Recercare XXIX-2017 View larger

«Respinto da un insolito vento contrario in alto mare». Anton Raaf, il Farinelli e la Storia della musica di Giambattista Martini

Online only

Author Elisabetta Pasquini
Series Recercare - Rivista per lo studio e la pratica della musica antica - Journal for the study and practice of early music
Nr. XXIX/1-2 2017
Size 17×24, pp. 284
Year 2017
ISBN 9788870968996

Price 7,00 €

Even though Giambattista Martini (1706–1784) was very renowned for his teaching activity, as is proved by the large number of young composers who came to Bologna in the hope of learning the secrets of their art, yet he acquired his reputation mainly through his History of music, the first one which was written in Italian and published in Italy. It was often stressed that this work contains the whole of it’s author’s scientific, critical, bibliographical and philological knowledge.The article reconstructs the complex editorial origin of Vol. I, which is discussed on the basis of some letters drawn from padre Martini’s correspondence and, most importantly, of several unpublished documents (particularly letters, but also notes of various kinds) included in Manuscript I.33/1 of Museo internazionale e Biblioteca della musica di Bologna. It is thus possible, thanks to documentary evidence, to follow, step-by-step, the various phases of preparation which led to the book’s publication and to its circulation. The printing began in 1752 and was completed by 1758. In spite of the date which appears on the title page (1757), yet the passing, on August 27, 1758, of Maria Barbara of Braganza  —  to whom the book was dedicated - and of her husband Ferdinand vi Borbone-Spagna (August 10, 1759) prevented the book’s publication untill December 1760. A successful completion of the endeavour was also made possible thanks to the engagement and the mediation of some celebrated singers — particularly Anton Raaf and Farinelli — who, during the work’s long development, were personally active in order to favour padre Martini.

Elisabetta Pasquini is associate professor at the University of Bologna, where she teaches History of music in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as History of musical instruments and of the orchestra, and coordinates the bachelor course in Drama, Art and Music Studies. She has published the monographs L’“Esemplare, o sia Saggio fondamentale pratico di contrappunto”: padre Martini teorico e didatta della musica (2004) and Giambattista Martini (2007). She is co-editor of the critical edition series Tesori musicali emiliani (Ut Orpheus, Bologna), in which she has edited the oratorio Giona by Giovanni Battista Bassani (2009) and the first volume of Domenico Gabrielli’s Complete sacred music (2012). Further, she edited the critical edition of Francesca da Rimini by Saverio Mercadante (2015), which was staged in 2016 at the Festival della Valle d’Itria. elisabetta.pasquini@unibo.it