The title of this new collection of essays echoes Ursula Günther's groundbreaking article from 1963, ‘Das Ende der Ars Nova’.Footnote ¹ The historiography of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries has long been problematic. If Günther had designated the stylistic transformation of the late Trecento with the term Ars subtilior, The End of the Ars Nova in Italy aims not to label, but simply to describe this crucial moment in music history. The book focuses on the final years of the Great Western Schism (1378–1417), when a ‘discontinuity in the manuscript tradition’ marks the disappearance of the older Trecento repertory from the sources and its substitution with a new one (p. vii).

At the centre of this transformational moment is the so-called San Lorenzo palimpsest (Florence, Archivio del Capitolo di San Lorenzo, Ms. 2211). This important anthology – later erased and reused to record church properties – has been recently published in a splendid facsimile edition with multi-spectral images by Andreas Janke and John Nádas.Footnote ² The new readability of the source prompted a conference, organised by the Ezio Franceschini Foundation in Florence and the Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage of the University of Pavia, which was held in Certaldo in 2017. Most of the essays in the collection originate from papers read at the conference and use new readings of the San Lorenzo palimpsest as a point of departure.

Elena Abramov-van Rijk opens the book with an exploration of the soundscape of Trecento Florence as depicted in Franco Sacchetti's sonnet Se, come intendo, la campana grossa. Demonstrating once more her virtuosic ability to decode Italian poetry and its musical implications, van Rijk identifies with meticulous precision the addressee of the sonnet, his location and his sonic environment.

The two essays that follow – by John Nádas and Margaret Bent – focus instead on individual composers. Nádas reports on his discovery of new documents (transcribed in the Appendix) linking Paolo da Firenze with the Benedictine monastery of the Badia Fiorentina and the entourage of Cardinal Angelo Acciaiuoli (1349–1409). These connections put Paolo at the centre of book production in Trecento Florence and suggest links to other central sources such as the fragment Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Inc. F.5.5. and the Squarcialupi codex (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Pal. 87). Margaret Bent concentrates on the motets in San Lorenzo, observing that the manuscript is the only Italian source containing such a section. Her rigorous analysis illuminates the scribe's choice of repertory, evaluates attributions and adds to the biography of Hubertus de Salinis.

The most refined codicological and palaeographical tools are also fully on display in the essays of Antonio Calvia and Andreas Janke. With a fresh reading of the San Lorenzo manuscript, Calvia attempts to decode the scarcely legible ballata C […] (tempo fugge) by Francesco Landini. The methodology is particularly fascinating: the author uses the formal articulations of the text – marked by capitals and/or traces of colour – to recreate two equally plausible reconstructions of the piece. Janke focuses on Donato da Firenze's transmission in San Lorenzo and in the Squarcialupi codex. His essay challenges the long-established idea that composers’ sections are organised chronologically in the Ars Nova anthologies and suggests different ordering criteria, such as grouping musicians belonging to the same musical circles. If correct, this proposition has major implications, since most of our Trecento narrative is based on a chronology suggested by the main sources.

Embodying his usual double-self as a Trecento musicologist and a computer wizard, Michael Scott Cuthbert confesses – in a somewhat playfully written essay – his inability to find new concordances of the San Lorenzo codex in his Electronic Medieval Music Score Archive Project (EMMSAP). For a moment, the digital humanities concede to traditional inquiry.

The collaboration between textual and musical philology is crucial for the study of the Trecento repertory. Once the text is established with a degree of confidence, analysis can follow on a more secure basis. Davide Checchi and Michele Epifani demonstrate its benefits by producing a new edition of two French virelais in the Codex Reina (BNF n.a.fr. 6771). Mikhail Lopatin looks at text–music relationships through the lens of metapoesis, an analytical model he has already fruitfully applied in previous studies.Footnote ³ Metapoetic terms are self-referential words that describe ‘the mechanic of the text or its musical setting’ (p. 74). The results highlight compositional choices otherwise not immediately apparent; for instance, the verb tornare (to return) in the tornello (the last two lines) of Giovanni Mazzuoli's A piè del monte justifies – in Lopatin's analysis – the reappearance of a musical motive. This kind of analysis connects the music, text and poetic structure of the madrigal.

The last two essays (by Anne Stone and Gianluca D'Agostino) return to geographical issues, but shift the focus from Florence to other centres of the peninsula. Her expertise on the Modena manuscript (Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, α.M.5.24) informs Stone's exploration of musical patronage in Lombardy with special focus on Matteo da Perugia and Beltrame Feragut. Among the political figures supporting the arts, she adds the previously overlooked name of Cardinal Branda Castiglione. Following other studies that stress the importance of the Angevin Court of Naples, D'Agostino seeks to reconstruct musical life in the city during the reign of Queen Joanna I (1343–82).Footnote ⁴ The task is particularly challenging because of the lack of archival and direct musical sources. Even so, the results are fascinating, and he is able to suggest a new occasion for the ballade Par les bons Gedeon et Sanson by Filippotto da Caserta.

The End of the Ars Nova in Italy was published at the end of 2020 as volume 21 of La tradizione musicale, a series promoted by the Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage of the University of Pavid-Campus of Cremona, the Walter Stauffer Foundation (Cremona) and the Ezio Franceschini Foundation (Florence). The series is dedicated primarily to the Middle Ages and Renaissance and hosts studies with a strong palaeographical and philological component, such as editions of music or theoretical treatises. The End of the Ars Nova in Italy is no exception. The essays display different methodologies, but at the basis of each of them is a rigorous attention to the verbal and musical text. Despite their declining significance especially in the Anglo-American academic world, the disciplines of palaeography and philology still offer an invaluable tool for the study of late Trecento music. This book demonstrates their continuous vitality; the variety of topics in the collection – from musical and textual analysis to soundscape studies – reveals their adaptability to new methodological developments. Broadened and powered by the most recent advances, including in multi-spectral imaging and the digital humanities, the study of sources remains a fundamental line of research for the future of medieval musicology.