ABSTRACT
Historians of music have not taken much notice of Francesco di Vannozzo, fourteenth-century poet, lutanist and harpist, because none of his settings of lyric or narrative poetry has survived, if indeed he composed any or wrote any down. But a study both of his life and of his literary works can teach us something about the performance of trecento music; and for that reason he deserves our attention. 1 Born into a Paduan middle-class family between about 1330 and 1340 - his relatives were cloth-merchants and notaries, and he himself attended the University of Bologna for a short time - Francesco opted for a life at court. Precisely what role he played at the courts of Padua, Ferrara and Milan is not clear, nor do we know how he earned his living during his years in Venice. On the one hand, he seems to have been a courtier highly prized for his literary and musical ability: he exchanged sonnets and other kinds of poems with princes and intellectuals, among them Francesco Petrarcha, Marsilio da Carrara (brother of Francesco da Carrara il Vecchio, Lord of Padua) and Gian-Galeazzo Visconti, Count of Virtu; 2 and, for a time in Padua, he ran a school to teach lute and harp (if that is, in fact, what the term ‘cetera’ means in the contract between Francesco and his co-director). 3 On the other hand, Francesco may have been hired as a herald or courier during some of his years at court, a lowly position that required him, among other things, to deliver letters from one prince to another.
