The first document attesting the existence of a moresca is Spanish: it is from 1156 in Lérida.

 

The term moresca derives from «morisco», adjective referring to the Moor, the Arab in Castilian. Even if we cannot affirm with certainty that the moresca was born in Spain, it will be associated with Spain forever. Five hundred years after its apparition in Lérida, in the Feast of Fat Thursday by Adriano Banchieri, "gli amanti morescano, ancora, danzando lo spagnoletto" (the lovers still dance the spagnoletto in a Moorish way).

 

Much has been said about its origin: some musicologists[1] link it to ancient rites of spring. During the Middle Ages, the contrast between Good and Evil, and between demons and celestial armies, declined. The Moor replaces the armed demon with a spear or a stick, and the moresca became the emblem of the struggle between Christians and Muslims. The black face of hell is henceforth identified with the Saracen,  «the armed Moorish dance of the Renaissance seems to represent the historicisation of an ancient propitiatory rite, whose meaning has been lost, leaving only its spectacular component. The gestural elements survive unconsciously: steps, pantomimes, costumes. More specifically, the blackened face and the white clothes of the Moorish dancers recall the clothes of the demons from hell.»[2] Bracelets of bells are worn at the ankles and around the waist constitute a recurrent element in the dancer’s costume.

 

La moresca goes on to inhabit two different worlds: first, the extremely conservative world of folklore, keeping untouched the origin of the warrior dance still recalling today the struggle between Infidels and Christians and second, the refined world of courtly pantomime.  Secondly, in the palace, moresca is a term assuming vague and varied significations. It became synonym with armed dance, masquerade, acrobatic dance, but also with an art of dancing, jumping, walking, speaking and gesticulating. During the 16th century, one could even die «a la moresca»!

 

The moresca had conquered Italy during the 15th century and was to constitute an  essential component of all kinds of performance, showing a surprising adaptability. In fact, it defines the ballets in costumes and the warrior dances, it evokes exoticism as well as mystery, epic lyric as well as farm labours. The moresca gives life to villain and Jewish dances, to Indian doctors and surgeons, to nymphs and matrons, to sculptors and shoemakers. It enlivens balls alla spagnola, alla francese, alla todescha, alla lombarda, alla fiorentina, all’uso di Etiopia. Its literary tone is vis comica, light and entertaining. Its homorhythmic music allows to easily understand the text, so that the audience can enjoy wit, puns and wordplay.

 

First and foremost, the moresca is the dance of carnival, which with its collection of masks and farces, remains therefore its most natural accomplice. It was prohibited during Lent, time of abstinence and spiritual exaltation following carnival. The contrast between these two periods of the year is emphasized in the 16th century by the reading of a Testament, a text read on Mardi Gras, the day marking the end of the carnival festivities and the beginning of the austere Lent.[3]

 

Eight or twelve dancers perform the moresca, either just female or just male dancers, but sometimes also mixed goupr according to the needs of representations. Young dilettantes are recruited and trained for the various roles by professional dancers. The masters have the more acrobatic and virtuoso parts, for instance during the Feast of Paradise, when eight dancers performed a piva with «molte partite de cavriole, scambiiti et salti» (many parts of capers, crossings and jumps)[4]. It is danced by adding acti (acts), or gestures and jumps in the Moorish style.

 

The moresca rhythm accompanies all the important ceremonies of the 16th and 17th centuries: such as the wedding of Tristano Sforza and Beatrice d’Este (1455), the Venetian and the Sienese wedding of Galeazzo (1459) and Ippolita Sforza (1465), the Roman wedding of Eleonora d'Este (1473) and the wedding in Urbino of Federico of Aragona (1474). One hundred years later, the festivities for the wedding of William V, son of Albert V, Duke of Bavaria, are directed by Orlando di Lasso and still include moresche.

 

The apparatus are sumptuous and include pantagruelian meals, triumphal chariots, parades with the nuptial gifts, representations of the planets, dances, jousts, horses tournaments and numerous choregraphical episodes.

 

 

❧

 

Bologna, Anno Domini 1487.

In January 1487, the wedding of Annibale Bentivoglio and Lucrezia d’Este, daughter of the Duke of Ferrara, was celebrated. For five days, a banquet is served followed by allegorical representations with numerous choregraphies and ballets realized by Lorenzo Lavagnolo from Mantua. This event is described by Sabadino degli Arienti.[5] The spectacle is made of recited parts and dances with, above all, a final ballet: in total, eight principal actions conceived to tell the story of Lucrezia the wife, cast as a nymph, rival to Venus and Diana.

 

The synopsis is as follows. The performance is preceded by a young Florentine girl dancing: « Cominciò a sonare un tamburino e zufoli che era dolce armonia sentire.... una fançiuleta fiorentina de anni sei cum uno omo incominciò a dançare cum tanta legiadria e dextreça e acti e salti ... che è cosa incredibile a chi non l'avesse veduta.» (A drum and a flute started to play, realizing a sweet harmony... a young Florentine girl, six years old, started to dance with a man, in such a graceful and skillful way, with actions and jumps... that it must seem unbelievable for those who didn't see her).

 

This spectacle is followed by the open arrangement of the stage. With dance steps, the dancers placed inside the elements composing the scenography introduce them on stage: the Tower, seat of Juno and two young men (one of them represents the groom Annibal); the Palace, home of Venus, Cupid, two women (Infamy and Jealousy) and four emperors with their respective wives; the Mountain, seat of Diana and eight nymphs; a rock hiding a female dancer with eight morescanti (Moorish dancers).

 

Once the stage is put together, six singers «start to sing in an exquisite way a dance called the hunt» and suddenly Diana and the nymphs, dressed in silk with «light veils, bows, quivers, arrows, and cornets around the neck», come out from the mountain and mime a hunt scene. At the end of this dance, an «exquisite melody» is heard, on which the nymphs in a circle perform a basse danse. Then enters Cupid «with slow and languid steps», unseen, he hides in the circle of dancers and shoots an arrow on the nymph Lucrezia. Transfixed by love, the lost nymph is torn apart between Venus’ and Diana’s flatteries, until Juno’s intervention deciding for the bride and groom with a couple dance, as a triumph to the union. The couples formed by Juno and a young man as well as the nymph Lucrezia and the groom Annibal are the protagonists of this dance called «Vivo lieta» (I live happily). The ritual of the spouses’ meeting is finished; Cupid shoots an arrow towards the Palace and, upon the agreed signal, the four emperors come out and perform with their respective wives a ballet as a tribute to the couple, «dancing up and down, one towards the other».

 

The festivities conclude with a last spectacular event. A young women and eight morescanti come on stage, accompanied «by the sound of a drum and other sweet instruments». The woman dances a la moresca (in Moorish way) and holds a flower and a «pomarança» in her hand. The pomarança is the sympbolic equivalent of the quince, sacred fruit of Venus and symbol of fertility and conjugal union. The dancers with blackened faces, with «Moorish clothes in white cloth» and with jingling bells, dance around the young woman, until they are «awakened by the more vigorous sound of instruments». Then, they start dancing with «measured acts and gestures, in tempo and with  great agility and dexterity».

 

The last act of the performance is the entry of young men on stage. They belong to the Consorzio dei Bechari, «old friends to the family». Their heads are covered and they have bells around their legs. The Consorzio dancers realize a figured dance «turning and turning again» under «circles of box tree branches» with delicate arm gestures, offering a «beautiful and charming» spectacle. The evening ends with the guests’ dance.

 

❧

 

 

 

THE MORESCA «ALLA NAPOLITANA»

The moresca, probably introduced by the Spanish, finds a fertile soil in Naples. The Neapolitan moresca is a vocal piece, a trio generally composed of two sopranos and one tenor or two tenors and a baritone. The Neapolitan pieces represent the oldest examples of the new Italian vocality, rather originating in the pantomime and theater than in the dance. Many of them will be arranged in new versions such as Chi chi li chi, first published in Naples for the classic Parthenopean trio and then arranged for six voices by Orlando di Lasso and Andrea Gabrieli. Even if publications entirely dedicated to the moresca genre are rare, it became common practise to insert two moresche in the end of anthologies of villanelle.

 

The repertory of these collections no longer recall the original warrior dance . No element from the dance actually survives. Its new costume is the villanelle, from which it borrows the three-voice texture, the parallel fifths, the instrumentation and the picturesque poetical world. The moresca will, however, survive in the form of two new characters included in its already vast iconography: the Saracen/Turk and the Moorish/Turkish/Pagan woman. If the first represents the image of the infidel warrior, the second embodies a more insidious seduction than existed in the villanella. Even if both are a representation of the simple life, pure and uncontaminated, of the rural world, the Moorish/Turkish woman has a lethal weapon at her disposal: the mystery surrounding her as an exotic and sensual veil. She represents the fascination of an exotic place, a place beyond, that is embodied by the the Moorish woman. Her geographical provenance has no longer any importance. The Moorish woman sometimes means an Arab or a a Spanish woman.

 

In the texts of Neapolitan moresche, liolele (falilalilà, dindirindin, etc.) and onomatopeas (lirun, lirun imitate the sound of the gamb and the lyra) are recurring; imitations of foreign accents (Matona mia cara for Madonna mia cara); merchants’ shouts; cats, dogs, donkeys, cuckoos, crows take the floor to sing hilarious animal counterpoints. There are many famous masks of the commedia dell’arte, such as the Mattaccino[6] and the Gatta[7].

 

All these elements were already sung in the Neapolitan villanelle, but the moresca allows to transfer them from poetry to theater, giving life to the picturesque world they describe. With this significant step, the moresca becomes part of the ambitious humanist project that aims to unite all the Muses together and to see their magical concert reappear from the ashes of the past. Thus, it represents the first step in the invention of musical drama.

 

 

 

 

 

[1]  Marius SCHNEIDER , La danza delle spade e la tarantella: saggio musicologico, etnografico e archeologico sui

riti di medicina , Lecce, Argo, 1999; Curt SACHS , Eine Weltgeschichte des Tanzes, Berlin, Dietrich Reimer, 1933 ; Paolo TOSCHI , Le origini del teatro italiano , Torino, Boringhieri, 1955.

 

[2]  Jose Sasportes, Storia della danza italiana: dalle origini ai giorni nostri, Torino, EDT, 2011.

 

[3] The Testament at the end of our CD is thus presented by its author: THE TESTAMENT OF CARNIVAL, or songs and poetical strambotti written by various Neapolitan authors, that were sung in Naples, collected in the rubbish by the Magnificent Doctor without doctrine D. Giuseppe Sigismunno. The collection is made of poems and songs in which the author include all things gracious, full of conceits and tasty, in order to make Florence, Pisa, Siena, and the whole Tuscany explode. He opposes the Neapolitan moresca to the triumphs of carnival at the Medici court

 

[4] Milano, 13 gennaio 1490. La Feast of Paradise was offered by Ludovico il Moro to the young newly-wed Gian Galeazzo Sforza and Isabella of Aragona.

 

[5] Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti, Biblioteca Palatina, ms. parmense 1294.

 

[6] It is not clear if the term mattacino comes from the Spanish matachín (juggler) or from the Arab mutawaggihin (masked), or from the Italian matto (mad). It defines both a mask and a dance. The mask probably appears during the Latin period. The mattacino of the commedia dell’arte is a clown who dances, disguised as an armed warrior, executing games of agility, Moorish acts and jokes. Consequently, the dance is a grotesque representation of a warrior dance, performed by dancers simulating a pair duelling. They wear a short tunic, a helmet in golden cardboard, a sword and a shield.

 

[7] The Gatta (cat) masquerade – more famous in its Venetian version: Gnaga – is a cross-dressing where a man takes on the appearance of a woman, also imitating her gestures and her vocal intonations. It is the favorite masquerade of homosexuals who, during carnival – in the 16th century, the carnival of Venice started on December 27 and ended on Mardi Gras – hidden and protected by the cat mask, could adopt all kinds of licentious behaviors, without fear of breaking the law.