IDEA Music/a

February 7, 2016December 8, 2017

Italian Songs from the time of Christopher Columbus

Since the mid-18th century, scholars have been accustomed to thinking of musical works of art as embodied in their notation. The restrictions of print culture on the publication of critical editions has perpetuated and entrenched this line of thinking. But with the vastly increased resources afforded by digital humanities, Italian songs from the time of Christopher Columbus aims to create a critical edition of the late-15th- and early-16th-century repertory of Italian and Latin songs known as frottole that displaces this notion and relocates the object of study in music as a sounding work of art.

While members of the research team for this project are rigorously evaluating, analyzing, and critiquing the materials and resources in this new edition, thereby providing users with expert editorial perspective,
our goal is not to establish a single authoritative version of a given sounding text, nor to render texts in modern notation, but rather to provide users with experiences and tools to make sense of the music, poetry, and sources for themselves. Our unique perspective provides scholarly information to a wide audience of users who may or may not be able to read music notation.

February 3, 2016July 26, 2019

Ad tempo taci: Songs for Isabella d’Este

Isabella d’Este’s tutor, Mario Equicola, wrote in his Libro de natura de amore that the ancient Greeks valued silence over speaking words that, once said, could never be revoked. These ideas, he wrote, are imitated in the impresa of

“la prudentissima Isabella da Este di Mantua marchesa, con tucte le pause della musica pratica, le quali ne admoniscono et quasi ad viva voce ne dicono: ‘Ad tempo taci ‘: Seneca commanda ad Lucilio sia tardiloquo; non essere cosa alcuna megliore che`l silentio Menandro scrive; Hesiodo ne prega la lingua servemo como thesoro; Tullio Quinto suo fratello exhorta che diligentemente habia in custodia la lingua.”

the most prudent Isabella d’Este, marchesa of Mantua, with all the rests of musica practica [that is, music as practiced, as opposed to music theory], which admonish and almost aloud say: “at times, hush.” Seneca commanded Lucilius to be slow to speak; Menandro wrote that there is nothing better than silence; and Tullio V exhorted his brother to diligently keep his tongue in check.

Mario Equicola, Libro de natura de amore (ms) (Biblioteca Italiana, 2003), V: 4.

Anne MacNeil has taken Equicola’s interpretation of Isabella’s musical impresa as the title for the film Ad tempo taci: Songs for Isabella d’Este in order to draw attention to the juxtapositions of sound and silence that run throughout the various artworks associated with the marchesa and her husband Francesco II Gonzaga.

❧ Link to the IDEA Video Archive here

February 1, 2016December 7, 2017

POPP: Parsing Ottaviano Petrucci’s Prints

POPP: Parsing Ottaviano Petrucci’s Prints explores what it means to read the arcane notation and page designs of 16^th-century music. With a focus on the frottola (song) books of the first music printer, Ottaviano Petrucci, POPP illustrates applications of 16^th-century music theory, pedagogy, and printing practices to this repertory, together with research about the history, performance practices, and patronage of these songs and the people who created them. This project was a learning exercise, enabling the POPP Team to learn how to design databases that would respond to questions about history and aesthetics. The data sets are purposefully small, and the Data Trials demonstrate proof-of-concept.

Piu che mai

Much of what we do in IDEA is to build bridges across disciplines, creating projects where scholars, artists, and performers in a variety of fields contribute their expertise toward a common goal. Thus, IDEA’s research teams include Italian scholars as well as Americans, experts in Italian literature, ceramics, archival studies, early printing, music history, and performance. The research that has gone into Parsing Ottaviano Petrucci’s Prints encompasses a variety of materials as well; seven Collections comprise our database: a documents Archive, Events, Library, Objects, People, Places, and Repertory. In the DH Press visualizations, data records are classified by Collection, a classification that is often used to sort, filter, or color-code information.

❧ Link to POPP: Parsing Ottaviano Petrucci’s Prints here

Isabella d’Este & Music

Isabella d'Este was an avid musician, a patron of music and musicians, and a connoisseur of musical instruments. As a member of the nobility, she learned to sing, dance, and play musical instruments as a child – her music tutor was the Netherlander Johannes Martini, maestro di cappella of her father’s ducal chapel, she learned to play musical instruments with Girolamo da Sextula, and Lorenzo Lavagnolo taught her to dance.¹ As an adult, too, she continued her studies, both in music and in humanist literature. Her library, catalogued at her death, includes a substantial number of texts in ancient Latin and Greek, including works by Seneca, Horace, Catullus, Pliny, Cicero, Aristotle, Ovid and Virgil, and a host of compositions by more modern writers, including Petrarch, Dante, Sannazaro, Galeotto del Caretto, and Nicolò da Correggio. Also prominent in this collection are several books of psalms and the Fior di musica by Franchino Gaffurio of Lodi.²

For her engagement in 1480 to the marchese of Mantua, Francesco II Gonzaga, Isabella's father commissioned a music manuscript now known as Rome, Casanatense 2856. This is the only surviving Ferrarese music manuscript from the late 15^th century, and it is filled with French chansons inscribed with only the first few words of their poetic texts. As a result, scholars sometimes assume that the collection was intended for performance by instruments, such as Ercole I d’Este’s famous wind band – a reminder of Isabella’s childhood home.³

As marchesa, Isabella made concerted efforts to increase the size of the musical establishment at Mantua. Among the noblewomen of Italy, Isabella was unique in establishing her own musical household, employing her own musicians, and maintaining a collection of musical instruments.⁴ This was typical of noblemen, but not of noblewomen. Soon after her marriage in 1490, Isabella asked her father to send Johannes Martini and Girolamo da Sextula to Mantua, so she might continue her music lessons. When Sextula left her court around 1495, she hired the great lutenist Giovanni Angelo Testagrossa, who taught her to play the lute and other viole. She sent Mantuan musicians to Ferrara to study and requested musical instruments to be sent from Ferrara. In 1491, she commissioned Johannes Martini to find her two singers: a contralto and a soprano. Over time, she hired over a dozen new musicians for the Gonzaga court.⁵

When Isabella first arrived in Mantua, she began having a set of rooms (camerini) built to showcase her books, artworks, and musical instruments, and to provide her with spaces for reflection, contemplation, and intimate music-making. Her first camerini were in the Castel San Giorgio in Mantua, adjacent to the Camera degli Sposi, which is decorated with frescoes by Andrea Mantegna. The room Isabella dedicated to the display of paintings was called her studiolo, and the room dedicated to music was the grotta. The grotta features a gilded, barrel-shaped vaulted ceiling, a shape that creates a warm acoustical environment, which is decorated throughout with Isabella’s musical symbol, the impresa di tempi e pause.

(Continue reading)