Notturno italiano. Sulla musica vocale da camera tra Sette e Ottocento

Abstract

This essay discusses Italian chamber vocal music ca. 1760-1830 and its sub-genres—canzonetta, arietta, duetto notturno, cantata, anacreontica, focusing on the duetto notturno, a novelty in those times. Its original main traits, as outlined by Harrison J. Wignall (1993), are: (1) lyrics are short arias à la Metastasio; (2) the musical setting displays formal, melodic, and harmonic traits akin to period popular or pseudo-popular genres, such as the Venetian boat song (canzone da battello); (3) use of 'lyric form' is frequent, again like in those very pop songs, of which the duetto notturno actually forms a two-part variant. In short, the genre can be defined as a musical cameo, pioneering excursions into the anxiety prompted by darkness, night, or exotic settings. 

Discussion of the lyrics reveals: (1) favored authors are Metastasio and others from Arcadia, along with such pre-Romantic poets as Jacopo Vittorelli, Aurelio De' Giorgi Bertòla, Ippolito Pindemonte, and Melchiorre Cesarotti (the translator of Ossian); (2) descriptive traits, often from open-air settings, increase over time, along with a sentimentality tinged with melancholia, negative feelings, and the chill of death; (3) Metastasio's poetry still looks effectively voicing the new late-century taste, aiming at the simple, the natural, and the witty. 

Close scrutiny of Felice Blangini's duettos shows their artificial naiveté, so fashionable in Napoleon-era drawing rooms. Instead, the rediscovery of nature as a source of emotion is apparent in Cherubini's duettos on Paolo Rolli's ode, Solitario bosco ombroso. Bonifazio Asioli's work shows yet another side, that was to leave its mark on the formal prototype of the genre—music grows expressive to plunge listeners in the moods conjured up by the lyrics. 

This study sheds light on a little-known and under-researched genre, often less considered vis-à-vis contemporary art song, of which it represents, after all, an aspect, with all its sundry facets—the simple and popular, the drawing-room pretty and sophisticated, the 'imitation of nature', and the pathetic/expressive. Taken together, such elements make up that generic Romantic trend which stemmed out of Arcadia, ran across the 18th century, and reached the Romantic movement proper. Those elements also help us disentangle seemingly conflicting tendencies, here represented by Francesco Pollini's work. Such mix of traits was to achieve vital importance in the birth of Italian Romantic art song—e.g. in Bellini's lyricism, Donizetti's dramatic realism, Mercadante's theatrical gesturing, as well as in 19th-century 'picturesque' compilations, of which Rossini's genial Soirées musicales are both a climax and a sign of upcoming decline.