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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 August 2009
One difficulty in understanding the poetic texts of Trecento madrigals is that the language they use is often that of allegories and symbols, which requires a key for deciphering their true meaning. It is widely accepted, based on the interpretation of birds as heraldic symbols, that the madrigal Aquil'altera (Proud eagle) by Jacopo da Bologna was written either for a wedding or for a coronation ceremony. In this essay, however, I show that Aquila's content and literary style echo ideas and images that were circulating in the literature of the time, and especially in bestiaries and bestiary-inspired Italian poetry. Since these sources were well known to every educated person of the time, we may assume that its symbolic content, which is actually a praise of the human intellect, would have been understood by listeners and readers. This madrigal in turn provides a stimulus for tracing its ideas in other musical compositions of the Trecento, the madrigals Musica son by Francesco Landini and Se premio di virtù by Bartolino da Padova. These compositions are examined in the context of a specific cultural phenomenon in Italy of this period, namely, tenzoni, or correspondence in poetic forms – a practice that was the natural domain of the phenomenon we know as intertextuality.
1 A. Ziino, ‘Rime per musica e danza’, Storia della letteratura italiana: Il Trecento (Rome and Salerno, 1995), ii, pp. 455–530, at p. 487.
2 This madrigal is transmitted in the following musical sources: FP, fols. 91v–92r; Sq, fols. 8v–9r; SL, fols. 48v–49r; Pit, fols. 2v–3r; Reina, fols. 2v–3r. Examples 1 and 2 are based on the edition by W. Thomas Marrocco, Italian Secular Music by Magister Piero, Giovanni da Firenze and Jacopo da Bologna (Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, 6; Monaco, 1967), p. 80.
3 Interestingly, Carducci has discerned in this madrigal, and even more in another one, Sovran uccello sei by Donato da Firenze, no little irony with regard to the presumed addressee, namely the Emperor Charles IV, ‘the eagle that lost its feathers’: ‘L'aquila imperiale era omai un trist'uccello che avea perduto le penne maestre’; G. Carducci, Musica e poesia nel mondo elegante del secolo XIV (Bologna, 1943), ix, p. 381.
4 The Music of Fourteenth-Century Italy, ed. N. Pirrotta (Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae, 8; [Rome], 1963), iv, p. ii.
5 G. Thibault, ‘Emblèmes et devises des Visconti dans les oeuvres musicales du Trecento’, L'Ars nova italiana del Trecento, III (Certaldo, 1970), pp. 131–60. Prior to this work, Bianca Beccherini had suggested a number of Viscontean devices within the Trecento musical poetry in ‘Le insegne viscontee e i testi poetici dell'Ars Nova’, in Liber Amicorum Charles van den Borren (Antwerp, 1964), pp. 17–25.
6 P. Memelsdorff, ‘La “tibia” di Apollo, i modelli di Jacopo e l'eloquenza landiniana’, in A. Delfino (ed.), Col dolce suon che da te piove: Studi su Francesco Landini e la musica del suo tempo. In memoria di Nino Pirrotta (Florence, 1999), pp. 241–57.
7 O. Huck, ‘Music for Luchino, Bernabò and Gian Galeazzo Visconti’, in S. Dieckmann, O. Huck, S. Rotter-Broman and A. Scotti (eds.), Kontinuität und Transformation in der italienischen Vokalmusik zwischen Due- und Quattrocento (Musica Mensurabilis, 3; Hildesheim, Zurich and New York, 2007), pp. 247–58.
8 ‘Quel est le personage qui porte dans ses armes, à la fois, “l'aigle” et “l'oiseau de Dieu”, c'est-à-dire la colomba, la “Tortorella”, “la tortora bianca”?’ (G. Thibault, ‘Emblèmes et devises des Visconti’, p. 138).
9 Pedro Memelsdorff describes it as follows: ‘Il testo potrebbe collaborare a svelare le intenzioni di Jacopo. Se, come sembra, l'occasione della committenza fu il matrimonio di Gian Galeazzo Visconti ed Isabella Valois nel 1360, e se quindi l'aquila in questione fosse quella “viscontea”, maritata qui alla colomba Valois (“uccel di Dio”), allora possono aggiungersi alle ricerche di Pirrotta, Gallo, Thibault e Ambroso alcune riflessioni in più. Mentre dell'aquila viscontea viene cantata l'altezza reale, ad Isabella spetta la virtù principesca; la “creatura gentile” altro non sarebbe, poi, che l'essere (“mitologico”) fusione delle loro stirpi, e la sua collocazione in cielo (“salire in alto e rimirare il sole”) altro non descriverebbe che la nuova posizione della colomba Valois, posta verticalmente sul fondo azzurro, appunto a “rimirare” quel sole e soprattutto quell'unico raggio di sole “singularmente suo” dello stemma matrimoniale; quello relativo cioè al motto che il Petrarca scrisse per l'occasione: “a bon droit”. È al motto petrarchesco che ci sembra alluda la colomba di Jacopo, descritta appunto quale insegna di giustizia’ (P. Memelsdorff, ‘La “tibia” di Apollo’, pp. 244–6).
10 To be sure, such poetry did exist, and we have incontestable examples of it, both in musical and non-musical poetry. For instance, the madrigals by Bartolino da Padova and Niccolò da Perugia composed on the same poetic text, La fiera testa, contain the motto of the Milanese ruler Bernabò Visconti, Soffrir m'estoit, and Bartolino da Padova's La douce cere contains the motto ‘Lialmant sans dottier’; see N. Goldine, ‘Fra Bartolino da Padova, musicien de Court’, Acta Musicologica, 34 (1962), pp. 142–55 and P. Petrobelli, ‘Some Dates for Bartolino da Padova’, in H. Powers (ed.), Studies in Music History: Essays for Oliver Strunk (Princeton, 1968), pp. 85–112. See also E. Arnrich, ‘Offene Fragen zu La fiera testa von Bartolino da Padua’, in Dieckmann et al. (eds.), Kontinuität und Transformation, pp. 273–9. Thibault lists some indisputable examples of this kind from the non-musical repertory as well, among them the poem La canzone morale fatta per la divisa del Conte di Virtù by Francesco di Vannozzo (G. Thibault, ‘Emblèmes et devises des Visconti’, p. 142). Interestingly, the citation of mottos is a frequent phenomenon in the musical poetry of the ars subtilior, namely the music of the end of the fourteenth century that flourished mainly in the French milieu, although some composers of Italian origin also engaged in this art. For more information see the following works by Y. Plumley: ‘Citation and Allusion in the Late Ars Nova: The Case of Esperance and En Attendant Songs’, Early Music History, 18 (1999), pp. 287–363; ‘An ‘Episode in the South’? Ars subtilior and the Patronage of the French Princes’, Early Music History, 22 (2003), pp. 103–68.
11 For example, regarding the content of the caccia Nel bosco senza foglie by Giovanni da Firenze, which tells of a hunter who, while pursuing a partridge, suddenly saw a white hare, Agostino Ziino and Marco Gozzi state that ‘in this case, too, the use of heraldic symbols is evident (hare and partridge), but the metaphor probably relates to wedding’ (‘The Mischiati Fragment: A New Source of Italian Trecento Music at Reggio Emilia’, in Dieckmann et al. (eds.), Kontinuität und Transformation, pp. 281–305, at pp. 287–8).
12 There are many studies on heraldry, mostly, however, regarding the noble military hierarchy in the English and French environments. A number of works by L. A. J. R. Houwen can be cited in this connection, e.g. ‘A Fifteenth-Century French Heraldic Bestiary’, Zeitschrift fur Romanische philologie, 108 (1992), pp. 460–514; ‘Animal Parallelism in Medieval Literature and the Bestiaries: A Preliminary Investigation’, Neophilologus, 78 (1994), pp. 483–96; and ‘Lions without Villainy: Moralization in a Heraldic Bestiary’, in G. Caie, R. J. Lyall, S. Mapstone and K. Simson (eds.), European Sun (East Linton, 2000), pp. 249–66. These works, however, discuss the Anglo-Norman practice of later periods, and there is no research in this field referring to the Italian milieu, especially that of the fourteenth century.
13 ‘The triple madrigal Aquila altera, undoubtedly a late work on grounds of style, refers either to the coronation in Milan of Charles IV in 1355 or, more likely, to the marriage of Gian Galeazzo Visconti and Isabella of Valois in 1360’ (K. von Fischer and G. D'Agostino, ‘Jacopo da Bologna’, in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn. (London, 2001) (hereafter New Grove II), xii, pp. 737–40, at p. 738).
14 Apart from general studies on this topic, two more specific books on medieval music and poetry are worth mentioning: M. Bent and A. Wathey (eds.), Fauvel Studies: Allegory, Chronicle, Music, and Image in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS Français 146 (Oxford, 1998), and S. Clark and E. E. Leach (eds.), Citation and Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Musical Culture: Learning from the Learned (Essays in Honour of Margaret Bent) (Woodbridge, 2005).
15 Plumley, ‘Citation and Allusion in the Late Ars Nova’; ‘Intertextuality in the Fourteenth-Century Chanson’, Music & Letters, 84 (2003), pp. 354–77.
16 Plumley, ‘Intertextuality in the Fourteenth-Century Chanson’, p. 356.
17 ‘intertestualità come arte allusiva, ossia come ripresa consapevole di parole o immagini adoperate in un testo preesistente che è … sufficientemente noto alla comunità dei lettori alla quale il nuovo testo citante si dirige’; C. Giunta, Versi a un destinatario (Bologna, 2002), p. 31.
18 ‘I testi non sono mai veramente quello che sembrano: esiste una chiave nascosta … accessibile all'interprete così come al pubblico del tempo – che, se ben adoperata, permette di capire di più, di penetrare nel suo autentico significato un'opera creduta trasparente e “ingenua”. Ciò che occorre per arrivare a questa piena comprensione dell'opera, è far luce sui rapporti che intercorrono tra essa e altri testi, altra letteratura’ (ibid., p. 34).
19 See D. Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Meaning, Ideology (Cambridge, 1995).
20 On the bestiary families see F. McCulloch, Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries (Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 33; Chapel Hill, NC, 1962); and W. B. Clark, A Medieval Book of Beasts: The Second-Family Bestiary. Commentary, Art, Text and Translation (Woodbridge, 2006).
21 Vernacular editions of bestiaries date from the beginning of the twelfth century. The oldest known French bestiary is one written in rhymes by Philippe de Thaon, shortly after 1121. Its text is closely related to the Physiologus. During the next hundred years, a number of French books on animals, both rhymed (Gervais, Guillaume le Clerc, Richard de Fournival) and in prose (Pierre de Beauvais, Guillaume le Clerc) appeared. For the French bestiaries see McCulloch, Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries, pp. 45–69. Willene Clark, who has studied and edited a number of bestiaries, observes that ‘while the Latin bestiary decreased in popularity, vernacular bestiaries continued to flourish into the later Middle Ages, probably with considerable or even predominantly secular patronage’; Medieval Book of Birds: Hugh of Fouilloy's Aviarium (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies; Binghamton, NY, 1992), p. 23.
22 Among the Latin bestiaries popular in Italy are the Physiologus and the Book of Birds, or Aviarium, by Hugh of Fouilloy (Hugo de Folieto), written about 1152. Beginning in the second half of the thirteenth century, a number of Italian translations of bestiaries appeared: for example, De Proprietatibus Rerum (c. 1240), a large encyclopedic opus that includes chapters on animals as well, by Bartholomaeus Anglicus (fl. c. 1220–40), translated by Vivaldo del Belcalzer, notary and councillor of Mantua, in 1309. De Proprietatibus Rerum served as a source for the bestiaries of the so-called fourth family, the smallest group of bestiaries (McCulloch, Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries, p. 39).
23 ‘in Italia, il genere sopravvive dunque, in primo luogo, proprio evolvendo in bestiario edificante: vale a dire adeguandosi alle esigenze di una nuova classe emergente, che si dimostra interessata non tanto a questioni teologiche o dottrinarie, quanto all'illustrazione di insegnamenti di morale pratica, di consigli su come conquistare la vita eterna, di norme di comportamento’; Bestiari medioevali, ed. L. Morini (Turin, 1996), p. xx. The so-called Bestiario toscano, or, more correctly, Libro della natura degli animali, an original Italian bestiary datable to the end of the thirteenth century, was also a popular reading book, as sixteen surviving manuscripts show. Luigina Morini observes that the Libro della natura delli animali was evidently compiled in northern Italy, but it exists in two versions, one Tuscan, the other from the Veneto (Bestiari medioevali, p. 427). Although this bestiary is quite close to the Physiologus and to the Bestiaire d'amour by Richard de Fournival (1201– c. 1260), it contains its author's own original interpolations within the text.
24 See the chapter on bestiaries and their influence on the poetry of Chiaro Davanzati in Chiaro Davanzati: Rime, ed. A. Menichetti (Commissione di opere inedite o rare, 126; Bologna, 1965), pp. xlv–lxi.
25 See Morini, Bestiari medioevali, pp. 489 ff.
26 ‘Questo increscioso evento alimentò a tal punto l'immaginario collectivo che Cecco divenne, in breve tempo, uno degli scienzati-maghi più prestigiosi di ogni tempo’; Cecco d'Ascoli, L'Acerba [Acerba etas], ed. M. Albertazzi (Trento, 2002), p. iii.
27 For further information on Brunetto Latini see B. Ceva, Brunetto Latini: L'uomo e l'opera (Milan and Naples, 1965), and J. Bolton Holloway, Twice-Told Tale: Brunetto Latino and Dante Alighieri (New York, 1993).
28 ‘One late Venetian manuscript ascribed itself in its text to Bono Giamboni and so consequently do the later printed editions, but not the earliest ones … Scholars are now convinced that Tesoro is Brunetto Latini's own work and this is borne out by a study of the manuscripts themselves. Interestingly, Brunetto Latini and Bono Giamboni were colleagues in Florence, the one a Guelf notary and Chancellor, the other a Ghibelline judge’; J. Bolton Holloway, Brunetto Latini: An Analytic Bibliography (London, 1986), p. 26.
29 See the list of manuscripts containing the Italian version of Tresor, ibid., pp. 26–30.
30 Il Tesoro di Brunetto Latini volgarizzato da Bono Giamboni, ed. L. Gaiter (Bologna, 1877), ii, pp. 145–6.
31 Brunetto Latini, The Book of the Treasure (Li Livres dou Tresor), ed. and trans. P. Barrette and S. Baldwin (New York and London, 1993), p. 111. In the last line I have changed ‘strange’ to ‘alien’. Some bestiaries stress the unworthiness of the chicks, others (including Latini) their illegitimacy.
32 As given by Giuseppe Corsi in Poesie musicali del Trecento (Bologna, 1970), p. 29.
33 My translation. ‘Altera’ can also mean ‘haughty, stately, lofty’. These verses are quite cryptic, so that an adequate translation is hardly feasible, and in some points only an interpretation or comment may be proposed. Aldo Menichetti linked the expression ‘in su la vetta dell'alta mente’ to a similar one, ‘il càssar de la mente’ (càssero is the highest point of a fortress or castle, the keep), also used metaphorically by Guido Cavalcanti in his sonnet addressed to Dante, ‘Vedeste, al mio parere, onne valore’. On this expression see Roberto Crespo, ‘Il “casser de la mente” cavalcantiano e l'“arx mentis” della tradizione mediolatina’, Quaderni di semantica, 1 (1980), pp. 135–41. The line ‘tu hai principalmente chiara gloria’ in FP is ‘tu hai principalmente chara gloria’, that is, ‘you desire glory above all’, since the expression ‘aver caro’ means ‘to desire’. ‘Ombra’ in the last line of the ritornello ‘Là vidi l'ombra’ has several meanings in the Trecento poetry. The Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, for example gives also ‘Manifestazione, parvenza o apparenza tenue, vaga, che non corrisponde alla realtà sostanziale … illusione, finzione, simulazione, inganno, falsità’ (‘Tenuous or vague manifestation or appearance, not corresponding the true reality … illusion, feigning, simulation, deceit, falsity’) (Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, ed. S. Battaglia (Turin), xi, p. 911). Here ‘ombra’ appears to connote ‘imitation, likeness, fiction’ as opposed to the true thing, the essence. The word ‘vidi’, ‘I saw’ or ‘I have seen’ (first person, past tense) contradicts the style of the poem, written in the second person, present tense. Corsi notes that in the non-musical manuscrit Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS II.II.61 this line reads ‘vedi’ (you see), and, he continues, ‘gli altri mss. [portano] “vidi” che sta per “vedi”’ (‘the other manuscripts [give] “vidi” instead of “vedi”’) (Poesie musicali del Trecento, p. 29). I am grateful to Prof. Aldo Menichetti for his help with this text and translation.
34 Memelsdorff, ‘La “tibia” di Apollo’, p. 244 n.
35 That Dante knew Brunetto's treatise follows from his own words in the Divine Comedy, Inferno, xv. 119, in which he mentions il Tesoro during his meeting with Brunetto's shadow: ‘sieti raccomandato il mio Tesoro / nel qual io vivo ancora, e più non cheggio’. The affinity between Dante's language and that of Brunetto permits us to assume the direct influence of Brunetto's writing: ‘E dura di guardare verso il sole sì fissamente, chè suoi occhi non muove niente.’
36 Memelsdorff, ‘La “tibia” di Apollo’, pp. 244–5.
37 Thibault proposed an interesting association between the ‘giustizia’ of the bird of God, that is, the dove, and the stemma of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, which depicts a dove on the background of sun rays and the motto A bon droit; Thibault, ‘Emblèmes et devises des Visconti’, pp. 142 and 158.
38 W. Clark, ‘The Animal Chapters in the St Petersburg Tresor’, in Li Livres dou Tresor: Facsimile of St Petersburg MS Fr. Ev. III. No 4 (Barcelona, 2000), ii, pp. 137–70, at p. 142.
39 Apparently it was a rare group in Italy, because there is only one surviving Italian-produced manuscript of the second family bestiary, from around 1220: Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vatican, MS lat. 2770 (Clark, A Medieval Book of Beasts, 251). Brunetto, however, could have been familiar with this bestiary group during his time in France. In Clark's edition of the bestiaries of the second family (based on London, British Library, Add. MS 11283) we read: ‘Asseritur quoque quod pullos suos radiis solis obiciat, et in medio aeris ungue suspendat. Ac si quis repercusso solis lumine intrepedam oculorum aciem inoffenso intuendi vigore servaverit, is probatur quod veritatem nature demonstravit. Qui vero lumina sua radio solis inflexerit, quasi degener et indignus tanto patre reicitur, nec estimatur educatione dignus, qui fuit indignus susceptione. Non ergo cum acerbitate nature, sed iudicii integritate condempnat. Nec quasi suum abdicat, sed quasi alienum recusat’ (‘And it is claimed that <the eagle> exposes its chicks to the rays of the sun, and suspends them by a claw in mid-air. Thus, if any <chick> vigorously maintains a calm focus of vision, a steady gaze at the light cast by the sun, it is judged to have demonstrated the reality of its <aquiline> nature. But the one that turns its eyes from the sun's rays, is rejected as degenerate and unworthy of such a father, nor is the one that was unworthy in the test deemed worthy of education. Thus, <the eagle> condemns not with a severity of nature, but with a soundness of judgment. And he does not renounce his own <chick>, but rejects it as an alien <species>) (Clark, A Medieval Book of Beasts, pp. 166–7).
40 Morini, Bestiari medioevali, p. 458.
41 Ibid., p. 510.
42 Cecco's bestiary (Book 3, chs. 1–56) was based mainly on De Proprietatibus Rerum by Bartholomaeus Anglicus, but also contains Cecco's own observations on animals and moralising conclusions. See F. Zambon, ‘Gli animali simbolici dell'Acerba’, Medioevo romanzo, 1 (1974), pp. 61–85.
43 Morini, Bestiari medioevali, pp. 576–7. See also Zambon, ‘Gli animali simbolici dell'Acerba’, pp. 78–9.
44 Cf. Cecco d'Ascoli, L'Acerba [Acerba etas], ed. Albertazzi. Unfortunately, there are no page indications in the main corpus of this edition.
45 See above, n. 33.
46 Stinson and Carsaniga, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Jacopo da Bologna, Giovanni da Firenze (The Music of the Fourteenth Century, vol. 1). Move Records MD 3091, Melbourne, 1987.
47 Ziino and Gozzi, ‘The Mischiati Fragment’, p. 289.
48 See the study by E. E. Leach, Sung Birds: Music, Poetry, and Nature in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca and London, 2007).
49 Cf. Chiaro Davanzati: Rime, ed. Menichetti, p. 385.
50 On the origin of this fable and its role in Italian literature of the Due- and Trecento see K. McKenzie, ‘A Sonnet Ascribed to Chiaro Davanzati and its Place in Fable Literature’, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America (PMLA), 13 (1898), pp. 205–20, and A. Cassel, ‘The Crow in the Fable and the Corbaccio: A Suggestion for the Title’, Modern Language Notes, 85 (the Italian Issue) (1970), pp. 83–91.
51 Giunta observes that the metaphor of the crow dressed in peacock feathers is found in the sonnet Tu se' cornacchia by Giovanni Quirini (1285–1333), where it apparently symbolises a plagiarist. (C. Giunta, Versi a un destinatario, p. 51 n.)
52 Interestingly enough, in several of his compositions Jacopo returns to the issue of authenticity versus imitation, which has to be avoided by all means, as in the above-cited madrigal Io me son un, which also contains the ‘crow in peacock's feathers’ allegory: ‘De l'altrui fronde mai non chezo ombra’ (‘I never seek for shadow under the foliage of another’). The same allusion may be seen in his appeal in the madrigal Tanto che siate: ‘ma pensate che siete…. Ne volate in alto con altrui ale’ (‘you all, think, who you are, … do not fly up with the other's wings’).
53 I do not intend to present a comprehensive analysis of the music here, because this has been done already by other musicologists, for example, by D. Baumann (Die dreistimmige italienische Lied-Satztechnik im Trecento (Collection d'études musicologiques, 64; Baden-Baden, 1979), pp. 62 and 71–3) and Memelsdorff (‘La “tibia” di Apollo’, pp. 241–4).
54 The Music of Fourteenth-Century Italy, ed. N. Pirrotta, iv, p. ii.
55 Von Fischer and D'Agostino, ‘Jacopo da Bologna’, p. 738.
56 Huck, ‘Music for Luchino, Bernabò and Gian Galeazzo Visconti’, p. 251 n.
57 Ibid. As Memelsdorff rightly observes, the final section of Aquila's ritornello with its verto/chiuso ending is quite enigmatic. It is present in the FP, Pit and Reina, but is absent in Sq and in Fa, where the ritornello ends with only the verto. Moreover, there is not another poetic line which might have been adapted to the repeated music of the ritornello, had it been sung twice. See more in Memelsdorff, ‘La “tibia” di Apollo’, p. 243 n.
58 Huck, ‘Music for Luchino, Bernabò and Gian Galeazzo Visconti’, p. 251 n.
59 For the date of this source, see E. Abramov-van Rijk, ‘Evidence for a Revised Dating of the Anonymous Fourteenth-Century Italian Treatise Capitulum de vocibus applicatis verbis’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 16 (2007), pp. 19–30, where the evidence is presented in the form of a citation that clearly permits the dating the Capitulum later than 1332, definitely linking it to Antonio da Tempo's Summa artis ritmici vulgaris dictaminis (1332).
60 Not many French motets, however, have text for all three voices; more common is the version with the two upper voices texted, while the tenor has no text.
61 See M. Bent, ‘The Fourteenth-Century Italian Motet’, in L'Europa e la musica del Trecento (Congresso IV; Certaldo, 1984), in L'Ars nova italiana del Trecento VI (Certaldo, 1992), pp. 85–125.
62 Cf. G. Corsi, Poesie musicali del Trecento (Bologna, 1970), p. 42. See also Leach, Sung Birds, in which the textual and musical analysis of Jacopo's Oselletto selvaggio is discussed on pp. 84–90, and the analysis of Jacopo's caccia on the same poetic text is on pp. 178–80.
63 See S. Debenedetti, ‘Un trattatello del secolo XIV sopra la poesia musicale’, Studi medievali, 2 (1906–7), pp. 57–82; N. Pirrotta, ‘Una arcaica descrizione trecentesca del Madrigale’, in Festschrift Heinrich Besseler (Leipzig, 1961), pp. 155–61; T. Burkard and O. Huck, ‘Voces applicatae verbis: Ein musikologischer und poetologischer Traktat aus dem 14. Jahrhundert’, Acta Musicologica, 74 (2002), pp. 1–34; and Abramov-van Rijk, ‘Evidence for a Revised Dating’.
64 For the quotation and translation of the motet section and of the initial phrase of the following caccia section, see also Bent: ‘The Fourteenth-Century Italian Motet’, pp. 105–6.
65 Cf. ibid.
66 ‘Other features of the caccia most easily recognizable in the motet are the accompanimental, bass-like character of the tenor, which is never based on chant, and the effect of canonic techniques (extended canon in the caccia, canonic unison imitations in the motet), which tend to foster precisely the kind of “tonal stability” just mentioned. Other surface features, such as imitation, declamation, clichés and melodic interplay, are clearly related to madrigal idioms. Just as caccia techniques were used in madrigal and ballata settings, so they left their mark on the motet’ (ibid., p. 104).
67 ‘True imitation was so uncommon as to be negligible. In the 14th century, too, imitation in the upper voices is of no significance’ (E. H. Sanders and P. M. Lefferts, ‘Motet. §1 Middle Ages. France, Ars Nova’, in New Grove II, xvii, pp. 199–201, at p. 201).
68 Sandra Dieckmann and Oliver Huck call this particular type of words semisdruccioli and provide an interesting treatment of the question of verses that include semisdruccioli words, that is, which end with syllables containing unstressed i as -io, -ii, -ia, -ie. Dieckmann and Huck, ‘Versi sdruccioli e versi tronchi nella poesia e musica del Trecento’, in Stilistica e Metrica Italiana, 7 (2007), pp. 1–31.
69 See more in E. Abramov-van Rijk, Parlar cantando: The Practice of Reciting Verses in Italy from 1300 to 1600 (Bern, 2009), in section 6.1.1, ‘The tenth syllable and the final melisma of the musical phrase’.
70 There is, however, an interesting discrepancy between the manuscripts concerning the last two syllables of the word ‘vittoria’. While in the codices FP, Reina and Pit the syllables are written separately under the two different notes (in FP and Pit the syllable -ri- is put under the second c♯ and -a under the note d, and in the Reina Codex the syllable -ri- is placed under the group of three notes a–b–c(♯)), in Sq both syllables are put under the final note d. In two other instances of sdruccioli in the two first lines of the tercet Uccel di Dio, the texting of the two last unstressed syllables is separate in all four relevant manuscripts. See the comparative transcriptions of the Aquil'altera in Die mehrfach überlieferten Kompositionen des frühen Trecento, ed. O. Huck and S. Dieckmann (Musica Mensurabilis, 2; Hildesheim, Zurich and New York, 2007), ii, p. 164.
71 There is also another polytextual composition by Landini – the three-voice ballata Perchè di novo sdegno. It consists of two different ballatas on similar topics, one of which is divided between the superius and the contratenor, and the other, of a different metric structure, placed in the tenor. See the analysis of the textual structure of this ballata in G. Capovilla, ‘Note sulla tecnica della ballata trecentesca’, in L'Ars Nova Italiana del Trecento, 4 (Certaldo, 1978), pp. 107–47, at pp. 128–9.
72 ‘The three-voice madrigals exhibit a fusion of Italian and French techniques of composition. Musica son is a triple-text madrigal, perhaps modelled on Jacopo da Bologna's Aquila altera’ (von Fischer and D'Agostino, ‘Landini, Francesco’, New Grove II, xiv, p. 215). ‘Oltre a topos testuale di Oselletto, Musica son di Landini deve però a Jacopo anche la tritestualità, presa certamente da Aquila, da cui sembra provenire anche quell'imitazione di frammenti melodici che caratterizza la fine della strofa’ (Memelsdorff, ‘La “tibia” di Apollo’, p. 248).
73 This middle voice of both madrigals, Aquila and Musica son, is labelled ‘contra’ (contratenor) in FP, fols. 92r and fol. 90r respectively.
74 Baumann, Die dreistimmige italienische Lied-Satztechnik, p. 37, and type 1.2 in the table on p. 119.
75 ‘Nur in drei Madrigales des Typus (1) kommen Quint-Octavklänge als Schlußkadenzen vor …: in Jacobus Aquil – Creatura – Uccel Y1, in Landinis Musica – Già – Ciascun X (beides sind kunstvolle, dreitextige Werke!), sowie in Landinis kanonischem Madrigal De! Dimmi X und Y’ (ibid., p. 62).
76 For more on the technique of musical composition and the structure of the verses in Landini's Musica son see D. Baumann, ‘Landinis Madrigal Musica son – ein kritisches Werk für Kenner’, in Festschrift Klaus-Jürgen Sachs (Hildesheim; forthcoming). I am grateful for her permission to read this paper before publication.
77 Example 3 is based on The Works of Francesco Landini, ed. Leo Schrade (Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, 4; Monaco, 1958), p. 213.
78 The ritornelli are different: they consist of only one line in Aquila, while in the Musica son they consist of two lines. See also n. 57 on verto/chiuso.
79 There are other madrigals in the Italian musical and poetic repertory of the fourteenth century in which the composers and poets expressed their regrets at the decline of artistic standards in their time. One of the most cited examples is Jacopo da Bologna's madrigal Oselletto selvaggio. However, the interpretations of Landini's criticism of the low state of the musical art are equivocal. Jehoash Hirshberg understands it as a somewhat conservative lamentation of the already aged composer against new tendencies in music: ‘[Landini's] criticism of certain new styles as expressed in his Musica son could have been directed against Ars subtilior compositions of the 1380's’; J. Hirshberg, ‘Aspects of Individual Style, Local Style, and Period Style in Landini's Music’, in Delfino (ed.), Col dolce suon che da te piove, pp. 197–221, at p. 221). Virginia Newes, however, sees in it a decline of the educational level: ‘Musica son inveighs against people who pretend to write music without a proper education in the liberal arts’ (V. Newes, ‘Landini's Madrigal De, dinmi tu: A Canonic Experiment in the French manner?’, ibid., pp. 223–33, at p. 233).
80 The poem is cited from Corsi, Poesie musicali del Trecento, pp. 129–31.
81 Cf. J. Stinson, G. Carsaniga and J. Griffiths, I am Music: Works by Francesco Landini (c 1325–1397) (The Music of the Fourteenth Century, 3). Move Records MD 3053, Melbourne, 1997, p. 10.
82 K. von Fischer, ‘Language and Music in 14th-Century Italy: On the Question of an Early Renaissance’, in Essays in Musicology, ed. T. S. Evans (New York, 1986), pp. 76–92, at p. 80.
83 C. Giunta, Due saggi sulla tenzone (Rome and Padua, 2002) and Versi a un destinatario (Bologna, 2002).
84 ‘Una parte considerevole della poesia italiana del Medioevo è poesia di corrispondenza’ (Giunta, Versi a un destinatario, p. 86) and ‘la poesia assolve a una funzione sociale o latamente culturale, non lirica’ (ibid., p. 87). Many examples of this practice can be cited: Dante's sonnets exchanged with Guido Cavalcanti, Cecco Angiolieri, Farese Donati and many others, Petrarch's poetic letters to various addressees, etc.
85 F. Sacchetti, Il libro delle rime, ed. F. Brambilla Ageno (Florence, 1990), p. 373.
86 ‘Saper impostare una tenzone e saper rispondere ad un sonetto missivo; a possedere queste minime competenze non erano, allora, soltanto quelli che oggi accetteremmo di definire poeti…. L'ingresso di questi dilettanti nel campo della poesia per un verso determina un incremento del numero delle tenzoni (cui partecipano anche coloro che mai o quasi mai scrivono testi monologici), per l'altro fa sì che il loro contenuto sia sempre più spesso occasionale e personale (tenzone-carteggio), e sempre più di rado teorico-oggettivo (tenzone quaestio)’ (Giunta, Versi a un destinatario, p. 218).
87 ‘testi dialogici … sono accomunati da un analogo atteggiamento nei confronti della poesia …: perorativo, ostensivo, orientato alla discussione e al ragionamento e non alla confessione, e insomma … non-lirico’ (ibid., p. 64).
88 ‘Le tenzoni sono, a loro modo, macrotesti realizzati a quattro mani: in questo caso, però la collaborazione non è sincronica ma si svolge in progresso di tempo’ (ibid., p. 153).
89 ‘prima della pubblicazione i testi venissero fatti circolare all'interno di una ristretta cerchia di amici letterati’ (ibid., p. 164). Giunta explores a problem of identification of parts of the ‘scattered tenzoni’, and explains why in many cases they have been split by scribes (Due saggi sulla tenzone, pp. 79–86).
90 Da Tempo presents them as follows: ‘Porro in hac arte notandum est quod si alicui mittitur aliquis sonetus vel rithimus, debet respondere illi soneto vel rithimo per easdem consonantias, et non ponere in responsione illa verba rithimata, idest dictiones rithimorum, quae sunt in soneto vel rithimo mittentis; nisi alium haberent significatum, … quia tunc bene posset idem verbum repeti per diversa significata; vel nisi tanta esset inopia illius rithimi quod similes consonantias respondens invenire non posset, vel aliis iustis causis. Nam tunc bene posset repeti verbum consonantiae mittentis in rithimo respondentis’ (LXII, Qualiter debeat responderi sonetis vet rithimis) (‘Further on with regard to this art, it must be noted that when somebody receives a sonnet or other poem, he must reply to this sonnet or poem in the same rhymes. But he must not put into his response the same rhymed words that were in the sonnet or poem sent to him, unless these words have a different meaning in his response, since it would be fine to repeat the same words which bear another meaning, or unless it would be extremely necessary to repeat a rhyme, when a respondent is not able to find out another word with the same rhyme, and in other just cases. But it is fine to repeat a rhyme of the missive in the poem of response’) (Antonio da Tempo, Summa artis rithimici vulgaris dictaminis, ed. R. Andrews (Collezione di opere inedite o rare, 136; Bologna, 1977), p. 86). For Gidino's excerpt see Gidino da Sommacampagna, De li rhitimi volgari, ed. C. Giuliari (repr. Bologna, 1968), pp. 169–70.
91 ‘E per questo che la mappa dei rapporti e delle influenze tra i poeti dovrebbe essere tracciata guardando soprattutto al contenuto dei testi, alle idee che vi vengono sviluppate’ (Giunta, Versi a un destinatario, p. 42).
92 Giunta, Due saggi sulla tenzone, p. 188.
93 Ibid., p. 24 and p. 189.
94 This madrigal is transmitted in Sq, fol. 113r; SL, fols. 33v–34r; and Reina, fol. 44r. Example 4 is based on the edition by W. Thomas Marrocco, Italian Secular Music: Bartolino da Padova, Egidius de Francia, Guilielmus de Francia, Don Paolo da Firenze (Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, 9; Monaco, 1975), p. 82.
95 Corsi, Poesie musicali del Trecento, pp. 243–4.
96 In Reina there is another two-line ritornello, which is absent in Sq. Giuseppe Corsi cites these additional lines: ‘perchè lei è lo frutto e la radice / di cotal sper'e con piacer felice’ (Corsi, Poesie musicali del Trecento, p. 244).
97 ‘[Jacopo's] works exerted a fundamental influence on the styles of both Landini and Bartolino da Padova, and with his allegorical madrigals he founded a new genre that was also cultivated by Bartolino and Johannes Ciconia’ (von Fischer and D'Agostino, ‘Jacopo da Bologna’, p. 739).
98 ‘The monophonic link passages between the lines of his madrigals, and the change in metre which occurs only in the ritornellos of the madrigals (and not always even there), provide evidence of this. It is also striking that Bartolino supplied text for both voices not only in the two-voice madrigals but also in the two-voice ballatas. The Italian tradition is emphasised by the avoidance of ouvert and clos endings in the ballatas and by the frequent extended melismas – not only in the madrigals – on the first and penultimate syllables of the line. The notation of his works is also strictly Italian. The three-voice pieces Non cor(r)er troppo, Per un verde boschetto and I bei sembianti conform partly with Jacopo's style with two upper voices set against a tenor part’ (K. von Fischer and G. D'Agostino, ‘Bartolino da Padova’, in New Grove II, ii, p. 821).
99 However, some of Bartolino's compositions show certain traits of French influence, even if the Italian manner still remains discernible in them: ‘Elsewhere they show influence from the French style in that countertenor and tenor provide a supporting duet for the upper voice (El no me giova, Sempre, donna, Alba colomba and La douce cere). In these last-mentioned pieces, in accordance with the Italian fashion, only the top voice and the tenor are texted’ (von Fischer and D'Agostino, ‘Bartolino da Padova’, p. 821). The mention of the lost ‘Rondel franceschi de fra Bartolino’ in the poem Sollazzo by Simone Prodenzani is intriguing in that it suggests Bartolino's interest in French music.
100 It is also probable that Bartolino was expressing not only his own opinion about this type of music: the almost complete absence of polytexual Italian musical compositions by other composers in the Trecento repertory is illuminating. In this regard, the three-voice caccia Cacciando per gustar di quel tesoro by Antonio Zacara da Teramo is worthy of mention as a unique polytextual composition, in which the two upper voices form a canon on the words of the first stanza, while the tenor has a different text, namely that of the second stanza ‘Ai cenci, ai toppo, ai vetro, ai ferro, ai rame rotto!’.
101 We have neither documentary or theoretical contemporary sources which would demonstrate that the written polyphonic madrigals were commissioned for performance during celebrations of various kinds in the Italian Trecento, something which we know with certainty regarding the written polyphonic music in the next century, namely the Quattrocento. Our notion about the performance of the Trecento written music is based mainly on the literary sources of the fifteenth century: Novelle by Giovanni Sercambi (early fifteenth century), Liber Saporecti by Simone Prodenzani (about 1415) and Paradiso degli Alberti by Giovanni Gherardi da Prato (about 1425). See Ziino, ‘Rime per musica e danza’, pp. 500–2. John Nádas, however, strongly suggests that such evidence should be approached with great caution (‘A Cautious Reading of Simone Prodenzani's Il Saporetto’, Recercare (In memoria di Nino Pirrotta), 10 (1998), pp. 23–38, at p. 25). Moreover, they are too late to allow us to refer them directly to mid-Trecento performance practice. At the same time, as Pirrotta points out, ‘né il Boccaccio, né il Sacchetti, che pure ebbero contatti con polifonisti e ne ebbero intonati alcuni testi poetici, mai descrissero in alcuna delle lor pur numerose novelle esecuzioni di musiche polifoniche, esperienza estranea alla maggior parte dei loro lettori’ (‘Neither Boccacco nor Sacchetti, though they had contacts with composers of polyphonic music and set to music some of their poetic texts, ever made a single mention of performances of polyphonic music in their numerous novellas, an experience that was alien to the majority of their readers’) (N. Pirrotta, ‘Franciscus peregre canens’, in Delfino (ed.), Col dolce suon che da te piove, pp. 7–13, at p. 8).
102 To recall, the wedding context has been suggested only because of the interpretation of some words and expressions of the madrigal Aquila as a hint at a dove, that is, a second protagonist.
103 Notwithstanding the anonymity of most poetic texts of the Trecento musical repertory, there is a consensus among musicologists with regard to the authorship of these three madrigals. All three poems are considered to have been written by the composers themselves. Thus, Musica son is ‘to be construed autobiographically’, as Kurt von Fischer and Gianluca d'Agostino suggest (‘Landini, Francesco’, p. 215). Dorothea Baumann makes a similar supposition regarding the poetic text of the madrigal Se premio virtù: ‘Autorschaft Bartolinos [ist] vermutet’ (‘Bartolino da Padova’, in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG), 2nd edn., Personenteil, ii (Kassel, 1999), cols. 406–9, at col. 408).