Modelli di protomadrigalismo nel repertorio di Sebastiano Festa

Abstract

Though hardly abundant (there are just eleven pieces for four voices), Sebastiano Festa's secular production represents an important moment in the passage from the frottola style to that of the nascent madrigal. With their specific dynamic qualities (affecting all the voices, each duly supplied with a complete text) and their alternation of homorhythmic and imitative procedures, these works anticipate the equal treatment of every line that is generally viewed as a prerogative of the new genre. Crossings, changes of register and bicinia combinations also help to enrich the variegated contrapuntal texture and enhance the expressive capacities of the musical setting. Through comparison with more manifestly acknowledged proto-madrigalistic models, the article aims to examine the technique and style of a composer who was by then far removed from the frottola idiom, and who instead resorted to compositional formulae that make his work more closely resemble that of the better-known Costanzo Festa and the better-studied Pisano and Verdelot. Indeed, the presence of one of his compositions, presumably written already in the first decade of the century, in the printed collection Motetti e canzone libro primo of 1521, is evidence of some form of chronological precedence and suggests that the above composers may have submitted to Sebastiano's influence during their stays in Rome between 1520 and 1530 – the very period the madrigal first flourished in Florence.