YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

144 DONNA G. CARDAMONE JACKSON
It is logical to assume that, when selecting or improvising songs to enhance their
stage personalities, these comedians would seek models in dialect repertories containing
laments or pathetic serenades. Proof that Lasso was aware of this tradition is
found in his self-accompanied rendition of the serenade, Chi passa per questa strada,
to reveal Pantalone’s senile lasciviousness in the comedy he produced for the Bavarian
court. But to portray Pantalone realistically, he would not have sung the Neapolitan
version circulating in Rome during the 1550s, but rather one of the versions in
Venetian dialect that materialized later. Since he succeeded in making the audience
‘roar with uncontrollable laughter’, 38 he may have stopped strumming his lute and
resorted to grafting one gesture upon another to express the old man’s predicament.
To summarize thus far, when attributing the villanelle in the latter part of Dorico’s
anthology to Lasso, I have relied primarily upon his well-known affinity for comic
theater, assuming it would give rise to songs characterized by humorous gestures,
both musical and textual. Moreover, in strictly musical terms these villanelle stand
apart from most of the others, because they would have been equally effective rendered
as accompanied songs or vocal trios. Sensitivity to vocal scoring – also a feature
of Lasso’s four-voice arrangements published in 1555 – is demonstrated by the
frequent use of sixths between the upper parts, voice crossing, and occasional first
inversion chords, all of which considerably enrich older Neapolitan conventions.
A final point remains to be made regarding no. 19, Tu traditora. Some scholars
claim that this is the only villanella in the anthology attributable to Lasso, because
he arranged it for four voices. 39 Yet arranging his own compositions is neither consistent
with Lasso’s youthful approach nor with that of his contemporaries. In fact,
Tu traditora resembles a satirical type of villanella about sexually traitorous women
cultivated in Naples about the time Lasso was living there. 40 If Lasso carried a copy
of the model to Rome, which seems likely, then it might be considered evidence of
his activity as collector.
In the course of this investigation I have assigned various roles to Lasso which,
admittedly, are founded on circumstantial evidence and therefore should be considered
hypothetical. Nonetheless, it seems reasonable to suppose that he collected and
38 For Massimo Troiano’s eye-witness account of Lasso’s performance, see K. RICHARDS and L.
RICHARDS, The Commedia dell’Arte. A Documentary History, Oxford, 1990, p. 50.
39 BOETTICHER, Orlando di Lasso und seine Zeit, pp. 41–42; H. LEUCHTMANN, Tu traditora.
Orlando di Lasso bearbeitet eine Villanesca, in F. BRUSNIAK and H. LEUCHTMANN eds.,
Quaestiones in musica. Festschrift für Franz Krautwurst zum 65. Geburtstag, Tutzing, 1989, pp.
338–339; H. LEUCHTMANN and B. SCHMID, Orlando di Lasso, Seine Werke in zeitgenössischen
Drucken 1555–1687, 1, Kassel, 2001, p. 47.
40 Four examples of this type were published anonymously in Elletione de canzone alla napoletana (see
note 7), an anthology reprinted in Capua by Johannes Sultzbach in 1549, the year in which Lasso
arrived in Naples.