Composers of the Late Medieval Era

This companion to Part One: The Medieval Era is an encyclopedia of composers and other figures from around 1300-1400. The playlist below is a selection of pieces by some of the composers covered in this reference guide and the reference guide for composers of the early and high medieval eras. The numbers that appear before the names of compositions in the text below refer to their position in the playlist. There are also separate playlists for each composer which contain all of the recordings available on Spotify barring those that are arrangements for modern instruments, instrumental arrangements of pieces originally scored for voices and the like.

Index

Johannes de Grocheio (b. c. 1255; fl. c. 1290–1300) was a Parisian music theorist whose treatise Ars musicae (c. 1300) offers a vivid and systematic account of musical life at the threshold of the late medieval era. Born likely to the Norman family of de Grouchy, Grocheio received an education grounded in Aristotelian philosophy and probably studied at the University of Paris. His work is distinguished by an exceptional focus on contemporary Parisian forms and society, reflecting both his urban experience and intellectual scope. The De musica divides music into three main categories: musica civilis, musica canonica, and musica ecclesiastica. Civil music, directed toward lay audiences, encompasses genres such as the chanson de geste, cantus coronatus (poems of high courtly style, often royal), rondeau, stantipes (a Latinized term for estampie), and ductia (carole, or dance song). He uniquely describes how musical forms serve distinct social and affective purposes, relating song types to the appetites and contexts of listeners.

Grocheio’s analysis of urban repertory is unparalleled among Latin treatises. He emphasizes how vernacular monody and polyphonic forms differ in rhythmic complexity, measuredness, and performance context. Notably, his discussion of the chanson de geste and public epic performance marks a rare theorist’s attention to narrative music traditions. His survey of polyphony (musica canonica) includes the conductus, motet, and hocket, noting the technical, intellectual, and social demands of their construction and reception.

The treatise is strongly informed by Aristotelian philosophy, layering definitions (universalis), technical analyses (magis perfecta), and compositional procedures (compositionis) across every musical category. Grocheio brings an abstract conceptual framework to the practical musical life of Paris, mapping the interplay between materia and forma in both song text and melody. His approach marks a high point in medieval musical thought, bridging speculative theory, social observation, and lived performance.

Grocheio’s achievement lies in his detailed attention to the forms and functions of music within society, offering a window into the secular, sacred, and academic cultures of Paris around 1300. His treatise stands as a foundational source for understanding the transition between the monophonic and polyphonic traditions and the cultural infrastructure of medieval urban life.

Bibliography
Page, Christopher. “Grocheio, Johannes de.” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001. Accessed September 29, 2025.
“Johannes de Grocheio.” Wikipedia. Accessed September 29, 2025.
Hibberd, L. “Estampie and Stantipes.” Speculum 19 (1944): 222–49.
Seay, Albert, ed. and trans. Johannes de Grocheo: Concerning Music. Colorado Springs, 1967; 2nd ed., 1973.
Wagenaar-Nolthenius, H. “Estampie/Stantipes/Stampita.” In L’Ars Nova italiana del Trecento: Convegno II Certaldo e Firenze 1969, vol. 3 (Certaldo, 1970): 399–409.
Rohloff, E., ed. Die Quellenhandschriften zum Musiktraktat des Johannes de Grocheio. Leipzig, 1972.
DeWitt, P.A. A New Perspective on Johannes de Grocheio’s Ars Musicae. Diss., University of Michigan, 1973.
Page, Christopher. The Owl and the Nightingale: Musical Life and Ideas in France 1100–1300. London, 1989.
Fladt, E. Die Musikauffassung des Johannes de Grocheio im Kontext der hochmittelalterlichen Aristoteles-Rezeption. Munich, 1987.
McGee, T. “Medieval Dances: Matching the Repertory with Grocheio’s Descriptions.” The Journal of Musicology v. 7, no. 4 (1989): 498–517.

Frauenlob (Heinrich von Meissen) (b. c. 1260; d. Mainz, November 29, 1318) was a German poet and Minnesinger renowned for his innovative artistry and his impact on later musical and literary traditions. Although precise details of his life are elusive and much is inferred from his poetry, Frauenlob is located in time by his lament for Konrad von Würzburg (d. 1287) and in place by his Central German dialect and the Würzburg songbook (c. 1350) naming him from Meissen. He may have received musical training at the chapel of Margrave Heinrich of Meissen, himself a Minnesinger. Throughout his career, Frauenlob is known to have praised nobles of widely scattered regions, from Denmark to Carinthia, though whether he actually travelled to all these lands remains uncertain. Significant links include the Přemyslid court at Prague and his probable patron, Peter von Aspelt, later bishop of Mainz.

Frauenlob’s moniker, “praise of women,” is reflected in his celebrated status as a singer devoted to extolling womanhood. His funeral at Mainz, where women are said to have accompanied his coffin in gratitude, became legendary. Though his tombstone was destroyed in 1774, its inscription survives, and his memory was further perpetuated by the Meistersinger, who credited him as a founding master and posthumously attributed to him melodies and poetic forms far exceeding his authentic corpus.

His oeuvre encompasses all three principal genres of the German lyric tradition: Minnelied, Leich, and Spruch. While the melodies to his love songs are lost, reliable 14th-century transcriptions remain for his three Leiche and for five of the ten Spruchton (with less reliable versions of others extant in 15th-century sources). These melodies, typically in canzone form with long stanzas, were widely influential and repeatedly adapted for new religious and political content. Stackmann’s critical edition (see bibliography) identifies 122 “genuine” Frauenlob stanzas set to his Langer Ton (“Ton” is a musical and stanzaic template), his most important and influential melody—a musical scheme that became the model for countless later contrafacta.

Frauenlob’s Leichs are extended, highly structured songs. Each Leich is a large-scale poetic and musical composition, often composed of multiple, intricately connected strophic sections (versicles), but conceived and performed as a unified whole. For example, his famous Marienleich features complex internal organization with long versicles, recurring melodies, and sweeping formal architecture, all within the framework of a single monumental song.

Frauenlob’s Spruch melodies, all set in canzone form, reflect the late 13th-century tendency toward long stanza construction. In his works, this allowed for extended and intricate melodic phrases, since Frauenlob avoided depending heavily on repeating melodic sections (such as adding a third Stollen at a stanza’s close), a device his peers favored. Rather, he crafted each melody to unfold dynamically, employing a distinctive pattern where the ascent toward, and descent from, the highest note in the melody was carefully delayed and controlled. The specific moment in the Abgesang when this top note is reached shapes the unique identity of the melody and represents the text’s emotional focal point—the passage the poet-singer wished to highlight most strongly.

His poetic technique is highly obscure and intellectually demanding, integrating acrostics, cryptic allegory, and complex strophic forms. Frauenlob pushed the boundaries of the Leich. His Marienleich (a mystical and highly allegorical praise of the Virgin), for instance, exhibits monumental structure, innovative use of modal cycles, and extreme strophic complexity, earning comparison to a gothic cathedral and generating intense scholarly debate concerning its organization and symbolism. His Kreuzleich and Minneleich similarly expand the expressive and formal range of the genre.

Frauenlob’s influence was immense among contemporaries and successors, both musically and poetically. He is the only Minnesinger depicted twice in the Codex Manesse: once as a master instructing other singers and once as a director of instrumentalists. Much later, the Meistersinger canonized him as an originator of melodic and poetic forms, and wrote new texts to Töne attributed to him, solidifying his reputation as a founding figure.

Bibliography
Shields, Michael. “Frauenlob [Heinrich von Meissen].” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001. Accessed September 17, 2025.
“Heinrich Frauenlob.” Wikipedia. Accessed September 17, 2025.
Stackmann, Karl and Bertau, Karl-Heinz, eds. Frauenlob: Leichs, Sangsprueche, Lieder. Göttingen, 1981.
Brunner, Horst and Wachinger, Burghart, eds. Repertorium der Sangsprueche und Meisterlieder des 12. bis 18. Jahrhunderts. Tübingen, 1994.
Pfannmüller, L. Frauenlobs Marienleich. Strasbourg, 1913.
Kirsch, W.F. Frauenlobs Kreuzleich. Dillingen, 1930.
März, C. Frauenlobs Marienleich: Untersuchungen zur spätmittelalterlichen Monodie. Erlangen, 1987.
Bein, T. Sus hup sich ganzer liebe vrevel: Studien zu Frauenlobs Minneleich. Frankfurt, 1988.

Guy de Saint-Denis (fl. late 13th and early 14th century) was a French Benedictine music theorist, active as a monk at the influential abbey of Saint-Denis near Paris. Though some older scholarship wrongly identified him as Guy de Chartres, the abbot of Saint-Denis (1294–1310), Guy cannot be matched with certainty to any individual in the obit lists of the monastery, and his biographical details remain obscure.

Guy is known primarily for a substantial music-theoretical treatise, surviving uniquely in British Library Harley 281 and attributed to “brother Guido, monk of the monastery of St Denis in France.” This attribution is confirmed by an acrostic formed from the initial letters of the treatise’s introduction and section headings—a practice paralleled by Guy’s contemporary Jacobus of Liège in his Speculum musicae. Guy’s treatise falls into two main sections: a theoretical part, exploring the Gregorian psalm tones, consonances, modes, and foundational concepts of chant; and a practical part, offering instruction in psalm performance, detailing the use of neuma (melismas interpolated at the end of chants), and concluding with a tonary specific to the antiphoner and gradual at St Denis.

Guy’s work exhibits close acquaintance with both ancient and contemporary sources, quoting Plato, Aristotle, Boethius, Guido of Arezzo’s Micrologus, Honorius of Autun, Guillaume d’Auxerre, and the plainchant treatises of Petrus de Cruce and Johannes de Garlandia. Notably, Guy’s citation of Johannes de Garlandia enabled later scholars to establish the authentic version of Garlandia’s famous treatise. The treatise also provides valuable documentary evidence of liturgical practice and musical change at St Denis—including references to the Office of St Louis (canonized 1297, composed 1299) and a new chant for Corpus Christi, indicating that Guy compiled his treatise between ca. 1315 (institution of the feast at Cluny and St Denis) and 1318 (its adoption at Paris).

Guy’s treatise stands out for its meticulous synthesis of theoretical speculation and practical ritual expertise, representing a highly learned strand of Parisian monastic musicology on the threshold of the Ars Nova period.

Bibliography
Huglo, Michel. “Guy de Saint-Denis.” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001. Accessed September 22, 2025.
Robertson, Anne W. The Service Books of the Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis: Images of Ritual and Music in the Middle Ages. Oxford, 1991.
Huglo, Michel. Les tonaires: inventaire, analyse, comparaison. Paris, 1971.
Reimer, Eberhard, ed. Johannes de Garlandia: De mensurabili musica. Wiesbaden, 1972.

Jacobus of Liège (b. Liège, c. 1260; d. after 1330; also known as Iacobus Leodiensis, Jacques de Liège, Iacobus de Montibus, Iacobus de Oudenaerde) was a Franco-Flemish music theorist recognized as the author of the Speculum musicae, the most extensive surviving treatise on medieval music. His encyclopedic opus, divided into seven books and encompassing 521 chapters, forms a substantial testament to the theory and practice of the ars antiqua while systematically challenging the innovations of the emerging ars nova.

Although details about Jacobus’s life remain debated, consensus holds that he was likely born in the diocese of Liège, studied at the University of Paris in the late 13th century, and later returned to Liège, where he served as canon at the Church of Saint Paul and maintained academic and clerical activity into the 1330s. Clues to his identity appear through acrostics embedded in the treatise, where the initials of each book spell “Iacobus.” The identification with Iacobus de Montibus is further supported by church and property records; he is also associated in some manuscripts with the alternative name Iacobus de Oudenaerde.

The Speculum musicae stands unparalleled in medieval music theory for its scope and erudition. The first five books address speculative music in the Boethian tradition, elaborating on the nature of intervals, proportions, consonance and dissonance, and the classification of music within the quadrivium. Book six delves into the systems of chant, both ancient and current, with particular attention to the modal liturgical practices of Liège and extensive treatment of psalm tones, tonaries, and modality. The final book, perhaps the best known, presents a spirited defense of the ars antiqua and vehement critique of the “moderni”—especially Philippe de Vitry and Johannes de Muris—disputing their approaches to mensural notation and rhythm.

Throughout his work, Jacobus demonstrates broad knowledge of classical and medieval authorities, drawing upon Boethius, Isidore of Seville, Plato, Guido of Arezzo, Franco of Cologne, and others. He investigates a wide range of issues, from abstract mathematical foundations to practical matters of polyphony, discant, and notational practices. Notably, his approach to musical cadence, intervallic structure, and compositional style links traditional speculative thought with close observation of contemporary music, while his polemics offer valuable insight into ongoing debates between partisans of old and new musical methods during the fourteenth century.

Besides the Speculum musicae, Jacobus is credited with treatises Tractatus de consonantiis musicalibus, Tractatus de intonatione tonorum, and Compendium de musica (ed. Smits van Waesberghe, Vetter and Visser, 1988), further evidencing his wide-ranging expertise in both speculative and practical theory.

Bibliography
Hammond, Frederick, revised by Oliver B. Ellsworth. “Jacobus of Liège.” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001. Accessed September 25, 2025.
“Jacobus of Liège.” Wikipedia. Accessed September 25, 2025.
Bragard, Roger. “Le Speculum musicae du compilateur Jacques de Liège.” Revue belge de musicologie 7 (1953): 59–104; 8 (1954): 1–17.
Ballke, Jürgen. Untersuchungen zum sechsten Buch des Speculum musicae des Jacobus von Lüttich unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Tetrachord- und Moduslehre. Frankfurt: 1982.
Steglich, Rudolf. Die Quaestiones in musica. Leipzig: 1911.
Huglo, Michel. Les tonaires. Paris: 1971.
Ellsworth, Oliver B. ed. The Berkeley Manuscript. Lincoln, NE: 1984.
Slocum, Kay. “Speculum musicae: Jacques de Liège and the Art of Musical Number.” In Medieval Numerology, edited by R.L. Surles. New York: 1993, 1–37.

Marchetto da Padova (fl. 1305–1319) was a seminal Italian music theorist and composer whose innovative writings stand at the center of early Trecento theory and practice. Little is known of Marchetto’s personal life, but documents confirm that he taught the boys at Padua Cathedral from 1305 to at least 1307, and undertook the writing of his treatises in Cesena and Verona. His chief works, the Lucidarium in arte musice plane (completed in 1317 or 1318) and the Pomerium in arte musice mensurate (completed by 1319), present a sophisticated system of both plainchant and mensural theory in scholastic style, incorporating question and answer, contradictions, and elaborations throughout.

In the Lucidarium, Marchetto advanced the theory of permutation to address chromatic progressions prevalent in contemporary Italian polyphony, and proposed dividing the whole tone into five equal parts—a conceptual breakthrough in tuning history that anticipated modern experimentation with temperament. He developed a modal system flexible enough to accommodate irregular chants, favoring pentachord and tetrachord species over traditional emphasis on finals or ranges. His modal categories—perfect, imperfect, pluperfect, mixed, and mingled—would inspire generations of theorists.

The Pomerium is a foundational treatise for Italian mensural theory, being the first systematic account of a system that allowed for both duple and triple division of the breve. Marchetto clarified notational practice, including the use of downward and upward tails, rests, the dot, and chromatic signs (notably his falsa musica). He detailed procedures in both tempus perfectum and imperfectum, described syncopation possibilities, and compared French and Italian practice in ways that crucially inform the understanding of 14th-century notation and performance.

Marchetto’s influence on later theorists was profound. The Pomerium provided the foundation for Italian mensural theory for a century, and manuscripts of the Lucidarium and its digests were widely copied into the 15th century and beyond—testifying to his foundational position in debates on tuning, temperament, and mode across Italy and Europe.

A single motet, Ave regina celorum / Mater innocencie / Ite missa est, is attributed to him on the basis of its acrostic; other compositional attributions remain conjectural.

Bibliography
Herlinger, Jan. “Marchetto da Padova.” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001. Accessed October 1, 2025.
“Marchetto da Padova.” Wikipedia. Accessed October 1, 2025.
Strunk, O. “Intorno a Marchetto da Padova.” Rivista musicale italiana 20 (1950): 312–15. English trans. in Essays on Music in the Western World (New York, 1974), 39–43.
Pirrotta, N. “Marchettus de Padua and the Italian Ars Nova.” Musica Disciplina, 9 (1955): 57–71.
Niemöller, K.W. “Zur Tonus-Lehre der italienischen Musiktheorie des ausgehenden Mittelalters.” Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch 40 (1956): 23–32.
Gallo, F. A. La teoria della notazione in Italia dalla fine del XIII all’inizio del XV secolo. Bologna, 1966.
Herlinger, J. The “Lucidarium” of Marchetto of Padua: A Critical Edition, Translation, and Commentary. Chicago, 1985.
Rahn, J. “Marchetto’s Theory of Commixture and Interruptions.” Music Theory Spectrum 9 (1987): 117–35.
Pass, W. and Rausch, A., eds. Mittelalterliche Musiktheorie in Zentraleuropa. Tutzing, 1998.
Beck, E. M. “Marchetto da Padova and Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel Frescoes.” Rivista italiana di musicologia 27 (1999): 723–37.

Jehannot de l’Escurel [Jehan de Lescurel] (fl. early 14th century) was a French poet-composer associated with the final decades of the 13th century and the dawn of the Ars Nova. Almost nothing is known of his life beyond his name and body of works. Archival efforts to link him to a Parisian cleric executed in 1304 are inconclusive; the surname l’Escurel was not uncommon in Paris at the time.

Jehannot’s entire known output is preserved in a single crucial source: the interpolated version of the Roman de Fauvel (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS français 146), where his works are appended to the narrative. The collection includes one three-voice polyphonic rondeau (A vous douce debonnaire), thirty-two monophonic songs (rondeaux, ballades, and virelais), and two diz entez—lyric poems in which each stanza ends with a notated refrain, interlacing music, and poetry. His songs are remarkable for their mensural notation, providing a unique witness to the rhythmic and melodic innovations that bridge the trouvère tradition and the new formes fixes of the 14th century. The manuscripts order his works alphabetically up to the letter G, suggesting the extant repertoire represents only a portion of his full output.

Jehannot’s musical language embodies the stylistic transition from late medieval monophony to early polyphony. His monophonic pieces, the largest notated collection from this transitional period, reflect sophisticated interplay of poetic genres and varied song structures. The dances, refrains, and strophic designs anticipate the distinction of the formes fixes (rondeau, balade, virelai) as codified by Guillaume de Machaut a generation later. Melodic formulas range from lively, ornamented patterns in dance-songs like Gracieusette (written in semibreves throughout) to plaintive, declamatory lines with contrasting rhythmic values in more serious pieces such as Amours, que vous ai meffait.

Jehannot’s works exploit subtleties of rhythmic and harmonic invention. His single known polyphonic rondeau belongs to the tradition founded by Adam de la Halle but incorporates an unusually high proportion of imperfect consonances, lending his music a frankness and individuality that anticipate later developments. Connections to existing musical and poetic materials—contrafacta, refrains, and intertextual links—point to a creative engagement with earlier traditions and the rapidly changing musical landscape of Paris.

Bibliography
Arlt, Wulf. “Jehannot de l’Escurel.” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001. Accessed September 28, 2025.
“Jehan de Lescurel.” Wikipedia. Accessed September 28, 2025.
Langlois, Charles-Victor. “Jean de Lescurel, poète français.” Histoire littéraire de la France 36 (1927): 109–15.
Roesner, Edward H., François Avril, and Nancy Freeman Regalado. Le Roman de Fauvel in the Edition of Messire Chaillou de Pesstain. New York, 1990.
Bent, Margaret, and Andrew Wathey, eds. Fauvel Studies: Allegory, Chronicle, Music and Image in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS français 146. Oxford, 1998.
Earp, Lawrence. “Lyrics for Reading and Lyrics for Singing in Late Medieval France: The Development of the Dance Lyric from Adam de la Halle to Guillaume de Machaut.” In The Union of Words and Music in Medieval Poetry. Austin, 1987: 101–31.
Gennrich, Friedrich, ed. Rondeaux, Virelais und Balladen aus dem Ende des XII., dem XIII. und dem ersten Drittel des XIV. Jahrhunderts mit den überlieferten Melodien. Dresden, 1927; 2nd ed., Göttingen, 1927.
Page, Christopher. “Tradition and Innovation in BN fr.146: the Background to the Ballades.” In Fauvel Studies, 353–94.

Composers of the Medieval Era Playlist Tracks

25. A vous, douce debonnaire
26. Toy servir en humilité

Robert de Handlo (fl. 1326) was an English music theorist whose treatise on notation stands as a central witness to the development of late Ars Antiqua and early Ars Nova mensural notation and vocabulary. Though biographical details are scarce, Handlo may have belonged to the de Handlo family of Kent, with records attesting to a Robertus de Handlo in the service of the Despensers c. 1315–1322. His authorship of the Regule cum maximis magistri Franconis cum additionibus aliorum musicorum, completed in 1326, anchors his reputation and influence.

The Regule is among the most substantial and detailed English treatises on mensural notation, bringing together and commenting upon the notational doctrines of Franco of Cologne’s Ars cantus mensurabilis—as transmitted in the tradition of Gaudent brevitate moderni—with extensive new material, practical glosses, and additions credited to leading theorists (including Petrus de Cruce, Johannes de Garlandia, Petrus Le Viser, Admetus de Aureliana, and Jacobus de Navernia). Handlo’s work stands out for refining and clarifying the vocabulary surrounding rhythm and note values at a moment of dynamic change, introducing important terminology such as divisio, divisa, nuda, and sola for note groupings.

Handlo’s treatise uniquely preserves sophisticated contemporary English practice alongside Franco-Gallic influences. He retained Franco’s principal figures—the long, breve, and semibreve—but interpreted larger values (the longa simplex, duplex, triplex, etc.) and smaller subdivisions as arithmetical multiples and divisions rather than introducing new symbols. He paid particular attention to oblique figures, conjunctions of semibreves, plicae, and their notational status, and outlined insular conventions absent from continental sources. His is the only medieval treatise to prescribe specific durations for plicas.

The Regule articulates new levels of rhythmic complexity, documenting the ongoing subdivision of the breve into multiple or unequal semibreves (a process attributed to Petrus de Cruce and further developed by Johannes de Garlandia and theorists of Navarre). Handlo named and described distinctive semibreves, including the minorata and minima, and described the use of unique English notational devices, groupings, and tempo distinctions (mos longus, mos mediocris, mos lascivus). He further incorporated materials and musical examples from now-lost treatises and cited the practices of earlier and contemporary musicians.

Handlo’s treatise proved highly influential, with an abbreviated version serving as the basis for larger portions of the Summa of John Hanboys. Today, his Regule remains one of the key sources for understanding the evolution of English and continental mensural theory at the intersection of the 13th and 14th centuries.

Bibliography
Lefferts, Peter M. “Robert de Handlo.” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001. Accessed October 2, 2025.
Dittmer, L. A., trans. Robert de Handlo: Rules. Brooklyn, NY, 1959.
Sanders, E. H. “Duple Rhythm and Alternate Third Mode in the 13th Century.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 15 (1962): 249–91.
Gallo, F. Alberto. “Die Notationslehre im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert.” In Die mittelalterliche Lehre von der Mehrstimmigkeit: Geschichte der Musiktheorie, edited by Zaminer, F., vol. 5. Darmstadt, 1984, 257–356.
Roesner, E. H., Avril, F., and Regalado, N.F. Le Roman de Fauvel in the Edition of Mesire Chaillou de Pesstain. New York, 1990, 30–38.
Lefferts, Peter M., ed. and trans. Robertus de Handlo: Regule (The Rules) and Johannes Hanboys: Summa (The Summa). Lincoln, NE, 1991.

Philippe de Vitry (b. ?Champagne or Vitry-en-Artois, 31 October 1291; d. Paris, 9 June 1361) was one of the most celebrated and influential composers, poets, theorists, diplomats, and churchmen of the fourteenth century, best remembered as the leading proponent of the ars nova and central architect of its notational and compositional advances.

Vitry’s early life remains somewhat obscure, but it is probable he attended the University of Paris and established himself as magister in both academic and ecclesiastical circles. His career unfolded amidst major dynastic and political shifts: first occupying prominent posts in the service of the House of Bourbon, particularly as clerk, administrator, and diplomat for Louis de Bourbon, Count and later Duke of Clermont, to whom Vitry was closely tied for over two decades. He acquired canonries at Clermont, Verdun, Soissons, Beauvais, Paris and other influential churches, eventually rising to the archdeaconry of Brie and other senior preferments. From 1340 Vitry was increasingly active at the French royal court, serving as royal notary and administrator, then as maître in the various judicial offices of the Parlement of Paris. In 1351 he was appointed Bishop of Meaux, a position he retained until his death.

Philippe de Vitry’s political and diplomatic reach brought him into contact with critical figures of his day, including Petrarch (who praised Vitry as “the keenest and most ardent seeker of truth” and “the only true poet among the French”), Cardinal Guy de Boulogne, Pope Clement VI, and King Jean II. He participated in crusading ventures and diplomatic missions in Avignon and London, and witnessed firsthand the turbulent Anglo-French relations and the politics of the papal Curia.

Vitry is widely acknowledged as the theorist and probable author of the treatise Ars nova notandi (c. 1322), whose name became synonymous with the entire musical era. This treatise formalized a new approach to rhythm and mensural notation, moving beyond the constraints of the rhythmic modes and enabling increased independence of voice parts, the use of smaller note-values, and the emancipation of binary meter. Vitry’s innovations include the introduction of red notes for distinguishing alterations in rhythmic and metric values, the invention of the minim, and the systematization of prolations and time signatures that underpinned later polyphony. The treatises attributed to him, while their full authorship remains debated, are pivotal sources for understanding the sweeping transformation in early fourteenth-century music.

As a composer, Vitry acquired a lasting reputation for his motets, especially those composed for the Roman de Fauvel and the Ivrea Codex. These works exhibit remarkable structural individuality, making free use of novel rhythmic patterns, isorhythm, and elaborate textual play. His corpus includes works for court, church, and political occasion—among them Cum statua/Hugo/Magister invidie, Garrit gallus/In nova fert/Neuma, and Tribum/Quoniam/Merito hec patimur. Many others survive as literary texts, testifying to his dual stature as musician and poet. Though Vitry’s secular songs and ballades have not survived with music, his reputation as inventor of the forme-fixe song was widespread in later sources.

Moving in artistic, ecclesiastical, and political circles, Vitry’s intellectual influence extended into the domains of mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and poetry. He accumulated a distinguished library and maintained correspondence and scholarly exchange with leading intellectuals. His legacy was immediately recognized by contemporaries and preserved in manuscript traditions for centuries.

Bibliography
Bent, Margaret, revised by Andrew Wathey. “Philippe de Vitry.” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001. Accessed September 26, 2025.
“Philippe de Vitry.” Wikipedia. Accessed September 26, 2025.
Besseler, Heinrich. “Die Motette von Franko von Köln bis Philippe de Vitry.” Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 8 (1926): 137–258.
Schrade, Leo, ed. The Works of Philippe de Vitry with commentary. Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, vol. 1. Monaco: 1956.
Wathey, Andrew. “Myth and Mythography in the Motets of Philippe de Vitry.” Musica e storia 6 (1998): 89–106.
Küngle, Karl. The Manuscript Ivrea, Biblioteca Capitolare 115: Studies in the Transmission and Composition of Ars Nova Polyphony. Ottawa: 1997.
Leech-Wilkinson, David. “The Emergence of Ars Nova.” Early Music History 13 (1995): 285–317.
Wathey, Andrew. “The Motets of Philippe de Vitry.” Early Music History 12 (1993): 119–50.

Composers of the Medieval Era Playlist Tracks

27. Petre Clemens, tam re quam nimine – Lugentium siccentur occuli plaudant senes
28. Tribum, que non abhorruit – Quoniam secta latronum – Merito hec patimur
29. Vos quid admiramini, virgenes – Gratissima virginis species – Gaude gloriosa
30. Tuba sacre fidei – In arboris
31. Almifonis melos – Rosa sine culpe spina (attributed to Vitry but not widely accepted)

Maestro Piero (b. before 1300; d. shortly after 1350) ranks among the earliest identifiable composers of the Italian Trecento. Often cited as one of the first musicians of this era whose name is known, he was likely a native of Assisi or another northern Italian city, rather than Florence—he does not appear in Filippo Villani’s Florentine chronicle, which records many other contemporary musicians.

Circumstantial evidence suggests Piero may be the “Magister Petrus Andreutii” documented as a music master in Perugia in 1335. His compositional career unfolded primarily in the northern courts, notably those of the Visconti in Milan and the della Scala in Verona, where he appears to have overlapped with Giovanni da Cascia and Jacopo da Bologna during the 1340s and early 1350s. The texts of Piero’s madrigals and cacce reference figures and locales closely tied to these artistic circles—as in the caccia Con brachi assai (set contemporaneously by Giovanni), which names the river Adda, or in pieces that praise “Anna,” a woman also celebrated in madrigals by Giovanni and Jacopo. The name “Margherita” in Sì com’al canto suggests further intertextual links, as Jacopo da Bologna also set this text.

Piero’s surviving output consists of eight securely attributed compositions—six madrigals (all for two voices) and two cacce (for three voices)—all preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Florence. Two works also appear anonymously in the older Rossi Codex, and at least two additional cacce have been attributed to him on stylistic grounds. Piero stands out for his mastery of canonic technique, being responsible for the earliest surviving Italian canonic madrigals and cacce. His works display a developmental sequence, from simple two-voice madrigals in the oldest style (Quando l’àire comença, Sovra un fiume regale), through ritornello passages with imitative voice exchange (All’ombra d’un perlaro, Sì com’al canto), to the fully-fledged canonic caccia (Con brachi assai, Con dolce brama). Especially in the latter, two upper voices proceed in strict canon above a freely moving, often untexted, tenor—a hallmark of the genre. These innovations profoundly influenced both Jacopo da Bologna and Giovanni da Cascia.

Manuscript sources and iconographical evidence reinforce both Piero’s significance and his seniority within the Trecento generation. A legal manuscript from Bologna (D 23) features a miniature of a bearded, tonsured old man identified as “Ser Piero,” plausibly the composer. Though most of his music remained limited in dissemination, Piero’s role as a catalyst in shaping the early madrigal and caccia genres marks him as a foundational figure at the dawn of Italian polyphony.

Bibliography
Von Fischer, Kurt, revised by Gianluca D’Agostino. “Piero.” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001; rev. 2009. Accessed October 6, 2025.
“Maestro Piero.” Wikipedia. Accessed October 6, 2025.
Pirrotta, Nino. “Per l’origine e la storia della ‘caccia’ e del ‘madrigale’ trecentesco.” RMI, 48 (1946), 305–23; xlix (1947), 121–42.
Pirrotta, Nino. “Marchettus de Padua and the Italian Ars Nova.” 1955; repr. in Musica tra Medioevo e Rinascimento (Turin, 1984), 63–79.
Von Fischer, Kurt. Studien zur italienischen Musik des Trecento und frühen Quattrocento. Berne, 1956.
Pirrotta, Nino. “Piero e l’impressionismo musicale del secolo XIV.” L’Ars Nova italiana del Trecento I (Certaldo, 1959), 57–74; repr. in Musica tra Medioevo e Rinascimento (Turin, 1984), 104–14.
Corsi, Giuseppe, editor. Poesie musicali del Trecento. Bologna, 1970.
Von Fischer, Kurt. “Portraits von Piero, Giovanni da Firenze und Jacopo da Bologna in einer Bologneser Handschrift des 14. Jahrhunderts?” MD, 27 (1973), 61–4.
Paganuzzi, Emanuela. “Medioevo e Rinascimento.” In La musica a Verona, edited by P. P. Brugnoli. Verona, 1976, 33–70.
Nádas, John. “The Structure of MS Panciatichi 26 and the Transmission of Trecento Polyphony.” JAMS, 34 (1981), 393–427.

Guillaume de Machaut (b. Reims or Machault, Champagne, c. 1300; d. Reims, April 1377) was the preeminent poet-composer of the 14th century and a towering figure in both the history of music and literature. Machaut’s meticulously compiled œuvre—transmitted in manuscripts assembled under his own supervision—stands out not only for its volume and literary and musical quality, but also for the influence it exerted on the development of new genres and forms throughout late medieval Europe.

Machaut, a cleric by education and status, began his service to Jean de Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, c. 1323, holding the offices of aumonier, notaire, and secretaire. Over nearly two decades, he accompanied the king on campaigns and journeys across Europe, experiences richly documented in his narrative poems. After 1340, Machaut became canon of Reims Cathedral, grounding his creative output in the city for the rest of his life. He maintained close associations with leading nobles and patrons, including Charles V of France and Jean, Duke of Berry, and was widely widely regarded as a master (maistre, magister) by his contemporaries, though not formally accorded the university title.

Machaut’s poetic output is remarkable for its scope and stylistic variety. He composed nearly 400 lyric poems, including roughly 235 ballades, 76 rondeaux, 39 virelais, 24 lais, 10 complaintes, and 7 chansons royales. A master of intricate rhyme schemes and formal invention, Machaut did much to codify the fixed forms that would dominate later French poetry and music. While celebrated for his musical achievements, it is notable that the majority of his surviving manuscripts are devoted to poetry that was never set to music. His technical ingenuity in rhyme and versification prefigures the Grands Rhétoriqueurs of the 15th century.

Although his Latin motets reflect religious subject matter, and a few poems address political and martial themes (such as captivity and war), the vast majority of Machaut’s lyric poetry is rooted in the conventions of courtly love: service to a lady, the lover’s pleasure and pain, fidelity, and the joys and torments of desire. Many lyrics are embedded within his narrative dits (literally “spoken”, i.e. a poem not meant to be sung), such as Le remède de fortune—which presents one of each lyric genre as examples encountered by the protagonist—and Le voir dit (“A True Story”), while the bulk of his lyric poetry is collected in a separate, unordered section titled Les loanges des dames. The fact that most of these poems are not set to music (with lyrics and musical repertories presented separately in the manuscripts) suggests that Machaut’s creative process favored poetic composition first, with selection of certain texts for musical setting afterward.

Narrative poetry was both the foundation and centerpiece of Machaut’s literary enterprise. The genre of the dit—a first-person narrative poem in octosyllabic rhymed couplets, modeled on the tradition of the Roman de la rose—dominates Machaut’s oeuvre. These autobiographical and often allegorical dits abound in dream visions, encounters with allegorical and personified figures, and the dilemmas of the lover-narrator in pursuit of or separated from his lady. Here, Machaut innovates a highly self-reflective persona: the poet himself appears as protagonist, offering not only narrative but also personal insights and philosophical reflections on love, fortune, consolation, and artistic craft.

In addition to his lyric and narrative poetry, Machaut wrote the Prise d’Alexandrie, a poetic chronicle of Peter I of Cyprus’s chivalric campaigns, as well as philosophical and consolatory works. At the close of his life, he composed a poetic treatise—the Prologue—which organizes genera and rhyme schemes, reflecting his deep preoccupation with the ordering of lyric genres and the compilation of his writings. This impulse guided the structure of his manuscripts, as seen in the index to manuscript MS A: “Vesci l’ordonance que G. de Machaut veut qu’il ait en son livre” (“Here is the order that G. de Machaut wants his book to have”).

Machaut’s musical legacy is distinguished by its diversity and creative flair, spanning complex mass settings, sophisticated motets, and a wealth of lyric forms. Stylistically, his work integrates the traditions of troubadour, trouvère, and ars antiqua church music, though he was neither simply a composer of courtly song nor of liturgical repertoire. The musicologist Gilbert Reaney observed that unlike earlier generations, Machaut excelled in both sacred and secular genres, achieving a distinguished balance only previously realized by Adam de la Halle. Aside from the celebrated Messe de Nostre Dame, the Hoquetus David, and several Latin motets, nearly all of Machaut’s surviving music is secular in character.

Within his catalogue, Machaut concentrated on five principal genres: the lai, virelai, motet, ballade, and rondeau. While maintaining the fundamental structures of the formes fixes, he regularly enriched them through inventive text settings and varied cadential patterns. For instance, most of his rondeaux feature an extended melisma on the penultimate syllable, yet some—like R18 Puis qu’en oubli—display an overall syllabic clarity.

His motets are notable for their intertwining of sacred and secular elements, often placing a liturgical Latin tenor beneath two upper voices with secular French poetry. One example, M12 Corde mesto cantando/Helas! pour quoy virent/Libera me, highlights this mix, while all his other genres are reserved strictly for secular texts.

The Messe de Nostre Dame, composed in the early 1360s and likely intended for Rheims Cathedral, is a landmark in medieval music: the first complete polyphonic mass Ordinary ascribed to a single known composer and conceived as a musical unit. Despite debate around its strict “cyclic” status, the mass is praised for its stylistic unity and innovative structure. Unlike later 15th-century cyclic masses, Machaut’s mass does not sustain a single tonal center or employ an overarching melodic theme, and almost certainly was assembled movement by movement rather than composed in a single continuous creative effort. Nevertheless, it stands as a coherent celebration of the Virgin Mary, probably created for a specific ceremonial occasion, and reflects Machaut’s intention for it to function as a unified performance.

Through all genres, Machaut’s music is characterized by what performers and scholars recognize as his “typical motifs”—signature melodic gestures and textural effects that define his mature style and mark his pivotal place between older monophonic traditions and the new expressive world of the late medieval polyphony.

Machaut’s self-awareness as author and composer is unique for his era. His prefaces, prologues, and the careful order of his manuscripts reflect a new concern with the production, reception, and transmission of artistic works, as well as the status of the artist as a conscious creator. His artistic legacy is matched by the extraordinary survival and carefully planned transmission of his corpus, influencing generations of poets, musicians, and theorists from Deschamps and Froissart to Chaucer and Dufay.

Bibliography
Arlt, Wulf. “Guillaume de Machaut” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001. Accessed October 3, 2025.
“Guillaume de Machaut.” Wikipedia. Accessed October 3, 2025.
Leach, Elizabeth Eva. Guillaume de Machaut: Secretary, Poet, Musician. Ithica and London, 2011.
Earp, Lawrence. Guillaume de Machaut: A Guide to Research. New York, 1995.
Robertson, Anne Walters. Guillaume de Machaut and Reims: Context and Meaning in his Musical Works. Cambridge, 2002.
Fuller, Sarah. “Guillaume de Machaut.” In Music Before 1600, edited by Mark Everist. Oxford, 1992, 41–65.
Cerquiglini-Toulet, Jacqueline. Un engin si soutil: Guillaume de Machaut et l’écriture au XIVe siècle. Geneva and Paris, 1985.

Composers of the Medieval Era Playlist Tracks

32. Plourez, dames
33. Puis qu’en oubli
34. Motet no. 5: Aucune gent/Qui plus aimme/Fiat voluntas tua
35. Motet no. 7: J’ay tant mon cuer/Lasse! je sui en aventure/Ego moriar pro te
36. De Fortune me doy pleindre
37. Mors sui se je ne vous voy
38. Motet no. 16: Lasse! comment oublieray/Se j’aim mon loial amy/Pour quoy me bat mes maris?

Giovanni da Cascia (fl. mid-14th century; also known as Jovannes de Cascia, Johannes de Florentia, Maestro Giovanni da Firenze) was a leading early master of the Italian Trecento. Though his precise origins remain uncertain—his surnames point to either the village of Cascia near Florence or the city itself—no definitive archival documentation has surfaced to fix his biography unambiguously. Previous attempts to link him with Florence Cathedral are unsubstantiated, though he was likely active in the Tuscan region, as evidenced by contemporary records and manuscript transmissions.

Giovanni’s professional career reached its zenith during the 1340s and 1350s, when he was musically active alongside Jacopo da Bologna and Magister Piero, particularly in the orbit of the Visconti in Milan and the della Scala court in Verona. Chronicler Filippo Villani describes Giovanni as a musical rival of Jacopo da Bologna at Mastino II della Scala’s court. Numerous madrigals reference shared poetic figures and familiar courtly themes, reflecting both friendly competition and the highly interconnected world of Trecento musicians. Giovanni’s works, such as those on Anna and Spina, were part of this vibrant poetic-musical exchange.

As a composer, Giovanni da Cascia played a central role in shaping the style and structure of the earliest Italian madrigal. His output—sixteen madrigals and three cacce—survives in multiple manuscripts, most prominently Tuscan sources and the Squarcialupi Codex, but also in north Italian collections. His works are notable for poetic inventiveness, melismatic decoration (often featuring hockets), and a schematic approach to text setting, including the use of cadences at line boundaries and the texting of both voices. His style typically avoids complex part-crossing and tonal unity, instead employing parallel motion and faithful declamation—trends found throughout the early madrigal tradition.

Giovanni’s madrigals frequently exist in variant forms, underlining both an improvisatory compositional approach and the changing notational habits of Trecento scribes. Certain pieces reveal progressive elements, such as isolated imitation between voices in melismatic passages, while others display textless linking phrases between lines, a feature later associated with Jacopo da Bologna. In his cacce, Giovanni solidified the dramatic, canonic form inherited from Piero, pioneering developments that would resonate throughout the genre.

Later sources and evidence, including mention in literary works up to 1420, affirm his enduring influence. The musical elegance and “marvelous sweetness” celebrated in Villani’s account helped secure Giovanni’s reputation as one of the masters through whose work the madrigal and caccia attained classical form.

Bibliography
Von Fischer, Kurt, revised by Gianluca D’Agostino. “Giovanni da Cascia.” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001; rev. 2009. Accessed October 8, 2025.
“Giovanni da Cascia.” Wikipedia. Accessed October 8, 2025.
Villani, Filippo. De civitatis Florentiae et eiusdem famosis civibus. Edited by G. C. Galletti. Florence, 1847; edited by G. Tanturli. Padua, 1997.
Li Gotti, E. “Il più antico polifonista italiano del sec. XIV.” Italica 24 (1947): 196–200.
Pirrotta, Nino. The Music of Fourteenth-Century Italy. CMM, viii/1 (1954).
Corsi, Giuseppe, editor. Poesie musicali del Trecento. Bologna, 1970.
Debenedetti, S. Il Sollazzo e il Saporetto con altre rime di Simone Prudenzani di Orvieto. Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, suppl. 15. Turin, 1913.
Gallo, F. Alberto, editor. Il codice Squarcialupi. Florence, 1992.
Nádas, John. “The Structure of MS Panciatichi 26 and the Transmission of Trecento Polyphony.” 1981.
Gallo, F. Alberto. “Critica della tradizione e storia del testo: seminario su un madrigale trecentesco.” 1987.

Jacopo da Bologna (fl. c. 1340–after 1360, possibly to c. 1386) stands among the foremost Italian composers and theorists of the trecento, the pivotal period also known as the Italian ars nova. Although little firm archival evidence survives regarding his life, Jacopo’s musical presence emerges predominantly in and around northern Italy, with strong associations to Bologna, his presumed birthplace, and engagements at the courts of the Visconti in Milan and the Scaligeri in Verona.

Jacopo’s career unfolds against a backdrop of courtly alliances and artistic exchanges. According to chronicler Filippo Villani, the composer collaborated and competed with contemporaries such as Giovanni da Cascia and Piero at the court of Mastino II della Scala in Verona (d. 1351), where musical rivalry and poetic allusion flourished. His works from this milieu frequently reference courtly figures—names like Anna, Spina, Varino, and Margherita circulate as recurrent poetic motifs—echoing through madrigals that intertwine personal, allegorical, and occasional content. Several compositions directly allude to historical events, such as O in Italia felice Liguria, commemorating the birth of twin sons to Luchino Visconti in 1346, or Lo lume vostro, which may encode veiled commentary on political intrigue.

A notable marker of Jacopo’s engagement with contemporary intellectual life is his contribution to music theory. His treatise L’arte del biscanto misurato secondo el maestro Jacopo da Bologna (The Art of Mensural Chant according to Master Jacopo da Bologna) demonstrates a sophisticated grasp of French and Italian rhythmic systems and suggests connections with university circles. Jacopo is credited with the earliest polyphonic lauda-ballata, Nel mio parlar, a landmark in sacred vernacular repertoire.

Jacopo’s musical style—refined and text-driven—helped shape the development of the Italian madrigal. His works, especially the two- and three-voice madrigals, establish techniques of motivic imitation, interplay between voices, and careful setting of text, marking a departure from the improvisational ethos of earlier trecento song. He pioneered the use of allegorical imagery and experimented with new formal structures, such as transitional monophonic phrases between polyphonic segments. The rich motivic relationships and parallel consonances of his early works gave way in later pieces to greater independence of parts and increased uniformity in tonal design.

Manuscript evidence situates Jacopo as a central figure in the major 14th-century songbooks: the Squarcialupi Codex and others preserve more than thirty works attributed confidently to him. These include numerous madrigals, a motet (Lux purpurata), and a caccia, reflecting Jacopo’s versatility and inventive spirit. The continued circulation of his music—quoted, intabulated, and echoed in later Quattrocento sources—testifies to his lasting reputation in both secular and sacred circles. His connection to Petrarch through the setting of Non al suo amante demonstrates his stature among intellectuals of his age.

Bibliography
Von Fischer, Kurt, revised by Gianluca D’Agostino. “Jacopo da Bologna.” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001; rev. 2009. Accessed October 5, 2025.
“Jacopo da Bologna.” Wikipedia. Accessed October 5, 2025.
Villani, Filippo. De origine civitatis Florentiae et eiusdem famosis civibus. Edited by G. C. Galletti. Florence, 1847; edited by G. Tanturli. Padua, 1997.
Marrocco, W. Thomas, editor. The Music of Jacopo da Bologna. Berkeley, 1954.
Pirrotta, Nino, editor. The Music of Fourteenth-century Italy. CMM, viii/2 (1960) and viii/4 (1963).
Pirrotta, Nino. “Per l’origine e la storia della ‘caccia’ e del ‘madrigale’ trecentesco.” RMI 48 (1946): 305–23; 49 (1947): 121–42.
Li Gotti, E. “Il più antico polifonista italiano del sec. XIV.” Italica 24 (1947): 196–200.
Plamenac, Dragan. “Another Paduan Fragment of Trecento Music.” JAMS 8 (1955): 165–81.
Von Fischer, Kurt. Studien zur italienischen Musik des Trecento und frühen Quattrocento. Berne, 1956.
Corsi, Giuseppe. Poesie musicali del Trecento. Bologna, 1970.
Petrobelli, Pierluigi. “‘Un leggiadretto velo’ ed altre cose petrarchesche.” RIM 10 (1975): 32–45.
Von Fischer, Kurt and N. Pirrotta. “Le biografie” and “Le musiche del codice Squarcialupi.” In Il codice Squarcialupi, edited by F. Alberto Gallo. Florence, 1992.
Wilson, Blake. “Madrigal, Lauda, and Local Style in Trecento Florence.” JM 15 (1997): 137–77.
D’Agostino, Gianluca. “La tradizione letteraria dei testi poetico-musicali del Trecento.” In ‘Col dolce suon che da te piove’: studi su Francesco Landini e la musica del suo tempo in memoria di Nino Pirrotta, edited by M. T. Rosa Barezzani and A. Delfino. Florence, 1999.

Composers of the Medieval Era Playlist Tracks

39. Lux purpurata/Diligite iusticiam
40. Nel bel zardino

Gherardello da Firenze (b. c. 1320/25; d. Florence, 1362 or 1363) was a prominent Italian composer and cleric of the Trecento, widely regarded as a leading representative of the early Florentine school. Born Niccolò di Francesco, he is first documented as a cleric at the Cathedral of Florence (Santa Reparata) in 1343, later becoming a priest and chaplain at the same institution. In the early 1350s he adopted the title “Ser Gherardello,” likely in connection with his entry into the Vallombrosan monastic order. He subsequently served as prior at S. Remigio in Florence and frequently visited Santa Trinità between 1360 and 1362. Gherardello’s death is inferred from the cessation of records after 1362 and from a sonnet in which Simone Peruzzi mourned him.

Celebrated during his lifetime primarily for his sacred music, only two liturgical pieces—a Gloria and an Agnus Dei for two voices—survive. By contrast, his secular works are preserved in Tuscan sources, most notably in the Squarcialupi Codex, which features a portrait possibly representing the composer himself. The Gherardello section of this manuscript attests to his contemporary esteem. His extant oeuvre includes madrigals, cacce, and monophonic ballatas. The frequent literary mention of works now lost, as well as the fact that both his brother Jacopo and son Giovanni composed music (albeit none survives), suggests his influence extended well beyond the manuscripts.

Gherardello’s style, especially in the madrigals, is marked by the alternation of melismatic and syllabic sections within poetic lines, a feature inherited and developed from Giovanni da Cascia. His settings of the stanza portions use contrasting mensurations, and he customarily sets both vocal lines of the madrigal text—a trait typical of early Trecento practice. Self-contained musical lines defined by final cadences, and rare use of monophonic transitions, point to his allegiance with the older madrigal tradition. Canonic imitation, likely drawn from the caccia’s technique, appears at the beginnings of some works, as in Intrando ad abitar and La bella e la vezzosa. The extant ballatas, by contrast, are monophonic and display minimal melisma, often ending their piedi on under-third cadences.

Gherardello’s two surviving mass movements are built in the style of his madrigals, showing pronounced contrast with contemporary sacred compositions such as those by Bartolino da Padova. His music stands as a testament to the cultivated Florentine polyphony of mid-14th-century Italy. Though modern understanding of his influence is hampered by the loss of many works, his surviving compositions secure his reputation as a pivotal early figure in both secular and sacred Italian music.

Bibliography
Von Fischer, Kurt, revised by Gianluca D’Agostino. “Gherardello da Firenze.” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001; rev. 2009. Accessed October 9, 2025.
“Gherardello da Firenze.” Wikipedia. Accessed October 9, 2025.
Pirrotta, Nino. “Lirica monodica trecentesca.” 1936; repr. in Poesia e musica e altri saggi, Florence, 1994, 35–46.
Von Fischer, Kurt. Studien zur italienischen Musik des Trecento und frühen Quattrocento. Berne, 1956.
Reaney, Gilbert. “The Manuscript London, B.M., Add.29987 (Lo).” Musica disciplina 12 (1958): 67–91, esp. 73.
Layton, Billy Jim. Italian Music for the Ordinary of the Mass 1300–1450. Diss., Harvard University, 1960.
Corsi, Giuseppe, editor. Poesie musicali del Trecento. Bologna, 1970.
D’Accone, Frank A. “Music and Musicians at the Florentine Monastery of Santa Trinità, 1360–1363.” in Music in Renaissance Florence: Studies and Documents. London and New York, 2006.
Long, Michael P. “Landini’s Musical Patrimony: a Reassessment of Some Compositional Conventions.” Musica disciplina 40 (1987): 31–52.
Sacchetti, Franco, Francesca Brambilla Ageno, editor. Il libro delle rime. Florence and Perth, 1990.
Von Fischer, Kurt. “Le biografie.” In Il codice Squarcialupi, edited by F. Alberto Gallo. Florence, 1992, vol. 1, 13–44.
Pirrotta, Nino. “Le musiche.” In Il codice Squarcialupi, edited by F. Alberto Gallo. Florence, 1992, 193–222.
Gozzi, Marco. “La cosidetta Longanotation: nuove prospettive sulla notazione italiana del Trecento.” Musica Disciplina 49 (1995): 121–49, esp. 145.

Vincenzo da Rimini (fl. mid-14th century; also known as Magister Dominus Abbas de Arimino, Labate Vincenio da Imola, Frate Vinceno) was an Italian composer associated with both northern and central Italy during the formative period of the Italian Trecento. His works, transmitted mainly in Tuscan manuscripts, point to a career that intersected circles in Florence, Rimini, and possibly Imola. The name variants suggest either origin or employment in Rimini or Imola; a plausible identification is with an abbot of S. Maria in Regola, near Imola (active c. 1362–64), but his connections to Florence are attested by sources and possible allusions within his music. The madrigal Ita se n’era a star—rivaling a setting by Lorenzo da Firenze and referencing the Alberti family villa Il Paradiso—support his Florentine associations.

Stylistically, Vincenzo da Rimini’s four preserved madrigals and two cacce bridge the musical language of Jacopo da Bologna and that of Florentine composers such as Lorenzo da Firenze and Donato da Cascia, whose careers overlapped with Vincenzo’s and who were active in Florence during the Trecento.His madrigals adopt monophonic linking passages after Jacopo’s model, but also show an increasing use of imitation—an earmark of shifting musical values in the later Trecento. His cacce, In forma quasi tra ’l vegghiar and Nell’acqua chiara, stand out for their lively marketplace scenes, use of dialect-inflected language, and unusual metrical freedom; these works occupy a stylistic space between the earlier cacce of Piero and the later A poste messe of Zachara da Teramo.

Though never a central figure in contemporary chronicles, Vincenzo’s miniaturized output and its survival alongside the works of the major Tuscan Trecento composers confirm his position within the mainstream of the Italian ars nova tradition. His music offers a window onto the convergence of regional styles and the creative ferment of 14th-century Italian song.

Bibliography
Von Fischer, Kurt, revised by Gianluca D’Agostino. “Vincenzo da Rimini.” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001; rev. 2009. Accessed October 18, 2025.
“Vincenzo da Rimini.” Wikipedia. Accessed October 18, 2025.
Von Fischer, Kurt. Studien zur italienischen Musik des Trecento und frühen Quattrocento. Berne, 1956.
Corsi, Giuseppe, editor. Poesie musicali del Trecento. Bologna, 1970, 81–7.
Brasolin, Maria Teresa. “Proposta per una classificazione metrica delle cacce trecentesche.” In La musica al tempo del Boccaccio e i suoi rapporti con la letteratura (Siena and Certaldo, 1975).
Long, Michael P. “Ita se n’era a star nel Paradiso: The Metamorphoses of an Ovidian Madrigal in Trecento Italy.” In L’Europa e la musica del Trecento, Congresso IV (Certaldo, 1984).
Newes, Virginia. “Chace, Caccia, Fuga: The Convergence of French and Italian Traditions.” Revue de musicologie 41 (1987): 27–57.
Pirrotta, Nino. “Le musiche del codice Squarcialupi.” In Il codice Squarcialupi, edited by F. Alberto Gallo. Florence, 1992.

Lorenzo da Firenze (d. Florence, December 1372 or January 1373) was a key Italian composer and music teacher associated with the second generation of Trecento polyphonists. Also known as Magister Laurentius de Florentia and Ser Laurentius Masii (likely the son of Tomaso), Lorenzo is documented as a canon at San Lorenzo in Florence from 1348 until his death. Villani ranked him with Bartolino da Padova among the most reputable contemporary composers. His close musical environment included Francesco Landini—possibly as master and pupil—and other Florentine figures such as Andrea da Firenze and Paolo da Firenze.

Lorenzo’s manuscripts show connections to literary and learned circles: he set poems by Boccaccio and Sacchetti, and the pedagogical works Antefana and Dolgomi a voi indicate his role as a teacher. His preserved works—ten madrigals, one caccia, a monophonic Antefana, a possible Gloria and Sanctus, and several ballette—are transmitted almost exclusively in Tuscan sources, notably the Squarcialupi Codex, which contains all the secular compositions.

Lorenzo’s music is marked by wide-ranging experimentation. His style features extensive melisma, frequent imitation, purposeful displacement of text between parts, and part-crossing. Alongside these innovations, his music preserves several older stylistic elements—parallel perfect consonances, a conservative approach in monophonic ballette and ballate. French influence surfaces in his caccia (which uses a vocal tenor in the chace manner) and in isorhythmic episodes, as seen in Povero zappator. Notationally, his compositions bridge older Italian and more modern French (Ars Nova) practices, as reflected in the two versions of Ita se n’era star. The use of accidentals, occasionally with chromatic effect, is also notable. Singular among Trecento composers, the Sanctus displays a heterophonic texture.

Bibliography
Von Fischer, Kurt, revised by Gianluca D’Agostino. “Lorenzo da Firenze.” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001; rev. 2009. Accessed October 9, 2025.
“Lorenzo da Firenze.” Wikipedia. Accessed October 9, 2025.
Villani, Filippo. De origine civitatis Florentiae et eiusdem famosis civibus. Edited by G.C. Galletti. Florence, 1847; edited by G. Tanturli. Padua, 1997.
Bongi, Salvatore, editor. Le croniche di Giovanni Sercambi, Lucchese. Lucca, 1892.
Li Gotti, E., and Nino Pirrotta. Il Sacchetti e la tecnica musicale del Trecento italiano. Florence, 1935.
Pirrotta, Nino. “Lirica monodica trecentesca.” in Poesia e musica e altri saggi (Florence, 1994), 35–46.
Von Fischer, Kurt. Studien zur italienischen Musik des Trecento und frühen Quattrocento. Berne, 1956.
Main, Alexander. “Lorenzo Masini’s Deer Hunt.” In The Commonwealth of Music, in Honor of Curt Sachs, edited by Gustave Reese and Robert Brandel. New York, 1965.
Seay, Albert. “The Beginnings of the Coniuncta and Lorenzo Masini’s L’Antefana.” In L’Ars Nova italiana del Trecento II (Certaldo and Florence, 1969).
Allaire, Gaston G. “Les énigmes de l’Antefana et du double hoquet de Machault: une tentative de solution.” Musica disciplina 66 (1980): 27–56.
Pirrotta, Nino. “On Landini and Ser Lorenzo.” Rivista musicale italiana 48 (1994): 5–13.
Flisi, Mario. “Notazione francese e italiana: Lorenzo da Firenze e la sperimentazione notazionale.” In Problemi e metodi della filologia musicale, edited by Silvia Campagnolo. Lucca, forthcoming.

Francesco Landini (b. Fiesole or Florence, c. 1325; d. Florence, Sept. 2, 1397) was the preeminent Italian composer, poet, organist, and instrument maker of the second generation of Trecento musicians. Blind from childhood due to smallpox, Landini became renowned for his exceptional musical talent and intellect, mastering organ, singing, poetry, and instrument-making. He maintained close relations with leading intellectuals such as Coluccio Salutati and garnered praise from Filippo Villani, Franco Sacchetti, Giovanni da Prato, and later humanist Cristoforo Landino.

Landini’s career was centered in Florence, where he was organist at Santa Trinità (1361), chaplain at San Lorenzo (1365–97), and involved in several organ-building projects, including those at SS Annunziata and Florence Cathedral. His reputation was celebrated during his lifetime and he enjoyed considerable status as a public intellectual—the corona laurea (laurel crown) was reportedly bestowed upon him by the King of Cyprus, and he is depicted with this crown in the Squarcialupi Codex’s famed illumination. Writings by Giovanni da Prato, Cristoforo Landino, and others place Landini at the center of Florence’s musical and literary scene in the late 14th century.

Landini’s musical output is the most voluminous of any Trecento composer, with 154 works attributed securely to him: 89 ballate for two voices, 42 for three voices, nine in both two-part and three-part versions, one French virelai, one caccia, and 12 madrigals (nine for two voices and three for three voices). Three works are known in instrumental versions from the early 15th century, and several sacred contrafacta as well as laude utilize his music. His compositions were widely copied in the most important Italian manuscripts, with the Squarcialupi Codex serving as the principal source.

Landini’s style is distinctively melodic and expressive, celebrated for the so-called “Landini cadence” (under-third cadence) at phrase endings, which became emblematic of Italian music of the period. His music ranges from the simply lyrical to the most complex, featuring canonic and isorhythmic structures, ingeniously synthesized Italian and French techniques, and a profound sensitivity to poetic diction. He often set text to both upper voices and employed varied structural forms, including experimentation with chromatics and modal harmony. The three-voice ballate, in particular, reveal a synthesis of French contratenor technique with the Italian style of parallel movement and flowing melody.

Landini was also a poet and philosopher, writing on topics ranging from logic to ethics. Several of his texts (and at least one sonnet) survive independently of their music. His influence extended far beyond Italy: his works were adapted as laude, cited by Oswald von Wolkenstein, and referenced in literary works into the 15th and 16th centuries. The scope and artistry of his surviving music confirm his reputation as the “sweet new style’s” greatest master and as the defining voice of Italian ars nova.

Bibliography
Von Fischer, Kurt, revised by Gianluca D’Agostino. “Francesco Landini.” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001; rev. 2009. Accessed October 11, 2025.
“Francesco Landini.” Wikipedia. Accessed October 11, 2025.
Villani, Filippo. De origine civitatis Florentiae et eiusdem famosis civibus. Edited by G.C. Galletti. Florence, 1847; edited by G. Tanturli. Padua, 1997.
Ellinwood, Leonard. “Francesco Landini and his Music.” Musical Quarterly 22 (1936): 190–216.
Pirrotta, Nino. “On Landini and Ser Lorenzo.” Rivista musicale italiana 48 (1994): 5–13.
M.T.R. Barezzani and A. Delfino, editors. Col dolce suon che da te piove: studi su Francesco Landini e la musica del suo tempo in memoria di Nino Pirrotta. Florence, 1999.
Guerrero, Jeannette. “Francesco’s Dream: Musical Logic in Landini’s Three-Voice Ballate.” Music Theory Online 13 (2007).

Composers of the Medieval Era Playlist Tracks

41. Così pensoso
42. Ne la partita pianson
43. Adiu, adiu dous dame
44. Che cosa è questa, Amor
45. Creata fusti o vergine Maria (contrafactum of Questa fanciulla)

P. des Molins (fl. mid-14th century) was a French composer whose works and biography are closely tied to the vibrant courtly and transnational culture of the ars nova. His identity is likely connected to Perotus de Molyno, documented as being in England in 1357–59 among the musicians of the chapel of King Jean II of France during the king’s captivity by Edward III—a period that saw significant cultural exchange between the French and English courts. Alternative hypotheses about his identity have been proposed, but the prevailing view links him to this historical figure.

Only two compositions by P. des Molins survive, yet both achieved remarkable popularity and diffusion across late medieval Europe. The three-voice ballade De ce que fol pense appears in numerous manuscripts, sometimes with a fourth voice (triplum), and was also arranged for decorated two-part keyboard. This ballade had significant visual resonance, with its opening cantus famously depicted on a contemporary tapestry—showing a lady playing a harp as a servant holds a roll of music.

His three-voice rondeau Amis, tout dous vis is similarly well transmitted, known in versions featuring two distinct contratenors and two closely related but ornamented upper-voice variations. Both pieces exemplify the rhythmic sophistication, lyric intensity, and technical elaboration characteristic of the mid-14th-century chanson tradition, and their popularity is reflected in manuscript sources from France, Flanders, and Italy.

Bibliography
Reaney, Gilbert. “P. des Molins.” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001. Accessed October 19, 2025.
“P. des Molins.” Wikipedia. Accessed October 19, 2025.
Wright, Craig. Music at the Court of Burgundy, 1364–1419. Henryville, PA, 1979.

Niccolò da Perugia (fl. Florence, second half of the 14th century) was an Italian composer and poet whose career and music are closely tied to the Tuscan tradition of Trecento song. His full name appears variously as Nicolaus de Perugia, Magister Sere Nicholaus Prepositi de Perugia, Niccolò del Proposto, or Ser Nicholo del Proposto, indicating origin in Perugia, where his father served as provost. The only certain biography situates him in Florence in 1362, visiting the monastery of Santa Trinità with Ser Gherardello. Evidence from literary sources and manuscript concordances suggests that Niccolò was active in Florence between 1354 and 1373, setting poems by Franco Sacchetti and others. A possible connection with “Ser Niccolò,” a singer of laude in Florence in 1393, has been proposed.

Niccolò’s works form one of the richest corpora among composers of the later Trecento. Thirty-six pieces survive in Tuscan manuscripts, with the largest share in the Squarcialupi Codex—twenty-three are unique to that source. Additional works appear in London, Paris, and Florence manuscripts. His known output includes numerous two-voice ballatas (notable for their textual and musical dialogue, melismatic passages, and concise musical form), madrigals with innovative strophic settings, and a handful of cacce (notably La fiera testa, also set by Bartolino da Padova). Niccolò’s ballatas display a particular fondness for short, aphoristic forms (the so-called minime and piccole ballate), sometimes structured as dialogues or embedding moralizing and folkloric themes.

Niccolò’s compositional style reflects the influence of Giovanni da Cascia and Jacopo da Bologna, conforming to earlier madrigalian models yet advancing the genre through rich word setting, inventive strophic variation, and textural contrast. His madrigals generally avoid part-crossing and favor distinct voices, while a three-voice example features continual text movement among voices. Several of his works found a second life as lauda contrafacta or as poetic texts copied independently, pointing to their enduring popularity.

Despite the allusions to political or heraldic references (notably the anti-Visconti tone in La fiera testa), Niccolò’s music stands out for its clarity, rhetorical acumen, and adaptability. Manuscript evidence, lost works cited by Sacchetti, and further musicological study affirm his substantial legacy within Italian secular music at the dawn of the Renaissance.

Bibliography
Von Fischer, Kurt, revised by Gianluca D’Agostino. “Niccolò da Perugia.” Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001; rev. 2009. Accessed October 20, 2025.
“Niccolò da Perugia.” Wikipedia. Accessed October 20, 2025.
D’Accone, Frank A. “Music and Musicians at the Florentine Monastery of Santa Trinità, 1360–1363.” Quadrivium 12/1 (1971): 131–51.
Kelly, Stephen Kevin. The Works of Niccolò da Perugia. Diss., Ohio State University, 1974.
Gallo, F. Alberto. “The Musical and Literary Tradition of Fourteenth-Century Poetry Set to Music.” In Musik und Text in der Mehrstimmigkeit des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts (Wolfenbüttel, 1980), 55–76.
Mazzantini, Agostino. “Le ballate di Niccolò da Perugia.” In L’Ars Nova italiana del Trecento V, ed. A. Ziino (Palermo, 1985), 179–95.
Wilson, Blake McDowell. “Madrigal, Lauda, and Local Style in Trecento Florence.” Journal of Musicology 15 (1997): 137–77.

Donato da Cascia (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. Seventeen compositions by Donato survive, including: fourteen madrigals, one caccia, one virelai, and one ballata. Except for one piece, his music is all for two voices, typical of mid-century practice in that regard, but unusually virtuosic; according to Nino Pirrotta, it “represents the peak of virtuoso singing in the Italian madrigal, and therefore in the Italian ars nova as a whole.”

Donato’s madrigals usually feature an upper voice part which is more elaborate than the lower, and often use imitation between the two voices, though usually the imitative passages are short. In addition he uses repeated words and phrases, often with a humorous intent; the influence of the caccia is evident in this device. Jacopo da Bologna was probably an influence on his work, as can be seen in the single-voiced transitional passages between different verses of the madrigals, typical of Jacopo.

Matheus de Sancto Johanne (died after 10 June 1391), also known as Mayshuet, was a French composer of the late medieval era. Active both in France and England, he was one of the representatives of the complex, manneristic musical style known as the ars subtilior, 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. The style also is found in the French Cypriot repertory. Often the term is used in contrast with ars nova, which applies to the musical style of the preceding period from about 1310 to about 1370; though some scholars prefer to consider ars subtilior a subcategory of the earlier style. Primary sources for ars subtilior are the Chantilly Codex, the Modena Codex, and the Turin Manuscript.

Six of his compositions have survived with reliable attribution. They include an unusual motet for five voices, Ave post libamina/Nunc surgunt (very few motets of the period have more than four voices), and five secular works: three ballades and two rondeaux. Two of the ballades, and one of the rondeaux, are for three voices, and these are later compositions more associated with the ars subtilior style; the others are four voices, and were possibly written earlier. That he was well-appreciated in England can be seen in late copies of his motet made there around 1430, for example, in the Old Hall Manuscript.

Jehan Vaillant (fl. 1360–1390) was a French composer and music theorist. Besides five (possibly six) pieces of music surviving to his name, he was also the author of a treatise on tuning. Vaillant was part of the post-Machaut generation whose music shows few distinctly ars subtilior features, leading scholars to recognize Vaillant’s work as closer to the ars nova style of Machaut.

Vaillant may have been “a younger contemporary of Machaut”, but if, as the Chantilly Manuscript records, one of his rondeaux was copied in Paris in 1369, then he was “rhythmically in advance of Machaut’s style”. This rondeau has two texts, Dame doucement and Doulz amis, while another has three, Tres doulz amis, Ma dame and Cent mille fois. Two of his rondeaux are monotextual: Pour ce que je ne say, which is isorhythmic and pedagogical, and Quiconques veut, a polymetric piece that is actually anonymous but sometimes ascribed to Vaillant. Of his works, only the ballade Onques Jacob is “fully in the style of Machaut”.

Vaillant’s Par maintes foys, a virelai with imitation bird-calls, was probably one of the most popular works of the time, certainly one of the most copied, surviving in nine sources, including versions with two voices, an added cantus, a Latin contrafactum and one with a German contrafactum by Oswald von Wolkenstein.

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. The Squarcialupi Codex, the largest source of Italian music of the 14th century, contains 37 pieces by Bartolino. A few other sources contain pieces by him, and his music was evidently widespread, indicating his reputation.

Bartolino’s music, unlike that of his contemporary Francesco Landini, shows little influence from the French ars nova. His 27 ballate are almost all vocal duets, in the Italian fashion (the French at that time were mainly writing them as a single vocal line with one or two instrumental accompanying parts). Eleven of Bartolino’s madrigals survive; like the ballate, they are mostly for two voices, however there are two pieces for three, and one of them (La Fiera Testa) has a macaronic text which is trilingual, one strophe in Italian, one in Latin and the final Ritornello section in French. This practice was common in the High Middle Ages but had become rare by the end of the 14th century.

Magister Franciscus (fl. 1370–80) was a French composer-poet in the ars nova style of late medieval music. He is known for two surviving works, the three-part ballades: De Narcissus and Phiton, Phiton, beste tres venimeuse; the former was widely distributed in his lifetime. Modern scholarship disagrees on whether Franciscus was the same person as the composer F. Andrieu.

Philippus de Caserta (fl. c. 1370) was a late medieval music theorist and composer associated with the style known as ars subtilior. Most of his surviving works are ballades, although a Credo was recently discovered, and a rondeau has been attributed to him. His ballade En attendant souffrir was written for Bernabò Visconti, confirmed by the presence of Visconti’s motto in the upper voice. Two of Caserta’s pieces, En remirant and De ma dolour, use fragments of text from chansons by the most famous composer of the century, Guillaume de Machaut. Caserta’s own repute was significant enough for Johannes Ciconia to borrow portions of Caserta’s ballades for his own virelai, Sus une fontayne. Five theoretical treatises have been attributed to Caserta, with some in dispute among scholars.

The Monk of Salzburg (German: Mönch von Salzburg) was a German composer of the late 14th century. He worked at the court of the Salzburg archbishop Pilgrim von Puchheim (1365–96). More than 100 Liederhandschriften (manuscripts) in Early New High German are attributed to him.

His name and monastic order is unknown; some of the introductions to the manuscript sources mention the names Herman, Johans, and Hanns and describe him as either Benedictine or Dominican. Despite this confusion, all the manuscripts that contain his works “agree that he was a learned monk who wrote sacred and secular songs”. His compositions overcome the Minnesang traditions and even approach recent polyphonic settings.

Johannes Alanus (fl. late 14th or early 15th century) was an English composer. He wrote the motet Sub arturo plebs/Fons citharizancium/In omnem terram. Also attributed to him are the songs “Min frow, min frow” and “Min herze wil all zit frowen pflegen”, both lieds, and “S’en vos por moy pitié ne truis”, a virelai. O amicus/Precursoris, attributed simply to “Johannes”, may be the work of the same composer.

Sub Arturo plebs/Fons citharizancium/In omnem terram is an ars nova mensuration motet with a different text in each voice. The “triplum”, or third voice, is on a text which names 14 musicians. These mentions, in some cases, are the sole extant references to these active musicians. Brian Trowell has identified many of those named with royal households. There has been significant debate as to the dating of this motet. The earliest dating assumes that it was written for the 1349 founding of the Order of the Garter, this date suggested by Trowell. Roger Bowers suggests that the list of musicians includes musicians who were no longer active at the time of the writing. Margaret Bent and others argue for a later date because of the style of the music itself, which includes a complex structure with three levels of diminution and rhythmic overlapping. This later dating, however, does not fall in with the theory that the composer is the same as the chaplain Johannes Aleyn. A certain date earlier than 1370 for this work would lead to a change in accepted ideas about the mid-14th-century style.

Johannes Symonis Hasprois (fl. 1378–1428) was a French composer originally from Arras. Four of his works of music survive in four different manuscripts. Hasprois’s early two-voice ballade Puisque je sui fumeux is a prime example of the exceedingly complex style of the ars subtilior. The text of this ballade is also preserved anonymously as Balade de maistre fumeux. It is similar to a rondeau by Solage, Fumeux fume par fumee, and both were probably written for the highly eccentric circle gathered around Jean Fumée If so, then it probably dates to the time when Hasprois was at the court of Charles V.

Hasprois wrote two other ballades in the tradition of courtly love as it was being expressed circa 1400. Ma doulce amour is preserved in three manuscripts and is the more complicated of the two. The syllabic Se mes deux yeux is found in only one manuscript, alongside Ma doulce.

Jo[hannes] Susay or Jehan Suzay (sometimes written Suzoy or Susoy) (fl. c. 1380; d. after 1411) was a French composer of the Middle Ages. He is the composer of three ballades in the ars subtilior style, all found in the Chantilly Codex: A l’albre sec, Prophilias, un des nobles, and Pictagoras, Jabol et Orpheus. The last ballade is also found in the Boverio Codex, Turin T.III.2, with the more accurate incipit “Pytagoras, Jobal, et Orpheus” . A a three-voice Gloria “in fauxbourdon-like style” found in the Apt codex (ff. 25v/26r) is also attributed to Susay.

Susay’s secular works have been edited in Willi Apel, French Secular Music of the Fourteenth Century and Gordon Greene, Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, volumes 18 and 19, and his Gloria by Stäblein-Harder and Cattin/Facchin.

According to the anonymous, early-fifteenth century treatise, Règles de la seconde rhétorique, the poet Jehan de Suzay (named along with Tapissier and others) was still alive at the time of writing. He is generally supposed to be this composer.

Trebor was a 14th-century composer of polyphonic chansons, active in Navarre and other southwest European courts c. 1380–1400. He may be the same person also called Triboll, Trebol, and Borlet in other contemporaneous sources. His name is possibly an anadrome of Robert.

His compositions are associated with the style known as ars subtilior, and six of his works survive in one of the most important surviving manuscripts of ars subtilior music, the Chantilly Codex. Some of his pieces explicitly reference historical events such as the Aragonese conquest of Sardinia in 1388-89 and the reign of Gaston Febus, the count of Foix. His music was well known to Avignonese composers of the time, such as Grimace and F. Andrieu, who quoted some of his pieces in their works. He is noted for his use of displacement syncopation and sustained chords, the former of which is one of the hallmark devices of ars subtilior.

Jan z Jenštejna (1348 – 17 June 1400) was a Bohemian archbishop, composer and poet. From 1379 to 1396 he was the Archbishop of Prague. He studied in Bologna, Padova, Montpellier and Paris.

His musical works were compiled in the book Die Hymnen Johanns von Jenstein, Erzbischofs von Prag of Q. M. Dreves. His musical activity was not systematic, but rather random. Before 1380 it was often dance music, then religious music.

Martinus Fabri (died May 1400) was a North Netherlandish composer of the late 14th century. Of his compositions, only four complete pieces survive, all ballades. Two of these have French texts (Or se depart and N’ay je cause d’estre lies et joyeux) and are in the ars subtilior style, highly complex and mannered. Both are three-voice compositions, though there are two (incompatible) alternatives for the third voice in Or se depart—a triplum and a contratenor. The other two ballades are in Dutch (Eer ende lof heb d’aventuer and Een cleyn parabel), with a simpler syllabic style of setting. The Leiden manuscript in which all of Fabri’s works are found also contains an incomplete ballade, Een cleyn parabel, the text of which describes a dilemma: the poet loves his lady and would like to marry her, but finds it difficult to accept her recently born child. This may be an autobiographical reference: Martinus Fabri had a son baptized in April 1396, and the godmother was Margaret of Cleves, Countess of Holland.

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, he was a leading representative of the Italian ars nova style of the Trecento, and was a prolific composer of secular songs, principally ballate.

All of Andreas’s surviving music with reliable attribution is in the genre of the ballata. Thirty are known, with eighteen being for two voices and twelve for three; in addition, one ballade in French may be his work, based on stylistic similarities and a contemporary attribution of it to a name similar to his. The main source for his work is the Squarcialupi Codex, which also includes, in the section containing Andreas’s music, a colorful illustration of a man playing an organ, probably Andreas himself.

The two-voice ballate are usually for two singing voices; two of them include an instrumental tenor. Not all of the three-voice ballate have text in all three voices, and the third voice sometimes may have been played on an instrument.

Compared to Landini’s music, in which refinement, elegance, and a memorable melodic line were the clear goals of the composer, Andreas’s music is dramatic, restless, and sometimes disjunct, and includes sharp dissonances to highlight certain passages in the text. One of his ballate includes a melodic leap of an augmented octave, highlighting the word maledetto (accursed), causing it to leap out from the rest of the music.

Johannes de Porta (c. 1350?) is associated with one work in the Chantilly Codex, the four-voice Isorhythmic motet Alma polis religio/Axe poli cum artica. This is one of the last motets found in the Chantilly Codex and contains the names of several poets and composers presumably belonging to the Augustan order; de Porta identifies himself as “the composer.” The text is a difficult one to interpret, and sometimes this piece has been accredited to Egidius de Aurolia (Gilles of Orleans) as the text states that “from him, all melody flows.” Just who is precisely meant of the many Aegidiuses or Egidiuses known from fourteenth century France is unclear, and as the otherwise unknown de Porta appears to have signed the work internally, there remains little doubt that, whoever he was, he was the actual writer of Alma polis religio/Axe poli cum artica. For a work composed in the fourteenth century, it demonstrates uncommon skill and is in advance of its time.

44. Alma polis religio/Axe poli cum artica

Anonymous

45. Patrie pacis/Patria gaudentium (late 14th century – England)

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. More surviving music of the Trecento is attributable to Paolo than to any other composer except for Francesco Landini. His music had both progressive and conservative aspects. While most of his surviving music is secular, and all of it vocal, two sacred compositions (a Benedicamus Domino for two voices, and a Gaudeamus omnes in Domino for three) have also survived.

His secular compositions are of three types: thirteen madrigals, forty-six ballate (some of which are fragmentary, and others of which have the ascription to Paolo erased in the source), and five miscellaneous secular songs. All of his music is for two or three voices, and all is datable through sources or stylistic features to the period before 1410. Whether he did any composing after 1410 is not known.

Paolo’s madrigals combine Italian and French notation, and show considerable influence of the Avignon mannerist school of the ars subtilior in their complex and intricate rhythmic patterns; however most of them are for only two voices, a conservative choice. The ballate are more progressively done overall; most are for three voices, and are lyrical, melodic, but yet use some of the extreme rhythmic intricacies of the ars subtilior school. The influence of Landini, hard to avoid for any Florentine composer late in the 14th century, is evident both in the madrigals and the ballate.

46. Altro che sospirar (Ballate)
47. Benedicamus domino
48. Era Venus

Grazioso da Padova or Gratiosus de Padua (fl. 1391–1407) was an Italian composer of the late medieval and early Renaissance eras. Of his output only three fragments remain, two sacred and one secular. He wrote two three-voice settings of portions of the Mass, a Gloria and a Sanctus, as well as ballata (Alta regina de virtute ornata). Stylistic characteristics – a mix of French and Italian traits – indicate he may have been acquainted with Johannes Ciconia, a northerner who spent some time in Padua during the period when Grazioso was active there.

Giovanni Mazzuoli (also Giovanni degli Organi) (ca. 1360 – 14 May 1426) was an Italian composer and organist of the late medieval and early Renaissance eras.

Mazzuoli is best remembered for the absence, rather than the presence, of his musical compositions. There is a large section of the Squarcialupi Codex, an important source of early Italian music, which is marked out under his name. However, no music is written in these pages; they are decorated around the edges but left blank otherwise. There are at least ten of his works written on a palimpsest in an Italian manuscript, Florence, Archive of San Lorenzo, MS 2211, but the state of the parchment has until recently left them essentially unreadable. Nine of his son Piero’s works are found in this manuscript as well. Nino Pirrotta attributed two works to Mazzuoli, one of which is a ballata ascribed in a manuscript to “Gian Toscan”, and the other a piece in the Roquefort Codex ascribed to “Johannes Florentius”. The latter has since been shown not to be a work of Giovanni Mazzuoli.

Johannes Cuvelier (fl c. 1372–d. after 1387) was a composer of the ars subtilior, whose surviving works are preserved in the Chantilly Codex. He was possibly born in Tournai and worked at the court of Charles V.

His most important work is the poem La Chanson de Bertrand du Guesclin, a tribute to the Breton military commander Bertrand du Guesclin. He also has four works in the Chantilly Codex:

• Se Galaas et le puissant Artus
• Onques Arthur, Alixandre et Paris
• Se Genevre, Tristan, Yssout, Helaine
• En la saison que toute riens encline

Grimace (fl. mid-to-late 14th century; French; also Grymace, Grimache or Magister Grimache) was a French composer-poet in the ars nova style of late medieval music. Virtually nothing is known about Grimace’s life other than speculative information based on the circumstances and content of his five surviving compositions of formes fixes; three ballades, a virelai and rondeau. His best known and most often performed work in modern-times is the virelai and proto-battaglia: A l’arme A l’arme.

He is thought to have been a younger contemporary of Guillaume de Machaut and based in southern France. Three of his works were included in the Chantilly Codex, which is an important source of ars subtilior music. However, along with P. des Molins, Jehan Vaillant and F. Andrieu, Grimace was one of the post-Machaut generation whose music shows few distinctly ars subtilior features, leading scholars to recognize Grimace’s work as closer to the ars nova style of Machaut.

49. Se Zephirus/Se Jupiter

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. He is one of the more renowned composers of the generation after Guillaume de Machaut. Antonello set texts in both French and Italian, including Beauté parfaite of Machaut; this is the only surviving musical setting of a poem by Machaut which is not by Machaut himself. He was highly influenced by French musical models, one of the first Italians to be so. One of his ballades quotes Jehan Vaillant, a composer active in Paris. He also made use of irregular mensuration signs, found in few other manuscripts. He also uses proportional rhythms in some ballades, a device which became more popular in later periods. His Italian works tend to be simpler, especially the ballate. Both his French and Italian works take as their subjects courtly love.

Solage (fl. late 14th century), possibly Jean So(u)lage, was a French composer, and probably also a poet. He composed the most pieces in the Chantilly Codex, the principal source of music of the ars subtilior, the manneristic compositional school centered on Avignon at the end of the century. Stylistically, Solage’s works exhibit two distinctly different characters: a relatively simple one usually associated with his great predecessor and elder contemporary Guillaume de Machaut, and a more recherché one, complex in the areas of both pitch and rhythm, characteristic of the ars subtilior (“more subtle art”). These two styles mostly exist separately in different songs but sometimes are found mixed in a single composition, where they can be used to underscore the musical and poetic structure. In his simpler “Machaut” style pieces Solage nevertheless makes many personal choices that are very different from what Machaut typically does. Moreover, the simpler style is not necessarily an indication of an earlier date nor the complex style a reliable sign of a later date. Solage uses his techniques to link text and music together, either in terms of form or else of meaning. Nevertheless, some of his ars subtilior music was quite experimental: the best-known example in this complex style is his bizarre Fumeux fume par fumée (approx: “The smoky one smokes through [or for] smoke”), which is extravagantly chromatic for the time; it also contains some of the lowest tessitura vocal writing in any music of the period.

Jacob Senleches (fl. 1382/1383 – 1395) (also Jacob de Senlechos [i.e. Senleches] and Jacopinus Senlesses) was a Franco-Flemish composer and harpist of the late Middle Ages. He composed in a style commonly known as the ars subtilior.

Despite the small number of transmitted compositions, Jacob de Senleches is counted among the central personalities of ars subtilior. All his compositions are polyphonic settings of French texts for three parts. Some texts appear autobiographical while others participate in a widespread tradition of textual and musical citation. Senleches developed many distinctive rhythmic and notational innovations.

Borlet was a 14th- and 15th-century composer whose life we know extremely little about. It is thought that his name is an anagram of Trebol, a French composer who served Martin of Aragon in 1409 at the same time as Gacian Reyneau and other composers in the Codex Chantilly.

If this Trebol is the same as Trebor then he has seven surviving compositions. If not then he is only known for his virelai He tres doulz roussignol and its variation Ma tre dol rosignol, which is also a virelai.

John Forest (c. 1365 – 25 March 1446), was an English composer of the late medieval era. There are two motets of Forest’s in the Old Hall Manuscript, but much more survives in Continental sources such as the Trent Codices. His music contrasts declamatory and melismatic passages; the conflict of rhythms between the various voices gives his music a restless quality.

50. Qualis est dilectus tuus

Johannes Ciconia (c. 1370 – between 10 June and 13 July 1412) was an important Franco-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 in the service of the papal chapels in Rome and later and most importantly at Padua Cathedral.

Ciconia’s music is an eclectic blend of styles. Pieces typical of northern Italy, such as his madrigal Una panthera, appear with pieces steeped in the French ars nova. The more complex ars subtilior style surfaces in Sus un fontayne. While it remains late medieval in style, his writing increasingly points toward the melodic patterning of the Renaissance, for instance in his setting of O rosa bella. He wrote music both secular (French virelais, Italian ballate and madrigals) and sacred (motets and Mass movements, some of them isorhythmic) in form. He is also the author of two treatises on music, Nova Musica and De Proportionibus (which expands on some ideas in Nova Musica). His theoretical ideas stem from the more conservative Marchettian tradition in contrast to those of his Paduan contemporary Prosdocimus de Beldemandis.

51. Venecie mundi splendor – Michael qui stena domus – Italie
52. VI. Gloria spiritus et alme No. 6
53. XV. Albane, misse celitus – Albane doctor maxime

Aleyn (fl. c. 1400) was an English composer. Two of his works survive in the Old Hall Manuscript, one a Gloria (no. 8), the other a Sarum Agnus Dei discant (no. 3, Old Hall, no. 128), later scratched out, which is ascribed to W. Aleyn.

Egardus (fl. 1400; also Engardus or Johannes Echgaerd) was a European medieval composer of ars subtilior. Almost no information survives about his life, and only three of his works are known. A certain “Johannes Ecghaerd”, who held chaplaincies in Bruges and Diksmuide, may be a possible match for Egardus. The extant works—a canon and two Glorias—appear to be less complex than music by mid-century composers, possibly because they date from either very early or very late in Egardus’ career.

Queldryk (also Qweldryk) (fl. c. 1400) was an English composer. He is thought to have been associated with a similarly named estate (Wheldrake) of the Cistercian monastery of Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire. He may have been the Richard Queldryk who donated a miscellanea volume of sacred music to Lichfield Cathedral. His known surviving output comprises two pieces in the Old Hall Manuscript, a Gloria and a Credo.

Andrea Stefani (fl. c. 1400) was an Italian monk and a member of the Order of the Bianchi Gesuati, literally meaning “white Jesuits,” but not related to the Jesuit monks who are generally known today. He is known to have led his order in public processions in Florence in 1399 and was considered a master singer and composer. By 1406 Stefani had settled in Lucca and his three surviving musical works are found only in the Lucca Codex or “Codex Mancini” (Archivio di Stato 184.) Stefani is known for two ballate, Con tutta gentilezza and I senti’ matutino, and a madrigal, Morte m’a sciolt. Five lauds written by Stefani are also known to exist, but as texts only, with no music. As Stefani’s music is located in the part of the Mancini Codex that was compiled in Lucca, his works were probably added to the book between 1410 and 1430.

Oswald von Wolkenstein (1376 or 1377–August 2, 1445) was a poet, composer and diplomat. He is one of the most important German composers of the Middle Ages. There are three main topics of his work: travel, God and sex. Oswald’s poems are preserved in three manuscripts:

• MS A (Vienna), 42 songs completed in 1425, with an addition of another 66 poems from 1427 to 1436.
• MS B (Innsbruck): 1432
• MS C (Innsbruck-Trostburg): 1450, a copy of B.

Thomas Fabri (c. 1380 – c. 1420) was a composer from the Southern Netherlands (Flanders), who worked during the early 15th century. Only four of his works have been preserved in foreign sources. Two works are settings in three parts on Dutch lyrics. They may have been written down by a German in a song book (perhaps at the Council of Constance) that has been illustrated by an Italian and is kept now in the Abbey of Heiligenkreuz.

Matteo da Perugia (fl. 1400–1416) was a medieval Italian composer, presumably from Perugia. From 1402 to 1407 he was the first magister cappellae of the Milan Cathedral; his duties included being cantor and teaching three boys selected by the Cathedral deputies. He wrote many contra-tenors to existing works, which resulted in many of these being wrongly ascribed to him. Matteo wrote in many forms, including the virelai, the ballade, and the rondeau.

Baude Cordier (fl. early 15th century) was a French composer in the ars subtilior style of late medieval music. Cordier’s works are considered among the prime examples of ars subtilior. In line with that cultural trend, he was fond of using red note notation, also known as coloration, a technique stemming from the general practice of mensural notation. The change in color adjusts the rhythm of a particular note from its usual form. (This musical style and type of notation has also been termed “mannerism” and “mannered notation.”)

54. Se Cuer D’amant Par Soy Humilier

Composers of the Transitional Period

Antonio da Cividale (also Antonius de Civitate Austrie) (fl. 1392–1421) was an Italian composer of the early Quattrocento, at the end of the musical medieval era and beginning of the Renaissance. He is one of a few Italian composers of the early 15th century whose works have survived; they are transitional between the Trecento and the early Renaissance styles.

Antonio wrote both sacred and secular vocal music. Of the sacred music, four mass movements and six motets have survived (some of the motets were incidental pieces written for specific occasions; these are the ones with known dates). The motets are for three or four voices, the mass movements for two or three. Stylistically, his lines are short, broken by rests, and depend on repetition as well as sequential treatment of short motifs. He was also interested in compositional “tricks” such as phrases which are first sung forward, then backward, and in addition he wrote parts that were sometimes strictly canonic. Isorhythm and other traits of the contemporary French style are prominent, but unlike the French composers, Antonio seems to have written the tenor parts to his motets himself, rather than borrowing them from pre-existing chant. He was a fairly prolific composer, and while it is not known how much of his music is lost, his six surviving motets are one of the largest groups of surviving motets by a single Italian composer of the time. Most of his music survives in sources in northern Italy.

Three rondeaux, three virelais, and one ballade survive of his secular output. All except the ballade are in French; the ballade, Jo vegio per stasone, is in Italian, although with the exception of the incipit, the text is lost.

The music of Antonio and his contemporaries was a formative influence on Guillaume Du Fay during his years on the Italian peninsula.

Antonio “Zacara” da Teramo (c.1350/1360 – between May 19, 1413 and mid-September 1416) 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.

Studies on Zacara’s music are all relatively recent, and much remains to be solved in terms of chronology and attribution. He seems to have been active as a composer throughout his life, and a stylistic development is evident, with two general phases taking shape: an early period, dominated by song forms such as the ballata, similar in style to the work of Jacopo da Bologna or Francesco Landini; and a period possibly beginning around 1400, when he was in Rome, during which his music is influenced by the ars subtilior.

Both sacred and secular vocal music survive by Zacara, and in greater quantity than most other composers from the period around 1400. Numerous paired mass movements, Glorias and Credos, are in a Bologna manuscript (Q15), compiled beginning around 1420; seven songs appear in the Squarcialupi Codex (probably compiled 1410–1415) and 12 in the Mancini Codex (probably compiled around 1410). Three songs are found in other sources, including the ars subtilior, Latin-texted Sumite, karissimi, capud de Remulo, patres. Apart from one caccia (Cacciando un giorno), a Latin ballade (Sumite, karissimi), and a madrigal (Plorans ploravi), his secular songs are all ballate.

The songs in the Squarcialupi Codex and Mancini Codex differ greatly in style. Those in the former document were probably written early in Zacara’s career, and show influence from lyrical mid-century Italian composers such as Landini; the music in the Mancini Codex is more closely related to the mannerist style of the ars subtilior.

Zacara’s mass movements appears to have been influential on other composers of the early 15th century, including Johannes Ciconia and Bartolomeo da Bologna; some of his innovations can even be seen in Du Fay. Zacara may have been the first to use ‘divisi’ passages in the upper voices. His movements are much longer than other 14th century mass movements, and use imitation extensively, as well as hocket (a more archaic technique). In general, his paired movements—Gloria, Credo—are a link between the scattered, ununified movements of the 14th century (Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame being the significant exception) and the cyclic mass which developed in the 15th century.

Some of Zacara’s pieces are found in very distant sources, indicating his fame and wide distribution, including in a Polish manuscript and in the English Old Hall Manuscript (no. 33, a setting of the Gloria).

55. Plorans ploravi perché la Fortuna
56. Credo “Cursor”

Jacobus Vide (French: Jacques Vide; fl. 1405–1433) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the transitional period between the medieval period and early Renaissance. He was an early member of the Burgundian School, during the reigns of John the Fearless and Philip the Good.

All eight of his surviving works are rondeaux, secular French songs which were a favorite of the Burgundians. They are somewhat unusual, in comparison to other music of the period, in their free use of dissonance, and in addition are marked by frequent use of cross-rhythms. All of the characteristic cadences of the period – the Landini cadence, the Burgundian cadence, and the V–I cadence where the lowest voice jumps an octave to avoid parallel fifths – are common in Vide’s music.

One of his more enigmatic songs is a three-voice rondeau, Las, j’ay perdu mon espincel, in which the upper voices, the superius and the tenor, are fully written out, but the contratenor is left blank. Since the manuscript was carefully prepared, it is probable that the missing part was deliberate, and was a pun on the song text “j’ay perdu mon” (I lost my …), in which case the singer, likely trained to improvise as well as sing from score, would have had to fill in by himself on the spot.

Johannes Cesaris (fl. 1406 – 1417) was a French composer of the late medieval era and early Renaissance. He was one of the composers of the transitional style between the two epochs, and was active at the Burgundian court in the early 15th century. Of his works, one motet, two ballades, and five rondeaux survive, as well as a sixth rondeau which has a contested attribution (it may be by Passet). Stylistically, they span both the manneristic complexities of the ars subtilior, which was the predominant style in Avignon in the 1390s, and the relatively simple song style of the early 15th century as it was developing in the courts of France and Burgundy. His motet A virtutis ignitio/Ergo beata/Benedicta filia, for four voices with three simultaneously sung texts, is isorhythmic in all parts. One of the secular songs, the rondeau A l’aventure va Gauvain, is in a style which suggests the later generation, and may have been written later than 1417; indeed many of his pieces are from manuscripts dated from early to mid-century.

57. A virtutis ignitio/Ergo beata/Benedicta filia
58. Mon seul voloir / Certes m’amour

Conradus de Pistoria (also Coradus, de Pistoia, de Pistoja) (fl. early 15th century) was an Italian composer of the late medieval era and early Renaissance, active in Florence and elsewhere in northern Italy. Conradus was an Italian representative of the manneristic school of composers known as the ars subtilior. Two of his compositions survive, both three-voice ballades. One is on a Latin text indicating his association with a papal court; the other is a secular work in French.

Pierre Fontaine (c. 1380 – c. 1450) was a French composer of the transitional era between the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, and a member of the Burgundian School of composers. While he was well known at the time, most of his music has probably been lost. All of his surviving music is secular, and all his compositions are chansons.

Eight compositions by Fontaine survive, including six rondeaux and a ballade, two of the three types of chansons known as the formes fixes. All of Fontaine’s pieces are for three voices. Most of Fontaine’s pieces are concise: a transcription of Pastourelle en un vergier in modern musical notation only consists of 11 bars. The texture of his music is simple, with the melodic line on top, as is typical of secular Burgundian music of the period.

Pycard, also spelled Picard and Picart (fl. 1410) was an English or French medieval and Renaissance transitional composer. The name “Picard” suggests a French origin, but his music is regarded as being in an English tradition. He is one of the most prolific composers represented in the Old Hall Manuscript with nine works from it attributed to him. His music is in the ars nova style, and is unusual in its virtuosity.

59. Gloria II

Thomas Byttering (also Bytering, Bytteryng, or Biteryng; fl. c. 1400–1420) was an English composer during the stylistic transitional from medieval to Renaissance music. Five of his compositions have survived in the Old Hall Manuscript, where the musicologist Peter Wright contends they “form a small yet distinctive corpus of work notable for its technical ambition and musical accomplishment”.

Byttering’s surviving music includes five compositions: three mass sections—two Glorias and a Credo—a motet and an antiphon. The latter, Nesciens Mater, is “famous for its remarkable camouflaging of the plainsong by means of transposition and migration”. His motet is a substantial three-voice isorhythmic piece and his best known work, En Katerine solennia/Virginalis contio/Sponsus amat sponsum; it was almost certainly written for the wedding, on 2 June 1420, of King Henry V and Catherine of Valois.

The four-voice Gloria, No. 18 in the Old Hall MS, is one of the most complex canons of the early 15th century, and represents what was probably the extreme of stylistic differentiation between English and continental practice. Canons in continental sources are extremely rare, but there are seven in the Old Hall MS, and Byttering’s is the only one with the standard arrangement of the same tune in all four voices.

Richard Loqueville (died 1418) was a French composer active during the transition between medieval and Renaissance music. A musician at Cambrai Cathedral, Loqueville was a harpist and teacher, whose students included Edward III, Duke of Bar and the influential composer Guillaume Du Fay. Attributed to him are four rondeaux, a ballade, an isorhythmic motet in honour of the Breton saint Yvo, a Marian motet, and several Mass movements.

Estienne Grossin (fl. 1418–1421; also Grossim) was a French composer of the late medieval and early Renaissance eras, active in Paris. He was one of the first composers to write a partially cyclic mass, a form which was to become the predominant large-scale vehicle for musical expression later in the 15th century.

While he wrote both sacred and secular music, the sacred music predominates. Most significant among these compositions is a four-movement setting of the Ordinary of the Mass, including the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, and Sanctus (there is no Agnus Dei in this particular set; it may have been lost). The movements are unified by a motto marked as trumpetta, although it is unclear whether this was an expression marking or an actual indication for performance on a trumpet. Unification of a mass by cantus firmus writing was not to occur for another decade at least, most likely in England: Grossin was one of the first, after Johannes Ciconia, to sense the need for musical unity in the several movements and accomplish it by use of a type of motto theme.

Grossin also wrote single movements of masses, almost all for three voices (although one Agnus setting survives for four). One of his motets, Imera dat hodierno, was popular enough to be copied in at least six surviving sources. He also wrote two French chansons which have survived, one of which is a rondeau. Some of his music survives in the Trent Codices, the largest source of music from the 15th century in Europe.

Johannes Legrant (fl. c. 1420 – 1440) was a French or Burgundian composer of the early Renaissance. All of Legrant’s surviving music is vocal. His style is related to that of the early Burgundian School, and resembles some of the early work of Guillaume Du Fay and Gilles Binchois; influence may have gone either way. He wrote elegant melodic lines in the Burgundian manner, and used the secular forms which were typical of the Burgundians: the rondeau and the ballade. Imitation is also prominent in his work. In addition to his secular music – four rondeaux and a ballade – four sacred pieces have survived, including two settings of the Gloria of the mass, for two and three voices, and a three voice Credo.

Hugo de Lantins (fl. 1420–1430) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the late medieval era and early Renaissance. He was active in Italy, especially Venice, and wrote both sacred and secular music; he may have been a relative of Arnold de Lantins, another composer active at the same time in the same area.

Hugo’s music is more forward looking than that of Arnold, making use of imitation, which was to become the prevailing musical device for the next hundred years and more; indeed, imitation is more prevalent in the music of Lantins than in the music of any other composer of the early 15th century. Most of Hugo’s music is for three voices, though occasionally he added a fourth. Several sections of masses have survived, but none complete, as well as five motets, one of which is isorhythmic. In the secular music category he wrote many rondeaux, all in French, as well as some ballate in Italian.

60. Per amor de costey

Antonius Romanus (fl. 1400–1432) was an Italian composer of the early 15th century during which musical styles were in transition between the late medieval era and early Renaissance. Six sacred compositions and one secular piece by Antonius have survived. The three mass movements, two Glorias and a Credo, all for four voices, are influenced by Ciconia; the three motets, also for four voices, are isorhythmic. All three can be approximately dated. The first, Ducalis sedes/Stirps Mocenigo, can be dated to 1414 or 1415, since it is written in praise of Tommaso Mocenigo, who was elected doge of Venice in 1414. The second, Carminibus festos/O requies populi, was written for the doge Francesco Foscari, who assumed the post in 1423. The last, Aurea flammigera, he most likely wrote in praise of Gianfrancesco Gonzaga on his triumphant return from Milan in 1432. Antonius’s single remaining secular composition is a ballata, Deh s’i t’amo con fede; only one voice survives from this composition and it is without text. The similarities of style of some of Antonius’s music to Du Fay’s earliest works suggest that the two may have crossed paths, or at least known each other’s works.

61. Gloria
62. Aurea Flamigeri

Mikołaj Radomski, also called Mikołaj z Radomia and Nicholas of Radom, was an early 15th-century Polish composer. He was connected with the court of Władysław Jagiełło and wrote polyphonic music renowned for its expression of religious contemplation.

63. Magnificat

Guillaume Legrant (Guillaume Lemacherier, Le Grant) (fl. 1405–1449) was a French composer of the late medieval era and early Renaissance, active in Flanders, Italy, and France. He was one of the first composers in writing polyphony to distinguish between passages for solo and multiple voices on each part. While his work includes some aspects that foreshadow Renaissance developments, he was part of a tradition that was still deeply tied to Medieval compositional techniques (such as the isorhythmic motet).

Legrant’s music is collected in Volume 11 of the Corpus mensurabilis musicae. Seven pieces survive, of which three are sacred, and the rest secular. The sacred music includes two settings of the Credo of the Mass, and one setting of the Gloria; these are the pieces in which he makes a distinction between solo and full chorus in the polyphonic parts.

All of his surviving secular works are in the form of the virelai, one of the formes fixes. Most of the composers of the period wrote in another of formes fixes, the rondeau, but Legrant seems to have preferred the virelai, which had been set widely the century before. By 1420 few composers are known to have been writing virelais, suggesting that Legrant’s compositions may predate 1420 (the virelai was to return to favor later in the 15th century, in the music of Antoine Busnois and Johannes Ockeghem).

Beltrame Feragut or Bertrand d’Avignon (c. 1385 – c. 1450) was a French composer of the late medieval era and early Renaissance. He was one of several French composers who worked in Italy; at Florence and Vicenza. Bertrand was either a priest or monk, since that was then a requirement to become maestro di cappella at Milan Cathedral (1426–1430).

Although he was a part of the early Renaissance movement, his music and compositional approach reflect medieval conventions, especially in the context of French polyphony. His works were influential, but he is more representative of the Late Middle Ages than the Early Renaissance.

64. Excelsa civitas Vincencia

Composers of the Early Renaissance Era

Table of Contents