The Maecenas and the Madrigalist: Patrons, Patronage, and the Origins of the Italian MadrigalMusicologists are increasingly focusing upon less formal private "institutions" and traditions of patronage: informal acad. and soc, the activities of individuals, and convivial aristocratic co. Early 16th-cent. Florence was characterized by the practices of a series of these vital institutions. Such informal institutions had considerable virtues as agents of patronage; their less routinized practices freed them to engage in experimentation that the more formal institutions would not support. This study reconstructs the memberships, cultural activities, and musical exper. of these informal Florentine institutions and relates them to the emergence of the madrigal, the foremost musical genre of early-modern Europe. Richly illus. with visual materials and musical examples. |
Common terms and phrases
Accolti Alamanni Albertini Alessandro Andrea del Sarto Banco rari Bartolomeo Bernardo Pisano Bernardo Rucellai Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Broncone Brucioli Buondelmonti canto carnascialesco Canzona Cardinal Giulio carnival song Cazzuola Company contemporary courtesan D'Accone Diamante documents Doni's early Cinquecento early madrigal evidence Example Fenlon and Haar Festa festivities Figure Filippo Strozzi Firenze dalla repubblica Florence Florentine Florentine cultural elite Francesco da Diacceto Francesco Vettori frottola Gaddi Gelli's genre Giovanni Gaddi Giuliano homorhythmic important institutions Italian Madrigal Jacopo Nardi Janus Lascaris Lascaris Layolle letter literary Lorenzo Strozzi Ludovico Luigi Luigi Alamanni madrigalists Magl Martelli Medici membership Migliorotti musical practices Nerli Niccolò Machiavelli Orti Oricellari Palla patronage performance Pesenti's Pirrotta political polyphonic Princeton references relationship Renaissance repertory repubblica al principato Richard Sherr Rome Rucellai gardens Rucellai group Sacred Academy setting sixteenth century solo singing sources Storia suggests tradition Trissino University Press Vasari Verdelot verse vols Zinzera
Popular passages
Page 206 - Bartoli: < ne' tempi della tua fanciullezza erano Bernardo Rucellai, Francesco da Diacceto, Giovanni Canacci, Giovanni Corsi, Piero Martelli, Francesco Vettori e altri litterati che allora si ragunavano all'orto de' Rucellai, dove tu, quando potevi tal volta penetrare in maniera alcuna, stavi con quella reverenza e attenzione a udirli parlare tra loro, che si ricerca proprio a gli oracoli. E di più mi ricorda ancora averti sentito dire che andavi sì volentieri, quando ci venivano ambasciadori,...
Page 207 - Niccolo e di tutti loro amicissimo, e molto spesso con loro conversavo), s' esercitavano costoro assai, mediante le lettere, nelle lezioni dell' istorie, e sopra di esse, ed a loro istanza compose il Machiavello quel suo libro de' discorsi sopra Tito Livio, e anco il libro di que' trattati e ragionamenti sopra la milizia.
Page 243 - too much annoy and, as it were, glut the eare, unlesse it be in small and popular Musickes song by these Cantabanqui upon benches and barrels heads, where they have none other audience then boys or countrey fellowes that passe by them in the streete, or else by blind harpers or such like taverne minstrels that give a fit of mirth for a groat...
Page 227 - The answer to the objection turns upon these distinctions; for it is quite possible that certain methods of teaching and learning music do really have a degrading effect. It is evident then that the learning of music ought not to impede the business of riper years, or to degrade the body or render it unfit for civil or military training, whether for bodily exercises at the time or for later studies.
Page 226 - My opinion, however, is that such a change is neither so greatly to be feared, nor, on the other hand, to be considered of no importance at all ; and yet I do observe that audiences which used to be deeply affected by the inspiring sternness of the music of Livius and Naevius, now leap up and twist their necks and turn their eyes in time with our modern tunes. Ancient Greece used to punish such offences severely, perceiving long before the...
Page 48 - For a change to a new type of music is something to beware of as a hazard of all our fortunes. For the modes of music are never disturbed without unsettling of the most fundamental political and social conventions.
Page 243 - Fit of mirth for a groat ; and their matter being for the most part stories of old time, as the tale of Sir Topas, the reportes of Bevis of Southampton, Guy of Warwicke, Adam Bell, and Clymme of the Clough, and such other old romances, or historicall rimes...
Page 243 - Clough, and such other old romances or historicall rimes, made purposely for recreation of the common people at christmasse diners and brideales, and in tavernes and alehouses, and such other places of base resort.
Page 221 - Rucellai a cantare, dove si faceva fra quei dotti una gran disputa sopra il Petrarca ; e v'era chi voleva che questa Laura fosse stata la filosofia , e non donna altrimenti , per quella canzone che comincia, Una donna più bella assai che...
Page 229 - Quanto meglio arebbono fatto quelli (sia detto con pace di tutti) a cercare di somigliare gli antichi nelle cose forti e aspre, non nelle delicate e molli...