Lorenzo Masi, known as Lorenzo da Firenze (Magister Laurentius de Florentia; died December 1372 or January 1373), was an Italian

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and def ...

and music teacher of the

Trecento The Trecento (, also , ; short for , "1300") refers to the 14th century in Italian cultural history. The Trecento is considered to be the beginning of the Italian Renaissance or at least the Proto-Renaissance in art history. The Trecento was als ...

. He was closely associated with

Francesco Landini Francesco Landini ( or 1335 – 2 September 1397; also known by many names) was a Florentine composer, poet, organist, singer and instrument maker, and a central figure of the music of the Trecento in the Italian peninsula. Name Frances ...

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

, and was one of the composers of the period known as the Italian ''

ars nova ''Ars nova'' ()Fallows, David. (2001). "Ars nova". ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan. refers to a musical style which flourished in the Kingdom of ...

''.

Life and career

Little is known about his life, but some details can be inferred from the music. He was active as a teacher in Florence, probably as a teacher of Landini himself. He became a

canon Canon or Canons may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canon (fiction), the material accepted as officially written by an author or an ascribed author * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western canon, th ...

at the church of San Lorenzo in 1348, a post which he retained for the rest of his life. Lorenzo is represented in the

Squarcialupi Codex The Squarcialupi Codex (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Mediceo Palatino 87) is an illuminated manuscript compiled in Florence in the early fifteenth century. It is named for the noted fifteenth-century organist Antonio Squarcialup ...

, the

illuminated manuscript An illuminated manuscript is a formally prepared manuscript, document where the text is decorated with flourishes such as marginalia, borders and Miniature (illuminated manuscript), miniature illustrations. Often used in the Roman Catholic Churc ...

which is the most comprehensive source of Italian music of the 14th century, with 16 pieces of music, 10

madrigal A madrigal is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance (15th–16th centuries) and early Baroque (1580–1650) periods, although revisited by some later European composers. The polyphonic madrigal is unaccompanied, and the ...

s, 6 ballate and one caccia. In addition to his contribution to that collection, he wrote two

mass Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...

movements which have survived (one of which is of doubtful attribution) and a pedagogical piece (the ''Antefana''), the text of which shows that he was a teacher.

Music

His style is progressive, sometimes experimental, but curiously conservative in other ways. While he used

imitation Imitation (from Latin ''imitatio'', "a copying, imitation") is a behavior whereby an individual observes and replicates another's behavior. Imitation is also a form of learning that leads to the "development of traditions, and ultimately our cu ...

, a relatively new musical technique, and

heterophonic In music, heterophony is a type of texture characterized by the simultaneous variation of a single melodic line. Such a texture can be regarded as a kind of complex monophony in which there is only one basic melody, but realized at the same time ...

texture, one of the rarest textures in European music, he also still used parallel perfect intervals. Voice crossings are common, when he wrote for more than one voice (most of his music is

monophonic Monaural sound or monophonic sound (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 reproduce sou ...

). In addition he used

chromaticism Chromaticism is a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic scale, diatonic pitch (music), pitches and chord (music), chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. In simple terms, within each octave, diatonic music uses o ...

to a degree rare in the 14th century, at least prior to the activity of the composers of the ars subtilior. French classical music influence is evident in some of his music, for example

isorhythm Isorhythm (from the Greek for "the same rhythm") is a musical technique using a repeating rhythmic pattern, called a ''talea'', in at least one voice part throughout a composition. ''Taleae'' are typically applied to one or more melodic patterns o ...

ic passages (characteristic of

Machaut Guillaume de Machaut (, ; also Machau and Machault; – April 1377) was a French composer and poet who was the central figure of the style in late medieval music. His dominance of the genre is such that modern musicologists use his death to ...

, but rare in Italian music). Some of the notational quirks in his work also suggest a connection with France.

Life and career

Music

See also

Further reading