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Vicente Lusitano (c. 1520 – c. 1561) was a Portuguese composer and music theorist of the late Renaissance. Some of his works on musical theory and a small number of compositions survive. Lusitano was for a time a Catholic priest and taught in several Italian cities, but later converted to Protestantism.

He is believed to have been of mixed race. Since the 1980s, he has been described as the first published black composer.

Life and career

Lusitano, a Portuguese-language term for "Portuguese", appears to be a descriptive nickname rather than a family name. Little is known of his life. He was born in Olivença, likely around 1520. Lusitano is described as pardo, a Portuguese term indicating he was of mixed European and non-European heritage. It has been suggested that his mother may have been of African descent. According to a manuscript by the 17th-century Portuguese critic Joao Franco Barreto, Lusitano came from Olivença, became a Catholic priest, and was employed as a teacher at Padua, Viterbo and Rome. His books and manuscripts of his musical compositions survive and are dated. Lusitano was in Rome by 1551. From the dedication of one of his first works, it has been suggested that Lusitano was a tutor to the Portuguese Lencastre family, who also arrived in Rome in 1551 as ambassador to the Papal court. By 1561 he had married, converted to Calvinist Protestantism, and traveled to Germany. There is no record of him after 1561.

In the 16th century, composers were usually employed by the Church, but there is no evidence that he held such a salaried post.

When he last appears in the historical record he was living in the Duchy of Württemberg.

Music

As a composer, Lusitano is known for his vocal works, including Latin motets and a madrigal. In several works he references Josquin des Prez, who had died 30 years earlier. For example, he reworked des Prez' motet Inviolata, integra for more voices.

His compositions, composed in (or about) the contrapuntal Renaissance style of his time and place, include:

• "Heu me domine", a motet included in Tratado de canto de organo (ca. 1551; see below)
• Liber primus epigramatum que vulgo motetta dicuntur, containing 23 motets for 5, 6, or 8 voices (Rome: Valerio & Luigi Dorico, 1551)
• "All’hor ch’ignuda d’herb’et fior la terra", a madrigal published in the anthology Il primo libro delle muse (Venice: Scotto, 1562)
• Beati omnes qui timent Dominum, a motet in a collective manuscript of motets and other sacred songs, compiled for the Stuttgart ducal court in 1562

Lusitano also wrote treatises. These are:

• An anonymous manuscript on the art of singing (ca. 1551), attributed to Lusitano on stylistic grounds, and published as Un tratado de canto de órgano (siglo XVI) in 1913.
• Introdvttione facilissima, et novissima, di Canto Fermo, Figvrato, Contrapon to semplice, et in concerto. Con Regole Generali per far fvghe differenti sopra il Canto Fermo, a ii, iii & iiii. voci, & compositioni, proportioni, generi. S. Diatonico, Cromotico, Enarmonico (Rome: Antonio Blado, 1553; Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1558; Venice: Francesco Rampazetto, 1561). All three editions dedicated to Marc' Antonio Colonna, Duke of Marsi.This treatise was reportedly also translated into Portuguese by Bernardo da Fonseca (Lisbon, 1603).

Lusitano was notable during his lifetime for his work as a theorist. In a 1551 debate in Rome, he espoused traditional views on the role of the three genera in music (diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic) over more radical ones put forward by Nicola Vicentino. Lusitano was deemed to have won the debate and Vicentino was fined. In 1555 Vicentino published an account of the debate that was recognised as misleading. This went on to influence later composers and may be a factor in omission of Lusitano from subsequent works on early European composers.

Lusitano's Introduttione facilissima, et novissima, di canto fermo, figurato, contraponto semplice, et inconcerto (Rome, 1553, plus reprints), contains an introduction to music, his views on the three genera, and uniquely, a systematic section on creating improvised counterpoint by setting new parts above or below a cantus firmus). Musicologist Philippe Canguilhem stated that "the significance of Lusitano’s writings is that they show how central improvised counterpoint was to everyday musical life during the Renaissance".

Lusitano's music has been revived in recent years, for example by the Australian Chamber Choir in 2019 the Marian Consort in 2021 and Chineke! Voices in 2022. His motet Heu me Domine and 1562 madrigal All’hor ch’ignuda have been recorded.

Reception

Up until the late 19th century, Lusitano was overlooked in English-language histories of music: sometimes omitted altogether, more often covered minimally. However, he has been studied by Portuguese musicologists like Maria Augusta Barbosa, who wrote a dissertation about him in 1977, originally in German and present until this day in Portuguese musicological investigation of the 16th century. Since the summer of 2020, when the Black Lives Matter movement re-ignited discussions about race in the United States, there has been a flurry of interest in Lusitano and his work.

His works have been edited in modern editions by several Portuguese musicologists since at least 1952, when Manuel Joaquim first published Lusitano's madrigal All'hor ch'ignuda d'herb et fior at Portuguese Journal Gazeta Musical, and has continued until our days with the modern publishing of motets like Regina coeli and Heu me Domine in 2012 by mpmp. In 2022, the music historian Joseph McHardy also made Lusitano's scores accessible in modern editions on the Internet, which allowed dozens of non-Portuguese-speaking choirs to perform and record his music. Previous recordings includes the anthology Cançoes, Vilancicos, e Motettes Portugueses Séculos XVI-XVII, by Huelgas Ensemble, Sony Classics, 1994.

Works

Motets

• Praeter rerum seriem
• Inviolata, integra et casta es
• Salve regina
• Emendemus in melius
• Regina Caeli
• Aspice Domine

Notes

1. Only in the 1960s and 70s was a 17th-century manuscript discovered describing him as "homem pardo", i.e., a mixed-race person with African origins.
2. Barreto's manuscript was used by Diogo Barbosa Machado in his Bibliotheca Luzitana, published in Lisbon by Ignacio Rodrigues in 1752.

References

1. ^ Schumann, Garrett (5 January 2023). "A Black Composer's Legacy Flourishes 500 Years After His Birth". The New York Times. Retrieved 5 January 2023.
2. ^ Schumann, Garrett (23 April 2020). "Centuries of Silence". VAN Magazine. Retrieved 9 September 2021.
3. ^ Spicer, Jonathan, ed. (2012). Revealing the African presence in Renaissance Europe. Baltimore: Walters Art Museum. p. 24. ISBN 9780911886788.
4. ^ Flandreau, Suzanne (1998). "Black Music in the Academy: The Center for Black Music Research". Notes. 55 (1): 26–36. doi:10.2307/900345. JSTOR 900345.
5. ^ Stevenson, Robert (1982). "The First Black Published Composer". Inter-American Music Review. 5 (1): 79–103.
6. "Vicente Lusitano, the first published black composer". Radio Three BBC. 28 June 2021.
7. ^ McHardy, Joseph (16 June 2022). "Vicente Lusitano: Why was the first Black published composer just a footnote in histories?". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 June 2022.
8. Williams, Holly (14 June 2022). "The great 16th-Century black composer erased from history". BBC. Retrieved 18 June 2022.
9. Stevenson, Robert (1962). "Vicente Lusitano: New Light on his Career". Journal of the American Musicological Society. 15 (1): 76–77. doi:10.2307/830056. JSTOR 830056. Retrieved 24 August 2023.
10. Brannon, Samuel J. (2016). Books about Music in Renaissance Print Culture: Authors, Printers, and Readers. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. pp. 297–298. Retrieved 24 August 2023.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
11. Collet, Henri (1913). Un tratado de canto de organo (siglo XVI), manuscrito en la Biblioteca Nacional de París. Madrid: Librería Gutenberg. Retrieved 24 August 2023.
12. Fétis, F.J. (1863). Biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie generale de la musique (2nd ed.). Paris: Librairie Firmin Didot Frères. p. 379. Retrieved 24 August 2023.
13. Introduttione. Bibliothèque nationale de France
14. Brannon, Samuel J. Review of Chanter sur le livre à la Renaissance: Les traités de contrepoint de Vicente Lusitano ed. by Philippe Canguilhem. Notes, vol. 71 no. 4, 2015, p. 716-719. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/not.2015.0074.
15. "You are being redirected..." www.auschoir.org. Retrieved 2023-01-15.
16. "Proms at Cadogan Hall". BBC. Retrieved 20 August 2021.
17. . Barbosa, Maria Augusta Alves (1977), Vicentius Lusitanus: ein portugiesischer Komponist und Musiktheoretiker des 16. Jahrhunderts, Lisboa, Secretaria de Estado da Cultura. Direcção Geral do Património Cultural.
18. . Acerca do motete “Heu me Domine” de Vicente Lusitano, Luís Henrique, 2018
19. Nery, Rui Vieira (1984), A Música no Ciclo da Bibliotheca Lusitana, Lisboa, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.
20. . Day-long Conference dedicated to Vicente Lusitano in 2012 by CESEM/FCSH NOVA
21. ‘Um madrigal de Vicente Lusitano publicado no “Libro delle Muse”’, Gazeta musical, vol. II, n.º. 13–14 (1951), 13–14
22. . Modern score of Regina Coeli by mpmp, 2012
23. . Modern score of Heu me Domine by mpmp, 2012
24. . Cançoes, Vilancicos, e Motettes Portugueses Séculos XVI-XVII, Sony Classics
25. "Composer in the news: Vicente Lusitano, ahead of his time and ready for rediscovery » Early Music America". Early Music America. 2023-11-26. Retrieved 2023-12-01.

Additional sources

• Bonnie Blackburn: "Vicente Lusitano", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed January 6, 2006), (subscription access)

External links

• Free scores by Vicente Lusitano at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)

• People from Olivenza
• Portuguese classical composers
• Renaissance composers
• Music theorists
• 16th-century Portuguese composers
• Portuguese male classical composers
• Portuguese people of African descent
• 1520 births
• 1561 deaths