The frottola is a genre of the early sixteenth century that gets just a brief mention in music history texts as a forerunner of the Italian madrigal; its tremendous popularity is conceded, and clearly visiting Netherlanders such as Josquin were compelled to try their hands at it. Josquin's El grillo, not included here, is the most famous instance (try YouTube for some delightful European high school choral versions), and those who have heard frottole at all tend to think of them as bouncy, homophonic, and humorous. Singer
Marco Beasley, music director
Guido Morini, and the Italian early music group
Accordone set out to change this impression and stress the frottola's links with the emerging humanist movement. The frottola in this group's hands is simpler, less stylized, and more emotional than the Northern chansons that epitomized secular vocal art in the Italian noble and mercantile courts of the day. The result is a really lovely disc.
Beasley's ingratiating tenor, the only voice heard, is ideally suited to the frottola's romantic lyrics, and
Accordone slows down pieces like Marco Cara's Io non compro più speranza, track 19, and fills them out with a free, lute-based accompaniment of the sort heard on
Jordi Savall's recordings of Renaissance secular repertory. The musicians make a convincing case that the top line, sung by
Beasley, is really a melodic line. The booklet -- with notes and texts in Italian, French, Dutch, and English -- rejects the idea of the frottola as a folk-influenced, semi-popular form, but sample one of the most attractive pieces, Bartolomeo Tromboncino's Sù, sù leva, alza la ciglia (track 8), and hear its irresistible Dorian tune, which still suggests an origin outside the cultivated sphere. The program is interspersed with instrumental pieces (mostly dance pairs) and religious works in the same style -- these are sometimes called laude, although the performers avoid that term. The last work on the disc is also intriguing:
Beasley contributes Tu dormi, a modern composition drawing on a frottola by Tromboncino. This is something different from the usual run of modern compositions that layer French neo-classic harmonies onto Renaissance models --
Beasley abstracts the gestures of Tromboncino's piece into a melancholy solo line. This disc, beautifully recorded, is both enjoyable in itself and productive of new directions in approaching secular Renaissance Italian repertory.