L'accento fisso in quarta sede del settenario lirico. Relazioni tra versificazione e ritmo musicale nel melodramma italiano, tra fine '600 e metà '800

Abstract

In the verse forms of literary Italian poetry from the thirteenth to the end of the seventeenth centuries the septenarius varies according to the position of the first stress: the first type has accents on the second, the fourth, and the sixth syllabe (iambic septenarius of the first type); the second has accents on the first, the fourth, and the sixth syllable (iambic septenarius of the second type); the third has accents on the third and the sixth syllabe (anapestic septenarius of the third type).
The librettos of the seventeenth century were also initially written in these three meters, both the recitatives and the arias. But from the early 1680s the anapaestic septenarius was excluded from most of the arias, and limited only to the recitatives (this new tendency is apparent notably in the librettos of Matteo Noris and Giulio Cesare Corradi). This practice went through alternate phases in the following decades, until it became the accepted norm in the work of Metastasio. In fact here the exclusive use of the operatic septenarius of the iambic type was finally endorsed. This stylistic choice on the part of the major librettist of the century later became law for religions of disciples and was still followed in the librettos of the early nineteenth century.
The reasons for this choice are obviously to be found in the rhythmic euphony which comes from the use of solely iambic metres and in the need to distinguish the lyrical from the recitative septenarii.
Then from a strictly musical point of view the choice makes it possible to differentiate the setting of the septenarius from other lyrical metres, since an anapestic septenarius would make necessary a musical incipit with a double anacrusis, as in the octonarius and the decasyllabe. The second part of the article is concerned with the musical settings of texts in septenarii. The metrical pattern of the line forces the composer to use an incipit with a simple anacrusis or on the downbeat, according to the type of iambic setenarius. There is hardly ever any choice, but in a few significant cases the composer is free to interpret the scansion as first or second type. A brief account is given of these cases.
This is followed by an analysis of the rhythmical interpretations of lyrical septenarii in seven different settings of Metastasio's Olimpiade (by Caldara, Vivaldi, Pergolesi, Leo, Galuppi, Hasse and Jommelli) and the conclusions which are drawn lead to the recognition that eighteenth-century composers followed the metrical pattern very faithfully. This is also true for the three librettos by Da Ponte which were set to music by Mozart.
In the first half of the nineteenth century Italian librettists were still faithful to the trading of using only lyrical iambic septenarii, and composers also continued to put the secondary or the main beat on the fourth syllabe. It was probably only in 1868 with Boito's Mefistofelethat the anapaestic septenarius was reintroduced as a lyrical metre.