Rossi Codex

The codex contains 37 secular works including madrigals, cacce and, uniquely among trecento sources, monophonic ballatas.

The codex is of great interest for trecento musicologists because for many years it was considered the earliest source of fourteenth-century Italian music.

In the early nineteenth century, it was in the possession of Italian collector Giovan Francesco de Rossi, for whom this manuscript and the collection in the Vatican is named.

The manuscript was first brought to the attention of the musical community by Monsignor Gino Borghezio in 1925 and then described in more depth by the musicologists Heinrich Besseler (1927), Friedrich Ludwig (1928), and Johannes Wolf (1939).

Pirrotta has further noted that De Rossi purchased books in Venice and Verona and speculates that the codex could have been acquired during one of these trips.

Most likely it preserves the repertory of the group of singers and composers who were gathered by Alberto della Scala in Padua and Verona between around 1330 and 1345.

Most significant of all, notational peculiarities in the manuscript are close to those described by Marchetto da Padova in his Pomerium in arte musice mensurate of the second decade of the century, which was from the same region.

While the music is anonymous, two composers have been identified from the appearance of the same pieces with attributions in other, later sources: Maestro Piero and Giovanni da Cascia.