Con lagreme bagnandome el viso: mourning and music in late medieval Padua

Abstract

In the years before his death, Johannes Ciconia (1370?-1412) set to music several poems penned by the young Venetian humanist Leonardo Giustinian. One of the earliest of these settings is 'Con lagreme bagnandome el viso'. This article proposes that both the poem and its setting by Ciconia operate within the emotional community of early humanists active at Padua in the decades around the year 1400. The public funeral oratory of one of the high-profile humanists active in this community in Padua, Pier Paolo Vergerio, reveals a renewed interest in ancient rhetoric that was instrumental in the development of new modes of self-expression within this emotional community. Different types of musical repetition in Ciconia's setting of 'Con lagreme' serve as musical analogues to rhetorical figures of pathos witnessed in the orations of Vergerio.