan Laude, Motets, and Anthems (as part of A-R Editions' series Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance), Savonarola preached repentance and church reform, and played a major role in Florentine politics between the expulsion of the Medici in 1494 and his execution in 1498. He transformed the rowdy carnival season before Lent, when the fanciulli had previously built houses out of sticks in the piazzas and thrown stones at rival gang members, into a time of religious observances, with the fanciulli now organized into orderly troops who marched around the city singing laude and collecting alms for the poor (as well as "vanities").

Savonarola's legacy in the sixteenth century was multifaceted. Although the church authorities had condemned him as a heretic, many Catholics admired Savonarola for his attempts to reform the church and regarded his execution as unjust. Dominican friars and nuns continued to sing Savonarolan laude behind convent walls. Catholic patrons from all over Europe commissioned complex motets on Savonarolan texts, despite the fact that Savonarola opposed polyphonic church music. Protestants hailed him as a martyr and precursor to Martin Luther, and English translations of Savonarola's meditations on Psalm 50/51 (Vulgate/Protestant numbering) set to music played a role in the development of the Anglican verse anthem.

Macey's edition of Savonarolan music contains three distinct repertories. First there are twenty-three polyphonic laude (simple devotional songs) from the late 1400s written and sung by Savonarola and his followers. Nine sixteenth-century motets by composers ranging from Philippe Verdelot to Claude Le Jeune follow, all settings of Savonarolan cantus firmi or the meditations on Psalms 30 and 50 that Savonarola wrote in prison while awaiting execution. The edition concludes with English anthems by William Hunnis, William Mundy, and Thomas Ravenscroft based on Savonarola's meditations that span the period from the 1570s to the early 1600s.

Macey's edition is a companion to his superb recent monograph, Bonfire Songs: Savonarola's Musical Legacy (Oxford Monographs on Music [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998]; reviewed by Anthony Cummings in Notes 56 [June 2000]: 932-34). Here the cultural and musical contexts for this music are thoroughly discussed; individual pieces are treated to insightful discussions, often quite extensive; and the story of Savonarola's musical legacy is spelled out in rich detail. Accompanying the book is a compact disc with excellent complete performances by the Eastman Capella Antiqua under Macey's direction of twenty-eight of the thirty-five compositions published in the edition a year later.

The edition as a whole is a pleasure to use. The layout is attractive, with clear, generous spacing and well-crafted incipits and voice ranges given at the opening of every piece. Macey had to supply a bass part to one motet (no. 26, Simon Joly's Infelix ego), and the part is both lovely and stylistically convincing. Occasionally Macey inserts three-beat measures within a duple-meter context without warning, which can lead to problems for performers (see especially p. 182, m. 94). I found only one error...