Bernardo Pisano
Bernardo Pisano (also
Pagoli) (
October 12,
1490 –
January 23,
1548) was an
Italian composer, priest, singer, and scholar of the
Renaissance. He was one of the first
madrigalists, and the first composer anywhere to have a printed collection of secular music devoted entirely to himself.
He was born in
Florence, and may have spent some time in
Pisa (hence his name). As a young man he sang and studied music at the church of Ss Annunziata in Florence. In
1512 he became
maestro di cappella there, a job which held in addition to supervising the choristers and singing in its various chapels. Evidently he was favored of the
Medici, for they not only hired him for his church job but gave him a post as a singer in the papal chapel in
Rome, immediately after Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici became
Pope Leo X. Sometime during the period 1512 to 1520 he was the teacher of
Francesco Corteccia, organist and composer to
Cosimo I de' Medici.
Pisano remained based in Rome for the rest of his life. In addition to singing in the papal chapel choir, he acquired ecclesiastical
benefices from the Pope, including one each at the cathedrals of
Seville and
Lerida. Between
1515 and
1519 he traveled between Florence and Rome, holding musical positions in both cities, but in
1520 he returned to Rome, except for occasional visits to Florence.
Pisano made the mistake of returning to Florence in
1529, during the three-year period of republican government, the result of a successful coup d'état against the Medici. Since he had obviously close connections to the Medici, he was accused of being a spy for the papacy, seized, imprisoned, and put to torture. In September 1529 the famous siege of Florence began, and he was released. In
1530 Florence was captured by papal troops and the Medici returned to power. After escaping alive from his former home, he returned to Rome to stay.
In
1546 Pope Paul III appointed him
maestro di cappella of his private chapel, a position which he only held for two years, for he died in 1548. Among the singers in this elite group was
Jacques Arcadelt, who was to become even more famous than Pisano as a madrigal composer.
While Pisano wrote sacred music in a sober,
homophonic style, almost certainly for use in Ss Annunziata when he was
maestro di cappella there, it is as a composer of secular music that he was most influential. Pisano is arguably the first madrigalist. The slightly later composers who became famous masters of the genre —
Costanzo Festa, Jacques Arcadelt,
Philippe Verdelot — were aware of his work and copied some of his stylistic traits.
Pisano's early secular music is typical of Italian music of the first two decades of the
16th century: light, rhythmically active, usually homophonic, containing frequent repetition, and generally for three voices. Most of these pieces are
ballatas or
canzonettas. His later secular music, including the important collection of
1520, the first printed book of secular music dedicated to the work of a single composer, contains music which is best defined as madrigalian (although he did not use the term). Poetry is sometimes serious, and sometimes humorous; seven poems by
Petrarch are represented. The music carefully attempts to convey the emotion expressed by the poem being set. Often the last line of the text is repeated for emphasis, a peculiarity which was to become a defining feature of the early madrigal. Texturally, the music varies between homophonic and
polyphonic passages, as well as between passages for groups of two, three, and four singers together.
* "Bernardo Pisano," in
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1561591742
*
Gustave Reese,
Music in the Renaissance. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0393095304
*
Alfred Einstein,
The Italian Madrigal. Princeton, 1949.
