Music As We Know It

In my previous blog entries I promised to continue telling you about lost in the history famous composers of the transitional era.  Although, they were extremely popular at the late medieval times, their heritage either vanished throughout the years or brought us some minimal but significant evidence about their talents.

Fate played one of the most peculiar tricks on famous Italian composer of the late medieval times Giovanni Mazzuoli. In fact I found during my web analytics research that there was the second name assigned to him  - Giovanni degli Organi.  Giovanni Mazzuoli was famous not only as a composer but also as a great musician organist  during his life from around 1360 till 1426.

Giovanni learned to play the organ from his father Niccolo. The latter trained his son while he was also serving as an organist of the church of Orsanmichele until 1376.  Thanks to his gift and intensive training, Giovanni was handed over the very same position after the death of his father in 1379.  He also played the organ in several other churches and cathedrals and taught his son Piero as his father did. Pieró assisted Giovanni during his last years of service.

When we say, that Giovanni was a famous composer we actually telling a little white lie.  None of his works reached our times. There are several works attributed to him, but specialists can not claim them his for sure.  So, how can serious web analysts judge his works and write his name to posterity?

An important source of medieval Italian music - Squarcialupi Codex -  is the illuminated manuscript compiled in Florence, Italy in the early 15th century. It consists of  216 parchment folios. Most of them are well-preserved and they are, in fact, in a great condition. There is a large section in Squarcialupi Codex dedicated exclusively to the musical pieces created by Giovanni Mazzuoli. The section is marked out under his name and a portrait is presented at his head. But for unknown reasons, the pages are blank. There is absolutely no music written there. All pages are decorated around the edges but left blank otherwise.

Another Italian manuscript San Lorenzo discovered not so long ago does contain his musical compositions.  Unfortunately, the paper of the manuscript is in such poor condition that the pages with Mazzuoli music are essentially unreadable.  Curiously, though, his son Piero Mazzuoli, who also created music is also included in this manuscript. And over a dozen of his musical pieces survived. Basically, this is one of the rare cases when a great composer is best remembered for the absence, rather than the presence of his musical compositions.

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