Sean Tarjoto
Humanities II
Prof. Hildebrandt
Mar. 5, 2000
DJ Written	

	Il Solazzo, meaning “solace” is a collection of 18 ballate, or dance-songs, as well as the name of the son of Buonare (“good spirit”), a man who lives in the castle Buongoverno (“good government) with this friend Pierbaldo. 
	The man Solazzo is an accomplished talented musician, as well as a singer and storyteller.  His invitation to castle Buongoverno by Pierbaldo provides him with the opportunity to entertain the other guests.  The compilation within Il Solazzo is “music for a medieval banquet.” “La Badessa” is the tale of a lascivious abbess, who, in her rush to condemn a nun caught red-handed with her own lover, is entangled in her own hypocrisy.  She grabs her lover’s underpants, who flees after the voyeurish nun exclaims, “A l’acurruomo! A l’acurruomo!” (Help, help, a man! a man!), and places them on her head as a veil.  It is not the nun who suffers the humiliation, but the deceptive hypocrite that is the abbess who finds herself standing in the middle of the convent with men’s underpants on her head, surrounded by her hysterical convent.
	The chorus of  “La Badessa” finds the female voice being joined by a male tenor.  It is A B B A, and actually has a subtle place throughout the entire song.  It is the liveliest work in Il Solazzo, if not the most entertaining. That it was usually played in middle-class parties shows a sort of ubiquitous liberality surprising for the medieval age.  It appears not only in song form, but also in medieval French romances, Aesop’s fables, and The Decameron.  
	It is also a combination of dance music, humor, and a morality lesson.  Although the moral seems less about the sins of condemnation, or claiming false witness even, but more about the danger of hypocrisy.  Although the nun has no option, her scenario is frank, honest, the truth revealed, in contrast to the lies (foiled by her own carelessness) constructed by the abbess. Had the abbess committed any sin but lust, she could have still condemned the second nun.  Such piety is the vocation of nuns but even they are only human (they must be, or else the medieval worldview demands they be either divine or demonic).  It is the task of the abbess that she never find herself facing a crisis, whether it be fire, barbarians, or a libidinous nun, with the wrong veil on.

	Matheus de Perusio(? - ca. 1418), also known as Matteo da Perugia, had an eccentric flair for melody. History leaves us an obscure account of the choirmaster of the antipope Alexander V.  This position was given to him after his work editing an important surviving manuscript, in which much of his own work were represented.
	In “Trover Ne Puis” (“I Find No Ease”), a three-part rondeau, we have the epitomy of ars subtilior (a variant of ars nova - “new art”).  It’s melody is impulsive, and rather unpredictable. Several notes sing one peice of text in instrumental, while the tenor and contratenor remain in modes of their own, seemingly unconnected with the instrumental. The contrasting juxtaposition of low voices and and short, high recorders, and long, medium violin would be confusing if not alternated. The violins become short and high with the contratenor while the tenor equivocates with almost bass-like syllabic stretches. The structure of this work is as uneasy and melancholy as its title.
	Perusio was an obscure eclectic among his contemporaries.  His music was as lively as any of the work being recorded at the time the aforementioned manuscript was discovered among academia. The quality, originality, and stylistic variety  is stands in contrast to his more famous contemporaries, such as Johannes Ciconia.  His influence, however, was negligible as evidenced from the fact his owkr survives in only one manuscript. 
	What I find unusual is this is a lament which oddly does not resemble either prayer or confession.  We discover that it is simply an unrequited lover whom finds no recompense in religion, “Ah, I shall needs be ruined and wretched / if in my fair lady’s cause I find no succour.”  Love and religion frequently embrace in forms of compassion or union, but love unanswered  turns easily into lust and is soon condemned by the church.  To the church, love only hurts when it is not really love, when it is lust, envy, covetousness.  Although such “bitter separation” is categorically sin in the alienative sense, the song refuses to acknowledge God as the source of the lover’s despair.  “Bereft of joy, I am sad and dejected / by the power of Fate that envieth me.”