Raffaele Brandolini, On Music and Poetry (De Musica et poetica, 1513)

The late Paul Kristeller recognized the need for a translation of Brandolini's important treatise. Transcribed here from the Latin and translated into English for the first time, this facing-page edition comprises the first humanistic treatment of music as an intellectual and performative discipline. It offers an extended look at the intersection of Roman humanist culture and leisure at the Vatican courts of Julius II and Leo X. Brandolini's circle of Roman humanists is now seen as a major element of Renaissance humanist culture. This edition will especially interest musicologists for its treatment of extemporaneous performance practices and also students of the humanist movement on subjects such as rhetoric and poetics, religion and ancient theology, and the powers of music.