The lauda is a religiously inspired poetic composition. Originally written in Latin, using a dimetric or trimetric iambic pattern, it celebrated the glory of God, the Virgin and the Saints. Complementary to the divine office, it was increasingly encouraged by the clerics to give lay people a more active part in Church rites. As early as the first decades of the thirteenth century confraternities of laudesi were formed and it was their task, after religious services, to sing the praise of the Virgin Mary.

 

Soon after, the lauda was written in the vernacular and became the archetypical expression of medieval religious faith. The genre came into its own in 1233, known as the "year of the Alleluia”, when Franciscan and Dominican friars headed large crowds of people chanting psalms to invoke peace between Guelphs and Ghibellines. From then on there was a constant growth of confraternities of laymen, the disciplinati, who were seized by penitential frenzy. At this stage the lauda adopted the form of the ballata maggiore or of the zajal, of ancient Arab-Spanish origin. Guido D’Arezzo was the first to use the former while Iacopone da Todi introduced the latter.

 

The next stage was to move away from the lyrical or monophonic lauda to the dramatic lauda, where several characters entered into dialogue. This was the first nucleus of sacred performances which were enacted in public places, using rather primitive theatrical means.

 

In the fifteenth century the literary lauda was practised by poets such as Leonardo Giustiniani, Feo Belcari, Lorenzo de Medici, Girolamo Beninveni and Francesco d'Albizzo who applied much greater imagination to the genre's traditional themes. It was then that the lauda’s strophic structure was moulded on that of the chivalrous poetry’s octava. This is known as the polyphonic lauda and is characterized by a mainly syllabic style of writing and by the generally homorhythmic development of the voices. It remained fashionable until the end of the seventeenth century.

 

Eighteenth century examples of laude are on the whole monophonic chants which were sung to accompany the faithful during pilgrimages.

 

At every stage of its evolution, the lauda - whether monophonic, dramatic or polyphonic - always remained the most popular form of non-liturgical religious expression. Most typical are the tight development of the different parts and the transparent architecture of the melodic lines. Over 200 laudarii (lauda compilations) have been preserved, leaving us a strikingly evocative repertoire of great dramatic intensity - the sound of a passionate religion that did not require or even welcome any intermediaries, and found its deepest expression in song.

 

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the lauda developed essentially in Central Italy, Umbria and Toscany, thanks to the work of Iacopone da Todi, Franceschino degli Albizi and Ugo Palizera. In the fifteenth century, however, it was in the republic and more particularly in the city of Venice that it found fresh inspiration. The movement of the Biancovestiti played a determining part in spreading the practice of singing laude throughout northern Italy. In the Venetian capital this practice was received very favourably as it fitted particularly well into the spiritual renaissance movement which, from the very first years of the fifteenth century, had enjoyed the support of Gabriele Condulmer (who became pope Eugene IV in 1431), Ludovico Barbo (one of the most important figures behind the Benedictine reform) and Lorenzo Giustiniani (Patriarch of Venice in 1451 and brother of the poet Leonardo).

 

From the very beginning the Venetian lauda aimed at stylistic autonomy, not finding its expression so much in the poetic and textual profile as in the purely musical aspects. ln Venice the practice of borrowing the tunes of secular songs for singing lauda (”cantasi come...”: sung like...) was abandoned in favour of composing new melodies, specifically conceived for the religious texts which had to be performed. The lauda became as much as a pretext for the composition of new airs and new songs. The ballata form was abandoned i.n favour of the structure of strambotti and veniziane, the metric forms of the Cantar Moderno - the poetic and musical style which had its origins in Venice and had conquered the whole peninsula by the middle of the fifteenth century. The practice of singing lauds a modo proprio (to their own music) remained confined to the Veneto region. In central Italy - especially amongst the spiritual Florentine poets - the practice of ”cantasi come ... ”, which lent a spiritual dimension to existing secular tunes, remained in fashion. Furthermore, in wishing to combine religious texts with songs that were more fashionable at the time, the Florentine spiritual poets often had no other choice but to resort to the secular repertoire which had its origins in the giustiniane and veniziane - the fashionable style in fifteenth century Italy.

 

Similarly to the profane repertoire, the lauds were passed on orally in Venice, while the practice of music notation was reserved for the art of polyphony or other music that was further removed from popular tradition. It was not until later that the melodies of the laude were written down, when the first Missals and compilations for Catechist use by pii intrattenimenti and children of christian doctrine were being printed. The sources of the Venetian lauda’s older repertoire point to a preference for monophony or a simple form of two or three-part polyphony. Only a few copies of this repertoire have survived, but monophonic laude can often be found in tenor parts (the basic voice) of polyphonic compositions.

 

The monophonic and polyphonic lauda only represent two different aspects of the musical history of this poetic form, but they also reveal the separate social environments in which they flourished. The more ancient practice of the monophonic lauda is also associated with the purer devotional atmosphere of monasteries, convents and religious confraternities. It was based on oral tradition, enriched by popular influence. On the other hand, the later polyphonic lauda was the typical religious expression of the upper classes, of the large congregations and spiritual communities ~ the Scuole grandi venetiane — that were organized with the support of public authorities. It found its inspiration in contemporary art forms and managed to survive until the end of the seventeenth century, always coupled to the most successful musical fashions. Thus, at the end of the fifteenth century the lauda was sung in the Venetian manner, at the beginning of the sixteenth century like a frottola and during the seventeenth century like a canzonetta.

 

Leonardo Giustiniani’s poetical contribution to fifteenth century Italian music is immense and his texts continued to be sung well into the first decades of the seventeenth century. It was already in the fifteenth century, however, that Giustiniani emerged as a model poet, appreciated by the aristocracy as well as by the public at large. The upper classes could, in effect, act as intermediaries between refined culture and popular religious feelings. If Feo Belcari and the other Florentine spiritual poets chose Giustiniani’s tunes for singing their own texts, this was because there was no one in Florence who, like the Venetian poet, was capable of creating this type of bond between poetry and music. Giustiniani’s spiritual texts were never compiled into a single volume, so there is no Laudario Giustinianeo as such. There are, in fact, too many versions of his songs, too many formal as well as dialectal variants that have been attributed to him. What is important to understand, however, is that Giustiniani was symbolic of a way of conceiving the relationship between poetry and music which, in Italy, was opposed to the "cantare a libro” (singing from a score) of the polyphonists across the mountains.

 

Through his work, Giustiniani broke down the barriers between cultured and courtly creations on the one hand, and popular expressions on the other. The tunes a la veniziana originated in the tradition of popular song and, through the poet's work, rose to a much higher artistic level. At the time when the lauda giustinianea was created, musical poetry in Venice had matured and acquired an autonomous style so that the lauda only had to be integrated in an already existing musical context. The lauda disguised itself a la veniziamz, and no one thought it necessary to add the music to Giustiniani’s first volumes of poetry (Editio Princeps, 1474; Editio Altera, 1475), nor to the reprints of 1483, 1490, 1495 and 1506. This is why there are now only a few examples available of the more ancient and popular monophonic lauda repertoire. We have had to wait for the lauda to become polyphonic and for the latest settings of Giustiniani’s texts to be able to detect the echo of a musical world which was averse to notation and preferred the sound of unwritten music.

 

 

Roberto Festa Translation: Paul Rans & Nell Race.