Michael [Michele] Clementis [Clementi, de Lucca] {Leo X-Adrian VI}
Bass; Lucca; in the chapel of the Duke of Ferrara, 1503 - 1510 ; in the chapel of the Marchese of Mantua, 1510 - 1514 ; first reference, bull of 19 March 1513 [sic?]; notarial list of 1522 ; unpublished beneficial documents : LR 25, fol.: entry dated 24 August 1519 , LR 25, fol. 63r: entry dated 10 September 1519 , LR 25, fol.: entry dated 5 November 1519 ; see FREY for a bulls dated 19 March 1513 , 27 April 1517 , and 1 November 1517; see SHERR for a document dated 17 July 1518.
In a papal breve dated 30 August 1514 , Leo X requests that the Marchese of Mantua send him the bass singer "Michael Lucensem," and sent another breve on the same subject on 25 September 1514 indicating that the singer had not yet arrived in Rome. Since this Michael Lucensem was in Mantua a year after the date of the earliest beneficial document calling Michael Clementis da Lucca a singer in the papal chapel (19 March 1513 ), FREY tried to demonstrate that the Michael Lucensem requested by Leo and the Michael Clementis who was a member of Leo’s chapel were different people, the first from Lugo in Spain, the second from Lucca. New research (see PRIZER), makes this assertion untenable; the only singer named Michael in Mantuan employ was from Lucca. Either the date of the Vatican document is in error, or Clementis had indeed become an official member of the papal chapel a year before before the Marchese allowed him to leave Mantua (Clementis was gone from Mantua by 1514 ). Clementis was still in the papal chapel in 1520 - 1521, as a series of letters in the Archivio di Stato of Florence concerning a benefice he had claimed makes clear.
DOCUMENTS
letter from Leo X to Francesco Gonzaga dated 30 August 1514 [From ADAMI , p. xix]
Marchioni Mantuae
Quoniam ad sacra conficienda, precesque divinas celebrandas cantore mihi opus est, qui graviori voce concinat, velim, si tibi incommodum non est, ut ad me Micahelem Lucensem cantorem tuum mittas, ut eo Nostris in sacris atque templo, quod est omnium celeberrimum, atque sanctissimum, communemque totius orbis terrarum pietatem, & laetitiam continet, uti possim. Datum 3 Kal. Augusti anno 2 Romae
Mantua, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Gonzaga, Busta 835
E XXV, No. 2: letter from Leo X to Francesco Gonzaga dated 25 September 1514 [transcribed in FREY (1956), p. 153]
Ex litteris dil. fil. Alexandri archiciaconi Mantuani intelleximus non solum assensum et humanitatem tuam in Michaele cantore ad nos destinando, sed etiam, quod nobis gratius multo extitit, animum et promptitudinem tuam in assentiendo . . . Itaque cantorem quidem ipsum gratum habituri sumus te vero ipsum cum isto amore atque animo erga nos in nostrae visceribus continue retenturi.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: ADAMI, Andrea. Osservazioni per ben regolare il Coro della Cappella Pontificia (Rome, 1711), p. xix; FREY (1955): 182, 189-190, (1956): 153-154; PRIZER, William. "La Cappella di Francesco II Gonzaga e la Musica Sacra a Mantova del Primo Ventennio del Cinquecento." in Mantova e i Gonzaga nella Civiltà del Rinascimento (Mantua, 1974), pp. 267-276, esp. 273; LOCKWOOD, Lewis. "Jean Mouton and Jean Michel: French Music and Musicians in Italy, 1505-1420." Journal of the American Musicological Society 32 (1979): 191-246, esp. 210; SHERR, Richard. "Notes on Some Papal Documents in Paris." Studi Musicali 12 (1983): 5-16, esp. 11; LOCKWOOD, Lewis. Music in Renaissance Ferrara 1400- 1505 (Cambridge MA, 1984), p. 328.