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Trecento The Trecento (, also , ; short for , "1300") refers to the 14th century in Italian cultural history. Period Art Commonly, the Trecento is considered to be the beginning of the Renaissance in art history. Painters of the Trecento included Giotto ...
was a period of vigorous activity in Italy in the arts, including painting, architecture, literature, and music. The music of the Trecento paralleled the achievements in the other arts in many ways, for example, in pioneering new forms of expression, especially in secular song in the vernacular language,
Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional It ...
. In these regards, the music of the Trecento may seem more to be a
Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ide ...
phenomenon; however, the predominant musical language was more closely related to that of the
late Middle Ages The Late Middle Ages or Late Medieval Period was the period of European history lasting from AD 1300 to 1500. The Late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern period (and in much of Europe, the Ren ...
, and musicologists generally classify the Trecento as the end of the
medieval era In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
. ''Trecento'' means "three hundred" in Italian but is usually used to refer to the 1300s. However, the greatest flowering of music in the Trecento happened late in the century, and the period is usually extended to include music up to around 1420.


History


Background and early history (to 1330)

Very little Italian music remains from the 13th century, so the immediate antecedents of the music of the Trecento must largely be inferred. The music of the troubadors, who brought their lyrical, secular song into northern Italy in the early 13th century after they fled their home regions—principally Provence—during the
Albigensian Crusade The Albigensian Crusade or the Cathar Crusade (; 1209–1229) was a military and ideological campaign initiated by Pope Innocent III to eliminate Catharism in Languedoc, southern France. The Crusade was prosecuted primarily by the French crown ...
, was a strong influence, and perhaps a decisive one; many of the Trecento musical forms are closely related to those of the troubadours of more than a century before. Another influence on Trecento music was the
conductus The ''conductus'' (plural: ''conducti'') was a sacred Latin song in the Middle Ages, one whose poetry and music were newly composed. It is non-liturgical since its Latin lyric borrows little from previous chants. The conductus was northern Frenc ...
, a type of polyphonic sacred music which had the same text sung in all parts; texturally, Trecento secular music is more like the conductus than anything else that came before, although the differences are also striking, and some scholars (for example, Hoppin) have argued that the influence of the conductus has been overstated. Some of the poetry of Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) was set to music at the time it was written, but none of the music has survived. One of the musicians to set Dante's poetry was his friend Casella (died 1299 or 1300), memorialized in Canto II of ''
Purgatorio ''Purgatorio'' (; Italian for "Purgatory") is the second part of Dante's ''Divine Comedy'', following the ''Inferno'' and preceding the '' Paradiso''. The poem was written in the early 14th century. It is an allegory telling of the climb of Da ...
''. Poems of Dante set by others included canzoni and ballate; if they were similar to the other earliest ballate, they would have been
monophonic Monaural or monophonic sound reproduction (often shortened to mono) is sound intended to be heard as if it were emanating from one position. This contrasts with stereophonic sound or ''stereo'', which uses two separate audio channels to reproduc ...
. Though the pioneering music theory of
Marchetto da Padova Marchetto da Padova (Marchettus of Padua; fl. 1305 – 1319) was an Italian music theorist and composer of the late medieval era. His innovations in notation of time-values were fundamental to the music of the Italian ars nova, as was his w ...
was written in this early period, the influence of his treatise on notation, the ''Pomerium'', is largely seen in the manuscripts of the succeeding generations. Marchetto, building on (or in parallel with) the innovations of
Petrus de Cruce Petrus de Cruce (also Pierre de la Croix) was active as a cleric, composer and music theorist in the late part of the 13th century. His main contribution was to the notational system. Life 13th-century composer, theorist, and scholar, Petrus de ...
, described a system of division of the breve into 2, 3, 4, 6,8, 9, or 12 semibreves (later minims) with dots (singular ''punctus divisionis'') indicating breaks at the end of a breve (however, Marchetto never used a term "punctus divisionis"). Although more Trecento music is written in the international system of notation descended from
Franco of Cologne Franco of Cologne (; also Franco of Paris) was a German music theorist and possibly a composer. He was one of the most influential theorists of the Late Middle Ages, and was the first to propose an idea which was to transform musical notation p ...
and
Philippe de Vitry Philippe de Vitry (31 October 1291 – 9 June 1361) was a French composer-poet, bishop and music theorist in the style of late medieval music. An accomplished, innovative, and influential composer, he was widely acknowledged as a leading musi ...
than in the Marchettian system (and there exist a few, mostly instrumental, works not of Italian origin that use this system), nonetheless, Marchetto's contribution to rhythmic notation is so connected with the Italian Trecento that it is often referred to as simply, "Italian Notation."


Birth of the Trecento style (1330–1360)

Much of the earliest
polyphonic Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, ...
secular vocal music of the Trecento to survive is found in the
Rossi Codex The Rossi Codex is a music manuscript collection of the 14th century. The manuscript is presently divided into two sections, one in the Vatican Library and another, smaller section in the Northern Italian town of Ostiglia. The codex contains 37 ...
and includes music by the first generation of composers to craft a uniquely Italian style. Though many works of this generation are anonymous, many works are attributed to one
Maestro Piero Maestro Piero (Magister Piero or Piero) (born before 1300, died shortly after 1350) was an Italian composer of the late medieval era. He was one of the first composers of the Trecento who is known by name, and probably one of the oldest. He is m ...
and
Giovanni da Cascia Giovanni da Cascia, also Jovannes de Cascia, Johannes de Florentia, Maestro Giovanni da Firenze, was an Italian composer of the medieval era, active in the middle of the fourteenth century. Life and career Virtually nothing is known about Giovann ...
. Other composers of the first generation include
Vincenzo da Rimini Vincenzo da Rimini, also Magister Dominus Abbas de Arimino, L’abate Vincençio da Imola, Frate Vincenço, was an Italian composer of the medieval era, active in the middle of the 14th century. Life and career All of the biographical details conc ...
and
Jacopo da Bologna Jacopo da Bologna (fl. 1340 – c. 1386) was an Italian composer of the Trecento, the period sometimes known as the '' Italian ars nova''. He was one of the first composers of this group, making him a contemporary of Gherardello da Firenze ...
, though they may be of the later end of this generation. All of these composers were associated with aristocratic courts in the north of Italy, especially
Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city ...
and Verona. Some extremely obscure names survive in later sources, such as
Bartolo da Firenze Bartolo may refer to: *Bartolo, California *Bartolo Nardini, Italian grappa company *Dr. Bartolo, a figure in Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville, and Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro *Bartolo, the highest mountain in the Desert de les Palmes Moun ...
(
fl. ''Floruit'' (; abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for "they flourished") denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indicatin ...
1330–1360), who may have been the first Italian composer to write a polyphonic
mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different eleme ...
movement in Trecento style: a setting of the
Credo In Christian liturgy, the credo (; Latin for "I believe") is the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed – or its shorter version, the Apostles' Creed – in the Mass, either as a prayer, a spoken text, or sung as Gregorian chant or other musical setti ...
. The two most common forms of early Trecento secular music were the two-voice
madrigal A madrigal is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance (15th–16th c.) and early Baroque (1600–1750) periods, although revisited by some later European composers. The polyphonic madrigal is unaccompanied, and the number ...
and monophonic ballata. Some three-voice madrigals survive from the earlier periods, but the form most associated with three-voice writing was the rarer caccia, a canonic form with
onomatopoeic Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', '' ...
exclamations and texts that make reference to hunting or feasting. While some of their music was still monophonic in the manner of the preceding century, much was for two voices, and Jacopo da Bologna wrote a few madrigals for three voices. Jacopo wrote one
motet In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to Margare ...
which has survived.


Florentine music in the mid-to-late fourteenth century (1350–1390)

The center of musical activity moved south in mid-century, to
Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico ...
, which was the cultural center of the early Renaissance. Characteristic of the next generation of composers, most of them Florentine, was a preference for the
ballata The ''ballata'' (plural: ''ballate'') is an Italian poetic and musical form in use from the late 13th to the 15th century. It has the musicapenim AbbaA, with the first and last stanzas having the same texts. It is thus most similar to the Fren ...
, a form which seems to have exploded into popularity around mid-century. Like the closely related French
virelai A ''virelai'' is a form of medieval French verse used often in poetry and music. It is one of the three '' formes fixes'' (the others were the ballade and the rondeau) and was one of the most common verse forms set to music in Europe from the l ...
, the ballata has two sections and the form AbbaA. In the
Decameron ''The Decameron'' (; it, label=Italian language, Italian, Decameron or ''Decamerone'' ), subtitled ''Prince Galehaut'' (Old it, Prencipe Galeotto, links=no ) and sometimes nicknamed ''l'Umana commedia'' ("the Human Comedy (drama), comedy", a ...
,
Giovanni Boccaccio Giovanni Boccaccio (, , ; 16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so well known as a writer that he was so ...
tells how in 1348, the year the
Black Death The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, cau ...
ravaged Florence, members of a group of friends gathered to tell stories and sing ballate to instrumental accompaniment. While Boccaccio mentioned no composers by name, many of the Florentine musicians whose names have come down to us were in their early careers at this time. By far the most famous composer of the entire Trecento,
Francesco Landini Francesco Landini ( or 1335 – 2 September 1397; also known by many names) was an Italian composer, poet, organist, singer and instrument maker who was a central figure of the Trecento style in late Medieval music. One of the most revered c ...
(b. ca. 1325–35, d. 1397), is generally considered a member of this generation, even if there are evidences that he was already active during the precedent generation, and that was very close to
Petrarch Francesco Petrarca (; 20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (), was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited ...
. Francesco wrote 141 surviving ballate, but only 12 madrigals; his compositions appear in every corner of the Italian peninsula. Other composers of this group besides Landini included
Gherardello da Firenze Gherardello da Firenze (also Niccolò di Francesco or Ghirardellus de Florentia) ( 1320–1325 – 1362 or 1363) was an Italian composer of the ''Trecento''. He was one of the first composers of the period sometimes known as the '' Italian ars nov ...
,
Lorenzo da Firenze Lorenzo may refer to: People * Lorenzo (name) Places Peru * San Lorenzo Island (Peru), sometimes referred to as the island of Lorenzo United States * Lorenzo, Illinois * Lorenzo, Texas * San Lorenzo, California, formerly Lorenzo * Lorenzo State ...
, and
Donato da Cascia Donato da Cascia (also da Firenze or da Florentia) (fl. c. 1350 – 1370) was an Italian composer of the Trecento. All of his surviving music is secular, and the largest single source is the Squarcialupi Codex. He was probably also a priest, and ...
. Also by this generation of composers, the influence of French music was becoming apparent in the secular work of the native Italians. Greater independence of voices was characteristic of the music of this generation, and points of imitation are common; in addition, the uppermost voice is often highly ornamented. Francesco's music was particularly admired for its lyricism and expressive intensity: his fame has endured for six hundred years, and numerous modern recordings exist of his work.


Trecento music during the Great Schism (1378–1417)

The last generation of composers of the era included
Niccolò da Perugia Niccolò da Perugia (Niccolò del Proposto also spelled as Nicolò. Latin, Magister Sere Nicholaus Prepositi de Perugia) (fl. second half of the 14th century) was an Italian composer of the Trecento, the musical period also known as the "Italian ...
,
Bartolino da Padova Bartolino da Padova (also "Magister Frater Bartolinus de Padua") (fl. c. 1365 – c. 1405) was an Italian composer of the late 14th century. He is a representative of the stylistic period known as the ''Trecento'', sometimes known as the "Italian ...
,
Andrea da Firenze Andreas de Florentia (also known as Andrea da Firenze, Andrea de' Servi, Andrea degli Organi and Andrea di Giovanni; died 1415) was a Florentine composer and organist of the late medieval era. Along with Francesco Landini and Paolo da Firenze ...
,
Paolo da Firenze Paolo da Firenze (Paolo Tenorista, "Magister Dominus Paulas Abbas de Florentia") (c. 1355 – after September 20, 1436) was an Italian composer and music theorist of the late 14th and early 15th centuries, the transition from the musical Medi ...
, Matteo da Perugia, and
Johannes Ciconia Johannes Ciconia ( – between 10 June and 13 July 1412) was an important Flemish composer and music theorist of trecento music during the late Medieval era. He was born in Liège, but worked most of his adult life in Italy, particularly ...
, the first member of the group who was not a native Italian. Though the principal form remained the ballata, a resurgence of the madrigal shows an interest in earlier music. This interest is accompanied by renewed interest in purely Italian notation. In many works by the newest generation the ornamentation of the parts is considerably less than in the music of the preceding group of composers, while other compositions are as ornamented as any in the earlier Trecento. Text-painting is evident in some of their music: for example, some of their programmatic compositions include frank imitations of bird calls or various dramatic effects. Ciconia, as a Netherlander, was one of the first of the group which was to dominate European music for the next two hundred years; early in his life, he spent time in Italy learning the lyrical secular styles. Ciconia was also a composer of sacred music and represents a link with the Burgundian school, the first generation of Netherlanders which dominated the early and middle 15th century. Ciconia spent most of his Italian years in cities of northern Italy, particularly
Padua Padua ( ; it, Padova ; vec, Pàdova) is a city and ''comune'' in Veneto, northern Italy. Padua is on the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice. It is the capital of the province of Padua. It is also the economic and communications hub of ...
, where he died in 1412. Another late 14th-century composer, probably active in Rome,
Abruzzo , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1 ...
, and
Teramo Teramo (; nap, label= Abruzzese, Tèreme ) is a city and ''comune'' in the Italian region of Abruzzo, the capital of the province of Teramo. The city, from Rome, is situated between the highest mountains of the Apennines (Gran Sasso d'Italia) ...
, was Antonio Zachara da Teramo. While a chronology of his music is yet to be established, it seems that his earlier music, surviving in the
Squarcialupi Codex The Squarcialupi Codex (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Med. Pal. 87) is an illuminated manuscript compiled in Florence in the early 15th century. It is the single largest primary source of music of the 14th-century Italian ''Trecento'' ( ...
, is related to the style of Landini and
Jacopo da Bologna Jacopo da Bologna (fl. 1340 – c. 1386) was an Italian composer of the Trecento, the period sometimes known as the '' Italian ars nova''. He was one of the first composers of this group, making him a contemporary of Gherardello da Firenze ...
; his later music borrows from the style of the
Avignon Avignon (, ; ; oc, Avinhon, label= Provençal or , ; la, Avenio) is the prefecture of the Vaucluse department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of Southeastern France. Located on the left bank of the river Rhône, the commune ha ...
-centered ''
Ars subtilior ''Ars subtilior'' ( Latin for 'subtler art') is a musical style characterized by rhythmic and notational complexity, centered on Paris, Avignon in southern France, and also in northern Spain at the end of the fourteenth century.Hoppin 1978, 47 ...
'', and indeed, he seems to have supported the
antipope An antipope ( la, antipapa) is a person who makes a significant and substantial attempt to occupy the position of Bishop of Rome and leader of the Catholic Church in opposition to the legitimately elected pope. At times between the 3rd and mid ...
s during the split of the papacy after the end of the century, going to Bologna around 1408. The late Trecento also saw the rising importance of sacred music, particularly polyphonic Mass movements and Latin
motet In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to Margare ...
s (both sacred and dedicatory). Though it was long thought that sacred music's role in the Trecento was small, thanks to many new discoveries over the past forty years, it now represents a significant percentage of the total output of the Trecento. Ciconia and Zachara play dominant roles in Mass composition, and their sacred music reached England, Spain, and Poland. The end of the period of the Schism also marked the end of the dominance of Florence over Italian music; while it always maintained an active musical life, it would be replaced by Venice (and other centers in the Veneto),
Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus ( legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...
,
Ferrara Ferrara (, ; egl, Fràra ) is a city and ''comune'' in Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy, capital of the Province of Ferrara. it had 132,009 inhabitants. It is situated northeast of Bologna, on the Po di Volano, a branch channel of the main stre ...
and other cities in the coming centuries and never again regained the pre-eminent position it attained in the 14th century.


Instrumental music

Instrumental music was widespread, but relatively few notated examples have survived. Indeed, while contemporary depictions of singers often show them performing from books or scrolls, paintings and miniatures of instrumentalists never show written music. The main keyboard collection is the Faenza Codex (Faenza, Biblioteca Comunale, ms. 117). Other small sources of keyboard music appear in codices in Padua (Archivio di Stato 553), Assisi (Biblioteca Comunale 187), and in one section of the (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, n. a. fr. 6771). The typical keyboard style of the time seems to have placed the tenor of a secular song or a melody from plainchant in equal tones in the bass while a fast-moving line was written above it for the right hand. The surviving sources are likely among the few witnesses of a largely improvised tradition. Other instrumental traditions are hinted at by the monophonic, dances without text in a manuscript now in London (British Library, add. 29987) and in imitations of instrumental style in sung
madrigals A madrigal is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance (15th–16th c.) and early Baroque (1600–1750) periods, although revisited by some later European composers. The polyphonic madrigal is unaccompanied, and the number ...
and cacce such as ''Dappoi che'l sole''. Instruments used during the Trecento included the
vielle The vielle is a European bowed stringed instrument used in the medieval period, similar to a modern violin but with a somewhat longer and deeper body, three to five gut strings, and a leaf-shaped pegbox with frontal tuning pegs, sometimes with a ...
,
lute A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted. More specifically, the term "lute" can re ...
,
psaltery A psaltery ( el, ψαλτήρι) (or sawtry, an archaic form) is a fretboard-less box zither (a simple chordophone) and is considered the archetype of the zither and dulcimer; the harp, virginal, harpsichord and clavichord were also inspired by ...
,
flute The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...
, and
portative organ A portative organ (from the Latin verb , "to carry"), also known during Italian Trecento as the , is a small pipe organ that consists of one rank of flue pipes, sometimes arranged in two rows, to be played while strapped to the performer at a ri ...
(Landini is holding one in the illustration). Trumpets, drums (especially paired drums called nakers), and
shawm The shawm () is a conical bore, double-reed woodwind instrument made in Europe from the 12th century to the present day. It achieved its peak of popularity during the medieval and Renaissance periods, after which it was gradually eclipsed by the ...
s were important military instruments.


Overall musical characteristics of the era

Music of the Trecento retained some characteristics of the preceding age and began to foreshadow the Renaissance in others. Consonances were
unison In music, unison is two or more musical parts that sound either the same pitch or pitches separated by intervals of one or more octaves, usually at the same time. ''Rhythmic unison'' is another term for homorhythm. Definition Unison or per ...
, fifth and octave, just as in the ''
ars antiqua ''Ars antiqua'', also called ''ars veterum'' or ''ars vetus'', is a term used by modern scholars to refer to the Medieval music of Europe during the High Middle Ages, between approximately 1170 and 1310. This covers the period of the Notre-Dam ...
'', and the interval of a third was usually treated as a dissonance, especially earlier in the period. Parallel motion in unison, fifths, octaves, thirds, and occasionally fourths was used in moderation. Composers used passing tones to avoid parallel intervals, creating brief harsher dissonances, foreshadowing the style of
counterpoint In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...
developed in the Renaissance. After 1350, there was increased use of triads in three-part writing, giving the music, to a modern ear, a tonal feeling. Accidentals occurred more frequently in music of the Trecento than in music of earlier eras; in particular, there was use of F, C, G, B, and E. One A occurs in the works of Landini. The Landini cadence or under-third cadence, is a cadence involving the melodic drop from the seventh to the sixth before going up again to the octave. It was named after Landini because of its frequent use in his music. It can be found in most of the music of the period, especially after him.


Music sources

Most of the manuscript sources of Trecento music are from late in the fourteenth or early in the 15th century: some time removed from the composition of the works themselves. The earliest substantial manuscript source of Trecento music is the
Rossi Codex The Rossi Codex is a music manuscript collection of the 14th century. The manuscript is presently divided into two sections, one in the Vatican Library and another, smaller section in the Northern Italian town of Ostiglia. The codex contains 37 ...
, which was compiled sometime between 1350 and 1370 and contains music from the earlier portion of the era. However, other small manuscript sources have been found that expand our knowledge of earlier Trecento repertories. These include the Mischiati fragments of Reggio Emilia, which contain several unique cacce. Other early sources contain sacred repertories. Two folios of Oxford Canon. Misc. 112 preserve a
motet In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to Margare ...
by
Marchetto da Padova Marchetto da Padova (Marchettus of Padua; fl. 1305 – 1319) was an Italian music theorist and composer of the late medieval era. His innovations in notation of time-values were fundamental to the music of the Italian ars nova, as was his w ...
. Further motets are found on the fragment at Venice, San Giorgio Maggiore. The source Perugia Bib. Univ. Inv. 15755 N.F. was claimed to be from 1349 to 1354 according to its discoverers, but this date has been strongly disputed, and scholarly consensus is building that the manuscript is no earlier than other sources commonly dated to the 1390s. Still, this episode reflects the difficulties and uncertainties of dating all Trecento sources. Most of the later large sources stem from the area around
Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico ...
. Probably the oldest of the larger sources is the Panciatichi Codex (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Panciatichiano 26). The largest and most beautiful Trecento source is undoubtedly the brilliantly illuminated
Squarcialupi Codex The Squarcialupi Codex (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Med. Pal. 87) is an illuminated manuscript compiled in Florence in the early 15th century. It is the single largest primary source of music of the 14th-century Italian ''Trecento'' ( ...
, compiled in the early 15th century, which, with 352 compositions (including 145 by Landini), is one of the largest music sources of the time from any region.
Stanley Boorman Stanley may refer to: Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Stanley'' (1972 film), an American horror film * ''Stanley'' (1984 film), an Australian comedy * ''Stanley'' (1999 film), an animated short * ''Stanley'' (1956 TV series) ...
, et al.
Sources, MS, §VIII: Italian polyphony c1325–c1420.
Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. 19 Jul. 2009
The Reina Codex, "Pit." (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, ital. 568), the London Codex (British Library, Add. Ms 29987), and the Lucca/Mancini Codex are the other largest legible sources of Trecento music. (The palimpsest, San Lorenzo 2211, discovered in the 1980s, has been the subject of much recent scholarship though it is largely illegible). Substantial fragmentary manuscript sources from
Padua Padua ( ; it, Padova ; vec, Pàdova) is a city and ''comune'' in Veneto, northern Italy. Padua is on the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice. It is the capital of the province of Padua. It is also the economic and communications hub of ...
,
Cividale del Friuli Cividale del Friuli ( fur, Cividât (locally ); german: Östrich; sl, Čedad) is a town and ''comune'' in the Province of Udine, part of the North-Italian Friuli Venezia Giulia ''regione''. The town lies above sea-level in the foothills of the e ...
, and from the area around
Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city ...
point to these areas as substantial areas of manuscript production as well.


See also

* :Trecento composers


Further reading

* Michael Scott Cuthbert, "Trecento I: Secular Music," and "Trecento II: Sacred Music and Motets in Italy and the East from 1300 until the End of the Schism," (Chapters 35 and 36) in ''Cambridge History of Medieval Music'', edited by Mark Everist and Thomas Forrest Kelly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 1079–1124. * Michael Long, "Trecento Italy," in
James McKinnon James William McKinnon (April 7, 1932 – February 23, 1999) was an American musicologist most known for his work in the fields of Western plainchant, medieval and renaissance music, Latin liturgy and musical iconography. Life and career He s ...
, ed., ''Antiquity and the Middle Ages'', Man and Music (renamed: Music and Society) series. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1991. pp. 241–268.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Music Of The Trecento
Trecento The Trecento (, also , ; short for , "1300") refers to the 14th century in Italian cultural history. Period Art Commonly, the Trecento is considered to be the beginning of the Renaissance in art history. Painters of the Trecento included Giotto ...
Renaissance music Italian music history 14th century in music