What is a ballata in 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
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4.1Explain the role of song in the courtly love tradition.

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

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

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

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

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4.6Discuss aspects of Francesco Landini's life.

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

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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.

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

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

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

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

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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.

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♫ 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.

Composers created the earliest polyphonic works sometime around the eighth or ninth century by adding new lines above or below existing plainchant melodies. These new melodic lines were crafted in such a way as to embellish what was already present, and church authorities sanctioned this new kind of music on the grounds that it provided, in effect, a gloss or commentary on a well-known passage of text and music (the chant). Some of the earliest works of polyphony were based on an existing plainchant melody. A twelfth-century cleric named Perotin, who worked at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, wrote immensely long and intricate works known as organum (see Expand Your Playlist). These used plainchant melodies in long note values in the lowest voice, with faster-moving voices layered above the plainchant. These polyphonic works thus preserved the plainchant (in the lowest voice) even while enhancing it with new melodies (in the upper voices). Gradually, composers began writing polyphony against new, original melodies, extending the technique beyond sacred music to include secular music as well. Landini's “Behold, Spring” is one of these entirely new secular compositions.

Rhythm: The Pulse of Meter
If you are a composer writing for two or more voices, you need to consider how to make the parts mesh properly and stay together: The rhythmic freedom of monophony, as in plainchant, is no longer an option. Landini organizes “Behold, Spring” around a steady pattern of triple meter (1-2-3 | 1-2-3 | etc.). The lengths of the individual notes vary, but the music falls into consistent units of three beats.

Units of Melody
The mostly conjunct (stepwise) melodic lines are subdivided into smaller units, each of which ends with a cadence, a brief stopping point at which the music pauses (or, in the case of the final cadence, ends). Cadences are to music as punctuation is to verbal expression: When we are writing, we indicate the end of individual units of thought with a comma, semicolon, period, or other end mark, and when we speak, we make correspondingly briefer or longer pauses. By breaking our speech into units (clauses and sentences), we make it easier for listeners to understand what we are saying. Music operates on the same principle. Here, Landini inserts a brief cadence at the end of the second and fourth lines in each four-line unit of the poetry. In this particular work, Landini always cadences on the unison—that is, both voices sing exactly the same note. The rhythms of the two voices also emphasize the arrival on each cadence. At times the two voices move in the same rhythmic pattern, whereas at other times their rhythms diverge, but the rhythms always coincide just before each cadence.

Form: Turning Poetry into Music
In most vocal music, the form of the text shapes the form of the work. “Behold, Spring” is no exception. The poetry consists of three verses, known as strophes (or stanzas—the terms are interchangeable), with the first repeated at the end. The music of the second strophe contrasts with the others. Landini thus uses both repetition and contrast to create a musical form that can be diagrammed as ABAA:

Strophe

1

2

3

4 (=1, repeated)

Music

A

B

A

A

This combination of repetition, variation, and contrast is basic to all musical forms. Once an idea is presented (in this case, the text and music of the first strophe, “1/A”), only one of three things can happen:

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1.It can be repeated.

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2.It can be varied.

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3.It can be contrasted through the introduction of a new idea.

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Landini uses all three of these devices:

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1.He contrasts 1/A by presenting both a new text and new music in 2/B.

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2.He varies 1/A by presenting the same music with a new text in 3/A.

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3.He repeats both the text and music of 1/A in strophe 4/A.

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Word–Music Relationships: Syllabic versus Melismatic
Landini sets the text in a manner that is largely syllabic, with one note per syllable. He uses melismas—multiple notes per syllable—only occasionally, as on “temp'è” (line 3 of the first strophe) and again on “tempo” in the third line of the second strophe. This creates a welcome degree of variety: Listening to an entirely syllabic setting might be a bit monotonous. But the syllabic setting allows the text to be projected quite clearly, even though the two voices are not always singing together in exactly the same rhythm.

Composer Profile: Francesco Landini
Blinded by smallpox at an early age, Francesco Landini (ca. 1325–1397) was the most famous and prolific Italian composer of the fourteenth century. He served as organist at a church in Florence for many years and also won renown as a poet. The phenomenon of the poet-composer was not unusual in the Middle Ages: Many of the songs from this era feature poetry and music by the same individual. Landini is believed to have written more than 150 secular songs, which together represent about one-third of all Italian music that has survived from the fourteenth century.

One of Landini's contemporaries praised him so lavishly as a composer, performer, and poet that he acknowledged that readers might think he was exaggerating about the abilities of any one individual in so many diverse fields. But this contemporary seemed certain that everyone would agree that “[no one] ever played the organ so well. For this reason, in a public ceremony in Venice, he was recently [i.e., in 1364] crowned with laurel by His Illustrious and Noble Majesty the King of Cyprus, in the say way that poets were once crowned by the Emperors of Rome.”

This image of Francesco Landini is from the Squarcialupi Codex, a richly illuminated manuscript of polyphonic music from the 14th century. Landini is shown playing a small portative (or portable) organ.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Producing a Manuscript
Unlike today, in the Middle Ages every musical document had to be written by hand. “Manuscript” means literally “handwritten” (manu = “hand”; scriptus = “that which is written”), so each manuscript was by its very nature unique.

These manuscripts could be extraordinarily expensive to produce. The one known today as the Squarcialupi Codex (a codex is a manuscript of many pages bound together) is an unusually elaborate example. Its material alone represented an enormous investment:

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Parchment. This codex consists of more than 216 leaves of parchment, the prepared skin of a sheep or goat, cleaned, dried, and stretched to form a smooth surface for writing.

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Gold leaf. Many of the painted miniatures within the codex are decorated with gold leaf, actual pieces of gold beaten very thin.

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Miniature portraits. All 146 of Landini's works in the Squarcialupi Codex appear in one continuous section, with his portrait at the beginning.

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We know where the Squarcialupi Codex was made—the monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence (present-day Italy)—but we do not know who commissioned it or paid for it. The music of the Squarcialupi Codex is largely secular (worldly), not sacred, and thus it was probably commissioned by an affluent individual. At some later point in the fifteenth century, this manuscript came into the possession of the Florentine organist Antonio Squarcialupi (1416–1480), after whom it is now named. There was no commercial market for a manuscript like this: It was created for, funded, and enjoyed by a single individual.

The Squarcialupi Codex, showing a portrait of the composer and organist Francesco Landini.

Expand, Connect, and Review: “Behold, Spring”
Expand Your Playlist
Francesco Landini
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“I feel the flame of love” (Sento d'amor la fiamma): Another ballata

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“My dear lady” (Cara mia donna): A ballata for three voices

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“Farewell, farewell sweet lady” (Adieu, Adieu, dous dame): A virelais (a genre of French song) that exists in two versions—one for two voices, one for three

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“Thus thoughtful” (Così pensoso): A caccia or hunting song for three voices

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Medieval Polyphony
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Perotin, “All the Ends of the Earth Have Seen” (“Viderunt omnes”). The three upper voices weave in and around each other over a slow-moving fourth voice, derived from plainchant. The effect is mesmerizing.

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Anonymous. “In Paris/It Is Said/Fresh Strawberries” (“À Paris/On parole/Fraise nouvele”). One of many thirteenth-century polyphonic works with multiple texts: Each of the three voices sings its own text, the upper two about the virtues of life in Paris, the third a street vendor's cry selling fresh fruit.

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Anonymous. “Summer is a-comin' in” (“Sumer is icumen in”). A round for two voices that is sung over a repeating phrase for two additional voices in the bass. This song about the arrival of summer was composed in England around 1250.

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Lorenzo da Firenze, “All in Their Places” (“A poste messe”). A fourteenth-century Italian caccia, a stylized hunting song that imitates the sounds of horns and dogs.

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Connect Your Playlist
Melismas
The Righteous Brothers, ”Unchained Melody” (1965). The Righteous Brothers's version of this 1955 song features melismas on nearly every note.