The so-called ‘Staffarda Codex’, which is housed in the National University Library of Turin (Ris. Mus. I 27), constitutes one of the earliest testimonies of musical life in Piedmont. Staffarda is a small country town, now in the commune of Rivello, some ten kilometers from Saluzzo. It contains a group of Cistercian monastic buildings dating from the community’s foundation around the years 1127 to 1138 (the church itself was built between 1150 and 1210) by Marquis Manfredi (†1175), the son of Bonifacio del Vasto and the first member of a dynasty which governed
the Marquisate of Saluzzo until 1548. After a series of vicissitudes, the marquise was attached to the territories of the Duchy of Savoy under the terms of the Treaty of Lione in 1601.
The Abbey of Santa Maria, which has belonged to the Mauritian order since 1750, enjoyed excepcional properity until the early part of the fourteenth century. In the following century, it came under the control of a succession of abbots in commendam (i.e. secular clerics, in most cases from high-ranking families) and it was stripped of a great part of its many treasures. It was finally reduced to ruins by French troops under the leadership of General Nicolas Catinat, who won a historic battle on the same territory during what was known as the War of the Great Alliance.
the Marquisate of Saluzzo until 1548. After a series of vicissitudes, the marquise was attached to the territories of the Duchy of Savoy under the terms of the Treaty of Lione in 1601.The Abbey of Santa Maria, which has belonged to the Mauritian order since 1750, enjoyed excepcional properity until the early part of the fourteenth century. In the following century, it came under the control of a succession of abbots in commendam (i.e. secular clerics, in most cases from high-ranking families) and it was stripped of a great part of its many treasures. It was finally reduced to ruins by French troops under the leadership of General Nicolas Catinat, who won a historic battle on the same territory during what was known as the War of the Great Alliance.
The Staffarda Codex contains a reference to one of the commandatory abbots, Brixianus Taparelli, a scion of the Savigliano branch of the Tapparelli (or Taparelli) family, who lived in the second half of the sixteenth century: folio 40r is headed ‘Ex libris Fratris Brixiani Tapparelli Religiosi Stapharde’. The abbey was pillaged a number of times and the many manuscripts it housed were dispersed; some of them however were bought (or at least acquired) by Duke Carlo Emmanuele I of Savoy and lodged in the ducal library. They included the codex whi
ch concerns us here and is the only one of real musical interest; in 1723 it was transferred by Vittorio Amedeo II to the library of the Turin Royal University.The codex is made up od 101 folios bearing three distinct watermarks, the oldest of which corresponds to one that was fairly widespread in Piedmont between 1420 and 1475 or thereabouts; it would seem that the most recent of the three dates from the early decades of the sixteenth century. The manuscript contains a total of 48 compositions, all of them, with the exception of one piece for two voices, being either for three or for four. There are eight masses (including one Missa pro defunctis, ‘mass for the dead’ or Requiem), eleven Magnificats, fourteen motets of various types (hymns, antiphons, Salve Reginas, etc.) two Benedictuses, twelve chansons, a canone enigmatico and an instrumental piece. The composers of only nineteen of the pieces are known, and in most cases they have been identified by comparison with other sources. The composers so far identified include Alexander Agricola, Loyset Compère, Hayne van Ghuzeghem, Heinrich Isaac, Antoine de Fevin, Jacob Obrecht, Antoine Brumel and the mysterious figure of Engarandus Juvenis – works by whom are found only in the Staffarda Codex: a Massa pro defunctis, a Magnificat for four voices and a three-voice Salve Regina -, all of whom died between the end of the fifteenth century and the first two decades of the sixteenth.
The most representive piece is beyond a doubt the mass A lumbreta dum bussonet for four voices, which bears the marginal note ‘Brumel gentil galant’ (a very common expression in the repertory of Piedmontese, Savoyard and Franco-Provençal popular songs); the work was later published in the Liber quindecim missarum (Andea Antico, Rome, 1516) under the more accurate title A l’ombe d’ung buissonet. Even Carpentras (i.e. Elzéar Genet, † Avignon, 1548) used this very same text for one of his own masses published in Avignon in 1532. Both are ‘parody’ masses (i.e. works which make use of pre-existing material) and are based on a three-part song by Josquin Desprez, En l’ombre d’ung buissonet au matinet. This song, whose melody (in the superius) features in the Chansonnier de Bayeux (a collection probably compiled in Normandy around the years 1490 to 1495) was itself published by Andrea Antico in 1503. Another song by Josquin to the same words, but reworked as a four-part canon on a diferent melody, is known to us via a manuscript dating from 1496 and published by Petrucci in 1503.
Antoine Brumel, one of the composers most representative of his generation, divided his time between Geneva and Chambéry over the period 1486 to 1492; between June 1501 and July 1502, he was in the service of the Capella Ducale of Savoy, before finally settling at the court of Ferrara where he was maestro dic cappella until 1520. In the Staffarda Codex, Brumel’s composition, in the shape of a double canon like the four-part song by Josquin, appears only for two parts, bassus and altus; the other two voices, tenor and superius, proceed in canon over the bassus and altus respectively. This work is a superbly solemn and skilful manifestation of the complex art of Flemish counterpoint.It should also be pointed out that the text on which the melody is constructed has a similar opening to that of a well-known song, A l’umbreta del bussum, found throughout Piedmont and in certain areas of western France. It is important to remember that Brumel was also the composer of a mass entitled Berzerette savoyenne (published in 1503) written to the song of the same title by Josquin Desprez (1501), thus demonstrating once again the links between that were forged by the Franco-Flemish composer with the court of the Duke of Savoy.
In addition to Brumel’s mass, the Staffarda Codex contains, as was mentioned above, seven others. One of them is a Missa pro defunctis for four voices expressly attributed to Engarandus Juvenis. There is absolutely nothing that we can say about this composer, two more of whose works feature in the codex. Nevertheless, an inventory of the ‘libri storici della Francia’, housed today in the Turin National Archives, provides evidence of the existence of a copy of the Chronique d’Enquerrand de Monstrelet, depuis 1400 jusqu’en 1444 (‘Chronicles by Enquerrand de Monstrelet, from 1400 to 1444’, a continuation of those by Froissard), thus enabling us to conjecture that the composer in question could be the son of this same chronicler from Picardy, whose name seems to have been common in the north of France and Burgundy, areas from which came most of the composers who entered the service of the dukes of Savoy and the leading Italian courts. The trail, however, is a doubtful one; it could just as well lead to Enguerrand Quarton, the painter from Laon who was active mainly in Provence from 1444 to 1466 and to whom a splendid Madonna di Misericordia was at one time attributed. This large retable portrays Ludovic II of Saluzzo together with his wife Marguerite de Foix; it is now attributed to Hans Clemer, the ‘Master of Elva’ and is housed in the Casa Cavassa in Saluzzo.
In the fifteenth century and a good part to the sixteenth, polyphonic settings of the words of the Missa pro defunctis were not common; the text itself was not finalized until later, in accordance with the decisions of the Council of Trent on liturgical matters. The earliest known example of this genre is a work by Ockeghem, since the Requiem that Dufay composed in 1470 has not come down to us. Ockeghem’s mass consists of an Introit (Requiem aeternam), a Kyrie, a Graduel (Si ambulem), a Tractus (Sicut cervus) and an Offertory (Domine Jesu Christe), but lacks the one text which was to become fundamental to services commemorating the death, the Sequence Dies irae, and the first polyphonic setting is generally held to be that by Brumel, which was published in 1516. However the Staffarda Codex gives the lie to ‘official’ historiography, since in the Requiem by Engarandus Juvenis, which is certainly earlier that that date – it was probably written in the closing years of the fifteenth century – there is a setting of the Dies irae. It is written for different combinations of two, three and four voices in alternation with stanzas sung in Gregorian chant.
This elegant, refined musical document holds, along with the rest of Engarandus’ mass, a fascination which is increased by the fact that both the circunstances and the place in which the Requiem was written are quite unknown, at least for the moment. The fact it is preserved in a codex from the library of the Abbey of Staffarda, situated on the territory of the Marquise de Saluzzo, might one to suppose that the work is linked, if not with the history of the church of Saluzzo (made a diocese only in 1511) or with the church of the Marquisate itself (it should be recalled that the last two great marquisses were Ludovic I, who died in 1475, and Ludovic II, who died in 1504), at least with one of the abbots in commendam who directed the Cistercian monastery towards the end of the fifteenth century. And yet it should not be forgotten that although the codex contains mainly sacred works, it also includes thirteen secular pieces (twelve of which are chansons) which cannot be associated with the usual repertory of the abbey. That is why it seems more than probable that the manuscript, which almost certainly was Piedmontese in origin, was brought to the library of the abbey by its legitimate owner, Brixianus Taparelli, when he was appointed as Commandatory Abbot to the Cistercian monastery.
Alberto Basso
Translation: John Sidgwick
