The rejection of the idea of an entirely gloomy and obscurantist Middle Ages is by now almost common sense. Yet, when one is dealing with music, it is not so easy to set aside the image, established in the humanist tradition, of the dark ages: the inaugural moment of the musical Middle Ages is unequivocally a period marked by the destructive fury of Christianity against all music that in any way appeared associable with pagan culture. A period that evokes the brutal violence of the burning of the Library of Alexandria, as far as could be from the calligraphic haloes of a certain kind of popular history or of tourist marketing. Besides the substantial liquidation of the pre-Christian musical past, the cultural hegemony exercised by the clergy throughout the entire course of the medieval West allowed music to exist almost exclusively within the narrow confines of a rigidly regulated liturgy, condemning to oblivion, at the same time, a large part of the musical practices that survived at the margins and/or developed outside religious officialdom. Such conditions begin to ease only from the 13th century onward, making possible the start of a slow process of restoring music to a position of relative autonomy, which corresponds to the process of genuine reconstruction of the musical language that lies at the origin of European musical civilization.
Within such a horizon, the years between the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th century constitute an interval of absolute exceptionality, marked by the activity of a generation of musicians whose unprecedented stylistic universe was called by later historiography Ars subtilior. These are the years of the Great Schism, in which the Christian West is crossed by an unprecedented crisis of the authority of the Church: after the Avignon Captivity ended in 1377 (the papal seat had been transferred to Avignon under the influence of the French monarchy at the beginning of the fourteenth century) with the return of Gregory XI to Rome, the following year the conclave elected the Italian Urban VI; after a few months, however, part of the College of Cardinals, with a French majority, denouncing external pressures suffered by the conclave, contested the legitimacy of the election and resolved to proclaim Clement VII pope. Defeated at the Battle of Marino by the Italian mercenaries loyal to Urban VI, in 1379 Clement VII took refuge in Avignon. The balance of the forces in the field meant that the conflict dragged on for some forty years, during which, in effect, two popes, two ecclesiastical hierarchies, two autonomous administrations of the church coexisted in conflict. Such circumstances, utterly disturbing in the perception of the time, had on the contrary a decisive, and exceptionally positive, role for musical life. In the first place, the duplication of the ecclesiastical structures includes the duplication of the papal courts and chapels, that is to say of patrons decisive for the economy of late-medieval art. At the same time the separation of the two churches is paradoxically the occasion for a substantial increase in the mobility of musicians between Italy and France (into which the seigniorial courts of northern Italy enter with a prominent role), which naturally corresponds to a multiplication of the occasions for encounter and sharing between their respective technical and stylistic heritages. But, and this is perhaps what matters most, the instability of ecclesial power is in all probability one of the preconditions of a climate of unusual (though conditioned) openness, capable of welcoming the most radical results of the innovations matured in the preceding decades. The creative explosion represented by the Ars subtilior appears in this sense as the outcome of a process of development of the musical language that sinks its roots into the contrapuntal and notational conquests of the early fourteenth century, but which only in the discontinuity of the new context manages to find an unexpected fulfilment. Within such a perspective, it is without doubt significant that the music of the Ars subtilior is only in minimal part sacred music: the compositions are for the most part of amorous or martial subject, and profoundly bound to the courtly-chivalric universe. This circumstance, besides being the mirror of a certain degree of autonomy with respect to ecclesiastical aesthetic constraints, inevitably marks this music as the extreme expression of a chivalric civilization now at its twilight. Yet a reading of the Ars subtilior mediated by the suggestions of the autumn of the Middle Ages, even if entirely well founded and in certain respects illuminating, risks casting into shadow its peculiar character: far from resolving itself into the terminal testimony of a civilization in the course of exhaustion, the whole affair of the Ars subtilior is marked by an unprejudiced tension toward the exploration of the possibilities of sonic matter. A vertiginous "looking beyond", then, capable of prefiguring solutions to aesthetic problems that will return to relevance only in the 20th century. The subtilitas to which it alludes is above all a technical subtilitas, which corresponds to an exceptional complexity of writing. A complexity in all likelihood accessible only to a very narrow cultural élite, and which implies performers of the highest skill, possessing the requisites necessary to master a deliberately hermetic language. Every level of organization of the music shows an extraordinary refinement: the extremely mobile melodic construction, rich in precious melismas, the very dense contrapuntal conduct distinguished by arduous solutions, up to the frequent presence of more or less enigmatic intertextual references, in which reference is made to other works as much with the texts as with the sounds. But the most surprising aspect is surely the unprecedented refinement of the rhythmic conception: the polyphony is very often realized by providing for the coexistence of different "speeds" among the voices, thus generating a sort of illusion of poly-temporality. This is obtained by means of sophisticated polymetric and polyrhythmic stratifications that conceal the regularity of the beat, and which will remain substantially foreign to the logic of Western music until the experiments of the avant-gardes of the second post-war period. The necessity of fixing on paper a language so articulated corresponds also to the development of a dedicated system of notation: the rhythmic values are rendered in graphic form (with at times decidedly esoteric results) by means of notes of different colour, to which correspond proportional variations of the durations.

The centre of diffusion of these technical and stylistic coordinates is surely Avignon (and the role of Clement VII, dedicatee of a significant number of compositions, is in this sense decisive), but the Ars subtilior appears from the outset as an international movement, extending from southern France to Italy, to Spain, even (and with most remarkable results) to the island of Cyprus. On the Italian side, one of the undisputed protagonists of this period is without doubt Matteo da Perugia. Of Matteo's link with the Umbrian capital no further information is in fact traceable apart from the toponymic (but it is no less surprising for that, that his figure should be completely ignored in his land of origin). Matteo's biography is closely bound to that of his illustrious protector Pietro Filargo, also known as Pietro di Candia: a Franciscan of Cretan origins, after having studied at Oxford and Paris, Pietro came to Italy where in 1402, thanks to the support of Giangaleazzo Visconti, he became archbishop of Milan. And it is precisely in Milan and in the same year that the name of Matteo da Perugia appears for the first time in the registers of the Fabbrica del Duomo, which engaged him with the qualification of biscantator:

«ipse Magister Matthaeus cum habitu videlicet Camisia singulis festis solemnibus intersit offitiis Missarum, et Vesperorum eiusdem Ecclesiae una cum Dominis Ordinariis ibique biscantet chorumque eiusdem Ecclesiase dulcibus melodiis honoret.»

(«The same master Matteo, on every solemn feast, shall take part, wearing the habit, that is the surplice, in the offices of Mass and Vespers in the said church together with the ordinary canons, and there let him "biscanti", and honour the choir with sweet melodies»)

Here "biscantare" corresponds to performing a second melody over the liturgical chants intoned by the canons, in all probability improvising. Besides the role of biscantator the contract stipulates that Matteo be a teacher of music, and in particular that he instruct three puericantores in the scientia musicae (it is quite likely that it was precisely these boys who were the performers of the master's polyphonic compositions). Matteo's contractualization has an entirely notable historical significance, since the figure of the professional musician is still substantially foreign to the customs of the time. In the double guise of singer and teacher, Matteo da Perugia can therefore be considered the first maestro di cappella of the Milanese cathedral under construction, even though a true chapel of singers did not yet exist (and even though the very notion of "composer" was still for the most part incomprehensible in ecclesiastical circles). The post at the Fabbrica del Duomo lasts until 1407. Subsequently Matteo's fortunes again follow those of Pietro Filargo, who in 1409 is elected pope with the name of Alexander V by the Council of Pisa in opposition to the Roman Gregory XII and the Avignonese Benedict XIII. The intention is to recompose the divisions of the church, but the attempt does not succeed: the Council of Pisa is disavowed by both sides, relegating Alexander V to the role of third pope. Matteo, after the Pisan sojourn, is thus active in Bologna, where the antipope installs his court. On the death of Pietro Filargo, however, he returns to Milan, where he regains the post at the Duomo, which he holds until 1416, the probable year of his death.
Of Matteo there remain thirty compositions of certain attribution, gathered in a manuscript preserved at the Biblioteca Estense in Modena together with the works of other leaders of the Ars subtilior such as Jacob Senleches, Antonello and Filippotto da Caserta, Johannes Ciconia. Some of them are sacred, probably produced during his activity at Milan Cathedral, and comprise movements of Masses (Gloria and Credo) and two isorhythmic motets. But most of the music included in the codex is of secular character: the forms are manifold (essentially virelais, rondeaux, ballate, as well as an elegant canon, Andray soulet) and the entire corpus shows an absolute mastery of the peculiar stylistic register of the Ars subtilior. The compositional technique is in every respect most sophisticated: the melodic profiles, rich in unusual leaps, are delineated through a dense and often bold ornamentation; the imitative contrapuntal procedures are realized with extreme accuracy, frequently joined to a far from obvious use of chromaticism as well as marked by an absolute command of rhetorical intention; the web of citations and references, both musical and textual, is almost omnipresent; the organization of the durations is always complex and in many cases founded on disorienting rhythmic stratifications (splendid, from this point of view, Se je me plaing).
The historical destiny of such a patrimony of innovations and conquests will, however, be quite severe: the creative experience of Matteo, like that of the whole Ars subtilior, dies apparently without heirs, and the febrile imagination of an extraordinary generation of musicians seems all at once to vanish without leaving traces. In the course of the fifteenth century, the evolution of European musical civilization will resume its course along the itinerary previously traced, forgetting the formidable acceleration imparted in the years of the Great Schism. But it happens that history does justice to its own errors: at a distance of six hundred years, some of the questions confronted in the age of Matteo da Perugia (in primis the conception of temporality) once again occupy the musical reflection of the present.

A saxophonist, composer and improviser, he completed his musical studies at the Conservatory of Perugia, at the same time graduating in philosophy from the University of Siena and in musicology from the University of Bologna. He works mainly in the area of intersection between jazz, "art" music and improvisation.