The Civic Muse: Music and Musicians in Siena during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Frank A. D'Accone. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1997. xxiii + 862 pp. illus. $70. ISBN: 0-226-13366-4.

Adorned with a spectacular jacket illustration of a chapel service, from 1483, in Santa Maria delle Grazie, Siena, The Civic Muse stuns the reader with a no less spectacular historical reconstruction of music, musicians, and musical practices in Siena during the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries. It is the author Frank D'Accone's magnum opus: beginning in the early 1970s, it spans the larger part of his scholarly career, subsuming and building on his principal writings on music variously in Siena and Florence and his numerous musical editions, particularly those in the twelve volume series Music of the Florentine Renaissance, published by the American Institute of Musicology. What is surprising is that, until now, there was nothing in the literature that would have led us to suspect the unparalleled richness of musical life in Siena: its political decline from the later sixteenth century on seems to have imprinted, on the modern consciousness, the illusory conception of a comparable musical decline in its earlier years. D'Accone set out to explore what he himself acknowledged as terra incognita (9) and succeeded, in the end, in putting Siena on the map as an important center, in Northern Italy of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, for the reception and diffusion of music.

Starting from the premise of a connection between patronage policies and musical activity, the author proposes, on page 1, to "trace the development {in Siena] of policies of civic, or state, patronage of music and discuss the manner in which they were shaped to meet the needs of church and state." The premise furnished the conceptual framework for measuring "all major developments in Sienese music . . . from later medieval times through the end of the Renaissance." Since the State sponsored and subsidized performing groups and musical activities in its leading institutions, particularly the Cathedral and the Palazzo Pubblico, music in Siena was indelibly linked with the vicissitudes in its political history. D'Accone sustains his argument through four centuries, tracing the musical activities of the Cathedral and Palazzo and inquiring into the place of music in town life. The book is enriched by forty-three musical examples (almost all of them complete works); twenty-three tables with summary lists of singers, music manuscripts, and payments in defined periods; and eleven illustrations, four of them full-page color plates.

Structurally, The Civic Muse divides into three parts: music in the Cathedral (chaps. 1-7), in the Palazzo (chaps. 8-12), and "in the life of the town" (chaps. 13-14). Within each of them, the order is chronological. Thus, in part 1, the discussion moves from an introductory chapter on the beginnings of the Cathedral, its organization, its staff, and church calendar to others on chant and improvised polyphony in the later Middle Ages; singers and organists from 1380 to 1448; the formation of a cappella, i.e., musical ensemble, in the years 1448-80; its expansion, then reinforcement, during 1480-1507; its stabilization in the period from 1507 to 1555; and its decline thereafter (1550-1607). Under the Palazzo, the various instrumental ensembles are considered; and under municipal activities, other institutions, music teachers and their schools, dance and its music and masters, instrument makers and repairmen, public ceremonies, royal entries, popular festivals, the Palio, and music in the Sienese theater.

The narrative rests on a solid fundament of archival records, almost completely unexplored, mainly in the Archivio dell'Opera della Metropolitana di Siena and the Archivio di Stato, Siena. It is complemented by an equally solid bibliography of primary and secondary sources, covering political and church history, confraternities, economics, demography, art, and literature. With meticulous scholarship the author weaves the multifarious threads of the material into a colorful fabric of musical life, from larger ecclesiastical and public events to the individuals that took part in them. Particularly fascinating for its report on "individuals" is the 75-page "register of musicians" at the end of the book: it presents, with full documentary support, hundreds of cathedral singers, wind players, cathedral organists and organ builders, palace trumpeters and shawm players, town criers, drummers, and other palace instrumentalists. We learn about their dates, functions, salaries, and, among other things, tax reports. A world of minor and sometimes major figures comes to life, in their daily activities and, more piquantly, in their delinquencies and points of conflict with the administration. Among the trumpeters, for example, one was suspended for making "improper remarks" (760) and another for not playing in the "customary style" (761); a third was reprimanded for having insulted his stepmother (because she removed his bedspread; 764); and a fourth was imprisoned for having introduced "infamous and dishonest women into the palace" (766). In conformity with my own interests (and in the book's gold mine of information there is material for scholars working on almost all topics relevant to early music and its practice) I discovered, among the musicians, a number whom I suspect to be Jewish converts: the singer Daniello Danielli (734); the "Flemish" contralto Daniello di Simone Lupi (from the "Wolf" family; ibid.); a certain Ser Elia (735); and, invited to serve as chapel master, though he declined, the Flemish musician Gienero di Mauritio Luti, which may have been a lapsus calami, in the source, for Lupi (again Wolf; 737). I also discovered interesting data on the various chapel masters at the Cathedral (almost all unknown to me) and, more particularly, on their duties: it seems they were not required to compose music, as one would have thought; rather, their activities were largely administrative and educational (276-82).

After having reconstructed his vast "civic" history of musical life in Siena over four centuries, D'Accone was modest enough to realize that more remains to be done: other musical sources await inspection, particularly chant books, which, had he yielded to the temptation of including them, and fortunately he did not, would have prolonged the study by "another fifteen years" (xvi). What we have in The Civic Muse is a work remarkable in both its detail and its breadth: it will stand for generations as the fons et origo of our knowledge of music in early Siena.

Hebrew University, Jerusalem