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John W. Hill, Roman Monody, Cantata, and Opera from the Circles around Cardinal Montalto. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1997, vol. i, xx + 453 pp.; vol. II, xii + 458 pp.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2008
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References
1 Kerman, J., Musicology (London, 1985Google Scholar (= Contemplating Music, Cambridge, Mass., 1985)), pp. 118–19Google Scholar; Brown, H. M., ‘Recent Research in the Renaissance: Criticism and Patronage’, Renaissance Quarterly, 40 (1987), pp. 1–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Brown, ‘Recent Research’, p. 10.
3 I have checked only a few of the transcriptions, so I cannot evaluate their reliability as a whole. All I can say is that it seems extremely variable as regards both the archival and the musical sources.
4 Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (hereafter ‘BAV’), Urb.Lat.1061, fol. 319 (5 June 1593).
5 BAV, Urb.Lat.1075, fol. 363v (9 June 1607).
6 Alberi, E., ed., Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato, series II, vol. iii (Florence, 1846), p. 490Google Scholar.
7 Chater, J., ‘Musical Patronage in Rome at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century: The Case of Cardinal Montalto’, Studi Musicali, 16 (1987), pp. 179–227Google Scholar.
8 One of the extant ruoli of Cardinal Montalto's household lists nine palafrenieri for him, two for his relative Cardinal Peretti, and two staffieri for his brother, Prince Michele Peretti (Rome, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Giustiniani, vol. 87, ‘Rolo della fameglia del mese di Ottobre [1614] in Bagnaia’, fols. 2, 2v and 3).
9 Hill accepts Dinko Fabris's hypothesis that Cavalier del Liuto was the lutenist Lorenzino da Bologna. This identification is questionable, however, especially in view of the evidence produced in Pesci, M., ‘Lorenzo Tracetti, alias Lorenzino, suonatore di liuto’, Recercare, 9 (1997), pp. 233–42Google Scholar.
10 Contrary to Hill's belief (RM pp. 29 and 127), Enzo Bentivoglio was not entitled to be called a marchese until after the death of his half-brother Ippolito in 1619, and his charge as ambassador of Ferrara to the Pope lasted not thirty-one years (RM p. 31) but only three, as documented in the second part of my essay ‘Il mecenate “politico”: Ancora sul patronato musicale del cardinale Pietro Aldobrandini (1571–1621)’, Studi Musicali, 17 (1988) p. 130Google Scholar.
11 Rome, Archivio storico del Vicariato, S. Lorenzo in Lucina, Stati d'anime 1609, fol. lv. On the marriage of Francesca with Gugliemo Gruminck, see Fabris, D., ‘Frescobaldi e la musica in casa Bentivoglio’, in Durante, S. and Fabris, D., eds., Girolamo Frescobaldi nel IV centenario della nascita, (Florence, 1986), p. 75Google Scholar.
12 Hill maintains that Francesca Massiccia could read music only because he is unaware of a letter of Arrigo Vilardi, who says plainly that she could not (Ferrara, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Bentivoglio, mazzo 71, fol. 618, 5 10 1613).
13 The discrepancies between the two stories are as interesting as their points of agreement. Another detail overlooked by Hill, the fact that Baldassarre went every Sunday to sing at the Chiesa Nuova (RM, Appendix A, no. 93), suggests that the boy was a member of the musical chapel of this Roman church. Such a suggestion is impossible to verify from archival sources, since the activity of the chapel in question was organised on a professional basis only in the 1640s. However, the possibility that Baldassarre was one of its singers is also suggested by the fact that, in contrast to Francesca Massiccia, the teachers assigned to Baldassarre by Enzo Bentivoglio included a maestro di cappella such as Nanino, who in fact made the boy practise not only written and improvised counter point but also some mottetti passaggiati of his own (RM, Appendix A, no. 97). There is a possibility, then, that Baldassarre's training was not directed exclusively towards his début as an operatic singer, and that his practice under Nanino concerned also his training as church singer. The hyperbolic evaluation of Nanino's exercises of contrappunto alla mente to which Hill is led by his belief that the case of Baldassarre shows that they were also used in the training of operatic singers (in RM pp. 138–9 such exercises are described as musical symbols of courtly culture in Montalto's time) should thus be reconsidered.
14 Hill does not note at all the role of these two musicians in the training of Francesca and Baldassarre. Moreover, he says that Francesco studied with Marotta (RM p. 129), forgetting that he also studied with Macchiavelli (RM, Appendix A, no. 70). As to Ghenizzi, Hill does not even mention him despite several letters of Girolamo Fioretti and Cesare Marotta which hint at his being hired as a continuo player by Enzo Bentivoglio, who immediately made him take the part of Rinaldo, i.e. the title role, in the Ferrara intermedi of 1616 (RM, Appendix A, nos. 96, 97, 99, 100, 103).
15 A letter of Ercole Provenzale to Enzo Bentivoglio, cited in Hammond, F., Girolamo Frescobaldi (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1983), p. 345CrossRefGoogle Scholar n.44, shows how on 19 June 1613 Marotta insisted on his need to share the responsibility for Francesca's training with other musicians, and how the girl's teachers were praised by Enzo's agents for the merit they were acquiring in their patron's eyes.
16 That at the beginning of July 1613 Vilardi gave Francesca harpsichord lessons similar to Frescobaldi's (which were considered superfluous for this reason, and because of their irregular frequency) is evidenced by another letter of Provenzale to Enzo, cited in Hammond, , Girolamo Frescobaldi, p. 344Google Scholar n. 44. That at the beginning of July 1615 Nanino's and Frescobaldi's lessons overlapped is documented in a letter of Fioretti to Enzo, transcribed by Hill (RM, Appendix A, no. 92). Concerning Frescobaldi's contribution to Baldassarre's training, Hill states that the musician ran a regular school for keyboard players (RM p. 132). But this is wrong: the Italian phrase andare a scola does not mean ‘to go to school’, as Hill seems to believe, but ‘to go and have a lesson’. Moreover, it is apparent that in the letter to which he refers (RM, Appendix A, no. 89) this locution is merely used to avoid repeating the phrase ‘andare a pigliar lettione’, which occurs a bit earlier.
17 Some letters of Marotta contain ironical passages whose sense apparently escaped Hill. Thus the table concerning his lost compositions (RM p. 223) includes the incipit O tu che ne vai altero non sentirai più bussare cocchiero, which corresponds to an imaginary piece cited by Marotta in a letter ironically evoking the days when the Bentivoglios lived in Rome and used to send their coach to the Marottas' house in order to bring them to their palace (RM, Appendix A, no. 27). As to the ‘playful deception’ occurring at the beginning of this same letter, Hill thinks that Marotta was ironically claiming to have arrived in Ferrara with his wife Ippolita (RM p. 29). Actually the musician was pretending to be Enzo Bentivoglio communicating to the Marottas his own arrival in Ferrara with his wife Caterina (the purpose of the joke was a gentle reproach to the Bentivoglios for not giving any news about their arrival there).
18 The first letter is transcribed in Newcomb, A., ‘Girolamo Frescobaldi, 1608–1615’, in Annales Musicologiques, 7 (1964–1977), p. 135Google Scholar, no. 17; the second one is quoted in my essay ‘Il mecenate “politico”, p. 150 n. 185.
19 Fabris, D., ‘Composizioni per “cetra” in uno sconosciuto manoscritto per liuto del primo Seicento (Napoli, Cons., MS.∣7664)’, Rivista Italiana di Musicologia, 16 (1981), pp. 188 and 194Google Scholar.
20 Pirrotta, N., ‘“Dolci affetti”: I musici di Roma e il madrigale’, Studi Musicali, 14 (1985), pp. 59–73Google Scholar.
21 Galand, J., ‘The Turn of ∣Aesthetic’, Current Musicology, no. 58 (1995), p. 90Google Scholar.
22 The ethical basis for the paternalistic system underlying art patronage in the Renaissance is discussed in Weissmann, R., ‘Taking Patronage Seriously’, in Lytke, G. F. and Orgel, S., eds., Patronage in the-Renaissance (Princeton, 1981), pp. 25–45Google Scholar.
23 I first dealt with this anthropological approach to the issue of musical patronage in the Renaissance and Baroque in my introduction to Annibaldi, C., ed., La musica e il mondo. Mecenatismo e committenza musicale in Italia fra Quattro e Settecento (Bologna, 1993), pp. 9–42Google Scholar. I subsequently developed the theoretical framework of the approach in question in ‘Towards a Theory of Musical Patronage in the Renaissance and the Baroque – The Perspective from Anthropology and Semiotics’, forthcoming in Recercare, 10 (1998).
24 Vittoria's visits to Rome in 1593–4 and 1602 were spent in the service of, respectively, Flavia Peretti and Virginio Orsini (Montalto's sister and brother-in-law) and of Montalto himself. Hill's assumption that in 1593–4 Vittoria served the above-mentioned couple only ‘technically’, since she was actually in the service of the cardinal (RM p. 95), is contradicted by a letter of Cavalieri testifying that the singer did not take a step without the permission of Flavia Peretti (Kirkendale, W., Court Musicians in Florence during the Principate of the Medici (Florence, 1993), p. 268)Google Scholar. As to Francesca Caccini's stay in Rome in 1613, Hill's belief that she lodged in Montalto's palace rather than in Orsini's is based on the fact that at the end of April 1613 she left for Florence without taking leave of Virginio Orsini (RM p. 48). But this is probably to be explained by the latter's serious illness, which lasted from the beginning of March to the middle of May (BAV, Urb.Lat.1081, fols. 71 and 184, 2 March and 18 May 1613).
25 Monteverdi, C., Lettere, ed. Lax, E. (Florence 1994), p. 31 no. 10 (28 12 1610)Google Scholar.
26 I owe these details of Monanni's biography to Wolfgang Witzenmann. Hill regards as unknown even musicians such as Teofilo Gargari and Francesco Cerasolo (RM pp. 166–7), whose careers are described in some of the items in his own bibliography. On the career of Gargari as an alto of the papal chapel (May 1601 – May 1626), see Celani, E., ‘I cantori della cappella pontificia nei secoli XV1–XVIII’, in Rivista Musicale Italiana, 14 (1907), p. 767Google Scholar. On the activity of Cerasolo as a tenor of the Cappella Giulia between March 1608 and November 1616, see Cametti, A., ‘Girolamo Frescobaldi in Roma, 1604–1643’, in Rivista Musicale Italiana, 15 (1608), 715 n. 5 (where the singer is cited as Cerasella, using an alternative spelling of his family name)Google Scholar. As to the falsettist Ludovico (RM pp. 50 and 113), he is to be identified with Ludovico Gualtero, who was also maestro di cappella at Carità, S. Girolamo della, as suggested in my ‘II mecenate “politico”’, p. 147. On the alto Ferdinando Grappuccioli, more reliable information than that given in RM p. 167Google Scholar (where he is erroneously said to have entered the papal chapel in 1630 instead of 1616) can be found in Celani, ‘I cantori della cappella pontificia’, p. 773 (s.v. Rapuccioli).
27 The thesis that Roman patrons did not hold musical libraries of their own until the second half of the seventeenth century is put forward in Murata, M., ‘Roman Cantata Scores as Traces of Musical Culture and Signs of Its Place in Society’, in Pompilio, A. et al. ed., Atti del XIV Congresso della Società Internazionale di Musicologia (Turin, 1990), i, pp. 272–84Google Scholar.
28 Hill speculates that Cenci appears in contemporary musical sources under the nickname ‘Giuseppino’ because of his wish not to be associated with Francesco Cenci and his relatives, who were implicated in a notorious scandal in 1599 (RM p. 52). This seems mere fantasy, however, in view of the large number of Renaissance and Baroque musicians who were known only by a first name, a nickname or a place-name (see, for example, the cases of Cesare Monanni and Ludovico Gualtero in note 26 above).
29 BAV, Urb.L∣at.1065, fol. 348v (14 06 1597).
30 BAV, Urb.Lat.1063, respectively at fols. 478v (29 July), 523 (12 August), 603v (2 September), 784 (18 October) and 952v (13 December 1595).
31 Thus Hill misreads ‘Rattazzi’ as ‘Battazzi’ (RM p. 11), ‘Capponi’ as ‘Caponi’ (p. 31), ‘Norcia’ as ‘Morcia’ (p. 109), ‘Stella’ as ‘Stelle’ (p. 307), ‘Cornelio’ as ‘Corachio’ (p. 323). Moreover, the addressee of the letter no. 26 in Appendix A is Giovanni Bentivoglio, not Guido as stated in RM pp. 31∣ and 308; and the Duke and Duchess mentioned in the letter no. 34 are not Virginio Orsini and his wife but the Duke and Duchess Cybo d'Este.
32 The document cited in RM p. 26 n. 28 calls Ippolita Recupita not ‘dama’ but ‘donna’; the letter no. 5 in Appendix A calls Marenzio not ‘maestro’ but ‘messere’; in the letter no. 30 in the same appendix Annibale Manfredi is not ‘cardinaleo; but ‘conte’. The locution ‘maestro Giovanni’ occurring in the letter no. 98 is a misreading of ‘mio Giovanni’
33 However, this is not the only inaccuracy of the index in question, since it ignores, among other things, a number of musicians such as Ludovico (i.e. Ludovico Gualtero), Mathias (i.e. Mattia Lorenzo) and Simoncino (probably Simone Papa), cited in RM p. 108, as well as Orazietto (i.e. O∣razio Crescenzi) and Piperno (i.e. Eustachio Prova), cited in RM pp. 112 and 342 respectively. Moreover, homonyms have caused some apparent confusion. Thus the page numbers corresponding to ‘Aldobrandini, cardinal Pietro’ concern sometimes Cinzio Passeri Aldobrandini, Giovan Giorgio Aldobrandini and Aldobrandino Aldobrandini, and those corresponding to ‘Frescobaldi, Girolamo’ concern sometimes Girolamo Fioretti and Girolamo Piccinini.
34 See the letters addressed to Enzo Bentivoglio by Ercole Provenzale (26 June 1613) and Ippolito Macchiavelli (21 September 1613), cited respectively in Hammond, , Girolamo Frescobaldi, p. 345 n. ∣44, and Fabris, ‘Frescobaldi e la musica in casa Bentivoglio’, p. 68 n. 15Google Scholar.
35 Fabris, D., ‘Bentivoglio Goretti Monteverdi e gli altri: Ancora sulla feste di Parma del 1628’, in Besutti, P., Teresa, M.Gialdroni, and Baroncini, R., eds., Claudia Monteverdi. Studi e prospettive (Florence, 1998), pp. 391–414Google Scholar.
36 Southorn, J., Power and Display in the Seventeenth Century: The Arts and Their Patrons in Modena and Ferrara (Cambridge, 1988), p. 79Google Scholar.
37 Southorn, , Power and Display, p. 81Google Scholar.
38 BAV, Urb.Lat.1077, fols.148v and 161v (no date, but about the end of March 1609).
39 Incidentally, the phrase transcribed by Hill ‘altri Card, a parata superba’ is a misreading of ‘altri Cav[alie]ri a testa scoperta’.
40 BAV, Urb.lat 1093, fol. 506 (5 July 1623).
41 What emerges from the pages on the ‘Cesi di Roma’ in Litta, P., Famiglie celebri italiane (Napoli, 1913), second series, vol. ii, pp. 150–1Google Scholar, is fully confirmed by the coat of arms printed on the title page to Quagliati's volume, a coat of arms which identifies an unmarried member of the Cesi family and has none of the four crowns described by Hill (who also exchanges in RM p. 280 the design of the Cesi coat of arms for that of the Peretti).
42 Copia d'ura lettera del sig. Romolo Paradiso. Con la quale dà avviso dell'apparato, e grandezza, con che si è rappresentato il festino dell'Eccellentiss. Sig. Principe Peretti (Rome, 1614), pp. 65–6Google Scholar.
43 On the eve of the wedding of Grand Duke Cosimo II, the avvisi di Roma distinguished accurately between Prince Peretti, who was about to leave for Florence ‘con molti sforgi per la persona sua et suo proprio servizio’, and his brother the cardinal, who intended to go there ‘positivamente non con gran pompa’ (BAV, Urb.Lat.1076, fol. 730: no date, but around the beginning of Octobmer 1608). This avviso eliminates Hill's doubts as to whether Montalto was actually present at the wedding in question (RM p. 47) but also excludes the possibility that he accompanied to Florence the musicians he had lent to the Grand Duke, who were sent there almost three months earlier (BAV, Urb.Lat.1076, fol. 561v, 19 July 1608).
44 BAV, Urb.Lat.1081, fols. 37v–38 (9 February 1613).
45 BAV, Urb.Lat.1081, fols. 497 and 513 (14 and 21 December 1613).
46 BAV, Urb.Lat.1079, fol. 160 (19 February 1611).
47 The ‘favola di Psiche’ may have been written by Alessandro De Preti, a tutor of Francesco Peretti who suddenly died at the end of December 1610 (BAV, Urb.Lat.1079, fol. 31v, 1 01 1611). Hill proposes the hypothesis that the play was entirely sung (RM p. 288), but this is excluded by the amateurish qualities of a performance that was wholly entrusted to young members of the Roman aristocracy.
48 Copia d'una lettera∣, p. 23.
49 I refer to a letter of Pompeo Lasco quoted in RM p. 134, together with two letters of Fioretti described as the last ones about Baldassarre written by this secretary to the Bentivoglio. Apart from the fact that these are not the last letters about Baldassarre written by Fioretti (an amateur guitar-player arbitrarily called by Hill ‘an aristocratic dilettante’, who also dealt with the boy in the letters transcribed in RM, Appendix A, nos. 97 and 99), Lasco's letter concerns not Baldassarre but another boy singer, whose name was Giovanni. To confuse the two boys is practically impossible, since Lasco refers to one who was already in Ferrara with Enzo Bentivoglio when the other had not yet left Rome. In any event, Lasco was not a member of the Bentivoglio household, as Hill suggests, but was a professional singer still active in 1628Google Scholar: see Lionnet, J., La musique à Saint-Louis des Français de Rome au xviiesiècle, part 2, supplemet to Note d'Archivio, 4 (1986), p. 59 no. 81Google Scholar.
50 Murata, M., Operas for the Papal Court 1631–1668 (Ann Arbor, 1981), p. 101Google Scholar.