Reassessing the development of cori spezzati: new discoveries in Bologna

Abstract

Abstract For a long time, musicology viewed early polychoral music (cori spezzati) as a Venetian tradition invented by the famous composer and noted teacher Adrian Willaert. Scholars later suggested that this technique was first used by native Italian composers of the Veneto and Lombardy regions between the second and third decades of the 16th century. This idea contributed to the shaping of our perception that the embryonic stage of cori spezzati was confined to northern Italy. Meanwhile, new sources have come to light. Recent research has demonstrated that early polychoral music also flourished in central Italy, and that this development should therefore be placed in a wider geographical context. Nevertheless, music historians have not yet fully investigated the emergence of polychoral music in Europe. In spite of valuable studies, the phenomenon of 16th- and 17th-century polychorality is still largely under-studied, and underestimated both in its extent and in its cultural significance. Based on a group of newly discovered manuscripts preserved in the Basilica of San Petronio, this article illuminates the genesis of cori spezzati in Bologna. I argue that its origins can be traced back to the first half of the 16th century, thus enlarging the northern Italian area normally considered as the epicentre of the phenomenon. I show that San Petronio (although not the first) was an important centre in the initial stages of this musical tradition. In so doing, this study contributes to a rebalancing of the Venice-centric view that still dominates the perception of polychorality among scholars, performers and audiences.