On Music and Poetry (De musica et poetica, 1513)

Abstract

Raffaele Brandolini (1465-1517) originally composed De musica et poetica at the request of Giovanni de Medici, later dedicating and presenting it to him upon Giovanni's election as Pope Leo X in 1513.De musica et poetica has survived in one manuscript, ms.805 at the Casanatense library in Rome.With the exception of a few excerpts printed by Adrien de la Fage in 1864, the work has not previously appeared in print.Ann E. Moyer has remedied this deficiency by providing a full edition and a facing-page translation, complete with explanatory footnotes, an introduction and bibliography.The development of musical thought in the Renaissance, and the role of humanists in that development, has been an area of particular concern to Ann E. Moyer, as evidenced by her earlier book, Musica Scientia: Musical Scholarship in the Italian Renaissance (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992).As Moyer remarks in her introduction to On Music and Poetry, "a distinct and lasting contribution of late Renaissance humanist to musical thought" was "to locate the meaning of music in terms of language and poetics" (p.xvii), a mode of analysis that became dominant in the following centuries.Moyer suggests that Brandolini is therefore a significant figure, as both a humanist and a musician, in so far as he appeared at the very beginning of this great shift in musical thought.What makes Brandolini unique is his status and fame as a musician, in particular as a composer and reciter of extemporaneous Latin verse -the aspect of his life that occasioned On Music and Poetry.The text represents Brandolini's attempt to defend the worthiness of his art, the employment of "lyre and Latin meters at the banquets of high prelates," against the charge that such things are "fit only for buffoons, parasites, and men of no intelligence or judgment" (p.11).Interestingly, as Moyer points out, despite his apparently well-appreciated talents as a musician, Brandolini was not a student of the scientia musica.Unlike his predecessors, he drew upon his extensive training as a humanist, rather than as a "natural philosopher," and he combined that with his experiences as an entertainer at the principal courts of his day.The significance and importance of On Music and Poetry thus lies in the discussion of music in terms of poetry and social context, as opposed to science and mathematics.On Music and Poetry, Moyer writes, represents "the first independent work to examine music not in the context of mathematical consonance but in the context of the poetry that music accompanies and music's role in the society" (Musica Scientia, p. 107).On Music and Poetry takes the form of an extended oration of praise.Brandolini first discusses music, then poetry; he also conflates the two.He goes so far as to place poets and musicians in the same category as prophets: "Rightly, therefore, those ancient expert appraisers of all things and reasons deemed musicians, prophets, and wise men to be the same" (p.25).Throughout, Brandolini

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