The long life of the Trecento repertory
In 1461, the manuscript Chantilly, Bibliothèque du Musée Condé, 564 was donated by Francesco d’Altobianco degli Alberti to the three daughters – aged 9 to 14 – of the Florentine banker Tommaso Spinelli. The gift of a seemingly outdated manuscript of complex polyphonic music to young girls (and not to a professional musician, as had happened with the Squarcialupi codex) seems surprising, and raises the question of how long the Trecento repertory could have survived into the next century.

A new source contains a long capitolo ternario about the seven joys of the Virgin Mary, written by the Dominican theology master Simone d’Angelo dei Bocci da Siena (1438-1509). The poem is dated 1486 and is dedicated to a lady of the Sienese aristocracy, Madonna Perna degli Ugurgieri, for her spiritual instruction.

Towards the end of the poem, the description of the Assumption into heaven is particularly musical, mirroring the classic late-medieval iconography of angels playing instruments and singing around the Virgin. In the tradition of the quodlibet or incatenatura, the verses are built around a series of quotations of musical incipits. In this paper, I propose an identification of many of them (hoping also to gather suggestions from my audience!). The results provide a view on the repertory known to the Sienese upper classes at the end of the 15th century. The presence of many Trecento pieces testifies that – similarly to the Spinelli a few years before – an aristocratic lady such as Madonna Perna was ready to catch the musical references to a dated, but still familiar repertory among the theological subtleties of the poem.
Date: 21 November 2024, 17:00 (Thursday, 6th week, Michaelmas 2024)
Venue: Venue to be announced
Speaker: Lucia Marchi (University of Trento)
Organising department: Faculty of Music
Organisers: Joseph Mason (University of Oxford), Margaret Bent (Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: all.souls.music.seminars@gmail.com
Part of: All Souls Seminars in Medieval and Renaissance Music
Booking required?: Required
Booking url: https://www.music.ox.ac.uk/all-souls-seminars-medieval-and-renaissance-music
Cost: Free
Audience: Public
Editor: Laura Howorth