Negri, Cesare de’ (EN)

Negri Cesare de’, called Il Trombone, *circa 1535 Milan, †after 1604 Milan (?), Italian choreographer and dance theorist. He was educated by P. Diobon in Milan, and there he remained in the service of the Spanish nobles. In 1555–1600, he participated in important public events, including in Cremona on the occasion of the arrival of King Henry Valois from Poland. Many outstanding choreographers were Negri’s students, including C. Beccaria, who was later active in Vienna.

Negri is the author of the treatise Le gratie d’amore (Milan 1602, entitled Nuove inventioni di balli, 2^nd edition Milan 1604), dedicated to Philip III of Spain, ruler of Milan; this treatise is one of the most important sources for the history of Renaissance dance and gives a comprehensive view of ballroom and stage dance, masterfully choreographed, as well as dance music of the 2^nd half of the 16^th century. It contains detailed descriptions of allegorical processions with dances and music (with tips on instrumentation), testifies to the spread of Italian dances in European courts and the existence of exceptionally talented professional dancers, and provides valuable information about their lives and activities.

Le gratie d’amore consists of three parts. The first contains biographical details about the author himself, as well as a list of Italian dance masters active in the 2^nd half of the century, including Negri’s teachers, colleagues (including F. Caroso) and students. The second defines the rules of dance steps and their combinations used in improvised variations of the galliards and requiring high skill. Based on Negri’s treatise, it is difficult to determine the exact relationship between improvised dance and improvised musical variations, because Negri did not precisely note the correlation of dance steps with music, he only gave the number of steps in specific musical measures, so he gave suggestions regarding the pace of the dance, however, determined by the individual qualities of the dancer. The third part of Le gratie d’amore consists of instructions for performing 43 dances (balletti, balli, brandi, etc.) with music written in tablature and mensural. The rules of steps proposed by Negri, taken from Il ballarino by Caroso (published in Venice 1581), were supplemented with a description of his own choreographic arrangements. Many of them are more complicated than the systems proposed by Th. Arbeau (Orchésographie, Langres 1588) and Caroso; among them, there are numerous dances with figures for two couples, not described elsewhere, and several for four couples, modelled, among others, on English folk dances. The dance music used elements of popular compositions of the time (including vocal pieces by G.G. Gastoldi), compiled and adapted for choreographic purposes; some compositions constitute musical material common to many dances, subjected to mensural transformations and provided with instructions on how to repeat individual sections, which reflects the performance practice of the time, and in the case of dance music intended for stage performance, is an example of the use of dances in stage balls by composers of the late Renaissance and early baroque (including C. Monteverdi in Introdutione al ballo. Volgendo, published in the 8^th book of madrigals, Venice 1638).

Literature: C. Sachs Eine Weltgeschichte des Tanzes, Berlin 1933, English translation 1938, reprint 1963; M. Dolmetsch Dances of Spain and Italy from 1400 to 1600, London 1954, reprint 1975; F. Reyna Des origines du ballet, Paris 1955, English translation 1965; P. Aldrich Rhythm in Seventeenth-Century Italian Monody, New York 1966; J. Sutton Reconstruction of 16th-Century Dance, “Commitee on Research in Dance” II, 1970.