Warrior, Courtier, Singer

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WARRIOR, COURTIER, SINGER

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Warrior, Courtier, Singer Giulio Cesare Brancaccio and the Performance of Identity in the Late Renaissance

RICHARD WISTREICH Newcastle University, UK

© Richard Wistreich 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Richard Wistreich has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Gower House Croft Road Aldershot Hampshire GU11 3HR England

Ashgate Publishing Company Suite 420 101 Cherry Street Burlington, VT 05401-4405 USA

Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Wistreich, Richard Warrior, courtier, singer : Giulio Cesare Brancaccio and the performance of identity in the late Renaissance 1. Brancaccio, Giulio Cesare, 1515–1586 2. Singers – Italy – Biography 3. Music – Italy – 16th century – History and criticism I. Title 782'.0092 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wistreich, Richard. Warrior, courtier, singer : Giulio Cesare Brancaccio and the performance of identity in the late Renaissance / Richard Wistreich. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7546-5414-8 (alk. paper) 1. Brancaccio, Giulio Cesare, 1515–1586. 2. Basses (Singers)—Italy—16th century— Biography. 3. Singing—Italy—History—16th century. I. Title. ML420.B7713W57 2007 782.0092—dc22 [B] 2006032279 ISBN 978-0-7546-5414-8

Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall.

Contents List of Figures and Table List of Music Examples Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction

vii ix xi xiii 1

PART ONE Identity of a Performer 1 Napolitano y de buena casta

9

2 Sieur Jule Brancasse, gentilhomme ordinaire de la Chambre du Roy

49

3 Il più veterano tra’ soldati

83

PART TWO Bass Song 4 Il basso del Brancazio

129

5 Per basso solo

159

6 Basso alla bastarda

193

PART THREE Performance of Identity 7 Poco preggio di soldato, ma anche di Corteggiano

221

8 Tra novelle sirene

239

9 Canti in dolce tenzon

253

Appendix 1 Giulio Cesare Brancaccio: Works Appendix 2 Selected Documents

275 279

Bibliography Index

303 323

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List of Figures and Table

Figures 4.1

4.2 4.3 4.4 5.1

6.1 6.2

Bassus part of Cipriano de Rore, ‘Alla dolc’ombra de le belle fronde’ (Prima parte) (1555) with diminutions by Giovanni della Casa, Il vero modo di diminuir (1584), Libro secondo, p. 39 Hermann Finck, Practica musica (1556), sig. Ttiij: diminutions of the fixed clausula for bass Lodovico Zacconi, Prattica di musica, libro primo (1592), fols 73v–74v: bass cadence figures with sample diminutions Pietro Cerone, El melopeo y maestro (1613), pp. 547–8: bass cadence figures with sample diminutions Vincenzo Galilei, Fronimo dialogo (1584), pp. 17–19: opening section of ‘In exitu Israel de Aegypto’ arranged as a bass solo with lute intabulation Giulio Caccini, Nuove musiche e nuova maniera di scriverle (1614): opening of ‘Io che l’età solea viver’ Francesco Rognoni, Selva di varii passaggi (1620), part 2, p. 72: opening of ‘Sfogava con le stelle’

149 150 152 156

178 200 216

Table 5.1

Sources of sixteenth-century Italian lute songs for solo bass

169

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List of Music Examples 4.1

5.1

5.2

6.1

6.2

Giovanni Camillo Maffei, Delle lettere (1562), pp. 42–57 (extract): diminutions of Francesco Layolle, ‘Lasciar il velo o per sol o per ombra’ (1546), bars 14–32

147

Bartolomeo Barbarino, ‘Ferma, ferma Caronte’ from Il secondo libro de madrigali (1607) with diminutions in the hand of Angelo Notari (London BL, Add. 34440, fols 63v–65r)

165

Final bars of Cipriano de Rore, ‘Anchor che col partire’ (1547) with diminutions from Giovanni Bassano, Motetti, madrigali et canzoni francese (1591)

189

Bartolomeo Barbarino, ‘Scioglio ardito nocchier vela d’argento’, from Il terzo libro de madrigali (Venice, 1613)

208

Bartolomeo Barbarino, ‘Quando i più gravi accenti’, from Madrigali di diversi autori posti in musica (Venice, 1606)

212

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Acknowledgements This book started life as a doctoral dissertation. During the years in which I was at work on it and then in the succeeding time in which I considerably extended the research, I have been helped by very many people, with contributions ranging from the small, but vital, item of information through to acts of quite extraordinary generosity in sharing, or, rather, donating pieces of raw material as they found them in the course of their own work. I have lost count of the number of times I have opened an e-mail sent by one scholar or another, which begins ‘I was recently working in the archives in Vienna / Paris / Naples / Parma / Rome, etc., and guess who I happened to stumble upon?’ to be followed by some nugget relating to the ubiquitous and incontinently peripatetic subject of this study. I am deeply grateful to them all and also to those others who have offered help with questions ranging from subtleties of Spanish and French diplomatic correspondence to the protocols of duelling or the tuning of lutes, and most importantly perhaps, in matters of translation. Documentary finds which I have been able to make use of are acknowledged individually where they occur in the text, but I wish here to list those who have helped me in many ways, both great and small. I was very lucky to have a number of colleagues prepared to help unstintingly with some of the really knotty problems of translation that so often benefit from the pooling of ideas: for Italian, I had (principally) Andrew dell’Antonio, Tim Carter, Ronald Martinez and Dario Tessicini; for Spanish, John Griffiths and Jack Weiner; for Latin, Leofranc Holford-Strevens; and for French, Jeanice Brooks, with many more interventions from others. Final responsibility for the translations (with their remaining imperfections), is, needless to say, mine. My two publisher’s readers, Donna Cardamone-Jackson and Iain Fenlon, were both very generous, offering help and suggestions beyond the call of duty, including reading substantial portions of the book while it was being prepared for publication. Others whom I am happy to thank for generous help are Marco Bizzarini, Philippe Canguilhem, Harris Crist, Flora Dennis, Andrée Desautels, Dinko Fabris, Philip Ford, Johann Haas, Elizabeth Kenny, Rachel Laurence, Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, Robert Lindell, David Loades, Anthony Newcomb, Emilio Presedo, Manuel Salamanca López, John Robinson and Laurie Stras. The Music Department of Royal Holloway College awarded me a Research Studentship in Early Music and the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Trossingen gave me a semester’s sabbatical leave to enable me to continue research and to give me time for writing up my doctoral thesis; I am grateful to both institutions for their crucial support. To have Bonnie Blackburn as copy-editor is an extraordinary privilege and she provided expert advice and many suggestions, often saving me from infelicities; only she knows just how much I owe to her great experience and keen eye for detail. Heidi May and Sarah Charters at Ashgate have been supportive and helpful at every step of the way.

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Research has taken place in a number of archives and libraries and I wish to thank the staff of the following institutions: Bologna, Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale; Cambridge, University Library; Chicago, Newberry Library; London, British Library (Rare Books and Music Reading Room); Library of the Warburg Institute; Royal Holloway College (Music Library); Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana; Modena, Archivio di Stato and Biblioteca Estense; Naples, Archivio di Stato; Newcastle University, Robinson Library; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France and Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal; Stuttgart, Württembergische Staatsbibliothek; Trossingen, Staatliche Hochschule für Musik; Valladolid, Archivo General de Simancas; Venice, Biblioteca Correr and Biblioteca Marciana; Vienna, Haus- Hof- und Staatsarchiv; Washington, DC, Folger Shakespeare Library. I especially wish to thank Kathryn Bosi of the Morrill Music Library at the Villa I Tatti in Florence, who tracked down microfilms of Giulio Cesare Brancaccio’s manuscripts at a time when the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan was closed for a number of years. Tim Carter gave me continual encouragement and support over many years. It was his idea in the first place that I should try to overcome my misgivings about undertaking doctoral research alongside all my other activities and who then accompanied and supported my efforts with patience, rigour, humour and a great deal of practical help, including detailed advice about almost every aspect of the research process. For this I will always be in his debt. Above all, I wish to thank Felicity Laurence, whose wisdom, advice and unstinting support at every possible level of this enterprise can never be adequately quantified, let alone repaid. Without her, this work would never have been started and certainly not finished, and it is to her that it is therefore dedicated.

List of Abbreviations Library sigla Brussels Florence AS Florence BN London BL Lucca Madrid PR Mantua AS Milan BA Modena AS Modena BE Montreal Naples AS Paris BN Parma AS Simancas AG Vatican Venice BC Vienna HHS

Brussels, Bibliothèque royale Albert Ier Florence, Archivio di Stato Florence, Biblioteca nazionale centrale London, British Library Lucca, Biblioteca statale Madrid, Palacio Real, Biblioteca y Archivio Mantua, Archivio di Stato Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana Modena, Archivio di Stato Modena, Biblioteca estense e universitaria Montreal, Conservatoire de Musique, Centre de Documentation Naples, Archivio di Stato Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France Parma, Archivio di Stato Simancas, Archivio general Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Venice, Biblioteca Correr Vienna, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv

General New Grove II

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn, ed. Stanley Sadie (29 vols, London and New York, 2001)

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Introduction This book about a Neapolitan warrior-courtier started, perhaps surprisingly, with my work as a singer of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century music. For a number of years I have been reading and performing those few songs specifically for a bass voice that occupy a small but persistent space among the many hundreds for soprano or tenor in printed volumes of monodies published in Italy and elsewhere in Europe between about 1600 and 1650. Just viewed on the page, these bass songs share a number of distinctive characteristics: although often extremely simple in terms of harmonic construction, they are striking for their depiction of ubiquitous roulades and cascades of very fast notes and other written-out decorations, as well as for their large voice ranges. Some of them look truly extraordinary in this respect, requiring two or, very occasionally, three different clefs in order to keep the pitches on the stave, and this physical stretch is often highlighted by sudden great leaps from high to low and back again, not necessarily for obvious text-related reasons. In sum, this notation describes a style of singing of impressive virtuosity, whose realization presupposes great flexibility and technical bravura. It is at first sight puzzling, then, that by comparison, virtually no printed or manuscript source of music for basses from before 1600 appears to demand remotely similar virtuosity. There are, as it happens, virtually no extant solo songs for bass from that earlier period, so we are dealing almost exclusively with bass parts in polyphonic music, liturgical and secular. Ranges seldom exceed the Renaissance norm of the span of the stave with a single clef and music for the lowest voice rarely has extended passages of sequentially adjacent pitches, let alone many small note values. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to assume that the actual performance styles of bass singers – which the monody prints in some way represent – almost certainly did not suddenly start in 1600, even though earlier notation does not apparently either prescribe or describe them. If, instead of being a record of an apparently sudden ‘step change’ in vocal technique, the appearance of graphic representations of such a performance style around this time is rather a function of developments in print culture and technology,1 then it will be necessary to look beyond the notation to find out how basses used their voices in the performance of songs in the mid- to late sixteenth century. My initial project, then, was simply to look for Italian bass singers and find out more about their styles of singing in order to complement the practical research into appropriate vocal technique in which I am engaged as a performer. Very soon I found myself asking further, much wider-ranging questions. For example, why might such vocal virtuosity have been so prized and what were the cultural values of the societies and institutions that generated and supported this special kind of singing? 1 For stimulating discussion of these ideas, see Tim Carter, ‘Printing the New Music’, in Kate van Orden (ed.), Music and the Cultures of Print (New York, 2000), pp. 3–37.

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What were the contexts – physical, social and intellectual – that gave meaning to the performance acts of which this later notation is some sort of record? Of the Italian bass singers of the sixteenth century, none is more illustrious nor so intriguing a character than the Neapolitan Giulio Cesare Brancaccio, best known to historians of vocal music because of his brief membership of the famous ‘musica secreta’ of Duke Alfonso d’Este II in Ferrara in the early years of the 1580s. However, I was struck by the fact that although music historians are naturally interested in Brancaccio as a famous singer, this was of almost negligible interest to his two twentieth-century biographers, presumably because of the tiny role that music appeared to have played in his life as a soldier and courtier. It was these latter two interrelated identities, not his prowess as a singer, that made his ‘life’ interesting to a passionate and patriotic Neapolitan historian and worthy of an entry in a biographical dictionary of significant Italians.2 Brancaccio may have been a remarkable performer, whose singing attracted admiring comments from knowledgeable contemporaries, but his story hardly fits any conventional image of a famous musician.3 For a start, there are no specific pieces of music that we can say without doubt that he either composed or sang, nor did he ever refer to himself as ‘a musician’ – indeed he was outraged at any suggestion that he might be one. Of his written works, none is musical: all are, in fact, about military science. But the fact that my project looked so unpromising as a topic of music history only increased my curiosity and my sense of the inadequacy of many of the existing ways of telling the ‘story’ of music in the Renaissance. The history of Renaissance music has certainly moved on from almost exclusive attention to notated musical works and their composers: many hundreds of onceforgotten performers and the institutions in which they worked are now much better known to us. But in order to make a history of music that acknowledges it as something inextricably embedded in a society’s culture, we need to go on to consider the totality of those musicians’ lives. Music historians, of course, long had an interest in the ‘lives of the great composers’ as keys to establishing the ontology and meaning of the ‘great works’ of music. It is a methodology now viewed askance in modern music history, distrusted largely because of its Romanticist implications as well as its apparent denial of a music history to cultures that ‘lack’ canons of ‘great works’ or identifiable composers. The practice of musical biography and its part in music historiography remains beset by anxieties thrown up by epistemological upheavals in the humanities in recent years.4 But this by no means makes biographical study redundant in a different sort of historical investigation, based on the idea of music as something that happens

2 Benedetto Croce, ‘Un capitano italiano del Cinquecento: Giulio Cesare Brancaccio’, in Varietà di storia letteraria e civile: serie prima (Bari, 1949), pp. 57–78, and Umberto Coldagelli, ‘Brancaccio, Giulio Cesare’, Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 13 (Rome, 1971), pp. 780–4 (much indebted to Croce’s work). 3 Nor has Brancaccio made it into the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 4 For a recent survey of some of these issues, see Jolanta T. Pekacz, ‘Memory, History and Meaning: Musical Biography and its Discontents’, Journal of Musicological Research, 23 (2004): 39–80.

Introduction

3

rather than as something that resides exclusively on paper. Indeed, biography, in its widest sense, has enjoyed a new lease of life in the past quarter of a century in other spheres of early modern cultural history, especially since the landmark publication of Stephen Greenblatt’s Renaissance Self-Fashioning, and in the subsequent, everspreading reach of ensuing new historicist ways of investigating ‘the complex interactions of meaning in a given culture’.5 Although the so-called ‘new historicism’ has been widely contested, there is no doubt that this extraordinarily fruitful current of thought and writing has spurred biographical writing and given it at least a respectable position among other historical narratives. This is particularly useful in a project such as mine, in which the possibility of writing a generalized and objective account of a style of singing (as if there could ever be such a thing) is constantly being stymied by the demanding interruptions of a very singular and often unruly protagonist. This book, then, is in the form of a biography, but one that has several versions or layers that in practice are inseparably interleaved, but can be roughly delineated as follows. First, it brings together just about all the currently known documentary sources relating to its central subject, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio, irrespective of their sometimes highly eclectic nature. These documents form the basis for a series of contextual studies which consist of oscillations between, on one hand, close-up textual analysis of the writing and the unravelling of the detail and rhetoric of certain moments or interactions between Brancaccio and others, and on the other hand, the widest possible panning shots which put the action into broad political or cultural context. This narrative procedure is not arbitrary, but reflects precisely the nature of the source material, which likewise ranges from the minute to the sweeping, generating a multi-dimensional or kaleidoscopic story, different from the more even focus of ‘single-issue’ or totalizing historical narratives. Secondly and especially in the second and third parts of the book, I engage with specific contemporary intellectual or institutional structures, setting Brancaccio’s story against them. In so doing, I also show how the apparently clear-cut distinction between ‘context’ and ‘contextualized’ is regularly blurred and that ‘foreground’ and ‘background’ often change places or interact. At times, for example, Brancaccio’s life seems to be a precise embodiment of one or other trope of noble identity and at others the plots of his ‘real life’ adventures read like those in an epic romance – at one point, he even turns up as a semi-fictional character in a book about the nature of nobility. Part I presents an account of Brancaccio’s life, drawing on all the material currently available to me. Many important sources were identified by Brancaccio’s first major biographer, Benedetto Croce, although many more documents have come to light in the process of this and other recent studies. Some of those not hitherto available in modern books are reproduced in Appendix 2; there is very likely plenty more documentary evidence waiting to be found. Brancaccio not only moved among the most powerful figures in European political history of the mid-sixteenth century, but was himself actually present and active at some of its decisive moments (a fact of which he himself was acutely aware). It is perhaps ironical that I am therefore 5 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare (Chicago, 1980), p. 3.

4

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compelled at times to engage the most dominant traditional narrative of history – that which focuses on wars, dates and the deeds of powerful men – as a critical strand of the thick weave in which his story is embedded. In the course of the narrative, I have also allowed space to subject Brancaccio’s treatises, letters and more personal writings to analysis as texts, with special attention to what they might divulge about him as an individual. Part II starts over again, telling a version of the same chronological story using different contextual materials and beginning at the place where my initial investigation had started: Brancaccio the bass singer. These chapters deal exclusively with the musical dimension of Brancaccio’s identity, bringing together a large array of different kinds of source material about bass singing in Italy in the sixteenth century. This is a necessary undertaking, given that nearly all the evidence for Brancaccio’s life in music is anecdotal, does not yield easily to any single approach, and certainly does not explain why he was so celebrated as a singer. I want to know better what he (and other singers like him) did that made him (and makes him still) famous as a musician. In the process, I hope to be able to develop a history of bass singing in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that takes account of such disparate materials and different ways of analysing and synthesizing them. The too simple idea that the appearance in print of the so-called ‘new music’ for the first time around 1600 was simultaneous with the ‘invention’ of a new kind of singing style has already been much revised by a number of scholars whose work has informed mine.6 An important strand of this work has continued to focus on written notation, and particularly the manuscript and other evidence for the ‘unfixed’ nature of composed sixteenth-century music when it was sounded in performances. The recognition of the importance of improvisation (the precise meaning of which in the Renaissance is still far from clear) and of a so-called ‘unwritten tradition’ (a distinctly value-laden negative) has helped in some ways to dismantle the positivist, composer-led model of musical process in the period. But it has not yet produced a commonly agreed language in which to talk about a very complex cultural phenomenon that includes music-creation, performing and listening. For the time being, talking and writing about vocal music and singing will continue to involve the appropriation of a variety of historical, musicological and literary approaches. The sometimes untidy conglomeration of information uncovered in close reading of the documents that told the story of Brancaccio’s life in Part I and the equally complicated questions raised in the exploration of what it might mean to call Brancaccio a ‘bass singer’, point up the interconnectedness of issues such as the construction of identity, the nature of social institutions and interactions

6 These include, for example, Howard Mayer Brown, ‘The Geography of Florentine Monody: Caccini at Home and Abroad’, Early Music, 9 (1981): 147–68; Tim Carter, ‘Printing the New Music’ and ‘On the Composition and Performance of Caccini’s Le nuove musiche (1602)’, Early Music, 12 (1984): 208–17; Jeanice Brooks, ‘“New Music” in Late Renaissance France’, Trossingen Jahrbuch für Renaissancemusik, 2 (2002): 161–78; Dinko Fabris, ‘The Role of Solo Singing to the Lute in the Origins of the Villanella alla napolitana, c. 1530–1570’, ibid., pp. 133–46; John Walter Hill, Roman Monody, Cantata and Opera from the Circles around Cardinal Montalto (2 vols, Oxford, 1997).

Introduction

5

between members of courtly-military society of the mid-sixteenth century. For understandable reasons of intellectual rationale, these are usually studied in a certain degree of isolation one from another. In Part III I seek to bring some of these strands together, focusing on the self-articulation of Brancaccio the warrior-courtier in socially and culturally changing times. I explore the connections between aspects of Brancaccio’s personal discourses (his actions, his narratives and those of others, including his musical performances) and various themes such as contemporary notions of nobility and honour, virtù, masculinity, dissimulation and performance – all of which contribute to an investigation of his ‘self-fashioning’ within a society in which identity was a highly performative construct. But Brancaccio’s story is not simply a conveniently exemplary one, useful only as a way of elucidating apparent paradigms of sixteenth-century elite culture. As the story of his life will, I hope, make apparent, he was a remarkably singular individual who made dozens of lasting impressions in a world in which making an impression was an undertaking vital to the successful sustenance of noble identity. The study of courtly society in the Renaissance has been an extraordinarily active, innovative and fertile one for a long while now, not least in the field of music history, and I have been able to draw on a broad range of historical scholarship offering a number of different possible critical approaches to the exploration of the themes thrown up by the subject of this book.7 I have adopted whichever useful elements of each one seemed appropriate to the particular job in hand and this seems to me to be entirely in keeping not only with the diversity of material, but also with progress towards new ways of researching and writing about musical practice in the early modern period. My decisions about how to subject the source material about Brancaccio to a set of narratives have certainly been influenced by my reading in contemporary historiography and critical theory, but I do not want to clutter an already messy narrative with yet further layers of meta-text showing which bits of theory might be being invoked and when (it would, in any case, be impossible to be precise at every point). My main endeavour has been to combine the best of constructionist, historicist and narrative ways of writing history by taking up the challenge made by Peter Burke in New Perspectives on Historical Writing with which he invited historians to try ‘making a narrative thick enough to deal not only with the sequence of events and the conscious intentions of the actors in these events, but also with the structures – institutions, modes of thought, and so on’; he asks ‘what would such a narrative be like?’8 What follows is one possible answer.

7 A significant recent publication that has particular resonances with the subject matter of this book, Kate van Orden’s excellent Music, Discipline, and Arms in Early Modern France (Chicago, 2005), focuses primarily on the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; it appeared too late for me to make direct use of in this study, but its conclusions have influenced my understanding of the relations between music and noble militarism. 8 Peter Burke (ed.), New Perspectives on Historical Writing (Cambridge, 1991), quoted in Alun Munslow, Deconstructing History (London and New York, 1997), p. 112.

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PART ONE Identity of a Performer

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Chapter One

Napolitano y de buena casta The soldier, courtier and singer Giulio Cesare Brancaccio was born into a family of the Neapolitan nobility, probably in the second decade of the sixteenth century.1 The family was large and its complex genealogy is as yet unreconstructed, but various Brancaccios (the name is often spelled Brancazzo or Brancazo in Neapolitan sources) had played significant roles in the history of the Kingdom of Naples for a good three hundred years before Giulio Cesare’s birth, would do so throughout the sixteenth century and continue to be important well into the nineteenth.2 The family’s status and the structure of the social world into which Giulio Cesare was born and which shaped his career and his very identity were determined by historical and political forces that are fundamental to the ensuing narrative. Naples was the capital of a substantial and autonomous kingdom with its own special aristocratic structure. Its highest baronial rank consisted of a number of princes, who, besides their regional feudal seats where they ruled virtually autonomously, also had palaces and political power bases in the capital.3 The city itself was divided into five districts or seggi, which were not only geographical but also political divisions. Each seggio was presided over by a leading baronial family and each provided home and focus of identity for a number of other noble families which traditionally retained special ties of fealty to seggio and to each other; thus, family name and seggio were defining marks of Neapolitan nobility.4 The Brancaccios belonged to the seggio of Nido,5 which was presided over by Ferrante Sanseverino d’Aragona, 1 Neither Brancaccio’s date of birth nor of his death has yet come to light. 2 Vincenzo di Sangro, Genealogie di tutte le famiglie patrizie napoletane e delle nobili fuori seggio (Naples, 1895), pp. 33–4. 3 A useful introduction to the upper echelons of the social hierarchy of Naples, which lists the names of its nobles and principal officers in the mid-sixteenth century, is Enrico Bacco, Cesare D’Engenio Caracciolo et al., Descrittione del regno di Napoli (Naples, 1616, repr. 1671); the opening chapters are published in English, with commentary, as Naples, an Early Guide, ed. and trans. Eileen Gardner (New York, 1991). 4 For a brief explanation of the system, see Tommaso Pedío, Napoli e Spagna nella prima metà del Cinquecento (Bari, 1971), p. 152. As an example, in a portrait of the lutenist and singer Fabrizio Dentice made long after his exile from Naples and establishment at the Farnese court in Parma, his status as a Neapolitan nobleman was confirmed ‘essendo Cavaliere molto nobile di Seggio’: Ranuccio Pico, Appendice di varii soggetti parmigiani (Parma, 1642), Aggiunte II all’appendice, in Dinko Fabris, Andrea Falconieri napoletano: Un liutista-compositore del Seicento (Rome, 1987), p. 15 n. The important families of each of the five seggi are listed in Bacco, ed. Gardner, Naples, pp. 132–6. 5 The principal church of the Nido district, Sant’Angelo a Nilo, was founded in 1384 by Giulio Cesare’s ancestor Cardinal Rinaldo Brancaccio; his tomb in the church includes

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Prince of Salerno, one of the feudal barons of the Kingdom of Naples; his wealth, political ambition and eventual downfall provide an important background to the first part of this story. Members of Nido families who were close associates of his household, including Giulio Cesare and another nobleman-musician, Luigi Dentice, were inextricably bound up with the Prince of Salerno’s own political fate; in order to make sense of Brancaccio’s life, a basic record of Neapolitan history in the first half of the sixteenth century is thus unavoidable. In February 1495, Charles VIII conquered Naples for the French, ending 64 years of Aragonese rule. He settled all its feudal estates on Frenchmen with a few exceptions, notably Roberto Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno (Ferrante’s father), confirming the amicable connection between the Salerno dynasty and France that dated back to the time of René d’Anjou.6 It was a link which would continue to be invoked and nurtured by succeeding generations and eventually cause the downfall of the family. The French were expelled six months later, but Charles’s successor, Louis XII, inheriting the Angevin claim to the throne of Naples, reconquered the city in July 1501. Three years later, Naples was taken by Gonzalo de Córdoba, ‘El Gran Capitán’, and was absorbed into the huge and spreading Spanish, later Habsburg, empire.7 Ruled from then on by a series of Spanish-appointed viceroys, the kingdom entered a period of quasi-colonial rule that was only ended by Napoleon. The Neapolitan aristocracy retained their status and riches, paying allegiance (and enormous taxes) to the Habsburgs, whilst the political control of the state was firmly in the hands of the viceroy. In 1528 a French army under Lautrec invaded the kingdom and many Neapolitan nobles rose up in rebellion in his support (including Fabrizio Brancazzo, Baron of Trentola and Loriano), but his siege of the city was repulsed and the Spanish retained control. In September 1532, Pedro Alvarez de Toledo became viceroy and remained in office until his death in Florence in February 1553.8 Pedro de Toledo was the emperor’s delegate but had the power to behave essentially like a sovereign. Based in a magnificent palace at the Castel Nuovo, he established a court of royal proportions and set about founding a family dynasty, rebuilding the city and taking firm political control of the state. The ‘native’ Neapolitan aristocracy was essentially integrated into the system, and so long as they were prepared to accept the pre-eminence of the viceroy, stability was secure. However, the viceroy increasingly behaved tyrannically, and many Neapolitans looked to Emperor Charles V as the one whom they hoped would relieve them of their burdens by deposing Toledo and replacing him with someone more acceptable, preferably one of their own. It may famous sculptures by Donatello and Michelozzo di Bartolomeo. 6 Charles also left another Francophile noble, Giacomo Caracciolo, with his lands intact; his heirs would also play an important part in the later rebellion against Spanish rule (see below). 7 Robert J. Knecht, The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France (London, 1996), pp. 41, 44–8, 51–4, 62–4, 158. 8 Pedío, Napoli e Spagna, p. 251. The principal recent source of information about the viceroy is Carlos José Hernando Sánchez, Castilla y Nápoles en el siglo XVI: El Virrey Pedro de Toledo. Linaje, estado y cultura (1532–1553) (Salamanca, 1994); see also Giuseppe Galasso, Alla periferia dell’impero: Il regno di Napoli nel periodo spagnolo (secoli XVI–XVII) (Turin, 1994), pp. 41–78.

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have been Toledo’s pretensions to regal status that began the rivalry with the Prince of Salerno, who had his own traditional dynastic claim on the throne of Naples, lived in a quasi-royal fashion himself, and was the wealthiest of the Neapolitan barons. He had married the beautiful Isabella Villamarino di Cardona, and assembled a court around him to rival the viceroy’s, although the two men publicly professed cordial relations.9 The Prince of Salerno’s courtiers were ‘nearly all from the most noble families’ and from at least the 1520s he had maintained a sizeable musical establishment of ‘the most excellent musicians from various parts of Italy and many also from foreign countries, on whom he spent three thousand scudi a year’.10 The prince was also a successful soldier, whose military reputation and standing in the eyes of the emperor were about to be confirmed at the highest level. What began as a test of who could hold Charles V’s attention during his state visit in 1535–6 was to lead, seventeen years later, to an assassination attempt and open rebellion.11 First blooding In his Curriculum vitae, written around 1573 (Appendix 2, Doc. 1), Brancaccio opens the account of his career in summer 1535, in the highly successful campaign of Charles V against Barbarossa and subsequent restoration of the imperial client Muliasse as King of Tunis, and this is the first documented date in his life we so far have. The idea of the campaign had been urged on Charles by the Neapolitan nobles in alliance with the viceroy, because of the menace of Turkish pirates operating out 9 Dell’istoria di notar Antonino Castaldo: Libri quattro ne’ quali descrivono gli avvenimenti più memorabili succedenti nel regno di Napoli sotto il governo del vicerè D. Pietro di Toledo e de’ Granveza [ca. 1573] (Naples, 1769), p. 45: ‘i quali oltre il trattarsi da gran Signori, vivendo al costume Reale, per le loro maniere signorili, splendide, e liberali, e per le fiorite Corti, che di Cavalieri, e d’huomini eccellenti tenevano ornate e piene, erano da ogn’uno amati e riveriti’ [Besides moving among great princes, [the Prince and Princess of Salerno] lived like royalty. They were loved and respected by everyone for their liberal, splendid and generous behaviour and for their flourishing court, which was adorned with nobles and excellent gentlemen]. See also Giuseppe Galasso, ‘Trends and Problems in Neapolitan History in the Time of Charles V’, in A. Calabria and J.-A. Marino (eds), Good Government in Spanish Naples (New York, 1990), pp. 64–75. 10 Filiberto Campanile, L’armi overo insegne de’ nobili (Bologna, 1610), p. 42, cited in Cesare Corsi, ‘Le carte Sanseverino: Nuovi documenti sul mecenatismo musicale a Napoli e in Italia meridionale nella prima metà del Cinquecento’, in Paologiovanni Maione (ed.), Fonti d’archivio per la storia della musica e dello spettacolo a Napoli tra XVI e XVIII secolo (Naples, 2001), p. 6: ‘I suoi cortegiani eran quasi tutti di famiglie nobilissime … Eran’ … musici eccellentissimi venuti da diverse parti d’Italia, e molti anche da paesi oltramontani, a’ quali pagava ogni anno di provisione tre mila scudi’. For the Princess of Salerno, see Benedetto Corce, ‘Isabella Villamarino’, Anecdoti di varia letteratura, ser. 1, vol. 1 (Naples, 1942), pp. 266–73. 11 See Alessandro Fava, ‘L’ultimo dei baroni: Ferrante Sanseverino’, Rassegna storica salernitana, 4 (1943): 57–82; Scipione Miccio, ‘Vita di Don Pietro di Toledo Marchese di Villafranca’, in Francesco Palermo (ed.), Narrazioni e documenti sulla storia del regno di Napoli dall’anno 1522 al 1667, Archivio storico italiano, 9 (Florence, 1846).

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of the harbour of La Goletta, close to Tunis, and the war was partly financed by special taxes raised in Naples. The goal was successfully accomplished by a force consisting of a fleet under the Genoese admiral, Andrea Doria and a large Spanish and Neapolitan army led by Don Federico and Don García Toledo, the two sons of the viceroy. With them were local troops under the principal Neapolitan nobility, among whom was the young Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (quite possibly still a teenager), taking his first steps in the military world for which his birth and education would have destined him and which was to shape the rest of his life.12 On 4 July, La Goletta was taken with great loss of life, including many Neapolitan nobles. But the victory was a resounding one for Charles V, who lost no time in having the news broadcast in Italy, and especially in Naples. This success and the emperor’s subsequent triumphal return gave the impetus to a manifestation of pride and self-confidence by Neapolitans which continued for more than a decade, during which the cultural and intellectual identity of the city and kingdom took on a kind of nationalistic fervour. It is within and against this background of chivalric, military and artistic display that Brancaccio’s own ‘identity world’ can be located. The celebrations of the victory were carefully orchestrated and used for specific political ends. The physical presence of the emperor in the kingdom allowed the Neapolitans to impress him with a massive demonstration of affection and opulence that promised to open a new era in the often-strained relationship between subjects and colonial power. Descriptions of the festivities constitute some of the only information about cultural activity in Naples in this period against which to assess Brancaccio’s own development as a warrior and courtier in the orbit of the Prince of Salerno. The Tunis expedition gave a major boost to the prince: he was singled out for praise for his leadership of the Italian infantry at the siege of Goletta, and was seen as representing the generally good impression made by the Neapolitans, which in turn gave him a privileged role in the celebrations of Charles’s entry into the city.13 The emperor left Tunis on 17 August, reached Sicily after twelve days and was received into the city of Palermo a month later, passing through Calabria during October. He stayed with the two senior nobles in the Kingdom of Naples: first, Pietro Antonio 12 Gregorio Rosso, ‘Istoria delle cose di Napoli sotto l’impero di Carlo V cominciando dall’anno 1526 per insino all’anno 1537 scritta per modo di giornale’, in Raccolta di tutti i più rinomati scrittori dell’istoria generale di Napoli, vol. 8 (Naples, 1770). It is quite possible that Brancaccio’s immediate commander would have been the Prince of Salerno himself, but by the time he came to write his Curriculum vitae – aimed at getting himself reaccepted into Spanish service – he had suppressed the by then disgraced prince’s name entirely. 13 James Ogilvie, The Civil History of the Kingdom of Naples, 2 vols (London, 1731), vol. 2, p. 534: ‘Goletta was first attacked, and, after much Toil and Slaughter, was taken on 4th of July. The Neapolitans behav’d with great courage, and particularly the Prince of Salerno, General of the Italian Foot, signaliz’d himself with much honour’. Ogilvie’s passage is based on Pietro Giannone, Istoria civile del regno di Napoli (10 vols, Milan, 1723), which, in turn, follows Rosso, ‘Istoria delle cose di Napoli’; Ogilvie also appears to have drawn on Castaldo, Istoria. Salerno was accompanied on the Tunis campaign by his secretary, Bernardo Tasso, who had joined his service in 1532; Edward Williamson, Bernardo Tasso (Rome, 1951), p. 8. Brancaccio, as a young man from the prince’s own seggio, and thus quite likely under his command, may have begun his life-long connection with the Tasso family in this campaign.

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Sanseverino, Prince of Bisignano and then in Salerno with Pietro Antonio’s distant kinsman, Ferrante Sanseverino himself.14 This was a propaganda campaign to impress on the emperor that Naples was a European kingdom with its own fully functioning aristocracy that could rival any other in the empire, including Castile. Another chronicler of Naples, Antonino Castaldo, listed the leading Neapolitan women who also entertained the emperor, beginning with Maria d’Aragona, who was the wife of Alfonso d’Avalos, praising her for her ‘beauty, royal presence, wit and incomparable judgement’, as well as Donna Giovanna d’Aragona Colonna and her sister-in-law, the famous poet and patroness Vittoria Colonna, Isabella Villamarino, Princess of Salerno (all three ‘almost on a par with Maria’) and finally, Donna Maria di Cardona, Marquise of Padula, future wife of Don Francesco d’Este.15 Meanwhile, Pedro de Toledo, preparing his own cultural offensive, was kept waiting in Naples. On 25 November, Charles made his triumphant entrance into a capital city decorated with arches, statues, colossi and inscriptions praising the new Caesar. The Prince of Salerno seems to have succeeded in being very close to the centre of attention, despite the heavy presence of major Spanish and other powerful European leaders, including the supreme commander, Alfonso d’Avalos, Marquis of Vasto; the Duke of Alba; Don Ferrante Gonzaga, Prince of Molfetta (a particular rival of Salerno); Andrea Doria (Genoese admiral of the imperial fleet), Pierluigi Farnese (son of the pope), and the Dukes of Ferrara, Urbino and Florence.16 Charles remained in the city for four months, until the end of carnival. By day, the Sindaco and the Deputies (parliament) met at the church of S. Lorenzo to discuss the subventions to be levied in the kingdom to finance Charles’s campaigns, and every night the emperor was extravagantly entertained with banquets, theatre and music. The Prince of Salerno and his wife, and also the Prince of Bisignano, competed with Pedro de Toledo to give Charles the most attention.17 On 19 December, the viceroy gave the emperor a solemn banquet in the gardens of the Poggio Reale, which included a pastoral comedy (‘un’ Egloga o Fraza pastorale che ci fu molto ridicola’), probably acted by a professional troupe. Theatre was again on offer at Candlemas (2 February 1536), which marked the start of Carnival. After going to the Monte Olivio with all the Neapolitan and foreign nobles (possibly for a church service), the emperor was entertained by the Prince of Salerno with a ‘most beautiful comedy’.18 The Mantuan ambassador to Naples, Nicola Maffei, was astounded by the beauty of the women and by the quality of all the performances, especially the music, exclaiming that ‘it seemed as though Paradise had presented all her beauty and harmony [pare che il

14 Rosso, ‘Istoria delle cose di Napoli’, p. 325. 15 Castaldo, Istoria, p. 56. Brancaccio would come to know these illustrious women well; he will later be described as a guest and performer at one of their salons, as well as being a close of associate of each of their husbands. 16 Pedío, Napoli e Spagna, p. 328. 17 Rosso, ‘Istoria delle cose di Napoli’, pp. 332–3; Castaldo, Istoria, p. 61. See also Anthony M. Cummings, The Politicized Muse: Music for Medici Festivals, 1512–1537 (Princeton, 1992), pp. 151–4. 18 Rosso, ‘Istoria delle cose di Napoli’, p. 331.

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paradiso havesse aperto ogni sua bellezza et armonia]’.19 He was likewise impressed with the luxurious exhibitionism of the Neapolitan nobility, and particularly with the Sanseverino palace, which vied with the viceroy’s for richness and regal splendour.20 Charles was clearly delighted by his reception and rode about the city in disguise throughout Carnival, as did his most senior nobles, Ferrante Gonzaga and the Duke of Alba. The Neapolitans returned the feeling, delighting in the excitement and wandering the streets making music, perhaps believing that the emperor had come to save them from the oppression of his lieutenant, Toledo.21 Charles, however, used the occasion to impress on his viceroy the need to curb the rebellious tendencies of the Neapolitans by any necessary means. This Don Pedro did throughout his ‘reign’: he reportedly once told the Florentine ambassador that in his 21 years as viceroy he had had 18,000 people executed.22 Forty years later, Brancaccio chose to open the account of his life’s achievements with his participation in the Tunis campaign, which must have seemed like a quasicrusade, so apt for the first blooding of a young member of the military-noble caste. He had sailed in a huge armada to a foreign continent with the great nobles of the land, following the Holy Roman Emperor himself to engage a leader of the infidels on his own territory, thence to return home together with the victorious Caesar and to participate in a triumph of classical proportions. He almost certainly took his place in the subsequent political and cultural display as a rising member of a significant family within his seggio and in the close orbit of its leading light. Since he was a member of a noble family, we can be fairly sure that his education would have prepared him for his role in this world through the development of specific skills – military, political and cultural. Quite apart from soldiering, to which he would devote his life, Brancaccio must at some point have been introduced to a humanist 19 Mantua AS, Archivio Gonzaga, busta 812, in Giuseppe Coniglio, ‘Note sulla società napoletana ai tempi di Don Pedro di Toledo’, in Studi in onore di Riccardo Filangieri (3 vols., Naples, 1959), vol. 1, p. 359. 20 See also Sánchez, Castilla y Nápoles, p. 282. 21 Coniglio, ‘Note sulla società napoletana’, p. 359, citing the words of Nicola Maffei, reports that ‘Passavano maschere, che lanciavano “ovi pieni d’odore”, gruppi di musici gareggiavano l’un con l’altro, nel cantare “cose villanesche all’usanza di qua” o “cose de madrigali molto concertatamente”. Giravano per le vie, improvvisando versi e canzoni in onore delle belle donne che vedevano alle finestre e “rendeano una suave harmonia”, con diletto a quelli che la poteano udire’ [masquers went around throwing “eggs filled with perfume”, groups of musicians competed with one another in the singing of “villanellas typical of the place” or madrigals “much concerted [possibly: ‘arranged with many singers and instruments’]”; they wandered through the streets improvising verses and songs in honour of the beautiful women whom they saw at their windows “producing a sweet harmony to the delight of those who were able to hear it”]. The intriguing musical information conveyed in this report has been analysed by, among others, Fabris, in ‘The Role of Solo Singing to the Lute’. 22 Helmut Georg Koenigsberger, The Habsburgs and Europe 1516–1660 (Ithaca and London, 1971), p. 52. The warm feelings of the people towards the emperor contrasted with those of some of their leaders. Having failed to persuade Charles to remove Pedro de Toledo as viceroy, the Marquis of Vasto thereafter withdrew from the negotiations at S. Lorenzo, although he continued to take part in the festivities.

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curriculum (he was able to publish a Latin epithalamium some years later) and had his musical talents nurtured, both of which would have contributed to the basic skills of courtiership necessary for furthering his career through the networks of the European noble class, as we will see. We do not know whether the young Brancaccio consciously ‘chose’ to follow a quasi-professional military career abroad, or whether this represented the only realistic option for a young Neapolitan of his social position. Certainly, he benefited from the opportunities presented by his participation in his first campaign, and, together with a major force of fellow Neapolitan nobles and soldiers, Giulio Cesare followed Charles V northwards when he left Naples to engage further in military campaigns against the empire’s major competitor in Europe: France and its leader, Francis I, who had just invaded and successfully occupied Savoy. Service abroad Charles left Naples in March 1536, and after spending time in Rome to meet the new pope, Paul III (Alessandro Farnese, elevated on 13 October 1534), he moved north and invaded Provence in July, capturing Aix and Marseilles. Brancaccio was in his first of very many campaigns in wild terrain, learning the style of warfare characterized by guerrilla-style skirmishing and the siege and defence of fortified towns that was to become his speciality. The French commander, Montmorency, Constable of France, destroyed food stores, wells and mills throughout Provence and cleverly denied his attackers major confrontations, leading them deeper and deeper into hostile terrain until Charles was forced by disease and hunger in his army to retreat into northern Italy. Brancaccio took part in Charles’s ensuing campaign of defence in the territories of Milan. As a member of what was essentially a Spanish army commanded by the Marquis of Vasto, Brancaccio began a lifelong involvement in the wars of Piedmont, even returning later as a member of a French army to take a town he had previously besieged with the Spaniards. He took part in the sieges of Cherasco, Chieri and Alba, describing his experiences later as ‘many beautiful actions against the French [molte belle fattioni contra francesi]’.23 The changing nature of warfare demanded the development of new skills based not so much on old-fashioned chivalric style as on mechanistic siege warfare and flexible tactics. The work, and thus the whole collective identity of the warriornoble class, was in flux, and Brancaccio’s life and career closely reflect this.24 Technological and tactical developments associated with the increasing importance 23 Curriculum vitae, fol. 132r. 24 The so-called ‘military revolution’ of the sixteenth century and the changing nature of the role of the noble class in European warfare is a major area of scholarship and debate. The following have been important to the present study: Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, 1988, rev. 2000); J.R. Hale, War and Society in Renaissance Europe (London, 1998); David Eltis, The Military Revolution in Sixteenth-Century Europe (London and New York, 1995); Malcolm Vale, War and Chivalry: Warfare and Aristocratic Culture in England, France and Burgundy at the End of the Middle Ages (Athens, Ga., 1981); J.R. Hale, ‘The Military Education of the Officer Class in Early Modern Europe’, in id. (ed.), Renaissance War Studies (London, 1983),

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of firearms, advances in fortifications and the subsequent tendency for fighting to be centred on towns and castles rather than in open battle, contributed to a subsequent decline in the importance and status of ‘armour-plated’ heavy cavalry, which had been the traditional military role of the nobility. The style of fighting and, indeed, of military life as a whole in the Piedmont campaign, was utterly different from the image we may have of the gigantic lumbering armies and huge set-piece battles of the campaigns in Italy of the previous generation. Relatively small groups of essentially ‘freelance’ professionals now fought each other in virtual isolation from the rest of the world. It was a theatre in which to exercise the ‘pure’ values of mid-sixteenthcentury warrior-nobles, offering recurring opportunities to indulge in bravado, risk and remarkably self-centred displays of military virtù, in which the somewhat haphazard taking and retaking of geographical objectives appears to have been less important strategically than simply pursuing warfare in the company of peers – on both sides. It lived up to Jean Giono’s apt description: ‘For several generations of gentlemen, Piedmont and Milan were a kind of “wild west” which entertained every impulse, ambition and dream of honour and glory’.25 It is not difficult to imagine how the experience of these years formed the young Brancaccio, and may help to explain the way in which he conducted himself for the rest of his life. The sheer lust for adventure and bravado which he demonstrated so often would surely have found echo in the racy prose of Blaise de Monluc’s Commentaires, gripping in a Boys’ Own kind of way, for example, in his description (here, in Andrew Clark’s 1674 translation) of how he just left home in Gascony one day, drawn inexorably towards the way of life to which he had been bred: ‘being enflam’d with the report of the noble feats of Arms every day perform’d in Italy, which in those days was the Scene of Action, I was possess’d with a longing and desire to visit that Country’.26 It seems entirely fitting that Monluc and Brancaccio, who were almost the same age and apparently similar in temperament, should have started out fighting on opposite sides and then later have been comrades in arms in many campaigns, often traversing the same territories and refighting sieges and skirmishes for the same fortified hill towns and villages over and again. At its extreme, this kind of fighting was little more than sport for the bored younger sons of the upper aristocracy. Monluc relates how at the siege of Volpiano in 1555 (at which Brancaccio was also present on the opposing side) the three young royal ‘Princes of the Blood’, Monsieur Enghien, his brother, the Prince of Condé, and Monsieur (later Conte) de Nemours, just turned up without any military commission, having absconded from court in order to hotfoot it to Italy where, they had heard, there was to be ‘une belle bataille’. They said that they were ‘only there for their pleasure, and without any command, being come

pp. 225–46; James Supple, ‘François de la Noue and the Education of the French “Noblesse d’épée”’, French Studies, 36 (1982): 270–81. 25 ‘Pour plusieurs générations de gentilshommes, le Pièmont et le Milanais furent une sorte de “Far West” qui permit tous les élans, toutes les ambitions, tous les rêves d’honneur et de gloire’, quoted in Jean-Marie Constant, La vie quotidienne de la noblesse française aux XVIe–XVIIe siècles (Paris, 1985), p. 11. 26 The ‘Commentaries’ of Messire Blaize de Montluc [sic], Mareschal of France, ed. Andrew Clark (London, 1674), p. 6.

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from Court, upon the report of a Battail speedily to be fought’. They were soon joined by others of their young aristocratic friends, the Messieurs de Ventadour, du Lunde, de Lauzun, de Malincorne and de la Chataignerie, and ‘were never absent from the work, and at the Assault went on together’.27 Groups on both sides often acted completely irresponsibly, setting off on unplanned skirmishes with a few men in order to take prisoners for ransom or to get noticed in other ways.28 Within his first six years of active service, Brancaccio had already had a wide variety of different kinds of military experience, including naval expeditions, major campaigning in Africa, northern Italy, southern France, Flanders and Germany, as well as sieging, open warfare and guerrilla tactics in the mountains of Piedmont. Besides the technical skills he would have acquired, we must also consider other aspects of this life. A number of contemporary military memoirs such as those by Monluc and Cesare Maggi describe the intense experiences of male bonding in perilous but exciting situations and the cavalier irresponsibility of military action a long way from home. The physical and social environment is seen purely in terms of its relevance to fighting, power exchanges and practical exploration of absolute concepts such as honour, virtù and fealty, encoded in a largely unwritten, shared language.29 What these books of memoirs offer is a view of the almost obsessive attraction of war and fighting as the prime indicator of identity; it is perilously addictive, producing for the first time a class of nobles for whom soldiering became, for long stretches, a fulltime occupation rather than an occasional practical expression of a settled chivalric ethos; the horrors of war are everywhere neutralised by the rhetoric of honour. The combatants on each side shared an ethos and a set of traditional modes of living and interacting with one another that gave them a unifying identity as a group or class which transcended distinctions of nationality and even, at times, of religious affiliation; stories of mutual respect and courtesy between members of this class across the battle divide are legion.30 Building a career: patrons, marriage and family The campaigning in Piedmont ended with the treaty of Nice on 18 June 1538 after the successful retaking of almost all the territory held by the French. Brancaccio returned to Naples after three years of the warrior life but he had clearly not spent 27 Ibid., p. 169. 28 Constant, La vie quotidienne, p. 14. 29 Blaise de Montluc [sic], Commentaires et lettres, ed. Aphonse de Ruble (4 vols, Paris, 1864–1870); Luca Contile, La historia de’ fatti di Cesare Maggi di Napoli, dove si contengono tutte le guerre successe nel suo tempo on Lombardia et in altre parti d’Italia et fuor d’Italia (Pavia, 1564; Milan, 1565). For an overview, see also Robert J. Knecht, ‘Military Autobiographies in Sixteenth-Century France’, in War, Literature and the Arts in SixteenthCentury Europe, ed. J.R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (London, 1989), pp. 3–21, and R. Puddu, I soldato gentiluomo: Autoritratto d’una società guerriera. La Spagna del Cinquecento (Bologna, 1982), esp. pp. 1–60. 30 See Hale, War and Society, esp. chapter 5, pp. 127–52: ‘The Society of Soldiers: the Professionals’.

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all of his time fighting. Like any young member of his class, he had also been assiduously making contacts and working to get himself noticed. Military careers were haphazard and needed constant servicing: there was no continuity between campaigns, and opportunities and commissions had to be pursued along networks of patronage and service to the powerful. Three letters which Brancaccio wrote in the following three years to Ercole d’Este II, Duke of Ferrara, have recently come to light and show that he not only kept alive contacts through the standard processes of courtesy correspondence, but that he had already served in some capacity (presumably military) in the duke’s entourage. Throughout the century, Ferrara maintained strong links with both poles of the European divide, and it was to remain a constant point of return for Brancaccio for the rest of his life, even as he (like the Este themselves) crossed between ‘Spanish’ and ‘French’ loyalties. In December 1538, Brancaccio was in Bologna, presumably making his way home, and he wrote a letter to Duke Ercole that encapsulates succinctly the nature of the developing relationship, and, indeed, reflects thousands of similar transactions conducted daily up and down the ranks of the European noble classes in the sixteenth century. Elegantly constructed statements of the humblest servility and an expression of his unceasing wish to serve the duke sandwich a request for the loan of a horse to take back home to Naples to put to stud: To my Illustrious and Excellent Patron, When I was seeking leave to depart from your service I was not in a position to ask you for a favour because I was so moved by your kind words and so overwhelmed by tears, that I could barely offer my unworthy life for your service. Yet, now, presumptuously compelled by passion, I wish to let you know that I am enamoured of a grey horse and, without caring for manners, I come to beg you for your rare kindness, if you would like to take care of this, and hand it over to the person carrying this letter, who is my faithful servant and will bring it to Naples. If Your Excellency does not know which horse I mean, give me any other as you wish, since it cannot be anything less than perfect. I promise that I will send it back to you in two years, having mated it with another horse of its own breed. Now I close, so as not to bother you further. I will just say that among all the graces I had from God, the first one is this, that he made me the servant of Your Excellency. Therefore, I will not cease to pray you to consider myself worthy of receiving your graceful orders, and I will be most happy to obey them. I kiss the hands and feet of Your Excellency. From Bologna, 20 December 1538. From your Illustrious Excellency’s humble servant Giulio Cesare Brancaccio To the Illustrious and Excellent Signor, my master, the Duke of Ferrara31 31 Modena AS, Archivio segreto, Particolari, Busta 227: Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Bologna) to Duke Ercole II d’Este (Ferrara), 20 December 1538: ‘Illustrissimo et Exellentissimo Signor Mio patrone osservissimo. Atteso che nel cercar licentia da l’Exellentia vostra, mi casco l’anima, udendo sue parole cosine di pietà, e fui sì oppresso da lacrime, che a pena offerir posse in suo servitio questa misera vita; non mi fo concesso di poter supplicarla d’una gratia. Prosontuosamente adesso, constretto da la passione le fo intendere come accesome d’un suo ginetto leardo senza [water damage] altramente mirar a creanza nisciuna, vengo a pregarla per sua rara gentilezza, se ne voglie incomodare, e consignarlo al presente

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In February 1539 he wrote from Naples, begging the duke to command him in any service he might do for him.32 He referred to a recommendation from the duke’s brother, Francesco d’Este, who had married into the Neapolitan nobility (Maria di Cardona, Marquesa of Padula and Countess of Avellino) in 1536 and whom Brancaccio may have first encountered in the Provence campaign in the same year.33 This and other letters appear to have gone unanswered, as we learn from another written a month or so later, in which Brancaccio wonders what he can have done to offend the duke such that no fewer than three letters ‘have not been deemed worthy of a reply, as a good servant might have expected from such a patron’. It was a problem which was to continue to dog his relations with the Este and it is fascinating to read very similar moans being repeated more than forty years later to Ercole’s son, Alfonso.34 Sometime in 1540, Brancaccio married Beatrice Pignatelli, a member of another prominent family from the Nido seggio.35 On 20 March 1541, he had an excuse to write again to Ercole. Disarmingly gauche in his uncontained happiness, he opened lator di questa mio fidatissimo servitore, che mel condurra in Napoli. Si l’Exellentia vostra non sa qual sia il cavallo ch’io li cerco, donemene uno a suo arbitrio che non potrà esser si non cosa perfettissima promettendole fra dui anni remandarlo accompagnato in la sua razza. Adesso per non più fastidirla fo fine, con farle intendere; che de l’oblighi che debbo tener a dio, il primo sì è questo, che m’habbia fatto servitor de l’Exellentia vostra. Dunque non cesserò mai di pregarla che mi faccia degno di suoi grati comandamenti, & sappia che questo sarà mia summa felicità, e bene. Baso le mani, e piedi di l’Exellentia vostra. Da Bologna il xx di dicembre del XXXVIII Dell Vostra Illustrissima Exellentia humil servo Giulio Cesare Brancazzo Al’ Illustrissimo et Exellentissimo Signor e patrone mio osservissimo il signor Duca di Ferrara’. This is Brancaccio’s earliest known surviving letter; his connection with the Este was probably fresh: he claimed in a letter in 1580 to have been a close associate of the family for 40 years (see Chapter 3). Francesco’s wife, Maria de Cardona, was the niece of Isabella Villamarino, Princess of Salerno and was celebrated for her poetry, musical skills and her beauty; she was a leading light of the Salerno circle. In 1550, Brancaccio acted as witness for Don Francesco d’Este in a legal record of a financial transaction in Naples AS, Banchieri antichi, St. 109, no. 26; I am grateful to Donna Cardamone for transcribing and generously passing this reference on to me. 32 Modena AS, Archivio segreto, Particolari, Busta 227: Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Naples) to Duke Ercole II d’Este (Ferrara), 23 February 1539. 33 Luisa Bertoni, ‘d’Este, Francesco’, Dizionario bibilografico degli italiani, vol. 43 (Rome, 1993), p. 346. 34 Modena AS, Archivio segreto, Particolari, Busta 227: Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Bologna) to Duke Ercole II d’Este (Ferrara), 20 March 1539: ‘S’io sapeva che l’Exellentia vostra ... s’haverna da irar cossì [sic] contra di me che a tre mie lettere non m’havessi fatto degno di resposta, come a buon servo aspettar conviene da un tanto patrone’. 35 Croce, ‘Un capitano italiano’, p. 59, cites two documents (which have so far proved unlocatable by the archivist) referring to the marriage to Beatrice Pignatelli: Naples AS, Quinternioni, vol. 84, fol. 71v (1540); Naples AS, Collaterale, Privilegi, vol. 41, fol. 17 (1548). During 1540, the Prince of Salerno made a major diplomatic journey to Siena, Milan, Paris, Antwerp, Gent, Bruges and as far as London. So far, there is no documentary evidence that Brancaccio accompanied him, although, as member of Ferrante’s ‘court’, there is no

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his heart: mentioning that the Ferrarese ambassador in Naples, Giulio Cesare Caracciolo (a poet and prominent member of the circle around the Prince of Salerno) had been telling of the ‘delightful and divine’ life of the duke in Ferrara, and thinking about this has stirred the idea in his mind that he might share the same happiness by serving Ercole, he comes to the point: And to make known the state of my affairs, I inform you that the lady, my wife, has had a daughter, which having emerged healthy, I embraced with as much pleasure as if she had been a boy. God grant you boys: I (with this) shall be content with girls, unless it should happen, that doubt of my honour and the certainty of the emptying of my purse within a short time, should generate bad humours. I kiss your gracious hands, praying that I be numbered among your most beloved servants.36

The daughter, who was probably an only child, was called either Cornelia or Vittoria – a mid-seventeenth-century genealogy of several prominent Neapolitan families that records her subsequent marriage to Scipione Venato, son of Ferrante Venato (an illustrious family of the Porto seggio) and Girolama Sanseverino de Bisignano (from the Nido seggio, and the other ‘royal’ branch of the Prince of Salerno’s family) offers both names; this marriage apparently produced no grandchildren for Giulio Cesare and Beatrice.37 For the next six months Giulio Cesare apparently lived peacefully enough in Naples, but in autumn 1541 he left his wife and baby daughter to return to North Africa to fight, probably under the command of Don Ferrante Gonzaga, as part of the emperor’s campaign in Algeria against ‘Turkish pirates’, who once again menaced Spanish and Neapolitan Mediterranean traders. The invasion was an unqualified disaster: the imperial fleet was wrecked in a storm and Charles’s commanders were unable to prevent the loss of 12,000 men and 150 ships.38 Brancaccio’s Curriculum vitae relates his participation in this action and the following year’s campaign, thousands of kilometres to the north, in Flanders, against William of Cleves, whose marshal was Maarten van Rossem (known as ‘Black Martin’ for his above-average level of brutality); Charles defeated William and annexed Cleves in 1543. Such a juxtaposition of campaigns in successive years, which saw the indefatigable emperor rushing with his armies from the south-western Mediterranean to the north-east of his reason why he should not have done so (as his friend and fellow musician courtier Luigi Dentice apparently did: see below); see Corsi, ‘Le carte Sanseverino’, pp. 9–10. 36 Modena AS, Particolari, Busta 227, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Naples) to Duke Ercole II d’Este (Ferrara), 20 March 1541: ‘E per far avisato a quella d’esser dele cose mie li fo intendere come la signora mia moglie ha fatto una figliuola, e per esserne uscita a salvamento l’ho pigliata con quella piace volezza come fosse maschio. Dio mandi all’Exellentia Vostra deli maschij, che io con questo mi contenterò delle femine, avenga che l’esser dubio de l’honore, e certo del devacar dela borsa fra poco tempo, generano mali humorij. Basci le sue graziose mani, pregandola mi tenglii [sic] al numero de li suoi cordiali servitori’. 37 Carlo de Lellis, Discorsi delle famiglie nobili del regno di Napoli, parte prima (Naples, 1654), p. 174: ‘Scipione, figluolo di Ferrante [Venato], e di Girolama Sanseverina si casò con Cornelia, o Vittoria Brancaccia, figluola di Giulio Cesare, e di Beatrice Pignatella, dalla quale non hebe figluoli’. 38 David Maland, Europe in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1973), p. 232.

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empire to put out the fires which were forever breaking out at its edges, is testimony to the sophistication of the European military machine in which Brancaccio plied his trade, not to mention the permanent state of armed conflict across the continent. The campaigning army in the Low Countries was again led by Don Ferrante Gonzaga, who was currently also Governor-General of Sicily. Brancaccio first mentions having been under his command in Algiers, although Ferrante Gonzaga had also been an important commander in the 1535 Tunis campaign. The years between 1538 and 1543 saw Gonzaga lead his army – which contained an elite corps of Neapolitan gente d’arme, among whom we can presumably count Brancaccio – through a series of campaigns and set-piece sieges on the borders of France, Burgundy and Germany. Gonzaga was a soldier through and through who had been educated solely for such a career. The son of Isabella d’Este and the Duke of Mantua, Francesco Gonzaga, he was sent to Spain aged 17 and returned four years later with the command of one hundred Italian soldiers. He fought at the Sack of Rome in 1527, and played a vital role in saving Naples from Lautrec in 1528. There are two substantial contemporary biographies of him, which, although unremittingly sycophantic, nevertheless present a useful portrait of a warrior-nobleman who was a leader and model of the class to which Brancaccio belonged.39 Ferrante’s second biographer, Giuliano Goselini, defended him against the charge of having been unlettered, not by denying the fact, but by emphasizing it as a sign of his single-minded devotion to soldiering. He reports Ferrante as arguing that in the modern world, life is so short that choices have to be made, and that cavalieri need to concentrate on military experience, rather than indulging their leisure in idleness reading books ‘in the shade’.40 This is a standard topos of the ‘Arms and Letters’ debate of the sixteenth century (to which we will return later) that references standard metaphors. It is perhaps interesting here in the light of Ferrante Gonzaga’s role in musical history as the one who apparently recruited the 12-year-old Orlande de Lassus at the time of this campaign, and brought him to Italy. The biography of Lassus by his contemporary, Samuel Quickelberg, places the recruitment in the period after the siege of Sandesir (or St-Dizier) in July and August 1544, a siege that incidentally occupies several pages of the biographies of Gonzaga because of its importance in his career. Given Brancaccio’s participation at the siege and his later connection with Orlande de Lassus in 1554 (see below), it is just possible that his acquaintance with the musician began here and even that he might have played a part in identifying the talented young singer (an office which he certainly filled for another patron later in life).41 For there seems every likelihood that even in the field, warrior-lords like Ferrante Gonzaga must have maintained some sort of ‘social court

39 Alfonso Ulloa, Vita del valorosissimo e gran capitano Don Ferrante Gonzaga, principe di Molfetta, &c (Venice, 1563). 40 Giuliano Goselini, Vita di Don Ferrando Gonzaga, Principe di Molfetta (Milan, 1574; repr. Pisa, 1821), pp. 339–40. 41 For a full analysis of the evidence surrounding the recruitment of Lassus, see Horst Leuchtmann, Orlando di Lasso: Sein Leben. Versuch einer Bestandsaufnahme der biografischen Einzelheiten (2 vols, Wiesbaden, 1976), vol. 1, pp. 83–5 and Annie Coeurdevey, Roland de Lassus (Paris, 2003), pp. 28–32.

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life’ on campaign, including music, and that noble gentlemen like Brancaccio and his comrades, serving together, would have exercised the full range of their virtù in everyday situations in camp, not only military prowess.42 The Flanders campaign had begun in 1543, culminating with the indecisive siege of Landresì.43 Charles sent Ferrante Gonzaga and Francesco d’Este to London in December to negotiate a secret treaty with Henry VIII whereby the English would invade France the following year jointly with the imperial forces in return for Spanish aid against the Scots. This campaign began in May 1544 and Brancaccio lists the actions one by one as they proceeded: on 25 May, Ferrante Gonzaga captured Luxembourg, moved rapidly south, taking Commercy and Ligny, and laid siege to St-Dizier, beginning on 4 July, joined by Charles V with reinforcements on 13 July. The town was very well fortified and held out for five more weeks, until Francesco d’Este was able to break through the blockade and inflict a heavy defeat on the French army, commanded by Marshal Brissac.44 By this stage, the fighting season was well advanced and Charles took a gamble, advancing rapidly down the Marne, taking Châlons on 30 August, Château-Thierry on 7 September and Soissons five days later. Henry VIII had meanwhile delayed by laying siege to Boulogne, but now the threat to the French was palpable. Charles proceeded to within ten leagues of Paris before the French king called for a truce and Charles decided to negotiate a treaty at Crépy-en-Lannois (that incidentally returned St-Dizier to the French).45 Charles now returned to Spain, but instructed Ferrante Gonzaga to go to Paris to negotiate the final points of the treaty. At Fontainebleau, he was entertained in lavish and friendly style and showered with gifts by those he had just defeated, François I and his son and heir, Henri.46 Among those attending Don Ferrante was 42 This is an almost completely unexplored aspect of sixteenth-century warrior life which awaits investigation, but one prominent example from the end of the century is Claudio Monteverdi’s service with a group of singers in the entourage of his master, Francesco Gonzaga, on campaign in Hungary in 1595. See Paolo Fabbri, Monteverdi, trans. Tim Carter (Cambridge, 1994), p. 30. 43 Brancaccio discussed the problems of this siege, and the lessons to be learned from it, in his Discorso delle milizia, fol. 1r (see Chapter 2). It also received extended treatment in Goselini, Vita di Don Ferrando Gonzaga, pp. 22–7. 44 Bertoni, ‘Francesco d’Este’, p. 346. 45 Curriculum vitae, fol. 132r–v; see also Knecht, The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France, pp. 214–15; Royall Tyler, The Emperor Charles the Fifth (London, 1956), p. 69. 46 Goselini, Vita di Don Ferrando Gonzaga, pp. 39–40: ‘si tornò Don Ferrando in Sicilia per Francia, mandatovi da cesare a visitare il Re Francesco in Fontanableo, et a negotiar seco alcune cose a lo stabilimento appartenenti de la pace. Quivi negotiando, et l’inclinatione del Delfino, del quale fece alhora concetto grande, et gli humori de la corte riconoscendo, si fermò alquanti giorni: ne’ quali quel magnanimo Ra, albergandolo ne le stanza del delfino, tenendolo seco a mangiare, et a ragionare del continuovo, commendando co’ suoi la prudenza, l’aspetto, et tutte le sue maniere virili, et grandi, et le vittorie di Carlo con l’eccellenza del Capitano communicando, appresso donandogli pretiosi vasi d’oro, et d’argento in gran quantità.’ [Don Ferrante returned to Sicily by way of France, sent by the emperor to visit King François at Fontainebleau and to negotiate a few details relating to the peace. Here he remained some days, carrying on the negotiations, acknowledging the atmosphere of the court and getting to know the inclinations of the dauphin, of whom, at this time, he started to have a high opinion.

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the Prince of Salerno together with his secretary, Bernardo Tasso, and so there is a reasonable possibility that Brancaccio was also present. The story of how the prince entertained the ladies of the court with music-making is well known: a Florentine courtier reported home that ‘they make him sing Neapolitan songs and have acquired a quantity of guitars and every lady has her own’.47 What has not been recognized is that this subtle cultural propaganda, in which the prince no doubt sowed seeds for his eventual welcome into the French court eight years later, occurred in the context of an almost ritualized post-battle display of diplomatic courtesy. Ferrante Gonzaga made his way back to Sicily (where he was currently governor), stopping off in Mantua; Brancaccio and the Prince of Salerno probably accompanied him and were back in Naples at least by early 1545. Theatre and politics In this year comes the first concrete evidence placing Brancaccio firmly in the close orbit of the Prince of Salerno, in what was to all intents and purposes a selfcontained court within the Nido seggio, where cultural pursuits were enthusiastically promoted.48 The prince and his wife Isabella had been organizing theatrical events at least since the visit of Charles V in 1535–6 (see above) and a specially constructed theatre in the Sanseverino palace was evidently used for performances by imported professional actors, for example in 1536, when a Siennese troupe of actors performed Bibbiena’s La calandria and Francesco Belo’s Beco to celebrate Don Francesco d’Este’s marriage to Maria di Cardona, Marquise of Padula.49 As his entertainment of the ladies of the Fontainebleau court shows, the Prince of Salerno was acutely attuned to the political uses of cultural activity, lessons which were not lost on his protégé Brancaccio. Castaldo remarks that these performances and indeed all the celebrations of the wedding were given by the Prince of Salerno and other nobles mainly as an expression of loyalty to the viceroy, who enthusiastically took part in the festivities.50 But the prince’s courting of another quite different constituency through this apparently innocuous means was recognized by another contemporary, Antonio Summonte:

During this time that generous king lodged him in the dauphin’s apartments, joining him to eat and talk with him all the time, commending with his [courtiers] his wisdom, appearance and all his great and manly attributes and also the victories of Charles and the excellence of his Captain [i.e., Ferrante]. Afterwards he gave him great quantities of precious vases of gold and silver.] 47 Despatch of Bernardo de’ Medici to Cosimo de’ Medici in late December 1544, quoted in Donna Cardamone (ed.) Orlando di Lasso: Canzoni villanesche and villanelle (Madison, 1991), p. xiii; see also Emile Picot, Les français italianisants au XVIe siècle (2 vols, Paris 1906), vol. 2, p. 15, n. 4. 48 See Corsi, ‘Le carte Sanseverino’, esp. pp. 5–11. 49 Benedetto Croce, I teatri di Napoli (Bari, 1926), p. 21, who gives the date erroneously as 1540. 50 Castaldo, Istoria, p. 45.

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Warrior, Courtier, Singer The Prince greatly increased the love of the people because, on the days that the comedies were performed, he had the idea of being at the gate in order to let townspeople in to see and hear them in comfort, so that they returned to their homes full of love and affection towards him, such that when the prince passed through the streets, he was practically worshipped and fêted with the greatest acclamation.51

The prince’s patronage of professional theatre companies was one thing, but in the year he returned from France, he was also behind a venture to promote theatre with music performed by members of his immediate court circle, as we learn from Antonino Castaldo: In the year 1545, many Neapolitan gentlemen came together to perform a commedia for their pleasure and for the entertainment of the city. The author was Signor Giovan Francesco Muscettola, a fine man of letters but also a quick and pungent wit. He chose the comedy of ‘The Deceived’, a work by the ‘Intronati’ Academicians of Siena and it was performed with most beautiful lighting, costumes and music in the hall of the Prince of Salerno’s palace, where there was a permanent proscenium set up for that purpose. The actors were Signor Giulio Cesare Brancaccio, Signor Luigi Dentice, Signor Giovan Francesco Muscettola, Signor Antonio Mariconda, Signor Fabrizio Villano, Signor Scipione delle Palle and Signor Abbot Giovan-Leonardo Salernitano [‘Leonardo dell’Arpa’], the Florentine Matteo da Ricoveri and other galant gentlemen. The smallest part was played by me, who, by the courtesy of those gentlemen, was given the honour of speaking the Prologue and playing the servant Stragualcia. [Luigi] Dentice, Mariconda and those daughters of delle Palle played the [other] servants with admirable grace; Brancaccio played the lover, very well; Muscettola, Giglio the Spaniard, marvellously; Fabrice Dentice, son of Luigi, played Pasquella [a female lead] graciously; Villano, a noble and serious pedant; Ricoveri, the old fool going mad; Salernitano [did] old Virginio, very seriously; a son of signora Giovanna Palomba played Fabio in an accomplished way and all the others spoke very appropriately, such that the performers in Naples were in no way inferior to those of Siena. The celebrated and judicious musician Zoppino took care of choosing the music at that time and also organized the instrumentalists, so that the music was truly heavenly; it was outstanding because Dentice with his falsetto and Brancaccio with [his] bass performed miracles.52 51 Antonio Summonte, Della historia della città e regno di Napoli (Naples, 1675), in Croce, I teatri di Napoli, p. 21: ‘Il Principe … augmentò molto l’amor del popolo, perché, nel dì che le commedie si rappresentavano, egli aveva pensiero di stare alle porte per far entrare i cittadini a vedere e sentire comodamente, talche se ne ritornavano alle lor case pieni d’amore ed affezione verso di lui, intanto che, quando il principe passava per le strade dagli artisti di ogni sorta era quasi adorato e con grandissimi applausi salutato’. 52 Castaldo, Istoria, pp. 71–2. ‘Nell’anno 1545, molti Gentilhuomini Napoletani conchiusero di recitare una Commedia per loro esercizio, e per passatempo della Città. L’autor di questo fu il Signor Giovan Francesco Muscettola, uomo di belle lettere, ma di pronto, e mordace ingegno. E scelta la Commedia degl’Ingannati, opera degl’Intronati Accademici Senesi, con bellissimo apparato di lumi, di vesti, e di Musica la rappresentorno nella Sala del Palazzo del Principe di Salerno, dove stava sempre per tal effetto apparecchiato il Proscenio. I recitanti furono il Signor Giulio Cesare Brancaccio, il Signor Luigi Dentice, il Signor Giovan Francesco Muscettola, il Signor Antonio Mariconda, il Signor Fabrizio Villano, il Signor Scipione delle Palle, il Signor Abate Gio: Leonardo Salernitano; Matteo da Ricoveri Fiorentino, ed altri galantuomini. Il minor di tutti fui io [i.e., Antonio Castaldo], sebben quei

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This document, which is incidentally the earliest reference to Brancaccio as a singer, has often been cited, with good reason, for the precious information it gives about music and musicians in Naples in the mid-1540s.53 It bears fresh examination in the light of other documents. Gl’ingannati was first prepared in Siena in 1529–30 by members of the Accademia degli Intronati (rather than professional actors) for a visit to the city by the new emperor, Charles V, who, in fact, never came, and the play was probably not performed that year. In Carnival of the following year the members of the Academy first performed Beco’s Il sacrificio – a medley of recitations and madrigals – and then a month later, this was ‘answered’ by a performance of Gl’ingannati. This was the first time that contemporary, as opposed to classical, comedy had been presented in the city; a play based on Plautus’ Captives had been performed during Carnival 1530, followed in August of the same year by Aurelia, based on Boccaccio, Plautus, and Ariosto’s Cassaria. The Sienese production of Gl’ingannati apparently had no single author, but was a collaboration of a number of academicians, based very schematically on Plautus’ Menaechmi.54 The Intronati of Siena was a society of aristocrats established more than a century earlier and which in a sense existed out of necessity in order to focus the cultural production and thus the projection of class dominance of the aristocracy in the absence of a princely court.55 The parallels and direct links with the ambiguous political situation in Naples are certainly reinforced by the fact that a list of members of the Intronati from 1527 includes not only Luigi Dentice (called ‘il Rispettoso’) but also Ferrante Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno himself (‘l’Ostinato’); other Neapolitan members of the Intronati included the Marquis of Vasto (‘il Pomposo’) and Antonio Muscettola (‘l’Inquieto’), who may well have been related to Giovanni Francesco Muscettola, credited by Castaldo with having written or produced the Neapolitan Signori per la lor cortesia mi onororno della carica del Prologo, e del Servo Stragualcia. Il Dentice, Il Mariconda, e quelle delle Palle rappresentorno i Servi con grazia mirabile: il Brancaccio, l’Innamorato assai bene: il Muscettola, Giglio Spagnuolo per maraviglia: Fabrizio Dentice figlio di Luigi, La Pasquella graziosamente: Il Villano, un Pedante nobile, e grave: Il Ricoveri, il vecchio sciocco per impazzire: Il Salernitano, il vecchio Virginio molto gravemente; un figlio della Signora Giovanna Palomba, il Fabio sopra modo aggarbato, & tutti gli altri dissero assai acconciamente; talchè Napoli non ebbe d’invidia punto a Siena per gli recitanti. Zoppino celebre Musico e giudizioso di quel tempo ebbe cura della Musica scelta, ed anco dell’accordo degl’instrumenti; onde la Musica fu veramente celeste; e massime perchè il Dentice con il suo Falsetto, ed il Brancaccio col Basso ferno [fecerono] miracoli. L’anno seguente 1546 si recitò un’altra Commedia, opera del Mariconda, detta La Filenia, rappresentata da quasi tutti i medesimi recitanti con una eccellente Musica che riusci buonissima’. 53 See, for example, Nino Pirrotta and Elena Povoledo, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, trans. Karen Eales (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 106–8. 54 Christopher Cairns and Jennifer Loach (eds), Three Italian Renaissance Comedies (Lampeter, 1996), Introduction; Florindo Cerreta, (ed.), La commedia degl’Ingannati (Florence, 1980), esp. pp. 9–18; Paolo Bosisio, ‘Accademia degli Intronati di Siena’, in Popolarità e classicità nel teatro del Cinquecento (Milan, 1975), pp. 220–34. 55 Richard Andrews, Scripts and Scenarios: The Performance of Comedy in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, 1993), p. 91.

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version of the play. The musician Scipione delle Palle (Scipione di Vecchi), who was in the Naples cast and whose importance in the group will be examined later, may also have been a Sienese nobleman.57 The Sienese version of the play was published in 1537 and this is the nearest source we have on which to judge the version presented at the Sanseverino palace in 1545.58 Originally set in Modena, the play would very likely have been reworked for the Naples production. For theatre historians, Gl’ingannati is of major significance: it is one of the very earliest surviving commedia dell’arte texts, containing many of the features which were later to become standardized. Its plot includes identical twins, women (played by men) dressed as men and men dressed as women, pedants, geriatric would-be lovers, buffoons, scheming servants, a Spanish soldier who speaks only his own language and is a figure of ridicule, as well as fast-moving, often obscene, jokes. The play was one of the most popular and widely circulated comedies of the sixteenth century, reworked in Spanish as Los engañados by Lope de Rueda perhaps as early as 1539, translated into French by Charles Etienne as Les abusez in 1543 (the earliest foreign translation of a play from the Italian) and known in England by 1547, where it was often imitated and was the principal source for Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. A further important contribution of the Intronati to Italian theatre was their conscious attempt, theorized by their leading literary figure Alessandro Piccolomini, to develop ‘an integrated spectacle in which words, scenery, music, dance and performance were all equally important’.59 The actors and musicians who played Gl’ingannati in Naples in 1545 were clearly inspired to build on their success and the following year they produced La Filenia, this time by one identifiable author, Antonio Mariconda, who had been one of the actors in Gl’ingannati. But by this time, this apparently innocent group of friends who liked amateur theatricals had formally organised themselves into an Accademia, and Antonino Castaldo (who had played a small role on Gl’ingannati) explains that the intention was to pursue humanist studies including Latin and Italian

56 Luigi Sbaragli, ‘I tabelloni degli Intronati’, Bullettino senese di storia patria, 49 (1942): 177–213; Price Zimmerman, ‘A Sixteenth-Century List of Intronati’, Bullettino senese di storia patria, 72 (1965): 91–5, 363. Rosso, ‘Istoria delle cose di Napoli’, notes that in 1530, Pope Clement VII sent a Giovanni Antonio Muscettola (?identical with ‘l’Inquieto’) as ambassador to Florence to inform the Florentines of his intention to marry his adopted daughter Margaret to Alessandro de’ Medici and to make Florence a Duchy; see Pedío, Spagna e Napoli, p. 292; Tyler, Charles V, p. 60. 57 Tim Carter, ‘Delle Palle, Scipione’, New Grove II, vol. 7, p. 176. It is therefore possible that some, at least, of the Naples cast had also been associated with the original Sienese performance. Castaldo also specifically mentioned Siena as a model for the Accademia dei Sereni, which the actors set up the following year (see below). 58 Modern edition by Florindo Cerreta, La commedia degl’Ingannati (Florence, 1980); there were 17 editions of the play in Italy in the sixteenth century, including two in 1537: ibid., p. 47. 59 Andrews, Scripts and Scenarios, p. 92.

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poetry, rhetoric, philosophy and astrology, as well as practical and theoretical music, like the Accademia in Siena.60 The Accademia dei Sereni was one of a number of academies set up in Naples in 1546.61 This one was made up almost exclusively of members of the Nido seggio, and although the Prince of Salerno’s name is absent from both extant membership lists, there can be little doubt that he was a ‘silent’ leader; Giulio Cesare Brancaccio was a founding member.62 This initiative was immediately interpreted by the viceroy as a dangerous challenge to his power and the security of the state. Pedro de Toledo saw the academies as hotbeds for rebellion, and as an excuse for his clampdown he accused them of indulging in heretical Protestant debate. Whether or not there was substance to this accusation depends on which account you read.63 Don Pedro de Toledo may indeed have had suspicions about the religious orthodoxy of the meetings of the academy, and this could lie behind the specific prohibition against the discussion of religion in the Accademia dei Sereni’s own rule-book, but Castaldo’s own explanation is surely correct: But when he learned more about this beautiful and honourable cultivation of letters, His Excellency the Viceroy and the Collateral Council were inclined to prohibit it, and this was done. And whatever the excuse given, the reason was that it did not seem a good thing that under the pretext of literary activities, there were so many assemblies and virtually continuous meetings of the brightest and most important minds in the city, both nobles and ordinary citizens, since through study of the humanities, people made themselves confident and informed and also became more spirited and resolute in their actions. But,

60 Castaldo, Istoria, p. 72. A Latin oration made to the Academy by Bernardino Rota, one of its two founding ‘consuls’, probably in November 1546, listed a group of musicians who were members of the Sereni: Luigi Dentice, Paolo Soardo (or Soardino), Giovannitomaso Cimello, ‘Zoppino’ (who was credited with directing the music for the two theatrical productions by members of the Academy in 1545 and 1546 – see above), Giulio Cesare Brancaccio, Antonio Bruni, Scipione delle Palle, Ioan Leonardo Salernitano [dell’Arpa], and Andrea and Giovanni Antonio Romano; Tobia R. Toscano, ‘Un’orazione latina inedita di Bernardino Rota, Principe dell’Accademia dei Sereni di Napoli’, in Letterati corti accademie: La letteratura a Napoli nella prima metà del Cinquecento (Naples, 2000), p. 322. 61 Others included the Accademia degli Ardenti and Accademia degli Incogniti. 62 Benedetto Croce, ‘L’accademia delle Sereni’, Anecdoti di varia letteratura, ser. 2, vol. 1 (Bari, 1953), pp. 302–9, at p. 305 and Table 1. 63 For example, Miccio, Vita di Don Pedro di Toledo, p. 51, accepted the official explanation: ‘molte volte si dismandavano a cicalare della sacra teologia e perchè pareva al Vicerè che da quella pratica potevano nascere false opinioni, non cesò mai in sino a tanto che tacitamente li annichilasse’ [many times they forbade the discussion of sacred theology and because it seemed to the viceroy that this could foster the nurturing of wrong ideas; he never gave up until he had as good as destroyed them]. On the other hand, according to Mazella, Descrizione del regno di Napoli (Naples, 1580), quoted in Sánchez, Castilla y Nápoles, p. 500, the viceroy ‘… entró insospetto – benchè vanamente – che in esse si facessero monopolii cioè trattati in pregiuditio del Rè, [benchè] non si trattava d’altro che di cose virtuose’ [… became suspicious – even though mistakenly – that [the Academies] were fostering groups which spoke against the king [although] they only discussed respectable topics].

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with one or other appropriate and expedient justification, all Academies were prohibited and disbanded.64

In other words, the Academies were considered cover for political debate and organization, and Antonino Castaldo, who had had such intimate knowledge of the Sereni, as good as admits this. The crucial factor was the cooperation between nobles and members of the popolo. The Spanish had deliberately set up the government of the city to ‘divide and rule’ by assigning a sixth seggio del popolo to represent the interests of the people (that is, the non-aristocratic ‘middle class’), traditionally oppressed within the Neapolitan feudal system. The Prince of Salerno’s winning ways, starting with the opening of the doors of his palace to members of the professional classes to watch plays, then allowing them to take part in the amateur theatricals, and finally to join in debates, appears, in fact, to have been a carefully planned tactic to unite politically active Neapolitans in a common cause. Rebellion The outbreak of rebellion in the early summer of 1547 brought to a head the tensions between the barons and the viceroy.65 At this ‘aristocratic’ level, the struggle was one of power and money: the nobles objected to taxes levied to finance the foreign policy of the empire and, most particularly, the military initiatives of Toledo and his clan, which entailed a number of costly naval expeditions against clients of the 64 Castaldo, Istoria, p. 72: ‘Ma quando più s’attendeva a così bello ed onorato esercizio di lettere, parve all’Eccellenza del Vicerè ed agli Signori del Collaterale di proibirle; e così fu fatto. E per quanto allora si disse, la causa fu che non pareva bene, che sotto pretesto esercizio di lettere, si facessero tante congregazioni, e quasi continue unioni de’ più savi ed elevati spiriti della Città, così nobili, come popolari; perocchè per lettere si rendono più accostumati gli uomini ed accorti, e si fanno anco più animosi e risoluti nelle loro azioni. Ma, o per questa, o per altra giusta e conveniente causa si fusse, furono l’Accademie proibite tutte e disfatte’. Castaldo was, in fact, at pains to point out that the Academies were not in the least tainted by Protestantism, acknowledging that in about 1540 or 1541, the Capuchin monk Bernardino Ochino had been a favourite preacher in Naples before he began to advocate Lutheran ideas and was then driven out of the city (ibid., p. 74). The ‘rules’ of the Sereni are in a document reproduced and discussed in Croce, ‘L’accademia delle Sereni’, and its musical activities are examined more closely in Chapter 4, below. Castaldo wrote his Istoria in the late 1560s and early 1570s, presumably in retirement, and is naturally partisan to his own perspective. For example, he uses every opportunity to note his own role in the events such as his playing of ‘the smallest role of all’ in Gl’ingannati (he also claims to have spoken the Prologue) as well as the fact that he claims to have been elected, ‘although unworthy’, as the first ‘chancellor’ of the Sereni (Istoria, p. 72); strangely, neither his name nor such an office appears in the list of the signatories of the founding charter (see Croce, ‘L’accademia delle Sereni’, pp. 302–9 and Table 1). The Istoria and its style of discourse (for example, the singling out of the plays and the use of even words like ‘fece miracoli’ with respect to Brancaccio’s singing) needs to be read with care: as the major source of information about the vice-regency of Toledo it is often cited uncritically by historians. 65 Principal accounts, with analysis, are collected in Pedío, Spagna e Napoli, pp. 345–95, and Sánchez, Castilla y Nápoles, pp. 394–470.

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Turks in the southern Mediterranean. For members of the baronial group, the only solution seemed to be the removal of Toledo and even, in the case of the Prince of Salerno, the possibility of enlisting France for a wholesale expulsion of the Spanish. However, the decisive factor in the rebellion was the popolo: they complained of the tyranny of Toledo and the intolerable burden of enduring thousands of ill-disciplined Spanish troops stationed in the city. The catalyst was Toledo’s threat to introduce the Inquisition from Spain to deal with suspected heresy, but he underestimated resistance to this idea, which was perceived as a thinly veiled excuse for suppressing political opposition. The final detonator for the uprising was the successful uniting of nobles and people, and the role of the Prince of Salerno and his circle of academicians is clear from Antonino Castaldo’s account. He relates how on 25 May, in scenes anticipating the early days of the French Revolution, Neapolitan nobles and representatives of the bourgeoisie (he was careful to stress that they spanned all the various seggi, listing by name the principal leaders) met in the monastery of S. Lorenzo, which was the seat of the city government. From the stormy and often heated debates (at one point, the radicals threatened to throw a more moderate councillor off the church tower) the cry went up of ‘Union, union in the service of God, of the emperor and of the city!’66 Luigi Dentice, ‘leading gentleman, noble musician and most galant in all actions’, then went up into the pulpit of the church and ‘spoke certain suitable words on the subject of such a union’.67 Dentice’s position as a leading cadre of the Prince of Salerno, and his role at this critical moment of revolutionary action, confirms the tight link between the ‘amateur theatricals’, music-making, apparently innocent intellectual debates and a carefully thought-out process of politicization designed to lead to a putsch, in which the Prince of Salerno would displace the viceroy. The failure of the plan can be put down to a number of factors, primarily the viceroy’s superior diplomatic expertise, miscalculation of the emperor’s loyalties and effective espionage. The rebels elected the Prince of Salerno and Placido di Sangro to negotiate with the viceroy, who agreed to their enlisting the emperor as mediator.68 The result was that Toledo withdrew his threat to bring in the Inquisition and issued a general pardon for most of the rebels, which nevertheless excluded the ringleaders.69 Many, including Dentice, fled for their lives, initially to Rome, where Pope Paul III offered them asylum. However, the Prince of Salerno was outmanoeuvred. He had made his way to the imperial court, which was currently at Nuremberg, but Toledo had sent

66 Alfred De Reumont, The Carafas of Maddaloni: Naples under Spanish Domination (London, 1854), p. 36. 67 Castaldo, Istoria, p. 73: ‘Gentilhuomo principale, gentil musico ed in ogni azione galantissimo ... disse certi parole assai comodamente sopra il soggetto di tal unione’. 68 The invitation to the Prince of Salerno to take on this office was communicated to him by a Carlo Brancaccio: Williams, Bernardo Tasso, p. 9. 69 A Giovan Vincenzo Brancazio was listed among those excluded from the viceroy’s pardon (Castaldo, Istoria, p. 100) and he was later executed (Miccio, Vita di Don Pietro de Toledo, p. 73). In fact, the beheading did not occur until 14 September 1550; see the report of the Florentine ambassador in Naples, in Pedío, Spagna e Napoli, p. 393.

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his own representative in advance to lay the ground, and Charles did not back the prince.70 Giulio Cesare actually missed these events in Naples altogether because he was by now in Germany fighting in the Neapolitan component of Charles’s army (under the command of the Duke of Alba) in the campaign against the German Protestants led by John of Saxony. That campaign culminated at the battle of Mühlberg on 24 April 1547 and Charles’s eventual acceptance of religious toleration in Germany. Brancaccio was still away from home in early 1548 and it is possible that he was delaying his return to Naples for political reasons. In February he wrote again to Duke Ercole, from Bologna. Here he refers to a letter he had sent via Ercole’s ambassador and is now taking the advantage of having met with Giulio Cesare Caracciolo on his way to Ferrara, to send his compliments. He again expresses his hope that Ercole will take him for a ‘true and most affectionate servant’ and then, in what might be a hint as to his present predicament in the light of recent events in Naples, he expresses a somewhat opaque hope that ‘if ever I get beyond so much misery, I hope that [Your Highness] will experience as actions that which you now perhaps otherwise would judge as Neapolitan prattle or Spanish pleasantries’. With this sentence, there is an almost forlorn resignation to the unlikelihood of his epistolary efforts bearing fruit.71 One reason for his depression about the future can perhaps be gleaned from a Latin epithalamium which he had printed in Bologna at this time in the form of a little two-sheet quarto pamphlet.72 Addressed to his sister, Giulia, on the occasion of her wedding, the 188-line poem is a highly formal pastiche of classical models (a worthy gift from a member of the Accademia degli Sereni), referring not only to her wedding, but also to the recent death of their father.73 Given the fact that at least one Brancaccio had been condemned for his role in the rebellion, it could be that the family fortunes had in some way been imperiled, as Brancaccio suggested in a petition written some years later (see below). Brancaccio ends his poem with the comforting image of their father rejoicing in the Elysian fields at her union with a fine nobleman (whose identity is not divulged beyond his first name, Giano). Perhaps 70 Sánchez, Castilla y Nápoli, p. 330. 71 Modena AS, Particolari, Busta 227, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Bologna) to Duke Ercole II d’Este (Ferrara), 25 February 1548: ‘et se mai sarò fuor di tante miserie, spero che vedrà per opra [sic] tutto quel che hora forse altri giudicarebbe parolette napolitane, o regoçisos espagnoles’. 72 Julii Caesaris Brancatii. Epithalamion (Bologna, [Ercole Bottrigari] 1548), ‘Julii Caesaris Brancatii in Iani Sanctis Inangi, et Iulie Brancatie Sorores Nuptias Epithalamion’. The print is extremely rare: only one copy is known to exist today, in the Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio in Bologna. Brancaccio’s knowledge of Latin was confirmed 35 years later when he was looking for a parallel German-Latin text so he could study German (see Chapter 3). 73 At one point, Giulia is encouraged to cease mourning her father’s death after ‘thrice nine months’; this may be a precise figure or simply included for its literary niceness. I am grateful to Leofranc Holford-Strevens for this suggestion and for offering an assessment of the quality of the Latin, which he finds commendable, although betraying some quite glaring metrical mistakes and even a few incorrect words.

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Brancaccio had the pamphlet printed up to take with him to the wedding; maybe it had to be sent in lieu of his own presence. Whatever his travel itinerary, we know from a letter written the same year (see below) that Brancaccio was back in Naples by August. Brancaccio must nevertheless surely be associated with the aspirations and fate of the rebels by virtue of his prominent membership of the Prince of Salerno’s group both in the 1540s and later after the Prince’s defection to France. And yet, as is also apparent from evidence of his later successful career there (which outlasted that of most other exiles), his precise role in the Neapolitan rebel group remained in some ways tangential, although, as we have seen, others of his family were firmly implicated. Another close kinsman of his, Cesare Brancaccio, who was later to play an important role as papal nuncio at the court of Henri II, had also been among the conspirators in Naples in 1547 and played a significant role in the events of the rebellion during which he was the elected deputy for the Nido seggio. In August 1547, Placido di Sangro – the second of the two ambassadors sent by the rebels to petition the emperor – had returned to Naples and was promptly arrested by the viceroy, who also confiscated arms and threatened further violent repression. Cesare Brancaccio was at a new meeting of the rebels in the church of S. Lorenzo, and instigated a plot to write, in the name of the assembly, to the Prince of Salerno, who was still at the imperial court, warning him of the fate of Sangro. The means to this act involved Cesare taking possession of the seal of the assembly against the majority wish, and in the magistrates’ inquiry that followed in September, he was arraigned as the main conspirator, and later fled the kingdom and joined the exiles in Rome.74 He allied himself to the powerful Neapolitan exile, Cesare Carafa, nephew to the future Pope Paul IV, and climbed with him to a powerful position, which led to his being sent as papal nuncio to Henri II in 1556–7, in which position he figures in this narrative later on. Giulio Cesare, meanwhile, continued his service in Neapolitan and imperial armies but kept up intimate contacts with members of the disbanded Salerno circle between 1548 and 1552, as two important documents show. The first is a letter Brancaccio wrote on 4 August 1548 (Appendix 2, Doc. 2) and the second a dedication to him by Luigi Dentice of the first edition of his Due dialoghi della musica, published in Naples in 1552 (see below and Appendix 2, Doc. 3). Murder, imprisonment and escape The two documents are linked by more than just Brancaccio himself. The addressee of the 1548 letter was Giovanni Antonio Ser(r)one, who also appears as one of the two interlocutors in Luigi Dentice’s Due dialoghi.75 The other voice in Dentice’s 74 Simancas AG, Legajo E1037-277, in Roberto Zapperi, ‘Brancaccio, Cesare’, Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 13 (Rome, 1971), pp. 769–70. 75 He plays the role of the questioner who renders the content of the discourse into a dialectic; see Marco Della Sciucca, ‘Mutamenti estetici nei trattati di Andrea Matteo III Acquaviva d’Aragona e Luigi Dentice’, Rivista italiana di musicologia, 31 (1996): 40; Bernardo Tasso wrote at least one letter to Gio. Antonio Serone: Anton-Federigo Seghezzi,

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dialogue is that of Paolo Soardo or Suardo, who was regarded as being amongst the best musicians in Naples in an account written in 1569.76 In Brancaccio´s letter to Soardo, he writes in a bantering familiar style laden with light-hearted classical references and names a number of mutual friends, including Signor Luigi (?Dentice) and Cesare Villano, who turns up in Dentice’s letter of dedication in the Due dialoghi as one who knew Brancaccio.77 The letter implies that Brancaccio is alone in Naples, separated from the whole cohort of his former friends, who were presumably together in exile in Rome. Luigi Dentice, as we have already seen, was a leading member of the Prince of Salerno’s circle. His association with Ferrante Sanseverino dated back at least to their common membership of the Sienese Accademia degli Intronati in 1527 (see above). In the spring of 1540 he was in the prince’s entourage travelling in the Low Countries and was involved in recruiting a young Flemish singer.78 It has been suggested that he accompanied the Prince of Salerno in July of the same year on his visit to England, and that it was at this time that he was offered a pension by Henry VIII to join his court as a singer, an offer he refused. In recalling this in 1564, Sir Thomas Chaloner said that ‘his voyce was the swetest that any in owr time hath been praysed for’.79 The first references to his musical activities in Naples are the same documents which also identify Brancaccio: the reports by Castaldo of the performances of Gl’ingannati and Filenia (see above). With Brancaccio, Dentice was a founding member of the Accademia dei Sereni in 1546. Following the failed rebellion in 1547, Luigi and his son, the lute virtuoso Fabrizio, fled first to Rome and apparently then went on to Genoa and Milan; Pedro de Toledo suspected that Dentice was also going on to France, although he is not recorded as being there until around 1557 (see Chapter 2 below). Luigi placed Fabrizio in the household of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese80 and it is more likely that both of them were part of a larger

Delle lettere di M. Bernardo Tasso … con la vita dell’autore (3 vols, Padua, 1733), vol. 1, p. 595. 76 Luca Contarino, La nobiltà di Napoli in dialogo (Naples, 1569), p. 353, cited in Dinko Fabris, ‘Contributo alla storia della teoria musicale a Napoli nell’epoca vicereale: Le fonti del Cinquecento’, Le fonte musicali in Italia: Studi e ricerche, 2 (1988): 77. A Paolo Soardino was a founding member of the Accademia dei Sereni and it seems likely that this is the same person: Croce, ‘L’accademia dei Sereni’, p. 307; he is also mentioned as a member of Ferrante Sanseverino’s circle (‘il buon vecchio Soardino’) in Ragionamenti di M. Agostino da Sessa con l’Illustriss. S. Principe di Salerno, sopra l’Etica d’Aristotele (Venice, 1554), p. 10, cited in Corsi, ‘Le carte Sanseverino’, p. 4. Finally, Paolo Soardo’s son Horatio married Livia, sister of Brancaccio’s future son-in-law, Scipione Venato: De Lellis, Discorsi delle famiglie nobili del regno di Napoli, p. 174. 77 A Fabrizio Villano was among the participants in Gl’ingannati (see above). 78 Corsi, ‘Le carte Sanseverino’, pp. 37, 39. 79 Keith Larson, ‘Dentice’, New Grove II, vol. 7, pp. 220–1. 80 Donna Cardamone, ‘Orlando di Lasso and Pro-French Factions in Rome’, in Orlando Lassus and his Time: Yearbook of the Alamire Foundation Colloquium 24–26 August 1994, ed. Ignace Bossuyt, Eugeen Schreurs and Annelies Wouters (Peer, 1995), p. 39, n. 58.

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group of exiles that remained in Rome at this point. Dentice father and son travelled to Spain in 1554 and again in 1559, and Luigi died sometime before 1569.81 In 1552 Luigi Dentice published his pair of treatises, the first on Greek music theory, and the second on counterpoint and practical music under the title Due dialoghi della musica. Although he was in exile, he managed to have the book published in Naples by Matteo Cancer, a leading printer who had been active since the 1530s. The book includes a vitally important glimpse of Brancaccio the singer and of the aristocratic musical life of Naples in the late 1540s.82 The first edition was headed by a letter of dedication addressed to Giulo Cesare (Appendix 2, Doc. 3) and it reveals the image he had already acquired as a living embodiment of an idealized Castiglionian courtier and man of ‘Arms and Letters’.83 More intriguing, however, is the fact that earlier in the year of its publication, Brancaccio had just been embroiled in a major scandal, the consequences of which were to precipitate a major turning point in his life. In Dentice’s letter of dedication in the 1552 edition of the Due dialoghi, he refers to the fact Brancaccio had read the treatise while languishing in prison for having apparently killed an ‘enemy of his fellow-countrymen’ and for singlehandedly defending one Ottaviano’s honour against 3,000 soldiers, armed only with his ‘valour’. This somewhat unlikely sounding story certainly receives no mention whatsoever in the Curriculum vitae and it would have remained clouded in obscurity were it not for a letter buried in the Spanish royal archives in Simancas (Appendix 2, Doc. 9) until its significance was noted by Umberto Coldagelli.84 In 1572 Brancaccio was interested in regaining admittance to Naples, and part of his campaign consisted in presenting himself to the authorities as an expert in military science (see Chapter 3). His petition reached, amongst others, one of Philip II’s most formidable lieutenants, Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, by that time Viceroy of Naples, whose memory was alerted. He recalled in extraordinary detail, and related to Philip II, Brancaccio’s crime over twenty years previously – when Granvelle had been Charles V’s secretary in the Low Countries – which had been perpetrated in the region of Halle, where Brancaccio was serving under the Duke of Alba. A Spanish soldier, marching in the ranks of the infantry, had apparently caused offence to this Ottaviano and Brancaccio killed the soldier with an arquebus. He was apprehended and claimed to have been following the orders of the duke, but Charles V was determined to make an example of him. In accordance with military law, he was condemned to death (Granvelle remarks that this would have been a very fitting resolution of the affair). Various rogadores pleaded on Brancaccio’s behalf and the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Brancaccio was then

81 Dinko Fabris, ‘Vita e opere di Fabrizio Dentice, nobile napoletano, compositore del secondo Cinquecento’, Studi musicali, 21 (1992): 64. 82 Luigi Dentice, Due dialoghi della musica (Naples, 1552; reissue, Rome, 1553); discussed at greater length in Chapter 4. 83 See Chapter 5. 84 Simancas AG, Legajo E1063-24, Cardinal Granvelle (Naples) to Philip II (Spain), 26 June 1573. Coldagelli, ‘Brancaccio’, p. 781, erroneously places the events described in 1553.

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apparently escorted all the way back to Naples and imprisoned in the Castel Nuovo, where he presumably read Luigi Dentice’s manuscript. Cardinal Granvelle somewhat cynically remarks that, for reasons which appeared good to the then viceroy, Pedro de Toledo, and as Brancaccio was a ‘musician who talked too much’, he was able to get himself released, which presumably means that, as he was to do later in life, Brancaccio exercised his singing and conversation skills as part of his armoury as a courtier, in order to gain access to, and influence with, the more powerful. Granvelle believed that it was a letter from Charles that had eventually secured Brancaccio’s release and permission to return to active service. Thanks to a discovery by Ignace Bossuyt, we now know that Don Ferrante Gonzaga, Brancaccio’s old commander, intervened on his behalf and relayed to the emperor Brancaccio’s offer to serve in any theatre of war rather than languish in prison; this petition is dated 29 March 1552.85 Armed with a document and a promise of a loan from the viceroy, Brancaccio headed north. Granvelle’s letter continued by saying that the document which Brancaccio obtained was ambiguous: he believed it allowed Brancaccio to serve only within the Kingdom of Naples, but Brancaccio ‘interpreted’ it as allowing him to go anywhere where there was war, and he had used it to go to Flanders, and thus to escape punishment for his crime. Meanwhile, in his own version of the events of this period, Brancaccio recorded his participation in 1550 in the (disastrous) naval expedition to Algiers led by Juan de Vega, Governor of Sicily, and Don García de Toledo, the viceroy’s son. Of this campaign, Brancaccio’s only remarks in the 1573 Curriculum vitae are about the technical marvel by which the Neapolitans built a platform across two galleys moored side by side on which were mounted six large guns with which Algiers could be bombarded.86 He next records having been a participant at the fateful siege of Metz (which began on 24 November 1552), which, completely passing over the murder of the Spanish soldier and its consequences, he puts as simply ‘a few months after’ the Algiers expedition in 1550. Assuming Brancaccio’s claims to be more or less true, this helps to delineate more precisely the time-frame of the murder, imprisonment in Naples and subsequent return to northern Europe on parole. Brancaccio may well have considered that the military service to which he returned was ample punishment for his crime. The successful defence by its French inhabitants of the city of Metz against the imperial besiegers was the triumph of Brancaccio’s future patron, François, Duke of Guise, and was regarded as one of the more memorably disastrous of Charles V’s failures.87 The sight of the corpses of the defeated imperial army outside the walls as they were found by the emerging defenders, left by an indifferent emperor to starve and freeze to death when the terrible winter siege was

85 Madrid PR, II, 2321, fol. 130r, transcribed and translated in Cardamone, ‘Orlando di Lasso and Pro-French Factions’, pp. 46–7. 86 Curriculum vitae, fol. 132v. The campaign resulted in the loss of 12,000 Neapolitan and Spanish lives; Maland, Europe in the Sixteenth Century, p. 232. 87 Knecht, The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France, pp. 253–4.

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finally lifted in January 1553, impressed itself on commentators as unusually horrific even by comparison with the normal bestialities of mid-sixteenth-century warfare.88 There remain a number of open questions about Luigi Dentice’s dedication of the first edition of his dialogues to Brancaccio. The portrayal of Brancaccio as a hero and a model of chivalric virtù may have been for the consumption of Neapolitan nationalists still in Naples, even perhaps hoping to encourage Brancaccio to take some leadership role. Such a sophisticated political motive, however, could have had, at best, limited effect, considering that the book is, in fact, a fairly obscure treatise about music theory, albeit with nostalgic references to great Neapolitan performers and patrons of the 1540s.89 And then, how was the book apparently printed in Naples when Dentice was in exile, presumably still in Rome? Why were pages from the same edition reissued the following year by a different printer with a newly printed title page, which not only identified the place of publication as Rome, but also excised the dedication to Brancaccio? One answer is that Brancaccio was by then far away and Pedro de Toledo, whom Dentice may just have been trying to address through Brancaccio in 1552, had died in February 1553. This deprived Brancaccio of an ally, not to mention a source of financial support, as he was to bemoan in a begging letter sent to Duke Ercole from Antwerp in May 1553. In this letter, Brancaccio revealed that shortly before his death, the viceroy had agreed to send him 800 scudi but that his death had intervened before the order could be acted upon; now he asks the duke to allow him more time to pay off a debt of 400 scudi. Brancaccio says he would have liked to send happy news to the duke as a friend of the emperor, but he could find only ‘little happiness in the entire Christian world and the anger of God above’ exemplified by the mutiny of the Spanish troops for want of pay; the siege of Ferrovana by the French with a force of six thousand cavalry and ‘plenty of infantry’; the news that Philip II would not now come from Spain to the Low Countries in the current year; the failure of 88 See, for example, the account of François de Rabutin, Commentaires sur le faict des dernières guerres en la Gaule Belgique entre Henri II et Charles V (Paris, 1554), in Ferdinand Lot, Recherches sur les effectifs des armeés françaises des guerres d’Italie et les guerres de religion 1494–1562 (Paris, 1962), pp. 179–80, who described the poor survivors ‘… en si grande indigence et misère que je ne fais point de doute que les bestes mesmes, voire les plus cruelles, n’eussent en quelque pitié de ces misérables soldats tombans, chancellans par les chemins, par extresme nécessité et le plus souvent mourans près des hayes et au pied des buissons pour etre proye aux chiens et oyseax’ [in such great destitution and misery that I have no doubt that the wild animals themselves, even the fiercest, would not, on seeing them, have had some pity for the miserable broken soldiers, staggering along the roads [driven] by extreme necessity, and most often dying under hedges and bushes, to become prey for dogs and birds]. Brancaccio mentions the siege not only in the Curriculum vitae, but also in Discorso della milizia, fol. 1r. 89 Discussed in Chapter 4; Fabris, ‘Contributo alla storia della teoria musicale’, pp. 76–7, speculates that Luigi Dentice’s initiative in getting his work published by the Neapolitan printer, despite his own exile, may have been part of an attempt to recover his own property, confiscated, like that of the Prince of Salerno, by the viceroy. Note also Brancaccio’s reference to ‘the destruction of what riddled and mortgaged property as I had left (see below)’.

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the viceroy’s siege against the French-supported mutiny in Siena and reports of the Prince of Salerno’s unsuccessful expedition against Naples with a French and Turkish fleet.90 For meanwhile, there had been a turning point for the leader of the Neapolitan rebellion, which opened a new chapter in the fate of the exiled rebels, or fuorusciti. The search for absolution In May 1551, the prince, who had by now returned to his own territory in Salerno, was the target of an assassination attempt. He survived with a bullet wound in the leg, certain that the instigator of the plot had been the viceroy, who did little to apprehend the suspect. The prince decided once again to petition the emperor in person for redress. Castaldo supplies the story that Salerno was advised in Pesaro by Cardinal Farnese to take heed of what had happened to his own brother, Duke Ottavio, who had been murdered in 1547 during a power struggle with the emperor. A link between Salerno and the Farnese seems very likely given the protection the family was already affording Neapolitan fuorusciti in Rome. Castaldo says that Salerno was nevertheless determined to continue on his way, but that he was held up by the festering bullet wound. Castaldo recalls how it looked to those left behind in Naples: The departure, or to be more precise, flight, of the prince from the kingdom in this way led many judicious people to suspect him, given his disdain for the shoddy treatment which it seemed to him that he had received in the lukewarm response to the offenders [who had attempted to kill him] and because he was by nature impatient and impetuous and also because of the enticements he might have had from this and that person in his predicament. It is clear in any case that he had gone to Venice where, having been made a Gentiluomo dalla Calza many years before, he was highly honoured; and they also gave him permission to keep armed men with him for his defence and security. 91 90 Modena AS, Archivio segreto, Particolari, Busta 227, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Antwerp) to Duke Ercole II d’Este (Ferrara), 6 May 1553: ‘Harei a caso scrivere di qua alcune cose degne di aviso a Vostra Eccellentia de’ quali come amico de sua Maestà Cesarea Honorato Signore, se n’havesse allegrato però non vi è nulla, salvo la mutino di questi spagnoli per mancanza del dinaro, l’assedio di Ferrovana da questi Signori borgognoni con 6,000 cavalli, et numero di fanti a bastanza, il tenersi per certo che quest’anno vi serà poco che fare, il non venire (secondo credeva) del principe di Spagna in questa estate, l’armata del turco a danni del medesmo Regno, col principe di Salerno, e Francia; il disfarsi del medesmo eserciti di Siena, il poco contentamente che è per tutto il mondo, e l’ira di dio che sta sopra, e christiani’. Note that there is nothing here which is either explicitly anti-Spanish or prorebel. In another letter sent a month later, the sum which Brancaccio should have received via the viceroy has increased to 3000 scudi (perhaps this relates to Brancaccio’s property in Naples?) and he was continuing to make excuses for the non-payment of the debt to Ercole, reiterated two years later: Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Antwerp) to Duke Ercole II d’Este (Ferrara), 20 June 1553; Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Fontainebleau) to Duke Ercole II d’Este (Ferrara), 10 June 1555. 91 Castaldo, Istoria, p. 118: ‘La partita, o per dir meglio, la fuggita del Principe a quel modo dal Regno diede a molti giudiziosi da sospettar di lui, considerato il suo disdegno per

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The prince went to Padua, across the Alps from the imperial court, which was then at Innsbruck. According to one version, Salerno was summoned to the court, but clearly fearing for his life, he asked for a safe conduct, which Charles V refused him, remarking that he was not accustomed to bargaining with his vassals.92 The prince, meanwhile, declared himself for France in letters which were intercepted by Toledo’s spies. He was immediately banished from Naples and all his property confiscated; the principality of Salerno was later sold to Niccolò Grimaldo, Genoese Duke of Eboli. The prince made his way to France, joining his secretary, Bernardo Tasso, who had gone on ahead to lobby King Henri II for support for an armed expedition against Naples, and this is what Brancaccio was referring to in his letter to Duke Ercole d’Este. Henri negotiated with the Turkish Sultan, Suleiman II, and in April 1552, the Turkish fleet arrived off the Neapolitan coast near Posilipo but failed to rendezvous with the 18 French ships laden with an army commanded by the Prince of Salerno. As it turned out, the failure of this attempt may, in fact, have been the result of jealous infighting among the fuorusciti themselves, a portent of problems ahead.93 In April 1553 Charles V invaded Picardy and Brancaccio relates in his Curriculum vitae that he fought in the whole of this campaign, including at the siege of Thérouanne on the Flanders, Hainault and Artois borders and at its capitulation in June, presumably taking part in razing the town to the ground.94 But the depressive tone of Brancaccio’s letter, probably written just before the start of the siege, reflected his increasingly precarious situation. Suspicion of his implication by association with people openly rebellious against Naples seems to have ruled out his return home; deprived of the protection of the viceroy Pedro de Toledo – ‘mio Signore’ – and his questionable status as a parole-breaker placed him at the mercy of the imperial authorities in the Low Countries. Brancaccio was in danger of becoming a pariah within the world in which he operated and of losing both his liberty and his very identity. He had had a lucky escape from death and then from Naples itself, but the experience of being condemned by the emperor placed him under an overriding obligation, literally to clear his name, as a ‘record’ for falling seriously foul of military discipline placed him beyond the bounds of noble society. Listing the various reasons which would disqualify a member of the nobility from invoking special privileges in respect of a duel, Girolamo Mutio specifies: ‘Moreover, such are to be denyed the fielde … we may also adde freebooters, and all such as for any military disorder are banished’.95 It is, thus, important to understand his motives and gli mali trattamenti, che gli parea d’aver ricevuti nella tepidezza mostrata contro li deliquenti, e per esser egli di natura impaziente e precipitoso, ed anco le tentazioni, che da questo e da quello aver potesse in questi suoi frangenti. S’intese tuttavolta, che se n’era andato in Venezia, dove da quella Repubblica, per esser egli molti anni prima stato fatto Gentiluomo dalla Calza, fu onorato molto; e gli fu anco dato licenza di tener uomini armati per sua difensione e sicurita’. 92 Williamson, Bernardo Tasso, p. 16. 93 Castaldo, Istoria, pp. 123–4. 94 Knecht, The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France, p. 268. 95 Girolamo, Mutio, Il duello del Mutio iustinopolitano con le risposte cavalleresche (Venice, 1571), trans. as Vincentio Saviolo, his Practise; in two books, the first intreating of

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actions in what followed in terms of a driving imperative to deal with the imputation of dishonour with which his ‘persona’ – and thus his entire existence – had been stained by the stigma of punishment, if not the crime itself. Brancaccio seems to have decided that his only course of action was to go to the top. But an appeal to the emperor, even if it had ever been theoretically possible, was now ruled out by events: Charles was sick and exhausted and in the process of preparing his abdication in favour of his son Philip and his brother Ferdinand. In summer 1554, Henri II reopened hostilities, partly as a counter to Charles V’s victory at Thérouanne in June the previous year, at which François de Montmorency, son of the Constable of France, had been taken prisoner, and partly in response to the impending marriage between Philip and Mary Tudor, in England. The marriage treaty specifically denied Philip the right to bring England into his father’s war with France, but, should he and Mary have children, the eldest son would inherit England, the Low Countries and Franche-Comté. Furthermore, in the event of Philip’s eldest son by his first marriage, Don Carlos, having no children, a son by Mary would also inherit Spain and her dependencies, a risk which Henri II saw as intolerable. In June 1554 three French armies entered the southern Low Countries, outmanoeuvring Charles’s forces.96 England Meanwhile, Brancaccio’s personal campaign to win a pardon and to get his sentence lifted came to a head. Around 15 June he appeared in Brussels before Charles V’s secretary in the Low Countries, none other than Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, who presumably saw the disputed parole document at this time, rebuffed Brancaccio in no uncertain terms and gave him three months in which to return to Naples and presumably to a harsher fate than before, now that his ‘patron’ Pedro de Toledo had died and been replaced by the Duke of Alba, who had been Brancaccio’s commander at the time of the murder and thus very unlikely to show him mercy now. Brancaccio agreed to abide by the ultimatum in a sworn statement, but made one final, desperate and madcap bid to appeal to another, higher, authority, as he explained in his memoir twenty years later: ‘In the guise of a loyal subject of the emperor, I travelled from Flanders to England to his Catholic Majesty, the Prince of Spain, to conduct certain important business of mine’.97 The fortuitous location of dynastic manoeuvring in Europe at that time presented Brancaccio with the idea of pursuing the vital business of restoring his reputation by carrying his petition to Charles’s son, Philip, who at that very moment was preparing to travel to England for his wedding to Mary Tudor. With seven or eight servants (a sign, incidentally, of his social standing, and presumably not armed members of his normal military entourage), among whom was probably Orlande de Lassus, Brancaccio embarked in Calais (still an English port), sailed across the Channel, and the use of the Rapier and Dagger; the second, of Honour and honorable Quarrels (London, 1595), sig. Cc. 32. 96 Knecht, The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France, pp. 268–9. 97 Curriculum vitae, fol. 132v.

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made his way to London, apparently with the intention of securing an audience with Philip or even of persuading Mary Tudor to intervene on his behalf. The details of Brancaccio’s adventure are recorded in despatches sent by Simon Renard, imperial ambassador in London, to the emperor in Brussels, but which were read and dealt with by Cardinal Granvelle, who was the responsible minister and who had negotiated the marriage contract between Philip and Mary. Renard, who played a powerful political role in London, was at that moment feverishly preoccupied with the last-minute preparations for Philip’s arrival in England. The forthcoming match had been bitterly opposed in England itself, and presented a serious provocation to France, which meant that there was a manic air of conspiracy at the court at that time. On 28 June, the French captured Mariembourg, renaming it ‘Henriembourg’, and little stood between them and Liège and Brussels. The French ambassador at Mary’s court, Antoine de Noailles, was reported to be backing a ‘great rebellion’ in England and an invasion of Scotland timed for early July, to coincide with the wedding.98 On 2 July Renard wrote to Charles in panic that the whole enterprise appeared to be falling apart at the seams: I heard this morning that the plague had broken out on board the ships from Seville and Portugal that are waiting to accompany His Highness [Philip], and that there were not sufficient supplies for the horses at Corunna: all of which is delaying His Highness’s coming. This is most unfortunate, for provisions are giving out here, the Queen is in despair, the disaffected are given time to intrigue, the Admiral of England’s gentlemen are mutinying, the soldiers on board Your Majesty’s ships refuse to serve any longer because of the dearness of food.99

Into all this walked Brancaccio, who had landed near Deal castle in Kent and made his way to the court, then at Farnham in Surrey: A Neapolitan gentleman named Julio Cesare Brancatiano [sic] has arrived by the post at this court and immediately claimed that he had come in order to present to the queen a page who plays the lute well and that Your Majesty had ordered him to return to Naples within four months.100

98 E.H. Harbison, Rival Ambassadors at the Court of Queen Mary (Princeton, 1940; repr. 1970), pp. 190–92. 99 Vienna HHS, E. 22: Simon Renard (Farnham) to Emperor Charles V (Brussels), 2 July 1554, fol. 1v. This and the following despatches are partially transcribed in M. Ch. Weiss (ed.), Papiers d’état du Cardinal de Granville d’après les manuscrits de la Bibliothèque de Besançon, vol. 4 (Paris, 1843), pp. 270–1, and partially translated in Royall Tyler (ed.), Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers Relating to the Negotiations between England and Spain Preserved in the Archives at Vienna, Simancas, Besançon and Brussels, vol. 12 (London, 1949), p. 300. 100 Ibid.: ‘Il y a icy arrivé ung gentilhomme néapolitain, nommé Julio César Brancatiano, qu’est arrivé par la poste en ceste court, et incontinant s’est déclairé estre venu pour présenter un paige à la royne que joue bien du leut, et que vostre majesté luy avoit commandé retourner à Naples dans quatre mois’. Henri Forneron, Histoire de Philippe II (Paris, 1881), vol. 1, pp. 40–1, quoted this as ‘Brancaccio … habile joueur de luth’, setting off a trail of misunderstandings (see below).

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That Brancaccio should be travelling with a lutenist, and that he should assume that through musical means he might gain a private audience with the queen, bears out previous and subsequent evidence for the way that he operated as a courtier. It is very possible that Brancaccio’s journey back to northern Europe from Naples would have taken him through Rome, and as we have seen, members of the Neapolitan exile community were there, including former friends from the Prince of Salerno’s circle. If the traditional version of subsequent events is to be believed, Brancaccio made contact at some point with Orlande de Lassus, whom he may have known since the latter entered Ferrante Gonzaga’s service in 1544 (see above), or later in Naples, or indeed, now in Rome.101 Lassus left Rome for the Low Countries sometime in June 1554, apparently to visit his sick and dying parents. Perhaps he and Brancaccio met fortuitously in Flanders or maybe there was a concrete plan.102 Dinko Fabris, 101 Lassus spent a period of time in Naples in the household of Giovanni Battista d’Azzia, Marchese della Terza, who was a member of the Accademia dei Sereni (see Chapter 4). He then moved to Rome in late 1551 and lived in the household of Antonio Altoviti, Archbishop of Florence, and was known to be working ‘freelance’ at least at Easter 1553 and to have become maestro di cappella at S. Giovanni Laterano on 31 March 1553 as successor to Paolo Animuccia; Leuchtmann, Orlando di Lasso, vol. 1, p. 89; James Haar, ‘Lassus, Orlande de’, New Grove II, vol. 14, pp. 295; Cardamone, ‘Orlando di Lasso and Pro-French Factions’, p. 25. 102 In his exhaustive treatment of the sources of this episode in Lassus’s life, Leuchtmann, Orlando di Lasso, vol. 1, pp. 92–4 (of which the following note represents a digest) makes the point that all references to the journey ‘home’ to visit his sick parents and also to the journey to England originate with Samuel Quickelberg; ‘Orlandus de Lassus Musicus’, in Heinrich Pantaleon, Prosopographiae heroum atque illustrium virorum totius Germaniae, pars tertia (3 vols, Basel, 1566), vol. 3, p. 541: ‘Unde postea peracto biennio, cum ob morbos parentum in patriam revocaretur, eos autem serius adventans mortuos reperiret, cum nobile viro Iulio Caesare Brancaccio Musices cultore, primum in Angliam, demum in Galliam, eius quoque videndi gratia, profectus est, tantem inde reversus Antuerpiae mansit duobus annis’. This article was translated into German in Heinrich Pantaleon, Der dritte und letzte Theil teutscher Nation warhafften Helden … Erstlich ... zu Latein zusammen gezogen ... Jetztmalen aber von dem ersten Authore selbs verteutschet (Basel, 1578), fols. 507r–508r: ‘Wie er zwey jar da verhartet und durch seine krancke elteren wider heim berueffet hat er sich auff die reiß begeben und seind diese gestorben ehe dann er heim kommen. Damalen ist er mit Herr Julio Cesare Brancaccio einem fürnemmen Musico erstlich in Engelland demnach in Franckreich gefaren damit er die land besichtiget’. [He suffered for two years, being called home because of his ailing parents. He set off on the journey [but] they died before he arrived home. Then he travelled with Herr Julio Cesare Brancaccio, a nobleman musician, first to England and then to France so that he saw the country]. This version of the episode was taken up by Franciscus Sweertius, Athenae Belgicae sive Nomenclator. Germaniae scriptorum, qui disciplinas philologicas, philosophicas, theologicas, juridicas, medicas, et musicas illustrarunt ... (Antwerp, 1628), in Leuchtman, Orlando di Lasso, vol. 1, p. 93: ‘Cum nobili viro Caesare Brancacccio Neapol. Anglicam & Galliam lustravit, adamatus honoratusque’. The story became further embellished in François Vinchant, Annales de la province et comté du Hainault (1628–35), ed. P.A. Ruteau (10 vols, Mons, 1848–52), vol. 5, p. 233: ‘Puis en companie de César Brancacius [sic]; gentilhomme de Naples, fit le voyage de France en Angleterre, avec grand honeur et amour qu’il receut de tant des grands que petits’ [Then in the company of César Brancacius, Neapolitan gentleman, he travelled from France to England

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apparently picking up Forneron’s faulty quotation, and then misreading Croce, has proposed that the lute-playing page was Luigi Dentice. Donna Cardamone, who has constructed an intriguing explanation for Brancaccio and Lassus’s trip to England, proposes that the page was Luigi’s son, Fabrizio; but surely the simplest explanation is that the page was Lassus himself.103 The name of the composer has focused attention on these events almost ever since they occurred and has encouraged unbridled speculation as well as palpable fantasy that has at times contributed to Brancaccio’s reputation as a romantic and quixotic character.104 [where] he was received with great honour and love by people of all ranks]. Isaac Bullart, Academie des sciences et des arts, contenant les vies, & les éloges historiques des hommes illustres (Brussels, 1682), p. 174 n., rewrites the story of Lassus’s position in Rome: ‘Mais s’estant lié d’interests avec Cesar Brancaccio; noble Neapolitain, & grand Amateur des Arts, il meprisa cette condition pour aller avec son amy en France, & en Angleterre, faire avoüer à ces Nations industrieuses qu’elles n’avoient rien d’approchant, ny de comparables à son harmonie. Ainsi receut-il partout des grands honneurs’ [But sharing the interests of César Brancaccio [sic], noble Neapolitan and great lover of the arts, he turned down this offer [i.e., the position at S. Giovanni Laterano] in order to go with his friend to France and England in order to prove to these industrious nations that they had nothing remotely comparable to his harmony]. This is clearly a fantasy, considering that Lassus already held the position before the events described. Leuchtmann also gives a digest of the various embellishments of the Brancaccio connection with Lassus in recent literature; his own conclusions now need considerable modification in the light of the new evidence. 103 Fabris, ‘Vita e opere di Fabrizio Dentice’: 64; Donna Cardamone’s suggestion is in ‘Orlando di Lasso and Pro-French Factions’, pp. 42–3. She also discusses interesting links between Granvelle and Lassus, noting that the latter’s First Book of Motets was dedicated to the future cardinal in 1556, addressing him as ‘mio unico patrone e benefattore [my sole patron and benefactor]’, and that he sent more pieces to Granvelle from Munich in 1558 and 1559. She posits an as yet unsubstantiated idea that Lassus was a spy sent by Granvelle to keep track of Brancaccio. Coeurdevey, Roland de Lassus, p. 54, rejects the possibility that Lassus was the ‘paige’ on grounds of his being too old (a view shared by both Horst Leuchtmann and Donna Cardamone). However, Coeurdevey somewhat spoils her case by inserting the word ‘jeune’, where the original document does not use this adjective (see above). For what it is worth, the definition of ‘paige’ given in Jean Nicot, Thrésor de la langue françoyse, tant ancienne que moderne (Paris, 1606), p. 452 is: ‘Page, ou serviteur allant apres son seigneur [Page, or servant following his master]’ (i.e., no mention of age). Lassus would have been about 23 or 24 years old at this time. 104 Most inventive, perhaps, is the novella by the musicologist H.J. Moser entitled Cesare Brancaccio: Groteske, originally written in 1919 and published in his Sinfonische Suite in fünf Novellen (Regensburg, 1926). In the story (written in a pastiche of the style of Lassus’s letters to Duke Albrecht V), Brancaccio meets the young Orlando in Rome and in a garden on the Palatine hills persuades him to join his enterprise to seduce Mary Tudor. The queen falls in love instead with the young, handsome and talented Lassus (naturally!); Moser was not, however, the inventor of this interpretation: it was first propounded (with no explanation) by the eminent Lassus scholar Adolf Sandberger, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Bayerischen Hofkappelle unter Orlando di Lasso (3 vols, Leipzig, 1894), vol. 1, p. 99; Sandberger also calls Brancaccio ‘Cesare’ and credits him with being a lute and spinet virtuoso. Despite all the possible ways in which Brancaccio and Lassus could have met (and the connections through Ferrante Gonzaga and the Accademia dei Sereni, of which Lassus’s patron, the Marchese

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Brancaccio told Simon Renard that he had been commanded to return to Naples within four months, but that he would rather die than go back, complaining that the emperor’s minister (in other words, Granvelle) would not help him. Renard said that Brancaccio wanted an audience with the queen in the hope of getting the command to return to Naples revoked. In the next sentence we finally get the confirmation of Brancaccio’s alignment with the opposition at home. Renard reported that he had warned the queen to deny an audience to Brancaccio and was organizing to have him arrested by the Council: Hearing this, I insisted to the said lady that she should not give him an audience, and also made representations to the council so that he should not be tolerated in this realm; that it was to be feared that he came only in order to perpetrate some outrage against the person of the queen, and that he had been ‘turned’ by the French; that since he had been banished from Naples, it was not suitable to receive him here; [and] asking that he should be arrested until such time as I had word from your majesty to know what it pleased you to be done with him, for several [people] had told me that he spoke bizarrely of the government of Naples and in terms of tyranny, which could damage and prejudice [our] affairs there.105

The last thing Renard wanted at this very delicate moment was for the already reluctant English nobility to get any negative ideas from the Neapolitan resistance about their new masters, even before the marriage had taken place. He had every reason to suspect that Brancaccio’s arrival was connected with French plans to scupper the marriage and with the fact that they currently held the upper hand in the Low Countries, and he acted quickly:

della Terza, was a member, remain perhaps the two strongest), the facts remain unproven. As Adolf Sandberger concluded in a lecture given in 1924, Orlando di Lasso und die geistigen Strömmungen seiner Zeit (Munich, 1926), p. 19: ‘Die sehr wahrscheinlich zwischenliegende abenteuerliche Reise nach England und Frankreich mit Giulio Cesare Brancaccio ist immer noch nicht voll beglaubigt. [The adventurous trip to England and France with Giulio Cesare Brancaccio, although very likely, is still not completely proven]’. The suggestion that Lassus’s motet ‘Te spectant Reginalde’ (RISM 15564), which praises Cardinal Pole’s persecution of English Protestants, could be evidence of his having met the cardinal in England, is related in James Erb, Orlando di Lasso: A Guide to Research (New York and London, 1990), p. 5, but is contradicted by Franz Haberl, in the introduction to his edition of the work in Orlando di Lasso: Sämtliche Werke, ed. Franz Xaver Haberl and Adolf Sandberger (Leipzig, 1894–1927, repr. 1973), vol. 39, p. 3, who argues that Lassus could have met Cardinal Pole when the latter was either in, or on his way to, Rome. 105 Vienna HHS, E. 22, fols 1v–2: ‘quoy entendant, je procura devers ladicte dame, pour non lui donner audience, et aussy devers le conseil afin que l’on ne le souffrît en ce Royaulme qu’il faisoit à craindre qui ne vint pour faire faire quelque outraige à la personne de la royne, et qui fût aposté par les François, que puis qu’il estoit renvoyé à Naples. Il ne convenoit le recepter par deçà; faisant instance qui fût arresté jusques à ce que j’eusse advis de vostre majesté pour sçavoir ce qui plaira l’on en faît. Car aulcungs m’ont dit qui parloit estrangement du gouvernement de Naples et par termes de tirannie, qui pourroit nuire et préjudicier ès [sic] affaires de par deçà’.

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At which [Renard’s appeal] the Council had him arrested and ordered that he should leave the realm within six days. Nevertheless he gave me the attached request and said that he did not wish to go and would rather we put him in prison; then said to the chancellor that he had lost his baggage, which is untrue and made up, and he brought seven or eight servants with him; at which I replied that even if it were at my own expense I would have him conducted to Gravelines [on the Flanders coast].106

Perhaps to increase the pressure on the emperor to get something done, Renard also passed on a report about Brancaccio’s attempts to gain access to the privy chamber of the queen: A friend of mine informed me that the said Brancatio had said that Ascanio Cafarello had advised him to address himself to a chambermaid of the queen named la Barbe, from Amiens, who plays the spinet, in order to give him access to the said lady, which makes people here suspect that he has some project [i.e., he has something up his sleeve], especially since the said Barbe is under suspicion for other reasons. I will await the wishes of Your Majesty so that I can act accordingly.107

The following day (3 July), Renard was getting anxious, increasing pressure on the emperor (in effect, Granvelle), to give orders for Brancaccio’s extradition, suspecting that some members of the Council might have their own reasons for holding on to him. Renard also included Brancaccio’s own written petition: 3 July: I forgot recently to attach to the last letters I sent to your majesty, Brancazo’s request, which I now do; and he does not want to clear out, even though he has been commanded to do so, which makes me think that certain other members of the Council prefer that he stay. If it pleases Your Majesty that I repeat the order, I will send him away from here; certainly, he is an extremely determined man and a troublemaker.108 106 Ibid., fol. 2: ‘Surquoy le conseil l’a faict arrester, et puis ordonner que dans six jours il se parte du Royaulme et nonobstant ce il m’a donné la requeste cy joincte, et dit que ne s’en vouloit aller, plustôt que l’on le mist en prison; puis a dit au chancellier qu’il avoit gecté son argent en la mer, et qu’il avoit poursuy par les dicts Francois en son paissage de calaix et avoit perdu son bagaige, qu’est chose faulce et inventée, et a amené sept ou huitz serviteurs avec luy; sur quoy j’ay faict recharge que plustôt à mes fraiz je le ferois conduyre à Gravelinghe’. 107 Ibid., fol. 2: ‘Ung mien amy m’a dict que ledict Brancatio avoit dict que Ascanio Cafarello luy avoit conseillé s’adresser à une femme de la chambre de la Royne ?d’Amiens [transcribed as ‘de Bruges’ in Weiss, Papiers d’état du Cardinal de Granville, p. 270; unclear in original], nommé la Barbe, qui joue de l’espinette, pour luy donner accès et entrée devers ladicte dame, qu’a mis en suspition ceulx de par deçà qu’il y ait quelque entreprinse, pour aultant que ladicte Barbe est suspecte par aultre occasion: j’attendray l’intention de vostre majesté pour selon icelle me régler’. Ascanio Cafarello (surprisingly rendered as ‘Asimo Nighanelli’ by Tyler) has not been identified; ‘la Barbe’ could be either Barbara Hawke, who was a gentlewoman who had been in Mary’s service for many years, or Barbara Rice, a more lowly chambermaid; both remained in Mary’s household until the end of the reign. For this information, and help in trying to find traces of Brancaccio’s visit, arrest and deportation in English court records (sadly, so far fruitless), I am most grateful to David Loades (private communication). 108 Weiss, Papiers d’état du Cardinal de Granville, p. 271 [original document not found]: ‘Je oblia dernièrement joindre aux dernières lettres de vostre majesté la requeste de Brancazo,

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Croce and Coldagelli both appear to have missed two further despatches from Renard to the emperor, one of them Brancaccio’s actual petition to Renard complaining of the latter’s having maligned his honour. The petition, which was possibly sent from Southampton as he awaited deportation, begins by acknowledging his undertaking to return to Naples, justifies his mission to London and goes on to attack Renard for having distrusted him and accused him of being a French spy and thus impugning his loyalty to Spain: I have sworn to the Provost of Catalonia in Brussels to present myself in Naples within three months; and it was seventeen days ago that I gave this oath and left straight away. I have come here to implore the prince, our Lord [i.e., Philip], and the queen to intercede with his Majesty [Charles] to absolve me from my oath, all the more because I feel I have a sore grievance against his Majesty on account of this ordering me to Naples … So I came here to present to the queen certain things that would have given her the greatest pleasure … I expected to receive compensation for my losses and some recognition of thirteen years’ service [sic],109 two arquebus wounds, the expenditure of 20,000 crowns and the destruction of what riddled and mortgaged property as I had left and instead I find myself betrayed and assassinated, and you, evilly informed about me [by Granvelle?], writing to the emperor things as far from the truth as were ever spoken in the world.110

The vehemence of Brancaccio’s denial of being a traitor to the emperor (as opposed to Naples) is telling. As he rightly says, if it should get back to Charles that he, Brancaccio, had refused the order to return to Naples, then ‘I know that my everlasting destruction will be the result’. The references to ‘destruction’ and ‘assassination’ underline the fact that his good name and reputation, already seriously tarnished, were essentially the same as his ‘life’, and both now hung by threads. With a smouldering self-righteous indignation whose rhetoric will be echoed in similar words spoken to Alfonso II d’Este almost 30 years later, he delivers a curse on Renard worthy of the Camorra: Remember that you are a gentleman, a Christian and a great minister of his Majesty, wherefore you ought not unjustly to oppress other oppressed gentlemen. No wonder if you do not yet know me well, for, God be praised, his Majesty has so many states and realms ce que je faict présentement; et ne veult déloger, encoires que luy soit esté commandé; que faict croire que aulcungs du conseil partiaulx le retiennent. Si plaist à vostre majesté que je le répète, je le renvoieray par delà; et certes c’est ung homme fort déterminé et scandaleux’. 109 This figure does not agree with the Curriculum vitae. 110 Vienna HHS, E. 22, fol. 6: ‘Io ho dar il giuramento al Provoste di Catalogna in Bruselles di presentarli in Napoli fra tre mesi, hoggi son xvii dì ch’io il donai, e partì subito, sono venuto qui a far le mie forze per mezzo del principe Nostro Signore e dela Reggina, che su Maestà mi faccia la gratia del tutto, tanto più quanto mi sento esser molto aggravato da sua Maiestà circa questo mandarmi a Napoli ... E venendo qui a presentare alla Reggina alcune cose io che ella haria hauto molto gran piacere ... pensando esser ristorato de li danni presenti, e passati, e che li miei servitii di tredici anni continui con due arcabusate, e XX Mille scuti spesi, e quel poco che m’è restato, tutto impegnato, è mezzo distrutto, fusse in parte ricognosciuto, m’ho ritrovato in scanbio [sic] di questo tradito et assassinato, e Vostra Signoria per sinistra informatione haver scritto al imperatore cose tanto fuora della verità quanto mai altra se habbia detta nel mondo’.

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that we, his servants, can hardly know the provinces’, let alone each others’ names. But when you do know me, you will repent of having been moved to blacken me so furiously in his Majesty’s eyes and ruin me for all time; and if you do not now send him a fresh and truthful report about me, the time will come when you will wish to remedy it, and will not be able to do so … Know, moreover, that my name is Giulio Cesare Brancazzo, and nothing else, a name to which no man alive ever heard me fail to answer; for on the contrary I wish it to be known to all men, even as my virtuous actions shine forth before all the world.111

It was presumably to Renard that he referred in the Curriculm vitae nearly twenty years later, when he said he had been ‘maliciously maligned by some official, no friend of mine [malignati a torto d’alcun ministro mio poco amico]’. He protested loudly in the petition that he was no traitor, continuing ‘and indeed I will almost venture to say that I am as good an imperialist as God himself [e quasi quasi dirò che non meno imperial di core sono io, che Iddio santo e giusto]’. What grounds, then, would we have to doubt Brancaccio? We can surely discount the Romantic suggestion by the French historian Forneron that Brancaccio’s intention had been to woo the queen himself, and thus prevent the royal marriage!112 Likewise, other conspiracy theories which place Brancaccio in England as an agent of one or other political faction, as Renard himself implied, must remain as such until further evidence turns up to support them.113 Renard surely had good reason to want to be rid of a loose-cannon Neapolitan minor aristocrat arriving apparently from French territory at the most delicate moment of the marriage negotiations, and it must have been with a certain amount of relief tinged with doubt that he reported on 9 July: Brancazzo left this place at midnight to go to Southampton in defiance of the Council’s orders, for he had been told to leave the kingdom within four [sic] days. So the Council have now had him arrested at Southampton and are sending him to Gravelines [the first port within imperial territory] in the custody of two archers. I am writing to M. de Vandeville [the governor of Gravelines] to admonish him to go to Naples and obey your Majesty’s commands.114 111 Ibid.: ‘Hor Vostra Signoria consideri che è Cavaliero e cristiano e tanto gran ministro del’imperatore, e non devria opprimese li cavalierij oppressi così a torto, e se non me cognosce ancor bene, non è meraviglia, poi che per gratia di dio sua Maiestà tiene tanti regni e stati, che a pena ci sappiamo cognoscere per le provincie, non solo per i nomi. Pero quando sapria di me, harà pentimento d’havessi mosso con tanta furia a dar tali travisi a sua Maiestà di me, e rovinarmi perpetuamente, talche se non li da haviso di nuovo e verdatero Vostro Signore vorra poi darci remedio e non potrà … e sappia ch’io mi domando Julio Cesare Brancazzo, e non altramente, ne mai negai il mio nome a persona di questa vita, anzi ho piacere che sia noto a tutto il mondo sì come ne fo le mie forze che per la via della virtù sia palese ad ogn’ uno’. 112 Forneron, Histoire, vol. 1, pp. 40–1. 113 Cardamone, ‘Orlando di Lasso and Pro-French Factions in Rome’. 114 Vienna HHS, E. 22, Simon Renard (Farnham) to Emperor Charles V (Brussels), 9 July 1554, fol. 12: ‘Brancatio s’estoit party d’icy a la minuyct pour aller au [Sout]hampton, et desobeyr au conseil, qui luy avoit ordonné se retirer hors du Royaulme d’Angleterre dans quatre jours, et pour ce le conseil l’a fait prandre autour [Sout]hampton et fait conduire à Gravelinghe par deux archers et j’ay escript à Monsieur de Vandeville qui le veille admonester d’aller a Napolies at satisfer l’ordonnance de Vostre Majesté’.

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And in a final despatch on the subject, Renard shows that he had no reason to alter his suspicions. It must refer to sometime in late July or early August: ‘Tuygnam [Twickenham] 3. Sept. 1554: … Brancaccio landed at Calais and pretended to start for Gravelines, but ?continued to Boulogne.’115 Even in hindsight, Brancaccio seemed a little surprised by his actions, imputing them to an impetuous temperament similar to that which Castaldo had recognized in the Prince of Salerno: the thwarting of his plans in England by Renard ‘put me in such desperation, coupled with burning and youthful impatience [la ardente et giovenile impatienza] and without regard for that which I would lose by such a decision, I went from England to France’.116 Brancaccio realized that he had exhausted all avenues of appeal and that he essentially had no future in the imperial world other than imminent arrest, deportation, ignominy, imprisonment and probable execution. It was under these conditions that he took the rash decision to defect to France. Even though Cardinal Granvelle was to say in 1573 that Brancaccio had ‘without any reason whatsoever of any kind that until now I have heard that he has given, [gone] from England to France and served the French against the late Emperor’, the fact is that Brancaccio surely had little choice in his course of action.117 His honour and reputation as a subject of the emperor were by this time essentially ruined, which was tantamount to annihilation within the imperial chivalric world. Among those things he lost by burning his bridges, quite apart from his property and reputation in Naples, were, of course, access to his wife Beatrice and his daughter. Thus, as he arrived in Calais, the English enclave on the French mainland from where he was supposed to make his way into imperial territory at Gravelines a few miles along the coast, he took his chance. The political geography of this small but key corner of Europe presented him with the opportunity of slipping over to Boulogne, and thus into French territory. Here, far from throwing himself into the jaws of the enemy, he had a well-established network of old friends and contacts. In fact, Brancaccio walked directly into the perfect opportunity to ‘reinvent himself’ in French service, doing what he knew best: fighting. But his treachery was not forgotten: not only did Granvelle recall all the details nearly twenty years later, but when Brancaccio arrived in Turin in 1571, the Spanish ambassador, Francesco da Vargas, recognized him immediately, reporting to Philip II: ‘Julio Cessar Brancacio [sic] has arrived here, who went from Brussels to serve the French, when Your Majesty was in England’.118 In October of the same year, the Spanish ambassador in Venice, Guzmán da Silva, reported that Brancaccio had arrived in that city and was 115 Vienna HHS, E. 22, Simon Renard (Twickenham) to Emperor Charles V (Brussels), 3 September 1554, fol. 43v: ‘Brancazo estant desembarqué à Calaix fit semblant d’aller à Gravelinghe et se ?suivre a Bologne’. 116 Brancaccio, Curriculum vitae, fol. 132v. 117 Simancas AG, Legajo E 1063-12, Letter from Cardinal Granvelle (Naples) to Philip II (Valladolid), 26 June 1573: ‘Y sin causa ninguna ny color que hasta aquí yo haya entendido que haya dado se passó de Inglaterra a Francia y sirvío a franceses contra el Emperador que sea en gloria’ (see also Chapter 3). 118 Simancas AG, Venecia, Legajo E 1230-86, Francesco de Vargas (Turin) to Philip II (Spain), 2 June 1571: ‘aquí a llegado Julio Céssar Brancacio napolítano, que se fue desde Bruselas estando Vuestra Magestad en Inglater[r]a a servicio de françesses’.

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already suspected of being a French spy. He wrote to Philip: ‘Well do I believe that Your Majesty remembers the Neapolitan Julio Cesare Brancaccio who, Your Majesty being in Naples [sic], went over to France’.119 Brancaccio’s treachery dogged him for the rest of his life, and the Spanish authorities neither forgave him nor fully trusted him again.

119 Simancas AG, Venecia, Legajo E 1329-111, Guzmán da Silva (Venice) to Philip II (Spain), 26 October 1571: ‘Bien creo, que se acordava Vuestra Magestad de Julio Cesaro Brancache Napolitano, que estando Vuestra Magestad en Nápoles se pasó a Francia’.

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Chapter Two

Sieur Jule Brancasse, gentilhomme ordinaire de la Chambre du Roy A fresh beginning I went from England to France, where, as soon as I arrived, I found myself at the siege and battle of Renty with King Henri II (of immortal memory) in person, in whose service I remained honourably settled.1

Even Brancaccio seems to have been surprised by the speed with which he not only changed sides but almost immediately found himself fighting with the French royal army at a major battle. It is testimony to the reputation and skills as a captain which he brought with him, together with some useful contacts, most important of whom were fellow Neapolitan exiles (fuorusciti) such as the Prince of Salerno, whose ranks he now rejoined. The campaign against Charles V’s forces was currently going at full throttle and in favour of the French. On 12 July, just as Brancaccio was on his way to France, Henri II captured Bouvignes, and the garrison of 800 Spanish soldiers was massacred. The French army advanced towards Brussels, and on 10 August they attacked the fort at Renty in the hope of drawing Charles into the open.2 Three days later the main battle was fought and it was here that Brancaccio managed to gain some sort of commission. The fight was fierce, and very nearly a disaster for the French, who were caught out by the Spanish cavalry, but managed to snatch victory out of the chaos at the end of the day. Brancaccio could hardly have been more timely or in a better position to make his mark: as he was later to remark, from his first day in France, his fortunes took a phenomenal turn for the better. At Renty, Brancaccio would have been in the presence not only of King Henri II himself, but also of representatives of the two powerful and principal rival factions of the kingdom, that of the Constable of France, Anne Montmorency, on one hand and, on the other, the clan of the house of Lorraine: François, Duke of Guise with two of his brothers, Louis Cardinal of Guise, and Charles, now Cardinal of Lorraine,

1 Brancaccio, Curriculum vitae, fol. 132v: ‘passai da Inghilterra in Francia, dove subito in arrivare mi trovai all’assedio, et fatto d’arme di Renty con la persona del Re Henrico II d’immortal memoria, nel cui servizio restai illustremente accommodato’. 2 Ferdinand Lot, Recherches sur les effectifs des armées françaises des guerres d’Italie et les guerres de religion 1494–1562 (Paris, 1962), pp. 145–7; Knecht, The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France, p. 269.

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following the recent death of his uncle.3 Brancaccio was to become a close client and lieutenant of François and it may have been at Renty that he first caught the Guises’ eye, if he was not already known through the Cardinal of Lorraine’s extensive links with Neapolitan fuorusciti circles in Rome. In fact, Brancaccio joined what was already a well-established Italian grouping, reflecting Henri II’s range of interests and ambitions south of the Alps: indeed, Italians from various states and factions played a significant role in French military and cultural life throughout the midcentury.4 Brancaccio was not only to become a leading member of the Neapolitan group, but also to remain relatively successful long after the influence of many of his compatriots had waned with the onset of the civil wars in the 1560s. Probably the senior Italian at Renty was the veteran Tuscan general Piero Strozzi, recently returned from his ignominious loss of Siena. Henri’s wife, Catherine de’ Medici, had avidly encouraged Tuscan fuorusciti in France in their ambitions to break the power of the ruling branch of her family. When the citizens of Siena rose against the occupying Spanish garrison in July 1552, Henri II declared himself as the city’s defender and appointed Ippolito d’Este as governor. But Cosimo de’ Medici, who feared (rightly) that the disaffected Tuscan clients of Catherine would want to use the city as a base for an attack on Florence, appealed to Charles V to help expel the French. In early January 1553, Don Pedro de Toledo, Viceroy of Naples, laid siege to Siena but had to retreat when the Turks attacked southern Italy. Henri then appointed Piero Strozzi as commander in Italy; he arrived in Siena in January 1554 and began seriously to menace Florence. On 17 April 1554, however, the city fell to the Spanish and Strozzi returned to France. From this point on, the ascendancy of exiled Florentines and their champions at the French court, Montmorency and Catherine de’ Medici, began to wane in favour of the Neapolitans and their respective patrons, the Guise.5 The decision to withdraw from the battle at Renty, after a very lucky win over the Spanish but without having dislodged Charles V from his stronghold, and the king’s subsequent decision to call off the campaign altogether, was regarded by many as a sign of Constable Montmorency’s unsuitability to lead the army, and chief amongst his critics were the Guise, who were engaged in manoeuvring against him for control of the military and political strategy of the kingdom. It was a power struggle which would shape the history of France for the next twenty years, and for the succeeding four years at least, until the death of Henri temporarily curtailed their influence, François, Duke of Guise, and his astute brother the Cardinal of Lorraine were on a rising wave of power that was intimately linked to Italian, especially Neapolitan, ambitions: Brancaccio had arrived in France at a moment ripe with opportunities. Also serving with the French forces was another Italian who was to play a decisive part in Brancaccio’s life, the young Alfonso d’Este, future Duke of Ferrara. Alfonso had escaped the stifling clutches of his father’s court two years previously, and pretending to go hunting, had ridden all the way to France with a few retainers. 3 L. Cimber and F. Danjou (eds), ‘Histoire particulière de la court du Roy Henri II’, in Archives curieuses de l’histoire de France, 30 vols, ser. 1, vol. 3 (Paris, 1833), p. 294. 4 The principal study remains Picot, Les français italianisants; see also Jean-François Dubost, La France italienne XVIe–XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1997). 5 Knecht, The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France, pp. 269–70.

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He presented himself to Henri ‘by whom he was received most courteously, and straightaway honoured with a company of 100 men and a grant of 12,000 scudi, so that he was able to take part in the campaign currently being conducted in that country’.6 Alfonso was brother-in-law to François, Duke of Guise, through the latter’s marriage to his sister Anna d’Este, and he had served under Guise’s successful command at the siege of Metz in 1552–3 (when Brancaccio had been on the opposing side). In 1554 François had tried (unsuccessfully) to arrange a marriage between Alfonso and Claude de France, daughter of Henri II and Catherine de’ Medici. Alfonso maintained very close relations with France and although he returned home shortly after Renty, he was back in 1556, this time with his father’s blessing, and went on to serve in the Italian campaign in 1556–7 (see below). Alfonso’s uncle, Francesco d’Este, with whom Brancaccio had already had more than ten years of contact, also renounced his allegiance to the emperor in 1554 and came over to serve Henri II, who appointed him governor of Siena in succession to Strozzi.7 As we have seen, Brancaccio already regarded himself as a client of the Este family, and this connection must have been an important one to him now; it may even be that his arrival and quick success were also linked in some way to Francesco’s help. Francesco’s other brother, Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, was already a long-standing favourite of Henri II and he and his nephew, Luigi, who would also later be made a cardinal, were both great Francophiles and official protectors of French interests in Rome; Luigi, as we will see, later became one of Brancaccio’s principal patrons. There are no records of Brancaccio’s precise activities during the next twelve months. He must have been actively establishing himself within the military and sociopolitical structures of the royal court and also, most likely, within other intersecting spheres of opportunity. In June 1555, he sat down to write to Duke Ercole d’Este II in order to bring him up to date with all that had happened in the intervening year. Passing quickly over the reasons which had driven him to defection, which ‘may not be lightly talked about’, he thanks God, whom he believes so offended by what had happened in the preceding years, that he chose to reward Brancaccio, who is ‘truly blessed with the fortune which [he] has been able to receive from His hands’. Brancaccio then moves on to King Henri II: From the first day that I arrived from England and [he] placed me before Renty, the king has never ceased to show me infinite grace, as much as I have known to ask for; and finally, on Easter day, he made me gentleman of his chamber … for which I will never cease to thank God for having led me to that which I have so much desired.8 6 Orazio Della Rena, ‘Relazione dello stato di Ferrara’ (1589), ed. Angelo Solerti, in Ferrara e la corte estense nella seconda metà del secolo XVI (Città di Castello, 1900), p. ccxviii: ‘dal quale fu ricevuto molto cortesemente, et subito onorato di una compagnia di 100 huomini d’arme e di 12,000 scudi di provvigione, accioché potesse seguitarlo nell’imprese di guerra che si facevano ancora nel paese’. 7 Bertoni, ‘Francesco d’Este’, p. 347. 8 Modena AS, Archivio segreto, Particolari, Busta 227, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Fontainebleau) to Ercole II d’Este (Ferrara), 10 June 1555: ‘dal primo dì ch’io venendo d’Ingliterra li comparse innanzi sopra Rentin, mai è stato satio di farmi gratie infinite, quante ne l’habbia saputo domandare et ultimamente il primo dì di pasca di resurettione mi fe

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It was a position which Brancaccio was to continue to hold under Henri’s two successors, François II and Charles IX.9 The duties of gentilhomme ordinaire de la chambre du roy involved close attendance on the king himself, and might include anything from administering to his dress and toilet at the daily levée du roi and waiting on him at table, to presence at important festivities and public occasions.10 Brancaccio’s status at this time is supported by remarks made over twenty-five years later by Alfonso d’Este (by then, duke), who recalled that Brancaccio ‘was a cameriere of the French king and in that court he was held in great esteem’.11 The prestige of such an appointment was undisputed but the pay and conditions relatively modest. Many nobles were attracted to the court because of the possibilities it afforded of making connections and picking up more lucrative offices and dispensations.12 Nevertheless, free room and board at court (wherever it happened to be located) was presumably not an insignificant matter, especially for someone in Brancaccio’s position, with no estates or family roots of his own in France. As for his military career, this was soon under the care of his new patron, François, Duke of Guise, who arranged for Brancaccio to be given a captain’s commission by the king to fight under Marshal Brissac in Piedmont, his old stamping ground.13 The first definite record of further military action is Brancaccio’s time in Piedmont as part of the reinforcements sent by Henri in the late summer of 1555 to help lift the siege of Santia by his former Spanish commander, the Duke of Alba. The French force arrived too late to relieve the besieged, but under the command of Claude Lorraine, Duke of Aumale (and uncle of the Guise brothers), the French commander Marshal Brissac used this force instead successfully to besiege Volpiano in the mountains north of Turin, which fell on 24 September 1555, and then Moncalvo, which fell on 7 October.14 The previous day, Brancaccio, who was with the Duke in Moncalvo, had written to François, Duke of Guise (in Italian, implying that he was not yet confident in French) asking him to intervene to clear up details of a payment of 600 scudi (or écus) due to him from the royal treasury (Appendix 2, Doc. 4). The money had been granted by the king at Guise’s request, over and above Brancaccio’s wages (gaggi), in order to allow him to go to Piedmont to fight, and this reveals something of the process by which such military commissions were obtained and gentilhomme della sua Camera ... sempre dando gratie a Nostro Signore d’havermi condotto a quel ch’io tanto desiderava’. 9 Brancaccio is among about sixteen Italians who were listed as Gentilhommes de la chambre du roy during the reign of Charles IX: Dubost, La France italienne, pp. 434–42. 10 Jean-François Solnon, La cour de France (Paris, 1987), pp. 138–9. 11 Florence AS, Archivio Mediceo del Principe, filza 2900, Horatio Urbani (Ferrara) to Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici (Florence), 13 February 1581, in Elio Durante and Anna Martellotti, Cronistoria del concerto delle dame principalissime di Margherita Gonzaga d’Este (Florence, 1982, rev. 1989), pp. 140–1: ‘è stato cameriere de’l Re Arigo [Henri II] et ella stessa haverlo conosciuto in quella corte in molta stima’. 12 Mack P. Holt, ‘Patterns of Clientèle and Economic Opportunity at Court during the Wars of Religion: The Household of François Duke of Anjou’, French Historical Studies, 13 (1984): 307–8. 13 Brancaccio, Curriculum vitae, fol. 133r. 14 Knecht, The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France, pp. 270–1.

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paid for. Brancaccio refers to Guise as ‘my second patrone, without whose grace I would not be able to live in this world’. Brancaccio was also anxious that his distance from court should not rule him out of the chance of getting a commission in any forthcoming campaign against Naples and he explains in the letter that he has asked his fellow Neapolitan, Vespasiano Macedonio [or Mancino], to speak to Guise on his behalf.15 The possibility of such a campaign, with François, Duke of Guise at its head, had only just been revived at court, as we will see, but rumours of it had clearly already reached the Piedmont front. Italian expedition The Guise’s interests in Italy and all things Italian was manifest in a number of ways, not least their bloodline to the Angevins through René II, son of Ferré II and Yolande d’Anjou, who took on the ducal crown of Lorraine in 1473. René II inherited a traditional claim to the thrones of Naples, Sicily and Jerusalem. Succeeding generations of Guise sustained these royal pretensions through dynastic marriages with royal families, so that in the current generation, François had married Anna d’Este, daughter of Ercole II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, and Renée de France, daughter of Louis XII, and his sister Mary married James V of Scotland, and their daughter would become Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland and France after her marriage to King François II. Duke François and his brother Charles also tried to arrange a marriage between their brother, the Duke of Aumale, and Vittoria Farnese in 1538.16 Meanwhile, Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine was Henri II’s principal link to the Holy See in Rome and a seriously committed Italophile. Renowned for his great wealth, his patronage of Italian artists, musicians, architects and as a collector of antiquities, he was also a fiendishly astute diplomat. In 1547 the Neapolitan rebellion afforded the cardinal (who had petitioned Pope Paul III, unsuccessfully, to be allowed to call himself Cardinal d’Anjou) the opportunity to pursue the idea of a grand alliance that would put a French king on the throne of Naples. Although the cardinal acted principally as representative of the Valois, there were of course strong suggestions that the Lorraine–Angevin interest played the more significant role in his plans, and many contemporaries as well as later historians believed that Charles was engaged in some kind of conspiracy to secure Naples for his brother.17 He cultivated Neapolitan 15 Vespasiano, from a prominent Neapolitan family, was a close comrade-in-arms and probably a member of Brancaccio’s famiglia: he would be next to him at the siege of Calais in 1558 (see below) and may have been among the eight servants who went with him to England. He is also very likely the same person as the ‘Vespasiano Mancino’ who was the recipient of Brancaccio’s letter of 3 August 1583, nearly 30 years later (Appendix 2, Doc. 17). Here, Brancaccio addresses him as ‘Illustre signor mio osservandissimo’, implying fairly equal status, and the contents of the letter, which deals with domestic matters, suggests that the two may have shared an apartment in the castle in Ferrara (see Chapter 8). 16 Jean-Pierre Babelon, ‘Conférence inaugurale du colloque’, in Le mécénat et l’influence des Guises: Actes du colloque … 1994, ed. Yvonne Bellenger (Paris, 1997), pp. 13, 15–16. 17 Lucien Romier, Les origines politiques des guerres de religion: Henri II et l’Italie (1547–1555) (2 vols, Paris, 1913), vol. 2, pp. 111–16 constitutes the strongest concentration

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fuorusciti in Rome while in 1552, the pope himself encouraged Henri II to put together a league with the Venetians, and even the Turks (for naval help), offering 12–15,000 troops of his own, to conquer Naples. As it happened, the French fleet was not ready in time, and, as we have seen, the planned rendezvous with the Turkish fleet failed, so the opportunity was lost. Although Charles continued to cultivate the fuorusciti and also the Farnese, this idea finally collapsed with the death of Paul III.18 Everything changed, however, with the election of a Neapolitan as Pope Paul IV on 23 May 1555. According to Romier, ‘The Neapolitan fuorusciti saw in the coronation of Giovanni Pietro Carafa, the head of one of their country’s great families, an opponent of Spanish domination: this gave them a reason to entertain some hope’.19 Paul IV was strongly opposed to the Spanish and demanded the See of Naples for his nephew, Carlo Carafa (a former soldier), and Piacenza for his nephew, the Duke of Camerino. When Philip II refused, the pope reacted by excommunicating Charles V and his son and also the powerful Colonna family in Rome, who were supporters of Spain; he also seized the Colonna’s property. The French were delighted – they were currently stalled in peace negotiations with the emperor – and Henri II took the opportunity on 1 October 1555 to send the Cardinal of Lorraine to Rome to negotiate a treaty with the pope, which was concluded on 15 December, also binding Duke Ercole II d’Este into the plans. Under the terms of the treaty, the French would aid the pope to drive the Spanish from Italy and hand him Siena. In return, Henri II would secure the throne of Naples for one son and the Duchy of Milan for another; if one or other were too young to rule, then someone (widely assumed to be François, Duke of Guise) would rule in his absence.20 The cardinal set off home to report to his masters in France, and the pope decided to send the leading member of the Neapolitan fuorusciti in Rome, Giambernardo di San Severino, Duke of Somma and kinsman of the Prince of Salerno, to press the case further at the French court.21 Naturally, there were obstacles, among which was the position favoured by Constable Montmorency, who tended towards peace (and against Guise ambitions in general), and Henri’s own need to conclude a cessation of hostilities on the eastern frontier of France. Henri was also in severe financial difficulties so that, despite the successes of Marshal Brissac in Piedmont and the abdication of Charles V in late 1555 in favour of the untested Philip II, he could not press home his advantages. of evidence arguing this position. The attribution of such motives to the Guise, who were for a very long time portrayed in the French historical narrative as essentially self-seeking and power-hungry (because of their perceived aggressive role in the civil wars and especially the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre) has more recently been contradicted by Richard Cooper: ‘Le rêve italien des premiers Guises’, in Le mécénat et l’influence des Guises: Actes du colloque … 1994, ed. Yvonne Bellenger (Paris, 1997), pp. 137–8. 18 Frederick Baumgartner, Henry II, King of France, 1547–1559 (Durham and London, 1988), p. 171; Cooper, ‘Le rêve italien des premiers Guises’, pp. 126–32. 19 Romier, Les origines politiques, vol. 2, p. 7: ‘Les fuorusciti napolitans voyaient couronner en Giovanni Pietro Carafa le chef d’une grande famille de leur patrie, rebelle à la domination espagnole: ce leur fut une raison de nourrir quelque espoir’. 20 Knecht, The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France, p. 272. 21 Romier, Les origines politiques, vol. 2, p. 47.

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On 5 February 1556 he concluded a five-year truce with Philip at Vaucelles, which was a triumph for Montmorency (among other things, it meant the return of his son, taken prisoner two years before) and seemed to stymie Guise ambitions in Italy. The truce was also made despite the strongest efforts of the Duke of Somma to press the Neapolitan case, which had gone on for almost a year; he returned empty-handed to Rome. In early April the pope sent his nephew, now Cardinal Carafa, as envoy to France; he arrived in Fontainebleau on 16 June and was received the following day by the king. The lobbying by the Neapolitans at court intensified, and a contemporary chronicle indicates that Brancaccio was among the most influential: Cardinal Carafa arrived in France [and met] the king; he persuaded him with many arguments to enter into league with the pope against [Philip II] and to undertake a campaign against Naples, depicting it as very easy and making many offers to him [of assistance]; and to these offers from the cardinal were likewise joined the support of some Neapolitan fuorusciti who were at that court: that is, the Prince of Salerno, the Duke of Somma, the Duke of Atri, Amerigo Sanseverino, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio and others, all of whom promised great things to that great king.22

In fact, the initiative was soon overtaken by events. On 1 September, Philip II launched a pre-emptive strike in southern Italy. The Duke of Alba, now Viceroy of Naples, entered the Papal States with 12,000 infantry, occupied the Colonna territories and moved to cut off Ostia and directly to threaten Rome. Cardinal Carafa rushed back from France to help protect Rome, together with veteran warriors such as Piero Strozzi, Blaise de Monluc and Paolo Giordano Orsini (whose will Brancaccio was to witness in 1584). Paul IV also sent a new nuncio to the French court to plead the case for a major French involvment in rescuing the Holy City, which still remembered the horrors of the 1527 sack by imperial troops.23 The nuncio was Cesare Brancaccio, whose precise relationship to Giulio Cesare is still not clear (he is described as a ‘cousin’ in 1561, but this may be only a loose reference to kinship; see below), but who had very direct links to the fuorusciti at the French court. His direct role in the rebellion of 1547 (see above, Chapter 1) and then his subsequent position as the Prince of Salerno’s agent in Rome, where he had acted together with Bernardo Tasso as coordinator of the failed naval alliance 22 Pandolfo Collenuccio, Mambrin Roseo and Tomaso Costo, Compendio, dell’istorie del Regno di Napoli (Venice, 1591, repr. 4 vols, Naples, 1771), vol. 3, p. 119, quoted in Croce, Un capitano, pp. 64–5: ‘giunto al Cardinale Carafa in Francia al Re, lo persuase con molte ragioni ad entrar in lega col Papa contro il Cattolico ed a far l’impresa di Napoli, dipingendogliela per molto facile e facendogli per essa di molte offerte; e a quel del Cardinale aggiungevansi i conforti altresi di alcuni fuorusciti napoletani, ch’erano in quella corte, cioè il principe di Salerno, il duca di Somma, il duca d’Atri, Amerigo Sanseverino, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio ed altri, che tutti promettevano a quel gran re gran cose’. This passage owes much to an exhaustive account of the campaign told from the Spanish point of view and published at its conclusion: Alessandro Andrea, Della guerra di campagnia di Roma et del regno di Napoli nel pontificato di Paolo IIII l’anno MDLVI. et LVII (Venice, 1560) which includes (p. 44) the above list of ‘fuorusciti Napolitani’ at Henri II’s court, but with the inclusion of one significant extra name: Luigi Dentice. 23 Romier, Les origines politiques, vol. 2, pp. 95–6, 100.

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with the Turks in the summer of 1552, made him an obvious link between papal and fuorusciti interests in France. Cesare Brancaccio arrived in Paris on 20 October and immediately set about persuading Henri to commit himself to an expedition, and to the formation of a League with Ferrara, the papacy and even the Turks, against Spain.24 By 5 November he was able to report to Carafa that ‘the king came back to me to repeat what he has always said to me, that he is losing no time to make all the necessary arrangements, and that within four days he could send Marshal Brissac to Piedmont, and within a few days, the Duke of Guise’.25 On 14 November, François, Duke of Guise, was created ‘Lieutenant Général du Roi en Italie’ and was joined by 200 noblemen, including his brothers the Duke of Aumale and the Marquis of Elbeuf, the Duke of Savoy-Nemours, Alfonso d’Este and ‘captains and a mass of officers of the royal army [des capitaines et une foule d’officiers de l’armée royale]’ amongst whom were Giulio Cesare Brancaccio and the Prince of Salerno. The commands of the army were divided amongst the principal Italian and French leaders, including Duke Ercole d’Este II as Captain-General of the League; Brancaccio was presumably among the 50 lances of the Prince of Salerno. A contemporary listing of the army concludes with the note that there were: five hundred men at arms, divided into seven companies: that is, his own [i.e., the Duke of Guise] of one hundred lances; those of my lords the princes of Ferrara, and of the duke of Nemours, of fifty; of the duke of Aumale, one hundred; of the prince of Salerno, fifty; and those of my lords Montmorency and Tavannes of fifty each. In addition to this, a fair number of lords, gentlemen of the chamber and other members of the nobility, who had flocked to the expedition, as much in the hope of obtaining and learning something (since the Frenchman is naturally curious), as because M. de Guise is marvellously loved and followed by all the nobility.26

Robert Knecht concisely sums up the potential of the force which was being assembled: ‘Clear-sighted observers understood that Henri II had not raised a crack army simply to rescue the pope. Ever since 1555, the Cardinal of Lorraine’s secret diplomacy had been paving the way for the conquest of Naples’.27 Comparisons

24 Andrea, Della guerra di campagna di Roma, p. 45. 25 Zapperi, ‘Cesare Brancaccio’, pp. 770–1: ‘il re mi tornò a replicare quel che sempre mi ha detto, che non si perde hora di tempo a fare tutte le provisioni necessarie, et che fra quattro giorni manderebbe in Piemonte il marescial Brissac, et fra pochi dì il duca di Guisa’. 26 Joseph François Michaud and Jean Joseph François Poujoulat (eds), Mémoiresjournaux de François de Lorraine duc d’Aumale et de Guise, in Mémoires pour l’histoire de France depuis le XIIIe siècle jusqu’à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, ser. 1, vol. 6 (Paris, 1836), p. 323: ‘cinq cents hommes d’armes, soubz sept compagnies: c’est à sçauvoir, la sienne de cent lances; celles des messieurs les princes de Ferrare, des duc de Nemours, de cinquante; duc d’Aumale, de cent, et prince de Sallerne, cinquante; celles de messieurs de Montmorency et de Thavanne chacun de cinquante. Et oultre ce, ung bon nombre de seigneurs, gentilz hommes de la chambre et aultres de la noblesse, qui estoient accourus au voyage, tant pour l’espérance d’y avoir et apprendre quelque chose, comme le François est naturellement curieux, que pour estre, monsieur de Guyse, merveilleusement aimé et suivi de toute la noblesse’. 27 Knecht, The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France, p. 273.

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with the successful French invasion of Italy and capture of Naples by Charles VIII in 1494–5 must surely have been made. The plan of campaign was to take a land army through the Po valley and into the Papal States, the so-called Via Emilia, which depended on passage through the Duchy of Parma, currently under French protection. But in summer 1556, Parma’s ruler, Ottavio Farnese, effected another change of allegiance and passed over to the support of the Spanish, and Henri then decided that this ‘treachery’ must be punished: Guise’s army should join up with Marshal Brissac’s troops from Piedmont, conquer Parma and then, together with forces paid for and provided by Ercole II d’Este, invade the Kingdom of Naples via the Marches and Abbruzzi. The outcome of these highly ambitious plans is well known. François, Duke of Guise’s army, which was made up of high-quality, relatively lightly armed troops, left Turin on 9 January 1557 and between 17 and 20 January they successfully besieged Valenza, which Brancaccio records in the Curriculum vitae. A surviving account of the siege written to glorify Guise for the restraint which he showed in his treatment of the inhabitants of the town gives a variety of insights into the way that such siege actions (which formed far and away the bulk of the military engagements during Brancaccio’s career) were normally conducted. The writer notes that on this occasion, the duke himself took the prime position by being the one to enter the breach and that the churches and convents were left untouched, but that the rest of the town was sacked and pillaged. The population were given safe conduct to return to their houses, the victorious soldiers being restrained, on pain of death, from ‘molesting’ them. The Spanish garrison fled under the force of the bombardment of the fortress and Guise kept their flag, which he sent to the king to show that he ‘loved more the honour of these flags than the spoil of their baggage and arms if he had the choice’.28 Reading behind this sanitized and obsequious narrative, the implication is that perhaps all those things which were in this case avoided normally formed the aftermath of sieging, and that the motivation for presenting such an example of restraint and clemency to the world was a demonstration of ‘honour’, rather than morality.29 The French and their allies liberated large swathes of the Duchy of Milan from the Spanish, but to no lasting effect, because they could not occupy the territory.30 Guise pushed on to Ferrara to meet with Ercole II d’Este, and here Brancaccio presumably had the opportunity to renew his fealty in person. The French complained bitterly of the meanness with which they were accommodated and about the meagre supplies provided for their troops. Ercole wanted to declare war on Parma, but Carafa was against it; Guise had designs on Florence, but Cosimo de’ Medici averted the threat. Then Ercole d’Este refused to provide the agreed funds and the pope would not give 28 François, Duke of Guise, Mémoires-journaux, p. 260: ‘ayant mieulx aimé l’honneur des dites enseignes que la dépouille de leurs bagues et armes dont il avoit le choix’. 29 This is explored in more depth in Chapter 7. 30 Brancaccio, Curriculum vitae, fol. 133r: ‘et lasciando in libertà quasi terre infinite di quello stato che di mano in mano si venivano a rendere per non havese i debiti presidij’ [and liberating an almost infinite amount of land in that state, which bit by bit they had to give up, thanks to a shortage of garrisons].

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Guise access to the port of Civitavecchia to enable him to be resupplied from France. Furthermore, there was behind-the-scenes dealing between Carafa and the Spanish, after which the pope failed, against all expectations, to appoint more than two French cardinals, which would critically affect whatever happened at the conclave to decide the papal succession, expected before long, given Paul IV’s failing health. Thus the alliance of different interests and goals began to unravel and the Neapolitan fuorusciti led by the Duke of Somma were becoming anxious and dangerous. They had already been organizing for an uprising in Naples to coincide with the now seriously delayed invasion: if this plot were now to be uncovered by the viceroy, the element of surprise would be lost. Guise put together a plan of action designed to confuse the Spanish as to his intentions and set off to rejoin the army. Giulio Cesare Brancaccio clearly had an important headquarters role and was left in Rome, coordinating intelligence reports and issuing orders to various units of the allied forces, which were strung out along a wide front in the Duchy of Urbino and into the Marches, enduring endless torrential rain. A brief and business-like note written by Brancaccio to Guise survives.31 Eventually, Guise was left with no alternative but to prepare to face the army of the Duke of Alba, who had been receiving reinforcements by sea from Spain. The French army camped outside the fortress of Civitella, perched on a high rock in extremely difficult and mountainous terrain in the Abruzzo, on the border with Naples, and on 20 April the siege commenced. The place was not even strategically important, but Guise wanted to keep his troops busy whilst waiting for Ercole II d’Este to provide the funds he was committed by treaty to supplying. The force began to disintegrate with mass desertions and fraying tempers. Towards the end of May, Henri II ordered Guise to abandon the campaign against Naples, and to move to Tuscany; the dreams and hopes of a glorious return to Naples were essentially over. Brancaccio recalled baldly: ‘the war being ended after we had long bombarded, but not captured, Civitella in the Kingdom [of Naples]’.32 Ironically, nine months

31 Paris BN, fonds français 20536, fol. 39r: Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Rome) to François, Duke of Guise, 12 April 1557: ‘Illustrissimo, et eccellentissimo Signore. Questa matina son venuti gl’avisi ch’io aspettava de le forze d’inimici secondo dissi a vostra eccellenza ch’io fatto haveva, et domani li manderò particularmente scritti per monsieur de Vinoult, non sarei da tardarsi punto, ma pur veggio qui poco principio de le cose che s’hanno a fare per marciare dove si deve, io non so che mi far, ne che mi dire, se non raccomandarmi a dio, et alla buona gratia di Vostra Eccellenza, la cui Illustrissima persona [illegible] et prosperi Nostro Signore come desidera, da Roma il xii d’aprile Lvij’ [Most illustrious and most excellent Lord, This morning the reports of the enemy forces arrived as I expected and as I had told Your Excellency I had ordered. Tomorrow I will send you written details by M. de Vinoult. I will not delay for a moment now, but only give here a small outline of the things that have to be done in order for them to happen as they must. I do not know what I should do or say, other than to submit myself to God and to the good grace of Your Excellency, whose illustrious person prosper as God wishes. Rome, 12 April 1557]. 32 Brancaccio, Curriculum vita: ‘la qual guerra essendo finita dopo haver noi lungamente battuta, et non presa Civitella nel Regno’. Andrea, Della guerra di campagna di Roma, gives a detailed account of the campaign; for the siege of Civitella, see especially pp. 86–96.

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later, the Venetian ambassador to the imperial court reported the Duke of Alba as saying that, had he chosen to, Guise could have succeeded: The Duke of Alba marvels that last year [Venice] was nearly deceived by the French because, if [things] had gone a bit quicker, they would have taken the whole kingdom of Naples without difficulty, as there were neither money, nor men, nor forts nor any provisions [with which] to be able to defend it.33

Henri II turned his hopes to Florence and Parma, but before anything could be undertaken, Philip II launched an invasion of northern France, led by Duke Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy. On 10 August a huge French army under Constable Montmorency was crushed at the battle of St-Quentin; both Montmorency and Admiral Coligny were captured and the estimated 5,200 French dead included leading nobles such as the Duke d’Enghien. Nothing stood between Paris and the Spanish, save for the fact that they, too, were short of money and could not press home their advantage. In the meantime, though, the situation appeared desperate and Henri realized he would have to recall the Duke of Guise from Italy in great haste.34 On 11 August he sent Scipione Piovene, an attendant of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, to the duke and also to de Termes, commander in Piedmont, with orders for both to return immediately with their troops. He also sent fourteen galleys to rendezvous with Guise’s forces at Civitavecchia. Piovene found Guise on 23 August at Spoleto and the duke, sick with influenza, was carried in a litter back to Rome. He arrived in the city with 500 cavalieri on 31 August and moved into Cardinal Ippolito d’Este’s residence at Montecavallo, attended by Brancaccio, among other officers. The majority of the captains and nobles made their way to Civitavecchia to await the ships, but Brancaccio must have remained with Guise, who negotiated with the pope over the disbanding of the army, sending just the principal gentlemen and the arquebusiers by ship and the rest by land. While the pope drew out the process, Cardinal Carafa was already in secret peace negotiations with the Duke of Alba.35 Guise’s patience ran out, and on 9 September he despatched Brancaccio back to Paris to bring notice that he was on his way. Giacomo Soranzo, the Venetian ambassador in France, was briefed on the situation and reported home on 21 September: After thanking the king for these communications, I said it was understood that the pope had made terms and his Majesty replied, ‘Last night Signor Giulio Brancatio arrived,

33 Michel Suriano (Brussels) to the Venetian Senate, 25 March 1558, in Romier, Les origines politiques, vol. 2, pp. 169–70 n.: ‘il signor duca d’Alba si maraviglia che l’anno passato Vostra Serenità si lasciasse quasi ingannare da’ Francesi perché, se era un poco più presti, prendevano tutto il regno di Napoli senza difficultà, perchè non vi era nè danari, nè gente, nè fortezze, nè niuna provisione da poterlo difender’. 34 Henry Kamen, Philip of Spain (New Haven and London, 1997), pp. 67–70; Knecht, The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France, pp. 273–4. 35 Romier, Les origines politiques, vol. 2, pp. 183–5.

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Brancaccio had clearly come via Ferrara: a letter sent to Duke Ercole d’Este II from Paris on 25 September (he says he had arrived eight days previously) says that he delivered greetings and letters to Henri on Ercole’s behalf. Brancaccio’s letter continues with information about the state of negotiations between the pope and the Imperial forces, about troops which the Duke of Guise has left in Italy for the defence of Tuscany, and generally passes on reassurances in the light of the sudden departure of Guise from Italy. Clearly, at this point, Brancaccio was acting in a senior military liaison role.37 Brancaccio’s position of trust, his role as a senior right-hand man to the Duke of Guise and to the Duke of Ferrara as their messenger to the king, confirms his place in the leading elite. His success as a soldier and the recognition of it was further hugely enhanced by the prominent active role he played in François, Duke of Guise’s siege and conquest of Calais in January 1558. The details of this campaign, and Brancaccio’s part in it, are related and analysed in detail in Chapter 7, which deals with the processes by which such honour and reputation were accrued and could be utilized. In brief, the capture of Calais by the Duke of Guise not only restored French self-confidence following the humiliation of St-Quentin, but also cemented the Guise’s dominant position as principal powers in the realm next to the king. Already in November 1557, Cardinal Louis had become a member of the Privy Council; François, Grand Prior and youngest of the Lorraine brothers, was made General of the Galleys and the king promised the governorship of Piedmont to the Duke of Aumale.38 Brancaccio presumably rose with them, and it is likely that he was among the party of the major nobility which accompanied Henri II on his triumphant visit to Calais on 17 January 1558, in the capture of which he had played so signal a role. The Italians as a group received a boost to their otherwise waning influence: Piero Strozzi, for example, who had also distinguished himself in the siege, was given a reward of 30,000 livres plus the ransom paid for the Governor of Guines and was himself made a member of the Privy Council, an extraordinary honour for a foreigner. He planned to retire and, among other things, to translate the works of Caesar, but he was killed at the siege of Thionville on 20 June 1558, an action at which Brancaccio was also present.39 Similarly, Prince Alfonso d’Este was in close attendance on the king, witnessing the presentation to his sister, Anne

36 Rawdon Brown (ed.), Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs Existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice and other Libraries of Northern Italy (1556–1557), vol. 6 (London, 1881), p. 1322, Giacomo Soranzo, Venetian Ambassador (Paris) to the Doge and Senate (Venice), 21 September 1557. 37 Modena AS, Archivio segreto, Particolari, Busta 227, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Paris) to Duke Ercole II d’Este (Ferrara), 25 September 1557. 38 Romier, Les origines politiques, vol. 2, p. 220. 39 Brancaccio calls it ‘Jeonville’ in the Curriculum vitae, perhaps confusing it with Joinville, the Guise family seat.

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d’Este, of a pearl collar worth 50 ducats, as a token of his gratitude and recognition of her husband, François, Duke of Guise.40 But the Guise were also bitterly resented for their increasingly strong grip on power, especially by Catherine de’ Medici and those who wanted peace with Spain, who looked to the imprisoned Constable Montmorency as the more likely bringer of stability to France. By October there was active diplomatic progress towards such a truce, which included Montmorency being paroled so as to be able to act as gobetween. Henri II and the Constable finally met on 10 October in the camp at Amiens, where Brancaccio was also stationed among a company of 100 men commanded by the Prince of Salerno.41 Formal treaty negotiations were opened and the landmark Peace of CateauCambrésis was finally concluded on 3–4 April 1559. It effectively brought to a close sixty years of almost continuous war between France and the Habsburgs and had deep and lasting consequences for the nobility of Europe and especially in France, where almost overnight, the single most important motivation for the continuation of the chivalric system – war – no longer existed as a permanent background to the lives of an entire class. Many saw the treaty as a humiliation for France. The hardwon territories where soldiers like Brancaccio and Blaise de Monluc had fought and suffered for two decades were now handed back: Piedmont, Savoy and Bresse to Emanuele Filiberto, Duke of Savoy; many fortresses in Burgundy and Lombardy to the Spanish; and Calais promised to the English. Most bitter for the fuorusciti, Spain’s rights to Milan and Naples were formally and finally recognized. It must have seemed to the Italians that their influence and importance to France was at an end. Many of them were left high and dry and they eventually made their way home. Others, including the Neapolitans who had irrevocably cut their ties with their home country, suddenly found themselves an unwanted irritation. In the camp at Amiens, there was an incident in which two of the Prince of Salerno’s soldiers were accused of murder (echoes of the hot-blooded Brancaccio at Halle?) and when they were refused protection from arrest by the camp provost, the prince apparently exploded, screaming that he wanted to be respected ‘comme un roi’, and that the king would stand by him. Henri, infuriated, sent word that if the two were not immediately given up, he would send 2,000 soldiers ‘to cut into pieces these 100 gentlemen and anyone else who would like to defend them’.42 The Abbé de Brantôme, in his Grands capitaines étrangers, includes a touching picture of the fate of the once grand Neapolitan noble fuorusciti, which, despite its typical mixture of fact and fiction, nevertheless relates the common perception: They would have left their countries and homes and come [only] to die of hunger in France, in the way I saw the Princes of Salerno, the Dukes of Somma, of Atria, the Count of Gaiazzo, Sir Julio Brancazzo and an infinity of others, who (as I live) I saw at our court

40 Romier, Les origines politiques, vol. 2, pp. 218–19. 41 Brancaccio, Curriculum vitae, fol. 133r. 42 Romier, Les origines politiques, vol. 2, p. 288: ‘pour mettre en pièces ses cent gentilshommes et tout autre qui voudrait prendre sa défense’.

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arousing more pity than envy, nearly dying of hunger, as died thus the Prince of Salerno, who left nothing to pay for his burial.43

In early 1559, Henri II was mortally wounded in a tournament and his slow and painful death brought the era of Italian fortunes in France to a decided close. In October, Alfonso d’Este, who was a participant at the fateful tournament and who had married Lucrezia, daughter of Cosimo de’ Medici, in June 1558, became Duke of Ferrara on the death of his father Ercole. A duel of words Those Italians who remained and continued to hang around the court, deprived of opportunities to exercise their calling to organized violence on the battlefield, fell back on fighting amongst themselves, playing out their social codes through stylized rituals, most notably duels. In this light it is fascinating to have the insight into the world of the Italian military nobles at the French court at this moment afforded by the Giustificationi et cartelli passati tra’ gli illustri Signori, il Signor Giulio Brancaccio, & il Signor Conte Giulio Estense Tassone [Justifications and Challenges which Passed between the Illustrious Gentlemen, Signor Giulio Brancaccio and the Signor Count Giulio Estense Tassone], published in mid-1559, recording a series of events that occurred in the court at St-Germain towards the end of 1558 (bibliographical information in Appendix 1). The Giustificationi et cartelli is interesting for the light it throws on the different ways in which cavalieri understood the operations of their coded world, and also on Brancaccio’s own personal conception of the role of both spoken and written language (as opposed to action) in the construction of cavaliero identity. The work opens with an explanation from Count Giulio Estense Tassone (a Ferrarese courtier who was at the French court as part of the group around Alfonso d’Este) of the pamphlet’s origins and the reason for its publication. He says that according to the ‘prescribed usage’ amongst courtiers, in the event of a quarrel and a challenge, the plaintiff and the accused always explain to the cavaliero community at large the nature of the dispute. Since an armed settlement of the dispute has not happened (for which he blames Brancaccio), Tassone has decided to undertake this ‘explanation’ in the form of a publication of cartelli and testimonii (the challenge, rebuttal and counter-challenge, witness statements and so on) so that the process of 43 Pierre de Bourdeille, Abbé de Brantôme, Grands capitaines étrangers, in Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2, ed. Ludovic Lalanne (Paris 1866), p. 235: ‘Ilz eussent quitté leur pays et leurs maisons, et s’en fussent venus mourir de faim en France, ainsy que j’ay veu les princes de Salerne, les ducs de Somme, d’Atrie, le comte de Gaiazze, le seigneur Julio Brancazzo et une infinité d’autres, que j’ay veus à nostre cour faisans à tout le monde plus pitié que d’envie, et qui mouroient quasi de faim, comme mourut ainsi le prince de Salerne, qui mourut ne laissant aprés soy pour se faire enterrer, comme je vis’. Castaldo, Istoria, p. 135, tells the story that Catherine de’ Medici had offered a bride to the Prince of Salerno after the death of his wife, Isabella Villamarino di Cardona, in Naples, but that he had preferred to convert to Protestantism and marry a Huguenot of no great status in Avignon, where he died in obscurity.

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apportioning and regulating honour through reputation can still be achieved, ‘in that it gives to me the honour which I merit and to him that which is fitting [per che si dia a me l’honore ch’io merito, & a lui quel che gli conviene]’. The literary nature of the exercise is further enriched by the fact that the original cause of the quarrel related to a dispute about words spoken or not spoken, and to the way that they can be manipulated to create misunderstanding. The stilted rhetoric of the written style lends the progress of the quarrel not only a legalistic feel, which one might expect, but also conveys its formalized, ritual nature, which to some extent at least must reflect the stylized quality of cavaliero discourse in general. The subject of duels between noblemen and the protocols to be observed in their conduct, including the complex process of written exchange that they entailed, is a vast one that generated its own literature in the sixteenth century. One of the principal works on the subject, widely disseminated in the period, is Girolamo Mutio’s Il duello … con le risposte cavalleresche, first published in 1564 and subsequently reprinted many times. The second volume of the book, ‘Le risposte [Responses]’, consists of transcriptions of complete examples of such exchanges of cartelli, the protagonists of several of which are prominent European warrior-courtiers, such as the Marquess of Vasto and Cornelio Bentivoglio, people with whom Brancaccio was well acquainted. There are so many close similarities of form and language between these examples and Brancaccio and Tassone’s Giustificationi that it is clear that such publications were to a great extent formulaic.44 The Giustificationi proceeds with lengthy statements from each of the protagonists criticizing the behaviour of the other and ‘justifying’ their own positions, followed by transcriptions of the cartelli and witness statements themselves, so that they form the script of an unfolding drama, whose pace was originally regulated by the time it took for letters to pass back and forth between France and Italy. The first cartello is the statement of the grievance (the mentito, or ‘lie’) and the challenge, which, as Tassone has said, is written in order that the community can see what is at stake. Tassone’s first document is dated 17 December 1558, in Monte Argì: Signor Giulio Cesare Brancaccio, it being come to my ears that you had said that I had behaved ungentlemanly or unchivalrously in favour of Messer Lucio Agnesi, I say to you that you have lied and that you [still] lie. And when you find yourself at liberty, having satisfied honourably all the disputes that you have, and you make it known to me, as is done among honourable cavalieri, you will be able to understand with effect how I will be quick to do that which is fitting for a gentleman of honour; and while you organize yourself to accomplish what you are obliged to do, I make it known to you that I have

44 The fullest recent survey of the literature and language of duelling in sixteenth-century Italy is Francesco Erspamer, La biblioteca di don Ferrante: Duello e onore nella cultura Cinquecento (Rome, 1982); see also Frederick Robertson Bryson, The Point of Honour in 16th-Century Italy: An Aspect of the Life of the Gentleman (New York, 1935). For France, see François Billacois, Le duel dans la société française des XVIème–XVIIème siècles: Essai de psychosociologie historique (Paris, 1986), trans. Trista Selous as The Duel: Its Rise in Early Modern France (New Haven, 1990).

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Warrior, Courtier, Singer gone to Italy and to Ferrara to deal with various personal matters, where at all times you can have news of me. In proof of which, I have signed the above with my own hand.45

Thus Tassone invites Brancaccio with exaggerated formality to contemplate the charge and all the other quarrels he has and then to consider ‘that which is fitting to a gentleman of honour’, which fairly clearly implies a call to fight. He also appears to suggest that Brancaccio will be prepared to travel to Ferrara to undertake the duel (cognisant of the fact that duels were banned in France). Then follows Brancaccio’s first refutation and counter-challenge, made on 12 March of the following year, in which he repeats his mentito, before responding to the invitation to fight by offering the excuse that, as Tassone well knows, he has currently lost the use of his left arm: Signor Conte Julio Tassone, some days ago I was given a letter of yours in Paris containing a written paper and signed with your hand and without other witnesses, dated in Mont Argì on 17 December, in which it says that it being come to your ears that I said that you had behaved ungentlemanly or unchivalrously in favour of M. Lucio Agnesi, that I have lied and I lie. To which I respond and say, I did not say that and rather say that it is you who have lied and lie by saying that I have said those words. As for the other disputes that you say I have, I reply to you that I have none that I know of, but if you specify the disputes and what they are and let me know, I will respond to you as is fitting to a cavalier of honour. Then about your going to Italy concerning your business (as you say in your challenge), when it is to be understood that I wished to fight you to the death in a fencing duel: [considering] my not being able to use my left arm at the moment, as you well know, I do not know what you mean by it, considering yourself to be such an honourable and valiant cavaliero as those among whom you count yourself to be; and God protect you from harm.46

45 Giustificationi et cartelli passati tra gli illustri signori, il signor Giulio Brancaccio, & il signor Conte Giulio Estense Tassone (Blois, 1559), sig. Bii: ‘Signor Giulio Cesare Brancaccio, essendomi pervenuto all’orrecchio che voi havete detto ch’io ho fatto ufficio di mal Gentil’huomo o da mal Cavaliere in favorire Messer Lucio Agnesi, vi dico che havete mentito & mentete; Et quando vi trovete libero della persona vostra, havendo sodisfatto honoratamente alle querele che havete, & me lo farete intendere, come si ricerca tra Cavalieri honorati, potrete dellà hora conoscere con effetto quanto sarò io presto a fare quel che si conviene a un Gentil’huomo da honore; & mentre che farete voi intorno a complire quello a che sete tenuto, vi faccio sapere che per alcun miei particolari me ne vado sino in Italia & a Ferrara, ove tutto il giorno potrete havere novella di me. In fede di che ho signata la presente di mia propria mano’. 46 Ibid.: ‘Signor Conte Iulio Tassone, mi fu data dì passati una vostra lettera in Parisi con un Cartello dentro scritto & suscritto di vostra mano, & senza altri testimoni, con la data in Montargì delli XVII Decembre: nel qual dite, ch’essendovi pervenuto all’orecchie ch’io detto che voi havete fatto ufficio di mal Gentil’huomo, ò di mal Cavaliere in favorir M. Lucio Agnesi, ch’io ho mentito & mento: Al che rispondo, & dico, non haver io ciò detto, anzi havete voi mentito, & mentite ch’io habbia quelle parole dette. Quanto all’altre querele che dite ch’io ho, vi rispondo ch’io non ne ho nissuna ch’io sappia, ma se voi specificherete che querele, & quali elle siano, & me lo farete intendere, vi rispondere come si conviene a Cavalier d’honore: Però quello andarvene in Italia (come dite nel vostro Cartello) per i vostri negotij, quando s’intese ch’io desiderava ammazarmi con voi con una spada in camiscia [literally ‘with a sword in my shirt’, apparently an expression to denote a fencing duel], non potendo servirmi

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Written and published language is here a substitute for the normal currency of interchange between cavalieri – spoken words and actions – and this perhaps explains the rather tortuous formulation of Brancaccio’s reply and also his statement that what is written is to signify something that he is actually saying: ‘… your letter … in which you say, that it being come to your ears that I said that you had behaved …; that I have lied and [still] lie; to which I reply, and say, that I did not say that and thus you have lied and lie [when you say] that I said those words …’, and so on. Thus, the entire quarrel hinges on what was or was not said, not even directly between the two protagonists, but, rather, something which Brancaccio was apparently overheard to say and which was then reported to Tassone and then witnessed by various courtiers, each of whom relates what he heard from second or even third persons, and whose versions of what was said are then systematically refuted by Brancaccio. We witness here the power of words themselves passing around between courtiers, and the importance of rumour, report, reputation and honour in the definition of individual identity, as it is constructed within the social group, even when members of the group find themselves scattered so far apart that it takes literally months between the successive stages of their ‘conversation’.47 Tassone recognizes both the force of words and their power to poison the purity of the code of the cavalieri: Chivalric justice does not consider the pedantic details, turns, twists and anatomizing interpretations of words: it is concerned with the whole character of the cavalier, and he who makes his judgment according to it, abhors and eschews one who with ill intentions wishes to offend others even though his words appeared good, and call him a slanderer and unworthy of his profession.48

In fact, these opening statements adhere so closely to the detailed advice given by Girolamo Mutio in Il duello that it is hard not to conclude that the writers may have been consulting it as their textbook. Mutio, advising on how to produce effective cartelli, says that they must be written with ‘the utmost brevity possible in order to convey the [nature of the] quarrel with certain, suitable and simple words, stating whether the injury is one of fact or of words, giving particulars of the who, what, when and where’.49 The witness statements and the cartelli in the Giustificationi are populated by a cast of small-part players whose identities help to locate Brancaccio’s level within del braccio sinistro per all’hora (come ben si sape) non so come la intendete, stimandovi tanto honorato & valoroso Cavaliere come vi tenete governatevi fra tanto, & dio di mal vi guardi’. 47 See the further discussion of this theme in Chapter 7. 48 Giustificationi et cartelli, sig. Aiii: ‘La giustitia di Cavaleria non sta considerando i puntigli, i rivolgimenti, i ritorcimenti & le sciocche interpretationi di parole. Ha ella la cura tutta all’animo del Cavaliere, & secondo quello fa il giudicio suo, abhorrisce & ributta colui che con mala intentione, ancor che le parole si mostrassero buone, voglia offender altri, lo chiama calunniatore, & indegno della sua professione’. 49 Girolamo Mutio, Il duello del Mutio iustinopolitano con le risposte cavalleresche (Venice, 1564), p. 16: ‘Occorrendo altrui che egli habbia da scrivere cartelli, doverà scrivere con quella maggior brevità, che glie fia possibile, formando la querela con certe, proprie, et semplici parole; et quella specificando, o sia stata la ingiustia di fatti o di parole, ha da venire a particolari di quella, bene esprimendo le persone, le cose, i tempi, et il luoghi’.

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the hierarchy of the cavalieri. On one side, Tassone’s second cartello is witnessed by three of the most senior nobles in Ferrara: Francesco d’Este, Ercole II’s brother Alfonso d’Este (not yet quite duke) and Count Lodovico Pico of Mirandola, while on the other side, Brancaccio is able to summon no less impressive a cohort, including Honorat de Savoye, Count of Villars; Bastien de Luxembourg, Viscount of Martignes; François de Montmorency, Marshal of France and son of the Constable; the Count of Vidame, whom Brantôme praised as one of the greatest courtiers and most brilliant military leaders of his time;50 and Claude Gouffier, Grand Equerry of France. Among the witnesses are Guido Bentivoglio, who identifies himself as ‘Gentleman of the Chamber of his most Christian Majesty [Henri II] and captain of one hundred men of arms in the train of the most illustrious and most excellent Signor PRINCE of Ferrara [Alfonso d’Este]’.51 Other lesser names were called by Tassone’s camp as witnesses and their statements furnish additional glimpses of the court and its operations. For example, one Galeazzo Fregoso recalls how he had first heard about Brancaccio’s alleged complaint about Tassone’s behaviour in a salon at Saint-Germain ‘where the court was, being in the room where there was dancing, in the company of three or four gentlemen’. Two other witnesses recall the fact that Brancaccio had asked leave of the king for special dispensation to fight a duel and that the Guise brothers, Duke François and the Cardinal of Lorraine, intervened at this stage. One witness, Teofilo Calcagnino, describes how he was in the chamber of the Duke of Guise and saw him to one side, deep in conversation with some ‘Cavalieri dell’ordine [knights of rank]’ and with M. Frena, a secretary; the Cardinal of Lorraine was drawn in and they twice questioned Giulio Cesare Brancaccio. When Calcagnino asked later what they had been discussing, he was told it had been a letter ‘in which he [i.e., Brancaccio] asked permission from the king to be able to challenge Count Giulio Tassone to a fencing duel’. The story came in a slightly different form in the testimony of one Francesco Villa, who recalled that he had been at home at Mont sur Lison, and hearing that Monsignor della Brochia [de Brosse], another ‘Cavalier dell’ordine’, was also at home nearby, he went over to his house to have dinner. They chatted about what had gone on at court between Brancaccio and Lucio Agnesi, and de Brosse said that Brancaccio had asked the Duke of Guise to give him permission to fight Count Giulio Tassone ‘con una spada in camiscia’. At this, his Excellency allegedly admonished Brancaccio and said to him

50 Pierre de Bourdeille, Abbé de Brantôme, Discours sur les colonels de l’infanterie de France, ed. Etienne Vaucheret (Paris, 1973), pp. 179–80. 51 ‘Gentil’huomo ordinario della Camera di sua Majestà Christianissima [i.e., Henri II] & Capitano di cento huomini d’arme sotto la carica dell’illustrissimo & Eccellentissimo Signor PRINCIPE di Ferrara’. This is not the Guido Bentivoglio (son of Brancaccio’s fellow courtiers in Ferrara in the 1570s and 1580s, Cornelio Bentivoglio and Lucrezia Bendidio) who later became a Cardinal, but may have been related to Annibale II Bentivoglio, who was married to Ercole II’s illegitimate daughter and Alfonso II’s sister, Lucrezia d’Este, founder of the Ferrarese ‘concerto delle dame’ (see Chapter 7).

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I am surprised at you, that having tried to get me to support you against sig. Lucio [Agnesi], you are come to this. For this reason it must be the opinion of everyone, that you deserve to be punished for this, because you know well that the king has forbidden, under pain of death, challenging anyone to a duel, save in certain special cases. And if you want to fight, go to Italy where it is not forbidden.52

This apparently detailed ‘recall’ of the details of a conversation committed to paper six months or more after the event was later dismissed by Brancaccio as complete fiction. The impression so far is that the Giustificationi was put out by Tassone in order to establish the rectitude of his own position, and yet Brancaccio actually gets two lengthy rebuttals, including the final word, suggesting that the book was in fact issued by common consent, perhaps as part of an agreed settlement of their stalled dispute. Brancaccio’s blistering rejection of Tassone’s case adopts a tone which not only recalls the much shorter deposition to Simon Renard (Ch. 1) but is also similar to the proud, hot-blooded but nevertheless skilful rhetoric which recurs in many of his later writings. First, he says to Tassone that had he thought carefully about the original charge laid against him he might have done better to resort directly to arms rather than to sending further cartelli and testimonii. He dismisses Tassone’s first four witnesses because they only relate what they had heard from others; as for the other witness by whom Tassone sets such store – Teofilo Calcagnino – the words he reports and attributed to a paper which Brancaccio had apparently allowed him to read are actually completely different from those in the document that Brancaccio wrote for the Duke of Guise. Further, the testimony of de Brosse (the ‘della Brocchia’ quoted above) can be discounted because, first, the latter had not been privy to Brancaccio’s conversation with the Duke of Guise, and, secondly, ‘because of his grace and courtesy [the duke] never speaks to me in the manner which that witness reports [per sua gratia e cortesia non usò mai trattar meco della maniera che quel testimonio dice]’. Brancaccio finally rejects altogether the force of written testimony as opposed to the established precedence of the spoken – ‘the word of a gentleman’ – (even though he has shown himself to be highly adept at the literary), stating unequivocally ‘And this thing [the entire Giustificationi] is clear enough for law and custom of the duel, so that discussing it is superfluous [E questa cosa è tanto chiara per leggi e costume del Duello, che il parlarne è soverchio]’. He brushes off what he sees as Tassone’s attempt to undermine his honour by impugning his reputation, and swats him away by comparing his own military record and his reputation amongst cavalieri, Signori and gran prencipi with that of ‘amateur warriors’:

52 Giustificationi et cartelli, sig. Biv: ‘Mi meraviglio di voi, che havendomi ricercato ch’io vi facci ragione contro sig. Lucio, veniate a questo. Percioché dovendosi far ragione per tutti, voi meritate castigo di questa vostra dimanda. Perche sapete bene che per lo Re è vietato in Francia sotto pena della vita chiamar alcuno a Duello, se non certi casi riservati. Et se pur volete combattere, andatevene in Italia, dove non è vietato’. Duelling between nobles was technically forbidden in France.

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But whatever the opinion of me among cavalieri, the actions of my life enduringly and at all times spent with them, both lords and great princes, demonstrate my reputation clearly enough, without him, the most inexpert in war and peace, needing to trouble himself to talk about it.53

The final shot is a wonderfully blustering threat that again recalls his parting curse on Ambassador Renard in 1554: ‘If you find a better way to end our quarrel when you are not absent I will immediately make you aware how swift I am to come to arms and how I take care of my honour’.54 Rather problematically, one might suppose, Brancaccio’s opponent in all this, as well as those who stood as his ‘seconds’, were members of the court of Ferrara, and Brancaccio was clearly aware that his position as a servant of Duke Ercole d’Este could well have been irrevocably damaged by the affair. He therefore wrote in April 1559 (a short time before Ercole’s death), explaining that in order to clarify matters in the duke’s mind, ‘to whose ears must have come many false reports of me’, he has put together various written testimonials from Henri II, together with various of his own writings (a copy of the Giustificationi?) which are ‘more important in order to satisfy the world than for any need which I have’. He asks Ercole to read them with ‘the eye of justice without bias’, for no other reason than ‘to understand how little reason they have, who have tried to bury my honour for ever’.55 Civil wars In the course of the following three years and particularly after Henri II was killed during a tournament in June 1559, the Guise brothers assumed almost absolute power, exploiting the minority of King François II. These years also saw the preliminary episodes of politically motivated religious intolerance, which were about to usher in twenty years of civil war. We have almost no documentary evidence of Brancaccio’s whereabouts or activities, except for a quittance for 4,337 livres signed and sealed by Brancaccio on 5 March 1559, recently discovered by Jeanice Brooks. It refers to a portion of the tax receipt from the generalité of Tours from 1557, which was still 53 Ibid., sig. Bi: ‘Ma qual sia di me l’opinione fra cavalieri, le azzioni della mia vita lungamente e in ogni tempo versata fra loro, e Signori e gran prencipi, assai chiaramente lo dimostrano, senza ch’egli inespertissimo di guerra e di pace s’affatichi di parlarne’. 54 Ibid., sig. Ciii: ‘Sì che trovate miglior via da terminare la nostra lite che quando da voi non manchi, vi farò ben tosto accorgere quanto io sia presto a venire all’arme, e quanto ho cura de l’honor mio’. 55 Modena AS, Archivio segreto, Particolari, Busta 227, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (the court in Villecotre) to Duke Ercole II d’Este (Ferrara), 10 April 1559: ‘Onde per chiarire la mente di Vostra Eccellentia, nelle cui orecchie doveano esser gionte molti di sono false novelle di me, havendo raccolto alcuni scritti di sua Maiestà Christianissima quali come giustissimo principe ha fato mandare in luce perché sanamente s’intesa et vegga la verità del negotio, glieli mando qui sotto inclusi con alcunaltri miei ch’ella vedrà ch’importavano più per satisfare il mondo che per bisogno ch’io n’havessi ... Voglia risguardarli con l’occhio de la giustitia senza appassionarsi ne per me tanto suo servidore, acciò per quelli cognosca quanto poca raggione habbiano havuto coloro che han cercato di sotterrar eternamente l’honor mio’.

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owed to the crown by the local tax official and which was diverted to Brancaccio for ‘services in the recent wars and around the king’s person’. It is also the first formal evidence that he was, indeed, a gentilhomme ordinaire de la chambre du Roi. Brancaccio’s position is further confirmed by letters of French naturalization with the right to hold office in the kingdom dated 3 August 1561 and issued by King Charles IX (then ten years old) and the queen mother, Catherine de Medici, who was regent (Appendix 2, Doc. 5). The letters are jointly registered for Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (described as ‘gentilhomme de sa chambre’) and for Cesare Brancaccio, who is described as his ‘cousin’, which may be a term implying general kinship of family or possibly just of nationality, as the word ‘brother’ is also used in the latter context quite often in documents of the period. The letters of naturalization also include a form of tax-free status, though the grammar of the entry does not make fully clear whether the ‘right to bear office in the kingdom up to the sum of 4,000 écus per year’ applies to both men, or just to Cesare. Since his relatively brief period as papal nuncio in Paris in 1557 (see above), Cesare’s career had been dramatic. He left the French court on 22 July 1557 with a letter full of eulogies from Henri II, and after being exonerated by the pope of any suspicion of double-dealing whilst in France, he was appointed Superintendent of the Papal States. On 22 October he was named Governor of the Marches, but with the fall from power of his protector, Cardinal Carafa, he was arrested in March 1559 and imprisoned in the Castel S. Angelo with his family. He was still incarcerated in June 1560, but must have been released soon afterwards and gone immediately to France.56 The fact that the names of the two Brancaccios were coupled together in the entry granting them naturalization suggests that they were, indeed, very closely linked. Could it be that Giulio Cesare was able to use his influence to help a needy member of his extended family not only to get asylum, but also a privileged settlement? On 16 December 1563 there is a repeat of the grant of naturalization, this time in Giulio Cesare Brancaccio’s name alone. Perhaps this repetition was related to the fact that Charles IX had gained his majority on 17 August.57 Meanwhile the first civil war had been raging in France, and Brancaccio’s military skills had kept him not only occupied, but at the front line. Catherine de’ Medici’s attempt to pursue a conciliatory line between the extreme Catholic position represented by the Guise family and the Huguenot pressure for religious toleration after the ‘Tumult of Amboise’ in March 1560, followed by the death of François II on 5 December, was embodied in the confirmation and modification of the July Edict of Romorantin on 28 January 1561 (thus usually referred to as the ‘Edict of January’). Calvinists, critical of what they perceived as its limited concessions, began to worship in the open where before they had been pursued as heretics, and they organized armed protection for themselves. Catholics were almost universally opposed to the Edict: zealots saw it as a charter for heretics, and moderates as the formal recognition of two opposing factions, dashing forever any hope of a reconciliation or concord 56 Zapperi, ‘Cesare Brancaccio’, p. 772. 57 Paris BN, Fonds français 3942, fol. 119v: ‘Lettres de naturalité de congé et tester ont esté accordées au seigneur Julles Cesar Brancasse gentilhomme ordinaire de la chambre du roy Sans paier finance. Du xvieme jour dudit moy de decembre [1563]’.

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between them, as had been dreamed of and actively pursued at the Council of Trent. The militarization of the religious struggle was not new, but it provoked an escalation of rhetoric and an alignment between different factions of warrior-nobles that was leading to inevitable confrontation. Extremist Catholic preachers such as the friar Jean de Hans urged Catholics to arm themselves to fight heresy.58 Against this background, the struggle for political ascendancy during the king’s minority was meanwhile played out. In early 1561, Antoine de Navarre, brother of the Prince of Condé (currently imprisoned for his part in the Amboise conspiracy), demanded more power. He had his brother released from prison and brought into the Council at court, at which point the Guise took umbrage and returned to their home property in Joinville. Here they buried their differences with Constable Montmorency and formed an association for the defence of the Catholic faith that later became known as the Triumvirate; similar groupings came together throughout the country. The massacre at Vassily on 1 March 1562, during which Guise’s henchmen shot Protestant worshippers ‘like pigeons’ and then hacked others to pieces as they were forced to pass between two rows of thugs, was shocking not only for its brutality, but also for the delight with which it was greeted in the streets of Paris.59 One of the leaders of the action who was accompanying François, Duke of Guise, and his brother the Cardinal of Lorraine at Vassily was La Brosse, presumably the same Monsieur de Brosse who had been a witness in Brancaccio’s dispute with Tassone in 1559.60 Could Brancaccio himself have been part of this murderous gang as well? Even if he was not, he was to be party to many similarly cold-blooded and increasingly wanton acts of butchery in the years to follow. The Prince of Condé now took the logical step and led a Protestant army south, seizing control of Orléans on 2 April 1562, then taking formal steps to set himself up as an alternative leader to the Guise, claiming in a manifesto (probably written by the Huguenot intellectuals François Hatton and Théodore de Bèze) that the king and his mother were being held prisoners by the Guise. This claim Catherine immediately denied and counter-posed that the Catholic leaders had acted in the kingdom’s best interest. Condé thus became a rebel, and armed and willing fighters from all classes flocked to him. His troops occupied towns in the Loire valley, and on 29 April, Lyons. The queen, meanwhile, took steps to mobilize and strengthen the royal army. She appealed to the Catholic powers – the Duke of Savoy, Philip II and the pope – for help. On 7 May, the Spanish envoy offered up to 30,000 foot and 3,000 horse and wrote perceptively to his masters that ‘what we see now is more a matter of rebellion than of religion, as I made the queen admit’. On 18 May the queen informed the French ambassador in Spain that she was assembling an army to enforce her son’s authority. This huge undertaking led to the creation of four separate forces, but only about half of the total manpower was French, the rest made up of mercenaries and foreign troops donated by friendly powers, such as the 2,000 ‘unreliable’ troops

58 Robert J. Knecht, The French Civil Wars, 1562–1598 (Harlow, 2000), pp. 72–80. 59 Ibid., p. 81. 60 Report sent to the Duke of Wittenberg, in David Potter (ed. and trans.), The French Wars of Religion: Selected Documents (London, 1997), p. 47.

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sent by the pope, some of whom may have been commanded by Brancaccio (see below).61 The major events of the first year of war were the recapture of some towns in the Loire valley by the main royal army under Marshals Saint-André and Montpensier and the siege of Rouen by the Duke of Aumale, which took almost six months to accomplish. Following the collapse of Rouen, Guise hoped to move against the English at Le Havre but was forced back to defend Paris against the threat of Condé’s army. Guise ordered the suburbs to be evacuated and refurbished the fortifications. Meanwhile, a short truce was negotiated and nobles from both sides mingled freely: they had, after all, much more in common than that which divided them, sharing social, military and, often, familial links. François de La Noue, referring to the German Reiter fighting with the Huguenots, asked ‘Who are these madmen who fraternize one day and kill each other the next?’ Within days, the two armies faced each other south of Dreux between the villages of Epinay and Blainville and famously waited uncertainly for two hours, reflecting, according to La Noue, on the fact that the noble warriors on the opposing side were their ‘own comrades, relatives and friends, and that within the hour it would be necessary to start killing one another’.62 Standing among them was Brancaccio, but if he had any doubts, he never mentioned them in his memoirs or surviving letters. The battle of Dreux was very bloody: about 6,000 dead, or one fifth of all the combatants, is a near contemporary estimate. Montmorency and Marshal Saint-André were taken prisoner and the latter was then murdered; a further 800 nobles were killed. And yet, the strange phenomenon whereby men bred up together in the nobility were able to recognize their mutual allegiances while at the same time killing one another was constantly being reaffirmed, for example by the famous story of how the Duke of Guise insisted on sharing his bed with the Prince of Condé – his prisoner, but social equal – on the night after the battle. It helps, perhaps, to explain Brancaccio’s own motivation and his later completely cool and technocratic vision of the years he spent fighting in the civil wars. For him, as for others of his class, fighting was a given, an inevitable function of his existence and identity, and the only parameters by which it was to be judged was whether it was done well or badly. According to the memoirs of Agrippa d’Aubigné, Brancaccio was in action at the siege of Lyons under the overall command of the Duke of Nemours, apparently in command of 600 Italian troops, part of a force of 2,000 sent by the pope to support the Catholics. Aubigné, a Huguenot, was swingeingly dismissive of the Italian leaders who had remained in France. He was scornful, too, of the quality of the troops, whom he described as badly equipped and who had mostly returned home as soon as their pay was not forthcoming, ‘leaving only Jules Brancassio with six hundred men alongside the Duke of Nemours’.63 Aubigné may not have realized that 61 Knecht, The French Civil Wars, pp. 93–5. 62 François de La Noue, Discours politiques et militaires (Basle, 1587) p. 657, trans. in Knecht, The French Civil Wars, p. 99. 63 Théodore Agrippa d’Aubigné, Histoire universelle (1616–1618), ed. André Thierry, 9 vols (Geneva, 1982), vol. 1, pp. 155–6: ‘La Pape qui estoit le motif de la guerre, n’y mit

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Brancaccio was a member of the French royal household and had probably received his commission from Nemours rather than from the pope. Certainly Aubigné (fiercely Protestant) was aware of him as a renowned and active captain as he had previously mentioned him in his description of the unsuccessful attempt by the Duke of Nemours to dislodge the Huguenots from Lyons, leading a band of fighters in close fighting.64 On 18 February 1563, Brancaccio’s patron François, Duke of Guise, was assassinated, almost certainly by an agent of Admiral Coligny, who had replaced Condé as leader of the Huguenots. It destroyed, at least temporarily, the power of the Guise clan, as François’s son and heir, Henri, was only 13 years old. Although Catherine promised the Cardinal of Lorraine, then negotiating at the Council of Trent, that the Guise would retain all their rights and privileges, the two were sharply divided on policy: Lorraine believed that a reform of the church was necessary but only after the Huguenots had been crushed, but the queen put the two captured leaders, Condé and Montmorency, on an island in the Loire to negotiate a peace, while she and her councillors watched from the bank. The first civil war was effectively ended with the Peace of Amboise on 19 March 1563.65 Peacetime activities: business For the following four and a half years there was technically peace, and there are no records whatsoever of what Brancaccio was doing in this time, with one exception. As a gentilhomme de la chambre du roi, he enjoyed an income and other benefits whilst at court, but it is clear from evidence of the process by which he obtained a military commission in the second civil war, that activities as a captain on the battlefield were organized on a freelance basis. With no estates of his own, he was therefore dependent during peacetime on royal patronage, and the kind of financial opportunities available to someone like Brancaccio are typified by the office he obtained early in 1563, which involved collecting royal taxes on hostelries and lodging places. The relevant information is extant because of a complaint made against Brancaccio of abuse of this office and the defence of him by none other than the leader of his erstwhile enemies, the Prince of Condé.

que le bout de l’ongle, n’y envoyant que le Comte d’Aiguesole avec deux mille Italiens mal equippez, et lesquels encore au premier retardement de leur monstre, repassèrent les monts, ne laissons que Jules Brancassio, avec six cents hommes, auprès du Duc de Nemours’. 64 Ibid., pp. 139–40 : ‘Le Duc de Nemours jugeant la ville desgarnie d’hommes (fortifié par les nouvelles levées de S. Cahaumont) s’approche de Lyon par deux fois, la dernière à l’escalade, estant repoussé ces deux fois, la derniere à S. Just: mais Soubize fait une sortie sur les bandes de Julle Brancasse, il les mena battant jusqu’au bout du fauxbourg’. [The Duke of Nemours, judging the city emptied of men (strengthened by the new mounds at St-Chaumont), approached Lyon twice, the final time by scaling the walls, being pushed back both times, the second at St-Just [to the east of the city]. But Soubize made a sortie against the companies of Giulio Brancaccio and brought them fighting right to the end of the fauxbourg]. 65 Knecht, The French Civil Wars, pp. 108–11.

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In de Thou’s eight-volume collected Mémoires de Condé, first published in 1743, he included a transcription of a ‘Descharge & protestation made in favour of Seiur Jule Brancasse, Gentilomme ordinaire de la chambre du Roy, on that which falsely accused him of having invented various impositions on the people’, and helpfully appended a copy of the relevant edict of Charles IX made in January 1563 and published on 29 August 1564.66 The edict placed price controls on meals and accommodation in inns for royal ‘foot- and horsemen’ as they moved around the country, and allowed for the levying of a 5 per cent tax on all income received by ‘Hostelliers, Taverniers, Cabaretiers & autres personnes qui logent & retirent en leurs maisons les voyageurs passans & repassans pas nostredit Royaume & Pays de nostre obeissance [Hoteliers, Taverners, Innkeepers and other persons who lodge and put up in their houses passing travellers in our kingdom and territories under our jurisdiction]’. Inspectors were to regulate prices for food charged by middlemen and at the table itself. It appears that Brancaccio had enjoyed some kind of monopoly on this tax-gathering and the present document is a rebuttal of a charge that he had been profiteering from it: For the rest, the mission and power that the said Sir Jules has accepted by the explicit command of the king was not bestowed upon him without good and full [literally: ripe or mature] discussion by his Council, and in consideration of the zeal which he brings and has always brought to the service of his Majesty, in which he wishes to employ himself without thinking of his own profit, judging rather the good of the public, with the honour and eternal praise that he can obtain from it, by being [i.e., if he should be] the cause that the outrageous and excessive expenses that are charged by the hoteliers of France should come to an end without damage to anyone.67

Condé’s ‘remonstrance’ characterizes Brancaccio as a faithful servant of the king and also describes the complicated bureaucracy that he had had to set up and finance personally in order to gather the tax, providing another insight into the way in which the resourceful Neapolitan had entered and worked the system, as well as hinting at the kind of resentment with which he had to contend from jealous rivals: With this, that when one looks very closely at the great costs that he will need to pay and advance, to retain a number of people, to have the said edict published by all the parliaments, to arrange payment for the officials that will be established, pay the said wages, keep at his own expense personnel to keep an eye on them, to pay as well those who will levy the said tax of five per cent in each city, and in all the provinces and regions,

66 Jacques-Auguste de Thou (ed.), Mémoires de Condé (8 vols, London, 1743), vol. 5, pp. 193–7. 67 Ibid., p. 199: ‘Au reste, la Charge & pouvoir que ledit Sr. Jules a acceptée par l’exprès Commandement du Roy, ne luy a esté dirigé sans bonne & meure délibération de son Conseil, & considération du zèle qu’il porte & a tousjours porté au service de Sa dite Majesté, en quoy il se veut employer sans regarder à son profit particulier, estimant plustost le bien d’un public, avec l’honneur & los perpétuel qu’il en pourra acquérir, pour estre cause que les démesurées & excessives despenses qui se font par les Hostelliers de France prennent fin sans le dommage d’aucun’.

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one will find that they exceed (or almost) the sums that will be levied by the said tax of five percent, without being able to make any profit, as it is alleged. 68

Royal courtier Throughout Charles’s reign from 1561 to 1575, the court moved each year about thirty times, with a change of venue roughly every twelve days.69 For individuals such as Brancaccio, for whom the sources for all patronage were the most powerful patrons at the centre – the king himself and the Guise family – it must have been prudent to stay close to them, being present and noticed, performing as a courtier. During the period of ‘armed peace’, Charles IX and his mother undertook a celebrated long grand tour of France, which lasted from 13 March 1564 until 1 May 1566. In keeping with normal practice, the entire court apparatus, including both royal domestic households, as well as the complete bureaucracy of the state, travelled with the king and his mother. Although there is no specific record of Brancaccio having been involved in any part of this, as a gentilhomme de la chambre du roi it is almost certain that he would have been required to be in attendance at least some of the time. Along the route, the royal party was often entertained with lavish cultural events promoted either by the municipalities being visited or by courtiers, or both. Theatre, music and dancing of all kinds are well documented; ritualized combat in the form of tournaments was also popular.70 The tournois were elaborately enhanced with rich costumes and mythological story-lines, often combining poetry, music and chivalric display, and the military nobles took part in them, so Brancaccio, with his background in theatre and singing, could have been involved, too. Such stylized combats also had a political purpose: during the course of the royal tour, leaders of the opposing factions of the civil war were brought together at court and the indulgence in harmless but symbolic courtly representations of warfare were one way of stimulating reconciliation.71 In an elaborate tournois that opened the festivities at Bayonne, Brancaccio’s commander at the siege of Lyons, the Duke of Nemours, led a group of nobles dressed as Amazons, while the young Henri of Guise led another dressed as Scots, the Duke of Nevers one of Moors and the Duke of Monpensier a party dressed à l’antique.72 68 Ibid., p. 197: ‘Avec ce, que quand on regardera de bien près les grans fraiz qu’il luy conviendra faire & advancer, pour avoir un nombre de gens, par tous les Parlemens faire publier ledit Edit, ordonner gages aux Officiers qui seront establis, payer iceux gages, tenir à ses propres despens personnages pour avoir l’oeil sur eux, payer encore ceux qui lèveront ledit Droit de cinq per cent en chaque Ville, & par toutes les Provinces & Ressorts, on trouvera (ou peu s’en faudra) qu’ils surmonteront les deniers qui se lèveront dudit Droit de cinq pour cent, sans pouvoir faire aucun profit comme dit est’. 69 Jean Boutier, Alain Dewerpe and Daniel Nordman, Un tour royal de France: Le voyage de Charles IX (1564–1566) (Paris, 1984), pp. 191–2. 70 See Victor E. Graham and W. McAllister Johnson (eds.), The Royal Tour of France by Charles IX and Catherine de’ Medici: Festivals and Entries 1564–6 (Toronto, 1979). 71 Ibid., p. 319. 72 Ibid., pp. 312–13.

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Likewise, fine distinctions of hierarchy and precedence could be marked out and enacted within the context of the ceremonial of such events. A small glimpse of the gradations of the court hierarchy and of the role of members of Brancaccio’s rank is given in the description by Brantôme of the different ‘grades’ of costume worn by the 140 to 160 gentlemen in attendance on the Duke of Orléans when he went to meet Elisabeth, Charles’s sister and Queen of Spain, at Bayonne. The mention of gentilhommes de la chambre confirms that they were in attendance on the king, and in large numbers, especially for such an important ceremonial occasion and Brancaccio’s presence is thus likely: Some courtiers were more taken care of and enriched than others; that is, those attendants of princes, dukes, marquises, counts, knights of the order and captains of men at arms were nearly all the same. Those of the gentlemen of the chambers of the king and of Monsieur were less, and those of the servants of the gentlemen, even less.73

The reference to ‘chevaliers de l’ordre’ in the above passage possibly refers to members of the Order of St Michael, similar in form to the English Order of the Garter. Membership of the order was an honour in the gift of the monarch and signified by the award of a chain of office. Under Henri II, the chain of St Michael was conferred on a very limited number of the highest-ranking nobles, both French and foreign (Alfonso d’Este was given it when he first came to serve in France). Its use was hugely expanded under Charles IX, as a way of rewarding loyalty to the crown and as a means of holding together the Catholic loyalists. Furthermore, a total of 56 foreigners were elevated during his reign. In 1560 alone, eighteen new members were created and in 1563 a dozen Guise loyalists were promoted, which led to accusations by Montmorency that François, Duke of Guise, had misused the royal prerogative to promote his own people. During 1568 and 1569 a further fourteen individuals were added by Charles IX and Catherine de Medici.74 Brancaccio revealed in a postscript to a letter written from Naples in 1573 (see Chapter 3, below) that he ‘has not stopped wearing the Order of St Michael [non lasci di portare l’Ordine di san Michele]’, which is the only substantiation of his having received the honour apart for references by others, particularly Spanish nobles, who took it as a sign of his allegiance to France.75 More puzzling is the fact that Brancaccio started to style himself ‘Conte di S. Andrea’ once he left France and continued to do so until the end of his life. This will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3.

73 Brantôme, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 6, p. 438, in Boutier, Dewerpe and Nordman, Un tour royal de France, p. 320: ‘Les uns estoient plus couverts et enrichis que les autres; c’est à sçavoir ceux des princes, ducs, marquis, comtes, chevaliers de l’ordre et capitaines de gens d’armes estoient quasi tous pareils. Ceux des gentilshommes de la chambre du Roy et de Monsieur [Orléans] estoient moindres, et ceux des gentilshommes servans encore moindres’. 74 Laurent Bourquin, ‘Les fidèles des Guises parmi les chevaliers de l’ordre SaintMichel sous les derniers Valois’, in Le mécénat et l’influence des Guises: actes du colloque … 1994, ed. Yvonne Bellenger (Paris, 1997), pp. 99–100, 110. 75 Florence AS, Miscellenea Medicea 505: Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Naples) to Troilo Orsini (Florence), 8 June 1573.

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Perpetual warrior Whatever the reality of Brancaccio’s life during the years between the first three civil wars, when he came to formulate his autobiographical story afterwards, he chose to present himself as having always been a warrior. In the Curriculum vitae, Brancaccio summed up the period between 1561 and the end of the third civil war at the Peace of Saint-Germain on 8 August 1570 in a single sentence: The civil wars began in France, where I found myself in the course of ten years in four true battles won by us against the Huguenots, and other similar armed engagements, with more than thirty sieges of fortresses sometimes under Charles IX (of happy memory) and sometimes his lieutenants and captains general.

This was further glossed with a marginal note: ‘From the year [15]60 until [15]70, the four battles royal were those of Dreux, St Denis, Jarnac and Montcontour. We won these two [latter] battles under the Duke of Anjou and Monsieur de Tavannes, his lieutenant general.’76 In the Discorso della milizia written about the same time, in the context of a passage dealing with the lack of scientific military knowledge that almost cost the Catholics victory so many times, he is a little more precise. The ‘ten years’ become ‘eight’, but he implies that the war was continuous, when, in fact, it was not: but coming to something in more recent memory we already saw how much has changed in these last wars in France against the Huguenots, not least in taking to the open field, with the four royal battles that we won, apart from many others that happened in different parts of that kingdom during eight continuous years of war. The battles were always almost lost by us at the start [by] we other [i.e., true] Catholics and then won more by the grace of God than otherwise, notwithstanding the valour of those captains who commanded the other army, so that one sees clearly how little we know these days how to fight war with order and reason.77

The second large-scale battle in which Brancaccio claims to have fought was at Saint-Denis, just outside Paris, on 10 November 1567 – the major event of the second civil war. Constable Montmorency (now 74 years old) fought at the head 76 Brancaccio, Curriculum vitae, fol. 133: ‘nacquero le guerre civili in Francia, dove mi trovai nel corso di 10 anni, in 4 battaglie reali vinte da noi agli Hugonotti, et altri rincontri simili a fatti d’arme, con più di 30 espugnationi di fortezze hora col Re Carlo viiij di felice memoria, et hora con suoi Luogotenenti et capitani generali / Dall’anno, 60 sin al 70 le 4 battaglie Reali furono quella di Dreux, Di saint Denìs, Di Giarnac et di Montcontor. Queste due battaglie vinsemo sotto il Duca d’Angiù, et mons. Di Tavannes suo luogotenente generale’. 77 Brancaccio, Discorso della milizia, fol. 77r: ‘ma venendo a qual di più fresca memoria già vedemo quanto sia va passato in queste ultime guere di Francia contra gli Ugonotti: non meno nel pigliare le terre in campagna con le quattro battaglie regali c’havermo guadagnato senza molte altre, che s’han dato in diversa parti di quel Regno per otto anni continui di guerra, le battaglie per haverle sempre quasi perdute, noi altri Cattolici al cominciare et guadagnate poi più tosto per gratia Domini che altramento, non ostante il valor di quei Capitani che governando l’altro esercito onde chiaramente, si veder quantopoco sapemo hoggi dì di combattere con ordine et ragione di guerra’.

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of the royal army, but was mortally wounded by a bullet in his back and died two days later; his position was taken by his younger brother, Henri, Duke of Anjou. The Huguenots left the field with honour under their commander Condé, who rushed with his army to join with the German mercenaries of John Casimir in Lorraine. He was pursued by a vast royal army of up to 38,000 troops marching in two huge columns that spread out over several miles, and the total company numbered about 50,000 people and 25,000 animals. Later joined by a further 10,000 troops of the Dukes of Aumale and Nemours, this immense force was, nevertheless, not deployed for fear of loss of more of the nobility and the impossible costs.78 It could have been this experience which first prompted Brancaccio’s gigantist fantasies about a military campaign against the Turks, involving an army and navy composed of hundreds of thousands, which were to see the light of day in the Ragionamento di Partemio et Alexandro sopra la guerra in 1583.79 As the Huguenots marched back to their stronghold of Orléans in spring 1568 they launched an assault on Chartres. Four thousand royal troops under the command of Nicolas des Essars together with 600 militia and 1,000 pioneers put up a robust but costly defence. A brief reference in the Dialogo della milizia strongly suggests that Brancaccio was present, and it may be that he was already serving in some kind of advisory capacity on the defence and sieging of fortified towns; it was not long afterwards that he claimed to have been appointed by Charles IX as ‘superintendant and general commissioner of all the fortifications and fortified places [superintendente et commissario general di tutte le fortificationi et piazze forti]’ for the whole of France, ‘which one can confirm from warrants and royal patents which I have always kept and keep with me [secondo si vede per le speditioni, et patente reali, ch’io sempre ho serbate et serbo meco]’.80 In the Discorso della milizia he devotes one section of his treatise on the ‘three principle parts’ of the art of war to the defence of towns and uses as examples a number of other actions, notably those of Malta, Sighet (in Hungary) and Famagusta and also: those of France in these last wars, that of Chartres and of Poitiers, both the weakest places and nonetheless bravely defended by Catholics against those of the new religion; the latter, who with much energy, study and art, continually assaulted and were never able to take during many days of bombardment and assault.81

78 Knecht, The French Civil Wars, pp. 137–40. 79 See Chapter 3. 80 Brancaccio, Curriculum vitae, fol. 133r. The Duke of Sessa, writing to Philip II from Florence on 8 May 1573 (Simancas AG, Legajo E1063-145), repeated this claim and suggests that Brancaccio had produced documentation to prove it: ‘y era superintendente de todas las fortificaciones de aquel Reyno conforme a la patente que muestra [and he was superintendent of all the fortifications in that kingdom, confirmed by the patents which he shows]’. 81 Brancaccio, Discorso della milizia, fol. 77r: ‘quei di Francia in queste ultime guerre quel di Chiartres et di Poitier ambidue luoghi debolissimi, et non di meno bravamente diffese da Cattolici contro queii della nuova religione, quali con molto ardore studio et arte ostinamente assalirono et non potrono già mai pigliare per molti giorni d’assedio di batterie et d’assalti’.

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Last years in France The collapse of the short-lived peace of Longjumeau and the remobilization of forces in late summer 1568 brought renewed possibilities for action. In an extraordinary letter from Brancaccio to the Duke of Nemours (who had now married Anna d’Este, widow of François, Duke of Guise, which might explain Brancaccio’s ‘transfer’ of fidélité) in January 1569, we gain insight not only into the process by which military commissions were obtained, but also evidence of the kind of command that Brancaccio could hope to get (Appendix 2, Doc. 6). If Aubigné’s testimony is trustworthy, then, as we have seen, Brancaccio was in command of Italian troops in 1563, and this was perhaps the best way for Italian captains working in France to find employment. In the letter (his earliest surviving one in French), Brancaccio refers to having heard about a meeting between the king and his mother, Catherine de’ Medici, with an envoy from the pope at a privy council held at Saint-Maur, and about the decision to raise 4,000 arquebusiers and 2,000 cavalry in Italy under the command of Duke Alfonso d’Este and the old fuorusciti commander, the Duke of Somma. Brancaccio notes the joy felt by him and his friends (presumably other Italians), but then his own disappointment that others of his countrymen had been proposed as officers to raise the bands of foot-soldiers, while he had not. He refers to the ‘very urgent request’ which he has been addressing to the duke since the beginning of this war, suggesting that he has been trying to get a commission for several months. The extravagant style in which he expresses his dismay at the possibility that the duke has forgotten his promise to favour Brancaccio will find echoes in similar rhetorical fusillades in letters written in the years to follow. The letter is a fine example of the complex form of protocol in such situations: Brancaccio sends a courier, his friend M. Cinamy, to speak on his behalf, so that the petition arrives in a mixed form of polished written epistle and a proxy, verbal version.82 By this stage Brancaccio may already have begun to realize that his enormous experience as a soldier was worth something more than just a recommendation to further commissions. Rather, he might recycle his knowledge in the form of theory and advice. The evidence of the commission given to him by Charles IX no later than 1570 (see above) suggests that he was taken seriously as an adviser by senior strategists. More direct evidence for this is perhaps another letter to the Duke of Nemours, written from Metz on 2 April 1569, soon after the battle of Jarnac (Appendix 2, Doc. 7). The detail and the tone of Brancaccio’s advice to his commander in the first paragraph, concerning the best way to conduct his army, suggest a familiarity and a well-established relationship of trust. The way that he subtly weaves in reference to his experience fighting (German) Protestants under Charles V ‘de fresche memoire’, is a device which he would develop considerably in subsequent years. It implies a sort of tutorial, even avuncular, role, and the style suggests also that Brancaccio was not unfamiliar with published manuals of military science. Having delivered his ‘gift’ (in the form of advice) he turns in the second 82 See Karen Neuschel, Word of Honour: Interpreting Noble Culture in SixteenthCentury France (Ithaca and London, 1989), esp. pp. 103–31: ch. 4, ‘The Power of Words: Oral Culture and the Definition of Events’.

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paragraph to his own request, which is in fact a complex way of declaring his loyalty to Nemours. Brancaccio’s reference to the fact that the duke himself knows well to whom he is referring and his request that Nemours effectively provide him with ‘cover’ for a visit to Paris, imply a close and intense relationship not so apparent in the earlier letter. His dark reference to having been betrayed and his menacing promise of revenge recalls in its severity an oath apparently sworn by the closest relations and clients of the Guises to avenge the murder of François, Duke of Guise, which was widely believed to have been organized by Coligny.83 Meanwhile, following the victory of Jarnac (at which battle Condé had been killed) the royalist army felt the advantage had been wasted and nobles, sick of the war, were beginning to desert. Coligny joined forces with 6,000 German Reiter and managed to defeat a small royalist force near La Roche l’Abeille, in which he took almost no prisoners, butchering soldiers and hundreds of peasants alike. Coligny then made what was to prove a major mistake, besieging Poitiers for six weeks. Brancaccio was again inside the city, which held out, against the odds (see above). Meanwhile, the Italian reinforcements from the pope and also from the Medici and from Spain arrived to join the royal army. We can presume that Brancaccio’s petition had been in some way successful, for he was present at Montcontour on 3 October 1569, the last open battle he was to fight in France, as it turned out. Both sides had a large number of foreign mercenary troops: the royalist army included 6,000 Swiss infantry, 3–4,000 Italian foot-soldiers (of whom at least some were possibly under Brancaccio’s command); l3,000 Reiter under the command of the Rhinegrave and the Margrave of Baden; 800 Italian cavalry under the pope’s general, Santa Fiore; and even a detachment of Wallonian horse, lent by the Spanish viceroy in the Low Countries, the Duke of Alba. The wild and disordered battle ended with the Huguenot infantry surrounded, when many of them were slaughtered in cold blood. The English Ambassador, Henry Norris, wrote ‘All men doth agree that of long time there hath not been a more cruel and bloody battle’.84 Even then, the royalists could not claim a final victory in the war. The commander of the royalists was Tavannes, who wished to drive the victory to its logical conclusion and annihilate the Protestants once and for all. He was persuaded, however, to go after the Huguenot strongholds around La Rochelle. Brancaccio was now on the outside, at the long and bitter siege of Saint-Jean-d’Angèly, which held out until 2 December, by which time winter had set in, and much of the remaining royal army was seeping away. Admiral Coligny took advantage of the internal divisions over tactics in the royal leadership, and in spring 1570, after taking control of the south, including Montpellier

83 Given in translation in Knecht, The French Civil Wars, p. 109: ‘I the undersigned promise and swear by the living God to render such obedience and loyal service to the Duke of Guise, the Cardinals and his uncles, and to his mother, as I had promised to the late Duke of Guise, for the recovery of his property as to avenge the death of the said duke up to the fourth generation of those who committed the said homicide or connived at it and those who are yet defending the culprits’. 84 Henry Norris (Tours) to Queen Elizabeth I (London), 5 October 1569; transcribed in Potter, The French Wars of Religion, p. 114.

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and Nîmes, he turned north and swept through Burgundy, sacking the abbey of Cluny on 18 June, and headed towards Paris. Treaty negotiations had been going on sporadically, but now the Huguenots extracted major concessions from a leadership that was compliant and desperate for peace, especially following the disgrace and fall of the Guise. On 8 August, the Edict of Saint-German was signed, which granted to the Protestants four major strongholds, La Rochelle, Cognac, Montauban and La Charité on the upper Loire; freedom of worship in all places where it had taken place before the war, admission to the universities; judicial safeguards against religious prejudice and the return of all confiscated property and offices.85 It appeared to the Catholics as though ten years of war and decisive victories in open battle at huge cost to life and property had achieved nothing. In the eyes of modern historians, the reasons for the failure of the Catholics to achieve complete victory, although partly caused by complexities of politics, seem to have rested on technical questions of military strategy and ‘management’. Mack Holt provides a summary: Three civil wars had been fought in less than a decade, and one obvious question is why the crown – with clearly superior manpower and resources – was so inexplicably unable to defeat the undermanned and outmatched Huguenots. Why were the royal forces so utterly unable to mount a convincing victory on the battlefield? A number of factors were responsible, but in each war a similar set of problems were encountered that prevented a total victory; 1) a lack of preparedness, 2) difficulties of mobilisation, 3) the large-scale nature of the conflict, 4) an inability to maintain armies in the field for long periods, and 5) structural problems involved in demobilisation.86

In the light of this assessment, it is remarkable to read Brancaccio’s own thoughts on the subject, which in many ways point to the same conclusions. His analysis of the constraints on Charles IX and his focus on the lessons which could be learned at a purely military-scientific level by looking at individual events in general terms and trying to draw conclusions about how tactics and techniques needed to be improved, written only two scant years after the end of the third civil war, shows that he did indeed have a relatively sophisticated analytical perspective on military matters and certainly a strongly opinionated one; he put the problem down mainly to poor sieging technique on both sides: the Admiral [Coligny], not knowing how to take Poitiers (the weakest of places) in two months and we other Catholics afterwards through not having known how to take San Jean d’Angély (even more feeble than Poitiers) for a long time, despite the advantage of the great victory of Montcontour in which battle we killed in the region of six thousand infantry; the remainder, I say, which could have been eight hundred ragged fugitives from the half dead was taken [over] by one of their valiant captains named Bela so that they stood up against all the force of our victorious army, which in the end was constrained to make a truce, most honourable for them. From where the enemy cavalry which was saved 85 Knecht, Rise and Fall of Renaissance France, pp. 409–12; Charles W.C. Oman, A History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1937), pp. 447–57. 86 Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 70–2.

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from the battle had time to regroup with the other infantry scattered through France in one force, flying about without fear that our more encumbered [army] would be able to catch up, destroyed so [much] in blood and fire that in the end the king was constrained to make peace with [such] little advantage that he could not avoid seeing his kingdom actually ruined, such that it was not possible to judge afterwards who was the winner or the loser. And the Admiral – despite not knowing how to win the above mentioned siege of Poitiers, is nevertheless one of the best captains in the universe – gave the king time to regroup his forces, which were very debilitated through continuously being in the field, so that he [Coligny] lost the said battle of Montcontour; without which loss, I am persuaded that he would have ended up ruler of France. Which is manifest proof that, of the two above-mentioned, neither one leader understood any more than the other: that is, one did not know how to conquer the fortified places, as is clear from the examples already shown and the other, fighting in open battle understood still less about disposing of the order of battle, so that at a stroke one or other army is seen first winning and then losing, almost in the wink of an eye, which is not a proper way to fight in order to win using reason and good tactics. Nevertheless, it seems to the ignorant that one cannot know more of military art and discipline than that which is done everywhere by the captains of today.87

His suggestion that had Coligny (‘one of the best captains in the universe’) known how to win the siege of Poitiers he might have succeeded in becoming leader of France might be overstated, as was possibly Brancaccio’s confident belief that he could have taught the admiral how to do it, but his basic conclusion that precise technical knowledge and tactical science are eventually the only way to get the upper 87 Brancaccio, Discorso della milizia, fols 77v–78r: ‘Le prese de fortezze per non havere saputo l’Amiraglio prendere in due mesi Poitiers, piazza debbolissima, et noi altri Cattolici dopoi per non havere saputo espugnare per lungo tempo san Gian d’Angellij ancora più fiacco di Poitier, non ostante il favore della gran vittoria di Moncontour nella cui battaglia gli uccisimo presso vi. mille fanti il resto dico de quali che potevano esser da 800 scalzi fuggiti fra mezzo i morti; et presi con un loro valoroso Capitano chiamato Bela che vegliavano dentro talmente contra tutte le forze del nostro vittorioso essercito, che alla fine fumo constrette pigliarli a patto honoratissimi per loro, la onde la Cavalleria de nemici che salvarno in quelle battaglie hebbe tempo di rimettere su dell’altra fanteria discorrendo per la Francia per un campo volante senza tema che il nostro più impedito lo potesse giungere lo distrussero talmente a sangue et fuoco che alla fine il Re fu constretto fare la pace con poco suo vantaggio per non finire di veder rovinare affatto il suo Regno, talche non si pote giudicare poi chi di noi fossi restato vittorioso o perditore, et l’Amiraglio per il sudetto assedio di Poitier non sapendo pigliare, nonostante che sia uno de migliori Capitani dell’universo, donò tempo al Re di rimettere le sue forze quali per lo continuo stare su la campagna erano molto indebilite onde ci ne perde poi la sudetta battaglia da Moncontour, senza la cui perdita mi persuado che egli sarebbe restato Signore della Francia. Il che prova manifesta, che non ci intendemmo non più dell’uno che dell’altro capo di quei due sudetti, cioè l’uno di non sapere espugnare le piazze forte, si come chiaramente [illegible] per gli esempij già demostrati et l’altro cioè il combattere in campo le battaglie perché intendemo [sic] meno ancora disponendo de sì fatta maniera l’ordine delle battaglie, che in un tratto si vede hor vincere, hor perdire quasi in un battre d’occhio l’uno et l’altro essercito il quale non è vero camino di combattere per vincere co’ ragione et con buono ordine di guerra non ostante che pare al volgo non potesse sapre più dell’arte, et disciplina militare, di quello che si fa hoggi da Capitani che sono al mondo’.

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hand in war, given the many unpredictable variables, is surely sound. It is also a sign that Brancaccio had perhaps recognized that technocrats were already more important than the guardians of chivalric traditions in a warfare now changed forever by the realities of the French experience since 1561. The two-hour pause before the battle of Dreux can be taken in retrospect as emblematic of an impending sea change in traditional noble ideals of warfare, a boundary that once passed could never be re-crossed.88 Brancaccio, the hardened warrior, unencumbered now by familial or national ties, apparently brimming with confidence and ultimately loyal only to the spirit of a ‘pure’ militarism, conceived an increasingly messianic motivation to spread his vision, for which he needed a larger arena than that offered by battered, war-weary France in 1570.

88 See Arlette Jouanna, ‘La noblesse française et les valeurs guerrières au XVIe siècle’, in L’homme de guerre aux XVIe siècle: Actes du colloque de l’Association RHR, Cannes 1989, ed. Gabriel-André Pérousse, André Thierry and André Tournon (Saint-Etienne, 1993), pp. 205–17.

Chapter Three

Il più veterano tra’ soldati In search of new patrons In late 1570 or early 1571, Brancaccio made the decision once more to move on. Explanations of his motive vary depending on who is recording his activities, from the deeply suspicious Spanish ambassadors who thought he was either a French spy or a fugitive from a Lyonnaise debtor’s prison, to Brancaccio himself, who variously claimed to be acting as a military adviser seconded by the King of France, to be looking for a reconciliation with Spain and rehabilitation, or to be offering the ‘philosopher’s stone’ of infallible military tactics.1 In France the Edict of Saint-Germain, signed in August 1570, had precipitated the fall from power of Brancaccio’s long-standing patrons, the Guise and their allies, and this is another possible reason. During these years Brancaccio made what seem to have been experiments with different kinds of written discourses in order to solicit, or to complement, face-to-face encounters with powerful people. The ‘external’ sources recording his movements between 1571 and 1573 – mostly Spanish diplomatic correspondence – reveal that Brancaccio was noticed at the very highest levels of power, principally because of the possibility that he might be either a dangerous spy or a valuable defector from the French with technical military information that could help give the Spanish an edge at a time (directly before and after the battle of Lepanto and the crisis in the Mediterranean) when relations between France and Spain were suddenly fraught: for a brief period at least, he could not be ignored. This particular narrative, conducted across the diplomatic networks between various Italian states and Philip II in Spain, involves not only spontaneous reports of Brancaccio’s movements and accompanying analysis of them by professional diplomats, but as part of that analysis, the recall and narration of Brancaccio’s earlier career, retold many years after the events by, for example, the acute politician Antoine de Perrenot, Cardinal Granvelle. Later, when Brancaccio was a member of the court of Ferrara for almost three years in the early 1580s, he became the subject of intense interest to correspondents there, especially the Florentine ambassadors, as well as being given a ‘role’ in a major published Castiglionian court dialogue and the subject of poems by both Torquato Tasso and Battista Guarini. Placed alongside 1 A metaphor coined by Coldagelli, ‘Brancaccio’, p. 784, that echoes, intentionally or not, the wry comment of Achillo Tarducci in his Delle machine, ordinanze, et quartieri antichi, et moderni come quelli da questi possino esser imitati senza punto alterare la soldatesca dei nostri tempi, discorsi … (Venice, 1601), p. 13, that Brancaccio’s offer in his book Il Brancatio to divulge to interested princes his ‘great secret’ of an invincible army was like the ‘promise of an alchemist to make mountains of gold [promessa da Alchimista di fare in monti d’oro]’.

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Brancaccio’s own stories about himself and his various essays on aspects of warfare, all of which he created in a careful attempt to exercise control over the presentation of himself to the most powerful men in Europe, we get a rich set of parallel ‘fictions’, filled with lacunae and contradictions, which between them offer a glimpse of the complex ways that different narrative strands twine together in the construction of Brancaccio’s identity (or perhaps, identities), even as the events themselves were unfolding. On 25 May 1571, the League between Spain, Venice, Savoy and the pope against the Turks was proclaimed by its architect, Pius V, in St Peter’s, Rome.2 Around the same time, the idea of French military intervention in support of William of Orange and Dutch rebels against the Spanish domination of the Low Countries was being floated in France by the newly ascendant Protestant leader, Admiral Coligny, and was receiving favourable attention from Charles IX.3 Meanwhile, Spain had suspicions that the Medici – somewhat reluctant clients of theirs – were putting out feelers to the French Protestants for a possible alliance. And then, in late April and early May 1571, Duke Emanuele Filliberto of Savoy communicated to the Spanish his nervousness that the French were planning new incursions into Piedmont, as they had brought troops by sea from Bordeaux to Marseilles and then sent them towards the Alps. In fact, France was paranoid about the League, and already in May, Charles IX sent the Bishop of Dax on a mission to broker a treaty with the Turks.4 On 2 June, the Spanish ambassador in Turin, Françesco de Vargas, reported that ‘Julio Cessar Brancaçio has arrived here … he says he is going to serve the Venetians in this war’. Vargas made inquiries and was told that Brancaccio had fled from Lyons, where he had been imprisoned for 10,000 ducats or more of debt and had jumped bail. He noted the extravagance of Brancaccio’s lifestyle and that he had money neither to pay his debts nor to look after himself and that he was looking for a way to make a living. The Duke of Savoy, meanwhile, told Vargas that he thought it worthwhile holding on to Brancaccio, impressed, presumably, by the fact that ‘he knows about fortifications and has the title of superintendent of all those in France’: he hoped to glean useful military information, which Brancaccio was apparently freely dispensing, and he offered the ambassador the opportunity to question the man himself. Vargas reported that Brancaccio had brought letters for the Duke and Duchess of Savoy and that he believed ‘they are helping him with money’.5 2 Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. Siân Reynolds (2 vols, London, 1973), vol. 2, p. 1091. 3 Knecht, The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France, pp. 413−14. 4 Braudel, The Mediterranean, vol. 2, pp. 1094–5. 5 Simancas AG, E 1230-86, Francisco da Vargas (Turin) to Philip II (Spain), 2 June 1571: ‘aquí a llegado Julio Céssar Brancacio napoletano que se fue desde Bruselas estando Vuestra Majestad en Inglaterra a servicio de françesses por tener poco y dever mucho en aquellos estados. Dize va a servir [a] los venecianos en esta guerra y por ser en la conyuntura que es y el hombre despíritu y que sentiende de fortificaçiones. Y tiene título de superintendente de todas las de Francia. He [ha] procurado inquirir a que venga y asta aora hallo solamente que estado presso en León por diez mill ducados de deudas y más que deve en aquel Reyno. Y que a sido ayudado y salió con fianças y va buscando la vida por no tener con qué pagar ni entretenerse y ser profussíssimo en gastar. No obstante que debaxo [continues in deciphered

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Brancaccio did not stay long in Turin, however: Vargas reported his departure on 10 July with a gratuity of 500 scudi and the intention of going to the imperial court at Vienna, to reveal his ‘great secrets of war’. In August and September 1571 Brancaccio was apparently present in Vienna at the celebrations of the wedding of the emperor’s brother, Archduke Karl II, to Maria of Bavaria. The event brought together the musical forces of the chapels of the emperor, directed by Philippe de Monte, of Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria under Brancaccio’s old friend, Orlande de Lassus, and of Archduke Karl under Annibale Padovano; famous chamber musicians including Madalena Casulana and Alessandro Striggio were also present, and Brancaccio could well have had opportunities to display his musical talents.6 Links between Vienna and France had been strengthened the previous year with the marriage of Elizabeth of Austria to Charles IX, and there would, indeed, have been good reason for Brancaccio to be present in his capacity as a member of the French royal household; he certainly claimed to have Charles IX’s blessing for his visit (see below). On 7 October 1571, the League’s fleet, under the command of Don Juan of Austria, famously defeated the Turks at the battle of Lepanto, and on 26 October, Guzmán da Silva, the Spanish ambassador in Venice, reported to Philip II that Brancaccio was at the imperial court and that he had been involved in private audiences, which da Silva thought was evidence of ‘plotting’ by the French.7 The effect of the victory code] deste color puede aver otro. Truxo cartas del Rey de Francia al duque y duquesa y estará aquí algún dia. Y creo le ayudarán con dinero estos príncipes por fuerça porque se ha dexado ya entender. El duque me ha hablado en él como por vía de aviso diziéndome que es muy plático de aquel Reyno y gran hablador y que le hable que sacaré sustancia dél. Yo he dicho al duque que lo haré y entiendo casi del duque que le aya pasado por la imaginación de entretenerle consigo. Procuraré saber lo que se pudiere y daré dello aviso a Vuestra Majestad’ [The Neapolitan Giulio Cesare Brancaccio has arrived here, having left Brussels while Your Majesty was in England to serve the French, because of having little [money] and owing much in those states. It is said that he is going to serve the Venetians in this war and for being in the situation he is, and a man of spirit who understands fortifications and has the title of superintendent of all of those in France, I have tried to find out what he is after. Up until now I have found out only that he has been in prison in Lyon on account of one thousand ducats or more of debts that he owes in that kingdom and that he has been helped and was let out on bail and he goes about trying to make a living, because he has nothing with which to pay or entertain himself and he is a huge spendthrift. Behind this image there might be another. He brought letters from the King of France to the duke and duchess and he will be here for a few days and I believe these princes will help him with money, because they believe what he says. The duke has spoken to me of him and advised me that he says a lot about that kingdom [i.e., France] and is a great talker and whoever speaks with him will be able to get quite a bit of substance. I have said to the duke that I shall undertake it [presumably, an interview] and I have as good as understood from the duke that he has decided to have dealings him. I shall endeavour to find out what transpires and will send Your Majesty news of it]. 6 As suggested by Robert Lindell, ‘Monte, Philippe de’, New Grove II, vol. 17, p. 17. 7 Simancas AG, E 1329-114, Guzmán da Silva (Venice) to Philip II (Spain), 26 October 1571: ‘Bien creo, que se acordava Vuestra Majestad de Julio Césaro Brancache, Napolitano, … Este me avisan que partió de Francia a la Corte del Emperador. como creo avrá advertido el conde de Monteagudo. [in code:] Tuvo algunas audiençias particulares con aquella Majestad,

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at Lepanto created a sudden fever of extravagant anti-Turkish plans that excited members of Europe’s military class. They scented the prospect of a massive new ‘war of religion’ that would perhaps give them opportunities for foreign adventures refreshingly unlike the internecine fighting between Catholics and Protestants of the years since Cateau-Cambrésis. Fernand Braudel characterizes the energy: All over Europe, regiments of soldiers and adventurers of every nation began flocking to the South where there was now employment … Frenchmen mingled with Spaniards boarding Philip II’s galleys at Alicante. In Spring 1572, 2000 French mercenaries were in Venice serving the Signoria – all clear signs of the importance of the Mediterranean battlefield.8

The outburst of idealism that proposed a pan-European war bringing united Christendom up against an incalculable multitude of the Turks must have appealed to the practically stateless adventurer Brancaccio.9 The heroic image of a chivalricstyle crusade (Lepanto, for example, stimulated Tasso in his writing of Gerusalemme liberata), which perhaps would evoke for us something of the ‘Romantic’, must have offered an attractive alternative to the deeply contradictory disruption of the traditional cavalier codes in civil war. Brancaccio himself was desperate to join the League’s fleet for any possible continuation of the war – testified in a letter from Grand Duke Cosimo de’ Medici I to Philip II in 1572, as we shall see. Apparently unsuccessful in his approaches to the emperor and to the Duke of Parma, Brancaccio now joined the crush of opportunists and by January 1572 at the latest he was in Venice, where he started making representations to the Venetians and then to Guzmán da Silva, Philip II’s ambassador. Recognition that he was in a dynamic and competitive marketplace for military employment may have stimulated his first efforts at encoding his technical expertise and long experience in the form of a short statement advertising that he was prepared to offer in person a controlled demonstration of his skills to any Christian prince willing to give him a hearing.

según me dizen. Y haviendo aquí tres días hor [?]’. Y en este punto me avisa dello don César Carrafa. Y que ha entendido que ha estado en collegio con estos señores. Procuraré entender lo que ha tratado que según la opinión de su persona se puede sospechar que sea tramas de las que han sembrado Franceses. A todas éstas espero en Dios que habrá puesto freno con esta Vitoria’ [Well do I believe that Your Majesty remembers the Neapolitan Julio Cesare Brancaccio… The aforesaid, they tell me, left France for the court of the Emperor, as I believe the Count of Monteagudo will have advised. He had several private audiences with that monarch according to what I have been told and has been here three days – and on this point I am advised by Don Cesar Carrafa, who understood that he had been in discussions with those gentlemen. I shall try to learn what it is they discussed – which, according to the opinion of his character it may be suspected that they are plans of the kind planted by the French, to all of them I hope by God that He will have put on the brakes with that victory [i.e., Lepanto]. 8 Braudel, The Mediterranean, vol. 2, p. 1105. 9 This idea was the inspiration for Brancaccio’s last major literary effort, Ragionamento di Partenio et Alexandro sopra la guerra, che si potrebbe fare al Turco per vincerlo et esterminarlo a fatto [Discussion between Parthenius and Alexander about the War which Could be Made on the Turks in Order to Defeat and Completely Exterminate Them].

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Military science: part one The Discorso della milizia, almost certainly in Brancaccio’s own neat hand, is dated 20 January 1572, and is preserved together with a number of other treatises by him (written over the next 14 years) in two volumes bound with numerous other miscellaneous documents of the 1570s and 1580s in the Pinelli archive, now in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan.10 A near word-for-word version of the Discorso in Spanish is preserved in two different copies in different hands (neither Brancaccio’s), now in the Archivo General de Simancas in Valladolid, both dated in Venice, 17 January 1572.11 There is no reason why Brancaccio should not have been quite fluent in Spanish, a language he must surely have known since his youth, even though there are, as yet, no other known documents by him in the language. In the Discorso, Brancaccio gives his own account of what he had been doing in the preceding ten months and with what authority. Adopting for the first time his new strategy of establishing his credentials in terms of the length of his practical experience, he refers to his thirty-two years [sic] ‘of continuous study and experience’ as a soldier. He says he has been moved by the chaos he had witnessed in both his own and the enemy’s tactics in the recent French civil wars to study ‘the minutiae of this dark and muddy subject matter of war’ and to offer the benefit of these thoughts to the leading members of the League against the Turks, something he claims to be doing with the full support of King Charles IX. He was at pains to stress the warm familiarity with which he had been received and heard, and his high hopes of recognition and reward from one or other of his high-level contacts.12 But in an 10 Milan BA, R 105 sup., fols 76–80v; for full details see Appendix 1: Works. 11 Simancas AG, E 1330-21 and E 1505-166, in different (non-autograph) hands. The latter bears Brancaccio’s seal and both are signed as follows: ‘Yo Julio Brancaccio Conde de Sant Andrés cavallero de la Orden del Rey Cristianíssimo y superintendente y capitán general de las fortificaciones, villas y plaças fuertes del Reyno de Francia prometo mantener lo que está aquí escrito y firmado de mi mano con el sello de mis armas. Hecha en Venecia a los xvij de henero 1572’. This is the first occurrence of the title ‘Conde de Sant Andrés’, which from now on Brancaccio used consistently (normally in Italian) when signing himself. 12 Brancaccio, Discorso della milizia, fol. 77v: ‘Il che ha causato che veggendo io tanti disordini non men nostri che de’ nemici m’habbia posto dal fine di queste ultime guerre in qua a considerazione sì per lo minuto de le passate attioni dell’antica et nuova militia del mio tempo con trenta due anni di continuo studio et esperienza che mi pare d’haver dato al presente per la Dio gratia et ritrovando il fondo di queste oscurissime et sabiose materie di guerra sicome possono certificare e dopo dieci mesi in qua’ c’io parti di Francia per alcun tempo, con buona gratia et licentia del Re Christianissimo mio Padrone non per altro che per affinare i miei detti pensieri la Majestate dell’Imperatore l’Altezza ch’ l’IlIustrissimo Duca di Savoya, l’Eccellentissima Illustrissima Signoria del Signor Duca di Parma, et l’Illustrissimo Signor Sforza Pallavicino Governatore generale della Serenissima Republica di Venetia con i qual Principi et Signore ho trattato et particolarmente et con tanta domestichezza per gratia et benignità loro che simili affare che mi persuado a quello che in loro della Christianità premiando il servitio secondo il merito di quello’ [Seeing such disorder of ours no less than the enemy’s is what has caused me, since the end of these last wars, to consider the detail of past military actions in antiquity and in my own time (with thirty-two years of continuous study and experience that it seems to me I have dedicated up to the present, by the grace

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inserted passage at the foot of the page, Brancaccio explains that he had, in fact, been frustrated in his wish to explain in person what he was offering and this was the reason he had set it down in writing. He states his desire, which is to serve his own patron, the King of France and all other princes, in the present holy war against the Turks: [from] the discussion of such matters with so exclusive and most excellent gentlemen at that time, the idea has remained so clearly with me that (without, however, interrupting my studies night and day) I have arrived at that outcome I had so much desired, which is to be in command of what I will here propose so easily and as well as other things that I find simple, so that I will be able to put it into practice in the service of God and of my master, and other princes, [including] the already mentioned Most Christian Majesty and his good will, [who] wish to be served [by] me in this Most Sacred war against the combined enemies of Christianity.13

This is the voice of a newly minted Brancaccio: the self-confident ‘panEuropean’ military analyst-cum-visionary adviser. His procedure is to make a pithy and rhetorically sophisticated sales pitch that nevertheless embodies the vital principle of keeping things simple if he is to engage his audience’s attention. He opens with a statement that all warfare can be reduced to three main topics: fighting in open country, the taking of fortified places and the defence thereof. He qualifies this simplification by remarking that it would take ‘a hundred pages of paper’ to master the innumerable details of war; he notes the enormous advances in military tactics and technology since the time of Charles V, and how, if the latter and his captains were to come back from the dead, they would be astounded by such progress. Brancaccio maintains that Charles, who is still praised by the cognoscenti as the greatest military leader of all time, was nevertheless unable to win a series of sieges ‘all because he really did not know what it entails to take fortified towns’.14 of God) and to rediscovering the foundation of these most dark and muddy matters of war, as they are able to attest. And after ten months since I left France for some time, during which, with the good grace and permission of the Most Christian king my master, for no other reason than to improve my said thoughts, I have spoken particularly with such princes and signori as the Majesty of his Highness the Emperor, the most illustrious Duke of Savoy, the most excellent and most illustrious Duke of Parma and the most illustrious Signor Sforza Pallavicino, Governor General of the Most Serene Republic of Venice, with such familiarity through their grace and kindness, that similar experiences persuade me that those Christian princes reward such service according to merit]. 13 Ibid.: ‘Me ne è rimasta sì lucida la mente che (senza però intermettere notte et giorno il mio studio) ne sono venuto a quei termini da me tanto desiati, ciò è di posseder quello che io propongo sì facilmente et se bene come altra facil cosa ch’io far potessi da porlo in essecutione in servitio di Dio et del mio Padrone, e d’altro Principe che con la già detta Majestà Christianissima et sua buona volontà si voglia servire di me in questa Sacrissima guerra contro il commun nemico della Christianità’. 14 Brancaccio, Discorso della milizia, fol. 76r: ‘Testimonio di questo co’l detto Impero Carlo V e Sandesir, et Landersì in Francia et Metz in Lorena, ove io mi ritrovai in tutte quelle giornate oltre di quelle altre di Fiandra et d’Alemagna in servitio di quel Principe et benche l’Andesir [sic] fosse preso dopo due mesi in circa d’assedio et con l’essercito nostro mezzo

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In offering examples (‘testimonio di questo’) from his own experience going back to Landersì in 1544, Brancaccio’s didactic method as a theoretician is to generalize enduring techniques of warfare using a structural synthesis drawn from events in the linear narrative of recent history. His great selling point, though, is the fact that he can list dozens of famous battles and actions where he was actually present, and he was to press the authority of physical authenticity as a continuous mantra in all his subsequent military writings (and, presumably, in his spoken discourse). Brancaccio continues with further examples from the French civil wars (quoted at the close of Chapter 2) and proceeds to the third of his categories, the defence of fortified towns. As we saw, here he cites the heroic defences by Venetian garrisons against the Turks in 1570 and 1571 at Malta, Seget and Famagusta. Brancaccio knew of these actions only from report, but they are of course particularly pertinent to members of the League intending to engage the Turks, who are his target audience. He balances this by mentioning the successful resistance of the French Catholics at Poitiers and Chartres, which he experienced at first hand. He warns against complacency, reminding his readers – picking up the refrain of the opening section – that all these successful defences were in fact achieved only because ‘the places were not besieged as they should have been’. Brancaccio now moves towards his conclusion with a display of notable rhetorical verve. He invites his readers to imagine someone who could successfully take any fortified town, with little or no loss of life, very little bombardment and the use of a normal army, and that there would be no possible way to resist such an assault. But, then again, what could be more perfect if this person were also able to defend a fortified town so that it could never, in any circumstances, be taken, even if it was besieged by one who knew such an ‘irresistible’ method of besieging; and what if the same person was equally gifted in the third sphere of warfare, fighting in open country? Such a person would be certain of being invincible in any kind of confrontation ‘without ever being afraid of all the cavalry, not only of the Turks but virtually the whole world … even if he were confronted by more than 10,000 mounted and foot soldiers’.15 Brancaccio maintains the suspense with a further twist of his virtuoso rhetoric: ‘what could be said of such a man? One could say that he is an angel come down from heaven to perform divine works on earth’.16 And then, apparently without a moment’s self-consciousness, he delivers the answer to this rhetorical question at which he has been aiming since the opening of the Dialogo, offering nothing less than himself as angel incarnate: But if this angel were ultimately to be found in human form, he would at last be the one able to be worthy of that prince for whom he performed the said services, which is finally destrutto per gli assalti. … non dimeno questo fu per mancamento che hebbero de monitione che polvere et altri cose per la diffesa necessaria altrimenti non l’hariamo forse presa … et tutto ciò per non sapere alla verità che cosa era l’espugnare delle piazze forte’. 15 Brancaccio, Discorso della milizia, fol. 79r: ‘senza tener mai tema alcuna di tutta la Cavalleria non solo del Turco, ma quasi di tutto il Mondo ... benché non si trovasse più di 10 mila soldati da piedi seco et da cavallo’. 16 Ibid., ‘che si direbbe di tal huomo? Dir si potrebbe ch’egli e un Angelo sceso dal Cielo per far nel Mondo opere Divine’.

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Warrior, Courtier, Singer to know the entire substance and perfection of war better than all the captains who have ever been in the world since Adam. He would certainly deserve as much as it merited of that which was in the power of the Prince whom he serves to give. Now then, because our most sacred God never does such miracles by his grace and mercy in the world today, princes know that to hear about it, [they have] to take the opportunity that is presented to them, if they wish to prosper on the earth.17

The Italian manuscript closes here; but the Spanish translation, one copy of which bears Brancaccio’s seal and was despatched with a long covering letter by Guzmán da Silva, has a concluding paragraph designed specifically for Philip II, detailing the terms he is offering, but interestingly maintaining the third person of the preceding rhetorical construction. Brancaccio offers a full demonstration, without prejudice, in the presence of the king, with the condition that if he is not convinced, he can execute him.18 Perhaps we can read here Brancaccio’s wish to ‘face the music’ from which he had run away in 1554, recalling that at that time he had also begged to be allowed to prove himself as a warrior in Flanders as an alternative to punishment (Chapter 1). The Discorso della milizia would be refined further during the following twelve months or so, until Brancaccio was sufficiently happy with it to have it printed in Florence, apparently in three languages, Spanish, Italian and French (although only one copy, of the Spanish version, survives).19

17 Ibid., fols 79v–80r: ‘Ma se questo Angelo si trovasse al fine in forma d’huomo che ciò facesse che sarebbe al fin quello che ci meritar potesse da quel Prencipe à cui egli facesse li sudetti servitij il che all’ultimo è sapere la sostanza intiera et perfettioni della guerra meglio che quanti Capitani mai sono stati al mondo da Adamo in qua. Meritarebbe certo quanto egli meritar sapesse par che ciò fosse in potere del Principe a cui egli servisse. Hora dunque poi che Nostro Santissimo Iddio fa hoggi mai per sua bontà et misericordia tali Miracoli al Mondo, sappiano i Principi che di ciò haveranno notitia servirsi dell’occasion che se gli appresentano, si vogliono prosperare su la Terra’. 18 Simancas AG, E 1331-14 and in another copy, E 1505, fol. 66: ‘Ará pues que Dios haze por su misericordia estos milagros en el mundo escriva Vuestra Serenísima Ilustrísima a Su Majestad y diga que la prueva d’ello que se hará en su presencia (antes que se salga en campaña) sopena de la cabeza, le hara cierto de quanto está dicho ... y prometo por la presente escrita y firmada de mi mano y sellada de mis armas’ [Now, given that God performs miracles in the world through his mercy, he writes to Your Majesty and says that he [Brancaccio] will show you the proof of it in your presence (before he leaves on the campaign) under threat of losing his head [and] confirm what has been said … and I swear and promise by this document signed by my hand and sealed with my crest]. 19 Simancas AG, E 1063-146. Printed on two loose quarto sheets, with no other printer’s marks or title material; reference to versions in Italian and French is made by Cardinal Granvelle (see below). Grand Duke Cosimo’s remark in his letter about the ‘Articoli’ ‘che io le mando’ could just possibly mean that he had ordered the printing, but this is not verifiable without seeing more original documents, if at all.

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Military science: part two On 29 March 1572 Guzmán da Silva reported that Brancaccio had left for Florence and Ferrara and we can assume that any advances he may have made to the Venetians or to the Farnese had by now been rebuffed.20 Brancaccio was received in Florence by Grand Duke Cosimo de’ Medici, to whom he presented his impressive sheaf of letters of introduction from (respectively) the French king, Charles IX and his mother, Catherine de’ Medici; Cardinal Charles de Bourbon-Vendôme; the military commander, Jacques de Savoie-Nemours and Henri I de Montmorency, Constable of France, and he made his request to be allowed to serve in the latest campaign against the Turks. This finally had the effect which Brancaccio had so far failed to achieve in Vienna, Turin or Venice. On 16 May Cosimo gave instructions for Brancaccio to be given 500 scudi and offered him a place on his great galleon (‘Galeazza maggiore’), about to join the League’s fleet under the overall command of Don Juan of Austria.21 Four days later, Cosimo instructed the captain of the ship, Bernardo Nasi, to offer Brancaccio ‘all help and assistance’, noting that ‘he is a person of merit and we ask that you afford him every good office as a cavaliero very dear to us’, adding that he is putting Brancaccio on the large ship because he suffers from sea sickness.22 The full weight of the positive impression that Brancaccio had made is revealed in a letter that Cosimo wrote to his ambassador in France, Giovanni Maria Petrucci, instructing him to acknowledge receipt of the letters of recommendation from their respective writers and to report that he found in Brancaccio ‘great sufficiency and intelligence in military arts’ and that he had arranged for him to be honourably received onto one of his ships about to join ‘this glorious force against the Turks’; furthermore, he says he has written to Don Juan of Austria (commander of the expedition), recommending Brancaccio for service as a ‘very experienced person in matters of war’.23 20 Simancas AG, , E 1331-29 Guzmán da Silva (Venice) to Philip II (Spain) 29 March 1572 21 Florence AS, Mediceo del Principato, 238, fol. 117 (Entry 19672 in the Medici Archive Project Documentary Sources database), ‘vi conmettiamo che paghiate al Illustre Signor Giulio Cesare Brancatii scudi cinquecento di moneta, che di tanti noi li facciamo libero dono’. 22 Florence AS, Mediceo del Principato, 238, fol. 122 (Entry 19673 in the the Medici Archive Project Documentary Sources database), Cosimo de’ Medici (Florence) to Bernardo Nasi (Livorno), 19 May 1572: ‘il signor Giulio Cesare Brancatii ha da ire a questa gloriosa impresa et perché gli fa male il mare verrà sopra le nostre Galeazze però lo imbarcherete sopra la Galeazza maggiore che voi comandate et li farete tutti que’ commodi et carezze che potrete perché è persona meritevole et vogliamo che gli facciate ogni buon trattamento come a cavaliere a noi molto accetto’. 23 Florence AS, Mediceo del Principato, 238, fol. 124 (Entry 19674 in the the Medici Archive Project Documentary Sources database), Grand Duke Cosimo de’ Medici (Florence) to Giovanni Maria Petrucci (Paris), 21 May 1572: ‘il signor Iulio Cesare Brancatii è venuto da me et ci ha presentato lettere di loro Maiestà Christianssime alle quale direte per parte nostra che ci sono state gratissime come ci saranno sempre, e massime raccomandandoci el detto Signor Iulio Cesare, il quale mostra molto bene essere servitore di tanti Gran Principi et della squola di quella Corte, et che habbiamo trovato in lui gran suffitientia et intelligentia del arte

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However, the Spanish still had to be persuaded that Brancaccio could be trusted; and so, rather than proceeding directly to Livorno to join the Tuscan fleet, Brancaccio went first to the Medici in court in Pisa (where he was to end up staying for the best part of a year). On 17 June he wrote to Cosimo that he was sending by way of Luigi Dovara, a Tuscan diplomat and Cosimo’s ‘Maestro di Campo Generale della Cavaliera Toscana’, a new copy of his Discorso, which was presumably then printed up ‘in three languages’ (see above), ready to be forwarded to Spain. Brancaccio also passed on a copy he had made of a letter from Charles IX to his ambassador in Rome which had been written on 31 May – suggesting that his French contacts were very much alive.24 All of this fed into a concerted effort on Brancaccio’s behalf by the Medici, who alone could provide the necessary mediation between French and Spanish interests. While in Pisa, Brancaccio must have made an instant impression on the two Medici princesses, Isabella and Eleonora (to whom he later sent greetings – see below). The latter wrote twice to the Florentine ambassador at the Spanish court on Brancaccio’s behalf: the first in June, mentioning his desire to join Don Juan’s expedition, and another in August, a further letter of recommendation.25 Finally, the grand duke himself intervened and wrote to Philip II on 20 August 1572 (Appendix 2, Doc. 8). Cosimo started by passing on Brancaccio’s regrets at having been unable to fight with the League’s fleet in the current year, for reasons that the Florentine ambassador would ‘explain in full’. He went on to say that he had tested ‘in part [Brancaccio’s] virtue and valour … in the matter of war’ by having him make a presentation of his ‘Articoli’ (i.e., the Discorso).26 Cosimo found him to be a very experienced soldier and most expert in military matters, and proposed that there would be nothing to lose by having the ‘Articoli’ further investigated, and that, meanwhile, Brancaccio should be kept in Florence, rather than returning to France to serve the French king. The French were by now deeply involved in aiding Louis of Nassau’s rebellion against Spain in the Netherlands, and war between France and Spain was looking militare e però esser degno di servire a ogni principe, et che per respetto di loro Maiestà non habbiamo mancato di accarezzarlo et favorirlo con farle dare ricetto honoratamente sopra una delle nostre galeazze per ire a questa gloriosa impresa contro a’ Turchi havendo noi scritto al Signor Don Giovanni d’Austria le virtù sua a fin che se possa servire del opera sua nelle cose di guerra come di persona molto sperimentata et che è persona da tenerlo caro e doppo l’havere fatto questo offitio con il Re e con la Regina madre farete il medesimo col Cardinale di Borbon et col Duca di Nemurs e Duca di Memoransy [sic] Marescial di Francia’. 24 Florence AS, Carte Strozziane, serie I, 32, fol. 163, Giulo Cesare Brancaccio (Pisa) to Grand Duke Cosimo de’ Medici I (Florence), 17 June 1572 and fol. 164, copy (in Brancaccio’s hand) of a document entitled ‘per lettere del Re christianissimo al suo Imbasciatore In Roma del Ultimo di maggio’, dated 16 June 1572. 25 Florence AS, Archivio Medici del Principato, 4905, fol. 149 (June 1572) and 167 (August 1572). These references and a transcription of Brancaccio’s letter to Cosimo referred to in the previous note were very generously passed on to me by Philippe Canguilhem, who learned of them in turn from Vanni Bramanti: I am grateful to them both. 26 Giovanni Mazzuchelli, Gli scrittori d’Italia (2 vols, Brescia, 1753–63), vol. 1, p. 1985, records a manuscript copy of the Discorso della milizia in Florence; see Appendix 1: Works.

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27

inevitable. Cosimo suggested that Brancaccio could well be of service to the League, something for which Brancaccio himself was showing a burning zeal, and the grand duke proposes waiting for news of the fleet before deploying him. Enclosed was the printed version of the ‘Articoli’: Cosimo would wait for Philip’s response. On 25 November the grand duke wrote again to Philip, now from Pisa, apologizing for raising such a minor matter, but thanking him for the decision which Philip had made in the intervening period and his resolve to act on it now: ‘I humbly kiss your hand for the reply which you have [graciously] deigned to give in the case of Giulio Cesare Brancato [sic] in your letter of the 26 ultimo; now that I know your thoughts on the matter, I will resolve it swiftly’.28 It seems that Philip’s ‘decision’ had been to refer the matter to Don Juan and his advisers and while Brancaccio remained in Tuscany, his case was considered at the highest levels. Copies of the ‘Articoli’ were sent to the two men who actually had the power to effect his request to join the fighting: Don Juan of Austria (this copy later shown to the Duke of Sessa) and none other than Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, now Viceroy of Naples. However, it was to be almost nine months before Philip received their responses to Brancaccio’s Discorso and his offer: letters were written by each within a day of one another, implying that they were sent with the same courier.29 The new version of the Discorso (referred to by Cosimo as the ‘Articoli’) is arranged along the same lines as its predecessor, that is, a division of the nature of warfare into the same three categories, which are then further elucidated in ‘ten articles’ which go into considerable technical detail about tactics, numbers of guns and men, and the design of fortifications. The whole opens with a paragraph of personal introduction that is in itself a fascinating model of the way that Brancaccio’s sense of personal identity is constructed in terms of embodied honour. It begins with a digest of his career, listing the number of battles fought in and the sovereigns under whom he has been subject, and reinforcing the ‘presence in person’ theme by mentioning the wounds which he has collected in the process, verifiable physical proof, as it were, of his ‘great experience and continual study’. He asks that one great prince of the League agree to put his (always unspecified) theory to the judgement of eight or ten of his most select captains and gentlemen in order to decide whether it merits a reward that matches up to the ‘virtue and valour’ that they recognize in Brancaccio himself:

27 Although four days after this letter was written, the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre in Paris was to provoke jubilant support from Spain; Braudel, The Mediterranean, vol. 2, pp. 1106–12. 28 Simancas, AG, E 1448-98, Grand Duke Cosimo de’ Medici I (Pisa) to Philip II (Spain), 25 November 1572: ‘bacio humilmente le mano della resposta che s’è degnata di darmi al particular di Giulio Cesare Brancato con la carta sua de xxvi del passato; il quale hor ch’io so la mente di quella, risolvero ben presto’. 29 Simancas AG, E 1063-12, Cardinal Granvelle (Naples) to Philip II (Spain), 7 May 1573 and E 1063-145, Duke of Sessa (Naples) to Philip II (Spain), 8 May 1573 (not 18 May, as stated by Coldagelli, ‘Brancaccio, Giulio Cesare’, p. 784, which is the date on the wrapper recording when the letter was received at the Spanish court).

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Warrior, Courtier, Singer If there be [for] me any virtue and value in war by way of the thirty-two years’ experience of it I have had, in which (among the services performed sometimes with commissions and other times without them to the blessed memory of the Emperor Charles V and after to the magnanimous King Henry of France, and outside it, and for the purpose of the Majesty of the present King Charles [IX], all of these past wars against the Huguenots) I have found myself in seven royal battles, always (thank God!) victorious, over and above many other encounters, taking of land and other fine military actions, having received many wounds in the process; if I (I say) possess any singular virtue in this art, which not many other brave soldiers and captains do, due to the great experience and continued study which I have made of it, it goes without saying in the extreme that I would like to find myself in this expedition [i.e., Don Juan’s campaign against the Turks]. I wish that some great Prince among those of the Holy League might avail himself of testing [my theory] to see if it is so or not, in his presence and that of eight or ten of the finest men and captains in his service, so that by doing it, it is proved with all the rigour and care that you might imagine among soldiers of skill and bravery, [and it] proving to be true, they might serve me, honouring me with goods, and with positions commensurate with the virtue and valour which could be found (perhaps) in my person … And so that it might be seen that he who deals with these marvels knows and understands what he is saying, he proposes that which follows and if there be any man on earth who might know how to resolve these principles of war, or any part of them, [that man] might volunteer his services to the Holy League for all the days of his life.30

The Duke of Sessa, Don Juan’s second-in-command and one of the leading Spanish military leaders in Italy, wrote back to Philip II on 8 May 1573.31 It is clear from Granvelle’s letter, dated the day before, that the duke and the viceroy had already had consultations and were of divergent opinions about what should be done. The duke says his first reaction had been that it was the work ‘more of a vain man than 30 Simancas, AG, E 1063-146, fol. 1v: ‘Si hay en mi alguna virtud, y valor de guerra por la experiencia de treinta, y dos años, qu’he andado en ellas, a donde (entre los servicios hechos una vez con cargos, y otra sin ellos a la bien aventurada memoria del Emperador Carlos V y después al magnánimo Rey Henricques en Francia, y fuera d’ella, y a la fin a la Majestat del presente Rey Charles en todas estas pasadas guerras contra los Ughenottes) me he hallado en siette batallas reales siempre (gracias a Dios) con vittoria de más de otros muchos rencuentros, presas de tierras, y otras lindas facciones militares, haviendo recebido entre vezes peleando muchas heridas. Si yo (digo) poseo alguna virtud singular en esta arte algo menor, que no hazen muchos otros buenos soldados, y capitanes por la grande experienzia, y contino estudio qu’he hecho en ello, ya que holgaría en estremo de hallarme en esta jornada: Desseo que algún gran Príncipe de los de la Santíssima Lega [sic] sea servido hazer prueva d’ello si es ansý, o, no en su presenzia, y de ocho, o, diez de los más escogidos señores, y capitanes de su servicio, para que haziendo se la prueva con todo el rigor, y primor, que se puede imaginar entre soldados de arte, y de valor saliendo en verdad, se puedan servir de mý honrándome de bienes, y de cargos conformes a la virtud, y al valor que se podrá (quizá) hallar en mi persona … Y para que se vea si el que tratta d’estas maravillas sabe, y entiende lo que dize, propone lo que sigue y si hay hombre sobre la tierra, que sepa resolver estas preposiciones de guerra, o alguna parte d’ellas, el quiere servir de balde a la Santíssima Lega todos los días de su vida’. 31 Braudel, The Mediterranean, vol. 2, p. 1126.

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of a good soldier’ and that he had informed himself a little about Brancaccio and had found ‘that he is a cavallero, is Neapolitan of a good family, that he says he had been a soldier for thirty-two years (this information, presumably, from the ‘Articoli’ itself), and that ‘for some reasons (though not sufficient) it seems that he went to France some time after the defeat of Metz in Lorraine, where he has served until now; he was a gentleman of the chamber to King Henri, and continues to be so now; he holds the order of Saint Michael and was superintendent of all the fortifications of that kingdom, confirmed by the patent that he shows’ and that he wants to return to Philip’s service.32 The duke is impressed, nevertheless, that Brancaccio is offering to serve with Don Juan, ‘despite the fact that the King of France ordered him to be called expressly to the siege of La Rochelle [no obstante que el Rey de Francia le mandava llamar señaladamente para la expugnación de la Rochela]’.33 The duke says that Brancaccio has already revealed some useful information, ‘particularly concerning taking open ground, cutting trenches and ordering of squadrons, and he surprises me because I am sure that without concealing it, he speaks the truth that when setting of a squadron of infantry against cavalry on open ground, nothing else can best resist [them] nor do better. And he knows about entrenching, approaching and attacking a fortified town, so that we cannot deny that [without him] we are in the dark’.34 He concludes that they should take Brancaccio on rather than have him serve the enemy, recommending that he be given leave by Granvelle to go to Naples in order to submit to the proof he has proposed. Granvelle, on the other hand, was immediately suspicious: ‘if he is the same that I knew in the service of his august Majesty [Charles V], I know him for a conceited man’ and if allowed to come to Naples, he would simply learn as much as possible, and then go back to France. To Granvelle, Brancaccio is nothing but a rebel, ‘who without any reason went to France in wartime and was found [fighting] against the 32 Simancas AG, E 1063-145: ‘Estando el señor don Juan en Mecina vino un despacho de un cavallero que se llama Jullio César Brancaccio, ofreciendo a la Liga lo que Vuestra Majestad mandará ver por el papel que embió; pareciéron me ofertas mas de hombre vano que de buen soldado. Después informándome de algunos, supe que este cavellero es Napolitano y de buen casta y a lo que él dize ha seguido la guerra treinta y dos años y algunos dellos con el Emperador, Nuestro Señor de gloriosa memoria, hasta que por algunas causas aunque no suficientes para lo que hizo se passó a Francia algo después de la jornada de Metz de Lorena donde hastar ahora ha servido. Ha sido gentilhombre de cámara de el Rey Enrrico y ahora déste; tiene la Orden de Santo Miguel y era superintendente de todas las fortificaciones de aquel Reyno conforme a la patente que muestra’. 33 The siege of La Rochelle lasted throughout the spring and into May of 1573 and the royal army under the Duke of Anjou never succeeded in taking the Protestant stronghold. Anjou was elected King of Poland on 29 May, giving him the excuse to retreat gracefully and make terms with the Rochelais: Knecht, The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France, pp. 432–5. This is the only reference to Brancaccio having been recalled to France, but, if true, it reinforces his claim to being a sieging specialist with a Europe-wide reputation and cachet. 34 Simancas AG, E 1063-145: ‘special sobre expugnación de tierras, y forma de trinches [sic] y ordenança de Esquadrones. Y hame admirado porque cierto sin encarecerlo el dize verdad que como él forma un esquadrón de infantería contra cavallería en tierra llana, de ninguna otra puede resystilla mejor ni tan bien y entrinchearse y llegarse a una plaza y batalla. Es lo que sabe de manera que no se puede negar que traemos los ojos cerrados’.

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emperor and against Your Majesty in all the time of the war that you afterwards had against France’. At first, he refused to give Brancaccio a safe passage, but eventually he grudgingly accepted the request of the Duke of Sessa and Don Juan and agreed to allow Brancaccio to come to Naples ‘to present the things that he talks of’, but only on condition ‘that it is done secretly and that he remains imprisoned in the castle and talks to nobody’.35 After six weeks or so spent gathering evidence, Granvelle took it on himself to write a further, more detailed letter to Philip on 26 June, which was yet more damning of Brancaccio (Appendix 2, Doc. 9). Now Granvelle implies that he has conducted further research, and has received ‘papers and writings’ from Ambassador Vargas in Venice. This is the letter in which he recalled the facts of Brancaccio’s crime in Halle in 1551 and what followed (see Chapter 1; it is further discussed in Chapter 7). His opening remarks show his complete scorn for Brancaccio’s boasts, implying that he considered that the Duke of Sessa had been taken in: ‘As for Giulio Cesare Brancaccio and the things that he is offering, sent to me from Florence printed in three languages: I know the man from the past and took him for vain. In particular, what he is offering is about a tenth of what [would be necessary] for him to claim to be a great engineer and a great warrior’.36 Quite apart from the crime Brancaccio committed nearly a quarter of a century earlier, Granvelle also tells how Brancaccio has been calling himself ‘Conte di Nola’ (did he mean ‘Conte de S. Andrea’?), claiming to have been given the title and land by Henri II. Granvelle had the ‘privilegio’ checked out by a ‘wise and clever lawyer’ in Rome, who said that the whole thing was very well done, except for one thing, that ‘instead of “Henricus”, who was the King of France who awarded the title, it says “Philippus”’, and as Granvelle points out to King Philip, he himself knows that he has issued no such privilege. Granvelle concludes ‘in truth, I do not believe that he is able to demonstrate what he is offering, and I consider it to be a fantasy’, immediately qualifying this diplomatically by adding that he defers to those who have heard what Brancaccio has to say (i.e., the Duke of Sessa and Don Juan) and that he did not wish to speak inopportunely. Yet he returns to the fray a few lines later, adding ‘because I consider everything that he says to be suspicious, as in fact many times demonstrated by what he took out of this kingdom [i.e., Naples]’; Granvelle will, of course, leave any decisions to the king.37 Granvelle was clearly feeling irked at having had his opinion ignored by Don Juan and the duke, because Brancaccio had, in fact, actually arrived in Naples in the intervening time. A letter recently found in the Medici archives, sent by Brancaccio from Naples on 8 June to a Florentine friend, Troilo Orsini, confirms that he was already in the city by then. Brancaccio begins by saying that he is waiting for a 35 Simancas AG, E 1063-12 (extracts): ‘Si es el mismo que conocí en servicio de su Majestad Cesárea le tengo por hombre vano. Y en buena escuela havría estado si después de partido deste servicio huviesse aprendido tanto … que sin causa ninguna se pasó a Francia a tiempo de la guerra. Y se ha hallado contra el Emperador y contra Vuestra Majestad en todas las jornadas de guerra que después se han havido contra Francia a tractar con él destas sus cosas … que fuese secretamente y que quedase serrado en el Castillo sin que le hablase nadie’. 36 Simancas AG, E 1063-24 (Appendix 2, Doc. 9). 37 Ibid.

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decision of King Philip II (who was, in turn, presumably waiting on Granvelle’s opinion) but that meanwhile he has met with Don Juan, with whom he has clearly made an instant hit on account of their being able to speak French together. Don Juan has shown him ‘various beautiful writings dealing with war or love [alcuni bei scritti, che tratteno d’arme, o d’amore]’, so that Brancaccio wants Orsini to send a copy of a French canzonetta entitled ‘Di moy mon coeur’ for him to give to Don Juan before they leave for Messina with the fleet, which would be shortly. The letter also gives an account of Brancaccio’s rather more formal interview with the Duke of Sessa, who after having heard from me [about] what war is, claiming to be ignorant [of it] (not being a soldier), on hearing [about] the incredible difference there is between this true and infallible military discipline [presumably Brancaccio’s ‘secrets’] and our normal practice, in use up to the present day, His Excellency spoke with great vehemence and for them all, praising me to the heavens, such that I do not know when I will ever be able to repay such favours and grace bestowed on me by him and his Highness [Don Juan], as well as the trust I was shown by their giving me a most solemn oath never to reveal in word or deed even the tiniest part of my secrets without my [agreement], until I have been granted my wish to serve the Catholic king [Philip II].38

Brancaccio was clearly thrilled by this vote of confidence ‘notwithstanding that Cardinal Granvelle had vigorously opposed it through his offices’. The Duke of Sessa and his friends must have worked on the viceroy: but having heard these gentlemen speak many times and seeing the service that I could give to the said Majesty [Philip II] he [i. e., Granvelle] softened greatly and during five or six days he showed that he held me in his good graces. But I have still not yet kissed his hands, which I will not be able to do until the answer comes from Spain.39

Judging by Granvelle’s most recent letter to Philip II (above), Brancaccio’s analysis of the viceroy’s opinion was quite wide of the mark. While he waited for word from Spain, however, Brancaccio took huge pleasure in renewing his acquaintances and moving again in the grand circles which he had 38 Florence AS, Miscellenea Medicea 505, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Naples) to Troilo Orsini (Florence), 8 June 1573: ‘dopo haver inteso che cosa è Guerra ci si repute non saper nulla, et non esser soldato, vedendo la differenza incredibile ch’è tra questa vera et infallibile disciplina military et la nostra ordinaria usata sin al presente, il che sua Eccellenza dice con tanta vehemenza, et predica per tutto ponendomi nel cielo, che io non so quando mai potrò disobligarmi imparte di tai favori, et gratie che in ciò mi fa insieme con Sua Altezza benché la fede ch’io nella lor [sic] datemi con sollenissimo giuramento di non palesar mai ne in detto ne in fatto pur la minima cosa de i m[i]ei secreti senza mia voglia et contento, ne senza esser io ricevuto a mio voto nel servitio del Re Cattholico’. This letter was discovered and generously passed on to me by Philippe Canguilhem. 39 Ibid.: ‘non ostante ch’il Signor Cardinal di gran vela vi s’habbia rigorosamente opposto per l’administration, che tiene in questo regno, ma havendo inteso parlar più volte questi Signori et vendendo il servitio che può da me farsi alla detta Maestà, s’è addolcito assai, et da cinque o sei giorni in qua mostra tenermi nella sua buona gratia, ma non già ch’io l’habbia ancor basciate le mani, a che ciò far possa fin che non vien risposti de Spagna’.

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left behind nearly twenty years before: ‘However, I am enjoying a very happy life with informal visits from the principal cavalieri and gentlemen of this land, from the most beautiful women, relations and friends and every other respectable delight that I could wish to have’.40 And it is likely that these social gatherings included musicmaking, as Brancaccio returns to his request that Orsini send him, via a Monsieur Gieronimo, secretary to the papal nuncio in Florence, ‘that canzonetta and other nice ones in French [quella canzonetta, et altre belle in francese]’. Brancaccio concludes by asking Orsini to greet the two Medici princesses, Isabella (a fine musician herself – see below) and Eleonora, the grand duke himself and, among others, ‘Signor de’ Bardi’ – presumably Giovanni de’ Bardi, Florentine musician and leading light of the camerata – as well as Bernardo Canigiani, who was Florentine ambassador to Ferrara in 1577 when Brancaccio visited (see below). It would appear that Granvelle’s continued opposition did not prevail, or perhaps events overtook his second despatch. According to his own testimony, Brancaccio did indeed join Don Juan’s fleet at some point in the summer, and took part in the expedition to Tunis.41 In early July, Don Juan returned briefly to Naples to reprovision, and so perhaps it was then that Brancaccio accompanied him on his return to Sicily, if he had not already taken him to Messina in late June, as Brancaccio had been hoping. It has been suggested that Don Juan, frustrated by the subordinate situation in which he had consistently been placed by his legitimate half-brother, Philip II (a policy aided and supported, incidentally, by Granvelle) and the denial to him of a crown, was influenced by the election of Henri d’Anjou as King of Poland to look for a throne for himself, and that the Kingdom of Tunis offered such a possibility.42 He arrived in Palermo on 7 September and leaving the Duke of Sessa and the Marquis of Santa Cruz behind, went on to Trapani, which was the best port from which to invade North Africa. On 7 October he disembarked his army at La Goletta, where his father (with the young Brancaccio) had done the same 38 years before; among the 140 warships of his fleet was the grand galleon of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, with Brancaccio presumably on board. The allied army entered Tunis without resistance, and soon afterwards Don Juan returned to Sicily, leaving behind a Spanish garrison under the command of a civilian governor, the brother of the former king, thereby essentially repeating his father’s mistake by stretching the edges of the empire too thin to sustain colonial outposts without massive expenditure. Within a year La Goletta was recaptured by the Turks and Tunis itself surrendered on 13 September 40 Ibid.: ‘Però passo fra tanto molto felice vita con visite ordinarie dei maggior cavaglieri, et Signori di questa terra, di bellissime dame, parenti, et amiche, et de ogni altra honesta delettatione ch’io desiderio havere’. 41 Brancaccio, Curriculum vitae, fol. 132r: ‘fui chiamato dal Signor Don Gio. d’Austria co ’l quale mi trovai per la 2a volta alla impresa di Tunesi (racquistata poco dinanzi da Turchi) 37 anni dopo ch’io ci fai la prima volta con l’invittimissimo Imperator suo persone’ [I was called by Signor Don Giovanni of Austria with whom I found myself for the second time in service in Tunis (retaken shortly afterwards by the Turks) 37 years [sic] after I did so for the first time with the most invincible emperor himself ]. Brancaccio for some reason dates this ‘1572’ in the margin. 42 Braudel, The Mediterranean, vol. 2, p. 1131.

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1574. Meanwhile, Don Juan made a triumphant return to Naples on 12 November 1573, witnessed by the viceroy.43 Military consultant It must have been around this time that Brancaccio wrote down the autobiographical document which I have named the Curriculum vitae (Appendix 2, Doc. 1) in order to present a particular version of himself. Brancaccio’s first biographer, Benedetto Croce, based much of his 1947 essay on this document, a study which, in turn, has been the principal source for subsequent accounts of Brancaccio’s career. The intended recipient of the Curriculum is unknown – he is addressed simply as ‘Clarissimo Signore mio osservandissimo’ (possibly a senior functionary) – but, as Brancaccio makes clear, it was written in response to a request for specific information: a quantification of the ‘experience’ which, as we have seen, was Brancaccio’s principal selling point. The inclusion of the Tunis campaign with Don Juan means it could have been written no earlier than mid-autumn 1573. The opening paragraph explains how the document is to be read: it is arranged in three columns, two of which – actually the left and right margins – contain the bare bones. In the left-hand margin, first, a simple ‘sum’ of the numbers of different types of action followed by a list of the commanders and patrons, and, in the right-hand margin, the dates.44 In the main body of the text, Brancaccio’s narrative lists in more detail the actions in which he has participated, identified by names of geographical locations, which in themselves are apparently understandable to the reader as signifiers of the historical import of the battles they represent. Brancaccio’s expressed aim of being brief betrays a certain sensitivity to criticism of his usually prolix style. We can imagine the ‘customer’ of this document having told Brancaccio to go away and get his spoken narrative onto paper and thereby ‘tame’ it. Brancaccio’s anxiety on this point is demonstrated in his attempts to keep the information in the form of a ‘business-like’ list in tabular form that, nevertheless, occasionally breaks out of control and heads into rambling ‘verbal’ prose as he is unable to resist a little analysis, along the lines of the ‘Articoli’. For example, the beast breaks out momentarily at ‘Landersì ... where (as happened also at Civitaterra) we were more days with the emperor, always fighting in battle, doing it in such great and well-planned skirmishes of five and six thousand horses a time in open country from one and the other army placed always according as I have said, battling to break in (which then by divine goodness did not succeed) ...’, before being reined in again.45 The Curriculum vitae is, in this way, a fascinating record of far more than a list of battles. 43 Ibid., pp. 1132–4, 1137. 44 After an initial attempt at a marginal summary of the information in the main body of the text (‘Battaglia vinta a Barbarossa in Tunisi’), Brancaccio realized the lack of space and abandoned the procedure. 45 ‘Landersì … dove (sì come anco a Ciatteuiterri [sic]) stettimo qui giorni con l’Imperator sempre in battaglia per combattere, facendosi in tanto di grosse et ben travate scaramuccie di 5 et 6 mila cavalli per volta in campagna fra l’uno et l’altro essercito posto sempre secondo ho detto, in battaglia per dar dentro (il che poi per divina bontà non successe)’.

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It was probably immediately before the final assault on Tunis that Brancaccio was finally not only given a serious job to test his much-vaunted skills as an expert in fortifications, but that he passed with honours. Throughout 1572 and 1573, the Governor of Sicily, Carlo d’Aragona, Duke of Terranova, had been reviewing the fortifications of the major towns and ports of the country and setting in motion an urgent programme of improvements and reinforcement of the garrisons. A series of detailed reports about the works, including discussion of how they should be paid for, with extensive marginal notes in Philip II’s hand testifying to the seriousness with which the defence of Sicily from the Turks was being taken, is preserved in the Simancas archives.46 Principal adviser in the process was one of Don Juan’s leading military commanders and fortification experts, the Milanese Gabrio Serbellone. Designs by him for Messina, Palermo and Trapani had been in discussion and, at least in the case of Palermo, under construction, since the beginning of 1573. Brancaccio impressed the Duke of Terranova with his apparent expertise and was engaged by him to review Serbellone’s plans for all three cities and for the new fortifications of Goletta itself.47 Brancaccio produced separate reports for each place, suggesting modifications and, particularly, financial savings, and these were forwarded by the duke with a covering letter to Philip II. The letter shows signs of Brancaccio’s own persuasive strategy at work and its rhetoric is designed to maximize the good impression of him that it conveys. The Duke of Terranova’s first words are Brancaccio’s name, followed by the sub-clause ‘by whom I am persuaded that your majesty knows of’, and then by the statement that ‘[he] is in such [high] estimation and opinion here for his intelligence and practice of fortification’. Brancaccio could hardly have had a better reference if he had written it himself.48 The reports were written as annotations to his modifications of Serbellone’s original plans (no longer extant). These reports are brief and to the point (unlike some of his later work), constantly justifying practical suggestions about the architecture of the fortifications and what is practicable in the circumstances, his comments directly based on how battles actually take place, predicting what the enemy might do and what tactics are best in different situations. His expertise is just what he has claimed it to be, a wealth of detailed technical knowledge deployed in the light of great experience, and as such, it shows him to be a military technocrat of confidence and authority. A randomly selected example of this can be seen in the report on the fortifications of Messina:

46 Simancas AG, E 1143, 18–27. See also Valentina Favarò, ‘La Sicilia fortezza del mediterraneo’, Mediterranea ricerche storiche, 1 (2004): 31–48. 47 Brancaccio’s involvement was mentioned in a dispatch to Grand-Duke Ferdinando de’ Medici from his majordomo, Enio Vaini, written from La Goletta on 16 October 1573: Florence AS, Mediceo del Principato, 4153 (Entry 18431 in the Medici Archive Project Documentary Sources database). 48 Simancas AG, E 1143-28: Duke of Terranova (Palermo) to Philip II (Valladolid), 16 October 1573: ‘Giulio Cesare, del quale mi persuado, che Vostra Maestà habbia notitia, venne qui in estima, et opinione tale de intelligenza, et pratica di fortificationi’. In the margin, against Brancaccio’s name, is an indecipherable comment scrawled, presumably, in Philip’s hand.

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It seems to me that none of the rest needs to be altered ... first, because there is not enough time, nor money, to increase the height of the mound on one side and reduce it on the other (as can be seen on the plan of the mounds, marked in red), nor men to defend it afterwards, unless there were a large army; in which case, if there were, it would be better to go out into the open to fight whatever enemy and power than to remain inside and guard the walls.49

The Duke of Terranova’s judgement of Brancaccio’s qualities seems to concur with the preliminary assessment of his equally senior military colleague, the Duke of Sessa. Perhaps Granvelle’s particular prejudices have also coloured the general assessment of Brancaccio’s actual qualities as a military scientist in subsequent accounts of his career. Certainly, ten or more years later, Brancaccio himself made the point in print, bitterly bemoaning that the King of Spain had not allowed him to take a leading role in his army comparable to the one he had had with the King of France, and this despite the good impression he had made on Don Juan and the Duke of Sessa in Naples in 1572.50 If Brancaccio did, indeed, return to Naples in Don Juan’s triumphal train, we can only speculate on the reasons why he did not remain there and settle down to a timely and well-earned retirement on his pension from the French crown as, indeed, the often unreliable Brantôme assumed he had done (in contrast to other fuorusciti colleagues), in his reflection on their fates: There was no one but the seigneur Jules Brancaccio who worked out [the situation] in time. After having kicked his heels in France, he pestered the treasurers of the Epargne for some measly pension (of which only half was paid, as I saw). He had Don Juan of Austria ask his pardon of the King of Spain, who granted it and, having returned to Naples, he got

49 Simancas AG, E 1143-29: Parere di Giulio Cesare Brancatio intorno la fortificatione di Messina [‘Opinion of Giulio Cesare Brancatio about the Fortifications of Messina’]: ‘Tutto il resto poi non bisogna mutarse al parer mio ... Prima, per che non ci basta tempo, ne danari ad ingrandirla d’una parte, et tagliara dall’altra, come si vede nel disegno notato di rosso dalla parte de’ monti, ni è gente poi che la defenda, si non fusse un gran essercito quale essendoci meglio sarebbe ad uscire in campagna di combatter qualsivoglia inimico et potente, che rinchiudersi et guardare le muraglie’. 50 Giulio Cesare Brancaccio, Il Brancatio: della vera disciplina, et arte militare sopra i Commentari di Giulio Cesare da lui ridotti in compendio per commodità de’ soldati (Ferrara and Venice, 1581), pp. 139–40: ‘Perciò che tutto che io veda che mentre la Maestà del Re Cattolico non consente che io possa trovarmi nelli suoi esserciti, a far alcun servitio, non meno a lei, che alla Christiana Republica, altri s’andrà servendo alle mie fattiche (si come s’è visto essersene servito in qualche somiglianza) nelle trincere a farsi d’alcun tempo in qua (non già del tutto bene) a quel modo, ch’io mostrai alla famosa memoria del Signor Don Giovanni, & al Signore Duca di Sessa l’anno settanta doi in Napoli’. [Thus, while I see that although his Majesty the Catholic King does not consent that I may find a place in his armies to provide any service, either to you, or to the Christian Republic, others will take advantage of my efforts (as we have seen some do in some similar way) in the earthworks that were made some time ago (and not quite properly), in the same way that I showed to Signor Don Juan of blessed memory and to the Duke of Sessa in Naples back in 1572].

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himself so much in the good graces of Don Juan on account of his fair and good qualities, that he finished his days much more happily than the others who had been banished.51

Indeed, Brancaccio is listed in the French treasury accounts as having been allotted two separate pensions under the categories ‘Italiens’ and ‘Neapolitaines’ of 600 livres and 2,880 livres respectively for the year 1572; and in 1578 the sum of 2,840 livres is allocated. But this kind of account entry by no means implies any actual payment of the amount: normally the pensioner would need to have appeared in person, or to send an agent, to collect his money.52 In a letter written in April 1580 to Duke Alfonso II d’Este, Brancaccio said that his pension had not been paid for the past five years. Even if it had now been politically possible for Brancaccio to resettle in Naples (always questionable, considering that Cardinal Granvelle was still viceroy), without a secure income, he would continue to need to seek patronage elsewhere. Rome At this point, Brancaccio’s trail goes almost completely cold and remains so for the next four years. Whilst it is possible that he remained at least part of the time in Naples, three incidental pieces of evidence point towards Rome. Laurie Stras recently found two references to Brancaccio in the Farnese archives in Parma dating from these years. The first is a letter of 2 October 1574 from Mutio Maffei, a Farnese agent in Rome, reporting that Brancaccio had wanted to borrow 100 scudi.53 Brancaccio’s request implies that he saw it as a ‘proxy payment’ by the Duke of Parma himself, suggesting a tie of patronage between the two. Two years later Brancaccio apparently offered some kind of service directly to the duke, who had a letter drafted in a standard format that politely, but firmly, turned him down: ‘I confess to remaining obliged to you for the friendly regard which [your letter] shows

51 Brantôme, Grands capitaines, p. 27: ‘Il n’y eut que le seigneur Jules Brancaccio, qui s’advisa de bonne heure. Après avoir traisné l’aiguillette en France, nacquetté les trésoriers de l’Espargne sur quelque chétive pention qu’on luy donnait (il en estoit payé à demy, comme je l’ay vue). Il fit requérir dom Juan d’Austrie de sa grace au roy d’Espagne, qui la luy donna; et, s’estant retiré a Naples, il se mit si bien en grace avec dom Joan pour les belles et bonnes parties qui estoient en luy, qu’il paracheva ses jours plus heureusement que les autres bannys’. 52 Paris BN, Fonds français 7007, ‘Estat des pensionnaires du Roy en Son espargne en l’année mil cinq cens soixante douze’, fols 74v–76r: ‘Italiens’: Au Sieur Julles Brancasse, viC l. [600 livres tournois]; fol. 76r–v: ‘Neapolitains’: fol. 76v: Au Sieur Julles Brancasse, iim viiic viiixx l [2,880 livres tournois]; Paris BN, Fonds Depuy, 852, ‘Estat des pensionnaires du Roy en son espargne faict et mis au net sur celluy de 1576 avec les augmentations depuis y mises jusques à la fin de la presente 1578’, fol. 51r: ‘Neapolitains’: Le Sieur Julles Brancasse, iim viiic iiiixx L [2,840 livres tournois]. These pension payment records were transcribed and generously brought to my attention by Jeanice Brooks. 53 Parma AS, Carteggio farnesiane estero, b. 373, Mutio Maffei (Rome) to ?Cardinal Farnese (Parma), 2 October 1574.

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towards me and the prince, my son, but the nature of the present times do not allow me to be able to accept your offer …’.54 The third piece of evidence is Vincenzo Giustiniani’s famous reference to Brancaccio as one of three bass virtuosos whom he heard Rome in his youth ‘in the Holy Year of 1575 or soon after’ (discussed at length in Chapter 6).55 Brancaccio’s trail becomes warmer once again in 1577, thanks to two mentions of him in Roman avvisi (local news reports). They reveal significant information about his status in the Holy City and suggest that his links to Emanuele Filiberto, Duke of Savoy, and to the Medici had remained alive. In mid-February 1577 it was reported that the pope persuaded Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici to contribute 100,000 scudi to the French war effort against the Protestants. Brancaccio had been entrusted to carry a letter to the Duke of Savoy ‘to the same effect’, that is, to persuade him to make a similar subvention. Brancaccio is described not only as (still) ‘generale della fortezza’ to the French king, but also ‘colonel’, and this implies that he was still acting as an agent for the French.56 Less than six weeks later, the avvisi reported that a letter had been received from Brancaccio in Turin (he is now given his ‘title’ of ‘Conte di Santo Andrea’) confirming his arrival in the city, his presentation of the pope’s letter to the duke, and the agreement of the duke in principle to the proposal to send aid to the French crown.57 Further sources will have to come to light before it is possible to account for Brancaccio’s activities and patrons during the middle years of the 1570s. This diplomatic mission in the spring of 1577 suggests that his connections and status were at the highest level and that he was still identified for his links to French royal interests. He was active enough in the right circles as a performer of ‘new’ kinds of 54 Parma AS, Carteggio farnesiane interno, busta 82, Ottavio Farnese (Parma) to Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (?Rome), 8 November 1576 [draft]: ‘Illustrissimo Signore, Io tengo in quella stima che conviene l’offerto, che Vostra Signoria mi fa con la lettera suo di l’ultimo del passato, et ne la ringratio molto, et confesso di restar con obligo alla voluntà amorevole, di ella dismostra verso di me, et del principe mio figlio, ma non permettando la qualità de’ tempi, che hora correno, che io possa accettare la sua offerta. Io la prego ad havermene per escusato, et esser certa, che sempre haverò memoria et della sua cortesia, et dell’obligo, che io le devo per questo conto, et me le offerto et raccomendato di core’. This, and the above document, were transcribed and generously passed on to me by Laurie Stras. 55 Vincenzo Giustiniani, Discorso sopra la musica de’ suoi tempi (1628) in Angelo Solerti, L’origine del melodramma (Turin, 1903), pp. 98–140, trans. and ed. Carol MacClintock, Musicological Studies and Documents, 9 (American Institute of Musicology, 1962), pp. 67–80. 56 Vatican, Urb. Lat. 1045, fol. 262, Rome, 13 February 1577: ‘Dicesi che il Duca di Fiorenza a persuasione di Nostro Signore habbia prestati 100,000 scudi al Re di Francia et che manderà il Colonello Giulio Cesare Brancatio generale della fortezza di sua maestà Christianissima al Duca di Savoja per il medesimo effetto, esser mandato da sua santità per isradicare gli Ugonotti ne darà 100.000 scudi altri’. 57 Vatican, Urb. Lat. 1045, fol. 305v, Rome, 26 April 1577: ‘Ci sono lettere del signor Giulio Cesare Brancatio Conte di santa [sic] Andrea da Turino con aviso ch’era gionto in quella Città, et presentato il Breve di Nostro Signore al Duca di Savoja, havendo Sua Altezza dimostrata buona inclinatione intorno al dare aiuto al Re Christianissimo’. This and the previous document were transcribed and generously passed on to me by Marco Bizzarini.

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solo songs to lute accompaniment to have been noticed by Vincenzo Giustiniani, and mentioned by him in the same breath as a professional member of the Sistine Chapel choir, Alessandro Merlo. Just where Giustiniani would have been able to hear Brancaccio give his virtuoso performances is not known, but as he belonged to one of the richest families in Rome, he presumably had access to the elite private court establishments of the princely cardinals. All these factors certainly tie in with the profile of Cardinal Luigi d’Este, brother of Duke Alfonso II, whose known relations with Brancaccio were such that the cardinal signed himself ‘as a brother’ in a letter in 1583. The cardinal was not only the principal link between the curia and France, but was also one of Rome’s great patrons of musicians: among his household in the mid-1570s was the singer and composer Luca Marenzio. The earliest documentation so far linking Brancaccio’s name with Cardinal Luigi d’Este dates only from 1579, but the two men may well have become acquainted many years previously, when the cardinal was resident in France for extensive periods, or even when he was a child and Brancaccio had dealings with his father, Ercole II. Luigi was a noted Francophile, as well as having a reputation for extravagance, luxury and a decidedly worldly range of interests, including music, which his elevation to cardinal in 1561 apparently did nothing to dampen. In 1577, he returned permanently to Rome from France with a reported entourage of 349 persons. He took over two floors of the Palazzo Orsini in Monte Giordano and also his uncle’s summer pleasure palace at Tivoli, with its famous water gardens (including Claude Venard’s celebrated hydraulic organ) and frescoed reception rooms. He even bought Turkish slaves ‘for between 24 and 36 scudi each’ to work on the estate, and gathered around him leading artists, musicians, philosophers and letterati.58 Ferrara Whether Brancaccio returned to Rome after his mission to Savoy is unknown, but on 9 November 1577 he was a visitor at the Este court in Ferrara, where his presence is listed in the Libro de andate e forestieri [Book of Visitors and Foreigners],59 and it was a few weeks later, on 14 December, that Bernardo Canigiani, ambassador to Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici, wrote to the grand duke’s secretary, Belisario Vinta, describing how Brancaccio had sung together with Lucrezia Bendidio, Leonora Scandiano, Countess of Sala, and Vittoria Bentivoglio, in the apartments of Duke 58 Giuseppe Camporti and Angelo Solerti, Luigi, Lucrezia e Leonora d’Este (Turin, 1888), pp. 22–3. The fullest biography of Cardinal Luigi d’Este remains the series of articles by Vincenzo Pacifici, ‘Luigi d’Este’, in Atti e memorie della Società Tiburtina di Storia d’Arte, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17, 20–27 (1930–54). See also Paolo Portoni, ‘Este, Luigi’, Dizionario bibliografico degli italiani, vol. 43 (Rome, 1993), pp. 383–90; Marco Bizzarini, Marenzio: La carriera di un musicista tra Rinascimento e Controriforma (Brescia, 1998), pp. 10–13. 59 Modena BE, Ital. β 2.2.21: ‘9 Novembre Tavola per il Brancacio loggiato in Corte’; in Anthony Newcomb, The Madrigal at Ferrara, 1579–1597 (2 vols, Princeton, 1980), vol. 1, p. 185. Brancaccio refers to his visit to Savoy in his letter to Duke Alfonso d’Este II, written in April 1580 (Appendix 2, Doc. 10).

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Alfonso II’s sister, the Duchess of Urbino, at the summer palace of Belriguardo, in the first of the famous series of witness reports of the concerto delle dame of Ferrara by Canigiani and others.60 Excerpts from the letters and diplomatic despatches which document Brancaccio’s various periods of residence in Ferrara between 1577 and 1583 are available in the secondary literature and others are transcribed in Appendix 2.61 A number of them will be examined in detail in Part 3, in the context of an investigation of Brancaccio’s role at the Este court; thus the following will be in the form of a summary of the relevant chronology, focusing mainly on his literary activities and on a tentative reconstruction of his whereabouts when not in Ferrara. Whether Brancaccio’s sojourn at the court in 1577 was the first since Alfonso had become duke in 1559 and how long it lasted is still unknown. In fact, only his reference in a letter written in July 1580 to Duke Alfonso’s displeasure at his apparent failure to behave in manner proper to a courtier during a visit to Belriguardo the previous summer provides the next evidence of Brancaccio’s presence at the court in 1579. Brancaccio does not reveal how long he had been a guest, but on 10 August 1579 he arrived at Cardinal Luigi’s palace in Tivoli with four servants, presumably following his unhappy visit.62 He almost certainly remained in Rome during the ensuing winter, where he was at work on his major literary project, a translation of, and commentary on, Julius Caesar’s De bello gallico.63 In his long letter written to the duke in April 1580 (Appendix 2, Doc. 10), which is not only one of his boldest and finest ‘pitches’ of all, but also a rich source of information of all kinds about his relationship with Duke Alfonso and the latter’s plans for his ‘musica secreta’, Brancaccio for the first time described the project which was to obsess him unremittingly for the following two years. He opens with a richly embellished appeal to the ‘more than forty years’ of service he has given the Este, presumably dating it back to his links to the duke’s father, Ercole, and his uncle, Don Francesco. Brancaccio then explains that he has been thinking about the idea of providing commentaries on Julius Caesar’s eight books ‘of the French wars’ which would incorporate his own experience and knowledge and be presented 60 Florence AS, Mediceo del Principato, 2895: Bernardo Canigiani (Ferrara) to Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici, 14 December 1577, in Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, p. 137; for a full discussion of this report, see Chapter 7. 61 See Newcomb, The Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, pp. 23–8 and 185–7; Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, particularly pp. 19, 32–5, 137–62, 282 and 284, and Elio Durante and Anna Martellotti, Madrigali segreti per le dame di Ferrara: Il manoscritto musicale F. 1358 della Biblioteca estense di Modena (2 vols, Florence, 2000), vol. 1, pp. 19–60. 62 Modena AS, Camera ducale, Amministrazione principi, Busta 1372, 10 August 1579, in Marco Bizzarini, ‘Marenzio and Cardinal Luigi d’Este’, Early Music, 27 (1999): 530, n. 15: ‘è arrivato il Signore Giulio Cesar’ Branchacio con boche no 4’ [Signor Giulio Cesar’ Branchacio [sic] has arrived with four [extra] ‘mouths’]. 63 Brancaccio was a regular guest of Cardinal Luigi, even if it is not clear if he was actually ever a permanent member of his household. He is recorded as being lodged at Luigi’s home in Rome, the palazzo at Monte Giordano (which belonged to another mutual acquaintance of the two men, Paolo Giordano Orsino), in a document transcribed by Marco Bizzarini, who dates it in summer 1581, although it seems more likely to refer to an earlier period when Brancaccio was still in Rome: Modena AS, Casa e stato, 411, fol. 154, in Bizzarini, Marenzio, p. 41.

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in such a way that this wisdom would be of direct use to present-day captains and soldiers, which had, he claimed, been in preparation ever since he left France at the beginning of the 1570s. He had already planned many details of the realization of the venture, which were (needless to say) extravagant. The book would be furnished with illustrations, and he had worked out that it should be printed in an edition of three or four thousand copies which would be offered for sale both within and beyond Italy at a price of three or four scudi each, which, even after repaying the printer and the booksellers, would, he blithely calculates, ‘giv[e] me a return of many thousands of scudi’; he is, indeed, quite candid about the fact that he had come up with this plan as a direct response to the problem of paying his debts. He appeals directly to the duke to pay the costs not only of the publication and of bringing him to the Ferrarese court and, presumably, installing him in a position ‘suitable to my station’, but also to finance his trip to Venice ‘to be present at the printing in order that no errors are made’, which makes clear his intention to have the book printed in that city (see below). Brancaccio apparently enclosed a draft of the first chapter with his letter, asking Alfonso for his opinion of it and for his ‘protection’, which would take the form of sending him the cost of his trip to Ferrara. Never one to play down his own opinion of his abilities (for which we should be very cautious about condemning him, as some have done), Brancaccio proposes that by inaugurating such a ‘school’ of military science he will do for Ferrara what others have done for Urbino through the creation of a courtly science, thus equating his proposed work with Castiglione’s Il libro del cortegiano. At the surface level, the letter follows in its basic structure a relatively standard pattern of client–patron negotiation: ‘I have demonstrated long service to you and your family; I am offering to continue this in the form of an enterprise which will bestow fame on you; I appeal for/claim reciprocation’. At another level, it has the marks of a business proposition: ‘here is a sample of the book, on the basis of which I ask you to put up (a large amount of) money and also to pay my expenses’. The fact that any monetary profit would accrue to Brancaccio rather than Duke Alfonso is, perhaps, not as outrageous as it sounds, considering that the duke should have no need of such money, but would, in theory, gain from the exposure of his name as patron with such a huge (putative) distribution, something implicitly understood by Brancaccio. And this is the proposal of a man who, by his own admission, has no other means of supporting himself and who needs to gets out of his present situation as fast as possible (which is why he is waiting so anxiously for Alfonso’s reply and ‘is ready to leave immediately’). It appears that Duke Alfonso’s response to the letter was, indeed, to treat it as the opening gambit in a contractual negotiation, and he chose to communicate via his agent in Rome, Giulio Masetti. If there was a letter from the duke, it is lost; but perhaps Masetti simply passed on Alfonso’s response verbally to Brancaccio, which apparently made clear that he was still upset by Brancaccio’s behaviour when he had been a guest at the palace of Belriguardo the previous summer.64 Although by now (July 1580) Brancaccio was without protection in Rome thanks 64 Brancaccio presumably left Belriguardo by the end of July, as he arrived at Cardinal Luigi d’Este’s palace in Tivoli on 4 August (see above).

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to the sudden departure for France of his erstwhile patron, Cardinal Luigi d’Este, who had had a serious row with the pope,65 Brancaccio, in his reply (Appendix 2, Doc. 11), nevertheless complained about this criticism (see Chapter 7) and also about Alfonso’s failure to read the proffered first chapter of his book. Brancaccio tried to tempt the duke with the offer of some songs for the ladies of the court (see Chapter 4), and reiterated his intention of dedicating the Caesar to him. But the fact is, despite his complaints, Brancaccio was in no position to bargain as he was completely penniless. He declared that he had been able to ‘throw together’ sixteen scudi towards his journey to Ferrara, and asked the duke to pay the rest later.66 He was desperate to get the book published and the hope that Duke Alfonso would help him was what was driving him to swallow his pride and ‘negotiate’. Alfonso had made Brancaccio a counter-offer, the full implications of which, as will become clear in the discussion in Chapter 7, Brancaccio either did not really appreciate, or chose to ignore. Other members of Cardinal Luigi’s household left Rome for Ferrara on 26 July,67 but Brancaccio lingered, perhaps because his outstanding debts prevented his departure. On 31 October, Urbani reported that Brancaccio was ‘expected in a few days’, but he actually only made it to Ferrara some time between 26 November (when he signed a receipt in Rome for 100 scudi for travel expenses advanced by Masetti) and 26 December, when it was reported that he ‘had arrived’,68 when he would have joined Cardinal Luigi himself, and other members of the cardinal’s entourage, including Luca Marenzio.69 It is possible Brancaccio may have stopped in Florence on the way north, as the Medici ambassador to Ferrara, Horatio Urbani, refers later to the fact that Brancaccio had shown the grand duke part of his Caesar before 1581.70 He was preceded by the rumour that he had ‘made a pact with [Duke Alfonso] that he is not to speak about his miracles of war, but rather to take part in a private music group being prepared by some ladies of the court, who are already rehearsing’.71 Brancaccio’s long anticipated arrival must surely have been a diverting 65 Bizzarini, Marenzio, pp. 31–3. 66 He left Rome owing money, which he was still trying to repay in November 1581 (see below). 67 Bizzarini, Marenzio, p. 38. Cardinal Luigi himself was in Ferrara during the first two weeks of August and then from November 1580 until February 1581: Durante and Martellotti, Madrigali secreti, vol. 1, p. 22 n. 68 Florence AS, Mediceo del Principato, filza 2899: Horatio Urbani (Ferrara) to Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici (Florence), 31 October and 26 December 1580, in Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, pp. 138 and 139 respectively; Modena AS, Archivio segreto, Particolari, Busta 227, in Durante and Martellotti, Madrigali secreti, vol. 1, p. 20 n. 69 Bizzarini, Marenzio, p. 38. 70 Florence AS, Mediceo del Principato, filza 2899: Horatio Urbani (Ferrara) to Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici (Florence), 13 February 1581, in Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, p. 141: ‘mi ha detto che quando ultimamente fu a Firenze, mostra a Vostra Altissima Serenissima una parte di quei suoi comentarij di Cesare’. 71 Florence AS, Mediceo del Principato, 2899: Horatio Urbani (Ferrara) to Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici (Florence), 31 October 1580, in Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, p. 138: ‘ha fatto patto con lui che non habbia di parlare di quei suoi miracoli di guerra, ma sì

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event for the Ferrarese court, and certainly Duke Alfonso made his new courtier welcome, by granting him generous conditions and accommodation, although the reason for the duke’s principal interest in Brancaccio was only now going to become clear. Just how much Brancaccio performed as a singer within the first few weeks of his arrival is not clear, but by 13 February 1581, he was already seriously frustrated and dropping hints to Horatio Urbani that he would be interested in serving the Medici.72 But he was clearly not giving up on Duke Alfonso, and having realized that the way to his employer’s heart was through his ears, Brancaccio wrote to Cardinal Luigi d’Este (who was now in Venice, presumably for carnival) at the end of February, asking him to order a lute from a famous German maker in Padua (Mastro Venere Alberti) to be presented to the duke, but built specifically for Brancaccio’s use. The technical specifications for the instrument were given in detail, showing Brancaccio’s very specialized knowledge and strongly implying that the instrument was conceived for accompanying his bass voice: in addition to the usual eight courses, there should be two additional single-course bass bourdons which should ‘resound as much as possible’. Brancaccio suggested that Marenzio, ‘or some other who understands’, will be able to advise on how the lute should sound (presumably knowing Brancaccio’s voice). In the same letter, Brancaccio asked the cardinal to get some of his chaplains to find him a book with parallel texts in German and Italian, or German and Latin, because he wanted to improve his German (joking, ‘such a youth as I am’). With his usual lack of modesty he says that he already knows ‘half’ of the language and that with little trouble he will know the rest.73 Getting published But it is clear that Brancaccio’s main preoccupation remained his own ‘Commentaries on Caesar’, and he must have been hard at work on it throughout the winter and spring. In early May 1581 he accompanied the Ferrarese court to Mantua for the festivities celebrating Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga’s return from his wedding to Margherita Farnese in Parma. Brancaccio apparently wrote a detailed account of various events of the trip to the Duchess of Urbino back in Ferrara (subsequently passed on by the Florentine ambassador to his employer), including the famous episode on 8 May, when Duke Alfonso had showed off the ‘music of these ladies’ and Vincenzo had got up and left after a short while, choosing rather to go and see the ‘comedia di zanni’, exclaiming ‘Women are a great thing, [but] in fact I would rather want to be a donkey than a bene intervenir in una musica secreta che si va preparando alcune Dame della corte le quali tuttavia a farci studio’. For further discussion of this passage, see Chapter 8. 72 It was presumably during this time that Torquato Tasso heard Brancaccio singing in dialogue with Anna Guarini and Laura Peverara and wrote the poem ‘A Giulio Cesare Brancaccio per il concerto de le dame a la corte di Ferrara’ (see Chapter 8). 73 Modena AS, Archivio segreto, Particolari, Busta 227: Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Ferrara) to Cardinal Luigi d’Este (Venice), 26 February 1581, in Durante and Martellotti, Madrigali segreti, vol. 1, p. 21; see also Bizzarini, Marenzio, p. 40 and Durante and Martellotti, Madrigali secreti, vol. 1, pp. 21–2.

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74

woman’. That Brancaccio should be relating such a titbit of gossip to the duchess is testimony of the easy-going relationship between the two, which manifested itself again in the affectionate way that the duchess gave Brancaccio 50 scudi so he could leave Ferrara in style after his ignominious dismissal from court two years later.75 This familiarity with Lucrezia, his bantering style with her brother Cardinal Luigi (who addressed Brancaccio as ‘brother’ in a letter in 1583), his almost certain close acquaintance with their sister, Anna d’Este, widow of François, Duke of Guise, not to mention his style of address to Duke Alfonso himself (which seems sometimes to border on the insolent), are all signs of just how long he had been involved with them all – indeed, most of them since they were little more than children. In seeking to understand Brancaccio’s position at the court, especially the fact that his trying behaviour was tolerated for so long, his status as ‘old friend of the family’ must be recognized as an important factor. By late May, the court was back home in Ferrara and in June the ‘contract’ between Brancaccio and Duke Alfonso was the subject of comment by Ambassador Urbani. During a visit to the court by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, Brancaccio was sulky and had to be coaxed into singing (see Chapter. 7), while what he really wanted was known to all: ‘Now he will publish his summary of the Commentaries of Caesar with great discussions and advice directed to the Princes of Italy and the duke is paying the costs of the publication of which he thinks to obtain great use’.76 In fact, the process of getting the books printed turned out to be complex in all respects, especially financial, and piecing together the events which led to its eventual publication – which reveal so much about its author – is by no means easy. Already, during the barge trip back from Mantua to Ferrara, Brancaccio had apparently broached the subject with the duke, because in an undated letter (Appendix 2, Doc. 12), he refers to such a conversation and his proposal that Alfonso should put up 500 scudi for a print run of 2,000 copies of the book. Saying that he does not like talking about money, Brancaccio explains that a printer to whom he has been talking (Vittorio Baldini – see below) has told him that this is how much it would cost to print and to have the illustrations drawn and engraved and also for the distribution costs. In early August, the whole court, including the concerto delle dame, went to the summer palace of Belriguardo, and Urbani was a house guest for two days. He reported excitedly back to Grand Duke Francesco on the attention he had been afforded by the duke himself, who had personally shown him around the (new) 74 Florence AS, Mediceo del Principato, 2900: Horatio Urbani (Ferrara) to Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici (Florence), 15 May 1581, in Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, p. 142. 75 Florence AS, Mediceo del Principato, 2901: Horatio Urbani (Ferrara) to Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici (Florence), 1 August 1583, in Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, p. 162 (see Chapter 7). 76 Florence AS, Mediceo del Principato, 2900: Horatio Urbani (Ferrara) to Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici (Florence), 26 June 1581, in Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, pp. 142–3: ‘Hora stamperà quel suo sommario de comentarij di Cesare, con gran discorsi et avvertimenti indirizzati a’ Principi d’Italia et il Signora Duca gli fa spesa della stampa, della quale pensa cavare grande utilità’.

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palace, and noted that they had been constantly attended by Brancaccio, which meant, Urbani cryptically adds, that there was no shortage of constant praise for everything. Was Brancaccio perhaps falling over himself to show the duke that he was indeed capable of being a model holiday guest?77 On 24 August the court was once again off to Belriguardo, but this time Brancaccio remained in Ferrara, ill with a fever and being treated with ‘bleedings, purges, diets and other appropriate remedies’. On 30 August, he wrote to Alfonso that, having heard that the duke intended to remain until 8 September, he would like to join him: ‘I am determined to die immediately in your presence than to live so long absent from such a padrone’. He asks the duke to organize for a carriage to be sent to collect him, reiterating the latest on the plans to have the ‘Commentaries on Caesar’ printed. His excitement (a contributing cause of the fever?) is such that he makes increasingly wild and extravagant claims for the book: he is sure that as soon as the duke has read it with the attention that is worthy of ‘a mystery as incredible as this is’, he will know the importance of this ‘new Miracle of the World for a Second Redemption of Christianity which has arisen from your homeland, from your court, and from a “cavaliero” [i.e., Brancaccio himself] who is your greatly beloved servant’. 78 It may also be that Brancaccio was talking his own courage up, because he had now taken matters into his own hands. In fact, as early as 7 August Brancaccio had already borrowed money from a Jewish moneylender and entered into a contract with him in front of the public notary in Ferrara as follows: 2,050 copies of the book would be published by Vittorio Baldini, court printer to the Este, and sold (Brancaccio suggested for five scudi each, a price way above the norm for any folio book at the time) and the money lender would advance 400 gold scudi to Baldini to pay for the printing.79 The extra 50 copies were to be retained by Brancaccio to present to princes and others he would select. In addition to the 400 scudi, Brancaccio would pay interest on the loan until Christmas 1581 and the moneylender was to be advanced Brancaccio’s ‘provisione’ (presumably his salary payments) for the whole year of 1582, until the 400 scudi plus interest had been repaid. Meanwhile, the moneylender would be entitled to receive 20 per cent of the profits of the sale of the book. He and Brancaccio would divide the costs of the transportation of the books, and the standard 10 per cent commission 77 Florence AS, Mediceo del Principato, 2900: Horatio Urbani (Ferrara) to Grand Duke Ferdinando de’ Medici (Florence), 14 August 1581, in Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, pp. 144–5: ‘mi ha personalmente mostrato tutto il palazzo et ogni altra cosa nelle quali si compiace molto e, perché era sempre presente il Signor Giulio Cesare Brancazio non mancavano sempre grandissimi lodi [he personally showed me the whole palace and everything else which pleased him hugely and, because Signor Giulio Cesare Brancaccio was always in attendance, there never was any shortage of the most effusive praise]. 78 Modena AS, Archivio per Materie, Letterati, Busta 11, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Ferrara) to Duke Alfonso II d’Este (Belriguardo), 30 August 1581. 79 Harris Crist has sketched out a breakdown of this sum, based on Baldini’s known paper costs and details of other projects he undertook in 1582 in ‘The “Professional Amateur”: Noble Composers, Court Life and Musical Innovation in Late Sixteenth-Century Italy’ (Ph.D. diss., Yale University; forthcoming). On Baldini in general, see Flora Dennis, ‘Music and Print: Book Production and Consumption in Ferrara, 1538–1598’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 2002).

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to the bookseller in the proportions four parts (Brancaccio) to one (moneylender). In fact, in the same letter, Brancaccio had proudly sent what were presumably early proofs of at least part of the book, ‘first fruit of my new Caesar, which is currently being printed’; small wonder that he was in a state of almost hysterical excitement. In a highly agitated letter written to the duke’s secretary on 24 November 1581 from Venice, Brancaccio revealed the entire awful detail of this contract and explained that he had gone for two reasons: first, to oversee printing of his book and second, to ‘disentangle [myself] from the [contract made with the] Jews of Ferrara who met with me and with M. Vittorio [Baldini] the printer last August 7 [l’altra per fare qualche partite per disbrigarmi dal Hebreo di Ferrara, il quale convenne meco, et con M. Vittorio Stampatore alle vij d’Agosto passato]’.80 Now the moneylenders were apparently using ‘a thousand plots and tricks [mille trame et furberie]’, and demanding their money with interest; Brancaccio implies that they will seize the books once they come off the press in Ferrara. He explains that he has come to Venice in order to ‘give instructions to the printer [per dare ordine alla stampa]’. Baldini’s shop was, of course, in Ferrara: the implication that some (or all?) the printing was in some way ‘sub-contracted’ in Venice needs further investigation. The first known edition of the book does, indeed, state on its title page: ‘In Ferrara, appresso Vittorio Baldini, 1581’, but a colophon states ‘In Venetia, appresso Vittoria Baldini, 1582’. Its rarity (only two copies are known) might suggest that much of a first Ferrara print run was, indeed, eventually seized by the moneylender in default of payment and that perhaps some copies were altered in order to disguise their origin, as the better-known and ubiquitous 1582 ‘state’ of the book is intriguingly marked as having been printed in Venice by Baldini.81 Brancaccio went on to ask for the duke to lend him 1,000 scudi to pay off all his debts, not only the 400 scudi plus interest to the money lender, but also certain debts in Rome where he is obliged to the trust of an unnamed cavaliero. He specifies that the duke should give a credit of 400 scudi to the moneylender for six months and that certain merchants or bankers be entrusted with the 1,000 books (presumably those apparently printed in Ferrara) to be sold in the cities that Brancaccio will name. He argues that there is no risk involved, because the books will sell for five scudi each, and even if they only go for one and a half scudi, the ‘loan’ will easily be paid off. The following day, Brancaccio sent a completely different letter (Appendix 2, Doc. 13) to Duke Alfonso himself, saying that he had asked Secretary Montecatino to give the duke a copy of the completed book, so that ‘his Caesar’ might have Alfonso’s blessing before going off into the world.82 Brancaccio raises some trivial 80 Modena AS, Archivio per materie, Letterati, Busta 11, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Venice) to Secretary Montecatino [First Secretary to the Duke’s Privy Council] (Ferrara), 24 November 1581. 81 Awareness of the 1581 edition seems to have evaded all commentators until now. Examination of one of the two known copies, in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC (U101.B8.1581.Cage), reveals that the relationship between the two printings of 1581 and 1582 is, indeed, a complex one: see Appendix 1 for further discussion. 82 Did Duke Alfonso pick up on the subtle change of emphasis here? The book was no longer actually being dedicated to him, but rather to ‘all the princes of Italy’. Whatever, it suggests that finished copies of Baldini’s printing were already available.

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matter of a Signor Cappello who wishes to be of service to the duke but who has been delayed because of his wife’s indisposition, the whole thing clearly a smokescreen to cover the fact that he knows he is in big trouble for absenting himself for so long, but presumably in the hope of putting Alfonso in a good mood for Montecatino’s communication of the matter of the 1000 scudi. Nevertheless, Brancaccio received neither money nor answer from the duke, and on 12 December, he wrote again – directly to the duke (Appendix 2, Doc. 14) – with a meandering and whining catalogue of the troubles he was going through in trying to get the project finished. Clearly, Brancaccio was way out of his depth in business, and after whingeing that ‘other princes give privilege of copyright without expecting payment’,83 he is reduced to a vicious anti-Semitic diatribe in an attempt to win sympathy from the duke, above all begging him to make an order to prevent the 1,000 books in Ferrara falling into the hands of the moneylender before he gets back. He is being delayed by the need to prepare an index – ‘that will perhaps be more pleasurable and useful to soldiers [che sarà forse il più bello et utile per i soldati]’ – and for a table of errors (for the ‘Venetian’ edition) to be printed; meanwhile the moneylender has come, and ‘being a Jew, wants nothing else than to kick Christians in the throat [sol perché egli essendo un Giudeo, vuol ponere il piede in gola a i Christiani]’. Brancaccio’s final plea to Duke Alfonso suggests that he is being threatened directly with the law, and he is only now realizing that perhaps he should have taken advice before entering into the contract back in August. As it happened, the whole story of the loan and Brancaccio’s plan to make a profit on the publication was already well known in Ferrara, and was the subject of amused gossip. On 1 November 1581, a courtier named Giacomo Grana had written to Cardinal Luigi that Brancaccio is in Venice to have printed his work [and] that he wants to teach today’s world the way to make war. In order to ‘spit out’ his opinion he has taken money with interest from Jews and gone into partnership with other Jews to whom he has signed over his income for perhaps three years, hoping to get it back from the publication and from others who think to give it to him.84

The desperation of Brancaccio’s situation, however, elicited no response from the duke, other than instructions regarding the auditioning of a professional bass singer in Venice, which might even have been a hint that the duke was looking to replace him (see Chapter 4). Brancaccio was forced to write again on 30 December, enclosing a copy of his previous letter, begging Alfonso ‘to let me know at this time if I remain 83 Interestingly, the title page of the book states ‘con privilegio’, implying that it was, indeed, so blessed. 84 Modena AS, Archivio segreto, Particolari: Giacomo Grana (Ferrara) to Cardinal Luigi d’Este (Tivoli), 1 November 1581, in Newcomb, The Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, pp. 185–6: ‘Il Signor Giulio Cesari Brancaccio è un pezzo fà a Venetia per far stampare l’oppera sua che vuole imparare al mondo d’hoggidì il modo di guerreggiare, dove, per sputare questo suo opinione a pigliato denari ad’interesso dalli Ebrei et con altri Ebrei a fatto partito et gli a obligato tutte le sue provisioni forsi per tre anni esperando di cavarne assai dalla stampa e d’altri che fa pensiero di donarglie’.

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in your good grace [supplicando di farmi conoscere a questa volta che mi tiene in la sua buona gratia]’. Having realized that he was not in particular favour in Ferrara, it is perhaps not surprising that Brancaccio was also sounding out other possibilities. On 16 December, the Spanish ambassador in Venice, Christobal de Salazar, reported to Philip II that Brancaccio had been to see him, offering his services (once again) to the Spanish crown and clearly making a convincing job of it: Several days have passed since Julio Cesare Brancaccio arrived here from Ferrara and he has spoken to me three or four times and always tells me of his desire to serve Your Majesty, particularly in matters of war, in which he has spent the best years of his life and of which he has seen many, and he has experience and he knows its secrets, from which we might well benefit. And [he told me] that he has not wanted to accept a position with any prince until now, desiring and hoping should the occasion arise that he might be able to serve Your Majesty with his clever wit and with this spirit he lived and has lived always. I have inquired from some of those that know of his doings, and they have told me that he is among the most intelligent of anyone living when it comes to warfare and that he has written a book about the modern form of war, applying it to that which Julius Caesar used in France, explaining the manner of waging war that is recorded in his writings.85

By January, Duke Alfonso was clearly irritated by Brancaccio’s four-month absence from Ferrara, not least because there had been foreign visitors and the singer had not been there to entertain them, as Grana wrote to Luigi d’Este on 17 January, adding the clearly still remarkable news that Brancaccio had taken two years’ wages ‘hoping to make something big with his book [sperando far gran cosa in questi libri]’.86 Brancaccio eventually returned to Ferrara around 9 March (presumably having enjoyed carnival in Venice), the laughing stock of at least one section of the court: ‘Signor Giulio Cesare Brancaccio has come rich with debts having sold his work cheaply, thinking to sell it dearly, the moderns not wanting to learn to make war his way [i.e., on classical principles] but according to reason’.87 But, for better or 85 Simancas AG, Papeles de estado (Venecia), 1339-71, Cristóbal de Salazar (Venice) to Philip II (Valladolid), 16 December 1581: ‘Ha algunos días que vino de Ferrara aquí Julio Césare Brancacio y ha me hablado [sic] tres o quatro vezes. Y siempre me dize del deseo que tiene de servir a Vuestra Majestad en especial en cosas de guerra en las quales ha gastado todo lo mejor de sus días. Y que ha visto muchas y tiene experiencia y secretos della con que podría ser de provecho Y que no ha querido aceptar asiento de príncipe alguno hasta agora deseando y esperando se ofreciese ocasión en que servir a Vuestra Majestad con su buena gracia y que con este ánimo ha vivido y viveza siempre. He preguntado a algunos que tienen noticia de sus cosas. Y me han dicho que es de los más inteligentes de la guerra, que agora hay y que ha comp[e]sto un libro sobre la forma de la guerra moderna aplicándola a la que usava Julio César en la Francia declarando el modo de guerrear que dexó escrito en sus comentarios’. 86 Modena AS, Archivio segreto, Particolari, in Newcomb, The Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, p. 186, Giacomo Grana (Ferrara) to Cardinal Luigi d’Este (Tivoli), 17 January 1582. 87 Modena AS, Archivio segreto, Particolari, in Newcomb, The Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, p. 186, Giacomo Grana (Ferrara) to Cardinal Luigi d’Este (Tivoli), 10 March 1582: ‘E venuta il Signor Giulio Cesare Crancaccio da Venetia rico di debiti per haver venduto la sua opera a bon mercato pensando venderla cara non volendo il moderni imparare di gueregiare al modo suo ma seconda la ragione’.

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worse, Brancaccio had succeeded in what he had set out to do such a long a time ago: Il Brancatio, della vera disciplina, et arte militare sopra i Commentari di Giulio Cesare da lui ridotti in compendio per commodità de’ soldati, duly printed in folio, with Baldini’s elegant borders and typography (but without the engravings he had originally planned, presumably left out on grounds of cost), remains as some justification of all his efforts.88 Whether Brancaccio ever saw a copy of the edition which Baldini had printed in Ferrara is unknown, but he presumably brought with him copies of the ‘Venetian’ printing, with its unique, and, as yet, unexplained printer’s mark ‘Venetia, V. Baldini 1582’,89 which he no doubt flourished with a great deal of pride. As to the end of the financial story this too remains unclear, except for the fact that every month in 1582, part of Brancaccio’s salary of 130 lire was paid not to him, but to ‘M. Salvadore Corinaldi e [per] il debito al M. Anibal Gianinel’.90 Further research may reveal if either of these two was connected with the moneylenders. Brancaccio’s life at Ferrara seems to have returned to its former pattern. On 27 June 1582, Grana reported that after supper recently, the husband of Marfisa d’Este had been entertained ‘with the music of the ladies and “il brancaccio” at the end’.91 And so it continued until the events that caused his dismissal from court at the end of July 1583 (described and discussed in detail in Chapter 7). There is, however, good reason to assume that he not only continued to sing, but also to play a full role in court life. According to Annibale Romei’s Discorsi (also discussed at length in Chapter 7), Brancaccio was regarded with respect and affection as the archetypal ‘retired warrior’, perhaps somewhat of the ‘old school’ and given to extravagant gestures and verbosity, but nevertheless still allowed to be a centre of attention. The publication of his book must surely have played no small part in this. There is an amusing letter from Cardinal Luigi d’Este, dated 22 March 1583, to whom Brancaccio had sent a package of books (presumably some of the 50 presentation copies) as soon as he reached Ferrara, which were to be passed on to the Viceroy of Naples. The cardinal pokes gentle fun at Brancaccio’s pretensions to glory, but the jibe is clearly affectionate: Illustrious Signor, It not being appropriate for a Protector of France, as I am, to go organizing for the ministers of the King of Spain to learn new ways of warfare, I will not, therefore, be undertaking the office which you asked me to do in your letter of the 9th and so I have arranged that your parcel for the Viceroy of Naples and the books you sent me be put into the hands of Masetto, agent of the duke my brother, and for him to hold onto

88 It may be that Brancaccio had really wanted to emulate the elaborate engravings of battle plans in Andrea Palladio’s own edition of I commentari di C. Giulio Cesarae, con le figure in rame de gli alloggiamenti de’ fatti d’arme delle circonvallationi delle città, et de molte altre cose notabili descritte in essi: fatte da Andrea Palladio per facilitare a chi legge, la cognition dell’historia (Venice, 1575); see also J.R. Hale, ‘Andrea Palladio, Polybius and Julius Caesar’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 40 (1977), pp. 240–55. 89 See also the remarks in Appendix 1: Works. 90 Modena AS, Camera ducale, Computisteria, Bolletta dei salarati, 91 (1582), in Crist, ‘The “Professional Amateur”’. 91 Quoted in Newcomb, The Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, p. 186.

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them until you advise him what should be done with them. And with this conclusion, I wish you all happiness. Fraternally, Luigi, Cardinal d’Este.92

When pressed, Francesco Patrizi, the famous philosopher at the court (and author of his own military treatise), gently damned the book with faint praise and the military theorist Achillo Tarducci attacked Brancaccio in detail and at length in his book Delle machine, ordinanze et quartieri antiche … of 1601, not only on technical grounds, but also ridiculing Brancaccio’s repetitiveness, pomposity and self-aggrandizement (see below, Chapter 7). Il Brancatio was, however, successful enough to go to a new edition in 1585, as Della nova disciplina & vera arte militare del Brancatio libri VIII, this time with a ‘commercial’ publisher, Aldo Manuzio the Younger.93 Il Brancatio The book itself consists of translations of the eight books of his illustrious namesake’s De gallico bello, each punctuated by a set of three Avvertimenti, or commentaries, by Brancaccio. It attempts to bridge the gap in sixteenth-century military theory between simple translations of Latin treatises, which had been the staple fare for professional officers for at least the past hundred years, and practical contemporary experience, through which to mediate classical theory and modern realities. As such, it was in tune with a general direction in new tactics literature throughout Europe, which tended to treat military problems in a practical way, and was written almost entirely by experienced soldiers; as David Eltis has remarked, ‘It was the credo of the new age that reading was a key to success in war as in other spheres of life’.94 Interestingly, two further major volumes of military science by important courtiers were published in Ferrara shortly afterwards, in 1583: Discorsi militari by Francesco Maria delle Rovere, Duke of Urbino (Duke Alfonso’s brother-in-law) and La militia Romana di Polibio, di Tito Livio e di Dionisbi Alicarnasseo by Francesco Patrizi himself, both of which were compendia of classical military science.95

92 Modena AS, Archivio segreto, Particolari, Busta 227, Cardinal Luigi d’Este (Tivoli) to Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Ferrara), 22 March 1583: ‘Illustre Signor. Non convendo a un Protettore di Francia come io sono d’andar procurando che i ministri del Re di Spagna imparino nuovi di guerreggiare, non farò altrimenti l’ufficio che Vostra Signore mi ricerca con la sua lettera di 9, et però ho ordinato che ’l suo pachetto per il Vicerè di Napoli et li libri mandatemi si diano in mano del Masetto Agente del Signor Duca mio fratello, acciò tenghi il tutto appo di sè fin tanto che lei gli avisi quel che ne devrà fare. Et con questo fine resto augurandole ogni contento. Di Tivoli ali 22 di Marzo 1583. Come fratello, Luigi Cardinale d’Este’. 93 Bibliographical details in Appendix 1. 94 Eltis, The Military Revolution, p. 61. 95 On 27 August 1582 Brancaccio also witnessed a receipt for 200 scudi paid by the famous adventurer and expert on scienza cavalleresca, Padre Antonio Possevino, SJ (with whom Brancaccio corresponded about his own military theories – see below) to Giangiacomo Aloise Cornaro (a Ferrarese courtier) as security for the loan of a copy of a book of military

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Brancaccio’s book opens with a lengthy Prefatione followed by a Proemio, both of which are strongly reminiscent of the procedures already encountered in the Discorso della milizia and its offshoots and reflecting the ‘new pragmatism’ in written military science. Brancaccio states that he could refer to ‘infinite ancient and modern examples’ but will restrict himself – ‘in order to avoid prolixity’ – to his own personal experiences (using language which will by now be becoming familiar): the successes which have happened solely in the forty or so years that I have been a soldier, in the majority of which I found myself in person taking part as much [through experience] which I received with the infantry gunners and the pikemen, as the victories, which through the intervention of Divine Goodness always fell to the side with which I was fighting.96

His discussions are peppered with lists of actions and the names of famous generals he has witnessed. This example is part of a discussion of the relative merits of the pike: And shortly afterwards one saw what happened … to the Swiss [pikemen] of Piero Strozzi in Tuscany at the rout and defeat of Duke John Frederick of Saxony in Germany and then to those of [Pope] Paul IV near Rome; also to the Swiss with the Constable [Montmorency] in Picardy at the battle of St Quentin, as also to those with the Marshal de Termes at the battle of Dunkirk; similarly to the Germans [fighting with] the Huguenots in France at the battle of Dreux and at the other [battle] at Montcontour, where in all cases, on seeing the first glimpse of the backs of the cavalry or infantry turning, they immediately left the pikes, throwing them to the ground without delivering one blow and yielded to the enemy or were slaughtered very vilely, because of not being able to make any proportionate defence with such weapons.97

It may read like the verbatim transcript of an old military bore in the bar, but Brancaccio was deliberately trying for some sort of ‘common touch’ through his conversational style, that would meet his aim of reaching the otherwise non-literary minded, considering that:

science (presumably in manuscript) by a Colonel Chieregato: Milan BA, S. 99 sup., fol. 253r. 96 Brancaccio, Il Brancatio, p. 12: ‘i’ successi accadati solamente da quaranti anni in qua, ch’io son Soldato, nella maggior parte de’ quali mi son trovato in persona a participare altretanto delle Archibugiate, & lanciate che io ci ho ricevuto, quanto delle vittorie, che mediante la Divina Bontà si sono sempre conseguite dalla banda, ov’io mi son trovato’. 97 Ibid., p. 13: ‘Et poco dopo si vide come la cosa andasse per la medesima natione alla rotta, & presa del Duca Gianfrederico di Sassonia in Lamagna; a gli Svizzeri di Piero Strozzi in Toscana, & poi a quei di Pavolo Quarto presso Roma; a Svizzeri anco del Connestabile in Piccardia nella battaglia di S. Quintino, come anco a quei del Marescial di Termes nel fatto d’arme Doncherche; a i Tedeschi similmente de gli Ughonotti in Francia nella battaglia di Dreus, & nell’altra di Moncontur, i quali tutti in veder voltare solamente le spalle alla lor cavalleria, o gente d’arme, lasciarono subito le picche, gittandole a terra senza a dar colpo, & rendutosi a’ nemici, o fattosi ammazzare assai vilmente per non potere con tali arme fare alcuna proportionata diffesa’.

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Despite the brevity of the commentaries, they could seem nonetheless long and troublesome to soldiers who dislike reading serious and lengthy things even though they are relevant to their work. This put me in mind to restrict myself to being as brief as possible for the benefit of soldiers, and particularly those who have to give orders in armies, such that the conciseness of the work, reduced to the most essential Compendium, dealing only with the facts of war and nothing else, will induce them to read it and better to retain it in their minds, than they would with a longer history [and] to serve them at times and places when they get the chance [for reading].98

In the Avvertimenti, Brancaccio relates modern practice (drawn from his own experiences) to points raised during each preceding passage of the classical text. His style of discourse is ‘verbal’, unfolding in a steady stream, incorporating snippets of anecdote or points of reference as they arise spontaneously; it is not remotely scholastic in an Aristotelian sense, although it is nonetheless constructed with nice rhetorical form that presumably reflects the style of a courtier skilled in the ‘Art of Civil Conversation’. Brancaccio refers to this, during one of the many reminders of the difference between his ‘practical experience’ and the inferior testimony of his rivals: ‘one will find that I have spoken like a practising soldier and not like a mere theoretician [se pur si trovarà ch’io discorso n’habbia come Soldato pratico, & non come semplice Theorico]’. This neat little stab is a delightful example of his considerable skill and quickness in construction. The contributions of ‘il Brancatio’, with his regular interpolation of the first person and the use of the anecdotal, make for a performative style of discourse, which, although well crafted from a literary standpoint, is nevertheless suggestive of someone comfortable with holding the floor and used to achieving his effect through his physical presence. The reader is, in a sense, required to picture Brancaccio speaking, or, rather, performing the text, with its ‘spontaneous’ rhetorical flourishes: comparisons with improvised solo singing are not at all inappropriate. A typical example of this conversational style can be found in the following short extract from the second Avertimento of the first book, in which he discusses the way to march quickly and make camp well, where he not only empathizes with the ‘poor bloody infantry’ but also drops in rhetorical questions to his reader, just as in spoken monologue:

98 Ibid., p. 17: ‘Là onde son ito a considerare, che non ostante la brevità di essi Commentari, potrebbono parer nondimeno lunghi & fastidiosi a’ Soldati, poco amici di leggere cose gravi, & di gran volume (benché pertinenti al mestier loro) per lo che mi son posto in animo (si come ho già fatto) di restringerli nel minor volume, che sia possibile per commodità de’ Soldati: & particoloramente di quelli, che havranno a comandare ne gli eserciti, affinché la brevità dell’opra ridotta in sostantievolissimo Compendio (di quel che tocca solamente al fatto della guerra, & non già ad altro) gli induchi a leggierli, & a riternergli meglio anco a mente di quel che sarebbono con più lunga historia, per servirsene a tempo, & luogo, quando ne verrà l’occasione’. Interesting in this respect is the fact that the Discorsi militari of Francesco Maria Della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, published in Ferrara in 1583, contains in its subtitle the words ‘utilissimi ad ogni soldato [most useful to every soldier]’, which just might suggest that he felt the competition from Brancaccio.

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Warrior, Courtier, Singer Turning to the life of the poor soldiers, who are today so little cared for by captains, it truly seems to me that [the latter] rate the leaves of the trees higher than the men with whom they go to make war. Now if they esteem the soldiers so little, what do they think of the sappers? And how will you make war without people? And so it’s little wonder then, if we see fine and happy outcomes to our campaigns, when, where Caesar wept for a year over the death of one soldier, we, on the contrary, weep unless around a thousand die in any old action, especially in skirmishes, which though expressly favoured in many cases, and can often happen spontaneously, it nevertheless seems that we enjoy making them rather for a good spectacle than for any necessity we have for them nowadays.99

Brancaccio advertised the aim of his book in the heading to the Prefatio: TO THE PRINCES OF ITALY, IN WHICH IS SHOWN how easily and with so little expense each one of them will be able, fighting in the field with only their own forces, to defend themselves against the attacks of the most powerful prince they wish [to name] AND THE MEANS TO EXALT THE ITALIAN NATION WITH ITS OWN ARMY to immortal glory and honour.100

His pan-Italian, ‘proto-nationalist’ viewpoint invoked the Roman past, coupled with an understanding of the present historical weaknesses of Italian military science, which, he implies, had put the peninsula at the mercy of foreign powers for the best part of the sixteenth century. In this, he shows himself to be in tune with the prevailing theoretical position with respect to the superiority of the ancients, exemplified by the statement of Brancaccio’s contemporary, the philosopher Francesco Patrizi, in his huge compendium of classical military authorities ‘which, when fully understood … will make clear, by contrast, how far modern armies are defective and imperfect’.101 However, his repetitive anxious refrain of both the length and the ‘actuality’ of his experience is in no small measure a response to the prevailing perception in contemporary works of military science of the superiority of the humanist appeal to classical history, as sufficient authority in itself. Although this is very possibly a symptom of a riposte to the letterato Patrizi himself (who must have been working 99 Ibid., p. 61: ‘Il che sarebbe la vita de i poveri soldati; de’ quali sì poco hoggi in cura de’ Capitani, mi par veramente, che stimano più le foglie d’alberi, che gli huomini, coi quali vanno a far la guerra. Hor se stimano sì poco i soldati, che faran de i Guastadori? & come si farà la guerra senza gente? Et perciò non è meraviglia, se vedemo poi così belli, & felici esiti delle nostre imprese, che dove Cesare piangeva un’anno la morte d’un soldato, noi al contrario piangemo, se non ne muoiono quasi le migliaia in qual si voglia fattione, & massimamente nella scaramuccie, lequali se ben s’attaccano espressamente per molti casi, et che soglion anco succedere all’improviso, par nondimeno, che noi godiamo a farle spesso, più tosto quasi per un bello spettacolo, che per bisogno che all’hora n’habbiamo’. 100 Ibid., p. 14: ‘AI PRENCIPI D’ITALIA NELLA QUALE SI MOSTRA CON quanta faciltà, & poca spesa ogn’un di loro si potrà difendere combattendo in Campagna sol con le forze proprie, da qual si voglia potentissimo Prencipe, che l’assalire, ET LA MANIERA D’ESALTARE LA NATIONE ITALIANA CON LE SUE PROPRIE MILITIE a immortal gloria, & honore’. 101 Francesco Patrizi, La militia Romana di Polibio, di Tito Livio e di Dionigi Alicarnasseo (Ferrara, 1583), quoted in J.R. Hale, ‘Printing and the Military Culture of Renaissance Venice’, in Renaissance War Studies (London, 1983), p. 483.

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on his book in Ferrara at exactly the same time), Brancaccio’s attempt to marry ‘Arms’ to ‘Letters’ in a more pragmatic way must be recognized for its novelty and serious intention, regardless of its actual success in achieving its goal.102 One of Il Brancatio’s basic premises is that contemporary tacticians have much to learn from the lightly armed, highly disciplined and mobile [ancient] Romans. The book is aimed at the princes of Italy, and Brancaccio wants them to learn from the more successful (modern) French: thus the example of Caesar’s comments on his campaigns against the Gauls is truly apposite. Brancaccio, too, can speak with genuine authority about the differences between French and Italian fighting styles, because of his own first-hand experiences. For example, the Italians traditionally fight in large static blocks advancing slowly, whereas the French, like Caesar’s Roman legions, favour smaller companies which move first at a trot towards the enemy and then gallop until they are ten paces off, after which they accelerate further: and in such a way they come to make those effects that one sees and hears about the French men of arms, to their great honour, and why most of the time a company remains ready to help in whatever way seems the best to it (that is, rather, to the one who knows to give it the order); they say that this is the true way to fight with men of arms and not otherwise.103

Brancaccio is an admirer of Caesar’s techniques of siege and defence, and the first Avvertimento to the third book of Caesar (which deals with this subject) gives him the opportunity to repeat his own ‘three precepts’ of siege warfare almost exactly as they appeared in Disorso della milizia, later refined as the printed ‘Articoli’, almost ten years earlier. In the final analysis, Brancaccio’s recommendations are distinctly forward-looking. He advocates the abandonment of outmoded weapons (especially the pike) in favour of the modern arquebus (‘the Queen of Arms’, as he called it in a letter to Antonio Possevino),104 cognizant of the timeless truism that technological advantage is the only way to keep the upper hand in warfare. Towards the end of the volume, Brancaccio makes the point that in most battles, victory is due to the actions of a minority, while most of the participants play no decisive role at all. He uses this fact to answer the criticism which has clearly often been used to put 102 The impression of Brancaccio and Patrizi arguing over precisely this ground during the time that each was working on his respective book of military theory in Ferrara is given credence by the allocation to them of the two main roles in the debate between Arms and Letters in Annibale Romei’s Discorso (set, putatively, in 1583), which is treated at length in Chapter 9. 103 Brancaccio, Il Brancatio, p. 179: ‘& in tal modo vengono a far quegli effetti che s’è visto, e inteso di continuo della gente d’arme Francesi, con loro grande honore, & perché il più delle volte si sta attento a soccorrersi l’une compagnie in cotal guisa far lo ponno benissimo, (havendo però chi glie lo sappia comandare) dicono che questa è la vera maniera di combattere della gente d’arme, & non altra’. The Duke of Sessa had singled out Brancaccio’s interesting suggestions for ‘the formation of a squadron of infantry against cavalry in open country [el forma un esquadrón de infantería contra cavallería en tierra llana]’ back in 1572 (see above). 104 Milan BA, D. 191 inf., fol. 176, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio to Padre Possevino (no date, but after the publication of Il Brancatio).

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down his ambitious idea of defeating the Turks in a combined effort by ‘Christianity’ – that large armies are simply too expensive – by pushing the idea of small, welldisciplined and mobile militias. At the end of the book, he makes one of those quintessential Brancaccio pitches, full of irrepressible confidence, certainty and arrogance, but which, in its absolute simplicity and directness, must surely reflect his years of insight into his target audience: the prince who wants the gist in few words and with a minimum of technical detail (which is to be reserved for the captains themselves). His final plea is, basically: give me an army and I will guarantee victory by following the techniques of Caesar, ‘the unique and single master of war that was and always will be until the last centuries of the world’.105 Padua Following his dismissal from court around 27 July 1583 (discussed in detail in Chapter 8), Brancaccio set off for Venice, but apparently settled in Padua.106 Although there is very little information about the remainder of his life, it is possible that he already had a circle of acquaintances in the city. He may finally have found patronage in the household of Vittoria Accoramboni, the wife of the notorious Paolo Giordano Orsini, Duke of Bracciano.107 Orsini, disabled by extraordinary obesity and by the wounds he had received at the battle of Lepanto, was seriously ill when he had come to Padua with Vittoria Accoramboni, his second wife, in July 1585. The scandal of their relationship and their attempts to marry against the orders of Pope Gregory XIII had recently been partially resolved by the election on 1 May 1585 of Cardinal Montalto as Pope Sixtus V. He allowed the pair to marry, after the first three attempts to do so had been annulled by Pope Gregory, but warned Orsino that he would hold him accountable for the murder of Vittoria’s first husband, Francesco Peretti, Montalto’s nephew, in April 1581. Orsino and Vittoria took the advice of Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici that it would be sensible to escape from Rome, and after an adventurous journey via Bracciano, Loreto, Urbino and Pesaro, they made it to Venice by boat, on

105 Brancaccio, Il Brancatio, p. 184: ‘unico, & solo maestro che fu & sarà sempre del la guerra sin’a gli ultimi secoli del mondo’. 106 One of the three letters which Brancaccio sent on 1 August 1583 to Ferrara (Appendix 2, Doc. 16) is marked ‘Di Padova In Appolline in casa d’un Signor Veneto’. This may have been a temporary address, and it is possible that he continued on to Venice at this time, as he had apparently intended when he left Ferrara (see Chapter 5). Another letter from Brancaccio to an unknown correspondent in Venice (Milan BA, R. 105 sup., fol. 93) on the subject of the fortifications in Bergamo, and written more than two years later, is marked ‘Di Padova a gli xi d’ottobre 1585’. 107 Besides the evidence of such a connection in the following paragraphs, it is also interesting that the volume of miscellaneous documents in the collection of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli into which Brancaccio’s various manuscript treatises are bound (Milan BA, R. 105 sup.) also contains a Discorso on military science by Giordano Ursini [sic] dated Venice, 22 November 1563 (fols 20r–35v) and a Latin poem by Vittoria Accoramboni (fol. 128v); further research may show whether the coincidence of these papers in one of the miscellaneous volumes of the collection has significance for their specific provenance.

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to Padova and finally to Salò on Lake Garda, where they settled in a villa. It was here, on 30 October 1585, that Paolo Giordano Orsino made a will leaving his jewels to Vittoria and conferring his title on her heirs. On 13 November, he died (poisoned by order of Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici, some said). Vittoria moved back into Padua, and on 13 December, Brancaccio was one of the signatories who witnessed the authenticity of Orsino’s signature on the will.109 Brancaccio’s connection with Orsino could have been long-standing. The duke had been in France in the 1550s and later in Rome during the unsuccessful Naples campaign (see Chapter 2) and he had been commander of the Italian infantry under Don Juan after the battle of Lepanto. He later lived as one of the most prominent secular princes in Rome during the 1570s. Brancaccio could barely have failed to have been aware of Orisini’s musical interests (see Chapter 4) or those of his first wife, Isabella de’ Medici, ‘by nature a perfect musician, most excellent singer and improvising poetess’, having met her in Pisa or Florence when he stayed there in the winter of 1572 and spring of 1573 (see above). He would also have been very aware, too, of the allegation that she was murdered by her husband on unsubstantiated suspicion of adultery in 1576.110 Brancaccio, too, hoped to benefit from the elevation of Sixtus V. Having failed in his attempts to gain the recognition he sought from any of the secular rulers of Europe, he dedicated his Ragionamento di Partenio et Alexandro sopra la guerra, che si potrebbe fare al Turco per vincerlo et esterminarlo a fatto to the new pope, and directly asked the military scientist and adventurer Padre Possevino to bring his work to the pontiff’s notice.111 Apart from a further ‘Discorso intorno alla fortezza [Discourse on Fortification]’ dated 1586 and bound in with the other military science manuscripts in a single volume, the Ragionamento is the last of Brancaccio’s surviving major works.112 According to a marginal note, not in the copyist’s hand, it was written in 1583, and it is in the form of a dialogue in which Brancaccio casts 108 Vincenzo Celletti, Gli Orsini di Bracciano: Glorie, tragedie e fastosità della casa patrizia più interessante della Roma dei secoli XV, XVI e XVII (Rome, 1963), pp. 99, 113–17; G. Orioli, ‘Accoramboni, Vittoria’, Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 1 (Rome, 1960), p. 114. The damaged relations between the pope and the Orsini were only repaired with the marriage of the pope’s great-niece, Flavia Peretti, to Duke Virginio Orsino in 1589. 109 Domenico Gnoli, Vittoria Accoramboni: Storia del secolo XVI (Florence, 1870), p. 460: ‘Paolo Giordano Orsino di mia mano pp. mi sono sottoscritto segue l’esame pel riconscimento della soscrizione del Duca: e lo spagnuolo Bernado de Chiros, Giulio Brancacci napoletano, Tiberio Pagnotta di Bracciano, suoi famigliari, e Baldassare Muti suo Maestro di Casa fanno fede che è di sua mano’. 110 Celletti, Gli Orsini di Bracciano, p. 101; see also Orioli, ‘Vittoria Accoramboni’, p. 114; Donna Cardamone-Jackson, ‘Isabella Medici-Orsini: A Portrait of Self-Affirmation’, in Todd M. Borgerding (ed.), Gender, Sexuality, and Early Music (New York and London, 2002), pp. 1–25. Orsino was also the owner of the palazzo Monte Giordano, which was Luigi d’Este’s central Rome residence, and Luigi and Paolo Giordano were friends; see Bizzarini, Marenzio, pp. 103 ff. Brancaccio could conceivably have been part of his circle in Rome in the late 1570s and early 1580s; further research may throw more light on these relationships. 111 Milan BA, D. 191 inf., fol. 178v. 112 Milan BA, R. 105 sup., fols 65–74v.

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himself in the role of Partenio (Parthenius – although not in his usual guise of love poet but rather as a military expert), and through whom he gives voice to the frustrations and disappointments of the previous ten years. Couched in the classical dialogue form, the literary style is a step on from Il Brancatio in that it allows Brancaccio to present himself directly as an acting character, and the text works rather like a play script. Brancaccio, having battered and bored every possible real-life listener into submission, is left with no alternative than to complete the literary process begun in the Discorso della milizia in 1573 and fictionalize both himself and an ‘ideal’ listener. The themes and refrains are the same as ever; the change of form from (often unruly) businesslike technical reporting to the freer, self-consciously ‘literary’ possibilities of the dialogue allow him to be more expansive. His larger-than-life sense of self-importance and his megalomania remain undiminished. Once again, Brancaccio feels constrained to reiterate at regular intervals what he sees as his qualification to speak on matters of military science (his great practical experience), and each statement of the fact is shot through with a tone of almost unbearable exasperation at the failure of the rest of the world to recognize his authority by virtue of seniority, if nothing else: But I do not rate myself in this profession, based on what I know from other people, but by the habitual foundations of reason and of examples which already for fifty years in which I have been a soldier – sometimes in command, sometimes not – it has fallen to me to see perhaps more of war than any other warrior alive today, afterwards adding to that the continuous study that I have made during the more mature and judicious season of my age.113

In the course of the work, in which Partenio describes his Munchhausenesque plans to put together a vast army and navy to invade and defeat the Turks, he has almost limitless opportunities to throw in comments about his own experiences and struggles, and his bitterness at rejection. In the young Alessandro (Alexander), Brancaccio created an adoring disciple to sit at his feet. This ‘prince’ is everything Brancaccio might have wished for in his long search for a patron, and, best of all, is a purely fictional creation, so that Brancaccio can control his every utterance, not to mention his endless patience to listen and to praise unconditionally, unlike all those others whose ears he had been unable to bend (except to the breaking point of boredom). To every suggestion or word of wisdom that Partenio utters, Brancaccio can have his ‘virtual’ adorer indulge the old man with admiring asides. For example, in response to Partenio’s complex plan to fool the Turks by taking the invading army via Alexandria and Salonica, Alessandro exclaims: ‘Truly new and most ingenious art of warfare!’ And to Partenio/Brancaccio’s offer to disclose his plans to all the

113 Brancaccio, Ragionamento, fol. 37r: ‘Ma io non mi governo in questa professione, della quale devrei saperne pur la parte mia, per lo dir delle genti, ma per soliti fundamenti di ragione et d’esempi già che da 50 anni in qua che io son soldato m’è accaduto vedere hor con cariche, et hor senza, forse più di guerra, che nessun altro guerrier che hoggi dì viva, e aggiungendoci poscia il perpetuo studio che ci ho fatto sopra nella più matura, et giuditiosa staggione della età mio’.

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princes of Europe free of charge, Alessandro lets slip Partenio’s true identity in his reply: This offer really seems incredible, and I would pass over it as no less in vain than the rest, if it weren’t for the esteem in which I hold you, knowing that there is no soldier inside or outside Italy as practised nor as expert as you are in the art of war. Besides the fact that all are aware of this fact, this is amply witnessed by your honoured writings on the Commentaries of Julius Caesar, which are unappreciated by those who most should magnify and extol them to the heavens. I would like those gentlemen to tell me what it would have cost them to learn that which you offered with such courtesy to demonstrate to them without any payment or reward.114

Partenio/Brancaccio’s detailed plans for an invasion of the Turkish empire may be illusory in scope and quantity – he estimates the Turkish forces at around 200,000 cavalry, 100,000 janissaries and 300,000 artillery, and suggests that a rather smaller army and navy could defeat them – but he did recognize the political realities of getting such a crusade to happen. He concludes with his estimation that it would need the pope, as the leader of Christendom, to initiate such a plan and to pull the great princes under him into line; the emperor would be necessary because the fleet would have to enter Hungary via the Danube, and the Spanish king, because ‘of the infinite money and men and because with his great power and authority he ensures that nothing will be wanting of that which is needed’.115 But, however it is to be achieved, Brancaccio is certain (along with many others throughout Italy and beyond at the time) that the Turks must be definitively defeated if the destruction of Christian Europe is to be avoided. As a final flourish, Alessandro praises Partenio for his prescience and for his brilliant plan for a Holy War: Alessandro: This is most true and here nothing else is necessary to that which I see except for remaining, as they say, ‘with boots on your feet’ because things can’t go on this way: God will have to solve this; for if princes are [well] disposed, men and money will be available. The Turk is involved in war elsewhere, and the means of defeating him and destroying him completely is already found, so that, my dear and most beloved Partenio, let us live meanwhile joyfully and let each one of us make sure that as soon as possible we might be able to fight in the field this most sacred and divine war, to put a crown of glory on the head of those of us in the present century and another more bright and beautiful in the centuries to come. The End.116 114 Ibid., fol. 41r: ‘Questa offerta par veramente incredibile, et io la passarei ne più meno per vana come gl’altri, se non fosse il credito chi vi tengo per saper che non è soldato in Italia ne fuor di essa tanto prattico, ne sì esperto come voi sete nel mestier della guerra (secondo oltre a esser ciò a tutti noto) ne fanno ampia fede i vostri honorati scritti sopra i Comentari di Giulio Cesare mal graditi da chi più dovra magnificarli et estoglieri sin al Cielo, La vorrei che mi dicessero quei signori che è quel che lor costava a volerne saper ciò che voi cortesemente li facevate offerta di mostrargli senza pagamento, o premio veruno’. 115 Ibid., fol. 60v: ‘per dinari et gente infinita, et per far con la gran possanza et autorità sua che non si mancasse a niente di ciò che ne fosse di mistiero’. 116 Ibid., fol. 60v: ‘Alessandro: Questo è verissimo et qui non ci bisogna altro a quel che vedo se non star, come si dice, Con li stivali in piedi, perciò che non può star più così la

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The end The picture of an elderly, eccentric Brancaccio, sitting alone in provincial Padua in his final years, far from the fast lane of Europe’s power centres where he has spent so much of his life, still blustering with his Neapolitan pride and vainglory and plotting the world triumph of Christendom, apparently content in his conviction that his moment is about to come, would be a fitting final image in this story, were it not superseded by another, which, with its setting of intimate music-making in the house of a famous noble beauty, combined with drama and violence, makes a peculiarly apposite conclusion to his biography. Following the authentication of Paolo Giordano Orsini’s will, Vittoria planned to transfer all her husband’s considerable wealth, made up of jewels, gold and silver, to her son, Virginio, the new Duke of Bracciano, now in Florence. Orsini’s estranged cousin, Ludovico, came from Rome to Padua to discuss the inventory and, in a tense meeting at the Orsini palazzo de’ Cavalli, he insisted on retaining all for his own branch of the family (who did not recognize the legitimacy of Virginio’s succession), a solution which she refused.117 This final affront to the honour and ambitions of the Orsini clan led to the fateful events of 22 December 1585. According to a nineteenth-century novelization of the story by Domenico Gnoli, and based on a source not yet identified, 22 December was apparently Vittoria’s name-day, which she had chosen to celebrate with a quiet musical evening at her house in Padua, attended by Scipione Dentice (the Roman composer and harpsichordist), a Spaniard named Bernard (possibly the same Bernardo de Chiros who had been another of the witnesses of Orsino’s signature), and Giulio Cesare Brancaccio. Gnoli records that Vittoria was saying the rosary as her young brother, Flaminio, was singing the Miserere to his lute. At this moment, six or eight assassins sent by Ludovico broke into the palazzo, and holding a knife to Brancaccio’s throat, they shot Flaminio in the head with an arquebus as he fled, before stabbing Vittoria to death on her bed.118 Lodovico Orsini was later arrested after the authorities had bombarded his fortified palazzo with artillery and he was forced to give himself up, cosa, che monsignor Iddio non ci dia rimedio poi che voluntà de’ prencipi son disposte, gente, et denari non mancano. Il Turco è implicato nelle guerre altrove, et la facilità di vincerlo, et ruinarlo a fatto è gia trovata, sì che il mio caro et amantissimo Partenio viviamo intanto allegramente et ognuno di noi procuri a che quanto prima sia possibile si pugna in Campo questa bella prattica santissima et divina per metterci una Corona di glorie in testa a quanti siamo nel secolo presente et un’altra più lucente et bella nel secolo avenire. Il Fine’. 117 Celletti, Gli Orsini di Bracciano, p. 116. 118 Gnoli, Vittoria Accoramboni, p. 324; Clifford Bax, The Life of the White Devil (London, 1940), p. 165, using a source as yet unidentified, but presumably the same one as Gnoli despite the different ‘Scipione’, lists those present as ‘Giulio Cesare Brancacci, Scipione Longo and a Spaniard’. The famous Paduan physician Girolamo Mercuriale, in a letter to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, claimed that he, too, had been with Vittoria and Flaminio earlier the same evening: Parma AS, Busta 133, Geronimo Mercuriale (Padua) to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (Rome), 27 December 1585, transcribed in Italo Paoletti, Gerolamo Mercuriale e il suo tempo: Studio eseguito su 62 lettere e un consulto inediti del medico forlivese giacenti presso l’Archivio di Stato di Parma (Lanciano, 1963), p. 41. Hill, Roman Monody, Cantata

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together with a gang of armed henchmen. He was garrotted in prison the following day by the Paduan authorities (still protesting his innocence), followed by a further fifteen of his followers, including the assassins themselves, who were tortured and then quartered in the main piazza of the city. The horrific crime and its aftermath became a cause célèbre.119 Brancaccio’s involvement in this scene is otherwise obscure, but if true, it seems a fitting final frame in his epic biography, before his image flickers and fades from the documentary record, disappearing into the blur from whence it first emerged.

and Opera, vol. 1, p. 39, cites Gnoli as his source, but seems to have embellished what he read there. 119 A series of accounts of the incident, together with copies of Lodovico’s last letter to his wife, are preserved in Venice BC, Cicogna, 1293; 1439; 2349; 2987; 3053; 3723; but none of these mentions Brancaccio.

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PART TWO Bass Song

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Chapter Four

Il basso del Brancazio That Brancaccio was a remarkable singer is indicated by many of the sources that describe him making music. Nevertheless, in the context of his entire story, it should now be clear that as far as he himself was concerned, and within the military-courtly world that he inhabited, his musical activities were essentially highly peripheral to, or at least constituted only one of a complex of threads in, the overall weave of his identity. It is perhaps inevitable, given that scholars seek and use evidence in highly selective ways, that Brancaccio is normally called a ‘bass singer’ by music historians and that this label is then (sometimes) qualified with reference to his ‘other’ life as a nobleman soldier and courtier.1 In sixteenth-century terms, to classify a person as a ‘singer’ or ‘musician’ (musico) meant very specifically that he (for it was almost exclusively a male profession) was a type of artisan whose entire identity was constructed around the practice of music, whereas the equivalent pole of construction for a male nobleman such as Brancaccio would undoubtedly have been, at least in the prevailing ‘Castiglionian’ formulation, the profession of arms.2 Irrespective of the heights of wealth, fame, closeness to rulers and access to other branches of service to which a talented or successful musico might ascend, these could almost never lead to a change of fundamental status.3 A musician, then, is defined by the rest of the world in terms not only of skills or actions but also of social position. But at the basic level this bestowal of a certain status, ‘musician’, is dependant on the dynamic functioning of a variety of essentially technical manifestations, many of which are revealed only in the moment 1 For example, Iain Fenlon, Music and Patronage in Sixteenth-Century Mantua (2 vols, Cambridge, 1980), vol. 1, p. 125: ‘a distinguished professional singer, the Neapolitan bass, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio’; Brown, ‘The Geography of Florentine Monody’, 148: ‘Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (who was a famous bass)’; Hill, Roman Monody, Cantata and Opera, vol. 1, p. 42: ‘the famous Neapolitan virtuoso bass singer, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio’. In his excellent ‘Courtesans, Muses or Musicians?: Professional Women Musicians in SixteenthCentury Italy’, in Jane Bowers and Judith Tick (eds.), Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition 1150–1950 (Urbana and Chicago, 1986), p. 95, Anthony Newcomb gives a more nuanced introduction: ‘the ageing Neapolitan minor nobleman, warrior, braggart, and bass Giulio Cesare Brancaccio’. 2 Baldassare Castiglione, Il libro del cortegiano, ed. Giulio Carbazzi (Milan, 1991), Libro 1, XVII, p. 72; trans. George Bull as The Book of the Courtier (Harmondsworth, 1967), p. 57. 3 Notable exceptions are those musicians, including Orlande de Lassus, who received patents of nobility from Rudolf II; see Robert Lindell, ‘Music and Patronage at the Court of Rudolf II’, in John Kmetz (ed.), Music in the German Renaissance: Sources, Styles and Contexts (Cambridge, 1994), p. 258.

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of performance. The precise nature and possible meanings of these manifestations, atomized into elements of musical practice, remain far less easy to pin down than one might at first suppose. Once musical practices are recognized as being indivisibly enmeshed within social structures, then the essentially taxonomic processes of classical performance practice studies soon reveal themselves to be, at best, inadequate to the task of describing fully the nature of ‘historical’ musical practice, and at worst, highly contentious as a historiographical system. The complex questions posed by the practice of music-making by a member of the noble class, especially when, in the case of Brancaccio, his abilities were clearly far beyond the level of the dilettante, are not simply the problem of present-day historians. The precarious boundary between actual and perceived status of musical performers and the significance of their performances became, for Brancaccio, a critical fulcrum of anxiety and eventually crisis at the court of Ferrara, and was articulated by him at one point precisely in terms of naming. Thus he complained that he was required ‘to serve as a musico’ and actually contemplated a strategy to counteract this by appealing to be given some military title in order, perhaps, to clarify or fix his identity semantically in an environment in which his status and its attendant role could apparently no longer be taken for granted.4 Likewise, when Cardinal Granvelle said of Brancaccio ‘he was a musico who talked too much’, with the implication that he had used his singing to inveigle the viceroy into releasing him from prison, he was being intentionally disparaging.5 The whole subject of nobility, status and music-making will be pursued in greater depth in the final part of this book, but it is raised here in order to show that, especially when dealing with the identity world of nobles, but also more generally, describing someone as, say, ‘a bass singer’, by no means makes clear either the nature or social meaning of his musical activities. There is perhaps a significance beyond the merely grammatical in the fact that Antonino Castaldo separates, as it were, the man from the voice when he writes ‘Brancaccio performed miracles with the bass [Brancaccio col Basso fermo miracoli]’ (my emphasis) and similarly, when Battista Guarini entitled his poem in praise of Brancaccio’s singing: ‘the bass of Brancaccio [il basso del Brancazio]’. Similarly, at the musical–technical level, there are many questions which need to be answered before we can be clear what is actually meant by ‘bass singer’, in terms of definitions of the voice type itself, performing techniques and repertoires, and the developments in the role and profile of those who ‘sang the bass part’ across the period in which Brancaccio was apparently active, and which he very possibly influenced. The description in words of vocal timbres and the affective properties of different voices and singing styles presents great enough hurdles in modern writing, let alone in the interpretation of the meagre and widely scattered references in sixteenth-century texts. The principal written record – that is, musically notated sources – has to be interpreted in the light of all we now understand about what it does not tell us about the ‘totality’ of performance practice. The tiny number of 4 Florence AS, Archivio Mediceo del Principato, filza 2900, in Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, p. 140, Horatio Urbani (Ferrara) to Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici (Florence), 13 February 1581; see also Chapter 7. 5 See Chapter 1.

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mostly fleeting references to Brancaccio’s actual activities as a singer over a long life is compensated for by the rich seams of material for an enquiry into bass singing in the sixteenth century at which they hint. The following discussion takes these various references as starting points for an examination of a wide variety of different kinds of material, literary and musical, that will, I hope, shed light on, among other things, the development of secular solo bass singing and the ‘geography’ of the diaspora of a particularly Neapolitan singing style and its attendant repertoires. It will also hint at Brancaccio’s possible significance in the further developments in bass song after his death. Fragments of a musical career To recapitulate briefly, references to Brancaccio’s musical activity are as follows: 1545

Participation in performances of the comedy Gl’ingannati in Naples in which he played the role of the Inamorato when he ‘did miracles with the bass [fermo miracoli col Basso]’

1546

Probable participation in Mariconda’s La Filenia, Naples

?before 1547

Singing at a (possibly fictional) ‘Musica’ at the house of Donna Giovanna Colonna in Naples, together with three other singers and four instrumentalists. Described as one of three ‘most perfect musicians who sang miraculously [perfettissimi Musici, [chi] cantano miracolosamente]’ (Luigi Dentice, Due dialoghi della musica, 1552)

?before 1553

Singing at the palazzo of the Viceroy of Naples, Don Pedro de Toledo, together with Francisco Bisballe (see below)

ca. 1575

Cited by Vincenzo Giustiniani as an initiator of a ‘new’ kind of solo singing to the lute in Rome, and as having sung bass with a range of 22 notes (see below)

Dec. 1577

Singing ‘concerted in company [in compagnia sive concerto]’ with Lucrezia Bendidio, Leonora Sanvitale and Vittoria [Bendidio] Bentivoglio in the rooms of the Duchess of Urbino in Ferrara

?1580

Singing in a ‘dialogue between Apollo and Amore’ together with Laura Peverara and Anna Guarini (Torquato Tasso, ‘A Giulio Cesare Brancaccio per il concerto delle dame a la corte di Ferrara’)

?around the same time

Singing described in Torquato Tasso’s poem ‘Sopra la voce del Brancaccio’

Feb. 1580

Unspecified performance with the musica secreta, Ferrara

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June 1581

Singing (solo?) in the presence of Cardinal Farnese in the rooms of Alfonso II d’Este, Ferrara

‘months’ before 10 Aug. 1581

Singing described in Guarini’s poem ‘Il basso del Brancazio’

July 1583

Being expected to sing in ‘a few little things which his Highness had already had given to him to study in order that he know them well [alcune cosete … la quale cosse già sua Altezza gli avea fate dare per che studiasse per ben saperle]’ together with the ‘musica delle dame’ (although he apparently refused to take part: see below, Chapter 8)

To this list can be added a handful of further references that show Brancaccio’s association with or reputation in music: ?mid-1546

Listed by Bernardino Rota among those members of the Accademia degli Sereni who ‘delighted in the art of music [in musica arte delectent]’

1552

Dedicatee of the first edition of Luigi Dentice, Due dialoghi della musica, in which Brancaccio is praised as ‘someone who not only has no superior, but also either very few or possibly no equals in this science of music [essendo … tale in questa scientia che non solo non havete chi in essa vi preceda, ma pochissimi, o forse nessuno che vi pareggi]’

ca. 1551–2

Granvelle’s comment (made in 1573) that Brancaccio ‘was a musician who talked too much [como era musico conversava demasiado]’

July 1554

Accompanied by ‘a page who plays the lute well [un paige… que joue bien du leut]’ (probably Orlande de Lassus) on his visit to the court of Mary Tudor in London

1566

Described by Samuel Quickelberg (apparently on the authority of Orlande de Lassus) as ‘the nobleman Giulio Cesare Brancaccio, cultivated in music [nobile viro Iulio Caesare Brancaccio Musices cultore]’ translated in 1578 as ‘Giulio Cesare Brancaccio, a noble musician [Julio Cesare Brancaccio einem fürnemmen Musico]’

9 July 1580

His remark that he had ‘put together various arias for sonnets and Neapolitan-style villanellas [posto in ordine alcune arie non ingrate di sonetti, et canzone Villanesche]’ for the service of the ladies of Alfonso d’Este II’s court

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26 Feb. 1581

Asks Cardinal Luigi d’Este to order a lute with two bass bourdons with which to accompany himself

Dec. 1581

Reports on his auditioning a Neapolitan bass singer in Venice on behalf of Duke Alfonso d’Este II

22 Dec. 1585

In Padua (possibly), together with the composer Scipione Dentice, listening to a young monk singing the Miserere at the house of Vittoria Accoramboni

The complete absence of any direct references to music-making between the mid-1540s and 1577 may come as a surprise. Brancaccio spent sixteen years in France, where he served as a gentilhomme du chambre du roi in the royal courts of three sovereigns and was very close to the Guise family. This leads to speculation that he would have deployed his musical skills as part of his courtiership, given that all these patrons were extremely supportive of, and interested in, music, and that nobles as well as professionals took part in musical performances at their courts. Charles de Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine, was particularly known for importing Italian musicians, including Jacques Arcadelt, who became his maître de chapelle in 1554, and later, the three Ferrabosco brothers, who sang and were among the greatest lutenists and viol players of their generation.6 Charles’s taste for fine lute playing and solo singing may have been stimulated during his lengthy stays at the Este court of Ferrara in the 1540s.7 Evidence for the cultivation of solo singing to the lute, not just by such professionals, but by Charles himself, implies that it would have found a particular welcome in court circles if practised by a courtier who had a fine voice, a repertoire of popular Neapolitan songs, and was associated with military prowess. Throughout the 1550s and 1560s Charles and his brother were dedicatees of numerous collections of vocal chamber music by Arcadelt, Jannequin, Clereau, Caietan and Lassus. Jeanice Brooks has shown how musicians and composers were particularly incorporated into the projection of the Guise as ‘warrior princes’.8 Further, the great interest in the Neapolitan villanella which was manifest in France during this period, not only through publications of original works, but also in versions with French texts, must be testament, at least in part, to the promulgation of this repertoire through performances by actual Neapolitan singers.9 Donna Cardamone has speculated on the possible role of members of the Prince of Salerno’s circle in this broadcasting of Neapolitan music and singing style, and Brancaccio’s voice could surely have been among those which were heard when such songs were 6 Jeanice Brooks, ‘Les Guises et l’air de cour: Images musicales du prince-guerrier’, in Le mécénat et l’influence des Guises: Actes du colloque … 1994, ed. Yvonne Bellenger (Paris, 1997), pp. 195–6. 7 Philippe Desan and Kate van Orden, ‘De la chanson à l’ode: Musique et poésie sous le mécénat du Cardinal de Lorraine’, in Le mécénat et l’influence des Guise, ed. Bellenger, p. 474. 8 Brooks, ‘Les Guises et l’air de cour’, pp. 198–205. 9 Jeanice Brooks, Courtly Song in Late-Sixteenth Century France (Chicago, 2000), pp. 266–93.

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sung in private court situations. Brancaccio had a formal position at the courts of Henri II, François II and for the longest time to at that of Charles IX (whose passion for musical entertainment of all kinds is particularly well known from his exchanges with Ronsard), so the likelihood of Brancaccio’s practical participation in musicmaking at the royal court is also strong.10 However, all this must remain speculative because of the simple fact that although Brancaccio spent so many years in France, so far not one single source has emerged recording any musical activity. Nor, as yet, is there any direct evidence from other courts and cities he visited, including Vienna, Turin, Venice, Florence, Pisa and Padua, to name only a few, even though, on the basis particularly of the evidence from Ferrara which we will examine in the final part of the book, it is all but certain that he would have exercised his musical talents regularly. Nevertheless, despite the paucity of actual witness statements, there is enough material to link Brancaccio to a series of investigations about performance practices in the specific contexts of Neapolitan amateur theatre, aristocratic ‘salon’ performance of vocal chamber music, the instigation of a ‘new’ style of solo singing to the lute in Rome that involved an extended vocal register, and of the musica secreta at the Ferrarese court in the late 1570s and early 1580s, and thus to flesh out the bare bones of the term ‘bass singer’ in sixteenth-century noble society. It will also become clear that he may have made significant contributions to the wider development of monodic bass singing and to have cast some influence on the development of solo bass song in the generations after his death.

Naples: Amateur theatre Apart from the words of Antonino Castaldo, there is almost no concrete information about the precise form of the musical contributions that either Brancaccio or the other singers and instrumentalists made to the theatre performances by the Accademia degli Sereni in Naples. There is one four-voice madrigal in Thomaso Cimello’s Libro primo de canti a quattro voci published in 1548, Veni giocosa e florida Thalia, which is subtitled ‘Madrigale ancho del cimello per la comedia delli sereni Accademici Napoletani’. It may have formed part of an intermedio, and its text refers directly to the musical activities of the members of the Academy: Veni, giocosa & florida Thalia, con l’altre tue sorelle saggie leggiadr’ & belle a far più adorn’ & lieto il nostro choro. E date ’l sacro alloro a li Sereni che con canti & versi Dolci soavi & tersi 10 Donna Cardamone, ‘The Prince of Salerno and the Dynamics of Oral Transmission in Songs of Political Exile’, Acta musicologica, 67 (1995): 77–97; Margaret McGowan, ‘The Arts Conjoined: A Context for the Study of Music’, Early Music History, 13 (1994): 175, 182–8.

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lodan’ insiem’ amore d’accortezze diletti & gioie autore. [Come, joyous and lovely Thalia, with your other sisters – wise, happy and beautiful – to make our chorus more elegant and more joyful. And grant the sacred laurel to the Sereni, who with songs and verses both sweet, tender and polished, together praise Amor, author of skills, pleasures and joys]11

James Haar has speculated that a number of the other madrigals in Cimello’s volume originated from contact with the Sereni, as two further pieces have texts by known members of the Academy. He also demonstrated that the volume has a fairly sophisticated structure, with pieces arranged in modal sequences, and using a variety of mensuration signs.12 Perhaps this reflects an interest in theory by members of the group, a possibility that would tie in with Luigi Dentice’s letter of dedication of his Due dialoghi to Brancaccio in 1552 (see Chapter 1). Cimello’s name does not, however, appear in the list of signatories of the rules of the Academy.13 The only extant text of Gl’ingannati derives from the original Sienese performance of 1537, and it is very likely that the play would have been considerably modified for the performance by the Prince of Salerno’s circle in Naples in 1545.14 Nino Pirrotta speculated that villanelle alla napolitane would have been sung by the characters in their roles at relevant moments in the drama, and pointed to the landmark publication of Canzoni villanesche alla napoletane … libro primo in Naples in 1537, the first known printed villanellas, as exemplary of the kind of pieces that might have been employed.15 More recently, Donna Cardamone has shown that close analysis of villanella texts reveals that the language closely resembles that of contemporary comedies (and farces), suggesting that villanellas might have been inserted into plays as realistic commentaries on the action, while preserving the conventional unities of time and place. Plot-lines that turn on deception in amorous entanglements appear to have encouraged the composition of villanellas narrated by male speakers duped by women who play one lover against another.16 11 Giovanthomaso Cimello, The Collected Secular Works, ed. Donna G. Cardamone and James Haar (Middleton, Wis., 2001), pp. 59–61 (score); p. 174 (translation). 12 James Haar, ‘Giovanthomaso Cimello as Madrigalist’, Studi musicali, 22 (1993), pp. 34–43, 53–4. 13 But Cimello is named along with Vincenzo del Prato, author of the texts of two of the madrigals in the volume, as a member of the Accademia degli Sereni (as is Brancaccio) by Bernardino Rota; see Toscano, ‘Un’orazione latina’, pp. 321–2, and Chapter 1, above. Haar claims two further poets set by Cimello in the volume as members of the Sereni: Fabio Ottinelli (‘a founding member’) and Mattheo Ricoveri: Haar, ‘Giovanthomaso Cimello as Madrigalist’, pp. 35–6, 54; see also Croce, ‘L’accademia dei Sereni’, pp. 306–7. 14 Modern edition of the 1537 version of the play: Florindo Cerreta (ed.), La commedia degl’Ingannati (Florence, 1980), trans. and ed. Bruce Penman as The Deceived, in Five Italian Renaissance Comedies (Harmondsworth, 1978). 15 Pirrotta and Povoledo, Music and Theatre, pp. 106–8. 16 Donna Cardamone, ‘Italian Comedy and the Canzone villanesca alla napoletana’, unpublished paper given at the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, 30 March 2001.

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If villanellas were sung by the academician-actors in these comedies, it is unclear whether they would have been performed as solos or in the three-part form in which they are always published. Verisimilitude would naturally suggest the former, and a well-known example of a later commedia dell’arte provides strong support for this: Orlande de Lassus’s performance as Pantalone di Bisognosi in Massimo Troiano’s La cortigiana innamorata at the Munich court in 1568 included his singing of the villanella Chi passa per questa strada to his own lute accompaniment.17 Lassus might, just possibly, have witnessed or even participated in the activities of the Accademia dei Sereni during his time in Naples,18 but, as we have seen, he knew Brancaccio well, their acquaintance presumably dating either from this period, or, as I have speculated in Chapter 1, even earlier. Perhaps Brancaccio’s singing of villanellas and his comic acting skills were inspiration for the young Lassus as performer and composer of villanelle alla napolitana. Sources describing the actual performance of villanellas, however, include references to both solo and consorted singing. In his Il fuggilozio – a fictional account of a gathering a group of academicians at the Villa Serena in Posillipo in the bay of Naples in June 1571, modelled on the Decameron – Tommaso Costo, who was secretary of the Neapolitan Accademia degli Svegliati, incorporated descriptions of music-making. Normally at the end of each day’s discussions, the academicians perform strambotti, madrigals or sonnets. On one day, however, they discuss the merits of the villanella, wondering that foreigners should like something so apparently lowbrow, and decide to end the evening by singing some examples. The host, Prior Ravaschiero, recalls one song that begins ‘Lo conosco il mio errore, / e so che l’empio amore’ that had once been sung by no less a ‘respectable’ musician than Fabrizio Dentice – in his youth, another member of the cast of the production of Gl’ingannati – who had also written the tune. He asks three of the academicians to sing another one: ‘Can you recall another good one besides that one and sing it in three parts, as is the custom?’ asked Ravaschiero. And thus ‘lo Studioso’, ‘lo Svegliato’ and ‘l’Accorto’, tuned their instruments and settled to sing the first, after which they also sang the next one.19

17 Described in Discorsi delli trionfi … nell’anno 1568 a 22 di febraro (Munich, 1568), in Pirrotta and Povoledo, Music and Theatre, p. 109. 18 The suggestion that Lassus was introduced to the Academy by his patron, the Marchese della Terza, a prominent member of the Nido seggio, was made by James Haar in his article on Lassus in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980), vol. 10, p. 481, although the relevant sentence has been dropped from the revised version of the article in the 2001 edition; see also Orlande de Lassus, Canzoni villanesche, ed. Cardamone, pp. x–xi, and Courdevey, Roland de Lassus, pp. 39–40. 19 Le otto giornate del Fuggilozio di Tomaso Costo ove da otto gentilhuomini e due donne si ragiona delle malizie delle femini (Naples, 1596), quoted in Donna Cardamone, The Canzone Villanesca alla Napolitana and Related Forms, 1537–70 (2 vols, Ann Arbor, 1981), vol. 1, pp. 118–19: ‘Non ve ne ricordereste, disse allora il Ravaschiero, oltre a cotesta qualcun’altra delle buone, e cantarla in tre, come s’usa? E così lo Studioso, lo Svegliato, e l’Accorto, accordati gli instromenti, si posero a cantare la predetta, dopo quale cantorono anche la seguente’.

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Thus even in this short extract we learn that villanelle could be sung either solo to the lute (as with Fabrizio Dentice) or a 3 with instruments. It also suggests that the style of performing a villanella by three men accompanying themselves on instruments was perhaps a traditional or old-fashioned form. Castaldo’s praise of ‘Dentice with his falsetto and Brancaccio with his bass’ in the comedy performance in 1545, however, sits rather uncomfortably with the fact that nearly all published three-voice villanellas employ high clef combinations which imply either two falsetto voices for the upper parts (parallel thirds are a generic feature of the villanella) and a high tenor, or, if transposed to male-voice modal ranges, for bass and two tenor voices; thus, in this case at least, solo performances appear more plausible. The performance of villanelle alla napolitana by virtuosos in Rome and other cities such as Ferrara, where Brancaccio was active later in the century, appears to have been exclusively solo, to self-accompaniment, although three-voice, and later four- and five-voice, villanellas continued to be published in either partbook or choirbook form with and without lute tablature until well into the seventeenth century (see below). Donna Cardamone concluded that in the later, ‘northern’ flowering of the villanella alla napoletana, solo performance dominated.20 Villanelle alla napolitane tend to be rhythmically fast and text-driven, and they appear to offer little potential for ornamentation, which, in any case, would almost certainly work against the pleasure which the songs offer through their witty and often lewd stories, where understanding the text is paramount. Thus, even if Brancaccio had sung villanellas in the context of his role as the Inamorato in Gl’ingannati, he would perhaps have characterized his vocal performance through his acting skills and the sonorities of his natural voice, rather than with sophisticated vocal virtuosity, more appropriate for the ‘madrigals, sonnets and strambotti’ which, according to Costo, were the normal fare of academicians anyway. Naples: ‘Musica’ at the Aragona palace At the opening of the ‘Secondo Dialogo’ in Luigi Dentice’s Due dialoghi, the ‘master interlocutor’, Paolo Soardo, rushes in ‘two long hours late’ in great excitement, blaming his delay on the fact that he has come directly from the house of the ‘most divine Signora Donna Giovanna d’Aragona’. To this, his ‘disciple’, Giovanni Antonio Serone, responds: ‘Now I am no longer wondering at your “wonder” [Hora non mi maraviglia della vostra meraviglia]’. Soardo continues: ‘My ‘wonder’ was caused by a ‘Musica’ that I heard at the said house [la maraviglia mia è causata da ... una Musica c’ho intesa nella medesima casa]’. Serone recognizes Soardo’s own sense of maraviglia as soon as he knows the identity of the hostess and the venue before he has even heard about the music, and it is in the resonance of this elite and ‘marvellous’ social space that Dentice sets up the description of the real or imaginary musical evening in which eight renowned musicians – four singers

20 Cardamone, The Canzone villanesca alla napolitana, vol. 1, p. 223; see also Fabris, ‘The Role of Solo Singing to the Lute’, pp. 133–46.

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and four instrumentalists – will exemplify the wonders of a now lost golden age of Neapolitan musical life. Giovanna d’Aragona, the estranged wife of Ascanio Colonna, was the mother of the poetess Vittoria Colonna and a beacon of cultural light in the liberal atmosphere of the ‘Naples Spring’ in the period before 1547. It is not clear if Dentice is describing an actual event or simply creating a fiction in which numerous famous musicians come together in aristocratic company, which could have served his need to remind former friends and patrons of his existence five years after his hurried departure.21 Dentice is writing in 1552 from exile in Rome and nostalgically recalling pre-rebellion Naples, so it is important to recognize the diplomatic and social dimensions of his fulsome praise of all the people he names. In this context it may be significant that Brancaccio (the dedicatee of the book itself) is the first named of the four singers, followed by another nobleman, Francisco Bisballe, Count of Bratico.22 Besides these two, the other named singer was Scipione delle Palle, fellow member of the cast of Gl’ingannati and of the Academia degli Sereni, and thus another close member of the musical group around the Prince of Salerno. It is interesting that in spite of delle Palle’s fame, Castaldo had not singled him out for praise of his singing in Gl’ingannati alongside Brancaccio and Dentice, perhaps because his social status did not warrant such highlighting. He took part in (and possibly composed music for) the intermedii by Luigi Tansillo for Alessandro Piccolomini’s play Alessandro performed at the palace of the Marchese del Vasto (Brancaccio’s former military commander) in 1558, and thus he was evidently not banished from the city as a result of the rebellion in 1547 (as were the Dentices), nor had he left Naples after the fall of the Prince of Salerno in 1552. He moved to Florence by 1559 and entered the service of Grand Duke Cosimo de’ Medici I, most famously acting as teacher of the young Giulio Caccini during the last years of his life, after the young singer was brought to Florence from Rome in 1565.23 Dentice’s ‘witness’, Paolo Soardo (another member of the Academia degli Sereni), decides not to name the fourth singer, the soprano, on the grounds that his 21 Dentice, Duo dialoghi della musica (Naples, 1552; reissue, Rome, 1553), sig. Hiii. The absence of one obvious person, the composer Giovanthomaso Cimello, who was almost certainly attached to the household of Giovanna d’Aragona in the 1540s, is noteworthy (was this a ‘political’ omission?); see Haar, ‘Giovanthomaso Cimello as Madrigalist’, p. 26; Cardamone, The Canzone villanesca alla napolitana, vol. 1, p. 106; Cimello, The Collected Secular Works, pp. ix–x. 22 The circumstances of the composition and publication of the Duo dialoghi della musica were discussed in Chapter 1. Ulisse Prota-Giurleo, ‘G. M. Trabaci e gli organisti della real capella di palazzo di Napoli’, L’organo, 1 (1960), pp. 185–96, at p. 187 n, records that Brancaccio sang with Francesco Bisballe on another occasion at the palazzo of the viceroy, Pedro de Toledo (which must have been before the latter’s death in 1553), together with Francesco Salinas (organist) and Francisco Martinez de Loscos, although the source of the reference is, unfortunately, not given. 23 Carter, ‘Delle Palle, Scipione’, p. 176; Brown, ‘The Geography of the Florentine Monody’, p. 148; see also Giulio Caccini, Le nuove musiche (Florence, 1602) and Le nuove musiche e nuova maniera di scriverle (Florence, 1614), ed. Jean-Philippe Navarre (Paris, 1997), Introduction, pp. 22–3.

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singing had not pleased him, and Dinko Fabris has speculated that because Luigi Dentice was himself a falsettist, he was disparaging a rival; a simpler explanation must surely be that the soprano was Dentice himself and the comment a witty selfdeprecation.24 Certainly it serves as a cue for Dentice, through the mouth of Soardo, to say why he was not impressed and thereby to give one of the earliest and most succinct descriptions of the desirable qualities in a chamber singer: ‘Because all of them were faulty in some way, either in intonation, or pronunciation, or playing or making the passaggi, or precise in restraining and reinforcing the voice when necessary, all of which are acquired partly by nature and partly through art’.25 This list is extraordinary in the sense that it encapsulates all the main technical parameters of refined chamber singing style that will be found throughout the ensuing century or more. The very word ‘passaggi’ predates even Giovanni Camillo Maffei, credited by Nanie Bridgman with having been the first to use it in print, in 1562.26 The specific mention of ‘rimettere & rinforzar la voce’ brings to mind the remarkably similar explanation of ‘esclamazione’ made fifty years later by Giulio Caccini as the principal means by which a singer moves the affections.27 In Howard Brown’s seminal article on the origins of Florentine monody, and on Giulio Caccini in particular, he traced the links between Scipione delle Palle and his famous pupil, particularly through a comparison between the type of songs found in Le nuove musiche and those in Rocco Rodio’s Aeri raccolti (1577). This is a volume containing arie and madrigals for three voices by members of this very circle of musicians active in Naples in the late 1540s, including Luigi Dentice and Scipione delle Palle. Perhaps because of the use by Maffei of one of the songs from that collection (the anonymous setting of Petrarch’s ‘Vago augelletto che cantando vai’) as an example to demonstrate the technique of adding improvised passaggi when making a solo, Brown relied on Maffei – who has no direct link with delle Palle – to provide the connection to Caccini. He overlooked Luigi Dentice’s own remarks on singing which so succinctly allow us finally to place the kind of techniques (until relatively recently thought of as having been ‘invented’ by Caccini and as being ‘new’ at the start of the seventeenth century), right in the circle of singers of which Scipione delle Palle and, for that matter, Brancaccio, were leading members.28

24 Fabris, ‘Contributo alla storia della teoria musicale’: 77. The identification of Dentice as the soprano was also suggested by Sandberger, Orlando di Lasso, vol. 1, p. 94. 25 Dentice, Duo Dialoghi, sig. Hiv: ‘Perché tutti errano in qualche cosa, o nella intonatione, o nella pronuntiatione, o nel sonare, o nel fare i passaggi, o vero nel rimettere & rinforzar la voce quando bisogna: le quali cose, parte per arte, & parte per natura s’acquistono’. 26 Nanie Bridgman, ‘Giovanni Camillo Maffei et sa lettre sur le chant’, Revue de musicologie, 38 (1956): 8. 27 Caccini, Le nuove musiche, Ai lettori (n. p.): ‘l’esclamazione, che è mezzo più principale per muovere l’affetto: & l’esclamazione propriamente altro non è, che nel lassare della voce rinforzarla al quanto’. 28 Brown, ‘The Geography of the Florentine Monody’. See also Tim Carter, ‘Giulio Caccini (1551–1618): New Facts, New Music’, Studi musicali, 16 (1987): 20–21; Hill, Roman Monody, vol. 1, pp. 59–66.

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With the exception of the singer Vittoria Fagiola, protégé of Maria di Cardona Marchese della Padula, and two others whom he demurs to name,29 Paolo Soardo says that all singers err in their lack of perfection of one or other of the various techniques he lists, amongst which is ‘sonare’ (to play), strongly implying self-accompaniment on an instrument, most likely the lute or guitar. Quite apart from the significance of this comment as early evidence of solo-singing practice, it makes for a certain amount of confusion when we try to work out exactly what kind of performance Paolo Soardo claims actually to have heard at the ‘Musica’. Unfortunately for us, he only ever gets around to answering the first part of Serone’s question: ‘who were the musicians and what sort of music were they doing? [chi furono i Musici? & che sorte di Musica fu?]’. Basing his conclusion on the eight musicians listed, Howard Brown states that Soardo had ‘heard polyphonic singing to instruments – doubtless madrigals – performed by four singers and four instrumentalists’, and suggests that the four singers are listed in ‘part order’, that is, Brancaccio (bass) Francisco Bisballe (tenor), Scipione delle Palle (countertenor) and the nameless soprano on the cantus’.30 As I suggested above, the list might, rather, be in order of status, and there is no reason to extrapolate such precise performance-practice information directly from the form of the list. Must we assume that the singers were only performing ‘four-part vocal music’, or might they, for example, have also performed villanelle alla napolitana, as did the members of the Accademia delle Svegliati in 1571? Might they not equally have been singing as soloists to their own accompaniment? Must we infer that all four instrumentalists played together with the singers all the time and never alone? Dentice named four instrumentalists: Giovanni Leonardo Mollica, Giaches de Ferrara, Perino Florentino and Battista Siciliano. The harp virtuoso Giovanni Leonardo Mollica, usually known as Giovanleonardo dell’Arpa, had also acted in Gl’ingannati. Later he performed together with Scipione delle Palle in Alessandro in 1558 in honour of the Duchess of Alba, and also composed villanellas. He was likened by the composer Giovenale Ancina to the psalmist David because of his singing to his own accompaniment, ‘as they do amongst princes’, which is a significant confirmation of the specifically noble connotations of such a practice.31 29 Dentice, Duo dialoghi della musica, sig. Hiii: ‘Ser[one]: Sarebbevi forse piaciuta la signora Vittoria Fagiola? La quale sdegnando il Mondo, se n’è gita in cielo a cantar con gli Angioli? Soar[do]: Questa sì che mi piacque assai: & la signora Donna Maria Cardona Marchese della Padula, la quale nel secol nostro è chiaro essempio d’ogni virtù, mentre ella fu a suoi serviggi, l’amò come figliuola, non per altro, che per conoscere buoni costumi accompagnato co ’l soave, & non mai più inteso canto di quella giovane’. I have not been able to discover anything about Vittoria Fagiola. Maria di Cardona was the wife of Francesco d’Este, for whose wedding celebrations in 1536 the Prince of Salerno had organized performances of the plays Calandria and Beco by a troupe of actors from Siena (see Chapter 1). 30 Brown, ‘The Geography of the Florentine Monody’, p. 148. 31 Giovenale Ancina, Il tempio armonico (Naples, 1599), fol. 3v, dedication at the beginning of the soprano partbook, in Cardamone, The Canzone villanesca alla napolitana, vol. 1, p. 113: ‘Talvolta il Signor Giovan Lionardo Dell’Arpa, il quale, in tal sua professione rarissimo et singolare, simile al regio salmista Davide, leggiadramente cantando et suonando come suole tra i Principi, le porgerà onesto et gratioso trattenimento inestimabile’.

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Thus, Giovanleonardo dell’Arpa could well have been playing and singing alone at the ‘Musica’. Giaches de Ferrara is probably Giaches Brumel, court organist in Ferrara at the time, although there is a possibility that it might just have been the teenage Giaches de Wert, who could have been in Naples at the time.32 Perino Florentino was a lute virtuoso in papal service who had been a pupil and collaborator of Francesco da Milano.33 Whilst he may simply have played along in the instrumental consort, it seems more likely that he would also have performed as a soloist, perhaps improvising solo fantasias, for which he was famous. Irrespective of the instrument played by Battista Siciliano, the combination of harp, keyboard and lute to accompany four singers in a chamber situation would certainly have produced a relatively thick texture. Perhaps Dentice wanted his readers to imagine that at least some of the time the four singers sang madrigals together – perhaps with instrumental doubling – as well as performing alone to instrumental accompaniment played either by themselves or by one or more of the illustrious players. Il vero modo di cantar cavaleresco It is useful that one of the most important documents about sixteenth-century secular vocal performance practice, Giovanni Camillo Maffei’s treatise on singing in the form of a letter addressed to the Conte d’Alta Villa and first published in 1562, is Neapolitan, and thus a particularly relevant source for help in deciphering Dentice’s ‘Musica’.34 The contents of the letter is, even by comparison with the more systematically organized teaching methods published in the last twenty years of the sixteenth century, a remarkably exhaustive and detailed account of two kinds of vocal chamber music performance, solo and consort. Claiming to be answering questions about singing put to him by the count, Maffei covers two basic themes: a ‘scientific’ explanation of how the voice works, including detailed anatomical information, and a lengthy section on the singing of ‘gorgie’, including technical explanations of how it is done, and examples of the ways such ornamentation should be applied by singers to the bare bones of a notated madrigal in order to render the performance worthy of noble company.

32 See Iain Fenlon, ‘Giaches de Wert at Novellara’, Early Music, 27 (1999): 25–6, who opts for Wert, but see then his Giaches de Wert: Letters and Documents (Paris, 1999), p. 31, which comes down in favour of Brumel. Wert was only 17 when he left Naples after the exile of the Prince of Salerno in 1552, but he may well have been an intimate member of Salerno’s musical circle in his teenage years; see, too, James Haar, ‘Arioso and Canzonetta: Rhythm as a Stylistic Determinant in the Madrigals of Giaches de Wert’, in Eugeen Schreurs and Bruno Bouckaert (eds), Giaches de Wert (1535 – 1596) and his Time (Leuven, 1999), p. 91. 33 Elwyn A. Winhardt and Iain Fenlon, ‘Fiorentino, Perino’, New Grove II, vol. 19, p. 403. 34 Giovanni Camillo da Solfra Maffei, Delle lettere (2 vols, Naples, 1562); a full transcription of the ‘Letter on Singing’ is given in Bridgman, ‘Giovanni Camillo Maffei et sa lettre sur le chant’; translation into English in Edward V. Foreman, Late Renaissance Singing (Minneapolis, 2001), pp. 8–31. My own translations are based on this and on an unpublished version by Candace Smith and Bruce Dickey.

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In another letter to the count published in the same volume, Maffei pictures a group of music-lovers arguing about what kind of performance they want to have, and amongst other disputes, ‘one disapproves of gorgia, another would not want to hear anything other than passaggi di garganta’.35 However, in the main ‘Letter on Singing’, Maffei is unequivocal: ‘the true style of courtly singing and of pleasing the ear is cantar di gorga [Il vero modo di cantar cavaleresco e di conpiacere all’orecchia, è il cantar di gorga]’.36 The word ‘cavaleresco’ in this context is noteworthy because of the direct link between social status and vocal style that it implies, and Maffei’s formulation means that an investigation of ‘cantar cavaleresco’ requires a thorough understanding of the technical and interpretational aspects of ‘cantar di gorgia’. Before embarking on this, though, it is important to take into account another critical technical consideration directly related to social context, and this is the parameter of vocal quality and sound level. Maffei’s account of the dispute about which sort of singing the company wants to hear continues: ‘one praises sweet and smooth singing and another church singing’;37 ‘sweet and smooth’ is, thus, what church singing is not. This difference is more directly expressed by Zarlino: The singer should know too that one sings in one way in churches and public chapels and in another in private chambers. In the former he should sing with full voice, moderated of course as I have just said, while in private chambers he should use a more subdued and sweet voice and avoid any clamour.38

Note the use of the words ‘private’ and ‘public’ here. Lodovico Zacconi, the most extensive writer on singing technique in the sixteenth century, reiterates the point when he lists those ‘who sing in churches or in places where one has to belt loudly’,39 and later makes a clear link between ‘loudness’, physical context and social status: ‘many learn to sing through singing softly and in chambers, where paid singers perform, and these are gentlemen and others who do not have to earn their bread from singing’.40 35 Maffei, ‘Al Molto Reverendo Padre Fra Teofilo Tusco’, Lettere, p. 195: ‘un biasimarà la gorga, un’altro non vorrebbe sentir se non passaggi di garganta’. 36 Ibid., p. 78. 37 Ibid., p. 195: ‘un lodar il cantar dolce, e soave, un’altro il cantar nella cappella’. 38 Gioseffo Zarlino, Le istitutioni harmoniche (Venice, 1558; 1588–9; facs. edn, Bologna, 1966), III, Cap. 46, p. 240; translated by Guy A. Marco and Claude V. Palisca as The Art of Counterpoint (New Haven and London, 1968), p. 111: ‘ad altro modo si canta nelle Chiese & nella Capella publiche; & altro modo nelle private Camere; imperoché ivi si canta à piena voce o con discrezione però … & nelle Camere si canta con voce più sommessa & soave, senza fare alcun strepito’. 39 Lodovico Zacconi, Prattica di musica … parte prima (Venice, 1592; facs. edn, Bologna, 1975), fol. 78v: ‘che cantandosi nelle Chiese, o ne luochi ove si habbia da gridar forte’. 40 Ibid., fol. 53v: ‘molti imparano di cantare per cantar piano & nelle Cammere, ove cantano i Cantori stipendiati; & questi sono i Gentilhuomini: & gli altri che non hanno di bisogno per questa via guadagnarsi il pane’. I take the subclause ‘ove cantano i Cantori stipendiati’ to mean that gentlemen learn from the professional singers who are paid to perform in ‘Cammere’ (otherwise Zacconi’s remarks are contradictory). See also Christopher Reynolds,

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Giovanni de Bardi’s advice to Giulio Caccini (ca. 1578) neatly encapsulates the indivisibility of singing technique from social parameters, and defines the optimal level for chamber singing: and whoever wants to sing well had better do so very sweetly, with a very sweet manner and with the sweetest modes … and while singing you will strive to behave in an elegant way, so similar to your normal manner that people will be left wondering whether the sound of the voice issues from your mouth or from someone else’s.41

Sixteenth-century courtesy books offering guidelines on ‘polite’ behaviour make no precise references to the quality of the singing voice, but they have plenty to say about speaking, whose closeness to ideal singing style is strongly implicit in Bardi’s advice. In a much-imitated section of Baldassare Castiglione’s Il libro del cortegiano that constructs the courtier in terms of the body, the author focuses at one point on voice and comportment in a passage which has important implications for any study of courtly singing: [The orator] needs some additional qualities, such as a good voice, not too thin and soft like a woman’s nor so hard and rough as to sound boorish, but sonorous, resonant and well articulated, with distinct enunciation and accompanied by suitable manners and gestures. These, in my opinion, should consist in certain movements of the entire body, not affected or violent but tempered by an agreeable expression of the face and movement of the eyes giving grace and emphasis to what is said, together with gestures to make as plain as possible the meaning and sentiments of the words.42

The phrases ‘sonorous, resonant and well articulated [chiara, soave e ben composta]’ and ‘suitable manners and gestures [modi e gesti convenienti]’, which are well-worn commonplaces from literary rhetoric, have been appropriated to describe certain ideal attributes within the complex of elements of vocal style that John Potter

‘Sacred Polyphony’, in Howard Mayer Brown and Stanley Sadie (eds), Performance Practice: Music before 1600 (London, 1989), pp. 189–90. In the mid-1570s, the court of Maximilian II in Vienna, for example, listed a ‘Camer Bassist’ separately from the other ‘Bassisten’ who sang in the Capella. Interestingly, no other singers were separately listed in this way; see Walter Pass, Musik und Musiker am Hof Maximilians II (Tutzing, 1980), pp. 378, 387. 41 Giovanni Bardi, ‘Discorso mandato a Giulio Caccini detto romano sopra la music antica, e ’l cantar bene’, in Claude V. Palisca (ed.), The Florentine Camerata: Documentary Studies and Translations (New Haven and London, 1989), p. 128: ‘Et che chi cantar ben vuole, conviene che con dolcissima maniera et dolcissimi modi ben regolati dolcissimamente ... et v’ingegnerete ancora cantando di star in modo acconcio, et al vostro ordinario sì somigliante, che si dubiti se ’l suono della voce dalla vostra esca, o, dall’altrui bocca’. 42 Castiglione, Il libro dello cortegiano, Libro 1, XXXIII, p. 90; The Book of the Courtier, p. 77: ‘al qual [i.e., the orator] però si richiedono alcune cose ... come la voce bona, non troppo sottile o molle come di femina, né ancor tanto austera ed orrida che abbia del rustico, ma sonora, chiara, soave e ben composta, con la pronunzia espedita e coi modi e gesti convenienti; li quali, al parer mio consistono in certi movimenti di tutto ’l corpo, non affettati né violenti, ma temperati con un volto accommodato e con un mover d’occhi che dia grazia e s’accordi con le parole’.

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has described as ‘performance rhetoric’.43 They recall Bardi’s words, which more specifically denote sung vocalization. Castiglione’s praise for the regulation – even disciplining – of excessive bodily movements, and the effective use of the eyes to express the ‘intenzione ed affetto’, are remarkably similar in substance and, indeed, style of formulation, to the qualities which Vincenzo Giustiniani would single out for praise alongside the vocal metallo and the exquisite cantar di gorgia in the performances by the ladies of the Ferrara and Mantua courts, in his often-quoted memoir of courtly solo singing written a hundred years later.44 Giovanni della Casa’s Galateo, almost contemporary with Dentice’s Due dialoghi, perhaps parodies Castiglione in his typically humorous way, when stressing the need for ‘moderation’ in speech as in all behaviour in polite society, including warnings against being over-loud, shrill or raucous: ‘The voice does not want to be either rough or harsh and it must not be strident … it is not good to raise your voice like a town crier nor to converse so quietly that the listeners cannot hear’.45 Stefano Guazzo employs very similar language in his influential La civil conversazione, and even employs a musical simile: [Annibale]. I consider first of all, that the first part of action consisteth in the voice, which ought to measure its forces, and to moderate itself in such sorte, that though it straine it selfe somewhat, yet it offend not the eares by a rawe and harsh sound, like as of strings of instruments, when they breake, or when they are ill striken.46

These observations on the acoustic aspects of appropriate behaviour in conversation also remind us firstly that the sound of the voice is relevant not only in the context of music, and secondly, that ‘vocalizing’ and hearing are critical environmental parameters of polite society. 43 John Potter, Vocal Authority: Singing Style and Ideology (Cambridge, 1998), p. 158. 44 Giustiniani, Discorso sopra la musica de’suoi tempi, pp. 67–80: ‘et era gran competenza fra quelle dame di Mantova e di Ferrara non solo quanto al metallo et alla disposizione delle voci, ma nell’ornamento di esquisiti passaggi … e principalmente con azione del viso, e dei sguardi e de gesti che accompagnavano appropriamente la musica e li concetti, e sopra tutto senza moto della persona e della bocca e delle mane sconcioso, che non fusse indirizzato al fine per il qual si cantava, e con far spiccar bene le parole in guisa tale che si sentisse anche l’ultima sillaba di ciascuna parola’. 45 Giovanni della Casa, Galateo, overo de’ costumi (1551), in Opere di Baldassare Castiglione, Giovanni della Casa, Benvenuto Cellini, ed. Carlo Cordiè, La letteratura italiana: storia e testi, vol. 27 (Milan and Naples, n.d.), p. 420; translated by Robert Peterson as A treatise of the manners and behaviours, it behoveth a man to use and eschewe in his familiar conversation (London, 1576, repr. 1892), pp. 86–7: ‘La voce non vuole essere nè roca nè aspera. E non si dee stridere ... Non istà bene alzar la voce a guisa di banditore, nè anco si dee favellare sì piano che chi ascolta non oda’. 46 Stefano Guazzo, La civil conversazione (Brescia, 1574), ed. Amedeo Quondam (2 vols, Modena, 1993), vol. 1, p. 89; translated by George Pettie as The Civile Conversation of M. Steeven Guazzo, the First Three Books (1581), fol. 58r–v: ‘[Annibale]: Io primieramente considero che la prima parte dell’azzione è posta nella voce, alla quale appartiene di misurar le forze sue e usare un temperamento tale che facendole violenza non offenda l’orecchie con un suono crudo, come le corde degli stromenti musici, le quali toccate in alcune parti stridono’.

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Cantar di gorgia Maffei’s assertion that cantar di gorgia is an integral part of the ‘vero modo di cantar cavaleresco’ is constantly reiterated throughout the diminution treatises and other sources about singing in the sixteenth century, including even those writers who bemoan the excesses of singers who make passaggi mindlessly. The evidence suggests that this specially articulated style of singing fast, improvised vocal ornaments (often called, simply, dispositione) had been an integral element of vocal performance at least as far back as the late fifteenth century.47 In 1592, Zacconi’s mammoth compendium of musical information, Prattica di musica … parte prima, containing detailed advice for singers, which seems to have been directed at budding professionals and their teachers rather than amateurs, made clear that facility in passaggi would put a mediocre singer at an advantage over one who, though blessed with a fine voice, nevertheless could not sing ‘di gorgia’: Thus, if we desire to see with how much skill the human voice carries those figures so quickly and so swiftly and how it is able to do all this exactly as the singer wishes, we should consider for a moment how many singers go happily through the world with very delightful voices, and they sing everything which is before them, written in the song, and nonetheless, because they lack a certain natural aptitude, are not able to make passaggi or gorgia.48

Zacconi hints in the opening sentence at the almost visceral pleasure for listeners of cantar di gorgia, especially the sense of marvel at the capacity of a bodily organ, the voice, to do something ‘sì presto, et sì veloce’. Again and again, descriptions of excellent singers right through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries dwell on two parameters, the dolcezza (literally, ‘sweetness’) or other timbral attractions of the voice and the quality of the trilli and passaggi. Indeed, the naming of technical terms which describe elements of cantar di gorgia are sometimes elevated to the status of tropes and used as ‘free’ signifiers in ecstatic descriptions of affective singing, which

47 Principal treatments of vocal diminution in the Renaissance are Howard Mayer Brown, Embellishing Sixteenth-Century Music (Oxford, 1976), which includes a list of the principal sixteenth-century sources (p. x); and Richard Erig and Veronika Gutmann (eds), Italienische Diminutionen: Die zwischen 1553 und 1635 mehrmals bearbeiteten Sätze (Zürich, 1979). Detailed discussion of the technique of cantar di gorgia is in Robert Greenlee, ‘Dispositione di voce: Passage to Florid Singing’, Early Music, 15 (1987): 47–55 and Richard Wistreich, ‘Reconstructing Pre-Romantic Singing Technique’, in John Potter (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Singing (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 186–90. 48 Zacconi, Prattica di musica ... prima parte, fol. 62v: ‘Onde se noi bramiamo di vedere con quanta fatica la voce humana porti quelle figure sì presto, et sì veloce, & se con essa si può fare tutto quello particularmente l’huomo vuole; Consideriamo un poco quanti Cantori vanno per il mondo con leggiadre, con assai felice voce, et cantano sicuro tutte le cantilene che li vengano presentato inanzi; & nondimeno per una certa naturale inattitudine, non hanno passaggi o gorgia’.

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means also that they must be read with care when looking for concrete information about individual performances.49 Ornamenting the bass part Maffei’s instructions about how and when to apply passaggi when singing in a consort, and his inclusion in his ‘Letter’ of a ‘worked example’ (Francesco Layolle’s madrigal ‘Lasciar il velo o per sol o per ombra’, first published in 1546), is the earliest didactic source that attempts to describe in notation the process of adding improvised cantar di gorgia.50 Pertinent to the present investigation is the fact that the ornamental figures in the bass are in no way different from those in the other voices. They are made sparingly, moving no more than the compass of a third from the fundamental note and returning to it before continuing, and this even at cadences, where the bass inevitably falls or rises a fourth or fifth (see Example 4.1). Further evidence of the singing of passaggi in the bass line within four-voice madrigals in a contemporary Neapolitan source is found in Marc’Antonio Volpe’s First Book of Madrigals (Venice, 1555), dedicated in Naples on 1 May 1555 to Cardinal Michele Saraceno, of the Nido seggio.51 The only surviving part is the Bassus book, and Keith Larson has shown that seven of the ottave comprise ‘Verses based on “Ruggiero tu m’hai lasciato”’ and that the vocal bass lines incorporate the ‘Ruggiero’ bass in either complete or fragmented form. At certain points this bass line is ornamented with diminutions that are occasionally quite energetic, including octave runs of semiquavers and dotted figures. Larson suggests that this notation could reflect the performance style of a singer such as Brancaccio and he speculates that when Castaldo spoke of Brancaccio’s ‘miracoli’, it was to such a style that he was referring.52

49 See, for example, Francesco Patrizi, L’amorosa filosofia, ed. John Charles Nelson (Florence, 1963), p. 23: in a long section of this manuscript treatise, where he is praising the singing of the virtuoso Tarquinia Molza in extravagant rhetoric (which is probably the most detailed on the subject of vocal technique in sixteenth-century literature), he left pairs of empty lines to be filled in at some later time with suitable tropes to describe her ‘dolcissimo gorgeggiamento di gola’, for ‘il trillare’, and, after ‘la gorgia’, he allowed seven empty lines. See also Laurie Stras, ‘Recording Tarquinia: Imitation, Parody and Reportage in Ingegneri’s “Hor che ’l ciel e la terra e ’l vento tace”’, Early Music, 27 (1999): 358–77. 50 Modern edition of the original madrigal in Francesco de Layolle, Collected Secular Works for Four Voices, ed. Frank d’Accone, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, vol. 32 (n. p. 1969), pp. 19–22. There are several editions of Maffei’s working of the madrigal including ibid., pp. 110–13 and Karin and Engen Ott (eds), Handbuch der Verzierungskunst in der Musik, vol. 2: Die Vokalmusik von den Anfang bis 1750 (Munich, 1997), p. 22 ff. 51 Marc-Antonio Volpe, Il primo libro, de gli madrigali, a quattro voci (Venice, 1555). 52 Keith Larson, ‘The Unaccompanied Madrigal in Naples’, PhD diss., Harvard University, 3 vols (1985), vol. 1, pp. 212–22.

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Example 4.1

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Giovanni Camillo Maffei, Delle lettere (1562), pp. 42–57 (extract): Diminutions of Francesco Layolle, ‘Lasciar il velo o per sol o per ombra’ (1546), bars 14–32

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There are very few other examples of madrigals with written-out passaggi in all voices with which to compare that of Maffei. The principal one, albeit from twenty or more years later, is Cipriano da Rore’s madrigal sequence ‘A la dolc’ombra de le belle fronde’, printed with sample diminutions in all four voice parts in Girolamo dalla Casa’s Il vero modo di diminuir (1584). In a volume that otherwise includes some very elaborate diminutions for solo voice, the treatment in these madrigals is remarkably conservative and similar to Maffei’s; the bass part has no special cadential formulas, and notably fewer figures than the other parts (see Figure 4.1).53 Some of the diminution manuals provide separate sections of their catalogues of ‘licks’ for singers of the bass part, although it is not always clear whether the examples are primarily intended for singers who plan to sing solo, or for use in consort situations, or both. Hermann Finck’s Practica musica was published in Germany in 1556 in the time between the treatises of Dentice and Maffei and includes instruction and examples for making ‘coloraturas of the throat’. Although he hints that it is a disputed point, Finck is of the opinion that all voices of an ensemble may ornament, even basses. He warns all singers that they must be careful not to ornament simultaneously: they must observe what I call ‘ensemble etiquette’: There are many who are of the opinion that the bass be embellished, others say the discantus; but in my opinion embellishments both can and should be applied to all the voices, but not throughout, only at indicated places; also not in all voices alike, only on the proper degrees. And let them be done by turn, in such a way that each embellishment can be clearly distinguished from the others, yet so that the entire work is uniform.54

53 Girolamo Dalla Casa, Il vero modo di diminuir con tutte le sorti di stromenti (2 vols, Venice, 1584, facs. edn, Bologna, 1970), pp. 38–49. Apart from ‘A la dolc’ombra de le belle fronde’, the formulas and specimen diminutions of complete pieces are exclusively for treble instrument. 54 Hermann Finck, Practica musica Hermanni Finckii, exempla variorum signorum, proportionum et canonum, judicium de tonis, ac quaedam de arte suaviter, et artificiose continens (Wittenberg, 1556; facs. ed. Hildesheim and New York, 1971), sig. Ss iv; trans. in Carol MacClintock, Readings in the History of Music in Performance (Bloomington, Ind., 1982), pp. 63–4: ‘Multi in ea sunt sententia, Bassum esse colorandum, alij Discantum. Verum mea sententia omnibus vocibus & possunt & debent coloraturae aspergi, sed non semper, & quidem locis appositis, nec omnes voces coniunctim, sed sede convenienti colorentur, reliquae suis locis, ita ut una coloratura expresse & distincte ab alia exaudiri & discerni, integra tamen & salva compositione, possit’. Nicolo Vicentino, L’antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica (Rome, 1555/57), ch. 9, makes a similar remark about the unsuitability of deeper voices for singing fast gorgie: ‘nelle parti basse il Cantante a voce piena non possi accommodarsi a proferirla correndo [singers of the lower parts using full voice are not able to articulate fast passages clearly]’. That Vicentino was writing in Rome raises an interesting question about which basses he may have had in mind: his reference to ‘voce piena’ may suggest that he is referring specifically to church singers.

Figure 4.1

Bassus part of Cipriano da Rore, ‘Alla dolc’ombra de le belle fronde’ (Prima parte) (1555) with diminutions by Giovanni della Casa, Il vero modo di diminuir (1584), Libro secondo, p. 39

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Finck provides several elaborations of increasing complexity for one typical bass cadential figure, or ‘fixed clausula’ (see Figure 4.2).

Figure 4.2

Hermann Finck, Practica musica (1556), sig. Ttiij: diminutions of the fixed clausula for bass

A far more conservative attitude to bass ornamentation had been expressed by Adrian Petit Coclico in his Compendium musices, published four years before Finck’s treatise. Having introduced the technique of cantar alla gorga into his curriculum for training boy singers (which he claims to have learned from his teacher, Josquin), remarking that ‘it is difficult at first to perform these [passages] with the throat unless the boy sweats and works a great deal, and tries very hard’, he says bluntly that ‘this cannot be done correctly in the Bass … since the Bass is the foundation of all the other parts, when it does not remain solidly fixed, distortions happen in song that offend the ears’.55 This fundamental objection to bass ornamentation, 55 Adrian Petit Coclico, Compendium musices (Nuremberg, 1552), facs. ed. Manfred F. Bukofzer (Kassel and Basel, 1954), sigs. H iiiv and I iiiv, trans. Albert Seay (Colorado Springs, 1973), pp. 20–1: ‘Sed arduum in primis est gutture ista pronunciare, nisi multum

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on compositional grounds, is, as we shall see, a recurring one in the period, often expressed in similar language. The most exhaustive writer on passaggi, cantar alla gorgia and its technique in the latter half of the century is Lodovico Zacconi. He provides, in fact, whole sets of graded exercises for students, starting with some pages of fairly simple elaborations of cadential figures for cantus, altus and tenor, with the rubric: ‘All these things require aptitude, agility and speed, without which they cannot be done’.56 After a lengthy discursion about common mistakes such as inadequate breath or speed, and trying to ‘run before walking’, he turns to the bass, offering some figures for the specific places where he is supporting the upper parts, based on typical bass cadence progressions (see Figure 4.3). It is also not to be forgotten that also the bass or lowest part [should be] embellished with some licks with simple ornaments which can be used in all the places where the bottom part supports the high ones. Thus, in order to demonstrate [how to do] it, a few examples are written below.57

Later on, Zacconi refers again to the fact that the bass is different because his intervals are usually larger than those of the other three voices, and consequently his ornamentation must often be different: ‘each singer needs to know that many ornaments and decorations are suitable for the soprano part but should be avoided in all the other parts and many of those which are suitable for other parts including the soprano are not suitable for the bass’.58 insudet ac laboret puer ... Verum in Basso haec fieri non possunt ... Quia Bassus est fundamentum omnium aliarum partium, qui cum non manet integer, occurrunt speties in cantu aures offendentes’. 56 Zacconi, Prattica di musica ... prima parte, fol. 62v: ‘Tutte queste cose ricercano attitudine, agilità, & tempo, senza de quali non si fa nulla’. 57 Ibid., fol. 63: ‘Non manca poi ancora di poter nel Basso o nelle parte più grave abellire alcune figure con accenti ordinarii, i quali servano in tutti quei luochi che le dette parte gravi sostentano le acute. Onde per mostrarne qualche essempio se ne formano l’infrascritte mostre’. In Adriano Banchieri, Cartella musicale (rev. edn, Venice, 1614; repr. Bologna, 1968), pp. 216–31, there is an Appendix containing ‘100 varied passaggi ornamented according to the modern style ... applied [to the works of] celebrated composers of our times [Cento variati passaggi accentuati alla moderna … dedotti in celebri compositori de i nostri tempi]’. According to the author (p. 229), these are short phrases ‘collected with great study and diligence from modern authors [Autori moderni, con molto studio, & diligenza raccolti]’, with sample diminutions for each voice, printed next to the original. There are 25 examples each for soprano, alto, tenor and bass, but Banchieri remarks in the rubrics that all the passaggi can be sung by any singer using simple transposition; thus basses, for example, can sing the alto examples one octave lower. Nevertheless, his examples ‘for the lowest part [la parte più grave]’ consist of typical bass cadential progressions. 58 Zacconi, Prattica di musica ... prima parte, fol. 83r: ‘però qualunque Cantore, ha da sapere che molti accenti & vaghezze si concedano alla parte del Soprano, che si vietano a ciascheduna altra parte, & molte di quelle che si concedano a ciasceduna altra parte con il Soprano, non si concedano al Basso, perché qualunque volta che le sudette vaghezze & accenti hanno certi accompagnamenti sequenti et ordinarii, il più delle volte a tutte le parte si concedano dalla parte del Basso in fuora, che per esser parte grave, & con contrarii ordini

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Figure 4.3

Warrior, Courtier, Singer

Lodovico Zacconi, Prattica di musica, libro primo (1592), fols 73v–74v: bass cadence figures with sample diminutions

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154

Figure 4.3 continued

Warrior, Courtier, Singer

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155

Pietro Cerone’s El melopeo y maestro (1613) is a gargantuan compilation made up (it appears) of large chunks translated almost verbatim from other writers’ works. Much of his material about cantar di gorgia is taken directly from Zacconi, including most of the notated examples. His direct translation of Zacconi’s introduction to his bass cadential figures is preceded by a vaguely sarcastic diatribe of his own against basses in general: Cerone seems to have had one or more particular singers in mind. Unusually, in this case, he does not take over Zacconi’s figures, but provides a set of far more conservative ones (Figure 4.4) that are even less adventurous than those of Finck, sixty years earlier, presumably to back up his brandishing of Aristotle’s proverb: Chapter VI: Ways in which one can embellish the bass part with ornaments and graces. I am certain … that it will not be entirely satisfactory to those who perform the bass part that they are forbidden to embellish it. And because I can already imagine that some, enraged, and others, vainglorious, will not be able to bear to sing it as it is, simple and so bare, and to satisfy themselves, they would also want to perform marvels and in the end they will not accept that they ought to avoid dissonances (for one cannot escape one or two), just as one chooses the lesser of two evils in cases of necessity; as Plato said ‘If he has to choose between two evils, nobody chooses the greater evil, but may choose that which is less so’; which Aristotle abbreviates, saying ‘always choose the lesser of two evils’. I say, therefore, that if anyone wishes to decorate the bass part with normal ornaments (reserving longer embellishments only for the moments when one sings alone, or in duet), he might do it by imitating the examples that follow, which will serve in those places where the lower part supports the upper ones – observing, nevertheless, the rules [against dissonance] that have been declared and expounded on other occasions.59

This brief survey of sixteenth-century ornamentation sources reveals something about how a bass singer such as Brancaccio might approach the singing of his part in an allvocal or mixed consort performance at a musical event such as Giovanna d’Aragona’s ‘Musica’, but it is naturally limited by the relative paucity of information, raising almost as many questions as it offers answers. Most of the printed ‘instructions’ are tessuta, ha altre maniere, che non hanno l’altre parte: dico contrarii ordini, perché l’ordine suo tanto è più vago e bello, quanto che più i moti suoi sono distanti et lontani’. 59 Pietro Cerone, El melopeo y maestro (Naples, 1613), p. 547: ‘Cap VI: De qué manera se puedá hermosear con Glosas y gracias la parte del Baxo. Soy más que cierto, … no será de entera satisfación a los que se exercitaren en la parte del Baxo por devedarles del todo el glosarla. Y porque imaginando voy que algunos coléricos y otros vanagloriosos no podrán sufrir cantarla assí simple y tan groseramente; y que para se satisfazer assí mismos, ellos también queran hazer maravillas; a fin no passen que menos dissonen, pues de la una no se puede escapar: assi como se suele escojer de dos daños el menor en caso de necesidad: diziendo Platón, Cum è duobus malis alterum eligere cogimur, nemo peius eligat, dum licet quod minus est, eligere (In Protag. Ethic. I. 5. cix): lo qual abrevió Aristóteles diziendo: Minus malum semper est eligendum. Digo pues, que si alguno querrá hermoscar la parte del Baxo con accentos ordinarios (dexando las Glosas largas para quando cantare solo, o en dos) podrá hazerlo a imitación de los exemplos que se siguen: los quales servirán en todos aquellos lugares adonde la parte grave susten[t]a las agudas: observando peró las reglas, quen en otras occasiones se pusieron y declararon’.

Figure 4.4 Pietro Cerone, El melopeo y maestro (1613), pp. 547–8: bass cadence figures with sample diminutions

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aimed at amateurs, especially those who want to ‘emulate’ noble virtuosi; and have thus been deliberately simplified; so how might more sophisticated diminution have differed from these models? How ‘internationally’ applicable is such information, and did different singers express individual styles with their particular diminution licks? This still needs further study, but one thing seems clear: diminution was a critical aspect of cantar cavaleresco and was an indispensable part of the performance of written music in Italy. As Lodovico Zacconi bluntly puts it, the ability to sing in this way was still a critical marker of social status in the 1590s: ‘Do we believe that if they could, [singers] would happily warble out torrents of ornaments and passaggi at will? Certainly we do, because through being able to make streams [of passaggi], many who with mediocre voices live mediocre lives, when they add gorgia, will live like princes’.60

60 Zacconi, Prattica di musica, vol. 1, fol. 75v: ‘crediamo noi che se potessero a i felici gorgheggianti torre i fioretti, & passaggi che gli li togliessero volontieri? Certo sì: perché potendoglili torre, molti che per la mediocre voce mediocramente vivano, con l’accompagnamento della gorgia viveriano da Signori’.

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Chapter Five

Per basso solo What, though, if Brancaccio had also exercised his skill at the palazzo of Giovanna d’Aragona or that of the Viceroy Pedro de Toledo (maybe thereby helping to secure his release from imprisonment in 1552, as Cardinal Granvelle had implied) by singing alone? If he did not simply perform the ‘tunes’ of popular Neapolitan villanellas, his repertoire choices would probably have been either sonnets, ottave rime or strambotti sung to aria formulas of the type found in, for example, the Rocco Rodio anthology of 1577 (which included pieces in both three and four parts), or madrigals. Taking Maffei’s worked example of the anonymous aria ‘Vago augelletto che cantando va’ as a representative example, we can imagine that either to his own accompaniment, or to that of one of the illustrious instrumentalists present, Brancaccio declaimed a text to a version of a melodic line of an existing piece, embellished with cantar di gorgia. But which line? He could have sung the cantus line of any song, aria, madrigal or villanella by taking the line ‘down an octave’ from its putative notated pitch. Another solution would have been to transpose the whole song lower, so that the cantus line remained the highest sounding part, but took the pitches within the range of his own voice. Pitch level is movable as soon as one sings solo and no other voices are dependent on the choice. If a male voice sings the cantus part, the remaining parts can also be rearranged to make harmonies beneath the voice: it is only necessary to have an accompaniment incorporating the harmonies of the other voices played accordingly, which for harp or keyboards is in principle no problem, and for lute, vihuela or viol, a question simply of changing the overall pitch by retuning or selecting a larger instrument.1 Caccini (albeit writing in 1601–2) recommends that the solo singer choose a pitch level that allows him to sing comfortably without having to strain or employ the falsetto (which would not, of course, apply to a pure falsettist, as Luigi Dentice is reported to have been).2 However, this process leaves open the 1 The large collection of arrangements of polyphonic sources for solo voice and lute collected in the ‘Bottegari Lute Book’ (Modena BE, C. 311) includes pieces, which, if performed at the notated pitches, would require no fewer than seven different lute tunings; see Kevin Mason, ‘“Per cantare e sonare”: Accompanying Italian Lute Song of the Late Sixteenth Century’, in Victor Coelho (ed.), Performance on the Lute, Guitar and Vihuela (Cambridge, 1997), p. 96. 2 Caccini, Le nuove musiche, Ai lettori: ‘se elegga un tuono, nel qual possa cantare in voce piena e naturale per isfuggire le voci finte, nelle quali per fingerle, o almeno nelle forzate’. William F. Prizer, ‘Lutenists at the Court of Mantua in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries’, Journal of the Lute Society of America, 13 (1980): 18–20, describes the purchase of a special lute for Isabella d’Este to suit her low voice; Brancaccio, too, ordered a lute with two extra bourdons to match his own voice (see Chapter 3).

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question of why Brancaccio is specifically praised by Castaldo (writing ca. 1573 but recalling 1545) and Guarini (writing in 1580) for singing with his bass voice. One could argue that the ‘basso del Brancazio’ refers to the vocal ‘instrument’ conceived by the listener in terms of vocal quality, distinct from the actual ‘bass part’ which he would have sung in an ensemble. On the other hand there is evidence to suggest that first, bass singers did in fact often sing the bass line of a polyphonic piece as a solo and secondly, that exceptional bass singers were able to create solo songs out of composed polyphony in other ways too. At least three studies in recent years have demonstrated the extent of sixteenthcentury sources for Italian solo secular song with lute accompaniment, both manuscript and print.3 That these sources are merely the bare remains of what was a very widespread performance practice of music otherwise published in conventional partbook form is becoming more and more apparent. It may well be that singing solo with instrumental accompaniment was the predominant way in which the secular forms – arias, villanellas, madrigals and canzonettas – were actually performed from as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century. Jeanice Brooks has demonstrated that similar processes are discernible in the case of French chanson repertoire from the 1570s or even earlier.4 Sixteenth-century musical, literary and iconographical sources depicting actual performance practice of chamber music certainly warrant more study for what they can further reveal about performance practices.5 In an article originally published in 1969, Claude Palisca drew attention to a set of intabulations with solo voice of various five- and six-voice madrigals and one canzona alla napolitana in the hand of the lutenist, theorist and teacher Vincenzo Galilei, entered on some extra pages bound into the back of one of his personal copies of the first edition (1568) of his own treatise on lute intabulation, Fronimo dialogo.6 The remarkable thing about these intabulations is that the part isolated 3 Leslie Chapman Hubbell, ‘Sixteenth-Century Italian Songs for Solo Voice and Lute’ (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1982); Mason, ‘Per cantare e suonare’ and Richard Falkenstein, ‘The Late Sixteenth-Century Repertory of Florentine Lute Song’ (Ph.D. diss., University of New York at Buffalo, 1997). See also Howard Mayer Brown, Instrumental Music Printed before 1600: A Bibliography (Cambridge, Mass., 1980). For a general account of solo song in the sixteenth century, see Nigel Fortune, ‘Solo Song and Cantata’ in New Oxford History of Music, vol. 4: The Age of Humanism, 1540–1630 (Oxford, 1968), pp. 125–217. 4 Brooks, ‘“New Music” in Late Renaissance France’. 5 See, for example, Cardamone, The Canzone villanesca alla napolitana, vol. 1, pp. 53–4; for examples of ‘solo’ music in polyphonic ‘reworkings’ in the early seventeenth century, see Tim Carter, ‘“An Air New and Grateful to the Ear”: The Concept of Aria’, Musical Analysis, 12 (1993): 127–8; for French practice, see Brooks, Courtly Song in Late Sixteenth-Century France, pp. 311–14 and ead, ‘O quelle armonye: Dialogue Singing in Late Renaissance France’, Early Music History, 22 (2003): 1–69; on the iconographical evidence, see, for example, Armin Brinzing, ‘Gesang zur Laute auf deutschen und niederländischen Kunstwerken des 16. Jahrhunderts’, Gesang zur Laute: Trossingen Jahrbuch für Renaissancemusik, 2 (2002): 25–42. 6 Vincenzo Galilei, Fronimo dialogo … nel quale si contengono le vere, et necesarie regole del intavolare la musica nel liuto (Venice, 1568), trans. Carol MacClintock, Musicological Studies and Documents, vol. 39 (Rome, 1985); ibid. (second edn, Venice, 1584,

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to be sung, and given in mensural notation on the page facing the intabulation of the other three voices, is the bass part.7 Palisca was able to date the pages to about 1570 and thus contemporary with Galilei’s most active period in the circle around Giovanni de’ Bardi in Florence. He concluded that Galilei had arranged the pieces thus not only out of convenience to suit his own voice range, but also because of a deeper-seated interest in the idea that ‘when singing in harmony, the low part is truly that which gives aria to the song [la parte grave sia veramente quella che dà l’aria (nel cantare in consonanza) alla Cantilena]’.8 On the face of it, there is something rather alien to the modern listener about hearing the bass line, with its typical series of jumps of fourths and fifths, foregrounded as a solo line, especially when the ear is so accustomed, in solo renditions of polyphonic madrigals, to hearing the cantus voice. Such disjunctive movement seems to contradict the very idea of ‘melody’ and all that it means to the ear. Palisca himself is ambivalent: he says that although there is no ornamentation written into the mensural line, perhaps the bass singer made the line appear more ‘melodious’ by ‘filling in’ the spaces of the leaping intervals: ‘one cannot exclude the possibility that the singer would have embellished them in the manner of the time, particularly where there are large skips’ and he also observes (somewhat opaquely, it must be said) that, for example, the arrangement of the ottava rima ‘Se ben di sette stelle ardent’ e bella’ demonstrates how effective the bass part is in a polyphonic texture ‘when it is set in relief in soloistic performance’. The problem would remain a largely theoretical one if the Galilei arrangements were simply evidence of private experiments intended for him alone or, at most, for a research group such as the camerata, rather than as examples of a wider common performance practice. In fact, Claude Palisca was apparently unaware of a relatively large corpus of other sources of similar ‘arrangements’ in a variety of Italian manuscript and printed sources, which would tend to confirm that the singing of the bass line as a solo was far from unusual, certainly in the period beginning around 1570. Furthermore, even a cursory survey of solo music for bass, both sacred and secular and encompassing not only Italian practice, but also music from other parts of Europe, from the late sixteenth century and up to the late seventeenth, shows that the norm rather than the exception was that in compositions for solo bass voice, the sung line was the same as the ‘bass line’ of the composition. In other words, composers, performers facs. edn, Bologna, 1969). The autograph manuscript additions are entered on twenty extra folios bound into the back of a copy of the book now in Florence BN, Landau-Finaly, Mus. 2; see Claude V. Palisca, ‘Vincenzo Galilei’s Arrangements for Voice and Lute’, in Studies in the History of Italian Music and Music Theory (Oxford, 1994), pp. 364–88, and Table 5.1 below for a list of pieces and concordances; see also Falkenstein, ‘Florentine Lute Song’, pp. 40–69. 7 In a number of the arrangements, the singer must transpose the mensural notation in order to sing in the same key as the lute, assuming this to be in a conventional ‘A’ tuning: Falkenstein, ‘Florentine Lute Song’, p. 45. 8 Vincenzo Galilei, Dialogo della musica antica, et della moderna (Florence, 1581), p. 76 quoted in Claude V. Palisca, ‘Vincenzo Galilei and Some Links between “PseudoMonody” and Monody’, in Studies in the History of Italian Music and Music Theory (Oxford, 1994), p. 356.

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and listeners expected the ‘tunes’ which bass singers sang to be made up largely of the leaps of fourths, fifths and octaves that characterize the harmonic progressions that underpin the basic stepwise progressions of soprano (or tenor) melodies in polyphonic music. In contrast to the idea that ‘solo tune’ implies the upper part, it may be that the sixteenth-century ear was attuned to the different, complementary qualities of soprano and bass ‘melody’ and that, depending on the acoustic and timbral qualities of the voice, it adjusted automatically to the type of melodic motion it expected to hear. Galilei’s search for a modern equivalent of the monody of the Greeks led him to look for models in the popular airs sung in his own time, and he cited especially the soprano parts of a number of villanellas and common aria patterns which are characterized by simple step-progressions encompassing a very small range (for example, the four and five notes respectively of the two falling phrases of the Romanesca melody). The ‘natural’ harmonization of these tunes, he argued, uses root-position chords even when this means the creation of parallel fifths. He seems to be arguing that the bass-line progressions of these harmonies are integral to the ‘aria’ that their ‘Ur-tunes’ carry. Thus, in making a song, a bass singer could perform the steps of the bass line and thereby still evoke the ‘aria’ of, say, the Romanesca, presumably embellishing these steps with any manner of cantar di gorgia. It is precisely the fundamental notes of the chords of this and other formulae, such as the ‘aria di Ruggiero’, which form the basis of numerous ‘monodies’ for bass found in printed collections of the early seventeenth century, sources which almost certainly reflect a tradition of improvisation possibly stretching right back to, for example, Brancaccio’s Naples in the 1540s.9 Zarlino had already characterized the differences between the soprano and bass voices in the context of the composition of polyphonic music, observing that the bass part should move more slowly than the upper parts, without too much diminution, so that, amongst other things, it will not be too difficult to sing:

9 The question of whether the ‘aria’ of a formula such as the Romanesca is ‘located’ in the soprano, bass or the harmony has been the subject of considerable debate. I take ‘aria’ to be a term expressing a cluster of different more or less tangible associative or familiar qualities that do not necessarily have a single location. See Palisca, ‘Vincenzo Galilei and some Links’; Pirrotta, Music and Theatre, pp. 247–9; Carter, ‘The Concept of Aria’, pp. 127–45. Typical examples of published bass monodies in the form of strophic texts set as embellishments of the bass lines of traditional aria formulas are ‘Pasciti pur del core’, an aria with four strophes, subtitled ‘Basso alla Bastarda Sopra l’Aria di Ruggiero di Napoli’, in Giulio S. Pietro del Negro, Grazie, ed affetti di musica (Milan, 1613); two similar pieces, ‘Voi pur vedete ch’io mi struggo e moro, anima bella’ and ‘O quante volte invan, cor mio, ti chiamo’, both subtitled ‘aria di Romanesca’, in Giovanni Domenico Puliaschi, Musiche varie a una voce con il suo basso continuo per sonare (Rome, 1618) and ‘Troppo, sotto due stelle’ (three strophes set with increasingly elaborate passaggi), in Girolamo Frescobaldi, Primo libro d’arie per cantarsi (Florence, 1630); note, too, the examples of ornamented versions of the Ruggiero bass in Marc’Antonio Volpe’s 1555 madrigals (see above, Chapter 4): these ottava settings could easily have been performed as solo bass songs with appropriate instrumental accompaniment.

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Therefore, when a composer composes the bass of his music, he proceeds with rather slow, somewhat leaping movements, rather wider than in the other parts. This permits the middle voices to progress with elegant and conjunct movements (most of all the soprano, for this is its nature). The bass, then, must not make many diminutions but should generally progress in values rather longer than those of the other parts and it must be organized for the best effect without being difficult to sing.10

There is no doubt a complex web of factors at play in the ‘emancipation’ of the solo bass voice and these include the changing and emerging notions of harmony and the sense of the bass (rather than the tenor) as the foundation of the piece. Likewise, Zarlino’s hint that bass lines need to be somehow ‘easier’ than the upper parts may reflect a reality in which the bass voice, by far the most ubiquitous male vocal range, was nevertheless normally exercised, in churches at least, by relatively incompetent ‘professional’ priests. ‘Amateur’ bass singers, on the other hand, were not restricted in this way, and those who wanted to make an impression had by necessity to develop a special way of drawing attention to their otherwise ‘basic’ voice register. The process of bringing the bass to the level of the soprano in terms of the speed and sophistication of cantar di gorgia which it might perform must be attributable to the performers, including Brancaccio, whose style and levels of technical virtuosity were reflected in music for bass solo that from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries, at least, was every bit as demanding as music for soprano and tenor. Indeed, it often looks more overtly virtuosic on the page owing to the greater range and wide intervallic leaps, and the potential these offer for extended diminutions. Possibly the earliest printed example of this contrasting approach to the different kinds of ‘melodies’ suitable for soprano and bass voice is the dialogue between Glauque and Tethys in Balthazar de Beaujoyeulx’s Le balet comique de la royne (Paris, 1582). The print, which is in the form of a lavish presentation volume designed to demonstrate the marvels of the entire event, reproduces only the melody lines, which were apparently sung by the soprano Violante Doria and her husband, the bass Gerard de Beaulieu, at the first performance in 1581. No harmonizations are provided, except for the refrain, which consists of the final couplet of each strophe repeated by a five-part chorus of marine deities. The melodies are first presented in their ‘plain’ form, and then in a form reproducing passaggi, and subtitled ‘pour la dernière stance’. As Jeanice Brooks has pointed out, the bass part is uncompromisingly filled with leaps of fourths, fifths and octaves, ‘the characteristic motion of the bass lines of contemporary polyphony’.11 The passaggi resemble any to be found in solo bass music for the following 50 years, and Brooks notes that the progression of intervals invites a harmonization very similar to that of the commonest singing formula, the Romanesca.12 10 Zarlino, Le istitutioni harmoniche, III, Cap. 58, p. 282; The Art of Counterpoint, p. 178. 11 Brooks, ‘O quelle armonye’, 32. 12 Baltazar Beaujoyeux, Le balet comique de la royne (Paris, 1582), facs. ed. Margaret M. McGowan (Binghamton, NY, 1982), fols 19r–21r; the music is edited in Brooks, ‘O quelle armonye’, Example 1, pp. 30–31.

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One has to wait until the turn of the seventeenth century for the printing of equivalent pieces of Italian music for bass to get under way (actual compositions as they were performed by famous singers, as opposed to diminution exemplars from pedagogical treatises). Among the earliest, Giulio Caccini’s ground-breaking print, Le nuove musiche (Florence, 1602), reproduced his music for the final chorus of Chiabrera’s pastoral Il rapimento di Cefalo, performed for the wedding of Henri IV of France to Maria de’ Medici at the Pitti palace on 9 October 1600. Three strophes of an aria interspersed with a simple repeating chorus were sung by three famous singers, the bass Melchior Palantrotti and the tenors Jacopo Peri and Francesco Rasi. His ‘own ornaments [proprie passaggi]’, apparently exactly as sung by Palantrotti ‘according to his style’, are reproduced using the sophisticated typography of the printer Marescotti. For Peri’s strophe, Caccini provides passaggi other than those sung at the performance and in Rasi’s strophe, passaggi partly the same as those he sang, and partly not (behind which set of publishing decisions presumably lies a complicated story of jealousy and rivalry). The setting of the first strophe of the aria, for Palantrotti, consists of idiosyncratic ornamentation of the ‘harmonic’ bass line with its typical cadential leaps, while the respective ornamentations of the tenors follow the contours of a step-like melody constructed ‘over’ the harmonies implied by the bass notes.13 Similarly, in one of the earliest Italian dialogues for two solo singers that appeared in print, Bartolomeo Barbarino’s ‘Ferma, ferma Caronte’ (Example 5.1), the melody of Caronte is a ‘polyphonic bass’ in contrast to the step-like tunes of the soprano, ‘Anima fida’. Barbarino’s printed version includes a certain amount of written-out cantar di gorgia, but interestingly, in a slightly later source of the song in the manuscript songbook of the singer Angelo Notari, more diminutions have been added, especially in the form of a written-out repeat of Caronte’s final couplet, giving a good example of the ways in which a bass singer might embellish such a solo line in practice. It is noteworthy, however, that in the final duet refrain the bass voice remains ‘plain’ in support of the highly ornamented cantus.

13 Caccini, Le nuove musiche, ed. Navarre, pp. 102–7. The 1602 volume contains another bass aria for Melchior Palantrotti also apparently from Chiabrera’s Il rapimento di Cefalo, the ‘Aria ultima: Chi mi confort’ ahimé chi più consola’ (ibid., pp. 134–5). Caccini provides an almost plain version of the aria for the words of the first verse, although there are diminutions printed for the final line of text. The ‘melody’ is virtually identical with the harmonic bass line. There is then a setting of the fifth and final strophe with almost continuous ornamentation, including a written-out repeat of the final line of text. This setting of the final strophe clearly provides a model for similar improvised ornamentation of the intervening strophes by a singer. Consideration of the compositional problems raised by the creation of ‘independent’ vocal and instrumental bass lines in seventeenth-century bass monody is beyond the scope of this study. Werner Braun, ‘Monteverdi’s große Baß-Monodien’, in Ludwig Finscher (ed.), Claudio Monteverdi: Festschrift Reinhold Hammerstein (Laaber, 1986), pp. 123–39, provides an introduction to these problems through an analysis of two major examples, Monteverdi’s ‘Io che nel otio nacque’ (Ottavo libro de madrigali, 1638) and ‘Ab aeterno ordinata sum’ (Selva morale e spirituale, 1643).

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Example 5.1 Bartolomeo Barbarino, ‘Ferma, ferma Caronte’, from Il secondo libro de madrigali (1607) with diminutions in the hand of Angelo Notari (London BL, Add. 34440, fols 63v–65r)

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Example 5.1 continued

Warrior, Courtier, Singer

Table 5.1 Sources of sixteenth-century Italian lute songs for solo bass Source

Date

Songs for bass: contents and [concordances]

Comments

Paolo Virchi,a Primo libro di tabolatura di citthara di ricercati, madrigali, canzone napolitane et salterelli (Venice, 1574)

1574

p. 28: Lelio Bertani,b ‘Amor mi sforzar amar una crudele’ (vocal clef: C3) p. 29: Paolo Virchi, ‘Come son vivo oimè’ (C4) p. 30: Lelio Bertani, ‘Io vidi solo il faretrato amore’ (C4) p. 31: Lelio Bertani, ‘Donna non trovo pac’in alcun loco’ (C4) p. 32: Lelio Bertani, ‘Claudia gentil col tuo sì dolce riso’ (C4) p. 33: Paolo Virchi, ‘Se si vedesse suore’ (C4) [Modena BE, Mus. C. 311 [Bottegari Lute Book], fol. 50; Gasparo Fiorino, La nobiltà di Roma (Rome, 1571), p. 64] p. 34: Lelio Bertani, ‘Chi vuol veder gigli rose e viole’ (C4)

Solo part in mensural notation (clef of bass part shown after each title) under tabulature for ‘cithara’ (exact instrument and tuning not yet identified).

Vincenzo Galilei, Florence BN, Landau-Finaly Mus. 2.c

after 1568

fols 14v–15: ‘Ancor ch’io possa dire’ (A. Striggio) fols 17v–18: ‘Dolce mi sarai uscir’ (G. Ferretti) fols 2v–4 Prima parte: ‘Fiera stella’; Seconda parte: ‘Ma tu prend’’ (O. de Lassus) fols 4v–5: ‘Io son ferito’ (G. da Palestrina) fols 18v–19: ‘Pur viv’il bel costume’ (?V. Galilei) fols 16v–17: ‘Se ben di sette stelle’ (A. Striggio) fols 15v–16: ‘Si gioioso mi fann’’ (?V. Galilei) fols 6v–13: ‘Vattene o sonn’e mai’ (?V. Galilei) fols 1–2 and 12v Prima parte: ‘Vestiva i colli e le campagne intorno’; Seconda parte: ‘Così le chiome mie soavemente’ (G. da Palestrina) fols. 5v–6: ‘Vivo sol di speranza’ (G. D. Da Nola)

Solo voice part in mensural notation on page facing intabulation (before rebinding partially altered the original order). Full list of contents and sources in Falkenstein, ‘Florentine Lute Song’, p. 42.

Table 5.1 continued Source

Date

Songs for bass: contents and [concordances]

Comments

Cavalcanti Lute Book (Brussels BR, II, 275)

dated ‘1590’; concordant publications ca. 1580–5

70 songs arranged for bass, including 7 ‘Madrigale’; 51 ‘Napoletana’, ‘Napoletana aria’, or ‘Villanelle’ and 2 ‘Arie’. The volume contains 32 arrangements of pieces (headed ‘Napolitana’ in the MS) from three volumes of Orazio Vecchi’s Canzonetted as follows: Canzonette libro primo (Venice, 1580): 11 Canzonette libro secondo (Venice, 1580): 5 Canzonette libro terzo (Venice, 1585): 16

Texts only under lute tablature. Concordances are listed in Falkenstein, ‘Florentine Lute Song’, pp. 232–88, with a full listing of the contents of the MS on pp. 298–304.

Lucca Lute Book (Lucca, 774)

Unknown. 2 songs concordant with Simone Verovio, 1589

List of contents and some attributions and concordances in Hubbell, ‘Sixteenth-Century Italian Songs’, Table VII, pp. 516–19, to which can be added fol. 45v: ‘Quando mirai sì bella faccia d’oro’e [Orazio Vecchi, Primo libro delle canzonette (Venice, 1580); Giovanni Antonio Terzi, Il secondo libro de intavolatura (Venice, 1599)]

7 songs: villanescas and canzonettas

?early seventeenth century

List of contents and concordances by Andrée Desautels (private communication): fols 3v–4r: ‘Amor senza tormento’ [Scipione Cerreto, Libro primo di canzonette (Naples, 1608)] fol. 4v: ‘Mirate che mi fa crudel amore’ ‘Canzonette et Napolitane d’Horatio Vecchi’: fol. 5r: ‘Se pensand’al partire’ [Orazio Vecchi, Primo libro delle canzonette (Venice, 1580)] f. 5v: ‘Chi mira gl’occhi tuoi’ [Orazio Vecchi,

Text under tablature.

Montreal Lute Book, (Montreal)f

Solo bass lines of some songs in mensural notation; others with texts under the tablature.

Source

Date

Songs for bass: contents and [concordances]

Comments

Canzonette, libro secondo (Venice, 1580)] fol. 6r: ‘Mentr’io campai contento’, [Orazio Vecchi, Canzonette, libro secondo (Venice, 1580)] (intervening folios contain solo lute music) ‘Canzonette de Cavaccio’: fol. 58v: ‘Dormendo m’insognava’, [Giovanni Cavaccio, Canzonette (Venice, 1592)] fol. 69v: ‘Come sperar poss’io rimedio al dolor mio’ (intervening folios contain solo lute music) fol. 94r–v: ‘Intorno al ciaro’ [Giovanni Cavaccio, Canzonette (Venice, 1592)] Galilei, Fronimo dialogo (Venice, 1584)

1584

pp. 17–19: ‘In exitu Israel de Aegypto’ (?V. Galilei – see Example 5. 1)g

Four-part score with intabulation beneath.

Giovanni Antonio Terzi, Il secondo libro de intavolatura (Venice, 1599)h

1599

p. 8: Horatio Vecchi, ‘Quando mirai sì bella faccia d’oro’ [Canzonette libro primo (Venice, 1580); Lucca Lutebook] p. 9: Iuliano Paratico, ‘Di pianti e di sospir nutrisco il cuore’ [Canzonette libro secondo (Brescia, 1588)] p. 9: Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi, ‘Ahi che mi tien’ il core’ [Canzonette libro primo (Venice, 1592)] p. 9: Antonio Mortaro, ‘Come farò cor mio quando ti parti, che sol pensando alla crudel’ [Il secondo libro delle fiamelle amorose (Venice, 1590)] p. 74: Pietro Vinci, ‘Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem’ [Bottegari Lute Book, fol. 11v; Cavalcanti Lute Book, fol. 60]

Text under intabulation, with following rubrics: ‘Le parole per cantare sono sotto al Basso’ ‘le parole si ponno cantar sott’al Basso, & nel Canto’ ‘sotto il Basso’ ‘le parole sono sotto a la parte del Basso’

Table 5.1 continued Source

Date

Songs for bass: contents and [concordances]

Comments

Jean-Baptiste Besard,i Thesaurus harmonicus, liber tertius (Cologne, 1603)

1603

‘Villanellae Trium Vocum, Luca Marencij’ 10 villanellas by Luca Marenzio, originally published in five different (partbook) volumes, as follows: p. 52: ‘Fuggirò tant’amore’ [a] p. 53: ‘Ahi me che col fuggire’ [a] p. 54: ‘Lasso quand’ havra fin tanti sospiri’ [a] p. 55: ‘Dolce mia vit’e amata morte mia’ [b] p. 56: ‘Dicemi la mia stella’ [a] p. 57: ‘Ard’ogn’hor il cor lasso e mai non more’ [a] p. 58: ‘Voi sete la mia stella’ [c] p. 59: ‘Andar vidi un fanciul’ ignudo e cieco’ [b] p. 60: ‘Mi parto ahi sorte ria el cor vi lascio’ [d] p. 61: ‘Non posso più soffrire’ [e] KEY: [a] Primo libro delle villanelle (Venice, 1584) [b] Secondo libro delle villanelle alla napolitana (Venice, 1585) [c] Terzo libro delle villanelle a tre voci composte del s. Luca Marentio nel modo che hoggidì si usa cantare in Roma (Rome, 1585) [d] Quarto libro delle villanelle alla napolitana (Venice, 1587) [e] Quinto libro delle villanelle (Venice, 1587)

In choirbook format: three voice parts, only bassus part texted, with French lute tablature under.

a Paolo Virchi was born in Brescia and later employed at Ferrara between 1579 and 1581 and again in 1598, when he became organist in Mantua; see Newcomb, The Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, p. 181. b Lelio Bertani was, like Virchi, Brescian and a regular visitor to Alfonso II d’Este’s court in Ferrara; there are no other publications credited to him before 1582: see Anthony Newcomb, ‘Bertani, Lelio’, New Grove II, vol. 3, p. 454. c The songs are in autograph manuscript on 20 blank pages bound into the back of a copy of Galilei, Fronimo dialogo (Venice, 1568). d In two of the Vecchi arrangements, ‘Mentr’io compai contento’ and ‘Raggi, dov’è il mio bene’, the tenor part is texted where the bass drops out, as in Galilei’s Fronimo dialogo (1584): see below. e This is a score of the whole piece in mensural notation (all voices) with the first phrase of text only underlaid in the cantus part only (this score not noted by Hubbell). f I am grateful to Andrée Desautels for sending me copies of her transcriptions of the songs. g Only bass line texted, except where it has rests, when the tenor part takes over; some diminutions added. h Published in facs. edn (Geneva, 1981). i Besard claimed to have studied with Vincenzo Galilei and Alfonso Ferrabosco; see Julia Sutton and Tim Crawford, ‘Besard, Jean-Baptiste’, New Grove II, vol. 3, p. 583.

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Lute songs for bass Table 5.1 is a list of known sixteenth-century sources of Italian lute songs for solo bass, taking in Besard’s arrangements of villanellas by Marenzio in his Thesaurus harmonicus of 1603. In some of these sources, notably Galilei’s song arrangements, the Lucca Lute Book and the Montreal Lute Book, the bass line is written in mensural notation, whereas in others, notably the Cavalcanti Lute Book, only the text is underlaid beneath the lute intabulation, but in such a way that it is clearly the bass line that is intended to be sung.14 It could be that the respective manuscript sources, most of which appear to have been compiled by or for young amateur musicians, favoured the bass voice simply because the performers found this the most comfortable to pitch for their ‘standard’ range male voices to ‘sing along’ while playing intabulations of songs they already knew (that is, approximately A to d′, which is the range of the normal modal voice for men without use of ‘head’ or falsetto range).15 But in the case of a layout as in the Cavalcanti Lute Book, the songs would only make sense at all when the original bass line of the composition is properly privileged. If the arrangements were made directly from printed or manuscript partbooks, then the choice of the bass part to sing as the solo line seems more conscious, as it is the only part which is 14 In the arrangements of the pieces in the Cavalcanti Lute Book (Brussels BR, II, 275, dated 1590, signed by Rafaello Cavalcanti, a member of a Florentine noble family), only the bass line is reproduced in its entirety in the intabulation; the other voices are in the form of an arrangement that constitutes an accompaniment for the vocal line. The process of intabulation is discussed in depth, with a number of worked examples, in Christine Ballman, ‘Technique du chant au luth d’après le manuscrit Cavalcanti (Bruxelles, Bibliothèque Royale Albert 1er, Ms II 275)’, Revue belge de musicologie, 50 (1996): 35–48. Véronique K Lafargue, ‘Le laboratoire de signore Cavalcanti’, in ‘La musique, de tous les passetemps le plus beau…’: Hommage à Jean-Michel Vaccaro (Paris, 1998), pp. 251–79, argues (but not persuasively) on the basis of detailed analysis and comparison of the intabulation techniques of songs in other sources, such as the Bottegari manuscript, that these arrangements are in fact intended to be performed as duets for soprano and bass. Victor Coelho, ‘Rafaello Cavalcanti’s Lute Book (1590) and the Ideal of Singing and Playing’, in Le concert des voix et des instruments à la Renaissance: Actes du XXXIme colloque international d’études humanistes: Tours, Centre d’Etudes Supérieures da la Renaissance, ed. Jean-Michel Vaccaro (Paris, 1995), pp. 423–42, describes and analyses the non-texted aria formulas in the Cavalcanti book, arguing that they could be used as interludes during, or even accompaniments for, the singing of ottave rime. 15 See Wistreich, ‘Reconstructing Pre-Romantic Singing Technique’, p. 182. The table in Michael Praetorius, Syntagma musicum, tomus secundus: De organographia (Wolfenbüttel, 1618), p. 20, showing voice ranges, gives the ‘normal’ range of the Tenorista as c, B or A to e′ or f′ in ‘Cammerthon’, which Cary Karp, ‘Pitch’, in Howard Mayer Brown and Stanley Sadie (eds), Performance Practice: Music after 1600 (London, 1989), pp. 151– 9, reckons to be about A = 460 (i.e., a semitone above modern ‘concert’ pitch). Praetorius, De organographia, p. 17, remarks: ‘Und ist genug, wenn ein Tenorist das e′ … in Cammerthon haben kan; Kan er hoeher kommen, ist es desto besser [And it is enough, if a Tenorist can reach e′ Kammerton [i.e., the d′ above middle c′ if A = 440]; if he can get higher, so much the better].’

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consistently reproduced complete, whilst the upper voices are more haphazardly incorporated into the intabulation.16 The majority of intabulations of music as solo lute song in the sixteenth century, however, designate the cantus as the part to be sung, as in, for example, Franciscus Bossinensis, Tenori e contrabassi intabulati col sopran in canto figurato per cantar e sonar col lauto, libro primo published by Ottaviano Petrucci in 1509. Relatively few volumes of such printed arrangements (as opposed to polyphonic music in partbook format) were issued during the century, which may indicate that singers and lutenists learned to prepare solo performances of songs from the standard partbook format in which music was normally published without the need for separate notation, and that it was so much part of normal performance practice that only amateurs and students actually needed writtendown arrangements, such as those in Bottegari’s or Cavalcanti’s lute books or Petrucci’s prints. In the diminution manuals by Girolamo dalla Casa (1584), Giovanni Battista Bovicelli (1594), Francesco Rognoni (1620) and others, the majority of examples of solo performing versions of songs with passaggi use the cantus, and specify that the lower voices must be played on an accompanying instrument. In such arrangements, male singers would then have to sing the cantus an octave lower than notated, or, as already pointed out, choose a lower starting pitch and a larger lute. Apart from those listed in Table 5.1 (which are further discussed in Chapter 6, below), Italian sources of lute song do not suggest the singing of any voice other than the cantus, but this is not always so in Spanish songbooks. There are texted intabulations of vocal music in the following printed books of music for vihuela, all of which can be associated with practice in courts: Luis Milán, Libro de música de vihuela da mano intitulado el maestro (Valencia, 1536); Luys de Narváez, Los seys libros del delphin (Valladolid, 1538); Alonso Mudarra, Tres libros de música en cifras para vihuela (Seville, 1546); Enríquez de Valderrábano, Libro de música de vihuela intitulado silva de sirenas (Valladolid, 1547); Diego Pisador, Libro de música de vihuela agora nuevamente compuesta (Salamanca, 1552); Miguel de Fuenllana, Orphénica lyra (Seville, 1554); and Esteban Daza, El parnasso (Valladolid, 1576). They adopt a variety of methods for showing the singing part, ranging from mensural notation to the use of red ink for the relevant notes in the tablature, or with puntillos or apostrophes at the upper right-hand corner of the tablature, with the words printed beneath.17 In a number of these sources, the part to be sung varies almost haphazardly between soprano, alto, tenor or bass. In Valderrábano’s collection, for example, there are various ways of isolating a vocal line for a male voice to perform. In ‘Las tristes lágrimas mías’ the sung part is simply the (unornamented) bass line of the original piece, while the short ‘Y arded, coraçion, arded’ singles

16 Ballman, ‘Technique du chant au luth’, 40. 17 See John Griffiths, ‘The Vihuela: Performance Practice, Style, and Context’ in Coelho (ed.), Performance on Lute, Guitar and Vihuela, p. 165; I am grateful to John Griffiths for further explanation of this notation.

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out the bass, alto and tenor lines for successive phrases.18 Esteban Daza prints five motets and two Neapolitan villanelle, ‘Quando ti veggio’ and Vincenzo Fontana’s ‘Madonna mia’ (which was first published in 1545)19 intabulated as bass solo songs. These indications of Spanish practice and, specifically, the setting of villanellas, are particularly significant in establishing a Neapolitan context for singing the bass line as a solo. In fact, it is Galilei himself who provides definite published evidence for the ‘normality’ of singing the bass line as a solo in Italian practice outside Naples, in the 1584 revised edition of the Fronimo dialogo. In this volume, the most exhaustive and authoritative manual on intabulation published in the sixteenth century, he includes two worked-out examples of complete polyphonic pieces arranged from their ‘original’ parts as solo songs with lute accompaniment. One is the villanella ‘Qual miracolo d’amore’, arranged as a song for soprano and lute, and the other a motet ‘In exitu Israel de Aegypto’, which he presents without comment as a solo for bass with the other voices intabulated (see Figure 5.1). Given that this example is intended principally to help lutenists, the treatment of the vocal line is interesting in two ways. First, the solo bass line has had some embellishments added, including chains of crotchets to bridge intervals that skip fourths and fifths (e.g., bars 1, 5, 6, 11, 12, etc.) and there is a particularly wideranging roulade to low D in preparation for the cadence at bars 39–40. The cadences themselves, on the other hand, are left ‘empty’. Secondly, where the bass line stops in the original, Galilei continues the text underlay, and provides a rubric that instructs the singer to continue on the lowest sounding line, here the tenor, thus ensuring that the text is not interrupted: ‘while the bass has rests, enter into the tenor part so that you sing all the words in the full sense of them as you see them written’20 (see bars 15–16, 23–4). Singing bass and tenor That a bass singer should pass into the territory of the tenor part is one of those things which to a ‘modern’ eye or ear is unremarkable. After all, the notes themselves required here are not very high for a conventional bass voice (the highest note is a d′). However, in sixteenth-century terms, singing notes in more than one clef (and thus more than one vocal register or modal ambitus) is out of the ordinary. The range of two octaves that Galilei’s arrangement requires is considerably more than that normally expected of a professional singer before about 1600. Indeed, the vast majority of vocal tessituras in Renaissance music rarely, if ever, exceed the range 18 There are modern editions of these pieces in mensural notation in Charles Jacobs (ed.), A Spanish Renaissance Songbook (University Park, Pa., and London, 1988), pp. 54–5; 58–9. 19 Partial transcription in Lafargue, ‘Le laboratoire de signor Cavalcanti’, p. 257. 20 ‘Quando il basso fa pausa, d’entrare in quel mentre nella parte de tenore, accio venghino cantate tutte le parole con l’intero senso di esse che le vedette scritte’.

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of the stave (i.e., an eleventh), and is usually smaller. An important acoustical and technical element of Galilei’s bass solo, therefore, is the low and high extensions of the normal range. This applies to bass singers no less than to the other voices, and the evidence we have for those elements of singing practice nowadays put under the heading of ‘register change technique’ suggests strongly that those who sang the lowest voice in polyphonic music never normally crossed out of the full modal register and into the region of the ‘head’ or mixed modal-falsetto range.22

Figure 5.1

Vincenzo Galilei, Fronimo dialogo (1584), pp. 17–20: opening section of ‘In exitu Israel de Aegypto’ arranged as a bass solo with lute intabulation

21 For example, Zacconi, Prattica di musica ... prima parte, fol. 51r: ‘perché le voci humane naturalmente non ascendono più di otto gradi; overo otto diverse voci che vogliamo dire, ascendente sopra l’altra [because human voices do not naturally go up more than eight steps, or eight different notes as we say, rising one above the other]’. 22 The ‘modal’ register is the same as ‘chest’ register: the scientific term helps distinguish it from the use of ‘chest’ by writers such as Zacconi to describe the upper body in the process of vocal articulation. Modern scientific literature characterizes modal register as the range in which vocal-fold oscillation is symmetrical, and in which glottal pulses appear at constant time intervals, in contrast to the longer pulses in falsetto mode; see Johan Sundberg, ‘Where Does the Sound Come From?’, in John Potter (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Singing (Cambridge, 2000), p. 239.

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Figure 5.1 continued

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If the range of the lowest voice in any piece of music appears to be ‘higher’ (i.e., notated in an F3, C4 or C3 clef), there would normally have been two possible performance solutions: either a different singer (e.g., a tenor) should sing the line, or the piece must be transposed lower (simultaneously changing the voice registers needed for all the other parts as well).23 If a bass singer, however, perfected the skill of crossing from the full modal voice into the ‘head’ register and even on into pure falsetto, without sacrificing flexibility of articulation (which in the sixteenth century would have been done without depressing the larynx as in post-Romantic art singing)24 and thereby sang in both ‘bass’ and ‘tenor’ ranges, or even ‘alto’ and ‘soprano’ as well, it would have been something special, unusual and a mark of virtuosity. Such a phenomenon should not be regarded as simply a natural ‘technical’ development. Singing in such a way was something remarkable even well into the seventeenth century: singers able to sing in more than one register, articulate text clearly and exercise cantar di gorgia were at a premium and would remain so. There is certainly good reason to believe that in 1562 Maffei regarded the ability to sing across more than one ‘voice’ range as not only exceptional but also an especially desirable skill, and as late as 1627, Claudio Monteverdi, in his capacity as maestro di cappella at S. Marco, one of Europe’s most exclusive centres of employment for elite singers, was impressed when a young Bolognese applicant for a post as a bass singer could show at his audition that he ‘makes the words very well understood, has a very easy throat and has something of a trillo … and his voice moves into the tenor with pleasure to the ears and is most secure in singing it’.25 In his discussion of voice types, Maffei makes the following observation, which constitutes perhaps the single most important clue to a Neapolitan style of virtuoso bass solo singing:

23 Praetorius, De organographia, p. 17, says that the ‘meanest School basses’ can get down to low F or E, but not much higher than a, which implies that they were not expected to sing outside the full modal voice at all, or above a stave with an F4 clef. But he also recalls a bass with an exceptionally large range, who was, interestingly, a Neapolitan: ‘ain der hoehe koennen die meiste Basisten das c′ und d′ ja auch wol das f ′ erlangen (welches, unter andern, ein gewesener Monachus Neapolitanus Carolus Cassanus, der in Deutschland an unterschiedenen Chur- und Fuerstlichen Capellen gedienet, gar rein, starck, und mit voller Stimme, nebenst der Tieffen, GG Cammerton [F♯ below bottom C!] haben koennen [at the top, the most ordinary bass can reach c′ and d′, [and some] even f′ (such as, among others, a former Neapolitan monk called Carolus Cassanus, who served in various princely chapels, who could reach lowest GG Kammerton very cleanly, strongly and with full voice]’. The importance of this highly practical aspect of bass range to the entire question of transposing clefs is, of course, critical. For a summary of the literature, see Andrew Parrott, ‘Monteverdi: Onwards and Downwards’, Early Music, 32 (2004): 303–17. 24 Wistreich, ‘Reconstructing Pre-Romantic Singing Technique’, pp. 179–80. 25 Letter from Monteverdi to Alessandro Striggio, 20 June 1627: ‘fa intendere benissimo la parola et ha assai comodamente la gorgia et alquanto di trillo … [e] la voce sua arriva ad un tenore con gratezza del senso et è sicurissimo nel cantare’; see Richard Wistreich, ‘“La voce è grata assai, ma…”: Monteverdi on Singing’, Early Music, 22 (1994): 8, 13.

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The rhetorical structure of this passage helps to convey the meraviglia beyond the bare technical information it contains: there are many who can only sing the bass part, and there are also plenty who are only ‘inchinati’ to one of the voices of the consort (i.e., one of the parts as it appears ‘on the page’). This causes ‘grandissimo fastidio’ (a strong reaction!) to the ear of the one listening; thus we are conscious of a context for this aesthetic judgement – an acoustical space containing both listener and the listened-to. On the other hand, there are those who sing (not only) bass but also tenor and every other voice. In other words, we are dealing with singers here who are at least nominally basses.27 Their singing is ‘easy’ and their improvised cantar di gorgia includes (perhaps) being able to crescendo and diminuendo (recall Luigi Dentice’s praise of ‘to hold back and to reinforce the voice when necessary’) and to make passaggi in a special way ‘now in the low, now in the middle and now in the high’. Alongside the technical implications of this phenomenon runs an equally significant ‘social’ dimension to the distinction between ‘normal’ singers who are bound to the relatively simple individual lines of the counterpoint and those who are not so constrained. The latter represent a more ‘desirable’ stance for a male performer in aristocratic society who transcends the confines set for ‘mechanicals’ or musici and moves with effortless and individual grace, drawing admiring ears to his performance. Here we might recall Zarlino’s intimations about ‘regular’ bass singers and the need for their lines to be simple. I shall pursue further the implications of such a divide between levels of virtuosity manifesting in terms of social standing later on. Maffei’s reference to the low, middle and high is a trope indirectly drawn from Aristotle’s Rhetoric and cited in discussions relating to vocal delivery by writers including Vincenzo Galilei, Claudio Monteverdi and, perhaps unwittingly, Brancaccio himself.28 While he was in Venice in 1581 organizing the printing of 26 Maffei, Delle lettere, p. 18: ‘di qui nasce, che molti sono i quali non ponno altra voce ch’il basso cantare. E molti anchora se ne veggono che non sono, se non ad una delle voci del conserto inchinati, e quella con grandissimo fastidio dell’orecchia appena cantano. E per il contrario, poi se ne trovano alcuni, ch’il basso, il tenore e ogni altra voce, con molta facilità cantano; e fiorendo, e diminoendo [sic], con la gorga, fanno passaggi, hora nel basso, hora nel mezzo, et hora nell’alto, ad intendere bellissimi’. 27 But note Vincenzo Giustiniani’s list of four famous ‘tenors’ who also sang bass. 28 Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, trans. John Henry Freese (New York, 1926), p. 345, quoted and discussed in Massimo Ossi, Divining the Oracle: Monteverdi’s ‘Seconda Prattica’ (Chicago and London, 2003), p. 199; Aristotle’s remarks concern oratory and the appropriate pitching and rhythm of the voice to suit the content of the speech: ‘Now delivery is a matter of voice, as to the mode in which it should be used for each particular emotion; when it should be loud, when low, when intermediate; and how the tones, that is shrill, deep, and

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Il Brancatio (see Chapter 3), Brancaccio auditioned a Neapolitan monk who sang ‘contrabasso’ in the choir of S. Marco (Appendix 2, Doc. 13). The audition was thorough: Brancaccio said he listened to the singer at Vespers and at Mass, singing solo as well as in duos and trios with the other singers. He reported back to Duke Alfonso d’Este II that ‘for me he succeeds in everything, because he has a round and sonorous voice, as well in the low as in the high and the middle ranges’.29 The encompassing of all three registers signifies both completeness of expressivity (pace Aristotle) and completeness of vocal technique. Such singers as those whom Maffei extols transcend the earth-bound structure of the ‘normal’ vocal consort as it renders the voice parts of the composition, and are able to move freely between all the voice registers (recalling again the significance of the wider acoustical space) and are ‘most beautiful to the listener’. In purely practical terms, Maffei appears to be describing a vocal performance that potentially is capable of replacing the several singers of the consort with just one who sings all the parts. Alternatively, it may be one who ‘invades’ the parts of the ‘ordinary’ singers of the parts above him during an ensemble performance. The distinction is equally unclear in the following intermediate, should be used; and what rhythms are adapted to each subject’. Vincenzo Galilei’s interpretation of Greek practice is in his manuscript treatise Dubbi intorno a quanto io ho detto dell’uso dell’enharmonio con la solutione di essi, in Frieder Rempp (ed.), Die Kontrapunkttraktate Vincenzo Galileis (Cologne, 1980), p. 184, trans. in Palisca, ‘Vincenzo Galilei and Some Links’, p. 351: ‘For the tranquil soul seeks the middle notes; the querulous, the high; and the lazy and somnolent, the low. Thus, also, the latter will use slow meters; the tranquil the intermediate; and the excited the rapid’; Galilei may well have been elaborating on information given him in a letter from Girolamo Mei of 8 May 1572: see Girolamo Mei, Letters on Ancient and Modern Music, ed. Claude V. Palisca, Musicological Studies and Documents, vol. 3 (Rome, 1960), p. 92. Monteverdi famously invoked the trope in the preface to his Madrigale guerrieri, et amorosi (1638), reprinted in Claudio Monteverdi: lettere, dediche e prefazioni, ed. Domenico de’ Paoli (Rome, 1973), p. 416: ‘Havendo io considerato le nostre passioni, o d’affettioni del animo, essere tre le principali, cioè Ira, Temperanza, et Humiltà o supplicazione, come bene gli migliori Filosofi affermano, anzi la natura stessa de la voce nostra in ritrovarsi, alta, bassa e mezzana: et come l’Arte Musica lo notifica chiaramente in questi tre termini, di concitato, molle, et temperata [Having considered that our mind has three principal passions or affections – anger, temperance and humility or supplication – as the best philosophers affirm, and, indeed, considering that the very nature of our voice falls into a high, low and medium range and musical theory describes this clearly with the three terms of agitated, languid and temperate]’; see Barbara Russano Hanning, ‘Monteverdi’s Three Genera: A Study in Terminology’, in Nancy Kovaleff Baker and Barbara Russano Hanning (eds), Musical Humanism and its Legacy: Essays in Honour of Claude V. Palisca (Stuyvesant, NY, 1992), pp. 145–70, and Ossi, Divining the Oracle, pp. 189–210. 29 ‘in ogni cosa mi riesce bene percioché mi par che habbia la voce tonda et sonora, così nel basso, come nell’alto, e nelle parte di mezzo’. Duke Alfonso was apparently interested in the possibility of the singer being suitable as a chamber musician and had instructed Brancaccio to test him in relevant conditions, specifically by hearing him sing to the accompaniment of Claudio da Correzzo [Merulo] playing the harpsichord. Brancaccio set up an audition in Merulo’s apartment and reported back to the duke that in comparison with the good impression he had made ‘in capella’, ‘in camera … non riesce niente [in the chamber … he managed nothing]’ (Appendix 2, Doc. 14).

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description of singers ‘showing off’ by Ercole Bottrigari (from 1594) that otherwise records a remarkably similar phenomenon: [Desiderio]: … and sometimes showing their own virtuosity so far from the counterpoint of the musical composition they [i.e., the singers] have before them that they become entangled in their dissonances – it is inevitable that an insupportable confusion should occur. This increases so greatly as they continue, that even those (and you see clearly how far this caprice and mania has gone) who perform the low part and the bass, do not remember – not to say are ignorant of the fact – that it is the base and the foundation upon which the song was built. And not standing firm beneath it, as the fabric requires, they go on up, they add nonsensical passages and allow themselves, because they enjoy it, to go so far as not only to pass into the tenor part but even into that of the contralto. Even this is not enough, they go almost to that of the sopranos, climbing in such a way to the top of the tree that they can’t come down, without breaking their necks.30

Bottrigari’s rhetoric is also rich, and although he is clearly as disapproving as Maffei is in favour, the passage shares Maffei’s sense of the extraordinary and the marvellous: the crazy, clambering bass singer’s escapade may end in disaster, but we (the watcher/listener) stand transfixed, ‘gazing’ in horror as he comes crashing to the ground, bringing the whole edifice with him (and in his use of a visual metaphor, Bottrigari evokes a sense of social space as well: the actor and the actedupon). Perhaps not surprisingly, given his earlier snide reference to ‘vainglorious and choleric’ bass singers, Pietro Cerone chose to copy this section verbatim from Bottrigari.31 Again, there is a trope at work here, this time in the reference to the bassus part being ‘la base, & il fondamento, sopra il quale è stata fabricata’. Bottrigari alludes to the theoretical discussion of the disparate functions of cantus and the bass in the definition of harmonic structure. The whole of the above passage is surely based directly on Zarlino (although the architectonic metaphor goes back to the Middle Ages):32

30 Ercole Bottrigari, Il desiderio overo de’ concerti di varij strumenti musicali: Dialogo di Allemano Benelli (Venice, 1594; facs. edn, Bologna, 1969), trans. Carol MacClintock, Musicological Studies and Documents, vol. 9 (Rome, 1962), p. 6: ‘[Desiderio]: quella prosontuosa audacia … (e vedete di gratia sin dov’è giunto questo capriccio, & questa frenesia) che essercitano la parte grave, e bassa, non si ricordando, per lasciar di dir non sappendo, che ella è la base, & il fondamento, sopra il quale è stata fabricata, conviene, che vada sossopra, si pongono sù grilli de’ passaggi, & si lasciano da questo particolare diletto loro tirar tanto oltre, che non solamente passano nella parte de’ Tenori: ma giungono a quella de’ Contr’alti: & non li bastando, quasi a quella, de’ soprani: inarborandosi di maniera alla cima, che non ne possono scendere, se non a rompi collo’. In the dialogue, ‘Alemanno Benelli’ exclaims somewhat enigmatically in response to this passage: ‘Cavalier Napoletano che dite?’. It is just possible that this is, in some way, a reference to Brancaccio himself, whom Bottrigari may well have known during his time in service at Ferrara. 31 Cerone, El melopeo y maestro, pp. 550–1. 32 See Christopher Page, Discarding Images: Reflections on Music and Culture in Medieval France (Oxford, 1993), p. 24.

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And just as the earth is the foundation of the other elements, the bass has the function of sustaining and stabilizing, fortifying and giving growth to the other parts. It is the foundation of the harmony and for this reason is called bass, as if to say the base and sustenance of the other parts. If we could imagine the element of earth to be lacking, what ruin and waste would result in universal and human harmony! Similarly a composition without a bass would be full of confusion and dissonance and would fall into ruin.33

Bottrigari, however, uses Zarlino’s rhetoric about composition to animate his own description of actual performance, transferring to the singer himself the blame for ‘wrecking’ what is presumably otherwise a soundly constructed piece. Vocal Basso alla bastarda What both Maffei and Bottrigari are signalling with their descriptions is a remarkable kind of performance practice perhaps more often associated with instrumental playing. Already in 1539, Diego Ortiz had described a performance style in which one melodic instrument plays a polyphonic piece of music as a solo, by making diminutions on a combination of several of the voices of the composition. He suggests three different ways in which a solo viola da gamba can play with a harpsichord, the third of which consists of ornamented arrangements of composed pieces, and he provides four versions of Arcadelt’s four-voice madrigal ‘O felici occhi miei’ and four of Pierre Sandrin’s four-voice chanson ‘Doulce memoire’. The harpsichord plays a literal transcription of the harmony whilst the solo instrument creates an ornamentation of the bass or the soprano or, alternatively, creates a new fifth voice or descant.34 This relatively simple technique opens the way to elaborations of polyphonic pieces in which not just one, but several or all the existing voices serve as the basic structure for a solo performance, the complexity of which in terms of diminution and leaping from voice to voice is only limited by the capabilities of the performer (who needs to have a good grasp of the counterpoint and voice-leading of the original) and by the physical properties of the instrument. Diminution elaborations of several, or all, of the voices of polyphonic pieces are of course possible on keyboard instruments and to a certain extent on plucked instruments, and this is reflected in the extensive surviving literature of such arrangements and of original works that imitate such a style. The properties that a purely melodic instrument needs in order, theoretically at least, to cover all voices from bassus to cantus, limits the choice almost exclusively to viols, whose playing technique and literature derive from the lute. The viola da gamba is just about the only melodic instrument capable of playing in all registers from bass to soprano. The surviving literature suggests that the ‘voice-crossing’ solo style arose out of viol playing, beginning with Diego Ortiz’s treatise and continuing 33 Zarlino, Istitutioni harmoniche, III, Cap. 58, pp. 281–2; The Art of Counterpoint, p. 179. 34 Diego Ortiz, El primo libro nel qual si tratta delle glose sopra le cadenze et altre sorte de punti in la musica del violone (Rome, 1553; facs. edn, Florence, 1984), trans. and ed. Max Schneider (Kassel, 1936).

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with the examples of pieces arranged in similar style in Girolamo dalla Casa’s Il vero modo di diminuir (1584), where worked examples of whole compositions are for the first time labelled for a ‘viola bastarda’.35 As early as 1543 Sylvestro Ganassi in La fontegara had developed and taught the technique of playing diminutions at high speed in the highest positions on the fingerboard of the viol, something after all not much different from the passage-work for the highest courses of the viola da gamba’s sister instrument, the lute.36 Although this performing style suggests that it was done only by virtuosos and also, presumably, all’improvviso, a sizeable number of written-down pieces for so-called viola bastarda (‘which is the queen of all the other instruments’)37 are nevertheless extant, and two major investigations of this repertoire in the 1970s focused on the question of whether viola bastarda was simply an instrument or actually a way of playing, or, indeed, both.38 Scholars of the viola bastarda have, perhaps understandably, concentrated on their own instrument and have tended to pay less attention to sources which contain vocal music, even though the latter clearly belongs to the same tradition of making diminution solos from polyphonic music by ‘bastardizing’ material from more than one part. Despite the fact that the treatises of Ganassi and Ortiz are the first to deal with this process systematically and are addressed to instrumentalists, it is very possible that the basic idea came indeed from vocal performance. In the preface to his Breve et facile maniera d’essercitarsi a far passaggi (1593), the Roman singing virtuoso Giovanni Luca Conforti says that his examples are addressed principally to singers, adding: ‘They [can] also be used by those who want to play them on the viol or on wind instruments’, establishing the hierarchy as firmly as Ganassi, who often reminds instrumentalists to emulate singers.39 In the following year, Giovanni Battista Bovicelli published his treatise 35 Dalla Casa, Il vero modo di diminuir (1584), ‘Alli lettori’: ‘Ho voluto anco far questa poca fatica di diminuir alquante Canzoni, & Madrigali a 4. Per sonar con la viola bastarda; nella qual professione si va toccando tutte le parti, si come fanno gli inteligenti, che ne fanno professione [I also wanted to take the trouble to add diminutions to various canzoni and fourpart madrigals to play on the viola bastarda, in which practice one touches on all the parts, as clever players do when they play]’. 36 No other sixteenth-century non-keyboard instrument other than the lute and the viol covers all registers from bass to soprano. Other instruments very occasionally mentioned as capable of such a technique of diminution are the trombone (one piece in Francesco Rognoni, Selva di varii passaggi (Venice, 1620; facs. edn, Bologna, 1983) and the dulzian, although in effect, no version of either instrument is technically able to play in bass and soprano registers as they should sound, and the respective ‘bastarda’ pieces for these instruments involve transposition of the soprano parts. 37 Rognoni, Selva di varii passaggi, parte seconda, p. 2. 38 Veronika Gutmann, ‘Viola bastarda: Instrument oder Diminutionspraxis?’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 35 (1978): 178–209 and Jason Paras, The Music for the Viola Bastarda, ed. George and Glenna Houle, Music: Scholarship and Performance, vol. 13 (Bloomington, Ind., 1985); see also Steven Saunders, ‘Giovanni Valentini’s “In te Domine speravi” and the Demise of the Viola Bastarda’, Journal of the Viola da Gamba Society of America, 28 (1991): 1–20. 39 Giovanni Luca Conforti, Breve et facile maniera d’essercitarsi a far passaggi (Rome 1593), facs. ed. Giancarlo Rostirolla (Rome, 1986), p. 5: ‘Et questo ancora serve per quei che

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Regole, passaggi di musica in Venice, which contained worked examples of diminutions for solo singers. But the most important sixteenth-century source of models for vocal ‘bastarda’ versions of existing compositions is Motetti, madrigali et canzoni francese (1591) by the Venetian composer and cornetto player Giovanni Bassano (now only known in transcription since the unique surviving copy was destroyed during the Second World War).40 The volume contained 47 pieces which are diminutions of wellknown madrigals and motets, either for solo instrument or voice or sometimes for two performers, soprano and bass, in which each respective line of the original is ornamented and the verbal text of the original voices is preserved, suggesting that vocal performance was at least one possible option. The book functions principally as a set of exemplars, presumably for pedagogical use: in order to perform the pieces, the musicians need either to know the original pieces by heart or have access to sets of partbooks. Bassano says only that the bass line of the original must always be played, although he suggests that either of the other parts be played on instruments (presumably each one taking a separate line) or by a harpsichord, playing from the original bass line of the composition and therefore adding appropriate harmonies (a basso seguente) rather than reproducing faithfully the original upper voices. The clear implication is that Bassano expects the ‘original’ bass line to be played by an accompanying instrument even when that voice is also being sung or played with diminutions.41 There are two solo pieces which embellish only the bass of the original composition, and a further four which are set as duos for the cantus and bassus with alternating passages of diminution in the respective voice parts. Seven more pieces in this volume are labelled ‘Per più parti’, and Bassano writes in the preface ‘You will find some madrigals for four, five and six voices in which not only the bass part is embellished but sometimes departing from the bass you sing the tenor part, but nevertheless it is singable by one voice’.42 In fact, one of the pieces, Marenzio’s madrigal ‘Quando i vostri begl’occhi un caro velo’ from Il primo libro de madrigali a cinque voci (Venice, 1580), is a diminution of only the altus and tenor voice parts, while two other pieces use just the original bass and tenor parts. Often, the sonano di Viola, o d’altri instromenti da fiato’. 40 See Ernest Ferand, ‘Die Motetti, madrigali, et canzoni francese … diminuti … des Giovanni Bassano (1591)’, in Lothar Hoffmann-Erbrecht and Helmut Hucke (eds), Festschrift Helmuth Osthoff zum 65. Geburtstag (Tutzing, 1961), pp. 75–10; the pieces for bass are listed in Table 1. Another important source of similar arrangements is Rognoni, Selva di varii passaggi (1620), which contains one song, ‘Passegiato per il Basso da Cantar alla Bastarda’. 41 ‘Avertendo di far sonare sempre il Basso di questi Canti come fondamento di essa Musica: quali Canti diminuiti in questa maniera potrà servire in concerto contando quella sol voce fra altri Istrumenti, overo solo un’Istrumento da penna con il suo Basso sonato, & la semplice voce [Make sure always to play the bass of these melodies as a foundation for the music; the melodies diminished in this manner could be played in concert featuring that voice alone among the other instruments [of the consort] or with a harpsichord playing the bass together with the melody as a solo]’. 42 ‘Trovassi alcuni Madrigali, a Quattro, Cinque, & Sei voci, diminuiti non solo il Basso; ma alcune volte lasciando il Basso canta Tenore, & è però cantabile da una sol voce’.

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diminution only moves over to the tenor line where the bass stops in the original (in line with Vincenzo Galilei’s note accompanying his intabulation of ‘In exitu Israel de Aegypto’: see above). It is only a small jump from here to see how a bass singer skilled in cantar di gorgia might have transformed a bass-line solo like those found in their simplest form in the Galilei or Cavalcanti manuscripts. Indeed, Cipriano de Rore’s Anchor che col partire appears in the Cavalcanti Lute Book (fol. 53v) in its ‘plain’ form, and one of Bassano’s examples is an ornamented version of the bass line of the same piece that passes into the tenor voice when the bass line pauses. Example 5.2 shows how Bassano’s diminutions could be performed with an intabulation of the original madrigal as accompaniment. Note how the voice jumps to the tenor part when the bass rests (bar 38). The remaining four madrigals in Bassano’s volume which are labelled ‘Per più parti’ make use not only of the bass and tenor lines, but occasionally also touch on the altus and quintus parts. These pieces are also texted, and are therefore also potentially vocal.43 There are similar pieces with text, and therefore theoretically for the voice, rather than conceived purely as solos for an instrument such as the viola bastarda, in a number of later sources, including Angelo Notari’s Prime musiche nuove (1613) and Francesco Rognoni’s Selva di varii passaggi (1620). Implicit in this practical solution to the performance of a contrapuntal piece by one singer is, of course, that one person is capable of singing in the bass, the low and high tenor registers and, in certain circumstances, in falsetto as well. In the case of Bassano’s version of ‘Anchor che col partire’, the range of the few notes in the tenor part would be no problem for a flexible bass with skill in the head register, but even this limited crossing of parts is, as noted above, unusual in the context of normal sixteenthcentury vocal practice. Nevertheless, there is evidence, particularly from Rome and Florence between about 1567 and about 1620, of male singers displaying just such virtuosity. The descriptions – either in the form of witness reports or notated music itself – convey a sense of meraviglia. The contemporary hallmarks of this special kind of impressive bass singing in the mid- to late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century are consistent: extremes of range, incorporating low, middle and high and also (often spectacular) cantar di gorgia. One place where public displays of virtuoso bass solo singing were to be heard was in the churches of Rome, and it would appear that the style of cantar di gorgia found a place from time to time in such spaces even though for a number of reasons (some of which have been discussed, above) ecclesiastical spaces might be thought inappropriate.44 Even the deeply conservative Cerone admitted that in circumstances where a bass singer performed solo to an organ accompaniment, it was considered proper and necessary that he showed that 43 One of these, a working of Marenzio’s ‘Liquide perle Amor’ is edited complete in Ferand, ‘Die Motetti, madrigali, et canzoni Francese’, pp. 82–5. 44 Extant sacred solo pieces for bass with diminutions from Rome are either motets (such as those in Lodovico Viadana, Cento concerti ecclesiastici (1600), or the seven pieces by Felice Anerio at the end of Puliaschi, Musiche varie (1618)) or Vesper psalms in falsobordone, such as those in Francesco Severi, Psalmi passeggiati (1615).

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Example 5.2 Final bars of Cipriano de Rore, ‘Anchor che col partire’ (1547) with diminutions from Giovanni Bassano, Motetti, madrigali et canzoni francese (1591)

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he understood where he was and what was expected of him, by adding a certain amount of ‘tiradas de garganta’. He recalls a bass he had heard on a visit to Rome in 1600 who – somewhat surprisingly, given Cerone’s prejudices – had pleased him: If he sings solo to the organ or with another instrument [either] without the support of other parts [?singers] or solo with several [others], on such occasions, in order to demonstrate that he knows how to perform his part appropriately to the time and place, [he should] honour his singing with embellishments and with cantar della gola, going high and low all he can easily. [And this] is what I heard with great pleasure and satisfaction in diverse services in Rome, in the Holy Year of 1600, especially by one Paulone, whom I heard at St John Lateran at Vespers on the day of the Circumcision of Our Lord.45

In about 1578, Giovanni Bardi recalled being in Rome in 1567 (that is, around 35 years before Cerone) where he, too, had heard a virtuoso bass solo singer (without specifying if it was in a church). Bardi brings up the case of this singer because he was a good example of the vandalism that such singers do to texts with their mindless displays of passaggi, such that ‘listening to him was to witness a massacre of the unfortunate poetry’.46 Nevertheless, this apparently did not disturb the other listeners, who were stunned by his display, and Bardi remarks on the physical manifestation of their wonder and the singer’s direct response to it: Hearing of the reputation of a famous bass who was praised beyond measure, I went to hear him one day in the company of certain accomplished foreigners. He filled us with wonder – I say wonder – because there was never a man who had greater natural gifts than this one, for he could reach a large number of notes – all resonant and sweet – up high as much as in the deepest and middle ranges … The wretched fellow, entreated by adulation, the more he saw eyebrows arching, the greater was his foolishness to satisfy the ignorant public.47 45 Cerone, El melopeo y maestro, p. 551: ‘Si caso no cantasse solo en el Órgano o con otro instrumento, sin acompañamiento de otra parte, o quando mucho con una sola: que en tal occasión, para mostrar que sabe exercitar su parte a lugar y tiempo le conviene, antes es tenido por honra suya cantar glosado y con tiradas de garganta, subiendo y baxando todo lo que pudiere cómodamente. Lo qual con mucho gusto y satisfacción mía oý hazer diversas vezes en Roma, el año Jubileo de mil y seyscientos; particularmente a un tal Paulone a las Vísperas que se hizieron en S. Juan Laterano, el día de la Circuncisión de Nuestro Señor’. ‘Paolone’ may have been Paolo Faccone, a Mantuan singer admitted to the papal chapel choir in 1587 and from 1609, its maestro di cappella; see Herman-Walther Frey, ‘Die Kapellmeister an der französischen Nationalkirche San Luigi dei Francesi in Rom im 16. Jhdt, Teil II’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 23 (1966): 32–60. Cardinal del Monte wrote to Vincenzo Gonzaga in Mantua in 1592 recommending Faccone as ‘il meglio basso che vi sia [the best bass there is]’: quoted in Susan Parisi, ‘Acquiring Musicians and Instruments in the Early Baroque: Observations from Mantua’, Journal of Musicology, 14 (1996): 134. 46 Giovanni Bardi, ‘Discorso mandata a Giulio Caccini detto romano sopra la musica antica, e ’l cantar bene’, in Claude Palisca (ed.), The Florentine Camerata: Documentary Studies and Translations (New Haven and London, 1989), p. 122: ‘che altro non era l’udir costui, che uno scempio della misera poesia’. 47 Ibid., ‘udendo la fama d’un Basso che oltra misura era lodato un giorno andai a udirlo essendo in compagnia con certi virtuosi forestieri, il quale ci empì di maraviglia dico, perché

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Later on in the same work, Bardi came down squarely against bass diminution, basically on ‘compositional’ grounds recalling Zarlino, while reluctantly accepting (presumably because of his experience in Rome) that it appealed to listeners: ‘To make divisions upon the bass is contrary to nature, because this part contains the slow and severe and drowsy too. But since it is customary to do it, I do not know what to say of it — I dare not praise or blame it’.48

non fu mai huomo che havesse in questo fatto più dote di costui dalla natura: avvenga che ricercava assai voci tutte sonore, e dolci così nell’alto, come nel basso, e per lo mezo; l’infelice sollecitato dall’adulatione quanto più vedeva inarcar le ciglia, tanto più andava crescendo le sue scempiezze per sodisfare al poco intendente volgo’. 48 Ibid., p. 124: ‘Il diminuire i bassi è cosa contra natura, perché essi come habbiam detto, è il tardo, il grave e ’l sonnolente pure poiché così è l’uso non so che dirmene, ne ardisco lodarlo, ne biasimarlo’. Bardi’s ambivalence may stem from his discomfort with hearing a distinctly ‘courtly’ style in an ecclesiastical setting. His mention of the ‘slow and severe and drowsy’ refers, of course, to the Aristotelian idea about appropriate vocal register discussed by his Camerata colleague, Vincenzo Galieli (see above).

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Chapter Six

Basso alla bastarda Multi-register singers The most compelling evidence for bass singers in Rome practising ‘multi-register’ singing, and the source which mentions Giulio Cesare Brancaccio by name, is the famous passage from Vincenzo Giustiniani’s musical memoir, thought to have been compiled in 1628: In the Holy Year of 1575 or shortly afterwards, there began a style of singing very different from that which had gone before, and which continued for some years afterwards, principally singing solo to an instrument, for example by one Giovanni Andrea (Neapolitan) and by Signor Giulio Cesare Brancaccio and Alessandro Merlo (Roman), who all sang bass with a range extending over 22 degrees of the scale, with a variety of passaggi new and pleasing to everybody’s ears. They inspired composers to write works which could be performed by several voices, as well as one [voice] alone accompanied by an instrument in imitation of the above-mentioned singers and [also] a woman named Femia, but obtaining [in their compositions] superior invention and artifice. And there emerged, as a result, some mixed villanelle combining aspects of polyphonic madrigals and villanelle, many books of which are seen today by ... composers [including] Orazio Vecchi and others.1

This central source about Brancaccio as a singer is abstracted from the section of Giustiniani’s work which attempts to describe the emergence of a new kind of secular vocal music in Rome in the later sixteenth century, centred around ‘simpler’ light forms, by composers such as Luca Marenzio and Ruggiero Giovanelli, songs which were characterized by ‘a new aria pleasing to the ears’. The passage has already been much dissected, and I do not intend to comment further here on Giustiniani’s theories about the origin of new compositional styles. Rather, I have left discussion of the passage until now in order to concentrate on the specific information it conveys about bass singing. 1 Giustiniani, Discorso, p. 69: ‘L’anno santo del 1575 o poco dopo si comminciò un modo di cantare molto diverso da quello di prima, e così per alcuni anni seguenti, massime nel modo di cantare con una voce sola sopra un instrumento, col l’esempio d’un Gio. Andrea napoletano, e del sig. Giulio Cesare Brancaccio e d’Alessandro Merlo romano, che cantavano un basso nella larghezza dello spazio di 22 voci, con varietà di passaggi nuovi e grata all’orecchie di tutti. I quali svegliarono i compositori a far opere tanto da cantare a più voci come ad una sola sopra un istrumento, ad imitazione delli soddetti e d’una tal femina chiamata Femia, ma con procurare maggiore invenzione et artificio, e ne vennero a risultare alcune libri de gl’autori suddetti e di Orazio Vecchi et altri’. English translation based on Hill, Roman Monody, Cantata and Opera, vol. 1, p. 102.

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We now know that Brancaccio could not have been established in Rome until, at the earliest, 1573, and that he was definitely in the circle around Cardinal Luigi d’Este by 1577 (but quite possibly earlier) and again in Rome in 1580. Giustiniani’s ‘o poco dopo’ would allow for a certain leeway, but he may also have been aware of a more widespread reputation, taking in Brancaccio’s time in Ferrara, where he had such a high profile in the late 1570s and early 1580s.2 Of the other two singers whom Giustiniani cites, nothing is known of Giovanni Andrea ‘napoletano’, although Giustiniani considered him as important as Brancaccio in the process by which their particular way of singing influenced the emergence of a new style of composition in Rome, Ferrara and Mantua, as he writes a little later: ‘With the example of these courts [i.e., Mantua and Ferrara] and of the two Neapolitans who sang bass in the way described above, they began in Rome to alter the way of composing written-out music for several voices and also for one, voice, or two at the most, with an instrumental accompaniment’.3 Most noticeable at this point, perhaps, is the two singers’ shared nationality. The other singer, Alessandro Merlo, was a professional musician, a Roman and a member of the choir of the Cappella Sistina on and off between 1562 and 1594, although he also had stints working at the Accademia Filarmonica in Verona and sang in other churches in Rome including S. Giovanni Laterano. Interestingly, he was listed as ‘tenor’ at the Cappella Giulia in 1567 and the Cappella Sistina in 1573 (as was Giovan Domenico Puliaschi – see below). He published three books of villanelle alla napolitana, which, like all similar compositions, lend themselves easily to solo performance with instrumental accompaniment, despite their standard layout in partbooks. Otherwise, as John Hill remarks, they reveal no particular evidence of a mode of performance that depends on a bass voice with great range.4 The ‘22 notes’ which all three singers apparently could encompass seems to be a very precise figure to find in writing that is otherwise short on concrete information. Giustiniani was a music-lover, but not an expert, and his information, intended to enable cardinals to hold conversations with appropriate authority on the subject of music, was probably gleaned from discussions with musicians and dilettantes. It is thus interesting to find the identical figure mentioned in another ‘Discorso sopra la musica’ by the Anconan cornetto player, Luigi Zenobi (or Zanobi), written around 2 See Chapter 3 above; also Bizzarini, Marenzio, pp. 40–1. 3 Giustiniani, Discorso, p. 70: ‘Coll’esempio di queste Corte e delli due napoletani che cantavano di basso nel modo sudetto, si cominciò in Roma a variar modo di componerer a più voci sopra il libro e canto figurato, et anche ad una o due al più voce sopra alcuno instrumento’. 4 Hill, Roman Monody, vol. 1, p. 104. On Merlo, see Sartori, ‘Merlo, Alessandro’, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 17 vols, ed. Friedrich Blume et al. (Kassel, 1949–63), vol. 9, cols. 128–9; Richard Sherr, ‘Merlo, Alessandro’, New Grove II, vol. 14, pp. 463–4; id., ‘The Diary of the Papal Singer Giovanni Antonio Merlo [Alessandro’s brother]’, Analecta musicologica, 23 (1985): 75–128; Herman-Walther Frey, ‘Das Diarium der sixtinischen Sängerkapelle’, in Rom für das Jahr 1596 (Nr. 21), Analecta musicologica, 14 (1985): 129–204. On Alessandro Merlo’s villanella compositions, see Ruth DeFord, ‘Musical Relationships between the Italian Madrigal and Light Genres in the Sixteenth Century’, Musica disciplina, 39 (1985): 14.

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1600 from Naples, where he was, at that time, in the service of the viceroy, to an as yet unidentified prince, in which he provided concrete information about choosing musicians for a court. The letter contains an extensive and highly informative section about singers and singing, particularly regarding basses. It covers topics already discussed above, and we can now recognize that the language Zenobi uses shows a detailed familiarity with the ‘sources’ or tropes already identified, including what I have termed ‘ensemble etiquette’ (knowing when to embellish and when not to) and cantar di gorgia (having a trillo and a polished tremolo). His reference to range suggests a similar ‘authority’: As for the one who sings bass, if he sings in an ensemble he must know how to perform his part correctly and securely: a steady voice, accurate pitching of the notes and knowledge [of style]; and if he sometimes wants to make passaggi, he must choose the moment when the other three voices are holding their parts firm, and know the places where it is appropriate to make passaggi. This is because making passaggi in the bass when the mood takes him, without knowing very well when [it is right] to do so is without doubt a sign of gross ignorance. He must also know and understand which passaggi are appropriate for the bass, because singing tenor, alto or soprano passaggi is another sign of the same ignorance. He must be able to make the trillo and have a polished tremolo [i.e., ‘disposizione’] and a consistent, rounded tone in both the high and low registers; neither can he be said to be a real bass if he does not have a range of 22 notes from top to bottom with the same roundness of tone throughout (my emphasis).5

It is clear that both Giustiniani and Zenobi were referring to some standard reference point about the ideal bass register (which Zenobi elaborates to include parameters of vocal sound quality as well), but it also seems too precise a figure to be based on purely practical observation. Zenobi continues with information about the tenor, alto and particularly the soprano, in a passage that goes into immense detail about improvising embellishments when performing solo (as one of the most famous cornetto virtuosos of his generation, Zenobi would be particularly expert in this area), but he prescribes no ‘required range’ for these voices. What trope could the two writers then be invoking when they speak of the bass voice? In the so-called Guidonian system, which represents all ‘possible’ pitches for singing, the compass between the ee-la at the top of the highest hard hexachord and the Gamma-ut at

5 Bonnie J. Blackburn and Edward E. Lowinsky, ‘Luigi Zenobi and his Letter on the Perfect Musician’, Studi musicali, 20 (1994): 61–95, at p. 82: ‘Colui, che canta il Basso, se canta in compagnia, è obligato a saper tener salda la sua parte, giusta, e sicura: salda quanto al cantare, giusta quanto alla voce, secura quanto al sapere, e se vuole alcuna volta passeggiare: deve appostare il tempo, che le tre parti tengan saldo, e conoscere i luoghi, dove può fare il passaggio. Perché il passeggiare al Basso, quando gli salta l’humore, senza conoscer molto bene il tempo, et il luogo di ciò fare, senza dubbio è argomento di crassa ignoranza. Deve poi conoscere, e sapere quali siano li passaggi proprij da Basso, perché il farli da Tenore, da Contralto, e da Soprano, è argomento del già detto chiarissimo. Deve poi haver trillo, e tremolo netto, e voce nell’alto e nel basso eguale tondezza di tuba; né si potrà dire realmente Basso, se non va ventidue voci alto, e basso con eguale tondezza di tuba’.

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the bottom of the lowest encompasses precisely 22 notes.6 If a singer can cover all 22, he might, then, be said to be able to sing ‘all of music’, capable, as it were, of performing alone music conceived in four or more conventional voice parts. Such an ‘ideal’ voice would, of course, be able to perform alla bastarda, or, in Maffei’s words, be one of those ‘who sing bass, tenor and every other voice with great ease’ – the ideal courtier-singer. Luigi Zenobi was a gentilhuomo employed at the court of Maximilian II in Vienna in 1571 when Brancaccio visited and possibly sang (see Chapter 3);7 he knew Cardinal Luigi d’Este well enough to write him a begging letter in 1583; and although he was not employed at Ferrara until well after Brancaccio’s departure (he was engaged in 1589), he seems to have been particularly well informed about bass singers and the Rome–Naples axis.8 In sum, it seems all but inconceivable that he did not know Brancaccio, at least by reputation. Could Brancaccio himself have been at least one of the sources of his information about the qualities of an extraordinary bass singer worthy of being employed in a princely court? And might Zenobi have been one of the professionals from whom Giustiniani picked up his information? ‘Tenor-bass’ singers in the generation after Brancaccio On 10 August 1581, Giovan Battista Guarini wrote to Duke Alfonso d’Este, who was in Mantua, enclosing the text of a dialogue which the duke had commissioned and also, with studied self-deprecation, a madrigal about the bass [voice] of Signor Giulio Cesare which I conceived many months ago but, because it is only a trifle, I have only now given it birth. I am sending it freely because, although many people here are well pleased with it, nevertheless, if it really is any good, then Your Highness will judge it as such.9

6 This includes the pitches equivalent to b flat and b natural; see Andrew Hughes, ‘Solmization’, New Grove II, vol. 24, pp. 644–49. 7 It may be significant that at Maximilian’s court, Zenobi had served alongside Luigi Fenice, who held the unique position of ‘Kammerbassist’ from 1569 to 1576 (there are no other ‘chamber singers’ listed in the payment records for this period). Fenice was clearly a virtuoso and accompanied Maximillian’s daughter Elizabeth to France when she married Charles IX in 1570; see Pass, Musik und Musiker am Hof Maximilians II, p. 218. 8 Blackburn and Lowinsky, ‘Luigi Zenobi’, p. 69. Zenobi was involved in the process of luring the Neapolitan bass Melchior Palantrotti to Ferrara in 1589. In 1593 he was in Rome and auditioned the bass Don Stefano Ruggieri of Cremona, and having found him wanting, then offered to go on to Naples to look for another bass for Alfonso II d’Este, an office also exercised by Brancaccio in Venice in 1581 (see above). 9 Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, p. 144: ‘un Madrigale sopra il Basso del Sig. Giulio Cesare già da me conceputo son molti mesi, et com’è solito della vena, non prima d’ora partorito. E ’l mando volontieri, perchè se bene è piacciuto qui a molti, allhora nondimeno dirò che sia buono, che Vostra Altezza il giudicherà per tale’.

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He also included the words of a ballata that he hoped Luzzaschi would set ‘for the Ladies’. The poem about Brancaccio is a eulogy of his singing, perhaps the nearest we will ever come to ‘hearing’ his voice: Quando i più gravi accenti da le vitali sue canore tombe con dilettoso horror Cesare scioglie, par che intorno rimbombe l’aria, e la terra. E chi n’udisse il suono, senza veder chi ’l move, e chi l’accoglie, diria, forse il gran mondo è che mugge con arte? E dal profondo spira musico suono? O crederia che l’ampio ciel cantasse, se l’ampio ciel con melodia tonasse.10 [When with delightful horror, Cesare unleashes the lowest notes from the living depths of his sounding sepulchre it seems as if the earth and the air are reverberating inside him. And whoever should hear and enjoy the sound without seeing who is producing it would say, ‘perhaps the whole world is rumbling artfully and breathing musical sound from the deep’. Oh, they would believe that the wide heavens were singing and thundering with melody!]

A setting of this text for five voices by the Ferrarese composer Lodovico Agostini appears in a manuscript collection containing settings of 36 different texts by half a dozen composers associated with Ferrara (Modena BE, Mus. F.1358), compiled between 1581 and 1584.11 Agostini’s setting of the poem about Brancaccio contains some interesting wide leaps in all parts and the bass line is relatively demanding. It is not possible to know exactly for which performers the settings were conceived, but there is no particular sign that it was specifically written for the musica secreta (particularly ornate or ‘high pitch’ soprano lines, for example). On the other hand, it would not have been a suitable candidate to be easily performed as a bass solo with lute or keyboard accompaniment, considering its considerable contrapuntal complexity. Thus, the contemporary setting, although responding in a general way to the suggestions raised by the text (there is a large leap near the start on the words ‘più gravi accenti’, for example), does not appear to refer directly to the solo singing of Brancaccio. Apart from Giustiniani’s description of his vocal range and Guarini’s vague reference to impressive low notes, the only other information about Brancaccio’s voice is a poem by Torquato Tasso, ‘Sopra la voce del Brancaccio’, which is the subject of detailed discussion in Chapter 9. It mentions ‘fast and slow sound’ and hints at its ‘soothing’ qualities on the spirits of those who listen. With 22 notes, we 10 Published as ‘Il basso del Brancazio’ in Giovanbattista Guarini, Rime (Venice 1598), fol. 119r. 11 See Durante and Martellotti, Madrigali segreti, vol. 1, pp. 65–82; an edition of Agostini’s setting of the text is ibid., vol. 2, pp. 17–22. Some of the other texts in the collection are about other members of the court, including one dedicated to Barbara Sanseverino, Countess of Sala, who was closely associated with Brancaccio (see Chapter 8).

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must assume that Brancaccio also could sing in the lowest and highest bass registers. Likewise, Guarini’s poem mentions ‘i più gravi accenti’, which makes the listener wonder if music is being sounded ‘dal profondo’ and also refers to more subjective expressive effects (‘dilettoso Horror’, ‘rimbomba l’aria e terra’). It is precious little to go on, but all these elements recall the general principles of basso bastarda style identified above. However, the vocal quality which Torquato Tasso praises most in his poem addressed to Brancaccio is ‘the sweetness of your own singing [la dolcezza del tuo proprio canto]’ and its ‘placative’ effect, which together evoke the desirable qualities of smoothness and gentleness of true cantar cavaleresco.12 These particular attributes may perhaps help in interpreting Zenobi’s comment about the ideal ‘eguale tondezza di tuba’ of the bass vocal range, which he contrasts with the ‘crude resonance’ that characterizes the singing of tenors who, through forcing the voice, try to stretch the extremes of the range: otherwise one will call him a forced tenor who through perpetual singing and screaming, has achieved equal force in the high and in the low registers and who always carries with him a certain crude resonance, which appears beautiful and fine to an ignoramus, but ugly and faulty to a connoisseur.13

Zenobi is consistently dismissive of tenors in general and it may be that he means here male singers with ‘normal’ modal voice who try to sing low notes not naturally in their range and who also push the voice to achieve the upper notes (‘polso’, implying ‘power’) rather than having an ease of transition to falsetto, as the ‘22-note’ singers presumably had. One wonders whether he would have been equally critical of the four singers (all known as tenors) who Giustiniani said had become famous in Rome and whom he credited with being able to sing in the bass register as well: Giulio Romano [Caccini], Giuseppino [Cenci], Gio. Domenico [Puliaschi] and [Francesco] Rasi (who was introduced to Florence by Caccini) came to prominence and all sang bass and tenor with wide ranges and with exquisite figures, passaggi and extraordinary stylishness and had a particular talent for making the words really audible.14

Giulio Caccini’s ability to sing very low is perhaps confirmed by two songs, the sonnet ‘Io che l’età solea viver’ and the strophic variations ‘Deh, chi d’alloro mi fa ghirlanda’, included in his second collection Le nuove musiche e nuova maniera di 12 ‘Sopra la voce del Brancaccio’, in Torquato Tasso, Le Rime, ed. Angelo Solerti, (3 vols, Bologna, 1898–9), vol. 3, p. 269, no. 716; see also the discussion of ideal vocal timbres for speaking (Chapter 4, above). Tasso’s poems about Brancaccio’s singing are treated in detail in the next chapter. 13 Blackburn and Lowinsky, ‘Luigi Zenobi’, p. 82: ‘ma si chiamerà tenore sforzato, che col perpetuo cantare, e gridare, habbia egualità di polso nell’alte, come nelle basse, e porti seco sempre una certa crudezza risonante, la quale a chi non intende par bella, e buona; ma a chi sa, brutta e vitiosa’. 14 Giustiniani, Discorso, p. 110: ‘e vennero in luce Giulio Romano, Giuseppino, Gio. Domenico et il Rasi, che apparò in Firenze da Giulio Romano; et tutti cantavano di basso e tenore con larghezza di molto numero di voci, e con modi e passaggi esquisiti e con affetto straordinario e talento particolare di far sentir bene le parole’.

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scriverle (Florence, 1614). Caccini specifically highlighted these two pieces on the title page: ‘With two special arias for the tenors who seek out the notes of the bass [con due Arie Particolari per Tenore, che richerchi le corde del Basso]’, and in doing so turned his back on the advice of his mentor, Giovanni Bardi: I would give this advice: do this [i.e., make diminutions] as little as you can, and when you must, show that you do it to indulge someone else, taking care never to pass from the tenor to the bass, since that magnificence which the tenor with his majesty impresses upon us, the bass takes away with his passaggi and weight.15

Both of Caccini’s songs include particularly ornate passaggi that regularly cover a great vocal range in a short period at basic cadential intervals: for example, at the first appearance of the word ‘piango’ in the first strophe of ‘Io che l’età solea viver’ (Figure 6.1), where over the cadence d–G, the voice passes from e′ down to D in the space of two bars.16 These procedures resemble many similar passages in perhaps the most remarkable single source of solo bass songs published in the period of monody prints in the early seventeenth century, by another of Giustiniani’s ‘tenor-basses’, Giovanni Domenico Puliaschi. His Musiche varie (Rome, 1618) is a ‘corrected’ version of Gemma musicale, which had apparently been brought out without the composer’s control, in the same year.17 The contents of the volume are ‘Madrigali, Arie, Canzoni et Sonetti’, and as such are remarkably consistent with the types of repertoire associated with the Neapolitan circle of Brancaccio and his colleagues, represented, for example, by Rocco Rodio’s Arie raccolti (1577). The book contains settings of sonnets by Petrarch, Tansillo and Sanazzaro and various ‘arie di Romanesca’. Puliaschi’s contributions to the volume (there are also seven motets for solo bass by Felice Anerio) end with four madrigals. All the pieces in the volume are essentially diminutions of a combination of the bass and tenor parts of short, simple aria-like pieces. The final piece is headed: ‘Madrigale di N. N. passaggiato da Gio. Domenico Puliaschi’ and is similarly very simple in construction, displaying none of the carefully considered, text-oriented affetti advocated by Caccini, let alone any broad characterization of the text; indeed, most of the songs are remarkably artless displays of repetitive vocal virtuosity, and often contain musical non sequiturs bordering on the crass. Like Caccini’s two songs for ‘tenor-bass’, many of Puliaschi’s works use both the F4 and C4 clefs within

15 Bardi, ‘Discorso’, p. 124: ‘ben darei per consiglio à far ciò il [diminuire] men che si possa, et quando ciò si debba fare, almeno mostrar di farlo per altrui compiacimento ingegnandosi ancora non passar mai dal tenore nel basso, avvengache la magnificenza che ’l tenore v’imprima con la sua maestà, il basso co’ passaggi e gravità la vi levi’. 16 It is interesting in this context to consider that Caccini very probably heard Giulio Cesare Brancaccio sing in Ferrara, and may even have performed with him when he made his highly successful visit to the Este court during the carnival season in 1583. See Newcomb, The Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, pp. 191–2, 199–200; Durante and Martellotti, Madrigal secreti, vol. 1, pp. 51–4. 17 The Musiche varie is edited with an introduction in Lewis Jones, ‘Italian Solo Song for the Bass Voice, with an Edition of Gian Domenico Puliaschi, Musiche varie (1618)’ (M.Mus. diss., University of London, 1980) and also by Martin Lubenow (Germersheim, 2004).

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Figure 6.1

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Giulio Caccini, Nuove musiche e nuova maniera di scriverle (1614): opening of ‘Io che l’età solea viver’

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the same piece. Although they occasionally touch very low notes, the tessitura of Caccini’s and Puliaschi’s songs is concentrated in the baritone and tenor range. Puliaschi was employed in the choir of the Cappella Sistina, nominally as a tenor, although in 1620, he was recorded as having sung not only bass and tenor, but alto as well, in a performance he gave in Florence together with the singer and composer Francesca Caccini, daughter of Giulio.18 Even allowing for the fact that ‘alto’ in this sense may well have meant music in the C3 clef, and thus in the ‘high tenor range’, Puliaschi was clearly a singer capable of singing ‘alla bastarda’. One must believe Puliaschi’s words in the introduction to the volume of songs in order to understand why he should have been so highly praised: Gentle Readers, I know that it will not appear miraculous to those who have heard me sing some of these works of mine, to find passages throughout the book where there are pitches in both the bass and the tenor [registers], now in fast runs and now on held notes, seeing as it has pleased God to grant me such a voice and disposition. Therefore, if some virtuoso who has not heard me would want to know how I sing, though it would be difficult to explain in words because many vocal effects are better understood by hearing them done than by having them described.19

The ‘tenor-bass’ songs of Caccini and of Puliaschi strongly imply that they each tap into a Neapolitan–Roman tradition of multi-register singing with the inception of which, Giustiniani credits, amongst others, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio. Caccini may have learned it ‘directly’ as a Neapolitan style through the teachings of Scipione delle Palle, and, as Giustiniani notes, it was Caccini who passed on his technical skills in Florence to the first ‘opera star’, Francesco Rasi, whose style is represented in the notation of the strophic aria ‘Possente spirto e formidabil nume’ in the 1609 print of Monteverdi’s Orfeo.20 The final ‘tenor-bass’ listed by Giustiniani, Giuseppino Cenci, was otherwise exclusively known as a tenor (and also as an incontinent improviser of passaggi, according to Pietro della Valle).21

18 H. Wiley Hitchcock, ‘Caccini’s “Other” Nuove musiche’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 27 (1974): 438–60, at p. 451. It is possible that Caccini wanted to demonstrate in his 1614 book that he could sing as many low notes as Puliaschi. A link between the two singers by way of Cardinal Montalto is proposed in Hill, Roman Monody, vol. 1, p. 168. 19 Puliaschi, Musiche varie, ‘Ai lettori’: ‘Benigne Lettori io so che non apportarà maraviglia a chi ha sentito me alcuna di queste mie opere il veder, che tocchino tante corde di basso, e di Tenore hora sfuggendo, hora fermando la voce in tutti quelli passi, che nell’opera si trovano, havendomi il Signore Iddio aggratiato di tal voce, e dispositione: però se alcun virtuoso non mi havendo sentito desiderasse saper il modo con che le canto ancor che sia difficile rappresentarlo in parole per cagione, che molti motivi di voce meglio si comprendono in sentirli portare, che in raccontarli’. 20 Published music by and for Francesco Rasi, including Monteverdi’s Orfeo, never employs the bass clef or descends below A, which is a normal bottom note for low tenor parts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 21 Pietro della Valle, ‘Della musica dell’età nostra che non è punto inferiore ansi è migliore di quella dell’età passata’ (1640), in Solerti, Le origini del melodramma, pp. 161–2.

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Contemporary with these ‘tenors who also sang bass’, there was also a premium on ‘genuine’ deep basses who could sustain passages in the lowest tessitura. In a later section of the Discorso, Vincenzo Giustiniani refers to the singer Melchior Palantrotti, who was probably the most famous of all the professional bass virtuosos in Italy in the generation after Brancaccio. Like Brancaccio and other notable basses, he was Neapolitan by birth, and began a successful career as a singer at S. Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, from whence he was recruited to the court of Ferrara as a highly paid chamber musician, before returning to Rome late in life, where he enjoyed the patronage of Cardinal Montalto. He created the role of Plutone in Peri’s Euridice and sang in Il rapimento di Cefalo at the wedding celebrations in Florence in 1600;22 he was praised by Pietro della Valle as late as 1640 as a paragon of bass singing.23 All the evidence suggests that he was ‘only’ a deep bass singer, albeit with a good range which extended from about D to d′, but well short of ‘22 notes’: he is described in the Ferrara archives as a ‘contrabasso’. The same archival entries show that, as with Brancaccio, special lutes were ordered for him, implying that he accompanied himself as a solo singer.24 What was considered particularly critical to Alfonso II d’Este when recruiting Palantrotti was that he really could sing low notes. The duke’s agent in Rome, the nephew of Count Ercole Tassoni, was instructed to check Palantrotti’s singing in the following terms: ‘if he has a good voice, if his notes are sweet, if he has disposizione [i.e., skill in cantar di gorga], how he sings the high notes’ and, most importantly, ‘what the lowest note of his voice is, whose pitch can be ascertained by means of a flute, writing down the pitch which corresponds with the [respective] note of the flute’.25 Reflecting a prevailing premium on low notes, a French bass, Piero (or Pierre) Peren was hired by S. Marco in Venice in 1597 on the recommendation of the Venetian ambassador, who specified that ‘he is a wonder 22 Examples of his range and virtuosity are preserved in two arias he sang in this production as published in Caccini’s Le nuove musiche (1602) (see above); interestingly, in the preamble to the first of these, Caccini writes of the ‘passage for the bass’ that the part ‘sometimes touches notes in the tenor range [nella parte del Basso, che tal volta ricerca le corde del Tenore]’, even though the highest note written is only a d′. 23 Della Valle, ‘Della musica dell’età nostra’, p. 155: ‘Mi ricordo anche a quei tempi ... di Melchior Basso, che aveva la mia grazia; e che oltre l’eccellente disposizione, aveva anche modi, che dopo di lui, sono restati a i Bassi per regole del cantar grazioso [I also recall from those times ... Melchior the bass, who charmed me; and besides his excellent disposizione he also made ornaments, which since his time have remained as benchmarks of refined singing for basses]’. For further information about Palantrotti, see Warren Kirkendale, The Court Musicians in Florence during the Principate of the Medici, with a Reconstruction of the Artistic Establishment (Florence, 1993), p. 139, n. 164; for Luigi Zenobi’s role in the recruitment of Palantrotti to Ferrara, see Newcomb, The Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, pp. 178–9, and Chapter 5, above. 24 Elio Durante and Anna Martellotti, Un decennio di spese musicali alla corte di Ferrara (1587–1597) (Fasano di Puglia, 1982), Registri dei Mandati Fattorali, pp. 28, 30: ‘[22. November 1589] Marti adì 7 /No 13 Al S.r. Hippolito Fiorini scudi 30, soldi 8 per un lauto tolto per il contra basso napolitano tolto di nuovo’; ‘[26 February 1591] Mercori adì 20 /No 34 A ms. Alberto dal’Occa scudi 19 per il precci [= prezzi] d’un lauto datto per servitio de ms. Marchioro [sic] contrabasso di Sua Altezza, Napolitano’. 25 In Newcomb, The Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, p. 178.

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who goes down as low as you can get [è un stupore che vadi tanto profondo come va]’.26 Brancaccio’s repertoire Vincenzo Giustiniani credited the three bass singers who sang with 22 notes not only with a variety of passaggi, as we would expect, but also that these were ‘new’, and he refers specifically to ‘singing solo to an instrument’. It was apparently in imitation of these performers that Ruggiero Giovanelli, Luca Marenzio and Orazio Vecchi were stimulated to write a new cross-breed of music, part villanella, part madrigal, which was both for several voices and for solo voice. We must therefore ask what kind of pieces were the bass singers performing which gave this initial stimulus, and how specifically might they have transformed the notated text in performance in such a way as to have created something new, worthy of ‘imitation’ and capable of giving rise to new musical forms. Brancaccio’s only hint of the kind of repertoire he may have sung in Rome and later in Ferrara, is his mention of having put together specifically for the entertainment of the ladies of Alfonso’s court ‘various arias for sonnets and Neapolitan-style villanellas [‘in servizio delle Dame di sua Corte haveva posto in ordine alcune arie … di sonetti, et canzone Villanesche]’. Brancaccio’s success as a courtier-singer presumably rested partly on his mastery of the delivery of the ribald and erotically suggestive Neapolitan songs which were so hugely popular, particularly in Rome.27 That these should be considered ‘suitable for the ladies’, and would rub shoulders quite happily with potentially more serious sonnets sung to aria formulas, gives a valuable insight into musical taste in the private circles at court. To this information, we can add that Brancaccio was known to Marenzio who, specifically, was in a position to know what kind of lute would be suitable for Brancaccio to accompany himself on in solo singing, which suggests that this was at least one of the modes in which he was known to perform in the circle of Cardinal Luigi d’Este.28 Brancaccio might well have sung villanellas composed by Marenzio, just as Marenzio may have developed his villanella style through his contact with Brancaccio and the latter’s fund of songs and style of performing learned in Naples and which he ‘carried with him’ through his life. But how might Brancaccio, as a bass, have performed this repertoire? The manuscripts and prints containing ‘bass songs’ listed in the previous chapter in Table 5.1 probably record repertoire of amateur singers and players of ‘normal’ ability, and certainly none shows direct evidence of the kind of virtuosity implied by Giustiniani’s description, although, like virtually all vocal music of this period, they do not rule out the wide range of embellishment that could be applied during performance. Additionally, the types of pieces they contain – predominantly 26 For discussion of these and other sources about bass range, see Wistreich, ‘La voce è grata assai’: 8–10. 27 See Donna Cardamone, ‘Erotic Jest and Gesture in Roman Anthologies of Neapolitan Dialogue Songs’, Music & Letters, 86 (2005): 357–79. 28 Bizzarini, Marenzio, p. 40.

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Neapolitan villanellas, some arias and a few madrigals – certainly seem to tie in with the repertoires to which both Giustiniani and Brancaccio himself refer. In the Cavalcanti Lute Book, out of a total of 70 songs, 57 are called either ‘Napoletana’ or ‘Villanella’, and of these, no fewer than 21 are arrangements of pieces found in three of Orazio Vecchi’s four published books of Canzonette. The seven songs in the Lucca Lute Book are ‘villanesche’, and of the nine songs in the Montreal Lute Book, there are three ‘Canzonette et Napolitane d’Horatio Vecchi’, three similar pieces by Giovanni Cavaccio, and three so far unidentified songs in the same style. Then there are the ten ‘Villanelle Trium Vocem, Luca Marencij’ laid out in choirbook format in Besard’s Thesaurus musicus (1603) with the text printed only under the bass line, in a volume that otherwise contains solo lute music, and which first appeared in print in four different villanella publications by Marenzio. Of these, only the Terzo libro delle villanelle was actually published in Rome (with the rubric ‘in the style in which they sing in Rome these days [nel modo che hoggidì si usa cantare in Roma]’), but of the other three – all published in Venice – the second and the fifth books were collected by Attilio Gualteri and dedicated in Rome to Roman patrons. The remainder of the repertoire in these books includes madrigals and villanellas predominantly by Roman or Ferrarese composers, including Palestrina and Paolo Virchi. Only a single villanella by Giovanelli occurs in these collections (‘Stelle ch’ornand’il cielo’ in Cavalcanti, fol. 87r), but the printed collection of Roman three-voice villanellas (in choirbook format with lute tablature, as in Besard) first published by Simone Verovio in Rome as Ghirlanda di fioretti musicali … con l’intavolatura del cembalo et liuto (1589) and later reissued in Venice by Giacomo Vincenti as Canzonette per cantar et sonar di liuto a tre voci in three books in 1591, contains three-voice canzonettas by Giovanelli as well as by Palestrina, Giovanni Maria Nanino, Marenzio, Felice Anerio, Paolo Quagliati and other Roman composers. A second Verovio collection including pieces by Giovannelli, the brothers G.M. Nanino and G.B. Nanino, Giovanni da Macque and Felice Anerio, Lodi della musica a tre voci … con intavolatura del cembalo e liuto, was published in 1595. Similarly, the large number of pieces in Orazio Vecchi’s four books of four-voice Canzonette, published between 1580 and 1585 in the usual partbook format, could be supplemented with the arrangements of four arie a 3, four canzonettas a 4 and three vocal balli a 3, published with lute tablatures in his huge compendium Selva di varia recreatione (Venice, 1590, repr. 1595). Finally, there are his Canzonette a tre voci (Venice, 1597), which contain 34 canzonettas with the voice parts in partbook format with lute tablature, all of which would have enabled solo performance of the works. In fact, there was a steady output of publications of canzonettas, villanellas and balletti in either choirbook or partbook format with lute tablature starting in 1570 with Napolitane ariose by Antonelli Cornelio. Between this and Giulio Cesare Barbetta’s Intavolatura di liuto delle canzonette a tre voci (Venice, 1603), Kevin Mason lists a total of nineteen volumes containing similar repertoire.29 29 Mason, ‘Per cantare e sonare’, pp. 77–8, Table 4: ‘Polyphonic music with mensural voice parts and Italian tablature accompaniments for lute’. See also Fabris, ‘The Role of Solo Singing to the Lute’.

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Such collections suggest a ready market for arrangements of villanellas and canzonettas laid out so that any voice, including the bass part, can easily be performed solo to the lute (without the need to be able to make one’s own intabulations first) and may reflect the principal form in which such repertoire had become popular in the final quarter of the sixteenth century in Rome and elsewhere. The further dissemination of this repertoire to the courts of Florence, Mantua and Ferrara, and beyond into Europe as a whole, reflects not only its usefulness and adaptability for an amateur public, but also its popularity, fostered through the mobility of virtuoso singers such as Caccini, Brancaccio himself, Marenzio, Palantrotti, Costanzo Porta and many others, as well as that of their Rome-based patrons, such as Cardinals Luigi d’Este and Montalto. It would, perhaps, be a leap too far to suggest that this distribution of villanellas and canzonettas and of popular madrigals by Palestrina, Striggio, Rore and others which are often used as models for diminution in the relatively small number of extant sources of bass-line solo lute songs, could be read as a confirmation of a standard mid- to late sixteenth-century ‘solo bass repertoire’. However, by looking at the various strands of evidence in a number of different arrangements, especially in the light of Giustiniani’s memoir, the following picture emerges: there is an established appreciation for the villanella alla napolitana and for the singing of verses to aria formulas in court circles throughout Italy and beyond from at least the 1540s, and this is principally a solo-singing style associated with relaxed, informal occasions, at which both professionals and amateurs might sing.30 Giustiniani says that in his boyhood (he was born in 1564) in Rome ‘for singing solo to the lute, the prevailing taste was for Neapolitan villanellas [per cantare con una voce sola sopra alcuno stromento prevalesse il gusto delle Villanelle Napoletane]’. He singles out the Roman singer Pitio (see below) for having composed new villanellas in imitation, presumably, of ‘genuine Neapolitan’ songs. Other singers (including Brancaccio) use a style of singing of villanellas, arie and madrigals that is directly derived from a Neapolitan performing tradition. This style is practised, amongst others, by bass singers who have a very large vocal range, remarkable skills in cantar di gorgia, and dolcezza of voice, who may include in their performances both ensemble and solo singing, improvising florid passaggi over aria formulas such as the Romanesca and Ruggiero and making spontaneous diminutions alla bastarda on the composed voices of known madrigals and other forms. This style has a particular home in Rome, perhaps because of the great concentration of ‘southern’ singers there thanks to patrons such as Cardinal Luigi d’Este and later Cardinals Montalto and Aldobrandini. However, singers like Brancaccio passed through other European centres of musical practice where Neapolitan singing was also cultivated, such as the French royal court (with the Prince of Salerno and Luigi 30 For example, Paolo Orsino, Duke of Bracciano (a personal acquaintance of Brancaccio – see Chapter 3) was reported by Francesco Suena, Ferrarese ambasssador to Florence, as having sung villanellas to his own lute accompaniment on a visit to Florence in January 1559: ‘in the evening they entertained themselves together with some of his musicians, singing napoletani to the lute’ [la sera si intertengono con alcuni suoi musici che cantano delli napolitani nel liuto]; in Cardamone, The Canzone villanesca alla napolitana, vol. 1, p. 171.

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Dentice), the imperial court at Vienna and the court at Munich (with Philippe de Monte and Orlande de Lassus respectively, both of whom spent a considerable time in Naples at formative times in their careers). The performances of the ‘traditional’ Neapolitan repertoire of simple arie and villanellas in special ways stimulated composers to produce new works, such as Vecchi’s ‘invention’ of the canzonetta and Marenzio’s production of volumes of villanellas for the enjoyment of music-lovers who had experienced such performances by these virtuoso solo singers in the salons and courts of Rome, northern Italy and beyond, either in the flesh or by repute. Whether Brancaccio sang both solo and in ensemble at Ferrara is never completely clear from any of the various sources, although both formations are strongly implied. Certainly he sang ‘together’ with ladies of the earlier versions of the musica secreta from time to time and Torquato Tasso indicates that on at least one occasion Brancaccio sang in dialogue with them. But there is no direct report of his having sung in a vocal consort capable of performing polyphonic music unaccompanied (although there is circumstantial evidence for such a practice). The musica secreta had no ‘noble’ tenor singers during its first period.31 It might be significant in this context to note the pieces in Vecchi’s Canzonette volumes which are scored for three high voices (C1, C1, C2) and bass (F4), which would certainly have suited perfectly the line-up of the musica secreta around 1583.32 When Duke Alfonso d’Este II was possibly searching for a replacement for Brancaccio in 1584, his agent in Rome, Giulio Masetti, made enquiries about the famous singer Pitio, and in listing the information he had about him, may have revealed the different kinds of ‘performing’ in its widest sense that Brancaccio himself had done: He has a good wit for singing Neapolitan songs and making up words and tunes with great relish, makes a profession of singing bass to the lute and has the sweetest voice. I do not know yet how he is in ensemble, never having tried it; otherwise, he has a very lively mind and makes pleasing conversation.33

Here should be added Giustiniani’s memoir of Pitio as ‘clever musician and a noble clown [musico bravo e buffone nobile]’.34 Recalling Brancaccio’s playing of the ‘inamorato’ in Naples back in 1545 and his friendship with Orlande de Lassus, who liked to play and sing in commedia dell’arte performances, and noting that like 31 Girolamo Merenda, Storia di Ferrara, in Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, p. 199, recorded in 1596 (long after Brancaccio’s time) that Anna Guarini and Laura Peverara were sometimes joined by ‘a bass and two other voices [presumably tenors], singers of His Most Serene Highness, when they sang “from the book” [a libro]’. 32 Orazio Vecchi, The Four-Voiced Canzonettas, ed. Ruth I. DeFord, Recent Resarches in the Music of the Renaissance, vols 92–3 (Madison, 1993), no. 71, ‘Non sarò piu ritrosa’; no. 76, ‘Cor mio, se per dolore’; no. 89, ‘Che fai, Dori, che pensi?’; no. 90, ‘Deh prega, Amor, il Fato’. 33 Giulio Masetti (ambassador in Rome) to Duke Alfonso, 6 June 1584, in Solerti, Ferrara, p. lix: ‘ha ben caprice di cantare napolitane et inventare parole, et arie di molto gusto, fa professione di cantare il basso nel leuto, e ha dolcissima voce, non so già com’egli riesca in compagnia, non havendolo mai provato; sul resto è cervello assai gagliardo, e di piacevole conversatione’. 34 Giustiniani, Discorso, p. 106.

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Brancaccio, Pitio specifically sang ‘napolitane … et arie di molto gusto’, we can see some hints of remarkable similarities between the two (‘buffone nobile’/‘dilettoso Horror’) and thus further glimpses of what Brancaccio’s performing repertoire and style might have been.35 Bass monody in the early seventeenth-century: the legacy of Brancaccio Once a regular output of publications containing exclusively solo song began to appear from the beginning of the seventeenth century – the so-called ‘monody’ repertoire – it is interesting to see that a small but nevertheless distinctive subgroup of specific bass songs finds its place in many collections otherwise devoted to works in which the sung part is a cantus – in either ‘soprano’ (C2) or ‘tenor’ (C4) clefs – provided with an independent bass line encoding the harmonic structures underlying it. Just as the earlier volumes in the series of airs de cour produced in Paris by Gabrielle Bataille from 1608 for the following 35 years often contain material that had been in circulation for at least 30 years beforehand (albeit in the form of partbooks), which quite clearly preserves performance practices of the previous generations, so, too can the early seventeenth-century Italian monody books be considered, to some extent at least, as examples of a similar process.36 New technical and marketing considerations stimulated the publication of solo songs in Italy from 1602 (and in France from 1608) onwards, and simply allowed, for the first time, the transmission of practices, which, as we now understand, were current at least as early as the 1570s. Several solo bass songs published in Italy in the early years of the seventeenth century are records of the performances of named virtuosos and it is thus not altogether fanciful to posit the possibility that the performing style of a singer as famous and influential as Giulio Cesare Brancaccio might also be echoed in prints in the generations after his death. Collecting together the information I presented earlier about Brancaccio’s singing, and that of other virtuoso tenor-bass singers in the generations immediately after Brancaccio, we might now summarize the technical characteristics of their style as ‘vocal basso alla bastarda’. It includes use of the fullest extended range of the male voice, especially the display of very low and very high notes; lengthy passages of cantar alla gorgia incorporating note values down to demisemiquavers; energetic and even boisterous textures involving leaps and lively rhythms; and an emphasis on vocal agility and sonic meraviglia rather than particularly expressive word–melody relationships, reflecting the nature of the intervals of harmonic bass-line movement, which forms the melodic material of the bass song. All these general characteristics of late sixteenth-century bass-solo singing style can be found in the five solo songs for bass included in the three volumes of secular monodies by Bartolomeo Barbarino, published in Venice in 1606, 1607 and 1610 respectively. For example, the song Scioglio ardito nocchier vela d’argento (Example 6.1) sets a text depicting ‘atra tempesta [gloomy storms]’, ‘strider d’onde 35 See Newcomb, The Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, pp. 47, 269. 36 See Jeanice Brooks, ‘“New Music” in Late Renaissance France’, Trossingen Jahrbuch für Renaissancemusik, 2 (2002), pp. 161–78.

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Example 6.1 Bartolomeo Barbarino, ‘Scioglio ardito nocchier vela d’argento’, from Il terzo libro de madrigali (Venice, 1613)

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Example 6.1 continued

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[hiss of the waves]’, ‘strepita di vento [roaring of the wind]’, ‘onda spumosa [foaming billows]’ and other excellent vehicles for numerous passages of complex cantar alla gorgia, often spanning large compasses in a short space (e.g., bars 6–7, etc.), rapid chains of cascate and dotted figures, a series of spectacular low notes, including a final cadential roulade taking in low D. The song is headed ‘Basso alla bastarda’, although there is little sign that it is built on a pre-existing polyphonic model: rather, it is simply in the bastarda performance style. It has the typical appearance of a written-out representation of a quasi-improvised song. Barbarino’s first collection of monodies, Madrigali di diversi autori posti in musica (1606), contains a single bass song, and this is a setting of none other than Guarini’s poem ‘Quando i più gravi accenti’, about Brancaccio (Example 6.2). The setting certainly reflects the stylistic elements associated with Brancaccio’s singing: a range of two and a quarter octaves, touching low C twice; numerous cantar alla gorgia figures including gruppi; and long scalar passages in semiquavers both ascending and descending, as well as a final cadential roulade incorporating demisemiquaver notes (this is, incidentally, one of the very earliest monody prints to include notes of such small value). With the exception of the two songs for bass in Giulio Caccini’s Le nuove musiche (1602) referred to above, it is the earliest extant printed Italian monody for a bass. In the print, the song lacks the title from the 1598 volume of Guarini’s poems where it first appeared in print, ‘il basso del Brancazio’. Did Barbarino’s decision to set the text for a solo bass derive from this title, or did he in fact set it with knowledge of the singer to whom it refers? It is feasible to imagine Barbarino browsing through Guarini’s poems and alighting on this text at random and choosing to set it simply because it describes a bass singer. On the other hand, although there is no biographical data that even suggests he could have heard Brancaccio, the singer’s extraordinary reputation as a performer might have informed Barbarino’s choice of the text and his setting of it. There are plenty of features which look quite familiar: indeed, there is very little here which, from the evidence we have now seen, would have been out of place in Brancaccio’s Rome or Ferrara. For example, the vocal line is little more than an embellishment of the very simple harmonic bass, which consists almost exclusively of root-position chords; word-painting, such as there is, mainly exploits ‘raw’ properties of a bass voice, principally very low notes for words such as ‘tombe’ and ‘terra’ or the long descent to an octave below the harmonic bass note for ‘mugge’; only rarely can the word-painting be described as melodically or harmonically based, as for example at the word ‘arte’ in bar 40. There is certainly athletic passage-work, including chains of semiquavers and demisemiquaver figures with sudden register leaps (for example, in the final melisma) and impressive cadence ‘licks’ (bar 19), which represent typical displays of vocal meraviglia. Other passages of diminution, however (for example, in bars 51–2 on the word ‘ampio’), could have come straight from the pages of Cerone, Maffei, or even Finck, which record procedures, established as we have seen, at least half a century before this song was published. Finally, apart from the especially extended melisma for the final cadence, there does not appear to be a large-scale ‘compositional’ strategy of development or variation in the quantity or style of written embellishment across the whole song: each diminution figure seems to be a separate response to a local event, whether word or cadence, as it

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Example 6.2 Bartolomeo Barbarino, ‘Quando i più gravi accenti’, from Madrigali di diversi autori posti in musica (Venice, 1606)

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might have been met by a singer spontaneously in the moment of performance. All in all, the notation of both of these songs by Bartolomeo Barbarino looks like a representation of improvised performance procedures. Comparison between the printed notation of these two songs and the added embellishments in the hand of the singer Angelo Notari for the repeat of the chorus section of ‘Ferma, ferma Caronte’ from Barbarino’s Second Book of Madrigals (see Chapter 5), show clear broad similarities in embellishment procedures for the bass line. Although few prints of bass songs contain such copious written-out embellishment as Barbarino’s (Puliaschi’s Musiche varie, discussed above, is an important exception), there is a marked consistency in the notated embellishment features in the bass songs published by a wide range of composers from all parts of the Italian peninsula in the succeeding decades. Whether the function of this notation is primarily prescriptive for potential singers or it serves as a record or exemplar of a particular performer or performance style, or even as a more generally schematic graphic representation of a whole complex of ‘bass vocal virtuosity’, or all of these, needs exploring further. To summarize, then: the steady production of volumes of secular and sacred song for accompanied solo voices from the major music publishers of Italy which, in the first decades of the seventeenth century, made hundreds, even thousands of songs easily available to literate amateur and professional singers, included a small but significant number of songs specifically written for bass voice. Although a thorough study of this repertoire is beyond the scope of the present book, even a cursory glance at examples of the genre shows that that they usually incorporate many of the elements of a specifically ‘bass style’ which have been identified in the foregoing chapters. These include close adherence by the singing voice to the harmonic bass, but with ‘excursions’ into other contrapuntal voice parts; exploitation of extreme range; sudden leaps across registers; specific ‘bass’ diminution figures; arresting and demanding passages of cantar di gorga, and a general exploitation of the particular ‘marvellous’ properties of the bass voice. The evidence we have examined in the preceding chapters suggests that, from early in the sixteenth century, there existed a distinct style of solo bass performance that differed from other kinds of solo singing in important ways, in terms of the musical content, the contexts in which it was performed and also the impact on listeners of its particular kind of virtuosity. Without doubt, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio was a significant practitioner, very likely an innovator, of such a performance style. Equally clear is that the ‘totality’ of Brancaccio’s singing could not be represented simply in terms of the words and the notes he sang – indeed, not even in terms only of the aural dimension of his performances. No account of solo bass singing in Italy at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries can be complete without mention of Ottavio Valera, whose quite extraordinary vocal skills have left evidence in the form of five printed works that apparently record his style of singing. Two of them, in the form of ‘worked examples’ of embellished madrigals at the end of the second book of his fellow Milanese Francesco Rognoni’s Selva di varii passaggi (Milan, 1620), ‘Sfogava con le stelle’ and ‘Tempesta di dolcezza’, are headed ‘Musica del Molto Illustre Signor Ottavio Valera & da lui Cantata con gli Istessi Passaggi’, implying that the

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singer was also the composer or at least the original performer. A third vocal piece in the volume is a version of Palestrina’s motet ‘Pulchra es amica mea’, subtitled by Rognoni ‘L’istesso motetto Passegiato per il Basso da Cantar alla Bastarda [the same motet ornamented for the bass to sing alla bastarda]’. All of these pieces employ not only bass and tenor clefs but also, for short passages, the soprano clef as well, and are meraviglie not only on account of the extraordinary vocal virtuosity they describe, but also of the typography through which they are represented. These vocal bastarda pieces together with the arrangement for ‘viol or voice’ of Cipriano de Rore’s ‘Ben qui si mostra il ciel’ in the singer Angelo Notari’s Prime musiche nuove (London, 1613), are the only extant notations to confirm Giustiniani’s and Zenobi’s claims: in order to perform the opening page of the setting of ‘Sfogava con le stelle’ (Figure 6.2), the singer would have to be able traverse a range of three octaves and a tone – i.e., 22 notes.37 Almost nothing is known of Valera, save for the fact that he was ‘Molto Illustre’ and thus possibly a nobleman, and that he employed or at least entertained virtuoso players of ‘every sort of instrument’. Francesco Rognoni played violin, viol and flute as did his father Riccardo Rognoni Taeggio. Father and son each published diminution treatises, and another son, Giovanni Domenico, published madrigals and canzonas.38 Another instrumentalist who received encouragement from Valera was the violinist Giovanni Paolo Cima, who dedicated his volume of Concerti ecclesiastici (which included the first published solo sonatas for the violin) to the singer, recording in the preface that ‘In his house he received and encouraged all the virtuosos of this profession and kept not only every kind of instrument but the best [examples] he could get, which he also knew very well how to make use of’.39 Valera’s virtuosity as a singer and player appears to be linked with other aspects of his ‘virtù’ as a gentleman and a patron of performers such as Cima and Rognoni. The quite complicated relationships between musico and ‘music-lover’ revealed in the dedication of Cima’s volume to Valera become perhaps more complex still when Francesco Rognoni ‘invokes’ the singing of Valera as exemplar of ‘sublime’ performance virtuosity by printing versions of songs ‘as sung by’ the gentleman 37 Further songs attempting to describe Valera’s performances in notation are Giulio S. Pietro del Negro, ‘Ch’io t’ami, o invochi con continue note’, in Grazie ed affetti di musica (Venice, 1613), dedicated ‘Al Molto Illustre Sig. Ottavio Valera. Basso alla Bastarda’ and Giovanni Ghizzolo, ‘O Mirtillo’ (a setting of a text from Guarini’s Il pastor fido), in Il terzo libro de madrigali (Venice, 1613), subtitled ‘Al Molto Illustrissimo Signor Ottavio Valera. Vien cantato’. Ugo Berto, ‘Contributo alla biografia e a le opere di Giovanni Ghizzolo da Brescia, (1580c. – 1624)’, Rassegna veneta di studi musicali, 2–3 (1986): 89–90, mentions a second work dedicated to Valera in Messe, concerti, Magnificat, falsi bordoni, Gloria Patri et una messa per gli morti, a quattro voci .. .co ’l basso continuo per l’organo (Milan, 1612). 38 Sergio Lattes and Marina Toffini, ‘Rognoni’ in New Grove II, vol. 21, pp. 521–3. 39 Giovanni Paolo Cima, Concerti ecclesiastici a una, due, tre, quattro voci … et sei sonate per instrumenti, a due, tre, e quattro (Milan, 1610): ‘in casa sua riceve, et accarezza tutti gli virtuosi di questa professione, et ci tiene non solo d’ogni sorte di instromenti; ma de’ migliori che possino ritrovarsi; quali sa anche molto bene adoperare’. See also Guglielmo Barblan, ‘La musica strumentale e camaristica a Milano dalla seconda metà del Cinquecento a tutto il Seicento’, Storia di Milano, vol. 16 (Milan, 1962), p. 605.

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Figure 6.2

Warrior, Courtier, Singer

Francesco Rognoni, Selva di varii passaggii (1620), part 2, p. 72: opening of ‘Sfogava con le stelle’

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himself. The unspoken commentary seems to say: ‘read this representation of vocal performance by a gentleman amateur and experience pure meraviglia, as surely no one else could sing like this’. The same process is presumably at work in the volumes by Giovanni Ghizzolo and Giulio S. Pietro del Negro. By referring to Ottavio Valera in this way, these Milanese musicians might be said to be tapping into the power generated by Valera’s virtù, the elixir of what Lorenzo Bianconi has identified as a trait of seventeenth-century discourse about vocal performance, which he has dubbed ‘ineffability’.40 Through the medium of newly sophisticated typography, these composers attempted to represent the elusive element of virtù-osity that constitutes the essence of the ‘music’ as experienced in performance, including the special qualities supplied by the singer’s identity, which standard notation alone cannot convey. In the end, as Puliaschi was forced to concede, his public needed to hear him in person to be able to understand what was so remarkable about the cascades of quavers and semiquavers and the huge leaps of two or more octaves that the notation of his published songs attempt graphically to describe. Even more would it be necessary to have seen and heard singers like Valera and Brancaccio in the elite social environments they inhabited, in order to understand what it was about their acts of singing bass that so affected those who praised them, and how these acts contributed to the construction of the identities of all those involved, singers and listeners alike. Only by recognizing that the technical aspects of their performances (which we still label ‘virtuosity’) were in fact part of the mechanics of a complex social construct, can we begin to understand the significance and possible meanings of such acts of music-making.

40 Lorenzo Bianconi, Music in the Seventeenth Century, trans. David Bryant (Cambridge, 1987), p. 61.

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PART THREE Performance of Identity

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Chapter Seven

Poco preggio di soldato, ma anche di Corteggiano Nobility and honour The prime category of identity for the ruling class as a social group in sixteenthcentury Europe and on which they staked their claim to rule was their nobility. As Karen Neuschel succinctly puts it: The unique feature of the nobility as a political institution is the nobles’ claim to political power by virtue of their personal identity. Any attempt to understand them as political actors must simultaneously consider them as persons, not merely or even primarily as individual personalities, but collectively, as social beings united by distinct values, expectations and self regard.1

A number of historians have demonstrated how the nobility in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries still saw their status not solely in terms of a birthright (although this was to become increasingly emphasized in the course of the century) but rather as a quality that needed constantly to be reaffirmed through virtuous actions.2 This notion proceeds from a long-established chivalric ideal that birth is of less importance than deeds, a principle that is summed up in the fifteenth-century author Ghillebert de Lannoy’s dictum for a young prince that ‘you should understand that no one, of whatever rank he may be, can attain honour without virtue’.3 In that the fundamental uniting factor for male members of the nobility was the military life, the prime location for demonstrations of appropriate virtue was war (or its stylized forms, the duel or the tournament) and the nature of such actions was thus essentially violent. Montaigne expressed it succinctly: ‘The appropriate and only form of nobility … is the military life’.4

1 Neuschel, Word of Honor, p. 16; see also Frank Whigham, Ambition and Privilege: The Social Tropes of Elizabethan Courtesy Theory (Berkeley, 1984), especially pp. 36–9. 2 Vale, War and Chivalry, pp. 14–32; Ellery Schalk, From Valor to Pedigree: Ideas of Nobility in France in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Princeton, 1986), especially pp. 202–5. 3 Ghillebert de Lannoy, L’instruction d’un jeune prince, quoted in Vale, War and Chivalry, p. 14: ‘l’on doit sçavoir et entendre que nul, de quelque estat qu’il soit, sans vertu ne poeut parvenir à honneur’. 4 Michel de Montaigne, Essais (1580), vol. 2, ch. 7, p. 384, quoted in Schalk, From Valor to Pedigree, p. 11: ‘La forme propre, et seule essentielle, de noblesse … c’est la vocation militaire’.

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In the course of the sixteenth century, however, changing circumstances, particularly in the ways in which warfare was carried out, limited the possibilities for men to enact affirmations of nobility by fighting, and there was a reactionary tendency for the noble class to emphasize bloodline and wealth (without which a man would have to engage in ‘the vile and mechanical arts’5) as the foundations of their status. Virtue remains both as a consequence and an obligation of birth and riches, but, the argument runs, the enactment of heroic deeds no longer necessarily has in itself the power to bestow superiority.6 In this way, as the century progressed, men of noble birth tried to consolidate themselves as an elite class whose status was intrinsic and resistant to entryism.7 It is possible to see the effects of this process in the way that it allowed members of the nobility to diversify into professions other than the military (in which there were, anyway, diminishing roles for non-specialists to play) without risking loss of status. This process is also critical to the traditional but newly invigorated debate between Arms and Letters (which will be discussed later) and these changes are particularly pertinent to understanding Brancaccio’s experiences at the court of Ferrara in the early 1580s. Nevertheless, the process was a gradual one, and the military image continued to play a significant part in the construction of nobility, right through the following two centuries. Likewise, the performance of virtuous actions remained a critical procedure in the affirmation of honour or virtù, even if the location for these performances moved increasingly from the battlefield to the court. The nobles’ curriculum of virtuous deeds and their media of expression came to be focused somewhat anxiously on subtleties of comportment rather than displays of sheer violence. Frank Whigham explains the pressures which this places on the noble class: Elite status no longer rested upon the absolute, given base of birth, the received ontology of social being; instead it had increasingly become a matter of doing, and so of showing. Those who would maintain their privileged position now had to constitute their own fundamental difference from their ambitious inferiors, in their own minds as well as in those of their rivals.8

5 Annibale Romei, Discorsi (Venice, 1585, 1586), ed. Angelo Solerti in Ferrara e la corte estense nella seconda metà del secolo XVI: I ‘Discorsi’ di Annibale Romei (Città di Castello, 1891/1900), ‘della Nobiltà’, p. 196. 6 The struggle between the Duke of Gloucester’s sons, the legitimate Edgar and the bastard Edmund, in Shakespeare’s King Lear is a good example of the operation of these principles: when they finally fight a duel, Edgar carries no mark of identity and fights with his face covered, but his true nobility (derived from his pure blood) both assures and legitimizes his eventual victory. See also Wayne A. Rebhorn, Courtly Performances: Masking and Festivity in Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier (Detroit, 1978), p. 130. 7 There was a widespread and vigorous debate during the mid-sixteenth century about the problem of the definition of nobility, nowhere more actively than in Italy. Stefano Prandi, Il ‘Cortegiano’ ferrarese: I ‘Discorsi’ di Annibale Romei e la cultura nobiliare nel Cinquecento (Florence, 1990), pp. 218–20, lists 44 books on the subject of ‘nobiltà’ published between 1540 and 1599. 8 Whigham, Ambition and Privilege, p. 33.

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In the words of the historian Arlette Jouanna, ‘nobility is, above all, a manner of being and behaving’.9 Karen Neuschel’s ‘uniting factors’ of the nobility – the ‘distinct values, expectations and self regard’ – emphasizing as they do the sense of an enclosed and self-valuating society, can be subsumed under the single concept of ‘honour’. This, as Giovanbattista Possevino says in one of the most influential sixteenth-century works of courtly science, Dialogo dello honore (1553), pervades every element of life in this society: ‘nothing can be courtly unless it is honourable’.10 ‘Nobility’ and ‘honour’ are virtually interchangeable terms in sixteenth-century usage, and both words are used in a wide range of senses (both as states and as processes) that are worth teasing out. Arlette Jouanna suggests three main categories of definitions of the word ‘honour’ in the sixteenth-century context and they form the basis of what follows.11 The first is where honour can be understood as ‘metier’ or ‘estate’, characterized in the form of behaviour appropriate to a specific social station or role. In this sense, every member of society has a respective ‘honour’ that corresponds to the defining virtue of each collective within it, as in this explanation from David Rivault de Fleurance (1595): For there is nothing more honourable to the tailor than to make clothes which fit the body well; in the same way, the honour of a soldier is to fight valiantly, and that of the general to lead and to fight together with courage and skill … thus honour must first be measured in the conscience against the ‘swamp’ of society at large. Then distinction comes from the difference between metiers, positions or categories of profession according to which one person must be better clothed in one virtue, the other in another: the singer in music, the magistrate in justice and the gentleman in magnanimity, which encompasses all of these virtues ... yet all people have a greater or lesser degree of honour, according to their status.12

9 Arlette Jouanna, La France du XVIe siècle: 1483–1598 (Paris, 1996), p. 61: ‘la noblesse est avant tout une manière d’être et de se comporter’. 10 Giovanbattista Possevino, Dialogo dello honore (Venice, 1553), p. 260, quoted in Prandi, Il ‘Cortegiano’ ferrarese, p. 149: ‘d’ogni cosa si può esser cortesi tranne che dell’honore’. 11 Arlette Jouanna, ‘La notion d’honneur au XVIe siècle’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 15 (1968): 595–623. 12 David Rivault de Fleurance, Les estats esquels il est discouru du prince, du noble, et du tiers estat, conformément à nostre temps (Lyon, 1595), pp. 317, 321–2: ‘Car il n’est rien plus honorable au Taileur, que faire l’abit bien proportionnement au corps. De mesme l’honneur du soldat est de valereusement combattre; & celuy du chef conduire & combattre ensemble avec courage & dextérité … Donc l’honneur doit premièrement estre mesuré à la conscience comme à la bauge universelle: Puis la distinction vient de la différence des mestiers, vocations ou genres de vies, selon lesquels les uns doivent estre plus habilles en une vertu, les autres en une autre, le chantre en la musicque, le Magistrat en la justice, le Gentillhomme en la magnanimité, qui les comprent toutes … Mais encores que toutes gens ayant portion en l’honneur petite ou grande, selon leur degree’.

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Each of these vocations denotes a specific and essentially exclusive set of distinguishing skills, expressed as a ‘doing’, rather than as a ‘given’. An individual of lesser degree may be more gifted in the profession of one virtue appropriate to their station (for example, the singer) while a gentleman must be master of an allembracing ‘magnanimity’. But the nobleman is the only member of society who ‘makes profession of honour in the first and last instance and neither owns to, nor seeks any of these virtues as his particular metier, [rather] he is called, simply, “man of honour”’.13 Jouanna’s second group of definitions deals with the more subjective: it encompasses esteem and reputation and consists of ‘the effect produced in the consciousness of another by the spectacle of a quality or action conforming to a socially approved model’.14 The production of such an effect presupposes an action done and observed and then spoken or written about so that it generates reputation. Jouanna adopts a useful semiotic model in her analysis of the process by which honour is generated: ‘Honour, in effect only exists in the relation between an actor and a witness; it is essentially an inter-subjective reality, the fruit of a meeting between an action and a public. If the public is absent, it is no longer possible to have honour’.15 According to this formulation, honour itself has no ontological status; rather it is a function of responses to the actions done by the one seeking honour. Thus the ‘deeds’ themselves do not constitute the causes of honour, but rather they are proofs of it; consequently, honour needs regularly to be reaffirmed through a process of display and recognition. This point is strongly made in Girolamo Mutio’s Il duello: ‘and it is necessary for one who wishes to be received among gentlemen to do deeds worthy of gentlemen, and moreover to have made honourable proofs of the person more than once’.16 Karen Neuschel shows how honour is a function of recognition within a particular community, something which anthropologists and historians find persistent in many types of closed groups; as she says,

13 Ibid., p. 322: ‘toutes fois par ce qu’entre tous le seul Noble faict profession d’honneur en première & dernière instance, & ne considère ou cherche rien en son mestier, que soubs ce nom & but, il est dit simplement “homme d’honneur”’. 14 Jouanna, ‘La notion d’honneur aux XVIe siècle’ : 607–8: ‘l’effet produit dans la conscience autrui par le spectacle d’une qualité ou d’un acte conforme à un modèle socialement approuvé’. 15 Ibid., p. 608: ‘L’honneur, en effet, ne se conçoit que dans la relation entre un regardé et un regardant: c’est essentiellement une réalité intersubjective … L’honneur … est le fruit d’une rencontre entre un acte et un public; si l’on supprime le public, il ne peut plus y avoir d’honneur’. 16 Mutio, Il duello, fol. 81v: ‘Et è necessario che a volere esser fra i cavallieri ricevuto, si facciano opere degne di cavallieri. Si vuole adunque più di una volta haver fatto honorata pruova della persona’. The importance of repetition in the affirmation of noble identity is explored further in Richard Wistreich, ‘Real Basses, Real Men: Virtù and Virtuosity in the Construction of Noble Male Identity in Late Sixteenth-Century Italy’, Gesang zur Laute: Trossingen Jahrbuch für Renaissancemusik, 2 (2002): 59–80.

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It is recognition of these proofs by the community – the visibility of honour – that counts. A principal motive of behaviour then, is not necessarily to do ‘objectively’ honourable deeds, but to have one’s behaviour judged honourable. The distinction is an important one: one implication is that seemingly trivial, commonplace situations can become charged with the possibility of displaying or impugning honour. Another related implication … is that a member of a community of honour is preoccupied with the notice of his fellows.17

‘Recognition’ is emphasized by the Sicilian Girolamo Camarata in his investigation of the definition of honour dedicated to the Spanish chancellor Ruy Gómez, Prince of Eboli, in 1567. Honour is a sign; it is made by the one who does the honouring and is not an intrinsic property of the one who claims to be ‘honourable’. Manifestations of the sign can take one of three forms: ‘vocalizations’ (as in declarations of praise); ‘actions’ (such as standing up, bowing, etc.) and ‘works’ (for example, the publication of eulogies or conferral of honours such as trionfi).18 Indeed, Jouanna’s third and final component of honour consists of ‘All the exterior signs by which collective or individual esteem is demonstrated’.19 Such outward signs are acquired and can be in the form of words: names, ranks and offices and forms of address which denote respect and status – the issue of names and titles and the roles or personae which they signify was an important one for Brancaccio, as a number of specific incidents in his story illustrate. Likewise, the precision of formulaic salutations and greetings as well as the more effusive professions of respect and amity that sometimes take up large portions of sixteenth-century written exchanges are by no means haphazard, nor can it be that they are to be taken as ‘understood’; otherwise surely not so much ink or time would be expended on them. Neuschel warns: These exchanges cannot be dismissed as being merely the ‘style’ of noble relationships, distinct from their ‘substance’. It proves impossible … to make hard-and-fast distinctions between empty exchanges of words or objects and supposedly significant exchanges of loyalty and favour.20

Outward signals of honouring can be kinaesthetic rather than linguistic, as Camarata affirms. For example, the figure of Camillo Gualengo in Annibale Romei’s Discorsi (a book in which Brancaccio also appears and which will feature later in this discussion) gives a set of clear examples in his explanation of ‘acquired honour: to

17 Neuschel, Word of Honour, p. 77. 18 Girolamo Camerata da Randazzo Siciliano, Trattato dell’honor vero et del vero dishonore (Bologna, 1567), ‘Delle specie dell’honore, e loro definitioni’, fols 6–8v: ‘non sarà se non bene dividere l’honore, quale essendo segno può esser fatto o con voci, o senza, & se senza voci in due maniere, o con attioni, o con opere [It will be as well to categorize honour, which, being a sign, can be made either with voices, or without, and if without in two ways: either with actions or works]’. 19 ‘tous les signes extérieurs par lesquels se manifeste l’estime collective ou particulière’; Jouanna, ‘La notion d’honneur aux XVIe siècle’, 611. 20 Neuschel, Word of Honour, p. 72.

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give the place, bow, to kisse the hand, the hemme of the vesture, the knee, the foote, putting off the hat and suchlike’.21 Thus the innate elements of honour derived from noble identity (that with which one is born, or which is expressed by estate or role) are, in fact, inextricably intertwined with the extrinsic, or outward signs, which are functions of esteem performed or enacted by oneself and by others. Esteem must be won through witnessed acts of virtù or by reputation, which in turn requires verbal or written report for its dissemination. Honour is not so much a fixed state as a dynamic, discursive process. Two different contemporary definitions capture well the sense of this; the first stresses the importance of the regardant and the second focuses on the deep satisfaction which accrues to the regardé when the dynamic system functions positively: You ask me advisedly what I mean by honour. I will tell you: it is a certain recognition imprinted first in the minds of men, then represented by gestures and words going from mouth to mouth and giving testimony of the virtù, excellence and loyalty of someone.22 True honour is the brilliance of a beautiful and virtuous action that rebounds to our credit in the sight of those with whom we live, and through reflection within ourselves, brings us evidence of what others think of us, which results in great satisfaction of the soul.23

If, as Jouanna proposes, honour is a product (at least partially) of the way its signs are read and perceived, to what extent then is any one individual actually able to play any part in the construction of her or his own identity in the monolithically encoded society of the Renaissance nobility? Ronald Weissman emphasizes that the acting individual in any society manipulates, and is not just manipulated by, the social relations he or she enters into; also, because all societies are constructs, we

21 Romei, Discorsi, pp. 85–6: ‘L’onore acquistato: il cedere il luogo, l’inchinarsi, il basciar la mano, il lembo della veste, il ginocchio, il piede, il cavarsi la berretta’, trans. as The Courtiers Academie: Comprehending Seven Severall Days Discourses: Wherein be Discussed, Seven Noble and Important Arguments, Worthy by all Gentlemen to be Perused … Originally Written in Italian by Count Hannibal Romei, a Gentleman of Ferrara, and Translated into English by I.K. [John Kepers] (London, 1598), sig. M2. 22 Louis Ernaud, Discours de la noblesse et des justes moyens d’y parvenir (Caen, 1585), fols 15v–16r, in Jouanna, ‘La notion d’honneur au XVIe siècle’, p. 616: ‘On me dira, qu’appellez-vous doncques Honneur, à bon escient? Je vous le diray. C’est une congnoissance certaine, emprainte premierement dans les esprits des hommes, puis representée par gestes et paroles, allant de bouche en bouche, et rendant tesmoignage de la vertu, excellence et preud’hommie de quelqu’un’. 23 Guillaume du Vair, La philosophie morale et stoïques (1598), p. 266, in Jouanna, ‘La notion d’honneur au XVIe siècle’, p. 616: ‘Le vray honneur est l’esclat d’une belle et vertueuse action, qui rejallit de nostre conscience à la vue de ceux avec qui nous vivons, et par une réflexion en nous-mesmes, nous apporte un tesmoignage de ce que les autres croyent de nous, qui se tourne en un grand contentement d’esprit’.

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should remember that there are no objective ‘facts’, but rather, that ‘self’ is located in terms of the relations between members of a society.24 Peter Marsh, who proposes an ethogenic approach to the study of court society, suggests that ‘the major focus of interest, and hence the manner in which social life is to be rendered explicable, is with how the individual creates in other members of his collective certain attitudes and expectations encapsulated in his reputation and the character attributed to him’.25 Ethogenic methodology works by highlighting the perspective of an ‘insider’ within a social group, in order ‘to reveal what it might be like to occupy a position within a social world from a participant’s point of view’. Marsh studied what he terms the ‘moral career’ of an individual member of a gang of young men united by a taste for violence at football matches (which is not, perhaps, a wholly inappropriate model for the study of the society in which Brancaccio’s identity was primarily constructed). In his conclusions, Marsh notes: certain social collectives come into being for the primary purpose of providing arenas for expressive order … our attention is … drawn to the features of the expressive order which provide for social identities, for the marking of respect, for reputation and the recognition of personal worth.

The concept of ‘expressive order’, combining as it does the notion of ‘active showing’ with the acknowledgement of the acceptable forms in which such ‘demonstrations’ are constrained, is indeed pertinent to the Renaissance court and to the battlefield, both of which can be seen as arenas for the production of honour. Marsh concludes that personal identity arises within the context of such social collectives ‘as the individual works through his social projects’.26 As I hope to show, Brancaccio’s own ‘crisis of identity’ in the latter part of his career seems to have arisen as he attempted to pursue his own ‘social projects’, relying on an understanding of the prevailing expressive order that turned out to be out of step with the changes that his social collective (in this case, the court of Ferrara) was being subjected to at the time. The performance of honour In an ideal chivalric society it would in theory be possible for a purely spontaneous act of virtuous or valorous behaviour to be noticed by the subject’s peers and for honour to be equally spontaneously generated by it. In an equally ideal, but (in the sixteenth century) strongly present world, an omniscient God rewards such behaviour in the next. But divine glory is not immediate, and on the crowded battlefield or in the princely residence, chances must be seized and ‘spontaneity’ has to be simulated. To this end, the court in particular can be seen as existing purely as a location for the

24 Ronald Weissman, ‘Reconstructing Renaissance Sociology: The “Chicago School” and the Study of Renaissance Society’, in Richard C. Trexler (ed.), Persons in Groups: Social Behaviour as Identity Formation in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (Binghamton, NY, 1985), p. 41. 25 Peter Marsh, ‘An Ethogenic Perspective’, ibid., p. 18. 26 Ibid., p. 27.

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generation and interchange of the currency of honour, along the lines proposed by Marsh. Torquato Tasso, in his celebrated cynical dialogue on the court, Il Malpigio, says precisely this in his role as the ‘Neapolitan stranger [Forestiero Napoletano]’: ‘The court, then, is a gathering of men come together for [the sake of] honour [La corte dunque è congregazion d’uomini raccolti per onore]’.27 There is no shortage of practical advice in the literature of scienza cavaleresco on how to accumulate the necessary coinage with which to become a player in this society. Federico Fregoso in Il libro del cortegiano offers the following: For under our rules, it should be understood, that when the courtier finds himself involved in a skirmish or pitched battle, or something of that nature, he should arrange to withdraw from the main body and accomplish the bold and notable exploits he has to perform in as small a company as possible and in view of the noblest and most eminent men of the army, and, above all, in the presence, or if possible, under the very eyes, of the prince he is serving. For is it certainly right to exploit the things one does well.28

In the context of the actual horror, violence and sheer confusion of the real battle situations in which soldiers found themselves in the sixteenth century, this seems like the most naive fantasy of an ‘armchair warrior’: the courtier who just happens to ‘find himself’ at a battle or in a skirmish, who should ‘discretely arrange’ to stand apart from the crowd, and to ensure that if possible, the king himself should be watching before he does some ‘bold and notable exploits’. And yet there is evidence for the fact that the choreographing of such ideal moments was regarded as possible even on a battlefield, which, despite the enormous technological and strategic changes that occurred during the course of the century, could nevertheless still serve as much as a stage for displays of chivalric fantasy as the court palace itself. For example, Blaise de Monluc, the soldier and autobiographer whose career and experiences have so much in common with Giulio Cesare Brancaccio’s, wrote of his early career: ‘Now during this war, which lasted 22 months, I had very beautiful opportunities for my apprenticeship, and I put myself normally in all the places where I could think to acquire reputation at whatever price’.29 27 Torquato Tasso, Il Malpigio, overo De la corte, in Tasso’s Dialogues, A Selection, ed. and (parallel) trans. Carnes Lord and Dain A. Trafton (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1982), p. 64. 28 Castiglione, Il libro del cortegiano, ed. Carbazzi, p. 123; trans. Bull, p. 115: ‘Pur sotto la nostra regula si potrà ancor intendere, che ritrovandosi il cortegiano nella scaramuzza o fatto d’arme o battaglia di terra o in altre cose tali, dee discretamente procurar di appartarsi dalla moltitudine e quelle cose segnalate ed ardite che ha da fare, farle con minor compagnia che po ed al conspetto de tutti i più nobili ed estimati omini che siano nell’esercito, e massimamente alla presenzia e, se possibil è, inanzi agli occhi proprii del suo re o di quel signore a cui serve; perché in vero è ben conveniente valersi delle cose ben fatte’. 29 Monluc, Commentaires, quoted in Robert J. Knecht, ‘Military Autobiographies in Sixteenth-Century France’, in J. R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (eds), War, Literature and the Arts in Sixteenth-century Europe (London, 1989), p. 10: ‘Or pendant ceste guerre, qui dura vingt-deux mois, j’ay de trés belles choses pour mon apprentissage, et me trouvay ordinairement en tous les lieux où je pourois penser acquerir de la reputation, à quelque pris que ce fust’.

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In this light we can see that Brancaccio’s action at the siege of Calais in 1558 was a textbook achievement. Many aspects of the episode were fortuitous for him and his own success was accomplished as part of one of the most celebrated coups de grâce by his commander and patron François, Duke of Guise, who exhibited extraordinary panache in the execution of the whole enterprise. Guise flouted accepted conventions by launching an attack in the depths of winter, taking his opponents by surprise and then besieging the town not from the landward side but from the sand dunes by the sea, thereby displaying notable virtuosity as a strategist. The feasibility of such an attack had been noted by Senarpont, Governor of Boulogne, and by Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France, who had observed during the negotiations at Marcq in June 1555 that the garrison was poorly defended and the fortifications in disrepair.30 But once the Constable had been ignominiously captured by the Spanish at the disastrous battle of Saint-Quentin, Guise exploited the chance to consolidate his pole position as the king’s right-hand man. A contemporary memoir explained: ‘The said Monsieur de Guise then took this plan forward, revealed it to the king, imploring His Majesty not to tell anyone else and begging to be given permission to undertake the enterprise, which the king was pleased to do’.31 The duke had thereby ensured that his actions would come as a surprise (both to his enemies and to his compatriots) and would take place in full view, as it were, of his king. On 1 January 1558 Guise arrived with 29,000 troops at the first of the outlying forts in the ‘Pale’ of Calais, which encompassed an area of several square miles of marshy territory surrounding the town, and within three days the artillery was in place. A breach was made in the seaward wall in the remarkably short space of two more days, and Guise’s troops swarmed into the town to take possession of England’s last foothold in Continental Europe.32 Guise had not only adopted an unusual and tricky strategy but had also achieved his goal with remarkable ease. The episode has the hallmarks of a conscious manifestation of two related Renaissance concepts normally associated more with the production of artistic artefacts or courtly behaviour than with military actions: difficultà and sprezzatura. In his study of sixteenth-century mannerism, John Shearman cites Lorenzo de’ Medici’s commentary on his own sonnets, in which the latter proposed that this poetic form was the equal of all others because of its difficultà, arguing that according to the ‘philosophers’, virtù consists in the conquest of difficulty.33 The ability to be able to overcome difficulty with apparent ease in the exercise of virtù was famously expressed by Castiglione in the word sprezzatura, which was elevated as a sine qua 30 Knecht, The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France, p. 274. 31 François, Duke of Guise, Mémoires-journaux de François de Lorraine duc d’Aumale et de Guise, in Joseph François Michaud and Jean Joseph François Poujoulat (eds), Mémoires pour l’histoire de France depuis le XIIIe siècle jusqu’à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, ser. 1, vol. 6 (Paris, 1836), p. 328: ‘le dit sieur de Guyse donc mit cest entreprince en avant, le faict entendre au Roy, suppliant Sa Majesté n’en communiquer à nul aultre, et la supplia luy permettre de tenter ceste entreprise: ce que le Roy trouva bon’. 32 Oman, A History of the Art of War, p. 269, and C.S.L. Davies, ‘England and the French War, 1557–9’, in Jennifer Loach and Robert Tittler (eds), The Mid-Tudor Polity c.1540–1560 (London, 1980), p. 169. 33 John Shearman, Mannerism (Harmondsworth, 1967), p. 21.

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non of ideal courtly accomplishment. Both difficultà and sprezzatura contribute to the production of what Shearman identifies as the essential component of mannerist art: meraviglia. It was precisely this word that the Ferrarese ambassador Giulio Alvarotti used when he described the Duke of Guise’s achievement in taking Calais (see below).34 The assault had taken only six days and immediately the full machinery of ‘reputation generation’ was set in motion. Even before he had secured the town, Guise was already writing letters reporting the victory and foreign ambassadors soon communicated the news to their respective employers.35 On 19 January Henry II made a triumphant entry into the captured town: ‘This fine exploit accomplished, it put all of France in good hope; the king himself rejoiced exceedingly and gave thanks to God, particularly in a procession and public act of devotion’.36 Guise was hailed throughout Europe, and the victory became part of his mythology.37 The entire process from inception through execution to acclamation was a model of meraviglia, whose absolutely pivotal central focus both in terms of moment and of place might be said to have been the first breach in the wall and the first attacker to enter it; and the man who had managed to place himself at precisely this apex and, most importantly, to be noticed and reported for having done so, was none other than Giulio Cesare Brancaccio. He could barely have followed Castiglione’s advice more closely. Distinguishing the foolhardy cavaliero from the wise, Federico Fregoso continues: And I recall in the past having known men who, though very able, were extremely stupid in this regard and would as soon risk their lives to capture a flock of sheep as in being the first to scale the walls of a besieged town; but this is not how our courtier will behave if he bears in mind the motive that leads him to war, which ought to be honour pure and simple.38

Another chronicle of the victory recorded: 34 Ibid., pp. 144–6; Maria Rika Maniates, Mannerism in Italian Music and Culture, 1530–1630 (Manchester, 1979), pp. 214–15. 35 A list of letters he wrote at this time is in David Potter, ‘The Duc de Guise and the Fall of Calais, 1557–58’, English Historical Review, 118 (1983): 495. 36 Guise, Mémoires-Journaux, p. 329: ‘Ce bel exploit exécuté remict toute la France en bon espoir; le Roy mesme en fut extresmement resjouy, en rendit grace à Dieu, tant en particulier qu’en procession et action de grace publique’. 37 For example, Ronsard describes the singing of epic verses in praise of Guise by the three Ferrabosco brothers at Meudon, the palace of François’s brother, Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine, in a poem written in late autumn 1558: ‘ou de fredons plus haux / de Guine et Calais retonnent les assaux, / victoires de ton frère’, quoted in Brooks, Courtly Song in Late Sixteenth-Century France, p. 291. See also Joachim Du Bellay, Hymne au roy sur la prinse de Calais (Paris, 1558). 38 Castiglione, Il libro del cortegiano, p. 123; trans., pp. 115–16: ‘Ed io ricordomi aver già conosciuti di quelli, che … metteano la vita a pericolo per andar a pigliar una mandra di pecore, come per esser i primi che montassero le mura d’una terra combattuta; il che non farà il nostro cortegiano, se terrà a memoria la causa che lo conduce alla guerra, che dee esser solamente l’onore’.

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The Duke of Guise, in order meanwhile not to lose time and to take advantage of the situation, sent the sire Brancazzo and others to reconnoitre the breach in the castle. And seeing that it was achievable, he sent the sire Grandmond with the hundred musketeers, supported by pikemen led by the sire Marshal Strozzi with two or three hundred other soldiers hard on their heels.39

Already on 9 January, the day of the breach itself, Giulio Alvarotti, Alfonso II d’Este’s ambassador in Paris, wrote: And this aforesaid [François, Duke of Guise] climbed up himself and going with the vanguard in such a manner that it was seen by all the others – whether great, middling or minor – as a readiness, bravura and resolution to fight and to die or to do something of worth, not to say advantage, such that the king is satisfied that the facts and the circumstances constitute a miracle. Signor Giulio Brancaccio and another Neapolitan gentleman went ahead of all the others on to the battery and planted a staff.40

A month later, Vincenzo Buoncambi, ambassador to the Duke of Parma, reported: ‘They say that the King of France has written with his own hand that he received Calais from Giulio Cesare Brancaccio, who was the first to climb onto the walls, and that this is greatly noted’.41 An analysis of Buoncambi’s sentence shows how richly its language conveys the honour that has accrued to Brancaccio in this transaction: ‘they’ (others with access to privileged knowledge); ‘say’ (word of mouth); ‘the King of France’ (the one who has greatest power to confer esteem); ‘has written’ (word of pen, the more permanent record); ‘with his own hand’ (authenticity and immediate personal action); ‘that he received from Giulio Cesare Brancaccio’ (exaggeration, or ‘spotlighting’ for effect – it was actually François, Duke of Guise who can be said to have delivered Calais to Henry II; statement of Brancaccio’s own name); ‘the first to 39 Discours de la prinse de Calais, faicte par monseigneur le duc de Guise, pair, et grand chamberlain de France, lieutenant general du roy (Tours, 1558), ed. L. Cimber and F. Danjou in Archives curieuses de l’histoire de France, 30 vols, ser. 1, vol. 3 (Paris, 1833), pp. 243–4: ‘[Le] seigneur de Guise … pour ne perdre temps cependant et pour servir de l’occasion qui se présentoit, envoya recognoistre la dicte bresche du dict chasteau, tant par le sieur de Brancazzo et autres. Et voyant qu’elle estoyt raisonnable, fait advancer le dit sieur de Grandmond avec les dictz cent harquebouziers, soustenuz d’autant de corseletz, que menoit le dict sieur mareschal Strozzi, et deuz ou trois cens aultres soldatz à leurs tallons’. 40 Modena AS, Ambasciatori di Francia, Busta 34, Giulio Alvarotti (Paris) to Duke Ercole d’Este II (Ferrara), 9 January 1558: ‘e questo detto si levorno da se stessi, et andorno fra tutt’i primi di maniera che in loro et in tutti li altri tanto grandi che mediocri et picoli s’è veduto una allacrità, et una bravura et risolutione di combattere et di morire, o, di far qualche cosa di buona che non se ne può dir’ d’avantaggio, di maniera che ’l Re et del fatto et delle circonstante et satisfatto ch’è una maraviglia. Il Signor Giulio Brancacio et un altro gentilhuomo Napolitano … andorno innanti a tutti li altri su la batteria et vi piantorno un bastone’. 41 Parma AS, Carteggio farnesiano estero, Roma, Busta 22, Vincenzo Buoncambi (Paris) to the Duke of Parma and Piacenza (Rome), 5 February 1556/7, in Benedetto Croce, ‘Un capitano italiano’, pp. 65–6: ‘Dicano che il Re di Francia ha scritto di sua mano che riceve Cales da Giulio Cesar Brancatio, il quale è stato il primo di montar sopra la muriglia et che si è segnalato grandamente’.

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climb up’ (separate, active); ‘greatly noted’ (generation of reputation). Added to this is the fact that the information is being conveyed to another prince, one who may already have known Brancaccio personally or at least by repute.42 Thus extrinsic or acquired honour travels and its nature changes depending on who is active in the process of dissemination, what they know and what spin they choose to put on the facts. Telling stories The process by which the written word determines the generation of honour can be observed at work in the different accounts of another of Brancaccio’s battlefield acts, his killing of a Spanish soldier whom he believed to have insulted his companion, one Ottaviano, whilst on campaign near Halle. As we have seen, the details of events were related to Philip II some twenty years after the fact by Cardinal Granvelle, who described how Brancaccio was condemned to death by the emperor, the sentence then commuted to life imprisonment in the Castel Nuovo in Naples thanks to the intervention of certain rogadores, and how he was released on licence by the viceroy, Pedro de Toledo. Cardinal Granvelle’s account was written with the intention of derogating Brancaccio and casting him as untrustworthy, a braggart and liar, traitor and spy. In contrast to this, Luigi Dentice’s letter of dedication to Brancaccio of the first edition of his Due dialoghi della musica (Appendix 2, Doc. 3) puts the story in a completely different light and to a different use. For Dentice, the purpose was to appropriate Brancaccio’s honour in the hope that it would shed some of its influence on the book and its author. But it is also a kind of trick, for as the writer (and thus the wielder of the rhetoric), he can first create the form of that honour and then turn it to reflect propitiously on his opus. First Dentice explains Brancaccio’s absence from court in the past years as a function of a ‘pure’ pursuit of honour, harnessing a conventional anti-court trope: ‘From where, in these past years, you left the ambitions of court and continual thoughts of it for the sole desire of honour in the wars’. And then: It occurred to me to give you [the dedication] knowing for sure that just as the Pythagoreans, wishing to calm with sleep the thoughts of the day, used certain songs in order to become more peaceful and relaxed and waking again they purged the confusion and stupor of sleep with certain other melodies, likewise you have already shown through your rare virtue to be like those ancients, who with sword and judgement merit perpetual praise, having exercised yourself strenuously in the wars and found yourself in prison, for having in Germany, despite three thousand soldiers marching in formation and on your side only your valour, killed the enemy of your fellow Signor Ottaviano (honoured by all Italy). Now you can amuse yourself with this little work of mine, which merits that it be dedicated by me to you; because you are as involved in the study [of music] as you are in my soul, and because of the judgement that you will be able to give of it, you being

42 Brancaccio had connections to the Farnese and may have tried to enter their service in 1548 (see Chapter 1 and Appendix 2, Doc. 1). Later, he claimed to have met with the Duke of Parma in 1571 and was mentioned in correspondence from Rome in 1574 (see Chapter 3).

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such [an authority] in this science that not only is there no one who is your superior, but, perhaps, anyone who is your equal.43

The comparison between Brancaccio and the ancients, not only as a warrior but as a singer who shares the sophisticated learning of the followers of Pythagoras, is a special version of the traditional praise of those famous warriors of the past who diverted themselves after the battle with writing and reading, the masters of both Arms and Letters.44 Here Dentice pictures Brancaccio, after fighting strenuously all day, entertaining himself with singing and the study of a treatise on enharmonic music. But Brancaccio is not in his tent but rather in prison, a fact massaged by Dentice, who neither praises nor condemns but merely provides a (seriously farfetched) statement of the reason for his incarceration.45 Two further documents which are closely connected to the episode should be considered alongside these two written versions of Brancaccio’s killing of the Spanish soldier. One is the petition written by Ferrante Gonzaga to Cardinal Granvelle asking him to intervene to spare Brancaccio from having to return to Naples after he had already been released by the viceroy, and instead to be allowed to serve the emperor in the field; the other is Brancaccio’s own Curriculum vitae. Neither document makes any mention of the murder at all, just as Granvelle made no reference to Gonzaga’s petition (which naturally would not have served his purpose of stigmatizing Brancaccio) except by way of a reference to the fact that he believed Brancaccio to have been lying about his desire to serve the emperor.46 Ferrante Gonzaga, for his part, was convinced of Brancaccio’s innocence of any crime, presumably accepting his argument that the killing of the (foreign) soldier was a justifiable defence of honour. He referred to him in conventional but warm terms: ‘As the friend that I am to him, he has appointed me as his intercessor to this end, asking me to intervene with Your Highness, which I could not deny him due to our friendship, as his request seems to me to be just and he worthy of help’.47 Brancaccio could have used the same argument in his Curriculum vitae to place himself in a positive light, but instead he glossed over it entirely, choosing instead to give an account of his mad-cap visit to England in the hope of getting a pardon from Philip II – whom he could not have met in any case, as the king had not yet arrived in England – which was distinctly economical with the truth.48 At the point in his

43 Dentice, Due dialoghi della musica, [p. 2] (see Appendix 2, Doc. 3). 44 The traditional examples are rehearsed by Count Lodovico in Book I, section 43 of Castiglione, Il libro del cortegiano, pp. 100–1; 89–90. 45 Dentice’s motives for mentioning the incident at all are unclear. He may have used it as an example of Spanish injustice against a fellow Neapolitan. 46 Simancas AG, Legajo E 1063-26, fol. 29, Cardinal Granvelle (Naples) to Philip II (Spain), 26 June 1573. 47 Madrid PR, II, 2321, fol. 130r, in Cardamone, ‘Orlando di Lasso and Pro-French Factions in Rome’, p. 46: ‘come amico, che io gli sono, ha eletto me per suo intecessore a ciò, pregandomi a farne Vostra Signora questo officio, il che non ho potuto negarli così per l’amicizia nostra, come per parermi giusto il desiderio suo, et degner d’esser aiuto’. 48 Curriculum vitae, fol. 132v (Appendix 2, Doc. 1).

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career at which he wrote this testimony, he certainly would not have wanted to draw attention to the fact of his having ‘slipped bail’ and become a traitor in 1554. Brancaccio’s actions and their consequences clearly had high profiles anyway, but these differing written accounts of them show particularly the crucial role of the regardant who construes and mediates their meaning according to his own particular agenda. It is the record of such constructions which performs the actual political work. Both these episodes from Brancaccio’s military life in ‘active service’ also demonstrate that almost any action or location was potentially imbued with the power to construct social meaning and thus identity, depending on the ways in which an incident or episode was enacted, observed and reported.49 If even the relatively random processes of war, with all their unpredictability and mess, could be harnessed to yield such symbolic meanings, how much more possible must this have been inside the stylized and anxiously theatrical arena of the court, where ‘it is explicitly from the unstable public arena that courtly identity is to be derived’?50 Warrior and Courtier Inevitably, any investigation of the society in which Brancaccio lived and performed will begin with, and often return to, Baldassare Castiglione’s Il libro del cortegiano. At one point in the book, Count Lodovico seeks to lay the foundations of a definition of the male courtier: ‘But to come to specific details, I judge that the first and true profession of a courtier must be that of arms’, which he expands later on, when speaking of Julius Caesar as an example of a warrior with intellectual skills, especially in literary eloquence. But he reiterates that arms should be the courtier’s chief profession ‘and that all his other fine accomplishments serve merely as adornments’.51 Here there is a clear hierarchy: the métier is ‘courtier’, the profession of arms is its principal manifestation; but courtiership also entails other ‘fine accomplishments’ (which become the subject matter for a large proportion of the book) that however ornamental, are nevertheless critical to the ‘completion’ of the construction. Castiglione’s work naturally articulates his ‘interest in defining an ideal type, depicting an ideal society in operation’52 and yet it was also communicated in a curriculum of concrete rules of conduct to which sixteenth-century courtiers throughout Europe assiduously looked for advice on how to live their lives, and it is thus perhaps not surprising that not only broad themes, but also the minutiae of conversations and incidents from Il libro del cortegiano can be found reverberating 49 It is also evidence of the common codes of the pan-European community of the nobility in which Brancaccio moved, that although effectively stateless after his exile from Naples, he was able to carry his reputation and identity from place to place, even though there were occasional tensions and misunderstandings to resolve along the way, as his career illustrates. See also John Adamson, The Princely Courts of Europe (London, 1999), p. 19. 50 Whigham, Ambition and Privilege, p. 37. 51 Castiglione, Il libro del cortegiano, pp. 72, 103: ‘Ma per venire a qualche particularità, estimo che la principale e vera profession del cortegiano debba esser quella dell’arme ... e l’altre bone condizioni tutte per ornamento di quelle’. 52 Rebhorn, Courtly Performances, p. 13.

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within the narrative discourses of ‘actual’ noble men and women, including Brancaccio. Brancaccio’s adult life was occupied virtually continuously with the ‘profession of arms’ and it is in the active sense of the word ‘profession’ that he almost always described himself in writing. When, in 1572, he tried to begin the process of modifying his career from hands-on fighter to that of adviser and theorist, he was at pains to stress how ‘real’ his credentials were, based on actual physical participation in the violent nitty-gritty of war, which he saw as his advantage over his competitors. In the Curriculum vitae he made a valiant (but only partially successful) effort to stick rigorously to facts as he listed the battles he had fought in and named the commanders under whom he had served. Perhaps reading back over the document and seeing its tendency to what he himself described as ‘prolissità’, he made a further distillation of what he hoped would be the eye-catching essentials in a blunt marginal gloss: ‘Numbers of wars in which Giulio Brancaccio found himself: 23; six [pitched] battles, with another infinite number of similar armed encounters and engagements; taking of territory [?presumably sieges]: more than one hundred.53 This Curriculum vitae was, as we have seen, one of his earlier efforts in the process of converting from the profession of arms in ‘real time’ – expressed by doing – to the profession of arms in the form of verbal and written discourse, which depended more and more on the recall and historicizing of past experiences. But for Brancaccio, this change in style of manifestation by no means meant a change in his primary identity as ‘soldier’. His own writing and speaking are simply other ways of performing self-image in addition to ‘doing’ valorous deeds. Similarly, the ‘wars, battles and similar armed encounters’ had been for him the theatres in which he had enacted his soldiering, or, in the vocabulary of courtly literature, in which he had expressed his virtù. The deeds he had performed on the field of battle retain their potency as signs of honour, not only in the written form of his marginal list, but also in the visual record of scars inscribed on his body.54 There are numerous reiterations of this catalogue in one form or another scattered throughout Brancaccio’s other works (as we have seen) that show not only a profound sense of his own superiority as an expert, based on his empirical experience, but also an apparent impatience and incomprehension of the failure of his peers to respond to his virtù. In various accounts of his career, Brancaccio gives precise figures for the number of years in which he has been in active service and although his field of operations is by this time purely on paper, he has no hesitation in still calling himself both ‘soldato’ and ‘guerrier’. In focusing on writing and speaking about himself and his past actions, Brancaccio also (theoretically at least) takes greater control of the mediation process by which his actions are ‘processed’ through discourse.

53 Brancaccio, Curriculum vitae, fol. 132r (Appendix 2, Doc. 1): ‘Numero delle guerre dove s’è trovato Giulio Brancaccio No. 23; battaglie 6, con altri infiniti rincontri simili e fatti d’Arme, et prese di terra più di 100’. 54 In his Discorso addressed to Padre Possevino (Milan BA, D. 191 inf., fols 176–179v), Brancaccio specifies these as ‘three good gunshot wounds, one spear wound, not to mention other minor blows [tre buone archibugiate; et una lanciata, senza l’altre minor percosse]’.

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In Chapter 3 I traced the process of Brancaccio’s readmittance to the court of Ferrara in 1580, and particularly the tone of his two letters to Duke Alfonso, which, to say the least, appear to stretch the limits of an appropriate deference. Although Brancaccio’s circumstances were basically desperate he still maintained an extraordinarily combative air. Before launching into a detailed demand for money to cover his expenses in going to Venice to have his book printed, he opened with a neatly turned rhetorical display of wounded pride at the duke’s treatment of him: I do not shy away from mentioning two things which I hold as greatly offensive to me. The first, that in such a long time Your Highness has not done me the favour of reading the first book of my Caesar, in order to know your opinion so much desired by me, so highly do I prize the importance of your judgement; and the other, that you took me for so a bad courtier that I had not known how to behave at Belriguardo in the manner appropriate to a place of pleasure and not of business … I [conclude] that I remain little prized not only as a soldier but also as a courtier.55

Brancaccio’s conscious differentiation of ‘soldato’ and ‘cortegiano’ in his letter is interesting. First of all, as far as he was concerned, his having written a chapter of commentaries on his namesake’s De bello gallico was just something he did as a ‘soldato’, no different presumably from laying siege to a town or leading a cavalry charge, and he saw Alfonso’s failure to read the first chapter and to comment on it as a sign that he is ‘little prized as a soldier’, rather than, as we might perhaps expect, ‘as a writer’ or ‘as a scholar’. This will be pursued in more detail in the discussion of ‘Arms and Letters’ in a later chapter, but is pertinent here as a sign of Brancaccio’s sense of his ‘estate’ at the point at which he officially entered the service of Alfonso II d’Este. Secondly, Brancaccio (and presumably also Alfonso) makes a direct association between ‘appropriate behaviour’ and the epithet ‘courtier’, which shows how much Castiglione’s work and its encyclopedic formulation of all the elements of what has been termed the courtly ‘form of living’ had been assimilated into the discourse of this elite society.56 It may only be coincidental, but Brancaccio’s capitalization of the word ‘Corteggiano’ is nevertheless arresting; in fact, Amedeo Quondam sees precisely this tension between la Corte and la corte (Castiglione’s and the actual world) and between Cortegiano and cortegiano, as the root of the remarkable ubiquity of the book throughout Europe:

55 Modena AS, Archivio di Materie, Letterati, Busta 11, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Rome) to Alfonso II d’Este (Ferrara), 9 July 1580: ‘non lascio di riputare a gran’ disgrazia per me due cose, La prima che in si lunga tempo Vostra Altezza non m’habbia favorito in leggere il primo libro ch’io gli mandai del mio Cesare, per intendere il parer suo tanto da me desiato quanto merita esser pregiata la grandezza del suo giuditio, et l’altra che mi tien’ per sì mal corteggiano che saputo non havessi trattar’ in Belriguardo del modo che si conviene in luogo di piaceri, et non di Negotij … vengo non solo a restar’ in poco preggio di soldato, ma anche di Corteggiano’. 56 Amedeo Quondam, ‘La “forma nel vivere”: Schede per analisi del discorso cortigiano’, in G. Papagno and Amedeo Quondam (eds.), La corte e lo spazio: Ferrara estense (3 vols, Rome, 1982), vol. 1, p. 16.

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Court/court and The Courtier/courtiers: in this double binary relation it is possible to understand perhaps the deepest motivations for the extraordinary reception of Baldassare Castiglione’s book, the historical sense of its constitution as a complete codification and general grammar of behaviour (that is of the production of social relations) of ancien régime European society.57

Alfonso’s specific accusation against Brancaccio shows how different courtly ‘roles’ and their respective appropriate behaviours could be separate; also that a precise sensibility for these protocols was an intrinsic part of courtier behaviour. It is reasonably certain that Brancaccio’s error at Belriguardo had been to talk about war, as it is precisely this which Alfonso would prohibit him as a condition for his re-entry to court later in 1580. Why would Brancaccio have made such a mistake? We could conclude that he was simply insensitive, an incontinent braggart and a bore who had simply not heeded the kind of advice found in Giovanni della Casa’s Il Galateo: ‘Likewise it is unseemly to talk of things completely contrary to the occasion and the company, even if the matters themselves, when spoken at the appropriate time, were otherwise well and good’.58 A more intriguing explanation, perhaps, is that he was caught out because the practice at Alfonso’s court in some way differed from his expectations or experience elsewhere. Duke Alfonso was indeed engaged at this time in making apparently fundamental changes in traditional court life, imposing highly controlled structures on one area – private music-making amongst nobles – which differed from the principles established in, for example, Castiglione’s Il libro del cortegiano.59 This would stretch to the use of social engineering artificially to ‘ennoble’ professionally trained musicians through marriage,60 or, in Brancaccio’s case, to try to control, by means of selective silencing, the ways in which a nobleman exercised his virtù. Such strategies involved interference in Rivault’s ‘mestiers, vocations ou genres de vies’ and signal a blatant manipulation of Castiglione’s doctrine of dissimulation. This states (briefly) that what is praiseworthy in the ‘traditional’ courtier is his ability to simulate the appearance of the virtuosity of the true professional without drawing attention to the ‘skill’. By ‘disguising’ spectacularly skilled musicians as courtiers, the effect on unwitting witnesses would naturally be to induce a sense of meraviglia, achieved, 57 Ibid., p. 22: ‘La Corte/la corte e il Cortigiano/i cortigiani, dunque: in questo doppio rapporto binario è possibile cogliere le motivazioni forse più profonde della straordinaria ricezione del libro di Baldassare Castiglione, il senso storico del suo costituirsi come codice totale e grammatica generale del comportamento (della produzione, cioè, di rapporti sociali) delle società europee d’ancien régime’. 58 Giovanni della Casa, Galateo, overo de’ costumi, p. 385: ‘Simigliamente si disdice il favellare delle cose molto contrarie al tempo ed alle persone che stanno ad udire, eziando di quelle che, per sè ed a suo tempo dette, sarebbono e buone e sante’. 59 See James Haar, ‘The Courtier as Musician: Castiglione’s View of the Science and Art of Music’, in Robert W. Hanning and David Rosand (eds), Castiglione: The Ideal and the Real in Renaissance Culture (New Haven and London, 1983), pp. 156–89; Stefano Lorenzetti, ‘La parte della musica nella costruzione del gentiluomo: Tendenze e programmi della pedagogica seicentesca tra Francia e Italia’, Studi musicali, 25 (1996): 17–40 and id., Musica e identità nobiliare in Italia (Florence, 2003). 60 See Newcomb, ‘Courtesans, Muses, or Musicians?’, pp. 90–115.

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however, at the expense of genuine sprezzatura. It is small wonder that Brancaccio had managed to transgress at the ‘pleasure palace’ of Belriguardo without realizing his mistake.

Chapter Eight

Tra novelle sirene When Brancaccio returned to the court of Ferrara at the beginning of November 1580, he may have thought that he still knew how to play the role of courtier according to a more or less Castiglionian ‘grammar of behaviour’ and he did not take the hint that the incident at Belriguardo the previous summer was symptomatic of something far-reaching; indeed, he seems to have dismissed Duke Alfonso’s objections as a minor peccadillo. But in fact, the duke’s revolutionary project to change the way that music was made in the private sphere, and his conception of Brancaccio’s role in it, was emblematic of a general move away from the traditional courtly social order, in which the metiers ‘soldier’ and ‘courtier’ might map effortlessly one onto the other. The series of incidents and misunderstandings between Brancaccio and the duke which followed are a microcosm of these changes. A lengthy despatch from Horatio Urbani (the Florentine ambassador to the court of Duke Alfonso II d’Este) to Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici, which described Brancaccio and his situation at court in February 1581, offers a wealth of material, and forms the basis for several strands of the following discussion: Tomorrow we are expecting a comedy with quite beautiful scenery. The amusements have been of the quality that I mentioned last week and in addition, there has always been some private entertainment, most often with the musica secreta, which is made up of some ladies of the court and chiefly the Mantuan woman [Laura Peverara] of whom I wrote before, and of Signor Giulio Cesare Brancaccio. The Lord Duke did indeed either summon him or accept him into service chiefly with the intention of having the pleasure of this his skill, and even before he arrived here His Excellency told me, just as I wrote to Your Most Serene Highness, that he had made an agreement with him that he [Brancaccio] would not deal with matters of war. But there is no reason to believe that he was told that he would have to serve as a musico, just as, for all that, one cannot say that he does so serve, given that he does not practise [music] save in the private company of women. And there is also reason to think that he was summoned and enlisted in terms of mere courtiership and that in his case those terms seem to extend to the level of knight, as in the end he is reputed to be and as the Lord Duke treats him. And to me His Excellency has said that he [Brancaccio] was cameriere to King Henri [II] and that he himself knew that [Brancaccio] was held in much esteem in that court. But in the end [Brancaccio] is not content and all in all, it is recognized that this manner of proceeding and this huge amount of music satisfy him little. Nor can he stick to the agreement – if it is true that one was made – not to talk about, propose or have pretensions in matters of war. Indeed, he himself has told me in no uncertain terms that at the beginning of Lent he wanted to ask the Lord Duke what was to become of him, and that he will do so by entering into discussion on the occasion of certain new repairs which the Lord Duke has in mind to undertake in the city towards the Po, where there remains a section much needing fortification. The intention of Signor Giulio Cesare would be to have a military title, which up to now he does not

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Warrior, Courtier, Singer have at all, and also he would wish the Lord Duke to be apprised of his miraculous secrets of war – and he proposed it to the emperor – in which he is today more immersed than ever, desiring to exercise them for the universal benefit of Christendom and for the glory of its name. Meanwhile, he is waiting further news of his salary, which from the start was said to be 400 scudi, and everywhere he has access to the most important places, since he is not lacking in his manners of either speaking or behaving, and given that he has the aforementioned statement of the Lord Duke concerning his honourable qualities and great bravery. He has told me that when he was in Florence he showed Your Most Serene Highness a part of those commentaries of his own Caesar, and that he would have taken more time to reveal some of his great ideas, but because you did not ask him anything, out of reverence he stopped pursuing the matter. He also shows himself to be a very affectionate and devoted servant to you. And this is all I can say on this subject.1

1 Florence AS, Archivio Mediceo del Principate, filza 2900, in Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, pp. 140–1, Horatio Urbani (Ferrara) to Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici (Florence), 13 February 1581: ‘e domani s’aspetta una comedia con assai bello apparato: i passatempi tutti son stati della qualità che accennai la settimana passata et inoltre si è fatto sempre qualche trattenimento ritirato, et il più delle volte con la musica secreta che è d’alcune Dame di Corte, e massime della Mantovana che io scrissi altra volta, e del Sig. Giulio Cesare Brancaccio, il quale il Signor Duca invero o chiamò, o accettò al suo servitio principalmente con intentione di goder di questa sua virtù, et me fin inanzi ch’egli arrivasse qua, come parimente scrissi a Vostra Altezza Serenissima, mi disse l’eccellenza sua che haveva fatto patto secho non gli havesse a trattare di cose di Guerra; ma non è già da credere che a lui fosse detto di havere a servire per musico, come forse con tuttaciò non si può dire che serva, poichè non l’esercita se non in secreta compagnia di Dame; et anche è da pensare che vi sia chiamato et indotto sotto termine di modesta cortesia, e che a lui paia estendersi in ciò fin quanto comporta il grado cavaleresco, come per tale ne ’l resto lo reputa, e tratta il Signor Duca, et a me l’eccellenza sua ha detto ch’egli è stato cameriere de’l Re Arigo et ella stessa haverlo conosciuto in quella corte in molta stima; ma con tutto ciò esso alla fine non si contenta e si conoscie che nello intrinsico questo modo di fare, e questa tanta musica, pocho gli satisfano, nè può star saldo al patto, se vero è che lo facesse, di non ragionare, proporre, e pretendere a cose di guerra, anzi egli stesso mi ha detto assolutamente che hora come entrava la Quaresima voleva domandare al Signor Duca, che cosa debbe esser di lui, il che farà entrando in ragionamento con l’ochasione di certi nuovi ripari che il Signor Duca ha in animo di fare alla Città dalla banda del Po, dove essendo per viene a rimanere quella parte molto bisognosa di fortificazione, e l’intento d’esso Signor Giulio Cesare sarebbe haver titolo militare, che fino a hora non ne ha di sorte alcuna, et anche vorrebbe che il Signor Duca restasse capace di quei suoi stupendi secreti di guerra, e lo proponesse all’Imperatore, nelle quali egli è hoggi immerso più che mai, desiderando effetuarle in benifitio universale di Cristianità, et a gloria del suo Nome; intanto attende a dire avanti col suo stipendio, il quale fin da principio si disse essere di scudi 400 et universalmente ha parte in ogni luogo più principale, non mancando egli a se stesso col dire, e col procedere, et havendosi la sopradetta testimonianza del Signor Duca di sue honorate qualità, e molto valore. Mi ha detto che quando ultimamente fu a Firenze, mostrò a Vostra Altezza Serenissima una parte di quei suoi comentarij di Cesare, e ci si sarebbe anche allargato in aprirle alcuno di quei suoi gran concetti, ma perchè ella non gli domandò cosa alcuna, egli per reverentia lassò di passare più avanti, e mostra esserle molto affetionato, e devoto servitore che è quanto posso dire in questa materia’.

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It would appear that Brancaccio wanted Urbani to convey to the grand duke his continued interest in Florence, especially, perhaps, in the light of his disappointment at what was on offer in Ferrara, and may even have more or less instructed Urbani in what to say. Urbani, in turn, has clearly held conversations with Duke Alfonso as well as with Brancaccio and it is almost possible to reconstruct the substance of confrontations which have already occurred between them: Urbani’s description and analysis of events for the benefit of Grand Duke Francesco serves as a kind of mediation between all parties. Had the grand duke perhaps made Brancaccio an offer to serve him in Florence, been turned down and now discovered that Brancaccio is apparently hired in Ferrara as a singer? And might Urbani’s dispatch be a diplomatic attempt to allay the grand duke’s understandable hurt, and by spelling out Brancaccio’s wish for a military title, hint at what might be needed to attract the old soldier back to Florence? Indeed, all of the ambassador’s despatches have to be read in the context of the old but still developing dispute between the two rulers over precedence, which was a major and continuing diplomatic impasse. The grand duke’s interest in having detailed reports of the minutiae of court protocol and of the case of Brancaccio in particular are evidence of the complex rivalry between Florence and Ferrara (see below, Chapter 9). A little bemused by the fact that Alfonso has ‘either called or accepted’ Brancaccio to his service in order principally to enjoy the latter’s virtù as a singer, Urbani twice refers to the pact which Brancaccio has made with the duke (here and in a subsequent dispatch), a quasi-legal contract drafted to exclude all possible varieties of unwanted discourse, although he wonders aloud ‘if it’s true that he made [such a pact]’. Small wonder that Brancaccio had told Urbani that he was not at all happy and would not be able to stick to this agreement. In Brancaccio’s eyes Alfonso had, by silencing his warrior discourse, effectively prevented him from exercising what he believed to be his principal virtù. He articulates this unease by recourse to the question of names and titles: discovering the unpalatable fact that he found himself apparently expected to serve as some sort of musico (which he was to repeat with great vehemence on the occasion of the final showdown in July 1583), he told Urbani of his determination to go to the duke at the beginning of Lent to ask what was supposed to become of him and to request to be given a military title, having had no such title up to now. The spur for this was the plan by the duke to repair the city walls on the side towards the river Po. If there was one area in which Brancaccio regarded himself as an expert, it was, of course, fortifications, and he planned to enter into a discussion of these with the duke. He may well have assumed that it was a calculated snub by Duke Alfonso not to have engaged him as an adviser already. Not only had Brancaccio successfully advised the Duke of Terranova on improvements to the fortifications in Sicily and Tunis in 1573, but in the previous year he had written and had printed his Discurso de Julio Brancaccio with a lengthy section on fortifications which was signed at the end: ‘I, Giulio Brancaccio, Count of S. André, Knight of the Order of the Most Christian King and Superintendent and Captain General of the Fortified Towns

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and Strongholds of the Kingdom of France’.2 According to his Curriculum vitae, Brancaccio had been given this title by Charles IX, and he added that he could prove it because he always carried his orders and letters patent with him, an interesting sign of the power of the written word to back up a claim that he could not otherwise easily prove now that he was no longer on French soil.3 Brancaccio had used the fact of the French office when he looked for recognition in Venice, Florence and Naples, and now he thought that being awarded a similar title by Duke Alfonso would restore his military potency, and thus reinforce his status in Ferrara. Additionally, he still wanted Duke Alfonso to acknowledge and understand his ‘amazing secrets of warfare [stupendi secreti di Guerra]’, which he was also offering to the Medici (and which, incidentally, he later peddled to the Spanish ambassador in Venice in December of the same year – see Chapter 3). Finally, Brancaccio must have been aware of Duke Alfonso’s own deep interest in fortifications and his delight in discussing them with experts, making the embargo on the discussion of such matters with him even more galling.4 Singing courtier Much of Urbani’s despatch is taken up with a systematic exposition of Brancaccio’s complaint about his situation that in its patient cataloguing of the details is an invaluable source of information about status and the social organization of the court. Urbani tells the grand duke that Brancaccio has been admitted to the court under the normal conditions of courtesy appropriate to his status and argues that Brancaccio was not in fact told that he was to be a musico, as perhaps others who have heard of his participation in Duke Alfonso’s extraordinary new form of organized musicmaking among his courtiers might suppose, for the technical reason that ‘one cannot say that he serves as one’ except when he sings in a ‘secret company of women’. Thus Urbani appears to reassure the grand duke (as perhaps he has also reassured Brancaccio himself) that there is no ‘impropriety’. Presumably neither Urbani nor Brancaccio would have been ignorant of the fact that this is precisely the arena in which Castiglione regards it as appropriate for male courtiers to indulge in music:

2 Discurso de Julio Brancaccio, conde de San Andrés, acerca de los cabos principales en que consiste toda guerra: ‘Yo Julio Brancacio Conde de Sant Andrés, cavallero de la Orden del Rey Cristianísimo y superintendente y capitán general de los fortificaciones, villas y plaças fuertes del Reyno de Francia’. 3 Brancaccio, Curriculum vitae, fol. 132r. 4 Orazio della Rena, Relazione dello stato di Ferrara, ed. Angelo Solerti, in Ferrara e la corte estense, p. ccxxxvi: ‘della Fortificazion ancora si è dilettato, e si diletta assai, et attese già ad imparar il modo di levar piante di Fortezze, far Trincere, ripari, forti, bastioni, e molt’altre cose pertinenti all’uso dell’offesa, e difesa militare; ragione et discorre molto bene et volontieri con i Professori, et intelligenti di quest’arte [He [Duke Alfonso] moreover took and takes great pleasure in fortifications and enjoys concerning himself with learning about preparing plans of fortresses, making trenches, parapets, towers, bastions and many other things pertinent to military offence and defence; he argues and discusses freely and very well with professionals and experts in these matters]’.

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Then as to the occasions when these various kinds of music should be performed, I would instance when a man finds himself in the company of dear and familiar friends, and there is no pressing business on hand. But above all, the time is appropriate when there are ladies present; for the sight of them softens the hearts of those who are listening … and also quickens the spirits of the musicians themselves; as I have already said, one should avoid performing in the presence of a large number, especially of the common people’.5

As we know, the performances of the first quasi-professional musica secreta (which Urbani himself had been one of the first outsiders to witness) took place in the private chambers of the duke and duchess or those of his sister, Lucrezia, the Duchess of Urbino.6 Even if Duke Alfonso was already consciously manipulating the Castiglionian private and amateur ideal by covertly developing a ‘professional’ ensemble posing as a group of amateur aristocrats, an experienced courtier like Urbani still seems either to have been oblivious to the fact – to have been taken in by the outward appearance of Duke Alfonso’s musica secreta – or to have been engaged in constructing a diplomatic explanation of Brancaccio’s situation to satisfy his employer.7 Certainly Brancaccio had no objection in principle to singing in appropriate circumstances: indeed, he was already celebrated for it. A good example of a performance situation that presented him with no apparent difficulties is, in fact, the first occasion on which he was noted singing at the Ferrarese court. On 14 December 1577, Urbani’s predecessor at Ferrara, Bernardo Canigiani, wrote to the grand duke’s secretary Belisario Vinta describing how he had been present in the chamber of the Duchess of Urbino to hear Brancaccio sing in company with the conserto of three ladies.8 One of the ladies in question was Lucrezia Bendidio, by then one of the principal ornaments of the court. Before her marriage to Baldassare Macchiavelli in 1562, she had been the object of Torquato Tasso’s love poems;9 at the time of the concert described here, she was reputed to be the mistress of Cardinal Luigi d’Este, at that time in France. Meanwhile, she had apparently also been the subject of amorous advances by Giovan Battista Pigna, the duke’s private secretary, who wrote poems to her. Her four sisters were all married off to important members of the Ferrarese court, and her own status was high, although it is difficult to be precise about the limits of her ‘duties’.10

5 Castiglione, Il libro del cortegiano, p. 128; trans., p. 121: ‘Il tempo poi nel quale usar si possono queste sorti di musica estimo io che sia, sempre che l’omo si trova in una domestica e cara compagnia, quando altre facende non vi sono; ma sopra tutto conviensi in presenza di donne, perché quegli aspetti indolciscono gli animi di chi ode … e ancor svegliano i spiriti di chi la fa; come ancor ho detto, che si fugga la moltitudine, e massimamente degli ignobili’. 6 Newcomb, The Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, pp. 20–28. 7 See also Newcomb, ‘Courtesans, Muses, or Musicians?’, esp. pp. 95–101. 8 Florence AS, Archivio Mediceo del Principate, filza 2895: Bernardo Canigiani (Ferrara) to Belisario Vinta (Florence), in Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, p. 137. 9 Angelo Solerti, ‘Torquato Tasso e Lucrezia Bendidio’, Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 10 (1887): 114–60. 10 Solerti, Ferrara e la corte estense, p. lxviii; Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, pp. 14–16; Laurie Stras, ‘Musical Portraits of Female Musicians at the Northern Italian Courts

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For example, on 30 July 1571, Alfonso Putti, Lucrezia’s brother-in-law, had written to Cardinal Luigi in Paris describing how there had been a visit to the court by Rodolfo and Ernesto, nephews of Barbara of Austria, Alfonso’s second wife.11 They had found the court in straitened circumstances because, due to the terrible earthquake in the night of 16–17 November 1570, everyone had been evacuated to Brescello, and here they were to be entertained, together with members of the Mantuan court. The duke insisted that Lucrezia and her sister Isabella perform that night despite the fact that their mother had died only a few days earlier.12 On 8 August 1571 there was a ballo for the princes at which Prince Rodolfo chose Lucrezia to dance the first gaiarde and also the elemana; afterwards she and her sister Isabella sang solos and duets to the harpsichord, played by Luzzasco Luzzaschi, Alfonso’s maestro di cappella.13 The occasion was reported further by another of Luigi’s confidants, the cavalier Giacomo Grana, who gave titillating descriptions of Lucrezia, partly written in code. He describes how she was dressed and how ‘in particular then in the music she performed divinely which made everyone (and those princes especially) marvel with adoring eyes’.14 He notes, however, that she was clearly not consoled about the death of her mother, seeing as she had been literally ‘forced’ to perform – an interesting insight into the power of Duke Alfonso in such a situation that bears comparison with episodes involving Brancaccio, as we shall see. Finally, Renato Cato, the Ferrarese ambassador to the imperial court in Vienna, told Duke Alfonso how he had praised the Bendidio sisters there for their ‘virtue, nobility and beauty [virtù, e nobilità et anco bellezza]’.15 This complex status of talented women singers who were admitted to the upper rank of court society through a combination of vocality, sexuality and marriage gives an idea of the systems regulating the world of non-professional musicians at the court. Noble women could, not unlike musici, be ‘commanded’ to perform, but a significant element in the overall effect of their performances was predicated on the fact of their elevated status. Married into the upper ranks of courtiers as they may have been, the innuendo running just under the surface of the ambassadors’ reports suggests that the distinction between the way the activities of the Bendidio sisters

in the 1570s’, in Katherine A. McIver (ed.), Art and Music in the Early Modern Period: Essays in Memory of Franca Camiz (London, 2002), p. 148. 11 Modena AS, Archivio segreto, Particolari: Alfonso Putti (Ferrara) to Luigi d’Este (France), 30 July 1571, in Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, p. 130. 12 Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, pp. 14–15. 13 Florence AS, Archivio Mediceo del Principate, filza 2898: Bernardo Cangiani (Ferrara) to Grand Duke Cosimo de’ Medici (Florence), 13 August 1571, in Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, pp. 130–3. 14 Modena AS, Archivio segreto, Particolari: Giacomo Grana (Ferrara) to Luigi d’Este (France), 17 August 1571, in Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, p. 131: ‘Nel particolar poi della divinamente che feci maravigliare ognuno et quelli prencipi tuttavia con ’ [words between < and > are in code in the original]. 15 Modena AS, Ambasciatori, Germania, Busta 30: Renato Cato (Vienna) to Duke Alfonso II d’Este (Ferrara), 24 July 1574, in Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, pp. 131–2.

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were perceived and those, for example, of Venetian courtesan singers, was a fine one. Brancaccio’s second partner in the musical ‘performance’ was Leonora Sanvitale, Countess of Scandiano, stepdaughter of Barbara Sanseverino, Countess of Sala, whom Brancaccio may have known through Neapolitan family connections or in Rome. Leonora had been married at the age of 16 to Giulio Thiene, Count of Scandiano, and was to die in childbirth in March 1582; her high social status is not in doubt.16 Nor is that of the third singer, Vittoria Cybó Bentivoglio, wife of Count Ippolito Bentivoglio, son of Count Cornelio, oldest right-hand man of the duke, ex-governor of Siena and head of Alfonso’s army. Isabella Bendidio was married to Cornelio in 1573 on the death of his first wife.17 The gathering does not seem to be so far removed – in terms of the social set-up – from the musical evening at the house of Giovanna d’Aragona in Naples witnessed by Luigi Dentice, at which Brancaccio had sung some time in the mid-1540s. For Brancaccio, an old soldiering friend of the duke’s spending an evening in very private and select company sharing the musical turns with three other singers all of whom were noble women, the situation would appear to have been unproblematic; and yet, it must have been at just such events as this that the idea of a more sophisticated and even less informal musica secreta was being hatched. An essential element in Castiglione’s prescription for appropriate musical performance by male courtiers is privacy: the moment that any performance becomes too public, the dissimulation is disrupted, a border has been crossed and the performers will be indistinguishable from musici. Before long, Duke Alfonso was exploiting the developing musica secreta as a major tool in the system of flattering his most exalted guests, dangerously straining the carefully balanced fiction of ‘dear and familiar companions’. Brancaccio was acutely attuned to what he perceived as Duke Alfonso’s violations of the conventions: on 26 June 1581 Urbani reported to Grand Duke Francesco Giulio Cesare’s extreme discomfort at being asked to sing in the presence of the visiting Cardinal Farnese, on account of the fact that the cardinal’s entire retinue was also present.18 The report also reveals how far the duke was prepared to go to humour the sulky Brancaccio in order to have him ‘favour us with a little something’ and perform his singing magic, even if it meant indulging his need to protect his ‘rare virtue’ as a soldier by keeping his hat on and remaining seated while performing, as well as accepting the quid pro quo of Brancaccio launching into another monologue about war (the ‘pact’ was clearly flexible).19 16 Stras, ‘Musical Portraits’, pp. 149–52. 17 Romei, The Courtiers Academie, ed. Shalvi, p. xviii. The social origins and career paths of the ‘second’ musica secreta – Laura Peverara, Anna Guarini, Livia d’Arco and Tarquinio Molza – is discussed in Newcomb, ‘Courtesans, Muses or Musicians?’, pp. 99–100. 18 Brancaccio would have regarded himself as a familiar of the cardinal. 19 Florence AS, Archivio Mediceo del Principate, filza 2900: Horatio Urbani (Ferrara) to Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici (Florence), 26 June 1581, in Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, p. 143: ‘v’intervene sempre il signor Giulio Cesare Brancaccio, il quale sì come per l’ordinario se ne compiace molto, così so che a certi tempi intrinsicamente sen’affliggie il che spetialmente gli ochorse quando ci fu il Cardinale Farnese, poiché non solo fu presente

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Brancaccio’s own attitude to singing during these evenings remains ambiguous. He clearly liked the attention but was also anxious about the consequences for his noble identity, sensing that things at Ferrara were out of balance, something which Urbani had already noted in February: ‘ultimately he is not happy and recognizes that fundamentally this way of life and so much music-making does not satisfy him [alla fine non si contenta e si conoscie che nello intrinsico questo modo di fare, e questa tanta musica, pocho gli satisfano]’. Brancaccio was no less uneasy about the way he had been recruited, something which he was to reiterate with much greater force once he had left Ferrara and turned angrily on a court which was apparently not interested in hearing his ideas about how to defeat the Turks: ‘But there was nobody (as God shall be my witness) who would have wanted to listen or lend an ear for just one hour for something of such great importance as perhaps they would have for music or poetry or other similar entertainments’.20 But for all this, Urbani argues in his dispatch in February 1581, on balance, Brancaccio’s honour has not been abused, and indeed, he was well treated. He says that far from being made subservient, Brancaccio has been ‘called and installed’ under reasonable terms and given that he has entered the court under these conditions, he is treated by the duke in a way appropriate to the rank of a knight (‘grado cavaleresco’), a status that he justifies by reputation. And here Urbani quotes the duke himself, who has told him that Brancaccio had been a gentleman of the chamber at the court of Henri II where he, the duke, had known him to be held in great esteem. The form and language of this explanation is closely reminiscent of that encountered in the definitions of honour explored in the previous chapter. Note, for example, the fact that the duke affirms by word of mouth, for the sake of Urbani, the reputation that Brancaccio had acquired nearly 25 years earlier in France and backs this up by naming a title or mark of honour (‘cameriere’) accorded him there. alla musica Sua Serenissima Illustrissima, ma anche tutta la sua Corte e cerca però confortarsi con questo, che il Signor Duca in sì fatte ochasioni l’introduce con sì fatte parole: “il Sig. Giulio Cesare non ne vuole anch’egli un pocho favorire?” e mentre che canta si cuopre e siede, il che ancora fa tuttavia in timore che non basti a fare che quella sua sì rara virtù che pretende nelle cose di guerra non ne resti aggravata, ne quali pensieri e discorsi è più immerso che sia mai stato, e faccia il Sig. Duca, pur se sa che o per forza o per amore, se vorrà sentirlo cantare bisognerà che lo senta anche ragionare in sì fatta materia’. [Signor Giulio Cesare Brancaccio always takes part in these [musical interludes], and he enjoys them greatly, but I know that at times he is inwardly distressed, which happened in particular when Cardinal Farnese was there, since not only His Illustrious Highness was present at the concert, but his entire court as well, and yet he tries to soothe himself since on these occasions the signor duke introduces him with words such as “wouldn’t Signor Giulio Cesare favour us with a little something as well?”, and while he sings, he keep his hat on and remains seated, which he does for fear of damaging that rare virtue of his, the one he claims to have in the art of war, and in whose thoughts and arguments he is absorbed more than ever. And so makes the signor duke know, whether out of necessity or love, that if he wants to hear him sing, he will also have to hear him holding forth on his favourite topic]. 20 Brancaccio, Ragionamento di Partemio et Alexandro, fol. 41v: ‘ma non vi è stato nessuno (egli me ne sia testimonio) che mi habbia voluto intendere ne prestar l’orecchia solamente un hora per cosa di sì grande importanza come, forse havrebben fatto per musiche o poesie, o altre simili delettationi’.

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The implication is that this reputation and honour are still ‘good’ even after so much time. Besides this there are also generous extrinsic marks of honour including the 400 ducat salary which Urbani believes he is to get,21 access to all areas of the court (on the basis of his ability to speak and behave appropriately) and, as we learn from other sources, a suite of rooms and horses from the royal stable.22 But Urbani reckons the most precious asset is ‘the above-mentioned testimonial of the signor duke of his honourable estate and great valour [la sopradetta testimonianza del Signor Duca di sue honorate qualità, e molto valore]’. However, as Urbani revealed in his account of the final act of Brancaccio’s Ferrarese career, Duke Alfonso’s almost filial efforts on his courtier’s behalf were not enough to mollify the old warrior. Urbani records that even before the events which led to the final break, there had been an angry exchange of words between the two, in which Brancaccio had blamed the poor sales of his books on Alfonso’s refusal to engage in further discussions of military matters. Alfonso had angrily countered this by saying that not only had he, in fact, talked about the book ‘continually’, but had also written about it to correspondents throughout Italy and as far away as Germany.23 Irremediable breakdown The last straw in this long and fraught relationship was broken when Brancaccio refused to sing in front of Duke Alfonso’s illustrious guest the Duke of Joyeuse in 21 Payments to Brancaccio of 130 lire per month are recorded in the surviving bollette for 1582 and the first half of 1583, at least three times the amount paid, for example, to the Roman bass virtuoso Melchior Palantrotti in 1590. Luzzasco Luzzaschi, the duke’s maestro di cappella, was paid 18 lire per month in 1583; see Newcomb, The Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, pp. 163, 165, 185. 22 In his dispatch (Florence AS, Archivio Mediceo, filza 2901: Horatio Urbani (Ferrara) to Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici, 1 August 1583, in Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, p. 162), Urbani remained nonplussed by Brancaccio’s behaviour, referring again to the benefits he was losing by giving up his place at the court: ‘Aveva 400 scudi l’anno, stanze fornite e cavalli con le solite qualdrappe di veluto [He had 400 scudi a year, furnished rooms and horses with the usual velvet saddlecloths]’. In a letter written a few days after his final (and hasty) departure from Ferrara (Appendix 2, Doc. 16), Brancaccio wrote to Vespasiano Mancino (presumably his old comrade-in-arms, Vespasiano Macedonio) to clear up some practical matters about items left behind or taken by mistake from his apartments and refers to a second chamber and to a kitchen. Brancaccio says he has received a letter from a friend, ‘Pocaterra’ (presumably Alessandro Pocaterra, a friend of Tasso: see Giovanni Ricci, ‘Annibale Pocaterra e i Dialogi della vergogna: Per la storia di un sentimento alla fine del Cinquecento’, in Marco Bertozzi (ed.), Alla corte degli estensi: Filosofia, arte e cultura a Ferrara nei secoli XV e XVI (Ferrara, 1994), pp. 43–75) referring to ‘certain hangings … belonging to the duke’ which are missing, as well as the key to the kitchen door, which Brancaccio insists he gave to Nicolò, a servant. 23 Florence AS, Archivio Mediceo del Principate: Horatio Urbani (Ferrara) to Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici (Florence), 1 August 1583, in Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, p. 161.

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late July 1583. The incident precipitated Giulio Cesare’s almost instant departure from court, apparently dismissed by the duke (although this was disputed, or at least fudged, by Brancaccio himself). The incident provoked real scandal in the court, attested by the copious reports of what happened, sent not only to Grand Duke Francesco, but also to Cardinal Luigi d’Este, who, over the years, had closely followed Brancaccio’s antics. A couple of slightly contradictory reports were sent to the cardinal by different informers, but they agree on most points. According to one, Girolamo Trotti, it seems as though the duke had sent for Brancaccio to sing with the concerto on Sunday morning, the last day of the Duke of Joyeuse’s visit to court, but that he did not turn up. The duke then sent word ‘that he must sing, but he [Brancaccio] did not wish to hear it, such that the Most Serene Duke concealed it in such a way that no one realized’. Brancaccio then apparently said later that evening that he would now like to sing, but the duke said, or had someone else say, ‘that it was not necessary that he attend because he was not required’.24 Alessandro Lombardini’s report to the cardinal tells a story of direct confrontation, in which Brancaccio made his refusal to sing directly to the duke with angry words (see below), whereupon ‘many gentlemen intervened to calm him down and try to persuade him to do what His Highness wished’. In vain; on the following morning a fellow courtier, Camillo Gualengo, was despatched by the duke to inform Brancaccio ‘that he was dismissed from his service because he no longer wanted him’.25 Clearly shocked, Brancaccio hung around all the following day. Attempts were made to patch things up, but Brancaccio’s pride got the better of him. Gualengo had reported how, when he told Brancaccio in the piazza of the duke’s decision, he had kept his dignity and not shown any emotion, only replying: ‘I only regret that His Highness has beaten me to it because tomorrow I wanted to resign and the world is large and my reputation is not small’.26 This precious record of Brancaccio’s speech is confirmed as genuine by the fact that almost identical words were reported by Horatio Urbani in his dispatch a few days later. Brancaccio tried to negotiate at least an honourable discharge and a small gratuity to pay for his departure, but to no avail. His behaviour clearly struck the court deeply, evoking, despite a sense of his folly, a certain respect and sympathy. The Duchess of Urbino, perhaps as a snub to her brother, even gave Brancaccio 50 scudi so that he could pay off his debts and leave for Venice in style with three servants in two carriages. Urbani noted: ‘finding himself old and poor, but nevertheless with a

24 Modena AS, Archivio segreto, Particolari, Girolamo Trotti (Ferrara) to Luigi d’Este (Tivoli), 27 July 1583: ‘che dovesse cantare, ma luj non volse intendere tal che il Signor Duca Serenissimo lo dissimulò ... che non occorrea che lasciasse, perché non ne haveano bisogno’. 25 Modena AS, Archivio segreto, Particolari: Alessandro Lombardini (Ferrara) to Cardinal Luigi d’Este (Tivoli), 28 July 1583, in Durante and Martellotti, Madrigali segreti, vol. 1, p. 59: ‘che si levasse dal suo servitio, perché non lo volea più’. 26 Modena AS, Archivio segreto, Particolari: Girolamo Trotti (Ferrara) to Cardinal Luigi d’Este (Tivoli), 1 August 1583, in Durante and Martellotti, Madrigali segreti, vol. 1, p. 60: ‘“non mi rincresce d’altro se non che Sua Altezza mi abi prevenuto per che domane volea far la licentia et il mondo è grande e il nome mio non è poco”’.

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jolly temperament behind his eccentricities, everyone felt great sympathy for him, particularly knowing how much good fortune he had enjoyed at other times’.27 One of three recently discovered letters written by Brancaccio on one day shortly afterwards (Appendix 2, Doc. 15) explains that he had in fact wanted to get leave to go for some time and that on the fateful evening he had been trying to enlist the services of a friend to ask the duke for such permission on his behalf. The motive of the letter was to convince his friends in Ferrara that he had always intended to go, and that they should therefore know the other side of the story and not be left with the impression that he had been ignominiously fired. Brancaccio was definitely rueful the following day about his behaviour in the heat of the night before and indeed he tried to get the decision to dismiss him reversed without success some time later by enlisting Giovanbattista Guarini to speak to the duke on his behalf (Appendix 2, Doc. 18). But the tone of this present letter, addressed to ‘Cesare detto Crotti’, also reveals passionate and disturbed feelings of deep injury to his honour, in sharp contrast to the sangfroid he had exhibited to Gualengo a few days before. He speaks of ‘the storm which I predicted must happen one day’ and recalls the vehemence with which he had begged Crotti on the evening before his dismissal ‘that he must by every means ask to be released by His Highness, because I resolutely wanted to leave the following day in order no longer to live in that manner in which I was so little honoured’.28 Another letter written the same day (Appendix 2, Doc. 16) opens with a remarkable outburst of remorse and self-pity in which he blames Duke Alfonso for his predicament. Having made enemies of all the princes of Italy, plus the emperor and the King of Spain, the duke is now making enemies of ‘all the knights and gentlemen of our nation’. Brancaccio says he had wanted to refute this, but in the end is not able to dispute the facts, and has been forced to leave behind his life and part of his honour. The letter continues with the nearest thing we have to an explanation of his grievance against the duke: ‘these are the cruellest disfavours which [the duke] has been pleased to use against me in order to humiliate me in my profession even to hell’.29 There are, of course, other possible reasons why Brancaccio found the demands of the musica secreta project distasteful or demeaning from a purely musical standpoint. For one thing, Duke Alfonso was actively commissioning compositions 27 Florence AS, Archivio Mediceo del principate: Horatio Urbani (Ferrara) to Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici (Florence), 1 August 1583, in Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, pp. 161–2: ‘Ma trovandosi vecchio, mendico e tuttavia con l’humor gagliardo intorno a’ suoi ghiribizzi, ciascun gli tien molta compassione, massime sapendosi quanto per altri tempi egli si sia trovato in buona fortuna’. 28 Modena AS, Archivio per materie, Letterati, Busta 11: Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Padua) to Cesare detto Trotti, 3 August, 1583: ‘la tempesta ch’io prevedea dover succedere un giorno ... che dovesse per’ogni modo chieder licenza a Sua Altezza ch’io mi voleva risolutamente partir il di seguenti’ per’ non viver’ più a quella foggia per me’ poco honorata’. 29 Modena AS, Archivio per materie, Letterati, Busta 11: Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Padua) to an unknown recipient (Ferrara), 3 August 1583: ‘questi sono stati i crudelissimi disfavori, che per suo gusto l’è piacciuto usar meco, per abbassarmi nella mia professione sin’a gli abissi’.

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which would need rehearsal and preparation, something which may have run counter to Brancaccio’s sense of sprezzatura. Reporting Brancaccio’s imminent arrival to join the musica secreta in 1580, Urbani wrote: ‘They tell me again that he [Duke Alfonso] expects Signor Giulio Cesare Brancaccio to enter his service in a few days … particularly to join in sometimes in a “private music” which is being prepared by some ladies of the court, who are still waiting to begin practising’.30 It appears that it was precisely this which triggered Brancaccio’s outburst about not being a ‘musico’ on the fateful morning in 1583, as Lombardini’s account of the events for Cardinal Luigi d’Este reveals: Duke Alfonso had evidently wanted the musica secreta to rehearse some pieces which involved Brancaccio singing ‘in concerto’ with the women. For Brancaccio, this was the point at which his line had finally been overstepped: On the last day [of the Duke of Joyeuse’s visit] some little pieces were performed at the ladies’ music in which Signor Giulio Cesare Brancaccio [was to have] taken part, and his Highness had arranged for the pieces to be given for him to study and learn. But Signor Giulio Cesare said very angrily that he did not want to join in and that he was not one of His Highness’s musicians and [also said] other not very nice things to his master.31

Lombardini’s need to explain the facts in such detail suggests that it was, indeed, an unusual and new request that had been made of Brancaccio. We know that Alfonso liked to impress visitors, including the Duke of Joyeuse, by getting them to follow in a book and see how the singers of the musica secreta sang exactly the ornaments which were written down, another example of the strong control he exercised over the performance process and one which, even from a technical point of view, represents a remarkable curtailment of the improvisatory process normally reserved to the individual singers in the performance of vocal music.32 The Duke of Joyeuse would surely have found Duke Alfonso’s wish to direct his listening so punctiliously as remarkable as the spectacle of apparently noble women able to display the skills of trained musicians (which they in fact were). Duke Alfonso’s resolve to retain control over when and what his courtiers should sing (and force virtuosos to sing ornaments exactly as they had been written down, presumably by someone else, rather than to improvise in the true ‘canto cavalaresco’ style), and that his guests should appreciate its excellence, certainly flies against 30 Florence AS, Mediceo del Principato, filza 2899: Horatio Urbani (Ferrara) to Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici (Florence), 31 October, in Durante and Martellotti, Cronistoria, p. 138: ‘Mi dice ancora che aspetta fra brevi giorni al suo servitio il Signor Giulio Cesare Brancaccio … si bene intervenir talvolta in una musica secreta che si va preparando s’alcune Dame della corte le quali tuttavia attendono a farci studio’. 31 Modena AS, Archivio segreto, Particolari: Alessandro Lombardini (Ferrara) to Cardinal Luigi d’Este (Tivoli), 28 July 1583, in Newcomb, The Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, p. 262: ‘L’ultimo giorno della musica delle dame era concertato alcune cosete dove gli intravenea il Signor Giulio Cesare Brancaccio le quale cosse già sua Altezza gli avea fato dare per che le studiase per ben saperle. Ma il Signor Giulio Cesare molto in colera dice non volerle intravenire et che non stava con sua Altezza per musicho e parolle non trope buone verso il suo signore’. 32 Newcomb, The Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, pp. 27–8.

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Castiglione’s ideal of nonchalance and the need to eschew all signs of ostentatious virtuosity: Therefore, if our courtier finds he is skilled in something other than arms I should wish him to derive profit and honour from it in a suitable way; and he should know how to use his discretion and good judgement in bringing people skilfully and opportunely to see and hear what he considers he is good at, always seeming to do so without ostentation, but casually and if at the request of others rather than of his own will. And, if at all possible, he should always be well briefed and prepared for everything he has to do or say though giving the impression that it is off the cuff.33

Brancaccio’s frustrations and conflicts with Duke Alfonso, and specifically about the terms and manner under which he had been brought to the court and the question of when and how he might sing, although disputed by Alfonso himself, were nevertheless real and indicative of a deep-seated tension between two broad positions that for Brancaccio, at least, were in some way incompatible. Brancaccio felt himself ‘little honoured’, while Urbani claims that he was appropriately respected by the duke; Brancaccio’s singing, praised by, amongst others, the two leading poets of the day, Torquato Tasso and Battista Guarini, was for Duke Alfonso ‘this his virtù’, whereas Brancaccio felt Duke Alfonso had been pleased to ‘humiliate him in “his” profession even to hell’, and that the programme of the Ferrarese court was unhealthy, devoting too much time ‘to music or poetry or similar delights’. How can such a gulf be explained? The final chapter of this book will be a search for an answer to this question, and pursues two lines of enquiry. The first is to see how Brancaccio’s sense of his ‘profession’ fits into the prevailing debate about the relationship between Arms and Letters. The second investigates what might lie behind the unease, indeed, anxiety, which the warrior Brancaccio now felt about doing what he had apparently done all his life – singing in front of his peers. It is a tension which may be symptomatic of underlying ambiguities in the Renaissance construction of noble male identity.

33 Castiglione, Il libro dello cortegiano, p. 152; trans., p. 148: ‘Voglio adunque che ’l nostro cortegiano, se in qualche cosa oltr’arme si troverà eccellente, se ne vaglia e se ne onori di bon modo; e sia tanto discreto e di bon giudicio, che sappia tirar con destrezza e proposito le persone a vedere ed udir quello, in che a lui par d’essere eccellente, mostrando sempre farlo non per ostentazione, ma a caso, e pregato d’altrui più presto che di voluntà sua, ed in ogni cosa che egli abbia da far o dire, se possibil è, sempre venga premediato e preparato, mostrando però il tutto esser all’improviso’.

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Chapter Nine

Canti in dolce tenzon Arms and Letters The ‘Arms versus Letters’ debate, which in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries attained the status of a learned catchphrase, grew out of a classical Latin dialectic between the merits of arms and laws, emblematic of which is the Ciceronian epigram ‘cedant arma togae’ (‘let arms yield to the gown’ or perhaps, ‘let violence yield to peace’), and also out of a conventional opposition of fortitudo [strength] and sapientia [wisdom]. In the course of the Renaissance, it finds voice in a whole host of different literary genres – poems, novels and histories, military, legal, political, literary and educational treatises, courtesy books, epitaphs, eulogies, dedications and emblem books – attracting along the way some of the best minds including Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning) and Montaigne (Essais).1 Treatises devoted exclusively to the subject range from the short, almost light-hearted Del paragone dell’arme e delle lettere by Stefano Guazzo to the 849 pages of Francisco Nuñez de Velasco’s Diálogos de contención entre la milicia y la ciencia. Until the beginning of the sixteenth century the conflict of precedence between doctor and miles had essentially been a dry topos of scholastic disputation. Stefano Prandi argues that the resurgent vitality of the subject in the sixteenth century reflects the prevailing debate and unease about the status of the nobility, particularly the search for an appropriate ideological model more in tune with the ‘aristocratic vocation’, one which would incorporate intellectual as well as warrior values.2 For Prandi this boils down to a question which he finds at the heart of Castiglone’s Il cortegiano: ‘what should take preference at court, the humanist character of the “lettered” or the military character of the “cavalier”?’.3 The answer seems to be summed up in Count Lodovico’s statement quoted in the previous chapter – his uncompromising elevation of Arms ahead of ‘other fine pursuits [l’altre bone condizioni]’ and the discussion of their precedence over Letters which follows, reflect the standard position whose principal arguments had already been laid out by Agostino Nifo in a book published the year before Il libro del cortegiano. These are: the classical origins of the military; the eminently defensive character of Arms; the magnificence of the honours and titles which accrue to them; the intellectual completeness of the military art, encompassing mathematics, physics, moral philosophy, and history; and 1 James Supple, Arms versus Letters: The Military and Literary Ideals in the ‘Essais’ of Montaigne (Oxford, 1984), pp. 63–75, provides a good general overview. 2 Prandi, Il ‘Cortegiano’ ferarrese, pp. 198–202. 3 Ibid., p. 202: ‘quale dovrà essere la formazione da preferire in corte, quella umanistica del “letterato” o quella militare del “cavaliere”?’.

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above all, the public dimension of Arms which are more useful in civic society than the private sphere of Letters.4 In the light of Castiglione’s influential conclusion that the courtier should, in fact, strive to be a master of both Arms and Letters, the question of precedence was bound to remain an essentially philosophical one. Similarly, the fact that the debate was always carried out in verbal form; those who spoke as men of arms were deemed worthy of the greatest of respect because, in the words of Giovanbattista Possevino: ‘they are content to fight with the tongue and not the hands’, and using the weapons of the letterati, wield these, rather than their usual weapons, against their opponents.5 Just such a ‘verbal joust’ formed the final section of Annibale Romei’s major work of court philosophy set in Alfonso II’s court at Ferrara, the Discorsi (first published in Venice in 1585), which featured none other than Giulio Cesare Brancaccio as the defender of Arms, sparring against the eminent philosopher Francesco Patrizi. Count Annibale Romei was a member of a distinguished Ferrarese family and of several academies in the city and also served as ducal ambassador in Venice and in Rome.6 The Discorsi were consciously cast in the style of Castiglione’s Il libro del cortegiano, first published almost sixty years earlier, although Romei’s work is more systematically organized into a series of set-piece debates on separate themes, in which each is expounded by a principal speaker, followed by contributions ‘from the floor’ by a number of individuals, concluding with a judgement by the day’s presiding ‘queen’, selected from among the illustrious women present. Romei ‘assembled’ a group of notable members of the Ferrarese court and claimed that his book was a faithful account of real discussions which had taken place over a period of days at the palaces of Mesola and Consandolo and, finally, on board the bucintoro returning them down the Po to Ferrara. There were two editions of the book. In the first (1585) the company consisted of 44 people (29 men and 15 women) including Duke Alfonso II, and they debated for five days, covering ‘Beauty’, ‘Human Love’, ‘Honour and the Injustice of the Duel’, ‘Nobility’ and finally, ‘Riches and the Precedence of Arms and Letters’.7 The second edition, published the following year in Verona, expanded the number of days to seven in order to allow a whole day for each topic and also increased the number of participants to fifty three, with some changes, notably removing the duke and substituting his brother Cesare d’Este, for reasons that may have been politically motivated.8 In the introduction, Romei maintained that the book recorded actual events that had taken place in the autumn of 1584.9 Angelo Solerti pointed out a number of anachronisms which disproved this 4 Agostino Nifo, De armorum literarumque comparatione commentariolus (Naples, 1526); see Prandi, Il ‘Cortegiano’ ferrarese, pp. 202–3. 5 Giovanbattista Possevino, Dialogo dello honore (1553), p. 188, quoted in Prandi, Il ‘Cortegiano’ ferrarase, p. 203: ‘si contentano di combattere … colla lingua, e non colle mani’. 6 See Prandi, Il ‘Cortegiano’ ferrarese, pp. 9–55 and Solerti, Ferrara e la corte estense, pp. cxxv–xxxi. 7 Solerti, Ferrara e la corte estense, p. cxxix, n. 8 Prandi, Il ‘Cortegiano’ ferrarese, p. 64. 9 Romei, Discorsi, pp. 5–10.

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possibility, including the fact that Giulio Cesare Brancaccio had left court at the end of July 1583 and that another ‘participant’, Leonora Sanvitale, had died in 1582.10 The contents of each debate are in the form of closely argued philosophical discourse, although the words of Romei himself and the characterization of the interlocutors are presented with an evocation of the humour and gentle teasing appropriate to their close relationships as members of a court and reminiscent of Castiglione. There is plenty of circumstantial description throughout the book, in which Romei shows what must be glimpses of the actual characters and foibles of the real people, including Brancaccio, that reveal that he had made a serious effort to convey a certain veracity. For example, at one point in the debate about Arms and Letters, Patrizi breaks off his argument and comments: But because I perceive by the gestures & motions of his person, that our obstinate adversary, [Brancaccio], long since impatient of attention, is most desirous to speake, I will here pawse, assuring myself, that he, considering he wanteth neither voice, tong, nor wordes, will never give way to manifest reason: but confident in his eloquence, he will attempt to retort the upright and most sincere judgement of our most gracious queen.11

The bantering familiarity of this sketch (that certainly chimes with other evidence of Brancaccio’s garrulousness) can be backed up with the evidence that the two men knew each other well in real life. In one of the letters written on 3 August 1583, Brancaccio asked his correspondent to pass on greetings to Patrizi; he also mentioned that he was sending copies of the letter to two other courtiers who play leading roles in the Discorsi: Cornelio Bentivoglio, and Camillo Gualengo, who had given Brancaccio notice of his dismissal and was the addressee of one of the other letters written on the same day and to whom Romei gave the job of expounding Honour.12 Similarly, Patrizi, who had also recently published a major book about the Roman army and who, in 1594, would produce another huge compendium of classical works of military science for the benefit of modern soldiers,13 offered comments on Brancaccio’s own book Il Brancatio in a letter to Baccio Valore in 1590 (Appendix 2, Doc. 19), in which he criticized Brancaccio for, amongst other

10 Solerti, Ferrara e la corte estense, pp. cxxvii–viii. 11 Romei, Discorsi, p. 280; The Courtiers Academie, p. 288: ‘Ma perchè mi avveggo a’ gesti del viso, e ai movimenti della persona, che il nostro duro avversario, ormai impaziente d’ascoltare, è avidissimo di parlare, farò qui punto, sendo molto ben sicuro ch’egli, poi che nè voce, nè lingua, nè parole mai gli mancano, non vorrà cedere alla manifesta ragione; ma fidatosi nella sua eloquenza, tenterà di torcere il retto e sincero giudizio dell’illustrissima nostra Signora’. 12 Modena AS, Archivio per materie, Letterati, Busta 11, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Padua) to an unknown recipient, 3 August 1583. 13 Francesco Patrizi, La militia romana di Polibio di Tito Livio e di Dionigi Alicarnasseo, dedicated to Alfonso II, 23 March 1583. The book was already complete in 1573; see Cesare Vasoli, ‘Francesco Patrizi e la cultura filosofica’, 1441–1598: Atti del convegno internazionale Copenhagen, maggio 1987, ed. Marianne Pade, Lene Waage Petersen and Daniela Quarta (Copenhagen and Modena, 1990), p. 214 and Francesco Patrizi, Paralleli militari … ne’ quali si fa paragone delle milizie antiche, in tutte le parti loro, con le moderne (Rome, 1594).

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things, knowing no other ancient writers except Julius Caesar and because ‘in some places he went off the track [in alcuni luoghi andò fuor di strada]’. The casting of Patrizi in the role of defender of Letters seems, then, to be a serious one (he had also propounded on Beauty on the first day). Stefano Prandi thinks, however, that the choice of Brancaccio for Arms was ‘clearly absurd [naturalemente assurdo]’ considering that he was a laughable figure in real life.14 He cites as evidence the account of an elaborate game, which Romei relates (only in the first edition) as one of the diversions on the morning of the second day. A group of courtiers had dressed up as pirates and ‘attacked’ the boat in which the Duchess of Urbino and other ladies of the court, together with Don Cesare d’Este, had gone out fishing. Giulio Cesare Brancaccio, ‘most noble and valorous warrior [nobilissimo e valorissimo guerriero]’ is supposed to have made an impassioned speech offering to defend the duchess against the twelve ships of corsairs and to defeat them before midday with a few arquebuses. This certainly sounds like a full-scale send-up of Brancaccio’s real ‘stupendous secrets of warfare’ which would presumably have very much amused the courtiers who knew his obsessions, particularly his master plan to defeat the massed armies of the Turks with a relatively small force made up principally of arquebusiers. The duchess accepts his offer: ‘The opinion of signor Brancaccio was praised by Her Highness and he made such an impression on the queen, [that she,] though greatly enthusiastic, was intent on other than fighting, so she gave the honour of the command to Signor Giulio Cesare’.15 It is clear from these hints, that for the courtiers of Ferrara, Brancaccio may have been an avuncular and larger-than-life example of the ‘old-fashioned’ chivalric warrior, and yet there was more genuine affection for him than ridicule, as Urbani made clear when he described his final departure from Ferrara.16 When, on the penultimate evening of the debates, Brancaccio was chosen to defend Arms the following day and Romei describes him as ‘not only amongst all the rest, the oldest Souldier, and in knowledge of Armes most excellent, but further, a gentleman, very learned, eloquent and with all manner of vertue adorned’, there is no reason to regard this judgement as sarcastic.17 That he is included in the book at all is indeed puzzling, given Brancaccio’s ignominious exit in 1583; perhaps, despite the unfortunate circumstances of his departure, he nevertheless lodged in people’s minds as the archetypal ‘eloquent soldier’. It may also be that Urbani’s wry cynicism had been unfairly partisan and that Brancaccio’s pretensions to the status of intellectual warrior had, in fact, been taken seriously by many in Ferrara. It seems, therefore, very unlikely that Romei would have wanted to debase the role 14 Prandi, Il ‘Cortegiano’ ferrarese, p. 71. 15 Romei, Discorsi (edn of 1585), pp. 35–6: ‘Fu lodato da Sua Altezza il parere del signor Brancaccio, e fece tanto animo alla Reina, la quale con tutto che sia di gran cuore, era piuttosto che al combattere intenta, ch’ella diede il carico dell’impresa al signor Giulio Cesare’. 16 See Chapter 8 above and also Claudio Donati, L’idea di nobiltà in Italia secoli XIV–XVIII (Bari, 1988), p. 169. 17 Romei, Discorsi, p. 259; The Courtiers Academie, p. 205: ‘non solo il più veterano tra’ soldati e nel mestier dell’arme eccellentissimo, ma gentiluomo dotto, eloquente e d’ogni altra maniera di virtù ornatissimo’.

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of the defender of Arms by giving it to a buffoon, especially when the chief warrior of all, Duke Alfonso himself, despite his physical absence from the proceedings, nevertheless has a constant symbolic presence throughout the debates.18 A different duel of words ‘Patrizio’ opens the presentation of his case declaring that there is no real dispute at all, and so clearing the way for what will be simply an entertaining display of oratory: Seeing that Armes and Letters are both of them so noble professions, and so excellent, as that it is difficult to judge, to whether of them the Palme is due. Considering by armes wee defend and amplifie kingdoms, and by letters we preserve and governe the same, so that the one of the other stands in such neede, that neither this without the other, can be justly be extended, nor the other without the firste, be securely maintained.19

In Castiglione and many other versions of the Arms and Letters debate, the claim for letterati to be accorded equivalent status with guerrieri is usually backed up by listing all the famous warriors of the past who were also learned, an argument that naturally works both ways. In fact there was a genuine tendency in the sixteenth century for soldiers with literary pretensions to turn their attention to emulating Julius Caesar, inspiring a number of them to write their memoirs. For example, Blaise de Monluc noted that ‘Caesar was the greatest captain that ever was and he showed me the way, having himself written his Commentaries, writing [down] at night what he had practised by day’.20 Others, not content merely with emulating Caesar’s writing of memoirs, determinedly demonstrated learning by actually translating his works. As we have seen, when Piero Strozzi, the Tuscan general who served Henri II with distinction, went into retirement in 1558, he planned to devote his old age to preparing a version of Caesar.21 A sumptuous edition of the De bello gallico – including detailed illustrations of the battle-formations and fortifications described by Caesar made by none other than the architect Andrea Palladio – was published in 1575, incorporating the Italian translation first published by Francesco

18 See Walter Gundesheimer, ‘Burle, generi e potere: i “Discorsi” di A. Romei’, Schifanoia, 2 (1986): 15–18. Romei may even have been promoting Brancaccio’s reinstatement at Ferrara. 19 Romei, Discorsi p. 261; The Courtiers Academie, p. 267: ‘conciossiachè l’arme e le lettere siano professioni amendue così nobili e così eccellenti, che difficile sia il giudicare a chi si debba dar la palma: stando che per le arme si difendono e s’amplificano i regni, e per le lettere si conservano e si governano; e così l’una dell’altra ha di mestieri, che nè l’una senza l’altra esercitar si può giustamente, nè l’una senza l’altra l’una mantener sicuramente’. 20 Monluc, Commentaires, vol. 1, p. 28: ‘Le plus grand capitaine qui jamais ayt esté, qu’est César, m’en a monstré le chemin, ayant luy-mesmes escript ses Comentaires, escripvant de nuict ce qu’il exécutoict de jour’. 21 Romier, Les origines politiques des guerres de religion, vol. 2, pp. 218−19.

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Baldelli in 1554. Brancaccio’s own work, Il Brancatio, was still more ambitious – a translation coupled with commentaries relating the classical work to modern military science – and represents a distinctly innovative exercise in combining Arms and Letters that may well have justified Romei’s epithet ‘dotto [erudite]’. ‘Patrizio’ continues his exposition of the argument in favour of Letters by dividing human knowledge into the ‘speculative’ and the ‘practical’, an elaboration of the traditional quadrivium and trivium. Speculative Knowledge, which he claims for Letters, includes natural philosophy, arithmetic, geometry and theoretical music as well as astrology (in contradiction to Nifo, who had allotted mathematics as well as moral philosophy to Arms): ‘Habite speculative is no other but a knowledge of all those things, that comprehende the universall frame [L’abito speculativo non è altro che la notizia di tutte le cose che questo universo comprendono]’. ‘Patrizio’ divides Practical Knowledge into two parts, ‘active and doing [attivo e fattivo]’. The ‘active’ is the knowledge of government, both of the self and of the republic; and the ‘doing’ divides into the mechanical arts, which are to be avoided as ‘impertinent to a civil man [impertinente all’uomo civile]’ and the liberal arts, among which, pride of place is given to ‘military art [arte militare]’. They also encompass ‘Grammar… Rhetoricke, Dialect [i.e., dialectics], Poesie, Musicke, both of voice & instrument, painting, Architecture and the art of Phisicke [la grammatica, l’arte rettorica, la dialettica, la poetica, la musica che canta e suona, la pittura e architettura e l’arte medica]’.23 Thus, vocal and instrumental music is now firmly lined up with military science, across the line from the speculative knowledge that forms the world of Letters. Singing and playing are ‘doing’ processes – kinds of action – and completely separated, in Romei’s division (and perhaps also generally so understood in the context of the Ferrararese court) from ‘intellectual’ activity. Military practice, too, is an art like the others, because it functions in the same way as them: it exists as a process that can be simplified along Aristotelian lines as consisting of a ‘material subject’, an ‘end’ and the ‘instrument to achieve it’. In the case of a soldier, the material subject is battle, the end is victory, and the instrument, arms. ‘Patrizi’s’ argument will be based on showing that all human knowledge has as its end the attainment of ‘felicity’. If he can show that Speculative Knowledge is better at inducing felicity than practical knowledge, he will have won the argument in favour of Letters.24 ‘Brancaccio’s’ reply follows standard lines: soldiers are the guardians of civil peace and liberty (his example is the Spartans) and no philosopher is so curious to understand the nature of things that he would not break off his contemplation to run to the aid of his country if it was endangered (example: Marcus Tullius). In addition to the liberal arts conceded by ‘Patrizio’, ‘Brancaccio’ claims also rhetoric for soldiers – citing the need for a captain to harangue his troops effectively before battle – as well as the arts of medicine and architecture. This list echoes Castiglione, who also included painting and music as necessary to a soldier’s education, besides 22 Palladio, I Commentari di C. Giulio Cesare; see Hale, ‘Andrea Palladio, Polybius and Julius Caesar’, p. 471. 23 Romei, Discorsi p. 264; The Courtiers Academie, p. 269. 24 Romei, Discorsi, pp. 262–4.

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the obvious practical skills of riding, weapons handling and bodybuilding. But not content with just these, ‘Brancaccio’ appropriates also magnificence, liberality, magnanimity, modesty, mildness [mansuetudine] and affability for warriors.25 ‘Patrizi’ praises the superiority of operations of the soul (which are the province of the letterati) over those of the body, with the concomitant denigration of Arms as being ‘all body’, a Platonic notion: The learneds operations therefore, beeing from the bodie disjoyned, they must needs have in them something divine, and be truly worthy to be placed amongest the things most honourable: the which notwithstanding by Souldiers cannot be affirmed, whose actions beeing wholly intermixed with the body, have in them that imperfection which the body bringeth to the minde, and all matter to his proper forme.26

At the equivalent point in the debate in Castiglione’s Il cortegiano, Count Lodovico rebuffs this simplification: ‘On the contrary, the operations of Arms belong to both the soul and the body [Anzi all’animo ed al corpo appartiene la operazion dell’arme]’. ‘Brancaccio’s’ refutation is considerably more subtle and is in two stages. First, in a standard renunciation of solitary genius he condemns those philosophers who live apart from the world ‘nourished in idleness and knowing themselves unapt to action [nutriti d’ozio, conoscendosi inetti alle azioni]’.27 With the mention of ozio, ‘Brancaccio’ taps into the classical concept of otium (idleness or leisure), that has positive connotations, in that it is associated with artistic and literary production and noble life, but also negative ones, in the sense of torpor and inertia, the greatest foes of military vigour.28 Secondly, ‘Brancaccio’ categorizes virtuous actions in two types: the external actions of soldiers that win honour, something which is not possible for the second type, the ‘internal actions and only of the minde [azioni intrinseche e solamente dell’anima]’ of the letterati. The latter can only be known by other letterati and although they are worthy of praise, they cannot win honour: and on the contrarie, the opperations of us Martialists, grounding their internal beginning in the mind, and discovering themselves to the eyes and eares of others by meane of valor and vertue of our bodies, as well of prayse, as likewise of highest honour wee are thought worthie.29

25 Ibid., pp. 267–70. 26 Ibid., p. 265; The Courtiers Academie, p. 272: ‘sendo dunque le operazioni dei letterati dal corpo disgiunte, elle avranno del divino e saranno veramente degne d’esser poste tra le cose più onorevoli; il che già non si può dir degli armigieri, le azioni de’ quali sendo totalmente nel corpo immerse, hanno in sé quella imperfezione che dà il corpo all’anima, ed ogni materia alla sua propria forma’. 27 Ibid., p. 268; p. 275. 28 For the subject of otium in both classical and Renaissance culture, see Brian Vickers, ‘Leisure and Idleness in the Renaissance: the Ambivalence of Otium’, Renaissance Studies, 4 (1990): 8–19. 29 Romei, Discorsi, p. 274; The Courtiers Academie, p. 281: ‘E pel contrario, avendo l’opere di noi guerrieri il lor principio interno fondato nell’animo, e scoprendosi agli occhi, ed

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In other words, we are back at the fundamental prerequisites for the generation of honour. Singing and sexual power According to ‘Brancaccio’, ‘virtuous actions worthy of highest honour’ have their foundation in the soul, but are revealed to the ears and the eyes of others by the actions of the body in a discourse of interchange that is dependent on the physical presence of performer and audience. The first point to note is how this model of honour and its acquisition coincides with the one I elucidated earlier; second, is the fact that the process is so precisely constructed in terms of the body. With a small contextual jump, ‘Brancaccio’ could be describing musical performance, as two pertinent examples illustrate. First is Vincenzo Giustiniani’s celebrated description of the performance of the women of the musica secreta quoted in Chapter 4, which places as much weight on the visual as the aural, as well as on the disciplined selfrestraint of the bodies of the performers. The second example takes the process one stage further. Torquato Tasso’s poem ‘Sopra la voce del Brancaccio’ praising the singing of Brancaccio himself, is a rather ungainly mix of utterly conventional imagery about the power of music over the elements, with an intriguing attempt to describe the kinaesthetic effects of his voice on those who hear him. Here there is no visual imagery, but there is an acknowledgement of the power of Brancaccio’s bodily action (his singing) first ‘to temper the will’ and then to ‘bind together’ the breasts of those who collectively hear him and finally to ‘overwhelm’ their acquiescent limbs with an internal feeling of calm: Mentre in voci canore i vaghi spirti scioglie Giulio, tempra in ciel l’aure, in noi le voglie. Si placa l’aura e ’l vento placido mormorando risuona e van tuoni e procelle in bando: un interno contento n’accorda anco ne’ petti e i membri acqueta da’ soverchi affetti; E se pur desta amore, gli dà misura e norma col suon veloce e tardo e quasi forma. [While in tuneful notes, Giulio disentwines his aspiring thoughts, he tempers breezes in heaven, and in us, desires. The air is pacified, and the wind peacefully murmuring sounds forth and thunder and storms are banished: an inner contentment harmonizes us in our

alle orecchie altrui per messo del valore e virtù de’ nostri corpi, così laude ed insieme degne di supremo onore siamo reputati’.

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breasts and calms the imperious emotions of our limbs. And if love should be awakened, he gives it measure and regulation: it is effectively formed with fast and slow sound]. 30

Brancaccio, performing alone, casts a spell over all the individuals who listen to him (and unlike the letterati, his work is done not in solitude, but within a group); as the poem progresses he is depicted as holding his listeners in a collective trance, in which their bodies are incapable of independent movement. Tasso highlights breeze, breath and wind, which in Platonism have specific sexual connotations, where love is communicated first by the look then by the breath (the kiss) and this then leads to the heating process completed by friction. If the listeners should now be aroused to love (which is one of the powers of music), it will be to his beat: with his fast and slow sounds (a reference to cantar di gorga perhaps) he will regulate it and give it measure and form. Thus by the simple action of singing, Brancaccio can not only control the affections (imitating Orpheus) but also has sexual power over those who fall under his spell. It is perhaps testament to Brancaccio’s powers that a man of his considerable age had this effect, bearing in mind Castiglione’s warning about old men making fools of themselves: And if the courtier will be a good judge of himself he will accommodate himself well to the occasion and will know when the listeners’ minds are disposed to listen and when not; he will know his age, because to speak the truth, it is not nice and indeed, unpleasant, to see a man of a certain age, grizzly-headed and toothless, full of wrinkles, with an instrument in his hand playing and singing in the midst of a company of women, even if he can do reasonably well, and this because most songs contain words of love and love is a ridiculous thing in the elderly, even if, among his other miracles, he sometimes seems to delight in setting hearts aflame in spite of his years.31 30 Tasso, ‘Sopra la voce del Brancatio’ in Le rime, ed. Solerti, vol. 3, p. 269, first published in 1582 in two different collections: Delle rime del signor Torquato Tasso (2 vols, Venice: Aldo Manuzio) and Scielta delle rime del Sig. Torquato Tasso (Ferrara: Baldini); the latter has a dedication to Lucrezia d’Este, Duchess of Urbino, signed on 30 November 1581; see Le rime, ed. Solerti, vol. 1 (Bibliografia), pp. 202–4. The poem does not, however, appear in an earlier collection of Tasso’s poem published in 1581, allowing a fairly precise suggested dating. Another poem by Tasso ‘Al signor Giulio Cesare Brancaccio’ which begins ‘Qual dura sorte ti sotrasse e tolse’ (Rime, ed. Solerti, vol. 3, p. 268) celebrates the shared Neapolitan patrimony of poet and soldier, ‘possente d’arme e di consigli [powerful in arms and counsel]’. It was first published in Rime et prose del signor Torquato Tasso parte terza (Venice: Giulio Vasalini, 1583); a copy of this edition exists with autograph corrections, including to this poem: see Rime, ed. Solerti, vol. 1 (Bibliografia), pp. 175–6, 212–14. 31 Castiglione, Il libro del cortegiano, p. 128: ‘e se il cortegiano sarà giusto giudice di se stesso, s’accomoderà bene ai tempi e conoscerà quando gli animi degli auditori saranno disposti ad udire, e quando no; conoscerà l’età sua; ché in vero non si conviene e dispare assai vedere un uomo di qualche grado, vecchio canuto e senza denti, pien di rughe, con una viola [‘lute’ in Thomas Hoby’s 1561 English translation] in braccio sonando, cantare in mezzo d’una compagnia di donne, avvenga ancor che mediocramente lo facesse, e questo perchè il più delle volte cantando si dicono parole amorose e ne’ vecchi l’amor è cosa ridicula; benché qualche volta paia che egli si diletti, tra gli altri suoi miracoli, d’accendere in dispetto degli anni i cori agghiacciati’.

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Small wonder that guests were delighted to be admitted to the salons of the Duchess of Urbino and of her brother Duke Alfonso II d’Este for four-hour sessions into the night in which such a man and also beautiful women performed such ‘miracles’; small wonder, too, that they might be considered confusing or even dangerous environments. It is worth noting, too, that Castiglione’s courtier is charged with making his own judgement about when it is appropriate to sing or not, whereas in Brancaccio’s Ferrara, it was Duke Alfonso who apparently wanted to be in control of such decisions. Before pursuing the implications of this in a purely musical context, it is interesting to see how the subject of sexual attraction is also employed by ‘Brancaccio’ in the conclusion of Romei’s case in favour of the precedence of Arms. After establishing philosophically the superiority of soldiers over letterati, which ‘Patrizi’ all but concedes, there remains an easy home straight. ‘Brancaccio’ runs through the traditional arguments: the bible condones war when it is just; arms are necessary to preserve the rule of law; one should condemn the empty rhetoric of lawyers ‘which is an art of selling words and lies [cioè arte di vender parolete anzi menzogne]’; and finally one must refute ‘Patrizi’s’ claim that warriors should be subservient to mere citizens, which brings the notion of nobility full-circle. With a final burst of confidence ‘because I see my ship approaching neere her port’, ‘Brancaccio’ observes that dukes, kings and emperors are called ‘cavalieri’ and never ‘dottori’. And if any further proof were needed that Arms are more highly valued among the powerful, ‘Brancaccio’ suggests with a twinkle in his eye, ‘the judgement of women ever infallible … we seeing the greater parte of women are rather carried away with the love of knights, then men learned’.32 This entire passage owes much to a standard conceit and is similar to a section of Stefano Guazzo’s Del paragone dell’arme e delle lettere, in which a letterato bemoans the fact that the meanest soldier is preferred at court above the finest offerings of musicians and poets: In brief, princes take more pleasure in the noise of horses’ stamping and the sound of the trumpets and drums than in the sweet harmony of excellent musicians; and a simple soldier who presents a sword, shield, dog or horse gets a greater sign of gratitude than a poor writer who dedicates poems and histories composed over a long time to their immortal glory. Thus it remains clear that these days, princes have good reasons to be distracted by putting arms before letters, and this manner is observed by all of them.33

32 Romei, Discorsi, pp. 285–6; The Courtiers Academie, p. 294: ‘perchè veggio la nave ormai al porto ... il giudicio delle donne non mai fallace ... vedendo noi, che la maggior parte delle donne più si tengono vaghe dell’amor dei cavalieri che dei letterati’. 33 Stefano Guazzo, Del paragone dell’arme e delle lettere, in Dialoghi piacevole (Venice, 1586), p. 62: ‘Et breviamente più si gode il Prencipe dello strepito de’ cavalli, & del suono delle trombe, & de’ tamburi, che della soave armonia d’eccellenti musici, & da lui riceve maggior segno di gratitudine un semplice soldato col presentargli una spada, uno scudo, un cane, ò un cavallo, di quel che faccia un povero scrittore consecrandogli i poemi, & i historie per lungo spatio di tempo ad immortal gloria di lui composti & e così rimanete chiaro c’hoggidì i Prencipi sono da degna cagione astratti ad antiporre l’arme alle lettere, & che universalmante è fra loro osservato questo stile’.

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Guazzo has earlier made an observation about the comparative favour in which women hold letterati and soldiers which is remarkably pertinent to Brancaccio: If my opinion agreed with that of women, I reckon that I’d better end this quarrel in favour of arms, because it seems to me that for long while I have observed that they favour knights more than clerks and never have enough of loving the former and ignore the latter. And that with all that they show themselves happy and charmed by sonnets and songs that are presented to them by literati lovers nevertheless secretly they make fun of them and I imagine that when they are at home, what they do with those compliments and bits of paper. In sum, Cupid, as the son of Venus’ love affair with Mars does not carry a pen at his belt, nor does he bother himself with books or love-songs, but is a warrior, and armed, and disdains writers wearing his colours.34

Here is a wonderfully potent image of wimpish aesthetes penning poems and songs to pass to their lovers while we are invited to imagine what the recipients actually do with these billets doux once they get home – because when it comes down to it, you have to realize that Cupid was the fruit of Venus’ coupling with Mars. The distinction between Guazzo’s canzone and frottole, which are the province of letterati and Brancaccio’s ‘musica canta e suona’, which Patrizi had placed unequivocally amongst the ‘active’ arts, is critical. The former are, at best, worthy of praise, whereas the latter, as something which is ‘done’, an action demonstrating virtù, has the potential, like military prowess, to acquire true honour. It is this which I believe makes the performance of music by male courtiers acceptable and appropriate. The structural context of such performances and the degree of free will with which they are made (which constitutes the differences between performances by noble singers and musici) form dangerous shoals which have to be navigated with care in order to avoid damage to honour. Reading Romei’s version of the Arms and Letters debate, one might conclude that within its terms, as long as a warrior-singer’s performance sets him apart from the crowd and exerts ‘physical’, possibly sexual, power over his hearers, then his honour would not be violated, and may even be enhanced. Castiglione’s delineation of the appropriate circumstances in which male courtiers can make music (see above) specifies the private and domestic environment because it offers the best place in which ‘to soften the hearts of those that listen … and also quicken the spirits of those who perform’.

34 Ibid., fol. 57v: ‘Se la mia opinione fosse conforme a quella delle donne stimo che mi converrebbe terminar questa lite in favor dell’arme, perché mi pare d’haver di lunga mano osservato che favoriscono più i Cavalieri che i togati, nè sono mai satie d’amar quelli & lasciar questi; & con tutto che si mostrino vaghe, & liete de’ sonetti, & delle canzoni che loro presentano gli amanti letterati, non dimeno in secreto se ne prendono gioco, & m’imagino quando sono ritirate in casa, ció che fanno di quelle lodi, & di quelle carte. In fine Amore come figliuolo di Venere innamorata di Marte non porta il pennaiulo alla cintola, nè s’impaccia di libri, nè di frottole, ma è guerriero, & armato, & sdegnando haver la sua insegna i letterati’.

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Warriors making music The subject of warriors making music in the company of women and the tendency for otium to lead to intemperance was elaborated by Stefano Guazzo in his handling of the standard theme of leisure and idleness in his major book about courtier conduct, La civil conversazione. He first contrasts the effects of music and wrestling and allows that both are necessary for a healthy body; but picking up on Castiglione’s recommendation of the therapeutic value of the ‘company of women’ (he even appropriates the verb ‘addolcire’), he warns of the dangers of being lulled into excess by the ‘ozio onesto [harmless leisure]’ which it offers, citing the direct danger that this poses to virility: My meaning is even so: for he that should wallow continually in pleasures and delights, remaining always idle without doing any thing, would soon become intemperate and lascivious. Therefore it cometh that in old time were set down the exercise of wrestling and music, for the two strongest pillars, to stay up our life by. For as one maketh a man strong and fierce, so the other maketh him mild and gentle; But both together serve both the body and mind to much purpose. Seeing then that in the conversation with women is chiefly found this honest pleasure, which serveth to comfort, yea, and to take from us the grievous, which oppress our hearts, we must take heed that we bee not so wrapped in it, that wee never come out of it, least thereby we distemper the mind, and effeminate it in such sort, that it loose that courage which is proper to man.35

Guazzo, once more choosing here to use a simile from music that helps to lead him on to the standard example from classical history illustrating the need for young warriors to be educated to avoid excessive indulgence in leisure, continues with the story of the young Alexander the Great and his father Philip of Macedonia: It is very true that this leisure loses its name, when it is turned into continual exercise without doing ought else, so that a man cannot properly term leisure or pastime, the exercise of a music master, who all the day long doth nothing but teach some or other to sing, or to play on some instruments. In which respect be like Phillip, King of Macedon, who rebuked his son Alexander, for that he was so skilful in music, not that he misliked music, but because his son was so exquisite in it, he doubted it was his chief profession, neglecting other things more necessary to his estate.36 35 Guazzo, La civil conversazione, pp. 173–4; trans. Pettie, The Civile Conversation, vol. 1, p. 245: ‘Così l’intendo, perchè chi non si contentesse mai dà piaceri e solazzi, e volesse col far nulla servire in ogni tempo, d’ozioso spettatore diverrebbe intemperato. Quindi è che anticamenti fu proposta dai savii la gimnastica e la musica per due principali colonne necessarie al sostenimento della vita, perchè sì come l’essercizio del saltare e del lottare rende l’uomo feroce, così la musica lo adolcire, ma tutt’ e due insieme compongono e contemperano bene l’animo e i costumi. Poichè adunque nella conversazione delle donne si fiora principalmente quell’ozio onesto, il quale è atto a sollevarci dalle gravi passioni che ci opprimono il cuore, bisogna anco avertire che lo starvi continovamente involto non sia cagione di stemperare l’animo e di liquefarlo in modo che venga a perdere quell’ardire che è proprio dell’uomo’. 36 Ibid., p. 174; p. 247: ‘Egli è ben vero che quest’ozio perde il suo nome, quando è convertito in essercizio continovo, senza fare altra professione, onde non sì potrà chiamare ozio quello d’un maestro di musica che stando tutto il dì a sedere insegni a cantare o sonare. Al

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Note that the music master is exempted, because he is a professional musico and therefore his activity is not subject to the rule of ozio, which is a mark of a gentleman, as in Machiavelli’s famous definiton: they call someone a gentleman who lives in idleness entirely from his property without having to cultivate it or do any other necessary work in order to live.37

The baseness of the music master’s calling is depicted as mechanical and uncreative: the teacher stands all day instructing singing or playing but not performing, in the sense of winning honour. Then King Philip admonishes his son with the shame not of being a singer – for music may, in itself, be a fine thing – but (in Pettie’s translation) ‘because his son was so exquisite in it, he doubted it was his chief profession, neglecting other things more necessary to his estate’.38 The problem is one of perception: the critical word here is ‘doubted’ (or perhaps ‘feared’)’, which in turn reminds us that Alexander’s ‘proper’ identity or metier, whose appropriate virtù consisted of ‘other things more necessary to his estate’, is as much a construction of those who perceive it, as is the ‘profession’ of musico. The case is, of course, reminiscent of Brancaccio’s position as well. Guazzo’s use of two examples from music to illustrate his construction of the identity of the warrior-courtier could be dismissed as a random rhetorical device if it were not for the fact that it is not unique. It is interesting, for example, that in Il libro del cortegiano, Castiglione often moves to a musical digression when the subject of display or performance is raised.39 Even more persuasive is the evidence of an entire book devoted to the question of the appropriateness or not of music in the education of a young gentleman, Francesco Bocchi’s Discorso … sopra la musica, dedicated to a Florentine nobleman, Giulio Sale, on 15 October 1580 and published the following year.40 Bocchi was not himself noble, but a professional man of letters trained in literature and eloquence, apprenticed in the Curia in Rome before returning to his native Florence at the age of twenty-four. Thereafter he worked as a private tutor to young noblemen, was patronized by Lorenzo Salviati and Ferdinando de’ Medici, and won recognition for writing fine Italian in innumerable orations, letters and

che per avventura avendo riguardo Fillippo re di Macedonia, riprese Alessandro Magno suo figluolo, dicendogli che si dovera vergognare di sapere così ben cantare, il che io considera che dicese non tanto per biasimo della musica … quanto perchè avendone tanta contentezza, mostrava quasi che fosse sua professione e che avesse il pensiero poco rivolto a quelle cose principalmente apparterano alla sua grandezza’. 37 Niccolò Machiavelli, Discorsi (Florence, 1521), vol. 1, p. 55: ‘gentiluomini sono chiamati quelli che oziosi vivono delle rendite delle loro possessioni abbondanemente, senza avere cura alcuna o di coltivazione o di altra necessaria fatica a vivere’. 38 Guazzo, La civil conversazione, p. 174; trans. Pettie, The Civile Conversation, vol. 1, p. 247. 39 For example, in Book 1, sections 45 and 46 (in the midst of the ‘Arms and Letters’ section) and Book 2, sections 11 and 12. 40 Francesco Bocchi, Discorso ... sopra la musica non secondo l’arte di quella, ma secondo la ragione alla politica pertinente (Florence, 1581).

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rhetorical exercises on a huge range of subjects, including a Discorso … sopra la lite delle armi et delle lettere.41 Bocchi’s book about music education is a fairly disorganized and rambling trawl through classical literature, resulting in a compendium of classical stories about the effects of music. It opens with a paean of praise to music’s therapeutic powers, continuing with the usual catalogue of myths, including Timotheus and Alexander the Great, Socrates, Pythagoras (how he calmed the violent youths with his singing); Epanimondas and Achilles; Cimon and Themistocles; Thaletes of Crete (who freed the Lacedaemonians from the plague with the help of music) and even the singers of Puglia, who use the tarantella to cure the madness caused by the bite of the tarantula. This leads to a series of examples of individuals and societies in the ancient world who encouraged the use of music for filling leisure time.42 But then he turns to the negative effects that music – especially the practice of it – can have on a nobleman. He proceeds with a lengthy exposition of the dangers of excess and the need for discretion in the pursuit of music, again with numerous examples from classical precedent, often invoking ‘universally acknowledged truths’. In a long Galenic metaphor based on the actions of the bodily humours, he warns of the tendency in those who lose themselves in the study of music to cause the blockage of the operation of virtù, the drying up of the fount of valour and the undermining of virility itself, using language that suggests the trance-inducing power of music and calling to mind the kind of languor attributed by Tasso to the effects of Brancaccio’s singing: And who does not know, that he who abandons himself in his study of music, blocks the opening to the operation of virtù and to the seriousness of life and dries up the fount of valor and glory, and wrapped up in the deliciousness of singing, consigns strong and virile action to oblivion?43

Bocchi continues with one anecdote after another, passing from examples of the beneficial to the harmful in the role of music. However, there is a thread running through the book, which is to remind the reader constantly of the fine line that separates the unwary (perhaps, specifically, the immature) music-lover from the abyss. Although his final conclusion is that music in moderation cannot be harmful, one senses a lack of confidence in this traditional dictum. He recalls Cato’s determination that the Romans should not allow Greek letterati into the country because through the dissemination of their artistic treasures (including music) they would, bit by bit, soften the valour of its people, causing them to reject the hardships of military life and replace them with a continuous idleness, to live delicately 41 S. Menchi, ‘Bocchi, Francesco’, Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 11 (Rome, 1971), p. 72. 42 A survey of the evocation of images of the positive role of music in the education of the French nobility is in Brooks, Courtly Song, pp. 133–50. 43 Bocchi, Discorso ... sopra la musica, p. 24: ‘Et chi non sa, che colui, il quale tutto nello studio della Musica, si abbandono, serra l’entrata alle operazioni di virtù, & alla gravità della vita, & secca il fonte del valore, & della gloria, che ravvilupato tra’ canti deliziosi si pone in oblio le operazioni forte, & virili?’.

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according to their appetites, leading eventually to the overthrow of the empire. The deep fear of this ‘insidious danger’ is reflected in the regular reference to music as harmless in itself, but like a sweet poison that, with continuous indulgence, creeps unseen into the body as a result of either listening or singing.45 Bocchi concludes his treatise, somewhat unconvinced, with a recipe for healthy living based on the idea that just as a strong body will not be harmed by small amounts of unhealthy food mixed with good, so, after performing appropriate and valorous actions, the virile cavaliero will not be corrupted by ‘using’ singing as long as he does not do it continuously: As during banquets it is customary to turn from delicacies to frugal and inexpensive food in order to fulfil the appetite; likewise, after duties and worthy actions it is possible to have singing, but our mind should, however, not be fed with music.46

The idea of music as feminine and its potential for effeminising men was a regular theme in conduct books, and was often raised in connection with the education of young men. The English writer Philip Stubbs famously made the point in The Anatomie of Abuses (1583) characterizing music in a very similar way to Bocchi, as a dangerous ‘sweetness’ that once it has found its way in through the ears, will then poison and corrupt the mind: [Music] hath a certaine kinde of smooth sweetness in it, alluring ye auditiore to effeminacie … [which] at first delighteth the eares, but afterwards corrupteth and depraveth the minde, making it quaesie and inclined to all licentiousness of life whatsoever … If you would have your sonne softe, womannishe, uncleane, smothe mouthed, affected to baudrie, scurrilitie, filthy Rimes & unseemly talkyng: briefly, if you would have hym, as it were transnatured into a Woman, or worse … sett hym … to learne Musicke, and then you shall not faile your purpose.47

44 Ibid., pp. 33–4. 45 Ibid., p. 32. This whole argument is based very closely on a passage in Plato’s Republic, cited in Mladen Dolar, A Voice and Nothing More (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2006), p. 47: ‘Now when a man abandons himself to music, to play upon him and pour his soul as it were through the funnel of his ears those sweet, soft, and dirgelike airs … and gives his entire time to the warblings and blandishments of song, the first result is that the principle of high spirit, if he had it, is softened like iron and is made useful instead of useless, and brittle. But when he continues the practice without remission and is spellbound, the effect begins to be that he melts and liquefies till he completely dissolves away his spirit, cuts out as it were the very sinews of his soul and makes himself a “feeble warrior”’. 46 Ibid., p. 38: ‘Et come ne’ conviti avviene per sodisfare all’appetito di mutare i cibi preziosi con quelli, che sono vili, & di poco pregio; così dopo le operazioni necessarie, & di valore si puote usare il canto, ma non si dee dare nutrimento di Musica all’animo nostro tuttavia’. 47 Phillip Stubbes, The Anatomy of Abuses (London, 1583), fols 109r–110v, quoted in Linda Phyllis Austern, ‘Alluring the Auditorie to Effeminacie: Music and the Idea of the Feminine’, Music & Letters, 74 (1993), pp. 350–51.

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Brancaccio among the Sirens The image of music as an ‘unseen poison’ threatening virility is also employed by Torquato Tasso in the final text that I wish to examine, a text which is not only the most detailed eye-witness account of Brancaccio performing as a singer, but also offers a plausible key to the reasons for his rejection of the role that Duke Alfonso had employed him to fulfil. One of the highlights of the performances by the musica secreta during Brancaccio’s participation was their concerted singing, and it was one such display, by Anna Guarini, Laura Peverara and Brancaccio, that gave Tasso the impulse to write (possibly in 1580) a remarkably prescient poem warning Brancaccio of the potential dangers to which he was exposing himself by performing together with the women.48 The three of them are pictured singing a dialogue representing a return to the conflict between Apollo and Amore, which in the myth, led to Apollo’s hopeless love for Daphne; it is essentially a moral tale about self-control and free will in love. Apollo (Phoebus) speaks through the voice of Brancaccio, who, in a ‘second round replay’ of the conflict, uses the sweetness of his singing ‘so that Phoebus might bring home the vaunt of winning this second contest [perchè Febo il vanto / ne la tenzon seconda / riporti]’ and in a complex conceit, he imagines Brancaccio ‘saved’ from being overcome by Love’s frenzy, because his heart is protected by the sweetness of his own singing, and thus avoids the trap of becoming a ‘Narcissus of sound’: i sensi vaghi, il cor circonda de la dolcezza del tuo proprio canto: ch’a la dolcezza esterna ti farà quasi sordo al suo diletto, novo Narciso al suon, non a l’aspetto. [compass round your errant senses, surround your heart with the sweetness of your singing; for this to that sweetness that comes from without will make you as if deaf to its delight, a new Narcissus at the sound, not at the sight]

Meanwhile the two women together sing the part of Amore, mixing their voices so that the double sweetness of their singing makes those already ‘sick’ with a tendency to languor, to crave the delightful agony. Presumably Tasso refers here to the musica secreta’s hopelessly addicted audience, including Duke Alfonso, who have succumbed to the ‘poison’ which Francesco Bocchi had warned against: Mentre tu dolce canti e dolce a te risponde la vaga coppia, Amore il suon confonde 48 Tasso, Le rime, vol. 3, pp. 270–72, no. 717: ‘A Giulio Cesare Brancaccio per il concerto de le dame a la corte di Ferrara’. The poem is preserved in Florence BN, Palatino 224 (nos. 85–90), a collection of miscellaneous poetry and other writings copied by Abbot Serassi; see Tasso, Le rime, vol. 1 (Bibliografia), pp. 116–20. I am very grateful to Ronald Martinez for making me a translation of this poem, which, in its many-layered embodiment of the contest/dialectic between Apollo and Amor, is laden with references to Ovid, Dante, Ariosto and other poets.

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e la doppia dolcezza trae sí dolce armonia che di languir desia qual alma inferma e di languire avvezza. [While you sweetly sing and sweetly the desiring couple answers you, Love the sounds confounds and the sweetness doubled draws forth such sweet harmony that any infirm soul, to languishing inclined, comes to crave that melting pain]

‘But’, asks Tasso, ‘how is it that you (Brancaccio) manage to protect yourself from this danger? Ma perché nel tuo core il venen non discenda, chi fia che ti difenda? Altro diletto forse ed altro amore, e de’ tuoi propri vanti gioia e vaghezza e sdegno di piacer folli e di femineo ingegno? [But so that into your heart the poison should not descend, what shall it be that defends you? Another delight it may be, another love, both the joy and delight in your own success and disdain for mad pleasures and feminine wiles?]

Tasso imagines Brancaccio, even in the middle of a performance charged with dangerously enervating eroticism, concentrating on soldiering in order to prevent the ‘poison’ from descending from his ears and eyes to the rest of his body: an image of the process by which singing works on the listener strongly reminiscent of the poem about Brancaccio’s performance examined earlier. But he warns that just as Amore was able with arrows to ensnare the mighty Apollo in hopeless love, so Brancaccio is in severe danger from the sound of the women’s voices and also from their glances. The poet pictures Brancaccio as Ulysses, and warns him to close his ears to the sound and open his eyes: Signore, Amor t’ha colto tra novelle sirene, quai non so s’udir mai le nostre arene, gli orecchi al suon, deh, chiudi ed apri gli occhi al sonno [Sir, Love has surprised you among sirens hitherto unknown, such as I do not know our sands have ever heard; close, I say, close your ears to the sound and open your eyes to the [danger of lethal] sleep]

Apollo-Brancaccio may win the battle with Amore as long as it remains a singing contest, but the danger is that Giulio Cesare alone will be ensnared by the dangerous gaze of Laura and Anna: Ahi, voci insidiose, ove dolcezze Amor mortali ascose … Perchè mentre il bel canto

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Warrior, Courtier, Singer quindi alternato e quinci suona e risuona, tu le donne vinci e riman’ vinto da’ begl’occhi intanto [Ah, the insidious voices, where Love his mortal sweetnesses concealed…For while the beautiful song from here alternating and from there sounds and resounds, you vanquish the ladies and are meanwhile left vanquished by their lovely eyes]

Finally, Tasso warns that the beguiling performance of the women is a front for the wiles of a malevolent god, and by implication, of the court itself, and he recommends Brancaccio to flee now, or at least to harden his heart so well that it will resist the ‘distempering’ effects of the women’s singing: Fuggi; o t’inaspri tanto sdegno e ‘n sì dure tempre, che per dolcezza il cor non si distempre. [Flee, then; or, let disdain so harshen you and put you in such firm temper that the heart not with sweetness be untuned]

The word dolcezza and its derivatives are often used in descriptions of singing and usually in a positive sense. Tasso’s use of the word in this place however also hints at the ‘poison’ (in the same sense as Bocchi) to which, he fears, not only Brancaccio, but all listeners, expose themselves. Brancaccio may believe that he is immune to danger because, as far as he is concerned, singing is just an innocent diversion from his main business and preoccupation as a soldier, even though, as we have seen, the Florentine ambassador Urbani, for one, had noted Brancaccio’s anxiety on just this point. Tasso reveals here an ambivalent feeling about vocal performance itself that it is easy to miss on reading his earlier poem about Brancaccio’s voice. Thus, Tasso sees his friend achieving a short term victory over the women in the performance of the dialogue through the superiority of his singing, a victory which, although deployed as a witty military metaphor suitable to the old soldier, also acknowledges the sense in which his performance has the status of an ‘honourable action’. But Tasso is also able to see that Brancaccio must be prepared to find his heart ensnared by ‘sweet feelings [dolce senti]’ and that the women will eventually overwhelm him with ‘sweeter sounds [più dolce accenti]’. Tasso makes use of the ‘entwining’ image at the close of the poem (which presumably describes a concluding chorus in which all three sing simultaneous cascades of diminutions), depicting Brancaccio weaving garlands which will crown and entwine both Apollo and Amore and, as Tasso’s final words remind Brancaccio, ‘you too’: Miracoli d’Amore, che con Apollo d’armonia contende, e vinto il vince e vincitore il rende! ... ma così dolce senti al cor le tue catene e l’amorose tue soavi pene, che lor rischiari anco più dolci accenti. Pago del novo onore Febo intesse i suoi lauri e mirti altrui,

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e se stesso ed Amor corona e vui. [Miracles of Amore, who with Apollo contends over harmony, and, defeated, defeats him and makes him the victor!...but so sweetly do you feel in your heart the chains and your tender amorous pains, that you risk still sweeter tones for them [i.e., the ladies]. Gratified by the novel honour, Phoebus weaves his laurels and his myrtles for others, and crowns himself, and Love, and you all with his leaves]

Tasso’s poem strongly recalls the closing section of the fifteenth canto of Gerusalemme liberata, which he was engaged in revising and publishing at the same time as this poem was written: there are precise echoes not only of content but also of choice of language. In the Gerusalemme at this point, the two knights, Carlo and Ubaldo, en route to rescue Rinaldo from Armida, are tempted by two Sirens whom they come upon bathing naked in a mountain pool, the ‘fonte del riso’. One of the two knights cautions the need to take great care: (XV, 57): Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio che mortali perigli in sè contiene. Or qui tener a fren nostro desio ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene: chiudiam l’orecchie al dolce canto e rio di queste del piacer false sirene, così n’andrem fin dove il fiume vago si spande in maggior letto e forma un lago. [Lo, the fountain of laughter, and lo the stream that bears within it deadly dangers; now here it behoves us to be very careful and hold our desires in check: let us close our ears to the sweet and sinful singing of these false Sirens of pleasure: thus shall we make our way to where the wandering stream spreads out in a wider bed and forms a lake]49

Carlo and Ubaldo resist the invitation of the two women to join them, ‘hardening’ themselves against the Sirens’ aural and visual allure, just as Tasso has counselled Brancaccio to do: Ma i cavalieri hanno indurate e sorde l’alme a que’ vezzi perfidi e bugiardi, e ’l lusinghiero aspetto e ‘l parlar dolce di fuor s’aggira e solo i sensi molce. [But the knights have hardened and deafened their hearts against those perfidious and lying tricks; and the deceitful appearance and sweet speech entwine about them outside and only lightly touch their senses]50

The canto concludes with an analysis of how the Sirens’ magic works, characterising it once again as a sweetness that penetrates the ears and eyes and, once infused, destroys the ‘healthy plant’ of action, a vegetable image similar to Bocchi’s:

49 Torquato Tasso, Gerusalemme liberata, ed. Giorgio Cerboni Baiardi (Modena, 1991), trans. and ed. Ralph Nash as Jerusalem Delivered: An English Prose Version (Detroit, 1987), Canto XV, 57. 50 Ibid., Canto XV, 65.

272

Warrior, Courtier, Singer E se di tal dolcezza entro trasfusa parte penètra onde il desio germoglie, tosto ragion ne l’arme sue rinchiusa sterpa e riesca le nascenti voglie. [And if some particle of sweetness, carried within, makes penetration, at which desire begins to germinate, straightway reason, enclosed within her armour, cuts off and roots up the burgeoning acts of will]51

Tasso’s warning to Brancaccio is that through his participation in a dialogue about the competing powers of Amore and Apollo conducted with alluring, even enchanting vocal virtuosity, he risks, like the warriors Carlo and Ubaldo, becoming ensnared by the feminine forces of enchantment through dolcezza and thus emasculated and distracted from his proper path. What Tasso witnessed, as Brancaccio the ‘warriorsinger’ worked his virtuoso power and temporarily defeated the women in a friendly and enchanting battle of song, was a paradigm of the long-term danger of the seductions of an essentially feminine activity in a female gendered space. Tasso perhaps saw it as symptomatic of the impotence of a Ferrara court overdosed on orgies of dolcezza as it declined in a burst of artistic creativity towards inevitable extinction. Perhaps, like Urbani and other foreign diplomats, he, too, witnessed the ways that the musica secreta was employed by the duke along with other pleasures, including the legendary professional music establishment, the plays, tournaments and other extravagant displays as a tool of diplomacy. Feeling that the participants in the endless indulgence of the senses were rendered as impotent as Duke Alfonso himself through their participation in them, he wanted to ‘rescue’ his old friend and countryman, symbol of shared (Neapolitan) virile military-noble values that he found wanting in Ferrara. The Este court was already entering a terminal crisis because of the duke’s inability to produce a son and the looming threat of the reversion of the duchy to the pope should he die without heir. A series of misalliances and military and diplomatic failures stretching back to the early years of his reign had made Ferrara increasingly vulnerable to the jealousies and ambitions of other states in Italy and beyond.52 The apparently endless dispute with the Medici over precedence that consumed the best efforts of numerous philosophers and diplomats and countless pages of argumentation over a period of two decades, was never resolved. Likewise, the duke’s campaign to have his bastard son Cesare recognized by the papacy as his rightful heir finally foundered when defeat was snatched from the jaws of a hard-won victory with the death of Gregory XIII, the last pope favourable to the Este.53 Duke Alfonso was, like his father and grandfather, a passionate, almost obsessive patron of the arts, of writers and intellectuals and, of course, of musicians. Suitable ardour in these pursuits was considered admirable in the general scheme of Renaissance princely attributes, but such extravagance and the impression that it was indulged to the increasing detriment of other activities, especially military, gave 51 Ibid., Canto XV, 66. 52 Della Rena, Relazione dello Stato di Ferrara, p. ccxxi. 53 See Giuseppe Mondaini, La questione di precedenza tra il duca Cosimo I de’ Medici e Alfonso d’Este (Florence, 1898) and Solerti, Ferrara e la corte Estense, pp. xviii–xix.

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Ferrara a reputation for decadence that increased during the late 1580s and 1590s, as the decline of the Este family became inevitable. Nevertheless, during the period in which Brancaccio was at court, Ferrara’s glittering cultural wonders were a crucial lever in the diplomatic offensive with which Duke Alfonso hoped to win and nurture influential friends, and to send signals about his grandezza to rivals, in the campaign to ensure the continuation of his dynastic power. As a loyal courtier, Brancaccio had naturally been willing to lend his virtù in whatever form to support his patron, as he so bitterly attested in his letter to Cavaliero Gualengo on 3 August 1583 (quoted above, Chapter 8). Assuming, perhaps naively, that Duke Alfonso would value him above all for his military ‘glamour’, but unable to recognize how his own overblown self-importance and his particular style of self-presentation made him at best a figure of fun and at worst an embarrassment in delicate social situations, Brancaccio was inevitably going to be frustrated and eventually become an expendable liability. Duke Alfonso, however, recognized in Brancaccio’s singing performances the same potency as Tasso had (despite the singer’s advanced age), and it is no wonder that he did his best to harness and control the exercise of this virtù as part of his musica secreta project. In fact, for a while, Duke Alfonso made great efforts to please Brancaccio, indulging him in his extravagant and inept venture into vanity publishing and enduring his sulky and apparently unreasonable behaviour, as we have seen. For his part, Brancaccio was clearly content to exercise his musical virtù in suitable circumstances, as Tasso’s poem (among other documents) attests. I have argued that, in terms of Renaissance conventions of honour, Brancaccio’s virtuoso performances as a singer in the closed circle of the elite of the court were in principle compatible with the construction of his identity as a warrior-courtier. But his own instinctive sense of disorder and imbalance in the arena of Alfonso’s court and his tumultuous ‘breakout’ from Ferrara, as well as the inherent ambiguities of his acts of singing – especially in company with women – in many ways mirror the general transformation of the traditional Castiglionian courtly–chivalric model of nobility, as the nobility themselves adapted to new political orders right across the European landscape.

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Appendix 1

Giulio Cesare Brancaccio: Works 1. Prints Julii Caesaris Brancati: Epithalamion (Bologna, [Ercole Bottrigari] 1548).1 Giustificationi et cartelli passati tra’ gli illustri Signori, il Signor Giulio Brancaccio, & il Signor Conte Giulio Estense Tassone (no printer, no date); colophon signed ‘Da Bles [Blois], 1 December 1559’. Carlo Promis cites a manuscript of the Giustificationi in Paris BN, dated ?1558 or 1559, which I have not yet located.2 Discurso de Julio Brancaccio, conde de San Andrés, acerca de los cabos principales en que consiste toda guerra ([Florence], 1572).3 Il Brancatio, della vera disciplina, et arte militare sopra i Commentari di Giulio Cesare, da lui ridotti in compendio per commodità de’ soldati (Ferrara, Vittorio Baldini, 1581) This edition is very rare: only two copies are listed in Mantua, Biblioteca comunale Teresiana (Le edizioni italiane del XVI secolo, vol. 2B, p. 28) and in Washington, Folger Shakespeare Library (where it is mistakenly catalogued under the name of Lelio Brancaccio, as is also the 1585 edition – see n. 5 below). There is a colophon which states ‘In Venetia, 1582’ (see below, note 5). Max Jähns refers to an autograph in Turin, Biblioteca Reale, 365, containing Books 1–3, but this proves to be a misattribution.4 Reprint: Il Brancatio, della vera disciplina, et arte militare sopra i Commentari di Giulio Cesare (Venice, Appresso Vittorio Baldini, 1582) 1 Partially transcribed in Croce, ‘Un capitano’, pp. 59–60, and described as ‘rarissimo’. The copy consulted (Bologna, Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio) is the only one listed in Le edizioni italiane del XVI secolo: censimento nazionale (Rome, 1985– ). 2 Carlo Promis, ‘Gl’ingegneri militari che operavono o scrisseno in Piemonte dall’anno 1300 all’anno 1650’, Miscellanea di storia italiana, 13 (1871): 436, n. 5. 3 No printer’s name or date; also apparently printed in French and Italian (see Chapter 3). MS copy in Simancas AG, Legajo E 1505-25, listed on the wrapper as ‘Proyecto indicando los modos de tomar las plazas fuertes en el plazo más breve hecho por Julio Brancaccio, conde de San Andrés, al servicio del rey de Francia’; a second MS copy in Legajo E 1331-21. 4 Max Jähns, Geschichte der Kriegswissenschaften vornehmlich in Deutschland: Erste Abteilung Alteratum, Mittelalter, XV. und XVI. Jahrhundert (Munich and Leipzig, 1889), vol. 1, p. 449.

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In almost all respects, ‘Ferrara, 1581’ and ‘Venice, 1582’ are identical and, with the exception of the outer sheet, consist of sheets printed with the same type settings; thus one of them is technically an ‘issue’ of the other rather than a separate edition. It is, however, as yet unclear whether the information about place of printing on the ‘1581’ and ‘1582’ title pages is to be taken at face value. The ‘1581’ issue (whose title page states ‘IN FERRARA | Apresso Vittorio Baldini | MD LXXXI’) has a colophon occupying a page numbered ‘203’ that reads ‘IN VENETIA | [Daedalus ornament] | Apresso Vittorio Baldini | MD LXXXII [sic]’; the reverse of this sheet (which would have been ‘page 204’) is blank; it is then followed by the ‘Tavola de’gli Errore’ [Table of Errors]. The final page of Brancaccio’s text in both issues is ‘page 202’ and they both have the same ‘Tavola de’gli Errore’ the printing of which Brancaccio claimed to have overseen in Venice (see Chapter 3); this ‘Tavola’ is on two pages numbered ‘205’ and ‘206’. The ‘1582’ issue is missing pages ‘203–4’ altogether. Thus the colophon of ‘1581’ contradicts the title page; furthermore, this colophon appears to share whole sections of type with the impression of the ‘1582’ title page. For example, the words ‘Appresso Vittorio Baldini | MD LXXXII’ are identical, even sharing a piece of worn type for the first ‘X’ of the date. Further, the ‘D’ of the date on the ‘1582’ title page is the same piece of worn type as the ‘D’ in the word ‘Disciplina’ in the title page of ‘1581’. Was the whole edition printed either in Ferrara or in Venice and was a different title page then set up for some of the copies? If so, why then do those copies which are called ‘Ferrara 1581’ on the title page declare themselves to have been printed in Venice in 1582 at the back? The copies of the more common 1582 issue which I have so far seen, appear to have had the sheet bearing the ‘colophon’ removed. Why? Is it possible that the so-called ‘Ferrara 1581’ title page was added afterwards to copies of the book printed in Venice, or vice versa? Further investigation of all these questions will include physical comparison of papers used in the two issues. New edition: Della nova disciplina & vera arte militare del Brancatio libri VIII… (Venice, Presso Aldo, 1585) This edition is well represented in many libraries across Europe and the 1582 edition is also relatively ubiquitous, which may reflect not only the book’s wide and successful distribution – perhaps thanks partly to the author’s own efforts, recalling the copies he sent to Cardinal Luigi d’Este for forwarding to Naples (Chapter 3, above) – but also to particularly large print runs, as Brancaccio had originally planned. In many libraries, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio’s work is misattributed to Lelio Brancaccio (relationship to Giulio Cesare unknown), who also published a work of military science, I carichi militari o fucina di Marte (Antwerp, 1610).5

5 For an account of the history of this bibliographical error, see Anna E. Simoni, ‘Soldier’s Tales: Observations on Italian Military Books Published at Antwerp in the Early 17th Century’, in Denis V. Reidy (ed.), The Italian Book 1465–1800: Studies Presented to Dennis E. Rhodes on his 70th Birthday (London, 1993), pp. 271–4.

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Reprint (in German) in Zween Kriegsdiscurs: I. über Julii Caesaris VIII Bücher vom französischen Krieg, Herrn Julii Caesaris Brancatii; II Herrn Francisci Mariae Hertzogen zu Urbin von allerhandt Kriegs-Vortheilen; und dann 4 Bücher von der Kriegskunst zu Wasser und Land Herrn Marii Savorgnan, Graffen von Belgrad; aus italienischer Sprach in der Teutsche versetzt durch H. Johann Wilhelm Newmayr von Ramsla (Frankfurt am Main, Sumpt. Rulandionum, 1620)6 2. Manuscripts7 Discorso della milizia (1572), Milan BA, R. 105 sup., fols 76r–80v The Brancaccio MSS in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana are in the collection of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, who was born in Naples in 1535 and went from there to the University of Padua in 1558, where he remained for the rest of his life.8 The documents presumably came into Pinelli’s possession in Padua, possibly after Brancaccio’s death and may suggest an acquaintance between the two men (they certainly knew other people in common). They could also have come into Pinelli’s hands together with other documents associated with Paolo Giordano Orsini and Vittoria Accaromboni which are bound into the same volumes: further research may elucidate their provenance. The first mention of these Brancaccio manuscripts is by Giovanni Mazzuchelli, who also records a manuscript copy of the Discorso della milizia in Florence in the ‘collection of Baron von Stosch, ms. 30’.9 This may be the one reported by d’Ayala and referred to by Croce as having been sold in Florence.10 Promis apparently worked from a copy of the Discorso della milizia in the Vatican (‘Vaticana No. 2597’).11 Another copy of the Discorso della militia di Giulio Cesare Brancatio is listed in London, Lambeth Palace Library: the volume contains miscellaneous items of military theory and ecclesiastical history in Italian and Latin from the later sixteenth century.12 ‘Memoria di Giulio Brancaccio che si trovò in 23 guerre, sei battaglie, e infiniti incontri simili a fatti d’armi, e prese da 100 dal 1535 al 1572’ (1573?) [Curriculum vitae] (see Appendix 2, Doc. 1), Milan BA, Q. 115 sup., fols 132r–133v.

6 As reported in Jähns, Geschichte der Kriegswissenschaften, vol. 1, p. 449; no extant copy so far found. 7 Promis, ‘Gl’ingegneri militari’, p. 435, mentions ‘dodici manoscritti ne conosco serbati a Firenze, Roma, Torino, Siena, Parigi e sopratutto a Milano’, which presumably include letters. 8 See Richard Wistreich, ‘Philippe de Monte: New Autobiographical Documents’, Early Music History, 25 (2006): 258–62. 9 Giovanni Mazzuchelli, Gli scrittori d’Italia (2 vols, Brescia, 1753–63), p. 1985. 10 Mariano d’Ayala, Bibliografia militare italiana (Turin, 1854), p. 9, cited in Croce, ‘Un capitano italiano’, p. 71 n. 11 Promis, ‘Gl’ingegneri militari’, p. 435 n. 12 London, Lambeth Palace, 249, fols 116–27; see Henry John Todd, A Catalogue of the Archiepiscopal Manuscripts in the Library at Lambeth Palace (London, 1812; repr. 1965), p. 34; I am grateful to Bonnie Blackburn for bringing this reference to my attention.

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Autograph; the paper bears the same watermark as that used for Ragionamento di Partemio, dated 1583 (in a copyist’s hand) and also the Discorso intorno alla fortezze, dated 1586 (?autograph, see below), suggesting that Brancaccio had a stock of paper which he obtained no later than 1573, and continued to use for at least the following 13 years. ‘Parere di Giulio Cesare Brancatio intorno la fortificatione di Messina’; ‘Parer di Giulio Cesare Brancatio in torno la fortificatione de Palermo’; ‘Parere di Giulio Cesare Brancatio in torno alla fabricatione di Trapana’ (1573?); Simancas AG, Legajo E1143-29, 30, 31. Il Partenio: ragionamento di Partenio e Alexandro sopra il modo di far la guerra al Turco [‘Dialogo di Giulio Cesare Brancaccio sopra il modo di far la guerra al Turco’13] (1585), Milan BA, R. 105 sup, fols 36r–64v. [‘Lettera del sudetto Brancaccio sopra le fortificazioni di Bergamo’] (1585), Milan BA, R. 105 sup., fol. 93r. [‘Discorso di Giulio Cesare Brancazi in materie di milizia al Padre Possevino’], Milan AB, D. 191 inf., fols 176–179v. [‘Discorso dello stesso intorno alla fortezze’] (1586), Milan BA, R. 105 sup., fols 65r–74v.

13 This, and subsequent subtitles, are those given in the list of contents of MS R. 105 sup., fol. 2, in the hand of Antonio Ceruti, compiler of the Ambrosiana catalogue in the 1860s and 1870s.

Appendix 2

Selected Documents This Appendix contains transcriptions of selected letters and other documents otherwise difficult to find in modern sources. Transcriptions from both manuscript and print sources follow the originals as faithfully as possible, retaining capitalization and spelling, except where obvious mistakes have been emended; abbreviations have been silently resolved, punctuation rationalized and some accents added. Document 1 Milan BA, Q. 115 sup., fols 132r–133r [Curriculum vitae]; probably written after August 1573; see Appendix 1. Numero delle guerre dove s’è trovato Giulio Brancaccio No. 23 battaglie 6, con altri infiniti rincontri simili e fatti d’Arme, et prese di terra più di 100.

Marchese del Guasto Capitano generale

Clarissimo Signore mio osservandissimo Perché mi pare che Vostra Signora Clarissima havrebbe molto a caro di sapere quante guerre io ho visto habbia in mia vita, et in quante battaglie, et prese di terre mi sia trovato, lo farò volentieri per servirla in questo suo desiderio; et ciò distintamente ne’ primi due capi, ma nel 3o ch’è la summa delle terre espugnate, ne parlerò per transito il più succintamente ch’io potrò per evitar prolissità, et ciò dell’anno 35 sin’ al 72 che sono 37 anni ch’io hor con carichi et hor senza ho continuamente militato, sotto più et diversi Capitani, Prencipi, et Nationi, havendo poi dall’hora in qua vacato alla speculatione delle cose passate, per poterne fare un giorno qualche buon servizio a Dio Benedetto, et alla Christianità che tanto n’ha di bisogno, come tutti vediamo. La prima guerra dunque fu di Tunesi, et la Goletta con l’Imperator Carlo V di felicissima et Augusta memoria, mio natural signore, dove guadagnammo la battaglia a Barbarossa che ne la presentò dopo la espugnatione della Goletta, marciando noi verso Tunesi a trovarlo co ’l nostro esercito.

fol. 132r

1535 Battaglia vinta a Barbarossa in Tunisi

280 Anton di Leva

Marchese del Guasto. Don Ferrante Gonsaga. Don Ferrante Gonsaga, Don Ferrante Gonsaga.

Don Ferrante Gonsaga

Duca d’Alba Duca d’Alba

Warrior, Courtier, Singer

Poscia l’anno seguente la Maestà medesima in Azais [Aix] di Provenza, et al ritorno di là col Marchese del Guasto in Piemonte creato pur all’hora Capitan generale in Italia dopo la morte di Antonio di Leva in Azais. Dove oltre alla espugnatione di Chirasco molto ben difesa per Francia, et la presa di Chieri, et d’Alba, si ferono [sic] molte belle fattioni contra francesi. Con l’Imperator anco poi successivamente in Algieri; et poco appresso alla espugnation di Dura, Reirmonda, Vendelot, et altre terre nelle stato di Gheldre Giuliès, et Cleves. Prima et 2a guerra di Francia contra Re Francesco venuto al soccorso di Landersì, da noi sin’all’hora battuto di continuo, et quasi non riconosciuto, non che preso, dove (si come anco a | Ciatteuiterri) stettimo qui giorni con l’Imperator sempre in battaglia per combattere, facendosi in tanto di grosse et ben travate scaramuccie di 5 et 6 mille cavalli per volta in campagna fra l’uno et l’altro essercito posto sempre secondo ho detto, in battaglia per dar dentro (il che poi per divina bontà non successe) con molte prese di terre fatte l’anno appresso \che fù la 2.a guerra/ quali furono fra l’altre Luzzèmborgo Còmercy; Ligny; Sandesir; Aprerù, Ciatteutierrì et Suessòn x lighe presso Parigi, dove si fè la pace. Le due guerre notabilissime d’Alemagna contra i Protestanti et Duca Gio: Federico di Sassonia, nell’ultima delle quali

1536

1537 1538

1539 1541 1542

1543

fol. 132v

1544

1546* 1547

1 The two dates are bracketed together, with the following note: ‘l’imperatore guidò queste due guerre, et lui solo le vinse con valore et prudenza inestimabile. Battaglia vinsa al Duca Gio: Federico di Sassonia’.

Selected Documents Giovean di Vega

Duca d’Alba

Duca di Savoya

Gran Condestabile di Francia, Fatto d’Arme di Renty

Duca d’Omala fratello di Guisa. Duca di Guisa.

presimo pregione in battaglia detto Duca. La espugnatione d’Africa in Barberia co ’l Vicere di Sicilia Gio: di Vega et Don Garsia di Toledo Governante delle Galerie di Napoli, sopra due delle quali congionte insieme gli fece fare quella piattaforma bellissima, ponendoci sei pezzi grossi. Per la cui batteria della banda di mare fu presa finalmente quella terra dopo 10 settimane di bravissima difesa. Et pochi mesi appresso quella di Metz in Loreno battuta lungo tempo con cento pezzi grossi, et non presa, et finalmente la espugnatione di Terrovana, et Hederi in Piccardia, prese amendue d’assalto. Il che finito con la persona sempre quasi dell’Imperatore passai di Fiandra in Inghilterra alla Maestà del Re Cattolico all’hora Principe di Spagna per certi miei importantissimi negotii, i quali malignati a torto d’alcun ministro mio poco amico mi possero in tal disperatione gionto con la ardente et giovenile impatienza, che senza haver riguardo a quello ch’io perdeva con tal risolutione, passai da Inghilterra in Francia, dove subito in arrivare mi trovai all’assedio, et fatto d’arme di Renty con la persona del Re Henrico II d’immortal | memoria, nel cui servizio restai illustremente accommodato. Il seguente anno in Piemonte co ’l Marescial Brisac Luogotenente et Capitan Generale del Re, dove espugnammo Vulpiano, et Moncalvo con i lor castelli; et altri luoghi. L’anno appresso calammo in Italia co ’l Duca di Ghisa general di quella impresa espugnando di passata Valenza co ’l suo castello nello stato di Milano, et lasciando in libertà quasi terre infinite di quello stato che di mano in mano si venivano a rendere per non havere i debiti presidij, la qual guerra essendo finita dopo haver noi lungamente battuta, et non presa Civitella nel Regno, et accomodato la pace fra

281

1550

1551

1552

fol. 133r

1554 1555

282 Duca di Guisa. Duca di Guisa.

Dall’anno, 60 sin al 70 le 4 battaglie Reali furono quella di Dreux, Di Saint Denìs, Di Giarnac et di Montcontour Queste due battaglie Vinsemo sotto il Duca d’Angiù, et mons. di Tavannes suo luogotenente generale

Warrior, Courtier, Singer

Spagnoli e ’l Papa, ritornammo in Francia, et quindi alla espugnatione di Cales [Calais] et Ghines che presimo d’assalto in 20 giorni. Come anco poi successivamente con lui medesimo alla espugnatione di Jeonville [Thionville], et d’altri luoghi nel ducato di Luzzemborgo, et finalmente nel campo di Amiens, dove intervenne la persona del Re Henrico sopradetto contra il Re Cattolico pratticamente nel suo campo, dopo la rotta di S. Quentin. et quivi si fe poco appresso la pace. Dalla quale dopo il miserabile et infelicissimo caso del Re Enrico, nacquero le guerre civili in Francia, dove mi trovai nel corso di 10 anni, in 4 battaglie reali vinte da noi agli Hugonotti, et altri rincontri simili a fatti d’arme, con più di 30 espugnationi di fortezze hora col Re Carlo viiij di felice memoria, et hora con suoi Luogotenenti et capitani generali. Ma fatto l’ultimo accordo con gli Hugonotti l’anno ’70 et essendo io stato eretto superintendente et commissario general di tutte le fortificationi et piazze forti di quel Regno (secondo si vede per le speditioni, et patente reali, ch’io sempre ho serbate et serbo meco) partij con buona gratia del Re et andai in Alemagna all’Imperator Massimiliano d’eterna memoria con | cortezza ch’ei dovesse intrare in lega co ’l Papa, Re Cattolico et Serenissimi Venetiani, et dare adosso al Turco (secondo per tutto chiaramente si diceva) per la Ungaria con potente essercito. Il che per qual cagion poi non succedesse me ne diè per sua gratia quel gentilissimo Principe particolar raguaglio. Onde ritornato in Italia et dissoluta la lega dopo la vittoria navale per l’accordo fatto dei Serenissimi Venetiani co ’l Turco, fui chiamato dal

1556

1557

Condestabile di Francia Duca d’Angiù, hora Henrico III, Re di Francia Duca di Nemurs, sotto il quela vinsemo dui fatte d’arme agli hugonotti in Delfinato fol. 133v

Selected Documents Il signore Don Giovan d’Austria

Signor \Don/ Giovanni d’Austria co ’l quale mi trovai per la 2a volta alla impresa di Tunesi (racquistata poco dinanzi da Turchi) 37 anni dopo ch’io ci fai la prima volta con l’invittissimo Imperator suo padre. Et dall’hora in quà ho seguito cosi ardentemente, li già molto prima cominciati studi della guerra che ci ho havuto a perdere altretanto la vita, come più fiate dubitai di lasciarla per cagion delle buone archibugiate, et lanciate che ci ho ricevuto sopra. Ma questi et altri maggiori disaggi gli ho tutti per molto ben’ impiegati per esserne venuto, Dio mercé, al desiato fine, ciòe di saper tanto di questa professione, che possa fare un giorno (come ho detto) qualche rilevato servizio a Dio et alla Christianissima Republica et al Principe che di me si vorrà servire non meno che honore alla nostra natione, il cui valore non essendo conosciuto da chi potrebbe essaltarla, giace, si puo dir, sepolta, fin che altri non la rilievi, et faccia conoscere con gli effetti la virtù sua per tutto il mondo.

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Guerre numeri 23 Battaglie reali 6. Rincontri simili a fatti d’arme forse X. Terre prese espugnate et altre battute et non prese forse 100.

Document 2 Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Naples) to Giovanni Antonio Serone (Rome), 4 August 1548, in Delle lettere facete, et piacevole di diversi grandi huomini, et chiari ingegni, scritte sopra diverse materie, raccolte per M. Francesco Turchi, libro secondo (Venice, 1575), pp. 52–3. Al Signor Gio. Antonio Serrone. Parmi che siano 20 Seccoli, ch’io non habbia havuto particolar nuova di Vostra Signoria e se non fosse, ch’il Signor Luigi [?Dentice] me ne ha avvisato, crederei che fosse in Parnasso, o in Helicona favellar con quelle Madonne, più presto che in … a sollazar la vita libera de i totum continens, & quel superbo vantatore di perfetto amico. Come in verità mi lodo, & compiaccio esser lo tanto del mio Signor Gio. Antonio. Vi prego a rendermi il solito tributo dell’amore, che sempre così interamente m’havete portato. Amatemi dunque. Scrivetemi, & accarezzatemi con un diluvio di lettere, altramente non voglio far pace con voi per un mese; fra’ il quale io me obligo a mandarvene quanto potrà condurre il … animale del Peraccio. Fra tanto mi farete gratia intendere, da una lettera, ch’io scrivo al Signor Cesare Villano una causa ch’io ho di dolermi della Fortuna, più che de i padroni. Poi che l’amore, che sempre m’ha portato il Duca Ottavio [Farnese], m’ha ridotto in termine, che quando mi togliese la vita, non potrei dolermene. Ma questo ch’io dico, essendo cosa che tanto comple al servitio suo, parmi dover pregar gli amici, che con destro modo glielo facciano venir all’orrecchie & salutando gli amici, e sopra tutti il mio Signor Gio. Alfonso, il

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Signor Gio. Ferrant, e ’l Signor Pietro Paolo, & a Vostra Signoria baciando mille volte le mani, le dico a Dio: che già sono chiamato alla cena. Di Napoli, Il dì 4 di Agosto del 48. Servitore di Vostra Signoria Giulio Cesare Brancazzo Document 3 Del signor Luigi Dentice gentil’huomo napoletano: della musica (Naples, 1552).1 Luigi Dentice al Signor Giulio Cesare Brancazzo Gentilhuomo Napoletano Havendomi il Signor Angelo di Costanzo (gentil’huomo nell’età nostra non solo tra i primi Poeti reputato, ma anchora in tutte le scientie versatissimo) più volte detto, di quanta forza appò gli antichi Greci fosse stata la Musica, & in che modo il genere Chromatico, l’Enarmonico, & il Diatonico fosse da quegli 1 The 1552 edition survives in very few copies. Fabris, ‘Contributo alla storia della teoria musicale a Napoli’, pp. 76–7, mentions only the one in the British Library, although there is at least one other, in Florence BN, Palatino, 14.X.6.6.13. A comparison between the British Library’s copies of the two ‘editions’, K.1.k.3 (Naples: Matteo Cancer, 1552) and Hirsch 1. 142 (Rome: Vincenzo Lucrino, 1553), reveals that the second ‘edition’ consists of copies of the same sheets as the first, with a newly printed outer sheet: technically, it is thus an ‘issue’ rather than a new edition; see Fredson Bowers, Principles of Biographical Description (Princeton, 1949; repr. Winchester, 1994), pp. 40–1. This is confirmed by comparing the watermarks in the two states, which are identical, save for the new sheet. The motivation for the new issue appears to have been solely in order to remove the letter of dedication to Brancaccio, because, apart from the change of printer’s name, all other material from the original first sheet is carefully reproduced, even to the extent of copying as near as possible Matteo Cancer’s typeface. Thus pages i to iv and the final two pages are reset as a single folio sheet, but thereafter (signatures A–L) the sheets are from the 1552 printing. The new pages for the 1553 Roman issue are definitely reset to be combined with sheets from the 1552 edition because on sig. Aiv the catchword in 1552 is ‘l’animo’ whereas in 1553 the typesetter was one word behind, so sets ‘con l’animo’ as catchwords, but the next page (sig. Bi) begins with ‘l’animo’. The original final page in 1552 has a colophon identifying the printer as ‘Maestro Cancer’ and on the reverse side is a list of ‘Errori di Stampa [Printing Errors]’. The errors have not been corrected in the 1553 issue. The presence of a list of printing errors raises the intriguing question of whether Dentice oversaw either the first or second printings, and if so, in which city, Naples or Rome? The modern facsimile, edited by Patrizio Barbieri (Lucca, 1988), reproduces the text of the more common 1553 issue (i.e., without the letter of dedication). The 1552 edition has the following title: ‘DEL SIGNOR / LUIGI DENTICE GENTIL’/huomo Napoletano / della Musica’, with the colophon: IL FINE / In Napoli per Maestro Cancer / nell’Anno M. D. LII’. The 1553 issue has the following title: ‘SIGNOR LVIGI DENTICE / GENTIL’HVOMO / Napolitano / [ornament] / Delli quali l’uno tratta della Theorica & l’altro della / Prattica: Raccolti da diversi Autori / Greci & Latini. / Nuovamente posti in luci. / [ornament] / IN ROMA / Apresso Vincenzo Lucrino / 1553’. If Brancaccio’s Curriculum vitae (see Doc. 1, above) is to be believed, he left Naples in time to be present at the siege of Metz, which began on 24 November 1552 (see Chapter 1), so this may be used in estimating a terminus ante quem for the letter of dedication to him in Naples.

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posto in uso, mi sarei non poco maravigliato, che a tempi nostri non se’habbia fatta esperienza; & che così come generalmente usiamo il genere Diatonico, non s’usi più presto il genere Enarmonico (essendo come dicono il miglior di tutti) se da molti valenti huomini non havessi saputa la cagione; i quali dicono che l’uno (cioè il genere Chromatico) per esser troppo molle & pieno d’affetti, non sia degno da ponersi in uso; & l’altro che è l’Enarmonico, anchor che si possa ridure, et che sia attissimo per lo stormento accomodato in quel genere, nientidimeno perché la voce humana non può più formare il diesis che è la metà del semitono minore, procedendosi nel genere Enharmonio per diesis, diesis, & ditono, non si può con le voci mettere in pratica. Et di ciò ne potrei io dar pena fede, havendo per lunga esperienza veduto con quanta difficultà si viene alla finezza di potere intonare il semitono minore, meno del quale la voce humana non può esprimere. Et certo mentre la Musica fu essercitata con semplici organi fu casta et modesta, ma come incominciò a farsi varia et mista, perdè la gravità & il modo della virtù. Onde Platone commanda, chi i fanciulli non imparino tutti i modi, ma più presto li fermi, & castamente congiunta deve esser guardata da una Republica, accioché sia modesta, semplice, & virile, & non effeminata, ne fiera, ne varia; il che i Lacedemonij con grande industria serbarono, mentre Talete Cretense gortino chiamato da loro per un gran prezzo venne ad insignare a i fanciulli la disciplina dell’arte della Musica, et fu questo a gli antichi per costume, et così per lungo tempo durò: ma essendo venuto Timoteo Milesio, aggiunse una corda sopra a quelle che innanzi havea trovate, & fè la Musica più moltiplice; ondei Lacedemonij fatto sopra di ciò il consiglio condennarono Timoteo Milesio ad una gran pena pecunaria, & che andasse in esilio, conciosia che grandemente havea nociuto a gli animi de i fanciulli; i quali egli havea presi ad insignare; & gli havea impediti dalla modestia della virtù, con ridure la Musica moltiplice; & che l’harmonia la quale havea appresa modesta, in genere Chromatico che è più molle havea ridutta; tanta fu la diligentia della Musica appresso di coloro, che pensavano che per quella si potesse vincer l’animo, & certo egli è così. Onde questi anni addietro, lasciate l’ambitioni delle corti, & li continovi pensieri che s’hanno per desio solamente d’honore nella guerra, con persuasione Signor Cesare Villano,2 del Signor Andrea Romano,3 & di Missere Giovan Antonio Severini,4 tutti tre perfetti musici, ho voluto pigliar fatica, in duo Dialoghi di parlare della Teorica & della pratica della Musica, di quella dico del genere Diatonico, perché degli altri generi, & de i misti non m’è piacuto di ragionare, accostandomi co i Lacedemonij & con Platone, La qual fatica essendo già venutta a fine, m’è paruto di donarlavi sapendo per certo, che così come i

2 Also mentioned in Brancaccio’s letter to Gio. Antonio Serone, 4 August 1548 (Doc. 2). 3 Founding member of the Accademia dei Sereni, 11 March 1546; Croce, ‘L’accademia dei Sereni’, p. 307. 4 Giovan Antonio Severino was named by Scipione Cerreto, Della prattica musica et strumentale (Naples, 1601), p. 159, as a (still living) lute composer. He, and other members of the family, including the better-known Giulio, were known as ‘della Viola’; see Pier Paolo Scattolin, ‘Severino, Giulio’, New Grove II, vol. 23, p. 176.

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Pitagorici volendo quietar co ’l sonno i pensieri del giorno, usavano certi canti, accioché a loro venisse più quieto et piacevole, & anchora desti, con certi altri modi purgarono la confusione & lo stupore del sonno, così anchora voi fatto già per le vostre rare virtù pari à qualunche di quegli antichi, che con la spada, & co ’l senno meritarono perpetue lodi: dopò d’havervi essercitato strenuamente nelle guerre, & ritrovandovi in prigione per haver voi in Alemagna à malgrado di tre mila soldati i quali ordinamente marciavano, & solamente accompagnato dal solito vostro valore, ammazzato il nemico del Signor Ottaviano vostro fratello5 (honor di tutta Italia) vi trastullarete con questa mia operetta, la quale meritamente v’è stata da me destinata; si perche siate così partecipe de lo studio, come dell’animo mio, si anchora per lo guidicio che potrete dare di lei, essendo voi tale in questa scientia, che non solo non havete chi in essa vi preceda, mà pochissimi, o forse nessuno che vi pareggi. Pigliatela dunque con quell’animo ch’io ve la dono, & state sano. Document 4 Paris BN, Fonds français, 20545, fol. 93, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Moncalvi) to François, Duke of Guise, 6 October 1555. Illustrissimo, et eccellentissimo signore osservandissimo Già si deve raccordar Vostra Eccellenza de li seicento scudi [?ecus] che Sua Maestà mi diede per soccorso, a riquesta di lei, quando io partei per queste guerre di qua nel Piemonte, et come furno dati, et non discontasi sopra li miei gaggi, come dopo la mia partita il tesoriero de lespairgne. Ma ’l Re disse il contrario, et che mai tal cosa havea comandato, ciò è che se mi scontassero il conto alcuno, anzi disse voler comandare ch’io fosse pagato subito. Però non esseandosi stata Vostra Eccellenza, non s’è ancor comandato il pagamento ordinario che non me s’impedisca, et che si doni a chi presentera mia leggitima procura con li bianchetti. Si che se Vostra Eccellenza, qual’è il mio secondo Patrone, senza la cui gratia non potrei vivere in questo mondo, non vi pone le mani, et ch’el faccia ordinare al tesorio che mi paghi quel che mi deve io non so che farmi ne del stare, ne del venire. Questo sì ben li dico che di molti mesi et anni Sua Maestà ne Vostra Eccellenza, havranno da me fastidio quanto a negotio de dinarij, sicome gli dissi in San Germano, et in Sandegier, il Signor Vespasiano Macedonio piglierà travaglio per amor mio di sollicitar Vostra Eccellenza, la supplico volerne haver un sol momento di pensiero, acciò me ne possa venire a servirla come io summamente desidero, massime hora che bolle la guerra intorno a Napoli, et io mi cognosco atto a farli grandissimi servitij, fra tanto Nostro Signore guardi et prosperi Vostra Eccellenza come la grandezza et sommo lor suo merita. da Moncalvi vj d’ottobre Lv Serenissima Eccellenza, Humil’et affetionatissimo Signor Julio brancazzo 5

See Chapter 1.

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Document 5 Paris BN, Fonds français, 3942, ‘Rolle d’aucunes expedicions commandées par le roy et premierements’, fol. 74v. (3 August 1561) Lettres de naturallité et Congé de tester sans paier finance ont esté accordées par ledict Seigneur au Seigneur Julles Cesar Brancasse gentilhomme de sa chambre et pareillment au Seigneur Cesar Brancasso son cousin avec congé de tenir office en ce Royaume jusques a la somme de Quatre milles escuz de Revenus par chacun an du iiième jour aoust la Reyne mère du Roy present. Document 6 Paris BN, Fonds français 3226, fol. 11r, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio to Duke of Nemours, 12 January 1569. Monseigneur le duc de Genevois, et de Namour En cour Monseigneur, mes amys s’estoyent resjouis de ce que venderdy dernier avoit esté arresté au conseil privé à Sainct Maur devant leur majestés de prier le Pape de secourir le Roy avec les aultres Princes d’Italie de deux mille chevaulx, et quatre mille arcabusiers, pour d’iceulx estre chefs le seigneur Don Alfonse, et monseigneur le Duc de Somme. Mais estant l’affaire mené à la fine devant monseigneur l’Ambassadeur du Pape lequel fut envoyé guerir pour cela (ainsy qu’on m’a dit) plusieurs aultres serviteurs du Roy de ma nation nommez furent par le Roy et la Royne nommés pour aller faire la levée desdict bandes de pie, hormis moy, le quel n’y fus plus ramentoyé qu’ung mort despuis mille ans en ça, pour n’avoir esté mis en avant comme j’esperois que vous le debuiez faire, me l’ayant ainsy tant de foys promis de faire, chose qui m’a tellement troublé les espritz que je ne scay comment je suis vif, ou a tout le moyns que je ne suis devenu fol. A cause de quoy n’ayant peu pour mes pechés prendre la poste pour vous venir faire entendre celà, (s’il est ainsy que vous l’ignories) je y ay voulu envoyer le seigneur Cinamy present porteur, mon bien grand et fidel amy, du quel vous orrez (s’il vous plaist) l’occasion des justes doleances que je vous auroys à faire estant par de là et les moyens pour donner prompt, et bien facile remede aux faultes sur ce commission, estant ancor assez a temps de favoriser voz tres humbles serviteurs qui de longue main ont travaillé sur ce faict. Comme vous Monseigneur scaves tres bien, que devant ça sy le commencement de ceste guerre (à vous par moy predicte) ie vous en avois faict tres instante priere de la part de monseigneur le duc de somme, et la mienne. Si voulez donc monstrer combien vous me tenez en bonne estime et opinion, prouvé tel par vous qui en paix et en guerre m’avez en le plus de foys pres de vostre personne, et soubs vostre charge c’est a cest’heure le temps de le mestre en execution, aultrement je puis dire à dieu au monde pour à jamais, que serà la fin de cestecy, me remestant au reste en tout ce queles seigneur Cinamy vous dira de ma part, vous suppliant

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plus que tres humblement le vouloir entendre avec tel soing que le cas de si grand’ consequence le requiert, et luy donner credit comme a moy mesme. Monseigneur, apres m’estre plus que tres humblement recomandé à voz bonnes graces, je prieray le Createur vous donner en tres parfaicte santé bien et heureuse vie. de Paris ce mercredy xij de Janvier 1569 Vostre tres humble tres obeyssant Serviteur, à jamais Julles de brancasse Document 7 Paris BN, Fonds français 3226, fol. 47r, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio to the Duke of Nemours, 2 April 1569. Monseigneur le duc de Genevois, et de Nemours A son camp Monsieur le duc de Nemours Monseigneur, j’ay parle bien au long avec monsieur de Brye sur la conduicte de vostre armée, la quelle pendant que vous mantiendrez entière, molestan nuict et joure l’ennemy par aultres moyens que par ung choc de battaille rangée, vous mantiendrez aussy ce Royaulme en son entier, et la couronne sur la teste du Roy. Chasquun scait combattre, mais ne scait pas chasquun veincre, Donnez vous tant seullement garde (et ce par vous bien camper es lieux avantageux) que l’ennemy ne vous puisse contraindre a combattre, leur presentant neantmoins la battaille ou ilz ny puissent mordre, rompez leur souvant les vivres; allarmes, et encamisades a touz propos, pour defendant l’eau, le fourage, le boys, et tuttes aultres comodités tant qui’l vous sera possible, monstres que vous soulez tousiour combattre en battaille rangée, et n’en faictes rien, soyez tres liberal en espies, et ainsy vous aurez avec l’ayde et grace de Dieu gaigner la guerre, sans hazarder ce Royaume et toutte la chrestienté ensemble en une seulle battaille. Tesmoing pour cela de fresche memoire en sera l’armée que menasmes avec l’empereur Charles contre les protestants, de la quelle nous nous servismes par les moyens que dit est, contraingnantz l’ennemy de sorte, qu’à la fin nous quitterent la place, et demourasmes victorieux, non obstant que fussions bien peu de gens au pris d’eux qu’avoint une tres puissante armée. Quant à mon faict particulier, j’ay este vendu et trahy de celluy que vous monseigneur bien savez, dont il me fault armer de patience avec esperance tres asseurée qu’ung jour bien en faira la vengeance pour tous, Au reste je me part ce jourd’huy pour Paris ou me fault aller maulgré moy pour prendre l’argent, et les aultres comodités que sans ma presence je ne pourrois nullement retirer, et dans XX jours au plus tard j’espère me rendre a vous monseigneur si bien equipé de tout ce qui’il fault pour la guerre que je puisse longuement faire service a vous et au Roy, sans molester personne, je n’ay sceu me despecher plus tost combien que j’eusse voulu vendre le corps et l’ame pour me despecher et vous aller trouver et faire service, mais qui ne peult plus, luy fault avoir patience. Touttes foys je vous supplie tres humblement (si bon vous semble) de dire à ceux qui pourroit

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vous demander de moy, que m’avez comandé d’arriver jusques a Paris devant que vous aller trouver pour faire quelque vostre negoce de gran consequence, la quelle sans vostre presence ou la mienne (à cause de m’en avoir aultres foys meslé par vostre comandement) ne se pourroit nullement conduire à fin. Et que j’ay prisée la poste envoyant tout mon cas au camp, affin d’y me trouver bientost de retour, bien scait si me creve le couer de retarder ce peu de temps a vous veoir et faire service, mais il n’y a ordre, de quoy me fault avoir patience, et de tout rendre graces à Dieu qui le veult et ordonée aintsy. Monseigneur, apres avoir presente mes tres humbles recomandations a vos bonnes graces, je prieray Dieu vous donner tout ce que vostre bon coeur desire, et victoire sur les ennemis de Metz, le ij de avril 1569. Vostre tres humble et tres obeissant serviteur, Julles de brancasse Document 8 Simancas AG, Legajo E 1448-85, Grand Duke Cosimo de’ Medici (Florence) to Philip II (Spain), 20 August 1572. The wrapper is annotated: ‘Sobre particular de Julio Brancachio y reimite cierto discurso de cosas de guerra’. Serenissimo & Cattolico Re, Le occasioni per che il Signor Giulio Brancaccio Conte di Santo Andrea non habbia possuto andare quest’Anno sul’Armata della santa lega (sicome egli ch’ha fatto ogni possibile sforzo) saranno narrate apieno dal mio Ambassadore a Vostra Maestà et qual’anco sia la virtù, et valore di questo cavaliero nel fatto della guerra, da me provato in parte, et riuscito forse maggior di quello che men’era stato detto, la onde m’è passo ritenerlo appresso di me, persuadendoli che per tutto quello che poteva succedere era bene di atendere novelle del progresso del’Armata, il che ho fatto espressamente, afinché prima che egli ritorni in Francia habbia tempo di fare intendere a Vostra Maestà quello che passa, parendomi che sia molto al servitio di quella di ricoverare tal’ personaggio, qual’io tengo per molto esperimentato cavaliero fra molti che del’arte militare siano espertissimi, sicome dalli Articoli, che io le mando, quali mi presentò l’altro giorno a caso. Vostra Maestà potrà considerare, et per quelli resolvere, che se il negotio è, tale come ivi è scritto, la virtù sua deve esser conosciuta, et se non è, non perde nulla in fare la prova, come lui offerisce ne sudetti Articoli; e perché io mi confido che se Vostra Maestà gli scrive che vada a trovarla, che lui lo farà subito con la sicurtà di quella lettera, mi pare di pigliare questo ardire, mosso dal zelo del servitio di Vostra Maestà di liberamente dirle, che non è da passare questa occasione di volerlo intendere, la onde supplico Vostra Maestà resti servita volermene far’ dare risposta, acciò non gli para, che io lo tenga a bada, senza farlo ritornare in Francia, a far servitio al suo Patrone, con che fo fine, baciando le mani di Vostra Maestà che Dio nostro Signore la conservi felicemente. Di Fiorenza il dì xx d’Agosto 1572. Humili e obbligatissimo servitor Il gran Duca di Toscana

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Document 9 Simancas AG, Legajo E 1063-24 Extract from letter from Cardinal Granvelle (Naples) to Philip II (Valladolid) 26 June 1573. … Quanto a Julio Césare Brancaccio, él me embió desde Florencia estampado en tres lenguas las cosas que ofrece y dize que sabe hazer aunque por lo que he conoscido del hombre en tiempos passados lo tuve por vanidad, specialmente por ser lo que ofrece tanto que sobraría la décima parte por darse por gran Ingeniero y aun por guerrero. No quise responder a sus cartas por ser foraxido deste Reyno. Al Embaxador don Juan de Cúñiga respondí que me havía encaminado el despacho como por e[n]stonces me parescía convenir, mándame Vuestra Majestad que le diga lo que sé deste hombre. Ninguno le podría mejor informar que el secretario Vargas que tiene los papeles y escripturas de lo que passó cerca de su persona. Lo que me acuerdo es que partiendo Su Majestad de Hal en Saxonia porque pretendía el hermano deste que se llamava Octaviano ser offendido de un soldado Español, él y el dicho Julio se atrevieron de [sic] yr a hazer la vendicta deste soldado y de cogerle marchando con la Infanteria Española. Que fue uno de los atrevidos acometimientos que se han entendido en muchos días. Fueron ambos y con un arcabuzello que creo tiró Julio, mataron [a] aquel soldado, y dieron a huyr; siguiéronlos muchos de la Infantería, y a Octaviano hizieron pedazos. Como alcançaron a Julio Césare, usó desta arte que dixo que no le matassen y que lo que havía hecho por orden y mandado del Duque de Alva; prendiéronle y estuvo el Emperador, que está en Gloria, quasi resuelto de mandarle cortar la cabeça como havía muy bien merescido. En fin, como se puso tiempo en medio y huvo rogadores, por donde Su Majestad por usar de clemencia la vida con que quedasse toda la vida preso en uno de los castillos del Reyno. Y dio fiança y hizo pleyto pleito omenage de representarse al Vir[r]ey, que e[n]stonces era Don Pedro de Toledo. que le puso en Castelnovo. Y como era músico conversava demasiado. Y por algunos respectos paresció bien al dicho Don Pedro darle licencia. Creo que con carta que obtuvo de Su Majestad a que pudiesse servir en guerra y acabando el servicio bolver al castillo. Entendiose differentemente esto aquí que en la Corte porque pretendía en la Corte que el servicio se devía hazer en este Reyno. Y aquí entendieron que pudiesse servir a Su Majestad en qualquier parte do huviesse guerra. Y vino a Flandes. Mandáronle prender. Y como mostró la licencia del Vi[r]rey Don Pedro le soltaron. Hizo instancia por ser libre del todo. La resolución sobre esta demanda se le differía fuesse a Inglaterra. Y sin causa ninguna ny color que hasta aquí yo haya entendido que haya dado se passó de Inglaterra a Francia y sirvió a franceses contra el Emperador que sea en Gloria, y también después contra Vuestra Majestad; y se halló con monseñor de Guisa quando pensó [a] venir conquistar este Reyno haziendo por su parte todo lo que pudo que fue poco. No debió saber entonces tanto de la guerra como presume saber agora. Haríase llamar Conde de Nola y ya tenía donatión desta tierra del Rey Henrico con título de conde y su privilegio despachado, el qual comunicó según entendí en Roma a un letrado cuerdo y gracioso a quien pidiendo parescer

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tuvo por respuesta que el previlegio le parescía muy bien despachado y que no le faltava sino una cosa. Pidiéndole el dicho Julio que respondió el doctor que en lugar de Henricus, que era el Rey de Francia que le dava el previlegio, dixesse Philippus. Pues dándosele Vuestra Majestad tuviera más fácilmente la possessión que no de mano de quien le havía dado el privilegio. Que pueda él cumplir lo que ofrece. Yo a la verdad no lo creo. Y lo tengo por vanidad. Pero yo me remito a los que le han oýdo no le haviendo querido yo hablar por no parecerme conveniente. Y tiene razón Vuestra Majestad en dezir que siendo su delicto tan grave harto se haría por él en perdonarle quando huviesse servido en algo de importancia. Pero él no haze esta cuenta sino que pide gran partido como Vuestra Majestad lo entenderá y servir como lugarteniente general para mandar al exército; y si éste fuesse mío yo no se le confiaría, pues haviéndose ydo a Francia sin causa haviendo recebido gracias y favores del Emperador, que sea en Gloria, y de su corte, no sé que más fiança se pueda tomar dél por haver estado en Francia. Porque tengo por cosa sospechosa todo lo que platica. He hecho muchas vezes instancia para que le sacassen desto Reyno. Y de mala gana consentí que dissimulasse su venida no haviendo querido venir a darle en ninguna manera salvoconducto. Solo dixe que me contentaría de dissimular. Pero que estuviesse secreto y no hablasse con nadie sino con el dicho señor Don Juan y con el dicho Duque de Sessa. Esto es lo que puedo dezir en lo de Julio César remitiéndome a lo que ya he escripto y a la resolución que Vuestra Majestad será servido tomar. De Nápoles a 26 de Junio 1573 De Vuestra Majestad. Muy humilde vassallo y capellán. Antonio Cardenal de Granvela. Document 10 Modena AS, Archivio per materie, Letterati, Busta 11, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Rome) to Duke Alfonso II d’Este (Ferrara), 10 April 1580. Serenissimo Signor Io trovarmi da 40 anni in qua molto familiare, e intrinseco servitor della serenissima sua casa, et l’havermi Vostra Altezza di sua benignità confirmato ultimamenti nella sua buona gratia, et antica mia servittii, mi darà ardire di conferrirgli anco familiarmenti un pensier mio, et supplicarla con ogni possibile humilità, et affettione di favorirmi di conseglio, et aiuto s’el mio disegno gli parrà honorato, et degno della protettion’ di tanto gran principe, et mio padrone qual di sua gratia m’è l’Altezza Vostra. Dirò dunque che dopo ch’io ritornai qui da Ferrara mi poi a lambiccare il cervello se permesso d’una grossa alihimia dimolini (che per i miei peccati mi fur posti avanti al ritorno ch’io feci da savoia) potuto havesse uscir d’affanno et non haver bisogno della borsa di nessun Prencipe del mondo. Ma sì ben della lor buona gratia servendoli del mio con tutto il core secondo l’occasioni che presentate si fissero a l’avvenire, e insieme anco mi posi in torno alli comentari di Cesare per finir quelli li e x anni sono cominciato haveva et cavarne un sommario da scrivere con alcune aggiornationi

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della mia botteca a i capitani, et soldati della nostra natione. Dell’ quali due imprese questa ch’era in poter mio, è riuscita molto a mio gusto, et a sodisfattione anco d’altri, et quella che dipendeva dalle mani altrui è riuscita vanissima et con mio troppo gran dispiacere per ciò che m’ha voto il sangue dalle veni, non ch’il dinaro dalla borsa in tempo così sterile come è giusto che li pagamenti delle nostre pensioni di Francia hanno acavallato già il quinto anno, e per molto che’l ne comandi che siamo sodisfatti, non si vede anco certezza alcuna di pagamento onde per aiutarmi quanto posso del mio ho’ giudicato esser bene a fare imprimere quante mie non volgar fatiche, lequali sono infine otto libri delli comentari di Cesare delle guerre di Francia ridotti da me quasi in compendio, o sommario che chiamarlo volgliamo, con alcuni avertimenti di guerra ch’io ci ho’ applicato di mano, ove mi pare che ogni soldato potrà sodisfarsi a gusto suo poi che ci trovarà quanto saprà desiare della sua professione, secondo nel questo primo libro ch’io mando qui allegato a vostra Altezza, potrà comprendere col suo savio guidizio. La cui lettura gli servirà hora solamente d’assaggio per il resto di quel che segue di maggiori anco importanza ne gli altri sette libri. Tanto che non resta fattione alcuna militare, piccola, ò grande ch’ella sia, che fra tutti gli otto libri non si toccavi d’alcuni secreti in fuora di troppo grande importanza ch’io serbo per me, et per Vostra Altezza, quando li vorra sapere. Il che essendo così com’à me pare credo che stampandone in Venetia tre, ò quattro mila volumi, con le dimostrationi in pittura di quel che si tratta (che potranno esser dato figure in circa per più sana intelligenza de’ i lettori se ne potra cavare per mezzo de’ i librari, che ne prenderà la cura di farli vendere dentro, et fuori d’Italia, tre, e quattro scudi per libro, et ritrarne in mia parte molte migliaia di scudi, dopo esser ben pagati i stampadori e’ i librari insieme. Per non havendo hora il modo di far tanto bene, et similimenti di condurmi io stesso in Venetia per assistere alla stampa acciò non si faccia errore, m’ e’ parso di ricorrere al mio serenissimo padrone, acciò col suo favore io possa dar fine, a tanta Impresa, e si un’ tratto Illustrando me, far servitio a Vostra Altezza per l’utile che’l io non m’inganno le sue militie trasportanno da quante mie continove, et Travagliose fatiche di dieci anni. Dunque s’el mio disegno sarà grato a vostra Altezza come io spero per quel che potrà conprendere dalla lettura del primo libro, quasi come essemplar’ di tutti gli altri, la supplico humilissimente sia servita a farmi dar comodità di condurmi in Ferrara conforme alla qualità mia. Dove considerandosi poi accuratamente quel che importa una tale opera della maniera, et circostante sopra narrate si trattava del resto, et ne farò quel tanto, che parrà a Vostra Altezza se guidicava esser degna della sua protettione et che senza divolgarla altrove resti in Ferrara, accioché da hora avanti nascano que’ frutti per l’uso della guerra dalla scola di Ferrara che nati sono altre fiati per la creanza di corte dalla scola d’Urbino. Però sia questo o quello, io son certissimo co’ suo Infallibile conseglio et gran favore di condurre al desiato fine il mio pensiero, dedicandogli da hora l’opra, così come l’ho dedicato la mia vita, con quanto potrò mai havere in questo modo di felicità, et di bene, che sarà il fine della mia supplichevole et humilissima richiesta, senza finir mai di pregar Iddio per la sua prosperità, et grandezza, come il suo gran valore merita, et io più che obligatississimo, humilississimo servitore

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desio. Da Roma, ove starò in tanto attendendo con gran’ desio gratissima risposta per mettermi subito in camino, il x d’Aprile 1580. Da Vostra Serenissima Altezza Più che obbligatissimo et humilissimo Servitore Serenissimo Suo Brancaccio Conte di St. Andrea Document 11 Modena AS, Archivio per materie, Letterati, Busta 11, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Rome) to Duke Alfonso II d’Este (Ferrara), 9 July 1580. La summa della risposta datami dal Signor Masetti in nome di Vostra Altezza. è ch’io superseda la partita per qualche giorno per le caggioni da lui esposte conformi al voler’ et sodisfattione di Vostra Altezza. Nel che sarà da me Ubbedita come nel resto delle attioni di mia Vita. Ma non lascio di riputare a gran’ disgrazia per me due cose. La prima che in sì lungo tempo Vostra Altezza non m’habbia favorito in leggere il primo libro ch’io gli mandai del mio Cesare, per intendere il parer suo tanto da me desiato quanto merita esser pregiata la grandezza del suo giuditio, et l’altra che mi tien’ per sì mal corteggiano che saputo non havessi trattar’ in Belriguardo del modo che si conviene in luogo di piaceri, et non di Negotij. Massimamente adesso che in Servitio delle dame di sua corte posto haveva in ordine alcune arie non ingrate di sonetti, et canzone Villanesche, che non l’haverebbono dispiaciute. Il che cessando hora per l’ordine da lei dato, vengo non solo a restar’ in poco preggio di soldato, ma anche di Corteggiano.Talche ho ben negotiato i fatti miei a questa volta. Però sia quel che si voglia, bisognandomi fare imprimere in ogni modo queste mie fatiche. S’altro non comanda Vostra Altezza ne far lo potendo senza l’aiuto del mio Padrone le so intendere che solamente con Sugento [Seicento] scudj che raffazzonar mi potessero per la partita, et condurmi in Ferrara, si spedirebbe subbito il resto senza alcuno incomodo, o spesa di Vostra Altezza e passi poi in Venetia, a finir questa prattica, s’Altro non si giudicava da lei che farsi debba per havergli a dedicar l’opera. Ecco dunque ciò che Vostra Altezza ha da fare in favore mio, nel che la supplico a non voler mancare al presta speditione, perciò che il non esser stato pagato ne io ne l’altri servidori della corona di Francia di cinque anni di miei pensioni, ove il ci sono per otto mila scudi in parte mia, l’esser fuora di mia casa, et la strettezza del Pontificato mi fan’ vivere languendo miserabilmente et già ridotto m’havebbero alla morte se la Cortesia del Illustrissimo Grandezza Cardinal d’Este, et la gentilezza del Signor Iacomo6 non m’havessero mantenuto la vita. Nel che mi persuado che Vostra Altezza non vorà far manco degli altri essendo il maggiore di tutti, et particolarmente mio Padrone da che nacque, già che da 40 anni in qua mi trovo esser’ familiar Servitore della Serenissima Sua Casa. Oltre che Parendo a chiunque mi conosce ch’io sia Cavaliero virtuoso,

6 Marco Bizzarini has suggested that ‘Signor Iacomo’ could be Giacomo Boncompagni, natural son of Pope Gregorio XIII (private communication).

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merito non esser abandonato dai prencipi del mondo, et men’ da Vostra Altezza che dagli altri per le Caggioni sopradette. Massimamente havendo a metter fuora una opra di sì grande Importanza, et così utile, et necessaria per la Nation’ nostra, come è questa. Onde potrà giudicare Vostra Altezza giusto me si debba aiuto per condurla a fine da qualsivoglia prencipe che sia, non che dalla Altezza Vostra mio singulare Padrone, a cui s’ha (come è detto) a dedicar tale opra, starò dunque espettando le sue gratie appo [?] quelle di Nostro Iddio, qual prosperi et assalti la Serenissima Sua persona come il suo gran valore merita, et io suo humilissima Servitore desio. Da Roma, il viiij di luglio 1580 Serenissimo Signore Da Vostra Altezza Humilissimo et più che obbligatissimo Servitore Il Brancaccio Conte di Sant’ Andrea. Document 12 Modena AS, Archivio per materie, Letterati, Busta 11, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Venice) to Duke Alfonso II d’Este (Ferrara), undated copy. Serenissimo Signore Due son le caggioni che mi spingono a fare Imprimere questa prima queste mie non già tanto povere fatigue che’l mondo non m’habbia un giorno a trar profitto. La prima è il desio di gloria, et l’altra, il bisogno c’ho di provedere a molte mie urgentissime occorrenze. Per il che supplicai Vostra Altezza in barca nel viaggio di Mantua a favorirmi d’un credito sin a 500 scudi per tale effetto, non già ch’io voglia toccar danarij, ma che un mercante li vada distribuendo al stampatore secondo sarà di bisogno, così per la stampa, come per i disegni, et l’intagli d’essi. Per la cui somma l’imprimatore s’obligarà a nomine proprio di rimborsare detto mercante de’ primi danari che si cavaranno della vendita de i libri; che saranno du [sic] mila per adesso et si venderanno bene. La qual gratia benché minima rispette alle altre ricevute et che riceverò però alla giornata dalla benignità di Vostra Altezza, la riputarò nondimeno grandissimo, in perpetuo, sia dunque Servito Vostra Altezza di queste dinare ad alcuno de suij ministri che raggioni meco nel negotio, affinché senza interesso di Persona sua si conceda il factore, supplicandola humilmente a farlo metter presto ad esecutione, se desidera mantenermi felicissimo al suo Servitio tutto il servitio di mia vita. Document 13 Modena AS, Archivio per materie, Letterati, Busta 11, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Venice) to Duke Alfonso II d’Este (Ferrara), 25 November 1581. Serenissimo Signor Io ho pregato il Signor Secretario Montecatino che presenti a Vostra Altezza Serenissima il mio nuovo Cesare, il quale in nessun modo voleva uscire in

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campagna senza saper’ chi dovea esser prima presentato, dubitando di non capitare in mano d’alcun poco prattico guerriero: ma quando io gli nomminai il Duca di Ferrara egli si rallegrò e’ giubilò tanto d’havere a far questo viaggio, che non m’ha lasciato mai più in riposo, finché non l’habbia inviato. Entrò dunque in suo potere con sicura speranza che Vostra Altezza gli habbia da far molto buona ciera in leggerlo, et trattar seco familiarmente (quando potrò) sin tanto ch’ella sappia ciò che di buono porta con esso lui. Et perché desidera che essendo distribuito in diverse Città d’Italia venga il Mondo a sapere molto particolarmente chi fu egli et quanto valse (essendogli aviso che perduta sia la memoria di lui, et del valor sopra humano che regnò nella sua persona, poiché non si parla più di fatti suoi) m’ha costretto a supplicar Vostra Altezza Serenissima sia servita di considerargli quanto da mia parte le sarà humilmente rimostrato dal Signor Vittoro Cappello m’ha fatto più volte istanza, ch’io faccia intendere a Vostra Altezza quanto gli è vero et affettissimo Signore et quanto le resta oltremodo obligato per le infinite gratie ricevate in questo suo viaggio dall’Altissima Vostra. Benché non gli’ havessi potuto godere presentialmente per la indispositione della Signora Helena sua moglie; et have, [sic] un incredibil desiderio non meno di servirla, che di sapess’io ho fatto questo officio con Vostra Altezza, alla qual supplico humilmente di favorirmi con due motti di risposta sopra tal particolare, affinché questo Signore possa restar sodisfatto del suo giusto desio. Guardi Il Signore intanto la serenissima persona di Vostra Altezza et in maggior stato augmenti, come il suo gran valor merita, et la Christianità n’ha dibisogno. Di Venezia: il xxv di Novembre 1581 Document 14 Modena AS, Archivio per materie, Letterati, Busta 11, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Venice) to Duke Alfonso II d’Este (Ferrara), 12 December 1581. All Serenissimo Signor mio osservandissimo Benché in molti argomenti havessi io scorto l’animo del Signor Duca essere allieno da quei pensieri overo notte et giorno m’avolgo con certissimo speranza d’haverne un giorno far qual che rilevato et importantissimo servitio alla Christianità nondimeno per merito più sarebbe un predicare al diserto. Ma non potendosi far altro bisogna ch’io mi stringa nelle spalle pregando Iddio che mi doni pace et aiuto insieme, che n’ho gran bisogno non senza ringratiar Vostro Serenissimo sommamente et restargli molto obligato del favor fattomi in haver esposto il tutto a Sua Altezza come io supplicato l’havea espettando l’occasione di servirla conforme al mio debito et desio. Fra tanto havendomi l’altri Prencipi concesso gratis il privilegio della stampa de i loro stati mi persuadono che Sua Altezza non me lo neggarà sì come la supplico humilmente di fare secondo il presente M. Vittorio [Baldini] Stampatore, dirà a Vostro Serenissmo della forma, che esser deve et inoltre ordinar che l’Hebreo non s’impadronisca della rotta mia si non quanto che si assicuri di essere intieramente sodisfatto della conventione fra noi passata al mese d’Agosto in Ferrara per man di Notaro, affinché io non

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habbia d’andare appresso a lui tapinando per havere il mio, sì come con tanto sudore estento s’è fatto per havere da lui quei pochi dinari, che dovea sborsare per la stamp [sic] (testimone l’istesso m. Vittorio Stampatore) et ciò si farà con ordine di Sua Altezza che l’Hebreo non ponga mano a i libri finché io non sia ritornato in Ferrara. Tra il quale spatio di tempo io farò l’Indice delle cose più notabili, che sarà forse il più bello et utile per i soldati, di quanto si fè mai sopra cose pertinenti a guerra, e di più la tavola degli errori, che sono infiniti in questi milli volumi di qua, come Vostro Serenissimo può vedere in quel libro ch’egli è restato in mano che fù il primo inviato a Sua Altezza, altramente sarebbe come vendere un busto senza capo. Et io n’haverei gran biasimo et dishonore, et poi tutti dui insieme, cioè l’Hebreo et io, notabil danno, percioché non si venderebbero già mai in cotal foggia et oltre a ciò, è più che necessario d’havere un libraro de i primi di questa Città a chi si consegni la merce per farla condurle sicuramente et distribuire in diverse Città d’Italia, ove io tengo i compratori appostati, affinché si renda molto bene per i mestieri che i librari sarono [?], et che tutte altre sorte di mercanti ignorano per non essere mestier loro, il qual libraro pigliando i suoi dritti del porto, et della vendita secondo le ordinario costume, ne doni le giuste parte a noi conforme alla nostra conventione, dopo haverli l’Hebreo rimborsatoli suoi dinari annalati per la stampa, con l’interessi decorsi fino a Natale, et questa è la maniera come s’hanno a far tal negotij. Ma costui è venuto quì come una furia Infernale, et vuol tutto, et ruinare tutto et metter sotto sopra tutto il mondo, sol perché egli essendo un Giudeo, vuol ponere il piede in gola a i Christiani, e non già peraltro. Il che son determinato non voler consentire in nessun modo, talché per dare pronto rimedio et che non ci venga scandalo. Si supplica Sua Altezza Serenissima a farvi provedere della sopradetta maniera, se parrà ragione, che così farsi debba, supplicando Vostro Serenissimo che ne faccia in mio nome caldo offitio con Sua Altezza affinché se non gli è parso di gratificarmi nella gratia, non mi abandoni almeno nella giustitia, se ben questi particolari non fossero specificati nel primo contratto già che non pareva allhora necessario di parlarne pensando d’havere a far con gente di buona fede per non haver primer trattato mai con Hebrei. Circa al frate Napolitano dell’ordine di Minori contrabasso di San Marco, l’ho udito più volte a Vespre (ch’io vi son ito a posta) et a Messa, cantare accompagnato, e sola, et tra le altre alcuni terzi, et duo, et in ogni cosa mi riesce bene percioché mi par che habbia la voce tonda et sonora, così nel basso, come nell’alto, e nelle parte di mezzo, et subito ricevuto ch’ebbi la lettera di Vostro Serenissimo mostrando ch’io desiasi udire in camera un poco di musica ben cantata, et in particolare sopra l’instrumento di Ms. Claudio da Correzzo [Merulo], presi appuntamento con lui di trovarmi domani doppo desinare in casa di Ms. Claudio, ove ne farò notomia senza che egli ne altri si possa accorgere ch’io pretendo nulla di lui, se non gustare della virtù sua s’ella riuscirà in Camera, come in Cappella, et non solo avisarò Vostro Serenissimo d’ogni le danno. Che sarà della mia lunga [illegible] in parte escusabile per cagion de negotij pregando Iddio per ogni prosperità e’ contento di Vostro Serenissimo Illustrissimo a cui bascio humilmente le mani. de Venetia alli 12 di Decembre 1581 Di Vostro Serenissimo Alltissimo Signore

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affettionatissimo Brancaccio, Conte di Santo Andrea Document 15 Modena AS, Archivio per materie, Letterati, Busta 11, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Padua) to Cesare detto Crotti (Ferrara), 3 August 1583. Molt’Illustre Signor mio osservandissimo Non vorrei tal volta che per troppo tirar la corda si rompesse a danno dell’amico, ne per troppo essaltare l’honor de’ padroni; già per la grandezza loro honoratissimi, s’opprimesse la fama altrui. Questo vien detto ch’essendosi sparsa fama per ferrara et altrove, ch’il Signor Duca mi habbia datto licenza per le cagioni già sapute, mi vien’ molto a contrapeso a non dirse la cosa, come a punto è passata, cioè ch’io volea prima chieder’ licenza a Sua Altezza per mezo di Vostra Signoria il quale essendo tanto mio caro amico e Signore. Et consapevole di questi andamenti comunicategli prima quasi un’ mar di volte amichevolmente affin che fosse mezo a remediar la tempesta ch’io prevedea dover succedere un giorno. Riccordarsi deve questo efficacemente e con quanto istanza, et importunità, io lo pregai, e supplicai la sera inanzi che dovesse per ogni modo chieder’ licenza a Sua Altezza ch’io mi voleva risolutamente partir il dì seguente per’ non viver’ più a quella foggia per me poco honorata, se bene altrui parso havesse honoratissima. È doppo’ l’haver ella cercato per molte, e diverse vie a rimovermi da quel proposito, sa’ molto bene, ch’io non vi mi volsi accordar’ già mai. Onde si scusò liberamente meco dicendo che non poteva farlo in nessun modo, con tutto che fossimo sì cari amici, per non dar disgusto al padrone. Per il che vedendo che havea ragione, restammo d’appuntamento che la cercasse io stesso il dì seguente per a non irritarlo quella sì come serà d’avantaggio con simile richiesta, sì come Vostra Signoria debbe riccordarsene benissimo senza intermissione d’un fil di paglia più o meno, di quel che s’è narrato. Ma venend’il dì seguente, parve al Signor Duca di fare un’ atto assai, notabile di guadagnarmi per la mano, come se sapendosi la ragion perché non fosse tutt’uno ad haver’ chiesto io licenza, o darmela Sua Altezza poiché io non havea voluto nè far’ voleva più cosa, che sopra tal materia m’havesse nè comandato, ne’ pregato. Ma con tutto ciò desidero che si sappia la Verità, se Vostra Signoria è servita dirla quando gli sarà domandato, come passo’ questo negotio. Sì come havrei ben supplicato Vostra Signoria quella istessa mattina di farlo intendere a tutti quei gentilhuomini che erano in Cortile s’io non havesse dubitato che in incaminandomi per termini si scabrosi ne havesse potuto nascer alcun’ impedimento della partita ch’io pretendea di fare onninamente sì come io feci, con ogni possibile diligenza, ch’e la cagione che m’ha’ mosso a scriver la presente a Vostra Signoria con tutta l’humiltà, et amorevolezza, che fra due cari amici, et amatissimi fratelli regnar’deve. Supplicandola di più a fare le mie humilissime et più che Affetuosissime raccomandationi a quella dolce et santa compagnia, veramente divina, et sopra naturale, e in tanto pregarò nostro

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Signor Iddio per la salute, et prosperità di tutti le Sue Signorie Vostre et delle Altezze loro, come per la mia anima istessa. Di Padova a 3. Agosto 1583. Di Vostra Signoria molt’Illustre Vero et più che affettionatissimo Signore Brancaccio, Conte di Santo Andrea Document 16 Modena AS, Archivio per materie, Letterati, Busta 11, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Padua) to an unknown recipient7 (Ferrara), 3 August 1583. Illustrissimo Signore mio osservandissimo Io non posso più vivere al mondo per tanta sceleragine che regna in esso. Udendo dire molto sfacciatamente che ’l Signor Duca nostro Serenissimo, dopo haverse fatto nemici tutti i prencipi d’Italia con l’Imperatore insieme et Re’ Catholico e tornato hora al cominciato camino di nemicarsi anco tutti i Cavalieri, e’ gentilhomini della natione nostra, per vie le più insolite del mondo. Al che volendo io oppormi con negative apparenti, è vero non ho havuto a far questione, e lasciarei la vita, o parte dell’honore, Nostro Signor m’aiuti ch’io non so più che farmi per passar la vita finché arrivi dove son chiamato. Et aspettato con’ infinito desiderio, per le medesme cagioni ch’io era in odio, per una parte a quello serenissimo Prencipe’. Nondimeno io spero di potergli far’ un giorno altritanti rilevati servitij, per essaltarlo sin’al Cielo, questi sono stati i crudelissimi disfavori, che per suo gusto l’è piacciuto usar meco, per abbassarmi nella mia professione sin’a gli abissi, et che così sia nessun ne può rendere miglior Testimonio di Vostra Signoria per le tante querelle che gli ne ho fatte pensando ch’elle fossero stato buon rimedio al male. Però questo più se ci è fatto, più se ci è perduto, è tanto più s’è inacerbita la piaga sì come supplico Vostra Signoria a volersene certificar d’avantaggio, per le qui alligate copie, che l’invio, l’una dell S. Cornelio [Bentivoglio], et l’altra dello Cavalier Gualengo,8 et poi si compiaccia di rispondermi a Bellaggio, che mi sarà gran favore, sì come anco mi sarà gratissimo che mi comandi da suo vero, et obligato Servitore non senza supplicarla di matenermi vivo nella memoria, et buona gratia della serenissima Signora Duchessa d’Urbino, santo lume, e splendore di questo secolo miserissimo e tenebroso, et di farle mie affetuose raccommandazioni al Signor [Francesco] Patritio, Signor Codegoro[?] et altri amici di casa di Vostra Signoria Illustrissima a cui bascio humilmente le mani. Di Padova in Appolline in casa d’un Signor Veneto, chi cavalca da buon cavaliero Napolitano, o Fer[r]arese, o come voglian che sio. a 3 d’Agosto 1583. Di Sua Illustrissima Vero et affettionatissimo Signore Brancaccio Conte di Sante Andrea

7 This may be the ‘Signor Griminaldi’ mentioned in Brancaccio’s letter the same day to Vespasiano Mancino (see below, Doc. 17), which refers to another letter enclosed with the first; Doc. 16 shows signs of having been tightly folded. 8 For Gualengo, see Chapters 8 and 9.

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[marginal note:] supplico Vostro Signore fare partecipe di quanto l’ho scritto al Signor conte Ottavio ?Lando a cui bascio mille volte le mani, et per l’altro ordinario le’ scriverò. Document 17 Modena AS, Archivio per materie, Letterati, Busta 11, Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (Padua) to Vespasiano Mancino (Ferrara), 3 August 1583. Al Illustrissimo osservandissimo il signor Vespesiano Mancino Illustre signor mio osservandissimo Mando la qui inclusa copia di lettera inviata al signor Cavalier ?Griminaldi,9 affinché Vostra Signoria mi faccia gratia vederla et considerarla molto bene per quanto amor mi porta. Di più il Pocaterra mi ha scritto che mancano certe robbe ch’io lasciaj in camara [sic] presente Vostra Signoria nell’hora istessa della mia partita, come è a dire le lenzuola del mio letto di renzo, con le endemelle grandi del medesimo, et non so che tele, cio è coverte di tela Turchina, e una manta bianca, e un sappedo verde grande della seconda camera che Vostra Signoria si deve ben ricordare che si lasciò sopra la tavola medesima. Però veda Vostra Signoria che Nicolo havea la chiave della porta della cucina la qual mia volse rendermi per molto ch’io glie la havesse fatto chiedere infinite volte da miei servitori e se manca nulla, credami Vostra Signore che gli haver fatto la manica, del che non mi ricordai dirlo quella matina per le tante cose che bisognò fare su ’l punto della partita, pregando Iddio che se io ho fatto portar nulla di quanto era scritto nella lista della guardarobba che mi fu data, ne che altri per mio ordine, o ch’io sappia preso habbia delle dette robbe di sua Altezza, mi mandi la più crudele e vituperoza morte che imaginare si possa al mondo. Nel resto Vostra Signoria mi tenga nella sua buona gratia, assicurandola che presto sarò dove mi terranno in palma di mano. Per quelle medesime cagioni della virtù mia per le quali il Serenissimo Signor Duca m’havea preso in urta con determinatione di pormi sotto a più non posso, che’l mal m’è penetrato insino all’osso [flourish] Quelle due Arme in hasta con quel fascio negro di paliaguzzi e’ ligati insieme, sto espettando [sic] con gran desio, non perché servano di nulla, ma per mostrare un incredibile miglioramento di spesa ch’io feci di poi et una sicurezza maravigliosa di guerreggiare, a chi gustarà divinamente l’opera, et la saprà molto ben galardonare. Con il che resto basciando le mani di Vostra Signoria, qual Nostro Signore guardi e prosperi come desidera. di Padova in Apolline, a Cà Cornara al Santo, alli 3 d’Agosto 1583 Di Vostra Signoria Illustrissima Servitor di core, Brancaccio, Conte di Santo Andrea 9

See n. 8 above.

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Document 18 Giovanni Battista Guarini (Ferrara) to Giulio Cesare Brancaccio (?Padua), date unknown,10 in Lettere del signor cavaliere Battista Guarini, nobile ferrarese (Venice, 1594, edn of 1600): ‘Lettere Uffiziose’, pp. 382–3. Ricevi la lettera di Vostra Signoria con la congiunta per il Signor Duca serenissimo mio Signore, e intesi il disiderio [sic] di tornare a questo servigio, & in ciò d’usare il mio mezzo. Il che sì come per l’amor, che le porto ho volontieri intrapreso, così per procedere con maggior fondamento, & riputazion del negozio, ho voluto prima scoprir paese, & ispiare l’animo di Sua Altezza. Il che non havend’io potuto fare, se non con buona occasione, ha cagionato, che sì tardi vengo a rispondere. Havend’io dunque colto il tempo opportuno, & fattomi cadere in proposito la persona di Vostra Signoria ho destramente, & come da me cercato d’introdurre il negozio, dicendo quasi quel medesimo in voce, che nella lettera di Vostra Signoria si contiene. Ma in fatti bench’io non habbia potuto scorger nell’animo di Sua Altezza vestigio alcuno di mala soddisfazzione verso di lei, ho trovato però pensiero tanto lontano dal far quello, che si desidera, che’l presentar la lettera mi è paruta cosa impertinentissima, non che infruttuosa. Questo è tutto quello, che ho potuto fare in servigio di Vostra Signoria nel che mi duole, che l’opera mia non le sia stata di quel giovamento, ch’ella si prometteva, & io somamente desiderava. Et sì come io le resto con molto obbligo della confidenza, che mostra in me; così se in altra cosa mi conosce buono a servirla, non havrà mai a desiderare in me altro, che la buona fortuna, la quale cercherò sempre di superare o compensare, almeno con la prontezza dell’animo. In che non cedo a qual si voglia amico, & servidore, ch’ella habbia. In tanto baccio la mano di Vostra Signoria Di Ferrara .... Document 19 Francesco Patrizi (Ferrara) to Baccio Valore (Florence), 12 February 1590, in Patrizi, Lettere ed opuscolo inediti, ed. D. Aguzzi Barbagli (Florence, 1975), pp. 71–2. Molto Illustre Signore mio Osservandissimo, il Signor Francesco Verino mi ha questi giorni scritto che Vostra Signoria gli havea fatto fede delle lode da me data alle sue Platoniche conclusioni. Di che molte grazie le rendo, perché con questo sì cortese ufficio Vostra Signoria mi ha acquistato la grazia di quel valoroso e buon gentilhuomo, della quale io sono per pregiarmi molto e portarne obligo a Vostra Signoria, come a cagione; e però gli rispondo e prego Vostra Signoria che gli faccia capitar l’inclusa.

10 Newcomb, The Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, p. 186, says the letter was sent in 1585, but without further corroboration. The events described must have happened before June 1588, when Guarini resigned from Alfonso II’s court: see ibid., vol. 1, p. 105.

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Con questo pensiero mi è sovenuto ch’ Ella, con l’ultima Sua, mi dimandò ciò che mi parea del libro militare del Brancaccio, il che non so come m’era uscito di memoria. Di grazia Vostra Signoria perdoni questa colpa di smemorataggine mia. Le dico adunque che il libro mi pare molto buono et utile. Vero è che, secondo me, egli, che degli antichi non havea veduto altri che Cesare, non intese questo a pieno, e in alcuni luoghi andò fuor di strada. Il che detogli da me, come ad amico, fu cagione che venimmo in strano disparere e quasi all’armi. I particolari hora non mi sovvengono, ma perché ne furono fatte alcune note da lui e da me, se Ella le vorrà, le ne farò far copia. E fra tanto le bacio le mani e prego ogni maggior contento. Di Vostra Signoria molto Illustre servitore affezzionatissimo Francesco Patrizi Di Ferrara, alli 12 di febbraio, 1590.

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Index

(Giulio Cesare Brancaccio is abbreviated to GCB throughout, except for his own main entry. References to music examples are in bold) Accademia degli Intronati 25–6 Accademia degli Svegliati 136, 140 Accademia dei Sereni 132, 134, 136, 138 members 27–8 Accoramboni, Vittoria 120, 133 death 124 Agnesi, Lucio 63–4, 66 Agostini, Lodovico ‘Quando i piú gravi accenti’ 197 Alba, Duchess of 140 Alba, Duke of 13, 14, 30, 33, 38, 52, 55, 58, 59, 79, 280, 281 Alberti, Mastro Venere 108 Aldobrandini, Cardinal 205 Alexander (Alessandro) the Great 122–3, 264 Algiers, siege 34 Alta Villa, Conte d’ 141 Alvarotti, Giulio 230, 231 Amboise peace (1563) 72 tumult (1560) 69–70 Amiens 61 Ancina, Giovenale 140 Andrea, Giovanni 193, 194 Anjou, Henri, Duke of 76, 77, 98 Anjou, Yolande d’ 53 Antwerp 35 Aragona, Carlo d’, Duke of Terranova 100, 101, 241 Aragona Colonna, Donna Giovanna d’ 131, 137, 138, 155, 159, 245 Aragona, Donna Maria d’ 13 Arcadelt, Jacques 133 ‘O felici occhi miei’ 185 Aristotle, Rhetoric 182 ‘Arms vs Letters’, debate 233, 251, 253–60 see also fighting, and nobility Atri, Duke of 55, 61 Aubigné, Agrippa d’ 71, 72, 78 Avalos, Alfonso d’, Marquis of Vasto 13, 14,

15, 63, 138 Bacon, Francis, The Advancement of Learning 253 Baldelli, Francesco 257–8 Baldini, Vittorio 109–14, 275–6, 295 Barbara of Austria, Duchess of Ferrara 244 Barbarino, Bartolomeo ‘Ferma, ferma Caronte’, diminutions 164 music example 165–8 Madrigali di diversi autori 211, 212 ‘Scioglio ardito nocchier vela d’argento’ 207, 211 music example 208–10 song collections 207 Bardi, Giovanni de’ 98, 161, 190–91 on singing technique 143, 199 bass singing 1, 146–57, 159–91 early 17th century 207–17 lute songs, sources 169–76 Maffei on 181–2 music examples 147, 149–50, 152–4, 156, 177, 178–80 range 177, 181, 195–6 see also basso alla bastarda; tenor-bass singers Bassano, Giovanni, Motetti, madrigali et canzoni francese 187 basso alla bastarda 185–91, 207 Bataille, Gabrielle 207 Battista Siciliano 140 Beaujoyeulx, Balthazar de, Le balet comique 163 Beaulieu, Gerard de 163 behaviour, and nobility 222–3 Belo, Francesco, Beco 23 Belriguardo, palazzo 105, 106, 109–10, 236, 237, 238, 239, 293 Bendidio, Lucrezia 104, 131, 243, 244

324

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Bentivoglio, Cornelio 63, 245, 255, 298 Bentivoglio, Guido 66 Bentivoglio, Ippolito, Count 245 Bentivoglio, Vittoria Cybo 104, 131, 245 Bergamo, GCB letter on fortifications 278 Besard, Jean-Baptiste, Thesaurus harmonicus 172, 174, 204 Bèze, Théodore de 70 Bianconi, Lorenzo 217 Bibbiena (Bernardo Dovizi), La calandria 23 biography musical 2 revival 3 Bisballe, Francisco, Count of Bratico 131, 138, 140 Bocchi, Francesco, Discorso...sopra la musica 265–7 Bossinensis, Franciscus, Tenori e contrabassi... 176 Bossuyt, Ignace 34 Bottegari, Cosimo, Lute Book 176 Bottrigari, Ercole 184–5 Boulogne 46 Bourbon-Vendôme, Cardinal Charles de 91 Bouvines 49 Bovicelli, Giovanni Battista, Regole, passaggi di musica 176, 186–7 Brancaccio, Carlo 29 Brancaccio, Cesare 31, 55–6, 69, 287 Brancaccio, Cornelia or Vittoria 20 Brancaccio, Giovan Vincenzo 29 Brancaccio, Giulia 30 Brancaccio, Giulio Cesare 2 Accademia dei Sereni 27 auditioning of singer 183 bass singer 4, 130–31, 159–60, 193 repertoire 203–7 style 146 voice quality 197–8 Belriguardo incident 105, 106, 109–10, 236, 237, 238, 239, 293 biography materials 3–4, 87 contemporary references to 83–5, 86, 94–6, 101–2, 196–7, 239–41 Dentice’s dedication to 31, 35, 132, 135, 232–3, 284–6 education 14–15 England 38–46 family 9 Ferrara 104–8, 236, 239, 242–7

departure 248–51 French naturalization 69, 287 Granvelle’s hostility 34, 38, 42, 46, 47, 83, 95–6, 97, 102, 130, 159, 232, 233, 290–91 Guarini letter from 249, 300 poem about 130, 132, 160, 196–7, 198, 211, 212–13 Guise, François, Duke of, letter to 286 and Holy League fleet 91–2, 98 identity construction 5, 46, 84, 231–5, 273 Mancino, Vespesiano, letter to 53, 299 marriage 19 Medici, Cosimo de’ letter to Philip II 289 support 91–3 on Messina fortifications 100–101 military service 15–17 Algeria 20, 34 Calais 60, 229, 231 Flanders 22–3 for France 46–7, 49–52, 59–60, 68–9, 71–4, 76–7, 78–82 Germany 30 Tunis 14, 98, 99, 100 military strategist 78–90, 80–82, 88–90, 100, 241, 288–9 money due to 52, 286 murder conviction 33–4, 110, 232 musical activity in Ferrara 242–7 in France 133–4 key dates 131–3 see also under bass singer Nemours, Duke of, letters to 287–9 Order of St Michael 75, 95 Padua 121–3 poetry 30–31 Rome 102–4, 194 in Romei’s Discorsi 254, 255, 256–7, 258–9, 262 Serone, letter to 31, 32, 283–4 Tasso’s poems 197–8, 260–61, 268–71 Urbani’s despatch on 239–41, 242, 246–7, 248–9 warrior-courtier 5, 234–8 works Curriculum vitae 11, 20, 33, 34, 45, 57, 76, 233

Index composition date 99 identity construction 235 text 279–83 Discurso de Julio Brancaccio 241–2, 275 Discorso della milizia 76, 77, 80–81, 87–90, 92–3, 116, 119, 122, 277–8 revision 93–4 Epithalamion 30, 275 Giustificationi et cartelli 62–8, 275 Il Brancatio 105–6, 258, 275–7, 291–2 analysis 115–20 criticism of 115, 255–6, 300–301 publication problems 109–14 success 115 Ragionamento 77, 121–3, 278 Brancaccio, Lelio 27–65 Brantôme, Pierre de Bourdeille, Abbé de 61, 66, 101 Braudel, Fernand 86 Brescello 244 Bridgman, Nanie 139 Brissac, Marshal 22, 52, 54–5, 57 Brooks, Jeanice 68, 133, 160, 163 Brosse [Brochia] M. de 66–7, 70 Brown, Howard 139, 140 Brussels 38, 44 Buoncambi, Vincenzo 231 Burke, Peter, New Perspectives on Historical Writing 5 Caccini, Giulio 138, 139, 159 Le nuove musiche 164, 198–9, 211 music example 200 voice quality 198–9 Cafarello, Ascanio 43 Calais 46, 61 capture (1558) 60 Calcagnino, Teofilo 66, 67 Camarata, Girolamo 225 Cancer, Matteo 33 Canigiani, Bernardo 98, 104, 105, 243 cantar cavalaresco style 142 cantar di gorgia style 145–6, 162, 163, 164, 188, 205, 207, 211, 214 Cappella Sistina 194 Caracciolo, Giulio Cesare 10, 20 Carafa, Carlo, Cardinal 54, 55, 56, 57, 58,

325

59, 69 Carafa, Cesare 31 Carafa, Giovanni Pietro see Paul IV, Pope Cardamone, Donna 41, 133 Cardona, Donna Maria di, Marquise of Padula 13, 19, 140 Casimir, John 77 Castaldo, Antonino 13, 23, 24, 27–8, 29, 36, 46, 130, 134, 138, 146, 160 Castiglione, Baldassare 129, 229 Il Libro del Cortegiano 106, 143–4, 228, 230, 234, 236–7, 253, 259 on musical performance 242–3, 245, 261, 263 Casulana, Madalena 85 Cateau-Cambrésis, Peace of (1559) 61, 86 Cato, Renato 244 Cavaccio, Giovanni 204 Canzonette 171 Cavalcanti Lute Book 169–71, 174, 204 cavaliero discourse 63–8 Cenci, Giuseppe 201 Cerone, Pietro 188, 190, 211 El melopeo y maestro 155, 184 music example 156 Cerretto, Scipione, Libro primo di canzonette 170 Challoner, Sir Thomas 32 Charles V, Emperor 10, 15, 22, 33, 78, 88, 95 abdication 54 Barbarossa campaign 11–12 Cleves, capture of 20 Flanders campaign 22 Milan campaign 15 Naples, visit 13–14, 25 Picardy, invasion 57 Thérouanne, victory 38 Charles VIII, King 10, 57 Charles IX, King 52, 69, 78, 80, 84, 87, 242 marriage 85 royal tours 74–5 Chartres, siege (1568) 77, 89 Cherasco, siege (1537) 15 Chiabrera, Gabriello, Il rapimento di Cefalo 164 Chieri, siege (1536) 15 Cima, Giovanni Paolo, Concerti ecclesiastici 215 Cimello, Thomaso 27 Libro primo de canti a quattro voci 134 Civitavecchia 58, 59

326

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Civitella 58 Coclico, Adrian Petit, Compendium musices 150–51 Coldalgelli, Umberto, biography of GCB 2, 33, 44 Coligny, Gaspard de, Adm 59, 72, 79–80, 81, 84 Colonna, Ascanio 138 Colonna, Giovanna, Donna 13, 131 Colonna, Vittoria 13, 138 Condé, Prince of 16, 70, 71, 72, 77, 79 Conforti, Giovanni Luca 186 Congregaza dei Rozzi troupe 23 Consandolo, palazzo 254 Córdoba, Gonzalo de 10 Costanzo, Angelo di 284 Costo, Tommaso 137 Il fuggilozio 136 court, and honour 228 Croce, Benedetto, biography of GCB 2–3, 41, 44, 99 Crotti, Cesare detto, GCB’s letter 297–8 Cuñiga, Juan de 290 Daza, Esteban, El parnasso 176 dell’Arpa, Giovanleonardo [or Ioan Leonardo Salernitano or Mollica] 27, 140–41 dalla Casa, Girolamo, Il vero modo di diminuir 148, 186 music example 149 della Casa, Giovanni, Galateo 144 della Valle, Pietro 201–2 delle Palle, Scipione 24, 138–40 Dentice, Fabrizio 9, 24, 32, 41 Dentice, Luigi 24, 27, 29, 32, 41, 137, 138, 139, 140, 159, 205–6, 283 Due dialoghi della musica 137, 138, 141, 144, 182, 245 dedication to GCB 31, 35, 131, 132, 135, 232–3, 284–6 Dentice, Scipione 124, 133 difficultà 229, 230 dolcezza 145, 198, 205, 268, 270, 272 Don Juan of Austria 85, 91, 92, 93, 95, 96–9, 101 Doria, Andrea 12, 13 Doria, Violante 163 Dreux, battle (1562) 71, 76, 82, 116, 282 Elizabeth of Austria 85

Eltis, David 115 Enghien, Duke of 16, 59 Este II, Alfonso d’, Prince, later Duke of Ferrara 2, 19, 45, 50–52, 56, 60, 62, 66, 78, 102, 105, 132–3, 183, 196, 202, 239, 241, 287 decline of court 272–3 GCB’s letters 105–6, 111–12, 236, 291–7 musica secreta 2, 243, 245, 249, 250, 260, 262, 268, 272, 273 Este, Anna d’ 51, 53, 60–61, 78, 109 Este, Don Cesare d’ 254, 256, 272 Este II, Ercole d’, Duke of Ferrara 13, 18, 35, 37, 51, 53, 56, 57, 104, 105 death 62 Este, Francesco d’, Don 13, 19, 22, 51, 66, 105 marriage 23 Este, Ippolito d’, Cardinal 50, 51, 59 Este, Isabella d’, Duchess of Mantua 21 Este, Luigi d’, Cardinal 51, 104, 107, 108, 113–15, 133, 194, 196, 203, 205, 243, 244, 248, 250, 276, 293 Fabris, Dinko 40, 139 Fagiola, Vittoria, 140 Farnese, Alessandro see Paul III, Pope Farnese, Cardinal Alessandro (the younger) 109, 132, 245 Farnese, Ottavio 36, 57, 283 Farnese, Pierluigi 13 Farnese, Vittoria 53 Farnham, Surrey 39 Ferdinand I, Emperor 38 Ferrabosco, family 133 Ferrara, Dukes of see Este Ferrovana, siege 35 fighting and identity 17, 46, 71 and nobility 16, 62, 222 see also ‘Arms vs Letters’ Filiberto, Emanuele see Savoy, Duke of Finck, Hermann, Practica musica 148, 211 music example 150 Flanders campaign 22 Florence 57, 91, 92, 188, 205, 240, 242 Fontana, Vincenzo, ‘Madonna mia’ 176–7 Fontainebleau 22, 55 Forneron, Henri 38, 40, 45 François I , King 15, 22

Index François II , King 52, 53, 68, 69 Fregoso, Galeazzo 66 Fuenllana, Miguel de, Orpheica lyra 176 Galilei, Vincenzo 162, 169, 188 Fronimo dialogo 160–61, 171 ‘In exitu Israel de Aegypto’ 176–7, 188 music example 177–80 Ganassi, Sylvestro, La fontegara 186 Ghizzolo, Giovanni, Il terzo libro di madrigali 215, 217 Giaches de Ferrara (?Brumel) 140–41 Giono, Jean 16 Giovanni Andrea, Napolitano 194 Giovanelli, Ruggiero 193, 203 ‘Stelle ch’ornand’il cielo’ 204 Giustiniani, Vincenzo 103, 104, 144, 201, 202, 206, 260 Discorso, GCB reference 131, 193, 194 Gómez, Ruy, Prince of Eboli 225 Gonzaga, Don Ferrante, Prince of Molfetta 13, 14, 20, 22–3, 34, 40, 233 court life 21–2 Gonzaga, Francesco, Duke of Mantua 21 Gonzaga, Vincenzo, Duke 108 Goselini, Giuliano 21 Gouffier, Claude, Grand Equerry of France 66 Gnoli, Domenico 124–5 Grana, Giacomo 112–14, 244 Granvelle, Antoine Perrenot de, Cardinal 33, 39, 93 hostility to GCB 34, 38, 41, 42, 46, 47, 83, 93, 95–6, 97, 101, 102, 130, 132, 159, 232, 233, 290–91 letter to Phillip II 290–91 Gravelines 45–6 Greenblatt, Stephen, Renaissance SelfFashioning 3 Gregory XIII, Pope 120, 272 Grimaldo, Niccoló, Duke of Eboli 37 Gualengo, Camillo 225, 248, 249, 255, 273, 298 Guarini, Anna 131, 268 Guarini, Giovanni Battista 83, 251 ‘Il basso del Brancazio’ 130, 132, 160, 196–7, 198, 211 musical setting 212–13 letter to GCB 249, 300 Guazzo, Stefano Del paragone 253, 262–3

327

La civil conversazione 144, 264–5 Guise, Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine 49, 50, 53, 54, 56, 66, 70, 72, 133 Guise, François, Duke of 34, 49–50, 51, 52–3, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59–60, 61, 66, 67, 70, 71, 72, 75 assassination 72, 79 Calais, capture of 229–31 GCB’s letter 286 military strategist 229 Guise, François, Grand Prior of France 60 Guise, Henri 72, 74 Guise, Louis, Cardinal 49 Haar, James 135 Halle 33, 61, 232 Hans, Jean de 70 Hatton, François 70 Henri II, King 22, 31, 37, 38, 49, 50, 51, 54, 59, 60–62, 68, 69, 95, 96, 230–31, 239, 246 death 62 Henry VIII, King 22, 32 Hill, John 194 Holt, Mack 80 Holy League 87, 89, 91 defeat of Turks 85–6 formation 84 see also Turks honour and the court 228 meanings 223–7 narrative creation of 232–4 outward signs 225–6 performance of 227–32 as process 226 as recognition 224–5 Huguenots 71, 72, 76, 77, 80 identity construction, GCB 5, 46, 84, 231–4, 235, 273 and fighting 17, 46, 71 nobility as 221 of warrior-courtier 265 Gl’ingannati 25, 26–7, 131, 135–8 Innsbruck 37 instrumentalists 140–14 Italians, in French service 50, 60, 61, 62, 78 Jähns, Max 275

328

Warrior, Courtier, Singer

James V, King 53 Jarnac, battle (1569) 76, 78 Jouanna, Arlette 223, 224, 226 Joyeuse, Duke of 247, 248, 250 Karl II, Archduke 85 Knecht, Robert 56 Landresì, siege (1543) 22, 99 Lannoy, Ghillebert de 221 La Goletta, capture 12, 98, 100 La Roche l’Abeille 79 La Rochelle 79–80, 95 Larson, Keith 146 Lassus, Orlande de 21, 38, 40, 41, 85, 132, 136, 206 Layolle, Francesco de‘Lasciar ilo velo o per sol o per ombra’ 146 music example 147 Le Havre 71 Lepanto, battle (1571) 83, 85–6, 120 Lombardini, Alessandro 248, 250 Lorraine, Cardinal of see Guise, Charles Lorraine, Claude II, Duke of Aumale 52, 53, 56, 60, 77 Louis XII, King 10 Lucca Lute Books 204 lute 108, 133 lute songs bass voice, sources 160, 169–76 collections 204 in Rome 134 Luxembourg, Bastien de, Viscount of Martignes 66 Luxembourg, capture 22 Luzzaschi, Luzzasco 244, 247, Lyons, siege (1562) 71 Macchiavelli, Baldassare 243 Machiavelli, Niccolò, definition of gentleman 265 Maffei, Giovanni Camillo 139, 159, 211 on bass singing 181–2 Delle lettere, music extract 147 on singing style 141–2 Maffei, Mutio 102 Maffei, Nicola 13–14 Maggi, Cesare 17 Mancino [Macedonio], Vespasiano, GCB’s letters 53, 247, 286, 299 Mantua 23, 108–9, 196

Manuzio, Aldo the younger 115, 276 Marenzio, Luca 104, 172, 187, 188, 193, 203, 204, 206 Maria of Bavaria 85 Mariconda, Antonio 24 La Filenia 26, 131 Marsh, Peter 227, 228 Mary Stuart, Queen 53 Mary Tudor, Queen 38, 132 Masetti, Giulio 106, 206, 293 Mason, Kevin 204 Maximillian II, Emperor 196 Medici, Catherine de’, Queen 50, 51, 61, 69, 75, 91 Medici, Cosimo de’, Grand Duke 50, 57, 86, 91, 138 letter to Philip II about GCB 289 Medici, Eleanora de’, Princess 92, 98 Medici, Ferdinando de’ Cardinal 120, 265 Medici, Francesco de’, Grand Duke 103, 104, 239, 241, 245 Medici, Isabella de’, Princess 92, 98, 121 Medici, Lorenzo de’ 229 Merlo, Alessandro 104, 194 Merulo, Claudio da Correggio 184, 296 Mesola, palazzo 254 Messina 98 fortifications, GCB on 100–101 Metz siege (1552) 34, 51, 78 ‘military revolution’ 15 Milan, Duchy of 57, 61 Milán, Luis, Libro de música 176 Milano, Francesco da 141 Moncalvo, siege (1554) 52, 286 Monluc, Blaise de 17, 55, 61, 228 Commentaires 16, 257 Montaigne, Essais 221, 253 Montalto, Cardinal 202, 205 Montcontour, battle (1569) 76, 79–81, 116 Monte Argì 63 Monte, Philippe de 85, 206 Monte Giordano, palazzo Orsini 104–5 Montecavallo 59 Monteverdi, Claudio 20, 181 Orfeo 201 Montmorency, Anne de, Constable of France 15, 49, 50, 54, 55, 59, 61, 70, 71, 72, 75, 76–7, 229 capture at Saint-Quentin 229 Montmorency, François de, Marshal of France 38, 66, 76–7

Index Montmorency, Henri I de, Constable of France 77, 91 Mon[t]pensier, Duke of 71, 72 Montreal Lute Book 204 Mudarra, Alonso, Tres libros de musica 176 Mühlberg, battle (1547) 30 Muscettola, Giovanni Francesco 24–5 Muscettola, Giovanni Antonio 25–6 music Aragona palace, Naples 137–46 corrupting influence 267–72 Renaissance 2 music education 265–7 music making, warrior-courtier 264–7 music masters 265 musica secreta 2, 206, 243, 245, 249, 250, 260, 268, 272, 273 musical performance Castiglione on 242–3, 245, 261, 263 need for privacy 245 ‘musician’, meaning 129–30 Mutio, Girolamo, Il duello 37, 63, 65 Naples academies 27–8 Castel Nuovo 10, 34, 232 conquest by France 10 music, Aragona palace 137–46 Nido seggio 9, 19, 20, 23, 27, 31, 146 planned invasion 53–4, 56, 61 rebellion 28–31 ruling families 9–10 theatre 13, 23–8, 134–7 Narváez, Luys de, Los seys libros del dolphin 176 Nasi, Bernardo 91 Nassau, Louis of 92 Navarre, Antoine de 70 Nemours, Duke of 16, 56, 71, 72, 74, 77, 78, 79 GCB’s letters 287–9 Neuschel, Karen 221, 223, 224–5 Nevers, Duke of 74 Nice, treaty (1538) 17 Nifo, Agostino 253 Noailles, Antoine de 39 nobility and behaviour 222–3 and fighting 16, 62, 222 as identity 221 Norris, Henry 79

329

Notari, Angelo, Prime musiche nuove 164, 188, 214, 215 Noue, François de la 71 Occhino, Bernadino 28 Order of St Michael 75, 95 Orléans, siege 70 Orsini, Lodovico 124–5 Orsini, Paolo Giordano, Duke of Bracciano 55, 120–21 Orsini, Virginio 124 Orsini, Troilo 96, 97, 98 Ortiz, Diego 185 Otium 259, 264 ‘Ottaviano’, GCB’s companion 33, 232 Padovano, Alessandro 85 Padua 37, 108, 120–25, 133 Palantrotti, Melchior 164, 202, 247 Palermo 12 fortifications 100 Palestrina, Giovanni, ‘Pulchra es amica mea’ 215 Palisca, Claude 160, 161 Palladio, Andrea 114, 257 Pallavicino, Sforza 88 Paris 59, 60, 69, 80 Parma 57 Parma, Duke of 86, 88, 102, 231 Patrizi, Francesco 115, 254, 298 in Romei’s Discorsi 257–9, 262 on GCB’s Il Brancatio 255–6, 300–301 La militia Romana di Polibio 115, 118 Paul III, Pope (Alessandro Farnese) 15, 29, 32, 36, 53 death 54 Paul IV, Pope (Giovanni Pietro Carafa) 31, 54, 55, 58 Peren, Piero (or Pierre) 202 Peretti, Francesco 120 Peri, Jacopo 164 Perino Florentino 140, 141 Petrucci, Giovanni Maria 91 Peverara, Laura 131, 268 Philip II, King 33, 35, 38, 47, 54, 55, 59, 83, 86, 90, 92, 93, 96, 97, 98, 100, 113, 233 Philip of Macedon 264, 265 Pico, Lodovico, Count of Mirandola 66 Piccolomini, Alessandro 26, 138 Piedmont, wars 15–16, 52, 59, 61, 84

330

Warrior, Courtier, Singer

Pigna, Giovan Battista 243 Pignatelli, Beatrice (GCB’s wife) 19, 46 Pinelli, Gian Vincenzo 87 Piovene, Scipione 59 Pirrotta, Nino 135 Pisa 92–3 Pisador, Diego, Libro de musica 176 Pitio 205–7 Pius V, Pope 84 Pocaterra, Alessandro 247, 299 Poitiers, siege (1569) 77, 79, 80–81, 89 Posillipo, Villa Serena 136–7 Possevino, Giovanbattista, Dialogo dello honore 223 Possevino, Padre Antonio GCB letter to 119, 278 Potter, John 143–4 Prandi, Stefano 253, 256 Promis, Carlo 265 Puliaschi, Giovanni Domenico 194, 217 Musiche varie 199, 201, 214 Putti, Alfonso 244 Quickelberg, Samuel 21, 40, 132 Quondam, Amedeo 236 Rasi, Francesco 164, 201 Renard, Simon 39, 42–6, 67, 68 René II, King 53 Renty, battle (1554) 49–51 Ricoveri, Matteo da 24 Rivault, David, de Fleurance, 223, 237 Rodio, Rocco, Arie raccolti 139, 159, 199 Rognoni, Francesco Selva di varii passaggi 176, 188, 214 ‘Sfogava con le stelle’ 214, 215 music example 216 Romanesca, aria 162, 163, 199, 205 Romano, Andrea 285 Rome 53–5, 59, 102–4, 106, 188, 190, 194, 203, 205, 211 Romei, Annibale, Discorsi 114, 225–6, 254–7, 258 GCB in 254, 255, 256–7, 258–9, 262 Romorontin, Edict (1561) 69 Rore, Cipriano de, ‘A la dolc’ombra de le belle fronde’ 148 music example 149 ‘Anchor che col partire’ 188 music example 189 ‘Ben qui si mostra il ciel’ 215

Rota, Bernadino 27, 132, 135 Rouen, fall (1562) 71 Rovere, Francesco Maria delle, Duke of Urbino, Discorsi militari 115 Ruggiero, aria di 162, 205 Saint-Germain 66 Edict (1570) 83 Peace (1570) 76 Saint André, Marshall 71 St-Denis, battle (1567) 76 Saint-Jean-d’Angély, siege 79 Saint Maur 78, 287 S. Pietro del Negro, Giulio, Grazie ed affetti di musica 215, 217 St-Quentin, battle (1557) 59, 116, 229 Salazar, Christobal de 113 Sale, Giulio 265 Salerno, Princes of see Sanseverino Salernitano see dell’Arpa, Giovanleonardo Salviati, Lorenzo 265 Sandesir, siege (1544) 21 Sandrin, Pierre, ‘Doulce memoire’ 185 Sangro, Placido di 29, 31 Sanseverino, Amerigo 55 Sanseverino, Barbara, Countess of Sala 245 Sanseverino, Ferrante, Prince of Salerno 9–10, 11, 13, 23, 37, 46, 49, 54, 55, 56, 61, 135, 138, 205 Sanseverino, Giambernardo di, Duke of Somma 54, 55, 58, 61, 78, 287 Sanseverino, Pietro Antonio, Prince of Bisignano 12–13 Sanseverino, Roberto, Prince of Salerno 10 Santa Cruz, Marquis of 98 Santia, siege (1555) 52 Sanvitale, Leonora, Countess of Scandiano, 131, 104, 245, 255 Savoy, Duke of (Emanuele Filiberto) 59, 61, 70, 84, 88, 103, 281 Savoy-Nemours, Duke of 56, 91 Savoye, Honorat de, Count of Villars 66 Scandiano, Leonora di see Sanvitale, Leonora seggi, Naples 9 Serbellone, Gabrio 100 Serone, Giovanni Antonio, 137 GCB’s letter 31, 32, 283–4 Sessa, Duke of, on GCB 93–8, 101, 291 Severino, Giovanni Antonio 285 Shearman, John 229, 230

Index Siena 25–6, 51 siege (1552) 36, 50 Silva, Guzmán da 47, 85–6, 90, 91 singing, and sexual power 260–63 singing style Maffei on 141–2 Soardo on 140 singing technique 141–4, 199 see also bass singing; cantar di gorgia, cantar cavalaresco Sixtus V, Pope 120, 121 Soardo (Suardo), Paolo 27, 32, 137–40 Solerti, Angelo 254 Soranzo, Giacomo 59 Southampton 45 Spoleto 59 sprezzatura 229, 230, 238, 250, 251 Stras, Laurie 102 Striggio, Alessandro 85 Strozzi, Piero 50, 51, 55, 60, 116 De bello gallico (trans) 257–8 Stubbs, Philip, The Anatomie of Abuses 267 Summonte, Antonio 23–4 Suleiman II, Sultan 37 Tarducci, Achillo, Delle machine 115 Tasso, Bernardo 12, 55 Tasso, Torquato 83, 243, 251 ‘A Giulio Cesare Brancaccio’ 131, 206, 268–71 Gerusalemme liberata 86, 271–2 Il Malpigio 228 ‘Sopra la voce del Brancaccio’ 131, 197–8, 260–61 Tassone, Giulio Estense, Count, Giustificationi et cartelli 62–8 Tassoni, Ercole, Count 202 Tavannes, Sieur de 56 tenor-bass singers 176–85, 196–203 Termes, Duc de 59 Terzi, Giovanni Antonio, Il secondo libro de intavolatura 170, 171 theatre, Naples 13, 23–8, 134–7 Thérouanne, siege 37 Thiene, Giulio, Count of Scandiano 245 Thionville, siege 60 Tivoli, palazzo 104, 105 Toledo, Federico, Don 12 Toledo, García de, Don 12, 34 Toledo, Pedro de, Don 10–11, 13, 27, 37, 131, 159, 232

331

death 35, 38 revolt against 28–9 Sanseverino, rivalry 11 Siena, siege 50 Trapani 98 fortifications 100 Trent, Council of 70, 72 Troiano, Massimo, La cortigiana innamorata 136 Trotti, Girolamo 248 Tunis campaigns 11–12, 14, 21, 98–9 Turin 52, 84–5, 91, 103 Turks alliance with 56 wars against 20, 77, 85–6, 88, 89, 91, 100, 120, 246 Urbani, Horatio 107, 108, 109–10, 256, 270 despatch on GCB 239–41, 242, 245–7, 248–9 Urbino, Duchy of 58 Urbino, Francesco Maria delle Rovere, Duke of 115 Urbino, Lucrezia d’Este, Duchess of 105, 108–9, 248, 256, 262, 298 Valderrábano, Enríquez de, Libro de musica 176 Valenza, siege (1557) 57 Valera, Ottavio 214–15, 217 Valore, Baccio 255, 300 van Rossem, Maarten 20 Vargas, Francesco da 47, 84 Vassily, massacre (1562) 70 Vaucelles, truce 55 Vecchi, Orazio 203, 204, 206 Canzonette, libro secondo 171 Canzonette a tre voci 204 Primo libro delle canzonette 170 Vega, Juan de 34 Velasco, Francisco Nuñez de, Diálogos 253 Venato, Ferrante 20 Venato, Scipione 20 Venice 85, 91, 111–14, 120, 202, 242 Verino, Francesco 300 Verovio, Simone 204 Vienna 85, 196, 206, 244 Vidame, Count of 66 Villa, Francesco 66 Villamarino, Isabella, Princess of Salerno 13, 23

332

Warrior, Courtier, Singer

villanellas 132, 133, 136 accompaniment 136–7 Chi passa per questa strada 136 collections 135, 203–5 villanelle alle napolitana 135, 136, 137, 203 205 Villano, Cesare 32, 283, 285 Villano, Fabrizio 24 Vinta, Belisario 104, 243 viola bastarda 186 Virchi, Paolo, Primo libro 169 virtù 229, 235, 237, 265, 273 Volpe, Marc’Antonio, First Book of Madrigals 146 Volpiano, siege (1555) 16, 52 warfare, developments 15–16

warrior-courtier 63, 133 excessive leisure, avoidance 264 identity 265 music making 264–7 Weissman, Ronald 226–7 Whigham, Frank 222 William of Cleves 20 William of Orange 84 women singers 243–5 Zacconi, Lodovico 142, 157 Prattica di musica 145, 151 music example 152–4 Zarlino, Gioseffo 142, 162–3, 182, 184–5, 191 Zenobi, Luigi 194–6, 198, 215 Zoppino 24