Pubblico dominio (Commons)
The Languors of Song in Decadentism
Decadentism, deeply influenced by Gabriele D’Annunzio and Giovanni Pascoli, manifested itself in music—and consequently in song—through a rejection of Positivism. It stood in sharp opposition to scientific objectivity and to the violent passions of Verismo, privileging instead mystery, exoticism, and evanescent states of mind in the texts of its songs.
What Do We Mean by Song
Throughout this journey, the term “song” is understood in the original sense of our tradition, that of Dante Alighieri, who defines song as the final union of words and music. Song includes arias, salon romances, and chamber vocal pieces. They are all forms of the same great Italian family of sung poetry, and it is important to remember this in order to avoid modern misunderstandings that separate what historically has always been united.
Orchestra, Voice, and Atmosphere
The orchestra accompanying the text sought to recreate dreamlike atmospheres, thus losing its dramatic function (typical of Verismo) and becoming instead a vehicle of suggestion. A rich chromaticism was employed to shade and comment upon the words, in analogy with Divisionist painting, which created rarefied atmospheres through fragmented color.
In performance practice, vocal supremacy diminished and singing tended to merge with the instrumental texture. The voice itself became a color emerging and disappearing within the sonic flow, relinquishing the absolute dominance it had enjoyed in nineteenth-century melodramatic song.
Absolute Cantability
Despite the crisis, Italian song maintained its unmistakable cantability, finding expression in the most lyrical genres (Arias), but also in salon romances and, by extension, in instrumental music that seemed to “sing” on implied texts. Languor and twilight melancholy became the distinguishing features of music at the turn of the century.
Manifestos and Composers
Although Decadentism is often associated with Puccini’s songs (detached numbers from Turandot or Madama Butterfly, sung in salons, on the street, or by amateurs at home) and with Zandonai’s celebrated operatic pieces such as Francesca da Rimini, its purest and most disinterested expression is found in chamber song.
Giuseppe Martucci (1856–1909), with his Nocturne in G-flat major op. 70, is considered a fully Decadent instrumental manifesto. Its twilight and sensual cantability embodies the languor of the period, echoed in song accompaniments. Martucci and Giovanni Sgambati championed the Italian symphonic school, refuting the cliché of an exclusively operatic Italy, yet they also composed beautiful songs.
Alfredo Catalani (1854–1893) wrote songs drawn from his operas such as La Wally, in which a vein of melancholy and languor emerges, closer to Decadent sensibility than to the rawness of pure Verismo.
Francesco Paolo Tosti (1845–1916), rather than operatic arias, is renowned for his splendid salon romances (Malìa, Ideale). Tosti translated the themes of D’Annunzio and Pascoli into miniatures for voice and piano, turning beauty into a refuge of the soul from the noises of a world that, amid Futurist clamor, was moving toward war.
In short, consistent with musical Decadentism, songs focused on sensual beauty as escape, employing the latest instrumental techniques and resources to paint atmospheres of subtle introspection, placing inner sensitivity at the center of musical experience.
The Café-Concert and Popular Song
The rise of the café-concert in major Italian cities (Naples, Rome, Trieste, Turin, and Milan) fostered the birth of a solid repertoire of songs. Performances balanced entertainment and taste, though double meanings and provocations were not lacking. In 1875, 'A cammesella, a reworking of an old Neapolitan nursery rhyme recounting the modesty and resistance of a bride on her wedding night, anticipated the striptease. A few years later in Rome, Maria Borsa invented the “mossa.”
The development and spread of Italian song were also shaped by the tumultuous political events of the nineteenth century, from the Risorgimento uprisings to later socialist and anarchist claims on one side and nationalist movements on the other. High-register texts rich in literary references coexisted with more immediate idioms. Patriotic and nationalist songs, as well as socialist ones, often adopted elevated rhetoric, sometimes sounding overly solemn. Greater success was achieved by simpler texts, such as Garibaldi fu ferito or La bella Gigogin during the Risorgimento, and Bandiera rossa toward the end of the century.
Why Does Italian Song Begin Here in the Middle Ages?
In this history we do not separate what, in Italian culture, has always been united. For centuries, “song” meant what today we would call a poetic-musical form, regardless of duration. The troubadours, the Sicilian School, Dante, Petrarch, the madrigalists, opera composers—all wrote songs. The fracture between art music and song is a late nineteenth-century idea, and it is not even ours, but comes from the German-speaking world. It reflects other realities. For this reason, narrating the history of the Italian song means following a single thread that runs through seven centuries—from the Stil Novo to Metastasio, from monody to opera, from Monteverdi to Cherubini, from Puccini to our singer-songwriters. It is a continuous path, not a collection of disconnected episodes.
© Collezione Varrone & Romano (Tutti i diritti riservati).
Read the first complete and documented history of the Italian song tradition, with extended analysis and theoretical references.
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