Agostini’s Canzoni make charming parodies of well-known serious songs of the time.
(More Canzoni Napolitane – TM59)
These pieces are from Lodovico Agostinis Canzoni Alla napolitana a cinque voci , published in Venice in 1574, a collection consisting of 20 villanesche, and 2 madrigals, all in 5 parts. Several of the pieces, including those printed here, are based on earlier songs by other composers, in most cases on 3-part songs published in the 1560s by Gardane; no. 4, however, is a parody (still in the form and style of the villanesca) of Rore’s Ancor che col partire, probably the most widely-known madrigal of its time; no. 5 is an arrangement of a popular French song, Qui la dira, that was presumably introduced to Italian musicians through the settings made of it by Adrian Willaert.
Agostini was born in Ferrara in 1534 of a musical family. He followed the tradition of his family and served at the Duomo in Ferrara as chaplain and musician, eventually dying in his native city in 1590. In spite of his active life as a church musician, no liturgical music by him has survived, though he did publish a book of spiritual madrigals in 1586. Rather, he seems to have specialised in secular music in which he displayed a taste for the bizarre: in 1567 he produced his Musica… sopra le rime bizarre di M. Andrea Calmo… à4 voci, and a few years later he published his two books of Enigmi musicali.
The present pieces stick to the AABCC form of the villanesca even in the most serious piece, Ancor che col partire, where the model is a madrigal, the same procedure is followed.
