Vincente Lusitano: the Black Renaissance composer erased from history
African-Portuguese composer Vincente Lusitano pushed Renaissance singing to its outer limits. Why, then, is his name missing from practically every textbook on the history of Western music? Until very recently, you couldn’t find his madrigals on Spotify, in record stores or in libraries. Even those who study early modern music at a postgraduate level rarely come across his work. And yet, Vincente Lusitano, this man we know so little about, was the first Black composer to have his work published in print. How could he be allowed to disappear?
Born in the Portuguese city of Olivença around 1520, Lusitano’s first biographer described him as a “pardo”, a term used to identify individuals of white European and African parentage. Many would reject such ambiguities. As Joseph McHardy put it in his 2022 Guardian piece, “Lusitano was Black”. Olivença’s population was 4% black in the 1520s, whereas Lisbon’s was 10%. Southern Europe may have been diverse, but it was anything but inclusive. The Portuguese kicked off the Atlantic Slave Trade in 1444 when they began plundering the African continent, sparking 400 years of brutality and subjugation. There is much speculation surrounding Lusitano’s background, but the use of “pardo” suggests that he was born to a white father and a Black mother, something that may have allowed him the level of education he ultimately received.
Though biographies of Lusitano state that he was an ordained priest, it would appear he was banned from entering the clergy because of his race. He probably worked as a tutor to the Lencastre family, who relocated to Rome in 1551 as ambassadors of the papal court. We have a record of Lusitano in Rome from that same year, and it’s possible that Lusitano joined the Lencastres there in the hope of persuading the pope to make an exception. He was unsuccessful in this endeavour.
Before converting to Protestantism and moving to Germany, Lusitano fell out with fellow composer Nicola Vicentino. The aesthetic dispute attracted so much attention that the Vatican organised a tribunal to deliver a verdict. At the hearing, Lusitano was declared the victor, and Vicentino was forced to pay a fine. But what Nicola lacked in intellectual rigour, he more than made up for in influence. A year after the verdict, Vicentino published an account of the tribunal in which he tarnished Lusitano’s reputation, going so far as to remove the victorious composer’s name from the introduction to his counter-treatise. In a private letter from 1551, Vicentino attacks Lusitano’s motet, ‘Regina Coeli’, dubbing it too dissonant. Chromaticism is, of course, a huge part of what makes Lusitano’s music so ahead of its time. But Vicentino didn’t stop there. In 1555, he published an account of the debate so obviously false that one of the judges from the original tribunal publically denounced Nicola’s fabrications.
Lusitano, meanwhile, was too busy being one of the most prolific Black composers of his day. After publishing a collection of 23 motets in 1551 (the first published composition by a Black composer that we know of), he published a book on music theory in 1553 before writing a comprehensive treatise on the art of singing. After converting to Protestantism and relocating to Germany, he wrote another motet, Beati omnes qui timent Dominum, which was written specifically for Protestant liturgy.
And yet, somehow, Vicentino’s smear campaign proved successful. The composer’s scholarship and compositions totally eclipsed those of Lusitano, influencing the next generation of Italian composers and informing studies of Renaissance music for centuries. Lusitano, meanwhile, was forgotten by even the most respected music historians. Worse still, the 2010 edition of Grout’s A History of Western Music – a key text for music scholars – praises Vicentino, citing his 1555 treatise, the very same that had been denounced by the Vatican, as proof of his pioneering chromatic approach. A decade later, Joseph McHardy, who hadn’t come across the composer’s work despite a decade of study, went to a Black Lives Matter protest and saw Lusitano’s name written on a placard alongside other those of other forgotten Black innovators. Above, in bold letters, the placard read: “Listen, perform, teach”.
You can hear Lusitano’s heart-achingly beautiful ‘Aspice Domine’ below.
