Music and Moral Philosophy in Early Fifteenth-Century Padua 1

Of the generation of early humanists immediately following Francesco Petrarch, Pier Paolo Vergerio represents a seminal figure in the formulation of humanism's new educational theory based on classical models. Vergerio's writings are important for understanding the musical and intellectual culture of Padua, a city in which Vergerio resided, studied and taught for the most part during the years 1390–97 and 1400–1405. The role of music in early humanist culture at Padua, indeed in the Veneto, is only beginning to be more fully comprehended. This chapter examines Vergerio's De ingenuis moribus with a view to shedding further light on textual elements in selected musical works composed contemporaneously at Padua. De ingenuis moribus represents the earliest post-classical formulation concerned with the role of moral philosophy in the pragmatic creation of civic being. The chapter proposes a new reading of Johannes Ciconia's motet O Padua sidus preclarum.