Music and Musicians in Renaissance Rome and Other Courts

Richard Sherr

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429779459
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Música

First published in 1999, the essays that follow have been selected from the author's writings to explore musical institutions in 15th and 16th century Italy with a detailed focus on the papal choir, but with additional comments on Mantua ( Mantova ), Florence and France. Much of the material which formed the basis of those essays was largely drawn from archives. Richard Sherr explores diverse areas including the Medici coat of arms in a motet for Leo X, performance practice in the papal chapel during the 16th century, the publications of Guglielmo Gonzaga, Lorenzo de' Medici as a patron of music and homosexuality in late sixteenth-century Italy.

I

NOTES ON SOME PAPAL DOCUMENTS IN PARIS

Students of the history of the Vatican Archive have long known of its removal to Paris by Napoleon, and of its subsequent relocation (not without major losses).¹ Less widely known, perhaps, is that a certain number of volumes have remained in Paris, where they now form part of the series L of the Archives Nationales. In a recent article, Msgr. Martino Giusti has drawn attention to the Paris volumes by describing the detailed inventory made by Eugène Martin-Chabot, and now in the microfilm collection of the Archives Nationales with the call number 246 Mi.² Recent consultation of the inventory and some of the documents has further shown that they contain information of interest to musicologists concerned with the papal chapel in Rome in the 15th and early 16th centuries.

First, a word about the documents themselves. Most of them are bound volumes of registers, each of which is given a separate signature (A10, All, etc.). They are now in the boxes making up the series L 24–52, with about three volumes per box, and they will be cited by L number and signature of the volume itself (ie. L 26, A10). Martin-Chabot, in his inventory, gave each of the volumes new signatures, and provided a concordance between his numbers and the older numbers (not, however, indicating the L number). Appendix I is a list of the documents consulted for this study, giving the present call numbers, Martin-Chabot’s numbers, and some comments. For further information, the reader is directed to Giusti’s article and to the inventory itself. The documents are in very bad condition — in many there has been so much water damage that they are totally illegible, in others only parts of pages are legible, and in others pages have been hopelessly stuck together — so that the information presented here cannot be said to be the result of a complete reading of each volume. The inventory, however, is an invaluable guide because of the many extracts it contains, and I have relied on it occasionally to check readings. I have also restricted myself to documents of the later 15th and first two decades of the 16th centuries, with the exception of one important document of 1400.³

1. The Earliest Extant Lists of the Papal Chapel in Rome.

L 166 of the Archives Nationales is a box containing miscellaneous packets of documents, no. 6 of which preserves a fragment of a book of the mandati camerali of the 11th year of the reign of Bonif ace IX (1400), prepared in Rome, as indicated by the introductory statement on fol. 1r:

Quaternus exitus camere apostolice, inceptus Rome, sub anno domini millesimo quadringentesimo, indictione octava, die primo mensis februarii, pontificatus sanctissimi in Christo patris et domini nostri domini Bonifatii divina providentia pape noni anno undecimo.

Ever since Haberl’s pioneering study, the musicological world has been cognizant of the books of the mandati camerali (records of the «orders to pay» sent from the Chamberlain of the Apostolic Chamber to the papal Treasurer, now mostly in the Archivio di Stato of Rome) as a major source of the lists of the papal chapel.⁴ The significance of the mandati and the problems of Haben’s use of them have been discussed elsewhere; suffice it to say here that his work was not thorough, and that he had no knowledge of the fragment of mandati extant in Paris.⁵ In fact, the fragment preserves three chapel lists (one not complete) for three months in the year 1400, thus providing the first specific information about the personnel of the chapel during the reign of Boniface IX.⁶ The first list, found on fol. 1v, reads as follows:

Abbas Angelus, magister capelle fl. iiii ca.⁷

Jacobus de Aquila fl. ii ca.

+ Johannes Ortega fl. ii ca.

Zacchara fl. ii ca.

Michael fl. iiii ca.

Cicchus fl. iii ca.

+ Paulus de Frosolona fl. iii ca.

Antonius de Reate fl. [illegible]

Antonius de Aquila fl. [illegible]

Paulus de Aversa [illegible]

Johannellus, clericus capelle

Indictione viii, die vi mensis februarii, Lande, solvas predictis cantoribus capelle domini nostri pape [rest, illegible].

This, then, is a list of the papal chapel for the month of February or January, 1400.⁸ It shows a Master of the Chapel, who seems not to have been a singer (as was to be the custom in the papal chapel), 9 singers (labeled «cantores» in another list), and a clerk of the chapel. On fol. 7v, basically the same list appears with certain changes: Zacchara becomes Zacharias, Cicchus is called presbyter, Paulus de Frosolona becomes Paulus de Frisinona (the entry for Johannellus is not visible). The date is illegible, but it seems perfectly logical to assume that this is a list of the next month, February or March, 1400. On fol. 13v, only the name of the Master of the Chapel appears, but it could be supposed that the list, had it been completed, would have been the same, and would have represented the chapel in April or May, 1400.

It should be noted, first of all, that only two of the singers in the lists correspond to any singers of Boniface’s chapel known from the researches of Haberl and Agostino Ziino.⁹ One is Zacchara, who must be identical with the composer Antonius Zacharias da Teramo, shown by Ziino to have been a papal singer in 1391, and present in Rome as a scriptor apostolicus at least until 1407; the present lists show further that he combined the two jobs.¹⁰ The other is Michael, who may be Michael de Wettere, cleric of Tournai, who was a papal singer in 1394.¹¹ I have not been able to identify the other singers, but the lists are remarkable in showing a clear majority of Italians, as opposed to one Fleming (Michael) and one possible Spaniard (Johannes Ortega), especially when compared to the nationalities in the chapel from 1417 on (dominated by northerners). But, in 1400, the Great Schism was not yet over, and northern singers might have been prevented from going to Rome for this reason. The meaning of the crosses before Ortega’s and Frosolona’s names in the first list (not repeated in the second) is not clear; sometimes that meant that the singer had died (which does not appear to be the case) or that he was on a leave of absence (which does not seem to be the case either), and for the moment, I have nothing to offer by way of explanation. Nor is there an immediately apparent reason for the differences in the salaries of the singers, but it probably was not based on musical merit, and may reflect extra duties in the chapel or in the papal familia.¹² Further research may throw light on this, as well as on the singers themselves.

2. A Document Concerning Josquin des Prez.

Most of the documents remaining in Paris are not fragments, but are complete books from the series of Annate and Obligationes Particulares (now mostly in the Archivio Segreto Vaticano), books which recorded the promises of individuals to pay taxes on benefices and privileges received from the pope.¹³ One of these volumes (L 27, A13) contains annates for the year 1490–1491 (reign of Innocent VIII). One of the entries for March 30, 1491 (the volume has no foliation) reads as follows:

Dicta die [March 30, 1491] d. Judocus de Pratis, clericus Cameracensis diocesis, in capella sacri palatii cantor, principalis obligavit se camere apostolice pro facultate resignandi et ex causa permutationis [sic] omnia beneficia ecclesiastica que obtinet [given to him by a bull] sub datum Rome quindecimo kalendas septembris, anno quinto [August 18, 1489].

The main interest of this document (apart from it as yet another addition to the small amount of information about Josquin) is its reference to a bull of an earlier date. The copy of the actual bull, previously unknown, is preserved in Vatican City, Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Registri Vaticani 753, fols. 157r–161r, and contains more faculties (such as the faculty of holding a benefice in an area with a language different from one’s own) than those mentioned in the Paris document.¹⁴ These appear to be the earliest known privileges Josquin received after joining the papal chapel — the first bull published by Noble is dated September 9, 1489 — and their blanket nature suggests that the composer had decided seriously to begin the process of collecting benefices through his position as a singer in the chapel, linked probably to a decision to remain in Rome for an extended period (he stayed in the chapel until 1494 at least).

3. A Document Concerning Johannes Tinctoris.

Volume A14 in box L 27, Annate for the year 1502 (reign of Alexander VI), contains an entry on fol. 28r at once more complicated and more interesting than the one discussed above.

Dicta die [July 12, 1502] Raphael de Bartholis de Florentia, institutor societate de Gaddis de Romana Curia, ut p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Musicians, Music, and Performance Practice at the Papal Court
• Archival Studies: Other Renaissance Courts and Cities
• Addenda and Corrigenda
• Index of Names and Works
• Index of Music Manuscripts