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‘You Will Take This Sacred Book’: The Musical Strambotto as a Learned Gift

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Abstract

The MS Modena, Biblioteca Estense e Universitaria, α.F.9.9 is by far the most lavish collection produced in the short-lived history of the musical frottola. In its pages, unassuming four-voice secular settings are preceded by citations from Pliny and Isidore and surrounded by dazzling illuminations of birds, fruits and plants. If splendour is never amiss in gifts, one must wonder what the relationship was between the components of this intriguing artefact. In this article I investigate the gift value of the source by examining the musical repertory and style in conjunction with its other features. I propose that musical strambotti enabled fifteenth-century educated Italians to perform symbolic gestures associated with ancient music. The repertory was also perfectly congruous with the poetic and decorative choices made for the manuscript. The examination of this peculiar source helps shed more light on the musical strambotto, its uses and its implied cultural associations.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 The Royal Musical Association

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Footnotes

This article is part of a collaborative project with Dr Silvia Fumian and Dr Luca Zuliani, and has been supported through a generous 2014 Junior Faculty Summer Fellowship from the Indiana University Office of the Vice Provost for Research and the Jacobs School of Music. Shorter versions were presented at the Indiana University Musicology Colloquium and at the Eighty-First Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society (2015) held in Louisville, Kentucky. I wish to thank several colleagues who discussed specific points or offered feedback on previous versions of this text, especially Katherine Altizer, Bonnie Blackburn, Elizabeth G. Elmi, Silvia Fumian, Patrick Macey, Rebecca G. Marchand, Massimo Ossi, Blake Wilson and Luca Zuliani. Special thanks are owed to Gabriel Lubell for his help with the music of the strambotto in Example 1.

The following sigla are used to refer to musical sources mentioned in this article: ChiN C25

Chicago, Newberry Library, Case MS minus VM 140.C25

FlorBN 229

Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Banco Rari 229 (olim Magliabechi XIX.59)

MilT 55

Milan, Biblioteca Trivulziana e Archivio Storico Civico (Castello Sforzesco), MS 55 (olim I 107)

ModE

Modena, Biblioteca Estense e Universitaria, MS α.F.9.9

ParisBNC 676

Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Département de la Musique, Fonds du Conservatoire, MS Rés. Vm7 676

Pe1505

Strambotti, ode, frottole, sonetti et modo de cantar versi latini e capituli: Libro quarto (Venice: Petrucci, 1505)

References

1 Chicago, Newberry Library, Case MS minus VM 140.C25 (hereafter ChiN C25). On this source, see Compositione di meser Vincenzo Capirola: Lute-Book (circa 1517), ed. Otto Gombosi, Publications de la Société de Musique d'Autrefois (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1955), and Federico Marincola, ‘Vincenzo Capirola et le luth en Italie au début du XVIe siècle’, Luths et luthistes en Occident: Actes du colloque organisé par la Cité de la Musique, 13–15 mai 1998, ed. Joël Dugot and Philippe Canguilhem (Paris, 1999), 135–43.

2 ‘Considerando io Vidal che molte diuine operete per ignorantia deli possesori si sono perdute, et desiderando che questo libro quasi diuino per me scrito, perpetualmente si conseruase, ho uolesto di così nobil pictura ornarlo, aciò che uenendo ale mano di alchuno che manchasse di tal cognitione, per la belleza di la pictura lo conseruasse.’ ChiN C25, fol. 1v.

3 The manuscript is published in black-and-white facsimile as Modena, Biblioteca Estense e Universitaria, MS alpha F.9.9, ed. Frank A. D'Accone, Renaissance Music in Facsimile (New York, 1987). A full-colour digital reproduction is available at <http://bibliotecaestense.beniculturali.it/info/img/mus/i-mo-beu-alfa.f.9.9.html>. The main studies devoted to it are Knud Jeppesen, La frottola, 3 vols. (Copenhagen, 1968–70), ii: Zur Bibliographie der handschriftlichen musikalischen Überlieferung des weltlichen italienischen Lieds um 1500 (1969), 76–82 and 166–71; Giuseppina La Face Bianconi, Gli strambotti nel codice estense α.F.9.9 (Florence, 1990); Giovanni Zanovello, ‘“With Tempered Notes, in the Green Hills, and Among Rivers”: Music, Learning, and the Symbolic Space of Recreation in the Manuscript Modena, Biblioteca Estense, Alpha.F.9.9’, The Music Room in Early Modern France and Italy: Sound, Space and Object, ed. Deborah Howard and Laura Moretti (Oxford, 2012), 163–75; and Silvia Fumian, ‘“Everything Is Illuminated”: Image and Decoration in the MS Modena, Biblioteca Estense, Alpha F.9.9’, paper read at the Fifty-Eighth Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, Washington DC, 23 March 2012.

4 The pioneering essay on ceremonial exchange is Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (New York, 1967). For useful surveys of the rich subsequent bibliography on the topic, see Raymond Firth, Symbols: Public and Private (Ithaca, NY, 1973), and Natalie Zemon Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France (Madison, WI, 2000). On musical gifts, see especially Rob C. Wegman, ‘Musical Offerings in the Renaissance’, Early Music, 33 (2005), 425–37, and Tim Shephard, ‘Constructing Identities in a Music Manuscript: The Medici Codex as a Gift’, Renaissance Quarterly, 63 (2010), 84–127.

5 The riddle reads: ‘Patavii iiii nonas octobres / a prima elementor(um) con- / cordia olimpiade / mcccxiiii’. The actual date is derived by starting from the date of the beginning of the world according to the Jewish calendar, and counting 1314 according to the Greek system of Olympiads, that is, one every four years. Scholars have reconstructed the precise day of completion as 4 October 1496. See Jeppesen, La frottola, ii, 76–82 and 166–71, and La Face Bianconi, Gli strambotti, 7–12.

6 For full-colour reproductions, see La Face Bianconi, Gli strambotti, Figures Ia–IIb, and the online facsimile cited above, in note 3.

7 Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Banco Rari 229 (olim Magliabechi XIX.59; hereafter FlorBN 229) is also a paper manuscript prefaced by a parchment fascicle, though it does not contain the kind of dedicatory apparatus found in ModE.

8 For the probable identities of the donor and recipient, and for a discussion of this sonnet, see below, pp. 12–14.

9 Zemon Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France, 11–22.

10 Desiderius Erasmus, The Correspondence of Erasmus, trans. Douglas Ferguson, annotated by Scott Thomson and James K. McConica, 3 vols. (Toronto, ON, 1976), iii, 43–4.

11 Amid an overwhelming bibliography, see for an introduction Nicolai Rubinstein, The Government of Florence under the Medici 1434 to 1494 (Oxford, 1966); Anthony Molho, ‘Cosimo de’ Medici: Pater Patriae or Padrino?’, Stanford Italian Review, 1 (1979), 5–33; Richard Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (Ithaca, NY, 1991), 419–62; Ludovica Sebregondi, ‘Lorenzo de’ Medici confratello illustre’, Archivio storico italiano, 150 (1992), 343–70; Francis Ames-Lewis, ‘Art in the Service of the Family: The Taste and Patronage of Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici’, Piero de’ Medici, ‘il Gottoso’, 1416–1469: Kunst im Dienste der Mediceer / Art in the Service of the Medici, ed. Andreas Beyer and Bruce Boucher (Berlin, 1993), 207–20; Melissa Meriam Bullard, Lorenzo il Magnifico: Image and Anxiety, Politics and Finance (Florence, 1994), 3–41; and Paul Douglas McLean, The Art of the Network: Strategic Interaction and Patronage in Renaissance Florence (Durham, NC, 2007).

12 A few examples of records from the protocol registers suffice to illustrate the array of these exchanges: the notes of thanks for a basket of fish sent by the city of Livorno in 1485, for a whole veal sent by the priors of Pistoia at the same time, and for several pheasants given by Andreolo da Cotignola the following year. See Protocolli del carteggio di Lorenzo il Magnifico per gli anni 1473–74, 1477–92, ed. Marcello Del Piazzo (Florence, 1956), 329, 342.

13 See Frank A. D'Accone, ‘Lorenzo the Magnificent and Music’, Lorenzo il Magnifico e il suo mondo: Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Firenze, 9–13 giugno 1992, ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini (Florence, 1994), 259–90. For an introduction to the dedications of musical manuscripts, see Thomas Schmidt-Beste, ‘Dedicating Music Manuscripts: On Function and Form of Paratexts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Sources’, Cui dono lepidum novum libellum? Dedicating Latin Works and Motets in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Ignace Bossuyt et al., Supplementa humanistica lovaniensia, 23 (Leuven, 2008), 81–108.

14 A general discussion of musical patronage in early-modern Europe can be found in Claudio Annibaldi, ‘Introduzione’, La musica e il mondo: Mecenatismo e committenza musicale in Italia tra Quattro e Settecento (Bologna, 1993), 9–43. See specific examples in William F. Prizer, ‘Bernardino Piffaro e i pifferi e tromboni di Mantova: Strumenti a fiato in una corte italiana’, Rivista italiana di musicologia, 16 (1981), 151–84, and Timothy J. McGee, The Ceremonial Musicians of Late Medieval Florence (Bloomington, IN, 2009), 158–98.

15 The secondary literature on the topic is extraordinarily abundant. See, for example, Rob C. Wegman, ‘“Miserere supplicanti Dufay”: The Creation and Transmission of Guillaume Dufay's Missa Ave regina celorum’, Journal of Musicology, 13 (1995), 18–54; idem, ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls: Reading and Hearing Busnoys's Anthoni usque limina’, Hearing the Motet: Essays on the Motet of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Dolores Pesce (New York, 1997), 122–41; Bonnie J. Blackburn, ‘For Whom Do the Singers Sing?’, Early Music, 25 (1997), 593–609; eadem, ‘The Virgin in the Sun: Music and Image for a Prayer Attributed to Sixtus IV’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 124 (1999), 157–95; David J. Rothenberg, ‘Angels, Archangels, and a Woman in Distress: The Meaning of Isaac's Angeli archangeli’, Journal of Musicology, 21 (2004), 514–78; and Mary Jennifer Bloxam, ‘Text and Context: Obrecht's Missa de Sancto Donatiano in its Social and Ritual Landscape’, Journal of the Alamire Foundation, 3 (2011), 11–36.

16 ‘Sed ne erit quidem indecens cantu fidibusque laxare animum.’ Petri Pauli Vergerii ad Ubertinum de Carraria de ingenuis moribus et liberalibus adolescentiae studiis liber, ed. Carlo Miani (Trieste, 1972), 183–251. On humanistic education (both general and musical), see Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Europe (London, 1986); Anthony Grafton, ‘The Humanist and the Commonplace Book: Education in Practice’, Music Education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Russell E. Murray, Jr, Susan Forscher Weiss and Cynthia Cyrus (Bloomington, IN, 2010), 141–57.

17 On the rejection of polyphony, see Rob C. Wegman, The Crisis of Music in Early Modern Europe, 1470–1530 (New York, 2005), 17–48. For two complementary introductions to Castiglione and music, see James Haar, ‘The Courtier as Musician: Castiglione's View of the Science and Art of Music’, The Science and Art of Renaissance Music, ed. Paul Corneilson (Princeton, NJ, 1998), 20–37, and Stefano Lorenzetti, Musica e identità nobiliare nell'Italia del Rinascimento: Educazione, mentalità, immaginario (Florence, 2003). For specific Florentine responses to art music, see Patrick Macey, Bonfire Songs: Savonarola's Musical Legacy (Oxford, 1998), 91–8, and Giovanni Zanovello, ‘Les humanistes florentins et la polyphonie liturgique’, Poétiques de la Renaissance: Le modèle italien, le monde franco-bourguignon et leur héritage en France au XVIe siècle, ed. Perrine Galand-Hallyn and Fernand Hallyn (Geneva, 2001), 625–38 and 667–73.

18 See specific examples in Schmidt-Beste, ‘Dedicating Music Manuscripts’, 96–104, where the dedicatory material in ModE is also discussed.

19 The correspondence is edited and contextualized in Bonnie J. Blackburn, ‘Lorenzo de’ Medici, a Lost Isaac Manuscript, and the Venetian Ambassador’, Musica franca: Essays in Honor of Frank A. D'Accone, ed. Irene Alm, Alyson McLamore and Colleen Reardon (Stuyvesant, NY, 1996), 19–44. On Isaac, see Reinhard Strohm and Emma Clare Kempson, ‘Isaac, Henricus’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd edn, London, 2001), xii, 576–90. Recent studies of the composer are discussed in David J. Burn, Blake Wilson and Giovanni Zanovello, ‘Absorbing Heinrich Isaac’, Journal of Musicology, 28 (2011), 1–8.

20 ‘Ringratiate il magnifico oratore veneto d'avermi richiesto di questi canti, perché ho in luogo di beneficio essere richiesto dalla Magnificentia sua, alla quale per le virtù sue et doctrina sono molto oblighato et affectionato, et anchora perché so essere molto amato dalla M.S. alla quale mi raccomandate. Et io fo mettere ad ordine i canti predecti et ve gli manderò presto, credo per la prima cavalcata. Se sapessi di che maniera si dilecta più l'arei meglo servito, perché Arrigho Isach componitore de epsi ne ha facto di diversi maniere, et gravi et dolci et anchora ropti et artificiosi. Manderò uno saggio d'ogni cosa, et dopo la prima degustatione saprò meglo che vino harò ad administrare.’ Florence, Archivio di Stato, Medici-Tornaquinci, III, 123, ed. and trans. Blackburn, ‘Lorenzo de’ Medici’, 19–20.

21 ‘Debent tibi, vir summe, omnes qui litteras, qui mores et (ut verbo explicem) qui virtutes amant. Sed ego tibi iam arctiore nexu obligor. Accepi libellum, immo amplum volumen musices Henrici Isaac nostri ea in arte eminentissimi cuius me cantiones semper mirifice delectarunt: quotiens ad musicen descenditur (descenditur autem quotidie) nihil libentius audio. In eo volumine quavis artis specie delectari potui. Quantum in quaque valeat Henricus facile quivis vel primis rudimentis imbutus potest animadvertere. Tuam istam hilarem liberalitatem admiror, veneror et illi habeo gratias. Quicquid otii superest musicae libenter impendo, ars per se satis ingenua et liberalis et vulgo etiam ab ignaris laudata. Aliqui sunt qui illam ambitione sequantur, alii consuetudine, alii alias ob causas: ideoque apud rarissimos exculta et nitida est. Mihi profecto non tam iucundi quam utiles eius artis proventus videntur. Aliis somnos […], at mihi diurni somni torpores ignavissimos tollit, severiores curas mitigat, expellit sordidas. Taceo quod excellens naturae munus est et fere typus animi nostri.’ Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Cappon. 235, fol. 144v, ed. and trans. Blackburn, ‘Lorenzo de’ Medici’, 19, 42.

22 See the edition (accompanied by an exhaustive study of the source) in A Florentine Chansonnier from the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent: Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Banco Rari 229, ed. Howard Mayer Brown (Chicago, IL, 1983).

23 Emilio Bigi, ‘La cultura del Poliziano’, La cultura del Poliziano e altri studi umanistici (Pisa, 1967), 67–101, esp. pp. 90–101.

24 It is useful to remember that Lorenzo's gift to Donà pales in comparison with other manuscripts made for illustrious acquaintances – the most famous example being the rich anthology of Tuscan poetry known as the Raccolta aragonese, sent to Federico d'Aragona in 1477. For a general introduction to the books surrounding Lorenzo, see All'ombra del lauro: Documenti librari della cultura in età laurenziana: Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, 4 Maggio–30 Giugno 1992, ed. Anna Lenzuni (Florence, 1992).

25 Stanley Boorman, Ottaviano Petrucci: A Catalogue Raisonné (Oxford, 2006), 251–3, 274–8. Another lost manuscript of Isaac's songs was apparently sent by the Florentine Ambrogio Angeni in 1487–9. See Blake Wilson, ‘Heinrich Isaac among the Florentines’, Journal of Musicology, 23 (2006), 97–152.

26 ‘Et certamente le cosse che in esso libro notate sono, contengono in sé tanta armonia, quanta la musical arte exprimer puole, come apertamente conoserà colui, che diligentemente quello transcorerà, et tanto più è da esser conseruato quanto che molte de le cosse che in esso si trouano, non sono sta dal auctor ad altrui che a me concesse.’ ChiN C25, fol. 1v.

27 ‘[Part]e duna mesa. Bela. / [lacuna]. Parte duna mesa. e più bela. / […] | [lacuna]. Parte duna mesa, bela, ebella. delomo arme.’ ChiN C25, unnumbered loose sheet with index.

28 ‘Pro nost(ro) amicor(um)q(ue) solatio’.

29 Fumian, ‘“Everything Is Illuminated”’. I am grateful to Dr Fumian for sharing her paper with me prior to its publication.

30 Zanovello, ‘“With Tempered Notes”’, 167–9.

31 In addition, through the concordance with Petrucci's fourth book, scholars have been able to attribute the composition Non biancho marmo (fol. 34r) to d'Ana and Aimè ch'io moro per te, donna (fol. 91r) to Marchetto Cara (c.1465–1525). On Crispin, see Raffaele Casimiri, Musica e musicisti nella cattedrale di Padova nei secc. XIV, XV, XVI: Contributo per una storia (Rome, 1942), 16–20, 98–100, 104–5; Craig Wright and Nanie Bridgman, ‘Musiciens à la cathédrale de Cambrai, 1475–1550’, Revue de musicologie, 62 (1976), 204–28, esp. pp. 206, 215; Giulio Cattin, ‘Formazione e attività delle cappelle polifoniche nelle cattedrali: La musica nelle città’, Storia della cultura veneta, ed. Gianfranco Folena et al., 6 vols. (Vicenza, 1976–86), iii: Dal primo Quattrocento al Concilio di Trento, ed. Girolamo Arnaldi and Manlio Pastore Stocchi (Vicenza, 1980–1), pt 3, 285–8; and Barbara Haggh, ‘Crispijne and Abertijne: Two Tenors at the Church of St Niklaas, Brussels’, Music and Letters, 76 (1995), 325–45. On d'Ana, see William F. Prizer, ‘Games of Venus: Secular Vocal Music in the Late Quattrocento and Early Cinquecento’, Journal of Musicology, 9 (1991), 3–56, esp. pp. 13–14. The most important work on Cara remains William F. Prizer, Courtly Pastimes: The Frottole of Marchetto Cara (Ann Arbor, MI, 1980), to be supplemented with information in his more recent ‘Games of Venus’.

32 For a more complete definition of the strambotto and a discussion of the poetic aspects of the Paduan collection, see La Face Bianconi, Gli strambotti, 137–41. For more in general on the strambotto in the poetic and musical repertory, see Prizer, Courtly Pastimes, 64–5, 107–10; Nino Pirrotta and Elena Povoledo, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi (Cambridge, MA, 1982), 3–36; Alberto Mario Cirese, Ragioni metriche: Versificazione e tradizioni orali (Palermo, 1988), 115–46; and Luca Zuliani, Poesia e versi per musica: L'evoluzione dei metri italiani (Bologna, 2009), 59–62, 136–46.

33 Owing to the loss of a number of folios, several compositions are now lacking. Their incipits survive in the original index but do not permit a precise classification in the case of unica.

34 Blake Wilson, Singing Poetry in Renaissance Florence: The ‘Cantasi come’ Tradition (1375–1550) (Florence, 2009), 128–43.

35 See Boorman, Ottaviano Petrucci, 288–91, 596–601.

36 As especially evident in the remaining books of frottole printed by Petrucci. See Ottaviano Petrucci, Frottole libro sexto: Venezia 1505 (‘more veneto’ = 1506), ed. Antonio Lovato (Padua, 2004); Frottole libro septimo: Venezia 1507, ed. Lucia Boscolo (Padua, 2006); Frottole libro octavo: Venezia 1507, ed. Lucia Boscolo (Padua, 1999); Frottole libro nono: Venezia 1508 (ma 1509), ed. Francesco Facchin and Giovanni Zanovello (Padua, 1999); Frottole libro undecimo: Fossombrone, 1514, ed. Francesco Luisi and Giovanni Zanovello (Padua, 1997).

37 Don Harrán, ‘Frottola’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd edn, London, 2001), ix, 294–300, esp. pp. 295–6. On stock melodies and musical settings of Orlando furioso, see James Haar, ‘Arie per cantar stanze ariostesche’, L'Ariosto, la musica, i musicisti, ed. Maria Antonella Balsano (Florence, 1981), 31–46; idem, ‘From “Cantimbanco” to Court: The Musical Fortunes of Ariosto in Florentine Society’, L'arme e gli amori: Ariosto, Tasso and Guarini in Late Renaissance Florence: Acts of an International Conference, Florence, Villa I Tatti, June 27–29, 2001, ed. Massimiliano Rossi and Fiorella Gioffredi Superbi (Florence, 2004), 179–97; and Camilla Cavicchi, ‘Musici, cantori e “cantimbanchi” a corte al tempo dell’Orlando furioso’, L'uno e l'altro Ariosto in corte e nelle delizie, ed. Gianni Venturi (Florence, 2011), 263–89.

38 ModE, fol. 19v (incomplete owing to the lack of the sheet containing the alto and basso parts, as well as text lines 5–8). Text edition from Le rime di Serafino Aquilano in musica, ed. Giuseppina La Face Bianconi and Antonio Rossi (Florence, 1999), 213. See also La Face Bianconi, Gli strambotti, 190.

39 Ibid., 150–7.

40 For Deus in adiutorium (Pe1505, fol. 9v), see the modern edition in Ottaviano Petrucci, Frottole, Buch I und IV: Nach den Erstlingsdrucken von 1504 und 1505, ed. Rudolf Schwartz (Hildesheim, 1967), xxxix, 52; for Del tuo bel volto (Pe1505, fol. 13r), see ibid., 57; for A che affliggi (Pe1505, fols. 10v–11r), see ibid., 53–4; and for Occhi mei lassi (Pe1505, fols. 11v–12r), see ibid., 55–6. See also Prizer, Courtly Pastimes, 107–10. The strambotti in the remaining five gatherings have only the first couplet set.

41 See Schmidt-Beste, ‘Dedicating Music Manuscripts’, 84–90, for a very useful comparison of these aspects in prints and manuscripts. On strambotti, see also Sabine Meine, Die Frottola: Musik, Diskurs und Spiel an italienischen Höfen 1500–1530 (Turnhout, 2013), 277–83.

42 See Nino Pirrotta, ‘Music and Cultural Tendencies in 15th-Century Italy’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 19 (1966), 127–61; Giorgio Raimondo Cardona, ‘Culture dell'oralità e culture della scrittura’, Letteratura italiana, ed. Alberto Asor Rosa (Turin, 1983), 24–101; William F. Prizer, ‘The Frottola and the Unwritten Tradition’, Studi musicali, 15 (1986), 3–37; James Haar, ‘Improvvisatori and their Relationship to Sixteenth-Century Music’, Essays on Italian Poetry and Music in the Renaissance, 1350–1600 (Berkeley, CA, 1986), 76–99; H. Colin Slim, ‘An Iconographical Echo of the Unwritten Tradition in a Verdelot Madrigal’, Studi musicali, 17 (1988), 33–54, repr. in Painting Music in the Sixteenth Century: Essays in Iconography (Aldershot, 2002); James Haar, ‘Monophony and the Unwritten Tradition’, Performance Practice: Music before 1600, ed. Howard Mayer Brown and Stanley Sadie (London, 1989), 240–66; Nino Pirrotta, ‘Musica e umanesimo’, Poesia e musica e altri saggi (Florence, 1994), 89–106; and F. Alberto Gallo, ‘Orpheus christianus’, Music in the Castle: Troubadours, Books, and Orators in Italian Courts of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries (Chicago, IL, 1995), 69–135.

43 ‘Nel recitare de’ soi poemi era tanto ardente e con tanto giudizio le parole con la musica consertava che l'animo de li ascoltanti, o dotti o mediocri o plebei o donne, equalmente commoveva.’ Vincenzo Calmeta, Prose e lettere edite e inedite, ed. Cecil Grayson (Bologna, 1959), 75–6.

44 For examples, see Gallo, ‘Orpheus christianus’.

45 On this topic, see Reinhard Strohm, ‘Music, Humanism, and the Idea of a “Rebirth” of the Arts’, Music as Concept and Practice in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Reinhard Strohm and Bonnie J. Blackburn, New Oxford History of Music, 3/1 (London, 2001), 346–443. The relationship between Renaissance art music and humanism has fuelled an intense debate in twentieth-century musicology. See Pirrotta, ‘Music and Cultural Tendencies’; Reinhard Strohm, The Rise of European Music, 1380–1500 (Cambridge, 1993), 540–57; Lewis Lockwood, review of Strohm, The Rise of European Music, in Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 120 (1995), 151–62; Strohm, ‘The “Rise of European Music” and the Rights of Others’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 121 (1996), 1–10; and Margaret Bent, ‘Music and the Early Veneto Humanists’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 101 (1998), 101–30.

46 Gallo, ‘Orpheus christianus’, 71.

47 Among the various publications on the topic, see Fiorella Brancacci, ‘Dal canto umanistico su versi latini alla frottola: La tradizione dell'ode saffica’, Studi musicali, 34 (2005), 267–318, esp. pp. 288–91, and Gundela Bobeth, ‘Die humanistische Odenkomposition in Buchdruck und Handscrhift: Zur Rolle der Melopoiae bei der Formung und Ausbreitung eines kompositorischen Erfolgsmodells’, NiveauNischeNimbus: Die Anfänge des Musikdrucks nördlich der Alpen, ed. Birgit Lodes (Tutzing, 2010), 67–88.

48 This phenomenon has mostly been studied as being related to the unwritten tradition, as detailed in Gallo, ‘Orpheus christianus’. However, the pieces by Cara and Josquin, in addition to a number of compositions on humanistic texts, also occupy a special area between serious song and motet. The ultimate example of this phenomenon would be Isaac's Quis dabit capiti meo aquam.

49 On these two musicians in the context of learned improvisation, see Gallo, ‘Orpheus christianus’, 75–86 and 86–97 respectively.

50 On Ficino, see especially Gary Tomlinson, Music in Renaissance Magic: Toward a Historiography of Others (Chicago, IL, 1993). On Baïf, see Pierre Bonniffet, ‘La musique mesurée à l'antique en France: Dans le champ sonore à la fin du 16e siècle’, Hommage à Claude Le Jeune, ed. Olivier Trachier (Marandeuil, 2005), 7–39, with relevant bibliography.

51 The principle of substitution developed in a different sense seems potentially to apply to the symbolic coexistence of modern and ancient musical practices. See Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (New York, 2010), 29–35.