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ISSN: 1089-747X
Volume 8 (2002) No. 1
Trombe, Trombe d'argento, Trombe squarciate, Tromboni, and Pifferi in Venetian Processions and Ceremonies of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.
Jeffrey Kurtzman and Linda Maria Koldau
II. Trumpets, Pifferi and Other Instruments in Venetian Processions and Ceremonies
6. Venetian Processions and Ceremonies
7. Descriptions of Venetian Ducal Processions (Andate)
8. Trombe d'argento in Venetian Ducal Processions
9. Trombe d'argento and the Busine
10. Pifferi in Venetian Ducal Processions
11. Other Instruments in Ducal Processions
12. Trumpets and Pifferi in St. Mark's and other Major Churches
13. The Use of Trumpets and Pifferi by the Scuole grandi
14. The Use of Trumpets and Pifferi by the Scuole piccole
15. Funeral Processions and Ceremonies
6. Venetian Processions and Ceremonies
6.1 The splendor of Venetian processions was legendary. Visitors from all over Europe acknowledged that those of Venice exceeded by far the civic and religious ceremonies of anywhere else, both in frequency and in lavishness. Many writers expressed amazement at these Venetian displays of power, wealth and pomp allied with piety.126 The close association between the temporal power of the city, represented by the doge, and of civic religion, as represented by the doge's chapel of St. Mark's, merged the functions of civic and religious ritual to a high degree. Margaret King, in summarizing the views of the fifteenth-century Venetian humanist Giovanni Caldiera about this merger of the secular and the sacred, of state and church, as the guarantors of a stable polity, declares "Republican virtues are identified with divine virtues, and God and the State, patriotism and religion, are metaphorically fused."127 However, it was not just processions that achieved this metaphorical fusion, for virtually every procession concluded with a ceremony of some kind. Most often it was a liturgical ceremony in a church or cemetery that served as the geographic goal of a procession, but it could also be in the location where a peace treaty was publicly proclaimed and posted, or even consist of secular ceremonies in the palace of the doge or some patrician or nobleman where a procession culminated with a banquet, dancing and general festivities. Processions and ceremonies, like church and state, were indissolubly linked in Venice.
6.2 The most important element in a ducal procession was the official cortege, governed by strict protocols regarding the order of groups of individuals as well as the costumes they wore. However, the ducal cortege constituted only one segment of a procession. The scuole grandi, the scuole piccole, religious orders, artisans' guilds, the military, and any number of other groups participated, depending on the festivity or occasion being celebrated. Such processions were already quite elaborate in the thirteenth century and already involved trumpets.128 Nevertheless, in this period, "both nobles and citizens walked in an undifferentiated crowd behind the doge."129 After the government was reorganized in 1297, permanently fixing the patrician status of certain families whose members were eligible for election to the Concilio Maggiore, social hierarchy grew in importance and ducal processions gradually became more elaborately organized. By the fourteenth century, acts of the Council had defined with precision the order of official elements in ducal processions. The processions thus came to represent the constitutional hierarchy of governmental authority as well as display the "ceremonial decorum and solemnity of the state."130 By the middle of the sixteenth century, an elaborate bureaucracy had developed to oversee the constitution of processions and the responsibilities of the various groups that participated. In 1590, the first ceremoniale was compiled, containing descriptions of actual ceremonies. Such records were kept until 1729, eventually filling six volumes entitled Collegio Ceremoniale.131 These records served as historical references to guide the organization of subsequent processions and ceremonies. Ecclesiastics in St. Mark's performed similar functions with regard to liturgical ceremonies, also drawing up books of ceremonies from time to time.132
7. Descriptions of Venetian Ducal Processions (Andate)
7.1 Various Venetian historians published descriptions, often highly detailed, of the regular ducal andate (processional visits to churches and institutions around the city) and of processions celebrating unique events, such as royal visits or military victories.133 The ducal andate were a conspicuous feature of Venetian civic life and were performed according to a strict calendar and protocol. Francesco Sansovino described these andate in 1581 in a separate chapter of his famous and twice-republished book on Venice.134 Marin Sanudo, whose diaries span the years 1497–1533, recounted numerous processions for special occasions and their associated civic events and rituals, sometimes relating the specific order of elements, naming individual personages or categories of people, and describing minute details of vestments (see sections 33–34). The most elaborate type of procession, including the doge, his full complement of symbols, the Signoria and many other personages as well, was called an andate in trionfo, or con onori.135 During the course of a single year, there were, according to Sansovino, fourteen separate andate in trionfo prescribed for the doge and the Signoria in St. Mark’s and in St. Mark’s square, as well as other andate to different churches in various sestieri of the city on certain feast days. In addition there were andate prescribed for anniversaries of military victories, the defeat of domestic plots, and other secular events in the history of Venice, as well as the translation of the relics of saints.136
7.2 Apart from these processions, Giovanni Stringa, in his enlarged re-edition of Sansovino's book of 1604, lists another twenty-two andate of the doge and Signoria that were not in trionfo, in other words, without all the symbols of the doge's secular authority.137 These processions, which followed as elaborate protocols as the andate in trionfo, were centered around major feast days and religious observances, such as Christmas and Holy Week. The majority of these services took place in St. Mark's, and the processions both inside the basilica and outside in the piazza (and piazzetta) included large numbers of clerics as well as the six scuole grandi on seven specified occasions.138 Edward Muir has counted at least 86 different days that had ceremonial significance for Venice by the end of the sixteenth century.139 Just how magnificent these andate could be is illustrated in an engraving published in 1610 by Giacomo Franco of a Corpus Christi procession (Figure 4).140
7.3 A few other andate that did not involve visits to churches are briefly described by Stringa,141 and Giustiniano Martinioni, in his 1663 re-edition of Sansovino's book, lists four other andate in trionfo to various churches established in the seventeenth century. But besides these scheduled, officially delineated processions, numerous andate were performed for special occasions, such as royal visits, receptions for new ambassadors, investitures of high military officials and procurators, victory celebrations, funerals of important civic officials, and any other event calling for official ceremonies, such as the festivities celebrating the end of the plague in 1631.142
7.4 In addition to the ducal Andate, processions were organized by lay confraternities, comprising the six Scuole grandi and the numerous Scuole piccole. Each scuola was associated with a particular church, and these processions often had as their goal the patron church where the celebration culminated with a religious ceremony. Celebrations could also be privately sponsored, as in the case of wedding processions, which might conclude with a banquet in the home of the bride or groom's parents.
8. Trombe d'argento in Venetian Ducal Processions
8.1 The iconographic record and documentary evidence regarding Venetian processions in trionfo, or con onori, concentrate on two different groups of instruments in the official cortege, the doge's trombe d'argento and his pifferi. Venice was the proud possessor of six special silver trumpets, dubbed trombe lunghe or trombe d'argento,that according to legend had been a gift of Pope Alexander III in 1177.The legend surrounding the origin of these long silver trumpets was repeated by Venetian historians for centuries as an important aspect of the "myth of Venice." These trumpets were reputed to have been received by Doge Sebastiano Ziani, along with eight banners, from Pope Alexander on the occasion of Doge Ziani's ceremonial entrance into Rome and in honor of the service of Ziani and the Venetians in saving the papacy from German invaders by negotiating a peace between Alexander and Frederick Barbarossa in Venice earlier that year.143 The legend of the trumpets was, in fact, one among several that attributed most of the insigne or symbols of the doge to gifts from Alexander. As one would expect, these legends served repeatedly as the basis of pictorial representations of central events in Venetian history. A large painting by Giulio del Moro showing Doge Ziani kneeling at the feet of Alexander III is one among several paintings on this theme adorning the walls in the Great Council Hall of the doge's palace.144
8.2 The history of the doge's trumpets is obscure, but certainly more complicated than the legend. The first documentation regarding these trumpets is in the promissione ducale, or oath of office, of Doge Jacopo Tiepolo in 1229, wherein the new doge agrees to pay for three silver trumpets made for St. Mark's that will be housed in the ducal palace.145 Martin da Canal reports that the Easter processions during the reign of doge Ranieri Zeno (1253–1268) featured six silver trumpets, and the promissione of Doge Giovanni Dandolo in 1289 contains an expense for six trumpets.146 According to Sansovino, there were originally four trumpets, but two were added in 1289. They weighed 24 marche, and in 1318 they were enlarged to 30 marche for greater dignity. They were formerly as long as normal trumpets, but Nicolo Marcello had them rebuilt in 1473 (only completed in 1478) to the size they were in 1581 at the time of Sansovino's writing.147 Marin Sanudo reports that in 1524 Doge Andrea Gritti had them rebuilt again, this time of silver instead of the copper of which they had previously been constructed (prima erano di rame), and that they sounded well.148 On the other hand, almost three centuries earlier, Canal, as indicated above, had already described the trumpets as being made of silver. [Return to note 346.]
8.3 These six trombe lunghe, or trombe d'argento,are the ones employed in the ducal corteo, and from the late fifteenth century they were apparently something quite separate from and longer than the approximately eight-foot straight trumpets of other cities. They could only be used in processions requiring the participation of the doge, they functioned as traditional symbols of civic and ducal authority, and they occupied a special position in the cortege. It is not even clear that they were played in all epochs of Venetian history, but in some periods may have served simply as visual symbols.149
8.4 Although the trombe d'argento were among the symbols of ducal authority, the appearance of the trombe d'argento in a procession did not always mean that the doge himself was present. On unusual occasions, such as when the doge was ill, the Signoria processed as normal, but without the doge. The trombe d'argento and the pifferi still participated, but several of the symbols of the doge were omitted when he himself was unable personally to attend.150
9. Trombe d'argento and the Busine
9.1 The trombe d'argento del doge clearly have their origins in the long busine of the middle ages and early Renaissance.151 The iconographical record of trumpets in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries shows these kinds of instruments in use all over Europe. The context of such images is often allegorical or symbolic, but may show quite realistically the instruments depicted. A case in point is a miniature in British Library Ms. Add. 18851, known as the Isabella Breviary, which presents a group of musicians on the steps of a church-like building.152 According to James McKinnon, this illustration could appropriately be titled, "An introductory illustration to the gradual psalms; levitical musicians play on the steps of the Temple at Jerusalem, while King David looks on and David as pilgrim mounts the steps."153 While the theme of the miniature is allegorical, the instruments and the clothing of the musicians appear quite realistic, and the long busine is probably an accurate representation of the size and shape of such an instrument.
9.2 Indeed, a very similar instrument is depicted in an allegorical drawing known as "A Scene of Sacrifice" by the Paduan artist Domenico Campagnola from c. 1514, now in the Uffizi Gallery.154 Long busine, but without the usual knob where the bell segment is joined to the principal tube, can be seen in a drawing by Lorenzo Lotto of "Festivities in Honor of Padua" (Figure 5).155 This drawing, now in the Biblioteca Reale in Turin, has been variously dated at c. 1528–30 or c. 1535–38. Such instruments were not confined to outdoor use. A miniature by an anonymous French illustrator of the fourteenth century shows two very long busine playing Tafelmusik together with bagpipes at a banquet.156
9.3 The busine was also a principal military trumpet of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and it can be seen employed by soldiers on horseback leading Christ through the streets of a fanciful Jerusalem on the way to Calvary in a drawing, now in the Louvre, from the sketchbooks of the Venetian Jacopo Bellini from around the mid-fifteenth century.157 There is no reason to believe that these long busine in Jacopo's drawing do not represent the kind of instruments that would have led a military or other important procession in Bellini's day. Indeed, they closely resemble the trumpets in Gentile Bellini's Processione della Croce in Piazza San Marco of 1496, discussed below. The typology of one or more trumpeters on horseback leading Christ to Calvary survived well into the eighteenth century, as can be seen in a painting by Giambattista Tiepolo in Sant'Alvise in Venice.158 A prominent example of the military function of such busine (though not as long as in the Jacopo Bellini example) occupies the very center of Vittore Carpaccio's "Martyrdom of the pilgrims and funeral of Saint Ursula" of 1493 from his cycle of Saint Ursula, originally in the Scuola di Sant'Orsola, but now housed together with other paintings from this cycle in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice (Figure 6).159 [Return to paragraph 31.1.]
9.4 Peter Downey has equated the Venetian trombe lunghe d'argento with the straight trumpets of the German courts.160 But the Venetian trombe lunghe were different in function, and after 1478, in size. The straight trumpets of German courts served to announce the presence of the prince, especially in processions and other ceremonies, but the trombe d'argento were only one among several symbols associated not with the personage of the doge per se, but with ducal authority as embodying the civic polity and defined by specific laws, ordinances and restrictions.161 Unlike the German courts headed by the personal authority of hereditary rulers where symbols such as trumpets served to emphasize rank and dynastic rule, the trappings of the doge were clearly symbols of the continuity and power of the city itself.162 The doge could not even exit the palace except when accompanied by the Signoria.163 The other, equally important emblems of civic authority attached to the doge were named in the Cerimoniale del doge, were described by Sansovino, and appear prominently in a woodcut by Matteo Pagan and an engraving by Giacomo Franco, described in sections 17 and 19. The relative sizes of German heraldic trumpets and the Venetian trombe lunghe d'argento were also different. No instruments of the length of the Venetian trombe, as depicted by Pagan and Franco, requiring the additional support of boys, are recorded anywhere else in Europe.
10. Pifferi in Venetian Ducal Processions
10.1 The official ensemble of pifferi was also under the jurisdiction of the doge. The earliest surviving document mentioning the pifferi is the same promissione of Doge Jacopo Tiepolo of 1229 where we find the first definitive evidence of the trombe d'argento.164 A document of 1460 establishes a pay scale for the pifferi and trombetti and the means for paying them.165 Three years later another document set the ensemble at five, consisting of tre piffari e do trombetti, and raised their salaries as well as those of the trumpeters. At this early date, the term trombetti very likely refers to single-slide trumpets, since U-shaped double-slide trombones, which formed part of the ensemble by the end of the century, were as yet probably unknown.166 By 1494 the pifferi numbered six.167 The size of the ensemble ranged over time between four and nine players.168 Aside from sometimes playing in the ducal church of St. Mark's,169 playing for official functions, playing at banquets, and playing for balls, the pifferi formed part of every ducal procession in their own distinct garments and fixed position in the cortege.
10.2 Despite the fact that all of the iconographical representations of instruments comprising the pifferi del doge discussed below show the ensemble to be made up of shawms and trombones, documents suggest that as elsewhere in Italy, the shawms began to be replaced by cornettos, at least for indoor performance, by the early sixteenth century. In 1566, one of the members of this ensemble was specifically identified as a cornettist, and Giovanni Bassano, who joined the doge's pifferi in 1576, was also famous for his playing of cornettos and pifferi.170 A seventeenth-century document refers to cornettos playing at the Elevation during the doge's coronation (an event when the doge's pifferi regularly played in St. Mark's), and the instrumental ensemble of St. Mark's itself (separate from the pifferi del doge) comprised only cornettos and trombones as winds from its inception in 1568.171 It seems highly unlikely that the doge's windband continued to play shawms in St. Mark's and for banquets and dancing in the palace when shawms had been replaced by cornettos for such purposes not only elsewhere in Italy, but also elsewhere in Venice.172 If this is true, then the pifferi del doge probably played two different sets of instruments by the mid-sixteenth century and perhaps earlier, depending on the occasion. For performances in St. Mark's and in the palace, the ensemble would have consisted of cornettos and trombones, while for processions outdoors (including the indoor component of many processions that originated outdoors), the cornettos would have been replaced by the louder and more penetrating shawms. [Return to note 273, paragraph 34.5.]
11. Other Instruments in Ducal Processions
11.1 While the trombe d'argento and the pifferi constituted the official instruments of the doge and were always present during a ducal procession in trionfo, processional instruments were not limited to just the doge's trombe d'argento and pifferi. Numerous accounts also mention a separate contingent of trumpets and drums which are often described as comprising two pairs of six each: i.e., twelve trumpeters and twelve drummers.173 The presence and position of such trumpets and drums, unlike the doge's instrumentalists and the various classes of dignitaries, were not regulated by the elaborate protocols pertaining to the doge's corteo. In those processions where the doge's trombe d'argento and pifferi were not present (as in funzioni senza onori) or the trumpets did not actually sound (as suggested by Grevembroch for part of their history), a body of trumpeters and drummers might have been the principal vehicle for announcing the approach of a procession that was making its way from one part of the city to another.174 Visiting dignitaries were likewise often met by smaller or larger processions representing the doge and the state which escorted them to the ducal palace and then to their lodgings with the sound of trumpets.175 As noted above, processions could contain a large number of elements, depending on the occasion,176 and when processions included the scuole grandi and the scuole piccole, the scuole brought with them their own singers and instrumentalists, sometimes including trumpets.177
11.2 A characteristic late fifteenth and early sixteenth-century ensemble of instruments employed by the scuole grandi in ducal and other processions as well as in the culminating mass in their patron church consisted of a hand-held harp, a rebec or other bowed string instrument, and a lute.178 This ensemble became obsolete by 1530–1535, and pay records of the scuole grandi demonstrate that it was replaced by a group of string instruments of the violin family, usually six, which were hired beginning in the 1530s and 1540s to participate in processions and ultimately other functions of the scuole in addition to, but separate from the wind instruments.179 [Return to paragraph 13.3.]
11.3 Additional trumpets, drums and other instruments were not the only factors contributing to the sound of processions. Volleys of rifle, blunderbuss or artillery fire, the ringing of church bells and the explosion of fireworks were also common accoutrements to processions.180 Processions were a major contributor to Venetian identity and civic pride, unifying the city divided by innumerable canals through their dazzling visual display and sometimes deafening auditory components that traveled far over the waters beyond the sight of the corteo itself.
12. Trumpets and Pifferi in St. Mark's and other Major Churches
12.1 St. Mark's occupied a unique position in Venice, not as the cathedral, which was San Pietro di Castello located far from the center of the city, but rather as the private chapel of the doge.181 In contrast to many other European cities, where the cathedral was located in the main square and was a principal focus of civic attention, in Venice it was the basilica of the doge in the Piazza San Marco that occupied center stage for religious and civic ceremonies.182 As the doge's private chapel, liturgical and administrative matters were under the ultimate jurisdiction of the doge, though the ecclesiastical leadership was entrusted to the primicerio and the administrative leadership to a group of nine procuratori, chosen for life.183 Processions were not only conducted out of doors in St. Mark's Square (comprising both the piazza and the piazzetta) but also inside the basilica. This held true for other Venetian churches as well. Thus trumpets and pifferi entered the sanctuaries themselves and at times participated in one way or another in the sacred service, whether mass or vespers.184 A document from 1460 attests to the use of trumpets and pifferi in ceremonies, possibly inside St. Mark's itself.185 On December 9, 1512, a solemn mass was celebrated at the high altar of St. Mark's with trombe e pifari.186 During a victory celebration on September 20, 1515 psalms were sung to the populace in the piazza from above the entrance to St. Mark's to the sound of trombe, pifari, corneti e altri instrumenti musici.187 A baptism of a bastard son was celebrated in Santa Maria Formosa on April 20, 1517 con gran triumpho,accompanied by trombe, pifari and "all the music that one could find."188 In 1524 a procession with eight battle trumpets and the doge's trombe et pifferi entered into St. Mark's.189 The doge's pifferi participated in the service celebrating the anniversary of the election of the doge in 1542 and later that year during the Christmas season as well.190 In 1548 a dispute over the performance of vespers at the monastery of San Giobbe records that the first psalm was contracted to be played by a group of pifferi, but because one of the instrumentalists didn't appear, the fifth part was taken by a singer.191 The ceremoniale for St. Mark's, compiled between 1559 and 1564 by BartolomeoBonifacio, describes the use of piffari in a procession in the church and before the Epistle as well as cornettos at the Elevation.192 The cerimoniale also calls for the celebration of the feast of Saint Nicholas in a chapel between the church and the ducal palace accompanied by the pifferi del doge, who substitute for the organ and play standing outside the door of the chapel.193 The coronation of Doge Giovanni Bembo in 1615 involved a mass col suono delle Trombe all'Elevatione.194 Since some of the ceremonies at St. Mark's involved elaborate entries into and exits from the basilica, trumpets also sounded directly outside the church and even from the roof over the portal.195 [Return to: paragraph 12.4, 34.2.]
12.2 One especially grand occasion involved Giovanni Rovetta, the Vice maestro di cappella of St. Mark's, who composed a concerted mass that he conducted in the Palladian church of San Giorgio Maggiore (on the island of San Giorgio, directly across the bacino from St. Mark's square) to celebrate the birth of the future Louis XIV of France in 1638.196 The official published account of the ceremonies mentions musical instruments in several capacities.197 Upon their arrival at the church, the company was greeted with a noisy reception produced by mortars, canons, trumpets, drums, pifferi, and viole (members of the violin family).198 Singers and instrumentalists performed both together and separately in the mass itself.199 At the Elevation, mortars, canons, trumpets, drums, pifferi, and violoni (another term for members of the violin family) echoed through the air in the square immediately in front of the church.200 At the end of mass, as the company exited from the church, a psalm was sung, trumpets were again sounded, and mortars and canons were fired after the company embarked in gondolas and traversed the grand canal.201 The subsequent festivities and banquet in the ducal palace were accompanied by viole, pifari, and other musical instruments, and trumpets, drums, and pifferi sounded from the courtyard of the palace. The toasting of the King of France was accompanied not only by the noise of all the instruments, but also by the firing of eighty large mortars.202 [Return to paragraph 35.2.]
12.3 Despite all the verbal accounts of trumpets in St. Mark's and the eventual appointment of trumpeters to the instrumental ensemble, we are aware of only one pictorial representation of a trumpet inside the basilica itself. An early seventeenth-century painting by Giovanni Le Clerc in the Great Council Hall of the doge's palace depicts the oath of Doge Enrico Dandolo and the military captains as they prepare to embark upon the Fourth Crusade in 1198 (Figure 7).203 The scene, witnessed by the Patriarch and other church officials, is turbulent, conveying the excitement and energy of purpose of those engaged in the event. In the center foreground is a single figure with a folded trumpet hanging behind his back from a sash around his waist (Figure 8). Obviously, the folded trumpet is anachronistic for the time period represented, but the presence of a trumpet does not even necessarily mean that in the mind of Le Clerc such an instrument would have been played during whatever service accompanied this oath-taking. Rather, the trumpet may simply have served as a symbol for the military significance of this event. [Return to paragraph 45.3.]
12.4 It is apparent that the use of trumpets and pifferi at St. Mark's and other churches in Venice was not limited only to the occasions for which we have documentation. Such documentation simply establishes the types of ceremonies for which trumpets and pifferi may have been quite regularly employed, i.e., at mass or in a Te Deum honoring any event, personage or feast requiring a specially joyous celebration. But instruments may also have taken part in services at St. Mark's on a fairly frequent basis at least as early as the beginning of the second quarter of the sixteenth century and perhaps much earlier. Trombe e pifari had played at the Elevation during mass in the chapel of St. Nicholas as early as December 6, 1500 (see paragraph 12.1).204 A prohibition against the use of instruments in church issued by the Patriarch of Venice in 1528 specifically exempted St. Mark's, which was under the doge's, not the Patriarch's jurisdiction.205 There would have been no need to mention St. Mark's at all if instruments were not being used there. The Patriarch's prohibition against instruments in other churches was ignored in 1529, when tybicines et sonatores cum tybiis, cornibus et aliis sonis et cantibus inhonestis, participated in a service at the church of Sant'Aponal, prompting the Patriarch's reprimand.206 By the 1560s, instrumental participation in services at St. Mark's was common. Sometime before 1560, Annibale Padovano, first hired in 1552 as an organist in St. Mark's, had organized an instrumental ensemble that played when the doge and the Senate, dressed in purple, entered the church.207 Instrumental ensembles were also hired for Christmas in 1563 and Christmas and Easter in 1564.208 Bartolomeo Bonifacio's 1564 ceremoniale for St. Mark's declares that "in every major solemnity, the singers sing with the organ or the instrumentalists play."209
12.5 Just four years later, on January 29, 1568, a group of pifferi comprising the famous cornettist Girolamo dalla Casa from Udine and his two brothers was contracted to play as salaried employees at St. Mark's for a series of specified feasts. From this point onward, St. Mark's regularly utilized cornettos and trombones, and later violins and a violone, in sacred services.210 The practice of hiring extra instrumentalists for particularly important celebrations continued, and both the salaried ensemble and the number of ad hoc instrumentalists increased substantially in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.211 When and in what manner the pifferi del doge may have also participated in services at St. Mark's after the basilica established its own instrumental ensemble is unclear, but at the very least, as participants in ducal processions, they played during these processions inside the church. They also played for ceremonies in the basilica celebrating the election of a new doge and the anniversary of the doge's election.212
12.6 At some point the pifferi del doge were absorbed into the pifferi of St. Mark's. In 1614, Giovanni Bassano, the leader of the instrumentalists (capo dei concerti) at St. Mark's since 1601, formed a union of six of the instrumentalists (eleven instrumentalists were placed on the regular payroll on December 7, 1614) in order to share among themselves the opportunities for external income from masses, vespers, compline, and the Forty Hours devotion at other churches and the scuole as well as from weddings.213 On November 24, Bassano submitted a petition to the doge for the formation of the union, which the doge referred to the Primicerio of St. Mark's for his opinion. In the petition, Bassano lists himself and his five companions by name as "players of your Excellency . . . all six of us players designated as trombones and pifferi of your Excellency."214 By dividing fairly the outside opportunities, competition and contention among the members for extra income could be avoided. The request notes that the ensemble's salary came from the doge and the Procuratoria de Supra.215 Traditionally, the doge paid the salaries of his trombe d'argento and pifferi. The Procuratoria was responsible for the financial management of St. Mark's, including the salaries of the musicians, so the salaries of Bassano's ensemble were a combination of the two funding sources. In the by-laws of the union, submitted October 22, 1616, the ensemble is referred to as "the aforementioned six players of your Excellency" at one point,216 and at another the six members are named individually and described as "trombones and pifferi of your Excellency and of your ducal chapel and church of St. Mark's."217 Toward the end of the by-laws, the reference is made to the ensemble "who are salaried and serve in the ducal chapel of St. Mark's."218 A list of eighteen instrumentalists (not including organists) at St. Mark's compiled between March 5 and August 24, 1616, a few months before the submission of the union's by-laws, includes all of the names of the union members except one.219 This union remained in force through the middle of the century, and its activities demonstrate that the Patriarch's attempt in 1528 to prohibit or at least limit instrumental participation in other churches obviously did not last long, for by the time of its formation, and certainly considerably earlier, the salaried instrumentalists at St. Mark's were being hired out on a regular basis to play in other churches as well as in the scuole. [Return to paragraph 13.4, note 169.]
12.7 As we have seen, during the course of the sixteenth century cornettos gradually replaced shawms in pifferi bands all over Italy, without necessarily banishing the latter instruments altogether, especially for outdoor performances. With regard to Venice, the combination of two cornettos and four trombones is described as early as 1505 in a letter from Giovanni Alvise Trombon, a member of the doge's pifferi, to the Marquis Francesco II Gonzaga in Mantua. In this letter, Giovanni, son of Zorzi Trombetta of Venice, announces that he is sending the Marquis several arrangements of motets for instruments; one of these is for four trombones and two cornettos.220A member of the pifferi del doge cited in a document of 1520 was Giovanni Maria Bernardi called "del cornetto."221 Girolamo della Casa, head of the wind band at St. Mark's, was famous as a cornetto virtuoso. We are not aware of any document of the Cinquecento or first half of the Seicento at St. Mark's referring to wind instrumentsthat identifies any instruments other than cornettos and trombones.222 The cornettos, however, gave way to violins in the 1620s and 1630s. Missing the sound of the cornetto, the procurators of St. Mark's, beginning in 1640, made a significant effort to revive it, including the hiring of someone to teach the instrument.223 They were evidently successful in revitalizing the cornetto, for it remained an important element of the ensemble throughout much of the century, together with trombones, strings, bassoons and theorboes.224 Francesco Cavalli's will of 1675 lists the instruments for his requiem mass as two violins, four viole, two cornettos, trombones, bassoon, two theorboes, a violon grosso and three organs, with the performers to be drawn from the best players of St. Mark's and the city.225
12.8 Trumpeters were still employed at St. Mark's with some frequency on an ad hoc basis for the liturgical celebrations of military conquests and other militaristic events, even after the middle of the seventeenth century when two trumpeters were appointed as salaried members of the instrumental ensemble, the first by 1664 and the second by 1689.226 Pay records of the procurators show trumpeters and drummers as well as extra pifferi hired in February 1690 (new style) for festivities in honor of Pope Alessandro VIII, and a dozen trumpeters and drummers were hired in January 1691 (new style) for the celebration of the conquest of Valon. In April 1694, a large contingent of trumpeters and drummers was hired to honor Doge Francesco Morosini as he departed on a military expedition for the Levant, and in November 1694 twelve trumpeters were hired to play in the mass and Te Deum when Venice acquired Scio (Chio).227 [Return to paragraph 34.2.]
13. The Use of Trumpets and Pifferi by the Scuole grandi
13.1 As already noted, some ducal processions included Venice's six large confraternities, the scuole grandi. Moreover, not all Venetian processions were ducal processions—many were initiated by the scuole grandi themselves, especially on the feast day of the titular saint of the church with which each scuola was associated, on the first Sunday of each month and on a number of other occasions.228 There are no known state protocols regarding the order of elements in the segments of a procession before or after the official ducal cortege or for those processions that were not state functions, though at least one scuola had its own ordine, and it is virtually certain that others did too.229 Processions by the scuole were frequent and could wend their way through large portions of the city, sometimes making various stops for the singing of laude on the way to their final destination.230 From descriptions, archival records and iconographical representations of such processions, it is clear that singers and instrumentalists often took part and participated in the liturgical services with which these processions invariably culminated. Numerous pay records show unequivocally that up to the 1530s, a string ensemble comprising a lute, a harp and a viola (rebec) was used by each scuola and that trombe e pifferi often participated in the processions and in the liturgical services.231 [Return to paragraph 16.2.]
13.2 Trombe had been used in processions and sacred services by Venice's scuole grandi since at least 1470, and undoubtedly much earlier.232 The term tromba, however, like trombetta, had become equivocal by the second half of the fifteenth century. In the first part of the century it meant a trumpet, which could take the form of a straight trumpet of full length or lesser size, an S-shaped trumpet, a folded trumpet, or any shape of single-slide trumpet, but as double-slide instrumentsdeveloped in the second half of the century, the term tromba also doubled as a reference to what was also called a trombone.233 A player of the tromba is listed as a member of the Scuola San Marco in 1470, and the scuola hired five instrumentalists (three pifari and two tromboni) to play at specified feasts in February of 1503 (new style), by which time the term trombone clearly meant a U-shaped double-slide instrument.234 For the Scuola San Marco, the use of trombe, together with pifferi, not only in processions but also in masses on the first Sunday of each month, is documented from 1515.235 In order to save money in hard times, the trombe and pifferi were dropped as permanently salaried employees by the Scuola in 1527, though they still could be hired on an occasional basis.236 In 1525, a visitor wrote that a solemn mass at the Scuola San Rocco was performed ("fu cantata") not with voices, but on pifferi.237 A 1530 document from the Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Misericordia refers to trombe, e pifari et corneti et eziam organo participating in a mass said before the dispensation of dowries to the daughters of deceased brothers of the Scuola.238
13.3 The ambiguity of terminology makes it impossible in most instances to be certain when trombe refers to trumpets and when to trombones, but a prohibition emanating from the Patriarch in 1639 against the use of trumpets and drumsin services of the scuole piccole (see paragraph 14.5) strongly suggests that such instruments were used by the scuole grandi as well. It seems inconceivable that the scuole grandi, with their emphasis on grandiose public display and much larger budgets for such matters,would have made more limited use of instrumental resources than the scuole piccole.The records of the scuole grandi also show that other instruments formed a regular part of the musical contingent.239 By the 1530s and 1540s, ensembles of strings were favored by the scuole in processions (see paragraph 11.2), though trombe e pifferi were still used in the liturgy. As time went by, strings increasingly supplanted winds in liturgical services, but winds still continued in use well into the seventeenth century.240 After the plague of 1630–31, the hiring of prominent musicians from St. Mark's and elsewhere declined, though some festive events were still occasionally celebrated with the former pomp. In the early eighteenth century, the Scuola di San Rocco hired numerous instrumentalists from St. Mark's, including a trumpeter and an oboist, to perform in the procession, a passion in the church of San Rocco, and music at the Scuola on the patronal feast.241
13.4 In 1553, the Council of Ten, in response to a complaint by the Scuola di Santa Maria della Carità about a union of singers that had recently been formed at St. Mark's to regulate participation in and fees for outside performances, attempted to reduce the expenditures for music by abolishing the union and prohibiting the scuole from hiring singers on the grounds that the scuole spent money on music that should have gone to the poor. The other scuole protested the regulation, citing psalm ninety-seven's injunction to "psallite Domino in cithara et voce psalmi in tubis ductilibus et voce tube cornee."The scuole were supported in their protest by the musicians themselves, who complained that their own salaries were so low as to barely escape poverty. After much debate and an appeal from the Procuratori, the Council eventually rescinded its earlier decision and simply limited the amount of money each scuola could spend annually on singers.242 This attempt at forming a union of singers laid the groundwork for later unions of instrumentalists and of singers for the same purpose of eliminating competition and dissension with regard to outside employment on an occasional basis. Decrees by the Heads of the Council of Ten in the 1580s attempted to resolve further such disputes by apportioning companies of instrumentalists among the scuole.243 The instrumentalists' union of Giovanni Bassano, described in paragraph 12.6, was the most long-lived of such efforts. [Return to note 213.]
13.5 Whatever limitations on the pomp of regularly scheduled processions the scuole might have imposed in response to the legislation of the Council of Ten, special events always elicited lavish spectacle. An account by Giovanni Stringa of a celebration on the 26th of July, 1598, honoring the peace between Henry IV of France and Phillip II of Spain, describes the procession by the scuole grandi, giving details of each scuola and its elaborate, hand-carried floats (solari). The fifth scuola in this procession was that of San Rocco, and among its floats was one representing the spreading of Fame throughout the world by means of a richly dressed youth playing a tromba squarciata da guerra. The boy had one foot on a replica of the world, and the other foot balanced in the air. No drum is mentioned in the description, but the military association of the tromba squarciata is clear. Immediately following this float came a series of floats representing the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and America, across which the fame of the current peace was disseminated symbolically by the tromba squarciata da guerra.244 [Return to: paragraph 29.2, 34.6, 35.2.]
14. The Use of Trumpets and Pifferi by the Scuole piccole
14.1 The scuole grandi were only six in number, but Venice also hosted other small and sometimes quite large confraternities known collectively as the scuole piccole, which numbered more than two hundred in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.245 These confraternities likewise sponsored processions and elaborate liturgical celebrations, principally on the feasts of their patron saints, though sometimes on other occasions as well.246 Pifferi and tromboni are frequently found on their membership lists.247 Instrumentalists took part in their festivities from a very early stage; in 1373 it was already necessary for the Scuola di San Giovanni Battista to reduce the number of instrumentalists who had received free membership in return for their musical services.248 Many scuole also limited the amount of money they could spend on musicians.249 The 1420 protocol for the annual patronal procession of the Scuola di San Giovanni Battista e Sant'Ambrogio dei Milanesi required four trombe e trombetti e nacharini (small kettle drums).250 Likewise, the undated mariegola (by-laws)of the Scuola dei Milanese requires that festal processions be accompanied by quatro trombe e trombete e nacharini.251 Here the association with nacharini obviously suggests trumpets, and at this early date, neither trombe nor its diminutive trombetti could refer to double-slide trombones. The distinction between the two terms suggests long straight trumpets versus shorter trumpets, possibly S-shaped, single-slide, or mid-size instruments of approximately half the length of the trombe, pitched an octave higher. Trombetti even could have referred to folded instruments whose tube length would have been the same as long straight trumpets, but which gave the appearance of being smaller instruments.
14.2 The early fifteenth-century mariegola of the Scuola della Beata Vergine Assunta in the church of San Stae calls for the hiring of two trombe, two pifferi and one drummer for the feast of Santa Maria della Gratia.252 The 1442 mariegola of the Scuola di San Francesco declares that pifari et tronbeti must be hired to celebrate Vespers and Mass, as was customary on February 2, the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin.253 Once again the early date of both documents means that the terms trombe and tronbeti must refer to trumpets of some kind.
14.3 Beginning in 1502, the Scuola del Venerabile Sacramento in the church of San Giuliano paid a group of wind players annually on the Feast of Corpus Christi.254 In about 1506, the pifferi del doge, comprising three pifari and three tromboni,became members of the Scuola di Santa Maria dei Mercanti.255 Documents pertaining to the Scuola di San Teodoro, which was one of the scuole piccole until 1552, when it became officially numbered among the scuole grandi, mention trombe e pifferi in a procession on December 15, 1490 and trombetti e pifferi on December 13, 1537.256 The corteo marched to San Marco and the Rialto to announce the feast. In the first instance, trombe could refer to either trumpets or trombones, though given the event, trumpets are certainly possible. In the second instance, trombetti much more likely refers to trumpets of some kind.257 In 1516 and 1517, the Scuola di Sant'Orsola hired six tronbetti ett [sic] pifari for the vigil and the day of the feast of St. Ursula, not only to play for first and second vespers and the mass, but also for a procession from San Marco to the Rialto.258 Processions by the scuole to San Marco and the Rialto, accompanied by tronbe e pifari, were commonplace and served to invite the populace and the scuola's membership to its host church to honor its patron saint.259
14.4 During the sixteenth century, the Scuola della Trinità regularly engaged musicians from St. Mark's and other well-known players for their feast.260 In 1604 the Scuola della Beata Vergine Assunta began celebrating a musical Compline with salaried singers and instrumentalists. In 1626 they reduced the number of instrumentalists, eliminating the trombone as superfluous.261 In the late sixteenth century, the nuns of the convent of Spirito Santo complained that because of the obstinacy of the guardian of the Scuola dello Spirito Santo, the first day's Pentecost celebrations had not been performed with the customary pomp, including hired singers and instrumentalists who were to have participated in the mass.262 In 1637 the Scuola and convent hired Francesco Cavalli at an expensive rate to provide music and musicians for the three days of elaborate Pentecost celebrations.263 The year before Cavalli had also been hired to provide similar services for the founding of the Scuola di San Domenico di Soriano, festivities which included the participation of tamburin e tronbete.264 Further documents of the Scuola dello Spirito Santo demonstrate ongoing problems and preoccupation with the expenses and character of the music for Pentecost throughout the seventeenth century.265 The contract of the maestro di cappella in 1691 for the annual Pentecost music called for a choir of twelve (three on a part) as well as "three organs, a violone, two violas da gamba, four violins, four violas, two cornettos, a theorbo, and a trumpet," all hired from St. Mark's.266
14.5 It is obvious that in the early seventeenth century some of the scuole piccole performed music in their host churches as sumptuous as that produced by the scuole grandi.267 The frequency of trumpet playing in the host churches prompted the Provveditori di Comun, at the request of the Patriarch of Venice, to warn the scuole piccole on April 1, 1639 to correct a number of excesses and abuses, including avoiding the use in sacred services of trumpets and drums, which were more suitable for armies than the house of God.268 Such admonitions usually had limited effect: in 1641 and 1642 the Scuola di Santa Catterina di Siena paid large sums of money for music at their annual feast, hiring in the latter year Natale Monferrato, later vice maestro di cappella and maestro di cappella at St. Mark's, to provide the music.269 [Return to paragraph 13.3.]
14.6 There are no surviving documents regarding the order of elements in processions of the scuole piccole in Venice, but the Scuola di Sant'Antonio di Padova in Paduahad a protocol for the order of its processions, and it is very likely that other scuole in Padua and Venice did as well.270 Although the order of procession for the Scuola di Sant'Antonio di Padova does not mention musical instruments, it is nevertheless quite probable that trumpets and pifferi, possibly with the addition of drums, led the procession and participated in the liturgical service, as in so many other documented cases.271
14.7 The quantity of records from as early as the fourteenth century suggests that such processions involving trumpets and pifferi, sometimes also including nacharini, were typical. These same instruments very likely also participated in the mass and vesper services of the scuole even prior to their frequent documentation in sacred services from the late fifteenth century.272 The list of participants in musical activities by the scuole (mostly scuole piccole) published by Elena Quaranta covering the period 1373–1613 sometimes lists trombetti e piffari (also pifferi or pifari), more frequently trombe e piffari, occasionally trombe, piffari e nacharini, sometimes simply suonatori or cantori e suonatori, rarely cantori alone, and sometimes even just musicisti. Some of these entries are too early for the term tromba to refer to an instrument with a slide, but by the fifteenth century a single-slide instrument could have been meant by tromba or trombetta when mentioned in connection with pifferi. The word trombone doesn't appear in these pay records as a distinct item, though single-slide instruments were possibly subsumed under the term pifferi in the early fifteenth century, and double-slide trombones could also have been included in the same word by the end of the fifteenth century. Pifferi is the most ambiguous and imprecise among many problematic terms for instruments in this period. The pifferi employed by the scuole were not limited to shawms or cornettos and trombones as in the pifferi del doge. In earlier times, the principal instruments would indeed have been shawms, gradually supplemented or replaced by cornettos in the sixteenth century as cornettos became more popular. However, other instruments could also take part in an ensemble of pifferi, such as trombones, bagpipes, recorders, cross flutes, and viols.273 Thus the pifferi could be a mixed bag of mostly wind instruments, depending on the occasion and what instrumentalists were available for hire. Strings were likely added to the winds in processions, just as they were in the scuole grandi, and the 1691 document from the Scuola dello Spirito Santo cited in paragraph 14.4 demonstrates that strings became major participants in the liturgical services of the scuole piccole as well. [Return to note 13.]
15. Funeral Processions and Ceremonies
15.1 Trumpets and drums were common accompaniments to funeral processions in northern Europe, as can be seen in a well-known engraving of the burial ceremony of Charles V at Brussels in 1558, the original by Wellens de Cock.274 This engraving shows fourteen trumpeters holding folded trumpets, each with a banner appended, two men carrying kettledrums both in front and at their backs, and a director of the ensemble. How the drums on the drummers' backs might have been played is suggested by another engraving from the Bibliothèque Royale in Brussels of trumpeters and drummers assembled for a funeral procession at the court of Archduke Albrecht, Governor of the Netherlands, in the early seventeenth century.275 This illustration shows twelve unusually large folded trumpets, kettledrums affixed to the front and back of two men, and two other men carrying mallets, who are obviously the players of the drums appended to the backs of their predecessors.276 While the trumpets in these engravings are not muted, muted trumpets were commonly used in funeral processions throughout Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including Florence and Naples.277 A small late seventeenth-century painting by Alessandro Piazza in the Museo Correr in Venice depicts a military funeral procession, "The Transport of the Body of the Doge [Francesco Morosini, 1688–94] from Napoli di Romania" (Figure 9). About halfway back in the procession are eight trumpeters playing straight trumpets about three feet long followed by two drummers (Figure 10).278 [Return to note 358.]
15.2 We have almost no information regarding trumpets or other musical instruments in funeral processions in Venice itself. Both Sansovino and Stringa wrote extensively about the protocols and order of funeral processions of persons of various rank, but no instruments are named by either.279 Since the funerals of doges emphasized the continuity of state authority rather than the former role of the deceased, it is virtually certain that the trombe d'argento would not have participated in any funeral procession of a doge.280 A large eighteenth-century painting of a doge's funeral at San Giovanni e Paolo by GabrielBella from the Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia illustrates a large crowd participating in the procession, but no musical instruments nor any other symbols of ducal authority are visible. 281 In times of plague, as in 1630–31, it was essential to bury immediately the bodies of those who died from the disease in order to avoid further contagion, and elaborate funerals, like other large gatherings of the populace, would generally have been avoided. Music played a role in the frequent funeral processions of the scuole grandi, but often consisted of no more than simple singing of unspecified music by the least well-trained musicians of the scuole. There is no evidence of the use of instruments by the scuole for funeral processions.282
15.3 Funeral liturgical ceremonies, however, could indeed use instruments. In 1675 the will of Francesco Cavalli, maestro di capella at St. Mark's, requested a concertato Requiem mass in the church of San Lorenzo with the best singers and instrumentalists of the chapel and the city, to be directed by the maestro di capella of St. Mark's. Cavalli even lists the required instrumentation: two violins, four viole, two cornettos, two theorboes, trombones, a bassoon, a violone, and three organs.283 [Return to note 225.]
References to Part II
126Muir, Civic Ritual, 60. It is clear, however, from the description of Roman cavalcades and official Bolognese processions cited in note 82 and quoted in Document 2 that Venice sometimes had competition from elsewhere in the lavishness of processions.
127 Margaret L. King, "Personal, Domestic, and Republican Values in the Moral Philosophy of Giovanni Caldiera," Renaissance Quarterly 28 (1975): 565.
128 Between 1267 and 1275 Martin da Canal compiled a chronicle in French that includes a number of descriptions of ducal ceremonies and processions featuring six silver trumpets. See Martin da Canal, Les Estoires de Venise, ed. Alberto Limentani (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1972), 246–63. For Canal's full text describing the Easter procession, see Document 5. For a reference of 15 November, 1361 to sumptuary legislation by the Senate limiting the use of trumpets during the feast of the Marys, see Fiati: Il sezione antichi libri e strumenti moderni, 49–50, item 16. The feast of the Marys was an eight-day festival from January 25, the Feast of St. Paul, to February 2, the Feast of the Purification, concluding with a procession in boats. A description of the feast of the Marys is found in Giulio Bistort, Il Magistrato alle pompe nella republica di Venezia (Venice, 1912; facs ed. Bologna: Forni Editore, 1969), 84–87. The legislation of 1361 limited trumpets to one pair per household providing one of the twelve "Marys," except for two pair per household on the feasts of St. Paul (January 25) and from the feast of the Translation of St. Mark (January 31) until the transit of the Marys (February 2).
129 Muir, Civic Ritual, 198.
130 Muir, Civic Ritual, 198–209 (quotation from p. 200). In these pages Muir cites the relevant documents and gives details of the hierarchical ranking and position of various elements of ducal processions.
131 Muir, Civic Ritual, 187–89. Muir describes the functions of several officials in organizing processions, ceremonies, and receptions.
132 Muir, Civic Ritual, 188–89. There was a Libro ordinum Ecclesiae sancti Marci, now lost,as early as 1307. The most important ceremoniali of St. Mark's were the Ritum ecclesiasticorum ceremoniale compiled by Bartolomeo Bonifacio in 1562 and the Ceremoniale magnum of Giovanni Battista Pace of 1678. The ceremoniali and liturgical booksand manuscripts of St. Mark's are discussed and analyzed in detail in Giulio Cattin, Musica e liturgia a San Marco, 3 vols. (Venice: Fondazione Levi, 1990).
133 For a general account of Venetian processions and more detailed descriptions of a number of specific annual processions, see Lina Urban, Processioni e feste dogali: "Venetia est mundus" (Vicenza: Neri Pozza Editore, 1998).
134 Sansovino's book, first published in 1581, was updated and republished in 1604 by Giovanni Stringa as Venetia città nobilissima, et singolare, descritta già in XIIII. Libri da M. Francesco Sansovino et hora con molta diligenza corretta, emendata, e più d'un terzo di cose nuove ampliata dal M.R.D. Giovanni Stringa, canonico della Chiesa Ducale di S. Marco. Nella quale si contengono tutte le cose, così antiche, come moderne, che nell'ottava facciata di questo foglio si leggono. . . In Venetia, presso Altobello Salicato. MDCIIII. Stringa's additions were then incorporated into the final republication by Giustiniano Martinioni in 1663 as Venetia, città nobilissima et singolare, descritta in XIIII. Libri . . . nella quale si contengono tutte le guerre passate, con l'attioni illustri di molti senatori, le vite de i principi, & gli scrittori Veneti del tempo loro, le chiese, fabriche, edifici, & palazzi publichi, & privati, le leggi, gli ordini, & gli usi antichi, & moderni, con altre cose appresso notabili, & degne di memoria; con aggiunta di tutte le cose notabili della stessa città, fatte, & occorse dall'Anno 1580, fino al presente 1663 da D. Giustiniano Martinioni . . . In Venetia, appresso Steffano Curti, MDCLXIII (reprint ed., Venice: Filippi Editore, 1968). For the chapter on Andate, see Libro Duodecimo, 492–526. The order of Andate are delineated on 492–93. For the full text, see Document 6. An English translation of this passage can be found in Denis Arnold, Giovanni Gabrieli and the Music of the Venetian High Renaissance (London: Oxford University Press, 1979), 22–23. A detailed description in English of the order of procession for these Andate, drawn from Sansovino, Martin da Canal, the diaries of Marin Sanudo, the woodcut of Matteo Pagan, and the Collegio Cerimoniale of the Archivio di Stato in Venice, is given in Muir, Civic Ritual, 189–211.
135 See Muir, Civic Ritual, 190–93 for a table listing the segments of a procession and their constituent elements as collated from five different sources.
136 Sansovino/Martinioni, Venetia, città nobilissima, 492.
137 See note 134. For the differences in the components of a procession in trionfo (con onori) and senza onori, see Document 7.
138 The seven feasts in which the scuole grandi participated were the feasts of St. Isadore, the Translation of the body of St. Mark, Corpus Christi, Finding of the body of St. Mark, St. Vido, St. Giustina, and St. Marina. See Baroncini, "Contributo alla storia del violino," 73.
139 See Muir, Civic Ritual, 78, note 35, for his estimate of the total number of regularly scheduled processions at the end of the 16th century as well as a survey of the number of official processions listed in various medieval and Renaissance sources. The political significance of these processions, their increasing number in the 16th century, their evolution into the 17th century, and the rigid ordering of the participants is thoroughly described by Muir on pp. 185–211.
140 Giacomo Franco, Habiti d'huomeni et donne venetiane con la processione della Ser.ma Signoria et altri particolari, cioè trionfi feste et ceremonie publiche della nobilissima città di Venetia. [1610] (facs. ed., Venice: Ferdinando Ongania Editore, 1878), Plate XXV. The Corpus Christi (Corpus Domini in Italian) procession was the most important of the entire church year throughout Europe. The feast had been established by Pope Urban IV in 1264 and was accompanied from its origins by an elaborate procession. See Bowles, "Music Instruments in Civic Processions," 159. The feast was equally prominent in the Venetian calendar where it involved two separate processions during the course of the day. The first, in Piazza San Marco, included the scuole grandi, the religious orders, the nine congregations of clerics, the regular canons, the chapters of San Pietro di Castello and St. Mark's, pilgrims stopping enroute to the Holy Land, and at the rear, the ducal cortege. See note 230. Each major contingent had its own musicians and singers at its head and the procession could last five to six hours. See Urban, Processioni e feste dogali, 98–99. Marin Sanudo, in describing in detail a lengthy procession in celebration of the signing of the treaty establishing the Holy League on October 20, 1511, indicates that it lasted five hours: "Fo comenzata la processione a hore 16 et compita a hore 21." See Marino Sanuto, I diarii, eds. R. Tulin et al (reprint ed. Bologna: Forni Editore, 1969), 13, col. 144. Return to note 176.
141 Sansovino/Martinioni, Venetia, città nobilissima, 523–24.
142 Muir discusses the annual ritual occasions as well as the types of one-time observances involving processions in Civic Ritual, 212–50. Perhaps the most elaborate and extensive of all the occasional celebrations were the rejoicings at the defeat of the Turkish fleet at Lepanto in 1571 (see paragraph 35.6). Eight days of celebrations, involving numerous processions, ceremonies and other activities, are summarized in Iain Fenlon, "Lepanto: le arti della celebrazione nella Venezia del rinascimento," Crisi e rinnovamenti nell'autunno del rinascimento a Venezia, ed. Vittore Branca e Carlo Ossola (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1991), 373–406. For a shorter version, see idem, "In Destructione Turcharum: The Victory of Lepanto in Sixteenth-Century Music and Letters," Andrea Gabrieli e il suo tempo: Atti del convegno internazionale (Venezia 16–18 Settembre 1985), ed. Francesco Degrada (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1987), 293–317. Because the victory occurred on October 7, the feast of Santa Giustina, she was considered the heavenly architect of the victory and the celebration of her feast became thenceforth the annual celebration of Lepanto as well. Return to note 418.
143 For an account of the legend, see Muir, Civic Ritual, 106 and 116; and Lina Urban, Processioni e feste dogali, 179–81. See also Lina Padoan Urban, "La festa della Sensa nelle arti e nell'iconografia," Studi veneziani 10 (1968): 291–353. Urban draws from the Biblioteca Correr ms. Correr n. 383, Cl. I [cod. Correr n. 1497], Storia della venuta a Venezia di papa Alessandro III. The doge's trumpets were reputed at least once in the 16th century to have been originally of copper. See Jonathan Emmanuel Glixon, "Music at the Venetian 'Scuole grandi', 1440–1540," 2 vols. (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1979), I: 210 and II: 134–35 (docs. E1–3 and E8). For further reports from the 16th and 18th centuries on the history of these instruments, see notes 345 and 346.
144 For a reproduction, see Rodolfo Pallucchini, La pittura veneziana del Seicento, 3 vols. (Milano: Electa, 1981), II: 489, plate 126. There are numerous other representations of Pope Alexander giving one or more of these symbols to Doge Ziani in Venetian iconography. The Biblioteca Correr in Venice contains a 15th century manuscript (Cod. Correr 383 cl. I, n. 1497) with a series of miniatures depicting Alexander III giving to Doge Ziani the ceremonial sword, the white candle, the golden ring symbolizing the marriage of Venice with the sea, the third of the ducal umbrellas, the trombe d'argento (four are depicted) and the eight banners of different colors. Another miniature illustrates a Venetian ambassador presenting a document to Federico Barbarossa that has been sealed with the special lead seal also conceded to Doge Ziani by Alexander III. These miniatures are reproduced in Agostino Pertusi, "Quedam regalia insignia: ricerche sulle insegne del potere ducale a Venezia durante il medioevo," Studi veneziani 8 (1965): plates 35–40. Pertusi discusses the actual origins of each of the ducal symbols, including the trombe d'argento. After the first surviving documentary record of these trumpets from 1229, six silver trumpets are mentioned in a description of an Easter procession during the reign of Doge Ranieri Zeno (1253–1268). See Pertusi, 91. The entire set of legends is reviewed in Muir, Civic Ritual, 103–19. The four paintings in the ducal palace are reproduced on 110–11. The symbols of ducal authority are also described in Staale Sinding-Larsen, Christ in the Council Hall: Studies in the Religious Iconography of the Venetian Republic, Vol. 5 of Acta ad Archaelogiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia of the Institutum Romanum Norvegiae (Rome: "L'Erma" di Bretschneider, 1974),156–66. For a 17th-century account of the legends, from Nicolò Doglioni, . . . delle cose successe dalla prima fondation di Venetia sino all'anno di Christo M.D.XCVII. . . In Venetia, M.D.XCVIII. Appresso Damian Zenar, 111; see Document 8. Doglioni cites on p. 112 a documentary reference signed by the pope as the basis for his account. Doglioni, who was also known as Leonico Goldioni, published several successive, updated editions of his work well into the 17th century. Francesco Sansovino also gave an account of the gifts from Alexander III in the midst of his description of the procession of a newly elected doge displaying the symbols of ducal authority. See Sansovino/Martinioni, Venetia, città nobilissima, 479–80 (Document 9). For an overview of music in Venetian ritual life in the 16th and 17th centuries, see Ellen Rosand, "Music in the Myth of Venice," Renaissance Quarterly 30(1977): 511–37. Return to note 161.
145 See Urban, Processioni e feste dogali, 181; and Fiati: II Sezione Antichi Libri e strumenti moderni, 46, item 1, where the number of trumpets is reported, apparently mistakenly, as six.
146 Urban, Processioni e feste dogali, 181; The passage cited is Canal Estoires de Venise, 246. Canal's description of the Easter procession and ceremonies gives an idea of how they were structured three centuries before the time of the woodcut of Matteo Pagan, described in section 17. For Canal's full text, see Document 5.
147 Sansovino/Martinioni, Venetia, città nobilissima, 479. For the full text, see Document 9. See also Muir, Civic ritual, 264–65.
148 See Urban, Processioni e feste dogali, 184, note 33. For Sanudo's full text, see Document 10. It is possible that by the phrase "prima erano di rame" Sanudo wasn't referring to the period prior to Doge Gritti, but rather to some indefinite period in the past.
149 See the discussion in note 346.
150 Sinding-Larsen, Christ in the Council Hall, 157–58. The symbols omitted when the doge was not present were the large candle, the cushion, the doge's seat, the umbrella and the sword.
151 Paired busine were a feature of civic and noble ceremonies from at least 1250 onward. See Keith Polk, "Brass instruments in art music," 41, 43. For a brief history of the early busine, see Edmund A. Bowles, "Unterscheidung der Instrumente Buisine, Cor, Trompe und Trompette," Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 18 (1961): 63–66.
152 Reproduced in James W. McKinnon, "The Fifteen Temple Steps and the Gradual Psalms," Imago Musicae 1 (1984): 30. The Breviary was for Queen Isabella of Spain; the illuminations are by Flemish artists.
153 McKinnon, "The Fifteen Temple Steps," 29.
154 See Jane Martineau and Charles Hope, eds., The Genius of Venice (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1984), 249.
155 Martineau and Hope, The Genius of Venice, 260.
156 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Départment des manuscrits, fr. 1586, fol. 55. This manuscript comprises a collection of the poetry of Guillaume de Machaut. See the reproduction in Catherine Homo-Lechner, "De l'usage de la cornemuse dans les banquets: quelques exemples du XIVe au XVIe siècle," Imago Musicae 4 (1987): 115. The depiction of long straight trumpets playing together with other instruments for Tafelmusik demonstrates that these trumpets were not confined merely to a signaling function. A mid-14th century instructional treatise by Konrad of Megenberg, a German living in Paris, describes tube playing together with tibie (shawms) at feasts, inspiring young girls to "dance eagerly to the loud noise, like hinds, shaking their buttocks womanishly and rudely." See Christopher Page, "German musicians and their instruments, a 14th century account by Konrad of Megenberg," Early Music 10 (1982): 194. The passage is also quoted in Welker, "'Alta capella,'" 124–25, where Welker stresses Megenberg's assessment that a trumpet and shawm sound well together.
157 See Norbert Huse and Wolfgang Wolters, The Art of Renaissance Venice, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990), 178.
158 Reproduced in Guido Piovene and Anna Pallucchini, L'opera completa di Giambattista Tiepolo (Milano: Rizzoli Editore, 1968), plate XXI.
159 The commission for the cycle of paintings on the life of St. Ursula was stimulated by parallels between her career and the life of the Venetian Caterina Cornaro, who, like St. Ursula, was married by proxy to a foreign prince whom she only later joined and who died soon afterward. See note 359. On the Carpaccio cycle, including the place of this painting in the series, see Giovanna Nepi Scirè, Carpaccio: Storie di Sant'Orsola (Milan: Electa, 2000); and Garry Wills, Venice: Lion City (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 137–47. Return to note 359.
160 Peter Downey, "The Danish Trumpet Ensemble at the Court of King Christian III - some Notes on its Instruments and its Music," Dansk Arbog for Musikforskning 19 (1988–91): 8.
162 This issue is also emphasized by Muir in Civic Ritual, 260–61. David Rosand puts the matter succinctly: "Venice represented above all that concept, of the legitimate state, and was universally so recognized. Dependent upon no single ruler but rather founded on immutable law, Venice could indeed assert the independent idea of itself, a republic of and yet existing above men." See David Rosand, "Venetia Figurata: The Iconography of a Myth," Interpretazioni Veneziane: Studi di Storia dell'Arte in Onore di Michelangelo Muraro, ed. David Rosand (Venice: Arsenale Editrice, 1984), 180.
163 See Muir, Civic Ritual, 251–98 for a full discussion of the restrictions placed on the doge by the civic polity.
164 See the exhibition catalogue Fiati: II Sezione Antichi Libri e strumenti moderni, 46, item 1. Cancelleria Inferiore, Doge, 158.
165 Fiati, 46 item 2. Cancelleria Inferiore, Doge, busta 168.
166 Fiati, 46 item 3. Cancelleria Inferiore, Doge, busta 168. For the full text, see Document 4. For another source from the same period that refers to the doge's trombetti e pifferi (exclusive of the trombe grandi d'argento) see Document 37. Documents of this period at times use the term trombetti and at times tromboni. According to Keith Polk, however, the trombone in this period was still very probably a single-slide trumpet, since we have no sure knowledge of U-shaped double-slide trombones until near the end of the century. See Polk, "The Trombone in Archival Documents," 25–26. See also note 67 for ambiguities in Florentine terminology for trumpets and trombones. It must be kept in mind that the scribes who wrote these documents were not musicians and were often not interested in or even necessarily knowledgeable about the details of particular instruments. Their principal concerns were the decrees themselves, the payments made, and the funds from which those payments were drawn.
167 An oft-quoted letter of December 1494 from Giovanni Alvise di Zorzi, trombonist in the ensemble of the Venetian doge, to Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, accompanied by some arrangements of motets for instrumental ensemble, mentions that there are six members of the doge's ensemble. The letter was first published with the incorrect date of 1495 in Stefano Davari, "La musica a Mantova," Rivista Storica Mantovana 1 (1884): 53–54. More recently, the letter has been published in Rodolfo Baroncini, "Se canta dalli cantori," 348; and Kämper, "Studien zur instrumentalen Ensemblemusik," 53. For correction of the date, see Prizer, "Bernardino Piffaro," 161.
168 In a 15th-century ceremoniale from the monastery of San Zaccaria, the doge's instruments are listed as fifteen, which points to nine pifferi in addition to the six trombe d'argento. See Glixon, "Music at the Venetian 'Scuole grandi'," I: 211 and II: 130 (doc. D9). The Ritum ecclesiasticorum cerimoniale of 1559–1564 mentions eight Sonatori del Principe. See Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 255, his Document 61. Although the number of instruments in the pifferi del doge varied, according to documents and iconographic evidence, from four to as many as nine, the most frequent number encountered is five or six. A list of six pifferi of the doge, evenly balanced between three, named simply pifaro, and three others named as trombone, dates from 1506–1512. See Glixon, "Music at the Venetian 'Scuole grandi'," I: 210–11 and II: 74 (doc. 195). In the depictions of processions discussed below, the number of pifferi is either five or six.
169 For a few references to the doge's pifferi performing in St. Mark's, see Fiati: II Sezione Antichi Libri e strumenti moderni, 46, item 2; 47, item 5; 48, item 7; and Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 255, his Document 61. The doge's pifferi were separate from the instrumental ensemble of St. Mark's, evidently until the early 17th century. See the discussion of Giovanni Bassano's instrumental union in paragraph 12.6.
170 The individual who joined the doge's pifferi in 1566 was Giovanni Maria dal Cornetto, identified from tax records as a cornettist and member of the doge's ensemble. The document, Dieci Savi alle Decime, Busta 127, no. 666, is quoted in Giulio Maria Ongaro, "The Chapel of St. Mark's at the Time of Adrian Willaert (1527–1562): A Documentary Study," (Ph.D. dissertation, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1986), 8, note 15: "jo Pasqualina relitta del quondam messer Zuamaria dal corneto era sonator dell'Illustrissima Signoria." On Bassano's appointment, see "Bassano, Giovanni" in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, www.grovemusic.com, and on his skill as a player of cornettos and pifferi, see Rebecca Edwards, "Setting the Tone at San Marco: Gioseffo Zarlino amidst Doge, Procuratori and Cappella Personnel," Giovanni Legrenzi e la cappella ducale di San Marco: Atti dei convegni internationali di studi; Venezia, 24–26 maggio 1990; Clusone, 14–16 settembre 1990, "Quaderni della rivista italiana di musicologia" 29, ed. Francesco Passadore and Franco Rossi (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1994), 395, note 30.
171 Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 81–82 and 255 (doc. 61). The famous cornettist Girolamo dalla Casa, from Udine, was first hired at St. Mark's on January 29, 1568 as the leader of a salaried three-person band that included his brothers. Girolamo remained as leader of the instrumentalists until his death in 1601 when he was replaced by Giovanni Bassano, who had been a member of the windband as far back as the 1570s. Bassano served as leader until 1617. See Reinmar Emans, "Die Musiker des Markusdoms in Venedig 1650–1708: 1. Teil," Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch 65 (1981), 57–58; and Edwards, "Setting the Tone at San Marco," 395. In the sixteenth century the cornetto gradually became preferred over the shawm throughout Italy and Germany.
172 By the seventeenth century many windbands centered around cornettos and trombones, though shawms were still used at times. A Florentine document of 1386 uses the term cornecti, but Keith Polk thinks this may apply to "a straight trumpet, perhaps with a very rudimentary slide." See Zippel, 14; Polk, "The Trombone in Archival Documents," 27; and Welker, "Bläserensembles der Renaissance," 254–55, where the author interprets the instrument as a cornetto. Indeed, the term cornette appears in another Florentine document of 1387 (see note 67). In any event, cornettos had come into common use in Italy at least by the beginning of the 16th century. An ensemble of cornettos and trombones is described as early as 1505 in a letter from Giovanni Alvise di Zorzi, a trombonist in the pifferi del doge of Venice, to Francesco II Gonzaga of Mantua. See Prizer, "Bernardino Piffaro," 161–62; and Baroncini, "Se canta dalli cantori," 348–59. Documents from the Scuola San Giovanni Evangelista from 1527 name a Ser Zuan Maria as pifaro dal corneto, illustrating not only that the cornetto was used in windbands by this time, but also that the term pifaro could now refer to players of the cornetto as well as shawms and trombones. See Glixon, "Music at the Venetian Scuole Grandi," I: 78.
173 An anonymous account of the entrance into Venice of Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, in 1562 mentions a dozen trumpeters leading the procession: "Andarano primieramente i Trombetti, che erano dodici . . ." The account is found in Biblioteca Marciana Misc. 180.4, p. 6. Giovanni Stringa and Giovanni Rota both describe twenty-four trumpeters and drummers and another twelve playing pifferi and short silver trumpets in their accounts of the coronation of the Dogaressa Morosina Morosini Grimani in 1597 (see paragraph 22.3 and notes 320 and 321 as well as Document 11). Twelve trumpets and twelve drums are mentioned in Marco Ginammi's pamphlet on the 1631 plague ceremonies in describing the procession over a pontoon bridge to the site of Santa Maria della Salute (see Document 1). Documents of 10 January, 1691, and 29 November, 1694 (Procuratori di San Marco de supra, Chiesa, Scontro, reg. 36) testify to the continuing tradition of twelve trumpeters and twelve drummers, in these cases associated with ceremonies in St. Mark's. Both documents are quoted in the catalogue of the exhibition Fiati: II Sezione Antichi Libri e strumenti moderni, 49, items 13 and 15. See Document 12. On the other hand, a dozen trumpeters and drummers was not a fixed rule. In 1574, Henry III, King of France and Poland was received into the city with twenty trumpets and twenty drums: "Erant ante palatium super fundamenta viginti tympanistae, induti sagis, & califis sericis, coloris flavi, & caerulei, cum pileolis eiusdem cultus: in fenestra vel pedio primae aulae viginti tubicines, eodem quo tympanistae cultu ornate: Omnes permixto tubarum, & tymponorum millitarium sono, regem venientem salutabant . . ." The account is found in Biblioteca Marciana, Misc. 180.6, folio B1 recto. Return to paragraph 41.3
174 The majority of processions did not move from one part of the city to another, but rather were concentrated in St. Mark's square. Processions could also be partly or even entirely indoors. Some processions wound their way through the basilica of St. Mark's and through the ducal palace itself. See Muir, Civic Ritual, 185–211.
175 Glixon, "Music at the Venetian 'Scuole grandi'," I: 212 and II: 134 (doc. E7: Document 13). More music could follow. After reaching his lodgings, the Duke of Ferrara, according to p. 7 of the account cited in note 173, was serenaded with a two-hour concert: "ove egli lo ricevette nella gran Loggia, che riguardava il canale, con un concerto meraviglioso di Musici di varie sorti d'istromenti: la quale durò d'intorno a due hore con una harmonia per certo rarissima."
176 For an idea of just how enormous a procession could be, see the engraving of a Corpus Christi procession in Franco, Habiti, plate XXV (Figure 4). See also note 140.
177 See Document 14, col. 134
178 Glixon, "Music at the Venetian 'Scuole grandi'," II: 17 (doc. 40), 27 (doc. 74), 30 (doc. 84) and 83 (doc. 210); Francesco Luisi, Laudario Giustinianeo, 2 vols. (Venice: Fondazione Levi, 1983) I: 468–9 (docs. 2, 3), 474 (doc. 48, 49), 485–6 (docs. 2, 3), 491–2 (doc. 12), 497–8 (doc. 15), and 504 (doc. 14); and Baroncini, "Contributo alla storia del violino," 74–77, 93. Such instruments can be seen on the left-hand side of Gentile Bellini's Processione della Croce in Piazza San Marco.
179 See Baroncini, "Contributo alla storia del violino," 78, 91–109, 118–29 and the documents quoted in Table I, pp. 65–68, especially items 28 (1552), 29 (1561), 30 (1562), 32 (1563), 37 (1574), and 38 (1578). These instruments were called by a variety of names, most frequently, violini, violoni, viole or lironi. See also the documents quoted in Luisi, Laudario Giustinianeo, I: 480 (doc. 89), 481 (docs. 92, 93), 483 (doc. 108), 487–88 (doc. 14), 488 (doc. 16), 489 (docs. 22, 24), 491 (docs. 10, 11), 493–4 (doc. 23), 494 (doc. 2), 500 (doc. 33), 501 (doc. 38) and 505 (doc. 18). In still other documents instrumentalists are referred to simply as sonadori without further qualification. The other documents quoted in Baroncini's table demonstrate that the use of members of the violin family in processions was ubiquitous in northern Italy throughout much of the 16th century.
180 The description of the entrance of the Duke of Ferrara cited in note 173 gives an idea of how noisy such a celebration could be: "Per tutto lo spatio, che durò, quella notte, non si senti giamai altro, che artigliere, razzi, fuochi, trombe, tamburi e piffari, venivano con grandissima allegrezza tirati, pervenendo si lontano il suono, che tutte le contrade di Vinegia ne risonavano, & ogni orecchi an'era ripiena" (p. 5). Similarly, the account of the entrance of Henry III of France into the city in 1574 was accompanied by a huge body of sound: "Descendeus Rex ex Bucintauro ingressus est palatium bombardis, tubis, buccinis, tympanis, atque etiam omnium templorum campanis, ingentem sonitum edentibus." See the account cited in note 173, the page just before folio C1. Another account of Henry's activities in Venice describes the sounds with which he was received on a visit to Murano: ". . . et la condusse a Murano in uno adorna, e regal Palagio, dove albardiere, trombetti, e tamburi vestiti alla sua livrea stavano per servirla preparati furono sparati molti pezzi d'artegliaria, sonate campane, tamburi, & trombe . . . " See Biblioteca Marciana, Misc. 180.9, p. 30. Other similar descriptions are found in Biblioteca Marciana, Misc. 180.12, pp. 6–7 and Misc. 180.14, folios 4 verso, 6 recto and 12 recto.
181 On the relationship between the two institutions, see Andrea Chegai, "San Marco e San Pietro di Castello: lineamenti di un'antinomia," La cappella musicale di San Marco nell'èta moderna: Atti del convegno internationale di studi, Venezia-Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, 5–7 settembre 1994, ed. Francesco Passadore e Franco Rossi (Venice: Edizioni Fondazione Levi, 1998), 313–19.
182 The most important general studies of music at St. Mark's in this period are Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's; Ongaro, "The Chapel of St. Mark's;" Edwards, "Claudio Merulo," 68–158; and Cattin, Musica e liturgia a San Marco. See also Giulio Ongaro, "Sixteenth-Century Patronage at St Mark's, Venice," Early Music History 8 (1988): 81–115.
183 On the organization of the chapel, see Ongaro, "The Chapel of St. Mark's," 19–21.
184 For general overviews of the role of trumpets and wind instruments in churches in Italy, see especially Glixon, "Music at the Venetian 'Scuole grandi';" Stefani, Musica e religione nell'Italia barocca; Jerome Roche, North Italian Church Music in the Age of Monteverdi (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984); Stephen Bonta, "The Use of Instruments in Sacred Music in Italy, 1560–1700," Early Music 18 (1990): 519–35; andMarco Di Pasquale, "Aspetti della pratica strumentale nelle chiese italiane fra tardo medioevo e prima età moderna," Rivista internazionale di musica sacra 16 (1995): 239–68.
185 Cancelleria Inferiore, Doge, busta 168, 1460 maggio 16: "El fo' deliberando che i trombetti ed i piffari, i qual servissero nelle solennità et altre cose nostre che per honor della città continuamente i stessero in la città, i fosse dado fra tutti lor ducati 20 al mese . . ." Cited in Fiati: II Sezione Antichi Libri e strumenti moderni, 46, item 2. The term solennità is often used for liturgical services, though it could mean solemnities in a more general sense, such as processions. Processions, of course, also took place in St. Mark's itself, with the ducal corteo, including its musicians, both entering and exiting the basilica.
186 "Fo ditto ozi a San Marcho a l'altar grando una solenne messa a trombe e pifari, fata dir per vodo per sier Vicenzo Grimani di sier Antonio procurator, et qual sier Vicenzo era lì drio l'altar a udirla." See Marino Sanuto, I Diarii, 15 (1512), col. 391. We are grateful to Jonathan Glixon for this reference.
187 Marino Sanuto, I Diarii, 21, col. 130. See Document 15. In this passage Sanudo distinguishes the corneti and the trombe from the pifari. Return to note 238
188 ". . . con gran triumpho, trombe, pifari e tutte le musiche che si pol trovar . . ." See Glixon, "Music at the Venetian 'Scuole grandi'," II: 132 (doc. D17) from Marino Sanuto, I Diarii, 24, cols. 178–79. For the full text see Document 16. For instruments, including those in the retinue of the King of France, playing in St. Mark's, see Glixon, "Music at the Venetian 'Scuole grandi'," I: 212, 220 and II: 134 (doc. E5: Document 14) and 137 (docs. G3 and G4: Document 17). See also Stefani, Musica barocca: poetica e ideologia, 32–34, 61–65.
189 ". . . et con trombe avanti numero 8 di bataglia dil Capitanio zeneral, et trombe et pifari del Serenissimo, introno in chiexia di San Marco, dove fo ditta la messa per il Patriarca nostro." Marino Sanuto, I Diarii, 36 (1524), col. 444. For the context see Document 18.
190 Giulio M. Ongaro, "Gli inizi della musica strumentale a San Marco," Giovanni Legrenzi e la cappella ducale di San Marco: Atti dei convegni internationali di studi; Venezia, 24–26 maggio 1990; Clusone, 14–16 settembre 1990, "Quaderni della rivista italiana di musicologia" 29, ed. Francesco Passadore and Franco Rossi (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1994), 217. According to Ongaro, the doge's pifferi participated regularly at St. Mark's during the celebration of the anniversary of the doge's election.
191 Ongaro, "Gli inizi ," 219.
192 See Rodolfo Baroncini, " Contributo alla storia del violino nel sedicesimo secolo," 132; and Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 255 (doc. 61). For the text, see Document 19.
193 "Missam vero canimus in saccello sancti Nicolai, ut predixi, sine organis, cum sonatoribus Dominii qui supplentur vicibus pro organo, cum domino Duce et collegio tantum." See Cattin, Musica e Liturgia a San Marco, III: 85. For the full text see Document 20. Return to note 204.
194 ". . . udita la Messa col suono delle Trombe all'Elevatione . . . Il Doge . . . andò in Chiesa per la porta del loro, et andò subito nel Bergamo dei Cantori ove fù presentato al Popolo. . ." Quoted from Biblioteca Correr, MS Donà dalle Rose 58, f. 19v, in Moore, Vespers, I: 347, note 178. According to the Neapolitan theorist Pedro Cerone, organ music and ringing of the bells at the Elevation was in imitation of the Old Testament custom of sounding silver trumpets at the hour of sacrifice: "Y adviertan que las campanas y organos se tocan mientras se alça el Santissimo Sacramento en el sacrificio de la Missa solenne, para imitar aquella tan antigua costumbre del testamento viejo, quando en la hora del sacrificio tañian las trompetas de plata, à fin que el pueblo, oyendo el sonido, se preparasse para adorar à Dios." See Cerone, El Melopeo: Tractado de musica theórica y prática (Naples: Juan Bautista Gargano and Lucrecio Nucci, 1613; facs. ed. Alberto Gallo, 2 vols., Bologna: Forni Editore, 1969), I: 189, num. 10.
195 Glixon, "Music at the Venetian 'Scuole grandi'," I: 212–13 and II: 134 (docs. E6 [Document 15]and E10 [Document 18]). The eight trombe di bataglia mentioned in document E10 were a group of trumpets separate from the trombe et pifari del Serenissimo. See also Merkley & Merkley, Music and Patronage, 416, for a description of the trumpets of the visiting Beatrice d'Este playing from the loggia of St. Mark's over the front door before mass in 1493: "sonando li trumbeti nostri sopra al chiesa ad una logia." For a modern edition of this collection, see Giovanni Rovetta, Messa e salmi concertati, op. 4 (1639), ed. Linda Maria Koldau, "Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era," 109 (Middleton, Wisconsin: A-R Editions, Inc., 2001).
196 The mass was published, together with a sizable collection of Vesper psalms, in Giovanni Rovetta, Messa, e Salmi Concertati A Cinque, Sei, Sette, Otto Voci, E Due Violini. . . . Opera Quarta. Dedicata alla Maesta Christianissima del Gloriosissimo Re di Francia, et di Navarra Luigi XIII. Il Giusto. . . In Venetia, Appresso Alessandro Vincenti. M.DC.XXXIX. It is not clear from the dedication of the print whether the festivities included a Vespers as well as the Mass. See Document 21.
197 Fausto Ciro, Venetia Festiva per gli Pomposi Spettacoli fatti Rappresentare Dall'Illustriss. & Eccellentiss. Sig. d'Hussè Ambasciatore di S. M. Christianissima, per la Nascita del Real Delfino di Francia. A Monsieur du Hussay Conseiller d'Estat Intendant, & Controolleur [sic] General de ses Finances . . . In Venetia, MDCXXXVIII. Apresso Andrea Baba.
198 "Finita la salva de' Mortari e de' cannoni, principiarono à stridere le trombe, rumoreggiare tamburi, e risuonare i piffari, e le Viole, accompagnando sù nobile e numerosa comitiva alla porta della Chiesa." Ciro, Venetia Festiva, 26. Quoted from Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 266 (doc. 81).
199 "Nel spuntare Sua Eccellenza in Chiesa incominciarono la melodia, gli Organi sonanti; il direttore della Musica chiamò in questo mentre al concerto le voci canore, e gl'istromenti sonori. Arrivata poi nel mezzo della Chiesa fù intonato da' Cantori il Te Deum. Prima in suono dimesso, e lento, indi con pieno et altissimo concento s'udi l'armonia. Erano i ripieni si soavi che rapivano gli animi de gli uditori, quali riputavan à grandissima fortuna l'essersi incontrati in un spettacolo si memorabile e giocondo. Pareva loro d'ascoltare delle Sirene il choro." Ciro, Venetia Festiva, 28; quoted in Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 266 (doc. 82). See also the detailed description of the virtuoso feats of a vocal soloist called "il Mantovano" and of the lutenist "Signor Bernardello" in Ciro, Venezia Festiva, 32–33, quoted in Moore, I: 266–67 (doc. 84). For an earlier celebration with instruments at San Giorgio Maggiore, see the 1610 Franco engraving in Figure 24.
200 "Continuò sempre questa sì grata armonia per tutta la Messa. Al cantare dell'Euangelio, & alla eleuatione del Santissimo comparuero dodeci paggi di S. E. con grossissimi doppieri di cera bianca accesi, lasciati poi in dono alla Sagrestia; mentre nell'istesso tempo sul campo eccheggiaua l'aria dal sonoro rimbombo de'pifari, tamburi, trombe, & violoni. Nel medesimo punto i Bombardieri con i mortari, & i marinari Francesi col cannone fecero vna strepitosa salua. Pareua s'abbissasse il Mondo dal gran fragore." Ciro, Venezia Festiva, 33; quoted in Moore, I: 267 (doc. 84). In this list of instruments, it is obvious that trombe, associated with drums,refers to trumpets, and that trombones would have been subsumed under the term pifari, especially since trumpets clearly participated in other noisy parts of the ceremony (see notes 198 and 201).
201 "Ultimata la Messa si partì dal Santuario Sua Eccellenza osservandosi l'istesso ordine nel uscire di Chiesa, che si fece nell'entrata. All'hora i Musici con un'armonioso concerto cantarono il Salmo. Omnes gentes plaudite manibus. Tenevano con l'alternare del bel concento tutte l'orecchie attente. Delle belliche squille parimente su'l campo il suono rimbombava. Nel montare in Gondola, e nel tragittare il gran Canale, rassembrava il Cielo tutto pieno di spaventevoli tuoni per le frequentissimi tiri di mortari, e del canone." Ciro, Venezia Festiva, 33; quoted in Moore, I: 267 (doc. 84). There can be no doubt that "delle belliche squille" refers to trumpets.
202 "Risuonava il Palagio d'armoniosi strepiti di viole, pifari, et altri musicali instromenti, mentre le tavole erano imbandite dalli scalchi . . . Mentre si mangiava sonavano nell'istessa sala le viole et altri instromenti Musicali; e nel Cortile si facevano di lontano sentire le trombe, i tamburi, et i piffari . . . Nell'invitare che si fece la prima volta, e nel bere alla salute del Re furono sparati nell'istesso punto da ottanta grossi mortari. Stridevano parimente le trombe, rimbombavano i tamburi, e si facevano in maniera sentire i pifari, e le viole, che pareva, tutto il Mondo commosso al giubilo et all'allegrezza, che si faceva al gratissimo nome di sua Maiesta." Ciro, Venezia Festiva, 34, 37; quoted in Moore, I: 267 (docs. 85–86). Again it is clear that the trombe in this passage, associated with drums, are trumpets, and that trombones were included under the rubric pifari.
203 "Il doge Enrico Dandolo e i capitani crociati giurano i patti."Le Clerc was in Venice from 1617. He died in France in 1633.
204 A report in the diaries of Marin Sanudo for December 6, 1500 notes the performance of mass in the chapel of St. Nicholas on that day with trombe e pifari dil doxe: "A dì 6 dezembrio, fo San Nicolò. El principe andò, justa il consueto, a udir messa in capella di San Nicolò im palazo, dove fu cantata una messa, e levato il corpo di Christo con trombe e pifari dil doxe; era la Signoria e pochi patricij. E poi andoe in colegio." See Marino Sanuto, I Diarii, 3, col. 1134. Cited in Quaranta, Oltre San Marco, 169, note 75. See the instructions for this feast from the 1564 cerimoniale of St. Mark's in note 193.
205 "Nihil tamen disponentes quoad ecclesiam Sancti Marci, à nostra iurisdictione exempta." Quoted from Quaranta, Oltre San Marco, 169. As David Bryant has suggested in personal conversation, such a prohibition may have simply meant that one had to apply to the Patriarch for exceptions. Return to note 238
206 "Ad nostram fidedigna relatione pervenit noticiam qualiter die hesterna que fuit xij mensis instantis [12 December], in quodam festo, sive festi solemnitate celebrata in dicta vestra ecclesia intervenerunt tybicines et sonatores cum tybiis, cornibus et aliis sonis et cantibus inhonestis, qui per vos d. Plebanum admisi fuerunt contra formam mandati nostri alias a nobis emanati [. . .], et sic in penam in dicto mandato contentam incuristis [. . .]." Quoted in Quaranta, Oltre San Marco, 171.
207 The ensemble and its function are mentioned in Bernardini Scardeoni, De Antiquitate Urbis Patavii, 3 vols. (Basel: Nicolaum Episcopium Iuniorem, 1560), II: 264 and reported in Edwards, "Claudio Merulo," 125–26.
208 Edwards, "Claudio Merulo," 126.
209 ". . . in ogni solennità mazor se canta negl'organi dalli cantori over si sona dalli sonatori." Quoted in Di Pasquale, "Aspetti della pratica strumentale," 259. Di Pasquale stresses that no document suggests that the pifferi played with the organ anywhere in Italy.
210 Ongaro, "Gli inizi della musica," 220–26. The maestro di cappella from 1565 to 1590, Gioseffo Zarlino, actively promoted the expansion of instrumental activity at St. Mark's, setting the pattern for the 17th century. See Edwards, "Setting the Tone at San Marco," 395.
211 See Edwards, "Claudio Merulo," 132–33; Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 81–82; and Emans, "Die Musiker des Markusdoms," 57–60.
212 Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 81.
213 See Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 12 regarding the number of instrumentalists at St. Mark's in 1614 and the search for a successor to Bassano as capo. The formation of the union is described on p. 82. The relevant documents, comprising the petition to the doge for formation of the union, as well as the union's by-laws, are transcribed on pp. 255–60 (docs. 62–63). See also Luisi, Laudario Giustinianeo, I: 419–20, 516–19 (docs. A.2, A.3, A.4). Bassano's union of instrumentalists was modeled on an earlier effort to form a union of singers at St. Mark's in 1553, organized for a similar purpose (see paragraph 13.4). Throughout the second half of the sixteenth century, companies of singers and instrumentalists were formed to compete for and distribute such outside work. See Jonathan Glixon, "A Musicians' Union in Sixteenth-Century Venice," Journal of the American Musicological Society 36 (1983), 392–421; and Giulio M. Ongaro, "La musica come professione nelle attività dei musicisti marciani tra la fine del cinquecento e il primo seicento," La cappella musicale di San Marco nell'età moderna: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Venezia-Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, 5–7 settembre 1994, ed. Francesco Passadore and Franco Rossi (Venice: Edizioni Fondazione Levi, 1998), 215–24.
214 ". . . sonatori di Vostra Serenissima . . . tutti noi sej sonatori nominati trombonj e piffari di Vostra Serenità."
215 "Hora cosi ispirati da nostro Signore Iddio vogliono, e si contestano tuttj loro, che sotto scrivendo questa mia scrittura che dividiamo tutti li utilj, che si acquistera con le nostre fatiche della nostra professione de sonadori di musica, si nelle chiese, come nelle scole grande in Venezia et fuori di Venezia, eccetuando però li nostri salarij, che habbiamo annualmente di Vostra Serenità et da la procuratia de supra." Transcribed in Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 256 from Venice, Archivio di Stato, Cancelleria Inferiore, Registro 79 (Atti dei Dogi, 1605–15), fols. 135v–136v.
216 "xxv. Che se alcuno delli sudetti sej sonatori di sua Serenità sarà seduttore, o seminatore di discordie tra di loro doverà esser severamente punito, et oncrerà nella disgratia di sua serenità." Transcribed in Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 258 from Venice, Archivio di Stato, Cancelleria Inferiore, Registro 80 (Atti dei Dogi, 1615–1623), pp. 54–59.
217 "Veduta per l'Illustrissimo et Reverendissimo monsignore Giovanni Tiepolo primicerio di San Marco la commissione, et deligatione predetta et uditj più volte Don Zuanne [Giovanni] Bassano capo dei concertj dei Trombonj, et Pifari, Don Nicolò da Udine, Francesco Bonfante, Giacomo Roeta [Rovetta, father of Giovanni], Pietro Loschj, et Battista Fabri trombonj et pifari di sua Serenità et della sua Ducale capella, et chiesa di San Marco sopra le cose contenute in quella." Transcribed in Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 259 (editorial inserts ours).
218 "xxxij. Che niuno delli capi, et molto meno delli Compagni, che sono stipendiatj, et serveno [sic] nella capella Ducale di San Marco possi separarsi da questa compagni sotto pena di perder tutte le sue utilità certe, et anco d'altre maggiori pene ad arbitrio della Giusticia di sua Serenità." Transcribed in Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 260. It is notable that here and elsewhere in the by-laws, infractions are to be punished by the doge, not by the primicerio, who had jurisdiction over ecclesiastical employees.
219 See Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 84, 260–61. In the by-laws, the instrumentalists are the same as those named in the original petition of two years earlier, with the exception of Battista Fabri, who replaced Lorenzo Cittera. The union member not included in the list of St. Mark's instrumentalists is Nicolò da Udine. There is a Zuane da Udene on the St. Mark's list, who could conceivably have been Nicolò's father, analogous to the presence of Giacomo Rovetta, and subsequently his son Giovanni, on the instrumental lists of 1614 and 1616.
220 This letter is quoted and discussed in Prizer, "Bernardo Piffaro," 161–62, 182–83; and Baroncini, "Se canta dalli cantori," 348–59. On Zorzi Trombetta, see note 30.
221 Ongaro, "Gli inizi della musica," 216.
222 The church and oratorio of the Steccata at Parma offers a parallel example. The wind players employed at the Steccata in the 17th century included only cornettists and trombonists. See Pelicelli, "Musicisti in Parma," 224–46.
223 See Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 87–88, 264–65 (docs. 74–78, covering the period 1640–1646).
224 Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 96.
225 See paragraph 15.3 and note 283.
226 A list of increases in salary for instrumentalists in St. Mark's in the period 1660–1708 documents a trumpeter by the name of Alessandro Fedeli on the payroll in 1664 and another by the name of Lunardo Laurenti in 1689. Procuratori di San Marco de supra, Chiesa, busta 91. Proc. 208. The documents are quoted in Fiati: II Sezione Antichi Libri e strumenti moderni, 53, item 29. Eleanor Selfridge-Field lists Fedeli as a trombonist, hired on October 5, 1664 (the same date as his listing as a trumpeter in the document cited above), but the document clearly states tromba in a period when tromba and trombone were usually more clearly distinguished than in earlier times. Fedeli also played string instruments. Francesco Bernardini and Leonardo Laurenti are listed by Selfridge-Field as trumpeters, both hired on September 11, 1685. Two trumpeters were still on the payroll in 1708. See Eleanor Selfridge-Field, Venetian Instrumental Music, Third Revised Edition (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1994), 340–41; Emans, "Die Musiker des Markusdoms," 58–59; and idem, "Die Musiker des Markusdoms in Venedig 1650–1708: 2. Teil," Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch 66 (1982): 65–67. In the latter article Emans lists payments to Fedeli for playing the trombone on October 5, 1664 and for playing the trumpet on January 20, 1686. Bernardini and Laurenti are both listed as musico straordinario paid for playing the trumpet in a Te Deum on September 9, 1685 as well as for other, later performances. It is possible that these performances for which individual payments are noted in the accounts were in addition to the trumpeters' regular responsibilities for which they were salaried. The uncertainty over what and when these instrumentalists played reflects both the ambiguity and incompleteness of the documentary record. Return to note 266.
227 The documents are quoted in Fiati: II Sezione Antichi Libri e strumenti moderni, 48–49, items 12, 13, 14 and 15. For the texts, see Document 12.
228 Jonathan Glixon's description of the scuole grandi is succinct: "These six institutions, the first of which was founded in the mid-thirteenth century and which survived until the fall of the Republic at the time of Napoleon, were among the principal charitable organizations of Venice, long famous for their patronage of art and architecture, and carried on active ceremonial and musical roles for over five centuries." In addition to processions on the first Sunday of each month and on the feast of each scuola's patron saint, the scuole processed to the Cathedral of San Pietro di Castello on the Sundays of Lent, to specified churches in the vicinity of the scuola, to specified churches distant from the scuola, to San Marco, and for the funerals of members. See Jonathan Glixon, "Music and Ceremony at the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista: A New Document from the Venetian State Archives," Crossing the Boundaries: Christian Piety and the Arts in Italian Medieval and Renaissance Confraternities, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), 56, 58. In addition to the other cited writings of Glixon, the musical functions of the scuole are surveyed and numerous documents are transcribed in Luisi, Laudario Giustinianeo, I: 413–524; and Baroncini, "Contributo alla storia del violino."
229 A Libro di ordini was compiled at the Scuola San Rocco in 1521 prescribing feast by feast what was to be carried in the procession and the order of its elements. The document is transcribed almost complete in Baroncini, "Contributo alla storia del violino," 147–51.
230 The only known document detailing the annual processions of a scuola is the 1570 Libro Vardian da Matin of the Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista cited in note 228. Although most processions had only a single destination, processions to the Cathedral of San Pietro in Lent made anywhere from nine to fifteen stops en route. Funeral processions traveled to the home of the deceased, then carried the body to one of the tombs used by the scuola, scattered throughout the city, or to the church specified by the deceased. Some of the processions took place at night, since the scuole were not allowed to process in the Piazza San Marco during the daytime. This rule obviously applied only to processions of individual scuole, not to large civic processions in which all of the scuole took part. On the feast of Corpus Christi there were two processions separated by dinner: one to the Piazza San Marco and the second to the Church of Corpus Christi. See Glixon, "Music and Ceremony at the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista," 60–78, which includes maps of processional destinations, stopping places and conjectural routes. For Giacomo Franco's engraving of the Corpus Christi procession in the Piazza San Marco, see Figure 4 . Return to note 140.
231 See the table illustrating processions of the scuole grandi followed by liturgical services employing the same musicians in Glixon, "Music at the Venetian 'Scuole grandi'," I: 185–87. See also the many documents transcribed in the other cited writings of Glixon and in Luisi, Laudario Giustinianeo, I: 468–512; and Baroncini, "Contributo alla storia del violino," 136–85.
232 See the documentation below for the scuole piccole dating from the late 14th century.
233 See Polk, "The Trombone in Archival Documents" and the discussions in paragraphs 3.3, 3.4, 5.8 and 26.1. See also notes 67 and 80.
234 See Luisi, Laudario Giustinianeo, I: 415–16 and 475 (doc. 53).
235 See Glixon, "Music at the Venetian 'Scuole grandi'," I: 94–5, 104–5; II: 15–6 (doc. 45) and II: 33–4 (doc. 92); and Luisi, Laudario Giustinianeo, I: 477 (doc. 68: Document 22).
236 Glixon, "Music at the Venetian 'Scuole grandi'," II: 37 (doc. 97: Document 23, no. 3).
237 Ongaro, "Gli inizi della musica," 218–19.
238 See Document 24. We are grateful to Jonathan Glixon for bringing this document to our attention. See Jonathan Glixon, "Music at the Venetian Scuole Grandi," Music in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Iain Fenlon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 205, 208: "a di xiii ditto [Dezember 1530]. Dovendose in questo zorno far la dispensa dele novize fiole de fradeli morti dela Schuola . . . Da poi fu cantata una solene mesa in canto con diachono et subdiachono, sonadori de tronbe e pifari et corneti et eziam organo et cantadori, con universal satisfazion de tutti . . . " The document is also included in abbreviated form in Glixon, "Music at the Venetian 'Scuole Grandi," II: 87 (doc. 228), and in a more extended version in Luisi, Laudario Giustinianeo, I: 500 (doc. 32). As in the documents cited in notes 69 and 187, trombe, pifari, and corneti are all distinguished from one another as separate types of instruments. While this use of instruments seemingly violated the prohibition of the Patriarch cited in note 205, it is also possible that dispensation was sought and obtained from the Patriarch for this particular event.
239 Further studies by Jonathan Glixon regarding the scuole grandi are "Music at the Scuole in the Age of Andrea Gabrieli," Andrea Gabrieli e il suo tempo: Atti del convegno internazionale (Venezia 16–18 settembre 1985), ed. Francesco Degrada (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1987), 59–74; "Far una bella procession: Music and Public Ceremony at the Venetian scuole grandi," Altro Polo: Essays on Italian Music in the Cinquecento, ed. Richard Charteris(Sydney: University of Sydney, 1990), 190–220; and "The Musicians of the Cappella and the Scuole: Collaboration or Competition?" La cappella musicale di San Marco nell'età moderna, 301–12. Glixon is currently preparing a book on music in the scuole grandi and scuole piccole. See also Luisi, Laudario Giustinianeo, I: 413–512; and Baroncini, "Contributo alla storia del violino."
240 Baroncini, "Contributo alla storia del violino," 105–11. For documents concerning the employment of wind players by the scuole grandi, see Luisi, Laudario Giustinianeo, I: 475 (his document 53), 478–9 (document 72), 495 (document 4), 500 (document 32), 506 (document 1) and 521–2 (document C.1). Pay records show that pifferi ensembles were hired for the feast of San Teodoro by the Scuola di San Teodoro in the 1580s and pifferi continued to take part in the music for the feast of San Rocco at the Scuola di San Rocco all the way through the beginning of the plague of 1630. See Glixon, "The Musicians of the Capella and the Scuole," 306–7.
241 Glixon, "The Musicians of the Capella and the Scuole," 308.
242 The entire affair, together with many original documents and their English translations, is recounted in Glixon, "A Musicians' Union." A discussion of this matter, including several documents not published by Glixon, is found in Luisi, Laudario Giustinianeo, I: 416–18 and 509–12. See also Ongaro, "La musica come professione."
243 Glixon, "A Musicians' Union," 410–12; and idem "The Musicians of the Cappella and the Scuola," 306.
244 Sansovino/Martinioni, Venetia città nobilissima, 435. We are grateful to Jonathan Glixon for this reference. The passage in question was added by Giovanni Stringa in his 1604 updated edition of Sansovino's book. The immediate passage reads: ". . . seguiva un gran solaro di argentarie, & immediate era portato sopra un'altro un giovane bellissimo, che haveva un piè sopra il Mondo, & l'altro, come in aria, & non cadeva, riccamente vestito, & suonava una tromba squarciata da guerra eccellentissimamente, intitolato per la Fama, che andava per tutto il Mondo." Stringa's wording is derived directly from an earlier publication describing the ceremonies: Relatione della solenne processione fatta in Venetia l'anno 1598. Adi 26. Luglio . . . per render gratie à Dio della perpetua pace, et confederatione stabilita trà il Christianiss. Rè di Francia, et il Cattolico Rè di Spagna . . . (Vicenza: Greco, 1598), fol. 3v. For the full context, see Document 25. Elaborate tableaux like this one increased greatly in number during the 16th century, creating public religious and political theater for the spectators. See Muir, Civic Ritual, 227–28, 240–41. Return to note 375.
245 Jonathan Glixon, "Far il buon concerto: Music at the Venetian Scuole Piccole in the Seventeenth Century," Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music I/1 (1995) <http://www.sscm-jscm.org/v1/no1/glixon.html>, paragraph 2.1; and idem, "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), 123–40. According to Glixon, "the term scuole piccole was used . . . to designate any confraternity (either lay or religious) other than the six flagellant scuole grandi." Glixon describes several types of scuole piccole according to their various functions. See "Con canti et organo," 124–26.
246 Glixon, "Far il buon concerto," paragraph 2.3; idem, "Con canti et organo," 126; and Quaranta, Oltre San Marco, 111, 146–47.
247 Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 127.
248 Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 127.
249 Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 129. Glixon quotes a 1514 mariegola from the Scuola della Beata Vergine in San Basilio which limited the amount of money it could spend from its own funds for cantori, sonadori, concieri (decorations) and other expenses. Glixon has found over twenty similar directives limiting expenditures for music and other decorations. Often costs above the fixed amounts were paid by individual officers of a scuola. See ibid., 132.
250 Quaranta, Oltre San Marco, 147. For the full text see Document 26. A much earlier reference to the use of trumpets in a procession comes from Padua in the 1324 rule of the Scuola di Santa Lucia, which prescribed the ceremonies of the patronal feast with the brothers processing in order to the church of Santa Lucia with trumpets. For the text see Document 27.
251 Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 127–28. For the original text and Glixon's translation, see Document 28.
252 Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 126–27. For the original text and Glixon's translation, see Document 29.
253 Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 127.
254 Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 130. The players undoubtedly participated in the elaborate Corpus Christi processions, which involved all of the scuole, grandi and piccole.
255 Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 130. Glixon uses the phrase "trombe e piffari," but the document in question merely lists musicians and their instruments, indicating those who belonged to the doge's ensemble by the phrases del Principo or del Serenissimo Principo, without giving any title to the doge's ensemble itself. See note 288.
256 See Glixon, "Music at the Venetian 'Scuole grandi'," II: 105 (docs. 282 and 286: see Document 23, nos. 1 and 2); and Quaranta, Oltre San Marco, 145–46.
258 See Quaranta, Oltre San Marco, 143–44; and Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 128. On the vigil of the feast a platform (soler) was mounted on a boat with two children representing St. Ursula and an angel. The boat and its occupants were carried by fifteen men and accompanied by musicians to St. Mark's and the Rialto to announce the feast (per denonziar la festa). This type of celebration seems to have been a regular, annual affair rather than limited to the years for which there is documentation.
259 A description of the functions of the Scuola di Sant'Antonio di Padova, dated 1533, states, "che la vezilia de messer santo Antonio mandar se dieba uno solareto adornado, et con uno putto vestido da anzolo a trombe, e pifari a San Marco, et à Rialto, et per el ditto anzolo annonciar al populo la festa de messer santo Antonio aciò la festa nostra sia visitada dal populo, et alli fradelli nostri sia arecordo de venir à honorar la festa, et tior le sue luminarie." Quoted in Quaranta, Oltre San Marco, 146.
260 Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 132–33. Glixon gives a table of the specific individuals, including singers, wind players, string players, and organists, hired for each of the eight years between 1577 and 1597 for which detailed documentation survives. See also Glixon, "The Musicians of the Cappella and the Scuola," 309.
261 Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 134–35.
262 Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 132. For the text of the complaint and Glixon's translation, see Document 30.
263 Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 134.
264 Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 134. We are grateful to Jonathan Glixon for providing us with the original Italian version of the relevant document.
265 Glixon, "Far il buon concerto," paragraphs 3.1–3.7.
266 See Glixon, "Far il buon concerto," paragraphs 3.4–3.6 and Table 1; and idem, "The Musicians of the Cappella and the Scuole," 309–11. For the text of the contract and Glixon's translation, see Document 31. The naming of instruments in this contract is especially precise and detailed, distinguishing, for example, among several types of string instruments. The brass instrument is designated by the word tromba and is mentioned not in conjunction with the cornetti, but after the tiorba. Although this word could be interpreted to mean trombone (see the discussion in paragraph 37.1), thereby constituting with the two cornettos a typical ensemble of pifferi, the cornettos (obsolescent instruments by this time) were dropped in 1695, while the tromba was retained. Thus it seems obvious that by tromba is indeed meant a trumpet, especially since there were trumpeters among the salaried instrumentalists at St. Mark's. See note 226.
267 Glixon, "Far il buon concerto," paragraphs 2.5–2.7.
268 Glixon, "Far il buon concerto," paragraph 2.6; Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 135. For the text of this admonition, copies of which were sent to all the scuole, and Glixon's English translation, see Document 32. The document had been previously quoted in Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 278–79 from the version adopted by the Provveditori di Comun and preserved in Busta 47 of the Provveditori di Comun in the Archivio di Stato.
269 Monferrato had also provided elaborate music for the same scuola earlier in 1642. See Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 136.
270 Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 147. For the text of this protocol, see Document 33.
271 See the extensive list in Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 107–10. The annual procession of the Scuola di Sant'Antonio Confessore in Padua placed the pifferi at the head of the procession and the trombetti ahead of the reliquary (p. 155). In addition to payment lists that mention trumpets and other instruments, inventories of furnishings of the scuole also list banners that were appended to trumpets and pifferi during processions (pp. 147–48).
272 Glixon, "Con canti et organo," 157, 163–67.
273 See Selfridge-Field, Venetian Instrumental Music, 14. See also Baroncini, "Se canta dalli cantori," 341, where the author cites a document from the Scuola Grande di San Marco of 1515 that, in outlining the procedure for processions and liturgical rites on the first Sunday of each month, indicates the addition of recorders and cornettos to the pifferi: ". . .ac etiam a tutta la messa debano sonar sì de trombe et pifari, come de fiauti et corneti . . ." Trombe in this context could refer to trombones. The entire document is reproduced in Luisi, Laudario Giustinianeo, I: 477, no. 68. In an earlier period, shawms and cornettos were kept separate, as instruments appropriate to loud ensembles and soft ensembles respectively. However, the mixing of shawms and cornettos became more common in the early 16th century (see paragraph 10.2). See McGee, "Giovanni Cellini, Piffaro di Firenze," 214. Return to note 413.
274 See Altenburg, Untersuchungen, III, plate 11. Also reproduced in Naylor, The Trumpet & Trombone, plate 140.
275 Altenburg, Untersuchungen, III, plate 142. See also plate 141 for a similar funeral ensemble. These engravings are similar enough to the one for Charles V's procession to suggest a traditional formation for funeral musicians.
276 Robert Barclay, in personal communication, has suggested that drums may have been carried in funeral processions, but not played.
277 See Wolfgang Osthoff, "Trombe sordine," Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 13 (1956): 77–95; Stefani, Musica barocca, 63, notes 151–52; and Alexander McGrattan, "The Trumpet in Funeral Ceremonies in Scotland and England during the 17th Century," Historic Brass Society Journal 7 (1995): 168–84. McGrattan is uncertain whether the documentary references to "close" trumpets actually refer to muted instruments.
278 The painting is in Sala 17 of the Museo Correr, at the lower left of a group of six small illustrations by Piazza of the life of Francesco Morosini. See Giandomenico Romanelli, Correr Museum, Engl. trans. Jeffrey Jennings (Milan: Electa, 1995), 38.
279 Sansovino/Martinioni, Venetia città nobilissima, 403–6.
280 The careful distinction the Venetians drew between the continuity of civic authority and the person of the deceased doge, especially regarding funerals and the election of a new doge, is described in Muir, Civic Ritual, 268–80. See also Edward Muir, "The Doge as Primus inter Pares: Interregnum Rites in Early Sixteenth-Century Venice," in Essays Presented to Myron P. Gilmore, ed. Sergio Bertelli and Gloria Ramakus (Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1978), 105–14.
281 See the reproduction in Michela Knezevich, Il Magnifico Principe di Venezia (Venice: Edizioni Storti, 1986), 104–5; and at <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bella,_Gabriel_-_Funerali_del_doge.jpg>. Muir, Civic Ritual, 273, note 69 cites the death from the plague of Doge Giovanni Mocenigo in 1485, when the doge's body was buried immediately. For the funeral rites the body was replaced with an effigy. On the basis of the foregoing information about Venetian funerals, Kurtzman has abandoned his suggestion that muted trumpets may have accompanied funeral processions in Venice during the plague years of 1630–31 made in Jeffrey G. Kurtzman, "Monteverdi's 'Mass of Thanksgiving' revisited," Early Music 22 (1994), 70.
282 See Glixon, "Far una bella procession," 194–95; and idem, "Music and Ceremony at the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista," where there is considerable information regarding funerals of the Scuola. Francesco Luisi, in Laudario Giustinianeo, I: 415, claims the participation of instrumentalists in funerals of the Scuola di Santa Maria della Carità, but the documents he cites (p. 491, documents 10, 11) don't substantiate his assumptions.
283 "Voglio in oltre, che nel termine di giorni otto, doppo la mia morte, mi sij fatto un'Essequie solenne nella detta Chiesa di San Lorenzo con Messa Cantata in Musica Concertata da Morto, dalli migliori Musici, e Suonatori de Capella e della Città regolata dal Signor Maestro di capella di San Marco." Shortly thereafter the specific instruments are listed. The part of the will pertaining to this and perpetual masses funded by Cavalli is published in full in Moore, Vespers at St. Mark's, I: 23–26, 100–101, and 239–40 (doc. 27). Return to note 225.