MARCELLO SORCE KELLER

REFLECTIONS OF CONTINENTAL
AND MEDITERRANEAN TRADITION
IN ITALIAN FOLK MUSIC
[1]

STEPHEN BLUM (EDS.)
MUSIC CULTURES IN CONTACT:
CONVERGENCES AND COLLISIONS

CURRENT PRESS SIDNEY 1994
pp. 40-47


INTRODUCTION


Time and again Béla Bartòk lamented in his articles and letters that nationalism or outright chauvinism often get in the way of objectivity in folk music research (Bartòk 1977, 1969). That was, and still is, often the case. Scholars tend to describe the traditional music of their native land as comprising the widest variety of forms and styles imaginable and, at the same time, showing an underlying unity, and it is not hard to detect some patriotic fervour behind such statements. There are isolated cultures that develop considerable internal diversification, as for instance, among many tribal traditions across the globe, including some in Australia. In Europe, on the other hand, isolated cultures are rather rare because of a combination of historical and geographic factors. Bestknown among them are probably those of Hungary and Sardinia. In general, however, states and nations seldom coincide with culture areas, and much of their internal diversity can be accounted for by contact with other cultures. This is particularly the case in Italy.
Scholarship accumulated over about a century shows very clearly that the Italian peninsula is not at all unified with respect to its folk culture. I shall argue below that much of its musical diversity is due to cultural contact with both the European mainland and the Mediterranean.

DIVERSITY

One can gain a fairly accurate overview of the diversity of the Italian folk music scene by considering song types, performance practices and compositional processes.
Many song types can be found in Italy: ritual songs (for christenings, weddings, burials), calendrical songs (for Christmas, spring and carnival festivals), occupational songs (sung by such people as shepherds, soldiers and street vendors), recreational songs (such as dance songs), family songs (such as lullabies and children's songs), religious songs, cattle calls and others. In this article I shall focus on the ballad and lyric song repertoires.
Some Italian ballads are similar to British ballads in the canon established by Francis James Child, and some even have exact correspondents in that repertoire. Among them are: Ch. 12, 'Lord Randal' (L'avvelenato); Ch. 43, 'The Sleeping Potion' (La bevanda sonnifera); Ch. 53,'Lord Thomas and Fair Annet' (Danze e funerali); and Ch. 4, 'Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight' (L'eroina). The small number of authors who have written on this topic includes Francello (1946) and Regnoni-Macera (1964). Others are broadsides, or in Italian, 'fogli volanti'. Lyric songs (canti lirico-monostrofici) exist in great variety: matinade, villotte, polesane, stornelli, strambotti, rispetti, stranot, canti alla boara, canti a vatoccu, canti alla stesa, canti alla longa, canti a pera. Most of these are from central Italy. In Sardinia there are the 'mutu' and the 'mutettu' and in Sicily, among others, the 'canzuna'.
There is considerable variety in the performance practice. In the vocal repertoire alone, there are straight monodic songs, diaphonic songs, choral polyphony, heterophony, antiphonal and responsorial singing. Performance practices often cut across genres. Ballads, for instance, can be performed solo or chorally, depending on the area (in the Alpine region choral singing is predominant) and on the availability of singers. So can lyric songs, although to a lesser degree than ballads and with a few exceptions: the 'stornelli', for instance, are typically solo songs, and the 'canti a vatoccu' can only be performed by two or, at the most, three voices.
Equally, there is no lack of variety in the domain of compositional process. I shall briefly mention three dissimilar types: 'modular', 'segmental' and 'kaleidoscopic'.
The modular process is typical of the Sardinian 'mutu' and 'mutettu' (see Leydi 1973:22-3). As mentioned before, these are lyric songs of a sort. They are modular in the sense that the whole song is developed, following precise rules, from elements or 'modules' contained in the first stanza, called 'isterria'. The 'isterria' consists of a variable number of sevensyllable lines, from which derives an equal number of stanzas that make up the whole song. Through a subtle process of expansion, contraction and adaptation to the text, the initial lines of the 'isterria' become the building blocks of the music that goes with the following stanzas.
The segmental compositional procedure is probably widespread. I studied it in Trentino, the region in northeastern Italy referred to by the Austrians as southern Tyrol (see Sorce Keller 1988). Some phrases in the folk song melodies of that area make up a small repertoire of what I call 'segments'. Often as long as a four-bar phrase or a two-bar semi-phrase, segments may 'migrate' from song to song, sometimes with great frequency. The dynamics of their circulation are complex because, given their variable length, they may cause change at different structural levels in host songs. The development of songs in Trentino, therefore, is largely the result of the progressive circulation of segments.
The kaleidoscopic procedure was also verified in the circumscribed area of Montemarano, not far from Naples (Giuriati 1982). Thrantellas are often performed in Montemarano, and each time the music may be said to be the result of the kaleidoscopic permutations of elements coming from a large, but finite, repertoire. A new piece is actually just a rearrangement of elements that were present in previously performed pieces.

CULTURE CONTACT

Is this microcosm of musical styles and practices typically or uniquely Italian? The overall pattern of the mosaic is unquestionably Italian, and only Italian. That does not mean, however, that many of its constituents cannot be recognized in other traditions.
Canti lirico-monostrofici, for instance, are as Italian as the 'blues' is American. In central and southern Italy they are the dominant song-type. Still, philologists immediately recognize that some of those lyric songs owe their origin to another Romance culture: the very name stornello comes from the Provengal 'estorn' (i.e. to challenge) and strambotto from the Provenqal 'estribar' (i.e. to lash). Another type of lyric song, the canto a vatoccu, is a form of diaphony that closely resembles the one found in Bulgaria, with its occasional intervals of a major or even a minor second (see Example 1).



Funeral lamentations, still practised in the southern part of the peninsula, clearly witness how southern Italy was an integral part of the Greek world (De Martino 1958). Indeed, in antiquity, southern Italy was in all respects part of Greece; long after the Roman conquest, Greek remained the everyday language.[1] That this was true in musical terms as well is confirmed by the fact that in southern Italy one still encounters a particular form of text fragmentation, in which lines or even words are left incomplete, to be repeated and completed in the next line:

oi di sira ci
di sira ci passai
oi di sira ci passai da ssa vinedda
da ssa vina ia
ssira ci passai da ssa vinedda

This form of text fragmentation is still in use in the Greek islands of the eastern Mediterranean (Magrini 1985:30-34 and 1986).
These comments pertain to central and southern Italy. In the north, culture contact is still apparent in what I call the Gallican Connection. As early as the end of the nineteenth century, Costantino Nigra noticed that ballads (canti epico-lirici) are found mostly in the north, where Celtic languages were once spoken (Nigra 1957 [1888)). Lyric songs (canti lirico-monostrofici), on the other hand, are far more common below the Apennines, where Italic languages (Osco, Umbrian, Faliscan) and, later, Latin were once spoken. This dichotomy was detected by focussing solely on the narrative content of songs rather than their musical component. Although recent research has been unable to show exactly why such a correlation between linguistic background and song types exists, it has shown, nonetheless, that the dichotomy holds true not only in terms of the literary content of songs but in terms of their musical style as well (Sorce Keller 1991:140-47).
These new findings implicitly strengthen the thesis, also formulated by Nigra, that most Italian ballads (and balladry as a genre) came to northern Italy from the Francophone territories. Indeed, beginning in Piedmont and moving eastward across Lombardy, Veneto and all the way to Trentino and Friuli, one frequently encounters fanfare-like tunes showing a clear French flavour (see Example 2).



Piedmont, a territory where local dialects still maintain a strong French colouration, would have functioned as a one-way bridge between France and the more eastern Italian regions north of the Apennines. Later, in the nineteenth century, in the wake of the Napoleonic army, the cultural ties between northern Italy and France were reinforced. This is evident in literary motifs still to be found in folklore and folksongs, such as the motif of France, 'the land where young people go never to return' (a reference to the military draft).
Curt Sachs once spoke of countries that «sing, but their melodies are bom from words and either merely convey poetry or else intensify it, and, beautiful as they may be, they are basically different from those melodies that follow purely vocal impulses!» He added that «Europe, with the exception of the Mediterranean region, has been a typical non-singer's land»(Sachs 1943:307). This is indeed a good description of the two main areas that musically make up the Italian peninsula. In the north, especially in the Alpine area, choral singing of ballads is common. It is syllabic, the words are clearly intelligible, the tempo is 'giusto', and voices are full, blending and supported from the chest (see Example 3).






However, as soon as the Apennines are crossed to the south, the musical climate changes considerably, and even more so once Rome is left behind and the Neapolitan area is reached. Choral singing gradually disappears, the tempo becomes tempo rubato, and by the time Sicily is reached the embellished character of the melodies and the nasal quality of voice production are strongly reminiscent of Arabic music (see Example 4).
This is not surprising, since southern Italy was once ruled by Spain (which has had close contact with the Middle East), and Sicily, in particular, was once ruled by the Arabs (ninth and tenth centuries A.D.).


CONCLUSION

Italian folk song is remarkably diverse when compared with the art music, which has a unity of its own. For example, in the nineteenth century, the middle class from Piedmont to Sicily enjoyed opera, and such composers as Donizetti were equally popular in Milan and in Naples. At the rural level, on the other hand, where music was mostly circulated orally, Italy was and is by no means a unified country. In that sense, when the Austrian politician Metternich (1773-1859) said that Italy was nothing but a geographic expression, he was right and wrong at the same time.
The diverse pattern of folk song styles and practices to be found in the northern as opposed to the southern part of the Italian peninsula reflects the even sharper dichotomy between continental Europe and the Mediterranean area. Furthermore, this pattern shows that the peninsula is a bridge between the European mainland and the Middle East. It is a bridge along which may be seen an almost continuous transition from one tradition to another, through a series of links and a few sharp divides, until the last link is entirely different from the first.


Note

[1] Parmenides, Zeno, Empedocles and Archimedes were all, geographically speaking, Italians but, culturally, entirely Greek.


REFERENCES

BARTOK, Béla
1969 Lettere scelte. Milan: Mondadori.
1977 Scritti sulla musica popolare. Turin: Boringhieri.

DE MARTINO, Ernesto
1958 Morte e pianto rituale. Turin: Boringhieri.

FRANCELLO, Elvira
1946 «An Italian Version of the 'Maid Freed from the Gallows'». New York Folklore Quarterly 2/1:139-40.

GIURIATI, Giovanni
1982 «Un procedimento compositivo caleidoscopico: la tarantella
di Montemarano». Culture musicali 1/2:19-72.

LEYDI, Roberto
1973 I canti popolari italiani. Milan: Mondadori.

MAGRINI, Tullia
1985 Forme della musica vocale e strumentale a Creta. Milan: Ricordi.
1986 «Dolce lo mio Drudo,. Rivista Italiana di Musicologia 21:215-35.

NIGRA, Costantino
1957 Canti popolari del Piemonte. Turin: Einaudi. First published Turin, 1888.

REGNONI-MACERA, Clara
1964 «The Song of May». Western Folklore 23:23-6.

SACHS, Curt
1943 The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, East and West. New York: Norton.

SORCE KELLER, Marcello
1988 'Segmental Procedures in the Transmission of Folk Songs in Trentino'. Sonus 8/2:37-46.
1991 Tradizione orale e canto corale, ricerca musicologica in Trentino. Bologna: Forni.