Francesco Landini

Francesco Landini (c. 1325–1397) was an Italian composer, organist, singer, and poet, and the leading composer of the Trecento style. His surviving music is chiefly secular vocal song.

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Trecento music: Italian music of the fourteenth century, marked by distinctive secular song forms and regional styles. Landini is its most prominent composer, especially in the surviving repertory of Italian song.
Ecco la primavera: A two-voice ballata by Francesco Landini celebrating the arrival of spring. This widely known song offers a compact example of his melodic style and ballata writing.
Florence in the Middle Ages: A powerful Italian city whose civic, religious, and commercial life flourished during the medieval period. Landini’s career unfolded in Florence, where he worked as a musician and held a church position.
Gherardello da Firenze: A fourteenth-century Florentine composer of sacred and secular music. He represents the generation of Trecento composers working in Florence around Landini’s time.
Ballata: A medieval Italian song form with a refrain framing one or more stanzas. Landini’s surviving secular songs are predominantly ballate.
Non avrà ma' pietà questa mia donna: A three-voice ballata by Francesco Landini, preserved in the Squarcialupi Codex. Its three-part texture shows Landini working beyond the two-voice format common in his songs.
Santa Trinita: A Florentine church and monastery belonging to the Vallumbrosan order. Landini served as organist at Santa Trinita, connecting his music-making to a specific Florentine institution.
Giovanni da Firenze: A fourteenth-century Italian composer of madrigals and ballate, also known as Giovanni da Cascia. His secular songs provide a close comparison with Landini’s Trecento repertory.
Madrigal (Trecento): A fourteenth-century Italian secular vocal form, usually set for two or three voices. Landini also composed madrigals, placing him within the broader Trecento song repertory.
Landini cadence: A melodic cadence in which an upper voice rises by a semitone while another voice descends by a third. The cadence is named for Landini, whose music frequently uses this distinctive voice-leading pattern.