Alberti’s activities as architect, theorist and advisor, and his clear attempt to ‘cover’ the visual arts by writing a treatise on each of the principal three –architecture, sculpture and painting– perhaps give us an unbalanced sense of the order of his enthusiasms. We know that his literary activity was very diverse, and he was a literato before all else. But from his theoretical writings and from his artistic activities, it can easily seem that his primary sense was the visual. All the while, though, his literary voice is often most animated on the subject of music. Indeed, in the (auto)biography he claims for himself credentials as a musician as confidently as, in De pictura, he tells of his spectacular perspective demonstrations. He gives himself almost Orphic powers in the speech of Niccola de’ Medici in Profugiorum ab aerumna: ‘Troppo sarebbe forza qui in Battista, se potesse con suoi strumenti musici adducere gli animi in qual parte e’ volessi.’[1] Confirmation of his musical ability comes from Cristoforo Landino who, as has been seen, wrote in Apologia di Dante, ‘What branch of mathematics was unknown to him? He was a geometer, arithmetician, astronomer, musician, and in perspective he was a prodigy, greater than anyone over the centuries.‘[2] It is true that claims for a person’s mathematical expertise could not omit music while it counted in the Quadrivium (or here in the new ‘Quintivium’, with perspective added). But, equally, no person intending to be mathematically educated would neglect his music.
Alberti’s definition of beauty is placed within De re aedificatoria for the sake, obviously, of explaining architectural beauty. He states, ‘Nos tamen brevitatis gratia sic deffiniemus: ut sit pulchritudo quidem certa cum ratione concinnitas universarum partium in eo, cuius sint, ita aut addi aut diminui aut immutari possit nihil quin improbabilius reddatur.’[3] Of importance is his insistence that it applies also universally: ‘in whatsoever subject’ as James Leoni translates. It is the word concinnitas that is at the core of the definition. Alberti also wrote, in Book IX, Chapter 5: ‘Hi quidem numeri, per quos fiat ut vovum illa concinnitas auribus gratissima reddatur, hidem ipsi numeri perficiunt, ut oculi animus que voluptate mirifica compleantur.’[4] Harmony is, familiarly, an agreement of voice and ear: ‘Armoniam esse dicimusvocum consonantiam suavem auribus.’[5] Ear and eye attend to beauties possessing a common substructure that appears in art and nature. Musical and architectural harmony are interchangeable in his famous admonition to Matteo de’Pasti, his overseer on the project of S. Francesco at Rimini: ‘Le misure e le proportioni de pilastri tu vedi onde elle naschono: cio che tu muti si discorda tutta quella musica.’[6] The passages carry the assumption that the reader will understand beauty in architecture and in nature, through being already in possession of an understanding of beauty in music. To be sought in each context is ‘a harmony of parts.’ The beauty he talks of is essentially to be found in complexity.
However, it is important to note that not all music would supply a level of complexity sufficient to sustain the analogy and thence the definition. It has become something of a commonplace of Renaissance architectural historiography, since Rudolf Wittkower’s Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (1951), to discuss musical harmonics and seek them out in the mathematics of architecture. Alberti himself followed Pythagoras, and explained musical intervals and the harmonic mean.[7] But these simple whole-number relations that can be used for proportioning buildings are only part of what he has in mind in his definition of beauty in De re aedificatoria and in a number of other notable utterances on music scattered throughout his writings.
The property of things whereby their parts fit together locally, quantitatively and qualitatively and they are integral objects is, in Alberti’s thinking, generically a mathematical characteristic. And his age held music to be a mathematical business alongside the other disciplines of the quadrivium, as was observed above. However, it is a more complicated mathematics than the arithmetic (with a little geometry) of harmonics and means that produces organic unity. In fact, it is so complex that Alberti is forced to state his definition in the form of a negative: ‘nothing could be added…’. Not so much beauty as the want of it is to be observed. Of collocatio, one of the parts of concinnitas, he says, ‘Ea magis sentitur, ubi male habita est, quam intelligatur per se, qui decenter ponenda sit.’[8] The ‘innata quaedam ratio’[9] by which we judge the beautiful, at the same time as being so deeply embedded that the human being’s very definition includes the faculty, paradoxically confesses in effect Alberti’s inability to locate it properly in reason, for to say that something is innate is to set it beyond enquiry.
The music that Alberti alluded to in the definition was of a particular kind. Like architecture, and Nature herself, it was complex. In fact, it was itself not so easy to define, and the seeker of an idea of musical beauty might, as readily, have used his/her given experience of a certain kind of formally consistent but complex architecture to help him grasp the nature of this special musical beauty. Goethe would later draw the connection.
It is only polyphonic music that can have the ‘harmony of parts’ that is the core of the definition. Alberti’s thought had an enormously important place for polyphonic music.
A statement in De familia gives a sense of music’s crucial position. In its passionate brevity and argumentative directness, and in its evocation of the catechism, it is the nub of Alberti’s creed – that statement that has been central to the discussion of several themes in Alberti’s thought. His interlocutor, Lionardo, voices it:
Most of all I praise the true and wise teachers who tell us that man was created for the pleasure of God, to recognise the primary and original source of things amid all the variety, dissimilarity, beauty and multiplicity of animal life, amid all the forms, structures, coverings and colors that characterise the animals. He was made to praise God together with universal nature, seeing in every living thing such great and perfectly matched harmonies of voice and verse and music combined in concord and loveliness.[10]
Nature herself is a polyphony. The speech encapsulates nothing less than a Natural Religion. Everything Alberti says must be consistent with it. Thus, the same passage, properly analysed, reveals his thought in different connections. The passages used to introduce the section above, on Faith and Belief, all rise, like this, to their ringing conclusions in celebration of aural experience –bird song or choral singing. The voice of the poet is more prominent than that of the rationalist at this point.
Alberti’s conception of polyphony is clearer than Gianozzo Manetti’s. When Manetti described the Lady Day service of 1436 in Florence Cathedral and talked of the singing, he lapsed into a facile simile: these voices were like those of angels.[11] [but read on. Manetti is much more elaborate than I’ve said (p.318) check para 26.] Maybe Dufay’s motet, Nuper Rosarum Flores, famously sung on the occasion, did not draw his attention or live in his memory. It is agreeable to fancy that Alberti is recollecting the same occasion and the singing of just that motet when, in the voice of Agnolo Pandolfini in Profugiorum ab aerumna, he praises the church, concluding, ‘Here, wherever you look, you see the expression of happiness and gaiety; here it is always fragrant; and, that which I prize above all, here you listen to the voices during mass, during that which the ancients called the mysteries, with their marvelous beauty.’[12] Agnolo is here continuing a passage describing the church as an evocation of Spring and the sound, poetically, evokes birdsong, making clear that polyphony, despite Manetti’s experience, does not emanate from heaven.
The kind of music that excited Alberti is to be identified by thinking through the simile. Birdsong is not plainchant. Birds do not sing in unison. The Bardi St Francis Master’s birds will give responses in unison; not those of the St Francis Master at Assisi.[figs] Just as it is the variety rather than the uniformity of nature that Lionardo makes the object of his piety, so, in art, it is variety that is to be achieved. In music, polyphony is proclaimed over plainchant. The single choral line indicates that faith is complete and entirely unassailable. That is the music that is angelic. When Fra Angelico, by including angels playing instruments of different sorts in his scenes of heaven, invites the observer to hear music whose essential character is founded in variety, he does so only to make heaven a more agreeable place: his inspiration is to be found on earth rather than in heaven.
For Alberti, polyphony is the exemplification of something important, something more that just an abstractly satisfactory audible state of things. Nor, to repeat, is it a heavenly emanation (for there is no reason to think that angels would not sing in unison). Polyphony signifies something; it has a content. Here, it might be like architecture which, as we see, is more than just formally admirable and materially useful. Or else, its own principle is universal.[13]
The moving effects of church music, especially the Kyrie, are described, as Agnolo Pandolfini continues:
Che è a dire che tutti gli altri modi e varietà de’ canti reiterati fastidiano: solo questo cantare religioso mai meno ti diletta. Quanto fu ingegno in quel Timoteo musico, inventore di tanta cosa! Non so quello s’intervenga agli altri; questo affermo io di me, che e’ possono in me questi canti e inni della chiesa quello a che fine e’ dicono che furono trovati: troppo m’acquetano da ogni altra perturbazione d’animo, e commuovonmi a certa non so quale io la chiami lentezza d’animo piena di riverenza verso di Dio. E qual cuore sì bravo si truova che non mansueti sé stessi quando e’ sente su bello ascendere e poi descendere quelle intere e vere voci con tanta tenerezza e flessitudine? Affermovi questo, che mai sento in que’ misteri e cerimonie funerali invocare da Dio con que’ versiculi greci aiuto alle nostre miserie umane ch’io non lacrimi. E fra me talora mi maraviglio, e penso quanta forza portino seco quelle a intenerirci. E quinci avviene ch’io credo quello che si dice ch’e’ musici potessero essortare Alessandro Macedone ad arme cantando, e rivocarlo in cena.[14]
Alberti himself was not committed entirely to church music. Music had its charms in itself. For example, it was a means of gaining personal tranquillità dell’anima also elsewhere. In De iciarchia he noted that, ‘E’ Pittagorici filosofi soleano, prima che dormissero, componere la mente sua a quiete con qualche armonia musica.’[15] The practice recalls his own in what may be construed as a parallel context. In Profugiorum ab aerumna, he describes himself as calming his agitated mind by conceiving ‘qualche compositissimo edificio e disposivi piu ordini e numeri di colonne con vari capitelli e base inusitate…’[16]
Alberti is a dogmatic naturalist. The strength of his commitment can be guaged by setting against Lionardo’s speech, above, the famous statement of Abbot Suger (1081-1155):
Thus, when –out of my delight in the beauty of the house of God– the loveliness of the many colored gems has called me away from external cares, and worthy meditation has induced me to reflect, transferring that which is material to that which is immaterial, on the diversity of the sacred virtues: then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling, as it were, in some strange region of the Universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the purity of Heaven; and that, by the grace of God, I can be transported from this inferior to that higher world in an anagogical manner.[17]
Both dwell upon diversity, but whilst Suger finds it above, Lionardo does, below. Lionardo’s statement is emphatically anti-platonic. He finds the grounds of faith in the things of nature: out of his love of the things of Creation comes his affirmation of the Creator. There is no direct experience of the numinous. It follows that, in Lionardo’s piety, God is not confined to His House. The practice of religion is not confined to Church premises. By extension, the Cathedral of Agnolo Pandolfini was an evocation of natural sensation. In Theogenius, the tone of the address to Microtiro is religious, and the event happens emphatically en plein air. Conjured up is a Franciscan sense of the natural world. Now, choral singing sounds best where the acoustic is best, and the church building is its most appropriate setting. But that does not mean that the singing itself necessarily supposes that its world is the building in which it is sounding. Polyphony, because of its complexity, requires a softer acoustic. The cavernous barrel and groin-vaulted church is not suitable. Practically speaking, polyphony has less control of the echo than plainchant. It is possible that elaborate ribbing shortens the echo and softens the acoustic. Generally speaking, timber roofing was better than masonry for audibility.[18] Alberti discusses acoustics in Book VIII, Chapter 9 of De re aedificatoria. Plainchant carries the implication that there is no barrier between the celestial and the faithful. But polyphony –its variety a celebration of a beauty of nature– conceives itself as terrestial rather than celestial sound. Polyphony belongs with philosophical scepticism. Raised in praise, it prompts affirmation; but it does not contain certitude. It imitates nature. Rather as the observer of the altarpiece, which has replaced the gold ground with landscape, pictures the action as happening in time and space as opposed to the church (where the object is located) and heaven and eternity (where that which is represented may exist), the listener to polyphonic church music attends an event on earth. And, as the gold background disappeared even for celestial scenes, like the Coronations of the Virgin of Fra Angelico in the Louvre and of Fra Filippo Lippi in the Uffizi, so music seems to have begun to be conceived spontaneously in polyphonic form. Fra Angelico pictures something almost riotously musical, though perhaps without the human voice, in the Uffizi Coronation (fig).
Alberti’s interest and enthusiasm for music is proclaimed in the ‘Autobiography’.[19] It contains the claim that he was, through his education, one of the most distinguished young men of his generation, ‘Nam cum arma et equos et musica instrumente arte et modo tractare, tum litteris et bonarium artium studiis rarissimarumque et difficilarum rerum cognitioni fui deditissimus…’[20] He would rest from his literary studies in music, painting and physical exercise. Self-taught, he nonetheless received the applause of the experts, composing and performing instrumental and vocal works:
Musicam nullis praeceptoribus tenuit et fuere ipsius opera a doctis musicis approbata: cantu per omnem aetatem usus est, sed eo quidem intra privatos parietes aut solus, et praesertim rure cum fratre propinquisve tantum. Organis delectabatur et inter primarios musicos in ea re peritus habebatur. Musicos effecit nonnullos eruditiores suis monitis.[21]
He wrote elegies, eclogues and songs.[22] The ‘Autobiography’ does not reveal just what sort of music Alberti made and admired; but the impression given is that it was a lively musical society in which he moved. The likelihood must be that it was an inventive one.
The importance of music for culture in general is made clear in the prologue to Della pittura. Alberti recalls a lament that he used to make before his experience of Florence showed that it no longer had grounds. He listed the kinds of artists and intellectuals that he had believed were in short supply: ‘…pittori, scultori, architetti, musici, iometri, retorici, auguri e simili nobilissimi e maravigioso intelletti…’.[23] But now they proliferated once more. If he were to have listed musicians encountered in Florence, Guillaume Dufay, the composer of the motet Nuper Rosarum Flores, sung on the occasion of the dedication of the dome of Florence Cathedral on 25th March 1436, would have been included.
The imitation of nature had to include the representation of her great principle of variety. The imitation of Nature as a creative process had to involve an exemplification of the principle. It is possible to say that, for Alberti, Alcibiades was a polyphonic sort of person, appearing frequently in Alberti’s writings to exemplify the person who changes according to the circumstances in which he finds himself. And Alberti himself, in having his various voices –Libripeta, Lepidus etc.– did not speak with just one. It is tempting to think that, in adopting the name Leon, he was claiming kinship with the cameleonte, the cameleon. Landino took up the idea of Alberti’s cameleon-character in his Apologia di Dante.[24] To practise a great number of arts and crafts would be further to epitomise variety: ‘ingenio fuit versatili…’[25] And, if the principle is a natural one, ought it not to be also a social or political one? Alberti did identify a somewhat democratic property in variety, and it ties in with polyphony, in which there is no question of inferiority or superiority between types of voice. Apologo XLI tells of the crown of Hadrian. A pearl wanted to join a diamond and a carbuncle. The two gems did not want their splendour diminished by the near-presence of the pearl, which eventually found a place elsewhere in the crown, surrounded by the smallest and least valuable jewels.[26] Alberti’s point is that, if the diamond and the carbuncle had recognised the principle of variety, had seen that they themselves, in their difference, were the beginning of it, and that they suffered in no way as a result, they would have welcomed the addition of the new element of variety. Instead, the comparison that could now be made between the pearl and its immediate setting emphasised its beauty and value. Polyphony, like variety, is not hierarchical.
Variety is an important theme in De pictura/Della pittura. Like the historia, ‘Come ne’ cibi e nella musica sempre la novità e abbondanza tanto piace quanto sia differente dalle cose antique e consuete, così l’animo si diletta d’ogni copia e varietà.’[27] The Latin gives, for ‘abbondanza’, ‘exuberantia’. He wants copiousness, but it must be disciplined by variety (and appropriateness to the subject). Copia is a matter of the number of species in the historia, indeed the number of genera for, as well as animal things, there are cities and provinces in the copious historia. Varietà is a matter of quality. Members of a single species will be varied, first in their poses and eventually, since the movement of the body is an index of the movement of the soul, in their emotions. Clarity is consistent with variety. Too great a throng will confuse the action just as, round Varro’s dinner table, a number greater than nine will make for agitated rather than congenial proceedings. In contrasting copia with varietà, and dissoluta confusione with composizione [28], Alberti is, in effect, contrasting cacophony and polyphony. We can suggest that he is considering here two of the three kinds of ‘many’. The aggregation of lots of the same thing produces a uniform sort of ‘many’. Alberti’s thinking is about the many that consists of a number of different things with no organisational principle (copia) and the many that is composed and organised (varietà). [29] He would think on about the quality of what we could call organised multiplicity, and in De re aedificatoria it had become concinnitas. In music, it was polyphony.
In effect, Alberti is saying, through Agnolo Pandolfini describing Florence Cathedral in Profugiorum ab Aerumna, ‘We are not listening to angels (unless angels come down among us and disguise themselves as other flying, singing creatures).’ Not only does the comprehensibility of polyphony delight (though it would be wonderful for the musically skilled person to understand the organisation of the voices, and, axiomatically at least, polyphony is variety in unity); it works also through some other organ of reception. As Palladio said, ‘Sometimes we like the music but are unable to say why.’[30] Perhaps the ear is connected to the seat of delight by two routes, one through the head and the other through the heart.[31] Other theories could be offered: perhaps the organs of sense were active, themselves shaping data. In saying, in Profugiorum ab aerumna, ‘Per gli orecchi, entra la sapienza,’ Alberti is arguing that organs of sense receive things of reason.[32] But when Alberti heard Nuper Rosarum Flores, we can be sure that its evocative power was accessible prior to an understanding of its structure, for that is the whole tenor of delight in sound in nature.
That is, his enthusiasm might have been for a mathematically-based art; but pleasure did not consist in having broken the code. Consonant with his naturalism, music was intrinsically delightful. He wrote, ‘Nam, veluti in lyra, cum graves voces respondeant acutis et mediae inter utrasque ad concentum intentae resonant, fit ex vocum varietate sonora et mirifica quaedam proportionum aequibilitas, quae maiorem in modum oblectet animos atque detineat; ita et quibusque reliquis in rebus evenit, quae quidem ad movendos habendosque animos faciant.’[33]
The age brought forth two great innovations: polyphony in music and perspective in painting. They had something in common. The perspective system allows variety and copiousness without confusion, and so does polyphony. Polyphony represents the crucial property of creation, its organised profusion. Quantity out of control in painting is clutter, or horror vacui: in music, it is cacophony. Alberti uses the words tumultuare and tumulto in Della pittura/De pictura of this horror vacui. In nature it would be Hell.[34]
______
Of course, it’s a zeitgeist-lich enthusiasm (we could gather examples – Fra Angelico, Luca della Robbia, Fra Filippo, Benozzo. Alberti seems the obvious intermediary between Nicholas and Fra Angelico in the papal chapel), Alberti does seem to have made it part of his philosophic system. (Federigo says that architecture is the offspring of arithmetic and geometry; but we’d expect him to have something to say about music too. Is there evidence that he was interested in polyphonic music?)
Is there any chance that the programme was changed in 1436? Robert Mode gives a precis of the various arguments about the dates of the panels. He favours Pope-Hennessy’s interpretation of a document (26.08.34) giving a date of 1434.(Adolescent Confratelli and the Cantoria of Luca della Robbia, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 68, No. 1. (Mar., 1986), pp. 67-71) Pope-Hennessy’s argument depends upon the side panels being worth seven-twelfths of the front ones. Unfortunately, he seems to be right. The front panels are about 1.7 times the side 35 to 60 (florins) is 1.71. Dufay didn’t get to Florence till 1435
Luca della Robbia’s Singing Gallery started off as a straight representation of Psalm 150. When the side panels with the singers ( so much more brilliant in style) were added the programme was amplified, or changed. The gallery became capable of accommodating a polyphony of voices; it was converted from being a general idea of musical celebration and praise into an imitation of what actually went on there. The components of the musical performance are spelled out punctiliously in the panel of the from of the Cantoria. If the side panels are also illustrative it would be of the last line: ‘Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD. Praise ye the LORD’. Luca has represented the universe of praise by the variety of voices; treble, alto and bass. Actually, the instrumental complexity of the front is also quite polyphonic.
Worth comparing with Luca’s end panels are the two in the Bode Museum, Berlin, in one of which angels are attending to the tuning of a lute and in the other choristers are singing, but in unison.
There’s singing in Fra Angelico’s Fiesole altarpiece, but diffidently.
Angels in the trees in Gentile da Fabriano’s Madonna and Cild with a Donor have a variety of instruments. They are clearly like birds with a variety of sounds/calls.
[Now, there is evidence from elsewhere that Alberti believed that there was an intelligent and a affective response to things, so that the learned and the unlearned were, equally, able to take pleasure and instruction from the historia. Was the final sensation before the historia like that at a polyphonic choral performance? (check Della pittura for musical analogies) Did Alberti intend a parallel? Of his ‘demonstrations’, in the Biography, it is said, ‘…et erant eiusmodi, ut periti imperitique non pictas, sed veras ipsas res naturae intueri decertarent.’ [73] Della pittura: L’opera del pittore cerca essere grata a tutta la moltitudine.(p.104, 62) See also p.68, 40]
See, at the end of Florence Cathedral section, ref. to P. Weiss, p.81: Alberti on the musicians in attendance at the service of 25.03.36
———————-
It is truly marvellous to relate how the whole surface of the earth exulted with joy and praise when the goddess first set foot on land. Never mind how exhilarated the breezes, the springs, the streams and hills became at the approach of the goddess! You could see flowers bursting out of even the roughest flint, smiling far and wide at the goddess as she went by, bending down to do her homage, and breathing out every fragrance to fill her path with sweet odors. You would have seen melodious birds flying around her applauding with painted wings and greeting the visiting gods with their song.[35]
Oh, my dear Microtiro, how greatly was sweet friendship ever to be prized! […] But, if it would please you, let us sit here among these myrtles – this place no less delightful than your vast theatres and most sumptuous temples. Here, raised by nature, columns as numerous as the loftiest trees that you see around. Above us, the sun, – we, shaded most delightfully by these beech trees and firs; and all around us, at every turn, you see the thousand exquisite colours of the flowers in their profusion, woven into the vivid green of the shadows, more intense more limpid than the sky; and to please you, the most ravishing fragrances. And then, the joyful celebration of the little birds that throng about you in their brightest and richest plumage – who could not take delight? So beautiful they are as, again and again, they come to greet me with their fresh songs raised to the heavens.[36]
Agnolo Pandolfini: And certainly this temple has in itself grace and majesty; and, as I have often thought, I delight to see joined together here a charming slenderness with a robust and full solidity so that, on the one hand, each of its parts seems designed for pleasure, while, on the other, one understands that it has all been built for perpetuity. I would add that here is the constant home of temperateness, as of springtime: outside, wind, ice and frost; here inside one is protected from the wind, here mild air and quiet. Outside, the heat of summer and autumn; inside, coolness. And if, as they say, delight is felt when our senses perceive what, and how much, they require by nature, who could hesitate to call the temple the nest of delights? Here, wherever you look, you see the expression of happiness and gaiety; here it is always fragrant; and, that which I prize above all, here you listen to the voices during mass, during that which the ancients called the mysteries, with their marvelous beauty.[37]
[The passage continues. I can’t think that it’s Alberti’s own view that only church singing is not irritating.] Che è a dire che tutti gli altri modi e varietà de’ canti reiterati fastidiano: solo questo cantare religioso mai meno ti diletta. Quanto fu ingegno in quel Timoteo musico, inventore di tanta cosa! Non so quello s’intervenga agli altri; questo affermo io di me, che e’ possono in me questi canti e inni della chiesa quello a che fine e’ dicono che furono trovati: troppo m’acquetano da ogni altra perturbazione d’animo, e commuovonmi a certa non so quale io la chiami lentezza d’animo piena di riverenza verso di Dio. E qual cuore sì bravo si truova che non mansueti sé stessi quando e’ sente su bello ascendere e poi descendere quelle intere e vere voci con tanta tenerezza e flessitudine? Affermovi questo, che mai sento in que’ misteri e cerimonie funerali invocare da Dio con que’ versiculi greci aiuto alle nostre miserie umane ch’io non lacrimi.[the Kyrie?] E fra me talora mi maraviglio, e penso quanta forza portino seco quelle a intenerirci. E quinci avviene ch’io credo quello che si dice ch’e’ musici potessero essortare Alessandro Macedone ad arme cantando, e rivocarlo in cena.
Niccola: Siete voi, Agnolo, in questa opinione che queste conversioni e coniunzioni di voci possino levare gli animi e imporre in loro vari eccitamenti e commozioni? Troppo sarebbe forza qui in Battista, se potesse con suoi strumenti musici adducere gli animi in qual parte e’ volessi. Goes on to question Plato’s view that nouva ragion di canti always causes public disorder. It might be an effect, but not a cause.
[a few pages from the end] A me aggradono alcuni altri rimedi forse non dissimili da questi, ma più degni e più convenienti a uno uomo moderato e constantissimo. E in prima mi piace quello omerico Achille, quale per requiescere dalle molte sue faccende militari solea sedare l’animo cantando insieme col plettro e colla lira, instrumento musico. Quinci credo el nostro Virgilio introdusse quel suo Polifemo in antro, quem
Lanigerae comitantur oves; ea sola voluptas
solamenque mali de collo fistula pendet.
E certo in questo convengo io colla opinione de’ pittagorici quali affermavano che ‘l nostro animo s’accoglieva e componeva a tranquillità e a quiete revocato e racconsolato dalle suavissime voci e modi di musica. E provai io non rarissimo questo in me, che in mie lassitudini d’animo questa dolcezza e varietà de’ suoni e del cantare molto mi sullevorono e restituirono. E proverrete questo voi, se mai v’accade: mai vi s’avvolgerà pell’animo e mente alcuna sì cocente cura che subito ella non si estingua ove voi perseverrete cantando. E non so come a me pare che ‘l cantare mio qualunque e’ sia, più a me satisfaccia e più giovi che ‘l sonare di qualunque altri forse fusse ottimo ed essercitatissimo musico. Né fu senza commodo instituto quel costume antiquissimo, qual poi interdisse el concilio arelatense, che le escubie funerali si vegghiassero cantando. Credo io così faceano que’ buoni antiqui per distorre l’animo da que’ tristi pensieri del morire. Ma a questi nostri religiosissimi forse parse più utile el ricordarsi d’essere uomo simile a quel morto; e parsegli officio più pio riconoscersi mortale e d’ora in ora caduco che darsi ad alcuna levità e lascivia.(electronic)
Most of all I praise the true and wise teachers who tell us that man was created for the pleasure of God, to recognise the primary and original source of things amid all the variety, dissimilarity, beauty and multiplicity of animal life, amid all the forms, structures, coverings and colors that characterise the animals. He was made to praise God together with universal nature, seeing in every living thing such great and perfectly matched harmonies of voice and verse and music combined in concord and loveliness.[38]
Nam, veluti in lyra, cum graves voces respondeant acutis et mediae inter utrasque ad concentum intentae resonant, fit ex vocum varietate sonora et mirifica quaedam proportionum aequibilitas, quae maiorem in modum oblectet animos atque detineat; ita et quibusque reliquis in rebus evenit, quae quidem ad movendos habendosque animos faciant(p.69).’ ‘Just as in music, where deep voices answer high ones, and intermediate ones are pitched between them, and they ring out in harmony, a wonderfully sonorous balance of proportions results, which increases the pleasure of the audience and captivates them; so it happens in everything else that serves to enchant and move the mind.’(I,9) {the church also waylays the passer-by]
?
Adovardo, analysing amicizia in Book IV of Della famiglia is like Brunelleschi in the Prologue.
Prologue
Book IV of Della famiglia looks like an enlargement (for harmony with the other books) of a core text (the short piece?)
Alberti refers to the musical consonance of the columniation of the façade of S. Francesco at Rimini (Il misure e le proportioni tu vedi onde nascono) (is it the arch and pier system, or is it what’s planned at the east end?)
Squarcialupi, organist at the Cathedral (1417-80)
So also in IX, 5: ‘…a form of sympathy and consonance of the parts within a body…’
VII,3 In the Christian basilica, altar, choir and trbune are grouped together. Otherwise, the church consists of nave and portico.
Practical acoustics – the Curia – De re VIII, 9.
Disappointingly, I find no section of De re where he was thinking about choral singing. In the passage on the basilica and that on the curia it’s clear that he is alert to what’s required for the spoken voice to be effective.
Alberti’s association with the choir of SS Annunziata. Choral music was very important at SS Annunziata. (Note perhaps that the rotonda at S Francesco at Rimini could have been for choral purposes. Was there at choir at the Pantheon?) The controversy of the early 1470s concerned the choir
See Robert L. Mode Article on the Confratelli and Luca’s Cantoria in Art Bulletin 1986 (detail in Lady Day quotes).
Fra Angelico wanted us to hear all the instruments of the orchestra.
There’s a band to the right in the Solomon and Sheba panel.
The central of the three figures immediately behind Solomon is in profile, and looks like Alberti (at any rate the Matteo de’ Pasti version). There are other portraits in this panel, for example the turbaned man behind and up.
Profugiorum (127): Per gli orecchi, entra la sapienza
Quintillian has music, the soul and number connected (1.1.72)
De iciarchia: E’ Pittagorici filosofi soleano, prima che dormissero, componere la mente sua a quiete con qualche armonia musica. Cf. Alberti making us buildings late at night( Poss. Footnote to passage in Alberti’s Way of Thinking)
Thinking about acoustics – V,8 end. Vaulted spaces no good for singing etc. see also, his discussion of the echo-breaking effect of the cornice in the curia.
See Alberti Notes
Profugiorum, Bk III, p.58: E certo in questo convengo io colla opinione de’ pittagorici quali affermavano che ’l nostro animo s’accoglieva e componeva a tranquillità e a quiete revocato e racconsolato dalle suavissime voci e modi di musica. E provai io non rarissimo questo in me, che in mie lassitudini d’animo questa dolcezza e varietà de’ suoni e del cantare molto mi sullevorono e restituirono. E proverrete questo voi, se mai v’accade: mai vi s’avvolgerà pell’animo e mente alcuna sì cocente cura che subito ella non si estingua ove voi perseverrete cantando. E non so come a me pare che ’l cantare mio qualunque e’ sia, più a me satisfaccia e più giovi che ’l sonare di qualunque altri forse fusse ottimo ed essercitatissimo musico.
[1] Leon Battista Alberti, Opere Volgari, a cura di Cecil Grayson, Vol. II, Bari: Laterza, 1966, Profugiorum ab aerumna, p.109, lines 10-12
[2] See above, Post Mortem 1, note 4 [Ref. get]
[3] L.B. Alberti, L’Architettura, a cura di G. Orlandi, Introd. P. Portoghesi (Milano: Polifilo, 1966), Book VI, Chapter 2, p.447
[4] Orlandi, L’Architettura, IX, 5, p.823
[5] Orlandi, L’Architettura, IX, 5, p.823
[6] Franco Borsi, Leon Battista Alberti: L’opera completa, Electa: Milano, 1986, p.133. fig 135
[7] Alberti, De re aedificatoria, IX, 4 and 5
[8] Orlandi, L’Architettura, IX,7, p.837
[9] Orlandi, L’Architettura, IX, 5, p.813
[10]Reneé Watkins, 1969, p.134: ‘Ma sopra tutte lodo quella verissima et probatissima sententia di coloro, e quali dicono l’uomo essere creato per piacere a Dio, per riconoscere un primo et vero principio alle cose, ove si vegga tanta varietà, tanta dissimilitudine, bellezza et multitudine d’animali, di loro forme, stature, vestimenti et colori; per ancora lodare Iddio insieme con tutta l’universa natura, vedendo tante et si differentiate et si consonante armonie di voci, versi et canti in ciascuno animante concinni et soave…’ Romano, Tenenti, Furlan, p.162, l.1786-1794. Here, I use Watkins’ admirable translation. There will be occasions below where I offer my own translation instead. I do so in order to allow myself slightly more paraphrased readings of the passages. My translations are identifiable by my omission of the page references to Watkins.
[11] Eugenio Battista, Il Mondo Visuale delle Fiabe, Congresso Internazionale di Studi Umanistici, V, 1960, Umaniesimo e Esoterismo, pp.291-320, contains Giannozzo Manetti’s Oration (Iannozii Manetti oratio ad clarissimum equestris ordinis virum Angelum Accaiuolum de secularibus et pontificlibus pompis in consecratione Basilicae Florentinae habitis incipit feliciter), pp.310-20: ‘Interea tantis tamque variis canoris vocibus quandoque concinebatur: tantis etiam simphonis ad coelum usque elatis interdum cantabatur ut angelici ac divini cantus mirium audientibus apparerent: adeoque audientium aures mira variarum vocum suavitate titillabantur: ut multum admodum ceu de syrenum cantibus fabulantur obstupescere videnture: quod in coelis etiam quot annis hac ipsa solemnissima die qua principium humanae salutatis apparuit ab angelis fieri non impie crederim…’(pp.317-18) This was evidently a polyphonic piece and therefore more likely the motet of Dufay, which would, in any case, make a fine accompaniment to the appearance of the pope within the church. Manetti is equally delighted by the singing at the elevation of the host, but it was probably plainchant for he makes no mention this time of various voices.
[12]Christine Smith, Architecture in the Culture of Early Humanism, (O.U.P.: New York & Oxford, 1992, pp.5-6 (translation); ‘E certo questo tempio ha in sè grazia e maiestà: e quello ch’io spesso considerai, mi diletta ch’io veggo in questo tempio iunto insieme una gracilità vezzosa con una sodezza robusta e piena, tale che da una parte ogni suo membro pare posto ad amenità, e dall’altra parte compreendo che ogni cosa qui è fatta e offirmata a perpetuità. Aggiugni che qui abita continuo la temperie, si può dire, della primavera; fuori vento, gelo, brina; qui entro socchiuso da’venti, qui tiepido aere e quiéto: fuori vampe estive e autunnali; qui entro temperatissimo refigerio. E s’egli’è, come è dicono che le delizie sono quando a’nostri sensi aggiungono le cose quanto e quali le richiede la natura, chi dubiterà appellare questo tempio nido delle delizie? Qui dovunque tu miri, vedi ogni parte esposte a giocondità e letizia; qui sempre odoratissimo; e, quel ch’io sopra tutto stimo, qui senti in queste voci al sacrificio, e in questi quali gli antichi chiamano misteri, una soavità maravigliosa.’ Grayson, II, p.107. Smith discusses this passage extensively in the light of rhetorical models (pp.80-97). She is interested principally in its aesthetic content, whereas the present paper is mainly interested in its moral content and its particular imagery:
[13] Rykwert et al, p.305; Orlandi, L’Architettura, IX, 5, p.823: ‘Hi quidem numeri, per quos fiat ut vovum illa concinnitas auribus gratissima reddatur, hidem ipsi numeri perficiunt, ut oculi animus que voluptate mirifica compleantur.’
[14] Grayson, II, Profugiorum ab aerumna, p. 107-8, ’28-17
[15] Grayson, II, De iciarchia, p.242, l.10-12
[16] Grayson, II, Profugiorum ab aerumna, p.182, l.4-5
[17] Get Abbot Suger passage. Panofsky
[18] See, Alberti, De re aedificatoria, VII,3.
[19] Renée Watkins gives a useful summing up of scholarly opinion on the question of the text being an autobiography or not. She herself makes a persuasive case for its being autobiography. Studies in the Renaissance, edited by M.A. Schaaber, Vol.IV, New York, 1957, pp.101-112.
[20] R. Furbini & A. Menci Gallorini, “L’Autobiographia di Leon Battista Alberti”, Rinascimento, Vol.12, 2nd Ser., 1972[? check], [pp.68-78] p.68
[21] Op.cit., p.69
[22] Op.cit., p.70
[23] Grayson, III, Della pittura, p.7
[24] See above, Post-mortem 1, note 5
[25] Furbini & Gallorini, p.68
[26] L.B. Alberti, Apologhi, a cura di Marcello Ciccuto, Milano,: Rizzoli, 1989, p.85
[27] Grayson, III, De pictura/Della pittura, pp.68/69, para 40
[28] Ibid.
[29] Alberti returns to the matter of painting lots of different things. In the Italian he writes only about copia but in the Latin, about varietas too. Op.cit., p.102/3, para 60.
[30] Andrea Palladio, I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura [get]
[31] In De amore, addressing Paolo Codagnello, Alberti, having begun by considering pleasure and pain in relation separately to soul and body, contemplates them in alliance: ‘Forse ancora sarebbe chi dicessi alcuni altri piaceri essere insieme e all’animo e al corpo gratissimi, come udire da ottimi musici e poeti cantare in presenza le laude tue e di chi tu ami, vedere onorar te insieme e i tuoi pregiati e lieti.’ Grayson, III, p.251
[32] Grayson, II, Profugiorum ab aerumna, p.107, l.27
[33] Orlandi, L’Architettura, I,9, p.69; ‘Just as in music, where deep voices answer high ones, and intermediate ones are pitched between them, and they ring out in harmony, a wonderfully sonorous balance of proportions results, which increases the pleasure of the audience and captivates them; so it happens in everything else that serves to enchant and move the mind.’(Rykwert et al, p.24)
[34] Grayson, III, De pictura/Della pittura, p.68/9, 40
[35]L.B. Alberti, Momus, Book I, p.41/43, para 40: ‘Dea ut primum appulit ad terras, mirabile dictu quantum universa terrarum facies plausa laetitiaque gestiret! Sino quid aurae, quid fontes, quid flumina, quid colles adventu deae exhilarati sint. Videbas flores vel ipso praeduro ex silice erumpere praetereuntique deae late arridere et venerando acclinare, omnesque suavitatum delicias, ut odoratissimum id iter redderent, expromere. Vidisses et canoras alites propter advolitantes circim applaudere pictis alis, modoque vocis deos hopites consalutare.’(p.40-42)
[36]Cecil Grayson, Teogenio, in Opere Volgari, Vol.II, 1966, p. 57-8: ‘O Microtiro mio, quanto fu sempre da pregiare la dolce amicizia! […] Ma sediamo, se cosi ti piace, fra questi mirti, luogo non meno delizioso che i vostri teatri e templi amplissimi e suntuosisimi. Qui colonne fabricate dalla natura tante quante tu vedi albori ertissimi. Qui sopra dal sole noi copre ombra lietissima di questi faggi e abeti, e atorno, dovunque te volgi, vedi mille perfettissimi colori di vari fiori intessuti fra el verde splendere in fra l’ombra, e vincere tanto lustro e chiarore del cielo; e a gratificarti suavissimi odori. E poi la festività di questi quali tu in presenza vedi uccelletti con sue piume dipintissimi e ornatissimi, a chi non dilettasse? Bellissimi, che d’ora in ora vengono con nuovi canti lodano i cieli a salutarmi!’ The preference is expressed for the natural over the artificial. Charon, in Book IV of Momus, expresses, several times, the same preference. He dispraises the theatre and praises instead the flower: ‘…shall I admire stones? Everything about a flower is beautiful and pleasing. In these man-made constructions, you won’t find anything wondrous apart from the wondrous extravagance of misplaced labour.’ (p.313, para 48) *(one wonders is he has S. Maria del Fiore in mind) (p….)
[37]Christine Smith, 1992, pp.5-6: ‘E certo questo tempio ha in sè grazia e maiestà: e quello ch’io spesso considerai, mi diletta ch’io veggo in questo tempio iunto insieme una gracilità vezzosa con una sodezza robusta e piena, tale che da una parte ogni suo membro pare posto ad amenità, e dall’altra parte compreendo che ogni cosa qui è fatta e offirmata a perpetuità. Aggiugni che qui abita continuo la temperie, si può dire, della primavera; fuori vento, gelo, brina; qui entro socchiuso da’venti, qui tiepido aere e quiéto: fuori vampe estive e autunnali; qui entro temperatissimo refigerio. E s’egli’è, come è dicono che le delizie sono quando a’nostri sensi aggiungono le cose quanto e quali le richiede la natura, chi dubiterà appellare questo tempio nido delle delizie? Qui dovunque tu miri, vedi ogni parte esposte a giocondità e letizia; qui sempre odoratissimo; e, quel ch’io sopra tutto stimo, qui senti in queste voci al sacrificio, e in questi quali gli antichi chiamano misteri, una soavità maravigliosa.’ Grayson, II, p.107. Smith discusses this passage extensively in the light of rhetorical models (pp.80-97). She is interested principally in its aesthetic content, whereas the present paper is mainly interested in its moral content and its particular imagery:
[38]René Watkins, 1969, p.134: ‘Ma sopra tutte lodo quella verissima et probatissima sententia di coloro, e quali dicono l’uomo essere creato per piacere a Dio, per riconoscere un primo et vero principio alle cose, ove si vegga tanta varietà, tanta dissimilitudine, bellezza et multitudine d’animali, di loro forme, stature, vestimenti et colori; per ancora lodare Iddio insieme con tutta l’universa natura, vedendo tante et si differentiate et si consonante armonie di voci, versi et canti in ciascuno animante concinni et soave…’ Romano, Tenente, Furlan, p.162, l.1786-1794. Here, I use Watkins’ admirable translation. There will be occasions below where I offer my own translation instead. I do so in order to allow myself slightly more paraphrased readings of the passages. My translations are identifiable by my omission of the page references to Watkins.
Alberti etc. 
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