MARGARET MURATA

GUITAR PASSACAGLI AND VOCAL ARIE

We are all familiar with ground bass patterns that are commonly grouped as
bassi ostinati, such as the folia, the romanesca, the Ruggiero and the ciaccona.
Stemming from popular music, their earliest manifestations have not been easy
to uncover.1 But whatever the individual origins of these basses, by the early Sei-
cento those origins no longer seemed to matter, although the patterns with more
than two component phrases, such as the Ruggiero and bergamasca, probably
retained their associations with song. Consisting of regular phrases, such basses
easily supported new songs with similarly equal-length (isometric) lines. Other
basses like the ciaccona and folia have only one or two shorter repeating units
and retain a characteristic strong sense of meter a trait we often describe as
dance-like. Vocal lines set to them can easily and attractively move in congru-
ent phrases or engage in cross phrasing. We are also familiar with the notion of
both melodies and/or chord successions functioning as arie, that is, as promiscu-
ously suitable models for reciting fixed poetic forms like the Spanish romance or
Italian ottava or sonetto, more or less allimproviso. Such arie typically take on
the rhythm of poetic scansion. This, too, can yield musical forms with isometric
phrases; but individual poetic lines can also be rhythmically distended in per-

1 Richard Hudsons extensive work on four ostinato patterns culminated in his The Folia,
the Saraband, the Passacaglia, and the Chaconne: The Historical Evolution of Four Forms that
Originated in Music for the Five-Course Spanish Guitar, 4 vols., American Institute of Musicol-
ogy, Neuhausen-Stuttgart 1982. Hudson, Alexander Silbiger, and Giuseppe Gerbino con-
tributed to the relevant articles on ostinato and ground bass in the New Grove Dictionary
of Music and Musicians, 2nd rev. ed., Macmillan, London 2001-2002 (www.grovemusic.com).
Silbigers most recent contribution to their appearances in the keyboard repertory is Alexander
Silbiger, On Frescobaldis Recreation of the Chaconne and the Passacaglia in The Keyboard in
Baroque Europe, ed. Christopher Hogwood, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003,
pp. 3-18. I would like to thank Professors Hudson and Silbiger for their astute and indispensa-
ble comments on earlier versions of this paper.

81
 MARGARET MURATA

formance, by embellishments and other aspects of vocal declamation or fantasy,

whether these are improvised or notated as if improvised. We often say that
these arie are formulaic, but in fact, they are not so, since they are many in num-
ber and do not bear designations beyond aria per cantar They can resemble
each other and are not necessarily either memorably tuneful or harmonically re-
markable in themselves.
One of the most recognizable ostinato basses is the four-note stepwise descent
identified today with the passacaglia. It seems to have emerged as a linear pat-
tern with what Alexander Silbiger calls generic markers only sometime in the
second quarter of the Seicento, even though Spanish and Italian guitarists had
been playing pasacalles as vamps or ritornelli to songs since the previous cen-
tury.2 One important transitional example is the Aria di passagaglia from
Girolamo Frescobaldis 1630 Primo libro darie musicali.3 The continuo line of
Cos mi disprezzate? begins as a variant of the stepwise descending tetrachord
in minor, but with Frescobaldis unique fantasy the bass strays from it, modu-
lates away from it and has its triple-meter progress interrupted with two recita-
tive passages that set stanzas two and four. Clearly such artfulness does not mark
the beginnings of a genre, nor does this aria seem a likely representative of a
popular oral genre.
In the 1630 print, the aria just before Cos mi disprezzate? is the much bet-
ter known Se laura spira, which is simply called an aria.4 Its stanza is also in
triple meter and in four regular four-bar phrases. It does not open with a de-
scending tetrachord, but this bass figure is the essence of phrases 2 and 4. The
form of the first stanza is retained and varied in parts two and three. Since the
bass in Cos mi disprezzate? isnt linearly repetitive I asked myself why is-
nt Se laura spira a passacaglia, too? In its strophic, always melodious form, it

2 Alexander Silbiger, Passacaglia, in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians cit.,
s.v.
3 Girolamo Frescobaldi, Primo libro darie musicali per cantarsi nel gravicembalo, e tiorba,
Landini, Firenze 1630; facsim. ed. SPES, Firenze 1982, pp. 32-35. Richard Hudson edited it
in his Passacaglio and Ciaccona: From Guitar Music to Italian Keyboard Variations in the 17th
Century, UMI Research Press, Ann Arbor 1981, Ex. 25, pp. [199-203].
4 Girolamo Frescobaldi, Primo libro darie musicali cit., pp. 31-32.

82
 GUITAR PASSACAGLI AND VOCAL ARIE

would seem to be closer to the kinds of songs that could have used instrumental
ritornelli. To be a vocal passacaglia, must the bass be predominantly and persist-
ently the same melodic phrase as well as a harmonic ostinato? This is not even
the case with Frescobaldis own aria di passagaglia.
In the context of instrumental music, Silbiger forbears from equating forms
like the passamezzo, romanesca, and ciaccona with either chordal or melodic-
bass formulas solely, in part because single attributes on their own are common
and migratory elements of the language of sixteenth-century music. Although
genres, then, may be identified by recurring complexes of attributes, it is also
conceivable that some common idioms never become so special as to provoke
recognition by name. Was Frescobaldis aria di passagaglia elaborating a sim-
ple bass that everyone already knew? If so, where are its antecedents? Or was it
the case that in the course of 30 or more years a general notion of pasacalles and
a variable practice became reduced to a single musical figure in triple meter, a
process we begin to witness in Cos mi disprezzate?.
John Hill has shown that accompaniments on Spanish guitar in sixteenth-cen-
tury Spain and Naples could have influenced the style of continuo performance
in early Florentine monody. The guitar chords were sometimes widely and irregu-
larly spaced over several syllables of text, a feature of continuo accompaniments
to the solo madrigals and recitatives of Peri and Caccini.5 The present inquiry in-
to passacagli in vocal music also begins with the guitar but goes instead in the di-
rection of canzonetta. Its starting point is consideration of the guitar pasacalles as
we know them from the first decades of the Seicento, in two of their early as-
pects: 1) as riprese or ritornelli, and 2) as sets of transposed phrases known as pas-
sacagli seguiti. These are short successions of chords, usually of equal length, per-
formed in chains or cycles.6 Because most notated examples of riprese and

5 This resemblance was first observed by John W. Hill in his Roman Monody, Cantata,
and Opera from the Circles around Cardinal Montalto, 2 vols., Oxford University Press, Ox-
ford 1997, chapter 3. It is further explored, with additional examples, in his Laccompagna-
mento rasgueado di chitarra: un possibile modello per il basso continuo dello stile recitativo?, in
Rime e suoni alla spagnola, ed. Giulia Veneziano, Alinea, Firenze 2003, pp. 35-57.
6 They were first published extensively in Richard Hudson, Passacaglia cit., nos. 13, 29,
41, 43, 44. There are others not so designated in their sources.

83
 MARGARET MURATA

passacalli appear in printed tutors, scholars have considered them exercises writ-
ten down for beginners to practice chord progressions in different transpositions.
That may well be the case for series of similar passacalli diverse. Passacagli seguiti,
however, are well joined and have both phrase groupings and harmonic markers
for phrase shifts that resonate in the vocal repertory, as will be shown later.

I. Passacagli for guitar

Guitar accompaniments and bass lines. We know from the tuning of the five-
course guitar and the appearance of alfabeto tablature for it at this time that the
model guitar passacagli in tutors and songbooks could not project linear, descend-
ing bass lines.7 At their simplest, guitar chords consist of the three tones that make
up a triad with the possibility of two doubling tones. The registers of the chord-
tones depend on two things. The obvious constraint is how the left hand can posi-
tion itself on the frets. The second, more variable factor is the tuning of the strings
of the five-course guitar (strung 2 + 2 + 2 + 2, with either one or two strings for
the highest-tuned, first course). Even though the series of intervals from course to
course appears fairly standard (4th, 4th, 3rd, and 4th up from the starting pitch of
the fifth, lowest course), the different tuning systems of the first half of the Seicen-
to had the lowest-tuned open string in different places. In a much-cited Spanish
treatise reprinted in the 1620s, the two strings of both lower courses are tuned in
octaves, with the lowest-tuned string sounding the interval of a twelfth below the
highest-tuned first course (yielding A2-D3-G3-B3-E4).8 Gary Boye reports that

7 Tyler now has pushed back the emergence of Italian alfabeto chord symbols to the last
decades of the sixteenth century (as seen in I-Bu ms. 177/IV); see James Tyler and Paul
Sparks, The Guitar and its Music from the Renaissance to the Classical Era, Oxford University
Press, Oxford 2002, pp. 39-45.
8 Juan Carlos Amat, Guitarra espaola de cinco rdenes..., Lrida 1626 and 1627, based on a
lost 1596 first edition. Pitches are given in terms of octave registers. Middle C is C4; the step
below is B3, the step above D4. For the principal sources on guitar tuning, see Gary R. Boye,
Performing Seventeenth-Century Italian Guitar Music: The Question of an Appropriate Stringing,
in Performance on Lute, Guitar and Vihuela, ed. Victor A. Coelho, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge 1997, pp. 180-194. Amats tuning is the same given in Girolamo Montesardo, Nuova
inventione di intavolatura, Marescotti, Firenze 1606 and implied in Foriano Pico, Nuova scelta di

84
 GUITAR PASSACAGLI AND VOCAL ARIE

this tuning with the possibility of true bass pitches was favored in the north of Italy
until well past the mid-century.9 A 1626 treatise by Luis Brieno represents Span-
ish and often southern Italian practice. It has all five courses tuned in unison, but
with the third course tuned down a fifth from the second, instead of up a fourth.
This makes the middle course a step lower than the open fifth course (yielding A3-
D4-G3-B3-E4). It also shrinks the total range of the instrument, as the interval be-
tween the lowest and highest open courses is only a major sixth.10 None of this af-
fects the pitches (pitch classes) in any chord, but it can change which pitch is the
lowest-sounding tone in a chord. Thus for the same left-hand fingering, a G-major
chord in Amats tuning sounds as a G6 chord of six tones that cover a range of a
thirteenth, but with Brienos all-unison tuning, it comes out as a G root-position
triad covering the space of an octave. In strictly chordal textures, then, chord qual-
ity was important and registral order negligible; notional inversions had no voice-
leading implications. Speaking from experience, James Tyler observes, When the
chords are played on a guitar without bourdons [octave strings in any course], any
inversions are virtually inaudible. Even on a Baroque guitar strung with bourdons,
the effect is still one of nearly inversion-free block harmonies.11 Thomas Chris-
tensen puts it more positively by saying, The rich and percussive resonance of the
guitar courses allowed a chords functional sonority to remain essentially constant
no matter which particular note happened to be on the bottom.12

sonate..., Paci, Napoli 16[9]8, who gives no indications of octave tunings for any courses. For a
list of tuning sources, see Gary R. Boye, Performing Seventeenth-Century Italian Guitar Music
cit., pp. 193-194 and James Tyler, The Guitar and its Music cit., appendix II, pp. 184-186. See al-
so Massimo Preitano, Gli albori della concezione tonale: aria, ritornello strumentale e chitarra
spagnola nel primo Seicento, Rivista Italiana di Musicologia, 29 (1994), pp. 27-88.
9 Gary R. Boye, Performing Seventeenth-Century Italian Guitar Music cit., p. 192.
10 A third system tunes only the fourth course in octaves, giving it the lowest-sounding

string (yielding A3-D3-G3-B3-E4). Tyler and Boye both agree that this octave tuning of the
4th course only first appears in Antoine Carrs Livre di guitarre (Paris 1671). Ivano Cavallini
and Hudson use the Amat tuning in their transcriptions; James Tyler, The Guitar and its
Music cit., p. 40 transcribes the alfabeto symbols using the Brieno tuning.
11 Ibidem.
12 Thomas Christensen, The Spanish Baroque Guitar and Seventeenth-Century Triadic Theory,

Journal of Music Theory, 36 (1992), pp. 1-42: 3.

85
 MARGARET MURATA

Ex. 1
Marco Antonio Aldigatti, Passacalli diverse, in Gratie et affetti amorosi (Venezia 1627),
p. 3. Two passacalli with chord positions on five-course guitar (Amat-type tuning). Uni-
sons are not indicated. Every measure has three strokes, down-up-down.

86
 GUITAR PASSACAGLI AND VOCAL ARIE

A succession of chords, then, that in modern terms could be described as a I-

IV-V-I progression would have a different series of lowest-sounding pitches (or
bass line), depending on how the guitar was tuned and what chord was the
tonic. None would make a linear, descending tetrachord (Ex. 1). Richard Hud-
son correctly emphasized that the passacaglia ostinato in guitar music is also
mainly a matter of continually changing bass-lines, even though, due to the na-
ture of the style, the basses themselves are often only vaguely implied.13 Con-
tinually changing bass-lines, however, is somewhat exaggerated. Given that the
lowest three courses are tuned in fourths (notionally A-D-G), the easiest avail-
able pitches on any course range up a major third (e.g. A up to C#). For example
Montesardos 1606 alfabeto tablature gives 27 chords. In Amats tuning, the low-
est-sounding tones of the first 22 chords are accordingly the pitches A, Bb, B, C
and C#. Only the twenty-third chord offers a D3 as the lowest tone, made by fin-
gering the 5th fret on the fifth and fourth courses, in a G 6/4 chord.
Because the lute has more strings and easily plays stepwise motion in the bass
register, one could look for stepwise bass patterns in passacaglias for lute. But
surprisingly, there are far fewer than might be expected in Victor Coelhos cata-
logue of manuscript sources of Italian lute music.14 This may be because pas-
sacaglias were generally too simple or too functional to be notated or, because
before ca. 1630 they were still largely a category of guitar music. One early key-
board passacaglia, in a yet-unpublished Italian source that likely dates from be-
fore 1630, very clearly opens with phrases on a G-C-D-G bass pattern, in a du-
ple meter. Silbiger has observed that none of the passagalli in this source has a
fixed ostinato bass.15

13 Richard Hudson, Passacaglia cit., p. xxviii.

14 Victor A. Coelho, The Manuscript Sources of Seventeenth-Century Italian Lute Music,
Garland Publishing, New York and London 1995. Of the three or four lute examples among
Coelhos sources that might date from before 1630, the one that opens with C-Bb-Ab-F-G in
the bass follows a Ballo di Mantova and lacks its own title (I-Fn Magl. XIX.45, nos. 1-2). It is
Coelho who has designated it Passacaglia.
15 Six bars given in Alexander Silbiger, On Frescobaldis Recreation of the Chaconne and

the Passacaglia cit., p. 16, from ms. Prontera 1 (private collection, Lecce), which contains six
passagalli.

87
 MARGARET MURATA

Passacagli as chord progressions. It is pointless to search for the stepwise tetra-

chord as a bass line among guitar passacagli. Furthermore, the guitar manuals show
that the notion of what was a pasacalle was not rigid and that within the simple
four-chord framework, a variety of chords were possible and probably usual.
The most basic examples are represented in tutors by Girolamo Montesardo
(Firenze 1606), Pietro Millioni (Roma 16[24]/27) and Foriano Pico (Napoli
16[9]8). Their passacaglie o ritornelli and passagagli diversi are simple four-
bar successions of four chords each, in both what we would term minor and
major flavors. All equal the progression I-IV-V-I, but sounding on the five-
string guitar with different inversions.16 It is clear from multiple sources, howev-
er, that in practice, passacagli were hardly limited to the one plain sequence of
chords. Picos Nuova scelta di sonate per la chitarra spagnola gives three short
passacagli diversi. One consists of two cadential statements cycling CM-FM-
GM-CM-FM-GM-CM; he also gives an identical transposed version beginning
with an FM chord (both on p. 10). The third is more colorful: Dm | Am-BbM |
GM | AM-Dm |. This progression, which resembles the second Aldigatti example
in Ex. 1, contains both the minor dominant (Am) opening out from the tonic and
a penultimate A-major dominant for the close. The move from a Bb-major chord
to a GM chord creates a nice B-flat to B-natural chromatic touch (Pico, p. 13; the
same succession of chords on p. 15 has a different pattern of strokes). This pas-
sagaglio is in the same family as the harmonically diverse passacagli that make
up Aldigattis passacalli diverse of 1627, first published by Cavallini.17

16Thomas Christensen, The Spanish Baroque Guitar cit., p. 4, calls this the paradigmatic
structure of the Spanish passacalle, but it is the basis of the earlier Italian ripresa or ritornello,
and is the component of other arie such as the bergamasca and Ruggiero. Chord content alone
does not determine these varieties. Boye has recently argued that Picos print, though datable
to 16[9]8, is a poorly printed plagiarism of Millionis posthumous Nuova corona dintavolatura
di chitarra spagnola of 1661; Gary R. Boye, The Case of the Purloined Letter Tablature: The Sev-
enteenth-Century Guitar Books of Foriano Pico and Pietro Millioni, in Journal of Seventeenth-
Century Music, 11 (2005) at <http://www.sscm-jscm/jscm/v11/no1/boye/html>.
17 Ivano Cavallini, Sullopera Gratie et affetti amorosi di Marcantonio Aldigatti (1627),

Quadrivium, 19 (1978), pp. 145-302. Marcantonio Aldigatti, Gratie et affetti amorosi, can-
zonette a voce sola, Gardano, Venezia 1627; facsim. ed. Ivano Cavallini, AMIS, Bologna 1979
(Antiquae Musicae Italicae Studiosi, 2).

88
 GUITAR PASSACAGLI AND VOCAL ARIE

Ex. 2
Marco Antonio Aldigatti (1627), Passacalli diverse, p. 3. Transcribed from alfabeto
tablature, normalized to root position and figures added.

89
 MARGARET MURATA

Passacagli passeggiati. Aldigatti gives eight progressions for a guitarist to prac-

tice. All are contained within four measures, but some have six chords and some
have seven (Ex. 2). These are passacagli passeggiati, that is, the basic pasacalle
variously decorated with extra chords. Four are in major; four are in minor.
Only two of the eight move from the tonic directly to a chord a fourth above
(nos. 6 and 8). The other six move from the opening tonic to a chord a fifth
above (four in major to their dominants; two in minor, nos. 4 and 5, to their mi-
nor dominants). Six of the eight close with three chords of a IV/iv-V-I cadence.
The two remaining in minor insert a tonic between the cadential iv and V
(nos. 4 and 8). No single version is given special prominence; all are just exam-
ples of how one could elaborate the basic framework.
The manual that perhaps demonstrates the importance of harmonically varied
passacagli is Giovanni Ambrosio Colonnas first Intavolatura di chitarra spagnuola
of 1620. After presenting four-chord passacalli beginning with each chord avail-
able on the guitar, he gives six passacalli passeggiati to G minor, three to C major,
three to D minor, and so on for twenty-four more; some require chords created
by shifting a chord-position up the fingerboard.18 In fact, in any one mode,
guitarists could harmonically vary the repetitions, four-bar phrase by four-bar
phrase. Carlo Milanuzzis 1622/25 songbook gives three passagalli as pairs of
four-bar units, one pair in G major, one pair in A major, and one pair in A minor.
Hudson 27a: GM - CM - DM - GM | FM - CM - DM - GM |
Hudson 27b: AM - DM - EM - AM | AM - Dm - EM - AM |
Hudson 27c: Am - Dm - EM - Am | CM - Dm - EM - Am |19

In these, the second group of each pair either changes the major or minor quali-
ty of the IV chord, or, take note, substitutes a subtonic or mediant (given in bold)

18 See the transcriptions from Giovanni Ambrosio Colonna, Intavolatura di chitarra alla

spagnuola (Colonna, Milano 1620), in Richard Hudson, Passacaglia cit., nos. 11, 33, and 39a.
Colonna issued a compilation of his four volumes under the same title (Gariboldi, Milano
1637; repr. Forni Editore, Bologna 1971).
19 Richard Hudson, Passacaglia cit., no. 27, p. 23, from Carlo Milanuzzi, Secondo scherzo

delle ariose vaghezze (Vincenti, Venezia 1622). Here in these and subsequent diagrams,
rhythm and stroke indications have been omitted.

90
 GUITAR PASSACAGLI AND VOCAL ARIE

for the opening chord of the second phrase. Milanuzzis two-phrase progressions
are not only passeggiati; they represent the minimum for passacagli seguiti.
Hudson 29b: BbM - EbM - Eb-FM - BbM | FM-Gm - DM-EbM - Bb-FM - Bb |20

For the more elaborate set of chords that is Hudsons Example 29b, from a
Florentine manuscript, it is necessary to know their rhythmic organization. In the
third bar, the Eb and F chords sound a short-long pattern (underlined) that is
then echoed in the chord pairs FM-Gm and DM-EbM, as well as the penultimate
Bb-FM (underlined). The four-bar cycle of two closed phrases is not altered.
Rhythmic variety. The Aldigatti and other examples in Hudsons studies am-
ply illustrate that before 1640, the four-chord/four-bar basis of passacagli was not
restricted to one chord per bar. Hudson pointed out that passacagli used as ritor-
nelli could be in duple or triple meter, since ritornelli would need to be in the
meter of the song to follow. He supplies two duple meter examples from
Benedetto Sanseverinos Intavolatura facile (Milan 1620).21 The teaching exam-
ples are most frequently in triple meter (with down-down-up stroke patterns)
and often with the opening tonic forming a two-beat anacrusis. With such an
anacrusis, the opening tonic would seem extended, even though the remaining
chords still fall on the next three downbeats. In triple meter, a chord change
could come on the second beat of a bar, as in Hudsons Ex. 29b above. This
goes hand in hand, as it were, with the down-down-up stroke pattern. Phrase
one of Hudson 29b simply displaces a chord change by a beat. When there are
embellishing chords, as in the second phrase, color and accent create a set of
two-chord replications that is almost stronger than the underlying chord scheme.
The variable placement of the defining chords within the four-bar phrases again
makes the guitar passacagli different from the later descending tetrachord osti-
nato. Indeed, the closer one looks at the four-bar guitar passacaglia in its capaci-
ty as an instrumental ritornello, its adoption as an ostinato seems less and less
obvious. Yet several of the early guitar sources offer a manner of performing pas-
sacagli that does consist of repeated, if varied, passacaglia phrases.

20 Ivi, no. 29b, p. 23, from I-Fr ms. 2951, f. 18.

21 Ivi, no. 8, p. 18.

91
 MARGARET MURATA

Passacagli seguiti. As mentioned, passacagli seguiti consist of two or more phras-

es in a chain. Hudson observes that these can be simple passacagli mixed with
passacagli passeggiati. Other examples he notes employ modulation, ... ending
... either in a different key or returning to the opening tonality. Some of these
pieces move to a key a step lower, a step higher, or both. Others ... [move] from a
major key to its relative minor or the reverse, or [move] between keys a fourth
apart.22 A good illustration is one of Hudsons examples from a manuscript in Pe-
saro, dated ca. 1635 (pairs of chords in a short-long rhythm are here underlined):
Hudson 43: Gm - Cm - Cm-DM - Gm | FM-Bb - FM-Gm - Cm-DM - Gm |
AM - Dm - Dm-EM - Am | Am - CM - DM - Gm |23

One pair of 4-bar phrases cadences to G minor; the third moves to A minor,
and the fourth phrase returns to G minor. Note how the two internal phrase
shifts are marked by harmonic disjunction: Gm to FM marks the shift from
phrase 1 to phrase 2; Gm is succeeded by AM between phrases 2 and 3! Similar
shifts up and down a step occur earlier in Pietro Millionis Mutanze di passacaglij
of 1627 (Hudson no. 44). A G-minor statement occurs as a ritornello in phrases
1, 4, and 7. Phrases 2 and 3 cadence to Am; phrases 5 and 6 to FM.
Three pieces entitled Aria de passacallo occur in the volumes of Colonnas
Intavolatura, appearing among the suonate and not the generic exercises.24
They illustrate well the main point here that chains of passacagli easily form the
basis for larger, non-additive forms. In the Colonna examples, the Aria de pas-
sacallo from his second book consists of four 4-bar passacagli passeggiate, two
to BbM and two to Gm, but the second phrase uses shifted chords, which gives

22Ivi, pp. xviii-xix.

23Ivi, no. 43, pp. 28-29, from I-PEc ms. 586, f. 3v. James Tyler and Paul Sparks, The Gui-
tar and its Music cit., p. 94 date this source later, ca. 1640, and attribute it to Antonio Car-
bonchi.
24 The arie de passagallo reprinted in Colonnas collected re-issue of 1637 are p. 45 (from

Book I; Hudson 39b), p. 52 (from Book II), p. 57 (from Book III; Hudson 45). Hudson dis-
cussed them in Richard Hudson, Passacaglio and Ciaccona cit., pp. 38-40. The aria in Book I
of 1620 (Hudson 39b) is given at two pitch levels, the first closing to G minor, the second to A
minor.

92
 GUITAR PASSACAGLI AND VOCAL ARIE

its closing Bb chord (N3 fingering) quite a different interval structure and sonor-
ity than the previous Bb tonic (H fingering). Similarly, the third phrase demands
shifted chords BbM-FM | Gm-CM | Gm-DM | up to the DM dominant in nor-
mal position that closes to G minor. The Aria de passacallo from Colonnas
Book three has three repeated strains of 1 + 2 + 2 mutating cycles (Hudson no.
45). Using shifted chords, it opens and closes in B minor. The aria in Colonnas
first book of 1620 takes a binary form (Hudson no. 39b, p. 27).

Giovanni Ambrosio Colonna, Aria de Passacallo (Hudson 39b)

||: phrase 1 | phrase 2 :||
Bb -Eb-Eb-FM - Bb | Bb - EbM - Eb-FM - Bb :||
||: phrase 3 | phrase 4 | phrase 5 :||
Bbm -Bbm - Bbm-CM - FM | Fm - Fm - Fm-GM -Cm | Cm-EbM - Cm - Cm-DM - Gm :||

In the binary example represented above, after eight bars of the basic cycle in
Bb (which are repeated), phrases 3, 4, and 5 cadence to FM, Cm, and Gm, not
returning to any phrase in Bb. The mutanze are pivot-chord modulations from
later theory. Each closing major triad is altered to serve as the minor subdomi-
nant in the following phrase. For the fifth and final phrase, the C-minor tonic of
phrase 4 briefly moves to an Eb-major chord and back (instead of altering to a
temporary CM chord). This audibly signals the new phrase and the mutanza, as
in the other modulations. Colonnas use of the term aria in these two examples
could have meant two things. The aria could be simply the basic passacaglia for-
mula. But the title and location of these arie among the suonate also suggest
that the combination of statements created a composition, that is, something
more than an open-ended ritornello. In the 1620 first edition, the piece is among
those associated with specific individuals. The Aria de passacallo is dedicated
to a singer (cantore) at Santa Maria della Scala in Milan.
As ritornelli, not only the simple but also the more elaborated passacagli
would have been in the ears of both amateur and professional guitarists. There is
no reason to imagine that musicians inclined to write down their music (com-
posers) would not also have known these patterns, this rasgueado idiom. The va-
riety of passacagli in the guitar tutors points to 1) harmonic improvisation as nor-
mative within the plain chordal framework; 2) a four-bar phrase structure with-

93
 MARGARET MURATA

out predictable metric placement of the internal chords, except for 3) a tonic
chord in the fourth bar;25 and 4) the potential of utilizing a repetitive series as
the basis for the invention of arie. Rather than calling passacagli perfunctory or
too labile to constitute a genre, we can regard them as a resource that encour-
aged composition and could form the basis for songs or dances. The search
here, then, is no longer for any stepwise descending bass line, but rather for the
use of passacagli seguiti as a type of aria, whether named as such or not.

II. Arie from passacagli (seguiti)

Franzeschina me garbada, bergamasca (8.8t.8.8t + 8t.8t). One of the most
obvious examples of the chords I-IV-V-I repeating as an ostinato to accompany a
song is the traditional bergamasca.26 The model aria given in the New Grove
entry for bergamasca provides only four melodic phrases, of which the second
and fourth are the same.27 No phrase is transposed. Nobody has called the
bergamasca a passacaglia, but the air shows that the same simple progression
readily sustains a more or less syllabic song of several phrases. The version below
applies the four-chord scheme in duple meter (of the 1689 Coferati model in
New Grove Online) to the Bergamasca text as sung by Zanni in a 1639 opera.
GM CM DM GM
Franzeschina me garbada,
GM CM DM GM
e chi l l t Zanno - lin,

25Instrumental variations on the passacaglia with tonic chords in the fourth bar in
Richard Hudson, Passacaglia cit., are notably not for the keyboard. Pieces with closing tonic
chords are Hudson, no. 50 for lute by Alessandro Piccinini (1639), and for guitar, no. 51 by
Antonio Carbonchi (1640); no. 52 by Michelangelo Bartolotti in minor and in major (1640);
and no. 53 by Giovanni Paolo Foscarini (ca. 1640).
26 Richard Hudson et alii, Bergamasca, in New Grove Online at <www.grovemusic.com>,

accessed 20 May 2005.

27 From Matteo Coferati, Corona di sacre canzoni, 2nd ed., Eredi Onofri, Firenze 1689.

The Coferati version seems likely to have been Italianized, since it lacks the tronco line endings
that would surely have been in any bergamasque text.

94
 GUITAR PASSACAGLI AND VOCAL ARIE

GM CM DM GM
zentil hom della vallada,
GM CM DM GM
quel che tama senza fin?
GM CM DM GM
Ma voraf far colazi,
GM CM DM GM
se tha fatti macchar.

What makes the song a bergamasca, of course, are not the repeating chords
that make up its accompaniment but the succession of similar melodic phrases in
duple meter that carry the songs poetic lines. Any pair of ottonari could success-
fully be sung over two statements of the chord cycle, using any two melodic
phrases that sounded complementary. In this case, the identity of both melody
and harmony as a duple-meter bergamasca is stronger than the relation of the
song to a passacaglia vamp.
The bergamasca on an unchanging ostinato can be compared with Marco
Marazzolis air for the bergamasco Zanni, who sings it in the 1639 Roman opera
Chi soffre speri (Ex. 3).28 Its ritornello is the passacaglia chord scheme of the air,
leading into the first four lines, which are sung straightforwardly as two phrase-
pairs over the bass pattern. Note, however, that phrases two and four in Maraz-
zolis setting begin with the tones A-B in the bass line, in place of a single G
chord, joining the two phrases as in pairs of seguiti. The closing two lines of the
song are sung twice, in order to create a second half that also consists of four
phrases in eight measures. But instead of continuing with the ostinato in C,
Marazzoli transposes two statements in the manner of the passacagli seguiti at the
same time that he altered the two-bar units of the basic cycle. Measures 11-12
break the harmonic pattern, after which measures 13 and 14 contain not one,
but two one-bar passacaglia units, one to A minor hooked into one to D ma-
jor. This, in turn, hooks sequentially onto the same progression in back in G (m.
15). One-bar repetitions then smoothly ease back into the original ritornello pat-
tern, which remains at the lively double-time rate.

28 Transcribed from I-Rvat Fondo Barb. lat. 4386; facsim. ed., New York, 1982, Act 2,

scene 4, ff. 114v-115.

95
 MARGARET MURATA

Ex. 3
Marco Marazzoli, from Chi soffre speri (Rome 1639). Zannis bergamasca, Act 2, scene 4,
I-Rvat Fondo Barb. lat. 4386, ff. 114v-115.

96
 GUITAR PASSACAGLI AND VOCAL ARIE

Anonymous, Mal cambio par che sia (7.11.7.11). Richard Hudson repro-
duces a folio from a manuscript source of ca. 1630, of a kind that still remains on
the margins of musical research.29 These are song texts with only guitar chords
indicated in alfabeto tablature. For 27 of the songs in the manuscript, alfabeto
progressions of four chords marked Pass are given as ritornelli. In the case of
Mal cambio par che sia, the chords GM-CM-DM-GM are indicated as a ritor-
nello for its four quatrains. The guitar chords given to accompany the song itself
also consist of four chords per vocal phrase (the rhythm is unknown).
Pass[acaglia]: GM - CM - DM - GM
GM Am GM
Mal cam- bio par che si- a
GM CM DM - GM
que- sto che i con voi, a- ni- ma mi- a:
FM Dm EM - Am
poi chio v da- to il co- re
Am CM DM - GM
e voi mi da- te in re- com- pen-sa un fio- re.

These accompanying chords do not simply repeat the opening passacaglia,

but they do make three passacagli seguiti on the model of one of Milanuzzis ex-
amples (Hudson 27a, given above). Poetic lines 1-2 are set within a single pas-
sacaglia statement to GM, in which the first chord is expanded by a GM-Am-
GM progression. Poetic line 3 opens with the subtonic VII chord that so often
signals a complementary phrase. Rather than closing out as a cycle in G, howev-
er, this FM chord introduces a Dm-EM-Am succession that defines line 3, much
like mm. 13-14 in Marazzolis bergamasca. This bridge phrase then smoothly
connects to a parallel, closing passacaglia phrase in G.
Since we do not know either the rhythm or the melody of Mal cambio par
che sia, this demonstration is purely schematic. It certainly does not suggest

29 Richard Hudson, Passacaglia cit., Plate II, p. xlv, from I-Vnm ms. 11701, f. 44v (olim

Ital. Classe IV, no. 1910); listed in James Tyler, The Guitar and its Music cit., p. 95 as having
belonged to Francesco Riccio.

97
 MARGARET MURATA

that all songs for which passacagli serve as the ritornello will continue this pat-
tern in their accompaniments! But another example is the Seguedillas muy
faciles immediately following the twelve pasacalles given in Luis Brienos guitar
tutor of 1626. The verses are preceded by the instruction to play the ninth
pasacalle, which is the chord progression DM-GM-AM-DM. The song, which
scans 7.5+7.5 syllables, continues with this progression in the accompaniment:
DM GM-AM DM GM AM - DM
No me case mi madre con hom- bre ga- lan :||
DM AM DM GM - AM - DM
que se hae la bar-ba a lo es- car- ra- man. :||30

Brienos stanza is made of basic, but more than sufficient, materials, and it
may have been a vivacious, rhythmic song, needing nothing other than rasguea-
do pasacalles accompanying a tenor with a mock wail in his voice. Like an ostina-
to bergamasca, Brienos seguedillas use no transposed statements. Mal cambio
par che sia, with one transposed statement, has a more articulated form, but it
is also a poem with a less popular flavor.
Kapsberger, La vita alberga (10.5.5 + 11.5.6 ). Kapsbergers villanella La vi-
ta alberga dov bellezza was published with alfabeto chords for the Spanish
guitar, as well as with a continuo bass line (Ex. 4).31 It is built on passacaglia cy-
cles that have no extra chords. The irregular stanza of 10.5.5 + 11.5.6 syllables is
regularized to four rustic, closed, four-bar phrases in the triple meter associated
with passacagli. The cycles transpose from FM, to CM, to Gm, and back to FM.
(A refrain that is not in Ex. 4 follows each of the three stanzas; it is sung over re-
peated cadences to FM, much like the closing phrases in Marazzolis bergamas-
ca). Certain stepwise movements in the continuo bass line are necessarily absent
when the aria is performed with guitar accompaniment alone. The effect, howev-
er, would be certainly unsurprising and also appropriate, given the pastoral na-

30 Luis de Brieno, Metodo muy facilissimo para aprender a taer la guitarra a lo espaol,

Ballard, Paris 1626; facsim. ed. Minkoff, Geneve 1972, p. 15; rhythm omitted.
31 Johannes Hieronymus Kapsberger, Libro secondo di villanelle a 1.2.&3. voci con lalfa-

beto per la chitarra spagnola, Robletti, Roma 1619; facsim. ed. SPES, Firenze 1982, p. 4.

98
 GUITAR PASSACAGLI AND VOCAL ARIE

Ex. 4
Johann Hyeronimus Kapsberger, La vita alberga, in Libro secondo di villanelle ... con
lalfabeto per chitarra spagnola (Roma 1619), p. 4, verse lines 1-6; guitar chords transcri-
bed over original b.c.

99
 MARGARET MURATA

ture of the duet. This villanella is simpler than Marazzolis bergamasca. It is so

simple and straightforward, drawing attention to its construction out of pas-
sacaglia statements would defeat its artlessness. Opening his dedication of the
volume to the composer, Ascanio Ferrari wrote, It is a natural condition of the
Graces to go about nude, ... nor do they accrue any shame from this nudity.32
My next example is a more dressed up version of the same combination of pas-
sacagli seguiti, triple meter, and melodic invention.
Anonymous, Aure placide volante (8.8.8.8.8.8). One popular song text of
the early Seicento is Aure placide, which has a stanza consisting of six
ottonari.33 As with the bergamasca, isometric ottonari fit perfectly with any of
the four-stress ostinato figures. A setting by an unknown composer appeared in
Raffaello Rontanis Varie musiche of 1614 (Ex. 5). The bass for this setting con-
sists of eight passacagli seguiti of two bars each that cadence to Gm, to Bb, to
CM, and GM for four ottonari; then to FM, DM, and GM for the final two ot-
tonari plus a repetition of the final line (which are followed by a repetition of the
closing statements). None of the single 2-bar units is the same, yet they are near-
ly all equal. The composer divides the song into two parts by the characteristic
shift down a step from the GM close of phrase four to the FM chord (in m. 9)
that heads phrase five. It is an audible marker, since all the prior phrases
smoothly begin on the same chord that ended the previous unit. In the second
half of the song, the joints between the phrases are different. They shift upward
by fifths. Phrase 5 in F major jumps to a CM chord (m. 11) to open phrase 6,
which closes, however, in D. That DM final moves to a Gm chord in m. 13, at
the head of phrase 7. After the repeat of phrases 5 and 6 as phrases 8 and 9, the
same DM closing chord (m. 18) steps down to a CM chord. This stepwise shift
now marks the final phrase in G.

32 Natural propriet delle Gratie landar ignude, ne perci avviene chelle dalla nudit

... ricevan vergogna. (Ivi, p. [2]).

33 There are several other settings of the text, which appeared in Remigio Romanos Nuo-

va raccolta ... parte quarta, Salvadori, Venezia 1625. The text appears with guitar chords only
in the Casalotti manuscript, which I have not seen (GB-Lbl Add. ms. 36877, f. 128). A solo
lute setting not related to the tune in Rontanis print is I-Rvat Fondo Barb. lat. 4145, f. 12v.

100
GUITAR PASSACAGLI AND VOCAL ARIE

101
 MARGARET MURATA

Ex. 5
Anonymous, Aure placid e volanti, in Raffaello Rontani, Varie musiche ... libro primo
(Firenze 1614), p. 17, first of four stanzas.

102
 GUITAR PASSACAGLI AND VOCAL ARIE

The series of strong, syllabic phrases is unmistakably characteristic of the

chains of seguiti. The 1614 print makes no mention of realizing the continuo part
on the Spanish guitar, and the continuo bass line to this song has more variety in
its two-bar units than one could achieve on a guitar. Yet the chordal orientation,
pastoral flavor of the text, and the rhythm of the song are easily imagined with a
battente guitar accompaniment. At least one other canzonetta in Rontanis vol-
ume appears in a manuscript source with guitar letters.
Brunelli, Amor chattendi (5.5.5.5 + 5.5.5.5). The isometric canzonetta text
Amor chattendi (possibly by Ottavio Rinuccini) appears in two printed
scores, Caccinis 1614 Nuove musiche and Antonio Brunellis first book of secu-
lar music of 1613.34 The regularity of the stanza suggested to both composers
equal, parallel phrases with mutating cadence points in the manner of passacagli
seguiti. Caccinis stanza is notated in eight tactus units in C3, one 3/2 measure
for each line. Brunelli interestingly enough sets the stanza in almost the same
rhythms, but notated in duple, not triple meter. In both settings, each of the four
phrases takes 12 beats. Brunellis begins after a beat rest, Caccinis on the beat.
As in Aure placide, the first 12-beat phrase sets the pattern for the rest of the
canzonetta. Caccinis first phrase clearly delineates the two short five-syllable lines
in the melody; his harmonization joins them in an expanded passacaglia phrase
in which the opening extends the initial tonic chord, as in the first line of the
anonymous Mal cambio par che sia (Ex. 6a). As in Caccini, the pairing of
quinari is emphasized more by Brunelli with sequential repetition in the vocal line
(Ex. 6b). Brunellis harmonization, however, is made up of two similarly sequential
passacaglia statements, Amor chattendi to DM and Amor che fai? to AM.
Since the strophes of Amor chattendi consist of four pairs of five-syllable
lines, Brunellis subsequent pairs continue with the same phrasing and rhythm as
the first pair. The two statements in each of the first three pairs end with chords
a fourth apart. Thus DM at the end of the first poetic line (m. 2) is IV of the AM
that finishes poetic line 2 (fai). A CM chord ends line 3 (prendi); GM line 4

34 Giulio Caccini, Nuove musiche e nuova maniera di scriverle, Pignoni e C., Firenze 1614;

mod. ed. H. Wiley Hitchcock, A-R Editions, Madison 1978; Antonio Brunelli, Arie, scherzi,
canzonette, e madrigali ... Libro primo, op. 9, Vincenti, Venezia 1613.

103
 MARGARET MURATA

(omai). The GM and DM chords that close lines 5 and 6 (vendetta/saetta)

are heard in the same pattern, even though neither of these subphrases contains
three chords. The fourth and final pair of poetic lines (mm. 10-12) repeats the
now-familiar rhythmic pattern but makes a more continuous harmonic progres-
sion to the final G cadence. This includes the use of a V6 of V chord in place of a
IV, displaced by a beat to the beginning of the last poetic line (a chord that
Brunelli seems fond of). The point here is not to speculate whether either com-
poser knew the setting of the other, but rather to suggest an implicit model for
both Caccini and Brunelli in the nature of an aria di passacagli whose fresh-
ness and simplicity evoke guitar-accompanied music. The Caccini version indeed
occurs among the Magliabechiana with guitar letters.35
To see whether stanzas in isometric quinari would tend to fall into this same
musical formula, Silke Leopolds catalogue of printed vocal music is a highly useful
tool.36 A sampling of the sixty pieces in her list of stanzas in quinari piani certainly
uncovered settings not related to the pasacalle such as Caccinis own Al fonte al
prato (1614), which has several phrases that end on the dominant. The 1617 set-
ting of the same text by Giovanni Francesco Capello, however, could be construed
as four 12-beat phrases of a smoothly expanded passacaglia progression.37
Milanuzzi, Lalma mi strugge (5.3.3.3.8 + 3.3.3.3.3.3).38 On the surface, Mi-

35 Spotted by Anne MacNeil in I-Fn Magl. XIX.25, ff. 20v-21 (private communication).
36 Silke Leopold, Al modo dOrfeo. Dichtung und Musik im italienischen Sologesang des
frhen 17. Jahrhunderts, 2 vols., Laaber-Verlag, Laaber 1995 (Analecta Musicologica, 29), II,
pp. 129-381.
37 Giulio Caccini, Nuove musiche cit.; Giovanni Francesco Capello, Madrigali et arie a

voce sola, Vincenti, Venezia 1617; facsim. ed., New York 1986, p. 18. The Capello consists of
equal phrases to FM, CM, Dm (or DM) and FM. Labelled aria, it is comparable to, though
simpler than, Kapsbergers La vita alberga. On melodic expansions of passacaglia bass lines,
see Richard Hudson, Passacaglia cit., p. xvii. These expanded formations are widely present
in canzonettas before 1620, but need to be examined in actual metric and phrase contexts.
Tracking them goes beyond the initial step essayed here.
38 Silke Leopold, Al modo dOrfeo cit., II lists the text of this canzonetta under Senari e

endecasillabi and gives its scansion as 11.11.6.6.6; the shorter lines, however, are heard be-
cause of the rhymes. The Milanuzzi print gives them as short lines. Leopold discusses the aria
in I, pp. 99-100 and gives a modern edition in II, Ex. 3, p. 4.

104
 GUITAR PASSACAGLI AND VOCAL ARIE

Ex. 6a
Giulio Caccini, Amor chattendi, in Le nuove musiche e nuova maniera di scriverle (Fi-
renze 1614), mm. 1-2, with guitar chords from I-Fn Magl. XIX.25, fol. 20v.

Ex. 6b
Antonio Brunelli, Amor chattendi, in Arie, scherzi etc. op. 9, Book I/5 (Venezia 1613),
aria, transcribed in Karen Knowlton, The Secular Works of Antonio Brunelli, Ph.D. diss.,
Kent State University, 1983.

105
 MARGARET MURATA

lanuzzis Lalma mi strugge seems quite different from the preceding examples.
Truly scherzoso, the stanza consists of eleven extremely short lines arranged over
the equivalent of four passacagli seguiti which are quite passeggiati. The staff
marked model in Ex. 7 reduces the chords specified by the alfabeto tablature to
their basic passacaglia design. Here Milanuzzis guitarist needs to play a chord on
every beat. This makes quite a vivacious effect, possibly with a downstroke and
upstroke on each beat. As in the previous example by Brunelli, it is the regularity
of the phrasing marked by cadences that resembles a set of mutanze di passacagli.

Ex. 7
Carlo Milanuzzi, Lalma mi strugge, in Quarto scherzo delle ariosi vaghezze, op. 11 (Ve-
nezia 1624), p. 12, first of three stanzas; guitar chords transcribed from alfabeto tablature.

Brunelli, Grazie e gloria al Re del cielo (8.8.8.8.8.8) and Mi command

Amor tiranno (8.8.8.5.5.8.8). Two more examples by Brunelli should now seem
somewhat redundant. They are comparable arias from his first book of 1613
with the same stanzaic form. One is marked spirituale and is charmingly sim-
ple enough to be a lauda for Christmas (Ex. 8a). The popular 12-beat rhythm of

106
 GUITAR PASSACAGLI AND VOCAL ARIE

Ex. 8a
Antonio Brunelli, Grazie e glorie al Re del cielo, in Arie scherzi etc., op. 9, Book I/12
(1613), aria spirituale, transcribed in Karen Knowlton, The Secular Works of Antonio
Brunelli cit.

107
 MARGARET MURATA

the ottonario line is repeated consistently for 5 + 2 phrases, each of which is a

passacaglia phrase. The transpositions are restricted to G and C.
The secular aria Mi commandAmor tiranno has five ottonari with two
quinari as lines 4 and 5 (Ex. 8b). Brunelli turns the two short lines into a single
phrase (using the descending thirds of phrase 3 of Grazie e glorie), but marks
their metric difference by shifting meter briefly from C to 3/2. Otherwise, each
ottonario is also set to a 12-beat passacaglia phrase, with the usual cadences to D,
A, and C within a G frame. Again, it is the series of equal phrases all ending with
strong cadences that resembles a set of seguiti. As we have seen in other in-
stances, the cadential definition of the phrases ignores grammatical relationships
such as those between verb and its object. Furthermore, in all these songs,
melodic sequence and rhythmic repetition rather than variation by embellish-
ment is the mark of the vocal line. Likewise, rhythmic repetition in voice and
bass, rather than alteration, may be related to the rasgueado style, whether as a
trace or evocation of songs accompanied by Spanish guitar.

Ex. 8b
Antonio Brunelli, Mi command Amor tiranno, in Arie scherzi, etc., op. 9, Book I/16
(1613), aria, transcribed in Karen Knowlton, The Secular Works of Antonio Brunelli cit.

108
 GUITAR PASSACAGLI AND VOCAL ARIE

Berti, Tante guerre e tanti danni (8.5t.8.5t.5.8). Bertis 1624 Cantade et arie
were published with guitar chords. One last aria here illustrates how smoothly
the closed, 12-beat unit can shape the new lyric strophes.39 In Tante guerre e
tanti danni, two pairs of an ottonario plus a quinario tronco, which amount to
twelve syllables of text, are set in a 12-beat sequence: the ottonario moves to the
IV chord, the quinario tronco provides the cadence; that is, the GM chord on
danni is IV in D major; in sequence, the FM chord on affanni is a fourth
away from C major.
Am EM Am | DM GM | Dm AM | DM
Tante guerre e | tanti danni | a un cor fe- | del?
GM DM GM | CM FM | CM GM | CM
Hor quai pene e | quali affanni | Havr un ru- | bel,

The guitar accompaniment points to the two-phrase passacaglia statement as

the model, as in Brunellis Amor chattendi (Ex. 6b above). In the continuo-
accompanied version, however, the pattern of raised leading tones in the bass
line (G#-A, F#-G in mm. 1-2) smoothes and obscures the Am-DM-GM progres-
sion of the first passacaglia unit. The sequential bass in mm. 5-6 has the same
effect. The chords for the closing syllables 10-12, however, move from root posi-
tion to root position, AM- DM and GM-CM (Ex. 9).
The last two lines of the stanza reverse the poetic meter, with 5 + 8 syllables.
Berti audibly separates the full quinario from the last line by shifting from a DM
chord on tadoro (a surprise in itself with a leap of a descending seventh in the
voice from E5 to F#4) to a D-minor subdominant on languisco (m. 11), a
chromatic shift heard in some of Hudsons passacaglia models. The D-minor
subdominant then easily moves to the cadence in A.
[CM] | DM | Dm | EM FM-Dm EM | AM
Sio che ta- | doro, | Languisco e | mo- ro___ mise- | ro.

The flavor of the poem is querulous; the first and last phrases hover in the

39 Giovanni Pietro Berti, Cantade et arie ad una voce sola, Vincenti, Venezia 1624; facsim.

ed. New York 1986, pp. 30-31.

109
 MARGARET MURATA

Ex. 9
Giovanni Pietro Berti, Tante guerre e tanti danni, in Cantade et arie (Venezia 1624),
pp. 30-31, first of four stanzas; guitar chords transcribed from alfabeto symbols.

110
 GUITAR PASSACAGLI AND VOCAL ARIE

minor mode, but they both end on major chords (according to the guitar tab-
lature), once again as if in complicit recognition of the artificiality of the text or
simply in amusement.
Frescobaldi, Se laura spira (5.5.5.5t + 5.5.5.5t) and Cos mi disprezzate?
(7.7.7.7.7.7). Does the hunt for guitar passacagli in vocal music illuminate the
two Frescobaldi arias that began this search? One strong similarity is the regular
four-bar phrasing in both, in a familiar lyric triple meter. But unlike the songs
with mutanze di passagagli, both Frescobaldi arias emphasize melodic variation
in the vocal line. Although embellishments are not precluded for those canzonet-
tas for which we only have one stanza of music, melismatic additions would ob-
scure the rhythms and possibly soften the crispness of the harmonic changes,
which lend so much vivacity to these songs. A stronger and more obvious differ-
ence, however, are the phrases in both Frescobaldi arias that end with dominant
chords, unlike the closed phrases that characterize passacagli seguiti (and also
Colonnas Arie de passacallo).
The first extended phrase of Se laura spira slides down a descending tetra-
chord and ends on a strong D, dominant-function chord, not on a tonic. It is not
followed by a tonic chord when the next phrase opens. Despite the stepwise de-
scending bass, Frescobaldis first, eight-bar phrase is more like the first phrase of
the passamezzo antico than a passacaglia (Ex. 10). The second phrase of Se lau-
ra spira then neither jumps to III in m. 9 nor repeats m. 1 as the head of a com-
plementary phrase, resolving the dominant of m. 8. Frescobaldi instead re-stated
the DM dominant in m. 9, just as he used the same FM chord in mm. 4 and 5,
making a liaison between first two four-bar subphrases.

Gm | Dm | Gm | FM| - FM | Gm | Cm | DM - -
Se laura | spira tut-| ta vez- | zosa, | La fresca | rosa ri- | dente | sta.
- - - DM | DM | Gm | FM | CM Dm | Cm | DM |G ||
La siepe om-| brosa di | bei sme-| raldi | Destivi | caldi ti-| mor non | ha.

The corresponding F-major chord in m. 12 (smeraldi), however, is not re-

peated, but rather moves on to a C6 chord (destivi). This gives the flavor of
the closing phrase of the passamezzo moderno. In all three stanzas, Frescobaldi
quickly cancels its fresh E-natural in the continuo line with an E-flat in the voice

111
 MARGARET MURATA

within a C-minor chord.40 Passamezzo is probably the most naturally-fitting aria

to associate with Se laura spira, whose stanza is clearly heard in two comple-
mentary sections.41
It is also possible to break Aldigattis fifth guitar passacagli in D minor into two
parts at the second dominant; it is, however, a minor dominant in a minor mode
context. To consider Aldigattis passacaglia as a potential model also stretches a
progression conceived as a four-bar unit into a 15-bar complete stanza, a theoreti-
cal operation that feels patently anachronistic. The two descending tetrachords in
Frescobaldis two phrases are furthermore not congruent with the vocal phrases.
They are rather simply the result of connecting tonic chords to subdominants, fill-
ing in between the 2nd and 4th tones of the first phrase of the passamezzo antico
and between the 1st and 2nd tones of phrase two of the passamezzo moderno.42
Cos mi disprezzate? is a different creature, and not just because two of its
stanzas are set in recitative style. Its first four bars also end on a dominant
chord, which is appropriate for an interrogative clause (Ex. 11). It may have
been this opening question, however, that set Frescobaldis passacaglia on a di-
vergent track, to become the genre that it came to be outside of the guitar tradi-
tion. The next chord is not unexpectedly a tonic; but coming in the fifth bar,
it is clearly the beginning of the new phrase-unit, not the end of the first. The
aria is fairly consistent in this. In the first stanza (the first of five sestets), all nine
of the four-bar phrases end with dominant chords; in the last stanza, all eight
do. What we hear in Frescobaldis Aria di passagaglia, then, is the conflation
or borrowing of the four-bar unit characteristic of the ciaccona, whose numer-
ous models in guitar tutors have the dominant as the last chord in the cycle. As
John Hill has already pointed out in his search for antecedents of Cos mi dis-

40 Robert Judd observed a similar chromatic play in keyboard passamezzi published in

Venice in 1551; see Alexander Silbiger, Keyboard Music before 1700, Schirmer Books, New
York 1995, p. 264.
41 The stanzas are called parti, which is usual for the sections in vocal variation forms.
42 The descending bass is lightly present but not thematic in the performance on 8-

course lute alone by Ronn McFarlane with soprano Julianne Baird, on The Italian Lute Song,
Dorian DOR-90236 (1996). The stately, archaic flavor of the harmony comes out in James
Bowmans two-and-a-half minute performance with harpsichord and gamba on James Bow-
man, Airs italiens & cantates, Arion ARN 68516 (rec. 1987, released in 1988 and 2000).

112
 GUITAR PASSACAGLI AND VOCAL ARIE

Ex. 10
Girolamo Frescobaldi, Se laura spira, in Primo libro darie musicali (Firenze 1630),
pp. 31-32, aria in tre parti (in variation); four models for the bass.

Ex. 11
Girolamo Frescobaldi, Aria di passagaglia, in Primo libro darie musicali (Firenze 1630),
p. 32, mm. 1-4.

113
 MARGARET MURATA

prezzate,43 Frescobaldi had already adopted a dominant-ending phrase in his

Partite sopra passacagli published in the first, 1627 edition of his second book of
toccatas and canzoni.44 Hudson published several passacagli from manuscript
sources that begin on the beat and do arrive at the dominant-function chord on-
ly in bar four (Hudson nos. 14-25). James Tyler has interrelated and pushed
back the dating of their sources to ca. 1610-20 and attributed their repertory to
a southern orbit, conjecturally Neapolitan.45 It is not possible to say whether
they represent an alternative or an idiosyncratic conception of the passacaglia,
much less whether Frescobaldi knew it or simply made an alteration on his own.
At any rate, the text of Cos mi disprezzate? seems forced into this notion
of what the passacaglia is, since the text and music fit awkwardly, even poorly, in
places. Each of the dominant chords in the first stanza is followed by a tonic,
which sometimes makes a close that ignores grammatical relations between poet-
ic lines (as we saw in other songs). Thus love will do to your heart is separated
from its object that which you did to mine by a full cadence in F major.
Furthermore, Frescobaldi is not consistent with his ostinato. In the first four
lines of the third stanza, the phrases revert to the typical passacaglia unit that
ends on a tonic (vertical lines below mark the ends of each fourth bar). These

43 John W. Hill, Frescobaldis Arie and the Musical Circle around Cardinal Montalto, in
Frescobaldi Studies, ed. Alexander Silbiger, Duke University Press, Durham (NC) 1987, pp.
157-194: 190-192.
44 Here uniquely, however, Frescobaldis passacaglia unit is three bars in length (each is

numbered in the source), but because adjacent pairs are similar, the listener effectively hears
six-bar phrases. Modern eds. in Richard Hudson, Passacaglia cit., no. 48, pp. 31-34; Girolamo
Frescobaldi, Keyboard Compositions Preserved in Manuscripts, ed. William R. Shindle, American
Institute of Musicology, s.l. 1968 (Corpus of Early Keyboard Music, 30/3, no. 14), pp. 46-49.
45 The sources of Hudsons dominant-ending passacagli are largely I-Fr mss. 2793, 2804,

and 2849, and I-Fn Landau Finaly 175; James Tyler, The Guitar and its Music cit., pp. 78-80;
91-92, connects them all to one copyist, Francesco Palumbi. See also Id., The Role of the
Guitar in the Rise of Monody, Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, 9 (2003) at <http://
www.sscm-jscm/v9/no1/Tyler.html>, parag. 2.10-11. I have not been able to consult the un-
published dissertation of Massimo Preitano which discusses these sources (among others):
Massimo Preitano, Laccompagnamento strumentale dellaria a Firenze nella prima met del Sei-
cento, 2 vols., Universit di Pavia, 1991-92; Id., Gli albori della concezione tonale cit., pp. 45-51.

114
 GUITAR PASSACAGLI AND VOCAL ARIE

four lines are set in five cycles that all close to GM, although not congruently
with the poetic lines:
Belt sempre non regna,
DM-GM |
e sella pur vinsegna
DM-
a dispreggiar mia f,
-GM | AM-DM-
cre - dete pur a me,
-GM | DM-GM |
che soggi manci- de- te,
DM-GM | BM | Em
doman vi pentire- te.
BM | Em

For the last two lines of the sestet, however, two more cycles shift to E minor,
but with the BM dominants in their fourth bars. The fact that Cos mi disprez-
zate? does not stick to its original passacaglia phrase in D minor was likely not
either a melodic or a harmonic innovation on Frescobaldis part, whether or not
he knew Colonnas earlier Arie de passacallo. The inconsistency of his pas-
sacaglia units, however, in terms of harmonic-rhythmic markers contributes to
the bumpy, unsettled quality of each of the stanzas in aria style.
John Hill found no single model or precedent for Frescobaldis Aria di pas-
sacagli.46 Nevertheless, the short-breathed, light-hearted insouciance we have
seen in some of these earlier songs is a characteristic of Cos mi disprezzate?,
along with variability rather than obstinacy in the sounding bass line. This is
successfully projected in Julianne Bairds 1996 performance accompanied by a
ten-course lute, which takes a lively tempo and a tone both petulant and mock-
ing.47 The next arias on the passacaglia bass both appeared in 1633 and, like

46 John W. Hill, Frescobaldis Arie cit., p. 191.

47 The Italian Lute Song cit., see note 42.

115
 MARGARET MURATA

Frescobaldi, mixed aria-style and recitative-style sections. They emphasized,

however, the naked linear descending tetrachord, which is never heard in
Frescobaldis aria.48 There are missing links, then, between Colonnas Aria de
Passacallo and Cos mi disprezzate?, as well as between Frescobaldis aria
and those by Sances and Pesenti. The Brunelli, Kapsberger, Milanuzzi and Berti
canzonette examined here did not, of course, appear designated as sopra i pas-
sacagli. Yet they appear to be members of a song family from whose genealogi-
cal branch can be heard the distinct and inviting sounds of rasgueado chords, in
passacagli both passeggiati and seguiti.

48 Usurpator tiranno by Giovanni Felice Sances (in Richard Hudson, Passacaglia cit.,

no. 49) and O Dio, che veggio? by Martino Pesenti (in Silke Leopold, Al modo dOrfeo cit.,
II, no. 57). The Pesenti is termed cantato sopra il passacaglio; its contrasting sections, in-
cluding the instrumental ritornello, appear to be on three formations of the passacaglia. It is
clearly the representation of a mad woman (named Eurilla by the narrator, who speaks only in
the closing section). I have elsewhere interpreted the Sances setting as a parody of an amateur
lute-player venting his lovesickness in song.

116