Rodolfo Baroncini

In questo volume c'è anzitutto un'istituzione illustre, che ha sempre assolto a compiti liturgici e di altissima rappresentanza, facendovi fronte con grande spesa e una struttura complessa. Ricostruire quel quadro è basilare: la trama rituale, il personale a disposizione, le mansioni, i fini dell'istituzione; l'indagine sui profili intellettuali dei suoi responsabili fa emergere personalità che agivano in un'ottica di vera e propria politica culturale. Questa poderosa macchina incanala Monteverdi entro i binari delle proprie necessità, ma quest'ultimo non si limiterà all'adempimento dei suoi doveri. Al maestro di cappella e ai suoi sottoposti era riconosciuto il diritto a un'attività libero-professionale esercita molto spesso organizzandosi in «compagnie»: così dalla più importante chiesa cittadina gusti, stili, tecniche e artisti s'irradiavano nel contesto urbano investendo le chiese circostanti, ma anche gli spazi profani. Indispensabile è riflettere pure su implicazioni oggi non più così assodate, come le intense valenze semantiche di cui erano portatori, in quei frangenti liturgico-devozionali, paramenti oggetti gesti azioni regìa e musiche. Tutto era carico di significato, e di storia: tradizione e consuetudini diuturnamente rivificate conferivano continuità e riconfermavano ogni volta la ragion d'essere dell'esistente. Le esibizioni pubbliche dei corpi musicali di Stato rappresentavano certo un'ostensione di fasto sonoro, ma allo stesso tempo anche il momento di condivisione ‘popolare’ di esperienze musicali e cerimoniali non confinate negli spazi di un'ipotetica città proibita, perfettamente in sintonia con un assetto politico fondato su un patriziato urbano che coi ceti inferiori condivideva un fiero patriottismo. [Paolo Fabbri]

Giovanni Gabrieli (1554/56-1612), al vertice della tradizione musicale veneziana avviata da Adriano Willaert, fu con Monteverdi tra i massimi compositori italiani ed europei della fine Cinquecento. Autore di musica sacra per grandi organici policorali, destinata in buona parte al cerimoniale civico-religioso della basilica di San Marco, Gabrieli fu anche l'iniziatore di un repertorio di musica strumentale d'assieme di complessità e dignità artistica pari a quello della migliore musica vocale sacra e profana dell'epoca. Avvalendosi di nuove fonti documentarie e di una accurata ricontestualizzazione delle fonti musicali, il presente volume offre una nuova immagine del compositore, più aderente alla variegata vita musicale veneziana dell'epoca, fornendo al contempo una più chiara comprensione del ruolo rilevante che egli, pur nel rispetto della tradizione policorale marciana, ebbe nell'affermazione del nuovo stile concertato e di tutti quegli stilemi tecnico-espressivi propri della nuova musica del Seicento.

The paper reconstructs the complex economic and social reality of the two venetian districts of San Salvador and San Zulian within which snaked the "Merzarie" [Mercerie], the main commercial street of Venice where the Gardano, the most important music publishers of the second half of the sixteenth century, had established his own "library" and printing house at the banner of the “Bear and Lion.”
Below, in a path that gradually degrades from the immateriality of the music to the materiality of socio-economic relations, the paper analyzes, trying to understand its meaning, the complex and seemingly contradictory relations system tied by the two Gardano brothers, Angelo and Matteo.

L'articolo prende in esame lo stato della musica veneziana delle prime tre decadi del Seicento, rilevando come, sulla base di nuove evidenze verbali e musicali, sia possibile affermare che la diffusione delle nuove pratiche a voce sola accompagnata e, in generale, della musica concertata a 1, 2, 3 voci e continuo si verificò assai più precocemente e rapidamente di quanto normalmente asserito nella letteratura musicologica.  Vettore principale delle nuove prassi fu il mecenatismo privato che a Venezia assunse la forma di un fenomeno diffuso e trasversale, animato da soggetti appartenenti non solo al patriziato, ma anche al ceto cittadinesco e all'ampia e articolata classe dei popolari. Dopo un inquadramento generale di questo fenomeno e della connessa pratica dei ridotti (una sorta di salotti musicali dell'epoca), illustrato mediante un cospicuo corpus di dati (pubblicati in appendice) frutto di una ricerca innovativa sotto il profilo metodologico, l'articolo apre la lente su una peculiare impresa mecenatesca: l'apertura, da parte di un'illuminata famiglia di ceto cittadinesco, di un «teatro» fatto appositamente per l'esecuzione della musica da camera. Partendo da una riflessione sulla qualità delle musiche eseguite in questa sede e sulle caratteristiche di una delle prime raccolte locali di musiche a voce sola, Orfeo, apparsa per i tipi di Bartolomeo Magni nel 1613, l'articolo prosegue illustrando le diverse forme (dall'aria strofica alla lettera amorosa in stile recitativo) con cui il germe della nuova musica concertata si diffuse in laguna nei due decenni successivi.

Making use of new sources, the article focuses on the figure, hitherto shrouded in mystery, of the the legendary Venetian composer-instrumentalist Dario Castello reconstructing the salient features of his short life and the complex historical-musical context in which he formed and worked. Born in 1602, Dario learned from his father Giovanni Battista, a violin player also practicing the art of "stracciarolo", which was very well inserted in the evolved environment of Venetian instrumentalism, the finest instrumental techniques; techniques constituting an important part of the musical knowledge that Dario infused in his remarkable concerted Sonatas. At the same time as his father's teachings, Dario, however, was also initiated into an ecclesiastical career, a path that allowed him to deepen his musical studies and to enter into relationships with patrons who supported his activity and fostered his contact with the best Venetian compositional tradition, of which Giovanni Gabrieli (who died in 1612) had been the most authoritative exponent. It is exactly from the synthesis of this dual knowledge, the performative and the exquisitely compositional one, that derives the peculiar quality of his Sonate concertate in stil moderno, compositions that, on the one hand, capture the hearing for their pyrotechnic instrumental resources and their acute sectional contrasts, on the other, they amaze for their solid musical substance and their calculated formal construction.

Avvalendosi di nuove fonti, l'articolo mette a fuoco la figura, fin qui avvolta nel mistero, del mitico compositore-strumentista veneziano Dario Castello ricostruendone i tratti salienti della breve vita e il complesso contesto storico-musicale in cui si formò e operò. Nato nel 1602, Dario apprese dal padre Giovanni Battista, un suonatore di violino esercitante anche l'arte dello «stracciarolo», il quale era assai ben inserito nell'evoluto ambiente dello strumentalismo veneziano, le più raffinate tecniche strumentali; tecniche costituenti una parte importante, dei saperi musicali che Dario infuse nelle sue notevoli Sonate concertate. Contestualmente agli insegnamenti paterni, Dario, tuttavia, venne anche avviato alla carriera ecclesiastica, un percorso che gli consentì di approfondire gli studi musicali e di entrare in relazione con mecenati che ne appoggiarono l'attività e favorirono il contatto con la migliore tradizione compositiva veneziana, di cui Giovanni Gabrieli (scomparso nel 1612) era stato il più autorevole esponente. E' esattamente dalla sintesi di questo duplice sapere, quello performativo e quello squisitamente compositivo che deriva la peculiare qualità delle sue Sonate Concertate in stil moderno, composizioni che, se da un lato, catturano l'udienza per le loro pirotecniche risorse strumentali e i loro acuti contrasti sezionali, dall'altro stupiscono per la loro solida sostanza musicale e la loro calcolata costruzione formale.

Abstract
There is a pressing need to document Monteverdi’s Venetian period (1613–43) in greater depth. This task has long been impeded, however, by our haphazard grasp of the specific complexities of Venetian socio-cultural and musical contexts. By looking beyond St Mark's Basilica, the present article uncovers brief archival records often overlooked by music historians. These new documents may not add much to the known facts of Monteverdi’s biography, but they do cast significant new light on the vast network of social relationships that Monteverdi developed during his Venetian years with fellow musicians and with higher-ranked patrons, not least in secular spheres and in the world of early ‘public’ opera.

Key words:
Claudio Monteverdi, Carlo Farina, Alessandro Grandi, Bartolomeo Barbarino, Giovanni Matteo Bembo, comparaggio, ridotti, godfather, baptism, Giovan Battista Manelli, opera, Venice

Gabrieli’s influence on the younger generations of musicians in Venice and the Italian peninsula, little studied in comparison with his legacy in northern Europe, is here discussed on the basis of contemporary assessments of his reputation and prestige, and tangible traces of his musical output in the works of younger composers. A total of 96 citations and paraphrases of sacred, secular and instrumental compositions by Gabrieli are identified in the surviving production of 34 authors. Stylistic characteristics and structural procedures are also analysed (though with caution, given the widespread dissemination of clichés in the context of the vast and indeterminate area of casual intertextuality). This new perspective demonstrates the importance of Gabrieli’s legacy in his native lands.

Musical life in Venice between the sixteenth  and seventeenth centuries: musicians, patrons and repertoires

The musical life in Venice between the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century offers a rather more complex and articulate picture than the one which has generally been presented to us up to now by the albeit rich historiography on the subject. If it is true, that lately, the attention traditionally focused on the Basilica of san Marco, seen as the one and only truly important centre of Venetian musical life, has been rightly surpassed by a more 'contextual' vision which is more attentive towards a certain 'periphery', which has been identified in the world of the collective patronage, activated by the numerous ecclesiastical (conventual and parish churches), devotional (Scuole Grandi and Scuole Piccole) and charitable (Ospedali Maggiori) institutions and which perhaps represents one of the most particular characteristics of the lagoon musical activity, it can however, also be said that the picture is far from being complete. Indeed, the Venice of private ridotti and academies, in other words, that of private patronage, remains as yet unexplored but which, on a first examination, does prove itself to be just as rich and articulate as the survey of ecclesiastical and devotional institutions. This context of private patronage reveals itself as being essential in understanding not only the presence and activity in the lagoon territory of a truly impressive number of musical professions (singers, players, makers of every kind of musical instrument and “dancers”), but also in understanding the intrinsic mechanisms of that very same collective patronage which was in fact so closely connected  and intertwined with that of the private patronage. Indeed, there is not a single Venetian musician who did not establish multiple and long-lasting patronly relations with illustrious members of the patricianship and with the emergent and wealthy cittadine class. And there are indeed, some very emblematic cases of organist-composers, authors mostly of ecclesiastical music, such as Giovan Battista Riccio, who apparently lived without occupying a stable position in any important conventual church whatsoever but solely by means of the assistance of private patronage.
Finally, it is necessary to recall how that, in the first instance, it is in the ridotti rather than in the conservative context of the Basilica of san Marco where some of the most musically advanced and innovative aspects are experimented. The fashion for accompanied monody and the new style of concerted music for two or three voices and continuo were widely cultivated and diffused in the circle of the private ridotti as is well illustrated by the works, emblematic of the lagoon enthusiasm for new expressive practices, of Bartolomeo Barbarino, the first true monodist to settle in the lagoon and who was largely provided for and supported by the Milani family (an influential cittadine family, member of the Scuola Grande of san Rocco and particularly active in the field of musical patronage) and various other cittadine families and patricians  (the Giunti family at san Stae, the Michiel family at santa Maria Formosa, the Grimani family at san Marcuola and the Giustinian family).

The essay, written in collaboration with Steven Saunders (author of the biography of Grandi appeared in the first volume of the Opera Omnia), reconstructs, overcoming the gaps and misunderstandings present in the earlier literature, the social and musical context within which the composer worked in Venice and Ferrara. The discovery of the date of birth, the family origin and the whole Venetian musical training are the first part of the article. The second part reconstructs the Ferrara period (1610-17) of the composer with a constant reference to his patrons and the institutions in which he worked. The third and final part concerns the return of the composer in Venice, his service in the Basilica of San Marco and, above all, the support of individual patrons of which could benefit to revive his career in the lagoon.

In a recent article on the same subject published in this journal, 1 I maintained that Zorzi Trombetta da Modon—a trumpet and slide-trumpet player who lived in the second half of the fifteenth century and is well known to scholars for having written an important notebook (GB-Lbl, Ms Cotton Titus, A XXVI, fols. 1-60) that contains, among other things, some polyphonic pieces for two and three voices—far from being an anonymous, marginal figure in his profession, 2 was one of the most talented and authoritative Venetian instrumentalists of his time. Basing my argument on unpublished documentation that is sufficiently convincing—even though incomplete and with chronological gaps—I reconstructed the fundamental milestones of his remarkable biography and artistic development in the following terms. Born in Methone (Modone in Italian), an important Venetian port colony in the southern Peloponnesus, Zorzi, after serving for several years (presumably from 1444 to 1449-50) as trumpeter on the galleys of the Serenissima, settled in Venice. I hypothesized that he might have made this move right after 1449 (the year until when, according the report written in his diaries, he was definitely employed as a naval trumpeter), but conceivably it could have come some years later, immediately before or immediately after 1460. 3 Once in Venice, Zorzi engaged in an intense professional career, which led, along with the credit he earned as a naval trumpeter, to his being chosen for the doge's band of piffari and tromboni, becoming one of its most illustrious and authoritative members. 4 The goal of my reconstruction was twofold and complementary: on the one hand, to present a profile of the author of such a special notebook, placing it in its proper context (the instrumental ensemble practice of fifteenth-century piffari and trombone bands); and on the other, to enter into the intellectual and musical world of late medieval instrumental ensembles, utilizing a more effective and penetrating lens than the sources, for the most part indirect, generally available to a historian for this type of investigation. Zorzi's book, with its music and his equally valuable personal, literary, and expository notations, constitutes a direct source that can provide much information to increase our knowledge of this type of ensemble practice, and also, as we shall see, for the reconstruction of certain aspects of the proto-history of the Serenissima's band of piffari and tromboni. Nonetheless, in the 'parallel histories' (Zorzi's personal history and the institutional history of the doge's band) that I sketched out in my earlier article, as I myself admitted, some murky areas remained. Between the time when Zorzi presumably ended his experience at sea (1450-55) and the date of the first document attesting to his prestigious new participation in the doge's band (1481), there is a gap of about thirty years, which could be filled only by guesswork, a fact that might give rise to doubts about the validity of my reconstruction. The main risk—albeit in my opinion an extremely remote one—was that Zorzi the naval

The paper, after illustrating the new musical trends emerging in Venice during the first decade of the seventeenth century and their social and patronage context, examines the brief and astonishing story of the Milani ‘theater’: an actual stage set up in the residence of a wealthy family of merchants and “zuccari” (sugar) producers, functional to the performance of the new music for accompanied solo voice and, in general, of the vocal and instrumental concerted music for one and more voices and continuo. The result of a research that is still ongoing, the paper will try to highlight the significance and consequences of such an operation, reconnecting its meaning to the considerable developments that had taken place shortly thereafter in the musical and theatrical field in the Venice of the next three-four decades.

The lecture, after a presentation of the complex phenomenon of private patronage in Venice in the first four decades of the seventeenth century, is focused on the reconstruction of one of the most notable literary-musical salons of the city: that of the patrician Girolamo Mocenigo, refined patron and sponsor of several theatrical works of Monteverdi, of which the Combattimento of Tancredi and Clorinda, set up in 1624 and published in 1638 (Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi), is the only one whose text and music have been fully come to us. Characterized by a strong level of hybridization that until now has made every attempt to decrypt it problematic, the Combattimento and the connected rhetoric of the "contrary passions" are traced back to their original conception and production context in an attempt to give sense and reason of their peculiar essence.

La relazione è un contributo preliminare a un articolo di prossima pubblicazione dedicato a Dario Castello (1602-1631). Avvalendosi di un inedito corpus di fonti documentarie, l'articolo ricostruisce i momenti salienti della vita e della formazione culturale e musicale del compositore sul quale, com'è noto, fino a questo momento gravava un silenzio pressoché totale. Forte di queste nuove acquisizioni contestuali, il contributo procede poi a un riesame critico della notevole produzione sonatistica castelliana mettendone in evidenza il duplice legame con la più avanzata prassi performativa e la più illustre tradizione compositiva lagunari.