Parodie, 'contrafacta' e cadenze: Alcune considerazioni e un caso di studio

The essay proposes an analytical strategy of parody and contrafactum procedures in classical vocal polyphony, based on the examination of cadential plans. After tracing the issues related to the concept of cadence and its application in 16th-century polyphony (particularly in relation to the metrics and syntax of the poetic text), the essay examines two re-elaborations of Giovanni Maria Nanino’s madrigal 'Morir non può il mio core': a parody by Nanino himself ('Morir può ‘l vostro core') and a contrafactum by Orfeo Vecchi ('Laetamini in Domino'). In the former case, the composer, by constructing a new piece from the model, has all the ease of studying new cadential strategies in function of the exegesis of the new text set to music; in the case of the contrafactum, on the contrary, the replacement text alters, so to speak, ‘unintentionally’ the original distribution of cadences, creating new ones and thwarting the exegetical project of the model. This may not be inevitable, but depends on the context of reception of the ‘contrafactum’ and its greater or lesser attention to the expressive component of the musical rendering of the text.