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AGAINST THE
ARTIFICE:
A SONG OF TRUTH
by
Xavier Lacavalerie
«… di qua
dal dolce stil novo
ch’i’ odo»
Dante Alighieri (Paradiso)
«…
on peut confortablement se proclamer un tenant de la musique
baroque sans faire beaucoup de différence entre les œuvres et
les auteurs.»
T.W. Adorno,
Du
mauvais usage du baroque, 1966
To understand the decisive
contribution given by the cantatrice Nella Anfuso in the
interpretation to the music so called antique, we must return to
the beginning of the year 1980 when the French recording company
Arion published a registration with a sibylline title “Sur
les traces de Pétrarque. La
virtuosité dans la musique spirituelle des XVIe et XVIIe
siècles”.
This was amazing not because of the repertoire - even though
works by Filippo Vitali, Marco Da Gagliano, Francesco Severi,
Sigismondo D’India and Francesca Caccini were little known and
the majority of these pieces were a real novelty in recording -
but art unprecedented, in the primigenial sense of the
term “never heard”, of an interpreter that plunged us
into unusual aesthetics and a universe of sound that left us
totally bewildered. This was claimed openly by the desire to
heed to the poetic word that a long vocal and musical tradition
had contributed to put on a second level.
This recording, that we can qualify without
any fear as “historic” because it determined a point of
breakage in the interpretation of antique vocal Italian
music, was accompanied by a learned and pugnacious comment by
the musicologist Annibale Gianuario that stated without qualms
that this was the first time after many centuries that the
Italian music of the XVI - XVII centuries was interpreted
correctly.
So be it. It was time to finish with the
inexpressive little voice (vocine) that the “baroque”
song had imposed creating a “new” style and mesmerizing the
public to the novelty that was accepted passively! Nella Anfuso
imposed herself like a complete cantatrice, real master
of an art and of a perfect technical instrument, characterized
by a perfect fusion of the two registers of chest and head, like
a single register that permits the homogeneity of the
voice, the extension of three octaves and
pureness of emission, qualities without which it
would be impossible any virtuosity.
The fact is - second essential point - that
the maturity of this voice out of the ordinary permitted
her to venture where no other singer of that period or
contemporary could go: to extricate oneself with ease in vocal
difficulties most dangerous (trilli calati e cresciuti, messa
di voce, canto di sbalzo), to ornate correctly the
voice with elegance (“smooth and detached and it is the most
natural” Monteverdi would say), to put, when required by the
word or the music, trillo, passaggio, gruppo,
cascata, exclamation and again the portar la voce,
with amazing ease the intonation.
It goes with out saying that this festival of
ornamentations is not there by chance. We understand that the
cantatrice possessed a profound knowledge of aesthetic that
characterized this repertoire, the famous representative
style, of which Caccini talks in his preface to the Nuove
Musiche, in that the vocal line combines the “nature” of the
poetic language, respecting their strong and weak accents, the
rhythm and internal prosody, and will reproduce the affects and
human passions.
A quick look at her biography demonstrated
her complete mastery. Anfuso was not only interpreter, but held
a university degree and specialized diploma that permitted her
direct access to the library for her research, finding and
understanding documents and antique manuscripts, contrary to
certain artist divas in show-business of the rising Baroque.
A vocal art that appeared affected and
flattery, a habit made of poses, sighs and artifices, due
to Nella Anfuso becomes suddenly a song of truth, finding
a profound sense of a music connected to the Neoplatonic
conception of the mimesis, that is to the representation
and painting of all the passions that move the human spirit.
This vocal virtuosity that characterizes the
art of Nella Anfuso will be maximised in a recording that
imposes not for the intrinsic beauty but for the complete,
unique, prodigious realization, defining the limits of reason,
like a dangerous flirt with the impossible.
It concerns a recording (SN 8830 - 2 cds)
consecrated favourite Airs of the castrated Carlo Broschi
so called Farinello: seven works highly virtuous among which his
“Al dolor che vò sfogando”: he takes great pleasure in
writing the music to produce a few vocal acrobatics, like those
great jumps ascending and descending that were his
speciality, intervals of fourteenth (B2- G 4!) and also…
of two ascending octaves (F2-F4)….
Her voice a warm sonority, rich with the
resonance of chest, in accordance with the golden rule of
Italian tradition, underlines the passionate and pathetic
character of these Airs of bravura. The intonation
and security of her emission leaves us with
admiration. Never the virtuosity kills the expression. The
jump of the ascending octave (for example in the
cadence of da capo in the Air Al dolor che vò sfogando)
the messe di voce (the first part of the Air Son qual
nave), the martellata agility or the battery of
trills cresciuti and calati ( the cadenza in the second
part in the Air Sposa, non mi conosci), the series of
acrobatic trills (25 with resolution, on a single breath,
cfr. the Air Quell’usignolo che innamorato!) are simply
to the service of emotions and expressions, taken to paroxysm,
like a manneristic painting or a statue by Bernini.
Song with urgency, song with fever, song
virtuoso! How this execution aristocratic and noble takes us
away from the affected aesthetics “belcantista” of occasion in
this song so called “baroque”! I remember one day listening to
famous singer Monserrat Caballé in the Air “Sposa non mi
conosci” attributed for a long time, with another text (Sposa
son disprezzata) to Vivaldi, returned to the original text,
thanks to the research by Nella Anfuso in the National Library
of Turin to the real author, Nicolò Porpora: a festival of sighs
and subtle sounds, eliminating cunningly the minimum expressive
difficulties (the magnificent messa di voce of the first
part on the word “Cieli” that Nella Anfuso sings sublimely!),
not exposing herself to the series of calati and cresciuti
trills in the second part of the Air (a real present from
Anfuso) and not to embellish the song in the cadenza
(that is what it is there for!) of the second part of the Air -
simplified because of a defect in the voice the singer showed
her craft! - reduced to a simple expression, a plot….well, a
together of solecisms that took us to a generalized vocal
barbarism.
Imperturbable (“Le poète insiste”
writes Edmond Jabès in his Livre de l’Hospitalité), Nella
Anfuso will trace her road, methodically covering four centuries
of Italian vocal music (or in the Italian style like in the
repertoire of Mozart), from the last third of fifteenth century
to the period of Bellini. Twenty five years later, a recording
rich with about forty pieces, we can measure without fatigue
the vastness and importance of her contribution to our knowledge
of the song and of consequence understand the evolution in
an art, born at the beginning of the Renaissance period in the
refined courts and camerate of Mantua and Florence,
radiating itself through the Italian Peninsular and Europe
before shedding it’s last flames at the beginning of
Romanticism. We refer to life and death of the “buon canto”
(good song), in some way, that a new taste made it disappear
leaving in its place an other aesthetical style that we support
even today.
Nella Anfuso helps us in our historical and
aesthetical journey and to understand specifically the pure
Italian song and different modes, were the muses always
encounter the muses, where the music does not know how to
separate itself from the poetry and its emotional charge. We
hear this in the regrouping of works under the generic title of
“Il canto alla corte di Isabella d’Este” (1 cd SN 8802),
odi and frottole by the composers (Bartolomeo
Tromboncino, Lodovico Milanese and above all Marchetto Cara)
active between 1474 and 1539 at the famous court of Isabella
D’Este.
The humanistic ideal of song, accompanied by
the lyre or lute (here played with fluidity asked for by Terence
Waterhouse), consisting in a harmonious fusion between the
musical and poetical language, casting their first light. The
spirit of Petrarca and Aretino flows in these pieces where love
is expressed on all levels, between desires and languors, hope
and regret, illusion and disillusionment. It is necessary a
“varied” voice, capable of touching all the levels of
expression, each time light, painful, passionate, violent,
clear, impulsive, obscured, feverish, languid, to translate all
the emotions. It is necessary all the same to the interpreter a
great liberty that in some way must contrast with the measure to
give more expressiveness and passion to the song, and dare the
rubati and inflections and personal and secret
accents, to give every phrase meaning of intensity and
drama.
We will not be surprised to hear in this
recording and in this repertoire the “first” lesson
“anfusiana”. The first because it shows the
refinement of a inaugural repertoire at the beginning of the
Renaissance period; first because correct, in the letter
and spirit; first finely because it introduces a total
breach with certain interpretive traditions of modern school
(?) of singing in America, Belgium, France and Germany.
In this recording, the vocal art of Nella
Anfuso wants to anticipate what was theorized by Giulio Caccini
under the name of “sprezzatura”, a word difficult to
translate in French. The sprezzatura is a possibility
given to the interpreter to sing following the poetic text and
emotions they contain without compromising the indication of
value to the notes in the musical measure. One should sing
“without bars”, commented later Claudio Monteverdi, that is
without worrying about the measure.
It is comprehensible, the history of Italian
song, at the beginning of the gold era, is above all dominion of
the theoretical and aesthetical continuity like a Platonic
ideal. A century after the magnificence of Mantua, it is
Florence that launches a “school” of composers like Giulio
Caccini (1 cd SN 8817) and Jacopo Peri composer of these
Madrigals (1609 - 1 cd SN 8804) and Laments (2 cds
singles SN 8818 and 8819), of whom Nella Anfuso cured the
critical edition.
Before the recordings of Nella Anfuso, not
much was known in the art of recitar cantando (recitative
singing) that is evident here, were the melody has the same
impetus of the verse, were the beauty and subtlety are born from
the unification of the word, harmony and rhythms. In this
“nuova maniera di cantare” (new way to sing), Nella Anfuso
demonstrates how much she is at ease - fluency of diction and
emission - performing with pleasure groups, trills, passages
and whirl of spiccate notes, like those that have to
appear in the Madrigals (1601). Listening for example to
the first measure of Cor mio, deh non languire, (1 cd SN
8817) and her Art of exclamation, in a
supplication intonated on a pointed white note, finely
diminished little by little, of whose intensity is on a held
note disconnected grade descending on the word “deh”. The
effect gains strength: all the rush of loving passion, the
fever, urgency are here suggested, exalted by the technical
mastery and by the naturalness of execution.
This Art of a vocal painting of affects,
emotions, we find raised to the highest level of refinement in
the repertoire of Claudio Monteverdi. The composer without doubt
abused by a generation of interpreters is the most betrayed, in
the letter and spirit, on the scene like a disc, by realizations
that were for a long time fanciful (D’Indy, Maderna etc.) and to
which we may add certain versions so called “historic” like the
realization of Orfeo by Jurgens (Archiv) that takes
incredible liberties with the text, betrayed by singers
unprepared and completely aphonic.
The effect is even more surprising because
the composer profits by abundant recordings and his works are
represented all over the world. We can state clearly that
Nella Anfuso is the only interpreter capable of realizing
the specifics of the famous parlar cantando, that is the
essence of the musical research of the composer, and to
penetrate the secrets that he called his Second Practice
where the melody is conceived in a platonic sense of the term:
an encounter between the declamation, rhythm and harmony, where
the declamation (the poetic word) determines the rhythmic
process and the sound of the musical language.
To interpret a Madrigal or a virtuosic Air of
the “seconda pratica”, is not just a simple case to put
the words under the music, indulging to a minimal inadequacy in
the ornamentation, to take liberties in relationship to the text
or the accents of the language, like generations of interpreters
have done. It is, on the contrary, modulating the word in
proportion to the representation of the affections, of emotions
vehicle of the words and music, without underlying the value of
the note or the rhythmic measure. The famous sprezzatura,
illustrated by Nella Anfuso in her recordings.
Conscious of the fact that this repertoire
was subjected to manipulations, the cantatrice conducted
her work in two ways: to insure a reliable and critical edition,
with support from the musicologist Annibale Gianuario and
through the Centre of Musical Studies for the Renaissance period
in Artimino, and to record in disk all the Madrigals and roles
she could interpret.
We must be clear:
these interpretations are and will be for a long
time a main “reference”. While other interpreters
construct the musical line by chance, worrying about diction and
ornamentation like it was frivolous and gladly ruin the Italian
language, Nella Anfuso restores all the complexities of this
“second practice”, where the word resounds clear, where the
ornamentation has to be pertinent and spiccata fortifying
the expression of the emotions. It concerns the lamentation of
Penelope, or the song of the Ninfa, or the prayer
of Proserpina (1 cd SN 8813), of the Lamento d’Arianna,
or minor roles of the Messaggera or of the Speranza
in Orfeo, how dangerous (1 cd SN 8814), or of the famous
Lettere Amorose, apex of the expressive painting
Monteverdian, Nella Anfuso realizes a vocal execution unique
and revolutionary should serve for a long time as a model.
An example for all: the first measures of the Lamento
d’Arianna (1608), that the cantatrice has recorded
twice, in the Venetian edition of 1623 of whom unicum is
preserved in the Library of Gand in Belgium.
There have been numerous so called stars of
Do, to tackle the Opera in polyphonic version that has nothing
to do with the representative style dear to Monteverdi
and Florentine composers: the old divas like Janet Baker or
Cathy Berberian the pioneer; darlings of “Baroque” that pretend
to perform music in the antique style, like Carolyn Watkinson,
Emma Kirby, Helga Muller Molinari and many others, in fanciful
realizations (Harnoncourt with an ensemble of strings in five
parts!), in an Italian inaccurate or incomprehensible. Nothing
is spared by the abandoned heroine and her misery, nor her
dramatic surges, neither her expressionistic sighs, neither the
lyrical flights in the pure operatic modes (a voice that joins,
embodies - in the sense to “give” body - to a theatrical
personage).
With Nella Anfuso this is all contrary: the
emotion lives through the same language, glorified by the
musical modulations. In the first words “Lasciatemi morire”,
the suffering is there, present, and not created
artificially by an arbitrary liberty taken from the text, but
inherent in underlining the word from the principal and
secondary accents of the word and intensity of the melody that
combines naturally the expressive rhythm of this suffering, with
its chromaticisms, dissonances and….musicological
truth! It is contrary to the artifice and vagaries dear to
the Theatre and Opera…
Among other great musicological and
artistic interpretations by Nella Anfuso, we must remember
absolutely Didone by Cavalli, for her essentiality
and her very expressive declamation, underlined by the austere
basso continuo of the harp; but above all the new approach to
singing by Antonio Vivaldi, this composer abused for so long
in his concerts by generations of interpreters and of his sacred
polyphonies like “piazza San Marco”, ostentatious, picturesque
and much repeated, interpreted by the “vedette” most
incongruous (falsettisti, soprano and mezzosoprano superstars
without voice, see Decca or L’oiseau-Lyre) of the actual
star-system.
In a series of two albums (SN 8807 and SN
8808) Nella Anfuso gives us a complete panoramic view of the
great works for song and basso continuo, the great profane
cantatas so extremely difficult that no modern
interpreter has risked performing them. Make no mistake about
it: this music corresponds to the golden age of the Italian
vocalism in the XVII and XVIII centuries and needs for the
interpreter an absolute mastery of bona vocalità, the
only correct way to sing, to do passages and trills,
apex of virtuosity of which speaks the great theorist of his
age, Pier Francesco Tosi, in his important work Opinioni de’
Cantori antichi e moderni.
These Venetian cantatas represent the pure
school of virtuosity; be aware of those who do not dominate
the portamenti, trills of every gender
“semplici e raddoppiati, cresciuti e calati”,
gruppi, gruppetti, appoggiature, volatine,
canto di sbalzo (i.e. simple, doubled,
raising and falling, turn and turnings, leaning
notes, flight of notes, jumping agility),
leaps of intervals (octaves and also twelfth)!
Remembering the most difficult of all
ornaments, agilità martellata, typical of this
repertoire that we also find in Nicolò Porpora (with regards to
this, listen to the recording of the Cantatas, SN 8810
and SN 8827): an ornament that seems insignificant that consists
of a “martellare” (to hammer) light and of the
same mode of four notes, the first more acute, the others
“hammered” on the same line and repeating this structure
changing the first note every time. It is necessary constant
practice, pureness in emission, art of the spiccato until
every note becomes distinct in perception, such mastery in the
dosage of breath to repeat this structure without toil, few
singers have mastered this even in the heroic times of Vivaldi.
From these vocal exploits, Nella
Anfuso comes out superbly with all honours, flirting to the
limits of the impossible (the passages of agility,
justly, in the cantatas La farfaletta s’aggira al lume
or Nel partir da te mio caro), because, in the great
tradition of interpretation of this period, she has chosen
her ornaments and imagined the cadences, without avoiding the
difficulties and trying to manage her voice.
This horizontal vision of Italian vocalism
would not be complete without evoking the famous canto
figurato of Italian repertoire or in Italian style of a
later period that includes Cimarosa, Bellini, Auber, Meyerbeer,
Mozart and Beethoven. Even though we near the splendour of Opera
and the Romantic period, even though the song will emancipate
itself progressively from the text that will only become an
excuse, this virtuosic song will shine singularly and needs a
certain style.
To this figurative song even to-day
unknown Nella Anfuso gives all her lustrous splendour (1 album
of 2 cds SN 8806): works of agility and strong point of which
she makes a panoramic point with a squint of the eye towards
Mozart (Ridente la calma) the most varied
appoggiaturas and above all Bellini, with his impressive
diatonic and chromatic scales (the famous “volatinas”
in the scene and Air Quando incise su quel marmo).
Without naturally forgetting to give homage to the exercise in
the variation: “Sul margine d’ un rio” by the
famous Angelica Catalani or by Paganini (unpublished) or again
“Di tanti palpiti” by Rossini, by Giuliani,
pretext of infinite passages even more complex, in a style
practised between second half of the XVIII and first half of the
XIX centuries.
I would not like to terminate this praise to
the “Art of Anfuso” without evoking a last and important
point. Only the buon canto, good singing, insures
the health and longevity of the voice. After more
than thirty years of activity, Nella Anfuso records the Great
Opera, a few madrigals by Giulio Caccini. All is there, without
a blemish, like the first days: the pureness of
emission and diction, the ornamental figurations
admirable and detached. Time stands still, blocked
for eternity.
An instrument correctly made and cared for
does not deteriorate, so a singer, accustomed to forming
artistic sounds (Italian “creare il suono”) and
exercised regularly, does not feel the effects of age.
It is a great victory for a cantatrice
continuing to sing when other rivals - with envy, criticism and
insult - have changed their repertoire or have become silent,
after few years of a lightening career.
Everything comes to light, talent
like everything else: in singing, like love, the roosters strut,
but the eagle hides itself. |
