Della Viola, Alfonso (EN)

Della Viola, dalla Viola, de la Viola, da Ferrara, Alfonso, *ca. 1508 Ferrara, †ca. 1574 Ferrara, Italian composer and instrumentalist. He was probably the illegitimate son of Agostino da Ferrara, a singer active at the court of the d’Este princes in Ferrara around 1497–1522, who accompanied himself on the viol while singing. Alfonso was associated with the same court from at least 1528 until the end of his life. Around 1563–1572 he served as maestro di cappella at the Ferrara Cathedral. He composed madrigals and stage music, the latter surviving only in fragments.

Alfonso’s madrigal output shows characteristics similar to the style of P. Verdelot and J. Arcadelt. He combines imitative passages with chordal textures and occasionally employs chromaticism. Some scholars suggest that certain madrigals may date from the 1520s. Alfonso’s stage music survives only as a recitative invocation with ritornellos and a four-voice final canzona, preserved in manuscript form appended to the printed pastorale Il Sacrificio by Agostino Beccari (1555).

Literature: A. Einstein The Italian Madrigal, Princeton 1949; H.M. Brown A Cook’s Tour of Ferrara in 1529, “Rivista Italiana di Musicologia” X, 1975; H.M. Brown and K. Spencer How Alfonso della Viola Tuned his Viols, and how he Transposed, “Early Music” XIV, 1986; J. Cohen Poetic Form versus Musical Form: Alfonso dalla Viola’s Petrarch Settings, “Musica Antiqua” VIII, 1988; J. Haar and I. Fenlon The Italian Madrigal in the Early Sixteenth Century. Sources and Interpretation, Cambridge 1988; J. Cohen Alfonso dalla Viola (Ferrara, c. 1508–c. 1574): Aspects of Chronology, Style and Influences, in: Musik, Raum, Akkord, Bild. Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Dorothea Baumann, eds. A. Baldassarre et al., Bern 2012.