Sight, sound and ceremony in the chapel of Galeazzo Maria Sforza

Abstract

Bernardino Corio's late fifteenth-century history of Milan covers the city's past from its foundations to the collapse of the Sforza dynasty. Following the historiographic traditions established by Leonardo Bruni, its essential outlines are founded on careful use of sources and, for more recent events, contemporary memories and impressions. It is, however, also characterised by judicious revisionism and anecdotal invention. The careful reader always needs to ask why digressions have been included and what hidden points are being made. It is therefore well worth inquiring why Corio, a member of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza's court, chose to link his master's assassination on 26 December 1476 with a passage on his chapel choir and musical taste.

Josquin and Milan

“…Moreover, in 1993 Evelyn Welch produced the damning evidence of the stabling records of 1476: they showed that Weerbeke shared four horses with one other singer, Compere shared three, but Josquin shared only two. 34 Welch remarked on this: 'Scholars have correctly noted that, as singers often relied on benefices, Josquin's low salary did not necessarily indicate a lower estimation of his talents. But in this impartial indicator, Josquin was still down at the bottom of the list.…”