ABSTRACT
Sicily at the court of the Emperor Frederick II, and later to another in the north of Italy, it is only reasonable to suppose that the music of the school of accompanied song which flourished oontemporaneously with the latter, particularly in Florence and Bologna, and attained to a remarkably high level of accomplishment at the hands of Francesco Landini, Giovanni de Cascia, and others too numerous to mention, was also in large measure a continuation, adaptation and development of the musical art of the Troubadours. Like the poetry written in the dolce stil nuovo, this music, similarly called the Ars Nova to distinguish it from the old art of organum and discant with which it has demonstrably nothing in common, is extremely subtle and sophisticated, deriving from the trobar clus rather than from the trobar cZar of Proven~al art. The importance of this school is still further enhanced by the fact that, in addition to this form of instrumentally accompanied song, they also cultivated a polyphonic style of compo'!lition in which the device of canon played a prominent part. It seems likely, however, that this form was a foreign importation rather than an indigenous growth; it certainly failed to maintain itself and soon died out.
