Johannes Ciconia - French Ballads (2/3) Sus un' fontayne

Johannes Ciconia (c. 1370 - between June 10 and July 12, 1412) was a late medieval composer and music theorist who worked most of his adult life in Italy, particularly in the service of the Papal Chapels and at the cathedral of Padua.

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Andrea von Ramm, Mezzosopran
Sterling Jones, Fidel
Thomas Binkley, Laute

Ciconia was born in Liège, the son of a priest also named Johannes Ciconia and a woman of high standing. That the composer had the same name as at least three other men from the area around Liège has created much confusion about the biography of the composer. A Johannes Ciconia, probably the composer's father, was probably born around 1335, and worked in Avignon in 1350 as a clerk for the wife of the nephew of Pope Clement VI.

A second person by the name of Johannes Ciconia appears in records in Liège in 1385 as a duodenus, generally a person of young age; thus contemporary scholars are in agreement that this is the composer himself. Papal records suggest that this Ciconia was in the service of Pope Boniface IX in Rome in 1391. His whereabouts between the early 1390s and 1401 are unknown. From this time until his death in 1412, he remained connected to the cathedral of Padua. It is unclear whether he arrived in Padua earlier than 1401. If his lament, Con lagrime bagnadome, described in one text source as written for the death of Francesco of Carrara, were written for Francesco il Nuovo, then it would date from after 1406; if, as earlier scholars had assumed, it were written for the death of Francesco il Vecchio, then he would have needed to be in Padua by 1393. The possibility of an intermediate stay in Pavia has also been suggested by Nádas and Ziino, as a necessary place for him to pick up Visconti associations and to learned the ars subtilior style and compositions of Philipoctus de Caserta quoted in his Sus un fontayne.

Ciconia's music has evidenced a comparable commingling of styles. Music typical of northern Italy, such as his madrigal Una panthera, is combined with the French ars nova. The more complex ars subtilior style surfaces in one work noted above, and the late Medieval style begins to morph into writing which points towards the melodic patterning of the Renaissance, for instance in his setting of O rosa bella. He wrote music both secular (French virelais, Italian ballate and madrigals) and sacred (motets, mass movements, some of them isorhythmic). He is also the author of two treatises on music, the Nova Musica, and De Proportionibus (which is an extract and expansion of some ideas from Nova Musica). His music-theoretical ideas stem from the more conservative Marchettian tradition, and can be contrasted with those of his Paduan contemporary Prosdocimus de Beldemandis.

Though contrafacts and later sources of his compositions suggest that he was well-known in Florence, his music is scarcely represented in the large Florentine sources; for instance there is no section for his works in the Squarcialupi Codex.

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Music

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• Johannes
• Ciconia
• French
• Ballads
• Sus
• un'
• fontayne