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RETHINKING THE SIENA CHOIRBOOK: A NEW DATE AND IMPLICATIONS FOR ITS MUSICAL CONTENTS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2005

Timothy J. Dickey
Timothy J. Dickey
Affiliation:
University of Iowa
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Extract

A 1481 date for the manuscript Siena, Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, MS K. 1. 2 (hereafter Si), which contains almost ninety pieces of late fifteenth-century liturgical polyphony including works of Obrecht, Isaac and Mouton, has rested uneasily upon an argument from Sienese copying records. A fresh codicological analysis of this important source, including evidence of matching ‘twin’ watermark pairs in datable Tuscan archival documents, has yielded a new date and a new narrative for its compilation. The main corpus, in fact, is decades later than the fragmentary appendix containing works of Dufay and Josquin. The redating presented here has manifold implications for some of the most important composers of the late fifteenth century, and for peninsular patterns of musical transmission. A secure early date for the appendix copy of Josquin's Missa L'ami baudichon, for instance, enables a reassessment of that piece's transmission to sources as far away as Poland and Bohemia in the light of recent discoveries in Josquin's biography. My new date for Josquin's mass also confirms a case of Josquin emulation within another, anonymous mass in Si. The new dating further enables a reassessment of ModE M.1.13's authority as a source for one of Johannes Martini's masses, and the identification of a heretofore unknown local Sienese composer. Finally, the new narrative for the Siena choirbook may reveal Florence as a link in the transmission of repertory from Milan and Ferrara to Siena.

Type
Research Article
Information
Early Music History , Volume 24 , October 2005 , pp. 1 - 52
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

   This study expands on a paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Columbus, Ohio, 3 November 2002, and earlier as part of the Duke University Music Department Lecture Series, 15 October 2002. My deepest thanks go to Jennifer Hambrick, Thomas Brothers, Alexander Silbiger and John Nádas for their patient assistance and stimulating comments during all stages of its preparation, to Bonnie J. Blackburn, Frank D'Accone and Jeffrey Dean for their commentary on earlier versions, and to Joshua Rifkin for his helpful comments during the course of the Fall 2003 Josquin seminar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Watermark photographs are courtesy of the Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, Siena (Figures 1 and 2), and Foto Testi (Figures 2 and 5). All rights reserved. Manuscript sigla follow the Census-Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music, 1400–1550, 5 vols., compiled by the University of Illinois Musicological Archives for Renaissance Manuscript Studies (Renaissance Studies, 1; Stuttgart, 1979–88).