Dataset for Florentine Trecento Musical Iconography and Contemporary Musical Performance

Abstract

In documenting the use of Trecento musical instruments in Florence, information has been gathered from five categories of documents: payment records from surviving archives, contemporary chronicles, contemporary literature, medieval music theory treatises and relevant modern accounts. Frequently encountered generic names for musicians have not been included in the catalogue of instruments as the instruments actually played are not specified. While the works from which these documents have been extracted make no pretence at giving a factual account of Florentine musical practice, they are important for describing the musical activities of those not usually paid for their musical activity: the amateur players who were an important part of the Florentine soundscape. From the initial file of 48,985 documents, a file of 33,247 unique records was developed with one keyword for each line. All documents with their line numbers are held in the full document in which the keyword is found. This file includes names of instruments, but generic terms for players of instruments as well as more specific terms are listed separately. Non-instrumental musical activities such as singing and dancing and their cognate forms are also listed.