La Frottola sacra napoletana nel primo Seicento: nuove acquisizioni

Abstract

Together with traditional genres, common without particular distinction in the entire seventeenth-century production, the Neapolitan sacred repertory includes a very unusual and peculiar genre: the frottola. It was widespread in Naples, at least in the first half of the Seventeenth century, as both known printed and handwritten collections obviously point out. It considers that the frottola was well known also out of Neapolitan reality. As a matter of fact, when in 1632 Heinrich Schulz sent his letter requesting 'Musiche da Napoli', he explicitly demanded the «Frottole del Padre Grillo a piu' voci», perhaps attracted by the inevitable curiosity that such a title aroused out of Naples.
Even though it is a unicum of the Neapolitan sacred repertory, the frottola has never been deeply studied. Salvatore di Giacomo, who was the first to deal with this genre, defined it as «a choral singing, group of ten o fifteen voices ('a frotte'), that the Neapolitan conservatoires students used to sing, almost running, in front of Saints processions […]».
Analyzing the frottole held in the handwritten MS.51 and preserved in the Library of the Conservatory S. Pietro a Majella of Naples, and those one printed by Orazio Giaccio in 1621, both musical and textual characteristics, peculiar of this genre, will be presented and discussed. The evaluation of sang poetical text will reveal both the frottola own characteristics and the strict relation with hymns. As matter of fact, the revealed picture shows the persistence, in the first of the Seventeenth century in Naples, of some hymn texts of medieval tradition which, even if never officialized in the Breviario, keeps on being used deprived of their own hymn characteristic.