CMM 32 Music of the Florentine Renaissance, Edited by David Burn and Frank A. d'Accone. Vol. XIII Francesco Corteccia: Collected Sacred Works: Counterpoints on the Cantus Firmi of Solemn Masses, Volume 32

This volume continues the series of Francesco Corteccia’s complete works with an edition of his settings of twenty-one polyphonic Mass-propers for principal feasts of the year and saints especially revered in Florence. Corteccia referred to them in the dedication of his Hymnary (CMM 32, Vol. 12, 1996 ) to Duke Cosimo de’ Medici, where he said that he hoped soon to send the Duke his counterpoints newly composed on the plain chants of solemn Masses. Undoubtedly composed for the singers of the Florentine Chapel, the propers are preserved anonymously in a manuscript volume copied by Corteccia’s pupil and principal copyist, Michele Federigi. The volume is cited in the earliest preserved inventory of Cathedral holdings from 1651 and has been there ever since. Though several propers were added later to the manuscript’s core, some by Federighi himself, documentary and analytical evidence show that all but one of them are by Corteccia. In his settings Corteccia placed the borrowed cantus firmus of the chant in equal notes in the bass and above this he added three newly composed upper parts that unfold, practically without stop, in lively non-imitative counterpoint. Corteccia evidently departed here from his usual style in order to recreate the boldness and immediacy of improvised church polyphony and perhaps also to illustrate the talents of his chapel singers. He was still at work on his counterpoints in June 1571, when death overtook him. For more information, see http: //www.corpusmusicae.com/cmm/cmm\_cc032.htm