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XXXI/1-2 2019 LIM
Stefano Lorenzetti, Memory of the past and perception of sound in the Renaissance: the Aristotelian perspective. Marco Di PaSquaLe, Silvestro Ganassi: a documented biography. PaoLo aLberto riSMonDo, Antonio Grimani «musico galileiano» tra Venezia e Roma. MichaeL KLaPer, An Italian in Paris: Giovanni Bentivoglio (1611–1694) and a neglected source for seventeenth-century Italian cantata poetry. aLeSSio ruffatti, «Un libro dorato pieno di ariette»: produzione e circolazione di manoscritti musicali tra Roma, Parigi e Venezia nel Seicento. GiacoMo SiLveStri, Un nuovo flauto diritto con-tralto di Castel a Perugia.
XXXi/1-2 2019
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issn 1120-5741€ 30,00 (numero doppio)
ISBN: 9788855430319
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Recercarexxxi/1–2 2019
RecercareRivista per lo studio e la pratica della musica anticaJournal for the study and practice of early musicOrgano della / Journal of the
Fondazione Italiana per la Musica Antica
direttore / editor
Arnaldo Morelli (Università dell’Aquila)
Anna Maria Busse Berger (University of California, Davis)Mauro Calcagno (Pennsylvania University, Philadelphia)Philippe Canguilhem (Université de Tours)Ivano Cavallini (Università di Palermo)Étienne Darbellay (Université de Genève)Marco Di Pasquale (Conservatorio di Vicenza)Norbert Dubowy (Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main)Giuseppe Gerbino (Columbia University, New York)Lowell Lindgren (Massachussetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.)Lewis Lockwood (Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.)Stefano Lorenzetti (Conservatorio di Vicenza)Renato Meucci (Istituto Superiore di Studi Musicali, Livorno)Margaret Murata (University of California, Irvine)John Nádas (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)Noel O’Regan (University of Edinburgh)Franco Piperno (Università di Roma – La Sapienza)Giancarlo Rostirolla (Università di Chieti)Kate van Orden (Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.)Luca Zoppelli (Université de Fribourg)
In copertina: Mattia e Gregorio Preti, Allegoria dei cinque sensi, Roma, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica – Palazzo Barberini, 1641–42 ca, particolare (per gentile concessione delle Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica (MIBACT) – Biblioteca Hertziana, Istituto Max Planck per la storia dell’arte / Enrico Fontolan)
comitato scientifico / advisory board
direttore responsabile / legal responsabilityGiancarlo Rostirolla
revisione abstract inglesi / english abstracts revised byMargaret Murata
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issn 1120–5741 isbn 978-88-5543-031-9
Recercare xxxi/1–2 2019
Stefano LorenzettiMemory of the past and perception of sound in the Renaissance:
the Aristotelian perspective5
Marco Di PasqualeSilvestro Ganassi: a documented biography
29
Paolo Alberto RismondoAntonio Grimani «musico galileiano» tra Venezia e Roma
103
Michael KlaperAn Italian in Paris: Giovanni Bentivoglio (1611–1694)
and a neglected source for seventeenth-century Italian cantata poetry
129
Alessio Ruffatti«Un libro dorato pieno di ariette»: produzione e circolazione
di manoscritti musicali tra Roma, Parigi e Venezia nel Seicento
155
4
Comunicazioni
Giacomo SilvestriUn nuovo flauto diritto contralto di Castel a Perugia
205
Sommari219
Summaries223
Gli autori227
The Authors229
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Marco Di Pasquale
Silvestro Ganassi: a documented biography
Silvestro Ganassi is a familiar name to anyone who has any dealings with the music of the first half of the sixteenth century. His fame rests on the works he had printed between 1535 and 1543. Indeed, the three books have been assid-uously promoted by both musicologists and publishers: from the beginning of the twentieth century onwards they have been published several times both in facsimile and in transcription, translated into various languages, and subjected to exegetic scrutiny. Interest in these treatises has not, however, stimulated an equally strong determination to research the author’s biogra-phy. In fact it is only recently that scattered information concerning his life has come to light, though in many cases we are confronted with assertions unsupported by documents, misunderstandings of the historical evidence, or even bold conjectures.1
To a certain extent the situation outlined above finds a ready explana-tion if we consider the peculiarities of the Venetian archival sources, which
* I am most grateful to a number of friends and colleagues for their contribution to the present essay. My warmest thanks to Giovanni Alessi, Rodolfo Baroncini, Mauro Bondioli, Orsola Braides, Philippe Canguilhem, Paolo Da Col, Lucia Fava, Maria da Gloria Leitao Venceslau, Antonio Mazzucco, Jan-Christoph Rössler, Carlida Steffan and John Whenham.
1. For example, martin kirnbauer, “Armando Fiabanes lettera su Ganassi”, Glare-ana, lxi, 2012, pp. 40–54, fails to cite any archival documents; han tol, “Composta per Sylvestro di Ganassi”, Tibia, xxxvii, 2012, pp. 242–254: 243, misunderstanding a document that I shall introduce below, asserts that Ganassi died in 1565; florence gétreau, “Un por-trait énigmatique de l’ancienne collection Henry Prunières”, Musique, images, instruments: revue française d’organologie et d’iconographie musicale, v, 2003 (Musiciens, facteurs et théoriciens de la Renaissance), pp. 148–156, puts forward a hypothesis that, attractive though it may be, has the support of no historical evidence. Hitherto the most extensive account of Ganassi’s life is to be found in martin kirnbauer, “Ganassi im Kontext. Bemerkungen zur Biographie von Silvestro Ganassi und seinem musikalischen Umfeld”, Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis, xxxv–xxxvi, 2011–2012 (printed in 2018), pp. 203–216.
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present a situation that is, in some respects, contradictory. On the one hand, their sheer size and complexity can have a disorienting effect, invariably forcing one to engage in lengthy investigations in diverging directions that are not always immediately identifiable. On the other hand, and especially in the case of Ganassi, one is penalised by the gaps in the documentation, which had already started emerging in his own lifetime.
Extremely serious, for example, were the effects of catastrophic events. Instances are the fires at the Ducal Palace, the political and administrative heart of the Serenissima Repubblica, where many documents (both public and private) were preserved, or the plague of 1575, which, by decimating the population, also impeded the fulfilment of many bureaucratic requirements, including the scrupulous reporting of deaths.2 Another factor that played a negative role was the late adoption, in Venice, of customs such as the compi-lation of the canonical registers of baptisms, marriages and deaths, which, if suitably consulted, can turn out to be abundant and irreplaceable sources of precious data. In the over seventy parishes of the island, this practice started functioning regularly only after the conclusion of the Council of Trent, in 1563.3
Having said that, what follows is a reconstruction of the events in Sil-vestro Ganassi’s life and of the various contexts in which it unfolded. The account will draw on the information supported by the available authentic evidence. Although the intention to respect the narrow limits imposed by the documentation will not rule out the proposition of substantiated hy-potheses, many questions will unfortunately remain without a clear answer.
2. On these calamities, see ennio concina, “La piazza e le fabbriche marciane (976–1577)”, Venezia in fumo: i grandi incendi nella città-fenice, ed. Donatella Calabi, Bergamo, Leading, 2006, pp. 83–100; and Venezia e la peste, 1348–1797, Venezia, Marsilio, 1979. Be-tween July 1575 and February 1577 around 50,000 people died of the plague, out of the 180,000 that made up the city’s population. The registering of deaths, entrusted to magis-trates called Provveditori e Sopraprovveditori alla Sanità, was carried out on a daily basis in the Necrologi; unfortunately, this archival series, preserved at the Archivio di Stato di Venezia (hereafter I-Vas), Provveditori e Sopraprovveditori alla Sanità, Necrologi, presents many gaps.
3. gino badini, Archivi e Chiesa: lineamenti di archivistica ecclesiastica e religiosa, terza edizione rivista e ampliata, Bologna, Pàtron, 2005, is an introduction to this type of source. The potential of the canonical registers for imparting information have been highlighted by guido alfani, Padri, padrini, padroni: la parentela spirituale nella storia, Venice, Marsilio, 2007 (Engl. transl. Fathers and godfathers: spiritual kinship in early-modern Italy, Farnham, Ashgate, 2009).
Silvestro Ganassi: a documented biography 31
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Nonetheless, the new acquisitions, taken together with the data already known, present a picture that is both composite and animated. It is filled with a host of people involved in a variety of events concerning both the public and private spheres, both the family circle and the professional envi-ronment (which at times are less easily distinguished than one might think). Not falling within the scope of this study, on the other hand, is any examina-tion of the content of Ganassi’s treatises, to which I will make reference only in so far as it occasionally bears on the author’s life.
Given the need to link the reconstructed events to the contemporary documents that certify them, while at the same time avoiding an exorbitant quantity of footnotes, the numerical references to the relevant documents (among the over fifty transcribed in the appendix) are indicated in the text in square brackets.
Fig. 1: Lodewijk Toeput called Il Pozzoserrato (c1550–c1603/5), The fire at the Doge’s Palace in 1577 (attrib.). Treviso, Musei Civici.
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1. Silvestro’s family of origin
The first member of Silvestro Ganassi’s family who can be traced in Venice is his father, Antonio. Son of another Antonio, he was a native of the district of Bergamo [13].
Ever since its subjection to the Venetian Republic in 1427, the Bergamo area, a mainly mountainous territory given to sheep farming and agricul-ture, guaranteed a constant migration of manpower towards the lagoon.4 The Commedia dell’Arte made fun of those who came from those valleys, portraying them as coarse servants and porters.5 In actual fact, thanks to the schooling of their birthplaces, many of them boasted a level of education that surpassed basic literacy. On the strength of this, and also of a distinct sense of belonging and solidarity, the sizeable Bergamasque community that settled in Venice managed to assert itself in perfectly respectable activities that guaranteed a satisfactory standard of living.
It is worth bearing in mind that, following their annexation to the Ve-netian stato da terra (i.e. mainland territories), Bergamasque subjects were accorded citizenship de intus tantum, such as was already granted to the inhabitants of other provinces. This legal status equated them to native citi-zens and allowed them to engage in trade on the island as well as to have ac-cess to most of the arti e mestieri (arts and crafts).6 Given the city’s peculiar layout, for example, the very transportation of goods was a business of vital importance, involving the management of a broad sector of all navigation in
4. The migration to Venice from the Bergamo area is treated in gino benzoni, “Vene-zia e Bergamo: implicanze di un dominio”, Studi veneziani, xx, 1990, pp. 15–58, and andrea zannini, “L’altra Bergamo in laguna: la comunità bergamasca a Venezia”, Storia economica e sociale di Bergamo, vol. iii Il tempo della Serenissima – Il lungo Cinquecento, Bergamo, Fondazione per la Storia Economica e Sociale di Bergamo, 1998, pp. 175–193.
5. Of Bergamasque origin are the two famous masks Zanni and Arlecchino, concern-ing which see emanuela agostini, Il bergamasco in commedia: la tradizione dello Zanni nel teatro d’antico regime, Bergamo, Lubrina, 2012; and more generally siro ferrone, La commedia dell’arte: attrici e attori italiani in Europa (XVI–XVIII secolo), Turin, Einaudi, 2014.
6. andrea zannini, “Flussi d’immigrazione e strutture sociali urbane: il caso dei ber-gamaschi a Venezia”, Bollettino di demografia storica, xix, 1993, pp. 213–215: 214. To be allowed to engage in commerce outside the island, de extra citizenship was required, the concession of which was governed by very stringent laws. On the correlation between social status and the professions, see anna bellavitis, “Ars mechanica e gerarchie sociali a Vene-zia tra xvi e xvii secolo”, Le technicien dans la cité en Europe occidentale, 1250–1650, eds. Mathieu Arnoux and Pierre Monnet, Rome, École Française de Rome, 2004, pp. 161–179.
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the lagoon. Moreover, certain Bergamasques who had settled on the island created highly successful commercial and productive enterprises that made them extraordinarily rich, even to the extent of permitting them to try and emulate the aristocracy in the patronage of music.
An exemplary case is that of Camillo Rubini, who was not only the owner of various manufacturing activities, a merchant and financial operator (cam-bista), but also the promoter of an important musical ridotto at his palace in the sestiere (i.e. one of the six city districts) of Cannaregio and a patron of Giovanni Gabrieli, Orazio Vecchi, Giovanni Battista Grillo and Giovanni Battista Riccio, as is attested, among other things, by the dedications of cer-tain works published by the said composers.7
7. See rodolfo baroncini, “Gli ospedali, la nuova pietas e la committenza musicale cittadinesca a Venezia (1590–1620): i casi di Bartolomeo Bontempelli dal Calice e di Camillo Rubini”, Atti del Congresso internazionale di musica sacra: in occasione del centenario di fondazione del Pontificio Istituto di Musica Sacra (Roma, 26 maggio–1 giugno 2011), eds.
Fig. 2: Giovanni Antonio Magini (1555–1617), The territory of Bergamo: note that, as was com-mon usage at the time, the map has north oriented to the right. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
