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Memoir 253
Historians of European music of the early-modern period have focused particular attention upon the formal institutions & agents of patronage: ecclesiastical institutions, royal & aristocratic courts, etc. Like their colleagues in sister humanistic disciplines, musicologists are increasingly focusing upon less formal private "institutions" & traditions of patronage: informal academies & societies, the activities of individuals, convivial aristocratic companies. Cultural life in early-16th-century Florence was characterized by the practices of a series of vital institutions of this type: the famous group that met in the Rucellai garden, the Medici Sacred Academy, the Companies of the Broncone, Cazzuola, & Diamante. Such informal institutions had considerable virtues as agents of patronage; their less routinized practices freed them to engage in experimentation that the larger & more public & formal institutions were less likely to support, given their regularized practices and well-established traditions. For music historians, the importance of these informal agents of patronage is that they reveal a relationship to the early madrigal: to early madrigal poets & composers, whose professional activities were closely aligned to those of the contemporary informal academies & literary societies. Through reference to sources multidisciplinary in nature, this study reconstructs the memberships, cultural activities, & musical experiences of these informal Florentine institutions & relates them to the emergence of the madrigal, the foremost secular musical genre of early-modern Europe. Dr. Cummings currently is Chairman of the Newcomb Department of Music at Tulane. Articles and other publications include "Giulio de' Medici's Music Books" (in Early Music History X, Cambridge University Press, 1991, pages 63-120), The Politicized Muse: Music for Medici Festivals, 1512-1537, University Libraries & Scholarly Communication: A Study Prepared for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, & "Music: Transmission of Music". "The scholarship is sound, well documented, and up to date. One of the strengths of the book is the breadth of its coverage. The material will be of interest to scholars in all areas of Florentine Renaissance studies. The author's comprehensive organization of the material and the conclusions he draws from it, and his ideas about the role of Medici patronage of the early madrigal, are original and important. The book is richly illustrated with both visual materials and musical examples. A wonderful contribution."
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