Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” Nods to 18th-Century Italian Art Song
Beyoncé's album "Cowboy Carter." Parkwood Entertainment / Columbia
When Beyoncé’s latest single, “Texas Hold ’Em,” was released on Superbowl Sunday, the world was set abuzz in anticipation of a “country album” from the influential pop artist. But when Cowboy Carter was released on March 29, it became clear that it was much more than that. The 27 tracks demonstrate an impressive array of stylistic influences and collaborators. These include covers of The Beatles’ “Blackbird,” Dolly Parton’s “Jolene,” and Chuck Berry’s “Oh Louisiana”; tracks featuring Miley Cyrus and Post Malone; and samples from The Beach Boys, Nancy Sinatra, and much, much more.
The album’s concept is summarized in one such sample, a spoken quote from Black country singer Linda Martell, who says, “Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they? . . . In theory, they have a simple definition that’s easy to understand. But in practice, well, some may feel confined.” Beyoncé said herself that the album was “a result of challenging myself, and taking my time to bend and blend genres together to create this body of work.”
Staying true to this ethos, Beyoncé’s most unexpected musical reference comes in the form of an 18th-century Italian art song called “Caro mio ben.” Unsuspecting listeners who had had a voice lesson or two were stunned when they heard the familiar Italian lyrics in the ballad “Daughter.” “Caro mio ben” is one of the most popular Italian art songs of all time, made famous through its inclusion in the collection of Twenty-Four Italian Songs & Arias that sits on every voice teacher’s shelf.
Like a lot of music written during the mid-1700s, the history of “Caro mio ben” is a bit murky, made murkier by numerous misattributions over the years. It was likely written around 1760 by composer Tommaso Giordani. Born in Naples c. 1730, Giordani spent most of his career in London, where he could sate English appetites for authentic Italian opera. Though some may call it an “arietta,” “Caro mio ben” is an art song, composed for an intimate concert setting, not the opera stage.
The song gained popularity (and notoriety among voice students) when composer Alessandro Parisotti (1853–1913) included it in his collection of Arie antiche (“Old songs”), published by Ricordi in 1885. (His collection formed the basis of Schirmer’s Anthology of Italian Song of 1894 and then the famous Twenty-Four Italian Songs & Arias of 1948.) Parisotti liberally edited these Baroque- and Classical-era songs to suit the musical tastes of his day. His accompaniments in particular are highly Romanticized realizations of the original figured bass, and the scores are full of errors and misattributions. For instance, he attributes “Caro mio ben” to Giuseppe Giordani, another Neapolitan composer (and possibly the younger brother of Tommaso—admittedly an easy mistake to make).
When scholar John Glenn Paton created his own edited collection of these Italian art songs in 1991, he attempted to present the songs in a historically informed way and peel back the inaccuracies that had become embedded in their performance for decades. He also tries to clear up some mistaken attributions and sources, making a scholarly case for the attribution to Tommaso Giordani. Nevertheless, the Schirmer book is still the most commonly used edition, and singers and voice teachers alike are fond of the “wrong” versions for aesthetic and pedological reasons.
The collection of Twenty-Four Italian Songs & Arias, a mainstay in vocal pedagogy for 80 years, is known as the “voice teacher’s bible” because each song has features that help a young singer build their classical vocal technique. None of the songs have outrageously virtuosic demands, and most stay within a modest vocal range. However, they teach young singers how to navigate different vocal registers, dynamics, and articulations with appealing melodies in the pure vowels of Italian that are so conducive to singing. Besides “Caro mio ben,” other popular songs from the collection include Claudio Monteverdi’s “Lascatemi morire,” Antonio Caldara’s “Sebben crudele,” Giulio Caccini’s “Amarilli mia bella,” and Christoph Gluck’s “O del mio dolce ardor.”
As a child, Beyoncé studied with classically trained tenor David Lee Brewer for 11 years. It comes as no surprise, then, that Beyoncé would be intimately familiar with “Caro mio ben.” She is just one artist of many to record the song and certainly not the first pop singer to try their hand at classical music or opera (see Aretha Franklin’s rendition of "Nessun Dorma"). But it’s what she does with the song that makes it interesting. Beyoncé transforms the expressive descending melody from major to minor, heightening the emotion of the text, which talks about the pain one feels when apart from one’s love. Its context as a bridge within an otherwise icy song (“If you cross me, I’m just like my father / I am colder than Titanic water”) reveals the narrator’s vulnerability. After a few lines of the Italian song (the melody treated more liberally than Parisotti), Beyoncé breaks into a haunting, wordless vocalise, heightening the ardency of the ballad.
Regardless of one's opinions on Beyoncé or personal tastes, I think it’s great that she nods to classical music as one of her numerous influences. Although some will try to gatekeep the genre by criticizing her nonoperatic vocal technique or imperfect Italian diction, doing so only further isolates classical music from the mainstream and makes it even more inaccessible—and thus endangered. If some young listener hears Beyoncé singing this strange old song in Italian and decides to take up voice lessons because of it, perhaps this will open up a whole new world of music to them they might never have encountered before.
