Papers by Patrizio Barbieri
"Die beiden Harmonic-Systeme der Paduaner Schule (1720-1820)", in "Geschichte der Musiktheorie, Band 12: Die Musiktheorie im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert. Dritter Teil: Frankreich, Belgien und Italien", ed. Stefan Keym, Berlin, Staatlches Institut fuer Musikforschung, 2021, pp. 43-99., 2021
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Tuning and temperament: practice vs science 1450-2020, 2023
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Symposium musicae. Saggi e testimonianze in onore di Giancarlo Rostirolla per il suo 80° genetliaco, eds Federica Nardacci and Benedetto Cipriani, Faleria-Palestrina, Recercare - Fondazione Palestrina, 2021, pp. 129-42., 2021
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Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 2020
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Roma, Torre d'Orfeo, 1987
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Informazione Organistica, XXXI-2 (Dec. 2019), 2019
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Informazione organistica, 2019
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The Galpin Society Journal, 2020
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Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society, 2019
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The Organ Yearbook, 2017
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The Organ Yearbook, 2016
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Informazione organistica, 2017
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Hydraulic musical automata in Italian villas and other 'ingenia' 1400-2000, 2019
Hard bound, pp. 543 290 illus. (106 in colour) Musical scores Euro 50 To order: www.gangemieditor... more Hard bound, pp. 543 290 illus. (106 in colour) Musical scores Euro 50 To order: www.gangemieditore.it Tel. +39 06.6872774 The volume may be ideally divided into two parts. The first deals with water organs, including the musical compositions with which they were provided, and several automata of Heronian design, such as the androids of the Farnese court, the Fountain of the Owl, and the myth of Faun and the nymph Echo. The various hydraulic systems for providing the pressurised air needed for their operation, also adopted in forges and melting furnaces, are analysed from a technical point of view. In the second part are illustrated ingenia of various kind, not always hydraulically operated, like: organs and harpsichords activated by sunlight or counterweights , the automata that once figured in the Roman museum of Athanasius Kircher, those realized by the missionaries for the Imperial Court of Peking, several reconstructions of the mythical Vulcan's forge, Michele Todini's famous "Galleria armonica", and a special type of hydraulis made in Naples in the Late Renaissance.
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"Arte Organaria Italiana", 2018
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Early Music, 2018
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17.2.2016
Patrizio Barbieri, “Harps versus pianos: Parisian querelles on tuning 1770-1830”
ABS... more 17.2.2016
Patrizio Barbieri, “Harps versus pianos: Parisian querelles on tuning 1770-1830”
ABSTRACT
This study aims at illustrating the scientific quarrels on the evolution of piano and harp tuning in the French capital, starting from the so-called tempérament ordinaire an intermediate solution between the meantone and the equal, still widespread in the 1820s and the final acceptance of equal temperament (c1830).
The controversies on the temperament of harps rose from the late eighteenth century, as a result of the increasing use of pedals on this instrument, then much in favour in Paris: unlike ordinary pianos and organs, with the innovation proposed by the Cousineaus in 1782 harps could actually play, in every octave of just seven strings, as many as 21 different notes, without causing any difficulty to the player as far as fingering is concerned. The theoretical aspect of the matter had been examined by the Parisian Académie des sciences, to which, according to current practice, makers applied in order to obtain the desired approbation for their innovations. These querelles on temperament and on the new instruments mainly involved scientists like de Prony, Biot, Vandermonde, Lacépède and Blein, besides representatives of the musical world like Fétis, Naderman, Dizi and Erard. They only died down toward 1830, when equal temperament was accepted by the Parisian musical world, almost a century after Rameau’s proposal (1737).
The features of Cousineau’s enharmonic harp had repercussions also on keyboard string instruments, like Johann Georg Roser’s “Piano-forté de la parfaite harmonie” (c1780), which offered the possibility of differentiating sharps and enharmonically equivalent flats; being, like the new harps, an isomorphic instrument, on its six keyboards the very same fingering could be used for many different tonalities. Also on this 31-note-per-octave piano new information has been found.
Author’s biography
PATRIZIO BARBIERI has taught at the University of Lecce (History of music theory, Musical acoustics, Applied acoustics) and in Rome (Università Gregoriana, and Rome Tor Vergata University). In 2008 he was awarded the Frances Densmore Prize by the American Musical Instrument Society for the best English-language article on musical instruments published in the two-year period 2007-08. He is the author of three books and over one hundred articles. He is currently engaged as an independent researcher in the history of musical acoustics, organology, music theory and printing.
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Informazione organistica, 2016
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Papers by Patrizio Barbieri
Patrizio Barbieri, “Harps versus pianos: Parisian querelles on tuning 1770-1830”
ABSTRACT
This study aims at illustrating the scientific quarrels on the evolution of piano and harp tuning in the French capital, starting from the so-called tempérament ordinaire an intermediate solution between the meantone and the equal, still widespread in the 1820s and the final acceptance of equal temperament (c1830).
The controversies on the temperament of harps rose from the late eighteenth century, as a result of the increasing use of pedals on this instrument, then much in favour in Paris: unlike ordinary pianos and organs, with the innovation proposed by the Cousineaus in 1782 harps could actually play, in every octave of just seven strings, as many as 21 different notes, without causing any difficulty to the player as far as fingering is concerned. The theoretical aspect of the matter had been examined by the Parisian Académie des sciences, to which, according to current practice, makers applied in order to obtain the desired approbation for their innovations. These querelles on temperament and on the new instruments mainly involved scientists like de Prony, Biot, Vandermonde, Lacépède and Blein, besides representatives of the musical world like Fétis, Naderman, Dizi and Erard. They only died down toward 1830, when equal temperament was accepted by the Parisian musical world, almost a century after Rameau’s proposal (1737).
The features of Cousineau’s enharmonic harp had repercussions also on keyboard string instruments, like Johann Georg Roser’s “Piano-forté de la parfaite harmonie” (c1780), which offered the possibility of differentiating sharps and enharmonically equivalent flats; being, like the new harps, an isomorphic instrument, on its six keyboards the very same fingering could be used for many different tonalities. Also on this 31-note-per-octave piano new information has been found.
Author’s biography
PATRIZIO BARBIERI has taught at the University of Lecce (History of music theory, Musical acoustics, Applied acoustics) and in Rome (Università Gregoriana, and Rome Tor Vergata University). In 2008 he was awarded the Frances Densmore Prize by the American Musical Instrument Society for the best English-language article on musical instruments published in the two-year period 2007-08. He is the author of three books and over one hundred articles. He is currently engaged as an independent researcher in the history of musical acoustics, organology, music theory and printing.
Patrizio Barbieri, “Harps versus pianos: Parisian querelles on tuning 1770-1830”
ABSTRACT
This study aims at illustrating the scientific quarrels on the evolution of piano and harp tuning in the French capital, starting from the so-called tempérament ordinaire an intermediate solution between the meantone and the equal, still widespread in the 1820s and the final acceptance of equal temperament (c1830).
The controversies on the temperament of harps rose from the late eighteenth century, as a result of the increasing use of pedals on this instrument, then much in favour in Paris: unlike ordinary pianos and organs, with the innovation proposed by the Cousineaus in 1782 harps could actually play, in every octave of just seven strings, as many as 21 different notes, without causing any difficulty to the player as far as fingering is concerned. The theoretical aspect of the matter had been examined by the Parisian Académie des sciences, to which, according to current practice, makers applied in order to obtain the desired approbation for their innovations. These querelles on temperament and on the new instruments mainly involved scientists like de Prony, Biot, Vandermonde, Lacépède and Blein, besides representatives of the musical world like Fétis, Naderman, Dizi and Erard. They only died down toward 1830, when equal temperament was accepted by the Parisian musical world, almost a century after Rameau’s proposal (1737).
The features of Cousineau’s enharmonic harp had repercussions also on keyboard string instruments, like Johann Georg Roser’s “Piano-forté de la parfaite harmonie” (c1780), which offered the possibility of differentiating sharps and enharmonically equivalent flats; being, like the new harps, an isomorphic instrument, on its six keyboards the very same fingering could be used for many different tonalities. Also on this 31-note-per-octave piano new information has been found.
Author’s biography
PATRIZIO BARBIERI has taught at the University of Lecce (History of music theory, Musical acoustics, Applied acoustics) and in Rome (Università Gregoriana, and Rome Tor Vergata University). In 2008 he was awarded the Frances Densmore Prize by the American Musical Instrument Society for the best English-language article on musical instruments published in the two-year period 2007-08. He is the author of three books and over one hundred articles. He is currently engaged as an independent researcher in the history of musical acoustics, organology, music theory and printing.