L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2025 www.italoamericano.org 18 L'Italo-Americano B a r c a r o l l e i s o n e o f t h o s e musical words t h a t t e l l s y o u what you'll hear before a note sounds. The name comes from the Italian word barca – boat – and its musical pattern is simple: a gentle 6/8 or 12/8 pulse that rocks like oars in water. In Venice, they call it barcarola, a type of boat song popular among gondo- liers, but in concert halls and opera houses, it became shorthand for night air, rip- ples, and voices that move without a hurry. T h e s t y l e w a s a l r e a d y p o p u l a r b y t h e l a t e e i g h - teenth century, when travel- ers and writers had already noticed gondoliers singing, and theorists filed the bar- carolle under "things every cultivated listener recog- nizes." Charles Burney m e n t i o n s i t i n 1 7 7 1 , a n d Rousseau remarks on how boat songs in Venice bor- rowed from the theater, with gondoliers picking up popu- lar arias that drifted out of o p e r a h o u s e s n i g h t a f t e r night. In other words, the traffic ran both ways: stage t u n e s f l o a t e d o n t o t h e canals, and the sound of the canals floated back onto the stage. Once there, the barcarolle proved to be quite practical: Gioachino Rossini used the canals as a frame for La Regata Veneziana, a Venet- ian-dialect triptych from the 1 8 3 0 s t h a t i m a g i n e s t h e city's rowing culture in song. A f e w d e c a d e s l a t e r , t h e most famous barcarolle of a l l , B e l l e n u i t , ô n u i t d'amour, opens the Venice a c t i n J a c q u e s O f f e n - bach's The Tales of Hoff- mann. That tune – a duet for female voices – returns later in the act to color the drama, this time without saying a word: its melody is, in fact, so striking that the audience still manages to recognize it in a few bars, e v e n w i t h o u t w o r d s . I n V e r d i ' s U n B a l l o i n Maschera, the hero's Act I D i ' t u s e f i d e l e i l f l u t t o m'aspetta carries an unmis- takable "boat rhythm," with Verdi using the barcarola to place us on water before the text tells us where we are. C o m p o s e r s a t t h e k e y - board took the same rhythm t o t h e c o n t i n e n t : F e l i x M e n d e l s s o h n w r o t e a handful of Venetian Gondo- la Songs in his Songs With- out Words, translating what h e h e a r d o n t r a v e l i n t o piano figuration: a left-hand undulation that never quite stops and a right-hand line t h a t l e a n s f o r w a r d l i k e a small boat's bow. Frédéric C h o p i n t u r n e d t h e i d e a i n t o a s i n g l e , l a r g e - s p a n B a r c a r o l l e i n F - s h a r p m a j o r , O p . 6 0 , a p i e c e pianists treat as a late-style t e s t o f s o u n d a n d s h a p e . Gabriel Fauré went fur- ther, returning to the form across his career with thir- teen barcarolles: the early o n e s s i t c l o s e t o t h e M e n d e l s s o h n - C h o p i n model, the later ones keep t h e s w a y b u t s p e a k i n F a u r é ' s s p a r e , m o d e r n voice. B a r c a r o l l e s m a d e a n important appearance also in popular southern music, b e c a u s e … n o t e v e r y b o a t song points to Venice. The Neapolitan S a n t a L u c i a w a s p u b l i s h e d i n 1 8 4 9 explicitly as a barcarola, t o o . I t i s , s o t o s p e a k , a boatman's invitation: the b r e e z e i s s o f t , t h e s e a i s calm, come out in my small boat and enjoy the evening. The text roots the music into a real waterfront district, Borgo Santa Lucia, and the melody's easy swing shows why listeners across Europe understood the origin and m e a n i n g o f " b a r c a r o l a " without any need for foot- notes. B u t , y o u m a y w o n d e r , what, exactly, makes a bar- carolle feel like a barcarolle? Meter and tempo do most of the work: the 6/8 (or some- times 12/8) count creates two gentle pushes per bar – dip, lift; dip, lift – while the harmony moves at a human pace. In vocal numbers, the tune often sits comfortably within a lyrical compass, letting breath and phrase mirror the oar's swing. In i n s t r u m e n t a l v e r s i o n s , accompaniments mark the "oar" with repeating bro- ken-chord patterns, while melodies float a little freer above. The effect is specific enough that film and televi- s i o n u s e i t a s a n i n s t a n t reminder of Venice, even when the scene was shot far from the lagoon. Truth is that the through- line, from canal to concert hall, is not a straight docu- mentary one, because we c a n n o t p i n e v e r y p r i n t e d "boat song" to a named gon- dolier. We can say, however, that Venice's water culture gave European composers a readable musical image from which it was easy to borrow and that was hard to exhaust. Rossini could make a race of it; Offenbach could m a k e i t s e d u c t i v e ; V e r d i could make it atmospheric b e f o r e a n a r i a s t a r t s ; Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Fauré could make it sing without words. That range – street, stage, salon, and key- board – explains why the b a r c a r o l l e s t i l l g e t s p r o - g r a m m e d a n d w h y a f e w bars can become so repre- s e n t a t i v e o f a p l a c e a n d carry it with them. If you hear the opening of Offenbach's duet or the first undulating bars of Chopin's Op. 60, you already know the scene: night, water, a s t e a d y a r m o n t h e o a r . Venice may be the image that comes to mind, but the reach is larger, an Italian w a y o f s e t t i n g m o t i o n t o music that many composers t u r n e d i n t o t h e i r o w n . T h a t ' s h o w a g o n d o l i e r ' s r h y t h m , h a l f w o r k p l a c e habit, half city soundtrack, b e c a m e a n i c o n o f w o r l d classical music. Barcarolle: the gondoliers' songs that entered classical music LUCA SIGNORINI A Venetian gondolier: it's them who gave us the original barcarolles (Photo: Oren Gelbendorf/Dreamstime) LA VITA ITALIANA TRADITIONS HISTORY CULTURE

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