Prosopography of Theorist-Composers of the Late Fourteenth Century

• In Event: Studies in Digital and Analog Prosopography: Reconnecting Cultural Networks of the Early Modern Era

Abstract

Connections between poets, composers, music theorists, performers, and patrons in the years ca. 1350–1410, such as those in the service of the Visconti at Milan, Pavia, and at the papal court at Avignon, warrant further study. Petrarch was said to have met the composer Jacopo da Bologna, the first musician to set his poetry. Others in the Visconti circle include Antonellus and Philippus de Caserta, thought to have been from Naples, the Parisian composer/theorist/teacher, Johannes Vaillant, and the mysterious composer Solage, whose name may be an anagram for the author of a treatise found in a number of contemporary sources. The manuscripts and treatises produced in France, Italy, Sicily, and elsewhere contain further evidence of connections between these late-fourteenth-century composer/theorist/teachers. We will test a framework created in our pilot NEH project “Digital Prosopography of Renaissance Musicians,” to see if we can find further links between some of these musicians.

Author

• Susan Forscher Weiss, Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University