(b Arezzo, 20 July 1304; d Arquà, 18 July 1374). Italian poet and humanist man of letters. The son and grandson of notaries active in Florence, Petrarch himself never lived in Florence and only rarely visited it; his family had been exiled from the city and their confiscated property was not returned. In 1312 Petrarch's family moved to Avignon, where the papal court had recently settled. Francesco was educated in nearby Carpentras, then (1316) sent to study law at Montpellier. In 1320 he went to Bologna to continue his studies, beginning a pattern of alternate periods of residence in Italy and Provence that was to last until 1353, when he moved to Italy for good.
Petrarch returned to Avignon at the time of his father's death in 1326. He and his brother lived for a short time on their patrimony, but in 1330 Petrarch entered the service of two ecclesiastical members of the Roman Colonna family. About this time he received the tonsure; he may or may not have taken minor orders, and he never married. Over his life he accumulated canonries and other ecclesiastical benefits from the income on which he lived; but he rarely assumed canonical duties, and lived as far as possible the life of an independent man of letters.
The famous Laura was first seen by the poet in Avignon in 1327; the sonnets celebrating his love for her were written over a long period, the first redaction of the Canzoniere being undertaken in 1342. More poems were written after Laura's death in 1348, and the final text and arrangement of the Canzoniere occupied Petrarch intermittently throughout his life. The sonnets and canzoni of the Canzoniere, the Trionfi and scattered lighter poems in Italian represented for Petrarch, who was not sanguine about the state of vernacular literature, only a small part of his literary activity, most of which was devoted to biographies of classical figures, reflective essays and dialogues, epic poetry, and above all letter-writing, all in Latin.
During the 1330s Petrarch travelled in northern Europe; in 1336, the year of his celebrated climb of Mt Ventoux, he visited Rome for the first time. He settled in the country in Vaucluse in 1337, near to, but not in, crowded Avignon, which he detested. In 1340 he accepted the sponsorship of King Roberto of Naples as a candidate for poetic ‘coronation’; the ceremony took place on the Capitol in Rome in April 1341. Petrarch's view of Rome as the proper residence for both pope and emperor, and his later support of Cola di Rienzo, were part of his humanistic reverence for Latin antiquity, as was his lifelong thirst for literary fame.
Parma and Vaucluse were Petrarch's ‘Cisalpine’ and ‘Transalpine’ homes in the next decade. He was now a great celebrity, sought after as an ambassador and orator on state occasions in Italy, France and imperial domains. The rulers of Milan, Verona, Ferrara and Mantua all paid court to him. His circle of friends, among whom the most celebrated was Boccaccio, was large and was carefully cultivated through visits and correspondence. After 1353 his residence for eight years was Milan, where he was close to the Visconti; in 1361 he moved to Padua, then to Venice, and again in 1368 to Padua. The gift of a piece of land in the Euganean hills enabled him to build his final country retreat at Arquà.
Petrarch was fond of music. Among his friends were the singer Ludovicus da Beeringhen (called ‘Socrates’), a Ferrarese musician named Tommaso Bambasio to whom the poet left his lute, and a certain Confortino. Although only one poem, the madrigal Non al suo amante, survives in a contemporary polyphonic setting (by Jacopo da Bologna), other occasional verse may have been given by the poet to performers for their own use. Very little of Petrarch's verse belongs to the category of poesia per musica (ballatas and madrigals); it is not surprising that Trecento composers did not set his sonnets and canzoni, any more than they did the serious poetry of Dante.
Although Petrarchan echoes may be found in the poetry of Boiardo and Lorenzo de' Medici, the revival of Petrarchism important in the history of music begins with the work of Benedetto Gareth (‘il Chariteo’), in whose verse, made for musical performance, Petrarchan metaphors were relentlessly exploited and given ‘existential reality’ (Wilkins). The poetry of Tebaldeo and Sasso, and above all the enormously popular strambotti of Serafino de' Ciminelli dall'Aquila, belong to this late 15th-century phase.
Pietro Bembo's thorough study of Petrarch resulted in an edition of the Canzoniere (1501) that was a model for the more than 160 editions printed in the 16th century; Bembo's theories on Tuscan Italian as a literary language depended heavily on examples provided by Petrarch; and his own poetry in Petrarchistic vein gave inspiration to at least two generations of Italian poets, including Alamanni, Ariosto, Caro, Cassola, Colonna, Della Casa, Gambara, Guidiccioni, Molza, Navagero, Sannazaro and Bernardo Tasso – all of whom provided texts for madrigalists. Petrarch's verse itself was set, at first occasionally in the later period of the frottola and among the early madrigalists, then more regularly. Whole collections, such as Matteo Rampollini's Musica … sopra di alcuni canzoni del divin poeta M Francesco Petrarca (c1545) were devoted to Petrarch, whose poetry was set with special seriousness and grandeur by Willaert and the Venetian circle around him. Settings of Petrarch became less frequent in the later 16th-century madrigal, but they never entirely disappeared. The number of madrigals to Petrarchan texts is enormous; but it is not quite so large as lists of titles (VogelB) would lead one to believe. Many poems found in madrigal collections begin with a few words borrowed from Petrarch, then go their own way.
Petrarchism spread over Europe in the 16th century. In France Marot and St Gelais cultivated a poetic style influenced by the Petrarchism of Serafino; Du Bellay and Baïf began a more serious adaptation of Petrarchan themes and language to French poetry, much of which received musical setting. In England translators and imitators of Petrarch began with Wyatt, Surrey and other poets printed in Tottel's Miscellany (1557), which includes an anonymous sonnet beginning ‘O Petrarke hed and prince of poets all’. Sidney and other Elizabethan sonneteers continued English Petrarchism in richer form, but with little influence on the madrigal of the period.
Among more recent settings of Petrarchan verse might be cited songs by James Hook (c1792), several Schubert songs, the celebrated Liszt songs and piano pieces, choral works by Moniuszko (1855) and Tommasini (1918), and Schoenberg's Serenade op.24.
only those important for music
A. Solerti, ed.: Rime disperse di Francesco Petrarca o a lui attribuite (Florence, 1909)
G. Contini, ed.: Canzoniere (Turin, 5/1974)
EinsteinIM
VogelB
A. Graf: ‘Petrarchismo ed antipetrarchismo’, Attraverso il Cinquecento (Turin, 1888, 2/1926), 3–86
C. Culcasi: Il Petrarca e la musica (Florence, 1911)
W.H. Rubsamen: Literary Sources of Secular Music in Italy (ca. 1500) (Berkeley, 1943/R)
E.H. Wilkins: The Making of the ‘Canzoniere’ and Other Petrarchan Studies (Rome, 1951)
E.H. Wilkins: Studies in the Life and Works of Petrarch (Cambridge, MA, 1955)
L. Baldacci: Il petrarchismo italiano nel Cinquecento (Milan, 1957, 2/1974)
N. Pirrotta: ‘Due sonetti musicali del secolo XIV’, Miscelánea en homenaje a Monseñor Higinio Anglés (Barcelona, 1958–61), 651–62
E.H. Wilkins: Life of Petrarch (Chicago, 1961)
D.T. Mace: ‘Pietro Bembo and the Literary Origins of the Italian Madrigal’, MQ, lv (1969), 65–86
C. Rawski: ‘Petrarch's Dialogue on Music’, Speculum, xlvi (1971), 303–18
D. Stevens: ‘Petrarch's Greeting to Italy’, MT, cxv (1974), 834–6
P. Petrobelli: ‘Un leggiadretto velo ed altre cose petrarchesche’, RIM, x (1975), 32–45
T. Greene: The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven, CT, 1982)
F. Ersparmer: ‘Petrarchismo e manierismo nella lirica del secondo Cinquecento’, Storia della cultura veneta, iv/1: Il Seicento, ed. G. Arnaldi and M.P. Stocchi (Vicenza, 1983), 189–222
N. Pirrotta: Music and Culture in Italy from the Middle Ages to the Baroque: a Collection of Essays (Cambridge, MA, 1984)
M. Feldman: ‘The Composer as Exegete: Interpretations of Petrarchan Syntax in the Venetian Madrigal’, Studi musicali, xviii (1989), 203–38
M. Feldman: City Culture and the Madrigal at Venice (Berkeley, 1995)
JAMES HAAR