YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

ORLANDO DI LASSO ET AL.: A NEW READING OF THE ROMAN VILLANELLA BOOK (1555)
through Rome. 9 Between 1551 and 1553, he issued forty-one non-music books as
compared to three music books. In 1554, while moving his shop to another location,
he managed to publish thirteen non-music books and three substantial music books.
Under these circumstances he may well have hired a versatile musician like Lasso
to round up villanelle for fast-house production in 1555, when the number of nonmusic
books totalled eighteen.
Additional support for situating Lasso directly in the planning stages of Dorico’s
venture can be found in the conceptual framework of the second book, which is unique
in the history of publishing villanelle. It opens with a keynote villanella that describes
the genesis of the repertory at hand and continues with the compositions arranged in
sets by text-type (see Table 1). As a result the book offered amateur musicians a means
of selecting songs with which to amuse themselves or friends as the occasion demanded,
and professional musicians a varied program for presentation in private settings,
such as aristocratic salons or academies. This manifest plan is a clear indication that
Dorico benefitted from the expertise of a person like Lasso, whose duties as a household
musician in Naples (1549-1551) most likely included organizing music for
domestic entertainments. 10
The text of the keynote villanella leaves no doubt that it was made-to-order as
a framing device and conceived by someone familiar with the habits of Neapolitan
musicians. The speaker is the leader of a group of singer-songwriters whom he challenges
to invent a program of villanelle for an expectant audience. When the leader
announces, ‘I think it would be better to let them hear some villanelle’, the cantus
sings the beginning of the phrase alone to dramatize the voice of the speaker.
Continuing, he describes a process of group improvisation: some ‘bust their brains’
singing, others poetizing as they invent ‘one of this kind and one of that’ in an effort
to find the best songs. Finally the leader proclaims that each person can sing and
recite whatever he wants, ‘because all villanelle are daughters of one father’. 11
This punch line alludes to the tendency of Neapolitan songwriters to imitate the
rustic discourse popularized by Velardiniello, said to be a musician who made ‘verses
flow like rivers’. 12 Velardiniello’s style is known primarily from his Farza de li massari,
which is composed of ottave in Neapolitan dialect and characterized by theatrical
speech acts which define interactions between the I-speaker and the You-lis-
9 F. BARBERI, I Dorico, tipografi a Roma nel Cinquecento (1526-1572), in La Bibliofilia, 67 (1965),
pp. 132–146.
10 K. LARSON, The Unaccompanied Madrigal in Naples from 1536 to 1654, Ph.D. diss., Harvard
University, 1985, pp. 82–84.
11 For the text of this villanella, see CARDAMONE, The Salon as Marketplace, pp. 70–71.
12 F. RUSSO, Il poeta napoletano Velardiniello e la festa di S. Giovanni a mare, Rome, 1913, p. 8.
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