Ballata definition music

Chapter 4 4Francesco Landini “Behold, Spring”
Composed: ca. 1350–1397

This brief song illustrates an important feature in the development of medieval music: polyphony. We hear in Landini's “Behold, Spring” not one voice or group of voices singing the same melodic line, but two voices singing independent and equally important lines.

Learning Objectives
.

4.1Explain the role of song in the courtly love tradition.

.

.

4.2Listen for the polyphonic texture in two voices in Francesco Landini's “Behold, Spring.”

.

.

4.3Listen for the cadences within “Behold, Spring.”

.

.

4.4Listen for the use of triple meter in “Behold, Spring.”

.

.

4.5Listen for the contrasts of syllabic and melismatic settings of text.

.

.

4.6Discuss aspects of Francesco Landini's life.

.

.

4.7Discuss the significance of the Squarcialupi manuscript as a source of medieval music.

.

Music was already the food of love in the Middle Ages long before Shakespeare coined the phrase. Poets were inspired to write love poetry, and composers were inspired to set those poems to music to make them even more moving. “Behold, Spring” (“Ecco la primavera”) by the Italian composer Francesco Landini is a setting of one such poem. It is a ballata for two voices. The ballata was one of many genres of secular song in the Middle Ages, and in the patterned rhythms of “Behold, Spring” we can hear the origins of the genre in dance (in Italian, ballata means “danced”). Landini's setting captures the feeling of bodies in motion.

The repertory of secular (worldly, nonsacred) song from the Middle Ages is enormous. This was the age of courtly love, a highly stylized form of love in which a knight declares himself as the servant of the lady he is wooing. All his heroic deeds are done in her honor, and his love for her ennobles him, even if—especially if—she rejects his advances. Some songs describe the lady's beauty, others the knight's suffering (caused by her rejection of him), and still others the pleasures of love. In the Decameron, poet Giovanni Boccaccio—who lived in Florence at the same time as Landini and undoubtedly knew him—describes how a small group of lords and ladies, fleeing the plague (the “Black Death”) in a group, sings “Behold, Spring” and songs like it “in amorous tones” to “divert their minds with music.”

Florence was—and remains—an important center of culture on the Italian peninsula. In Landini's time, it was also an important center of political power.

Exploring “Behold, Spring”
First, listen to Francesco Landini's “Behold, Spring,” using the following prompts as a guide. Then read the discussion of how the elements of music operate in this ballata.

·

Texture: Listen to the contrast between the melodies of the two voices, one high, one low.

·

·

Rhythm: Feel the regular pulse of three beats, with the first accented (1-2-3 | 1-2-3).

·

·

Melody: Listen for the stepwise motion in both voices, and notice the brief stopping points that break the melody into smaller units.

·

·

Form: Listen for the repetition of large-scale units.

·

·

Word-Music Relationships: Notice the largely syllabic text setting—one note per syllable, and listen for the occasional melismatic setting—multiple notes sung to a single syllable.

·

♫ Listen to This First

Francesco Landini, “Behold, Spring”

The Richness of Polyphonic Texture
This brief work uses a new kind of musical texture that had been emerging slowly for several centuries: polyphony. In polyphony, two or more voices of equal importance combine in such a way that each voice retains its own identity (poly=“many”;phon=“sound”). Here, the upper and lower voices are of equal importance, and while our ear is drawn to the upper line for acoustical reasons (higher pitches always tend to stand out more), the lower line is every bit as melodious.