Villanella Napoletana: Historically informed practice of ensemble arrangements from vocal scores

Valeria Di Biase

About this exposition

In the context of Renaissance music performances, this research deals with the possibility to increase and facilitate historically informed arrangements from original partbooks. More specifically, the focus of this research is the Villanella Napoletana, a XVI century rustic part-song, with Neapolitan origins. Musically speaking, the Villanella is a three-voices composition, almost always note-against-note, with a simple melodic line without complex counterpoint, where traditional rules of composition were sometimes broken. The surviving Villanelle collections only include the three (or sometimes less) vocal partbooks, but several sources indicate as these songs used to be accompanied by instruments. For an ensemble, nowadays, it might not be easy to perform this music considering the lack of information about the accompaniment. The purpose of this research is creating an historically informed database with information and practical examples which could increase and facilitate the process of arranging or improvising songs belonging to this specific musical genre using vocal partbooks as a starting point. In order to achieve this, a detailed description of the musical genre and an analysis of a significant Villanelle collection has been carried on. This theoretical section has been enriched by interviews to experts of Renaissance music arrangements with the purpose of collecting information on their methodology and gaining knowledge from their experience. As a final result, Villanelle from partbooks have been arranged for ensemble; these arrangements show a practical application of the presented research.

type	research exposition
keywords	arrangements, historically informed performance, Villanella Napoletana, 16th century
date	15/11/2021
published	11/07/2022
last modified	11/07/2022
status	limited publication
copyright	Valeria Di Biase
license	CC BY-NC-ND
language	English
url	https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1423126/1423125
published in	KC Research Portal
portal issue	3. Internal publication

Research Catalogue

an international database for artistic research

Villanella Napoletana: Historically informed practice of ensemble arrangements from vocal scores (2022)