Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Niccolò Patavino [Niccolò da Padova, Nicolaus de Albis]

(d 1516). Paduan composer and priest. He spent much of his career with Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI. He was apparently already in her services in Rome during the very late 15th century, for he and a companion accompanied her from that city to Ferrara for her wedding in January 1502 to Alfonso I d’Este, oldest son of Duke Ercole I d’Este. ‘Niccolò da Padova, cantore’, with an annual salary of 96 lire, remained with Lucrezia until at least 1511, when he was included in a list of benefices as ‘Messer Nicolò, cantore de la duchessa’. He appears to have left her services just after this: in April 1512 Lucrezia, apparently ignorant of his whereabouts, asked Francesco Gonzaga of Mantua to aid ‘Niccolo cantor’. Like other Ferrarese musicians who departed the city during this period, he must have journeyed to Rome to join the services of the new music-loving Pope, Leo X. He is probably identical with the ‘Nicolaus de Albis’ (called ‘clericus Paduanus’) who entered the private chapel of Leo in 1513. He died in May 1516.

Niccolò is the author of 17 frottole, all of which first appeared in Petrucci's second through sixth frottola books (RISM 1505³, 1505⁴, 1505⁵, 1505⁶ and 1506³). They represent works heard and sung by the Borgia duchess. He is also assuredly the ‘Don Niccolò’ who contributed two or three works to Petrucci’s Laude, libro secondo (1508³); both Ben serà crudel e ingrato and Salve, croce, unica spene were written for Good Friday. Both are also corporate prayers, adopting the plural rather than the singular voice and were probably intended for one of the elaborate processions held in Ferrara during Holy Week. The third lauda, Senza te, madre Maria, is printed twice in Petrucci’s book, once with this text and ascribed to ‘D. Niccolò’ and once with the text Vengo a te, madre Maria and ascribed to ‘Jacobus Folianus Mutinensis’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

K. Jeppesen: Die mehrstimmige italienische Laude um 1500 (Copenhagen and Leipzig, 1935)

R. Schwartz, ed.: Ottaviano Petrucci: Frottole, Buch I und IV, Publikationen älterer Musik, viii (Leipzig, 1935/R)

G. Cesari and others: Le frottole nell’edizione principe di Ottaviano Petrucci, IMa, 1st ser., i (1954)

H.-W. Frey: ‘Regesten zur päpstlichen Kapelle unter Leo X’, Mf, ix (1956), 46–57, esp. 48

C. Gallico: Un libro di poesie per musica dell’epoca d’Isabella d’Este (Mantua, 1961)

B. Disertori: Le frottole per canto e liuto intabulate da Franciscus Bossinensis, IMi, new ser., iii (1964)

K. Jeppesen: La Frottola (Århus, 1968–70)

F. Luisi: La musica vocale nel Rinascimento (Turin, 1977)

L. Lockwood: ‘Musicisti a Ferrara all'epoca dell'Ariosto’, L'Ariosto: la musica, i musicisti, ed. M.A. Balsano (Florence, 1981), 7–29

W.F. Prizer: ‘Isabella d’Este and Lucrezia Borgia: the Frottola at Mantua and Ferrara’, JAMS, xxxviii (1985), 1–33

W.F. Prizer: ‘Renaissance Women as Patrons of Music: the North-Italian Courts’, Rediscovering the Muses: Women’s Musical Traditions, ed. K. Marshall (Boston, 1993), 186–205

WILLIAM F. PRIZER

Niccolò Piffaro.

Name of either one or two Italian composers of the early 16th century. Niccolò Piffaro Senese can be identified as Maestro Niccolò di Cristoforo di Brandino (b 1480; d ?1566), a Sienese composer, shawm player and leader of the wind band at Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico. He was the son of Maestro Cristoforo di Brandino, from Lombardy, who had settled in Siena by the early 1470s and played the shawm in the Palace band from 1472 to 1495. Niccolò himself enjoyed a long service there, from 1510 to 1565. He is the author of eight works in Sambonetto’s Canzonetti sonetti strambotti e frottole libro primo (RISM 1515²), ascribed to ‘Nic[colò] Pif[faro] S[enese]’ or some variation of this. They are squarely in the style of the north-Italian frottola, though the texts appear to be local products.

An otherwise unknown composer and shawm player, Niccolò Piffaro, probably from northern Italy, is the author of ten works in Petrucci’s sixth through to eighth books of frottole (1506³, 1507³, 1507⁴). D’Accone (1991) argued convincingly against the identification of this man with the Sienese Niccolò on the grounds that the latter’s career was centred exclusively in his native city, far removed from the vast majority of Petrucci’s composers. Furthermore, the one work of Niccolò Piffaro in the Sienese print (1515²), Se’l t’è cara, appears there anonymously and as a contrafactum (Con dolor vivo); it is attributed to him only in Petrucci’s sixth book of frottolas. Finally, three of this Niccolo’s barzellette include refrains that cite popular tunes, a characteristic practice in the Veneto and Lombardy, but not seen in Tuscany. It is possible that he was a Mantuan musician, since he is described in Filippo Oriolo’s Monte Parnasso (c1520) as playing with the Mantuan shawm players Bernardino Piffaro and Giovanni Mantovano Piffaro. Luisi conflated the two men. Gallico (1961) conflated the northern Niccolò Piffaro with a third figure, Niccolò Patavino.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L. Cellesi: ‘Ricerche intorno ai compositori dello “Zibaldoncino Musicale” marucelliano’, Bullettino senese di storia patria, xxxviii (1931), 307–09

L. Cellesi: ‘Il lirismo musicale religioso in Siena nel Trecento e quello profano nel Cinquecento’, Bullettino senese di storia patria, xli (1934), 93–112

G. Cesari and others: Le frottole nell’edizione principe di Ottaviano Petrucci, IMa, 1st ser., i (1954)

C. Gallico: Un libro di poesie per musica dell’epoca d’Isabella d’Este (Mantua, 1961)

H.C. Slim: ‘Musicians on Parnassus’, Studies in the Renaissance, xii (1965), 134–63

K. Jeppesen: La Frottola, i–iii (Århus, 1968–70)

D. Fusi: Le frottole nell’edizione di Pietro Sambonetto (Siena 1515) (thesis, U. of Siena, 1976–7)

F. Luisi: La musica vocale nel Rinascimento (Turin, 1977)

F.A. D’Accone: ‘Instrumental Resonances in a Sienese Vocal Print of 1515’, Le Concert des voix et des instruments à la Renaissance: Tours 1991, 333–59

W.F. Prizer: ‘Games of Venus: Secular Vocal Music in the Late Quattrocento and Early Cinquecento’, JM, ix (1991), 3–56

C. Gallico: Rimeria musicale popolare italiana nel Rinascimento (Lucca, 1996)

F.A. D’Accone: The Civic Muse: Music and Musicians in Siena during the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Chicago, 1997)

WILLIAM F. PRIZER