Music in Golden-Age Florence, 1250–1750: From the Priorate of the Guilds to the End of the Medici Grand Duchy 9780226822792

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Book the First. Music in Late-Medieval Florence: The Duecento And Trecento
Book the Second. Music in Renaissance Florence I: The Quattrocento
Book the Third. Music in Renaissance Florence II: The Cinquecento
Book The Fourth. Music In Florence in the Baroque Era
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Music in Golden-­Age Florence, 1250–­1750

Music in Golden-­Age Florence, 1250–­1750 F ro m the Prio rate o f the Guild s to t h e End o f the Medici Grand Duchy

Anthony M. Cummings

The University of Chicago Press  Chicago a nd Lond on

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2023 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2023 Printed in the United States of America 32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23   1 2 3 4 5 ISBN-­13: 978-­0-­226-­82278-­5 (cloth) ISBN-­13: 978-­0-­226-­82279-­2 (e-­book) DOI: https://​doi​.org​/10​.7208​/chicago​/9780226822792​.001​ .0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cummings, Anthony M., author. Title: Music in golden-age Florence, 1250–1750 : from the priorate of the guilds to the end of the Medici grand duchy / Anthony M. Cummings. Description: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2022026792 | isbn 9780226822785 (cloth) | isbn 9780226822792 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Music—Italy—Florence—History and criticism. | Music and state—Italy—Florence—History. | Florence (Italy)—History—To 1421. | Florence (Italy)— History—1421–1737. Classification: lcc ml290.8.f6 c84 2023 | ddc 780.945/511— dc23/eng/20220613 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022026792 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-­1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Dedicated to Lewis Lockwood and Francis Oakley, and in memory of Frank D’Accone

Contents

Preface xiii

B o ok the F ir st Music in Late-­Medieval Florence: The Duecento and Trecento Music and the Ecclesiastical and Political Organization of the Late-­Medieval City

The Duecento 1  *  Church and State in Florence circa 1300  5 • Santa Reparata/Santa Maria del Fiore  6 • Palazzo della Signoria  7 • Music at Santa Reparata/Santa Maria del Fiore  10 • The Duecento Lauda 15 • Instrumentalists of the Signoria  21

The Tr ecento 2  *  Secular Polyphony: The Beginnings of the Florentine Tradition  25 • The Social Context of Performance  26 • Johannes de Florentia (fl. ca. 1351)  28

3  *  Secular Polyphony: Francesco Landino and the Central Florentine Tradition  37 • Ser Gherardellus de Florentia (†1362 or 1363)  37 • Donatus de Florentia and Laurentius Masii de Florentia (†1372)  41 • Francesco Landino (†1397)  45 4  *  Secular Polyphony: The Gallicization of Florentine Musical Culture  57 • Some Florentine Kleinmeistern: Magister frater Egidius, Magister Guglielmus frater, and Corradus  58 • Andreas de Florentia (Andrea di Giovanni) (†1415)  59 • Some Florentine Kleinmeistern Redux: Bonaiutus Corsini and Andrea Stefani  60 • Paulus de Florentia (†1436)  62 5  *  Music in Communal Worship and Civic Life  64 • Liturgical Polyphony  65 • The Trecento Lauda 66 • The Herald of the Signoria  68

B o ok the Second Music in Renaissance Florence I: The Quattrocento

Aristocracy Emulated: The De Facto Medici Regime 6  *  The Medici Regime and the Public Ecclesiastical Institutions  73 • Nicolaus Zacharie and the Professionalization of Composing and Performing  75 • The Consecration of the Cathedral of Florence  79 • The Musical Establishments Stabilized  86 • Heinrich Isaac  92 7  *  Tradition and Innovation in Sacred Music  96 • Tradition: Music for the Liturgy  96 • Tradition and Innovation: The Quattrocento Lauda 99 • Innovation: The Sacra Rappresentatione 101

8  *  Heralds, Knights, and Carnival Revelers  108 • Tellers of Tales  108 • Medieval Chivalric Tradition Reimagined  112 • Florentine Carnival and the Canto Carnascialesco 114 9  *  Music and Domestic Life: The House of Medici  122 • Occasions for Music-­Making  122 • The Patrons, Their Musicians, and Their Music  125 • The Musical Sources  126 • Varieties of Music-­Making  127 10  *  Girolamo Savonarola and the Medici in Exile  136 • Theocratic Censure  136 • The Medici in Exile, 1494–­1512  140

B o ok the Thir d Music in Renaissance Florence II: The Cinquecento

Aristocracy Achieved: The De Jure Medici Regime, Family as Country, and “Florentinism” 11  *  The Medici Restoration: The Florentine-­Papal Tandem  145 • The Restoration  145 • Composers in Medici Service  149 • Music in Private Medici Settings: Instrumental Music  153 12  *  A New Institution, a New Technology, a New Genre: The Madrigal  154 • Wellsprings of the Madrigal: The Chanson  155 • Wellsprings of the Madrigal: The Canto Carnascialesco and Trionfo, the Lauda, and Solo Song  156 • The Earliest Madrigals  156 • Florentine Academies and Madrigals for the Theater at Midcentury  166 • Intimate Settings: Isabella de’ Medici, Solo Song, and the Polyphonic Madrigal  170 • Intimate Settings: The Florentine Madrigal after Midcentury  173

13  *  The Church  183 • The Reconstitution of the Polyphonic Chapels  183 • The Reformation and Counter-­Reformation  190 • The Cinquecento Lauda and Sacra Rappresentatione 190 • Intermedi Sacri e Morali and Music in Religious Communities for Women  193 14  *  Medici Pageantry, 1539–­1589: “L’état, c’est moi”  198

B o ok the F ourth Music in Florence in the Baroque Era

Cross-­Genre Influences: Monody, the Stile Recitativo, and the Stile Concertato in Florentine Music of the Seicento and Early Settecento 15  *  Opera in Florence, Act 1: The Florentine Aristocratic Phase  225 • Academic Theories Applied  227 • The Beginnings of Opera  246 • Widening Applications of the Innovations  253 • The Meaning of Baroque  261 16  *  Intermedio I: Music in Religious and Dynastic Ritual  263 • Religious Ritual: A Cappella and Concerted Vocal Music  263 • Religious Ritual: Music for Organ  269 • Dynastic Ritual (“L’état, c’est moi”): The Equestrian Ballet  272 17  *  Opera in Florence, Act 2: The Pan-­Italian Phase  275 • A New Institution: The Opera House  276 • Beginnings of the Pan-­Italian Phase: La finta pazza 286 • A Native Attempt at a Venetian-­Style Opera: Celio 287 • Venetian Imports: Ipermestra 289 • A Distinctively Florentine Tradition of Comic Opera: Il potestà di Colognole 291 • Venetian Imports: Ipermestra, Redux  293 • The Baroque Aesthetic on Full Display: Ercole in Tebe, L’Orontea, La Dori 295

18  *  Intermedio II: Devotional and Convivial Uses of Music  304 • Devotional: The Lauda Reimagined: Canzonette Spirituali 304 • Devotional: The Oratorio  305 • Convivial: Ballet Entertainments  311 • Convivial: The Seicento Madrigal  316 • Convivial: The Seicento Cantata  317 • Convivial: Instrumental Genres  319 • Convivial: The Invention of the Piano  325 19  *  Opera in Florence, Act 3: The Pan-­European Phase  330 • Opera in Arcadia? The Halting Adoption of Reform Principles—­Griselda 330 • Grand Prince Ferdinando and a Restitution of Aristocratic Opera  332 • The Reopening of Teatro della Pergola  337 • Vincer se stesso è la maggior vittoria, or Rodrigo 339 • Opera in Arcadia: The Fuller Adoption of Reform Principles—­Catone in Utica 340 • The Settecento Cantata  340 Conclusion 345 Acknowledgments 351 Notes 355 Bibliography 433 Index 467 Color illustrations follow page 222.

Preface

Florence is the city of Galileo, Dante, Ficino, and Machiavelli, of Giotto, Brunelleschi, Donatello, and Masaccio, of Michelangelo and Leonardo, whose achievements in science, literature, Neoplatonic philosophy, political thought, and the visual arts have perhaps obscured those of comparable figures in the history of music. Yet Florence also deserves one’s most respectful attention because it is identified with some of the most important developments in the history of European music. It was the birthplace of the sixteenth-­century madrigal, preeminent secular genre of the European musical Renaissance and the creation of composers active in Florence around 1520. It was the birthplace of opera, that quintessentially Italian art form, Italy’s great contribution to world musical culture, the creation of Florentine poets and composers at the end of the Cinque­cento and the beginning of the Seicento. And it was a Medici employee—­Bartolomeo Cristofori—­who effectively invented the piano. The musico-historical importance of Florence rests on numerous other developments described in the book, some significant and interesting in their own right, some significant and interesting especially as the wellsprings of the consequential developments identified here. I thought it important to attempt to contribute to an accurate understanding of the place of Florence in music history.1 I therefore thought it worthwhile to undertake a general survey of the history of music in this great city when its cultural achievements were their greatest, to recover its sounds so that they can be heard—­imaginatively—­as they might have been heard in the Trecento or Seicento. The chronological limits were set by the appearance of the earliest substantial written record of a distinctively Florentine musical tradition (ca. 1250) and the end of the Medici regime, which supported much of Florentine cultural activity during this period.

xiv  P r e f a c e

A Definition of Terms This is a history of Florentine music and music in Florence. I make the terminological distinction to differentiate between music heard in Florence between 1250 and 1750 and music that was Florentine in origin. Much of it was Florentine, of course, and many genres (the carnival song; the sacra rappresentatione) are quintessentially Florentine. In other cases, the music was non-­Florentine in origin and was composed and often performed by non-­Florentines and even non-­Italians. If it was vocal music, it was often in a language other than Tuscan. Nevertheless, such music was cultivated, preserved, performed, and treasured in Florence by those responsible for the city’s musical culture. My book is organized in good part, though not exclusively, by established infrastructures of patronage, although the public spaces that witnessed less formal performances of music and the musical traditions exemplified by those performances are also considered in detail. In the medieval and early-­modern eras—­long before the technologies that permit us to hear many kinds of music, at any time—­the experience of music was of live performances, except for anyone who was musically literate and could imaginatively “perform” music from notation. Before the concert tradition of the nineteenth century, music figured in larger events and contexts. The services of ecclesiastical institutions, devotions of lay confraternities, theatrical performances, festive banqueting and daily dining, and public festivals often featured musical performances as a complement to the events’ other elements. Such occasions were often associated in turn with private patrons and private or public institutions of patronage, whether religious (ecclesiastical establishments, lay confraternities) or secular (aristocratic courts, civic municipalities, informal academies). Such institutions often had dedicated spaces, and in the belief that music was an indispensable element in their activities they employed or hosted musicians, continuously or intermittently. To a considerable extent, though not exclusively, musical experience in late-­medieval and early-­modern Florence was framed by these institutions of patronage, the rites and celebrations associated with them, and the spaces they maintained or appropriated. We recover that world more successfully and revealingly when we foreground the ritual and material contexts for musical performances. More important, the musical style is the expression of those contexts. Music for an ecclesiastical setting had characteristics that suited it to that context. Music for an aristocratic court had contrasting characteristics suited to its context. If we resituate the music within its framing occasions and spaces, we more accurately understand why it has the features it has.

P r e f a c e  xv

The fundamental questions I have attempted to answer are the following: On what occasions and in what venues was music heard in late-­ medieval and early-­modern Florence? What were the music’s defining characteristics, and what distinguished the Florentine sound world at that extraordinary moment? And why are late-­medieval and early-­modern Florentine musical accomplishments so important? Where possible, I have reconstructed musical performances for which there is either a surviving composition or extant music of the type that would have been performed on such occasions, so that one can know with some certainty what the stylistic properties of the music were. Such music is not invariably privileged per se. It furnishes the principal means available to us of recovering the actual sounds of the Florentine acoustical landscape of the late-­medieval and early-­modern eras. With few exceptions, music that represented oral practices, by definition, is rarely echoed in written practices, or if it is, only faintly. If we wish to access the actual musical sounds of that world—­what has been called the “life of sounds”2—­ written practices provide the amplest evidence we have as to how that world assembled pitches, rhythms, and other foundational materials of music to create its music. From such extant music, we can offer conjectural hypotheses about the sonic profile of music in the oral tradition. I also describe practices for which there is little or no surviving music because they, too, formed an important part of the period soundscape. As I wrote in another context, “Were there a reliance solely on the evidence of notated musical sources,” “the importance . . . of ” particular musical idioms “would not be fully appreciated,” which illustrates the fallacy of relying too heavily on extant notated works . . . as exclusive witness to . . . a musical culture. The historical sources, as distinct from the musical sources, . . . convey a more ramified sense of the contemporary musical culture than can be gained solely from an analysis of the extant notated repertory.3

The sounds I reconstruct here are musical sounds, the conscious product of the human imagination and creative will, as contrasted with more random elements of the sonic landscape: ambient noise, the shouting of Florentines in the streets, the neighing of horses. Such sounds were an important part of the acoustical terrain and are increasingly the subject of a fascinating scholarly literature.4 In this book, however, I use the terms “sound” and “soundscape” in the more restricted sense. We musicologists are often guilty of using our professional vocabulary too liberally. Readers from other disciplines and the general reader cannot

xvi  P r e f a c e

always understand our discourse. To increase the possibility that the book will be read by colleagues from other disciplines, or an avocational audience, I have used several means of presenting the music. For those who can read musical notation, it is largely self-­sufficient. I have restricted myself to musical examples that are either not readily available or are so important to the accompanying narrative that one could not easily do without them. In most cases I have not given the entirety of the composition but only an excerpt, to convey something of the music’s fundamental defining characteristics. For those who cannot read music but command something of the vocabulary of musical analysis, I have sought, where appropriate, to describe the music in terms that make the presentation intelligible. Finally, for those who neither read music nor understand analytical terms, I have sought to relocate the music imaginatively in those venues and occasions for its performance and describe its importance in Florentine society. The mode of presentation is narrative. For me, the most effective, atmospheric, and informative presentation was one that microscopically narrated actual historical events. In the context of a discussion of the occasions for musical performances and the infrastructures of patronage supporting them, I typically proceed in a straightforward chronological manner, with granular analysis offered whenever it seemed important to understanding the presentation. This book is an exercise in what Ernest Boyer called the “synthesizing” tradition “of academic life.”5 Some of the scholarship on which it is based is my own. But most of the findings were produced by colleagues in several disciplines. I delighted in the opportunity to read (or reread) their contributions to the scholarly conversation, and I gladly acknowledge my indebtedness to those whose publications are cited and whose presentation is liberally quoted. The book attempts to synthesize their findings into a whole. It is a stock-­taking at this moment in the history of the discipline, after decades of specialized research on music in Florence from the mid-­ Duecento to the mid-­Settecento. A challenge in writing such a book is to maintain a balance between the macro-­and microscopic. The material is so rich that one can easily lose oneself in detail and fail to profile clearly the main themes of the narrative. I hope to have avoided doing so. A compensating virtue of a synthesis is the contextualization of particular moments in the entire narrative. The significance of any of them is truly understood only when considered in context. To give just one example, I devote special attention to the secular polyphonic tradition of fourteenth-­century Florence, the music of Gherardellus, Donatus, and Laurentius, of Landino, Andreas, and Paulus. But that tradition is accurately understood only when viewed against the backdrop of the larger

P r e f a c e  xvii

musical culture of the time and what came before and after. Rather than being “the music of fourteenth-­century Italy”6—­as an edition of the polyphonic repertory, sadly incomplete, labeled it—­that tradition is only one facet of “the music of fourteenth-­century Italy,” and one could argue that it is not the most important one.7 Moreover, many Florentine musical traditions exemplify change throughout the decades, even centuries. The individual moments in their history acquire a logic when resituated in the context of what came before and after. Because the book is an exercise in this species of scholarship, scholars knowledgeable about any one of the topics covered in it will find the material familiar. Of course, basing the presentation upon existing scholarship means that my synthesis depends upon the data and interpretations currently available. Gaps in my coverage result from gaps in the scholarship on which the synthesis is based. A further virtue of a synthesis is that it isolates matters worthy of further investigation. What kinds of music-­making in late-­medieval and early-­modern Florence still elude our understanding? What scholarly activity might we devote to illuminating matters that are not now so well understood? To give just one example, our understandable attention to the beginnings of opera in Florence may have caused us inadvertently to overlook the vitality of the Florentine operatic tradition in the post-­ aristocratic phase, of which I myself was not fully aware before writing this book. Florence continued to be a venue for operatic performances of considerable importance. A 1702 performance of Il Flavio Cuniberto with music by Alessandro Scarlatti occasioned the composition of new music, some of which is extant but has never been published. And there are arias surviving for a 1696 performance in Florence of Giovanni Bononcini’s Mutio Scevola, which, once more, have never been published. A Lafayette colleague, Lewis Baratz, and I have drafted articles on these developments, with complete editions of the surviving music.

A Note on Secondary Sources Consulted and Cited I ask my readers to trust that I have consulted the secondary literature more extensively than my citations suggest. If I have not cited a particular title, it does not mean that I am unaware of it, or that I find it unworthy. Although ambitious, my objectives in writing this book were limited, and some titles proved more useful than others. My selection from among the titles in the literature results from the approach I favored, which is dependent upon the primary data cited in those secondary works, the usefulness of the interpretations, and their relevance to my objectives.

xviii  P r e f a c e

I identify another rationale for choosing among titles in the literature. In Lost Horizon, James Hilton’s novel about the Tibetan lamasery Shangri-­La, one reads the following exchange about the lamasery’s library between one of the lamas, Chang, and the novel’s protagonist, Hugh Conway. Other books published up to about the middle of 1930 . . . would doubtless be added to the shelves eventually; . . . “We keep ourselves fairly up-­to-­date . . . ,” [Chang] commented. “There are people who would hardly agree with you,” replied Conway. . . . “Quite a lot of things have happened in the world since last year. . . .” “Nothing of importance . . . that will not be better understood in 1940.”8

So, too, with musicological scholarship. Prudence dictates that we not rush to accept the most recent interpretations uncritically, however stimulating they may be. Upon further reflection, their true importance “will . . . be better understood.” Two final matters: I trust my readers to know that the terms “Middle Ages/medieval,” “Renaissance,” and “Baroque” are contested; they are used here with that understanding in mind. And I happily acknowledge that my title was adapted from Gene Brucker’s Florence: The Golden Age, 1138–­1737.9

Bo o k th e Fi r st

Music in Late-­Medieval Florence: The Duecento and Trecento Music and the Ecclesiastical and Political Organization of the Late-­Medieval City

The Duecento

Figure 1.1 The earliest known representation of medieval Florence, fourteenth century. The octagonal building in the center is the Baptistery, named for St. John the Baptist, patron saint of Florence. To its right is the Cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, then under construction. The building with the battlemented tower, behind and slightly to the right of the Baptistery, is Palazzo della Signoria. Florence, Museo del Bigallo, Madonna della Misericordia. Scala / Art Resource, NY. See plate 1 for a color image.

1

Church and State in Florence circa 1300

At either end of Via dei Calzaiuoli in Florence are two of the city’s storied public spaces, Piazza del Duomo at the north end and Piazza della Signoria at the south. Each is dominated by an architectural monument of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, Piazza del Duomo by the Cathedral (or Duomo) of Florence, Santa Maria del Fiore, or St. Mary of the Flower, a fitting name for the cathedral in a city known at various times in its history as Florentia, or Fiorenza, or Firenze;1 and Piazza della Signoria by Palazzo della Signoria (later Palazzo Vecchio), where the offices of the municipal government are still located, seven centuries after the palace was built. Construction on the two buildings began almost simultaneously, in the last few years of the thirteenth century, which witnessed unprecedented public building activity in Florence, the result of extraordinary growth in the city’s population. Between 1100 and 1300, it had quadrupled,2 and by 1300, it had reached 105,000.3 At that time, Florence was one of the largest cities in Europe. The foundation stone of Santa Maria del Fiore was laid in 1296. Palazzo della Signoria was begun in 1299.4 Construction of the conventual churches Santa Maria Novella (Dominican) and Santa Croce (Franciscan) began in 1283 and 1295.5 My narrative thus begins around the middle of the Duecento. Piazza del Duomo and Piazza della Signoria and the buildings located therein are material symbols of the principal macroscopic public worlds inhabited by Florentines of the late-­medieval and early-­modern eras, the religious world symbolized by Santa Maria del Fiore, the civic world by Palazzo della Signoria. But it was not yet a society where there was a sharp distinction between the religious and the political, as one would later understand those terms. Florence was a Christian community, and any other understanding at that moment in history would have been almost unimaginable. In the pages that follow, we shall see, time and again, that the polit-

6  M u s i c i n L a t e - M e d i e v a l F l o r e n c e : T h e D u e c e n t o

ical was suffused with a religious quality and the religious with a political one. Complementing the macroscopic public worlds were microscopic communities that similarly exemplify a coalescence of spiritual and civic sensibilities: the local districts or gonfaloni, political entities whose local lay religious institutions, confraternities, contributed indispensably to neighborhood life and identity.6 In the current context, the important matter is that both realms, the spiritual and the civic, unquestioningly assumed a vital role for music. The vast bulk of the extant music from late-­medieval and early-­modern Florence, certainly art music, was music for the church and music for state. The two communities featured music in their rituals and activities as an indispensable element of their practices. Both communities maintained venues for musical performances and organized the occasions when they took place. The city’s religious and political institutions and its private patrons had musicians in their employ who were responsible for the formal musical soundscape of late-­medieval and early-­modern Florence.

Santa Reparata/Santa Maria del Fiore Santa Maria del Fiore succeeds an earlier establishment, dedicated to a saint important in Florentine religious experience, Santa Reparata.7 The Cathedral of Santa Reparata was constructed in the early-­Christian era and partially modified and consecrated in the late ninth century. It was entirely reconstructed around the middle of the eleventh century and altered again around 1230. Toward the end of the Duecento it was decided that Santa Reparata should once more be restored. But within less than a year, in March 1294, the Commune resolved that the building not merely be renovated, but replaced, and at the end of the century demolition was begun to make room for the successor institution. On 8 September 1296, the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, the cornerstone of the new building was laid and the Cathedral of Florence rededicated to St. Mary of the Flower.8 By 1375, the new cathedral had more or less enclosed Santa Reparata, which was then almost completely demolished.9 In 1436, when construction on the Cathedral had progressed to the point where a consecration ceremony could be held, it took place, with lavish music, on the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Florentine new year began. The cathedral of the city of flowers, the city whose symbol was the fleur-­de-­lis and whose coin of the realm was the florin, was consecrated as St. Mary of the Flower on New Year’s Day.10 With the beginning of construction on Santa Maria del Fiore, the city

Church and State in Florence circa 1300 7

established the Opera del Duomo, a secular institution responsible for the Cathedral’s construction, maintenance, and administration. In 1331, responsibility for the Opera was delegated to the Arte della Lana, the Wool Guild, one of medieval Florence’s most important mercantile corporations.11 Delegating responsibility in this way for the administration of the city’s public ecclesiastical institutions was a Florentine practice, documented as early as the twelfth century, when responsibility for the Baptistery (named for San Giovanni, patron saint of Florence) was delegated to the Arte dei Mercatanti di Calimala, the Merchants’ Guild. The construction, maintenance, and administration of the Cathedral were thus financed through a system that reflected the economic and political organization of Trecento Florence and the importance of the guilds to the Florentine economy and Florentine politics.12 In a population of some 105,000 around 1300, the guilds counted more than a third of the city’s adult males among their members.13 Such an arrangement was only one of many ways in which the ecclesiastical and civic orders overlapped and the distinction between them was blurred. There were moments in the city’s history when this was truer still, as in the early sixteenth century, when three of the Medici, then the wealthiest, most prominent, most powerful of Florentine families, were cardinals, two of whom became pope: Giovanni di Lorenzo il Magnifico (Leo X) and Giulio di Giuliano di Piero (Clement VII).14 An identification of church and state was expressed in innumerable ways. In the early sixteenth century, newly commissioned Cathedral manuscripts that celebrated the Medici by means of the use of the family’s heraldic devices and mottos were publicly displayed.15 The reach of religious experience was extended by methods that sacralized the entire city.16 Religious processions featuring the singing of the participants followed routes through all quarters of Florence. More revealing still, on the days before the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, the processional routes delineated the central axis of the ancient Roman city and symbolically evoked Florence’s Roman origins. Such practices made tangible the otherwise intangible “theme of Florence as . . . daughter of Rome.” Although religious in nature, the practices “located the city in secular history.”17 Such were the principal venues and occasions for the public expression of Florentines’ spirituality and the accompanying musical performances.

Palazzo della Signoria Palazzo della Signoria is a symbol of the complex, sometimes violent political history of Duecento Florence. Political life had been marked by

8  M u s i c i n L a t e - M e d i e v a l F l o r e n c e : T h e D u e c e n t o

feuding between the two principal factions, the Guelphs and Ghibellines, adherents respectively of the pope and the emperor. When efforts at a reconciliation proved unsuccessful, a new government magistracy was formed, the Fourteen (Quattordici Buonomini),18 which comprised eight Guelphs and six Ghibellines. But the Quattordici were increasingly obliged to rely on the seven greater guilds, foremost among them the international merchants and cloth finishers guild (the Calimala), the jurists and notaries guild (the Giudici e Notai), the manufacturers of woolen cloth guild (the Lana), and the manufacturers of silk cloth and retail cloth merchants’ guild (the Seta),19 which were represented in the Quattordici first by three and then by six of the Priori delle Arti (Priors of the Guilds). By the end of 1282, the Priorate of the Guilds had wrested control of the government from the Quattordici and emerged as the supreme executive authority in a new popular regime. Legislation to contain the historic feuding was enacted, and a new magistrate, the Gonfaloniere di Giustizia (Standard Bearer of Justice), was appointed and given command of a thousand-­man militia.20 Ordinances of 1293 excluded the magnate nobility, the historic Florentine knightly class, from the government. But the lingering, smoldering resentments of the magnates emboldened them to challenge the authority of the new republican magistracies. The need for a permanent, fortress-­like residence for the seven Signori or Lords—the six Priori delle arti and the Gonfaloniere di Giustizia—was debated, and at the end of 1298 the Signori were directed to identify a location for their palace. Funds were appropriated for its construction.21 Like the landed nobility of northern Europe, the magnates were nominally a military class. Noble status resulted from knightly status. But knighthood in Florence was less a vocation than a kind of stylized, cultivated comportment. Most titled Florentines were merchants or bankers who appropriated chivalric motifs, indulged a taste for chivalric names such as Roland and a courtly literature that celebrated elegant manners, and favored lavish display and elaborate ceremonial. In Carol Lansing’s words, “Knighthood was a means of self-­definition.” As a distinguishable class, the magnates were increasingly indiscernible throughout the Trecento.22 The city’s aristocratic past nonetheless continued to be a source of traditions and imagery. Long before the Medici were formally ennobled (1532), vestigial aristocratic sensibilities were reflected in many Florentine institutions and practices: in the position of the Herald of the Florentine Signoria, who was often given a knightly title and name

Church and State in Florence circa 1300 9

such as Sir Percival and whose singing for the Signori was a kind of courtly attainment and activity (indeed, the very fact that he was in the service of “the Lords” suggests that his position was understood as the expression of knightly values); in the use of senhal, a literary device associated with the poetry of the seigneurial classes of northern Europe, and a receptivity to other elements of the International Gothic. These developments document the actualization of noble aspirations and the aristocratizing of Florentine political culture. They were remote noble practices that the Medici could invoke as sources of aristocratic values and models of aristocratic behavior. They satisfied a persisting Florentine fascination with aristocratic tradition and slowly conditioned the Florentines to the prospect of the decisive ennoblement of the Medici. The merchant Giovanni Morelli urged his sons to “frequent the schools of instrumental playing, singing or dancing, and fencing, and in this you will become expert: You will make yourself known to noble youths. . . . And you’ll do so in order to make friends . . . and will be reputed to be noble and well-­bred and fashionable.”23 The weakness of centralized civic institutions had permitted the magnates to indulge their private interests at the expense of the common good. The emergence of the republican institutions of the late Duecento and the 1293 Ordinances of Justice signaled a radical change in Florentine political culture. There was no ambiguity as to the Ordinances’ aim. Candidates for the Signoria were to be “guild members of the city . . . who are not knights [emphasis added].” The guilds were regarded as acting for the common good, and the 1293 Ordinances enshrined the victory of the mercantile corporations.24 But a fascination with the aristocratic past remained. By March 1302, it was reported that the Signori were residing in their palazzo, “in pallatio novo,” which served as their temporary residence during their term of office (two months).25 The palazzo also housed civil servants in the employ of the Signori. The essential architectural configuration of the city that still exists, with its public and institutional buildings dating from the Middle Ages, the Cathedral and conventual churches, headquarters of the guilds and the palace of their priors, and headquarters of the Guelph Party, had already emerged by the late thirteenth century. Gone was the old city enclosed within the ancient walls. Gone, or reduced in height, were many of the magnate families’ defensive towers. The new public squares and streets paved in stone were the architectural expression of the strengthening of the centralized republican civic institutions that had successfully challenged the authority of the magnates.26

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Music at Santa Reparata/Santa Maria del Fiore In late-­medieval Florence, religious sentiment was formally and publicly expressed, first and foremost, through the services of the public ecclesiastical institutions, the Cathedral preeminent among them. Such institutions displayed works of art that stimulated and intensified congregants’ spiritual experience, engaged personnel (ecclesiastical authorities, administrative officers, and the clergymen who officiated at services, clothed in magnificent vestments), and featured ritual action: the liturgy, a system comprising ceremonial action, texts of great doctrinal significance, and their musical settings.27 In the words of one historian, “Ecclesiastical institutions” were “the leading patrons of the arts.”28 Administrative appointments pertaining specifically to the music were first made in the mid-­eleventh century, when a member of the choir was named proposto, responsible for selecting the music sung at services.29 Fundamental to the liturgy was the calendar of the church year, a cycle of feast days (Christmas, Easter, Pentecost), each of which was provided with some texts common to it and all other feasts in the calendar, some that were unique—­or “proper”—­to that particular feast. Many such texts were set to music. The distinction between common and proper texts and their music is a feature of the two principal services of the church, the Mass and Divine Offices. The Mass, the central rite of Roman Catholicism, features some texts—­known as the Ordinary—­that are spoken or sung whenever Mass is celebrated. Other texts—­known as the Proper—­refer to the events commemorated on a particular day: Jesus’s birth on Christmas; his resurrection on Easter Sunday. The Divine Offices are observances that take place throughout the church day, celebrated in Duecento Florence not only at public ecclesiastical institutions such as the Cathedral but also in the privacy of the monasteries attached to the city’s conventual churches: Matins (celebrated at midnight), Lauds (sunrise), Prime (the first hour, approximately 6:00 a.m.), Terce (the third hour, approximately 9:00 a.m.), Sext (the sixth hour, approximately 12:00 noon), Nones (the ninth hour, approximately 3:00 p.m.), Vespers (sunset), and Compline (immediately after Vespers). Many feasts in the calendar of the Cathedral of Florence were celebrated at all ecclesiastical institutions in Western Christendom, including other Florentine institutions in addition to the Cathedral. They were fixtures in universal ritual calendars. Other feasts unique to Florence honored saints with specifically Florentine associations: the titular saints of the Ca-

Church and State in Florence circa 1300 11

thedral (Santa Reparata; the Virgin Mary) or figures important in Florentine ecclesiastical history (St. Zenobius, celebrated as the first bishop of Florence; Zenobius’s deacon, St. Eugene, and subdeacon, St. Crescentius). A contemporary manual describing the Cathedral’s rites, the Ritus in ecclesia servandi, defines the uniquely Florentine feasts as either those that honored saints “whose relics we have and venerate” or featured rites “in which we process to other churches.” Contemporary music manuscripts from the Cathedral often reserve the most lavish liturgical, musical, and visual material (illuminated miniatures) for these distinctively Florentine feasts. The principal musical adornment to the liturgy were the settings in the monophony of the “Gregorian” chant of the Latin liturgical texts for a particular feast, sung by the choir while the congregation attended respectfully. But characteristic of thirteenth-­century practice was an effort to engage the populace more actively. On Sundays, the Major Mass was celebrated in the Baptistery after the Office of Terce, but the Mass of the People was celebrated in Santa Reparata so that more of the faithful could attend. One of the primary means of involving the populace was the processions, an element of any number of observances, which followed established routes into all quarters of the city and featured singing by the participants.30 Public processions engendered a sense of community, not only in the vicinity of the Cathedral, but also in the city at large. The construction of the urban soundscape facilitated by such practices was reinforced by the ringing of bells, which regulated ceremonial action and elicited public involvement. “On the Monday after Easter,” states another contemporary manual, the Mores et consuetudines canonice florentine, we ring . . . all the bells at length. After this, and with the clergy and populace together, the cantor intones the antiphon Stetit angelus, at the beginning of which we begin our walk, heading toward the church of San Pier Maggiore, and here we celebrate Terce, the High Mass, and Sext. In these processions . . . and in the litanies when we sing throughout the streets, the bells of each church by which we transit must be rung.31

Participants in the processions would carry relics of the saint whose feast was being celebrated or the saint’s sacred image, displayed for the edification of the observers. Such practices formed part of Florentine religious experience for many centuries, and music was almost invariably featured. In the fifteenth century, “on 23 June [the vigil of the Feast of St. John, pa-

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tron saint of Florence] . . . they go in procession with statues and relics of the saints, images, and venerable crosses; trumpets and other musical instruments always march first.”32 The Mores et consuetudines canonice florentine mandates that for Sant’Agata ring . . . all the bells . . . toward the middle of Terce so that the clergy and populace convene in the mother church. . . . We celebrate Terce, after which we go in procession around the city while the cantor begins the responsory Quis es tu qui venisti ad me, and we sing for those saints next to whose relics we transit, preceded in our path by the cross and . . . the panel with the image of Sant’Agata. In this procession the Four Gospels are sung.

An early-­Trecento processional standard with the image of Sant’Agata, preserved to this day in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, is attributed to Jacopo del Casentino, father of the great fourteenth-­century Italian organist and composer Francesco Landino, of whom we shall hear more. It is a powerful stimulus to the imagination. One envisions the processions slowly wending their way through the congested urban spaces depicted imaginatively in figure 1.1, the processional standard borne aloft (fig. 1.2). Music for the liturgy was drawn principally from the existing, universal monophonic chant repertory, the corpus of texts and melodies codified much earlier in the Middle Ages and disseminated throughout the Christian West. But in those cases where the feast was specific to Florence, texts and their musical settings could be composed expressly for such a feast. The formal acoustical landscape of late-­medieval Florence was rich in sounds unique to it. A late-­Trecento manuscript for the Cathedral preserves an Office of St. Eugene, Bishop Zenobius’s deacon. One of the texts for Vespers is the Magnificat (“My soul magnifies the Lord”), Mary’s ecstatic response to the understanding that she was with child. Preceding and following the Magnificat is an antiphon, a kind of refrain. The antiphon to the Magnificat in the Office of St. Eugene—­both text and music—­is unique to Florence and refers specifically to Eugene (ex. 1.1). O levita nobilis Eugeni sanctissime nostris fave iubilis de celorum culmine iram placa iudicis ne draconis aulicis se iungamur celicis. In secula seculorum, Amen.

Although newly composed rather than derived from the universal liturgy, O levita nobilis Eugeni is in the monophony of the historic chant. It features unmeasured, rhythmically undifferentiated pitches, a single melodic line

Church and State in Florence circa 1300 13

Figure 1.2 Jacopo del Casentino, early fourteenth-­century processional standard with the image of Sant’Agata. Florence, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo. Alfredo Dagli Orti / Art Resource, NY.

sung in unison by members of the choir, the absence of a concurrent pitch or pitches, which would have produced harmony, and the absence of instrumental accompaniment (a cappella performance). The Cathedral’s services featured other recent additions to the liturgy: newly composed snippets of texted melody inserted horizontally into preexistent chant melodies (tropes); the vertical elaboration of monophonic melodies (polyphony). Both genres of accretion to the Gregorian liturgy satisfied the desire of musicians of the High Middle Ages to compose new

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Example 1.1 O levita nobilis Eugeni

music, which nonetheless respected—­in a literal sense was grounded in—­ the existing Gregorian melodies. But unlike the music for the Office of St. Eugene, other newly composed music for the Cathedral liturgy appears to have originated largely in liturgical practice from outside of Florence. Understandably—­though perhaps inordinately—­musicologists are keenly interested in polyphonic practice. Creating pleasing vertical simultaneities of pitch (chords) and sequencing them so that they succeeded one another in a permissible manner, according to the musical doctrines of the time, could be a rewarding activity for a musician. Such an exacting practice reasonably commands our attention. Though sometimes indirect and open to conflicting interpretation, there is evidence of polyphonic performance of Latin liturgical texts in Duecento Florence. The Ritus in ecclesia servandi specifies four occasions when polyphony was prohibited. This suggests that the occasions when polyphony was permitted were so numerous that the Ritus found it more efficient simply to identify those when it was not. But this is conjecture. There is less conjectural evidence of polyphonic practice. In 1244, the bishop of Florence ordered “that the singers [of the monastery of San Pancrazio] . . . who sing cantus ruptus [a common period term for polyphony] . . . no longer have melodies on that day [of San Pancrazio], except for those . . . for one voice [emphasis added].”33 And Cathedral manuscripts of the chant preserve the familiar monophonic melodies, accompanied in a few instances by a second, newly composed melody, simple in design, which lay above the chant melody and was sung in counterpoint to it.34 Very little direct musical evidence of polyphonic performance at Santa Reparata is known to us, therefore, but this should not be surprising. In

Church and State in Florence circa 1300 15

Florence as elsewhere, polyphony was likely extemporized in real time and rarely committed to notation, a practice that normally produces a simpler result. A twelfth-­century composition from elsewhere in Tuscany illustrates. It is the polyphonic elaboration of a trope. In the polyphonic elaboration, each pitch in the preexistent monophonic melody is matched to another above it. [trope text] Regi regum glorioso Petrus et Paulus sedulo Assistunt in palatio Superni regis jubilo [Mass Ordinary text] Benedicamus Domino

The pitches are rhythmically unmeasured, and the setting of the text is syllabic; each syllable of text is matched with one musical pitch and usually one only. The matching of each pitch in the lower voice to one in the upper produces a note-­against-­note (punctus contra punctum) effect. And the two voices typically move in opposite directions—­one ascending while the other descends—­which produces variety in the contours of the two melodies.35 Such practices constitute the prehistory of the rich secular polyphonic tradition of Trecento Florence.

The Duecento Lauda Religious sentiment was not expressed solely through the formal ritual services of ecclesiastical institutions. The expression could be a more personal reflection of one’s private spirituality.36 Complementing the musical practices of the Cathedral of Florence was the tradition of the lauda, a monophonic setting of a sacred text, though devotional rather than liturgical, usually Italian rather than Latin, and usually in verse rather than prose.37 The lauda was central to Florentine musico-­devotional experience. Some of the most celebrated Florentine composers of the early-­modern period were singers of laude.38 Although it figured in a number of performance contexts throughout its history,39 the lauda was originally performed either at the services of lay confraternities devoted to the Virgin Mary or during the public processions of flagellants, who—­dressed in robes bearing the insignia of their confraternity, wearing cowls to conceal their identity, and chanting prayers of supplication—­practiced ritual self-­ scourging.40 The religious sentiment underlying each kind of confraternity was different, reflecting a similar difference in the practices of the mendicant orders. The sensibilities of the flagellants were “world-­renouncing.” The practices of the Marian confraternities were reverential rather than penitential.41

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The confraternities of flagellants arose in response to the ecstatic preaching of members of religious orders (the Dominicans, the Franciscans), the effects of war and plague, and the resulting spiritual atmosphere, charged with late-­medieval apocalyptic fervor.42 The Marian confraternities—­informal organizations of laypeople established so that their members might receive religious instruction, assist at Mass, and honor the Virgin Mary43—­arose in the wake of the preaching of the Dominican prelate Peter Martyr, sent to Florence in 1244.44 The chronicler Giovanni Villani gave a vivid account of the kind of event that first inspired the observances of the confraternities of laudesi. In that year [1292], . . . there began to be manifested great and obvious miracles in . . . Florence by a figure of the Virgin Mary painted on a pilaster of the loggia of Orto San Michele, where the grain is sold. . . . Out of custom and devotion, a number of laity sang laude before this figure, and the fame of these miracles, for the merits of Our Lady, so increased that people came from all over Tuscany in pilgrimage, . . . bringing various wax images.45

Such spontaneous, ecstatic behavior was soon codified and standardized in ritual activity. Once established, lay brotherhoods contributed to Florentine spiritual life for centuries. Most of the confraternities of laudesi in Florence emerged in the last few decades of the Duecento and the first few of the Trecento. They were either existing Marian confraternities that were reorganized or were newly established institutions.46 The paraliturgical services of the confraternities were now the principal context for the singing of laude. By the early fourteenth century, there were a dozen such companies, most associated with a church with a monastic community attached to it: the Company of San Piero Martire, associated with the Church of Santa Maria Novella (the Dominicans); Santa Maria delle Laudi, detta di Sant’Agnese, associated with Santa Maria del Carmine (the Carmelites); Santo Spirito, with the Church of Santo Spirito (the Augustinians); Santa Croce, with the Church of Santa Croce (the Franciscans).47 The earliest documented was the company associated with the Church of the Santissima Annunziata (the Servites), which was founded in 1264 and by 1273 had established a practice of lauda singing.48 By the 1520s, the number of confraternities had increased from a handful to 106 and the number of members to more than 20,000. It is believed that every Florentine who could afford the subscription fee was enrolled in a confraternity.49 The parish churches with which the confraternities were associated were critical to the identity of the roughly coterminous neighborhood

Church and State in Florence circa 1300 17

civic institution, the gonfalone: the Gonfalone of the Red Lion (Lione Rosso); the Gonfalone of the Green Dragon (Drago Verde).50 The interests of the gonfalone and the parish rather naturally coincided.51 By around 1450, the Lione Rosso’s “primordial neighborhood community,” which had had its nucleus intact for almost two hundred years, was effectively that of San Pancrazio parish; the gonfalone’s church was the parish church. Many features of the confraternities’ organizational structure were shared with the mercantile guilds. Indeed, we may assume substantial overlap in membership between the two kinds of institution. Such institutions maintained a regular schedule of meetings, were financed by members’ dues, elected officers to fixed terms, provided social security for members and their families, arranged for the burial of deceased members, and engaged in charitable activity, the most important of the confraternal activities.52 Like the practices of the ecclesiastical institutions, those of the confraternities were governed by the calendar of the church year and church day. Some services occurred once annually (on particular feast days in the church year), some monthly (on a designated Sunday), some daily. Observances were also held on ad hoc occasions, such as funeral services for its members.53 These latter became more important as the confraternities received bequests for commemorative services.54 Of the services held once annually, those for the feast of the company’s patron saint were the most lavish and public. A banditore (town crier) would announce the festivities in the city squares, sounding a trumpet decorated with the company’s standard. The company would sponsor a communal meal, which among the larger companies was later to feature instrumental music, often performed by musicians in the city’s employ. Once more, there was a merging of the prerogatives and a pooling of the resources of the municipal government, the city’s ecclesiastical institutions, and less formal associations like the confraternities of laudesi. The monthly service occurred during the celebration of the Mass. The principal element was a procession during the Offertory by confraternity members, who processed two by two through the church and cloister, singing laude and carrying lighted candles, which were then placed on an altar.55 Daily services took place at Compline. They featured lauda singing by the members of the company amid other ritual activity: readings, prayer, a candle procession and offering, a sermon, confession.56 The more static phases of the services were conducted before an altar in the host church, which displayed a devotional image to which the singing was directed. Company members were seated on benches. Candles, altar cloths, lec-

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terns, and other accoutrements of worship enhanced the solemnity.57 During Lent, the services assumed a penitential tone. The texts drew upon a vivid Passion literature.58 The companies commissioned works of art from accomplished artists, the devotional images displayed on the altar during services, some of which survive to this day. Among such works is the exquisite Rucellai Madonna in the Galleria degli Uffizi, painted in 1286 by the Sienese artist Duccio di Buoninsegna for the Company of San Piero Martire (fig. 1.3).59 Among the varied elements of confraternal observances, music thus had a prominent place. Before the service, the company sacristan would set out a lectern and manuscript anthology containing lauda texts (and occasionally their music) and identify the laude to be sung during the service. The texts served a didactic purpose and were expressed in affective language intended to evoke praise or—­as appropriate to the calendar—­ penance.60 The following lauda in honor of the Holy Cross is representative (ex. 1.2). ripresa a Ogne homo ad alta boce a laudi la verace croce.

Let every man praise the true cross in a loud voice.

strophe 1 b Quant’è degna da laudare b core no llo può pensare, b lingua no llo può contare, a la verace sancta croce.

Hearts cannot conceive and tongues cannot recount how worthy of praise is the true, holy cross.

return of the ripresa a Ogne homo ad alta boce a laudi la verace croce.

Let every man praise the true cross in a loud voice.

strophe 2 c Questo è legno pretioso c e segno virtuoso: c lo nemico è confuso a per la morte de la croce.

This is a precious wood and a powerful sign: the enemy is confounded by the death on the cross.

return of the ripresa

Laude are often in the contemporary poetic fixed form of the ballata,61 which also served for Italian secular poetry. The “croce” of the final line of

Figure 1.3 Duccio di Buoninsegna, Rucellai Madonna, 1286. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi. Alfredo Dagli Orti / Art Resource, NY.

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Example 1.2 The lauda Ogne homo

the strophes rhymes with the “croce” and “boce” of the ripresa (refrain) and anticipates its return. This is conventional poetic practice. Musical procedures paralleled poetic form. The ripresa performed at the outset, after each of the strophes, and at the very end was probably sung by the entire membership, to the same music each time, while the strophes—­which had different music from the refrain—­were likely sung soloistically by more skilled, though initially nonprofessional members of the company, some of whom also became professionals in effect, contracted to sing by multiple companies.62 Companies of laudesi offered weekly instruction with the likely purpose of teaching the music of the refrains to less skilled members of the company.63 During the initial phase of the development,64 laude were in a simpler musical style, although we may also assume a developing tradition, for the moment unwritten, of an improvised elaboration of the melody of the strophes by the more skilled solo singers responsible for them.65 The simplicity of the genre lay in the music’s compositional design: the conjunct

Church and State in Florence circa 1300 21

melodic motion, where each pitch is usually only one step higher or lower than the preceding or following one, and the syllabic text setting, where each syllable of text is matched to one musical pitch.66 Lauda melodies were in the rhythmically unmeasured monophony of the chant, but their melodic style was different. The chant melodies, which are on Latin texts, were sung by appointees to the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Singing was one of their professional obligations. Laude, which are on Italian texts, were sung by attendees at the companies’ devotional services. Relocating responsibility to the confraternities’ members for the musical element of their services—­settings of religious texts in the vernacular, notably—­deepened their personal religious experience and made it more immediate in a way denied them as congregants who silently attended the ritual services of an ecclesiastical institution.67

Instrumentalists of the Signoria The following is the earliest known reference (1292) to an instrumental corps in the city’s employ. In . . . council, . . . all matters . . . were . . . authorized according to the . . . statutes of the . . . Commune, . . . confirmed upon the provision and choice of the Lord Priors of the Guilds. . . . This was enacted concerning the below-­written [names of the players of the] six large trumpets, and one shawm, and . . . cymbals. . . . The names of these trumpeters and shawm player and cymbal player are as follows: Guglielmo Nero, Catena di Dietaiuti, Pacino d’Ubertino, Guglielmo di Giacomo, Balduccio di Buono, Matteo di Niccolò, six trumpeters of the Commune of Florence; Gianuccio di Niccolò, of the parish of San Lorenzo, shawm player; Lore, called “Anghara,” of the parish of San Felice in Piazza, cymbal player.

It cannot be coincidence that the ensemble was formed at around the same time as the other developments I have been recounting: devotional, political, social, and architectural. Although the ensemble comprised trumpeters, a wind player (who likely played the shawm), and a percussionist, it was invariably known as the trombadori (trumpeters). Their duties included several kinds of daily performance: processions, assemblies, other such occasions. The earliest statement of the instrumentalists’ duties (1325) also specifies that “they go either into the army or on cavalcade for the commune.” They served civic purposes, therefore, furnishing music either for the ceremonial activities of officers of state or for the kind of music that from time immemorial has accompanied military action.

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When the instrumentalists’ initial three-­year appointment was renewed in 1295, it was stipulated that “by law they are to present themselves to the . . . commune with silver trumpets.” The trumpets they played were presumably the long, straight, valveless instruments appropriate to attention-­commanding ceremonial. On the other hand, the pungent, reedy tone quality of the shawm was ideally suited to its function. The earliest documentation identifies the shawm player as “Gianuccio di Niccolò[,] . . . player of the . . . alarm,” and in 1300 his duties were specified: “to hold the office for the benefits of the office of sounding the . . . alarm . . . for the commune.” Also among the city’s employees were the banditori, of whom there were six, one for each of the city’s precincts. The earliest known reference to them (1307) states that “each . . . is to have . . . a small trumpet made of silver.” Their function was also to perform fanfares, consistent with their role in the city government, and for that purpose they played a trombetta—­a smaller, straight, valveless instrument, also of silver.68

The Trecento

2

Secular Polyphony

The B eginnin gs o f the Flo rentine Tra d ition

By the mid-­fourteenth century, an extraordinarily vital though circumscribed Florentine tradition of secular vocal polyphony had emerged, reflected in a substantial repertory of two-­and three-­voice polyphonic settings of Italian secular poetry and a small number of polyphonic settings of Latin liturgical texts. As contrasted with the sacred repertory of the Duecento and before, which was largely the universal musical repertory of the European Christian world, the secular polyphony of Trecento Florence is the earliest distinctively Florentine music to survive in any quantity. The extant repertory represents only a fraction of the secular music heard in fourteenth-­century Florence and is not representative of Florentine Trecento musical culture as a whole. The music that has survived did so because it is of a rarified type, dependent upon musical notation to be composed, preserved, transmitted, and performed. For that reason, it is the only secular music we have in any quantity. Yet it is only one species of musical practice. It flourished in private, intimate circles and rarely reached an audience beyond. The extant repertory has been likened to the tip of an iceberg.1 The surviving compositions constitute merely a subset of an enormous repertory, most of which is lost to us—­submerged below musical sea level—­and susceptible to reconstruction, if at all, only through indirect, often nonmusical evidence. Among the varieties of Trecento music for which there is little direct musical evidence but which were fundamental to contemporary experience was solo singing to string accompaniment. Documenting such a practice is iconographic evidence (representations in painting and sculpture) and historical evidence (accounts of performances in correspondence and other kinds of written documents). Although its testimony can scarcely be taken at face value, the following text is representative. It appears in a letter by the early Renaissance humanist Coluccio Salutati, onetime chancellor of Florence, who had po-

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litical objectives in writing. His letter employs the humanist’s rhetorical flourishes and neo-­Ciceronian Latin. But even if there is an imaginative element in Salutati’s account, he would have described a scene consistent with contemporary experience, even if some of the details are exaggerated and expressed in the florid language of the humanist’s discourse. Salutati recounts strolling through Piazza del Duomo one evening in 1393 when he encounters a group of young people. A faint melody reaches his ear. The singer is Filippo (“Pippo”) Sacchetti, son of the celebrated Florentine Trecento poet Franco Sacchetti. Salutati asks the young people how Pippo was able to produce such sweet harmony and learns that it is a new kind of song, reportedly invented by Pippo himself. Pippo recounts for Salutati how it came about and gives him a demonstration, which is marvelous beyond belief, surpassing any known song or instrumental playing. One appreciates, states Salutati, how difficult it is to describe something so singular to anyone who did not witness it. He reaches for superlatives and suggests that if Greece could boast of Pythagoras, the Hebrew nation of Jubal, and Thrace of Orpheus, then Pippo is an honor to Florence.2 Assuming the historicity of Salutati’s account, one imagines that Pippo was performing from memory, the composition schematic in form and also strophic, the same music serving for multiple strophes of text, and that in each successive strophe he was improvising on the fundamental melodic line and perhaps also varying the accompaniment to introduce variety into what might otherwise have been a monotonous performance.3 Pippo’s solo song figured in a robust Florentine tradition.4 If one were to travel in time and return to Trecento Florence, the soundscape would have been rich in performances of the type Salutati heard and only rarely characterized by performances of the type of secular polyphony I describe presently. If inaccurately evaluated, the surviving repertory can lead to a specious understanding of the reality. Yet no matter how rarified, the extant music is of unquestionable importance in its own right, not to mention one of the principal means available to us of accessing the Trecento sound world.

The Social Context of Performance Almost without exception, the known Florentine composers of the secular Trecento repertory—­who for the most part were probably also its performers—­were not professional musicians. They were members of religious orders who composed and performed when their energies were not otherwise devoted to their obligations as members of their communities. After communal meals, for example, or in the evening—­as logs and

Secular Polyphony: The Beginnings of the Florentine Tradition 27

Example 2.1 Decus morum

torches burned low and the community was preparing to retire for the evening—­one of the monks might perform one of his compositions for the delectation of his brothers, perhaps with one of his fellows singing the lower voice, perhaps playing it himself on a string instrument.5 For them, musical composition and performance were avocations. Sophisticated polyphonic practice in the European world had originated in the church, and the communities with the greater number of the composers and performers of polyphony were those of the clergy and religious orders, stewards of medieval technical and theoretical musical culture. When polyphonic treatment was extended to secular texts, its practitioners—­at least in the initial phases—­were almost uniformly ecclesiastics.6 In that world, it would not have been anomalous for clerics to compose settings of overtly secular Italian love poetry, given the contemporary prestige of such literature. This factor explains the seemingly sudden emergence of the Trecento polyphonic tradition. Before the fourteenth century, there was polyphonic practice in Italy, in Tuscany and specifically in Florence. But it was a religious, even an ecclesiastical art: music for the ritual services of the church or for informal devotional purposes, and in a simpler style. The direct musical evidence of Duecento polyphonic practices is not insignificant in quantity, but it is fragmentary in nature, consisting of an isolated polyphonic composition from one region of Italy, a small collection from another. Other evidence of polyphonic musical practice is found in didactic music-­theoretical treatises that contain examples of how one composed polyphony. The composition shown in example 2.1—­copied in Florence, notably—­is representative.7 Such compositions “are of the tradition . . . from which germinated what

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we call Italian ars nova”—­or “new art,” a term originating in fourteenth-­ century France but also applied to Italian Trecento polyphony—­“ but which does not yet form a part of the ars nova.”8 Almost without exception they are in that simpler style. The pitches are usually unmeasured, their duration not clarified by the notation. The usual constructional technique is note-­against-­note counterpoint and the rhythmic conception homo­ rhythmic. As such it contrasts with the complex polyrhythmicism of Florentine Trecento secular polyphony. “The music generally performed in ordinary Italian churches” “from the beginning of the 14th century to the beginning of the 16th century” did not, therefore, belong “exclusively to the traditional, liturgical, monodic repertory [the Gregorian chant].” But when featured, church polyphony “differed in type from that which belongs to the sphere of musica mensurabilis,” rhythmically measured music, the music of the Florentine Trecento tradition.9 Rhythmically measured “polyphony began to be known and used in a few Italian circles in the very last years of the 13th century.”10 And “the problem of the origin of the Italian Ars Nova . . . has to do . . . with the determination of the conditions which induced . . . ecclesiastical musicians to leave their monasteries, gave them increased opportunity for self-­expression in secular music, and provided their works a certain publicity that has permitted them to be preserved for us.”11 Florentine Trecento composers would have been conversant with “the musical usage of the Religious Orders,”12 and with sufficient experience in composition they would have been able to develop it into the sophisticated, polyrhythmic music that is the polyphonic secular repertory of fourteenth-­century Florence. Many of the Florentine Trecento composers of polyphony were church organists by trade, and the style of their secular polyphony may also derive from the distinctive characteristics of their music for organ.

Johannes de Florentia (fl. ca. 1351) The Florentine Trecento tradition of secular polyphony has an ironic prehistory. The earliest known composer—­Johannes de Florentia, or Giovanni da Firenze, or Giovanni da Cascia, Cascia being a village near Florence—­seems to have flourished exclusively outside his homeland.13 Neither does he seem to have been an ecclesiastic who practiced musical composition and performance as avocations. Rather, in the tradition of the medieval Provençal troubadour, Johannes was “courtly and a wanderer.”14 He practiced composition and performance as vocations, seeking remuneration where one would have found it. In Johannes’s case it was at

Secular Polyphony: The Beginnings of the Florentine Tradition 29

aristocratic courts in the north of Italy—­of the della Scala of Verona and Visconti of Milan—­where the senior male member of the reigning family served as head of state and ruled over the independent city-­state and its dominions. If the reigning lord had musical interests, he could engage musician-­composers who would either be retained continuously—­placed on staff, as it were, and compensated out of the resources available to him as head of state—­or hosted episodically when they happened to be passing through town. Evidently, this is what happened in Johannes’s case. By the time Johannes arrived at the della Scala court, musical activity there was well established. An account of the reign of Canfrancesco I della Scala (called Cangrande)—­co-­ruler of Verona from 1308 to 1311 and ruler from 1311 to 1329—­records the presence of “guitars and lutes, violas and recorders, [and] high and acute voices” and reports that “here you will hear good singers harmonizing with composers of polyphony and troubadours.”15 For Cangrande, part of the rationale for supporting musical life at court may have been strategic. Earlier in the century, the court of Naples—­the court of King Robert d’Anjou, the sole royal polity on the peninsula—­ had supported similar practices. King Robert is said to have been “surrounded . . . by a crowd of singers.”16 Such practices served as a model for other Italian states keen to employ the arts either purely for enjoyment or as enrichments of civic identity or—­in the case of royal and aristocratic polities—­as enhancements to the aura of majesty surrounding hereditary dynasties.17 Perhaps almost as much as military power or the stature resulting from the quasi-­religious character of royal and aristocratic figures, cultivation and deployment of the arts could stabilize a regime, enhance the political, social, and judicial standing of royalty or nobility, and magnify its allure. They could further ennoble the nobility. Whatever such strategic considerations there may have been, by the time Johannes de Florentia arrived in Verona they were joined with personal ones. The crown had passed from Cangrande I (who had no legitimate offspring) to his nephews Alberto II18 and Mastino II, who ruled jointly from 1329 to 1351. The stage has been set. Enter Johannes de Florentia. We know of Johannes’s activities in Verona from the account of a Florentine historian, Filippo Villani. For the sake of financial gain, Giovanni da Cascia frequented the home of the Veronese tyrant Mastino della Scala and contended in the excellence of his art with Master Jacopo, a Bolognese most expert in the art of music. The tyrant encouraged them with his munificence, and Giovanni intoned a number of madrigals and

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many soni [i.e., monophonic ballate?]19 and [polyphonic?] ballate [“sonos . . . multos et ballatas”] of admirable sweetness and most artful melody, in which Giovanni demonstrated the extent and greatness of his learning in the art [of music].20

Given that Mastino della Scala died in 1351, the competition between Johannes de Florentia and Jacobus de Bononia ( Jacopo da Bologna)21 must have taken place no later than that year. Remarkably, compositions survive from that competition, in which a third composer not named by Villani also took part, one Piero.22 To judge from extant compositions by the three, they competed with one another not only in Verona but also at the Visconti court. They were giullari—­ wandering minstrels of considerable status—­and their visits to the della Scala and Visconti courts were episodes in a professional life spent restlessly journeying from court to court, seeking financial gain. Compositions by both Johannes and Piero were copied into a manuscript evidently assembled in the vicinity of the della Scala court, which is the repository of the compositions they wrote there.23 The texts of the compositions from the contest allude to the same person, an unidentified lady named Anna,24 who, in the tradition of medieval courtly love of the troubadours and trouvères, is the inaccessible object of the pitiable poet’s unrequited affections. It is unlikely that Johannes, Jacobus, and Piero were speaking for themselves and addressing their compositions to Lady Anna. Rather, they were likely responding to an informal commission and composing polyphonic settings of the verse in the cycle of interrelated poems. Also in the tradition of courtly love, Anna is not mentioned explicitly. Her name is concealed in the text, a medieval rhetorical device known as senhal.25 In Johannes’s O perlaro, the reference to Anna, expressed obliquely in the word “ANNAmorarmi” (in modern Italian, “innamorarmi”), occurs in the concluding couplet.26 strophe 1 O perlaro gentil, se dispogliato se’ per l’inverno ch’ogni fior nasconde, nel tempo novo dolc’ennamorato strophe 2 a te terneranno le fogli e le fronde Ma io dolente, quanto più vo innançi, nell’amor di costei più disavanço.

Oh noble perlaro: If despoiled you are by winter (which conceals all flowers), in the sweet springtime of love

your leaves and foliage will return. But—­sorrowful me—­the more I progress in the love of her, the more I regress.

Secular Polyphony: The Beginnings of the Florentine Tradition 31

ritornello Ay, lasso a me, non vol più ANNAmorarmi la biancha man che pur solea toccarmi.

Alas, woe is me! It no longer wishes that I be ENAmored of it, the white hand that indeed used to touch me.

Other features also point to the court of Alberto and Mastino della Scala: references to the perlaro, a local species of tree, and the banks of a river, likely the Adige, which passes through Verona and on whose banks the perlaro grows. Six compositions surviving from the competition—­two each by Johannes, Jacobus, and Piero—­refer to the perlaro and a river and conceal Anna’s name. Three others by Jacobus, the first of which refers to the Adige, tell of the metamorphosis of a lady, while in one of Johannes’s the lady herself—­“transformed into a horrible snake,” her identity again indirectly referenced—­speaks in the first person.27 Other compositions by Johannes and Jacobus also seem to document their rivalry, which may not have been altogether amicable. Jacobus’s I’ mi son un che per le frasche andando barely conceals his antipathy for his rivals, whom he does not name but publicly accuses of plagiarism. I do not seek the shade of others; indeed, I am weighed down by others’ vile thought, which hides its vileness beneath the style of others.

The poem’s conclusion—­“A crow that decks itself out in peacock feathers among the parrots loses them shamefully”—­furnishes the theme of another of Jacobus’s madrigals, The Carrion-­Crow Clothes Itself in Others’ Feathers, to which Johannes seems to have responded with his Amidst a Thousand Ravens a White Carrion-­Crow.28 There is also evidence of Johannes’s and Piero’s competition at the Visconti court. Both composers set a text that refers to the Adda, a river that runs through the Visconti dominions. Con brachi assai e con molti sparveri Uccellavam su per la riva d’Adda

With lots of hounds and many falcons we hunted for birds on the banks of the Adda.29

Happily, we have compositions we can examine. With rare exceptions, the extant secular vocal compositions of fourteenth-­century Florence are settings of verse in one of three poetic fixed forms: the madrigal, caccia,

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and ballata. In their formal design, the first two are essentially identical to each other, the ballata different. The earliest phase of the Trecento development is dominated by the madrigal and caccia. There are only a few (monophonic) ballate. During the course of the century, polyphonic madrigals and cacce almost disappear and polyphonic ballate greatly increase in number. We shall see representative examples of madrigals ( Johannes de Florentia’s Quando la stella presently and then Laurentius de Florentia’s Da, da), a caccia (Gherardellus de Florentia’s Tosto che l’alba), and a polyphonic ballata (Andreas de Florentia’s Astio non). Their texts and English translations are given below and their poetic schemes sketched. I consider poetic form in the proper context to ground such abstractions in the specifics of particular compositions. If we have correctly interpreted Filippo Villani’s account, Johannes may have composed lyrical, monophonic settings of ballata texts. But none of Johannes’s monophonic ballate is known to have survived.30 However, the exclusive attention to a single melody that such composition affords, coupled with Johannes’s position at the head of the Trecento tradition, may explain a distinguishing feature of his polyphonic compositions: the tendency for the melodic interest to be concentrated in the upper voice and rarely extended to the lower voice, or tenor (a term originating in the Latin verb tenere, “to hold,” since the lower voice in early polyphonic Latin sacred compositions in Christian Europe “held” the Gregorian chant melody), above which a second, independent melody was added.31 As in O perlaro gentil, madrigal texts typically comprise two or three tercets (three-­line strophes), with the music for the first tercet serving for subsequent ones, and a concluding couplet, the ritornello, sung to different music.32 The text freely alternates heptasyllabic (seven-­syllable) and hendecasyllabic (eleven-­syllable) lines. The ritornello brings the whole to a conclusion. The subject matter of the poem is often pastoral,33 and it—­ and the language in which it is written, and other means of expression—­is decorous. The rhythmic values of the tenor are longer, those of the upper voice(s) shorter; the uppermost voice has an expanded range. These two latter characteristics exemplify that tendency among early madrigal composers to concentrate on features of the upper voice that elicit virtuosic performance.34 The tercets typically have the same rhyme scheme; the ritornello is typically a rhyming couplet with a different rhyme scheme. The tercets provide an objective account of an event or a description of a scene; the ritornello is the author’s subjective reflection on the subject matter of the tercets or an interpretation of their meaning.35 Johannes’s chronological position suggests that he may also have been

Secular Polyphony: The Beginnings of the Florentine Tradition 33

responsible for establishing certain compositional procedures associated thereafter with polyphonic settings of madrigal verse, though he may simply have been refining earlier practices now unknown to us. Among the most distinctive of these was the practice of setting the text line by line, with the first and next-­to-­last syllables of each line of verse set melismatically (a single syllable of text sung to a melodic sequence of many pitches before the next syllable is sung), alternating with the setting of the interior syllables of the line of verse, which are set syllabically (each syllable sung to a single pitch in the melodic sequence before the next syllable is sung). The musical setting of each phrase of text then concludes with a cadence (in musicians’ language): a decisive pause. The music’s formal plan faithfully mirrors the text’s. Johannes’s Quando la stella illustrates (ex. 2.2). strophe 1 A Quando la stella press’ a l’alba spira B E ’l sol si mostra inverso l’oriente, B Amor gentil m’aparse nella mente. ritornello 1 C La vaga donna col benigno aspetto C Tenea nelle bracca per diletto;

strophe 2 D Poi la coperse di perfetta luce E E del suo draggio il fece vestita, E Vermiglio e bianco di color partita.

ritornello 2 F Una ghirlanda ’n su le trecce bionde F Di foglie verdi pose con le fronde.

When the star fades at dawn and the sun rises in the east, gentle love comes to mind.

The beautiful woman with the benign aspect, he was holding in his arms with delight.

Then he covered her with perfect light and had her dressed in his rays, divided between the colors red and white.

On her blond tresses, he placed a garland of green leaves with fronds.36

The syllable “Quan-­” in the initial word of the upper voice (“Quando”) is set melismatically to a linear sequence of fifteen pitches that precede the interior syllables of the line at the phrase “press’ a l’alba spi-­.” Now the setting is syllabic, each syllable in the phrase “press’ a l’al-ba” matched to

Example 2.2 Excerpt from Johannes de Florentia’s Quando la stella

Secular Polyphony: The Beginnings of the Florentine Tradition 35

one pitch before we proceed to the next syllable and its associated pitch. At “spi-­”—­the next-­to-­last syllable of the line—­we revert to a melismatic setting, where the syllable “spi-­” is set to a melodic sequence comprising forty pitches before we arrive at the cadence on the syllable “-­ra.” Johannes also composed cacce.37 In form and content, madrigal and caccia verse is similar, though not identical. Both have a strophic design, the strophe(s) of the caccia being an expanded version of the madrigal’s tercets. Both can manifest an idyllic quality, and both can employ the narrative mode. And in both, the ritornello summarizes or interprets the preceding lines. But although nearly identical in poetic form and similar in poetic content, madrigals and cacce were understood to be markedly different from each other. The audience of a caccia performance had the sensation of witnessing a scene as if from above, one that is evocatively described and full of action, employing third-­person narration. This distinguishing feature of the genre has been described as the “aerial perspective” of much caccia verse.38 The musical setting was also different in its use of strict imitation—­canon—­in the two upper voices and in the number (three) and character of the voices. Caccia tenors are textless and idiomatically instrumental. We shall see an example of a caccia presently, Gherardellus’s Tosto che l’alba. The genre is known as a “caccia,” or chase, because of two defining features: the literal depiction of a hunting scene and the compositional device of canon, where the second of the two canonic voices “stalks” the first. Johannes’s Con brachi assai indeed describes a hunting scene, and the second of the two upper voices indeed stalks the first. strophe 1 Con brachi assai e con molti sparveri Uccellavam su per la riva d’Adda E qual diceva, “Da, da!” E qual, “Vacia, Varin, Torna, Picciolo!” E qual prende a le quaglie a volo, a volo, Quando con gran tempesta un’aqua venne.

With lots of hounds and many falcons we hunted for birds on the banks of the Adda. And one of us was saying, “Come on!” And another, “Vacia, Varin, Torna, Picciolo!” One of us was catching quail in flight when the rain came with a great storm.

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strophe 2 Non corser mai per champagna levrieri, Come facea ciaschun per fuggir l’aqua E qual diceva, “Da,’ qua! Dammi ’l mantel!” e tal, “Dammi ’l chappello!” Quand’io ricoverai col mio uccello, Dove una pasturella il cor mi punse.

ritornello Sola era li, onde fra me dicea, “Eccho la pioggia, Eccho Dido e Enea.”

Never did a greyhound run through the countryside as each of us did to escape the rain. And one of us was saying, “Give it here! Give me my cloak!” And one, “Give me my hat!” when, with my falcon, I found cover where a shepherdess pierced my heart.

She was alone there, whereupon I said to myself, “Here comes the rain; here are Dido and Æneas.”39

3

Secular Polyphony

F ra ncesco Landino and t h e Central F lo rentine Trad ition

The Florentines clearly knew of their countryman Johannes de Florentia and of Jacobus de Bononia and Fra Piero as well and emulated them. It was a Florentine historian, after all, who recounted the competition between Johannes and Jacobus. And the compositions of Johannes, Jacobus, and Piero were copied into manuscripts compiled in Florence in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Just as the Neapolitan court of King Robert d’Anjou had served as the model for the della Scala and the Visconti, so the practices of the della Scala and Visconti inspired the Florentines to adopt such practices, though under different political and material circumstances: the absence of an aristocratic court.

Ser Gherardellus de Florentia (†1362 or 1363) Ser Niccolò di Francesco, better known to music historians as Gherardellus de Florentia (Gherardello da Firenze), was among the earliest of those composers with the profile described, that of the musician-­composer who had taken vows, in Gherardellus’s case as a member of the Vallombrosan Congregation of the Benedictine Order. In an illuminated miniature in the principal manuscript source of Florentine Trecento polyphony, he is depicted in the red cassock of the Vallombrosan Congregation, his head tonsured in the style of the medieval cleric. What little more we know of Ser Gherardellus the historical figure is that he was skilled enough as an administrator to advance rapidly through the Florentine ecclesiastical hierarchy, socialized amicably with his colleagues in the larger religious community, and had sufficient command of musical composition to leave behind a substantial body of polyphonic settings of secular Italian poetry. He is known to have set verse by his great contemporary Franco Sacchetti.1 We also know that he was associated with a confraternity of laudesi, the Compagnia di San Zanobi.2 Several decades after Gherardellus’s death, Sacchetti wrote in memory of the most

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famous men who had lived in Florence and said of Gherardellus and his younger contemporary Laurentius Masii that “whoever took pleasure in music found there Lorenzo and Gherardello, flawless masters of that art.”3 Like Johannes, Ser Gherardellus composed monophonic ballate. But unlike Johannes’s, some of Gherardellus’s survive. The ballata then being monophonic, Gherardellus’s are precious notated examples of oral practice, cherished vestiges of a kind of music that in its time must have been the most widely circulated.4 As the term suggests, the ballata originated in dance music,5 which is also reflected in its form, quite unlike that of the madrigal and caccia. Like the lauda, the ballata opens with a ripresa (refrain) comprising several hepta­syllabic or hendecasyllabic lines, typically no more than four. Following the ripresa is a series of strophes. The ripresa then recurs, either after each strophe or at the conclusion of the entire composition. The form illuminates the genre’s origins. The ripresa (with its recurring text and music) was originally sung by the group of dancers, whereas the strophes (with their own different, recurring music and different text for each strophe) were sung soloistically by the leader calling the dance, thus producing an alternation between choral ripresa and soloistic strophe, a call-­and-­response effect. The form eventually lost its association with the dance and became a lyric form, whether the text was understood as purely literary or was intended to be sung. But the nomenclature remained and loosely retained its original associations. Gherardellus’s I’ vo’ bene, on a text by his celebrated contemporary Niccolò Soldanieri, is representative (ex. 3.1). The text is in canonical ballata form. ripresa A I’ vo’ bene a chi vol bene a me A E non amo chi ama proprio sè.

strophe 1 piede (or mutazione) B Non son colui che per pigliar la luna C Consuma ’l tempo suo e nulla n’ à; B Ma, se m’ avien, com ’or, m’ incontri ad una C Che mi si tolga, i’ dico:—­E tu tti sta!–­

I wish anyone well who wishes me well, but I love no one who loves only himself.

I’m not the sort to waste my time shooting at the moon and hitting nothing; so if it happens sometimes that I meet a lady who picks me, I say, “So be it!”

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Example 3.1 Excerpt from Gherardellus’s I’ vo’ bene

volta C Se mi fa:—­Lima, Lima!—­et io a lei:—­Dà, dà!–­ A E così vivo in questa pura fe.’ return of the ripresa A I’ vo’ bene a chi vol bene a me A E non amo chi ama proprio sè.

But if she says: “Perfect [yourself],” I say “Sure!” And thus I abide by this true faith.

I wish anyone well who wishes me well, but I love no one who loves only himself.6

strophe 2 return of the ripresa

Gherardellus’s best-­known polyphonic composition is his caccia Tosto che l’alba (ex. 3.2). The text vividly depicts a hunt and is rich in such onomatopoeic devices and word painting as the imitation of the hunting horn at the words “he was playing his horn.” The highest pitch in the melody is reserved for the moment when the hunters shout “Hey!” to one another. The second voice to enter stalks the first.

Example 3.2 Excerpt from Gherardellus’s Tosto che l’alba

Secular Polyphony: Landino and the Central Florentine Tradition 41

strophe Tosto che ll’ alba del bel giorno appare Isveglia (gl)i cacciator.—­Su, ch’ egli è tenpo! —­Alletta (gl)i can!—­Tè, Viola! tè, Primiera!—­ —­Sus’ alto al monte co’ buon cani a mano E gli bracheti al piano, Et nella piaggia ad ordine ciascuno!—­ —­I’ vegio sentir uno De’ nostri miglior brachi.—­ —­Star’ avisato.—­ —­Bussate d’ ogni lato Ciascun le machie, chè Quaglina suona!—­ —­Aiò, aiò! a tte la cerbia vene! Carbon l’ à pres’ e in bocca la tene!—­

ritornello Del monte que’ che v’era su gridava: —­All’ altra! all’altra!—­e suo corno sonava.7

As soon as the fair day dawns the hunters awaken—­Up, for it is time Call the hounds! You, Viola! You Primiera!—­ Up to the mountains with fine dogs to hand and the pointers in the plain, everyone in position on the slopes! I see one of our finest pointers catch the scent—­ be on the alert—­ each of you beat the bush on all sides because the quail horn is sounding!—­ Hey, hey! The deer is running towards you! Carbon has got her and holds her in his jaws!

From the mountains came a call: To the other! To the other!—­and he was playing his horn.

Donatus de Florentia and Laurentius Masii de Florentia (†1372) Gherardellus’s younger contemporaries Donatus de Florentia (Donato da Firenze or da Cascia) and Laurentius Masii de Florentia (Lorenzo Masii or Masini, either one meaning the son of a Tommaso) “represent the peak of virtuoso singing in the Italian madrigal, and therefore in the Italian Ars nova [i.e., the Trecento] as a whole.”8 They represent quintessentially Florentine style, when Florentine tradition was largely sealed off from external influences, before the later fourteenth century, when Florentine practice began to reflect French taste, which “always invited technical and notational complexity.”9 The principal conduit for foreign influence was the transnational ecclesiastical state. Given that the religious orders were international in char-

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acter, circumstances were propitious for cross-­cultural interactions. Donatus lived at a moment when Florentine musicians were beginning to respond to foreign influences. He set verse in the French poetic form of the virelai, structurally related to the ballata. That he was among the earliest Italian composers to set a ballata text polyphonically suggests that the polyphonic treatment of ballate—­otherwise belonging to a later phase of the Trecento tradition—­was indeed the product of French influence and Donato’s experience in setting a virelai polyphonically.10 We know considerably more about Laurentius than Gherardellus or Donatus. He, too, exemplifies the now-­predictable profile of the musician-­ ecclesiastic. One of the contemporary manuscript sources of the Trecento repertory identifies him as a priest,11 and conclusive evidence documents a long association with the Church of San Lorenzo. We first trace Laurentius in 1347. Later, during his association with the monastic community at San Lorenzo, he occupied one of the spartan cells located along the western flank of the cloister adjoining the church. In 1348, he and three other canons requested that Pope Clement VI appoint one of them to the priorate, then vacant. Within two months, Clement issued a bull, and in 1349—­in the presence of “Laurentio Masini” and the other canons—­ Canon Ricco di Gianni was named prior. Laurentius assumed various administrative responsibilities at the monastery, including a fiduciary one. In 1353, he maintained the register of income and expenses for the sacristy and captioned the relevant document, “Here below, we shall record that which I—­Ser Lorenzo, comptroller—­ shall give.” In 1372, Laurentius drafted his last will and testament, naming San Lorenzo as legatee. Effects reflective of his musical interests and accomplishments were left to another legatee, who came into possession of “omnes libros et instrumenta acta ad cantandum.” Laurentius must have died by February 1373, as his testament was executed as of that date.12 Long thereafter, he was still remembered in Florence. That same Filippo Villani who furnished precious information about Johannes de Florentia noted that “many memorable Florentines have had a most perfect grasp of the discipline of music. But there are few who have published anything in that science; among these Bartolo and Ser Laurentius Masij composed more outstandingly and artistically than the rest.”13 Among the poets whose verse Laurentius set were Sacchetti, Niccolò Soldanieri, and Giovanni Boccaccio, celebrated author of the Decameron.14 The understandable privileging of poetry by Florentine poets may be an early intimation of “Florentinism,” a celebration of distinctively Florentine tradition. Laurentius seems to have had a speculative intellect, fed, perhaps, by

Example 3.3 Excerpt from Laurentius’s Dà, dà

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activity as a teacher. His identity as a teacher is suggested partly by the title “Master” accorded him by Sacchetti,15 partly by an enigmatic, didactic composition, Diligenter advertant cantores, the “Antiphon by Ser Lorerenço [sic],” preserved—­seemingly almost by happenstance—­in one of the contemporary sources of the Florentine Trecento,16 and partly by evidence of a fascination with such compositional challenges as the unambiguous notation of rhythm.17 Laurentius’s interest in the latter is suggested by two versions of his madrigal Ita se n’era a star,18 the second of which appears to be the product of his dissatisfaction with the earlier attempt to communicate his intentions. Laurentius thus exemplifies the profile of the clerical polymath whose identity as musician and composer is only one facet of a multifaceted professional personality. Like Donatus’s compositions, Laurentius’s are characterized by the tendency to lavish particular attention on the virtuosic upper voice and craft a tenor subordinated to the superius that provides a substructure for it, such that the floridity of the upper voice is showcased (ex. 3.3). In some of Laurentius’s madrigal settings, there is also evidence of a developing interest among Trecento composers in integrating the two voices. At the opening of Dà, dà, a chi avaregia pur per sè and again at measures 9 and 10, 16 and 20, 24 and 25, and elsewhere, the two voices employ a call-­and-­ response technique. Such moments are episodic, however. Elsewhere, the tenor serves the more traditional role, its longer rhythmic values providing unobtrusive harmonic support for the florid superius. There is also word painting, such as the insistent repetition of the word Dà, which expresses the meaning of the text: “Give, give, give, GIVE, GIVE!” strophe 1 Dà, dà, a chi avaregia pur per sè, Se ’l tempo gli si volge a scherço d’orsa, Chè non si trova amico fuor di borsa.

strophe 2 Tu, o tu che ài stato, ascolta me: Quegli à il destro, a fare a sè amico, Ch’à il piè nell’acqua, il becco nel panico.

Give to the man who hoards wealth only for himself; if time turns out to play a she-­bear’s trick on him he will find out that you can’t have friends without a full purse.

You who have wealth and position, listen to me: the man who makes fortune his friend is the one with his feet in the water and his beak in the grain.

Secular Polyphony: Landino and the Central Florentine Tradition 45

ritornello (De’) pensa, pensa che tardi si rinocca, Chi scende, a risalir. Zara a cui tocca!

But remember that usually we delay too much in firing a second arrow. It’s a matter of chance who will rise again after a fall.19

Francesco Landino (†1397) If a teacher is known partly through the successes of his pupils, then Laurentius was fortunate indeed. It has been proposed that the illustrious Francesco Landino was Laurentius’s protégé (fig. 3.1).20 Uniquely among Florentine Trecento composers, Landino reached an audience far beyond his religious community. As a result, his life is richly documented not only by archival entries and similar references but also by numerous contemporary and posthumous accounts of his life, tributes that celebrate his accomplishments and provide evocative details. Some of the acclaim is owing to Landino’s blindness, which afflicted him almost from birth;21 he overcame its effects through his attainments as a composer and organist. The references documenting Landino’s life habitually refer to his condition and the musical instrument with which he was identified. He is typically named “blind Francesco” and “Francesco the organist” or “of the organs.”22 In the principal source of Florentine Trecento polyphony, the illuminated miniature that portrays him gives a careful rendering of his eyes, documents his blindness, and shows him with a portative organ. The caption identifies him as “blind maestro Francesco, organist of Florence.” His tomb slab in the Church of San Lorenzo portrays him similarly. The composer’s father was the late-­Duecento/early-­Trecento painter Jacopo del Casentino.23 According to the renowned fifteenth-­century Florentine humanist Cristoforo Landino—­Francesco’s grandnephew24—­ Landino was born in Fièsole.25 As an infant, Landino contracted smallpox, the cause of his blindness. The tributes to him almost invariably employ a similar trope: the blindness that limited him physically unleashed compensating abilities. Cristoforo wrote about his great-­uncle that “nature gave as much to him in judgment of hearing as it took away from him in sight.”26 The second strophe of an autobiographical madrigal written in the third person refers to the compensating powers that Landino developed. Fortune kept his sight locked up, against which he used every skill and talent available to him for the sole purpose of directing himself toward the honored goal.27

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Figure 3.1 Francesco Landino. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Med. Pal. 87. White Images / Scala / Art Resource, NY. See plate 2 for a color image.

Young Francesco mastered singing and instrumental playing, not only on the organ, but also string and wind instruments. He was said to have invented a new instrument, a cross between a lute and a psaltery. Landino demonstrated great dexterity on the organ, playing rapidly while strictly maintaining the rhythm and meter and attaining a sweetness in the execution. The sounds he produced were said to have resembled the human voice. Most remarkably, his blindness did not prevent him from mastering organ construction and repair. And his organ playing was by no means confined to the religious institutions that housed such an instrument. He

Secular Polyphony: Landino and the Central Florentine Tradition 47

kept more than one portative organ in his home, and the instruments would be carried to and from performance venues.28 The man and the musician were one and the same. Landino enjoyed a relationship with the monastic community at the Church of Santa Trìnita. In 1361, he played the organ there—­his brother Nuccio working the bellows—­and afterward dined with members of the larger Florentine ecclesiastical community.29 In 1365, Landino is first documented at the Church of San Lorenzo.30 His name appears more or less continuously in the account books beginning in 1369. He served as chaplain and was compensated for playing the organ.31 For several years, therefore, Laurentius and Landino were together at San Lorenzo—­Laurentius as canon, Landino as chaplain—­which increases the likelihood that Laurentius served, if not formally as Landino’s teacher in polyphonic composition, then at least as his mentor in a less formal sense. During his years at San Lorenzo, Landino also first set Sacchetti’s poetry.32 At one time during his life, Landino visited Venice, where according to Villani he was crowned with laurel by the king of Cyprus, an honor typically reserved for poets and emperors.33 One might question Villani’s eulogizing account of the composer’s life, although Landino is portrayed with a laurel wreath in the principal manuscript source of Trecento polyphony. But more credible evidence exists. A fragmentary Latin sacred composition whose text is addressed to Andrea Contarini, Venetian doge in 1368–­82, acclaims Contarini as the “noblest prince who reigns justly and stably over the dogato of the Venetians.” Further particulars of the text leave no doubt that the composition dates from Contarini’s lifetime and that the composer is a “Francesco” who is singing outside his native land.34 Other accounts of Landino’s life also report that the composer had visited Venice, where he was crowned with laurel (according to one account, by the Venetian doge as well as the king of Cyprus), and there is substantiating evidence that Landino composed several Latin sacred compositions.35 Peter II of Lusignano, king of Cyprus, visited Venice on three occasions, the last of which (1368) coincided with the beginning of Contarini’s tenure. Was that the year of Landino’s visit to Venice and the composition and performance of his motet? Among the earliest evidence that Landino was earning a reputation in Florence beyond San Lorenzo is a 1375 letter from Salutati to the bishop of Florence recommending “Franciscum Iacobi musicum et organistam” for a sinecure at the hospital of Santa Reparata.36 Preeminent Florentine ecclesiastical institutions other than San Lorenzo—­the Church of the Annunziata, the Cathedral of Florence—­sought Landino’s expertise in organ construction and maintenance. In 1379, he was responsible not only for the design of a new organ at the Annunziata but also for supervising its construction.37

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In 1387, Landino and several others were deputized by the supervisors of the Cathedral to attend to the design and construction of new organs there. Evidence of Landino’s entry onto a larger Florentine stage is also contained in the Paradiso degli Alberti, a fictional work whose testimony has to be evaluated accordingly. All the same, the picture it conveys is not unrealistic, and one assumes that its author imagined a scene that his readers would not have found implausible, even if he was not recounting actual historical events. In this . . . year [1389], . . . many magnificent banquets were held, amongst which it pleased . . . Coluccio, our chancellor, to invite to dine with him . . . a large number of . . . doctors and artists and other notable citizens. . . . A great many harmonies had been played and sung by Francesco and his company, to complete the . . . meal. . . . After the valiant men had been seated, Francesco . . . requested his small organ and began so sweetly to play his songs of love that there was no one present who did not feel that his heart wished to escape from his chest for joy. . . . Then when morning came, and the company met at that delightful place as had been agreed the previous evening, and when they had found messer Antonio [Alberti] . . . , they entered the palace. . . . When they had broken their fast . . . , the little organ of Francesco . . . was prepared and brought to him. He took it, and began to play it so sweetly and with such sweet harmony that all were amazed. . . . And soon, to everyone’s delight, and especially to the delight of Francesco . . . , two young girls began to sing a ballata, while Biagio di Sernello provided a bourdon [instrumental bass line] for them. . . . These are the words of the ballata: Or su, gentili spirti ad amar pronti.38

Imagine that we have been invited to the Alberti family palazzo. After breakfast, two young girls sing Landino’s ballata Orsù, gentili spirti, which is still extant. The bottommost voice is performed instrumentally. ripresa A Orsù, gentili spirti ad amar pronti, B volete voi vedere il paradiso? B Mirate d’esta cosa suo bel viso. strophe piede (or mutazione) 1 C Nelle sue santi luci arde e sfavilla D Amore vittorioso, che divampa E Per dolcezza di gloria chi lla mira;

Come, gentle spirits, quick to love, do you wish to see paradise? You may see it in her gracious face.

And in her divine eyes there burns and sparkles victorious Love, which in its gentle glory inflames all who look on her.

Secular Polyphony: Landino and the Central Florentine Tradition 49

piede (or mutazione) 2 C ma l’alma mia, fedelissima ancilla, D piatà non trova in questa chiara lampa E e null’altro che llei ama o disira,

But my soul, her most faithful handmaid, can find no pity in that bright flame, though it loves and desires no other than her.

volta E O sacra iddea, al tuo servo un po’ spira B mercé; merzé sol chiamo, già conquiso; B deh, fàllo pria che morte m’abbia inciso.

Holy goddess, take pity on your servant; pity is all I ask, for I am already vanquished; pray have pity before death bears me away.

return of the ripresa A Orsù, gentili spirti ad amar pronti, B volete voi vedere il paradiso? B Mirate d’esta cosa suo bel viso.

Come, gentle spirits, quick to love, do you wish to see paradise? You may see it in her gracious face.39

Landino then performs on his portative organ, which is often with him. What might he have played? Although the vast majority of the extant compositions from Trecento Florence are vocal, there are small collections of instrumental compositions extant that comprise some of the earliest such compositions in European history. An anthology of instrumental arrangements of vocal compositions—­the Faenza manuscript40—­ has been characterized as “unquestionably the oldest unified collection of [European] instrumental music that has yet come to light.”41 The instrument intended was almost certainly a keyboard instrument (the portative organ, clavichord, or spinet), and among the compositions arranged for such performance—­“a judiciously selected group of instrumental transcriptions of some of the most widely disseminated French and Italian secular compositions of the 14th century”—­are ballate by Landino. The arrangements rather uniformly employ a particular technique. “The original tenor part is reproduced almost unaltered, while the cantus is embellished with lively figurations,” which “denote the wish to produce specifically instrumental effects.”42 But the Faenza manuscript is not of Florentine origin, and one does not know whether the arrangements of the Landino ballate were even known in his native city, let alone that he was responsible for them. Another period source—­the Reina manuscript—­preserves an arrangement for key-

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board of another of Landino’s ballate,43 and in this case it is likelier that the arrangement was Landino’s own.44 As contrasted with the arrangements in the Faenza manuscript, the Reina arrangement of Questa fanciulla reveals a “use of figurations in the upper part” “of a far more restrained and modest kind” (ex. 3.4).45 Landino might well have performed such a composition at the palace of the Alberti. And although the account of the gathering at the palace of the Alberti does not so report, such an event often featured dancing. Giovanni Boccaccio furnishes an atmospheric fictional account of one such occasion. When they had put away the tables, since all the young men and women knew how to carol, play instruments, and sing, and some of them really well, the queen commanded that the instruments be brought, and at her command Dioneo picked up a lute and Fiametta a vielle, and began sweetly to play a dance. At that, after they had sent their servants away to eat, the queen and the other women, together with two young men, made a circle and with slow steps began to dance the carol.46

Having established the performance context, let us pause to consider the dance tradition of Trecento Italy. Instrumental compositions serving as the accompaniment to dancing are all monophonic, many of them bearing cryptic, exotic titles such as The Beginning of Joy, Three Fountains, and Tristan’s Lament.47 The dances are of two types. Eight of them—­known as the istampita (or Istanpitta)—­are for a higher-­pitched melody instrument such as a recorder. In performance they would likely have been accompanied by both a percussion instrument and a lower-­pitched string instrument such as a lute or harpsichord, capable of furnishing chords, which accompanied the melody and provided a harmonic substructure for it. The existing melody would have suggested the chords of the accompaniment, which could have been improvised in performance. The Istanpitte are organized into sections, labeled as the first, second, third, fourth, and even fifth parts, each section played twice and having two contrasting endings, the first “open” or inconclusive and the second “closed” or conclusive.48 Consistent with their status as melodies, the Istanpitte are fully rhythmized.49 Among the dances of the first type are also several examples of the saltarello, a lively dance with leaping motions.50 Four of the compositions, identified as “German song tenors,” are of a second type. They are lower-­lying in register and intended for performance on a lower-­pitched instrument, the notated melodies (which are typically unmeasured) serving as the foundation for an improvised countermelody above them. It is only conjecture that these compositions

Secular Polyphony: Landino and the Central Florentine Tradition 51

Example 3.4 Excerpt from an arrangement for keyboard performance of Landino’s ballata Questa fanciulla

were intended to accompany dancing, though that is a reasonable hypothesis.51 Perhaps equally likely, they served as the foundation for a series of variations on the harmonic scheme implied in the melody. Examples 3.5 and 3.6 are representative examples of each type. In addition to surviving music for dancing, we have invaluable depic-

Example 3.5 Excerpt from the music for the istampita Cominciamento di gioia

Secular Polyphony: Landino and the Central Florentine Tradition 53

Example 3.6 Excerpt from the Chançoneta Tedescha Tenor

tions of the dance from late-­medieval Tuscany that aid our efforts to envision the dance practices of that distant world. Such images cannot be read literally, of course. They are the product of the artist’s fancy. But they stimulate the imagination. The mid-­Quattrocento Florentine painter Apollonio di Giovanni decorated a cassone—­the chest that stored a bride’s trousseau—­w ith a depiction of the dance (fig. 3.2). Instrumentalists seated on an elevated platform accompany the dancers below. Let us imagine that there is dancing at the extravagant gathering at the palace of the Alberti to which we have been invited. A small ensemble comprising a recorder (which plays the melody), a lute (which improvises supporting chords), and a tambourine (which marks the beat) accompanies an istampita, The Beginning of Joy. Then a lower-­pitched instrument plays the long notes of a German song tenor, while the tambourine once

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Figure 3.2 Apollonio di Giovanni, Continence of Scipio (from a cassone panel), mid-­ fifteenth century, period representation of dancing. London, Victoria & Albert Museum. V&A Images, London / Art Resource, NY.

more marks the beat and the recorder this time improvises a rhapsodic countermelody above. Each pitch in the sequence of pitches in the tenor corresponds to one step in the choreography. To judge from the account of the gathering at the palace of the Alberti, Landino’s attainments were securing him a following in Florentine society: figures in bourgeois society (members of that “mondo elegante” of Trecento Florence of which Giosuè Carducci wrote so evocatively),52 masters of the Studium of Florence, and others.53 One basis for Landino’s appeal was that his interests extended to the arts and philosophies: grammar, poetry, dialectic. Cristoforo Landino said of his great-­uncle, “It is doubtless wonderful that, deprived completely of sight, he was not unlearned in philosophy, not ignorant in astronomy.”54 Evidence of Landino’s accomplishments as a student of dialectic are his Latin “verses of Francesco . . . composed in praise of the logic of [William of] Ockham,” the late-­medieval nominalist theologian.55 That Francesco wrote in Ockham’s defense suggests that however much the composer was esteemed

Secular Polyphony: Landino and the Central Florentine Tradition 55

by Renaissance humanists such as Salutati and Francesco’s grandnephew Cristoforo, the composer’s world, rather than that of the emerging Renaissance, was that of the “waning Middle Ages,” to quote the standard translation of the title of Huizinga’s classic work. Whatever uncertainties there may be about the historicity of the account in the Paradiso degli Alberti, there is no question that Landino’s accomplishments afforded him entree to a larger world. Several of his compositions conceal references to a Florentine lady named Alessandra or ’Sandra, such as the ballata Ma’ non S’ANDRÀ per questa donna altera, to cite only one example. The same device may have been deployed in other ballata settings. Much of this evidence—­especially the use of senhal—­ may be the expression of a late fourteenth-­century Florentine openness to the practices of the courts of France and northern Italy, elements of a courtly culture (especially Provençal) imported to republican Florence. Landino also engaged in an exchange of sonnets with Sacchetti. Beyond the evidence it provides of his associations with contemporary intellec-

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tuals, it is testimony to his own accomplishments as letterato. For many of the settings for which we do not know the poet, Landino was likely the author. Landino died on “Sunday, the 2nd day of September 1397, at the 6th hour . . . inasmuch as the said day he was put to rest in our church.” Several days later, a memorial service was held at San Lorenzo.56 The composer settled a legacy of 300 florins on the church and for many years thereafter was remembered there for his bequests.57 Cristoforo Landino, who was well informed about contemporary Florentine events and knew of the pending reconstruction of San Lorenzo, wrote metaphorically to his great-­uncle that “at death you are given a marble tomb, which the ancient church of San Lorenzo now enfolds; that church encloses it which Cosimo will soon give.” But the construction of the new church resulted in the removal of Landino’s tomb slab in the fifteenth century. It was rediscovered in the nineteenth century and returned. The importance of Landino’s achievement is owing in good part to the sheer number of his extant compositions, which dwarf those of any other Trecento composer. It was a moment when ballata settings greatly exceed caccia and madrigal settings in number, and only about a dozen caccia and madrigal settings by Landino survive, as contrasted with some 150 two-­and three-­voiced ballata settings. Landino was the earliest Florentine composer to leave a substantial body of ballata settings, and from that moment the ballata became the principal genre in the repertory of polyphonic settings of Italian secular poetry.58 More successfully than his contemporaries, Landino was able to reconcile the austere technical demands of “Gallic” polyphonic composition with the traditional “Italic” lyricism of the ballata, especially in its monophonic phase.

4

Secular Polyphony

T h e Galliciz atio n o f Florentine Musica l Culture

By “musical Gallicism,” I mean a tendency for Florentine Trecento composers of polyphony to reaccent their style with features characteristic of fourteenth-­century French compositional practices. Reflections of such compositional aesthetics in Landino’s oeuvre (and that of later Florentine Trecento composers) may be evidence of the phenomenon in the visual arts (especially painting) known as the International Gothic.1 So, too, may the openness to literary practices of the courts of northern Italy and transalpine Europe. Although the definition of the International Gothic is contested,2 it seems to have been a courtly phenomenon, entailing practices facilitated by relationships among European aristocratic dynasties that resulted from intermarriages between them.3 No matter how inconsistent with nominal republican values, aristocratic tradition fascinated Florentines of the late Middle Ages, especially members of the “mondo elegante.” How did such an aesthetic find its way to late-­Trecento Florence? Because there was no aristocratic court in Trecento Florence, robust transnational networks of interrelationships among aristocratic dynasties did not yet exist. Transnationality, as we have seen, was the product of the ecclesiastical state; the monastic orders were the channel for exchanges of musical repertory and compositional practices. Once such practices were established in Florence, the mondo elegante absorbed them into its own traditions. The Gallicization of Florentine musical culture is evident in the enrichment of the texture of polyphonic compositions. Although compositions for three voices survive from the mid-­Trecento, the preponderance of the extant compositions from the earlier phase of the tradition is for two voices. As the century progressed the number of three-­voice compositions increased. With these developments came adjustments in compositional tech-

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nique. Despite the evidence in Laurentius’s madrigal Dà, dà, a chi avaregia pur per sè of incipient attempts to integrate the tenor and superius, the tenor remains subordinate, designed to provide a harmonic substructure. Landino’s three-­voiced ballata settings display a greater integration of the three voices, a greater similarity to one another in melodic contour and rhythmic design.

Some Florentine Kleinmeistern: Magister frater Egidius, Magister Guglielmus frater, and Corradus The compositions of several composers active in Florence in Landino’s time reveal French influence perhaps even more clearly than Landino’s. Their biographies document the means by which such influences permeated Florentine practice. The careers of the Frenchmen “Magister frater Egidius”4 and “Magister Guglielmus . . . frater” (fl. ca. 1360, 1371)5—­both members of the monastic community at the Augustinian Church of Santo Spirito6—­are the product of the transnational ecclesiastical state. The musical evidence of Egidius’s French origins is revealing. Among the texts he set to music—­a French text, one notes, in the French poetic form of the ballade—­is one in honor of “the Holy Father who has care for all,” his name “Clemens” concealed in an acrostic. Courtois et sages et a tous doit plaisir Le droit signour que par eleccion Et non par force, mais par commun sentir, Mis est en siege de benediccion. Est redone a tous en union Nulz contradire ne le puet par droiture: Sains peres set que de tous a la cure.

Courtly and wise, and pleasing to all, the rightful lord who by election and not by force, but by common agreement, has been placed in the seat of blessing, and restored to all in unity. No one has the right to gainsay him: He is the Holy Father who has care for all.7

Clemens can only be the schismatic French “antipope” Clement VII (not to be confused with the Medici pope Clement VII). Egidius’s composition, notably, is transmitted in an early fifteenth-­century manuscript that appears “to reflect the activity of a group of musicians in the retinue of two early fifteenth-­century schismatic popes, Alexander V and John XXIII.”8 Egidius’s and Guglielmus’s French aesthetics reveal themselves in others of their compositions. Roses et lis ay veu en une fleur, attributed to

Secular Polyphony: The Gallicization of Florentine Musical Culture 59

“M. Egidius Augustinus,” is also on a French text and in ballade form.9 As for Egidius’s and Guglielmus’s influence on the music of their contemporaries, it has been said of Guglielmus that “he may have contributed to the strains of French influence . . . easily perceptible in Landino’s . . . music.”10 But Guglielmus’s “attempts to assimilate the style of Italian polyphony” “were only moderately successful.”11 French influence is also evident in a composition by Corrado da Pistoia (fl. ca. 1385, 1410), who is recorded at the Church of Santo Spirito in 1385.12 Like Egidius’s Courtois et sages, Corradus’s Veri almi pastoris is a document of the Great Schism. It refers to the papal singers (“musicale collegium”) and reveals an anxiety about the pope’s pedigree. Lest there be any question about the pope’s bona fides as claimant to the papal throne, the claim was warranted in that he was a “True . . . shepherd [‘Veri . . . pastoris’].” Veri alma pastoris—­musicale collegium hunc cantum suscipite13

Andreas de Florentia (Andrea di Giovanni) (†1415) Andreas de Florentia was a member of the Order of the Servants of Mary (Ordine de’ Servi di Maria),14 headquartered at the Church of the Santissima Annunziata. As with so many of the composers considered earlier, his musical attainments were only one facet of a multifaceted professional profile and in the eyes of contemporaries not necessarily the most important one. The “unusual amount of biographical information we have about” him is “due to his deeds as an administrator.”15 But the annals of the Servites make only passing reference to his musical abilities,16 as one of two organists who in 1379 first played the new organ at the Annunziata.17 Andreas’s extant compositions are almost exclusively settings of ballata texts and in that respect he is typical of his time. Once polyphonic settings of ballate were countenanced, a development attributable partly to French influence, the composers’ command of polyphonic technique—­acquired earlier in composing madrigals and cacce—­permitted a rapid refashioning of the ballata as a polyphonic genre. Andreas favored “experiment” and “old contrapuntal devices,”18 and some of his compositional “contrivances” suggest French influence. His polyphonic setting of the ballata text Astio non morì mai makes use of Stimmtausch or rondellus in its two upper voices: voice exchange between the two, patterned according to an unvarying, predetermined scheme, which occurs over a repeating ostinato bass in the lowest voice.19

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ripresa a Astio non morì mai. [Fine]

Spite does not ever die.

strophe 1 piede (or mutazione) b Nel foco sempre ardendo b Consùmasi stridendo

Always burning in the fire, consuming itself, shrieking

volta a Con dolore e con guai

with pain and troubles,

strophe 2 c Le bilance al cul porta c Per tener ragion torta a Attuta gente mai.

he carries scales at his ass to hold invalid reason for all the people evermore.

strophe 3 d Ignudo in cuffia e in braca d Sotto la rota vaca a Sança levarsi mai. [Da capo al Fine] return of the ripresa a Astio non morì mai.

Nude, in cap and breeches, he sprawls under the wheel without ever raising himself.

Spite does not die ever.20

In Astio non morì mai, music is provided only for the first line of the piede; the second line is sung to that for the first. At the conclusion of the three strophes, the ripresa returns (ex. 4.1). Even more direct evidence of French influence on Andreas’s aesthetics is his setting of a French poem in the poetic fixed form of the ballade Dame sans per.21

Some Florentine Kleinmeistern Redux: Bonaiutus Corsini and Andrea Stefani A composition by Andreas de Florentia’s pupil Bonaiutus Corsini Cofanarius (fl. 1379–­1416)—­a painter of “cofani” and “cassoni”—­reveals even more clearly the influence of French compositional technique.22 His ballata setting Donna non fu già mai reveals incipient attempts at isorhythmic writing,23 a technique especially associated with French practice of the fourteenth century, rarely with Italian. Seemingly before the process of composition even began, the composer had settled on a fixed, unvarying

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Example 4.1 Excerpt from Andreas’s Astio non

order of pitches and pitch durations, which then recurs in sequence—­ repeatedly, end to end—­in one of the voices of the composition, with which the other voices are in counterpoint. Typical of the self-­conscious intellectualism of late-­medieval French composers, the creative artifice contrasts rather sharply with the more intuitive quality of Italian style.24

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A different kind of evidence of French influence is revealed in the work of Bonaiutus’s contemporary Andrea Stefani (fl. ca. 1399). His Con tutta gentilezza is a three-­voice composition noteworthy for its handling of the contratenor, or third voice, which avoids the uniformity in rhythmic design of the three voices typical of the genre at this time: its homo­ rhythmicism, to use the musician’s term. Described as “fluent,”25 Andrea’s contratenor has a melodic cogency and independence from the other voices that may reveal French influence.

Paulus de Florentia (†1436) Unlike the Kleinmeistern, Paulus de Florentia was a genuine master.26 Because of his place in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, we have an unusual amount of biographical information about him.27 Paulus’s extant compositions include two settings of Latin sacred texts (one of them for the Ordinary of the Mass), forty-­six ballata settings, and thirteen madrigal settings. Among fourteenth-­century Florentine composers of polyphonic music, he is second only to Landino in the number of extant compositions. And like that of his contemporaries, Paulus’s music reveals the influences of French compositional practice and contrivances.28 Two characteristics of Paulus’s output are noteworthy: the relatively large number of madrigal settings at a time when caccia and madrigal settings had been almost entirely eclipsed by ballata settings, a phenomenon described as a “survival” of the madrigal; and the number of compositions on political themes, explainable as the product of his prominent role in church affairs. The Florentine conquest of Pisa inspired Paulus’s Godi, Firenze, which celebrates Florentine superiority to Pisa not only militarily but also culturally.29

* * * Although composers of secular polyphony with works in a recognizably Florentine Trecento style were active as late as the first few decades of the fifteenth century, it is clear that by then a new era in the history of Florentine music had begun. Only when one fully contextualizes the Florentine Trecento tradition of settings of Italian secular poetry does one begin to appreciate how rarified and intimate that tradition was relative to other contemporary traditions, such as music for communal worship, whether liturgical or devotional, or for civic occasions. It justifiably commands our attention, as it did that of its contemporaries. From archival references we know something of its composers’ biographies but principally because

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of their nonmusical activities and achievements. The tradition is susceptible to fuller reconstruction by virtue of its dependence upon notation for its creation, preservation, transmission, and performance; it is more well documented. But its survival is almost an accident of preservation and properly understood as such. The tradition must not be seen as especially representative of the period’s musical culture. Among its practitioners, only Landino truly seems to have attracted an audience beyond the confines of an ecclesiastical community. It is a circumscribed tradition, understandably and justifiably celebrated for its refinement but limited in its reach and precious in character, an outlier on the musico-historical graph of Trecento Florence.

5

Music in Communal Worship and Civic Life

Construction on the Cathedral of Florence proceeded slowly throughout the Trecento. Progress was sometimes marked with vocal and instrumental performances and other elements of the soundscape of fourteenth-­ century Florence. In 1357, new construction was celebrated “with a great exultation of songs and . . . the sound of bells, the organ, and trumpets.”1 In providing for the musical adornment of the liturgy, the authorities assumed the use of other genres in addition to the chant and improvised polyphony. From time immemorial, worship in the Christian West has featured organ playing, and in 1387, the Cathedral overseers furnished the building then under construction with two new organs, at considerable expense (300 florins). The overseers sought the expertise of Landino and Andreas, among others. They were responsible for designing and supervising the construction of the organs.2 An important early-­Trecento development—­a reform of the Cathedral liturgy—­lay behind the copying of the earliest extant music manuscripts for Santa Maria del Fiore.3 Almost immediately upon his election in 1310, Bishop Antonio degli Orsi issued his Constitutiones episcoporum florentini, a document important thereafter to Florentine liturgical practice. Bishop Antonio’s objective was a standardization and Romanization of the liturgy, which appears to have resulted in the suppression of an earlier set of books for Santa Reparata judged to be obsolescent and provincial. Antonio was concerned that the subordinate churches of his diocese were failing to honor the practices of the ecclesia maior—­the Cathedral—­and he mandated that the “corrected Office” now “follow and approach the order of the Office of the Roman Curia.” Bishop Antonio’s demand for Romanization is best understood in the context of his interest in reaffiliating with the papacy. By means of shared ritual observances, Florentines sought to fashion their city as the liturgical

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offspring of Rome, and they asserted a sacramental relatedness between the two cities that paralleled their symbolic evocation of the historic Roman origins of Florence.4 Thirty-­one feasts for the Cathedral of Santa Reparata were suppressed and replaced with approximately the same number of Roman feasts. Simultaneously, however—­ and somewhat inconsistent with Romanization—­came a renewed devotion to figures with Florentine associations: the Virgin Mary; Santa Reparata; St. Zenobius. Another group of feasts commemorated saints associated with the Guelph traditions of Duecento and Trecento Florence. Yet other figures were the patron saints of Florentine companies of laudesi. The new liturgical books assembled for the Cathedral partly favored feasts for Florentine saints. And the most interesting material—­liturgical, visual, musical—­is for a few saints’ days of particular significance. These often featured unique texts and music; the books’ illuminated miniatures were often executed by the city’s foremost miniaturists. In a Mass for Santa Reparata, the musical material is largely drawn from the universal liturgy of the church, with at least one important exception. A late-­Quattrocento manuscript for Santa Maria del Fiore substitutes the Alleluia v. Genere nobilis mente nobilior for the universal Alleluia v. Specie tua et pulchritudine tua, and the text of the substituted verse refers specifically to Santa Reparata.5 It, too, may be an early instance of “Florentinism,” although such privileging of local tradition was by no means uniquely Florentine.

Liturgical Polyphony Notwithstanding the fact that the vast majority of the known Florentine Trecento composers were ecclesiastics, their music rarely gives evidence of their professional identities.6 But there is some such evidence: Gherardellus, Laurentius, and Paulus composed polyphonic settings of Mass Ordinary texts. The same Filippo Villani who reported on Johannes and Laurentius also reported on a tradition of liturgical polyphony at the Cathedral of Florence. He had identified “Bartolo7 and Ser Lorenzo di Maso” as having composed in an “excellent and capable manner” and recounted that in our principal church, when the Credo was being sung—­the playing of the organ alternating with the voices of the choir—­the first of these [Bartolo] performed it instead with so much agreeable and sweet harmony and artistic skill that—­the customary interjection of the organ having been abandoned—­the

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entire piece was performed vocally, with a large gathering of people following the vocal harmony, and Bartolo was thus the first who forced abandoning the ancient custom of the chorus and organ.8

Prior to Bartholus’s innovation, the performance of the Credo at the Cathedral had conformed to time-­honored practice. The choir alternated with the organ, the choir presumably singing one verse of text in the monophony of the chant with the organ responding. Bartholus’s innovation was a through-­composed setting of the entire Credo text. His Credo figures in a cycle of polyphonic settings of Mass Ordinary texts by his Trecento compatriots: a two-­voiced Gloria by Gherardellus, a two-­ voiced Sanctus by Laurentius, a two-­voiced Agnus Dei by Gherardellus, and a three-­voiced Benedicamus domino by Paulus. I deferred discussion of the cycle for a particular reason: there is little distinction in style between the settings by Gherardellus, Laurentius, and Paulus of Latin sacred and Italian secular texts. The liturgical compositions are madrigalesque in character, as a glance at Laurentius’s Sanctus setting suggests (ex. 5.1). A simpler tenor provides a foundation for the virtuosic singing of the upper voice, which is rich in florid passagework. The settings of liturgical texts are consistent with the secular repertory in another respect: “while . . . polyphonic pieces [like the Decus morum seen earlier] normally make use [in the tenor] of liturgical melody [i.e., the Gregorian chant], all the voices of . . . polyphonic pieces [like Laurentius’s Sanctus] are normally the creation of the composer.”9

The Trecento Lauda The Florentine lauda tradition flowered during the Trecento.10 The fourteenth-­century lauda was the product of vital ritual, musical, and visual developments. The image of the Madonna currently framed by Orcagna’s marble tabernacle in Orsanmichele, to which lauda singing was directed, was painted in 1347 by Bernardo Daddi. It is the only Florentine laudese image that may still be viewed in its original setting, essentially unchanged since the fourteenth century.11 That same century saw the copying of the principal manuscripts preserving lauda texts and music. Although the performance contexts and ritual purposes of the lauda were effectively the same as in the Duecento,12 the musical style changed notably, surely owing in part to the presence of fourteenth-­century polyphonists among the laudesi. Bonaiutus and Gherardellus belonged to the Company of San Zanobi; Giovanni di Niccolò Mazzuoli, organist at Santa Felìcita and the Cathedral, was organist and accompanist to the laudesi

Example 5.1 Excerpt from Laurentius’s Sanctus

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at Orsanmichele; Andrea Stefani composed not only settings of ballate but also polyphonic laude for one of the confraternities, the Bianchi.13 The similarities between the earliest madrigals and Florentine laude are of a general sort, notably the florid vocalism and melismatic text setting that characterize both,14 and as such the Trecento style contrasts with the simpler style and syllabic treatment of the text characteristic of the Duecento lauda.15 The impressive flowering of the lauda tradition in the fourteenth century is to be understood as the product of a moment when contemporaries demonstrated what could be achieved when the more modest practices of the Duecento were fully elaborated.

The Herald of the Signoria Civic instrumentalists (trombadori) were not the only musicians in the city’s employ during the Trecento. Though his position was not so styled until the mid-­Quattrocento,16 the herald of the Signoria contributed vitally to the sound world of late-­medieval Florence. Until the end of the fourteenth century, he was the only musician in the municipality’s service other than the historic trombadori and other more recently appointed instrumentalists.17 The herald’s responsibilities were modeled on various prototypes: the practices of the papal and royal courts, Italian communal tradition, vestigial feudal culture.18 And although the duties of the position changed throughout its long history, the earliest archival references (1322–­25, 1333) suggest that the herald was an istrio (actor) and that singing was a fundamental element of his duties.19 The 1333 document gives the rationale for the appointment: “In any . . . noble city . . . there are skillful singers for” the “recreation and delight” of the officers of state. Although the Signori of Florence came by their status through republican electoral practices rather than hereditary succession, the Signoria “had to be amused, flattered, and celebrated like any other court.”20 It was, after all, a Signoria. The . . . Priors of the Guilds and . . . Standard Bearer of Justice, noticing that in any . . . noble city . . . there are skillful singers for their recreation and delight, . . . among other eminent and skillful singers Lord Percival . . . is said to number. . . . [I]n honor of the . . . city, and for the recreation and delight of its citizens, it is thought fitting for such men to be provided with vestments, as in other noble cities. . . . The Twelve Good Men . . . did . . . arrange . . . and determine that the honorable Podestà . . . and the Captain and Defender of the people and Com-

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mune of Florence are . . . obligated to give to the said Sir Percival . . . one honorable robe of that Podestà or Captain.21

Though drawn from the ranks of accomplished actor-­singers, the herald was usually knighted, as Percival’s titles “Lord” and “Sir” suggest. Moreover, Percival was almost certainly not his given name but a sobriquet, a bid by republican Florentines for the respectability associated with medieval chivalric tradition.22 As the herald’s position was redefined throughout the centuries, responsibilities were sometimes added, sometimes removed. But until the end of the Trecento, singing for the Signori remained fundamental. An early-­Quattrocento document describes the herald as a “singer of songs and reciter of morals at the mensa of the Lord Priors of the Guilds.”23 The herald, then, was responsible for singing musical settings of morally edifying texts during the communal meals of the Signori, taken in the private dining room in Palazzo della Signoria. He exemplifies the tradition of the cantastorie—­singer of stories or histories—­and in that respect was like the village bard of old. It is in the nature of the music in question that there are no surviving examples of the music the herald sang. The herald’s music existed in an oral state. He did not perform from musical notation but from memory, improvising where appropriate upon melodic formulas retrieved as necessary from his mental data banks. His music was presumably characterized by a speech-­like delivery of the text, schematic in melodic design. He likely accompanied himself on a five-­string fiddle (vivuola, viola, viella, vielle), whose strings could be both bowed and plucked.24 Such would have provided an unobtrusive accompaniment, a spare instrumental backdrop whose sounds immediately died away, thus permitting the herald to project his words intelligibly to his audience. During the Trecento, the herald gradually assumed additional duties: administrative, judicial, even household responsibilities. He became “sindicus et referendarius comunis Florentie” and was soon functioning as a kind of master of ceremonies for public celebrations.25 The mensa of the Signori witnessed performances of other kinds of music, especially when distinguished visitors to Florence were invited to dine with the Signori, as increasingly they were. In the late Trecento, diners were summoned to meals by the fanfares of players of the trombetta—­ the small trumpet—­who were distinct from the historic trumpeters and members of one of two new instrumental ensembles. The first new ensemble comprised trumpeters appointed specifically “for the honor of the Lord Priors of the Guilds, the Gonfaloniere, and the people of the Com-

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mune of Florence.” They, too, sounded fanfares throughout the meal to announce each course.26 The new ensembles—­only the second and third of those established south of the Alps—­also included an ensemble of three wind players—­originally a sonatore di bombarde (alto shawm), a sonatore di cornete (likely the soprano shawm), and a sonatore di cornamuse (likely the bagpipe)—­who also performed in the mensa of the Priori and Gonfaloniere. These new ensembles formed in the aftermath of the Ciompi Revolt of 1378—­an alarming insurrection of disenfranchised laborers ineligible to serve in the Florentine government because they were not enrolled in a guild—­after which the traditional political and social elite reasserted its prerogatives and a patrician government was established. The status of the Signoria was enhanced by the new ensembles, which were specifically in the service of the Signoria rather than the Commune more generally. Period trumpets were constructed in such a way as to limit their repertory to fanfares. The presence of the wind players suggests other, more interesting possibilities. They may have played dance music of the types described in following chapters or instrumental arrangements of originally vocal compositions. Finally, a fascinating document of the early Quattrocento suggests that performances of secular vocal music—­and conceivably of polyphonic secular vocal music—­took place at the mensa of the Signoria. In the Signoria’s correspondence, the Flemish musician Giovanni di Daniele is said to have trained two boys in “harmonias musicas.” The Signori delighted in the boys’ singing, often summoning them to perform when the Signori were at table with their guests.27 The music was presumably secular, and the phrase “harmonias musicas” suggests that the boys’ performances were of secular polyphony. The entertainment provided for the mealtime enjoyment of the Signori was described in atmospheric terms: “The mensa of the Signori is as well furnished and richly adorned and tidily supplied as the mensa of any Signoria in the world, and by order . . . they maintain wind players and instrumentalists and jesters and jugglers and all manner of amusement and magnificence.”28

B o o k th e Sec ond

Music in Renaissance Florence I: The Quattrocento Aristocracy Emulated: The De Facto Medici Regime

6

The Medici Regime and the Public Ecclesiastical Institutions

The rise of the Medici in the early fifteenth century was a development of almost incalculable importance in the history of Florence and Europe.1 The family’s status ultimately depended upon its wealth (for a time, it was probably the wealthiest family in Europe), which permitted its support of learning—­the copying of manuscripts and construction of the libraries that housed them; the commissioning of editions and translations of newly recovered classical texts; the support of neo-­Latin composition—­ and the arts: painting, sculpture, architecture, music. The family’s patronage practices were informed by the principles of the humanist program, dedicated to the recovery of ancient Greek and Roman intellectual and aesthetic values and standards of achievement and such monuments of classical civilization as could be recovered (fig. 6.1). Such practices enhanced the stature of both the Medici and the city and fueled the extraordinary historical phenomenon known as the Italian Renaissance. The family’s wealth was accumulated through banking.2 The head of the bank, Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici, amassed the fortune critical to his family’s ascendancy.3 In order to avoid offending the sensibilities of his fellow Florentines, he carried himself circumspectly.4 Though not a democracy, Florence was a republic. Political authority was wielded de jure by elected officials who guarded their prerogatives jealously.5 More than any other member of the family, Giovanni di Bicci is to be credited with securing its position.6 When he died in 1429, his son Cosimo il Vecchio, Pater Patriae, was already a grown man. To varying degrees, Giovanni’s successors—­Cosimo foremost among them—­carefully modeled their comportment on Giovanni’s. For more than a century, until the formal establishment of the Medici principate in 1532, the Medici nominally respected republican tradition while simultaneously manipulating Florentine political institutions to their advantage. Through a network

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Figure 6.1 A fifteenth-­century view of Florence, the Carta della Catena. In the center are the Cathedral and Baptistery. To their right are the Church of Orsanmichele and Palazzo della Signoria. To their left (below) are the Churches of Santa Maria Novella and San Lorenzo and Palazzo Medici; and to their left (above) is the Church of the Santissima Annunziata. Also depicted are the city walls with their battlemented gates and Ponte Vecchio, lined with shops. Florence, Palazzo Vecchio. Scala / Art Resource, NY.

of strategic alliances—­often secured by such simple means as paying the taxes of those who would otherwise have been ineligible to hold office—­ they established a party of adherents.7 But such maneuvering violated Florentine political tradition and the constitution, and it resulted in Cosimo’s exile in September 1433 and had almost led to his execution. When his political enemies, the Albizzi, who had played an important role in engineering his exile, overplayed their hand, Cosimo was recalled, in September 1434.8 For the six following decades, de facto control of the Florentine government passed, sometimes uneasily, from father to son, as if the family were already an aristocratic dynasty with the right of hereditary succession (fig. 6.2). The two Pieros (Piero di Cosimo il Vecchio and Piero di Lorenzo il Magnifico) proved less skillful than their fathers, and the latter’s incompetent stewardship of the regime led to a second exile, from 1494 to 1512. In autumn 1434, however, Cosimo il Vecchio and his brother Lorenzo returned from exile, and the Florentines embraced them anew. And with the return of the Medici, their palazzo in Florence and the family’s residences outside the city joined the established public ecclesiastical and

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Figure 6.2 Partial genealogy of the Quattrocento and early-­Cinquecento Medici.

civic spaces as the most important venues for formal musical activity in early-­modern Florence.

Nicolaus Zacharie and the Professionalization of Composing and Performing In the Trecento, performing—other than for liturgical services—and composing were typically an ecclesiastical musician’s secondary activities, avocational diversions from his responsibilities as canon, chaplain, or friar. In the Quattrocento, they became professionalized.9 Posts in cathedral churches and their stipends were increasingly reserved for ecclesiastics who were also singers and possessed the skills important for the formation of the choirboys, their young colleagues in the musical establishments whom they trained. Moreover, musicians increasingly found employment with prominent ecclesiastical figures: cardinals and archbishops.10 This was as true of Florence as elsewhere. Throughout the Quattrocento, performers of the chant—­which remained the principal musical ornament to the services at Santa Maria del Fiore—­were canons, chaplains, and clerk-­choristers (choirboys).11 In the early Quattrocento, the canons were compensated specifically for singing at services.12 As early as 1407,

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the Cathedral’s overseers—­the Arte della Lana—­decreed that there be singers. The provision cannot have been novel, since the decree stipulates that among the chaplains “are always two singers.” When and what did the ensemble sing? The documentation is vague. The singers were engaged because the overseers were “desirous of honoring the church . . . with regard to the Divine Offices,” or so that they would honor “the Divine Offices” or sing “in the church . . . in celebration of the Divine Offices,” or—­more vaguely still—­with the objective of their “singing, celebrating, and doing all those things . . . required in the said church.” The services identified are thus the Offices rather than the Mass. Although the documentation permits no more definitive conclusions, later evidence from which one can extrapolate suggests that the reference to the “Divine Offices” may be principally to Vespers, the Office most accessible to the congregation at large and most likely to be solemnized with elaborate music. Alternatively, the reference to “singing, celebrating, and doing all those things . . . required in the said church” is perhaps to the Mass on Christmas, Easter, and feast days of special significance to the Florentines (the feasts of their patron saint, John the Baptist, and Saints Zenobius and Reparata), as well as Matins on Christmas Day and the three final days of Holy Week. As for the music performed, although the chant continued to be the principal musical adornment of the liturgy, polyphony was also intended, at least occasionally. In the fourteenth century, Bartholus’s polyphonic setting of the Credo supplanted earlier practice. There were also the madrigalesque settings of the other Mass Ordinary texts, although one does not know what formal place they had in the liturgy, if any. In the third and fourth decades of the Quattrocento, tenoristae appear among the Cathedral singers: performers of the tenor, typically the lowest voice in a medieval sacred polyphonic composition and the bearer of a melody borrowed from the chant. Moreover, several of the Cathedral’s singers in the early Quattrocento were accomplished composers of polyphony,13 and their extant compositions are presumably evidence of the Cathedral’s polyphonic repertory during their tenure as chaplains. This is especially so in the case of Nicolaus Zacharie (†1466). Zacharie’s Florentine sojourns were brief. Soon after he is first documented in Florence (February 1429), he was appointed to the chapel of Pope Martin V (1 June), then in Florence. He was again in Florence from April to November 1434, this time with Pope Eugenius IV.14 Zacharie was a priest of the diocese of Brindisi,15 which is near Taranto, and the text of one of his extant compositions, Letetur plebs fidelis / Pastor qui revelavit, refers cryptically to its having been “composed in haste in Taranto by

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Nicolaus Zacharie.”16 This suggests that the work was composed before Zacharie arrived in Florence. I conjecture that it was among the compositions performed by his colleagues in the Cathedral choir or by Martin V’s singers, who performed at the Cathedral while Martin was in Florence.17 Zacharie’s four-­voice Latin sacred composition describes the martyrdom of St. Barbara (ex. 6.1).18 It features the polytextuality of the late-­ medieval motet (the genre in question). In this case, the polytextuality is exemplified as follows: one of the voices sings Letetur plebs fidelis, a second sings Pastor qui revelavit, and the third and fourth are textless beyond their incipit, which suggests instrumental performance. The vocal duet could have been executed by the two singers mandated by the Arte della Lana. The difficulty of understanding different texts sung simultaneously suggests that according to the aesthetic values of the time, text intelligibility was a secondary consideration. Of far greater importance were the composition’s architectural features and sonic richness, resulting from its complex contrapuntal technique and the concurrent use of voices and instruments. An excerpt illustrates the music’s intellectualistic complexity.19 Nicolaus Çacharie [Superius] Letetur plebs fidelis in Barbare trihumpho querere Virgineo carnem mundumque sprevit quamvis decor nimis in fide trinitatis se totam roboravit quam pater revelavit per fenestellam sibi nam factam que Jusu suo quo pater ense capto Barbaram occidiscet ni lapis miracolo ad montem transportascet Ubi pastores erant tu cantas melodiam que factis est conformis Nicolae Çacharie editam in Tarento con festinatione [Contratenor altus] Pastor qui revelavit Barabam [sic; recte: “Barbaram”] paterno quam pro ovibus locustas in impias mire Versis recepit in premium tradit eam presidi fidelem infidelis ut dijs sacrificat metu suppliciorum vel eam interimat vane preses Barbaram hinc mulcet hinc minatur carceri mancepatur Expoliatur nuda Verberatur dire Tu cantas melodiam que factis est conformis Nicolae Çacharie editam in Tarento con festinatione [Instrumental] Tenor Leteptur [sic; recte: “Letetur”] [ . . . ] [Instrumental] Contratenor [bassus] Pastor [ . . . ]

Example 6.1 Excerpt from Zacharie’s Letetur plebs fidelis

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The Consecration of the Cathedral of Florence Upon returning to Florence in 1434, the Medici brothers faced an unusual situation, rich in opportunities for their family and the city. Residing in the convent at Santa Maria Novella was Pope Eugenius, who the year before had been invited to Florence by the Signoria when he was facing political difficulties in Rome. And construction on Santa Maria del Fiore had progressed to the point where a dedication could be planned and executed.20 The 25 March 1436 ceremony, on the Feast of the Annunciation, was one of the most celebrated events in the history of Florence and of European music. For reasons to be detailed, it has acquired quasi-­mythic status. The ceremony featured an extraordinarily rich array of liturgical, literary, artistic, and musical elements: civic and religious ritual, poetry, architecture (the Cathedral itself), and music. It was a multimedia extravaganza avant la lettre.21 The fact that Eugenius officiated at the dedication ceremony was only one of the ways in which the city benefited from his presence. In that same year, the Scuola Eugenia—­named for Eugenius himself—­was established by papal bull.22 Following papal tradition, Eugenius had presented the Cathedral (and symbolically the city) with a Golden Rose, displayed on the high altar; his action was commemorated in musical compositions thought to have been performed during the dedication.23 On the day of the ceremony, ecclesiastical and political dignitaries processed on a temporary wooden platform from the papal residence to the Cathedral. They were preceded by instrumentalists, string and brass players. Although it is not known whether the instrumentalists played, they must have left a memorable impression all the same, attired as they were in ceremonial dress and carrying their visually striking instruments.24 One envisions the stately procession en route to the Duomo by way of the elevated walkway: the instrumentalists massed at the head of the entourage; the trumpeters holding their long, valveless, silver trumpets aloft; the cardinals in their vivid scarlet robes; and Eugenius in the distinctive dress emblematic of his status as Vicar of Christ, occupant of that singular position at the summit of Latin Christendom. The effect on observers must have been almost immeasurable. The principal contemporary account of the ceremony, written by Giannozzo Manetti, suggests that the procession—­indeed, the entire series of events—­was seen as having political as well as religious meaning. “Any sketch . . . of the most glorious parade would seem especially to relate, first, to the inexpressible glory of God immortal and, next, to the great praise of our city.”25 An illuminated miniature depicts the arrival of the

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pope—­resplendent in the papal tiara and other vestments and surrounded by cardinals and others in his retinue—­at the central door of the Cathedral, where singers raise their voices in song (fig. 6.3).26 Eugenius is welcomed by a cardinal carrying a golden crucifix, perhaps his nephew, Marcus Condulmer, cardinal of Venice, who chanted the Mass. Present were both Filippo Brunelleschi, architect of the mythic cupola, which was then nearing completion, and Guillaume Du Fay, first singer of the papal chapel as of October 1435,27 the composer of much of the most important music for the occasion.28 The participants in the ceremony took their seats in the Cathedral; “all . . . sat . . . according to . . . rank.”29 “The pope’s chair was on the [south] side [of the chancel] where the Gospel is said, . . . the [papal] singers [including Du Fay?] . . . standing on the other side.”30 Although the ceremony was nominally the consecration of the high altar, it was symbolically of the entire Cathedral.31 “After the consecration of the altar,” Eugenius bestowed further honors on the city and its citizens. “One of the cardinals [Marcus Condulmer of Venice] . . . , already dressed in . . . sacerdotal vestments, went to the altar to celebrate the divine service,”32 and “while the cardinal of San Marco was preparing . . . to sing . . . , the Holy Father knighted the worthy Florentine citizen and jurist, Messer Giuliano Davanzati, . . . Standard Bearer of Justice.”33 “Mass was said by the Cardinal of Venice at the stated altar consecrated by said pope.”34 Manetti’s account suggests that the ceremony was enriched with a substantial musical element. He waxed rhapsodic, and his account bears quoting in extenso, as much for what it reveals about the developing humanistic sensibilities of early-­Quattrocento Florence as for what it tells us about the music. The mixing of Christian and classical imagery—­especially the references to the power of music performed by the Sirens, Timotheus, and Orpheus and its effects on the emotions—­is characteristic of the early Renaissance. I offer some clarifying comments. From time to time, so many and . . . different melodious voices were singing; in fact, so many symphonies were sung, reaching as far as the sky, that doubtless they seemed to the listeners like angelic and divine songs.

To judge from the meaning of the Greek sym-­ and -­phonos, it was indeed polyphonic vocal music that was being performed. The listeners’ ears were titillated by the marvelous sweetness of the various voices to the extent that they appeared to be very much spellbound, as they say when the sirens sing. I would believe without being blasphemous that in heaven,

Figure 6.3 Pope Eugenius IV arrives at the Cathedral for the 1436 consecration ceremony. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Edili 151, fol. 7v. Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali. See plate 3 for a color image.

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too, the angels do this every year on this very solemn day in which the Source of Human Salvation appeared;

This, of course, is a reference to the Annunciation, celebrated on 25 March, the day of the consecration. . . . they [i.e., the angels] indulge with more fervor in the most beautiful songs to celebrate this holiday.

This may be a reference to celestial music, sung here by the cherubim and seraphim, a metaphor indebted to the Boëthian tripartition of music into mundana, the music of the spheres, humana, the accord of man’s body and soul, and organica or instrumentalis, actual earthly sounding music, performed by the human voice or an instrument. Meanwhile, at the usual pauses in the singing, instruments were played so pleasantly and beautifully that the mind’s rapture, calmed at the end of those most lovely symphonies [in this case, of course, the word symphony refers to ensemble instrumental playing], seemed to resume strength because of the wonderful playing. Many very important authors wrote [of] what Timotheus and Orpheus, the greatest of all master players[,] did; . . . the one with his varied harmony was able to bend men to any emotion; the second—­and this is even more extraordinary—­thanks to some kind of unbelievably beautiful harmony, was able to attract to himself—­hard [though it may be] to believe—­stones, and trees, and everything else, both living and lifeless things. In the same way, it seemed that all of our slightly more human senses became delighted in different ways: by hearing the most pleasant singing and . . . sweet playing; . . . by smelling various aromatic fragrances; . . . by gazing at . . . marvelous decorations.35

The most celebrated passage in Manetti’s account records that during the Mass, it was time to consecrate the Body of our Lord, which in Greek is called most correctly Eucharist. During the elevation of the most Sacred Body, all places in the cathedral resounded with so many symphonies of harmonies and with so many different instruments that the divine angelic instrumental sounds and the divine singing of paradise—­sent from heaven to us on earth—­seemed, due to their incredible sweetness, to whisper in our ears something divine.36

The music for the ceremony—­all proper to the general occasion, the dedication of a church—­featured some specifically Florentine elements:

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the rubric in the relevant liturgical book that is the source of the illuminated miniature reproduced as figure 6.3 reads, “In Dedicatione Ecclesie Florentine.” And while the great majority of the texts contained in it are from the universal corpus of Proper chants for the dedication of a church, both the text and the music of the prosa—­an important liturgico-­musical genre—­are not only unique to Florence, but specific to the consecration of Santa Maria del Fiore.37 After the consecration of the altar, at the moment when the prosa was traditionally sung (after the Alleluia), the text chanted that day was almost certainly Nuper almos rose flores, which is rich in literal and metaphoric references to the event.38 The newly composed occasional text (to use standard nomenclature for a nonliturgical text composed for a specific occasion and appropriate to no other) refers to the rose that Eugenius had given to the Cathedral and the wooden bridge on which he had processed. And a reference to Gabriel permits an identification of Eugenius IV—­Gabriele Condulmer—­with the archangel Gabriel, who announced to the Virgin Mary that she was to be the mother of Jesus.39 (Eugenius, of course, was also the name of a figure important in Florence religious experience.) Recently the man ruling the doors of heaven gives bountiful flowers of the rose to you, Virgin of virgins. . . . Now, on the day on which Gabriel fills you with the eternal word, he dedicates the Temple to you. . . . A wooden bridge for the living[,] supported by a wondrous structure[,] carries the curia on high. It carries the pope, the friars the priests and abbots.40

It would be well nigh impossible to overstate how apposite such symbolism was for the consecration of a cathedral dedicated to St. Mary of the Flower, which took place on the Feast of the Annunciation, New Year’s Day in Florence. Another extant composition for the ceremony is the basis for the iconic importance of the event for historians of European music: Guillaume Du Fay’s magisterial polyphonic motet for four voices, Nuper rosarum flores. The composition features two different texts sung simultaneously and thus exemplifies the late-­medieval polytextuality that we also saw in Zacharie’s Letetur plebs fidelis / Pastor qui revelavit. One of Du Fay’s texts is liturgical

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in origin: This is a fearsome place, one of the universal texts figuring in the liturgy for the dedication of a church. In the tenor part of his polyphonic composition, Du Fay embeds a portion of the original music for This is a fearsome place, borrowed from the chant. His technique epitomizes the practice of deriving existing musical material from the Gregorian repertory and thus appealing to auctoritas. The principal text of the motet is newly composed (paraliturgical). It echoes the imagery of Nuper almos rose flores: The harsh winter having past, roses—­ a recent papal gift—­ perpetually adorn the Temple of the grandest structure, piously and devoutly dedicated to you, Heavenly Virgin. Today Eugenius, the vicar of Jesus Christ and successor of Peter, has deigned to consecrate this same most enormous Temple with sacred hands and Holy oils.41

The musico-historical importance of the motet lies in its structure. The author of what had been the most authoritative published analysis observed that “Nuper rosarum flores possesses a systematic, indeed architectonic, design”; “the structure of the motet [is] . . . governed by a proportional relationship with the values 6:4:2:3.” “It seems reasonable to inquire whether the composer intended to communicate something more specific than proportions that are merely pleasing.”42 Indeed, Du Fay may have opted for a design based upon the proportions of a uniquely important building in Judeo-­Christian tradition, one with which Santa Maria del Fiore enjoyed a symbolic association through related architectural proportions. Like Du Fay’s motet, “the dimensions of the biblical Temple of King Solomon produced the proportion 6:4:2:3.” Moreover, in Nuper rosarum flores, the “two [lower] voices use . . . the Introit for the dedication of a church . . . at two different pitch levels and with interlocking rhythms,” which “itself symbolises . . . Brunelleschi’s structural feat, an inner . . . and . . . outer shell with interlocking struts.”43 The motet—­and the Cathedral—­are examples of the late-­medieval practice of designing structures with symbolic significance, expressed numerically.

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Whether the motet’s architectonic features were audible in musical compositions is clearly of secondary importance. The occasional texts; their references to the Virgin Mary, the rose, Eugenius as Vicar of Christ and successor to St. Peter, and the Cathedral as “this . . . most enormous Temple”; the embedding of the chant melody for the dedication of a church and the symbolic structure of the motet: all contributed to that multivalent fusion of artistic elements that made the consecration so important and memorable an event. One does not know for certain when during the ceremony Du Fay’s motet was performed, but it is difficult to resist speculating that it was at that moment described as follows in Manetti’s account: “During the elevation of the most Sacred Body, all places in the cathedral resounded with so many symphonies of harmonies and with so many different instruments that the divine angelic instrumental sounds and the divine singing of paradise—­sent from heaven to us on earth—­seemed, due to their incredible sweetness, to whisper in our ears something divine.” Manetti’s account suggests that there were other moments when music was performed, and it has been proposed that another composition for the ceremony was Du Fay’s motet Salve flos, Tusce gentes,44 whose humanistically inspired text (authored by Du Fay himself)45 compares the maidens of Tuscany to followers of Venus.46 Notwithstanding the protohumanistic sensibilities of the text, Du Fay’s compositional method, once again, is faithful to the musical practices of the High Middle Ages. In the uppermost voice of the three (the triplum) it employs one text and in the middle voice (the motetus), another. The three examples we have seen of such polytextuality are characteristic of medieval compositional procedure. And like Nuper rosarum flores, Salve flos is structured according to complex numerical proportions.47 The triplum reads as follows: Hail flower of the Tuscan people [i.e., Santa Maria del “Fiore”]. Hail Florence. O hail, the great glory of the land of Italy. Hail, so happy blessed mother, with great council and faith, You create so many learned men, . . . so many distinguished men. . . . Hail, whose fame has been spread throughout the world [this may be a reference to Dante, Inferno XXVI/1–­3: “Take joy, oh Florence, for you are so great your wings beat over land and sea, your fame resounds through Hell!”].48 You both bear your children and send them to the stars. . . . [T]hrough singing, the voice is exhausted but [may you] live through my singing songs.

The motet thus deploys an established poetic conceit. The addressee—­the city of Florence—­enjoys eternal life partly through the artist’s address to

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it, which ensures that it will live as long as human beings read the texts or hear the music written in the city’s honor. The motetus reads as follows: Now, Ye Maidens, hail the light of Etruria. . . . They stand at the gates like nymphs and . . . Naiads or Amazons. [Wooing?], sumptuous Venus burns with caresses as well as sweet kisses. If one should see them a single time, he—­captured by love—­would fall for this Goddess of the world. He who is yours for all time, I, Guillermus, . . . who was born Fay.49

In the pre-­Reformation world, an association of the pagan goddess Venus with the Virgin Mary—­implicit in the use of such a text at the dedication of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore—­was not as anomalous as it might now seem. In late-­medieval and Renaissance Europe, the pagan gods and goddesses (Venus in particular) were metaphorically Christianized, such that Giovanni Pico della Mirandola could write that “he who has deeply and intellectually understood the division of Venus’s oneness into the trinity of Graces . . . will see the due way to proceed in Orphic theology,” thus implying an analogy between the Trinity of Christian theology—­God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit—­and a parallel Trinity in Orphic theology.50 The tenor text had a different purpose, however. It alludes to “lying men,” identifiable either as those who drove Eugenius from Rome or the anti-­Medicean faction of Florence responsible for the momentary exile of Cosimo il Vecchio.51

The Musical Establishments Stabilized Not long after the consecration ceremony, Pope Eugenius left Florence.52 But in 1439 he returned under even more auspicious circumstances for the city and the Medici. Rather than being ephemeral like those of the Cathedral dedication ceremony, the effects of the pope’s later visit were of enduring significance. Seeking the most hospitable site for a church council, Eugenius had transferred it from Ferrara to Florence in January 1439, which all the principal players—­the pope, the city of Florence, the Medici family—­saw as an opportunity not to be missed. Given that the principal objective of the council (ultimately unrealized) was a union of the Greek and Latin churches,53 it brought an unusual concentration of high-­ranking church officials to Florence, as well as preeminent representatives of the Byzan-

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tine Empire, whose capital city, Constantinople, was to fall to Turkish forces in a decade and a half. Florentine city officials understood the importance of stabilizing the musical establishment at the Cathedral of Florence and enhancing its quality. The Cathedral was a splendid architectural monument, newly consecrated, and a more robust musical establishment was deemed appropriate to the institution’s new stature and its presence in the city. And there was a tradition of appointing trained singers to serve church councils.54 There had been a modest musical establishment at the Cathedral between the early years of the Quattrocento, when Zacharie served there, and the late 1430s. In 1436 and 1437, two singers were in the Cathedral’s employ. One is identified as a tenorista, which documents that he sang the melody from the chant embedded in polyphonic elaborations of it. The other is identified as a biscantor, which documents that he sang in counterpoint with the chant melody, probably quasi-­improvisationally.55 The Cathedral was thus supporting the minimal establishment necessary to perform polyphonic music: simple, improvised, two-­part polyphony. With the completion of the Cathedral and the relocation of the Council of Ferrara, such arrangements were judged to be adequate no longer, given the ambitious objectives that the Cathedral officials then had. In anticipation of the transfer of the council, the officials authorized one of its canons in December 1438 to appoint “Magister Benotto and his associates who sing at the church of San Giovanni [the Baptistery] . . . to sing Vespers at Santa Maria del Fiore on festive and solemn days,”56 and three days later, “the Florentine canon . . . appointed to sing . . . in the Major Florentine Church, only at Vespers on the feast days of the said church[,] . . . Magister Benottus of Ferrara[,] . . . Frater Beltramus of the Order of St. Augustine[,] . . . Iannes de Monte of Ferrara [and] . . . Francischus Bartoli.”57 The ensemble was now capable of performing the fashionable four-­voice polyphony. In March 1439, Cathedral officials ratified the 1438 appointments and authorized funding.58 They also commissioned new chant manuscripts, which supplanted the now-­outdated Trecento books.59 Among the first obligations of Benottus and his associates was to sing “at Vespers in the Major Church the day on which the body of the blessed Zenobius was translated [transferred] [April 1439],”60 an event that once more featured lavish music, though not as memorable as that for the dedication of the Cathedral.61 Benottus and his colleagues had been appointed “to sing Vespers at Santa Maria del Fiore on festive and solemn days,” and one of the features of Vespers is the chanting of the Magnificat. The antiphon to the Magnificat

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at Vespers on the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, patron saint of Florence, is Puer qui natus est nobis (ex. 6.2). A surviving polyphonic setting of that text by Benottus is an example of the kind of music that he and his colleagues at Santa Maria del Fiore likely performed at Vespers in the third and fourth decades of the Quattrocento.62 It opens with the traditional monophonic intonation chanted by a soloist, followed by a polyphonic elaboration of the venerated Gregorian melody. The stated rationale for the establishment of the Cathedral choir in 1438 is revealing. Desirous of augmenting the divine cult as much as possible so that the Church of Santa Maria del Fiore is embellished and excels all other churches in honor, and . . . considering how noble and honorable it would be to have singers continually in the service of the said church, . . . [the overseers] decided to write to . . . Lorenzo di Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici, who is in Ferrara at present as ambassador of the Commune of Florence to the Holy See, that he seek . . . a chapel master and three singers or more. (emphasis added)

It was partly civic pride, therefore, that inspired the city to enhance the music for the Cathedral. Such a motivation would continue to be important. The competition among the Italian city-­states—­so important to the dynamism of the Italian Renaissance—­was as operative in Florence as elsewhere. Notwithstanding periodic lapses, the city was committed to maintaining musical establishments at Santa Maria del Fiore and San Giovanni that would be a credit to the Florentines. The same rationale is offered more than three decades later but with an important difference. Now the agent was not the overseers of the Cathedral but Lorenzo the Magnificent, who became de facto head of the government in 1469. In emulation [of King Ferdinand of Naples], Lorenzo de’ Medici, with the purpose that nothing should be superior to the dignity and adornment of his country, . . . embellished the temple of San Giovanni most beautifully with the very sweetest concert of voices. (emphasis added)

The difference between the 1438 and post-­1469 documents the ever greater involvement of the Medici in the administration of the public ecclesiastical institutions. The evidence permitting such an interpretation is unlikely to be too explicit. Just as the Medici discreetly manipulated the institutions of republican government to their advantage, so they at first discreetly wielded

Example 6.2 Excerpt from Benottus’s Puer qui natus est nobis

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their authority in matters pertaining to the musical establishments at the Cathedral and Baptistery. But the evidence is clear. By the time of Lorenzo il Magnifico, the Medici were acting more or less as if they were already a seigneurial family and the establishments at the Cathedral and Baptistery symbolically their private chapel. This finding permits a second—­that the Medici retained appointees at the public institutions for their own private entertainment. The Medici risked offending the republican sensibilities of their fellow citizens if they behaved like an aristocratic dynasty, with all its associated institutions, such as a private musical establishment. But here, too, the evidence is clear, if oblique. Appointees to the public institutions also frequented Medici circles, where they entertained for the family and its intimates. A third finding is that Medici involvement with the public institutions could strengthen the hand of Florentine officials when competing for talented musicians, whether among the other independent city-­states on the Italian peninsula—­the papal state, the Aragonese kingdom of Naples, the Estense marquisate of Ferrara—­or elsewhere in Europe. We glimpse the Medici exercising their authority in international recruitment activities. During the fourteenth century, the monastic orders with houses in Florence were the principal conduits for international exchanges of music and personnel. During the Quattrocento, the Medici capitalized on the network of relationships spawned by their vast banking system to assist in the recruitment of musicians and acquisition of repertory. Finally, because of all these circumstances, by the end of the Quattrocento the musical establishments at the Florentine public institutions counted some of the most illustrious European musicians of the time among their members: Alexander Agricola, Charles de Launoy, Cornelio di Lorenzo, Guillelmus Steynsel, Johannes Ghiselin-­Verbonnet, Johannes Stochem, Niccolò de Lore, Pietrequin Bonnel, and, most illustrious of all, Heinrich Isaac, one of the most gifted and accomplished composers of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Other institutions in the city, specifically the Church of the Santissima Annunziata, would engage the singers of the Cathedral and Baptistery, supplementing them with their own appointees who had the appropriate skills. Periodically during the Quattrocento the establishments at the Cathedral and Baptistery were either purposely disbanded or simply allowed to deteriorate if the responsible parties—­whether the institutions’ authorities or the Medici—­were distracted by other obligations. Sometimes the singers departed of their own volition.63 Medici involvement in the recruitment of musicians for the public institutions is documented within less than a decade of the establishment of

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the chapels. During the time of Cosimo il Vecchio, much of the relevant correspondence is addressed to his son Piero, as if Piero either took a personal interest in musical matters or were delegated responsibility for them because of other demands on his father. In June 1448, the manager of the Medici bank in Bruges wrote to Piero, who had sent the singer Pitratto there, to report on Pitratto’s success in recruiting musicians capable of performing the chant-­bearing tenor line and the melody sung in counterpoint.64 The branch manager’s letter is only the first in a long series documenting the role of Piero and his successors in recruiting musicians for the Cathedral and Baptistery. Once appointed to the Cathedral and Baptistery choirs, these singers were to some extent under Piero’s jurisdiction, as well as that of the institutions’ nominal authorities.65 Numerous letters document Piero’s authority. They hint that it may have been even greater than the documentation normally suggests.66 Such practices survived changes in leadership. Even before Lorenzo the Magnificent succeeded his father, Jachetto de Marvilla wrote to Lorenzo to report on efforts to identify singers and pledge his continuing help.67 Lorenzo’s role in the functioning of the chapels seems even to have exceeded his father’s. He sent letters to Ferrara, Naples, and Flanders with the objective of attracting the most accomplished singers to the Florentine establishments.68 Compositions in the international repertory circulated in Florence as the result of relationships forged. Lorenzo himself was the recipient of compositions sent to Florence. Le Petit, “master at Lyon,” wrote to Lorenzo to report that “there has come into my hands a newly composed motet [and] it seems to me that it will be found excellent [when] performed by those in your chapel.”69 Nor was such transmission of repertory unidirectional. In March 1484, the duke of Ferrara asked a former employee then in Florentine service to send “the new L’homme Armé Mass by Philippon [i.e., Philippe Basiron].” And this is not the only reference that documents bidirectional exchanges among the Italian city-­states,70 practices that survived changes in leadership.71 It was well known, and not only in Florence, that the Medici favored northern musicians, trained in counterpoint and capable of performing compositions in the polyphonic repertory.72 Such musical francophilia was characteristic of Medici patrons until well into the sixteenth century,73 when a Florentinist preference for native Florentine or Tuscan musicians supplants it. In 1482, the obligations of the Cathedral singers engaged by the Annunziata were articulated and the genres for which they were responsible identified (Mass settings, motets, and Magnificat settings), as were the

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occasions when they were obliged to perform (Mass and the Offices of Lauds and Vespers).74 And we have evidence of the Mass Ordinary settings they might have performed. We know that polyphonic settings of the Mass not only by Basiron but also by Isaac, Weerbeke, and others were in circulation in Florence. The success of Lorenzo and his predecessors in attracting gifted musicians provided his family with the option of hosting musicians from the public institutions in their private company.75 The great organist Antonio Squarcialupi, whose formal appointment was at the cathedral, was clearly a Medici intimate.76 Such practices continued when the family’s senior member in the next generation succeeded to the position of de facto head of state. In September 1492, after the death of Lorenzo il Magnifico, three well-­known employees of the public institutions—­Isaac, de Launoy, and Bonnel—­were members of Piero di Lorenzo’s entourage when he visited Rome on the occasion of Alexander VI’s election.77 The encomium of Lorenzo il Magnifico quoted above was not hyperbole, the meretricious rhetorical excess of the Italian Renaissance humanist. Lorenzo had indeed helped create an establishment in which his fellow Florentines could take great pride (fig. 6.4).

Heinrich Isaac The most distinguished appointee to the Quattrocento establishments, Heinrich Isaac,78 must have settled in Florence by late 1484.79 Three decades later, the prior of the papal chapel during the papacy of Leo X (Giovanni di Lorenzo il Magnifico) said of “Ysac” that “Lorenzo de’ Medici . . . sent as far away as Flanders for him, and then in Florence gave him a wife.”80 Isaac was definitely in Florence as of 1 July 1485.81 He was in the Cathedral’s service until March 1493, identified as either singer or—­notably—­composer.82 We catch glimpses of Isaac’s life, intimate relationships, and private creative activities. His Florentine wife, Bartolomea, was the daughter of a butcher named Piero Bello. One of Bartolomea’s sisters was married to Charles de Launoy, Isaac’s colleague at the public ecclesiastical institutions.83 References in the correspondence of Ambrogio Angeni depict Isaac in the company of two fellow singers from the public institutions, performing a newly acquired composition and judging its worth. On more than one occasion, we see him offering to compose a fourth voice to enrich the texture of a three-­voice composition.84 One of Angeni’s letters documents Isaac’s relationship to Lorenzo il Magnifico: “Arigo . . . willingly composes new things because the boss

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Figure 6.4 Giorgio Vasari, Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, “il Magnifico,” ca. 1533–34. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi. Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

enjoys them.”85 Lorenzo personally played a role in the dissemination of Isaac’s music in Italy.86 And at Lorenzo’s death in 1492, Isaac composed two moving elegies—­Latin occasional motets—­in Lorenzo’s memory: Quis dabit capiti meo aquam? (on a text by one of the most distinguished humanists of the day, Angelo Poliziano) and Quis dabit pacem.87 Isaac was likely the composition teacher of Lorenzo’s son Giovanni. Isaac’s music output was vast, the variety of genres he cultivated wide, and his reputation unsurpassed. As a legatee of the northern polyphonic tradition, he composed settings of the Mass Ordinary and motets, which predisposed him toward use of the usual four voices: the tenor, often the

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bearer of a borrowed melody, and the superius and two newly composed contratenors (altus and bassus), who sang in counterpoint with the tenor. And as we have just seen, Isaac was inclined to enrich the texture of three-­ voice secular compositions by adding a fourth. One of Isaac’s instrumental compositions—­Palle, palle, based on the Medici party slogan—­is a musical representation of the Medici coat of arms, a gold shield with five red balls arranged in a V shape and a central blue ball with three gold fleurs-­de-­lis, also arranged in a V shape. Five-­note sequences in the tenor line ascend and descend stepwise, as if depicting the five red balls in the form of an inverted V, and descending and ascending three-­note sequences immediately follow, which symbolize the three gold fleurs-­de-­lis arranged in the shape of a V.88 Isaac became a champion of the literary and musical traditions of his adopted homeland. He composed polyphonic settings of secular and sacred verse by Lorenzo—­laude and the canzoni à ballo (or ballate) Hora è di maggio and Un dì lieto giammai89—­and Poliziano (Questo mostrarsi adirata di fore).90 In 1559, Antonfrancesco Grazzini, “Il Lasca,” suggested that Isaac was also responsible for innovations in the music for carnival. His account suggests that the older, pre-­Laurentian “mode of celebrating . . . found by the Magnificent Lorenzo,” when “the men of those days would sing Canzoni à ballo,” featured solo singing to string accompaniment. Isaac refashioned the tradition, substituting polyphony for solo song. This mode of celebrating was found by the Magnificent Lorenzo the Elder, of the Medici. The men of those days would sing canzoni à ballo, which manner of singing the Magnificent—­having considered it always the same—­thought of varying, and not only the song but also the program [of the mascherate] and the mode of composing the words, making songs on various other bases and then composing their music with new and different tunes; and the first song or Mascherata . . . sung in this guise was of the men who would sell Berriquocoli and confortini [characteristically Tuscan pastries], composed for three voices by a certain Arrigo the German [i.e., Isaac], then master of the Chapel of S. Giovanni and a most highly reputed musician of those times. But before long they were writing them in four parts.91

The text of the Mascherata of the Confortini is by Lorenzo il Magnifico himself, and it seems indisputable that Lorenzo personally commissioned Isaac’s setting in the new style.92 Isaac’s four-­voice Alla battaglia, composed to celebrate the 1487 Florentine victory in the siege of Sarzanello, was performed at carnival the year

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hence.93 Its scoring, the evidence of Isaac’s refashioning of three-­voice compositions for four voices, and Il Lasca’s account suggest that four-­voice settings of carnival-­song verse—­once thought to have been a Cinquecento development—­originated in the Quattrocento.94 Isaac may have contributed to a Florentine vogue for four-­voice textures, and during the 1480s and later, there seems to have been an increasing Florentine taste for such settings of secular texts.95

7

Tradition and Innovation in Sacred Music

Tradition: Music for the Liturgy We considered one of Benottus’s polyphonic Vespers antiphons as representative of the repertory of the Florentine cathedral around 1440. What might that repertory have comprised in the 1480s or 1490s? Basiron’s Missa “L’homme armé,” in circulation in Florence in 1484, was based on a preexistent melody but with a crucial difference. As in many other liturgical compositions of the pre-­Counter-­Reformation world, his borrowed melody is secular in origin: the famous popular tune “L’homme armé,” which served as the basis for numerous fifteenth-­and sixteenth-­century polyphonic Masses (ex. 7.1). The seeming anomaly of using so secular a melody in a liturgical composition—­indeed, making it the musical foundation of that composition—­would not have seemed so anomalous in the late Quattrocento. There was also a Florentine tradition of polyphonic settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Indeed, a mid-­fifteenth-­century setting by Johannes de Quadris, who had no known Florentine connections, is transmitted in the oldest surviving source of polyphony for the Cathedral (MS 21 of the Opera di S. Maria del Fiore),1 which also contains music for Matins and Lauds on the Triduum Sacrum, the three final days of Holy Week (Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday).2 I give an excerpt from Antonius Janue’s O Redemptor sume carmen, labeled “Fifth Feast Day. For the procession of the sacraments” in MS 21 (ex. 7.2).3 It illustrates the tradition of service music: simpler, homorhythmic liturgical polyphony, to which I return presently. I also cite Heinrich Isaac’s six-­voice motet Angeli, archangeli, probably a late-­Quattrocento composition still in circulation in Florence in the early Cinquecento. It is representative of the late-­medieval motet and features

Example 7.1 Excerpt from Philippe Basiron’s Missa “L’homme armé,” showing his use of the “L’homme armé” tune

Example 7.2 Excerpt from Antonius Janue’s O Redemptor sume carmen

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some of the characteristics we have seen before: the complex polytextuality (the text is a cobbling together of two texts, Psalm 148 and the Te Deum, featured in the Offices of Lauds and First Vespers on the Feast of All Saints, 1 November); the use of antecedent material, which can be either liturgical or nonliturgical. In this case, the borrowed material is secular in origin, like that of Basiron’s Mass: the tenor is based on Gilles Binchois’s song Comme femme desconfortée.4 There are some features of Isaac’s motet—­the use of six voices, for example—­that suggest that it may have been composed when he was in imperial service, between the exile of the Medici in 1494 and their restoration in 1512. Even if the motet were composed upon Isaac’s return to Florence after the restoration, the basic compositional procedures are more characteristic of the late Quattrocento than early Cinquecento. We may take it as illustrative of the kind of composition Isaac might have composed for late-­Quattrocento Florence. The similarity of Janue’s composition to earlier compositions such as Benottus’s Puer qui natus est nobis and even the polyphonic setting of the trope to the Benedicamus domino and the didactic Decus morum document the remarkable continuity of the tradition such compositions represent: service music, with its fidelity to the liturgical text and the requirements of that moment in the liturgy when the composition was sung; and its simpler design, visible showcasing of the Gregorian antecedent material, homo­rhythms, and relative absence of advanced contrapuntal devices. Such features contrast sharply with those of other kinds of sacred works, such as the Mass (Basiron’s Missa “L’homme armé”) and motet (Zacharie’s Letetur plebs fidelis, Du Fay’s motet for the dedication of the Cathedral of Florence, and Isaac’s Angeli, archangeli), which employ the complex polyrhythmicism of contrapuntal practice, as well as the occasional poly­ textuality, use of both instruments and voices, and even the mix of sacred and secular elements. The basic defining characteristics of the strictly liturgical tradition persist for centuries. By no means were developed polyphonic practices the sole prerogative of the Cathedral and Baptistery of Florence. The Church of the Santissima Annunziata, for example, whose musical traditions have been expertly and vividly described by the musicologist Giovanni Zanovello, maintained a vital polyphonic ensemble.5

Tradition and Innovation: The Quattrocento Lauda Anxious to comport themselves circumspectly, the Medici infrequently held important positions in the principal government magistracies, although the assemblies were packed with loyal adherents to their cause.

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Beyond the political realm, however, the Medici could risk acting more openly, and they were prominent members of the companies of laudesi.6 Beginning in 1469, Lorenzo (and later his sons, Piero and Giuliano) was a benefactor and honorary member and officer of the Company of Sant’Agnese.7 Lorenzo’s appropriation of the company for his family’s political purposes spelled the end of the company as a local, egalitarian institution. It became an instrument of Medici authority.8 Indeed, an established Medici presence became the principal fact of life in the confraternal activities of the gonfalone of the Drago Verde, a sign of “the long transformation of Florence from guild-­based republic into courtly society.”9 Little happened in the Company of Sant’Agnese without Lorenzo’s knowledge and sanction.10 Under the influence of changing material and artistic conditions, the lauda was refashioned during the Quattrocento. Just as monophonic repertories featured elsewhere in Florentine musical life were steadily complemented with polyphonic genres, so with the lauda, although one could exaggerate the extent of such a development. Polyphonic practice was still a rare and special effect, experienced intermittently among other music composed according to contrasting compositional principles of the type described throughout this book: the chant, the lauda, instrumental music. The lauda continued to serve personal devotional ends. The great author of Quattrocento lauda verse, Feo Belcari, learned of his sister’s death in a Florentine convent from a letter that described how she “entered into a devout state and began singing the lauda that begins Partiti core et vanne all’amore, then upon her request her close companions gathered and sang a lauda that eased her passage from this life.”11 Such devotional singing by figures who likely were musically untrained is consistent with the genre’s origins as a monophonic genre performed by a confraternity. All the same, the lauda was increasingly reaccented as polyphonic throughout the Quattrocento, which required that its composers and performers receive more advanced training. Between around 1415 and 1470, the number of paid singers in the confraternities gradually increased, and there are the first references to singers of polyphony.12 By about 1430, most of the companies of laudesi had embraced polyphonic singing and made the enhancements in staffing required to perform three-­and four-­voice compositions.13 The companies also ceased hiring instrumentalists—­ except organists, of course—­and they abandoned weekday services, indicative of waning enthusiasm for the tradition. Settings of lauda verse were increasingly derived from existing music originally composed for a different purpose and then retrofitted with a lauda text, an important practice known as “cantasi come.” In the sources,

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a lauda text will be labeled “cantasi come [sung like],” followed by the title of a preexisting composition in a compatible poetic form, whose music was then fitted to the lauda text.14 Singers of lauda texts sought models in secular practices seemingly incongruent with the sacred lauda: in the local Florentine festive tradition, genres such as canti carnascialeschi (carnival songs) or the music for May Day or for trionfi (the processions of floats featured at carnival and the Feast of St. John the Baptist) or other festivals important in Florentine life. The autograph manuscript of Feo Belcari compiled between around 1468 and the poet’s death in 1484 models the cantasi come practice and seems to have influenced its later development. The goal was a travestimento spirituale—­spiritual recostuming—­where music composed to clothe a secular text thereafter clothed lauda verse. Florentine carnival songs were especially subject to such treatment,15 an iconic example being the spiritual recostuming of Lorenzo il Magnifico’s Quant’è bella giovinezza as Quant’è grande la bellezza / di te Vergin sant’e pia.16 An impetus for the recostuming was to replace suggestive texts with more sober, devout, and suitable verse. Among the themes that inspired such refashioning were the lingering desires of nuns who had entered religious life but then sought to break their vows, in particular the vow of chastity. One of the texts in the tradition was copied by the late-­Quattrocento theocrat Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who preached against such abuses as the breaking of one’s vows. The lauda also assumed a new, vitally important function in the musical culture. The companies of laudesi at the Churches of Santo Spirito and Santa Maria del Carmine contributed annually to the staging of the sacre rappresentationi, sacred theatrical performances where one or more laude were often interpolated.17 We come to one of the most important Florentine cultural traditions of the early-­modern era.

Innovation: The Sacra Rappresentatione The following description of a performance of the festa of the Annunciation of the Virgin during the Council of Florence in 1439—­written by a Russian bishop who witnessed it—­is of one of several major sacred theatrical performances in fifteenth-­and sixteenth-­century Florence.18 In . . . the city of Florence a . . . clever man . . . has created a wonderful work . . . representing the descent from heaven of the archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary . . . to announce to her the conception of her . . . son. . . . This is how it was done. In a certain monastery of that city there is a large church . . . and in this church, above the main door and below the roof . . . , a platform was con-

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structed, up against the front wall. . . . On this . . . platform is set a throne, on which a man sits. . . . He is the figure of the Father. . . . [I]n the middle [of the church] a rood screen runs from one side wall to the other on pillars. . . . The . . . screen is . . . covered in beautiful cloth and upon these layers of cloth . . . stands a bed. . . . At the head of the bed is a chair. . . . In this . . . chair a . . . young man sat, dressed in . . . maiden’s garb. . . . He represented the . . . Virgin Mary. . . . From the upper place . . . down to the rood screen run . . . ropes, right to the altar. Two of them . . . are secured in front of the person who acts the part of the . . . Virgin. It is on these that the Angel sent by God descends, by means of a third . . . cord, to give her the good tidings. Then in jubilation he returns to Heaven again. These three cords go right to the middle of the rood screen. . . . [W]hen the time came for the spectacle, many people gathered from everywhere for the great and wonderful event, in the hope of seeing the rappresentazione, so that a great multitude of people fill the church. For a while they stood in silence, looking up at the scene prepared on the rood screen. . . . After a while the curtains and hangings are swept open and everybody can see the person acting the part of the . . . Virgin Mary. Then there come on to the rood screen . . . four men . . . to whom has been granted the gift of prophecy. . . . They began to argue with each other. . . . While they are arguing, the curtains covering the upper platform are swept back with the sound of cannon fire. . . . There on the upper platform the . . . Father can be seen; around him . . . burned more than five hundred lights. . . . Little boys in white robes . . . surrounded him, representing heavenly virtues. Some of them were singing, another played the cymbals, others played the lute and pipes. After some time, the Angel sent from on high by the Father came down on the two ropes . . . towards the Virgin to announce the conception of the Son of God. The Angel was played by a beautiful, curly-­haired boy. . . . He came down on the ropes singing softly. . . . The Angel . . . landed in front of the Virgin. . . . He then addressed her . . . : “Hail Mary, blessed art thou among women. . . . Behold you will conceive in your womb a son, you shall bring forth the Word of God, and you shall call him Jesus. And he shall free men from their sins [Luke 1:28–­31, with omissions].” She rose up quickly in fright, and replied with quiet maiden-­ modesty: . . . “You said that God is with me and wants to be incarnate in my womb? I do not believe your words, for I partake not in matrimony and . . . have known no man. . . .” Seeing her so terrified, he answers, “Fear not, Mary, I am the archangel Gabriel, sent by God to announce to you the conception of the son of God. Do not doubt my words: the conception is without seed, the Holy Ghost shall come upon you. . . .” Looking up, she saw the Father. . . . When she saw him, she . . . said to him humbly: “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord; be it unto me according to your word [Luke 1:38].” The Angel . . . returned on high. While the Angel was going up, simultaneously there emerged from God the Father a loud and continuous thunder-­flash, . . . and again it blazed quickly up and

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sprang down again, so that all the church was full of sparks. The Angel continued up rejoicing, gesturing with his hands and moving his wings; it really looked as if he were flying. . . . When the Angel had gone back into the place from which he had come, the flames were extinguished and all the curtains closed as they had been before. (emphasis added)19

Major Florentine churches served as performance venues for such events, San Felice in Piazza in the case of the Annunciation play.20 The aim of the confraternities associated with the churches that were the performance venues was partly didactic: the edification of the overwhelmingly illiterate observers. The organizers thus resorted to striking visual means. One scholar of the sacra rappresentatione described its effect as attributable to “elaborate mechanical means, actors suspended on strings, great revolving disks, massed sources of artificial light, people going up and down in wooden clouds.”21 An inventory of the possessions of the company that staged the Ascension play lists the properties: stars with rays fashioned of wood, from which figures of angels and the company’s coat of arms dangled; diadems worn by the actors portraying the apostles, the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Jesus; a painted castle; the Mount of Olives; stars and a large cloud “in which Christ goes into the heavens when the festa is done”; bells; lamps; costumes; and a mask that “God the Father wears over his face.”22 Elaborate machinery propelled the actors around the ceiling vaults of the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine. At one time, the company spent some three-­fifths of its annual budget on the Ascension play, a measure of the importance of such activity to the congregants’ devotional experience.23 The performance venue for the larger genre of dramatized episodes from scripture need not have been the interior of a church. Just as the entire city was sacralized by means of the religious processions, so it could be transformed into a virtual theater. The Company of the Magi staged dramatizations of the episode in the Gospel of Matthew when the Magi visited the court of Herod before journeying to Bethlehem, where they lavished gifts on the baby Jesus. For one memorable Quattrocento dramatization of the meeting of Herod with the Magi, the procession formed in Piazza della Signoria. Among its participants—­wild and domesticated animals, servants of the Florentine Signoria, slaves, courtiers, the legates of the Magi with their bodyguards—­were instrumentalists.24 An ephemeral palace had been constructed in Piazza San Marco, and when the procession arrived, Herod’s retinue exited to meet it. “And as the entire kingdom sounded with music,” he was seated upon his throne.25 Several Quattrocento sacre rappresentationi are well attested by period

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documentation; any of them could serve as representative of the genre. I have selected the Festa dell’Annunciazione because it illustrates not only the continuing modification of the basic literary and dramatic template but also the ever-­changing use of music. And because the Annunciation was celebrated on New Year’s Day, and for other such reasons, the subject matter is quintessentially Florentine. Years after the 1439 performance, Feo Belcari reworked the plot and regularized the narrative as a fully composed written text. The 1439 performers may well have made use of no written script at all, instead improvising based on a concise plot outline, continual rehearsing, and established routines for realizing material that existed largely in an oral state. A complication in reconstructing the tradition, therefore, is that depending upon the historical moment in question, one cannot always be certain that a particular performance relied solely upon a scenario or upon one of the extant, ex post facto written regularizations of the material. Earlier performances of the Annunciation play had likely been largely dependent on a visual realization of the mystery. The new literary genre more fully verbalizes it. In the words of a modern scholar of the tradition, the prerogatives of the goldsmith had yielded to those of the wordsmith. Belcari’s Italian versification of the account of the Annunciation in the first chapter of the Gospel according to Luke thus applies a new narrative mode to the old festa. In the narration in 1439, the prophecies of the Annunciation had occupied a full half hour. Belcari greatly reduced this element of the plot.26 So much for the recast text. Now for the other accoutrements of the performance: stagecraft, music. In his life of Filippo Brunelleschi, Giorgio Vasari described a performance for which, he claimed, Brunelleschi had designed the elaborate stage machinery, a claim now contested.27 The description is invaluable, especially as it contrasts with that of the visiting Russian bishop. Up on high you could see a Heaven, full of living figures, that moved. . . . Filippo had set . . . a dome like an empty bowl or . . . barber’s basin turned upside down. . . . All this part of the machinery was supported by a sturdy . . . beam, well reinforced with iron, which was set cross-­wise on the rafters of the roof. At the bottom of the dome, on its inside rim, there were wooden ledges. . . . A child . . . was set on each of these ledges. . . . These putti, who were twelve in all, were arranged, as I have said, on the ledges and dressed as Angels. . . . When the time came, they took each other by the hand and by swinging their arms made it look as if they were dancing. . . . A big iron frame . . . had eight spokes which curved to fill the cavity of the dome, and at the end of each spoke it had a wooden ledge. . . .

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On each ledge stood a little boy. . . . These eight angels supported by the frame could . . . be lowered . . . from within the dome down to eight braccia below the level of the rafters that support the roof. . . . In the middle of this nosegay of eight angels (for that is what it is properly called) was a mandorla made of hollow copper tubing. . . . When the nosegay of angels was lowered into position, this mandorla . . . came down to the platform where the festa was performed. On the platform, just where the mandorla came to rest, was a high place like a big throne. . . . Within the mandorla, dressed as an angel, there was a young man. . . . And so, when the nosegay was lowered into position, and the mandorla was resting in its throne, . . . the angel . . . could walk along the platform, and when he came to where the Virgin was he greeted her and gave the Annunciation. Then he returned to the mandorla, . . . and then . . . the mandorla was hauled back up, while the singing of the angels of the nosegay and of the turning heaven made it really seem like Paradise, and especially since besides this choir of angels . . . , there was a God the Father next to the outer shell of the dome . . . , so that Heaven, the nosegay, the God the Father, the mandorla, the infinite lights and sweetest music really were the image of Paradise. (emphasis added)28

A Quattrocento printed text of La festa della Annuntiatione di nostra Donna depicts the “dome . . . turned upside down,” with the “mandorla . . . of hollow copper tubing.”29 The differences in the musical element between the 1439 performance and the one described by Vasari are obvious. Now there is dancing (surely accompanied by music), and the angels in the nosegay enclosing the copper mandorla sing the “sweetest music.” In 1439, conversely, the angels surrounding God the Father sang and played, and Gabriel sang “softly” as he descended to the Virgin Mary. Most important for a musicologist, Feo Belcari’s text further clarifies where music was used and what kind of music it was, and even precisely what music.30 The music that clothed the text of the monologues sung by the actors (“the Angel sent . . . by the Father came down on the two ropes . . . towards the Virgin to announce the conception of the Son of God. . . . He came down . . . singing softly”) was different from that of the set pieces. Some of these latter were dramatically unrealistic (“on the upper platform the . . . Father can be seen. . . . Little boys . . . surrounded him, representing heavenly virtues. Some of them were singing, another played the cymbals, others played the lute and pipes”), but in other cases, the set pieces could be fully appropriate to the narrative.31 The long narration by the prophets and Sibyls, on the other hand, was likely in a declamatory style, where the text was simply musically heightened. It has been described as the “intoned recitation of dialogue.”32 The

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gospel account of the Annunciation was also presumably intoned in liturgical recitative, where many syllables of text were delivered rapidly to a single unvarying pitch. At least one herald of the Signoria is known to have performed in theatrical productions,33 and one imagines that the kind of music sung in the mensa of Palazzo della Signoria also typified the singing of the prophets and Sibyls and the archangel Gabriel. One envisions Gabriel plucking or bowing a chord on his five-­string fiddle as he briskly delivered one or more lines of text to a single pitch. In contrast, rubrics in Belcari’s text direct that the lauda Laudate el sommo Dio be sung by a “delegation” of angels “who come in Gabriel’s company.”34 As suggested earlier, because the text of any given sacra rappresentatione was susceptible to continual refashioning,35 one cannot know if a particular performance of a given sacra rappresentatione featured elements known to have been featured in other performances. The most one can say is that the fact that the text of Laudate el sommo Dio figures in Belcari’s script suggests when music might have been used and what kind of music it might have been. And even if we cannot know with any certainty what music was performed during a particular Quattrocento performance, we do know that the text of Laudate el sommo Dio circulated in the fifteenth century and could easily have been featured during Quattrocento performances of the Annunciation play. Happily, there is surviving music for Laudate el sommo Dio. Like many fifteenth-­century laude, Laudate el sommo Dio is in ballata form. An opening two-­line ripresa of seven-­and eleven-­syllable lines is followed by a six-­line strophe comprising four eleven-­syllable lines and a two-­line volta of seven-­and eleven-­syllable lines. There is then a return of the ripresa. The rhyme scheme links the strophe to the volta and the volta to the ripresa upon its return: ripresa 1 Laudate el sommo Dio, 2 Laudatel con fervente e buon desio.

strophe 3 Laudate Dio cantando con buon zelo, 4 Laudate le virtù celeste e sante, 5 Laudate tutti quanti il re del cielo, 6 Laudate le potenzie tutte quante,

a Praise the highest God, A praise him with fervent and good desire.

B Praise God singing with good zeal, C praise the heavenly and holy virtues, B all praise the king of heaven, C all praise his powers,

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volta 7 Dategli laude tante 8 Quante potete ad un Signor sì pio. return of the ripresa 1 Laudate el sommo Dio, 2 Laudatel con fervente e buon desio.

c all give him as much praise A as you can to so pious a Lord.

a Praise the highest God, A praise him with fervent and good desire.

Musically, the lauda manifests some of the characteristics of the genre: syllabic text setting, homorhythms, an almost complete absence of such contrapuntal devices as imitation, and a musical-­phrase design modeled closely on the text-­phrase design. There is extreme economy in melodic material, the same music serving for lines 3 and 5—­which are also linked through rhyme—­and the same music for lines 4, 6, and 8. Such features—­ characteristic of the genre more generally—­are doubly appropriate given the unpredictable performance conditions. More complex and less economical music would have been more difficult to perform under such conditions.36 One pictures the eight little boys—­the “angels”—­standing on their wooden ledges at the end of the spokes of the iron frame, their singing of Laudate el sommo Dio competing with the creaking of the stage machinery as it first slowly lowers and then slowly raises the iron frame and copper mandorla, and the observers on the floor of the church, their heads tilted upward and their necks craned, their eyes wide open and their jaws dropped as they strain to see the marvelous spectacle being enacted high above them, just beneath the vault. By the mid-­sixteenth century—­indeed, by the end of the fifteenth—­ performances of sacre rappresentationi had become vehicles of Florentine and Medicean propaganda.37

8

Heralds, Knights, and Carnival Revelers

Tellers of Tales In 1442, Anselmo Calderoni—­a Florentine who had been herald at the court of Urbino—­was named Florentine “knight of the court [militis curialis],” and for the first time the term “herald” appears in the official documentation (“Calderonis, militis araldi”), which one interprets in part as acknowledgment of the status that Calderoni had enjoyed in Urbino, in part as aristocratic pretension by the nominally republican Signori of Florence. And in 1456, Francesco Filarete, one of Calderoni’s successors, became the first Florentine herald expressly appointed as such. He justified his application for the post on grounds that he was “apt and suited to the duties of . . . araldus of your lordships.” With the change in title came particular responsibility for the codification and enactment of Florentine public ceremonial.1 When a new herald was appointed, he was installed in a ceremony on the platform in front of Palazzo Vecchio, which featured the playing of the Signoria’s instrumentalists.2 These new administrative responsibilities did not supplant the herald’s duties as a singer. He is identified not only as “araldo” but also as “canterinus.” The herald Antonio di Matteo di Meglio was “cantoris cantilenarum,” “elected to declaim in song at the mensa.”3 Just as the Medici were ever more deeply involved in the functioning of the musical establishments at the ecclesiastical institutions, so, too, were they ever more deeply involved in recruiting instrumentalists for the Signoria’s ensemble. Lorenzo il Magnifico’s correspondence is rich in references documenting his recruitment of instrumentalists,4 among them Bartolomeo Tromboncino, the celebrated Mantuan trombonist and composer of frottole (settings of Italian secular poetry for solo voice and instrumental accompaniment), who ultimately declined Lorenzo’s offer.5

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In 1469, one of Lorenzo’s correspondents wrote of an excellent shawm player at Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, urging that Lorenzo secure his services.6 Gradually, though concealing their actions to the extent possible, the Medici were inexorably tightening their grip on Florentine life. A similar pattern obtained regarding the influences of northern European musical culture on the practices of the instrumentalists. In 1443, the four members of the ensemble of wind players were dismissed and replaced by northern Europeans. Legislation expressly restricted membership to northerners, coveted throughout Italy as superior practitioners of their craft. The addition at that time of a bent or slide trumpet is itself evidence of northern influence.7 The pifferi of the Signoria—­the favored ensemble among those maintained by the Signori8—­were often engaged to perform in private venues,9 both within and outside the city of Florence. Their abilities were so valued, in fact, that the Signori were soon obliged to regulate their moonlighting.10 But the Signori themselves reserved the right, as well they might, to dispatch the instrumentalists and herald to other Italian cities and principalities when it was in the city’s diplomatic best interests to do so.11 The Commune’s statutes stipulate that the only regular obligations of the instrumentalists of the Signoria were to play at the mensa each day at the noon and evening meals, accompany the Signori when they exited Palazzo Vecchio for official engagements elsewhere in the city, and perform at special ceremonies, including, importantly, those for distinguished visitors to Florence.12 The repertory of the wind players likely comprised either secular vocal compositions performed instrumentally or instrumental carmina (songs) conceived as such.13 (Although the wind players performed music for dancing in other contexts, such music would have been appropriate at the mensa of the Signoria only under unusual circumstances.)14 The typical compositional design of fifteenth-­century French secular songs transmitted in contemporary Florentine sources consisted of a tenor line featuring longer note values, which could have been performed instrumentally on the alto shawm, an upper line featuring shorter note values performable on the treble shawm, and a third line that lay between the other two, performable on the slide trumpet. Contemporary depictions of such ensembles show two shawms and a slide trumpet until about 1450 and three shawms and the slide trumpet thereafter.15 It has been argued that the almost complete absence of texts in contemporary Florentine sources of French secular vocal music16—­and the frequent garbling of text when it is present—­“is . . . an indication of instrumental performance”: “Any secular music other than that . . . on texts in the

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native language was predominantly and perhaps even exclusively the domain of instrumentalists.”17 More recent scholarship reinforces the qualifier “perhaps even exclusively.”18 The relevant Florentine sources of the time may have been assembled for the wind players of the Signoria of Florence or other such ensembles, though not solely for that purpose.19 At minimum, the primary sources reflect the kind of operation performed on existing vocal compositions to ready them for instrumental performance.20 As an example, I cite a setting of the secular poem Depuis le congé que pris, attributed to the composer Firminus Caron,21 which appears—­ largely textless—­in a Florentine manuscript of around 1485 (ex. 8.1).22 It is reformatted here to illustrate how it might have been arranged for instrumental performance. Music of the type that the herald performed was featured not only in the privacy of Palazzo della Signoria but also in the public spaces of Florence. The principal setting for the Florentine canterini or improvvisatori was Piazza San Martino. The golden age of their performances was the mid-­to late fifteenth century, when an increasingly professionalized class of singers performed spare musical settings of historical or mythological tales to their own playing of a string instrument, delivered for observers who either stood or sat on benches in the square. Sources document the activities of poet-­singers “who sing on the bench [panca] in San Martino.” In the 1480s, the humanist Michele Verino heard the most famous of the Quattrocento improvvisatori, Antonio di Guido, “singing the wars of Orlando” in “vico Martini.” In period collections of his poetry, Antonio is identified as “Master Antonio who sings in San Martino.” The repertory of the cantimpanche was both sacred and secular. Among texts that Feo Belcari lent to Antonio di Guido was a dialogue of St. Gregory, “which Antonio returned with a letter and sonnet,” reporting to Belcari that he would sing of it “in versi.” The subject matter affords interpretation in terms relevant to contemporary Florentine cultural, historical, and political sensibilities. Florentines . . . seemed never to tire of hearing about the deeds of the Carolingian paladins. . . . The allure of these tales was . . . derived . . . from the capacity of the canterini and their audiences to “read” into them narratives of a particularly Florentine sort: the struggle against foreign usurpers of liberty, a fascination with the trappings of feudal culture as a traditional language of power, and even a belief in Charlemagne as one of the legendary founders of the city.

Although some early-­Quattrocento humanists disdained the practices of the improvvisatori of San Martino, “many noble persons”—­Verino among

Example 8.1 Excerpt from Caron’s Depuis le congé que pris, arranged for instrumental performance

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them—­frequented the performances. The Medici were patrons of the singers of San Martino. At least one of the canterini who performed at San Martino—­Michele di Nofri del Giogante—­also participated in one of the most important cultural events of mid-­Quattrocento Florence, the 1441 Certame Coronario,23 a more high-­minded and intellectually substantive undertaking. Organized by Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici and the esteemed humanist Leon Battista Alberti, the Certame was a competition held in the Cathedral over several days, during which literary figures sang their poetry to instrumental accompaniment.24 The intention was to demonstrate the potential of the Italian vernacular (specifically, Tuscan) as a literary language, comparable in literary elegance and effectiveness of expression to classical and neoclassical Latin.25 The Certame was also a humanistic revival of what was understood as the antique practice of solo song to string accompaniment, which allowed for a clear and intelligible projection of the contestants’ poetic texts. The distinguished audience included “secretaries of . . . Eugene P.P., the Magnificent Signoria of Florence, the Archbishop, Ambassador from Venice, and . . . a number of Prelates,” “officials of the Studium, many most honored courtiers,” the “judges elected by the . . . Signoria and officials of the Studium,” “and then universally all the Florentine people”26

Medieval Chivalric Tradition Reimagined Other species of musical performance defined the public sound world of mid-­to late-­Quattrocento Florence. The Medici could not claim aristocratic origins and were sensitive on that point; but they could adopt and emulate the traditional practices of the authentic knightly class, which they did.27 They and their apologists staged ceremonial jousts in an imaginative evocation of the chivalric practices of medieval Europe.28 Two jousts are memorialized in idealized fashion by poets who were intimates of the Medici: Luigi Pulci, who left a fictionalized account of the 1469 joust in which Lorenzo il Magnifico was the victor,29 and Angelo Poliziano, who left an incomplete fictionalized account of the 1475 joust in which Lorenzo’s younger brother, Giuliano, was the victor.30 Jousts had been the prerogative of the Guelph Party, “protector of the city’s still noisy feudal pretensions,”31 and the fact that they were appropriated by the Medici is a sure sign of the family’s advancing ennoblement. Pulci’s account contains references to a musical element. Although it is a work of fiction in verse that had to employ the contrivances of meter and rhyme, which dictated word choices, and can scarcely be taken at face

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value, it reports accurately on the type of music that would have been performed during the ceremony and when. The joust was staged in Piazza Santa Croce. As each contestant entered the square, fanfares by the instrumentalists in his entourage announced his arrival, and onlookers shouted his name (or, in Lorenzo il Magnifico’s case, the Medici party slogan, “Palle, palle!”). When Benedetto Salutati’s entourage entered, there was a “great tumult of trumpets, drums, and wind instruments”;32 “the sound resounded to the heavens.”33 Wind players, trombonists, and a percussionist also accompanied Lorenzo.34 Lorenzo’s propagandists exploited the occasion to the fullest, capitalizing on the opportunity to display Medici symbols on his attire and accompanying festive accoutrements.35 Lorenzo was bedazzingly outfitted in fabulously expensive clothing. His velvet jacket was studded with jewels and pearls. Embroidered on his scarf were images of withered and fresh roses, symbolic of renewal. His weapon, harness, and standard were designed by some of the leading artists of the day, Sandro Botticelli and Andrea del Verrocchio among them. Verrocchio lavished his talents especially on the design of Lorenzo’s processional standard,36 which depicted his personal device: branches of laurel. In choosing the emblem, Lorenzo and his propagandists capitalized on the resemblance of his name (Laurentius/ Laurus/Lauro) both to laurel and to that of Petrarch’s Laura, who was the embodiment of evergreen immortality, interpreted in turn as a metaphor for political stability. Lorenzo’s standard also bore the motto Le tems revient, an allusion to Virgil’s Eclogue IV, verses 4–­7, which prophesy the return of a golden age of peace, such notions of renewal being a fixture of the Florentine religious imagination. In his account of the joust, Pulci decoded the Medicean iconography. Lorenzo came onto the field riding a horse that made the ground shake. And on his fair standard could be seen a sun on high and then a rainbow, and these golden letters could be read: “The time returns,” which may be taken to mean that time has returned and the world been renewed [“‘Le tens revient’: che può interpretarsi tornare il tempo e’l secol rinnuovarsi”].37

In a world of flux, symbolized by both fresh and withered roses, the Medici represented regeneration and continuity. The topos would be revived after

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the 1512 restoration of the Medici. The imagery of rain followed by sunshine was then a metaphor for the sunny return of the Medici after eighteen years of metaphoric rainfall.38 Lorenzo handily won the joust, and although the outcome was a foregone conclusion, a period account suggests that it was not achieved solely through theatrical sleight of hand. Lorenzo was “solid and robust of body, and of [such] great agility that in this he was second to none.”39 Very little direct musical evidence survives from the early-­modern era that gives a sense of the processional music performed at such an event, but later sixteenth-­and seventeenth-­century examples at least suggest something of the character of such music. The trumpet fanfares were likely in the style of those in Gascoigne’s Noble Arte of Venerie or Hvnting (1575)40 or Mersenne’s Harmonie Universelle (1636).41 And the music of the wind players who accompanied the processions was likely similar to “the music for the fife or arigot” in Thoinot Arbeau’s Orchesographie,42 music in which a simple monophonic formula is decorated and embellished, followed by further such formulas expanded or abbreviated to fit the requirements of the moment.43

Florentine Carnival and the Canto Carnascialesco Carnival has undergone repeated refashioning throughout its long history. Originally a pagan festival that celebrated the coming of spring, it was later incorporated into the Christian calendar while retaining its pagan festive character. Under the Christian redefinition, carnival was marked by unfettered reveling in the period before Lent, the season of ritual abstinence prior to Easter, the entire period a “transition from feasting (Carnival) to fasting (Lent).”44 During the de facto rule of the Medici, carnival was reenvisioned yet again, first classicized and intellectualized in the late Quattrocento—­ overlaid with a Platonizing veneer—­and then, in the early Cinquecento, refashioned once more, politicized when the conditions of the moment made such a reinterpretation possible. Though still classicistic, the literary conceits were then redirected toward overt glorification of the House of Medici.45 Lorenzo il Magnifico’s changing sensibilities paralleled such developments. When he was still a young man and involved with his companions,46 typical carnival song texts of the time (the 1470s)47—­often laced with risqué double entendres—­celebrated the trades and professions of late-­medieval and early-­modern Florence:48 pastry cooks, dyers, wool carders.49 Such texts document the vestigial importance of the guilds in the city’s political culture and imagination.

Example 8.2 Excerpt from the Song of the Vendors of Perfumes

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Figure 8.1 Baccio Baldini’s 1475 engraving of the Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne in a float drawn by centaurs and accompanied by fauns and nymphs. London, British Museum, nos. 1860,0714.41 and 1872,0511.970.

For a musicologist, the great interest of the Florentine carnival tradition is that relative to other kinds of occasions, there is an abundance of extant music. It permits us to know some of the texts that were sung (and therefore the kinds of text), their musical settings, and thus the typical features of the genre more generally. Emblematic of carnival songs from earlier in the fifteenth century are the Song of the Tailors (a four-­voice song, notably, whereas most extant fifteenth-­century carnival songs are for three voices),50 Lorenzo’s own Song of the Vendors of Perfumes, Oils, and Soaps (for three voices), Lorenzo’s Song of the Grafters, “Ladies, we are masters of grafting” (an example of the use of sexual double entendres, in this case one that invokes the imagery of agricultural grafting as a metaphor for penetration more generally),51 Lorenzo’s Song of the Pastries, which Heinrich Isaac reportedly set to music (although the setting, alas, is no longer extant), and any number of other examples.52 Although they were performed publicly, the

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true audience for these early songs comprised members of Lorenzo’s own circle. The texts tell an inside joke and delight in popular language, verbal sparring, and references to sodomitic activity among members of a circle where experimentation in such activity may have been a rite of passage.53 In all places, at all times, carnival celebrations have been characterized by challenges to contemporary propriety and standards of behavior. In the quotation from Il Lasca cited earlier, it is reported that the men of Lorenzo’s time, “masking themselves and using . . . carnival to play the roles of ladies, were accustomed to walk about during the Calendimaggio: And thus disguised in the habits of women and young girls [they] sang canzoni a ballo.”54 Transvestism and experimentation in homosexual activity were parallel expressions of the mid-­Quattrocento Florentine carnivalesque.55 I present a musical example from the earlier phase in the development of the Laurentian canto carnascialesco, a setting of Lorenzo’s own Song of the Vendors of Perfumes, Oils, and Soaps (ex. 8.2). Sources of Lorenzo’s Song of

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the Vendors and a second canto carnascialesco56 reveal that although the Song of the Vendors celebrated a profession and presumably dates from the earlier phase of the tradition, it could be revived even after tastes had changed. As was typical (although there are exceptions), the fifteenth-­century carnival song was a three-­voice composition. The setting is largely homorhythmic and the text setting syllabic. Such spare treatment is logical in light of the performance conditions and the need for an intelligible projection of the text, a foregrounding of its often-­obscure tropes. Variety in the setting is achieved, if at all, by changes in meter, from duple to triple and back again, as in the Song of the Vendors, “We are galants from Valencia,” at measures 30–­38. Later, when Lorenzo had come of age and settled into his role as de facto head of state, his tastes underwent refinement. He was then receptive to the more austere influences of Angelo Poliziano. Lorenzo’s sensibilities may also have become more restrained as a result of the trauma of the 1478 Pazzi rebellion,57 when his beloved brother Giuliano was assassinated and Lorenzo himself narrowly escaped death.58 One contemporary reported in 1488 that there had been no edifici or trionfi for the Feast of San Giovanni for more than a decade.59 Carnival song verse from after around 1488 is suffused with references to historical and mythological figures of the ancient Greeks and Romans; the programs of the displays feature classical allegories.60 During the 1490 carnival, Lorenzo’s Song of Bacchus—­an emblem of Florentine Neoplatonism—­as well as his Song of the Seven Planets—­Lorenzo’s song for the planet Venus—­are said to have been performed (see figs. 8.1 and 8.2).61 Aby Warburg pointed out the correspondence between an engraving of Bacchus and Ariadne, almost certainly based on a drawing by Botticelli, and Lorenzo’s Song of Bacchus.62 Although the engraving is dated to around 1475 and therefore cannot refer to the 1490 Triumph of Bacchus, I reproduce it as stimulus to the historical imagination. (Exceptionally, the intervening carnival seems to have been something of an anomaly, a reversion to an earlier vision of carnival. It featured a “song of the women and chatter­boxes who went with the float in the year 1488 [recte: 1489], which Lorenzo de’ Medici made.”) In one of its period primary sources, the Song of Bacchus is captioned “Canzona composed by the Magnificent Lorenzo de Medici who had the Triumph of Bacchus done this carnival, where they were singing the following canzona, composed for lute [or “on the lute”]; they were the most beautiful things.” The phrase “composed for lute” may mean that the singers were accompanied by a lutenist. But would a lute have been heard over the singing of the three vocalists, not to mention ambient sounds: the low-

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Figure 8.2 A drawing by Filippino Lippi of an enthroned woman on a triumphal carro, which may be connected with the “mascherata di 7 trionfi di 7 pianeti,” 1488–­ 93. Oxford, University of Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, WA 1995.213. © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. See plate 4 for a color image.

ing of the oxen drawing the floats, the shouting of inebriated observers, the creaking of the carnival floats? Might not “chomposte da leuto” mean instead that on this occasion the polyphonic version in the sources was performed by a solo singer who stood on the float and sang the uppermost line to the chordal accompaniment of his own lute playing, which was an instrumental performance of the two lower lines in the texture of the fully vocal version? Might not canti carnascialeschi have been performed in different arrangements on different occasions, sometimes polyphonically by a consort of singers, sometimes by a soloist to lute accompaniment? Depending upon the performing resources, performance conditions of the moment might have been adjusted. The float might have come to a halt and the oxen steadied. Under such conditions a standing solo singer ac-

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Figure 8.3 An engraving (ca. 1490–­1500) of the Triumph of Æmilius Paulus may record a design of Filippino Lippi for this trionfo. London, British Museum, no. 1845,0825.263 PPA41351 ncq.

companying himself on the lute might have been able to project his text to the hundreds of observers assembled along the processional route. In 1491, the festivities for the Feast of San Giovanni also revealed classicizing tendencies. The program—­the Triumph of Æmilius Paulus, a metaphoric celebration of Lorenzo’s good government by means of its allusion to Augustan Rome63—­was Lorenzo’s own invention, and he himself absorbed the expense for the horses and oxen that drew the floats: “Having had a naturalistic conceit invented, Lorenzo de’ Medici had the Chompagnia de la Stel[l]a do . . . the fifteen trionfi done when Æmilius Paulus staged his triumph in Rome” (fig. 8.3).64 Giorgio Vasari characterized the inventions of the mascherata as “bellissimi.” And notwithstanding his youth, Francesco Granacci—­then a student in Lorenzo’s sculpture garden at San Marco—­was praised for the paintings that decorated the carri.65 Precisely when during carnival and related festivities—­during which performance contexts—­would the music have been sung? One might distinguish among the mascherate, sung by the groups of masked men and

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boys who serenaded the women of Florence at their windows during carnival or on May Day; the carri, or processional floats, on which singers representing one of the Florentine trades stood or were seated; and the trionfi, consisting of several elaborate carri, on which sat personifications of Greek and Roman gods or the cardinal and theological virtues.66

9

Music and Domestic Life The H o use of Me d ici

The musical experiences of the Medici were probably no different in kind from those of other prominent families, only in degree. The status of the Medici afforded them the means of supporting musical performances on more occasions and also in more lavish fashion than their contemporaries. However, if one were able to reconstruct the private experiences of similar families, one would likely discover that music-­making occurred on the same kinds of occasions and featured the same genres. We know, for example, that other families owned manuscripts of polyphonic music and could therefore enjoy performances of polyphony in their homes.1 A challenge in reconstructing private musical experiences—­of the Medici as well as other families—­is that the primary evidence is scattered, varied in format and content, and more difficult to assemble and interpret successfully. Notwithstanding such characteristics, the sources tell us a great deal.

Occasions for Music-­Making There are glimpses of the informal singing and instrumental playing by members of the Medici family and their intimates.2 Ugo della Stufa reported to Giovanni di Cosimo il Vecchio in 1445, “We are together here—­ now at Careggi, now at Bivigliano. . . . Antonio [Squarcialupi] . . . gives us pleasure . . . with the organ, since it has been equipped with a double rank of pipes, and you don’t want to hear more about how—­with bellows [pumping]—­his desire to play cannot be satisfied whenever he has them at hand.”3 In 1485, when Lorenzo and Clarice de’ Medici were at the baths in Morba, their entourage included “Francesco [di Antonio Squarcialupi] degli Organi,” “2 cantori” (otherwise unidentified), and “El compare,” an otherwise unidentified violist who sang extemporaneously to the viola da braccio. During their return to Florence, Lorenzo and Clarice parted company, and from that moment Clarice’s retinue “came from there in song,

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festivities, and happiness. . . . We found . . . about 25 foot soldiers. . . . We knew them to be people sent . . . to accompany us. . . . And dismissing . . . all the aforesaid foot soldiers, with only one of them as a guide, [and] our songs and festivities having been resumed, we left there.”4 On other occasions, as at other times and in other places, music was thought capable of ameliorating one’s melancholic state. Bernardo Rucellai reported in 1466 that Lucrezia Donati—­who, though married to Niccolò Ardinghelli, was the object of Lorenzo il Magnifico’s passion, as he was of hers—­“is listening to music to treat herself for melancholy and sadness.”5 Sometimes an oblique reference suggests that informal music-­ making was a regular occurrence in the Medici household. Upon the death of his ally Francesco Sforza, Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici admonished his children to “forgo the playing of instruments, or songs and dancing, or other similar delightful things.”6 But glimpses of music-­making under private circumstances are rare. More numerous are the references to formal occasions. The gradual ennoblement of the Medici during the fifteenth century was such that private occasions such as the marriage of a member of the family could have a public component and elicit an account from an observer who need not have had any particular relationship to the Medici. When Lorenzo il Magnifico and Clarice Orsini were married in June 1469, the festivities included both public and private music-­making: trumpet fanfares, processional music by wind players, the instrumental accompaniment to dancing.7 Another consequence of the protoennoblement of the Medici was that they increasingly behaved like—­and were treated like—­the seigneurial classes of true aristocratic states elsewhere in Italy. Resident envoys to Florence from other Italian city-­states and from European nations and aristocratic visitors to Florence were hosted in Palazzo Medici,8 where there was often music. When Ippolita Maria di Francesco Sforza was en route to Naples for her wedding to the duke of Calabria, she paused in Florence, where she was the guest of Piero di Cosimo. Among the musical elements of her ceremonial entry were the usual trumpet fanfares and processional music by the pifferi. A later occasion was celebrated with the inevitable music for dancing. And while Ippolita was staying at Palazzo Medici, “as soon as they have eaten, Piero’s daughters . . . play various instruments in the Duchess’s chamber.”9 The fact that responsibility for hosting and honoring the young noblewoman was shared by the Medici and the municipal government suggests just how much the prerogatives of the Medici and those of the city were beginning to blur. An extremely important context for musical performances was daily

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dining or festive banqueting. The music was typically performed between courses, along with other kinds of activity: dancing, masked processions, the appearance of magical machines, and the performances of live or artificial animals, minstrels, and acrobats. It constituted an interlude while the plates for the finished course were being removed and the next course was being served, thus locating the courses within a contrasting, nonculinary frame. Music-­making that occurred after the meal would have been understood as a means of aiding in digestion.10 And it was otherwise thought to intensify the overall effects of banqueting. Some of the most atmospheric and informative accounts of music-­ making in Medici circles, or among Florentines more generally, are associated with banqueting. In 1459, one of the events in honor of the young Milanese prince, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, was a banquet on 23 April at Cosimo il Vecchio’s villa in Careggi, which featured after-­dinner music-­making and dancing. The prince reported on the evening to his father, the duke of Milan, and waxed rhapsodic about Antonio di Guido, cantimpanca of San Martino and a Medici intimate.11 At about the same time, Pope Pius II visited Florence while en route with his retinue to the Council of Mantua, and upon his return early in 1460, he and his entourage again paused in Florence. Their visit occasioned one of the most revealing accounts of music-­making in Quattrocento Medici circles. [6 February 1460, from the Apostolic Protonotary to the Marchesa of Mantua] After eating, Bianca, . . . daughter of Piero di Cosimo [and fiancée of Guglielmo de’ Pazzi], went with other ladies . . . to visit the Cardinal of Rohan. . . . He took them into a hall and had Bianca play the organ; . . . Monsignor the Vice-­Chancellor . . . sent . . . to have the ladies who had gone to see the Cardinal . . . visit him, . . . because the Pazzi . . . said they wanted to hear Bianca . . . play. . . . Bianca tuned the pipes of the organ that King Alfonso had given to the organist maestro Antonio [Squarcialupi], saying that he was giving Squarcialupi this instrument because he was the best he had ever heard, or would ever hear. Once the organ was tuned, the sister . . . began to pump the bellows . . . , and . . . I had her [Bianca] perform two songs . . . : “Fortuna”12 and “Duogl’angoseus [sic; recte: “Dueil engoisseux”].”13 . . . When she had finished playing in camera, Monsignore and the ladies went into the hall and danced until about 7:30, first balletti, then saltarelli, and finally the ballata. . . . When the dance was finished, everyone ate something and then Bianca played an angelic song on the organ; then she sang a canzonetta with her sister, and then . . . another young girl began one that says “Moum cuer chiantes ioussement [sic; recte: “Mon cuer chante joyeusement”].”14

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In 1465, Braccio Martelli reported to Lorenzo il Magnifico on a memorable evening when there was dining, lute playing, dancing the Gioioso, a chirintana, and a moresca, ensemble singing, and laughter-­inducing transvestism.15 Although dancing, which assumes instrumental accompaniment, often occurred in the context of dining, it could also occur independently. In 1441, one of Cosimo il Vecchio’s correspondents wrote to him to report that “today a notable festival was done here where all the women of these parts were, and a magnificent ball was done and two honors given: one to the women and the other to the men.”16

The Patrons, Their Musicians, and Their Music From the time of Cosimo il Vecchio’s sons, virtually all the principal members of the family were musicians themselves. Giovanni di Cosimo owned lutes17 and a viola,18 and as they were the instruments of choice for those who practiced extemporaneous solo singing, Giovanni was likely an improvvisatore. Piero di Cosimo and Lorenzo il Magnifico also owned different types of instruments designed for soloistic performance: lute, viola, organ.19 When Lorenzo was away from home, he often sent urgent requests to Florence for his viola da braccio. In 1472, Lorenzo, then at one of the family villas outside Florence, wrote to his agent in Florence: “I await the viuola and the other things, and at any cost see to it that you bring them with you.”20 Many members of the family had received music instruction and are documented as performers.21 It was said of Lorenzo—­“an exceedingly skilled musician himself ”—­that “he always honored all musicians,” “to the point that he was deemed second to none.”22 The same was true of his sons. Poliziano said of Piero di Lorenzo that he “sings verse, both from musical notation and to the cithara.” Lorenzo’s second son, Giovanni (later Pope Leo X), one of the most passionate devotees of music in European history, was said to have joined in singing with musicians in his service. He was also a lutenist, perhaps a harpsichordist and organist, a collector of music manuscripts, and a creditable composer in his own right who was said to have delighted in the company of musicians.23 The Medici need not have provided music themselves for their own delectation. They profited from the presence of musicians employed in Florence whom they invited into Medici circles. We know for certain that, at minimum, the following appointees to the public institutions were retained by the Medici: Antonio Squarcialupi, organist of the cathedral;24 Squarcialupi’s son Francesco; and the singer-­composers Heinrich Isaac,

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Charles de Launoy, Pietrequin Bonnel, and Alexander Agricola.25 Other unnamed singers were Medici intimates, in one case identified simply as “chantori di San Giovanni.” Musicians with other kinds of professional abilities were known to be in Medici service. A period document tells of “two players, a harpist and a [lute?] player of Lorenzo de’ Medici.”26 Finally, much evidence documents the presence of lutenists, violists, and lutenist and violist singers, compari who would deliver verse extemporaneously to the accompaniment of a string instrument. We have encountered the tradition so many times now as to lose count. In 1473, Pulci wrote to Lorenzo of “compare nostro”—­otherwise unidentified—­“e lla vihuola.”27 Among the members of Piero di Lorenzo’s entourage in 1492 on the occasion of his visit to Rome were “il chonpare della viola” and “il chardiere della viola.”28 Baccio Ugolini, who sang the title role in Poliziano’s Orfeo in Mantua, was a member of Lorenzo’s chancery29 and an intimate of Lorenzo’s son Giovanni.30 Giovanni di Lorenzo had any number of lutenists, violists, and improvisatory singers in his employ, even while he was cardinal.31 Indeed, Cardinal Giovanni seems to have had a particular passion for lute playing and solo singing to string accompaniment. Giuliano di Lorenzo’s poetic elegy for Serafino Aquilano suggests that one of the most famous Quattrocento improvvisatori had been Giuliano’s intimate.32 From the profiles of these musicians—­organists of the cathedral, singer-­ composers trained in the polyphonic tradition, ensemble instrumentalists, singers who sang extemporaneously to string accompaniment—­one can draw some conclusions about the kinds of music heard in Medici circles: polyphonic settings of secular verse, whether French or Italian; the playing of a portative organ; instrumental ensemble music (presumably instrumental arrangements of originally vocal compositions or instrumental carmina); solo song. As always, the written sources document only a portion of the musical culture, and surely not the greater part. Many of the genres attested by the accounts quoted—­most of them—­were not and would not have been attested by contemporary notated documents. Moreover, some Medici property was confiscated during the two periods of the family’s exile from the city. The fossil record is incomplete.

The Musical Sources Few to none of the contemporary accounts mention music for the liturgy. Nor should we expect them to, since such performances were so fundamental to contemporary experience that they would not have occasioned

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special comment. But we do have evidence of manuscripts of sacred music in Medici possession,33 likely manuscripts of Gregorian chant or collections of laude for informal devotional singing. Inventories of the possessions of Piero di Cosimo il Vecchio34 and Lorenzo il Magnifico35 contain entries for music manuscripts, in many if not most cases presumably of secular compositions. But although there are numerous manuscripts of secular music remaining from Quattrocento Florence, only two can unquestionably be associated with the Medici. The earlier of the two is a manuscript copied in the mid-­1440s that was owned by Piero di Cosimo.36 It contains nineteen polyphonic compositions—­ fifteen chansons (twelve by Binchois, two by Du Fay, and one anonymous) and four settings of Italian texts—­and presumably preserves examples of the kinds of settings of secular poetry favored in Piero’s circles. Tellingly, the manuscript contains the two Binchois chansons said to have been played or sung in 1460 for the enjoyment of the retinue of Pius II. The later of the two manuscripts (Cappella Giulia XIII.27) likely dates from around 1492 to around 1494 and has been associated with Giuliano di Lorenzo il Magnifico.37 Its repertory and iconographic devices provide unequivocal evidence of Medici provenance, and it transmits a largely text­ less repertory of French secular songs and, notably, Heinrich Isaac’s Palle, palle, among several other musical genres. The principal composers represented are Alexander Agricola, Firminus Caron, Loyset Compère, Hayne van Ghizeghem, Jean Japart, Josquin Desprez, Johannes Martini, Jacob Obrecht, and Johannes Ockeghem. Other compositions in circulation in Quattrocento Florence certainly found their way into Medici circles, even if not contained in extant Medici manuscripts. Music in the written tradition was transmitted to Florence from major centers of musical patronage and activity. Of the four principal external influences on the formation of the Florentine secular repertory of the Quattrocento, two were Italian (Neapolitan and Ferrarese)38 and two northern European (English and Habsburg-­Burgundian).39

Varieties of Music-­Making Solo song—­like so many other musical genres—­was classicized during the Italian Renaissance, overlaid with a Platonizing veneer. On his deathbed, Cosimo il Vecchio requested Marsilio Ficino’s presence and asked that he bring one of Plato’s dialogues and an Orphic lyre. Indeed, the place of the lyre in Ficino’s philosophy is prominent.40 The viola da braccio of the Quattrocento was metaphorically transformed into an Orphic lyre;

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solo singing to the viola or lira da braccio was imaginatively reinterpreted as the singing of Orpheus. Lorenzo il Magnifico’s solo song was subject to Ficino’s Platonizing reinterpretation. Ficino reported having heard “our own Lorenzo sing to the accompaniment of a lyre” as though possessed “by a divine frenzy.”41 Ficino employs a humanist topos. Ficino himself, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and other Italian Neoplatonists of the fifteenth century accepted the Boëthian tripartition of music into musica mundana (music of the spheres), musica humana (accord or harmony of man’s body and soul), and musica organica (actual sounding music, produced by the human voice or an instrument), the last of which was understood as a means of bringing the human soul into momentary communion with the cosmos. Lorenzo’s “divine frenzy” was the ecstatic state attainable through solo singing to an Orphic lyre or its Quattrocento restorations.42 Further evidence of the preference of the Quattrocento Medici for this kind of music is contained in a remarkable letter of Poliziano, reporting on the music performed—­during dinner, notably—­on a visit to Rome by Piero di Lorenzo. No sooner were we seated at the table than [Fabio Orsini, the eleven-­year-­old son of the host] was ordered to sing, together with some other experts, certain of those songs which are put into writing with those little signs of music, and immediately he filled our ears, or rather our hearts, with a voice so sweet that (I do not know about the others) as for myself, I was almost transported out of my senses, and was touched beyond doubt by the unspoken feeling of an altogether divine pleasure. He then performed an heroic song which he had himself recently composed in praise of our own Piero dei Medici. . . . His voice was not entirely that of someone reading, nor entirely that of someone singing; both could be heard, and yet neither separated one from the other; it was, in any case, even or modulated, and changed as required by the passage. Now it was varied, now sustained, now exalted and now restrained, now calm and now vehement, now slowing down and now quickening its pace, but always it was precise, always clear and always pleasant; and his gestures were not indifferent or sluggish, but not posturing or affected either. You might have thought that an adolescent Roscius was acting on the stage.43

The rather facile dismissal of vocal ensemble music in the polyphonic tradition and the preference for the solo singing of Fabio Orsini are indicative of the humanist sensibilities of the fifteenth-­century Medici. The implicit critique of polyphony—­“those songs which are put into writing with those little signs of music,” which required that they be sung “together

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with some other experts”—­contrasts revealingly with the secular Florentine tradition of the Trecento. For secular music-­making, many Quattrocento Florentine humanists preferred the more intuitive, spontaneous practices typified by extemporaneous solo song, which contrasted with what they regarded as the contrived, mechanistic compositional devices of polyphonic composition, inflected with a medieval French, scholastic aesthetic.44 The quintessential “Renaissance man” Leonardo da Vinci was an accomplished singer to the accompaniment of his own playing of a stringed instrument.45 Given the dynamics of oral transmission, once again, we have little to no actual music remaining that illustrates such practices. One imagines an unobtrusive accompaniment—­chords strummed intermittently on a string instrument, for example—­while the singer rhapsodically delivered Latin or Italian texts in a declamatory manner, projecting the texts movingly to his listeners or for his own private edification.46 At the end of the Quattrocento and the beginning of the Cinquecento, there begin to be notated reflections of the practice. One imagines that Lorenzo’s “divinely frenzied” song approximated compositions, for example, that set formulaically the first strophe of an ode (itself a classical poetic form). Subsequent strophes would then have been sung to the same music, the soloist improvising in each succeeding strophe upon the spare template provided by the notation. In 1460, a young girl sang Mon cuer chante joyeusement for Pius II’s entourage, and it has been suggested that this was the extant polyphonic setting by Gilles Binchois of the French poem of that name. Polyphonic treatment of French verse was certainly in vogue in Medici circles. If the reference is representative of the period culture, it suggests that Florentine tastes may have been somewhat conservative, since the Binchois chanson performed in 1460 was transmitted in a Florentine manuscript copied more than a decade earlier. Whatever the texting patterns in the sources, the composition could have been arranged for a soloist and instrumental accompaniment, the two lower lines in the three-­voice texture performed instrumentally, since the document reports that it was sung by one young girl.47 I provide a portion of Binchois’s chanson (ex. 9.1). The evidence of vocal performances of polyphonic settings of French verse in Medici circles suggests that, however sparse the musical evidence, there were likely to be many vocal performances, at least for a vocal soloist accompanied by a consort of instruments that played the lower lines of the originally vocal composition, if not a fully polyphonic vocal performance. Several Florentine manuscripts of French secular music, among them Florentine but non-­Medicean manuscripts, document that such

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Example 9.1 Excerpt from Gilles Binchois’s Mon cuer chante joyeusement

a repertory was in circulation in Florence.48 The composer Pietrequin Bonnel, who was in the employ of the Santissima Annunziata in the late Quattrocento, left a French secular composition with Florentine associations, Adieu Florens la yolye.49 A Florentine manuscript from the mid-­ to late Quattrocento whose original owner was Margherita Castellani is

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now in Berlin.50 And dating from only a few years after the 1494 exile of the Medici but before their 1512 restoration is a manuscript that belonged to Marietta di Francesco Pugi, which suggests that bourgeois Florentines “gathered music that . . . [they] and . . . [their] friends could easily sing and perform.”51 The same was undoubtedly true of the late Quattrocento. Evidence for the performance of settings of Italian secular verse in Medici circles is fuller and more complex than that for performances of French music and also more difficult to interpret accurately. But it is also more revealing. Members of the Medici family and their correspondents exchanged settings of Italian texts, and their correspondence documents how Italian secular verse was set to music and how the settings circulated. Early in 1445, Giovanni di Cosimo il Vecchio, then in Rome, sent a ballata to Rosello Roselli in Florence, inaugurating a friendly “joust.”52 Roselli responded in kind: “I send you this ballata. . . . And it was set to music here and is magnificently sung. Insofar as you’ll do similarly for yours, I’ll be able to say that you’re a good jouster.” Roselli continued, “See if you’re well served by your singers there. Those here tell me . . . it’s good.” The reference to “singers,” plural, suggests that the music was polyphonic. If there is no sure surviving musical evidence of the 1445 exchange, we have direct musical evidence of a similar episode from later in the century. In 1467, Antonio Squarcialupi wrote to Guillaume Du Fay, asking on behalf of Piero di Cosimo il Vecchio that Du Fay set a canzona by Piero’s son Lorenzo il Magnifico, Amore ch’ai visto ciascun mio pensiero, which Squarcialupi had enclosed with his letter.53 Du Fay evidently declined the request and returned the canzona to Florence.54 Although Du Fay was apparently unable or unwilling to oblige Piero di Cosimo, there is a surviving polyphonic setting of Lorenzo’s poem by the English composer John Hothby,55 who for two decades was in the service of the Cathedral of Lucca and thus moved within the larger Tuscan ecclesiastical and cultural orbit. He is also known to have written to Lorenzo il Magnifico on a nonmusical matter, which suggests that he enjoyed a relationship with the de facto Florentine head of state.56 I present a portion of Hothby’s setting of Lorenzo’s Amore ch’ai visto ciascun mio pensiero as evidence of Lorenzo’s sound world (ex. 9.2).57 Polyphonic settings of Italian verse can feature the customary solo voice accompanied by two (bowed-­ string?) instruments, although as always in the Italian tradition the two instrumental lines were also performable on a single string instrument, the lute or viola da braccio. Other varieties of secular music—­specifically instrumental—­were performed in private Medici circles. In 1460, Bianca di Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici, Lorenzo il Magnifico’s sister, played keyboard arrangements

Example 9.2 Excerpt from John Hothby’s Amore ch’ai visto ciascun mio pensiero

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of French secular vocal compositions—­intabulations, to use the musicologist’s term—­for members of Pius II’s entourage, and there are period organ intabulations of the two compositions identified in the documentation. I print an excerpt from one as evidence of the kind of organ music Bianca de’ Medici might have performed: abstract, in contrast to functional, instrumental music (music not intended to serve a practical function, such as the accompaniment to dancing) (ex. 9.3).58 Sources like the Medici manuscript described above—­Cappella Giulia XIII.27,59 the sole surviving late-­Quattrocento source of French secular songs with a demonstrable Medicean provenance—­transmit textless versions of French chansons, as well as Isaac’s instrumental carminum Palle, palle. A repertory of textless chansons was likely intended for instrumental performance, the several lines in the polyphonic complex assigned to an ensemble of instruments. Finally, dancing was central to the experience of Florentines of the status of the Medici and is richly documented. Lorenzo il Magnifico seems to have had a particular passion for dancing. Luigi Pulci said of him that “he began to try new arts and things of wit, . . . sometimes staging dances and nighttime parties.”60 Some months before his 1469 wedding to Clarice Orsini, Lorenzo was in communication with the choreographer and dancing master Guglielmo Ebreo / Giovan Ambrosio da Pesaro and others about choreographing new dances for the festivities.61 In Rome, Clarice Orsini was already taking dancing lessons.62 Several years later, Lorenzo again corresponded with Giovan Ambrosio about the possibility of his coming to Florence, this time for carnival.63 Lorenzo himself choreographed two dances, Venus and Lauro,64 both described in Giovan Ambrosio’s dance manual, De pratica,65 a copy of which he gave to Lorenzo.66 We can partly reconstruct the repertory of dances and choreography known to the late-­Quattrocento Medici. One must first distinguish between the ballo and bassadanza. The ballo consisted of several subsections, typically with shorter and shorter rhythmic values as the dance proceeds, opening in a stately manner and concluding with more animated sections. The melodies of the extant monophonic music for the balli are in the superius range, which suggests that they were performed by a treble shawm, let us say. Beneath the melody, other instruments likely improvised a harmonic substructure, the entirety accompanied by percussion instruments that kept the beat. In contrast, extant music for the bassadanza is in the tenor range, which suggests that it was performed by the alto shawm. Extant bassadanza melodies consist of a sequence of long notes, usually all of identical duration,

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Example 9.3 Excerpt from the arrangement for performance on the organ of a Gilles Binchois chanson

each note presumably corresponding to one step in the choreography. Above the low-­lying line, an instrument or instruments in the superius range would improvise a counterpoint or counterpoints. The improvised upper lines consisted of shorter note values than the tenor and thus were faster moving. Once again, percussion instruments rhythmically animated the whole. In both dance types, the instrumentalists were expected to im-

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provise additional accompanying lines, converting the single remaining line into a polyphonic composition.67 Because the ballo had a sectional design, each section different in character from the others, a particular surviving melody was seemingly matched to a specific choreography, and only one. The surviving music for the bassadanze, alternatively, was generic. The slow-­moving, equal note values could be employed for any bassadanza choreography. The memorable evening in 1465 described for Lorenzo il Magnifico by Braccio Martelli included mention of a Gioioso; this was very possibly the famous Quattrocento/Cinquecento dance Rôti bouilli joyeux. The music for it displays the features outlined above: the sectional design, the ever shorter note values as the dance unfolds.68 Lorenzo’s own Venus, alternatively, was a “bassa danza, called Venus, for three persons, composed by Lorenzo di Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici.”69 “The form is always of the two side figures dependent upon the central one,” wrote a student of Quattrocento dance, and he drew a relationship with Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.70 I refer the reader to one of the bassadanza tenors, which displays the characteristics enumerated: the slow-­moving, even note values, which in performance would have been accompanied by the quasi-­improvised superius, playing in counterpoint with the tenor and percussion.71 The moresca described in Martelli’s 1465 letter may have featured the most famous extant tune for the form, preserved late in the following century, admittedly. I have speculated elsewhere that it may have circulated orally long before it was committed to notation.72 There is little evidence that illustrates the improvisation of the additional lines, but there is some. A survival from a different cultural context demonstrates the technique. In this case, the surviving melody is not a bassadanza tune but the tenor of a secular song, Binchois’s Vostre tres doulx regart plaisant. It appears as the tenor in a textless duet. Above it “is . . . a line of decorative contrapuntal work unrelated to the original” composition, a “remnant of improvisatory performance practice,” “an indication of a well-­executed will to improvise.” And “the probability that ‘Votre trey dowce regaunt plaisaunt’ was intended for dancing is suggested by the sign 0,”73 which indicates that the meter was a dancelike triple.

10

Girolamo Savonarola and the Medici in Exile

Theocratic Censure At various moments in history, European society—­both sacred and secular—­was judged to have embraced the legacy of the classical world too enthusiastically, provoking a reaction from within the church and beyond. Preeminent cultural, intellectual, and religious figures were increasingly troubled by what they regarded as an obsession with Greek and Roman civilization.1 The most notable such reaction was, of course, the Protestant Reformation, whose principal representatives objected to the Italian Renaissance humanists’ “unnatural alliance with the papacy.” The church had countenanced and even supported a synthesis of the principal belief systems of the ancient Mediterranean world and their literatures and imagery. Jean Seznec wrote of a need to reconcile the pagan cult of life with Christian spiritual values, of “this balancing of two universes, so anxiously striven for by Renaissance thought,” and for a time, the two were held in equilibrium. Classical tropes in the Florentine carnival displays of the late Quattrocento are only one manifestation. But a reconciliation of the twin legacies of the ancient world, so fundamental to the Renaissance as a phenomenon, was “a dream of scholars and philosophers . . . for whom the approaching Reformation [held] a terrible awakening.” An anticipation of the Reformation can be seen in the searing late-­Quattrocento theocratic critique of Florentine Renaissance culture by the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, prior of the monastery of San Marco.2 After an earlier period in Florence, Savonarola returned there in 1490—­ironically at Lorenzo il Magnifico’s invitation3—­at a moment when many Florentines found themselves receptive to Savonarola’s preaching. Perhaps it was their weariness at six long decades of (sometimes inept) Medici rule. Perhaps it was Piero di Lorenzo’s particular in-

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competence. Perhaps it was simply a hunger for something more satisfying to the human spirit. In any event, a fin-­de-­siècle religious fervor momentarily swept the city, which was advantageous to Savonarola in articulating a compelling alternative spiritual vision for Florence. Among the consequences of Savonarola’s de facto rule (1494–­98) was the eighteen-­year exile of the Medici. Fault lay particularly with Piero, who asserted prerogatives he did not possess, thus triggering the toppling of the regime.4 The immediate pretext was the seizure of coastal fortresses by the French king Charles VIII while en route to his ultimate objective, Naples, to which he had a claim. The French invasion was interpreted as an expression of a prophetic expectation of spiritual renewal,5 and the Signoria capitalized on the opportunity to hold Piero responsible.6 Among those who had negotiated with the French was Savonarola.7 Charles and his forces entered Florence on 17 November in a ceremonial entrata that featured music prominently. Along the route were performances of mystery plays, among them the Annunciation.8 The most magnificent of the ephemeral decorations was the “Triumph of Peace” in Piazza della Signoria, a trionfo “with most excellent songs and rockets and fireworks in great quantity,” “a . . . float with the grandest fleur-­de-­lis, and above it a crown of silvered palms with olive branches.” “The said fleur-­de-­ lis was on a large base with steps on which were choirboys and . . . others who sang and played marvelously well.” The “youths with different kinds of instruments, who were playing and singing, . . . saluted the King saying ‘Welcome to the liberator and restorer of liberty!’ and many other things in praise of the King.”9 The decoration was designed by Filippino Lippi, and the structure was large enough to hold eighteen instrumentalists and singers uniformed in red and white, Charles’s colors.10 The music of the celebratory canto was composed by none other than Heinrich Isaac, who, pragmatically, was now willing to compose for the city’s temporary political authority.11 The royal entourage processed “to Santa Reparata . . . and . . . Piazza San Giovanni, . . . admirably ornate all around.” “Almost all the people of Florence, . . . having seen the King, immediately began to shout with one voice ‘France, France!,’ amidst Trumpet fanfares, and Bells, and other not-­ insignificant sounds.”12 On 23 November, the Festa dell’Annunciazione was performed for King Charles in San Felice in Piazza. He is said to have enjoyed it so much that he asked that it be given again privately.13 Charles then departed the city, and Savonarola emerged as its effective ruler. He enjoyed the support of a majority of the Signori, as well as the people. The Milanese envoy to Florence reported in 1496 that some two-­ thirds of the Florentines supported Savonarola. Another contemporary

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reported that “it could almost have been said that he was governing the city.”14 The exile of the Medici and Savonarola’s ascendancy led to sweeping changes in the Florentine constitution. Within weeks of Piero’s exile, magistracies that had been established during the six decades of de facto Medici rule were abolished and a republican system of government was restored. The Medicean Councils of Seventy and One Hundred were eliminated, and the ancient councils of the people and the Commune recovered their exclusive right to legislate. Shortly thereafter, on Savonarola’s initiative, the councils voted to establish the Great Council modeled on the Maggior Consiglio of Venice.15 Some of the themes of Savonarola’s critique of contemporary Florentine musical culture were informed by the program of the Florentine Renaissance,16 especially its humanism and Neoplatonism, among them a concern that polyphonic music lessened the intelligibility of the text and compromised the affective message.17 References in Savonarolan texts to the charming effects on the senses of polyphonic music recall another humanistic proposition—­that polyphony was a blandishment, sensually alluring but incapable of moving the emotions.18 Other elements of the Savonarolan critique were theological in origin. A contemporary chronicler wrote that “the friar hated the pleasures [of carnival],” and in 1496 one of the city magistracies banned maschere and public gatherings during the carnival season. Savonarola was particularly concerned for Florentine youth and directed that they not attend “pagan public spectacles” like “maschere” or “go to . . . music or even . . . the public improvisors.”19 Savonarola also proscribed the kind of sodomitic behavior emblematic of the carnivalesque.20 Savonarola especially disdained the carnival floats and trionfi, owing to their use of pagan imagery and exaltation of Roman deities such as Venus, who figured prominently in Lorenzo’s Trionfo de’ sette pianeti.21 He had an antipathy to classical learning more generally and specifically Greek and Latin poetry: the works of Ovid, Catullus, Terence, and others, which he regarded as popularizing fables and inciting carnal lust.22 He forbade performances of sacre rappresentationi on grounds that “such an abundance of spirit had come that among the friars, plays about the Saints had the reputation of being dissolutions.”23 These philosophical and theological propositions redefined ritual practices, many of which featured music with characteristics that Savonarola dictated. In place of the complex polyphony of the professional choirs, he advocated the congregational singing of simple laude, which could be

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polyphonic but nonetheless feature the spare, familiar homorhythms typical of the genre,24 which made the text intelligible. (Of course, the polyphonic versions of laude in our possession may not have been what was sung. The congregations may instead have sung the melody monophonically, in unison.) Lauda singing figured above all in Savonarolan processions, which could engage more than a thousand fanciulli (youths), dressed in white robes and carrying olive branches.25 The seventeen hundred children who took part in the 1496 carnival procession ranged in age from six to seventeen.26 A contemporary described the forms of Savonarolan rituals and the place of music in them. On Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras), the young people gathered in S. Maria del Fiore. . . . They . . . sang . . . newly written, devotional laude composed in polyphony for this occasion. Then . . . they gathered at the Annunziata. . . . From there they departed with the trumpets of the Signoria in front. . . . Next followed the fanciulli, . . . singing litanies and . . . newly composed laude. . . . They processed to the foundations of S. Reparata, where, joined in a chorus, they sang laude. Then they returned to . . . Piazza [della Signoria], and, some of them in the Loggia and others on the platform . . . sang . . . “Te Deum laudamus” with shawms and . . . other laude, crying out . . . “Long live the crucified Christ! Long live Christ our king and the king of the Florentine people.”27

Christ the King had metaphorically replaced Lorenzo de’ Medici as de facto Florentine head of state. On Fat Tuesday in 1497, young singers who accompanied the procession sang “psalms and spiritual hymns.” In Piazza della Signoria they sang a newly composed “invective against carnival,” the Song That a Florentine Does at Carnival. But the most infamous of the Savonarolan rituals were the 1497 and 1498 “bonfires of the vanities.” The 1497 pyre was likened to a carnival float, one of the principal material expressions of the carnivalesque, which on this occasion was consumed in flames. The pyre was an octagonal, seven-­tiered pyramid of wood, some ninety feet in height, the seven tiers symbolizing the seven deadly sins. Atop the pyramid was Satan. “On these . . . steps were collected and placed all women’s vanities and lascivious things, and disreputable paintings and sculptures, playthings, books of poetry (such as Latin and vernacular) and all disreputable things to read, musical instruments with their notated scores, masks[,] and all the maledictions of Carnival”:28 “harps, lutes, string instruments, clavichords, dolzaine, bagpipes, harpsichords, cornetti [staffette], horns.” The pyre was set ablaze, and the “trumpets and shawms of the Signoria played to the

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glory of such a great trionfo offered to God.” The fanciulli sang laude from the ringhiera of Palazzo Vecchio and then processed to Piazza San Marco, where more laude were sung.29 What kind of music did the fanciulli sing? Although it is unlikely that they sang polyphonic settings of lauda texts while in procession or dancing feverishly around the bonfire of the vanities, given the unpredictable performance conditions of the moment,30 in other performance contexts they demonstrably did: while stationed—­standing or seated—­upon risers in the Duomo or other venues, for example.31 A lauda representative of the type heard during Savonarolan rituals set the most famous text by Savonarola himself, Iesù, sommo conforto.32 Two polyphonic settings of the text—­one for three voices, one for four—­have a similar melody in the topmost voice, which suggests that the polyphonic settings were harmonizing a melody from Savonarola’s time.33 The three-­ voice setting displays the familiar features of the genre.34 Savonarola also proscribed the musical practices of the sisters of the Benedictine convent of Le Murate.35 They had been trained in the chant by two priests and had advanced to “polyphonic singing, learning counterpoint, the rules of harmony, and everything else about the art of singing.” A portative organ had been acquired and an organist appointed who gave instruction to some of the sisters. In 1461, a nun from Viterbo was appointed choir mistress, and she and the other members of the community acquired expertise in performing masses and Vespers. A singing instructor was appointed. But Savonarola condemned such musical practices as “Satanic.”36 Notwithstanding the powerful momentary appeal of Savonarola’s vision, its long-­term effects on Florentine musical culture were negligible. Opposition to him increased, and when he overplayed his hand and was executed by order of the pope in 1498, the Florentines reverted almost immediately to their favored musical practices: polyphonic singing in the principal ecclesiastical institutions; carnival songs.37 Even while Savonarola was alive, some young Florentines risked his censure, or an even more draconian response, when they celebrated carnival in time-­honored manner.38 In 1495, a group of young men shouted the Medici party slogan, “Palle, palle!” In 1497, Savonarola’s opponents, the Arrabbiati, held a feast in the company of prostitutes.39

The Medici in Exile, 1494–­1512 From the moment he was exiled, Piero de’ Medici schemed almost incessantly to return to power. In contrast, from 1495 to 1499, his younger

Girolamo Savonarola and the Medici in Exile 141

brother Giovanni, by then cardinal, traveled contentedly with an entourage of twelve gentlemen that included his first cousin Giulio, the illegitimate son of the cardinal’s uncle Giuliano.40 Their travels took them throughout Italy, the Holy Roman Empire, and France. Cardinal Giovanni was received by Emperor Maximilian I “with great care and honor.” The emperor provided the entourage with letters of safe conduct and an introduction to his son Archduke Philip the Fair, whose court was in residence in Brussels in October 1499. There, Giovanni and his companions were welcomed “with every manner of honor and kindness.” Later that month, the cardinal and his entourage arrived at the Church of St. Donatian in Bruges.41 They also traveled to Thérouanne “by ocean” and are known to have visited Saint-­Omer, likely while en route to Thérouanne.42 The cardinal maintained only irregular contact with other members of his family. He eventually returned to Rome with the objective, shared with his older brother, of restoring the family to Florence. But it was not to be for some years. In 1511, Cardinal Giovanni was named legate to Bologna by Pope Julius II, an appointment that strengthened his hand politically.43 In April 1512, just a few months before the restoration of the Medici to Florence, Cardinal Giovanni was captured by the French at the battle of Ravenna,44 but he escaped and made his way to Florence. Giovanni’s younger brother, Giuliano, also made a life for himself during the family’s exile, and music figured in it. We glimpse Giuliano in Mantua, enjoying the singing of the famed Mantuan frottolist Marchetto Cara.45 Giuliano also spent much of his time while in exile at the court of Urbino, and he appears in Baldassare Castiglione’s mythic Book of the Courtier. If one can draw any authentic historical conclusions from Castiglione’s fictional work, Giuliano subscribed to the traditional humanistic proposition that a command of music was a necessary courtly attribute.46 On 11 March 1513, Cardinal Giovanni was elected pope and took the name Leo X. For the long-­term prospects of the Medici, his election was the single most important event in the history of the family and the city. It raised the Medici to unprecedented stature internationally and afforded the new pope a means to consolidate his family’s position and ensure its survival.

Bo o k th e Thir d

Music in Renaissance Florence II: The Cinquecento Aristocracy Achieved: The De Jure Medici Regime, Family as Country, and “Florentinism”

11

The Medici Restoration

The F lo rentine- ­P a pal Tand em

The Restoration Momentous developments in early-­Cinquecento Florence led to the ennoblement of the Medici in 1531–­32 and the establishment of the duchy of Florence (later the grand duchy of Tuscany), with the Medici granted the right of hereditary succession. So revolutionary a change in the city’s political culture, which would have been unimaginable to republican Florentines of the late Middle Ages, was the result of two developments: first, a pan-­European process of “re-­aristocratization,” a “seigneurial reaction” or “new feudalism,” and a return to relevant values and forms;1 and second, the election of the Medici popes Leo X (Giovanni, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, r. 1513–­21) and Clement VII (Giulio, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent’s younger brother, Giuliano, r. 1523–­34).2 The Medici restoration of 1512 resulted from a miscalculation by the Florentine republic and a shrewd calculation by the Medici, who were restored by force of Spanish arms. In opposition to Pope Julius II’s Holy League (England, Spain, and Venice), Florence alone allied itself with France. The Medici instead allied themselves with the league, whose military forces easily overcame resistance from the Florentines. On 1 September 1512, the Gonfaloniere di Giustizia, Piero Soderini, was deposed, and Lorenzo the Magnificent’s son Giuliano entered Florence after an eighteen-­year exile.3 On 16 September, he and a band of armed supporters seized Palazzo della Signoria in what can only be understood as a coup d’état.4 The citizenry was summoned to a parlamento—­a kind of impromptu town meeting—­in Piazza della Signoria, whose entrances were controlled by armed guards. The parlamento was the mechanism that effected the Medici restoration.5 The principal figures of the restoration were Cardinal Giovanni; his younger brother Giuliano; their nephew Lorenzo; and Giovanni and

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Giuliano’s first cousin Giulio, whose father, Giuliano, had been assassinated in the 1478 Pazzi conspiracy. (For the complex familial relationships, see fig. 6.2 in Book the Second.) The family settled on an arrangement that restored Quattrocento methods. Constitutionally ordained assemblies were retained, but their membership was carefully regulated and their legislative activities were designed to align with Medici will. These arrangements were made in Rome, where Cardinal Giovanni reigned as Pope Leo X as of 1513. Until the establishment of the Medici ducato in 1532, Florence was effectively ruled from Rome. First Leo and then Clement VII made little effort to conceal that their priority was always Florence. Their native city became an appendage of the papacy.6 As long as the Medici popes reigned, they could prop up the regime in Florence, however fragile it might be because of the perceived inadequacies of the nominal head of state of the moment. Leo was able to arrange strategic marriage alliances with members of the French royal family. But with Lorenzo’s death in 1519, the stability of the regime was imperiled. Leo dispatched his cousin Giulio, who by then was archbishop of Florence, Cardinal de’ Medici, papal vice-­chancellor, and privileged resident of the papal palace, to attend to Florentine matters of state and Medici interests (1519–­23). Cardinal Giulio’s election to the papacy precipitated yet another crisis, because the family members eligible to succeed him in Florence were judged lacking in the requisite human characteristics. Both were young and spoiled; both were bastards. Ippolito was the illegitimate son of Giuliano di Lorenzo il Magnifico, and Alessandro, though presented as the illegitimate son of Lorenzo il Magnifico’s grandson Lorenzo, was rumored to be Pope Clement’s bastard. When the lesser political powers of Europe (the Italian states in particular) were obliged to ally themselves with one or the other of the two European superpowers—­France and the Holy Roman Empire—­Pope Clement visibly equivocated. In 1527, acting essentially independently, the imperial troops—­many of them Lutherans who viewed Rome as morally bankrupt—­sacked the Eternal City. Clement was compelled to come to terms with the elected Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. Once more, the Florentines exploited the instability of the Medici regime and exiled the family (1527–­30). The short-­lived restoration of the republic inspired a renewed, momentary devotion to Savonarola, whose followers interpreted his teachings as prophesying the sack of Rome.7 The Medici again profited from Spanish military supremacy, this time as the result of a 1529 alliance between Clement VII and Charles V. Florence capitulated to the imperial army in August 1530,8 and the Medici were again restored. The regime was stabilized through Alessandro’s marriage to Margaret of

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Austria, Charles V’s illegitimate daughter, and in July 1531, Charles issued a bull declaring Alessandro hereditary head of the Florentine government. Soon thereafter, the Florentines—­finally reconciling themselves to the inevitable—­enacted sweeping changes to their constitution that granted Alessandro the paradoxical title “Duke of the Florentine Republic” (1532–­ 37) and confirmed the perpetual claim of the Medici to the ducal throne by right of hereditary succession. The ancient government of the Signori was abolished,9 and new government magistracies were established. A contemporary grieved that the new constitution abolished “the very names of the major and minor guilds. They took away as well the . . . gonfaloni.”10 Only five years later, Duke Alessandro was stabbed to death by his cousin Lorenzino. But by then the Florentines had become so accustomed to Medici rule and so respectful of the European-­wide tradition of primogeniture that they could not envision an alternative, however contrived their solution might be to the problem of the succession. Alessandro had been the last surviving direct male descendant of Cosimo the Elder eligible to serve as Florentine head of state. When he was assassinated, the Florentines climbed back up the Medici family tree to Cosimo’s younger brother, Lorenzo, patriarch of a cadet branch of the family, and installed his great-­ great-­grandson Cosimo di Giovanni delle Bande Nere as Duke Cosimo I (1537–­74). From Cosimo I’s time on, the ducal crown passed without incident from father to son (on one occasion from older to younger brother) (fig. 11.1): from Cosimo I to his great-­great-­great-­grandson Gian Gastone, who died without issue in 1737. In that year, the grand duchy of Tuscany became the appendage of a non-­Medici European polity. Emperor Charles V ratified Cosimo I’s status as duke of Florence, and with the Florentine conquest of Siena in 1557, Emperor Philip II granted Cosimo the title of duke of Siena. In 1570, he became grand duke of Tuscany, and as important as was the grand ducal title itself, equally important was that it construed Tuscany as a unified geopolitical entity.11 The title of grand duke was unusual among Italian heads of state and represents a successful bid by the Medici for political advantage. In an extraordinary symbolic and literal assault on Florentine republican tradition, the historic Palazzo della Signoria was repurposed (1540) to serve as the ducal residence. The architectural historian Eugene J. Johnson has written that “Cosimo . . . moved into Palazzo Vecchio, physically taking possession, for his own use, of the most important symbol of Florentine government.” “Converting the hall built for a government by many into one dedicated to the dynastic triumphs of an autocrat vividly represented the new political order in Florence.”12 Nothing dramatized the identification of the Medici with their native city more decisively than

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Figure 11.1 Partial genealogy of the mid-­to late sixteenth-­century and seventeenth-­ century Medici.

their appropriation of the architectural symbol of republican Florence. Nothing clarified the status of the Medici as the human embodiment of Florence more effectively than their repurposing of Palazzo Vecchio. Toward the end of his reign, Cosimo I rejected a design for the ceiling of the Salone dei Cinquecento in Palazzo Vecchio on grounds that it called for the display of the “respective devices” of “the sixteen gonfaloni of the four quarters.” Now Cosimo, rather than Florence, was to be celebrated. Cosimo was Florence.13 The aristocratization of the Medici demanded an enlarged bureaucracy, and the historic Florentine patriciate was redefined so that it could meet the duchy’s increased administrative needs and its members serve as courtiers to the Medici dukes.14 The need for space to accommodate the larger bureaucracy was met by the construction of the Uffizi (“offices”), where the Medici family’s collection of paintings is now housed. It is the most vivid material expression of the expansion of the ducal administra-

The Medici Restoration: The Florentine-Papal Tandem 149

tion. The theater constructed in the Uffizi would become one of the most important venues for musical performances in the Cinquecento and early Seicento. The implications of these developments for contemporary cultural life were that all the arts—­music among them—­were now formally supported by the ducal regime and leveraged as instruments of Medicean aristocratization by the dukes, other family members, artists in their employ, and Medici propagandists. Even the Medici who were not otherwise enthusiastic devotees of music could be extolled as such, in an effort on the part of the petitioner to ingratiate himself with his would-­be benefactor. A tribute to Duke Alessandro from the publisher of one of Adrian Willaert’s books of settings of the Mass Ordinary (1536) illustrates. to the noble duke of florence: . . . Every species of virtue comes to you entirely happy, which one well knows, because your heavenly spirit has not lessened relative to those of your great ancestors, whose generosity has, with regal judiciousness, always placed letters and musical science at the highest level of happiness; and given that, not entitling you to the things of the illustrious genius [i.e., Willaert] is unjust to you, lover of this and the six other liberal arts. Francesco Marcolini da Forlì15

Composers in Medici Service One of the significant effects of “the Florentine-­Papal tandem” in the two decades between 1513 and 1534 was an increased opportunity for exchanges of musical personnel and repertory between Medicean Florence and Leonine/Clementine Rome.16 Such cross-­fertilization had notable consequences. Several of the most important composers and musicians of the time were employed in both centers. Others, permanently employed in one, were momentarily hosted in the other. Among the important figures associated with patrons in both Florence and Rome were the singer and composer Heinrich Isaac,17 the lutenist and composer Gian Maria,18 the singer and composer Bernardo Pisano, and the singer and composer Philippe Verdelot. Pisano and Verdelot in particular had close, consequential relationships with Medici patrons in the two centers of patronage. The greater importance of those relationships was a function of the composers’ status as early madrigalists. Their interest in polyphonic settings of secular poetry for a vocal ensemble, which contrasted with the pan-­Italian tradition of solo song to lute accompaniment typical of the Quattrocento, was partly the result of their relationship with Leo and Clement, who favored such an

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aesthetic. Such interests on the composers’ part may also be owing to their status as legatees of Florentine literary tradition, especially its devotion to Petrarch. A renewed commitment to refined poetry may have stimulated an elaboration of musical style.19 Florentine and Roman episodes in the career of Bernardo Pisano—­ composer, classicist, and teacher of the classics, habitué of the garden of Rucellai (of which we shall hear more) and the Company of the Cazzuola, a convivial society—­are so closely intertwined as to make it almost impossible to disentangle them one from the other. Pisano “served in both Florence and Rome and, in fact, alternated periods of service between the two centres. . . . Indeed, on occasion such periods of service in the two centres . . . even seem to have coincided or overlapped.”20 His “career is . . . a reflection of the intricate political, diplomatic and cultural relationships between Medici-­restoration Florence and Leonine/Clementine Rome.”21 The Frenchman Verdelot—­ the most important of the earliest madrigalists—­was apparently sent to Florence in 1521 to enter Cardinal Giulio’s service.22 He was Florentine chapelmaster soon thereafter,23 and his relationship with Cardinal Giulio continued after Giulio ascended the papal throne. In December 1523, Verdelot and two other singers—­ Cornelio Senolaart and Francesco Grisovan—­were granted leave with pay so that they could visit Rome, “causa honorandi sanctitatem domini nostri Clementis pape septimi.”24 And like Pisano, Verdelot and Senolaart were habitués of the Rucellai garden.25 Those composers who became familiar with both Florentine and Roman musical practice were able to forge a synthesis of the two. There was also a sharing of repertory. The correspondence of family members residing in either Florence or Rome contains references to musical compositions sent to relatives in the other, which were sometimes enclosed with the correspondence, sometimes carried in the baggage of those who traveled frequently between Florence and Rome.26 In other cases, the versions of a musical composition copied into both Florentine and papal manuscripts are so similar to each other as to suggest that they were copied directly from a parent Medicean source.27 Such opportunities for cultural cross-­fertilization between Medici restoration Florence and Leonine and Clementine Rome effectively ended with the end of the Medici papacies (1513–­21; 1523–­34). In Florence, the establishment of the Medici duchy had implications for organized musical life.28 Unlike the administrative arrangements of the Quattrocento and early Cinquecento, when the Medici retained employees of the public ecclesiastical institutions for their own

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entertainment—­circumspectly, to avoid offending vestigial Florentine republican sensibilities—­after the inception of the principate the Medici dukes and grand dukes were freed as never before to engage openly in patronage practices similar to those of other aristocratic states. Composers and performers of secular music could now be placed officially on staff and compensated out of the resources available to the Medici dukes and grand dukes as heads of state. But although composers and performers of secular music were Medici employees, with respect to sacred music Cosimo continued the modus operandi of his Medici predecessors. Rather than establish a competing institution in the Medici palace, he involved himself in the patronage practices of the public ecclesiastical institutions. This had the added virtue of suggesting, yet again, a oneness of the ducal family and the city. The musical establishments at the Cathedral and Baptistery operated as if they were private establishments in the service of the Medici dukes and grand dukes, which to a considerable extent they were.29 Musicians in Medici employ served in various roles, many of which aided intentionally in the family’s political aggrandizement. The most important composers of the Medici principate in the sixteenth century were Francesco Corteccia and Alessandro Striggio. Corteccia exemplifies the time-­honored tradition of the composer-­ecclesiastic.30 In the years between 1522 and 1526, he completed both his musical training with Bernardo Pisano and his humanistic studies. In 1531, Corteccia was named chaplain at the Medici family church of San Lorenzo and appointed organist there, and on 1 January 1540 he became master of the chapels at the Cathedral and Baptistery. He died in 1571.31 Although not officially employed by the Medici court, Corteccia styled himself “master of the chapel of the Most Illustrious and Most Excellent Duke Cosimo de’ Medici,”32 an honorific status confirmed by others.33 The only other composer of the mid-­Cinquecento who rivaled Corteccia in importance was the Mantuan Alessandro Striggio.34 Whereas Corteccia applied his talents to many different musical genres, sacred and secular, Striggio’s importance was, above all, as a composer of madrigals and music for Medici festivals. His services as both composer and practicing musician were eagerly sought. The earliest precise date in the composer’s biography is 1 March 1559, when he entered Cosimo’s service. He played the viol, lute, and lira da braccio and was especially renowned as a virtuosic performer on the lirone or lira grande (a larger version of the lira da braccio).35 Although Striggio’s responsibilities at the Medici court required that he reside more or less continuously in Florence, he enjoyed

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relations with the court of Bavaria and traveled to other Italian city-­states and European countries. As a Mantuan, he had particularly close relations with the court of Mantua, which he visited in 1574. In 1579, Striggio’s name remained at the head of the roster of musicians of the Medici court, but in 1587 he returned to Mantua,36 where he lived essentially without interruption for the rest of his life (1587–­†1592), with an important exception. Among his final contributions to the musical life of the Medici court was his performance on the “arcisviolata lira” during the fifth intermedio (the entr’acte entertainment) for Girolamo Bargagli’s comedy La pellegrina, staged in 1589 for the wedding festivities for Cosimo I’s son, Grand Duke Ferdinando, and Christine of Lorraine. A visit to Ferrara in the mid-­1580s gave Striggio an opportunity to witness performances by the renowned Ferrarese concerto delle donne, whose practices he described in detailed correspondence with his Medici patrons and sought to emulate in his own compositional activity. The influence on Florentine musical experience of contemporary Ferrarese practice was of the greatest importance to the Florentine soundscape of the late Cinquecento. Several compositions by Alessandro Striggio and his contemporary Stefano Rossetti are revealing illustrations of how music could serve Medici dynastic objectives. Davitt Moroney has signaled Striggio’s “reputation for out-­of-­the-­ordinary achievement,” revealed in the “considerable number of . . . exceptionally large-­scale polyphonic works, all dating from the period 1557 to 1601, . . . most of them . . . Florentine.” Moroney characterizes the repertoire of such compositions as “an identifiable corpus, a distinct stylistic phenomenon, responding to specific architectural, dynastic, and cultural realities.”37 Striggio’s recently recovered Mass for forty and sixty voices—­performed in various European venues during a 1567 journey—­was deployed to reinforce the relationship of the Medici to several of Europe’s ruling families. It was offered to the emperor at a moment when Duke Cosimo was seeking the title of archduke.38 In 1568, Striggio contributed a (surviving) ten-­voice madrigal to the intermedi for Lotto del Mazza’s comedy I Fabij, staged during the festivities celebrating the birth of Grand Prince Francesco’s daughter, Eleonora. Such unusual compositional choices reflect “the arguably Florentine predilection for large-­scale forces.”39 Manifestations of compositional prowess by Medici composers—­evident above all in rich sonorities—­ were not only instruments for strengthening political relationships with other European powers; they also reinforced the family’s newly acquired image as enlightened aristocratic patrons of the arts. As Pirrotta writes, “The Florentine court had only recently asserted its political power and

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the Medici may have been eager for their banking and trading past to be forgotten.”40 Increasingly, the Cinquecento Florentine public soundscape was the product of performances intended to bedazzle the citizenry with displays of artistic magnificence and further the Medici family’s dynastic objectives.

Music in Private Medici Settings: Instrumental Music In the pages that follow, I shall return repeatedly to the musical practices of the court. To make the foregoing abstractions somewhat more concrete, I give just one brief example here of the kind of redefinition of the musical establishment that occurred with the beginnings of the principate.41 Although the public ecclesiastical establishments continued to function nominally as independent institutions, there were now composers and performers of vocal music officially in private Medici service. There were also instrumentalists, some of whom achieved considerable renown. Among them was Antonio da Lucca, a composer as well as an instrumentalist.42 “Messer Antonio dallucha” was identified as a “sonatore di sua eccellenza,” and “it can be said” of “m[e]s[ser]. Antonio da Lucca Suonatore del Duca Cosimo” that he was “almost unique in all the kinds of instrument, wind and otherwise. But his own were indeed the recorder, cornet, lute, and viola and flute.” Antonio was in the employ of the Medici as early as 1535, when he served Duke Alessandro. Later, he was a member of the Accademia Fiorentina, which suggests something about his standing among period intellectuals. (I shall return to the Accademia Fiorentina.) Any number of distinguished contemporary letterati acclaimed him. Girolamo Parabosco called him “a man of such perfection on the lute as well as the cornetto and many other instruments.” Carlo Lenzoni furnished an evocative image of Antonio’s playing. Those listening, wrote Lenzoni, “affected by the food . . . and the hour . . . and . . . charmed by the sweet harmony of the music, went lightly to sleep, if sleep it can be called, this caressing narcotic trance in which one hears and understands everything.” Antonio died in 1554 and was laid to rest in the Church of the Santissima Annunziata.

12

A New Institution, a New Technology, a New Genre The Ma drigal

Accounts of music-­making during the Quattrocento identify the principal secular genres performed in private Medici circles. With some exceptions, polyphonic settings of secular verse were few, relative both to Florentines’ own practices of the Trecento and those of northern musicians during the Quattrocento. For their own enjoyment, members of the fifteenth-­ century Florentine cultural elite—­their tastes shaped by Renaissance humanism1—­momentarily favored other genres, above all (1) solo singing to the accompaniment of the singer’s playing of a string instrument (the cithara, the viola da braccio), whether by oneself for one’s own enjoyment or edification or for the enjoyment of an audience; (2) arrangements for solo voice and instrumental accompaniment of polyphonic settings of secular verse, French or Italian, the lower voices intabulated; and (3) instrumental compositions, whether abstract, or an arrangement of a vocal composition, or dance music (sometimes removed from its intended context and enjoyed as abstract instrumental music, sometimes accompanying dancing), whether the instrumental playing was of a self-­sufficient instrument such as a lute or keyboard instrument or an ensemble. There are references to polyphonic vocal music on secular texts in the contemporary record—­typically French rather than Italian—­but in the context of the entirety of the documentation they are relatively rare. The sixteenth century witnessed a notable return to polyphonic treatment of Italian secular verse: the Italian madrigal, the most important secular genre of the European musical Renaissance, which originated in Florence. How did a culture that had favored secular music other than vocal polyphony come once again to favor polyphonic settings of Italian secular poetry? And why did the new genre originate in Florence? The most important early madrigalists were the Florentines Francesco de Layolle and Bernardo Pisano2 and northerners active in Florence: Philippe Verdelot and Jacques Arcadelt, who were schooled in the northern polyphonic

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tradition and eminently capable of setting Italian poetry polyphonically. Their compositions are fully texted—­that is, all four voices were provided with text—­and designed for performance by an ensemble of vocal soloists in the familiar disposition superius, altus, tenor, and bassus.

Wellsprings of the Madrigal: The Chanson The earliest madrigalists were especially influenced by the French chanson and native Florentine genres. Polyphonic settings of French secular poetry predated the madrigal. One species of the genre—­the “four-­part popular arrangement,” fully texted polyphonic settings of monophonic French popular tunes—­was one of the source musics of the madrigal. Such arrangements indeed share important stylistic characteristics with the earliest madrigals.3 We saw that on several occasions Heinrich Isaac enriched the texture of three-­voice compositions by adding a fourth. Florentines privy to such practices became aware of the attractions of fuller textures. Other musical practices had the same effect: the carnival song of the early Cinquecento was typically a four-­voice composition.4 Florentines had collected chansons in the Quattrocento, but their texts are often either nonexistent or fragmentary and corrupt.5 In its fully texted status, the early-­Cinquecento chanson was a relative novelty. The Cinquecento iteration is also characterized by frequent voice pairing in an echo-­like fashion, homorhythms, and shifts from binary meter to ternary. Such techniques seem to have been applied to secular music in Florence as early as Isaac’s Alla battaglia. Several Florentine manuscripts of the early sixteenth century (one of which was unquestionably copied for the Medici, another of which was in the possession of the Strozzi) specialize in a repertory of four-­part popular arrangements or a mixed French-­Italian-­Latin repertory that features chansons prominently.6 Two of these manuscripts were unquestionably copied in Florence by an Italian scribe, the third likely copied in Florence, though by a northern scribe.7 Two show a marked preference for the four-­ part popular arrangement.8 The provenance of the repertory itself is not as easily determined. A solution to the problem may rest on the identity of the composer Ninot le Petit, amply represented in the early-­Cinquecento Florentine sources. One thesis argues that he was the composer Jean Lepetit, first chapelmaster and then canon at the Cathedral of St.-­Mammès in eastern France.9 Another argues that he was the papal singer Johannes Petit alias Baltazar, who unquestionably had a relationship to Florence: he corresponded with Lorenzo the Magnificent’s son Piero.10 The case for the Italian provenance

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of the repertory does not rest solely on the identity of Ninot, however. It has been argued more generally that the genre is Italian in origin.11 Whatever the provenance of the genre, it was especially in vogue in Florence, to judge from the provenance of the manuscript sources. The early-­Cinquecento chanson manuscripts are a set of four separate partbooks. Each of the four vocal parts is entered into its own book, in landscape format. Each vocalist held his own book, which facilitates performance by an ensemble of four (patrician amateur?) soloists. The earliest madrigal manuscripts, similarly, are also separate partbooks in landscape format. Several of them containing chansons also contain proto­madrigals and other source musics of the early madrigal.

Wellsprings of the Madrigal: The Canto Carnascialesco and Trionfo, the Lauda, and Solo Song Other than the chanson, which was a non-­Italian genre, Florentine secular musical culture of the time favored typically Florentine practices and genres: the canto carnascialesco (carnival song) and classicistic trionfo, both intended for performance by an ensemble of soloists;12 the lauda, by this time also intended for performance by a vocal ensemble and closely related to the carnival song; and solo song to string accompaniment, which among the members of the Florentine cultural elite was understood as a classicizing restitution of ancient musical practice—­what was known of it—­and reflects the skepticism about counterpoint as an effective tool for setting text to music.13 These genres are treated more fully in Book the Second, above. The earliest madrigalists were responsive to the tastes and musical experiences of their patrons and compatriots, who were demonstrably familiar with the French chanson and established local genres.

The Earliest Madrigals The earliest datable madrigals were composed at a difficult moment in Florentine political history. The fruitful conditions of patronage of the late Quattrocento ended with Lorenzo’s death in 1492. The Medici were in exile between 1494 and 1512, and the Medici principate, though established in 1532, faced uncertain prospects until Cosimo’s accession in 1537. In the absence of a robust infrastructure of patronage during the second decade of the sixteenth century, Florentine cultural and intellectual figures organized themselves as best they could into informal sodalities, the fore­ runners of the formal academies of the later Cinquecento and thereafter:

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the famous group that met in the Rucellai garden, for example, and the Sacred Academy of the Medici. Here, they engaged in discussion of political and literary matters and had musical performances. In one case, we know that the favored musical genre was solo song to string accompaniment: among the members of the Sacred Academy were such celebrated solo singers as Atalante Migliorotti and the “Unico Aretino.”14 The particular literary concern of the academies was the potential effectiveness of the Tuscan language as a vehicle for literary expression and whether it was equal in effectiveness to classical Latin. The literary refinement of some, even much, early madrigal verse—­especially as contrasted with the poesia per musica written elsewhere in Italy, earlier in the history of Italian literature—­is partly attributable to this concern. It led to a privileging of Petrarchan verse and efforts to imitate it. Among the members of these associations were such luminaries as Michelangelo Buonarrotti and Niccolò Machiavelli.15 More important, a significant number of the poets whose verse was set by the earliest madrigalists (including Machiavelli)—­and, in fact, all the earliest madrigalists themselves (Pisano, Verdelot, and Francesco de Layolle)—­were members or intimates of members of these new institutions. This is the setting where the madrigal emerged.16 The earliest datable madrigals—­compositions called “madrigali” in the primary sources and datable beyond argument—­were composed to be performed as intermedi—­entr’acte music—­between the acts of two comedies by Machiavelli. Suspected unfairly when the Medici returned from exile of harboring anti-­Medicean sentiments, Machiavelli had been removed from office, imprisoned, and tortured, to be released soon thereafter as the result of a general amnesty issued when Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici was elected pope. Machiavelli thereafter passed the time writing such texts as The Prince, a poignant, ultimately futile attempt to ingratiate himself with the Medici and return to office, and the comedies La Clizia and La mandragola (The Mandrake Root). Both plays are in the customary five-­act format, and Machiavelli furnished five texts—­thereafter clothed in Verdelot’s musical dress—­to be sung before the prologue and after acts 1 through 4. (In the later sixteenth century, it became the practice to add a sixth intermedio, performed at the conclusion of the entire comedy.) The performing resources are identical in each madrigal: an ensemble of four vocal soloists—­a nymph and three shepherds in La Clizia—­comes on stage just as they are about to sing, performs the madrigal, and then withdraws, not to reappear until the following act has concluded.

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In the case of the inaugural performance of La Clizia in January 1525, the novelty of Verdelot’s contribution was partly the uniformity of performing resources for the cycle (the vocal quartet that imposed a symmetrical frame on the parent comedy, absent in earlier examples of theatrical music, which had deployed heterogeneous performing resources), partly the relationship between the texts of the madrigals and the plot of the acts they followed. In good Renaissance fashion, they functioned like Greek choruses and commented on the action of the comedy. And the very character of Verdelot’s music was itself novel. In the past, music for theatrical performances was not necessarily polyphonic. The polyphonic musical dress that clothed Machiavelli’s texts was understood by the playwright himself as noteworthy: the nymph and shepherds proclaim that their singing features a “harmony so sweet [that] you have never heard the like of it before.” Although Verdelot adopted a polyphonic technique, the need for intelligibility was such that the setting had to be largely homorhythmic so that the function of providing commentary was fulfilled. Usually, all four voices declaim the same words simultaneously to pitches of equal duration. But “chordal recitation by all voices” alternated “with freer, even imitative passages in counterpoint,” such alternation being among the techniques that produced “changes in color and sonority obtained by various groupings of the voices.”17 Verdelot’s settings feature these properties. The madrigal before the prologue to La Clizia (or the canzone, as madrigals were first termed) illustrates the characteristics of the new genre, especially as used in a theatrical context: homorhythms; syllabic text setting; the greater intelligibility of the text resulting from the two previous characteristics; the identical performing resources in each intermedio (the vocal quartet) and the fully texted nature of the genre; the efforts to relate the texts of the intermedi to the plot of the parent comedy. The texts are cast into the poetic fixed form of the canzone, much favored among early madrigal poets.18 (The same term, canzone, is used for both the poetic fixed form and the genre.) Two opening piedi (or feet) of three lines each have the identical rhyme scheme a/b/C, a/b/C, the first two lines of each piede comprising seven syllables (heptasyllabic lines), the third comprising eleven (hendecasyllabic). (Lowercase letters in the rhyme scheme indicate heptasyllabic lines; uppercase letters, hendecasyllabic.) The piedi are then linked to the concluding section of the poem, the sirima, by means of the interlocking rhyme (or concatenazione): C/c. The sirima otherwise consists of two lines rhyming D/d and two rhyming e/E.

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first piede a Quanto sia lieto il giorno b Nel qual le cose antiche C Son hor da noi dimostre et celebrate, second piede a Si vede, perch’intorno b Tutte le gente amiche C Si sono in questa parte radunate.

How happy be the day in which ancient things are now shown and celebrated by us

is seen, because from all around all the friendly people have been assembled in this place.

} concatenazione sirima c Noi, che la nostra etate D Ne’ boschi et nelle selve consumiamo, d Venuti anchor’ qui siamo, e Io nympha, et noi pastori, E Et giam [i.e., “andiamo”] cantando inseme e nostri amori.

We who our lives in the woods and forests spend, we, too, have come here, I a nymph and we shepherds, and we go singing together of our love.

The musical setting reflects the poetic structure. The parallel piedi use the same music. But with the sirima comes not only new music but also a constructional technique that contrasts with that of the piedi. (I explain presently.) The use of the same music for parallel sections in the poetic structure is reminiscent of earlier genres of Italian secular vocal music; in the mature madrigal, it ceases to be typical. Far more important than such syntactical elements, however—­features of the poetic form with correspondences in the form of the musical setting— ­are the semantic elements: the meaning of the text, which the composer expresses and glosses in his music. The most obvious of the techniques Verdelot used in meeting such an objective is text or word painting, in which specific words or phrases are depicted musically. Text painting is so closely identified with the genre that it has become known as a “madrigalism.” There are several illuminating examples in Verdelot’s madrigal. The compositional technique employed at the opening of the madrigal is imitative polyphony, which is suited to the abstract content of the text (“How happy . . . the day in which ancient things are . . . shown . . . is seen”), especially as contrasted with the homophony used in setting the following

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phrase (“are . . . shown and celebrated by us [emphasis added]”). When abstract, third-­person narration (“How happy . . . the day in which ancient things are . . . shown”) gives way to a description of the concrete action taken by the narrators (“are . . . shown and celebrated by us”), the delicacy and transparency of imitative counterpoint give way to the concreteness of foursquare homophony, motivated by the use of the first-­person-­plural pronoun “noi [us]” and the immediacy of the action described (“ancient things are . . . shown and celebrated by us”). Although it recycles the music for the first piede, the second is even more illustrative. Imitative polyphony sets the phrase “from all around all the friendly people”; but when “all the friendly people” “have been assembled in this place,” the texture employed is abruptly homophonic once again. That is, while the friendly people are assembling, they enter randomly and one after another, at irregular intervals. But when all the people have assembled, the singers sing homophony. In the mind’s eye (and ear!), the staggered entries of imitative counterpoint permit one to see and hear the staggered entries of the friendly people who are assembling. Homophonic block chords are then the expression of the fully assembled gathering. From that moment on, the prevailing compositional technique is homophony, appropriate to narration in the first person (singular and plural). Further delectable instances of text painting await us. When the singers sing, “I a nymph and we shepherds,” the soprano first sings alone, on the words “I a nymph.” She is then answered by the three lower voices, which sing “we shepherds” together in a homophonic setting. And at the words “together we go singing,” the singers break into lush melismas in eighth notes, in a composition where the note motion had been largely quarter and half notes. The shorter note values and the melismas vividly depict the animated action expressed in the text “we go singing.” Verdelot’s Quanto sia lieto is among the earliest madrigals in our possession (ex. 12.1; fig. 12.1). The defining characteristics closely identified with the genre thereafter are already evident in 1525. Although Machiavelli’s and Verdelot’s textual and musical choices were novel, in 1525 the use of intermedi was not. The intermedio had a distinguished history, predating Machiavelli’s comedies by decades. We have documentation of the use of such entr’acte musical entertainment as early as the 1480s.19 Indebted to Aristotelian principles, Renaissance humanist dramaturgy argued that the action of a dramatic work between the prologue and epilogue ought to take place within twenty-­four hours and no more (the Aristotelian unity of time) and that each act be complete and

Example 12.1 Excerpt from Philippe Verdelot’s Quanto sia lieto

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Figure 12.1 A manuscript source for one of the earliest madrigals, Niccolò Machiavelli and Philippe Verdelot’s Quanto sia lieto, ca. 1528–29. Chicago, Newberry Library, case MS.-­VM 1578 .M91.

sufficient in itself. Intermissions, and the intermedi, momentarily suspend but do not stop the action. Further, fifteenth-­century stagecraft was such that the curtain remained open throughout the entire performance. At the beginning of the prologue it was dropped to the stage floor rather than raised up from it, and it remained there until the end of the epilogue. This argued for entertainment between the acts. And when the plot was such that there was the passage of several hours between the acts, the intermedi marked it. Fifteenth-­century intermedi were typically “non apparenti,” consisting of music alone, absent the additional visual elements that in the sixteenth century became almost indispensable to the alternative type, the “intermedio apparente” or “beheld intermedio,” which was sung, mimed, and danced and featured lavish costuming, a sumptuous stage apparatus (sets and machinery), choreographed movement, stage combat, and choruses, as well as instrumental sinfonie. However, even in the intermedi non apparenti, the musicians typically appeared on stage, sometimes even in costume, and were fully visible to the audience. None of this is to suggest that the intermedio non apparente was supplanted by the apparente. The non apparente continued throughout the Cinquecento and, indeed, was more common than the apparente. In the intermedio non apparente, the music was the critical element.

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Contemporary accounts of fifteenth-­and early sixteenth-­century intermedi non apparente report, for example, that at the conclusion of each act, “one plays or sings,” as in the case of a Farsa recitata dagli excelsi Signori di Firenze (a Florentine example, notably). Music was also important in the sixteenth-­century intermedi apparenti, to be sure, but given the other lavish elements it was less exclusively so than in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In the sixteenth century, the intermedi became crucial elements in the entire experience. Antonfrancesco Grazzini, “Il Lasca,” lamented that “before, one would do intermedi that served the comedy; now one does comedies that serve the intermedi.” Giangiorgio Trissino characterized the intermedio as being “a most inconvenient . . . thing, . . . which doesn’t permit savoring the interpretation of the Comedy.”20 With the sixteenth century came further important developments. The parent comedy (or tragedy) respected the Aristotelian principle of unity of action, certainly, but in violation of that principle, the action of the parent comedy now alternated with that of the intermedi, which had their own, often-­competing subplot, frequently entirely independent of the plot of the parent comedy. As with Machiavelli’s Mandragola and La Clizia, an individual intermedio in a sixteenth-­century theatrical work might comment on the plot of the preceding act. All the intermedi in the cycle of five or six could also be linked to one another (sometimes tenuously) by means of their subplot, which also observed the Aristotelian unities of time and place, more rarely that of action. However, the objective of thematic unity had to be balanced against a conflicting desire for variety and novelty within the cycle.21 In the sixteenth century, too, Bernardo de’ Nerli, “Accademico fiorentino” and author of the intermedi for Lionardo Salviati’s comedy Il granchio, made explicit what was implicit: that “the intermedi of the comedies serve the function of the chorus in the ancient fables of the Greeks.” (This was the Renaissance era after all.) Nerli qualified: “I don’t speak of the whole chorus but of the . . . Songs that the chorus would sing only on certain occasions in the fable.”22 By this moment, the Renaissance understanding of ancient Greek practice had developed to the point where it was known that the choruses in Greek tragedy declaimed both in prose and blank verse and in occasional set pieces in full-­blown poetry, with all its familiar features: meter; rhyme; a fixed, unvarying number of syllables per line. The Renaissance intermedi sought to resuscitate and reinvent only the ancient Greek set pieces. Setting the entire text of a dramatic presentation to music would be the accomplishment of those who created opera at the end of the Cinquecento.

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Many of the intermedi that have come down to us—­though by no means all—­feature writing for an ensemble of vocal soloists that represents a metaphoric collective personage. In contrast, solo singing represents a literal individual character. In music for an ensemble, the text is set chordally in relatively simple, homorhythmic, nonimitative polyphony. Such a compositional technique was appropriate, given that the action of the intermedi unfolded in pantomime and the choreographed movement of groups of players rather than in dialogue. Of course, homorhythms also helped attain the objective of text intelligibility. After Verdelot’s madrigals for Machiavelli’s comedies, the next important cycle of Florentine intermedi was by the Flemish composer Jacques Arcadelt, who was in Duke Alessandro’s service in 1535.23 The parent comedy was probably Lorenzino di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici’s Aridosia, performed during the festivities for the 1536 wedding of Duke Alessandro and Margaret of Austria.24 The set designer, Aristotile da San Gallo, placed the instrumentalists and singers on platforms independent of the stage so that the movements of the actors would not set off vibrations that could undo the tuning of the instruments. Moreover, placing the musicians on the stage might have dampened the resonant effects of their playing and deadened the sound. Arcadelt’s madrigals honor the prototype established by Verdelot more than a decade earlier. They are homorhythmic and their texts intelligible. And they were performed each time by the same vocal ensemble in the familiar disposition superius, altus, tenor, and bassus.25 The particular importance of the 1525 and 1536 cycles was that they effectively launched the extraordinarily rich tradition in Medicean Florence of theatrical performances with musical intermedi.

* * * Three forces combined to create a substantial market for the new genre. One of those forces was socioeconomic, one aesthetic, and one technological. The socioeconomic force has been described by the economic historian Richard Goldthwaite: “In the history of music the development of the madrigal and other forms involving amateur performance is closely tied to the increase of social activities by the upper class within the privacy of their homes.”26 To a considerable extent, music of the type employed in the madrigal had been the preserve of elites. Changing conditions had spawned new socioeconomic strata of European society, with demographic characteristics

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of the type Goldthwaite describes. Their members had an interest in new genres and cultural practices, the madrigal among them. They welcomed a means of appropriating the practices of the social and political elite. The aesthetic force I have considered in some detail. In response to the musical experiences and tastes of the Florentine intellectual and cultural figures for whom the earliest madrigalists composed, as well as the need for a musical style that made the text intelligible, Verdelot, Arcadelt, Corteccia, and other madrigalists of the 1520s, 1530s, and 1540s opted for a relatively simple, homorhythmic setting of the text. Although the product of practical considerations, the homorhythmic design was also appropriate to the modest abilities of the consumers of the new genre, many of whom were indeed amateurs. In this respect, the early-­Cinquecento madrigal is different from later refashionings. It could be performed for the enjoyment of the performers themselves.27 The technological force is music printing.28 Through the medium of print, the earliest madrigals were made accessible to new would-­be consumers. And this technological development is related to the socio­economic one. Printing now made music available to consumers who in the past would likely not have had access to music of particular types, given the dependence upon expensive manuscript copies. The simpler madrigals composed by Verdelot, Arcadelt, and Corteccia were soon printed and disseminated among new consumers. In Florence, the Signori granted one of the heralds the right to print music, but he seems not to have published even one volume.29 Florentine madrigals were printed in large numbers in Venice, the principal center of music printing in Italy, and were available to anyone with the interest and means to acquire the printed collections. Period literary texts depict the kinds of settings and occasions when madrigals were performed by patrician amateurs for their own delectation.30 Antonfrancesco Grazzini described the singing of madrigals by a group of young Florentines. One evening, inclement weather forced the entourage indoors, where its members turned to music-­making: “They devoted themselves to singing certain five-­voiced Madrigals by Verdelot and Arcadelt. . . . And after they had sung six or eight madrigals, to the not-­inconsiderable satisfaction and pleasure of the entire entourage, they seated themselves by the fire.”31 Pietro Aretino’s Ragionamenti depicts a scene in which the heroine left her temporary home in the convent one evening so that she could fraternize with musical amateurs, who delight in singing a madrigal to lute accompaniment and marvel at the dancing of a Ferrarese woman.32 The new genre quickly entered a market of musically literate amateurs who performed for their own enjoyment.

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Florentine Academies and Madrigals for the Theater at Midcentury By midcentury, the embryonic, early-­Cinquecento Florentine academy—­ exemplified by the Rucellai group and the Sacred Academy of the Medici—­had become formalized. Before the inception of the Medici principate, leading members of the Florentine cultural and intellectual elite sought regular fellowship, and the means of satisfying their needs were informal. With the establishment of the principate there were additional motivations. First, the Medici dukes saw advantages in the academic movement, which they formalized and co-­opted for their own purposes. A second motivation was related to the first. Increasingly, there are signs throughout the century of the phenomenon known as Florentinism,33 the “tendency [for the Florentines] to close in on themselves with a self-­ sufficiency and aloofness that was the exact contrary of the mental openness of the great Florentine artists and intellectuals of the past. . . . In this satisfied contemplation of their own past, the Florentines certainly displayed a pride in being the heirs and continuers of that past.”34 Antonfrancesco Grazzini’s late account of Quattrocento carnival festivities and their music and his collecting of canti carnascialeschi35 exemplify Florentines’ “satisfied contemplation of their own past,” as well as a glorification of the House of Medici. And with the appointment of Corteccia as chapelmaster at the public ecclesiastical institutions, there begins an unbroken line of Florentine appointees to that post (or Tuscans long resident in Florence),36 a practice that contrasts sharply with that of the Quattrocento and early Cinquecento. The Florentine (and “Florentinist”) academic movement of midcentury had the effect of regularizing the early-­ Cinquecento sodalities, and ducal support was critical to their vitality and survival. Such more or less formal institutions had a venerable history in Florence, from the gatherings at the home of the Alberti of “doctors and artists and other notable figures” that featured evening banqueting and morning breakfasting and Landino’s playing of his portative organ37 to such later institutions as Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Academy.38 The Cinquecento academies that arose in the 1530s and thereafter were the product of a change in the aspirations of Florentine intellectuals after the military and political dislocations of the late Quattrocento and early Cinquecento and the consolidation of the form of academic organizations that had emerged during the preceding century. Most of the Cinquecento academies were formally organized and had a written constitution, a celestial patron, and an earthly aristocratic protector.39 The academies would invite “the nobility and . . . more learned of the people” to celebrations for the patron saint’s feast

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day, carnival, or the harvest, when the festivities would include a banquet, dancing, and orations. Substantively, most of the academies recognized their obligation to “the universal knowledge of the sciences and . . . liberal arts.” They were especially dedicated to the study and codification of the local vernacular—­ Tuscan—­and their original compositions were the expression of a faith in its possibilities.40 And consistent with the emphases of (Italian) Renaissance humanism more generally, and its implicit critique of the scholastic method, the academies understood knowledge to be identified with “discourse”: “the art of speech.”41 In November 1540, an entourage of Florentine letterati who shared the literary concerns of the members of the early-­Cinquecento sodalities formed an academy, which they called the Umidi.42 Early the following year, the new academy was reconstituted—­with ducal support—­as the Accademia Fiorentina, the quasi-­mythic Florentine Academy. Among its members were some of the most important musicians and composers of the time, including Corteccia and Striggio.43 Duke Cosimo was quick to sense the political promise of the academy and the returns on supporting it (fig. 12.2). But there was a persisting anxiety among civic officials about such informal institutions. Among Cosimo’s motives was a more cynical one, therefore. He co-­opted the academy and seduced its members with thinly veiled blandishments. He named its consul to his Consiglio del Dugento (the Senate) and automatically to the rectorate of the Studio (university) of Florence, with all the privileges normally attendant on such status. In midcentury, the Florentine Academy witnessed a debate about song, one episode in an ongoing conversation about the most effective means of setting text to music, which recurs throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, specifically in humanist circles: whether it should be “based on oral conception in the performance of accompanied song” or “on musical composition and the notation of . . . polyphony.”44 The same debate is reflected in writings of the Rucellai group.45 The anonymous author of one of the principal documents of the midcentury debate “decries . . . the quality of writtenness in polyphonic music,” “music with . . . notes being an artificial thing,” in his words.46 One position was aligned with the humanistic view of knowledge as essentially identical to the “art of speech”47 and was consistent with that element of the humanist program that placed a premium on text and speech and elegance in the expression and practice thereof. It favored a kind of music-­making championed by humanists since the Quattrocento: “accompanied song.” The other position favored musical composition de-

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Figure 12.2 Agnolo Bronzino, Cosimo I de’ Medici, Duke of Florence, ca. 1545. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi. Scala / Art Resource, NY. See plate 5 for a color image.

pendent upon “the notation of . . . polyphony” and was consistent with the larger scholastic program that favored “ratiocination” and “the formal language-­game of the disputation” and their privileged musical technique: the “written­ness” of polyphonic music. At the end of the Cinquecento, “the authority of notation . . . is connected to the artificioso, the highly worked, the esoteric. And the artificioso was connected to the written, as distinguished from the improvised.”48 Academy members Niccolò Martelli and Alfonso de’ Pazzi believed that “notation falsifies the Tuscan language, rendering poetry unintelli-

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gible in part because it engenders a complexity of musical relationships . . . at the expense of the poem.”49 Although an antipathy to polyphony was not universal among members of the Accademia Fiorentina, even one of those who championed polyphonic composition, Benedetto Varchi, could write toward the end of his life, “I never heard anything that moved me more inside and seemed more wonderful . . . than the singing extemporaneously to the lira by M. Silvio Antoniano.”50 Such contrasting perspectives shaped the sensibilities of the musician members of the Accademia Fiorentina.

* * * Corteccia’s formal appointment as chapelmaster at the public ecclesiastical institutions of Florence did not prohibit him from accepting commissions for music to be performed in very different venues. In 1544, he composed the music for performances of Francesco d’Ambra’s comedy Il furto at the Accademia Fiorentina and elsewhere in Florence.51 He honored the formal prototype that Verdelot and Arcadelt had pioneered in the 1520s and 1530s. There were two performances of the comedy in the seat of the Accademia, the Sala del Papa in the Church of Santa Maria Novella—­one for the gentlemen on 9 November 1544,52 one for “the ladies” on 11 November—­ and a third for Duke Cosimo on 15 November at the Medici villa in Castello.53 The duke set some specific conditions. His Excellency wants the comedy . . . recited here on Saturday next at the 17th hour and consequently he’ll order all the actors to be here by the 15th hour. . . . In addition, he would like [the] music of viols [did they reinforce the singers’ parts?]. And Corteccia likewise should be here with all those young singers.54

One of Ugolino Martelli’s and Corteccia’s contemporaries reported that the comedy was given “with a sumptuous stage apparatus and was full of the magnificent pomp of the richest costuming and adorned with beautiful intermedi.”55 The five intermedi—­sung before the prologue and after acts 1 through 4 —­would be classified as non apparenti: there is no choreographed movement, no dancing, no stage combat, no stage set, no instrumental sinfonie. However, the singers were evidently in full view and may even have been costumed: the text of the first intermedio (Udendo ragionar che qui si denno, which makes reference to “il Furto [the Theft]”) seems to indicate the visible presence of a chorus (or masquerade) of zingari (Romani).56

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And like the canzone before the prologue of Machiavelli’s La Clizia, one of Martelli’s intermedi for Il furto (Quanto sia dolce voglia, sung after act 1) is directed to the audience. The madrigals after acts 1 through 4 relate generally to the themes of the play and events in it, although the first three do not refer directly to any of the characters, and, indeed, the second and third make no explicit reference to the play itself. Like Verdelot’s and Arcadelt’s madrigals, Corteccia’s are prevailingly though not exclusively homorhythmic, a feature attributable to their function as intermedi, certainly, but perhaps also a response to the debate in the Accademia Fiorentina about the efficacy of polyphony. As a member of the Accademia, Corteccia could easily have witnessed the debate. Corteccia also resorted to a greater variety of rhythmic values than is ordinarily found in madrigals from this moment in the history of the genre, which affords changes of pace from one phrase to the next. This, too, permits the words to be intelligible, in a manner responsive to their natural accents. His madrigals are examples of the note nere phenomenon, where the note values are shorter: quarter and eighth notes in contrast to the half notes usual in many earlier madrigals, and thus “black notes.” Unlike Verdelot’s setting of Quanto sia lieto, there is no recycling of the same music for parallel moments in the poetic structure: all the madrigals for Il furto are “through-­composed.”

Intimate Settings: Isabella de’ Medici, Solo Song, and the Polyphonic Madrigal Once the defining musical characteristics of the madrigal had been established, the new genre figured primarily in several performance contexts: as elements in the private entertainment of the Medici, for example, and other families of some stature, perhaps as after-­dinner music. Of course, madrigals performed at the grand ducal court (and in the circles of other wealthy families, what few there were that approached the Medici in status) were often performed by professionals for an audience of grand ducal courtiers and other nobles, whereas those performed in other private circles (including the academies) were typically performed by patrician amateurs themselves, for their own enjoyment. Solo song was intimate music-­making, especially associated with the musical experiences of women, given the social conditions of the time and the constraints within which women operated.57 With some notable exceptions, women—­even noblewomen whose husbands were the ruling lords of an aristocratic state—­did not often have primary authority for the formal musical establishments of the court: the chapels responsible for perform-

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ing polyphonic settings of Latin sacred texts; the instrumental ensembles that played on convivial occasions; the vocal ensembles that sang madrigals and other kinds of vocal part-­music for the enjoyment of the court. There were notable Florentine exceptions: Isabella de’ Medici; Grand Duchess Bianca Cappello; Grand Duchess Christine of Lorraine. They were patrons of considerable importance. Isabella, the daughter of Duke Cosimo, was not only a patron but also a musician and composer in her own right. She sang madrigals she had composed to the accompaniment of her own lute playing and was so gifted as to earn the approbation of her contemporaries.58 “A perfect musician,” wrote one contemporary, “singing beautifully, a poetess and improvisatrice by nature, Isabella was the . . . fairest star of the Medici.”59 Eyewitnesses reported that she could “play all instruments.”60 Isabella surrounded herself with poets and musicians.61 She and her husband, Paolo Giordano Orsini, made Florence their principal residence, and among the musicians in their employ were several of some stature, for example, Antonio Barrè and Scipione della Palla.62 Cristofano Malvezzi, later to be chapelmaster at the Cathedral of Florence, was Isabella’s teacher.63 She and her husband supported mascherate and vocal and instrumental performances in the courtyard of their palace and entertainments in Piazza San Lorenzo on the saint’s feast day.64 Isabella may have inherited a partiality for solo song from her mother, Eleonora of Toledo, who, as a good Neapolitan, favored the singing to the lute of napolitane: tuneful, buoyant works that exemplify “a tradition of vocal writing with a distinctive kind of vocal style, . . . ‘tinged with local color.’”65 In 1559, an observer reported that “in the evening [Eleonora and Isabella] entertain themselves with some of [Paolo’s] musicians, who sing napolitane to the lute.” A week later the same observer reported: In this illness of Eleonora, she has resorted to music quite often. . . . Throughout the whole night she kept in her room . . . certain musicians of Signor Paolo [Giordano Orsini], who sing alla napolitana to the lute, and others with voices alone, and one [who sings] to keyboard accompaniment. She spent the greater part of the time in this manner.66

At this moment in the history of music, solo song emerges more clearly into the written tradition from fugitive oral practice. A period source contains an arrangement for lute and soprano of a six-­voiced madrigal on the text Lieta viva e contenta, which bears the inscription, “Id est Signora Isabella Medici” (ex. 12.2).67 One’s initial assumption is that the six-­voiced setting was the original and the arrangement for lute and soprano an ex

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Example 12.2 Excerpt from Isabella de’ Medici’s Lieta viva e contenta

post facto refashioning. But some features of the composition suggest otherwise. The polyphonic version has a melodic style that may reveal an attempt by the composer to achieve a kind of naturalistic tunefulness and spontaneity, the airy buoyancy of Neapolitan song. It is relatively unusual to find such a quality in a polyphonic madrigal of the time, and it is possible that Isabella was not only the author of the poem but also the composer of the original version of the composition, a solo song to be performed to lute accompaniment in her salon, with an expressive, buoyant melody supported by improvised block chords. And she may have come to favor such an aesthetic under her mother’s influence. A sensitive composer (perhaps Isabella herself?) might then have recomposed her solo

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song for a vocal ensemble while preserving the melodic properties of the original.68

Intimate Settings: The Florentine Madrigal after Midcentury Earlier scholarship identified a seeming irony. Despite Florence’s status as birthplace of the madrigal, the two decades between 1540 and 1560 witnessed relatively little in the way of important innovations. The creative center of gravity had shifted to Venice, Ferrara, and Rome.69 But newly discovered archival documents and music manuscripts give a more complete, nuanced picture.70 By 1540, Arcadelt was in Rome. And neither Francesco Corteccia nor Mattia Rampollini, another important Florentine madrigalist, seems to have been very active as a madrigal composer after about the mid-­1540s.71 Among the explanations for this ironic situation is that the absence of a printing industry in Florence comparable to that in Venice deprived Florentine would-­be madrigalists of a ready outlet for their activity.72 Cosimo I seems to have understood the potential benefits of the press as a vehicle for Medici political aggrandizement, just as he understood the promise of the academic movement, and by 1547 he had identified a Flemish printer who could establish a viable music publishing enterprise in Florence. But by the late 1550s, the firm was in financial difficulty, the consequence in part of the recondite character of the books published. Cosimo did offer some protection to Florentine printers, but his policies were essentially laissez-­faire, the printers largely left to their own entrepreneurial devices. Moreover, publishing with a Venetian press had professional advantages for the Florentine composer. Florentine publishers competed on an unequal footing.73 The equivocation of members of the Accademia Fiorentina concerning the efficacy of polyphony as a means of setting Italian secular verse may also have had an inhibiting effect.74 There is also the question of Cosimo’s own tastes and whether he had a personal passion for music like that of the many other members of his family who were enlightened patrons of the arts. The duke’s interest in the madrigal may not have extended beyond celebratory collections of the kind dedicated to him.75 Perhaps as the result of Cosimo’s tastes, there was not a viable infrastructure of secular music patronage, a robust formal institution such as the grand ducal court, that might have supported aspiring madrigalists. The more recent scholarship enlarges this picture considerably. We now know appreciably more about the transmission of madrigals to Florence from elsewhere. And the new documentation provides glimpses of

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private music-­making among patrician amateurs, including the singing of madrigals. In the 1540s, there was a community of letterati in the orbit of the Accademia Fiorentina. Giovanbattista and Lionardo della Fonte, who became members of the Accademia in 1545, “were at the center of a dense network based on a variety of motivations . . . , including shared cultural . . . concerns.”76 Although members of this community were often away from Florence, they corresponded with those who remained, and the correspondence documents the music-­making that took place in their lives, their interest in the madrigal, and the means by which repertory was transmitted to Florence. There is evidence of musical performances at dinner (a time-­honored occasion) and an emphasis on the new in the search for repertory. Newly studied madrigal manuscripts compiled in Florence during the two decades when the land was thought to have lain fallow77 also document a continuing tradition of composing, copying, and performing madrigals.78 Whatever lingering uncertainties there may be about the vitality of the madrigal tradition in Florence between 1540 and 1560, there can be no question that with Striggio’s arrival it was decisively revitalized. Striggio arrived in Florence around 1559, only five years before Cosimo relinquished day-­to-­day responsibility for governing to the heir apparent, Prince Francesco, who appears to have been much more interested in music. Francesco contributed importantly to Striggio’s activities as madrigalist, as we shall presently see. Increased attention to the polyphonic madrigal in the 1560s may be attributable to this change in the material conditions. Striggio was not only a talented and productive composer of polyphonic madrigals; he also acquired a profound knowledge of innovative practices elsewhere in Italy and replicated them for the Medici court. Striggio had a fondness for travel, and his visit to the Ferrarese court in 1584/85 was of the greatest importance to the madrigal tradition of late-­ Cinquecento Florence. Striggio’s many polyphonic madrigals document that there was still a taste at the Medici court for compositions in the traditional style. The Ferrarese, however, had pioneered a different, innovative vision of the genre, and word of the innovations raced throughout the peninsula. Not long thereafter, other Italian courts—­Florence among them—­were enjoying performances of madrigals in the Ferrarese style.79 The first Florentine to report on the Ferrarese innovations was not Striggio but another visitor to Ferrara, Guilio Caccini, who went there with Giovanni de’ Bardi during carnival in early 1583. Bardi and Caccini were later of extreme importance to the beginnings of opera in Florence. Their experiences in Ferrara must have been transformative.80 On 12 February 1583, Caccini reported to Grand Duke Francesco:

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Every evening, the Duke [of Ferrara] has called us to one of his small chambers, where the Signora Duchess his wife was, the Signora Duchess of Urbino, and three Ladies: rather, three Angels of paradise, because they sing so miraculously that it does not seem to me, insofar as I understand it, that one can climb any higher.81

This was the renowned Ferrarese concerto delle donne, a trio of sopranos who were essentially professional singers. Either singly or in duets or trios, they sang to harpsichord accompaniment. The fact that the setting of the poetic text was not polyphonic—­for an ensemble of four, five, or more singers—­freed the Ferrarese donne to engage in an utterly different style of singing. The vocal line (especially in those compositions for only one of the three) did not have to take account of the other voices in a polyphonic complex. Rather, the conception was idiomatically soloistic and the harmonic function consigned to a plucked-­ string instrument that provided unobtrusive accompaniment. This had the notable effect of profiling the voice(s) and freeing the singer(s) to apply a rich overlay of lush ornamentation to the vocal line. The poetry was still madrigalian, but the conception behind the musical setting was revolutionary. In little more than a year, the grand ducal court in Florence had its own concerto delle donne. In April 1584, during the festivities for the wedding of Eleonora di Francesco de’ Medici and Vincenzo Gonzaga, “one was entertained with the music . . . of a Bolognese woman of the Grand Duchess [i.e., Laura Bovia], a very Rare thing, and a Vittoria [Archilei] come from Rome, and other famous musicians, and one danced until the fifth hour.”82 On this occasion, the Florentine donne evidently sang singly, but within a few months, they constituted a trio, a Florentine equivalent of the Ferrarese concerto delle donne. The third member of the trio was likely Giulio Caccini’s wife, Lucia.83 Striggio was invited to Ferrara in the summer of 1584, and his yearlong stay permitted him to observe the Ferrarese concerto closely. He had an extensive correspondence with Grand Duke Francesco and Grand Duchess Bianca, much of which survives. Striggio was specifically commissioned to compose virtuosic madrigals in the Ferrarese style. In an early letter in the sequence (13 July 1584), he reported to the grand duke: I received a letter from . . . Cavalier Vinta, in which, by order of Your Most Serene Highness, he commissions me to set to music as soon as possible some madrigals with three sopranos singing diminutions. As soon as I read the letter, I wrote one as a sample, which I am now sending to Your Most Serene Highness so that

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I can find out if the style is to your taste. I believe that they are to be performed for a concerto [i.e., a mixed ensemble of both vocalists and instrumentalists], but because I do not know—­nor do I know with what instruments they will be accompanied or with what voices—­I have composed it as the fancy took me; and according to what is written to me in reply, so will I do. . . . His Lordship the Duke of Ferrara has had me, my wife, and son invited to go and stay in Ferrara for two weeks in order to hear his concerto di donne, which I understand is quite exceptional; but . . . I could not go. I hope that His Lordship the Duke will have me invited again, whereupon I will go and see the forces and manner they use for this concerto of theirs. . . . From Mantua.84

News of the Ferrarese innovations had obviously reached the Florentine court, and Grand Duke Francesco (fig. 12.3)—­not to be outdone by those inconsequential Ferrarese—­commanded that they be replicated in Florence. Even before receiving Francesco’s response, Striggio wrote again, this time providing revealing detail on the design of the compositions he was writing to fulfill the grand duke’s commissions and reporting that he expected Caccini to have a role in performing the madrigals sent to Florence. Two weeks ago I sent Your Most Serene Highness a four-­part madrigal for the concerto, with three sopranos singing in diminution . . . ; this was a trial effort to which I expected a reply to see if they [the concerto] wanted it in this style or in a more difficult manner, with a greater or smaller range. And because I have already been six days in Ferrara, on the invitation of His Lordship the Duke, I was not able to wait for the reply in Mantua. . . . Before I left, I composed a dialogue with two sopranos in diminution in a different manner from the first, and although I have not tried it out, . . . I am sending it to Your Most Serene Highness, while waiting to hear which style will be more appropriate for the concerto [in Florence]. I had also written the intabulation for the lute, and I left it behind in Mantua. . . . But . . . Signor Giulio [Caccini] will be able to play on the lute or . . . harpsichord above the bass. . . . His Lordship the Duke of Ferrara . . . has done me the favor of letting me hear his concerto di donne, which truly is exceptional. Those ladies sing excellently together as a group; they are assured both reading from music and when improvising.85

The three Florentine donne were thus provided with madrigals in which the basic melodic lines had had an encrustation of ornaments—­rapid passagework—­overlaid on them (“diminution”). Striggio had also provided the instrumental foundation, notated in lute tablature: “the bass” above which Caccini was “to play on the lute or . . . harpsichord.” The

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Figure 12.3 Alessandro Allori (attributed), Francesco di Cosimo de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, as a young man, ca. 1560. Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago. Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource, NY. See plate 6 for a color image.

expansion of the performing resources beyond one soprano was the “most striking and influential innovation of the [Ferrarese] musica secreta during the early 1580s,”86 and it was almost immediately replicated in Florence. In another letter, Francesco’s directions to Striggio are restated and Caccini’s role in arranging and completing Striggio’s compositions, as needed or wanted, is detailed.

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Last week I sent Your Most Serene Highness “Cor mio, mentr’io vi miro,” fitted out with the embellishments according to Your Most Serene Highness’s commission. I am now sending the other, “Per voi, lasso, conviene,” and I believe they will work when they have been learned from memory, and when the words are well enunciated, and concerted87 by messer Giulio.88

Caccini’s contribution is later described in such a way as to suggest that some of these madrigals were effectively full-­scale collaborations between the two composers.89 In one case, Caccini went so far as to outline his expectations in the margin of the page with the poetic text sent to Striggio. Caccini called for “very difficult runs, both high up and down low, and the end repeated in a variety of ways twelve times between the two sopranos.”90 One soprano singing soloistically or with one or two others; diminutions (“very difficult runs, both high up and down low”; “embellishments”); a mixed consort of voices and instruments (“the concerto”); and an instrumental bass line (“the intabulation for . . . lute. . . . Signor Giulio will be able to play on the lute or the harpsichord above the bass”): these were the principal distinguishing features of the Ferrarese style that Striggio sought to emulate. Grand Duchess Bianca was a full partner in this initiative. On the same day that Striggio first wrote to Francesco, the composer’s wife—­the singer Virginia Vagnoli—­wrote to Cappello. Her letter not only documents the grand duchess’s involvement but also establishes that the texts that Striggio set were often sent from Florence.91 In a second extended correspondence with the grand ducal court, this one with the grand duchess (February– ­March 1585),92 Striggio received a second series of commissions, on this occasion from Cappello,93 and one of his letters to the grand duchess identified the Florentine ensemble as “your concerto.”94 Another of the grand duchess’s correspondents reported that Giovanni de’ Bardi was again in Ferrara in March 1585, a little over two years after he had first heard the Ferrarese concerto delle donne. This time, Jacopo Corsi and Ottavio Rinuccini—­two figures of the greatest importance to the beginnings of opera in Florence—­were with him.95 The performances of the Ferrarese concerto were said to have left the same powerful impression on Bardi as in 1583.96 And Corsi was so taken with what he witnessed (or learned of) in Ferrara that immediately upon his return to Florence he ordered forty-­one books of music from Venetian publishers.97 Striggio’s household returned to Florence in June 1585. During his year away, he had composed seventeen madrigals in the Ferrarese style for the grand duke and duchess, enough to fill a printed book of madrigals.98 Un-

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fortunately, only one musical witness to these developments survives: the Ferrarese composer Luzzasco Luzzaschi’s 1601 collection of madrigals for one, two, and three sopranos with harpsichord accompaniment. But it is likely that many of the works published there were composed during the 1580s: they correspond exactly to Striggio’s descriptions of what he witnessed in 1584 and 1585 and seems to have composed in imitation of the Ferrarese concerto. Since none of Striggio’s own experiments in the new style survives, we are dependent upon Luzzaschi’s retrospective publication for direct musical evidence.99 Interestingly, the most advanced of its three compositions for solo soprano, Aura soave, is not as modern in its ornamentation as one of the compositions for the intermedi for the 1589 wedding festivities of Grand Duke Ferdinando and Christine of Lorraine, nor is it as advanced in that respect as many compositions in Caccini’s almost simultaneous publication, Le nuove musiche (New Music) of 1602. Such a seemingly retrospective character suggests that the compositions in Luzzaschi’s publication are indeed from some two decades before.100 The madrigals in his 1601 collection exemplify precisely the kind of concerted music that Caccini asked Striggio to provide (“very difficult runs, both high up and down low,” etc.). In his attempt to imitate Luzzaschi’s style, Striggio composed works whose texture was like that of the more complicated compositions in the 1601 collection.101 I provide a portion of an illustrative Luzzaschi madrigal from the 1601 collection (ex. 12.3). Changes to the Florentine concerto were in the offing when Ferdinando ascended the grand ducal throne.102 He disapproved of much of Francesco’s tawdry behavior during his reign and developed an extreme dislike of Bianca Cappello.103 At the beginning of his reign, Ferdinando merely wanted to appoint his own personnel. Soon, however, various of Francesco’s appointees fell victim to Ferdinando’s purge and the colorful politics of life at court at the end of the Cinquecento.104 In 1588, Ferdinando’s ensemble consisted of “La [Laura Guidiccioni] Lucchessina, . . . La [Laura] Bovia, La Vittoria [Archilei], whom His Highness has brought from Rome, the wife of Giulio Romano [Lucia Caccini], . . . [et al.]. . . . His Highness . . . has given the supervision . . . to Signor Emilio Cavalieri, a Roman gentleman and great favorite of His Highness.” By 1589, Francesco and Bianca’s concerto had been largely disbanded. The singer Bovia was dismissed; Vittoria Archilei, who had been Ferdinando’s protégé, was primarily in Rome; only Lucia (and Giulio) Caccini remained. In a letter to Ferdinando, Cavalieri questioned whether “Your Highness has any taste for small chamber ensembles.”105 Ferdinando’s different sensibilities were perhaps attributable to the less centralized patron-

Example 12.3 Excerpt from Luzzasco Luzzaschi’s O primavera

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Example 12.4 Excerpt from a madrigal for Alessandro Striggio’s Cicalamento delle donne

age practices he had known as a cardinal in Rome,106 where there were numerous independent patrons, as well as the unusual circumstances of the succession upon Grand Duke Francesco’s death: Ferdinando had been obliged to leave the cardinalate to claim the ducal throne (fig. 12.4). At the end of the Cinquecento the familiar Florentine polyphonic ma-

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Figure 12.4 Giambologna and Pietro Tacca, Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, 1608. Florence, Piazza Santissima Annunziata. © Alinari Archives / George Tatge / Art Resource, NY.

drigal had been partly eclipsed at the grand ducal court by the ornament-­ saturated madrigal for one, two, or three sopranos with instrumental accompaniment. Under the influence of Ferrarese practices, the Medici grand duke and duchess had reenvisioned the Florentine madrigal tradition. One final contribution by Striggio to the madrigal literature demands consideration: the dramatic madrigal (ex. 12.4). Striggio’s dramatic compositions in the genre “started from a[n] . . . aspiration to translate . . . the vis comica of the commedia dell’arte into madrigalesque language.”107 They feature discrete musical set pieces within a dramatic framework; the action momentarily stops, and a four- or five-­voice polyphonic madrigal is performed. The compositional technique can be imitative. There had been a tendency to interpret these works as progenitors of comic opera. But in the dramatic madrigal, the dialogue was delivered by a polyphonic ensemble, not by a soloist. Nor was there any individualization of the characters by means of the music used. Although theatrical, the use of the music was not operatic in nature.

13

The Church

The Reconstitution of the Polyphonic Chapels Before Savonarola’s condemnation of polyphony resulted in the disbanding of the polyphonic chapels at the public ecclesiastical institutions, the choirs had comprised eighteen adult singers, among them some of the most accomplished northern musician-­composers of the day. In the less propitious years between Savonarola’s execution and the reestablishment of the Cathedral chapel in 1501, eight clerks and four tenors and contra­ tenors performed on specified occasions during the church year. At the urging of Cathedral authorities, the consuls of the Wool Guild resolved in late 1501 to reconstitute the chapels. In addition to a teacher of polyphony, they sought two tenors, two contraltos, two basses, and at least seven sopranos and as many more as possible. They also specified the occasions when polyphony was to be performed. Implementing the decision of the previous year, the Cathedral authorities appointed singers in February 1502, the more notable among them Giovanni Serragli, who taught polyphonic music, and Isaac’s brother-­in-­law, Charles de Launoy. The feast days when a polyphonic Mass was to be performed were identified; included, predictably, were feasts of particular importance in Florentine religious tradition, those of St. Zenobius, Santa Reparata, and John the Baptist. Other feasts important in Florentine religious experience were later added: the feasts and vigils of the nativity, beheading, and indulgence of John; and the days when the Lord Priors of the Florentine people assumed office. Once again, Florentine religious tradition was privileged; once again, there was a coalescence of the civic and the spiritual. With the Medici restoration came a restoration of the musical patronage practices of the Quattrocento Medici. They were again deeply involved

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in the practices of the public ecclesiastical institutions, and they retained appointees at those institutions for their private entertainment. Bartolomeo degli Organi and Baccio Moschini received their appointments in 1518 “at the instance of the most illustrious lord Lorenzo [di Piero] de’ Medici.”1 In 1522, when existing financial and administrative arrangements were reaffirmed, it was noted that they applied to singers “elected during the lifetime of the most illustrious Duke of Urbino [Lorenzo di Piero]”; they had “promised the . . . Duke verbally” to sing a polyphonic Mass daily in the Baptistery, without an increase in salary.2 Giovanbattista d’Arezzo, a singer at the Baptistery and the Santissima Annunziata, was retained by Lorenzo di Piero for his private musical entertainment.3 In 1521, Cornelio Snalaart (Senolaart) was appointed a singer at the Santissima Annunziata, his salary to be “terminated according to the wish of our most reverend Messieur Cardinal [Giulio] de’ Medici.”4 Verdelot’s career gives further evidence of Medici involvement in the practices of the public institutions. Mattia Rampollini had succeeded Bernardo Pisano as chapelmaster in 1520,5 but Verdelot soon replaced Rampollini.6 In 1524, Verdelot was named “singer and master of the chapel” at the Baptistery and in 1527 a member of the musical establishment at the Cathedral, in the company of Senolaart and Rampollini.7 The coalescence of the spiritual and the civic was facilitated by the identity of the principal members of the family who acted as de facto heads of state: first Cardinal Giovanni (1512–­13); then Cardinal Giulio, archbishop of Florence (1519–­23). Paralleling their appropriation of carnival and other traditional Florentine festivals, the Medici appropriated instruments of worship.8 New liturgical books compiled for the Cathedral of Florence after the Medici restoration feature illuminated miniatures with Medici heraldic devices. The manuscripts had the potential to convey political themes to the citizenry but only if they were seen. Accordingly, “three beautiful books are lent to Domenico di Giovanni Parigi, cartolaio, . . . for display at the feast of St. John the Baptist,” possibly at the exposition where the merchants of Florence “ostentatiously show their things in the more frequented places of the city . . . for the greater honor of the city, and perhaps for greater profit.” The public display of these accoutrements of worship helped to establish a Medicean visual identity and suggest a religious and political oneness of family and city. Contained in these manuscripts is a newly composed Office for St. Zenobius, which contains indirect references to the Medici. During his ceremonial entry in 1513, Archbishop-­designate Giulio de’ Medici—­who was born on the day after the Feast of St. Zenobius (San Zanobi) and whose

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full name was Giulio et Zanobi—­paused at the site where San Zanobi was said to have raised a young boy from the dead.9 In the newly composed office, a hymn concludes with the text, “Great is the glorious one [Zanobi] who has redeemed us, the exiles.” Metaphorically, the exiled Medici had been redeemed and restored through the intercession of San Zanobi, one of the most important figures in Florentine religious experience. The confusing political developments of the decade between 1527 and 1537 made those years inauspicious ones for the organized musical life of the city. But with the stabilization of the situation upon Cosimo’s election and the renewed involvement of the Medici in the practices of the Cathedral and Baptistery, there began a long and fruitful period in the history of the principal ecclesiastical institutions and their musical activities. Within months of Cosimo’s election, the consuls of the Merchants’ Guild named a “master of chant and polyphonic music,”10 and in March 1540, they resolved as follows: Desirous . . . of . . . [bringing] satisfaction to our most illustrious and excellent prince and lord, Duke Cosimo de’ Medici, who . . . in emulation of his most illustrious ancestors . . . desires that the many talented people in this field who are at present in his city be recognized, . . . [it has been decided] . . . that all the herewith inscribed singers . . . be appointed to the chapel, . . . Master of the chapel messer Francesco di Bernardo Corteccia, . . . ser Gianpiero di Niccolò [Masacone] [et al.].11

Appointments to the musical establishments at the Cathedral and Baptistery at the behest of the duke and duchess soon followed. In 1541, when it was observed that the contrabasses in the Baptistery choir “are so weak that they are little heard,” “a chaplain of the most illustrious Duchess [Eleonora],” the Spaniard Hieronimo Carasco (Eleonora’s countryman, notably), “who has a very good voice,” was engaged by the Merchants Guild; in 1543, Andrea Mancivelli, “chaplain to the Duchess,” was appointed by the consuls; in 1546, Cornelio de Benis (de Brugni) of Udine, a singer in the duke’s household, joined the Baptistery chapel;12 and in 1581, the chaplains of Florence cathedral sang a mass . . . of the Holy Spirit as a sign of joy, thanking God and the Grand Duke . . . Francesco [di Cosimo] . . . that by his grace had been increased the allocations of the choir of Santa Maria del Fiore by more than half the previous amount from 1 August 1581. . . . They sang the said most solemn Mass with eight singers and the organ playing, with trombones and cornetts and a Mass in polyphony.13

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In midcentury, a roster of the chapels’ personnel listed among the “Musicians” “messer Francesco di Bernardo Corteccia, master of the chapel,” and “ser Gianpiero Masiaccioni [Masacone].”14 Like his Medici ancestors, Cosimo availed himself of the musicians’ services: Masacone, a scribe as well as singer and composer, copied music books for the duke.15 Corteccia’s appointment as chapelmaster thus came with the 1540 reconstitution, at Duke Cosimo’s instance, of the Cathedral and Baptistery chapels.16 Corteccia composed new settings of traditional texts to replace Quattrocento settings that were no longer deemed fashionable or suitable,17 and his compositions form the core of the repertory preserved in extant codices copied for the Cathedral. Those were the work of Gianpiero Masacone.18 With Masacone’s six extant manuscripts, we have substantial, decisive evidence of the repertory of the Cathedral in the early-­modern era.19 One of these manuscripts contains motets by, among others, Verdelot and Arcadelt, the Florentine madrigalist Francesco de Layolle, the French royal court composers Jean Mouton and Jean Richafort, who received privileges from Leo X,20 and the Leonine musicians Andreas de Silva and Jean Lhéritier.21 A second manuscript contains Magnificat settings by, among others, Verdelot, Lhéritier, and Leo’s chapelmaster Elzear Genet. And a third contains motets by, among others, Corteccia, the Leonine musicians de Silva and Costanzo Festa, Richafort,22 and Adrian Willaert, who is known to have visited Leonine Rome.23 Long after Leo’s papacy ended, compositions that likely figured in the Leonine repertory continued to be copied in his native Florence. Three additional manuscripts compiled by Masacone contain hymns and responsories by Corteccia, who composed new settings of responsory texts for Holy Week because “practically nothing else exists here,”24 since “there were almost none of them left for us to use except those most ancient ones by a certain Arnolfo, which never cease insisting on the similarity of voices.”25 “Even those” by Corteccia’s revered teacher, Bernardo Pisano, were “thought . . . too slow in some places and too uncomfortable for the singers in others.”26 Corteccia’s immediate successor as chapelmaster was Giovanni Manenti, succeeded in turn by Giovanni Benvenuti del Cartolaio (1571–­74). Benvenuti’s successor was Isabella de’ Medici’s music teacher Cristofano Malvezzi (1574–­98), who styled himself “Master of the Chapel of the Most Serene Grand Duke of Tuscany”; at Malvezzi’s death, Luca Bati asked that he be considered for the post of chapelmaster and within weeks, on 15 February 1599, he was named master of the chapel.

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As earlier in the history of Florence, sacred ritual served political ends, as in 1569, when a “most solemn Mass . . . with Gloria and Credo” was sung “to mark the very great joy at our duke Cosimo de’ Medici’s having been granted the right to a royal crown on top of the arms by the pope, Pius V, who sent him the crown”;27 or when “a solemn Mass of the Holy Spirit was sung . . . as a sign of the joyousness of the . . . marriage” of Grand Duke Francesco and Bianca Cappello;28 or in 1590, when the birth of Grand Duke Ferdinando’s son was celebrated “with . . . instrumental playing and singing.”29 On all such occasions, the singers of the cathedral performed.30 And as earlier in the history of Florence, ritual practices sacralized the city by means of the time-­honored processions and, later, the ceremonial entries of important ecclesiastical figures.31 The entry of Archbishop Antonio Altoviti in 1567, when he took possession of the archdiocese of Florence, exemplifies Florentine fidelity to ancient practice and Florentine ritual tradition.32 The archbishop-­elect was received outside Porta San Frediano, and as he mounted his horse for the processional, “in front of the gate, the royal [i.e., ducal] musicians—­the best in the land—­were singing the antiphon . . . Sacerdos et Pontifex, set polyphonically with great skill by Francesco Corteccia, a most learned man in the art of music.” Participating in the procession was “the chapel of royal musicians, who sang beautiful and splendid sacred songs in Latin.” Government officials awaited the archbishop-­elect at Palazzo Vecchio, “amidst the sounds of trumpets . . . and . . . the bells of the city’s churches and . . . royal tower.” Altoviti paused at the convent of the Church of San Pier Maggiore to participate in one of the most symbolically meaningful moments in the entry of a Florentine archbishop: the “marriage” of the archbishop to the convent’s mother abbess, a metaphor for the archbishop’s marriage with his “bride,” the Florentine church. Altoviti honored his metaphoric bride with a gold ring “worth 200 scudi.” The archbishop-­elect also paused at the shrine commemorating the miracle of San Zanobi. He prayed silently at the Cathedral while “the singers pronounced the antiphon in chant”; the dean “sang the verse and that prayer . . . Deus omnium fidelium Pastor,” and “the singers then sang an antiphon to the Holy Virgin, for whom the church is named.” With the ceremony at an end all the clergy began moving, as did the trumpeters, and all of the singers sang splendid songs. . . . The church echoed throughout with murmuring, cries, songs, and sounds. . . . Nothing like this had been heard since Leo X made his entrance into the city, and more recently, when Johanna of Austria, wife of our Prince, arrived here.

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At the concluding banquet in the sala grande of Archbishop Altoviti’s official residence, Palazzo Arcivescovile, “the singers performed very elegant songs in Latin and . . . Italian in praise of his arrival and these were received with great pleasure.” The archbishop then had gifts distributed “to . . . the trumpeters . . . [and] singers,” among the many other participants in the lavish ceremony. Corteccia’s five-­voice Sacerdos et Pontifex, sung during the processional, is transmitted in one of the manuscripts copied for the Cathedral by Masacone, and rather remarkably so, in that it does not often happen in the early-­modern era that a composition referenced in an account of an occasion is extant. A portion of Corteccia’s motet is presented here, in part to illustrate its compositional techniques, which were generally characteristic of the sixteenth-­century motet at this phase of its development (ex. 13.1).33 Sacerdos & pontifex, & uirtutum opifex, Pastor bone in populo, ora pro nobis, Dominum. Priest and Bishop, and worker of all virtues, good shepherd among the people, pray for us to the Lord.

In contrast to the complex polytextuality of the late-­medieval motet and the embedding of a borrowed melody in its entirety in the tenor part, imitative polyphony is now the privileged technique in the arsenal of compositional devices. The voices enter in sequence: the first enters alone, singing a particular melodic motive; it is followed a measure or two later by the second voice, singing the same motive in imitation of the first; and so on. All voices in the polyphonic complex sing the same text. The melodic material is still borrowed from the chant but is not preserved as a linear totality. Rather, the brief, discrete motives treated imitatively in the polyphonic elaboration of the chant are drawn from corresponding melodic gestures in the chant original. Thus the first motive in Corteccia’s motet, on the words “Sacerdos et . . . ,” is based on the opening melodic gesture of the chant sung to the same words; the motive in the motet on the words “Et virtutum” is based upon the motive on the same words in the chant original; and so on. The chant is used as the source of brief motives, each treated imitatively, as contrasted with the compositional practices of the late Middle Ages. The borrowed material now saturates the entire polyphonic texture. In the words of one scholar, “The essential element is no longer the total line but the individual motive.”34

Example 13.1 Excerpts from the chant setting of the text Sacerdos et Pontifex and Francesco Corteccia’s polyphonic elaboration

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The Reformation and Counter-­Reformation On 16 December 1563 a Mass of the Holy Spirit was sung in the Florentine cathedral, thanking God that the Tridentine Council had had a good outcome and had ended.35

By the mid-­Cinquecento, all Europe was compelled to come to terms with the Protestant challenges to the position of the Catholic Church and, ultimately, the establishment of new Protestant sects, religious traditions, and practices. Although urgent throughout Christian Europe, the issue was especially urgent in Italy. Florence was no exception. Besides the ephemeral public celebrations of the type documented above, the texts of some of Corteccia’s sacred compositions were revised to ensure that they aligned with liturgical reforms that postdated the Council of Trent, convened by the Catholic Church to determine its response to the Protestant Reformation.36 There are more substantive reflections of contemporary developments in the actual music of Counter-­Reformation Florence. The Council of Trent had restricted itself to general principles. It left it to individual dioceses to develop specific solutions to the task of implementing those principles.37 Soon after taking possession of his see in 1567, Archbishop Altoviti convened a synod for purposes of implementing the Tridentine reforms.38 In the 1571 publication of Corteccia’s motets, the compositions are printed in the order of the modes of the Catholic Church,39 the scale types according to which the monophonic Gregorian melodies were classified and which were once thought to have governed the composition of medieval and Renaissance polyphony. The practice of printing such collections in modal order, also characteristic of collections other than Corteccia’s, has been interpreted as expressing in polyphonic compositions of the Catholic Counter-­Reformation one of the church’s most important musical doctrines.40

The Cinquecento Lauda and Sacra Rappresentatione As before, Cinquecento Florentine spirituality was expressed not solely in the formal ceremonies of the ecclesiastical institutions but also in the genres of informal devotional observances: the lauda, the sacra rappresentatione, and a new genre, the intermedio sacro e morale. In the sixteenth century, the fortunes of the lauda—­like those of other musical genres and musical practices more generally—­were subject to the political developments of the time.41 The lauda companies first declined

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because of those developments and then were slowly transformed during the grand ducal period. In his efforts to control the companies, Duke Cosimo was aided by Counter-­Reformation fervor, and understandably, since Counter-­Reformation sensibilities would have found the activities of the lay confraternities ritually irregular.42 In 1563, the product of a systematic effort to recover lauda tunes of the late Quattrocento and earlier Cinquecento was published: Serafino Razzi’s Libro primo delle laudi spirituali, which represents “the culmination of a tradition,” the Florentine “cantasi come” practice.43 Razzi explained his method: “He whom I seek to compose spiritual words for some worldly song must apply himself to make them respectful of the Song, to the extent one possibly can: should the music be cheerful, for example, the words adapted to it should not be feeble but festive and cheerful.”44 Many of the lauda texts in Razzi’s Libro primo were written in the early Cinquecento by Dominican friars at San Marco, which suggests continuing fidelity to Savonarola’s preference for lauda singing. In Razzi’s own words, the collection comprises “ancient tunes”: two-­and three-­voice compositions from late-­Quattrocento Florence, many of them “travestimenti spirituali” (spiritual recostumings) of carnival songs. And as in the Quattrocento, the music retrofitted to the new spiritual texts could be impressively varied.45 Notably, the publication of Razzi’s Libro primo coincided with the final months of the Council of Trent, when the reform of sacred music was being planned and executed; and, indeed, the Counter-­Reformation inspired the final phase of the lauda tradition, in which the practice succumbed to that “Florentinist” impulse. Indeed, it was two Florentines—­the composer Giovanni Animuccia46 and the priest Filippo Neri—­who were responsible for introducing a lauda tradition to Counter-­Reformation Rome. Razzi’s publication effectively marks the end of the tradition.47 The life span of the sacra rappresentatione essentially coincided with that of the lauda. Both were the expression of late-­medieval spirituality, both the preserve of the lay confraternities. Like the lauda, the sacra rappresen­ tatione had a Cinquecento phase. Like almost every other artistic reflec­ tion of the times, the sacra rappresentatione was politicized after the establishment of the Medici duchy. Of the Annunciation, Ascension, and Pentecost plays, only the Annunciation continued to be performed throughout the Cinquecento.48 A 1533 performance, the first in many years,49 was staged by the Company of the Orciuolo on the occasion of the visit of Duke Alessandro’s fiancée, Margaret of Austria,50 and, in accordance with custom, in the Church of San Felice. The plot was effectively identical to that of the Quattrocento performances.51

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The tradition was thereafter revived periodically for political purposes, as in 1566, during the wedding festivities for Johanna of Austria and the heir apparent, Prince Francesco. The distinguished intellectual Vincenzo Borghini52 advised Duke Cosimo on the artistic provisions for the entire cycle of celebrations. A new text was fashioned for the Annunciation play, based upon the sparest dramatic realization of the account in the Gospel according to Luke, which was adorned with nothing but vocal and instrumental music. The vocal music was not in polyphony, however, but in monophony, “that simple and ancient mode of singing.”53 Borghini proposed a variety of artistic elements to welcome Johanna and celebrate the Medici and the city—­triumphal arches, decorations, inscriptions54—­but devoted particular attention to the Annunciation play. He wrote to the duke: As far as the festa is concerned, . . . since the time . . . and way of doing it are so different, we could think of giving the thing to two or three people. One of them could be Messer Francesco Corteccia to consider the style of singing and also the matter of those Prophets and Sybils who . . . removed much grace from the beauty of the rest, so that perhaps they could be tempered in some way and made more refined with some worthwhile innovation suitable to . . . these times.55

The revised text corrected the deficiencies that Borghini identified. The new, more concise Rappresentazione dell’Annunziazione della Gloriosa Vergine56 indeed “tempered” and “refined” the “matter of those Prophets and Sybils.” The “Angel who announces” summons fifteen prophets and two Sybils to sing their prophesies, which account for some two-­thirds of the play. The angels (traditionally two young boys) sing a lauda based on Psalm 148, and the angel Gabriel (an adult) replies, praising Justice and Mercy. In order that Gabriel could then proceed directly to the angelic salutation, which was spoken rather than sung, the lauda had to conclude at the precise moment when the mandorla reached the stage. After the Annunciation, Gabriel and the two other angels return to heaven, singing a metrical vernacular setting of Psalm 97, “Nuovo canto al Signor tutti hor cantiamo,” which they repeated as many times as was necessary until they reentered heaven.57 The final lauda was a setting of the text “O benedetto giorno / Ch’oggi riluce al mondo.”58 Two days before the performance, Borghini attended a rehearsal and identified ways in which the performance could be improved. The instrumentalists had produced insufficient sound to make themselves heard over the creaking of the stage machinery.59

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Intermedi Sacri e Morali and Music in Religious Communities for Women The intermedi of the secular theater—­Verdelot’s, Arcadelt’s, Corteccia’s, and especially those of the grand Medicean celebrations between 1539 and the end of the century—­provided a model for the use of music in sacred theatrical performances different from that of the old sacra rappresentatione. By midcentury, there was a substantial tradition of sacred and moral entr’acte music, parallel to that of the secular intermedi.60 And theatrical performances featuring intermedi sacri e morali came to supplant the sacra rappresentatione. The extravagant Medici court intermedi, which have been termed “aulic,” were exceptional for their time. Their objective was “the glorification . . . of the ruling house and, by implication, the absolutist regime,” and they were intended for consumption not only by the Medici and their intimates but also by envoys to Florence from other Italian and European courts.61 The sacred and moral intermedi obviously had a different aim and purpose and were therefore different in design. Whereas the courtly intermedi typically drew their iconography from classical motifs, the sacred and moral intermedi were, of course, religious in content.62 Whereas the courtly intermedi were performed by professional actors, dancers, and musicians, the intermedi sacri e morali were performed by the boys of the confraternities for their fellows, families, and invitees.63 Eight of the confraternities regularly staged theatrical performances, in their oratories in winter and their courtyards in summer. There was little of the movement and theatrical gesturing that would otherwise have typified a dramatic performance.64 Giovanni Maria Cecchi was the most prolific and successful Florentine playwright of his time.65 Of the ten surviving cycles of intermedi for his dramatic works, eight are religious or moral in content.66 The most common design was the monologue-­plus-­madrigal type, in which a monologue delivered by an allegorical figure is followed by a madrigal sung by other costumed characters.67 In the first intermedio of La morte d’Acabbe re di Sammario68—­staged in 1559 by the Compagnia di S. Giovanni Evangelista, a confraternity of young boys, the music by Giovanni Benvenuti del Cartolaio, Florentine chapelmaster in 1571–­74—­the character Synagogue appears, chained to Adam, Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Melchizedek, and Joseph. Synagogue introduces each of the Old Testament figures as the prefiguration of the Messiah, after which, joined by personifications of the cardinal virtues Strength and Prudence, the eight sing the five-­voice

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madrigal shown in example 13.2,69 with two voices on several of the parts. The style of the musical setting is the familiar homophony, intended—­as always—­to maximize the intelligibility of the text. In other respects, too, the sacred and moral intermedi could differ in design from the courtly intermedi. The majority of Cecchi’s sacred intermedi feature no action, scenery, or machines (in this, they anticipate the Seicento oratorio); five begin with spoken dialogue; some feature a cappella singing, some a doubling of the melodic lines.70 Such differences between the two traditions notwithstanding, sacred intermedi could be performed at court on the same occasions as secular ones. In 1589, Luca Bati, later the chapelmaster, composed the music for the intermedi of Cecchi’s L’Esaltazione della croce, staged by the boys of the Company of San Giovanni Evangelista to welcome Christine of Lorraine, fiancée of Grand Duke Ferdinando, when their wedding festivities were imminent. The prologue, rewritten for 1589, makes explicit reference to Ferdinando and Christine.71 Although the music for the intermedi is lost, didactic rubrics in the text of Cecchi’s play provide vivid evidence of the nature of the music. In the first intermedio, “Jacob’s Ladder,” the angels descended on a cloud. A most beautiful harmony having been played by transverse flutes, they sang to [the accompaniment of] the same instruments. . . . Having come down from the ladder toward the sleeping Jacob, God majestically sang “My eternal word” in a bass voice to the playing of many instruments. . . . Being awakened, Jacob sang the verses of the following madrigal in a solo alto voice, supported by four trombones, muted cornets, violin, large lutes, and organ, which music—­composed in a melancholy and pious manner—­ expressed the holy fear conceived in the heart of the devout Jacob: ‘Tremendo é questo loco Porta per gire a Dio’.72

Other chapelmasters composed music for the intermedi of Cecchi’s plays. Giovanni Manenti, chapelmaster in 1571, composed the intermedi for a 1569 performance of Cecchi’s Coronazione di Saulo by the boys of the Compagnia di San Giovanni Evangelista,73 witnessed by Duke Cosimo I, Cardinal Ferdinando di Cosimo I, and perhaps Archduke Karl of Austria.74 Cecchi was the favored playwright of another religious community that staged musico-­theatrical performances: communities of nuns, which by the mid-­Cinquecento had become vital centers of the practice. A half century and more after Savonarola’s proscriptions, efforts to regulate nuns’ cultural activities continued. In 1534, the governor of the Convent of San

Example 13.2 Excerpt from Giovanni Benvenuti del Cartolaio’s setting of a text for Giovanni Maria Cecchi’s La morte d’Acabbe re di Sammario

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Giovannino delle Cavalieresse di Malta in Florence mandated that the nuns in his charge not be “permitted at any time to put on comedies [and allow] secular persons to participate.” The nuns were nonetheless granted some freedoms evidently denied the impressionable young boys in the confraternities that staged plays with intermedi sacri e morali. The nuns were permitted to participate vicariously in the life of secular society, which may have reflected Tuscan cultural values. As a result, there was an openness in the convents to a different kind of musico-­theatrical experience, exemplified by the spiritual comedy. Before the early Cinquecento, dramatic works staged in the convents had belonged to established genres: sacre rappresentationi of the Quattrocento variety, one-­act plays, and entertainments that were sometimes called simply “ricreazioni.” Early in the sixteenth century, the new species of spiritual comedy appeared, an amalgam of the earlier one-­act religious play and the five-­act, neoclassical Latin comedies and tragedies modeled on ancient exemplars, in particular, the works of Plautus, Terence, and Seneca. A spiritual comedy would incorporate both religious material characteristic of the sacra rappresentatione and the comic elements of the one-­act play. In some instances the comic elements were relegated to a subplot related to the main plot of the drama, though perhaps only tangentially. In other instances the main action featuring the religious theme was periodically paused to permit comic episodes. By no means was the sacra rappresentatione immediately eclipsed, however, though by the second half of the Cinquecento the spiritual comedy had rather decisively supplanted the vestigial sacra rappresentatione. Like the plays with intermedi sacri e morali performed by the confraternities, the spiritual comedy featured entr’acte musical performances, a practice that became normative.75 An anonymous Commedia di Judit is a revealing example.76 The convent for which the Judith comedy was intended has not been identified. Nor has it been precisely dated, although the fact that its intermedi featured laude rather than other genres of musical composition suggests that it is an earlier work. Scenes depicting the mischief-­making of kitchen servants alternate with episodes from the story of the biblical heroine Judith. Apart from three instances of the “realistic use of music” during the action of the drama itself 77—­one of which deploys the cantasi come practice78— ­the music is relegated to a prologue, six intermedi, and an epilogue after the licenza. The play concludes with verses from the book of Judith (16:15–­21). The intermedi are sung by the Sibyls Cumana, Sambetta, Tiburtina, and Erithrea. “Before the prologue, these four Sibyls—­prophetesses and virgins—­are to enter, all four together, saying their names and that which each has prophesied.” Each of the Sibyls then sings a lauda, and “after the

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prologue the said Sibyls sing this lauda: ‘Noi ci vogliam partir ch’ormai è tempo.’ . . . [T]hen in each act of the comedy, a pair of them will enter and . . . sing their verses.” The role of Judith was taken by a nun. There is particular symbolic significance in the fact that she sings the first verse of the canticle Hymnum cantemus domino to the traditional Gregorian melody. Judith has become a nun who embraces the liturgical practices of the Catholic Church, which represents a Christianizing appropriation of an Old Testament figure now reinterpreted in Christian terms. Despite efforts by authorities to control the record of nuns’ theatrical activity, there are thus surviving documents that reveal something of the range of musico-­theatrical genres favored. From the mid-­1580s date two manuscripts by Suor Annalena Aldobrandini of the “Monasterio dello spirito santo di Firenze” that preserve “Ricreationi per monache”: “veglie,” which could be even more whimsical than spiritual comedies.79 By the early Seicento, a veglia—­an evening’s entertainment—­could feature spoken verse, dancing, vocal and instrumental music, and games. The characters of Suor Annalena’s veglie are mythological and allegorical figures, personifications, and classical deities. One characteristic theme of the veglia more generally was the tension between Natural Reason and Immoderate Desire, which could endanger the nominally celibate status of members of a religious community. The music of the veglia was typically in one of the principal period compositional genres: the madrigal, whether for solo voice with instrumental accompaniment or a vocal ensemble capable of performing a polyphonic setting of the poetic text; or songs “sung like” an existing vocal composition (the cantasi come tradition); or stock melodies that could be used as the musical setting for any poem in a particular poetic fixed form. In the Veglia di Calendimaggio, “the musical canzona” “Canto di Albagia” “is sung [cantasi] by three voices like [col modo] ‘Chi vuol esser lieto sia,’” the refrain of Lorenzo the Magnificent’s secular Trionfo di Bacco e Arianna. Another veglia features the allegorical figure Discretion, who “arrives . . . leaning on a page named Order . . . and sings . . . , and the said page plays the viola.” In both the confraternity and the convent, new musico-­theatrical genres had effectively challenged the privileged status of the Quattrocento sacra rappresentatione.

14

Medici Pageantry, 1539–­1589 “L’état, c’est m oi”

Florentine festivals of the sixteenth century have exercised a powerful hold on the historical imagination. They were sumptuous, multimedia extravaganzas that made liberal use of all the available arts and engaged the talents of the foremost artists of the time: painters; sculptors; architects; costume designers; poets; composers; musicians. They made use of refined classical tropes and inspired atmospheric accounts, engraved commemorative illustrations, and records of the texts and music performed. Though typically fragmentary, these remains often permit a vivid imagined reconstruction. Among the festivals’ visual and sonic accoutrements were temporary works of sculpture and architecture (ephemeral triumphal arches located along the processional routes), richly decorated floats, lavish costuming, the playing of instrumentalists in the procession, explanatory poetic texts set to music, and singers’ delivery of the explanatory verse. A particular festival was usually conceived according to a program, an overarching narrative and iconography that governed the content of the texts and visual material deployed. When the Medici were first restored, and especially when the duchy was first established, the artists contributing to the festivals were freed as never before to be explicit in their panegyrics. They could overtly celebrate the ennoblement of the family. Existing festive traditions such as carnival were co-­opted and reimagined once again. The classicizing tendencies of the last years of the Laurentian era gave way to unfettered politicization; the festival tradition was reaccented in support of the family’s political self-­aggrandizement. The use of Medicean imagery was continually evolving and fluctuating, depending upon the circumstances and needs of the moment. Within three years of the restoration, the themes began to be less specifically Medicean and more traditional and generic, with a renewed use of universal

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classical material. It is as if the Medici and their propagandists, keen to establish a distinctive Medici visual identity early in the restoration, became more confident as their hold on Florence tightened and they sensed that they could afford to revert to more generic festive tropes. Thereafter Medicean tropes could once again become more pronounced. The interregnum between the exile of the Medici and their restoration witnessed some memorable festivals sponsored by the Strozzi family, the only Florentine family since the exile of the Albizzi in 1434 that could challenge the preeminence of the Medici. These festivals respected the forms of Florentine festive tradition and reflected contemporary political developments.1 Upon the restoration of the Medici, the festive tradition was politicized not only with respect to its themes and iconography, which were suffused with Medicean conceits; the entire tradition was appropriated by the Medici as an instrument in a conscious program of aristocratization. The frequency of the festivals greatly accelerated, and their artistic provisions were greatly enriched. The Medici never failed to exploit a suitable opportunity. Concentrating on music for public festivals in honor of the Medici and for their private entertainment is not to suggest that no other such music was composed and performed in Cinquecento Florence. It is simply a function of the fuller written record, given the social and political status of the Medici. And although the greater number of the descriptions of such festivals are of Florentine performances, they were no more frequent in Florence than elsewhere, or necessarily more splendid. The explanation is rather that the Medici—­ever anxious for legitimation of their tenuous, newfound noble status—­more often encouraged such descriptions, published and unpublished.2 With the inventive presentation of the grand dukes as the human embodiment of Florence, what had been the music of Medici private experience in the Quattrocento now became a crucial element in the family’s ongoing program of ennoblement. The leveraging of festivals toward the glorification of the Medici is evident as early as the 1513 carnival, the first since the Medici restoration of September 1512. Of the two companies of patricians that assumed responsibility, one was under the direction of Lorenzo the Magnificent’s son Giuliano, the other under the direction of the younger Lorenzo, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent’s son Piero. The statutes of Lorenzo’s Company of the Broncone (Laurel Branch) enumerated protocols designed “to give pleasure to the city.”3 Documentary evidence of the 1513 carnival is full and revealing: contemporary narrative accounts; extant visual material; surviving literary

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and musical documents. Canvas panels attached to the carnival floats are preserved, not the typical fate of works in that fragile medium: canvas stretched on wooden frames. Two explanatory songs—­texts and music—­ have survived in their entirety. The iconography of the visual and poetic elements aligned perfectly with the theme of the festivities: the benefits for Florence of the restoration of the Medici. The masque staged by Lorenzo’s company was an allegory of the effects of good government. The final float—­a triumphal chariot representing the return of the golden age—­featured a man in rusted armor from which a young boy emerged, naked and gilded. The period of the Medici exile had given way to the golden age initiated by their return; an age of rust was followed by an age of gold. Curious Florentines thronged the streets in February 1513. What did this first postrestoration carnival promise? A contemporary reported that “each of the two trionfi had a song [appropriate to] the program of the trionfo.”4 And if there were any remaining ambiguity as to the meaning of the masque, the text of the song eliminated it. One sees how, step by step, the one age after the other comes to the world and changes good into evil, and evil into good. The first state—­that of gold—­was the most cheerful. In subsequent ages a decline is clearly shown. And then in your age the world comes to rusted iron. But now, being at the lowest point, the happy age returns and is reborn from the trunk of the green laurel, like the phoenix. So, too, a Golden Age is spawned from that of iron. . . . Heaven today renews nature, and remakes the old era into a youthful age, and that of iron falls. . . . After the rain the serene sky returns. Rejoice, Florence, and be happy evermore. . . . Happy and beautiful city . . . behold that the hour has come when you will be blessed and honored among all others, so that, in order to celebrate you for your excellence, simply your name—­divine Florence—­will suffice.5

These were subtler tropes than those of the bawdy Quattrocento trade songs, which was even greater justification for the homorhythmic setting of the text. The spare textures and block chords succeeded as effectively as any musical device could succeed in projecting the metaphoric text intelligibly to the enthusiastic Florentines who crowded the streets. Later that month, there was a performance of a comedy in Palazzo Medici that featured even more overt use of the motif of renewal. This sequence of events would become canonical: a public phase in the streets of Florence, including such traditional elements as a procession of floats with explanatory songs, followed by a private phase in the Medici residence, including such elements as a theatrical performance.

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The eminent Florentine historian, translator, poet, and playwright Jacopo Nardi was responsible not only for the explanatory song from some days earlier but also the comedy, which was prefaced by “stanzas . . . sung on the lyre by an actor representing the poet Orpheus, come from Elysian fields, when the aforementioned comedy was performed in the presence of the Most Reverend Cardinal and the magnificent Giuliano and Lorenzo de’ Medici.”6 Nardi recycled motifs of return and renewal from his carnival song: resonant, profoundly meaningful Medicean tropes. The music to which the stanzas were sung is not preserved, nor would one expect it to be. It reflects the time-­honored tradition of solo song to string accompaniment, which itself is an evocation of ancient musical practice, as understood during the Renaissance. There were other Medici festivals in the period between the 1512 restoration and the exile of the Medici in 1527, but given that they date from some time after the restoration, the tropes had become less overtly Medicean. Moreover, the principal remaining festivals were not occasioned by fixtures in the Florentine festive calendar—­carnival, the Feast of San Giovanni—­but were onetime events, such as the 1518 wedding of Lorenzo the Younger and Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne or the 1536 wedding of Alessandro and Margaret of Austria. Such events had public components but also featured important elements that would not have been witnessed by the Florentine populace: banquets accompanied by singing and instrumental playing; dancing, with the obligatory instrumental accompaniment; theatrical performances with intermedi. The truly glorious phase of Florentine Renaissance festivals began with Cosimo I’s ascent to the ducal throne and his marriage in 1539 to the daughter of the Neapolitan viceroy. In Florence as elsewhere, such festivals were “propagandistic displays by the emerging Renaissance nations,” instances of “the theater of triumphalism,” where “art making was a product of the triumphalist state.”7 The staging of triumphs had an additional beneficial effect: because they were revivals of the ancient Roman triumph, they once more evoked the fundamental program of Italian Renaissance humanism—­the revivification of antique culture—­and Medicean identification with that program.8 The music for the 1539 and 1589 festivities—­Duke Cosimo’s wedding to Eleonora of Toledo and Grand Duke Ferdinando’s to Christine of Lorraine—­was published more or less in its entirety at the time, because of the particular importance of those events, both politically and artistically. The festivals of the intervening half century are attested by only fragmentary musical remains, if at all. In the following presentation, I distinguish between the public ele-

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ments of the festivities—­those that could have been witnessed by any Florentine who wished to do so—­and those intended solely for the Medici and their invitees, assembled in private spaces. In the former category were the traditional explanatory canti accompanying a procession of floats, or Corteccia’s motet for the ceremonial entrance of Cosimo I’s fiancée, or instrumental fanfares. In the latter were theatrical intermedi and music for banqueting and dancing. More effectively than any other strategy the Medici might have adopted, the overtly public nature of the public elements dramatized the status of the Medici as the personification of Florence. Table 14.1 identifies the principal festive occasions. It is limited to festivals for which there is extant music intended for a known ceremonial context. In what follows, I can offer only a sampling of the extraordinarily rich primary material.9 I consider an iconic cycle of festivities from earlier in the century (1539), one from midcentury (1565/66), and one from the end of the century (1589). The 1539 festivities were “the first of the great courtly spectacles of sixteenth-­century Florence.”10 Unlike later in the century, the 1539 festivities were largely dependent upon Duke Cosimo’s sponsorship,11 which may be the product of Medici anxiety about their newly acquired aristocratic status.12 The iconography was unambiguous as to meaning. Cosimo I’s fiancée, Eleonora of Toledo, was honored with a performance of Corteccia’s elaborate eight-­voice motet Ingredere, each part sung by three singers, for a total of twenty-­four.13 The voices were doubled by instruments, four cornets and four trombones, one for each of the melodic lines. An ephemeral arch had been constructed before the Porta al Prato, through which Eleonora entered the city. The duke’s trombonists greeted her at the arch. At the top of the arch were two balconies, one for the singers on one side, one for the instrumentalists on the other. The Latin text of the motet—­“carved in antique letters in the main frieze of the arch”14—­made clear what the expectations were of the duchess to be. Come in, come in, under the most favorable auspices, Eleonora, to your city. And, fruitful in excellent offspring, may you produce descendants similar in quality to your father and forebears abroad, so that you may guarantee eternal security for the Medici name and its most devoted citizenry.

Corteccia’s motet is a superb example of what has been termed the “Staatsmotette”: paraliturgical or occasional compositions on Latin sacred texts, composed and performed to celebrate important state occasions.15

Ta ble 14.1 Surviving music for Cinquecento Medici festivals Year

1539

Precipitating Wedding of event Duke Cosimo I and Eleonora of Toledo

Surviving music and festive function

Corteccia, Ingredere, for the entrata of the duchess Polyphonic vocal compositions for the first convito: Corteccia, Sacr’et santo Himeneo, Costanzo Festa, Più che mai vaga; Rampollini, Lieta per honorate; Masacone, Ecco Signor Volterra; Costanzo Festa, Come lieta si mostra; Moschini, Non men ch’ogn’altra lieta; Rampollini, Ecco la fida ancella; Moschini, Ecco Signor il Tebro Corteccia, polyphonic vocal compositions functioning as the intermedi for Landi, Il Commodo: Vatten’almo riposo; Guardan’almo pastore; Chi ne l’a tolt’oime; O begl’anni del’oro; Hor chi mai canterà; Vientene almo riposo; Bacco bacco e uoe

1565/66

1568/69

1579

Wedding of Prince Francesco di Cosimo I and Queen Johanna of Austria

1568 Baptism of Eleonora di Francesco di Cosimo I and Johanna of Austria

Wedding of Francesco and Bianca Cappello and coronation of Cappello as grand duchess

Wedding of Grand Duke Ferdinando I and Christine of Lorraine

Striggio, two vocal compositions functioning as theatrical intermedi for d’Ambra, La Cofanaria: one for polyphonic vocal ensemble, A me che fatta, and one for a vocal soloist with instrumental accompaniment, Fuggi speme mia

1568 Striggio, Scorte dal chiaro lume, polyphonic vocal composition for a procession of floats (fragmentary) Striggio, O giovenil ardire and In questi verdi prati, polyphonic vocal compositions functioning as intermedi for del Mazza, I Fabij (In questi verdi prati fragmentary)

Three vocal compositions for processions of floats: Piero di Matteo Strozzi, Fuor dell’humido, for vocal solo and instrumental accompaniment, and Striggio, La dea d’amor and Ite guerrier felici for vocal ensemble (both fragmentary)

Instrumental and polyphonic vocal compositions functioning as intermedi for Bargagli, La Pellegrina: Intermedio I: Archilei or Cavalieri, Dalle più alte sfere; Malvezzi, Noi, che cantando; Sinfonia; Dolcissime Sirene; A voi, reali Amanti; Coppia gentil. II: Marenzio, Sinfonia; Belle ne fe’; Chi dal delfino; Se nelle voci nostre; O figlie di Piero. III: Marenzio, Qui di carne si sfama; O valaroso Dio; O mille volte mille. IV: Caccini, Io, che dal Ciel cader; Bardi, Miseri abitator; Malvezzi, Sinfonia; Or che le due grand’Alme. V: Malvezzi, Io, che l’onde raffreno; E noi, con questa bella diva; Godi, Coppia Reale; Che vede uscir da voi; E discacciar dal mondo; Onde farà ritorno; Sinfonia, Lieti solcando il mare; Peri, Dunque fra torbide onde. VI: Malvezzi, Dal vago e bel sereno; O quale, O qual risplende; O fortunato giorno; Cavalieri, Godi, turba mortal; O che nuovo miracolo

1569 Visit to Florence of Johanna’s brother Karl, Archduke of Austria

1569 Striggio, Noi qui nove sorelle, polyphonic vocal composition for a procession of floats (fragmentary) Striggio, five polyphonic vocal compositions functioning as intermedi for Cini, La vedova (all fragmentary): Lasciate il tristo Averno; Levian tante contese; O che strano scompiglio; Ombre del oscuro abisso; and Ombre tornate in giuso Rinaldo Bruni (?), Si avessi tantillo di speranza, vocal composition for soloist and instrumental accompaniment functioning as the realistic use of music in the comedy

1589

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Further elements enriched the corpus of Medicean tropes and conceits. One of the banquets (6 July 1539, given in the second courtyard of Palazzo Medici) featured choruses of allegorical characters representing the major cities of Tuscany—­subject cities of Florence, in effect: Arezzo, Cortona, Pistoia, Volterra—­each of which sang a madrigal, still extant, in honor of the duke and duchess, all composed by musicians in either Florentine or Leonine service. Music for the Medici family had become music of the state; family was state.16 After a second banquet (9 July, in the galleries of the first courtyard of Palazzo Medici), there were madrigalian intermedi for Antonio Landi’s comedy Il Commodo, staged in the second courtyard, all the madrigals composed by Corteccia, and all extant. Theatrical uses of music performed in the privacy of the Medici residences on crucial occasions in the lives of the dukes and grand dukes were exceptionally important in the history of music in Florence, and, indeed, in Italy and even western Europe as a whole. But their importance can be exaggerated, and has been. Although the Florentine intermedi are the ones about which most has been written, they were atypical, staged only on special occasions such as weddings, baptisms, or visits of noble guests, when all available artistic means were deployed and all relevant artistic talents engaged. The intermedi featured mythological material and are characterized by a refined classicism, erudite allusions, and Neoplatonic imagery, as well as lavish costuming, stage sets, and music. They are well known because they elicited reports that offer detailed descriptions and explanations. The theatrical intermedi performed during Landi’s Il Commodo were on texts by Giovambattista Strozzi il Vecchio.17 A temporary stage had been constructed at the north end of the courtyard.18 The intermedi were apparenti: performed scenically. And they were an example of entrusting responsibility to them for signaling the passage of time between one act and the next. Bastiano da Sangallo’s stage machinery enhanced the effect. Affixed to an arch located behind the houses of the set was a lantern, in front of which was a glass globe filled with water and encircled by a corona representing the rays of the sun. To simulate the rising and setting of the sun, the lantern and globe were first raised on one side of the arch and then lowered on the other. The entire action of the play occurred within a single day, fulfilling the Aristotelian dramaturgical imperative of the unity of time.19 The themes of the intermedi served the same purpose: “To demonstrate that evening was already coming, eight hunting nymphs passed through the scene, singing.” The beginning and end of the day during which the action takes place were further symbolized by Dawn and Night, who sang

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the first and last intermedi respectively. In violation of the Aristotelian unity of place, Bastiano also seems to have anticipated a later Cinquecento development: changes of set. Although no actual set changes took place in 1539, the second and third intermedi were performed in a trench located in the space between the stage and the courtyard, decorated like “a capacious canal, painted inside and out in such a way that it would seem to be the Arno.”20 A soloist was featured in the first, third, and sixth intermedi, but the music was densely polyphonic, the soloist singing to the accompaniment of an instrumental consort that provided a rich contrapuntal background. In the fourth intermedio, the soloist himself played the accompaniment on a violone:21 “Oh beautiful years of gold, for four voices, played at the end of the third act by Sileno, with a violone playing all the parts and [the soloist] singing the soprano.”22 Given that solo song occurs in a theatrical context, here, too, one might be (and has been) inclined to interpret these intermedi as precursors to opera. But the style is entirely different. It exemplifies the more general practice of substituting instruments for voices, partly or entirely, in the lower lines of a contrapuntal texture. The style does not differ appreciably from that of all-­vocal performances of polyphonic compositions.23 Corteccia achieved an attractive variety in instrumental color (winds, strings, and keyboard) and in the disposition of the performing resources, both vocal and instrumental. Through such means, he expressed the distinctive mood and meaning of each text. In the intermedio Vientene, almo riposo, Night sings to the accompaniment of four trombones. In his search for sonic variety, Corteccia thus momentarily departed from the four-­part vocal ensemble that had sung the intermedi in earlier cycles,24 although he was to return to it in 1544 with the intermedi for Il furto.25 By the mid-­1540s, music for carnival was featuring a bolder, more ambitious compositional design. In 1546, “the most illustr[ious] Don Francesco (firstborn of his Most Excellent Lord) sent forth the triumph, . . . the canzone well sung in the public venues.” The torchbearers carried three hundred torches, and the canto began with four voices, then expanded to eight, twelve, and finally fifteen.26 Later that carnival season, “a most beautiful comedy by Vittorio de’ Pucci, titled The Astrologer, was performed for the ducal banquet, with intermedi of heavenly music.”27 Among the intermedi may have been Corteccia’s Mascherata d’astrologi, from his Secondo Libro de’ Madrigali (1547).28 Thus was inaugurated a series of “spectacles [in which] mythology normally played an important . . . role.”29 The celebrations of 1565–­66 were for the 1565 wedding of Prince Francesco to Johanna of Austria.30 The wedding ceremony itself took place at

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the Duomo on 18 December. On Christmas Day were a banquet with after-­ dinner dancing until dawn and the performance of the comedy, Francesco d’Ambra’s La Cofanaria.31 Giovanni Battista Cini’s intermedi were inspired by the fable of Cupid and Psyche, as told by Apuleius. The theme develops from one intermedio to the next, with occasional references to some of the more prosaic events of the parent comedy.32 The stage set for the first five intermedi changed only slightly. In the first intermedio, before act 1, the heavens opened and a cloud descended from the ceiling, bearing Venus and seven companions in a gilded chariot drawn by two swans. At scene’s end, Venus and her entourage returned to the heavens, these effects likely achieved by the raising and lowering of the cloud by ropes and pulleys. In the last intermedio the initial set disappears, hidden by a forested mountain. Remarkably, two entire compositions survive from the 1565 intermedi. Il Lasca identified the artists responsible for the literary and musical elements. The concept and texts of the intermedi were by Messer Giovanni Battista Cini, and they were conducted under his care, as was the comedy [itself] and everything else pertaining to it. Messer Alessandro Striggio did the music of the first, second, and fifth intermedi. That of the third, fourth, and final one was done by the master of the chapel of their Most Illustrious Excellencies: Messer Francesco Corteccia.33

He then identified the performance context for the first intermedio. Shortly after the curtain fell, one saw the heavens appear, from which a cloud is seen to emerge, on which a float is placed, recognized as Venus’s. She had the three Graces in her company and the four Seasons. Simultaneously, Cupid was seen, in whose company one saw his four principal passions: Hope, Fear, Joy, and Sorrow. Having neared the float, which had reached the floor [of the stage], these [five] paused while the Seasons and Graces descended from the cloud [and] who, encircling Venus, joined her in singing the two first stanzas of the following ballatetta: Venere A Me, che fatta son negletta, e sola Non più gl’Altar, ne i voti, Ma di Psiche deuoti, A lei sola si danno, ella gl’inuola.

Venus For me, who is made to be neglected and alone, no more altars nor vows, other than to Psyche devoted; to her alone are they given; she seizes them.

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Dunque se mai di me ti calse, ò cale Figlio l’armi tue prendi, E questa folle accendi Di vilissimo Amor d’huomo mortale.

Therefore, if you ever identified with me—­or identify now, my son—­take up your arms and ignite this crowd with the vilest Love of mortal man.

Amore Ecco Madre, andian noi: chi l’Arco dammi? Chi le saette? ond’io Con l’alto valor mio Tutti i cor vinca, leghi, apra, & infiammi?

Cupid Behold, mother, let us go: Who will give me the bow, who the arrows? So that I, with my valor high, might conquer, bind, open, and inflame all hearts?

The music . . . left a lot of room for the lowering of the float and the Seasons and Graces. The music of the two stanzas of Venus’s ballata was for eight voices, sung on stage by voices alone and accompanied backstage by two harpsichords, four viols, a medium-­sized lute, a muted cornet, a trombone, and two direct flutes. Then Cupid’s final stanza was for five voices, it, too, sung on stage entirely by voices and accompanied backstage by two harpsichords, a large lute, a low bass viol doubling the vocal parts, a soprano viol also doubling, a recorder similarly doubling, four transverse flutes, and a trombone. And this was in the first intermedio.34

The music adds a kind of stylization to the texts and has no pretense to realism. To quote my earlier formulation, “The majority of the intermedi that have come down to us make use of choral writing, which represents a metaphoric collective personage.” This first intermedio depicted a dialogue between Venus and Cupid in which Venus’s lines were delivered by a chorus of eight voices and Cupid’s by a chorus of five, although this artifice is somewhat justified by the fact that Venus was accompanied by the three Graces and four Seasons, for a total of eight voices, and Cupid by “his four principal passions,” for a total of five. Happily, Striggio’s eight-­voice madrigal on the text, A me, che fatta son negletta, survives (ex. 14.1). The voices are disposed in two choirs of four voices each, and there is often an alternation between the two, producing an antiphonal effect, although not in a way that is dialogic, reflecting the structure of the text. The eight-­voice chorus sets only Venus’s address to Cupid. The text setting is largely homorhythmic. What sonic variety

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Example 14.1 Excerpt from Alessandro Striggio’s A me

there is was achieved by the antiphony, the overall impression attained through the symphonic arrangement of the voices and the rich euphony. The Florentinist predilection for larger than normal performing resources is revealed once more. Accompanying the voices from backstage was an instrumental ensemble comprising two harpsichords, four viole da gamba, a contralto lute, a muted cornet, trombones, and two transverse flutes.35 The music for a later intermedio also survives.

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The fourth act finished, the wretched Psyche, clothed in desperation, gave the material to the fifth act, and whom—­sent by Venus to the infernal Persephone (as is understood from the fable)—­one saw coming by one of the paths, all joyless, accompanied by tedious Jealousy, Envy, Brooding, Care or Solicitude, and Scorn or Desperation. Then, these four having been led to the intended place, the earth suddenly opening with fire and smoke, they seized four serpents and ultimately seemed to disappear into the bloody gorge, and suddenly one heard from the interior (Psyche singing the following madrigal) a joyless but sweetest melody, because four violoni had been placed in the serpents, with unsurpassed artifice, and then she sang, with much grace, such that one saw tears drawn from the eyes of more than one.36 Fvggi spene mia, fuggi, e fuggi per non far più mai ritorno: sola tu, che distruggi ogni mia pace: à far vienne soggiorno Inuidia, Gelosia, Pensiero, e Scorno meco nel cieco Inferno, oue l’aspro martir mio viua eterno.

Flee my hope, flee, and flee so as never again to make a return; you alone, who destroys all my peace: To pay a visit come Envy, Jealousy, Scorn, and Care, to me in sightless Hell, where my bitter martyrdom lives eternally.

In the fifth intermedio, for five voices, was one solo soprano voice accompanied on stage by four viols and backstage by a lirone and four trombones.37 In the search for progenitors of opera, some musicologists have been tempted to overinterpret Psyche’s lament. Admittedly, it is for solo voice. But the instrumental accompaniment, once more, is rich and full—­not spare and minimal, designed so as not to compete with the voice for the listener’s attention—­and the accompaniment continuous rather than intermittent. Such qualifications do not entirely invalidate the thesis about the progenitors of opera, however. Psyche’s lament is, after all, a soloistic vocal composition, and years later, Vincenzo Galilei—­who would play an important role in the beginnings of opera—­wrote of Fvggi spene that it was “very affectionate and learned music for five voices by the immortal Alessandro Striggio, who expressed those melancholy verses with marvelous affect.”38 By the time the new genre of opera emerged, Florentines had had decades (if not centuries) of experience that fully acquainted them with the possibilities of affecting solo song.39 Some weeks after Johanna’s entrata and the wedding ceremony, three

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Figure 14.1 Demogorgone’s chariot, a drawing for the Mascherata della genealogia degli’iddei, 1566. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, Gabinetto disegni e stampe 2672F. Scala / Art Resource, NY.

mascherate were staged: The Song of Dreams (2 February 1566), The Masquerade of the Genealogy of the Gentiles’ Gods (21 February; see fig. 14.1),40 and the Masques of the Buffaloes (26 February). Among the sonic elements were the predictable trumpet fanfares and explanatory canti, but for none of the latter does the music remain. There are revealing accounts, however. “On the . . . 21st day of February, Duke Cosimo sent out 21 trionfi, . . . all different and most beautiful, where there were four orders of musicians with varied instruments and voices.” The costumed were 500 [in number]; and the most beautiful to see was the night with the lights, which were from 1,000 torches; and I [Agostino Lapini] saw everything and sang therein; and it was said that the expense was 30,000 scudi.41

Another contemporary account furnishes precise details as to when the music was performed and what kind of music it was, revealing details despite the fact that the music is lost.

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This was the end of the Triumph of Janus, before which was Hesiod . . . who was carrying the standard. . . . [A]nd before the standard were eight trumpeters dressed in long clothing of various colors in women’s style. . . . Besides the trumpeters in this mascherata were four singers, the first of which was with Bacchus’s float, the second with the triumph of Pan, the third with the triumph of Venus, and the last with the Demogorgon’s float.42

As its name suggests, the Masques of the Buffaloes (26 February)—­a traditional Florentine festive genre—­featured a column of buffalo.43 It was a tableau vivant that usually involved seven performers, the first astride a buffalo. Following were the other six, who often symbolized a particular personage or moral concept and thus were identically attired. The column would enter Piazza Santa Croce in formation, the square ringed by terraced seating in the shape of an amphitheater on which the duke’s invitees were seated. After circling the interior of the amphitheater twice, the procession would exit the piazza, bound for the streets of Florence, where there were street songs and declamations of poetry for the large and unlettered public.44 On 26 February, “the masqueraders arrived in the piazza, and [also] the Cavalcade of Buffaloes staged by the Genoese Merchants, who had depicted the Bacchanti running festively after Silenus, preceptor of Bacchus, who was riding the Buffalo.” At the conclusion of “mascherata ii” of the Buffaloes, “they went singing the song written below, at night, with music and instruments: ‘HOR al monte, hor al bosco / Ecco Baccho si chiama.’” And at the conclusion of “mascherata vii,” “the festival in the piazza finished, the said Mascherata . . . went throughout the city, having the sonnet below sung by the Musicians: ‘Ringratio’l Ciel’ che più non prouo e sento / Nel fondo del mio cor’ l’acuto chiodo.’”45 The festivities culminated on 10 March in the revival of the Annunciation play, whose musical elements have been described. Because I have had ample opportunity to describe them elsewhere, I pass over the festivities of 1568/6946 and 1579.47 The series of Medicean intermedi of the century culminated in those for Girolamo Bargagli’s La pellegrina in 1589.48 We know more about this music because it was published in its entirety, as part of the ongoing public relations campaign by the Medici.49 And the rich surviving documentation for other elements of the festivities—­visual and literary—­is uncommonly stimulating to the historical imagination. The fullness of the documentation affords greater possibilities for a reconstruction of the festivities:

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30 April 1589 2 and 15 May 2 May 4 May 10 May 11 May 13 May 28 May

Christina’s entry; Cathedral ceremonies performances of Girolamo Bargagli’s La pellegrina; Uffizi theater performance of La zingara; Uffizi theater giuoco di calcio; Piazza Santa Croce ceremonial joust procession of floats; sbarra; naval battle; Palazzo Pitti performance of La pazzia; Uffizi theater equestrian procession

There were three kinds of events, each with its own performers: the spoken comedies featuring the intermedi and the actors who performed the comedies; the intermedi and the dancers, vocalists, and instrumentalists who performed them; and the public pageantry—­the ceremonial entrata; religious ceremonies; giuoco di calcio; joust; procession of floats at Palazzo Pitti; and other such events.50 Christine disembarked at Livorno, where she was met by an entourage that included instrumentalists who accompanied her to Florence. On Palm Sunday, 30 April 1589, she made her ceremonial entrata by the Porta al Prato.51 Alessandro Allori had designed an ephemeral octagonal arch for the gate, and “in the rich and new theatre, Christine dismounted, and gazing at the many lovely pictures, she was detained by two consorts of instruments . . . in the gallery above the gate, one of trombones and cornets, the other of Pifferoni.” Located along the processional route were additional arches, the third of which made reference to “the extent and foundation of the greatness of the House of Lorraine, from which splendor issues the Most Serene light of the new Grand Duchess.”52 The unfinished facade of the cathedral was covered by an ephemeral work that displayed the Medici-­Lorraine coat of arms.53 The interior was illuminated by 38,000 candles. There, a remarkable musical performance awaited the bride to be.54 A cloud was made that opened in the form of Paradise, which were the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, singing a madrigal for five choirs: The words were composed by the Canon messer Palla Rucellai, and the Music by messer Cristoforo [sic; recte: “Cristofano”] Malvezzi.55

While the archbishop preached, machinery lowered the cloud from the cupola, which came to rest at Christine’s seat, the singing so magnificent that “it seemed like Paradise itself.” Overtly theatrical touches now inflect liturgical ceremony. On the evening of 1 May were a ball and a musical per-

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formance, and on the evening of 7 May a sumptuous banquet took place enriched with music. Notwithstanding the lavishness of other elements of the festivities, the intermedi were undeniably “the spectacularly elaborate centerpiece.”56 Their original context were the performances of Girolamo Bargagli’s La pellegrina (2 and 15 May);57 they were reprised for performances of La zingara (2 May) and La pazzia (13 May),58 all of which took place in the Medici theater in the Uffizi. A long, two-­story space above ground-­floor vaults, Vasari’s rectangular theater—­located at the north end of the east wing of the Uffizi—­was divided in two,59 the stage roughly half as deep as the length of the theater. The stage designer, Bernardo Buontalenti, had had a balcony constructed over the door facing the stage, and here the musicians were placed, facilitating their ability to see the onstage action. The set depicted Pisa. La pellegrina was performed by the famous Sienese Accademici degli Intronati,60 who continued a long-­standing Medici tradition of engaging Sienese actors for performances of comedies.61 La zingara and La pazzia were staged by another celebrated company of comici, the Gelosi, who were Milanese.62 Ferdinando had brought Emilio de’ Cavalieri with him from Rome and appointed him superintendent of music, with some one hundred musicians under his direction.63 The music was composed principally by Cavalieri himself, Luca Marenzio, and the cathedral chapelmaster, Malvezzi; more limited responsibility was delegated to Giulio Caccini, Giovanni de’ Bardi, Jacopo Peri, and Antonio Archilei.64 With the exception of one composition, Luca Marenzio was tasked with composing the music for the second and third intermedi, to texts by Ottavio Rinuccini, who would be the librettist of Peri’s Euridice, the earliest fully extant opera. Malvezzi composed most of the music for the first, fourth, fifth, and sixth intermedi. Of the others, Cavalieri composed about half of the music for the final intermedio; Bardi, Archilei, Caccini, and Peri were assigned responsibility for one composition each.65 The most distinguished of the composers, certainly, was Marenzio, who, like Cavalieri, had been a member of Cardinal Ferdinando’s establishment before Ferdinando ascended the grand ducal throne.66 By 1589, it had become conventional for a cycle of intermedi to have an overarching theme. In 1589, that theme, for which Giovanni de’ Bardi was principally responsible, was the power of musical harmony, whether the harmony produced by the heavenly bodies in their orbits (musica mundana) or that produced on earth by the accord of man’s body and soul (musica humana).67 The plots, derived from Plato’s Republic, treated the concept of musica mundana in the first, fourth, and fifth intermedi, musica humana in the others.

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The sixth and final intermedio introduced an additional theme especially suited to the event. It featured a dance with links to ancient fertility rites. Laura Guidiccioni’s text invoked Hymen (god of marriage ceremonies) and Venus (goddess of love) and explicitly stated Christine’s expected role: “the noble virgin burns with sacred fire and girds herself for the game of love,” from which “demigods will be born.”68 This raw sexuality is expressed in the phenomenon of the dance itself, which from time immemorial has had such resonances. By 1589, variety within thematic unity had become normative. Such variety was achieved by inventive mechanical transformations carried out under the viewers’ eyes.69 The intermedi were so rich in their musical element that it is impossible to do justice to them here. I offer only a few examples of the kind of music employed and important innovations in compositional technique.70 To instrumental fanfares, the grand duke and duchess entered the theater and took their seats.71 The performance began. According to custom, the first of the six intermedi was performed before the play, the second between acts 1 and 2, the third between acts 2 and 3, and so on. The first intermedio began with a solo song by the Dorian Harmony, From the Highest Spheres, likely composed by Antonio Archilei, and sung by his wife, Vittoria, seated on a cloud, “she playing a leuto grosso accompanied by two chitarroni.” But although it refers to the Greek theory of music (and, indeed, contains the only explicit such reference in the entire cycle), there was no antiquarian attempt made to represent the ancient mode.72 After the cloud had risen out of sight, the sky opened, and “up there, as well as down on earth, a melody arose, so much sweeter than any that had ever been heard . . . that it seemed to belong to Paradise.” This, too, was a reference to the Boëthian tripartition of music. Cosmic harmony—­ musica mundana, represented by the singing of Vittoria Archilei—­was now echoed by musica organica or instrumentalis: terrestrial music, represented by Malvezzi’s sinfonia. The . . . symphony was performed with . . . [two lire, two harps, a large lute, a chitarrone, a bass, and a sub-­bass viol] and in addition in the open sky . . . six lutes, three large and three small, a psaltery, a bass-­viol with three tenor viols, four trombones, a cornetta, a transverse flute, a zither, a mandola, and a sopranino di viola played most excellently by Alessandro Striggio.73

The third intermedio featured the lament of the people of Delphi, threatened by a serpent (Python). Their appeal to Jupiter suggests yet another

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Figure 14.2 Agostino Carracci, Python and Apollo, 1589. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1926 (26.70.4 [33]). Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Scala / Art Resource, NY.

Renaissance venture in synthesizing the twin legacies of the ancient Mediterranean world. Might Jupiter have heard our desperate crying? . . . O father, King of Heaven [“O padre, Re del Cielo”], turn thy eyes with compassion to unhappy Delos [sic; recte: “Delphi”]: She asks thy help, and cries and implores. Hurl lightning, and dart, to take vengeance for her on the cruel monster . . . devouring her.

The text is declaimed simultaneously by all the voices, and the durations of the pitches are modeled closely on the meter of the text: accented syllables are set to longer notes, unaccented to shorter.74 Marenzio’s setting is madrigalistic in its expression of the meaning of the text.75 Apollo descends and battles Python. A contemporary print depicts the serpent and Apollo’s descent in foreshadowing (fig. 14.2). Dance in the intermedi—­the term most frequently used is moresca—­ had its own plot, frequently a battle between opposing forces. It is difficult to determine when dancing morphs into fast and elegant fencing

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(abbattimento), but in both genres the movement was regulated by the rhythm of the music. The duel between Apollo and Python is in this tradition.76 Apollo slays Python and engages in a victory dance with the Delphic couples.77 The fourth intermedio featured a magic invocation that led to prophecies, as well as an encomium of Ferdinando and Christine. The sorceress (played by Caccini’s wife, Lucia) entered the stage on a chariot, “took a lute she had there with her, and to its sound . . . began sweetly to sing” the virtuosic solo “I who would make the moon fall from the sky,” interpolated between a symphony and a chorus. Giulio Caccini’s recognizable style is already evident in the floridity of the coloratura.78 The sixth and final intermedio was a fusion of plot, text, visual elements (set and costuming), music, choreography, and dancing and manifested a particular richness and complexity. “Feeling sorry for the human race, so exhausted and oppressed by worries,” Jupiter “has sent [Apollo, Bacchus, the Graces, Muses, and cupids, as well as Hymen and Venus] to earth” to bring the gift of Song and Dance. The finale to the cycle of intermedi was a dancing lesson, the immortals schooling the mortals. To these words, Movete il piè conforme, the gods descend to earth . . . , take those nymphs and shepherds by the hand, and begin to dance with them . . . , the music of this ballet and the ballet itself composed by Signor Emilio dei Cavalieri, and the words . . . written after the air for the dance by Signora Laura Lucchesini ne’ Guidiccioni.79

Before the dance, five-­and three-­voice choral sections had alternated, the three-­voice sections probably sung by the immortals, the five-­voice sections by the mortals, except for the last and longest, in which humans and gods likely joined together. “All the trios were sung and danced by Vittoria Archilei and Lucia Caccini and Margherita: Vittoria and Lucia each played a chitarrina, the former a Spanish one, the latter a Neapolitan one; Margherita a cembalino adorned with little silver bells.” Then Vittoria, Lucia, and Margherita were joined in the dance by others, the number of dancers totaling twenty.80 The intermedio performances were not the only occasions for music during the 1589 festivities. An athletic contest—­a giuoco di calcio—­took place on 4 May in Piazza Santa Croce, before which the teams made their entry to music.81 And at the ceremonial joust in Piazza Santa Croce on 10 May, twenty knights participated with suites of musicians,82 a ceremony reminiscent of the 1469 and 1475 jousts. Such features of Medicean court culture were expressions once again of the Florentine obsession with chi-

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Figure 14.3 Bernardo Buontalenti, A “triumphal float, pulled by a very large Dragon, with two Knights inside and . . . exceptional music,” 1589. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1931 (31.72.5), Leaf 28. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY.

valric tradition, which became ever more urgent with the ennoblement of the Medici. It contributed to the gradual reconciliation of Florentines to the transformation of their political culture, the fulfillment in the aristocratization of the Medici of Florentine aspirations to noble status. A grand series of events followed on 11 May, in the courtyard of Palazzo Pitti: a procession of floats; a sbarra, which was a joust on foot (yet another joust); and a naval battle, “La Naumachia.”83 Surviving prints depict the first of these—­the entrance procession—­and document its visual elements and the role of the music.84 After the audience was seated—­the courtiers, their ladies, the noble couple—­there were artillery discharges, and the procession began. The first float appeared; then “another . . . , pulled by a very large Dragon, with two Knights inside and . . . exceptional music; and they stopped to sing where Her Most Serene Highness the Bride was” (fig. 14.3). “The Knights . . . first to enter the field were his Highness [Vincenzo I] the Duke of Mantua85 and his Excellency Signor Don Pietro [di Cosimo I] de’ Medici, who were the Mantenitori, who . . . dismounted . . . ; and their triumphal float departed.” The contemporary print documents

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Figure 14.4 Bernardo Buontalenti, Trumpeters and drummers accompany the entrance of the knights, 1589. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1931 (31.72.5), Leaf 19. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY.

the participation of trumpeters and drummers (fig. 14.4). “Finally Don Virginio86 appeared with his invention, which was a large Mountain and a crocodile on which was astride a sorcerer.” In the print, the sorcerer is depicted crowned with laurel and playing a harp (fig. 14.5). After the sbarra and naval battle, the day’s festivities ended at around 2:00 a.m. with celebratory music. Finally, on 28 May, “a company of noble Florentine youths” staged an equestrian procession, which featured a high float on which Neptune was seated, the float drawn by four horses and twenty-­four mounted river gods. The procession, which departed from the grand ducal stables, was accompanied by torchbearers and musicians and paused at the houses of prominent gentlewomen to sing explanatory songs that decoded the conceit, that the waters of the earth had come to pay tribute to the grand duchess.87 After the 1589 festivities, many of the musicians engaged for the event gradually dispersed and sought and secured employment elsewhere as posts at Ferdinando’s court were eliminated. Marenzio was removed from the grand ducal payroll and returned to Rome.88 A new phase began in

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Figure 14.5 Bernardo Buontalenti, Astride a crocodile, a sorcerer plays a harp, 1589. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1931 (31.72.5), Leaf 24. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY.

the history of music for the theater at the Medici court. That phase would witness the birth of opera. In 1589, the overall musical effect was the product of extended periods of instrumental and vocal color, alternating with long intervals when there was little to no music. During these latter, visual and mechanical elements were of paramount importance. Music did not yet predominate, as in opera; nor was it yet the continuous and dynamic feature it would soon become.89

* * * References to the instrumentalists who performed during the 1589 intermedi occasion a last brief look at the instrumentalists in Medici service during the Cinquecento. One of the musicians for the 1589 intermedi was Giovanni Battista Jacomelli “del violino,” so called because of his particular facility with that instrument. Having appeared among the fifteen Sirens in the first intermedio—­in the company of Antonio Archilei, Jacopo Peri, and Giulio Caccini—­he then played in the fifth, in the sinfonia for six parts by Mal-

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vezzi, which was performed “with . . . a violin played with complete excellence by Giovanni Battista Jacomelli detto il Violino.”90 One of Cavalieri’s first acts as Ferdinando’s superintendent of the arts (March 1588) was to intercede with the grand duke on behalf of Jacomelli, “servitor fedelissimo di V.A. Serenissima,” and ask that he be appointed tenor in the Cathedral choir, then under Malvezzi’s direction. Jacomelli was to remain in the employ of the Medici court and Florentine ecclesiastical institutions until his death in 1608. Within a few months of the wedding festivities for Ferdinando and Christine, he was admitted to the Compagnia dell’Arcangelo Raffaello, detta della Scala, among the most prestigious lay confraternities then active in Florence, whose other members included Jacopo Peri, Giulio Caccini, Giovanni de’ Bardi, Jacopo Corsi, and Marco da Gagliano, all important to the beginnings of opera.91 Like Antonio da Lucca before him, Jacomelli was treasured as much for his good fellowship as his musical abilities. The latter were varied and considerable. He was a composer,92 organist (first at the Church of the Santissima Annunziata, then, as first organist, at the Cathedral), and virtuoso performer on the harp, double harp, contralto and tenor viole da braccio, and lirone da braccio. Florence also maintained an institution for the training of young instrumentalists, orphans from the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Piazza Santissima Annunziata.93 They were placed under the care of the court musician Bernardo Pagani “della cornetta,” detto “Il Franciosino” (†1596), and thus became known as the Franciosini. So that they could provide instrumental music for the grand dukes and their families, the boys were instructed on a variety of instruments. They gave nearly daily performances for the grand ducal family, their courtiers, and invitees. In particular, they played at court at mealtime and also for the citizenry at sundown, performing from the loggia of Palazzo Pitti. Instruments in the Medici collection were loaned to members of the ensemble.94 Two of the Franciosini played at the Annunziata to Jacomelli’s organ accompaniment. The Franciosini figured prominently among the instrumentalists who performed during the theatrical intermedi staged on the occasion of Medici weddings. It was the Franciosini who were dispatched to Livorno to meet Grand Duchess Christine and accompany her to Florence. And Franciosino’s school furnished many of the freelance instrumentalists in 1589. A contemporary described their contributions to the late-­Cinquecento Florentine soundscape. In Florence there are two lads, aged 16 or 17, . . . brought up by Franzosino of the Abandonati. They play cornett, transverse flute, viola, and trombone. Franzosino has them play constantly, every day on the Grand Duke’s balcony and at table.

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They also performed at the comedy which the Grand Duke put on for the [1586] Ferrara wedding [between Virginia de’ Medici and Cesare d’Este]. They do not have a regular salary from His Highness, although they are constantly in service. But they go about playing in churches, accompanied by the organ, wherever necessary—­in Lucca and Pistoia and elsewhere, as requested.95

* * * Six years after Cosimo ascended the ducal throne, the regime initiated systematic efforts to co-­opt and classicize the carnival tradition, transforming the musical element.96 The colorful trade songs familiar from the Quattrocento did not immediately disappear, however. A letter from Cosimo’s secretary to the duke’s majordomo reports on Cosimo’s satisfaction with a canto de’ Mattacini that the majordomo had sent, a traditional canto carnascialesco featuring jugglers and acrobats.97 But another letter to the majordomo asked that he send new music, “so that all these Monsignori will be satisfied, because they scorned the Mattacini as a thing not worthy of them.” Whereas the old canti carnascialeschi had depicted tradesmen, rural villagers, and other figures of such station, the new mascherate reflected courtly taste, eliminating the ribald allusions of the genre. The earlier tropes were replaced by classicistic allegorical or symbolic conceits, expressive of a courtly culture. In 1549, a “Song of the Knights Errant” was sung, celebrating knightly virtues.98 The 1546 Masquerade of the Astrologers; the 1566 Masquerade of the Genealogy of the Gentiles’ Gods, a 1569 Triumph of Honor featuring the Muses: the views of members of Cosimo’s circle who found the old trade songs wanting had prevailed. Lionardo Salviati wrote of the old canti di mestieri, “Just as I do not blame those who followed the custom current in that time, so I praise those who have dared to ennoble this thing from such a low place and bring it into a far more honorable state, even if some have perhaps taken aim too far in this direction.”99 And with the more elevated texts came a more elevated musical genre, the madrigal. Concurrent with this ennoblement of the genre was an effort to ensure greater visibility for the mascherate. The private initiatives of the old compagnie were progressively replaced by official public events, in which Cosimo’s courtiers and other members of the Florentine aristocracy participated. The late-­medieval popular regime, headed by the priors of the guilds, gave way to the de facto patriciate of the late Quattrocento and early Cinquecento, which then gave way to Duke Cosimo’s de jure patriciate, packed with its sycophantic, self-­fashioning courtiers. Such changes in the political culture were enshrined in formal changes in the Florentine

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constitution. With the establishment of the duchy, the Signoria of the medieval era—­the priors of the guilds and gonfaloniere of justice—­was supplanted by new magistracies. As with changes in the political culture, so in the history of the arts, especially architecture and music. Originally the priors’ fortress, Palazzo della Signoria was appropriated and repurposed to serve as the ducal residence. And in the history of festival music, the songs of the trades—­ emblematic of the guild-­based popular regime of the late Middle Ages—­were succeeded by the songs of the trades as appropriated by the Quattrocento protopatriciate, Lorenzo il Magnifico’s entourage. But as the result of his own personal odyssey, Lorenzo then classicized festival music. With the 1512 restoration of the Medici, carnival was politicized, and with the duchy, the genre was redefined and repurposed once more, to serve the interests of Cosimo’s courtiers. As the genre of choice for carnival celebrations, the humble, homorhythmic carnival song was supplanted by the refined, courtly, polyphonic madrigal. Transformations in several different realms of Florentine experience—­social, political/constitutional, architectural, and musical—­closely aligned. Music became a metaphor for political metamorphosis.

Plate 1 The earliest known representation of medieval Florence. See figure 1.1 on page 4.

Plate 2 Francesco Landino. See figure 3.1 on page 46.

Plate 3 Pope Eugenius IV arrives at the Cathedral for the 1436 consecration ceremony. See figure 6.3 on page 81.

Plate 4 A drawing by Filippino Lippi of an enthroned woman on a triumphal carro. See figure 8.2 on page 119.

Plate 5 Agnolo Bronzino, Cosimo I de’ Medici, Duke of Florence. See figure 12.2 on page 168.

Plate 6 Alessandro Allori (attributed), Francesco di Cosimo de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. See figure 12.3 on page 177.

Plate 7 Bernardo Buontalenti, Jacopo Peri costumed for the 1589 intermedi. See figure 15.1 on page 242.

Plate 8 Giovanni Battista Foggini, Grand Prince Ferdinando di Cosimo III de’ Medici. See figure 18.1 on page 322.

B o o k th e Fo u rt h

Music in Florence in the Baroque Era

Cross-­Genre Influences: Monody, the Stile Recitativo, and the Stile Concertato in Florentine Music of the Seicento and Early Settecento

15

Opera in Florence, Act 1

T h e Flo rentine Aristo cr atic Phase

One can give two distinct replies to the question of the origins of opera: either . . . that opera began in Florence in 1600; or . . . that operatic theatre began in Venice in 1637. . . . It is true that the first entirely sung drama of which the score . . . has survived . . . is Ottavio Rinuccini’s Euridice, first performed in Florence in 1600–­01. . . . Equally, however, it may be said that only with the advent of public, commercially-­based theatre, first introduced in Venice in 1637, did the new genre finally acquire that degree of stability, continuity, regularity and frequency of performance—­in short, that economic and artistic “solidity”—­which would make it the dominant form of theatrical entertainment in Italy (as in Europe as a whole) for centuries to come. . . . [O]nly with the opening of these first public theatres was opera transformed from its original condition as a curious and somewhat ephemeral episode in the life of a handful of early seventeenth-­ century Italian courts to its subsequent position as an enduring and historically relevant “institution.” From the eighteenth century onwards, . . . historiographers and critics alike have invariably opted for the first of the two possible views on the origins of opera (“Florence 1600”), . . . The humanist and classicist pretensions of the earliest protagonists in the history of opera (Rinuccini, Peri, Caccini), in their declared—­though highly cautious—­intentions of reviving and restoring the theatrical music of ancient Greece . . . are raised ipso facto to the level of a general yardstick. . . . That the “dawn” of opera should have coincided with the final splendours of humanist culture—­what is more, a Florentine culture—­was a circumstance which, right from the early seventeenth century, could hardly fail to occasion feelings of pleasure.1

Whichever of the two historiographic positions outlined above one favors—­the aesthetic interpretation, based upon considerations of genre, or the materialist interpretation, based upon considerations of the financing of the operatic enterprise—­the opera historian Lorenzo Bian-

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coni affirms the importance of Florentine opera around 1600. Since the eighteenth century, the aesthetic interpretation has prevailed. Opera—­ Italy’s greatest contribution to world musical culture—­began in Florence around 1600. In fact, the application of music to drama began as early as the late Quattrocento.2 Opera is another application. The new genre emerged organically and almost imperceptibly, by fits and starts, with innovations followed by a momentary return to traditional practices. The Jesuit priest Giovan Domenico Ottonelli da Fano offered a taxonomy of early-­Seicento opera: (1) those “done in the palaces of great princes and other great secular or ecclesiastical lords”; (2) “those which . . . virtuoso citizens . . . or erudite academicians perform”; and (3) those “done by . . . mercenary musicians . . . by profession and who—­organized into a company—­are directed by one of their own, as the principal one in authority and head of the others.”3 In Florence, these were not discrete categories. Many operas were the product of hybrid sponsorship. The earliest Florentine operas resulted from academic theorizing and—­under aristocratic patronage—­practical applications thereof. Such theorizing directed the authors of the texts to source material that supplied both the general themes and the specifics of the plot. (Later in the history of opera, such figures will be called librettists, but to do so here would be anachronistic. I favor the term “poet.”)4 In turn, the artistic concept was realized through multiple sources of financing: the support of an aristocratic patron, sometimes supplemented with the benefactions of an academy, sometimes with proceeds from ticket sales, sometimes an amalgam. Although such variety is found throughout Italy,5 the hybrid model was especially characteristic of Florence, a result of the city’s political history.6 The republican traditions of late-­medieval Florence had given way to de facto Medici control, which in turn had given way to the de jure principate. But memories of the republican past remained. The mixed financing of opera in Florence was the expression of the continuing multiplicity of stakeholders in Florentine life, a multiplicity that is partly a reflection of the “illusion of participatory government,”7 expressed even in Alessandro’s oxymoronic title, Duke of the Florentine Republic. The relationship between Florentine court and city life throughout the Seicento was intricate. The notion of a Florentine operatic public is complex, given that the enterprise was ultimately dependent upon the benefactions of the grand duke and other members of his family. This contrasts with Venice, where opera was more of a commercial enterprise and en-

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trepreneurs had to be sensitive to the tastes of a paying public, as well as other constituencies.8

Academic Theories Applied The proto-­academic and academic movements of the early Cinquecento were fundamental to Florentine musical life.9 Academies flourished throughout the century and, if anything, gained in importance. They were crucial to the beginnings of opera. Toward the end of the century, several informal salons and formal academies made critical contributions to the musical life of the city. The discourse of some of the late-­Cinquecento academies is the fulfillment of the humanistic strain running throughout fifteenth-­ and sixteenth-­century Florentine musical thought—­that as a vehicle for expressing the meaning and affect of the text, polyphony was ineffective. Three Florentine sodalities that are especially well known had musical interests: the Accademia degli Alterati, the famous Florentine Camerata, and the Accademia degli Elevati. As their names suggest, the first and third were genuine academies in the traditional sense. The second—­more informal salon than formal academy—­is easily the best known and in many respects the most consequential. But its significance has been misunderstood and, indeed, exaggerated. Even to perceive the “Florentine Camerata” as a single, unified institution is inaccurate. In fact, there were two such institutions, one of which is commonly known as the Camerata. Founded in 1568, the Accademia degli Alterati met weekly for learned colloquy.10 Although some of its members had musical interests, its program especially emphasized literary and philosophical matters. One of the academy’s particular concerns was the function of the chorus in ancient tragedy and the nature of its music, which is clearly important to the beginnings of opera,11 given that the earliest operas are a kind of late-­ Renaissance attempt at restoring ancient dramaturgical practices, including the use of music. Although not the earliest contemporary to do so, Giulio del Bene, the academy’s first regent, relocated music within the academic disciplines, removing it from the Quadrivium, where it had figured in the arts curriculum of the medieval university among the other mathematical arts (arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy), and relocating it to the Trivium (grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric), thus reinterpreting it as a humanistic discipline, serving to move or express the affections.12 This, too, is important to the beginnings of opera, given that the expression of the affections was an important goal of the earliest opera composers.13 Among the Alterati were any number of figures important to the early

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history of the new genre: Giovanni de’ Bardi, host of one of the camerate; Ottavio Rinuccini, who authored the text of the earliest extant operas; and, as a member in absentia, Girolamo Mei, “mentor to the Florentine Camerata.”14 Rinuccini’s participation is of particular importance because it familiarized him with the theorizing that he was later to put into practice in the works we know as the earliest operas.15 Other members included the poet Giovanni Battista Strozzi, who contributed to the 1589 intermedi.16 And at the home in Rome of Nero del Nero, regent of the academy on two occasions, Giulio Caccini premiered some of his initial experiments in the new style that resulted from the discussions of late-­ Cinquecento Florentines, which modeled a kind of music appropriate to the aims of those who created the earliest operas.17 Giovanni de’ Bardi hosted one of the “camerate.”18 Jacopo Corsi hosted a second, more bohemian salon.19 Literature and music were discussed in both, although there were differences between them. “There is cause to view the meetings in Jacopo’s palace as less an academy than an informal ‘musical/compositional workshop.’” But the memberships of the two salons were not as “disjunct” as had been assumed. Relationships between the memberships facilitated an application of the abstract speculations of Bardi’s circle to the concrete experiments that are the first operas.20 The importance of these camerate is matched, ironically, by a vagueness in the evidence testifying to them.21 As camerate—­salons, as contrasted with academies true and proper—­they lack the documentation typical of the academies: the formal statutes, the membership rosters, the detailed narrative accounts of their activities. The fullest contemporary accounts of Bardi’s camerata are either informal later testimonials, the statements of hardly disinterested parties, or accounts that are both late and partisan. One of the most important—­that by Bardi’s son Pietro—­is not only late (1634) but also a filiopietistic reminiscence of his father’s salon. Although closer in time to the activities of the camerata, Giulio Caccini’s accounts are colored—­even tainted—­by a personal agenda and unattractive competitiveness, reflected in inflated assertions. Both of these texts—­Pietro de’ Bardi’s and Caccini’s—­present the activities of the Camerata as more purposeful than they were. These are ex post facto, somewhat self-­serving refashionings of the evidence, which overstate the importance of the Camerata to the beginnings of opera.22 Pietro is one of our principal witnesses to the membership of his father’s salon. In this instance his account is substantiated by others, despite its being marked by the filiopietism revealed elsewhere in his account. He testifies to the participation of Galileo’s father, the composer Vincenzo

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Galilei, whom today we would also identify as a music theorist. Substantiating Pietro de’ Bardi’s account, Galilei himself records his attendance at meetings of Bardi’s salon.23 Pietro’s allusion to Galilei’s “thorough” mastery “of the theory of every sort of music” is a reference to Galilei’s important treatise, the Dialogo della musica antica e della moderna, a reference that Pietro later makes explicit. In the Dialogo Galilei identifies another member of the salon, Piero di Matteo Strozzi, who appears in the Dialogo as interlocutor.24 Strozzi had composed a madrigal for the 1579 wedding celebrations for Grand Duke Francesco and Grand Duchess Bianca Cappello, a solo song, notably, performed by Giulio Caccini to the accompaniment of a consort of viols. Finally, Pietro de’ Bardi records Caccini’s participation. And like Galilei, Caccini himself records his attendance, substantiating Pietro’s account once again.25 Although resident in Rome and not an attendee in a formal sense, Girolamo Mei was principally responsible for the Camerata’s understanding of the questions that were its special concern.26 The disadvantages of their geographic separation are our advantage. Mei’s ideas were communicated to Bardi’s salon in an extensive correspondence with Galilei, considerable remnants of which survive,27 and in a treatise, a formal text addressing particular musical problems, Mei’s unpublished De modis musicis antiquorum, which he sent to Florence.28 Mei was interested in many questions—­the tone system of ancient Greek music, the tuning of instruments—­but of greatest importance to the beginnings of opera were two propositions that became foundational characteristics of (Italian) opera: rather than being partly spoken and partly sung, ancient Greek tragedies were sung throughout, and as the compositional method most effective for setting appropriate passages in the text and appealing successfully to the emotions of the listener, monody had every advantage over polyphony, “the arabesque sonorities of modern ‘counterpoint.’”29 On the first of these propositions, Mei said the following in the De modis musicis antiquorum. Since they wrote choral poems and made melody complete and finished by all types of number . . . [by this Mei means melody sung to regular rhythm], the dithyrambic and melic poets always used verse, rhythm, and melody . . . throughout[;] the tragic poets, though, and the old comedians . . . and . . . writers of satyr plays [used melody sung to regular rhythm] only in that part of the work assigned to the chorus that represented the crowd, the chorus, that is, when it was not stationary. In the remaining parts . . . they used only verse and [irregularly rhythmized] melody.30

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Mei thus distinguishes between two varieties of text setting in ancient Greek tragedy and related theatrical genres. “The chorus that represented the crowd”—­“the chorus, that is, when it was not stationary”—­sang melodies to regular rhythm (melodies “finished by all types of number”). And although the individual actors who engaged in dialogue and the stationary chorus also sang, their melodies were without regular rhythm.31 Whatever uncertainty there may have been about the clothing of the entire text of the ancient Greek tragedies in music, and whatever uncertainty there may still be, that assumption was held at the time by such important figures in the early history of opera as Ottavio Rinuccini and Jacopo Peri.32 They proceeded accordingly. On the second of his principal propositions, Mei said the following in a letter to Galilei, a “landmark” that among Mei’s letters “clearly has priority.”33 What . . . persuaded me that the . . . chorus sang one identical air was observing that the music of the ancients was held a valuable medium for moving the affections . . . and from noting that the music of our composers . . . is appropriate for anything but that. . . . On these thoughts and grounds I began to reason that if . . . the ancients sang many airs [arie] mixed together in one song as our musicians do, with their bass, tenor, contralto, and soprano [this is an obvious reference to polyphony], . . . it would have been . . . impossible for it to stir so vividly in the listener whatever affections they wanted, as one reads at each turn in the testimony of the great and noble writers.34

These two propositions cleared the way for revolutionary uses of music that set the entirety of the text of the drama and privileged monody over polyphony. The inspiration for the first of these propositions was the (presumed) dramaturgical practices of the ancient Greeks. This, after all, was the concluding phase of the movement in European history known as the Renaissance, when the objective of the humanist program was the recovery of whatever was recoverable of classical cultural attainment. In the matter of the origins of opera, it would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of the Florentine humanist tradition. Music for the theater no longer needed be intermittent: reserved for the intermedi, for example, where the musical elements were not necessarily integrated into the parent comedy. In the intermedi, music had been a different kind of decorative element, music in addition to the visual elements, music that contributed to the entire experience of the theatrical performance but was not organically embedded in the plot. In (Italian) opera, on

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the contrary, music is employed throughout as the vehicle for delivering not only the text of the ensembles but also the dialogic exchanges among characters in the main plot.35 Although there was vocal polyphony in the earliest operas, it was relegated to the ensembles that performed madrigalian choral interludes amid the dialogic exchanges. The “unrealistic” use of polyphony of the type we saw in the 1565 intermedi—­where Venus’s text was delivered by a chorus of eight voices and Cupid’s response by a chorus of five—­is now supplanted by a more realistic use of music (if opera is ever realistic), where conversations among the characters are delivered in monodic settings of the text. However, the 1565 intermedi demonstrate that the music of the Cinquecento intermedi was not invariably of this stylized, unrealistic variety. Psyche’s soloistic lament was acclaimed by Vincenzo Galilei himself. One should not exaggerate the extent of the differences between the music of some of the Cinquecento intermedi and that of the early operas. The favoring of monody is consistent with the continuous use of music for the dialogues, since monody is more suitable for setting the texts of soloistic exchanges in a realistic, speech-­like manner;36 it was also better suited to the goal of expressing the characters’ affect. In this respect, the style of the music characteristic of opera is similar to that used intermittently in the spoken theater. The madrigal comedy—­another application of music to drama—­was characterized by “extremely rapid and synthetic dialog, which tends toward a ‘talking’ singability derived from various types of polyphonic canzonette or villanelle, though . . . retaining a more musical accentuation.”37 Moreover, the musical setting of the poetry is reflective of the characteristics of the poetic text. In sixteenth-­and seventeenth-­century dramaturgy, music was understood as the servant of the text, in that it aided one’s comprehension of the text and intensified its effects, as a result of which the poet commanded greater respect than the artisan-­composer. This is a characteristically humanistic proposition and contrasts with nineteenth-­ century sensibilities, which reaccented the relative importance of librettist and composer. Mei favored monody as the most effective means of achieving his objectives. His correspondence was foundational to the discussions of the Camerata, which in turn stimulated the experiments in accompanied monody—­instrumentally accompanied solo song—­by Galilei, Caccini, Peri, and Corsi.38 Giovanni de’ Bardi echoed Mei’s condemnation of the contrapuntal practices of the time in his “Discourse addressed to Giulio Caccini, called the Roman, on ancient Music, and singing well” (ca. 1590), which may be the earliest systematic manifesto resulting from the discus-

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sions of the Camerata. It set the agenda.39 Notably—­and somewhat ironically, given his supposedly austere tastes—­Bardi urged that Caccini “take as a model those never sufficiently praised ladies of Ferrara,” whom both Bardi and Caccini had heard. Bardi’s preference was for highly ornamented solo song. But he seems to have doubted whether a reform of contemporary practices along such lines could soon be achieved.40 In their writings, Galilei and Caccini also echoed Mei’s teachings, which suggests that their experiments were efforts to actualize the theorizing that was Mei’s particular contribution to the origins of opera. Galilei’s Dialogo—­Platonizing even in its dialogic form41—­was “the central manifesto of the Camerata movement,”42 but its “most lasting contribution”—­ “the critique of contrapuntal music”—­was also “the least original because it derived from Mei.”43 As an alternative to polyphony, Galilei had advocated for the tuneful stock airs and formulas for singing poetry that were in circulation in the early Cinquecento.44 And like Galilei, Caccini45 not only subscribed to the theoretical positions of Mei and Bardi (or so he later claimed) but also sought to actuate them. Invoking Plato as an authority, he stated that he shared Mei’s and Bardi’s convictions about the limitations of polyphony.46 The earliest notice of meetings of Bardi’s camerata dates from 1573.47 It flourished especially between 1577 and 1582 and by the mid-­1580s was in decline.48 During the period when it was most active, both Galilei and Caccini undertook to translate the aesthetic precepts of the Camerata into actual music.49 On Galilei’s application of Mei’s and Bardi’s teachings,50 Pietro de’ Bardi is again a principal witness. After recounting that Galilei—­good Renaissance humanist that he was—­“recognized that . . . one of the chief aims of the academy was to improve modern music and . . . raise it in some degree from the wretched state to which it had been reduced,” Pietro continues: He was the first to let us hear singing in stile rappresentativo, in which . . . undertaking . . . he was chiefly encouraged and assisted by my father.51 Accordingly he let us hear the lament of Count Ugolino, from Dante,52 intelligibly sung by a good tenor and . . . accompanied by a consort of viols. . . . Continuing with this undertaking, Galilei set to music a part of the Lamentations and Responds of Holy Week, and these were sung in devout company in the same manner.

Galilei’s Lamentations of Jeremiah (lost, like his setting of the lament from Dante, alas) are datable. He writes of them in 1582 in a way that makes clear that he understood them as demonstrations of Bardi’s and Mei’s teach-

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ings and an application of his own musings.53 But Galilei’s practical experiments did not meet with a universally favorable response.54 They were judged to be marked by an “excessive antiquity,” which suggests that they were deemed too literal a translation of ancient practice, as understood by Galilei and his contemporaries. And although they demonstrated a viable aesthetic, Galilei did not yet apply it to dramatic music.55 Caccini also reported that his experiments were a product of discussions at meetings of the Camerata. He recounted performing at the home of Nero del Nero. It being plain . . . that such music and musicians gave no other delight than what harmony could give the ear . . .—­for . . . unless the words were understood, they could not move the understanding . . .—­I have endeavored in my late compositions to bring in a kind of music by which men might . . . talk in harmony, using in that kind of singing . . . a certain noble negligence of song, playing the inner parts on the instrument to express some affect, these being of little other value. For which reason, having in those times made a beginning of such songs for a single voice and believing that they had more power to delight and move than the greatest number of voices singing together, I composed in those times the madrigals . . . “Vedrò il mio sol” . . . and the like, . . . in that very style which later served me for the fables . . . represented in song at Florence. The affectionate applause with which these madrigals . . . were received in the “Camerata” . . . led me to betake myself to Rome to make trial of them there also. At Rome, when the said madrigals . . . were heard in the house of Signor Nero Neri by many gentlemen accustomed to gather there, . . . all can testify how I was urged to continue the enterprise I had begun, all telling me that they had never before heard harmony of a single voice, accompanied by a single string instrument, with such power to move the passion of the mind with those madrigals.56

Elsewhere Caccini wrote that “this manner appears throughout my other compositions, composed at various times going back more than fifteen years.”57 As these words were published in 1600, Vedrò il mio sol and the related experiments were composed around 1585,58 assuming—­as always—­ that one can accept Caccini’s self-­serving assertions at face value. At last we have some music, since several of Caccini’s experiments were later published in his Le nuove musiche. Below is an excerpt from Vedrò il mio sol (ex. 15.1). In setting the text, Caccini proceeds line by line, often reserving the richest ornamentation and shortest note values (eighths and dotted eighths; sixteenths; thirty-­seconds) for the cadences at the end of a line of text.

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Example 15.1 Excerpt from Giulio Caccini’s Vedrò il mio sol

Vedrò ’l mio sol, vedrò prima c’io muoia quel sospirato giorno che faccia ’l vostro raggio à me ritorno. O mia luce, o mia gioia, ben più m’è dolc’il tormentar per vui che’l gioir per altrui. [etc.]

A I shall see my sun; before I die I shall see b that sighed-­for day B that makes your rays return to me. a O my light, o my joy, C to me torment with you is sweeter c than joy with another.

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The alignment of Caccini’s music with his stated objectives in composing it is obvious, always assuming, of course, that his statements were not spawned ex post facto as justification for his practical experiments.59 However one judges the veracity of Caccini’s account, Vedrò il mio sol indeed features “a single voice, accompanied by a single string instrument,” that instrument playing “the inner parts on the instrument to express some affect,” “these being of little other value.”60 The inner voices of the traditional complex of four were thus held to have little importance other than expressing the song’s affect. This is a challenge to the precepts of polyphony, since it privileges the superius and bassus and denies equivalent status to the altus and tenor, a status seen in any number of Cinquecento polyphonic compositions, whether Corteccia’s Latin-­texted motets or Striggio’s Italian-­texted polyphonic madrigals. Caccini’s compositional method in Vedrò il mio sol exemplifies his principles. The texture is essentially reduced to two lines: a vocal superius, drenched with ornaments, which may reflect Caccini’s experience as a solo singer,61 and an instrumental bassus, whose longer note values (whole, half, and quarter notes, with occasional shorter values) contrast with the shorter values of the superius. The slow-­moving bassus part is continuous: the famous basso continuo, which contrasts with the discontinuous bassus in polyphonic compositions, where the bass is sometimes present, sometimes absent, depending upon its role at a particular moment in the composition. The inner voices are not eliminated altogether, however. Caccini reduces them to a minimum, the exact pitches and rhythms unspecified, the notation only a schematic indication as to what those pitches and rhythms might be, the realization dependent upon intermittent arabic numerals that suggested what chords the instrumentalist might improvise above the notated bassus. The bassus (provided) and the altus and tenor (furnished in performance) give a substructure for the vocal superius, an unobtrusive accompaniment that foregrounds the voice and showcases its ornamentation. There were precedents for Caccini’s innovations. There was a long history in Florentine (and Italian) musical culture of solo song to (spare) instrumental accompaniment,62 as we have seen many times. This is not to deny the distinctiveness and effectiveness of Caccini’s refashioning of the practice. Rather, it is to contextualize it properly within the long tradition of widely diffused practices from which he drew inspiration.63 Although Caccini’s own claims were self-­aggrandizing, and the accounts of the achievements of Bardi’s camerata almost exclusively Florentine in origin and self-­promoting, an account of Caccini’s accomplishments from

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outside Florence is laudatory. Vincenzo Giustiniani wrote that “Giulio Romano [Caccini] and Giuseppino [Cenci] were those . . . who were almost the inventors [of recitative style], or at least they gave it good form.”64 How did Caccini come by such an aesthetic? He and Bardi had witnessed the Ferrarese concerto delle donne, whose ornament-­saturated vocal style was emulated throughout Italy. It must have had an effect. Caccini himself identified the principal source of his style. If hitherto I have not put forth to the view of the world those fruits of my music studies employed about that noble manner of singing . . . I learned of my master, the famous Scipione della Palla, nor my compositions of airs, composed by me at different times, . . . this has proceeded from my not esteeming them.65

Caccini’s teacher Scipione66 had had substantial experience in Naples, where he would have become conversant with the canzona napolitana alla villanesca, a genre distinguished by the tunefulness of its melodies. And although polyphonic in their conception, canzone napolitane were always susceptible to refashioning, where they were recast for solo voice and a plucked-­string instrument. Compositions in the Neapolitan repertory could be refashioned in another way: an embellished version of one of the arias in the sole known source of della Palla’s music gives a sense of the kind of lush elaboration of the melodic line that Neapolitan singers could practice.67 Neapolitan musical tradition featured another melodic style, “midway between singing and reciting.” These two contrasting aesthetics have been called the “cantillational style” versus the “recitational,” or the “tuneful dialectical” style versus the “formulaic.”68 These are among the most important musical practices della Palla might have imparted to Caccini.69 However, Caccini made different poetic choices from those of the typical napolitana, so that his compositions would not be indiscriminately grouped with the fashionable, frivolous canzonette di parole vili. He opted for the more intellectually substantive verse of Jacopo Sannazzaro, Ottavio Rinuccini, Gabriello Chiabrera, and Giovanni Battista Guarini, poetic choices consistent with Florentine tradition.70 Caccini can easily have studied with della Palla in Florence. Caccini is known to have been there as of 1565.71 Della Palla contributed to the celebrations for the baptism of Prince Francesco’s daughter, Eleonora, in 156872 and was in the employ of Francesco’s sister Isabella, who shared a passion for napolitane with her mother Eleonora. And in 1567 the Medici ambassador to the court of Ferrara wrote to Prince Francesco to report that “Orlando di Lassus . . . has . . . given certain of his printed madri-

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gals to the Signor duke [of Bavaria]. . . . I . . . send . . . Your Most Illustrious Excellency one of the volumes he has given me, which—­‘concertati’ [i.e., arranged for voice and instrumental accompaniment] with Scipione and Spina—­will delight your Most Illustrious Excellency.”73 Here again polyphonic compositions could be redacted for performance by a voice or voices and instrumental accompaniment. Duke Cosimo I may have had in mind precisely the kind of music described when he requested the services of a boy soprano for the intermedi for La Cofanaria (1565). He sought a singer with “a beautiful voice and good grace in singing with embellishments in the Neapolitan manner.” The singer eventually identified for him was Giulio Caccini.74 Of course, one need not attribute Caccini’s conversance with Neapolitan musical tradition directly or exclusively to della Palla’s influence. Political and cultural interrelationships between Naples and Florence could have afforded Caccini opportunities to become conversant with the models he emulated. In Pirrotta’s words, “In order to realize his . . . ideal, Caccini knows no other way than to ennoble the solo song of the [Neapolitan] villanelle while keeping in it that freshness of execution, particular to his spontaneous executions.”75 Florentine monody was nonetheless distinctive. Though subject to the influences described here, Caccini forged his own aesthetic, which was somewhat independent of them.76 Among Caccini’s distinctive contributions was his exercise of the composer’s prerogatives with respect to the ornamentation he intended—­which he carefully described and sought to control—­and the character of the bass line, the reduction of the texture to the vocal superius and instrumental bassus: the basso continuo. Indeed, it has been suggested that the foundational technical feature of the new style lay less in the character of the melody, which was somewhat indebted to established practices, than in the basso continuo, which permits the vocalist’s singing to be highlighted and the melodic properties of the vocal line easily apprehended. The basso continuo provided the vocal melody with a congruent rhythmic and tonal substructure. When accompanying himself, and as justified by the expressive exigencies of the text, the soloist was then enabled—­even obliged—­to elaborate upon the harmonic relationships suggested by the vocal superius and instrumental bassus.77 The character of the instrumental accompaniment in Caccini’s monodies was thus different from that in the so-­called pseudo-­monodies of the Cinquecento, where the conception underlying the composition was still essentially polyphonic. The lower voices were simply performed instrumentally. This contrasts with the aesthetic of the bass line in Caccini’s

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monodies. In order to foreground the vocal solo, Caccini’s basses were fashioned ex nihilo. Another foundational concept in the new aesthetic was the “noble neglect of the song” described in the preface to Le nuove musiche (or—­to adopt a more revealing translation—­ “a certain noble negligence of song”). This is an elusive, ultimately Italianate concept. The quality of “sprezzatura”—­sometimes translated as “nonchalance”—­is what is meant by the “freshness” and “spontaneity” of execution cited in preceding paragraphs. It is a “virtue opposite to affectation,” “the effortless resolution of all difficulties,” “a kind of well-­bred negligence born of complete self-­ possession.”78 In the preface to Le nuove musiche (1602) Caccini offered some examples: “The two lines of verse on the words ‘Ahi, dispietato amor,’ . . . and the . . . madrigal, ‘Deh, dove son fuggiti,’ include all the best affects that can be used for the nobility of this kind of singing,” and in the example of “Deh, dove son fuggiti” he labels a passage “without regular rhythm, as if speaking in tones, with the aforesaid negligence.”79 This, too, is an implicit criticism of polyphonic music, where every pitch and every rhythm are of necessity exactingly prescribed and executed. Sprezzatura implies a kind of serene disregard for the strictures of musical notation, with its inflexible prescription of pitch and pitch duration. It is this quality of the design and performance of melody that is especially dependent upon the unobtrusive properties of the basso continuo.80 And although the basso continuo could have been played by any plucked-­string instrument where the sound dies away almost immediately, Caccini’s favored instrument was the chitarrone, which the vocalist himself could play, thus permitting an intimate, closely coordinated interaction of the vocalist’s “nonchalant” singing with his own minimal instrumental accompaniment, thus producing a nuanced integration of the two.81 In an amateurish act of ostentatious, Platonistic philosophizing,82 Caccini wrote of the ideal that his singing aspired to express as “that internal grace that I hear resounding in my soul.” It requires an exercise of the imagination to be confident that Caccini’s performances in fact achieved the ideal that one “integrate . . . the written sign of the compositions that have come down to us” with its potential actualization: the alternating “regularizing and relaxing of the meter,” “the delicacy of the embellishments and the coloratura,” and other elusive features potentially realized in performance, for which notation is a poor representation.83 Caccini has therefore been justifiably lauded—­by his contemporaries and successors—­as one of the inventors of a new kind of song: accom-

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panied monody, distinguished by the “sprezzatura” of the vocal execution and a kind of schematic instrumental support, the basso continuo, which foregrounded the melodic properties of the vocal line. The success of Caccini’s practical experiments to the contrary notwithstanding, they, like Galilei’s, were not yet applied to music for the theater.84 That was to be the crucial contribution of Jacopo Corsi, Ottavio Rinuccini, and Jacopo Peri. Toward the end of the Camerata’s most active period—­perhaps even after it had stopped meeting altogether—­Bardi made a final important contribution to the musical life of late-­Cinquecento Florence, the 1589 intermedi. The music of the intermedi represents something of a return to the values and practices of an earlier era. With some notable exceptions—­ Vittoria Archilei’s opening number and Jacopo Peri’s singing as Arion—­ they make relatively little use of the styles pioneered by Galilei and Caccini.85 Not long thereafter (1592), Bardi left Florence for Rome, owing to a fall from grace upon Ferdinando’s accession to the grand ducal throne. He returned to Florence after an exile of some thirteen years, reconciled with Ferdinando, and contributed to a future Medici festival. But one has the sense that he never fully recovered the status he had once enjoyed.86 We come to Jacopo Corsi, Jacopo Peri, and Ottavio Rinuccini,87 figures central to any account of the beginnings of opera. Corsi was broadly educated, and although he was a connoisseur of many contemporary cultural practices, his particular passion was music. He had had the benefits of a fine musical education at the hands of an accomplished maestro di cappella of the Cathedral of Florence, Luca Bati.88 He had studied counterpoint in particular,89 and he and his confrères therefore knew whereof they spoke when they questioned the efficacy of polyphony as a means of realizing their objectives. Above all, Corsi was important as a patron who encouraged and supported his protégés.90 It was said that “Caccini and Peri were under great obligation to Signor Ottavio [Rinuccini], but under still greater to Signor Jacopo Corsi, who . . . directed these composers with excellent ideas and marvelous doctrines, as befitted so noble an enterprise.”91 The importance of Jacopo Corsi’s salon—­which included such poets as Ottavio Rinuccini and (probably) Gabriello Chiabrera—­was that it applied the principles of Bardi’s camerata, which it shared, to theatrical music specifically.92 The participation of the poets was critical, since the poetic texts were as important to the new genre as the music. An often-­unseemly polemic among various claimants to priority in this matter—­Caccini, Peri, Emilio de’ Cavalieri—­is to our benefit. Jacopo Peri justifiably claimed a status as a pioneer in music suited to the theater,93 although unlike Caccini he was gracious enough to acknowledge the im-

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portance of Cavalieri, who was indeed the first to stage theatrical performances with music throughout. Peri’s claim was instead that he had invented a method of text setting peculiarly suited to the task.94 Cavalieri’s aesthetic and literary preferences contrasted with those of the camerate.95 He favored a literary/theatrical genre—­the pastoral—­ that humanistically inclined members of the camerate disdained because there was no known equivalent to it in ancient theatrical practice. Cavalieri sponsored a 1590 visit to Florence of a celebrated representative of the tradition of the pastoral, Torquato Tasso, who was hosted by Jacopo Corsi.96 This led to performances in the 1590s of newly composed pastorals for which Cavalieri wrote the music (none of which survives, alas): Il satiro, La disperazione di Fileno,97 and Il gioco della cieca.98 Caccini churlishly disputed Cavalieri’s accomplishment: “Notwithstanding [the fact] that Signor Emilio del Cavaliere . . . was the first here to let their Serene Highnesses hear such plays upon the stage, his was not the same style.”99 To Cavalieri’s critics, music could and should serve not only a decorative function, but also express and interpret action and emotion.100 At the same time, a performance of his music could have a pathos inspired by the text, as a skilled singer could demonstrate. Vittoria Archilei moved the audience to tears with her performance of one of the scenes in La disperazione di Fileno.101 Because of Corsi, Rinuccini, and Peri’s understanding of the function of music for their purposes and the resultant optimal style, their dramas, rather than Cavalieri’s, must be considered the earliest operas as one understands that term, notwithstanding Warren Kirkendale’s opposing argument. Kirkendale makes a case for Cavalieri because his later theatrical works used music throughout. But whether they qualify as “operas” depends upon one’s definition of the term. One indispensable condition was met: the performances featured continuous music, the characteristic that justified Peri’s acknowledgment of Cavalieri’s priority. Even in Cavalieri’s own time, however, the significance of his accomplishment was questioned, because the style of the music he composed—­Giovanni Battista Doni characterized much of it as “ariette”—­did not effectively capture the dramatic and emotional qualities of his text.102 A second essential condition fundamental to the definition of (Italian) opera was therefore not met—­that the music be specifically suited to—­be an effective expression of—­the dramatic properties of the text of the drama.103 Because the music for Cavalieri’s later theatrical works does not survive, one cannot judge whether the second of these conditions was even attempted, let alone attained. In Cavalieri’s pastorals, the music seemed to remain subordinate to

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the movements of the scenic action and the choreography, a use of music reminiscent of the Cinquecento intermedi, whereas for Rinuccini and Peri the principal goal was the expression in song of poignant emotional states, even if—­for variety and contrast—­it was embedded in a plot that also included episodic choreographic and decorative elements. Apollo and Orpheus, fabled singers of classical mythology—­figures of high station, gods and demigods, tragic figures—­are featured prominently in Corsi, Peri, and Rinuccini’s dramas precisely because of the expressive power of the human voice and its effectiveness in conveying emotion. For the same reason, Peri, himself a gifted solo singer, played a central role in realizing the objectives of these visionaries. Of course, the appearance of Apollo and Orpheus also justified singing and countered charges of artificiality leveled against the new genre at a moment when its champions were anxious to counter such charges.104 In Jacopo Peri, Corsi and Rinuccini found the colleague who could best actuate their vision (fig. 15.1). Peri had studied with Malvezzi, and he, too, would have assumed the limited suitability of polyphony to the objectives at hand. He also understood the requirements of a dramatic performance better than Caccini, and he believed that a particular kind of music was indispensable in meeting those requirements. For those moments in the drama that featured dialogic exchanges among the characters, Peri created a style closely modeled on speech, the so-­called recitative,105 a groundbreaking manner of text setting that, unlike Caccini’s, was less song-­like, less lyrical, even less “musical” in some sense. Pietro de’ Bardi suggested that Peri had “found a way of imitating . . . speech by using few sounds.”106 Among the influences on Peri may have been the method of declaiming the text characteristic of the comici dell’arte.107 Claude Palisca writes, “The ancient model of a stage action in which all the words were sung, though not all in . . . regular rhythm, was fundamental to the development of a theory of recitative.”108 And the distinction between sections in regular rhythm and those that are not—­which emerges with the very beginnings of opera—­is the basis for a defining characteristic of Italian opera: the different compositional techniques for setting dialogue as contrasted with those moments known to students of Italian opera (and opera more generally) as “set pieces.” Lorenzo Bianconi elucidated the distinction.109 Later in operatic history, the poetic texts of the dramatic dialogues are typically in versi sciolti: roughly equivalent to blank verse, where whole lines (hendecasyllabic, or eleven-­syllable) alternate freely with broken ones (heptasyllabic, or seven-­

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Figure 15.1 Bernardo Buontalenti, Jacopo Peri costumed for the 1589 intermedi. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale. HIP / Art Resource, NY. See plate 7 for a color image.

syllable) and the lines are of flexible rhythm and without a fixed rhyme scheme, the only established convention being the placement of the accent on the penultimate syllable of the line. For the interventions of the chorus, on the other hand, or for individual characters’ soliloquies—­their effusions of song at moments of particular significance in the plot or un-

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usual emotional intensity, or their commentary, or their interpretation of the universal moral significance of the preceding action—­closed metric forms are used. Until about the mid-­Seicento, these were the standard poetic fixed forms of Italian tradition used from the Trecento on: the canzone; the sonnet. Gabriello Chiabrera and his contemporaries and successors expanded the number of options: the quaternario, a line of four syllables; the quinario; the ottonario; and others. Such strophic structures gave rise to the aria and other closed forms of Italian opera.110 The ratio of recitative verse (versi sciolti) to metrical verse (versi lirici, or lyric verse) has varied throughout operatic history, but the “double diet,” in Bianconi’s words, has remained, each kind of verse serving a different dramatic purpose. In time, the development of the action was left to light and free recitative, alternating with ariette or canzonette that contrasted stylistically with recitative. For Peri, the particular challenge—­the special task he set himself—­ was clothing the dialogic exchanges in speech-­like musical dress. In the preface to the printed edition of Euridice, Peri took pains to describe his method and elucidate its innovative character. Peri held the conviction that the supposed chant of ancient tragedy might be revived in his recitative. I judged that the ancient Greeks and Romans (who, in the opinion of many, sang their tragedies throughout in representing them upon the stage) had used a harmony surpassing that of ordinary speech but falling so far below the melody of song as to take an intermediate form. . . . I considered that the kind of speech that the ancients assigned to singing . . . could in part be hastened and made to take an intermediate course, lying between the slow and suspended movements of song and the swift and rapid movements of speech. . . . I knew likewise that in our speech some words are so intoned that harmony can be based upon them and that in the course of speaking it passes through many others that are not so intoned until it returns to another that will bear a progression to a fresh consonance. . . . This . . . manner of singing . . . is the only one our music can give us to be adapted to our speech. . . . I demonstrated . . . this new manner of singing, which gave the highest pleasure.111

Example 15.2 from Euridice illustrates.112 A messenger informs Orpheus of Euridice’s death. Rinuccini, notably, employs the poetic form of the madrigal, with its free alternation of seven-­ and eleven-­syllable lines and conventional concluding rhyming couplet (“dente”/“ripente”).

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Example 15.2 Example of Jacopo Peri’s compositional method in his recitative

Ma la bel-­la Eu-­ri-­di-­ce Mo-­vea dan-­zan-­do il piè sul ver-­de pra-­to Quand’ahi ria sor-­te a-­cer-­ba An-­gue cru-­do, e spie-­ta-­to Che ge-­la-­to gia-­cea tra fio-­ri e l’er-­ba punsele il piè con sì maligno dente che impallidì repente.

a But the beautiful Euridice B dancing, moved her feet on the green meadow c when—­o bitter, evil fate!–­ b a cruel and implacable snake C that lay motionless among the flowers and . . . grass D bit her foot with such malignant teeth d that she suddenly turned pale.113

Relative to the preceding and following note values, Peri lengthens the notes that set accented syllables, the syllables emphasized in speech. Further, such syllables are accompanied by a bass note and a chord consonant with it, which remain fixed while the voice hurriedly delivers syllables that are not so emphasized. The bass note and chord change only when the singer arrives at a new emphasized syllable, which is then accompanied by a different consonant bass note and chord. Thus “the voice is not

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hindered by contrapuntal obligation to other parts.” “It is free to declaim the text according to speechlike accents and durations.”114 These effects are achieved in part because of Peri’s greater attention to and exactitude in his notation of rhythm. In his preface to Euridice, Peri specifically addressed the recitative style employed for the active passages of the drama, the blank verse that in ancient tragedy (according to Mei) would have been sung without the rhythm of the dance. Rinuccini here used metric forms such as the Cinquecento madrigal. (Although a closed metric form, the madrigal was freer relative to other such forms.) But Peri’s compositional techniques also included the further options enumerated by Bianconi. Alternating with the speech-­like delivery of the dialogue were contrasting techniques, appropriate to the different dramatic functions they served. In setting lyrical moments, interpolated songs, and choruses, Peri accepted established practices.115 The prologue to Euridice was a poem of seven strophes that adopted the procedures of the Cinquecento aëre da cantar versi: airs for singing verses, stock tunes used to accompany any poem in a particular poetic fixed form. The same music was used for all seven strophes of Peri’s prologue. The model was that of Chiabrera.116 Doni distinguished this style of delivery from recitative proper. It was effective in the delivery of poems composed of numerous strophes, such as ottave rime. Recitative proper, on the other hand, was “similar to . . . speech.”117 Further, reflective choruses were set by Peri as polyphonic madrigals of the Cinquecento variety. Although metrically regular, they lacked the rhythm of dance (e.g., “Poi che gl’eterni imperi”). On the other hand, Rinuccini used closed metric and strophic forms (ordinarily canzonettas in imitation of Chiabrera) for other species of chorus, Chiabrera’s forms being privileged because they exemplified a kind of late-­Renaissance attempt at “Hellenization.”118 As was customary, the final, celebratory chorus—­ “Biond’arcier,” for example—­employed the rhythm of dance, as did “Bella ninfa fuggitiva.” The relationship of these compositional approaches to Mei’s distinctions derived from ancient practice is obvious. And there was more to Peri’s solution to the challenges Corsi and Rinuccini posed than the varied means of text setting corresponding to the different poetic fixed forms. In contrast to Caccini’s predilection for the lush coloratura that inflects his vocal line, Peri favored a sparer melodic style that left it to the singer to intensify the expression through a flexible approach to the accentuation of the text and a freedom in enunciating it. Peri’s understanding of sprezzatura—­that “noble neglect of song”—­ also differed from Caccini’s. For Caccini, it was a matter of the seemingly nonchalant, virtuosic execution of the coloratura. For Peri, it was instead

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a matter of the expressive tension that resulted when the vocal melody was freed from having to be consonant continuously with the harmonic substructure. The intermittent, controlled dissonances that occur naturally in Peri’s recitative—­“in our speech some words are so intoned that harmony can be based upon them and . . . in the course of speaking it passes through many others that are not so intoned until it returns to another that will bear a progression to a fresh consonance”—­also constituted a kind of “noble neglect of song.”119 On the other hand, Peri shared with Caccini the preference for a spare, partly improvised instrumental accompaniment—­ the basso continuo—­as the favored means of supporting the voice. Marco da Gagliano acknowledged Peri’s status as the inventor of the recitative and celebrated his accomplishment: “Jacopo Peri discovered that artful manner of speaking in song, which all Italy admires. . . . He impresses in others the affection of the words in such a manner that he forces everyone to weep and rejoice according to his will.”120 All of these important developments in musical style will be gradually though systematically applied to other genres throughout the Seicento.121

The Beginnings of Opera Corsi, Peri, and Rinuccini’s earliest full-­scale demonstrations of the appeal of their aesthetic were the operas La Dafne (1598) and Euridice (1600). Several protagonists involved in the composition and inaugural performances of Dafne left precious informative reminiscences. In 1600, Jacopo Peri recalled that “as long ago as 1594,” “it was pleasing to . . . Signori Jacopo Corsi and Ottavio Rinuccini that I . . . set to music the fable of Dafne, composed by . . . Signor Ottavio . . . in order to make a simple test of what the song of our time was capable of.” Rinuccini recalled that the result was “incredibly pleasing to those . . . who heard it,” an account substantiated by Peri himself: “I demonstrated . . . this new way of singing, and it gave the highest pleasure . . . to Signor Jacopo . . . , Signor Pietro Strozzi, . . . Signor Francesco Cini, and . . . other very expert gentlemen.” Peri also reported that Corsi “had already composed some most beautiful airs for this fable.”122 Rinuccini then recounts that this “simple test” was “given better form” and performed “anew in . . . [Corsi’s] home” and “heard and commended” by its audience, which now included not only “the nobility of this entire favored land, but the most serene Grand Duchess and . . . most illustrious Cardinals Dal Monte and Montalto.”123 Gagliano reports that the inaugural performance of this “better form” took place in 1598, and Peri reports

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that there were performances in three successive years, thus 1598, 1599, and 1600.124 Later iterations of the text of the opera have been known—­texts that postdate the effort to give it “better form”—­but, remarkably, an earlier text has only recently been rediscovered.125 In several respects, its somewhat different text aligns better with that underlaid to the music in one of the primary sources, which suggests that it is the version of the text sung at the inaugural performance in 1598.126 Alas, we have only fragmentary remains of the music for Dafne, and what little there is does not permit an adequate assessment of the achievement, not so much because the evidence is fragmentary as because of the nature of the remaining fragments. There may have been a principle of selection that dictated what was preserved and what was not. The picture one has of Dafne is therefore skewed. I explain. Five of the six remaining compositions (two of which are attributed to Corsi in a period source and might therefore have been among those already in existence when Peri set about to clothe the text of the entire drama in music, as he himself reported) are reminiscent of the Cinquecento tradition of solo song. The music is tuneful and lilting, unlike the more speech-­like effect for which Peri was striving in his recitative. And in three of the five cases, the music is in triple meter and indistinguishable from the light, polyphonic canzonettas of the late Cinquecento.127 The prologue, for example, which is sung by an actor playing Ovid himself, is strophic, the same music serving for each strophe. Each is of four lines, each line hendecasyllabic (ex. 15.3). Only for the text that recounts the pivotal moment when Daphne is transformed into a laurel tree and avoids being assaulted by Apollo—­ “Qual’ nova meraviglia!”—­does the surviving setting foreshadow Peri’s fully developed recitative style. And unlike the poetic form deployed in the prologue, “Qual’ nova meraviglia!” is a madrigal with a nonstrophic text and irregular versification. Equally important is the character of the instrumental accompaniment in “Qual’ nova meraviglia!,” which differs from that in the other surviving excerpts. In the prologue, the bass is more active and uses shorter note values and is also more fully developed as melody. The bass line of “Qual’ nuova meraviglia!” is less active and more inclined to use longer note values. In the prologue, the bass line (and therefore the instrumental accompaniment more generally) has a musical profile more independent of the vocal line. But in “Qual’ nova meraviglia!,” the bass line—­and therefore the instrumental accompaniment more generally—­is subordinated to the

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Example 15.3 Excerpt from Jacopo Peri’s prologue to La Dafne

vocal line, supporting it harmonically and rhythmically but otherwise not obscuring it. The setting of the text is largely syllabic and the melodic line either remains on a single pitch or moves to a new one when the harmony changes.128 The pitch content of the bass line is notably static (ex. 15.4). There are only three further texts in the poem where the music is not

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Example 15.4 Excerpt from Jacopo Peri’s “Qual’ nova meraviglia!” from La Dafne

extant and might have had the kind of music used in the prologue. On the other hand, there are many passages of text without an extant musical setting, where the line lengths of the verse reveal no particular pattern and there is no elaborate rhyme scheme. The act of preservation may therefore have favored settings of text in the familiar tuneful, arioso style. Other passages of text treated as recitative may have been deemed less interesting and therefore less worthy of being preserved in notated form, its features consistent with the venerable tradition of orally transmitted, quasi-­ improvised solo song.129 Indeed, was it even notated? Yet this lost music may have been innovative in its text setting, more like Peri’s recitative in his Euridice. The accident of preservation must not dictate one’s assessment of Dafne’s quality and importance.

* * * Jacopo Corsi had had a role in the negotiations that culminated in the marriage of Grand Duke Ferdinando’s niece Maria to Henri IV, king of France, as a result of which he was invited to contribute to the festivities for the wedding.130 Having witnessed the success of Dafne, Rinuccini resolved to write the longer Euridice. And when Corsi heard Rinuccini’s

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poem, he under­took to have a musical setting composed and performed. Once more, they turned to Jacopo Peri, who responded to their invitation with his Euridice, the earliest extant opera to be preserved in its entirety, the “curtain raising” on a development of almost incalculable importance. Dafne and Euridice are called fables and have affinities with the pastoral.131 Earlier scholarly opinion had held that despite the contemporary knowledge of the dramaturgical practices of the ancient Greeks that was the rationale for using music throughout Dafne and Euridice, Corsi and Rinuccini were reluctant to claim that their dramas were tragedies according to the ancient Greek understanding of that term, certain dramaturgical requirements not having been met.132 More recent scholarship argues compellingly that the two earliest operas might indeed be considered tragedies.133 In the pastorals, the protagonists are nymphs and shepherds and the gods the extras who appear in order to assist through divine interventions or magic. In Rinuccini’s texts, however, the protagonists are gods, demigods, and heroes—­mythic characters—­whereas the nymphs and shepherds are the extras. Rinuccini did not divide the action into acts and scenes but episodes and choruses with a prologue, the structure typical of tragedies, comprising the parados, first stasimon, second stasimon, and so on. The division is reinforced by means of the metrical choices. The texts of the choruses are strophic canzonettas, whereas the episodes are sixteenth-­ century madrigals that progressively liquefy into versi sciolti. In Dafne, there were no versi sciolti in the episodes, only a series of madrigals. The choruses were strophic canzonettas. But in Euridice, Rinuccini no longer maintained so rigid a structure. The number of verses in Euridice is practically double that of Dafne, and the lessened privileging of the poetic form of the madrigal is such that the seven-­and eleven-­syllable lines are increasingly in free verse. Insofar as is possible, Rinuccini’s plots respect the Aristotelian unities of time, place, and action, with one exception in Euridice, where there is a change of scene. With Euridice, the fable begins happily enough, but halfway through the plot there is a catastrophe in the ancient Greek dramaturgical sense, which upends the dramatic situation established thus far. All concludes well, however. Throughout, the tone is elevated, in a noble, regal register, whereas in the pastoral, the tone is colored by the comic or satirical moments, exemplified by the character of Satiro. Even more explicitly, the prologue to Euridice was sung by the allegorical character Tragedia. Euridice was performed on 6 October 1600134 in a space now identified as a room in the apartment of Don Antonio de’ Medici.135 The official

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chronicler, Michelangelo Buonarrotti the Younger, left a detailed description of the stage set in particular. In a noble hall, behind the curtains was . . . a magnificent apparatus. Inside a great arch were two niches, one at each end. In them Poetry and Painting were represented as statues. . . . Between these a forest was seen. . . . It was bathed with a light as bright as day by well-­placed lamps. Later, when a hell was represented, these woods changed into horrible and frightening masses that seemed real. . . . Upstage, through the opening of a large rock, the city of Dite could be seen burning, tongues of flame vibrating from the windows of its towers, the air all around blazing with a brassy color. After this change of set, the first . . . returned, and there were no further scene changes.136

Consistent with Rinuccini’s objective of resuscitating ancient tragedy poetically, the scene was wooded. There was an archaicizing quality to the scenography, as well as its pastoral quality. Classicization in the intermedi had meant that the subject matter was typically drawn from ancient sources. Otherwise, their lavishness was almost proto-­Baroque in character. Although also shaped by the ancient source material, the atmospherics of the earliest operas were marked by late-­Renaissance classicizing and a spare, purgative quality. His expectations perhaps raised by the lavishness of Florentine intermedi, the ambassador from Parma qualified his assessment of the apparatus: “It was a most beautiful thing, though simple in its machinery.”137 Peri himself sang the role of Orpheus. Corsi played the gravicembalo and “Messer Giovan Battista dal Violino [ Jacomelli]” “a lira grande.”138 Reactions were mixed. Cavalieri—­whose testimony can scarcely be accepted at face value, he being too eager to substantiate his claim of priority and his own importance more generally—­reported that Euridice “did not give satisfaction” and that “the music was tedious, . . . like the chanting of the Passion.”139 Another eyewitness complained that “the manner of singing easily became boring.”140 But the Venetian ambassador found the melodies of Euridice very sweet. Caccini’s competitiveness now revealed itself in even more unattractive ways. Although such interventions were not altogether unusual at the time, Caccini refused to permit his protégés to perform Peri’s music and insisted on substituting his own music at the moments when they sang.141 And it was not enough that Caccini compromised the artistic integrity of Peri’s Euridice. He also composed his own Dafne (or so he claimed)142 and his own Euridice,143 which, however, fails precisely where Peri’s succeeds. His music is too lyrical, too faithful to the Cinquecento traditions of tune-

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ful solo song, in contrast to Peri’s, which more successfully conveys the powerful emotional content of the text.

* * * Although the future lay with the innovations of Peri and Rinuccini’s Euridice, in the context of the entirety of the festive events for the 1600 Medici wedding Euridice was a modest affair and in the context of contemporary aesthetic values somewhat inconsequential. Of far greater importance was the 9 October performance of Caccini’s Il rapimento di Cefalo, on a non­ comedic text by Chiabrera. It is understandable that Il rapimento should have commanded such attention.144 Euridice was staged with limited performing resources in a private space in the grand ducal palace. Caccini’s lavish Il rapimento was performed in the historic Medici theater in the Uffizi.145 Period commentators considered the performance the climax of the festivities.146 The grand duke himself, who absorbed the expense,147 identified it as the “commedia maggiore.”148 Although once interpreted as something of a hybrid of opera and intermedio, Il rapimento has more recently been reinterpreted. For all that it retains elements of the intermedio tradition,149 it must be considered an opera, tout court.150 It borrows the iconography typical of the intermedio tradition, admittedly, and would have been understood at the time as a pastoral, in the tradition of Tasso and Guarini.151 And it displays the scenic and other conventions of the intermedio, lavishly realized.152 But Il rapimento is a self-­sufficient work, not dependent upon a spoken parent comedy, and unlike the Cinquecento intermedi the text of Caccini’s Il rapimento was sung throughout and has its own narrative thread. Especially important, the elements of the intermedio tradition that are retained are embedded in the action and not independent entr’acte entertainment.153 As with Euridice, we know a fair amount about the performance of Il rapimento, thanks once again to the official account by Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger and other period sources. The performance began around sunset and lasted several hours.154 Featured in scene 1 was the Helicon, “which, as high as 20 braccia, was just as long.” Striking the ground three times with its hoof, a white horse at the summit caused a spring to gush forth. At the foot of the Helicon was Apollo with the nine Muses and a young girl representing Poetry, who descended to the proscenium singing the praises of the queen. The spectacle concluded with a “most magnificently ornate” float with Fame, who, rising from beneath the stage, was accompanied by a host of young girls representing the cities of the grand

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duke’s dominion. While Fame was returning to the heavens, transported by a cloud, the girls descended to the stage floor, singing and dancing.155 Among the reminiscences of the intermedio tradition were the magnificent transformations of the stage sets in the final chorus of each scene, with music by Stefano Venturi del Nibbio for the Chorus of Hunters at the conclusion of scene 1, Piero di Matteo Strozzi for the Chorus of Lovers at the conclusion of scene 22, Luca Bati for the Chorus of Celestial Signs and the Gods at the conclusion of scenes 3 and 4, and Caccini himself at the conclusion of the opera.156 Charged with overall responsibility, Caccini composed the entirety of the music, except that by Venturi, Strozzi, and Bati, which is lost. Caccini’s music was never published in full, but a few fragments appear in his Le nuove musiche.157 The sumptuousness of the resources foreshadowed the extravagance of Baroque opera in its fuller elaboration. “More than 100 musicians sang, more than 1,000 other persons worked; there were machines of several types dedicated and all marvelous, arranged and designed by Timante [Buontalenti].”158 In describing the production, Michelangelo particularly emphasized the stage machinery.159 And in the final chorus alone, the musicians numbered many dozens. Among them were members of Caccini’s concerto delle donne, established in imitation of the Ferrarese ensemble. Its lavishness notwithstanding, reaction to Il rapimento was similarly mixed. Faithful to the intermedio tradition he had championed in the late Cinquecento, Giovanni de’ Bardi objected that it was not a comedy with intermedi in the late-­Renaissance Florentine manner. Eight years later, on the occasion of another Medici wedding, the festivities reverted to tradition. Although there is evidence that there had been an intention to perform an opera by Riccardo Riccardi about Mary Magdalene,160 in 1608 the music was performed during the intermedi of a parent spoken drama. But despite the retention of elements of the intermedio tradition, it would be mistaken to understand Il rapimento as having no afterlife. Any number of early-­Seicento theatrical performances employed the amalgam characteristic of Il rapimento.161 Opera’s full and uncontested viability as a genre independent of earlier musico-­theatrical genres was demonstrated only in stages.

Widening Applications of the Innovations I conclude my account of the Florentine aristocratic phase of opera with a briefer consideration of four performances, selected because they demonstrate the halting adaptation to the new aesthetic (Il giudizio di Paride,

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1608), or the widening application of the innovations (L’Orfeo dolente, 1616), or the general importance and quality of the work (La Flora, 1628), or the historical significance (Le nozze degli dei, 1637, which effectively ended the Florentine aristocratic phase of opera). Concentrating exclusively on these four performances might give the erroneous impression that musico-­theatrical activity in Florence was less extensive and varied than it was. As suggested earlier, the complicated political history of the city and the multiplicity of stakeholders were such that a number of aristocratic patrons other than the grand duke himself supported operatic activity. Some of these were the illegitimate children (in one case the illegitimate half brother) of the grand duke: Don Giovanni de’ Medici, illegitimate son of Grand Duke Cosimo I and illegitimate half brother of Grand Dukes Francesco I and Ferdinando I; Don Antonio de’ Medici, illegitimate son of Grand Duke Francesco I and his then-­mistress, Bianca Cappello. A fuller account of musico-­theatrical activity in Florence in the first half of the Seicento would be based upon a more complete and sensitive survey of the landscape. One might include La regina Sant’Orsola (1624, 1625), for example, and Lo sposalizio di Medoro e di Angelica (1619, 1620, 1626) of Andrea Salvadori. The 1608 performance162 was for the wedding of the heir apparent, Cosimo di Ferdinando de’ Medici, and Archduchess Maria Maddalena of Austria, who were married in September that year.163 In 1600, the Florentine court had “flaunted its progressive orientation by staging two entertainments in a new style. . . . The 1608 festivities marked a step backwards for Medici court entertainment.”164 Bardi’s return to Florence is among the explanations for the privileging of earlier Florentine genres, as are the somewhat conservative tastes of the court.165 Thus the decision was made to stage not only Il giudizio di Paride but also Francesco Cini’s La notte d’amore,166 which was in the tradition of the veglia, a series of loosely related dramatic episodes interspersed with the attendees’ dancing.167 On 25 October “the major comedy,” Il giudizio di Paride (The Judgment of Paris), “is performed.” Responsibility for the invention of the intermedi was delegated to Giovanni de’ Bardi and others. The comedy owed its success to the intermedi, . . . and . . . the machines. . . . The best part of the music was Cardinal Montalto’s Signora Ippolita, and this was well recognized, for the audience was continually noisy except for when she was singing, when there was universally a delightful silence. . . . The comedy was The Judgment of Paris, to which the audience paid little attention, either because the beauty lay in the intermedi or because the story was too well known to arouse any curiosity.168

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The grand finale, which included a ballo to (lost) music by Giulio Caccini, was particularly reminiscent of the most lavish and memorable feature of the 1589 intermedi. Gods and goddesses descended from heaven to honor the newly married couple.169 The performers of the intermedi included singers, instrumentalists, and dancers. Although the music for Il giudizio di Paride—­some of it by Caccini, some by the madrigalist Santi Orlandi170—­is almost entirely lost,171 there is an extant setting by Jacopo Peri of a text at the conclusion of act 3, “Poichè la notte con l’oscure piume,” sung by an ensemble of shepherds.172 Peri’s music is for a text from the play itself rather than one of the intermedi. One asks, therefore, if his composition was performed during the play or if the text was set because Peri favored it for other, purely aesthetic reasons. By this moment in history, the recitative style enjoyed such currency that it was deployed in many contexts outside strictly operatic uses.173 Peri’s “Poichè la notte” exemplifies the characteristics of the strophic recitative (ex. 15.5). The first six lines are in a declamatory style in duple meter, supported by the slow-­moving bass of recitative. But the three final lines are set in an arioso, metrically regular style, which introduces a note of rhythmic variety. The characteristics of the concluding section—­achieved by the use of triple meter and a more active bass—­contrast pleasingly with those of the recitative.174 [duple meter] Poichè la notte con l’oscure piume Il volo affretta ai lidi d’occidente E con l’umide piè d’obblio gl’irrora Cinta di nuovo lume, Da’ monti esce ridente Di rose adorna la vermiglia aurora; [triple meter] Di sua beltà innamora E le fere, e gli augelli, e l’aure, e i fiori Gemme de prati, et pregi degli honori.

See how the night, in dusky array, Hastens its flight to the shores of the west And with the moisture of limbo bedews The fringe of the new-­born day, Forth from the mountains in laughing quest Issues the dawn in roseate hues;

Its enlivening beauty with love’s heady brews Filling beasts and birds and breezes and flowers, The prayers of the just, the gems of the bowers.

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Example 15.5 Excerpt from “Poichè la notte” from Il giudizio di Paride

Also extant is Marco da Gagliano’s setting of Fortune’s speech at the conclusion of the fifth intermedio, the “Forge of Vulcan.” Like Peri’s “Poichè la notte,” it is an example of music for dramatic purposes that is only loosely integrated into the narrative and thus illustrates the persistence of an earlier aesthetic (ex. 15.6).175 Mars having taken up arms, a wheel spinning in the air appeared to him, on which Fortune was seated, dressed in gold, a veil in one hand, and she manifested her condition and her will in song: “Ouunque irato Marte in terra scende [‘Wherever irate Mars descends to earth’].” Fortune’s having departed at the end of the intermedio, the Scene returned to the service of the fable of Paris, who had his due end in this fifth act, according to the rules of poetry.

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Example 15.6 Excerpt from “Ovunque irato Marte in terra scende” from Il giudizio di Paride

Influences of one theatrical genre upon another could thus be bi­ directional. Elements of the intermedio tradition could enrich an operatic performance, as in Il rapimento di Cefalo. The distinguishing melodic style of opera—­the stile recitativo—­could be deployed in the intermedi of their parent comedy. Traditional forms persisted and were fused with newer

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ones. Composers sought amalgams and opportunities to craft them. An inflexible taxonomy of contemporary musico-­theatrical genres is methodologically unsound. For example, the music of the intermedi for a 1616 performance of Tasso’s pastoral Aminta was in the new recitative style.176 In one respect the intermedi were essentially indistinguishable from an opera in that they had their own plot, which—­“diviso in cinque intermedi”—­alternated with the plot of the principal text.177 The intermedi were titled Orfeo dolente178—­ Grieving Orpheus—­and their music was by Domenico Belli.179 The first part of the text of L’Orfeo dolente has been attributed to Chiabrera, given that it is identical with the first two-­thirds of Il pianto d’Orfeo, published in his Favolette (1615).180 The second part, in which the Three Graces appear, is perhaps also attributable to Chiabrera. His La veglia delle Grazie had been performed in Palazzo Pitti in 1615, and a revised version may have been repurposed to serve as the second part of the cycle of intermedi.181 Belli’s recitatives for the intermedi182 make use of the familiar, slow-­moving basso continuo, above which arabic numerals and sharp and flat signs are intermittently notated, their purpose, as always, being to indicate to the player of the chitarrone or harpsichord the chords he was to improvise (ex. 15.7). After a momentary return to the genre of the intermedio in 1608 and 1616, we come again to “true” operas, such as Gagliano’s La Giuditta, now lost, and his 1628 La Flora,183 to which Jacopo Peri contributed. Because of its quality and importance, I devote particular attention to La Flora,184 the occasion for which was once again a Medici wedding (Margherita de’ Medici and Duke Odoardo Farnese of Parma and Piacenza).185 It was performed on 14 October 1628 in the Uffizi theater. In a sense, Gagliano had been preparing for La Flora for years. He had composed a genuine opera, La Dafne, to a revised version of Rinuccini’s late-­Cinquecento text, which was performed in Mantua in early 1608 and published in Florence later that year.186 He had composed La liberazione di Tirreno e d’Arnea (text by Andrea Salvadori), performed for the wedding of Ferdinando Gonzaga and Caterina de’ Medici; Lo sposalizio di Medoro e di Angelica (text by Salvadori), performed on 25 September 1619 (these two works collaborations with Peri); and La regina Sant’Orsola (text by Salvadori), another true opera, performed in 1624 and reprised on 25 January 1626 in honor of Prince Władysław Sigismund of Poland, this last something of a Florentine novelty in its religious subject matter.187 In his earlier Dafne, Gagliano’s recitative was very much indebted to that of Peri, whom Gagliano esteemed. Knowledge of Peri’s more recent style is entirely dependent upon his contributions to La Flora. In La Flora,

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Example 15.7 Excerpt from one of Domenico Belli’s recitatives in L’Orfeo dolente

relatively uniform recitative style is now enlivened with spirited arias, all of those for Chloris/Flora, which were composed by Peri and sung by his protégé.188 Passages of recitative are also relieved by insertions of choral singing accompanied by dancing. In several cases, these interludes are introduced by Pan, his arias the expression of his amorous delusion. They are among the earliest instances of comic elements in operatic plots and as such foreshadow the vital tradition of comic opera.189 It is not irrelevant that these set pieces are associated with a comic character. Aware that arias and other kinds of set pieces were regarded as dramatically unrealistic, as contrasted with speech-­like recitative, early opera composers sought to justify their use. As I wrote in another context, “According to the theatrical conventions of the time, comic opera offered a more accepted rationale for lyric effusion and was more prepared to” accommodate it. “For historians of Italian opera—­of opera in general—­this question is one of the most urgent: under what circumstances is an aria (or other species of . . . set piece) justified?”190 The music is also notable

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in that La Flora is one of the few operas of the time whose prologue is not set as a strophic “air for singing verses”191 of the type seen in Peri’s Dafne. Among the seemingly traditional elements are the fantastical prologues and extravagant final scenes. They function like introductory and concluding intermedi. A scene between Mercury and Berecinthia immediately after the prologue resembles an introductory intermedio (although it is integrated with the plot), and each act concluded with ballets danced by Medici courtiers, which once again is reminiscent of the intermedio tradition. The last of these ballets, that of the Winds, coincided with an appearance of the Medici gigli, which blossom from Zephyr’s tears.192 As with other genres from earlier during the Medici principate, opera, too, could be deployed to glorify the House of Medici and its texts and music plausibly read for veiled or overt references to Medici political events. La Flora has been sensitively interpreted as alluding to the end of the regencies of Christine of Lorraine, wife of Grand Duke Ferdinando, and Archduchess Maria Maddalena of Austria, wife of Grand Duke Cosimo II, and the (re)transfer of political authority from female to male rulers.193 In the words of the opera historian Thomas Walker,194 Le nozze degli dei was the “grandest of all” “in the constant stream of musical entertainments (balls, intermedi, mascherate) in the orbit of the Medici.”195 Set to music by “five principal composers of the city,” Abbot Giovanni Carlo Coppola’s fable was performed on 8 July 1637 for the wedding of Grand Duke Ferdinando II and Vittoria della Rovere d’Urbino “without calling in a single foreign musician”196—­yet another example of Florentine musical campanilismo. Gagliano may have been among the “five principal composers” who composed Le nozze.197 Grand Prince Giovan Carlo de’ Medici played the principal role of Eustachio. Settimia di Giulio Caccini was among the other singers.198 The instrumental ensemble was divided in two and concealed behind faux partitions on either side of an ephemeral stage in the courtyard of Palazzo Pitti.199 In the ballet finale of the opera, the two partitions fell away to reveal densely populated clouds—­a “display of the whole of Heaven”—­where the singing of the deities was accompanied by two celestial instrumental ensembles.200 As a complex amalgam of the literary, visual, and sonic, Le nozze degli dei is a further example of musico-­theatrical compositions of the late Cinquecento and early Seicento that display the extravagant proto-­Baroque aesthetic. Contributing to the extravagance in 1637 were several “Balletti a Cavallo.”201 “The colossal operatic spectacle Le nozze degli dei (Florence 1637)” symbolized “the definitive eclipse of Florentine operatic supremacy.”202 Florence thereafter yielded pride of place to other centers of operatic ac-

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tivity. The 1637 performance was a fitting end to the glorious Florentine aristocratic phase in the history of opera.

The Meaning of Baroque In most histories of European music, a new style period—­the Baroque—­is said to have begun around 1600, which suggests something of the hazards—­perhaps even the illegitimacy—­of periodizing the past. Rather than inaugurate a new era, the beginnings of opera in Florence represent the culmination of the phenomenon in European history known as the Renaissance, a fulfillment rather than an exordium. For that reason I have deferred a consideration of the concept of the Baroque until now, having made only passing reference to it in what came before. Hereafter, I use the term “Baroque” in two senses: as it refers to particular aesthetic characteristics and values and to a time in European history when they were normative and even privileged. Two important qualifications: such an aesthetic was present—­if at all—­in different parts of Europe at different times; and how one assesses its quality and value is a matter of judgment and taste. The vocabulary used to describe the Baroque aesthetic can have critical, negative overtones, and many of its elements have been judged to be imperfect. Indeed, the very term “Baroque” connotes an irregularity or imperfection, which reflects the prejudices of those who came after the “Baroque era” and evaluated it in relation to a new aesthetic. For those who love Baroque music, its features are by no means negative; they are what makes it compelling. In a case study of Italian historiography as reflective of “the transition from Renaissance to Baroque,” Eric Cochrane wrote that although there are continuities between Renaissance and Baroque historiography, “the differences far outweigh the similarities.” There were differences in form. Baroque historians forsook the ancient models to which their Renaissance predecessors had clung. . . . They were just as conscious of form. . . . But these . . . were no longer those either of one of the ancients or . . . one of the Renaissance emulators. . . . The model they followed was that of the news bulletins, or avvisi. . . . The result was a “pile of bits of information lacking in any distinction between external and internal events or between what is necessary and what is redundant.”

And there were differences in style: “The Baroque historians . . . delighted in strung-­out metaphors” and “the multiplication of nouns, adjectives, and subordinate clauses.” Municipal historians “could . . . simply pile up

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inscriptions, charters, contracts, letters, and whatever else the archives disgorged.”203 If one accepts Cochrane’s principle that “finding an answer to the question of what the term [Baroque] means . . . involves identifying the peculiar characteristics of many different manifestations of human activity over a period of some hundred years,” one acknowledges that the music of the time can indeed have features that are the equivalent—­if one so characterizes and judges them—­of Cochrane’s “pile of bits of information lacking in any distinction between . . . what is necessary and what is redundant” and “the multiplication of nouns, adjectives, and subordinate clauses.” One can find such an aesthetic in the plots of Baroque operas, one of which has been characterized as “feckless” and “really licentious,” a “bewildering concoction” of “fascinating complexity” and a “farrago,” featuring “ins and outs, turns and twists, recognitions and love complaints.”204 One can find it in the bombastic language of the dedications in the printed libretti of Baroque operas, in the arguably artificial design of arias in ABA′ form, with their engineered opportunities for luxuriant Baroque display of vocal virtuosity in the A′ section, and in the chromaticism of much Baroque music more generally. One can find it in the lush overlay of ornament that enriches the topmost line of a Baroque vocal or instrumental composition, similar to the rich detail that overlays the surface of the ceiling vaults of many Baroque churches. Perhaps above all, one can find it in the kinetic quality of much Baroque music: its conspicuous energy.

16

Intermedio I

M u s i c in Relig io us a nd Dynastic Ritual

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Medici had involved themselves deeply in the patronage practices of the public ecclesiastical institutions. Unlike other seigneurial families, they had never established a competing court chapel in their own residences, even after the emergence of the principate. They appear to have done so by the mid-­seventeenth century. For the cappella, the number of singers could be fixed at . . . two sopranos, a contralto, a tenor, and a bass, . . . and a keyboard player, a harpist, and a theorbist, and a composer or maestro di cappella. . . ; because this ensemble could serve for ordinary needs, being able to sing very well masses and vespers for five voices. And when there should be occasion to sing in five or six parts, choosing the fillers-­in (since they do not need to be so skilled) from the cappella of the Cathedral as is done at present, since there are always passable singers there.1

The reference to drawing singers from the Cathedral suggests that the court chapel musicians constituted a separate establishment. Moreover—­ and this is an important revelation—­the court ensemble included instrumentalists, which suggests that the music was concerted: vocal music with instrumental accompaniment. And the instruments could play chords in the bass range and were therefore capable of performing a basso continuo. The court ensemble’s practices were thus different from the more traditional, largely a cappella practices of the Cathedral. Sacred music performed in the court chapel could be more progressive than that of the Cathedral, which maintained greater fidelity to conservative principles.

Religious Ritual: A Cappella and Concerted Vocal Music Concerted music is emblematic of the Baroque. It is performed by both vocalists and instrumentalists, and the instrumentalists do not simply

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double the singers’ melodies (play colla parte, to use the professional term) but perform their own independent melodic material, which thickens and enriches the texture of the composition and expands the palette of sonic colors. Although principally associated with Venice in the collective musico-­historical imagination, the concertato principle had a Florentine variant, though a limited one. Its association with Venice is partly owing to so fundamental a factor as the architectural characteristics of one of the principal performance venues, St. Mark’s Basilica, whose acoustics were (and are) ideally suited to the rich, varied euphony of concerted compositions and the antiphonal technique of much Venetian sacred music. Florentine ecclesiastical performance venues were not necessarily so ideally designed. In addition, there were simply differences in taste between Florentines and Venetians. The liturgico-­musical practices of the Cathedral and Baptistery of Florence during the Seicento display the familiar tension between tradition and innovation. Florentine style was post-­Tridentine in nature, characterized by a restrained approach to text setting that entailed clear declamation of the text and little repetition thereof. In an effort to communicate with the congregation by direct means, the texture was homophonic. The musicologist Alfred Einstein characterized the style of Marco da Gagliano’s Holy Week music as “rhythmically animated homophony.” The music also displays sobriety of expression, minimal use of elaborate contrapuntal techniques, syllabic rather than melismatic text setting, the diatonic pitch collection, and a moderate use of text expression.2 Cathedral authorities expressed their preferences explicitly. They made clear that a newly appointed chapel­ master would do well to honor the chapel’s traditions, perform repertory in the Florentine canon, and forswear novelty for its own sake. But although compositions in the canon were to adhere to universal norms of taste, that did not inhibit stylistic innovation. Several of the composers discussed in the chapters on opera also composed music for worship, Gagliano among them. And several were madrigalists, including Gagliano and Luca Bati. Their sacred music is sometimes inflected with progressive features characteristic of secular genres. It could employ the audacious harmonies, dissonances (sometimes unprepared), rhetorical projection of the text, and chromaticism3 that characterize the Cinquecento madrigal and Seicento opera. A cross-­genre borrowing of stylistic elements is one of the defining characteristics of Florentine sacred music of the seventeenth century. Yet Florentine liturgico-­musical practice was nonetheless relatively conservative and less responsive to external developments than elsewhere in Italy. Who were the Seicento chapelmasters who worked under such con-

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ditions? The earliest we consider is Luca Bati, a talented and prolific composer.4 In an institution where the memory of Francesco Corteccia was revered, Bati—­as both the chapelmaster and a composer himself—­ nonetheless sought to update the Cathedral repertory. From purchases of printed books of music in 1600 and 1601, which he likely approved, we can draw some conclusions about the repertory he thought not only aesthetically and ideologically aligned with the Cathedral’s traditions but also responsive to more recent taste. These are books of Masses, paraliturgical motets, and more strictly liturgical hymn settings by Palestrina and Victoria: repertory in the canonical stylus ecclesiasticus of the post-­Tridentine Roman “school.”5 The sources transmitting Bati’s own music also contain Masses and motets by Palestrina and Victoria,6 which suggests that their compositions in particular were fixtures in the Cathedral repertory at Bati’s time. While more up to date than Corteccia’s compositions, they are still respectful of the musical traditions of the Catholic Church. That respect for compositional convention is also expressed in Bati’s own polyphonic psalm settings. The text setting is syllabic, the uppermost line in the texture borrowed from the chant, and the text treated in alternatim fashion, where the opening of the first verse is chanted and the remainder sung polyphonically. Thereafter, even-­numbered verses are chanted and odd-­numbered verses sung polyphonically.7 This is time-­ honored compositional technique. It was especially Gagliano, the most important Florentine composer of sacred music of the first few decades of the Seicento and perhaps the entire century, who furnished the Cathedral singers with new repertory.8 If the late Quattrocento had its Heinrich Isaac and the mid-­Cinquecento its Francesco Corteccia, the Seicento had Gagliano. By 1610, he “was . . . officially and securely placed as the most important musical presence in Florence.”9 The earliest scholar to study Gagliano’s life and output systematically wrote that he “stood for more than thirty years at the very peak of musical life in Florence and surpassed [all his contemporaries] in artistic greatness.”10 Gagliano (*1 May 1582–­†25 February 1643) had been Bati’s assistant since 1602.11 He had received formal instruction in theology and in 1606 was ordained a priest. In 1608, he was named chapelmaster of the Cathedral, in 1609 chapelmaster to Grand Duke Cosimo II (an appointment made by Cosimo himself, who had been Gagliano’s brother in a prestigious lay confraternity, the Company of the Archangel Raphael),12 and in 1610 canon at the Church of San Lorenzo, an appointment made, once more, by the grand duke. (A canonicate at San Lorenzo had long provided the stipend that was the salary for Florentine chapelmasters.) In 1615 he was named apostolic protonotary. After 1621, Gagliano turned in-

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creasingly to sacred music, perhaps owing to the influence of Grand Duchesses Christine of Lorraine and Maria Maddalena of Austria, who limited secular musical and theatrical entertainment.13 Although Gagliano was a teacher and performer—­on the theorbo and keyboard instruments—­his reputation was secured above all by his composing in almost every important period genre.14 The first volume of Gagliano’s sacred music, the Officium defunctorum (Venice: Gardano, 1607), contains four-­voice settings of responsories, antiphons, and other texts in the Office for the Dead.15 Other collections of his sacred music exemplify the attempt at balancing tradition and innovation. Among the conservative features was the long-­standing Florentine tradition of performing polyphony at the Offices of Matins and Lauds during the three final days of Holy Week, the Triduum Sacrum. Gagliano composed his own Holy Week music for the Cathedral, the Baptistery, and the Church of San Lorenzo. His dedication to Cosimo II in his Missae, et sacrarum cantionum, sex decantandarum vocibus (1614) reports that “these sacred compositions had their origins in the royal Medici temple”—­surely a reference to San Lorenzo—­and among the representative compositions is a six-­voice setting of Responsory 5 for Holy Saturday, O vos omnes (ex. 16.1). Stylistically, Gagliano’s music for Holy Week honors more generally the prima prattica tradition of earlier Florentine composers: music in the time-­honored style of Palestrina. More specifically, Gagliano was exceptionally faithful to local Florentine tradition. He set the same texts as his predecessors at the Cathedral, Baptistery, and Church of San Lorenzo, which furnished Gagliano with his models. Gagliano’s music for Holy Week was the latest example of such music in the Florentine tradition and arguably the finest. His Responsoria . . . Marci a Gagliano musices serenissimi magni Hetrutrie ducis, prefecti, his final published work,16 were the most beloved and widely diffused of his compositions, revered not only throughout the entire Seicento but also the Settecento and, at San Lorenzo at least, for a good part of the Ottocento.17 The Responsoria are a complete cycle of responsorial compositions for each day of the Triduum Sacrum. Although the publication date is 1630, they may have been composed in 1626,18 and, indeed, earlier still.19 Gagliano was followed in the post of chapelmaster by his younger brother, Giovanni Battista,20 who was followed in turn by Filippo Vitali (1651), Giovanni Battista Comparini (1655),21 Niccolò Sapiti (1660),22 Bonaventura Cerri (1681),23 and Pietro Sanmartini (1686),24 the last three of whom were also composers of opera. In addition to some of the more traditional features of musical style

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Example 16.1 Excerpt from Marco da Gagliano’s O vos omnes

identified earlier, the mid-­to late-­Seicento and early-­Settecento Florentine sacred repertory made little to no use of the basso continuo or of recitative style, and there was little to no sacred instrumental music in an idiomatically instrumental style. With some notable exceptions to be considered presently, there are few examples of concerted music, featuring

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both voices and consort instruments. The music was a cappella, unaccompanied even by the organ. The mid-­Seicento witnessed only one prominent exception to these tendencies. In 1651, it was stipulated that at Christmas Mass (and on several feasts immediately following) the Verbum caro factum est be sung by a soprano soloist with organ accompaniment. And although instruments accompanied voices during religious ceremonies occasioned by important political events of the 1680s—­though not for specifically liturgical ceremonies independent of such occasions—­even the most important of them could exclude instrumental playing.25 What of the more progressive and innovative stylistic developments? Although conceived in the stylus ecclesiasticus,26 Florentine sacred music of the Seicento can display innovative touches. Sapiti’s music features more progressive dissonance treatment and rhetorical projections of the text.27 Were they the product of his experience as an opera composer? And a sensitive analysis of Gagliano’s Holy Week Responsory Vinea mea electa identified similar characteristics: an early-­Seicento concern about proper text declamation, and a departure from the principles of the prima prattica in melodic and harmonic features.28 Among the relatively few notable examples of concerted sacred music is the collection of Responsories for Holy Week by Giovanni Maria Casini, published in 1706.29 These are the same texts set by several of his distinguished predecessors. Notably, Casini published two versions of the collection, one for a cappella choir, a second with the accompaniment of an instrumental ensemble comprising first and second violins, viola, violone, and basso continuo. His dedicatory remarks give his rationale. I brought my Musical Responsories for Holy Week to light; and at that time I thought it well not to insert the concerto of instruments: first in order to render them more usual; and then because without such a concerto (they being Music accommodated to sorrowful and tearful words, rather than expressive), they came to appear—­in their unclothed condition—­with a certain kind of bleakness and terror, set throughout to melodies of mournfulness and torment. But its having seemed to my friends and patrons that for many reasons a like accompaniment not be improper, I finally took it to heart to furnish them with [such] decor, so that—­having satisfied with their publication whoever enjoyed those Responsories without the instruments—­I now come to satisfy whoever they be with them.30

Although Casini’s first version of his Responsories adhered to tradition, the second demonstrated the utility and appeal in early-­Settecento Flor-

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ence of the new, concerted Baroque aesthetic. Scores originally conceived for a cappella performance were refashioned through the addition of the basso continuo.31 Once again, compositional procedures that had emerged for one purpose in the musical culture were applied elsewhere. Remarkably, “the Venerable Father brother Dionisio Bellieri” applied the new compositional technique even to Gagliano’s venerated 1630 Responsoria, which were performed with organ accompaniment at the Annunziata as of 1708. At the Cathedral, however, Gagliano’s original performing resources were left respectfully unaltered.32 The late Cinquecento and early Seicento witnessed the adoption by other ecclesiastical institutions of polyphonic practices that in the Quattrocento had been the more or less exclusive preserve of the Cathedral, the Baptistery, and the Church of the Santissima Annunziata. Such practices now also featured the new musical genres and embraced the new compositional techniques, such as the Baroque concerted style. Fra Tommaso Miniberti championed change at the Church of Santa Maria Novella, which had depended largely upon the performance of polyphonic laude. Instrumental music, music for “double [ensembles] of instruments and two choirs,” and instrumental arrangements of vocal compositions now enriched earlier musical practices.33 And in the worship services of the sisters of the Monastero di Santa Croce (“La Crocetta”), where Gagliano served temporarily as chapelmaster, there was a “new, sweeter sound” that complemented the monophonic chanting of the traditional Gregorian repertory. A cappella polyphonic and concerted music were now featured.34

Religious Ritual: Music for Organ Discussion of Casini’s concerted sacred music leads to a consideration of him as organist. Throughout the centuries, organ playing had been critical in the life of the Cathedral and the city. Casini was the equal of his predecessors. Indeed, in his time, he was regarded as the greatest organist in Italy.35 Priest, teacher, author of literary texts in both Italian and Latin, and his own librettist, Casini was a pupil of Niccolò Sapiti and Francesco Nigetti, the latter the first organist of the Cathedral who had studied with the mythic Girolamo Frescobaldi.36 Nigetti took on Casini as a pupil in 1674. The younger man remained under his teacher’s formal tutelage for more than six years. In 1676 Casini was named second organist of the Cathedral, in 1685 first organist, in 1699 chaplain of the Cathedral, and in 1703 its de facto chapelmaster.37 Casini’s masterpiece for organ was his Pensieri per l’organo, which

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Example 16.2 Imitative technique in Giovanni Maria Casini’s Pensieri for organ

Alessandro Scarlatti esteemed highly.38 The Pensieri are in imitative polyphony—­Scarlatti referred to them as the Pensamenti fugati and to Casini’s knowledge of the “Art” of music—­and a glance reveals Casini to be a master of counterpoint (ex. 16.2). The Cathedral, Baptistery, and Santissima Annunziata enjoyed the services of celebrated organists who served essentially without interruption, from Antonio and Francesco Squarcialupi in the fifteenth century,

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to Bartolomeo degli Organi, Baccio Moschini, Cristofano Malvezzi, and Giovanni Battista Jacomelli in the sixteenth, and to Nigetti, Casini, and, finally, Francesco Feroci (*1673–­†1750).39 In many cases, pupil directly succeeded master. As a pupil of Nigetti (1688–­97), Francesco Feroci was a member of the “school” of Casini. He mastered harpsichord, organ, and—­most notably—­counterpoint and music theory. Feroci assisted Casini in his teaching, and when a serious illness compelled Casini to curtail his activities, Feroci began to substitute for him at “the first Organ of S. Maria del Fiore, demonstrating well his meriting the trust and affection of his Master.” At Casini’s death, the authorities of the Opera del Duomo appointed Feroci first organist, without the customary competition. In 1735, Feroci himself began experiencing “frequent serious health problems, which rendered him almost incapable of serving the Metropolitan church.” One of his pupils began to substitute for him at the Duomo, and in 1750 Feroci died. It was said of him that “he composed a great many very excellent Sonatas and Cantatas in music,” as well as “a copious Collection of pleasing Verses.”40 In seeking continuities between the aesthetics of Casini and Feroci, one finds a distinction between the compositions for voice and those for organ. Casini’s oeuvre maintains a fidelity to the exacting contrapuntal techniques of the Renaissance tempered with a certain novelty in harmonic practice. Although Feroci’s sacred vocal works honor his master’s model, in his compositions for organ the style is very different from that of Nigetti and Casini. The Pensieri—­Casini’s masterwork for organ—­feature time-­ honored imitative techniques. Feroci instead privileges the uppermost voice and reduces the importance of the innermost voices. The texture is homophonic. A contemporary described Feroci’s profile as composer. On the 25th day of July 1736: Today in our Metropolitan church a long symphonic work for organ was performed for the first time, composed and played on the first organ by the Rev. P. Francesco [Feroci], while his pupil and substitute Rev. P. Buonaventura [Matucci] was sitting attentively at the second [organ], playing at the correct places at the signals of the first [organist]. It was a miraculous thing to hear, and applause came in the Church (which was disapproved of). The music is the sweetest and [is] varied, when it is casual and joyous, [based] upon the tune [“aria”] of the Genovese [Martino Bitti], already an excellent violinist of the Court (who was a friend of Father Feroci); when it was melancholy, so as to be called tearful and sighing; but then it was finished festively, with both players together. It is said that Father Feroci ceases to play through being very sick.41

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This is the Concerto CXXX alternato col 10 e 20 organo . . . / Francisco Feroci auctore. The different style of the composition—­the Baroque concerted principle, symphonic use of the two organs, favoring of the uppermost voice, and relative absence of familiar contrapuntal devices—­reveals the difference in Feroci’s style from the stylus ecclesiasticus techniques of his master (ex. 16.3). Antonio Squarcialupi’s organ playing relied upon oral practices. Casini’s and Feroci’s training enabled them to compose works—­Casini’s Pensamenti fugati, Feroci’s Concerto CXXX—­that exemplify the “written­ness” of music dependent upon notation for it to be composed, performed, and transmitted.42

Dynastic Ritual (“L’état, c’est moi”): The Equestrian Ballet Trumpet fanfares that announced events important to the Florentine state; the playing of the instrumentalists of the Signori when they exited Palazzo della Signoria en route to official engagements in the city; music for the Quattrocento ceremonial jousts and carnival; the music for the public components of private Medici occasions in the fifteenth century and similar components of the Medicean festivals of the Cinquecento: we have seen numerous instances of civic uses of music.43 A fixture of early-­Seicento Florentine public life, the Seicento equestrian ballet was a kind of refashioning of the Quattrocento jousts, though with the more overt, fancifully martial elements tempered. Sponsored by the grand ducal court and serving the objectives of the Medici in their bid for aristocratic respectability, and typically performed in private settings, the ballets were sometimes performed in public as well, for the delectation of the citizenry. Until 1616, the favored venue was Piazza Santa Croce, as with the 1469 joust, the 1546 mascherata, and a 1569 giuoco di calcio. Thereafter, from 1637 to 1661, the ballets were performed in private Medicean spaces, such as the amphitheater of Palazzo Pitti. An older though evocative and still valuable article by Paul Nettl describes several of these equestrian ballets.44 Little music remains, nor would one expect otherwise: the music need not have been notated for it to be performed. Though rich and atmospheric, the evidence is nonetheless almost entirely iconographic and documentary. La guerra d’amore, “The War of Love,” a familiar trope, was staged during the 1616 carnival.45 The text was coauthored by Andrea Salvadori, the music composed by Jacopo Peri and others.46 The ballet was staged in Piazza Santa Croce, where a temporary oval field was enclosed by tiered ranks of seating. The grand ducal box was flanked by infantry and cavalry

Example 16.3 Excerpt from Francesco Feroci’s Concerto CXXX alternato col 1o e 2o organo

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arrayed in symmetrically disposed squadrons. An allegorical figure borne on the familiar ephemeral ship performed the vocal music.47 After a song of several strophes dedicated to the most serene archduchess “August Maddalena,” the tourney began with the arrival of the coach of the Indian queen Lucinda. Competing for her hand were the grand duke (costumed like Indamoro, king of Narsinga) and the grand duke’s brother Don Lorenzo (costumed like Gradamento, king of Melinda). “When the theatre was full of people, and each in his seat in most beautiful order, one heard a marvelous symphony of different musical instruments.” A madrigal sung by the goddess Venus signaled the beginning of the ballet. The grand duke and Don Lorenzo “had their horses dance, to the amazement and delight of everyone.”48 In 1625, La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina by Francesca Caccini was staged at Villa Poggio Imperiale in honor of the Polish prince Władysław Sigismund.49 A quadrangle was laid out in the villa’s courtyard, where a temporary semicircular vestibule was constructed. The combatants faced each other in two squadrons, twenty-­four mounted men performing the concluding ballet.50 Particular mention is made in the sources of those responsible for the scenery and machines and of the authors of the “ballo a piedi e a cavalli.” This work in particular suggests the methodological indefensibility of attempting too rigid a taxonomy of musico-­ dramatic types. It might well be classified as an opera with a concluding balletto a cavallo. Indeed, many operas of the time featured such an element. In a sense, the equestrian ballet tradition reached its fullest development with the 1661 performance of The World en Fête [Il mondo festeggiante]: Equestrian Ballet in the Theatre Conjoined to the Palace of the Most Serene Grand Duke,51 on the occasion of the wedding festivities for Grand Prince Cosimo di Ferdinando II de’ Medici and Marguerite Louise d’Orléans. The ballet was performed in the amphitheater of the Boboli gardens.52 It featured a text by Giovanni Andrea Moniglia, music by Domenico Anglesi, stage machinery by Ferdinando Tacca, and costumes by Stefano della Bella.53

17

Opera in Florence, Act 2 The Pan- ­Ita lian Phase

In my history of opera in Florence thus far, I have concentrated especially on the aristocratic phase because of the genre’s Florentine origins. But court opera was a carefully defined and circumscribed phenomenon. In Franco Piperno’s felicitous metaphor, “opera at court was like a book printed privately in a very limited edition; in a public theater, opera became like a paperback.”1 The importance of Florence in the history of the genre is owing more or less exclusively to its origins. In this respect opera is like the Cinquecento madrigal, which may be a consequence of that same Florentine predilection for the initial conceptualization, followed by consolidation rather than further development. After the Florentine aristocratic phase, creative momentum was generated to a great extent by other centers of operatic activity in Italy.2 We enter phases when the repertory is first pan-­Italian in origin and then pan-­European. And in its dependence upon successful masterpieces in the pan-­Italian repertory, operatic activity in Florence was not markedly different from that of other Italian cities and courts, with some exceptions. Other than comic operas, the works performed in Florence were largely imports from elsewhere in Italy, the product of non-­Florentine composers.3 But although the center of gravity shifted from Florence to other centers, vital operatic activity continued in Florence.4 The justifiable attention paid to the origins of opera and its aristocratic phase in Florence may have had the inadvertent effect of obscuring later phases of Florentine operatic history. With the end of the aristocratic phase, all material and aesthetic elements of the operatic enterprise—­sponsorship, sources of funding, performance venues, and even more particular material resources such as sets, stage machinery, and costuming—­had to be reenvisioned and renegotiated. Many of these elements, if not most, had been within the purview of the grand ducal court. After 1637, the financing of the operatic enterprise

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was typically dependent upon multiple sources of funding: aristocratic and academic subventions; proceeds from ticket sales.

A New Institution: The Opera House Many of the principal performance venues for the earliest operas had been makeshift spaces in the Medici palace or private residences of other patrician Florentines. These multipurpose spaces were not designed for theatrical performances. In the new phase in the history of the genre, venues dedicated to operatic performances were expressly designed, financed, and constructed. In the fifteen years between 1637, when Le nozze degli dei was performed at Palazzo Pitti, and 1652, when the Accademia degli Immobili acquired the space in Via della Pergola that permitted the construction of the historic theater that took its name from the street on which it was located,5 performance spaces had been secured largely ad hoc. In 1645, La finta pazza was performed in a space made available by the grand duke: the Teatro della Dogana, detto “di Baldracca.”6 The Teatro della Dogana7 was located immediately to the east of the Uffizi, in a quarter of the city known as “di Baldracca.”8 Here the Medici had had a theater constructed where troupes of comici dell’arte could perform. It was the official and most important venue for such performances. The theater was on the top floor of a multipurpose building that had shops on the ground floor and storerooms on the floor above. The building and the theatrical performances staged there were under the control of the Dogana, the customs office. The theater—­identified in contemporary documents as “the Large Room for the Comedies”—­was in operation by the late Cinquecento.9 The performance space was some 33 by 16 meters in size. At the southwest corner of the building was the “cavalcavia,” a separate corridor that connected the theater to the Uffizi and was reserved for the privileged few. The grand dukes and their guests entered there without having to exit grand ducal properties and without being witnessed by the popolino. On lower levels of the theater, on the west side toward the Uffizi, were the box seats that the grand ducal family entered directly.10 There, screened from the view of the audience, the Medici, Florentine aristocrats, and guests could enjoy the performance unseen. The paying public of the Baldracca theater comprised small businessmen and the lesser bourgeoisie. At the 1645 performance of La finta pazza, tickets sold for five lire toscane.11 The Accademia degli Immobili—­easily the most important of such institutions of the time—­has a complex history.12 It originated in 1644 “in a conversation of gentlemen who—­uncertain in their study of chivalric

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practices—­gathered together in their houses at the beginning, stimulated to do so . . . by the most serene prince Lorenzo [brother of Grand Duke Cosimo II],” the academicians seeking to engage in refined, private “virtuous entertainments.” Forming around Don Lorenzo, “who then took it under his protection,” the proto-­academy organized more officially in December 1644 as the Concordi. Lorenzo gave the academicians—­most of them “agents of the Medici court”—­“ his . . . palace . . . in Parione.”13 Although the preamble of the “Old Statutes of the Academy of the Immobili” presents the initiative as spontaneous, this is a pose, as is the claim that the members were “gentlemen of ordinary talent.” They were noblemen and after Don Lorenzo’s death (1648) were members of Cardinal Giovan Carlo de’ Medici’s circle. Chapter 7 of the “Statutes” describes the situation more accurately: “Anyone who wishes to be admitted to the academicians’ number—­the virtuous end of this noble Academy being known—­will have to remember that all those who constitute it are gentlemen by birth and of legitimate lineage.”14 The “Statutes” enumerate the formal activities: “to introduce some daily study of Cosmography, [and] of [the] reading of Histories, . . . Mathematics and other [subjects].”15 The members engaged in “dancing and fencing, the reading of comedies to be performed, and music-­making for the entertainment of the Royal Family and the public.”16 From 1644 to 1648, they performed “improvised comedies” in Don Lorenzo’s palace. The social profile and responsibilities of the Immobili were time-­ honored. In a sense, they functioned collectively as a “Sopraintendente alle commedie e alla musiche,” like Emilio de’ Cavalieri in the sixteenth century (who, notably, was also a nobleman).17 But notwithstanding their responsibilities as “superintendents of music,” direct experience in music and theater was often secondary in importance to the “chivalric practices” that were their original interest.18 True to its elite character, the academy was rigidly structured. At the top was a “Supreme magistracy,” or directorate. Serving it were a treasurer, secretary, and “Guardaroba maggiore,” responsible for “diligent care of all the effects, clothing, and other things . . . of the Academy.”19 Even after Lorenzo’s death, the Concordi continued to operate in his palace as the “academicians of Parione,” and after the house was sold in 1649, they were permitted to use other venues in the vicinity.20 In 1650 they relocated to rented rooms in Via del Cocòmero,21 where they undertook to “undo several floors” in order to “construct a theatre with a small stage, set, etc.” The theater was ready for use by carnival in 1651. The Concordi performed spoken and sung comedies there or had them performed for their enjoyment.22 In April of that same year they took the name “Immo-

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bili” and in September held their first recorded performance in the Teatro del Cocòmero. (It was a spoken comedy, notably, with three musical intermedi. The intermedio tradition continued to flourish for several decades after the beginnings of opera.) When even this new, reconstructed hall proved too small for its purposes, the academy divided in two, and the more aristocratic members—­ once more under the protection of Cardinal Giovan Carlo—­secured space in Via della Pergola,23 where they began construction of the theater completed in 1657. “The Arte della Lana [Wool Guild] of Florence gave Signor Cardinal Giovanni Carlo de’ Medici (protector of the Immobili Academicians) a cloth-­drying building in perpetuity in Via della Pergola.”24 The cornerstone was laid in Giovan Carlo’s presence in 1652.25 With the opening of the Pergola in 1657, the “Illustrissimi Signori Accademici Immobili” had a dedicated venue, expressly designed for the purpose to which it was thereafter devoted. The architect of the theater was Ferdinando Tacca,26 who was also the scenographer for several of the most important productions mounted there.27 He was especially expert in the design of stage machinery capable of bedazzling effects.28 Tacca constructed the theater “by his own hand from the foundations up, in a short period of time [and] with admirable architecture, under the direction of the Lord Academicians, and thanks to the efficacious and benign patronage of the Lord Prince Cardinal himself, . . . protector of so worthy an Academy.”29 Tacca would have been influenced by Florentine scenographic tradition: set changes, stage machinery, and the formal plan. His design was shaped by the need to be responsive to the tastes of his Medici benefactors, and he seems to have depended partly upon models furnished by the 1628 La Flora and the 1637 Le nozze degli dei.30 He was sent by Giovan Carlo to study theaters in other Italian ducal capitals. The stage was at the south end of the space, the auditorium at the north. Adjoining the stage were service areas and wings for storage and for moving scenery. At the north end, the women of the audience and members of the grand ducal family had separate entrances. Men entered from the sides. The entrance reserved for the Medici led to a spacious private box. The theater was “situated in an enclosure of rooms and courtyards that removes it from the tumult of the streets, so that no din is heard in the operations inside.”31 A precious period image (1658) depicts the theater’s interior.32 The auditorium—­a large, V-­shaped, central space—­was ringed by three tiers of boxes. Beneath the lowest tier, which was supported by columns, were risers for the audience. Other audience members sat on benches on either side of a central aisle bisecting the auditorium. Balustrades close to the

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stage separated the benches from seating for privileged attendees. Men and women sat on opposite sides of the theater. Facing the stage, beneath a canopy on the floor of the auditorium, were seats for the grand ducal family. As architecture, the Pergola recalled celebrated Medicean performance spaces: the courtyard of Palazzo Pitti, the Uffizi theater, the public spaces for the equestrian ballets, with their tiered seating. Orazio Ricasoli Rucellai argued that the Pergola “conjoined the best of all the . . . theaters of Italy” and identified elements of the design that reflected the association with the grand ducal family: “the four principal” boxes “in the principal spaces directly in front of the stage” “were reserved . . . for these most serene [Medici] princes,” Ferdinando, Giovan Carlo, Mattias, and Leopoldo. One remarkable feature of the design has been interpreted as an even subtler expression of Medicean prerogatives and sensibilities: a “subterranean passage . . . through which the Most Serene Lord cardinal can visit the stage [from his box] and . . . return . . . without anyone . . . realizing it,” which recalls the Vasari corridor that permitted the grand dukes access to the Uffizi from Palazzo Pitti without having to descend to the street and be witnessed by their Florentine subjects.33 The contemporary illustration (1658) is invaluable evidence of the design (fig. 17.1).34 Half of the expense of the construction was borne by Cardinal de’ Medici, half by the Immobili.35 In these developments, one sees once more the persistence of the long-­established Florentine model of an academy under an earthly protector or protectress and a hybrid of aristocratic and academic funding. The very design of the theater expressed these features. The tiered seating surrounding the central V-­shaped space became characteristic of commercial opera houses. The benches on the floor recalled historic court theaters. Other elements of the design also expressed the mixed sponsorship: a tablature featuring the Immobili coat of arms above a pair of columns on either side of the stage and displays of Medici heraldry elsewhere in the theater. Such mixed sponsorship was not without its risks, of course. Because initiatives of the Immobili were essentially governed by Giovan Carlo, the construction and functioning of the theater were ultimately dependent upon Medici largesse. But whatever its financing mechanisms, the Pergola was the site of attention-­commanding developments. The inaugural performance during carnival in 1657 was of the comic opera Il potestà di Colognole (text by Giovanni Andrea Moniglia, music by Jacopo Melani), one of those few examples of a distinctively Florentine contribution to the contemporary Italian operatic repertory in the post-­aristocratic phase of Florentine opera.36

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Figure 17.1 The V-­shaped interior of the Teatro degli Immobili as seen from the stage in the earliest depiction of the theater: an etching by Silvio degli Alli of the architect Ferdinando Tacca’s design, which appeared as one of thirteen double-­page plates in the printed libretto of L’Hipermestra (Florence: Stamperia della S.A.S., 1658), images of the scenery for Ipermestra. New Haven, CT, Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

The group that remained in Via del Cocòmero took the name Accademici Sorgenti and staged numerous operatic productions there.37 It appears to have formed in 1654, about two years, therefore, after the earlier Accademia degli Immobili had divided in two. Indeed, the first unequivocal evidence of the Sorgenti in Via del Cocòmero dates from August 1654. The Sorgenti established a true, continuing, public venture that could compete with the companies of itinerant comici dell’arte that would pause at the Baldracca theater during their ceaseless journeying up and down the peninsula. The Sorgenti were among the organizations that managed a theater, a physical space made available to whomever they chose: a company, an impresario, a group of actors and singers. At times they themselves performed in the spectacles, though normally without compensation. Relative to the Immobili, the Sorgenti were probably of somewhat more modest social standing, though still noble. The aristocratic, courtly sensibilities that permeate the founding statutes of the Immobili were thus more or less

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foreign to the Sorgenti. The documents attesting the activities of the Sorgenti concentrate on the precise administrative arrangements to be made and the responsibilities to be met. There are no allusions to “chivalric exercises,” or “studies of cosmography,” or “fencing.” Above all else, the Sorgenti’s statutes dwelled on the financing mechanisms, and the initial impulse was toward self-­financing. A chamberlain—­ answerable to the administration—­managed the accounts. Once a proposal had been made—­“the academicians wanting to perform some work, whether in prose or music”—­they voted. If they obtained a two-­thirds majority, they proceeded to the staging. But if there were not “sufficient denari in advance to do such a work,” a “seven-­eighths” vote was required to “bind the academicians themselves to spend” their own capital in support of the venture. Like the Immobili (at least in the early stages of their activity), the Sorgenti staged performances of ballets, spoken comedies with musical prologues, and intermedi with machinery. In 1658, the academicians performed a “comedy of the lord doctor Giovanni Andrea Moniglia with musical intermedi.” On another occasion, the performance featured “musicians and male dancers,” “five female dancers,” a “prologue,” and a “finale” set to music, for which “the musicians, and instrumentalists, and actors” were paid with wine.38 The first public performance of the Sorgenti under Cardinal Giovan Carlo’s patronage took place in the same year as the inaugural performance at the Pergola (1657). A reconstruction of the Cocòmero the previous year had added such appurtenances as stage machines. And notwithstanding the tendency among the formally organized Florentine academies to distance themselves from the itinerant troupes of comici dell’arte, the Sorgenti collaborated with commedianti, yet further evidence of a fluidity in the conceptual construction of musico-­theatrical genres in the first few decades of opera. The last known performance by the Sorgenti at the Cocòmero was in 1663.39 Some of the academies of Seicento Florence continued to support productions of an antiquarian, aulic character, reminiscent of the Cinquecento. They featured chivalric festivities and stage combat.40 This was especially true of the Immobili.41 In this respect, and many others, the academies of the Immobili and the Sorgenti represented quite different traditions of patronage and had distinctive values and visions that reflected such differences.42 The theaters of the Immobili and the Sorgenti were very much unlike each other in their lavishness, for example, as well as their financing.43 Of the two academies, the Immobili was easily the wealthier,44 and it and its associated theater were the most distinguished such institutions in the city.45 For a single performance in 1658, each of

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the Immobili contributed ₤328.2.6, in addition to annual levies for boxes in the theater. The expectations of the members of the two academies were also different. Members of both performed as extras or dancers. But whereas such activities were avocational for the Immobili—­the skills facilitating them understood as the traditional attainments of courtiers—­many of the Sorgenti were professionals: actors, singers, dancers, instrumentalists, and scenographers, who were compensated for their services and “exempt from taxes and other payments, being committed to other responsibilities relating to the contiguous goals.” Among the Sorgenti were such professionals as Giovan Carlo’s musician Antonio Rivani; Pietro Susini, the poet for Antonio Cesti’s Le nozze in sogno; and Jacopo Melani, who was compensated “for composing music.” The statutes enumerate the various tasks to be completed to stage a performance: “dancing,” “painting,” “assisting with the machines,” “copying,” “reciting,” “singing,” and “[instrumental] playing.”46 The Immobili would not have deigned to sully themselves with such plebeian responsibilities. The costs of the sumptuous productions mounted by the Immobili were borne either entirely by the Medici court or in collaboration with the academicians. “A unique managerial system—­theater administration by an association—­ . . . lay halfway between the court system and commercial opera.”47 However, the court’s subsidies were never set for more than a year at a time, which contributed to the uncertainty of the venture.48 In the early years of its operation, the boxes in the Teatro degli Immobili were the members’ individual property. The academy did not make tickets available to a paying public until 1718. Between 1657 and 1663, the theater thus functioned more or less as if it were a court theater, catering to the tastes and interests of an elite audience.49 In contrast, the production expenses of the Sorgenti were borne by members’ contributions, the renting of boxes to members and nonmembers, and the subsidies of members of the Medici family and others, but above all by ticket sales. From midcentury until around 1700, the Cocòmero was the principal public opera house in Florence.50 From the late 1650s to the early 1660s, the Sorgenti mounted their productions in the old Cocòmero theater, which was of modest dimensions. There were some fifteen boxes, likely all on the first floor. The maximum number of tickets that could be sold for non–­box seats, all probably located in the orchestra, was 506. In contrast, the Pergola had forty-­seven boxes and a correspondingly larger number of non–­box seats in the orchestra. Because of the smaller space, the orchestra of the Sorgenti probably comprised no more than two or three violins, perhaps a fourth or

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fifth instrument that played in the bass range, and a small basso continuo group. It is not difficult to understand why it was the Immobili who were engaged for the extravagant Medici court theatrical productions. Almost invariably, the Immobili mounted premières of new works by both Florentine and non-­Florentine composers, and premières only. The Sorgenti staged reprises of successful Venetian operas.51 In sum: Although born as the refined entertainment of the aristocracy, opera in Florence subsequently attracted an audience outside grand ducal circles, enjoyed at the Cocòmero by a bourgeois, paying public and at the Pergola by Medici courtiers and the academicians of the Immobili.52 Because of the traditional mixed model of financing, the Pergola did not operate solely with the financial support of the ruling family. The Immobili had to be sensitive to the financial exigencies of the operatic enterprise. All the same, it was certainly not the case that, with the exception of the generous patronage of Cardinal Giovan Carlo, Florentine operatic activity became independent of Medici influence and was exclusively relocated to purpose-­built theaters with no relationship to aristocratic patronage. Literally and symbolically, the venue for the performances of the Immobili was the successor institution to the grand Medicean performance spaces of the Cinquecento, home to the intermedi.53 Performance venue was thus one indispensable element of the operatic enterprise. Patronage—­sponsorship, whether academic or aristocratic—­ was equally important, and not only as a source of funding. I now consider more systematically the patronage of the Medici brothers54 Mattias,55 Ferdinando, Cardinal Giovan Carlo, Francesco, and Leopoldo (all sons of Cosimo II), describe the character of their patronage, and assess its significance. Cardinal Giovan Carlo not only served as earthly protector of the Immobili but also repeatedly furnished his own considerable personal resources on an ad hoc basis to meet production costs. When he died, he was memorialized as “protector of the academies.” One motivation for Giovan Carlo’s activity may have been to establish an identity as patron independent of that of his brother the grand duke. “If all the world’s a stage, the stage was the only world in which the cardinal was free to exercise absolute power.”56 Thus Giovan Carlo, Leopoldo, and Mattias each engaged in his own patronage activities, a circumstance that made the Medici grand duchy unlike royal and aristocratic states elsewhere in Europe, where authority in patronage practices was more likely to be vested more exclusively in the head of state. As the result of a 1641 visit to Venice, Mattias was the first of the brothers to develop a taste for Venetian opera.57 He was reported to have seen

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“all these sung Comedies, which were Five in number.” In Venice also began an enduring relationship—­attested by a rich correspondence—­ between Mattias and Francesco Sacrati, the composer of any number of important operas, including La finta pazza performed in Florence in 1645. Requests for music and performers and the responses to them were bi­ directional. Sacrati asked Mattias for singers and in turn sent him the scores to his operas.58 Medici patrons befriended composers and performers and secured repertory and performing personnel. And on their own initiative, composers and singers sought and secured the protection of the Medici brothers.59 Anna Francesca Costa (Checca) enjoyed the protection of Leopoldo60 and Giovan Carlo de Medici,61 who recommended Costa to the powerful Cardinal Mazarin, first minister to French kings Louis XIII and XIV.62 Another renowned (and troublesome) singer, Anna Maria Sardelli “Romana”—­“ la Signora Campaspe,” “virtuosissima cantatrice”—­ enjoyed both Mattias’s and Giovan Carlo’s patronage.63 Yet another important Medici protégé, the singer Michele Grasseschi, was among the most sought-­after musicians of the day, the protagonist in Sacrati’s Bellerofonte, highlight of the 1642 Venetian opera season.64 When they discovered, assisted in training, and engaged established and would-­be singers, the Medici brothers invested in important human capital.65 Mattias had the principal role in patronizing the Melani: the castrato Atto, performer and composer, who by the age of fifteen was already in Mattias’s employ,66 his brother Jacopo, an important composer of midcentury, and other members of the family.67 The Medici brothers’ sister Anna was Atto’s duet partner and often sang with him when he was in Florence.68 And Antonio Cesti—­composer of one of the two most successful Italian operas of mid-­Seicento Italy (Orontea, the other being Cavalli’s Giasone)—­profited repeatedly from Mattias’s, Giovan Carlo’s, and Ferdinando II’s vital interest in his career.69 Initiatives by the Medici brothers—­especially Cardinal Giovan Carlo—­did not invariably yield entirely successful results, in good part because of the distinctive nature of Florentine culture and politics.70 Mattias’s aspirations for a Florentine iteration of Venetian opera aligned imperfectly with the native Florentine practices to which he was heir. Venetian opera assumed an audience of a particular type and a kind of polity that did not exist in Florence, and the conditions of patronage and audience expectations characteristic of Venice were not easily replicated in Florence. Prospects for Venetian-­style opera were not uniformly auspicious in Florence. This circumstance is evident even in so specific a matter as performance

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venue. The concept of a court opera house in Florence was vague and ill-­defined. And no Venetian-­style commercial theater had been known in Florence when the post-­aristocratic phase of Florentine opera began. One had to make do initially with venues that were anything but purpose-­ built.71 The Florentine literary tradition may also have been an inhibiting factor. Partly because of its commercial nature and the need to appeal to audiences of a particular type, Venetian opera in midcentury had distinctive characteristics. “Cavalli’s setting of G. A. Cicognini’s libretto Giasone (1649)” was, “with Orontea (also to a text by Cicognini, music by Cesti),” “the most enduringly popular opera in 17th-­century Italy.” “They were the first works to turn completely to complex, fast-­paced action, and comic dexterity in place of the literary atmosphere of Venetian academies that clung to the earlier operas.”72 Cristoforo Ivanovich, who left an invaluable though often inaccurate chronology of operatic activity in Venice, described that city’s tastes in opera to Giovanni Maria Pagliardi, one of the most important composers of opera in late-­Seicento Florence. “The character of this city likes the heroic to be serious but lively, the pathetic not excessively languid, and the comic full of vigour but easy-­going.”73 In contrast, Seicento Florentine literary tradition—­a later iteration of the refined classicizing sensibilities of Florentine Renaissance humanism74—­may have proved resistant on occasion to such audience-­satisfying features of Venetian operatic practice and have complicated attempts by Medici patrons to graft them onto Florentine tradition. There were some notable successes, but the requisite conditions emerged only slowly and fitfully and were never fully stabilized. A demographic factor may also have been determinative. Venice had a larger population than Florence, an element in a material infrastructure that permitted a higher density of venues. In Florence, suitable performance spaces were thus rented (when already existing) or intentionally constructed for the purpose in lavish fashion. And repertory could be, and had been, secured by means of the personal relationships of patrons with composers and other methods. In the first few years of the post-­aristocratic phase of opera in Florence, the performance personnel were frequently members of the famed itinerant troupes—­traveling companies known by such names as the “Febiarmonici”75—­and in this respect, too, such practices made Florence like other centers of operatic activity. But by the late 1650s and early 1660s, a more or less fixed roster of singers had been established at the Pergola, featuring such celebrated figures as Antonio Cesti and Michele Grasseschi.76 There was also a permanent équipe of other kinds of artists involved with the operatic enterprise, all associated with the court:77 the

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architect Tacca, the composer Jacopo Melani, the poet Giovanni Andrea Moniglia, and the costume designer and engraver Stefano della Bella.78 Cardinal Giovan Carlo would assign responsibility for the costumes for particular performances to each of the Immobili.79 Not all of these artists need have resided permanently in Florence, of course. Rather, they were prompted to serve there when their talents were solicited by patrons and sponsors to whom they were devoted. The extraordinary richness of the material is such that the operas chosen for detailed examination here are very few in number. They are select, illustrative representatives of Florentine operatic practices.

Beginnings of the Pan-­Italian Phase: La finta pazza The 1645 performance of Giulio Strozzi and Francesco Sacrati’s La finta pazza was the most important event of its kind in Florence since the effective end of the aristocratic phase eight years earlier. The performance by the Comici Febiarmonici took place in the Baldracca theater. The possibility of staging the opera in Florence had occurred to Mattias de’ Medici during his 1641 visit to Venice. He had surely witnessed a performance there: Giovan Carlo’s agent reported to the cardinal that “a most beautiful comedy was done, well sung, [with] some beautiful stage machines. . . . And among us it was agreed to hear this comedy twice; but it truly is beautiful.”80 This was almost certainly La finta pazza. La finta pazza had been touring Italy since its 1641 Venetian première.81 A simplified version that omitted most though not all of the scenes featuring gods and goddesses—­well nigh impossible to produce in theaters lacking the necessary machinery—­was performed in Piacenza in 1644,82 and the version performed in Florence the year after—­produced by the ballerino, scenographer, and choreographer Giovanni Battista Balbi—­was similar to the 1644 version. The touring version was designed in response not only to the absence of machinery in host theaters but also to the need for the traveling companies to remain lean and mobile more generally.83 The Medici court was keenly interested in the fortunes of the touring version, which was performed in Milan on 24 June 1644.84 Intent on settling the terms of the contract for the opera season with the grand duke, the Febiarmonici arrived in Florence in late December 1644, with Balbi at their head.85 It was reported that Giovanni Paolo [sic] Balbi, Head of the Academy of the Febiarmonici, who was a dancer in Venice at the time of Your Highness [i.e., Grand Prince Mattias], has obtained the free hall in Florence from His Highness [the grand duke], and also

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the box seats[,] in order to perform the Finta Pazza of S[ignore]. Giulio Strozzi there, with all the Intermedij and set changes, as they did it in Venice.86

The performance was to have taken place on 12 February but was postponed because of logistical challenges.87 When it did take place, the three-­ hour performance was well received. One contemporary reported, “The work was most beautiful and most well performed, . . . some Roman musicians having been made to come. . . . To this one adds most superb costumes, changes of set, machines, and dancing bears, marmosets, and other inventions.”88 The additional accoutrements indeed included “Balli d’orsi, Gatti, . . . e . . . altre invenzioni.”89 There was an effort to persuade the Comici Febiarmonici to remain in Florence during “Lent in order to redo their comedy,” and a contemporary reported that “they will remain . . . until the 10th of . . . March.”90 Their decision enabled Grand Prince Mattias, who had been absent from Florence, to see a repeat performance on 5 March. The score of La finta pazza—­only fairly recently rediscovered and coinciding substantially with the touring version—­has been characterized as “lively,” “with a light recitative which opens into short, intense flourishes of melody, some ostentatious . . . , some languishing . . . , some jocular . . . , and some cheerfully mocking (in the mad scenes).”91

A Native Attempt at a Venetian-­Style Opera: Celio Celio is a revealing example of the challenges faced by native Florentine composers when attempting to replicate Venetian operatic practice. Celio is an operatic flash in the pan. It is both the first significant attempt by native Florentines at Venetian-­style opera92 and effectively the last. For the most part, the Florentines thereafter either imported operas from Venice or confined themselves to the uniquely Florentine variant of comic opera. It was probably inevitable that native Florentine composers would have made such an attempt, and they seem to have been encouraged by their Medici patrons,93 who may have been naively emboldened by the success of La finta pazza the year before. Leopoldo de’ Medici thus commissioned a text in the Venetian style from a Florentine poet, Giacinto Andrea Cicognini,94 one of the most successful opera poets of the mid-­Seicento, the author of Giasone and Orontea. Soon after writing Celio, Cicognini left Florence for Venice, likely in part because he concluded reluctantly that prospects in his native city for this kind of undertaking were not auspicious.95 Cicognini’s Celio was finished in the summer of 1645, just a few months

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after the performances of La finta pazza. The earliest redaction of his text is in a manuscript with the Medici shield embossed in gold on its parchment covers. In the dedication to Leopoldo, dated Florence, 20 July 1645, the author declares that the text collects the “first fruits of my poor ingenuity in this genre of composition.”96 It was then published in Florence in 1646.97 The score of the music,98 composed by the Florentines Baccio Baglioni and Niccolò Sapiti,99 refers in the foreword—­dated 10 May 1646—­to an imminent performance, which took place at the Baldracca theater. The differences in dramaturgical character and, frankly, level of artistic quality between Celio and Cicognini’s three later Venetian drammi per musica—­Giasone, Orontea, and Gl’amori di Alessandro Magno ed di Rossane (music for this last by Francesco Lucio)100—­document how unpropitious were the conditions for a Florentine iteration of Venetian-­style opera.101 Cicognini’s text is effectively enough constructed and each dramatic development convincingly motivated. But much of the development takes place through monologue or dialogue, as a result of which the music plays a subordinate role. It either clothes recitative verse in minimalist dress or serves as the music for the arias of comic or allegorical secondary characters. An early article by Vittorio Ricci offered an alternative assessment of the qualities of the text and music. While acknowledging defects in the text, Ricci also suggested that the music is superior to it, although here and there reflecting its inadequacies.102 And recognizing that there are traces of the influence of Peri and Caccini, especially in the recitatives, Ricci argued that there is nonetheless a melodicity in the recitatives that is almost arioso: aria-­like, or airy.103 More recent scholarship argues otherwise. “Ricci . . . simply makes a virtue of necessity when he considers Celio more in the tradition of Peri’s ‘recitar cantando’ than representative of a true ‘operatic’ tradition.”104 Another knowledgeable scholar also identified characteristics of Celio that honored the past rather than anticipated the future.105 When one contrasts the musical realization of another Cicognini libretto—­Cesti’s Orontea—­with Baglioni and Sapiti’s Celio, the differences are immediately evident. The passages in Orontea destined to be translated into recitative are concise relative to those from which set pieces arise: arias and ensembles. The equilibrium soon to be achieved in settings of other Cicognini libretti is not found in Celio. Baglioni and Sapiti’s recitatives are long and in fact obscure the melodicity of the arias. Such differences may be attributable in part to Cesti’s control over his setting of Cicognini’s Orontea. He may have collaborated more closely with the poet than did Baglioni and Sapiti and persuasively argued his views on melodrama.106 Another factor may have been the difference in subject matter

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of the libretti, the commitment to mythological material being characteristic of the aristocratic phase of Florentine opera. Cesti may simply have had an awareness of the greater range of possibilities inherent in comedy. It is almost as if the weight of Florentine tradition—­in this case as in so many others we have seen—­was so great as to short-­circuit innovation. Soon after they were attained, Florentine accomplishments in the arts were often enshrined in practice, and Baglioni and Sapiti—­wedded to Florentine aesthetic principles—­may have been incapable of escaping them. Through no fault of their own, Baglioni and Sapiti may simply have been “too Florentine.” After this flawed—­even failed—­experiment in Venetian opera, Florentines turned almost exclusively to battle-­tested works that had been performed in Venice and had withstood the rigors of being premiered there. Throughout the remainder of the Seicento, the staples of opera in Florence were monuments in the pan-­Italian repertory. The circumstances that produced Baglioni and Sapiti’s Celio may explain why the Florentines there­ after featured the Venetian repertory, demonstrated success elsewhere being a precondition to the performance of a particular opera in Florence, with the most notable exceptions considered below.107

Venetian Imports: Ipermestra108 In the spring of 1654, Cardinal Giovan Carlo commissioned one of those works that best exemplify Baroque opera: Giovanni Andrea Moniglia and Francesco Cavalli’s fantastical Ipermestra. It was reported to Giovan Carlo by a correspondent in Venice that “we went to Signore Cavallo [sic] to get his sense about the comedy that Your Highness consigned to him to have set to music.”109 The commission decisively confirms that for the Medici brothers, the Venetian tradition was among the most important models for the operatic enterprise.110 That summer, Cavalli received the text from Moniglia and assured him that the score would be finished by mid-­ October. But his projection was optimistic. Ipermestra is important to Florentine operatic history for one particular reason, among others. Giovan Carlo had commissioned it for the inauguration of the Teatro della Pergola, and preparations for the performance were under way by late 1654. The decision to commission the opera of so famous and accomplished a composer as Cavalli—­a non-­Florentine at that, who was able to command a considerable salary—­was justified by the need for memorable optics at the opening of the Pergola. But the inaugural performance at the Pergola was delayed. Construction proceeded more slowly than anticipated (for reasons to be detailed), and Cardinal

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Giovan Carlo’s presence in Rome was demanded because of the death of Pope Innocent X in January 1655.111 All the same, interest in Ipermestra was so great that a chamber performance of act 1 was organized for 2 October 1654, long before the Pergola was completed. In late September, Atto Melani reported to Mattias that the first act having come from Venice, which truly is miraculous music, the most serene Cardinal Giovan Carlo had the kindness to write to me that I be in Florence upon his return in order for us to be able to begin concertizing, I with the signora Leonora [Ballerini].112 . . . All those who have heard the music from this first act that has come cannot satisfy their desire to commend how beautiful it is; only signor [Domenico] Anglesi says it truly is that Cavalli has done beautiful things, but that it, however, is ordinary and . . . not to be longed for.113

Melani and Leonora were to rehearse the music in preparation for the performance, which Melani chronicled. He wanted “Ipermestra also [to] do her part well”—­this is surely a reference to Ballerini—­thus confirming that this and another performance were indeed of Ipermestra. Melani recounted: Today in the chamber of the cardinal, I sang the entire comedy, and Prince Leopoldo was also there; and I swear to Your Highness [Mattias] that it is music of paradise and that one could not hear anything more beautiful. . . . [The work] was sung by other virtuosi at Pratolino in the chambers of the grand duchess, and then also here in Florence in the presence of the cardinal.114

Despite Melani’s reference to “the entire comedy,” the 1654 chamber performance was only of act 1.115 And despite his original projection, Cavalli finished composing the score only in November, when he completed the prologue. Illuminating correspondence from October 1654 documents his progress. Giovanni Rucellai wrote on 3 October, “This evening I receive another part of the comedy in music from signor Cavalli. . . . Signor Cavalli promised to give me, within a few days, the comedy [that is now] finished being set to music.” And on 31 October it was reported that “Signor Cavalli is fulfilling the promises made . . . that his remaining in the villa would not only not have jeopardized the composition of his comedy [but] that it would better serve him in giving . . . the final piece.”116 The text of one of two competing finales in the primary source refers to a “Vittoria.” Ipermestra, therefore, was originally intended as a tribute to Grand Duchess Vittoria della Rovere, wife of Grand Duke Ferdinando II, whose birthday was 7 February.117 By December 1654, “work

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on the hall [was] so far along” that Giovan Carlo assumed it would soon be finished. He secretly sent Mattias a copy of the “commedia.” But, in fact, construction was not completed until several years later. In the meantime, the Immobili continued to stage their performances in Via del Cocòmero.118 The principal challenge in completing the Pergola involved the stage machinery, use of which had been continuous in Venetian theaters almost from the beginnings of Venetian opera. The absence of similar practices elsewhere—­including Florence—­and the resultant impossibility of amortizing costs by reusing equipment threatened financial ruin. With such exceptions as the 1661 performance of Ercole in Tebe, when machinery was more or less dictated by the important political events that occasioned the sumptuous offerings, after the 1689 performance of Il Greco in Troia the Pergola never again attempted to mount a performance requiring elaborate machinery.119

A Distinctively Florentine Tradition of Comic Opera: Il potestà di Colognole The première of Ipermestra was therefore postponed until June 1658, and the first performance at the Pergola was of Moniglia and Jacopo Melani’s comic opera Il potestà di Colognole,120 which did not require complex machinery. It took place during the 1656–­57 carnival season. Already in mid-­ 1655 Giovan Carlo’s correspondence reports on preparations for the performance. Il potestà was substituted for Ipermestra at the eleventh hour, which suggests that it may already have been in the repertory of the Immobili, since the performers could not have been expected to master a new work so quickly.121 Sixteen comic operas were composed for Florence in the second half of the Seicento. There were two phases of the comic operatic tradition there, and Il potestà di Colognole and Pietro Susini and Antonio Cesti’s Le nozze in sogno are the only extant operas with surviving music from the earlier phase (1657–­early 1680s). Il potestà was the first by Moniglia and Melani, the dominant figures of early Florentine comic opera, who produced four other comic works for the Immobili, as well as an opera seria.122 The operas of the aristocratic phase and even thereafter had typically been pastoral and mythological in content and character, their protagonists such figures as Daphne, Orpheus, Paris, Jason, and Alexander. Some later operas, however—­La finta pazza, Celio, Giasone— ­featured comic characters and plot elements. The novelty and importance of Il potestà di Colognole was not that its subject matter was comic, therefore, but that the comic elements were distinctively Tuscan, even Florentine, in character.

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Among Moniglia’s models were his own works, inspired in turn by those of the ancient Roman comic playwright Terence. Moniglia was also influenced by an Italian Renaissance derivation from Terence, the commedia erudita, where two young lovers are initially foiled by their elders and then required to exercise their wits in order to prevail, often with the aid of wily servants. This is the plot of numerous Italian comic operas, among them Il barbiere di Siviglia. The young lovers—­the innamorati—­are serious characters, the servants comic. Another influence—­this is one of the truly distinctive elements that give Il potestà and works like it their defining character—­was from a cherished local tradition with a generic designation that Moniglia himself invoked in describing his text: “Dramma civile rusticale.”123 It is a kind of dramma giocoso, to invoke the term later applied to da Ponte and Mozart’s Don Giovanni.124 A related influence was from the Tuscan farsa, which deployed familiar peasant expressions and dialectical speech, to the amusement of the condescending urban intelligentsia. There were, finally, the familiar characters of the commedia dell’arte.125 Melani’s varied music—­scored for basso continuo and two unidentified obbligato instruments—­reflects the variety in Moniglia’s dramaturgy. There are moments where the music functions realistically in the plot.126 Lively short songs, ensembles, longer dramatic arias, spoken comic dialogues, and mock combat and ballets are among the elements of the work. On 7 February [1657], the birthday of the Most Serene [Grand Duchess Vittoria della Rovere], . . . a comedy in music, opera of G.A. Moniglia, was done in the new Theatre in Via della Pergola. It was called Il potestà di Colognole, and the music was by Jacopo Melani, brother of Atto, and it was the first . . . sung in that location.127

Potestà was performed with the financial support of Cardinal Giovan Carlo, who absorbed the costs of the costumes and other accoutrements of the performance. It featured the celebrated Michele Grasseschi, Cardinal Giovan Carlo’s employee Antonio Rivani (a member of the Sorgenti), and otherwise unidentified “Musici per la serenata.”128 Although rustic comedies did not feature elaborate stage machinery, other elements of the performances entailed significant expenditure of effort and resources. A full year and a half before the performance, the painter Jacopo Chiavistelli wrote to Cardinal Giovan Carlo, “Enclosed, I send Your Most Reverend Highness the design of the ‘scena civile’ for the opera, which I have found [to be of] no little difficulty.”129 And documents in the archives of the Immobili contain descriptions and color

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sketches of the designs for some of the costumes for the performance, creations of the accomplished artist Stefano della Bella, an employee of Grand Prince Mattias.130

Venetian Imports: Ipermestra, Redux131 In November 1657, when Philip Prospero, heir presumptive to the throne of Spain, was born, Giovan Carlo de’ Medici wrote to congratulate the Spanish royal family and report that a “comedy in music” would be performed in Florence, “with machines prepared on that account.” Capitalizing on the fact that Ipermestra had not yet had a proper première, those responsible for the 1658 performance had the opera repurposed to celebrate Philip Prospero’s birth and honor the Spanish Habsburgs. Revisions necessary to make the opera suitable for that purpose were requested of Cavalli and others. In the prologue and the final scene, the references to Vittoria in the 1654 redaction were replaced by references to Philip Prospero. Preparations for the première proceeded throughout late 1657 and early 1658. Giovan Carlo engaged singers and entrusted “the choice of Musicians, . . . the voices most adapted to the parts of the Interlocutor,” and responsibility for assisting and directing them to the “Marchese Filippo Niccolini, his Chamber Master, . . . the Marchese Giovanni Battista del Monte, his major riding instructor, and . . . the Signori Pietro Strozzi and Filippo Franceschi, who take maximum delight in Music and have optimal taste, on a par with professionals themselves.”132 Period sources describe the composition process, documentation for which is rare for the Seicento. Orazio Ricasoli Rucellai’s Descrizione della presa d’Argo e degli amori di Linceo con Hipermestra furnishes evocative details. The composition of this Drama being finished, it was expeditiously transmitted to . . . sig. Francesco Cavalli in Venice, so that—­with the artifice of his harmonious counterpoint—­he drew from others [i.e., the performers], from the bottom of one’s heart, the most tender and compassionate affections that were most suitable to the expression of the words and . . . poetic events; and he who today is reputed the foremost composer in Italy, particularly in the Dramatic style, made a composition from it, with incredible rapidity, of such sweetness and suavity of style.133

In March 1658, a correspondent wrote to Giovan Carlo of Cavalli’s careful attention to the revisions necessary: “I have delivered by hand to Signore Cavallo the pages of music that Your Highness sent me, and we read the instructions together, whence [Cavalli] fully understood what must

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be done.” Later correspondence clarifies further. “Since he has changed the prologue because of the dedication, it is thus appropriate to change something in the finale.” Preparations for the performance were still under way in April. Indeed, as late as 9 June, after several previous delays, the première was postponed yet again, this time because of “difficulty with the Machines, which are great in number.”134 At long last, on 22 June 1658, the “festa teatrale” of “the capture of Argo, and of the love of Linceo and Hipermestra,” was staged by the Immobili at the Pergola.135 The performance lasted some five hours. Among the renowned singers, who by then formed a more or less fixed company in Florence, were Grasseschi and Ballerini.136 The expenses of the performance were an astronomical ₤106,500, of which ₤10,500 were borne by the Immobili, ₤96,000 by the grand ducal court.137 The costumes presented particular challenges. There were three hundred roles, many of them demanding lavish costuming: the gods and heroes of the opera, the knights who participated in the stage combat, and the dancers who performed the two ballets.138 Ipermestra’s costume was a gift of the grand duchess.139 The costs of the cloth and the making of the other costumes were absorbed by the Immobili, who also provided room and board in their palaces for the principal artists and covered the expense of the rehearsals.140 The long-­ established, aristocratic-­academic cost-­sharing practices were followed once more. Although the original dramaturgical pretext for intermedi had long since ceased to be relevant, operatic performances in Florence continued to feature this beloved element of the performance, especially to ensure that the potential tedium of recitative not unduly jeopardize the satisfactions of the experience. On occasion, the theme of the intermedi emerged organically from the plot of the opera, as in Ipermestra. The siege and burning of Argos furnish appropriate material for the third intermedio.141 Two of Ipermestra’s three acts end with balli. Act 1 featured a “Ballo of the Furies.”142 The aristocratic members of the Accademia degli Immobili danced during the intermedi.143 Published in Florence in 1658,144 the revised text contains a dedication by Moniglia and rich visual material. An engraving depicts the heraldic images of both the Spanish Habsburgs and a cardinal of the House of Medici. It also contains some one dozen engravings of the Pergola by Giovan Carlo’s employee Silvio degli Alli, based on the scenography of Tacca, the theater architect.145 Also extant are thirty-­eight drawings for the costumes by Stefano della Bella.146 There is no evidence of Cavalli’s having participated in the performance. But there can be no doubt that the

Opera in Florence, Act 2: The Pan-Italian Phase 295 Ta ble 17.1 Theatrical entertainments for the wedding of Cosimo di Ferdinando II de’ Medici and Marguerite Louise d’Orléans Opera

Performance venue

Aurelio Aureli and Cavalli, L’Erismena Moniglia (music lost), Il mondo festeggiante Moniglia and Melani, Ercole in Tebe Cicognini and Cesti, L’Orontea Moniglia and Melani, Il potestà di Colognole Giovanni Filippo Apolloni and Cesti, La Dori ò vero La schiava fedele

Cocòmero (Sorgenti) Palazzo Pitti Pergola Cocòmero (Sorgenti) Cocòmero (Sorgenti) Cocòmero (Sorgenti)

Performance dates 22 February–­15 March 1 and 16 July 12 and 22 July, 7 August 5–­24 October 6 October 25 October–­?

acclaim for it was virtually unanimous and of international dimensions. “Baroque” opera was appealing ever more successfully to the voracious tastes of its Florentine public.

The Baroque Aesthetic on Full Display: Ercole in Tebe, L’Orontea, La Dori The Baroque aesthetic was never more impressively on view than in the 1661 celebrations for the wedding of Grand Prince Cosimo di Ferdinando II de’ Medici (later Grand Duke Cosimo III) and Marguerite Louise, daughter of Gaston, duc d’Orléans.147 The fullness of the schedule of performances alone contributed to the Baroque extravagance. And the performances by the Sorgenti represent the high-­water mark in the seventeenth-­ century history of the Cocòmero.148 Like the great Cinquecento wedding festivities, the 1661 festivities comprised several elements, including Marguerite’s ceremonial entrata (which was of the sixteenth-­century variety), an event on the Arno, and Il mondo festeggiante.149 By now, opera was the musico-­theatrical genre of choice and had decisively supplanted the five-­act comedy with entr’acte musical entertainment. The cycle of securely attested theatrical entertainments was as shown in table 17.1. A significant offering in the cycle was Moniglia and Jacopo Melani’s lavish Ercole in Tebe.150 Once more, the performance featured the foremost singers of the day, members of the now-­stabilized Florentine company: “Sig. Abate [Antonio] Cesti” as Hercules; Grasseschi as Chitarro, “custode delle donne”; Ballerini; and others of that stature.151 At the beginning of March 1661, the famous painter Salvator Rosa reported to a correspondent that “Cesti, called for on the occasion of these forthcoming festivities, will leave [for Florence] in a few days.”152 It was recounted that

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on the 8th of said month the most superb and marvelous opera . . . Ercole in Tebe was presented in the . . . theatre in Via della Pergola,153 in which—­beyond the excellence of the composition and the singers—­the most enormous machines were seen, the most marvelous flights [of the machinery], set changes, admirable ballets, [and] most ingenious and fierce sword-­play. . . . Suffice it to say that it began an hour after sunset and finished at daybreak, without the least tedium on the listeners’ part.154

Not all members of the audience were so forgiving about one element of the performance, however. “The comedy . . . had the sole defect of too great a length, which lasted until the eighth hour,” wrote one audience member.155 The ballets must indeed have been “admirable.”156 Extraordinarily, the primary sources preserve the original music for the four end-­of-­act balli and the abbattimento, a final “catastrophe” in the ancient Greek dramaturgical meaning of the term, which permits a resolution of the plot, nested within a happy ending.157 The libretto includes an official Descrizione with detailed accounts of the balli, names of the dancers and choreographers, and thirteen engravings based on Tacca’s drawings, three of which depict dance scenes. Seventy-­four ballerini took part in the balli, which included both French and Italian dance types, surely a nod to both the Medici and the French noble family into which Grand Prince Cosimo was marrying. In the concluding ballo of act 3, to music which inspired terror, Pluto’s monsters began a wild dance with horrendous jumps, various athletic feats, fantastic steps regulated by stravagante capriccio. . . , while at the same time, and to the same music, the cupids wove a noble dance. And it was a wonderful thing to see the terrible fierceness of the monsters, and the order and polish of the cupids, interweaving their movements in such a way that each, their pauses in harmony, demonstrated new and delightful figures.

To judge from the primary material, the earlier dance music had evidently been scored for a single melody instrument that played above the basso continuo. Melani now employs a four-­voice setting, scored for cornets and trombones, the more somber instrumental colors long associated with scenes of the type depicted in the accompanying dance. An instrumental introduction precedes the chorus of monsters, after which the cornets and trombones return in a concluding section.158 Art at the Medici court continued to serve a propagandistic end. A chorus represented the “quattro stelle medicee,” the Galilean moons or “Med-

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icean stars,” the four largest moons of Jupiter (Callisto, Europa, Ganymede, and Io), which Galileo had discovered earlier in the century with his epoch-­making telescopes.159 And an implicit identification of Grand Duke Ferdinando II with Hercules was the inevitable continuation of a politico-­iconographic tradition of apotheoses of the House of Medici. The Medici were Herculean in stature. In 1608, Hercules was a central figure in Cini’s Argonautica. In 1617, in The Liberation of Tyrrhenus and Arnea, Authors of the Tuscan Blood, described in my chapter on ballet entertainments at court, Hercules sanctioned the union of the young betrothed, Ferdinando Gonzaga and Caterina de’ Medici. Performances of the equestrian ballet Il mondo festeggiante, in which Grand Prince Cosimo appeared as Hercules, coincided with the performances of Ercole in Tebe. The cost—­again remarkable for its time—­was a staggering ₤96,440 toscane, which was absorbed by the court. Payment registers in the archives of the Pergola classify the categories of expense and identify some of the material requirements of the operatic enterprise: iron, timber, and the “painting of all the stage sets,” “expenses for the wardrobe,” the “composition of the drama and printing of the libretto, with the engravings of the stage sets,” “incisions of the engravings of the stage sets, printing of different announcements, and . . . such,” “expenses for the rehearsals and the . . . nights on which the spettacolo was performed,” payments “to the singers and instrumentalists” and “the dancers and stage combatants,” “lodging for three months for four Sienese with their households for the movements on horseback executed in the ballets,” an “honorarium to the master horse-­jumper,” and “different expenses,” itemized as “weekly assistance given by different people for the work from the 22nd day of January 1661, which was the beginning, to the month of July 1661.” There were 370 costumes, and they alone cost some ₤37,000, of which more than ₤2,000 was for the plumes of the crests on the helmets. Most audience members likely had little if any appreciation for the complexity of an operatic undertaking and the scope of the demands entailed in mounting such a performance. There can be no question that the casual, offhand extravagance of the 1661 performances was one of the factors that brought this first phase in the history of the Teatro di Via della Pergola to an end. The dizzying succession of operatic performances continued, “demonstrations of happiness . . . and . . . jubilation.”160 In October there were six performances of one of the two most successful operas of the Seicento, Cicognini and Cesti’s Orontea,161 which “Sig. Abate” Antonio Cesti himself staged and in which he again performed, probably in the male protagonist role of Alidoro.162 The grand duke contributed funding, as did the grand princes Mattias and Gian Carlo and Archduke Ferdinand Karl

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of Austria, to whom the libretto was dedicated.163 Costs not absorbed by individual benefactors were covered by the rental of boxes.164 The libretto’s dedication—­obsequiously expressed, with true “Baroque” bombast—­recounts the performance history of Orontea. Having just emerged from the bosom of the Adriatic [i.e., Venice],165 the famous Orontea flew to the banks of the Eno [i.e., Innsbruck], in order to bow to the name of Your Highness [Archduke Ferdinand Karl, husband of Anna de’ Medici, sister to Grand Princes Leopoldo, Mattias, and Giovan Carlo] and find a place in that august spirit, where all the best disciplines have their patrimony: Caressed and received there, it wore the noble mantle, whence today it shines brightly, and—­its visage enriched with the great image of Your Highness—­it was then taken to exhibit its royal features to the Gods of the Tiber and Capitoline Hill.166 It finally arrived on the floral banks of the Arno and thought of displaying itself to the Goddesses of Flora with the treasure of an admirable impression; but finding the exemplarity there of Your Highness’ living person, who with generous footsteps had already trod this entire ground of leading-­lady magnificence, it was judged incapable of bringing any addition or greater splendor; silent and unknown, it chose our Academy’s humble residence.167

After a onetime reprise of Il potestà,168 the rich cycle of operatic offerings concluded with some six performances of another of Cesti’s most successful operas, La Dori ò vero La schiava fedele.169 Cesti reported that the performance was Archduke Ferdinand Karl’s contribution to the festivities. On 22 October 1661, Cesti wrote from Florence: On Monday or Tuesday [24 or 25 October], the Most Serene Lord Archduke—­ in order to satisfy the Curiosity of these Most Serene [members of the grand ducal court] to see his [Innsbruck] musicians perform—­has ordered that a small opera by Signor Apolloni170 titled La Dori or Schiava fortunata be performed by the same [Innsbruck musicians]. I . . . invite [you] and Your Giovanni Battista [Ricciardi] to hear my weaknesses, and make allowances for these Gentlemen [the singers], because in only four days they have put it [the opera] back together.171

La Dori had first been performed in Innsbruck, which explains why the Innsbruck musicians were, in fact, able to “put it back together” “in only four days.”172 Cesti staged and performed in the Florentine productions.173 The Baroque character of the 1661 performances is revealed with uncommon clarity in La Dori. The text carries the complexities and coinci-

Opera in Florence, Act 2: The Pan-Italian Phase 299

dences of the plot and the transvestism to absurd lengths.174 Apolloni’s text has been characterized as “feckless” and “really licentious,” a “bewildering concoction” of “fascinating complexity” and a “farrago,” featuring “ins and outs, turns and twists, recognitions and love complaints.” And yet the opera has also been described as perhaps “the foremost . . . of its period,” “the operatic paragon of its time.”175 At the time it was enthusiastically described in the correspondence of the grand ducal family.176 Our consideration of Cesti’s La Dori occasions a look at some music. The possibilities inherent in the distinction between recitative and set piece were rebalanced over many decades. The following clear and concise statement identifies some defining design elements of Italian opera in the mid-­to late Seicento,177 although I hasten to add the qualification that it extrapolates from hundreds of examples within which is the inevitable variety. Seventeenth-­century opera . . . is characterized by the lack of a sharp distinction between recitative and aria. There were moments . . . in which the recitative was secco [i.e., accompanied solely by the basso continuo]. . . . This type of recitative was sharply distinguished from the aria; but there were many other more nuanced kinds of recitative, . . . not to mention the frequent transitions from recitative to a broad arioso [“airy”] melody, be it only to stress a single significant line. On the other hand, there were arias with instrumental accompaniment and [orchestral] ritornelli, and arias which we might call secco arias, having only a continuo accompaniment and no [orchestral] ritornelli; there were long arias, big set pieces, and, more commonly, shorter arias forming part of the dialogue. . . . There were arias whose climax consisted in a sudden, dramatic transition to impassioned recitative. (emphasis added)178

Cesti’s La Dori offers a representative example.179 A scene with the characters Arsinoe, Celinda, and Dirce opens with a sinfonia for two violins and bass. There immediately follows a strophic, triple-­meter set piece, in this case a duet accompanied solely by the basso continuo. The strophes comprise a sestina followed by a concluding rhyming couplet, which delivers a moralizing aphorism. Between the setting of the sestina and couplet in each strophe is a ritornello. The first strophe is followed by a repetition of the sinfonia. A second strophe, whose poetic design is identical to that of the first, follows, and the sinfonia is again repeated. Finally, the scene concludes with secco recitative, but included in it are two triple-­meter arioso passages. The design of the scene is as diagrammed below, and an excerpt of the music is given in example 17.1.

Example 17.1 Excerpt from Antonio Cesti’s La Dori

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“Sinfonia” a triple-­meter strophic duet of two strophes, each a sestina and concluding couplet, the duet accompanied solely by the basso continuo a [1.a P(art)e] Se perfido Amore b Coi dardi vi punge, a Se tacito ardore b Al seno vi giunge. c Ogni punta, ogni foco c Prendete amanti a gioco “Ritornello” orchestral; played after the sestina and before the couplet a strophe-­ending, aphoristic rhyming couplet d Che le facelle e’ i strali, D son ben armi d’Amor, mà non mortali. “Sinfonia ut supra” e 2.a P[art]e Se l’arco d’un ciglio f Vi toglie la vita e Se un labbro vermiglio f Ai baci v’invita g Ogni vezzo ogni strale g Credete amanti, è frale, “Ritornello” the couplet h Sguardi e lusinghe accorte, H Son ben armi d’Amor, mà non di Marte. “Sinfonia ut supra” a scene-­ending, duple-­meter recitative, with two brief, triple-­meter arioso passages interpolated roughly one-­third and two-­thirds of the way through the recitative Già ti è palese, o bella, . . .

With the death of Cardinal Giovan Carlo de’ Medici in 1663 and the resultant loss of the continuing financial support of the grand ducal court, the immediate future prospects of the Teatro della Pergola were imperiled. It was extensively remodeled in 1689 for the wedding festivities of Grand

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Prince Ferdinando di Cosimo III de’ Medici and Princess Violante Beatrice of Bavaria. In the meantime, Ferdinando had undertaken to support operatic performances himself, and in 1679 the first of many performances at his villa in Pratolino was staged. They continued regularly almost until his death in 1713.180

18

Intermedio II

D evotio nal and Co nvivia l Uses o f Music

Devotional: The Lauda Reimagined: Canzonette Spirituali Throughout my narrative, we have seen how Florentines sought outlets for a more personal expression of their spirituality. The Trecento and Quattrocento lauda; the Quattrocento and Cinquecento sacra rappresentatione; the Cinquecento intermedio sacro e morale: these genres emerged in response to Florentines’ devotional needs, complements to their less participatory experience of the formal ritual observances of the Catholic Church. Although originally monophonic and intended for congregational singing, the lauda was refashioned throughout its long history, first as a polyphonic genre in the fifteenth century, then, in the sixteenth, as an increasingly complex genre capable of expressing Counter-­Reformation sensibilities and the conviction of the Counter-­Reformation church that the arts could be leveraged to intensify religious experience. The further reimagining of the tradition of devotional genres by Giovanni Maria Casini in the late Seicento and early Settecento is an expression of the mature Baroque style. Among the devices Casini employed was the concertato technique, where the ensemble includes both voices and instruments, and the instruments play a role other than simply doubling the vocal lines. In 1703, Casini published a collection of canzonette spirituali. The author of the texts, Padre Bernardo Adimari, wished to see them “clothed in the Music of Sig. Gio. Maria Casini, Organist of the Duomo.” In reimagining the original Florentine lauda, where a skilled amateur soloist alternated with the congregants, Casini alternated an ensemble of professional musicians with the congregation. For each canzonetta, there was one melody for the people, and for the texts “that exceed seven stanzas,” “two melodies . . . , such that one can sing the first half before and the other after, with a different tune for variety.”

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Signor Giovan Maria Casini has not only furnished these Canzonetta texts with a melody, but, further, has set them to concerted Music for four voices, its being the custom in several locales to have one stanza sung by the Musicians and the others by the people. [Whoever, therefore,] wishes to have the said concerted Music, request it of the Author of the Canzonette, who is ready to give it gratis to all who send to make a copy of it.1

Devotional: The Oratorio In the Seicento, an important new devotional genre emerged, the oratorio, which flourished well into the nineteenth century, undergoing significant transformations during its long and happy life. In its way, the oratorio was the successor to the Quattrocento sacra rappresentatione and the Cinquecento intermedio sacro e morale, the application of then-­current compositional techniques to a sacred drama to create an extraliturgical genre functioning as an informal means for expressing one’s spirituality.2 Musicologists had been inclined to trace the origins of the oratorio to the Roman practices of the Florentine composer Filippo Neri, but even before Neri was born, sermonizing by the laity and lauda singing were ritual practices of Florentine companies. In its Florentine iteration, the oratorio seems to have originated in the activities of such organizations as the Compagnia dell’Arcangelo Raffaello, a lay confraternity founded in the early fifteenth century, which in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries supported the singing of sacred dialogues.3 The Raffaello was probably the most important lay confraternity of late-­Cinquecento Florence.4 Such institutions enrolled boys and young men, ages thirteen to twenty-­four, who typically were not destined to become clergy. Their members practiced devotions and received instruction in the Christian faith and rituals.5 The company’s rooms fronted Piazza Santa Maria Novella. As reconstructed before 1586, they comprised two rooms for musicians, as well as their loft, which opened out onto the oratory, at the far end of which was the altar. Musical performances there were multimedia experiences. A fresco in a vault behind the altar depicted “a choir of angels . . . marveling at the Trinity, which—­beheld on high—­is shown amidst splendor.” From recorders, the violas, the Organs, harpsichords, monochords, citharas, rattles, panpipes, and many other . . . diverse instruments, played with the most beautiful grace, it seems that one hears a je ne sais quoi of uncommon harmony, [so] complete was the merit of the excellent Artifice in painting them.6

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There in the company’s rooms, during morning services and evening assemblies, the boys preached sermons for their own edification. Clerical members also preached, all members sang laude, and the boys played roles in the Compagnia’s sacred theatrical performances, which sometimes could feature costuming, stage sets, and music of various kinds, including in stile rappresentativo. Among the Raffaello’s members were Jacopo Peri, Giovanni Battista da Gagliano,7 Giulio Caccini, Piero di Matteo Strozzi, Girolamo Mei, Jacopo Corsi, Domenico Belli, three of the Franciosini (were they among the boys who preached sermons?), and offspring of Giovanni de’ Bardi and Vincenzo Galilei. Marco da Gagliano became a member when he was less than six years old and in 1607 was named maestro di cappella. In 1609, after overcoming some initial political opposition, Gagliano—­“at present maestro di cappella of his serene highness”—­was confirmed in the position and held it for thirteen years.8 He was only one of several chapelmasters of the Raffaello who were also maestri di cappella at the Cathedral.9 One of the earliest performances of a sacred dialogue, which modeled the further use of music for dramatic purposes, was in 1582. It depicted Tobias, a figure of particular importance to Florentine lay confraternities and especially the Raffaello,10 since it is the archangel Raphael who accompanies Tobias on his quest, recounted in the book of Tobit, recognized as canonical by the Council of Florence in 1442. A contemporary diarist recorded the text performed, which reveals the differences between the fifteenth-­century sacra rappresentatione and the embryonic oratorio: in the oratorio’s relative brevity, in the reduction of the speaking roles to two, in the absence of internal divisions and scenery, and in the elimination of a prologue and epilogue. The first of many proto-­oratorios that were entirely sung rather than alternating spoken dialogue and music was staged in 1593, at roughly the same time as Cavalieri’s pastorals, notably. The same manuscript sources that contain the remaining fragments of Rinuccini and Peri’s La Dafne also contain a monody that may well have been performed in the 1593 proto-­ oratorio. The text is appropriate to an archangel’s solo, and the compositional technique reveals affinities with the contemporary tradition of secular solo song to spare instrumental accompaniment.11 The newest, most fashionable compositional techniques meant not only the stile recitativo, of course, but also the stile concertato. On the Feast of the Archangel Raphael in 1592, two choruses of singers performed a madrigal and other music after Mass with instrumentalists.12 The one possible surviving composition from Gagliano’s time as maestro di cappella of the Compagnia documents the application of new com-

Intermedio II: Devotional and Convivial Uses of Music 307

Example 18.1 Excerpt from Marco da Gagliano’s Pastor levate

positional styles and techniques to the emerging genre of the oratorio. In 1609, the Feast of the Nativity was celebrated “with excellent music, and after the office [Giulio Caccini’s son] Ponpeo [sic; recte: Pompeo] sang a most beautiful lauda in music . . . , composed by Signore Ottavio Rinuccini.”13 In 1608, Gagliano reported having recently composed works for one, two, and three voices, and in his Musiche a una, due, e tre voci (Venice, 1615), he published a lauda for solo voice on a text by Rinuccini (Pastor levate). Pastor levate may have been among the works composed in 1608, and, if so, the fact that it predates the 1609 performance by one year suggests that it may have been the lauda sung by Pompeo Caccini in 1609. At minimum, it gives an excellent sense of the style (ex. 18.1).

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In many of these instances, one sees a reflection of the convictions about the power of solo song that were held by the many members of the company who were also deeply involved in creating the earliest operas. The compositional techniques adopted in service of these convictions demonstrate that devotional genres were not subject to the conservative conventions of musical composition for the formal liturgy. As para­ liturgical genres, they could respond more freely to innovations in creative strategy deployed in other genres, among them the Seicento madrigal and opera. The Raffaello was performing oratorios until the early Settecento, albeit less frequently than in the Seicento.14 The mature Florentine oratorio may be said to have come of age initially with performances by the Florentine Congregazione dell’Oratorio di San Filippo.15 As the name of the congregation suggests, it memorialized Filippo Neri, who was responsible for establishing the Roman oratorio tradition and, as suggested before, had earlier enjoyed a reputation among music historians as the pioneering figure in the history of the genre, a status he is now held to share with others. The performances of the Congregazione were easily the most numerous at a moment when the oratorio was the most important genre for the city’s final group of truly consequential native composers, “the most accessible and pervasive genre of dramatic music in Florence during all but the summer months.”16 In 1640, the Oratorian fathers first took possession of “old San Firenze,” which occupied the site of the more southerly of the two conjoined ecclesiastical buildings that now stand in Piazza San Firenze. In 1672, a new structure—­“new San Firenze,” the more northerly of the two—­was completed for the Congregazione. That same year the Congregazione elected to hold its oratorio performances there, but it must have concluded almost immediately that that was unworkable, since until 1758 they were held instead in old San Firenze.17 In 1775, a second, newer oratory was constructed on the site of old San Firenze, which had been demolished three years before. The two buildings now present Piazza San Firenze with nearly identical facades in the high Baroque style.18 In architectural terms, they were utterly appropriate to the performance of oratorios in “Baroque” Florence. Although the Congregazione was initially under the control of a faction that opposed the performance of elaborate music, by 1652 new aesthetic values had emerged. In that year, it was reported that “we began to do our oratorios in . . . [old San Firenze].” Every year between All Saints Day and Palm Sunday, an oratorio was performed in the evening on Sundays and particular feast days. Whereas some six or seven operas were staged an-

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nually in the public or semipublic theaters between 1668 and 1750, some thirty to thirty-­five oratorios were performed annually between 1668 and 1670 and 1693 and 1694. Some of the other Florentine lay religious con­ fraternities also performed oratorios.19 Not all of the oratorios were newly composed, of course. Although there are very few surviving scores from before 1750, dozens of libretti document the preferences of the Oratorians, understandable preferences in light of the genre’s didactic function, similar to that of the Quattrocento sacra rappresentatione. Clarity of presentation was valued, as were human dramas. Abstract allegories were to be avoided.20 The musicians typically performed from an altar platform or a graded stage or tiered riser in front of the altar. The singers never exceeded the solo roles in number. Choruses comprised the soloists, singing as an ensemble. The instrumental accompaniment was provided by two violins, viola da gamba, lute, and harpsichord, played by the maestro di cappella. (Florentine musicians preferred that the basso continuo be performed by the harpsichord and lute or theorbo.) The only wind or brass instrument recorded is a trumpet.21 In their modest scale, such performing resources were comparable to those of the contemporary Venetian opera orchestra.22 Seventeenth-­ century orchestral style was typically characterized by the familiar sonata or trio-­sonata polarity of a treble instrument or instruments juxtaposed to the bass.23 By 1690, a rich tradition of performances of sacred dialogues and oratorios was thus already established. Around that year the number of performances began to increase dramatically.24 Although no other con­fraternity had rivaled the Raffaello in that respect, competing confraternities now staged performances in some thirty other venues.25 This increase is explained by a gradual change in the membership of the confraternities, paralleled by a corresponding evolution of the oratorio from earlier genres. By the end of the Seicento, adult males dominated the confraternities, which led to a greater interest in the oratorio as a sophisticated kind of sacred drama, performed by professional musicians.26 With the decisive establishment of a tradition of performances of oratorios came established practices. Financing mechanisms and other means of material support complemented the earlier self-­financing. The same patrons who supported other musical activities at the end of the century might also support oratorio performances. Three oratorios by Alessandro Scarlatti were performed with Grand Prince Ferdinando’s financial support.27 Unlike those of the Congregazione dell’Oratorio di San Filippo, the oratorio productions of other confraternities admitted women to the audience. Whereas the Congregazione—­true to its affiliation with San

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Filippo Neri—­tended to perform oratorios by Roman composers, the other confraternities privileged Florentine composers and Florentine musicians as directors of the performances. Among them were the Cathedral chapelmaster Sanmartini, as well as Antonio Veracini, often the director of performances of oratorios composed by his nephew Francesco Maria, who on occasion served as concertmaster of the orchestra.28 The Oratorians tended to perform older compositions, the other confraternities more recent compositions. The earlier Compagnia dell’Arcangelo Raffaello had had a maestro di cappella on staff; the other confraternities engaged maestri for one season or even one performance.29 Perhaps most important, the oratorio in Florence can be said to have provided for other socio­economic strata of society what opera provided for the aristocracy and high bourgeoisie.30 Casini composed oratorios, and of the four he is known to have composed,31 scores for two survive. One of those treats subject matter favored among devotees of the proto-­oratorio and oratorio, as we saw: an anonymous Florentine diarist reported that “during the last Lent [1701] there were great crowds and clamor at [the Compagnia dell’Arcangelo Raffaello, called of] La Scala for the oratorio of Tobiah composed by Signor Casini—­a Florentine priest and . . . most excellent musician and scholar—­and . . . there were several repeat performances.”32 The same features characteristic of Casini’s sacred music more generally—­that somewhat anomalous fusion of chromaticism and neo–­stylus ecclesiasticus counterpoint—­are seen in Il viaggio di Tobia.33 So, too, are the stile concertato and the richer, more inventive scoring we saw in the composer’s Responsories for Holy Week. In Il viaggio, two independent string ensembles furnish the accompaniment, one comprising five violas to accompany the melancholic arias, one comprising four violins and two cellos to accompany the more joyous ones. Many of the arias exemplify the familiar ABA′ design.34 As in the Cinquecento, religious communities of women staged performances of religious dramas. In 1625, Jacopo Cicognini dedicated his five-­act Il martirio di Santa Caterina to the daughter of Grand Duke Ferdinando I and Grand Duchess Christine of Lorraine, Grand Princess Maria Maddalena, who had entered the Monastero di Santa Croce (“La Crocetta”) in 1621. The music for Il martirio consists of a prologue in verse and intermedi between the acts. Cicognini surely intended his drama for a convent, given that the prologue, sung by Divine Wisdom, is addressed to an all-­female audience. It features strophic poetry, sung soloistically by Divine Wisdom, and another species of solo song, an aria appropriate for the prologue. Stage directions suggest that the singer of the aria may have

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been the celebrated Francesca Caccini: “Here a solo voice should sing, as Signora Francesca knows, then the entire chorus should repeat the first stanza, that is, ‘Noi dell’eterno amore.’” Caccini may also have composed the aria. Each intermedio featured a poetic text of three or four strophes, and each was sung by a chorus depicting different personages: priestesses of Palla Athena; Bacchantes; angels; virginal followers of Saint Catherine. One assumes that the same ensemble performed each intermedio. The music was likely sung either in unison by the ensemble of female singers or in simple homophony.35 Throughout much of Florentine history, and especially after the Counter-­Reformation, there was a recurring anxiety about the respectability of informal devotional activities and the institutions that supported them. In the sixteenth century, the lauda had been regulated by the political authorities. As in the Cinquecento, so in the Settecento. Late in the century, Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo questioned the utility and even the propriety of the confraternities. They engaged in unregulated ritual activity that was uninformed by the traditions and formal values and practices of the parish churches and competed with them for the loyalties of attendees and their financial support. The unseemly competition between the formal ecclesiastical institutions and the confraternities was among the factors that led Pietro Leopoldo to suppress the confraternities altogether in 1785.36

Convivial: Ballet Entertainments In the Cinquecento, dancing had figured prominently in the private entertainments of the grand ducal family, sometimes performed by the members of the family itself and their invited guests, sometimes staged for the enjoyment of the audience. In the latter case, the dancing typically occurred during the theatrical intermedi nested within a parent comedy. In the early Seicento, a new genre gained currency at the Medici court, a different kind of dramatic work in which dancing was the principal element. The dancing was organized according to a plot and was, in short, a kind of ballet, familiar from ballets of later centuries where a narrative thread runs throughout and the whole is accompanied by instrumental music. As in the sixteenth century, the dancing sometimes featured the courtiers’ participation, depending upon courtly taste and the function of various ritual types. Seicento ballet entertainments were known at the time as mascherate (masques). The dramatic conception was different from that of opera. Although there was vocal music, dancing rather than singing predominated. It was as if a cycle of sixteenth-­century intermedi, with their loose narra-

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tive thread, were lifted wholesale from their original context as entr’acte entertainment and performed all of a piece, end to end. Almost without exception, the ballet entertainments were occasional works for important, onetime events in the lives of the Medici.37 The subject matter was almost invariably mythological, the cumulative effect achieved largely through scenic and choreographic means. The texts were by some of the foremost poets of the day (Rinuccini, Chiabrera); the singers were illustrious (Vittoria Archilei, Giulio Caccini, Francesco Rasi). The music was either instrumental accompaniment to the dancing or was sung chorally or in recitative. Entire scenes could be largely in recitative to the accompaniment of the basso continuo, alternating with occasional choral interludes. Given the ephemeral nature of the genre, there is a rather surprising amount of music remaining, some of it the fragmentary remains of the vocal music, some the instrumental accompaniment to the dancing. The Florentine ballet entertainments bore a relationship to similar quasi-­theatrical genres, such as the English court masque and the French ballet de cour of the distant Medici cousins, the kings of France. Indeed, the ballet de cour was a French adaptation of the type of entertainment offered by Italian courts to honor important visitors or celebrate events such as weddings. The elements of these festivals were not dissimilar to those of the Florentine ballets: entr’acte entertainment, entries of masked dancers, pantomimes, processions of floats, and dances in which the courtiers participated, fused into a novel amalgam of the arts.38 A 1611 performance of The Mascherata of the Nymphs of Senna, on a text by Rinuccini, featured both vocal and dance music.39 In the Intermedio of the Passengers, several boats appeared. After the first “another . . . appears[,] and its occupants join those of the first in singing the madrigal On the African Sands. . . . [T]he madrigal was excellently set to music by Marco da Gagliano, canon of San Lorenzo . . . and maestro di cappella to His Highness.”40 (Gagliano’s music—­for eight voices in two choruses—­was published in his Sixth Book, which was dedicated to the grand duke.)41 Other text is set in stile recitativo. Some of the soloistic vocal music is by Jacopo Peri,42 some by Francesca Caccini. It was “sung by the principal singers.” A brief fragment from a passage in another intermedio survives,43 a few bars of recitative setting an exchange between Proteus and Venus (ex. 18.2). Then, weeping and sorrowful, the goddess Venus appeared, seated upon a dolphin and unbosoming her sorrow to the waves. Her laments attracted Proteus and the other gods who came forth from the sea. From them she heard news of her fugitive son. And how pleasant these tidings were may be judged from the following words:

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Example 18.2 Excerpt from a recitative for a 1611 ballet entertainment

[Venus: Return, oh, return, my little boy. . . .] Proteus: Beautiful mother of Love, who the wind and the waves. . . . Venus: My handsome little boy. . . .44

Elsewhere during the performance there was a dance “called the Siren, . . . danced by His Most Serene Highness [and the grand duchess], Princes, and Gentlemen and Ladies[,] all dressed as Sea Deities.” “There appeared above the waves many Sea Deities and the most noble chariots of Thetis . . . and then came the dance.” In the “Hall of Comedies,” splendid scenery was erected which depicted the fortress of Livorno and the sea . . . where His Highness with the Archduchess and Ladies-­in-­Waiting dressed as nymphs and Cavaliers dressed as denizens of the sea appeared in a chariot drawn through the sea by dolphins[,] . . . and it made a ballet that was well designed and very charming.45

The masque was “changed in part and amplified on May 5, 1613, for the most happy marriage of . . . Mario Sforza”—­“Duke of Onano . . . [and] Count of Sancta Fiora”—­“and Lady Arnea of Lorraine.”46 Challenging the canonical sequence of dances in the Italian dance suite—­ballo grave, gagliarda, and corrente—­Lorenzo Allegri composed a “Gavotta” for the

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“Terza Parte,” which is surely to be interpreted as a nod to French dance tradition, honoring “Lady Arnea of Lorraine” (ex. 18.3). One of the most interesting ballets was performed on 26 February 1615, the Dance of the Turkish Women with Their Consorts of Slaves.47 Another entrant in a long series reflecting the anxieties of European Christians about the “Islamic Other,” the ballet depicted a military engagement between Christians and Muslim Turks.48 The dance featured an armed warship. The music included an instrumental sinfonia, a concluding dance accompanied by “the harmony of diverse instruments,” and recitatives and choruses on texts by Alessandro Ginori. The characters accompanied their singing “with motions appropriate to the song and . . . gestures of lamentation.” Several of the Turkish women performed a “low dance with gestures denoting extreme grief.” In 1617, the veglia The Liberation of Tyrrhenus and Arnea, Authors of the Tuscan Blood—­text by Andrea Salvadori, music by Gagliano and Peri, and scenography and costuming by Giulio Parigi49—­was staged in the Uffizi theater to mark the wedding of Ferdinando Gonzaga and Caterina de’ Medici. It featured intermedi50 distributed among the three scenes of the veglia, interpreted by courtiers and comprising a ballet danced by twelve gentlemen and twelve ladies and a concluding ballet:51 “After the veglia was a dance with 40 knights and 40 ladies . . . , which all those from the tourney attended. . . . The festivities continued almost until the sixth hour, and many dances were danced between those Princes and other gentlemen and ladies.”52 A famous etching by Jacques Callot depicts the grand duke and duchess participating in the dancing.53 As in the 1611 Mascherata of the Nymphs of Senna, the stage action was not restricted by physical barriers. It extended into the campo di mezzo (theater pit) and required that the instruments—­whose playing ensured that the choreographic action was synchronized—­be removed from the stage to separate platforms, scaffolding, or balconies in the hall. In dramatic presentations where the action extended into the campo di mezzo, there was a distinction in social standing between those in the pit and those on stage. A contemporary account of The Liberation of Tyrrhenus and Arnea reported that “in the middle of the auditorium the grand duke danced amid cavaliers, and the archduchess amid ladies, yet with gestures and movements and placements that were always differentiated from those of the others, so that even though they all followed the same music, the masters were always recognized as such.”54

Example 18.3 Excerpt from a dance for a 1611 ballet entertainment

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Convivial: The Seicento Madrigal In sixteenth-­century Florence, madrigals had been performed in a variety of contexts: informal gatherings of patrician amateurs, meetings of the academies, and entertainments of the aristocratic courts, including, most important, that of the grand dukes. In the early Seicento, the situation was essentially the same. The Accademia degli Elevati witnessed such performances, and Marco da Gagliano “praised . . . the musical evenings held at [Cosimo] Cini’s palace on the Arno river at which ‘the most elevated musicians’ of Florence were in attendance. Gagliano recalled with gratitude the many cigni canori—­singing swans—­who performed his madrigals on those occasions.”55 The polyphonic madrigal in sixteenth-­century Florentine style was by no means immediately eclipsed, therefore. Young noblemen who had studied music had often mastered counterpoint specifically, and when they published the results of their studies they were almost invariably madrigals.56 As Edmond Strainchamps writes: In 1602 the madrigal was probably still the most favored secular genre throughout Italy—­certainly it was in Florence. Present-­day musicological writings, with their understandable enthusiasm for searching out historical roots and precedents and for emphasizing progressive tendencies, have exaggerated the relative weight of . . . opera and monody in Florentine culture during that water­ shed period, the last decades of the sixteenth century and the first of the seventeenth.57

The great scholar of the Italian madrigal of the Cinquecento, Alfred Einstein, argued that “with . . . Gagliano, Florence has a master madrigalist again, after having been relatively inactive since the time of Corteccia.”58 “His madrigals are . . . the chief glory of Gagliano’s secular chamber music.”59 In his first of his six books of madrigals, Gagliano set texts by some of the leading poets of the day, more than twenty of them poems by Chiabrera, Guarini, and Marino.60 Gagliano wrote that “the true delight [of song] stems from the intelligibility of the words,” and in pursuing the goal of intelligibility, he employed homophonic or near-­homophonic textures, syllabic text setting, and a restrained use of melisma.61 In his secular music as in his sacred, Gagliano continued Florentine musical tradition,62 specifically the polyphonic madrigal as envisioned by Striggio. But there is always a fresh vision of established practice. In time, however,

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the new, more immediate, subjective, and dramatic style of the emerging Baroque precludes further usefulness of the madrigal. Gagliano’s development as a composer, as a musical intellectual, and as a musician responsive to fashion-­ minded patrons must have left him no choice but to abandon it. . . . Gagliano as early as 1606 recognized the madrigal as a genre without a future.63

Convivial: The Seicento Cantata One of the distinguishing characteristics of Italian opera during much of its history is that alternation between “light and free recitative” to which “the development of the action” was left64 and the arias and other species of set pieces that were poetically and musically different from the recitative, employing different poetic forms, a different rhythmic conception, and a more “musical” melodic style. Composers sought opportunities to employ the stile recitativo and alternation of recitative and set piece associated with opera. But the full-­scale staging of an opera was a costly enterprise. The cantata was a more economical alternative and performing one a simpler undertaking. A kind of minimalist chamber opera, the cantata lasts minutes rather than hours and is performed by a soloist (or small vocal ensemble) and initially only the basso continuo. Later during the Baroque era, the accompaniment could become richer and more colorful, although composers always retained the option of scoring the work for solo voice and basso continuo alone. Whether in recitative or aria style, monody could now be employed in a brief, multisectional or multimovement chamber genre that alternated recitative and aria-­like passages. The cantata had other virtues: “At a time when opera was still a special seasonal or occasional event . . . , cantatas provided regular . . . entertainment.” They “took . . . the place of the polyphonic madrigal of the previous century and virtually equaled that genre in popularity and profusion.”65 Notwithstanding the relative modesty of the genre and the intimacy of one’s experience of it, performances could enhance the stature of patrons. The public and ceremonial events we have witnessed imaginatively were the overt expression of a patron’s status. Of a subtler order was what one scholar has termed “humanistic patronage.” The cantata and related genres “represent the rank of its élite patrons,” not through the extravagance of public display, but “by demonstrating their artistic sensibility and connoisseurship.”66 The suitability of the cantata to a courtly setting was especially important to the Medici court, where it would never be entirely forgotten that

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the Medici were originally a mercantile family. As the grand dukes’ subjects became reconciled to the family’s ennoblement, the Medici were keen to exploit the full range of features of courtly life and define and redefine the roles of the courtiers who sought to ingratiate themselves with the ruling family. At other Italian and European noble courts, if not in Florence, the traditional aristocracy was now obliged to rely less on the earlier rationale for its status—­the military function of knighthood—­and more on courtly comportment.67 Although the cantata was the successor to the madrigal as the chamber genre of choice, the aesthetic sensibilities of the two were different.68 The cantata represented yet another application of the stile recitativo rather than an elaboration of the polyphonic techniques of the Florentine madrigal of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, though in the sixteenth-­ century madrigal tradition, there had been a Florentine variant of the Ferrarese tradition of solo song to instrumental accompaniment, which, in its way, anticipates the Seicento Florentine cantata. And although the social contexts for performances of cantatas did not differ appreciably from those of the Cinquecento madrigal, the premise was different. The cantata belonged somewhat less to the intellectual realm of the academy, somewhat more to the charming domain of courtly entertainment, the amorous and witty world of aristocratic leisure, as one scholar has characterized it.69 The occasions for the courtly performance of cantatas were those we have seen time and again: daily dining, festive banqueting, and similar events. On other occasions, cantata performances were not simply the backdrop to such activities, but enjoyed a stand-­alone status independent of such functionality.70 Illustrative of the fully developed Florentine cantata of the mid-­ Seicento is Scrivete, occhi dolenti by the Medici protégé Atto Melani.71 Although Melani claimed not to have been a composer, there are fifteen extant cantatas securely attributable to him. He offered them to prospective patrons and in a letter to Grand Prince Mattias de’ Medici maintained that they were of high quality. Although several of Melani’s cantatas are preserved in Florentine sources, Scrivete, occhi dolenti is not. But evidence suggests that it may have been among those intended for a prospective patron, in this case the Mantuan duke Carlo II. Scrivete, occhi dolenti displays many of the characteristics of the mid-­ Seicento cantata, among them the alternation of recitative and aria-­like passages and the seamless morphing from one to the other. It is scored for solo voice and basso continuo and opens in a more neutral duple meter, with the long-­held bass notes essential to recitative style. But at the words, “I burn, I weep, I sigh, and yet I do not speak,” the meter shifts to a dance-­

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like triple and the vocal line assumes a more aria-­like quality, accompanied by a more active, more melodically compelling bass. The techniques of text expression pioneered by Cinquecento madrigalists were applied to a new genre.72 Recitative style; duple meter with a bass line characteristic of recitative: Scrivete, occhi dolenti, Con inchiostro di pianto Sul foglio del mio volto, i vostri affanni. Narrate i miei tormenti, Registrate i miei danni; E dite a chi no’ l’ crede, Ch’amar tadendo ogni martire eccede. Per un ciglio amoroso, Che piace ma saetta; Per un labro vezzoso, Ch’uccide ma dilletta; Per un seno di neve, Che mira non si può senza adorarlo:

Write, aching eyes, with ink of tears on the page of my face your pains: relate my torments, register my injuries, and tell whoever does not believe it that to love in silence exceeds every martyrdom. For a loving brow that pleases, but shoots arrows; for a graceful lip that kills, but delights; for a breast of snow that one cannot see without adoring:

Aria-­like quality in the vocal line; triple meter with a more active bass: Ardo, piango, sospiro; e pur non parlo.

I burn, I weep, I sigh, and yet I do not speak.

Convivial: Instrumental Genres By 1628, Girolamo Frescobaldi was “acknowledged as the leading Italian virtuoso and composer of keyboard music.”73 He dedicated a collection of instrumental canzone to Grand Duke Ferdinando II, presumably in hopes of securing the favor of a prospective patron. They are the only instrumental canzone Frescobaldi composed. In November that year, he was granted leave from St. Peter’s in Rome and entered the service of the grand duke of Tuscany. Frescobaldi immediately became the highest paid musician at court. He was expected to participate in performances at court as organist and harpsichordist and compose vocal chamber music. He also had several pupils in organ, among them Casini’s teacher Francesco Nigetti.74 There are few but revealing glimpses of Frescobaldi’s activity in Florence. There was an

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established tradition there of performances by ensemble instrumentalists: an ensemble called the Franzesi (“string players for dances and entertainments or for meals, who are called the ensemble of the franzesi”) and the famous Franciosini. In May 1630, the Franciosini played during dinner, after which “everyone retired to the chamber of the Most Serene Archduchess . . . to hear . . . Frescobaldi play.” In the early 1630s, it was said that “Girolamo Fantini, the most excellent trumpeter in all Italy, . . . has played . . . with the organ of Cardinal Borghere, on which Girolamo Frescobaldi, organist of the Duke of Etruria and . . . the Church of St. Peter’s at Rome, played very skillfully.”75 In 1634, Frescobaldi left Florentine service and returned to Rome. Given that Frescobaldi dedicated the instrumental canzone to Grand Duke Ferdinando, I make the assumption that they were known in Florence during the composer’s tenure at the Medici court.76 Were they among the compositions performed by the Franzesi and Franciosini, especially since the instrumentation of the canzone is usually unspecified? The canzone are for one, two, three, or four instrumental voices. They typically begin imitatively, the opening section followed by a series of contrasting sections. The thematic material—­developed through variation technique in all the sections—­is ordinarily derived from the opening subject. Tempo indications in Frescobaldi’s oeuvre appear for the first time. Canzona I77 comprises several sections in alternating meters—­duple and triple—­and contrasting tempos. The allegro sections are imitative, the adagios free and ornamental (ex. 18.4). Although reflecting the emerging tradition of independent, freestanding instrumental compositions, Frescobaldi’s canzone reveal the continuing influence of madrigalian polyphony. “Canzona” is the term initially used for the Cinquecento madrigal, after all. By the mid-­to late Baroque era, however, distinctive compositional practices in instrumental music had emerged, accompanied by a nomenclature appropriate to instrumental genres. In August 1662, for the birthday of Grand Prince Cosimo, a five-­ voiced “serenata” attributed to Cesti was performed, “orchestrated according to the usage of the concerti of France.”78 The Florentine instrumental tradition reached a zenith under the patronage of Grand Prince Ferdinando, one of the most knowledgeable, passionate, and sophisticated patrons of music in Medici family history (fig. 18.1).79 When the grand prince was not yet twenty years old, he had already assembled a personal équipe of excellent musicians. Some of his activities as patron were public. But at Palazzo Pitti, he organized more intimate events, and among the musicians who performed there—­several of them also composers of note—­were the virtuoso lutentist, theorbist,

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Example 18.4 Excerpt from Girolamo Frescobaldi’s Canzona I

and composer Giovan Battista Gigli; Martino Bitti, first violinist of the grand prince’s chamber ensemble; and the violinists Antonio and Francesco Maria Veracini (fig. 18.2). The “Eulogy for the Most Serene late ferdinando de’ medici, Prince of Tuscany,” recalled that he was liberally educated and “likewise seasoned these serious applications with learning to play various string instruments from Piero Salvetti, his Adjutant of the Chamber. . . . From Gianmaria Paliardi, Genoese Priest, he learned music, counterpoint, and how to play the harpsichord.”80 Ferdinando himself may have composed fifteen anonymous harpsichord compositions, copied into a Florentine manuscript.81 The compositional output of the great Florentine composer of instru-

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Figure 18.1 Giovanni Battista Foggini, Grand Prince Ferdinando di Cosimo III de’ Medici, ca. 1683–­85. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY. See plate 8 for a color image.

mental music of the mid-­to late Baroque era, Francesco Maria Veracini (*Florence 1690–­†Florence 1768), illustrates the mature Florentine instrumental practices of the Baroque era.82 Late-­Seicento/early-­Settecento Florentine musical life required that one be enterprising. The profile of Veracini’s uncle Antonio, head of a family of violinists, reveals how musicians of the time cobbled together a career from different kinds of employment possibilities. From his father, Antonio inherited a music school, located in the family home. There, Antonio taught his craft. He collected musical

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Figure 18.2 Anton Domenico Gabbiani, group portrait of Medici court musicians, after 1687. The painting depicts Pietro Salvetti on the ’cello, Giovan Battista Gigli on the mandolin, and Francesco Assolani and Martino Bitti on the violin. Florence, Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Inc. 1890, Nr. 2808. Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.

instruments and likely dealt in them. He was a founding member and officer of the musicians’ confraternity. He served for thirty years as maestro di cappella at the Theatine Church of San Michele. He was the composer of at least five oratorios and more than thirty violin sonatas published during his lifetime. And he and his brother regularly played in the opera orchestra at the Medici villa in Pratolino. Amid such variety, one of Antonio’s principal sources of income was for his services as violinist and contractor for the many performances of oratorios produced by the confraternities. Antonio’s career reveals an independence and self-­sufficiency. Although a central figure in Florentine musical life of his time, he remained on the periphery of the grand ducal establishment. He received an appointment in the household of Grand Duchess Vittoria, but the post seems to have been a sinecure. He enjoyed the favor of Vittoria and her grandson, Grand Prince Ferdinando, and as of 1685 was in Vittoria’s service as a violinist, but he seems never to have been obliged to perform at court. Francesco Maria thus belonged to a musical family,83 which facilitated his entrée into the Florentine musical world. His early years (1690–­1711) were spent in Florence. And although he traveled frequently during his subsequent career and secured lucrative appointments elsewhere in Europe, he regularly returned to Florence, where he would then remain for

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some years (1723–­33 and 1750–­68). From 1755 until his death, Veracini was chapelmaster for the Vallombrosan community at the monastic Church of San Pancrazio and from 1758 for the Theatine fathers at the Church of San Gaetano. Notwithstanding the stature of the Veracini in Florentine musical life, Francesco Maria, like his uncle before him, never held a formal post at court. Veracini’s early musical training was with Giovanni Maria Casini,84 the practitioner, as we have seen, of a kind of neo–­stylus ecclesiasticus.85 Veracini’s studies with Casini must partly explain his sure command of contrapuntal technique and his privileging—­late in life—­of polyphonic textures. Perhaps they also partly explain the fact that notwithstanding his importance as a composer and performer of secular instrumental music, his formal appointments in Florence and compositional activity there were primarily as a composer of sacred music. When Veracini came of age, the principal patron of music in late-­Seicento/early-­Settecento Florence, Grand Prince Ferdinando, was reducing his patronage activities and support of operatic performances. After 1709 Ferdinando was no longer in contact with Alessandro Scarlatti, and in 1713 he died. The foremost opera theater in Florence, the Pergola, had long been closed, largely the result of Cosimo III’s indifference.86 (It was said of Cosimo that he “never wanted to encumber himself with either musicians or music.”)87 Perhaps not coincidentally, the Pergola reopened only toward the end of Cosimo’s life. But if Cosimo was not especially interested in opera, he was interested in sacred music, and Veracini’s status as a sacred composer was perhaps as much the result of employment opportunities as of Casini’s influence and Veracini’s own tastes. Although Veracini never held a formal position at the Cathedral, he was visible in Florence as a composer of oratorios. Throughout one of the periods of his settled residence in Florence (1723–­33), he often composed and performed oratorios for the confraternities. Veracini’s known surviving compositions include sonatas for solo instrument and basso continuo, concertos for solo violin and strings, an opera overture, orchestral suites, chamber cantatas for two voices and bass, duets without recitative in the form of an eclogue with string accompaniment, a chamber aria, and arias from several of his operas. But having begun professional life as a progressive, Veracini, very late in life, became disdainful of the homophonic style he had once championed. As illustrative of his contributions to the Florentine sound world of his time, we consider one of his Sonate accademiche, characterized as “his finest sonatas,” which were published in Florence (and London) in 1744. The title of the collection signifies only that these compositions were intended for performance at meetings of formal academies or informal salons. But

Intermedio II: Devotional and Convivial Uses of Music 325

they are also “academic” in the sense that they employ exacting imitative polyphonic technique. The Sonate accademiche were “composed during many previous years of concertizing,”88 and, indeed, Veracini performed at private concerts in Florence and informally at the Medici court. Two of the Sonate accademiche, including the one excerpted here, are in five movements.89 Although here and there they reveal the stylistic influence of the opera aria (including Veracini’s own), which is a reflection of the sharing of features with contemporary vocal music, elsewhere they are richly contrapuntal, reflective of Veracini’s increasing interest in such a compositional technique. The scoring is for solo violin and basso continuo. In the manner of Arcangelo Corelli, the Sonate maintain something of the traditional distinction between church and chamber sonatas. One or more of the movements—­the extended movements titled “Capriccio”—­ are invariably in a brisk tempo and invariably fugal, with the familiar alternation between a series of expositions when the fugue subject is present and episodes when it is absent. The subject is played with almost equal frequency by the violin and bass, the bass seldom serving merely a supporting role. The collection is among the final collections of sonatas for solo violin and basso continuo to feature three-­voiced fugues in the style of Corelli. The complexity and rich, dense interplay of motives is effectively new for the genre, as are the greater scope of the movements and the means used to construct them. In a hybrid that has been characterized as “conservative innovation,” Veracini reenvisioned the sonata while simultaneously featuring elements of the genre’s traditional procedures and stylistic characteristics. The first of the Sonate accademiche shows the violinist’s virtuosic double and even triple stops in the familiar Corellian manner and the full participation of the ’cello in the imitative counterpoint (ex. 18.5).

Convivial: The Invention of the Piano Grand Prince Ferdinando’s knowledgeability about music extended to instruments. He assumed responsibility for the organs at court, and in 1685 there was a harpsichord “delivered to the Chamber of the Most Serene Prince Ferdinando,” the lid displaying the Medici coat of arms.90 Although other members of the family had a passion for instrumental music, it was Ferdinando’s instruments that were the most important and of the greatest interest.91 On 18 December 1687, Grand Prince “Ferdinando left for Bologna, whence to continue to Venice, there to enjoy carnival.” He returned to Florence on 24 March 1688, and within little more than a month, “eighty-­

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Example 18.5 Excerpt from Francesco Maria Veracini’s Sonate accademiche I

four Lire” were “paid to Bartolomeo Cristofori, Musical Instrument Maker, whom his Most Serene Highness [Ferdinando] has hired . . . and he has to be Placed on the roll.”92 By a remarkable coincidence, at precisely the turn of the century—­1600 and 1700—­Florence made its two greatest contributions to world musical culture: opera and the piano.93 And Cristofori must be considered one of the most important figures in the history of music in Florence and Europe

Intermedio II: Devotional and Convivial Uses of Music 327

Figure 18.3 A Bartolomeo Cristofori piano, 1720. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments, 1889 (89.4.1219). Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY.

and the Europeanized world more generally, since it was he who decisively substituted the method of sound production of the piano for that of the harpsichord.94 It seems beyond debate that the new instrument was invented while Cristofori was in Medici service. Ferdinando recognized Cristofori’s importance with a residence, a workshop where he could practice his craft, and a higher salary than that of any other artisan at court. He was also compensated separately for each instrument produced for the grand prince. No other instrument maker at the Medici court had enjoyed Cristofori’s status. In 1716, three years after Ferdinando’s death, Cosimo III appointed Cristofori keeper of the grand ducal instrument collection. The earliest of Cristofori’s instruments is dated 1690. Thereafter, the rate at which the Medici were acquiring keyboard instruments was rapidly accelerating. A 1691 inventory lists two cembali and three spinets; a 1700 inventory, seventeen cembali, fifteen spinets, two clavichords, two chamber organs, and a pianoforte.95 The entry for this last is the earliest known reference to a piano. At some time between 1691 and 1700, therefore, the epochal development occurred (fig. 18.3). The entry in the 1700 inventory

Example 18.6 Excerpt from one of Lodovico Giustini’s Sonatas for soft-­and-­loud Cembalo

Intermedio II: Devotional and Convivial Uses of Music 329

is detailed enough to leave no doubt that the instrument in question was a piano, with the distinctive method of sound production that we associate with it: “[a] large cembalo, of new invention, by Bartolomeo Cristofori, which does soft and loud [che fa’ il piano, e il forte], . . . with several jacks with red cloth that touch the strings [i.e., dampers] and several hammers that do soft and loud [che fanno il piano, et il forte].”96 Exactly when the piano was invented during the decade between the earlier and later inventories is not revealed in those documents, but another suggests that it was in 1700. A keyboard player in Medici service made the following entry in his copy of a music-­theoretical treatise: “These are the styles that can be adapted to the soft-­and-­loud Arpicimbalo invented in the year 1700 by the Paduan Maestro Bartolomeo Christofari [sic], harpsichord maker of . . . Grand Prince Ferdinando.”97 Alas, the 1700 piano evidently does not survive. The formulation used in 1700 to describe the piano became standard. The instrument’s notable feature—­the one that contemporaries were most intent on identifying—­was the performer’s ability to vary the dynamic level, to play both “piano e forte,” a function of the innovative method of sound production, where the strings are struck rather than plucked and the performer could apply different levels of pressure to attain the desired loudness. According to a credible observer of Cristofori’s work, Scipione Maffei, Cristofori had made three pianos before 1711, when Maffei reported on these developments in print. Maffei had been in Florence, and it is more than likely that he and Cristofori knew each other. Indeed, Maffei’s published account contains precious engravings that depict Cristofori’s instrument, with its various innovative components clearly labeled. These were likely based upon sketches that Cristofori had furnished. The design and function of the dampers are also described. The very fact that Maffei was moved to describe Cristofori’s invention in such detail is a measure of the impression it made on contemporaries. With the benefit of hindsight we know that the future lay with Cristofori’s invention. However, in his own time, it was met with indifference or even antipathy, reflected in Maffei’s observation to the effect that “some professors have not given this invention all the applause it merits.” All the same, in 1732—­the very year of Cristofori’s death—­the first compositions intended specifically for the piano were published (in Florence, notably): Lodovico Giustini’s Sonatas for soft-­and-­loud Cembalo, commonly called “of the little hammers” (ex. 18.6). The new instrument then decisively attracted advocates and secured a vast and appreciative audience.98

19

Opera in Florence, Act 3 The Pan- ­Euro p ean Phase

Despite early visits by itinerant troupes, the operatic practices of Seicento Florence continued to depend largely upon the patronage of the Medici, or that of the academies in the orbit of the grand ducal family, or both.1 The mix of different species of opera was complex, ranging from the comic Il potestà di Colognole to the monumental Ipermestra. Even a single occasion like the 1661 marriage of Grand Prince Cosimo could feature works as different from each other as La Dori and the grandiose Ercole in Tebe, which had to be radically refashioned thereafter to suit the tastes of a Venetian audience. Throughout Italy, the seventeenth century did not yet witness the development of a coherent tradition of comic opera, freestanding and independent of the melodramas in its distinctive features. Comic plots were the expression of specific local traditions and tended not to find audiences elsewhere, as was the case with Moniglia’s Tuscan dramas, intended for consumption by his Florentine audiences.

Opera in Arcadia? The Halting Adoption of Reform Principles—­Griselda Opera in Florence had had an international element. Cavalli and Cesti, whose operas were featured in the Florentine repertory, had both found episodic employment elsewhere in Europe. But with the coming of the new century, the pan-­European character of opera in Florence became more pronounced. Although principally Italian, the poets in some instances secured appointments at other centers of operatic activity. Many were of truly international stature—­Pietro Metastasio; Silvio Stampiglia; Apostolo Zeno—­and some of the operas were on texts of enduring importance, such as Metastasio’s La clemenza di Tito. Similarly, although many of the composers were Italian, some enjoyed international repu-

Opera in Florence, Act 3: The Pan-European Phase 331

tations: Tommaso Albinoni; Giovanni Bononcini; Leonardo Vinci. And effectively for the first time, several celebrated composers of operas in the Florentine repertory were non-­Italians: Georg Friedrich Händel; perhaps Johann Adolph Hasse. Concurrent with the internationalization of the repertory was a fuller commercialization of the enterprise. Accounts of performances or libretti attesting operatic activity at the Cocòmero from the mid-­seventeenth century to the early eighteenth suggest that imports from elsewhere could have an academic character. But beginning in the early eighteenth century, a change in the values that defined the operatic enterprise in Florence—­ from academic to commercial—­was accompanied by a tendency for the repertory to comprise imports or revivals even more frequently.2 A 1696 performance of Silvio Stampiglia and Giovanni Bononcini’s Mutio Scevola was among the earliest performances in Florence of operas in the pan-­European repertory. Stampiglia and Bononcini were both Italian. But Bononcini had an international career, with periods of service in Vienna (where Stampiglia was simultaneously employed) and London, and his operas enjoyed international acclaim. It is not an entirely settled matter whether the 1696 Florentine performance of Mutio Scevola was of the Stampiglia and Bononcini setting, but the preponderance of evidence suggests that it was: “Stampiglia’s Roman libretto of 1695 . . . was . . . the model for a version produced in Florence in 1696,” and there is little doubt that the 1695 performance in Rome was of Stampiglia and Bononcini’s opera.3 In 1703, Florence saw a performance of Apostolo Zeno and Tommaso Albinoni’s Griselda. The libretto4 identifies the theater as that of the Accademia degli Infuocati,5 which by this time had occupied the Cocòmero. It reports that “Albinoni . . . played the violin.” The libretto for a later performance recounted the great success the opera enjoyed in Florence.6 The performance was “enriched,” if that is the proper term, with eight comic scenes by Girolamo Gigli of Siena that feature an octogenarian nurse farcically infatuated with a male servant not half her age. Despite Zeno’s literary sophistication and ambitious goals as a poet, he did not object to the addition of the comic scenes.7 The Arcadian movement—­ a late seventeenth-­and early eighteenth-­century initiative dedicated to a reform of opera, which sought to make it a more high-­minded enterprise—­ resulted in the elimination of episodes of coarse comicality from operas that were otherwise serious in character and in the establishment of an independent tradition of comic opera. Its effects were only gradually felt, however, to different degrees in different centers of operatic activity at different times. Zeno’s acquiescence to the imperatives of his moment is a

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measure of the extent to which he and other poets of the time had to “suffer . . . having such ignorance forced upon them” merely “to serve the tastes of ” their times, the “theatrical convenience” characteristic of the era.8

Grand Prince Ferdinando and a Restitution of Aristocratic Opera Before resuming my account of operatic performances at the Cocòmero and the Pergola (when it reopened in the early eighteenth century), I consider here an exceptional moment in the history of opera in Florence, when aristocratic opera enjoyed a momentary but brilliant revival under Grand Prince Ferdinando. Until 1696, operatic performances at the Medici villa in Pratolino were staged in a salon on the ground floor. But Ferdinando had a small, purpose-­ built theater constructed with funds provided by his father, Grand Duke Cosimo III.9 Construction was under way by the late 1680s,10 and in 1698, it was reported that “on the second floor there is a large and well carried-­ out Theatre for Comedies.”11 For more than two decades, Ferdinando sponsored an almost unbroken series of productions. The prince was generally loyal to native Tuscan poets and composers, with some important exceptions, notably Alessandro Scarlatti, many of whose operas were performed in Pratolino and elsewhere in Tuscany beginning in the mid-­to late 1680s.12 Although an aristocratic enterprise, Ferdinando’s to some extent had the character of an academic initiative. Functioning as had the aristocratic superintendents at the Pergola, Ferdinando supervised the performances himself, in something of an amateur’s role. It was reported that “on the 20th day [of January 1688], the Most Serene Prince Ferdinando returned from Pratolino, having many times done his comedy in music there.”13 The prince would retire to his villa every carnival season and August. His paternal grandmother, Vittoria della Rovere (Grand Duchess Dowager of Tuscany);14 paternal uncle Cardinal Francesco Maria; and siblings, Anna Maria Ludovica (Electress Palatine and Grand Princess of Tuscany) and Gian Gastone (Grand Prince of Tuscany and later grand duke), attended the performances that Ferdinando and his fellow academicians had prepared.15 In a fidelity to classical models, the operas for Pratolino reveal the quasi-­academic sensibilities of Ferdinando and his confrères. Derived from the Latin comic playwrights are such dramaturgical devices as mistaken identity and such character types as the wily servant. They are reminiscent of vernacular Renaissance comedies. The operas also feature dialectical speech, supposedly for philological ends but also deployed to

Opera in Florence, Act 3: The Pan-European Phase 333

humorous effect. One of the poets of the operas performed in Pratolino—­ Moniglia—­appended etymological glossaries to his comedies that borrow from the Vocabulario della Crusca, an authoritative period dictionary of linguistic usage. Consistent with the scale of many operatic performances of the time, especially in a venue like Pratolino, the performing resources were modest: two violinists, two violists, a ’cellist or violonist, a theorbist, and a harpsichordist.16 Ferdinando was deeply involved in every important element of the performances. He commissioned texts and their settings, discussed the plots and scores with the poets, composers, and set designers, hired singers, attended rehearsals, and sometimes played the harpsichord himself at performances.17 He would give detailed, exacting instructions to the composers, identifying the stylistic traits he sought in the musical setting. He was an activist, involved patron, evident in his relationship with Scarlatti, who visited Florence in connection with the 1702 performance of his opera Il Flavio Cuniberto.18 Other operas were performed in Scarlatti’s absence, either in Florence or elsewhere in Tuscany. Well before Scarlatti’s 1702 visit to Florence, Ferdinando was in communication with the composer and commissioning operas from him. The grand prince’s first request of Scarlatti for an opera, which was perhaps the comedy La serva favorita, performed in Pratolino, is from 1688.19 An important figure in the reception of Scarlatti’s operas in Florence was Ferdinando’s uncle Cardinal Francesco Maria, who seems to have shared some kind of responsibility with his nephew for the principal Tuscan centers of theatrical activity, the beneficiaries of the cardinal’s personal interest.20 The cardinal apparently had a special interest in Scarlatti’s compositions, documented as early as 1684, and the earliest performance of the composer’s operas may have been owing to the cardinal’s intermediation.21 The provenance of a good part of the operatic repertory of one of the Florentine theatrical academies that seems to have enjoyed Francesco Maria’s patronage was Roman, a circumstance surely attributable to the cardinal’s intimate familiarity with the Roman ambience. In 1686 that academy staged Tutto il mal non vien per nuocere, with music by Scarlatti.22 Notwithstanding Scarlatti’s relationship with Ferdinando, the grand prince’s wife,23 and his paternal uncle, the composer’s dream of a permanent appointment in Florence was not to be realized, neither in the service of Grand Prince Ferdinando nor in the post of chapelmaster of the Cathedral of Florence, to which Scarlatti aspired.24 At issue were Ferdinando’s tastes in musical style, which Scarlatti did not satisfy. In 1704, the composer felt moved to reassure the grand prince that he had attempted to be “pleasant and tuneful, rather than learned.”25 But despite Scarlatti’s best

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efforts, Ferdinando had reservations. In 1706, he wrote to the composer, “I shall be much pleased if you will make the music rather more easy, and noble in style; and if, in such places as is permissible, you will make it rather more cheerful.”26 There seems to have been growing opposition to Scarlatti and his aesthetics of operatic composition, the disaffection perhaps attributable to the collapse of the academic tradition of the Florentine operatic enterprise and the emergence of an impresarial model, of which more will be said presently. Only a fraction of Scarlatti’s output was addressed to a “public,” in the modern sense of the term. The two principal Florentine theaters for operatic performances at the time were the Pergola and the Cocòmero, both of which were in some sense academic establishments. And between about 1690 and 1706, Scarlatti’s operas seem to have been the most frequently performed at them; indeed, about one-­half of the operas staged at the Cocòmero between 1701 and 1706 were by Scarlatti.27 One asks whether he enjoyed some kind of personal relationship to the theater. Cardinal Francesco Maria was protector of the Florentine academic theaters that were the first to perform Scarlatti’s operas,28 and the “academic” character of Scarlatti’s operas may be owing to this circumstance. He may simply have been too much the product of a different generation or too faithful to a different aesthetic of musical composition to satisfy his patron. For whatever reason, Scarlatti was not an especially influential composer in the eighteenth century.29 Although Scarlatti considered his operas for Pratolino the best he had composed, Ferdinando was ultimately to sever his relationship with Scarlatti and engage Giacomo Antonio Perti as his favored composer.30 (Alas, all of Perti’s operas for Pratolino are lost, along with the entire music library of the grand prince,31 and Perti’s operas were the last to be performed in Pratolino.) Ferdinando shared the modern taste for “a rather easy music, and . . . happy” and found Perti’s “more moderated.”32 In this change in taste, there may be early evidence of “the transition from ‘the Baroque’ to a new style period,” distinguished by “the more substantial clarity, equilibrium, and plastic relief that characterize Italian vocal and instrumental music of this period.”33 It may also be attributable in some way to Ferdinando’s preference for a French dramaturgical aesthetic, as contrasted with Spanish operatic dramaturgy.34 But before dismissing Scarlatti, Ferdinando commissioned the composition or sponsored or witnessed the staging of several of the composer’s operas. Although Aurelio Aureli’s Massimo Puppieno was set to music by five different composers,35 only the settings by Carlo Pallavicino and Scarlatti survive. There are librettos from Livorno in 1697 and Florence in 1700, and the Livorno performance was probably in the presence of Ferdinando,

Opera in Florence, Act 3: The Pan-European Phase 335

protector of the Accademici Avvalorati, who sponsored the performance. For the most part it likely made use of Scarlatti’s music.36 Like Zeno and Albinoni’s Griselda, Aureli and Scarlatti’s Massimo Puppieno documents just how gradually the reforms of the Arcadians were absorbed. The servant Gilbo figures in several raucously comic scenes where, dressed like a woman, he fears that he may be violated either by Massimo or his soldiers, eventually coming to believe that he himself is a woman. In Italian opera of the (early) Settecento and thereafter, scenes were typically defined by the characters on stage at a particular moment. When the dramatis personae change, there is a new scene. Scenes were often—­ though not invariably, of course—­structured according to a convention, which historians of opera have called “the grand Metastasian design.” The scene often opens with secco (dry) recitative accompanied by the basso continuo group. The scene then concludes with a set piece, customarily a solo aria that comments metaphorically on the plot problem posed in the foregoing recitative, and typically in the familiar ABA′ design. After the aria, the soloist usually exits the stage, ideally to the audience’s enthusiastic applause. An orchestral ritornello typically precedes and follows the A and A′ sections. A “rigid contrast between aria and recitative” “would prevail in the eighteenth century,”37 and “the variety, . . . flexibility, and . . . dramatic impact of seventeenth-­century opera . . . was gradually lost . . . and . . . replaced by a new . . . structure which tended to assert the inflexible alternation of recitative and exit aria.” Among “the typical trends in the years 1600 to 1720” was “the . . . pronounced decline in the number of entrance, medial, and medial-­exit arias, corresponding to an increased percentage of exit arias.”38 Scarlatti’s Massimo Puppieno illustrates the large-­scale changes in formal procedure that had taken place since Cesti’s La Dori, as in example 19.1. Here, too, however, I hasten to qualify: these are generalized defining characteristics, derived from hundreds of examples that display considerable variety within them. Nor are they uniquely associated with Florentine operatic practice, by any means. Further performances in Pratolino followed.39 In 1704, Silvio Stampaglia and Scarlatti’s Turno Aricino was performed. A correspondent wrote of his contentment that the new opera would be on a Stampiglia text, and he reported that the music “perhaps will be by Scarlatti.”40 In June 1705, Ferdinando sent Scarlatti the first act of Lucio Manlio; the composition of the entire opera took only some five weeks. In 1706, Scarlatti composed Il gran Tamerlano for Pratolino; he described it as his ninetieth opera and finished composing it in only six weeks. In this case, too, Ferdinando was deeply involved. Scarlatti acknowledged receipt of Ferdi-

Example 19.1 Excerpt from Alessandro Scarlatti’s Massimo Puppieno

Opera in Florence, Act 3: The Pan-European Phase 337

nando’s instructions concerning the finale, about which the grand prince expressed particular satisfaction, assuring Scarlatti that he need not make further revisions. Interestingly, Scarlatti was especially pleased with the recitatives, which composers of the time often regarded as of secondary importance.41

The Reopening of Teatro della Pergola In 1718, the Pergola reopened.42 The Immobili had attempted to persuade Grand Duke Ferdinando II to assign them ownership on grounds that the structure could not be considered part of Cardinal Giovan Carlo’s estate. It had been built largely at the academicians’ own expense, whereas the greater part of Giovan Carlo’s resources had gone toward mounting the productions, which left little to no material remains. What little did remain—­some scenery, for example—­was worthless. But the grand duke could not be moved.43 A happier future for the Pergola lay on the horizon when the twenty-­ six-­year-­old marchese Luca Casimiro degli Albizzi (*1664–­†1745) was elected principe of the Immobili for a one-­year term in 1690. Albizzi had been witness to operatic activities in Pratolino and thus had a model of how one might successfully organize the operatic enterprise. And in 1688, he had accompanied Grand Prince Ferdinando on a visit to Venice, when the grand prince enjoyed musical performances nightly.44 Indeed, Grand Duke Cosimo III had charged Albizzi with responsibility for closely monitoring Ferdinando’s comportment. In a letter to his wife, Marguerite Louise d’Orléans, Cosimo stipulated various conditions in order that the visit might be approved: Ferdinando should not “become indecently familiar with musicians and comedians reputed to be infamous people in the law.”45 Albizzi had ample opportunity to acquaint himself with Ferdinando’s tastes and interests. In the early 1720s, Albizzi was asked by his fellow academicians to assume impresarial responsibilities. Nevertheless, the theater always retained something of the character of an academic institution. Albizzi was officially a member of the academy, not a hired “career administrator.” He negotiated the acquisition of the Pergola by the Immobili, granted under the terms of a motu proprio issued by Cosimo III, who had reluctantly provided funds to enlarge and refurbish the theater. The statutes were ratified by Cosimo’s son and successor, Grand Duke Gian Gastone. Personal relationships with members of the grand ducal entourage, as well as Albizzi’s experience and demonstrated competence—­the product of his close association with Cosimo’s son and Gian Gastone’s brother Ferdinando—­must

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have been critical to the success of the negotiations. They also explain the reenvisioning of the Pergola on more of an impresarial model.46 In the Seicento, the Pergola had operated essentially as a private theater, reserved for the entertainment of the Medici, their guests, and the Immobili. The Cocòmero had remained open to the public. Now, of necessity, the Pergola’s financing was more mixed. The Immobili adopted successful Venetian practices; proceeds from the sale of tickets to a paying public became an indispensable element in the entire complex of revenue sources supporting operatic performances. Although the academicians of the early Settecento continued to justify their operatic activity on grounds of the prestige afforded them and their city, in truth they were now required to be almost as attentive to financial viability as the impresario at any Venetian opera house, which depended more exclusively on proceeds from ticket sales. Novel alternative means of securing resources were identified. In 1726, it was proposed that a kind of “superfund” be established to support operatic performances, but the creative proposal went unheeded. Grand ducal largesse did not cease, however, and the Pergola received an annual subsidy from the grand ducal government as of the beginning of Gian Gastone’s reign. The Pergola reopened with performances of Antonio Salvi and Antonio Vivaldi’s Scanderbeg.47 The second production was of Girolamo Gigli and Luca Antonio Predieri’s La fede ne’ tradimenti. Making his debut on that occasion was the acclaimed tenor Giovanni Battista Pinacci, who was to sing there several times during the following two decades, as a formal member of the company during the 1724–­25 and 1725–­26 seasons. From the moment the theater reopened, the public was admitted. At “the first performance given for a fee,” “everybody had to pay 2 lire at the entrance.” For some performances in 1729, 596, 621, 707, and 649 tickets were sold. On one occasion, Albizzi reported that “including the members of the court, there were 2000 people in attendance.”48 With Albizzi’s appointment as de facto impresario in 1721, there began an extensive, illuminating correspondence documenting the functioning of the theater. Letters of the early 1720s give evidence of the challenges in managing a prima donna such as Margherita Gualandi, who first sang at the Pergola during the 1724–­25 season, when her roles included the title role in Pietro Metastasio and Domenico Sarro’s Didone abbandonata. As early as 1726, Albizzi was attempting to secure the services of the celebrated Sienese alto castrato Francesco Antonio Bernardi (“Senesino”), who spent the final years of his career in Florence (1736–­40). Among the other renowned castrati of early-­Settecento Florence was Gaetano Berenstadt, faithful servant of a Medici patron (Anna Maria Luisa di Cosimo III

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de’ Medici) and son of a German father who played tympani in the grand ducal instrumental ensemble. Berenstadt performed at the Pergola in 1720 in Apostolo Zeno and Carlo Francesco Gasparini’s Lucio Vero and again there in 1728 in an opera on Antonio Salvi’s libretto L’Andromaca. In 1730, at the Pergola once more, he performed the title role in Salvi and Giovanni Porta’s Il gran Tamerlano. In Albizzi’s correspondence from 1735, we read of negotiations with Antonio Vivaldi over the commission for his Ginevra principessa di Scozia.49 The search for novelty was such that the impresario advised the composer that “it is necessary that I vary librettos as much as possible.” A commercial opera house had to be sensitive to the expectations of its audience. For anyone with a fanciful understanding of the lavishness of the operatic enterprise—­shaped, perhaps, by a knowledge of later phases in the history of the genre—­the artisanal quality of the undertaking revealed in Albizzi’s correspondence is revealing. Two works illustrate the internationalization of the Florentine operatic tradition. The first is by the composer Georg Friedrich Händel (the original form of his name), who, although a German, was an important composer of Italian opera in the early Settecento. The second is by the poet Pietro Metastasio, a literary figure of unsurpassed stature who perfected the design that became known as the “Metastasian tradition,” “Metastasian opera seria.”50 But before considering Händel and the Metastasian operas, I note, one last time, the continuing fidelity to Florentine tradition. As late as 1717 and 1727, performances took place of Il potestà di Colognole, though of altered versions.

Vincer se stesso è la maggior vittoria, or Rodrigo In the autumn of 1707, Antonio Salvi (?) and Händel’s Vincer se stesso è la maggior vittoria, or Rodrigo,51 his first opera entirely in Italian, was performed at the Cocòmero “under the protection of the Most Serene Prince of Tuscany.”52 Grand Prince Ferdinando, whom Händel had likely met in Hamburg, invited the composer to Italy. Händel probably went to Florence immediately (in 1706), informally joined the Medici court, and returned each autumn until 1709.53 Any representative scene from Rodrigo illustrates how much the musical procedures seen earlier in Scarlatti’s Massimo Puppieno had become favored: scene-­opening secco recitatives are followed by a scene-­ending exit aria in the form ABA′, usually accompanied by the whole orchestra.54 As always, these conventions were susceptible to the composer’s exercise of his own creative will, which produced an impressive diversity of results.

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Opera in Arcadia: The Fuller Adoption of Reform Principles—­Catone in Utica In 1729, Metastasio and Leonardo Vinci’s Catone in Utica was performed at the Pergola. Metastasio experienced the same tension as Zeno between one’s literary aspirations and the demands of one’s profession as poet. All the same, Metastasio had an appreciation for the attractions and benefits of a career as a librettist, which had been shaped in Naples, where he presumably had made Vinci’s acquaintance. For the rest of his life, Metastasio was partial to the “good professors” of the Neapolitan school, among them Domenico Sarro, whose setting of Metastasio’s Didone abbandonata had been performed at the Pergola during the 1724–­25 season. The good professors’ style was marked by a novel composure and expressive “cantabilità” that appealed to Metastasio. Catone manifested the fuller adoption of the principles of the Arcadian reform: in addition to the elimination of comic scenes, a classicizing, neo-­Aristotelian simplification of the plot and purification of the poetic language. This meant, above all, an identification of opera with tragedy. Like the poets and composers of the earliest operas—­Corsi, Peri, Rinuccini—­Metastasio was sensitive to matters of genre and skeptical of claims that an opera could be classified as a tragedy if certain dramaturgical requirements had not been met. For him the critical development was the commission for Catone, which permitted him to contribute to a restoration of tragedy. The classification of Catone as a “tragedy in music” is justified by the conflicts of strong passions and exaltation of Roman virtue, as well as the catastrophic classicistic elements of the plot. Catone was performed at the Pergola only two years after it was premiered elsewhere.

The Settecento Cantata I deferred further consideration of the late-­Seicento/early-­Settecento cantata so that its compositional innovations could be seen in light of innovations first revealed most clearly in concurrent operatic composition. I now complete my brief history of the cantata. Like other genres cultivated in Florence, the cantata embraced pan-­European changes in compositional technique. The seamless transition from passages in stile recitativo to aria was replaced by a clearer, more rigid distinction between the two. In Su le sponde del Tebro, by the great late-­Baroque opera and cantata composer Alessandro Scarlatti, recitatives are accompanied solely by the basso con-

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Example 19.2 Illustrative excerpts from Alessandro Scarlatti’s Su le sponde

tinuo and conclude with a decisive cadence, to be followed by arias accompanied by a fuller and more active instrumental ensemble. As we have seen, Scarlatti was in the service of Grand Prince Ferdinando in the early Settecento, and Su le sponde del Tebro is preserved in a Florentine source.55 I therefore make the assumption that it was known in

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Example 19.2, continued

Florence and is a representative example of the Florentine cantata of the early eighteenth century. The colorful scoring is for soprano, two violins, basso continuo, and trumpet (ex. 19.2).56 Consistent with long-­established practice, the recitatives narrate; the arias are reflective and interpretive. The cantata has the following design and is in high Baroque musical style.

Opera in Florence, Act 3: The Pan-European Phase 343

sinfonia recitative Su le sponde del Tebro Ove le Dee latine Fecero à gl’Archi lor corde del crine Colà Aminta il fido da Clori Vilipeso con dolore infinito Disse al ciel’ disse al mondo, io son tradito! sinfonia-­aria Contentatavi, o fidi pensieri, Trattenervi per guardie al mio core. Che gl’affanni giganti guerrieri dan’ l’assalto, Et è duce il dolore.

On the banks of the Tiber, where the Latin goddesses plaited bow-­strings of hair, faithful Aminta, from his infinite anguish, cried to heaven and earth of the scornful Chloris: “I am betrayed!”

Be content, O faithful thought, to remain the guardians of my heart, assaulted by sorrow and anxiety, those mighty warriors whose leader is pain.

recitative aria aria recitative aria

* * * With Metastasian opere serie, I conclude my long, detailed history of opera in Florence from around 1600 to the effective end of the Medici regime in 1737. In that year, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany became a helpless political pawn, vulnerable to the complicated dynamics of European power politics. And with the exception of a few musical developments that postdate the end of the Medici regime, our story ends with the political developments of 1737.

Conclusion

If Florence was the city of Dante, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, and Galileo, it was also the city of the earliest madrigalists, the pioneers in the revolutionary genre we know as opera, and Bartolomeo Cristofori, inventor of the piano. Contributions of the first order of magnitude to European musical culture justify adding Florentines who altered the course of music history to the city’s pantheon. Governing these innovations were macroscopic forces that shaped Florentine culture throughout the late-­medieval and early-­modern periods and transcended developments in any one realm of creative activity, whether music, literature, or the other arts. First among these forces was a “dream of scholars and philosophers”: “the reconciliation of the twin legacies of the ancient world, classical and Christian,” the “balancing of two universes, so anxiously striven for by Renaissance thought,” which was “so fundamental to the character of ” intellectual and cultural life in early-­modern Italy.1 A second force was change in the Florentine political culture: with the progression in the political culture from republican to aristocratic principles, vividly expressed in the establishment of the duchy of Florence and the grand duchy of Tuscany, with the Medici named heads of state and granted the right of hereditary succession, all the city’s institutions and traditions—­including its musical practices—­were reimagined. One of the most vivid examples is the carnival song. The trade songs of the republican era—­an expression of the importance of the guilds to Florentine politics of the Middle Ages—­were refashioned as the classicized, Platonized carnival songs of the late-­Laurentian era and the politicized carnival songs of the early Medici restoration. These yielded to the decisive classicization of the genre upon the establishment of the duchy, with its courtly values. The gradual ennoblement of the Medici—­though in retrospect seemingly inexorable—­was reflected in the adoption of many of the institu-

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tions and practices of the historic feudal aristocracy, such as the position of herald or the ceremonial jousts. There was a growing tendency to deploy the arts—­literature; painting, sculpture, and architecture; music; even the culinary arts—­to celebrate the Medici. Idealized artistic tributes were elicited from the city’s artists as the Medici became ever more identified with the state, although that process was gradual and never as complete as in other European polities, owing to Florence’s earlier status as a republic and the family’s original social status, which tempered its behavior. A third force was an openness, at certain moments, in Florentine musical culture that permitted non-­Florentine, even non-­Italian, musical practices to develop, the product of changing tastes. This openness resulted in a partial effacement of native Florentine tradition and an internationalization of Florentine musical practice, but also experimentation and an enrichment of Florentine musical tradition. A fourth force, at other moments, was a tendency among the Florentines to close in on themselves, to retreat into self-­satisfaction, celebrate past accomplishment, and forswear innovation, a phenomenon that an Italian might term “cultural campanilismo.” Fidelity to Florentine tradition was deeply rooted and could engender a resistance to change. Yet it also inspired sensitive reflections on Florentine achievement and the construction of a Florentine musical identity. The balance between the two tendencies varied over time, depending upon the aesthetic preferences of the principal agents of the moment: ecclesiastical authorities, the Signori and then the Medici dukes, private patrons during the fifteenth century. In the Quattrocento, a Medicean preference for northern polyphony prompted the appointment to the public ecclesiastical institutions of musicians trained in that tradition. In the Cinquecento and Seicento, the Cathedral and Baptistery favored Florentine (or at least Tuscan) musicians for the position of chapelmaster. A fifth force was the related phenomenon of “Florentinism”—­a tendency to privilege Florentine practices—­associated in the later phases of my narrative with the establishment of the Medici duchy and Medicean anxiety about their bona fides as an aristocratic family. Appropriating the phenomenon of Florentinism served the family’s interests, again suggesting that oneness of the family with the city. Such tendencies explain the retrospective collecting of the carnival song and lauda during the ducal and grand ducal periods. A sixth force, at critical moments, was that Florentine composers and musicians seem to have devoted their intellectual energies principally to innovation, followed by a willingness to cede primacy to other centers of musical activity. Although Florence was the birthplace of the Cinque-

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cento madrigal, it was never again as important to the genre’s development. It was the birthplace of opera, but after the emergence of the new genre, Florence’s distinctive contribution was largely confined to a variant of comic opera. Once the innovation had occurred, Florentines were seemingly content to consolidate and celebrate rather than continually reimagine and refashion. The tendency to expend creative and intellectual energy on innovation may be a defining characteristic of the Florentine temperament and aesthetic sensibilities, an inclination to privilege originality over sustained development. The macroscopic forces described here were not unique to Florence. They were also characteristic of other centers of musical activity. Nor are they unique to Florentine music; they can be detected in other realms of Florentine cultural experience. All the same, they are among the most distinctive characteristics of Florentine musical tradition in the early-­ modern era. I conclude with some more speculative observations. It may not be coincidental that the phenomena of Florentinism and campanilismo became especially urgent when they did. In the early Cinquecento, the center of gravity—­politically, intellectually, culturally—­began to shift from Florence to Rome, which had the additional unrivaled advantage of being the seat of the papacy. A fear that Florence might have been losing its status as the intellectual capital of the peninsula may be an additional explanation for the anxious collecting of documents of the distinctively Florentine musical past, such as the carnival song and lauda. Florentinism might also explain the comparative insignificance of the Baroque aesthetic in Florence, although there are the undeniable examples of that aesthetic described in earlier chapters. But relative to other centers of artistic activity, a Baroque sensibility is less central to Florentine identity. Notably, at least in the case of opera, it is an import from elsewhere (Venice). And there are fewer architectural monuments of the Baroque ideal in Florence, at least in ecclesiastical architecture: San Gaetano; San Firenze; perhaps one or two other examples. The skyline of Florence surveyed today from the surrounding hills is dominated by monuments of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which suggests a privileging of those moments in history. Finally, I would argue that in music, the prestige and weight of the classical tradition—­as it was reverently recovered by Florentine humanists of the Renaissance, favored by the patronage practices of the Medici, and celebrated thereafter—­were so great as to explain two and perhaps all three of Florence’s signature contributions to world musical culture. The earliest madrigals functioned like the choruses of the ancient Greek tragedies.

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They provided entr’acte commentary on the action of the preceding act and explicated the plot. And the relationship of the beginnings of opera to efforts to restore classical dramaturgical practices is obvious. Both the madrigal and opera resulted from the theorizing that took place in the informal Florentine academies of the Cinquecento, which themselves were imaginative, antiquarian restitutions of similar institutions of the ancient Greek and Roman world, such as the nymphaeum of Maecenas, Roman statesman and patron and benefactor of Horace and Vergil. The purification of the Tuscan language that was one of the principal objectives of the Rucellai group, which was foundational to the character of the earliest madrigals, clearly had a classicizing motivation; the group’s members sought to ensure that the Tuscan language was as effective a vehicle for expressing sophisticated thought as ancient Greek and Latin. One member of the group suggested that Tuscan had indeed achieved that status: Janus Lascaris, the preeminent Greek scholar of the day, “would say at table in the garden of the Rucellai that, with respect to eloquence . . . , he would not recognize Boccaccio as inferior to any . . . Greek writers.”2 Even the invention of the piano may be more fancifully related to the classicistic (or neoclassicist) tendencies of the time, in that the method of sound production permitted a musical style that contrasts sharply with that of Baroque keyboard music. The busyness of much keyboard music for harpsichord is partly attributable to the method of sound production, which demanded that the sound be continuous and that there be a rich overlay of ornamentation on the skeletal melody. In contrast, the method of sound production in the piano permits melodies that can be played legato and sostenuto, with a cantabilità also favored in other musical genres at the beginning of the Settecento. Such developments may be aligned with the aesthetic sensibilities of Bartolomeo Cristofori’s patron, Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici, who expressed dissatisfaction with the style of Alessandro Scarlatti’s music, asking that it be more “pleasant and tuneful, rather than learned.” Whatever the impetus, Cristofori’s innovations had an enormous appeal to both his contemporaries and his successors. For centuries thereafter, the piano was the solo instrument of choice for untold thousands in Europe and the larger Europeanized world. Cristofori’s innovations and Grand Prince Ferdinando’s demands of Scarlatti parallel larger classicizing sensibilities characteristic of the time and the place. As I wrote in another context: The last twenty years of the seventeenth century witnessed a new naturalism and rationalism, a reaction to Seicentismo and . . . its “Baroque” bombast and

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bizarreness. There was a longing for a new Renaissance, whose tastes and standards would be consonant with those of the Quattrocento and Cinquecento Renaissance, and, through it, with the achievement of the classical world. Francesco Redi, a Florentine physician, was a paradigmatic figure: his scientific sensibilities suggested a taste for precision of thought and clarity of expression believed to be transferable.3

We celebrate the artistic and cultural expressions of Florentine Renaissance humanism’s reverence for the classical past, perhaps to the detriment of our understanding of and appreciation for the achievements of post-­ Renaissance Florence. This is the premise of Eric Cochrane’s stimulating book Florence in the Forgotten Centuries.4 But in the history of Florentine music at least, particular scholarly attention to Florentines’ enchantment with the classical legacy is warranted, since the signature developments in that history are owing in good part to that enchantment. In music, as in learning and the other arts, a fascination with Florence is understandable and justifiable. In the history of music as in the history of literature, political theory, the visual arts, and science, the attainments of Florentines of the late-­medieval and early-­modern periods position Florence among the world’s most important polities and cultural systems. In ways that can scarcely be accurately calibrated, the City of Flowers contributed immeasurably to the flowering of European and world musical culture.

Acknowledgments

I welcome this opportunity to thank the many colleagues whose assistance has been invaluable. First, I am delighted to report that several esteemed colleagues and I are collaborating on a set of CDs to accompany and “illustrate” this book: my friends Michał Gondko and Corina Marti, cofounders and co–­artistic directors of the early-­music ensemble La Morra, with whom I collaborated most enjoyably once before; Andrés Locatelli, founder and artistic director of the early-­music ensemble Theatro dei Cervelli; and Francesco Corti, harpsichordist, organist, and conductor. Their performances will bring the music to life. In those subfields where I believe that I have a particular expertise, I have tended to rely on it. But in those where I do not, I have benefited from the wisdom of generous colleagues who had the patience to read what I wrote and suggest many improvements, almost all of which I incorporated. As always, such colleagues are absolved of responsibility for errors that remain; they are mine alone. I gratefully acknowledge the advice of the following: Lawrence F. Bernstein, who shared his understanding of the genre of chanson known as the four-­part popular arrangement; Philippe Canguilhem, who is completing a monograph on the musical patronage of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici—­ which promises to be foundational—­and whose “Music and Culture in Florence during the Reign of Cosimo I” was delivered at Villa I Tatti on 16 December 2021; Linda Carroll, who read all of my chapters in draft form and offered her customary generous counsel, which she has graciously provided for many decades now; Andrew Kirkman and Darwin Smith, who offered important information on the identity of the composer Arnolfo and related matters; John Henderson and Katharine Park, who identified a medical institution in medieval Florence with which Francesco Landino was associated; John Walter Hill, who read portions of my

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Seicento book and offered advice; Patrick Macey, who read my chapter on Girolamo Savonarola’s critique of late fifteenth-­century Florentine culture and shared his unsurpassed knowledge of the subject; John Nádas, who gave valued advice on subject matter relating to the music of fourteenth-­ century Florence, much of it based on his unrivaled knowledge of documents in the Florentine archives, which will form the basis of authoritative revisionist studies in progress, some of which have already appeared in print; Robert Nosow, who offered his insights on various fourteenth-­ and fifteenth-­century Italian musical developments; Timothy McGee, who read all my discussions of instrumental music in Florence during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries and provided predictably knowledgeable comment; Carl B. Schmidt, who read the portions of my text on the post-­aristocratic phase of opera in Florence and provided invaluable comment; Richard Sherr, who furnished access to rare materials that documented the musical practices of the papal musical establishment in the early-­modern era, a subject on which his expertise is unsurpassed; Edmond Strainchamps, who offered advice on the music of the great Florentine composer Marco da Gagliano, Strainchamps’s particular area of expertise; Francesco Lora, Nicola Michelassi, and Nicola Usula, three Italian colleagues with whom I had the great pleasure of corresponding, to my considerable benefit, who are experts in the important field of seventeenth-­ century Italian opera, a field that has seen considerable scholarly activity in recent decades and can present significant challenges to scholars; Blake Wilson, who read my chapters on the lauda and shared his considerable expertise; and Stewart Pollens, who shared his unrivaled knowledge of Bartolomeo Cristofori’s achievements as inventor of the piano. Special debts are owed to Tim Carter, who read the entirety of my section on the beginnings of opera in Florence, a subject on which he is without peer, and Dott.ssa Francesca Fantappiè, who read the entirety of my Seicento book and offered many, many pages of thoughtful and authoritative criticism. Attilio Bottegal, librarian of the F. Gordon and Elizabeth Morrill Music Library at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence (where I have been privileged to be an appointee on three occasions), was kind and gracious with his assistance. At the University of Chicago Press, Marta Tonegutti, acquisitions editor, and her assistants, Dylan Montanari and Kristin Rawlings, were the consummate representatives of the roles they play, as were Meredith Nini, Jenni Fry, and Christine Schwab. They were patient with me and helpful in every way imaginable. It was an honor and a pleasure working with them,

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and I consider it the rarest of privileges to have had a book accepted for publication by the University of Chicago Press, which exemplifies the gold standard in my discipline. I am also grateful to the anonymous readers of the typescript for the press, who provided generous, valuable comment, to Jon Dertien, and to Sheila Berg, my copyeditor, whose editorial interventions were nothing short of extraordinary. Paul De Angelis, whom Marta Tonegutti recommended, edited my typescript. He, too, was exceptionally patient with me, and his suggestions were invaluable. My friend and colleague in the musicological profession, Dr. Alexander Dean, prepared the musical examples to his usual standard of perfection. My friend and Lafayette colleague Robin Rinehart and my friend and former Princeton colleague Marcia Snowden offered valued advice on my project at moments when I especially needed it, for which I am most grateful. My friend and Lafayette colleague Eric Ziolkowski showed great interest in my project and answered questions about varieties of spiritual experience. At Lafayette College, my able research assistants Emily Emick and Justin Kogasaka rendered indispensable service. Emily made first drafts of the musical examples, and Justin read my endnotes and bibliographies with an impressive thoroughness and exacting attention to detail and corrected them expertly. Hannah Tatu of Lafayette’s Information Technology Services helped with challenging technological matters. Lafayette offered generous financial assistance on more than one occasion: to support the preparation of the musical examples and Emily Emick’s and Justin Kogasaka’s work as my research assistants, and for other such purposes. Teaching at Lafayette is a privilege. The college’s commitment to the scholarly work of its faculty is uncommon and appreciated in ways that cannot be adequately expressed, demonstrated not only in the financial support of the type referenced immediately above but also in the generous sabbatical program. The college understands and appreciates that an instructor’s intellectual vitality is refreshed by opportunities to conduct research and write for an audience beyond Lafayette. It understands and fully appreciates that the pedagogical effectiveness of its faculty, crucial in a small liberal arts college, is enhanced through scholarly activity. For assistance in procuring the images, I am grateful to colleagues at Art Resource, especially Diana Edkins; the Newberry Library, especially Dr. Suzanne Karr Schmidt; the Biblioteca Medicea-­Laurenziana, especially Dott.ssa Eugenia Antonucci; the British Museum, especially Elizabeth

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Bray; the Picture Library of the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford, especially Sibyl Searle; and the Beinecke Rare Book Room at Yale University, especially Rebecca Aldi and Dolores Colon. I conclude with special thanks to three treasured mentors and colleagues in the scholarly enterprise, beginning with the late Frank D’Accone. Frank should have been the author of this book. As his beloved teacher at Harvard, Nino Pirrotta, once said to me, “Frank is the world’s authority on the history of music in Florence,” and indeed he was. But I was so bold as to report to Frank that I was contemplating writing this book, and I asked his blessing, which he granted graciously—­with a handshake—­at a memorable lunch during the meeting in Vancouver of the American Musicological Society. Frank then read every word I wrote in draft form and offered penetrating criticism, of the most valuable, knowledgeable, authoritative, and constructive kind. I am saddened beyond words that Frank did not live to see this book. Finally, this book is dedicated to the two scholars who had the most profound influence on my intellectual and professional development. The distinguished medievalist Francis Oakley was my teacher at Williams College, and it was he who first taught me about the European Middle Ages (and, indeed, about the necessity of using the terms “Middle Ages” and “Renaissance” critically, with an understanding of the constructedness of all such labels). Frank’s courses were, for me, a revelation. I had no idea—­ and likely could have had no idea—­of what the study of the European Middle Ages entails and of the profound satisfactions it offers. The experience of studying such subject matter under the tutelage of so talented and accomplished a scholar as Frank and so gifted a teacher will remain memorable for the rest of my days. At Princeton, my dissertation adviser, Lewis Lockwood, offered an inspiring model of musicological scholarship of the highest quality, and of exemplary scholarly writing. I am privileged and honored to be part of a scholarly tradition that began at Princeton with Oliver Strunk, and I cannot ever be sufficiently grateful to Lewis (and to Kenneth Levy, Arthur Mendel, and Harold S. Powers) for granting me entrée to that very special company. Attending Princeton was among the most significant developments of my professional life, and to some extent my personal life. And for that I shall forever be grateful to Lewis and his colleagues.

Notes

Preface 1. I would like to identify immediately an excellent, brief history of music in Florence during this period, an encyclopedia entry from which I have profited: Marcello de Angelis, Piero Gargiulo, John Walter Hill, and Andrew Tomasello, “Florenz,” in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd ed. (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1997), cols. 516–­56. It does not contain any additional material that I thought crucial to utilize or interpretations that differ so sharply from mine that I thought it essential to cite them, but it does provide a very helpful, highly distilled account of the history I seek to reconstruct in this book. I would also like to cite a publication that appeared too recently for me to profit fully from its findings. I refer my readers to it: Keith Christiansen and Carlo Falciani, eds., The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512–­1570 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; Distributed by Yale University Press, 2021). Another important book that was published too recently for me to take full account of its findings is Déborah Blocker, Le Principe de plaisir. Esthétique, savoirs et politiques dans la Florence des Médicis (XVIe–XVIIe siècle), Les Belles Lettres/ essais (Paris: Société d’édition Les Belles Lettres, 2022). 2. Anthony M. Cummings, The Politicized Muse: Music for Medici Festivals (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 6. 3. Anthony M. Cummings, The Maecenas and the Madrigalist: Patrons, Patronage, and the Origins of the Italian Madrigal (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2004), 12–­13. 4. See, e.g., Niall Atkinson, The Noisy Renaissance: Sound, Architecture, and Florentine Urban Life (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017). 5. Ernest L. Boyer, Scholarship Reconsidered (Princeton, NJ: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990). 6. Nino Pirrotta, ed., The Music of Fourteenth-­Century Italy (Rome: American Institute of Musicology, 1954–­). 7. I shall return to this matter presently, in my chapters on the Trecento. 8. James Hilton, Lost Horizon (New York: Pocket Books, 1933), 80. 9. Gene Brucker, Florence: The Golden Age, 1138–­1737 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).

Chapter 1 1. On the meaning of the reference to the “flower” in the name of both the city and the Cathedral, see, e.g., Nerida Newbigin, Feste d’Oltrarno: Plays in Churches in Fifteenth-­ Century Florence, 2 vols. (Florence: Olschki, 1996), vol. 1, 1.

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2. Carol Lansing, The Florentine Magnates: Lineage and Faction in a Medieval Commune (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 4. 3. Nicolai Rubinstein, The Palazzo Vecchio, 1298–­1532 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 1, 8, 79; Lansing, Florentine Magnates, 4. 4. Rubinstein, Palazzo Vecchio, 1. 5. Conventual churches had an associated monastery or convent that housed a particular religious order. On the important distinction among the ecclesiastical figures and congregants of parishes and dioceses (the secular), members of established convents (the monastic), and friars who traveled and preached (the mendicant), see Daniel E. Bornstein, The Bianchi of 1399: Popular Devotion in Late Medieval Italy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 10–­11. 6. Nicholas A. Eckstein, The District of the Green Dragon: Neighbourhood Life and Social Change in Renaissance Florence ([Florence]: Olschki, [1995]), xvii, xix–­x x, xxii; Lansing, Florentine Magnates, 9. 7. Marica S. Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence: The Service Books of Santa Maria del Fiore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 201; Marica S. Tacconi, “‘Secundum consuetudinem Romanae Curiae in Maiori Ecclesia florentina’: I codici liturgici della Cattedrale di Firenze” and “Codici liturgici e musicali / schede nn. 60–­85,” in I libri del duomo di Firenze, ed. Lorenzo Fabbri and Marica Tacconi (Florence: Centro Di, 1997), 65–­78, 174–­75, 188–­200, 209–­29; and Marica S. Tacconi, “The Maestro Daddesco and the Cathedral of Florence: A New Manuscript,” Burlington Magazine 142.1164 (2000): 165–­70. 8. On the material in this paragraph, see Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual, 1–­3, 122, 177. 9. Blake Wilson, Music and Merchants: The Laudesi Companies of Republican Florence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 197. 10. Wilson, 1. Although consecrated in 1436, the Cathedral’s basic structure was truly completed only in 1471, when Andrea del Verrocchio’s bronze sphere was placed atop the cupola. 11. Tacconi, “The Maestro Daddesco,” 169; Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual, 15, 137. 12. On the material in this paragraph, see Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual, 15, 137–­38. 13. John M. Najemy, “Guild Republicanism in Trecento Florence: The Successes and Ultimate Failure of Corporate Politics,” American Historical Review 84.1 (1979): 53–­71, at 58, 59 n. 21. 14. The third was Ippolito di Giuliano di Lorenzo “il Magnifico.” 15. Marica S. Tacconi, “Appropriating the Instruments of Worship: The 1512 Medici Restoration and the Florentine Cathedral Choirbooks,” Renaissance Quarterly 56.2 (2003): 333–­76. 16. Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual, 249. 17. Tacconi, 251, quoting Donald Weinstein. 18. On the material in this paragraph, see Lansing, Florentine Magnates, 11, 13. 19. John M. Najemy, A History of Florence, 1200–­1575 (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006, 2008), 35–­44; Lansing, Florentine Magnates, 197 n. 10. 20. Lansing, Florentine Magnates, 13, 196; Rubinstein, Palazzo Vecchio, 1, 5. 21. Rubinstein, Palazzo Vecchio, 1, 5–­6, 11. 22. D. V. Kent and F. W. Kent, Neighbours and Neighbourhood in Renaissance Florence: The District of the Red Lion in the Fifteenth Century (Locust Valley, NY: J. J. Augustin, 1982), 14.

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23. Giovanni di Pagolo Morelli, Ricordi (Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 1956), 258–­ 59, 262. 24. Unless otherwise noted, see Lansing, Florentine Magnates, on the material of the foregoing four paragraphs: 13–­14, 21, 29, 33, 46, 52, 147–­48, 150, 155–­57, 159, 163, 165, 202, 207, 229, 234. 25. Rubinstein, Palazzo Vecchio, 1, 3. 26. On this material in this paragraph, see Lansing, Florentine Magnates, 17, 229. 27. Anthony M. Cummings, The Lion’s Ear: Pope Leo X, the Renaissance Papacy, and Music (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), 49–­50. 28. Bornstein, Bianchi of 1399, 12. 29. Frank A. D’Accone, “Music and Musicians at Santa Maria del Fiore in the Early Quattrocento,” in Scritti in onore di Luigi Ronga (Milan: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1973), 99–­ 126, at 100. 30. Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual, 220; on the processions, see also Bornstein, Bianchi of 1399, 21–­22. 31. On the material in the foregoing three paragraphs, see Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual, 7, 12, 57, 60, 63, 98–­99, 220. 32. Konrad Eisenbichler, “Nativity and Magi Plays in Renaissance Florence,” Comparative Drama 29.3 (1995): 319–­33, at 319–­20. 33. On the material in the foregoing ten paragraphs, see Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual, 100–­107, 115–­16, 129–­31, 135, 242, 297. 34. Daniele Torelli, “La prassi del canto piano e del canto fratto nel duomo di Firenze,” in “Cantate Domino”: Musica nei secoli per il duomo di Firenze, 3 vols., ed. Annalisa Innocenti and Timothy Verdon (Florence: Edizioni Firenze, 2001), vol. 3, 107–­23; “Tavole fuori testo,” v–­x. Torelli’s examples are from a later period, but they give a sense of the practice described here. 35. Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual, 130. 36. On the meaning of the term “spirituality” in this context, see Bornstein, Bianchi of 1399, 117. 37. Wilson, Music and Merchants; Nello Barbieri and Blake Wilson, eds., The Florence Laudario: An Edition of Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Banco Rari 18 (Madison, WI: A-­R Editions, 1995); and Blake Wilson, “Lauda,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, accessed 31 December 2016, https://​w ww​.oxfordmusiconline​.com​.libcat​.lafayette​ .edu​/subscriber​/article​/grove​/music​/43313. The foundation for Wilson’s later research is two articles by Frank D’Accone: “Le compagnie dei laudesi in Firenze durante l’Ars Nova,” in L’Ars nova italiana del Trecento II (Certaldo: Centro di Studi sull’Ars nova italiana del Trecento, 1970), 253–­80; and “Alcune note sulle compagnie fiorentine dei laudesi durante il Quattrocento,” Rivista italiana di musicologia 10 (1975): 86–­114. 38. Mario Fabbri, “Laude spirituali di travestimento nella Firenze della Rinascenza,” in Arte e religione nella Firenze de’ Medici (Florence: Città di vita, 1980), 145–­58 [59], 148. 39. Wilson, Music and Merchants, 2. 40. Wilson, 29; Eckstein, District of the Green Dragon, 62, 65. 41. Wilson, Music and Merchants, 61; Eckstein, District of the Green Dragon, 65. On the distinction between the two kinds of confraternities, see also Bornstein, Bianchi of 1399, 24. 42. Wilson, Music and Merchants, 2. 43. Wilson, 42. 44. Wilson, 30–­31; Konrad Eisenbichler, The Boys of the Archangel Raphael: A Youth Confraternity in Florence, 1411–­1785 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 16.

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45. Wilson, Music and Merchants, 41–­42. 46. Wilson, 29, 33. 47. Wilson, 77. 48. Wilson, 43. On the association of confraternities with conventual establishments, see Bornstein, Bianchi of 1399, 30. 49. Eckstein, District of the Green Dragon, 61–­62. On the size of the confraternities earlier in Florentine history, see Bornstein, Bianchi of 1399, 25. 50. Eckstein, District of the Green Dragon, passim; and Kent and Kent, Neighbours and Neighbourhood, passim. 51. Eckstein, District of the Green Dragon, 139. 52. Wilson, Music and Merchants, 34; Eckstein, District of the Green Dragon, 62, 88. On the nature of confraternities’ expenditures in service of their devotional activities, see Bornstein, Bianchi of 1399, 27. 53. Wilson, Music and Merchants, 47, 53. 54. Wilson, 49; Eckstein, District of the Green Dragon, 111. 55. Wilson, Music and Merchants, 57–­58. 56. Wilson, 34, 60. 57. Barbieri and Wilson, Florence Laudario, xiii. 58. Wilson, Music and Merchants, 66, 68. 59. On the material in the foregoing two paragraphs, see Wilson, Music and Merchants, 59–­61, 70, 187. 60. Wilson, “Lauda”; Barbieri and Wilson, Florence Laudario, xxxvii. 61. Barbieri and Wilson, Florence Laudario, xv. 62. Barbieri and Wilson, xiii, xv; Wilson, Music and Merchants, 3, 149–­50. On the call-­ and-­response musical technique, see Bornstein, Bianchi of 1399, 41. 63. Wilson, Music and Merchants, 70–­71. 64. Wilson, 37. 65. Wilson, 150. 66. Wilson, “Lauda”; Wilson, Music and Merchants, 150. 67. On the importance of this outlet for the expression of one’s personal spirituality and the role of the confraternity in affording occasions to do so, see Eisenbichler, Boys of the Archangel Raphael, 7. 68. For the material in the foregoing six paragraphs, see Timothy J. McGee, The Ceremonial Musicians of Late Medieval Florence (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 50, 52–­56, 59–­60, and 249 n. 28.

Chapter 2 1. Nino Pirrotta, “Tradizione orale e tradizione scritta della musica,” in L’Ars nova italiana del Trecento III (Certaldo: Centro di Studi sull’Ars Musicale Italiana del Trecento, 1970). 2. Coluccio Salutati, Epistolario, ed. Francesco Novati (Rome: Forziani, 1893), vol. 2, 456–­62, esp. 458–­60. 3. F. Alberto Gallo, “La musica nella ‘Cronica’ di Salimbene de Adam,” Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia: Università degli Studi di Perugia 20–­21 (1982–­84): 89–­99, esp. 91–­92 and n. 10. 4. Blake Wilson, Singing to the Lyre in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 56–­86.

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5. Giulio Cattin and F. Alberto Gallo, Music of the Middle Ages, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984–­85), vol. 2, 68. 6. Nino Pirrotta, “Sull’Etimologia di ‘Madrigale,’” Poesia: Quaderni Internazionale 9 (1948): 60–­61. 7. Gallo, “La musica nella ‘Cronica’ di Salimbene de Adam,” 99 n. 48. 8. Pirrotta, Music of Fourteenth-­Century Italy, vol. 1, 1 n. **. For further examples, see Agostino Ziino, “Polifonia ‘arcaica’ e ‘retrospettiva’ in Italia centrale: nuove testimonianze,” Acta Musicologica 50.1–2 (1978): 193–207, esp. 193 and n. 1; and Kurt von Fischer, “Das Kantorenamt am Dome von Siena zu Beginn des 13. Jahrhunderts,” in Festschrift K.G. Fellerer (Regensburg: Bosse, 1962). 9. F. Alberto Gallo, “The Practice of Cantus Planus Binatim in Italy from the Beginning of the 14th to the Beginning of the 16th Century,” in Le polifonie primitive in Friuli e in Europa (Rome: Edizioni torre d’Orfeo, 1989), 13–­30, esp. 13. 10. Gallo, 23. 11. Nino Pirrotta, “Marchettus of Padua and the Italian Ars Nova,” Musica Disciplina 9 (1955): 57–­71. 12. Gallo, “The Practice of Cantus Planus Binatim.” 13. On the possibility of Johannes’s presence in Florence, see Kurt von Fischer, “Quelques remarques sur les relations entre les laudesi et les compositeurs florentins du Trecento,” in L’Ars nova italiana del Trecento: Secondo convegno internazionale (Certaldo: Centro di Studi sull’Ars nova italiana del Trecento, 1970), 247–­52, esp. 249–­50. 14. Pirrotta, Music of Fourteenth-­Century Italy, vol. 1, ii. See also Nino Pirrotta, “Back to Ars Nova Themes,” in Music and Context: Essays for John M. Ward, ed. Anne Dhu Shapiro (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Department of Music, 1985), 166–­82, esp. 174. 15. Manoello Giudeo, “Bisbidis . . . a magnificenza de Messer Cane de la Scala,” in Vincenzo de Bartholomaeis, Rime giullaresche e popolari d’Italia (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1926), 68–­70. 16. Marchetto da Padova, Lucidarium. Pomerium, ed. Marco Della Sciucca et al. (Florence: Sismel, 2007), 242. 17. Carla Vivarelli, “‘Di una pretesa scuola napoletana’: Sowing the Seeds of the Ars Nova at the Court of Robert of Anjou,” Journal of Musicology 24.2 (2007): 272–­96. 18. Torello Saraina, Le historie, e fatti de’ Veronesi ne i tempi del popolo, e Signori Scaligeri . . . (Verona: Gieronimo Discepoli, 1576), fol. 39v. 19. On the interpretation of the term “sonus” in Villani’s account of Johannes at court of Verona, see Nino Pirrotta, “Ballate e ‘soni’ secondo un grammatico del Trecento,” in Musica tra Medioevo e Rinascimento (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1984), 90–­102. 20. For an authoritative text, see Ettore Li Gotti, “Il più antico polifonista italiano del sec. XIV,” Italica 24.3 (1947): 196–­200. For an analysis of Villani’s account, see Pirrotta, “Back to Ars Nova Themes,” esp. 172–­73. For a different translation, see Robert Nosow, “The Perlaro Cycle Reconsidered,” Studi musicali 1.2, n.s. (2011): 253–­80, at 253–­54 n. 2. 21. Giuliano Di Bacco, “Jacopo da Bologna,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani 62 (2004). There is evidence that Jacobus visited Florence: see Blake Wilson, “If Monuments Could Sing: Music and the Origins of Civic Devotion inside Orsanmichele,” in Orsanmichele and the History and Preservation of the Civic Monument, ed. Carl B. Strehlke (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2012), 139–­68, esp. 145. 22. Nino Pirrotta, “Piero e l’impressionismo musicale del secolo XIV,” in Musica tra Medioevo e Rinascimento (Turin: Einaudi, 1984), 103–­14; Nosow, “Perlaro Cycle Reconsidered,” 258 n. 10. 23. Nosow, “Perlaro Cycle Reconsidered,” 258. Other evidence of the repertory and the

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geographic origins of its principal contemporary source is provided by Piero’s Sì com’al canto della bella Yguana, which refers to the mythological Euguane, or water nymphs, said to have inhabited the Euganean hills near Padua, which the della Scala lords controlled between 1329 and 1337. 24. Nosow, 267, identifies Anna with Giovanna d’Antiochia, wife of Cangrande I della Scala, lord of Verona and uncle of Mastino II and Alberto II. 25. Nino Pirrotta, “Note ad ‘Anna’ o dei dispetti amorosi,” Accademia: Rivista di lettere, arti, scienze 1.2 (1945): 7; Pirrotta, “Back to Ars Nova Themes,” 175–­79. 26. Translation by Linda L. Carroll. 27. F. Alberto Gallo, ed., Il codice Squarcialupi: Ms. Mediceo Palatino 87, Biblioteca laurenziana di Firenze, 2 vols., Ars nova (Florence: Giunti Barbèra; Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 1992), 131. 28. Gallo, 131; Nosow, “Perlaro Cycle Reconsidered,” 260. 29. Gallo, Il codice Squarcialupi, 131; Nosow, “Perlaro Cycle Reconsidered,” 262; F. Alberto Gallo, “Antonio da Ferrara, Lancillotto Anguissola e il madrigale trecentesco,” Studi e Problemi di Critica Testuale 12 (1976): 40–­45; F. Alberto Gallo, “Critica della tradizione e storia del testo: Seminario su un madrigale trecentesco,” Acta Musicologica 59.1 (1987): 36–­45. 30. This is an interpretation of Villani’s term sonus, a lyrical song on a poem in the fixed form of the ballata, whereas his “ballata” presumably referred to songs intended to accompany dancing, suggested by the term. See Pirrotta, “Back to Ars Nova Themes,” 172–­73; Nino Pirrotta, “Ballata (Fr. Ballade, Engl. ballad, Sp. Balada, Ger. Ballade),” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo (Rome: Le Maschere, 1954–­62), vol. 1, cols. 1331–­32 passim; Cattin and Gallo, Music of the Middle Ages, vol. 2, 119–­21. 31. Gallo, Il codice Squarcialupi, 198. 32. Nino Pirrotta, “Per l’origine e la storia della ‘caccia’ e del ‘madrigale’ trecentesco,” Rivista musicale italiana 48 (1946): 305–­23; 49 (1947): 121–­42; Nino Pirrotta, “Madrigal. A. Das Madrigal der Ars Nova,” in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart 8 (1960): col. 1421; Nino Pirrotta, “Una arcaica descrizione trecentesca del madrigale,” in Musica tra Medioevo e Rinascimento (Turin: Einaudi, 1984), 80–­89; Cattin and Gallo, Music of the Middle Ages, vol. 2, 121. 33. For a qualification, see Pirrotta, “Madrigal,” col. 1423. 34. Pirrotta, “Madrigal,” col. 1422; Pirrotta, “Sull’Etimologia di ‘Madrigale’”; Pirrotta, “Una arcaica descrizione,” 80–­89; Nino Pirrotta, “A Sommacampagna Codex of the Italian Ars Nova?,” in Essays on Mediaeval Music in Honor of David G. Hughes, ed. Graeme M. Boone (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 317–­31, esp. 331. 35. Cattin and Gallo, Music of the Middle Ages, vol. 2, 61–­63. 36. Translation adapted from A Song for Francesca: Music in Italy, 1330–­1430, Gothic Voices, Christopher Page, Hyperion CDA 66286 (London: Hyperion Records Ltd., ℗ 1988). 37. Cattin and Gallo, Music of the Middle Ages, vol. 2, 59. 38. Pirrotta, “Piero e l’impressionismo musicale del secolo XIV.” 39. Translation by Linda L. Carroll. There is an edition of the music in Pirrotta, Music of Fourteenth-­Century Italy, vol. 1.

Chapter 3 1. Franco Sacchetti, Il libro delle rime, ed. Alberto Chiari (Bari: Laterza, 1936), 93. 2. Frank A. D’Accone, “Le compagnie dei laudesi in Firenze durante l’Ars Nova,” in

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L’Ars Nova italiana del Trecento II, 253–­80, esp. 280 and n. 98 (Certaldo: Centro di Studi sull’Ars nova italiana del Trecento, 1970). 3. Cattin and Gallo, Music of the Middle Ages, vol. 2, 66; Sacchetti, Il libro delle rime, 290. 4. Pirrotta, Music of Fourteenth-­Century Italy, vol. 1, ii. 5. Pirrotta, “Ballata”; Timothy J. McGee, ed., Medieval Instrumental Dances (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 5–­6. 6. Translation adapted from Puzzles and Perfect Beauty: Italian Music at the End of the Middle Ages, Newberry Consort (Noyse Productions, n.d.). 7. Text reproduced from Pirrotta, Music of Fourteenth-­Century Italy, vol. 3, x–­xi; translation adapted from Ghirardello da Firenze, Madrigali, Cacce, Ballate dal Codice Squarcialupi, Ensemble Modo Antiquo, Nuova Era Internazionale 232901 (Nuova Era Internazionale, ℗ © 2010), liner notes pp. 32–­33, emended according to suggestions from Linda L. Carroll. Pirrotta’s publication has an edition of the composition. 8. Pirrotta, Music of Fourteenth-­Century Italy, vol. 3, ii. 9. Pirrotta, “Back to Ars Nova Themes,” esp. 168; Michael P. Long, “Francesco Landini and the Florentine Cultural Élite,” Early Music History 3 (1983): 83–­99, 83. 10. Pirrotta, 83. 11. Pirrotta, Music of Fourteenth-­Century Italy, vol. 3, i. 12. On the material in the foregoing four paragraphs, see F. Alberto Gallo, “Lorenzo Masini e Francesco degli Organi in S. Lorenzo,” Studi musicali 4 (1975): 57–­63, esp. 57–­58 and 60–­61. 13. Cattin and Gallo, Music of the Middle Ages, vol. 2, 128. 14. Pirrotta, Music of Fourteenth-­Century Italy, vol. 3, i. 15. Sacchetti, Il libro delle rime, 13. 16. Pirrotta, Music of Fourteenth-­Century Italy, vol. 3, i; Nino Pirrotta, “On Landini and Ser Lorenzo,” Musica Disciplina 48 (1994): 5–­13, esp. 5–­6; Michael Long, “Singing through the Looking Glass: Child’s Play and Learning in Medieval Italy,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 61.2 (2008): 253–­306. 17. Pirrotta, Music of Fourteenth-­Century Italy, vol. 3, i–­ii. 18. Pirrotta, “On Landini and Ser Lorenzo,” esp. 6. 19. Text by Niccolò Soldanieri. Translation adapted from Early Music Festival, Early Music Consort, London Set 289 452 967-­2 (London: Decca, ℗ 1969). 20. Pirrotta, “On Landini and Ser Lorenzo”; Pirrotta, Music of Fourteenth-­Century Italy, vol. 3. 21. F. Trucchi, Poesie trecentisti (Prator Guasti, 1846), 152. 22. Frank A. D’Accone, “Music and Musicians at the Florentine Monastery of Santa Trìnita, 1360– ­1363,” Quadrivium 12 (1971): 131–­51, esp. 134–­35 and n. 11, 136 and nn. 16 and 18. 23. Gallo, “Lorenzo Masini e Francesco degli Organi,” esp. 59; Nino Pirrotta, “Francesco Landino: I lumi della mente,” in Dolcissime armonie: Nel sesto centenario della morte di Francesco Landino, ed. Piero Gargiulo (Fièsole: Edizioni Cadmo, 1997), 3–­11. 24. James Haar and John Nádas, “Antonio Squarcialupi: Man and Myth,” Early Music History 25 (2006): 105–­68, esp. 119–­20. 25. Cristoforo Landino, Xandra, in Landino, Poems, trans. Mary P. Chatfield, I Tatti Renaissance Library 35 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 41–­51, “Poem 24.” 26. See Haar and Nádas, “Antonio Squarcialupi,” esp. 120. 27. Helene Nolthenius, “Een autobiografisch Madrigaal van Francesco Landino,” Tijdschrift der Vereeniging voor Noord-­Nederlands Muziekgeschiedenis 17.4 (1955): 237–­41.

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28. D’Accone, “Music and Musicians at the Florentine Monastery of Santa Trìnita,” 133 and n. (6). 29. D’Accone, 34–­35 and nn. 11, 13. 30. Gallo, “Lorenzo Masini e Francesco degli Organi,” 59. 31. D’Accone, “Music and Musicians at the Florentine Monastery of Santa Trìnita,” 136–­38 and nn. 16–­25; Gallo, “Lorenzo Masini e Francesco degli Organi.” 32. Gallo, “Lorenzo Masini e Francesco degli Organi,” 59. 33. K. von Fischer and G. D’Agostino “Landini, Francesco” (1 January 2001), Grove Music Online, accessed 28 June 2019, https://​w ww​.oxfordmusiconline​.com​.ezproxy​ .lafayette​.edu​/grove​music​/view​/10​.1093​/gmo​/9781561592630​.001​.0001​/omo​-­­9 78​ 1561592630​-­­e​-­­0 000015942. 34. Dragan Plamenac, “Another Paduan Fragment of Trecento,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 8.3 (1955): 165–­81. 35. Ettore Li Gotti, “A Presumed Crowning of Francesco Landino,” Bulletin of the American Musicological Society 11–­13 (1948): 55, disputes Villani’s account. 36. Gallo, “Lorenzo Masini e Francesco degli Organi,” 62–­63. This is the hospital dedicated to San Giovanni Evangelista, the largest of its time between the first and second circles of city walls; the hospital was situated between the Baptistery and the Duomo. It was known at that time as the Spedale di Santa Reparata. The older building was demolished and a new building constructed in what is now Via Martelli. On the history of the institution, see Robert Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, 8 vols. (Florence: Sansoni, 1956–­68), vol. 7, 89–­91. 37. R. Taucci, “Fra Andrea dei Servi, organista e compositore del Trecento,” Studi storici dell’Ordine dei Servi di Maria 2.2 (1934–­35): 73–­108, esp. 78. 38. Cattin and Gallo, Music of the Middle Ages, vol. 2, 134–­35. 39. Text and translation adapted from Fior di dolceça: L’Ars nova di Magister Franciscus Cecus Orghanista de Florentia, Ensemble Micrologus, Mécénat Musical Société Générale, Zig Zag Territoires 050603 (Paris: Zig Zag Territoires, ℗ © 2005). 40. Nino Pirrotta, “Note su un codice di antiche musiche per tastiera,” Rivista musicale italiana 56 (1954): 333–­39; Dragan Plamenac, “A Note on the Rearrangement of Faenza Codex 117,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 17.1 (1964): 78–­81; Dragan Plamenac, ed., Keyboard Music of the Late Middle Ages in Codex Faenza 117, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 57 ([Dallas?]: American Institute of Musicology, 1972); Armen Carapetyan, “The Codex Faenza, Biblioteca Comunale, 117 [Fa],” Musica Disciplina 13 (1959): 79, 81–­107, esp. 79; and Pedro Memelsdorff, ed., The Codex Faenza 117, 2 vols. (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2013). 41. Dragan Plamenac, “Keyboard Music of the 14th Century in Codex Faenza 117,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 4.3 (1951): 179–­201, 187. 42. On the material in the foregoing two paragraphs, see Plamenac, “Keyboard Music,” 181, 184–­85, 187. 43. Gallo, Il codice Squarcialupi, 16. 44. Nino Pirrotta, “‘Franciscus peregre canens,’” in Col dolce suon che da te piove: Studi su Francesco Landini e la musica del suo tempo (Florence: Sismel, 1999), 7–­13. 45. Plamenac, “Keyboard Music,” 186 and n. 14. 46. McGee, Medieval Instrumental Dances, 2, quoting the Decameron. 47. Gilbert Reaney, ed., The Manuscript London, British Museum, Additional 29987 (n.p.: American Institute of Musicology, 1965); and Giuliano Di Bacco, “Alcune nuove osserva-

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zioni sul codice di Londra (British Library, MS Additional 29987),” Studi musicali 20.2 (1991): 181–­234. On the provenance of the manuscript, see Giovanni Carsaniga, “An Additional Look at London Additional 29987,” Musica Disciplina 48 (1994): 283–­97. Throughout this section, I have borrowed from McGee, Medieval Instrumental Dances. 48. McGee, Medieval Instrumental Dances, 8. 49. The dances are transcribed into modern notation in McGee’s edition. See also Di Bacco, “Alcune nuove osservazioni sul codice di Londra,” 197 and nn. 45–­47; and Plamenac, “Keyboard Music,” 186. 50. McGee, Medieval Instrumental Dances, 14. 51. Reaney, The Manuscript London, British Museum, Additional 29987, 10; Di Bacco, “Alcune nuove osservazioni sul codice di Londra,” 198 and n. 48; McGee, Medieval Instrumental Dances, 33. 52. Giosuè Carducci, “Musica e poesia nel mondo elegante italiano del secolo XIV,” Studi Letterari (Livorno: Vigo, 1874), 373–­447; and evocations of Carducci’s thesis in, e.g., Nino Pirrotta and Ettore Li Gotti, Il Sacchetti e la tecnica musicale del Trecento italiano (Florence: Sansoni, 1935), 51; and Nino Pirrotta, “Novelty and Renewal in Italy, 1300–­1600,” in Music and Culture in Italy from the Middle Ages to the Baroque: A Collection of Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984) 159–­74, 406–­8, esp. 164. 53. Long, “Francesco Landini,” 85. 54. See Haar and Nádas, “Antonio Squarcialupi,” esp. 120. 55. Michael P. Long, “Musical Tastes in Fourteenth-­Century Florence: Notational Styles, Scholarly Traditions, and Historical Circumstances” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1981), 153, 219–­22, 136–­41; Long, “Francesco Landini,” 88–­90, 93–­94. But for some qualifications of Long’s formulations, see Gianluca D’Agostino, “Some Musical Data from Literary Sources of the Late Middle Ages,” “Dolce Nuove Note,” ed. Francesco Zimei, L’Ars nova italiana del Trecento VII (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2009), 209–­36. See, e.g., Long, “Francesco Landini,” 90, on an opposition of “medieval scholasticism” to “Renaissance humanism.” 56. Gallo, “Lorenzo Masini e Francesco degli Organi,” 62–­63. 57. Gallo, 62–­63; and D’Accone, “Music and Musicians at the Florentine Monastery of Santa Trìnita,” 138 and n. 25. 58. Cattin and Gallo, Music of the Middle Ages, vol. 2, 75.

Chapter 4 1. John Shearman, “The Internationalism of Florentine Gothic Art,” in L’Europa e l’arte italiana (Venice: Marsilio, 2000), 143–­55; D’Accone, “Music and Musicians at the Florentine Monastery of Santa Trìnita,” 115. 2. Musica Disciplina 41 (1987), Special issue: 1380–­1430: An International Style?, esp. the introductory essay by Reinhard Strohm, 5–­13. 3. See “Background: Late Medieval Painting in Lombardy and the International Style,” in Diane Cole Ahl’s forthcoming volume on fifteenth-­century Italian painting for Yale University Press. 4. He is so identified in the manuscript Mediceo Palatino 87 of the Biblioteca laurenziana of Florence, the Squarcialupi codex. 5. Sacchetti, Il libro delle rime, 122. 6. Long, “Francesco Landini,” 94–­96.

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7. See the text and translation and liner notes by Margaret Bent, Popes and Antipopes: Music for the Courts of Avignon and Rome, Orlando Consort, Met CD 1008 (n.p.: BBC Worldwide Ltd., ℗ 1994; Metronome Recordings Ltd, © 1995). 8. Anthony M. Cummings, Nino Pirrotta: An Intellectual Biography (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2014), 139; Anne Stone, The Manuscript Modena, Biblioteca Estense, α.M.5.24, Commentary (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2005), esp. 108–­9. 9. Long, “Francesco Landini,” 95 and n. 73. 10. Pirrotta, Music of Fourteenth-­Century Italy, vol. 5, ii–­iii. 11. Pirrotta. 12. D’Accone, “Music and Musicians at Santa Maria del Fiore,” 105, 119. 13. Corradus’s choice of the text more likely documents his sympathy for the members of the papal chapel rather than his membership in it. Nino Pirrotta, “Il codice estense lat. 568 e la musica francese in Italia al principio del ’400,” estratto dagli Atti della Reale Accademia di Scienze Lettere e Arti di Palermo, serie II, vol. V, parte II (1946), 42–­43; Cattin and Gallo, Music of the Middle Ages, vol. 2, 88. For a contrasting view, see Long, “Francesco Landini,” 98. 14. Long, “Francesco Landini,” 98; Nino Pirrotta, “Andreas de Florentia,” in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1949–­73), vol. 15, col. 208. 15. Pirrotta, Music of Fourteenth-­Century Italy, vol. 5, i. 16. Pirrotta. 17. Arcangeli Giani, Annalium Sacri Ordinis Fratrum Servorum B. Mariae Virginis A’ suae institutionis exordio centuriae quatuor . . . , 2nd ed. (Lucca: Marescandoli, 1719), vol. 1, 338. 18. Pirrotta, Music of Fourteenth-­Century Italy, vol. 5, ii. 19. Pirrotta, vol. 5, ii. 20. Translation adapted from A Song for Francesca, Gothic Voices, Hyperion CDA 66286. 21. Pirrotta, “Il codice estense lat. 568 e la musica francese in Italia al principio del ’400,” 43; Pirrotta, Music of Fourteenth-­Century Italy, vol. 5, ii. 22. On Bonaiutus, see Ulrich Thieme, ed., Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart . . . (Leipzig: Verlag von E. A. Seeman, 1912), vol. 7, 473; Ettore Li Gotti, “Per la biografia di due minori musicisti italiani dell’ ‘Ars nova,’” in Restauri trecenteschi (Palermo: Palumbo, 1947), 98–­105, esp. 103–­5; Coppo Stefani, Istoria fiorentina di Marchionne di Coppo Stefani (Florence: Cambiagi, 1783), 221, 226; Naddo da Montecatini and Iacopo Salviati, Croniche fiorentine di Ser Naddo da Montecatini e del Cavaliere Iacopo Salviati (Florence: Cambiagi, 1784), 146–­47; Di Bacco, “Alcune nuove osservazioni sul codice di Londra,” esp. 201 nn. 56 and 57, 202 nn. 61 and 64; Guido Carocci, L’Illustratore fiorentino: Calendario storico per l’anno 1908 (Florence: Tipografia Domenicana, 1907), 22. 23. Pirrotta, Music of Fourteenth-­Century Italy, vol. 5, iii. 24. Nino Pirrotta, “‘Dulcedo’ e ‘subtilitas’ nella pratica polifonica franco-­italiana al principio del ’400,” Revue belge de musicologie 2.3–­4 (1948): 125–­32. 25. Pirrotta, Music of Fourteenth-­Century Italy, vol. 5, iii. 26. Another important composer of the time was the organist Giovanni Mazzuoli (†1426), compositions by whom have recently been reclaimed from a period source. See Andreas Janke and John Nádas, eds., The San Lorenzo Palimpsest: Florence, Archivio del Capitolo di San Lorenzo Ms. 2211, 2 vols. (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2016). 27. Anthony M. Cummings, “Godi, Firenze: The Florentine Conquest of Pisa Celebrated in Song,” Predella 13–­14 (2016): 111–­34 and Tavola XLIV. John Nádas has reported new findings that add to our understanding of the composer’s life; see “New Biographical

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Documentation of Paolo da Firenze’s Early Career,” in The End of the Ars Nova in Italy: The San Lorenzo Palimpsest and Related Repertories, ed. Antonio Calvia, Stefano Campagnolo, Andreas Janke, Maria Sofia Lannutti, and John Nádas (Florence: Sismel, 2020). 28. See Nino Pirrotta, ed., Paolo Tenorista in a New Fragment of the Italian Ars Nova: A Facsimile Edition of an Early Fifteenth-­Century Manuscript Now in the Library of Professor Edward E. Lowinsky, Berkeley, California, introd. Nino Pirrotta (Palm Springs, CA: Ernest E. Gottlieb, 1961), 45 n. 71, citing Frank D’Accone, “The Music of Paolo Tenorista” (paper presented at the Meeting of the New England Chapter of the American Musicological Society, October 1955). 29. On the interpretation of these compositions, see Cummings, “Godi, Firenze: The Florentine Conquest of Pisa Celebrated in Song.”

Chapter 5 1. D’Accone, “Music and Musicians at Santa Maria del Fiore,” esp. 99 and n. 4. 2. Giovanni Poggi, Il duomo di Firenze (Florence: Kunsthistorisches Institut, 1909), vol. 2, 263–­64. 3. Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual, 15; Marica S. Tacconi, “The Choirbooks of Florence Cathedral: Liturgy, Music and Art,” in Gary M. Radke et al., Make a Joyful Noise: Renaissance Art and Music at Florence Cathedral (Atlanta, GA: High Museum of Arts, 2014), 73–­87. 4. See my section above on the Duecento. 5. On the material in the foregoing three paragraphs, see Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual, 23, 70–­72, 74, 209, 211, 252. 6. Cattin and Gallo, Music of the Middle Ages, vol. 2, 68. 7. Stefano Campagnolo, “Nota sul ‘più antico polifonista italiano del secolo XIV,’” in Firenze e la musica: Fonti, protagonisti, committenza. Scritti in ricordo di Maria Adelaide Bartoli Bacherini, ed. Cecilia Bacherini, Giacomo Sciommeri, and Agostino Ziino (Rome: Istituto Italiano per la Storia della Musica, 2014), 25–­31. 8. Campagnolo, 128. 9. Gallo, “The Practice of Cantus Planus Binatim,” 28. 10. Wilson, “If Monuments Could Sing,” esp. 145–­46. 11. Wilson, Music and Merchants, 187, 192. 12. Wilson, 187, 192. 13. Blake Wilson, “Madrigal, Lauda, and Local Style in Trecento Florence,” Journal of Musicology 15.2 (1997): 144, 148–­50; Wilson, Music and Merchants, 83, 160–­61, 163. 14. Wilson, “Madrigal, Lauda, and Local Style in Trecento Florence,” 158; see also Wilson, Music and Merchants, 83. 15. Wilson, Music and Merchants, 157. 16. Francesco Filarete and Angelo Manfidi, The Libro Cerimoniale of the Florentine Republic, ed. Richard C. Trexler (Geneva: Droz, 1978), 42, 44. 17. McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 69. For the material of the following paragraphs, see also Wilson, Singing to the Lyre, 150–­51 passim. 18. Filarete and Manfidi, Libro Cerimoniale, 23, 29. 19. McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 70–­71. 20. Filarete and Manfidi, Libro Cerimoniale, 33. 21. McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 70–­71. 22. McGee, 76.

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23. Gino Corti, “Un musicista fiammingo a Firenze agli inizi del Quattrocento,” in L’Ars nova italiana del Trecento IV (Certaldo: Centro di Studi sull’Ars nova italiana del Trecento, 1978), 177–­81, 178, 181. 24. On the material in the foregoing three paragraphs, see McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 72, 79, 81, 131, 134, 139. 25. McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 70, 129–­30; Filarete and Manfidi, Libro Cerimoniale, 35, 38–­39. 26. McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 131, 134, 139. 27. On the material of this paragraph, see Corti, “Un musicista,” 177–­78, 180. 28. McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 267 n. 36; my translation.

Chapter 6 1. J. R. Hale, Florence and the Medici (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977), passim; Dale V. Kent, The Rise of the Medici (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978); Eckstein, District of the Green Dragon, 170 ff.; Gene A. Brucker, “The Medici in the Fourteenth Century,” Speculum 32.1 (1957): 1–­26, 1. 2. Raymond De Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397–­1494 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), passim. 3. Brucker, “The Medici in the Fourteenth Century,” 2. 4. Anthony Molho, “A Note on the Albizzi and the Florentine Conquest of Pisa,” Renaissance Quarterly 20.2 (1967): 185–­99, at 185–­86. 5. Brucker, “The Medici in the Fourteenth Century,” 26. 6. Brucker, 26. 7. Nicolai Rubinstein, The Government of Florence under the Medici (1434–­1494) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), passim; Riccardo Fubini, “Lorenzo the Magnificent’s Regime: Aims, Image, and Constitutional Framework,” in The Medici: Citizens and Masters, ed. Robert Black et al. ([Florence]: Villa I Tatti, 2015), 61–­84; Rubinstein, Palazzo Vecchio, 33. 8. Rubinstein, Palazzo Vecchio, 91. 9. Cattin and Gallo, Music of the Middle Ages, vol. 2, 79–­80. 10. D’Accone, “Music and Musicians at Santa Maria del Fiore,” 99–­126; Nino Pirrotta, “Il codice estense lat. 568 e la musica francese in Italia al principio del ’400,” Atti della Reale Accademia di Scienze Lettere e Arti di Palermo, ser. 4, vol. 5, pt. 2 (1944–­45): 1–­59. 11. D’Accone, “Music and Musicians,” 100. 12. D’Accone, 101–­2. 13. On the material in the foregoing six paragraphs, see D’Accone, “Music and Musicians,” 102; 105 and 117 Doc. 1; 105 and 119 Doc. 14; 106 and 120 Doc. 17; 106–­7 and 121 Doc. 23; 109–­11; 113–­14; 122 Doc. 27; 124 Doc. 39; and 125 Doc. 42. 14. Alejandro Enrique Planchart, Guillaume Du Fay: The Life and Works, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), vol. 1, 16; Nino Pirrotta, “Rom. C. Spätmittelalter und Renaissance,” in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1949–­73), vol. 11, cols. 695–­702. 15. Franz Xaver Haberl, Bausteine für Musikgeschichte (Hildesheim: Olms, 1971), vol. 1, 57. 16. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Canon. Misc. 213, introd. David Fallows (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), facsimile fols. 28v–­29[r]; see the accompanying discussion by Fallows.

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17. D’Accone, “Music and Musicians,” 116. 18. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Canon. Misc. 213, 33. 19. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Canon. Misc. 213, facsimile fols. 28v–­29[r]. 20. James Haar and John Nádas, “The Medici, the Signoria, the Pope: Sacred Polyphony in Florence, 1432–­1448,” Recercare 20.1–­2 (2008): 25–­93, 29. 21. D’Accone, “Music and Musicians,” 116 and nn. 3–­5; Craig Wright, “Dufay’s ‘Nuper rosarum flores,’ King Solomon’s Temple, and the Veneration of the Virgin,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 47.3 (1994): 395–­441; Sabine Žak, “Der Quellenwert von Giannozzo Manettis Oratio über die Domweihe von Florenz 1436 für die Musikgeschichte,” Die Musikforschung 40.1 (1987): 2–­32; Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual; Michael K. Phelps, “The Pagan Virgin? Du Fay’s Salva Flos, a Second Consecration Motet for Santa Maria del Fiore,” in Qui musicum in se habet: Studies in Honor of Alejandro Enrique Planchart, ed. Bonnie J. Blackburn et al. (Middleton, WI: American Institute of Musicology, 2015), 501–­13. On an attempt made to ready a new organ, see Gabriele Giacomelli, “Fifteenth-­Century Pipe Organs and Organists at Florence Cathedral,” in Radke et al., Make a Joyful Noise, 53–­61, at 53–­54. 22. D’Accone, “Music and Musicians,” 101; Albert Seay, “The 15th-­Century Cappella at Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 11.1 (1958): 45–­55, 46–­49. 23. Wright, “Dufay’s ‘Nuper rosarum flores,’” 399 n. 10; Planchart, Guillaume Du Fay, vol. 1, 134–­40. 24. Wright, “Dufay’s ‘Nuper rosarum flores,’” 430. 25. Manetti, quoted in Phelps, “The Pagan Virgin?,” 501. 26. Haar and Nádas, “The Medici, the Signoria, the Pope,” 30 n. 14. 27. Planchart, Guillaume Du Fay, vol. 1, 134–­40; Robert Nosow, “Du Fay and the Cultures of Renaissance Florence,” in Hearing the Motet: Essays on the Motet of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Dolores Pesce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 104–­21, at 118 n. 17. 28. Wright, “Dufay’s ‘Nuper rosarum flores,’” 396. 29. Phelps, “The Pagan Virgin?,” 501. 30. Phelps, 502. 31. Haar and Nádas, “The Medici, the Signoria, the Pope,” 29 n. 9. 32. Phelps, “The Pagan Virgin?,” 502. 33. Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual, 3 and n. 10. 34. Wright, “Dufay’s ‘Nuper rosarum flores,’” 429. 35. Phelps, “The Pagan Virgin?,” 502. 36. Phelps, 502. 37. Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual, 156–­58; Wright, “Dufay’s ‘Nuper rosarum flores,’” 435–­36; Craig Wright, “A Sequence for the Dedication of the Cathedral of Florence: Dufay’s Nuper almos rose flores,” in Innocenti and Verdon, “Cantate Domino,” vol. 3, 55–­67. 38. Of course, the fact that this prosa is preserved in a fifteenth-­century Florentine liturgical manuscript is no guarantee that it was actually performed at the consecration ceremony. One is making an assumption, therefore, but not an extravagant one. 39. Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual, 156–­58; Wright, “Dufay’s ‘Nuper rosarum flores,’” 435. 40. Wright, “Dufay’s ‘Nuper rosarum flores,’” 435–­36, lightly reformatted. 41. Wright, 399, lightly reformatted.

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42. Wright, passim. 43. Wright, 396–­97, 405–­6; David Fallows, liner notes, Guillaume Dufay, Missa “L’homme armé”: Motets. Motetten, Hilliard Ensemble, EMI Digital CDC 7 4 47628 2 (Cologne: EMI Records / EMI Electrola GmbH, ℗ © 1987), 5. But see Emily Zazulia, “Out of Proportion: Nuper rosarum flores, Cathedralism, and the Danger of False Exceptionalism,” in Program and Abstracts of Papers Read at the American Musicological Society Eighty-­Third Annual Meeting, 9–­12 November 2017 (New York: American Musicological Society, 2017), 119–­20; now published in Journal of Musicology 36.2 (2019): 131–­66. 44. Phelps, “The Pagan Virgin?” On another motet for the ceremony, see now Patrick Macey’s liner notes for the CD The Florentine Renaissance, The Orlando Consort, Hyperion Records CDA 68349 (2022). 45. Nosow, “Du Fay and the Cultures,” 106. 46. Nosow, 106, 116. 47. Phelps, “The Pagan Virgin?,” 504. 48. Phelps, passim. 49. Phelps, 504–­5. 50. Anthony M. Cummings, “Leo X and Roman Carnival,” Studi musicali 36 (2007): 289–­341, at 323–­24. 51. Planchart, Guillaume Du Fay, vol. 1, 134–­40. 52. Haar and Nádas, “The Medici, the Signoria, the Pope,” 31. 53. Frank A. D’Accone, “The Singers of San Giovanni in Florence during the 15th Century,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 14.3 (1961): 307–­58, 308. 54. James Haar and John Nádas, “Florentine Chapel Singers, 1448–­1469,” in Beyond 50 Years of Ars Nova Studies at Certaldo, 1959–­2009: . . . L’Ars nova italiana del Trecento VIII, ed. Marco Gozzi, Agostino Ziino, and Francesco Zimei (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2014), 505–­6. 55. Haar and Nádas, “The Medici, the Signoria, the Pope,” 26–­27. 56. Haar and Nádas, 25. 57. D’Accone, “The Singers,” 310. 58. Haar and Nádas, “The Medici, the Signoria, the Pope,” 26. 59. Haar and Nádas, 30; Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual, 143. On another attempt, again unsuccessful, to ready the new organ commissioned in 1432 for use (see above), see Giacomelli, “Fifteenth-­Century Pipe Organs and Organists,” 54. 60. D’Accone, “The Singers,” 311; Haar and Nádas, “The Medici, the Signoria, the Pope,” 32; Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual, 159. 61. Anna Benvenuti Papi, “La traslazione delle reliquie di San Zanobi,” in Firenze e il concilio del 1439, 2 vols., ed. Paolo Viti (Florence: Olschki, 1994), vol. 2, 191–­220, at 215–­ 16; Blake Wilson, “Music, Art, and Devotion: The Cult of St. Zenobius at the Florentine Cathedral during the Early Renaissance,” in Innocenti and Verdon, “Cantate Domino,” vol. 3, 17–­36, 31–­33 and n. 58; Marica S. Tacconi, “In Honor of the Florentine Cathedral and the Medici: The 1526 Office of St. Zenobius,” in Music and Culture in the Middle Ages and Beyond: Liturgy, Sources, Symbolism, ed. Benjamin D. Brand et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 72–­88. 62. Nosow, “Du Fay and the Cultures,” 105 and 118 n. 6, notes that Benottus’s Gaude tu baptista Christi addresses John the Baptist, patron saint of Florence. 63. On the material of the foregoing ten paragraphs, see D’Accone, “The Singers,” 309–­ 10, 316–­17, 319–­21, 323–­31, 334.

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64. D’Accone, “The Singers,” 315–­16; Haar and Nádas, “Florentine Chapel Singers,” 508 and n. 12. 65. See, e.g., Haar and Nádas, “Florentine Chapel Singers,” 517–­18; D’Accone, “The Singers,” 320. 66. Haar and Nádas, “Florentine Chapel Singers,” 521–­22, 524, 526–­28; D’Accone, “The Singers,” 322–­24. 67. D’Accone, “The Singers,” 325; Haar and Nádas, “Florentine Chapel Singers,” 528. 68. D’Accone, “The Singers,” 327; Giovanni Zanovello, “‘Master Arigo Ysach, Our Brother’: New Light on Isaac in Florence, 1502–­17,” Journal of Musicology 25.3 (2008): 287–­317, 305; Frank A. D’Accone, “Lorenzo the Magnificent and Music,” in Lorenzo il Magnifico e il suo mondo, ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini (Florence: Olschki, 1994), 259–­90, 284 (main text) and 284 n. 70. 69. D’Accone, “The Singers,” 327. 70. Lewis Lockwood, “Music at Florence and Ferrara in the Late Fifteenth Century: Rivalry and Interdependence,” in La musica a Firenze al tempo di Lorenzo il Magnifico, ed. Piero Gargiulio (Florence: Olschki, 1993), 1–­13, at 2; Lewis Lockwood, Music in Renaissance Ferrara (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 164–­65. 71. D’Accone, “Lorenzo the Magnificent,” 279. 72. Frank A. D’Accone, “Lorenzo il Magnifico e la musica,” in La musica a Firenze al tempo di Lorenzo il Magnifico, ed. Piero Gargiulio (Florence: Olschki, 1993), 219–­48, 238–­39. 73. Richard Sherr, The Papal Choir during the Pontificates of Julius II to Sixtus V (1503–­ 1590) (Palestrina: Fondazione Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, 2015), 134, 141, 146; Anthony M. Cummings, “Clement VII’s Musical Patronage: Evidence and Interpretations,” Recercare 19.1–­2 (2007): 5–­46. 74. D’Accone, “The Singers,” 331, 333–­34. 75. Gabriele Giacomelli, “Nuove aggiunte alla biografia di Antonio Squarcialupi: I viaggi, l’impiego, le esecuzioni,” in La musica a Firenze al tempo di Lorenzo il Magnifico, 257–­73, 267 n. 31; Judith Bryce, “Performing for Strangers: Women, Dance, and Music in Quattrocento Florence,” Renaissance Quarterly 54.4, pt. 1 (2001): 1074–­1107, 1091. 76. Giacomelli, “Fifteenth-­Century Pipe Organs and Organists,” 57. 77. Frank A. D’Accone, “Some Neglected Composers in the Florentine Chapels, ca. 1475–­1525,” Viator 1 (1970): 264–­88, at 273; Allan W. Atlas and Anthony M. Cummings, “Agricola, Ghiselin, and Alfonso II of Naples,” Journal of Musicology 7.4 (1989): 540–­48, 545 passim. 78. See D’Accone, “The Singers,” 338–­46; Frank A. D’Accone, “Heinrich Isaac in Florence: New and Unpublished Documents,” Musical Quarterly 49.4 (1963): 464–­83; John Nádas, “Some New Documentary Evidence Regarding Heinrich Isaac’s Career in Florence,” in Firenze e la musica: Fonti, protagonisti, committenza. Scritti in ricordo di Maria Adelaide Bartoli Bacherini, ed. Cecilia Bacherini, Giacomo Sciommeri, and Agostino Ziino (Rome: Istituto Italiano per la Storia della Musica, Fondazione, 2014), 45–­ 64; Zanovello, “‘Master Arigo Ysach,’” passim; Reinhard Strohm and Emma Kempson, “Isaac, Henricus,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, accessed 26 June 2017; Martin Stähelin, Die Messen Heinrich Isaacs, 3 vols. (Beme and Stuttgart: Haupt, 1977); Blake Wilson, “Heinrich Isaac among the Florentines,” Journal of Musicology 23.1 (2006): 97–­152. 79. D’Accone, “Heinrich Isaac,” 465.

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80. D’Accone, 473–­74. But see now Zanovello, “‘Master Arigo Isach,’” 305; Nádas, “Some New Documentary Evidence,” 47. 81. D’Accone, “The Singers,” 338; D’Accone, “Heinrich Isaac,” 467. 82. D’Accone, “Heinrich Isaac,” 467. 83. D’Accone, 468–­69; Nádas, “Some New Documentary Evidence,” 48; Wilson, “Heinrich Isaac,” passim. 84. Wilson, “Heinrich Isaac,” 112–­13. 85. Wilson, 126–­27. 86. Martin Stähelin, Die Messen Heinrich Isaacs, vol. 2, 33–­35; Walter Rubsamen, “The Music for ‘Quant’è bella giovinezza’ and Other Carnival Songs by Lorenzo de’ Medici,” in Art, Science, and History in the Renaissance, ed. Charles S. Singleton (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968), 163–­84, esp. 184; Bonnie J. Blackburn, “Lorenzo de’ Medici, a Lost Isaac Manuscript, and the Venetian Ambassador,” in Music Franca: Essays in Honor of Frank A. D’Accone, ed. Irene Alm, Alyson McLamore, and Colleen Reardon (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1996), 19–­44, esp. 21, 42; Cummings, Maecenas and the Madrigalist, 27. 87. Anthony M. Cummings, “A Florentine Sacred Repertory from the Medici Restoration (Manuscript II.I.232 [olim Magl. XIX.58; Gaddi 1113] of the Biblioteca nazionale centrale, Firenze): Bibliography and History,” Acta Musicologica 55 (1983): 267–­332, esp. 280, 315, 321. On Quis dabit capiti, see Blake Wilson, “Remembering Isaac Remembering Lorenzo: The Musical Legacy of Quis dabit,” in Henricus Isaac (ca. 1450– ­1517): Composition—­Reception—­Interpretation, ed. Stefan Gasch, Marcus Grassl, and August Valentin Rabe (Vienna: Hollitzer Verlag, 2019), 153–­76. 88. Anthony M. Cummings, “Giulio de’ Medici’s Music Books,” Early Music History 10 (1991): 65–­122, esp. 81–­91; and Cummings, Lion’s Ear, chap. 5. 89. D’Accone, “Heinrich Isaac,” 46; Walter H. Rubsamen, “From Frottola to Madrigal: The Changing Pattern of Secular Italian Vocal Music,” in Chanson and Madrigal, 1480–­1530, ed. James Haar (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), 51–­72, esp. 61; Blackburn, “Lorenzo de’ Medici,” 26. 90. Wilson, “Heinrich Isaac,” 114 and n. 43. 91. Tvtti i trionfi, carri, mascheaate [sic; recte: “mascherate”] ò canti carnascialeschi andati per Firenze, dal tempo del magnifico Lorenzo Vecchio de Medici; quando egli hebbero prima cominciamento, per infino à questo anno presente 1559 (Florence, 1559), pp. a iiv– ­a iiir; D’Accone, “Heinrich Isaac,” 467; Wilson, “Heinrich Isaac,” 106; Nerida Newbigin, “Piety and Politics in the Feste of Lorenzo’s Florence,” in Lorenzo il Magnifico e il suo mondo, ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini (Florence: Olschki, 1994), 17–­41, 35. 92. The text of Lorenzo’s mascherata survives in several sources, in one of which it is titled “Canzona de’ confortini” and its text incipit given as “Berriquocholi, Donne, et confortini.” See also Anthony M. Cummings and Michał Gondko, “Et iste erat valde musicus. . . : Pope Leo X, Composer,” Recercare 29.1–­2 (2017): 22–­23 nn. 13–­14, 24 n. 20. 93. Wilson, “Heinrich Isaac,” 100–­102. 94. Wilson, 107. 95. Wilson, 129, 135; Lockwood, “Music at Florence and Ferrara,” 8.

Chapter 7 1. Giulio Cattin, Un processionale fiorentino per la Settimana Santa: Studio liturgico-­ musicale sul ms. 21 dell’Opera di S. Maria del Fiore (Bologna: Antiquae Musicale Italicae

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Studiosi, 1975). De Quadris’s setting is published in Johannis de Quadris, Opera, ed. Giulio Cattin (Bologna: Antiquae Musicae Italicae Studiosi, 1972). There are later settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah by composers with well-­documented associations with Florence: Alexander Agricola and Heinrich Isaac; Wilson, “Heinrich Isaac,” 123–­24 and nn. 62, 65. 2. Frank A. D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche dell’Archivio dell’Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, 2 vols. (Florence: Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore / Olschki, forthcoming); and Frank A. D’Accone, “Marco da Gagliano and the Florentine Tradition of Holy Week Music,” in Music and Musicians in 16th-­Century Florence (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), vol. 6, 1–­27, at 2. A Florentine cathedral singer and chaplain, ser Matteo di Paolo, was compensated in 1480 for polyphonic settings of the Lamentations, Responsories for Holy Week, “and other things for Holy Week which he composed for their church”; this is among the earliest known documentary references (as contrasted with direct musical evidence) for the performance of polyphony at Matins and Lauds in Florence on the Triduum Sacrum. 3. Ed. in Cattin, Un processionale fiorentino per la Settimana Santa, 30–­31, 46–­48. 4. Cummings, “A Florentine Sacred Repertory,” 307; Anthony M. Cummings, “Isaac, the Mass Proper, and the Motet,” in Heinrich Isaac and Polyphony for the Proper of the Mass (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 157–­66; David Rothenberg, “Angels, Archangels, and a Woman in Distress: The Meaning of Isaac’s Angeli archangeli,” Journal of Musicology 21.4 (2004): 514–­78. 5. Giovanni Zanovello, “‘In the Church and in the Chapel’: Music and Devotional Spaces in the Florentine Church of Santissima Annunziata,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 67.2 (2014): 379–­428; Darwin Smith, “La réforme musicale à la Santissima Annunziata de Florence (1478–­1485) et la politique religieuse de Lorenzo de’ Medici,” Drammaturgia 14, n.s., 4 (2017): 7–­52; Darwin Smith, “Arnoul Gréban: De l’identité d’un auteur à la forme d’une culture,” in Devenir historien (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2012), 129–­34. Of course, polyphonic singing was by no means the only musical ornament to the liturgy in Florentine churches. Among the other important species of music-­making was organ playing. See Frank A. D’Accone, “Sacred Music in Florence in Savonarola’s Time,” in Music in Renaissance Florence (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), vol. 6, 311–­54, 320–­27. 6. Eisenbichler, Boys of the Archangel Raphael, 46. 7. Wilson, Music and Merchants. 8. Eckstein, District of the Green Dragon, xxv. 9. Eckstein, 199. 10. Eckstein, 199, 206, 210–­12. 11. Wilson, “Lauda.” 12. Eckstein, District of the Green Dragon, 100 ff. 13. Wilson, “Lauda.” 14. Wilson; Fabbri, “Laude spirituali,” 145–­58 [59], 149; Blake Wilson, Singing Poetry in Renaissance Florence: The “Cantasi Come” Tradition (1375–­1550) (Florence: Olschki, 2009). 15. Wilson, “Lauda.” 16. Fabbri, “Laude spirituali,” 151. 17. Wilson, “Lauda.” 18. Nerida Newbigin, “Greasing the Wheels of Heaven: Recycling, Innovation and the Question of ‘Brunelleschi’s’ Stage Machinery,” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 11 (2007): 201–­41, 201. The following publication appeared too recently for me to profit from it; I expect that it is an exceptional source: Nerida Newbigin, Making a Play for God: The Sacre Rappresentazioni of Renaissance Florence, 2 vols., Publications of the Centre for

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Renaissance and Reformation Studies, Essays and Studies 48 (Toronto: Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, 2021). The term sacra rappresentazione is often used, rather indiscriminately, to refer to any episode in scripture—­the Hebrew or Christian Bible—­that lends itself to dramatization and staging. Newbigin distinguishes carefully among various species of such performances and restricts the term sacra rappresentazione to play texts in ottava rima, with prologue and epilogue delivered by an angel: see New­ bigin, Feste d’Oltrarno, vol. 1, 29. I adopt Newbigin’s distinction and refer to sacred theatrical performances for the general phenomenon of dramatized episodes from scripture and sacre rappresentazione for the more or less fixed, authored texts in ottava rima. 19. Newbigin, Feste d’Oltrarno, vol. 1, 3–­7. See also Orville K. Larson, “Bishop Abraham of Souzdal’s Descriptions of Sacre Rappresentazioni,” Educational Theatre Journal 9 (1957): 208–­13; Michel Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici: Public Celebrations, Politics, and Literature in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2008), 49. 20. Newbigin, Feste d’Oltrarno, 8–­9, 13; Newbigin, “Greasing the Wheels,” 205 n. 9. 21. Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 71. 22. Eckstein, District of the Green Dragon, 56–­57. 23. Bornstein, Bianchi of 1399, 29. 24. See Rab Hatfield, “The Compagnia de’ Magi,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 33 (1970): 107–­61, at 114–­16 and 150. 25. Hatfield, 114–­16, 151. 26. On the material in the foregoing four paragraphs, see Newbigin, Feste d’Oltrarno, 30–­32, 36, 60–­62, 167, 205–­7, 212. 27. Newbigin, “Greasing the Wheels,” 230–­31. 28. Newbigin, Feste d’Oltrarno, 22–­24. 29. A reproduction of the image and accompanying discussion are in Cummings, Politicized Muse, 141–­45. See also Orville K. Larson, “Vasari’s Descriptions of Stage Machinery,” Educational Theatre Journal 9 (1957): 287–­99. Illuminating reconstructions of the stage machinery and the mandorla are in Marco Sperenzi et al., eds., Teatro e spettacolo nella Firenze dei Medici: Modelli dei luoghi teatrali (Florence: Olschki, [2001]), Tav. III. 30. Although there is no music that illustrates the following element of the festa—­ nor would one expect there to be—­trumpeters were often sent throughout the city to announce the event. In 1473, the paymaster recorded that he had “paid Nigi and his son, trumpeters, who played the morning and day of Saint Agnes.” Newbigin, Feste d’Oltrarno, 96, 114, 122, 145. 31. Eisenbichler, “Nativity and Magi Plays,” 328–­29. 32. See Cummings, Politicized Muse, 141–­45. 33. McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 84. 34. Bianca Becherini, “La musica nelle ‘Sacre rappresentazioni’ fiorentine,” Rivista musicale italiana 53 (1951): 241, 200–­201; Cummings, Politicized Muse, 141–­45. In a late fifteenth-­century printed book of Laude di Feo Belcari (. . . come l’anima priegha iddio gli dica che cosa egli sia et i[n] che modo iddio rispo[n]de). Cantasi come ([Florence: Bartolommeo di Libri, 1490]), the text Cristo, ver uomo e Dio is captioned “cantasi come Laudate el sommo Dio.” A musical setting of Cristo, ver uomo e Dio survives, at the conclusion of which is the rubric, “All the same canzoni are sung to the same tune” (Serafino Razzi, Libro primo delle laudi spirituali [repr. Bologna: Forni, 1969]), which confirms that the surviving music for Cristo, ver uomo e Dio indeed served for Laudate el sommo Dio as well. And although the

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source of the music dates from the Cinquecento, it collects fifteenth-­century material, as the editor, Serafino Razzi, reports in his preface to the volume. 35. Eisenbichler, “Nativity and Magi Plays,” 322–­24. 36. See also Nino Pirrotta, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 20 n. 46; Patrick Macey, “Singing in and around Florence Cathedral: Oral and Written, Local and Imported Traditions,” in Radke et al., Make a Joyful Noise, 63–­71, at 65–­66. An edition of Laudate el sommo Dio is in Cummings, Politicized Muse. 37. Newbigin, Feste d’Oltrarno, 43, 210–­11.

Chapter 8 1. On the material in the foregoing two paragraphs, see Francesco Filarete and Angelo Manfidi, The Libro Cerimoniale of the Florentine Republic, ed. Richard C. Trexler (Geneva: Droz, 1978), 25, 41–­45. 2. McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 91. 3. Wilson, Singing to the Lyre, 152–­53. 4. McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 184–­85. 5. Cummings, MS Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magl. XIX 164–­167 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 43 and n. 104; McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 185, 210; Timothy J. McGee, “Giovanni Cellini, Piffero of Florence,” Historic Brass Society Journal 12 (2000): 210–­25, 218; D’Accone, “Lorenzo the Magnificent,” 282. 6. D’Accone, “Lorenzo the Magnificent,” 281; D’Accone, “Lorenzo il Magnifico,” 235–­ 36 n. 38. 7. McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 162, 164. 8. McGee, 167. 9. William F. Prizer, “Reading Carnival: The Creation of a Florentine Carnival Song,” Early Music History 23 (2004): 185–­252. 10. McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 169. 11. McGee, 169. 12. McGee, “Giovanni Cellini,” 218. 13. McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 225–­27. 14. McGee, 222; Robert Nosow, “Dancing the Righoletto,” Journal of Musicology 24.3 (2007): 407–­46, at 418. 15. McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 212–­13, 221, 229. 16. David Fallows, “Polyphonic Song in the Florence of Lorenzo’s Youth, ossia: The Provenance of the Manuscript Berlin 78.C.28: Naples or Florence?,” in La musica a Firenze al tempo di Lorenzo il Magnifico, ed. Piero Gargiulio (Florence: Olschki, 1993), 47–­61, at 49. 17. Louise Litterick, “Performing Franco-­Netherlandish Secular Music of the Late 15th Century: Texted and Untexted Parts in the Sources,” Early Music 8.4 (1980): 474–­78, 480–­ 85, at 480. 18. The most recent scholarship is as yet unpublished. For informative conversation, I am grateful to John Nádas. 19. Wilson, Singing to the Lyre, 110–­13. 20. McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 225–­27, 229; Nádas, “Some New Documentary Evidence,” 45–­64, at n. 14. 21. Sean Gallagher, “Caron and Florence: A New Ascription and the Copying of the Pixérécourt Chansonnier,” in Recevez ce mien petit labeur: Studies in Renaissance Music in

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Honour of Ignace Bossuyt, ed. Pieter Bergé and Mark Delaere (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2008), 83–­92. 22. Litterick, “Performing Franco-­Netherlandish Secular Music of the Late 15th Century,” 485. 23. With the exception of the reference below to D’Accone, “Lorenzo the Magnificent,” on the material of the foregoing six paragraphs, see Blake Wilson, “Dominion of the Ear: Singing the Vernacular in Piazza San Martino,” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 16.1–­2 (2013): 273–­87, at 274, 276, 278, 282, 284, 286. See now Wilson, Singing to the Lyre, 87–­167, which provides a fuller account of the phenomenon of the cantimpanche of Piazza San Martino. On the correspondence between Belcari and Antonio di Guido, see D’Accone, “Lorenzo the Magnificent,” 264 n. 11. The Piazza San Martino in question is not the present-­day square of that name but Piazza de’ Cimatori—­located immediately to the west of today’s Piazza San Martino—­which earlier had been Piazza San Martino del Vescovo or Piazza del Convento di San Martino, named for the ancient parish church of San Martino, which then faced Piazza de’ Cimatori. 24. McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 84; James Haar, “The Vatican Manuscript Urb. lat. 1411: An Undervalued Source?,” in Manoscritti di polifonia nel Quattrocento europeo (Trent: Provincia Autonoma, 2004), 65–­92, at 77–­78. 25. Wilson, “Dominion,” 286. 26. McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 84. 27. McGee, 43; Freitas, Portrait of a Castrato, 215–­17. 28. On the jousts, see generally Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 17–­40, esp. 18. 29. Luigi Pulci, La giostra di Lorenzo de Medici messa in rima . . . (Venice: . . . Francesco Garone, 1527); Angelo Poliziano, Opera (Basel: Apud Nicolaum Episcopium Iuniorum, 1553), “Epistolarum” Liber XII, pp. 167–­68; Anthony Grafton, Commerce with the Classics: Ancient Books and Renaissance Readers (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 98 and n. 18. 30. Angelo Poliziano, The Stanze, trans. David Quint (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1979). 31. Filarete and Manfidi, The Libro Cerimoniale of the Florentine Republic, 34; Newbigin, “Piety and Politics,” 32; Eckstein, District of the Green Dragon, 162. 32. La giostra di Lorenzo de Medici messa in rima . . . ; McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 179–­80. 33. La giostra di Lorenzo de Medici messa in rima . . . , Ciir. 34. La giostra di Lorenzo de Medici messa in rima . . . , Ciir; McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 179–­80. 35. Quint, The Stanze, ix–­x , xiii, 3, 5; Newbigin, “Piety and Politics,” 32–­34. 36. C. de Fabriczy, “Andrea Verrocchio ai servizi de’ Medici,” Archivio storico dell’arte, 2nd ser., 1 (1895): 163–­76. 37. Paola Ventrone, “Medicean Theater: Image and Message,” in The Medici: Citizens and Masters, ed. Robert Black and John E. Law ([Florence]: Villa I Tatti, 2015), 253–­65, at 260 n. 43. 38. Cummings, Politicized Muse, 15–­41, at 26. 39. Charles Dempsey, The Portrayal of Love: Botticelli’s Primavera and Humanist Culture at the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 80.

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40. G. Gascoigne, The Noble Arte of Venerie or Hvnting . . . ([London]: Imprinted by H. Bynneman, for Ch. Barker, [1575]), following p. 248. 41. Cummings, “Leo’s Jesters,” Revue belge de musicologie 63 (2009): 31–­65. 42. Thoinot Arbeau, Orchesographie (Langres: J. des Preyz, 1596), fol. 18v–­20r: “Tabulature du Fifre, ou Arigot du troisième ton.” 43. Howard M. Brown, Music in the French Secular Theater, 1400–­1550 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 153. 44. Pierpaolo Polzonetti, “Banquets, Bacchanals, and the Birth of Opera: The Drinking Song in Politian’s Orfeo,” in Program and Abstracts of Papers Read at the American Musicological Society Eighty-­Second Annual Meeting and the Society for Music Theory Thirty-­Ninth Annual Meeting, 3–­6 November 2016 (n.p.: American Musicological Society and Society for Music Theory, 2016), 319–­20, at 319. 45. Cummings, Politicized Muse, “The 1513 Carnival.” 46. On Lorenzo’s circle, see Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 23–­24. 47. McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 188. 48. Patrick Macey, “Some New Contrafacta for Canti Carnascialeschi and Laude in Late Quattrocento Florence,” in La musica a Firenze al tempo di Lorenzo il Magnifico (Florence: Olschki, 1993), 143–­66; William F. Prizer, “The Music Savonarola Burned: The Florentine Carnival Song in the Late 15th Century,” Musica e Storia 9.1 (2001): 5–­33, at 31 ff. 49. Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 19. 50. Prizer, “The Music Savonarola Burned,” 15–­16. 51. Prizer, 15–­16. 52. See Newbigin, “Piety and Politics,” 36. 53. Newbigin, 36; Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 88. 54. Charles Dempsey, “Portraits and Masks,” Renaissance Quarterly 52.1 (1999): 1–­2; Walter Rubsamen, “Music for ‘Quant’è bella giovinezza,’” 163–­84. 55. See Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 19–­20. 56. In Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS 2723, fol. 78v, the Song of Bacchus is dated 1490. 57. McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 188. 58. Newbigin, “Piety and Politics,” 21. 59. McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 188; Wilson, “Heinrich Isaac among the Florentines,” 104–­5, 105 n. 19; Newbigin, “Piety and Politics,” 39. 60. McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 188; Newbigin, “Piety and Politics,” 36. 61. Prizer, “The Music Savonarola Burned,” 28; Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 23. 62. Dempsey, Portrayal of Love, 72. 63. Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 21. 64. Plaisance, 24. 65. Dempsey, “Portraits and Masks,” 5. 66. Rubsamen, “Music for ‘Quant’è bella giovinezza’”; and Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 21; but see Prizer, “Reading Carnival,” 191 and nn. 11–­14.

Chapter 9 1. Elisabetta Pasquini, Libri di musica a Firenze nel Tre-­Quattrocento (Florence: Olschki, 2000); review by Bonnie J. Blackburn in Music & Letters 83.4 (2002): 609–­11, at 610.

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2. E.g., Haar, “Vatican Manuscript Urb. lat. 1411,” 78. 3. Haar, 84–­85; see also D’Accone, “Lorenzo the Magnificent,” 269 n. 25. 4. Matteo Franco, Un viaggio di Clarice Orsini de’ Medici nel 1485, ed. Isidoro del Lungo (Bologna: Romagnoli, 1868), 7, 9. 5. Dempsey, Portrayal of Love, 91. 6. Dempsey, 98. 7. Per le nozze di Florestano ed Elisa dei conti de Larderel: Delle nozze di Lorenzo de’ Medici con Clarice Orsini nel 1469; informazione di Piero Parenti fiorentino, ed. D. Bonamici (Florence: Bencini, 1870), 8–­10, 12–­13; McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 181. 8. Anthony Grafton, Introduction to Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. with notes George Bull (London: Penguin, 2003), xv–­x xix, xviii. 9. Alessandra Macinghi degli Strozzi, Lettere gentildonna fiorentina del secolo XV ai figliuoli esuli, ed. Cesare Guasti (Florence: Sansoni, 1877), 423 ff.; McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 175–­77; Bryce, “Performing for Strangers,” 1098. 10. Anthony M. Cummings, “Music and Feasts in the Fifteenth Century,” in Cambridge History of Fifteenth-­Century Music, ed. Anna Maria Busse Berger and Jesse Rodin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 361–­73. 11. B. Buser, Die Beziehungen der Mediceer zu Frankreich während der Jahre 1434–­1494 (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1879), 347–­48. See now Wilson, Singing to the Lyre, 124–­27. 12. Likely Johannes Bedyngham’s Fortune, helas [Gentil madonna]; we return to this matter. 13. Likely the setting by Gilles Binchois; we return to this matter. 14. Likely the setting by Binchois; we return to this matter. 15. Dempsey, Portrayal of Love, 88–­89. 16. Gaetano Pieraccini, La stirpe dei Medici di Cafaggiolo (Florence: Vallecchi, 1925), vol. 1, 78. 17. D’Accone, “Lorenzo il Magnifico,” 225 nn. 14–­15; D’Accone, “Lorenzo the Magnificent,” 266 n. 18. 18. D’Accone, “Lorenzo the Magnificent,” 266 n. 18. 19. D’Accone, “Lorenzo il Magnifico,” 228–­29, 229 n. 26; D’Accone, “Lorenzo the Magnificent,” 277. 20. D’Accone, “Lorenzo il Magnifico,” 37; D’Accone, “Lorenzo the Magnificent,” 278. 21. D’Accone, “Lorenzo il Magnifico,” 234, 278. 22. Niccolò Valori, Lavrentii Medicei vita . . . , ed. Lorenzo Mehus (Florence: Io. Pavlii Giovannelli, 1749), 45–­46; Wilson, “Sound Patrons,” 279. 23. Anthony M. Cummings, “Three Gigli: Medici Musical Patronage in the Early Cinquecento,” Recercare 15 (2003): 39–­72. 24. D’Accone, “Lorenzo the Magnificent,” 267 n. 22; D’Accone, “Lorenzo il Magnifico,” 239 n. 481; Haar and Nádas, “Antonio Squarcialupi: Man and Myth,” 116–­17; Giacomelli, “Biografia di Antonio Squarcialupi,” 266. 25. On an Arnolfo who frequented the Medici gardens—­identified in earlier scholarship with Arnolfo Gréban (Haar and Nádas, “Johannes de Anglia,” Acta Musicologica 79.2 [2007]: 336–­38)—­see now Darwin Smith, “La réforme musicale à la Santissima Annunziata de Florence (1478–­1485)”; and Smith, “Arnulphus de Greban, Greben, Graben, Magister Arnulphus: Biographie, Werke, Würdigung,” in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2002), vol. 7, cols. 131–­34. 26. D’Accone, “Lorenzo the Magnificent,” 264; McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 186–­ 87, 201.

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27. Dempsey, Portrayal of Love, 97 n. 35. 28. Cummings, Politicized Muse, 39. 29. Cummings, 37. 30. Cummings, “Three Gigli,” 39–­53; Cummings, “Music and Feasts,” 361–­73. 31. Cummings, “Three Gigli”; Anthony M. Cummings, “Gian Maria Giudeo, Sonatore del Liuto, and the Medici,” Fontes Artis Musicae 38.4 (1991): 312–­18. 32. Cummings, Politicized Muse, 39. 33. John Shearman, “The Collections of the Younger Branch of the Medici,” Burlington Magazine 117.862 (1975): 12, 14–­27, esp. 16, 23. 34. D’Accone, “Lorenzo il Magnifico,” 225 n. 15. 35. D’Accone, 225 n. 15; Guglielmo Volpi, “Una nota di libri posseduti da Lorenzo il Magnifico,” Rivista delle biblioteche e degli archivi 11 (1900): 89 ff. 36. James Haar, Città del Vaticano Ms Urbinas latinus 1411 (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2006); Wilson, “Sound Patrons,” 270–­71; D’Accone, “Lorenzo the Magnificent,” 267 n. 19; William F. Prizer, “Games of Venus,” Journal of Musicology 9.1 (1991): 5 n. 6. 37. Allan W. Atlas, The Cappella Giulia Chansonnier: Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, C.G. XIII. 27, 2 vols. (Brooklyn, NY: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1975). 38. For Neapolitan influence, see Allan W. Atlas, “Aragonese Naples and Medicean Florence: Musical Interrelationships and Influence in the Late Fifteenth Century,” in La musica a Firenze al tempo di Lorenzo il Magnifico, 15–­45, 25–­28, 39; Sean Gallagher, “The Berlin Chansonnier and French Song in Florence, 1450–­1490: A New Dating and Its Implications,” Journal of Musicology 24.3 (2007): 339–­64, at 361–­62. Other evidence of Aragonese-­Medicean musical relationships suggests a sharing or exchange of personnel: Atlas, “Aragonese Naples,” 34–­39; Cummings and Atlas, “Agricola, Ghiselin, and Alfonso II of Naples,” 540–­48. For the general Neapolitan background to Aragonese-­Medicean musical relationships, see Allan W. Atlas, Music at the Aragonese Court of Naples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Gianluca d’Agostino, “La musica, le cappelle, e il cerimoniale alla corte aragonese di Napoli,” in Institutions and Patronage in Renaissance Music, ed. Thomas Schmidt-­Beste (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 257–­84. For Ferrarese influence, see Lockwood, “Music at Florence and Ferrara,” 1–­13, at 5, 8. 39. For English influence, see Fallows, “Polyphonic Song in the Florence of Lorenzo’s Youth,” 57; Gallagher, “The Berlin Chansonnier,” 339–­64; Frank A. D’Accone, “A Late 15th-­ Century Sienese Sacred Repertory: MS K.I.2 of the Biblioteca Comunale, Siena,” Musica Disciplina 37 (1983): 121–­70, at 149 n. 59. For Habsburg-­Burgundian influence, see Gallagher, “The Berlin Chansonnier,” 360; Archivio di Stato, Florence, fondo Mediceo avanti il principato, XXXIX, 537; XXXIX, 542; and XLVII, 473; Gallagher, “‘Belle promesse e facti nulla’: Ludovico Sforza, Lorenzo de’ Medici, and a Singer Caught in the Middle” (paper presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society); see AMS Newsletter 39.2 (2009): 12. 40. Arthur Field, The Origins of the Platonic Academy of Florence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 3–­4; James Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance, 2 vols. (Cologne: Brill, 1990), vol. 1, 267; Philippe Canguilhem, “Naissance et décadence de la lira da braccio,” Pallas 57 (2001): 41–­54, pls. VIII–­IX, at 47–­49; Wilson, Singing to the Lyre, 181–­89. 41. D’Accone, “Lorenzo the Magnificent,” 273. On Lorenzo and solo song, see now Wilson, Singing to the Lyre, 189–­223. 42. Anthony M. Cummings, “Musical References in Brucioli’s Dialogi and Their Classical and Medieval Antecedents,” Journal of the History of Ideas 71 (2010): 169–­90; An-

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thony M. Cummings, “Informal Academies and Music in Pope Leo X’s Rome,” Italica 87 (2009): 583–­601. 43. Angelus Politianus, Opera Omnia, 3 vols., ed. Ida Maïer (Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1971), vol. 1, 165–­66; Pirrotta, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, concluding pages of chap. 1. 44. Cummings, Nino Pirrotta, 266–­82. I am aware of contrasting views on this entire phenomenon, with which I disagree, respectfully. On Leonardo, see Canguilhem, “Naissance,” 49–­50. 45. For the material of the foregoing two paragraphs, see also Wilson, Singing to the Lyre, 205–­23, 226–­30. 46. See Blake Wilson, “The Cantastorie/Canterino/Cantimbanco as Musician,” Italian Studies 71 (2016): 6–­21. 47. Gallagher, “The Berlin Chansonnier,” 360–­61. 48. Howard Mayer Brown, ed., A Florentine Chansonnier from the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). 49. D’Accone, “Some Neglected Composers in the Florentine Chapels, ca. 1475–­1525,” 263–­88; Joshua Rifkin, “Pietrequin Bonnel and Ms. 2794 of the Biblioteca Riccardiana,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 29 (1976): 284–­96. 50. Gallagher, “The Berlin Chansonnier,” passim, esp. n. 3. 51. Bonnie J. Blackburn, “Two ‘Carnival Songs’ Unmasked: A Commentary on MS Florence Magl. XIX. 121,” Musica Disciplina 35 (1981): 121–­78, at 123–­24, 149. 52. Haar, “Vatican Manuscript Urb. lat. 1411,” 65–­92 (in some cases, I have lightly emended Haar’s translations of the primary documents); Haar, Città del Vaticano Ms Urbinas latinus 1411. 53. Haar, “Vatican Manuscript Urb. lat. 1411,” 88–­89; Planchart, Guillaume Du Fay, vol. 1, 283–­84. 54. Haar, “Vatican Manuscript Urb. lat. 1411,” 88–­89. 55. Pedro Memelsdorff, “John Hothby, Lorenzo il Magnifico e Robert Morton in una nuova fonte manoscritta a Mantova,” Acta Musicologica 78.11 (2006): 1–­32. 56. Albert Seay, “Florence: The City of Hothby and Ramos,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 9.3 (1956): 193–­95, at 193–­94. 57. However, as David Fallows suggests to me, he has argued more recently that Lorenzo’s text cannot be fitted successfully to Hothby’s music. See David Fallows, ed., Secular Polyphony, 1380–­1480, Musica Britannica 97 (London: Stainer and Bell, 2014), the critical notes to the edition of “Amor che hai visto.” From later in the century (Lorenzo’s era once again) is the evidence that the Arnolfo who was appointed a singer at San Giovanni was one of Lorenzo’s intimates. Among Arnolfo’s extant compositions is a setting of an Italian secular text, Piagneran gli occhi mey. Might it have been performed in Lorenzo’s presence? 58. Prizer, “Games of Venus,” 6; Bertha A. Wallner, ed., Das Buxheim Orgelbuch, 3 vols. (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1958–­59), vol. 1, 72–­75; vol. 2, 162. 59. Atlas, The Cappella Giulia Chansonnier. 60. Dempsey, Portrayal of Love, 85. 61. Timothy J. McGee, “Dancing Masters and the Medici Court in the 15th Century,” Studi musicali 17.2 (1988): 201–­24, at 205. 62. D’Accone, “Lorenzo the Magnificent,” 272; Bryce, “Performing for Strangers,” 1094; McGee, “Dancing Masters,” 202. 63. D’Accone, “Lorenzo the Magnificent,” 272; McGee, “Dancing Masters,” 209–­10. 64. McGee, “Dancing Masters,” 212.

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65. Bryce, “Performing for Strangers,” 1093; McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 215–­16. 66. McGee, “Dancing Masters,” 210–­11. 67. McGee, Ceremonial Musicians, 217. 68. Edition in Cummings, Lion’s Ear, 167. 69. Baxandall, Painting and Experience, 78, 80. 70. Baxandall, 79, 80. 71. Edition in my Politicized Muse, 111–­12. 72. Cummings, “Leo X and Roman Carnival,” 309–­41. 73. Walter H. Kemp, “‘Votre Trey Dowce’: A Duo for Dancing,” Music & Letters 60.1 (1979): 37–­44.

Chapter 10 1. Anthony M. Cummings, “Leonine Lasciviousness and Luther,” in Sexualities, Textualities, Art and Music in Early-­Modern Italy, ed. Linda L. Carroll, Melanie Marshall, and Katherine McIver (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014), 95–­115, esp. 109–­12. 2. Patrick Macey, Bonfire Songs: Savonarola’s Musical Legacy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998); Prizer, “The Music Savonarola Burned,” 5. On Savonarola and Florence generally, and the effects of his theocratic critique more specifically, see Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 17–­40, esp. 26, and 55–­84. 3. Patrick Macey, “Some New Contrafacta for Canti Carnascialeschi and Laude in Late Quattrocento Florence,” in La musica a Firenze al tempo di Lorenzo il Magnifico, 143–­66, at 144. 4. On these events, see Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 41–­53. 5. Plaisance, 44; Cummings, “Musical References in Brucioli’s Dialogi,” 169– ­90. 6. Eve Borsook, “Decor in Florence for the Entry of Charles VIII of France,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 10.2 (1961): 106–­22, at 106. 7. Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 41. 8. Plaisance, 48. 9. Plaisance, 50, 51. 10. Borsook, “Decor in Florence for the Entry of Charles VIII of France,” 110, 112, 119–­21. 11. Borsook, 119. 12. Borsook, 119. 13. Borsook, 117. But see Newbigin, Feste d’Oltrarno, 43. 14. Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 85–­86. 15. Rubinstein, Palazzo Vecchio, 40–­41, 92. 16. Macey, Bonfire Songs, chap. 4. 17. Cummings, “Musical References in Brucioli’s Dialogi,” 176–­81. 18. Cummings, 176–­81. 19. Prizer, “The Music Savonarola Burned,” 10. 20. Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 6, 88. 21. Prizer, “The Music Savonarola Burned,” 17. 22. Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 65. 23. Plaisance, 69. 24. Wilson, “Lauda”; Wilson, Music and Merchants, 99; Blake Wilson, “Hora mai sono in età: Savonarola and Music in Laurentian Florence,” in Una città e il suo profeta: Firenze di fronte al Savonarola, ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini (Florence: Sismel, 2001), 283–­309.

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25. Macey, “The Lauda and the Cult of Savonarola,” Renaissance Quarterly 45.3 (1992): 444. 26. Macey, Bonfire Songs, chap. 3; Prizer, “The Music Savonarola Burned,” 10. 27. Prizer, “The Music Savonarola Burned,” 9. 28. Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 67–­69; Pacifico Burlamacchi, La vita del beato Ieronimo Savonarola (Florence: Olschki, 1937), 130. 29. On the material of the foregoing three paragraphs, see also Prizer, “The Music Savonarola Burned,” 5, 9, 11. On the 1498 rituals, see Prizer, “The Music Savonarola Burned,” 13–­14; and Macey, “Some New Contrafacta,” 146. 30. Macey, Bonfire Songs, 27, 89. 31. Prizer, “The Music Savonarola Burned”; Macey, Bonfire Songs, 64. 32. Macey, Bonfire Songs, 104. For even more direct of evidence of the kind of lauda Savonarola favored, see Wilson, “Hora mai sono in età.” 33. Macey, “The Lauda and the Cult of Savonarola,” 450–­52. 34. But see Anthony M. Cummings, review of Macey, Bonfire Songs, MLA Notes, 2nd ser., 56.4 (2000): 932–­34; Giulio Cattin, “Le poesie del Savonarola nelle fonti musicali,” Quadrivium 12.1 (1971): 262, 275; Prizer, “The Music Savonarola Burned.” 35. Macey, Bonfire Songs, 96–­97. 36. Macey, Bonfire Songs, 96–97; Bryce, “Performing for Strangers,” 1099; and Laurie Stras, “Preserving Repertoire, Preserving Practice: The Musical Heart of a Mid-SixteenthCentury Florentine Convent,” in Program and Abstracts of Papers Read at the American Musicological Society Eighty-Third Annual Meeting, 9–12 November 2017 (New York: American Musicological Society, 2017), 167–68. 37. D’Accone, “Sacred Music in Florence in Savonarola’s Time,” 311–­54. 38. Prizer, “The Music Savonarola Burned,” 7–­8 and n. 10; Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 26. 39. Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 71–­73. 40. Joseph Hergenröther, ed., Leonis X. pontificis maximi Regesta . . . , 2 vols. (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1884–­91), 1–­2; Scipione Ammirato, “Ritratti di uomini illustri di casa Medici,” in Opuscoli, 3 vols. (Florence: Amadore Massi e Lorenzo Landi, 1637–­42), vol. 3, 63–­71; Johannis Burchardi, Diarium sive Rerum urbanarum commentarii (1483–­1506), 3 vols., ed. Louis Thuasne (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1883–­85); William Roscoe, Vita e pontificato di Leone X, trans. Luigi Bossi (Milan: Sonzogno e comp., 1816), vol. 2, 107–­10; Robert Nosow, “Hobrecht, la Rue, and the Cardinal of Florence” (Unpublished paper delivered at the Pierre de la Rue Quincentenary conference, Mechelen, November 2018). I am grateful to Dr. Nosow for permitting me to read his paper and make use of it. 41. Nosow, “Hobrecht, la Rue, and the Cardinal of Florence,” reports that the capitular acts of the church provide the first-­known period archival documentation that substantiates Ammirato’s mid-­seventeenth-­century account. 42. A 1501 letter relates to Giovanni’s visit to Saint-­Omer and documents a musical product of it. See Anthony M. Cummings, “Three Gigli: Medici Musical Patronage in the Early Cinquecento,” Recercare 15 (2003): 39–­72, at 43–­44 and n. 15. See also The Correspondence of Erasmus: Letters 142 to 297, 1501 to 1514 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975), 48–­49; the letter, written from Saint-­Omer, makes clear that Cardinal Giovanni had visited there. Andrew Kirkman reports to me that an unidentified composer mentioned in the 1501 letter can now be identified as Johannes Thorion, who seems to have been associated with the Church of Santissima Annunziata in Florence in the late Quattrocento. This

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would substantiate the composer’s claim of a relationship to the Medici. For exchanges on this matter, I am grateful to Professor Kirkman and Dr. Nosow. I would now recast some of what I state in my article in Recercare and also, obviously, my speculations there about the identity of the composer mentioned in the 1501 letter. 43. Hergenröther, Leonis X. pontificis maximi Regesta, 2; Cesare Baronio and Odorico Rinaldo, Annales ecclesiastici, 27 vols. (Rome: Typografia Vaticana, 1588–­), year 1511, n. 62, pp. 398 ff. 44. Hergenröther, 2; Baronio and Rinaldo, Annales ecclesiastici, year 1512, nn. 20 ff., p. 613. See also Pietro Bembo, Opere (Venice: Presso Francesco Herthauser, 1729), vol. 4, 201–­2. 45. William F. Prizer, “Marchetto Cara at Mantua: New Documents on the Life and Duties of a Renaissance Court Musician,” Musica Disciplina 32 (1978): 87–­110, at n. 46. 46. Count Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier (1528) (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903), 64–­65. See also Frank A. D’Accone, “A Documentary History of Music at the Florentine Cathedral and Baptistery during the 15th Century,” 2 vols. (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1960), vol. 2, 140.

Chapter 11 1. J. R. Hale, Florence and the Medici ([London]: Thames and Hudson, 1977), 87; R. Burr Litchfield, “Demographic Characteristics of Florentine Patrician Families, Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries,” Journal of Economic History 29.2 (1969): 191–­205, at 191. 2. Hale, Florence and the Medici, 80. 3. Rubinstein, Palazzo Vecchio, 46. 4. Rubinstein, 94. 5. Rubinstein, 94. 6. Cummings, Politicized Muse, 194–­95 n. 2. 7. Rubinstein, Palazzo Vecchio, 95. 8. Rubinstein, 2. 9. Rubinstein, 2, 35. 10. Kent and Kent, Neighbours and Neighbourhood, 178. 11. Elena Fasano Guarini, “‘Rome, Workshop of all the Practices of the World,’” in Court and Politics in Papal Rome, 1492–­1700, ed. Gianvittorio Signorotto et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 53–­77, at 57. 12. Eugene J. Johnson, Inventing the Opera House (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 88. 13. Kent and Kent, Neighbours and Neighbourhood, 178. 14. R. Burr Litchfield, The Emergence of a Bureaucracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986); Litchfield, “Demographic Characteristics of Florentine Patrician Families,” 193, 202–­3; Eckstein, District of the Green Dragon, 180. 15. David Kidger, “Willaert’s Liber Quinque Missarum: The First Venetian Print Devoted to the Music of the Maestro di Cappella of San Marco,” Journal of the Alamire Foundation 4 (2012): 36–­56, 48, and 55–­56, Document 3; the translation is mine. 16. Garrett Mattingly, “The Florentine-­Papal Tandem,” in Renaissance Diplomacy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955), 155. 17. Zanovello, “‘Master Arigo Ysach,’” 287–­317, 288–­89, 292–­93, 305; D’Accone, “Hein-

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rich Isaac in Florence,” 466 and n. 5, 470–­75; and Nádas, “Some New Documentary Evidence,” 45–­64. 18. Cummings, “Gian Maria Giudeo, Sonatore del Liuto, and the Medici”; Cummings, Politicized Muse, 12, 108, 117, 175 n. 6; Cummings, Lion’s Ear, 1, 102, 106–­7, 149, 153, 163, 200, 250–­52 n. 94, and 271 n. 74; Willibald Pirckheimer, Briefwechsel, ed. Emil Reicke (Munich: Beck’sche, 1940), vol. 1, 371. 19. Nino Pirrotta, contributions to the panel discussion in Chanson and Madrigal, 1480–­1530, ed. James Haar (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), 72–­87; see also pp. 123–­38 and Example 48 [pp. 254–­55]. 20. Anthony M. Cummings, MS Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magl. XIX, 164–­167 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 49. 21. Cummings, 50. 22. Richard Sherr, “Verdelot in Florence, Coppini in Rome, and the Singer ‘La Fiore,’” Journal of the American Musicological Society 37.2 (1984): 402–­4; D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche. 23. Nádas, “Some New Documentary Evidence,” 7 n. 9. 24. D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche. 25. Cummings, Maecenas and the Madrigalist, 34–­35 and nn. 90–­96, 41 and n. 121, 45–­46 and nn. 147–­49, 156, 158; Nádas, “Some New Documentary Evidence,” 7 n. 9. 26. Cummings, MS Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magl. XIX, 164–­167, 48 and nn. 118–­22. 27. Joshua Rifkin, “Motivik—­Konstruktivismus—­Humanismus: Zur Josquins Motette Huc me sydereo,” in Die Motette: Beiträge zu ihrer Gattungsgeschichte, ed. Herbert Schneider and Heinz-­Jürgen Winkler (London: Schott, 1992), 105–­34; Heinrich Isaac, Messen, 2 vols., ed. Martin Staehelin (London: Schott, [1970] 1973), vol. 2, 160. 28. The indispensable source for any work on the Medici ducal and grand ducal musical establishment is Warren Kirkendale, The Court Musicians in Florence during the Principate of the Medici (Florence: Olschki, 1993). 29. Philippe Canguilhem, “La cappella fiorentina e il duca Cosimo Primo,” in Cappelle musicali fra corte, stato e chiesa nell’Italia del Rinascimento, ed. Franco Piperno et al. (Florence: Olschki, 2007), 231–­44, at 231 and n. 1, 241–­42. 30. Nino Pirrotta, “Corteccia, Francesco,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, 9 vols. (Rome: Le Maschere, 1954–­62), vol. 3, cols. 1531–­32; Bianca Maria Antolini, “Corteccia, Francesco,” Dizionario biografico degli italiani 29 (1983); Mario Fabbri, “La vita e l’ignota opera-­prima di Francesco Corteccia, Musicista italiano del Rinascimento,” Chigiana 22 (1965): 185–­217; Frank A. D’Accone, “Corteccia, Francesco,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, accessed October 23, 2017, https://​w ww​.oxfordmusiconline​.com​.ezproxy​ .lafayette​.edu​/subscriber​/article​/grove​/music​/06575; Francesco Corteccia, Eleven Works to Latin Texts, ed. Ann McKinley, Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance VI (Madison, WI: A-­R Editions, 1969); and David A. Sutherland, “A Second Corteccia Manuscript in the Archives of Santa Maria del Fiore,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 25.1 (1972): 79–­85. 31. Fabbri, “La vita e l’ignota opera-­prima di Francesco Corteccia,” 202. 32. Fabbri, 202; D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche. 33. Cosimo Bartoli, Ragionamenti accademici (Venice: Francesco de’ Franceschi Senese, 1567), Libro terzo, fol. 36v. Philippe Canguilhem has a different interpretation of the meaning of these titles; see his forthcoming book on music in Florence at the time of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, which promises to be foundational.

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34. Nino Pirrotta, “Striggio, Alessandro, Sr. e Jr.,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, 9 vols. (Rome: Le Maschere, 1954–­62), vol. 9, cols. 489–­90; Alessandro Striggio, Il primo libro de madrigali a sei voci, ed. David S. Butchart (Madison, WI: A-­R Editions, 1986); Alessandro Striggio, Il primo libro de madrigali a cinque voci, ed. David Butchart (Middleton, WI: A-­R Editions, 2006); David Butchart, “The First Published Compositions of Alessandro Striggio,” Studi musicali 12.1 (1983): 17–­52; David Butchart, “The Letters of Alessandro Striggio: An Edition with Translation and Commentary,” Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle 23 (1990): 1–­78; Iain Fenlon and Hugh Keyte, “Memorialls of Great Skill: A Tale of Five Cities,” Early Music 8.3 (1980): 329–­31, 333–­34. 35. Canguilhem, “Monodia e contrappunto a Firenze nel Cinquecento: Dal ‘canto alla lira’ al ‘canto alla bastarda,’” in La monodia in Toscana alle soglie del XVII secolo: Atti del Convegno di Studi, Pisa, 17–­18 dicembre 2004 (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2007), 29–­30; Canguilhem, “Naissance,” 51. 36. Butchart, “Letters of Alessandro Striggio,” 1–­78, 68. 37. Davit Moroney, “Alessandro Striggio’s Mass in Forty and Sixty Parts,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 60.1 (2007): 1–­70, at 3, 5, 7. 38. David Butchart, “A Musical Journey of 1567: Alessandro Striggio in Vienna, Munich, Paris, and London,” Music & Letters 63.1–­2 (1982): 1–­16, at 3–­4, 9; Moroney, “Alessandro Striggio’s Mass in Forty and Sixty Parts,” 8. 39. David Butchart, review of Stefano Rossetti, Madrigals for Three to Eight Voices, ed. Allen B. Skei, Music & Letters 67.4 (1986): 443–­44, at 443. 40. Nino Pirrotta, Li due Orfei (Turin: Einaudi, 1975), 201. 41. For instrumental music I draw on the following sources: Kirkendale, Court Musicians in Florence; Cummings, Politicized Muse, 157 and accompanying nn. 31–­32; James Haar, “The Florentine Madrigal, 1540–­60,” in Music in Renaissance Cities and Courts: Studies in Honor of Lewis Lockwood, ed. Anthony M. Cummings and Jessie Ann Owens (Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 1997), 150–­51; and Cummings, “Gian Maria Giudeo, Sonatore del Liuto, and the Medici,” 313 and n. 3 (on Lorenzo da Lucca). 42. On Antonio, see Mario Fabbri, “La vita e l’ignota opera-­prima di Francesco Corteccia,” 200 n. 54; Corteccia, Eleven Works to Latin Texts, vii; Cummings, Politicized Muse, 157 and accompanying nn. 31–­32; Haar, “The Florentine Madrigal,” 150–­51; James Haar, “A Musical Accompaniment to Petrarchan ‘lezioni’ at the Accademia Fiorentina,” Annali d’italianistica 22 (2004): 267–­80, esp. 271; Striggio, Il primo libro de madrigali a cinque voci, x and n. 10; Philippe Canguilhem, “Lorenzo Corsini’s ‘Libri di canzone’ and the Madrigal in Mid-­Sixteenth-­Century Florence,” Early Music History 25 (2006): 1–­57, at 41.

Chapter 12 1. Cummings, Nino Pirrotta, 266–­82. 2. See Cummings, Maecenas and the Madrigalist, chap. 1. 3. Cummings, 202–­3 and nn. 37–­38; Haar, “Florentine Madrigal, 1540–­60,” 145. 4. On these developments, see the material on Heinrich Isaac in Book the Second, above. 5. Lawrence F. Bernstein, “A Florentine Chansonnier of the Early Sixteenth Century: Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Magliabechi XIX 117,” Early Music History 6 (1986): 1–­107, at 85. 6. Anthony M. Cummings, “Giulio de’ Medici’s Music Books,” Early Music History 10 (1991): 65–­122, at 94–­95; Cummings, MS Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magl.

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XIX, 164–­167, passim. These two publications treat the manuscripts with a Medicean association. The Strozzi manuscript is Florence, Biblioteca del Conservatorio di Musica Luigi Cherubini, Manuscript Basevi 2442. 7. Lawrence F. Bernstein, “Notes on the Origin of the Parisian Chanson,” Journal of Musicology 1.3 (1982): 275–­326, at 278, 286–­87 n. 28; and Cummings, MS Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magl. XIX, 164–­167, 40, 54–­55. 8. Lawrence F. Bernstein, “‘La Courone et fleur des chansons a troys’: A Mirror of the French Chanson in Italy in the Years between Ottaviano Petrucci and Antonio Gardano,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 26.1 (1973): 1–­68, at 18; Cummings, MS Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magl. XIX, 164–­167, 4, 92–­98. 9. Louise Litterick, “Who Wrote Ninot’s Chansons?,” in Papal Music and Musicians in Late Medieval and Renaissance Rome, ed. Richard Sherr (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). 10. Cummings, “A Florentine Sacred Repertory,” 282–­85 and nn. 53–­69. 11. Bernstein, “Notes on the Origin of the Parisian Chanson,” 284, 286. 12. Nino Pirrotta, “Florence from Barzelletta to Madrigal,” in Musica Franca: Essays in Honor of Frank D’Accone (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1996), 7–­18, at 12–­13. 13. Cummings, Maecenas and the Madrigalist, chaps. 1 and 2. 14. Cummings, chap. 2. 15. Anthony M. Cummings, “Musical References in Brucioli’s Dialogi and Their Classical and Medieval Antecedents,” Journal of the History of Ideas 71 (2010): 169–­90; Cummings, Maecenas and the Madrigalist, chaps. 1 and 2 and appendix. 16. Cummings, Maecenas and the Madrigalist, chap. 3. 17. Pirrotta, “Florence from Barzelletta to Madrigal,” 18. I am aware of another argument as to the origins of the madrigal—­see Julie E. Cumming and Zoey M. Cochran, “The Questione della musica: Revisiting the Origins of the Italian Madrigal,” in Program and Abstracts of Papers Read at the Joint Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Eighty-­ Fourth Annual Meeting, and the Society for Music Theory, Forty-­First Annual Meeting, 1–­4 November 2018 (New York: American Musicological Society and Society for Music Theory, 2018), 415—­but I was unpersuaded by it, alas. More recently, however, Cumming and Cory McKay offered further observations on the origins of the madrigal, which, gratifyingly, effectively substantiate my own: “Using Corpus Studies to Find the Origins of the Madrigal,” in Proceedings of the Future Directions of Music Cognition International Congress, 6–­7 March 2021, 1–­5. 18. Don Harran, “Verse Types in the Early Madrigal,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 22.1 (1969): 27–­53. 19. Nino Pirrotta, “Intermezzo,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, 9 vols. (Rome: Le Maschere, 1954–­62), vol. 6, cols. 572–­76. On the intermedio, I was guided by the following: Pirrotta, “Intermezzo”; Nino Pirrotta, “Intermedium,” in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1949–­73), vol. 6; and David Nutter, “Intermedio” (2001), Grove Music Online, accessed 16 December 2017, https://​w ww​.oxfordmusiconline​.com​.ez​ proxy​.lafayette​.edu​/grovemusic​/view​/10​.1093​/gmo​/9781561592630​.001​.0001​/omo​ -­­978​1561592630​-­­e​-­­0 000013831. 20. Henry W. Kaufmann, “Music for a Noble Florentine Wedding (1539),” in Words and Music, the Scholar’s View, ed. Laurence Berman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Department of Music, 1972), 176–­77 and nn. 65–­66. 21. James M. Saslow, The Medici Wedding of 1589: Florentine Festival as Theatrum Mundi (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 29.

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22. Lionardo Salviati, Il granchio commedia . . . con gli intermedi di Bernardo de Nerli. Accademico Fiorentino. Dall’Accademia Fiorentina fatta publicamente recitare in Firenze. Nella Sala del Papa l’anno 1566 . . . (Florence, 1566), fol. I[i]r–­v. 23. Cummings, Politicized Muse, 155–­57 and accompanying nn. 25–­32. 24. See John Walter Hill, review of Nino Pirrotta, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, Journal of the American Musicological Society 36.3 (1983): 519–­26, at 521 n. 2. 25. See the edition in my Politicized Muse, 158–­61. 26. Richard A. Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy, 1300–­1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). 27. Cummings, Maecenas and the Madrigalist, chap. 1. 28. Anthony M. Cummings, “Music: Transmission of Music,” in Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, ed. Paul F. Grendler (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1999), vol. 4, 217–­ 19, esp. 219. 29. Martin Picker, “A Florentine Document of 1515 Concerning Music Printing,” Quadrivium 12.1 (1971): 283–­90. See also Tim Carter, “Music-­Printing in Late Sixteenth-­and Early Seventeenth-­Century Florence: Giorgio Marescotti, Cristofano Marescotti and Zanobi Pignoni,” Early Music History 9 (1990): 27–­72, at 39. 30. Howard Mayer Brown, “A Typology of Francesco Corteccia’s Madrigals: Notes towards a History of Theatrical Music in Sixteenth-­Century Italy,” in The Well Enchanting Skill: Music, Poetry, and Drama in the Culture of the Renaissance. Essays in Honour of F.W. Sternfeld, ed. John Caldwell et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 3–­28. 31. Antonfrancesco Grazzini detto Il Lasca, Le cene (Milan: Giovanni Silvestri, 1815), 43–­53; Brown, “Typology of Francesco Corteccia’s Madrigals”; Canguilhem, “Lorenzo Corsini’s ‘Libri di canzone,’” 22. 32. Pietro Aretino, I ragionamenti (Rome: Frank & C., 1911), 1–­48, 45. 33. Cummings, Maecenas and the Madrigalist, 80–­81; Tim Carter, “‘Per cagione di bene, et giustamente vivere’: On the Musical Patronage of Giovanni de’ Bardi,” in Neoplatonismo, musica, letteratura nel Rinascimento: I Bardi di Vernio e l’Accademia della Crusca, ed. Piero Gargiulo et al. ([Prato]: I Cahiers di Accademia, 2000), 137–­46, at 138. 34. Cummings, Politicized Muse, 170. 35. Tvtti i trionfi, carri, mascheaate [sic; recte: “mascherate”] ò canti carnascialeschi andati per Firenze, dal tempo del magnifico Lorenzo Vecchio de Medici; quando egli hebbero prima cominciamento, per infino à questo anno presente 1559 (Florence: 1559). 36. Edmond Strainchamps, “Marco da Gagliano in 1608: Choices, Decisions, and Consequences,” Journal of Seventeenth-­Century Music 6.1 (2000): sec. 7.1. 37. Eric W. Cochrane, Tradition and Enlightenment in the Tuscan Academies, 1690–­1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 29. 38. Cochrane, 29; and Cummings, Maecenas and the Madrigalist, chaps. 1 and 2. 39. Cochrane, Tradition and Enlightenment, 4–­8, 13, 15–­16, 19, 25. 40. Cummings, Maecenas and the Madrigalist, 36 and n. 102, 80–­81. 41. Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth-­and Sixteenth-­Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 131. 42. On the Humidi, see a foundational article by Michel Plaisance: “Culture et politique à Florence de 1542 à 1551: Lasca et les Humidi aux prises avec l’Académie Florentine,” in Les écrivains et le pouvoir en Italie à l’époque de la Renaissance . . . (Paris: Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1974), 149–­242. 43. Haar, “A Musical Accompaniment,” esp. 269–­70, 273; Striggio, Il primo libro de ma-

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drigali a cinque voci, x and n. 10; Michel Plaisance, “Une première affirmation de la politique culturelle de Côme Ier: La transformation de l’Académie des ‘Humidi’ en Académie Florentine (1540–­1542),” in Les écrivains et le pouvoir en Italie à l’époque de la renaissance, ed. André Rochon (Paris: Université de la Sorbonne nouvelle, 1973), 361–­438; Robert Nosow, “The Debate on Song in the Accademia Fiorentina,” Early Music History 21 (2002): 175–­221. 44. Plaisance, “Une première affirmation,” 176. 45. Cummings, Maecenas and the Madrigalist, chap. 1. 46. Nosow, “Debate on Song”; emphasis added. 47. Cochrane, Tradition and Enlightenment, 25. 48. Anthony Newcomb, “Notions of Notation around 1600,” Il saggiatore musicale 22.1 (2015): 5–­31, at 8 and n. 13. 49. Newcomb, 214. 50. Nosow, “Debate on Song,” 212. 51. Libro primo de madriali / . . . Di Francesco Corteccia / Maestro di cappella dello illustrissimo et eccelentissimo / Duca Cosimo de Medici duca secondo di Firenze. / Con l’aggiunta d’alcuni madrigali nouamente fatti per la Comedia del Furto . . . (Venice: . . . Antonio Gardane, 1547). 52. Florence, Biblioteca Marucelliana, MS B.III.52, fol. 21v. 53. Vanni Bramanti, “Ritratto di Ugolino Martelli (1519–­1592),” Schede umanistiche (1999): n. 2, pp. 5–­53, p. 25 and n. 97; Florence, Biblioteca Marucelliana, MS B.III.52, fols. 21v–­22r; Antolini, “Corteccia, Francesco.” 54. Frank D’Accone, ed., Music of the Florentine Renaissance 8 (Neuhausen-­Stuttgart: American Institute of Musicology, 1981), xii; Canguilhem, “La cappella fiorentina e il duca Cosimo Primo,” 234–­35; Haar, “The Florentine Madrigal,” 148 and n. 52. The notice that the comedy was recited in the presence of the duke is in Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS it. IX. 126 (6482), fol. 61v. The texts of Martelli’s five intermedi are in Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Firenze, MS Panciatichi, 164, fols. 243r–­246v: “Madrigali Di Messer Vgolino Martelli / sopra la Commedia Di Francesco D’anbra [sic] / Madrigale al primo Atto / Vdendo ragionare che qui si denno . . . ,” etc. 55. Michel Plaisance, “La politique culturelle de Cosme Ier et le fêtes annuelle à Florence, 1541–­1550,” in Les fêtes de la Renaissance 3 (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1975), 133–­52, at 146–­47. Plaisance states that the comedy was again performed on 9 June that year, but I am uncertain as to what the basis is for that statement. 56. Brown, “Typology of Francesco Corteccia’s Madrigals,” 7; D’Accone, “Corteccia, Francesco”; Antolini, “Corteccia, Francesco.” 57. Grafton and Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities, 56–­57. 58. James Haar, “From ‘Cantimbanco’ to Court: The Musical Fortunes of Ariosto in Florentine Society,” in L’arme e gli amori: Ariosto, Tasso, and Guarini in Late Renaissance Florence, ed. Massimiliano Rossi and Fiorella Gioffredi Superbi, 2 vols. (Florence: Olschki, 2004), vol. 2, 179–­97, at 190. 59. Donna G. Cardamone, “Isabella Medici-­Orsini: A Portrait of Self-­Affirmation,” in Gender, Sexuality, and Early Music, ed. Todd M. Borgerding (New York: Routledge, 2002), 1–­25, at 3 and n. 11; Antonio Molino, I Dilettevoli Madrigali a Quattro Voci, ed. Linda L. Carroll, Anthony M. Cummings, Zachary W. Jones, and Philip Weller (Rome: Istituto italiano per la storia della musica, 2014), xxx and nn. 81–­82. 60. Cardamone, “Isabella Medici-­Orsini,” 3 and n. 11. 61. Stefano Rossetti, Il lamento di Olimpia et canzone (Venice 1567): Three Works for Isabella de’ Medici, ed. James Chater (Middleton, WI: A-­R Editions, 2017), ix.

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62. Rossetti, Il lamento di Olimpia et canzone, x. 63. Cardamone, “Isabella Medici-­Orsini,” n. 46; D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche, vol. 2. 64. Frank D’Accone, “Corteccia’s Motets for the Medici Marriages of 1558,” in Words and Music: Essays in Honor of Andrew Porter on the Occasion of His 75th Birthday, ed. David Rosen and Claire Brook (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon, 2003), 36–­73, at 51. 65. Cummings, Lion’s Ear, 140. 66. David S. Butchart, “‘La Pecorina’ at Mantua, Musica Nova at Florence,” Early Music 13.3 (1985): 358–­66, at 363–­64. 67. Carol MacClintock, “A Court Musician’s Songbook: Modena MS C 311,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 9.3 (1956): 177–­92, at 189; The Bottegari Lutebook, ed. Carol MacClintock ([Wellesley, MA]: Wellesley College, 1965); and Cardamone, “Isabella Medici-­Orsini,” 9–­10, 12, 14. 68. For other possible instances of an ex post facto polyphonic refashioning of what was originally a solo song with instrumental accompaniment, see John Walter Hill, “The Solo Songs in the Florentine Intermedi for La Pellegrina of 1589: Some New Observations,” in “Et facciam dolçi canti”: Studi in onore di Agostino Ziino in occasione del suo 65o compleanno, ed. Bianca Maria Antolini et al. (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2003), 569–­82, at 577; Tim Carter, “Caccini’s Amarilli, mia bella: Some Questions [and a Few Answers],” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 113 [1988]: 150–­73; Pietro Maria Marsolo, Madrigali a quattro voci sulle monodie di Giulio Caccini e d’altri autori, ed altre opere, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi (Rome: De Santis, 1973); John Walter Hill, Roman Monody, Cantata, and Opera from the Circles around Cardinal Montalto, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), vol. 1, 90. 69. Haar, “The Florentine Madrigal.” 70. Canguilhem: “Lorenzo Corsini’s ‘Libri di canzone,’” passim; and “Madrigal En Route to Florence,” passim. 71. Haar, “Florentine Madrigal,” 142; Canguilhem, “Madrigal En Route to Florence,” 37. 72. Haar, “Florentine Madrigal,” 143. 73. Carter, “Music-­Printing,” 32–­33, 36–­38, and 67; Tim Carter, “Music-­Selling in Late Sixteenth-­Century Florence: The Bookshop of Piero di Giuliano Morosi,” Music & Letters 70.4 (1989): 483–­504, at 484, 487–­88. 74. Nosow, “Debate on Song,” 210–­11. 75. This view summarizes current scholarship. But Philippe Canguilhem is in the final stages of a major book that presents a different view of Cosimo’s musical patronage. 76. Canguilhem, “Madrigal En Route to Florence.” 77. Canguilhem, “Lorenzo Corsini’s ‘Libri di canzone,’” 20 passim. 78. Canguilhem, 39. 79. The entire cultural tradition of which innovations in the madrigal were a part has now been expertly, comprehensively revisited by Laurie Stras in her excellent book Women and Music in Sixteenth-­Century Ferrara (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), which is fundamental. 80. Anthony Newcomb, The Madrigal at Ferrara, 1579–­1597, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), vol. 1, 191–­92, 203. 81. Butchart, “Letters of Alessandro Striggio,” 37; Newcomb, Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, 90, 191; Pirrotta, “Striggio, Alessandro, Sr. e Jr.”; Striggio, Il primo libro de madrigali a sei voci, viii. 82. Butchart, “Letters of Alessandro Striggio,” 33; Newcomb, Madrigal at Ferrara,

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vol. 1, 90, 272; Frederick Hammond, “Musicians at the Medici Court in the Mid-­ Seventeenth Century,” Analecta Musicologica 14 (1974): 151–­69, at 157. 83. Butchart, “Letters of Alessandro Striggio,” 33; Newcomb, Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, 91; Nino Pirrotta, “Caccini,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, 9 vols. (Rome: Le Maschere, 1954–­62), vol. 3, cols. 1447–­53. 84. Butchart, “Letters of Alessandro Striggio,” 35. 85. Butchart, 37; Hill, Roman Monody, Cantata, and Opera, vol. 1, 80. 86. Butchart, “Letters of Alessandro Striggio,” 44, quoting Newcomb, Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, 59. 87. “‘consertati’; which could either mean ‘accompanied,’ with Caccini on the lute, or arranged for voices and instruments.” Butchart, “Letters of Alessandro Striggio,” 40. 88. Butchart, 40. 89. Butchart, 43. 90. Butchart, 45. 91. Butchart, 34. 92. James Chater, “Bianca Cappello and Music,” in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Craig Hugh Smyth, 2 vols., ed. Andrew Morrogh (Florence: Giunti Barbèra, 1985), vol. 1, 569–­79, at 571; Butchart, “Letters of Alessandro Striggio,” 49–­53. 93. Chater, “Bianca Cappello,” 571. 94. Butchart, “Letters of Alessandro Striggio,” 49; Chater, “Bianca Cappello,” 571. 95. Butchart, “Letters of Alessandro Striggio,” 77 n. 51. Bardi, Corsi, and Rinuccini were in Ferrara on more than one occasion; Newcomb, Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, 192, 203. 96. Chater, “Bianca Cappello,” 572; Newcomb, Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, 40–­41. 97. Carter, “Music-­Selling,” 71, 99 n. 80. 98. Butchart, “Letters of Alessandro Striggio,” 55. 99. Newcomb, Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, 53–­54; Butchart, “Letters of Alessandro Striggio,” 38; Luzzasco Luzzaschi, Madrigali per cantare e sonare a uno, due e tre soprani (1601), ed. Adriano Cavicchi (Brescia: L’Organo; Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1965); and Anthony Newcomb’s review in Journal of the American Musicological Society 21.2 (1968), 222–­26. 100. Newcomb, Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, 58. 101. Newcomb, 59, 67. 102. Newcomb, 91–­93. 103. Newcomb, 91; Elena Fasano Guarini, “Ferdinando I de’ Medici, granduca di Toscana,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani 46 (1996). 104. Nino Pirrotta, “Temperaments and Tendencies in the Florentine Camerata,” Musical Quarterly 40.2 (1954): 169–­89, at 176–­77, 183. 105. Anthony Newcomb, “Carlo Gesualdo and a Musical Correspondence of 1594,” Musical Quarterly 54.4 (1968): 409–­36, at 412. 106. Tim Carter, “Non occorre nominare tanti musici: Private Patronage and Public Ceremony in Late Sixteenth-­Century Florence,” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 4 (1991): 89–­104, at 97. 107. Cummings, Nino Pirrotta, 162.

Chapter 13 1. On the material in the foregoing five paragraphs, see Frank A. D’Accone, “The Musical Chapels at the Florentine Cathedral and Baptistery during the First Half of the 16th Century,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 24.1 (1971): 1–­50, at 1–­10, 14, 16.

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2. D’Accone, “Musical Chapels,” 17. 3. D’Accone, 15–­16, 22; Cummings, Politicized Muse, 108 and n. 31. 4. D’Accone, “Musical Chapels.” 5. D’Accone, 17. 6. D’Accone, 17; Fabbri, “La vita e l’ignota opera-­prima di Francesco Corteccia,” 195 n. 33. 7. D’Accone, “Musical Chapels,” 19–­21. 8. Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual, 39–­40, 231–­41; Tacconi, “Appropriating the Instruments of Worship,” 338–­39, 355–­56, 359–­60, 365; Marica S. Tacconi, “In Honor of the Florentine Cathedral and the Medici: The 1526 Office of St. Zenobius,” in Music and Culture in the Middle Ages and Beyond, ed. Benjamin D. Brand et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 72–­88. 9. Cummings, Politicized Muse, 85–­86. 10. Canguilhem, “La cappella fiorentina e il duca Cosimo Primo,” 232. On religion in Florence during Cosimo’s time, see Philippe Canguilhem, “‘Udite Ghieremia che si lamenta’: Pratica musicale e ortodossia religiosa nella Firenze cosimiana,” in Firenze nella crisi religiosa del Cinquecento (1498–­1569), ed. Lucia Felici (Turin: Claudiana, 2020), 129–­45. 11. Canguilhem, “La cappella fiorentina e il duca Cosimo Primo,” 233; D’Accone, “Musical Chapels,” 25. 12. D’Accone, “Musical Chapels,” 30–­31. 13. Tim Carter, “Crossing the Boundaries: Sacred, Civic, and Ceremonial Space in Late Sixteenth-­and Early Seventeenth-­Century Florence,” in Innocenti and Verdon, “Cantate Domino,” vol. 3, 137–­46, at 144. 14. D’Accone, “Musical Chapels,” 31–­32. 15. Canguilhem, “La cappella,” 235. 16. D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche. 17. D’Accone, “Sacred Music in Florence in Savonarola’s Time,” in Music in Renaissance Florence (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), vol. 6, 311–­54, at 353. 18. D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche; Frank A. D’Accone, “The Sources of Luca Bati’s Sacred Music at the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore,” in Essays on Italian Music in the Cinquecento (Sydney: University of Sydney, 1990), 159–­71, at 167. 19. D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche; Frank A. D’Accone, “Reclaiming the Past: Archbishop Antonio Altoviti’s Entrance into Florence in 1567,” in Instruments, Ensembles, and Repertory, 1300–­1600: Essays in Honour of Keith Polk, ed. Timothy J. McGee and Stewart Carter (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 237–­62, at 258. 20. Richard Sherr, “The Membership of the Chapels of Louis XII and Anne de Bretagne in the Years Preceding Their Deaths,” Journal of Musicology 6.1 (1988): 60–­82; Herman-­ Walther Frey, “Leo X,” in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1949–­73), vol. 8, cols. 619–­22. 21. Herman-­Walther Frey, “Die Kapellmeister an der franzosischen Nationalkirche San Luigi dei Francesi in Rom im 16. Jahrhundert. Teil I: 1514–­1577,” Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 22 (1965): 272–­93; and “Teil II: 1577–­1608,” 23 (1966): 32–­60; Alessandro Ferrajoli, “Il Ruolo della corte di Leone X,” Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria (1911), 31; Herman-­Walther Frey, “Michelagniolo und die Komponisten seiner Madrigale: Bartolomeo Tromboncino, Jean Conseil, Constanzo Festa, Jakob Arcadelt,” Acta Musicologica 24.3–­4 (1952): 147–­97, at 162 n. 63. 22. The text of Richafort’s motet is here rendered as “O plebs Florentinae” and is said to be suitable for San Zanobi. See D’Accone, “Reclaiming the Past,” 258.

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23. Cummings, Lion’s Ear, 52. 24. D’Accone, “Sources of Luca Bati’s Sacred Music,” 172. 25. D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche; Canguilhem, “The Madrigal En Route to Florence (1540–­1545),” 51–­52; Canguilhem, “Lorenzo Corsini’s ‘Libri di canzone,’” 17, 20. 26. D’Accone, “The Sources of Luca Bati’s Sacred Music,” 172; B. Pisano and Marco da Gagliano, Music for Holy Week, ed. Frank A. D’Accone et al. (Muenster: American Institute of Musicology, 2018). 27. Moroney, “Alessandro Striggio’s Mass in Forty and Sixty Parts,” 22. 28. D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche. 29. D’Accone et al. 30. For further examples, see Canguilhem, “La cappella fiorentina e il duca Cosimo Primo,” 240–­41, 243. 31. For an example, see Frank A. D’Accone, “Francesco Corteccia’s Hymn for St. John’s Day in the Florentine Liturgy, ca. 1544–­1737,” in “Uno gentile et subtile ingenio”: Studies in Renaissance Music in Honour of Bonnie Blackburn, ed. M. Jennifer Bloxam et al. (Brepols [Turnhout]: Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, 2009), 101–­8. 32. D’Accone, “Reclaiming the Past.” Some of D’Accone’s translations are lightly emended. For quoted passages from Altoviti, see Maria Pia Paoli, “Il duca Cosimo I e l’ ‘eletto’ Antonio Altoviti arcivescovo di Firenze,” in Firenze nella crisi religiosa del Cinquecento (1498–­1569), ed. Lucia Felici (Turin: Claudiana, 2020), 77–­105. 33. D’Accone, “Reclaiming the Past,” 242, 256; D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche. 34. Cummings, Nino Pirrotta, 277 n. 110. 35. Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual, 43. 36. D’Accone, “Corteccia, Francesco.” 37. Lewis Lockwood, “Vincenzo Ruffo and Musical Reform after the Council of Trent,” Musical Quarterly 43.3 (1957): 342–­71, at 342–­43. 38. D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche. 39. Corteccia, Eleven Works to Latin Texts, ix–­x. 40. Harold S. Powers, “Tonal Types and Modal Categories in Renaissance Polyphony,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 34.3 (1981): 428–­70; and “Modal Representation in Polyphonic Offertories,” Early Music History 2 (1982): 43–­86. 41. Wilson, Music and Merchants, 227–­28; Wilson, “Lauda”; Patrick Macey, “The Lauda and the Cult of Savonarola,” Renaissance Quarterly 45.3 (1992): 439–­83, at 451. 42. On the matter of civic anxiety about these institutions in earlier periods, see Bornstein, Bianchi of 1399, 26, 165; Eisenbichler, Boys of the Archangel Raphael, 54; Fabbri, “Laude spirituali,” 155; Fabbri, ed., Laudario polifonico di S. Maria del Fiore (Lucca: Otos. Edizioni Musicali Opera Italiana, 1959) / Laudario polifonico di Santa Maria del Fiore. Anonimi secc. 16. e 17. Dal vol. di Pol. n. 55 dell’Archivio dell’opera del duomo di Firenze (Siena: Accademia Musicale Chigiana, 1967). Joseph G. Amato of Stanford University tells me of an interesting archival reference that documents Cosimo I’s overt concern for the reform activities of the church in the duchy of Tuscany. In a letter, Cosimo admonishes Archbishop Altoviti regarding Altoviti’s absence from the diocese: Florence, Archvio di Stato, fondo Mediceo del principato 161, XIV, 20, 1 June 1565. 43. On Razzi’s publication, see now Wilson, Singing to the Lyre, 172–­87. 44. Fabbri, “Laude spirituali,” 152.

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45. Fabbri, 154. 46. Canguilhem, “Madrigal En Route to Florence,” 39, 60; Canguilhem, “Lorenzo Corsini’s ‘Libri di canzone,’” 40; Nosow, “Debate on Song,” 210–­11. 47. Fabbri, “Laude spirituali,” 157; Blake Wilson, Singing Poetry in Renaissance Florence: The “Cantasi Come” Tradition (1375–­1550) (Florence: Olschki, 2009), chap. 3. 48. Newbigin, Feste d’Oltrarno, vol. 1, 212–­16. 49. Newbigin, 212. 50. Cummings, Politicized Muse, 141. 51. On this performance, see the full description in Cummings, Politicized Muse, 141–­45. 52. On Borghini, see Cummings, “Giulio de’ Medici’s Music Books,” Early Music History 10 (1991): 63–­120. 53. Newbigin, Feste d’Oltrarno, 214–­16. 54. Nerida Newbigin, “Greasing the Wheels of Heaven: Recycling, Innovation and the Question of ‘Brunelleschi’s’ Stage Machinery,” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 11 (2007): 201–­41, 213–­14; Raccolta di lettere sulla pittura, scultura ed architettura scritte da’ più celebri personaggi dei secoli XV, XVI, e XVII, 8 vols., ed. Giovanni Gaetano Bottari (Milan: Silvesti, 1822), vol. 1, 125–­204. 55. Newbigin, “Greasing the Wheels,” 215–­16. 56. Recitata in Firenze il dì x di Marzo 1565 [more florentino; recte: “1566”] nella Chiesa di Santo Spirito (Florence, 1565 [’66]); Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Firenze, E.6.7.56 I8. 57. Newbigin, “Greasing the Wheels,” 225. 58. Moroney, “Alessandro Striggio’s Mass in Forty and Sixty Parts,” 27. 59. On yet another performance of the Annunciation play on the occasion of a Medici wedding, see Filippo Baldinucci, Opere, 14 vols. (Milan: Società tipografica de’ classici italiani, 1808), vol. 8, 40–­41; Cummings, “The Motet,” in European Music, 1520–­1640, ed. James Haar (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), 130–­56, 131, and n. 5; James M. Saslow, The Medici Wedding of 1589: Florentine Festival as Theatrum Mundi (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 104; Tim Carter, H. W. Hitchcock, S. Cusick, and S Parisi, “Caccini Family” (1 January 2001), Grove Music Online, accessed 20 July 2019, https://​w ww​ .oxford​music​online​.com​.ezproxy​.lafayette​.edu​/grovemusic​/view​/10​.1093​/gmo​/978​ 1561592630​.001​.0001​/omo​-­­9781561592630​-­­e-​ ­­0 000040146; John Shearman, “Correggio’s Illusionism,” in La prospettiva rinascimentale: Codificazioni e trasgressioni I, ed. Marisa Dalai Emiliani (Florence: Centro Di, 1980), 281–­94, at 293. 60. John Walter Hill, “Florentine Intermedi Sacri e Morali, 1549–­1622,” in La musique et le rite sacré et profane: Actes du XIIIe Congrès de la Société Internationale de Musicologie, 2 vols., ed. Marc Honegger et al. (Strasbourg: Association des publications près les Universités de Strasbourg, 1986), vol. 2, 265–­301; see 265. 61. Hill, 265, 273–­74. 62. Hill, 266. 63. Konrad Eisenbichler, “Innovation in the Prologues to Giovan Maria Cecchi’s Religious Plays,” Italica 63.2 (1986): 123–­41, at 127–­29, 131–­32. 64. Konrad Eisenbichler, “Two Unknown Italian Plays at the Beinecke Library: Giovan Maria Cecchi’s Atto recitabile per fare avanti che nella compagnia si diano li panellini benedetti and Giovanni Nardi’s Il Disperato,” Yale University Library Gazette 74.3–­4 (2000): 126–­34, at 133. On the performance venues, see Eisenbichler, “Nativity and Magi Plays,” 322–­24. 65. On Cecchi, see Eisenbichler, “Two Unknown Italian Plays,” 126, 128–­30; Eisenbich-

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ler, “Innovation in the Prologues,” passim; and Michel Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici: Public Celebrations, Politics, and Literature in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2008), 33. 66. Hill, “Florentine Intermedi Sacri e Morali,” 265–­66. 67. Hill, 267–­68. 68. D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche, vol. 2; Hill, “Florentine Intermedi Sacri e Morali,” 267, 275. 69. Attributed to “Gioanne Cartolaio,” in Il terzo libro delle muse: A 5 voci composto da diversi eccellentissimi musici con uno madregale a 6 et uno dialogo a 7, d’Orlando novamente per Antonio Gardano ristampato (Venice: Gardano, 1569) (RISM 157016 and RISM 15809). 70. Hill, “Florentine Intermedi Sacri e Morali, 1549–­1622,” 272. 71. D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche; Hill, “Florentine Intermedi Sacri e Morali,” 269; Nino Pirrotta, “Bati, Luca,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, 9 vols. (Rome: Le Maschere, 1954–­62), vol. 2, 46; L’Esaltazione della croce con i svoi intermedi, ridotta in atto rappresentatiuo da Giouanmaria Cecchi Cittadin Fiorentino. Recitata in Firenze da’ Giouani della Compagnia di San Giouanni Vangelista, con l’occasione delle nozze de’ serenissimi gran duchi di Toscana (Florence: . . . Bartolomeo Sermartelli, 1589); Feste e apparati medicei da Cosimo I a Cosimo II: Mostra di disegni e incisioni, ed. Giovanna Gaeta Bertelà and Annamaria Petrioli Tofani (Florence: Olschki, 1969), 73; Federico Ghisi, “Luca Bati maestro della Cappella Granducale di Firenze,” Revue belge de musicologie 8.2–­4 (1954): 106–­8, at 107. On the 1589 performance and rewritten prologue, see Eisenbichler, “Innovation in the Prologues,” 127–­29, 138–­40 n. 12. On L’Esaltazione and Cecchi more generally, see also an extremely important study, Michel Plaisance, “L’exaltation de la Croix, comédie religieuse de Giovan Maria Cecchi,” in Théâtre. Histoire. Modèles. Recherches sur les textes dramatiques et les spectacles du XVe au XVIIIe siècle, ed. Élie Konigson (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1980), 13–­41; and Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 34. 72. Ghisi, “Luca Bati,” 107. The translation is mine. 73. D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche; Eisenbichler, “Innovation in the Prologues,” 131–­32. See also Tim Carter and Francesca Fantappiè, Staging “Euridice”: Theatre, Sets, and Music in Late Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 69–­70 n. 17. 74. Eisenbichler, “Innovation in the Prologues,” 127–­29. 75. Elissa B. Weaver, “Canti suoni e balli nel teatro delle suore toscane,” in Letteratura italiana e musica: Atti del XIV Congresso dell’A.I.S.L.L.I., Denmark, University of Odense, 1–­5 July 1991, ed. Jørn Moestrup (Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag, 1997), 845–­54, at 845–­46. 76. On the material in the four following paragraphs, see Weaver, Convent, 73–­74, 74 n. 73, 76, 132, 135, 143, 145–­47, and 244–­52; and Kelley Harness, “Judith, Music, and Female Patrons in Early Modern Italy,” in The Sword of Judith, ed. Kevin R. Brine et al. (Cambridge: Open Book, 2010), 371–­83, 373, 377, 379, and 379 n. 16, from which I have borrowed liberally. 77. Pirrotta, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, chap. 3. 78. Harness, “Judith,” 379 n. 16. 79. On the material in the two following paragraphs, see Laurie Stras, “The Ricreationi per monache of Suor Annalena Aldobrandini,” Renaissance Studies 26.1 (2012): 34–­59, 34–­ 36, 39–­40, 42, 44, and 46–­47, from which I have borrowed liberally.

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Chapter 14 1. For two examples, see Cummings, Maecenas and the Madrigalist, 54 and 230–­31 and nn. 195–­200; and Prizer, “Reading Carnival,” 241 and n. 115. 2. For one non-­Florentine example, see Franco Piperno, “Musiche in commedia e intermedi alla corte di Guidubaldo II della Rovere duca di Urbino,” Recercare 10 (1998): 151–­71. 3. Cummings, Politicized Muse, 115–­41; Cummings, Maecenas and the Madrigalist, 116–­40. 4. Cummings, Politicized Muse, 22–­23. 5. Cummings, 23–­26. 6. Cummings, 34. 7. Saslow, Medici Wedding of 1589, 2. 8. Loren Partridge and Randolph Starn, Arts of Power: Three Halls of State in Italy, 1300–1600 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 157. 9. The primary sources for table 14.1 are the following: 1539: Musiche fatte nelle nozze dello illustrissimo duca di Firenze il signor Cosimo de Medici et della illustrissima consorte sua mad. Leonora da Tolleto (Venice: Antonio Gardane, 1539); 1565/66: Musica de diversi auttori illustri per cantar et sonar in concerti: a sette, otto, nove, dieci, undeci & duodeci voci: novamente raccolta & non piu stampati: libro primo (Venice: Vincenzi & Amadino, 1584) and Vincenzo Galilei, Fronimo, dialogo sopra l’arte del bene intauolare (Venice: L’herede di G. Scotto, 1584); 1568/69: Il qvinto libro de madrigali a cinqve voci del signor Alessandro Striggio (Venice: Angelo Gardane, 1597), Dialoghi musicali di diversi eccel[l]entissimi autori (Venice: A. Gardane, 1590); Alessandro Striggio, Il terzo libro de madrigali a cinque voci. Nouamente posto in luce (Venice: Angelo Gardane, 1596); Brussels, Bibliothèque du Conservatoire Royal, MS 27.731, and Il primo libro de canzone napolitane a tre voci, di Io. Leonardo Primauera (Venice: Girolamo Scotto, 1570); 1579: Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Magliabechiano 66, cl. XIX and Il qvinto libro de madrigali a cinqve voci del signor Alessandro Striggio (Venice: Angelo Gardane, 1597); and 1589: Intermedi et concerti: Fatti per la commedia rappresentata in Firenze nelle nozze del serenissimo don Ferdinando Medici, e madama Christiana de Loreno, gran duchi di Toscana (Venice: G. Vincenti, 1591). 10. Pirrotta et al., Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, 154. 11. Carter, “Non occorre nominare tanti musici,” 99. 12. Pirrotta, Li due Orfei, 201. 13. A Renaissance Entertainment: Festivities for the Marriage of Cosimo I, Duke of Florence, in 1539, ed. Andrew C. Minor and Bonner Mitchell (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1968); Pirrotta, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, 154–­69; Kaufmann, “Music for a Noble Florentine Wedding (1539),” 161–­88. 14. Cummings, “The Motet,” 137 n. 26; Antolini, “Corteccia, Francesco.” 15. Albert Dunning, Die Staatsmotette 1480– ­1555 (Utrecht: A. Oosthoek, 1970). A portion of Ingredere is published in Cummings, Politicized Muse. 16. For the remainder of this section, I am indebted to Michel Plaisance, “La politique culturelle,” 133–­52. For a 1541 festival not considered here, see Records of the Accademia degli Umidi, Firenze, Biblioteca nazionale centrale, MS II IV 1, Libro capitoli, compositioni, et leggi della Accademia degli Humydi di Firenze creata l’anno del Signore MDXL, fols. 63v–­64v; Philippe Canguilhem, “La cappella fiorentina e il duca Cosimo Primo,” 237, 243; Plaisance, “Une première affirmation,” 419–­20; and Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 104.

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17. Musiche fatte nelle nozze dello illustrissimo duca di Firenze il signor Cosimo de Medici et della illustrissima consorte sua mad. Leonora da Tolleto (Venice: Antonio Gardane, 1539); Il Commodo. Comedia d’Antonio Landi, con i suoi intermedi, recitata nelle nozze de l’illustriss. & eccellentiß. s. il s. duca di Firenze l’anno 1539. Nuovamente ristampata (Florence: . . . i Giunti, 1566); A Renaissance Entertainment, ed. Minor and Mitchell; Pirrotta, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, 154–­69; Kaufmann, “Music for a Noble Florentine Wedding (1539),” 161–­88. 18. Johnson, Inventing the Opera House, 71–­73. Revealing and stimulating reconstructions of the decor and stage are in Marco Sperenzi and Elvira Garbero Zorzi, eds., Teatro e spettacolo nella Firenze dei Medici: Modelli dei luoghi teatrali (Florence: Olschki, [2001]), Tav. VI and Tav. VII. 19. For a sensitive, revealing analysis of the iconography of the decorations of the courtyard, see Kelley Harness, “Pageantry,” in Routledge Companion to Music and Visual Culture, ed. Tim Shephard and Anne Rachel (New York: Routledge, 2014), 313–­20, at 314–­16. 20. Harness, 314–­16. 21. Pirrotta, “Corteccia, Francesco.” 22. Canguilhem, “Monodia e contrappunto a Firenze nel Cinquecento,” 27–­28. 23. Pirrotta, “Intermezzo.” Pirrotta qualifies the position taken in “Temperaments and Tendencies in the Florentine Camerata,” at 174, where he terms the music of the 1539 intermedi “pseudo-­monody.” 24. Antolini, “Corteccia, Francesco”; D’Accone, “Corteccia, Francesco”; Pirrotta, “Temperaments and Tendencies,” 174. 25. Pirrotta, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, 158 n. 69. 26. Plaisance, “La politique culturelle,” 137; Niccolò Martelli, Dal primo e dal secondo libro delle lettere, ed. Cartesio Marconcini (Lanciano: R. Carabba, 1916), 54–­61, “Di Fiorenza a dì X di Marzo, il giorno primo della Quaresima MDXLV (recte: 1546).” 27. Martelli, Lettere, 54–­61; Plaisance, “La politique culturelle,” 147. 28. Federico Ghisi, ed., Feste Musicali della Firenze Medicea (1480–­1589) (Bologna: Arnaldo Forni, 1999 [Ristampa . . . dell’edizione di Firenze, 1939]), xii–­xiii and 39–­43. Ghisi seems not to have known of the account of the performance of Pucci’s The Astrologer; he writes, “The composition was written on the occasion of some festival at court, Corteccia . . . being chapelmaster of Duke Cosimo, which brief intermedio was probably inserted into a comedy performed at the Accademia fiorentina, of the same sort as the Madrigali del Furto, indeed by Corteccia.” 29. Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953, 1981), 280. Not considered here is a fascinating festival of 1550; see Enrico Coppi, ed., Cronaca fiorentina 1537– ­1555 (Florence: Olschki, 2000), 114–­15; Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, Ms. Codex 564, fol. 48v, Cronica dopo la morte del duca Alessandro de’ Medici fino al 1555; Philippe Canguilhem, “Des canti carnascialeschi aux mascherate,” in Marquer la ville: Signes, traces, empreintes du pouvoir, XIIIe–­XVIe siècle: Actes de la conférence organisée à Rome en 2009 par le LAMOP en collaboration avec l’École française de Rome, Histoire ancienne e médiévale, 405–­29 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne; Rome: École française de Rome, 2013); and Plaisance, “La politique culturelle,” 149–­50, Doc. no. 2. For another treatment of this entire phase of Florentine festivals and their music, see Robert Nosow’s unpublished paper, “Madrigal and Mascherata in Mid-­Sixteenth-­Century Florence,” read at the 2002 meeting of the American Musicological Society; I am grateful to Nosow for permitting me to read his paper. He considers the stylistic relationship between the carnival song and the madrigal, which I have addressed and confirmed else-

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where in my own work, including in this study. See my chapter, “A New Institution, a New Technology, a New Genre,” and the bibliographic references given there to some of my own studies. 30. Howard Mayer Brown, “Psyche’s Lament: Some Music for the Medici Wedding in 1565,” in Words and Music, the Scholar’s View, ed. Laurence Berman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Department of Music, 1972), 1–­27; Oscar G. Sonneck, “A Description of Alessandro Striggio and Francesco Corteccia’s Intermedi ‘Psyche and Amor’ 1565,” in Miscellaneous Studies in the History of Music (Atlanta, GA: Macmillan, 1921), 269–­86; Camilla Cavicchi, “D’alcune musiche sul tema d’Amore e Psiche nel Cinquecento,” in Psyché à la Renaissance, ed. Magali Bélime-­Droguet et al. (n.p.: Brepols, 2012), 159–­78. See also Feste e apparati medicei da Cosimo I a Cosimo II, 19. 31. Johnson, Inventing the Opera House, 87, 90–­93. For reconstructions of the decor and stage, see Sperenzi and Zorzi, eds., Teatro e spettacolo nella Firenze dei Medici, Tav. VIII and Tav. IX. 32. Cummings, Lion’s Ear, 124, 126, 259 n. 54, 260 n. 58; Cummings, MS Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magl. XIX, 164–­167, 64–­65; John Shearman, “Iconographia: The Loggia di Psiche at the Farnesina: Ars Amandi,” FMR, n.s., 5 (February–­March 2005): 1–­22; Michel Plaisance, “Fiction comique et idéologie dans ‘La Cofanaria’ de Franceso d’Ambra,” Revue d’histoire du théâtre 114, trimestre 2 (1977): 141–­52. 33. Il Lasca, Descrizione de gl’intermedi rappresentati con la commedia nelle nozze dell’illustrissimo, ed eccellentissimo signor principe di Firenze, e di Siena (Florence: . . . Filippo Givnti, 1593). 34. Cavicchi, “D’alcune musiche,” 170–­72. 35. Descrizione dell’apparato della commedia et intermedi d’essa recitata in Firenze il giorno di S. Stefano l’anno 1565. Nella gran sala del palazzo di sua ecc. illust. nelle reali nozze. Dell’illustriß. & eccell. s. il s. don Francesco Medici principe di Fiorenza, & di Siena. & della regina Giouanna d’Austria sua consorte . . . (Florence: . . . i Giunti, 1566); and Il Lasca, Descrizione de gl’intermedi rappresentati con la commedia nelle nozze dell’illustrissimo, ed eccellentissimo signor principe di Firenze, e di Siena. For reminding me of the reference to the instrumentation, I thank Andrés Locatelli. 36. Sonneck, “A Description of Alessandro Striggio and Francesco Corteccia’s Intermedi.” 37. On this intermedio, see Tim Carter, “Giulio Caccini (1551–­1618): New Facts, New Music,” Studi musicali 16.1 (1987): 13–­31, at 18–­20. 38. Brown, “Psyche’s Lament.” 39. An edition of Fvggi spene is in Brown, “Psyche’s Lament.” Although the music is no longer extant for the six intermedi by Bernardo de’ Nerli for the 1566 performance of Lionardo Salviati’s Il granchio—­among the final events celebrating Francesco and Johanna’s wedding—­one can draw some conclusions from the text about the intermedio tradition. True to the practice of distinguishing the first and last intermedi from the four intervening ones, the Muses sing the first and last, while the others had the four stages of man as a subject and were thus faithful to the Aristotelian unity of action. 40. Mostra di disegni vasariani: Carri trionfali e costumi per La genealogia degli Dei (1565), ed. Anna Maria Petrioli (Florence: Olschki, 1966); see also Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 22. 41. Canguilhem, “La cappella fiorentina e il duca Cosimo Primo,” 239; Seznec, Survival of the Pagan Gods, 280–­82; Jean Seznec, “La Mascarade des dieux à Florence en 1565,” Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire 52 (1935): 224–­43. The title page of Baccio Bal-

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dini’s account makes clear that, in modern style, the date was 1566, and the day specified accords with Lapini’s reference quoted above: Baldini, Discorso sopra la mascherata della geneologia degl’iddei de’ Gentili. Mandata fuori dall’illustrißimo, & eccellentiß. s. duca . . . il giorno 21 di febbraio MDLXV (Florence: . . . i Giunti, [modern style 1566]). On p. 132 the date is correctly given. The account specifies 21 carri, as Lapini’s account reported. See more recently, Luca Degl’Innocenti et al., eds., Atti della giornata di studi: La mascherata della genealogia degli Dei (Firenze, Carnevale 1566) (Florence: Edizioni Cadmo, 2013), in which see Degl’Innocenti, “Un archivio digitale per gli Dèi di carnevale: La ‘Mascherata’ della raccolta Pal. C.B.III.53, I e la sua edizione online,” 11–­28; and Degl’Innocenti, “Gli appunti a margine: Il cantiere della ‘mascherata’ nei disegni palatini c.b.iii.53, i,” 75–­98. See also Stefano Pierguidi, “Baccio Baldini e la ‘mascherata della genealogia degli dei,’” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 70.3 (2007): 347–­64. In Feste e apparati medicei da Cosimo I a Cosimo II, fig. 2 reproduces a contemporary image of a costume for the Mascherata della genealogia degli’iddei. 42. Baldini, Discorso sopra la mascherata, 128– ­29. Mostra di disegni vasariani, 19–­20, prints the texts of the songs sung. The Gabinetto disegni e stampe degli Uffizi has preliminary designs for the eight trumpeters’ costuming: 2668F–­2671F. The same publication reproduces preliminary designs for several of the floats and any number of the costumes for the mythological and allegorical figures represented and also inventories designs in the Gabinetto disegni e stampe degli Uffizi for Hesiod and the standard he bore. 43. There had also been a masque of the buffalo in 1546, also in Piazza Santa Croce; see Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 106–­7, 125–­26. 44. Feste e apparati medicei da Cosimo I a Cosimo II, 22–­23; fig. 3 in the same publication reproduces a contemporary image of one of the performers in the 1566 Mascherata delle bufole. On this genre, see Plaisance, “La politique culturelle,” at 136. 45. The principal primary source is Le dieci mascherate delle bvfole mandate in Firenze il giorno di carnouale l’anno 1565 [more florentino; recte: 1566]. Con la descrittione di tutta la pompa delle maschere, e loro inuentioni (Florence: . . . i Giunti, 1566), 8 and 37. See also Feste e apparati medicei da Cosimo I a Cosimo II, 23. 46. Anthony M. Cummings, “Music for Medici Festivals: Some Additional Works Recovered,” Musica Disciplina 56 (2011): 275–­334; Cummings, “On the Testimony of Fragments,” 39–­60. 47. See Anthony M. Cummings, “On the Testimony of Fragments (or, Alessandro Striggio the Elder and the Genesis of the Genere Concitato),” Studi musicali, n.s., 4.1 (2013): 39–­60, passim. The festivities were in honor of Grand Duke Francesco and Bianca Cappello, who was grand duchess of Tuscany from 1579 until her death in 1587 and an important patron of music. See Chater, “Bianca Cappello and Music”; Cummings, “Music for Medici Festivals,” passim. For a reconstruction of the courtyard and amphitheater of Palazzo Pitti on this occasion, see Marco Sperenzi et al., eds., Teatro e spettacolo nella Firenze dei Medici, Tav. XV. See also Feste e apparati medicei da Cosimo I a Cosimo II, figs. 6, 7. 48. Although Stefano Rossetti may have contributed music to it, I pass over Giovanni Fedini’s comedy Le due Persilie, staged “in the presence of the Princesses of Tuscany [including Eleonora di Francesco], on the 16th day of February 1583,” because the music is no longer extant. For similar reasons, I also pass over Giovanni de’ Bardi’s 1586 L’Amico fido, because Striggio’s madrigals for the first, second, and fifth intermedi are not extant. See Pirrotta, “Striggio, Alessandro, Sr. e Jr.”; and Kirkendale, Court Musicians in Florence, 95. On the 1586 festivities, for the wedding of Cesare d’Este and Virginia de’ Medici, see

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also Feste e apparati medicei da Cosimo I a Cosimo II, 56–­61. Other music for the intermedi was composed by Cristofano Malvezzi and Bardi himself. 49. Musique des intermèdes de “La Pellegrina,” ed. D. P. Walker (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1963); Saslow, Medici Wedding of 1589; Nina Treadwell, Music and Wonder at the Medici Court: The 1589 Interludes for “La Pellegrina” (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008); Pirrotta, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, 212–­36; Hill, “The Solo Songs”; D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche, vol. 2; Newcomb, Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, “Text”; Chater, “Bianca Cappello and Music.” The remaining visual reminiscences of this event have been reproduced many times; see, e.g., Saslow, Medici Wedding of 1589; Cesare Molinari, Le nozze degli dei: Un saggio sul grande spettacolo italiano nel Seicento (Rome: Bulzoni, 1968); Feste e apparati medicei da Cosimo I a Cosimo II, 67–­85. 50. Saslow, Medici Wedding of 1589, 50. 51. Saslow, 19, 71, 138. 52. Kelley Harness, Echoes of Women’s Voices: Music, Art, and Female Patronage in Early Modern Florence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 249. 53. Arthur R. Blumenthal, Theater Art of the Medici (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Museum & Galleries, 1980), 4. 54. Saslow, Medici Wedding of 1589, 144–­45. 55. D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche, vol. 2, i. 56. Saslow, Medici Wedding of 1589, 1. 57. Saslow, 19. 58. Saslow, 169. 59. Johnson, Inventing the Opera House, 99–­100. For reconstructions of Buontalenti’s decor and stage, see Sperenzi and Garbero Zorzi, Teatro e spettacolo nella Firenze dei Medici, Tav. XIII and Tav. XIV. 60. Saslow, Medici Wedding of 1589, 51. 61. Cummings, Lion’s Ear, 25, 123, 126, 187. 62. Mario Fabbri, Elvira Garbero Zorzi, and Anna Maria Petrioli Tofani, eds., Il luogo teatrale a Firenze: Brunelleschi, Vasari, Buontalenti, Parigi. Firenze (Milan: Electa, 1975), 116. 63. Saslow, Medici Wedding of 1589, 5, 28. 64. Saslow, 38–­39. 65. Pirrotta, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, 215. 66. On Marenzio’s Medicean service, see Steven Ledbetter, James Chater, and Roland Jackson, “Marenzio [Marentio], Luca,” Grove Music Online, accessed 12 February 2018, https://​w ww​.oxfordmusiconline​.com​.ezproxy​.lafayette​.edu​/grovemusic​/view​/10​ .1093​/gmo​/9781561592630​.001​.0001​/omo​-­­9 781561592630​-­­e​-­­0 000040081; Paolo Fabbri, “Marenzio, Luca,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani 70 (2008); Anthony Newcomb, Madrigal at Ferrara, vol. 1, 94, 207; Nino Pirrotta, “Notes on Marenzio and Tasso,” in Music and Culture in Italy from the Middle Ages to the Baroque (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 198–­209 and accompanying notes, at 200, 203, 413 n. 12, and 415 n. 28. 67. Saslow, Medici Wedding of 1589, 29–­31. 68. Saslow, 158. 69. Contemporary prints of the set design for the first and third intermedi are reproduced in Blumenthal, Theater Art, 10, 12. 70. Pirrotta, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi. I have not provided musi-

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cal examples, since they are excerpted in Pirrotta, Music and Theatre, and they can be found in their entirety in Musique des intermèdes de “La Pellegrina,” ed. D. P. Walker. 71. Saslow, Medici Wedding of 1589, 151. 72. Pirrotta, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, 216–­17. Period depictions of the Harmony of the Spheres are reproduced in Feste e apparati medicei da Cosimo I a Cosimo II, figs. 16, 17. Vittoria Archilei’s song and other solo songs in the cycle have provoked a scholarly difference of opinion. See Hill, “The Solo Songs,” 570–­73, summarizing the contrasting opinions of Warren Kirkendale and Nina Treadwell. 73. Pirrotta, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, 218, 220, and 220 n. 133. 74. See Cummings, Maecenas and the Madrigalist, 144–­45. 75. Pirrotta, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, 224–­28. 76. I engaged in a “virtual” scholarly debate with the late dance historian Barbara Sparti as to the meaning of the moresca. This particular instance, which depicts a battle between Apollo and Python, is yet another example that substantiates my interpretation. See my “Dance and ‘the Other’: The Moresca,” in Seventeenth Century Ballet: A Multi-­Art Spectacle, ed. Barbara Grammeniati (Crossways: Xlibris Corporation, 2011), 39–­60, for a synopsis of the debate. 77. Saslow, Medici Wedding of 1589, 214–­15. 78. Pirrotta, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, 229. See also William V. Porter, “A Central Source of Early Monody: Brussels, Conservatory 704 (II),” Studi musicali 13.1 (1984): 139–­67, at 142–­43. 79. Pirrotta, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, 234–­35; Jennifer Nevile, “Cavalieri’s Theatrical Ballo ‘O che nuovo miracolo’: A Reconstruction,” Dance Chronicle 21.3 (1998): 353–­88. 80. Pirrotta, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, 234–­35. 81. Saslow, Medici Wedding of 1589, 161. 82. A contemporary etching is reproduced in Blumenthal, Theater Art, 14. 83. Saslow, Medici Wedding of 1589, 165–­69, 247–­60; and Phyllis Dearborn Massar, “A Set of Prints and a Drawing for the 1589 Medici Marriage Festival,” Master Drawings 13.1 (1975): 12–­23 and 74, at 12–­15, 18. I have lightly modified Massar’s translations. A period depiction of “La Naumachia” is reproduced in Feste e apparati medicei da Cosimo I a Cosimo II, fig. 15; see also Blumenthal, Theater Art, 26. 84. Blumenthal, Theater Art, 18, 20, 22–­24, reproduces contemporary etchings of the procession into the courtyard of Palazzo Pitti. 85. Husband of Leonora de’ Medici, the daughter of Francesco and Johanna of Austria. 86. Di Paolo Giordano I Orsini and Isabella di Cosimo I de’ Medici, Duke of Bracciano, and nephew of Ferdinando I. See also Hill, Roman Monody, Cantata, and Opera, vol. 1, 28. 87. Saslow, Medici Wedding of 1589, 261; Blumenthal, Theater Art, 16, reproduces a contemporary etching of the event. 88. Saslow, Medici Wedding of 1589, 176. 89. Pirrotta, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, 236. 90. On Jacomelli, see Mario Fabbri, “La vicenda umana e artistica di Giovanni Battista Jacomelli ‘del violino’ deuteragonista della Camerata fiorentina,” in Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici nell’Europa del ’500, 3 vols., ed. G. Garfagnini (Florence: Olschki, 1983), vol. 2, 397–­438, at 402–­3; Chater, “Bianca Cappello and Music,” 575; Saslow, Medici Wedding of 1589, 53; and Pierre M. Tagmann and Iain Fenlon, “Jacomelli [Giacometti; Del Violino], Giovanni Battista,” Grove Music Online, accessed 3 February 2018, https://​w ww​

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.oxford​music​online​.com​.ezproxy​.lafayette​.edu​/grovemusic​/view​/10​.1093​/gmo​/978​ 1561592630​.001​.0001​/omo​-­­9781561592630​-­­e​-­­0 000011060. 91. On the Compagnia della Scala, see Guido Burchi, “Vita musicale e spettacoli alla Compagnia della Scala di Firenze fra il 1560 e il 1675,” Note d’archivio per la storia musicale, n.s., 1 (1983): 9–­50; and Eisenbichler, “Two Unknown Italian Plays,” at 128–­30. 92. David Nutter, “Aspects of Sacred Music in Late Sixteenth-­Century Florence,” in Innocenti and Verdon, “Cantate Domino,” vol. 3, 125–­38, at 126. 93. Mario Fabbri, “La vicenda umana e artistica di Giovanni Battista Jacomelli,” 420; Butchart, “The Letters of Alessandro Striggio,” 63; D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche, vol. 2; and Saslow, Medici Wedding of 1589, 51, 71, 172. 94. See Mario Fabbri, “Dalla spinetta al controviolino. Cenni storici sulla formazione del Museo annesso al Conservatorio ‘L. Cherubini’ di Firenze” and “Bibliografia,” in Antichi strumenti dalla raccolta dei Medici e dei Lorena alla formazione del Museo del Conservatorio di Firenze (Florence: Giunti Barbèra, 1980), 13–­28, 139–­43; Frederick Hammond, “Musical Instruments at the Medici Court in the Mid-­Seventeenth Century,” Analecta Musicologica 15 (1975): 202–­19. 95. David Butchart, “The Letters of Alessandro Striggio: An Edition with Translation and Commentary,” Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle 23 (1990): 1–­78. 96. Philippe Canguilhem, “Courtiers and Musicians Meet in the Streets: The Florentine mascherata under Cosimo I,” Urban History 37.3 (2010): 465–­73; and the French-­ language version, Canguilhem, “Des canti carnascialeschi aux mascherate.” 97. Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici, 111. 98. Plaisance, 108, 110. 99. Canguilhem, “Courtiers and Musicians Meet in the Streets”; and Canguilhem, “Des canti carnascialeschi aux mascherate.”

Chapter 15 1. Lorenzo Bianconi, Music in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 162, 165. Throughout this entire chapter I have profited enormously from Carter and Fantappiè, Staging “Euridice,” which the authors graciously permitted me to read in proofs. 2. Thomas Walker, “Part One: Baroque Opera. I. Italy,” in History of Opera, ed. Stanley Sadie (New York: Norton, 1989), 15. 3. Lorenzo Bianconi and Thomas Walker, “Dalla Finta pazza alla Veremonda: Storie di Febiarmonici,” Rivista italiana di musicologia 10 (1975): 379–­454, at 407–­8. 4. Francesca Fantappiè, “Rinuccini, Ottavio,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani 87 (2016); Francesca Fantappiè, “Una primizia rinucciniana: La Dafne prima della ‘miglior forma,’” Il saggiatore musicale 24.2 (2017): 189–­222. 5. Lorenzo Bianconi and Thomas Walker, “Production, Consumption, and Political Function of 17th-­Century Opera (Synoptic Version),” in IMS Report, Berkeley 1977 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1981), 680–­85; Lorenzo Bianconi and Thomas Walker, “Production, Consumption, and Political Function of Seventeenth-­Century Italian Opera,” Early Music History 4 (1984): 209–­96; Thomas Walker and Giovanni Morelli, “Tre controversie intorno al San Cassiano,” in Venezia e il melodramma nel Seicento, ed. Maria Teresa Muraro (Florence: Olschki, 1976) 97–­120. 6. Sara Mamone, “Most Serene Brothers-­Princes-­Impresarios: Theater in Florence un-

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der the Management and Protection of Mattias, Giovan Carlo, and Leopoldo de’ Medici,” Journal of Seventeenth-­Century Music 9.1 (2003): sec. 4.1. 7. Mamone, 98. 8. William C. Holmes, Opera Observed: Views of a Florentine Impresario in the Early Eighteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 12, quoting Franco Piperno. 9. Cummings, Maecenas and the Madrigalist, chaps. 1 and 2. 10. Claude V. Palisca, “The Alterati of Florence, Pioneers in the Theory of Dramatic Music,” Studies in the History of Italian Music and Music Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 408–­31, esp. 410–­11, 413–­17; Déborah Blocker, “The Accademia degli Alterati and the Invention of a New Form of Dramatic Experience: Myth, Allegory and Theory in Jacopo Peri’s and Ottavio Rinuccini’s Euridice (1600)” in Dramatic Experience: The Poetics of Drama and the Early Modern Public Sphere(s) (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 77–­117. 11. On the academy’s importance, see Walker, “Part One: Baroque Opera. I. Italy,” 16. 12. Cummings, Nino Pirrotta, 299–­300. 13. Pierpaolo Polzonetti, “Banquets, Bacchanals, and the Birth of Opera: The Drinking Song in Politian’s Orfeo,” in Program and Abstracts of Papers Read at the American Musicological Society Eighty-­Second Annual Meeting and the Society for Music Theory Thirty-­Ninth Annual Meeting, 3–­6 November 2016 (n.p.: American Musicological Society and Society for Music Theory, 2016), 319–­20, at 320. 14. See Claude V. Palisca’s article in Musical Quarterly 40.1 (1954). 15. Blocker, “The Accademia degli Alterati,” 79, 88–­89. 16. One can read that Jacopo Corsi was also a member, but this is erroneous, as Francesca Fantappiè informs me. He was never officially enrolled. A similar qualification must be offered about Chiabrera. 17. Blocker, “The Accademia degli Alterati,” 80, 84. 18. Pirrotta, “Temperaments and Tendencies”; Nino Pirrotta, “Camerata fiorentina,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, 9 vols. (Rome: Le Maschere, 1954–­62), vol. 2, cols. 1563–­68; Nino Pirrotta, “Tragédie et comédie dans la Camerata fiorentina,” in Musique et poésie au XVIe siècle (Paris: Centre nationale de la recherche scientifique, 1954), 287–­97; Claude V. Palisca, The Florentine Camerata (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989); Vincenzo Galilei, Dialogue on Ancient and Modern Music, trans., with introd. and notes, Claude V. Palisca (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003); Claude V. Palisca, Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985); Palisca, “Peri and the Theory of Recitative,” in Studies in the History of Italian Music and Music Theory, 452–­66. 19. Pirrotta, “Temperaments and Tendencies,” 171, Tim Carter, “Music and Patronage in Late Sixteenth-­Century Florence: The Case of Jacopo Corsi (1561–­1602),” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 1 (1985): 57–­104, at 73–­74 and accompanying notes; and John Walter Hill, “Oratory Music in Florence, I: ‘Recitar Cantando,’ 1583–­1655,” Acta Musicologica 51.1 (1979): 108–­36, at 111–­12 n. 18. 20. Carter, “Music and Patronage in Late Sixteenth-­Century Florence”; Hill, “Oratory Music,” 111. 21. Walker, “Part One: Baroque Opera. I. Italy,” 16. 22. Pirrotta, “Temperaments and Tendencies,” 170–­71, 176. Also in this vein was Severo Bonini’s Discorsi e Regole; see the edition, trans. and ed. Mary Ann Bonino (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1979), 56, 141–­42, 144. For a more sympathetic view of

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Caccini, see Tim Carter, “Rediscovering Il rapimento di Cefalo,” Journal of Seventeenth-­ Century Music 9.1 (2003): sec. 2.4. 23. Galilei, Dialogue on Ancient and Modern Music, 22. 24. On the membership, see also Palisca, The Florentine Camerata, 7. On Strozzi, see also Galilei, Dialogue on Ancient and Modern Music, xxii and n. 17; Edmond Strainchamps, “Music in a Florentine Confraternity: The Memorial Madrigals for Jacopo Corsi in the Company of the Archangel Raphael,” in Crossing the Boundaries: Christian Piety and the Arts in Italian Medieval and Renaissance Confraternities, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Kalama­ zoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1991), 161–­78, at 161 and passim; and, most recently, Francesca Fantappiè, “Strozzi, Piero Vincenzo,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani 94 (2019). 25. Giulio Caccini, “Le nuove musiche [1602] Foreword,” in Source Readings in Music History, ed. Oliver Strunk (New York: Norton, 1950). Strunk’s Source Readings has now been published in a revised and updated edition, edited by Leo Treitler et al., which I have consulted throughout. 26. Palisca, Florentine Camerata, 3; Pirrotta, “Mei, Girolamo,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, 9 vols. (Rome: Le Maschere, 1954–­62), vol. 7. 27. Palisca, Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought, 319 and n. 50. 28. Girolamo Mei, Letters on Ancient and Modern Music to Vincenzo Galilei and Giovanni Bardi, 2nd ed., ed. Claude V. Palisca (Neuhausen-­Stuttgart: American Institute of Musicology, 1977), 31 and nn. 82–­83 and 198, 200; Palisca, Florentine Camerata, 66; Palisca, Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought, 419 and n. 33. 29. Pirrotta, “Estratto dal III volume del Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti contenente la voce: ‘Monodia’” (Turin: Unione tipografico-­editrice torinese, 1984), 175–­79. 30. Palisca has twice translated this passage. I used a conflation of his translations and emended them slightly. See Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought, 420; and “Peri and the Theory of Recitative,” in Studies in the History of Italian Music and Music Theory, 454. 31. Palisca, Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought, 422. 32. Palisca, 408. But Peri’s argument in the preface to Euridice is somewhat qualified. On this matter, see also Tim Carter, “‘Per cagione di bene, et giustamente vivere’: On the Musical Patronage of Giovanni de’ Bardi,” in Neoplatonismo, musica, letteratura nel Rinascimento. I Bardi di Vernio e l’Accademia della Crusca, ed. Piero Gargiulio et al. ([Prato]: I Cahiers di Accademia, 2000), 137–­46, at 145. There is not unanimous opinion on this matter. Barbara Russano Hanning, “Apologia pro Ottavio Rinuccini,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 26.2 (1973): 240–­62 (at 146–­52), subscribes to the thesis I advance here; Pirrotta, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, 264 and n. 88, expresses reservations. 33. Palisca, Florentine Camerata, 2, 45, 56–­77; Girolamo Mei, Letters on Ancient and Modern Music to Vincenzo Galilei and Giovanni Bardi, 89–­106. 34. Palisca, Florentine Camerata, 57–­58. See also Palisca, Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought, 422–­23. 35. Blocker, “Accademia degli Alterati,” 94, 115. 36. Palisca, Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought, 432. 37. Cummings, Nino Pirrotta, 162–­64. 38. Palisca, Florentine Camerata, 45.

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39. Palisca, 5, 111, 113, 115; and Carter, “‘Per cagione di bene, et giustamente vivere,’” 137–­46. 40. Pirrotta, “Tragédie et comédie dans la Camerata fiorentina,” 287–­97. 41. Pirrotta, “Camerata Fiorentina,” cols. 1563–­68; on Galilei’s musical thought, see also Philippe Canguilhem, “Tel père, tel fils? Les opinions esthétiques de la famille Galilei,” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 23.1 (1992): 27–­42. 42. Palisca, Florentine Camerata, 1; Pirrotta, “Camerata Fiorentina.” 43. Pirrotta, “Temperaments and Tendencies,” 172; Pirrotta, “Galilei, Vincenzo,” Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, 9 vols. (Rome: Le Maschere, 1954–­62), vol. 5; Palisca, The Florentine Camerata, 1. 44. Palisca, Music and Ideas in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 117; Palisca, “Vincenzo Galilei and Some Links between ‘Pseudo-­Monody’ and Monody,” in Studies in the History of Italian Music and Music Theory, 346–­63. 45. Nino Pirrotta, “Caccini,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, 9 vols. (Rome: Le Maschere, 1954–­62), vol. 2, cols. 1447–­53. 46. Giulio Caccini, “Le nuove musiche [1602] Foreword,” in Strunk, Source Readings in Music History; John Walter Hill, Baroque Music: Music in Western Europe, 1580–­1750 (New York: Norton, 2005), 25. 47. Palisca, Florentine Camerata, 5. 48. Palisca, 7. 49. Walker, “Part One: Baroque Opera. I. Italy,” 16. 50. See Pirrotta, “Galilei, Vincenzo,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo. 51. Galilei, Dialogue on Ancient and Modern Music, 3–­5. 52. Inferno xxxiii/4–­75. 53. A. Bertolotti, Musici alla corte dei Gonzaga in Mantova dal secolo XV al XVIII ([Bologna]: Forni, 1978), 60–­61. 54. Pietro de’ Bardi, “Letter to G. B. Doni [1634],” in Strunk, Source Readings in Music History; Pirrotta, “Camerata Fiorentina,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, cols. 1563–­68; and Pirrotta, “Temperaments and Tendencies,” 173–­74. 55. Pirrotta, “Tragédie et comédie dans la Camerata fiorentina,” 287–­97; Pirrotta, “Temperaments and Tendencies,” 172. 56. Caccini, “Le nuove musiche [1602] Foreword,” in Strunk, Source Readings in Music History; see also Giulio Caccini, “Euridice [1600] Dedication,” in Strunk, Source Readings in Music History. I have slightly altered the translation. 57. Caccini, “Le nuove musiche [1602] Foreword.” 58. Palisca, Florentine Camerata, 7. 59. Nino Pirrotta, “Camerata Fiorentina,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, cols. 1563–­68. 60. Giulio Caccini, Le nuove musiche, ed H. Wiley Hitchcock (Madison, WI: A-­R Editions, 1970). 61. Musique des intermèdes de “La Pellegrina,” ed. D. P. Walker (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1963); Pirrotta, “Tragédie et comédie dans la Camerata fiorentina,” 287–­97. 62. Pirrotta, “Temperaments and Tendencies,” 173–­74; Pirrotta, “Estratto dal III volume del Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti contenente la voce: ‘Monodia,’” 175–­79. 63. Hill, Roman Monody, Cantata, and Opera, vol. 1, 57. 64. 1. Hercole Bottrigari, Il Desiderio or Concerning the Playing Together of Various Mu-

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sical Instruments; 2. Vincenzo Giustiniani, Discorso sopra la musica, both trans. Carol MacClintock (n.p.: American Institute of Musicology, 1962), 74; Nino Pirrotta, “Giustiniani, Vincenzo,” in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1949–­73), vol. 5, cols. 206–­8; Hill, Roman Monody, Cantata, and Opera, vol. 1, 110–­11. 65. Caccini, “Le nuove musiche [1602] Foreword,” in Strunk, Source Readings in Music History; Hill, Roman Monody, Cantata, and Opera, vol. 1, 60. 66. Howard Mayer Brown, “The Geography of Florentine Monody: Caccini at Home and Abroad,” Early Music 9.2 (1981): 147–­68. See also Brown’s contribution to Essays on Italian Music of the Cinquecento, ed. Richard Charteris et al. (Sydney: Frederick May Foundation for Italian Studies / University of Sydney, 1990), 16–­50, at 24, 44. 67. Hill, Roman Monody, Cantata, and Opera, 62, ex. 3.1. 68. Hill, 63, 65. For a different formulation of distinctions among Seicento genres of solo song and a different taxonomy, see Margaret Murata, “Image and Eloquence: Secular Song,” in Cambridge History of Seventeenth-­Century Music, ed. Tim Carter and John Butt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 378–­425. 69. Pirrotta, “Tragédie et comédie dans la Camerata fiorentina.” 70. Pirrotta, “Camerata Fiorentina,” Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, cols. 1563–­68; Brown, “The Geography,” 153–­54; Carter, “Rediscovering Il rapimento di Cefalo,” sec. 6.2–­6.3. 71. Maria Adelaide Bacherini Bartoli, “Giulio Caccini: Nuove fonti biografiche e lettere inedite,” Studi musicali 9.1 (1980): 59–­72, at 61. 72. Anthony M. Cummings, “Music for Medici Festivals: Some Additional Works Recovered,” Musica Disciplina 56 (2011): 275–­334; on the masques, see 279–­87 and nn. 10–­25. 73. Philippe Canguilhem, “Monodia e contrappunto a Firenze nel Cinquecento,” 25–­ 42, at 42. “Cipione delle palle” died in October 1569; see John Walter Hill, “Oratory Music in Florence, I: ‘Recitar Cantando,’ 1583–­1655,” Acta Musicologica 51.1 (1979): 108–­36, n. 11. 74. On Caccini’s role in the performance, see Tim Carter, “Giulio Caccini (1551–­1618): New Facts, New Music,” Studi musicali 15.1 (1987): 13–­31, at 18–­20. 75. Pirrotta, “Tragédie et comédie dans la Camerata fiorentina.” 76. Hill, Roman Monody, Cantata, and Opera, vol. 1, 80. Tim Carter reminds me that the monodies of Domenico Maria Melli (or Megli) were published virtually simultaneously with Caccini’s; see N. Fortune, “Melli [Megli], Domenico Maria” (1 January 2001), Grove Music Online, accessed 8 July 2019, https://​w ww​.oxfordmusiconline​.com​.ez​proxy​ .lafayette​.edu​/grovemusic​/view​/10​.1093​/gmo​/9781561592630​.001​.0001​/omo​-­­9 78​ 1561592630​-­­e​-­­0 000018341. 77. Pirrotta, “Estratto dal III volume del Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti contenente la voce: ‘Monodia,’” 175–­79. 78. Caccini, Le nuove musiche, ed. Hitchcock, 3 n. 10. A classic definition of “sprezzatura” is in Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier vol. 1, 26 (London: Penguin, 1967), 66–­68. 79. Caccini, Le nuove musiche, ed. Hitchcock, 8, 12. 80. Pirrotta, “Tragédie et comédie dans la Camerata fiorentina.” 81. Pirrotta, “Caccini,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo; Pirrotta, “Estratto dal III volume del Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti contenente la voce: ‘Monodia,’” 175–­79. 82. Pirrotta, “Estratto dal III volume del Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti contenente la voce: ‘Monodia,’” 175–­79. 83. Hill, Roman Monody, Cantata, and Opera, vol. 1, 122. 84. Walker, “Part One: Baroque Opera. I. Italy,” 16.

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85. Nino Pirrotta, “Intermedium,” vol. 6, cols. 1310–­26; Pirrotta, “Camerata Fiorentina,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, cols. 1563–­68. 86. In my review of Suzanne Cusick’s book on Francesca Caccini (American Historical Review [2011]), I overstated the extent of Bardi’s estrangement from the grand duke. His residence in Rome was interrupted by the return to Florence and his reconciliation with Ferdinando expressed in his involvement with the festivities of 1608. But I do offer the qualification advanced above in the text accompanying this note. See also Carter, “‘Per cagione di bene, et giustamente vivere,’” 137–­46, at 140. 87. Mario Fabbri, “La vera data di nascita di Ottavio Rinuccini,” in Le celebrazioni del 1963 e alcune nuove indagini sulla musica italiana del XVIII e XIX secolo, ed. Adelmo Damerini et al. (Florence: Olschki, 1963), 15–­17. 88. Carter, “Music and Patronage in Late Sixteenth-­Century Florence,” 57–­104, at 70–­ 71; and D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche, vol. 2. 89. Bardi, “Letter to G. B. Doni [1634],” in Strunk, Source Readings in Music History. 90. Strainchamps, “Music in a Florentine Confraternity,” at 162. 91. Bardi, “Letter to G. B. Doni,” in Strunk, Source Readings in Music History. On Corsi, see also Blocker, “The Accademia degli Alterati,” 80–­84. 92. John Walter Hill, “Florence: Musical Spectacle and Drama, 1570–­1650,” in The Early Baroque Era from the Late 16th Century to the 1660s, ed. Curtis Price (London: Macmillan, 1993), 121–­45, at 135; Nino Pirrotta, “Corsi, Jacopo,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, 9 vols. (Rome: Le Maschere, 1954–­62), vol. 3; Walker, “Part One: Baroque Opera. I. Italy,” 16. 93. See Tim Carter and Richard A. Goldthwaite, Orpheus in the Marketplace: Jacopo Peri and the Economy of Late Renaissance Florence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013); and my review in Journal of Seventeenth-­Century Music (2016). 94. Peri, “Euridice [1601], Foreword,” in Strunk, Source Readings in Music History. 95. Pirrotta, “Estratto dal III volume del Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti contenente la voce: ‘Monodia,’” 175–­79; Claude V. Palisca, “Musical Asides in the Diplomatic Correspondence of Emilio de’ Cavalieri,” Musical Quarterly 49.3 (1963): 339–­55; Pirrotta, “Tragédie et comédie dans la Camerata fiorentina,” 287–­97; Pirrotta, “Temperaments and Tendencies,” 169–­89; Pirrotta, “Camerata Fiorentina,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, vol. 3, cols. 1563–­68. 96. Carter, “Music and Patronage in Late Sixteenth-­Century Florence,” 57–­104, at 70. 97. Laura Riccò, Dalla zampogna all’aurea cetra: Egloghe, pastorali, favole in musica (Rome: Bulzoni, 2015), chap. 2. 98. Iodoco del Badia, “Storia d’Etichetta ovvero Diario di Corte (1599),” Miscellanea Fiorentina di Erudizione e Storia 2.22 (1900): 145–­60, at 146–­48; “A’ lettori,” and “Avvertimenti,” in Rappresentatione di anima et di corpo nuovamente posta in musica del signor Emilio del Cavaliere (Rome: Guidotti, 1600); Walker, “Part One: Baroque Opera. I. Italy,” 16, 19. 99. Hill, Roman Monody, Cantata, and Opera, 59 and n. 11. 100. For a new, revisionist treatment of these pastorals, see Riccò, Dalla zampogna all’aurea cetra. 101. Pirrotta, “Temperaments and Tendencies,” 178–­79. 102. Io. Baptistae Doni, “Trattato della musica scenica,” in Lyra Barberina, ed. Antonio Francesco Gori, 2 vols. (Florence: Caesareis, 1763), vol. 2, 1–­202, esp. 22. 103. On Kirkendale’s argument, see Emilio de’ Cavalieri, “Gentiluomo Romano” (Florence: Olschki, 2001). 104. Nino Pirrotta, “Rinuccini, Ottavio,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, 9 vols. (Rome:

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Le Maschere, 1954–­62), cols. 1003–­4, at col. 1003; Walker, “Part One: Baroque Opera. I. Italy,” 117. See also Carter and Fantappiè, Staging “Euridice,” 164–­65. 105. Nino Pirrotta, “Peri, Jacopo (detto Zazzerino),” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, 9 vols. (Rome: Le Maschere, 1954–­62), vol. 8, cols. 1–­3. 106. Pietro de’ Bardi, “Letter to G. B. Doni [1634],” in Strunk, Source Readings in Music History. 107. Emily Wilbourne, Seventeenth-­Century Opera and the Sound of the Commedia dell’Arte (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016). 108. Palisca, “Peri and the Theory of Recitative,” 455. 109. Bianconi, “Italy 3. Drama and Form: A Historical Outline,” in New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Stanley Sadie, 4 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1992), 846–­53, 857–­60. 110. Walker, “Part One: Baroque Opera. I. Italy,” 17; Thomas Walker, “Un appunto sul rapporto fra metrica e ritmo nelle opere italiane del tardo Seicento,” in L’edizione critica tra testo musicale e testo letterario, ed. Renato Borghi and Pietro Zappalà (Lucca: Liberia musicale italiana, 1995), 463–­69; Freitas, Portrait of a Castrato, 208. 111. Peri, “Euridice [1601], Foreword,” in Strunk, Source Readings in Music History; Walker, “Part One: Baroque Opera. I. Italy,” 16. 112. I have borrowed this example and the analysis from Palisca, Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought, 429–­32. 113. The translation is adapted from Jacopo Peri, Euridice, Ensemble Arpeggio, Roberto De Caro, Red Line 47276-­2 ([Reisen, Eitting]: Artsmusic e.K. [℗ 1992, © 1995]), 60–­61. 114. Palisca, Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought, 432. 115. Palisca, 432–­33. 116. Fantappiè, “Una primizia rinucciniana: La Dafne prima della ‘miglior forma,’” 17–­20. 117. Palisca, “Peri and the Theory of Recitative,” 461–­63. 118. Fantappiè, “Una primizia rinucciniana,” nn. 17–­21. 119. Pirrotta, “Peri, Jacopo (detto Zazzerino)”; Pirrotta, “Estratto dal III volume del Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti contenente la voce: ‘Monodia,’” 175–­79. See also Carter and Fantappiè, Staging “Euridice,” 165. 120. Palisca, “Peri and the Theory of Recitative,” 461–­63, 466; Pirrotta, “Estratto dal III volume del Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti contenente la voce: ‘Monodia,’” 175–­79. 121. Among the institutions that exemplify these tendencies was the Accademia degli Elevati, on which see Edmond Strainchamps, “New Light on the Accademia degli Elevati of Florence,” Musical Quarterly 62.4 (1976): 507–­35, at 507–­8, 510–­20, 522–­24, 526–­28, and 530–­33; Strainchamps, “The Sacred Music of Marco da Gagliano,” in Innocenti and Verdon, “Cantate Domino,” vol. 3, 147–­60, at 148; Marco da Gagliano, Responsori della Settimana Santa a 4 voci pari, introd. notes Mario Fabbri (Bologna: Forni, 1982), vii–­viii; David S. Butchart, I madrigali di Marco da Gagliano ([Florence]: Olschki, 1982), 28 n. 39; Emil Vogel, “Marco da Gagliano: Zur Geschichte des florentiner Musiklebens von 1570–­ 1650 (Forsetzung und Schluß),” Vierteljahrschrift für Musikwissenschaft 5.3 (1889): 509–­68, at 553; La Dafne di Marco da Gagliano nell’Accademia de gl’Elevati (Florence: Marescotti, 1608; Sala Bolognese: Arnoldo Forni, 1987); and Il qvinto libro de madrigali a cinqve voci. Di Marco da Gagliano nell’Accademia de gl’Elevati . . . (Venice: Angelo Gardano & Fratelli, [recte: 1608]). 122. Peri, “Euridice [1601], ‘Foreword.’”

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123. Hill, Roman Monody, Cantata, and Opera, vol. 1, 5, 20, 45, 47; Iodoco del Badia, “Storia d’Etichetta,” 145–­60, at 146, 148. I have attempted my own interpretation of the conflicting evidence as to the dates and chronology of the inaugural performances. For our purposes, this matter is secondary, since the principal concern is with the music; the one truly consequential matter is the fact of an initial private performance before select aficionados for their own enjoyment, followed by more formal performances for aristocrats and prominent ecclesiastical figures, perhaps in Palazzo Pitti. The relevant primary and secondary sources bearing on the question of dates and chronology are del Badia; Pietro de’ Bardi, “Letter to G. B. Doni [1634]”; Peri, “Euridice [1601], ‘Foreword’”; Ottavio Rinuccini, “Euridice [1600], ‘Dedication’” (these latter three titles all in Strunk, Source Readings in Music History); and La Dafne di Marco da Gagliano nell’Accademia de gl’Elevati l’Affannato rappresentata in Mantova, “ai lettori.” All of the relevant primary texts are quoted in O. G. Sonneck, “Dafne, the First Opera: A Chronological Study,” Sammelbände der internationalen Musikgesellschaft 15.1 (1913): 102–­10. The translations from the texts in Sonneck are my own unless otherwise noted. Among the secondary sources, see Tim Carter, “Correspondence: The First Printed Opera Libretto,” Music & Letters 59.4 (1978): 522–­23; Robert L. Weaver and Norma W. Weaver, A Chronology of Music in the Florentine Theater, 1590–­1750 (Detroit, MI: Information Coordinators, 1978), 87–­89. The indispensable source for any work on the Medici ducal and grand ducal musical establishment is Kirkendale, Court Musicians in Florence, where all the primary texts are assembled. The texts relevant to this particular discussion are also (more persuasively) interpreted in Tim Carter and Richard A. Goldthwaite, Orpheus in the Marketplace; see my review of their book in Journal of Seventeenth-­Century Music (2016). 124. Palisca, “Musical Asides in the Diplomatic Correspondence of Emilio de’ Cavalieri,” at 347; Sternfeld, “The First Printed Opera Libretto,” at 135–­36. On the dates of the performances of Dafne, see Carter and Fantappiè, Staging “Euridice,” 3–­4, 39 ff., 131, and 148. 125. Fantappiè, “Una primizia rinucciniana,” passim. 126. Frederick W. Sternfeld, “The First Printed Opera Libretto,” Music & Letters 59 (1978): 121–­38, at 123; William V. Porter, “Peri and Corsi’s ‘Dafne’: Some New Discoveries and Observations,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 18.2 (1965): 170–­96, at 174; Fantappiè, “Una primizia rinucciniana,” 220. 127. Porter, “Peri and Corsi’s ‘Dafne,’” 193. 128. William V. Porter, “A Central Source of Early Monody: Brussels, Conservatory 704 (II),” Studi musicali 13.1 (1984): 139–­67, at 145. 129. Porter, “Peri and Corsi’s ‘Dafne,’” 195. On this distinction, see Jette Barnholdt Hansen, “From Invention to Interpretation: The Prologues of the First Court Opera Where Oral and Written Cultures Meet,” Journal of Musicology 20.4 (2003): 556–­96. But is not what is argued just the reverse? Recitative is the expression of orality, as the remnants of Peri’s Dafne suggest. 130. Carter, “Music and Patronage in Late Sixteenth-­Century Florence: The Case of Jacopo Corsi (1561–­1602),” at 66. 131. Pirrotta, “Temperaments and Tendencies,” 184; Palisca, Music and Ideas in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 125. 132. See my review of Suzanne G. Cusick, Francesca Caccini at the Medici Court, American Historical Review (2011).

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133. Laura Riccò, Dalla zampogna all’aurea cetra, passim. 134. Claude V. Palisca, “The First Performance of Euridice,” in Studies in the History of Italian Music and Music Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 432–­51. A comprehensive new treatment of the first performance of Euridice is Carter and Fantappiè: Staging “Euridice.” I borrowed liberally from their presentation in advance of the publication of their book, which they kindly shared with me before it was published and which promises to be the decisive statement for many years. On other musical elements of the entire cycle of festivities, see Tim Carter, “Crossing the Boundaries: Sacred, Civic, and Ceremonial Space in Late Sixteenth-­and Early Seventeenth-­Century Florence,” in Innocenti and Verdon, “Cantate Domino,” vol. 3, 137–­46, at 145. 135. Blocker, “The Accademia degli Alterati,” 82 and n. 10. The recent scholarship by Carter and Fantappiè—­Staging “Euridice”—­has greatly improved our knowledge of the performance venue for Euridice; see 52, 57 (the caption to fig. 1.7), 58, 80. The entire matter was the subject of a recent exhibit: Florence and the Birth of Opera. Firenze e la nascita dell’opera. Fra documenti ritrovati e ricostruzioni virtuali . . . 3 aprile–­15 maggio 2019. Casa Buonarroti, Firenze, Via Ghibellina 70, ideazione e curatela Francesca Fantappiè (con la consulenza scientifica di. . . . Tim Carter), coordinamento organizzativo Elena Lombardi (curatrice dell’Archivio di Casa Buonarroti), multimedia e allestimento Massimiliano Pinucci, Gian Gabriele Bassanelli, Elena Degl’Innocenti (MBVision). 136. Palisca, “The First Performance.” 137. For a further interpretation of Euridice—­predictably sensitive and well informed—­see Kelley Harness, “Le tre Euridici: Characterization and Allegory in the Euridici of Peri and Caccini,” Journal of Seventeenth-­Century Music 9.1 (2003). Among the many, many virtues of Carter and Fantappiè’s Staging “Euridice” are the exquisite, evocative reconstructions of the proscenium, pastoral and Underworld sets, and mechanisms for raising and lowering the Underworld set, pp. 90, 95, 109, and 118, as well as the detailed description of the Underworld drawn from period testimony. 138. Jacopo Peri, “Euridice [1601], Foreword,” in Strunk, Source Readings in Music History. On the performers, see also Carter and Fantappiè, Staging “Euridice,” 54 ff., 139 ff. 139. Palisca, “Musical Asides,” 350–­51, 354; Carter, “Rediscovering Il rapimento di Cefalo,” sec. 2.5. Cavalieri held particular animus toward Rinuccini. 140. Palisca, “The First Performance,” 434 and n. 19. On the reactions to the performance, see also Carter and Fantappiè, Staging “Euridice,” 60. 141. Peri, “Euridice [1601], Foreword,” in Strunk, Source Readings in Music History; Blocker, “The Accademia degli Alterati,” 84; Palisca, “Musical Asides,” 349; Pirrotta, “Estratto dal III volume del Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti contenente la voce: ‘Monodia,’” 175–­79; Pirrotta, “Caccini,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, vol. 2, cols. 1447–­53; Palisca, “The First Performance,” 451. But for a more sympathetic consideration of the practice of a teacher’s substituting his own pupils, see Carter and Fantappiè, Staging “Euridice,” xii–­xiii, 59. 142. Caccini, preface to Nuove musiche e nuova maniera di scriverle (Florence, 1614); Pirrotta, “Estratto dal III volume del Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti contenente la voce: ‘Monodia’”; Sonneck, “Dafne, the First Opera: A Chronological Study,” at 103; Pirrotta, “Temperaments and Tendencies,” 183–­84; Angelo Solerti, Gli albori del melodramma (Milan: Sandron, [1903]), vol. 2, 191–­92. On this matter, see also Carter and Fantappiè, Staging “Euridice,” 45. 143. Caccini, “Euridice [1600] Dedication,” in Strunk, Source Readings in Music History; Pirrotta, “Caccini,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, vol. 2, cols. 1447–­53.

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144. Carter, “Rediscovering Il rapimento di Cefalo”; Pirrotta, “Intermezzo,” vol. 6, cols. 572–­76; Pirrotta, “Caccini,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, vol. 2, cols. 1447–­53; Palisca, “The First Performance,” 432–­51. 145. Blocker, “The Accademia degli Alterati,” 82. 146. Palisca, “The First Performance,” 438. 147. Feste e apparati medicei da Cosimo I a Cosimo II, ed. Giovanna Gaeta Bertelà and Annamaria Petrioli Tofani (Florence: Olschki, 1969), 97. 148. Carter, “Rediscovering Il rapimento di Cefalo,” sec. 1.1. 149. Molinari, Le nozze degli dei, chap. 3, “Gli intermezzi dopo il Melodramma.” 150. Carter, “Rediscovering Il rapimento di Cefalo,” abstract and sec. 1.2 and 1.3; Carter, “Non occorre nominare tanti musici,” 93–­94; Walker, “Part One: Baroque Opera. I. Italy,” 16–­17. 151. Carter, “Rediscovering Il rapimento di Cefalo,” sec. 4.1. 152. Carter, sec. 4.4. 153. Carter, sec. 4.4 154. Carter, sec. 4.2. 155. Feste e apparati medicei da Cosimo I a Cosimo II, 99–­100. 156. Nino Pirrotta, “Bati, Luca,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, 9 vols. (Rome: Le Maschere, 1954–­62), vol. 2, 46. 157. See Le nuove musiche, ed. Hitchcock (Madison, WI: A-­R Editions, 1970), the final chorus, for example, which features a recurring setting for vocal ensemble of the text “Ineffabil ardore,” framing three monodies embedded in it: “Muove sì dolce e sì suave,” “Caduca fiamma,” and “Qual trascorrendo,” sung at the performance by Melchiorre Palantrotti, Jacopo Peri, and Francesco Rasi. 158. Pirrotta, “Intermezzo,” vol. 6, cols. 572–­76. 159. Carter, “Rediscovering Il rapimento di Cefalo,” sec. 6.1. 160. Harness, Echoes of Women’s Voices, 58. 161. Carter, “Rediscovering Il rapimento di Cefalo,” sec. 7.2; Walker, “Part One: Baroque Opera. I. Italy,” 18. 162. Molinari, Le nozze degli dei, illus. 11–­17. 163. Paolo Carpeggiani, “Studi sul Gabriele Bertazzolo: I. Le feste fiorentine del 1608,” Civilità Mantovana 12 (1978): 14–­56, at 15. 164. Tim Carter, “A Florentine Wedding of 1608,” Acta Musicologica 55.1 (1983): 89–­ 107, at 89–­90; Carpeggiani, “Studi sul Gabriele Bertazzolo,” passim; Victor Coelho, liner notes to La notte d’amore: Musica per le nozze di Cosimo II Medici and Maria Maddalena of Austria, Il Complesso Barocco, Dulcimer Stradivarius STR 33636 (Cologno Monzese: Milano Dischi, © ℗ 2003); Coelho, “Public Works and Private Contexts: Lorenzo Allegri and the Florentine Intermedi of 1608,” in Luths et luthistes en Occident, ed. J. Dugot (Paris: Klincksieck, 1999), 121–­32; Federico Ghisi, “Ballet Entertainments in Pitti Palace, Florence, 1608– ­1625,” Musical Quarterly 35.3 (1949): 421–­36. See also Carter and Fantappiè, Staging “Euridice,” 202. 165. Carter, “A Florentine Wedding,” 94. 166. Carter, 91. 167. Pirrotta, “Intermedium,” vol. 6, cols. 1310–­26; Angelo Solerti, Musica, ballo e drammatica alla corte medicea dal 1600 al 1637 (Florence: Bemporad & Figlio, 1905), 261–­79. 168. Carter, “A Florentine Wedding,” 102–­3; Pirrotta, “Intermedium,” vol. 6, cols. 1310–­26; Ghisi, “Ballet Entertainments,” 423; Hill, Roman Monody, Cantata, and Opera,

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47; Edmond Strainchamps, “Marco da Gagliano in 1608: Choices, Decisions, and Consequences,” Journal of Seventeenth-­Century Music 6.1 (2000): sec. 8.2. 169. Carter, “Rediscovering Il rapimento di Cefalo,” sec. 6.7. 170. Strainchamps, “Marco da Gagliano in 1608: Choices, Decisions, and Consequences,” sec. 8.3. 171. But see Coelho, liner notes to La notte d’amore. 172. Il givdizio di Paride. Favola del s. Michelagnolo Bvonarroti. Rappresentata nelle felicißime nozze del sereniss. Cosimo Medici principe di Toscana e della seren. principessa Maria Maddalena (Florence: i Sermartelli, 1608), 40–­41, “coro . . . Il fine del terzo atto.” 173. Federico Ghisi, “An Early Seventeenth Century MS. with Unpublished Italian Monodic Music by Peri, Giulio Romano and Marco da Gagliano,” Acta Musicologica 20 (1948): 46–­60, at 46. 174. Ghisi, “Ballet Entertainments,” 425; Margaret Murata, “‘Singing,’ ‘Acting,’ and ‘Dancing’ in Vocal Chamber Music of the Early Seicento,” Journal of Seventeenth-­Century Music 9.1 (2003). 175. Descrizione delle feste fatte nelle reali nozze de’ serenissimi principi di Toscana d. Cosimo de’ Medici, e Maria Maddalena arciduchessa d’Avstria (Florence: i Guinti, 1608), 44 (my translation is free and abbreviated); Marco da Gagliano, Music for One, Two and Three Voices (1615), Part 2, ed. Putnam Aldrich (Bryn Mawr, PA: Theodore Presser, 1972), vol. 2, 2–­3; Carpeggiani, “Studi sul Gabriele Bertazzolo,” fig. 3, Intermedio Quinto di Vulcano; Feste e apparati medicei da Cosimo I a Cosimo II (fig. 28); Coelho, liner notes to La notte d’amore, 15. 176. Weaver and Weaver, A Chronology of Music, 97; Giuseppe Baccini, Notizie di alcune commedie sacre in Firenze nel secolo XVII (Florence: Libreria Dante, 1889). See also John Walter Hill, “Le relazioni di Antonio Cesti con la corte e i teatri di Firenze,” Rivista italiana di musicologia 11.1 (1976): 27–­47, at 32. 177. Pirrotta, “Intermedium,” vol. 6, cols. 1310–­26. 178. Orfeo dolente / Mvsica di Domenico Belli diviso in cinqve intermedi con li quali il signor Vgo Rinaldi ha rappresentato l’aminta fauola boschereccia del signor Torquato Tasso (Venice: Amadino, 1616); Antonio Tirabassi, “The Oldest Opera: Belli’s Orfeo Dolente,” Musical Quarterly 25.1 (1939): 26–­33, at 28; Solerti, Musica, ballo e drammatica, 375. 179. Pirrotta, “Intermedium,” vol. 6, cols. 1310–­26. 180. In what follows, I am drawing heavily from excellent unpublished research by Francesca Fantappiè. 181. Solerti, Musica, ballo e drammatica, 375–­91. 182. Tirabassi, “The Oldest Opera: Belli’s Orfeo Dolente,” facsimile printed between pp. 26 and 27. 183. On La Flora, see Gagliano, La Flora, ed. Suzanne Court (Middleton, WI: A-­R Editions, 2011), ix–­x , from which I have borrowed liberally. 184. Molinari, Le nozze degli dei, illus. 30–­33. 185. Pirrotta, “Gagliano, Marco (Zanobi) da,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, 9 vols. (Rome: Le Maschere, 1954–­62), vol. 5, cols. 817–­18, at col. 817; Marco da Gagliano, Responsori della Settimana Santa a 4 voci pari, viii. 186. La Dafne di Marco da Gagliano nell’Accademia de gl’Elevati l’Affannato rappresentata in Mantova; Marco da Gagliano, Responsori della Settimana Santa a 4 voci pari, vii– ­viii. 187. La regina Sant Orsola del sig[nor]. Andrea Saluadori. Rappresentata nel Teatro del sereniss[imo]. gran dvca di Toscana. Al serenissimo principe Vladislao Sigismondo principe di

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Polonia, e di Suezia . . . ([Florence]: [Cecconcelli], [1625]), 16: “Le Musiche furono del Sig. Marco da Gagliano. . . . L’abbattimento e’l Ballo del Signor Agnolo Ricci.” Blumenthal, Theater Art, 136, reproduces an etching of the scenery for act 1. 188. Gagliano, La Flora, ed. Court, x. 189. Pirrotta, “Gagliano, Marco (Zanobi) da.” 190. Cummings, Nino Pirrotta, 179, quoting Pirrotta, “Tre capitoli su Cesti,” in La scuola romana: G. Carissimi—­A . Cesti—­M. Marazzoli (Siena: Ticci, 1953), 27–­79. 191. Gagliano, La Flora, ed. Court, x. 192. Blumenthal, Theater Art, 146–­48, reproduces etchings of the scenery for acts 1/2, 4/finale, and 5/finale. 193. Kelley Harness, “‘La Flora’ and the End of Female Rule in Tuscany,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 51.3 (1998): 437–­76; Harness, Echoes of Women’s Voices, chap. 6; see also Harness’s appendix to the chapter, which contains revealing illustrative excerpts from the music. See also Gagliano, La Flora, ed. Court, ix–­x. 194. Walker, “Part One: Baroque Opera. I. Italy,” 18. 195. Molinari, Le nozze degli dei, illus. 62–­68; Le nozze degli dei favola dell ab’ Gio. Carlo Coppola rappresentata in musica in Firenze nelle reali nozze de sereniss[i].mi gran duchi di Toschana Ferdinando II e Vittoria principessa d’Vrbino (Florence: Amadore Massi, e Lorenzo Landi, 1637). 196. Walker, “Part One: Baroque Opera. I. Italy,” 18. Many of the principal contemporary accounts are published in Solerti, Musica, ballo e drammatica, 197–­211. 197. Pirrotta, “Gagliano, Marco (Zanobi) da,” cols. 817–­18; Gagliano, La Flora, ed. Court, ix. 198. Weaver and Weaver, A Chronology of Music, 113. 199. Weaver and Weaver, 114. 200. Bianconi, Music in the Seventeenth Century, 172. Blumenthal, Theater Art, reproduces the title page of the libretto and etchings of the scenery for the prologue and acts 1/2, 2/3, 3/2, 4/5, 5/1, and 5/2: pp. 161, 163, 165–­66, 170–­71, 173–­74, 176. 201. Paul Nettl, “Equestrian Ballets of the Baroque Period,” Musical Quarterly 19.1 (1933): 74–­83, at 77; Kelley Harness, “Laboring for Hercules: Constructing a Horse Ballet in Mid-­Seventeenth-­Century Florence” (paper presented at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society); Blumenthal, Theater Art, 178, reproduces an etching of the ballet. 202. Bianconi, Music in the Seventeenth Century, 172. See also Solerti, Musica, ballo e drammatica; and Françoise Decroisette, “Un exemple d’administration des théâtres au XVIIème siècle: Le Théâtre de la Pergola à Florence (1652–­1662),” in Arts du spectacle et histoire des idées: Recueil offert en hommage à Jean Jacquot (Tours: Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance, 1984), 73–­90, at 73. 203. Eric Cochrane, “The Transition from Renaissance to Baroque: The Case of Italian Historiography,” History and Theory 19.1 (1980): 21–­38. 204. Nathaniel Burt, “Opera in Arcadia,” Musical Quarterly 41.2 (1955): 145–­70.

Chapter 16 1. Frederick Hammond, “Musicians at the Medici Court in the Mid-­Seventeenth Century,” Analecta Musicologica 14 (1974): 151–­69, at 156. 2. Frank A. D’Accone, “Marco da Gagliano and the Florentine Tradition of Holy Week

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Music,” in Music and Musicians in 16th-­Century Florence (Aldershot: Ashgate/Variorum, 2007), vol. 6, 1–­27, at 3 and 14. 3. D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche; John Walter Hill, “The Musical Chapel of the Florence Cathedral in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century: Vitali, Comparini, Sapiti, Cerri,” in Innocenti and Verdon, “Cantate Domino,” vol. 3, 175–­94, at 183–­88. 4. Frank A. D’Accone, “The Sources of Luca Bati’s Sacred Music at the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore,” in Essays on Italian Music in the Cinquecento, Altro Polo (Sydney: Frederick May Foundation for Italian Studies / University of Sydney, 1990), 159–­71, at 159; Piero Gargiulo, Luca Bati, Madrigalista Fiorentino: Con l’edizione moderna del “Secondo libro de madrigali a cinque voci” (1598) (Florence: Olschki, 1991), passim; and Federico Ghisi, “Luca Bati maestro della Cappella Granducale di Firenze,” Revue belge de musicologie 8.2–­4 (1954): 106–­8, at 106. 5. D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche. 6. D’Accone, “The Sources of Luca Bati’s Sacred Music,” 161. 7. D’Accone, 170. 8. D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche. 9. Edmond Strainchamps, “Marco da Gagliano in 1608: Choices, Decisions, and Consequences,” Journal of Seventeenth-­Century Music 6.1 (2000), secs. 3.3, 10.1. 10. Strainchamps, “Marco da Gagliano and the Compagnia dell’Arcangelo Raffaello in Florence: An Unknown Episode in the Composer’s Life,” in Essays Presented to Myron P. Gilmore, 2 vols. (Florence: Nuova Italia, 1978), vol. 2, 473–­87, at 473, quoting Emil Vogel. 11. Strainchamps, “The Sacred Music of Marco da Gagliano,” in Innocenti and Verdon, “Cantate Domino,” vol. 3, 147–­60, at 148. On Gagliano as Bati’s protégé, see Nino Pirrotta, “Bati, Luca,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, vol. 2, 46; Mario Fabbri and Enzo Settesoldi, “Aggiunte e rettifiche alle biografie di Marco e Giovanni Battista da Gagliano: Il luogo e le date di nascita e di morte dei due fratelli musicisti,” Chigiana, n.s., 1 (1964): 131–­42. 12. Strainchamps, “The Sacred Music of Marco da Gagliano,” 147. 13. Strainchamps, 149; Nigel Fortune, “Italian Secular Monody from 1600 to 1635: An Introductory Survey,” Musical Quarterly 39.2 (1953): 171–­95, at 186. But see now Antonella d’Ovidio, “Patronage, Sacrality and Power at the Court of Vittoria della Rovere: Antonio Veracini’s Op. 1 Trio Sonatas,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 135.2 (2010): 281–­ 314, at 293–­94. 14. Strainchamps, “Marco da Gagliano in 1608,” secs. 3.3, 10.1; Strainchamps, “The Sacred Music of Marco da Gagliano,” at 148; Hammond, “Musicians at the Medici Court in the Mid-­Seventeenth Century,” at 156; Gagliano, Responsori della Settimana Santa a 4 voci pari, vii– ­viii. 15. D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche. 16. D’Accone, 1, 16; and Bernardo Pisano and Marco da Gagliano, Music for Holy Week, ed. Frank A. D’Accone and Thomas MacCracken (Muenster: American Institute of Musicology, 2018). 17. Marco da Gagliano, Responsori della Settimana Santa a 4 voci pari, ix. 18. Gagliano, x–­xi. 19. Gagliano, xi. 20. Strainchamps, “The Sacred Music of Marco da Gagliano,” 147; Hill, “The Musical Chapel of the Florence Cathedral”; Fabbri and Settesoldi, “Aggiunte e rettifiche.” 21. Hill, “The Musical Chapel of the Florence Cathedral,” 177–­78.

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22. Hill, 178–­79. 23. Hill, 179–­80. 24. Stefano Lorenzetti, “Un ‘huomo valentissimo nella professione dell’insegnare e comporre in musica’: Pietro Sanmartini maestro di capella in Santa Maria del Fiore (1686–­ 1700),” in Innocenti and Verdon, “Cantate Domino,” vol. 3, 219–­45, at 236–­42. 25. Lorenzetti, 180–­81. 26. D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche. 27. Hill, “Musical Chapel,” 185, 188. 28. Hill, Baroque Music: Music in Western Europe, 1580–­1750, 95. 29. Del concerto degli stromenti a quattro di Giovammaria Casini sacerdote fiorentino organista e cappellano del duomo di Firenze in accompagnamento de’ responsi della Settimana Santa a quattro voci da lui composti e pubblicati in Firenze l’anno 1706. All’illustrissimo e clarissismo sig . . . Pietro Capponi maestro di camera della serenissima principessa di Toscana. Opera terza (Florence: Bindi, n.d. [1706]); Fabbri, “Giovanni Maria Casini: ‘Musico dell’umana espressione’: Contributo su documenti originali,” Studien zur Musikwissenschaft 25 (1962): 135–­59, at 151. 30. Fabbri, “Giovanni Maria Casini,” 152; original emphasis. 31. Gagliano, Responsori della Settimana Santa a 4 voci pari, ix–­x. 32. Gagliano, x. 33. Frank A. D’Accone, “Repertory and Performance Practice in Santa Maria Novella at the Turn of the 17th Century,” in A Festschrift for Albert Seay (Colorado Springs: Colorado College, 1982), 71–­136. 34. Harness, Echoes of Women’s Voices, 224–­25, at 241. 35. John Walter Hill, “Casini, Giovanni Maria,” Grove Music Online, accessed 9 June 2018, https://​w ww​.oxford​musiconline​.com​.ezproxy​.lafayette​.edu​/grovemusic​/view​/10​ .1093​/gmo​/978​1561592630​.001​.0001​/omo​-­­9781561592630​-­­e​-­­0 000005091. On what follows on Casini, see esp. Danilo Prefumo, liner notes, Giovanni Maria Casini, Il viaggio di Tobia, Diego Fasolis—­I Barocchisti / Coro della Radiotelevisione Svizzera, Dynamic CDS 7705/1-­2 (Genoa: Dynamic, © ℗ 2015), 5–­11, at 8–­9. 36. Frederick Hammond, Girolamo Frescobaldi (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 73, 76. 37. Fabbri, “Giovanni Maria Casini,” 138, 140, 136, 142–­44, 147; Mario Fabbri, “Francesco Feroci nella scuola organistica fiorentina del XVIII secolo,” Chigiana 19 (1962): 145–­ 60, at 147; Feroci, Opere per organo, ed. Armando Carideo, 6 vols. (Bologna: Ut Orpheus Edizioni, 1997–­), vol. 1, ix–­xv. 38. Fabbri, “Giovanni Maria Casini,” 153. 39. Fabbri, “Francesco Feroci nella scuola organistica fiorentina del XVIII secolo,” passim. For more on Feroci, see Opere per organo, vol. 1, ix–­xv; and Gabriele Giacomelli and Enzo Settesoldi, Gli organi di S. Maria del Fiore di Firenze: Sette secoli di storia dal ’300 al ’900 (Florence: Olschki, 1993). 40. Fabbri, “Francesco Feroci.” 41. Fabbri. 42. I have not included sections on instrumental music for religious ceremonies, on which see Jean Grundy Fanelli, “In Praise of Man: Voices and Instruments for Cathedral Celebrations in the Late Baroque (1681–­1741),” in Innocenti and Verdon, “Cantate Domino,” vol. 3, 247–­58. 43. Molinari, Le nozze degli dei, chap. 4, “L’Opera-­torneo.” 44. “Equestrian Ballets of the Baroque Period.” Kelley Harness is completing a mono-

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graph on the equestrian ballet, which promises to be foundational. See now chap. 5 in Harness’s Echoes of Women’s Voices: Music, Art, and Female Patronage in Early Modern Florence. See also Ralph P. Locke, “Music, Horses, and Exotic Others: Early-­Modern Processions, Tournaments, and Pageants,” Music & Politics 11.1 (2017): 1–­25. Illuminating cross-­cultural comparisons are afforded by Kate van Orden’s Music, Discipline, and Arms in Early Modern France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 45. See also Anthony M. Cummings, “On the Testimony of Fragments (or, Alessandro Striggio the Elder and the Genesis of the Genere Concitato),” Studi musicali, n.s., 4.1 (2013): 39–­60. 46. Feste e apparati medicei da Cosimo I a Cosimo II, 142. 47. Nettl, “Equestrian Ballets,” 75; Ghisi, “Ballet Entertainments in Pitti Palace, Florence, 1608–­1625,” at 434. 48. Feste e apparati medicei da Cosimo I a Cosimo II, 142, figs. 43 and 44; Blumenthal, Theater Art, reproduces etchings of the scenery and a pen and ink sketch of an Indian soldier escorting the chariot of the Queen of India: pp. 96, 98–­99, 101. 49. La liberazione di Rvggiero dall’isola d’Alcina balletto rapp[resenta].to in musica all ser[enissi].mo Ladislao Sigismondo principe di Polonia e di Suezia: Nella villa imp[eria].le della sereniss[i].ma arcid[uche]:ssa d’Austria gran. duch[es].sa di Toscana (Florence: Pietro Cecconcelli, 1625); Walker, “Part One: Baroque Opera. I. Italy,” 18; Molinari, Le nozze degli dei, illus. 26–­29. See now Christine Fischer, ed., La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina: Räume und Inszenierungen in Francesca Caccinis Ballettoper (Florenz, 1645) (Zurich: Chronos Verlag, 2015), which contains important essays by Suzanne Cusick (“Gender, Politics, and Gender Politics in La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina”); Kelley Harness (“‘Nata à maneggi & essercizii grandi’: Archduchess Maria Magdalena and Equestrian Entertainments in Florence, 1608–­1625”); and others. And see Suzanne G. Cusick’s all-­ important Francesca Caccini at the Medici Court: Music and the Circulation of Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 191–­246; Cummings, review of Cusick’s book in American Historical Review (2011); and Harness, Echoes of Women’s Voices, chap. 5, esp. 152–­62 and the appendix to her chapter, which presents revealing excerpts from the music for the ballet. Blumenthal, Theater Art, 139–­42, reproduces etchings of the scenery for the prologue, the first two scenes, and the equestrian ballet. 50. Nettl, “Equestrian Ballets,” 76. 51. Nettl, 75 and n. 1; Kelley Harness, “Laboring for Hercules: Constructing a Horse Ballet in Mid-­Seventeenth-­Century Florence,” 294. For contemporary depictions of the festivities for the wedding, see Il mondo festeggiante balletto a cavallo fatto nel teatro congiunto al palazzo del sereniss. gran dvca, per le reali nozze de’ serenissimi principi Cosimo terzo di Toscana, e Margherita Lvisa d’Orleans (Florence: nella Stamperia di S.A.S., 1661), between pp. 16 and 17, 26 and 27, and 40 and 41. 52. Hill, “Le relazioni di Antonio Cesti,” 27–­47, at 37. 53. Phyllis Dearborn Massar, “Costume Drawings by Stefano della Bella for the Florentine Theater,” Master Drawings 8.3 (1970): 258; Decroisette, “Les fêtes du mariage de Cosme III avec Marguerite Louise d’Orléans à Florence, 1661,” in Les fêtes de la Renaissance 3 (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique), 421–­36, pls. I and II (between pp. 424 and 425); Barbara Sparti, “Hercules Dancing in Thebes, in Pictures and Words,” in Dance, Dancers, and Dance-­Masters in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, ed. Gloria Giordano and Alessandro Pontremoli (Bologna: Massimiliano Piretti, 2015), 368. Blumenthal, Theater Art, 196–­97, reproduces etchings of the ballet. On the preparatory designs for the engravings of Il mondo festeggiante, see Decroisette, “La sopravvivenza dell’idea

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rinascimentale della festa negli allestimenti teatrali fiorentini degli anni 1656–­1661,” in The Renaissance Theatre: Texts, Performance, and Design, ed. C. Cairns (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), vol. 2, 61–­84, at 67.

Chapter 17 1. Franco Piperno, “I. Opera Production to 1780,” in Opera Production and Its Resources, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 9. For this entire section, until the account of the 1645 performance of La finta pazza, I also found helpful Decroisette, “La sopravvivenza dell’idea rinascimentale della festa negli allestimenti teatrali fiorentini degli anni 1656–­1661.” But on the term and concept “court opera,” in particular, as they may or may not be relevant to Florence, see Carter and Fantappiè, Staging “Euridice,” 205–­6. Carter and Fantappiè observe that although Medici did not entirely abandon opera, as my chapter 15 documents (e.g., La Flora), what scholars have termed “court opera” (perhaps wrongly) and similar entertainments in this period tended to move (or return) primarily to private households, whether of princes, rather than (grand) dukes, or patricians (e.g., Orfeo dolente). 2. See also Hammond, Girolamo Frescobaldi, 71. But for a qualification, see Mamone, “Most Serene Brothers-­Princes-­Impresarios: Theater in Florence under the Management and Protection of Mattias, Giovan Carlo, and Leopoldo de’ Medici,” sec. 1.2. 3. Robert L. Weaver, “Opera in Florence: 1646–­1731,” in Studies in Musicology: Essays in the History, Style, and Bibliography of Music in Memory of Glen Haydon, ed. James W. Pruett (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 60–­71, at 64–­65. 4. For this entire, post-­1637 phase of Florentine operatic traditions, see Molinari, Le nozze degli dei, chap. 9, “I nuovi spettacoli di Firenze.” 5. Weaver and Weaver, A Chronology of Music, 113, the introduction, and the entries at the proper chronological point. 6. Bianconi and Walker, “Dalla Finta pazza alla Veremonda,” 402 and n. 104; Sara Mamone, Mattias de’ Medici serenissimo mecenate dei virtuosi: Notizie di spettacolo nei carteggi medicei. Carteggio di Mattias de’ Medici (1629–­1667) (Florence: Le Lettere, 2013), 137; Nicola Michelassi, “La finta pazza a Firenze: Commedie ‘spagnole’ e ‘veneziane’ nel teatro di Baldracca (1641–­1665),” Studi Secenteschi 41 (2007): 313–­53 passim, esp. 317, 328–­ 29; Nicola Michelassi, “La finta pazza di Giulio Strozzi: Un dramma incognito in giro per l’Europa (1641–­1652),” in Gli incogniti e l’Europa (Bologna: Emil di Odoya, 2011), 145–­208, at 174; and Anna Maria Evangelista, “Le compagnie dei Comici dell’Arte nel teatrino di Baldracca a Firenze: Notizie dagli epistolari (1576–­1653),” Quaderni di Teatro 6.24 (1984): 50–­72. Indispensable information on the titles mentioned from this point on is to be found in Weaver and Weaver, A Chronology of Music; and Claudio Sartori, I libretti italiani a stampa dalle origini al 1800, 7 vols. (Cuneo: Bertola & Locatelli, 1990–­94). 7. Eugene J. Johnson, Inventing the Opera House (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 115–­18. 8. Fantappiè, “Accademie teatrali fiorentine nel quartiere di Santa Croce tra Sei e Settecento: Tra attori dilettanti, gioco d’azzardo e primi tentativi impresariali,” Annali di storia di Firenze 3 (2008): 147–­93, at 150, has a map showing the location of the Dogana Theater. 9. Evangelista, “Le compagnie dei Comici dell’Arte.” For a revealing reconstruction of the Baldracca theater, see Marco Sperenzi and Elvira Garbero Zorzi, eds., Teatro e spettacolo nella Firenze dei Medici: Modelli dei luoghi teatrali (Florence: Olschki, [2001]), Tav. X and Tav. XI.

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10. Fantappiè, “‘Angelina senese’ alias Angela Signorini Nelli. Vita artistica di un’attrice nel Seicento italiano: Dal Don Giovanni ai libertini,” Bullettino Senese di Storia Patria 116 (2009): 212–­67. 11. Evangelista, “Le compagnie dei Comici dell’Arte,” 57. 12. Alessandro Ademollo, I primi fasti del teatro di via della Pergola in Firenze (1657–­ 1661) (Milan: Ricordi, [1885?]); Michelassi, “Il teatro del Cocòmero di Firenze: Uno stanzone per tre accademie (1651–­1665),” Studi Secenteschi 40 (1999): 149–­86. The academy of the Concordi/Immobili is the subject of an article in progress by Dott.ssa Francesca Fantappiè, which promises to be an extremely important contribution. 13. Decroisette, “Un exemple,” 86–­87. Dott.ssa Francesca Fantappiè reminds me of the careful distinction to be made between the earlier phases of activity of the Concordi/ Immobili, when the academicians devoted themselves to the “study of chivalric practices,” and the later phases, when the organization become more of a theatrical company. 14. Decroisette, 75–­76, 83 n. 28. 15. Decroisette, 83 n. 28. 16. Michelassi, “Il teatro del Cocòmero,” 153; see also Lionello Puppi, “Il teatro fiorentino degli Immobili e la rappresentazione nel 1658 dell’Ipermestra del Tacca,” in Studi sul teatro veneto fra Rinascimento ed età barocca, ed. Maria Teresa Muraro (Florence: Olschki, 1971), 171–­92; 174, figs. 90–­102. 17. Decroisette, “La sopravvivenza dell’idea rinascimentale della festa negli allestimenti teatrali fiorentini degli anni 1656–­1661,” 63. 18. Decroisette, “Un exemple,” 83 n. 28. 19. Decroisette, 76. 20. Decroisette, 86–­87. 21. Decroisette, 87–­88. 22. Freitas, Portrait of a Castrato, 66–­67; Michelassi, “La finta pazza a Firenze: Commedie ‘spagnole’ e ‘veneziane’ nel teatro di Baldracca (1641–­1665),” 316. 23. Ademollo, I primi fasti del teatro di via della Pergola, 4 n. 1. See also Massar, “Costume Drawings by Stefano della Bella for the Florentine Theater,” Master Drawings 8.3 (1970): 243–­66 and 297–­317, at 245; Weaver, “Opera in Florence,” 62; and Holmes, Opera Observed, between pp. 150 and 151. 24. Decroisette, “Un exemple,” 85 n. 41, 87–­88; Ademollo, I primi fasti del teatro di via della Pergola. 25. Johnson, Inventing the Opera House, 238–­43. 26. See Elvira Garbero Zorzi’s contribution to Lo “spettacolo maraviglioso”: Il Teatro della Pergola: L’opera a Firenze, ed. Marcello de Angelis et al. (Florence: Polistampa, 2000). 27. Puppi, “Il teatro fiorentino degli Immobili,” 172. See also Decroisette, “Une exemple,” 87–­88. 28. Massar, “Costume Drawings by Stefano della Bella for the Florentine Theater,” 246. 29. Puppi, “Il teatro fiorentino degli Immobili,” 176. 30. Puppi, 187–­88. 31. Decroisette, “Un exemple,” 81. 32. Hipermestra festa teatrale rappresentata dal serenissm. principe cardinale Gio. Carlo di Toscana per celebrare il giorno natalizio del real principe di Spagna (Florence: Nella stamperia di S.A.S., 1658). 33. Nicola Michelassi, “Memorie dal sottopalco: Giovan Carlo de’ Medici e il primo teatro della Pergola (1652–­1663),” Studi Secenteschi 43 (2002): 347–­55, at 353–­54. See also Decroisette, “Une exemple,” 82 n. 25.

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34. Holmes, Opera Observed, between pp. 150 and 151. See also Jacopo Melani, Il potestà di Colognole, ed. James Leve (Middleton, WI: A-­R Editions, 2005), pl. V; and Blumenthal, Theater Art, 192. 35. Massar, “Costume Drawings,” 245–­46; Hill, “Le relazioni di Antonio Cesti,” 31; Weaver, “Opera in Florence,” 61–­62; Michelassi, “La finta pazza a Firenze,” 316; Decroisette, “Un exemple,” 77 and 88. 36. The Immobili produced an additional three comedies and two melodramas between 1657 and 1661, the latter of which were by Giovanni Andrea Moniglia and Francesco Cavalli, L’Hipermestra (Florence: St[amperia]. della S.A.S., 1658), and Moniglia and Jacopo Melani, Ercole in Tebe (Florence: Stamperia di S.A.S., 1661), in two editions, one with four plates and a descrizione by Alessandro Segni. 37. Weaver and Weaver, A Chronology of Music, 118–­19. The Weavers are here revising the presentation offered earlier by Weaver in “Opera in Florence,” 62. See also Michelassi, “La finta pazza a Firenze,” 317. The academy of the Sorgenti is now the subject of an article in progress by Dott.ssa Francesca Fantappiè, which promises to be an extremely important contribution. She especially considers the academy after its rebirth in 1680. 38. Michelassi, “Il teatro del Cocòmero,” 163–­65. 39. On the material in the foregoing three paragraphs, see Michelassi, “Il teatro del Cocòmero,” 167, 169–­70, 172–­73, 175–­76, 182. See also Fantappiè, “Accademie teatrali fiorentine nel quartiere di Santa Croce,” 168. 40. Puppi, “Il teatro fiorentino degli Immobili,” 174. 41. Massar, “Costume Drawings,” 244. 42. Weaver, “Opera in Florence,” 62. 43. William C. Holmes, “The Teatro della Pergola in Florence: Its Administration, Its Building, and Its Audiences,” in Musica Franca: Essays in Honor of Frank D’Accone (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1996), 259–­82, at 260. 44. For what follows, see Hill, “Le relazioni di Antonio Cesti,” at 31, 35–­36. 45. Holmes, “The Teatro della Pergola in Florence,” 261. 46. Michelassi, “Il teatro del Cocòmero,” 171. 47. Piperno, “I. Opera Production to 1780,” at 21. 48. Holmes, “The Teatro della Pergola in Florence,” 261. 49. Holmes, 262. 50. Holmes, 262; Michelassi, “La finta pazza a Firenze,” 317. 51. Michelassi, “La finta pazza a Firenze,” 317. 52. Michelassi, “Memorie dal sottopalco,” 351. 53. Michelassi, 351–­52. 54. Mamone, “Most Serene Brothers-­Princes-­Impresarios,” sec. 4.1. 55. Mamone, Mattias de’ Medici serenissimo mecenate dei virtuosi; Alessandra Maretti, “Dal teatro del principe alla scena dei virtuosi. Indicazioni sul mecenatismo di Mattias de’ Medici (1629–­1666),” Medioevo e Rinascimento: Annuario del Dipartimento di Studi sul Medioevo e il Rinascimento dell’Università di Firenze, n.s., 6 (1992): 195–­209. 56. Michelassi, “Memorie dal sottopalco,” 347–­55. 57. Bianconi and Walker, “Dalla Finta pazza alla Veremonda,” 435; Michelassi, “La finta pazza a Firenze,” 325. 58. Alessandro Ademollo, I primi fasti della musica italiana a Parigi: 1645–1662 (Milan: R. Stabilimento Musicale Ricordi, 1884), 99, 103–­5; Michelassi, “La finta pazza a Firenze,” 327. 59. Mamone, “Most Serene Brothers-­Princes-­Impresarios,” sec. 4.8.

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60. Bianconi and Walker, “Dalla Finta pazza alla Veremonda,” 443 n. 260. 61. P. Besutti, “Costa, Anna Francesca” (2002), Grove Music Online, accessed 5 August 2019, https://​w ww​.oxfordmusiconline​.com​.ezproxy​.lafayette​.edu​/grovemusic​/view​/10​ .1093​/gmo​/978​1561592630​.001​.0001​/omo​-­­9781561592630​-­­e​-­­5000006274. 62. Henry Prunières, L’opera italien en France avant Lulli (Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion. Édouard Champion, 1913), 81 and n. 3, 82 and n. 3, 82 and n. 4, and 83 and n. 5; Michelassi, “La finta pazza di Giulio Strozzi,” 174. 63. On Sardelli and her Medici patrons, see also Mamone, “Most Serene Brothers-­ Princes-­Impresarios,” sec. 5 generally, esp. sec. 5.4 and 5.11. 64. Mamone, sec. 5.2. 65. Mamone, sec. 4.5. 66. Freitas, Portrait of a Castrato, 1, 230. 67. Mamone, “Most Serene Brothers-­Princes-­Impresarios,” sec. 4.8 and 5.1. 68. Freitas, Portrait of a Castrato, 46–­47. 69. Hill, “Le relazioni di Antonio Cesti,” 39–­40, 42, 44; Mamone, “Most Serene Brothers-­Princes-­Impresarios,” sec. 4.8 and 5.1. 70. Bianconi and Walker, “Dalla Finta pazza alla Veremonda,” 439. 71. Johnson, Inventing the Opera House, 238. 72. Thomas Walker, “Francesco Cavalli,” in Denis Arnold, et al., New Grove Italian Baroque Masters (London: Macmillan, 1984), 135–­78, esp. 141. See also Harold S. Powers, “Il Serse trasformato—­I,” Musical Quarterly 47 (1961): 481–­92; and “Il Serse trasformato—­II,” Musical Quarterly 48 (1962): 73–­92, esp. vol. 47, 482–­83; Margaret Murata, “‘Cloak and Sword’ in Italian 17th-­Century Opera,” in Abstracts of Papers Read at the Forty-­Fifth Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society Meeting Jointly with the Society for Music Theory, New York City, 1–­4 November 1979, ed. Richard Taruskin and Richard Stiefel (n.p., n.d.), 45. 73. Thomas R. Walker, “Gli errori di ‘Minerva al tavolino’: Osservazioni sulla cronologia delle prime opere veneziane,” in Venezia e il Melodramma nel Seicento, ed. Maria Teresa Muraro (Florence: Olschki, 1976), 7–­16; T. Walker and N. Dubowy, “Ivanovich, Cristoforo” (2001), Grove Music Online, accessed 5 August 2019, https://​w ww​.oxfordmusiconline​ .com​.ezproxy​.lafayette​.edu​/grovemusic​/view​/10​.1093​/gmo. 74. On this matter, see also Carter and Fantappiè, Staging “Euridice,” 205–­6, where the authors observe that in 1625 there was no longer much direct interest in the consequences of the fact that under the Medici grand dukes the musical practice of ancient Greek drama had been revived, save on the part of theorists like Giovanni Battista Doni. 75. Bianconi and Walker, “Dalla Finta pazza alla Veremonda,” passim. 76. Ademollo, I primi fasti della musica italiana a Parigi, 13–­14, 21; Massar, “Costume Drawings,” 247; Mamone, “Most Serene Brothers-­Princes-­Impresarios,” sec. 4.8. 77. Decroisette, “Un exemple,” 81 n. 17. 78. Decroisette, 74–­75, 81 n. 18. 79. Decroisette, “La sopravvivenza dell’idea rinascimentale della festa negli allestimenti teatrali fiorentini degli anni 1656–­1661,” vol. 2, 61–­84, at 64. 80. Michelassi, “La finta pazza a Firenze,” 326. 81. Michelassi, 328. 82. Michelassi, 328; Michelassi, “La finta pazza di Giulio Strozzi,” esp. 170–­71; Giulio Strozzi and Francesco Sacrati, La finta pazza, ed. Nicola Usula (Milan: Ricordi, 2018), liii–­ lxxx, “Giulio Strozzi, ‘La finta pazza (1644, Piacenza, versione Feboarmonica). Edizione del libretto.’” 83. Pirrotta, “Tre capitoli su Cesti,” 27–­79.

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84. Strozzi and Sacrati, La finta pazza, ed. Usula, xlviii. The Febiarmonici performed La finta pazza in Milan for the first time in 1644, as is documented by an avviso sent from Milan to the Medici court on 29 June 1644: “On the 24th [of the] current [month] the Academy of the Febiarmonici began to perform its comedy in music entitled La finta pazza, and up to now it was done four times, the theatre always having been full, this aristocracy and those lords taking part there. . . . One will carry on doing the same so long as the assembly not be absent, then they will easily launch another. Several of these generals and masters of the field have returned to see it and such novelty is truly laudable, these virtuosi carrying themselves well enough. The costumes and the scenes are beautiful and there are good parts” (Florence, Archivio di Stato, Mediceo del Principato, 3257a). 85. Michelassi, “La finta pazza a Firenze,” 328–­29 and n. 50; Michelassi, “La finta pazza di Giulio Strozzi,” 174; Irene Alm, “Giovanni Battista Balbi, ‘Veneziano Ballarino celebre,’” in Giacomo Torelli: L’invenzione scenica nell’Europa barocca, ed. Francesco Milesi (Fano: Cassa di Risparmio di Fano, [2000]), 214–­26, at 218. 86. Evangelista, “Le compagnie dei Comici dell’Arte,” 57; Alm, “Giovanni Battista Balbi,” 226 n. 18. 87. Michelassi, “La finta pazza a Firenze,” 329. 88. Evangelista, “Le compagnie dei Comici dell’Arte,” 65–­66. 89. Alm, “Giovanni Battista Balbi,” 218–­19. 90. Sara Mamone, Mattias de’ Medici serenissimo mecenate dei virtuosi, 143; Michelassi, “La finta pazza a Firenze,” 330–­32. 91. L. Bianconi, “Finta pazza, La” (2002), Grove Music Online, accessed 5 August 2019, https://​w ww​.oxfordmusiconline​.com​.ezproxy​. lafayette​.edu​/grovemusic​/view​/10​ .1093​/gmo​/9781561592630​.001​.0001​/omo​-­­9781561592630​-­­e​-­­5000009223; Strozzi and Sacrati, ed. Usula, La finta pazza, lxxxi ff. passim. 92. Bianconi and Walker, “Dalla Finta pazza alla Veremonda,” 445 and n. 266. 93. Bianconi and Walker, 445 and n. 266. 94. On Cicognini, see Anna Maria Crinò, “Documenti inediti sulla vita e l’opera di Jacopo e di Giacinto Andrea Cicognini,” Studi Secenteschi 2 (1961): 255–­86. 95. Aurelio Aureli and Francesco Lucio, Il Medoro, ed. Giovanni Morelli and Thomas Walker (Milan: G. Ricordi & CSPA, 1984), cxxxiv–­cxxxv; Crinò, “Documenti inediti sulla vita e l’opera di Jacopo e di Giacinto Andrea Cicognini,” 285. 96. Cicognini, Celio di don Gastone dramma musicale di Hiacint’Andrea Cicognini al ser[enissi].mo sig[no].r principe Leopoldo di Toscana, in Bianconi and Walker, “Dalla Finta pazza alla Veremonda,” 448 and n. 271, 449–­50. 97. Cicognini, Celio drama musicale del dottor Hyacinto Andrea Cicognini rappresentato in Fiorenza l’anno MDCLVI (Florence: per Luca Francesco et Alessandro Logi, [1656]); Bianconi and Walker, “Dalla Finta pazza alla Veremonda,” 445 and n. 266; Vittorio Ricci, “Un melodramma ignoto della prima metà del ’600: ‘Celio’ di Baccio Baglioni e di Niccolò Sapiti,” Rivista musicale italiana 32 (1925): 51–­79, at 53. 98. Ricci, “Un melodramma ignoto della prima metà del ’600,” 53; Celio dramma musicale del signor dottor Jacinto Cicognini messo in musica da Niccolò Sapiti e da Baccio Baglioni dedicata [sic] all’illustriss[i]mo sig[no]r marchese Bartolommeo Corsini, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS II.I.292 (olim Magl. XIX, 57). 99. Ricci, “Un melodramma ignoto della prima metà del ’600,” 54–­55; D’Accone et al., Catalogo delle musiche polifoniche; Fabbri, “Giovanni Maria Casini: ‘Musico dell’umana espressione,’” 137. 100. Aurelio and Lucio, Il Medoro, cxxx–­cxxxii; Francesco Lucio, Arie a voce sola . . .

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dedicate al molt’illustre signor e patron mio osseruandissimo il sig. Iseppo Zolio (Venice: Alessandro Vincenti, 1655), where they are scored for soprano and basso continuo. 101. Bianconi and Walker, “Dalla Finta pazza alla Veremonda,” 452. 102. Ricci, “Un melodramma ignoto della prima metà del ’600,” 56–­57. 103. Ricci, 57–­58. 104. Bianconi and Walker, “Dalla Finta pazza alla Veremonda,” 450–­51, n. 278. 105. Pirrotta, “Tre capitoli su Cesti.” 106. Pirrotta. 107. Nicola Michelassi, “Drammi per musica e commedie spagnole nell’Accademia degli Infuocati di Firenze (1665–­1690),” in La “comedia nueva” e le scene italiano del Seicento, ed. Fausta Antonucci and Anna Tedesco (Florence: Olschki, 2016), 117–­30, at 119. 108. Nicola Usula, “Di verità alterate e complesse strategie: Giovan Carlo de’ Medici e l’Ipermestra di Moniglia e Cavalli (Firenze 1654–­58),” in Le voci arcane: Palcoscenici del potere nel teatro e nell’opera, ed. Tatian Korneeva (Rome: Carocci, 2018), 25–­43; I am grateful to Dott. Usula for sharing his article with me prior to publication. See also Usula’s edition, coedited with Christine Jeanneret, of Francesco Cavalli, Ipermestra (Basel: Bärenreiter, forthcoming). 109. See Cavalli, preface to his Musiche sacre concernenti messa, e salmi concertati con istromenti imni antifone et sonate, a due, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 e 12 voci (Venice, 1656), dedicated to the cardinal, and Bianconi, “Caletti (Caletti-­Bruni), Pietro Francesco, detto Cavalli,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani 16 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1973), 686–­96, at 687. 110. Bianconi and Walker, “Dalla Finta pazza alla Veremonda,” 438. 111. Decroisette, “Un exemple,” 82 n. 21, 87–­88. 112. Bianconi “Cesti, Pietro (in religione Antonio).” 113. Bianconi, “Caletti (Caletti-­Bruni), Pietro Francesco, detto Cavalli,” 692; Freitas, Portrait of a Castrato, 89. 114. Arch. di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato, filza 5452, pp. 747r–­748v; filza 5453, pp. 595r–­596r; Freitas, Portrait of a Castrato, 89; Bianconi, “Caletti (Caletti-­Bruni), Pietro Francesco, detto Cavalli,” 692; Michelassi, “Memorie dal sottopalco.” 115. Freitas, Portrait of a Castrato, 89; Sara Mamone, Serenissimi fratelli principi impresari. Notizie di spettacolo nei carteggi medicei. Carteggi di Giovan Carlo de’ Medici e di Desiderio Montemagni suo segretario (1628–­1664) (Florence: Le Lettere, 2003), 229–­30, 234. 116. Decroisette, “Un exemple,” 82 n. 21. 117. Moniglia’s 1654 manuscript libretto of Ipermestra—­[G. A. Moniglia], [L’Egitto] (n.p.: n.d. [ca. 1654]), Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, MSS 124, fols. 9r–­v—­is confirmation. 118. Michelassi, “Il teatro del Cocòmero,” 159. 119. Nicola Michelassi and Salomé Vuelta García, “Antonio Cesti e la partitura delle Nozze in sogno (Firenze 1665),” Il saggiatore musicale 22.2 (2015): 203–­14, at 207. 120. Decroisette, “Un exemple,” 87–­88. 121. Michelassi, “Il teatro del Cocòmero,” 157 n. 34. 122. Prunières, L’opera italien en France avant Lulli, 64 and n. 2; Robert L. Weaver, “Materiali per le biografie dei fratelli Melani,” Rivista italiana di musicologia 12.2 (1977): 252–­95; and Weaver, “Melani family” (2001), Grove Music Online, accessed 1 September 2018, https://​w ww​.oxfordmusiconline​.com​/grovemusic​/view​/10​.1093​/gmo​/978​ 1561592630​.001​.0001​/omo​-­­9781561592630​-­­e​-­­0 000018308. 123. On the generic interpretation of Il potestà, see also Françoise Decroisette, “Les ‘drammi civili’ de Giovan Andrea Moniglia, librettiste florentin, entre Contre-­Réforme

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et Lumières,” in Culture et idéologie en Italie après le concile de Trente, ed. Eveline Andréani and Michel Plaisance (Abbeville: Paillart, 1985), 91–­150, at 91, 94. 124. Il potestà di Colognole. Dramma civile rusticale. a gl’illvstrissimi signori accademici immobili (Florence: il Bonardi, 1657); Weaver and Weaver, A Chronology of Music, 122–­ 24; Hill, “Le relazioni di Antonio Cesti,” 34; Massar, “Costume Drawings by Stefano della Bella for the Florentine Theater,” at 248. 125. On derivations from the commedia dell’arte, see Decroisette, “Les ‘drammi civili,’” 101. 126. Melani, Il potestà di Colognole, ed. Leve, ix, xi–­xii; Massar, “Costume Drawings by Stefano della Bella for the Florentine Theater,” 248–­49. 127. Melani, Il potestà, 141 n. 40. 128. Decroisette, “Les ‘drammi civili,’” 132. 129. Decroisette, 142. 130. Melani, Il potestà, xiii, xviii n. 44 and pl. V; Marcello De Angelis et al., eds., Lo “spettacolo maraviglioso,” 125–­27. Another important Florentine comic opera is Girello, on which see Nino Pirrotta, Don Giovanni’s Progress: A Rake Goes to the Opera, trans. Harris S. Saunders Jr. (New York: Marsilio, 1994), 26; Pirrotta, “Stradella, Alessandro,” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, 9 vols. (Rome: Le Maschere, 1954–­62), vol. 9, 451–­53; Pirrotta, “Alessandro Stradella,” in La Musica (Turin: Unione tipografico-­editrice torinese, 1966–­71), “Enciclopedia storica,” vol. 4, 511–­24; Nino Pirrotta and Carolyn Gianturco, “Stradella, Alessandro,” in Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti (Turin: Unione tipografico-­editrice torinese, 1985–­88), “Le Biografie,” vol. 7 (1988), 486–­ 89; Margaret Murata, “Il carnevale a Roma sotto Clemente IX Rospigliosi,” Rivista italiana di musicologia 12.1 (1977): 83–­99, at 97–­98; Roger Freitas, Portrait of a Castrato, 291–­92; Owen Jander, “The Prologues and Intermezzos of Alessandro Stradella,” Analecta Musicologica 7 (1969): 87–­111, at 102–­3; Weaver, “Il Girello, A 17th-­Century Burlesque Opera,” Quadrivium 12.2 (1971): 141–­63 passim; and Il girello. Drama musicale burlesco del signor N.N. da rappresentarsi in Firenze l’anno 1670. Con la musica del sig. Jacopo Melani . . . (Florence: Stamp. di S.A.S., n.d.). 131. Usula, “Di verità alterate e complesse strategie,” passim; Molinari, Le nozze degli dei, illus. 102–­12. See also Decroisette, “Les ‘drammi civili,’” 136 n 3. 132. Puppi, “Il teatro fiorentino degli Immobili,” 186. 133. Bianconi, “Caletti,” 691–­92. 134. Bianconi and Walker, “Dalla Finta pazza alla Veremonda,” 439 n. 246. 135. Puppi, “Il teatro fiorentino degli Immobili,” 178; Bianconi and Walker, “Dalla Finta pazza alla Veremonda,” 439 n. 246; Weaver and Weaver, A Chronology of Music, 129. 136. Bianconi, “Caletti,” 691. 137. Hill, “Le relazioni di Antonio Cesti,” 34. 138. Puppi, “Il teatro fiorentino degli Immobili,” 186. 139. One of Stefano della Bella’s costume designs for Ipermestra is reproduced in Valeria De Lucca, “Dressed to Impress: The Costumes for Antonio Cesti’s ‘Orontea’ in Rome (1661),” Early Music 41.3 (2013): 461–­75, at 463 and illus. 3. 140. Ademollo, I primi fasti del teatro di via della Pergola, 22–­25. 141. Blumenthal, Theater Art, 188–­89, reproduces etchings for the first prologue and the act 3 finale. 142. Sparti, “Hercules Dancing in Thebes, in Pictures and Words,” 370; on p. 382 is a reproduction of an engraving of the “Ballo of the Furies.” 143. Pirrotta, Don Giovanni’s Progress, 26.

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144. L’Hipermestra. Festa teatrale rappresentata dal sereniss[imo]. principe cardinale Gio[van]: Carlo di Toscana per celebrare il giorno natalizio del real principe di Spagna (Florence: St[amperia]. della S.A.S., 1658). See Puppi, “Il teatro fiorentino degli Immobili,” 179. 145. Melani, Il potestà di Colognole, ed. Leve, pl. V; Massar, “Costume Drawings by Stefano della Bella for the Florentine Theater,” at 253; Weaver and Weaver, A Chronology of Music, 21. 146. Massar, “Costume Drawings by Stefano della Bella for the Florentine Theater,” 254. 147. Michelassi, “Il teatro del Cocòmero,” 176–­82. 148. Michelassi, 177–­78; and Ademollo, I primi fasti del teatro di via della Pergola, 23. 149. Antonio Cesti, La Dori ò vero La schiava fedele, introd. Howard Mayer Brown (New York: Garland, 1981), unpaginated preface. 150. See Molinari, Le nozze degli dei, illus. 113–­23. See also Decroisette, “Les ‘drammi civili,’” 136 n 3. I pass over Erismena, on which see Francesco Cavalli, L’Erismena: Dramma per musica by Aurelio Aureli (Venice, 1655/56), ed. Beth Glixon et al. (Basel: Bärenreiter, 2018), esp. xliv–­xlvi; Harold S. Powers, “L’Erismena travestita,” in Studies in Music History: Essays for Oliver Strunk (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 259–­324; Hill, “Le relazioni di Antonio Cesti,” 33; and Cavalli, L’Erismena drama per mvsica di Avrelio Avreli (Florence: nella Stamp. di S.A.S, 1661). 151. Ademollo, I primi fasti del teatro di via della Pergola, 14, 26; Weaver and Weaver, A Chronology of Music, 131; Hill, “Le relazioni di Antonio Cesti,” 38–­39; Bianconi, “Cesti, Pietro (in religione Antonio),” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani. 152. Franco Schlitzer, “A Letter from Cesti to Salvator Rosa,” Monthly Musical Record (1954): 150–­52, at 151; Michelassi and Vuelta García, “Antonio Cesti e la partitura delle Nozze in sogno (Firenze 1665),” 207. 153. Holmes, Opera Observed, between pp. 150 and 151. 154. Melani, Il potestà di Colognole, ed. Leve, xvii n. 18. 155. Weaver and Weaver, A Chronology of Music in the Florentine Theater, 1590–­1750, 131. 156. In what follows, I am dependent entirely upon Sparti, “Hercules Dancing in Thebes, in Pictures and Words,” at 358, 363–­64, 368, 374, 380–­81, 383, and 396. 157. Françoise Decroisette, “Hercules sur la scène entre Florence et Paris,” in Du genre narratif à l’opéra au théâtre et au cinéma: Journées d’étude (Toulouse: Presses de l’Atelier d’imprimerie de l’Université de Toulouse—­Le Mirail, 2000), 99–­122, at 104. 158. Sparti, “Hercules Dancing in Thebes,” 383, gives an excerpt of the instrumental introduction and conclusion to the dance. 159. Ademollo, I primi fasti del teatro di via della Pergola, 26. 160. Hill, “Le relazioni di Antonio Cesti,” 37. 161. Antonio Cesti, Orontea, ed. William Holmes ([Wellesley, MA]: Wellesley College, 1973); and Antonio Cesti, Orontea: Opera in Three Acts and a Prologue. Libretto by Giacinto Andrea Cicognini. Version of the Italian Manuscripts, ed. William Holmes, rev. Alejandro Enrique Planchart (Santa Barbara, CA: Marisol Press, 2002). 162. Aurelio Aureli and Francesco Lucio, Il Medoro, ed. Thomas Walker et al. (Milan: Ricordi, 1984); Michelassi and Vuelta García, “Antonio Cesti e la partitura delle Nozze in sogno (Firenze 1665),” 207. 163. Cesti, L’Orontea. Dramma musicale del dot. Giacinto Andrea Cicognini, rappresentato in Firenze nell’Accademia de’ Sorgenti. Al ser. Ferdinando Carlo arciduca d’Austria (Florence: Stamp. di S.A.S., 1661); see Weaver and Weaver, A Chronology of Music, 133. 164. Hill, “Le relazioni di Antonio Cesti,” 33.

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165. But the setting of Cicognini’s text performed in Venice in 1649 is now thought to be by Lucio rather than Cesti. 166. Bianconi, “Cesti,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 286. 167. Franco Schlitzer, “Fortuna dell’ ‘Orontea,’” in La scuola romana: G. Carissimi—­ A. Cesti—­M. Marazzoli (Siena: Ticci, 1953), 81–­92, at 85; Walker, introduction to Aureli and Lucio, Il Medoro, ed. Morelli and Walker, cxxxviii–­cxxxxix. 168. Weaver and Weaver, A Chronology of Music, 134; Hill, “Le relazioni di Antonio Cesti,” 37–­38. 169. La Dori ò vero La schiava fedele dramma musicale dedicato al serenissimo Ferdinando II. grandvca di Toscana (Florence: All’Insegna della Stella., 1661); the dedication (pp. [3]–­ [5]) is signed by “Gli Accademici Sorgenti”; Hill, “Le relazioni di Antonio Cesti,” 27–­28; Schmidt, “‘La Dori’ di Antonio Cesti: sussidi bibliografici,” Rivista italiana di musicologia 11.2 (1976): 197–­229, at 199–­200; Schlitzer, “A Letter,” 152. 170. Pirrotta, “Apolloni (or Appolloni),” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, vol. 1 [1954], cols. 736–­37; Weaver and Weaver, A Chronology of Music in the Florentine Theater, 1590–­ 1750, 133; Cesti, La Dori ò vero La schiava fedele, introd. Howard Mayer Brown, unpaginated preface; review of Weaver and Weaver by Thomas Walker in Notes, 2nd ser., 36.1 (1979): 90–­92, at 91. 171. Hill, “Le relazioni di Antonio Cesti,” 27; Carl B. Schmidt, “Antonio Cesti’s ‘La Dori’: A Study of Sources, Performance Traditions and Musical Style,” Rivista italiana di musicologia 10 (1975): 455–­98, at 459–­60; and Schlitzer, “A Letter,” esp. 151. See also Carl B. Schmidt, “‘La Dori’ di Antonio Cesti: Sussidi bibliografici,” Rivista italiana di musicologia 11.2 (1976): 197–­229; Pirrotta, “Cesti, Antonio o Marco Antonio (Pietro C., so-­called),” in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, cols. 462–­68. 172. I am grateful to Professor Carl B. Schmidt for reminding me of this fact. 173. Michelassi and Vuelta García, “Antonio Cesti e la partitura delle Nozze in sogno (Firenze 1665),” 207. 174. Cesti, La Dori ò vero La schiava fedele, introd. Howard Mayer Brown, unpaginated “Preface.” 175. Nathaniel Burt, “Opera in Arcadia,” Musical Quarterly 41.2 (1955); 145–­70, at 164–­ 67; Burt, “Plus ça change: Or, The Progress of Reform in Seventeenth-­and Eighteenth-­ Century Opera as Illustrated in the Books of Three Operas,” in Studies in Music History: Essays for Oliver Strunk, ed. Harold Powers (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 325–­40, at 327–­32; Thomas Walker, “Apolloni [Apollonio, Appolloni], Giovanni Filippo” (2001), Grove Music Online, accessed 14 August 2019, https://​w ww​.oxfordmusiconline​ .com​.ezproxy​. lafayette​.edu​/grovemusic​/view​/10​.1093​/gmo​/9781561592630​. 001​ .0001​/omo​-­­9781561592630​-­­e​-­­0 000001091. 176. Bianconi, “Cesti,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, where he cites correspondence in the fondo Mediceo del Principato, f. 5461, cc. 636, 638, 649, 670, 671, now accessible in the two compilations of Mamone: Serenissimi fratelli principi impresari; and Mattias de’ Medici serenissimo mecenate dei virtuosi. 177. Nino Pirrotta, “Metastasio and the Demands of His Literary Environment,” in Crosscurrents and the Mainstream of Italian Serious Opera, 1730–­1790, 2 vols. (London: Department of Music History, University of Western Ontario, 1983), vol. 2, 10–­27, and “Final Licenza,” 197–­203, at 17, 19. 178. Nino Pirrotta, Don Giovanni’s Progress: A Rake Goes to the Opera, trans. Harris S. Saunders Jr. (New York: Marsilio, 1994). See also Harold S. Powers, “L’Erismena e le orig-

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ini drammatiche dell’aria col da capo: Erismena and the Dramatic Origins of the Da Capo Aria” (paper presented at a seminar in memory of Thomas Walker, Venice, October 2002). 179. Excerpts are edited in Francesco Cavalli’s Il Giasone (1649) und Marc Antonio Cesti’s La Dori (1663) (Berlin: Trautwein’sche Hof-­Buch-­und Musikalienhandlung, 1883). 180. Holmes, “The Teatro della Pergola in Florence,” 262, 264; Weaver, “Opera in Florence: 1646–­1731,” 60.

Chapter 18 1. Fabbri, “Giovanni Maria Casini: ‘Musico dell’umana espressione,’” at 150. 2. But see John Walter Hill, “Oratory Music in Florence, I: ‘Recitar Cantando,’ 1583–­ 1655,” 116. 3. Hill, passim; Strainchamps, “Marco da Gagliano and the Compagnia dell’Arcangelo Raffaello in Florence: An Unknown Episode in the Composer’s Life,” at 475, Strainchamps, “Music in a Florentine Confraternity: The Memorial Madrigals for Jacopo Corsi in the Company of the Archangel Raphael,” at 166; and Guido Burchi, “Vita musicale e spettacoli alla Compagnia della Scala di Firenze fra il 1560 e il 1675,” Note d’archivio per la storia musicale, n.s., 1 (1983): 9–­50. 4. Responsori della Settimana Santa a 4 voci pari, vii. On the Raffaello, see, above all, Eisenbichler, Boys of the Archangel Raphael. 5. John Walter Hill, “Oratory Music in Florence, III: The Confraternities from 1655 to 1785,” Acta Musicologica 58.1 (1986): 129–­79, at 131; Eisenbichler, “Two Unknown Italian Plays,” 128–­30. 6. Tim Carter, “Music and Patronage in Late Sixteenth-­Century Florence: The Case of Jacopo Corsi (1561–­1602),” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 1 (1985): 57–­104, at 61–­71. 7. Eisenbichler, “Two Unknown Italian Plays,” 128–­30. 8. Strainchamps, “Marco da Gagliano and the Compagnia dell’Arcangelo Raffaello in Florence,” 476, 485. 9. Hill, “Oratory Music in Florence, III,” at 136. On the membership of the company, see Eisenbichler, Boys of the Archangel Raphael, 123. 10. On this matter, Eisenbichler, “Nativity and Magi Plays,” 322–­34; and Eisenbichler, Boys of the Archangel Raphael, v. 11. An edition is in Hill, “Oratory Music in Florence, I.” 12. Strainchamps, “Marco da Gagliano and the Compagnia dell’Arcangelo Raffaello in Florence,” 475–­76. 13. Strainchamps, 476. 14. Hill, “Oratory Music in Florence, III,” 135. 15. Hill, passim. 16. Hill, “Oratory Music in Florence, II,” 246–­47, 250. 17. Hill, 251, 258–­59. 18. Antonio Cistellini, “Pietro da Cortona e la chiesa di San Filippo Neri in Firenze,” Studi Secenteschi 11 (1970): 27–­57; Hill, “Oratory Music in Florence, III,” 133. 19. Hill, “Oratory Music in Florence, III,” 142–­43. 20. Hill, “Oratory Music in Florence, II,” 248, 253. 21. Hill, 257–­58. 22. Thomas Walker, “Monteverdi: L’incoronazione di Poppæa,” Historical Performance

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4.1 (1991): 49–­53; Thomas Walker and Edward H. Tarr, “‘Bellici carmi, festivo fragor’: Die Verwendung der Trompete in der italienischen Oper des 17. Jahrhunderts,” Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft 3 (1978): 143–­203. 23. Hill, “Oratory Music in Florence, II,” 258. 24. Hill, “Oratory Music in Florence, III,” 138. 25. Hill, passim. On another of the important confraternities, see Lorenzo Polizzotto, Children of the Promise: The Confraternity of the Purification and the Socialization of Youths in Florence, 1427–­1785 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 26. Hill, “Oratory Music in Florence, III,” 132. 27. Mario Fabbri, Alessandro Scarlatti e il principe Ferdinando de’ Medici (Florence: Olschki, 1961), 41 and 43; José Maria Domínguez, “Scarlatti, Alessandro,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani 91 (2018). 28. Hill, “Oratory Music in Florence, II,” 263. 29. Hill, “Oratory Music in Florence, III,” 141–­42, 146–­48. 30. Hill, 143. There are other companies important to the genre, such as the Compagnia di San Bernardino e Santa Caterina and Compagnia della Purificazione della Gloriosa Vergine Maria, et di San Zanobi, detta di San Marco, on which see Hill, “Oratory Music in Florence, III,” 137–­38; Eisenbichler, “Two Unknown Italian Plays,” 128–­30; and Diane Cole Ahl, “In corpo di compagnia: Art and Devotion in the Compagnia della Purificazione e di San Zanobi of Florence,” in Confraternities and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Italy: Ritual, Spectacle, Image, ed. Barbara Wisch and Diane Cole Ahl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 46–­73; and Hill, “Oratory Music in Florence, III,” 131–­33, 139–­40. 31. In addition to Il viaggio di Tobia, La nascita di Samuele (Florence, 1696, lost), La fuga in Egitto (Florence, 1697), and Giacobbe in Mesopotamia (Florence, 1698, lost); Prefumo, liner notes, Giovanni Maria Casini, Il viaggio di Tobia, 9. 32. Prefumo, liner notes, Giovanni Maria Casini, Il viaggio di Tobia, 8. This was not the première, however, which was “in the church of the congregation of the oratory of S. Filippo Neri di Firenze” in 1695 (8). 33. Hill, “Oratory Music in Florence, II,” 262. 34. Hill, 262. On another of those composers important for his contributions to the operatic repertory who also contributed importantly to the oratorio literature, see Juliane Riepe, “Gli oratorii di Giacomo Antonio Perti. Cronologia e ricognizione delle fonti,” Studi musicali 22.1 (1993): 115–­232; A. Schnoebelen and M. Vanscheeuwijck, “Perti, Giacomo Antonio” (1 January 2001), Grove Music Online, accessed 4 October 2018, https://​ www​.oxford​musiconline​.com​.ezproxy​.lafayette​.edu​/grovemusic​/view​/10​.1093​/gmo​ /978​1561592630​.001​.0001​/omo​-­­9 781561592630​-­­e​-­­0 000021394; Francesco Lora, “Perti, Giacomo Antonio,” Dizionario biografico degli italiani 82 (2015). 35. On the material in the two foregoing paragraphs, see Harness, Echoes of Women’s Voices, 282, 284, 295–­96, 298–­99, from which I have drawn extensively. 36. Hill, “Oratory Music in Florence, III,” 130. Music also figured prominently in the private ritual observances of the Medici. See Giovanni Giacomo Perti, Integrale della musica sacra per Ferdinando de’ Medici, principe di Toscana / Complete Sacred Music for Ferdinando de’ Medici, Prince of Tuscany (Firenze 1704–­1709), vol. 1, xii–­xviii, and vol. 2, xii–­ xviii; Francesco Lora, “Perti, Giacomo Antonio”; Lora, “Note a margine di G.A. Perti, Five-­Voice Motets for the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, a cura di Rodolfo Zitellini. . . . Critica dell’edizione critica: Quattro casi,” Il saggiatore musicale 18.1–­2 (2011): 245–­88, at 263–­74; and Leonardo Spinelli, “Lo spettacolo toscano sotto il segno del gran principe: Luoghi e protagonisti,” in Il gran principe Ferdinando de’ Medici (1663–­1713): Collezionista

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e mecenate (Florence: Giunti, 2013), 104–­13, at 110–­11. Mario Fabbri argued that Alessandro Scarlatti may also have composed sacred music for Ferdinando: see Fabbri, Alessandro Scarlatti e il principe Ferdinando de’ Medici, 101–­14; “Le musiche di Alessandro Scarlatti ‘Per il tempo di Penitenza e di Tenebre’ (Il manoscritto n. 443 dell’Accademia filarmonica di Bologna),” in I grandi anniversari del 1960 e la musica sinfonica e da camera nell’Ottocento in Italia, ed. Adelmo Damerini and Gino Roncaglia (Siena: [Ticci], 1960), 17–­32; and Alessandro Scarlatti, Musiche per il tempo di penitenza: 11 mottetti per la Quaresima 1708 a quattro voci dispari: Corpus integrale dal “Ms. 443” (Unicum) dell’Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna (da c. 1r a c. 15v), transcription and reconstruction Mario Fabbri ([Rome]: RAI, 1969). But see Francesco Lora, “I due ‘Benedictus’ ritrovati: Musiche di Perti per la settimana santa del principe di Toscana (1708)” (paper presented at the XI Colloquio di Musicologia del “Saggiatore musicale,” Bologna, Università degli Studi, 23–­25 November 2007). 37. Ghisi, “Ballet Entertainments in Pitti Palace, Florence, 1608–­1625,” 421; Ghisi, “An Early Seventeenth Century MS. with Unpublished Italian Monodic Music by Peri, Giulio Romano, and Marco da Gagliano,” 46–­60, at 46. 38. See the concise treatment in Claude Palisca, Baroque Music, 3rd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1991), “Opera in France and Italy from Lully to Scarlatti” and “Lute and Keyboard Music in France,” from which I have borrowed liberally. 39. On this particular event, see Balletto delle Ninfe: Italienische Tanzmusik des Frühbarock für fünf Stimmen I, ed. Silke Leopold (Basel: Bärenreiter, [1989]), unnumbered p. 2; and Sparti, “Hercules Dancing in Thebes, in Pictures and Words,” 368. 40. Ghisi, “Ballet Entertainments,” 426. 41. Ghisi, 427; Butchart, I madrigali di Marco da Gagliano, 41 n. 16. 42. Gagliano, La Flora, ed. Court, x. 43. Ghisi, “Ballet Entertainments,” 427. 44. Ghisi, “An Early Seventeenth Century MS.,” 51–­53; Mascherata di ninfe di Senna ballo danzato nel real palazzo del gran duca di Toscana per le felicissime nozze de gl’illustrissimi, et eccellentissimi il signor conte Mario Sforza e la signora Arnea di Lorena (Florence: . . . gl’Heredi del Marescotti, 1613), 260–­94; Solerti, Gli albori del melodramma, vol. 2, 291–­92. 45. Ghisi, “Ballet Entertainments,” 430. 46. Ghisi, 426, 430. 47. Ghisi, 433; Ghisi, “Le musiche per ‘Il ballo di donne turche’ di Marco da Gagliano,” Rivista italiana di musicologia 1.1 (1966): 20–­31; Gagliano, Responsori della Settimana Santa a 4 voci pari, viii; Gagliano, Music for One, Two and Three Voices (1615), Part 2, ed. Putnam Aldrich (Bryn Mawr, PA: Theodore Presser Company, 1972), 116–­35 and appendix of Italian texts with English translations. 48. See the first chapter of Cummings, Lion’s Ear; Anthony M. Cummings, “Dance and ‘the Other’: The Moresca,” in Seventeenth Century Ballet: A Multi-­Art Spectacle, ed. Barbara Grammeniati (Crossways: Xlibris Corporation, 2011), 39–­60. 49. Feste e apparati medicei da Cosimo I a Cosimo II, 161; Blumenthal, Theater Art, 110–­ 17; Gagliano, La Flora, ed. Court, x. 50. Fig. 51 in Feste e apparati medicei da Cosimo I a Cosimo II. A contemporary depiction of the veglia that illustrates the participation of the grand duke and duchess in the dancing is entitled Primo intermedio della veglia della liberatione di Tirreno fatta nella sala delle comedie del ser[enissi].mo gran dvca de Toscana il carnovale del 1616 [modern style 1617]. Blumenthal, Theater Art, 111; other etchings of the scenery for the intermedi reproduced on pp. 113–­14.

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51. Ghisi, “Ballet Entertainments,” 434. 52. Feste e apparati medicei da Cosimo I a Cosimo II, 161. 53. Johnson, Inventing the Opera House, 103–­4, where Johnson reproduces the etching as his fig. 68. 54. Nino Pirrotta, “The Orchestra and Stage in Renaissance Intermedi and Early Opera,” in Music and Culture in Italy from the Middle Ages to the Baroque (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 210–­16, and notes, 213 and 418 n. 9. 55. Edmond Strainchamps, “Marco da Gagliano, Filli, mentre ti bacio, and the End of the Madrigal in Florence,” in Music and Civilization (New York: Norton, 1984), 311–­25, at 317. 56. Gagliano, Madrigals: Part I. Il primo libro de madrigali a cinque voci (Venice, 1602), ed. Strainchamps (Middleton, WI: A-­R Editions, 2003), vii, and Strainchamps’s accompanying note. 57. Strainchamps, “Marco da Gagliano, Filli, mentre ti bacio, and the End of the Madrigal,” 311. Another important Florentine composer of polyphonic madrigals in the early Seicento was Luca Bati: see Piero Gargiulo, Luca Bati, Madrigalista Fiorentino, passim; and Gargiulo, “‘Così d’Arno sul Lido’: Madrigali e Autori Fiorentini Ospiti nelle Sillogi di Area Medicea (1594–­1629),” Del XV Congreso de la Sociedad Internacional de Musicología, Rivista de musicología 16.5 (1993): 2521–­30. 58. Strainchamps, quoting Einstein, in Gagliano, Madrigals: Part I, ed. Strainchamps, viii. When Einstein wrote these words, this was valid scholarly opinion; but more recent evidence would suggest modifications to Einstein’s argument, as I suggested in my earlier sections on the Cinquecento madrigal at midcentury in Florence. 59. Gagliano, Madrigals: Part I, ed. Strainchamps, vii. A brief but nonetheless valuable study of Gagliano’s madrigals is Butchart, I madrigali di Marco da Gagliano, which, as Butchart reports (9 n. *), is a version of the chapter dedicated to Gagliano contained in Butchart “The Madrigal in Florence, 1560–­1630,” 2 vols. (DPhil diss., University of Oxford, 1979), vol. 1, 204–­32. 60. Gagliano, Madrigals: Part I, ed. Strainchamps, vii, ix. 61. Gagliano, viii. 62. Gagliano, viii. 63. Strainchamps, “Marco da Gagliano, Filli, mentre ti bacio, and the End of the Madrigal,” 316–­17; Gagliano, Responsori della Settimana Santa a 4 voci pari, viii. 64. I am quoting myself at “Opera in Florence, Act 1,” above. 65. Atto Melani, Complete Cantatas, ed. Roger Freitas (Middleton, WI: A-­R Editions, 2006), xi. 66. Freitas, Portrait of a Castrato, 204, quoting Claudio Annibaldi. 67. See also Hill, Baroque Music, 8. 68. Freitas, Portrait of a Castrato, 215–­17, 219–­21, 226. 69. Freitas, 226. 70. Freitas, 219–­21. There is a precedent for the Florentine cantata of midcentury in two books of Arie by the Medici court composer Girolamo Frescobaldi; see Primo libro d’arie mvsicali per cantarsi nel Grauicimbalo, e Tiorbo. A vna, a dva, e a tre voci. Di Girolamo Frescobaldi organista del serenissimo gran dvca di Toscana (Florence: Gio: Batista Landini, 1630); Secondo libro d’arie mvsicali per cantarsi nel Grauicimbalo, e Tiorbo. A vna, a dva, e a tre voci. Di Girolamo Frescobaldi organista del serenissimo gran dvca di Toscana (Florence: Gio: Batista Landini, 1630); Anthony Newcomb, “Girolamo Frescobaldi,” in New Grove Italian Baroque Masters, ed. Denis Arnold et al., 83–­133, at 116, 127; Hammond, Girolamo

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Frescobaldi, 314–­17, at 76–­78, 265–­66; Fortune, “Italian Secular Monody,” 185–­86; and Hill, “Frescobaldi’s Arie and the Musical Circle around Cardinal Montalto,” in Frescobaldi Studies, ed. Alexander Silbiger (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987), 157–­94. 71. Atto Melani, Complete Cantatas, ed. Freitas, xii–­xiii, xvi, xxxv, 67–­68, 95–­107. 72. Melani. See also Elisa Goudriaan, “‘Un recitativo per il signor Antonio con un scherzetto di un’arietta fatta fresca fresca’: Marco Marazzoli, Giuseppe Vannucci and the Exchange of Music between Rome and Florence in the Correspondence of Marchese Filippo Niccolini,” Recercare 25.1–­2 (2013): 39–­74, at 39, 41, 43, 46–­47, 53, 56, 61–­62. 73. Hammond, Girolamo Frescobaldi, 70–­73, 76; Hammond, “Musicians at the Medici Court in the Mid-­Seventeenth Century,” at 155 and n. 4 and 156; Newcomb, “Girolamo Frescobaldi,” at 97–­98. 74. Fabbri, “Francesco Feroci nella scuola organistica fiorentina del XVIII secolo,” 145–­ 60, at 147. 75. Hammond, Girolamo Frescobaldi, 70–­73. 76. Hammond, 71, 188–­89, 191–­92; Newcomb, “Girolamo Frescobaldi,” 95–­96, 125. 77. The bibliographic situation with respect to the Frescobaldi canzoni is somewhat complex. In an earlier publication (Il primo libro delle canzoni, 1628), the example published here appears as Canzona prima; in a later print (Canzoni da sonare a una, due, tre et quattro, 1634), it appears as Canzona terza. I have published the later version here, though labeling it as in the earlier publication, because it furnishes fuller evidence of the nature of the genre. My view is that it is essentially the same composition as had appeared in 1628, with the informative modifications identified here. 78. Bianconi, “Cesti, Pietro (in religione Antonio),” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani 24 (1980). But as Bianconi notes, the attribution to Cesti is equivocal. 79. Weaver, “Opera in Florence,” 65–­66; and William C. Holmes, “Operatic Commissions and Productions at Pratolino: Ifianassa e Melampo by Moniglia and Legrenzi,” Journal of Musicology 17 (1999): 152–­67, at 153; Giulia Giovani, “Tra mondanità e ufficialità: Ancora sulla prima visita a Venezia del gran principe Ferdinando de’ Medici,” in Firenze e la musica: Fonti, protagonisti, committenza. Scritti in ricordo di Maria Adelaide Bartoli Bacherini, ed. Cecilia Bacherini et al. (Rome: Istituto Italiano per la Storia della Musica, 2014), 313–­40. 80. Giornale de’ letterati d’Italia VII (1714), 5; on this source, see also Francesca Fantappiè, “Per una rinnovata immagine dell’ultimo cardinal mediceo: Dall’epistolario di Francesco Maria Medici (1660–­1711),” Archivio storico italiano 166 (2008): 495–­531, at 514. See also Spinelli, “Lo spettacolo toscano,” at 105, 110–­11; and on Bitti and Salvetti, see Stewart Pollens, “Bartolomeo Cristofori in Florence,” Galpin Society Journal 66 (March 2013): 7–­ 42 and 242–­45, at 13. 81. See the liner notes by Alexander Silbiger: “The Medici Harpsichord Book,” The Medici Harpsichord Book, Aapo Häkkinen, Harpsichord, Deux-­Elles DXL 1083 (Reading: Deux-­Elles Limited, © ℗ 2005), 1–­3, at 1. For more on Ferdinando as composer, harpsichordist, and patron, see Spinelli, “Lo spettacolo toscano,” 102. 82. Hill, “Antonio Veracini in Context: New Perspectives from Documents, Analysis, and Style,” Early Music 18.4 (1990): 545–­47, 549–­51, 554–­57, 559, 561–­62; d’Ovidio, “Patronage, Sacrality and Power at the Court of Vittoria della Rovere: Antonio Veracini’s Op. 1 Trio Sonatas,” 281–­314. 83. For the material in the foregoing five paragraphs, see Hill, The Life and Works of Francesco Maria Veracini (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International Research Press, 1979), v, 1, 7–­8, 10, 30, 33, 36, 53–­55, 62, 66, 267–­69, 271, 273, 281, 285–­86, 346–­54;

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Hill, “Veracini, Francesco Maria,” Grove Music Online, accessed 21 August 2021, https://​ www​.oxfordmusiconline​.com​/grovemusic​/view​/10​.1093​/gmo​/9781561592630​.001​ .0001​/omo​-­­9781561592630​-­­e​-­­0 000029178. 84. Fabbri, “Giovanni Maria Casini,” 159. 85. Fabbri, “Francesco Feroci,” 155. 86. Ademollo, I primi fasti del teatro di via della Pergola, 15. 87. Fabbri, Alessandro Scarlatti e il principe Ferdinando de’ Medici; Decroisette, “Un exemple,” 77, characterizes Cosimo as a “bigot.” But see d’Ovidio, “Patronage, Sacrality and Power at the Court of Vittoria della Rovere: Antonio Veracini’s Op. 1 Trio Sonatas,” at 293–­94. On Cosimo’s indifference—­even hostility—­toward music, see Giulia Giovani, “Tra mondanità e ufficialità,” 314. 88. Hill, Life and Works, 267. 89. [12] Sonate accademiche a violino solo e basso dedicate alla sacra real maestà di Augusto III re di Pollonia . . . et elettore di Sassonia . . . da Francesco M[ari]:a Veracini Fiorentino compositor di camera della Medesima S.R.M. Opera seconda (Florence and London: . . . L’Autore, [1744]), [1] “Toccata. Adagio, e come stá”; [2] “Capriccio Primo. Allegro ma non presto”; [3] “Allegro”; [4] “Epilogo della Toccata. Largo, e Nobile”; and [5] “Capriccio. Allegro, e Brillante.” 90. Giuliana Montanari, “Chromatic and Transposing Quilled Keyboard Instruments at the Florentine Grand Ducal Court in the Seventeenth Century,” Recercare 20.1–­2 (2008): 143–­79, at 145, 149–­50. 91. Fabbri, “Dalla spinetta al controviolino: Cenni storici sulla formazione del Museo annesso al Conservatorio ‘L. Cherubini’ di Firenze” and “Bibliografia,” in Antichi strumenti dalla raccolta dei Medici e dei Lorena alla formazione del Museo del Conservatorio di Firenze (Florence: Giunti Barbèra, 1980 [“2a edizione”]), 13; Vinicio Gai, Gli strumenti musicali della corte medicea e il Museo del Conservatorio “Luigi Cherubini” di Firenze (Florence: Libreria Commissionaria Sansoni, 1969); see also Giuliana Montanari, “Domenico da Pesaro’s Keyboard Instruments in the Collection of Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici,” Organistica, n.s., XLIV, Anno XXXI/1 (2019): 37–­107. 92. On Cristofori in Florence, see, in addition to Pollens, Bartolomeo Cristofori and the Invention of the Piano (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), Pollens’s article “Bartolomeo Cristofori in Florence,” on this reference especially, 8. On p. 41 of the article a portrait of Cristofori is reproduced. 93. On the subject generally, see Fabbri, “Dalla spinetta al controviolino,” 13–­28 and 139–­43; Gai, Gli strumenti musicali della corte medicea, “Inventario di diverse sorti d’instrumenti musicali in proprio del serenissimo sig. principe Ferdinando di Toscana,” on 6–­22; Pierluigi Ferrari and Giuliana Montanari, “Presenza del pianoforte alla corte del Granducato di Toscana, 1700–­1859: Uno studio documentario, con riferimenti alle vicissitudini di clavicembali, spinette e spinettoni: Parte prima: Fino al 1799,” Recercare 7 (1995): 163–­211; Giuliana Montanari, “Bartolomeo Cristofori: A List and Historical Survey of His Instruments,” Early Music 19.3 (1991): 383–­96; Montanari, “Chromatic and Transposing Quilled Keyboard Instruments,” 143–­79; Laura Och, “Bartolomeo Cristofori, Scipione Maffei, e la prima descrizione del ‘gravicembalo col piano e forte,’” Il flauto dolce 14.15 (1986): 16–­23. All previous publications on the subject are now superseded by the recent Pollens, Bartolomeo Cristofori and the Invention of the Piano. See also Spinelli, “Lo spettacolo toscano,” 110–­11. 94. Pollens, Bartolomeo Cristofori, 2.

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95. On this important 1700 inventory, see Pollens, “Bartolomeo Cristofori in Florence,” 15–­16, 34, 38. 96. Throughout, I have occasionally slightly emended Pollens’s translations. 97. Pollens, “Bartolomeo Cristofori in Florence,” 35. 98. Lodovico Giustini, Sonata II, transcription and revision Ernesto Sparago (Rome: Edizioni Ernesto Sparago, 2019). Throughout this entire section, I have benefited greatly from the advice of Stewart Pollens, generously given in personal communications. I thank him, very much.

Chapter 19 1. Walker, “Part One: Baroque Opera. I. Italy,” 23–­24. 2. Weaver, “Opera in Florence,” 62. 3. Harold S. Powers, “Il ‘Mutio’ tramutato, Part I: Sources and Libretto,” in Venezia e il Melodramma nel Seicento, ed. Maria Teresa Muraro (Florence: Olschki, 1976), 227–­ 58, at 230, 232; Lowell Lindgren (1 January 2001), “Bononcini, Giovanni,” Grove Music Online, accessed 30 September 2018, https://​w ww​.oxfordmusiconline​.com​/grovemusic​ /view​/10​.1093​/gmo​/9781561592630​.001​.0001​/omo​-­­9781561592630​-­­e-​ ­­6002278276; Lowell Lindgren, “A Bibliographic Scrutiny of Dramatic Works Set by Giovanni and His Brother Antonio Maria Bononcini” (PhD. diss., Harvard University, 1972), 817–­18; and Powers, “Il ‘Mutio’ tramutato,” 239–­40. In collaboration with Dr. Lewis Baratz, I am now preparing a full study of the 1696 Florence performance of Mutio Scevola, with an edition of the extant arias. 4. Griselda: Drama per musica rappresentato in Firenze nel carnevale del 1703 (Florence: Vincenzio Vangelisti, n.d. [1703]). 5. Weaver, “Opera in Florence: 1646–­1731,” at 63. 6. Weaver and Weaver, A Chronology of Music in the Florentine Theater, 1590–­1750, 194. 7. Weaver and Weaver, 194; and Robert Freeman, “Apostolo Zeno’s Reform of the Libretto,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 21.3 (1968): 321–­41, at 326. 8. Cummings, Nino Pirrotta, 324, 330; Gloria Staffieri, “‘Versi, macchine e canto’: Il teatro in musica del Seicento,” in Musiche nella storia, ed. Andrea Chegai et al. (Rome: Carocci, 2017), 131–­87, esp. 177–­86, “Alla scoperta di nuove geometrie drammatico-­ musicale,” at 185. 9. Holmes, “Operatic Commissions and Productions at Pratolino,” at 152, 167; Fabbri, Alessandro Scarlatti e il principe Ferdinando de’ Medici, between pp. 36 and 37; Marcello de Angelis, “Il teatro di Pratolino tra Scarlatti e Perti: Il carteggio di Giacomo Antonio Perti con il principe Ferdinando de’ Medici (1705–­1719),” Nuova rivista musicale italiana 21 (1987): 606–­40, at 608, 611. There is a hypothetical reconstruction, very useful for envisioning the performances that took place there, in Il gran principe Ferdinando de’ Medici (1663–­1713), 106. Previous scholarship on Grand Prince Ferdinando’s sponsorship of operatic performances at Pratolino is now superseded by Francesco Lora’s Nel teatro del principe: I drammi per musica di Giacomo Antonio Perti per la Villa medicea di Pratolino ([Bologna]: Albisani, 2016); this is especially true with respect to the documents published by Fabbri in his Alessandro Scarlatti, which have been re-­published by Lora in much-­improved transcriptions. On operatic performances at Pratolino, I note that Dott.ssa Francesca Fantappiè is preparing a study that promises to be foundational to further understanding; she presented early results of her work as “Spettacoli in villa: Organico e costi

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delle opera di Pratolino (1679–­1696),” XXIII Colloquio di Musicologia del “Saggiatore musicale” (23 November 2019). I am grateful to Dott.ssa Fantappiè for generous communications on her work. 10. Leonardo Spinelli, “Le esperienze veneziane del principe Ferdinando de’ Medici e le influenze sulla politica spettacolare e dinastica toscana (1688–­1696),” Medioevo e Rinascimento 19, n.s., 16 (2005): 159–­99, at 191–­92. 11. Maria Letizia Strocchi, “Pratolino alla fine del Seicento e Ferdinando di Cosimo III,” in Il gran principe Ferdinando de’ Medici (1663–­1713), 72–­81, at 75. 12. Holmes, “Operatic Commissions and Productions at Pratolino,” 153, 163. 13. Weaver, “Opera in Florence,” 65 n. 16. 14. On Vittoria della Rovere, see Antonella D’Ovidio, “Sul mecenatismo musicale di Vittoria della Rovere, granduchessa di Toscana: Alcune considerazioni,” in Firenze e la musica: Fonti, protagonisti, committenza. Scritti in ricordo di Maria Adelaide Bartoli Bacherini, ed. Cecilia Bacherini et al. (Rome: Istituto Italiano per la Storia della Musica, 2014), 284–­311. 15. Edward J. Dent, Alessandro Scarlatti: His Life and Works, pref. and additional notes Frank Walker (London: Edward Arnold, [1905] 1960 [new impression]), 102. 16. Pollens, Bartolomeo Cristofori and the Invention of the Piano, 23–­24, 68. 17. Holmes, “Teatro della Pergola in Florence,” 154; Pollens, Bartolomeo Cristofori and the Invention of the Piano, 212–­13. 18. Among other sources one could cite, see, most recently, Anthony M. Cummings, “A Scarlatti Operatic Masterpiece Revisited,” Christ Church Library Newsletter 12.1 (2020–­ 21): 1, 3–­5. 19. Domínguez, “Scarlatti, Alessandro”; Domínguez, “L’opera durante il primo periodo napoletano di Alessandro Scarlatti (1683–­1702),” in Storia della musica e dello spettacolo a Napoli: Il Seicento, ed. Francesco Cotticelli and Paologiovanni Maione, Turchini Saggi (Naples: Turchini Edizioni, 2019), vol. 1, 653–­36, at 666–­67. 20. Francesca Fantappiè, “Per una rinnovata immagine dell’ultimo cardinal mediceo,” 515, 522. 21. Domínguez and Fantappiè, “Alessandro Scarlatti and the Spanish National Church of S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli,” in Music and the Identity Process, ed. Emilie Corswarem et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), 104–­10, at 107; Fantappiè, “Accademie teatrali fiorentine nel quartiere di Santa Croce,” 160. 22. Fantappiè, “Accademie teatrali fiorentine nel quartiere di Santa Croce,” 160. 23. Holmes, “Lettere inedite su Alessandro Scarlatti,” in La musica a Napoli durante il Seicento, ed. Domenico Antonio d’Alessandro et al. (Rome: Torre d’Orfeo, 1987), 369–­ 78, at 375. 24. Domínguez, “Scarlatti, Alessandro.” 25. Dent, Alessandro Scarlatti: His Life and Works, 71, 103–­4. 26. Dent, 106; Freitas, Portrait of a Castrato, 243; and Edwin Hanley, “Alessandro Scarlatti (Palermo 2 V 1660—­Napoli 22 X 1725),” in Enciclopedia della musica (Milan: G. Ricordi e C., 1963–­65), 132–­37, at 133. On the matter of Ferdinando’s tastes and Scarlatti’s failure to satisfy his patron, see an important article by Reinhard Strohm: “Alessandro Scarlatti and the Eighteenth Century,” in Strohm, Essays on Handel and Italian Opera (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 15–­33 and 272 ff., at 16. 27. Domínguez, “Scarlatti, Alessandro.” 28. Domínguez and Fantappiè, “Alessandro Scarlatti and the Spanish National Church,” 107; Fantappiè, “Accademie teatrali fiorentine nel quartiere di Santa Croce,” 160.

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29. For these important observations, see Strohm, “Alessandro Scarlatti,” 19–­20, 29. 30. Domínguez, “Scarlatti, Alessandro.” 31. Fabbri, “Giacomo Antonio Perti,” in Musicisti Lombardi ed Emiliani, ed. Adelmo Damerini et al. (Siena: Accademia musicale Chigiana / Ticci, 1958), 133–­40; Schnoebelen, A., and Vanscheeuwijck, M., “Perti, Giacomo Antonio”; Lora, “Perti, Giacomo Antonio”; Perti, Integrale della musica sacra per Ferdinando de’ Medici; Francesco Lora, Nel teatro del principe. I drammi per musica di Giacomo Antonio Perti per la Villa medicea di Pratolino (Turin: De Sono Associazione per la Musica / Albisani editore, 2016); and Holmes, “Teatro della Pergola in Florence.” 32. Hanley, “Alessandro Scarlatti,” in Enciclopedia della musica, 133. 33. Cummings, Nino Pirrotta, 326. 34. Gloria Staffieri, “‘Versi, macchine e canto,’” at 185. 35. Scarlatti, Massimo Puppieno, ed. H. Colin Slim (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979); Pierluigi Petrobelli, “La partitura del ‘Massimo Puppieno’ di Carlo Pallavicino (Venezia 1684),” in Venezia e il melodramma nel Seicento, ed. Maria Teresa Muraro (Florence: Olschki, 1976), 273–­97. 36. Petrobelli, “La partitura del ‘Massimo Puppieno’ di Carlo Pallavicino (Venezia 1684),” 286; Donald J. Grout, Alessandro Scarlatti: An Introduction to His Operas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 57. 37. Pirrotta, Don Giovanni’s Progress, 34. It is important to recognize the role of the librettists in the design of these new formal structures, on which see Staffieri, “‘Versi, macchine e canto,’” 180–­83; and Cummings, Nino Pirrotta, 325–­33. 38. Powers, “Il Serse trasformato—­I,” vol. 47, 488; Staffieri, “‘Versi, macchine e canto,’” 183; Cummings, Nino Pirrotta, 326–­33. 39. Other Scarlatti operas that figured in the Florentine operatic repertory included Pirro e Demetrio (1711) and Arminio (1716); see Alessandro Scarlatti, by Roberto Pagano, Lino Bianchi, and Giancarlo Rostirolla; review by Reinhard Strohm, Rivista italiana di musicologia 11.2 (1976): 314–­28, Strohm’s numbers 23 and 45. 40. Holmes, “Lettere inedite,” 371. 41. Dent, Alessandro Scarlatti, 106–­7. 42. Gino Corti, “Il Teatro La Pergola di Firenze e la stagione d’opera per il carnevale 1726–­1727: Lettere di Luca Casimiro degli Albizzi a Vivaldi, Porpora, ed altri,” Rivista italiana di musicologia 15.1–­2 (1980): 182–­88; Holmes, “The Teatro della Pergola in Florence”; Holmes, Opera Observed, at 2, 7, 12, 15–­16, 34–­35, 38, 89–­90, 105–­17, 118, 131–­33; Johnson, Inventing the Opera House, at 238. 43. Michelassi, “Memorie dal sottopalco,” 352. 44. Giovani, “Tra mondanità e ufficialità,” 313, 315. 45. Giovani, 314. 46. Spinelli, “Le esperienze veneziane del principe Ferdinando de’ Medici,” 199. 47. Reinhard Strohm, “Vivaldi’s Career as an Opera Producer,” in Antonio Vivaldi: Teatro Musicale Cultura e Società, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi and Giovanni Morelli (Florence: Olschki, 1982), 11–­63, at 21, 44. 48. Corti, “Il Teatro La Pergola di Firenze.” 49. Strohm, “Vivaldi’s Career as an Opera Producer,” 27, esp. 58–­59. 50. Cummings, Nino Pirrotta, 325 n. 59. 51. J. Merrill Knapp, “Handel’s First Italian Opera: ‘Vincer se stesso é la maggior vittoria’ or ‘Rodrigo’ (1707),” Music & Letters 62.1 (1981); 12–­29; Reinhard Strohm, “Händel in

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Italia: Nuovi contributi,” Rivista italiana di musicologia 9 (1974): 152–­74; Ursula Kirkendale, “The Ruspoli Documents on Handel,” now in Warren and Ursula Kirkendale, Music and Meaning: Studies in Music History and the Neighbouring Disciplines (Florence: Olschki, 2007), 287–­349; Mario Fabbri, Alessandro Scarlatti e il principe Ferdinando de’ Medici, 24 ff.; Winton Dean with Anthony Hicks, New Grove Handel (New York: Norton, 1980, 1982, 1983), 6–­9; Lorenzo Bianconi, I libretti di Georg Friedrich Händel e le loro fonti, 2 vols. (Florence: Olschki, 1992), vol. I*, I testi handeliani, and vol. I** (“Note ai testi e fonti”), 3–­5; Donald Burrows, Handel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 29–­32, 56–­57, 66, and fig. 3; Rognoni, “Il gran principe Ferdinando e la musica,” 123; Dinko Fabris, “Gli studi su Händel in Italia,” in Musicologia come pretesto: Scritti in memoria di Emilia Zanetti, ed. Tiziana Affortunato (Rome: Istituto Italiano per la Storia della Musica), 147–­76; Hans Joachim Marx and Steffen Voss, “Eine neue Quelle zu Händels Rodrigo,” Göttingen Händel Beiträge 10 (2004); 67–­80; Alan Curtis, “Introduction: Rodrigo Rediscovered. A Note,” in George Frideric Handel, Vincer se stesso è la maggior vittoria, ovvero Rodrigo, 2 CDs, Il Complesso Barocco, Alan Curtis, direction, Virgin Veritas 7243 5 45897 2 0 (London: Virgin Classics Ltd, © 1999; Siena: Accademia Musicale Chigiana, under exclusive license to Virgin Classics Ltd, ℗ 1999), 14–­16. 52. Vincer se stesso è la maggior vittoria[.] Drama per musica rappresentato in Firenze nell’autunno dell’anno 1707. Sotto la protezione del serenissimo principe di Toscana (Florence: Vincenzio Vangelisti, 1707). 53. Rognoni, “Il gran principe Ferdinando e la musica,” 123. 54. But see Strohm’s important observation that Handel’s operas are not the sole measure of what subsequent generations owed to Scarlatti; “Alessandro Scarlatti and the Eighteenth Century.” 55. Edwin Hanley, “Alessandro Scarlatti’s Cantate da Camera: A Bibliographical Study” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1963), iv, 479; Hanley, “Alessandro Scarlatti. III. Other Works. II. Cantatas,” in Denis Arnold et al., New Grove Italian Baroque Masters, 233–­38. 56. Cantata Su le sponde del Tebro, Alessandro Scarlatti, Domenico Scarlatti, Johann Adolf Hasse, Salve Regina, Cantatas and Motets, The King’s Consort, Robert King, The Hyperion Helios Series CDH 55354 (London: Hyperion Records, ℗ 1996, © 2011), tracks 5–­12. My translation of the text of the cantata is borrowed from the compact disc.

Conclusion 1. Cummings, Lion’s Ear, 204–­6; Anthony M. Cummings, “Leonine Lasciviousness and Luther,” in Sexualities, Textualities, Art and Music in Early-­Modern Italy, ed. Linda L. Carroll et al. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014), 95–­115, esp. 109–­12. 2. For the material of the foregoing paragraph, see Cummings, Maecenas and the Madrigalist, pref. and chap. 1. 3. Cummings, Nino Pirrotta, 327. 4. Eric Cochrane, Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1527–­1800: A History of Florence and the Florentines in the Age of the Grand Dukes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973).

Bibliography

Note: The bibliography lists the most important titles. Complete bibliographic information for a work not included here is given in the note where it is first cited; thereafter, it is cited in abbreviated form. However, all primary sources cited in the notes (both manuscript and print) are listed here, with full bibliographic information.

Primary Sources Manuscripts Brussels, Bibliothèque du Conservatoire Royal, MS 27.731 Florence, Archivio di Stato, fondo Mediceo avanti il Principato, filze XXXIX, n. 537; XXXIX, n. 542; and XLVII, n. 473 Florence, Archivio di Stato, fondo Mediceo del Principato, filze 161, XIV, 20, 181 (filza 181, fol. 4r, “Tomo LXIII d’Antonio da Sangallo”), 182, 644, 3716, 5452, and 5453 Florence, Biblioteca del Conservatorio di Musica Luigi Cherubini, MS Basevi 2442 Florence, Biblioteca Marucelliana, MS B.III.52 Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS II.I.292 (olim Magl. XIX, 57) Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS II.IV.1, fols. 63v–­64v, Libro capitoli, compositioni, et leggi della Accademia degli Humydi di Firenze creata l’anno del Signore MDXL Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS E.6.7.56 I8, Rappresentazione dell’Annunziazione della Gloriosa Vergine . . . recitata in Firenze il dì x di marzo 1565 [more florentino; recte: 1566] nella Chiesa di Santo Spirito Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Magliabechiano 66, cl. XIX Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Panciatichi, 164, fols. 243r–­246v (“Madrigali di Messer Vgolino Martelli / sopra la commedia di Francesco D’anbra [sic; recte: “d’Ambra”] / Madrigale al primo atto / Vdendo ragionare che qui si denno . . . ,” etc.) Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS 2723 Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, Ms. Codex 564, fol. 48v (Cronica dopo la morte del duca Alessandro de’ Medici fino al 1555) Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, MS 124, fols. 9r–­v (G. A. Moniglia, L’Egitto [ca. 1654]) Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS. it. IX. 126 (6482)

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures, tables, and musical examples. academies, Florentine, xiv, 166–­68, 227, 279, 281, 324–­25 informal sodalities as proto-­ academies, 156–­57, 166–­67 See also camerate; and specific academies Accademia degli Alterati, 227–­28 Accademia degli Elevati, 227, 316, 405n121 Accademia degli Immobili, 276–­83, 286, 291, 292, 294, 337–­38 See also Accademia dei Concordi Accademia degli Infuocati, 331 Accademia dei Concordi, 276–­78 See also Accademia degli Immobili Accademia Fiorentina (Umidi), 153, 166–­69, 170, 173–­74 Accademici Avvalorati, 335 Accademici degli Intronati (Sienese), 213 Accademici Sorgenti, 280–­83, 292, 295 Accolti, Bernardo, the “Unico Aretino,” 157 Adda River, 31, 35 Adieu Florens la yolye (Bonnel), 130 Adige River, 31 Agricola, Alexander, 90, 126, 127 Alberti, Leon Battista, 112 Alberti palace, 166 See also Paradiso degli Alberti Albinoni, Tommaso, 331, 335 Albizzi, Luca Casimiro degli, 337–­39 Albizzi family, 74, 199

Alexander V (antipope), 58 Alfonso II (king of Naples), 124 Alla battaglia (Isaac), 94–­95 Allegri, Lorenzo, 313 Alli, Silvio degli, 294 Allori, Alessandro, 177, 212 Alterati, Academy of the, 227–­28 Altoviti, Antonio (archbishop of Florence), 187–­90 A me (Striggio intermedio), 206–­8 Amidst a Thousand Ravens a White Carrion-­Crow ( Johannes de Florentia), 31 Aminta (Tasso pastoral), 258 Amore ch’ai visto ciascun mio pensiero (Lorenzo “il Magnifico” canzona), 131–­32, 378n57 Andreas de Florentia, xvi, 32, 59–­61 Andrea Stefani, 62, 68 Andromaca, L’ (Salvi opera libretto), 339 Angeli, archangeli (Isaac motet), 96, 99 Angeni, Ambrogio, 92–­93 Anglesi, Domenico, 274, 290 Animuccia, Giovanni, 191 Anna, Lady, 30–­31 Annunciation play (Festa dell’Annunciazione), 6, 79–­86, 101–­7, 137, 191–­ 92, 211 Antoniano, Silvio, 169 Antonio da Lucca, 153, 220 Antonio di Guido, 110, 124

468  i n d e x

Antonio di Matteo di Meglio, 108 Apolloni, Giovanni Filippo, La Dori ò vero La schiava fedele (opera libretto), 295, 298–­99, 300–­301, 302–­3, 335 Apollonio di Giovanni, 53, 54– ­55 Arcadelt, Jacques, 154, 164, 173, 186 Arcadian movement, 331–­32, 335, 340 Archilei, Antonio, 203, 213, 214, 219 Archilei, Vittoria, 175, 179, 214, 216, 239, 240, 312 Ardinghelli, Niccolò, 123 Aridosia (Lorenzino de’ Medici), 164 Aristotile da San Gallo, 164 Arnolfo (Quattrocento composer), 186, 376n25, 378n57 Ascension play, 103, 191 Assolani, Francesco, 323 Astio non morì mai (Andreas de Florentia ballata), 59–­61 Aura soave (Luzzaschi madrigal), 179 Aureli, Aurelio L’Erismena (opera libretto), 295, 421n150 Massimo Puppieno (opera libretto), 334–­35, 336, 339 Baglioni, Baccio, 288– ­89 Balbi, Giovanni Battista, 286 Baldini, Baccio, Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne, 116–­17 Baldracca theater (Teatro della Dogana), 276, 280, 286, 288 ballade, genre of French poetry and musical settings thereof, 58–­60 ballata, genre of Italian poetry and musical settings thereof, 31–­32, 38, 360n30 Ballerini, Leonora, 290, 294–­95 ballet entertainments (mascherate, or masques) at the Seicento Medici court, 311–­15 banditori (town criers), 17, 22 Baptistery of St. John the Baptist (San Giovanni Battista), 4, 7, 11, 74, 88 Baratz, Lewis, xvii Barbara, Saint, 77

Bardi, Giovanni de’, 220, 236, 239, 253, 404n86 camerata, host of, 228–­33, 235 “Discourse addressed to Giulio Caccini,” 231–­32 visits to Ferrara in 1583 and 1585, 174, 178 works: L’amico fido, 396n48; intermedi for Bargagli’s La pellegrina, 203, 213, 239; intermedi for Il giudizio di Paride, 254 Bardi, Pietro di Giovanni de’, 228–­29, 232, 241 Bargagli, Girolamo, La pellegrina, 152, 203, 211–­13 “Baroque” as term and concept, xviii, 261–­62 Bartholus (Bartolo) de Florentia, 42, 65–­66, 76 Bartoli, Francischus, 87 Bartolomeo degli Organi, 184, 271 Basiron, Philippe, “Philippon,” Missa “L’homme armé,” 91–­92, 96–­97, 99 bassadanze and balli, 133, 135 Bati, Luca, 186, 194, 239, 253, 264–­65, 426n57 Belcari, Feo, 100–­107, 110 Bellerofonte (Sacrati opera), 284 Belli, Domenico, 258 Bellieri, Dionisio, 269 Bello, Bartolomea, 92 Beltramus of the Order of St. Augustine, 87 Benottus of Ferrara, 87, 368n62 Puer qui natus est nobis, 88, 89, 96, 99 Benvenuti del Cartolaio, Giovanni, 186, 193 Berenstadt, Gaetano, 338–­39 Bernardi, Francesco Antonio, “Senesino,” 338 Biagio di Sernello, 48 Bianchi, Company of the, 68 Bianconi, Lorenzo, 225–­26, 241, 243 Binchois, Gilles, 99, 127, 129, 130, 134, 135 Bitti, Martino, 271, 321, 323 Boccaccio, Giovanni, Decameron, 42, 50 Boëthius, tripartition of music, 82, 128, 214

i n d e x  469

Bonaiutus Corsini Cofanarius, 60–­61, 66 Bonnel, Pietrequin, 90, 92, 126, 130 Bononcini, Giovanni, Mutio Scevola (opera), xvii, 331 Book of the Courtier, The (Castiglione), 141 Borghini, Vincenzo, 192 Botticelli, Sandro, 113 Bovia, Laura, 175, 179 Boyer, Ernest, xv Bronzino, Agnolo, 168 Brucker, Gene, Florence: The Golden Age, 1138–­1737, xiii Brunelleschi, Filippo, xiii, 84, 104 Buontalenti, Bernardo, 213, 217–­19, 242, 253 caccia, Trecento genre of poetry and musical settings thereof, 31–­32, 35–­36 Caccini, Francesca di Giulio, 274, 310–­11 Caccini, Giulio, 220, 225, 288 collaborations with Striggio on Ferrarese-­style madrigals, 176–­79 compositional techniques and innovations, 233–­36, 238–­39; the basso continuo, 235, 237–­38, 246; sprezzatura, 238, 239, 245–­46; Vedrò il mio sol as illustrative of, 233–­35, 234 foundational influences, 236–­37 as member of the late Seicento Florentine academies, 228–­29, 231–­33, 240, 306 visit to Ferrara in 1583, 174–­75 works: Dafne and Euridice, 251–­52; intermedi for Bargagli’s La pellegrina, 203, 213, 216, 219; intermedi for Il giudizio di Paride, 255; Le nuove musiche (New Music), 179, 233–­35, 238, 253; Il rapimento di Cefalo (opera), 252–­53 Caccini, Lucia, 175, 179, 216 Caccini, Pompeo di Giulio, 307 Calderoni, Anselmo, 108 camerate, 227–­29, 231–­33, 235, 239, 240 cantasi come (sung like) practices, 100–­ 101, 191, 196, 197

cantata, Seicento, 317–­19 cantata, Settecento, 340–­43 canterini or improvvisatori of Piazza San Martino, 110–­12 Cappello, Bianca, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, 171, 175, 178–­79, 187, 203, 229, 254, 396n47 Cara, Marchetto, 141 Carducci, Giosuè, 54 Careggi, Medici villa at, 124 carnival and carnival songs (canti carnascialeschi) and related festival music, xiv, 94–­95, 156, 205, 345 celebration of trades and professions, 114–­18, 121, 221–­22 classicization of, 118–­21, 221–­22 Medici leveraging of, 166, 199–­200 Savonarola’s critique of, 138–­39 works: Song of Bacchus, 118; Song of the Grafters, 116; Song of the Pastries (Mascherata of the Confortini), 94, 116; Song of the Seven Planets, 118–­19; Song of the Tailors, 116; Song of the Vendors of Perfumes, Oils, and Soaps, 115, 116, 117–­18; Triumph of Æmilius Paulus, 120 See also festivals, Cinquecento Florentine Caron, Firminus, 110–­11 Carpentras (Elzear Genet), 186 Carracci, Agostino, 215 Carrion-­Crow Clothes Itself in Others’ Feathers, The ( Jacobus de Bononia madrigal), 31 Carter, Tim, 417n74 Casini, Giovanni Maria, 268–­72, 304, 310, 319, 424n31 Castello, Medici villa at, 169 Castiglione, Baldassare, The Book of the Courtier, 141 Cathedral of Florence. See Cathedral of Santa Reparata Cathedral of Santa Reparata (Santa Maria del Fiore, the Duomo), 5, 9 consecration of (25 March 1436), 79– ­86 construction of, 6–­7, 64, 356n10

470  i n d e x

Cathedral of Santa Reparata (Santa Maria del Fiore, the Duomo) (continued) ecclesiastical posts in, 75 liturgical practices, 10–­15, 64–­65 manuscripts for, 7, 64, 96, 98, 184, 186 medieval and early-­modern depictions of, 4, 74 musical establishment at, 10–­15, 87–­ 92; post-­Savonarolan reconstitution of the, 183–­86; tradition and innovation in during the Seicento, 264–­72 organs and organ music at, 47, 64, 269–­73, 367n21, 368n59 titular saints of, 10–­11 Catone in Utica (Metastasio and Vinci opera), 340 Catullus, 138 Cavalieri, Emilio de’, 179, 203, 213, 239–­41 Cavalli, Francesco, 300 L’Erismena (opera), 295, 421n150 Giasone (opera), 284, 285, 287, 288, 291 Ipermestra (opera), 280, 289–­91, 293–­ 95, 330 Cazzuola, Company of the, 150 Cecchi, Giovanni Maria, 193–­95 Celio (Cicognini, Baglioni, and Sapiti opera), 287–­89, 291 Cenci, Giuseppino, 236 Cerri, Bonaventura, 266 Certame Coronario (literary competition, 1441), 112 Cesti, Antonio, 285, 295, 320, 330 La Dori ò vero La schiava fedele (opera), 295, 298–­99, 300–­301, 302–­3 Le nozze in sogno (opera), 282, 291 Orontea (opera), 284, 285, 288–­89, 295, 297–­98 Chançoneta Tedescha Tenor (German song tenor), 50–­51, 53–­55 chanson, 155–­56 Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor), 146–­47 Charles VIII (king of France), 137

Chiabrera, Gabriello, 236, 239, 243, 245, 258, 316, 400n16 Chiavistelli, Jacopo, 292 Christine of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, 171, 266, 310 wedding of Grand Duke Ferdinando I di Cosimo I de’ Medici and, 152, 179, 194, 201, 203, 211–­16, 220 churches of Florence, 16–­17, 187, 323, 324 See also Baptistery of St. John the Baptist; Cathedral of Santa Reparata; confraternity; conventual churches and establishments; Orsanmichele, Church of; San Felice in Piazza, Church of Cicalamento delle donne (Striggio madrigal), 181 Cicognini, Giacinto Andrea Celio (opera libretto), 287–­89, 291 Giasone (opera libretto), 284, 285, 287, 288, 291 Gl’amori di Alessandro Magno ed di Rossane (opera libretto), 288 Orontea (opera libretto), 285, 287, 288–­89, 295, 297–­98 Cicognini, Jacopo, Il martirio di Santa Caterina, 310–­11 Cini, Francesco, La notte d’amore (veglia), 254 Cini, Giovanni Battista, 203, 206–­9, 231, 237 Ciompi Revolt (1378), 70 Clement VI (pope), 42 Clement VII (antipope), 58 Clement VII (pope), Giulio di Giuliano di Piero de’ Medici, 7, 58, 75, 141 election as pope, 145, 146 influence on Florentine music, 149–­50 musical patronage as archbishop of Florence, 184–­85 Cochrane, Eric, 261–­62, 349 Cocòmero. See Via del Cocòmero, opera theater in Cofanaria, La (d’Ambra), intermedi for, 203, 206–­9, 231, 237 Cominciamento di gioia (istampita), 52 commedia dell’arte, 182

i n d e x  471

Commedia di Judit, 196–­97 Comme femme desconfortée (Binchois chanson), 99 Commodo, Il (Landi), 203, 204–­5 Comparini, Giovanni Battista, 266 Con brachi assai ( Johannes de Florentia caccia), 35–­36 concerto delle donne (Ferrarese), 152, 174–­76, 178, 236 Florentine equivalent, 175–­79, 253 Concordi, Academy of the, 276–­78 See also Accademia degli Immobili Condulmer, Gabriele. See Eugenius IV Condulmer, Marcus (cardinal of Venice), 80 confraternity, xiv, 6, 15, 16, 17, 20, 100, 196, 305, 309 devotional observances of, 17–­18, 19 oratorio performances, 309–­10 ritual irregularities of, 191, 311 specific confraternities: Arcangelo Raffaello, detta della Scala, 220, 265, 305, 306, 308, 309, 310; Bianchi, 68; Purificazione della Gloriosa Vergine Maria, et di San Zanobi, detta di San Marco, 424n30; San Bernardino e Santa Caterina, 424n30; San Giovanni Evangelista, 193–­94; San Piero Martire, 16, 18; Santa Croce, 16; Santa Maria delle Laudi, detta di Sant’Agnese, 16, 100, 101, 103; Santo Spirito, 16, 101; San Zanobi, 37, 66 See also intermedio: intermedio sacro e morale; lauda; sacra rappresentatione Congregazione dell’Oratorio di San Filippo [Neri] (the Oratorians), 308–­10 Consiglio del Dugento (senate), 167 Constantinople, 86–­87 Constitutiones episcoporum florentini (Orsi), 64 Contarini, Andrea (doge of Venice), 47 Con tutta gentilezza (Andrea Stefani), 62 conventual churches and establishments, 9 definition of, 356n5

San Lorenzo, Church of, 42, 47, 56, 74, 151, 265, 266 San Marco, Church of (Dominican), 136, 191 San Pancrazio, Church of (Vallombrosan), 14, 17, 324 Santa Croce, Church of (Franciscan), 5, 16, 269 Santa Maria Novella, Church of (Dominican), 5, 16, 74, 79, 169, 269 Santa Trìnita, Church of, 47 Santissima Annunziata, Church of the (Servites, or Servants of Mary), 16, 47, 59, 74, 90, 99, 269, 270, 371n5, 380n42; musical repertory of, 91–­92 See also churches of Florence Coppola, Giovanni Carlo, Le nozze degli dei (opera), 254, 260–­61, 276, 278 Cornelio de Benis (de Brugni) of Udine, 185 Cornelio di Lorenzo, 90 Coronazione di Saulo (Cecchi), 194 Corradus, 59, 364n13 Corsi, Jacopo, 220, 231, 306, 400n16 camerata of, 228, 239 as creator of earliest operas, 239–­41, 245, 340 La Dafne (opera), 246–­50, 260, 306, 406n123 visit to Ferrara in 1585, 178 See also Peri, Jacopo Corteccia, Francesco di Bernardo, 190, 265 and Annunciation play, 192 life and career, 151, 166, 169, 185–­86 as madrigalist, 165, 173, 316, 394n28; intermedi for d’Ambra’s Il furto, 169–­70; intermedi for Landi’s Il Commodo, 203, 204–­5 works: Ingredere (motet), 202, 203; intermedi, 193, 205, 206; Sacerdos et Pontifex (motet), 187–­89 Costa, Anna Francesca, “La Checca,” 284 Counter-­Reformation in Florence, 190 Courtois et sages (Egidius ballade), 58 Crescentius, Saint, 11

472  i n d e x

Cristofori, Bartolomeo, xiii, 326–­29, 345, 348 “Crocetta, La” (Monastero di Santa Croce), 269 Dà, dà, a chi avaregia pur per sè (Laurentius madrigal), 43–­45 Daddi, Bernardo, 66 Dafne, La Caccini opera, 251–­52 Gagliano opera, 258 Rinuccini, Corsi, and Peri opera, 246–­50, 260, 306, 406n123 d’Ambra, Francesco La Cofanaria, 203, 206, 237 Il furto, 169–­70, 205 Dame sans per (Andreas de Florentia [?] ballade), 60 Dance of the Turkish Women with Their Consorts of Slaves (mascherata), 314 dances, dance music ballet entertainments at the Seicento Medici court, 311–­15 balli and bassadanze, 133–­35, 296 Chançoneta Tedescha Tenor (German song tenor), 50–­51, 53–­55 Gioioso (perhaps Rôti bouilli joyeux), 125, 135 istampita (Istanpitta), 50, 52, 53 moresca, 125, 135, 215–­16 saltarello, 50 See also ballata dancing, depictions of, 51, 53–­55 Dante Alighieri, xiii, 85, 232, 345 Davanzati, Giuliano, 80 Decameron (Boccaccio), 42 del Bene, Giulio, 227 del Giogante, Michele di Nofri, 112 della Bella, Stefano, 274, 286, 293, 294 della Fonte, Giovanbattista, 174 della Fonte, Lionardo, 174 della Palla, Scipione, 236–­37 della Scala family, 29–­31, 37, 359n23 della Stufa, Ugo, 122 del Mazza, Lotto, I Fabij, 152, 203 de Lore, Niccolò, 90 Depuis le congé que pris (Caron), 111 Descrizione della presa d’Argo e degli

amori di Linceo con Hipermestra (Rucellai), 293 de Silva, Andreas, 186 d’Este, Cesare, 221, 396n48 Didone abbandonata (Metastasio and Sarro opera), 338, 340 Diligenter advertant cantores (Laurentius antiphon), 44 dining or banqueting, music for, 123–­35 “Discourse addressed to Giulio Caccini, called the Roman, on ancient Music, and singing well” (Bardi), 231–­32 Divine Offices, 10, 11, 76 Dogana Theater, 276, 280, 286, 288 Donatello, xiii Donati, Lucrezia, 123 Donatus de Florentia, xvi, 41–­42, 44 Doni, Giovanni Battista, 240, 417n74 Donna non fu già mai (Bonaiutus ballata), 60–­61 Dori ò vero La schiava fedele, La (Apolloni and Cesti opera), 295, 298–­99, 300–­301, 302–­3, 335 Duccio di Buoninsegna, 18, 19 due Persilie, Le (Fedini), 396n48 Du Fay, Guillaume, 80–­86, 131 Nuper almos rose flores (prosa), 83 Nuper rosarum flores (motet), 83–­85, 99 Salve flos, Tusce gentes (motet), 85 Duomo. See Cathedral of Santa Reparata Egidius, Magister frater, 58– ­59 Einstein, Alfred, 316 Eleonora of Toledo, 171, 185 wedding of Cosimo I and, 201–­5 Elevati, Academy of the, 227, 316, 405n121 equestrian ballet, 272, 274, 297 Ercole in Tebe (Moniglia and Melani opera), 291, 295–­97, 330 Erismena, L’ (Aureli and Cavalli opera), 295, 421n150 Esaltazione della croce, L’ (Cecchi), 194 Estense marquisate of Ferrara, 90 Eugene, Saint, 11, 12, 14

i n d e x  473

Eugenius IV (pope), Gabriele Condulmer, 76, 86, 112 Council of Florence (1439), 86, 101 as officiant at the consecration of the Cathedral of Florence, 79–­80, 81, 83 Euridice Caccini opera, 251–­52 Rinuccini and Peri opera, 213, 225, 243–­45, 246, 249– ­52 Fabij, I (del Mazza), 152, 203 Fantappiè, Francesca, 400n16, 416n37, 417n74, 429n9 “Febiarmonici” (itinerant troupe), 285, 287, 330 fede ne’ tradimenti, La (Gigli and Predieri opera), 338 Fedini, Giovanni, Le due Persilie, 396n48 Ferdinand Karl (archduke of Austria), 297–­98 Ferdinando (Quattrocento king of Naples), 88 Feroci, Francesco, 271–­73 Ferrara church council transferred to Florence from, 86, 87 concerto delle donne, 152, 174–­76, 178, 236 as creative center, 173 musical exchange with, 90–­91, 127 visits by Florentine musicians, 152, 174–­76, 178 Festa, Costanzo, 186, 203 Festa dell’Annunciazione. See Annunciation play festivals, Cinquecento Florentine, 211, 394n29 festivals with extant musical elements, 203 notable festivals: 1513, first carnival following Medici restoration, 199–­201; 1539, wedding of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici and Eleonora of Toledo, 201–­5; 1546, carnival, 205, 394n28; 1565–­66, wedding of Prince Regent Francesco de’ Medici and Johanna of Austria,

187, 192, 203, 205–­11; 1568, birth of Eleonora di Francesco de’ Medici, 152, 203, 236; 1579, wedding of Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici and Bianca Cappello, 187, 203, 229; 1586, wedding of Cesare d’Este and Virginia de’ Medici, 221, 396n48; 1589, wedding of Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici and Christine of Lorraine, 152, 179, 194, 201, 203, 211–­16, 220 “occasional” celebrations, 201 politicization and Medicean appropriation of, 198–­99, 202 public phase followed by private phase, 200, 202 visual and sonic elements of, 198 See also carnival and carnival songs Ficino, Marsilio, xiii, 127–­28 Filarete, Francesco, 108 finta pazza, La (Strozzi and Sacrati opera), 276, 284, 286–­87, 291, 418n84 Flora, La (Gagliano and Peri opera), 254, 258–­60, 278 Florence, piazze of Piazza del Duomo, 5 Piazza della Signoria, 5 Piazza San Firenze, 308 Piazza San Lorenzo, 171 Piazza San Martino, 110–­12, 374n23 Piazza Santa Croce, 113 Piazza Santa Maria Novella, 305 Piazza Santissima Annunziata, 220 Florence, political history of, 8, 9, 167 gonfaloni (local political precincts), 6, 16–­17, 100, 148 Guelphs/Guelph Party, 8, 9, 64, 112 See also Signoria Florence, Studium of, 54, 112, 167 Florence: The Golden Age, 1138–­1737 (Brucker), xiii Florentine Academy. See Accademia Fiorentina (Umidi) Florentine constitution, 147, 221–­22 Florentinism, 42, 65, 91, 166, 191, 208, 346–­47 flower as Florentine icon, 6, 355n1 (chap. 1)

474  i n d e x

Foggini, Giovanni Battista, 322 Franciosini ensemble, 220, 306, 320 Franzesi ensemble, 320 Frescobaldi, Girolamo, 269, 319–­20, 426n70, 427n77 furto, Il (d’Ambra), 169–­70, 205 Gabbiani, Anton Domenico, 323 Gagliano, Giovanni Battista da, 266 Gagliano, Marco da, 220, 246, 256, 312 brief biography of, 265–­66 as madrigalist, 316 and Peri, 258–­60 sacred music of, 264–­67, 268–­69, 306–­7 works: La Dafne (opera), 258; La Flora (opera), 254, 258–­60, 278; La liberazione di Tirreno e d’Arnea, 258; Musiche a una, due, e tre voci, 307; Le nozze degli dei (opera), 254, 260–­61, 276, 278; “Ovunque irato Marte in terra scende,” intermedio for Il giudizio di Paride, 256–­ 57; Pastor levate, 307; La regina Sant’Orsola (opera), 254, 258; Lo sposalizio di Medoro e di Angelica, 258 Galilei, Galileo, xiii, 345 Galilei, Vincenzo, 228–­33 Gasparini, Carlo Francesco, 339 Gelosi (Milanese), 213 Genet, Elzear, “Carpentras,” 186 Gherardellus de Florentia, xvi, 37–­41 as laudese, 37, 66 settings of Mass Ordinary texts, 65–­ 66 works: I’ vo’ bene (ballata), 38–­39; Tosto che l’alba (caccia), 32, 39–­41 Ghibellines/Ghibelline Party, 8 Ghiselin-­Verbonnet, Johannes, 90 Gian Maria Giudeo, 149 Giasone (Cicognini and Cavalli opera), 284, 285, 287, 288, 291 Gigli, Giovan Battista, 321, 323 Gigli, Girolamo, 338 Ginevra principessa di Scozia (Vivaldi opera), 339

Giotto, xiii Giovanbattista d’Arezzo, 184 Giovanni di Daniele, 70 giudizio di Paride, Il, 253–­57 Giulio di Piero, 141 giuoco di calcio (athletic contest), 212, 216, 272 Giustini, Lodovico, 328–­29 Giustiniani, Vincenzo, 236 Gl’amori di Alessandro Magno ed di Rossane (Cicognini and Lucio opera), 288 gonfaloni (local political precincts), 6, 16–­17, 100, 148 Gonfaloniere di Giustizia (Standard Bearer of Justice), 8, 68–­70 Gonzaga, Ferdinando (duke of Mantua), 258, 297, 314 Gonzaga, Vincenzo I (duke of Mantua), 175, 217 granchio, Il (Salviati), intermedi for, 163, 395n39 gran Tamerlano, Il (opera), 335, 339 Grasseschi, Michele, 284, 285, 292, 294, 295 Grazzini, Antonfrancesco, “Il Lasca,” 94–­95, 117, 163, 165, 166, 206 Great Schism, 58–­59 Griselda (Zeno and Albinoni opera), 330–­32, 335 Grisovan, Francesco, 150 Gualandi, Margherita, 338 Guarini, Giovanni Battista, 236, 252, 316 Guelphs/Guelph Party, 8, 9, 64, 112 guerra d’amore, La (The War of Love; Salvadori and Peri), 272, 274 Guglielmo Ebreo (Giovan Ambrosio) da Pesaro, 133 Guglielmus, Magister frater, 58–­59 Guidiccioni, Laura, 179, 214, 216 guilds (mercantile corporations) of Florence, 7, 17, 114 Arte de’ Giudici e Notai (judges and notaries), 8 Arte dei Mercantanti di Calimala (international merchants and cloth finishers), 7, 8

i n d e x  475

Arte della Lana (woolen cloth), 7, 8, 76, 278 Arte della Seta (silk cloth and retail cloth merchants), 8 headquarters of the individual guilds, 9 Priori delle Arti (Priors of the Guilds), 8, 68–­70, 222 Händel, Georg Friedrich, 331, 339–­40 Henri IV (king of France), 249 herald of the Signoria, 6, 8, 9, 68–­70, 106, 108 See also Signoria Hilton, James, Lost Horizon, xviii Holy Roman Empire as European superpower, 146 Hora è di maggio (Isaac ballata), 94 Hothby, John, 131–­32, 378n57 Huizinga, Johan, 55 humanist sensibilities and music, 73, 80, 112, 128–­29, 138, 160, 167 Iannes de Monte of Ferrara, 87 Iesù, sommo conforto, 140 I’ mi son un che per le frasche andando ( Jacobus de Bononia), 31 Immobili, Academy of the. See Accademia degli Immobili Infuocati, Academy of the, 331 Ingredere (Corteccia motet), 202, 203 Innocent X (pope), 290 instrumental tradition of Seicento and early-­Settecento Florence, 319–­26 See also pianoforte intermedio, 162–­64, 230, 241, 294 early history of, 160 intermedi non apparenti vs. apparenti, 162–­63, 169 intermedio sacro e morale, 190, 193–­95 original motivations and justifications for, 162–­63 International Gothic, phenomenon of, 9, 57 Intronati, Academy of the (Sienese), 213 Ipermestra (Moniglia and Cavalli opera), 280, 289–­91, 293–­95, 330

Isaac, Heinrich, 90, 92–­95, 125, 149, 265 Alla battaglia, 94–­95, 155 Angeli, archangeli (motet), 96, 99 Hora è di maggio (ballata), 94 Mascherata of the Confortini, 94 Palle, palle, 94, 127, 133 Questo mostrarsi adirata di fore, 94 Quis dabit capiti meo aquam (motet), 93 Quis dabit pacem (motet), 93 Un dì lieto giammai (ballata), 94 istampita (Istanpitta), 50, 52, 53 Ita se n’era a star (Laurentius madrigal), 44 Ivanovich, Cristoforo, 285 I’ vo’ bene (Soldanieri and Gherardellus ballata), 38–­39 Jacobus de Bononia, 30, 31, 37, 359n21 Jacomelli, Giovanni Battista, “del violino,” 219–­20, 251, 271 Jacopo del Casentino, 12, 13, 45 Janue, Antonius, O Redemptor sume carmen, 96, 98 Johanna of Austria, 187, 192, 203, 205–­11 Johannes de Florentia (Giovanni da Firenze, Giovanni da Cascia), 28–­36, 37, 38, 42, 66, 359n13 Con brachi assai (caccia), 35–­36 O perlaro gentil (madrigal), 30–­32 Quando la stella (madrigal), 32–­35 John XXIII (antipope), 58 Johnson, Eugene J., 147 jousts, ceremonial, 112–­14, 212, 216–­17, 272, 346 Julius II (pope), 141 Kirkendale, Warren, 240 Landi, Antonio, Il Commodo, 203, 204–­5 Landino, Cristoforo, 45, 54–­56 Landino, Francesco, 12, 45–­59, 62 Ma’ non S’ANDRÀ per questa donna altera (ballata), 55 Orsù, gentili spirti (ballata), 48–­49 Questa fanciulla (ballata), 49–­51

476  i n d e x

Landino, Nuccio, 47 Lansing, Carol, 8 “Lasca, Il” (Antonfrancesco Grazzini), 94, 117, 163, 166 lauda Duecento, 15–­21, 38 Trecento, 66–­67 Quattrocento, 99–­101; in the sacra rappresentatione, 101–­7 Cinquecento, 190–­91; Razzi’s Libro primo delle laudi spirituali, 191 Seicento and early Settecento, 304 Laudate el sommo dio, 106–­7 laudesi. See confraternity Launoy, Charles de, 90, 92, 126, 183 Laurentius Masij de Florentia, xvi, 32, 38, 42–­45, 47 Dà, dà, a chi avaregia pur per sè (madrigal), 43–­45 Diligenter advertant cantores (antiphon), 44 Ita se n’era a star (madrigal), 44 Sanctus, 66–­67 Layolle, Francesco de, 154, 157, 186 Leo X (pope), Giovanni di Lorenzo “il Magnifico” de’ Medici, 7, 75, 92–­93, 125, 126, 149, 184, 187 election as pope, 141, 145–­46 Leonardo da Vinci, xiii Lhéritier, Jean, 186 liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina, La (Francesca Caccini), 274 liberazione di Tirreno e d’Arnea, La (The Liberation of Tyrrhenus and Arnea; Salvadori, Gagliano, and Peri), 258, 297, 314 Libro primo delle laudi spirituali (Razzi), 191 Lieta viva e contenta (Isabella de’ Medici madrigal), 171–­73 Lippi, Filippino, 119, 120, 137 liturgical observances of the Church, 10, 11, 17, 76 Feast of Sant’Agata, 12, 13 Feast of Santa Reparata, 11, 65, 76, 183 Feast of St. Crescentius, 11 Feast of St. Eugene, 11, 12

Feast of St. John the Baptist (San Giovanni Battista), 76, 183–­84 Feast of St. Zenobius (San Zanobi), 11, 65, 76, 87, 183–­84 Feast of the Annunciation, 6, 79–­86 Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin, 7 Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, 6 Feast of the Virgin Mary, 11, 65 liturgical practices by century: Duecento, 13, 14; Trecento, 64–­66; Quattrocento, 96–­ 99; Cinquecento, 187–­89 Lamentations of Jeremiah, 96 processions, 7, 11, 12 Tridentine reforms, 190 See also Annunciation play; Ascension play; lauda; sacra rappresentatione Locatelli, Andrés, 395n35 Long, Michael P., 363n55 Lost Horizon (Hilton), xviii Lucio (Luzio), Francesco, Gl’amori di Alessandro Magno ed di Rossane (opera), 288 Lucio Vero (Zeno and Gasparini opera), 339 Luzzaschi, Luzzasco, 179–­80 Machiavelli, Niccolò, xiii, 157, 163–­64, 170 madrigal, genre of Italian poetry and musical settings thereof Trecento, 31–­35 Cinquecento, xiii, 222, 345; and the academies, 166–­70, 173; decline in Florence in midcentury, 173–­74; demand for, 164–­65; design and features of, 154, 158; influence of Ferrarese innovations, 175–­82, 232; as intermedi for d’Ambra’s Il furto, 169–­70; as intermedi for Machiavelli’s comedies, 157, 163–­64, 170; as intermedi for Lorenzino de’ Medici’s Aridosia, 164; note nere, 170; origins of, 155–­56, 384n17; as suited for amateur performance, 165; text painting, 159, 160 Seicento and early Settecento, 316–­17

i n d e x  477

Maffei, Scipione, 329 magnate nobility, 8–­9 Malvezzi, Cristofano, 171, 186, 203, 220, 241, 271 compositions for wedding of Grand Duke Ferdinando I and Christine of Lorraine, 203, 212, 213, 214 Manenti, Giovanni, 186, 194 Ma’ non S’ANDRÀ per questa donna altera (Landino ballata), 55 Mantua, 141, 152 Marenzio, Luca, 203, 213, 215, 218 Margaret of Austria, 146–­47, 164, 191, 201 Marguerite Louise d’Orléans, 337 wedding of Cosimo III di Ferdinando II de’ Medici and, 274, 295–­99 Maria Maddalena of Austria, 254, 260, 266, 274 Martelli, Braccio, 125, 135 Martelli, Niccolò, 168 Martin V (pope), 76, 77 martirio di Santa Caterina, Il ( Jacopo Cicognini), 310–­11 Marvilla, Jachetto de, 91 Masaccio, xiii Masacone (Masiaccioni), Gianpiero di Niccolò, 185–­86, 188, 203 Mascherata d’astrologi (Corteccia), 205 Mascherata of the Confortini (Isaac), 94 Mascherata of the Nymphs of Senna, 312–­15 mascherate (masques) at the Seicento Medici court, 311–­15 Masquerade of the Genealogy of the Gentiles’ Gods (Mascherata della genealogia degl’iddei), 209–­11, 221, 395n41 Masques of the Buffaloes, 209–­11 Massimo Puppieno (Aureli and Scarlatti opera), 334–­35, 336, 339 Matteo di Paolo, 371n2 Maximilian I (Holy Roman Emperor), 141 Mazzuoli, Giovanni, 66, 364n26 Medici, Alessandro di Giulio (?) di Giuliano de’, Duke of Penne and

“Duke of the Florentine Republic,” 75, 146–­47, 149, 153, 164, 191, 201, 226 Medici, Anna di Cosimo II de’, 298 Medici, Anna Maria Luisa (Ludovica) di Cosimo III de’, Electress Palatine and Grand Princess of Tuscany, 332, 338–­39 Medici, Antonio de’, 250, 254 Medici, Bianca di Piero di Cosimo “il Vecchio” de’, 124, 131, 133 Medici, Caterina di Ferdinando I de’, 258, 314 Medici, Clarice de’ (née Orsini), 122–­ 23, 133 Medici, Cosimo “il Vecchio” de’, Pater Patriae, 73–­74, 75, 86, 91, 127, 148 Medici, Cosimo I di Giovanni “delle Bande Nere” de’, Duke of Florence and Grand Duke of Tuscany, 147, 148, 151, 153, 156, 168, 169, 185, 187, 237, 254 wedding of Eleonora of Toledo and, 201–­5 Medici, Cosimo II di Ferdinando I de’, 148, 254 Medici, Cosimo III di Ferdinando II de’, 148, 324, 327, 332, 337–­38 wedding of Marguerite Louise d’Orléans and, 274, 295–­99 Medici, Eleonora di Francesco de’, 152, 175, 203, 236 Medici, Ferdinando di Cosimo III de’, Grand Prince of Tuscany, 148, 302–­ 3, 309, 320–­27, 332–­39, 430n26 Medici, Ferdinando I di Cosimo I de’, Grand Duke of Tuscany, 148, 181, 182, 187, 239, 310, 404n86 wedding of Christine of Lorraine and, 152, 179, 194, 201, 203, 211–­16, 220 Medici, Ferdinando II di Cosimo II de’, Grand Duke of Tuscany, 148, 260, 279, 283–­84, 290, 297, 319, 337 Medici, Francesco di Cosimo I de’, Prince Regent and Grand Duke of Tuscany, 148, 177, 185, 236, 254 patronage of Striggio, 174–­79

478  i n d e x

Medici, Francesco di Cosimo I de’ (continued) wedding of Bianca Cappello and, 187, 203, 229 wedding of Johanna of Austria and, 187, 192, 203, 205–­11 Medici, Francesco di Cosimo II de’, 283 Medici, Francesco Maria di Ferdinando II de’, 332–­34 Medici, Gian Gastone di Cosimo III de’, Grand Duke of Tuscany, 147, 332, 337 Medici, Giovan Carlo di Cosimo II de’, Grand Prince of Tuscany, 148, 260, 277–­79, 281–­84, 286, 289–­93, 297–­ 98, 302, 337 Medici, Giovanni “delle Bande Nere” de’, 147, 148 Medici, Giovanni di Bicci de’, 73, 75, 148 Medici, Giovanni di Cosimo “il Vecchio” de’, 125, 131 Medici, Giovanni di Cosimo I de’, 254 Medici, Giovanni di Lorenzo “il Magnifico” de’. See Leo X Medici, Giuliano di Lorenzo “il Magnifico” de’, Duke of Nemours, 75, 126, 141, 145, 199 Medici, Giuliano di Piero de’, 75, 112, 118 Medici, Giulio di Giuliano di Piero de’. See Clement VII Medici, Ippolito di Giuliano di Lorenzo “il Magnifico” de’, 75, 146 Medici, Isabella di Cosimo I de’, 170–­ 73, 236 Medici, Leopoldo di Cosimo II de’, 279, 283, 287–­88, 290, 298 Medici, Lorenzino di Pierfrancesco de’, Aridosia, 164 Medici, Lorenzo di Ferdinando I de’, 274, 277 Medici, Lorenzo di Giovanni di Bicci de’, 88, 147, 148 Medici, Lorenzo di Piero de’, “il Magnifico,” 75, 93, 123, 133, 135 carnival music, 114–­21 and ceremonial jousts, 112, 114 and civic institutions, 108–­9, 114

and the confraternities, 88, 90–­92, 100 domestic musical experiences, 122, 128, 133 and Isaac, 92–­94 as musician, 125, 128 and Savonarola, 136 works: Amore ch’ai visto ciascun mio pensiero (canzona), 131–­32, 378n57; Quant’è bella giovinezza, 101; Trionfo de’ sette pianeti, 138 Medici, Lorenzo di Piero di Lorenzo “il Magnifico” de’, Duke of Urbino, 75, 145, 184, 199 Medici, Margherita di Cosimo II de’, 258 Medici, Maria di Francesco di Cosimo I de’, 148, 249 Medici, Maria Maddalena di Ferdinando I de’, Grand Princess of Tuscany, 310 Medici, Mattias di Cosimo II de’, 148, 279, 283–­84, 286–­87, 290, 297–­98 Medici, Piero di Cosimo “il Vecchio” de’, 74, 75, 91, 112, 123, 125 Medici, Piero di Lorenzo “il Magnifico” de’, 74, 75, 91, 125, 128, 136, 140 Medici, Pietro di Cosimo I de’, 217 Medici, Virginia de’, 221, 396n48 Medici family, 8, 73–­95, 155 exiles and restorations of: 1433–­34 exile, 74; 1494–­1512 exile, 74, 99, 113, 136–­37, 140–­41; 1512 restoration, 146, 185; 1527–­30 exile, 146, 156; 1530 restoration, 145, 146–­47, 156, 221–­22 family trees of, 75, 148 iconographic devices and mottoes of, 113 marriages in service of strategic alliances, 146–­47 methods of control of Florentine political institutions, 74, 88 music and: musical “francophilia” of, 91; music in service of dynastic objectives and aristocratic identity, 152–­53; primary sources of, 126–­ 27; Quattrocento, 90, 92, 122–­35;

i n d e x  479

Cinquecento, 149, 151, 152–­53, 155; Seicento and early Settecento, 263, 424n36 (see also opera in Florence, early aristocratic phase; opera in Florence, pan-­Italian phase; opera in Florence, the pan-­European and later phases) propagandistic ceremonial jousts for (1469 and 1475), 112–­14 regime, rise and fall of, 145, 147, 156, 221, 343 residences of, 74, 124, 169, 220 support of learning and the arts, 73 wealth of gained through banking, 73 See also Pazzi rebellion (1478); and specific family members Mei, Girolamo, 228–­32 Melani, Atto, 284, 290 Melani, Jacopo, 282, 284, 286 Ercole in Tebe (opera), 291, 295–­97, 330 Il Girello (opera), 420n130 Il potestà di Colognole (opera), 279, 291–­93, 298, 339 See also opera in Florence, pan-­Italian phase mendicant orders, 15, 356n5 Metastasio, Pietro, 330, 335–­36, 338, 339, 340 Michelangelo Buonarroti, xiii, 157, 345 Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger, 251–­52 Migliorotti, Atalante, 157 Miniberti, Fra Tommaso, 269 Missa “L’homme armé” (Basiron), 91–­ 92, 96–­97, 99 Monastero di Santa Croce, “La Crocetta,” 269 monastic orders, 16, 57, 90, 356n5 See also conventual churches and establishments Mon cuer chante joyeusement (Binchois), 124, 129, 130 Moniglia, Giovanni Andrea, 274, 281, 286, 330, 333 Ercole in Tebe (opera libretto), 291, 295–­97, 330

Ipermestra (opera libretto), 280, 289–­ 91, 293–­95, 330 Il potestà di Colognole (opera libretto), 279, 291–­93, 298, 339 moresca, genre of dance, 398n76 Mores et consuetudines canonice florentine, 11, 12 Moroney, Davitt, 152 morte d’Acabbe re di Sammario, La (Cecchi), 193, 195 Moschini, Baccio, 184, 203, 271 Mouton, Johannes, 186 Murate, Le (Benedictine convent), 140 Mutio Scevola (Stampiglia and Bononcini opera), xvii, 331 Naples, 29, 37, 90, 124, 137, 340 musical relationships with and influences on Florence, 236–­37, 377n38 tradition of solo song, 171–­72, 236–­37 Nardi, Jacopo, 201 Neri, Filippo, 191, 305, 308, 310 Nerli, Bernardo de’, intermedi for Salviati’s Il granchio, 163, 395n39 Nero del Nero, 228, 233 Nigetti, Francesco, 269, 271, 319 Ninot le Petit, 155–­56 notte d’amore, La (Cini veglia), 254 nozze degli dei, Le (Coppola and Gagliano opera), 254, 260–­61, 276, 278 nozze in sogno, Le (Susini and Cesti opera), 282, 291 nuove musiche, Le (New Music; Caccini), 179, 233, 238, 253 Nuper almos rose flores (Du Fay prosa), 83 Nuper rosarum flores (Du Fay motet), 83–­85, 99 Ockham, William of, 54 Odoardo Farnese (duke of Parma and Piacenza), 258 O levita nobilis Eugeni, 12, 14 Opera del Duomo, 7 opera houses, 276–­86, 339 See also Teatro della Pergola; Via del Cocòmero, opera theater in

480  i n d e x

opera in Florence, early aristocratic phase, 225–­62, 414n1 debate about origins of, 225–­26 importance of academies and salons, 227–­35, 239–­46 (see also academies, Florentine; and specific academies) libretti and librettists, 431n37 mythological characters featured in, 241 roots in ancient Greek dramaturgical practices, 230, 417n74 works: La Flora, 254, 258–­60, 278; Il giudizio di Paride, 253–­57; Le nozze degli dei, 254, 260–­61, 276, 278; L’Orfeo dolente (intermedi for Tasso’s Aminta), 254, 258 See also Caccini, Giulio; Peri, Jacopo opera in Florence, pan-­Italian phase, 275–­303 comic opera, tradition of, 291–­92 continuing aristocratic benefactions, 283–­85 influence of Venetian opera, 283, 284 institutions of patronage, 276–­85, 292 (see also academies, Florentine; and specific academies) performance venues, 276–­86 (see also Teatro della Pergola; Via del Cocòmero, opera theater in) performers, 284, 285, 287, 290, 294 transition to public performance, 275–­86 works: Celio (Cicognini, Baglioni, and Sapiti), 288–­89, 291; La Dori (Apolloni and Cesti), 298–­302; Ercole in Tebe (Moniglia and Melani), 291, 295–­97; La finta pazza (Strozzi and Sacrati), 286–­ 87, 291; Ipermestra (Moniglia and Cavalli), 289–­91, 293–­95; Orontea (Cicognini and Cesti), 297–­98; Il potestà di Colognole (Moniglia and Melani), 279, 291–­93, 298, 339 opera in Florence, the pan-­European and later phases, 330–­43 Arcadian reform, effects of, 331–­32, 340

composers, 331 fuller commercialization of the repertory, 331 later aristocratic phase, 332–­37; performance of Massimo Puppieno (Aureli and Scarlatti), 335–­36; performances at the Medici villa in Pratolino, 323, 332–­35, 337, 429n9. See also Medici, Ferdinando di Cosimo III de’; Scarlatti, Alessandro librettists and libretti, 300 Metastasian tradition, 335, 340 Teatro della Pergola reopening, 337–­ 40 works, 331–­32; Catone in Utica (Metastasio and Vinci), 340; Didone abbandonata (Metastasio and Sarro), 338, 340; La fede ne’ tradimenti (Gigli and Predieri), 338; Ginevra principessa di Scozia (Vivaldi), 339; Il gran Tamerlano (Salvi and Porta), 339; Griselda (Zeno and Albinoni), 330–­32; Lucio Vero (Zeno and Gasparini), 339; Mutio Scevola (Stampiglia and Bononcini), 331; Scanderbeg (Salvi and Vivaldi), 338; Vincer se stesso è la maggior vittoria, or Rodrigo (Salvi [?] and Händel), 339–­40 O perlaro gentil ( Johannes de Florentia madrigal), 30–­32 O primavera (Luzzaschi madrigal), 180 Oratorians (Congregazione dell’Oratorio di San Filippo [Neri]), 308–­10 oratorio, devotional genre, 305–­11 compositional techniques, 306–­7 Congregazione dell’Oratorio di San Filippo (Neri) (the Oratorians), 308–­10 financing, 309 origins, 305–­6 performance of in religious communities for women, 310–­11 Orcagna (Andrea di Cione di Arcangelo), 66 O Redemptor sume carmen ( Janue), 96, 98

i n d e x  481

Orfeo dolente, L’ (intermedi for Tasso’s Aminta), 254, 258, 259 Orlandi, Santi, 255 Orontea (Cicognini and Cesti opera), 284, 285, 287, 288–­89, 295, 297–­98 Orsanmichele, Church of, 16, 66, 68, 74 Orsi, Antonio degli, Constitutiones episcoporum florentini, 64 Orsini, Fabio, 128 Orsini, Paolo Giordano, 171 Orsini, Virginio di Paolo Giordano I, 218, 398n86 Orsù, gentili spirti (Landino ballata), 48–­49 Ospedale degli Innocenti (orphanage), 220 Ottonelli da Fano, Giovan Domenico, 226 Ovid, 138, 247 O vos omnes (Gagliano), 266–­67 Pagani “della cornetta,” Bernardo, detto “Il Franciosino,” 220 Pagliardi, Giovanni Maria, 285, 321 Palazzo della Signoria (Palazzo Vecchio), 5, 7–­9, 106, 108, 109, 110, 145 Cinquecento residence of the Medici dukes, 147–­48 medieval and early-­modern depictions of, 4, 74 See also Signoria Palazzo Medici, Florence, 74 Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 220 Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, 109 Palazzo Vecchio. See Palazzo della Signoria Palisca, Claude, 241 Palle, palle (Isaac), 94, 127, 133 papal state, 90 Paradiso degli Alberti, 48–­50, 53–­55 Parigi, Domenico di Giovanni, 184 pastoral, literary/theatrical genre, 240, 250–­51, 252, 258 Pastor levate (Gagliano), 307 Paulus de Florentia, xvi, 62 Benedicamus domino, 66 Godi, Firenze, 62 Pazzi, Alfonso de’, 168

Pazzi rebellion (1478), 118, 146 pellegrina, La (Bargagli), intermedi for, 152, 203, 211–­16, 239 Pensieri per l’organo (Casini), 269–­71 Percival, Lord, Herald of the Signoria, 9, 68–­69 performance venues, operatic. See opera houses Pergola. See Teatro della Pergola Peri, Jacopo, 242 and ancient Greek dramaturgical practices, 243, 401n32 compositional techniques and innovations, 231, 241–­46 compositions for wedding of Grand Duke Ferdinando I and Christine of Lorraine, 203, 213 early protagonist in the history of opera, 225, 230, 239 as member of the Compagnia dell’Arcangelo Raffaello, 220, 306 works: La Dafne (opera), 246–­50, 260, 306, 406n123; Euridice (opera), 213, 225, 243–­45, 246, 249–­52; La Flora (opera), 254, 258–­60, 278; La guerra d’amore (The War of Love), 272, 274; The Liberation of Tyrrhenus and Arnea, 314; Mascherata of the Nymphs of Senna, 312; “Poichè la notte” from Il giudizio di Paride, 255–­56 Perti, Giacomo Antonio, 334, 424n34 Peter II of Lusignano, 47 Petit, Le, “master at Lyon,” 91 Philip II (Holy Roman Emperor), 147 Philip the Fair, 141 pianoforte, xiii, 325–­29 piazze. See Florence, piazze of Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 86, 128 Piero, Fra, 30, 31, 37 Con brachi assai (caccia), 31 Sì com’al canto della bella Yguana (madrigal), 359n23 Pinacci, Giovanni Battista, 338 Piperno, Franco, 275 Pirrotta, Nino, 152–­53, 237 Pisano, Bernardo, 149–­50, 154, 157, 184, 186

482  i n d e x

Pitratto, 91 Pius II (pope), 124 Plato and early-­modern music, 232 Plautus, 196 political history of Florence. See Florence, political history of Poliziano, Angelo, 112, 118, 125, 128 polyphonic tradition in the Trecento, xvi, 25–­63 “Gallicization” of, 41–­42, 57–­62; Stimmtausch or rondellus (exchange between voices), 59 instrumental tradition, 49–­55; keyboard arrangements of vocal compositions, 49–­50; music for dancing, 50–­54 liturgical, 65–­66 origins of, 28; setting of a trope to the Benedicamus domino, 15; setting of the sacred text Decus morum, 27 See also Andreas de Florentia; Bartholus (Bartolo) de Florentia; Corradus; Egidius, Magister frater; Gherardellus de Florentia; Guglielmus, Magister frater; Jacobus de Bononia; Johannes de Florentia; Landino, Francesco; Laurentius Masij de Florentia; Paulus de Florentia; Piero, Fra Ponte Vecchio, 74 Porta, Giovanni, 339 potestà di Colognole, Il (Moniglia and Melani opera), 279, 291–­93, 298, 339 Predieri, Luca Antonio, 338 Priori delle Arti (Priors of the Guilds), 8, 68–­70, 222 Prospero, Philip, 293 Pucci, Vittorio de’, The Astrologer, 205, 394n28 Puer qui natus est nobis (Benottus of Ferrara), 88, 89, 96, 99 Pulci, Luigi, 112, 126, 135 Quando la stella ( Johannes de Florentia madrigal), 32–­35 Quanto sia lieto (Verdelot madrigal), 159–­62

Quattordici Buonomini (the Fourteen), 8 Questa fanciulla (Landino ballata), 49–­51 Questo mostrarsi adirata di fore (Isaac), 94 Quis dabit capiti meo aquam (Isaac motet), 93 Raffaello, Compagnia dell’Arcangelo, detta della Scala, 220, 265, 305, 306, 308, 309, 310 Rampollini, Mattia, 173, 184, 203 rapimento di Cefalo, Il (Caccini opera), 252– ­53 Rappresentazione dell’Annunziazione della Gloriosa Vergine (Annunciation play), 192 See also Annunciation play (Festa dell’Annunciazione) Razzi, Serafino, 190–­91 Reformation, Protestant, 136 regina Sant’Orsola, La (Salvadori and Gagliano opera), 254, 258 Ricci, Vittorio, 287 Richafort, Johannes, 186 Rinuccini, Ottavio, 178, 228, 230, 236, 239–­41, 258, 307, 340 Dafne (opera libretto), 246–­50, 260, 306, 406n123 Euridice (opera libretto), 213, 225, 243–­45, 246, 249– ­52 Mascherata of the Nymphs of Senna, 312 Ritus in ecclesia servandi, 11, 14 Rivani, Antonio, 282, 292 Robert d’Anjou (king of Naples), 29, 37 Rome, sack of (1527), 146 rondellus or Stimmtausch (exchange between voices), 59 Rosa, Salvator, 295 Roselli, Rosello, 131 Roses et lis ay veu en une fleur (Egidius ballade), 58–­59 Rossetti, Stefano, 152, 396n48 Rucellai, Bernardo, 123 Rucellai, Giovanni, 290 Rucellai, Orazio Ricasoli, 279, 293

i n d e x  483

Rucellai garden group, 150, 157, 166–­67, 348 Rucellai Madonna (Duccio di Buoninsegna), 18, 19 Sacchetti, Filippo “Pippo” di Franco, 26 Sacchetti, Franco, 26, 37, 42, 44, 47, 55 Sacerdos et Pontifex (Corteccia motet), 187–­89 sacra rappresentatione, xiv, 101–­7, 196, 371n18 Sacrati, Francesco Bellerofonte (opera), 284 La finta pazza (opera), 276, 284, 286–­ 87, 291, 418n84 Sacred Academy of the Medici, 157, 166 Salutati, Benedetto, 113 Salutati, Coluccio, 25–­26, 47, 48, 55 Salvadori, Andrea, 254, 258, 272, 314 Salvetti, Pietro, 321, 323 Salvi, Antonio, 338, 339–­40 Salviati, Lionardo, 163, 221, 395n39 San Felice in Piazza, Church of, 103, 137, 191 San Firenze (church), 308, 347 San Gaetano, Theatine Church of, 324, 347 San Giovanni Evangelista, Compagnia di, 193–­94 San Giovannino delle Cavalieresse di Malta, Convent of, 194 San Lorenzo, Church of, 42, 47, 56, 74, 151, 265, 266 San Marco, Church of (Dominican), 136, 191 Sanmartini, Pietro, 266 San Michele, Theatine Church of, 323 Sannazzaro, Jacopo, 236 San Pancrazio, Church of (Vallombrosan), 14, 17, 324 San Pier Maggiore, Church of, 187 Santa Croce, Church of (Franciscan), 5, 16, 269 Santa Maria del Fiore. See Cathedral of Santa Reparata Santa Maria delle Laudi, Compagnia di, detta di Sant’Agnese (Church of

Santa Maria del Carmine), 16, 100, 101, 103 Santa Maria Novella, Church of (Dominican), 5, 16, 74, 79, 169, 269 Santa Reparata, Spedale di, 47, 362n36 Santa Trìnita, Church of, 47 Santissima Annunziata, Church of the (Servites, or Servants of Mary), 16, 47, 59, 74, 90, 99, 269, 270, 371n5, 380n42 musical repertory of, 91–­92 Sapiti, Niccolò, 266, 268–­69, 288–­89 Sardelli, Anna Maria, 284 Sarro, Domenico, 338, 340 Savonarola, Fra Girolamo, 101, 136–­40, 146 Scanderbeg (Salvi and Vivaldi opera), 338 Scarlatti, Alessandro, 270, 309, 324, 332–­ 37, 340–­43, 430n26 Arminio (opera), 431n39 Il Flavio Cuniberto (opera), xvii, 333 Il gran Tamerlano (opera), 335 Lucio Manlio (opera), 335 Massimo Puppieno (opera), 334–­35, 336, 339 Pirro e Demetrio (opera), 431n39 La serva favorita (opera), 333 Su le sponde del Tebro (cantata), 340–­43 Turno Aricino (opera), 335 Tutto il mal non vien per nuocere (opera), 333 Scrivete, occhi dolenti (Atto Melani cantata), 318–­19 Seneca, 196 Senolaart (Snalaart), Cornelio, 150, 184 Serafino Aquilano, 126 Serragli, Giovanni, 183 Seznec, Jean, 136 Sforza family and court, 123, 124 Siena, 147, 213 Signoria (lords), 8, 68–­70, 183, 222 banditori (town criers), 17, 22 Gonfaloniere di Giustizia (Standard Bearer of Justice), 8, 68–­70 Herald of the, 6, 8, 9, 68–­70, 106, 108

484  i n d e x

Signoria (lords) (continued) instrumentalists of: Duecento, 21–­22; Trecento, 68–­70; Quattrocento, 108–­11 Ordinances of Justice (1293), 9 See also Altoviti, Antonio; guilds (mercantile corporations) of Florence; Palazzo della Signoria (Palazzo Vecchio) sodalities. See academies, Florentine Soderini, Piero, 145 Soldanieri, Niccolò, 38, 42 Sonatas for Soft-­and-­Loud Cembalo (Giustini), 327 Sonate accademiche (Veracini), 324–­25, 326 Song of Dreams, The, 209–­11 Song That a Florentine Does at Carnival, an “invective against carnival,” 139 Sorgenti, Academy of the, 280–­83, 292, 295 spiritual comedy, 196 sposalizio di Medoro e di Angelica, Lo (Salvadori and Gagliano opera), 254, 258 Squarcialupi, Antonio, 92, 122, 124, 125–­ 26, 131, 270, 272 Squarcialupi, Francesco di Antonio “degli organi,” 122, 125–­26, 270 Stampiglia, Silvio, 331, 335 Steynsel, Guillelmus, 90 stile concertato, 264, 304, 306, 310 stile rappresentativo, 232, 306 stile recitativo, 257, 306, 317, 318, 340 Stimmtausch or rondellus (exchange between voices), 59 Stochem, Johannes, 90 Strainchamps, Edmond, 316 Striggio, Alessandro, 151–­52, 174–­82, 203, 316 intermedi for Bardi’s L’amico fido, 396n48 intermedi for d’Ambra’s La Cofanaria, 203, 206–­9, 231, 237 Striggio, Virginia Vagnoli, 178 Strozzi, Giovambattista “il Vecchio,” 204 Strozzi, Giovanni Battista, 228

Strozzi, Giulio, La finta pazza (opera), 276, 284, 286–­87, 291, 418n84 Strozzi, Piero di Matteo, Fuor dell’humido, 203, 229, 253, 306 Strozzi family, 155, 199 Studium of Florence, 54, 112, 167 Su le sponde del Tebro (Scarlatti opera), 340–­43 Susini, Pietro, Le nozze in sogno, 282, 291 Tacca, Ferdinando, 274, 278, 286, 294 Tacca, Giambologna and Pietro, 182 Tasso, Torquato, 240, 252, 258 Teatro della Dogana, detto “di Baldracca,” 276, 280, 286, 288 Teatro della Pergola, 276–­86, 289–­92, 294, 297, 302, 324, 332, 334, 337–­39, 340 Terence, 138, 196, 292 Thorion, Johannes, 380n42 Tosto che l’alba (Gherardellus caccia), 32, 39–­41 trionfi, 101, 118, 120, 121, 137, 138, 156, 200, 210 Trissino, Giangiorgio, 163 Tromboncino, Bartolomeo, 108 Tuscan language, xiv, 112, 157, 167, 168–­ 69, 348 Uffizi, 148–­49 Ugolini, Baccio, 126 Umidi. See Accademia Fiorentina Un dì lieto giammai (Isaac ballata), 94 Varchi, Benedetto, 169 Vasari, Giorgio, 93, 104, 120 Vedrò il mio sol (Caccini), 233–­35, 234 veglia, 197, 254, 258, 314 Veglia di Calendimaggio, 197 Venice, 47, 138, 145, 264 madrigals in, 165, 173 opera in, 225, 226, 283–­91, 293–­94, 330, 338, 347 Venturi del Nibbio, Stefano, 253 Veracini, Antonio, 310, 321, 322–­23 Veracini, Francesco Maria, 310, 321, 322, 323–­25, 326

i n d e x  485

Verdelot, Philippe, 149–­50, 154, 157, 164, 184, 186 Quanto sia lieto (madrigal), 159–­62 Veri almi pastoris (Corradus), 59 Verino, Michele, 110 Verona, 29–­31 Verrocchio, Andrea del, 113, 356n10 Via del Cocòmero, opera theater in, 277–­ 83, 291, 295, 331, 332, 334, 338, 339 viaggio di Tobia, Il (Casini), 310 Villani, Filippo, 32, 42, 47, 65 Villani, Giovanni, 16 Vincer se stesso è la maggior vittoria, or Rodrigo (Salvi [?] and Händel opera), 339–­40 Vinci, Leonardo, 340 Violante Beatrice of Bavaria, 302–­3 Virgil, Eclogues, 113 Visconti court, 29–­31, 37 Vitali, Filippo, 266 Vittoria della Rovere d’Urbino, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, 260, 290, 293, 323, 332 Vivaldi, Antonio, 338, 339

Vostre tres doulx regart plaisant (Binchois chanson), 135 Walker, Thomas, 260 Warburg, Aby, 118 Weerbeke, Gaspar van, 91 Willaert, Adrian, 149, 186 Władysław Sigismund (prince of Poland), 274 women, religious communities of, 194 Monastero di Santa Croce, “La Crocetta,” 269 musico-­theatrical traditions of, 196–­ 97, 310–­11 Savonarola and the convent of Le Murate, 140 Zacharie, Nicolaus, 75–­78, 87 Letetur plebs fidelis / Pastor qui revelavit, 76–­78, 83, 99 Zanovello, Giovanni, 99 Zeno, Apostolo, 330–­32, 335, 339 Zenobius, Saint (San Zanobi), 11, 12, 65, 76, 87, 183, 184–­85