And Josquin laughed ... Josquin and the composer's anecdote in the sixteenth century

Journal of Musicology

Volumn 17, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 319-357

  Wegman, Rob C ^a  

^a PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 60950130066     PISSN: 02779269     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/764097     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (161)

1. Cf. Helmuth Osthoff, Josquin des Prez, 2 vols. (Tutzing, 1962-65), I, 79-93. In what follows I will use the term "anecdote" (and interchangeably "story") in its conventional sense as a narrative, usually brief, of a separable incident or event of curious interest, usually biographical. Where relevant I will also discuss "reports," by which I understand statements about the historical Josquin that are repeated as something heard or said. Both anecdotes and reports are to be distinguished from documentary evidence, which may often be of anecdotal interest today, but was recorded for purely administrative reasons (the obvious borderline case being letters).
2. "Is multa iucunda relatu fecisse dicitur, antequam in hominum noticiam uenerit . . . Caeterum plus Iaudis habent ac uere merentur Ioci, si qui incidunt cum grauitate et occasione quaesiti: Quales Iodoci Pratensis aliquot feruntur." Heinrich Glarean, Dodekachordon (Basel, 1547), 440 and 468;
3. trans. after Glarean, Dodecachordon, trans. Clement A. Miller, 2 vols. (American Institute of Musicology, 1965), II, 271 and 284.
4. "Mi dissero anco tali discepoli di Giosquino che me recordo il nome d'uno chiamato Giovan l'Heriter che dava a cantare quel tenore a qualche mastro, e colui il cantave bene secondo il segno e Giosquino rideva ch'egli non notava le parole l'Homme Arme, ch'era Canone, come crescat in duplum e si disse, che all'hora rideva alquanto, e poi gli diceva il come fu composta tal messa e come dovea cantarsi." James Haar, "Lessons in Theory from a Sixteenth-Century Composer," in id., The Science and Art of Renaissance Music, ed. Paul Corneilson (Princeton, NJ, 1998), 149-75 at 153-54;
5. See Osthoff, Josquin des Prez, 1, 77-78;
6. Jeremy Noble, "Josquin des Prez," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 20 vols. (London, 1980), IX, 713-38, at 717-18;
7. Paula Higgins, "Musical 'Parents' and Their 'Progeny': The Discourse of Creative Patriarchy in Early Modern Europe," in Jessie Ann Owens and Anthony M. Cummings, eds., Music in Renaissance Cities and Courts: Studies in Honor of Lewis Lockwood (Michigan, 1997), 169-86, at 176.
8. The earliest self-styled pupil of Josquin on record is Arnoldus Juliani Causin, of Ath in Hainaut, who was described as magnus musicus fusquin discipulus when he matriculated at the University of Craców in 1526;
9. see Gerhard Pietzsch, Zur Pflege der Musik an den deutschen Universitäten bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts (Hildesheim and New York, 1971), 45.
10. v: ". . . summi artifices, qui ex eius schola prodierunt, Nicolaus Gombertus et alij . . .".
11. "Josquinus, vivens Cameraci, cum quidam vellet ei in suo cantu adhibere colores seu coloraturas, quas ipse non composuerat, ingressus est chorum, et acriter increpavit ilium, omnibus audientibus, addens: Tu asine, quare addis coloraturam? Si mihi ea placuisset, inseruissem ipse. Si tu velis corrigere cantilenas recte compositas, facias tibi proprium cantum, sinas mihi meum incorrectum." Johannes Manlius, Locorum communium collectanea (Basel, 1562), 542;
12. trans. after Osthoff, Josquin des Prez, I, 222.
13. On this anecdote, see also David Fallows, "Embellishment and Urtext in the Fifteenth-Century Song Repertory," Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musihpraxis XIV (1990), 59-85.
14. Manlius claimed to have collected his anthology of anecdotes, exempla, and other stories from the public lectures at Basel of the Lutheran reformer Philipp Melanchthon (d.1560), as well as of other, unnamed, scholars. The book was enormously popular: by 1600 it had been reprinted fourteen times and published twice in German translation. (This may explain why the Josquin anecdotes were still being reported by Johann Mattheson, Der vollkommene Capellmeister [Hamburg, 1739], 242.)
15. See Ernst Heinrich Rehermann, "Die protestantischen Exempelsammlungen des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts: Versuch einer Ubcrsicht und Charakterisierung nach Aufbau und Inhalt," in Wolfgang Brückner, ed., Volkserzählung und Reformation: Ein Handbuch zur Tradierung und Funktion von Erzählsioffen und Erzählliteratur im Protestantismus (Berlin, 1974), 579-645, esp. 594-97 and 631-33.
16. "Josquin did not judge everyone capable of the demands of composition. He felt that it should be taught only to those who were driven by an unusual force of their nature to this most beautiful art"; Adrian Petit Coclico, Musical`1 Compendium (Compendium musices), trans. Albert Seay (Colorado Springs, 1973), 16.
17. See Edward E. Lowinsky, "Musical Genius - Evolution and Origins of a Concept," The Musical Quarterly L (1964), 321-40 and 476-95, esp. 479-92.
18. This, for instance, is what Coclico stressed in his alleged reminiscences of Josquin's teaching; Musical Compendium, 5, 7-8, and 16-17.
19. For an exploration of archetypal ideas underlying artists' anecdotes, see Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz, Die Legende vom Künstler: ein geschichtlicher Versuch (Vienna, 1934);
20. see also the revised English translation Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist: An Historical Experiment, trans. Alastair Laing and Lottie M. Newman (New Haven, 1979).
21. Rawdon Brown, trans., Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII, 2 vols. (London, 1854), 1, 296;
22. see also J. S. Brewer et al., eds., Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, 21 vols. (London, 1862-1910), 2/1, 748-49.
23. On 24 March 1517, Cardinal Wolsey wrote to the Bishop of Worcester, then at the Vatican, that the king begged him to expedite the business of his organist Dionisio; see Brewer et al., Letters and Papers, 2 / 2, 975.
24. "Dito missier Dionisio à composto uno canto belissimo a quatro, e lo ha intitulato: Memor esto verbi tui servo tuo perpeluo in quo mihi spem dedisti. Dovealo sonar a questa Maestà e darli le parole; per le qual so po' ben intender il desiderio suo non li mancherà; e questo è certo, quod differtur non aufertur, non po' tropo indugiar etc." Marino Sanuto, I diarii, 58 vols. (Venice, 1879-1903), XXIV, 392.
25. The passage is not referred to in the summary of the letter given in Brewer et al., Letters and Papers, II/2, 1045. To my knowledge Memo's setting of Memor esto has not been identified.
26. Brewer et al., Letters and Papers, II/2, 1149 and 1188;
27. Brown, Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII, II, 126 and 136.
28. The presentation of Memo to the church of Henbury, in the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield, is recorded on 14 August of the same year; Brewer, Letters and Papers, II/2, 1135.
29. 1 and FlorBN II.I.232 (c. 1515).
30. "Verum cum promissa leuiter, ut in Regum aulis fieri solet, caderent, ibi commotum Iodocum psalmum composuisse. Memor esto uerbi tui seruo tuo, tanta maiestate ac elegantia, ut ad Cantonim collegium relatus ac deinde iusto iudicio excussus, admirationi omnibus fuerit." Glarean, Dodekachordon, 440;
31. Dodecachordon, trans. Miller, 2, 272.
32. 1) and FlorBN II.I.232 (c. 1515);
33. these also happen to be the earliest sources for Josquin's Memor esto. Elzéar Genet (Carpentras), Opera omnia, Corpus mensurabilis musicae, 58, 5 vols. (American Institute of Musicology, 1973),V: xii and 57-69).
34. "Wahrscheinlich ahmte Memmo den inzwischen berühmt gewordenen Einfall Josquins nach"; Osthoff, Jos quirt des Prez, I, 42. It is quite possible that Glarean's anecdote inspired the composer and theorist Eucharius Hofmann (whose Doctrina de tonis of 1582 was based directly on Glarean's Dodehachordon) to adopt this strategy as well. In January 1565 he sent a four-part composition to Nicolaus Gentzkow, mayor of the north-German seaport of Stralsund, where Hofmann had been hired as Cantor in the previous year. The mayor recorded its receipt in his diary as follows (my trans.): "On 7 January the Cantor of the school sent me a song in four parts which he had apparently composed himself. What he meant by this I don't know, but I think it could be a reminder of the previous song with which he honored the town, for reason of recompense, which perhaps he has eagerly awaited up till now."
35. For the diary entry, see Klaus Wolfgang Niemöller, Untersuchungen zu Musikpflege und Musikunterricht an den deutschen Lateinschulen vom ausgehenden Mittelaller bis um 1600, Kōlner Beiträge zur Musikforschung, liv (Regensburg, 1969), 97 n. 57.
36. The mayor did not identify the piece by title, but Hofmann did in fact leave a collection of four-part psalm settings, printed at Rostock in 1577, Deutsche Sprūche aus den Psalmen Davids (now lost);
37. it is not inconceivable, therefore, that he had composed a setting of Ps. 118: 49-64 in Luther's translation.
38. See Martin Ruhnke, "Hoffmann, Eucharius," New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, VIII, 626-27.
39. Petrus Opmeer, Opus Chronographicum (Antwerp, 1611), 440;
40. Claude Hémcré, Tabella chronologica decanorum, custodum, canonicorumque regalis ecclesiae S. Quintini (Paris, 1633), 161;
41. The only exception is the canonry at the church of Our Lady at Condé-surl'Escaut, which Josquin accepted on 3 May 1504, yet this was not at the collation of the King of France but bestowed by election of the chapter.
42. See Herbert Kellman, "Josquin and the Courts of the Netherlands and France: The Evidence of the Sources," in Lowinsky and Blackburn, eds., Josquin des Prez, 181-216, at 207.
43. Jeremy Noble, "New Light on Josquin's Benefices," in Edward E. Lowinsky and Bonnie J. Blackburn, eds., Josquin des Prez: Proceedings of the International Josquin Festival-Conference (London, 1976), 76-102, at 88-89 and 100-1.
44. Of course he does in a later anecdote (Dodecachordon, trans. Miller, II, 284), as do Opmeer and Hémeré.
45. See Rob C. Wegman, "From Maker to Composer: Improvisation and Musical Authorship in the Low Countries, 1450-1500," Journal of the American Musicological Society XLIX (1996), 409-79, esp. 467-69.
46. For a thoughtful evaluation of this anecdote's plausibility in the light of other musical and poetic treatments of the theme 'Lassa far a mi' / 'La sol fa re mi,' see James Haar, "Some Remarks on the 'Missa La sol fa re mi'," in Lowinsky and Blackburn, eds., Josquin des Prez, 564-88.
47. It is true, of course, that there are few stories about the private lives of composers in any case. Among the exceptions is the report that Nicholas Gombert was sentenced to the galleys for violating a choirboy whilst in the service of Emperor Charles V; see Hieronymus Cardanus, Writings on Music, ed. and trans. Clement A. Miller, Musicological Studies and Documents, XXXII (American Institute of Musicology, 1973), 30-32 and 210-11
48. and Clement A. Miller, "Jerome Cardan on Gombert, Phinot, and Carpentras," The Musical Quarterly, LVIII (1972), 412-19, at 413-15.
49. v, that he would publish a book about the major composers of his time, including Ockeghem, Obrccht,Josquin, La Rue, Brumel, Isaac, Clemens, Hellinck, and many others: "I will review these, and others whom I have not mentioned here, in another little book. And there I will add many things regarding the life and pursuits of these men themselves, both ancients and more recent [composers], not only everything I have seen and read myself, but also what I have been able to learn from the reports of others." It would be a musicologist's dream come true if this book, or Finck's drafts for it, were to surface in a manuscript collection some day.
50. Glarean, Dodecachordon, trans. Miller, II, 265;
51. Dodekachordon, 363: "Aiunt enim qui nouerunt, multa cunctatione, multifariaque correctione sua edidisse, nec, nisi aliquot annis apud se detinuisset, ullum in publicum emisisse cantum, contra atque Iacobus Hobrecht." Manlius, Locorum communium collectanea, 542;
52. quoted after Osthoff, Josquin des Prez, 1, 220: "Quoties novam cantilenam composuerat, dedit earn cantoribus canendam, et interea ipse circumambulabat, attente audiens, an harmonia congrueret. Si non placeret, ingressus: Tacete, inquit, ego mutabo."
53. There is evidence to suggest that this was normal practice for composers until at least the mid-16th century, when score notation became more widely current; see Jessie Ann Owens, Composers at Work: The Craft of Musical Composition 1450-1600 (New York and Oxford, 1997), 55-56.
54. This attitude is not without parallels in the literary sphere. William Prizer has cited a letter of the Ferrarese poet Antonio Tebaldeo, dated 10 Jan. 1491, in which he explains to Isabella d'Esta, marchesa of Mantua: "I do not give any of my [poems] out because I want to change and improve them from day to day, and, if some were out, my [poems] would be stolen by some of my companions." William F. Prizer, "Isabella d'Este and Lucrezia Borgia as Patrons of Music: The Frottola at Mantua and Ferrara," Journal of the American Musicological Society, XXXVIII (1985), 1-33, at 11 n. 46.
55. For a well-known if not uncontroversial example, see Maynard Solomon, "Charles Ives: Some Questions of Veracity," Journal of the American Musicological Society, XL (1987), 443-70.
56. Lewis Lockwood, "Josquin at Ferrara: New Documents and Letters," in Lowinsky and Blackburn, eds., Josquin des Prez, 103-37, at 114-15 and 136.
57. Kellman, "Josquin and the Courts of the Netherlands and France," 207.
58. Music in Renaissance Ferrara, 1400-1505 (Oxford, 1984), 205.
59. So much sense does this interpretation make that another Josquin scholar has already accepted it as an established fact; see Willem Elders, "Josquin's Absolve, quaesumus, Domine: A Tribute to Obrecht?" Tijdschrift van de Verenigingvoor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis XXXVII (1987), 14-24, at 21.
60. Lockwood, "Josquin at Ferrara," 129-31.
61. See Martin Picker, "A Letter of Charles VIII of France Concerning Alexander Agricola," in Jan LaRue et al., eds., Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music: A Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese (New York, 1966), 665-72
62. and Allan W. Atlas, "Alexander Agricola and Ferrante I of Naples," Journal of the American Musicological Society XXX (1977), 313-19.
63. Of course one is also reminded of Johann Sebastian Bach, who was imprisoned and then dismissed in disgrace, in 1717, for being too insistent after the Duke of Weimar had refused to let him go.
64. Rob C. Wegman, Bom for the Muses: The Life and Masses of Jacob Obrecht (Oxford, 1994), 139-41.
65. Lowinsky, "Musical Genius," 484-85;
66. Wegman, "From Maker to Composer," 468-69.
67. Lowinsky, "Musical Genius," 485.
68. ". . . ingessit se questioni quam idem Bertram habebat cum nonnullis alijs super differentia et valore notarum musicalium"; G. Schmidt-Görg, "Die Acta Capitularia der Notre-Dame-Kirche zu Kortrijk als musikgeschichtliche Quelle," Vlaamsch Jaarboek voor Muziekgeschiedenis I (1939), 21-80, at 62 doc. 35g.
69. Pamela F. Starr, "Rome as the Centre of the Universe: Papal Grace and Music Patronage," Early Music History XI (1992), 223-62, at 249-51 and 260.
70. Paula Higgins, "Musical Politics in Late Medieval Poitiers: A Tale of Two Choirmasters," in Paula Higgins, ed., Antoine Busnoys: Method, Meaning, and Context in Late Medieval Music (Oxford, 1999), 155-74, at 161-62.
71. Atlas, "Alexander Agricola and Ferrante I of Naples," 317. There is a possibility that Ferrante's offer was made in a different currency from the one referred to in Gian's letter. However, Atlas points out (ibid., n. 18): "It is a safe assumption that the letters of both Ferrante and Gian refer to the ducato d'oro, and that we necd not, therefore, take into account differences in local currency. Yet, even if by some chance Ferrante's offer was made in terms of ducati di moneta di conto, Agricola's would-be salary is not drastically altered. According to an entry in an account book of Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, dating from December 4, 1490, the ducat of gold and that of 'money of account' stood in Naples in a ratio of 1:1.15."
72. and id., "Who Was Josquin?" in Richard Sherr, ed., The Josquin Companion (Oxford, 2000), in press.
73. See also Hansjörg Pohlmann, Die Frühgeschichle des musikalischen Urheberrechts (ca. 1400-1800) (Kassel, 1962), 21-24.
74. e siècle, 8 vols. (Brussels, 1867-88) VI, 87-88.
75. For an accessible overview of Michele's life, see Massimi Alberini, Breve storia di Michele Savonarola seguita da un Compendio del suo "Librelo de tutte le cosse che se manzano," 2 vols. (Padua, 1991), I, 19-38.
76. I have not been able to consult Amaldo Segarizzi, Della vita e delle opere di Michele Savonarola (Padua, 1900).
77. On Girolamo and music, see now Patrick Mace)', Bonfire Songs: Savonarola's Musical Legacy (Oxford, 1998).
78. Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols. (New York, 1923-58) IV. 190-97.
79. "Nam in arte aliqua excellentes certe aliquid melancholie habere videntur co quod tales aliqua ex parte prudentia carere a vulgo dicuntur. Sunt enim ut melancholici in opinionibus fixi neque precibus ad exercendum artis operationes molliuntur ut in can-toribus et fidibus doctis sepe contingere videmus, neque eas operationes non nisi propria a fantasia moti perfectas conficiunt. Et hos bizaros vulgares nominant aitque vulgus neminem artificem excellentem esse posse nisi aliqua ex parte bizaria vexetur a qua culpa bizarie excellens medicus omnino vacuus esse debet." Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science IV, 196 n. 56. I am grateful to Leofranc Holford-Strevens for emending my translation.
80. Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion, and Art (London, 1964), 18-19;
81. see also the corrected and updated German translation, Saturn und Melancholie: Studien zur Geschichte der Naturphilosophie und Medizin, der Religion und der Kunst, trans. Christa Buschendorf (Frankfurt am Main, 1998), 59-61. With regard to musicians in particular, the eccentric behavior noted by Savonarola may have a classical parallel already in Horace, Satira, I. iii. 1-3: "All singers have this fault: if asked to sing among their friends they are never so inclined; if unasked, they never leave off."
82. "Che maladetto sia chi mai maritò nessuna femina ad alcuno dipintore, ché siete tutti fantastichi e lunatichi, e sempre andate inebbriando e non vi vergognate." Franco Sacchetti, Il Trecenionovelle, ed. Emilio Faccioli (Turin, 1970), 225.
83. Rudolf and Margot Wittkower, Born Under Saturn: The Character and Conduct of Artists: A Documented History from Antiquity to the French Revolution (New York, 1963).
84. See also Edgar Zilsel, Die Entstehung des Geniebegriffes: Ein Beitrag zur Ideengeschichle der Antike und des Frūhkapitalismus (Tübingen, 1926; repr. Hildesheim and New York, 1972), 269-74.
85. For this and what follows, see Bonnie J. Blackburn and Edward E. Lowinsky, "Luigi Zenobi and his Letter on the Perfect Musician," Studi musicali XXII (1993), 61-114, esp. 89 and 106-7.
86. For an excellent overview, see Werner Friedrich Kümmel, Musik und Medizin: Ihre Wechselbeziehung in Theorie und Praxis von 800 bis 1800, Freiburger Beitrāge zur Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte, ii (Freiburg [Breisgau] and Munich, 1977). esp. 285-306.
87. See also Günter Bandmann, Melancholic und Musik (Cologne, 1960)
88. and Werner Kümmel, "Melancholic und die Macht der Musik: Die Krankheit König Sauls in der historischen Diskussion," Medizinhistorisches Journal IV (1969), 189-209.
89. For this and what follows, see Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy, 254-74.
90. On this connection, especially in the poetics of Deschamps, see Henrik Heger, Die Melancholie bei den franzöpsischen Lyrikern des Spätmittelalters (Bonn, 1967), 153-66.
91. Literature on the subject is extensive. See Murray W. Bundy, The Theory of Imagination in Classical and Mediaeval Thought, University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, vol. xii, nos. 2-3 (Urbana, 1927; repr. Norwood, Pa., 1977);
92. Francis A. Walsh, "Phantasm and Phantasy: A Study in Terms," The New Scholasticism IX (1935), 116-33;
93. Harry Austryn Wolfson, "The Internal Senses in Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew Philosophic 'Texts," Harvard Theological Review XXVIII (1935), 69-133;
94. E. Ruth Harvey, The Inward Wits: Psychological Theory in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (London, 1975);
95. Katharine Park, "Picos De imaginatione in der Geschichte der Philosophic," introduction to Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, Über die Vorstellung: De imaginatione, ed. and trans. Eckhard Keßler (Munich, 1984), 16-40;
96. Thomas G. Rosenmeyer, "und Einbildungskraft: Zur Vorgeschichte eines Leitbegriffs der europäischen Ästhetik," Poetica: Zeilschrift für Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft XVIII (1986), 197-248;
97. Gerard Watson, Phantasia In Classical Thought (Galway, 1988);
98. Francis Dubost, Aspects fantastiques de la littérature narrative médiévale (Xllème-XIIIème siècles): L'Autre, l'Ailleurs, l'Autrefois, 2 vols. (Paris, 1991), esp. I, 31-59.
99. For the meaning and significance of fantasia in Italian, see also Salvatore Battaglia, Grande Dizionario della Lingua Italiana, 19 vols. to date (Turin, 1961- ) V, 642-47.
100. Cf. Walter Pagel, "Medieval and Renaissance Contributions to Knowledge of the Brain and Its Functions," in The History and Philosophy of Knowledge of the Brain and Its Functions (Springfield, Ill., 1958), 95-114, esp. 97-103
101. and Nicholas H. Steneck, "Albert the Great on the Classification and Localization of the Internal Senses," Isis LXV (1974), 193-211, esp. 201-02;
102. Simon Kemp, Medieval Psychology (New York, Westport, Conn., and London, 1990), 53-76.
103. Dagmar Teepe, Die Entwicklung der Fantasie für Tasteninstrumente im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert: eine gattungsgeschichtliche Studie, Kieler Schriften zur Musikwissenschaft XXXVI (Kassel and New York, 1990);
104. Thomas Schipperges and Dagmar Teepe, "Fantasie," in Ludwig Finscher, ed., Die Musik in Geschichle und Gegenwart, Sachteil, 9 vols. (Kassel and New York, 1994- ), III, 316-45, esp. 316.
105. As in Boccaccio's commentary on Dante, Inferno, viii. 62: "E 'l Fiorentino spirito bizarro, that is, quick-tempered; I believe this word bizarro is uniquely Florentine, and is always used in a pejorative sense. We call those people bizzarri who are quickly angered, even for the slightest reason, and cannot be persuaded to calm down";
106. cf. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. and comm. Charles S. Singleton, 3 vols. (Princeton, 1970-75), 1/2, 127-28.
107. Other attestations of bizzarro up to c. 1375 can be found in the 16.8 million-word electronic text resource Opera del Vocabulario Italiano (URL: http:// www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/ARTFL/projects/OVI), and, for later periods, Liber Liber (URL: http://www.liberliber.it/home/index.htm).
108. On the etymology and history of the term bizzarro until the 19th century, see Fritz Schalk, "Das Wort bizarr im Romanischen," in id., Exempla romanischer Wortgeschichte (Frankfurt am Main, 1964), 21-59
109. and Horst Bursch, "bizarr," Romanische Forschungen LXXXVI (1974), 447-50.
110. By the late 13th century, the word bigerai seems to have been in use for jongleurs and traveling entertainers; see Giovanni Villani, Istorie Florentine, 8 vols. (Milan, 1802-3), III, 160: "onde di Lombardia e di tutta Italia vi traevano buffoni e bigerai" (at a Florentine feast in 1283). The 18th-century historian Lodovico Antonio Muratori assumed bigerai to be a derivation from the French language, "where bigarrè denotes a man dressed in clothes of diverse colors";
111. cf. Vito Pandolfi, La commedia dell'arte: Storia e testo, 6 vols. (Florence, 1988), I, 45.
112. The earliest known examples of this semantic expansion appear in the writings of Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472);
113. see Nicoletta Maraschio, "Aspetti del bilinguismo albertiano nel 'De pictura'," Rinascimento: Rivista dell'Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, 2nd ser., XII (1972), 183-228, at 225
114. and especially Luigi Trend, "Libripeta misantropo: Nota all'intercenale albertiana 'Religio'," La Rassegna della leiteratura italiana XCI (1987), 39-45, at 44.
115. See also below, n. 87.
116. Giorgio Vasari, Le vile de'piú eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani, da Cimabue insino a'tempi nostri, ed. Luciano Bellosi and Aldo Rossi (Turin, 1986).
117. Roland LeMollé, "Le bizarre et le capricieux ou: le vocabulaire de l'insolite et de l'extravagant," ch. 7 of id., Georges Vasari et le vocabulaire de la critique d'art dans les "Vite" (Grenoble, 1988), 153-207.
118. LeMollé, Georges Vasari, 163-65: "Le bizarre définit line esthétique qui a pour finalité l'ornement et le décoratif, ce qui sous-entend la prédominance de 1'ornement sur la structure, du décoratif sur le fonctionnel, de l'accessoire sur l'essentiel. Le bizarre est associé à des moyens psychologiques, techniques ou de mise en œuvre qui sollicitent essentiellement la fantaisie, mais aussi la finesse, la vérité dans l'expression et l'éton-nement. Est également bizarre ce qui provoque la stupeur, Ie rêve, l'imagination, l'étrangeté, quelquefois l'envie de rire; qui va jusqu'à éblouir l'intelligence, qui se remarque par son excentricité, sa folie, son sens de l'extraordinaire ou du fantastique. Enfin, le bizarre est étroitement lié à tout un arsaenal né avec le Maniérisme florentin . . . il traduit le climat psychologique d'un art nouveau qui s'installe avec sa mythologie propre, ses accessoires et son sens du théâtre."
119. Vasari, Le vite, 368;
120. Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. Gaston du C. de Vere, 2 vols. (New York, 199G), I, 432.
121. James Haar, "A Sixteenth-Century Attempt at Music Criticism," Journalo of the American Musicological Society XXXVI (lg83), 191-209.
122. See also Hermann Zenck, "Zarlino's 'Istitutioni harmoniche' als Quelle zur Musikanschauung der italienischen Renaissance," Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft XII (1930), 540-78.
123. For another study of the critical vocabulary of 16th-century music theorists, see Don Harrán, "Elegance as a Concept in Sixteenth-Century Music Criticism," Renaissance Quarterly XLI (1988), 413-38.
124. Ludovico Gonzaga to Galeazzo Maria Sforza (11 Mar. 1470): ". . . ma l'è stata la mazore difficultà del mondo a poterlo condurre fin a Mantua perchè l'è un homo el piu suspectoso che sentisse mai et del sonare in fori le vive [como] un putino et se ha posta questa fantasia: che li sonatori de Italia per invider, lo debano tosicare: nè vole manzare cosa alcuna se non quello che gli fa fare la Illustrissima fiola consorte de Federico per la via de le donne suoe, de laqual se confida pur per essere de la natione sua; nè mangeria cosa se fasesse per mano de mei cochi." William F. Prizer, Courtly Pastimes: The Frottole of Marchetto Caro (Ann Arbor, MI, 1980), 3-4 and 168 n. 22.
125. Heinrich Schipperges, "Melancolia als ein mittelalterlicher Sammelbegriff für Wahnvorstellungen," Studium generale XX (1967), 723-36.
126. Bundy, The Theory of Imagination, 208.
127. For the ambivalent status of poetic "fanta-sye" in Elizabethan England, see William Rossky, "Imagination in the Renaissance: Psychology and Poetic," Studies in the Renaissance V (1958), 49-73.
128. Another well-known example is the comment of Pierre Ronsard in his Abbregé de l'art poelique français (1565): "When I tell you that you should invent beautiful and great things, I do not, however, mean those fantastic and melancholy inventions (inventions fantastiques et mélancoliques) which have no more relation to one another than the disconnected dreams of a madman, or of some sufferer severely tormented by fever, to whose injured imagination there are represented a thousand monstrous forms without order or connection." Trans. after Pierre Ronsard, Œuvres completes, ed. Jean Céard, Daniel Ménager, and Michel Simonin, 2 vols. (Paris, 1993-94), II, 1178;
129. see also Olivier Pot, Inspiration et mélancolie: L'épistémologie poétique dans les Amours de Ronsard (Geneva, 1990).
130. For the ambivalent status of fantasy and imagination in the early modern period, see also Murray W. Bundy, "Fracastoro and the Imagination," Philological Quarterly XX (1941), 236-49
131. and Ian Dalrymple McFarlane, "Montaigne and the Concept of the Imagination," in D. R. Haggis et al., eds., The French Renaissance and Its Heritage: Essays Presented to Alan M. Boase (London, 1968), 117-37.
132. Martin Kemp, "From 'Mimesis' to 'Fantasia': The Quattrocento Vocabulary of Creation, Inspiration and Genius in Visual Arts," Viator VIII (1977), 347-403, esp. 361-75.
133. Isabella d'Este to Paride de' Ceresari: "M. Paris. Non sapemo chi habbi in maggior fastidio la longhezza de li pictori, o nui che non vediamo finito el nostro Camarino, o vui che ogni dì havete ad fare nove inventione; quali poi per la bizarria d'essi pictori, non sono nè cossi presto, nè cossì integralmente designati como vorressimo, et per questo havemo deliberato esperimentare novi pictori per finirlo alii giorni nostri." Fiorenzo Canuti, Il Perugino, 2 vols. (Siena, 1931) II, 223, doc. 346.
134. Josquin des Prés, Werken, ed. Albert Smijers, 11 vols. (Amsterdam, 1927-69), Afl. 53: Wereldlijke Werken, bundel IV, 16-17.
135. Gregory G. Butler, "The Fantasia as Musical Image," The Musical Quarterly LX (1974), 602-15, at 603.
136. See Andrew Wathey, "The Motets of Philippe de Vitry and the Fourteenth-Century Renaissance," Early Music History XII (1993), 119-50. at 138.
137. On humanist critiques of late-medieval court life in general, see Jacques Lemaire, Les visions de la vie de cour dans la littérature française de la fin du Moyen Âge (Brussels and Paris, 1994), where Vitry's motet is discussed on pp. 379-82.
138. Edward E. Lowinsky, "Ascanio Sforza's Life: A Key to Josquin's Biography and an Aid to the Chronology of his Works," in Lowinsky and Blackburn, eds., Josquin des Prez, 31-75, esp. 51-60.
139. Joshua Rifkin has advanced compelling arguments against the identification of Josquin d'Ascanio with the composer, in his unpublished paper of 1990, "A Singer Named Josquin and Josquin D'Ascanio: Some Problems in the Biography of Josquin des Prez" (I am grateful to Joshua Rifkin for allowing me to consult his text). Meanwhile, however, documentary confirmation of Josquin's service at the court of Cardinal Ascanio in 1484 has been discovered by Lora Matthews and Paul Merkley, "Iudochus des Picardia and Jossequin Leboitte dit Desprez: The Names of the Singer(s)," The Journal of Musicology XVI (1998), 200-26, at 218-21.
140. For the date of Serafino's entry in Ascanio's service, the fall of 1484, see Lowinsky, "Ascanio Sforza's Life," 51-54.
141. Gioseffo Zarlino, Sopplimenti musicali (Venice, 1588; repr. Ridgewood, N.J., 1966), 314: "Giosquino de Pris, ilqual teneua à i suoi tempi nella Musica il primo luogo . . . che si dolea & si lamentaua spesse fiate con i suoi amici della sua trista fortuna; & specialmente con il Serafino Acquilano Poeta nominato in quei tempi, alquale, cercando egli di consolarlo, come amico, cosi scriue."
142. To mention just one of many other possible readings, Clytus Gottwald has suggested that the direct occasion for Serafino's poem might have been a row between Josquin and Cardinal Ascanio; see his "Lasso-Josquin-Dufay: Zur Āsthetik des heroischen Zeitalters," Musik-Konzepte XXVI/VH (1982), 36-69, at 66.
143. For the history of this connection in the 16th and 17th centuries, see Heinz-Günter Schmitz, "Phantasie und Melancholie: Barocke Dichtung im Dienst der Diätetik," Medizinhistorisches Journal IV (1969), 210-30.
144. Miller, "Jerome Cardan," 417;
145. Cardanus, Writings on Music, 211 and 220.
146. Richard Sherr, "Ceremonies for Holy Week, Papal Commissions, and Madness (?) in Early Sixteenth-Century Rome," in Owens and Cummings, eds., Music in Renaissance Cities and Courts, 391-403;
147. for the full texts of those dedications, see Carpentras, Opera Omnia, 1:xi-xiv, 2:xi-xv, and 3/1:ix-xiii.
148. Ironically, Carpentras does say that he eventually overcame his affliction by forcing himself to compose again: "Meanwhile, in order that continuous sadness might not consume my heart, I turned my mind, thus afflicted, to the composition of music, and I have compelled it even against its will to serve the task, not, to be sure, without the greatest effort." Carpentras, Opera Omnia, l:xiii;
149. Sherr, "Ceremonies for Holy Week," 401.
150. It is important to note, in this context, how often bizzarria and fantasia are found in direct proximity in 16th-century Italian texts, confirming the intersections between their semantic fields. We have already seen Vasari's description of Graffione as "bizarro e fantastico." Likewise, in the preface to his Dubbi Amorosi, Pietro Aretino (1492-1556) speaks of "vostra bizzarra fantasia," while Bernardo Davanzati (1529-1606) mentions "nuovi capricci e bizarre fantasie" in his Coltivazione Toscana. (For these and many other attestations of bizzarro and bizzarria in 16th century literature, see Battaglia, Grande Dizionario delta Lingua Italiana, II, 263-64.)
151. One of the earliest examples may be found in Leon Battista Alberti's dialogue Theogenius, completed in 1440 and (like Savonarola's Physiognomia) dedicated to Leonello d'Este. Here, in a discussion on the blessings of the solitary existence devoted to learning and scholarship, Teogenio remarks that people often accuse him of being "taciturno e pervicace, e quanto e' diceano, fantastico e bizzarro." Alberti, Opere volgari, ed. Cecil Grayson, Scrittori d'Italia, ccxviii, 2 vols. (Bari, 1960-73) II, 58.
152. It is worth adding that the close association between bizzarria and fantasia is also attested in French by the late 16th century. In Henri Estienne's Deux dialogues du nouveau langage françois (1578), the fictional character Philausone (who speaks a modish italianate French) is censured for his use of the new-fangled italianism bizarre by the purist Celtophile. The latter suggests that a good French alternative would be phantastique, "drawn from that noble Greek language," though Philausone remains doubtful whether this word would capture the precise sense of bizarre.
153. See Henri Estienne, Deux dialogues du nouveau langage François italianizé el autrement desguizé, principalement entre les courtisans de ce temps, ed. Pauline Mary Smith (Geneva, 1980), 145-46.
154. Mario Equicola to Duke Alfonso of Ferrara (4 Sept. 1519): "La Cathelina sta bene et tuctajocosa. Li è intrato nela mente una bizarria, che non dice altro se non che vole V. S. li dia la sua dote, che l'ha ben servita. Con omniuno et sempre ragiona de questa dote et ne fa mille disegni. L'havema facta retrare de naturale." Alessandro Luzio and Rodolfo Renier, "La coltura e le relazioni letterarie di Isabella d'Este Gonzaga: II. Le relazioni letterarie," Giornale storico della lelteratura italiana XXXIV (18gg), 1-97, at n. 8.
155. Marco Nigro to Marchesa Isabella d'Este: "A la secunda de 19 dico Zuan Angelo [Testagrossa], sonator de Vostra Sublimità, vene qui e conpite le viole: insieme con lui fu cum el maestro per concluder el mercato, qual maistro, che ha del bizaro, me rechiexe XXV ducati. Zuan Angelo el menò via e disse che '1 conzeria la cossa. Tandem eri el maistro vene a mi, dicendo che el voleva li danari et io li offersi de darli, pur fossamo d'acordo del precio el qual lui par de non contentarse de li XV ducati li offersi." Clifford M. Brown, Isabella d'Este and Lorenzo da Pavia: Documents for the History of Art and Culture in Renaissance Mantua, Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 189 (Geneva, 1982), 201-02 n. 3.
156. "In questo mezo vi prego vogliati affaticar 1'ingegno vostro et poncrvi tutta l'arte per far qualche bel canto sopra, ma perchè summamente dcsidcro che faciati il canto di bizaria in excellentia et che non siati distratto da altri pensieri et fastidij, mi fareti gran gratia ad venir qui ad star con me in piacer che ve ni invíto et vi facio di quarta et perchè vi aspetto ad ogni modo, chè al altro mercato che ci farà qua il stampator mi portarà il fine et la parte che ni resta." Prizer, Courtly Pastimes, 39-40 and 293, doc. 100. Two days later Cara begs to be excused because he is bedridden with fever, but he promises to compose settings as soon as he is recovered, and comments that the poems seem "truly ancient and from the time of the learned Dante and the delightful Francesco [Petrarch]." Ibid., 40 and 293-94, doc. 101.
157. Kemp, "From 'Mimesis' to 'Fantasia'," 372.
158. Cardinal Luigi d'Aragona to Isabella d'Este (22 Sept. 1518): "Mandando in compagnia de Jo. Maria Capilupo suo creato un Jouanni Ungaro che si delecta de organi per condurne uno che ho fato far in Brischino quale secondo mi scriue el maestro e lo vescouo detto è riuscito in tucta perfectione et benche sia piccolo ce seranno de moke bizzarie et varietà, de voci, supplico V. S. Ill. mi uogli fare gratia di farlo prouider de uno mulo et uno homo che lo mena in fine a ly ad ciò possa condurre dicto organo cum quello in fine ad Mantua." Antonino Bertolotti, Musici alla Corte dei Gonzaga in Mantova dal secolo XV al XVIII (Milan, 1890; repr. Bologna, 1969), 32.
159. e colloque international d'êtudes humanisles, Tours, juillet 1980 (Paris, 1982), 599-621, at 607.
160. For perceptions of music history in the Renaissance, see Jessie Ann Owens, "Music Historiography and the Definition of 'Renaissance'," MLA Notes XLVII (1990), 305-30.
161. LeMollé, Georges Vasari et le vocabulaire de la critique d'art, 164.