MUSIC IN FLORENCE,

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CHAPTER 14

• MUSIC IN FLORENCE,
• 1350-1450

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THE EARLY RENAISSANCE

• Renaissance means rebirth in the sense of a
  reawaking. Although the description of the
  Middle Ages as a dark age is a great
  exaggeration, the period of the early Renaissance
  (1350-1450) did see a reawakening of interest in
  the art of classical antiquity and a quickening
  of concern for the arts and humanities
  generallyin poetry, painting, sculpture, and
  music.

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FLORENCE

• Florence might fairly be called the home of the
  Italian Renaissance, possessing, as it does,
  more great art per square foot than any city in
  the world. Giotto, Donatello, Masaccio,
  Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci and
  Michelangelo all graced Florence with their art
  at various times between 1320 and 1490. Florence
  was a city-state which by 1348 had a population
  of about 100,000.

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TRECENTO MUSIC AND THE SQUARCIALUPI CODEX

• The period of the 1300s in Italy is called the
  trecento. By far the largest collection of
  trecento music is the Squarcialupi Codex, name
  after a Florentine organist who once owned the
  manuscript. Compiled in Florence about 1415, the
  Squarcialupi Codex contains 354 compositions and
  constitutes a retrospective anthology of all of
  forms of trecento music.

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ITALIAN FIXED FORMS

• While the French had their fixed forms for
  secular vocal music in the fourteenth century
  (ballade, rondeau, and virelai), so too did the
  Italians, specifically the madrigal, caccia, and
  ballata. The trecento madrigal possessed AAB
  form. The madrigal Non al suo amante of Jacopo
  da Bologna (c1310-c1386) is typical of the
  madrigal around 1350 in that it is highly florid,
  but somewhat rigid rhythmically. The poem here,
  by the early Renaissance humanist Frescesco
  Petrarch (1304-1374), is exceptionally beautiful
  and, typical of Renaissance poetry, is full of
  classical allusions.

The beginning of Jacopo da Bolognas two-voice
madrigal Non al suo amante.
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CACCIA AND BALLATA

• In Italian, caccia means hunt. A caccia is a
  composition involving a musical canon in the
  upper two voices supported by a slower moving
  tenor. In a caccia one of the upper voices
  chases after the other, and the Italian texts of
  many caccias are about a hunt, either real or
  amatory (of the beloved).
• The ballata was a dance song with a choral
  refrain. Its music and poetic form is similar to
  the French virelai A (ripresa) b (piede) b
  (piede) a (volta) A (ripresa). The terms piede
  (foot), volta (turn), and ripresa (refrain)
  recall the origins of the ballata as a monophonic
  dance.

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FRANCESCO LANDINI

• Francesco Landini (c1325-1397) was the most
  important composer of the trecento. Landini was
  a blind organist who worked at the church of San
  Lorenzo (St. Lawrence) in the center of Florence.
  Surviving from his pen are 140 ballatas, thirteen
  madrigals, but only one caccia.

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• Landinis ballata Or su, gentili spirti was said
  to have been sung in 1389 in a garden party by
  two women accompanied by a gentleman on the
  lowest part. Landinis music is characterized by
  flexible rhythms, florid melody, abundant thirds
  and sixths, and an idiosyncratic cadence, called
  the Landini cadence in which the cantus voice
  drops from the seventh degree to the sixth before
  jumping to the 8th and final degree.

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The beginning of Landinis ballata Or su, gentili
spirti revealing languid rhythms and a florid
melody
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The end of Landinis ballata Or su, gentili
spirti showing a Landini cadence