Nicolò Paganini. Diabolus in Musica
edited by Andrea Barizza and Fulvia Morabito
Turnhout, Brepols, 2010 (Studies on Italian Music History, 5)

Paganini is considered to be the greatest violin virtuoso of all time. He was a virtuoso who relied on the astonishment that he aroused in those who heard him. One of the criticisms that he himself addressed to other violinists was that they failed to ’surprise’ the audience. Paganini, on the other hand, succeeded. But to what extent? Much was due to the improvisational side of his music. Whenever he played, he was unable to perform a piece without enriching it not only with virtuoso embellishments, but also with accents and colouristic inflections. The true novelty of his violin idiom can be identified in the probing of the instrument’s sonic potential and in the peculiarities of gesture. Perhaps we should consider him not so much as a virtuoso musician but as a representative of a new generation of composers for whom emphasis was a positive, constructive quality, whether it be connected to sound, gesture and improvisation or to ‘technical’ display.
In this book, edited by Andrea Barizza and Fulvia Morabito, about thirty scholars investigate different aspects of the life and works of Nicolò Paganini, and his relationship with the 18th- and 19th-centuries school of the Violin techinque.

Florence, BNC, Panciatichi 27: Text and Context

edited by Gioia Filocamo, translated by Bonnie J. Blackburn, Turnhout, Brepols.
XX+988 p., 230 x 310 mm, 2010, Hardback ISBN 978-2-503-51518-2

The volume comprises a complete edition of the large manuscript Panciatichi 27, compiled at the beginning of the sixteenth century: 185 compositions (parts of masses, motets, Magnificat sections, litanies, lamentations, dances, instrumental pieces, frottole, laude, chansons, etc.). Nearly one-third of the compositions have Italian texts. The introduction takes into account the complex relationships with some 600 concordant sources, both poetic and musical, manuscript and print. Some compositions are closely related to printed sources of the early sixteenth century: several pieces were copied from publications by Petrucci and the Canzoni nove of Antico (1510), which helps in dating the manuscript. The work of a single scribe (apart from two pieces), the manuscript was evidently compiled for practical purposes, as is evident from the small format, the absence of decorative elements, erasures and corrections, alternative readings, duplications of parts of the texts, and the intriguing presence of arabic numbers at the ends of many pieces, related to the number of semibreves in the composition or its parts. It has been suggested that Panciatichi 27 was copied in northern Italy (Mantua or Ferrara); further evidence — in particular a repertorial connection with Augsburg, Staats- und Stadtbibliothek, MS 2° 142a — points to Mantua. The commentary on each composition includes a complete list of concordances (many newly discovered) with bibliographical references and an evaluation of the relationships with concordant sources

Paola Palermo – Giulia Pecis Cavagna
La cappella musicale di Santa Maria Maggiore a Bergamo dal 1657 al 1810

with documents transcriptions on Cd-Rom.

From its very creation the musical chapel of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo was always one of the most outstanding of the North-Italian ecclesiastical institutions. Among the 16th-century maestri di cappella there were musicians of the calibre of Gasparo de Albertis, Pietro Ponzio, Pietro Vinci and Ippolito Camaterò, while in the following century the list includes key figures such as Giovanni Cavaccio, Alessandro Grandi, Tarquinio Merula, Maurizio Cazzati and Giovanni Battista Bassani — to mention just a few. To these we should certainly add two illustrious organists: Giovanni Battista Quaglia and Giovanni Legrenzi. Inevitably the presence of these important composers has generated a series of important studies, such as the (by now classic) ones by Gary Towne, Alberto Colzani and above all Maurizio Padoan, all of which focus on the 16th- and early 17th-century history of the chapel. The following periods, however, have been substantially overlooked by modern research, or at most approached merely with reference to Johann Simon Mayr and his pupil Donizetti. Paola Palermo and Giulia Pecis Cavagna’s book, which aims to fill this large gap, examines the period ranging from 1657, the year of Cazzati’s departure, to 1810, by when Mayr had been maestro for some time. An impressive array of documents — all of which can be consulted on a CD-Rom attached to the volume — help to reconstruct not only the activities of this important institution (with its various maestri, regular members and temporary collaborators), but also the church’s liturgy, an aspect which naturally had a close bearing on the chapel’s functions. The book comes with a valuable appendix listing all the musicians (salaried and otherwise) associated with the chapel and mentioned in the documents.

Vol. xvi: Beyond Notes: Improvisation in Western Music of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

edited by Rudolf Rasch,

pp. xii+392, 2011.

Improvisation is an important aspect of music, not only in jazz and other ‘improvised music’, but also of classical music. Pianists may add improvised interludes to their recitals and cadenzas to a concerto they perform. They may conclude their recitals by playing compositions composed on the spot, freely invented or on themes handed to them by the public. Violinists and other instrumentalists may do the same. Singers may add embellishments to their arias which are not notated in their scores, a practice widely spread in nineteenth-century opera. For the listener it may perhaps not make very much difference whether or not what he hears is improvised or composed, but for the performer it does, of course. In fact, the improviser shows that he is a real master of the art: he can do at once, without preparation, what others can do only with preparation. But there is also a genre of written compositions which is supposed to sound as improvisations, especially those entitled Improvisation, Fantasy, Impromptu, Prelude, and so forth.

Beyond Notes: Improvisation in Western Music of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries brings together twenty essays that do confirm the many sides of the concept of ‘improvisation’ and the wide range of approaches that can be taken to it. Because of the collective nature of this volume, the approaches do indeed vary greatly. Some contributions deal with improvisation from the conceptual point of view: what really is improvisation? Others deal with certain repertoires, or with specific examples. Some deal with improvised additions, others with improvisational aspects of written compositions. The contribution on the improvisations of the French organist Louis Vierne deals directly with recorded improvisations. The contribution on the flute-cadenza in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor encompasses recorded material, but this was rather semi-improvisational, prepared certainly, but not necessarily notated and not necessarily performed identically every time. Contemporary descriptions of improvisations are found in contributions on Italian music theorists and musicians in general, and in those on composers such as Hummel, Paganini, Bériot, Clara Wieck Schumann, Czerny, Liszt and Henselt. Compositions in improvisatory style are discussed in several of these contributions and in one on nineteenth-century Hungarian or so-called ‘Gypsy’ music. Ad libitum ornamentation is discussed in relation to Tartini’s violin sonatas and nineteenth-century operatic arias. Other contributions discuss the instability that is a property of nearly all music or the migration of motives and schemes from one composition to another, processes that pave the way for improvised additions. Several contributions provide theoretical reflections on improvisation.

Beyond Notes: Improvisation in Western Music of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries contains contributions by Carmela Bongiovanni (Genoa), Philippe Borer (Boudry, Switzerland), Rogério Budasz (Riverside, California), Vincenzo Caporaletti (Rome), Gregorio Carraro (Padoa), Simone Ciolfi (Rome), Damien Colas (Paris), Mariateresa Dellaborra (Pavia), Raffaele Di Mauro (Rome), Martin Edin (Stockholm), Valerie Woodring Goertzen (New Orleans), Martin Kaltenecker (Paris), John Lutterman (Walla Walla, Washington), Naomi Matsumoto (London), Laura Moeckli (Bern), Csilla Pethő-Vernet (Paris), Rudolf Rasch (Utrecht), Renato Ricco (Salerno), Rohan Stewart-MacDonald (Cambridge), and Steven Young (Bridgewater, Massachusetts).

Editorial Contents Abstracts

ARTICLES

Barry Cooper
The Two — or Two Dozen — Finales for Beethoven’s Quartet Opus 130
David Chapman
Tuning Variations as a Guide to Bass-Line Instrumentation in the Orchestral and Solo Literature for the Eighteenth-Century Contrabass «Violon»
Serguei N. Prozhoguin
Cinque Studi su Domenico Scarlatti

REVIEWS

Floyd Grave
David Wyn Jones, The Life of Haydn
Miguel Ángel Marín
Boccherini Studies: Volume 2
Renato Ricco
Nicolò Paganini, Epistolario. Volume I: 1810-1831
Warwick Lister
Mark W. Rowe, Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst: Virtuoso Violinist
News – Contributors – Books Received – Abstracts – Index of Names

editorial contents abstracs

Despite their apparent diversity, the contributions included in the present issue of Ad Parnassum coalesce around the established and ongoing debate concerning ‘revision’ as a methodological category within the sphere of musicology. Although approached from different perspectives and from the vantage points of diverse historical and analytical methods, the concept of revision is the common element that connects aspects of ‘transformation’ that are, in turn, linked to the history of musical reception. It therefore follows that the historicization of musical works entails the analysis of such processes of transformation, centring on the study of tradition and the analysis of musical sources through the examination of contemporary practice and related theorethical issues.
This is addressed by Fabrizio Ammetto whose article takes up the widespread problem of deformation in the interpretation of sources by eighteenth-century editors. Specifically, Ammetto analyses the Concerto RV 513 by Vivaldi as it exists in one of two collections of Concerti a Cinque Stromenti [...] d’Alcuni Famosi Maestri edited by Gerhard Fredrik Witvogel. This is the only composition for two violins published in a single anthology by a living author, and has been preserved only by the Dutch press. The authenticity of the source is not in question; nonetheless the reliability of the text is dubious, particularly in relation to the orchestral parts accompanying the second soloist. In the preparation of the individual parts the publisher Witvogel has distributed the music of the six instrumental parts between five-line staves; this distorts the text and misinterprets the conventions of a typically Vivaldian concerto for two violins.
The essay by Wolfgang Sawodny advocates a different approach in relation to the central topic of ‘revision’. His subject is the 1987 monograph by Peter Brown and Richard Griscom on the Parisian works of German publisher Guera, The French Music Publisher Guéra of Lyon: A Dated List, dating from 1987. Sawodny identifies incorrect interpretations within the book and updates the previous authors’ work in the light of more recent discoveries.
The remaining two articles investigate the changes in social context of the musical work and the impact these had on the transformation of the concept of musical genre. Marie Sumner Lott discusses the Parisian salon during the first two decades of the nineteenth century. Lott studies the output of quintets by composers such as Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Ferdinand Ries and Johann Baptist Cramer from the points of view both of form and instrumentation, and compares these composers’ works with the productions of Louise Farrenc (1804-1875). Sumner Lott explores the differences between Farrenc’s approach to the genre and that of her predecessors, also in relation to the transformations that occurred in mid-century chamber music.
Editorial
Vanda de Sá Silva draws our attention to the Portuguese court under the Ancien Régime. She explores the world of dance music and evaluates the reasons for the transformation of the minuet, with reference to the work of Pedro António Avondano (ca. 1714-1782). The influence of Avondano, particularly in the contexts of urban life in Portugal and London, led to stylistic renewal via and new solutions to form that included the cosmopolitan model of an aristocratic minuet and a new practices of popular influence.

Luca Sala

Université de Poitiers

ARTICLES

Marie Sumner Lott
Negotiation Tactics in Louise Farrenc’s Piano Quintets, Opp. 30 and 31 (1839-1840)
Fabrizio Ammetto
Un concierto para dos violines de Vivaldi en una colección antológica del siglo XVIII: ¿cuán atendible es el texto musical en la fuente del RV 513?
Vanda de Sá Silva
‘Avondano’s Lisbon Minuets, the Establishment of a Cosmopolitan Model
Wolfgang Sawodny
Der Lyoner Musikverlag Guera. Addenda und Corrigenda zu A. Peter Browns und Richard Griscoms Monographie «The French Music Publisher Guéra of Lyon» (Detroit 1987)

REVIEWS

Judith Schwartz Karp
Bathia Churgin, Transcendent Mastery: Studies in the Music of Beethoven
Begoña Gimeno Arlanzón
Victoria Alemany, Metodología de la técnica pianística y su pedagogía en Valencia, 1879-1916
Valerie Woodring Goertzen
R. Larry Todd, Fanny Hensel: The Other Mendelssohn
Claudia Macdonald
Jon W. Finson, Robert Schumann: The Book of Songs
Floyd Grave
The Century of Bach and Mozart: Perspectives on Historiography, Composition, Theory, and Performance
Donald R. Boomgaarden
Communication in Eighteenth-Century Music

REPORTS

Louis Brouillette
14th Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music Queen’s University, Belfast, North Ireland (30 June-4 July 2010)
News – Contributors – Books Received – Abstracts – Index of Names

a cura di David Rowland

Sommario

The critical edition of The Correspondence of Muzio Clementi includes some 20 previously-unknown letters by Clementi himself, in addition to about 30 more that were written to him, his family or associates, or by those other individuals. Furthermore, many letters only previously referred to or partially quoted are published here in full, along with previously unknown passages found in new sources such as the notebook used by both Clementi and his grandson Herbert Clementi-Smith, now in the possession of John Collard.

Clementi’s correspondence opens a window on a number of aspects of his own life, the lives of other contemporary musicians, and the international music business of the time.

One of the benefits of publishing all of the known letters to and from Clementi, his family and his business associates is that much more is revealed than has hitherto been known about the nature of Clementi’s company, and more generally the nature of the music business in early nineteenth-century Europe.

The letters clearly show the extent of Clementi’s contacts with European publishers and instrument sellers, including Artaria, Breitkopf & Härtel, Erard, Naderman, Nägeli, Pleyel, Ricordi and Streicher. One of the most striking features of the correspondence is the evidence that it provides for the esteem in which Clementi was held among musicians all over Europe, as well as the use that he made of his reputation. His relations with Haydn, Dussek and Beethoven are well-known, but other figures emerge in this correspondence who have not been so closely associated with Clementi in the past, such as Bomtempo, Himmel and Righini, as well as very minor figures about whom very little is known, such as Nezot.

In summary, the correspondence reveals an intelligent and cultured British citizen, a good friend, an energetic musician who was at the heart of the development of London’s musical institutions, and an extremely astute and well-connected businessman.

edited by Roberto Illiano and Luca Sala
Bologna, Ut Orpheus Edizioni 2010 (Ad Parnassum Studies, 5), pp. 652
ISBN: 978-88-8109-468-4.

In this volume we wanted to investigate the intersection between the Industrial Revolution and the aesthetic-musical field. In particular, we aimed to explore the European dimension of the cultural exchanges caused by the phenomenon of musical migration, together with the international relationships generated by the music printing industry, entrepreneurship and the market for musical instruments. The later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries were a time of fundamental change in European life, proceeding from the revolutionary implications of the ideologies of Enlightenment, and reverberating in market economies, methods of manufacturing and agriculture, modes of travel, and population distribution. The development of new technologies resulted in the enlargement and improvement of the music printing industry, and in the widespread diffusion of music in private and public spheres. The Industrial Revolution brought about the ‘modernization’ of productive processes and, as a consequence, engendered a kind of ‘globalization’ of the musical market.

Contributors

Luca Aversano (ROME) – Claudio Bacciagaluppi (BERN) – Carmela Bongiovanni (GENOA) – Andrea Cardone (CASERTA) – Jen-yen Chen (TAIPEI, TAIWAN) – Simone Ciolfi (ROME) – Andrea Coen (ROME) – Therese Ellsworth (WASHINGTON, DC) – Joël-Marie Fauquet (PARIS) – Florence Gétreau (PARIS) – Consuelo Giglio (TRAPANI) – Outi Jokiharju (LONDON) – Roe-Min Kok (MONTREAL, QC) – Paul R. Laird (LAWRENCE, KS) – Marie Sumner Lott (STATE COLLEGE, PA) – Simon McVeigh (LONDON) – Elio Matassi (ROME) – Russ Manitt (MONTREAL, QC) – Jenny Nex (LONDON) – Leon Plantinga (NEW HAVEN, CT) – Alban Ramaut (SAINT-ÉTIENNE) – Rudolf Rasch (UTRECHT) – David Rowland (MILTON KEYNES, UK) – Laure Schnapper (PARIS) – Rohan H. Stewart-MacDonald (CAMBRIDGE, UK) – Renata Suchowiejko (KRAKÓW) – Maria Alice Volpe (RIO DE JANEIRO-BRASÍLIA)

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CONVEGNO INTERNAZIONALE

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

Orchestral Conducting in the 19th Century

Società dei Concerti, La Spezia

&

Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini, Lucca

La Spezia, CAMeC, 15-17 luglio 2010

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COMITATO SCIENTIFICO / PROGRAMME COMMITTEE

Andrea Barizza (La Spezia), Alexandre Dratwicki (Venice), Lorenzo Frassà (Lucca), RobertoIlliano (Lucca), Fulvia Morabito (Lucca), Michela Niccolai (Montréal), Massimiliano Sala (Pistoia)KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Prof. Rémy Campos (Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris / Haute École de Musique de Genève) Prof. Renato Meucci (Università degli Studi di Milano / Conservatorio di Novara)

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Call for Papers

On the occasion of the tenth edition of the Festival Paganiniano of Carro the Società dei Concerti of La Spezia (Liguria, Italy) and the Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini of Lucca, in association with Palazzetto Bru Zane-Centre de musique romantique française of Venice and Musicalwords.it, are pleased to invite submissions of proposals for the symposium «Orchestral Conducting in the Nineteenth Century», to be held in La Spezia, CAMeC, from Thursday 14 to Saturday 16 July 2011. The programme committee encourages submissions within the following areas, although other topics are also welcome:

• Orchestral Conducting in the Nineteenth Century: Historical and Sociological Aspects
• Techniques, Orchestral Disposition, Treatises
• Virtuoso-Conductors (i.e. Clementi, Paganini, Liszt, Spohr, etc.)
• Opera Performances and Orchestral/Singing Conducting
• Great Conductor-Composers (Berlioz, Charpentier, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Spohr, von Weber, and others)
• The Relationship between Composers and Conductors (i.e. Wagner vs Bülow)
• Conducting and Musical Interpretation

The official languages of the conference are English, French and Italian. Papers selected at the conference will be published in a miscellaneous volume. Papers are limited to twenty minutes in length, allowing time for questions and discussion. Please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words and one page of biography. All proposals should be submitted by email no later than Thursday 31 March 2011 to Dr. Roberto Illiano: rilliano@muzioclementi.com.

With your proposal please include your name, contact details (postal address, e-mail and telephone number) and (if applicable) your affiliation. The committee will make its final decision on the abstracts by the 15th of April 2011, and contributors will be informed immediately thereafter. Further information about the programme, registration, travel and accommodation will be announced by the end of April 2011.

If you have any questions, please contact: Dr. Roberto Illiano Via Nottolini, 162 San Concordio contr. I-55100 Lucca – tel: +39/338.3122409 rilliano@muzioclementi.com www.luigiboccherini.org

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OLTRE LE NOTE – EDIZIONE 2010

PAGANINI DIABOLUS IN MUSICA – EDIZIONE 2009

edited by Roberto Illiano and Massimiliano Sala,

XIV+767 p., 210 x 270 mm, 2009, Hardback

ISBN 978-2-503-52779-6.

In this book, edited by Roberto Illiano and Massimiliano Sala, twenty-four scholars investigate the relationship between music and dictatorship in twentieth-century Europe and Latin America. The music is explored as a political phenomenon in fifteenth nations under totalitarian regimes: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, France, Greece, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Spain, and Hungary. Historical and aesthetical articles face both individual people (for instance, Chavez, Ligeti, Massarani or Villa-Lobos) as well whole generations of composers operating under dictatorship (for example, in the communist regimes of Poland and Serbia; in France under Vichy; in Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, or in Revolutionary Cuba). The contributors are: Rachel Beckles Willson, Dário Borim, Steve Butterman, Teresa Cascudo, Myriam Chimènes, Regis Duprat, Christoph Flamm, Marina Frolova-Walker, Thomas Garcia, Melita Milin, Simone Münz, Marcos Napolitano, Nina Noeske, Karen Painter, Gemma Perez Zalduondo, Daniel Party, Carlo Piccardi, Marc-André Roberge, Katy Romanou, Mattias Tischer, Andrzej Tuchowski, Luis Velasco Pufleau, Pablo Vila, Maria Alice Volpe.