Francesco Portinaro
Encyclopedia
Francesco Portinaro was an Italian composer and humanist of the Renaissance
, active both in northern Italy and in Rome. He was closely associated with the Ferrarese
Este
family, worked for several humanistic Renaissance academies
, and was well-known as a composer of madrigals
and dialogues.
He was born in Padua
around 1520. While he published a book of motet
s in Venice
in 1548, no biographical details are available for the period before 1550. He was the son of a Paduan official, was married to Laura d'Este, and was resident in the Este palace in Padua. In 1555 he applied unsuccessfully for the post of maestro di cappella, music director, at the city's cathedral, and failing in this enterprise, spent the rest of the decade in humanistic as well as musical pursuits. In particular, he had an active life working for four secular groups: a group of musicians in Padua, and three humanistic academies in Vicenza
, Padua, and Verona
. Such academies were becoming common in the late 16th century, as a part of the Renaissance rebirth of humanistic thought; in music they were the location of the first experiments with monody
and multi-voice dramatic vocal forms, the strands of which would eventually coalesce into opera
.
The first of Portinaro's associations was an unnamed group he founded himself, which existed to further the musical careers of its members, which he created on June 21, 1555. Upon the dissolution of this fraternity he moved to Vicenza
, where he joined the Accademia dei Costanti in that city, a society of humanists to which he dedicated his 1557 book of madrigals. In March 1557 he was back in Padua, for the newly-formed Accademia degli Elevati. Of this group, some records survive of its specific activities, and his role in them. There were approximately forty members of the academy; unlike the original Accademia Filarmonica in Verona
, the members themselves did not seem to do most of the music-making. Portinaro was hired as maestro, and he was to find professional assistants to perform for the academy members. Their sessions, which involved lectures, speeches, and discussions about secular and Latin poetry and other humanistic topics, frequently began and ended with musical performances by Portinaro and his group. In addition, Portinaro and his assistants, of which there were three listed in the records, were required by the terms of his employment to teach singing, instrumental performance, and other aspects of music to any of the members who wished it. The organization did not survive long – in 1560 it dissolved, for reasons unknown. Portinaro dedicated a book of madrigals for them that year.
Next he went to Verona, where the Accademia Filarmonica hired him for a year beginning in 1561. At the end of the year he was replaced by Ippolito Chamaterò
, who held the post for the next two years. Scipione Gonzaga
was the recipient of a madrigal book of Portinaro's in 1563, in Padua; Gonzaga himself founded an academy in that city, the Accademia degli Eterei, though Portinaro is not known to have been associated with them directly. From 1564 to 1566 or 1568 Portinaro was in Rome, in the service of Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este
as music director for his considerable musical establishment – he had a group of 15 singers, with instrumentalists and an organist. Ippolito was a prominent patron of the arts, and brought much of the sumptuousness of the Ferrara Este court with him to the Holy City; he was also a patron of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
around the same time that Portinaro was there. Portinaro probably wrote much of his sacred music, mostly motet
s, during his tenure in Rome.
There is some dispute over whether he remained in Rome after 1566: he may have moved to the service of Cardinal Luigi d'Este
, but no documentation survives other than the suggestive dedication to Luigi d'Este of some motets that Portinaro published in 1568. Musicologist Alfred Einstein believed that Portinaro was in Venice sometime around 1567 as a printer and publisher, not of music but poetry, including verse by Pietro Bembo
and others. Whether he went to Venice or not, in 1568 Portinaro moved back to Padua, and then later that same year went to Vienna, most likely to apply for the vacant post of choirmaster at the court of Maximilian II
. Unsuccessful in this endeavor, he returned to Padua sometime before March 1569, and he seems to have spent the rest of his life in his native city.
In 1573 a new academy in Padua, the Accademia degli Rinascenti, hired him as music-master with duties similar to those he had held at the previous academy of the Elevati; he even hired as assistants some of the same people who had helped him before. Different this time was the existence of a rival academy in Padua, the Accademia degli Animosi, but neither academy lasted for long. Competition from nearby Venice, one of the major musical centers of Europe at the time, was too intense to allow for multiple such institutions in Padua, and just three years later, in 1576, an outbreak of bubonic plague
killed 12,000 in the city and ended most of the significant musical activity there for years. Portinaro himself survived the plague, and was hired as maestro di cappella at Padua Cathedral
in December 1576, staying there at least through August 1577, from which month a payment record survives. Cathedral archives indicate that he was dead in by January 1579, at which time the administration was searching for his replacement; however the date and circumstances of his death are not known.
intabulation
s, his only known instrumental music. His secular vocal music, which consisted of madrigals and dramatic dialogues, was the best-known portion of his output. He published six books of madrigals and dialogues in all, for between four and eight voices, as well as three books of motets. A few madrigals and motets were published separately, and an unpublished setting of the mass
survives in the Munich Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.
Most of his secular vocal music he seems to have written for the academies of which he was the maestro. He periodically gathered the pieces, madrigals and dramatic dialogues, into sets to publish and to dedicate to the academies and his aristocratic patrons. The madrigals show the influence of the Venetian School composers such as Adrian Willaert
; in musical style they are polyphonic
, reserved, and avoid the manneristic and experimental style of some of the mid-century composers such as Cipriano de Rore
also working in the Venetian orbit. However Portinaro was innovative in developing dramatic characterization in his dialogues, an important predecessor to opera. An example composition was one he wrote for Maximilian II in Vienna, the first piece in the 1568 Vergini collection. This work, for seven voices, features the Seven Muses, who have been exiled and seek a peaceful new home: the home they find is the imperial court in Vienna. Unlike the Muses, Portinaro failed to find a home there, but the piece shows the contemporary trend towards dramatic characterization, with single voices representing single characters, and it also demonstrates the era's increasing use of secular stories, largely drawn from classical antiquity.
Portinaro likely wrote most of his motets both while in Rome in the service of Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este
, and some date from his earliest, undocumented years. These works also show the influence of Netherlandish
polyphony such as practiced by Willaert in nearby Venice.
The only instrumental music assigned to Portinaro is a series of lute intabulations which he published in Venice within the book on lute-playing by Florentine humanist, music theorist, lutenist, and composer Vincenzo Galilei
(the father of the astronomer). Galilei likely made the intabulations himself, as Portinaro is not known to have been a lutenist. The publication was called Fronimo dialogo di Vincentio Galilei fiorentino, nel quale si contengono le vere et necessarie regole del intavolare la musica nel liuto, and appeared in several editions in 1568, 1569 and 1584.
Renaissance music
Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance. Defining the beginning of the musical era is difficult, given that its defining characteristics were adopted only gradually; musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s.Literally meaning...
, active both in northern Italy and in Rome. He was closely associated with the Ferrarese
Ferrara
Ferrara is a city and comune in Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy, capital city of the Province of Ferrara. It is situated 50 km north-northeast of Bologna, on the Po di Volano, a branch channel of the main stream of the Po River, located 5 km north...
Este
Este
The House of Este is a European princely dynasty. It is split into two branches; the elder is known as the House of Welf-Este or House of Welf historically rendered in English, Guelf or Guelph...
family, worked for several humanistic Renaissance academies
Academy
An academy is an institution of higher learning, research, or honorary membership.The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 385 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and skill, north of Athens, Greece. In the western world academia is the...
, and was well-known as a composer of madrigals
Madrigal (music)
A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six....
and dialogues.
Life
Padua
Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...
around 1520. While he published a book of motet
Motet
In classical music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions.-Etymology:The name comes either from the Latin movere, or a Latinized version of Old French mot, "word" or "verbal utterance." The Medieval Latin for "motet" is motectum, and the Italian...
s in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
in 1548, no biographical details are available for the period before 1550. He was the son of a Paduan official, was married to Laura d'Este, and was resident in the Este palace in Padua. In 1555 he applied unsuccessfully for the post of maestro di cappella, music director, at the city's cathedral, and failing in this enterprise, spent the rest of the decade in humanistic as well as musical pursuits. In particular, he had an active life working for four secular groups: a group of musicians in Padua, and three humanistic academies in Vicenza
Vicenza
Vicenza , a city in north-eastern Italy, is the capital of the eponymous province in the Veneto region, at the northern base of the Monte Berico, straddling the Bacchiglione...
, Padua, and Verona
Verona
Verona ; German Bern, Dietrichsbern or Welschbern) is a city in the Veneto, northern Italy, with approx. 265,000 inhabitants and one of the seven chef-lieus of the region. It is the second largest city municipality in the region and the third of North-Eastern Italy. The metropolitan area of Verona...
. Such academies were becoming common in the late 16th century, as a part of the Renaissance rebirth of humanistic thought; in music they were the location of the first experiments with monody
Monody
In poetry, the term monody has become specialized to refer to a poem in which one person laments another's death....
and multi-voice dramatic vocal forms, the strands of which would eventually coalesce into opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
.
The first of Portinaro's associations was an unnamed group he founded himself, which existed to further the musical careers of its members, which he created on June 21, 1555. Upon the dissolution of this fraternity he moved to Vicenza
Vicenza
Vicenza , a city in north-eastern Italy, is the capital of the eponymous province in the Veneto region, at the northern base of the Monte Berico, straddling the Bacchiglione...
, where he joined the Accademia dei Costanti in that city, a society of humanists to which he dedicated his 1557 book of madrigals. In March 1557 he was back in Padua, for the newly-formed Accademia degli Elevati. Of this group, some records survive of its specific activities, and his role in them. There were approximately forty members of the academy; unlike the original Accademia Filarmonica in Verona
Verona
Verona ; German Bern, Dietrichsbern or Welschbern) is a city in the Veneto, northern Italy, with approx. 265,000 inhabitants and one of the seven chef-lieus of the region. It is the second largest city municipality in the region and the third of North-Eastern Italy. The metropolitan area of Verona...
, the members themselves did not seem to do most of the music-making. Portinaro was hired as maestro, and he was to find professional assistants to perform for the academy members. Their sessions, which involved lectures, speeches, and discussions about secular and Latin poetry and other humanistic topics, frequently began and ended with musical performances by Portinaro and his group. In addition, Portinaro and his assistants, of which there were three listed in the records, were required by the terms of his employment to teach singing, instrumental performance, and other aspects of music to any of the members who wished it. The organization did not survive long – in 1560 it dissolved, for reasons unknown. Portinaro dedicated a book of madrigals for them that year.
Next he went to Verona, where the Accademia Filarmonica hired him for a year beginning in 1561. At the end of the year he was replaced by Ippolito Chamaterò
Ippolito Chamaterò
Ippolito Chamaterò was an Italian composer of the late Renaissance, originally from Rome but active in northern Italy. He wrote both sacred and secular music, particularly madrigals; all of his surviving music is vocal...
, who held the post for the next two years. Scipione Gonzaga
Scipione Gonzaga
Scipione Gonzaga was an Italian Cardinal.Born in Mantua, he belonged to the family of the Dukes of Sabbioneta, passed his youth under the care of Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, and made rapid progress in Greek and Latin studies...
was the recipient of a madrigal book of Portinaro's in 1563, in Padua; Gonzaga himself founded an academy in that city, the Accademia degli Eterei, though Portinaro is not known to have been associated with them directly. From 1564 to 1566 or 1568 Portinaro was in Rome, in the service of Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este
Ippolito II d'Este
Ippolito d'Este was an Italian cardinal and statesman. He was a member of the House of Este, and nephew of the other Ippolito d'Este, also a cardinal.-Biography:...
as music director for his considerable musical establishment – he had a group of 15 singers, with instrumentalists and an organist. Ippolito was a prominent patron of the arts, and brought much of the sumptuousness of the Ferrara Este court with him to the Holy City; he was also a patron of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition...
around the same time that Portinaro was there. Portinaro probably wrote much of his sacred music, mostly motet
Motet
In classical music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions.-Etymology:The name comes either from the Latin movere, or a Latinized version of Old French mot, "word" or "verbal utterance." The Medieval Latin for "motet" is motectum, and the Italian...
s, during his tenure in Rome.
There is some dispute over whether he remained in Rome after 1566: he may have moved to the service of Cardinal Luigi d'Este
Luigi d'Este
Luigi d'Este was an Italian Catholic cardinal, the second of the five children of Ercole II d'Este, Duke of Modena and Ferrara, and Renée, daughter of Louis XII of France.-Biography:...
, but no documentation survives other than the suggestive dedication to Luigi d'Este of some motets that Portinaro published in 1568. Musicologist Alfred Einstein believed that Portinaro was in Venice sometime around 1567 as a printer and publisher, not of music but poetry, including verse by Pietro Bembo
Pietro Bembo
Pietro Bembo was an Italian scholar, poet, literary theorist, and cardinal. He was an influential figure in the development of the Italian language, specifically Tuscan, as a literary medium, and his writings assisted in the 16th-century revival of interest in the works of Petrarch...
and others. Whether he went to Venice or not, in 1568 Portinaro moved back to Padua, and then later that same year went to Vienna, most likely to apply for the vacant post of choirmaster at the court of Maximilian II
Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor
Maximilian II was king of Bohemia and king of the Romans from 1562, king of Hungary and Croatia from 1563, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation from 1564 until his death...
. Unsuccessful in this endeavor, he returned to Padua sometime before March 1569, and he seems to have spent the rest of his life in his native city.
In 1573 a new academy in Padua, the Accademia degli Rinascenti, hired him as music-master with duties similar to those he had held at the previous academy of the Elevati; he even hired as assistants some of the same people who had helped him before. Different this time was the existence of a rival academy in Padua, the Accademia degli Animosi, but neither academy lasted for long. Competition from nearby Venice, one of the major musical centers of Europe at the time, was too intense to allow for multiple such institutions in Padua, and just three years later, in 1576, an outbreak of bubonic plague
Bubonic plague
Plague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin. Primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death...
killed 12,000 in the city and ended most of the significant musical activity there for years. Portinaro himself survived the plague, and was hired as maestro di cappella at Padua Cathedral
Padua Cathedral
The Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary of Padua is a Roman Catholic church and minor basilica in Padua, northern Italy. The cathedral is the see of the Diocese of Padua, and is dedicated to to the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary....
in December 1576, staying there at least through August 1577, from which month a payment record survives. Cathedral archives indicate that he was dead in by January 1579, at which time the administration was searching for his replacement; however the date and circumstances of his death are not known.
Music and influence
Portinaro wrote both sacred and secular vocal music, and also left a handful of luteLute
Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes....
intabulation
Intabulation
Intabulation, from the Italian word intavolatura, refers to an arrangement of a vocal or ensemble piece for keyboard, lute, or other plucked string instrument, written in tablature. It was a common practice in 14th-16th century keyboard and lute music...
s, his only known instrumental music. His secular vocal music, which consisted of madrigals and dramatic dialogues, was the best-known portion of his output. He published six books of madrigals and dialogues in all, for between four and eight voices, as well as three books of motets. A few madrigals and motets were published separately, and an unpublished setting of the mass
Mass (music)
The Mass, a form of sacred musical composition, is a choral composition that sets the invariable portions of the Eucharistic liturgy to music...
survives in the Munich Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.
Most of his secular vocal music he seems to have written for the academies of which he was the maestro. He periodically gathered the pieces, madrigals and dramatic dialogues, into sets to publish and to dedicate to the academies and his aristocratic patrons. The madrigals show the influence of the Venetian School composers such as Adrian Willaert
Adrian Willaert
Adrian Willaert was a Flemish composer of the Renaissance and founder of the Venetian School. He was one of the most representative members of the generation of northern composers who moved to Italy and transplanted the polyphonic Franco-Flemish style there....
; in musical style they are polyphonic
Polyphony
In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....
, reserved, and avoid the manneristic and experimental style of some of the mid-century composers such as Cipriano de Rore
Cipriano de Rore
Cipriano de Rore was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance, active in Italy...
also working in the Venetian orbit. However Portinaro was innovative in developing dramatic characterization in his dialogues, an important predecessor to opera. An example composition was one he wrote for Maximilian II in Vienna, the first piece in the 1568 Vergini collection. This work, for seven voices, features the Seven Muses, who have been exiled and seek a peaceful new home: the home they find is the imperial court in Vienna. Unlike the Muses, Portinaro failed to find a home there, but the piece shows the contemporary trend towards dramatic characterization, with single voices representing single characters, and it also demonstrates the era's increasing use of secular stories, largely drawn from classical antiquity.
Portinaro likely wrote most of his motets both while in Rome in the service of Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este
Ippolito II d'Este
Ippolito d'Este was an Italian cardinal and statesman. He was a member of the House of Este, and nephew of the other Ippolito d'Este, also a cardinal.-Biography:...
, and some date from his earliest, undocumented years. These works also show the influence of Netherlandish
Franco-Flemish School
In music, the Franco-Flemish School or more precisely the Netherlandish School refers, somewhat imprecisely, to the style of polyphonic vocal music composition in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, and to the composers who wrote it...
polyphony such as practiced by Willaert in nearby Venice.
The only instrumental music assigned to Portinaro is a series of lute intabulations which he published in Venice within the book on lute-playing by Florentine humanist, music theorist, lutenist, and composer Vincenzo Galilei
Vincenzo Galilei
Vincenzo Galilei was an Italian lutenist, composer, and music theorist, and the father of the famous astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei and of the lute virtuoso and composer Michelagnolo Galilei...
(the father of the astronomer). Galilei likely made the intabulations himself, as Portinaro is not known to have been a lutenist. The publication was called Fronimo dialogo di Vincentio Galilei fiorentino, nel quale si contengono le vere et necessarie regole del intavolare la musica nel liuto, and appeared in several editions in 1568, 1569 and 1584.