Johannes Ciconia

Johannes Ciconia (c. 1370 – between 10 June and 13 July 1412) was an important Franco-Flemish composer and music theorist of trecento music during the late Medieval era. He was born in Liège, but worked most of his adult life in Italy, first in the papal entourage in Rome and later and most importantly at Padua Cathedral. Life He was the son of a priest (also named Johannes Ciconia) and a woman of high social standing. Since at least three other men around Liège had that name as well, this has created biographical confusion, first solved by David Fallows in 1975. A Johannes Ciconia, probably the composer’s father, worked in Avignon in 1350 as a clerk for the wife of Pope Clement VI’s nephew. Another Johannes Ciconia is recorded in Liège in 1385 as a , generally identifying a person of young age; scholars agree that this is the composer himself. Papal records suggest that Ciconia was in the service of Philppe d’Alençon, a powerful French cardinal of the schismatic Pope Boniface IX. He is believed to have worked as a clericus capelle, an important job usually held by younger musicians. His whereabouts between the early 1390s and 1401 are generally undocumented, however, due to his se