In medieval literature there are various genres, each of which differs in its form, metric and purpose. One of the specific genres of that era is Canzone, which will be discussed in this article.
What is canzone in literature?
Canzona or Canzonetta is a term from among the troubadours. Perhaps this is the most universal and widespread literary genre in their work, later divided into many additional subgenres. Initially, Canzona is a song dedicated to courtesan love. She was among the chivalrous and feudal lyric poetry of Provence, from there migrated to Italy, where she was given features that are more suitable for the Italian dialect.
Meaning of the word
What does the word canzone mean? It comes from a noun from the Provencal dialect - canso, which literally translates as “song”. This word sounds almost similarly in both Italian and Catalan, in which the canzone was also widely used.
Provencal Canzon
Probably, from the beginning Kanzona was a choral song, which by the 12th century had passed into the literary work of the troubadours. The Provencal Canzon consisted of five or seven stanzas and ended with several shortened stanzas - tornads (from the Provencal "turn"). They contained a request, addressed to a secret initiate, to transmit a message to the canzon and an indication of the person to whom, in fact, the canzon was addressed. But the name of the latter was not usually called for secrecy, but a nickname was used.
The addressee of this lyrical song could be a beautiful lady, or the patron saint of troubadour, or a close friend who is initiated into a love secret. The themes for canzon usually served as follows: giving praise of love, a story about feelings that bloom against the backdrop of spring renewal, the coldness of a lady or the praise of an object of love, the sadness of the upcoming separation from the lady.
The structure of the canzone was quite rhythmic, because, like all the poetry of the troubadours, it was designed to be played with instrumental music. Otherwise, except for the theme and metrics, this genre is very heterogeneous. The rhyme for each song was purely individual. In addition to the monologue, there is also a canzon-dialogue, built either on a conversation between the songwriter and the Beautiful Lady, or between two troubadours. There is also a pastoral variety of canzone, called pasturel.
Italian canzone
As already mentioned, in Italy, canzona is a transformation of the canvases of Provencal, which the Italians remade, in accordance with the norms of their language. Among the famous authors working in this genre, one can recall Dante, Guinicelli, Petrarch, Cavalcanti. Italian canzons are distinguished by their philosophical and abstract character.
The laws by which the works of this genre should be built were first formulated by Dante, and he considered the canzon precisely as a textual music genre. The second part of the treatise On Folk Eloquence is devoted to this topic. In it, the poet mainly discusses the specifics of building a work - it should consist of an introductory and a main part, which in turn can be split into smaller ones. Dante says almost nothing about the necessary rhymes, the number of stanzas and rhythm, so in Italian literature you can find a variety of canzone options, but the most common were songs with eleven-compound sizes. The stanzas in both the Italian and Provencal versions succeed each other without the use of refrain and chorus - this feature is characteristic of more ancient song genres.
In Italy, two branches of the canzone genre appeared: a sextine, the inventor of which is the troubadour Arnaut Daniel, and a sonnet that appeared in Sicily in the 13th century and was developed in the work of Dante and especially Petrarch.
The fate of the Canzon
The canzon's genre gradually disappears from use when the traditions of chivalry begin to leave, and the theme of the works becomes irrelevant. Canzon’s last revival is received in the work of the 16th century Petrarchists and after that it freezes for a long time.
In the 20th century, interest in this literary genre reappears in connection with the arising interest in the work of troubadours. Then their poetry was no longer viewed through the prism of romanticism, trying to study the spirit of courtesan lyrics. During this period, Russian poets of the Silver Age began to turn to canonization, for example, Valery Bryusov and Vyacheslav Ivanov, but the genre did not take root due to the fact that it was too inconsistent with the surrounding reality.
Canzona's music
In addition to the definition of the word canzon in literature, there is such a genre in music - it existed in Italy in the 16th century as a polyphonic play intended for an ensemble of instruments or solo. Initially, these were arrangements of French polyphonic songs, then original Italian works began to appear.