Neapolitan lute music of the Renaissance

The lute repertoire from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is an invaluable source for understanding the interplay between performance practice, written transmission, and socio-cultural context in early modern Europe. As an emblematic instrument of the Renaissance, the lute was at home in both learned and popular spheres, and reflected a taste that embraced cultivated contrapuntal textures, orally transmitted dances, and intabulations of religious and secular vocal repertoires. In an era of intense cultural exchange, Italy, France, and Spain produced a strongly interconnected corpus, as evidenced by the activities of musicians such as Alberto da Ripa (Albert de Rippe), who served at the court of Frans I van Frankrijk, and Giovanni Paolo Paladino, who introduced Italian lute notation in Lyon. Their editorial and musical efforts promoted the dissemination of Italian practices on French soil and fostered a fruitful cross-pollination of stylistic and notational idioms. In Napels, the lute was used in both public and private settings and enjoyed the favor of all social classes – particularly the nobility, who viewed it as a modern symbol of Orpheus' mythical lyre. In this tradition, the word liuto also encompassed the viola da mano, related to the Spanish vihuela, with which it shared repertoire and function despite differences in form. Their mutual interchangeability is already documented in Francesco da Milano's Intavolatura de Viola o vero Lauto (1536), the earliest known Neapolitan collection for these instruments. Neapolitan aristocrats considered musical performance indispensable, as illustrated by figures such as Luigi Dentice (ca. 1510-1566) – theorist and musician – and his son Fabrizio (ca. 1530-1566), a virtuoso admired throughout Europe. The nobility often took responsibility for the musical education of their children, engaging renowned masters and thereby contributing significantly to the city's artistic flourishing. In this milieu, we must also place Scipione Cerreto (1569-1633), who in Dell'arbore musicale compiled a list of the most celebrated instrumentalists of his time. A central role in our understanding of the instrumental literature of that period is played by the "Barbarino" manuscript, a Neapolitan codex of approximately 400 pages. Its vicissitudes are remarkable in themselves: the manuscript is now preserved in the Biblioteka Jagiellońska in Krakau (P-Kj Mus. ms. 40032), was formerly housed in the Preussische Staatsbibliothek (now Deutsche Staatsbibliothek) in Berlin, and was among the many treasures that disappeared during World War II and resurfaced more than thirty years later. The stamp of the Bibliotheca Regia Berolinensis on the cover bears witness to the library's long presence there. The Barbarino is an important witness to the musical exchange between lutenists active in Napels, Rome, Parma, and Spain. The codex is possibly the work of a castrato lutenist, known as Barbarino, who was active in Napels between circa 1580 and 1611. The repertoire reflects the musical climate of the time in Napels: under Spanish rule, Napels was a melting pot of Italian and Iberian influences, and lute practice was characterized by highly virtuosic fantasias and ricercars. Further evidence for a Neapolitan origin is found in the frequent use of Spanish names and spellings in titles scattered throughout the manuscript, together with compositions of Spanish origin or modeled after Spanish prototypes. Illustrative of this linguistic blending are titles such as Conditor alme sobre il Canto llano (p. 3), Pedazo de fantasia del ottavo di Luis Maimón (p. 15), and Sobre il Canto piano dell'Ave Maris Stella del Sig. Fra[ncesco] Aguyles (p. 53), in which even the composer's surname appears to be Spanish. Other composers in the manuscript possibly of Spanish origin include Francesco Cardone, Castillo, and Luis Maymón. The only clue to the identity of the compiler and owner is an erased inscription on p. 406. Both the inscription and its cancellation appear to be in the same hand as the rest of the codex. The preserved text mentions a cash payment of eighteen giulii on 22 February 1611 to the castrato Barbarino (his first name is illegible) for services rendered to Alfonso Br[…], a patron who must remain unknown due to the page's trimming during restoration. The hypothesis that the Barbarino contains a pre-existing lute manuscript by another player rests on the rubric at the end of the sixth system on p. 105, "Finis de Flores para tañer de Luis Maymon". Several factors – notably the pronounced anthological Spanish title, reminiscent of collections such as the poetic Ramillete de flores (E-Mn Ms 6001), which itself contains a vihuela tablature collection – suggest that this remark marks the conclusion of an entire manuscript rather than of a single piece. The codex is a miscellany, intended for solo use: it contains no texts, only tablatures. The notation is based on the Italian lute system (also used for the viola da mano), with numbers indicating the fret positions and mensural symbols for rhythm. There is no alphabetical index in the appendix or introduction; the pieces follow one another seemingly at random, possibly in chronological copying order, though certain thematic clusters (sequences of fantasias or dances) are recognizable, and the copyist's hand appears uniform throughout. The manuscript preserves intabulations of polyphonic madrigals, interspersed with purely instrumental works. Known examples include Giulio Severino's tablature of Palestrina's madrigal Da poi che vidi vostra falsa fede, rendered almost literally faithfully. Elsewhere the music is entirely original – multi-sectional imitative fantasias and ricercars, toccatas, ostinato-based dances (such as the Folia, the Tenore di Napoli, or the Ruggero), and balletti. These works reflect both popular and courtly trends current in Spanish and Italian centers; the version of La Batalla in the Barbarino (fo. 368) reworks material from other European manuscripts. The role of the lute as a compositional aid was closely linked to its pedagogical and recreational use, and fitted into the broader network of interactions between lutenists and vocal polyphonists in the sixteenth century. At that time, the distinction between these two categories was far less sharp than we would assume today: there were lutenists who composed vocal music and vocal composers who played the lute – or even wrote for it. Some applied the principles of vocal polyphony with great refinement to instrumental compositions (Francesco da Milano, Valentin Bakfark), while others, particularly known as instrumentalists, also produced vocal works – John Dowland, Philip van Wilder, Fabrizio Dentice, Luyz de Narváez. A crucial reference is a letter from 1578 by Don Annibale Capello to Guglielmo Gonzaga, in which Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina's own intabulation of parts of the Missa Dominicalis is mentioned, indicating an active role of the lute in the work's genesis. Palestrina's incomplete madrigal Da poi che io vidi vostra falsa fede was until recently known only from the tenor and bass parts in Il terzo libro delle Muse di Antonio Barré (Rome, 1562). The intabulation in the Barbarino – the only known one – is not attributed to Palestrina, but to his arranger Giulio Severino, yet eloquently testifies to the function of intabulations in the transmission of vocal repertoire during the Cinquecento and to the strong musical bonds between Napels and Rome. Severino's version almost certainly derives from Barré's original print. Barré, a former papal singer who became a publisher, maintained close ties with Orlando di Lasso and the circle of Neapolitan exiles in Rome, including the Dentice family and the person to whom the book was dedicated, Don Indico Piccolomini, duke of Amalfi. Among the leading figures in the Barbarino collection is Fabrizio Dentice, a consummate composer and inventive polyphonist. Although much of his career took place outside Napels, Dentice exerted considerable influence on colleagues and students – particularly Giulio Severino, who also appears in the collection. Their compositions, rich in counterpoint and formal refinement, embody the Neapolitan taste of the time. Luigi Dentice, presumed born in Napels between 1510 and 1520, is remembered primarily for his theoretical treatise Duo dialoghi della musica, delli quali l'uno tratta della theorica et l'altro della pratica (Napels, Matteo Cancer, 1552). Immersed in the cultural milieu of Neapolitan aristocracy, he regularly visited the palace of Ferrante Sanseverino, prince of Salerno, where in 1545 he participated with his son Fabrizio in the theatrical performance Gli ingannati. What stands out most about Fabrizio Dentice – a proud figure who refused to perform for a non-aristocratic audience – is the central role he played in the diverse musical settings and genres he encountered. His villanelle, essentially eloquent monodies with a refined, even tragic, poetic content, remained in Napels long after his death a model of perfection. During his stay in Rome, his Miserere a falsi bordoni was incorporated into the official repertoire of the Sistine Chapel and became a touchstone for later Roman composers; even in the seventeenth century it served as the basis for vocal diminutions and multi-choir arrangements. From his years in Spain (ca. 1559-1565) only one fantasia for vihuela survives, copied in a late manuscript. In Spain, where keyboard tablature functioned as a form of encoded score, Dentice probably learned this notation method – and later introduced it in Napels. It is certainly no accident that from Rocco Rodio's collection of ricercars from 1575 (Rodio was artistically connected to Dentice) all Neapolitan keyboard publications adopted the score format and retained it until the end of the seventeenth century, although elsewhere the Italian tablature model had become ubiquitous. Such a tradition cannot be explained solely on commercial or customary grounds. Given the strong Spanish influence on Neapolitan society, it is plausible that each composer strove to emulate the position of Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa. Count Alfonso Fontanelli, invited to Ferrara for the wedding of Leonora d'Este, sketches a vivid portrait of Gesualdo in a letter of 18 February 1594: "He is devoted to hunting and to music, and calls himself a master in both... As for music, he has told me in one day more than I have heard in a whole year. He confesses it openly and shows his pieces, performed in parts, to everyone to make them marvel at his art..." Thus Fontanelli captured the flamboyant yet learned spirit that also animates the Neapolitan lute legacy preserved in the Barbarino manuscript. Gabriele Zanetti © 2025