Jonathan Ligrani

Jonathan Ligrani is a Ph.D. candidate in Historical Musicology at Columbia University whose research centers on Renaissance Italy, the Italian Madrigal, manuscript culture, and materiality. His dissertation, “Manuscript Culture and Patrician Identity in the Florentine Madrigal,” supervised by Giuseppe Gerbino, explores the social world of four manuscript anthologies of madrigals crafted in 1530s Florence, arguing that they participated in a culture whose practices aligned with and projected the elite identities of their owners, in distinction from the printed collections intended for broad consumption in the genre’s dissemination from the 1540s onward. Jonathan received his B.A. in Music and studied viola at the University of Northern Colorado. He earned an M.A. in Musicology at The Pennsylvania State University in 2016, writing a thesis on the development of musical techniques for the portrayal of plaintive emotions in polyphony, entitled “The Language of Lament: Giaches de Wert and Claudio Monteverdi’s seconda pratica,” which was supervised by Marica Tacconi and read by Charles Youmans. In earning his M.A. and M.Phil. at Columbia University, Jonathan wrote a thesis focused on the composer Ottorino Respighi’s orchestral representation of three Botticelli paintings in an imagined, sonic altarpiece, and its relationship to the Italian cultural spirituality and nationalism of the early twentieth century. As a fellow at MAP, Jonathan will examine correspondences by the Medici and Strozzi families—presumed owners of two of the four manuscripts—narrating the cultural history surrounding the madrigal partbooks and their relationship to patrician Florentines’ beliefs, identities, and political sentiments. He will couple this research with paleographic analysis of the partbooks, adding new information about the creation, circulation, ownership, and use of this repertory in its handwritten tradition. Additionally, Jonathan will assist in MAP’s project to uncover the rich sacred-music traditions of quattrocento and cinquecento Florence and Medici musical patronage, working to bring this repertory into public appreciation among the city’s artistic masterworks.