Francesco Landini (c. 1325–1397)
Sì dolce non sonò col lir’ Orfeo

Solage (fl. c. 1380–1400)
Calextone

Codex Faenza (15th century)
Constantia (instrumental)

Johannes Ciconia (1370–1412)
Chi vole amar
Albane, misse celitus / Albane doctor maxime
Doctorum principem / Melodia suavissima

Codex Faenza
Ave Maria stella (Anonymous, Codex Faenza 117)

Johannes Ciconia
Gloria „Spiritus et alme“
Venecie mundi splendor / Michael qui Stena domus

Codex Faenza
Benedicamus Domino (instrumental)

Johannes Ciconia
Gloria
Credo
Petrum Marcello Venetum / O Petre antistes inclite

Guillaume Dufay (1397–1474)
Salve flos Tusciae gentis / Vos nunc Etruscae iubeo / Viri mendaces (1436?)

John Dunstaple (c. 1395–1453)
Veni sancte spiritus / Veni creator

Buxheim Organ Book (c. 1460)
Con lacrime (instrumental)

Guillaume Dufay
Nuper rosarum flores / Terribilis est locus iste (1436)

There will be no intermission.

The Rise of European Music
Works by Johannes Ciconia and Others

Michele Pasotti

The Rise of European Music is the title of a pivotal book by the German musicologist Reinhard Strohm. It describes the decades between the end of 14th and the first half of the 15th century as the first time when making and composing music on the continent acquired an international, European dimension.

Johannes Ciconia, a native of Flanders, is a key figure of this development: at the age of 20, he was the first important Flemish composer to emigrate to Italy, where he lived until his death. Absorbing the characteristic elements of the Italian Ars Nova music, he could not help mixing them with his northern sensibility and training, thus creating a model that would be followed by the great Flemish masters who came after him such as Guillaume Dufay. After a brief exploration of Italian and French music that preceded Ciconia, our program will turn to his music, before looking ahead to Dufay and the English composer John Dunstaple—two fathers of a new way of composing that would become the role model until the end of the 15th century.

French Origins

We begin with the most famous among the Italian Ars Nova composers, Francesco Landini. Known at his time as “Francesco degli organi” (Francis the Organist) or “Francesco Cieco organista di Firenze” (Blind Francis, Organist of Florence), he was a blind organist and composer whose legacy exceeds that of any of his Italian colleagues. We chose his Sì dolce non sonò because it is an homage to Philippe de Vitry, the French master who “invented” a new way of composing and notating music at the turn of the 14th century that came to be known as Ars Nova, thereby already establishing a European connection.

The piece resembles an enchanted forest both in words (every other line ends with the word “boschi”—woods—and the text is nothing but a thicket of different myths) and music: a dense, complex, and intricate counterpoint whose branches seem to grow in every possible direction. It introduces a rooster (“gallus,” which can also stand for Gaul, i.e., a Frenchman) whose chant is better and sweeter than that produced by Orpheus, Apollo, Philomena (the nightingale), or Amphion. All these mythical “authorities” are surpassed by a new way of singing that comes out of the woods and was never heard before: it is a “new art,” and the singing Gaul is none other than Philippe de Vitry. This new music has the power to move the world, fluid and ever-changing as nature. French Ars Nova is represented by the beautiful, “harmonically” daring and melodically haunting Calextone, a later ballade by Solage. It tells the marvelous story of the nymph Callisto, who was first transformed into a bear and then into the Ursa Major constellation by her lover Zeus/Jupiter.

Merging Traditions

French and Italian Ars Nova were the two leading traditions in European music at the time, and Johannes Ciconia represents their perfect synthesis. It is now largely accepted that he was born in 1370 in Liège, and not in 1335 as previously assumed. In 1385, documents locate him at the collegiate church of St. Jean l’Évangéliste in Liège. The next trace he left us is in Rome. In a letter from Pope Boniface IX in April 1391, Johannes Ciconia is mentioned as clericus capelle of cardinal Philippe d’Alençon, and in July of the same year another letter reports that Ciconia returned to Rome with the cardinal after traveling northern Europe. Ciconia might have been associated with the papal chapel since some of the cardinal’s musicians later sang there. This is particularly interesting because Antonio Zacara da Teramo, a composer close to Ciconia in terms of the musical devices he used, was in Rome at the same time and eventually became the pope’s chapel master (magister capellae). Ciconia’s Roman years may have ended with the death of cardinal d’Alençon in 1397.

At the beginning of the new century we find Ciconia in Padua, where he wrote his most celebrated compositions. A bunch of documents spanning from 1401 to 1409 show that with the support of Francesco Zabarella, a humanist, professor of law, archpriest of Padua, and later cardinal, Ciconia was able to establish himself as cantor et custos of the Padua cathedral, a position he held until his death. This is by far the most important and creative period of his life. Some of his famous motets celebrate Zabarella, such as Doctorum principem (Prince of Teachers), which is dedicated to him. Similarly, Albane, misse celitus addresses Albano Michele, the new bishop of Padua, who is also praised as a “great teacher.” Petrum Marcello Venetum was perhaps written to be performed on the day of the inauguration of Pietro Marcello as Bishop of Padua in November 1409, whereas Venecie mundi splendor is dedicated to the glory of Venice and its ruler (doge) Michele Steno, possibly written in January 1406, when Padua formally came under Venetian rule. All these motets as well as other pieces contain references to Ciconia himself, a sort of musical signature that will also be used by Dufay, Busnoys, and other 15th-century masters. 

The motet was the predominant musical form of the earlier French Ars Nova, exemplified by the compositions of Philippe de Vitry. As the 14th century went on, however, the celebrative motet developed quite a different character and shape in the Italian Ars Nova, starting a tradition that was then picked up and further transformed by Ciconia at the end of the century. At the beginning of the 15th century, he was by far the most important motet composer in Europe, endowing the genre with a distinctively solemn, festive, and joyful character, especially when it was used to celebrate great personalities such as bishops, saints, rulers, or patrons.

Our program also includes three mass movements out of the seven Glorias and four Credos attributed to Ciconia today. The Gloria found in a manuscript in the Biblioteca della Musica di Bologna and the Credo from a manuscript in the Biblioteka Narodowa in Warsaw were clearly conceived as a pair. The Gloria “Spiritus et alme” is a so-called troped Gloria (containing additional lines of text not part of the Mass ordinary) that was widely used for Marian feasts before the Roman Missale from 1570 banned it. Ciconias setting employs three voices and alternates between duo and tutti sections. Judging from the surviving copies, Ciconia’s sacred music circulated less than his secular compositions.

English Influence

In July 1412, a new cantor was appointed at the Padua cathedral “per mortem M. Johannis Ciconie”— after Johannes Ciconia’s death. His influence can be traced in many composers who came after him, most notably in Dufay’s great isorhythmic motets, unimaginable without Ciconia’s innovative works. But Dufay’s and European music in general would not have been the same without another major innovation in music-making that reached the continent from England at the same time when Ciconia was writing his motets. John Dunstaple, a mathematician and astronomer as well as a musician, is the most important proponent of this new wave of English music.

Writers and music theorists such as Martin Le Franc in the 1440s and later Johannes Tinctoris believed English composers, and among them John Dunstaple in particular, to be the “source and origin of the new art,” a new sweet style that was characterized by a much more “consonant,” triadic, harmonious, and flowing polyphony. This English manner of composing, named contenance angloise by Le Franc, uses thirds as consonances and extensive faux bourdon, changing European music durably. We chose Dunstaple’s sublime four-voice motet Veni sancte spiritus / Veni creator as an example of his new way that eventually brought about a “reformation” of European music. 

A New Generation

Guillaume Dufay most likely attended the Council of Constance in 1415–17, as did most of Europe’s music chapels as part of the entourage of their patrons. Soon after the Council, Dufay’s career took a major turn when he went to Italy as a musician in the service of Carlo Malatesta (who headed pope Gregory XII’s delegation in Constance). Italy became Dufay’s home for the next 20 years. By July 1435 he had returned to the papal chapel, then located in Florence. For this city, often referred to as the cradle of the Renaissance, he wrote some of the greatest masterpieces in western music history. His works are an essential part of the cultural landscape we associate with Florence. Science and art became allies in the invention of perspective in the visual arts and in the miraculous architecture of Santa Maria del Fiore by Filippo Brunelleschi. Dufay’s Salve flos Tusciae gentis and Nuper rosarum flores are the soundscapes of the sublime art produced in Florence at that time: the first is an homage to the Florentine people and city, the latter was written for the consecration of Santa Maria del Fiore on May 25, 1436. They represent a new musical synthesis that amalgamates various traditions from Ciconia and his motets to French Ars Nova, to Dunstaple’s contenance angloise, to Flemish music, forming the models of European Renaissance.