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Volume 8 (2002) No. 1

Jeffrey Kurtzman and Linda Maria Koldau

Trombe, Trombe d'argento, Trombe squarciate, Tromboni, and Pifferi in Venetian Processions and Ceremonies of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

Document 30: Complaint by nuns at the convent of Santo Spirito regarding Pentecost services.  Venice, Archivio di Stato, Monastero dello Spirito Santo, Busta 16. Quoted and translated in Jonathan E. Glixon, "Con canti et organo: 'Music at the Venetian scuole piccole during the Renaissance'," Music in Renaissance Cities and Courts: Studies in Honor of Lewis Lockwood, ed. Jessie Ann Owens and Anthony M. Cummings (Warren, Michigan: Harmonie Park Press, 1997), 132.

Et una volta già pocchi anni volevanno far cantar la messa granda . . . ma con si poca solennità et musica, che causò più tosto derisione che devotione, se bene havevano incaparati, et apparechiati, e pronti li migliori musici della Città, si da voce, come da instrumenti, come è antico costume, et per disprecio non volse il guardian di quel anno lasciar far la musica solita et ordinaria, ma li fece tacee, se ben poi li dui di seguenti, havendo egli dormito su quella sua opinione, si fece in chiesia la musica consueta delli altri anni.

one time, several years ago, they wanted to sing the great mass . . . but it was done with such little solemnity and music that the result was derision rather than devotion.  Even though a down payment had been made, and the church all prepared, and the best musicians of the city, both singers and instrumentalists, as was the custom, were ready, to spite us the guardian of that year decided not to let them do the usual music but rather remain silent; the next two days, however, having slept on it, he put on the music in the church, as had been usual in other years.

Return to note 262.