Recercare. Rivista per lo studio e la pratica della musica antica

Rethinking the chronology of the Italian Ars nova.

Francesco Zimei — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The musical period conventionally referred to as the Italian Ars nova is normally characterized by the advent of the Trecento mensural notation and a predominantly polyphonic repertoire designed to enhance its application. However, the scarcity of documentation and the survival of sources only up to 1410–1415 have led scholars to view it — according to Nino Pirrotta’s evocative metaphor — as "an island appearing on the horizon after a long voyage through centuries of silence and obscurity. The sudden and brilliant rise of this island delights us, but as we near it and are able to make out the configuration of its shore line, we see that after it there is another expanse of silence and obscurity separating it from the larger and more solid continent, the
music of the Italian Renaissance."

The ongoing exploration of this shadowy area, further supported by significant discoveries, has nevertheless allowed us to shed new light on the tradition and performance of this repertoire, enabling us to demonstrate that the Italian Ars nova actually had a much longer-lasting persistence and a more fluid course than previously supposed. In the following articles, we will present two emblematic cases: one focusing on the vitality of Trecento music, especially through to the oral knowledge of its religious contrafacta, at least until the end of the fifteenth century; the other showing the clear preponderance of the Ars nova repertoire in a 1486 Sienese capitolo ternario, constructed with quotations of musical incipits.

Rethinking the chronology of the Italian Ars nova.

Lucia Marchi — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Sul mottetto Le temps verra tamtoust aprés attribuito ad Antonio Zaccara da Teramo. Nuova lettura e interpretazione

Angelica Vomera — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The article offers a new edition and interpretation of the text of Le temps verra tamtoust aprés, a motet attributed to Antonio Zaccara da Teramo, and a new dating hypothesis for its composition. The motet is preserved in the manuscript T.III.2 of the Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria di Torino, usually named Codex Boverio, one of the major sources of polyphony of the late fourteenth-century
Italy and France. The codex transmits forty-two compositions, nine of which are attributed to Zaccara, and includes pieces from the Ars Nova and the Ars Subtilior. The edition and linguistic analysis of Le temps verra tamtoust aprés reveal a Middle French visibly corrupted towards the Italian system, and many precise references to places and people among the numerous exhortations to put an end to the Western Schism in favour of the unity of the Catholic Church. The only dating hypothesis advanced so far suggested that the Zaccara’s motet could date back to the Council of Rome in 1413, due to the mention of Pope John XXIII.
A significant segment of the motet includes a hoquetus with dialogic alternations between two voices, which is clearly rendered by the new edition presented here, allows us to reject the reading of «Ihovany» (Giovanni) in favour of «Ho nany» (to be translated as the exclamation «Oh no!»), thus invalidating the previous hypothesis of a reference to John XXIII. The new edition and interpretation of
the text emphasizes the conciliarist sentiment that permeates the motet and allow us to trace an explicit reference to the city of Pisa. All this suggests that the composition of Le temps verra tamtoust aprés should be placed in the period preceding the Council of Pisa, therefore before March 1409.

Una sconosciuta fonte dell’Orontea di Antonio Cesti. Con alcune considerazioni sulla tradizione testuale e musicale

Davide Mingozzi — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The article examines a newly discovered manuscript source of Antonio Cesti’s opera Orontea, recently identified in the Library of the Conservatory in Genoa. Premiered in 1656 at the Innsbruck court theatre, Orontea represents a rare example of longevity within the Italian operatic repertoire of the midseventeenth century, as evidenced by its widespread circulation in major Italian cities and the substantial number of surviving manuscript and printed sources. The identification of the Genoese manuscript — analyzed here for the first time — enriches our understanding of Orontea’s textual and musical transmission, revealing features that position it as an intermediate branch between the two previously recognized lines of tradition: the Pepys manuscript held in Cambridge, and the so-called ‘Italian scores’. The article also offers a critical reconstruction of the opera’s complex transmission history, through a systematic comparison of librettos and manuscript sources, shedding light on the adaptive practices that shaped its various stagings between 1656 and 1674.
The analysis of the Genoese manuscript identifies specific textual, structural, and musical variants — such as divergent solutions in instrumental ritornellos and scene distribution — that suggest the existence of a third branch within Orontea’s manuscript tradition. The discovery of this new source significantly enhances our understanding of the opera’s historical reception and transmission, providing valuable material for future research and for the preparation of a longawaited critical edition of one of the most celebrated and enduring works of seventeenth-century Italian musical theatre.

Diogenio Bigaglia’s motets for Munich

Michael Talbot — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A manuscript album in the Sächsische Landesbibliothek — Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek at Dresden dated 1739 and inscribed to duchess Maria Antonia Walpurgis, then an adolescent at the Wittelsbach court in Munich who was just beginning to display her gifts as a musician and poet, contains ten sacred musical items, all anonymous and scored for the slightly unusual combination of solo voice, solo violin and continuo. Its opening items are a Stabat Mater and a devotional song in German, but the last eight are lengthy four- or fivemovement Latin motets (one adding an extra singer in its final movement) displaying consistent stylistic traits and clearly the work of a single composer. Hitherto, none of the composers has been identified, although earlier suspicions that Maria Antonia herself was the author have been quashed. A concordance for one of the motets and a the mention of another in an inventory confirms their author as Diogenio Bigaglia (1678–1745), the Venetian Benedictine monk who led a successful parallel life as a prolific and esteemed composer of music in several genres. Bigaglia’s musical style and notational usage are highly personal, and it does not take long to establish that he was the composer of all eight motets.
However, these are not an actual set but rather a series of his motets acquired by the Wittelsbachs over the years between around 1715, when Bigaglia accompanied electress Therese Kunigunde back to Munich after her Venetian exile, and 1738, when a motet commemorating the signing of the Treaty of Vienna must have been written. At least half of them have a biographical connection to a female member of the ruling dynasty: Therese Kunigunde herself, her daughter-in-law Maria Amalia or her sister-in-law Maria Anna. In anticipation that these motets will soon join the early music repertory, the article offers an commentary on them.