[Letter from Gregory Butler]Author(s): Gregory ButlerSource: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Autumn, 1983), pp.544-545Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/831241 .

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To the Editor of the JOURNAL

QUESTIONS RAISED by Alexander Silbiger's article "Michelangelo Ros- si and His Toccate e Correnti," this JOURNAL, XXXVI (1983), 18-38, spe- cifically regarding the author's desig- nation of Bologna/Caifabri as the lat- est of the three known editions of Rossi's print, prompted me to com- pare the engravings in Bologna/Cai- fabri with those of the Bologna/ Ricarii edition, both in the Civico Museo Bibliografico, Bologna. Rath- er than supporting Silbiger's conclu- sion that "the fancy initial of the Bologna/Ricarii copy represents the original design" (p. 23) while the simple design of Bologna/Caifabri is a later copy, my examination of both capitals under high magnification showed the opposite, namely, that all the strokes of the plain "Q" were present in the ornate one. Some had been thickened or extended as part of the engraver's elaboration of the original design. Furthermore, the di- mensions of the "Q" in both editions are almost identical, even with the thickening; so close that one could not possibly have been a copy of the other, as Silbiger suggests. That the engraver, no matter how skilled, could have matched an original plate so exactly in all respects is inconceiv- able. The ornate initial "Q" of Bo- logna/Ricarii is evidently a later elab- oration of the earlier, unadorned "Q" of Bologna/Caifabri.

To buttress his comparative dat- ing, Silbiger refers to "numerous small differences" in the engraving of these two editions, especially on page io, some of which he indicates

in his Figures 5 and 6 by means of arrows (p. 24). But three of these involve corrections, two of faulty rhythmic readings (system 3, m. I, bass; system 4, m. 2, soprano) and one of a faulty melodic reading (the suspension figure in system 4, m. I, soprano). In all three cases the cor- rect version appears in Bologna/Ri- carii, the earlier edition, according to

Silbiger. But surely such corrections would be more likely to occur in a later rather than an earlier edition, to

represent editorial emendations en- tered on the original plate by the

engraver. Other "small differences" between the two prints involve the extension or thickening of original strokes, either to clarify the musical text or for purely aesthetic reasons.

Again, such alterations are usually encountered when original plates are

being prepared for a new edition; yet here they are found in Bologna/Ri- carii, Silbiger's "earlier" edition.

The third edition of the print, the Borboni edition, is convincingly dat- ed 1634 by Silbiger, and its engrav- ing appears to be identical with that of Bologna/Ricarii. It seems quite clear, then, that Bologna/Caifabri, far from having been published after Rossi's death, as Silbiger suggests, is actually the earliest of the three known editions of the print. Indeed, various details on its title page sup- port a date possibly before 1624, during Rossi's early years in Rome. The coat of arms, unlike those on both of the other editions, is not that of a noble Roman family or a church potentate but rather that of the city of Genoa, Rossi's birthplace. Per- haps the composer was still a resi-

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COMMUNICATIONS 545

dent of Genoa at the time Bologna/ Caifabri was published or was not yet employed in Rome. Further- more, this title page is the only one of the three to be typeset, a relatively inexpensive alternative to the more costly engraved title page for a young composer unattached to any financial benefactor.

By dismissing Bologna/Caifabri as a posthumous publication, Silbiger has failed to capitalize on the oppor- tunity its correct dating would have offered to strengthen his otherwise well-reasoned argument. The even earlier dating of Rossi's Toccate e cor- renti proposed here would suggest that pieces in it were written either completely or in part before Rossi's move to Rome or soon after his arrival there, at a time when the young composer's contact with Fre- scobaldi and his music would have been tangential at best.

GREGORY BUTLER The University of British Columbia

To the Editor of the JOURNAL

JOHN APLIN'S ARTICLE "Cyclic Tech- niques in the Earliest Anglican Serv- ices," this JOURNAL, XXXV (1982), 409-35, was most interesting, but I am alarmed by his conclusion. Could it be that "nostalgic attempts to cap- ture a classic church style" on the part of Gibbons, Tompkins, and Weelkes were in fact a response to what was considered appropriate or decorous within the context of an Anglican service? Italian moderniza- tions may not have been deemed acceptable. Craig Monson's article "Authenticity and Chronology in Byrd's Church Anthems," in the same volume of this JOURNAL, pp. 280-305, makes it clear that only about twenty of the seventy-five so- called anthems by Byrd were

deemed appropriate for use as part of the Divine Service, presumably for reasons of musical propriety, the Pu- ritan influence being quite strong in the Established Church. By analogy I would suggest that modernisms may have been considered inappro- priate within the Anglican liturgy- Italianate ones especially, in view of their potential associations with Ca- tholicism, and that the dislocation caused by the temporary success of Puritanism was as important as any musical factor in hastening the de- generation of Anglican service mu- sic. Surely such degeneration is better seen in the imitations of the short service idiom by the likes of Wise, Rogers, and Aylward later in the seventeenth century, than in the immediate followers of Byrd.

RICHARD TURBET

Kings College, Aberdeen University

To the Editor of the JOURNAL

IN MY ARTICLE "The Early History of Music Writing in the West," this JOURNAL, XXXV (1982), 237-79, there is an error of transcription that has been called to my attention by Drs. Ellen Ryer and Wulf Arlt: Ex- ample I (p. 260) should be one de- gree higher, i.e., beginning on a rather than g. In the same example, the version of the trope under discus- sion from MS Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale Lat. 1240, will be found on fol. i9r, not 9r. In addition, on p. 271, first full paragraph, the paren- thetical citation of Figure 7 belongs in the fifth line, following "music writing."

LEO TREITLER

State University of New York at Stony Brook

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