Music of Florence

In 1383, Florence made clear subdivisions between its civic instrumental ensembles, singling out the pifferi (or piffero band) from the rest of the musicians.

Sometimes this ensemble also played for religious services on the Virgil of the feast of the Blessed Virgin, Easter, and at solemn Matins on the Sundays when the image of the Mother of God was exhibited.

When he was hired, officials subsequently fired the three native, Florentine shawm players and replaced them all with German speaking musicians.

When the wave of humanism originated in Florence focused around Marsilio Ficino and his circles, there was a preference amongst the humanists for music performed for the bas groups: improvised poetry accompanied by soft instruments.

These festivals took place before Lent and during Calendimaggio, which celebrated the return of spring beginning on May 1 and ending on the feast day of John the Baptist, the patron saint of Florence.

People from all classes of society gathered in the streets of Florence and participated in processions, parades, singing, dancing, and revelry.

Their first task was to envision the concept and text for a carnival song (canti carnascialeschi) and then to present their creation on a float with costumes, singers, and musicians.

[1] A large portion of texts depicted a particular guild trade attempting to sell a product, and the mark of a good setting was in the poet's employment of double entendre.

These were groups of lay individuals that formed under the Dominican, Franciscan, and mendicant orders who devoted themselves to God, promoted the common good for themselves and the city, and practiced charitable works.

These companies organized their own liturgical services and also met each evening to sing laude in veneration of the Virgin Mary.

By 1470 and continuing into the 16th century, the companies had established choirs of around five to eleven singers who could perform three- or four-part polyphony.

Adamantly opposed to the activities of carnival, he deputized his followers and the fanciulli (boys and adolescents) to sing laude throughout the streets during the festival season.

A major source for the lauda is Serafino Razzi’s Libro primo delle laudi spirituali published in 1563.

In addition to other responsibilities, these guilds oversaw the establishment and maintenance of the chapel that sang for services at these two institutions, as well as later at Santissima Anunnziata.

However, polyphonic music was returned to the cathedral soon after Savonarola's arrest; records show musicians were engaged to perform by April 27, 1498.

Private Outside of Florence, most major centers had a court and a system of nobility, such as the Dukes of Ferrara, the Este, the Sforza in Milan, etc.

Patrons, whether dukes or guilds men, used music and musicians to demonstrate either their own wealth and prestige, or that of their city or institution.

A Florentine Chansonnier from the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent A Florentine Chansonnier from the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent (Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, compiled in Florence, c. 1490–1491) opens with Johannes Martini's work, and other works by him regularly alternates with those of Heinrich Isaac in the first nineteenth items.

Despite a periodic gap between the two, a larger number of concordances suggest the spread of common material in the two important centers from which the manuscripts originated.

For instance, the singer Cornelio di Lorenzo in Ferrara moved to Florence in 1482, where he was serving as a member of Santissima Annunziata.

He reuses the melodic material from Martini in the opening and concluding sections as well as several places of his setting, yet with motivic elaboration.

This is a similar technique to that which Martini used in the same part of the form, although Isaac did not borrow any explicit melodic material from his model.

The opening section of the Florentine manuscript may suggest the interrelationships between Martini and Isaac, and by extension, between Ferrara and Florence.

During his visit, Martini may have influenced Isaac with regard to the compositional techniques, styles, and procedure portrayed in his Martinella.

Given this environment of collaboration among institutions and classes of society, it is worth considering the relationship between music and Renaissance humanism, one of the primary intellectual strands active in Quattrocento Florence.

Classicism was the basis for their studies: humanists drew on the discoveries and revival of ancient Greek and Latin authors and attempted to imitate them in content, style, and form.

Due in part to the collection efforts by Florentines such as Niccolo Niccoli (c. 1364–1437) and Pico della Mirandola (1463–94), much classical Greek and Latin music theory was known and studied during the 15th century.

One of the ways in which humanism exerted its influence on other disciplines was to encourage greater attention to clarity or elegance of style.

Moreover, Dufay uses a number of musical devices to explain and amplify the meaning of the text, in much the same way as a humanistic orator would employ rhetorical figures to decorate a speech.

Such accounts typically take an effusive tone, calling on classical images of Orpheus or the Muses and emphasizing the rhetorical nature of the performance.