Voicing the Doge's Sacred Image

During the fourteenth century, Venetian chronicles, art, and ceremony fostered provocative analogies between angelic annunciation and the political voice of the Venetian populace. Such analogies imagined a city whose civic and heavenly members were united through the sound of unanimity. At the intersection of the state’s civic and celestial bodies stood the doge, considered to be the image of the Republic and of its patron, Saint Mark. A complex of sung ceremonies and musical compositions addressed to the doge dramatized the notion that the voice, as a ritual instrument, could engender real political or spiritual change in the state and its leaders. Performances of acclamations to the doge positioned him within Venice’s sacred and civic hierarchies, while state art and ceremony forged symbolic resemblances between ducal acclamation and angelic annunciation. A repertory of occasional motets evidences polyphonic play with the notion that vocal rituals centered on the doge could activate the spiritual ideals of the state: the anonymous Marce, Marcum imitaris (c. 1365) draws a sonic analogy between spiritual likeness and musical imitation in order to dramatize the concept of the doge as Mark’s image, whereas Johannes Ciconia’s Venecie mundi splendor/Michael qui Stena domus elides a text dedicated to the Annunciate Virgin with one addressed to the doge, creating musical echoes and simultaneities in its praises of Venice’s temporal and celestial leaders.

Voicing the Doge’s Sacred Image Author(s): Jamie Reuland Source: The Journal of Musicology , Vol. 32, No. 2 (Spring 2015), pp. 198-245 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jm.2015.32.2.198 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Musicology This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Voicing the Doge’s Sacred Image JAM IE R EULAN D D 198 oge Andrea Dandolo opens his Venetian history, the Chronica per extensum descripta (c. 1350), with a scene of prophetic speech.1 The setting implies a genesis: a small vessel is buoyed on an inhospitable primordial soup—the marshy lagoon onto which a group of refugees would, some four centuries later, lay the foundations of a great city. Asleep in the vessel lies the evangelist Mark, on course to establish a church in Aquileia, when an angel appears to him in his dream (fig. 1). The angel announces: ‘‘Pax tibi Marce, hic requiescet corpus tuum’’ (Peace to you Mark, here will your body rest).2 What ensues between Mark and the angel resembles the scene of Annunciation narrated in Luke 1:28–38 (see table 1, which compares the two texts). Interpreting the angel’s message literally, Mark expresses alarm, but the angel assuages his worries by forecasting the great glory that awaits him among A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the 2011 American Musicological Society Annual Meeting in San Francisco. I wish to thank Margaret Bent, Patricia Fortini Brown, Kevin Brownlee, Michael Scott Cuthbert, Wendy Heller, Peter Jeffery, Alejandro Planchart, Blake Wilson, Giovanni Zanovello, Anna Zayaruznaya, and the anonymous readers for this journal for their comments on this article. I am especially grateful to the late David Rosand for encouraging this work in its early stage. Manuscript sigla are as follows: Gr Eg Q15 Grottaferrata, Abbazia di Grottaferrata, Biblioteca, Kript. Lat. 224 Montefiore dell’Aso, Biblioteca—Archivio di Francesco Egidi (now lost) Bologna, Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale MS Q 15 1 Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta aa. 46-1280 d. C., ed. Ester Pastorello in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, Tomo XII, parte I (Bologna: Zanichelli,1938), 10. Although four Venetian doges bore the patronymic Dandolo, I use this name throughout to refer to Andrea (1342–1354) unless otherwise specified. 2 Ibid. The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 32, Issue 2, pp. 198–245, ISSN 0277-9269, electronic ISSN 1533-8347.  2015 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/JM.2015.32.2.198 This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland figure 1. Angel announces Mark’s predestination to Venice as depicted in mosaic in Cappella Zen, Basilica San Marco. The inscription reads: CUM TRANSITUM FACERET PER MARE UBI NVNC POSITA EST ECCLESIA SCI MARCI ANGELVS EI NUNCIATVIT QVOD POST ALIQVANTUM TEMPVS A MORTE IPSIVS CORPVS EIVS HIC HONORIFICE LOCARETVR (While he was making his sea voyage across the area where the church of San Marco now stands, the angel announced to him that at a certain point after his death his body would be placed here with great honor). 199 future generations. The evangelist accepts the divine will with a fiat that recalls Mary’s fiat to the angel Gabriel. By modeling Mark’s predestination to Venice on the Annunciation, Dandolo renders Venice’s political genesis in the image of Christ’s incarnation, and casts the crucial episode of Mark’s Venetian vita within the framework of Christian soteriology. Yet in fitting the narrative structure of the Annunciation to Mark’s hagiography, Dandolo also amplified a nascent fourteenth-century myth that set the day of the Annunciation as the Republic’s founding date This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y TABLE 1 Comparison of Mark’s annunciation in the Chronica per extensum descripta with the Annunciation in Luke 1:28–38. Andrea Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta.i 200 Luke 1:28–38ii And an angel of God appeared to him in that very spot saying: Peace to you Mark, here will your body rest. And the angel, being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art though among women. To whom, hesitating as if about to suffer a shipwreck on that very spot, the angel consoled: Who, having heard, was troubled at his saying and though with herself what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said to her: Fear not, evangelist of God, for a great road yet remains to you; and there will be many things for you to suffer in the name of Christ; after your martyrdom devoted and faithful people from around this area, being constantly persecuted and desiring to avoid the infidels, will construct a magnificent city; and they will be worthy to receive your body, which they will honor with the greatest amount of veneration, and through their prayers and their merits they will obtain a great many benefits. Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God. Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and shalt bring forth a son; and thou shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of David his father; and he shall reign in the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom there shall be no end. And Mary said to the angel: How shall this be done, because I know not man? And the angel, answering, said to her: The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee. And therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And behold, thy cousin Elizabeth, she also hath conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her that is called barren. Because no word shall be impossible with God. Then blessed Mark having woken gave thanks to the Lord, saying: Lord, let your will be done. And Mary said: Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her. (continued) This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland TABLE 1 (continued) Andrea Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta. Luke 1:28–38 aparuitque ei, in estaxi posito, angelus Dei dicens: Pax tibi Marce, hic requiescet corpus tuum. 28. et ingressus angelus ad eam dixit have gratia plena Dominus tecum benedicta tu in mulieribus Cui, cum se passarum illico naufragium, hesitaret, subintulit angelus: 29. quae cum vidisset turbata est in sermone eius et cogitabat qualis esset ista salutatio 30. et ait angelus ei Ne timeas evangelista Dei, quia adhuc tibi grandis restat via; multaque te, pro Christi nomine, opportet pati; post vero pasionem tuam circum vicinarum regionum devoti et fideles populi, infidelium crebras persecuciones declinare volentes, hic mirificam urbem fabricabunt; et corpus tuum denique habere merebuntur; quod summa veneracione colent, tuisque meritis et precibus plurima beneficia consecuturi sunt. ne timeas Maria invenisti enim gratiam apud Deum 31. ecce concipies in utero et paries filium et vocabis nomen eius Iesum 32. hic erit magnus et Filius Altissimi vocabitur et dabit illi Dominus Deus sedem David patris eius 33. et regnabit in domo Iacob in aeternum et regni eius non erit finis 34. dixit autem Maria ad angelum quomodo fiet istud quoniam virum non cognosco 35. Et respondens angelus dixit ei Spiritus Sanctus superveniet in te et virtus Altissimi obumbrabit tibi ideoque et quod nascetur sanctum vocabitur Filius Dei 36. Et ecce Elisabeth cognata tua et ipsa concepit filium in senecta sua et hic mensis est sextus illi quae vocatur sterilis 37. quia non erit inpossibile apud Deum omne verbum Tunc beatus Marcus expergefactus, gratias egit Deo, dicens: Domine fiat voluntas tua. 38. dixit autem Maria ecce ancilla Domini fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum et discessit ab illa angelus.iii i Ed. Ester Pastorello (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1938), 10. English translation my own. ii The Holy Bible: Douay version, translated from the Latin Vulgate (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1957). iii Biblia Sacra: Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem, ed. B. Fischer, et. al. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994). This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 201 t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y 202 (25 March 421). The narrative structure of Dandolo’s account thus gave historiographical authority to a myth that, over the course of the fourteenth century, had become increasingly conspicuous in the city’s most important political spaces.3 Depictions of Mary and Gabriel alluded in iconographic shorthand to the state’s auspicious beginnings, while the trope of angelic announcement—at play in Mark’s vita as much as in the Annunciation story itself—functioned as a metonym for Venice’s status as a divinely favored Christian empire. ‘‘Pax tibi Marce, Evangelista Meus,’’ the angelic utterance that encapsulated the city’s unique claims to Mark’s patronage, assumed apotropaic significance for the Republic in its new empire abroad, and a Lion of Saint Mark blazoned the divine motto in every outpost of the Republic, signaling throughout the Mediterranean that providential forces stood behind Venice’s imperial dominance.4 As the legend of the angel’s salutation to Mark attests, prophetic utterances loomed large in the Venetian political imagination. The mythic, as well as musical, role that voices could play in engendering the state preoccupied political thought during the period. Indeed music made it possible to hear this providential vision of the Venetian state. As a heightened form of utterance, song had the potential to structure Venetian political discourse, reconstituting the angelic voices of the city’s founding myths through musical performance. Listening closely, one finds the political 3 David Rosand explores the array of political associations that Annunciation imagery accrued in Venetian state art in his Myths of Venice: Figurations of a State (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), esp. 12–46. 4 The phrase ‘‘Pax tibi Marce, Evangelista Meus’’ is the source for the ‘‘Pax tibi Marce, hic requiescet corpus tuum’’ announcement that appeared for the first time in Dandolo’s Chronica. The former phraseology derives from Christ’s announcement to Mark during his imprisonment in Alexandria in the saint’s pre-Venetian vita (see, for instance, Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda Aurea or Boninus Mombritius’Sanctuarium seu Vitae sanctorum). Dandolo reworked the dialogue of the Alexandrian apparitio Dei episode into the Venetian praedestinatio (the term given by the Venetians to the legend of the angel’s announcement to Mark) that had first been articulated by Martin da Canal in his thirteenth-century chronicle, Les estoires de Venise. Giulio Cattin uncovers the former version of the text in an antiphon for vespers on the vigil of the feast of Saint Mark in several liturgical sources from the ducal basilica: a thirteenth-century antiphoner and a contemporary ProcessionaleRituale (Venice, Museo Correr, Cicogna 1006, ff. 2v–3); a fourteenth-century antiphoner (Venice, Archivio di Stato, Procuratia de Supra, Reg. 113–18); and a sixteenth-century Ordo Orationalis (Venice, Museo Correr, Cicogna 1602, ff. 87v–88) where the antiphon is found in a variety of liturgical situations. See Cattin, Musica e liturgia a San Marco: testi e melodie per la liturgia delle ore dal XII al XVII secolo: dal graduale tropato del Duecento ai graduali cinquecenteschi, 4 vols. (Venice: Fondazione Levi, 1990–1992), with a facsimile from Cicogna 1006 in vol. 2, 499, and a transcription in vol. 3, 5*–6*. Patricia Fortini Brown offers a useful overview of the Lion of Saint Mark as a symbol of state in Art and Life in Renaissance Venice (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1997), 80–83. Debra Pincus brings the angelic legend to bear on Andrea Mantegna’s use of the ‘‘Pax tibi’’ motto on an icon of Saint Mark in ‘‘Mark Gets the Message: Mantegna and the ‘Praedestinatio’ in Fifteenth-Century Venice,’’ Artibus et Historiae 18, no. 35 (1997): 135–46, whereas Hans R. Hahnloser and Renato Polacco discuss the appearance of the ‘‘Pax tibi’’ motto in a scene depicting the angel’s annunciation to Mark on a tile in the Pala d’oro in La Pala d’oro (Venice: Canal and Stamperia Editrice, 1994), 36–37. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland theology of late-medieval Venice engaged by an astonishing variety of musical acts and works. Sung ceremonies and musical compositions addressed to the doge dramatized the idea that the voice could, through the act of announcement, bring about real political or spiritual change in the state and its leaders. The heavenly voices that ushered in Dandolo’s political history are important in this regard. Both the angelic utterance to Mark and the story of the Annunciation found provocative analogies in the ceremonial acclamation (laudes) of the doge by which the Venetian vox populi legitimized his office. Throughout the year, the doge was acclaimed in a number of ritual contexts that underscored the imagined kinship between the laudes—the populace’s sung proclamation of consent to their leader’s election—and the city’s founding acts of angelic announcement. Ritual and state myth worked in tandem to forge a symbolic resemblance between ducal acclamation and angelic annunciation in order to position the doge within Venice’s sacred and civic hierarchies.5 Contemporary political discourse emphasized the dual nature of the doge’s power. Understood to be the personification of the Republic and the earthly representative of the city’s patron saint Mark, the doge stood at the intersection of Venice’s civic and celestial structures. His participation in the practical affairs of state gave embodied presence to the government’s jointly popular and divine bases.6 Functioning much like a devotional icon or relic, the doge channeled the presence of Saint Mark, on whose guidance the government depended, and at the same time represented the entire Venetian populace and its values. A 1447 decision made by the Council of Ten, for instance, required Doge Francesco Foscari’s attendance at council votes, reasoning that although Foscari himself could not partake in the decision-making, his status as ‘‘that Imago which represents the government of the Venetians’’ lent him a ‘‘symbolic function [representationem]’’ within the workings of the government.7 5 Debra Pincus has shown how the doge’s role as an instrument of the divine and mediator between Mark and the state found articulation in the visual sphere of late-medieval Venice in chapter 8 of her The Tombs of the Doges of Venice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 121–49, and in idem, ‘‘Hard Times and Ducal Radiance: Andrea Dandolo and the Construction of the Ruler in Fourteenth-Century Venice,’’ in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, ed. John Martin and Dennis Romano (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 89–136. For a broad discussion of the doge as a symbol for the ideals of government, see chapter 2 of Margaret L. King, Venetian Humanism in an Age of Patrician Dominance (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1986), esp. 179. 6 Frederic C. Lane elucidates a central paradox in the Venetian government, wherein the ducal office was administered through popular assembly, but the doge’s powers were vested by Saint Mark in Frederic C. Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 87–101, and esp. 89–90. 7 Translated by Dennis Romano, who brought the relevant document to light, in his The Likeness of Venice: A Life of Doge Francesco Foscari 1373–1457 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), xxi. Romano interprets the document within fifteenth-century This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 203 t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y A repertory of occasional motets develops the notion that the voice, imagined in musical terms, could activate the political and spiritual ideals of the state, with the doge at its center.8 The two motets examined in this essay elaborate different facets of this idea. The anonymous Marce, Marcum imitaris (c. 1365)9 makes a sonic analogy to the concept of the doge as Mark’s image by figuring the likeness between Venice’s holy and secular rulers in terms of musical imitation, whereas Johannes Ciconia’s Venecie mundi splendor/Michael qui Stena domus (c. 1406)10 elides a text dedicated to the Annunciate Virgin with one addressed to the doge, creating musical echoes and simultaneities in its praises to Venice’s celestial and temporal leaders. The confluence of available musical styles with political thought during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries yielded a singular - 204 political discourse on ducal power. Romano notes that not only did the term imago, here applied to the doge, also denote devotional images, but that ‘‘the doge [was] like an icon, transmitting the power of Saint Mark to his people,’’ ibid., xxi. 8 Julie Cumming situates the corpus of extant motets dedicated to doges within the broader repertory of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century occasional motets, and shows how their engagement with contemporary political thought pointed toward the musical and rhetorical hallmarks of the fifteenth-century Italian motet. See Julie Cumming, ‘‘Concord out of Discord: Occasional Motets of the Early Quattrocento’’ (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1987). Chapters 6, 8, and 9 deal expressly with the surviving motets dedicated to doges. These include Ave corpus sanctum (anonymous) for Francesco Dandolo (1329–39); Marce, Marcum imitaris (anonymous) for Marco Corner (1365–68); Principum nobilissime (anonymous, possibly Landini) for Andrea Contarini (1368–81) and for which only a single voice survives; Venecie mundi splendor/Michael qui Stena domus (Johannes Ciconia) for Michele Steno (1400–13); and Ducalis sedes/Stirps Mocinico (Antonio Romano) for Tommaso Mocenigo (1414–23). In addition three motets survive for Francesco Foscari (1423–57): Plaude decus mundi (Cristoforus de Monte); Carminibus/O requies (Antonio Romano); and Christus vincit (Hugo de Lantins). Cumming understands the motets for Francesco Foscari as indicative of a growing interest on the part of the Venetian state in cultivating polyphony for state functions in Julie Cumming, ‘‘Music for the Doge in Early Renaissance Venice,’’ Speculum 67 (1992): 324–64. 9 Edited by Kurt von Fischer and F. Alberto Gallo in their Italian Sacred and Ceremonial Music. Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century XIII (Monaco: Éditions de l’Oiseau-Lyre, 1987), 197–201, no. 44. Cantus II was first published in Francesco Egidi, ‘‘Un frammento di codice musicale del secolo XIV,’’ Nozze Bonmartini-Tracagni XIX novembre MCMXXV (Rome: La Speranza, 1925). This fragment is now thought to be lost. All voices are preserved in Grottaferrata, Biblioteca lat. 224, first published by Ursula Günther, who also provides a transcription in her ‘‘Quelques remarques sur des feuillets récemment découverts à Grottaferrata,’’ in L’ars nova italiana del trecento III: Secondo Convegno Internazionale 17–22 luglio 1969 sotto il patrocinio della Società Internazionale di Musicologia (Certaldo: Centro di Studi sull’Ars nova italiana del Trecento, 1970), 329, 335, 369–75. A facsimile of the Egidi fragment is also reproduced, without a transcription, in Giuliano di Bacco and John Nádas, ‘‘The Papal Chapels and Italian Sources of Polyphony during the Great Schism,’’ in Papal Music and Musicians in Late Medieval and Renaissance Rome, ed. Richard Sherr (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 44–92. 10 Venecie/Michael is a unicum found on Arabic fol. 287v–288 in Bologna, Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale, MS Q 15. For a facsimile edition see Margaret Bent, Bologna Q 15: The Making and Remaking of a Musical Mansucript II (Lucca: LIM Editrice, 2008), no. 257. The work is edited by Margaret Bent and Anne Hallmark in The Works of Johannes Ciconia. Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century XXIV (Monaco: Éditions de l’Oiseau-Lyre, 1985), 77– 80, no. 14. A transcription of the motet can also be found in Suzanne Clercx, Un musicien liégeois et son temps (Vers 1335–1411) II (Brussels: Palais des académies, 1960), 183–86. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland moment within Venice’s musical history. Already by the second half of the fifteenth century the increasingly limited powers of both the doge and the Venetian people had divested acclamations of their political efficacy.11 Metaphors of musical harmony used to describe in idealized terms the Republic’s newly crystallized system of governance gradually eclipsed the medieval function of musical performance as the ritual enactment of Venetian political theology. The prestige of the chapel of San Marco as a musical institution, virtually non-existent before the fifteenth century, became the dominant mode of the state’s musical selffashioning. Yet in this lesser acknowledged and little understood period of musical life in the late-medieval city, ceremonial song served as a vital mechanism of government, attested as much in state literature and iconography as in musical composition and ritual practice. The Voice of the People and the Image of Mark The fulfillment of the angelic prophecy to Mark—the translation of the evangelist’s body from Alexandria to Venice in 828—is portrayed in a thirteenth-century mosaic above the Porta Sant’Alipio of the Basilica San Marco (fig. 2).12 Read against the background of contemporary political thought and ceremonial life, the mosaic’s depiction of a scene of announcement becomes the means by which it explores the nature and origins of the doge’s authority. The mosaic’s allusion to a laudes performance encourages the viewer to identify the doge with the relics of Mark, thus clarifying the spiritual attributes of the doge (vis-à-vis his relationship to Mark) by reference to a musical ceremony that conferred his political authority. Until the late twelfth century the entire populace had acclaimed the new doge and conducted him to San Marco while they sang the Te Deum, the Kyrie eleison, and the so-called laudes, or ducal acclamations.13 This 11 A clear indication of the Republic’s increasingly aristocratic tendency is the Great Council’s 1423 decision to validate its own decrees without the populace’s ceremonial endorsement, and also to abolish the people’s ritual agreement to the doge’s election. By the second half of the fifteenth century, the term Commune Veneciarum was removed from the doge’s official oath, and was replaced in common usage by the designation La Serenissima. See Lane, A Maritime Republic, 252. 12 The Porta Sant’Alipio mosaic, which faces the Piazza San Marco, is one of the most conspicuous images in all of Venice. For an analysis of this image in the context of the broader cycle to which it once belonged see Otto Demus, The Mosaics of San Marco in Venice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), II/1, 201–206. 13 Domenico Tino’s eyewitness account of the ceremonial events of the election and investiture of Domenico Selvo in 1071 is reproduced in Agostino Pertusi ‘‘‘Quedam regalia insignia’: ricerche sulle insigne del potere ducale a Venezia durante il Medioevo,’’ Studi Veneziani 7 (1965): 67–68. For the evolution of the investiture ceremony from the ninth through fifteenth centuries, see also Gina Fasoli, ‘‘Liturgia e cerimoniale ducale,’’ in This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 205 t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y figure 2. Mark’s Translation to Venice as depicted in the Porta Sant’Alipio mosaic, Basilica San Marco (Photo by Michael Huneke) 206 voiced consent of the populace, expressed through the laudes, legitimized the doge’s election, and without it the doge had no legal claim. By the thirteenth century the chaplains of San Marco had assumed responsibility for the performance. Yet even then, the singing of laudes continued to connote the populace’s original right to authorize their leader.14 The laudes’ connotations of popularly-granted authority could be extended, moreover, to include the spiritual basis for the doge’s power: his proximity, indeed his very likeness, to Mark. This idea finds unique expression in the Sant’Alipio mosaic. The image portrays the ninth-century reception of Saint Mark’s relics against the backdrop of the city’s contemporary architectural refurbishments (of - Venezia e il Levante fino al secolo XV, ed. Agostino Pertusi (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1973). Iain Fenlon provides a useful gloss of Tino’s account in his The Ceremonial City: History, Memory and Myth in Renaissance Venice (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 143–44. 14 Investiture ceremonies retained the constitutive role of the vox populi until 1423 by allowing the populace to respond to the announcement ‘‘Questo è vostro Doge se vi piace’’ with ‘‘sia, sia!’’ as is described in Andrea da Mosto, I dogi di Venezia nella vita pubblica e privata (Milan: A. Martello, 1960), xxii. Yet the original constitutive charge of the vox populi remained in the political memory of the city far longer, for instance, in Francesco Sansovino’s sixteenth-century Venetia Città Nobilissima: ‘‘in the beginning [the doge] was created by the populace by voice or, created by others, was confirmed by the populace’’ (nel principio fu creato dal popolo à voce, overo fatto da altri, fu dal popolo confermato). Francesco Sansovino and Giustiniano Martinioni, Venetia Città Nobilissima (Venice: S. Curti, 1663), 473. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland which the mosaic itself was part), couched in the visual language of thirteenth-century ducal ceremony. Both Otto Demus and Agostino Pertusi highlight what appears as a secondary topic within the mosaic: the depiction of the moment when the newly invested doge—oath of office in hand—first encounters the populace, who symbolically legitimize his authority by means of sung acclamations, or laudes.15 Although Demus and Pertusi argue persuasively for this secondary reading, it is just as useful to understand the image not as depicting any single ceremonial occasion, but as relying on the visual language of ducal ceremony, and acclamation in particular, to interpret the mythic-historical event of Saint Mark’s translation. Musical topoi carry a special rhetorical charge within the image’s design. On the left-hand side of the composition, the congregants leaving the church make a gesture of speech or song—indicated by arms raised at the elbow—toward the right, apparently motioning toward Mark’s body being borne into the church at the central axis of the composition. The doge’s bent arm and pointing finger extend this gestural motif so that it culminates in the scroll—interpreted by Demus and Pertusi as the doge’s promissione, or oath of office—that he holds in his other hand.16 By this interpretation, the viewer’s eye is drawn not merely to the doge, but more specifically to the legal document that defines the scope of his political jurisdiction. The result is that the doge, the city’s political leader, forms an auxiliary focal point to Mark, the city’s spiritual leader. An accompanying inscription helps the viewer interpret the gesture of the populace on the left as directing song toward the right. At the same time, it reinforces the thematic duality of the composition by merging devotional and political song: COLLOCAT HUNC DIGNIS PLEBS LAUDIBUS ET COLIT HYMNIS/ UT VENETOS SERVET TERRAQUE MARIQUE GUBERNET.17 (The people establish him with worthy laudes and honor him with hymns/ So that he may preserve the Venetians and govern by land and sea.) 15 Otto Demus argues that the investiture ceremony depicted was that of Lorenzo Tiepolo (Demus, The Mosaics of San Marco in Venice II/1, 202–206). Significantly, this is the same investiture ceremony recounted in detail in Martin da Canal, Les estoires de Venise: Cronaca veneziana in lingua francese dalle origini al 1275, ed. Alberto Limentani (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1972), 279–83. The full iconographic cycle, of which the Sant’Alipio mosaic is the only remaining original, is visible in Gentile Bellini’s Processione in piazza San Marco. 16 Demus, The Mosaics of San Marco II/1, 202–206; Pertusi, ‘‘Quedam Regalia Insignia,’’ 45–46. 17 The second line of the inscription above the Sant’Alipio mosaic currently reads: ‘‘Ut Venetos semper sepit ab hoste suos,’’ which frustrates the hexameter set up in the first line. This modification is the result of restoration to the mosaic likely undertaken sometime in the nineteenth century (see Demus, The Mosaics of San Marco in Venice II/1, 201). This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 207 t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y 208 In the sense that the mosaic conflates two separate events—the deposition of Mark’s relics in the basilica and a ducal ceremony—we can understand the ‘‘laudibus’’ in this inscription to refer not only to the people’s sung petitions to their patron saint, but also to the singing of laudes that validated the doge as the Republic’s elected figurehead.18 The ‘‘laudibus’’ and ‘‘hymnis,’’ in other words, could refer equally well to the Te Deum, Kyrie eleison, and laudes with which the populace historically greeted the doge’s election as it could to the people’s sung veneration of Saint Mark’s relics. The overtly civic language with which the inscription concludes (‘‘terraque marique gubernet’’) makes the subject of both text and image all the more ambiguous, or perhaps extends it to encompass the doge as Mark’s earthly representative. Through its pictorial and textual punning, the Sant’Alipio mosaic encourages the viewer to identify the doge with the source of his authority. The populace’s posture of acclamation literally gestures through song at the doge’s spiritual proximity to Mark, a proximity that predicated his place at the head of the Republic.19 The mosaic thus evokes the political prerogative of the vox populi by way of analogy to the spiritual foundation for the doge’s authority: the presence of Mark’s relics within the ducal basilica.20 Moreover, the image pictures the intercessory circuit established in this spiritual economy. Whether the populace lauds the relics or the ruler, the effect is the same. What is addressed to the image is transferred to the prototype, and in acclaiming the doge they acclaim Mark. Sounding Unanimity When Dandolo was composing his Chronica per extensum descripta in the 1350s, the Sant’Alipio mosaic was one of the highlights of the newly 18 Hans Hubach recognizes the viability of this reading in ‘‘Pontifices, Clerus – Populus, Dux: Osservazioni sul più antico esempio di autorappresentazione politica della società veneziana,’’ in San Marco: aspetti storici e agiografici: atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Venezia, 26–29 April 1994, ed. Antonio Niero (Venice: Marsilio, 1996): ‘‘Lo stretto nesso con l’investitura dogale si riflette chiaramente nell’inscrizione originaria del mosaico situato al di sopra della porta di Sant’Alipio, la quale faceva riferimento all’usanza dell’acclamazione del doge neoeletto da parte del popolo,’’ 396, n78. 19 On the complex spiritual relationship the doge was understood to share with St. Mark see Staale Sinding-Larsen, Christ in the Council Hall: Studies in the Religious Iconography of the Venetian Republic, Acta ad Archaeologiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia 5 (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1974). 20 Thomas E. A. Dale details the development of a mosaic program in San Marco that increasingly stressed the doge’s role as part of a soteriological chain that extended from Christ and reached the doge by way of Mark in his ‘‘Inventing a Sacred Past: Pictorial Narratives of St. Mark the Evangelist in Aquileia and Venice, ca. 1000–1300,’’ Dumbarton Oaks Papers 48 (1994): 53–104. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland renovated basilica.21 Indeed the image may have loomed in Dandolo’s mind when he described the election of Domenico Selvo. Domenico Selvo was elected doge in the year of our Lord 1071. So, with his predecessor not yet buried, the entire populace [cunctus populus] unanimously acclaimed [unanimiter aclamavit] that doge in the church of San Nicolò [al Lido] and led him with hymns and praises [hymnis et laudibus] to the not-yet-complete church of San Marco, [where] he received his investment with the standard of Saint Mark.22 Here ‘‘hymnis et laudibus’’ recalls the mosaic inscription (‘‘LAUDIBUS ET . . . HYMNIS’’), and Selvo’s reception at the yet incomplete San Marco brings to mind the mosaic’s depiction of a ducal reception in front of the partially refurbished basilica. Yet it is precisely what the mosaic offered by way of suggestion that this passage makes explicit: the legitimizing role of the Venetian people in establishing their leader’s authority. In its attention to the vocal participation of the populace, Dandolo’s account of Selvo’s election is paradigmatic of a broader rhetorical strategy in the Chronica. Each chapter of the Chronica begins with an account of a new doge’s election, and Dandolo renders these openings in stock, formulaic language. Verbs of speech in particular describe the mode by which the doge’s power has been established. Dandolo frequently locates the source of this constitutive voice with the populace: ‘‘Vitalis Michael II . . . was acclaimed [laudatus] by public opinion, as was customary’’;23 ‘‘Iacopo Tiepolo . . . was acclaimed [laudatur] by the public opinion . . .on March 6 he was acclaimed doge [dux laudatus]’’;24 ‘‘Lorenzo Tiepolo was announced doge [annunciatur] . . . and with the praise of the populace [colaudacione populi] . . . they confirmed the form of election of the new doge.’’25 21 On the creation of the Chronica within the milieu of early humanism, its relationship to earlier chronicles, and its subsequent influence, see Girolamo Arnaldi, ‘‘Andrea Dandolo doge-cronista,’’ in La storiografia veneziana fino al secolo XVI. Aspetti e problemi, ed. Agostino Pertusi (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1970), 127–268. 22 Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta aa, 46–1280 d. C., 214: ‘‘Dominicus Silvo dux censetur anno Domini millesimo LXXI. Nam, predecessore nedum sepulto, cunctus populus hunc ducem, in sancti Nicholai templo, unanimiter aclamavit: et ipsum, cum ymnis et laudibus, in sancti Marci ecclesia nondum conplecta duxit, qui ibi investicionem cum vexilo suscepit, ad quam perficiendam crebo operam dedit.’’ 23 Ibid., 246: ‘‘Vitalis Michael II dux . . . Hic a concione, more solito, laudatus . . . ’’ 24 Ibid., 291–92: ‘‘ Iacobus Theupulo dux . . . a concione laudatur . . . hic, die VI marcii dux laudatus . . . ’’ 25 Ibid., 315: ‘‘Laurencius Theupolo dux anunciatur . . . et colaudacione populi, formam electionis futuris ducis . . . sanxerunt.’’ The frequent use of the noun laus and the verb laudatur throughout the Chronica to describe ducal elections aligns the laudes performance with the doge’s legitimate election. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 209 t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y 210 The sound of the populace’s sung accord to their leader thus reverberates throughout the Chronica, framing the civic and world-historical events that unfold in each chapter. In this way, the scene of angelic announcement with which the Chronica begins finds structural echoes throughout the political history that ensues. Indeed, the trope of the acclaiming vox populi that punctuates Dandolo’s narrative can be seen as an extension—albeit on a political level—of the angelic voice that, in predestining Venice’s future, engenders all that follows. The angel’s annunciation grounds the inception of the state in divine will, while the voice of a unanimous body politic regularly reaffirms Venice’s governing structure by sounding accord to its leader. Dandolo would continue to draw analogies between the laudes performance and angelic announcement throughout his career as procurator of San Marco and, later, as doge. As we shall see, his imaginative reconfigurations of the laudes in state ceremony, iconography, and architectural design bolstered their ability to point to both the popular and divine sources for the doge’s authority. While the performance of the laudes invoked the electoral voice of the people, its text gestured toward the divine reaches of the city’s ruling structure. A concise articulation of the doge’s place within the Republic’s sacro-political hierarchy, the laudes text pictures a chain of sovereignty that originates in Christ and, through the intercession of Mark, extends to the doge: Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat. Domino nostro [N.N.], Dei gracia, inclito duci Venecie, Dalmacie atque Croacie, et dominatori quarte partis et dimidie tocius imperii Romanie, salus, honor, vita, et victoria: Sancte Marce, Tu illum adiuva.26 26 The Venetian laudes clearly derive from the Frankish laudes regiae. Identical versions of the Venetian laudes are used both by Martin da Canal in Les estoires de Venise and in Hugo de Lantin’s polyphonic setting of the text for the election of Francesco Foscari in 1423. For two different perspectives on de Lantin’s motet, see Cumming, ‘‘Music for the Doge,’’ 346– 53, and J. Michael Allsen, ‘‘Intertextuality and Compositional Process in Two Cantilena Motets by Hugo de Lantins,’’ Journal of Musicology 11 (1993): 174–202. Fenlon presents the various ritual contexts in which the laudes were performed throughout the Venetian ritual year and traces the historical development of these rituals in his The Ceremonial City, 130–31. For an in-depth study of the laudes regiae from their antique origins into the twentieth century, see Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz, Laudes regiae: A Study in Liturgical Acclamations and Mediaeval Ruler Worship (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1946). Although Kantorowicz devotes a full chapter to ‘‘Dalmatian and Venetian Laudes,’’ his investigation focuses almost exclusively on their constitutive significance in Venice’s colonial empire, whereas on the performance of laudes in the city of Venice itself he concludes that ‘‘a few notes, not very specific, suggest that the doge on some occasions, for example at his investiture, would be greeted with acclamations. But no text of the laudes seems to have been preserved from San Marco,’’ ibid., 153. Kantorowicz appears not to have been familiar with da Canal’s Les estoires or de Lantin’s setting of the laudes text. For a study on the place This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland (Christ conquers, Christ reigns, Christ commands. To our lord [N.N.] by the favor of God, the renowned doge of Venice, Dalmatia, and Croatia, and ruler over quarter and a half of the entire Roman empire, health, honor, life, and victory: Saint Mark, help him!) Beneath the Christological tricolon that acclaims Christ’s military and imperial attributes—‘‘Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat’’—the doge is hailed as ruler of his own territory—a territory that included the newly acquired regions of the Byzantine Empire that secured Venice’s undisputed dominance over the Mediterranean. Here in the laudes, Christ’s spiritual triumphs, stated in the language of empire, are mirrored in the acclaims to the doge as figurehead of this great new maritime power. Mark is called upon to guide the doge, through his relationship to whom he mediates between Christ’s kingdom and its political image, the Republic of Venice. The imperial tone conveyed in this text is echoed in one of the most important spaces for the performance of acclamations: the south transept of San Marco, where the doge was first presented following his election, and the populace’s approval formally solicited. The space is unified through an iconographic program based on the theme of the adventus Domini, which presents Christ in the language of imperial triumph. Staale Sinding-Larsen has suggested that the adventus theme be interpreted in light of the investiture ceremony enacted below it.27 He points to the two inscriptions that adorn the pergolo (the platform from which the doge was presented and acclaimed by the people), and that, in keeping with the spirit of the adventus topos, invoke a term associated with political ceremony (laus, pl. laudes) to describe the praise rendered to Christ: EX ORE INFANTIUM ET LACTENTIUM PERFECISTI LAUDEM. (Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have perfected praise.) (Ps. 8:3) LAUS DECET ISTA DEUM, QUI SUMPSIT IN HOSTE TROPHEUM. (This praise befits God, who takes triumph toward the enemy.) Sinding-Larsen asks, ‘‘Could it be stated more clearly that the acclamation of a new doge was in the last instance a praise of God, on whom the well-being of the State depended?’’28 Yet meaning cuts both ways here. If - of the laudes regiae in Normandy and England see Herbert Edward John Cowdrey, ‘‘The Anglo-Norman Laudes Regiae,’’ Viator 12 (1981): 37–78. 27 Sinding-Larsen, Christ in the Council Hall, 202. 28 Ibid., 203. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 211 t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y 212 the sentiment expressed in the inscriptions redirects the ducal acclamations toward a higher power, it simultaneously casts a heavenly aura back down onto the sung ceremony below, conferring on the doge the militant, victorious attributes of Christ and underscoring the congruence between the state and Christ’s heavenly kingdom. Moreover, the demonstrative ‘‘laus . . . ista’’ (italics mine) of the second inscription had the potential to refer not only to the ‘‘laudem’’ mentioned in the psalm verse above it, but also to the acclamations occasionally performed beneath it. The latter valence of the inscription fixes the memory of a civic performance within liturgical space. The laudes themselves did not belong to the liturgy at San Marco, and sources describe the chaplains of San Marco singing them in extra-liturgical processions, as was the case on Easter morning and on the feast of the Translation of Saint Mark.29 It would appear, in fact, that the popular acclamation of the doge from the pergolo occurred only during the investiture ceremony itself. Yet the south transcript inscriptions flirt with the boundaries of the civic and the liturgical by projecting a mute acclamation into the space the doge normally occupied while attending mass at the basilica.30 Notably, the textual formula of the laudes first appears in a literary work written contemporaneously with the creation of the Sant’Alipio mosaic. Martin da Canal’s Les estoires de Venise furnishes vivid and reliable information about civic events in the years 1267–1275. The chronicle thus complements and clarifies aspects of the thirteenth-century ceremony that the mosaic depicts.31 Performances of laudes to the doge emerge from the pages of da Canal’s history as one of the most salient sonic features of thirteenth-century state ceremony.32 Among the occasions for laudes that 29 Giulio Cattin’s monumental Musica e liturgia a San Marco has vastly improved our understanding of the rito patriarchino in use at San Marco. Its four volumes describe and inventory the liturgical books currently known to have furnished the ducal liturgy. Cattin also provides a selective edition of texts and music from the Mass and Office, and transcriptions of related sources, such as a portion of Bartolomeo Bonifacio’s 1564 Cerimoniale. Giordana Mariani Canova contributes an essay on miniatures found in the liturgical books, and Susy Marcon a codicological study of the manuscripts. 30 In the Middle Ages, versions of the so-called laudes regiae either formed part of the episcopal mass or occasioned the coronation of kings (see Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae, 65–146). For that reason the inclusion of the ducal laudes within the liturgy at San Marco would have grossly overstated the power of what was, in the end, an elected official. 31 Martin da Canal, Les estoires de Venise: Cronaca veneziana in lingua francese dalle origini al 1275, ed. Alberto Limentani (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1972). 32 Da Canal describes laudes performed in extra-liturgical ceremonies on Easter Sunday and the feast of the Translation of Saint Mark, as well as those performed for the election ceremonies of Doge Lorenzo Tiepolo. He informs readers that the Easter performance was repeated every Sunday of the Paschal season until Pentecost. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the significance of each of these occasions. Susan Rankin has considered the symbolism behind the singing of laudes within the thirteenth-century Easter morning celebration that took place in the Piazza San Marco in her ‘‘From Liturgical This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland da Canal describes is the election of Doge Lorenzo Tiepolo in 1268, and it is significant that the grosso coin minted during Tiepolo’s rule reproduces the laudes text in visual terms.33 On the obverse of the coin, the patron saint invests Tiepolo with the standard of Saint Mark—the emblem of Mark’s endorsement of the ducal office—while on the reverse, Christ sits enthroned (fig. 3). The grosso thus serves as a visual iteration of the political theology expressed in the laudes.34 Both verbal and visual tokens imagine Christ’s heavenly empire reflected in the Republic through the doge’s spiritual relationship to Mark.35 Like the contemporary grosso, the laudes encapsulate a political cosmology in which the doge—as Mark’s representative—stands at the center of mirrored heavenly and human branches. As a sonic performance, the laudes voice the unanimity of a populace that sees the doge as its perfect embodiment. As a sung text, the laudes articulate the doge’s place in a hierarchy that, through him, places the entire state under divine management. If we return to the Sant’Alipio mosaic, we notice that the image nods toward the laudes as both text and act. Christ Pantokrator—a mosaic within a mosaic, indeed, at its exact center—frames the resemblance between the saint and doge constructed beneath it. We might recognize in this configuration yet another echo of the laudes text that imagines an imperial Christ, beneath whom Mark (through the presence of his relics at the basilica) assists the doge in governing the Republic. Yet as we have seen, the performance of laudes is also mutely suggested within the scene’s diegesis. If the connections among Christ, Mark, and the doge - Ceremony to Public Ritual: ‘Quem queritis’ at St. Mark’s, Venice,’’ in Da Bisanzio a San Marco. Musica e Liturgia, ed. Giulio Cattin (Venice: Il Mulino, 1997), esp. 150–56. Fenlon offers an expert synthesis of the sources that describe the performance of laudes, including a consideration of Les estoires, in his The Ceremonial City, 130–31. Da Canal’s recognition of the laudes as a potent symbol of state is suggested by the personal prayer with which the author begins the second half of Les estoires (the half that describes contemporary ceremony, and thus recounts the laudes performances): ‘‘Ge pri Jesu Crist et monseignor saint Marc, qui done sauvement, henor, vie et victoire a monseignor li dus et a tos les Veneciens, et comencerai mon conte tot en tel maniere,’’ ibid., 156. The prayer is modeled on the structure of the laudes and invokes Christ and Mark to grant the doge imperial attributes. 33 Alan M. Stahl, Zecca: The Mint of Venice in the Middle Ages (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press; New York: in association with the American Numismatic Society, 2000), 16–18, 302–308. It seems significant that Enrico Dandolo (doge 1192-1205) introduced the grosso, along with its characteristic imagery, into Venice’s monetary system: he was the first doge to gain the epithet ‘‘renowned doge of Venice, Dalmatia, and Croatia, and ruler over quarter and a half of the entire Roman empire,’’ with which subsequent doges were acclaimed thereafter. 34 For the relationship these coin programs bear to the ducal investiture ceremony, see Sinding-Larsen, Christ in the Council Hall, 166. 35 The gold ducat introduced into the monetary system in 1284 by Doge Giovanni Dandolo reinforces this iconographic symbolism. As is the case for the grosso, the obverse depicts the transaction of the vexillum between Mark and the doge. The reverse of the ducat shows Christ Resurrected in a starry mandorla. See Stahl, Zecca, 28–32. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 213 t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y figure 3. Grosso minted under Doge Lorenzo Tiepolo depicting (obverse) Mark investing doge with standard (vexillum S. Marci) and (reverse) Christ enthroned 214 are established along the composition’s vertical axis, then the acclaiming populace, commanding the entire bottom register, forms a horizontal axis that also includes saint and doge. This visual organization pictures the full extent of the Republic’s reaches. Mirrored in one another, Mark and doge fall at the hinge of this structure, which the acclaiming body politic both joins and generates through its sung accord. How might the political freight borne by such vocal acts—real, legendary, or imagined—have found expression in contemporary musical compositions? Among ceremonies that featured laudes, the doge’s investiture would certainly have included the performance of polyphonic compositions. We might see many of these works as reproducing ideologies underpinning the occasions for which they were composed. Motets honoring the doge are particularly well represented within the fourteenth-century Italian repertory.36 Several of these motets—which 36 Cumming investigates the motets composed for Doge Francesco Foscari in her ‘‘Music for the Doge in Early-Renaissance Venice,’’ 341–59. For a discussion of several other ducal motets, see also Cumming’s dissertation, ‘‘Concord out of Discord.’’ For the place of these works within the broader trecento repertory see Margaret Bent, ‘‘The FourteenthCentury Italian Motet,’’ in L’ars nova italiana del trecento VI. Atti del Congresso internazionale ‘‘L’Europa e la musica del Trecento,’’ Certaldo, 19-21 July 1984 (Certaldo: Centro di Studi sull’Ars nova italiana del Trecento, 1992). In addition to the motet repertory, an anonymous and fragmentary ballade from the first half of the fifteenth century sets the first vespers antiphon for the feast of Saint Mark that recounts the dialogue between Christ and Mark that provided the textual model for the Venetian praedestinatio (see note 4 above). Margaret Bent and Robert Klugseder, A Veneto Liber cantus (c. 1440): Fragments in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munich and the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2012), 85–86, 116–17. Although it is beyond the scope of this article to This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland we can imagine occupied their own type of privileged vocal status as representatives of a high-art polyphonic genre—bear evidence of imaginative play with the notion that the voice could activate the political and spiritual ideals of the state through the figure of the doge.37 An investigation of one such motet, the anonymous Marce, Marcum imitaris, reveals many of the same sonic themes explored in contemporary ceremony, art, and historiography to be freshly imagined, amplified, and elaborated in purely musical terms. Echo as Image in Marce, Marcum imitaris The rhetorical doubling between Mark and doge at work in the Sant’Alipio mosaic finds a musical counterpart in Marce, Marcum imitaris (ex. 1).38 The motet was composed in honor of Doge Marco Corner (1365–1368) and was likely intended for performance at one of the ceremonies celebrating his inauguration.39 Grounded in a political theology that, on the - consider the work here, its existence testifies to the use of polyphony well into the fifteenth century to relate the angelic exchanges so central to Venetian political identity, and in a genre other than the ceremonial motet. 37 Gina Fasoli was perhaps the first to anticipate the repertory’s potential to illuminate the laudes in her ‘‘Liturgia e cerimoniale ducale.’’ Commenting on Antonio Romano’s Ducalis sedes inclita/Stirps Mocinico and the anonymous Ave corpus sanctum gloriosi Stefani, Fasoli notes that ‘‘l’uno e l’altro di questi motetti presentano interessanti risonanze delle acclamazioni imperiali: quello a Francesco Foscari [sic: Francesco Dandolo] si rivolge ad un certo punto al doge dicendogli: ‘esto tu nobis [dux], via et vita’, mentre quello al Mocenigo formula l’augurio che il doge ‘diu consistat solio, longo vivat imperio,’’’ ibid., 278. 38 Example 1 modified from Kurt von Fischer and F. Alberto Gallo, ed., Italian Sacred and Ceremonial Music. Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century XIII (Monaco: Éditions de l’Oiseau-Lyre, 1987), 197–201, no. 44. For the purposes of the present discussion I have redacted several of Fischer and Gallo’s reconstructions in order to clarify source lacunae. 39 Although Ursula Günther refutes Kurt von Fischer’s attribution of the motet to Landini, Marce, Marcum in fact shares many of the features she highlights—generic hybridity in particular—with Landini’s madrigal Si dolce non sono. See note 46 in this article for comments on the motet’s relationship to the Italian caccia. As Günther has noted, the shift from octonaria to senaria perfecta in the Amen section of Marce, Marcum is characteristic of the trecento madrigal, and the isorhythmic tenor of Si dolce non sono would have unmistakably evoked the motet genre. The madrigal’s staggering of the upper voice entries with respect to the tenor isorhythm is a procedure that aligns it all the more closely to the design of Marce, Marcum outlined here. Although no motets can be securely tied to Landini, he received payment ‘‘pro quinque motectis’’ in 1379, and there are grounds for attributing the motet Principum nobilissime, another ducal motet dedicated to Andrea Contarini (doge 1368–1382) and for which only one voice survives, to the Florentine composer. Dragan Plamenac has pointed out that the mention of ‘‘Franciscus peregre canentem’’ in the text of Principum nobilissime may refer to the composer’s stay abroad in Northern Italy in this period. Ursula Günther, ‘‘Quelques remarques sur des feuillets récemment découverts à Grottaferrata,’’ 336–37; Kurt von Fischer, ‘‘Neue Quellen zur Musik des 13., 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts,’’ Acta Musicologica 36 (1964): 92; and Dragan Plamenac, ‘‘Another Paduan Fragment of Trecento Music,’’ Journal of the American Musicological Society 8 (1955): 173–74. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 215 t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y 216 one hand, recognized the voice’s ability to bring about real change in its leaders and, on the other, saw the doge as Mark’s spiritual image, Marce, Marcum forges a novel musical metaphor by conflating sonic with spiritual similitude. Its composer seizes upon the coincidence in name between doge and saint, and Corner’s spiritual likeness to Mark, made explicit in the first line of the motet, becomes its musical subject. Drawing on the political concepts that cast the doge as Mark’s spiritual imago, Marce, Marcum performs the musical joining of the evangelist and doge. Though Marce, Marcum is sometimes held up as an important early witness to the Italian motet tradition, only cursory notice has been given to this motet as a vehicle for musical signification.40 In the view of Julie Cumming, who first considered the work’s political rhetoric, Marce, Marcum ‘‘fail[ed] to take advantage of the symbolic possibilities of the motet,’’ and for that reason did ‘‘not constitute a native Venetian musical tradition of full-blown laudatory motets.’’41 In particular, she points to the use of a single text for both cantus voices as curious among trecento motets. This leads her to conclude that the work ‘‘does not exploit the symbolic and expressive possibilities [of] the polytextual motet.’’42 Indeed, Marce, Marcum is unique in this regard; it is the only extant single-texted motet of the Italian trecento.43 Yet if it fails to anticipate the defining polytextuality of the late-trecento and early-quattrocento Italian motet, this breach of generic norms begs to be read as part of the work’s broader rhetorical operations. It is possible to argue that the work signifies precisely through its constructions of one-to-one correspondences between the two equalrange cantus voices. Viewed against the backdrop of the political theology that posited likeness between doge and saint, the use of a single text for the two cantus voices appears as one of several musical devices that create aural analogies to the notion of the doge as Mark’s imago. It is thus telling that the first stanza of the motet dwells explicitly on the concept of similitude between the two Marks. In fact the first few words of the poem—‘‘Marce, Marcum imitaris’’ (Mark you imitate Mark)—invite the 40 For the place of Marce, Marcum within the tradition of the Italian trecento motet see Bent, ‘‘The Fourteenth-Century Italian Motet.’’ Also chapter 6 of Cumming, ‘‘Concord out of Discord’’; Di Bacco and Nádas, ‘‘The Papal Chapels and Italian Sources of Polyphony during the Great Schism’’; and Günther, ‘‘Quelques remarques,’’ 334–37. 41 Cumming, ‘‘Concord out of Discord,’’ 262. Cumming understands this ‘‘full-blown phase’’ to be best represented by Ciconia’s Venecie mundi splendor/Michael qui Stena domus (discussed below), and by the group of motets related to the 1423 election of Doge Francesco Foscari by Hugo de Lantins, Christeforus de Monte, and Antonio Romano. 42 Ibid., 259. 43 For a table that illustrates adherence to generic norms among extant Italian motets c. 1300–1410, see Bent, ‘‘The Fourteenth-Century Italian Motet,’’ 122–25. Four of the motets Bent lists have missing voices, and it is therefore not possible to determine the number of texts they use. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland listener to interpret musical imitation—instances of which the composer presents textually, texturally, and motivically—in terms of the relationship between the motet’s two subjects. In this respect, the echoed interactions between the two texted voices are perhaps the most innovative aspect of the motet’s design, and prove central to the large-scale planning of the work. Example 1 indicates these moments of textual echoing as letters A through E, beginning on measures 1, 27, 62, 73, and 84, respectively. These sections of structural misalignment between the cantus parts provide the major moments of contrast in a texture otherwise characterized by simultaneous declamation in the two voices; a section of hocket also offers textural contrast. Closer examination of the work reveals that this calland-response-style interaction between the cantus parts unfolds as a musical process over the course of the motet, where the distance at which the two voices echo text shortens progressively with each subsequent imitative section. The systematic compression of the interval between vocal entries results in a musical mirror-imaging that brings the two voices into alignment. Since the most likely occasion for the motet’s performance (Marco Corner’s 1365 investiture) was fundamentally processual, where during the inaugural ceremony the doge assumed the role of the saint’s earthly image, this compositional strategy of organizing vocal entries performs a programmatic relationship to the event it accompanied. An imitative introitus setting the first syllable, Mar- of Marce, puts this musical process in motion. Virginia Newes suggests that Marce, Marcum is the earliest known example of a dedicatory motet with an extended echo imitation introitus in an Italian source.44 As Newes’s statement implies, such lengthy introductory imitations would become a hallmark of the genre. Here in this early usage, however, the introitus works to establish the symbolic horizons of the composition. Though both sources for the motet—Grottaferrata 224 (Gr) and the Egidi fragment (Eg)—transmit cantus II, only Gr transmits cantus I and tenor, and regrettably there is a lacuna for cantus I in measures 7–15. Given that cantus II and tenor form a grammatically complete, self-standing unit in this section, however, it seems reasonable to conclude that the motet opens with two exact solo repetitions of the Mar- melisma, successively declaimed by each cantus voice over the tenor. Suggestively, both manuscripts propose a text underlay for the introitus that complements the musical image it creates. The first two 44 Virginia Newes, ‘‘The Relationship of Text to Imitative Techniques in 14th-century Polyphony,’’ in Musik und Text in der Mehrstimmigkeit des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts, ed. Ursula Günther and Ludwig Finscher (Kassel, Basel, and London: Bärenreiter, 1984), 151. For the use of imitative techniques in the fourteenth-century repertory, see ibid., 121–54. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 217 t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y example 1. Marce, Marcum imitaris (Anonymous) Gr., fol. 5v-6; Eg., fol. 2r (CII only) (fragment now lost) 218 This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland example 1. (Continued) 219 This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y example 1. (Continued) 220 This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland example 1. (Continued) 221 This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y example 1. (Continued) 222 Marce, Marcum imitaris text and translation Marce, Marcum imitaris probitatis radio, nec ab ipso disgregaris equitatis madio. Miles dignus approbaris virtutum efficacia. Princeps iustus sublimaris karismatum gratia. Tu ducatus generosi mundi pariferiam circumducis virtuosi ad prolem Corneriam. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland example 1. (continued) Tu michi benignitatis manum porrexisti. Tu Venetie dignitatis gradum addidisti. Sic celestis claritatis cui te commisisti, Deus augeat largitatis liliumque majestatis, quod pie meruisti. Amen. Mark, you imitate Mark with a rod of uprightness, nor are you divided from him; you are steeped in equity. Worthy soldier, you are confirmed by the efficacy of your strength. Just prince, you are exalted by divine grace. You of generous dogeship bear a feast to the world. You lead the virtuous to the offspring of the Corner family. You offered me a hand of kindness. You added to the degree of Venice’s worth. Thus by the heavenly splendor with which you are united, may God augment the lily of largess and of majesty which you piously earned. Amen. words of the motet—‘‘Marce, Marcum’’—are the only instances in which the shared proper name of the twin subjects appears, and their stark juxtaposition at the very outset of the motet produces an immediate graphic and auditory symmetry between the two. Only the vocative and accusative endings (-e and -um) distinguish the two instantiations of the name, pointing grammatically to the political and celestial referents, respectively. Despite the length of the opening melisma, both Gr and Eg suggest that the change of syllable from Mar- to -ce be deferred until after the cadence of the introitus. While the scribes of Gr and Eg indicate this differently (this is partly related to a musical discrepancy between the two sources in this section), both clearly withhold the grammatical resolution of the name Marcus until beyond the introitus.45 The delay in 45 It is significant in this regard that the two manuscript sources that transmit Cantus II and Tenor of Marce, Marcum—Grottaferrata lat. 224 (Gr) and the Egidi fragment (Eg)— contain only one substantive scribal disagreement, and that this disagreement is in part a matter of text underlay: Gr and Eg transmit a different underlay for cantus II in measures 14–15. Yet this very disparity perhaps helps to establish the interpretive horizons of the work. If we adopt the underlay of Eg, the potential simultaneous declamation of Marce and Marcum in measure 14 would be the only moment in which different words coincide in the motet—a vivid musical accentuation of the equivalence between human and heavenly Marks. Whether we adopt the underlay from Eg or from Gr, the availability of both possible approaches to the text only underscores the semantic interchangeability of the two Marks in the context of the motet’s subject. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 223 t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y 224 grammatical discrimination between the two Marks thus preserves the unity of subject reflected in the echo imitation of the introitus. It is only on the heels of this initial musical image that the two Marks are uncoupled. What ensues throughout the remainder of the work is the gradual restoration of the two subjects to this original state of unity.46 Reinforcing the sense that the text’s theme of similitude governs the musical scheme, the next imitative exchange between cantus voices (m. 27, passage B) sets the continuation of the first stanza that underlines the similarity between the two Marks: ‘‘Nor are you divided from him [Mark], you are steeped in equity.’’47 Yet whereas in the introitus (passage A) the repetition of the second cantus had followed the first by a distance of twenty semibreves, here in passage B the second cantus follows at a distance of only eight semibreves. With each subsequent echoed section, the distance at which the voices echo the text is systematically shortened by two semibreves. In passage C the distance between vocal entries contracts to six semibreves, in passage D to four, and in passage E to two semibreves. Thus gradually, and at regular intervals, the lag between vocal entries diminishes until the texted section of the motet cadences with cantus I and II in perfect unison (m. 88). The Amen section that follows, moreover, begins with the two voices sustaining a unison long on G (mm. 90–91), and they continue in minims at the unison until the end of the following measure (m. 92). Bridging the two sections, the solo tenor (m. 89) heralds not only the new perfect mensuration, but likewise the transformation that has occurred in the relationship between cantus voices. While homorhythmic parallel motion between the cantus voices abounds in Marce, Marcum, possibly related to the broader theme of the 46 Bent has stressed the generic commonalities between the Italian motet and the caccia in her ‘‘The Fourteenth-Century Italian Motet,’’ 104. Although the musical operation at work in Marce, Marcum does not adhere to the caccia’s strict canonic technique, its opening imitation, nodding toward the caccia, might be read as a metaphorical pursuit in which cantus II catches up to cantus I over the course of the motet. Thus the physical proximity of Marce, Marcum to Antonio Zacara’s caccia, Cacciando per gustar/Ay cinci ay toppi within Eg is perhaps not coincidental, as observed by di Bacco and Nádas, ‘‘The Papal Chapels and Italian Sources of Polyphony during the Great Schism,’’ 65–69. Di Bacco and Nádas raise the possibility that ‘‘the outstanding musical artifice of [Zacara’s] caccia’s opening canon between the top voices would have suggested its similarity to the opening of Marce, Marcum in particular, sparking its inclusion in this collection,’’ ibid., 68ff. If we are to read a metaphorical pursuit into Marce, Marcum, Michael Alan Anderson’s study of the symbolic use of imitative introductory techniques in a later repertory of fifteenth-century motets dedicated to John the Baptist proves instructive. See Michael Alan Anderson, ‘‘The One Who Comes After Me: John the Baptist, Christian Time, and Symbolic Musical Techniques,’’ Journal of the American Musicological Society 66 (2013): 639–708, as well as his dissertation, ‘‘Symbols of Saints: Theology, Ritual, and Kinship in Music for John the Baptist and St. Anne (1175–1563)’’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2008). 47 Nec ab ipso disgregaris/Equitatis madio. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland work, this passage of unison that elides the texted and Amen sections of the motet is especially striking. If the texted section had introduced the cantus parts as juxtaposed images in the introitus, the Amen reveals the voices in superimposition. The shift from imperfect (octonaria) to perfect (senaria perfecta) meter only underscores the sense of a completed transformation. Moreover, if we are to see hocket as the ultimate form of vocal entwinement, the brief section of hocket that concludes the work (passage F) puts a peculiar spin on the idea, for it is nothing but the literal repetition of single pitches in a hocket texture. Thus the entire motet ends with echo imitations at the interval of a semibreve before the final cadence. The musical process that the echo introitus had set into motion comes to its full realization in creating aural images at the level of the individual pitch. The tenor, too, joins at the octave below in this final mirroring of pitches, reinforcing the notion of sonic sameness with which the work concludes.48 With the musical echo functioning here as an aural imago, Marce, Marcum makes a musical analogy to a political concept that equated the dual subjects of the motet’s text—human and heavenly Marks. If the first poetic line, ‘‘Mark you imitate Mark,’’ establishes an interpretive framework by which to understand its musical imitations, then the musical process of aligning—even superimposing—the voices influences our understanding of the poem. Not only does Corner imitate the spiritual virtues of his patron, but he is completely identifiable with him. Since the motet likely accompanied the Cappella San Marco’s sung affirmation of the doge as Mark’s political representative, this musical operation perhaps voices the real image-making function of laudes in the context of the ducal investiture. Two Annunciations The final line of Marce, Marcum voices an obscure wish for the new doge: ‘‘May a bountiful God augment the lily of majesty, which you piously earned.’’ To what might this politicized lily refer? We might arrive at a viable interpretation by considering two images, both ubiquitous in Venetian state imagery, juxtaposed: Saint Mark investing the doge with the vexillum S. Marci at his investiture and Gabriel extending a lily to Mary at the scene of Annunciation (figs. 4a and 4b). Might the poet and/or composer have united these two images in the closing line of Marce, Marcum? 48 I infer the tenor pitch D in measure 109 based on the hocket pattern established in the previous two measures. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 225 t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y figure 4a. Mark invests the doge with the vexillum S. Marci (Princeton Numismatics Collection, 2457) 226 Both Mark’s and Mary’s annunciations had, by the fourteenth century, become powerful symbols for the divine origins of the state.49 Dandolo’s Chronica, as we have seen, foregrounded angelic announcement as the heavenly spark to Venice’s imperial progress. The iconographic use of the Annunciation motif in political spaces, furthermore, served as a concise expression of the angelic words that gave Venice its genesis.50 49 Venetian humanist Bernardo Giustiniani wrote: ‘‘The sacrosanct day was chosen on which the divine message was brought by the Archangel to the most glorious Virgin with the indescribable bending of the celestial highness to the abyss of humility. It was then that the highest and eternal wisdom, the Word of God, descended into the womb of the most chaste Virgin so that man, lying in the depths of pitiable darkness, might be raised to the most joyful society of celestial spirits. But indeed, there is no measure to the divine wisdom. For He Who, on that day, in choosing the Virgin for the redemption of the whole human race, looked especially towards her humility, as she herself confessed, wished also that on the same day, in a most humble place and from most humble men, a start should be made toward the raising of this present Empire, a beginning of so great a work.’’ Bernardo Giustiniani, De origine urbis Venetiarum (published posthumously in 1493), trans. in Patricia H. Labalme, Bernardo Giustiniani: A Venetian of the Quattrocento (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1969), 267. 50 Apart from the prominent use of the Annunciation in the decoration of the Basilica San Marco, the placement of Mary and Gabriel on either side of the Rialto Bridge This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland figure 4b. Giovanni Bellini, Annunciazione (Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice) 227 As both a political and a liturgical site, the Basilica San Marco provided a canvas against which to develop the Annunciation’s political resonance for Venice. Reliefs of the Virgin Orant and of Gabriel, originally separate pieces, were paired to form an Annunciation group on the western façade of the church, and Mary and Gabriel’s dialogue was placed above the basilica’s southern ceremonial portal.51 During Dandolo’s dogeship, - in the sixteenth century would have recalled the government’s founding location on the Rialto on 25 March 421. 51 For a discussion of the many appearances of the Annunciation theme in Venetian state art and of its symbolic resonances see chapter 1, ‘‘Miraculous Birth’’ of Rosand, Myths of Venice, 6–46. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y 228 statues of Gabriel and Mary were positioned on either side of the high altar of San Marco, fixing the theme to the very spiritual core of the state. In the early fifteenth century the corner aediculae of San Marco’s façade received figures of Gabriel and Mary that staged what David Rosand described as a ‘‘holy dialogue across the upper reaches of the basilica’’ that ‘‘reverberated’’ into the Piazza below.52 Common to each of these configurations of the Annunciation motif is its use to enclose a politically symbolic space—the high altar, a ceremonial entryway, the ducal chapel itself—within a sacred framework. In this sense, the Annunciation figures that bookend the tombs of Doges Bartolomeo Gradenigo (1339–1342) and Andrea Dandolo envision the doge himself as a sacro-political locus (figs. 5a and 5b).53 Gabriel and the Virgin stand on either corner of both tomb chests. In each case, the person of the doge—representing the Republic—is cast as a semisacred figure through the holy dialogue that extends across his body. Given Dandolo’s involvement in the decoration of both tombs, it is perhaps useful to recall the analogy his Chronica draws between Mary’s and Mark’s angelic annunciations and the ceremonial acclamations to the doge. Moreover, in his will Dandolo requests his tomb be placed beneath a dome mosaic in the basilica bearing the inscription ‘‘XPC VINCIT, XPC REGNAT, XPC IMPERAT.’’54 In other words, beneath an inscription of the ‘‘Christus vincit’’ tricolon with which the ducal laudes begin. Dandolo’s request was not granted; nevertheless, in this unrealized vision, political and angelic announcement provocatively intersect within the architectural space of the basilica. The will locates the doge’s body beneath the inscription, a position that in a sense visually restates the laudes text, in which the Christological tricolon heralds the acclaim to the doge (see text and translation on pp. 210–11). Thus while the Annunciation extends laterally across the tomb, ducal acclamation is suggested through the vertical alignment of the doge beneath an excerpt of the laudes text. Giving spatial dimension to vocal acts, in other words, Dandolo made the Annunciation and the laudes simultaneities. State ceremony played with the slippage between the Annunciation and the ducal laudes in a tradition that predated Dandolo’s tomb project: the sung drama performed on the feast of the Translation of Saint Mark’s 52 Ibid., 16. The inscription is located in the cupola of San Giovanni Evangelista in the north transept of the basilica. Pincus, The Tombs, 128ff. 54 Vittorio Lazzarini, ‘‘Il testamento del Doge Andrea Dandolo,’’ Nuovo archivio veneto 7 (1904): 139–48. Dandolo’s specification survives in a will dated to 3 September 1354. The inscription forms part of the dome’s twelfth-century mosaic work. See also Pincus, The Tombs, 134–35. 53 This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland figure 5a. Tomb of Doge Bartolomeo Gradenigo (Basilica San Marco, Atrium) (Photo by Jamie Reuland) figure 5b. Tomb of Andrea Dandolo (Basilica San Marco, Baptistery) 229 This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y 230 relics to Venice, celebrated on 31 January.55 The event of Mark’s Translation, as depicted in the Sant’Alipio mosaic, was of crucial political importance to the state, since the presence of the evangelist’s relics at the ducal chapel justified the city’s apostolic status and its unique claim to Mark’s patronage. Celebrations for this feast day therefore centered on the person of the doge, who was not only custodian to the relics, but their very living embodiment.56 It is perhaps mere calendric happenstance, however, that the 31 January feast accrued Marian connotations, since it fell within the week-long Festival of the Twelve Marys, a city-wide event related to the Feast of the Purification.57 The procession that took place on 31 January thus amalgamates ducal and Marian elements, fusing a laudes performance with the sacra rappresentazione of the Annunciation. Da Canal’s Les estoires de Venise provides an account of the procession as it occurred in 1275, which I have reproduced in appendix 1. He reports that the procession was ‘‘doble,’’ since two separate groups processed from the Piazza San Marco to the church of Santa Maria Formosa. A priest apareillés de dras de dame (dressed in the clothes of a woman) playing the part of the Virgin marched in the first procession, while another representing Gabriel, aparillés a la guise d’un angle (dressed in the guise of an angel), formed part of the second. Both men were carried in procession on decorative thrones. When the first procession passed beneath the ducal palace, three priests from the group stepped onto a raised platform, where they sang the laudes to the doge (in this case Ranieri Zeno) a haute vois (in a loud voice). The priest dressed as Mary then approached the platform to salute the doge, who returned the gesture, after which the entire group continued on to Santa Maria Formosa. The second procession followed the same sequence of events: three priests repeated the laudes to Zeno, while the priest dressed as Gabriel and the doge saluted one another in turn. Once both groups had arrived at Santa Maria Formosa, the priests costumed as the Virgin 55 For comparison with the sacra rappresentazione of the Annunciation performed in nearby Padua see Giuseppe Vecchi, Uffici drammatici padovani (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1954). 56 State interest in promoting this event is further suggested by a now missing document (Venice, Archivio di Stato, Ufficiali allo Estraordinario, cod. 131, last document) dated to 16 September 1342, in which the procurators of San Marco specify the terms of the commission to Paolo Veneziano, who was to provide the decorations for the sacra rappresentazione. See Michelangelo Muraro, Paolo da Venezia (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1970), 83. 57 For an overview of the weeklong events see Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 135–56. Giovanni Musolino situates the Festa delle Marie within the city’s broader Marian devotions in his ‘‘Culto Mariano,’’ in Culto dei santi a Venezia, ed. Silvio Tramontin (Venice: Edizioni Studium Cattolico Veneziano, 1965), 256–60. Thomas Devaney offers a fresh perspective on the Festa delle Marie in his ‘‘Competing Spectacles in the Venetian Festa delle Marie,’’ Viator 39 (2008): 107–25. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland and Gabriel entered the church, where they enacted the sacred drama of the Annunciation—the culminating event of the day’s ceremonies (see XCV in appendix 1). Thus the singing of the laudes on the one hand, and the enactment of the Annunciation on the other, underscored the respectively civic (ducal palace) and religious (Santa Maria Formosa) spaces conjoined through the procession. Both topographically and symbolically, the procession mapped a connection between the performance of laudes and the act (or enactment) of Annunciation, thus literalizing the analogy between angelic and political announcement through the processional route. Gabriel’s and Mary’s roles not only as actors of the Annunciation, but also as participants in the laudes performance in the Piazza, further blurred the boundaries between the ceremony’s state and sacred elements. The salute (here an ambivalent term applicable to both performances) to the doge assigned a political function to the voices of heavenly agents. A tradition of disruptive neighborhood feuding that accompanied the Festival of the Twelve Marys led the government to abolish the celebration in 1379. It is likely that the 31 January procession ceased along with it. The ceremony, however, remained alive in Republican historiography. Boccaccio’s ribald account of the sacra rappresentazione in his tale of Frate Alberto (Decameron 4.2) likewise contributed to its legacy. Venice’s alliance with Padua in 1339 redoubled the political significance of the Annunciation to the Venetian state. Paduan protohumanists in the early fourteenth century had scripted their city into the history of the Veneto by claiming Paduan founders for Venice in the year 421, on the feast of the Annunciation.58 Following the 1339 alliance, Venice eagerly assimilated the glorious cultural inheritance of Padua’s Carrara dynasty and seized on the potential of the Annunciation myth that the Paduans had exploited in their own state art.59 (It was, for 58 For the Annunciation legend in Paduan historiography and its absorption into Venetian history in the 1330s see Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 38; and Pincus, The Tombs, 129. 59 Marchetto da Padova’s early fourteenth-century motet Ave regina/Mater innocencie suggests that music was, for the Paduans, yet another outlet for their devotion to the Annunciate Virgin. Both triplum and duplum texts are encomic poems to the Virgin of the Annunciation that contain acrostics; the triplum embeds the Annunciation antiphon ‘‘Ave Maria gratia plena’’ and the duplum contains the name of the composer. Anne Walters Robertson locates the Joseph Ite melody from the Annunciation liturgy in the motet’s tenor voice in her ‘‘Remembering the Annunciation in Medieval Polyphony,’’ Speculum 70 (1995): 275–304. Both Robertson and F. Alberto Gallo connect the motet to the 1305 consecration of the Scrovegni chapel dedicated to Mary of the Annunciation in Padua. F. Alberto Gallo, ‘‘Marchetus in Padua und die ‘franco-venetische’ Musik des frühen Trecento,’’ Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 31 (1974): 42–44. This dating has been challenged on stylistic grounds by Kurt von Fischer, ‘‘Philippe de Vitry in Italy and an homage of Landini to Philippe,’’ in L’Ars nova italiana del trecento IV. Atti del 3. Congresso This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 231 t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y 232 instance, the use of the Annunciation figures on the tomb of Marsilio da Carrara, Lord of Padua that provided a model for those of Gradenigo and Dandolo).60 Following the Carrara model, the Annunciation origin myth—fully articulated for the first time in Dandolo’s Chronica—became part of the official history of the lagoon city. It is against this backdrop of cultural and territorial appropriation that Ciconia composed the motet Venecie mundi splendor/Michael qui Stena domus (ex. 2).61 Written during the period in which he enjoyed the patronage of Paduan canonist and ambassador Francesco Zabarella, the work reflects the shared myth of the Annunciation as common to both conquered and conquering cities.62 Bent identifies the 3 January 1406 ceremony in which Zabarella, in a formal gesture of submission, consigned the emblems of the city to Doge Michele Steno (1400–1413) in front of the Basilica San Marco as the most probable occasion for the work’s performance.63 Virgin Venice and Doge Steno form the twin dedicatees of this bi-textual motet, which depicts Steno as the victor who reigns over his domain together with the personified female Venetia. As Cumming notes, the first cantus of Venecie/Michael alludes to Venice in several of her common figurations, including Justice, Dea Roma and the Virgin Mary.64 Yet while the text allows multiple personifications of the state to coexist, the work’s poetic and musical structures hinge on - internazionale sul tema ‘‘La musica al tempo del Boccaccio e i suoi rapporti con la letteratura,’’ Siena-Certaldo 19–22 July 1975 (Certaldo: Centro di studi sull’Ars nova italiana del Trecento, 1978), 227. It was also questioned by Margaret Bent, ‘‘The Fourteenth-Century Italian Motet,’’ 97; and by Virginia Newes, ‘‘Early Fourteenth-Century Motets with MiddleVoice Tenors: Interconnections, Modal Identity, and Tonal Coherence,’’ in Modality in the Music of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, ed. Ursula Günther, Ludwig Finscher, and Jeffrey Dean (Neuhausen-Stuttgart: American Institute of Musicology, Hänssler-Verlag 1996), 43. Given the ardent politicization of the cult of the Annunciation by the Carrarese in the visual arts and in civic historiography, it is possible to imagine the motet’s abiding relevance outside of any single occasion. 60 Pincus, The Tombs, 129–32. 61 Example 2 reproduces the Bent and Hallmark edition in Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century XXIV, no. 14. 62 For Zabarella’s patronage of Ciconia see Anne Hallmark, ‘‘Protector, imo versus pater: Francesco Zabarella’s Patronage of Johannes Ciconia,’’ in Music in Renaissance Cities and Courts: Studies in Honor of Lewis Lockwood, ed. Jessie Ann Owens and Anthony M. Cummings (Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 1997), 153–68. See also Margaret Bent, ‘‘Music and the Early Veneto Humanists,’’ in Proceedings of the British Academy 101 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 101–130. 63 On the textual resonances between the motet and Zabarella’s oration for this occasion see Hallmark, ‘‘Protector, imo versus pater,’’ 163; and Bent and Hallmark, The Works of Johannes Ciconia, xii. 64 Cumming, ‘‘Concord out of Discord,’’ 274. For the various traditions of the personification of the state, and from which Cumming draws these categories in her analysis of Venecie/Michael, see David Rosand, ‘‘Venetia Figurata: The Iconography of a Myth,’’ in Interpretazione Veneziane. Studi di storia dell’arte in onore di Michelangelo Muraro, ed. David Rosand (Venice: Arsenale Editrice, 1984), 177–96. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland example 2. Venecie, mundi splendor – Michael, qui Stena domus 233 This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y example 2. (Continued) 234 This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland example 2. (Continued) 235 This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y example 2. (Continued) 236 This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland example 2. (Continued) 237 Venecie mundi splendor/Michael qui Stena domus text and translation Cantus I Venecie, mundi splendor, Italie cum sis decor, in te viget omnis livor regulis mundicie. Venice, splendor of the world and ornament of Italy, in you all desire for the standards of elegance flourishes. Gaude, mater maris, salus, qua purgatur quisque malus. Terre ponti tu es palus, miserorum baiula. Rejoice, mother of the sea, saving force by which each evildoer is cleansed. You are a mainstay to land and sea, a support for the wretched. Gaude late, virgo digna, principatus portas signa (tibi soli sunt condigna) ducalis dominii. Rejoice greatly, worthy virgin You bear the signs of ducal dominion to you alone are they befitting. Gaude, victrix exterorum, nam potestas Venetorum nulli cedit perversorum, domans terram, maria; Rejoice, conqueress of heathens, for the power of Venice, that tames the land and seas, yields to none of the depraved; This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y example 2. (continued) [Nam] tu vincis manus fortis, pacem reddis tuis portis, et disrumpis fauce[s] mo[r]tis, tuorum fidelium. For you conquer the forces of the mighty, you restore peace to the gates of your faithful ones and you shatter the jaws of death. Pro te canit voce pia (tui statum in hac via El conservet et Maria) Johannes Ciconia. For you, with pious voice, sings (that God and Mary may in this way preserve your rank) Johannes Ciconia. Cantus II Michael, qui Stena domus tu ducatus portas onus, honor tibi, quia bonus vitam duces celibem. 238 Michael of the house of Steno you bear the burden of leadership, honor to you, for you, a good man lead a celibate life. Phebo compar, princeps alme, tibi mundus promit ‘salve’; spargis tuis fructum palme, victor semper [nobilis]. Kindly prince, equal to Phoebus, the world renders you ‘salve’; you scatter the fruit of victory to your people, ever-noble victor. Clemens, justus approbaris, decus morum appellaris, tu defensor estimaris fidei catholice. You are acclaimed as merciful and fair, you are called a paragon of virtue, you are esteemed the defender of the catholic faith. Bon[i]s pandis m[u]nus dignum, malis fundis pene signum leges suas ad condignum gladio justitie. You bestow proper reward on the good, while on the evil you impose your laws as a proper token with the sword of justice. Sagax, prudens, mitis pater, (lex divina, cum sis mater) mentis virtus tibi frater, zelator reipublice. Keen, prudent, humble father (while you, divine law, are the mother) facility of mind is your brother, O guardian of the state. Sedem precor tibi dari, Deo celi famulari, ejus throno copulari per eterna secula. I pray that a place be given to you, that you may serve God in heaven, that you be united to his throne through eternal ages. Amen. Amen. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland the personification of Venice as the Virgin Mary, and more particularly as the Virgin of the Annunciation.65 Slippage between Marian salute and ducal acclamation becomes the structural focal point of the work, with key musical events occurring around textual allusions to the Annunciation. Ciconia commingles language from the laudes with that of Marian Annunciation to create a musical analogy between these two potent verbal acts, with both cantus parts drawing interchangeably on the language of the laudes and on the Annunciation script. Thus capitalizing on the intertextual possibilities of the bi-textual motet, Venecie/Michael elides images of the Annunciate Virgin with those of the doge acclaimed, and merges Venice’s ceremonial and sacred landscapes in the act of salutation.66 If the feast of the Translation of St. Mark joins the ducal laudes and the Annunciation through processional space and performance, Ciconia uses polyphonic means to give them synchronous expression in Venecie/ Michael. One of the ways Ciconia invites listeners to hear commonalities between political and angelic announcement is by calling attention to the work’s own vocal status as a form of apostrophe. Beyond the vocative openings, ‘‘Venecie’’ and ‘‘Michael’’ (which is conventional in dedicatory motets), the imperative ‘‘gaude’’ that begins stanzas two, three, and four of cantus I self-reflexively highlights the vocal nature of the musical and poetic address. So, too, does the final stanza, in which the composer calls attention to his own singing voice (‘‘pro te canit voce pia . . . Johannes Ciconia’’/‘‘for you, with pious voice, sings . . . Johannes Ciconia’’)—his own vocal participation, in other words, in the imagined musical event of the work’s performance. Significant in this respect, too, is the double entendre created by the word ‘‘maria’’ (line 16/mm. 59–60) with which the exhortatory portion of the poem (quatrains 1–4) ends. One can interpret ‘‘maria’’ not only as a second direct object after ‘‘terram’’ (yielding ‘‘conquering land and seas’’), but likewise as the vocative form of Maria. The latter reading has the rhetorical effect of retrospectively naming Mary as the addressee of the entire exhortation. It also yields a poetic symmetry wherein the 65 Significant contributions to the topic of the Annunciation in medieval polyphony include Robertson, ‘‘Remembering the Annunciation’’; David Rothenberg, ‘‘Marian Feasts, Seasons, and Songs in Medieval Polyphony: Studies in Musical Symbolism’’ (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2004); Jessie Ann Owens, ‘‘‘And the angel said . . . ’: Conversations with Angels in Early Modern Music,’’ in Conversations with Angels: Essays Towards a History of Spiritual Communication, 1100–1700, ed. Joad Raymond (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011), 230–49; and Robert Nosow, Ritual Meanings in the Fifteenth-Century Motet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 79–83. 66 Jane Alden explores modes of intertextuality in Ciconia’s ceremonial motets in her ‘‘Text/Music Design in Ciconia’s Ceremonial Motets,’’ in Johannes Ciconia, musicien de la transition, ed. Philippe Vendrix (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2003), 39–64. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 239 t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y 240 exhortation both begins and ends with an invocation to its dedicatee. This symmetry fosters the semantic equivalence of ‘‘Venecie’’ with ‘‘Maria.’’67 The operative anaphoric ‘‘gaude,’’ moreover, recalls Gabriel’s ‘‘Ave’’ to Mary at the scene of the Annunciation. ‘‘Gaude’’ in this motet serves not only as a poetic device, but also as a powerful principle in the work’s musical organization. Key motivic, structural, and semantic events coalesce around occurrences of the word. Appearances of ‘‘gaude’’ in cantus I begin with a fanfare-like descent through the voice’s upper tessitura (mm. 18, 36, and 49). This descending gesture’s heraldic quality highlights the word’s hortatory charge. Thus not only does the motive articulate the underlying stanzaic structure; it also bears a programmatic relationship to the text it sets by musically accentuating the association between ‘‘gaude’’ and the ‘‘Ave’’ salute of the Annunciation.68 It is fitting that the ‘‘gaude’’ motif should belong to cantus I, since that voice addresses Venice in her personification as the Virgin Mary. But cantus II shares in the preoccupation with announcement. This is particularly apparent when in measures 25–27, shortly after cantus I’s first ‘‘gaude’’ statement, cantus II declaims, ‘‘Tibi mundus promit ‘salve’’’ (The world renders you [Michele Steno] ‘‘salve’’). We might recall here the historiographic trope of the acclaiming populace, the unanimous voice of the people that grants validity to the doge’s authority. Use of direct speech (‘‘salve’’) furthermore dramatizes the textual moment, interpolating an imaginary acclaiming populace into the work’s diegesis. But ‘‘salve’’ also points in two directions: toward ducal ceremony and toward the Annunciation. It is instructive in this respect to return to da Canal’s description of the Annunciation-themed procession on 31 January, in which the priests portraying Gabriel and Mary, ‘‘coming before the doge, saluted him (si le salue), who [in return] rendered his salute’’ (quant il est tres parmi monsignor li dus, si le salue et il li rent son salus). The performance of this political gesture by priests costumed as Gabriel 67 The epithets that follow each of the ‘‘gaude’’ statements can be read to refer ambiguously to the personified Virgin Venice and the Virgin Mary. ‘‘Gaude mater maris’’ (stanza 2) perhaps most closely points to Virgin Venice as the Virgin Mary, calling to mind the Marian hymn ‘‘Ave maris stella.’’ 68 Versions of this motive occur in other contexts in the motet as well, for instance in the chain of imitative exchanges between the cantus parts initiated in measure 23, which culminates in the second ‘‘gaude’’ section (m. 36). In fact, Ciconia generates the entire melodic fabric of the motet through the (often imitative) exchange of a handful of such rhythmic and melodic gestures between the two cantus voices. Yet comparison of the musical design of the ‘‘gaude’’ openings with the opening of stanza five (m. 62) supports this motive’s special association with acts of speech. Notably, this is the only quatrain in the first cantus that does not begin by framing itself as a vocal utterance. Indeed not only does Ciconia set the first line of the fifth stanza (‘‘[nam] tu vincis manus fortis’’) in an entirely different fashion; the stanza as a whole makes almost no reference to this otherwise prominent motive whatsoever. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland and Mary must have lent a Christian significance to the salute. So, too, in this motet the proximity of ‘‘gaude’’ and ‘‘salve’’ complicates the relationship between their respective Christian and secular referents. Ciconia presents the second ‘‘gaude’’ statement in an arresting moment of synchrony between the upper voices (mm. 36–37). This moment of rhythmic coordination between cantus parts initiates an extended passage of referential ambivalence between the voices and their texts, where Steno partakes of the salutations rendered to the Virgin (mm. 36–46). Homophonic superimposition of ‘‘gaude’’ in cantus I and ‘‘approbaris’’ (‘‘you are confirmed’’) in cantus II (mm. 36–37) musically aligns the act of salutation (here addressed to the Virgin) with the political effect of ducal acclamation—that is, the endorsement of ducal authority. Following this, cantus I declaims: ‘‘you bear the signs (or emblems) of ducal dominion, to you alone are they befitting’’ (mm. 38–46). Technically this text is addressed to the Virgin. Yet Ciconia likely composed Venecie/Michael for a ceremony whose central event was Zabarella’s consignment of real emblems of dominion—those granted as a sign of the Paduan Signoria’s submission—to Michele Steno. Moreover, while the language of cantus I takes a patently political turn, cantus II simultaneously adopts a Christian tone (‘‘decus morum’’/‘‘paragon of virtue and ‘‘defensor . . . fidei catholice’’/‘‘defender of the Catholic faith’’). Voice crossings between cantus parts throughout this passage only further ambiguate the two subjects. In measures 47–49 ‘‘gaude mater late digna’’ (rejoice greatly, worthy mother) is announced by the tenor in a striking solo statement. The fact that this is the tenor’s first solo appearance increases the dramatic effect of this passage in which the voices seem to reenact the real ceremony of acclamation.69 The tenor’s ‘‘gaude’’ and its immediate redoubling by cantus I (m. 49) create the musical illusion of a response to the granting of ‘‘emblems of ducal dominion’’ (signa . . . ducalis domini). The aural impression is that the announcement of the doge’s authority is confirmed by a new and unexpected voice, which we might imagine to be the voice of the Paduan and Venetian people. Notably this tenor announcement bisects the texted section of the motet. Indeed, if the motet’s three-breve introitus is not included in our reckoning, it falls exactly at the halfway point of the texted section. The unusual transfer of this ‘‘gaude’’ announcement to the tenor—one of only two places in which texted tenor stands alone in the work—as well as the inversion of the melodic profile of the ‘‘announcing’’ motive intensify the 69 The only other passage of texted solo tenor (mm. 73–75) also points to the vocal status of the work, even locating the source of the musical utterance with the composer himself. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 241 t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y 242 musical markedness of the halfway arrival. The clear structural function of this ‘‘gaude’’ in a motet honoring the doge assumes the same framing effect that we have seen in ducal imagery, in which the Annunciation theme inflects a political topic with a sacred framework. Here, this spiritual inflection is amplified through the analogy, indeed the ambiguity, between Marian Annunciation and ducal acclamation. What would Ciconia’s interest have been in this musical near deification of the doge? The infelicity of the motet’s occasion for Ciconia’s Paduan patron makes it difficult to read the tone of this work. Yet it is possible that Ciconia subtly nods here toward Venice’s Paduan roots. The motet’s reference to the Annunciation, after all, alludes to a facet of Venetian history particularly favorable to Padua, one in which Padua lays the foundation of the Republic.70 Perhaps it is a subtle reminder that ‘‘Victrix’’ Venice, after all, bears the cultural impress of her new territory. Ciconia would likely have been acquainted with Marce, Marcum, for the motet circulated within the papal chapels during the composer’s residency in Rome.71 Giovanni Di Bacco and John Nádas have demonstrated that the anonymous motet and the northern composer would have crossed paths in the papal courts in the 1390s.72 While the political climate of the Veneto during Ciconia’s Paduan years certainly would have left him fluent in the political rhetoric of the Republic, it is noteworthy that his exposure to this rhetoric indeed predated his arrival in the Veneto. It is hardly possible to imagine Ciconia so readily assimilating the Italian style he encountered in Marce, Marcum without apprehending the Venetian state mythology it heralded. It may also be that Ciconia’s combination of dialogic elements from Venetian civic ceremony and the Annunciation narrative in Venecie/ Michael served in turn as a model for Pietro Rosso’s motet Missus est Gabriel angelus, composed for the Annunciation celebrations in Treviso, and performed there each year from 1434 until 1447.73 David Rothenberg has shown how alternating sections of narration and dialogue that 70 For the Annunciation legend in Paduan historiography and its afterlife in the Venetian historiography of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries see Brown, Venice and Antiquity, 38; and Pincus The Tombs, 129. For Padua’s legendary role in the founding of Venice more generally see Antonio Carile and Giorgio Fedalto, Le origini di Venezia (Bologna: Pàtron Editore, 1978), 55–108. 71 Di Bacco and Nádas argue that both sources for Marce, Marcum (Gr and Eg) are of central Italian provenance with papal connections, and that Ciconia would likely have come in contact with these sources while resident in Rome in the 1390s. Di Bacco and Nádas, ‘‘The Papal Chapels,’’ 61–77. 72 Ibid., 69–70. 73 Treviso was, at that time, Venice’s oldest and most loyal subject city on the terra ferma. Nosow recovers the importance of Missus est for the confraternity of Santa Maria dei Battuti in Treviso and the tradition of the motet’s performance in that city’s annual procession on the feast of the Annunciation. Nosow, Ritual Meanings, 79–83. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland result from Rosso’s novel disposition of textures yield a quasi-dramatic rendering of the Annunciation text.74 Annual reenactments of the Annunciation at the Treviso cathedral may have motivated the dramatic structure of the motet, similar to the way in which Venice’s uniquely politicized sacra rappresentazione left its mark on Venecie/Michael. Jessie Ann Owens views Missus est as the earliest in a growing corpus of polyphonic works that enacted ‘‘conversations with angels’’ in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.75 Yet Venecie/Michael, which predates Missus est by a quarter century, uses the motet as a vehicle to mingle angelic conversations with the din of political ceremony. Its polyphonic framework allows for the musical literalization of an analogy that related angelic voices to ceremonial song—an analogy that coursed through late-medieval Venetian society, finding expression in visual and material culture, structuring political texts, and informing ritual space. Indeed the motets composed for Venetian ceremony represent only one medium for the expression of political thought through musical performance. The ritual occasion to reaffirm the relationship between Venice’s leader and its people or reenact the city’s providential history through song ensured a state in harmony with its heavenly guides. Appendix 1. Description of Procession from the Piazza San Marco to Santa Maria Formosa on 31 January from Martin da Canal in Les estoires de Venise; Cronaca veneziana in lingua francese dalle origini al 1275, ed. A. Limentani (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1972), 254–56 Or vos ai conté de la vegile, et après vos conterai dou jors de monsignor saint Marc. [XCIII] Sachés, signors, que le derain jor de jener est la feste et la procession doble, que l’unde de ces .ij contrees dont je vos ai fait mencion s’en vienent li damosiaus et li homes d’aage en aive au palés de monsignor li dus et desendent en seche terre et donent plus de.d. banieres as petis enfans et les envoient a .ij. a .ij tres devant l’iglise de monsignor saint Marc. Et aprés vont greignors enfans et portent en lor mains plus de.c. cruis d’arjant. Et aprés vient la clergie, trestos vestus de pluvials et de samit a or, et les tronbes et les chinbes; et vient un clerc en la rote apareillés de dras de dame, trestuit a or. Et siet celui clerc desour une chaere mult richement aparillee et le portent .iiij. homes desor lor espaules, et devant et encoste les confanons a or; et li clers vont chantant la procession. Endementiers que il vont ensi, issent .iij. clers de la procession et la ou il voient 74 75 See Rothenberg, ‘‘Marian Feasts, Seasons, and Songs in Medieval Polyphony,’’ 115ff. Owens, ‘‘‘And the angel said . . . ’: Conversations with Angels in Early Modern Music,’’ 230–33. This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 243 t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y monsignor li dus as fenestres de son palés, en la conpagnie des nobles veneciens, il montent desor un dois et chantent a haute vois et dient tuit ensi: —Criste vince, Criste regne, Criste inpere: nostre signor Ranier Gen, Des grace inclit dus de Venise, Dalmace et Groace, et dominator quarte part et demi de tot l’enpire de Romanie, sauvement, honor, vie et victoire: saint Marc, tu le aı̈e !— Et quant les loenges sunt finees, il desendent desor li dois et monsignor li dus lor fait geter a val de ses mehailles a planté, et il s’en retornent en la procession aveuc les autres, que totesvoies les atendoient. Et lors vient avant li clerc que porte corone d’or et est aparillés si richement con je vos ai conté; et quant il est tres parmi monsignor li dus, si le salue et il li rent son salus. Et lors s’en vont avant ciaus que le portent desor les espaules et sivent la procession, et s’en vont en l’iglise de nostre dame sainte Marie et atendent tant illeuc, que ciaus de l’autre contree vienent tot en tel maniere, que de banieres que de cruis que de prestres, et funt chante .iij. clers autretel loenges tres devant monsignor li dus, con firent les autres; et monsignor li dus lor fait geter de ses mehailles. Et sachés que monsignor li dus est vestus a or, et a corone d’or en son chief. Et a veoir ceste procession que se fait a henor de Nostre Dame, sont li gentis homes de Venise et tos li peuple et grant planté de dames et de damoselles, et entrevoies et desor li Palés en sunt a planté. 244 [XCIV] Quant il trois clers ont chanté les loenges de monsignor li dus tot en tel maniere con ont fait les autres que s’en alerent devant, il se mistrent en la procesion; et lors vient avant un autre clerc, que seoit desor une chaere, mult richement aparillés a la guise d’une angle, et le portent desor les espaules .iiij. homes. Et quant il fu parmi ou monsignor li dus estoit, il le salue et monsignor li dus li rent son salus. Et aprés se, il s’en vont en la procession que les clers vont chantant; en sachés que andeus les processions ont bons destrenceors, et clers et lais. Et tant s’en vont, que il entrent en l’iglise de nostre dame sainte Marie; et quant celui clers qu’est aparillés en senefiance de angle est entrés dedens l’iglise et il voit l’autre qu’est aparillés en senefiance de la virge Marie, il se lieve en estant et dit tot ensi: [XCV] —Ave Marie, ploine de grace, le Signor est aveuc toi, beneoite entre les femes et beneoit li fruit de ton ventre: ce dit nostre Sire.— Et celui que en senefiance de Nostre Dame est aparillés respont et dist: —Coment peut ce estre, angle Dei, en parce que je ne conois home, por avoir enfant?— Et li angles li redit: —Spirit Saint desent en toi, Marie: n’aies paor, auras dedens ton ventre le fils Dieu— Et cele li respont et dist: —Et je sui ancelle dou Signor: viegne a moi selonc ta parole— This content downloaded from 128.112.200.107 on Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:33:44 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms reuland ABSTRACT During the fourteenth century, Venetian chronicles, art, and ceremony fostered provocative analogies between angelic annunciation and the political voice of the Venetian populace. Such analogies imagined a city whose civic and heavenly members were united through the sound of unanimity. At the intersection of the state’s civic and celestial bodies stood the doge, considered to be the image of the Republic and of its patron, Saint Mark. A complex of sung ceremonies and musical compositions addressed to the doge dramatized the notion that the voice, as a ritual instrument, could engender real political or spiritual change in the state and its leaders. Performances of acclamations to the doge positioned him within Venice’s sacred and civic hierarchies, while state art and ceremony forged symbolic resemblances between ducal acclamation and angelic annunciation. A repertory of occasional motets evidences polyphonic play with the notion that vocal rituals centered on the doge could activate the spiritual ideals of the state: the anonymous Marce, Marcum imitaris (c. 1365) draws a sonic analogy between spiritual likeness and musical imitation in order to dramatize the concept of the doge as Mark’s image, whereas Johannes Ciconia’s Venecie mundi splendor/Michael qui Stena domus elides a text dedicated to the Annunciate Virgin with one addressed to the doge, creating musical echoes and simultaneities in its praises of Venice’s temporal and celestial leaders. Keywords: acclamation, Johannes Ciconia, civic ritual, historiography, motet, Venice This content downloaded from 128.1ff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff on Thu, 01 Jan 1976 12:34:56 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 245

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