Selva de varia ricreazione

by Orazio Vecchi

The title of Orazio Vecchi’s anthology, published in Venezia by Angelo Gardano in 1590, reads: Selva de varia ricreazione di Orazio Vecchi, nella quale si contengono varij soggetti à 3, à 4, à 5, à 6, à 7, à 8, à 9, à 10 voci, cioè Madrigali, Capricci, Balli, Arie, Iustiniane, Canzonette, Fantasie, Serenate, Dialoghi, un Lotto amoroso, con una Battaglia a Diece nel fine, & accomodatevi la intavolatura di Liuto alle Arie, ai Balli & alle Canzonette. The title alone describes in a very articulated and cogent way the programmatic aim of this anthology: Vecchi, following his own inclination towards the burlesque and jovial, submits to his dedicatees, barons of Kirchberg and Weissenhorn, a collection of musical pieces which differ greatly from one another. Personnel, subject, form, style and language vary extremely, almost as if they resembled «the trees [of a forest] that are organized in such an order as you can find in those ornamental gardens».

This kaleidoscopic variety creates through the music a universe that is very dear to Vecchi.

Even though his work can be included in the Renaissance polyphonic tradition, it also deviates substantially from the old style. His means are new: forms and expressive devices close to immediate and popular realism, parody, caricature and mockery, comical situation. He puts together a great amount of different genres while abandoning the dignified rules of the contemporary madrigal. Vecchi’s capricious and inspired soul, his love for the theatre of the masks, his complete lack of interest in the borning lyrical opera and in the recitar cantando, together with his attachment to the old polyphonic style, through which he tests new expressive solutions, those are the things that make the modenese composer a very unique figure.

Vecchi was a priest and he has been kapellmeister in Modena, Salò and Reggio Emilia. He also held the same assignement at duke Cesare d’Este’s court, but he somehow did not get involved in the court’s life and always kept his distance from those political and cultural centres of power. When Emperor Rudolf II nominated him to be the successor of Philippe the Monte, he refused the position as he would rather enjoy the tranquillity of his home town instead of the imperial splendor.

But ‘calmness’ of Vecchi’s rural life is not to be found in his Selva de varia ricreazione: here commedia dell’arte scenes alternate with bucolic settings, love themes intertwine with erotic twists, serenades with nuptial hymns, dances with games, and so on. Such diversity originates an uncontrolled babel, made of languages and codes, where Vecchi claims his own expressive freedom that has no comparison in the coeval polyphonic production.