Teoria musicale e prassi esecutiva nei trattati di danza del Quattrocento: una nuova lettura

Abstract

At the Este court in Ferrara, Domenico da Piacenza (ca. 1410–ca. 1477) appears as the founder of the fifteenth-century dance treatise tradition. A close analysis of De arte saltandi et choreas ducendi / De la arte di ballare et danzare (ca. 1454) reveals how the author interpreted, transformed, and applied the contemporary mensural system to the misure or tempi of dance (bassadanza, quaternaria, saltarello, piva), closely integrating it with bodily movement. From this perspective, the mensural sign and musical proportion are not abstract or indecipherable elements proposed by a theorist detached from mensural practice, but essential tools for understanding a renewed relationship between music and dance—conceived as the interaction between mensural sign and choreic proportion, as Domenico da Piacenza repeatedly emphasizes in the treatise. Supporting this interpretation, the analysis focuses on the balli Iupiter and La fia Guielmina, studied and collated from their respective sources, in order to verify in detail the practical application of the theoretical principles outlined in the treatise.