The Curious Story of The Little Monster
– or –
Why a Musician Wrote a Study of
Michelangelo’s Signatures

I wasn’t hoping to write a study of the signatures, I was hoping to read one – but there was none to be found anywhere. Over a good many years, I had devoted considerable time and creative energy to reading, translating, and composing musical settings of more than forty of Michelangelo’s poems, letters, and aphorisms. While doing that work, I was often struck by just how many different kinds of signatures there were in books I studied, on reproductions I looked at, and, of course, on those rare originals I saw in my travels.

My efforts to convince the art historians I knew to undertake such a study came to naught, perhaps because it seemed such an unlikely subject. So eventually, even though well aware of Pope’s admonition that “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” I decided to look into it myself and set off with a travel grant and some letters of introduction to archives, thinking I might write an article of perhaps fifteen pages or so. That was seven years ago, and the article is now a book of 260 pages.

* * *

The going was not easy, and at the outset my learning curve felt impossibly steep. I had little experience with calligraphy beyond learning to read various types of handwritten musical notation (although that would ultimately prove to be valuable training). Along with a musician’s eye for patterns and ear for languages, I also have a fondness for wordplay of all kinds – as did Michelangelo.

Perhaps most surprisingly, I found that my years of experience with playing for church services, especially requiem masses and feast day celebrations for St. Michael and All Angels, made me aware of the extent to which hearing those same liturgies must surely have influenced Michelangelo’s thinking about himself, the various roles he played in other people’s lives, and his responsibilities. And I had good friends in Italy and scholars in this country I could call on for help with dialects and colloquial idioms and endless questions of calligraphic style and technique.

Several things kept me going, not least among them my fascination with watching Michelangelo’s mind at play with the elements of his own name. Two comments from a well-known philologist became mantra-like refrains for me as I worked, at times for long periods with no apparent progress. One was that this study would need, at the end of the day, to be more of an artistic endeavor than a strictly scholarly one. The other was that only a musician would have noticed some of the details I observed as we were looking through Michelangelo’s letters together. I’ve never been sure whether the second comment was intended as a compliment or a chastisement, but I decided to think of it as the former and pressed on.

So, behold the fruit of my labors, the book known affectionately at our house as The Little Monster. In style, it is more a journal/essay than purely academic study. Written to be read alike by amateur admirers and by serious scholars of Michelangelo, the book has two bibliographies – one for those who would like to do more reading about him and his writings, and one for those interested in the location of the documents I studied and refer to. To be sure it was affordable, I insisted on paperback format (but with a cover that feels to the touch like laid paper of the period). Reproductions are in black-and-white but with website addresses provided for locating high-resolution color images.

It is a modest little book, one whose goal is to begin a conversation about the mind-boggling riches concealed in the handwriting of the man named for the most important of the archangels, a man whose pen was very nearly as mighty as his chisel – or his namesake’s sword.

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Acknowledgements

Attempting to thank all those who have assisted me, one way or another, with my work on this project would be both a challenge and probably unwise, since the risk of forgetting someone who should be included would be so great. I expressed my gratitude to a goodly number of individuals in the book itself, but since my work with the signatures has continued and more people have found the project interesting and become involved, the list of those deserving thanks has continued to grow.

My infinitely patient wife Carol remains (most days) willing to go on sharing our home with our 550-year-old houseguest a little longer, all the while enduring, with remarkable patience, long discussions about him, his handwriting, his personality, and the rest. My trusted and capable student and assistant Kevin Rilling continues to be helpful in myriad ways, not least of them gently prodding me to keep pushing ahead.

I remain very grateful for the continued encouragement and travel support of the Dean of the Blair School of Music, Mark Wait, without whose efforts on my behalf little of my research would have been possible. My good friend Michael Jones in the Blair School’s Anne Potter Wilson Music Library seems capable of making hard-to-find books and articles appear quickly and as if by magic; his help has always been invaluable. His Library colleague Jacob Schaub has skillfully and thoughtfully built this website and will (I hope!) maintain it as it continues to grow.

In addition to the scholars whose assistance I mentioned in the book, two merit additional thanks here. The brilliant Vasari scholar Enrico Mattioda of Torino, whom I met in Arezzo when working on the project, has continued to share his valuable thoughts and observations; several of them are now included in the Emendations section. And without the treasured comments and constant encouragement of the University of Virginia’s distinguished art historian and scholar Paul Barolsky, whose writings I hold in the highest regard, my half-dozen boxes of notes and numerous drafts might be languishing in the basement.

Mille grazie to you all!