salve flos tuscae gentis
Sacred Music in Florence in between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
music by Paolo tenorista, Gherardello da Firenze, Bartolo, Lorenzo da Firenze, Guillaume Dufay, Heinrich Isaac
L’HOMME ARMÉ
conductor FABIO LOMBARDO
“Salve fiore della Tosca gente, Firenze, salve”: thus begins the piece by Guillaume Dufay that marks the beginning of a fundamental “graft” in the history of western music: the insertion of the northern european musical culture in the cradle of the Italian culture of the time. The piece, which was composed during Dufay’s stay in Florence in between 1434 and 1436 while he was in the retinue of Pope Eugenio IV on occasion of the Concilium, praises the city of Florence, flower of Tuscany and centre of the Italian glories, having been the birthplace of “ so many men of talent…of integrity…and faith”.
We do not really know what kind of music Dufay found on his arrival (many sources are lost and there is no information on important native composers except for the famous organist Antonio Squarcialupi). It is certain, though, that just a few years before, at the end of the 14th cent. in Florence and in other Italian cities, an extremely sophisticated musical style had developed which was characteristic of the period, and that is today known as “Italian Trecento”. This style developed around a small number of composers who favoured, due to the commisssions, secular music. The sacred music of the florentine Trecento had a very limited circulation and was restricted to a small group of aristocratic connoisseurs, so much so that it was virtually unknown to the greater part of its contemporaries.
Of the composers who were active in Florence during the 14th cent., such as Gherardello, Lorenzo, Paolo and Bartolo, we know that they were educated first and then they orbitated around the church circles of Florence. In fact in the miniatures of the time they are represented wearing a religious habit.
Nevertheless, following a custom which is not rare in the course of the history of music, even the prelates Gherardello, Lorenzo, Paolo etc. tried their hand at both the sacred and the secular repertoire. Stylistically speaking, we can identify two main directions in the pieces of this concert programme: the first is the one found in the compositions of Gherardello, Paolo and Lorenzo, where one can clearly perceive the intention of the composers to show both the characters of the subtilitas of counterpoint and of the dulcedo of expression, that is to say the two highest ideals of musical aesthetics of the time; in other pices of the concert, such as in the Ave Verum and in the Veni Sancte Spiritus by Anonymous, one can easily trace the presence in the compositions of the cantus binatum, that is to say a sort of simple counterpoint, probably the legacy of a practice of improvisation which was passed down orally.
In the last part of the concert, in between the two pieces written in Florence (Nuper rosarum was performed on occasion of the consecration of the florentine Cathedral), we will listen to two pieces by Heinrich Isaac, another northern composer who settled in Florence around 1475. The first is a marian motet, on the tenor ‘la-mi-la-sol’ (we may note also that Isaac served at the Church of Santissima Annunziata), while the second, Quis dabit, is one of the most famous laments of the Renaissance, written for the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent.
