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ARCHIVAL SOURCES FOR THE HISTORY OF MUSIC IN ITALY: Recent ResearchAuthor(s): Bianca Maria AntoliniSource: Fontes Artis Musicae, Vol. 43, No. 1, Music in Italian Libraries: The Last Decade(January-March 1996), pp. 12-39Published by: International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres(IAML)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23508653 .

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ARCHIVAL SOURCES FOR THE HISTORY OF MUSIC IN ITALY

Recent Research

Bianca Maria Antolini (Rome)*

Die lange und facettenreiche Musikgeschichte Italiens dokumentieren in reichem Maße

die verschiedenen Archive des Landes, und sie bilden Ausgangspunkt für bedeutende

Forschung. Es wird die Organisation der unterschiedlichen Typen von italienischen

Archiven—staatlichen, regionalen, kirchlichen, städtischen, familären und personellen

Archiven—beschrieben und besonders auf grundlegende Veröffentlichungen des letzten

Jahrzehnts hingewiesen, die auf der Basis der in den Archiven verwahrten Quellen ent

standen sind.

La longue histoire de la musique italienne, aux multiples facettes, se reflète dans la ri

chesse documentaire de plusieurs archives à travers le pays, qui sont à l'origine de

nombreux travaux de recherche importants. En présentant ces archives par catégorie— archives nationales et régionales, religieuses, municipales, familiales ou individuelles—

l'auteur décrit l'organisation des archives italiennes et mentionne plus particulièrement les publications récentes de la dernière décennie, qui exploitent le travail fondamental

effectué par des chercheurs à partir de ces sources.

The rich Italian artistic and cultural history that has developed throughout the centuries through a vast variety of institutions has left ample documentation in

private and public archives. This essay intends to offer some information on archival sources for the history of music in Italy. First it outlines the various types of archives existing in Italy, then describes some research work both underway and published since 1990 which has systematically utilized archival sources.

Finally it focuses on a recent experience of musico-historical research based on this type of source—a collective volume on music in Rome published in 1994, thanks to a joint effort of the Roman State Archive and the Italian Musicological Society.

No mention will be made of catalogues relating to music collections still

preserved in private and public archives, or those deriving from donations or connected to the activities of the institutes that keep the archive (for example the various ecclesiastical archives which often preserve music of their musical

*Bianca Antolini is professor of the History of music at the Perugia Conservatory and co-editor of Le Fonti musicali in Italia.

12



ARCHIVAL SOURCES FOR THE HISTORY OF MUSIC IN ITALY 13

chapel); for this material refer to the section Archivi e biblioteche by Giancarlo Rostirolla, of the 5° Annuario musicale Italiano, Roma, CIdIM 1993, pages 693-845.

Italian Archives

"An archive is a collection of documents produced or acquired during the course of activities carried out by magistratures, State organizations and offices, public agencies and private institutions, families and persons" says Paola Carucci in her work on Italian archives. "L'archivio è il complesso dei documenti prodotti o

comunque acquisiti durante lo svolgimento della propria attività da magistrature, organi e uffici dello Stato, da enti pubblici e istituzioni private, da famiglie e da

persone."1 Moreover, the word "archive" indicates a place in which documents are preserved. Generally speaking, one defines an historical archive as that part of an archive which contains documents no longer needed to carry on an organi zation's everyday functions. An historical archive can be preserved on the same

premises of the agency which produced it, or it can be united with other historical archives in a location especially established for this purpose.

For the concentration and preservation of historical archives, State Archives have been established in all of the provinces; there are divisions of the State Archive in forty particularly prominent municipalities, and there is a State Central Archive in Rome. The State Archives preserve the preunitary Italian state

archives, the archives of peripheral Italian organizations, notarial archives, and all those archives and single documents which the State owns or has in deposit because of legal provisions or for other reasons.

As a rule, substantial groups of documents belonging to the last category described above are made up of archives of religious congregations, which reached the State Archives after the suppression effected in the Napoleonic period or after the Unity, archives of the opere pie, beneficent and assistance

institutions, and numerous archives of families which had a significant role in Italian life. The State Central Archive, on the other hand, contains documentation of the Italian State central bodies. The documentary patrimony of both the State Archives and the Central Archive is described in the Guida generale degli Archivi di Stato italiani (recently published by the Ministère per i beni culturali e ambientali—Ufficio Centrale per i Beni archivistici, in 4 volumes in 1981, 1983, 1986, and 1994).

The non-state archives (both archives of public agencies and private archives) are subject to supervision by archival Superintendencies, which generally have

regional authority and premises in the region's seat of local government. Scholars

can turn to the Superintendencies to consult the covered archives. Moreover, the

archives of the Superintendencies have created—often jointly with the Regions —a series of census and sectorial guides, both by territory and type of agency. These non-state archives, by reference to the legal nature of the agencies which

1. Paola Carucci, Le fonti archivistiche: ordinamento e conservazione (Roma: La Nuova Italia

Scientifica, 1992), 19. I will refer to this volume for general information on archives in Italy.



14 FONTES ARTIS MUS1CAE 43/1

produce them, can be distinguished as: archives of public agencies (territorial and non- ), private archives (of families and of real or legal persons), ecclesiastic and

religious archives, foreign archives, and archives of international agencies. Italian law has foreseen the institution of separate archive departments for

documents of public agencies (for example Municipalities, or the Bank of Italy, etc.) relative to business concluded over forty years ago. Among the archives of the territorial public agencies (Municipalities, Provinces, Regions), the most

important for historical research are naturally the municipal archives, because of their centuries-long history. The non-territorial public agencies operate—or op erated—in many different sectors: health, social assistance and insurance, scho lastic assistance, public education, professional orders, agriculture, credit, tour

ism, culture, etc. For example, some opera institutions (Enti lirici) belong to this

category. Among private archives, historical research has always paid particular attention

to archives of families and persons, as the history of many families intertwines with the political-institutional history of many Italian states. Moreover, the as

sumption of public functions on the part of many members of Italian families, has also made it possible very often to find papers pertaining to public functions in

family archives. There are many archives of this kind contained within State Archives. Recently, the state archival administration saw to a census of archives

belonging to families and persons, of which the first volume was published in 1991: Archivi di famiglie e di persone. Materiali per una guida, I: Abruzzo-Liguria.2 Over the last few years, under the impulse of contemporary historiography, particular attention has also been given to the archives of industrial corporations, cultural

associations, banks, and so forth. Ecclesiastic and religious archives reflect the multiform activities of the Cath

olic Church. Here one can count archives of papal congregations, diocesan

archives, parish archives, capitular archives, archives of confraternities, archives of monasteries and of religious congregations, archives of sanctuaries, archives of

seminaries, ecclesiastical court archives, archives of laymen's agencies directly subordinate to ecclesiastical authorities (Catholic universities, cultural institu

tions, oratories, etc.), archives of the fabbriche (moral bodies which administer the patrimony of some cathedrals), and so forth. Moreover, the Vatican Secret

Archive, founded by Pope Paul V in 1612, has an enormous importance for the

history of the Church and obviously for a part of the Papal State history.

Recent Musicological Research

Archival sources have been given more and more attention by historians of music over the last few years. Many studies, based on this type of source, have outlined the history of court musical chapels and of Italian religious institutions, as well as the various forms of musical patronage practiced by individuals or by families. The

chronological period most generally favored is from the fifteenth to the seven

2. See the description of the project in Gabriella De Longis Cristaldi, "Un progetto della Ammi nistrazione archivistica statale: il censimento degli archivi di famiglie e di persone," Le Fonti musicali in Italia. Studi e ricerche 6 (1992): 195-99, with an editorial comment concerning the musicological importance of the project.




teenth century. The periodical Note d'archivio per la storia musicale, which first came out in 1983, has concentrated on this field with the intention of reviving— with updated historical criteria—the production of the periodical of the same name

published by Casimiri between 1924 and 1943. The question of musical patronage in Italy was the center of remarkable

interest in the 1980s on the part of both Italian and Anglo-Saxon scholars. An

example is research in the history of opera production methods, whose findings were summarized in some essays (particularly those by Piperno, Rosselli, and

Nicolodi) in the fourth volume of the Storia dell'opera italiana.3 I would like to indicate some other studies, published since 1990, or still

underway, which are chiefly based on archival sources, linking them to the

description of the Italian archives put forth above. Most of these are studies where particular attention has been given to describing archival sources; some cover the edition of a conspicuous set of documents. For reasons of space, however, I will not be able to include those numerous contributions relative to

single documents, especially those of a biographical nature, issued more or less

regularly by musicological periodicals, or which appeared in conference reports dedicated to a single musician.4 For these one may refer to "Rassegne biblio

grafiche" by Laura Ciancio, which appears annually in Le Fonti musicali in Italia. Studi e ricerche.

State Archives

Documentation relative to musical activities promoted and financed by courts and preunitary states, and preserved in State Archives, has provided significant findings regarding varied Italian centers and states for different historical periods. Musical patronage by the Medici of Florence was the subject matter of study by Frank D'Accone particularly in regard to Lorenzo il Magnifico.5 For the following period, the study of Warren Kirkendale, the result of thirty years of archival

research, reconstructs the events of musicians tied to the Medicean court from Cosimo I (1543) to Gian Gastone (1737).6 The principal sources for the recon struction of the court's musical staff are the libri dei 'salariati o provisional in the

Depositeria generale (registers of the staffs monthly pay) and the rolls, that is the list of people employed at court at a given moment, and who carried out certain

3. Il sistema produttivo e le sue competenze. Storia dell'opera italiana, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi and

Giorgio Pestelli (Torino: EDT, 1987). 4. Among general musicological periodicals one can mention: Nuova Rivista Musicale Italiana,

Rivista Italiana di Musicologia, Il Saggiatore musicale, MusicalRealtà; among those dedicated to

single musicians, to particular fields of research, historical periods or geographic areas: Informazioni

e studi vivaldiani, Bollettino del Centro rossiniano di studi, Recercare, Early Music, Early Music

History, Le Fonti musicali in Italia. Studi e ricerche, Rassegna veneta di studi musicali, Esercizi,

L'Organo, Rivista internazionale di musica sacra. Among congress reports recently published, see

those on Domenico Zipoli and on Giovanni Legrenzi in the series Quaderni della Rivista Italiana di

Musicologia, and those on Giuseppe Tartini issued by II Mulino in 1994.

5. Frank A. D'Accone, "Lorenzo il Magnifico e la musica," in La musica a Firenze al tempo di

Lorenzo il magnifico, ed. Piero Gargiulo (Firenze: Olschki, 1993), 219-55.

6. Warren Kirkendale, The Court Musicians in Florence during the Principate of the Medici, with

a Reconstruction of the Artistic Establishment (Firenze: Olschki, 1993).



16 FONTES ARTIS MUSICAE 43/1

tasks. The peculiarity of Kirkendale's volume is that it is arranged not as a

history of the musical activities at the Medicean court, but as a succession of

biographies of musicians engaged at court. Each of these biographies draws upon not only the State Archive of Florence (Guardaroba mediceo, Mediceo del Prin

cipato, Miscellanea medicea, Carte strozziane, Carte Galetti), but also upon a

quantity of other archival sources in various Italian cities, especially Rome and Mantua.

The State Archive of Florence has furnished vital material for research carried out in documenting particular aspects of musical activities in Florence: for exam

ple, Pierluigi Ferrari and Giuliana Montanari have systematically examined inven tories of the Guardaroba mediceo and of the Imperial and Royal Court of Lorena from the late fifteenth century to 1859 in order to study the collections of musical instruments.7

The Gonzaga archive in the State Archive of Mantua, exploited in recent years by the well-known studies of Fenlon and Prizer in reconstructing the musical activities of one of the most important courts of the Italian Renaissance, continues to be subject matter for research, not only for the fifteenth and sixteenth but also for the following centuries. Susan Parisi, who continues the research which was the subject of her 1989 dissertation, deals with some problems relative to archival sources for the reconstruction of the court chapel, in particular the

payrolls, in the 1587-1627 period.8 Paola Besutti is working on the reconstruction of the Gonzaga's musical patronage in the final period of the dukedom between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, particularly in regard to opera and oratorio performance.9 The same scholar has produced contributions on

Guglielmo Gonzaga's musical patronage concerning the chapel of Santa Barbara and the Mantuan liturgy, with documents from the Gonzaga Archive and the

7. The first results of this research have been published in the following essays: Pierluigi Ferrari, "Ancora sulla collezione medicea di strumenti musicali: gli inventari inediti del 1670 e 1691," in Studi in onore di Giulio Cattin offerti dall'Istituto di Paleografia Musicale (Roma: Torre d'Orfeo, 1990), 227-65; Giuliana Montanari, "Bartolomeo Cristofori: A List and Historical Survey of His Instru

ments," Early Music 21 (1991): 383-96; Pierluigi Ferrari and Giuliana Montanari, "Giovanni, Giuseppe e Filippo Ferrini: cembalari della Corte del Granducato di Toscana. Uno studio documen

tario," in a volume in honor of Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, forthcoming; id., "Presenza del pianoforte alia corte del Granducato di Toscana (1700-1859): Uno studio documentario, con riferimenti alle vicissitudini di clavicembali, spinette e spinettoni," Recercare, forthcoming; id., "Raccolte di strumenti musicali in Italia all'epoca di Claudio Monteverdi," an essay for the catalogue of the exhibition "Gli strumenti musicali all'epoca di Monteverdi" projected by the Ente Triennale degli Strumenti ad Arco. The same archival documents have been examined by Vinicio Gai, "Considerazioni sulla collezione medicea di strumenti musicali alia luce di documenti sconosciuti del 1744-67 e 1794-95," in Musico

logia humana. Studies in Honor of Warren and Ursula Kirkendale, ed. Siegfried Gmeinwieser, David

Hiley, and Jörg Riedlbauer (Firenze: Olschki, 1994), 443-56. 8. Susan Parisi, "Musicians at the court of Mantua during Monteverdi's time: evidence from the

payrolls," in Musicologia humana, 183-208. 9. The first results are discussed in "Rapporti fra opera e oratorio in area medio-padana (sec.

XVII): Mantova," Atti del XV Congresso della International Musicological Society, Madrid 3-10 aprile 1992, forthcoming; "I rapporti musicali tra Mantova e Vienna durante il Seicento," in In Teutschland noch ganz ohnbekandt. Claudio Monteverdi und die Anfänge der Oper in den Ländern deutscher

Sprache. Atti del Convegno Internazional Thurnau-Bayreuth, 2-6 marzo 1994, forthcoming.




Diocesian Historic Archive.10 The musical staff at the court of Francesco II

d'Este, who were mainly engaged in performing oratorios, was reconstructed for the period of the 1680s by Victor Crowther, thanks to documents in the State Archive of Modena (pay-rolls in Camera Ducale, Bolletta dei Salariati, letters, receipts, etc. in the subject archive under Musica e Musicisti).u

Personnel, functions, and activities of some of the royal or palace chapels of the different Italian States have been reconstructed with a detailed analysis of varied archival sources also preserved in the State Archives. As for the Palace chapel of

Genoa, Maria Rosa Moretti's study outlines religious and civil musical occasions, regulations, appointments of chapel musicians and maestri, wages and staff, by means of documents most of which are kept in the State Archive of Genoa; for the most part these are Official Records and Decrees of the Senate—which also contain petitions by musicians to obtain favors, engagements, leaves of absence, economic improvements—and Cerimoniali.12

The Palatine chapel of Palermo in the seventeenth century was studied by Anna Tedesco, with special reference to the lists of payments kept in the State archive of Palermo, Conservatoria di registro, Salariati and Mercedes; here the

participation of the members of the Union of the musicians to the activities of the chapel was given prominence.13 However, both Moretti and Tedesco have turned to the reconstruction of entire musical activities of the cities they have taken into consideration for chosen periods. Later I will also indicate documen tation relating to other institutions dealt with in these two studies.

The chapel of the Court of Savoy in the late period of its history (1775-1870) has been studied in detail by Rosy Moffa.14 The documentary sources most valuable for data in this research are kept in the State Archive of Turin (apart from the Municipal historical archive of Turin). Her study is based on quarterly accounts of the Tesoreria generale della Real Casa, documents relative to recruit ment and salary increases (Patenti Controllo Finanze), and plans for the chapel in Cerimoniale e cariche di corte. Sources of the same kind can be found also in: Casa di Sua Maestà, Matricole del personale; Conti catégoriel This volume makes it

possible to follow the events in the lives of singers and especially instrumentalists of the chapel, and their activities in other local institutions, especially theaters.

10. Paola Besutti, "Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina e la liturgia mantovana," in Palestrina e la sua

presenza nella musica e nella cultura europea dal suo tempo ad oggi. Atti del II Convegno internazionale

di Studi palestriniani, ed. Lino Bianchi and Giancarlo Rostirolla (Palestrina: Fondazione G.P. da

Palestrina 1991), 155-64; id., "Un modello alternativo di Controriforma: il caso mantovano," La

cappella musicale nell'Italia della Controriforma. Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, ed. Oscar

Mischiati and Paolo Russo (Firenze: Olschki, 1993), 111-21.

11. Victor Crowther, "A Case-study in the Power of the Purse: the Management of the Ducal

Cappella in Modena in the Reign of Francesco II d'Este," Journal of the Royal Musical Association

(1990): 207-19.

12. Maria Rosa Moretti, Musica a Genova tra Cinque e Seicento (Genova: Cassa di risparmio di

Genova e Imperia, 1990).

13. Anna Tedesco, II teatro Santa Cecilia e il Seicento musicale palermitano (Palermo: Flaccovio,

1992). 14. Rosy Moffa, Storia della Regia Cappella di Torino dal 1775 al 1870 (Torino: Centro studi

piemontesi; Fondo Carlo Felice Bona; Associazione piemontese per la ricerca delle fonti musicali,

1990).




Gabriella Biagi Ravenni's research on the propagandists and political utilization of music in Lucca between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries focuses on the varied musical activities promoted by the State of Lucca, with documentation by the State Archive of Lucca, from the liturgical celebrations with political functions in the years 1799-1805 (news from the chronicles of Chelini in Archivio Sardini), to the Palace chapel and the serenades composed for the election of the magis trates of the Republic (le Tasche); from festivities organized for visits of important personages (documents in Offizi sui ricevimenti di principi) to the organization of theater performances (documents from Cura sopra il teatro and R. Intima Segre teria di Gabinetto); and to the organization of music (Vespers, Mass, and proces sions) for Santa Croce (documents in Deputazione sopra la musica di S. Croce).15

Archival research on music in Naples over the last few years has refuted the

widespread belief that there is a total lack of documentation in this city, particu larly for the eighteenth century. For the period of the Austrian vice-reign, the

study being carried out by Francesco Cotticelli and Paologiovanni Maione deals with characteristics of the two musical organizations, the Royal Chapel and the San Bartolomeo Theater, with documentation from the State Archive of Naples. For the Chapel, this involves documents relative to concessions of permits, promotions, settlements of payments and services, and organizing mechanisms, in the collection called Segreteria dei Viceré-Affari diversi and—for the period 1720-1740—also the Casa Reale Antica-Diversorium; Casa Reale Antica Camera délia Sommaria-Consulte. As for the theater, documents taken into consideration from the collections mentioned above mostly concern the conflict of

authority between the Viceroy and the Casa Santa degli Incurabili, who had the

privilege of collecting half of the profits from the theater, and the quarrels among the various impresarios.16 The eighteenth-century history of the San Carlo Opera Theatre has been enriched by Michael Robinson with a new document from the same collection, Casa Reale Antica, concerning the management of the theater by a "Società di Cavalieri" in 1785-1786.17

For the nineteenth century, new documentation on the San Carlo and Fondo

Royal Theaters was discovered and studied by Paologiovanni Maione and Francesca Seller, as part of a research program, financed by the Institute of

Philosophic Studies of Naples, centered on the figure of the theater-manager Domenico Barbaja. The authors discuss the organization of the performances using the collections Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione, Ministen dell'Interno, Ministen di Polizia generale, Teatri.18 Another collection of the State Archive still

15. Gabriella Biagi Ravenni, Diva panthera. Musica e musicisti al servizio dello Stato lucchese

(Lucca: Accademia lucchese di scienze, lettere e arti, 1993). 16. Francesco Cotticelli and Paologiovanni Maione, Le istituzioni musicali a Napoli durante il

viceregno austriaca (1707-1734). Materiali inediti sulla Real Cappella ed il teatro di San Bartolomeo

(Napoli: Luciano, 1993). 17. Michael Robinson, "A Late 18th Century Account Book of the San Carlo Theatre, Naples,"

Early Music 22 (1992): 73-81.

18. Paologiovanni Maione and Francesca Seller, I Reali teatri di Napoli nella prima metà dell'Ot tocento. Studi su Domenico Barbaja Istituto di Studi filosofici-Ricerche musicali, 1 (Napoli: Santabar

bara, 1994). In this volume are reprinted some recent essays: "Domenico Barbaia a Napoli (1809 1840): Meccanismi di gestione teatrale," in Gioachino Rossini. 1792-1992. Il testo e la scena,




unexplored—the Tribunale di Commercio, an expert source for every contro

versy regarding theatrical performances—has also provided the same researchers with further information on nineteenth-century opera in Naples.19

Police offices are another interesting source of documentation for the periph eral areas of the Neapolitan state. Dinko Fabris reconstructs the first events of the bands in Bari thanks to the papers of the Borbonic police 1828-1840 (Stato

informativo di tutti i componenti delle bande musicali, in the State archive of Bari, Polizia e giustizia, Affari generali di polizia).20

The research on "royal" music in Naples has also concerned the Royal Cham ber and Chapel in the nineteenth century: the Chamber had to provide music for gala performances, amusement for ball entertainment, and dinners on royal sites, the Chapel, for ceremonies connected with the principal occurrences of the

liturgical year and with the Borbone family in the Palatine churches. The affairs of the Chamber and the Chapel are being studied by Rosa Cafiero and Marina Marino with documents from the State Archive of Naples, collections Casa Reale Am ministrativa III Inventario, Intendenza di Casa Reale Gran Ciambellano, Teatri, Decreti originali. The musical collections from the Royal Chamber and the Palatine

Chapel are now kept in the Naples Conservatory library; eight inventories

preserved in the State Archive of Naples describe these collections in the period 1817 to 1833.21

Useful information regarding musical relationships between different centers can be acquired from series of dispatches and diplomatic correspondence. John Whenham, for example, is preceding with a research project on diplomatic correspondence from Venice in the years 1620-1645.22 Marta Lucchi has partially examined the musical news contained in the dispatches of Giuseppe Riva, who was ambassador in London and Vienna and involved in theatrical activities in the first decades of the eighteenth century; these are preserved in the State Archive of Modena, Cancelleria ducale, Ambasciatori and Sommari di dispacci.23

Convegno internazionale di studi, ed. Paolo Fabbri (Pesaro: Fondazione Rossini 1994), 403-29; "Gioco d'azzardo e teatro a Napoli dall'età napoleonica alla restaurazione borbonica," Musica Realtà 43

(aprile 1994): 23-40; "L'ultima stagione napoletana di Domenico Barbaja (1836-1840): Organizzazione e spettacolo," Rivista italiana di musicologia 27 (1992): 257-325; "II Real Teatro del Fondo di

separazione," Nuova Rivista Musicale Italiana, forthcoming. 19. P. Maione and F. Seller, "II tribunale di Commercio di Napoli: una fonte sconosciuta per lo

studio dell'attività teatrale," Le Fonti musicali in Italia. 1995, forthcoming. 20. Dinko Fabris, "Le origini delle bande musicali in Terra di Bari," in La musica a Bari: dalle

cantorie medievali al Conservatorio, ed. Dinko Fabris and Marco Renzi (Bari: Levante, 1993), 169-86.

21. Rosa Cafiero and Marina Marino, "La musica della Real camera e cappella palatina di Napoli fra

Restaurazione e Unità d'Italia. I: Documenti per un inventario," Studi musicali 19 (1990): 133-82.

22. John Whenham, "The Gonzagas Visit Venice," Early Music, 23 (1993): 525-42. The Venetian

visit of 1623 is described by means of documents from the State Archive of Venice: Collegio,

Cerimoniali; Collegio, Esposizioni Principi; Senato-Secreta; and the State Archive of Mantua: Can

celleria, estero.

23. Marta Lucchi, "Da Modena all'Europa melodrammatica. I carteggi di Giuseppe Riva e carteggi

varii," in Teatro e musica nel '700 estense. Momenti di storia culturale ed artistica, polemica di idee, vita

teatrale, economia e impresariato, ed. Giuseppe Vecchi and Marina Calore (Firenze: Olschki, 1994),

45-78.




The State Archive also keep notarial files which represent "the most immediate and principal source of research by which it is possible to carry out studies on

every aspect of the history, institutions, economy, culture, art, and customs."24 In the notarial records we find contracts of sale and location, companies, money loans, contracts of employment, inventories, and wills. For the history of music, notarial archives have been employed frequently but rarely systematically. One

exception, however, is the chronological list made by Maria Grazia Pastura

Ruggiero of the notarial documents in the eighteenth century in Rome, which demonstrates how much and what information notarial archives can supply for the

history of opera.25 Significant information has emerged over the last few years from notarial

documents regarding the opera house in Palermo and in Venice in the seventeenth

century, and in Lecce in the eighteenth. For Palermo, the above-mentioned study by Anna Tedesco (see note 12) introduces documents of great interest from the State Archive of Palermo, Notai cLefunti, on the construction and commencement of the Santa Cecilia Theater starting from 1686, and on the contribution of the Unione dei musici. In Venice, Beth L. and Jonathan E. Glixon provide new

starting-points for the knowledge of opera production in the 1650s, with docu ments from the notarial archive in the State Archive of Venice, and even more from the collection of the Scuola Grande di San Marco in the same State Archive.26 Also of interest are the contracts with singers engaged for the opera season at the Lecce Theatre, preserved in the notarial archive of the State Archive of Lecce cited by Luisa Cosi.27

The notarial archives of Bari28 and of Genoa preserve the various locatio pueri contracts in the sixteenth to the seventeenth century. Moreover, documentation relative to the employment and resignations of maestri di cappella are kept in the

Genoese notarial archives, as well as contracts for the construction of organs in various churches in Genoa.29 For the numerous indications of contracts for the

24. Patrizia Melella, "Gli Archivi notarili," in II patrimonio documentario dell'Archivio di Stato di

Roma, ed. Lucio Lume (Roma: Archivio di Stato di Roma, 1994), 79.

25. Maria Grazia Pastura Ruggiero, "Fonti per la storia del teatro romano nel Settecento conservate nell'Archivio di Stato di Roma," in II teatro a Roma nel Settecento (Roma: Istituto

dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 1989), 505-87.

26. Beth L. and Jonathan E. Glixon, "Marco Faustini and Venetian Opera Production in the 1650s: Recent Archival Discoveries," The Journal ofMusicology 10 (1992), 48-73. Beth L. Glixon is carrying on research on opera in Venice in the seventeenth century: two essays are forthcoming, concerning respectively the opera GTamori di Alessandro Magno e di Rossane and the biographies of prime donne in Venetian theaters.

27. Luisa Cosi, "I primi died anni di attività del Teatro Nuovo di Lecce attraverso le fonti archivistiche (1759-1769)," Recercare 2 (1990): 35-69.

28. Pierfranco Moliterni, "Vita musicale a Bari dal Settecento all'Ottocento," in La musica a Bari, 147-66, quotes from Notarile of the State Archive of Bari some contracts of the late seventeenth

century. 29. Maria Rosa Moretti, La musica a Genova.




construction of organs in various Italian centers one may refer to the recent

bibliography by Arnaldo Morelli.30 The notarial archives are generally sources of fundamental information on

the activities of publishers, booksellers, and music printers. Moreover there are other numerous interesting collections preserved in the State Archives for this sector. For example, in the State Archive of Venice the collections Arti, Rifor matori dello Studio di Padova, Savii alle Decime, Giustizia vecchia, Provveditori alla Sanità, Giudici di petizion were used by Marinella Laini for the second half of the seventeenth century.31 Among the most recent results from archival research in this field, one must cite the ample essay on Florentine musical

publishing between the sixteenth and seventeenth century by Tim Carter, who

regularly utilized supplications and petitions by publishers, with the relative

reports and replies from the file of the Auditore delle Riformagioni, and even inventories from the Magistrature de' pupilli, and documents from the collections of Regio Diritto, Tribunale di Mercanzia, Miscellanea Medicea, all of them in

the State Archive of Florence.32 The identification of publishing activity by the

composer Giovanni Battista Vitali is due to Carlo Vitali, thanks to documents in the Archivio Segreto Estense in the State Archive of Modena.33 The archival research in this field will be brought together in the forthcoming Dizionario degli editori musicali italiani, promoted by the Italian Musicological Society and edited

by Bianca Maria Antolini and Stanley Boorman.

Among the most conspicuous documentary collections in the State Archives are the archives of suppressed religious congregations and those of the beneficent

and assistance institutions. Recently a thorough documentary study was carried

out by Blake Wilson on the Laudesi companies from their founding in the late

thirteenth century to their decline after the expulsion of the Medici in 1494 using documents (statutes, contracts, festival services) from the State Archive of

Florence, Compagnie religiose soppresse and from Catasto in 1427.34

The archives of the Congregazione degli Oratoriani (Filippini Fathers), of

Rome, of great importance for the history of musical oratorio, have been thor

oughly studied by Arnaldo Morelli for the period 1575 to 1705. The sources (in

particular the Libri dei decreti) are not only kept in the State Archive of Rome, but also in the Archive of the Congregazione and in the Vallicelliana library.35

30. Arnaldo Morelli, "Storia dell'organo italiano. Bibliografia (1958-1992)," with Luciano Buono,

Luisa Cosi, Paolo Da Col, Lorenzo Ghielmi, Renzo Giorgetti, Valentina Longo, demente Lunelli,

Paolo Peretti, and Maurizio Tarrini, Le Fonti musicali in Italia. Studi e ricerche 6 (1992): 25-92.

31. Some other musicologists are now studying Venetian music publishing activity in the sixteenth

and seventeenth centuries by means of archival research: Richard Agee, Jane Bernstein, Becky

Edwards, Beth Miller, and Giulio M. Ongaro.

32. Tim Carter, "Music Printing in Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth-century Florence:

Giorgio Marescotti, Cristofano Marescotti, and Zanobi Pignoni," Early Music History 9 (1990): 27-72.

33. Carlo Vitali, "Giovanni Battista Vitali, editore di musica fra realizzazione artistica e insuccesso

imprenditoriale," Nuova Rivista Musicale Italiana 27 (1993): 359-74.

34. Blake Wilson, Music and Merchants: The Laudesi Companies of Republican Florence. (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1992).

35. Arnaldo Morelli, II Tempio armonico. Musica nell'Oratorio dei Filippini in Roma (1575-1705),

Analecta Musicologica 27 (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 1991).




In the State Archive of Padua, documents are kept of the Paduan Filippini (Fathers of the Oratory), useful for the history of the musical oratorio in the early eighteenth century; these have been studied by Elisa Grossato.36 The archive of the Barnabite convent which joined the State Archive of Bologna after the

Napoleonic suppression was examined by Paolo Da Col and Andrea Macinanti to outline the history of the music of the Basilica of San Paolo.37 The account books for the eighteenth century furnish documentation for the preparation of sumptu ous displays for solemn events with music. The Congregazione del SS.mo En tierro and generally the musical activities of the Jesuits in Milan from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries have been studied by Marina Vaccarini with docu mentation from the State Archive of Milan.38

The State Archive of Venice has a conspicuous documentation of Venetian confraternities. Documents relating to the music of the Scuole grandi in the seventeenth century are presently a subject of research on the part of Jonathan Glixon39, while Gastone Vio has been studying those documents from the Scuole

piccole from 1200 to the end of the eighteenth century. The renowned Venetian musical and relief institutions—the Ospedali degli Incurabili, dei Derelitti, della

Pietà, and dei Mendicanti—were recently studied with a great abundance of

documentary reference by Jane Baldauf Berdes.40 In the course of her research, she consulted many collections of the State Archive of Venice, in particular Ospedali e LuoghiPii diversi, Provveditori sopra Ospedali e Luoghipii. The I.R.E.

(Istituzioni di Ricovero e Educazione) archive and the Archivio Storico dei So maschi in Genoa also figure prominently. The collection of the Ospedali e Luoghi pii, together with numerous other collections of the State Archive of Venice, have

provided material for the reconstruction of the biography of a woman musician, Antonia Bembo, a pupil of Francesco Cavalli, all the more significant as the archives tend to lack in materials regarding women.41

The musical activities of confraternities and Roman hospitals—whose archives are kept in the State Archive of Rome—were a topic of research on the part of Noel O'Regan, who published various articles on the Confraternities of San Rocco

36. Elisa Grossato, "Per una storia dell'oratorio musicale filippino a Padova. Prime testimonianze e documenti," in Contributi per la storia délia musica sacra a Padova, ed. Giulio Cattin and Antonio Lovato (Padova: Istituto per la Storia ecclesiastica padovana, 1993), 213-46.

37. Paolo Dal Col and Andrea Macinanti, "Cronache di musica e storia degli organi nella basilica di San Paolo Maggiore in Bologna," Rivista intemazionale di musica sacra 12 (1991): 145-92.

38. See the paper read at the annual congress of the Italian Musicological Society, Milan, Nov.

1994, and the essay "La Iauda spirituale, la cantata sacra e l'oratorio nella vita religiosa e musicale dei

pp. Gesuiti a Milano (1563-1773)," in Quaderni del Corso di Musicologia del Conservatorio "G. Verdi" di Milano, 3, forthcoming.

39. Jonathan Glixon, "Far una bella procession: Music and Public Ceremony at the Venetian Scuole grandi," in Altro Polo: Essays on Italian Music in the Cinquecento, ed. Richard Charteris

(Sydney: University of Sydney, Frederick May Foundation for Italian Studies, 1990), 190-220. 40. Jane L. Baldauf-Berdes, Women Musicians of Venice. Musical Foundations 1525-1855 (Ox

ford: Clarendon Press, 1993). 41. The research, carried on by Claire Fontijn and Marinella Laini, was first described in a paper

on Antonia Bembo and musical relations between Venice and Paris, read at the second French-Italian

congress at Mondovi, May 12-14, 1994.




and of the Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini in the sixteenth century,42 while the activities of the chapel and oratory of the Arciconfraternita di S. Girolamo della Carità from the sixteenth to the late nineteenth century is the subject of a volume

by Eleonora Simi Bonini.43 The State Archive of Bari, the Consiglio generale degli Ospizi-Amministrazione collection, has documents of musical interest for the convent of the Addolorata in Casamassima, which was tranformed into a school of music in 1812.44

Various collections in the State Archives make it finally possible to put on record the activities of associations between musicians (generally associations with the aim of a monopoly on the musical profession, or associations of mutual

aid). The volume by Tedesco on the Unione dei musici of Palermo, which in the late seventeenth century was a determining part of the music of Palermo has

already been mentioned (see note 13). For Venice, the collection of the State Archive of Venice, Inquisitorato alle arti, offers information on the "Arte de Sonadori" in the second half of the eighteenth century.45 Various collections in the same archive give information on the "Sowegno di S. Cecilia" from 1690 to the beginning of 1800;46 documents have also been found on the establishment of the Società Pio Filarmonica per gli Stati Sardi in the State Archive of Turin, Società commerciali.47

Religious Archives

The ecclesiastic and religious archives have been scrutinized since the very beginning of musicological research for countless studies on the activities of musical chapels in various historic periods. Beside the archives of the individual

institutions, the Vatican Secret Archive is obviously a very important source of

documents for the history of sacred music and of institutions relating to it. Over the last few years methodical research in this archive has enabled researchers

42. Noel O'Regan, "Palestrina, a Musician and Composer in the Market-place," Early Music 22

(1992): 551-72 (with documents mostly from the State Archive of Rome, Ospedale SS Trinità dei

Pellegrini); id., "Processions and their Music in Post-Tridentine Rome," Recercare 4 (1992): 45-80,

with documents concerning music in the confraternities of S. Rocco and Ss. Trinità dei Pellegrini (in

the State Archive of Rome) and of Gonfalone and Santissimo Crocifisso (in the Vatican Secret

Archive); id., "Musical Ambassadors in Rome and Loreto: Papal Singers at the Confraternities of

Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini and San Rocco in the late 16th and early 17th century," in Collectanea

I, ed. Adalbert Roth (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1994), 75-95.

43. Il fondo musicale dell'Arciconfraternita di S. Girolamo délia Carità, Cataloghi di fondi musicali

italiani, 15; Quaderni della Rassegna degli Archivi di Stato, 69 (Roma: Torre d'Orfeo, 1992). The

musical history of S. Girolamo is outlined in the introductory essay: Bianca Maria Antolini and Eleonora

Simi Bonini, "L'attività musicale in S. Girolamo della Carità," 23-35.

44. Pierfranco Moliterni, "Vita musicale a Bari dal Settecento all'Ottocento," in La musica a Bari.

45. Thomas Baumann, "Musicians in the Market-place: the Venetian Guild of Instrumentalists in

the Later 18th century," Early Music 21 (1991): 345-55.

46. Gastone Vio, "Giovanni Legrenzi ed il «sowegno di Santa Cecilia»," in Giovanni Legrenzi e la

Cappella Ducale di San Marco. Atti dei convegni internazionali di studi Venezia, 24-26 maggio

1990-Clusone, 14-16 settembre 1990, ed. Francesco Passadore and Franco Rossi, Quaderni della

Rivista Italiana di Musicologia 29, (Firenze: Olschki, 1994), 115-32.

47. Patrizia Bassi and Cristina Ariagno, Luigi Felice Rossi (Torino: Centre studi piemontesi Istituto per i beni musicali in Piemonte, 1994), 74-76.




to reconstruct the papal chapels of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries

employing a systematic scrutiny of the records containing the petitions, papal bulls, and breves. The archival series in question (administrative records: Libri introitus et exitus, Diversa cameralia, etc; records of the petitions: Registra supplicationum; records of the letters and bulls: Registra Lateranensia, Registra Vaticana; records of the breves: Registra Brevium, Brevia Lateranensia) to which we must add the series of Mandati earnerali kept in the State Archive of Rome, have been described by Adalbert Roth.48 The results of these studies appeared in

essays by Roth, John Nadas, Giuliano Di Bacco, Pamela Starr, and Richard Sherr.49

Some of these scholars are also involved in a research project of the Palestrina Foundation which foresees the publication of seven volumes on the history of the Papal chapel, each dedicated to a historical period. The Middle Ages will be described by Giuliano Di Bacco and John Nâdas, the fifteenth century by Pamela

Starr, the sixteenth century by Richard Sherr,50 the seventeenth century by Jean Lionnet, the eighteenth century by Francesco Luisi, Giancarlo Rostirolla, Maria Adelaide Morabito, and Federico Pirani, the nineteenth by Angela Pachowski and

Leopold Kantner (publication due in 1995), and the twentieth century by Salvatore de Salvo. The archival documentation is preserved both at the Vatican Secret

Archive, and in the Sis tine Chapel collection at the Vatican Apostolic Library. Other collections of the Vatican Secret Archive have made it possible to clarify

single moments or aspects of the history of religious institutions, and not only in Rome. The documents of the Sacra Visita Apostolica have enabled Arnaldo Morelli to reconstruct nearly the entire picture of music in Rome in the third decade of the seventeenth century, as the minutes of an inspection promoted by Urbano VIII of all the Roman religious institutions from 1624 to 1631 provide a lot of data relative

48. Adalbert Roth, "Zur Auswertung der Registerserien im Archivio Segreto Vaticano und des Fondo Camerale I im Archivio di Stato di Roma," Atti del XIV Congresso délia Società Internazionale di Musicologia. Trasmissione e recezione delle forme di cultura musicale, ed. Angelo Pompilio, Donatella Restani, Lorenzo Bianconi, and F. A. Gallo (Torino: EDT, 1990) 2:259-66.

49. Pamela F. Starr, "Rome as the Centre of the Universe: Papal Grace and Musical Patronage," Early Music History 11 (1992): 223-62. The author has examined 300,000 documents of Nicolö V, Calisto III, Pio II and Paolo II papacies (1447-1471). Among these, more than 1200 relate to music; Richard Sherr, "A Biographical Miscellany: Josquin, Tinctoris, Obrecht, Brumel," in Musicologia humana, 65-73; John Nâdas and Giuliano Di Bacco, "Verso uno stile 'internazionale' della musica nelle

cappelle papali e cardinalizie durante il Grande Scisma (1378-1417): il caso di Johannes Ciconia da

Liège," in Collectanea I, ed. A. Roth, Capellae Apostolicae Sixtinaeque Collectanea Acta Monumenta, 3 (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1994), 7-74. In this series the results are

published of the research project on Sistine Chapel financed by Heidelberger Akademie der Wissen

schaften, directed by Ludwig Finscher and Helmut Hucke. This essay is part of research on music in

papal chapels during the Great Schism. The complete archival documentation will be published in the same series; A. Roth, "Anmerkungen zur 'Benefizialkarriere' des Johannes Ockeghem," Collectanea 1: 99-232.

50. Richard Sherr has recently utilized documents in the Vatican Secret Archive, Misc. Arm. XI, xciii, referring to the year 1565, for his study: "Competence and Incompetence in the Papal Choir in the Age of Palestrina," Early Music 22 (1992): 607-29.




to music.51 Documents of the Sacra congregazione dei vescovi e regolari have also been used to explain the different aspects of the musical customs in convents in Rome in the sixteenth century and in Bologna from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.52

New documents from various Italian chapels in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from a wide geographic range appear in the proceedings of a congress held in Cento in 1989.53 Some of these studies utilize archives preserved in the same religious institutions, such as Establicimientos Espanoles and San Giovanni in Laterano in Rome, the Basilica del Santo in Padua, the cathedrals of Adria, Faenza, Piazza Armerina, or the church of Santa Maria della Pace in Brescia, while the documentation for chapels in Caltagirone and Piove di Sacco went into the respective State archives.54

Documentation about the activities of one of the most important Italian chapels, at San Marco in Venice, is kept in the State Archive of Venice, in particular in the

series Procuratia de Supra, Basilica di San Marco; it was recently used by Roark Thurston Miller and by Claudio Madricardo.55 The most modern part of this information is preserved in the Procuratoria archive of San Marco, and was examined for the period 1855-1871 by Francesco Passadore.56 The music col

lection of the chapel is deposited in the Levi Foundation. Moreover, in 1994 a

congress entirely dedicated to the San Marco Chapel was held in Venice.

51. Arnaldo Morelli, "Le cappelle musicali a Roma nel Seicento: questioni di organizzazione e di

prassi esecutiva," in La cappella musicale nell'Italia della Controriforma, 175-203. This essay moreover includes a useful bibliographic appendix.

52. Gian Ludovico Masetti Zannini, "

'Suavità di canto' e 'purità di cuore': Aspetti della musica nei

monasteri femminili romani"; Craig Monson, "La pratica della musica nei monasteri femminili bo

lognesi," (with documents also from the State Archive of Bologna). In La cappella musicale nell'Italia

della Controriforma, 123-41 and 143-60.

53. La cappella musicale nell'Italia della Controriforma, (see note 10). 54. See respectively: Francesco Luisi, "S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli e la festa della Resurrezione in

piazza Navona. Mire competitive, risorse e finanziamenti per la Pasqua romana degli spagnoli,"

75-103; Wolfgang Witzenmann, "La festa di San Giovanni evangelista a San Giovanni in Laterano nel

Seicento: Disposizione musicale e partecipazione di predicatori," 161-73; Jessie Ann Owens, "La

cappella musicale della basilica del Santo: alcune forme di mecenatismo," 251-63. (The author

examined the Libri partium et actorum kept in the basilica, Archivio antico dell'Arca); Francesco

Passadore, "Le cappelle musicali di Adria e Piove di Sacco nei secoli XVI e XVII," 265-77; Domenico

Tampieri, "Giovanni Battista Spada e Tomaso Fabri: fonti e testimonianze di musica strumentale nella

cattedrale di Faenza tra la fine del Cinquecento e l'inizio del Seicento," 279-301 (with documents in

Archivio capitolare of Faenza, Mansioneria, Atti capitolari)-, Emanuela Citati, "La musica presso la

Congregazione di Santa Maria della Pace in Brescia, con riferimento all'attività esercitata dal compo

sitore Pietro Baldassarri," 353-60; Luciano Buono, "Peculiarity istituzionali di due cappelle musicali

nel XVII secolo: Caltagirone e Piazza Armerina," 361-69.

55. Roark T. Miller, "The Composers of San Marco and Santo Stefano and the Development of

Venetian Monody (to 1630)." (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Michigan, 1993); Claudio Madricardo, "La cappella

ducale di San Marco alla fine del Seicento: forme e sviluppi dell'istituzione musicale," in Giovanni

Legrenzi e la Cappella Ducale di San Marco, 99-113.

56. Francesco Passadore, "Antonio Buzzolla maestro di cappella a San Marco," in Antonio

Buzzolla: una vita musicale nella Venezia romantica, ed. Francesco Passadore and Licia Sirch (Rovigo:

Associazione culturale minelliana; Adria: Conservatorio statale di musica di Adria, 1994), 253-73.




Attention has also been given to the chapel of S. Maria Maggiore in Bergamo;57 the Chapel of the Saint at Padua in the eighteenth century;58 and the school of

singing in the cathedral and the seminary of Padua and relations with the musical

chapel in the nineteenth century.59 The organ history of the Duomo of Florence was reconstructed in detail by Gabriele Giacomelli and Enzo Settesoldi by study ing the documents of the Archivio dell'Opera del Duomo there.60

A research project is presently being effected by Arnaldo Morelli and financed

by the Harvard University Center of Italian Renaissance Studies—Villa I Tatti, Florence: "Organ, liturgy and religious architecture in Renaissance Italy," based on the archives of some other Florentine churches (Santa Maria Novella, Santa

Croce, Santa Trinita). The archives of Siena form the basis for Frank D'Accone's research for a book on the music in Siena from the fourteenth to the seventeenth

century; in the meantime he has published findings relative to the music in the Duomo in the late sixteenth century, with documents from the Archivio dell'Opera del Duomo.61 Colleen Reardon has examined documents from the Sienese archive of the collegiate church Santa Maria di Provenzano.62

Numerous research initiatives have had to do with the chapels of Umbria. Bianca Brumana and Galliano Ciliberti provide the history of the musical chapels of the Duomo of Orvieto and the cathedral of Perugia by means of an accurate

description of the archival sources and an integral reproduction of the archival documents coming from the Archivio dell'Opera del Duomo (Orvieto), and from the capitular archive, completed by documents from notarial and chronicle sources

(Perugia).63 Chapels at other Umbrian centers such as Amelia, Gubbio and Terni have been studied;64 and the Center of Musical Studies in Umbria has completed archival research on the Cappella musicale del Sacro Convento, Assisi.

57. Maurizio Padoan, "Giovanni Legrenzi in Santa Maria Maggiore a Bergamo," in Giovanni

Legrenzi e la Cappella Ducale di San Marco, 9-27; Alberto Colzani, "La cappella musicale di Santa

Maria Maggiore dopo Legrenzi," ibid., 29-45.

58. Nicoletta Billio D'Arpa, "Festività solenni al Santo di Padova. Testimonianze inedite sui Vivaldi e su altri musicisti e virtuosi," II Santo. Rivista antoniana di storia dottrina arte 32 (1992), 345-59: with documents in Archivio dell'Arca of the Basilica del Santo.

59. Antonio Lovato, "Disciplina musicae nel seminario di Padova (1822-1882). Statuti e pratica del canto fratto, repertorio locale e polifonie popolari," in Contributi per la storia della musica sacra a

Padova, 299-335, with documents from Archivio Capitolare in the Curia Vescovile of Padova. 60. Gabriele Giacomelli and Enzo Settesoldi, Gli organi di S. Maria del Fiore di Firenze. Sette

secoli di storia dal Trecento al Novecento (Firenze: Olschki, 1993). See also: Gabriele Giacomelli, Antonio Squarcialupi e la tradizione organaria in Toscana. Testimonianze documentarie iconografiche ed organologiche (Roma: Torre d'Orfeo, 1992); Id., "Nuove giunte alia biografia di Antonio Squarcia lupi: i viaggi, l'impiego, le esecuziom," in La musica a Firenze al tempo di Lorenzo il magnifico, 257-73.

61. "Music in the Sienese Cathedral in the Later 16th Century," Atti del XIV Congresso della Società Internazionale di Musicologia, 3:729-36.

62. Colleen Reardon, "Music and Musicians at Santa Maria di Provenzano, Siena, 1595-1640," The Journal ofMusicology 11 (1993): 106-32.

63. Bianca Maria Brumana and Galliano Ciliberti, Orvieto: Una cattedrale e la sua musica (1450 1610) (Firenze: Olschki, 1990); Id., Musica e musicisti nella cattedrale di S. Lorenzo a Perugia (XIV-XVIII secolo) (Firenze: Olschki, 1991).

64. Mirella Mostarda, "Per una storia della cappella musicale del Duomo di Terni," Esercizi. Musica e spettacolo n.s. 1 (1991): 15-35 (the documents under examination are in this case housed in State Archive of Terni); Maria Laura Spagnoli, "La cappella musicale della cattedrale S. Firmina di




The history of the Cappella Giulia in Rome is the subject of a monumental

undertaking by Giancarlo Rostirolla, which will be published in three volumes of Analecta Musicologica edited by Friedrich Lippmann. The documents which were examined are preserved in the Archive of Saint Peter and in the Vatican Apostolic Library, Cappella Giulia collection.

Finally, two volumes mentioned previously, relating to music in Genoa and

Bari, also outline the history of the most important ecclesiastical chapels of those cities. Maria Rosa Moretti utilizes the documents of the capitolar archive (and of the notarial collection) to trace the history of the cappella del Duomo; she also deals with the relationship between the palace chapel and the musical activities in the various churches in Genoa, and even music in the convents. Dinko Fabris reconstructs the events in the chapels of San Nicola and in the cathedral of Bari in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries via the respective archives and the

Apprezzi of the State archive of Bari.65

Municipal Archives

Municipal Archives are very rich in documentation relative to the various musical activities which took place in the various Italian cities over the centuries. As has been said, they often preserve very old documentation relating to medieval

towns; in some cases these archives are kept in the State Archives. For medieval

music, some significant documents from the Ufficio corone ed armi, dated 1264 and 1284-1381, for example, are kept in the collection Curia del Podestà of the State archive of Bologna, where they have systematically been examined by Alessandra Fiori.66 The Ufficio had jurisdiction in sumptuary matters, gambling, and licenses for firearms, but also had to judge and punish behavior which disturbed the Bolognese nights with parties, songs, and the playing of instru ments. Once again the Municipal archive of the State achive of Bologna contains documents used by Susan Forscher Weiss to explore the previously unexamined musical patronage of Sante and Giovanni II Bentivoglio in the late fifteenth

century.67 Anna Maria Corbo has carried out research, using documents belong

ing to the Historical Archive of the municipality of San Ginesio for the years between 1369 and 1511, on the festival of San Ginesio, the patron saint of mimes and actors, where groups of musicians used to meet annually in town on the 25th of August. These documents acquaint us with the musical instruments used, whether folk or courtly; names, origin, and pay of the musicians.68

Amelia dal 1555 al 1780," Esercizi Musica e spettacolo n.s. 2 (1992): 53-70; Maria Cecilia Clementi, La cappella musicale del Duomo di Gubbio nel '500. Con il catalogo dei manoscritti coevi, Quaderni di

Esercizi. Musica e spettacolo, 2 (Perugia: Cattedra di Storia délia musica; Université degli studi di

Perugia; Centro di studi musicali in Umbria, 1994).

65. Dinko Fabris, "Vita musicale a Bari dal Medioevo al Settecento," in La musica a Bari, 19-108.

66. Alessandra Fiori, "Pratica musicale a Bologna nelle testimonianze di alcune fonti processuali dei secoli XIII e XIV," Studi musicali 19 (1990): 203-57.

67. Susan Forscher Weiss, "Musical Patronage of the Bentivoglio Signoria, c. 1465-1512," Atti

del XIV Congresso délia Società Internazionale di Musicologia 3:703-15.

68. Anna Maria Corbo, "San Ginesio e la tradizione musicale maceratese tra la fine del '300 e

l'inizio del '500: giuUari, suonatori e strumenti musicali," (San Ginesio: Comune di San Ginesio, 1992).




Unfortunately it is not possible here to give an account of the numerous

researches in recent years which have described single aspects of musical life in

big and small Italian centers. However, for this sector one can consult the above mentioned annual bibliographic report in Le Fonti musicali in Italia. Studi e

ricerche. In 1996 a bibliography will be published in the same periodical listing

musicological articles which have appeared in local historical magazines. Further words can be dedicated to the archival research relative to opera

houses. In the past, research has been dedicated to the chronological reconstruc tion of the repertory, generally by examining librettos. Yet also in this field archival research—always useful not only to document chronology more pre cisely, but also to clarify different aspects of opera production and theater

management—has been given a new stimulus.69 We have seen how documenta

tion from the State archives has recently brought important information to light on theaters in Venice, Palermo, Lucca, and Naples. Later we shall learn how

private archives prove valuable. Here however, I would like to point out how the

municipal archives contain important material, particularly for the history of the

eighteenth- and nineteenth-century theater. Diverse management structures—

committees, or commissions, or presidencies—established in various cities to

control, regulate, and guide the theatrical activities of the city or of a single theater were responsible for keeping records found in these archives today. One can find contracts with impresarios chosen to manage the various seasons, documentation on what happened during the seasons between the management and the contractors, the administration of the structures directly subordinate to the management (theater employees, orchestra), and so forth. Moreover consid erable documentation can often be found in police offices, and for the most recent

period, in various council offices which were concerned with these matters.

Among the archival collections of the type described above, one can also mention the rich Spettacoli Pubblici of the Civic Historical Archive of Milan, not

fully utilized in a recent work of Remo Giazotto;70 the collections of the Archive of the Municipality of Florence (kept in the State Archive) used by Marcello De

Angelis for the history of Florentine theaters in second half of the eighteenth century (in particular for the Cocomero Theater);71 and those of the Historic Archive of the city of Turin, described in the very rich catalogue L'arcano incanto, and already utilized in the past by Alberto Basso to outline the history of the Regio Theater.72 In 1991 a further volume was added to the volumes issued in 1976,

69. The diverse studies of John Rosselli gave a fundamental stimulus to this type of research. A

monographic issue of Le Fonti musicali in Italia will be dedicated to the sources for the history of Italian opera theaters. It will contain also a bibliography of theater histories and chronologies, compiled by Teresa Chirico, Alessandro De Bei, Maria Grazia Sità, and Marina Vaccarini.

70. Remo Giazotto, Le carte delta Scala. Storie di impresari e appaltatori teatrali (1778-1860) (Lucca: Akademos, 1990).

71. Marcello de Angelis, La felicitä in Etruria. Melodramma, impresari, musica, virtuosi: lo

spettacolo nella Firenze dei Lorena (Firenze: Ponte alle Grazie, 1990). 72. Rossana Roccia, "Le fonti dell'Archivio Storico délia Città di Torino," in II Teatro Regio di

Torino 1740-1990: L'arcano incanto, ed. Alberto Basso (Milano: Electa, 1991), 81-87. The author

gives an account of the archive's vicissitudes. The documents used for the research include the Atti

municipali (from 1849), and Affari del Gabinetto del Sindaco (from 1870), Economato, Polizia, and Lavori pubblici.




relative to the years 1936-1990, which utilizes the series of Atti del Municipio and Atti del Consiglio Comunale, and deals with the reconstruction of the theater and the events of the "Ente autonomo."73

Alberto Basso had hoped for the creation of an historical archive at the Regio Theater of Turin to make research easier in this sector. Historic archives of opera houses are present in various Italian cities, and only in recent years have inventories been made or started, as witness the volumes dedicated to the archives of the Regio Theater of Parma, and of the Vittorio Emanuele Theater of Messina.74 These provide a detailed inventory of the materials they preserve: generally documents produced by the commissions, but also some papers of

impresarios, for example at Messina. In press at the moment is the inventory of the Historical Archive of the Verdi Theater of Trieste, relating to the period 1801-1985, kept at the Civico Museo Teatrale C. Schmidl75—this documentation is more or less complete from 1840, because all the theatrical management records have been kept there. The history of the theater orchestra has been studied by Margherita Canale on the basis of the documents in this archive.76

The Municipal Theater of Reggio Emilia holds its documentation in its own archive (tapes, video, posters, programs, etc.) relative to the performances from the 1950s onwards; the documentation relative to the preceding theatrical activ ities instead is kept in the Civic Library, State Archive, Civic Museum and Civic Archive. The Municipal Theater of Bologna is also presently organizing an archive which will include—besides recordings of the theatrical productions starting from 1971—historical documentation regarding theatrical activities, to be recon structed however through research into the State archive and the Library of

Archiginnasio, as the material kept in the theater itself is scarce.77 On the other

hand, the history of the La Fenice Theater of Venice is entirely documented by its historical archive, deposited in the Levi Foundation, which preserves librettos,

payrolls, correspondence, minutes of the company owners, and scores.78

Family and Personal Archives

Family archives, whether private property or kept in State archives, have stirred

up interest particularly in research relative to the patronage extended by some members of noble families in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A

73. Il Nuovo teatro regio di Torino, ed. Alberto Basso (Torino, Cassa di risparmio, 1991).

74. Inventario dell'Archivio storico del Teatro Regio 1816-1859, ed. Roberta Cristofori (Parma:

Comune di Parma; Archivio storico del Teatro Regio; 1992). The inventory concerns the documents

of the ducal period; in the archive, however, documents are kept referring to the following period to

1956. Giovanni Molonia, L'Archivio storico del Teatro Vittorio Emanuele (Messina, Filarmonica

Laudamo, [1990]). In this archive there are documents of the period 1856-1908; among the most

important papers there are the Rendiconti of Matteo Saija, the Pubblici Spettacoli secretary from 1856

to 1894. They will be edited by Alba Créa and Giovanni Molonia.

75. See "La ricerca nelle regioni," ed. Federica Riva, Le Fonti Musicali in Italia. Studi e ricerche

5 (1991): 246; 6 (1992): 207.

76. Margherita Canale de' Grassi, "Documenti per una storia dell'orchestra del teatro Comunale

di Trieste: i primi anni di attività (1801-1821)," Archeografo triestino 1992: 387-438.

77. "La ricerca nelle regioni," Le Fonti Musicali, 6 (1991): 205.

78. Playbills and posters kept in the theater historical archive have been the principal source for

the chronology of La Fenice. The second volume has recently been published: Michele Girardi and

Franco Rossi, II teatro La Fenice. Cronologia degli spettacoli 1939-1991 (Venezia: Albrizzi, 1993).




continuation of this exploration has taken place over the last few years in studies based on the Bentivoglio archive documents, kept in the State archive of Ferrara, which relate both to the activities of Enzo Bentivoglio's musical patronage in the

early seventeenth century79 and to that of Ippolito Bentivoglio in the second half of the century.80 During his long research in Roman archives, Jean Lionnet has par tially examined the archive of the Borghese Family (the largest family archive kept in the Vatican Secret Archive), identifying different forms of musical patronage practiced by members of the family in the first half of the seventeenth century.81

Family archives have also been examined to reconstruct the activities in ecclesiastical chapels, as is the case of documents in the Pallavicini archive, Genoa, which illuminate the musical activities of the Jesuits in Genoa, as the Jesuit Marcello Pallavicino destined a part of his property to the institution of a chapel of sixteen musicians, specifying meticulous regulation.82 Some family archives con tain precious information applicable to the functioning mechanisms and organiza tion of opera houses which furnish a necessary completion to the "official" documentation.

In the eighteenth century in particular, members of noble families personally carried out activities of theater management, generally as members of the Società di Cavalieri which at that time constituted the most widespread form of enterprise in Italian theaters, and sometimes even as real impresarios. Some recent re searches are moving in this direction, particularly those relevant to the archives of the Albizzi family in Florence83 and the Pepoli family in Bologna.84 The private

79. John Walter Hill, "Training a Singer for Musica Recitativa in Early Seventeenth-century Italy: the Case of Baldassare," in Musicologia Humana, 345-57 (with some letters of 1615 concerning the

improvements in singing by a young singer trained in Rome to sing in Ferrarese intermedi promoted by Bentivoglio).

80. See Arnaldo Morelli, "Legrenzi e i suoi rapporti con Ippolito Bentivoglio e l'ambiente fer

rarese. Nuovi documenti," in Giovanni Legrenzi e la Cappella Ducale di San Marco. Atti dei convegni internazionali di studi Venezia, 24-26 maggio 1990; Clusone, 14-16 settembre 1990, ed. Francesco

Passadore and Franco Rossi, Quaderni della Rivista Italiana di Musicologia, 29 (Firenze: Olschki,

1994), 47-86 (with publication of 53 Legrenzi letters from the Bentivoglio archive and other Ferrarese

collections); Carlo Vitali, "Un cantante legrenziano e la sua biografia: Francesco De Castris, «musico

politico»," ibid., 567-603 (with a list of the letters quoted from diverse archives and libraries and a

transcription of some of them). 81. Jean Lionnet, "The Borghese Family and Music during the First Half of the Seventeenth

Century," Music & Letters 74 (1993): 519-29.

82. Giampiero Buzelli and Giacomo Costa, "Attività musicale alla chiesa del Gesù nel primo Seicento. Il periodo genovese di Willem Hermans," in Musica a Genova tra Medio Evo e Età moderna

Atti del Convegno di studi, Genova, 8-9 aprile 1989, ed. Giampiero Buzelli. (Genova: Associazione

ligure per la ricerca delle fonti musicali, 1992), 85-116. Besides the Pallavicino archive, the authors

utilize documents from the Archivum Historicum Societatis Jesu in Rome and from the State Archive of Genoa.

83. William Holmes, Opera Observed: Views of a Florentine Impresario in the Early Eighteenth Century (Chicago; Chicago University Press, 1993). The author studies over 3,000 letters and papers from the Albizzi archive, now kept in the private library of the Guicciardini family in Florence. The Florentine nobleman Luca degli Albizzi was musical adviser to Prince Ferdinando de' Medici; his son Luca Casimiro was an important member of the Accademia degli Immobili, and in the last twenty-five years of his life impresario of the La Pergola theater.

84. Carlo Vitali, "Da 'schiavottiello' a 'fedele amico': Lettere (1731-1749) di Carlo Broschi Farinelli al conte Sicinio Pepoli," Nuova Rivista Musicale Italiana 26 (1992): 1-36. The 68 autograph




Giustiniani archive of Venice makes it possible to know details of the activities of the San Moisè Theatre, which the Giustiniani family owned from 1793 to 1818, as the impresarios were obliged by contract to supply the family's agent information on the preparation of the performances, and regularly to consign posters, play bills, and announcements to the owners for approval.85

In the nineteenth century, research in the archives of the Capranica family in

Rome, divided between the Capitoline Historical Archive and the Theatrical Archive of Burcardo, has offered interesting data on the mechanisms of theatrical

circulation, to which has been added precious news on music and theater in various Italian cities, thanks to the family's correspondence.86

The Sforza Cesarini Archive (conserved in the State Archive of Rome), has

participated in documenting part of the complex theatrical events in Rome in the

eighteenth and early nineteenth century.87 On the other hand, a noble Milanese

family, Visconti di Modrone, has been involved in the administration of La Scala in successive stages. Today their family archive, kept at the Université Cattolica of Milan, Istituto di Storia Economica "M. Romani," makes it possible to learn the

history of the theater both from 1833 to 1836 and during the period from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth, when La Scala was run by a company presided over first by Guido, then by Uberto Visconti di Modrone.88

New points of departure for research also come from archives of families of the small provincial nobility. Studies have begun on the domestic musical customs

starting from the middle of the eighteenth century, including information on musical performances, purchase of scores, and participation at town activities; these emerge, for example, from the archives of the families Compagnoni Mare foschi of Macerata, Zacchei Travaglini of Spoleto, and Malaspina of Verona.89

letters of Farinelli, about which Vitali supplies a brief summary with date, signature, and incipit, are

kept in the State Archive of Bologna, Archivio Pepoli, Carteggi, Lettere a Sicinio, 1717-1752. In the

period 1731-34 the rich correspondence deals with every aspect of theatrical life in the towns visited

by Farinelli, supplying informations on singers, composers, dancers, and impresarios. 85. Maria Giovanna Miggiani, "Il teatro di San Moisè (1793-1818)," monographic issue of

Bollettino del Centro rossiniano di studi 30 (1990). 86. Bianca Maria Antolini, "La musica a Napoli nel carteggio dei marchesi Capranica," in Francesco

Florimo e I'Ottocento musicale. Atti del convegno di studi, Morcone, 1990, ed. Rosa Cafiero, Rossella

Del Prete, and Marina Marino; Id., "Cronache teatrali veneziane. 1842-1849," in Musica senza

aggettivi. Studi per Fedele d'Amico, ed. Agostino Ziino. (Firenze: Olschki, 1991) 1:297-322.

87. Bianca Maria Antolini, "Musica e teatro musicale a Roma: gli anni della dominazione francese,"

Studi Musicali, forthcoming. 88. Giorgio Cortella and Gianfranco Colombo, "II teatro alia Scala nella gestione dei duchi Visconti

di Modrone, 1898-1916," In Per la Scala (Milano: Amici della Scala, 1992), 15-102.

89. See the introduction by Giancarlo Rostirolla to the catalogue of the Compagnoni Marefoschi

musical collection, forthcoming in the series Cataloghi di fondi musicali italiani, a cura della Società

Italiana di Musicologia; Teresa Chirico, "La musica nella famiglia Zacchei Corvi Travaglini di Spoleto,"

in Ottocento e oltre, ed. Francesco Izzo and Johannes Streicher (Roma: Pantheon, 1993), 9-24 (the

Travaglini archive is kept in the State Archive of Spoleto); Emanuela Negri, "Giuseppe Tartini e

I'ambiente musicale Veronese," in Tartini: II tempo e le opere, ed. Andrea Bombi and Maria Nevilla

Massaro (Bologna: II Mulino, 1994), 67-77 (information on music in the middle of the eighteenth

century in the Malaspina family; the archive is in the State Archive of Verona).




Some private archives of academies or congregations are sources of informa tion about the history of the theater in the eighteenth century. Among those few

private archives of academies presently known and consultable, the one of the

Accademia degli Immobili of Florence, owners of the Teatro della Pergola, has

recently been studied as regards the second half of the eighteenth century.90 The archive of the Sovrano Militare Ordine di Malta in Rome includes a collection called Fondo romano teatro delle Dame with documents from the period 1724

1848; research conducted for the years 1750-80 has brought to light minutes written during the meetings of the company that ran the Teatro delle Dame.91

Among personal archives, musicians' archives are particularly interesting for the history of music. The archives of Giuseppe Verdi are still lodged in the Villa of Sant'Agata; in 1993 an inventory of detailed information was started on letters that are kept there. After the correspondence between Verdi and Ricordi has been catalogued the same will be done for the letters sent to Verdi by Boito, Piave, Du Locle, Somma, Cammarano, and Andrea and Clarina Maffei. Moreover, the edition of the correspondence between Verdi and Ricordi is proceeding, based on materials from the relevant archives.92

Only a few months ago the Italian State purchased the archive of Giovanni

Sgambati, consisting of correspondence, compositions, autographs and editions,

assigning it to the Biblioteca Casanatense of Rome.93 Recently the (private) archive of the violinist Camillo Sivori was made available to scholars in Genoa;

apart from containing published and unpublished music by Sivori, it also contains

unpublished compositions of Niccolo Paganini, a vast correspondence, and an album with autographs of the principal European musicians of the nineteenth

century. This archive is in the course of being catalogued by Flavio Menardi

Noguera and Stefano Termanini.

Obviously the archives of Italian musicians of the twentieth century are even more numerous. The archive of Francesco Cilea including the library of the

composer, photographs, and a dense correspondence, is kept in Palmi.94 In Genoa the archive of Luigi Cortese (1899-1976), containing more than 6,000 letters, writings, programs, and musical compositions was put in order and catalogued by Giacomo Costa on behalf of the Associazione Ligure per la Ricerca delle Fonti Musicali.95

90. See the study of M. De Angelis quoted in note 69.

91. Antonietta Cerocchi, "II teatro Alibert o delle Dame nella seconda metà del Settecento:

struttura e organizzazione," in Mozart, Padova e la Betulia Liberata: Committenza, interpretazione e

fortuna delle azioni sacre metastasiane rtel '700, ed. Paolo Pinamonti, Quaderni della Rivista Italiana di

Musicologia, 24 (Firenze: Olschki, 1991), 395-405.

92. The second volume of the correspondence has been just published: Carteggio Verdi-Ricordi:

1882-1885, ed. Franca Cella, Madina Ricordi, and Marisa Di Gregorio Casati (Parma: Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, 1994).

93. Domenico Carboni, "Riscoprire Sgambati," in Ottocento e oltre, 411-22. The article includes a list of Sgambati's compositions kept in this archive.

94. Teresa Galluccio, "II Museo Cilea di Palmi," in La dolcissima effigi: Studi su Francesco Cilea nel 30° anniversario dell'istituzione del Conservatorio di Reggio Calabria, ed. Gaetano Pitarresi (Reggio Calabria: Laruffa, 1994), 23-24.

95. See "La ricerca nelle regioni," Le Fonti musicali in Italia. Studi e ricerche 5 (1991): 249.




In Venice at the Istituto della Musica of the Giorgio Cini Foundation, directed

by Giovanni Morelli, there are archives of two of the most important exponents of Italian twentieth century music: Alfredo Casella and Gianfrancesco Malipiero, which contain correspondence, autograph music, rough drafts, books, programs, and so forth. Intense research activity for some years has resulted in a detailed

inventory of four volumes on Alfredo Casella, and research on his juvenile Parisian

period,96 while there is a project for a series of studies on the drafts. Research on Malipiero in progress includes an edition of his correspondence with Gatti, a

catalogue of the drafts, and a study of his literary activities, along with a catalogue of his librettos.97 Moreover, documentation at the Malipiero collection was used to reconstruct the events of the music for the film Acciaio by Ruttmann.98 Also

pertinent to music are the materials of another personal archive conserved in the same Institute, that of the choreographer Aurelio Milloss."

The Luigi Nono archive containing books, scores, records, tapes, and corre

spondence, was also formally established in Venice in 1993, financially backed

by the composer's widow, Nuria Nono. The archive also promotes a series of research projects coordinated by Veniero Rizzardi, among which is an analysis by Rizzardi and Gianmario Borio of the drafts of the works composed in the 1950s.

The Archivio Contemporaneo Alessandro Bonsanti at the Gabinetto Vieusseux in Florence holds the archive of Luigi Dallapiccola (manuscripts, writings, letters,

photographs, written reviews, programs) being catalogued by Mila De Santis. In the same Bonsanti archive there are archives of other men of letters and

intellectuals of the Italian twentieth century, many of which such as the Cecchi

collection also contain interesting materials for music. Similarly the Carlo Belli

collection, now in the Archivio del Novecento at Rovereto (Trento), can be

interesting for the music of the Italian twentieth century, and so can the archive

of Massimo Bontempelli, now at the Getty Institute, from which the correspon dence with Gianfrancesco Malipiero has been published.100 In Fiesole (Florence) the Primo Conti Foundation keeps the archive of Francesco Balilla Pratella, on which Domenico Tampieri is working.

Archives of other people such as music organizers, writers of librettos, or

musicologists, are also interesting for the history of music. In Rome the Italian

Institute for the History of Music has entrusted Johannes Streicher with cata

loguing the archive of the musicologist Raffaello De Rensis. In Genoa, the archive

of the musicologist Pier Costantino Remondini is preserved at the Franzoniana

96. Francesca Romana Conti and Mila De Santis, Catalogo critico del fondo Alfredo Casella, 1:1

carteggi (2 vols.); Anna Rita Colajanni, Francesca Romana Conti, and Mila De Santis, Catalogo critico

... 2: Scritti, musiche, concerti; Luisa Mazzone, Catalogo critico ... 3: Scritti su Alfredo Casella,

Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Studi di musica veneta, 18 (Firenze: Olschki, 1992); a volume containing the

documents of the Parisian period, edited by Roberto Calabretto, is in the press.

97. Edited respectively by Cecilia Palandri, Paolo Cattelan, and Laura Zanella.

98. Retroscena di "Acciaio:" Indagine su un'esperienza cinematografica di G. Francesco Malipiero

(Firenze: Olschki, 1993). The essays of Fabrizio Borin, Paolo Pinamonti and Paolo Cattelan in this

volume are based on the correspondence and drafts kept in the archive.

99. Caterina Moisè is preparing the catalogue of the Milloss library.

100. Aurora Cogliandro, "II carteggio Malipiero-Bontempelli (1932-1952)." Le Fonti musicali in

Italia. Studi e ricerche 6 (1992): 93-149.




Library;101 in Rome, the (private) archive of the nineteenth-century librettist

Jacopo Ferretti is being rearranged and catalogued thanks to a project of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia.102 The impressive archive of the nineteenth

century impresario Alessandro Lanari, of which an inventory was published in

1982, has been subject of research in the last few years.103 Important for the

study of everything regarding organs is the archive of the Tronci family, active from the early eighteenth century to 1919, about which Oscar Mischiati is

publishing a detailed register in successive stages.104 Archives of publishers have great importance for the study of Italian nine

teenth- and twentieth-century musical history. Ricordi, the publishing house, possesses a rich historical archive, containing autograph scores of works of the most important Italian nineteenth century composers, sketches of costumes, sketches of scenes, correspondence, and so forth: the sources kept in this archive are basic to the critical editions—now underway—of the works of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, and Puccini, and for the editions of many contemporary musi cians' correspondence. Also the documents relating to the business activities of the company, such as inventories and letter-books, are also presently a subject of

scrutiny.105

In the Schmidl Museum, Trieste, the archive of the Triestian publisher Carlo

Schmidl, active at the turn of the twentieth century, has already been examined in part by Fabiana Licciardi, and is now being catalogued by Margherita Canale.106 The research underway on archives of such music publishers has also provided information for the forthcoming Dizionario degli editori musicali italiani. (See page 19.) Materials on publishing houses of this period have also been found in archives of the Chambers of Commerce of some Italian cities.107

Some schools and musical associations presently have their own historical archives. In the library of the Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella in Naples, documents such as administration records, and books of results, are preserved which refer to the multi-century activities of many Neapolitan conservatories

(S. Maria di Loreto, S. Maria délia Pietà dei Turchini, S. Onofrio a Capuana); in

101. Maurizio Tarrini, "Pier Costantino Remondini e le 'Tomate musicali' della sezione di ar

cheologia della Société ligure di storia patria (1875-76)," in Musica a Genova, 169-245.

102. See Annalisa Bini, "I progetti di ricerca dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia per lo studio delle fonti musicali," Le Fonti Musicali in Italia. Studi e ricerche 7 (1993).

103. Sandro Corti, "Gilbert Louis Duprez: le lettere (1833-1850) nell'archivio dell'impresario Alessandro Lanari," in Ottocento e oltre, 277-318.

104. The "Regesto dell'Archivio Tronci di Pistoia" is being published in the periodical L'Organo. The documents concerning organ-building activity have been divided in five groups: I: Libro di tutti i lavori d'organo 1773-1784 (inventory in L'Organo 1978); II: Catalogues (in 1979); III: Projects, contracts, letters: the inventory is published, in toponomastic order, in the years 1987-88, 1989-90

(g-o) 1991-92 (p), 1993-94 (r-v). 105. Ricordi's "copialettere" for the years 1895-96 have been examined in the paper "L'editoria

musicale italiana negli anni di Puccini," read by Bianca Maria Antolini at the international congress on Giacomo Puccini, Lucca, November 25-29, 1994.

106. See "La ricerca nelle regioni," Le Fonti musicali 7 (1993). 107. See the articles by Pia Rosso on Canti and by Francesca Perruccio on Florentine publishers

of the second half of the nineteenth century, written for the Dizionario degli editori musicali italiani.




1993 the archival Superintendence for Campania sponsored an inventory of this.108 Some of these documents have provided further subject matter for

study.109 The Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale of Bologna preserves docu mentation concerning the Liceo Filarmonico of Bologna, founded in 1804. These documents provide the groundwork for reconstruction of concert activities con nected with the Liceo in the early nineteenth century.110 Initiatives for inventories

have also been set up for the historical archives of the Conservatories of Milan and Parma.

In 1993, thanks to a convention sponsored by the Superintendence of Book

Patrimonies of Emilia-Romagna, the archive of the renowned Philarmonic Acad

emy was also rearranged. The life of that institution has been the subject of recent

documentary studies.111 The National Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome pre serves a historic archive, a source of documentation for anyone active in Roman

musical life from the late sixteenth century to the present. From 1993 onwards

reordering and cataloguing there has been computerized.112 Finally, some concert associations still active have utilized the documentation

deposited in their own archives to outline their own histories, as has the Acca

demia Filarmonica Romana, or to create a chronology of performances, like the

Filarmonica Laudamo of Messina.113 Research on musical associations at Bres

sanone (approx. 1870-1920) led by G. Tonini also included the rich documentation

of the archive of the Männergesangverein in Bressanone.114

Congress 1992: La Musica a Roma

In 1992 the State Archive of Rome and the Italian Musicological Society promoted a congress dedicated to the history of music in Rome as documented in archival

108. See "La ricerca nelle regioni," Le Fonti musicali 7 (1993).

109. Raffaele Pozzi, "Vita musicale e committenza nei conservatori napoletani del Seicento: Il S.

Onofrio e i Poveri di Gesù Cris to," in Atti del XIV Congresso delta Società Internazionale di Musicologia

3:915-24. (The author compares account-books of S. Onofrio, 1688-1693, with similar documents of

the Poveri di Gesù Cristo, 1673-78).

110. Nicola Gallino, "Lo scuolaro Rossini e la musica strumentale al liceo di Bologna: nuovi

documenti," Bollettino del Centro rossiniano di studi 33 (1993): 5-55.

111. Laura Callegari Hill, L'Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna, 1666-1800: statuti, indici degli

aggregati e catalogo degli esperimenti d'esame nell'archivio (Bologna: AMIS, 1991); Osvaldo Gambassi,

L'Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna: Fondazione, statuti e aggregazioni (Firenze: Olschki, 1992). The

present state of the Academy is described by Giuseppe Vecchi in Accademia: archivio e biblioteca

(Bologna: AMIS, 1991), 19-43; about the reordering of the Academy collections see "La ricerca nelle

regioni," Le Fonti musicali 7 (1993).

112. Among studies that recently have been using these documents see Giancarlo Rostirolla, "La

professione di strumentista a Roma nel Sei e Settecento," Studi Musicali 23 (1994): 87-174. On the

Archive see Annalisa Bini, "I progetti di ricerca dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia per lo studio

delle fonti musicali," Le Fonti musicali 7 (1993).

113. Arrigo Quattrocchi, Storia dell'Accademia filarmonica romana (Roma: Presidenza del Con

siglio dei ministri, 1991). The history is based on documents (1824-1948) from the Academy's

historical archive and is very detailed from 1869 to 1990; 1921-1991. La Filarmonica Laudamo di

Messina, ed. Carlo De Incontrera and Alba Zanini (Messina: Filarmonica Laudamo, 1993).

114. See "La ricerca nelle regioni," Le Fonti musicali 7 (1993).




sources. The proceedings, published in 1994,115 make it possible to evaluate the

importance of the new perspective obtained from a fruitful joint effort between

musicologists and archivists. The thirty-five essays contained in the volume treat

various aspects of music in Rome from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, utilizing the most varied of documents and placing particular attention on proper evaluation of the archival sources used.

At the beginning of the volume, Lucio Lume ("Documenti e testi musicali negli Archivi di Stato: un'indagine in corso") presents the first data about research carried out at all of the ninety-five State Archives in Italy in order to locate musical

sources; he pauses for a while on a kind of source "specific" in a certain sense to these archives: the fragments of parchment with musical notation retrieved from

bindings of archival volumes. Bonifacio Baroffio ("Frammenti liturgico-musicali medioevali nell'Archivio di Stato di Roma") provides us with observations on the method for research in this type of archival source, illustrating it with the examination of some medieval musical-liturgical fragments. The essay by Vera Vita Spagnuolo ("Gli atti notarili dell'Archivio di Stato di Roma. Saggio di spoglio sistematico: l'anno 1590") also contains advantageous annotations on methodology for research in notarial archives, which are of utmost importance, remarking "over the last thirty years this source has been utilized with growing frequency and whoever is in the habit of consulting it is always astonished about the abundance and variety of its contents." Extremely useful to the musicologist who is about to use this type of document is the description of characteristics of the Roman notarial offices in the second half of the sixteenth century. The careful

reading of notarial records from the year 1590 (290 volumes) offered both

biographical data on musicians already known and the identification of about fifty names of musicians previously unknown to musicological research; it has also

brought to light locatio pueri contracts, inventories containing musical instru

ments, and documents relative to the cordari. The most interesting news how ever regards the music publishing business of the time, in particular the relation

ship between publishers and booksellers and even the financing mechanisms of the firms.

Some essays offer biographical information on musicians active in Rome in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Giancarlo Rostirolla ("Note e manette: documenti su musici, costruttori e teatri dalla "Miscellanea artisti") and Maria Luisa San Martini ("La 'Miscellanea artisti': regesti di documenti relativi alia musica e ai musicisti") have studied the so-called Miscellanea artisti of the State Archive of Rome, containing various documents extrapolated as a rule from the Governor of Rome's Chancellery; Claudio Annibaldi ("La macchina dei cinque stili: nuovi documenti sul secondo soggiorno romano di Johann Jakob Froberger") relates data on Froberger's stay in Rome, based on new documents from the Pontifical Gregorian University Archive; Elena Tamburini ("La lira, la poesia, la

115 .La musica a Roma attraverso le fonti d'archivio. Atti del Convegno internazionale, Roma 4-7

giugno 1992, ed. Bianca Maria Antolini, Arnaldo Morelli, and Vera Vita Spagnuolo. Strumenti délia ricerca musicale, collana délia Società Italiana di Musicologia, 2 (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 1994).




voce e il teatro musicale nel Seicento: note su alcune vicende biografiche e artistiche della baronessa Anna Rosalia Carusi") uses correspondence to recon struct the biography of a singer attached to the court of the Colonnas, and Eleonora Simi ("Valerio Santacroce nobile dilettante romano"), thanks to the Santacroce family archive, is able to portray a noble amateur author of oratorios and sacred music. Warren Kirkendale ("Rapporti musicali tra Roma e Firenze") traces the relations between Rome and Florence between the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Examining the abundant correspondence between the Gonzagas' ambassador in Rome and the Secretary of State of Mantua, relative to the dispatch of music from Rome to Duke Carlo II Gonzaga, Paola Besutti ("Produzione e trasmissione di cantate romane nel mezzo del Seicento") proposes interesting observations on the usual procedures of performance and use of the "cantata" in a court of the mid-seventeenth century and on the circulation of this kind of repertory; while Arnaldo Morelli ("La musica a Roma nella seconda metà del Seicento attraverso l'archivio Cartari Febei"), uses thirty-one volumes of a diary kept between 1642-1691 by the consistorial lawyer Carlo Cartari to document a series of activities (private banquets, "accademie" with music in colleges, music for the discussion of dissertations, sacred music, etc.) which do not often find a place in the contemporary series of announcements and gazettes. He enriches known information with unpublished particulars, concluding, "a description of the music in Rome in the second half of the 17th. century . . . appears in a different

perspective from that which up till now historiography has conventionally ac

cepted." A group of essays copes with the diverse aspects of the opera house in Rome

in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: Maria Grazia Pastura ("Legislazione pontificia sui teatri e spettacoli a Roma") outlines jurisdictional and statutory rules in matters of performances enforced by the Governor of Rome in the eighteenth

century: on control of the companies, on the behavior of the public and actors, on the stability of theatre buildings and so forth. John Rosselli ("I teatri di dipendenza

della famiglia Capranica") describes the multiple archival sources useful for re

constructing the history of the Capranica and Valle Theaters.

Family archives are at the center of the studies by Francesco Sinibaldi on the

Argentina Theater ("Proprietà, gestione e concorrenza nel teatro romano del

Settecento: alcuni document! inediti sul teatro Argentina dal fondo Sforza Ce

sarini"), by Elisabetta Mori on the Alibert Theater ("I Maccarani dal teatro di

corte al teatro Alibert"), by Silvia Cretarola ("Proprietà e impresa nel teatro

Valle") and by Bianca Maria Antolini ("Teatro e musica a Roma nell'Ottocento

attraverso gli archivi familiari") on the Valle Theater. Not only does a quantity of

new data emerge, but also a reconsideration of business organization and of the

relations between the various theaters active in Rome. Completely unpublished also is the reconstruction of the debate on the "national theatre of music" which

developed in Rome between 1881 and 1888; Marcello Ruggieri's essay on the

subject, "Per un teatro nazionale di musica a Roma: il teatro Apollo tra gestione

impresariale e progetti di teatro a repertorio", is based on documents from the

Ministry of Public Education at the Central State Archive and those from




the Town Council and the Municipal Junta at the Capitoline Historical Archive. The control of performance in nineteenth-century Rome is examined by Renata Cataldi ("La censura nella Roma pontificia delTOttocento: le licenze del cardinal

vicario") in regard to the authority of the "Cardinal Vicario" on public decency and

public morality, and by Monica Calzolari ("La censura nella Roma pontificia dell'Ottocento: il ruolo prédominante della Direzione generale di polizia") and Elvira Grantaliano ("La censura nella Roma pontificia dell'Ottocento: tipologie ed

esempi") for the political authority attributed to the General Administration of Police.

This last collection (and other analogous collections in State Archives of other Italian cities) made it possible for Chiara Trara ("Suonatori ambulanti, cantastorie ed altri artisti girovaghi: i rapporti della Polizia dell'Ottocento a Roma, Firenze,

Napoli") to study the strolling musicians in the nineteenth century, thus providing an archival contribution to ethnomusicological research. Other essays cope with the musical history of some of the countless ecclesiastical institutions existing in Rome: the Papal Chapel in the fifteenth century (Adalbert Roth, "La storia della

Cappella Pontificia rispecchiata nel fondo Camerale I dell'Archivio di Stato di

Roma"), San Giovanni in Laterano (Wolfgang Witzenmann, "Materiali archivistici

per la Cappella Lateranense nell'Archivio Capitolare di San Giovanni in Late

rano"), the English College (Graham Dixon, "Music in the Venerable English College in the Early Baroque"), San Giacomo degli Spagnoli (Jean Lionnet, "La

musique à San Giacomo degli Spagnoli au XVIIème siècle et les archives de la

Congrégation des Espagnols de Rome"), and the archiconfraternity of San Rocco in the late sixteenth century (Noel O'Regan, "Music at the Roman Archconfra

ternity of San Rocco in the late Sixteenth Century"). Patrizia Melella ("Vita musicale e arte organaria a Santo Spirito in Sassia nel

Cinquecento: note e documenti") documents in particular the construction of the organ of S. Spirito in Sassia in the mid-sixteenth century. Franco Piperno ("Musica e musicisti per l'Accademia del Disegno di San Luca, 1716-1860") is concerned with the musical performances promoted by an "accademia" which

brought together figurative artists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Organological interests characterize the essays by Renato Meucci ("La costru zione di strumenti musicali a Roma tra XVII e XIX secolo con notizie inedite sulla

famiglia Biglioni") with a wealth of information on the manufacturers of wind

instruments, and of Franca Camiz ("Gli strumenti musicali nei palazzi, nelle ville e nelle dimore della Roma del Seicento"), which studies the musical instruments

present in the inventories of Roman aristocratic homes of the seventeenth

century.

Finally some personal archives are indicated or described: that of Giovanni

Sgambati (Antonio Latanza, "G. Sgambati e il suo archivio musicale: una grande occasione storica per la musica italiana tra Ottocento e Novecento"), that of the

pianist and musicologist Rate Furlan (Stefano Pogelli, "II fondo Rate Furlan presso la scuola di musica di Testaccio"), and that of Roffredo Caetani. In this last, Luigi Fiorani offers an interesting picture, ("Roffredo Caetani, 1871-1961, una voca zione per la musica") bringing to light the relationship of a Roman patrician with the Parisian and Roman culture in the early twentieth century.




This summary description of the volume shows the many new elements which

emerged from the congress and the documentation. Naturally the image of Roman musical activities is more positively articulated; music was played not only in musical chapels or opera houses but on numerous other occasions; ties with other Italian cities were established; diversified professions tied to music are distin

guished, both in the artistic and business world. Just as significant is the meth

odological approach: on one hand it reflects the variety of archival sources

necessary to take into consideration to permit the reconstruction of the history of musical institutions or of a single person; on the other, we see a constant call to evaluate diverse types of archival sources, without which one risks being led

astray. For this reason it was particularly important to have the complete collaboration

of the archivists who on this occasion lent their daily experience with archival research to aid the history of music.

The experience gained at the Congress obviously establishes a starting point for further music research in Rome. At the same time it is to be hoped that similar excellent collaborations between archivists and music historians can be estab lished in other Italian cities with the same success. In this way the great variety and richness of the Italian archives will contribute to successful reconstruction of the diversified and multi-faceted Italian musical history.

