Italian town. A small town in northern Italy, near the Slovenian and Austrian borders, it is of Roman origin and is one of the most important Langobard establishments in Italy. Cividale's significance for the history of music lies mainly in the liturgical and para-liturgical polyphonic activity connected with its collegiate church of S Maria Assunta, where the Aquileian rite was used with some local variations. By the 13th century a scolasticus was entrusted with the teaching and practice of music; the post was superseded in 1338 by the appointment of a cantor from among the canons. Liturgical manuscripts of local origin (in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale) contain 12 examples of early two-part polyphony (cantus planus binatim) to be sung on major feasts; among them is the Easter Benedicamus trope ‘Submersus jacet Pharao’ found only in Cividale sources and known to have been performed there as late as 1960. Equally important was the tradition of liturgical drama, four examples of which survive among the same manuscripts. Among other examples of two-part polyphony, in black mensural notation, is an ‘Et in terra pax’ by Antonius de Civitate Austrie; manuscript XXIV contains the four Passions transcribed in cantus fractus notation by the local canon, Comuzio della Campagnolla, who signed and dated his work (1448). Some fragments from an early 15th-century polyphonic manuscript (with pieces by Philippus de Caserta, Jacob de Senleches and Zachara da Teramo) may be associated with the presence in Cividale of the papal court and of the council in 1409; archival documents show, on the other hand, that throughout the 15th century, and even later, polyphonic singing was entrusted to four mansionarii from the chapter, and that only at the end of the century was a maestro di cappella appointed, the post being held by such musicians as Guglielmus Marescot and the printer and composer Gerard de Lisa.
The frottola composer Filippo de Lurano was maestro di cappella in Cividale from 1512 to 1515; manuscript LIX, a collection of sacred Renaissance polyphony, probably dates from this time, while manuscript LIII, containing polyphonic masses probably derived from contemporary printed volumes, is slightly later. Giovanni Ferretti was maestro di cappella from 1589 to 1596, while the main figure in the Baroque period was Giovanni Sebenico (active in Cividale 1660–63 and 1693–1705). During the 19th century two active supporters of the Cecilian movement were maestri di cappella in Cividale, G.B. Candotti (1832–76) and Jacopo Tomadini (1876–83).
G.B. Candotti: ‘Cenni bibliografico-biografici sui maestri di musica friulani’, GMM, vi (1847), 273–5
E. de Coussemaker, ed.: Drames liturgiques du Moyen Age (Rennes, 1860/R), 280–310, 344ff
G. Marioni: ‘La cappella musicale del duomo di Cividale’, Memorie storiche forogiuliesi, xli (1954–5), 115; xlii (1956–7), 157
P. Petrobelli: ‘Nuovo materiale polifonico del Medioevo e del Rinascimento a Cividale’, Memorie storiche forogiuliesi, xlvi (1965), 213–15
M. Huglo: ‘Une composition monodique de Latino Frangipane’, RdM, iv (1968), 96–8
G. Cattin: ‘La tradizione liturgica aquiliese e le polifonie primitive di Cividale’, Le polifonie primitive in Friuli e in Europa: Cividale del Friuli 1980, 117–30
R. Della Torre: ‘Il “Submersus jacet Pharao”’, ibid., 139–42
M. Grattoni: ‘Il “Missus ab arce” nella tradizione e nelle fonti di Cividale’, ibid., 131–8
L. Lockwood: ‘Sources of Renaissance Polyphony from Cividale del Friuli’, Saggiatore musicale, i (1994), 249–314
PIERLUIGI PETROBELLI