The Colors of Ars Nova
La fonte musica & Michele Pasotti
Musical Performance Ensemble & Orchestra / Early Music 0The notion that “music may be called the sister of painting” has often been attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. Michele Pasotti and his ensemble La fonte musica, who are among the leading performers of Italian trecento music and have been heard at the Pierre Boulez Saal twice in the past, take this idea as the starting point for a fascinating exploration of the “realistic revolution” in early-Renaissance art. Following their concert in March 2022, which revealed surprising parallels between the visual and musical achievements of that era in secular works of ars nova, this second program focuses on sacred music by composers such as Johannes Cicona and Marchetto da Padova, which will by accompanied by breathtaking frescoes and paintings by Giotto di Bondone.
The audio livestream will be open to the general public. The audio recording of the concert will be released at a later date available to members of Pierre Boulez Saal Online only. Learn more about our new online membership!
Laudario di Cortona (second half of the 13th century)
Sia laudato San Francesco
Codex Santa Maria Maggiore 1, Guardiagrele (ca. 1400)
Alleluja
Codex Faenza 117 (15th century)
Kyrie (instrumental)
Johannes Ciconia (ca. 1370–1412)
O Padua sidus praeclarum
Marchetto da Padova (fl. 1305–19)
Ave regina caelorum / Mater innocencie
Johannes Ciconia
O felix templum jubila
Matteo da Perugia (fl. 1402–26)
Ave sancta mundi salus / Agnus Dei
Codex Faenza 117
Benedicamus Domino (instrumental)
Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300–1377)
Sanctus & Benedictus from the Missa de Notre Dame
Convento di Santa Maria dei Servi, Siena (14th century)
Ave stella matutina
Codex Faenza 117
Without Title (instrumental)
Antonio Zacara da Teramo (ca. 1360–1416)
Credo „Deus Deorum“
Intermission
Codex Faenza 117
Ave maris stella
Llibre Vermell de Montserrat (ca. 1500)
Mariam matrem virginem
Matteo da Perugia
Laurea martirii / Conlaudanda est
Codex Faenza 117
Constantia (instrumental)
Matteo da Perugia
Gloria
Antonio Zacara da Teramo
Credo
Encore
Guillaume Dufay (ca. 1397–1474)
Lamentatio sanctae matris ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae ('Lament of the Holy Mother Church of Constantinople')
“La musica non è da essere chiamata altro che sorella della pittura”—music is not to be called anything other than the sister of painting, wrote Leonardo da Vinci. With our program The Colors of Ars Nova, we want to explore this relationship between music of the Ars Nova period and contemporary painting of the 14th century. At the same time as Ars Nova composers introduced new soundscapes, expressions of emotions, and rhythmical possibilities to their art, painters, first and foremost Giotto di Bondone (1267?–1337), also began their search for a new naturalism, extensively drawing from nature and urban life and expressing emotions in ways that had never been tried before.
Following our first concert dedicated to secular music of the time last March, tonight’s performance is centered around religious art: how did Ars Nova composers and contemporary painters approach sacred texts and stories? Just as depictions of Christ on the cross start to show true suffering and pain, composers too begin to establish ever stronger links between the sacred texts they are setting and their musical expression, in what not by chance will come to be called word-painting.
While the introduction of perspective played a key role in the visual arts of the Renaissance, parallel to the development of polyphony in music, there is also a strong connection between Giotto’s “realistic” revolution and the origins of Ars Nova. The transition from the older Byzantine style that had been dominant in Western painting to Giotto’s drawing from nature, his new sense of space and corporeity, not to mention the expressiveness of his characters, is a revolution whose impact can hardly be overestimated. It marks a fundamental reevaluation of reality itself, bestowing new dignity upon the world that surrounds us.
Giotto and the fathers of Ars Nova were also connected through the places where they worked. “Art imitates nature as far as it can (as Aristotle said in Book II of the Physics). I shall prove this with an example: he who paints a lily or a horse strives as far as he can to paint it so as to resemble a horse or a lily in nature.” These words are taken from the 1318–9 treatise Pomerium in arte musice mensurate by music theorist and composer Marchetto da Padova, the father of Italian Ars Nova, who constantly refers to the art of painting in his works. Marchetto was from Padua, and at the time he was writing Pomerium, Giotto decorated the city’s Cappella degli Scrovegni with his famous frescoes. Marchetto must have written that passage, first and foremost, with Giotto in mind.
Taking a closer look at their biographies we find another link between Giotto and Marchetto as well as Philippe de Vitry, the father of French Ars Nova. In the first decades of the 14th century, the court of Robert of Anjou in Naples was a center of attraction for the cultural avant-garde.
Some of the most famous artists of the Umbrian-Tuscan area worked for the Angevin court, including Giotto, who, together with his workshop, painted important frescoes in Naples’s Castel Nuovo and in the convent of S. Chiara. The king himself had a passion for singing and occasionally wrote tunes of his own. Marchetto’s Pomerium is dedicated to him.
According to the 16th-century writer Bernardino Scardeone, Marchetto visited the Angevin court in Naples and became a friend of the king: “Marchetto had learned how to calm and excite the sentiments of the King by varying the sound and rhythm of his songs.” Philippe de Vitry also had a connection to the court and probably met Robert and Marchetto in Provence in 1318–9. So there seems to have been a physical place as well that connected Giotto with two of the most important figures of Italian and French Ars Nova.
The Ars Nova movement started out as a new and more precise way of writing music. It allowed composers, for the first time, to notate rhythm exactly and unambiguously. Just as in painting, the goal for Marchetto and his contemporaries was to fixate and reproduce sound on paper in a more “realistic” and “naturalistic” way.
This new naturalism, both in painting and music, has much to do with a scientific, Aristotelian approach to the arts. The exactness of Ars Nova notation gave composers the means to “control” musical space and to create new perspectives in music: for the first time, and with a much greater degree of variety, they were able to determine exactly where the voices of a polyphonic piece would meet. In a very similar way, visual space is conceived and organized differently from Giotto onward, who created the illusion of three-dimensional space by applying a kind of intuitive painterly perspective. Lastly, Ars Nova music deals with themes such as love, death, loss, pain, joy, sex, dreams, hunting, animals, markets, shipwrecks, and fires in a completely new form of expressiveness: human emotions and passions are represented “realistically,” just as we can see and understand the feelings of Giotto’s characters on their faces and in their bodies.
To illustrate the parallels between music and painting as vividly as possible, I have selected 13 masterworks by Giotto di Bondone to accompany the pieces on tonight’s program, from his early frescoes in the Basilica di San Francisco in Assisi to his last panel paintings.
—Michele Pasotti
Notes originally published in the Pierre Boulez Saal program book for the performance The Colors of Ars Nova on October 15, 2022.
To illustrate the parallels between music and painting as vividly as possible, Michele Pasotti has selected 13 masterworks by Giotto di Bondone (1267? – 1337) to accompany the pieces on tonight’s program, from his early frescoes in the Basilica di San Francisco in Assisi to his last panel paintings.
1
Saint Francis Preaches to the Birds
© akg images / Erich Lessing
2
Mary Magdalene’s Journey to Marseille
© Creative Commons
3
The Mourning of Christ
© akg images / De Agostini Picture Library / A. Dagli Orti
4
Meeting of Anna and Joachim at the Golden Gate
© akg images / Cameraphoto
5
The Presentation of Mary at the Temple
© akg images / Mondadori Portfolio / Sergio Anelli
6
Ceiling Fresco
© akg-images / Mondadori Portfolio / 2001 / Archivio Quattrone
7
Last Judgment
© akg images / Cameraphoto
8
Dormition of the Virgin Mary
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie / Jörg P. Anders
9
Crucifixion
© akg images / Rabatti & Domingie
10
Ognissanti Madonna
© Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florenz
11
Saint Lawrence
© Musée Jacquemart-André, Chaalis / Creative Commons
12
Baroncelli Polyptych
© akg images / Heritage Images / Fine Art Images
13
Crucifixion
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie / Volker-H. Schneider / Eigentum des Kaiser Friedrich Museumsvereins