THE NOTEBOOK OF A FIFTEENTH-CENTURY TRUMPETER:

LONDON, BRITISH LIBRARY, COTTON TITUS A.XXVI^*

Cotton Titus A.XXVI is a call-mark familiar to most students of early fifteenth-century music; yet inspite of many references to it in articles and concordance lists, the manuscript has never been the subject of a detailed study. This is perhaps due to the unpromising nature of its musical contents, which consist only of nine Rondeaux, all presented in simplified notation and with severely corrupted readings. However, the unusual state of these pieces may be explained with reference to the large amount of non-musical material which constitutes the main body of the manuscript; and from this it is clear that Cotton Titus A.XXVI is a notebook compiled by an itinerant musician from the Venetian colonies during the years 1444 - 1449. This short discussion will attempt to examine the source both from a purely musical point of view, and in a wider social context, starting from a discussion of the manuscript itself, its musical notation and readings, and proceeding to an explanation of these by means of a characterization of the book's compiler, Zorzi Trombetta.

The MS is one of almost one thousand volumes which made up the Cottonian Library, founded by Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631), and continued by his son, Sir Thomas (1594-1662), and his grandson, Sir John (1621-1702) who presented it to the nation in 1700.⁽¹⁾ Following a severe fire in 1731 it was incorporated into the newly-founded British Museum in 1753. Sir Robert Cotton appears to have kept no records of the sources from which he acquired his collection; indeed, it has been suggested that he deliberately removed signs of earlier ownership from some of his manuscripts in order to disguise their origin.⁽²⁾ Consequently it has been impossible to trace Cotton Titus A.XXVI any further back than the first printed catalogue of the Cottonian Library, published in 1696.⁽³⁾ Cotton habitually bound together unrelated manuscripts, and Cotton Titus A.XXVI is a typical example, consisting of five groups of manuscripts dating from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, collected together under one binding.⁽⁴⁾ It is the first of these manuscripts with which this study is concerned.

This first manuscript (ff.2-60 of the complete volume)⁽⁵⁾ is a personal notebook consisting mainly of a treatise on ship-building and related skills,⁽⁶⁾ but also including dated accounts and memoranda, prayers, poems and music.⁽⁷⁾ The first entry on the first surviving folio (f.2^r) reads,

in nomine domini l444 fe fatto questo libro per zorzi ttrombetta da modon⁽⁸⁾

That Trombetta was also the scribe is clear from his signature, Ego gehorgius ttubizine subscripsi, in the same hand on the first and last pages of the MS (f.2^r and f.60^v). With the exception of the earliest entries in the music section the entire MS was copied by Trombetta. The music section, however, is the work of three scribes. Scribe A, a professional North Italian hand using black notation with void coloration, ruled the staves for the whole section, and entered compositions on the first three openings (ff.3^v-5^v). Scribe B, an untidy and probably an inexperienced hand using void notation, entered the tenor and contratenor of Puisque m'amour on f.6^r; while Scribe C filled the remaining space (f.5^r, staves 3-7, and ff.6^v-8^r), again in an untidy void notation, with four additional versions of Puisque m'amour, each with a new contratenor, and the tenor parts of four songs, three of which are unique to this manuscript. The part-names and incipits which accompany the work of Scribe C are all in the hand of Trombetta; and thus it seems likely that he was also the music scribe.

There are three clearly distinguishable groups of material in the MS;

i) ff.8^v-22^v, 25a^r -25e^v, 27^v-28^v, 29^v-47^r, 48^r-54^v, 55^v-60^r.
These passages, containing information relating to sea-faring, constitute the majority of the MS; and were copied by Trombetta, from unknown exemplars.⁽⁹⁾

ii) ff.3^v-8^r.
The music section.⁽¹⁰⁾

iii) ff.2^r-3^r, 12^r heading, 23^r-25^v, 26^v, 47^v, 55^r, 60^v.
These passages, entered in the empty spaces around the passages listed under i), and all written in an untidy hand (though certainly that of Trombetta), consist of accounts, prayers, memoranda, moral epigrams and miscellaneous notes. All the accounts are dated, and so provide a useful guide for the dating of the rest of the material in the MS.

The arrangement of the material suggests that the work of Scribe A, the professional music scribe, was entered before any of the other surviving material, except possibly the free-hand staves or ff.2^r-3^r which may be a continuation of entries on the original first two folios.⁽¹¹⁾ This seems to have been followed by the material of group i). The surrounding blank folios were then filled by the material of group iii), which contains datesranging from 1446-1449. Thus the entry at the top of f.2^r, in nomine domini 1444 fe fatto questo libro per zorzi ttrombetta da modon, probably refers to the earlier group i), that is, to the compilation of the majority of the MS. If that is so, then the work of Scribe A must date from before 1444, and perhaps from a time before the MS came into Trombetta's possession. This is borne out by the style of black notation and text hand,⁽¹²⁾ and by the contents,⁽¹³⁾ all of which point to a date nearer the 1420's. The watermark, although close to Briquet 11878, dated 1443-44,⁽¹⁴⁾ need not contradict the earlier date since the triple mount was common and widespread throughout the first half of the fifteenth-century. The entries in void notation by Scribes B and C were added on staves left blank by Scribe A, and, as will be shown below, were almost certainly added during Trombetta's ownership of the MS, c.1444-49.

All three music scribes, though to varying degrees, used a form of notation in which breves and longs in mensuration, and semibreves and breves in were split into the appropriate number of repeated semibreves or minims. Thus, in order to perform from this notation it was not necessary to understand the rules of mensuration, perfection and imperfection, or alteration. There have been a number of studies of the use of similar notations in other sources.⁽¹⁵⁾ Margaret Bent, in a study of English sources,⁽¹⁶⁾ has suggested that the purpose of this notation in Cotton Titus may have been didactic, a suggestion which could be supported with the following passage from Erasmus, Dialogus de recta latini graeciaue sermonis Pronunciatione, Basel, 1528, pp.139-140:

But if sounds no different from , why is it that grammarians so often pronounce as sounding long and from the hollow of the mouth? How is it easier to sound it, not with a beat of the voice, but drawn out, rather than to sound the same vowel twice? He who at first, has sounded two vowels in place of one will understand this quite easily, just as those inexpert in music, in order to sing more accurately to the beat of a hand, divide a long into two breves. On the other hand, after a while they sing the same long as a continuous note, as if imagining to themselves the double beat of the vowel. Thus several breves or longs are sung, without undesirable repetitions, as a continuous sound, counting mentally, not out loud.⁽¹⁷⁾

Although a century later than Cotton Titus, this passage appears to refer to a similar splitting of longer into shorter notes for purposes of teaching.

A rather different interpretation was proposed by Charles Hamm for Bologna, Archivio di San Petronio, Fragment E, which dates from c.1485.⁽¹⁸⁾ Here an extreme form of stroke notation using only strokes and final longs is used to notate a four-part mass written in a style which suggests that it was composed for performance by instrumentalists, possibly wind players. The strokes are grouped in two and threes to indicate where they should be tied in performance in order to reproduce the correct note-lengths. In Cotton Titus, however, there is no such grouping; thus, unless one assumes that the music was performed exactly as written, which seems unlikely, there must have been a measure of agreement among performers as to how many notes of the same pitch could be tied together before repeating. The evidence of the San Petronio fragment suggests that the notes were to be tied in twos and threes, though in many cases this still would not reproduce the original values, so that performance from this type of notation can never have produced results which were entirely satisfactory.

The extent to which this type of notation was employed in Cotton T'itus varies. Scribes B and C consistently split all breves into repeated semibreves.⁽¹⁹⁾ Scribe A treats Qu'en puis je mais (f.4^r) in the same fashion so that the tenor becomes an uninterrupted stream of semibreves, accompanied by a superius which uses only semibreves and minims. In the remaining three pieces entered by Scribe A the corruptions are restricted largely to the lower, untexted voices. In Jour a jour la vie (f.3^v) the superius retains its mensuration signs, differing from the concordant sources only in having more ligatures. The lower two voices, on the other hand, omit all mensuration signs, and use only semibreves and minims.⁽²⁰⁾Une fois avant que mourir (ff.4^v-5^r) and Je me recommande (f.5^v) both retain coloration in their lower voices, splitting up larger note values only in order to avoid alteration, hemiola, and perfect breves and semibreves.⁽²¹⁾ The contrast between the state of the superius and that of the lower voices suggests that the singer of the superius was expected to know considerably more about mensural notation than were the performers of the tenor and contratenor. Indeed, it is tempting to interpret the differing states of the four songs entered by Scribe A as a deliberate progression from the rhythmic simplicity of Qu'en puis je mais to the relative complexity of Je me recommande.⁽²²⁾

The contratenors to both Jour a iour la vie and Une fois avant que mourir are, so far as is known, unique to this MS. This is particularly surprising in the case of Jour a jour since the piece has survived in a relatively large number of sources. The contratenor preserved in Cotton Titus, however, is crude both in itself and in combination with the other parts, which might suggest that it was associated with this simplified version of the piece.⁽²³⁾ The reading of Une fois is especially interesting since it is the only surviving version in three parts. The large number of surviving keyboard arrangements, together with its occurrence as a basse danse in B-Br 9085 indicate that it may have been more widely-disseminated than the two surviving versions of the chanson would suggest.⁽²⁴⁾ Moreover, the second of those versions, preserved a2 in F-Pn 10660, presents a reading which differs more radically from that of Cotton Titus than could easily be explained by scribal changes, and thus would seem to be descended through a separate manuscript tradition.⁽²⁵⁾

Many of the worst errors in the readings of Cotton Titus are a direct result of the changes in notation. The most common mistake results from the failure of the scribe⁽²⁶⁾ to recognize cases of alteration, so that an altered semibreve is transcribed as one instead of two repeated semibreves. This same error is to be found in the work of all three scribes,⁽²⁷⁾ while Scribes A and C both mistake the values of ligatures.⁽²⁸⁾ Another interesting variant occurs in the work of Scribe C when, in the Tenord'una ballatina franzese (f.5^r) a minim rest is replaced, on repetition of the same passage, by a minim note on the same line. A point of augmentation is treated in a similar way in the third copy of the tenor of Puisque m'amour:

Music Example 1

Such changes could have occurred had the source for these parts been written in a notation in which it was difficult to distinguish between notes and rests; perhaps a variety of stroke notation. Throughout the work of all three scribes there are serious harmonic and melodic corruptions, of which the following, from Une fois, is typical:

Music Example 2

Of all the unusual readings preserved in Cotton Titus those of Puisque m'amour are perhaps the most interesting since, in addition to the original tenor and contratenor (Scribe B, f.6^r), Scribe C has entered four new contratenors (f.6^v and ff.7^v-8^r), all of which are unique to this MS.⁽²⁹⁾ Scribe B's version of the original parts already contains two corrupt passages in the tenor, the first consisting of three notes a third too low, the second of five notes a third too high;⁽³⁰⁾ while his version of the contratenor represents an interesting conflation, achieved after a number of changes and additions, of the different versions preserved in the two concordant sources.⁽³¹⁾ Scribe C recopies the tenor onto f.6^v, retaining all the mistakes of Scribe B's version, and adding a few of his own, replacing most of the rests with semibreve notes in the same spaces, and omitting all dots of augmentation. He copies the part again on f.7^v, still copying from Scribe B's version, but this time retaining all the rests, and replacing dots of augmentation with minim notes in the same positions (see the first music example above). The contratenors set to these recopied tenors are all unique to this MS; and it is quite clear from their disregard of melodic line, and from their appalling counterpoint that they are all the work of a musician with only the most rudimentary knowledge of composition. Contratenors (iii), (iv) and (v) are accompanied by comments in Trombetta's hand:

Contratenor (iii): sona ttutti do de briga chol ttenor

Contratenor (iv): sona de briga con questo de sovara

Contratenor(v): questo sie un alttro conttra de questo mediemo ttenor e sona solo da per si solo e queli do sona de briga senza cuesto

Bukofzer has suggested that this seems to imply that contratenors (iii) and (iv) "could possibly be played simultaneously with the tenor, while version [(v)] could not be combined with any other contratenor. However, the music does not seem to permit any three-part combination without turning the counterpoint from bad to worse."⁽³²⁾ In view of Bukofzer's last sentence I should like to suggest the following paraphrase of Trombetta's remarks:

(iii): sounds all wrong with the tenor

(iv): often sounds wrong with this [the tenor]

(v): here is another contra for this same tenor, which can be played alone, but which sounds wrong without it [i.e. without the tenor]

This interpretation would appear to be supported by the evidence of the music. Contratenor (iii) moves largely in thirds with the tenor, but is seriously at fault at the cadences, particularly at the final cadence of the first half where, without Bukofzer's correction,⁽³³⁾ it ends a third below the tenor. Contratenor (iv) avoids thirds, moving largely in fifths and octaves, and producing ugly passages of parallel intervals.⁽³⁴⁾ In general, however, it has a better sense of harmonic direction than contratenor (iii). Contratenor (v) is certainly the best as an individual line, though it still contains many awkward leaps. Compared with contratenors (iii) and (iv) it works reasonably well with the tenor.

The fact that the incipits accompanying the work of Scribe C are all in Trombetta's hand suggests that the four unique versions of Puisque m'amour were entered into the MS during the period of his ownership; while his comments on contratenors (iii) - (v) indicate that he also heard them performed. The evidence of the notation and readings suggests that the arrangements of the pieces contained in Cotton Titus were prepared by musicians inexpert in the rules of mensural notation; and it is likely that they were copied into the MS for the use of similarly inexpert performers.

On the evidence of the music section alone it would be unwise, if not impossible, to draw any further conclusions concerning the purpose and use of the MS, or to provide a more detailed explanation of the extraordinary readings which it preserves. However, in contrast to almost every other source containing music from this period, Cotton Titus is not primarily a musical manuscript. On the contrary, the music which it contains is surrounded by a large amount of varied information which leaves very little doubt that its compiler, Zorzi Trombetta, was precisely the kind of partially-educated musician who might use, or even produce such readings as his MS preserves.

*

Prom the contents of his notebook it would seem that Zorzi Trombetta was interested chiefly in sea-faring. The large majority of the MS is occupied with information relating to this: ship-building, sail-making, navigational astronomy, mathematical problems concerned with the measurement of speed and distance, and simple medical information. The remainder of the space is occupied by the music, some poems, a few prayers, a page of moral epigrams, and scattered diary entries and accounts; and it is these dated entries that provide us with the most valuable clues to Trombetta's activities. Rearranged in chronological order the dated entries are as follows:

If, as seems likely, the date of 1441 at the head of the copy of the letter to the pope refers to the date of the original letter, rather than to this copy, then there is no reason to doubt Trombetta's statement that the book was made in 1444. Trombetta describes himself as "da modon", a Venetian-held port on the south-west corner of the Peloponnese, which formed an important link in the chain of Venetian colonies on the trade-route between Venice and Constantinople.

The entries for 1447⁽³⁹⁾ show that Trombetta spent at least two months of that year in "santtuzi". Professor Frederic Lane has kindly identified Santuzzi as the fifteenth-century Venetian name for Sandwich, on the east coast of Kent.⁽⁴⁰⁾ In the mid-fifteenth century this was a flourishing port with a small Italian colony. It is clear from a commission appointing Bartelomeo Minio Captain of the Flanders Galleys in 1485 that ships travelling on the trade-route from Venice to Flanders were expected to spend three months either at Southampton or Sandwich;⁽⁴¹⁾ and these three entries for 1447, dated at monthly intervals, suggest that Trombetta could have been attached to a ship doing just this. The same commission also states that the Captain of the Galleys "is to keep a clerk, priest, notary, an admiral...and two physicians. The salaries of the captain, admiral, musicians, physicians and others to be paid as usual by the masters." The reference to musicians is explained by Alethea Wiel: "The vessels of lesser tonnage carried two trumpets, those of heavier tonnage had a trumpet, a drum and two kettledrums."⁽⁴²⁾ This is supported by a document in the Archivio di Stato at Venice which states that in 1383 the admiral of the fleet of galleys going to Constantinople was required to have at his expense "duos tubetas".⁽⁴³⁾ They appear to have been used for signalling; but since this can have occupied no more than a fraction of their time on a long voyage it seems likely that if they had sufficient musical training they would also be expected to entertain the officers and crew.

The entries for 1448 consist mainly of three lists of accounts (see Appendix 2) which show that Trombetta was engaged in selling wine to crew-members of "la galia chapettagnia". Two entries are of particular interest for their references to pifari:

The final list of payments, dated 17 April 1449 (f.25^v), charts a journey down the Albanian coast, stopping at many of the larger ports on the way. At each of these places Trombetta was paid small sums, for unstated services, by various individuals and officials. Three entries are particularly suggestive:

A Chattaro da un per de noze, duchatto doro .i.

Da qua [D'Aqua?] in zo ave Augustin partte

A Zara da un per de noze, duchatti doro 2.

In view of the nature of the musical readings discussed above, and the evidence from the earlier dated entries and accounts, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Trombetta was being paid for providing music at these occasions, in the case of the second wedding a duet with Augustin; and it is tempting to assume that the music which they played might possibly have been the two-part arrangements of Puisque m'amour. The evidence of the entries for 1447 and 1448 suggest that Zorzi's instrument was the trumpet, but that two other players, Girardo Pifaro and Borttolamio Pifaro, were aboard the same naval squadron; this comprises a combination which was certainly common during the second half of the century when the players of these instruments were becoming increasingly literate.⁽⁴⁴⁾ Taken as a whole, the evidence of his notebook leaves little doubt that Trombetta was, as his name implies, a trumpeter, albeit a trumpeter of unusually wide interests and a degree of education; that from 1447-48 he was employed as a ship's trumpeter on the Venice-Flanders trade-route, and during 1449 was travelling around the Venetian colonies in the Adriatic, playing to local officials, residents and visitors; that he made use of, and perhaps was responsible for some of, the music contained in his notebook; and that its unusual notation and copious errors reflect his limited musical training.

Although Cotton Titus A.XXVI is quite exceptional among surviving sources of fifteenth-century polyphonic songs in its notation, in the corruption of its readings, and in the fact that it contains such a wealth of information about its own origins and uses, it would be quite wrong to assume that it was in any way exceptional in its own time. There can be little doubt that there would have been a growing demand throughout the fifteenth-century for music which would be accessible to the amateur performer without his having to master the intricacies of mensural notation. Thus it seems not unreasonable to suggest that sources such as Cotton Titus, presenting popular songs of the day in simplified notation for the amateur market, would have been at least as comrnon as the large collections of conventionally notated music which are almost all that remain to us today; for it is extremely unlikely that any manuscript whose music was so unattractively presented, and of so little textual value would be deliberately preserved after having outlived its period of use. That Cotton Titus has survived as one of the only witnesses of this alternative tradition is almost certainly due to the extraordinarily broad interests of its compiler, which led him to include both a group of beautifully executed drawings of the ships of his time and a collection of apparently worthless musical arrangements between the covers of a single notebook.

Daniel Leech-Wilkinson

Cambridge, December 1978

INVENTORY OF GATHERING 1

APPENDIX 1

Contents of the whole collection

Contents of ff.2-60

Physical description of ff.2-60

A paper manuscript of 64 folios. The foliation, 2-60, was added in the seventeenth century as part of the foliation of the entire volume of 298 folios. Five leaves have been removed, leaving only the stubs, between f.25 and f.26, and were therefore not foliated. These are numbered 25a-25e in the list of contents, above.

There are five gatherings, originally of sixteen leaves each. The first two leaves are now missing, together with all but the first two leaves of the third gathering. All but the centre bifolium of each gathering have been torn into two separate leaves, and mounted on stubs of heavy paper. The following collation is based on matching the halves of the torn watermarks:

2 missing, I¹⁴, II¹⁶, III², IV¹⁶, V¹⁶

The paper is of the same type throughout, bearing the common triple mount watermark in a form close to Briquet 11878 (30x45, Tyrol 1443-44, Palermo 1444). It is found at the centre of the following bifolia:⁽⁴⁹⁾

I: 2-13, 4-11, 6-9
II: 19-25c, 21-25a, 22-25, 23-24
III: 27-[--], 28-[--]
IV: [44]-29, 41-32, 39-34, 38-35
V: 56-49, 55-50, 54-51, 53-52

A single folio measures c.213x144 mm. The size of the written area varies, but in the music section (ff.3^v-8^r) is c.149x115 mm. There is heavy staining on the lower outer edge of each folio, heaviest at the beginning, and disappearing by f.54.

Layout of the music section

Ff.2^r-3^r are partially covered by freely-drawn five-line staves, between vertical margins c.122 mm apart, but without any music. The remaining space on each page was subsequently filled with notes, poems and accounts. Ff.3^v-8^r are each ruled with seven five-line staves, drawn with a 12.5mm five-nib rastrum. The first stave on each page is recessed c.10mm to allow space for initials, which were never entered. The recesses on ff.6^r-8^r were later filled by extending the top stave to the left. Scribe A provided very faint guide-letters for his entries as follows:

f.3v, stave 1: J, stave 4: t
f.4r, stave 6: t
f.4v, stave l: u
f.5r, stave 1: c
f.5v, stave 1: J, stave 4: t, stave 6: c

APPENDIX 2

Zorzi Trombetta's accounts⁽⁵⁰⁾

NOTES

* I should like to take this opportunity to thank Reinhard Strohm for introducing me to this MS as a masters student and for supervising my first work on it. I owe him a great debt of gratitude.

1. For a biography of Sir Robert Cotton see the entry by S.L. Lee in the Dictionary of National Biography, vol.xii (London, Smith, 1887) pp. 308-315.
Return

2. J.P. Gibson, 'The Library of Henry Savile of Banke', Transactions of the Bibliographical Society xi (1906-8) p. 132.
Return

3. Dr Thomas Smith, Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum Bibliotecae Cottonianae (Oxford, Sheldonian Theatre, 1696) p. 125. The MS is also listed in Lbl-Harley 694, No.21, p. 110, a late seventeenth-century manuscript subject-catalogue of the Cottonian Library.
Return

4. See Appendix 1 for a brief list of contents.
Return

5. See Appendix 1 for a list of contents and a palaeographical description.
Return

6. Discussed and partially transcribed in R.C. Anderson, 'Italian Naval Architecture about 1445', Mariners' Mirror xi (1925) 135-163, where 'Trombetta' is misread as 'Timbotta'.
Return

7. The only previous discussion of the music section is in H. Besseler, 'Studien zur Musik der Mittelalters', Archiv für Musikwissenschaft vii (1925) 233.
Return

8. In all quotations from the MS, abbreviations have been expanded without comment; otherwise, the original spelling has been retained. All punctuation is editorial.
Return

9. Anderson, op.cit., shows that the naval treatise was a copy of a widely-circulating fifteenth-century treatise of which another, late fifteenth- early sixteenth-century version is preserved in Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magl. XIX 7 (ed. A.Jal, Archeologie Navale, vol.2, Paris, 1840, pp. 1-133, where it is incorrectly dated early fifteenth-century).
Return

10. A list of the musical contents of the MS will be found in the Inventory of Gathering 1 below.
Return

11. The collation (see Appendix 1) shows that two folios are missing from the beginning of the MS, (labelled 0 and 1 in the Inventory). It is clear from the condition of f.2^r and f.60^v, which are much dirtier than the inner pages, that these served as the covers of the MS for some time before it was bound. This fact, together with the placing of Trombetta's statement of ownership at the top of f.2^r, suggests that ff. 0 and 1 were missing from an early date, possibly before the MS came into Trombetta's possession. Thus the free-hand staves on ff.2^r-3^r may also date from before the entry of any of the rest of the surviving material.
Return

12. Compare F-Pn 4917, which appears to date from c.1420-30, (H. Besseler, 'The Manuscript Bologna Universitaria 22l6', Musica Disciplina vi (1952) p. 49; and Philipp Möller, 'Die französischen Lieder der Handschrift Paris, Bibl. nat. nouv. acq fr. 4917' (dissertation at the Goethe Universität, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1944) p. 25a. It has a similar text-hand, and almost identical decorations at the end of each part. Walter H. Kemp, 'A Chanson for two voices by Cesaris', Musica Disciplina xx (1966) 52, has shown a close link through concordances of Cesaris' Mon seul voloir between F-Pn 4917 and GB-Ob 213. Compare also the notation and text-hand of F-Pn 4379 part II which Schoop has shown to be a source for GB-Ob 213, and therefore in Venice during the second quarter of the century, (H. Schoop, Entstehung und Verwendung der Handschrift Oxford, Bodleian, Canonici misc. 213 (Bern, Schweizerischen Musikforschenden Gesellschaft, Serie II, vol. 24, 1971) p. 72ff.) F-Pn 4379 part III, copied from GB-Ob 213 by the same scribe, and therefore probably also Venetian, has corruptions of the tenor of Je me recommande identical to those of GB-Lbl CTA XXVI. It is tempting, though premature, to see these five sources as a group of related manuscripts, originating in the Veneto during the 1420's and 30's.
Return

13. Jour a jour la vie occurs in the index to F-SERRANT which is dated 1376 (H. Besseler, 'Studien zur Musik des Mittelalters', Archiv für Musikwissenschaft viii (1926) 235; and E. Droz and G. Thibau1t, 'Un Chansonnier de Philippe le Bon', Revue de Musicologie vii (1926) 1). Je me recommande is dated c.1420 by W. Rehm, Die Chansons von Gilles de Binchois, Musikalische Denkmäler, vol.11 (Mainz, Schott, 1957). Qu'en puis je mais is preserved in F-Pn 4917 together with pieces by Cesaris, Grenon and Fontaine, and early pieces by Binchois.
Return

14. C.M. Briquet, Les Filigranes, ed. Allan Stevenson (Amsterdam, The Paper Publications Society, 1968).
Return

15. For a more extensive coverage of these notations see S. Williamson, dissertation at the University of Leeds, (in progress) [in fact, never completed. DLW 2/98].
Return

16. M. Bent, 'New and Little-Known Fragments of English Medieval Polyphony', Journal of the American Musicological Society xxi (1968) 149.
Return

17. 'Quod si nihil aliud sonabat quam , quid sibi vult quod grammatici tantopere praedicant , grandius quiddam resonans e specu oris? Quid aut facilius quam eandem vocalem duplicatam, non ictu vocis, sed productione sonare? Id facillime percipiet, qui primum pro una sonarit duas, quemadmodum solent non dum absoluti musici, quo certius canant ad ictum manus, longam diducunt in duas breves: rursus eadem mora, perpetuo sono pronuntiant eandem longam, animo tantum imaginantes geminum vocis ictum. Simili ratione, complures breves, aut etiam longas continuo sono pronuntiant, nec errant in moris, animo supputantes intervalla, non voce.' The passage 'quemadmodum....non voce' is quoted in translation in Clement A. Miller, 'Erasmus on Music', Musical Quarterly lii (1966) 346.
Return

18. Charles Hamm, 'Musiche del Quattrocento in S.Petronio', Rivista italiana di Musicologia iii (1968) 215.
Return

19. With the exception of the two tenors on f.7^r, written throughout in ligatures.
Return

20. With the exception of a breve with signum congruentiae for the final of the first section. The omission of mensuration signs from the lower voices need not affect performance if semibreve equivalence is assumed. Jarlephie is mentioned for its use of mensuration signs in the 15th-century treatise, Breslau, University Library, MS IV Qu 16, f.148^r; ed. Johannes Wolf, 'Ein Breslauer Mensuraltraktat des 15. Jahrhunderts', Archiv für Musikwissenschaft i (1918) 336.
Return

21. Even these changes are not applied consistently.
Return

22. If this was the intention of the scribe it is possible that the logical order of the first two songs, Qu'en puis je mais and Jour a jour la vie, was reversed in the MS in order that the music section might begin with a decorated initial. This would be difficult in the case of Qu'en puis je mais since the text begins only after the first phrase of music.
Return

23. The wider nib used for the incipit, together with the absence of a guide-letter, suggests that the part may have been a later addition.
Return

24. See F. Crane, 'The Derivation of Some 15th Century Basse Danse Tunes', Acta Musicologica xxxvii (1965) 82-3; and R. Meylan, L'enigme de la musique des basses danses du l5eme siècle, Bern, Schweizerischen Musikforschenden Gesellschaft, Serie II, vol. 17 (1968) p. 107.
Return

25. The versions of the tenor preserved in D-Mbs 3725, D-Bds 40613, D-ROu 100 and B-Br 9085 are radically different both from one another and from the versions preserved in F-Pn 10660 and GB-Lbl CTA XXVI; which suggests that the song has behind it a long tradition.
Return

26. Or the musician responsible for these versions.
Return

27. Scribe A in Qu'en puis je mais, superius; Scribe B in Puisque m'amour, contratenor (i); and Scribe C in contratenor (ii).
Return

28. A particularly interesting example occurs in the tenor Souvent mes pas (f.7^r) which is presented in two different versions; firstly (staves 3-4) notated in ligatures, and below that (staves 5-7) in semibreves. Both two-breve ligatures are mis-translated as six + six semibreves. I am grateful to Dr. John Caldwell for pointing out the concordance with I-FZcll7.
Return

29. Printed with emendations in ed. M. Bukofzer, John Dunstable, Complete Works, Musica Britannica, vol.VIII (London, Stainer and Bell, 2nd ed., 1970) p. 137.
Return

30. Ibid., p. 137, arrangement (a), bars 13 and 26-27i; almost certainly caused by line-changes in an earlier source.
Return

31. E-E V.III.24, ff.4^v-5^r; I-TRmn 88, f.84^v.
Return

32. Bukofzer, op.cit., p. 203.
Return

33. Ibid., p. 137, arrangement (b), bar 16.
Return

34. Ibid., p. 137, arrangement (c), bars 12-14, for example.
Return

35. Francesco Foscari, Doge of Venice, 1423-7.
Return

36. Lorenzo Moro, Vice-Captain of the London Galleys, 1438; Captain of the Flanders Galleys, 1456. Latana is now the Russian port Azov on the Black Sea.
Return

37. The accounts are transcribed in full as Appendix 2.
Return

38. For purposes official business the Venetian year began on 1st March until 1797. (A.Cappelli, Cronologia, Cronografia e Calendario Perpetuo (Milano, Hoepli, 3rd ed., 1969) p. 16). This entry is a later addition beneath the series of accounts dated 28 December 1448.
Return

39. Unfortunately it has not been possible to decipher the entry for 1446, even under ultra-violet light.
Return

40. For confirmation of this identification see, for example, ed. O.S. Peschel, Fac-simile dell'Atlante di Andrea Bianco (Venice, Ongania, 1871); and GB-Lbl Egerton 73, f.14^r and f.28^r. I am most grateful to Professor Lane for his invaluable help and encouragement with the nautical aspects of this study. For a discussion of trade with Sandwich see Alwyn A. Ruddook, Italian Merchants and Shipping in Southampton, 1270-1600 (Southampton, University College, 1951).
Return

41. Ed. Rawdon Brown, Calendar of State Papers Venetian, Vol.2, 1202-1509 (London, Longman, 1864) pp. 148-49.
Return

42. Alethea Wiel, The Navy of Venice (London, Murray, 1910) p. 324.
Return

43. Venezia, Archivio di Stato, senato misti, reg.38, f.33. Since this article was written Dr P.T. Van der Merwe of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, has been kind enough to supply me with numerous references to the use of trumpets on fifteenth-century ships. See August Jal, Glossaire Nautique (Paris, Firmin Didot, 1848) under 'Trombator', 'Trompette', etc; Michael E. Mallett, The Florentine Galleys in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford, Clarendon, 1967) pp. 202-263; M.M. Newett, Canon Pietro Casola's Pilgrimage to Jerusalem In the Year 1494 (Manchester, University Press, Historical Series No.5, 1907) pp. 161, 167, 180, 190, 296, 319, etc.; W.G. Perrin, 'Notes on the development of bands in the Royal Navy', Mariner's Mirror ix (1923) pp. 2-10.
Return

44. William F. Prizer, 'Bernardino Piffaro and the Piffari and Tromboni of Mantua', Rivista italiana di Musicologia, (forthcoming). The MS contains illustrations of precisely these instruments on f.55^r, where a series of ideograms, entitled zorzi ttrombetta, shows a shawm and two S-shaped trumpets, or perhaps trombones.
Return

45. See note 6.
Return

46. Discussed in R. Hope-Robbins, 'Good Gossips Reunited', British Museum Quarterly xxvii (1963-64) 12-14.
Return

47. Discussed in W.H. Bryson, 'A Note on Robinson's Brief Collection of Courts of Records', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society vi (1974) 181.
Return

48. Pope Eugenius IV, 1431-47.
Return

49. The number of the folio carrying the upper half of the watermark appears first. See S.H. Boorman, 'The 'First' Edition of Odhecaton A', Journal of the American Musicological Society xxx (1977) 185-86.
Return

50. It is a pleasure to express my special thanks to Professor Pierluigi Petrobelli for his most generous help in deciphering these accounts.
Return

51. Modern name, Trogir.
Return

52. Kotor.
Return

53. Crete.
Return

54. Lesh.
Return

55. Kerkira.
Return

56. Patrai.
Return

57. Naupaktos.
Return

58. Possibly Sutomore.
Return

59. Zador.
Return

60. Dubrovnik.
Return

61. Modon, Méthoni.
Return

62. The great jubilee of 1450.
Return

© Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, 1978, 1998