5. Enslavement, Diplomacy, and Trade

This chapter examines musical elements in four genuine eyewitness travel accounts, three from the fifteenth century, resulting from very different motives and experiences: Georgius de Hungaria’s account of his enslavement in Turkey; Ambrogio Contarini’s account of his Venetian diplomatic mission to the Turkoman ruler of Persia, Uzun Hasan; Niccolò de’ Conti’s account of his extensive travels as a merchant throughout India and Southeast Asia, as recounted to and recorded by the papal secretary Poggio Bracciolini; and Marco Polo’s account of his career in government and trade in Yuan dynasty China, as recorded by the romance author Rustichello da Pisa and later adapted into Venetian dialect. Broadly speaking, they fall within the two musical themes established in the previous chapter, but elaborated with considerable variety and nuance according to the very different perspectives of the different travellers, recorders, and translators. 5.1 Georgius de Hungaria 5.2 Ambrogio Contarini 5.3 Niccolò de’ Conti and Poggio Bracciolini 5.4 Marco Polo and Rustichello da Pisa