- The most reliable biography of a scholar is the chronology of his/her writings.edit
This article on Telemann’s ‘Der Tag des Gerichts’ –written when the studies on this composers were given a new impulse by the bicentenary of his death (1767-1967) – represents the author’s first step towards historical... more
This article on Telemann’s ‘Der Tag des Gerichts’ –written when the studies on this composers were given a new impulse by the bicentenary of his death (1767-1967) – represents the author’s first step towards historical musicology, However his previous experience as a critic specialized in nineteen century art music is still immanent in the attempt to define the place of Telemann in eighteen century society and culture through the compositional choices exemplified by the score of his last oratorio.
The index of the issue of the ‘Nuova Rivista musicale italiana’, where this article was published, is well worthy to be read in itself, since It exceptionally includes many of the best historical musicologists, music critics and ethnomusicologists active in Italy at the end of the 1960.
The index of the issue of the ‘Nuova Rivista musicale italiana’, where this article was published, is well worthy to be read in itself, since It exceptionally includes many of the best historical musicologists, music critics and ethnomusicologists active in Italy at the end of the 1960.
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An enlarged version of the article 'Palestrina and Frescobaldi: discovering a missing link' (published in Music & Letters. lxxix, 1998 ), this essay has been unfortunately spoiled by typographical careless and unexperienced... more
An enlarged version of the article 'Palestrina and Frescobaldi: discovering a missing link' (published in Music & Letters. lxxix, 1998 ), this essay has been unfortunately spoiled by typographical careless and unexperienced editing. Hence the illegibility of some pictures and, respectively, the definite article systematically added to Frescobaldi’s surname (e.g. il Frescobaldi, del Frescobaldi, and so on) without the author’s consent.
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A discussion of the essays on the economic structures of the early Venetian opera which Lorenzo Bianconi, Giovanni Morelli and Thomas Walker published between 1976 and 1984, with reference to Hellmuth Christian Wollff’s seminal... more
A discussion of the essays on the economic structures of the early Venetian opera which Lorenzo Bianconi, Giovanni Morelli and Thomas Walker published between 1976 and 1984, with reference to Hellmuth Christian Wollff’s seminal book on this subject matter as well as to Max Weber's theory of capitalism and Fernand Braudel’s writings on Venetian economy in the 17th century.
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This unpublished paper comes back to 1997 when the author was invited to deliver the keynote address of an international conference on musical patronage in South Europe during l’ancien régime, to be held in Avila (Spain), as well as... more
This unpublished paper comes back to 1997 when the author was invited to deliver the keynote address of an international conference on musical patronage in South Europe during l’ancien régime, to be held in Avila (Spain), as well as a lecture on the same subject at the Deutsches Historisches Institut of Rome. It gives an account of the research he had accomplished at the time on this crucial problem of music history that is much more exhaustive than the one available in his 1998 article Towards a theory of musical patronage in the Renaissance and the Baroque . The footnotes complementing the text uploaded here were added when, some years later, it was scheduled for publication in a volume of musicological essays that never got into print. This is why some footnotes refer to writings by the author and other scholars which in 1997 were still unpublished.
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This paper is the definitive version of the one read in Montbéliard , France, during the Froberger International Conference of 1990, and later translated into French and included as 'Froberger à Rome: de l’artisanat... more
This paper is the definitive version of the one read in Montbéliard , France, during the Froberger International Conference of 1990, and later translated into French and included as 'Froberger à Rome: de l’artisanat frescobaldien aux secrets de composition de Kircher' in the conference proceedings published in 1998 by Klincksieck. The refinement of the text, however, is counterbalanced by the lack of the unpublished epistolary items transcribed in the appendices of the French version and of the abridged Italian version published in 1994 as 'La macchina dei cinque stili'– the extant letters of Johann Jakob Froberger to Athanasius Kircher and, respectively, the letters written to the latter by the confessors of emperor Ferdinand III and archduke Leopold Wilhelm during the 1649 stay of Froberger in Rome.
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Written at the request of Howard M. Brown and read during a roundtable chaired by him at the 15th Congress of the International Musicological Society, this paper starts by providing a survey of the recent literature on musical... more
Written at the request of Howard M. Brown and read during a roundtable chaired by him at the 15th Congress of the International Musicological Society, this paper starts by providing a survey of the recent literature on musical patronage in Central and Southern Italy between 1500 and 1700 and ends by hinting at a methodological perspective exploited by the author in a number of writings published in subsequent years.
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Conceived as an introduction to a session of the conference 'Musikstadt Rom: Geschichte- Forschung-Perpektiven', organized in 2004 by the Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rome, this paper features a curious archival... more
Conceived as an introduction to a session of the conference 'Musikstadt Rom: Geschichte- Forschung-Perpektiven', organized in 2004 by the Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rome, this paper features a curious archival finding: an anonymous little poem magnifying the musical performances patronized by Francesco Barberini, ‘ cardinal nipote ‘ of pope Urban VIII, in the Roman church of San Lorenzo in Damaso. The version of the paper uploaded below corresponds to a print draft diverging from the published version in one detail: the sentence at page 17, lines 7-9, «tutto ciò spiega anche come mai due delle tre relazioni di questa sessione siano dedicate a principi della Chiesa come Francesco Barberini, appunto, e Pietro Ottoboni iuniore», which was subsequently changed into «tutto ciò spiega anche come mai una delle due relazioni di questa sessione sia dedicata a un principe della Chiesa come Pietro Ottoboni iuniore».
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The pdf uploaded below includes the first and the last paper of ‘Music and patronage: a debate’ – the central section of 'Perspectives on Luca Marenzio’s secular music', a book edited by Mauro Calcagno and published by Brepols... more
The pdf uploaded below includes the first and the last paper of ‘Music and patronage: a debate’ – the central section of 'Perspectives on Luca Marenzio’s secular music', a book edited by Mauro Calcagno and published by Brepols in 2014. 'Social markers in the musical market ‘ is a version, opportunely enlarged and improved, of the position paper read by the author at the beginning of a roundtable on musical patronage in Marenzio’s age, that took place at Harvard University in April 2006. The twin paper, 'A reply in an apologetic vein’, is the author’s reply to the scholars who participated in the debate as respondents ( the historian Mario Biagioli and the musicologists Jonathan Glixon, Stefano Lorenzetti and Arnaldo Morelli) – a reply that was written at a later time, however, given that organizational reasons cut short the roundtable after the respondents had read their own papers. Further details on the contents of the above book are available at <www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503553320-1>.
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The bulk of this paper is a musical analysis conceived as an essential complement of the biographical reconstruction put forward by the author in 'Frescobaldi’s early stay in Rome ‘, where the book of 'Fantasie a... more
The bulk of this paper is a musical analysis conceived as an essential complement of the biographical reconstruction put forward by the author in 'Frescobaldi’s early stay in Rome ‘, where the book of 'Fantasie a quattro’ that represented the debut of the young Frescobaldi as composer of keyboard music, is described, at variance with its usual definition as a singular by-product of his activity as church organist, as a compositional tour de force aiming to attract the patronage of Francesco Borghese, the brother of the reigning pope and the promoter of musical ‘accademie' suitable for his own social rank. Thus the present paper is also a demonstration of how the anthropological approach to musical patronage in early modern period illustrated by the author in 'Towards a theory of musical patronage in the Renaissance and Baroque' can be effectively enhanced by analytical methods designed ad hoc – just like the ‘method of measuring identical entry ratios’ applied here to some of Frescobaldi’s ‘ Fantasie’ so as to put in evidence the stylistic features which distinguish them from other fugal pieces, either by Frescobaldi himself or by composers such as Giovanni Maria Trabaci, Giovanni de Macque and Giaches de Wert, among his forerunners, and Johann Jakob Froberger and Leonardo Castellani, among his successors.
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A part from a minor if meaningful document so far overlooked concerning Frescobaldi’s years in Florence (1628-1634) the paper deals with a number of archival sources coming back to the period when he moved from Ferrara to Rome... more
A part from a minor if meaningful document so far overlooked concerning Frescobaldi’s years in Florence (1628-1634) the paper deals with a number of archival sources coming back to the period when he moved from Ferrara to Rome and began to work there as a church organist. Starting from the discovery of the marriage licence obtained by him in 1613 and the ascertainment of when he settled in the papal city, the author puts forward a new picture of the cultural and social background both of Frescobaldi’s tenure as organist in Santa Maria in Trastevere and of his performances in the palace of Francesco Borghese – the brother of the reigning pope and the dedicatee of the amazing Fantasie a quattro published by the young musician in 1608.
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The unpublished text uploaded below deals with a well known collection of keyboard tablatures of the 17th century housed in the Vatican Library, focusing on the unimaginable circumstances of their acquisition on the part of... more
The unpublished text uploaded below deals with a well known collection of keyboard tablatures of the 17th century housed in the Vatican Library, focusing on the unimaginable circumstances of their acquisition on the part of Chigi family in the 1660s. Details of the documentary and musical sources used for the preparation of the talk can be found in its expanded version, that the author has subsequently published as 'Musical autographs of Frescobaldi and his entourage in Roman sources’. And the same may be said for the archival research in the 17th-century section of the Chigi musical archive in the Vatican Library, hinted at by him as still in progress, whose results he has subsequently presented in the article ‘Palestrina and Frescobaldi: discovering a missing link’.
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The second part of this study focuses on the historical value of the musical items catalogued in the first part so as to enlighten the special position that the Doria Pamphilj family has always occupied, thanks to its... more
The second part of this study focuses on the historical value of the musical items catalogued in the first part so as to enlighten the special position that the Doria Pamphilj family has always occupied, thanks to its cultural distinction, in the Roman aristocracy.
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The paper uploaded here is the first part of a study concerning the musical collection assembled between the 16 and the 19 centuries by the Doria Pamphilj family, and housed in the Roman palace where they still dwell. It... more
The paper uploaded here is the first part of a study concerning the musical collection assembled between the 16 and the 19 centuries by the Doria Pamphilj family, and housed in the Roman palace where they still dwell. It includes a synthetic catalogue of almost three hundred items that, a part from its bibliographical interest, is the basis of the discussion of the collection from the historical viewpoint which the second part of the study focuses on.
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The paper develops the writing expertise of 'Ancora sulle messe attribuite a Frescobaldi’ through the identification of the master's handwriting in most pages of the anonymous keyboard tablature of the Vatican Library quoted in... more
The paper develops the writing expertise of 'Ancora sulle messe attribuite a Frescobaldi’ through the identification of the master's handwriting in most pages of the anonymous keyboard tablature of the Vatican Library quoted in the title – a collection of sketchy pieces whose details recall Frescobaldi’s first book of toccatas but which was probably made for didactic and not for compositional purposes. This theory is corroborated by a second keyboard tablature of the same library (Chigi Q.iv.24), whose unkwown scribe is the same of a fragmentary 'corrente' jotted down in the first one. As a matter of fact, the scribe in question is identifiable with Leonardo Castellani , a Roman organist who made part of Frescobaldi’s entourage at the end of the musician’s life, and this manuscript of his includes, besides a few copies of printed works of the master, some pieces attributable to Castellani himself which seemingly refer to the compositional method exemplified by Frescobaldi in Chigi Q.iv.29.
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A survey of the main aspects of musical patronage in 17th- century Venice – those linked, respectively, to the ruling class, the printing industry and the theatrical entrepreneurship – in the light of the author’s views on musical... more
A survey of the main aspects of musical patronage in 17th-
century Venice – those linked, respectively, to the ruling class, the printing industry and the theatrical entrepreneurship – in the light of the author’s views on musical patronage in early modern Italy and on the basis of letters from Monteverdi’s and Carissimi’s epistolaries. Because of an exceeding number of misprints an ad hoc list of errata is appended to the offprint uploaded below.
century Venice – those linked, respectively, to the ruling class, the printing industry and the theatrical entrepreneurship – in the light of the author’s views on musical patronage in early modern Italy and on the basis of letters from Monteverdi’s and Carissimi’s epistolaries. Because of an exceeding number of misprints an ad hoc list of errata is appended to the offprint uploaded below.
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A writing expertise whose path-breaking result – the identification of Girolamo Frescobaldi’s and Nicolò Borboni’s musical and ordinary handwriting in the manuscript of the masses quoted in the title and in Ms. Chigi IV.... more
A writing expertise whose path-breaking result – the identification of Girolamo Frescobaldi’s and Nicolò Borboni’s musical and ordinary handwriting in the manuscript of the masses quoted in the title and in Ms. Chigi IV. 25 of the Vatican library – enhanced the discussion on both sources and made the author as well as other scholars discover further musical autographs of Frescobaldi and Borboni in Rome, Paris and London. As a contribution to the Frescobaldi Quadrocentennial Conference held in Ferrara in 1983, the paper is followed by a summary of the debate that took place after its presentation.
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The idealized image of Luca Marenzio emerging from most biographies of his is challenged by re-evaluating the musician’s multiple relationships with the upper-class patronage of music and the flourishing business of music... more
The idealized image of Luca Marenzio emerging from most biographies of his is challenged by re-evaluating the musician’s multiple relationships with the upper-class patronage of music and the flourishing business of music printing.
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A two-part study focusing on the interdependence of the roles of politician and patron of music played by the nephew of pope Clement VIII who masterminded the recovery of the duchy of Ferrara to the Papacy in 1598 and... more
A two-part study focusing on the interdependence of the roles of politician and patron of music played by the nephew of pope Clement VIII who masterminded the recovery of the duchy of Ferrara to the Papacy in 1598 and acted successfully as arbitrator between the king of France and the duke of Savoy in 1600. The first part of the study deals with the striking social ascent of Pietro Aldobrandini, and is complemented by two appendix which gather, respectively, all the documents referring to his career between January 1592 and April 1600, and the dedicatories of eleven musical volumes offered to him in 1593-1599 by, among others, outstanding composers such as Palestrina, Monte and Luzzaschi.
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The interdependence of Cardinal Aldrobrandini’s roles as politician and patron of music is dramatically testified by the change they concurrently underwent when the death of Clement VIII and the election of Paul V (1605) led... more
The interdependence of Cardinal Aldrobrandini’s roles as politician and patron of music is dramatically testified by the change they concurrently underwent when the death of Clement VIII and the election of Paul V (1605) led his public life to a turning point . The powerful 'cardinale nipote' who in 1600 had celebrated in Florence the marriage between Maria de Medici and Henry IV of France ( and who had been at the same time the dedicatee of Emilio de’ Cavalieri's "Rappresentazione di anima e di corpo" and Luzzaschi’s "Madrigali per cantare e sonare") spent part of the subsequent sixteen years far away from the papal court, attending to his own duties as bishop of Ravenna. Thus the four musical prints dedicated to him in this period ( one fourth of those offered to him in previous years) came from church musicians personally bound to him, and included just one volume worth mentioning – "Recercari e canzoni francesi” by Girolamo Frescobaldi, who served the Cardinal and other members of his family between 1611 and 1621.
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A compendious exposition of the author's theory of musical patronage in the Renaissance and Baroque complemented by a discussion testing its tenets against the lifelong relationship of Monteverdi with the Gonzaga family ( English... more
A compendious exposition of the author's theory of musical patronage in the Renaissance and Baroque complemented by a discussion testing its tenets against the lifelong relationship of Monteverdi with the Gonzaga family ( English summary at pp. 474-475),
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An English abstract is to be found at the end of the article
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A full development of the observations on the book "L’oeuvre en filigrane" by Christine Jeanneret (Florence, Olschki, 2009) sketched by the author in " Was Frescobaldi a chameleonic scribe?" («Early Music»,xl, 2012, pp.87-89), as well... more
A full development of the observations on the book "L’oeuvre en filigrane" by Christine Jeanneret (Florence, Olschki, 2009) sketched by the author in " Was Frescobaldi a chameleonic scribe?" («Early Music»,xl, 2012, pp.87-89), as well as a caveat for the editors of the forthcoming volumes of the "Opere complete di Girolamo Frescobaldi" reserved to the musician’s unpublished works.
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A revision of the current views of the outstanding success of Athanasius Kircher’s "Musurgia universalls" among contemporary readers, in the light of 133 letters written or received by him and owned today by the Pontificia... more
A revision of the current views of the outstanding success of Athanasius Kircher’s "Musurgia universalls" among contemporary readers, in the light of 133 letters written or received by him and owned today by the Pontificia Università Gregoriana, Rome. The appendix includes summaries of the letters in question and the index of their senders.
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The old but still influential thesis of the outstanding success of Kircher’s "Musurgia universalis” among contemporary musicians is challenged by taking into account the passages of the treatise criticizing them, the selection... more
The old but still influential thesis of the outstanding success of Kircher’s "Musurgia universalis” among contemporary musicians is challenged by taking into account the passages of the treatise criticizing them, the selection of contemporary pieces used there as musical examples, and the reactions of Roman musicians when the treatise was published as echoed by Antimo Liberati and Giovanni Angelini Bontempi in their own theoretical writings.
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This paper – which includes an English abstract – was read during the Florence conference devoted to the quadrocentennial of the birth of opera (5-6 October 2000).
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A methodological discussion of a conspicuous book on musical patronage in early modern Italy ("Court musicians in Florence during the principate of the Medici " by Warren Kirkendale, 1993) including new details on Girolamo... more
A methodological discussion of a conspicuous book on musical patronage in early modern Italy ("Court musicians in Florence during the principate of the Medici " by Warren Kirkendale, 1993) including new details on Girolamo Frescobaldi’s biography, with special reference to the years 1628-1634, when he lived in Florence and served as organist the Grand Duke Ferdinando II de’ Medici.
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An English abstract is to be found at p. 57. The appendix includes the full transcription of two letters that Johann Jakob Froberger wrote to Athanasius Kircher in 1649 and 1654.
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A short article anticipating the exhaustive discussion of Christine Jeanneret’s 'L’oeuvre en filigrane ' subsequently developed by the author in ‘Quando il filologo musicale cerca lo scoop’.
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The paper deals with the relationship of patronage between the Roman pontiff and his musical chapel in 1500-1700 not from the usual standpoint of how the former’s personality could influence the latter’s musical... more
The paper deals with the relationship of patronage between the Roman pontiff and his musical chapel in 1500-1700 not from the usual standpoint of how the former’s personality could influence the latter’s musical activities but in the light of the double roles historically played by each of them: the pope as Vicar of Christ and head of the State of the Church, his singers as a vocal ensemble serving him and the main chapel of his residence. Hence the possibility to explain why the musical chapel of the Roman pontiff used to perform most of its daily duties in his absence and to keep up performing them also when he was dead.
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Eight archival documents concerning a legal process conducted in Rome between 1617 and 1618 and terminated with the dispossession of a house owned by Girolamo Frescobaldi and his wife are discussed in order to exemplify the... more
Eight archival documents concerning a legal process conducted in Rome between 1617 and 1618 and terminated with the dispossession of a house owned by Girolamo Frescobaldi and his wife are discussed in order to exemplify the fenomenon of paternalism underlying the patronage relationship that linked the musician to a nephew of pope Clement VIII, the powerful cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, in the years of the latter’s political eclipse.
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The autographs of Girolamo Frescobaldi identified by the author in the Chigi MS Q.iv.19 of the Vatican Library – two series of liturgical hymns by Palestrina and Victoria scored by Frescobaldi presumably when he was... more
The autographs of Girolamo Frescobaldi identified by the author in the Chigi MS Q.iv.19 of the Vatican Library – two series of liturgical hymns by Palestrina and Victoria scored by Frescobaldi presumably when he was preparing his own hymns of the Second Book of Toccate – are also discussed in a different version of the present paper: 'Girolamo Frescobaldi e il Palestrina: un autografo misconosciuto, un filo riannodato', published in 'Palestrina e l’Europa. Atti del III convegno internazionale di studi', edited by G.Rostirolla, S.Soldati and E.Zomparelli, Fondazione G.Pierluigi da Palestrina, Palestrina 2006, pp. 671-705.
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The bulk of the present essay is the reconstruction of the singular circumstances through which a number of musical autographs of Frescobaldi and his Roman entourage were acquired in 1667 by prince Mario Chigi, brother of pope... more
The bulk of the present essay is the reconstruction of the singular circumstances through which a number of musical autographs of Frescobaldi and his Roman entourage were acquired in 1667 by prince Mario Chigi, brother of pope Alexander VII. This reconstruction did not lead the author to identify other autographs of the master besides the ones presented in the papers 'Ancora sulle messe attribuite a Frescobaldi' and 'La didattica del solco tracciato'. However it has two remarkable results – throwing new light (and shadows) on the musical patronage fostered by the upper classes in Baroque Rome and pointing towards further research in the Chigi fund of the Vatican Library (the research subsequently accomplished and described by the author in 'Palestrina and Frescobaldi: discovering a missing link').
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The pdf uploaded here includes five texts discussing the essays by H.M. Brown, A.Atlas, O.Strunk, H.J. Marx, J. Hill, H.-W. Frey, C.Palisca, O. Jander, L.Bianconi-Th.Walker, and M. Murata which are anthologized, two by two, in... more
The pdf uploaded here includes five texts discussing the essays by H.M. Brown, A.Atlas, O.Strunk, H.J. Marx, J. Hill, H.-W. Frey, C.Palisca, O. Jander, L.Bianconi-Th.Walker, and M. Murata which are anthologized, two by two, in the chapters of 'La musica e il mondo' as well as an extensive survey of the literature on musical patronage in early modern Italy appeared up to the early 1990s. All texts aim to show how the essays and, more generally, the literature in question can be revalued in light of the methodological views championed by the editor in the preface of the book ( a writing available in this same Academia.edu profile page, at the entry ‘La musica e il mondo. Mecenatismo e committenza musicale in Italia fra Quattro e Settecento’, a cura di Claudio Annibaldi”, together with complete references to the sources of the above essays).
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The pdf uploaded here gathers the prefatory texts of the translations into Italian of nine musical analyses ( by, respectively, H. Schenker, R. Réti, D. F. Tovey, H. Riemann, J. LaRue, J-J. Nattiez and L. Hirbour Paquette, J. E.... more
The pdf uploaded here gathers the prefatory texts of the translations into Italian of nine musical analyses ( by, respectively, H. Schenker, R. Réti, D. F. Tovey, H. Riemann, J. LaRue, J-J. Nattiez and L. Hirbour Paquette, J. E. Youngblood, N. Böker-Heil, A. Forte) which complement 'Analisi musicale' by I. Bent and W. Drabkin – a book edited by C. Annibaldi in 1990, whose index and preface are available in the editor’s Academia. edu profile page. A part from those to chapters and paragraphs of the book in question, the bibliographic references recurring in the above prefatory texts are listed in the last page of the pdf.
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This book – whose original edition was published in 1987 as one of The New Grove Handbooks in Music – was sponsored by the Educational Committee of the Società Italiana di Musicologia in order to supply Italian readers... more
This book – whose original edition was published in 1987 as one of The New Grove Handbooks in Music – was sponsored by the Educational Committee of the Società Italiana di Musicologia in order to supply Italian readers interested in musical analysis with a manual viable also for autodidactic use. As detailed in the Prefazione – uploaded here with the relevant bibliographic references (pp. 353-355) and the index of the book (pp. V-VI) – this purpose led to a number of changes in the overall organization of the English edition, as especially instanced by the Letture – nine analyses by well-known scholars such as Hugo Riemann, Heinrich Schenker and Allen Forte never translated into Italian – which provide full examples of some of the analytical methods described in the book. The proceedings cited as forthcoming in the first footnote of the Prefazione were subsequently published in the series ‘Quaderni di Musica/Realtà’ (Rossana Dalmonte and Mario Baroni eds., L’analisi musicale, Unicopli, Milan, 1991). They included also a paper by the editor of the present book surveying the literature on musical analysis published in the decade 1979-1989: Claudio Annibaldi, “In corpore nobili”: rilievi storico-metodologici sull’analisi musicale postmoderna (pp. 25-39).
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This short book, published as a special issue of the journal 'Musica Antica', gathers the transcriptions of four roundtables on ' Frescobaldi and his time’ organized and chaired by the editor in Pamparato ( a mountain village of... more
This short book, published as a special issue of the journal 'Musica Antica', gathers the transcriptions of four roundtables on ' Frescobaldi and his time’ organized and chaired by the editor in Pamparato ( a mountain village of Northern Italy) during the 1983 edition of the courses in early music, founded there by Mauro Uberti, a specialist in ancient vocal techniques. What distinguished this small tribute to the quadrocentennial of Frescobaldi’s birth from the musicological congresses which celebrated it in Italy and the United States is its interdisciplinary quality. In fact, a part from a number of people following the above courses or attending the concerts complementing them, the roundtables in question involved musicians and scholars who were at Pamparato as teachers or performers (among them, the harpsichordists Emilia Fadini and David Collyer, the organist Christopher Stembridge, the lutenist Mirko Caffagni, the flautist Lorenzo Girodo and the musicologist Marie-Thérèse Bouquet Boyer) as well as four historians of Baroque dance, visual art, economy and culture such as, respectively, , Barbara Sparti, Bruno Contardi, Rosalba Davico and Gino Benzoni.
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The volume gathers the Italian translation of ten essays published between 1946 and 1990 by distinguished scholars from Germany, England, United States and Switzerland. The uploaded excerpt below includes an extensive foreword by... more
The volume gathers the Italian translation of ten essays published between 1946 and 1990 by distinguished scholars from Germany, England, United States and Switzerland. The uploaded excerpt below includes an extensive foreword by the editor,
who discusses in the last part Lewis Lockwood’s and Iain Fenlon’s books on the musical life in the ducal courts of Ferrara and, respectively, Mantua, according to the anthropological view of musical patronage in the Renaissance and Baroque elaborated by him in later years.
who discusses in the last part Lewis Lockwood’s and Iain Fenlon’s books on the musical life in the ducal courts of Ferrara and, respectively, Mantua, according to the anthropological view of musical patronage in the Renaissance and Baroque elaborated by him in later years.
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Besides the index of the volume, the author’s foreword, and a bibliographical list typed ad hoc, the pdf uploaded below include two chapters focusing on aspects of Palestrina’s biography and compositional output which are... more
Besides the index of the volume, the author’s foreword, and a bibliographical list typed ad hoc, the pdf uploaded below include two chapters focusing on aspects of Palestrina’s biography and compositional output which are still largely misunderstood. “L’eccezione e la regola” (pp. 68-82) deals with his supposed appointment as a composer of the Papal Chapel after his release as a singer because of his being married. “Un Innario in cerca d’autore” (pp. 195-217) analyzes the edition of Palestrina's polyphonic hymns reprinted in 1644 under the aegis of Urban VIII – a volume usually regarded as a second edition taking into account the textual revision of the liturgical hymns lately accomplished by order of the pope, whereas it includes a number of unattributed pieces composed by the singers serving the Papal Chapel in the 1640s.
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Unpublished contribution for a round table on the theme of Italian avant-garde music in the current perspectives, held on 21 December 1975, at the end of the XII Festival of Nuova Consonanza, an association of Roman composers,
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This talk was delivered, in a somewhat different version, during a symposium on Baroque art and music promoted in February 1992 by the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma in addition to a festival of early music and an exhibition of... more
This talk was delivered, in a somewhat different version, during a symposium on Baroque art and music promoted in February 1992 by the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma in addition to a festival of early music and an exhibition of documents on Roman oratorio. It deals with the major performances featured by the festival – L’Aretusa, a mythological opera by Filippo Vitali and Ester liberatrice del popolo hebreo, a biblical oratorio by Alessandro Stradella, composed in 1620 and after 1672 respectively – so as to highlight, according to the author’s views on musical patronage in the Renaissance and Baroque, the ideological background of the operas and the oratorios produced in 17th-century Rome . The quotations from writings of modern scholars refer, in the order, to: John W. Bennet, Paternalism, «International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences», Macmillan, New York 1968, vol. 9, pp. 472-477; Arnaldo morelli, Il ‘Theatro Spirituale’ ed altre raccolte di testi per oratori romani del Seicento, « Rivista Italiana di musicologia», XXI (1986), pp. 80. 114 e 116; Lino Bianchi, Carissimi, Stradella, Scarlatti e l’oratorio musicale, De Santis, Roma 1989, pp. 238-9 e 242; Marc Bloch, I re taumaurghi, Einaudi, Torino 1973, p. 293; Nino Pirrotta, Alessandro Stradella, «La musica. Enciclopedia storica», Utet, Torino 1966, vol. 4, p. 515.
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This paper dealing with the proliferation of the literature on musical analysis in the decade 1979-1989 was delivered by the author (whose Italian edition of ‘ Analysis' by Ian Bent and William Drabkin was then forthcoming ) during... more
This paper dealing with the proliferation of the literature on musical analysis in the decade 1979-1989 was delivered by the author (whose Italian edition of ‘ Analysis' by Ian Bent and William Drabkin was then forthcoming ) during the opening session of the first conference on musical analysis ever held in Italy (Reggio Emilia, 16-19 March 1989). Its bulk – a positive evaluation of analytics methods modeled on scientific experiment, i.e. based on explicit working hypotheses and procedures repeatable by any scholar – anticipates a perspective later exploited by him as historical musicologist, especially in the analytical section of the essay
'Frescobaldi’s Primo libro delle Fantasie a quattro (1608): a case study on the
interplay of commission, production and reception in early modern music’. The keys to the shortened bibliographic references inserted in the text uploaded here are to be found in the appendix.
'Frescobaldi’s Primo libro delle Fantasie a quattro (1608): a case study on the
interplay of commission, production and reception in early modern music’. The keys to the shortened bibliographic references inserted in the text uploaded here are to be found in the appendix.
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This unpublished text goes back to 2001, when the author was invited by the Music Department of the Deutsches Historisches Institut of Rome to given a talk on Franco Piperno’s " L’immagine del Duca. Musica e spettacolo alla corte... more
This unpublished text goes back to 2001, when the author was invited by the Music Department of the Deutsches Historisches Institut of Rome to given a talk on Franco Piperno’s " L’immagine del Duca. Musica e spettacolo alla corte di Guidobaldo II duca d’Urbino" (Olschki, Florence 2001) . As Piperno's book focuses on the patronage of music and theatre nurtured by the prince en titre, who ruled the duchy of Pesaro and Urbino between 1538 and 1574, the author took advantage from the above invitation in order to demonstrate the viability of the theoretical approach to the courtly patronage of music in early modern Italy championed by him since the preface of the book "La musica e il mondo".
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Given in 1992 during a congress dedicated to archival sources concerning the musical life in modern Rome, this talk deals with the relationship between Johann Jakob Froberger and Athanasius Kircher, already treated by the... more
Given in 1992 during a congress dedicated to archival sources concerning the musical life in modern Rome, this talk deals with the relationship between Johann Jakob Froberger and Athanasius Kircher, already treated by the author in an extensive essay on Froberger in Rome, whose English and French versions were at the time still forthcoming. The appendix includes the handout distributed to the participants in the above congress: the transcription of two letters written to Kircher by the confessors of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm and Emperor Ferdinand III, respectively in April 1649, when Froberger was in Rome, and in the following August, soon after the musician’s return to Wien. It is worth noting that, according to a recent article of Herbert Seifert included in the volume Steinbruch oder Wissensgebäude? edited by Melanie Wald-Furhmann (Basel 2014, pp. 131-141), the 'Organista Serenissimi' quoted in the letter transcribed in the Appendix 1 of the present paper is to be identified not with Froberger but with Johann Kaspar Kerll.
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This talk, given by the author in 1994, synthesizes his views on musical patronage in the early modern period for the benefit of a group of young scholars involved in a project of research on the musical life of the duchy of... more
This talk, given by the author in 1994, synthesizes his views on musical patronage in the early modern period for the benefit of a group of young scholars involved in a project of research on the musical life of the duchy of Castro e Ronciglione, a small papal fief in central Italy ruled by members of the Farnese family until the half of the 17th century. The tables included in the published version uploaded here derive from Nobiltà di Dame, a treatise on court dance that Fabrizio Caroso dedicated in 1600 to Ranuccio Farnese and Margherita Aldobrandini, the ducal couple then ruling, a part from the above fief, the duchy of Parma and Piacenza.
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The article uploaded here derives from the recording of the first of five lectures on ‘ L’imitazione musicale degli affetti in Italia nel Rinascimento e nel Barocco’ that the author gave in 1978 at the Summer courses in early music... more
The article uploaded here derives from the recording of the first of five lectures on ‘ L’imitazione musicale degli affetti in Italia nel Rinascimento e nel Barocco’ that the author gave in 1978 at the Summer courses in early music of Pamparato, a mountain village of North Italy. Conceived as a colloquial presentation of the cycle to the participants in the courses, the talk focuses on the central role played by the imitation of affections not only in the music of the Renaissance and Baroque but also in the performing and visual arts of the period.
( Unfortunately, the pdf uploaded here omits the last page of the article and thus the closing passage, which reads : « «E’ anche autore di una sonata per clavicembalo e violino, il cui richiamarsi a nuove istanze di autenticità espressiva viene dichiarato già nel titolo : ‘I sentimenti di Karl Philipp Emanuel Bach’. Un titolo che basta da solo a significare quanto profondamente fosse mutata, e stesse mutando, la musica colta europea.»)
( Unfortunately, the pdf uploaded here omits the last page of the article and thus the closing passage, which reads : « «E’ anche autore di una sonata per clavicembalo e violino, il cui richiamarsi a nuove istanze di autenticità espressiva viene dichiarato già nel titolo : ‘I sentimenti di Karl Philipp Emanuel Bach’. Un titolo che basta da solo a significare quanto profondamente fosse mutata, e stesse mutando, la musica colta europea.»)
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A part from its polemical content – a reply to the aggressive reaction of an influential music critic to the passages of the author’s essay "L' immagine 'analitica' di Webern" criticizing his support to the neo-romantic... more
A part from its polemical content – a reply to the aggressive reaction of an influential music critic to the passages of the author’s essay "L' immagine 'analitica' di Webern" criticizing his support to the neo-romantic trends which were in fashion among young composers in 1980s Italy – this short writing is a realistic document of the everlasting lack of correspondence between music historians and music critics.
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The text uploaded here derives from the unpublished transcription of a round table on the perspectives of the research on Baroque music at the beginning of the XXI century, that the journal ‘Recercare’ organized in Rome, on 27... more
The text uploaded here derives from the unpublished transcription of a round table on the perspectives of the research on Baroque music at the beginning of the XXI century, that the journal ‘Recercare’ organized in Rome, on 27 November 2003, together with the music department of the local Deutches Historisches Institut. The text gathers the answers given by the author to three questions that Arnaldo Morelli, editor-en-chief of ‘Recercare', asked the scholars participating in the discussion : besides the author, Saverio Franchi, Robert Kendrick and Franco Piperno, then associated respectively to the universities of Perugia, Chicago and Florence. Morelli’s questions are quoted here just as he worded them in a letter sent to the four scholars in order to confirm the date of the round table..
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Published in 1991 as the foreword of a book collecting a selection of analyses of Anton Webern’s compositions sponsored by ' Nuova Consonanza’, a Roman association active in the field of contemporary music, this paper was... more
Published in 1991 as the foreword of a book collecting a selection of analyses of Anton Webern’s compositions sponsored by ' Nuova Consonanza’, a Roman association active in the field of contemporary music, this paper was subsequently reprinted in a miscellaneous volume on the activity of the same association ( Daniela Tortora, 'Nuova Consonanza 1989-1994’, Lim, Lucca 1994, pp. 104-123 ). Its scope however goes far beyond the assessment of eight analytical writings whose authors range from composers such as Herbert Heimert, Henri Pousseur and György Ligeti to musicologists such as Heinz-Klaus Metzger, Armin Klammer, Bernadette Lespinard and Nicholas Cook. The central section, in fact, takes issue with the equivocal image of Webern as man and composer diffused in Italy even among experienced music critics, and the closing section opposes the profoundness of his vision of art music to the modish ’neo-romanticism ' championed in the 1980s by many Italian composers of the latest generation.
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Written for the launching issue of ‘Analitica', the journal on line of GATM ( Gruppo Analisi e Teoria Musicale), this short article draws an unsparing picture of the state of musical analysis in Italy in the 1990s, according to the... more
Written for the launching issue of ‘Analitica', the journal on line of GATM ( Gruppo Analisi e Teoria Musicale), this short article draws an unsparing picture of the state of musical analysis in Italy in the 1990s, according to the author’s experience as teacher and scholar.
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Written for the special issue dedicated by a popular music magazine to the 350th anniversary of Monteverdi's death, this article basically aims to compensate the lack of attention for the simultaneous anniversary of... more
Written for the special issue dedicated by a popular music magazine to the 350th anniversary of Monteverdi's death, this article basically aims to compensate the lack of attention for the simultaneous anniversary of Frescobaldi’s death because of the scarse importance usually given to instrumental music in comparison with vocal one.
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Prospectus of a lecture in three installments for a seminar group of graduate and postgraduate students given in March 2015 in Cremona, at the invitation of the local Dipartimento di Musicologia e Beni culturali of Pavia... more
Prospectus of a lecture in three installments for a seminar group of graduate and postgraduate students given in March 2015 in Cremona, at the invitation of the local Dipartimento di Musicologia e Beni culturali of Pavia University. (Needless to say, the locution ’ storia totale’ refers to the methodological approach advocated in France by the so-called ’école des Annales’, that challenged traditional historiography by taking all levels of society into consideration and emphasizing the collective nature of mentalities.)