The Bentivoglio and music, 1605‒1684

Thanks to the valuable books by Dinko Fabris and Sergio Monaldini, the significant role the Bentivoglio family played in the seventeenth century as patrons of the performing arts has become ever more clear. Although Fabris and Monaldini published a significant part of the Bentivoglio correspondence, the lion’s share of which is housed in the Archivio di Stato di Ferrara, they did not consider that part of the letters which since the early nineteenth century is kept in the Raccolta Stefani of the Archivio di Stato di Venezia. An exploration of the respective fondo from a music-historical viewpoint has revealed a sample of letters that are concerned with different aspects of musicking in the Early modern period. These letters are published and commented for the first time in this article. Besides from confirming the multi-faceted activities of the Bentivoglio as organizers of spectacles and patrons of musicians, these letters also offer interesting insights in the strategies of music collectors, in music-political circumstances of certain events as well as in the exchange of musicians from 1605 to 1684.