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musical material returns to a unison). It is in this phrase that I find the first evidence of
Casulana’s message, the importance of unity over division.
The second half of the poetic line, “ucciderlo vorrei, poi che vi piace” (I would like to kill
it since that would please you), contrasts sharply with the first phrase in texture, as it appears in
strict homophony as opposed the first phrase’s additive structure. This texture provides another
kind of unity, as the voices, moving together, express a desire for death and the pleasure of the
other. This phrase also ends with a perfect cadence on G in m. 6, coming to a full closure before
embarking further into the piece.
The third phrase, “ma trar non sipuò fuore” (but it cannot be pulled out), is where LaMay
posits the climax of the piece. They are musically set twice before a relaxed cadence in m. 10 on
B-flat, where the canto makes the move from A to B-flat, while the basso jumps the fifth from F
down to B-flat, forming the cadence. 68 This passage contains the highest pitch in the piece, D, as
well as an extended and ornamented treatment of the word “fuore” (out) which indicates the
effort, perhaps in vain, of trying to pull one’s heart out of another’s breast. These musical
indicators signal that the sentiment of inability or reluctance to remove one’s heart from the
other’s breast is the most important in the piece. LaMay notes that this section is set in a manner
atypical of a “male musical climax.” 69 LaMay coined this phrase to refer to the tradition of piling
up of “deaths” at the end of a piece, where musical gestures such as heightened pitch material or
faster-moving rhythmic patterns underscore the poetic climax. (A clear example can be found in
68 Karol Berger, Musica ficta: Theories of Accidental Inflections in Vocal Polyphony from
Marchetto da Padova to Gioseffo Zarlino (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 122-
123. The term “relaxed cadence,” refers to cadential movement where, in addition to the half step
in one line, the lower cadential gesture does not move by minor third or major sixth, but instead
jumps to the cadence point via perfect fourth or fifth. The term “relaxed” refers to the fact that
such a cadence “relaxes” the traditional rules of counterpoint.
69 Ibid.
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