Italian family of music patrons. They were the ruling family of the Duchy of Milan from 1450 to 1535. During their rule, Milan was one of the most active centres of Renaissance culture, including music. The first Sforza duke, Francesco I, already had a number of trumpeters and wind players in his service when he seized the duchy in 1450. His son Galeazzo Maria (ruled 1466–76) was himself a musician and in 1473 established a ducal chapel for which he recruited musicians both from Italy and abroad. He employed some 40 singers, most of them French or Flemish. About half were attached to the court chapel, which was directed by Antonio Guinati; among these were Josquin, Alexander Agricola, Loyset Compère, Johannes Martini and Jean Cordier. The others belonged to the duke’s chamber, where the music was directed by Gaspar van Weerbeke; among these were Jacotin and George Brant. The international character of these bodies contrasted with the predominantly Italian membership of the chapel of Milan Cathedral, directed by Gaffurius. There were reciprocal influences between them and the cathedral.
Largely because of his wife, Beatrice d’Este, musical development reached a very high level under Ludovico il Moro, who acted as a regent for Galeazzo Maria’s son Gian Galeazzo from 1479 and ruled in his own right from 1495 (he was defeated by the French in 1499 and died a prisoner in France in 1508). In addition to the chapel and chamber musicians, the court was entertained by fiddlers and singers such as Atalante Migliorotti (a friend of Leonardo da Vinci) and Serafino Aquilano (previously employed by Cardinal Ascanio Sforza in Rome along with Josquin). Such men introduced the vogue for less sophisticated forms such as the frottola, strambotto and barzelletta, which were often settings of poems by Gaspare Visconti. Musical festivities were particularly sumptuous (see illustration). Leonardo da Vinci, who was at the court from 1482 to 1499, designed sets and stage machines for some of these performances, including the celebrated Festa del Paradiso of 12 January 1490 on the occasion of the wedding of Gian Galeazzo to Isabella of Aragon, to a text by Bernardo Bellincioni based on a subject suggested by Ludovico il Moro. Dancing was extremely popular, Ippolita Sforza, daughter of Francesco I, being a noted practitioner; Antonio Cornazano dedicated to her the first edition of his Libro dell’arte del danzare (1455).
The Sforza family also fostered the theoretical and didactic aspects of music. Ludovico il Moro appointed Gaffurius lecturer on music at court; Florentius dedicated a Liber musicae to Cardinal Ascanio (it is an illuminated manuscript now in I-Mt). Instrument makers were encouraged too, among them Isacco Argiropulo, organist and organ builder, who was at the court in 1472–3, and Lorenzo Gusnasco of Pavia, a maker of viols, organs and clavichords who was highly esteemed by Beatrice d’Este and her sister Isabella Gonzaga. Leonardo da Vinci invented a new kind of lira while at court.
After the defeat of Ludovico il Moro in 1499, the Sforza chapel was dissolved. Ludovico’s sons Massimiliano and Francesco, however, had as maestro until 1509 the Flemish musician Simon de Quercu. Massimiliano recovered the duchy in 1512, and in that year Marchetto Cara and his pupil Roberto Avanzani lived at his court. He soon lost the duchy again to the French, but his brother regained it in 1522 and ruled as Francesco II until his death in 1535.
See also Milan.
G. Porro: ‘Lettere di Galeazzo Maria Sforza, duca di Milano’, Archivio storico lombardo, v (1878), 107–29, 254–74, 637–68; vi (1879), 250–68
E. Motta: ‘Musici alla corte degli Sforza’, Archivio storico lombardo, xiv (1887), 29–64, 278–340, 514–61; pubd separately (Milan, 1887/R)
V. Rossi: ‘Per la storia dei cantori sforzeschi’, Archivio storico lombardo, xxviii (1901), 150–60
G. Cesari: Musica e musicisti alla corte sforzesca (Milan, 1923)
Storia di Milano, vii–ix (Milan, 1956–61) [pubn of the Fondazione Treccani degli Alfieri per la storia di Milano]
C. Sartori: ‘Henricus Isaac o Isacco Argiropulo?’, CHM, iii (1963), 177–86
E. Lowinsky: ‘Ascanio Sforza’s Life: a Key to Josquin’s Biography and an Aid to the Chronology of his Works’, Josquin des Prez: New York 1971, 31–75
F. Degrada: ‘Musica e musicisti nell’età di Ludovico il Moro’, Milano nell’età di Ludovico il Moro: Milan 1983, ii, 409–15
W.F. Prizer: ‘Music at the Court of the Sforza: the Birth and Death of a Musical Center’, MD, xliii (1989), 141–93
MARIANGELA DONÀ