Massimo Troiano
Encyclopedia
Massimo Troiano was an Italian Renaissance
Renaissance music
Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance. Defining the beginning of the musical era is difficult, given that its defining characteristics were adopted only gradually; musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s.Literally meaning...

 composer, poet, and a brief, but vivid chronicler of life at the court of Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...

's ruler, Duke Albrecht V
Albert V, Duke of Bavaria
Albert V was Duke of Bavaria from 1550 until his death. He was born in Munich to William IV and Marie Jacobaea of Baden.-Early life:Albert was educated at Ingolstadt under good Catholic teachers...

 in the late 1560s, the only period in which Troiano is known to history.

Life

Nothing is known of Troiano's early life other than that he was from the vicinity of Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...

, possibly from the town of Corduba, since in his first and second books of canzoni he calls himself "Massimo Troiano di Corduba da Napoli".

Only his activities during the three-year span of 1567-70 are documented, but those in some detail. In 1567 he published in Treviso
Treviso
Treviso is a city and comune in Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Treviso and the municipality has 82,854 inhabitants : some 3,000 live within the Venetian walls or in the historical and monumental center, some 80,000 live in the urban center proper, while the city...

 a book of canzoni, secular songs on his own verse. By early 1568 he was in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

, in the service of the House of Wittelsbach, singing in the Bavarian Hofkapelle under the direction of Orlande de Lassus
Orlande de Lassus
Orlande de Lassus was a Franco-Flemish composer of the late Renaissance...

. He traveled between Munich and Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

 at least twice, with one extended stay in Venice in 1569, where he waited for the Duke of Bavaria to send him money and an acceptance letter for continued service. He remained in Munich until Easter
Easter
Easter is the central feast in the Christian liturgical year. According to the Canonical gospels, Jesus rose from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion. His resurrection is celebrated on Easter Day or Easter Sunday...

 1570, when he was accused of murdering one of his musical colleagues, and fled. A warrant was issued for his arrest, but he was never found, and there is no known documentation of his activity after that time.

Another Troiano, Giovanni, appeared in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 in 1571, a few months after Massimo's disappearance from Munich. There is no evidence to indicate whether Giovanni was related to Massimo, but they were both composers of secular vocal music. Giovanni lived for an additional half-century, until 1622.

Work and influence

While Massimo Troiano published four books of secular songs (in three collections—in 1567, 1568 and 1570), he is best known for having provided in his Dialoghi a vivid and colorful description of life in the Bavarian court and especially the lavish marriage ceremony for the Munich wedding of Duke Wilhelm V and Renée of Lorraine
Renata of Lorraine
Renata of Lorraine was the daughter of Francis I, Duke of Lorraine and Christina of Denmark. Her maternal grandparents were Christian II of Denmark and Isabella of Burgundy...

. Modern scholars consider Troiano to be an unreliable (since he was being paid to portray the court in the most positive terms), but useful witness.

Troiano's Dialoghi was published in Munich in 1568, Venice in 1569 and appeared shortly thereafter in a Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 translation. The book is the most complete description of how Orlande de Lassus produced and staged his musical performances, and contains accounts of both instrumental and vocal music. "The singers [serve] every morning at High Mass
Missa Cantata
Missa Cantata is a form of Tridentine Mass defined officially in 1960 as a sung Mass celebrated without sacred ministers, i.e., deacon and subdeacon.Other names in pre-1960 sources:...

 and at Vespers
Vespers
Vespers is the evening prayer service in the Western Catholic, Eastern Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran liturgies of the canonical hours...

 on Saturdays and the vigils of the feasts of obligation. The wind instruments are played on Sundays, and on feast days at Mass and at Vespers in company with the singers." Troiano also gives unusually detailed descriptions of how Mass was celebrated and which parts were sung polyphonically
Polyphony
In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....

—all important information in reconstructing Renaissance performance practice. Troiano also left an account of the 1567 performance of the largest polyphonic composition of the Renaissance, the 40- and 60-voice Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno
Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno
The Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno is a musical setting of the Ordinary of the Mass, for 40 and 60 voices, by Florentine Renaissance composer Alessandro Striggio. It probably dates from 1565–6, during the reign of his employer Cosimo I de' Medici. Lost for more than 400 years, it was recently...

by Alessandro Striggio.

Troiano's music was mostly in the light Neapolitan style of the canzon villanesca alla napoletana, sometimes called simply "canzonettas", three-part vocal compositions related to madrigals but more formulaic in character, although in Troiano's hands, along with his compatriot Giovanni Leonardo Primavera, they began to approach the artistic world of the madrigal. All of his books of canzonette he published in Venice, and they show aspects both of Neapolitan and contemporary Venetian style. Most of the verse he likely wrote himself, and he sometimes writes nostalgically of his native Naples, for which he longed.
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