CICONIA, IOHANNES. – Musician and theorist, poet and singer, a Paduan canon but originally from Liège, he was, rather than a purely eclectic composer, the most accomplished representative of the period of transition between the Ars nova (v.) and the Italo-Burgundian current that dominated the first half of the fifteenth century and constituted the first period of fifteenth-century polyphony.
He lived in Padua at the beginning of the fifteenth century, where he wrote (1411) his treatise Nova musica in five books (of the third, entitled De proportionibus, there are various manuscripts transmitted separately); he left many sacred compositions, especially Masses, fragments of which are preserved in Modena and Warsaw as well as in the Trent codices. Elegant and restrained in style, these works, although lacking the passion that vibrates in his secular songs, nevertheless represent the marvelous synthesis of the two national schools of which he was the representative by birth and by choice. Luisa Cervelli