Nicoletti, Filippo (EN)

Nicoletti Filippo, *ca. 1554 Ferrara, †27 September 1634 Rome, Italian composer, poet, clergyman. He probably studied with G. Cartari in Bologna; in the years 1577–1585 he worked in Rovigo; from 1588 to 1598 he was a musician and chaplain at the ducal court in Ferrara. Thanks to the patronage of the Bevilaqua family, he moved to Rome in 1602, where from 1605 to 1607 he served as mastro di cappella at S. Lorenzo in Damaso. From 1607 to 1612, he worked at S. Maria della Consolazione, and from 1613 until his death, at S. Maria di Loreto. He was a member of the Compagna dei Musici di Roma, and his students included the famous violinist Giovanni Antonio Leoni. Nicoletti prepared an anthology of madrigals entitled La gloria musicale di diversi eccelentissimi autori (Venice, 1592) and was also very active as a poet. He wrote the texts for his madrigals and published Rime spirituali sovra la solennità del Natale di Nostro Signore (Ferrara, 1593). His poetic works can be found, among others, in Scelta di alcune rime spirituali del R.D. Andrea Tristani ferrarese (Ferrara 1592) and Rime di diversi autori nelle felicissime nozze dell’ill. mo don Carlo Gesualdi, con l’ill.ma et eccell.ma signora donna Leonora d’Este (Ferrara 1594).

Most of Nicoletti’s work has not survived; his religious compositions and enigmatic canons, for which he was particularly appreciated in Rome, have been lost. He was praised as an unrivalled contrapuntist by G. Briccio (De canoni enigmatici, Rome 1632) and G.O. Pitoni (Notizia de’ Contrapunctisti, e Compositori di Musica, manuscript, Biblioteca Vaticana, ca. 1725). Nicoletti’s surviving works consist almost exclusively of pieces composed in Rovigo and Ferrara: over 70 madrigals and 22 villanelles. The madrigals from his early Book 1, mostly based on anonymous texts and some of his own, are characterized by restraint in the use of expressive means, simple melodic language, and traditional contrapuntal technique. In I finti amori, by choosing highly expressive love texts by Mannerist poets from Ferrara (L. Ariosto, G.B. Guarini, T. Tasso) and Rovigo (G. Avanzi), Nicoletti employed innovative musical devices: energizing the melodic line through metrical changes, diminutions, chromaticism, and frequent leaps, as well as a free use of contrasts in texture and motion. The book of two-voice madrigals is a new arrangement of texts by Ariosto and P. Bembo, previously used by A. Gabrieli (Libro primo de madrigali a tre voci, Venice 1575). These bicinia enjoyed great popularity and, compared to Gabrieli’s more traditional works, exemplified the innovative expressive possibilities of the virtuoso Ferrarese madrigal of the 1580s. The villanellas also employ madrigal technique; their sophisticated musical language far removed from the simplicity of means typical of the genre.

Literature: A. Einstein The Italian Madrigal, Princeton 1949, repr. 1970; A. Newcomb The Madrigal at Ferrara, 1579 to 1597, Princeton 1980; G. Brunello Il Groto e la musica: Le Lettere famigliari, le Rime ne I finti amori (1585) di F. Nicoletti, “Subsidia musica veneta” I, 1980; F. Passadore Musica e musicisti a Rovigo tra rinascimento e barocco, Padua 1987; A. Andreotti Nuove acquisizioni circa la vita e le opere di Filippo Nicoletti (1554–post 1623), «Rassegna Veneta di Studi Musicali» VII–VIII, 1991–92; A. Morelli Filippo Nicoletti (ca.1555–1634) compositore ferrarese: profilo biografico alla luce di nuovi documenti in: Musica Franca: Essays in Honor of Frank A. D’Accone, eds. I. Alm, A. McLamore, C. Reardon, Stuyvesant 1996.