Hello and welcome to Early Music Sources.com,
my name is Elam Rotem and today we'll talk about the Romanesca.
In our episode about improvisation we mentioned the Romanesca;
one of the popular harmonic sequences that was used
in countless vocal and instrumental pieces in the 16th and 17th centuries.
In this episode we will have a close look at the Romanesca;
its form, its history, and how it was used in compositions. Let's start.
Why don't we just cut to the chase,
here is the basic form of the Romanesca.
We'll now listen to a very simple rendition of it.
Unless explicitly noted, all the examples played in this episode
were created especially for this occasion.
As you see, the Romanesca is in triple time.
Mostly, it's also in this tonality; second mode if you like,
and always starting on the third degree of the mode.
A very close form to the Romanesca is the Passamezzo,
here is a simple rendition of the Passamezzo.
The only differences from the Romanesca
are the first note of the sequence and the meter;
the Passamezzo starts on the first degree of the mode and is in duple meter.
Pieces based on the Romanesca sequence first appeared
in musical sources in Spain in the middle of the 16th century.
Probably the earliest example is found in a collection by Luys de Narváez in 1538.
Under a variation piece tited "Guárdame las vacas"
there is a piece with the harmonic sequence that will later be called Romanesca
Eight year later, when Alonso Muddara
used the term Romanesca for the first time in a publication,
he titled the piece "Romanesca, or Guárdame las vacas".
In Spain the form remained connected with its original title,
at times indicated simply as Las vacas.
By the way, Guárdame las vacas in English means "look out for the cows".
From that moment and well into the 17th century,
countless pieces were composed using the Romanesca sequence;
from instrumental variation pieces, or partite,
to vocal monodies and duets with basso continuo.
In instrumental pieces the sequence will be repeated with variations,
and in vocal pieces, the sequence would commonly be
the accompaniment for one verse of text,
and then repeated for further verses.
See the footnotes page for a database made especially for this episode
with more than 50 Romanesca pieces.
An explanation for why so many Romanesca pieces were written
could be the fact that, at least in Italy,
the Romanesca was often used as a generic accompaniment for singing poetry,
a bit like the psalm tones in church,
where on a simple musical formula one can sing different texts.
This might also explain how come the Romanesca sequence,
or parts of it or variants of it, are found in so many Renaissance songs.
Here is just a random example from a famous English tune
Now that we have a better idea of what the Romanesca is,
we can examine its form in more details. Let's see.
The Romanesca can be divided into two short musical sentences:
the opening A, and the closing B.
In actual Romanesca pieces there is normally an additional section:
either a repetition of the B part, or a little ritornello or ripresa,
that can sometime be repeated as well.
This additional part might have stemmed
from the original function of the Romanesca
as a generic accompaniment for poetry:
on the A and B the text was sung,
and before the next verse, a little instrumental interlude took place.
Anyhow, it seems that the form was not strict,
as even within one Romanesca piece of a single composer,
one can find variety in the form in the different variations.
Now, while the A is always the same throughout the Romanesca repertoire,
the B, as well as the little ritornelli are sometimes different.
The B part very often will touche the C during the cadence, like this.
I'll play this B part from Ascanio Mayone's Romanesca, published in 1609.
I intentionally won't show you Mayone's score while I play it,
so you can stay focused on the Romanesca's skeleton.
As in many elaborated versions of the Romanesca,
the pace of the sequence is very slow, so there will be place for creativity.
Another variation of the B part, includes skipping the G
and arriving on the C immediately, like this.
In fact, as far as I know it is used only by Bernardo Storace,
in a publication from 1664, but as it so nice, let's have a listen to it.
The ritornello also has several variants throughout the repertoire.
In one of the earliest keyboard versions, by Antonio Valente in 1576,
it looks like that. I'll play from the B part
Here is a later version of the same thing,
but slower and with some diminutions,
an excerpt from a Romanesca found in the Chigi manuscripts,
again starting from the B part.
Another common ritornello form, is just the same,
only detached from the triple meter;
the A and B end with a fermata, and then comes the ritornello.
As an example I'll play the end of Storace's variation we heard before.
In his case, the ritornello is repeated twice.
Now we know the possible forms of the Romanesca, its most basic structure.
Let's see now, in what ways
composers filled the gaps between the given structural points.
The most basic way to elaborate things in the 16th and 17th century
is simply by adding diminutions.
Fundamentally, it keeps the harmonic sequence
and the changes of harmony equal.
This was the case in the first Romanesca pieces.
Mostly however, the notes of the Romanesca were used more as cornerstones,
and in between those, composers were sometimes very creative.
One way to elaborate the Romanesca is by using cadences.
Let's see what happens if we apply different cadences
to each of the notes of the Romanesca.
Let's start with two-step tenor cadences.
By the way, If you are not sure about cadences,
feel free to check out our special episode about that.
Needless to say, these examples are just
for the sake of demonstrating the use of cadences;
such a repetition of a single concept would be considered
by most of the Romanesca composers as not varied enough.
Let's go on with adding an authentic cadence
to each of the notes of the Romanesca.
And now, let's add a plagal cadence to each of the notes of the Romanesca.
The last option would be to put a cantizans clause before each note.
To categorize all these cases as cadences might be a bit theoretical,
so another way to describe it would be to simply arrive
at each of the notes of the Romanesca by ascending stepwise.
Let's listen to an example.
So, by using diminutions and contrapuntal building blocks,
one can arrive at many different renditions of the Romanesca.
Let's continue to some early baroque tricks
one can pull when making a Romanesca.
Some of the differences between the "classical polyphony"
of the high Renaissance and the music of the 17th century
are the texture of the music, and the number of dissonant clashes it contains.
In terms of texture, the complete equality between parts
changed towards the dominance of two upper parts,
often moving in parallels, and a bass.
A nice example for that is the famous Ritornello from Monteverdi's Orfeo.
The two upper parts are often moving in parallel thirds or sixths,
but the main point is that these two parts together
with the bass function perfectly without the two remaining parts;
this five part piece is in fact a trio
with two additional and in fact optional filling parts.
This kind of texture based on two upper parts and a bass
was very prominent from around 1600,
and seem to reflect in some cases the new way in which
composers were thinking about music.
This kind of texture can be seen in many of the 17th century Romanesca settings,
as we will soon demonstrate.
The second characteristic of early 17th century music we mentioned
is the number of dissonant clashes found in the music.
They are often created when different parts
are making diminutions at the same time.
If we take, for example, this simple progression,
and we want to spice it up, we should add simple diminutions.
If we add some diminution in the bass it sounds fine,
and if we add some diminutions in our two upper parts
it also sounds fine,
but what if we add diminutions in the bass
and in upper parts at the same time?
we get a Monteverdian flavoured moment
where most notes are just dissonances.
This is fun, let's make a complete Romanesca variation based on this concept.
Again, this is for demonstration purposes only,
no decent composer from that period would accept
such lack of variety across a complete variation.
Although we have played examples from actual romanesca pieces,
we didn't really look at the scores of any of them.
One reason for that, as I said,
was to make sure you'd be focusing
on the Romanesca's skeleton when listening to the examples,
but another reason, is that in most cases,
Romanesca pieces are notated in a very weird way. Let's see.
So, as the Romanesca is in triple time,
all the examples presented here were in triple time.
But this was only to simplify things;
here is what a typical notation of a Romanesca bass actually looks like.
As you see, it's not in triple time, or is it?
If we look from the second step of the Romanesca,
and ignore the bar lines, it is just like our model.
The only real difference is the first note,
that has four beats instead of three.
This extra beat in the beginning might be explained
by some early Romanesca pieces, that have an upbeat.
So when notating a Romanesca with an upbeat,
and for some reason that is not at all clear to me
using a duple meter for the notation, this would be the result.
This is one of these cases that a rather odd and "unnatural" thing
got standardized and was repeated many times in practice.
You can see how Frescobaldi tries to overcome this
by starting with a pause in some of his variations.
In short, you should remember that
the first note of the Romanesca often has 4 beats instead of 3,
and that there is no correlation between the triple meter of the music
and the meter of the notation.
This phenomenon must be understood
whenever playing or examining a Romanesca.
Now, although we were talking about
how free and creative composers were when making Romanescas,
it should be said that in most ensemble Romanesca pieces,
that is, those for voice or instruments and basso continuo,
the bass was often canonized.
That is, it was already a fixed melody that repeated itself exactly
for every verse or variation.
The composer's creativity in those cases manifested itself
only in the top part or parts.
However, in the case of single instrument variations,
composers were only bound to the skeleton of the romanesca
and were much freer.
Before we finish, let's have a quick look
at the first Romanesca variation of Girolamo Frescobaldi.
As we said, when analyzing a Romanesca,
we should first find the basic skeleton and meter.
After we have found that,
we can mark more musical, and therefore less confusing barlines.
In terms of form we see that Frescobaldi,
at least in this variation, is using A and B, and then repeats the B.
We see that he uses cadential formulas leading to the main points,
we see that he often uses the trio concept
of two dominant and parallel upper voices,
and because it's Frescobaldi,
he also plants some imitations within the variation. Let's listen.
This was our show about the Romanesca, we hope that you enjoyed it!
Don't forget to check the special page on our website
with all the footnotes and other extra information.
Feel free to comment, share, and like, and see you next time at EMS.com.
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