YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

64 KATELIJNE SCHILTZ
Figure 2. Title page of Stephani Comitis
Bellocassii Sylvula carminum,
Bruges, 1544.
terminology of phonetics) liquids and
nasals: ut quiNa eMuNdaNs vuLNeRa
pRoLueRat. If we now examine the content
of both lines, it is certainly no accident
that the second verse speaks of the
‘squeezing of the sponge’, whereas in
the fourth verse the act of ‘cleaning and
bathing’ Christ’s wounds is described.
In short, the opposite emotional content
of the two verses is accentuated by an
equally opposite sonic content. Although
lines 2 and 4 are very clear examples of
this correspondence between meaning
and word-sound, the same principles
can be traced in the remaining eight
verses.
The crucial question now is of
course what Willaert does with this text.
In the following discussion, I would
like to show how the expressive and
sonic details of Comes’s poem by no
means escape his attention. What is
more, he not only seeks to translate, but
also to intensify them by effective mu-
sical means. It will become clear that the use of a polyphonic texture allows Willaert
to add a new dimension (both in the literal and figurative sense of the word) to the
purely horizontal dimension of the written and/or spoken text. In other words, polyphony’s
inherent capacity to combine different voices simultaneously proves to be
an ideal medium for exploring and heightening the interaction between the emotional
and sonic content of Comes’s poem.
It must be said that scholars such as Dean Mace and Jonathan Miller have dealt
with this topic, especially in light of Pietro Bembo’s Prose della volgar lingua, published
in Venice in 1525. 9 But whereas they have concentrated their investigation on
the Italian madrigal in general and the Venetian madrigal output in particular – especially
works based on the poetry of Francesco Petrarca – I intend to show that a similar
attention to word-sound can be found in the Latin motet as well. Furthermore,
whereas both scholars have mainly focused on sixteenth-century literary theories, it
9 D.T. MACE, Pietro Bembo and the Literary Origins of the Italian Madrigal, in The Musical Quarterly,
55 (1969), pp. 65–86; J.M. MILLER, Word-Sound and Musical Texture in the Mid-Sixteenth-Century
Venetian Madrigal, Ph.D. diss., University of North-Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1991. See also M.
FELDMAN, City Culture and the Madrigal at Venice, Berkeley – Los Angeles, 1995.