Puneet Sharma History 414 8/11/10 Renaissance Music: The Patronage System and its Change of Music into

a Commodity Italian and Netherlands 14th century Renaissance was a time of vigorous musical activity and new influences. The emphasis was on secular songs such as love lyrics; since the music that survived the medieval ages was polyphonic, having two or more independent melodic parts. English influences became predominant, and artists such as John Dunstable and Guillayme Dufay highlighted the early 1400s.1 Due to the patrons, the English music influences evolved to a such a great extent that Tinctoris, a great theorist of the century, called it a new art.2 Prestigious music ensembles and choirs were attached to the great courts and churches; but music was not limited to church mass.3 Musicians performed for high ranking associates and secular rulers in private houses. Patrons were the great princely courts and many enjoyed music passionately and hired the best musicians and singers.4 The patronage system allowed music to progress from the middle ages and into a commodity that forms the music of today. The rulers of princely courts invested in chapels for many reasons because they were more employers and consumers, rather than patrons. Charles the Bold of Burgundy and Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan were some patrons that enjoyed music with passion; consequently, they spent 5,000 ducats to proved salaries for their singers.5 They were devout and investing in the chapel to show that they invested in their salvation.6 Additionally, it was

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Alec Harman, Medieval And Early Renaissance Music (up to c.1525) (London: Burleigh Press, 1958), 185-186. ebt 3 Allan W. Atlas, Renaissance Music: Music in Western Europe (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998), 170. 4 ebt 5 Atlas 1998, 179 6 ebt

illustrious to be a ruler and they showed this by hiring musicians and singers for the chapel. 7 Patrons recruited musicians using three methods: (1) by sending agents abroad; (2) by mail order, as when Ercole I dEste wrote to the bishop of Constance that he was seeking most excellent musicians, whom we are looking for everywhere; (3) by institutionalizing musicians to recruit.8 Consequently, the urban areas, during 15th century, were thriving with music and it was of interest to government and wealthy merchants. Business fairs were held semiannually and it was a prime place for the merchants form all over Europe to meet.9 Thriving cities such as Antwerp, sGertogenbosch, and Bergen op Zoom were places where musical patronage was a combination of church, civic, corporate, and private support.10 The largest numbers of firstclass musicians were produced in these Low Countries which also had the largest number of listeners.11 Patrons showed immense interest in music, beginning with the Italian statesmen and patron, Lorenzo de Medici, who was intimately connected with Florentine music.12 Lorenzo was a musicians and a performer who passed his talents to his son Giovanni, Pope Leo X, who also was composer that brought music to Vatican at new heights.13 Giovannis interest in music runs in his family including his great grandfather, Cosimo, who was responsible for creating music chapels in churches.14 Cosimo was also behind the commission from Guillaume Dufay, one of the new stars in the musical firmament.15

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ebt ebt 9 Atlas 1998, 180-182 10 ebt 11 ebt 12 Frank A. DAccone, Music in Renaissance Florence: Studies and Documents (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2006), 265-266. 13 ebt 14 ebt 15 ebt

Medici patronage was responsible for what is now called opera performance, which took place in the courtly environment of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.16 Operas early patrons were libertines who exercised true privacy, contrary to princely courts in which the prince was the ultimate patron, acknowledged by everyone.17 Venetian opera house, the Teatro Novissimo, brought professional musicians from Rome with the learned Venetian academicians who had articulated the theory of opera and produced the librettos for the new productions.18 Patrons could disguise their identity during stage performance, and so were able to avoid full responsibility for the content that appeared.19 Those who patronized early opera were called Incogniti (the unknowns). During the carnival seasons in Venice, the unknowns had an opportunity to experiment in theatre on an unprecedented scale.20 Audiences and patrons were masked during opera performances allowing the society to be dissimulated; yet personal. 21 Early opera provided more drama and entertainment than music since it appealed to human emotions using music as a dramatic component. The patronage system encouraged competition and rivalry. Jean Mouton, a French composer was famous for his motets and one of the musicians caught in the patron wars. Ferrarese, the French patron, tried to procure French music and musicians (including Mouton), and the papacy honored and used Mouton for purposes of the Church.22 These and the French courts became rival centers of musical ambition and as components of a larger international

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Edward Muir, Why Venice? Venetian Society and the Success of Early Opera, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 36 (Winter 2006): 331-347. 17 ebt. 18 ebt 19 ebt 20 ebt 21 ebt 22 Lewis Lockwood, Jean Mouton and Jean Michel: New Evidence on French Music and Musicians in Italy, 15051520, Journal of the American Musicological Society 32 (Summer, 1979): 192.

patronage system.23 A comparison can be made with modern record companies and artists trend towards signing with multiple companies. Borso and Ercole, rulers and patrons of Ferrara, changed the widening political and diplomatic framework within [the city].24 It opened new channels by which music could be imported, musicians could be recruited, and news of the rising importance of musiccould be spread abroad.25 As music became available, more of it was accumulated and copied for local patrons; thus the creation of repertoires for local usage became a significant activity.26 A new relationship emerged between music and text where both were placed on an equal footing and these elements satisfied the demands of both clarity and expression.27 Madrigals, a secular vocal music composition, was in constant demand and the names of well-known composers such as Verdelot, Arcadelt, Festa, and Willaert were used to sell volumes containing only a few pieces by these musicians and filled out with music by lesser-known and sometimes very young madrigalists.28 Collectors started collecting volumes of music manuscripts; although, they had more respect for the objects themselves rather than their potential function or practical application.29 The new channels also allowed music to be viewed through a humanist eye, where music can produce multiple effects such as its ability to drive out melancholy, to increase reflective piety, and to arouse a listener to ecstasy.30 The people of early fifteenth century

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Lockwood 1979, 192 Lewis Lockwood, Music in Renaissance Ferrara, 1400-1505: The Creation of a Musical Center in the Fifteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 321-324. 25 ebt 26 ebt 27 ebt 28 James Haar, Essays on Italian Poetry and Music in the Renaissance, 1350-1600 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 101. 29 Richard Goldthwaite, The Empire of Things: Consumer Demand in Renaissance Italy, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 153-75. 30 Lockwood 2009, 322-323

showed interest in music because it was used to assist them in spiritual consolation.31 The relationship between text and music inaugurated a new way of listening and viewing music as a commodity, in which the mind could alternate its focus of attention and of perception between textual and musical components, as [the] composition itself adjusted flexibly to both.32 Musicians received benefices, a gift that provided income, in return for their musical services.33 The secular rulers with most power were able to influence the dispensation of benefices in their own territories and thus lure the best singers to their courts with the promise of such prizes.34 Receiving of these gifts was concerned prestigious and respectful for the musicians knelt before the patron and graciously accepts the benefices.35 Additionally, Patrons allowed musicians and composers to live, eat and pray at their house. For example, singers of Duke Maximillian I had not received their salary for years; yet, none of the singers left the ruler to look for employment elsewhere. Maximlian was unable to pay the singers due to spending in wars and financial troubles but he was able to give them hospitality, privileges, and miscellaneous gifts and favoursall of which were tokens of his goodwill and liberality, and bound[ed] his servants in loyalty and affection.36 The benefices were ducats, gold coins used as currency, which doubled a singers income. For example, Josquins salary in Milan was 60 ducats per year, but when he traveled to Gozzano, Josquins 60-ducat salary at Milan would have been augmented by another 95 or so from the benefice: 155 ducats per year held one very nicely.37 To understand the buying force of these benefices: 1 ducat in Milan would have bought 130 pounds of bread, 30 pounds of veal, 10 chickens, or 25 pounds of cheese or
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ebt ebt 33 Atlas 1998, 176-179 34 ebt 35 Rob Wegman, Musical Offerings in the Renaissance, Early Music 33 (August 2005): 426. 36 Wegman 2005, 429 37 Atlas 1998, 176-179

butter.38 A musician did not have to live in a place where he held a benefice, active musicians returned home and the benefice were still there for them, much like a retirement pension. Singers could also pile up benefices. In all, it was a lucrativebusiness.39 Patrons were not only noblemen but also noblewomen; Lucrezia Borgia (1480-1519) in Ferrara and Isabella dEste (1474-1539) in Mantua were patrons that contributed to musical upbringing.40 These patrons competed against each other and formed a rivalry in which they were never friendly with one another.41 Both women expanded elements of music such as: frottolists, singers, string players, and a pipe-and-tabor player.42 Both employed the same types of music which leaving the field of divine and wind music to their husbands. Frottola, secular songs of fifteenth century, became an important genre due to its support by the noblewomen. This conclusion is supported by Isabella's and Lucrezia's employment of Tromboncino, one of thegreatest frottolists,who was the first frottolist of northern Italy to set in quantity the poems of Petrarch and of his more talented imitators.43 Native Italian music was orchestrated and developed by the patronage of these women.44 The transformation of music into a marketable commodity can be explained by understanding the origin of copyright.45 The ownership of music during this time was quite different than the copyright system today. Everybody had the rights to the music as long as they were able to make duplicates for others.46 Since music was considered to be a gift from god it was enjoyed a status equal to a natural resource or a public good, not to be monopolized by
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ebt ebt 40 William F. Prizer, Isabella dEste and Lucrezia Borgia as patrons of Music: The Frottola at Mantua and Ferrara, Journal of the American Musicological Society 38 (Spring, 1985): 2. 41 ebt 42 ebt 43 Prizer 1985, 30 44 Prizer 1985, 2-31 45 Wegman 2005, 433-435 46 ebt

anyone in particular.47 However, musicians looked for compensation for their labors but individuals were free to give musical offerings as gifts. In a society of gifts, perishability of that gift is inevitable because gift economies discourage a mindset all too common in market economies: the hoarding of possessions, the accumulation of wealth and property, and the consumption of goods to gratify the narcissistic cravings of the ego.48 The aspect of perishable property is celebrated in a gift society by sharing the gift and being thankful for it. Leonardo da Vinci criticized that music dies the instant it is born, and Erasmus, a Dutch philosopher, thought of music as a trifling aural pleasures that die away instantly. Most criticism of the time evaluated music as a profit that should be provided for the individual, for if music does not provide spiritual profit than it cannot be of any use other than hollow satisfaction of the ears.49 The perspective is that music is transformed into a materialistic means. The transformation into commodity started when the accepted question asked was not What have I received as a gift, and how do I respond to the gesture? but What do I get in return for my time and money?50 The competitions, giving of benefices, viewing music as a humanist forms through the use of opera are all of the aspects that encompassed and transformed music in renaissance into a marketable good. Competition gave rise to music by allowing musicians to push boundaries and excel in their fields. It allowed patrons to continue investing in musicians and create relationships that allowed them to keep them. Competition also increased wealth for nobles who returned the favor by creating chapels fit for musical ensembles and mass. Gifts and incomes were used to produce and market music in a way that has never been done before because benefices were the first instances where music was seen as a commodity. Gifts were given not

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ebt ebt 49 ebt 50 ebt

only as income but as hospitality and affection allowing musicians to respect their patrons, vice versa. Furthermore, music became every man and womens realm for women patronage played as big of a part as male. Printed text and sheet music increased musics ability to be marketed because of its capability to be reproduced and copied causing the rise of copyright. Music became a means towards a spiritual end due to the criticism provided by the philosophers of the time. It transformed into a profiting scheme that predicated that it only provide benefit instead of an aesthetic good or a gift from god. The patronage of music in renaissance paved a way for music to be used as a commodity that we still see today.