Francesco’s Dream

Abstract

Francesco Landini composed a dream-vision in Latin verse, in which he evinces intimate knowledge of works by the logician William of Ockham. Exploring the logic aspect of the dream-vision, as opposed to its theological implications, this study renders Francesco’s music as an explicit exhibition of dialectical and logical principles. To that end, musical motion is represented through paradigms that employ the logical syllogism; the three-term syllogism gives rise to an analytical method that uncovers important features of fourteenth-century harmony. First, an entire class of harmonic progressions arises as the result of retaining one or more tones between sonorities; as the number of retained tones increases the music appears outwardly to exhibit triadic prolongation even though the principle does not truly operate in the music. Second, directed progressions, which have been discussed extensively by Sarah Fuller and David E. Cohen, are shown to function in tandem with tone-retaining progressions. Lastly, no single type of harmonic paradigm governs structural levels exclusively or recursively, a feature that distinguishes the 14th-century repertoire from functional tonality, as defined by Matthew Brown’s models of recursion and rule preservation. In the end, harmonic progressions in the ballate privilege multiplicity over unity in a manner equivalent to other art forms of the period.