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John Nádas and Andreas Janke (eds.), The San Lorenzo Palimpsest: Florence, Archivio del Capitolo di San Lorenzo, Ms. 2211, vol. 1: Introductory Study; vol. 2: Multispectral Images, Ars Nova, n.s. 4 (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2016). xiii pp. + 123 fols (135 fols including blanks). €300. ISBN 978 88 7096 852 1. - Andreas Janke , Die Kompositionen von Giovanni Mazzuoli, Piero Mazzuoli und Ugolino da Orvieto im San-Lorenzo-Palimpsest (ASL 2211), Musica Mensurabilis 7. Hildesheim: Olms, 2016. xii + 225 pp. €58. ISBN 978 3 487 15435 0.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2017

MARGARET BENT
MARGARET BENT*
Affiliation:
[email protected]
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Plainsong & Medieval Music , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , October 2017 , pp. 186 - 198
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press, 2017 

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References

‡The original version of this review was published with an incorrect title. A notice detailing this has been published and the error rectified in the online version.

1 Schofield, Bertram, ‘A Newly Discovered 15th-century Manuscript of the English Chapel Royal – Part 1’, The Musical Quarterly, 32 (1946), 509–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; De Van, Guillaume, ‘A Recently Discovered Source of Early Fifteenth Century Polyphonic Music’, Musica disciplina, 2 (1948), 5–74 Google Scholar. The recent discovery of a manuscript of about fifty songs of later date was reported by David Burn at the Sheffield Med-Ren conference 2016: ‘The Aosta Chansonnier: A New Late Fifteenth-Century Song Source’.

2 A full description of the Campione volume as it now stands is still lacking. Two paper flyleaves at the front [i–ii] are followed by two parchment leaves designated (but not marked) A and B, then 109 parchment folios with arabic foliation, followed by an unreported paper gathering fols. 110–15, and two further paper flyleaves [iii–iv]. None of the paper leaves belonged to the music volume. It is reported (p. x) that the Capitolo of San Lorenzo plans to make available a full colour facsimile of the MS as it appears today. Although this may be of limited use to musicologists, it may offer some advantages for discerning the red colour of attributions, stave lines and foliation.

3 There is no overwriting on arabic fols. 8r–v, 24v, 33v, 79r–80v, 83r, 86r–v and 90r–109v, and very little on fols. [A] and [B] at the front of the volume.

4 D'Accone, Frank, ‘Una nuova fonte dell'ars nova italiana: il codice San Lorenzo, 2211’, Studi Musicali, 13 (1984), 3–31 Google Scholar.

5 D'Accone, Piero in, ‘Una nuova fonte’, Giovanni in Frank D'Accone, ‘Giovanni Mazzuoli, a Late Representative of the Italian Ars Nova’, in L'Ars nova italiana del Trecento, 2, ed. Alberto Gallo, F. (Certaldo, 1968), 23–38Google Scholar and idem, ‘A Documentary History of Music at the Florentine Cathedral and Baptistry during the Fifteenth Century’, PhD diss., Harvard University (1960).

6 Nádas, John, ‘Manuscript San Lorenzo 2211: Some Further Observations’, in L'Ars nova italiana del Trecento, 6, ed. Cattin, Giulio and Dalla Vecchia, Patrizia (Certaldo, 1992), 145–68Google Scholar. In ‘The Lucca Codex and MS San Lorenzo 2211: Native and Foreign Songs in Early Quattrocento Florence’, unpublished paper read at the Meeting of the American Musicological Society, 1989, Nádas refined some of the findings of his still unpublished 1984 paper and his 1985 dissertation, distributing a revised inventory. It was then still thought that gathering XVIII was devoted to Ugolino: see David Fallows in The New Grove Dictionary, s.v. Ugolino, and Michael Scott Cuthbert, ‘Trecento Fragments and Polyphony Beyond the Codex’, Ph.D. diss., Harvard University (2006). Only subsequently did Nádas identify several attributions to Salinis in that gathering.

7 John Nádas, ‘The Transmission of Trecento Secular Polyphony: Manuscript Production and Scribal Practices in Italy at the End of the Middle Ages’, Ph.D. diss., New York University (1985).

8 SLP I: 21 notes an error of roman foliation by one digit in part of gathering IX, referring to Janke 2016, 23–4; that this is indeed an error is corroborated by the present position of that intact gathering as fols. 21–30 of the manuscript in its present form.

9 Roman folio numbers are given here in arabic form (with ‘R’) for easier reference.

10 Most recently, Janke 2016, and Janke, Andreas and Nádas, John, ‘New Insights into the Florentine Transmission of the Songs of Antonio Zacara da Teramo’, Studi musicali, n.s. 6 (2015), 197–214 Google Scholar.

11 Nádas, in ‘The Transmission’, 460 and in ‘Manuscript San Lorenzo 2211’, 146, says ‘at least’ 190, but now drops this qualifier.

12 In the second half of gathering XIX extended to nine (Janke 2016, 8).

13 Kurt von Fischer implies that the composers are presented in chronological order in Sq, and that some (Giovanni Mazzuoli) were not copied or completed because they were still alive when the codex was compiled (in Alberto Gallo, F., Il Codice Squarcialupi. Ms. Mediceo Palatino 87 Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana (Florence, 1992), 143)Google Scholar, an argument weakened by Giovanni preceding Landini in SL.

14 Other manuscripts presenting this repertory, some with additions up to 1420 or later, include Rossi, Lo 29987, Reina, Lucca, Boverio and Faenza.

15 Madrigals and ballatas are mostly grouped together, that is, in generic order, but SL is inconsistent about further grouping by voice number. However, Giovanni's compositions are ordered first by genre and then by voice number (Janke 2016, 22).

16 Nádas, ‘Manuscript San Lorenzo 2211’, 151.

17 On these composers see Janke 2016, and Janke, Andreas, ‘Giovanni e Piero Mazzuoli. Due compositori fiorentini del tardo Trecento’, in Beyond 50 Years of Ars Nova Studies at Certaldo 1959–2009, L'Ars Nova italiana del Trecento 8, ed. Gozzi, Marco, Ziino, Agostino and Zimei, Francesco (Lucca, 2014), 241–53Google Scholar.

18 They include En la maison Dedalus in ‘normal’ layout; hitherto unique in the theory MS Berk 744, it is presented there as a circular labyrinth.

19 In Gallo, Il Codice Squarcialupi, 67.

20 Nádas, John and Ziino, Agostino, ‘Two Newly Discovered Leaves of the Lucca Codex’, Studi musicali, 34 (2005), 3–23 Google Scholar.

21 On caccia no. 174 the authors refer to Michele Epifani, ‘Una caccia inedita dal codice di S. Lorenzo: problemi e proposte esegetiche’, Il Saggiatore musicale (forthcoming).

22 On the motets in SL see Bent, Margaret, ‘Continuity and Transformation of Repertory and Transmission in Early 15th-Century Italy: The Two Cultures’, in Kontinuität und Transformation in der italienischen Vokalmusik zwischen Due- und Quattrocento, Musica mensurabilis 3, ed. Dieckmann, Sandra, Huck, Oliver, Rotter-Broman, Signe and Scotti, Alba (Hildesheim, 2007)Google Scholar, 225–46, at 225–9. Cuthbert's discovery was announced in his paper ‘Hidden in our Publications: New Concordances, Quotations, and Citations in Fourteenth-Century Music’, at the meeting of the American Musicological Society in Vancouver, 5 November 2016.

23 Bent, Margaret, ‘The Fourteenth-Century Italian Motet’, in L'Ars nova italiana del Trecento 6 (Certaldo, [1992]), 85–125 Google Scholar. The SL compiler may have thought of Apollinis in the same category, based on the version he had, as two more or less equal triplum parts (one an added optional extra) but lacking the essential motetus Zodiacum signis, an odd aberration; as presented the motet is not viable.

24 The only others are the isolated Cantano gli angiol lieti in Lo 29987 and the more recently discovered Perugia Cialini fragment, in Frammenti musicali del Trecento nell'incunabolo Inv. 15755 N.F. della Biblioteca del Dottorato dell'Università degli Studi di Perugia, ed. Biancamaria Brumana and Galliano Ciliberti (Florence, 2004). That fragment also includes a further concordance to Rex Karole.

25 D'Accone, Frank, ‘Music and Musicians at Santa Maria del Fiore in the Early Quattrocento’, in Scritti in onore di Luigi Ronga (Milan, 1973), 99–126 Google Scholar, at 106.

26 According to an inventory of 1466, Ugolino had left the cathedral a copy of his Declaratio and a large but incomplete music-book that he had compiled, apparently of his own compositions.

27 D'Accone, ‘A Documentary History’, D'Accone, ‘Giovanni Mazzuoli’, and Wilson, Blake, Music and Merchants: The Laudesi Companies of Republican Florence (Oxford, 1992)Google Scholar and elsewhere.

28 As a director of DIAMM at the time, I was present during the photography in 2001 and had access to the images, which enabled many of the identifications, and contain information not captured in the monochrome multispectrals. These images and efforts at enhancement were not generally available and are still not permitted on the DIAMM website, though they were used in studies including Huck, Oliver, Die Musik des frühen Trecento, Mensurabilis, Musica 1 (Hildesheim, 2005)Google Scholar and Huck, Oliver and Dieckmann, Sandra, eds., Die mehrfachen überlieferten Kompositionen des frühen Trecento. Übertragungen, Texte, Kommentare, Mensurabilis, Musica 2 (Hildesheim, 2007)Google Scholar.

29 A fuller account of the technical processes is given in Andreas Janke and Claire MacDonald, ‘Multispectral Imaging of the San Lorenzo Palimpsest (Florence, Archivio del Capitolo di San Lorenzo, Ms 2211)’, Manuscript Cultures 7, ed. Christian Brockmann et al. (2014), 113–24.

30 Adieu plaisir, no. 205, R179v–80 = 66v and 80 is according to Janke 2016 (pp. 31, 33, 51) the only piece with red coloration in SL. Most coloration, here and elsewhere, is for imperfection (not for sesquialtera, as Janke states; he describes sesquialtera correctly on pp. 39–40 where three minims replace two). Red is visible on the DIAMM natural-light colour images (fol. 80 was not overwritten), but not on the monochrome multispectrals.

31 Nádas, ‘Manuscript San Lorenzo 2211’, 147, not detailed. Nádas here mentions variation in rastrum size, but no further details are given in SLP, where only one rastrum is described. The gauge of the 6-line rastrum is given as 29–30 mm, but this must surely be the distance from the top of one system to that of the next one down. The actual stave gauge appears to be closer to 20 mm, bringing it within the normal range; 5-line rastra tend to be in the 15–16 mm range, 6-line gauges closer to 20 mm. (Sq's is 17–18 mm, as reported by Nádas in Gallo, Il Codice Squarcialupi, 28). The images are reproduced at about a centimetre less than actual size.

32 Janke 2016 reports these (p. 33) as fols. 73v, 78v, 68r and 67v–66r. These are, respectively, nos. 198 (R175v), 200 (R176v), 201 (R177r) and 204 (R178v-179). Three of these, nos. 198, 201 and 204, are attributed to Salinis, raising the possibility that nos. 200 and 204 in the same group of songs may also be by him.

33 But implicitly not as late as his earlier proposal of ‘c. 1420–25 when the compositions of Giovanni and Piero Mazzuoli, Ugolino da Orvieto, and a widely disseminated repertory of chansons and motets were copied into the San Lorenzo Codex’, in ‘The Songs of Paolo Tenorista: The Manuscript Tradition’, in In cantu et in sermone. For Nino Pirrotta on his 80th Birthday, ed. Fabrizio Della Seta and Franco Piperno (Florence, 1989), 41–64, at 61.

34 Nádas, ‘Manuscript San Lorenzo 2211’, 147. The scribal characteristics are described in Di Bacco, Giuliano, ‘Alcune nuove osservazioni sul codice di Londra (British Library, Additional 29987)’, Studi musicali, 20 (1991), 181–234 Google Scholar, at 191 and 195. Lo 29987 was part of a larger manuscript of at least 185 folios, as the surviving leaves were originally numbered 98–185.

35 SLP I: 26, and Janke 2016, 26–7 and 48–53. Janke is surely right to suggest that this is the private manuscript of a scribe-compiler, whether or not under some degree of Medici patronage.

36 Janke and Nádas, ‘New Insights’, 197–214, at 214.

37 In SL Dicovi per certança is transposed up a fifth, an interesting and rare instance of written transposition at this time. This is not a clef error (as supposed in Janke 2016, 49) but deliberate, as stated in Janke and Nádas, ‘New Insights’, 206–7. Another instance of transposition in Zacara is Deduto sei, an unusually low-cleffed piece in its presumed original form in BU and Pz, notated up an eleventh in Faenza.