Wednesday, May 1, 8582

Marco da Gagliano (1582-1643) - Dafne


[Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) - Apollo e Dafne]

Marco da Gagliano (May 1582, Florence - February 25, 1643) lived most of his life in Florence.

After early study both with a religious confraternity and with Luca Bati, he was employed beginning in 1602 at the church of San Lorenzo for six years as a singing instructor. In 1607 he went to Mantua, where he wrote music for the Gonzaga family, including his impressive operatic setting of Dafne, and in 1609 returned to Florence to become maestro di cappella at the Compagnia dell'Arcangelo Raffaello, the organization from which he had received his boyhood musical training. Later that same year the Medici made him maestro di cappella of their court, a position he held for 35 years.

Gagliano wrote an enormous quantity of music, both sacred and secular, for the Medici, and in addition he was a singer and instrumentalist who entertained them privately. His works include the opera, Dafne (1608) which was praised as the best setting of the libretto by Rinuccini -- even by Jacopo Peri, the first to write an opera on the text. Meanwhile Gagliano or another altered Rinuccini's poetry so strongly that sometimes it is impossible to recognize traces of the original.

Peri indicated that Gagliano's way of setting text to music came closer to actual speech than any other, therefore accomplishing the aim of the Florentine Camerata of decades before, who sought to recapture that supposed aspect of ancient Greek music.

Other music by Gagliano includes secular monodies and numerous madrigals. While the monody was a Baroque stylistic innovation, most of the madrigals are a cappella, and written in a style reminiscent of the late Renaissance (in the first decades of the 17th Century, the continuo madrigal was becoming predominant, for example in the works of Monteverdi). This mix of progressive and conservative trends can be seen throughout his music: some of his sacred music is a cappella, again in the prima prattica style of the previous century, while other pieces show influence of the Venetian School.

Gagliano was extremely influential in his time, as could be expected of the Medici's own appointed head of all musical activities at their court; however his popularity waned after his death, and his music has since been overshadowed by contemporaries such as Monteverdi.

Related Reading:
Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin
Music in the Western World: A History in Documents
Marco di Gagliani
Dafne: Preface (Pages 174-177)

***



[Antonio Pallaiuolo (1429-1496) - Apollo e Dafne]

Apollo and Daphne is a story from ancient Greek mythology, retold by Hellenistic and Roman authors in the form of an amorous vignette; Thomas Bulfinch drew on those late sources in the following manner:

The curse of Apollo was brought onto him when he chided the young Eros for playing with bow and arrows.

Apollo was a great warrior and said to him, “What have you to do with warlike weapons, saucy boy? Leave them for hands worthy of them. Behold the conquest I have won by means of them over the vast serpent who stretched his poisonous body over acres of the plain! Be content with your torch, child, and kindle up your flames, as you call them, where you will, but presume not to meddle with my weapons.”

The petulant Eros took two arrows, of gold and one of lead. With the leaden shaft, to incite hatred, he shot the nymph Daphne and with the golden one, to incite love, he shot Apollo through the heart. Apollo was seized with love for the maiden, and she in turn abhorred Apollo. In fact, she spurned her many would-be lovers preferring instead woodland sports and exploring the woods. Her father demanded that she get married so that she may give him grandchildren.

She begged her father to let her remain unmarried.

He consented warning her, “Your own face will forbid it.”

Apollo continually followed her, begging her to stay, but the nymph continued her flight. They were evenly matched in the race until Eros intervened and helped him gain upon her.

Seeing that Apollo was bound to catch her, she called upon her father, “Help me, Peneus! open the earth to enclose me, or change my form, which has brought me into this danger!”

Suddenly her skin turned into bark, her hair became leaves, and her arms were transformed into branches. She stopped running as her feet became rooted to the ground. Apollo embraced the branches, but even the branches shrank away from him. Since Apollo could no longer take her as his wife, he promised to tend her as his tree, promising that he would use his powers of eternal youth to make sure that she would always stay green, and since then the leaves of the Bay laurel tree have never known decay.




[Titian (1485-1576) - Apollo and Daphne]



Gian Lorenzo Bernini sculpted a very famous baroque, life-sized marble entitled Apollo and Daphne.



In recent literature it is argued that The Kiss of Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) is a symbolic picture of the kissing of Apollo to Daphne at the same moment she is transformed into a laurel tree.

[8583 Frescobaldi / 8582 Marco da Gagliano / 8582 Ravenscroft]

Friday, January 18, 8582

Thomas Ravenscroft (1582-1635) - Blind Mice


Thomas Ravenscroft (1582-1635) - Three Blind Mice (1609)

Thomas Ravenscroft (c. 1582 or 1592 until 1635) was an English composer, theorist and editor, notable as a composer of rounds and catches, and especially for compiling collections of British folk music.

He probably sang in the choir of St. Paul's Cathedral from 1594, when a "Thomas Raniscroft" was listed on the choir rolls; likely he remained there until around 1600, under the directorship of Thomas Giles. He probably received his bachelor's degree in 1605 from Cambridge.

Ravenscroft's principal contributions are his collections of folk music, including catches, rounds, street cries, vendor songs, "freeman's songs" and other anonymous music, in three collections: Pammelia (1609), Deuteromelia (1609) and Melismata (1611). Some of the music he compiled has acquired quite extraordinary fame, though his name is rarely associated with the music: for example Three Blind Mice first appears in Deuteromelia. He also published a metrical psalter (The Whole Booke of Psalmes) in 1621. Hs works include 11 anthems, 3 motets for five voices, and four fantasias for viols.

In addition to his activities as a composer and editor, he wrote two treatises on music theory: A Briefe Discourse of the True (but Neglected) Use of Charact'ring the Degrees ... (London, 1614), and A Treatise of Musick, which remains in manuscript (unpublished).

***

Three Blind Mice is a children's nursery rhyme and musical round.

The modern words are:

Three blind mice. Three blind mice.
See how they run. See how they run.
They all ran after the farmer's wife
She cut off their tails with a carving knife.
Did you ever see such a thing in your life
As three blind mice.

The first publication of this rhyme was written by Thomas Ravenscroft in 1609. The lyrics there are:

Three Blinde Mice,
three Blinde Mice,
Dame Iulian,
Dame Iulian,
The Miller and his merry olde Wife,
shee scrapte her tripe licke thou the knife.

There is an urban legend that this musical round was written earlier and refers to Queen Mary I of England executing three Protestant bishops. The earliest lyrics don't talk about directly killing the three blind mice and are dated after Queen Mary died, however, "she scrapte her tripe licke thou the knife" implies they were prepared and consumed if not a reference to tasting the blood of a slain adversary. (she scraped off the entrails and the knife was licked).
There is a narrative ambiguity at the heart of the rhyme, which is the question over whether the mice are chasing the farmer's wife after she cut their tails off, or whether she cut their tails off after they began chasing her.

In several sports (basketball and hockey, for example, which have three referrees), "Three Blind Mice" is used as a derogatory phrase for poor referees. Bands also play the song to mock referees in similar cases. Such references, however, are heavily frowned upon officially by both sports as unsportsmanlike.

Before major-league baseball required four umpires at every game, there were regularly three.

The Brooklyn Dodgers had a fan band called the "Sym-Phoney Band," led by Shorty Laurice, which started playing "Three Blind Mice" when the umpires came out onto the field until the league office ordered the team to stop it.

Joseph Holbrooke (1878-1958) composed his Symphonic Variations, opus 37, based on Three Blind Mice. Also, Joseph Haydn used its theme in the Finale (4th movement) of his Symphony 83 (La Poule) (1785-86); one of the six Paris Symphonies, and the music also appears in the final movement of English composer Eric Coates' suite The Three Men.



Three Blind Mice was also used as a theme song for The Three Stooges.



The Beatles used the sentence "See how they run" in two of its songs: I am the Walrus and Lady Madonna.

[8582 Dafne /8582 Ravenscroft / 8578 Figured Bass]