Anthonello, [An]tonellus, de Caserta, Marot, A. Marotus de Caserta abbas, *Caserta (?), Italian composer. He was active at the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries, probably in northern Italy and at the court of the Dukes of Anjou in Naples. He is credited with composing eight surviving three-voice pieces to French texts, including five ballads, two rondeaux and a virelai, as well as seven (or eight) mostly two-voice pieces to Italian texts, including seven ballate (the authorship of one ballata is uncertain) and a madrigal. Anthonello’s work is characterised by a distinctive type of stylistic transformation. His earlier works are considered to be French song forms, preserved mainly in a manuscript written in Bologna around 1410 (Modena, Biblioteca Estense, oc.M.5, 24, olim lat.568). These are three-voice compositions, with an instrument, tenor and countertenor, written in the complex ars subtilior style, with intricate rhythmic patterns – resulting, among other things, from the accumulation of syncopations and the overlapping of different rhythmic patterns in individual voices (virelai and ballad to the text by Guillaume de Machaut), as well as from the use of the basic progression with its simultaneous diminution and augmentation (ballad) – and metrical patterns, consisting in combining various time signatures (rondeau). His two-voice works to Italian texts, whose main source is the so-called Mancini codex (Lucca, Archivio di Stato 184), are characterised by a clear simplification of style, although here too there are frequent metrical changes and syncopated rhythms (madrigal, probably written shortly after the marriage of Queen Joanna II of Naples to Count Giacomo de la Marche in 1415 or to Louis III d’Anjou in 1423). In all these works, both voices are set to text, with the exception of the ballata with instrumental countertenor.
Editions: works with French text ed. W. Apel in: French Secular Music of the Late Fourteenth Century, Cambridge (Massachusetts) 1950 also in: French Secular Compositions of the Fourteenth Century, «Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae» LIII/1, 1970.
Literature: G. Bertoni, «Archivum romanicum» I, 1917; N. Pirrotta, «Atti della Reale Accademia di Scienze, Lettere e Arti di Palermo», series IV, vol. V/2, 1945, offprint Palermo 1946; A. Bonaccorsi, «Atti dell’Accademia nazionale dei Lincei» series VIII, vol. 1, 1948; N. Pirrotta, E. Li Gotti, 3 parts, “Musica Disciplina” III–V, 1949–51; N. Pirrotta, «Collectanea historiae musicae» I, 1953; K. von Fischer, “Musica Disciplina” XI, 1957; K. von Fischer, “Acta Musicologica” XXX, 1958; N. Wilkins, «Nottingham Mediaeval Studies» VIII, 1964; U. Günther, “Musica Disciplina” XXIV, 1970; U. Günther, in: commemorative book for J. La Rue, ed. E.K. Wolf, E.H. Roesner, Madison 1990; P. Memelsdorf, “Recercare. Rivista per lo studio e la pratica della musica antica” IV, 1992.
