But who is this “rooster”? In Italian, the word is gallo. Might Landini’s gallo not be a stand-in for a
certain gallico—a certain Frenchman? If, as has been most plausibly proposed, we regard Sy dolce non
sonò as a veiled tribute to Philippe de Vitry, the virtual (or, at least, the reputed) inventor of the
isorhythmic motet, the whole concept of the piece and its affectionate parody of French genres takes on a
new level of meaning.
The gallicization of the Italian style was matched, albeit a few decades later, by the Italianization of
the French, both tendencies converging on an internationalized style that in fact became truly international.
That was to be the great musical story of the fifteenth century. We can observe its beginnings from an
angle opposite to Landini’s—that is, from the French perspective—by analyzing the very different mix of
generic ingredients in Pontifici decora speculi, a motet in honor of Saint Nicholas by “Johannes