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UNEXPECTED CONTEXTS: VIEWS OF MUSIC IN A NARRATIVE OF THE GREAT SCHISM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2006

Renata Pieragostini
Affiliation:
Cambridge University

Abstract

On 11 November 1417, the election at the Council of Constance (1414–18) of Oddo Colonna as Pope Martin V brought to an end a period of almost forty years of instability and crisis within the Church, which had begun with the outbreak of the Schism in 1378. After his consecration, the new pope set out to return to Rome, intending to re-establish there the Holy See, while the Council continued. Martin V entered Rome in September 1420, after travelling through Geneva, Pavia, Mantua, Milan and Florence. In the latter city he resided for almost two years, from 26 February 1419 to 9 September 1420. It was most likely during the pope's residence there that an Italian student in law, Antonio Baldana, wrote and dedicated to him a peculiar work: a narrative of the Schism written in the form of prophecy, in a mixture of prose and verse, Latin and Italian, and accompanied by thirty watercolour illustrations. The only known surviving version of this work is contained in a manuscript now preserved in Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, as MS Parmense 1194. The manuscript has been studied primarily for its iconography, while its musical implications, which form the subject of the present study, have so far passed unnoticed. In fact, as we shall see, Baldana's work is also designed as a framework for a discussion encompassing the disciplines of trivium and quadrivium – a small encyclopedia, where a distinctive connection is drawn between rhetoric, astrology and music.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2006 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This study is a revised version of my dissertation submitted for the degree of Master of Philosophy at Cambridge University in 2003–4; my research was supported by an award from the Arts and Humanities Research Board. I am grateful to the many colleagues and scholars who made perceptive comments and suggestions; I would like to thank in particular Professor Susan Rankin and Professor Iain Fenlon for their help, patience and assistance with this article. Earlier versions were presented in 2002 at Bologna (VI Colloquio di Musicologia del Saggiatore Musicale) and Dozza (Seminari Internazionali Estivi ‘Jacopo da Bologna’).