• Startseite
• Literatur
• Noten
• Noten 4-stimmig
• Compère, Loyset: 3 Italian Songs

Compère, Loyset: 3 Italian Songs

for 4 voices or instruments.

The melodies at the centre of these compositions were evidently popular songs that were current at the end of the fifteenth century. Scaramella provided the basis for a 4-part setting by Josquin des Près (see LPM AN6), It also forms the refrain of Antonio Stringari´s frottola Poi ch´io son in libertate, and is quoted in two contemporary centoni (quodlibets). Che fa la ramacina is quoted to heart-rending effect at the end of Tromboncino´s Poi che volse la mia stella, and is combined with Fortuna d´un gran tempo in a quodlibet by Ludovico Fogliano; it also appears in Nicolo Pifaro´s Per amorfata solinga, and turns up in the same quodlibet as Scaramella.
Compère´s Scaramella setting is unusual in that it sets a basically triple-time song in a duple context at two different speeds, producing a generous dose of cross-rhythms; this procedure has been described as “motet-like” in the New Grove entry on the composer, but that is surely to miss the point of this witty setting.
The music of the two Compère settings is printed here after Petrucci, Strambotti, Ode, Frottole, Sonetti... , Libro Quarto, Venice, 1505. Presumably for reasons of space, Petrucci does not provide proper text underlay: in Che fa la ramacina the cantus is underlaid complete, but in Scaramella there is only partial text (cantus and tenor only). However Florence 164-7 gives us a texted version of Che fa la ramacina. The anonymous Che fa la ramacina is printed here after the Seville Chansonnier.
Loyset Compère spent most of his working life in France, but did work for Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan in 1474-6, and visited Italy again twenty years later.
All three songs can be performed with a solo voice on the tenor part, and three accompanying instruments. However, the parts are virtually equal in Scaramella, and this is almost as true in Compère´s Che fa la ramacina, so a performance by four voices or four recorders or viols is quite valid.