Baldassarre Galuppi

During the middle of the eighteenth century, one of the dominant streams of European musical culture was Metastasian opera seria. Composers including Hasse, Galuppi, Gluck, Pergolesi, and Vinci composed dozens of settings of Pietro Metastasio’s librettos, each one containing twenty or thirty arias in da capo form.

This dissertation develops a theory of the Metastasian da capo aria as a dialogic form, in the spirit of Hepokoski and Darcy’s *Elements of Sonata Theory*. It proposes a hypothetical reconstruction of the “generic contract” of the mid–eighteenth-century aria, whereby the individual musical features of the richly conventionalized form attain expressive meaning as the agents of the genre’s cultural uses. In particular, the intellectual and theatrical climate to which the Metastasian da capo aria was adapted demanded many of the musical features central to Hepokoski and Darcy’s conception of sonata form: its orientation toward predictable punctuating cadences, its “vectored trajectory” toward closure, and its rhetorical layout in a series of musical “rotations.”

The da capo aria’s features can be interpreted as a musical construction of a particularly eighteenth-century conception of subjectivity and ethical experience. Metastasio’s librettos theatricalize the moral philosophy of Descartes’ *Les passions de l’âme*, depicting characters who struggle to regulate their passions in order to act appropriately. The dissertation interprets the musical and textual parameters of the aria in this light, with emphasis on musical form and the interplay between the purely musical and the poetic text. Its chief theoretical tool for approaching musical form is the “characteristic action,” a formal “schema” or “family resemblance” that unites the character’s dramatic agency (as musically embodied in the vocal line) with a series of musical goals (rhetorically highlighted punctuating cadences). The chief of these goals is the “essential structural closure” that provides tonal closure for the entire aria, as in sonata form.

В настоящей статье представлен подробный обзор иконографических материалов, связанных с именем выдающегося композитора. В контексте деятельности Бортнянского в качестве коллекционера, знатока и художественного консультанта малого двора, особое внимание уделяется картинной галерее композитора, состав которой был частично реконструирован нами при изучении вновь выявленных архивных и литературных источников. Статья представляет собой исправленную и дополненную версию текста, опубликованного в книге "Мольберт Эвтерпы" (М., 2018. С. 10-73).

Schweizer Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft 30 (2010), pp. 117-161. – In 1675 the monastery of Einsiedeln (Switzerland) acquired by the Jesuits a residence in Bellinzona. This house used until 1852 represents a very important ‘pied-à-terre’ to Italy and especially to Milan. An exceptional cultural transfer occurs along this way with an intense circulation of musical sources. Aim of this study is, on the one hand, to investigate the modalities of circulation of music between Milan and Einsiedeln; on the other, to show how this swiss connection has influenced the selection of Italian music.

In this article the first Viennese version (1767) of the opera buffa Il marchese villano by Pietro Chiari and Baldassarre Galuppi (Venice 1762) is examined from the perspective of cultural transfer. The notable differences between the performance context of the Venetian premiere in the commercial theatre system of the Republic of Venice and the Viennese performance context – the betrothal festivities for Maria Josepha of Austria at the imperial court of Vienna – are mirrored in the radical Viennese adaptation, which generally tends to a more elevated kind of entertainment and a less buffo-style music.

Il principe di Sansevero Raimondo di Sangro (1710-1771) è figura ben nota per l’eccentricità del pensiero e per la singolare simbologia massonica alla quale si ispirò nel riedificare la cappella di famiglia, situata nel cuore di Napoli. Il contributo ricostruisce gli interessi musicali del personaggio, finora mai indagati; in particolare evidenzia la componente sonora di alcune sue invenzioni, raccoglie le informazioni disponibili intorno al carillon che egli fece costruire sull’esempio degli strumenti nord-europei e presenta i testi drammatici riconducibili al suo mecenatismo (tra questi, il libretto in vernacolo "Li sconquasse de lo Pennino" del 1757). Una specifica attenzione è riservata alla moglie del principe, Carlotta Gaetani, dedicataria di una misconosciuta stampa musicale partenopea, la "Scelta di arie" del dramma "L’eroe cinese", intonato da Baldassarre Galuppi per il Teatro di San Carlo nel 1753. L’ultima parte del saggio è dedicata ai figli di Raimondo: il primogenito Vincenzo, committente di un componimento d’occasione di Gian Francesco de Majo; la prediletta Carlotta, protettrice del compositore Silvestro Palma; ma soprattutto Francesco, in rapporti con Carlo Gozzi, autore di numerose commedie e attivo anche come promotore e organizzatore di rappresentazioni teatrali.

Die Etablierung der Opera buffa veränderte die Opernlandschaft des 18. Jahrhunderts maßgeblich. Sie stellte einen inhaltlichen Kontrapunkt zur höfisch geprägten Opera seria dar und löste diese zunehmend in den Spielplänen ab. Wie aber ging die europaweite Verbreitung der komischen italienischen Oper vor sich? Wo konnte sie sich rascher als anderswo etablieren und wer waren die zentralen Akteurinnen und Akteure? Welche Rolle spielten mobile Operntruppen und wie verhielten sich die Höfe zu dem neuen Genre? Erstmals nehmen die Autorinnen in einer systematischen Analyse der Opera buffa in Europa Migration, Mobilität, Netzwerke und Transformationsprozesse zwischen 1740 und 1765 in den Blick.

Mit einem Gastbeitrag von Tom Brökel und Heike Brökel.

The article argues for the acceptance as a genuine work by Vivaldi of a further work, a single-movement setting for choir and strings of the psalm Laetatus sum, fraudulently attributed to Galuppi in the Dresden manuscript Mus. 2973-D-36 by Iseppo Baldan, the proprietor of the Venetian copisteria that around 1760 supplied the Saxon-Polish court, temporarily removed to Warsaw during the period of the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), with a large and comprehensive repertory of sacred vocal music primarily consisting of works genuinely by that composer. This newly identified work, henceforth to be known as RV 827, joins RV 795, RV 803, RV 807 and RV Anh. 35a in the group of works by Vivaldi misattributed to Galuppi by Baldan, who had probably received them (correctly attributed, of course) from one or other of the two nephews of Vivaldi – Daniele Mauro and Carlo Vivaldi – who had previously worked for him.
The justification for the attribution of RV 827 to Vivaldi is made primarily on general stylistic grounds, reinforced by a few instances of thematic concordance with actual works by him and certain notational similarities. The opportunity is also taken to introduce the work by analysing its form and evaluating its aesthetic qualities. It appears to date from the early 1730s and to have no connection with the Ospedale della Pietà. As one of the longest and most complex single-movement psalm settings to come from Vivaldi’s pen, it constitutes an interesting and valuable addition to his catalogue. It has very recently been published in the Critical Edition of Vivaldi's works.