Music and Patronage in the Sforza Court. (Reviews).

Paul A. Merkley and Lora L.M. Merkley, Music and Patronage in the Sforza Court.

(Studi sulla storia della musica in Lombardia. Volume III.) Brepols: Pietro Antonio Locatelli Foundation, 1999. xxx + 514 pp. n.p. ISBN: 2-503-50706-9.

In geo-political terms, early-modern Italy was dominated -- grosso modo -- by five principal entities: the republic of Venice, the duchy of Milan, the republic of Florence (subsequently the duchy of Florence and the grand duchy of Tuscany), the papal states, and the kingdom of Naples. To varying degrees, the musical patronage practices of these distinct polities have been carefully studied and thoroughly described by musicologists. One thinks, for example, of Frank D'Accone's magisterial publications on republican Florence, of Allan Atlas's decisive contribution on the Aragonese kingdom of Naples, and of other such studies. The principal lacuna -- a serious one -- has been the duchy of Milan, notwithstanding important earlier studies by Emilio Motta, Claudio Sartori, Guglielmo Barblan, Edward Lowinsky, and William Prizer, among others. Thus Paul and Lora Merkley's impressive study has been eagerly awaited, the more so because the Merkleys already enjoy an excellent reputation, richly deserved. In a series of remarkable papers, coolly and masterfully delivered at recent meetings of the American Musicological Society, the Merkleys have systematically rewritten the biography of Josquin Desprez, preeminent European composer of the early-modern period: for scholars in other disciplines whose eye might fall on this page, the Merkleys' accomplishment in this respect is roughly equivalent to overturning current understanding of the biography of Martin Luther, for example, or of Michelangelo. They have now published a comprehensive report on their work in the Milanese archives, and their book is an immensely important one, to be very, very sure.

The principal aristocratic figures in the Merkleys' book are Galeazzo Maria Sforza, who was assassinated in December of 1476; his widow Bona, regent for their son Giangaleazzo, who "took the ducal sceptre" in 1478 (266); and Ludovico, Galeazzo's brother, who in 1479 "was given responsibility for the government" (275-76); another important figure is Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, Galeazzo and Ludovico's brother, and Josquin Desprez's benefactor. The Merkleys offer a full reconstruction and thorough description of what one might call the "infrastructure" of Milanese musical patronage, including an excellent explanation of the functioning of the benefice system, and an exhaustive reconstruction of the ducal chapel's membership, the compensation of its members, and their activities. In the course of their narrative, they provide important, often new information on the leading European musicians of the early-modern period and their associations with the duchy of Milan: the composers Alexander Agricola (63) and Loyset Co mpare (102, 115, 133, 178, 236), the music theorist and university professor Gaffurius (300), the composers Johannes Martini (76, 102, 115) and Johannes Ockeghem (80), the lutenist Pietrobono (217), the composer Gaspar Weerbecke (77), and many, many others. As a result of the Merkleys' research, Josquin Desprez is now known to have been in Milanese service only from 1484 on, as a ducal singer and familiar of Cardinal Ascanio (207-08, 377, 427-28, 430-32, 439, 444, 449); he is to be distinguished from another Josquin, a Iudochus de Picardia (or Kessellia), a member of the Milanese cathedral and ducal chapels in the 1450s, '60s, '70s, and later (87, 94, 197, 207, 209, 214,15), who previously had been confused with Josquin Desprez. Josquin's biography, in the Merkleys' own words, forms "a 'keystone' of this documentary study" (p. xvi), just as a similar interest in the composer's biography had earlier prompted the research for Lewis Lockwood's prize-winning book, Music in Renaissance Ferrara (Lockwood, p. vii). Indeed, the Merkleys' interest in Josquin's biography extends well beyond his Milanese service, for they have also uncovered documentation, not yet published, that further illuminates his service at the court of Rend of Anjou in the 1470s, now his earliest known place of employment (428 and n. 7), and have published further documentation for his relationship in 1483 to Condd-sur-Escaut, where he also spent his last years (150421) (456, 458-60). Given Josquin's stature, it is literally impossible to exaggerate the consequentiality of the Merkleys' stunning findings. (Further, their discussion of Josquin's music in light of their new biographical findings is interesting, though in connection with their discussion of the motet cycle O admirabile commercium and the motet Huc me sydereo on pp. 483 and 486, might they have profitably made use of my article in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association CXV?)

The authors are at some pains, understandably, to do justice to the importance of the Milanese liturgy and Milanese sacred music as expressions of aristocratic rule, in particular, use of the venerable Milanese or Ambrosian rite (96-98), and the cultivation of the new and distinctive liturgical genre especially associated with Milan and specifically with Galeazzo, as is suggested by Gaffurius's characterization of certain works by Weerbecke as "ducal motets" (357): the so-called motetti missales, exemplified by Compere's musical tribute to his patron Galeazzo, the Missa "Galeazeseha" (350), among many other works. The Merkleys offer a decisive re-dating of the famous sources transmitting the sacred Milanese musical repertory, the socalled Libroni (322-32), and the most informed, authoritative treatment to date of the tradition of the motetti missales (332 and following).

But the documents they reproduce also illuminate various ceremonial uses of music that are secular in nature (e.g., trumpet fanfares that served to announce civic events; 94, 99, 192) and afford insights into the "texture" of Milan's remarkably varied musical life. There are references to procurement of a book of "tenors," possibly tenors for the performance of basse dances by an alta cappella; to a roster of instrumentalists who could have formed either such an alta cappella or a wind ensemble capable of performing instrumental arrangements of three- or four-part vocal music (181); to the sounding of trumpets as accompaniment to entries and jousts (192); to the use of polyphonic music for the Feast of St. George (221); and to attempts on the part of Cicco Simonetta, Bona's general secretary, to procure a book (270) containing "all of the canzone of Leonardo Giustiniano," two or three of which were to include "the notes of the song[,] [in order] to hear the Venetian air [et in doe tre canzon fate fare li noti del canto per intendere l'aere Venetiano]." I myself found especially fascinating the reconstruction of the musical activities for the wedding of Giangaleazzo and Isabella d'Aragona (306-18), which may have occasioned the composition and performance of Josquin Desprez's settings of Virgilian texts (here the Merkleys might have cited Oliver Strunk's article in The Musical Quarterly for 1930); the reconstruction of the musical elements of the Festa del Paradiso (419-21); and the brief account of music (422-23) in the households of Beatrice d'Este Sforza (Ludovico's wife) and Isabella d'Argona Sforza (Giangaleazzo's wife), with its tantalizing references to the lutenist and composer Andrea Cossa, to Beatrice's playing of the "Clavicordo," and to viol players and the singing of three-part songs for soprano, tenor, and contrabasso.

There are vivid glimpses of the rivalries that characterized the Italian Renaissance courts (104, 122-23, and elsewhere): Galeazzo requests of one of his ambassadors (36) that he procure the famous musical composition He Robinet-- O rosa bella; in 1473, he requests of his ambassador at the Neapolitan court that he obtain "psalms that... king Alfonso had sung when his majesty had won a victory" (224). Indeed, the Merkleys observe generally (63) that Galeazzo's patronage practices brought him "into close contact with the manners and customs of the sovereign he aspired to imitate [i.e., the king of Naples], and if possible surpass," which suggests that for Milan, as for Florence and other Italian states, the royal musical traditions of the Neapolitan kingdom were considered especially worthy of emulation (for Florence, see Journal of the American Musicological Society XIV, p. 327).

The book's bibliographic apparatus, thankfully, is exceptionally full. There are complete bibliographic citations for all documents quoted, complete transcriptions of the original texts, and complete translations of them, although very occasionally some poetic texts and some documentary texts (principally in French and Latin) remain untranslated; there are thorough, extremely serviceable indexes. Only one element of this type is missing: a genealogical table detailing the relationships among the members of the Sforza family (not to mention a brief recapitulation of the historical background) would have been helpful.

In places, the Merkleys' book reads more like Warren Kirkendale's The Court Musicians in Florence During the Principate of the Medici, with its systematic, somewhat "clinical" mode of presentation, than like other archival studies. The passages where the Merkleys permit themselves to indulge more freely in analysis and interpretation, such as on pages 86 and 148, are welcome indeed. Their presentation is careful and orderly, and is ordinarily chronological, though not exclusively so. One can certainly envision other ways of having presented their material, to be sure: topically, for example. But the material is there, it is abundant, and it is precisely organized and accessible; others can readily make what contrasting uses of it they will. The Merkleys' book has a kind of nineteenth-century quality to it, and I say that not to criticize, by any means, but in an effort to characterize. Their scholarly persona is not often evident in their presentation; the Merkleys are not obviously proponents of any particul ar "-ism" that subsequently governs their interpretation of the material; no fashionable current critical theories obviously inform their analyses. Their book has the kind of quality that Joseph Kerman once characterized as "positivistic." I suspect that, because of that quality, few American publishers these days, if any, would have published the Merkleys' book, and that is unfortunate, because it is of tremendous importance. It presents facts, not theories, and facts ascertained as the result of extraordinary industry, and rigorous, thoughtful, careful evaluation of information. It is difficult to imagine that anyone will ever again have to undertake what the Merkleys have undertaken here, in the way that they themselves undertook to update Motta. Within the terms of its chosen discourse, their contribution is about as decisive, conclusive, exhaustive, and definitive as is imaginable. It is a splendid accomplishment.