Uccelli [née Pazzini], Carolina Uccellini, Marco

Ugolino, Biagio.

See Ugolinus, Blasius.

Ugolino of Orvieto [Ugolino di Francesco Urbevetano; Ugolinus de Urbeveteri]

(b ?Orvieto, c1380; d Ferrara, 23–31 Jan 1452). Italian theorist and composer.

1. Life and music.

He was already at Forlì Cathedral by 18 July 1411. On 13 May 1413 ‘domnus Ugolinus de Urbeveteri’ was reported as a papal singer swearing allegiance to Pope Gregory XII. From 1415, when he represented the city of Forlì at the Council of Konstanz, he was a canon at Forlì Cathedral, appointed archdeacon in 1425; he was also rector at S Antonio abate in Rivaldino, Forlì. In 1427 he served as episcopal vicar during Bishop Giovanni Caffarelli's absence in Rome and was evidently a figure of substance within the city. He had correspondence with the humanists Girolamo Guarini, Ambrogio Traversari and Flavio Biondo; he was famous as an orator; and he is credited with a treatise on physics.

Ugolino visited Ferrara with the singers of Forlì on St Luke's day, 1426. On 12 October 1429 he was elected canon of Ferrara Cathedral, but he was still living in Forlì in November 1429; his permanent residence in Ferrara is documented only from March 1431. Evidently the rise of the Ghibellines in Forlì had forced his departure. On 25 August 1431 he was elected archpriest of Ferrara Cathedral (until 1448), in which capacity he seems to have played an important role in the expansion of the choir-school.

In 1448–51 he was vicar to Cardinal Pietro Barbo (the future Pope Paul II), in the diocese of Cervia. On 16 December 1449 he was appointed a papal secretary, a position he retained to the end of his life. Ugolino made his last will on 23 January 1452 at his home in Ferrara; an inventory of his estate was ordered on 31 January. According to an inventory of 1466, he had left the cathedral a copy of his Declaratio and a large but incomplete music-book that he had compiled, apparently of his own compositions.

But Ugolino's musical legacy is hard to judge. Although he was one of the last surviving composers of the Italian Trecento, the main body of his surviving music is all but illegible: the 18th gathering of the palimpsest manuscript I-Fsl 2211 was devoted to songs by him, 10 large openings containing perhaps 11 pieces; they include works with French as well as with Italian text. Three songs, headed ‘Idem Ugolino’, appear at the end of I-Rc 2151 (c1450), the grandest manuscript of his Declaratio; all are in the then outdated full-black notation with red coloration (a technique found also in the Ferrarese manuscript P-Pm 714 from the same years; see Robertus de Anglia), and use intricate rhythmic devices that reflect the Ars Subtilior tradition, though their style is otherwise that of the late Trecento composers. All three appear to be in two voices, though here too there are severe legibility problems (attempts at editing them are in Seay, 1955). The first, Si videar invidorum sequi consortia, seems to be a ballade, though its Latin text has no clear structure; L'alta virtute and Chi solo a si are both Italian ballate, though for the latter only the discantus line survives.

2. Theory.

Ugolino's Declaratio musicae disciplinae (‘declaration of the discipline of music’; ed. in CSM, vii, 1959–62) was most likely completed during his years at Ferrara. Divided into five books, probably on the model of Boethius, it represents the summa of his learning, both speculative and practical. From the very first sentence of the introduction, ‘The intellective power is known to be the noblest of the powers of the soul’, it is clear that the treatise is pitched at a high intellectual level. Music is approached through reason and the senses, but reason, based on mathematics, takes precedence: music is a science. This Aristotelian orientation is evident throughout the treatise.

Proceeding from things more known to those less known, Ugolino began with the elements of music. Book 1, divided into 165 chapters, covers pitches, properties, intervals, mutation and modes, but more than half of it is an extensive discussion of chants and their differences. The much shorter Book 2, on ‘musica melodiata’, is devoted to note-against-note counterpoint. Consonant and dissonant intervals are calculated within a hexachord and between different hexachords, illustrated with numerous examples. The book closes with a very important chapter on musica ficta, with rules and examples for perfecting imperfect consonances and ‘sweetening the harmony’. Book 3 is an extended gloss in Scholastic terms on Johannes de Muris's Libellus cantus mensurabilis, rather oddly preceded by a discussion of modal ethos. With this book we come to the end of Ugolino's writings on practical music. Book 4 takes up the speculative aspect of intervals: it treats proportions first from a purely mathematical point of view, then as the basis of intervals. Book 5 returns to the high philosophical plane, with an inquiry into the nature of sound and its relation to musica instrumentalis, humana and mundana. Here the principal authority is Boethius.

It is clear that Ugolino, while not mentioning authors more recent than Johannes de Muris, had studied the works of Prosdocimus de Beldemandis, in whose footsteps he followed in treating both the practical and the speculative aspects of music. Many sections of Book 2 recall Prosdocimus's own counterpoint treatise. Moreover, the short treatise of the monochord appended to Ugolino's Declaratio is directly modelled on Prosdocimus's Parvus tractatulus de modo monacordum dividendi. Both produce one division in musica recta and two in musica ficta, providing flats and sharps. The only difference is that Ugolino began on c rather than G and split the semitones B–C and E–F into equal halves. Prosdocimus's and Ugolino's divisions, resulting in five flats and five sharps, were to have considerable influence on late-15th-century theorists in Italy. A significant source for the speculative portions of the Declaratio, likewise unnamed by Ugolino, has been identified as the anonymous Questiones on music (F-Pn lat. 7372), perhaps written by a pupil of Biagio Pelacani or someone in his circle.

Ugolino's treatise, though less original than was once thought, was nevertheless influential, especially the first two books. Franchinus Gaffurius copied substantial extracts in his Extractus parvus musicae of about 1474 and was able to purchase his own (incomplete) copy after he moved to Milan (GB-Lbl Add.33519). John Hothby used a copy (I-Fn Magl.XIX.36) for teaching purposes. Bartolomeus Ramis de Pareia transmitted Ugolino's metrical rules on counterpoint, with improvements, in his Musica practica of 1482. Giovanni del Lago quoted the Declaratio frequently in his letters, although he believed it to be by Prosdocimus. The treatise is a major if unacknowledged source of the anonymous Compendium musices printed in many editions in Venice between 1499 and 1597 (ed. in CSM, xxxiii, 1985). A chained copy of Ugolino's Declaratio was still in the sacristy of Ferrara Cathedral in the 16th century, when it was mentioned as being ‘thoroughly useful to clerics’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

LockwoodMRF

F.X. Haberl: ‘Bio-bibliographische Notizen über Ugolino von Orvieto’, KJb, x (1895), 40–49

U. Kornmüller: ‘Musiklehre des Ugolino von Orvieto’, KJb, x (1895), 19–40

R. Bagattoni: ‘Ugolino da Orvieto’, Madonna del Fuoco, ii (1916), 32–4; iii (1917), 31–6, 46–7, 63–8: iv (1918), 11–15, 43–5 [incl. edn of his will]

A. Seay: ‘Ugolino of Orvieto, Theorist and Composer’, MD, ix (1955), 111–66

A. Seay: ‘The Declaratio musice discipline of Ugolino of Orvieto: Addenda’, MD, xi (1957), 126–33 [contains notes on three pieces in I-Rc 2151]

Andrew Hughes: ‘Ugolino: the Monochord and Musica Ficta’, MD, xxiii (1969), 21–39

J.E. Murdoch: ‘Music and Natural Philosophy: Hitherto Unnoticed Questiones by Blasius of Parma(?)’, Manuscripta, xx (1976), 119–36

E. Peverada: ‘Ugolino da Orvieto nella erudizione scalabriniana e alla luce di nuovi documenti’, Giuseppe Antenore Scalabrini e l'erudizione ferrarese nel '700: Ferrara 1978 [Atti della Accademia delle scienze di Ferrara, lv (1977–8)], 489–506; repr. in E. Peverada: Vita musicale nella chiesa ferrarese del Quattrocento (Ferrara, 1991), 1–19

M. Lindley: ‘Pythagorean Intonation and the Rise of the Triad’, RMARC, xvi (1980), 4–61

J. Nádas: ‘Manuscript San Lorenzo 2211: Some Further Observations’, L'Europa e la musica del Trecento: Congresso IV: Certaldo 1984 [L'Ars Nova italiana del Trecento, vi (Certaldo, 1992)], 145–68

J. Herlinger, ed. and trans.: Prosdocimo de' Beldomandi: Brevis summula proportionum quantum ad musicam pertinet; Parvus tractatulus de modo monacordum dividendi, GLMT (Lincoln, NE, 1987)

C. Panti: ‘Una fonte della Declaratio musicae disciplinae di Ugolino da Orvieto: quattro anonime “Questiones” della tarda Scolastica’, RIM, xxiv (1989), 3–47

E. Peverada: ‘La scuola di canto della cattedrale’, in Vita musicale nella chiesa ferrarese del Quattrocento (Ferrara, 1991), 101–43, esp. 111–15

G. di Bacco and J. Nádas: ‘The Papal Chapels and Italian Sources of Polyphony during the Great Schism’, Papal Music and Musicians in Late Medieval and Renaissance Rome: Washington DC 1993, 44–92

A.M. Busse Berger: Mensuration and Proportion Signs (Oxford, 1993)

D. Fallows: ‘The End of the Ars Subtilior’, Basler Jb für historische Musikpraxis, xx (1996), 21–40

DAVID FALLOWS (1), BONNIE J. BLACKBURN (2)