Musical Patronage

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),

Archduke Ferdinand of Inner Austria was not only the dedicatee of the anthology Parnassus Musicus Ferdinandaeus – in itself a rich document of the future Holy Roman Emperor’s wide-ranging musical connections – but his court in Graz also became – on account of his personal music interests and the opportunities provided by carefully planned family connections – a major hub of the leading musical trends of the first two decades of the seventeenth century. The paper provides an overview of this intricate web forming Ferdinand’s musical “Parnassus” in Graz.

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.

Don Antonio Londonio (1532-1592) was born in Castile and settled
in Milan in the late 1550s. He was both a prominent politician and one of
the main patrons of the arts in Lombardy: musicians, poets, philosophers, and
other artists in Northwest Italy benefited from his protection. Maddalena Casulana,
Pietro Vinci, and Marc’Antonio Ingegneri dedicated madrigal books to him
between 1570 and 1584. These dedications, together with other documents (notarial
acts, collections of poems and letters, the proceedings of the trial in which
Londonio was involved from 1581 onwards), make it possible for us to identify
the members of his artistic circle. In general, they convey the image of a patron
who – given his considerable musical competence – must have played a significant
role in the preparation of the music books dedicated to him. In particular,
the encomiastic madrigals and the texts on political matters can be considered as
expressions of Londonio’s ideas, the institutional tasks that he had to carry out
in the Duchy of Milan and the relationships he was able to develop with musical
circles in Lombardy.Antonio
Londonio also had a significant role in the editing of Paolo Caracciolo’s
Primo libro de’ madrigali a cinque voci (Venice, Scotto, 1582). More generally, this
anthology indirectly sheds light on Milanese musical life in the late 1500s, which
was animated by individuals – mainly from the lower aristocracy or officials of
the imperial court – who in turn patronized the publication of musical works and
probably promoted the circulation of books of poetry and madrigals produced in
Milan both in Central and Northern Italy and in Central Europe.

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.

Die politisch-religiose Bedeutung und die künstlteisch-kulturelle Sensibilität des Salzburger Erzbischofs Paris Lodron zog zugleich mit jener anderer bedeutender Personlichkeiten seiner Zeit eine grosse Zahl von Musikern an, die dem Prälaten  Kompositionen widmeten. Unter ihnen war der Florentiner Musiker Pietro lappi (ca. 1557 - ca. 1630), der fast ein ganzes Leben lang als Kapellmeister von S. Maria delle Grazie in Brescia tätig war. Seine Werke sind mindestens aus zwei Gründen von besonderem Interesse: zum einen hat der italienische Musiker seine Musikdrucke den hochsten  kirchlichen Würdenträgern Salzburgs gewidmet, zum anderen handelt es sich bei lappi um einem der bedeutendsten Vertreter auf dem Gebiet der norditalienischen geistlichen Musik des Frühbarock.

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.

Carlo Broschi Farinelli, the most famous castrato singer in the History of Music, lived for more than twenty year in the Madrid court, arriving there in 1737 in coincidence with the rise of the power of the Marquis de la Ensenada. This article explores and discusses their relationship, revising well known sources as well as considering unknown ones. The starting point is a historiographical criticism in order to assess the scarce recption of the studies on Ensenada in Farinelli’s scholarship. Then, the article shows, on a documentary basis the interest on music of several Ensenada’s acquaintances: Montealegre, Huéscar, Ardore and Esquilache. In the following part, the court feasts promoted by Ensenada and Farinelli are studied, as well as the references to the Minister in the letters from Metastasio and Huéscar, with emphasis in the first operas and serenatas produced under the reign of Ferdinand VI. Unpublished sources are used to shed light on the process of fabrication and propaganda sourrounding these productions. Finally, the period following Ensenada’s fall is considered using the letters from Farinelli to the Spanish ambasador in Vienna. These and other sources are presented in the appendix that includes a translation into Spanish of the references to Ensenada in the Farinelli-Metastasio correspondence.

Recent research on the ties between the Venetian cardinal Pietro Ottoboni – a patron of music and the arts in Rome from the end of 1689 until 1740 – and the representatives of the European powers in Rome, has put into relief the ‘cultural lines of force’ that ran between him and the foreign nobility. Those relations changed over the course of time during the pontificates of Alexander VIII (1689-1691), Innocent XII (1691-1700), and Clement XI (1700-1721). In fact, Ottoboni’s patronage of music during these three decades is articulated in various ‘phases’, shaped by politics and historical events, but also by the ups and downs of the cardinal’s financial resources. Cardinal Ottoboni maintained strong relationships with the ambassadors thanks to both his diplomatic skills and his offering of musical events in which the very best singers, instrumentalists, and composers took part (Arcangelo Corelli, Alessandro Scarlatti, Giovanni Bononcini, Ottavio Pitoni). The foreign diplomats and aristocrats were received with great splendour at the Palazzo della Cancelleria, the cardinal’s residence, in which various theatres were in function at different times. These social events favoured the exchange of music, musical instruments, singers, instrumentalists, and composers between Rome and the rest of Europe.
A focus on the ties between Ottoboni and the Portuguese nation throws into relief the climate of collaboration that favoured the exchanges between Rome and Lisbon in the field of music and the arts, as is shown, for instance, by the presence at the Roman church of S. Antonio dei Portoghesi of numerous musicians that were employed by the Venetian cardinal. At the same time, artists from Portugal found in Ottoboni an important point of reference in Rome, something that had a direct bearing on the dissemination of genres, styles, and musical instruments in Lisbon. We know, for example, that in 1718, in his capacity as protector of the Sistine Chapel, Ottoboni procured a range of music for Lisbon cathedral at the request of king John V.
Using new archival sources, this paper investigates the possible collaboration between Ottoboni and the Portuguese ambassadors on the organisation of musical events.

The aim of this article is to contribute new information and some preliminary hypothesis about the musical patronage of the Novohispanic nobility in mid-18th century using as case of study the creole Miguel de Berrio y Zaldívar, Marquess of the Jaral and Count of San Mateo of Valparaíso. Owner of extensive haciendas in the center of the viceroyalty, Berrio became famous for the musical soirees that took place in his palace of Mexico city, taking part himself as violinist; additionally, he favored musicians as Ignacio Jerusalem and gathered one of the most impressive particular collections of scores and musical instruments of the continent. An isolated example does not allow to extract general conclusions on the musical profile of the Novohispanic nobility, but in case of Berrio it seems that his musical interest not only was a way of entertainment and autopromotion, but part of his aristocratic identity. In the light of all this I conclude that, in spite of the specificities of the social fabric in colonial Mexico, as well as of its practices and artistic representations, the supposed lack of interest for the music of the urban colonial elites must be reconsidered. // El propósito de este artículo es aportar nueva información y algunas hipótesis preliminares sobre el mecenazgo musical de la nobleza novohispana a mediados del siglo XVIII usando como caso de estudio al criollo Miguel de Berrio y Zaldívar, Marqués del Jaral y Conde San Mateo de Valparaíso. Propietario de extensas haciendas en el centro del virreinato, Berrio se hizo famoso por las tertulias musicales que tenían lugar en su palacio de la ciudad de México, en las que él mismo participaba como violinista; adicionalmente, favoreció a músicos como Ignacio Jerusalem y reunió una de las más imponentes colecciones particulares de partituras e instrumentos musicales de todo el continente. Aunque un ejemplo aislado no permite extraer conclusiones generales sobre el perfil musical de la nobleza novohispana, en el caso de Berrio parece que su afición musical no sólo era una forma de entretenimiento y autopromoción, sino parte de su identidad aristocrática. A la luz de todo lo anterior concluyo que, pese a las especificidades del tejido social del México colonial, así como de sus prácticas y representaciones artísticas, la supuesta falta de interés por la música de las élites urbanas coloniales debe ser reconsiderada.

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".

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.

The paper addresses specifically the production of motets of G. Contino, J. de Mantua, C. De Rore connected with the political-institutional work of the cardinal of  Trent Cristoforo Madruzzo (1512-1578), in the delicate historical phase of the Council of Trent (1545-1563)

The figure of Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo Trento (1513-1578), major personality in the crucial historical moment of the Catholic Reformation, is outlined in terms of its musical patronage, especially significant in the sphere of political Latin motet: various compositions were dedicated to Madruzzo ad its political and diplomatic action by authors like G. Contino, J. de Mantua, C. de Rore.

edited by Galliano Ciliberti, Turnhout, Brepols Publishers, 2021 (Studies on Italian Music History, 15), pp. xviii+492 , ISBN 978-2-503-59544-3

During the Renaissance and throughout the Baroque and Classical periods, musical production is linked to patronage. There are essentially two types of patronage. The first relates to political institutions, to public life, and aims to promote musical events that highlight the wealth and power of the patron in the eyes of rival courts and subjects – hence the birth of the court chapels.

The second type belongs to the private sphere, in which the patron, of noble birth and as such in possession of high moral and intellectual virtues, possesses a discriminating artistic sensibility — hence the promotion of chamber music activities, the collecting of rare and valuable musical instruments, and the compilation and collection of musical manuscripts, possibly in deluxe or personalized copies. This musical production system, as described, lasted until the middle of the nineteenth century, when the advent of capitalism and the rise of the bourgeois class caused the decline of patronage. This book focuses on the various aspects of music patronage in Italy from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century.

The papers collected here deal with musical patronage and its relations with contemporary society from different points of view, offering new reserch perspectives.

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.

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.

Théodora Psychoyou, « The Historical Implications of a Distinctive Scoring: Charpentier’s Six-Voice Motets for Mademoiselle de Guise », New Perspectives on Marc-Antoine Charpentier, edited by Shirley Thompson, Surrey, Ashgate, 2010, p. 207-227
(reprint London-New York, Routledge, 2016).

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’.

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.

Although the city of Úbeda (Jaén, Spain) never had a duke or a count, it did have a figure of enormous political power and influence in Francisco de los Cobos y Molina (c.1477-1547). Born in Úbeda, in 1516 Cobos became secretary to the Emperor Charles V and took responsibility for the imperial finances, positions which made him into one of the most powerful people in Spain of that period despite his birth into the gentility in a small town far from court. This study aims to supplement the small amount of information around Cobos’ musical patronage in his home town through analysis of the musico-liturgical regulations and musical repertories related to the Sacra Capilla [Holy Chapel] of El Salvador, founded by Cobos as chapel-burial place.

During the seventeenth century, Cardinals held an essential place in the promotion of musical practices. Music was then seen as a mediator which shaped and enhanced the political, social and religious activities of these prelates. Hence, cardinals’ musical patronage underpinned a desire to assert identity. The political and social instrumentalization of musical art was thus one of the strategies that enabled these patrons to become what we call today cultural leaders.
In everyday life cardinals polished their reputation through magnificence (that is to say the art of knowing how to stand out from the others through expenditure), as well as princely virtue that made it possible to give an ornamental dimension to their patronage by acting as a vector of aestheticization. The magnificence of cardinals being especially lavish, its study raises the question of the financial resources involved in their musical undertakings, but also the issue of the various musical forms of expression that were the sound result of these practices. As a marker of prestige, musical expenditure can be understood as a social and cultural act, and thus offers a key to interpreting prelates’ political aspirations.
As studying cardinals’ musical expenditure in the early modern period, how can we not draw a comparison with the social, political and cultural stakes of a private patronage model which, in the musical practice field, is tending to develop nowadays? Indeed, we can wonder how comparable are the patronage of these prelates in the seventeenth century (Clergymen amongst the most secular of the Church) and the present great private patrons (in particular foundations of corporate groups).
In this perspective, through a comparative study, this paper aims to initiate a reflection on the dynamics of musical patronage, between early modern period and our time, as well as how the past can help us to understand the present.

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.

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».

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').

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.

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.

La música desempeñó un papel principal en la propaganda política y la diplomacia cultural castellana del siglo XV. Las relaciones entre la corte real y los tres primeros duques de Medina Sidonia (1445-1507) nos ofrecen una nueva perspectiva sobre la representación del poder y la música. Estas relaciones curiales-musicales nos adentran a su vez en otros aspectos de interés como la circulación de músicos, el potencial diplomático de estos y las redes musicales en su contexto.

The article examines the musical activities  nanced by marquis Filippo Niccolini (1586-1666), a leading member of one of the most in uential Florentine families and, from 1630, maestro di camera to Giovan Carlo de’ Medici, son of Grand Duke Cosimo II. On the basis of the documents found in the fam- ily archives, the  rst part of the article examines Filippo’s musical interests in the decades 1640-60, the organization of musical academies in his palaces, the train- ing and protection given to young musici and virtuose, the intense relations with composers active in Rome (Stefano Landi, Girolamo Frescobaldi, and especially Luigi Rossi). The second part focuses on Niccolini as a leading intermediary for Medicean spectacles: he had a key role in selecting singers to be hired for some important productions – a case in point is Antonio Cesti’s Orontea – and, more generally, was able to exert a considerable in uence on the relationships between the Medici and the musicians at their service, thanks to his musical knowledge and his network of contacts.
The Marquis’s musical interests and activities – both as a patron “in his own right” and as an intermediary – reveal themselves to be not simply an emulation of the dominant Medicean taste, but rather one of the main elements of a speci c cultural policy, implemented so as to consolidate the image of his own family and to reinforce its in uence on that of the Grand Duchy. This helps us re ect on the function of music within the social practices of a patriciate that sought to position itself on the cultural and political chessboard of seventeenth-century Florence. Furthermore, it leads us to rethink musical patronage in the light of a system of relations between the Medici and the patrician families that was much more com- plex than has hitherto been supposed.

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.

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>.

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.