Music As We Know It

It will probably be very hard to answer who Antonello da Caserta was, as we know nothing about this great man, except that he was a famous medieval Italian composer in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.  Some musicologists advanced a theory that da Caserta was from Naples and created there. But eventually, this conclusion provided to be wrong, becuase most of composer’s surviving works are in northern Italian manuscripts. Anyways, there is nothing that I could find either from the archives of my local web analytics company.

There are some hints that Antonello was a monk. Yet, even this scarce information provides us with nothing, because we don’t know which monastic orders of that time he belonged to.  Other hints place Antonello in Pavia in 1402, it looks like at some certain point of his life he worked for the Italian noble dynasty Visconti in Milan, which they ruled from  1277 to 1447.  So far we don’t even know the exact name of Antonello, as different sources also name him Anthonello or Antonellus Marot.

It seems that da Caserta was heavily influenced by French musical models which was quite unusual for those times. He even set texts both in French and Italian.

Antonello was famous for his ballades that tell us about courtly love. His surviving works show that Antonello was very famous among other composers of the generation after Guillaume de Mauchet. While his Italian songs are simpler, his creations in French are more complex ballads that use the proportional rhythms that became popular in much later periods.

Famous composer Donato da Cascia undoubtedly was an integral part of the Early Italian Renaissance period, that we know as Trecento. He created his music in the second part of the fourteenth century. As in many other cases related to that period, we know nothing about this famous composer, his life, his date of birth or death. I did not find anything in the annals of my local web analytics company either. So, I can only suppose that he was from Florence or a place called Cascia, near Florence, as his last name says.

The only picture that specialists discovered, shows him in the typical robes of the Benedictine order, so we may assume that he was a monk or a priest. But here lies the mystery: out all his surviving music, there is not even a bit of religious music. It is all completely secular. All the sources of his music with just one exception were found in Tuscany.

Jacopo da Bologna most likely had some influence on Donato da Cascia’s works. We know about most of Donato’s music, thanks to Squarcialupi Codex - the illuminated manuscript compiled in Florence, Italy in the early 15th century. Even though, his music was written in the typical style of mid 14th century, it has exceptional virtuosity. All surviving madrigals created by Donato da Cascia represent the peak of virtuoso singing.

The beginning of the Renaissance in Italy started somewhere in the14th century. In Italian this historical period is called the Trecento from the phrase “mille trecento” which is translated as 1300. The list of famous names related to that period, that I found through search engines and in my local web analytics company, is practically endless. And, in addition to this list, we can add famous composers and musicians, artists and writers who published their works anonymously.

The Trecento, as you may well know it, was the period of heightened activity in art, literature and music. This is when Dante wrote his Divine Comedy, painter Giotto di Bondone used for the first time perspective in art. The list of Renaissance giants is huge and include famous creators as Boccaccio, Petrarch, Adnrea da Firenze and others.

Music had also changed drastically during Trecento. Partially, because a lot of troubadours was fleeing from the Southern France, mostly Provence, to Italy. Troubadours had a huge impact on Italian music of Renaissance period. Famous composers and musicians that used to write only religious music started writing secular songs. Francesco Landini, Paolo Tenorista, Maestro Piero and others created not only polyphonic music for all powerful Catholic Church but also love lyrics for everyday people.

From what we know, instrumental music was also widespread during Trecento. Unfortunately, not much of it survived, just few notated examples. The rest of the sources come to us from the area around Florence. We also know that some of the poetry of Dante was set to music, but none of it survived either.

Although Walther von der Vogelweide was one of the most famous composers, poets and singers in medieval Germany, there are practically no contemporary records about him. By doing a lot of guesswork, specialists came to the conclusion that he was of noble birth but did not belong to the aristocracy or even higher nobility. His place of birth is unknown, but there are dozens of books with all kinds of theories about it. Some secondary evidence also points that he occasionally used a nickname, which was quite usual for the poets of the times during which he lived.. Generally, everybody agrees, that he period of life was overall from about 1170 to 1230.

We know that Walther mastered his craft at the court of Vienna because of his beautiful lyrics dedicated to the death of his patron, duke Frederick, who was a patron of poetry and art. Since his sponsor’s death Walther’s happy period of life had ended. He started wandering from court to court, singing for bed and bread. Even though famous composer was hoping that some new patron would notice and give him a shelter, he was not exactly suited for that type of life, mostly due to his poetry. It contained very emotional and scathing criticism of men and manners of the times, which made uncomfortable rich nobility. Thanks to his lyrics, he lost a position at the court of duke Bernhard of Carinthia and later was kicked out of the court of Dietrich I of Meissen, where as he mentions, he did not get neither money nor praise.

Yet, Walther’s poems give us the picture not only of a great artistic genius, but of a strenuous, passionate, very human and very lovable character. His talents and strong views became required by German society, when empire and papacy started their struggle in 1197. Walther took side with German independence and unity which gave him a place of significance in history. Till the end of his days, Walther remained a faithful Catholic, which is confirmed by religious poems. Nevertheless, he was fervently opposing the extreme claims of the Roman popes, whom he attacked with bitterness, expressing his deep patriotic feelings.

Walther never switched sides and a highly intelligent new emperor Frederick II held in high esteem poet’s genius and zeal. Thus, Walther received desired recognition and even a small fief in Franconia, that gave him a home and fixed position. Yet, he was complaining that this fief had little value. There is some evidence, that Frederick made Walther the tutor of his son, but this evidence based on one of his lyrics is disputed by modern researchers.

Walther von der Vogelweide did not stay immediately at his new fief long, he traveled for a while and only then settled at his new place. From there he was urging German princes to take part in the Sixth Crusade in 1228 but, did not participate in it himself, or at least did not go further than Tirol. In a beautiful poem he paints the change that had come over the scenes of his childhood and made his life seem a thing dreamed. When he was dying in 1230, he put in his will the request to feed the birds at his tomb every day.