Amero, non amero. Frottola and Popular Song: Courtly Games Predicated on Proximity and Distance in Early-Sixteenth-Century Italy

The Libri di Frottole offer a plethora of examples of how elements from the popular song tradition were utilized by the North-Italian courtly culture around 1500. According to the meaning of "frottole" (Italian for "mixture of proverbs", "meaningless chatter"), this genre consists of an undogmatic play with poesia per musica, and also with the compensatory musical effects of popular songs. Italian court composers here found a rich source to differentiate themselves from the Franco-Flemish competition. Hence the intensive and yet only short success of the collection of Frottole can be regarded as the specific national reflection of emerging national-linguistic efforts. Before the dichotomy between high and low language culture became cemented, popular adaptations of the "frottole" were used for a subtle play with the counter-culture (see, for instance, D'un bet matin and its variants). The contrast between a regionally colored, rustic popular language and the literary stereotypes of courtly love corresponded, on the level of music, the contrast between vocally arranged multi-voice homophone melodies and the half-instrumentalized style typically of the frottola with the dominant cantus. At times, the "frottole" were characterized by a humorous, sometimes critical, and reflective element even when they used a musical counting rhyme ("I will love, I will not love").