Francesco Landini Ecco la primavera
Francesco Landini[]
Francesco Landini was one of the most famous Italian composer, organist, singer, poet and instrument makers in late 14th century. He is well known in Trecento style, sometimes called “Ars Nova”.
Landini wrote a large numbers of Ballata, besides this, a small numbers of Madrigal and Caccia also survived. What's more, Landini created a unique technique in music composition called “ Landini Cadence”.
Ecco la primavera[]
Ecco la primavera is a duplum Italian Ballata composed by Landini, which has both tenor and bass parts. With Italian text, this 3/4 times Ballata has a lively dance step with very simple structure and lyrical melody. 2 voices sing in a sweet and smooth way. It follows the Isorhythm pattern strictly, especially the bass part from measure 12 till the end. Besides the perfect fifth and octave, Landini uses a lot of thirds and sixths in this Ballata.
Following these typical writing characteristics, he uses passing tones and neighbor tones to arrive at sharp notes instead of moving to a sharp sign directly. With almost same rhythm in both left hand and right hand, it is very homophonic. However, the Landini Cadences are not obvious in this piece.