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The ballata (plural: ballate) is an Italian poetic and musical form in use from the late 13th to the 15th century. It has the musical form AbbaA, with the first and last stanzas having the same texts. It is thus most similar to the French musical 'forme fixe' virelai (and not the ballade as the name might otherwise suggest). The first and last "A" is called a ripresa, the "b" lines are piedi (feet), while the fourth line is called a "volta". Longer ballate may be found in the form AbbaAbbaA, etc. Unlike the virelai, the two "b" lines usually have exactly the same music and only in later ballate pick up the (formerly distinctly French) first and second (open and close) endings. The term comes from the verb ballare, to dance, and the form certainly began as dance music.
The ballata was one of the most prominent secular musical forms during the trecento, the period often known as the Italian ars nova . Ballate are sung at the end of each day of Boccaccio's Decameron (only one musical setting of these poems, by Lorenzo da Firenze, survives). Early ballate, such as those found in the Rossi Codex are monophonic. Later, ballate are found for two or three voices. The most notable composer of ballate is Francesco Landini, who composed in the second half of the 14th century. Other composers of ballata include Andrea da Firenze, a contemporary of Francesco Landini, as well as Bartolino da Padova, Johannes Ciconia, Prepositus Brixiensis [1] and Zacara da Teramo. In the 15th century both Arnold de Lantins and Guillaume Dufay wrote ballate; they were among the last to do so.
The Trecento Madrigal is an Italian musical form of the 14th century. It is quite distinct from the madrigal of the Renaissance and early Baroque, with which it shares only the name. The madrigal of the Trecento flourished ca. 1340–1370 with a short revival near 1400. It was a composition for two voices, sometimes on a pastoral subject. In its earliest development it was simple construction: Francesco da Barberino in 1300 called it a "raw and chaotic singalong".
Francesco Landini 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 composers of the second half of the 14th century, he was by far the most famous composer in Italy.
The Burgundian School was a group of composers active in the 15th century in what is now northern and eastern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, centered on the court of the Dukes of Burgundy. The school inaugurated the music of Burgundy.
A Landini cadence, or under-third cadence, is a type of cadence, a technique in music composition, named after Francesco Landini (1325–1397), an influential Italian composer, in honor of his extensive use of the technique. The technique was used extensively in the 14th and early 15th century.
A virelai is a form of medieval French verse used often in poetry and music. It is one of the three formes fixes and was one of the most common verse forms set to music in Europe from the late thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries.
Jacopo da Bologna 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 and Giovanni da Firenze. He concentrated mainly on madrigals, including both canonic (caccia-madrigal) and non-canonic types, but also composed a single example each of a caccia, lauda-ballata, and motet.
The Squarcialupi Codex 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.
Lorenzo Masi, known as Lorenzo da Firenze, was an Italian composer and music teacher of the Trecento. He was closely associated with Francesco Landini in Florence, and was one of the composers of the period known as the Italian ars nova.
Paolo da Firenze was an Italian composer and music theorist of the late 14th and early 15th centuries, the transition from the musical Medieval era to the Renaissance. More surviving music of the Trecento is attributable to Paolo than to any other composer except for Francesco Landini.
The Trecento refers to the 14th century in Italian cultural history.
Andreas de Florentia was a Florentine composer and organist of the late medieval era. Along with Francesco Landini and Paolo da Firenze, he was a leading representative of the Italian ars nova style of the Trecento, and was a prolific composer of secular songs, principally ballate.
Niccolò da Perugia was an Italian composer of the Trecento, the musical period also known as the "Italian ars nova". He was a contemporary of Francesco Landini, and apparently was most active in Florence.
The Trecento 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. In these regards, the music of the Trecento may seem more to be a Renaissance phenomenon; however, the predominant musical language was more closely related to that of the late Middle Ages, and musicologists generally classify the Trecento as the end of the medieval era. 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.
Gherardello da Firenze was an Italian composer of the Trecento. He was one of the first composers of the period sometimes known as the Italian ars nova.
Antonio "Zacara" da Teramo was an Italian composer, singer, and papal secretary of the late Trecento and early 15th century. He was one of the most active Italian composers around 1400, and his style bridged the periods of the Trecento, ars subtilior, and beginnings of the musical Renaissance.
Bartolomeo da Bologna was an Italian composer of the transitional period between the late medieval style of the Trecento and the early Renaissance.
The modern state of Italy did not come into being until 1861, though the roots of music on the Italian Peninsula can be traced back to the music of ancient Rome. However, the underpinnings of much modern Italian music come from the Middle Ages.
The formes fixes are the three 14th- and 15th-century French poetic forms: the ballade, rondeau, and virelai. Each was also a musical form, generally a chanson, and all consisted of a complex pattern of repetition of verses and a refrain with musical content in two main sections.
Antonello da Caserta, also Anthonello de Casetta, Antonellus Marot, was an Italian composer of the medieval era, active in the late 14th and early 15th centuries.
Add MS 29987 is a mediaeval Tuscan musical manuscript dating from the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, held in the British Library in London. It contains a number of polyphonic Italian Trecento madrigals, ballate, sacred mass movements, and motets, and 15 untexted monophonic instrumental dances, which are among the earliest purely instrumental pieces in the Western musical tradition. The manuscript apparently belonged to the de' Medici family in the fifteenth century, and by 1670 was in the possession of Carlo di Tommaso Strozzi; it was in the British Museum from 1876, where it was catalogued as item 29987 of the Additional manuscripts series. It is now in the British Library.