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Music of the trecento

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   Landini, the most famous composer of the trecento, playing a portative
   organ (illustration from the 15th century Squarcialupi Codex)
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   Landini, the most famous composer of the trecento, playing a portative
   organ (illustration from the 15th century Squarcialupi Codex)

   The trecento was a period of vigorous activity in Italy in the arts,
   including painting, architecture, literature, and music. The music of
   the trecento paralleled the achievements in the other arts in many
   ways, for example in pioneering new forms and new forms of expression,
   especially in secular song in the vernacular language, Italian. In
   these regards the music of the trecento was a Renaissance phenomenon,
   even though the predominant musical language was more closely related
   to that of the late middle ages. Although the positioning of beginnings
   and ends of musical eras, especially the middle ages and Renaissance,
   has always been controversial, the music of the trecento has usually
   been classified by musicologists as belonging to the end of the
   medieval era.

History

Background

   Very little Italian music remains from the 13th century, so the
   immediate antecedants of the music of the trecento must largely be
   inferred. The music of the troubadors, who brought their lyrical,
   secular song into northern Italy in the early 13th century, after they
   fled their home regions — principally Provence — during the Albigensian
   Crusade, was a strong influence, and perhaps a decisive one; many of
   the trecento musical forms are closely related to those of the
   troubadors of more than a century before. Another influence on trecento
   music was the conductus, a type of polyphonic sacred music which had
   the same text sung in all parts; texturally, trecento secular music is
   more like the conductus than anything else that came before, although
   the differences are also striking, and some scholars (for example
   Hoppin ^) have argued that the influence of the conductus has been
   overstated.

Early trecento

   Some of the poetry of Dante Alighieri (1265–1320) was set to music at
   the time it was written, but none of the music has survived. One of the
   musicians to set Dante's poetry was his friend Casella (died 1299 or
   1300), memorialized in Canto II of Purgatorio. Poems of Dante set by
   others included canzoni and ballatas; most likely the settings were
   monophonic.

   The earliest polyphonic secular vocal music of the trecento to survive
   is found in the Rossi Codex, and includes music by the first generation
   of trecento composers: Maestro Piero, Giovanni da Cascia, as well as
   numerous composers who are anonymous. Other composers of the first
   generation include Vincenzo da Rimini and Jacopo da Bologna, who was
   probably the teacher of Francesco Landini. All of these composers were
   associated with aristocratic courts in the north of Italy, specifically
   Milan, Padua, and Verona. Some extremely obscure names survive in later
   sources, such as Bartolo da Firenze (fl. 1330–1360), who may have been
   the first Italian composer to write a polyphonic mass movement: a
   setting of the Credo.

   This generation of composers usually wrote music with both voices
   singing the same text, in the manner of the conductus, and they
   preferred the form of the madrigal. While some of their music was still
   monophonic in the manner of the preceding century, much was for two
   voices, and Jacopo da Bologna wrote a few madrigals for three voices.
   Jacopo wrote one motet which has survived; motets from 14th century
   Italy are extremely rare. Indeed relatively little sacred music was
   produced by any composers in 14th century Italy: the almost complete
   focus on secular music by these composers, many of whom had musical
   careers in churches and could have been expected to write large
   quantities of sacred music, as did their descendants, is unique in
   medieval and early Renaissance history.

Peak of the trecento

   The centre of musical activity moved south in mid-century, to Florence,
   which was the cultural centre of the early Renaissance. Characteristic
   of the next generation of composers, most of them Florentine, was a
   preference for the ballata, a form which seems to have exploded into
   popularity around mid-century. By far the most famous composer of the
   entire trecento, Francesco Landini (c.1325–1397), was a member of this
   generation. Other composers of this group besides Landini included
   Gherardello da Firenze, Lorenzo da Firenze, and Donato da Cascia. Also
   by mid-century, influence of French music was becoming apparent in the
   secular work of the native Italian composers.

   Greater independence of voices was characteristic of the music of this
   generation, and points of imitation are common; in addition, the
   uppermost voice is often highly ornamented. Landini's music was
   particularly admired for its lyricism and expressive intensity: his
   fame has endured for six hundred years, and numerous contemporary
   recordings exist of his work.

   The preferred form at this time was the ballata, which is closely
   related to the French virelai. Landini wrote 141 which have survived,
   but only 12 madrigals. Another form which became popular after the
   middle of the century was the caccia, most likely derived from the
   French chace, which was a two-voice canon.

   Giovanni Boccaccio mentions Florentine music in the Decameron. He tells
   how in 1348, the year the Black Death ravaged Florence, members of a
   group of friends gathered to tell stories and sing songs, to
   instrumental accompaniment. While Boccaccio mentioned no composers by
   name, many of the Florentine musicians whose names have come down to us
   were in their early careers at this time.

Late trecento and transitional era

   The last generation of composers of the era included Niccolò da
   Perugia, Bartolino da Padova, Andrea da Firenze, Paolo da Firenze,
   Matteo da Perugia, and Johannes Ciconia, the first member of the group
   who was not a native Italian. Their principal form was the ballata, and
   the ornamentation of the parts is considerably less than in the music
   of the preceding group of composers. Text-painting is evident in some
   of their music: for example, some of their programmatic compositions
   include frank imitations of bird-calls or various dramatic effects.
   Ballate continued to be composed into the 15th century, and the form is
   closely related to the later frottola.

   Ciconia, as a Netherlander, was one of the first of the group which was
   to dominate European music for the next two hundred years; early in his
   life he spent time in Italy learning the lyrical secular styles.
   Ciconia was also a composer of sacred music, and represents a link with
   the Burgundian school, the first generation of Netherlanders, which
   dominated the early and middle 15th century. Ciconia spent most of his
   Italian years in cities of northern Italy, including Venice and Padua;
   he died in Padua in 1412.

   Another late 14th century composer, probably active in Rome, Abruzzo,
   and Teramo, was Antonio Zacara da Teramo. While a chronology of his
   music is yet to be established, it seems that his earlier music,
   surviving in the Squarcialupi Codex, is related to the style of Landini
   and Jacopo da Bologna; his later music borrows from the style of the
   Avignon-centered Ars subtilior, and indeed he seems to have supported
   the antipopes during the split of the papacy after the end of the
   century, going to Bologna around 1408.

   The end of the trecento marked the end of the dominance of Florence
   over Italian music; while it always maintained an active musical life,
   it would be replaced by Venice, Rome, Ferrara and other cities in the
   coming centuries, and never again regained the pre-eminent position it
   attained in the 14th century. By the first decade of the 15th century,
   the quattrocento, Venice had emerged as the leading power in Northern
   Italy; the foundation of a singing school there in 1403 was one step
   towards their equivalent emergence as a musical power.

Instrumental music

   Instrumental music was widespread, but relatively few notated examples
   have survived. Indeed while contemporary depictions of singers often
   show them performing from books or scrolls, paintings and miniatures of
   instrumentalists never show written music. One of the few sources that
   has survived, the Robertsbridge Codex (dated variously at either around
   1325 or 1360) is the earliest extant written music for keyboard, but
   its repertory is different from that main line of the trecento. The
   first keyboard collection closely related to the main line of the
   trecento is the Faenza Codex (Faenza, Biblioteca Comunale, ms. 117).
   Other small sources of keyboard music appear in codices in Padua
   (Archivio di Stato 553), Assisi (Biblioteca Comunale 187), and in one
   section of the Reina Codex (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, n.
   a. fr. 6771). The typical keyboard style of the time seems to have
   placed the tenor of a secular song or a melody from plainchant in equal
   tones in the bass while a fast-moving line was written above it for the
   right hand. The surviving sources are likely among the few witnesses of
   a largely improvised tradition.

   Other instrumental traditions are hinted at by the monophonic, untexted
   dances in a manuscript now in London (British Library, add. 29987) and
   in imitations of instrumental style in sung madrigals and cacce such as
   Dappoi che'l sole.

   Instruments used during the trecento included the viele, lute,
   psaltery, flute, and organetto (portative organ: Landini is holding one
   in the illustration). Trumpets, drums (especially paired drums called
   nakers), and shawms were important military instruments.

Overall musical characteristics of the era

   Music of the trecento retained some characteristics of the preceding
   age, and began to foreshadow the Renaissance in others.

   Consonances were unison, fifth and octave, just as in the ars antiqua,
   and the interval of a third was usually treated as a dissonance,
   especially earlier in the period. Parallel motion in unison, fifths,
   octaves, thirds, and occasionally fourths was used in moderation.
   Composers used passing tones to avoid parallel intervals, creating
   brief harsher dissonances, foreshadowing the style of counterpoint
   developed in the Renaissance. After 1350, there was increased use of
   triads in three-part writing, giving the music, to a modern ear, a
   tonal feeling. Accidentals occurred more frequently in music of the
   trecento than in music of earlier eras; in particular, there was use of
   F#, C#, G#, B-flat, and E-flat. One A-flat occurs in the works of
   Landini.

   The Landini sixth, also known as the Landini cadence or under-third
   cadence, is a cadence involving the melodic drop from the seventh to
   the sixth before going up again to the octave. It was named after
   Landini because of its frequent use in his music. It was, however, not
   invented by him, and can be found in most of the music of the period.

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