The Four-Voice Canzonettas: With Original Texts and Contrafacta by Valentin Haussmann and Others.

The humorous Italian part-songs which form the basis of DeFord's edition were "the first pieces specifically called canzonette and the first compositions to display the distinctive combination of features that define the canzonetta style." Originally published in a series of four books between 1580 and 1590 in Venice, Vecchi's canzonettas rapidly attained unprecedented popular success throughout northern Europe. In Nuremberg and Antwerp the books were issued as a complete set, and the repertory was made accessible to an even more diverse audience by various retextings in German. These contrafacta were usually independent of the saucy models in meaning, although Vecchi's favorite characters - Venus and Cupid - persisted in fanning the fires of love. Haussmann's adaptive work aimed to control the texts according to prevailing moral attitudes, and he routinely replaced Vecchi's sensual images with chaste constructions of female love objects. Those familiar with early modern misogyny will not be surprised by the occasional intrusion of songs that represent women as inconstant and deceitful. Other contrafacta of a more pious nature (including Neander's Psalm paraphrases) were created expressly to edify young people in churches and schools.

To perform the contrafacta, singers will have to underlay the strophic texts on their own. But they are served well by lucid guidelines in the editor's critical apparatus which is carefully organized to make processes of modeling easy to understand. DeFord presents the texts of 90 canzonettas (most presumed to be by Vecchi) and 150 contrafacta, all in their original metrical forms with translations in parallel columns that deftly preserve witty puns and colloquial syntax. Vecchi's rhythmically vivacious settings are edited with meticulous care and among them are exceptionally attractive pieces with high tessituras that will appeal to both amateur and professional performers.

Striking proof of the popularity of Vecchi's canzonettas is found in DeFord's extensive list of instrumental arrangements dating from 1584 to 1620. Arrangements for lute outnumber those of any other composer by a ratio of almost two to one, we are told, a remarkable achievement considering that during the same period about 150 composers produced almost 4,500 canzonettas. It appears that Vecchi's success depended largely upon his playful musical style which was often imitated but rarely matched. As composer of musical comedies Vecchi had the advantage of knowing - evidently better than most - the nature and purpose of humor.

DeFord's edition, carried out with the highest standards we have come to expect from A-R, is a landmark contribution that promises a rich harvest for those who pursue the issues it raises. For instance, I found that canzonetta poems in Vecchi's repertory were often printed anonymously in chapbooks for singing to familiar tunes with improvised instrumental accompaniment. Twelve of them appear in the enormously popular series Fiore di vilanelle & arie napolitane raccolte . . . per cantar in ogni stromento (1609; rpt. 1632). Many more turn up in earlier hand-written anthologies with variants common in a genre susceptible to continual transformation by amateur poets and singers (e.g., transposition of lines and substitution, addition or omission of strophes). This suggests that the fluidity of popular song forms is a more provocative issue than authorship and that "the work itself" is not easily defined. Indeed, Vecchi "the reader" drew freely upon familiar materials from literate and oral culture, blending forms and themes, juxtaposing invention with tradition. Could he have appropriated tunes and treated them in the same manner as well? Fortunately DeFord has given us the tools to begin questioning the status of the reader/listener in the production of late sixteenth-century popular song.

Donna Cardamone Jackson UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA