Around the middle of the fourteenth century, the previously dominant musical centres of Italy – Milan and Verona – began to lose their position to Florence. Gherardello da Firenze is considered to be the earliest composer associated with this city. Although he was a clergyman, it is mainly his secular works that have survived to our times. However, the most important Florentine Trecento composer is considered by scholars to be Francesco Landini, slightly younger than Gherardello, who at the time composed the largest number of works written in Florence. Interestingly, during his lifetime, Landini was known mainly as an outstanding organist, working at the Florentine convent of Santa Trinita and later at the Basilica of San Lorenzo. In the surviving musical sources associated with Landini, his name often appears with an annotation referring to his instrument. Admiration for Francesco’s playing was expressed in 1389 by the lawyer and writer Giovanni Gherardo da Prato, in his work Il Paradiso degli Alberti, describing Florence at the time. An organetto (portative organ) even accompanies Landini on his tombstone portrait. Perhaps his outstanding talent as a performer and appreciation during his lifetime explain why a relatively large number of his works have survived to this day. However, they are exclusively secular compositions.

Simply… Philharmonic! Project 3:

Both historical eras and cultural centres are often associated with outstanding individuals who represent the art created in a given place and time. However, confining ourselves to the individual perspective often distorts the full picture of the artistic reality of the time. For Baroque Italy, such a point of reference is certainly Antonio Vivaldi. Although he was an outstanding violinist, he also wrote concertato works not intended for string instruments, as did another violinist, Georg Philipp Telemann, who today remains in the shadow of the great Baroque luminaries from Saxony – Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. Unlike Vivaldi, Telemann was a multi-instrumentalist, also experienced in playing wind and keyboard instruments.
Francesco Landini can be considered a symbol of Florence, and also of the entire Italian output of the Trecento. He too delighted his contemporaries with his performance art, specialising in organ. The most outstanding composer of the Polish Republic of the first half of the fifteenth century known to us today was Nicolaus of Radom. Very little is known about his life, but he can certainly be associated with his activities in early Jagiellonian Cracow.
 

Daniel Laskowski