19 - Music and feasts in the fifteenth century

Summary

The association of music-making with dining is not difficult to understand: both activities occur in "real time" and are dynamic or kinetic in nature. Both banqueting and music-making involve similar creative processes. Both originate in raw material: undifferentiated pitches and pitch durations in the case of music-making; more or less undifferentiated foodstuffs in the case of banqueting. The fifteenth century inherited particulars of the practice of convivial music-making from the earlier Middle Ages. Consistent with the larger program of the Italian Renaissance, convivial music-making in fifteenth-century Italy either imaginatively resuscitated ancient Greek and Roman tradition or reframed and reinterpreted medieval tradition, overlaying it with a classicizing veneer. A well-known poetic description of the wedding banquet for Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti by Francesco Filelfo's contemporary Antonio Cornazano depicts a performance by the celebrated lutenist-singer Pietro Bono. Banqueting was a time-honored occasion for music-making during the fifteenth century.