LANDINI, FRANCESCO

Blind poet-organist of the ars nova era; b. Fiesole, Italy, c. 1325; d. Florence, Sept. 2, 1397. His father was the painter Jacopo del Casentino. Francesco, blinded by smallpox in early childhood, probably studied music under Jacopo da Bologna, developing a prodigious memory and great skill at improvisation. He also worked in philosophy and astrology, and supported the theories of william of ockham. He was crowned poet laureate at a Venetian festival in 1364. At least nine of his musical compositions are known to be settings of his own verses, and many anonymous verses he set are possibly his. Although he was for many years organist at the Basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence, his only surviving organ piece is an arrangement of one of his own love songs. An account book of Andrea de'Servi shows that he was paid for five motets, but no sacred works of his are known today. He is considered the most prolific ars nova composer of 14th-century Italy. There survive 12 madrigals, a caccia, and 142 ballate set for voices and instruments in two or three parts. Both his portrait in the Squarcialupi Codex (Florence, Bibl. Medicea Laurenziana, Pal. 87) and his tombstone at San Lorenzo show a blind figure holding a small lap-organ or organetto, on which he could accompany his own singing, as described in Giovanni da Prato's II Paradiso degli Alberti (1389).

Bibliography: Works, ed. l. ellinwood (Cambridge, Mass.1939). f. villani, Liber de Civitatis Florentiae Famosis Civibus, ed. g. c. galletti (Florence 1847). l. schrade, ed., Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, 4 v. (Monaco 1956–58) v. 4. l. ellinwood, "The Fourteenth Century in Italy," New Oxford History of Music, ed. j. a. westrup, 11 v. (New York 1957–) 3:77–80. n. pirrotta, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. f. blume (Kassel-Basel 1949–) 8:163–168. p. gargiulo, ed., Dolcissime Armonie: nel sesto centenario della morte di Francesco Landini (Florence 1997). m. p. long, "Francesco Landini and the Florentine Cultural Élite," in Early Music History 3: Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Music, ed. i. fenlon (Cambridge, Eng.1983) 83–99; "Landini's Musical Patrimony: A Reassessment of Some Compositional Conventions in Trecento Polyphony," Journal of the American Musicological Society, 40 (1987) 31–52. n. slonimsky, ed., Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (8th ed. New York 1992) 1002. k. von fischer, "Francesco Landini," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. s. sadie, v. 10 (New York 1980) 428–434.

[l. ellinwood]