1666–1747. L’Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna nella prassi editoriale e nella diffusione europea della musica strumentale

L’Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna nella prassi editoriale e nella diffusione europea della musica strumentale
In 1666, the year of publication of the Primi frutti del Giardino musicale, a due violini e basso continuo (the first printed work of Giovanni Maria Bononcini), the Accademia Filarmonica of Bologna was founded. It quickly became the fulcrum of local and national musical life, an institutional point of reference for not only Emilian, but also Italian and European, professional musicians. At century’s end and in the decades to come, the Accademia gained great renown through its members, who spread the characteristics of instrumental and vocal music. The Bononcinis of Modena exemplify the excellence of this diaspora of Italian music and of its transfer abroad. This study is articulated in two tightly linked parts. The first half analyzes in depth the diffusion of the printed compositions of Bolognese Accademia members, first in Bolognese and then in European publishing. The publications of the Bononcinis are the first witnesses to the circulation of Italian music and treatises in an ever-broadening array of publishers and dedicatees.
The second part documents and illustrates the major theoreticians, performers, and composers of the Accademia Filarmonica in their activity through their works preserved and their performing forces. The research trajectory is based on Accademia documents, many unpublished, which have not yet been the subject of systematic study. These materials belong to both the historical archive and the original collection of music donated by the founder Vincenzo Maria Carrati and then enlarged by the Accademia members themselves. We will demonstrate the strongly organic nature of the seventeenth-century prints (including the treatises), a resource used in the weekly “exercises” and reference point for the theoretical debates in which the Accademia was the recognized international arbiter.