Program Notes: Provided by Ensemble Lucidarium
Ensemble Lucidarium: Friday, November 1, 2019 - 7:30 pm
Macchine – Music and Science from the Time of Leonardo da Vinci
The music of Leonardo’s time, along with architecture, painting and poetry, was considered a domain where Mathematica naturalis exhibited all of its possibilities. The practical arts were a mirror where mathematical concepts were both applied and proven. Indeed, this fusion between art and knowledge at the dawn of the Renaissance went far beyond the concepts of art and of science with which we are familiar today. Music, in particular polyphony, more than any other form of artistic expression, was a terrain for experimentation, where research brought immediate, tangible results. The Northern maestri of the international polyphonic school experimented with complex rhythmic proportions, chromaticism, coloration and musica ficta. In doing so, they made music the place where mathematical intuitions could be brought to life, and where composers gave musical form to the proportions that governed their perception of the world.
As if to counterbalance this complex universe dominated by architects of sound, a different kind of music began to be heard in culture’s highest echelons. Because of a renewed interest in the classical tradition, the Humanists experimented with a revival of the monodic declamation of poetry, considered the most perfect form of musical expression, with an open rebellion against the polyphonic tradition, which was seen as a remnant of days past. The controversy went on for a long time, until the two positions were slowly reconciled, thanks to the efforts of polyphonists like Agricola or Gaffurius who were also accomplished Humanists. This led to the diffusion of simpler, more intuitive polyphonic forms that were better suited to Italian taste, such as frottole, barçellette, strambotti, odi and capitoli. These last two poetical-musical structures had a simple contrapunctal style, and set texts that were typically declaimed as part of the Humanist classical revival. Moreover, it is possible that the melodies found in written sources could very well be based on popular, orally-transmitted, melodic formulas.
Leonardo was an accomplished singer, and played the Lira da braccio, which he probably used to accompany himself while singing. At the same time, his modern reputation as an exceptional musician probably comes more from Giorgio Vasari’s somewhat inflated rhetoric than any reality. Although Leonardo was certainly also a musician, like many intellectuals of his time, when Vasari writes of him playing the lyre and singing “divinely to that instrument… rising above all of the other musicians”, as well as being the “best reciter of poetry and improviser of his time”, the whole should be perhaps taken with a grain of salt.
Leonardo’s extravagant macchine designed to produce music include the “viola organista”, the “tamburo elastico” (precursor of the modern timpani), a horsehead viola, flauti glissatti and others, part of the fervent desire for experimentation fueled by the twin catalysts of art and science. At the same time, from a practical point of view, they are not without their problems. The subject of extensive study since the 1960s, they are certainly considered more important today than during Leonardo’s lifetime: among the tens of thousands of pages of sketches in Leonardo’s notebooks, only around 25 designs of instruments, many of them doubles, can be found. This, together with Leonardo’s own opinions on the art of music as opposed to that of painting, should put the importance he himself placed on music into perspective. Some of the instruments are obviously designed for the theatre, with special sonic (or visual) effects in mind, while others, such as the flauti glissandi, have proven themselves impossible to realise. At the same time, there are some, based on either sketches or paintings, that can be built and played. Between practical ingenuity and unrealisable folly, they mirror one of the most remarkable minds in history.
The music of Leonardo’s time, along with architecture, painting and poetry, was considered a domain where Mathematica naturalis exhibited all of its possibilities. The practical arts were a mirror where mathematical concepts were both applied and proven. Indeed, this fusion between art and knowledge at the dawn of the Renaissance went far beyond the concepts of art and of science with which we are familiar today. Music, in particular polyphony, more than any other form of artistic expression, was a terrain for experimentation, where research brought immediate, tangible results. The Northern maestri of the international polyphonic school experimented with complex rhythmic proportions, chromaticism, coloration and musica ficta. In doing so, they made music the place where mathematical intuitions could be brought to life, and where composers gave musical form to the proportions that governed their perception of the world.
As if to counterbalance this complex universe dominated by architects of sound, a different kind of music began to be heard in culture’s highest echelons. Because of a renewed interest in the classical tradition, the Humanists experimented with a revival of the monodic declamation of poetry, considered the most perfect form of musical expression, with an open rebellion against the polyphonic tradition, which was seen as a remnant of days past. The controversy went on for a long time, until the two positions were slowly reconciled, thanks to the efforts of polyphonists like Agricola or Gaffurius who were also accomplished Humanists. This led to the diffusion of simpler, more intuitive polyphonic forms that were better suited to Italian taste, such as frottole, barçellette, strambotti, odi and capitoli. These last two poetical-musical structures had a simple contrapunctal style, and set texts that were typically declaimed as part of the Humanist classical revival. Moreover, it is possible that the melodies found in written sources could very well be based on popular, orally-transmitted, melodic formulas.
Leonardo was an accomplished singer, and played the Lira da braccio, which he probably used to accompany himself while singing. At the same time, his modern reputation as an exceptional musician probably comes more from Giorgio Vasari’s somewhat inflated rhetoric than any reality. Although Leonardo was certainly also a musician, like many intellectuals of his time, when Vasari writes of him playing the lyre and singing “divinely to that instrument… rising above all of the other musicians”, as well as being the “best reciter of poetry and improviser of his time”, the whole should be perhaps taken with a grain of salt.
Leonardo’s extravagant macchine designed to produce music include the “viola organista”, the “tamburo elastico” (precursor of the modern timpani), a horsehead viola, flauti glissatti and others, part of the fervent desire for experimentation fueled by the twin catalysts of art and science. At the same time, from a practical point of view, they are not without their problems. The subject of extensive study since the 1960s, they are certainly considered more important today than during Leonardo’s lifetime: among the tens of thousands of pages of sketches in Leonardo’s notebooks, only around 25 designs of instruments, many of them doubles, can be found. This, together with Leonardo’s own opinions on the art of music as opposed to that of painting, should put the importance he himself placed on music into perspective. Some of the instruments are obviously designed for the theatre, with special sonic (or visual) effects in mind, while others, such as the flauti glissandi, have proven themselves impossible to realise. At the same time, there are some, based on either sketches or paintings, that can be built and played. Between practical ingenuity and unrealisable folly, they mirror one of the most remarkable minds in history.
The Repertoire
The repertoire for this programme is centred around the Sforza court in Milan, where Leonardo worked from 1482 until 1499, and combines music by Northern and Italian composers, ranging from declamation, simple songs and dances to complex polyphonic works by way of the frotolla. The instrumental music included here gives a full spectrum of what Leonardo might have heard: popular dances, such as the Pavana, Piva or Romanesca, and music for the choreographies of Guglielmo Hebreo da Pesaro, who often worked for the Sforza family. Next to these functional pieces, Alexander Agricola’s versions of De tous bien pleins represent another kind of repertoire. Probably written for quiet instruments in intimate settings, this is ‘art’ music with a scientific as well as aesthetic purpose: a kind of study of the results that can be obtained by experimenting with different proportions and compositional techniques over the same cantus firmus.
The second part of the program is dedicated to an attempt at a musical reconstruction of parts of La Festa del Paradiso, commissioned by Ludovico Sforza in honour of Isabella d’Aragona, the bride of his nephew Gian Galeazzo Sforza. It was performed on January 13th 1490 with elaborate stage machines representing the planets designed by Leonardo. The text is by the Florentine Bernardo Bellincioni (1452-1492), decidedly minor (and remarkably sycophantic) poet who was a fellow Tuscan and apparent friend of Leonardo. The prelude to the spettacolo featured music and dance from Spain, Germany, France, and across Italy, including regional costumes, with even a Turkish contingent on horseback, the whole evening conceived as a kind of Macchina made to impress and astonish. Indeed, to the great minds of the day, architecture, mathematics and geography, counterpoint, poetry and perspective, color theory, and astronomy were all marvelous machines. Macchine that Renaissance Man used to measure and interpret that which he considered the greatest gift of all: the natural World and its wonders.
The repertoire for this programme is centred around the Sforza court in Milan, where Leonardo worked from 1482 until 1499, and combines music by Northern and Italian composers, ranging from declamation, simple songs and dances to complex polyphonic works by way of the frotolla. The instrumental music included here gives a full spectrum of what Leonardo might have heard: popular dances, such as the Pavana, Piva or Romanesca, and music for the choreographies of Guglielmo Hebreo da Pesaro, who often worked for the Sforza family. Next to these functional pieces, Alexander Agricola’s versions of De tous bien pleins represent another kind of repertoire. Probably written for quiet instruments in intimate settings, this is ‘art’ music with a scientific as well as aesthetic purpose: a kind of study of the results that can be obtained by experimenting with different proportions and compositional techniques over the same cantus firmus.
The second part of the program is dedicated to an attempt at a musical reconstruction of parts of La Festa del Paradiso, commissioned by Ludovico Sforza in honour of Isabella d’Aragona, the bride of his nephew Gian Galeazzo Sforza. It was performed on January 13th 1490 with elaborate stage machines representing the planets designed by Leonardo. The text is by the Florentine Bernardo Bellincioni (1452-1492), decidedly minor (and remarkably sycophantic) poet who was a fellow Tuscan and apparent friend of Leonardo. The prelude to the spettacolo featured music and dance from Spain, Germany, France, and across Italy, including regional costumes, with even a Turkish contingent on horseback, the whole evening conceived as a kind of Macchina made to impress and astonish. Indeed, to the great minds of the day, architecture, mathematics and geography, counterpoint, poetry and perspective, color theory, and astronomy were all marvelous machines. Macchine that Renaissance Man used to measure and interpret that which he considered the greatest gift of all: the natural World and its wonders.
1 Giorgio Vasari. Le Vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori et scultori italiani… (Florence: Lorenzo Tirrentino, 1550)