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References

^[*] Martin Morell (mmorell42@gmail.com) is an independent musicologist and singer with a longstanding interest in the Italian madrigal of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and in Venetian music and musicians of the period, in particular Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli and Giovanni Croce. His article “Giovanni Croce, His Non-Venetian Dedicatees, and The Relationship between Venice, the Hapsburgs and the Holy See,” appeared in Dal canto corale alla musica policorale: l’arte del coro spezzato (Padua, 2015). He has researched the collection of Italian madrigal prints amassed by Georg Knoff, a patrician of Danzig. Most recently, his research has centered on the compositions and biography of Tiburzio Massaino. He maintains a website, www.Italianmadrigal.com, devoted to the late Italian madrigal.

^[1] His whereabouts and the corresponding dates are summarized in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (henceforth DBI), s.v. “Massaino (Massaini), Tiburzio” (Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2008), 71:691–94.

^[2] For the library’s holdings, see Gugliemo Barblan, ed., Catalogo della Biblioteca del Conservatorio di Musica “Giuseppe Verdi” di Milano: Fondi speciali I. Musiche della cappella di Santa Barbara in Mantova (Firenze: Olschki, 1972), entries 211–14. A useful summary listing may be found in Iain Fenlon, Music and Patronage in Sixteenth-Century Mantua (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 1:204–5.

^[3] Some caution should be exercised in drawing inferences from such evidence alone; Susan Parisi has documented numerous instances of composers (e.g., Luzzasco Luzzaschi, Liberale Zanchi) who dedicated publications and/or sent music to Vincenzo Gonzaga, but for whom no stay in Mantua is attested. See Susan Parisi, “Ducal Patronage of Music in Mantua 1587–1627: An Archival Study,” 2 vols. (PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1989), passim.

^[4] It was previously known that Massaino’s brother Luca had commanded Venetian soldiers in Crete; see DBI, s.v. “Massaino,” 71:691.

^[5] I-MAa Archivio Gonzaga (henceforth AG), serie E.XLIX.3, Corrispondenza estera Milano, Carteggio Inviati e Diversi, busta 1712, fol. 504r.

^[6] Picenardo, a member of a notable Cremonese patrician family, is described as a “Capitano di molto valore, & di molta riputatione” in Antonio Campi, Cremona fedelissima città, et nobilissima colonia de Romani … (Cremona: In casa dell’istesso auttore, 1585), libro terzo, xlvi. He was evidently on familiar terms with Duke Vincenzo; in a letter dated 31 May 1589 (I-MAa AG, serie F.II.9, Copialettere Ordinari, Misti, busta 2956/397, fol. 165r), the duke thanks Picenardo for his offer of hospitality at his Cremona home, while in a letter of 18 July 1601 (I-MAa AG, serie F.II.7, Minute della Cancelleria, busta 2253, unfoliated) the duke expresses regret that Picenardo is unable to join him on his forthcoming campaign in Croatia.

^[7] I-MAa AG, serie E.XLIX.3, Corrispondenza estera Milano, Carteggio Inviati e Diversi, busta 1712, fol. 503r. Although Picenardo refers to Luca Massaino as the “bearer” (apportatore) of his letter, which would seem to indicate that in-person delivery was intended, it is not clear whether this was in fact the case. No addressee is given on the verso of Luca’s letter, while the verso of the bifolium of Picenardo’s bears a seal and the following address: Al Serenissimo Signore mio padrone Colendissimo il Signore Duca di Mantoua. In the archival unit, Luca’s single-folio letter is inserted into Picenardo’s bifolium. These circumstances would seem to be consistent with either in-person or postal/courier delivery.

^[8] I-MAa AG, serie F.II.9, Copialettere Ordinari, Misti, busta 2956/398, fols. 171v–172r.

^[9] I-MAa AG, serie F.II.9, Copie di lettere ducali scritte ad ambasciatori, principi e personaggi diversi in corti estere, busta 2979 libro 6 (Corte Cesarea), fols. 186v–187r.

^[10] It is impossible to know, of course, whether Luca was merely repeating what his brother had communicated to him, or whether he added some exculpatory touches of his own.

^[11] I-MAa AG, serie E.IV.2a, Corrispondenza estera, Diete imperiali …, busta 516, fols. 419r–420v.

^[12] Hermann Spies, “Die Tonkunst in Salzburg in der Regierungszeit des Fürsten und Erzbischofs Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau (1587–1612),” Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Salzburger Landeskund 71 (1931): 7–8.

^[13] According to Susanne Hehenberger (personal communication), Massaino’s sentence was a relatively light one, although comparisons are problematic because the term “Sodomie” and its equivalents covered a variety of illicit acts. I thank Dr. Hehenberger for this information and for referring me to the detailed treatment of the subject in her dissertation, Unkeusch wider die Natur: Sodomieprozesse im frühneuzeitlichen Österreich (Wien: Löcker-Verlag, 2006), accessible at http://www.loecker-verlag.at/docs/HehenberUnkeusch.pdf.

^[14] According to Costanzo Antegnati, L’arte organica (Brescia: presso Francesco Tebaldino, 1608; reprint Mainz: Rheinhold-Verlag, 1938), 48, Massaino was maestro di cappella at the church of S. Agostino at the time, “et hora nel Duomo di Lodi.”

^[15] I-MAa AG, serie E.XLIX.3, Corrispondenza estera Milano, Carteggio Inviati e Diversi, busta 1712, fols. 501r–501v. The letter is misfiled under the year 1591. Massaino and Cima may have become acquainted earlier in Innsbruck; Walter Senn, in Musik und Theater am Hof zu Innsbruck (Innsbruck: Österreichische Verlag-Anstalt, 1954), 84, documented Cima’s presence in that city in the late 1580s, contemporaneously with Massaino’s tenure as maestro di cappella at the archducal court (see below). Cima can evidently be identified with a musician mentioned by Laurie Stras, in Women and Music in Sixteenth-Century Ferrara (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 226n; Stras cites an account according to which Cima was forced to flee Parma in the wake of a suspicious relationship with Princess Margherita Farnese but was eventually captured and executed. Furthermore, according to Susan Parisi (“Ducal Patronage of Music in Mantua,” 432−33), a person of the same name, evidently a musician, was present at the Gonzaga court in 1589 and again in 1594, but disappears from the record around 1596. Piecing together the evidence, I find it plausible that Cima did indeed suffer the unfortunate fate described.

^[17] According to Senn, Musik und Theater, 129–30, after Massaino departed Innsbruck for Salzburg, the archduke accused him of trying to poach his singers; given Vincenzo’s own propensities for augmenting his musical establishment, it is not inconceivable that he might have requested Massaino to perform a similar service.

^[18] Massaino’s tenure there began around 1600; see DBI, s.v. “Massaino,” 71:693.

^[19] I-MAa AG, serie E.XLIX.3, Corrispondenza estera Milano, Carteggio Inviati e Diversi, busta 1725, unfoliated. As in most other letters in the same set, the verso does not indicate the name of the recipient; the relatively few exceptions are addressed to a variety of court personages (e.g., the duke and duchess, Fabio Gonzaga, Annibale Chieppio).

^[21] The duke was to suffer a serious setback at Kanizsa in modern-day Hungary and was eventually obliged to make an ignominious withdrawal; back in Mantua, he endeavored to present the military operation in a positive light. See Daniela Sogliani, “The Gonzaga and the Ottomans between the 15th and the 17th centuries in Documents of the State Archive of Mantua,” in The Ottoman Orient in Renaissance Culture: Papers from the International Conference at the National Museum in Krakow, June 26–27 2015, ed. Robert Born and Michal Dziewulski (Kraków: Kraków National Museum, 2015), 83–85.

^[22] Copies of several letters written by the duke from Venice to various family members and other personages bear dates between 20 and 23 July 1601; see I-MAa AG, serie F.II.7, Minute della Cancelleria, busta 2253, passim.

^[23] The search for pertinent documentation is hindered somewhat by the fact that the ducal Copialettere were effectively discontinued after 1601.

^[24] See Laurie Stras, Women and Music in Sixteenth-Century Ferrara, 333–39; thanks to Susan Parisi for calling this circumstance to my attention.

^[25] It is possible that Massaino became acquainted with Moro while the former was in Venice in mid-1579, engaged in the highly visible project of assembling and preparing for publication the anthology Trionfo di Musica di diversi a sei voci, a musical offering to Bianca Capello on the occasion of her forthcoming marriage to Francesco de’ Medici; further details are given in Martin Morell, “Musical Settings of sestine as Markers of Rites of Passage, with Particular Reference to the Marriage Celebrations for Bianca Capello and Francesco de’ Medici,” paper presented at Interdisciplinary Conference: “Venice and Ritual” (Princeton University, 11–12 January 2014). In a petition to the Town Council of Salò, evidently dating from July 1587, seeking release from his three-year contract in order to join Moro’s embassy, Massaino refers to the newly appointed bailo as “mio antiquo padrone”; Claudio Sartori, “Orazio Vecchi e Tiburzio Massaino a Salò: Nuovi documenti inediti,” Renaissance-Muziek 1400–1600: Donum natalicum René Bernard Lenaerts (Leuven: Katolieke Universiteit, 1969), 238.

^[26] Perhaps coincidentally, during his tenure in Constantinople, Moro had to deal with a scandal concerning a homosexual relationship between two young men in his employ (neither of whom, it seems, was Massaino). See E. Natalie Rothman, “ ‘To remove the occasion for scandal’: Same-sex Love, Homosocial Domesticity, and Patriarchal Authority in Inter-Imperial Relations,” abstracts of papers presented at conference To Have and To Hold: Marriage in Pre-Modern Europe, 1200–1700, Toronto, 15–17 October 2009.

^[27] The precise duration of his stay cannot presently be determined; it evidently occurred between mid-1587 and sometime in 1588 or 1589. See DBI, s.v. “Massaino,” 71:692.