THE UNICORN ENSEMBLE

With its purely instrumental compositions the Codex
Faenza represents a special case in the period of musical
creativity around 1400. The manuscript was copied
between 1400 and 1420. In it an anonymous musician
recorded the practice of diminution, providing tablature
versions of vocal compositions. In doing so he used a
musical staff of six lines, linking two of them with bar
lines to create a score. In the field of vocal music at the
time, it was the usual practice to write the various parts
of a polyphonic composition either one after the other on
the same page or in separate part books. Thus the
interplay of the voices became evident only when the
piece was performed in ensemble. In two separate parts
the codex contains 52 ornamented versions of Italian
and French secular vocal music of the 14 th century as
well as liturgical cantus-firmus pieces. Among the
composers represented are Guillaume de Machaut
(c.1300 - 1377), Jacopo da Bologna (1340 - c.1360),
Francesco Landini (c.1325 - 1397) and anonymous 14th-
century composers. This mixture of cultural influences is
not surprising; there was a strong French orientation in
the courtly culture of Italy at the beginning of the 15th
century.