ABSTRACT
An abundance of evidence – scribal, codicological, repertorial, stemmatic, historical and so on – suggests that Florence 164–7 was copied in Florence around 1520, notwithstanding its Roman associations. Its repertory, especially the substantial representation of compositions by Bernardo Pisano, suggests a possible relationship to two of the most important private cultural institutions of early Cinquecento Florence, the famous group that met in the garden of the Rucellai and the Sacred Academy of the Medici: it comprises the sorts of compositions that might have found favour among Bernardo Pisano’s intellectual intimates. Their classical scholarship, their interest in resuscitating Trecento literary values and standards, and the reflection of such principles in Pisano’s biographical profile and in the large number of settings of Petrarchan verse in the manuscript suggest that Florence 164–7 may be a document of the aesthetic sensibilities of members of the Rucellai group and Medici Sacred Academy, or at least of their general stratum of Florentine society. So, too, does the large number of settings of verse by Lorenzo Strozzi, a member of both institutions. Moreover, the advanced contrapuntal compositional techniques employed in the manuscript represent one end of a stylistic spectrum, consonant with the position that the refined Petrarchan texts demanded equally elaborate musical treatment, which led to complex polyphonic treatment; on the other hand, the suspicion of polyphony typical of humanists like those who frequented the garden of the Rucellai provided for works at the other end of the stylistic continuum, the popular works manifesting the characteristic of aria, a melodic style distinguished by an intrinsic naturalness and buoyancy.
