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Francesco Landini

Francesco Landini
Born 1325 in Florence, Italy
Died September 02, 1397 in Florence, Italy
  • Period: Medieval (1-1449)
  • Country: Italy
  • Genres: Vocal

Biography

Francesco Landini was the most celebrated musician in the first school of polyphonic music in Italy. Landini was born in Fiesole on the outskirts of Florence, the son of Jacopo del Casentino, a painter and student of Giotto. A childhood bout with smallpox left him blind, and he took refuge in music; he reputedly played several instruments, but mastered the organ. Landini was famed for his ability on the organetto, a small portative organ that was pumped with one hand and played with the other. In the two surviving portraits of the composer, Landini is shown with this instrument. Landini is also a featured character in a 1389 romanza by Giovanni da Prato; in it the "sweetness and harmony" of Landini's organetto playing is said to have been capable of charming the birds down out of the trees. He most likely studied with Jacopo da Bologna and Giovanni da Cascia and was largely based in Northern Italy before 1365. He helped build the organs installed in the St. Annunziata and Florence cathedrals in 1379 and 1387 respectively. Landini was named choirmaster at the church of St. Lorenzo in Florence in 1365, a post that he held until his death in 1397.

Landini was the most popular musician in Italy in the fourteenth century, and 154 works are known to have been written by him, constituting more than a quarter of all surviving polyphonic music from the Italian trecento. Of his pieces, all but 14 are two and three-part ballate, a loose form of song perhaps following French models, with a refrain or ritornello. Some of these ballate were very popular; the ballata Questa fanciulla, Amor is found in five different manuscripts, including some that set the music to sacred texts. Orsu, gentili spiriti is mentioned by name in the da Prato romanza. The short phrases and catchy rhythm of Ecco la primavera seem to project a popular, uncultivated feel, and all of Landini's surviving music is based on secular subjects. Fragments of sacred motets ascribed to Landini are known, but their authenticity remains unclear. He also wrote 12 works known as "Madrigali"; these are not sixteenth century madrigals but more resemble an expanded form of conductus. A French virelai, Adiu, adiu, dous dame and a Pesch, or fishing caccia, Cosi pensoso, round out his known works.

Landini's music is rhythmically very free, incorporating bits of hocket, syncopation, and allusions to dance steps. There are florid figurations in some parts that are clearly intended as instrumental rather than vocal, and in his late works Landini sometimes includes an untexted part that appears to have an accompanimental function. The harmonic feature that bears his name, the "Landini" or "under-third" cadence (in which the melodic line drops briefly to a third before the final note), appears commonly throughout his works, but also can be found in earlier French works. After Landini however, the under-third cadence appears with greater frequency, and it became a key element in Italian music of the fifteenth century. Composers of later generations believed that this figure originated with Landini himself. Landini was also a noted improviser and poet, and is believed to have written many of his own texts. Contemporary accounts also allude to his skill as a philosopher and astrologer.

~ Uncle Dave Lewis, All Music Guide

 
 
Music Encyclopedia: Francesco Landini

(c 1325-97). Italian composer, poet and performer. Blinded by smallpox in childhood, he mastered the organ and other instruments, working at home in Florence and probably also in Venice, as well as writing on philosophical, religious and political topics of the day. He is buried at S Lorenzo, Florence. Most of his surviving works are ballate, of which roughly two-thirds are for two voices and one-third for three. His style ranges from simple dance-song to intricate canonic or isorhythmic forms, synthesizing the Italian style of his predecessors with French influences and displaying a distinctive gift for melody. The so-called Landini (under-3rd) cadence is frequent in upper parts. Hardly any poetry can be securely attributed to him, although the texts of the autobiographical songs, in the Italian dolce stil novo associated with Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch, are presumably his.

works:
Works

  • c 140 ballate
  • 1 virelai
  • 1 canonic madrigal
  • 9 other madrigals
  • 1 caccia

 
Biography: Francesco Landini

Francesco Landini (ca. 1335-1397), the greatest Italian composer before the late 16th century, was also a poet.

Italian art music first came to the fore in the middle third of the 14th century. Earlier music - and there certainly was much of it - seems to have been largely confined to monophony: Gregorian chants and the songs of the troubadours and of St. Francis of Assisi. Then, suddenly, polyphonic music began to flourish in the mid-14th century, particularly in Florence, culminating in the work of the poet-musician Francesco Landini.

The son of a painter, Landini became blind in childhood because of smallpox; but he acquired great virtuosity on the organ, built organs, and invented a new stringed instrument, probably similar to the harpsichord, which emerged during his time.

Although honored as a poet in both Latin and Italian, Landini's extant poems are almost exclusively for his own musical compositions. These, although many seem to be lost, constitute about a quarter of all Italian music surviving from the period 1340-1480. They found widespread popularity and reappear in many manuscripts and in arrangements for keyboard instruments. Only one small fragment of a motet has come to light, although Landini is known to have written quite a number. What remains are 154 secular songs, which are of three types, madrigals, caccie, and ballate, all in two or three voice parts.

The madrigal, very different from the more familiar 16th-century type, was the first Italian poetry set to music; hence its name, which means "in the mother tongue." It flourished particularly in the generation before Landini. His 11 madrigals are usually composed for two or three vocalists, but voices and instruments may combine on each melodic line. Each madrigal consists of two musically different sections, the first serving the two or three three-line sections of the poem and the second one the concluding two lines of text.

The caccia - the same word as the English "catch" - was a hunting or fishing song, set in the form of a canon or round. Its poetic form is that of the madrigal, so that each caccia falls into two canonic sections. In some madrigals, also, one of the two sections may be composed as a canon. Only two of Landini's caccie are extant.

The rest of Landini's output are ballate, essentially songs for a solo voice with the accompaniment of one or two instruments, though some of them are written for two or three voices. Their poetic form differs from that of the madrigal, for a refrain, modeled after the second section of the stanza and sung to the same melody, was sung at the beginning of the ballata and repeated after each of the usually three stanzas.

With his lyrical, songlike melody Landini stands out among his contemporaries. His songs possess an easy-flowing grace and are charmingly harmonized. The texts are in part by him and in part by his Florentine compatriot Franco Sacchetti. Their subjects are quite varied: religion, love, convivial companionship, and historical events.

Further Reading

A good account of Landini's achievements is in Donald Jay Grout, A History of Western Music (1960). Alec Harman, Medieval and Early Renaissance Music (1958), is also recommended.

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Francesco Landini

(born c. 1335, Fiesole, near Florence — died Sept. 2, 1397, Florence) Italian composer, organist, and poet. Blinded by smallpox as a child, he took up the study of music and the organ. He later became an organ builder as well as a composer, lyricist, and performer of more than 150 beautifully melodic two- and three-part songs. Landini's works represent about a quarter of the music that survives from the Italian Ars Nova (14th century).

For more information on Francesco Landini, visit Britannica.com.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Landini, Francesco
(fränchās'kō ländē'nē) , c.1325–97, Italian composer. Although Landini was blinded from smallpox in childhood, he learned to play the lute, guitar, flute, and organ. His organ playing was highly regarded. Celebrated in his own day as a master of the Florentine ars nova style, among his works are madrigals, cacce, and ballate. His name was also spelled Landino.
 
Wikipedia: Francesco Landini
For the tractor manufacturer, see Landini (tractor)
Landini playing a miniature organ (illustration from the 15th century Squarcialupi Codex)
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Landini playing a miniature organ (illustration from the 15th century Squarcialupi Codex)

Francesco Landini or Landino (around 1325 – September 2, 1397) was an Italian composer, organist, singer, poet and instrument maker. He was one of the most famous and revered composers of the second half of the 14th century, and by far the most famous composer in Italy.

Life

Details of his life are sketchy, but a few facts can be established with certainty, and the general outline has begun to take shape as more research has been done, especially into Florentine records. Most of the original biographical data on Landini comes from a 1385 book on famous Florentine citizens by chronicler Filippo Villani, who was also born approximately 1325.

Landini was most likely born in Florence, though his great-nephew, humanist Cristoforo Landino, gave his birthplace as Fiesole. His father, Jacopo del Casentino, was a noted painter in the school of Giotto. Blind from childhood (an effect of contracting smallpox), Landini became devoted to music early in life, and mastered many instruments, including the lute, as well as the art of singing, writing poetry, and composition. Villani, in his chronicle, also stated that Landini was an inventor of instruments, including a stringed instrument called the 'syrena syrenarum', that combined features of the lute and psaltery, and it is believed to be the ancestor of the bandura.

According to Villani, Landini was given a crown of laurel by the King of Cyprus, who was in Venice for several periods during the 1360s. Probably Landini spent some time in northern Italy prior to 1370. Evidence in some of his music also points to this: he dedicated one motet to Andrea Contarini, who was Doge of Venice from 1368 to 1382; and in addition, his works are well-represented in northern Italian sources.

He was employed as organist at the Florentine monastery of Santa Trinità in 1361, and at the church of San Lorenzo from 1365 onward. He was heavily involved in the political and religious controversies of his day, according to Villani, but he seems to have remained in the good graces of the Florentine authorities. Landini knew many of the other Italian composers of the Trecento, including Lorenzo da Firenze, with whom he was associated at Santa Trinità, as well as Andreas da Florentia, who he knew in the 1370s. Around or shortly after 1375, Andreas hired him as a consultant to help build the organ at the Servite house in Florence. Among the surviving records are the receipts for the wine that the two consumed during the three days it took to tune the instrument. Landini also helped build the new organ at SS Annunziata in 1379, and in 1387 he was involved in yet another organ-building project, this time at Florence Cathedral.

Numerous contemporary writers attest to his fame, not only as a composer, but as a singer, poet, organist, and passionately devoted citizen of Florence. His reputation for moving an audience with his music was so powerful that writers noted "the sweetness of his melodies was such that hearts burst from their bosoms." [1]

He is buried in the church of San Lorenzo in Florence. His tombstone, lost until the 19th century and now again displayed in the church, contains a depiction of him with a portative organ similar to the one shown.

Music and influence

Landini was the foremost exponent of the Italian Trecento style, sometimes also called the "Italian ars nova". His output was almost exclusively secular. While there are records of his having composed sacred music, none of it has survived. What has survived are eighty-nine ballate for two voices, forty-two ballate for three voices, and another nine which exist in both a two and a three-voice version. In addition to the ballatas, a smaller number of madrigals have survived. Landini is assumed to have written his own texts for many of his works. His output, preserved chiefly in the Squarcialupi Codex, represents almost a quarter of all surviving 14th century Italian music.

Landini is the eponym of the Landini cadence (or Landino sixth), a cadential formula whereby the sixth degree of the scale (the submediant) is inserted between the leading note and its resolution on the tonic. However this cadence neither originated with him, nor is unique to his music; it can be found in much polyphonic music of the period, and well into the 15th century (for example in the songs of Gilles Binchois). Gherardello da Firenze is the earliest composer to use the cadence whose works have survived. Yet Landini used the formula consistently throughout his music, so the eponym—which dates from after the medieval era—is appropriate.

In one of his madrigals, he set a text he wrote himself: "I am Music, and weeping I regret seeing intelligent people forsaking my sweet and perfect sounds for street music." [2]

See also

References and further reading

  • Richard H. Hoppin, Medieval Music. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1978. ISBN 0-393-09090-6
  • Kurt von Fischer, Gianluca D'Agostino: "Francesco Landini", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed November 16, 2005), (subscription access)

Notes

  1. ^ Richard H. Hoppin, Medieval Music, p. 455. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1978. ISBN 0-393-09090-6
  2. ^ Harold Gleason and Warren Becker, Music in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Music Literature Outlines Series I), p. 82. Bloomington, Indiana. Frangipani Press, 1986. ISBN 0-89917-034-X

External links


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Artist. Copyright © 2008 All Media Guide, LLC. Content provided by All Music Guide ® , a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
Music Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.  Read more
Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Francesco Landini".  Read more

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