MS Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magl. XIX, 164-167

AnthonyM. Cummings

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780754655299
• eBook ISBN: 9781351557856
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Manuscript Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magliabechiana XIX, 164-167 (FlorBN Magl. 164-7) has been the subject of considerable scholarly attention. The prevailing assumption had been that it was a Florentine source of the early sixteenth century. More recently, it has been argued that its provenance is not as easily determined as it first appears, and that there are Roman connections suggested by one of its codicological features. This monograph provides as full a bibliographical and codicological report on FlorBN Magl. 164-7 as is currently possible. Such evidence suggests that the earlier thesis is more likely to be correct: the manuscript was copied in Florence c.1520. After a review of the evidence for provenance and date, the repertory of the manuscript is placed in its historical and cultural context. Florence of the early sixteenth century is shown to have an organized cultural life that was characterized by the activities of such institutions as the Sacred Academy of the Medici, the famous group that met in the garden of the Rucellai, and others. FlorBN Magl. 164-7 is an exceedingly interesting and important source; an eclectic repository not only of compositionally advanced settings of Petrarchan verse by Rucellai-group intimate Bernardo Pisano but also of sharply contrasting works, popular in character. It is almost a manifesto of the sensibilities of preeminent Florentine cultural figures of the sort who frequented the garden of the Rucellai and as such is a revealing document of Florentine musical taste during those crucial years that witnessed the emergence of the new secular genre we know as the Italian madrigal.

1

Introduction

The four partbooks that constitute the manuscript Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magliabechiana XIX.164–167 – Cantus, Altus, Tenor and Bassus – are anomalously and inexplicably numbered out of order: 167, 164, 166 and 165. Walter Rubsamen interpreted the manuscript’s very organisation into partbooks – relatively novel for its time (c. 1520) – as ‘illustrating the new equivalence of textually conceived voice parts that became the norm in secular Italian vocal music between 1520 and 1530’;¹ this phenomenon is critically important to the emergence of the Cinquecento madrigal. The partbooks are described here in conventional musicians’ (rather than librarians’) order.

As is clear from a glance at the inventory appended to this study, 47 compositions on Italian texts appear first (nos. 1–45 and 45½ and a second no. 45), although among them are the polylingual incatenature; no. 45½ and the second no. 45 cannot be part of the original corpus of the manuscript, for reasons given in detail below. Following the Italian works are 24 French chansons (nos. 46–69). Twelve para-liturgical Latin sacred compositions (motets) complete the original corpus of the manuscript (nos. 70–81). A fragmentary Te Deum and an additional three-voice setting of an Italian text (nos. 82–3) follow the original corpus; the universal scholarly assumption is that these last two are later additions.²

There are thus 85 compositions, although the numbering within the manuscript extends only as far as 83 (‘lxxxiij’), a readily explainable anomaly in that two compositions (the first no. 45, Vaghe le montanine pasturelle, and the second no. 45, the fragmentary later addition Vorrei saper Amanti) are both numbered ‘XLV’, and one composition (Solingho et uagho augello, also a subsequent but not necessarily much later addition) is numbered ‘XLV½’ in the Cantus and Tenor partbooks and ‘XXVJ½’ in the Altus and Bassus partbooks. In my view, the numbering is not exactly contemporary with the compilation of the manuscript per se, nor does it represent anything more than a somewhat clumsy attempt to enumerate Florence 164–7’s compositions. There are also any number of curious jottings, fragmentary musical entries, largely unintelligible annotations, and so on, which will be enumerated, described, and provisionally interpreted in what follows, in so far as is possible.

The composers represented in the manuscript, which itself carries no author attributions – most prominently Bernardo Pisano (12 compositions), Josquin des Prez (9), Sebastiano Festa (6), and Loyset Compère (5) – are as shown in Table 1.1. The counts are limited to cases where contemporary sources attribute the compositions in question to a particular composer; additional attributions by modern scholars – based as they are on debatable considerations of style and unsubstantiated by the testimony of a composer attribution in a contemporary source – are not included. In the case of the Cara/ Pesenti/Tromboncino composition, there are conflicting attributions in the contemporary sources and one cannot be entirely certain who the composer actually was. In other cases of conflicting attribution,³ one of the attributions is so manifestly erroneous that it was possible to discount it and ascribe the composition to one of the composers identified. The presence of the Josquin and Compère compositions is attributable to their status as standard works in the international repertory; the Pisano and Festa works, conversely, have more of a local cast to them and are important evidence concerning the manuscript’s date and place of origin.

Table 1.1. Composers

Composer	No of compositions
ITALIAN–TEXTED COMPOSITIONS (45)
Bernardo Pisano	12
Sebastiano Festa	6
Francesco Patavino	2
Michele Pesenti	2
Bartolomeo Tromboncino	2
Marchetto Cara/Michele Pesenti/Bartolomeo Trombincino	1
Loyset Compère	1
Heinrich Isaac	1
Josquin des Prez	1
Jacob Obrecht	1
Anonymous	16
FRENCH–TEXTED COMPOSITIONS (CHANSONS) (24)
Loyset Compère	4
Ninotle Petit	4
AntoineBruhier	3
Josquin des Prez	3
MatthaeusPipelare	1
Anonymous	9
LATIN-TEXTED COMPOSITIONS (MOTETS) (13)
Josquin des Prez	5
Johannes Mouton	3
Heinrich Isaac	1
Elzéar Genet	1
?Pope Leo X	?1
Andreas de Silva	1
Anonymous	1
MACARONIC COMPOSITIONS (3)
Musicola	1
Anonymous	2

The identifiable Italian poets whose verse is set are Francesco Petrarca (16 settings, or more than a third of the Italian compositions), Dante Alighieri (one setting) and Franco Sacchetti (one setting), as well as Lorenzo Strozzi (five settings, or more than 10 per cent of the Italian compositions)⁴ and other poets. At the other end of the literary-stylistic continuum are the settings of the villotte or villottistic texts, as well as polyphonic settings of other varieties of monophonic popular melodies; the polylingual quodlibets quote both French and Italian popular materials, text and music.

In this latter respect, the manuscript’s Italian repertory bears an important relationship to its French repertory. Although the French compositions include chansons musicales – examples of the art of musique – a high percentage of them, notably, are polyphonic chansons rustiques:⁵ four-voice settings of pre-existent monophonic popular melodies (or ‘four-part popular arrangements’, to use the late Howard M. Brown’s preferred term),⁶ some of whose texts are sexually quite explicit (for example, Antoine Bruhier’s Jacquet Jacquet mon con est ersarget [sic; recte: ‘esraget’], no. 57). Another characteristic feature of that repertory is the use of nonsense syllables – ‘Dondon farlaridon’, ‘Ladinderindine ladinderindone ladinderindin’, or Turelure’⁷ – which once again relates the manuscript’s polyphonic chanson rustique repertory to the villotta literature, similarly distinguished by the use of such linguistic peculiarities (for example, Sebastiano Festa’s villotta L’ultimo dí di maggio, no. 44). Further such relationships between the French and Italian repertories are also suggested by the presence of the quodlibet by Gaspar van Weerbeke in Florence 2442, which – though not preserved in Florence 164–7 – is transmitted in the source most closely related to Florence 164–7 with respe...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Manuscript as Object and its Genesis
• 3 The Manuscript in Historical and Cultural Context
• Conclusion
• Appendix: Inventory of Florence 164–7
• Source Sigla
• Bibliography
• List of Compositions
• List of Composers
• General Index