Le Gratie d'Amore

Late Renaissance music and original dances in authentic choreographies composed by Italian dance master C. Negri, well known at the Prague court of Rudolf II.

Dance: CHOREA HISTORICA, artistic leader Eva Kröschlová
Music: COLLEGIUM MARIANUM, artistic leader Jana Semerádová
Direction and reconstruction of dances: Eva Kröschlová
Premiere on July 7th 2002 Wallenstein Garden, Prague at Summer Festivities of Early Music

Le Gratie d'Amore (The Graces of Love) is the title of the tractate by the dance-master Cesare Negri of Milan, published in 1602. His anniversary has also a significance for us, the citizens of Prague. In 1563, Cesare Negri became a dance teacher, to our letter Emperor Rudolph II, who, eleven years old, was with his brother on the way to be educated at the Spanish court. On their way back, in 1571, they stopped in the same port from which they had sailed – Genoa; the North Italian Princes gave them a tribute in the form of a sumptuous performance on two boats, prepared by Negri. Negri's pupil, Carlo Boccaria, was appointed by Emperor Rudolph II to his court. In Prague, Negri's balli must have been danced – though not by the Emperor himself, who in his later years took a dislike to music and dancing.

The second edition of Negri's tutor, Nuove inventioni di balli (1604), surviving in the National Library, Prague, contains descriptions of dance steps, and thirty-four of Negri's balli and balletti, including lute tablatures and melodies written in mensural notation. Ballo or balletto s a small choreographic form for 2 – 12 dancers, known from the 15th century. Their names are often taken from popular songs, on the melodies of which the dances were based, such as Bizzaria d'Amore (Love's Bizarrness), Il Gratioso (Gracious Dance) or La Caccia d'Amore (Love's Chase), where the gentlemen ‘hunted' the ladies (this old motive is found also in a number of European folkloric dances). Most balli alternate double and triple time and change tempi; formally, they are a minuscule suite of dance rhythms derived from various dances – bassa danza, quaternaria, saltarello and piva. In this performance these are Il bianco fiore (A White Flower) and Brando di Cales (The Cales Round); in Negri's version, the circle dancing takes place only briefly, twice, while dancing in couples is unusually asymmetric. One of the dances, the Provencal Nizzarda, was only sketched by Negri, to suggest the steps and jumps of the female dancers; an almost identical Volta, also from Provence, described in Thoinot Arbeau's Orchésographie (1588) was a favourite of Queen Elisabeth I.

Negri´s work captivate many specialists, for instance Véronique Daniels of Basel. Her and our endeavour aim at the revival of his 400 years old dances in the most possible veracity - in the hope that they will find favour also at our audience.

Eva Kröschlová

 

Due to Emperor Rudolph II's interests in the arts and sciences, Prague became a Mecca of painters, sculptors, architects, craftsmen, alchemists and musicians (who gathered around the Emperor's court band) at the break of the 16th and 17th centuries. The Emperor's education was versatile – it included dance; the illnesses of his old age made him avoid music.

The Milanese dance master Cesare Negri (1536 – 1604) published a number of dance compositions in his tutor Le Gratie d'Amore 1602), in the form of simple tablature or just as a melody, all of them known in polyphonic setting from 16th century music Mss. and publications. Some of them belonged to the sum of the popular songs of the time. Cesare Negri's treatise is a part of a group of sixteen music publications from the estate of the Emperor's Counsellor Godefridus Troilus á Lessoth; these are the source of the two-part canzonetta O soave dolore, by Antonio Brunelli (1575 – 1630), and the song Filli dolce pastorella, by Enrico Radesca di Foggia. The vice-Kapellmeister of the Imperial music band Jacob Regnart (1540 – 1599), composed three-part villanellas on German texts in Neapolitan style as well polyphonic sacred music. Around 1580 Alessandro Orologio, a famous wind player, became a „Trompeter und Musicus“ of the Emperor's music band. His Intradae (1597); his three-part canzonettas (1596) which were dedicated to the Duke of Brunswick are well known. Philipp de Monte (1521 – 1603), maestro di capella of the Emperor's band, wrote polyphonic sacred music as well as madrigals, in the style of Jacob Arcadelt and Luca Marenzio; one of these is Ma i pomi un tempo a lui, from 1581. Valerius Otto (1579 – ?), from Leipzig, was for a time the organist at the Our Lady before Týn Church, in Prague's Old Town. His Newe Paduanen, Galliarden, Intraden und Currenten (Leipzig 1611), was dedicated to the Duke of Brunswick, an influential personality at Rudolph II's court.

Přemysl Vacek

 

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