Composer, Organist. Italy's most popular musician of the Ars Nova ("New Art") period. The son of a painter, he was blinded by smallpox as a child but learned to play the organ by ear. He was said to have been particularly skilled at the organetto, a hand-pumped miniature organ, and his two known portraits depict him with this instrument. Apart from visits to Venice and Northern Italy Landini spent most of his life in his native Florence, serving as choirmaster at the Church of San Lorenzo from 1365 until his death. During the 1380s he also helped build and install the organs at Florence Cathedral and the Church of S. Annuziata. Through historical circumstance, Landini is one of the earliest Western composers whose fame rests on his secular music; of his many sacred pieces only a fragment of a motet has come down to us. What survives are some 150 beautiful songs for two or three voices, on such subjects as love, friendship, religion, and then-current events. He was not an innovator and the overall effect of his tunes and harmonies is one of smoothness, though it is backed by a high degree of technical resource. The seeming simplicity of his songs made them much loved and they were widely circulated in manuscript copies, reaching as far afield as Germany before the advent of the printing press. Today they are favorites among fans of Early Music.
Composer, Organist. Italy's most popular musician of the Ars Nova ("New Art") period. The son of a painter, he was blinded by smallpox as a child but learned to play the organ by ear. He was said to have been particularly skilled at the organetto, a hand-pumped miniature organ, and his two known portraits depict him with this instrument. Apart from visits to Venice and Northern Italy Landini spent most of his life in his native Florence, serving as choirmaster at the Church of San Lorenzo from 1365 until his death. During the 1380s he also helped build and install the organs at Florence Cathedral and the Church of S. Annuziata. Through historical circumstance, Landini is one of the earliest Western composers whose fame rests on his secular music; of his many sacred pieces only a fragment of a motet has come down to us. What survives are some 150 beautiful songs for two or three voices, on such subjects as love, friendship, religion, and then-current events. He was not an innovator and the overall effect of his tunes and harmonies is one of smoothness, though it is backed by a high degree of technical resource. The seeming simplicity of his songs made them much loved and they were widely circulated in manuscript copies, reaching as far afield as Germany before the advent of the printing press. Today they are favorites among fans of Early Music.
Bio by: Bobb Edwards
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