Connections and musical interferences between 16th-century European States
Venetians, Bologneses, Neapolitans, Germans, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Jews, Moors, Stradiots, Indiands: during the 16th century, music and theatre were both crowded with a great variety of characters and figures of different origins and with various backgrounds, who met and coexisted creating an articulated ethnical kaleidoscope. This proves that immigration and emigration actually made the history for the Western world. Italy has always been a crossroads of different populations, not only for military and political reasons, but also for trade and arts. Though this variety of cultures, traditions and languages were never really part of the Italian culture, they still show its economic and artistic prosperity, and musical expressions such as moresca, passacaglia, allemanda, tedesca, aria di Firenze, tenore di Napoli, bergamasca, ciaccona and others are, on the contrary, good examples of cultural borrowing and exchange.
The exotic charm of faraway countries and remote places was skillfully used by professional actors on stage to develop the famous ‘commedia dell’arte’ in the following years.
Comic archetypes included women and men of different nationalities and social classes. The variety of languages, the pictoresque elements and clichés associated with a certain population were used to enhance the comical impact (e.g. “Pantalone” is Venetian, “Dottor Graziano” from Bologna, the “Captain” is either Spanish, Neapolitan or German). In order to enliven plots and jokes, non-European characters (such as Jews, Turks, Stradiots or Indians) were often involved; even the play itself could be set in a foreign exotic country.
The best example of this ethnical Babel, which at the bases of many polyphonic and multilingual musical experiments, is Diversi Linguaggi, the well-known madrigal that gives the title to our program. Marenzio had written a five-voice-piece, starring a German, a Zanni from Bergamo, the Venetian Magnifico, the two folk themes Franceschina and Girometta. Orazio Vecchi enriched it adding four more parts: a Scholar, a Latin speaking Pedante, a Bolognese Graziano and another “ostinato” called Fate ben per voi. He thus recreated, in one big musical scene, “El gran teatro del mundo” (“The Great Theatre of the World”).
