Francesco Landini (ca. 1335-1397), the greatest Italian composer before the late 16th century, was also a poet.

Italian art music first came to the fore in the middle third of the 14th century. Earlier music--and there certainly was much of it--seems to have been largely confined to monophony: Gregorian chants and the songs of the troubadours and of St. Francis of Assisi. Then, suddenly, polyphonic music began to flourish in the mid-14th century, particularly in Florence, culminating in the work of the poet-musician Francesco Landini.

The son of a painter, Landini became blind in childhood because of smallpox; but he acquired great virtuosity on the organ, built organs, and invented a new stringed instrument, probably similar to the harpsichord, which emerged during his time.

Although honored as a poet in both Latin and Italian, Landini's extant poems are almost exclusively for his own musical compositions. These, although...