Giovanni Mazzuoli (ca. 1360 – 14 May 1426) was an Italian composer and organist of the late medieval

Medieval music

Medieval music is Western music written during the Middle Ages. This era begins with the fall of the Roman Empire and ends sometime in the early fifteenth century...

 and early Renaissance

Renaissance music

Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance. Defining the beginning of the musical era is difficult, given that its defining characteristics were adopted only gradually; musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s.Literally meaning...

 eras.

Mazzuoli was born in Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

 and probably was trained on organ by his father Niccolò, who was organist at the church of Orsanmichele

Orsanmichele

Orsanmichele is a church in the Italian city of Florence...

 until 1376. Giovanni was given this position in 1379, which he held until 1412; he also held organist positions at S. Felicita (1385–1390) and Florence Cathedral (1390–1426). In his last years at Florence he was assisted at the organ by his son Piero.

Mazzuoli, curiously, is best remembered for the absence, rather than the presence, of his musical compositions. There is a large section of the Squarcialupi Codex

Squarcialupi Codex

The Squarcialupi Codex is an illuminated manuscript compiled in Florence, Italy in the early 15th century...

, an important source of early Italian music, which is marked out under his name, and a portrait of him is presented at its head. However, no music is written in these pages; they are decorated around the edges but left blank otherwise. There are at least ten of his works written on a palimpsest

Palimpsest

A palimpsest is a manuscript page from a scroll or book from which the text has been scraped off and which can be used again. The word "palimpsest" comes through Latin palimpsēstus from Ancient Greek παλίμψηστος originally compounded from πάλιν and ψάω literally meaning “scraped...

 in an Italian manuscript, but the state of the paper leaves them essentially unreadable. About a dozen of his son's works are found in this manuscript as well. Nino Pirrotta

Nino Pirrotta

Nino Pirrotta was an Italian musicologist of international renown who specialized in Italian music from the late medieval, Renaissance and early Baroque eras. In 1931 he earned a degree in art history from the University of Florence after having already earned a diploma in organ performance...

 attributed two works to Mazzuoli, one of which is a ballata

Ballata

The ballata is an Italian poetic and musical form, which was in use from the late 13th to the 15th century. It has the musical structure AbbaA, with the first and last stanzas having the same texts. It is thus most similar to the French musical 'forme fixe' virelai...

ascribed in a manuscript to "Gian Toscan", and the other a piece in the Roquefort Codex ascribed to "Johannes Florentius".