Long 1983 - Francesco Landini and the Florentine Cultural Elite

Francesco Landini and the Florentine Cultural liteAuthor(s): Michael P. LongSource: Early Music History, Vol. 3 (1983), pp. 83-99Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/853738 .Accessed: 26/05/2014 22:23

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MICHAEL P. LONG

FRANCESCO LANDINI AND THE FLORENTINE CULTURAL ELITE*

The French' orientation of Florentine music in the second half of the Trecento, particularly with regard to the practice and theory of notation, has been recognised by music historians since the surveys of medieval sources and style made byJohannes Wolf and Friedrich Ludwig at the beginning of this century.2 The evidence for the 'contenance frangaise' that has been most frequently cited includes texting procedures in three-voice compositions,3 structural features (such as the appearance of verto and chiuso endings in the polyphonic ballata), textual gallicisms and the presence of French compositions in Florentine musical manuscripts. The network of transmission which accounts for the appearance of these features in Italian music and musical sources has remained a matter for speculation. The fusion of French and Florentine traits of style in the last quarter of the fourteenth century has traditionally been viewed, at least in part,

* This paper was originally presented in shorter form at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society in Boston in November 1981. Research for this study was carried out under a grant from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music, Inc. I am grateful to the staffs of the Archivio di Stato and the Biblioteca Riccardiana, Florence, for their kind assistance. 1 Here, and throughout this paper, I use the term 'French' in the broad cultural sense to

include not only the French Kingdom but also the papal dominion of Avignon. 2 See, for example, J. Wolf, 'Florenz in der Musikgeschichte des 14. Jahrhunderts',

Sammelbiinde der Internationalen Musik-Gesellschaft, 3 (1901/2), p. 605, and Wolf, Geschichte der Mensuralnotation von 1250-1460, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1904; repr. 1965), I, pp. 304ff. See also F. Ludwig, 'Die mehrstimmige Musik des 14. Jahrhunderts', Sammelbiinde der Internationalen Musik-Gesellschaft, 4 (1902/3), pp. 60-1; and idem, ed., Guillaume de Machaut: Musikalische Werke, 4 vols. (Leipzig, 1926-9; repr. 1954), 11, p. 28. The seminal modern study is K. von Fischer, Studien zur italienischen Musik des Trecento undfriihen Quattrocento (Berne, 1956), esp. pp. 111-13.

3 For a convincing alternative view of so-called 'French' texting practices in one Trecento source, see J. Nidas, 'The Structure of MS Panciatichi 26 and the Transmission of Trecento Polyphony', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 34 (1981), pp. 422-6.

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Michael P. Long as a result of presumed personal contacts between French and Italian composers. The changing face of musical style does not, however, reflect a totally independent musical process; style is a function of the tastes and demands of an audience, as well as of the artistic personalities of specific composers. Florentine receptivity to French stylistic influences was determined by a number of factors, not the least important of which was the nature of the audience for music.

Musical life in the fourteenth-century Florentine republic was somewhat more fragmented than that of other contemporary centres because of the absence of a central court or dynastic residence and of an aristocratic establishment for patronage. The organisation of Florentine society and government was based on a foundation of middle-class enterprise. Artisans and financiers served equally important functions in the political and economic machinery of their patria, and were themselves acutely aware of that fact. The political equality of free citizens which was the theoretical basis of the Florentine republic did not, however, preclude the stratification of the Florentine citizenry according to common economic interests or circumstances. In contrast to the nobilities of agrarian societies, or non-industrialised urban societies such as fourteenth-century Venice, for whom aristocracy and political power were legitimised by the intangible and originally non-secular concept of an inherited or divine right, the Florentine elite was supported by a system of practical values which were directly related to Florence's highly urbanised and industrial environment.4 Although the criteria for social 'honour' included office-holding, profitable marriages and family tradition, the basis for inclusion in the 'honour elite' was financial status derived from commercial activities such as banking or cloth-manufacturing.5 The honour elite, or uomini di stato,

4 For a discussion of the geographical factors contributing to Florence's industrial pre-eminence, see G. Brucker, Renaissance Florence (New York, 1969), pp. 2-3. On the social consequences of industrial growth in Florence, see D. Hay, The Italian Renaissance in its Historical Background (Cambridge, 1970), p. 89. An illuminating comparison of Trecento Florence with modern urban centres (e.g. New York and London) is provided by G. Salvemini, 'Firenze ai tempi di Dante', Studi in onore di Armando Sapori, 2 vols. (Milan, 1957), 1, pp. 470-1.

5 See L. Martines, The Social World of the Florentine Humanists (Princeton, 1963), p. 10, and R. Trexler, 'Charity and the Defense of Urban Elites in the Italian Communes', The Rich, the Well Born and the Powerful: Elites and Upper Classes in History, ed. F.Jaher (Urbana, 1973), pp. 64-5.

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Landini and the Florentine cultural 6lite

constituted the ranks from which were drawn representatives of civic as well as church authority. It was this rather extensive circle ofelite families, comparable in many ways to the urban elites of our own industrial era,6 that provided the base for support of the arts in Florence, whether privately (in their family residences) or officially (as agents of religious institutions or of the Signoria).7 The primarily non-ceremonial character of the upper-middle class's private patronage of polyphonic musical performance was no doubt related to the republican orientation of artistic theory in the period. The nature of Florentine patronage underwent a significant change in the first decades of the fifteenth century, when writers such as Leon Battista Alberti and Matteo Palmieri provided theoretical justifica- tion for artistic patronage aimed at personal or familial aggrandisement.8 Artistic support shifted at that time from urban, haut-bourgeois consumerism to a more traditional and symbolically orientated aristocratic patronage structure, as the bourgeois elite took on the role and appearance of nobility.

Members of these clans without political responsibilities (women and lesser ecclesiastics) were also a vital part of the artistic life of the Trecento Florentine dlite. The Florentine convents and churches (chief among them San Lorenzo, Santa Triniti, Santa Felicitat and Santo Spirito), which served as centres for all forms of artistic activity, including music,9 housed numerous younger representatives of the families which constituted the culturally aware haute-bourgeoisie. The urban convents of Tuscany were able to provide an increasingly comfortable lifestyle for their members after mid-century, when feelings of Christian guilt and penance inspired 6 Cf. the description of urban elites in the industrial era in F. Jaher, 'Style and Status: High

Society in Late Nineteenth-century New York', The Rich, the Well Born and the Powerful, p. 259.

7 Descriptions of private musical performances are found in several contemporary literary works. See H. Gutman, 'Der Decamerone des Boccaccio als musikgeschichtliche Quelle', Zeitschriftfur Musikwissenschaft, 11 (1928/9), pp. 397-401, and Giovanni Gherardi da Prato, Il Paradiso degli Alberti, ed. A. Lanza (Rome, 1975), esp. pp. 164-70. 'Official' support of the arts often took the form of recommendations for appointments; an example is Coluccio Salutati's letter on behalf of Francesco Landini (cited in note 48, below). 8 F. W. Kent, Household and Lineage in Renaissance Florence (Princeton, 1977), pp. 284-5.

9 See F. A. Gallo, 'Lorenzo Masini e Francesco degli Organi in S. Lorenzo', Studi Musicali, 4 (1975), pp. 57-64; F. D'Accone, 'Music and Musicians at the Florentine Monastery of Santa TrinitY, 1360-1363', Quadrivium, 12 (1971), pp. 131-52; and idem, 'Giovanni Mazzuoli: a Late Representative of the Italian Ars Nova', L'ars nova italiana del trecento: Convegni di studio 1961-1967, ed. F. A. Gallo (Certaldo, 1968), pp. 23-38. Concerning Santo Spirito, see below, pp. 94-5.

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by the Black Death motivated a wave of legacies and bequests to religious institutions which became, in the words of the city council of Siena, 'immensely enriched and indeed fattened'.'0

Musicians are known to have been offered hospitality or employment at the residences of the Alberti and Adimari - families representing quite different gradations of status within the Florentine banking dlite." The Alberti firm was the most powerful banking-house in western Europe for most of the Trecento, serving as papal bankers for much of the latter half of the century."2 The Adimari seem, on the basis of their tax returns, to have been only 'moderately prosperous'.'" Both families, however, were representatives of the same social circle of dealers and financiers, the 'elite corps of the Florentine business community'.'4 The international scope of their business dealings necessitated continuous and intimate contact with foreign centres of culture, especially Paris, Bruges and

Avignon.'5 Commercial ventures often required that entire branches of Florentine bourgeois families set up house for extended periods in these northern centres.'6 An aspiring young business man who intended to follow a career in international commerce was required to undertake lengthy training which usually included years of residence abroad."7 A knowledge of French became an indispensable asset to the Florentine businessman. Cultural historians have viewed this fact of economic life as one of the prime reasons for the

great influx of gallicisms into the Tuscan vernacular in the second half of the Trecento."8 It was probably also responsible in part for the

ready acceptance of musical gallicisms into the contemporary Florentine ballata style.

10o W. Bowsky, 'The Impact of the Black Death upon Sienese Government and Society', Speculum, 39 (1964), p. 16. 11 D'Accone, 'Music and Musicians', pp. 145 n. 53, 147; also the evidence of Prato, II Paradiso.

12 R. de Roover, 'The Story of the Alberti Company of Florence, 1302-1348, as Revealed in its Account Books', Business History Review, 32 (1958), p. 15.

13 G. Brucker, Florentine Politics and Society, 1343-1378 (Princeton, 1962), pp. 34-5. 14 Brucker, Renaissance Florence, p. 68. 15 Y. Renouard, 'Affaires et culture a Florence au xlve et au xve siecle',

tudes d'histoire

midilvale, 2 vols. (Paris, 1968), I, p. 484. 16 Y. Renouard, 'Le compagnie commerciali fiorentine del Trecento', ltudes, i, pp. 519-26, includes a list of the Alberti houses throughout Trecento Europe. See also the biographies

of Diamante and Altobianco degli Alberti in L. Passerini, Gli Alberti di Firenze (Florence, 1870), pp. 79, 89.

17 Brucker, Renaissance Florence, p. 69. 18 Renouard, 'Affaires et culture', p. 487, and Brucker, Renaissance Florence, p. 70.

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By around 1370, the polyphonic ballata had replaced the madrigal as the most popular musical genre in Florence. Ballata texts were more often vocative than narrative, often addressed to the beloved or to Amor himself. Self-revelation had replaced the highly stylised narrative associated with the madrigal. The poet's assessment of his emotional state (or, occasionally, of some external situation) had become the subject matter for the entire poem. Accordingly, the musical settings may be seen as an attempt to conform more to the mood or meaning than to the structure of the poetry. Textual poignancy is reflected musically by the careful introduction of dissonances, suspensions, leaps and appoggiaturas.19 Ballata settings exhibit very few mensuration changes, a feature which was virtually obligatory in the sectional madrigal.20

The striking increase in the subjective content of Florentine artistic endeavour in the second half of the Trecento has been remarked by historians of art and literature, who have emphasised the abandonment of impersonal and abstract medieval conventions in favour of more personal, self-orientated modes of expression.2' The shift from the 'poetic' to the 'empirical' 'I' (from the medieval poet as Everyman, the observer, to the poet as individual engaged in self-analysis) has been cited as the most telling manifestation in poetry of this change in artistic temperament.22 It has been suggested that it is not by chance that a sudden turn towards the subjective in the arts occurred in Florence specifically and not, for instance, in Visconti intellectual circles. Artistic expression in Florence was supported by the cosmopolitan bourgeois elite, the members of which were generally 'self-made men' with little or no university training, and thus with no ideological commitment to time- honoured modes of medieval literary and poetic rhetoric and form associated with the courses of study offered at Padua and Bologna.23 19 See N. Pirrotta, 'Ballata', Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. F. Blume, 16 vols.

(Kassel, 1949-79), I, col. 1162. 20 Antonio da Tempo, in Summa artis rithimici vulgaris dictaminis (1332), ed. R. Andrews

(Bologna, 1977), p. 74, dictates that the sonus (musical setting) of a madrigal should be altered at the ritornello, along with the rhyme. That this alternation was intended to be primarily metrical is borne out by the number of madrigals which exhibit a metre change at the end of the terzetti.

21 See F. Antal, Florentine Painting and its Social Background (London, 1947); also L. Spitzer, 'Note on the Poetic and the Empirical "I" in Medieval Authors', Traditio, 4 (1946), pp. 414-22, and U. Schulz-Buschhaus, Das Madrigal (Bad Homburg, 1969), pp. 14-27. 22 Spitzer, 'Note on the Poetic and the Empirical "I"', pp. 416-17. 23 Renouard, 'Affaires et culture', p. 495.

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One of the finest representative pieces of the 'Franco-Florentine' style originating in the latter years of the Trecento is the three-voice ballata by Francesco Landini Contemplar le gran cose.24 On stylistic grounds, the work could not have been composed much before 1380. The disposition of the voice-parts, and various rhythmic and contrapuntal details, are characteristic of the three-voice settings composed by Landini in the last decades of his career.25 Although from a purely musical point of view this is an outstanding work, its historical interest lies in its textual content: 'It is good to meditate upon the great works of God, but it is unnecessary to explain them. Why spend time in subtle reasoning, searching for something which is ultimately impossible to know? Simple faith is the answer; faith which lifts us from sadness, and then we are content.'26 The text, as Kurt von Fischer and others have noted,27 offers a simple exposition of one of the basic tenets of the English Franciscan logical philosopher William of Ockham. Ockham died c. 1350, leaving a collection of philosophical works characterised by novelty and subtlety.28 Because of the highly individual nature of Ockham's thought, his writings have been a source of scholarly disputes for six centuries. Still, the underlying principle of his system, as set forth in his discussion of logical attempts to demonstrate the unicity of God,29 is clear. According to Ockham: 'The articles of the Christian faith ... should be accepted as such. They cannot be proved by reason; nor can they be made the basis of knowledge. Science and theology ... are essentially different and must not be confused.'3o Landini's ballata expresses in simple poetic form his fundamentally Ockham- ist view of the world. In the light of all existing testimony to Landini's talents and temperaments, it is not at all surprising to find

24 The Works ofFrancesco Landini, ed. L. Schrade, Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century 4 (Monaco, 1958-9), p. 177.

25 K. von Fischer, 'Ein Versuch zur Chronologie von Landinis Werken', Musica Disciplina, 20 (1966), p. 42. 26 'Contemplar le gran cose c'e onesto/Di chi tutto ghoverna;/Ma cerchar le ragion non c'' richiesto./Che metter tempo e sottigliar la mente/In voler cerchar quel che c'e negato./ Che quanto lo 'ntelletto e piui possente/Nelle ragion piui mancha d'ongni lato./Ma vengnamo a rimedio che a te dato/Che toglie il viver mesto,/Del creder puro e stian contentia questo' (text after Schrade, The Works of Francesco Laudini, p. 177). 27 Von Fischer, 'Ein Versuch', p. 37.

28 A good introduction to Ockham's works and bibliography is provided by G. Leff, William of Ockham: The Metamorphosis of Scholastic Discourse (Manchester, 1975).

29 P. Boehner, ed., Ockham: Philosophical Writings (Edinburgh, 1957), pp. 125-6. 30 C. Stephenson, Medieval History (New York, 1943), p. 602.

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examples of his work that reflect his strongly intellectual cast of mind. Contemporary references to the composer rarely fail to mention this aspect of his personality.3'

The most important witness to Landini's intellectual profile is his lengthy invective written in Latin verse against detractors of Ockham, addressed to Antonio da Vado and preserved in only one source, Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS 688.32 The source was copied, according to the scribe's own notations, in the first years of the 1380s at the papal court in Avignon by a Florentine cleric, Johannes de Empoli, who was at that time a member of the retinue of the Florentine Cardinal Piero Corsini.33 The manuscript is primarily an anthology of historical and moralistic texts; at least one is by Corsini himself, and many display the characteristic literary and academic subtlety associated with the upper echelons of ecclesiastical society in the 1370s and 1380s.34 Landini's poem, which utilises the popular medieval formal structure of the dream-vision, describes how the spirit of Ockham appears to the sleeping form, but wakeful mind, of the composer.35 Ockham complains of an ignorant man who has been delivering inflammatory addresses to the uneducated masses of Florence,36 and describes to Landini how this 'savage dog'

3' See the citations in A. Lanza, Polemiche e berte letterarie nella Firenze del primo quattrocento (Rome, 1971), pp. 39ff. 32 Fols. 132r-135v. The best edition of the poem is in Lanza, Polemiche, pp. 233-8. An English

translation by David Blank is included in my dissertation, 'Musical Tastes in Fourteenth-century Italy: Notational Styles, Scholarly Traditions, and Historical Circumstances' (Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 1981), pp. 136-41. Excerpts in the present text are drawn from Blank's translation; line-numbers refer to Lanza's edition of the Latin text.

33 The scribe identifies himself on fol. 49: 'Johannes de Empoli clericum florentine diecesis et cubicularium Reverendissimi in Christo patris et Domini mei Domini Petri de Corsinis de florentia Portuensis et s. Rufine episcopi S. Romane ecclesie Cardinalis'. Corsini continued to be referred to in Avignon as the Cardinal of Florence even after the events of 1378 described below. See, for instance, A. Meier, 'Ein Leihregister aus der Bibliothek des letzten Avignonese Papstes Benedikt xim', Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia, 20 (1966), p. 314.

34 An inventory (though incomplete and often incorrect) is given in P. Boehner, 'Ein Gedicht auf die Logik Ockhams', Franziskanische Studien, 26 (1939), pp. 79-80. Some of the lesser-known authors whose works are included in the manuscript are discussed in L. Mehus, Historia litterariafiorentina (Florence, 1769), p. 207, and A. Coville, La vie intellectuelle dans les domaines d'Anjou-Provence de 1380 ci 1435 (Paris, 1941), pp. 369ff. Among the more widely circulated works included in the collection are excerpts from the Speculum historiale of Vincent of Beauvais and Petrarch's Africa. The latter inspired considerable interest among Italian intellectuals in the second half of the Trecento, particularly in the period immediately following Petrarch's death in 1374. See G. Billanovich, Petrarca letterato (Rome, 1947), pp. 359ff.

35 11. 1-12, 28-30. 36 11. 60ff.

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has attacked the basis of his philosophy, Dialectic, which 'rules all the arts, and without which ... no art can be known perfectly'.37 Ockham denounces this man who 'hates logicians like he hates death, and calls them tricksters and argumentative sophists'.38 Even worse than his ignorant attacks, which are after all based on little more than misunderstanding and jealousy of Ockham's subtlety, is the fellow's championship of classical authors such as Cicero and Seneca, whom 'he counts to his own credit, for he cites divine books, recites them, though they are not understood by the rabble or by himself: he runs through all your books, Marcus, and calls you his very own Cicero, and with your name frequently cited, he names now this book and now that ... This backward layman ... even names Seneca his father.'39 At the end of the invective, Ockham is alerted to the approach of daylight by the sound of the artisans on the streets, and the 'venerable shadow' disappears into the air.40

Landini's invective was long considered to have been aimed in general at the growing circle of self-styled, neo-classical humanists whose vociferous attacks on the philosophical barbarisms and linguistic infelicities of the northern dialecticians were becoming an increasingly dominant force in Florentine intellectual life and culture in the last quarter of the Trecento.41 The poem was viewed as yet another manifestation of the age-old theme of the battle between the ancients and the moderns, in this case medieval scholasticism and its associated philosophies versus renaissance humanism (or proto-humanism). Giuseppe Saitta first suggested that Landini's attack (as voiced by Ockham's spirit) seemed to be directed toward one specific individual: he proposed that the object of Landini's scorn, the man who 'seeks to resound through the uneducated masses of the rabble and philosophize among the effeminate crowds'42 might have been Luigi Marsili, prior of the Augustinian convent of Santo Spirito in the 1380s.43 Saitta's suggestion is based on the fact that Marsili was indeed known and criticised by his

contemporaries for his enthusiastic discussions of theology and literature with youthful representatives of the Florentine middle

37 11. 69-73. 38 1. 118. 39 11. 134-9, 151-2. 40 11. 174-80. 41 The literary manifestations of early humanist polemic are discussed in detail in H. Baron,

The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance (Princeton, 1966). 42 Lanza, Polemiche, 11. 100-2. 43 G. Saitta, II pensiero italiano nell'Umanesimo e nel Rinascimento, 3 vols. (Bologna, 1949), I, pp.

143ff.

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class, a group unprepared (in the eyes of the academics) for such esoteric conversations. It was this tendency to bring theology to the masses (along with his championship of the cause of nationalisation of the Italian Church) that kept Marsili from being appointed Bishop of Florence.44 Unfortunately, a lack of more concrete evidence made a certain identification impossible. Nothing is yet known of Marsili's activities between 1378 and 1382 (the period during which the poem was most probably written).45 Furthermore, none of Marsili's writings has survived except for two moralistic commentaries and a few letters.46

Scholars since Saitta have attempted to identify the humanist rabble-rouser portrayed by Landini: suggestions have included the merchant-turned-scholar Nicol6 Niccoli and the humanist chancel- lor Coluccio Salutati.47 Both of these men may be ruled out, however, on the basis of textual details and historical considerations.48 An approach to the problem is suggested by the contents of some letters written by Marsili from Paris, where he spent a good portion of the 1370s engaged in a frustrating attempt to earn his doctorate. These letters include some bitter criticisms of the lifestyle associated with the Avignon curia, criticisms which appear to be modelled largely on Petrarch's so-called Liber sine nomine.49 It is clear that, from the time of their first encounter at Padua, Petrarch and Marsili had become great friends. They shared a similarly violent distaste for the rational philosophy of the 'northern barbarians'. In fact, Petrarch considered

44 See Martines, The Social World, pp. 307-8. 45 U. Mariani, II Petrarca e gli Agostiniani (Rome, 1946), p. 83. 46 For a list of manuscript sources, see Mariani, II Petrarca, pp. 92-6. 47 Cesare Vasoli suggested both as possible objects of Landini's invective, in 'Polemiche

occamiste', Rinascimento, 3 (1953), p. 126. Lanza, Polemiche, pp. 48ff, argued for Nic- coli.

48 Salutati appears to have been a friend and supporter of Landini. In 1375 he recommended Landini as an organist to Cardinal Piero Corsini (the letter of recommendation is published in A. Wesselofsky, ed., II Paradiso degli Alberti, 2 vols., Bologna, 1867, I, pp. 323-6). Niccoli was born in 1364, and thus would have been in his teens at the time the poem was written. His earliest academic training was undertaken (in part under Marsili's tutelage) only after his retirement from the family wool business around 1385, following the death of his father. Consequently, Niccoli must be considered an unlikely candidate for the demagogue described by Landini. On Niccoli's career, see Martines, The Social World, p. 160, and Vespasiano da Bisticci, Le vite degli uomini illustri, ed. A. Greco, 2 vols. (Florence, 1970), 11, p. 225.

49 F. Petrarch, Sine nomine: Lettere polemiche e politiche, ed. U. Dotti (Bari, 1974). See, for example, Marsili's letter to Guido del Palagio 'al tempo della guerra tra i fiorentini et la chiesa', in Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS 1080, fols. 36v-39r.

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Marsili to be his spiritual heir, ideological successor and literary executor.50

In a letter 'contra dyaleticos' written around 1350, Petrarch made his first literary assault on the English school of dialectical logicians.51 With the passing of time his criticisms of dialectical rhetoric became increasingly pointed. In a letter of 1364 to Boccaccio, Petrarch wrote: 'Lately a school of dialecticians has arisen, not so much ignorant as mad. Like a black army of ants, they have emerged from the recesses of some old rotten oak, devastating all the fields of sound doctrine.'52

Like the object of Landini's Ockhamist diatribe, Petrarch had a passionate attachment to the writings of Cicero. In 1374, Petrarch reminisced that as a youth he 'wanted nothing but books by Cicero'.53 The most striking aspect of Petrarch's frequent literary references to the classical poet is their personal tone: in the 1374 letter he referred to 'my friend Cicero'.54 Twenty years earlier he had addressed an epistle to the object of his literary admiration which commenced: 'Franciscus sends his greetings to Cicero', and concluded with 'Farewell my Cicero'.55 This is more than coin- cidentally similar to Landini's description of the man who speaks of 'his very own Cicero'.

Petrarch also referred often to the works of Seneca, although I have found no evidence that he 'names Seneca his father'. It is not at all unlikely that he did, whether in writing or speaking, for in 1360 he wrote that he 'loved Cicero as if he were my father'.56 The image of Seneca as father is also implied in Petrarch's discussion of imitatio and his humanist approach to what has been termed 'the construction of his own literary personality' based on classical models.57

In the light of Marsili's known admiration of Petrarch it seems reasonable to assume that his political, theological and literary

50 Mariani, II Petrarca, pp. 66-92. See also Hay, The Italian Renaissance, pp. 120-1. 51 F. Petrarch, Lefamiliari, ed. V. Rossi, 4 vols. (Florence, 1933-42), I, pp. 35-8. On the

dating of this letter, see E. Wilkins, Petrarch's Correspondence, Medioevo e Umanesimo 3 (Padua, 1960), p. 50.

52 Epistolae rerum senilium, v 2: 28 August 1364; trans. M. Bishop, Letters from Petrarch (Bloomington, Indiana, 1966), p. 246.

53 Bishop, trans., Letters, p. 295. 54 Ibid., p. 298. 55 Ibid., pp. 206-7. 56 Ibid., p. 191. 57 N. Struever, The Language of History in the Renaissance: Rhetoric and Historical Consciousness in

Florentine Humanism (Princeton, 1970), pp. 146-7.

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rhetoric would have been borrowed from or modelled upon the writings and speeches of his mentor. This being the case, the suggestion that Marsili represents the object of Landini's invective takes on added weight.58 The value of the Ockham poem as a documentary witness to one aspect of Landini's biography is significant. The composer considered himself a representative of a venerable academic tradition, the same tradition which he upheld in the conservative, if not reactionary text of his polytextual polemical madrigal Musica son, in which Music complains of composers who ply their trade without the proper liberal-arts training.59 To contemporary Florentines, this medieval academic tradition was most clearly represented by the circle surrounding the papal curia in France.

The Avignon court had served as a residence for Cardinal Corsini and his retinue (which included the scribe of the unique source for Landini's poem) since 1378. In that year, a number of financially secure ecclesiastics, mostly members of bourgeois families with significant business interests in France, left Florence. The move was made in response to the Florentine government's attempts to bribe local priests to celebrate Mass illegally in public, in defiance of a papal interdict which had been in effect since 1376.60 Corsini, a member of one of the most conservative of the 6lite popolani families with strong ties to Avignon, defected to the French camp officially in September 1378, after the election of the French schismatic Pope Clement VII.61 After 1378, the politicised humanist element in Florence led by Salutati, Niccoli and (by 1382) Marsili, came to identify more strongly with Petrarch's earlier attacks on ecclesiastical scholasticism and the effetism of the Avignon curia. Landini's poem gave voice to the sentiments of the more conservative members

58 In the light of Petrarch's death in 1374, a dating of c. 1380-1 for Landini's poem (based on the biography of its intended recipient, Antonio da Vado, as well as its inclusion in a manuscript of the early 1380s) argues against the possibility raised in my dissertation that the poem may have been aimed at Petrarch himself. On Antonio da Vado's career in Florence, see F. Novati, ed., Salutati: Epistolario, 4 vols. (Rome, 1891-1911), 11, p. 52 n. 1. Lanza's objection that Marsili and Landini were friends on the basis of the evidence provided by Prato's II Paradiso may not be sustained, in view of the noted historical inaccuracies of that work. See Baron, The Crisis, esp. p. 90.

59 Schrade, ed., The Works of Francesco Landini, pp. 213-15. 60 R. Trexler, 'Economic, Political and Religious Effects of the Papal Interdict on Florence,

1376-1378' (Inaugural thesis, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitiit, Frankfurt-am- Main, 1964), pp. 147-8.

61 See G. Brucker, The Civil World of Early Renaissance Florence (Princeton, 1977), p. 117. 93


Michael P. Long of the haut-bourgeois power structure in Florence and of the Florentine expatriates and their French colleagues in Avignon.

The cosmopolitan ecclesiastical and bourgeois cultural 61ite was to some extent responsible for the lack of distinction between French and Florentine musical notation and theory in the 1380s and 1390s. The same manuscript which contains the Landini invective also transmits a musical treatise ascribed therein to Philippe de Vitry.62 Whether the attribution is valid is less important than the implication that Florentine musicians of the second half of the Trecento saw themselves as heirs of the French tradition of Franco, Vitry and Muris. Florentine treatises of this period often include references to Vitry or Muris as authorities.63 Marchettus de Padua, codifier of the school of notation associated with the Veneto and Romagna-Emilia, is rarely, if ever, cited.64 Theoretical and source evidence indicates that many details of the Marchettan notational system were never incorporated into the Florentine style. Atten- dance at the universities of Padua and Bologna, where Marchettus's teachings were no doubt integrated into the courses of musical study, was forbidden to fourteenth-century Florentine students by a city ordinance which aimed at increasing enrolments at their own faltering local institution.65 Ecclesiastics often sought their higher degrees in Paris. A number of well-to-do Florentines turned for academic training to the studium of the local Augustinian convent of Santo Spirito, which had increased in scope and reputation throughout the first half of the fourteenth century.66 By the last quarter of the century it had developed into a paradigm for the ideal humanist society, forming an urban counterpart to the bucolic Villa Paradiso of the Alberti family where the same intellectual circle met

62 Fol. 142r. De musica secundumfilippum de vitriaco, quoted in full in Long, 'Musical Tastes', pp. 223-5.

63 See especially the anonymous vernacular 'Notitia del valore delle note' in Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, MS Redi 71, fols. 1 3r24r. The citations of French theorists are discussed by Armen Carapetyan in his edition of the 'Notitia', Corpus Scriptorum de Musica 5 (Rome, 1957), pp. 27-8.

64 On the geographical boundaries of Marchettan notation, see Long, 'Musical Tastes', pp. 116-18.

65 Hay, The Italian Renaissance, p. 120, and G. Voigt, Die Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1893; repr. 1960), I, p. 340. See also G. Brucker, 'Florence and its University, 1348-1434', Action and Conviction in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Memory of E. H. Harbison, ed. T. K. Rabb and J. E. Seigel (Princeton, 1969), p. 234.

66 D. Gutierrez, 'La Biblioteca di Santo Spirito in Firenze nella meta del secolo xv', Analecta Augustiniana, 25 (1962), pp. 6-7, and R. Weiss, 'An English Augustinian in Late Fourteenth-century Florence', English Miscellany, 9 (1958), p. 18.

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to discuss politics, philosophy and the arts. The wordly friars of Santo Spirito participated actively in the political, spiritual and artistic life of Florence, functioning as 'a free academy . .. subject to no authority, independent of Church and University'.67 The Santo Spirito circle came to include such notables as Niccoli, Salutati, Marsili, Roberto Rossi, Martino da Signa and, peripherally, Petrarch and Boccaccio.68 Marsili and his followers served as ambassadors and political advisers for the Florentine republic.69

Fourteenth-century Augustinians, particularly those associated with wealthy or administratively important foundations, engaged in frequent international travel. Of the Italians residing in Avignon in the 1360s and 1370s, approximately 50% were Florentine, and among those the majority of clerics not directly connected with the curia were Augustinians.70 Many of the most important posi- tions in the pontifical household were traditionally assigned to Augustinians.71 In addition, the fratres eremitani were particularly active in cultural projects of the international ecclesiastical 6lite. Several of the foremost manuscript illuminators at the Avignon court were members of the large group of resident Augustinians.72

The role of the order in the musical activities at the papal court is documented by a motet which appears only in Chantilly, Mus6e Cond6, MS 564, a source which by the middle of the fifteenth century was in the possession of a branch of the Florentine Alberti family which had spent the first decades of that century in exile in Paris.73 67 H. Vonschott, Geistiges Leben im Augustinerorden am Ende des Mittelalters und zu Beginn der

Neuzeit (Berlin, 1915), p. 23. 68 Ibid., pp. 22-3. See also R. Arbesmann, Der Augustinereremitenorden und der Beginn der

humanistischen Bewegung, Cassiciacum 19 (Wiirzburg, 1965), pp. 73ff. 69 Marsili conducted embassies to Louis of Anjou and Charles of Durazzo in 1382 and 1383.

See Martines, The Social World, p. 307, and M. Becker, Florence in Transition, 2 vols. (Baltimore, 1967), II, p. 55.

70 B. Guillemain, La cour pontificale d'Avignon (1309-1376) (Paris, 1962), pp. 598-601. 71 The office of chamberlain, for instance, was typically held by an Augustinian. Ibid., p. 372. 72 P. Pansier, Histoire du livre et de l'imprimerie a Avignon du xive au xvie siecle, 2 vols. (Avignon,

1922), i, pp. 6-7, 22, 33-4. 73 One of the flyleaves bears an inscription referring to Francesco di Altobianco degli Alberti.

His father, Altobianco di Niccolo, was exiled from Florence in 1401 through the influence of his enemies in the powerful Albizzi faction. He eventually took up residence in Paris, where the family already had firm contacts. Altobianco's father Niccolo had taken part in diplomatic missions to the Avignon court during the 1350s and 1360s. Passerini, Gli Alberti, p. 89, and L. B. Alberti, Iprimi tre libri dellafamiglia, ed. R. Spongano (Florence, 1946), p. xxxv. A further piece of evidence linking the Chantilly Manuscript with Florentine circles is the number of works it shares with the Florentine source Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Panciatichi 26. See U. Giinther, 'Die Anwendung der Diminution in der Handschrift Chantilly 1047', Archiviir Musikwissenschaft, 17 (1960), p. 3.

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The motet, Alma polis religio, offers a catalogue of musical Augustinians, praising their piety and musical accomplishments.74 Most of those named are known to have been connected with the households of northern French cardinals or the Avignon curia.75 Included in this international roll-call of distinguished musicians are the 'Augustini de florencia', which testifies once again to the Florentine presence in cosmopolitan musical circles.

The role of the Augustinians as determinants of musical style in Florence in the second half of the fourteenth century has never been fully explored. Nino Pirrotta suggested that the Augustinian Guiglielmus de Francia, whose music appears in several Florentine sources, 'may have contributed to the strains of French influence that are easily perceptible in Landini's ... music'.76 He proposed that Guiglielmus might have been present in Florence at Santo Spirito in or around 1365, the approximate date of Sacchetti's autograph of the text for Guiglielmus's madrigal Le neve, el ghiaccio.77 The slim biographical data relating to Guiglielmus consists of attributions in musical sources which identify him as 'de Francia' or 'di Santo Spirito',78 the illumination in the Squarcialupi Codex in which he is portrayed in Augustinian garb with a master's beret79 and the rubric in Sacchetti's autograph which identifies him as 'Mag(ister) Guglielmus Pariginus frater romitanus'.80 Any attempt to augment this information is complicated by the loss of the Santo Spirito Memoriale for the period in question.8' The remaining documentary evidence is sparse, but a few tentative conclusions may be drawn on the basis of extant documents preserved in the Archivio di Stato in Florence.

The first mention of a French Guiglielmus at Santo Spirito occurs 74 U. Giinther, ed., The Motets of the Manuscripts Chantilly, Musie condi, 564 (olim 1047) and

Modena, Biblioteca estense, a. M. 5,24, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 39 (1965), pp. 40-5. The work is attributed to Egidius of Orleans, an Augustinian.

75 Ibid., pp. XLm-XLV. 76 N. Pirrotta, ed., The Music of Fourteenth-century Italy, v, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 8

(Rome, 1964), p. ii. 77 Ibid., pp. 28-9. 78 The attributions to Guiglielmus are: 'Frate guglielmo di santo spirito' (Panciatichi 26);

'M. frater guilelmus de francia' (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, MS Palat. 87, Squarcialupi Codex); 'Frate guiglielmo di francia' (Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, fonds ital. MS 568); and 'Fratte guiglielmo di santo spirito' (London, British Library, Add. MS 29987).

79 Fol01. 173v. 8o Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, MS Ashburnham 574, fol. 21V 81 Formerly Florence, Archivio di Stato, Conventi Soppressi, 122, 36.

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in a volume of contracts and testaments.82 The will of Andreas Raynerii de Buondelmontibus was witnessed by several residents of the convent in 1360, among them a 'frater Guglielmo de Narbona'.83 'Narbona' probably represents an Italianate form of Narbonne, near Avignon. An immediate identification with the musician is frustrated by Sacchetti's use of the qualifying 'Pariginus'. However, a list of Masters of the University of Paris from the year 1362 includes among the magistri provincie Parisiensis one 'Magistro Guillermo Pagesii, alias de Narbona, Parisiensi'.84 Guglielmo de Narbona and Guglielmus Pariginus may well, then, be the same man, the latter designation referring to his degree and not to his town of origin. The name 'Guilielmus de Francia' appears along with three other Augustinians from France in another list of witnesses originating at Santo Spirito in 1371.85 The scant documentary evidence, in conjunction with the existence of Guiglielmus's setting of Sacchetti's poem dating from the mid-1360s, strongly suggests that the French musician's activity in Florence fell largely within the decade of the 1360s, a crucial one for Florentine musical style.86

While the works of Guiglielmus as transmitted in Florentine manuscripts are examples of a French musician writing in a slightly gallicised Italian idiom, the body of works by ecclesiastical musicians emanating from the Avignon orbit contains illustrations of the inverse - Italian composers working within the framework of French musical genres, often with French texts. The primary source for this repertory is Modena, Biblioteca Estense, MS a.M.5,24 (fascicles 2-4).87 The early fascicles of the Modena manuscript were probably compiled during the papal residence in Bologna, from 82 Conventi Soppressi, 122, 76. 83 Conventi soppressi, 122, 76, fol. 14. 84 'Rotulus facultatis artium Parisiensum ad Urbanem V missus', ed. H. Denifle,

Chartularium universitatis Parisiensis, 4 vols. (Paris, 1889-91), in, p. 82. 85 Florence, Archivio di Stato, Museo Diplomatico, Pergamene di S. Spirito: 16June 1371.

No French Guiglielmus appears among the extant records of the convent after 1371, nor is Guiglielmus mentioned in the letters which Marsili sent to his friends from abroad in the years 1373-4. Those letters do include references to two of Guiglielmus's compatriots whose names appeared in the Pergamena of 1371, suggesting that Guiglielmus was no longer in residence at the time the letters were written. Marsili's name was included among those present in 1371, and he therefore must have been acquainted with the musician.

86 The period is marked by Landini's growing reputation as a composer, poet and organist, as well as by the incipient shift away from the madrigal and monophonic ballata of the Lorenzo Masini-Gherardello da Firenze generation.

87 U. Giinther, 'Das Manuskript Modena, Biblioteca Estense a. M. 5,24', Musica Disciplina, 24 (1970), pp. 17-67. Fascicles 1 and 5 are later interpolations.

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Michael P. Long

January 1410 to March 1411. The manuscript contains works which could have originated in as many as five centres (Avignon, Genoa, Milan, Padua and Bologna), but it clearly reflects the musical tastes and interests of the corps of musicians and aesthetes attached to the curia of the schismatic popes.88 The Italian Corrado of Pistoia is represented by two ballades in the Modena collection: the first, Se

doulz espour, bears an attribution to 'Fr. Corradus de Pistoria';89 the attribution of the second, Veri almipastoris (the text of which refers to the papal chapel), indicates that Corrado was a member of the Augustinian order.90 Ursula Giinther suggests that the composer is probably identifiable with the 'Curradus ser gualandi de bracilionis de pistorio' who was enrolled as a singer at the cathedral of Santa Reparata in Florence in 1410.91 The cathedral record does not designate this singer as an Augustinian. However, Giinther's identification may now be substantiated on the basis of a document bearing the date 1385 originating at Santo Spirito. Among the witnesses to the document is a 'Fr. Curradus ser gual(a)ndi de pistorio'.92 Corrado was present at Santo Spirito at the height of the controversy surrounding Luigi Marsili's attempts to nationalise the Italian Church and purge the studium of the barbarisms of dialectic, during which time 'divisions in the Augustinian convent were so intense ... that the Signoria was forced to solicit the intervention of the General of the Order'.93 In light of Corrado's taste for the international style and his probable residence at the papal court (suggested by his musical references to the papal choir), it may be conjectured that he formed a part of the same circle of artists and intellectuals which included Landini,Johannes de Empoli and Piero Corsini,94 and that his sympathies would have lain with the anti-Marsili 61itists.95 88 Ibid., p. 45. 89 Fol. 31v. 90 'Fr. Coradus de Pistorio ordinis herimitarum': fol. 36'. Concerning the text, see Giinther,

'Das Manuskript Modena ... a. M. 5,24', pp. 25-6. 91 Giinther cites a document published by Frank D'Accone in 'A Documentary History of

Music at the Florentine Cathedral and Baptistry during the Fifteenth Century' (Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1960), p. 76.

92 Florence, Archivio di Stato, Museo Diplomatico, Pergamene di S. Spirito: 11 January 1385. 93 Martines, The Social World, p. 308.

94 When Corsini died in 1405, his funeral ceremony was conducted at the Augustinian convent in Avignon, suggesting a further link between the conventual elite surrounding the pope and the Florentine ecclesiastical patriciate. See L. Passerini, Genealogia e storia dellafamiglia Corsini (Florence, 1858), p. 74.

95 The balance of power shifted in favour of Marsili's opponents, at least temporarily, after

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Whether or not Corrado or Guiglielmus are to be counted among the anonymous 'Augustini de florencia'96 referred to in Alma polis religio, it is certain that musical ties between the Augustinian convent of Santo Spirito and the Augustinians of Paris and Avignon existed throughout the last four decades of the Trecento, and that they constituted an important strand in the broader fabric of artistic interaction among the cultural dlites of those centres. Francesco Landini's demonstrated association with members of the same international elite illuminates his role not only as a spokesman for Florentine academic conservatism, but as a representative of international musical style in Florence in the same period.

University of Wisconsin at Madison

1388. Marsili's final bid for a bishop's chair was rejected, and an English Ockhamist lecturer was brought to Santo Spirito to teach logic and philosophy. See Martines, The Social World, p. 308, and Weiss, 'An English Augustinian', pp. 18-19.

96 Another name appearing in the list ofAugustinians residing at Santo Spirito in 1385 is that of a 'Fr.Johannes deJanua'. The Modena manuscript includes a virelai and a ballade by a 'Fr. Johannes Janua' (or 'J. de Janua'). Giinther, 'Das Manuskript Modena ... a. M. 5,24', p. 42, has speculated that the composer of these works may have been one of the two new singers bearing the name Johannes who enrolled in the papal chapel in 1405 (J. Burec and J. Desrame).Their surnames, however, appear to be French rather than Italian. The composer in question may have been the 'FraterJohannes' from Genoa who was, as the 1385 document indicates, Corrado's contemporary at the Florentine convent, a hypothesis which could explain their joint, anonymous citation in Alma polis religio.

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Article Contentsp. 83p. 84p. 85p. 86p. 87p. 88p. 89p. 90p. 91p. 92p. 93p. 94p. 95p. 96p. 97p. 98p. 99

Issue Table of ContentsEarly Music History, Vol. 3 (1983), pp. i-x+1-202Volume Information [pp. 175-202]Front Matter [pp. i-ix]The Venetian Privilege and Music-Printing in the Sixteenth Century [pp. 1-42]The Beneventan Apostrophus in South Italian Notation A. D. 1000-1100 [pp. 43-66]A Newly Discovered Trecento Fragment: Scribal Concordances in Late-Medieval Florentine Manuscripts [pp. 67-81]Francesco Landini and the Florentine Cultural lite [pp. 83-99]New Evidence for the Biographies of Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli [pp. 101-122]New Sources of English Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Polyphony [pp. 123-173]Back Matter

Documents

Long 1983 - Francesco Landini and the Florentine Cultural Elite