Giovanni Battista Bovicelli

Giovanni Battista Bovicelli was an Italian music theorist and singer, born in Assisi, active around 1592 and 1594. His name survives almost exclusively thanks to a single book, yet that book holds an important place in understanding vocal practice in Italy at the beginning of the Baroque, when improvised ornamentation had reached a remarkable degree of virtuosity.

His principal work, Regole, passaggi di musica, madrigali et motetti passeggiati, was published in Venice in 1594, with a later reissue. Earlier, in 1592, the assistant maestro di cappella of Milan Cathedral, Damiano Scarabelli, had already praised Bovicelli's skill as a composer and improviser of ornamental passages in the dedication of his Liber primus motectorum. The treatise follows the usual format of the manuals of the period: first it offers lists of common diminutions for intervals and melodic figures, and then it presents the upper voices of several well-known motets, madrigals and falsobordoni, showing how the embellishments were to be applied. Among the composers cited are Palestrina, Rore, Victoria and Claudio Correggio, whose pieces appear so heavily ornamented that it is sometimes difficult to recognise the original line.

The first part of the book deals with the new placement of the text in the ornamented versions. Bovicelli explains when the syllable may change according to the value of the notes, gives indications on vocal articulation, and distinguishes how melodic leaps should be treated according to context. Although he considered a succession of leaps to sound more instrumental than vocal, he thought it effective if the high notes were sung lightly. He concludes with an exhortation on proper breathing in ornamented singing.

Bovicelli's legacy lies in the testimony he offers of this transition. Caccini, in his Nuove musiche (Florence, 1601/1602), sought to reform that style and accepted only one of its figures, the accento, yet the improvisation of ornaments continued in practice. His indications anticipate the new style of virtuoso singing that would dominate the Baroque cantata and opera.