Abstracts

Sound, Space and Object: The Aural, the Visual and the Tactile in Early Modern French and Italian Music Rooms

9-11 July 2009 

 

Guido Beltramini (Centro di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio, Venice)
Living like the Ancients in Bembo's Padua

The lecture is dedicated to a particular culture relating to the way one might ideally lead one’s life in line with ancient practices and views. The trend in question, which developed in Padua in the first half of the Cinquecento, was promoted by such humanists as Pietro Bembo, Alvise Cornaro and Marco Mantova Benavides. Exceptional connoisseurs of the mores and values of antiquity, these intellectuals personally supervised and directed the building of their homes and in this occupation Pliny counted more than Vitruvius and literary points of reference, architectural trends and the decorative elements were granted equal importance. Following the model of villa Adriana at Tivoli, these Paduan residences were building complexes comprising dwelling areas, pavilions, large gardens and the installation of fountains, statues and rare plants. The model referred to was taken from literary sources or, rather, was that of the ideal of recreating the ‘ancient’ way of life, which had been revived in fifteenth-century Florence and later in suburban Florentine villas and Roman vigne.
Music was afforded an important role in these ‘settings reflecting the lifestyle of the ancients’ and in the courts of Cornaro and Benavides two buildings were specifically designed and created for the purpose of indulging in musical pursuits.

Guido Beltramini is Director of the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio since 1991. He was Visiting Professor at the University of Ferrara (1994 -2002), and University of Milan (2005). In 2008, he was Craig Hugh Smyth Visiting Fellow at Villa I Tatti, Florence. He gave lectures at University of Basel, Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, Yale University, Princeton University. His broad interests center on Renaissance Architectural history, with a particular emphasis on Venetian architecture and on the culture of the Antique in the Renaissance. Among his publication: Palladio Privato, Venice 2008 and Berlin 2009; PALLADIO (exhibition catalogue, edited with Howard Burns) London 2009; Palladio e la villa veneta (exhibition catalogue, edited with Howard Burns) Venice 2005; Vincenzo Scamozzi 1548-1616 (exhibition catalogue, edited with Franco Barbieri) Venice 2003.

 

Tarek Berrada (Université de Paris Sorbonne - Paris IV)
Music at home: spaces for music in French seventeenth private architecture.

Music could be performed anywhere. But, thanks to several sources (diaries, inventories, ...), we may note that some places are favourite during the Seventeenth Century: the Great Chamber for eating and dancing, the Chamber and the Cabinet for private concerts and the Gallery for great occasions. In the middle of the Seventeenth Century the ballroom appears in some beautiful castles or town mansions. The room is equipped with a balcony all around or a little tribune to settle musicians. During the same period, we may note that some people had a cabinet devoted to music, but without particular denomination. It is only during the second half of the century that we may find precise terms like “chamber of the music” for Chenonceau Castle or “music room” as it appears in the well known Parisian mansion of the duchesse de Guise. This evolution is naturally symptomatic of both the royal examples and the creation of multiple social circles, the so called “salons”.

A PhD Student in architectural history, Tarek Berrada is particularly involved in the relationships between architecture and social life. His Phd concerns the spaces of the musical performance into French 17th and 18th Centuries private architecture and he has already written several articles on the subject (“Les lieux de l’air de cour” in Poésie, Musique et Société. L’air de cour en France au XVIIe siècle, Sprimont, Pierre Mardaga éditeur, 2006, p. 67-79 ; “Les lieux de la pratique musicale dans l’architecture privée au temps de Louis XIV” in C. Mazouer (dir.), Les Lieux du spectacle dans l’Europe du XVIIe siècle, actes de colloque, Tübingen, Gunter Narr Verlag, 2006, p. - ). From 2002 to 2006, he was chargé d’études et de recherche at the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (Paris), working for the research program studying fine arts in their relationships with music and theatre.

 

Davide Bonsi (Laboratorio di Acustica,Fondazione Scuola di San Giorgio, Venice)
The acoustic analysis of Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico

In the history of theatre buildings the Olimpic Theatre in Vicenza by Andrea Palladio is often regarded as the archetype of the evolution of spaces for drama and music in modern European culture. Even regarding the special subject of architectural acoustics the Olimpic Theatre represents a sort of symbolic beginning of a new era, since the main idea which led to its realization, that is the transformation of the greek-roman theatre into a closed volume, started to pose problems which had been previouosly unknown or neglected due to the completely different sound propagation processes occurring in ancient open listening places . In such a context the presentation will be focussed on the a recent campaign of acoustic measurements done by the author in the Olimpic Theatre. Among the results which will be discussed there are the long reverberation time and low clarity which make the hall more suitable for music than speech.
 
Dr Davide Bonsi received the PhD in Physics with a thesis on experimental and theoretical studies of energetic properties of sound fields. Since 1999 he’s been working at the Musical and Architectural Acoustics Laboratory of the St. George School Foundation in Venice. He’s been involved as project researcher in the activity of the European projects Racine-S and IP-Racine, in which he has worked on applications of acoustic intensimetric techniques for the ambience reconstruction of films audio tracks. His main research fields of activity include: application of acoustic intensimetric techniques to room acoustics studies and sound spatialisation, signal processing, ray tracing simulation and acoustic virtual reality, with special regards to environments of Venetian cultural heritage. Dr. Davide Bonsi is an effective member of the Acoustical Association of Italy where he holds the office of coordinator of the Musical and Architectural Acoustics Group. He’s author of several papers on journals and conferences on the above mentioned subjects.

 

Tracy Cooper (Temple University, USA)
The Place of  Music in the Artist’s Home

Visual representation of instruments and musical practice has long been integral to the study of iconology and archaeology of early music. Critical to any assessment of such evidence is an understanding of the authority of the artist, their knowledge and degree of participation in musical culture. Contemporary sources reveal that music played a variety of roles in the lives and conception of the Renaissance artist. Its most tangible manifestation was in the artist-musician, of whom Leonardo da Vinci may be said to be one of the best-known examples. Leonardo’s multi-talented proclivities were instrumental in his success as a court artist, the more public manifestation of an artists’ “home.” An association with courtliness was one of several markers of status conferred by musical practice. Indeed, according to Baldassare Castiglione’s description of The Courtier, music and drawing were paired among the requisite material accomplishments (Book 1.55, p. 95). This paper will investigate the domestic setting of the artist, whether in a court environment or that of a republic, to develop themes of the social elevation of the artist, entertainment and performance, as well as creativity.
 
Dr. Tracy E. Cooper is Professor of Italian and Southern Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture in the Department of Art History, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philaelphia (PA). Her book, Palladio’s Venice: Architecture and Society in a Renaissance Republic (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), received the Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Prize 2007 for Best Book in Renaissance Studies from the Renaissance Society of America. She is currently working on artists’ houses in Renaissance Venice.


Flora Dennis, University of Sussex
TBA

Abstract and biography to follow

 

Iain Fenlon (University of Cambridge)
From Isabella d'Este to Guglielmo Gonzaga: Music Rooms in a Renaissance Palace

Although the desirability for Italian princes and those who emulated their social practices to construct rooms specifically dedicated to the performance of music was specified by Paolo Cortesi in his treatise De cardinalatu at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the identification of these dedicated spaces and in particular of the repertories performed within them is fraught with difficulty. Beginning with Isabella d'Este's various studioli, this paper considers what can be reconstructed about the provision of such rooms within the ducal palace in Mantua during the sixteenth-centuries up until the death of Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga in 1587. In doing so it will draw upon inventiories, archival documents, and the iconography of decorative schemes. as well as what can be determined about the shape and internal disposition of the rooms themselves.

Iain Fenlon is Professor of Historical Musicology in the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King's College. He has also held visiting appointments at Harvard University, the Ecole Normale Superiéure in Paris, the University of Bologna, and has been a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Most of his writings, some of which are gathered together as Music and Culture in Late Renaissance Italy (Oxford University Press, 2002), are concerned with the social and cultural history of music. His most recent book, The Ceremonial City: History, Memory and Myth in Renaissance Venice, was published by Yale University Press in 2007.


Patricia Fortini Brown, Princeton University
Seduction and Spirituality: The ambiguous role of music in Venetian art

This paper examines the tensions between the sacred and profane in attitudes toward the art of music as manifest in Venetian Renaissance painting. Choirs of pious music-making angels playing a variety of musical instruments were a notable feature of Venetian altarpieces from the fourteenth century on. And yet, by the early years of the sixteenth century, these concerts of sacred music were eclipsed by secular images of flute-playing shepherds and lute-strumming youths. While household inventories tell us that musical instruments played a central role in family congeniality, paintings of the time also associate musical performance with ladies of dubious respectability. Thus, while music was treasured for its spiritual enlightenment and contribution to refined domesticity, it was also suspect because of its seductive sensuality.   

Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University since 1983, Patricia Fortini Brown served as  department chair from 1999 to 2005 and was Slade Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Cambridge in 2001. Presently a trustee of Save Venice, Brown was previously president of the Renaissance Society of America and a member of the Board of Advisors for the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington, DC. Her books include: Venetian Narrative Painting in the Age of Carpaccio (1988); Venice & Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past (1996); Art and Life in Renaissance Venice (1997); and  Private Lives in Renaissance Venice: Art, Architecture, and the Family (2004). She is presently writing two books on the cultural geography of the Venetian Empire.

 

Deborah Howard (University of Cambridge)
The role of music in the culture of Venetian cittadini

This talk will consider the role of music and dance in the definition of family identity in the cittadino class in Renaissance Venice. The integration of music into its visual and dynamic context will be considered, attempting to ascertain whether a ‘cittadino’ cultural  identity - distinct  from that of the ruling nobility – can be legitimately defined. The contexts will range from domestic entertainment to family festivities such as marriages.   The paper will further explore the kinds of music-making in different rooms in the Venetian dwelling.

Deborah Howard is Professor of Architectural History in the Faculty of Architecture and History of Art and a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge.  She is the present Head of the Department of History of Art. 

Her principal current research interests are the art and architecture of Venice and the Veneto; music and architecture in the Renaissance; and the relationship between Italy and the Eastern Mediterranean.  Her books include Jacopo Sansovino, The Architectural History of Venice, Scottish Architecture from the Reformation to the Restoration and Venice and the East. Her forthcoming book, Sound and Space in Renaissance Venice, written with Laura Moretti, is in press with Yale University Press.

 

Michael Lowe (Lute-maker, Wotton-by-Woodstock)
Settings for the lute's use in Early Modern France and Italy

Abstract and Biography to follow.

 

Michael Markham (State University of NY)
Caccini Stages: Identity and Performance Space in the late-cinquecento court

While Giulio Caccini’s writings have been mined frequently for what they can tell us about the emergence of monody, there is much in his various pronouncements that leads toward another important idea, the nature of the performance spaces inhabited by late-cinquecento musical soloists at court.  The profound differences between these various spaces remains underappreciated, as has the ways in which the court soloist formulated and reformulated his/her own identity in order to fit within each of them. Tracing the documented performances associated with Caccini, we can map them onto a continuum of spaces from the most public to the most private. Caccini’s successful passage into these more intimate spaces required him to re-form himself as the inheritor of the century-old tradition of the intimate vocal improvvisatori, a “stylistic” and physical transformation that was, in a sense, his life’s work.  Given this, the double nature of Bardi’s Camerata as both an academy and a portal to the court is reflected in the ambiguity of Caccini’s own submissions to the group.  We can trace in Caccini’s writings his struggle to define a new type of professional presence made possible by these experiments.

Michael Markham's research is on solo song in the early Italian Baroque. In 2001 he received his M.A.  and in 2006 his Ph.D. in Musicology from the University of California ­ Berkeley. His dissertation is entitled The Heritage of Campaspe: Oral Tradition and Giulio Caccini's "Le nuove musiche" (1602). It touches on theories of performance and space in early 17th-Century Italy and the problem of text and Italian solo song in the Renaissance. His work on Monteverdi, on Baroque song, and on Bach has appeared or is forthcoming in the Cambridge Opera Journal, Opera Quarterly, Repercussions, and Seventeenth-Century Music. In 2008 he joined the faculty of the State University of New York. From 2006-2008 he was at Stanford University where he held a Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities and was a visiting lecturer in Music and Cultural History.  He received his B.Mus in classical guitar and an M.M. in Musicology from The Peabody Conservatory of The Johns Hopkins University.

 

Arnaldo Morelli (Università degli Studi dell’Aquila)
Spaces for musical performances in seventeenth-century Roman residences

This paper will investigate the locations and modes of musical performance in the residences of the nobility in 17th-century Rome, indicating the differences between this period and the Renaissance.  In particular, instances of music-making in the courts of princes and cardinals will be identified and described, in relation to considerations of etiquette, social conventions and anthropology.  This research, based on first-hand documentary research in the archives of Roman noble families, has revealed unexpected locations for music-making, not always justifiable in terms of the acoustic or aesthetic environment.  Particular attention will be paid to the places where instruments were stored, as recorded in inventories, and their typology.

Arnaldo Morelli is professor of Music History at University of L’Aquila. He is editor of Recercare. Journal for the study and practice of early music and serves on the editorial board of Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani). He has published the monograph Il tempio armonico. Musica nell’oratorio dei Filippini in Roma, 1575-1705 («Analecta musicologica», vol. 27), and numerous articles, mainly concerning music patronage, music iconography, oratorio, cantata, and keyboard music and instruments.

 

Laura Moretti (University of Oxford)
Spaces for musical performance in the d’Este court in Ferrara (c.1440-1540)

The aim of this paper is to identify, within the present state of knowledge, the spaces most commonly used for musical performance in the residences of the court of Ferrara in the period between 1440 and 1540. The research is rooted in the analysis of the various types of musical performance that accompanied court life during state and dynastic events, public and private festivities, banquets, religious services, theatrical representations and occasional entertainments within the private circles of the princes and rulers. Proceeding from this analysis, it has been possible to identify locations - chapels, large halls, salotti, small chambers and studioli - in various spaces in the court residences, in which musical performances are known to have taken place. From this evidence the paper attempts to characterize the architecture of these rooms, as well as performance practices, the types of repertoire and every other relevant detail needed to paint the picture of the places used for music-making in these courtly settings.

Laura Moretti took her undergraduate degree in architecture and also holds a performance diploma in violoncello. She has a PhD in Architectural History, and has been working for several years on the relationship between architecture and music. She has participated in a number of conferences on this theme, and co-edited the volume entitled Architettura e musica nella Venezia del Rinascimento, Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2006 (with Deborah Howard). She is the author of the book Dagli Incurabili alla Pietà. Le chiese degli Ospedali Grandi veneziani tra architettura e musica (1522-1790), Florence: Olschki, 2008, and the joint author (with Deborah Howard) of Sound and Space in Renaissance Venice. Architecture, Music, Acoustics, now in press with Yale University Press. From 2005 until 2007 she was Research Associate in the Department of History of Art at the University of Cambridge. She currently holds the post of Scott Opler Senior Research Fellow in Architectural History at Worcester College, Oxford.



Tessa Murdoch (Victoria and Albert Museum)
The Musical Patronage of Queen Christina of Sweden in Rome in the 1650s

Following her abdication, Christina took up residence in the Palazzo Farnese, Rome from 1655. She had developed a keen interest in music gaining from tuition from a French dancing master,  and playing the star role in the ballet ‘The Captured Cupid’ in honour of her mother’s birthday in 1649. Her arrival in Rome was marked by performances in her honour in the Palazzo Barberini and Palazzo Pamphili of specially commissioned works by contemporary composers Marco Marazzoli and A.F.Tenaglia and by her favourite Giacomo Carissimi. Inspired by the chamber music proportions of the capella of the Collegio Germanico, many of Carissimi’s secular arias were composed for his royal Swedish patron. After two years in France, Christina returned to Rome where she took up residence in the Palazzo Riario on the Janiculum. Inventories record her musical instruments and describe the contents of the Great Hall in which concerts were held.

Dr Tessa Murdoch FSA is Deputy Keeper, Department of Sculpture, Metalwork, Ceramics and Glass, Victoria and Albert Museum. In Furniture and Woodwork, 1990 to 2002, she had some responsibility for musical instruments. From 1981 to 1990 at the Museum of London she curated an exhibition on the Huguenots, 1985, with some musical content. Her publication as editor, Boughton House: The English Versailles, 1992, includes the music manuscripts. Her Stephan Zweig lecture at the British Library in 1995 was on Music Rooms in Great London Houses and she has published on the decoration of the Norfolk House Music Room (Apollo Magazine,  June 2006).



Rebecca Norris (University of Cambridge)
Women on the Edge: The “Saletta delle Dame” of the Palazzo Salvadego in Brescia

Form and content give rise to the question of function in the Saletta delle Dame of the Palazzo Salvadego. It is a uniquely decorated space where frescoes cover the four walls treating the viewer to a vista of the countryside. Mediating between illusion and reality are eight women. Set in pairs along a partitioning balustrade, these individuals focus their attention toward the center of the room. In the vaulted ceiling are painted musical instruments suggesting a possible use for this space. The overall effect in form and content is unlike any other room from this period. This paper will explore the imagery of the Saletta and consider the function within the broader context of frescoed Italian Renaissance rooms.
 
Rebecca Norris is an MPhil Candidate with the History of Art Department at the University of Cambridge. She has interned at the Victoria and Albert Museum, J. Paul Getty Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art and the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio where she contributed toward the reinstallation of the Oppenheimer Collection of Medieval and Renaissance Art.

 

Raf Orlowski (Arup Acoustics, Cambridge)
Assessing the performance of small music rooms.

The performance of music in early modern French and Italian music rooms typically created an aural impression of 'Intimacy' and 'Clarity' where the individual instruments could clearly be perceived spatially. These qualities arise from the close proximity of the audience to the performers and the acoustic characteristics generated by the room geometry.  Generally, the rooms were rectangular with high ceilings, between 4 and 8 metres, with volumes between 200 and 1000 cubic metres.  Such rooms have moderate reverberance when occupied which helps maintain the individuality of separate voices.  They also give rise to short delay reflections from the walls and ceiling which enhance 'Clarity', 'Intimacy ' and 'Envelopment'. The acoustic characteristics of these rooms will be discussed in terms of current subjective and objective parameters developed for assessing concert venues.

Raf Orlowski took up a post lecturing and researching into building acoustics at Salford University, following research into architectural acoustics at Cambridge University. He later returned to Cambridge to help set up an acoustic consultancy office with Arup Acoustics. Since that time, Raf has specialised in the acoustical design of performance spaces, particularly concert halls, recital halls and music schools.  Where possible he has applied his earlier research work into design practice. Recently, Raf has been appointed as a visiting professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Sheffield.

 

Mimmo Peruffo (String-maker, Aquila, Italy)
Investigating period instruments: The balance of the lute

ll Liuto fu lo strumento in cui gli antichi liutai e cordai spesero tutto ciò che era spendibile per ottenere il massimo rendimento acustico nell’interfaccia corda-strumento.

Le sue ridotte tensioni di lavoro, l’emissione sonora realizzata mediante un solo impulso iniziale impartito con le dita (e non in continuo per mezzo di un arco) e la notevole escursione di frequenza esistente tra la prima corda e l’ultima suonate a vuoto (soprattutto nelle versioni a 10 e 11 ordini disposti sulla stessa tastiera) ne facevano una vera palestra di abilità progettuale e costruttiva.

Come le proprietà meccaniche del mattone rappresentano l'elemento di partenza per qualunque architetto così gli antichi liutai progettavano il nostro strumento partendo in primis dalle proprietà acustiche e meccaniche offerte dalle corde a loro disposizione e non viceversa, vale a dire dallo strumento già realizzato.

Si è infatti portati a ritenere che Liuto potè  garantire la sua esistenza  grazie all’ottimizzazione estrema di alcune variabili quali ad esempio la scelta della lunghezza vibrante, il numero massimo di corde utilizzabili  e le tipologie di corda da adottare nei suoi range dei Trebles, Meanes e Basses.

Un perfetto punto di equilibrio tra le regole della statica e dell’acustica.

Il dolce strumento lavorava dunque compresso all’interno di un vincolo superiore ed uno inferiore:
Esattamente come un liquido, il quale versato in un recipiente ne va ad occupare la massima superficie disponibile, così la caratteristica del Liuto, strumento perfectissimo et eccellentissimo, fu quella di sfruttare alla massima estensione le proprietà meccaniche ed acustiche offerte dalle corde a disposizione.

Mimmo Peruffo was born in Arborea, Sardinia. Pupil of the stringmaker Arturo and researcher  in Vicenza, Mimmo has devoted himself, since 1983, to the study and re-creation of gut strings in use in the Renaissance, Baroque and Classic eras. Working in the field of research on modern materials, in 1997 he discovered and brought onto the market Nylgut, a true "synthetic gut" to substitute for nylon on historical plucked instruments and on classical guitar, ukulele, ouds, charangos etc.

His works have appeared in 'Recercare', 'F.O.M.R.H.I quarterly', 'The Italian Lute Society Bulletin’, 'Orfeo', 'The Lute Society of America Bulletin', 'Quattrocentoquindici', 'Il Fronimo', in the volume 'Gendai Guitar', ‘Das Musikinstrument’ etc.

He took care of  the gut string- section in the musical instruments catalogue of the GNM in Nürnberg  and the volume on the Bergamo 1998 exhibition "Evaristo Baschenis and still life painting in Europe". He was the first to carry out accurate research on the gut strings pieces from the first half of the 18th century in the Museo Stradivariano in Cremona and, in April 2000, the gauging of the original violin gut strings which belonged to Nicolò Paganini. He reads papers in the conservatories and universities of Vienna, Dresden, Milan, Venice, London, Brussells, Florence, Brescia, The Hague, Gijon, etc. and has investigated all the generic 'old' gut and wound gut strings present on bowed and plucked instruments of  the European musical museums. His current project is to complete a database of  all the 'old' gut strings that are on these instruments. A copia of the relation was gave to each museum. This work is in progress; at present a complete check of the following museums is being carried out:

-Ferdinandeum Museum di Innsbruck
-Musee Royal Instrumental di Bruxelles
-Museo Nazionale degli Strumenti Musicali di Roma
-Germanische National Museum di Norimberga
-Kunsthistorisches Museun di Vienna
-Ashmolean Museum di Oxford

 
Sophie Pickford (University of Cambridge)
Music in the French Domestic Interior (1500-1600)

This paper will consider music-making and the material culture of music in the French domestic interior (1500-1650). Its primary aim will be to outline the field, discussing the context for entertaining, particularly in châteaux, as well as investigating the kind of music-related objects found in houses, with a view to a future, more in-depth study of the topic.

Châteaux and other élite domestic settings often housed vibrant communities, with music as a key part of inhabitants’ leisure activities. From services in the chapel to banquets in the great hall, music was a common feature of privileged life.

This paper will fall into two halves. First, I will discuss inventories’ use in investigating music in châteaux, looking at the range of documents available to us dating from the sixteenth century, their limitations, and, finally, the evidence they offer. Secondly, I will take the grande salle as a case study and examine the use of music as entertainment in this space. To date, little attention has been paid to this area of research, yet it is a rich field deserving more detailed study.

Sophie Pickford graduated in 2001 with starred first-class honours in History of Art from King's College, Cambridge, where she held both an academic scholarship and a university music award. For her PhD she moved to St. John's College on a Benefactor's Scholarship and AHRC doctoral award, and wrote her thesis on 'The French Renaissance Chateau Interior' under the supervision of Professor Massing. Sophie was appointed to her present position as Research Fellow at St. Edmund's College in October 2007, and worked as a Research Associate on Professor Howard's AHRC-funded 'Music and Architecture' project in 2007-08.

 

Giovanni Zanovello (Indiana University Bloomington)
Impossible decorum: The Role of the Frottola in the Early 16th-Century Italian Interior

How did the frottola inhabit Renaissance palazzi? One almost recoils from placing this unsophisticated music within the system of austere symbols that aristocratic interiors had to convey. This apparent contradiction, however, may offer precious insights on the status of music at the turn of the 16th century. In this paper I describe the layout and content of a Paduan frottola source, MS Modena, Biblioteca Estense, Alpha.F.9.9, and the context in which it originated. The contrast between the highly learned framework and the more vernacular content of this manuscript arguably reflects the tension between humanistic standards required of music and a secular repertory just beginning to adjust to a new role. Only later would music be able to develop the vocabulary for a fruitful dialogue with literary and artistic Humanism.

Giovanni Zanovello is Visiting Assistant Professor at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He earned his PhD from Princeton University and has held research fellowships at the University of Padua (Italy), the Centre d’Études Superieures de la Renaissance (Tours, France), and Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. His research mostly focuses on fifteenth-century music in Florence, Franco-Flemish musicians, and 16th-century French music theory.



 

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