Costanzo Festa was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 composer of the Renaissance

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...

. While he is best known for his 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....

, he also wrote sacred

Sacred

Holiness, or sanctity, is in general the state of being holy or sacred...

 vocal music

Vocal music

Vocal music is a genre of music performed by one or more singers, with or without instrumental accompaniment, in which singing provides the main focus of the piece. Music which employs singing but does not feature it prominently is generally considered instrumental music Vocal music is a genre of...

. He was the first native Italian polyphonist

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 ....

 of international renown, and with Philippe Verdelot

Philippe Verdelot

Philippe Verdelot was a French composer of the Renaissance, who spent most of his life in Italy. He is commonly considered to be the father of the Italian madrigal, and certainly was one of its earliest and most prolific composers; in addition he was prominent in the musical life of Florence...

, one of the first to write madrigals, in the infancy of that most popular of all sixteenth-century Italian musical forms.

Life

Not much is known about his early life. He was probably born in the Piedmont

Piedmont

Piedmont is one of the 20 regions of Italy. It has an area of 25,402 square kilometres and a population of about 4.4 million. The capital of Piedmont is Turin. The main local language is Piedmontese. Occitan is also spoken by a minority in the Occitan Valleys situated in the Provinces of...

 near Turin

Turin

Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...

, but the evidence for this is not certain, being based mainly on later documents referring to him as a clericis secularibus, i.e. not a monk, from that region. His birth date has been given as early as 1480 and as late as 1495, but recent scholarship has tended to narrow the range to the late 1480s. In addition he may have been related to his slightly younger contemporary Sebastiano Festa

Sebastiano Festa

Sebastiano Festa was an Italian composer of the Renaissance, active mainly in Rome. While his musical output was small, he was one of the earliest composers of madrigals, and was influential on other early composers of madrigals, such as Philippe Verdelot...

, another early madrigal composer, also from the same region. Sebastiano's father, Jacobinus, was resident in Turin around 1520.

In early 1514, Festa wrote a motet, Quis dabit oculis, on the occasion of the death of the Queen of France (Anne of Brittany

Anne of Brittany

Anne, Duchess of Brittany , also known as Anna of Brittany , was a Breton ruler, who was to become queen to two successive French kings. She was born in Nantes, Brittany, and was the daughter of Francis II, Duke of Brittany and Margaret of Foix. Her maternal grandparents were Queen Eleanor of...

) (9 January 1514). Anne's funeral was an extensive affair, lasting 40 days; Johannes Prioris

Johannes Prioris

Johannes Prioris was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. He was one of the first composers to write a polyphonic setting of the Requiem mass....

 also composed music for it. This motet is the earliest datable composition of Festa's, and the first record of his activity.

In 1514, Festa visited Ferrara, bringing some 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 with him; he seems to have been an established composer by this time, as indicated by the reception he received. This motet appears in a manuscript copied between 1516 and 1519, which also contains music by Sebastiano Festa, his possible relative; since the manuscript is thought to have been copied in northeast Italy, one or more of the motets it contains may have been those he brought to Ferrara. Most likely after his visit to Ferrara, but certainly between 1510 and 1517 he lived on Ischia, an island in the bay of Naples, where he served as a music teacher to the aristocratic d'Avalos family. In 1517 he moved to Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 and began employment with Pope Leo X

Pope Leo X

Pope Leo X , born Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, was the Pope from 1513 to his death in 1521. He was the last non-priest to be elected Pope. He is known for granting indulgences for those who donated to reconstruct St. Peter's Basilica and his challenging of Martin Luther's 95 Theses...

 as a singer, and his association with the Sistine Chapel

Sistine Chapel

Sistine Chapel is the best-known chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the Pope in Vatican City. It is famous for its architecture and its decoration that was frescoed throughout by Renaissance artists including Michelangelo, Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Pinturicchio...

 choir was to continue uninterrupted for almost 30 years. In September 1536, he wrote to Filippo Strozzi

Filippo Strozzi the Younger

thumb|250px|A view of [[Palazzo Strozzi]] in Florence.Filippo Strozzi the Younger was an Italian condottiero and banker, the most famous member of the Florentine Strozzi family in the Renaissance.-Biography:...

, his patron, to help him find a Venetian printer willing to print a book of his liturgical music similar to the ones being in printed in Rome by Andrea Antico

Andrea Antico

Andrea Antico was an Italian music printer, editor, publisher and composer of the Renaissance, of Istrian birth, active in Rome and in Venice...

; he wanted the sum of 200 scudi for the job, but was unsuccessful. During this era, printers more often demanded money from composers for the privilege of publication than the other way around.

Festa was active as a composer throughout the period, and some of the earliest madrigals identifiable as such, by any composer, may come from his pen and date from the mid-1520s; only some compositions by Bernardo Pisano

Bernardo Pisano

Bernardo Pisano was an Italian composer, priest, singer, and scholar of the Renaissance. He was one of the first madrigalists, and the first composer anywhere to have a printed collection of secular music devoted entirely to himself.- Life :He was born in Florence, and may have spent some time...

, Sebastiano Festa, and possibly Philippe Verdelot may predate them by a few years. While he was unsuccessful in his attempted sale to the Venetian printer in 1536, a Roman firm produced a book of madrigals in 1538 as a result of the privilege granted, but most of it has been lost. In 1537, a Venetian firm printed a collection of his madrigals for three voices.

An unusual amount of Festa's works can be dated precisely, since some of the compositions are topical, referring to weddings, visits, deaths, and other events (some composers of the Renaissance, such as Josquin des Prez

Josquin Des Prez

Josquin des Prez [Josquin Lebloitte dit Desprez] , often referred to simply as Josquin, was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance...

, wrote an immense amount of music, almost none of which can be dated precisely). Among the dateable compositions is the motet for Anne of Brittany; compositions copied in a manuscript between 1515 and 1519; a motet protesting the 1527 sack of Rome

Sack of Rome (1527)

The Sack of Rome on 6 May 1527 was a military event carried out by the mutinous troops of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor in Rome, then part of the Papal States...

; some madrigals Festa sent to Strozzi in 1528 (they were named "canti"); a lost 1533 madrigal to a poem by Michelangelo

Michelangelo

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...

; music for a 1539 Medici

Medici

The House of Medici or Famiglia de' Medici was a political dynasty, banking family and later royal house that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century. The family originated in the Mugello region of the Tuscan countryside,...

 wedding; and other compositions in hand-written manuscripts which have been dated.

A communication from 1543 indicates that Festa was too sick to travel with the Pope to Bologna

Bologna

Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...

, and he died in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 in 1545.

Music and influence

Festa was one of the few Italians in the Papal Choir, which at that time was dominated by musicians from northern Europe. He was a master of the Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 contrapuntal

Counterpoint

In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...

 technique, however, and his importance to music history is as the one who first brought the two musical styles, the Italian and the Netherlandish, together. In addition, he was an obvious influence on 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...

, who modeled many of his early works after his.

Most of Festa's madrigals are for three voices, in contrast to the other early madrigalists: for example Verdelot preferred five or six voices, while Sebastiano Festa only wrote for four. He liked quick, rhythmically active passages in his madrigals; this may reflect an influence from the contemporary vocal form of the villanesca. In addition, he wrote extended homophonic

Homophony

In music, homophony is a texture in which two or more parts move together in harmony, the relationship between them creating chords. This is distinct from polyphony, in which parts move with rhythmic independence, and monophony, in which all parts move in parallel rhythm and pitch. A homophonic...

 sections, showing somewhat less influence from the contemporary 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...

, in contrast to the motet-like imitative passages found in Verdelot.

In addition to his madrigals, published mostly between 1543 and 1549, several collections of his sacred works were published during his lifetime, among them four 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...

es, over forty 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, a set of Lamentations

Lamentations (music)

The Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet have been set by various composers.-England:Thomas Tallis made two famous sets of the Lamentations. Scored for five voices , they show a sophisticated use of imitation, and are noted for their expressiveness. The settings are of the first two lessons for...

, and numerous Magnificat

Magnificat

The Magnificat — also known as the Song of Mary or the Canticle of Mary — is a canticle frequently sung liturgically in Christian church services. It is one of the eight most ancient Christian hymns and perhaps the earliest Marian hymn...

s and Marian Litanies

Marian litany

A Marian litany, in Christian worship, is a form of prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary used in church services and processions, and consisting of a number of petitions....

 (for two choruses, each with four voices). The style of his sacred music matches that of his secular: he was less fond of imitation and complex counterpoint for its own sake, and often wrote purely homophonic passages. Since Rome was musically conservative compared to the rest of Italy (and Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

) at the time, and there was a strong reaction against elaborate counterpoint within two decades after his death (expressly stated by the Council of Trent

Council of Trent

The Council of Trent was the 16th-century Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church. It is considered to be one of the Church's most important councils. It convened in Trent between December 13, 1545, and December 4, 1563 in twenty-five sessions for three periods...

), his stylistic bent may represent a foreshadowing of that event; perhaps he was responding to the taste and needs of his papal employer.

Festa also wrote instrumental music. His most famous instrumental output is the monumental scholastic counterpoint study on La Spagna on which he wrote 125 variations using it as cantus firmus

Cantus firmus

In music, a cantus firmus is a pre-existing melody forming the basis of a polyphonic composition.The plural of this Latin term is , though the corrupt form canti firmi is also attested...

. A work which must have been a quite impressive artistic compendium even at his time. La Spagna comes from a famous "Basse dance" (bassadanza) from that time probably from Spain, well known by several famous composers of his time: Josquin himself wrote a variation on La Spagna. For a long time, musicologists believed that the legendary variations were attributed to another Italian composer called Nanino who lived in the time of Palestrina, one or even two generations after Festa, because he wrote 28 motets on La spagna and published it together with the 125 variations of Festa without mentioning the name Festa. Later commentators were led to assume that all of these 157 pieces were written by Nanino and this confused the whole research after the legendary study. Recent researches finally showed and proved that it is no doubt that only the first 125 counterpoints originally are from Festa himself. What Festa does with the cantus firmus, a simple melody containing 37 notes, is not only extravagant and amazingly creative. He shows practically all possibilities of counterpoint technique of his time, using canons (even triple canon), imitations, free or strict counterpoint, all styles of instrumental and vocal composition technique like using soggetti cavati, plainchant paraphrases, retrograde counterpoint, ostinatos, quodlibets, using 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and at the end 11 voices. Remarkable and outstanding in this work, also called 'I bassi', is not only the scholastic academical or pedagogical sense but that it can be played on all sort of instruments, it contains all kind of combinations of general clefs and therefore creates all kinds of instrumental output possibilities such as the cantus firmus in the first voice and 4 basses as counterpoint. He experimented with different rhythmical patterns (mensural problems) such as using two different tempo signatures (proportions), keys or rhythmically extremely complex bars with 7:5:3 proportions or other admirable ideas such as using the cantus firmus in a canon or putting the cantus firmus in every possible location in the texture. Altogether, ideas of a monumental study from a Renaissance genius, a study which only Fux could reach 200 years later in his Gradus ad parnassum and concerning the outstanding complexity it rather should be compared even with J.S. Bach's speculative late work. The studies on La Spagna showed that he also used musica ficta

Musica ficta

Musica ficta was a term used in European music theory from the late 12th century to about 1600 to describe any pitches, whether notated or to be added by performers in accordance with their training, that lie outside the system of musica recta or musica vera as defined by the hexachord system of...

and a lot of Christian and ancient symbolics (numerology) as well as hidden or obvious symmetrical structures in his counterpoints.

The 125 counterpoints on La Spagna certainly belong to the most interesting works of Festa and probably even of his time and could be seen as a lifetime work. Even when it was considered as a pure 'scholastic work' with somehow too much use of strict technique and "construction", sometimes rather archaic and with pure mathematical logic, it remains remarkable that he wrote it as a compendium for learning how to sing and compose and to learn about all the secrets of counterpoint mastery. It must be seen as one of Festa's best and outstanding works.

An indication of his fame is his appearance in the introduction to Book Four of Gargantua and Pantagruel

Gargantua and Pantagruel

The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel is a connected series of five novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais. It is the story of two giants, a father and his son and their adventures, written in an amusing, extravagant, satirical vein...

by François Rabelais

François Rabelais

François Rabelais was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes and songs...

. In the song Festa and others sing, Priapus boasts to the gods on Mount Olympus

Mount Olympus

Mount Olympus is the highest mountain in Greece, located on the border between Thessaly and Macedonia, about 100 kilometres away from Thessaloniki, Greece's second largest city. Mount Olympus has 52 peaks. The highest peak Mytikas, meaning "nose", rises to 2,917 metres...

 of his method of deflowering a new bride with a wooden mallet. Festa is the only Italian among the large group of singers listed by Rabelais, who appear to be a collection of the most famous musicians of the age.

External links

• http://aeiou.iicm.tugraz.at/aeiou.music.data.5.050105/050105a.jpg A picture of Costanzo at mid age

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