“Improvvisatori” (Penny Magazine)

Performer Name:

Corilla; Sgricci

Performance Venue:

 

Performance Date:

 

Author:

 

Date Written:

 

Language:

English

Publication Title:

The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge

Article Title:

Improvvisatori

Page Numbers:

452:145-47

Additional Info:

20 April 1839, No. 452

Publisher:

 

Place of Publication:

 

Date Published:

1839

Text:

[145] THROUGHOUT Italy, and more particularly in the Tuscan province, there has prevailed from time immemorial a peculiar and highly interesting exhibition of intellectual power, the delivery of extempore poems, by a class of persons called in the language of the country the improvvisatori. Something of the same kind may be found in other parts of the world, but nowhere so fully developed. In Portugal the peasants may still be heard in the summer evenings singing improvvisatised songs to the accompaniment of their guitars, but their strains are of a very humble unambitious character. Mrs. Piozzi* also speaks of a similar custom in our own kingdom: she says, "Our Welsh people make the harper sit down in the churchyard after service is over, and placing themselves round him, command the instrument to go over some old song-tune; when having listened awhile, one of the company forms a stanza of verses, which run to it in well adapted measure; and as he ends another begins, continuing the tale or retorting the satire." But the Turkish storytellers approach the Italian improvvisatori the nearest in ability, while their audiences perhaps surpass them in the deep absorbing interest with which they listen. They are so numerous through the Mohammedan countries that they form a kind of trade or profession, with a sheikh at their head, entitled the sheikh of the coffee-house narrators. They are found in every place; they mingle with and exercise their seductive powers upon all ranks. Even the wild Arab of the desert will listen with sparkling eye and throbbing breast to the glowing narration, exhibiting, perhaps, the adventures of some renowned warrior—and as the misfortunes of the hero become more and more imminent, will cry out in irrepressible emotion, "No, no; God prevent it!" These are the prose improvvisatori; turn we now to those which more immediately concern us—the poetical.

It is somewhere mentioned that an English general, inspecting a body of Italian military, put some questions to a drummer-boy, which were answered in octave rhyme! We do not know that we can give a more apt illustration [146] of the prevalence of this custom, and of the ludicrous lengths to which it is occasionally carried. "Through Tuscany," says Mr. Roscoe, "the custom of reciting verses has for ages been the constant and most favourite amusement of villagers and country inhabitants. At some times the subject is a trial of wit between two peasants; on other occasions a lover addresses his mistress in a poetical oration, expressing his passion by such images as his uncultivated fancy suggests, and endeavouring to amuse and engage her by the liveliest sallies of humour. These recitations, in which the eclogues of Theocritus are realised, are delivered in a tone of voice between speaking and singing, and are accompanied with the constant motion of one hand, as if to measure the time and regulate the harmony; but they have an additional charm from the simplicity of the country dialect, which abounds with phrases highly natural and appropriate, though incompatible with the precision of a regular language."** Another writer also observes: "On a fine evening in Florence you may see the streets swarming with the lower orders, who have transformed themselves into rhapsodists. The workman who has finished his daily task, instead of expending his little gains at the wine-house, equips himself with a good coat and guitar, and catches inspiration from what he would, we suppose, call the mantle and the lyre:"*** and not unwisely either, we may add, if they inspire his heart with cheerful sensations—his imagination with innocently stimulating thoughts; if they make him an active and happy being—with whom we may place in striking contrast the dull unrefined and unreflecting labourer, too often found nearer home, who is prodigally wasteful of his little means without obtaining enjoyment, who is fond of associating, but seldom social, often mirthful, but never happy! Let our readers look upon the scene which the genius of Leopold Robert has immortalized, and of which our engraving presents an humble copy, let them watch those charmed spectators; "fit audience, though few," listening to their inspired fellow-peasant, and then turn to our own country, and wish it presented like evidences of widely spread intellectual power, refined tastes, and common sympathies.****

The more eminent of the Italian improvvisatori have been, of course, generally found among the higher and better educated classes. The most flourishing period of the art is considered to have been during the pontificate of Leo X., who not only encouraged its professors, but delighted in occasionally joining them in their exercises of skill. The ambition of the improvvisatori at that time was to exhibit their powers in Latin verse. Andrea Marone eclipsed all competitors in this way. "His recitals were accompanied by the music of his viol, and as he proceeded he seemed continually to improve in facility, elegance, enthusiasm, and invention. The fire of his eyes, the expression of his countenance, the rising of his veins, all bespoke the emotions with which he was agitated, and kept his hearers in suspense and astonishment."*****

Salvator Rosa, the distinguished painter, was also eminent for his exellence in this accomplishment. Madame de Staël has made an improvvisatrice, Corinna, the subject of a well known novel of that name; and it is understood that the original was Corilla, a peasant-girl of Pistoja, who rose by her talents from that condition to be the unrivalled queen of the art, and who was actually crowned in the Capitol. Perhaps the extraordinary faculties possessed by the improvvisatori were never more strikingly evidenced than in the exhibitions of Signor Sgricci, who died two or three years since. He not only recited poems of a decidedly superior character on the impulse of the moment, but actually before the eyes of an audience, on receiving a subject (and what that would be he could not possibly have known beforehand), framed the dramatis personae of a play, the plot, the contrasts of character, and flow of story; then proceeded act by act, and scene by scene, to pour forth the unpremeditated effusions of a rich fancy and warm imagination, and in short created a play, an entire five-act drama, in the mere time required for its utterance! A power like this is certainly in the highest degree astonishing; and to say that the play thus produced is not first-rate (in other words, not an impossibility) is idle. In Sgricci's published dramas, taken down by shorthand writers from his own lips as they were delivered, there is abundant evidence of a genius that under any more natural and less hothouse-like system of cultivation must have produced, we think, valuable and enduring fruits. Perhaps the worst consequence of the art of improvvisatising is that the exceeding popularity of its exhibitions, where there is poetical power, renders its possessors unwilling to "scorn delights and live laborious days," to exchange the splendours of the theatre for the dim and solitary lamp of the closet; and therefore frequently to prevent the development of high original genius. Still it is a poor philosophy that is ever seeking to lessen what it is constrained to admire; and the very superficiality of which we complain must doubtless be one element of its success among the people. And what service can be more invaluable to the great poet than to create for him among the many a capacity to appreciate and enjoy his writings? and this, it appears to us the improvvisatori must do. When the poor gondolier is heard singing passages from Dante or Tasso, can we doubt for a moment that there must be some link of communication between the lofty and the lowly mind?—that link is the improvvisator!

The general mode of exhibition by the greater professors is as follows:—Two assistants appear on the stage with writing materials and a glass vase. Different subjects are proposed by the spectators, which are written on pieces of paper, and these, being sealed, are committed to the vase; which is then shaken, and presented to the audience. As the papers are withdrawn, the contents are read, and the subject that meets the most decided approbation is chosen. The assistants now retire, and the improvvisator appears. The authoress of 'Rome in the Nineteenth Century' has described a scene of this kind, when Sgricci was the actor and 'Medea' the play; "a subject so hackneyed," she says, "that when Sgricci received it on his entrance, he expressed a wish that another lot might be drawn, both from the difficulty of avoiding an imitation of the great writers who had already treated it, and from having very lately at Florence dramatised the same. The saloon however resounded with cries of 'Medea!' 'Medea!' to the great joy of an Italian gentleman of my acquaintance behind me, who had heard him on this very theme at Florence. Signor Sgricci bowed, paused a single minute, and then said, that to avoid repetition as much as possible he would make a different cast of parts. He introduced, as my Florentine friend acknowledged, two new characters, opened the action in a different part of the story, and neither in a single scene nor even speech approached to the tragedy he had composed at Florence! The character of Medea throughout was supported with wonderful force and effect; and her invocation to the hellish brood was horribly sublime." She adds, "Sgricci is a native of Arezzo, the birth-place of Petrach, and the harsh Tuscan accent is very distinguishable in his enunciation. His langauge, however, is remarkably pure, and its flow and variety are most wonderful."

Among the more curious of such exhibitions Mr. Rose speaks of seeing a man to whom three subjects for sonnets were proposed: one of which was Noah issuing from the Ark; another, the death of Caesar; the third, the wed [147] ding of Pantaloon. These were to be declaimed interlacedly; that is, a piece of Noah, then a piece of Caesar, and then a piece of Pantaloon: returning after that for another piece of Noah, and so on. Nor were these difficulties enough; he was also to introduce a particular verse specified by one of the audiences at a particular place in each sonnet. He accomplished this task in ten minutes.

We must not suppose that all who call themselves improvvisatori deserve the name; there are pretenders in this as well as in all other things. Occasionally one of the street or piazza gentry, whose ambition and power are in an inverse, we may say, perverse ratio, will, in the amplitude of his fancy, get his story so involved, that after many vain efforts to disentangle it for the audience, whose earnest attention seems to increase as he finds himself less able to satisfy it, he is compelled, with a suppressed "maladetta!" to take to his heels amid the malicious laughter of the crowd. But where the ability is of a higher cast, behold the people, with crossed arms and eyes fixed upon the ground, form a silent circle round the narrator, while at their feet children of every age seat themselves in attitude of equal attention. The skilful artist, having secured the sympathy of his audience, works up his story to its catastrophe, which often consists in the casting away a poniard, or the angry rejection of a letter, which the cunning rogue imitates by throwing his hat among the spectators, who take the hint, and "point the moral" of the tale he has "adorned."

With a few words on the art, we conclude. The different writers who have spoken of the subject account for the apparently marvellous powers of the improvvisatori by the exceeding facility of the language, the comparative laxity of its poetical rules, and the mechanical skill of introducing similes and thoughts previously prepared. The two first points must undoubtedly greatly decrease the difficulty of making extempore verses; the last, we think, not only inadequate for the object proposed, but to be altogether a mistake. The character of the compositions produced is not of the patchwork kind here indicated. The truth lies deeper: the exceeding vividness of mind that all must acknowledge to be required after any or every preparation, to carry along a dramatic fable though five acts, and by its means command the sympathies and admiration of an audience, must be sufficient in itself, without such preparation as has been supposed, and which is all that the circumstances allow. In one word, the improvvisatori are really inspired poets; generally perhaps of weak, but always of ready and most excitable powers, whose emotion, being genuine and poetically expressed, naturally induces a corresponding state of feeling in their auditors. The practice is now, we believe, on the decline; the more the pity, unless something better takes its place in the hearts and minds of the people who have so long cherished it, and enjoyed by its means so many a harmless and happy hour.

*Writing in 1789.

**Roscoe's 'Life of Lorenzo de' Medici.

***Rose's 'Letters from Italy.'

****For other works, and a notice of L. Robert, see Nos. 348 and 414.

*****Roscoe's 'Leo the Tenth.'

Notes:

Collected by:

DP