Oda è canto. Livelli musicali di Umanesimo

Abstract

Inhospitas per alpes was composed by Michele Pesenti and published by Ottaviano Petrucci in 1504. The text is in good humanistic Latin. Perhaps the work of Antonio Tebaldeo, it uses the late-Renaissance Italian metre of the oda, a form intended to be set to music. It displays a tragic expressiveness, almost 'disperata'. The uniqueness of this composition, as careful analysis of the music shows, leads to further speculation and context-observation: the text tradition, the zoological quotations, the study of emblems, the art of rhetoric, the performance practice and reception. The result is a possible reconsideration of the history of music between the end of the XVth and the beginning of the XVIth centuries, with special reference to the much debated 'language question'. The author is aware of the great cultural domain to which this enquiry relates; at this point he only indicates its general terms, with the intention of returning to the issue.