Antonello da Caserta, also Anthonello, Antonellus Marot, was an Italian composer of the medieval era

Medieval music

Medieval music is Western music written during the Middle Ages. This era begins with the fall of the Roman Empire and ends sometime in the early fifteenth century...

, active in the late 14th and early 15th centuries.

Essentially nothing is known of Antonello's life. Earlier in the 20th century, Nino Pirrotta

Nino Pirrotta

Nino Pirrotta was an Italian musicologist of international renown who specialized in Italian music from the late medieval, Renaissance and early Baroque eras. In 1931 he earned a degree in art history from the University of Florence after having already earned a diploma in organ performance...

 thought Caserta was a Neapolitan

Naples

Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...

 composer, but because most of his surviving works are in northern Italian manuscripts, this is disputed. Allusions in his texts suggest that he worked for the Visconti

House of Visconti

Visconti is the family name of two important Italian noble dynasties of the Middle Ages. There are two distinct Visconti families: The first one in the Republic of Pisa in the mid twelfth century who achieved prominence first in Pisa, then in Sardinia where they became rulers of Gallura...

 family in Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

 around the turn of the 15th century, and archival documents place him in Pavia

Pavia

Pavia , the ancient Ticinum, is a town and comune of south-western Lombardy, northern Italy, 35 km south of Milan on the lower Ticino river near its confluence with the Po. It is the capital of the province of Pavia. It has a population of c. 71,000...

 in 1402. Antonello was a monk

Monk

A monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, living either alone or with any number of monks, while always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose...

, though the order to which he belonged is not known.

Antonello da Caserta is one of the more renowned composers of the generation after Guillaume de Machaut

Guillaume de Machaut

Guillaume de Machaut was a Medieval French poet and composer. He is one of the earliest composers on whom significant biographical information is available....

. Antonello set texts in both French and Italian, including Beauté parfaite of Machaut; this is the only surviving musical setting of a poem by Machaut which is not by Machaut himself. He was highly influenced by French musical models, one of the first Italians to be so. One of his ballades quotes Jehan Vaillant, a composer active in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. He also made use of irregular mensuration signs

Time signature

The time signature is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats are in each measure and which note value constitutes one beat....

, found in few other manuscripts. He also uses proportional rhythms in some ballades, a device which became more popular in later periods. His Italian works tend to be simpler, especially the ballate

Ballata

The ballata is an Italian poetic and musical form, which was in use from the late 13th to the 15th century. It has the musical structure AbbaA, with the first and last stanzas having the same texts. It is thus most similar to the French musical 'forme fixe' virelai...

. Both his French and Italian works take as their subjects courtly love

Courtly love

Courtly love was a medieval European conception of nobly and chivalrously expressing love and admiration. Generally, courtly love was secret and between members of the nobility. It was also generally not practiced between husband and wife....

.

French

(all for three voices)
Ballades

• Amour m'a le cuer mis
• Beauté parfaite
• Dame d'onour en qui
• Du val prilleus (or Du ciel perileus)
• Notes pour moi ceste ballade
• Nulle pitie de ma dame (possibly by Antonello)

Rondeaux

• Dame d'onour c'on ne puet esprixier
• Dame zentil en qui est ma sperance

Virelai

• Tres nouble dame souverayne

Italian

(all for two voices)
Ballatas

• A pianger l'ochi
• Con dogliosi martire
• Deh, vogliateme oldire
• Madonna, io me ramento
• Or tolta pur me sey
• Più chiar ch'el sol (with a fragmentary third voice)

Madrigal

• Del glorioso titolo d'esto duce