CORGLUSION ‘The Italian Trecento cannot be culled one of the grest periods in the history of music, Basically, it produced a mdest, charming, fresh, and worldly art, innocent of its ow limitstions — in a word, provincial. This frank and open worldliness wes carried beyond the recreational chambers of the courtly palaces end less pretentious private dwellings into ‘the churches, The Florentine Mess pieces sre built of the same materials and speak the same ebullient language as do the secular madrigals, and, if we are to believe the evidence, this style caused the pieces to enjoy ® popular success when they were performed in the divine servic Plorence, however, cannot be taken as representative of ail of italy. Indeed, the Florentine composers give the impression of constitut~ ing a wre iscleted local. school then do the rorthern masters, fdua must be seon as the leading Itelian center of sucred polyphony thro. ‘out tie fourtee:. end early fifteenth ce: That it may heve bee: e2u of the most inportant eanters o ueke can y be coubte., but the evide.ce of & tradition of Lit of wore inpsrtince to us, since euch a tradition would seem to be iucking elsewhere in italy. one cannot escape the feeling tist Tuscany hes © scvmed @ piece of much greater importw.ce in modern eyze thon it ecturily hela curing the fou~ enter, bervtes of the elreumsiarce that € number of Lerve Tu:-3%- manuscripts have been preserved, while cusparabie sanuscripts frox other regions have been lost to a Pag ie the crucial source froa which one may begin to draw an understanding of the historical situation in regard to sacred polyphony dn the North, Again, we must deplore its fragnentary condition, This condition, however, does not prevent us from seeing evidence that & Liturgieal tradition did exist in Padua, and ttut there must have been Long and continuous contact with the centers of polyphonic activity in France. That the most important Northern master of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth eenturies should choose to end his days in Padua ie surely indicative of the advanced state of musical culture in thet city, and it is certain that Oiconfa reve a crest inpetus and new direction to musical thinking in Padua er elacwhere in the peninsula. Ciconta vee the first of thet distinguished line of Franco- tice their sxill ¢ hetherlendish aasters w0 cite dom Lo Italy to p their crt, and the fiftcent Itelian composers clte ether. at hove in the rain regional center oo do, Beri Feltre, and others —, but these eososers ap‘ntsined their pov ition 17 Learning wcll end following closely the foreign idion. Joe, sarrotte, rista da Firenze, pp. 1ff.- 397 = + remult of the present investigation has been to cast @ little more light on the work of the three leading nastere who were active in Italy at the md of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth cen— turtes, Cleonta, Matteo da Perugia, and Antonio cacharia 4a Terano, Cdeonie 48 confirmed as the true master he has long been held to be, and the figure of Hatteo takes on nore substance and authority than hed pro viously been accorded him, primarily on the basis of his Secular works, But it {9 Zecharia ds Tarano whe has undergone the greatest re-evaluation, it te only through Zacharia's muste for the ¥ass that he may be seen in anything approaching the proper perspective — not that he can now be regarded as & great master, for that he ts mt. But zacharia must cer- tetnly be esteemed as en originel, fascdnating artist, rivalled only by Hetteo among the Italians, y than the reintersretations of these cajor fizures whitch it Nes nade possible, the present study has inerecosd our widerston ling of the styles, technics) procedures, and, especially, the fore processes teenth witch were exployed for & number of compositions of t fifteenth centuries, the detailed anstysos of ver Tuctures, sectional plans, thezstic el, ind other mesical interrelations carist escily be surerized and have exdstonce of the music has deen the heart of our