Volume 8 (2002) No. 1
Jeffrey Kurtzman and Linda Maria Koldau
Trombe, Trombe d'argento, Trombe squarciate, Tromboni, and Pifferi in Venetian Processions and Ceremonies of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
Document 30: Complaint by nuns at the convent of Santo Spirito regarding Pentecost services. Venice, Archivio di Stato, Monastero dello Spirito Santo, Busta 16. Quoted and translated in Jonathan E. Glixon, "Con canti et organo: 'Music at the Venetian scuole piccole during the Renaissance'," Music in Renaissance Cities and Courts: Studies in Honor of Lewis Lockwood, ed. Jessie Ann Owens and Anthony M. Cummings (Warren, Michigan: Harmonie Park Press, 1997), 132.
Et una volta già pocchi anni
volevanno far cantar la messa granda . . . ma con si poca solennità et
musica, che causò più tosto derisione che devotione, se bene havevano
incaparati, et apparechiati, e pronti li migliori musici della Città,
si da voce, come da instrumenti, come è antico costume, et per disprecio
non volse il guardian di quel anno lasciar far la musica solita et ordinaria,
ma li fece tacee, se ben poi li dui di seguenti, havendo egli dormito su quella
sua opinione, si fece in chiesia la musica consueta delli altri anni.
one time, several years ago, they
wanted to sing the great mass . . . but it was done with such little solemnity
and music that the result was derision rather than devotion. Even though
a down payment had been made, and the church all prepared, and the best musicians
of the city, both singers and instrumentalists, as was the custom, were ready,
to spite us the guardian of that year decided not to let them do the usual music
but rather remain silent; the next two days, however, having slept on it, he
put on the music in the church, as had been usual in other years.