lauda

   A lauda (plural, laude) was a popular religious poem or “song of praise,” adapted from the Christian liturgy and widespread in Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries. The earliest laude were 13thcentury Latin hymns, the best known being the Stabat Mater and the Dies Irae. St. FRANCIS OF ASSISI wrote some of the first laude in the vernacular, called the Cantico delle Creature. The popularity of the lauda was augmented by the rise of the religious Order of the Flagellants (a group devoted to public penance, whose members paraded through European cities, beating each other with ropes or chains). This group, originating in Umbria (in central Italy north of Rome) in about 1260, practiced fraternal singing of laude in their rituals, which helped spread the genre to Umbrian composers, the best known of whom was JACOPONE DA TODI, the most famous practitioner of the form.

   Early laude followed no standard metrical form. However, as more came to be written, the lauda came to imitate the form of the ballata, an Italian dance song with a refrain. Most commonly Jacopone’s laude were written in octosyllabic (or eightsyllable) lines. Sometimes seven- or 11-syllable lines are used. In the ballata, individual stanzas were sung by a soloist and the refrain by a chorus. This responsive format, coupled with the fact that the laude were often verse narratives of Christ, the Virgin, or one of the other saints, encouraged the development of the laude into a dramatic form. In many laude, an actual dialogue was created, rather than a simple alternating solo and chorus, so that singers took the parts of various characters. By the 15th century, the laude had moved out of Umbria and become widespread throughout Italy. Such early Renaissance writers as Lorenzo de’ Medici and Girolamo Savonarola were interested in the form. By the following century, however, the form had declined significantly in popularity.