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The Experimental Music of Pietro Raimondi

by Jesse Rosenberg

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Music New York University May 1995

Approved

Research Advisor

UMI Number: 9621829

UMI Microform 9621829 Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

UMI

300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103

To my parents who purchased a used upright piano in the Fall of 1966

iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is a pleasure for me to acknowledge the debts I have accumulated toward the many individuals who assisted me in my researches on Raimondi.

My chief advisor, Prof. David

Burrows, was simply indispensable in helping me to arrange and formulate my ideas, and showed throughout just the right combination of tough criticism and warm support.

The other

members of my dissertation committee, Professors Brian Fennelly and Cliff Eisen, were veritable geysers of sound advice.

Professor Edward Roesner, Chaiman of the Music

Department, has been a constant source of encouragement to me.

Others in the NYU Music Department community whose

names I cannot omit are Doctors Rena Mueller and David Cannata, as well as the present secretary of the Music Department, Lisa Feldsher; all three have saved my life a dozen times over. I feel especially indebted to those of my fellow graduate students who took precious time from their own researches to provide me with materials I needed.

Dr. Evan

Baker, who years ago did me the incalculable beneficence of naming me his official sidekick, has helped me on occasions far too numerous to count.

Dr. Robert Kendrick, the

accurate Linda Fairtile, Dwight Blazin, and Dr. Faun Stacy Tanenbaum (all of New York University); Wendy Powers (Columbia University), Benjamin Westervelt (Harvard iv

University), David Schneider (University of California at Berkeley), Ronald Shaheen and Giuseppina Collici (University of California at Los Angeles) all have my deepest gratitude. If I have a home away from home it is the Music Research Division of the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, and I am thankful to Jean Bowen, Charles Eubanks, John Shepherd, Frances Barulich, Robert Kosovsky, Chanan Willner, and Tema Hecht for all the many ways they have assisted me. Of the many Italian libraries where I have worked, the staff of the library of the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia in Rome has been especially helpful: many thanks are due to its director, Domenico Carboni, to Giancarlo Rostirolla for permitting my access to the historical archives of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia; to the superbly competent librarians Annalisa Bini, Laura Ciancio, and Paola Reali; and to the bidelli

who

patiently lugged Raimondi's gargantuan scores up and down the stairs at my persistent behest, Domenico Durante, Mario Capucci, Roberto Bianca, and Elena Datola Aristo. At the Casa Ricordi in Milan it was my privilege to receive a gracious welcome from the archivist, the late Carlo Clausetti. I would never have been able to examine the Raimondi sources at the Palermo Conservatory without the timely intervention of Dr. Umberto d'Arpa, nor those at the Naples Conservatory without the assistence of Dr. Giovanni v

Giuriati; to both my boundless thanks. My entree into the Vatican Library went smoothly thanks to Prof. Alejandro Planchart and Dr. Jean Moret. The music librarian of the Bobst Library of New York University, Dr. Kent Underwood, went out of his way to secure Raimondiana for my perusal. Friends Rosa Cafiero, Tom Kaufmann, Robin Meigel, and Michele Eaton provided help no less critical for being miscellaneous. The loving support of my family has carried me through the travails of the last five years, and I can never thank them enough. As for my wife Alessandra, if I choose not to list the many ways in which she has helped in seeing this dissertation through to completion—if I prefer not to sing her praises here for all she has done—it is not for lack of gratitude. My reasons rather are similar to those of Albert Lavignac, who, explaining in his 1897 volume The Music Dramas of Richard

Wagner why he would forego any accolades

in his analyses, expressed himself thusly:

We look at the sun and watch it in its course, but we never think of congratulating it upon its power; nor do we presume that its glory would in any way be augmented by the addition of our mite of personal appreciation.

Jesse Rosenberg New York, March 1995 vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments

iv

Introduction

1

Chapter 1.

Early career

18

An early tour-de-force: the 8-part Christe

of 1810

24

First Period in Sicily (1815-1819)

33

Rossini's Messa di Gloria: a collaboration with Raimondi Stabat Mater (1821): fugal finale Messa (1824): canons and fugues in sixteen parts

40 68 72

2.

Operatic career through II ventaglio

100

3.

Raimondi as Leista

148

4.

Raimondi in Palermo

148

Leisti and Durantisti

171

Bassi Imitati e Fugati

198

Earliest practical experiments

234

Due sinfonie in una and the

5.

Messa di Gloria of 1836

234

Due sinfonie in una of 1841

256

First "Scientific" Compositions Fughe diverse

(1838)

Nuovo genere di composizione

274 274

scientifica

musicale

vii

(1843)

309

Experiments in polytonality Due fughe

in una dissimili

350 nel modo

359

Practical bitonality: the Messa di Morte of 1844 Quattro fughe in una

373

dissimili

nel modo

377

Sei fughe

in una dissimili

The "Oratorio

Triplice"

nel modo

Giuseppe

394 462

Sources

472

Libretto

485

Simultaneous juxtapositions

494

Ostentatious erudition in more conventionally conceived works II Giudizio

Universale

531 537

Mose al Sinai

545

Stabat

547

Mater (1845)

Vespers of 1847

548

Dixit

Dominus: Tu es sacerdos

550

Sicut

erat

551

a 12

The aesthetics of enormity: works for 32 and 64 voices

556

An operatic epilogue

601

Influence and reputation

690

Raimondi's "School"

690

Reputation

716

Relations with Liszt

723

Posthumous Reputation

733

viii

Appendix 1 Raimondi's "Riflessioni sopra la Scienza Musicale [. . . ]" [ 1841 ] 745 Appendix 2 Giovanni Pacini's Review of Nuovo Genere di Scientifica Composizione Musicale (1843)

755

Appendix 3 Raimondo Boucheron's Review of Quattro Fughe in Una (1847)

760

Appendix 4 Rosa Taddei's Ode a Pietro Raimondi (1852) 767 Appendix 5 G. B. Martini on a Mass by Gregorio Ballabene..771 Bibliography

781

ix

Introduction

Among the more than two hundred busts of celebrated figures of Italian history and culture gracing the top of the Pincio hill, adjacent to a spot affording perhaps the most breathtaking panorama of Rome, the bust of Pietro Raimondi might be thought to occupy a privileged location: it stands directly opposite the bust of Alessandro Manzoni at the midpoint of the Viale dell'Obelisco, the central thoroughfare of the area. But as one continues to stroll the verdant paths, pausing to read the names on the pedestals, one is struck above all by the isolation of Raimondi's statue from those of his musical colleagues on the Pincio. Not only does he stand some distance off from the largest cluster of composers thus immortalized, including Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini, and Sgambati, all located on the Viale Vittoria Aganoor Pompili, as well as from Cimarosa, Bellini, and Mascagni, who lie off in the same general direction, but he appears to be averting his glance distastefully away from his fellow musicians. Though the arrangement, determined in large measure by 1

the death-dates of the subjects, was obviously not deliberate, it is nonetheless suggestive, embodying as it does a certain poetic truth about Raimondi's isolated position in the history of Italian music—an isolation which other monuments of the Raimondian itinerary in Rome tend to reinforce. The Palazzo Firenze, site of Raimondi's birth, is unmarked by any plague, and is thus as good an emblem as any of the obscurity into which he has fallen in the course of the twentieth century.

Some idea of the heights from which

this fall began may be had from the inscription on his tomb in the fourth chapel on the right of the Church of San Marcello, attesting to the great reknown he achieved, and even more with the commemorative plague attached to the wall of his home in the Piazza dell'Oratorio in 1876, twentythree years after his death (the plague was relocated to another building in the same piazza when the home was demolished in 1895). The plague reads "In this house lived and died Pietro Raimondi, Roman, in the year 1853, celebrated composer of sacred and theatrical music for incredible combinations in the art of counterpoint, the most novel miracle of the nineteenth century," and is probably unigue among commemorative plagues the world over in its use of the word "incredible." The term seems peculiarly apt. I have noticed that it is often the first word someone will utter when told that Raimondi, active mostly in Naples, Palermo and Rome in the 2

first half of the nineteenth century, was fond of the idea of composing works capable of both separate and simultaneous performance, including a number of examples in which each individual component was in a different key. The description, straightfoward as it is, seems to defy processing, so little does it fit in with anything else one has ever heard about nineteenth century Italian music. Raimondi's obscurity seemed to demand explanations beyond the ones commonly given for the disappearance of once-famous minor composers from public conciousness, i.e. the intrinsically low aesthetic value of their music and the consequent failure of the latter to pass the "test of time." Whatever validity there may be in those assumptions it is true nonetheless that Raimondi's self-imposed isolation poses special difficulties for the modern commentator. No ready-made category exists in which to hold him within our musico-historical memory.

The construction of such a

category is one of the principal aims of this dissertation. Raimondi has briefly emerged from his obscurity on a number of occasions in the years since his death. Performances of his most successful opera, II

ventaglio,

continued throughout the nineteenth century, most frequently in Naples, but in other Italian cities as well, and these performances often led to fresh critical examinations. ventaglio

II

has also occasioned the most recent airings of his

name, since it was performed both in Italy, Switzerland and 3

the United States during the 1970s and '80s, and was recently published in Garland's series of Italian opera piano-vocal score reprints, along with several other operatic selections by Raimondi and an appreciative introductory essay by Philip Gossett.1 It seems safe to say, however, that the sporadic eruptions of interest in Raimondi in the years since his death have more typically been prompted by the series of experimental works which he began in 1836. From the entries for Raimondi by Fetis and Riemann in their respective encyclopedias down through the only serious article published during this century dealing exclusively with the composer, Cecil Gray's "Pietro Raimondi,"2 it is the handful of musical experiments which has ensured Raimondi his limited place in musical historiography.

Gray, "the most reckless of all reckless

English musicologists," in Joseph Kerman's phrase, went well beyond the mere indication of Raimondi's experiments as meriting attention. Though egregious factual errors and flawed reasoning are present in his article, Gray

1

I1 ventaglio / libretto by Domenico Gilardoni, after Carlo Goldoni; music by Pietro Raimondi; and excerpts from L'orfana russa / libretto by Andrea Passaro, after Eugene Scribe, etc.; music by Pietro Raimondi, and Isabella degli Abenanti / libretto by Giuseppe Sapio, after Giovanni Schmidt; music by Pietro Raimondi; a facsimile edition of the printed piano vocal scores / with an introduction by Philip Gossett (Italian opera 1810-1840 vol. 40), New York: Garland, 1989. 2

The Music Review I (1940), 34-42, repr. in Cecil Gray, Contingencies, London, 1947, 94-103. 4

nevertheless succeeded in articulating a strong defense of Raimondi which holds up remarkably well, and which will be examined in detail in my final chapter. But who has followed Gray's lead?

Exactly one musical writer has taken

up Gray's suggestion that Raimondi be acknowledged as "the father of polytonality": Mosco earner, in his small volume on 20th-century harmony, follows an analysis of a passage from no. 4 of Milhaud's Cinq symphonies with a footnote citing Raimondi's polytonal precedents.3 Otherwise there is only Michael Ayrton, author of a number of books on musical and artistic matters and a satirical novel of which Raimondi is a major protagonist. A sample monologue, drawn from the scene where the composer announces his credentials for the post of Musical Director to Tittivulus (a demonic figure whose task is "collecting vain and unmeaning sounds, gossip, tittle-tattle, pomposity, verbosity, prolixity," and so forth) will indicate how far this novel is from the kind of serious examination Gray hoped to instigate:

"Leesten, I'm-a Raimondi...I'm-a greatest-a master of-a counterpoint in-a world. Listen—I write-a twenty-four ballets, I write-a four Masses wit'orchestra—I write-a three Requiems, I write-a two symphonies you can-a play separate or atta same-a time. I write-a two operas, un-opera seria, un-opera buffa play atta same time."* 3

Mosco earner, A study of twentieth-century Vol.2 (London: Joseph Williams Ltd., 1942), 55. "Michael Ayrton, Tittivulus (London: M. Reinhardt, 1953).

or The verbiage 5

harmony, collector

As the first in over half a century to act upon Gray's recommendation of Raimondi as deserving "far more attention from musical historians, scholars, and critics than he has so far received," I have felt deeply my own responsibility toward this curious figure, who may never again be subjected to such concentrated scrutiny, and have carefully considered my approach to him.

For a number of reasons, a "life-and-

works" format seemed inappropriate. Raimondi was a prolific composer in a number of genres over the course of a lengthy career. While opera was unquestionably the genre which took up the larger portion of his labors, there are good reasons for de-emphasizing it. The first of these is strictly practical: most of the autograph scores of Raimondi's fifty-odd operas are at present unavailable to the public, forming part of the collection of I-Nc, closed since 1988. Manuscript copies of the operas are few in number, and, together with scattered printed editions of individual numbers (aside from II ventaglio

only one other opera was

published in a complete piano-vocal score) amount to only a small portion of his operatic output. A more significant reason is artistic: Raimondi's operatic career was largely unsuccessful.

It seems to me that many aspects of

Raimondi's operatic career and compositions might more profitably be examined within other, broader contexts than a study devoted to him exclusively; indeed, Father Kantner has already indicated the way in his treatment of the sacred 6

music of Raimondi, considering it along with that of five other composers, in his study of music at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome during the first half of the nineteenth century.5

Similarly broad studies of the later stages of

Neapolitan dialect opera, for instance, or of the role of musical director in the royal theaters of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the nineteenth century, seem to me more convincing settings for an examination of Raimondi's particular contributions in these areas than the present dissertation.

I have therefore been content to sum up his

contributions to opera with a brief discussion of II ventaglio

and a rough outline of Raimondi's theatrical

career. By relegating such topics to the distinctly secondary position they occupy here, I have allowed myself room to consider his musical experiments in two contexts which I feel are crucial to an adequate understanding of Raimondi, both of which would lie outside the limits of a life-and-works study: the historical roots of instruction in academic counterpoint in Naples, with special attention given to the rivalry between the leista

and

durantista

parties, and the evolving attitudes toward the composer in the years since his death. In concentrating on Raimondi's unusual experiments, I am following the lead not only of

s

Leopold M. Kantner, Aurea Luce. Musik an St. Peter in Rom 1790-1850 (Vienna: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akadamie der Wissenschaften, 1979). 7

Gray, but of several earlier commentators, and of the less guarded of Raimondi's own remarks concerning his works. Nor do I deal exclusively with the works "themselves" (a dubious enough subject for investigation), since I have thought it important to consider the many varied ideas and attitudes, his own and others', surrounding his works, and what I take to be the inevitable effect that a knowledge or lack of knowledge of these will have on the perception and evaluation of his compositions. A further limitation is the general absence of materials permitting an investigation of Raimondi's creative process, save for his own cryptic comments. No sketches of any of his works, experimental or not, are known to me, and most of his experiments have unique sources in the form of clean autograph copies (the few exceptions to be noted in the course of the dissertation). Otherwise the only evidence for creative process is what I have gleaned from the finished products. The musical experiments properly speaking, which constitute the primary focus of this dissertation, are few in number. They include several movements from a Messa di Gloria

of 1836, two 'double-overtures' from roughly the same

period, the quadruple and quintuple fugue combinations included in Fughe diverse,

the attempts at systematic

polytonality begun in the nine compositions collected in Due fughe

in una dissimili

Quattro-

and Sei fughe

nel modo and continued in the in una dissimili 8

nel modo, the

'triple oratorio' Giuseppe

of 1847-8 and the unfinished

'double opera' from the last year of his life. Apart from examining these ten experiments, it has also proved highly relevant to include some discussion of his more "conventional" works, both in order to view the experiments against a general stylistic background, and to identify works which bear a significant relation to the experiments in their ostentatious display of erudition. I use the term "conventional" to denote works which were not experimental, that is, works designed for a single body of musicians, to be performed straight through. Generally, I present the compositions I have selected for examination in chronological order, beginning with an early contrapuntal tour-de-force and ending with the incomplete 'double opera,' but a glance at the table of contents will reveal that this organizing principle has been treated with some elasticity. I have departed from strict chronology at several important points, for reasons ranging from the anomalous nature of the publication Fughe diverse

(an anthology of pieces composed

over an extended period—including a number for which the chronology itself is in unknown) to my conviction that a clearer overview of his output may be obtained if a thematic organization is partially superimposed upon the chronological one. The division of Raimondi's works into "experimental" and "conventional" categories is mine, not Raimondi's. 9

Raimondi's own approach to categorizing his works is evident in the two autograph worklists (here referred to as WL1 and WL2) he prepared late in his career. These lists provide more (and frequently less) than straightfoward information about his compositions. In their many idiosyncrasies, mistakes, and quirks of organization and presentation, these two lists permit a revealing glimpse into his conception of himself and his artistic legacy.

Since they will set the

stage for important distinctions in what is to follow, they merit detailed attention. Though it is undated, we may confidently assign WL1 to late 1846 or early 1847, since it includes the oratorio Mose al Sinai,

the autograph of which (I-Rsc G. Mss. 570) is

dated 1846, but not the Vespers psalms Nisi Laudate

Dominus and

puere composed for Rome during the first half of

1847. Raimondi divides this worklist into several categories. The first category carries no general heading, but includes all dramatic works (both staged and unstaged) except for ballets. Probably due to the large number of works in the first category, Raimondi subdivided it in turn into chronological periods, within which, however, the listed works may or may not be in correct chronological order. At first Raimondi's idea seems to have been to allow biographical circumstances to determine the chronological divisions. The first period, "dall'anno 1808 al 1814," for instance, comprises works composed on the mainland before 10

moving to Sicily (the listed works here are in perfect chronological order), and the second period "dal 1815 al 1819," comprises works composed during his first Sicilian sojourn. This procedure soon breaks down. The works composed on the mainland following his return from Acireale are so numerous that he decided to group them by decade; thus the next category is "dal 1820 al 1830."

He then

continues the organization by decade in the following period ("dal 1830 al 1840") despite his move back to Sicily during this period.

The last period, "dal 1840 al 1844,"

includes only four works, two of which (Mose al Sinai stanza

del letto)

performed.

and La

are indicated as having never been

Such divisions create confusion by giving two

years (1830 and 1840) twice; more importantly, they give a misleading impression of continuous theatrical activity, while in fact Raimondi composed no operas in 1814, 1834, 1839 and 1840. There are, moreover, numerous errors in chronological order within each period. That Mose was unperformed may account for Raimondi's having mistaken the date (the autograph score is clearly marked 1846, but the work is listed among the compositions from 1840-44), but other mistakes are more puzzling. II giudizio

universale,

for example, unquestionably dating from 1843, is placed in the "1830 al 1840" group. Most mistakes are found within the two decade-periods, where Raimondi seems to have been guided by only the vaguest chronological sense, noting down 11

titles (several of them incorrectly!) in the order in which they occured to him.

Raimondi also gave a bit of

information about each work, noting down its genre (cantata, oratorio, opera, farce) and place of performance.

In its

privileging of quantity, so similar to the emphasis on enormity evident in various individual works, the most characteristic touch in this part of the worklist is the arithmetic at the end: In tutto 6 Cantate 6 Farse 6 Oratorii 41 Opere 59 produzioni teatrali The next category on WL1 is ballet. Here too his memory serves him poorly.

In addition to omitting a number

of titles, many of the titles he does provide are given both inaccurately and out of chronological order, some of them drastically so. For example, his very first ballet, Alina regina

di Golconda,

dating from 1812, appears eighteenth on

his list of ballets, mistakenly noted as "Amina." Rather than setting the record straight, his main preoccupation here seems to be returning to arithmetic, adding the 21 ballets he lists to the 59 "theatrical productions" of the first category. The triumphal result: "In tutto, fra Opere, Cantate, Farse, e Balli [he omits oratorios] - 80 produzioni." In this way Raimondi indicates a larger grouping not immediately apparent in a first glance at the 12

worklist, i.e. all works which were either performed or could conceivably be performed in the theater. The next category, "opere ecclesiastiche," with its many Masses, Requiems, Stabats, and Misereres, seems at first to be self-explanatory, save for two curious titles, the Mass with two large orchestras and two separate, riunite

le quali insieme,

si possono

eseguire

sinfonie

isolatamente,

e

and the similarly conceived Due sinfonie

una (both treated in Chapter 4).

in

More far-reaching

questions about this category are raised in the next category, "Opere Scientifiche." This includes, along with titles which seem appropriately placed here, such as the clearly scientific (i.e. pedagogical) partimenti

exercises,

also some works that might be supposed to have belonged with the "Opere Ecclesiastiche."

Several of the Ventidue

(Raimondi's misremembered title of Fughe diverse) the compositions of the Nuovo genere composizione

musicale

di

fughe

and all of

scientifica

are settings of sacred texts, and the

same is true for the polytonal works listed in the category of "opere scientif iche. "6 Most curious of all is the way 6

It is interesting to note that though the 1855 Ricordi catalogue listed Fughe diverse under "Opere teoretiche e scientifiche," it was considered prudent to place a crossreference to this collection under "Musica sacra;" see the Catalogo delle opere pubblicate dall'I. R. Stab. Naz. Priv. di Calc, Cop. e Tip. Musicale di Tito di Gio. Ricordi in Milano (Milano: Ricordi, 1855), 18. Similarly, the current catalogue at I-Rsc still has a listing for a Nuovo genere exemplar under "S" for "Salmi" [psalms]. The call numbers for Raimondi's experiments at the New York Public Library, which uses the Billings system of classifcation, indicate a 13

in which all of the "opere ecclesiastiche" and "opere scientifiche" are crowded into a single column, permitting a final specimen of Raimondi's arithmetic:

"In tutto 114

produzioni." The reader is at first so distracted by Raimondi's air of bravado in tallying up his works as to not notice a subtler but more significant point. As with the theatrical works, Raimondi has implied with his arithmetic a grouping of compositions in WLl larger than those explicitly labeled: the scientific and the ecclesiastical combine to form a single category. The paradoxical result is that a number of sacred works are at the same time separated from and linked to the "ecclesiastical" category. Raimondi's other autograph worklist (WL2) must date from around 1851. It includes the 1847 Vespers psalms, as well as the triple oratorio and the fugue for 64 voices, both from 1848, and the Salmodia

Davidica,

intended as a

complete set of 150 psalm-settings, begun in 1850 and never finished, but none of the compositions he initiated in 1852 or 1853. Raimondi organized WL2 in somewhat differently from WLl. Though the "Opere teatrali" still make up the first category of works listed, they are now subdivided not by chronological period but by genre. Serious operas are given first; next come the comic operas, with asterisks next to

similar ambiguity: Due fughe in una dissimili nel modo is designated *MI (used for contrapuntal treatises), but Quattro fughe in una dissimili nel modo has the call number *MRH—for sacred vocal works accompanied by keyboard. 14

those operas having at least one part in Neapolitan dialect, and finally the cantatas. These are the only three subdivisions in this category (the oratorios, rather than being integrated with the theatrical works as in WL1, constitute a separate category on WL2).

The organization

for ballets, "opere ecclesiastiche" and "opere scientifiche" is much the same as in WL1, save for the additions. There is also one subtraction, since Raimondi was apparently so carried away with the 1836 Mass for two orchestras, with its Due sinfonie

in una, that he listed it twice in WL1 (with

slightly varied titles), making the correction in WL2. Despite the additional works listed and the helpful new indications of dialect operas, the new worklist is in some ways less complete than the old, since Raimondi omitted much information included in WL1 (dating, place of performance, the non-performance of certain works).

WL2 also provided

the basis for the printed worklist (W3), indicated specifically as covering all Raimondi's compositions through June 15 1851; W3 is nearly identical in content to WL2. One intriguing exception is the description of the triple oratorio. WL2 carries the comment that the three oratorios, aside from being performable separately, may also be done simultaneously "without creating any confusion;" this was an "invention of the composer and librettist" [invenzione dell'autore e del poeta].

W3 carries the identical comment

save that the "invenzione" is credited to the composer 15

alone; Raimondi for some reason now wished to drop the implied reference to the librettist, Giuseppe Sapio, as having had any responsibility for the work. There are no tallies on WL2 for the total number of "produzioni" in any large or small category of composition. The "opere scientifiche" category on WL2 is considerably longer than the corresponding part of WL1, an interesting indication of how important that genre had become to Raimondi in the mid-to-late 1840s. The 64-voice fugue, the 12-combination of two fugues and a four-part canon, and the Salmodia

Davidica

now appear on the worklist, as well as a

group of sixteen four-part fugues not found on WL1. Some works that had already appeared on WL1 show other changes. Two polytonal works, the Quattrodissimili

and Sei fughe

in una

nel modo, are now given separate entries, instead

of being listed (rather illogically) as part of the collection entitled Due fughe

in una dissimili

nel

modo.

Raimondi refers to the latter collection as including ten compositions, instead of the (correct) figure of nine given in WL1. The central problem posed by WL1, however—the presence of a number of sacred works, now including the psalm-settings of the Salmodia

Davidica,

not among the

"opere ecclesiastiche," but rather included, along with didactic partimenti,

among the "opere scientifiche"—remains

unchanged in WL2. It is important to keep these various categories in 16

mind. Raimondi's musical experiments, despite the resemblances between them, are a heterogeneous group drawn from all three principal categories of WL1 and WL2, and cannot be fully understood unless considered in the context of other, more conventional theatrical, ecclesiastical, and scientific works. That he pursued his experiments in all three of these genres testifies to their importance for him. A word, finally, about my attempts to correct a number of errors which tend to recur in the secondary literature about Raimondi. The correction of such errors is not unusual in dissertations, and indeed is often seen as one of their primary functions, but I am convinced that the problem in the case of Raimondi is highly unusual. The frequent cases of his being credited with immense compositions which he never wrote, and the patently inaccurate descriptions of works which he did write, seem to me to reflect much more than the general carelessness usually responsible for errors in writing about composers, or the general laziness and complacency with which such errors are perpetuated by writer after writer. Such errors strike me rather as the negative by-products of the same stupor and amazement which Raimondi sought to effect with his musical experiments, and as such deserve consideration as aesthetic, as well as historiographical, issues.

17

CHAPTER 1 Raimondi's Early Life and Career

The obituary notice by Pietro Alfieri, appearing more or less simultaneously in a number of newspapers and periodicals shortly after Raimondi's death, contains the earliest reliable account of the composer's youth.1 Since Filippo Cicconetti, a Roman lawyer and music lover responsible among other things for the first published biographies of Donizetti and Bellini, included it in his published compilation of documents on Raimondi, enriched by several of his own annotations, this obituary has served as the point of departure for most biographical descriptions of Raimondi's career.2 Alfieri is known for the leading role he played in the 1

A partial listing of publications where the obituary appeared includes the Gazzetta Musicale di Milano XI, n.46, ((13 XI 1853), 101-2; Gazzetta Musicale di Napoli II n.46 (12 XI 53), 367-8; Corriere dell'Arno (12, 16 XI 1853); a lightly revised version of Alfieri's notice was also published in the Florentine journal Armonia (Vol. V n.15, 14 VIII 1857) around the time of the performance of the "triple oratorio" in Florence. 2

Filippo Cicconetti, Memorie intorno Rome, 1867, 3-16. 18

Pietro

Raimondi,

Cecilian revival of church music in Italy, in particular for his advocacy of the music of Palestrina (a number of whose works reached their first modern publications under Alfieri's direct supervision), along with other "classic" Italian composers. It was undoubtedly his stature as an authority on sacred music which led to his being asked to write the obituary of Raimondi, considered at his death one of the leading Italian composers in that genre. Alfieri's authority had another dimension as well. Two elements of the biographical notice— an anecdote from the composer's conservatory days, and another mentioning Raimondi's confession of ignorance regarding certain seventeenth- and eighteenth-century works to which his own imposing creations had been compared—are given as received directly from Raimondi; thus, the two men were probably personally acquainted. Though the obituary does contain numerous and significant inaccuracies, to be noted in their proper contexts, the earlier part of the biography is relatively straightforward.

Raimondi was born in Rome on 20 December,

1786; Cicconetti's annotation that the birth took place in the landmark Palazzo Firenze is confirmed by the baptismal register of the Church of San Nicola di Bari (also known as San Nicola ai Prefetti) currently kept, along with all other Roman parish registers, in the Archivio del Vicariato di Roma in the Lateran.

Several successive volumes of the 19

Stato

d'Anime

for the same parish, also in the Archivio del

Vicariato, explain what Raimondi's family was doing in that splendid specimen of Renaissance architecture: Raimondi's father Vincenzo was an employee in the post office housed there during much of the eighteenth century. But while Raimondi and his parents, together with several other relatives of Vincenzo, feature in the Stato

d'Anime

volumes

of 1786 through 1788, that of 1789 gives the names of only his relatives (those not part of his immediate family). After 1790 these too disappear from the parish records. Another of Cicconetti's annotations relates that Raimondi's parents knew nothing but "penury and irregular habits," but no details are provided, and it is not known why or where Vincenzo and Caterina relocated with their infant son (no siblings are named in the above-mentioned records) in 1789. Francesco Florimo, another who knew Raimondi personally, if not amicably, provides no source for his information that Vincenzo died when his son was fifteen, following which Raimondi was entrusted to the care of an aunt, while his mother remarried and settled in Genoa.3 Even if all this information is generally true, the events were certainly misdated, since Raimondi could not have begun his studies at the Conservatorio della Pieta dei Turchini in Naples later than 1800, year of the death of the aged

3

Francesco Florimo, "Pietro Raimondi," La musicale di Napoli, Naples, 1881-83, III, 96. 20

scuola

counterpoint teacher Nicola Sala,4 whom Raimondi claimed to have met, and whose teachings were in any case of fundamental importance in the shaping of his aesthetic, as will be shown below.5 The approximate date of 1800 for Raimondi's arrival at the conservatory is also confirmed by subtracting six years from the date of his first opera, given in Genova during the Carneval 1806 season, which was written directly after Raimondi's six years at the conservatory, the duration of study given in both Alfieri's obituary and Florimo's biographical entry cited above. The historical archive of the current Conservatory in Naples contains a large number of annual volumes, including those for the years Raimondi spent at the conservatory. These transmit the minutes of meetings of the governors of the conservatory. Since the latter fell under the jurisdiction of the Minister for Internal Affairs of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, these volumes are labeled Ministerial!.

The Ministeriali

for the years 1800-06

undoubtedly contain much that could add to the slight anecdotal information presented in Alfieri's obituary 4

Nicola Sala (1713-1801), composer and theorist active for many years in Naples, will be discussed later in this chapter and in Chapter 3. 6

See in particular Raimondi's "Riflessioni sopra la scienza musicale del passato e del presente secolo" printed in La Ruota (III n.7 (15 April 1842), 55-6, where he reports that he himself heard the almost century-old Sala modestly admit that only now [i.e. circa 1800] was he beginning to understand the complexities of counterpoint. The full text of Raimondi's article is given in Appendix 1. 21

regarding Raimondi's studies, along with many other interesting documents pertaining to the last years of one of four ancient conservatories of Naples. It is most unfortunate that the Conservatory's historical archive, currently a heap of dusty and insect-ridden chaos, has been closed (which is distinct from the main library) both to the general public and to serious scholars. Thus there is no available confirmation for details which might be assumed, such as his successful competition for one of the available posts of

maestrino.

According to Alfieri's obituary, Raimondi himself recounted the story of how he spent the slight amount of pocket-money allotted the Conservatory pupils to help augment their meager food rations: while others squandered their allowances on snacks, Raimondi preferred to obtain extra lessons from his teacher Giacomo Tritto. A slightly different version is given by Florimo, according to whom the allowance thus spent by Raimondi, specified as six ducats each month, was provided by his aunt. Whichever version of it is true, the episode is another early manifestation of Raimondi's devotion to the study of counterpoint. According to Florimo, Raimondi's studies were cut short in 1806 when his aunt in Rome, who had been supporting his education, announced to him that she was relocating to Florence, and could no longer provide for him. Entirely lacking in funds, Raimondi subsequently travelled to Rome on 22

foot. There he began a dolorous succession of encounters with relatives either unable or unwilling to help him: from his father's brother in Rome he went to his aunt (the erstwhile benefactress) in Florence, where his fever and exhaustion necessitated a period in the hospital of Santa Maria Novella, and finally to his mother in Genova, now remarried and, according to an annotation of Cicconetti, grown indifferent to her son. In Genoa he succeeded in making himself known in musical circles and produced his first two operas, La blzzarria a tale of Boccaccio, La forza Gazzetta

d'Amore and a farce based on dell'immaginazione

(the

di Genova of 27 June 1810 gave a highly

appreciative account of the latter opera).6

Both these

works are lost, as is the cantata Ero e Leandro,

also dating

from this early sojourn in Genoa. It was also during this period that Raimondi began his teaching career.7

An Early Tour-de-Force: the 8-part Christe

of 1810

"Printed both in Edilio Frassoni, Due secoli di lirica a Genova (Genoa: Casa di Risparmio di Genova e Imperia, 1980), 67, and Leopoldo Gamberini, La vita musicale europea del 1800 - Archivio musicale genovese. Vol. II. Opera lirica e musica strumentale documenti e testimonianze (Genoa: Universita di Genova Facolta di Lettere e Filosofia, 1979), 34. 'Raimondi's letter to his student Luigi Castiglia, published in the Sicilian periodical La Ruota vol. II n. 13 (30 V 1841), 103-4, mentions his thirty-four years of teaching experience, i.e. dating back to 1807. 23

An Early Tour-de-Force; the 8-part Christe

of 1810

From the point of view of his later developments, the most interesting product of this period is the Christe

"a 8

[parti] Reali e Doppio Canone con due orchestre" ["in eight real parts and double canon with two orchestras"], the first of Raimondi's sacred works to have survived and a revealing portent of his later predilection for works of contrapuntal intricacy in imposing dimensions. As in the case of a number of these later works, the Christe

may be seen as

extending tradition of academic counterpoint exemplified by Sala's counterpoint treatise Regole

di Contrapunto,8

which

had an influence upon Raimondi egual to if not greater than that of the aforementioned Tritto (despite his never having studied with Sala, who had retired from teaching by the time of Raimondi's arrival in Naples). Sala's treatise, consisting of three enormous and beautifully engraved volumes printed at royal expense, is of a decidedly archaic cast, reflecting the pedagogy not of the 1790s but of many decades earlier. Sala even reproduces the cantus

firmus

setting he completed for the 1745 competition

in which he won a position at the Cappella Reale in Naples. Cantus

settings through the five species in two or more

parts together with invertible counterpoint and the full complement of imitative devices constitute the bulk of the a

Naples: Stamperia Reale, 1794. 24

work. Sala labeled and arranged most of his examples by "mode," though the term seems defined by nothing more specific than the letter-name of the tonic pitch (musical examples in d minor as well as those in D Major, for example, are labeled as being in the "primo modo," while "secondo modo" serves egually for e minor and E-flat major).9

Sala's predilection for fugues on two or more

subjects seems proto-Raimondian, as does the implication that the crowning achievement of contrapuntal study is composition for large numbers of voices. Typically these present a simultaneous combination of canons which include fugal elements, another principle Raimondi later showed great interest in developing.

Ex. 1.1 gives the opening

measures of Sala's "Canone sopra Canone a 4 al primo coro, e Canone sopra Canone a 4.o al secondo coro, e tutti concertati insieme," one of the last compositions of the third volume of the treatise. Each four-part choir sings two canons at the lower octave, the pairings in both choirs being soprano-tenor and alto-bass. But the reader is surprised at the appearance of the fugal term "risposta" ["answer"] at m.6, when Choir II enters for the first time. In fact, the first measures sung by Choir II do in fact have the character of a fugal "answer" to the "subject" given by Choir I in mm.1-5, now transposed to the dominant key of C 9

Sala, Regole, Vol. II, cf. pp. 21-24 (the second and third of the three-part fugues), 43-47 (the first two of the four-part fugues). 25

major. This particular relation between the choirs lasts only for a few measures, but the two groups never entirely diverge, continuing to make use of shared thematic material, and at times approaching the texture of a fugal stretto (mm.12-16, 30-38).

The organ parts that accompany each

choir, each notated on a single staff, fulfill a mixed function of doubling vocal parts and playing independent lines, allowing for another fugal flourish in the lengthy dominant pedal before the final cadence. Thus, the strict four-part canonic writing in each choir, maintained steadily throughout, is balanced by a looser series of strategies for the totality of combining parts, strategies occasionally partaking more of fugue than of canon. Even the sacred texts Sala employs for his examples, including a large quantity of "Amen" and "Tu es sacerdos" settings, were those later favored by Raimondi for many of his most intricate experiments. But perhaps more important than the influence on Raimondi of any of these stylistic traits is the overwhelming preoccupation with "scientific" music, that is, with the laborious composition of musical examples intended not to be performed or listened to, but studied, directed more to the eye than to the ear. Aside from the many specimens of species counterpoint, where the rigid stratification of note values among the different parts throughout each example is obviously removed from musical practice, as witness the large number of examples 26

which are either textless or, if texted, far too brief to serve any practical function, and by the inclusion of descriptive tags throughout the examples ("tonal answer," "inversion at the 10th," "canon at the 4th below," etc.). The latter are perfectly appropriate in a treatise such as Sala's, but indicative of generic ambiguity in the later "practical" scores by Raimondi where they appear. To be sure, analytical labels, whether in a treatise or a practical work, often denote devices which are audible; such is not the case with the often-encountered (in both Sala and Raimondi) labels referring to caselle,

the spaces

and lines of the musical staff—references not merely predominantly, but exclusively visual in orientation. doubtful whether remarks on caselle pedagogically.

It is

are helpful even

In a genuine puzzle canon written as a

single line, of course, the presence of more than one clef provides an important hint as to the proper solution, but outside of such fun-and-games contexts it seems gratuitous to point out the coincidence of caselle

in different voices

of a canon. Since the soprano and tenor clefs, for example, lie a seventh apart, any two-part canon at the seventh for tenor and soprano will have the pitches of each line occupying the same caselle,

while the coincidence would

disappear if the identical canon were transposed down a fifth and notated for bass and contralto. When Sala points out such canonic tricks with caselle, 27

there is more than a

touch of pretence; he seems to have been laying claim to a kind of virtuosic contrapuntal feat which is in fact nothing of the sort, and Raimondi's similar tags in Nuovo genere

musicale10 and II

scientifica

composizione

universale11

display much the same qualities.

Raimondi's Christe

di

giudizio

of 1810 (ex. 1.2) demonstrates at

the same time what he absorbed from his study of Sala and his determination to go beyond him in complexity.12 To the double-choir forces is added a double-orchestra accompaniment. Beginning inra.5the two choirs present respectively their own thematically distinct four-part canons, rigidly carried out save for occasional alterations of melodic intervals, such as repeated pitches instead of octave leaps or descending fourths in place of ascending fifths, to allow for vocal ranges. Raimondi breaks off the eight-part double canon at m.20 during a modulation to the dominant key, B-flat, definitively confirmed with a cadence at m.25. At this point, in a manner distinctly analogous to the part of Sala's 8-part canon labeled by him a "risposta," Choir II begins to sing in the newly established key the four-part canon first heard in Choir I—with the significant difference that the exchange this time is complete, since

10

See Chapter 5.

"See Chapter 8. ia

Christe a 8 parti reali orchestre (I-Fc E. I . 112).

e doppio canoni con due 28

Choir I likewise sings the canon first heard in Choir II. In both choirs a different order of entry for the four voices from that originally heard allows for display of invertible counterpoint. This newly resumed canonic passage is again interrupted, now by a cadence in the original key of E-flat. This leads to an even more intricate sharing and combining of material both within and among the two choirs, which now (m.37ff) sing together the same canonic theme originally confined to Choir I, with the four-measure phrase now split among four vocal parts rather than presented as a single dux, and with elements of the canon originally given to Choir II blended into the texture. The result is, despite the title, not a double canon, but rather a series of canons arranged in order of increasing complexity. Yet, this complexity can hardly camoflouge the extreme simplicity of the harmonic plan for the work, barely venturing beyond tonic, dominant and subdominant chords. And the particular type of complexity later to receive most of Raimondi's attention—the construction of two or more works allowing first for individual and then for simultaneous performance—is absent. The two choirs and two orchestras are far too implicated in each other's thematic working-out for separate performance to be conceivable, and the call-and-answer choral exclamations of the last nine measures would be rendered meaningless if only one of the two sounding groups were present. The Christe, 29

however,

though not belonging to the series of Raimondi's experiments properly speaking, is nevertheless similar to these in having apparently been conceived as an answer to the question of whether it was possible to do anything new with such ancient techniques as canonic imitation—the same question haunting Sala, as evidenced by the eight-part canonic compositions which crown the third volume of his Regole. In one respect, however, Raimondi has departed from his model considerably: the Christe

is decidedly a practical

work, far from co-extant with the complex canonic structure at its heart. The tempo indication given at the outset (Allegro) would never have appeared in Sala's treatise, and the many non-canonic passages incorporated into the vocal parts strengthen the impression of a practical (as opposed to a "scientific") work. But it is especially evident in the orchestra, with its fanfare-like opening orchestral measures preceding the canon proper, playfully adumbrating the canonic display to come, and its role throughout of decorating and enlivening the canonic lines of the choirs, imparting a much stronger individual character to the work. To be sure, the decorations themselves are carried out consistently; just as the dux of Soprano I is "doubled" by the first violins with a more active eighth-note quality, for example, so too is the contralto comes doubled by an identically decorated first viola part; by such means the 30

essentially free orchestral parts are brought into the canonic spirit of the work. The string doublings of the vocal parts, however, while consistent, do show some freedom, with the first violin and viola occasionally dropping out of their roles as enlivened doublings of Soprano and Contralto respectively, either to double other vocal parts or to carry on independently. As for the wind and brass parts, they are almost entirely independent of the canons.

Clearly, the function of the orchestra was to

render the bare-bones vocal canon more varied, palatable, and gratifying to the ear. Though the resulting aesthetic experience may not be a high one, the underlying aim is clearly to produce such an experience, and not, as Sala phrased it before one of his eight-part cantus

firmus

settings, in order that "si ponno regolare gli studiosi scolari [studious pupils may regulate themselves]."13 Raimondi's fairly itinerant existence after leaving the conservatory in Naples was followed by a permanence of four or five years back in that city. This was interrupted only once for a trip to Rome in 1813 to produce Amuratte

II,

an

abject failure at the same Teatro Argentina where his "triple oratorio" led to scenes of delirious enthusiasm some three decades later. Naples, L'oracolo

His first work after returning to

di Delfo

(heard at the Teatro San Carlo on

15 August 1811), was non-operatic, but it marks Raimondi's "Regole,

III, 153.

31

earliest involvement with world-class opera singers: in the cast were Isabella Colbran and Giovanni David.

In Naples

Raimondi also began an association with Neapolitan dialect opera which was to bring him some of his most satisfying successes in the theater. Two operas, both at the Teatro dei Fiorentini, featured Carlo Casaccia, member of a dynasty of comic basses active in Naples for five generations. These were II fanatico agitato

deluso

(21 October 1811) and Lo

sposo

(23 June 1812), both librettos by Giuseppe Palomba.

Between these two operas he made his first foray into the composition of ballet scores, a field in which he contributed extensively during his later residence in Naples, by collaborating with Count Wenzel Robert Gallenberg on the music for Alina

regina

di Golconda

(choreography by

Pierre Hus) on 18 March 1812; another ballet by Raimondi for the San Carlo composed in collaboration with Gallenberg was Louis Henry's Phaeton

(22 January 1814).

That it was during this period in Naples that Raimondi married may be supposed not only from his wife's name (Domenica Casaccia, in all likelihood a member of the same family with whom Raimondi had begun to work), but by two further considerations. First, the marriage could not have been a late one, since Raimondi's son Vincenzo was singing professionally by the mid-1830s.14 X

*I1 Passatempo

per

le

Second, Raimondi's

dame (27 April 1833, 135) gave

an enthusiastic report on the success of Raimondi's son in the theater of Porto Maon on the island of Minorca. This 32

relocation to Acireale at the end of 1815 would be easily explained by the responsibilities felt toward a wife and small child; otherwise it is difficult to guess what could have induced him to leave Naples, after the encouraging reception given to his works there, to take on a humble post in a provincial Sicilian town several kilometers outside of Catania.

First Period in Sicily (1815-1819)

Neither Florimo nor Alfieri mention Raimondi's years in Acireale, and Cicconetti provides no annotations on the matter in his redaction of Alfieri. The most detailed account of this phase of Raimondi's career was written by a musical dilettante of that town dating from around the turn of the last century, anxious to spread the word of Acireale's glorious musical history.15 Though replete with errors, D. Zaccaria Musmeci's address to the Accademia Dafnica of Acireale does contain a number of documented references sufficient for at least a skeletal history of Raimondi's time there, and is in any case a fascinating document of how strongly Raimondi's name continued to success is confirmed in a brief notice several months later in the Allgemeine

Musikalische

Zeitung

XXXV no. 38 (18 Sept.

1833), col. 640. 15

D. Zaccaria Musmeci, "Del culto della musica in Acireale," Atti e rendiconti dell'Accademia Dafnica di Acireale, Serie II. vol.11, Anno 1905-10, 1-39. 33

resonate in some circles of Italy less than a century ago. After describing how the death of Alfio Platania Vinci in November 1815 left the town without a maestro

di

cappella,

Musmeci continues dramatically:

And now, who shall be his successor? Gentlemen, apathy and baseness were unknown among the old citizens of our town; and so, animated by their love and customary enthusiasm for art, they dared once more to turn their eyes to Palermo, and without heeding any consideration of expense, to call upon the Director of that Royal Musical Institute; he from whom the illustrious Pietro Platania drew his knowledge and inspiration; the author of 66 operas among which that outstanding one entitled "II ventaglio," in the buffo genre, and of various Oratorios; the writer of Masses in 16 real parts and two orchestras, of compositions alia Palestrina, of sacred overtures, of 60 psalms for voices alone, of fugues (one of which is for 64 voices divided into 16 choirs)....that prodigious composer, teacher of composition of the Conservatory of Naples, the most skilled and profound contrapuntist of the nineteenth century, Pietro Raimondil Yes...Pietro Raimondi, gentlemen: he was among us, he was ours.... and who knows how many excellent works were drawn from the genius and inspiration of our fair sky, the citrus-perfume of our gardens, the enchanting view of our varied horizon! Pietro Raimondi! And what other city or chapel, whether of Sicily or the mainland, had the advantage, the high honor, of having him, gentlemen? Only Naples, Palermo, and Rome, where he was Maestro at Saint Peter's16 in the Vatican.... and? And Acireale!

The fact is that all of the accomplishments of Raimondi enumerated by Musmeci as evidence for the outstanding taste,

'Musmeci, "Acireale," 25-6. 34

daring, and pride of early nineteenth century

Acesi

postdated by many years the decision to hire him as Maestro di Cappella in 1815, at which time he was a rather obscure musician in Naples (and not Palermo).

Musmeci goes on to

lament the absence of any autographs of Raimondi in the musical archive of the Cathedral or the Municipio, expressing his puzzlement that the Acesi of old, such zealous cultivators of music, were so careless about maintaining so valuable a collection.

In order to form a

conception of Raimondi's music composed during this period, Musmeci at first had to content himself with some papers which had come into the possession of a local shoemaker, and later examined other works in private collections: masses, vespers, and the oratorio La vittoria 1819.

di Gedeone

written in

Musmeci's opinion of the compositions he examined,

for whatever it may be worth, is surprisingly cool after the extravagant build-up cited above. To him they were far too heavily influenced by operatic tastes to be appropriate for their sacred function.17 At the end of his article Musmeci provides a table listing a number of works by composers active in Acireale, including the following by Raimondi: 1) II trionfo

di Tito,

oratorio, 1816; performed again

in 1827. 2) II sacrifizio

di Abramo, oratorio, 1818.

"Musmeci, "Acireali," 28. 35

3) Radamisto

e Zenobia,

cantata, 1818.

Performed under

the direction of the Accademia Dafnica on the occasion of the name-day of Ferdinando I.18 4) L'Andromaca,

oratorio, date unknown.

5) Gedeone, "azione drammatica," 1819, performed outdoors in the Piazza. 6) Ester,

oratorio, 1820, performed in the Piazza.

WL119 includes an itemization of his acesi

ompositions

which diverges from Musmeci's list on a number of points: neither Gedeone

nor Ester

appear, while Raimondi does

include two oratorios missing from Musmeci's list,

L'esaltazione trionfo

di Mardocheo and II Deicidio

di Tito,

punito.

II

moreover, is characterized by Raimondi not

as an oratorio but as an opera.

Since Raimondi's worklist

is inaccurate in numerous respects, it should not automatically be assumed that his data are more reliable than Musmeci's as regards either dating or genre, but in this case Raimondi's dates, given collectively as "from 1815 through 1819" are undoubtedly more reliable than Musmeci's, since Raimondi could not have written anything for Acireale in 1820, having returned to Naples by the end of 1819 (see below).

In any case no works of Raimondi with any of these

18

A score of this work is in the Chisari collection in Catania. 19

0n Raimondi's autograph worklists see the Introduction. 36

titles have survived.

And whether we accept Raimondi's

titles or Musmeci's, one fact emerges with great clarity: Rairaondi's operatic career virtually ceased during his years in Acireale, his energies being given over almost entirely to oratorios and liturgical music. Aside from the equivocal case of II trionfo

di

Tito,

termed an opera by Raimondi but a cantata (performed outdoors on an unspecified Feast-Day) by Musmeci, there are two further examples of operatic activity on Raimondi's part during this period, both involving revivals of earlier works. At some time during this early period in Sicily his first opera for Genoa, Le bizzarie

d'amore,

was revived in

Catania at the Teatro Biscardi under the direction of Pietro Antonio Coppola; Raimondi is supposed to have declared modestly that the success of this revival was owed less to his own merits than to Coppola's direction.20

Also

revived in Sicily was Raimondi's most recent comic opera for Naples, Lo sposo agitato,

given in Messina at the Teatro la

Munizione in 1819.21 While in Messina that year Raimondi apparently announced the completion of an imposing new work 20

Umiliano Pietro Coppola, Biografia di Pietro Antonio Coppola, 2.a edizione, Catania, 1903, 12: L'illustre Raimondi, dopo di aver gustato nel nostro teatro la sua Bizzaria d'amore diretta dal giovane Coppola, non dubitd di dichiarare che l'esito dell'opera sua si dovea piu al bravo direttore che a lui stesso [italics in original, presumably to indicate a more or less direct quotation]. 21

Giuseppe Uccello, Lo Spettacolo nei Secoli (Palermo: Publisicula Editrice, 1986), 141. 37

a Messina

(whether it was performed is not known).

According to a

notice in a local newspaper, later picked up by the Allgemeine

Musikalische

in Leipzig,22 the Requiem

Zeitung

Mass which Raimondi completed at the time had required two years of toil, and was written at the behest of the same music lover who had commissioned Raimondi to write a Libera me to conclude a performance of Mozart's Requiem in 1815, "written in "8, 12, 16, and even 20 real parts." This work, the first indication of Raimondi's interest in counterpoint for a very large number of parts, is unfortunately lost, but the tone of bravado in the announcement has an authentic Raimondian ring.23 From the date of Un'ora

(12 January 1820), the next

ballet by Raimondi at the Teatro San Carlo, Naples (in collaboration with Domenico Crivelli, choreography by Armando Vestris) it is possible to correct two inaccuracies which have appeared in the literature. He must have left Sicily at the end of 1819, not the beginning of 1820, as has been asserted, and he did not return to Naples in order to produce the Lenten oratorio Ciro in Babilonia

in March of

1820. Though Raimondi's commission to compose Ciro was eventually used by him to justify his request for an

22

AZIgemeine Musikalische

Zeitung

XXI (April 1819) col.

249. 23

See the Chapter 5, however, for possible evidence that one movement of the 1819 Requiem may have survived in the publication Fughe diverse. 38

extended leave of absence from his post in Acireale,24 the assignment was actually unexpected, and did not fall to him until February, after it had become clear that the oratorio promised by Giovanni Simone Mayr would not be completed in time; this is attested by several documents in I-Nas.25

24

I-Nas Teatri f.125, letter from the Minister of State of Internal Affairs to the Superintendent of the Royal Theaters Giovanni Carafa duca di Noja dated 16 March 1820: [...] S. A. R. il Luogotenente Generale ha conceduta al Maestro di Musica Sig. Raimondi sino a tutto il corrente mese di Marzo una proroga al congedo accordatogli, come Maestro della Cappella di Acireale, e ci6 per la considerazione di trovare il medesimo occupato attualmente per oggetti di Real Servizio in cotesto R.e teatro di San Carlo. [His Royal Highness the Lieutenant General has conceded to the composer Raimondi through all of the current month of March an extention of the leave of absence accorded him, as Maestro di Cappella of Acireale, and this because he finds himself presently occupied for purposes of royal service in the San Carlo theater. 25

Fondo teatri f.125, letter of Domenico Barbaja to Giovanni Carafa duca di Noja, 20 Feb. 1820: Dalle lettere scritte dal Sig.r Maestro Mayr gia comunicate all'E[ccellenza] V[ostra], ebbi motivo di sospettare dell'adempimento di sua promessa per rimettere la musica del nuovo Oratorio all'epoca prescritta dalla sua scrittura, quindi volendo riparare in tempo opportuno in caso di sua mancanza, diedi coramissione al celebre Sig.r Maestro Raimondi di scrivere altro oratorio con un libro nuovo espressamente scritto il quale ha per titolo - II Ciro in Babilonia. [From the letters written by Maestro Mayr already communicated to your Excellency, I had reason to be doubtful that he would keep his promise to complete the music of the new oratorio within the period prescribed in his contract. Wishing therefore to remedy the situation in time in case of his absence, I commissioned the celebrated Maestro Raimondi to write another oratorio with a new libretto expressly written for the occasion which has as a title Ciro in Babilonia]. Printed in Bruno Cagli and Sergio Ragni, eds., Gioachino Rossini, lettere e documenti, Vol. I, Pesaro, 1992. Another communication to Carafa in I-Nas Fondo Teatri f.129, dated 15 February, reports that royal permission for the substitution of Raimondi's oratorio for Mayr's had been granted. 39

Ciro was heard on March 13, with Giovanni David and Rossini's wife Isabella Colbran in the cast.

Rossini's Messa di Gloria:

a Collaboration with Raimondi

March 1820 was a significant month for Raimondi in another way. Rossini, as director of the Teatro San Carlo (and as husband of Colbran) had naturally known of Raimondi's substitution for Mayr as composer of a Lenten work for the theater. Rossini also must have read the review of the February performance at the San Carlo of Mose in Egitto,

which went on to proclaim the great promise of

the young composer Raimondi and the high expectations aroused by his forthcoming oratorio:

Profoundly learned in the science of music, cultured, intelligent, full of feeling and liveliness, young Raimondi unites to all of these gifts a fine modesty and the glorious honor of having been a pupil at our conservatory. How many reasons for the public to expect a happy production, and to26wish the young composer favor and encouragement!

Neither the reviewer's identity nor his source of information about Raimondi's learning and other positive attributes is known. He may have heard about Raimondi's

**Giornale del regno delle 1820.

Due Sicilie, 40

17 February

first act upon returning to Naples from Sicily, which was to visit his former teacher, Giacomo Tritto, to submit some of his recent fugues for examination.27 Raimondi had in any case acquired by March of 1820 a reputation as both a learned composer and one who could get things done in a hurry, qualities having considerable bearing upon the questions surrounding the authenticity of Rossini's Messa di Gloria

of 1820. The rumor of a collaboration between Rossini and

Raimondi on this mass had circulated in Naples from the time of the first performance, and Raimondi's name found its way into many biographies and work-lists of Rossini in this connection.28 While certainly not implausible, Rossini's many collaborations of this sort being well known, the rumor was impossible to verify so long as none of the relevant

27

Florimo, La scuola musicale di Napoli, III, 97. Florimo gives an incorrect date for this episode; Raimondi himself, in a contribution to the Palermo periodical La Ruota, Anno III n.13 (30 June 1841), 103-4, specified that this took place around his 34th year, i.e. 1820. 28

See, among other sources, Henri Blaze de Bury, "Rossini, sa vie et ses oeuvres," Revue des Deux Mondes, Nouvelle periode, ser.2 vol.6 (1854), 744; Enrico Montazio, Gioachino Rossini (Torino: Dall'Unione Tipografico-Editrice, 1862), 121; Antonio Zanolini, Una biografia di Gioachino Rossini (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1875), 253; Francis Toye, Rossini, a study in tragi-comedy (London: W. Heinemann, 1934), 75; Gino Roncaglia, Rossini l'olimpico (Milan: Fratelli Bocca, 1946), 71; Alfredo Bonaccorsi, Gioachino Rossini (Florence: Olschki, 1958), 172; Henry Weinstock, Rossini, a biography, (New York: Knopf, 1968), 100, 428; and Gossett's revised worklist for the "Rossini" article in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Bd.16 (Kassel: Barenreiter, 1979), col.1578. 41

sources had come to light.29

The first serious inquiry

into the matter was made by Philip Gossett in the 1960s following his discovery of sources for the Messa di

Gloria

and several other works from Rossini's period in Naples.30 Gossett concluded that the rumor of Raimondi's participation in the composition of the Messa di Gloria

was without

foundation, an opinion which long remained the last word on the subject.31

It is important to remember that Rossini's

autograph score was not among the sources discovered, save for a single page.32 As Gossett suggested, this at least partial dismembering of the autograph on Rossini's part hardly inspires one with much hope of finding the rest of it.

In the absence of this primary document of the work's

29

It is interesting to note in this connection the appearance of both Rossini's and Raimondi's name on the libretto for the ballet Castor e Polluce performed at the Teatro S. Carlo on May 30, 1821. This was almost certainly an adaptation of Rossini's music with additional numbers by Raimondi, and not, as suggested by Rosa Cafiero, a genuine collaboration ("Aspetti della musica coreutica fra Settecento e Ottocento" in Bruno Cagli and Agostino Ziino, eds., II Teatro di San Carlo 1737-1987, Napoli, 1987, 30931). 30

Philip Gossett, "Rossini in Naples: some major works rediscovered," Musical Quarterly LIV no.3 (July 1968), 31640. An Italian translation "Rossini a Napoli," appeared in the Bolletino del centro rossiniano di studi, Anno 1971 nn.1-3, 53-71. "Herbert Handt's introduction to his revised pianovocal score of the work (Lottstetten/Waldsut: Edition Kunzelmann, 1987) makes no mention of Raimondi. 32

The verso of this page, with Rossini's dedication to Gustave Vaez of 15 July 1846, is reproduced in Gossett, "Rossini in Naples," facing 337. 42

composition, it is evident that any position taken on the question of Raimondi's collaboration, whether pro or

contra,

will depend necessarily upon a degree of conjecture. Gossett's reasons for dismissing the idea of Raimondi's participation may be summarized as follows. Raimondi's name appears on none of the sources for the work hitherto discovered. Carl von Miltitz, moreover, whose "correspondence" printed as a lengthy footnote in Amadeus Wendt's Rossini's

Leben und Treiben33

is the earliest

printed source of the rumor, is a wholly unreliable witness, guilty of notable errors, and contradicting in several places the account given in the Giornale Sicilie

del regno delle

due

of March 31, one week after the first performance;

this review also makes no mention of Raimondi. Von Miltitz is so harshly critical of the mass that he must have been motivated largely by the anti-Italian and anti-Catholic prejudices typical of German Protestant attitudes of the time, as well as by envy of Rossini's success in the operatic world. But questions might be raised here about the logic of this argument. The perpetrator of an imbroglio does not habitually proclaim his deception to the world; it is rather in his interest to keep it as secret as possible. To cite only the most well-known of Rossini's later collaborations,

"Leipzig, 1824, 210-12. See also the translation of the description in Gossett, "Rossini in Naples," 332-33. 43

Rossini did not write the name of Tadolini on the score of the Stabat

Mater sent to Madrid in 1832, and likewise, the

original version of Mathilde

di Shabran heard in February of

1821 was not publicized as a new opera by Rossini and Pacini. Rossini would hardly have had reason to act differently if he availed himself of Raimondi's assistance in 1820. The absence of Raimondi's name from both the musical sources and the press coverage of the time in no way constitutes conclusive evidence that no collaboration took place. The question of von Miltitz' testimony is more complex. To begin with, there is reason to believe that the description of the mass cited by Wendt may not have been written by von Miltitz but by Franz Sales Handler, under whose name an article appeared in a German periodical34 containing an account of the mass almost identical to that attributed to von Miltitz. The first sentences will indicate generally the similarity of the two sources:

34

"Musikstand von Neapel," Caecilia VI (1827), 235-96. The passage corresponding to the description attributed to von Miltitz is on 266-8. It is odd that Radiciotti's discussion of this episode cites only von Miltitz' correspondence (Gioachino Rossini: vita documentata, opere ed influenza su lfarte, Tivoli, 1927-29, II, 400-3), taking no note of the conflicting attributions for the description of Rossini's Kessa di Gloria, even though he cites Handler's article in the bibliography (vol.Ill, 305). It is interesting that one of the reasons for Radiciotti's own skepticism regarding this description is its implied underestimation of Raimondi's contrapuntal abilities. 44

Von Miltitz

Handler

Wer ware nicht gespannt gewesen, den Liebling der Italienischen, fast mochte ich sagen, der europ&ischen Opernbiihne an heilger Statte zu horen, um dort vielleicht in der wiirdigsten Anwendung aller musikalischen Mittel und seines Talentes seine reiche Individualitat zu bewundern?

Wer ware nicht gespannt gewesen, diesen Liebling der Opernbiihne an heiliger StStte zu sehen, und dort vielleicht in wurdiger Anwendung seines Talentes und der ihm Gebote stehenden musikalischen Mittel, seine reiche Individuality zu bewundern.

Indess konnte eine solche Vermuthung, die Wahrheit zu sagen, nur von solchen gehegt werden die keinen Begriff haben von dem ganzlischen Verfalle und der emporenden Geringschatzung, mit welcher dieser wichtige Theil des Cultus in Italien verwaltet wird.

Diese Vermuthhung konnte indess, die Wahrheit zu sagen, nur von solchen gehegt werden, die Keinen Begriff von dem ganzlischen Verfalle und der Geringschatzung hatten, womit dieser wichtige Theil des religiosen Kultus in Italien uberhabt behandelt wird.

Ich habe von Rossini selbst gehort, dass er diese Messe in zwei Tagen gescrieben, und spater vernommen, dass auch Raimondi daran arbeitete.

Rossini hatte erklart dass er diese Messe in zwei Tagen geschrieben; auch verlautete, dass selbst Raimondi daran gearbeitete hatte.

Also Flickarbeit!

[Missing in Handler's article]

Only a few sentences are in fact identical in the two sources. Most differ in ways ranging from minor changes in orthography or word-order to the addition or deletion of significant phrases. That the scornful epithet ••Flickarbeit" is missing from Handler's article is an example of another difference worth noting: Handler, though harsh in his criticism, is decidedly less vitriolic than von 45

Miltitz. The latter, for instance, mockingly describes the theme of the overture by Mayr, which according to his account opened the solemnities for the feast of the Sorrows of Mary, as "dance-like," while Kandler simply notes that it is in "the modern style." Miltitz accuses Rossini of having made use of passages "stolen from German masters," while Kandler says that these passages were "learned from German and other masters." In at least two important respects Kandler's description seems the more authoritative: whereas Wendt, translating from Stendahl, gives the year of the mass incorrectly as 1819, Kandler corrected this to 1820, also omitting the incorrect date of November 24 found in von Miltitz' correspondence. And while von Miltitz states generally that the central idea of the opening section of the Gloria

was "not new," Kandler provides the specific

information that it was Abb£ Vogler who had done similar things. Who, then, plagiarized whom? Which author hypocritically helped spread the rumor of Rossini's secret collaboration with Raimondi—in a portion of an article or "correspondence" itself copied from another source? That Kandler's Caecilia

article appeared in print several years

after the publication of Wendt's translation of Stendahl's biography would appear to establish von Miltitz as the true author of the passage, but a closer look reveals the situation to be a good deal more complicated. Much of 46

Handler's article had appeared in print well before the publication of Wendt's book. For instance, a large part of the section on sacred music in Naples, of which the description of Rossini's Messa di Gloria concluding portion in the Caecilia

forms the

article, had been printed

in an Italian journal in 1822, though without the description of the 1820 Messa di gloria.35

Most of the long

section dealing with the Naples Conservatory had appeared in the Allgemeine

Musikalische

passages in the Caecilia

Zeitung

in 1821.36 Other

article show obvious similarities

with the chapter that Handler contributed to Andrea Majer's volume on Italian music,37 published even earlier. Handler's article for Caecilia,

in short, has the aspect of

an integrated anthology of his earlier writings, and there is no sure way of knowing whether the description of

3S

Franz Sales Handler, "Sullo stato presente della Musica in Napoli," Effemiridi letterare di Roma, Anno III (1822), 50-61. 36

Franz Sales Handler, "Uber den gegenwartigen Kulturstand des koniglichen Musikcollegiums in Neapel mit einem vorangehenden Ruckblicke auf die verblichenen Conservatorien dieser Haupstadt," Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung XXIII (Dec. 1821), columns 833-42, 856-63, 869-78. "Andrea Majer, Discorso sulla origne progressi e stato attuale della musica italiana (Padova: Minerva, 1821). Handler speaks of his contribution to Majer's volume in a letter of 6 July 1820, printed in Ludwig Schiedermair, "Venezianer Breife F.S.Handlers aus der Jahren 1818-20" in the Riemann-Festscrift (Leipzig: M. Hesse, 1909), 494-5. 47

Rossini's Messa di Gloria

was one of these.38 If Handler

did copy von Miltitz' description of the mass following the publication of Wendt's volume, it remains to be explained how he knew to change the incorrect year to the correct one. It would also seem odd that Handler, plagiarizing von Miltitz in 1824 or later, did not take the opportunity to bring up to date some of the obsolete information in the above-mentioned earlier articles, such as the characterization of Rossini as still residing in Naples. If Handler is the real author, then the rumor of Raimondi's collaboration has gained a far more dependable promulgator, not a chauvinistic German Protestant intent upon bashing Italian Catholics, but an Austrian Catholic—named "Franz Sales"—whose various writings show him to be, if anything, a musical italophile, though clearly a conservative one. In any case, neither writer claimed exclusive authority in the matter.

Each claimed merely to be reporting a rumor already

in circulation.39 "Handler's article for Effemiridi Letterare di Roma is characterized there as an "estratto di una lettera diretta ad uno de' Compilatori delle Effemiridi Romane" ["extract of a letter directed to one of the compilers of the Effemiridi Romane"]. Without Handler's original letter it is impossible to know what was omitted in the process of extraction. 39

This crucial distinction was blurred in the rather free French translation of the von Miltitz "correspondence" given by Blaze de Bury ("Rossini," 744), which implies that Rossini himself spoke to von Miltitz of Raimondi's collaboration: "Je tenais de Rossini lui-meme qu'il aviat bade en trois jours cette messe, a l'elucubration de laquelle Raimondi avait aussi contribue" ["I had it from 48

Whether by Kandler or von Miltitz, the problems of the description indicated by Gossett remain, such as the incorrect tonality and time signature given for the opening Kyrie,40

the unsubstantiated charge that Rossini made use

of his own operatic themes in the Mass, the erroneous description of the Mass as a complete setting of the ordinary and not a Messa di Gloria

as confirmed both by the

musical sources and the review in the Giornale delle

due Sicilie

del

regno

of March 31 1820, and the discrepancy with

that review regarding the other music performed on the same occasion.41

Yet even here it is not necessarily to be

concluded that the description of the Mass was in any way "fabricated."

It is not impossible, for instance, that two

different witnesses to a musical service might select different compositions to record.

In any case, alongside of

the errors, there are statements obviously to be taken as accurate: that the work was heard at the church of S. Ferdinando, that the opening of the Gloria

was based on the

alternation and juxtaposition of two themes, that the Mass contained a fugue. The unsolved problem remains the

Rossini himself that he had finished this mass, to which Raimondi had also contributed, in three days"]. 40

While von Miltitz gives the time signature as 5/4, obviously a misprint, Kandler gives it as 3/4—also wrong, but at least conceivable. "Von Miltitz and Kandler mention an overture by Mayr; the review speaks instead of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater as reorchestrated by Paisiello. 49

question of whether the assertion of Raimondi's participation ought to be placed among the accurate or inaccurate statements of the Wendt/Kandler account of Rossini's Messa di

Gloria.

If the foregoing observations are set forth not so much as reasons to believe the rumor of Raimondi's collaboration as reasons not to dismiss it as false, several other sources may be assigned to an intermediate category of circumstantial evidence which, while still not conclusive, tends in the direction of confirmation.

First, a revealing

bit of information about the Messa di Gloria

is found in a

letter from the French-born Neapolitan publisher Guillaume Cottrau to his mother on November 21, 1842, *2 which begins "Je viens d'acquerir une copie de la messe que Rossini 6crivait ici en 1821 [sic] pour la Congregation de l'6glise S. Ferdinando et qui avait ete

toujours gardee avec une

extreme jalousie" [I have just acquired a copy of the Mass which Rossini wrote here in 1821 for the Congregation of the Church of St. Ferdinand and which he had always guarded with great jealousy"]. Here again, the parallel with the 1832 Stabat

Mater—another sacred work which Rossini did not wish

to receive any diffusion—suggests itself. Next to be considered is the direct mention made of Raimondi in a letter from Rossini to his close friend, the 42

Guillaume Cottrau, Lettres d'un melomane pour servir de document a l'histoire musicale de Naples de 1829 a 1847, (Naples: A. Morano, 1885), 82-83. 50

conductor Michele Costa in London of October 7, 1861; Rossini wrote to solicit Costa's support in finding an English publisher interested in purchasing the property of Raimondi's immense 'triple oratorio' Putifar Giacobbe

- Giuseppe

-

for the benefit of Raimondi's family, left without

means of support following his death in 1853:43

My very dear son, colleague and friend, I know that you love me; I am proud of it, and I come to ask new proof of your love. It is probably not unknown to you that in the Spring of 1853 there was performed at the Teatro Apollo in Rome44 the magisterial work by the renowned composer Pietro Raimondi carrying the following title Giuseppe Three Lyric Dramas in One The text is by Giuseppe Sapio of Palermo. The performance was entrusted to the Congregation and Academy of St. Cecilia. Here are the titles of the three dramas: 1st: Putifar 2nd: Giacobbe 3rd: Giuseppe

Four characters and chorus Three characters and chorus Three characters and chorus

43

An English translation somewhat different from this one is to be found in Frank Walker, "Rossiniana in the Piancastelli Collection: II—Correspondence with Costa," Monthly Musical Record vol. 90 no. 1002 (Nov.-Dec.1960), 205-6. I am grateful to Dr. Piergiorgio Brigliadori of the Biblioteca Comunale A. Saffi in Forll, curator of the Piancastelli collection, for providing me with a photocopy of Rossini's autograph letter. 44

[Walker ("Rossiniana") mistakenly "corrects" this to August 8, 1852 at the T. Argentina, the date and site of the first performance of the work, but other performances of the 'triple oratorio' were indeed heard at the T. Apollo in the Spring of 1853. ] 51

These dramas are performed separately in the order marked 1,452, 3_; then all three simultaneously. The success obtained in Rome was colossal. For the performance there were 250 voices and 150 instruments, from which it may be seen that in Italy they sing more than they play!I Poor Raimondi died in Rome, leaving his family without any means of sustenance. A friend there concerned for them has turned to me to see if it might be possible to draw provision from the sale of the property of this singular and classic work to the advantage of the miserable children46 of its author. Wishing to do good, my first thought was to turn to you to ask for advice and protection. Do you think it possible that an English publisher would want to acquire the property of these dramas? Or do you think that in the recurrence of the Exposition it would be possible (as something extraordinary) to perform this work in London? Great as you are, respected, loved, obeyed by all, a simple stroke of your baton (worth far more than the staff of Hoses) would be enough to satisfy my second request, which could serve as a step toward satisfying the first! You will probably tell me that, not having the score to examine, you cannot judge its importance and utility. I do not know these dramas either, but I do know what Raimondi was capable of in similar material, the great success of the work is known to me, and I have had recent reports from persons who took part in the vocal performance. These are all things that make me certain that I would not be leading you astray if you were willing to participate in this holy enterprise. Pressured as I am from Rome, I would appreciate a categorical reply, and if this were a positive one (as much as is possible for now) you would make many people happy and would show yourself ever more worthy of having as your father the affectinate, and entirely yours G. Rossini P.S. If you believe it opportune, I could have the score and parts sent to you; even a rental, in "Actually, Giuseppe preceded Giacobbe and 1853 performances (see Chapter 7).

in both the 1852

"Rossini's use of the plural is misinformed. Raimondi had only one child, Vincenzo, fully grown at the time of this letter. 52

place of a sale, could be of assistance to those poor ones. My wife desires to be remembered to you. Embrace your brother affectionately for me. Can you read this?

What did Rossini mean when he said that he knew "what Raimondi was capable of in similar material"?

Which other

of Raimondi's works of this type could Rossini have known? The 'triple oratorio' Putifar-Giuseppe-Giacobbe

was not

Raimondi's first experiment in musical simultaneity. It is most unlikely that Rossini was familiar with Raimondi's 1836 Messa di Gloria,

with several movements for double chorus

and double orchestra composed in such a way that each component could be performed separately, since the work was heard only in Palermo in 1836, and was never published.47 It seems even less probable that Rossini perused the various other experiments of this sort which Raimondi had published in the 1830s and '40s,48 though it is not inconceivable that he had read of them in the musical press. The most convincing solution of the problem would be to define Rossini's term "simile materia" to mean not "a group of musical compositions performable both separately and

47

See Chapter 4 for a description of this Mass. Rossini may have learned of it indirectly from a somewhat inaccurate description in the obituary of Raimondi written by Pietro Alfieri and printed in many newspapers and periodicals including Gazzetta Musicals di Milano XI n.46 (Nov. 13 1853), 101-2. 48

These are discussed in Chapters 5 and 6. 53

simultaneously," but rather "an imposing musical composition demonstrating great learning and contrapuntal skill." Such a composition would most likely be a sacred one, for Rossini shared fully in the attitude that sacred music was, by definition, learned music.49

In this case, we would have

to take a close look at the years 1820-23, the period when Raimondi's and Rossini's Neapolitan periods overlapped. Even during this time, Rossini's opportunities for hearing Raimondi's music were naturally quite limited, since he was more than occupied with his own affairs and away from Naples much of the time. At any rate, Raimondi's earliest securely datable sacred works for Naples long postdate the 1820 Messa in question.50

If, however, we accept Walker's

hypothesis that Raimondi's assistance with the 1820 Messa di gloria

was restricted to the portions requiring more

contrapuntal expertise, i.e. the 'Cum sancto

spiritu'

final

movement, then we have found a plausible candidate for the

49

See Rossini's response to the suggestion that he concentrate his creative energies on sacred music in Francois-Joseph Fetis, "Lettres sur la musique en Italie," Revue et gazette musicale, Vol. 8 no.61 (28 November 1841), 256, given in Italian translation in Radiciotti, ibid, Vol.11, Tivoli, 1928, 229. That Rossini still suffered from doubts about his own contrapuntal abilties at this late date is hardly irrelevant to the question of whether he might have sought Raimondi's collaboration on the Messa di Gloria. 50

This is the Mass in A-flat (I-Mc Noseda I 97) from

1827. 54

"simile materia" of Rossini's letter to Costa.51

If

Rossini did need help in completing the Messa di Gloria

as

the deadline drew near, it is difficult to imagine a more likely and attractive choice for the job than Pietro Rairoondi. Several musical sources provide further circumstantial evidence for Raimondi's participation. The library I-Palcon contains two autograph orchestral scores, R8 and R36, of a Stabat

Mater in d minor by Raimondi. The last page of R8

carries the following note in Raimondi's hand: "This Stabat was performed for the first time by the castrato Mose Tarquino, by the famous G[iovanni] B[attista] Rubini, and the bass Michele Benedetti in the Church of S. Ferdinando in 1821" ["Questo stabat fu eseguito la prima volta dal Musico Mose Tarquino, dal celebre G. B. Rubini, ed il Basso Michele Benedetti nella chiesa di S. Ferdinando nel 1821"]. The score includes a piano reduction of the orchestral accompaniment intended for the publisher Cottrau, who issued a combined orchestral and piano-vocal score of this work in 1824.52 The other autograph score of this Stabat

mater,

"Walker, op. cit., 205. Not having the score to examine, Walker naturally did not specify the contrapuntal portion or portions. Walker's hypothesis was taken over by Herbert Weinstock without credit in Rossini, a biography (New York, 1969), 100. "The full score, with a piano reduction of the orchestral part at the foot of the page, was actually published in 1824 by Girard (pi.no.358). See Rosa Cafiero and Francesca Seller, "Editoria musicale a Napoli attraverso la stampa periodica: il Giornale del Regno delle Due 55

R36, carries a similar note which includes an explicit and proud reference to this edition and another important piece of information: "This stabat was performed in Naples in the Church of S. Ferdinando by the eunuch Moise Tarquenio, G. B. Rubini, and the bass Michele Benedetti on Friday of the Lady of Sorrows. It was printed in 1822, but the copies are all sold out" ["Questo Stabat fu eseguito in Napoli nella chiesa di S. Ferdinando dall'Eunico Moise [sic] Tarquenio [sic], G. B. Rubini, ed il Basso Michele Benedetti il venerdi dell'Addolorata. Fu stampata nel 1822, ma le copie sono tutte esaurite"]." This means that shortly after the performance of Rossini's Messa di Gloria,

a work rumored to

have been partially by Raimondi, Raimondi himself was asked to compose music for the same liturgical function at the same church. This 1821 Stabat

furnishes more than the external

evidence relating to its commissioning and place of performance, as will be explained below.

Sicilie'" (1817-1860), Le fonti ricerche 3 (1989), 68. 53

musicali

It is another of

in Italia,

Studi

e

As given on the last page of I-Pc R8, the final numeral "1" of the date 1821 replaces a "2" which has been rubbed out. There is therefore no disagreement with the date 1822 given on p. Ill of R36, the other autograph manuscript of this Stabat, which specifies only the date of publication. The note "In Napoli l'Anno 1822" on the title page of the manuscript R36 would in this case be mistaken. The assignment of the date 1821 for the Stabat is therefore tentative pending the discovery of other relevant information. 56

Raimondi's works, however, which would seem to provide the strongest substantiation of the rumor. This is the Gran Messa di Gloria Reali.

a due Orchestra

con Credo a Sedici

Parti

Though the manuscript (I-Nc Mus. Relig. 1805) is

undated, we may assign it to the early-to-mid 1820s: Raimondi is identified on the title page as "Maestro di Cappella e Socio corrispondente della Reale Accademia Borbonica di Belle Arti in Napoli"—to which he was first named in 1824. Convinced of the great historical significance of his works, and inordinately proud of the various awards, honors, and professional positions he managed to accumulate in the course of his career, Raimondi generally flaunted his titles as soon as he had acquired them, as a glance at his published opera libretti demonstrates clearly.

The libretto of Le nozze

de'

Sanniti

(Naples, San Carlo, February 24 1824) already identifies him as "socio corrispondente della real Accademia delle Belle Arti di Napoli," less than two months after Raimondi had obtained this title,54 while the libretto for

Sapienti

Pauca (Teatro del Fondo, December 31 1825) calls him "Socio corrispondente della Real Accademia delle Belle Arti, e maestro di contrappunto del Real Conservatorio di musica di Napoli" only one week following his nomination, again at the

S4

Zingarelli's letter of January 10 1824 welcoming Raimondi as an associate of the academy is printed in Cicconetti, Memorie, 34. 57

instance of Zingarelli, to the latter post.55 Similar additions to Raimondi's curriculum

vitae,

as it were, may be

found in the libretti for operas following his nomination as director of the Palermo conservatory and the Teatro Carolino in 1833 and maestro

di camera to Prince Leopoldo, Count of

Siracusa and Luogotenente in Sicily, in 1835. Since the first page of Raimondi's Messa di Gloria

gives only one

title for Raimondi, that of Associate of the Academy of Fine Arts, we would be safe in assuming an approximate date of 1824-25 for this Mass.

But Raimondi's imposing autograph

score is beautifully bound and provided with an ornate title page in an unknown flourishing hand.

It is highly possible

that this manuscript was presented to the Academy on the occasion of Raimondi's becoming a member; the submission of a sample of the composer's mastery was standard practice when gaining admission to such honorary societies. This would push the date back to 1823-24, i.e. the period immediately preceding Raimondi's nomination to the Academy. In any case we are dealing in all probability with a Messa di gloria

composed several years after Rossini's. Two

passages from this Mass containing multivoiced (sixteen part) counterpoint will be considered later on in this chapter; of more pressing concern is another passage bearing

55

, See the letter of the secretary of the conservatory, Giuseppe Lemmo, to Raimondi dated December 22 1825 in Cicconetti, Memorie, 33-4. 58

directly on the problem of the authenticity of Rossini's 1820 Messa di

Gloria.

In line with Walker's suspicions referred to above, it is the most notably contrapuntal section of Rossini's mass, the Cum sancto

spiritu

fugue, which a section of Raimondi's

work closely resembles. The similarity is particularly striking as the passage in question occurs at virtually the same point in the text of the Messa di gloria:

Raimondi's

fugal passage is a setting of the word Amen immediately following the text Cum sancto

spiritu

in gloria

Dei

patris.

The vocal parts of the first eight measures of this passage are shown in ex. 1.3.56 Before illustrating the similarities between the two works, let us note one important difference. Though Raimondi's passage, for eight-part double chorus, undoubtedly begins like a fugue, it is more properly a hybrid of elements of fugue and canon—itself an idea already hinted at, as discussed above in connection with the Christe

double-canon, and which Raimondi would later develop

considerably, though in a rather different way.57 Unlike

56

This movement lacks a tempo indication. It is preceded by a brief setting of the text Cum sancto spiritu in 6/8, marked andantino. There are no numerals for folios or pages in the manuscript. S7

See Chapter 5 for a description of Raimondi's Nuovo genere di scientifica composizione musicale (Naples, 1843), which consists largely of compositions for eight-part double chorus, one chorus performing a fugue while the other sings a canon. 59

the exposition of the Cum sancto Messa di gloria,

spiritu

fugue of the 1820

Raimondi's opening measures consistently

present the subject together with its countersubject, all that is sung by Chorus I being repeated literally by Chorus II beginning at measure 7. The result might also be described as four-voice fugue in Chorus I, each individual part of which is seconded by a canon at the unison in Chorus II.

This eight-part canon between the two choruses is twice

interrupted, after the manner of a fugue, by brief sequential episodes (mm. 25-7 and 41-45).

With each

resumption of the canon, Raimondi reduces the time-interval between dux and comes from six measures at the beginning down to three at mm. 28-31 and later down to one at mm. 4650.

In the latter passage, this reduction is mirrored

within each chorus by a stretto, the countersubject being brought in obliquely as the continuation of the subject as it appears in each entering voice. A further sequential episode leads into a dominant pedal (mm.53-61) followed not by a definitive cadence in the tonic but a deceptive cadence leading into a new passage in E-flat; thus the canon lacks tonal closure. Examples of double and triple invertible counterpoint abound throughout. Such a structure, combining the artifices of fugal composition with several types of canon, seems to have been planned as a contrapuntal tour-deforce; this impression is strongly reinforced by the following section, the final Amen movement in E-flat, in 60

which the chorus splits into sixteen-part imitative counterpoint, and by the Credo,

also in sixteen parts,

appended to the Raimondi's Messa di

gloria.

Exx. 1.4a and 1.4b juxtaposes the subject and tonal answer of Rossini's four-part fugue with that of Raimondi's eight-part canon.

(Like the examples to follow, ex. 1.4

omits text as well as instrumental parts, and transposes Raimondi's music up a minor third to the key of B-flat major for easier comparison.) Even the slightly different rhythmic profile of Raimondi's subject has a precedent in the 1820 fugue—the sporadically used countersubject heard first in the soprano voice at m.8 (ex. 1.5); this rhythmic/melodic contour figures not only in Rossini's own countersubject, but in imitative passages in both the 1820 mass and the later work with nearly identical chromatic inflections (ex. 1.6). Both the 1820 and 1824 movements open with a passage of several homorhythmic chords for the chorus, on the text Cum sancto

spiritu,

before the fugal imitation begins. More

importantly, the close resemblance between the two subjects naturally imparts an overall similarity to the two works, both in their repeated statements and tonal answers, and the impossibility of their employment in stretto in any but a greatly abbreviated form (see mm.46ff of Raimondi's canon). None of this overall similarity, of course, can be regarded as conclusive: fugal subjects were generic, and many 61

examples of fugues by different composers based on the same subject are known to us. The most intriguing similarities between our two works, however, occur in free episodic passages. Let us refer back to the respective subjects of the fugues to note another difference (ex. 1.4). The more consistently syncopated subject of the 1820 mass contains two notes tied across the barline; the second of these rises a step before descending.

In the 1820 fugue, the two

sequential episodes based on the subject naturally retain this melodic contour. Raimondi's subject, however, has only one note tied across the barline, which descends directly. Yet, surprisingly, Raimondi's imitative passage based on the syncopated portion of the subject employs the rising step before the downward resolution.

In other words, for this

episode Raimondi seems to take as his point of departure the subject, not of the work at hand, but of the fugue of the 1820 Messa di gloria.

To demonstrate the similarity between

these passages, ex. 1.7 presents in isolation the voices participating in the two-part imitative counterpoint of the two works. The example also shows that the bass line of the earlier of the two passages of the 1820 Messa di

gloria

appears as the bass of Chorus II in the corresponding sequence of the Raimondi work. This two-part imitative pattern was evidently much liked by Raimondi, who employed it in the final Amen movement from the 1821 Stabat

mater. 62

Once again, for

greater ease in comparison, ex. 1.8 shows in isolation two imitating parts from a sequential episode of this Amen.

As

in the 1824 Amen discussed above, the imitative figure is not identical to that of the passage from the 1820 Mass given in ex. 1.7a; here its contour and rhythmic profile is slightly altered by the inclusion of a pair of eighth notes. But if the altered figure seemed somewhat out of place in the 1824 Amen, where it distorted the contour of the "subject," it seems a wholly foreign element in the 1821 three-part fugue, with no real reason to be there at all, having nothing to do with any thematic material presented earlier or later in the movement. The imitative passage of the 1820 fugue given in Ex. 1.7c thus begins to assume the aspect of a Raimondian thumbprint. If Raimondi did assist Rossini in the composition of the cum sancto

spiritu

fugue, what can we know about the

nature of such a collaboration?

In the absence of further

evidence, it is probably best toxleave this question unanswered.

The movement may be Raimondi's alone; this

would accord with Rossini's practice in Mose in Egitto, original Mathilde

di Shabran,

and the 1832 Stabat

Mater,

the and

in various other works in which entire numbers were entrusted to other composers. Certain stylistic anomalies, however, make this less than fully certain. The fairly adventurous modulatory scheme of the fugue is quite atypical for Raimondi, an upholder of the conservative fugal 63

tradition espoused by his teacher Giacomo Tritto. Also untypical is the general paucity of double counterpoint in the movement, the proper exhibition of which was for Raimondi an important part of fugal composition. The inversion of the fugal theme is also problematic. Examples of inversion in Raimondi's fugues are quite rare, and invariably present the inversion precisely and literally.58 The inversion of the Cum sancto

spiritu

subject at mm. 68-

70, however, is merely approximate—a literal inversion would have been as in ex. 1.9, with the overall descending contour of the subject's second measure mirrored by an ascending motion, rather than duplicated by another descending one. Also to be considered are the striking differences in style of orchestration between the 1820 Cum sancto the 1824 Amen canon.59

fugue and

In the earlier work, the four vocal

parts are reinforced throughout by string parts which double their lines either at the unison or the octave, sometimes literally and sometimes with livelier rhythmic figuration.

"Examples are the sixth lezione of his Nuovo genere di scientifica composizione musicale, op. cit., 63-74, the fuga irregolare per moto contrario in the Tu es sacerdos movement of the 1843 Dixit Dominus in I-Palcon, R41 (copy in I-Rsc A.Ms.322), and passages in his setting of the Psalm 30 in Salmodia davidica, vol. Ill (I-Rsc G.Mss.8), 63v-77v. 59

I am grateful to Casa Ricordi in Milan for making available to me a bound copy of Giovanni Acciai's manuscript critical edition of Rossini's Messa di gloria, which greatly facilitated my study of the style of orchestration of the final movement. 64

These doublings in the strings are generally quite consistent—almost mechanically so—throughout the movement: the violas supporting the tenors, 1st violins with the sopranos, 2nd violins with the altos, and both 'cellos and contrabasses with the basses. The winds also play an active role in reinforcing the vocal lines of the fugue, but in a different manner, each wind instrument moving from one vocal part to another. The oboes, for example, begin by doubling the soprano line, then switch to supporting the altos, returning finally to the sopranos. Similar migrations are found in the flute part (at times doubling the sopranos but switching for one passage to the tenors) and the bassoons, alternating between tenors and basses. All wind parts drop out of the texture entirely for several passages distributed throughout the movement, leaving them for the strings alone to carry.

In the 1824 Amen, however, the winds are never

given any doubling tasks, being restricted throught to sustaining roles and brief chordal interjections, and never reinforcing a vocal line for more than one or two occasional measures. The strings as well present an entirely different picture from that of the earlier work: in place of a rigorously carried out assignment of doubling for each of the main string parts, there is a much more restless flux in their roles, not dissimilar to the writing for winds in the Cum sancto

fugue. The second violins, for example, begin by

doubling the sopranos, move on to double the altos, and at 65

m. 25 begin to double the tenors; 1st violas and 'cellos likewise are brought in to reinforce different vocal parts at different times. There are also a number of passages in which the 1st or 2nd violins move independently, not taking part in the fugal texture at all, thus producing an even greater contrapuntal density than in the rest of the movement, with the number of independent parts rising to nine or ten.

(Their independence is of course highly

qualified, in that even these passages in Orchestra I are precisely imitated in Orchestra II, so their participation in the larger imitative structure is never in doubt.) the two fugal numbers from Raimondi's own 1821 Stabat for the Church of S. Ferdinando, the Fac ut ardeat

In mater

and the

final Amen, the distribution of string parts demonstrates a similar freedom and independence from the vocal lines, particularly the tenor and bass.

But these differences in

style of orchestration between the 1820 Cum sanctus

fugue

and other of Raimondi's fugal movements from the same period do not necessarily point to a weakness in the hypothesis of Raimondi's participation.

If the 1820 fugue was indeed

composed in a rush, as Rossini himself admitted, a simpler method of orchestration would have naturally been in order, while an immense tour-de-force of contrapuntal learning, worked out in relative leisure for admission into a learned society, would demonstrate far more subtlety. Orchestration aside, these considerations may indicate 66

a relatively limited role for Raimondi, such as completing a fugue already sketched by Rossini, the working out of one or more purely mechanical passages of the work (such as the imitative sequence of mm.18-20), or the composition of the last nine measures (from the dominant pedal through the final cadence).

If Raimondi's participation were truly

limited, it might be more to the point to hypothesize that in his own Messa di gloria

he borrowed from Rossini's as a

means of demonstrating, to his own satisfaction if no one else's, how much more he could accomplish with the same material than his far more illustrious colleague. In summary, enough circumstantial evidence exists to support strongly the hypothosis that the rumor of Raimondi's participation in Rossini's 1820 Messa di gloria

contained

some truth. Certainly some of the factors discussed— Rossini's at least partial dismembering of his autograph score, his "extreme jealousy" regarding the score as described by Cottrau, Raimondi's being commissioned to supply music for the same church and liturgical function the following year, and above all the similarity between the 1820 Cum sancto spiritu and the Amen canon from Raimondi's Messa di Gloria of the mid 1820s—are all quite satisfactorily explained if we accept this hypothesis, and rather mystifying if we do not. Raimondi's name belongs next to Rossini's on the latter's work-list in connection with this beautiful and imposing fugue, even if enclosed within 67

parentheses and qualified by a question mark.

Stabat

Mater

C182H: the Fuaal Finale

Raimondi's early StaJbat Mater is much more than a piece of the puzzle surrounding the authenticity of a work by Rossini, but a significant and revealing work in its own right.

Even without his involvement with Rossini's Mass

performed in 1820, on which occasion an arrangement by Paisiello of Pergolesi's Stabat

Mater was also heard, we

could assume a familiarity with the latter work on Raimondi's part on internal evidence alone, since there are striking similarities between it and Raimondi's own

Stabat

setting of 1821. There is, first of all, a virtually oneto-one correspondence between the two works in the breakdown of the stanzas of the poem into individual numbers. Even the two cases where Raimondi has created smaller individual numbers out of stanzas which Pergolesi joined together into larger ones (in the first instance, Quis est peccatis,

and toward the end Quando corpus

homo and pro

and the final

Amen, have precedents in the earlier setting, where separate sections within numbers are marked off with their own tempo indications for these stanzas. Representing the reverse case—formal divisions in the poem as set by Pergolesi but collapsed into a single movement by Raimondi—is only one of the latter's thirteen numbers, Fac ut portem, 68

which

includes, with no formal break, the stanza beginning with the work Inflamatus

set separately by Pergolesi.

similarities may be seen as well. Fac ut ardeat

Other

Both composers set the

and the final Amen as fugal fast movements

which contrast strongly with the slower and more lyrically conceived movements making up the preponderance of numbers in their settings. Even in these up-tempo fugal numbers there are correspondences, i.e. the way that orchestral lines not directly participating in the fugal structure nevertheless participate actively in creating the bustling polyphonic effects sought by the two musicians at these points.

Similar also is the occurence of the half-step

"crying" theme in Raimondi's s tenor aria Vidit soprano's Sancta

mater,

suum and the

and the preponderence of "feminine"

endings in triple meter. The differences between the two scores are also noteworthy.

One is Raimondi's inclusion of a part for the

bass voice, heard in two strongly declamatory solo arias and participating in six ensemble numbers; this provides for a more extensive variety of timbre than is to be found in Pergolesi's setting. At a number of points Raimondi indulges in surprising distant modulations: the brief foray into A major (enharmonically equivalent to B double-flat Major) following a D-flat cadence within the f-minor 0 quam tristis

(p.11), and the tonicizations of e-minor and b-minor

within the g-minor soprano aria Sancta 69

mater,

and most

strikingly in the brief E-major section of the f minor duet for tenor and bass Fac ut portem

(pp.82-3, ex. 1.10).

Though easy enough to relate to the key theoretically (lowered submediant of the subdominant of the main key in the first case, close relatives of the relative major in the second and third, a greatly expanded and enharmonically respelled leading tone in the last) the effect is nonetheless sufficiently wrenching as to seem out of place in a work otherwise so tightly reined in harmonically. None of these relatively daring passages, in any event, appears in the two fugal numbers, both quite brief. The first of these, Fac ut ardeat,

is not properly a fugue, but

occasionally behaves like one, as in the standard exposition at the opening and the stretto and dominant pedal toward the end. The a minor Amen, however, already cited in connection with the Rossini/Raimondi controversy, is an expertly crafted fugue following the precepts of Raimondi's teacher Tritto in having the first important change of key being to the subdominant (ex.1.11). It follows a straightfoward plan of exposition, sequential episode modulating to the subdominant (mm. 11-14) for statements of subject and answer in that key, another sequential episode (mm. 24-28) returning to the tonic a minor, stretto (beginning m. 28), dominant pedal, and final cadence. As in the 1810

Christe

and 1824 Amen canon discussed above, the string parts often include independent lines, and even where they double the 70

vocal parts, they do so freely, now doubling one voice and now another. The winds are entirely independent of the fugal structure. It was very likely this fugue which had so impressed Johann Simon Mayr when he made his own manuscript copy of the Stabat,

leading him to compliment Raimondi many

years later as a master of the strict style.60 This early Stabat

mater setting was unquestionably the

best known and most widely performed of Raimondi's early sacred works. Aside from the published full score (an extremely rare honor for an Italian sacred work of this period, and soon sold out, as Raimondi was proud to point out), a number of manuscript copies of the work are extent.61 The evident popularity of the work is all the more noteworthy in that it lacks those qualities usually associated with Raimondi's sacred music, such as complex canonic structures and many-voiced counterpoint—to say nothing of experiments with simultaneity, which lay years in the future. This early Stabat

Mater is simply a model of

what many in the early nineteenth century considered the ideal type of sacred music: conservative, severe, and shorn

60

This was not the first point of contact between Mayr and Raimondi, whose friendship together was described in Mayr's letter of 2 September 1844 (reproduced in Cicconetti, Memorie, 82-3) as of many years' standing. Raimondi also contributed an insert aria for an 1810 performance of Mayr's Ii'amor con jug ale. 61

In addition to the copy in Mayr's hand mentioned above (in I-BGc Faldone 273) these include I-Nc, I-Nf, IBsf, I-Pb. 71

of florid vocal writing and other operatic touches. Messa f!824); canons and fuaues in sixteen parts Two final passages from the 1824 Mass will permit a glimpse of the first sixteen-part counterpoint of Raimondi to come down to us. Immediately following the Amen canon bearing such strong similarities to the Cum sancto fugue from Rossini's Messa di Gloria,

spiritu

there is another

extended setting of the word "Amen," reproduced in ex. 1.12 with text omitted. Here each of the two choirs is divided into eight parts (SSAATTBB). This turns out to be a canon, but unlike the eight-part canon for double-choir in the Christe

of 1810, this sixteen-part canon has only a single

orchestra accompanying it. At the beginning, following two measures of introduction in the violins, two different eight-measure perpetual canons are given by the two choirs respectively for a total of three times. Then follows a sequential passage functioning in the manner of a fugal episode, another example of the fusion of canonic and fugal elements in Raimondi's counterpoint. After a third complete repetition of the eight-measure canon (mm.54-61) begins another, this time interrupted after four measures. Here Raimondi brings about the same type of choral exchange employed in the 1810 Christe,

with Choir I taking up the

canon first heard in Choir II and vice-versa, thus wiping out the clear-cut thematic division of labor between them obtaining up to that point, and leading rapidly to a final 72

cadence. Ex. 1.13 reproduces the opening measures (without text or instrumental parts) of the Credo appended to the 1824 Messa di Gloria,

which is in sixteen parts, as noted

carefully on the title page. This movement alternates imitative passages with chordal writing for the choir. The concluding portion is labeled "Fuga," and is furnished with separate tags indicating four subjects and four countersubjects in Choir I (one tag for each of the eight voices) and the eight answers to these items in Choir II (likewise). What are labeled "risposte" in Choir II, however, are not answers, either tonal or real, in any traditional sense. In fact, despite the indication "fuga" this does not begin like a fugue at all, but another sixteen part canon, since Choir II echos Choir I at a distance of two measures. Oddly, the passage which does qualify as a proper fugal answer is labeled not "risposta" but "rivolta alia 5a del tono"; despite the unconventional labeling, this passage at least partially justifies the description as a fugue, as does the sequential episode which follows. But the specific devices, whatever the particular labeling, distract from the more important question of what any labels at all are doing in the score. For whose benefit did Raimondi so carefully note down the four "subjects," four "countersubjects," eight "answers" and "inversion in the dominant"?

Whom did he intend to reach with such labels? I 73

have speculated above that the 1824 Mass was composed on the occasion of Raimondi's joining the Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples, either by way of soliciting the nomination or of expressing gratitude for it; perhaps on this occasion it was that learned company he wished to impress. But such labels continued to appear in Raimondi's scores, in practical works as well as those he termed "scientific," and they are often more difficult to relate to any such definite circumstances. Clearly this is not just a notational quirk, but goes to the heart of Raimondi's peculiar image as a musician. Cecil Gray suggested that Raimondi's disappointing and deteriorating theatrical career in the 1820s and '30s was what induced him to turn to experiments in simultaneity, finding it not surprising that defeated in the operatic field by Rossini and his brilliant successors, he should have tended increasingly as time went on to devote his energies to the cultivation of the religious field in which his supremacy could not be challenged. The Dutch scientist Marais, in his fascinating study of the white termite ant, has described how this insect, if its habitat is disturbed, abandons its normal activities and builds a fantastic kind of tower; similarly Raimondi as if in protest against the intrusion into the traditional operatic field of the all-conquering newcomer, resolved to build for himself a towering monument elsewhere, before which his contemporaries would halt in amazement and admiration—a kind of Beckfordian Fonthill Abbey 'folly' of music."

If there is any truth to this, it must be qualified in the strongest way, for, as has been shown, Raimondi's "Pietro Raimondi," 98. 74

preoccupation with the theoretical, as opposed to practical, aspects of composing was fully manifest in some of the earliest works of his to survive.

In these works, his

absorption of the precepts of Sala and Leo63 was reflected in his concentration on the problems of multi-subject fugues and the division of large bodies of contrapuntal parts into smaller components with differentiated functions—ideas extended and developed in some of Raimondi's later experiments. Though the somewhat freakish aspect of the latter may induce us to seek an external explanation, such as a desire to protest, as Gray was cited above as saying, "the all-conquering newcomer" Rossini, the experiments may be seen rather as having grown quite naturally out of a venerable Neapolitan tradition of academic counterpoint.

"For more on Raimondi's position within this tradition see Chapter 3. 75

Ex. 1.1 Nicola Sala, Regole di contrapunto, (Naples, 1794), VoL m , pp. 183 -184, mm. 1-16

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Ex. 1.4 Subjects and tonal answers from Raimondi's 1824 canon (transposed to B-flat) and the fugue from the 1820 Messa di Gloria:

1.4a: Subjects

1.4b: tonal answers 1820 =2f:

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Ah

CHAPTER 3 Raimondi as

Leista

Whether attributed to his success in the theater1 or his reputation as a learned musician,2 Raimondi's appointment to a double position in Palermo in 1833 has been characterized as an honor, a just recognition of his talents. Raimondi himself seems to have been anxious to strengthen this impression.3

But having obtained a

position of some authority in Naples he would certainly have regarded a move to a provincial capital as a significant step down in his career. Still more misleading are the speculations of Ottaviano Tiby, who suggests that Raimondi himself helped to overcome the opposition to his appointment on the part of the superintendent of public performances and

1,1

...dopo il successo splendidissimo del Ventaglio, il Re con decreto dei 2 giugno 1833 lo nomind maestro della scuola di contrapunto del Conservatorio in Palermo..." (Florimo, La scuola musicale di Napoli, III, 98). 2

"Per la sua rinomanza nella scienza armonica fu scelto a dirigere il Reale Conservatorio in Palermo [...]" (Pietro Alfieri, "Necrologia,n 101. 3

See Raimondi#s preface to Bassi imitati e fugati, reproduced below, where he speaks of his assignment to Palermo as an act of "sovrana clemenza" of King Ferdinand. 148

the decurionato by exploiting his royal connections.4 But the title which Tiby claims Raimondi held at the time, "Maestro di Camera di [Prince] Leopoldo, Conte di Siracusa e Luogotenente di Sicilia," was not actually awarded to him until the summer of 1835, two years after he officially assumed his duties in Palermo.5 The supposition that Raimondi was reluctant to transfer his activities to Palermo is confirmed by a document dated 29 September 1831, located in the archivio

storico

of the Naples conservatory.6 In

it, Raimondi petitioned the Marchese di Pietracastello, the secretary of state for internal affairs, for an increase in salary: unless he received it, he would have no choice but to accept the flattering offer extended by Baron Pisani in Palermo to direct the conservatory there.7

Raimondi's

petition runs as follows: Pietro Raimondi, Maestro di Contrapunto of the Royal College of Music in San Sebastiano humbly makes known to your Majesty that he has served in said position for some six years at the salary of 20 ducats per month, which with various withholdings is reduced to a mere 17. The salary 4

0ttaviano Tiby, II real teatro Carolino e musicale palermitano, Florence, 1957, 152-3.

l'ottocento

5

The circumstances of the awarding of this title to Raimondi are discussed below. 6

Nc XI-42-13.

'According to the earliest published history of the Palermo conservatory, Pisani had first met Raimondi in Palermo prior to 1820, that is, during the composer's first period in Sicily. See Benedetto Castiglia, "11 Buon Pastore," La ruota, Anno Secondo n.5 (1 March 1841). 149

for this position was originally 50 ducats, and when the position was filled by the petitioner it was reduced to 40. The salary was divided in half when the position came to be shared with another composer, Maestro Ruggi. The petitioner Raimondi respectfully informs your Excellency that I have received most flattering offers from the Director of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Palermo to accept the position of Maestro Contrapuntista of that establishment, and together with these offers that director has shown me the letter sent to the Lieutenent of Sicily asking for a salary for me adequate to the purpose of allowing Raimondi and his family to lead a tranquil life. Your Excellency may confirm the truth of what I have declared also by means of Director Zingarelli, who is fully informed. The unhappy position of the petitioner would merit a request on his part for permission to accept such a fortunate invitation, so honorable and advantageous for him, but the reflection that this would necessitate leaving an Establishment where he has toiled so arduously, and thus upset those Superiors who constantly cover him with the most honorable praises, place him in the circumstance of refusing the fortune which is now offered him at a time of greatest need. He flatters himself, however, that he may merit still more the consideration of the royal government, and with this firm faith dares to recommend to your Excellency that the unhappy position of the petitioner could in some way be ameliorated by increasing his salary to that degree proportionate to what it was before, and that this will be a just compensation for his labors." 8

Pietro Raimondi Maestro di Contrapunto del Real Collegio di Musica in S. Sebastiano umilm[en]te espone a V.E. come trovasi a servire nella sud.a gualita da circa sei anni col tenere soldo di Docati Venti al mese, il quale per le Varie ritenute viene ridotto appena a Docati 17. Nell'atto che il soldo addetto a questa Piazza in origine di D. 50 ed allorche fu proweduto nella persona del Ricorrente era di D. 40 ma fu diviso per meta a favore dell'altro Maestro Sig.e Ruggi. II Ricorrente Raimondi rispettosamente rassegna all'E.V. che dal Dirett.e del Real Conservatorio di Musica di Palermo ho avuto le piu lusinghiere offerte onde accettare la Piazza di Maestro Contrapuntista di quello stabilimento, conchiudendo con esse una lettera da esibirla 150

This transparent attempt to use Palermo as a bargaining chip in his negotiations for a pay increase at the Naples conservatory is less than fully candid. In stating his conservatory salary to be 20 ducats a month, he withheld any mention of his earnings in the theater, either as composer or musical director; his actual income was obviously higher than the figure he quoted.

In addition, Raimondi at the

same time was attempting to use several other bargaining chips in his negotiations with Palermo, at least one of which was wholly fictitous. In a memorandum to the secretary general Baron Lunicero, Baron Pisani related that Raimondi had written to tell him he was being besieged with offers, including two from Milan (to direct the Conservatory ad ogni richiesta di avere delle facolta di S.A.R. il Luogotenente di Assegnarglisi un soldo atto a poter inenare tranquilla la Vita del Raimondi e della sua famiglia. V. E. pud compiacersi verificare la verita dell'esposto anche per mezzo del Direttor Zingarelli, il quale e di tutto informato. L'infelice posizione del Ricorrente meriterebbe al caso di domandare un permesso per accettare un invito fausto per lui onorevole e vantaggioso, ma il riflettere che dovrebbe lasciare un Stabilimento ove ha impiegato fatiche, e recare un disturbo a quei Superiori che lo colmano tutto giorno di lodi le piu onorevoli, lo mettono nella circostanza di rifiutare una fortuna che nel maggiore suo bisogno gli e stata presentata. Egli perb si lusinga che cid possa fargli meritare sempre piu la considerazione del R. Governo in questa ferma fiduccia osa raccomandarsi a V. E. onde voglia migliorare in qualche modo l'infelice posizione del Ricorrente con portare il suo soldo a quel grado di aumento in proporzione di quello ch'era una volta, e che sia di giusto compenso alle sue fatiche. Tanto spera ottenere.

151

and to direct the Teatro alia Scala) and one from Naples (to direct the Teatro San Carlo).

Despite this plethora of

flattering offers, Raimondi was willing, Pisani continues, to give consideration to the position being offered him in Palermo; for these reasons it was necessary to offer him the generous salary of 400 onze annually.9

Only the first of

these putative offers has even indirect evidence to confirm it: the director of the Milan Conservatory, Francesco Basily, had been in communication with Raimondi regarding the a possible position there.10 In the end Raimondi profited little from this strategy: the Naples Conservatory officials evidently called his bluff, rejecting his petition for a pay increase, and when Raimondi arrived in Palermo to assume his duties as director and instructor at the Conservatory and director of the Teatro Carolino on June 18, 1833, his salary was fixed at 300 onze per year, less than what he had hoped. Various documents preserved at the Archivio di Stato in Palermo indicate that Raimondi's post at the Teatro Carolino was planned as entailing the same duties as those of two earlier directors who made brief journeys to Palermo from the mainland, Generali and Donizetti, but with one important difference: Raimondi was under no obligation to compose new

9

I-Pas I.S. 1271. The document, undated, was undoubtedly written in 1831. 10

See his letters to Raimondi of March and April 1837, quoted below. 152

works for the theater.11 This clause, however, does not appear in either of the two decrees of King Ferdinand dated June 2, 1833 assigning Raimondi to his double-position as director of both the theater and the conservatory; had Raimondi realized the decreased opportunities in Palermo for having his works staged, it is less likely that he would have wanted the new job.

Also missing from the decrees was

an important qualification, one of several unanimously agreed upon at the session of the Consiglio d'Intendenza,12 called specifically to discuss the question of the appointment of a musician to the double position in Palermo proposed by Pisani. According to this condition, in the event of rival claims over the maestro on the part of the conservatory and the Teatro Carolino, the theater was to take precedence. More precisely, this condition stipulated that

the service to be provided by the above-named Maestro for the theater must be preferred to the exclusion of any other service, including that of the Conservatory, whether according to the requirement of the administration or the impresario, not being permitted to pass over in any way that which pertains to public service

"The first document to mention this stipulation is the communication from the superintendent of Public Spectacles to Antonio Mastropaolo, Secretary of State for internal affairs to the Count of Siracusa, dated 17 December 1831 (IPas I.S.2477). 12

I-Pas I.S. 2407. 153

[...]

The subsequent repeated refusals of the theater management to accept Raimondi's resignation in order to concentrate on his duties at the conservatory, attested by many archival documents of the 1840s, must naturally be seen in view of this ordering of priorities. Thus, by the time of Raimondi's assumption of his duties in Palermo in 1833, various ingredients for a disaster were already in place, and indeed the new arrangement proved unsatisfactory from the beginning.

It is

noteworthy that the earliest document and two of the latest pertaining to Raimondi's theater post relate to his dereliction of duty.

The first is a complaint concerning

his absence from a performance of Mercadante's La donna caritea

in July of 1833:

[...] And what shall we say of Maestro Raimondi? ...we shall employ our usual unalterable frankness, which is certainly not, as have suggested certain gustamestieri, an insult to the public, but rather a potent means for ensuring that this public is served and respected with humble devotion; and we shall say that Raimondi, in bringing the opera with such precision to a 13

[... ] il servizio da prestarsi dal cennato Maestro per il Teatro, debba esclusivamente essere preferito a qualunque altro, anche a quello del Conservatorio, secondo il bisogno, sia dell'Amministrazione, sia dello Impresario, non potendosi preterire in menoma parte, cid che interessa il pubblico servizio [...].

154

theater where he has been so strongly desired, could have directed the orchestra himself for the first evenings' performances of the work; that the Public awaited him; but then, the first time? And then? I attribute the weak reception of the opera to his absence. The second evening various pieces were cut, including the tenor's cavatina di sortita, the largo of the first finale and the duet of the two women. We are not condemning that in this season this lengthy work was rendered bothersome, but in a theater such as ours, directed by a Raimondi, and sung by four excellent actors [...] this is unpardonable.14

Twelve years later Raimondi wrote a letter to the journal La Falce,

requesting that it be inserted in the

following issue; in this letter Raimondi emphasizes that the recent performance of Bellini's La Sonnambula, criticized

in the journal,

heavily

had not been prepared by him, but

by one "Cavaliere Bochsa" who had been kind enough to take Raimondi's place during his brief absence for "indisposition "Passatempo per la Donna, 13 VII 1833: [...] E che diremo del maestro Raimondi?...useremo la nostra solita franchezza inalterabile, la quale non e per certo un insulto al Pubblico, come han giudato certi gustamestieri, ma sarebbe un mezzo potentissimo per far si che questo Pubblico venga con ogni religiosita servito e rispettato; e diremo che il Raimondi, nel metter con molta esattezza lo spartito in un teatro nel quale vi e stato tanto desiderato, avrebbe dovuto ei stesso le prime sere della rappresentazione star a dirigerlo in orchestra; che ivi appunto il Pubblico lo attendeva; e poi la prima volta?....e poi? —Attribuenzo l'esito poco felice dell'opera alia sua lunghezza, furono la seconda sera tagliati e tolti vari pezzi fra quali la cavatina di sortita del tenore, il largo del primo finale e il duetto delle due donne. Noi cid non condanniamo, che in questa stagione quello spartito lungo si rendea molesto, ma in un teatro come il nostro, diretto da un Raimondi, e cantato da quatto bravissimi attori [...] e cosa imperdonabile. 155

of health."15 Also revealing in this regard is the furious letter from Count Alessandro Lucchesi-Palli, Administrator of the management of the Teatro Carolino, to the Superintendent of Public Spectacles, of January 15 1853.X6By this time Raimondi, fresh from the successful performances of his triple oratorio the previous year, was settling into his new position at St. Peter's, and obviously had no intention of returning to Palermo—but apparently still receiving regular payments as theater director there. Lucchesi-Palli reported

that in article 9 of the contract of the management, Pietro Raimondi was named maestro di cappella director of the Theater, to whom the Manager, on his part, was obligated to pay an honorarium of no more than 740 ducats, paid in funds of the theater, in regular rates. However, Maestro Raimondi has never, on his part, fulfilled his commitment toward the management, even before [his current trip to] Rome, where he still remains, and will remain forever, and as newspapers abroad have indicated, he has contracted to work at the Cappella of S. Paul [sic]. Management, in the meantime, having formally protested from the very beginning [the comportment] of Raimondi, has had to go elsewhere to provide for its need for a Maestro Director. Nevertheless Your Excellency the Pretore of Palermo, in the handling of the monthly payments to the management, has not ceased to provide for the same honorarium for Sig. Raimondi, who has already accumulated almost five hundred ducats. Now, by that holy and eternal principle of reason and justice that the payment must be given ^Letter no. 32, 63.

dated

24 November printed

16

I-Pac Interno 2644. 156

in La Falce,

Anno II

in return for actual work; [feeling] that Raimondi, who has always failed to live up to his obligations, should not have any right to his honorarium [as musical director], and since the mangageroent has had to hire others for this object, it follows that the management has the perfect right to implore the wisdom and justice of Your Excellency to transfer the sum hitherto accumulated on the account of the Maestro di Cappella to the undersigned, and that all other monthly payments in progress be terminated for this reason.17

In his anger, Lucchesi-Palli lapsed into hyperbole; it is undoubtedly an exaggeration to assert that Raimondi never

"Che nel contratto di appalto della Impresa istessa, all'art.o 9, fugli destinato Maestro di cappella direttore del Teatro, il Sig.r Pietro Raimondi, il quale obbligassi, dal canto suo lo Appaltatore, rispondere l'onorario di Ducati non piu di 740, in atto gravati sulla dote del Teatro, da rate mensurali. Per6 il Maestro Raimondi, non ha mai, dalla parte sua adempito il suo impegno verso 1'Impresa: egli trovatosi, prima anche di aver questo cominciamento in Roma, vi e durato e vi dura sempre, e, per quanto per gli ultimi giornali esteri resta contestato, egli ha contrattato la opera sua colla cappella di San Paolo [sic] in Roma. La Impresa, intanto, protestatasi formalmente sin dal suo bel primo collo stesso Raimondi, ha dovuto prowedersi altrimenti al bisogno del Maestro Direttore. Non perd S. E. il Pretore di Palermo, nelle somministrazioni delle rate mensuali della dote fatte sinora all'Impresario, ha creduto trattenere sulle stesse rate mensurali corrispondenti all'onorario, come sopra, destinanto al Sig.r Raimondi, per modo che gia contarsi da presso cinquecento Ducati di cumulati. Or, per quel santo ed eterno principio di ragione e di giustizia che alio emolumento debbe rispondere 1'opera; che Raimondi mancato sempre all'obbligo suo, non perd aver dritto di sorta al suo onorario; che in vero 1'Impresa ha dovuto awalersi di altri a quest'oggetto; viene il dritto perfetto all'impresa istessa d'implorare dalla saggezza e giustizia della E.V., che voglia benignarsi disporre a S.E. Pretore che sia liberamente pagata all'Esponente, nella qualita, quella somma che sinora trovasi cumultata di conto onorario del Maestro cappella [sic] Direttrore, come, altresi tutte altre rate mensuali che saranno in progresso per iscadere per tal causa. 157

fulfilled his obligations as director of the Teatro Carolino, as is made clear in this chapter.

It is

nevertheless indicative of the tense relations between Raimondi and the management brought on by his ever dwindling commitment to the theater. By 1847 he had put in an official request to be relieved of his duties at the Carolino—turned down by the authorities by the simple expedient of citing as still valid the very document Raimondi was trying to alter, his original contract, with its specification of his duties at both the conservatory and the theater.18 During his tenure of eighteen years as director of the Teatro Carolino, Raimondi wrote only three new operas for this theater. These were II cafettiere

(July 6 1838),

FrancBSca Donato (December 12 1842), and II no (March 1851); only the second of these aroused any enthusiasm.19 In addition, he produced a revision of Vinclinda,

which had

been an outright failure at its Neapolitan premiere on May 30 1837, as Sveno (Carneval 1839); the new version was no more successful than the original.

The earliest of these

operas came six years after Raimondi's arrival in Palermo; apparently, during the earliest part of his tenure there, his only hope for having his operas performed was to make a return visit to Naples, the scene of his earlier modest 18

I-Pac Interno 2477, Memorandum of August 24 1847.

19

JI pirata,

Anno VIII no. 53 (30 XII 1842), 214. 158

triumphs. Raimondi's first absence from Palermo, which lasted from March through September of 1835, only worsened his situation. He was invited by the king's son Leopoldo, the Count of Siracusa, to follow him to Naples, but somehow the authorities in Palermo were not informed, either by Leopoldo or by Raimondi, of the expected duration of this sojourn. Raimondi's leave caused problems both for the authorities of the Conservatory, who had begun to receive complaints from the parents of pupils whose instruction had been interrupted, and for those of the Teatro Carolino, his lengthy absence from which compelled the management to assume the services of another musician, Andrea Monteleone, to put together the performances of Bellini's Norma, Donizetti's Parisina, and Persiani's Ines

de

Castro.

Naturally Monteleone had to be compensated for his efforts, resulting in further expenditure.20 The general displeasure of the Palermo authorities was evidently communicated to Raimondi by the summer of 1835, since he was careful to include for the first time, perhaps as a kind of insurance against their wrath, the title "Maestro di Cappella al servizio di S. A. R. il Principe Luogotenente Generale in Sicilia" below his name in the printed libretto for I parenti

ridicoli

on June 21, and similar information

(though this time "Maestro di Camera") in the libretto for 20

I-Pas Busta 2477. 159

L'orfana

russa

on August 26. It was probably at Raimondi's

anxious behest that Leopoldo interceded directly on behalf of the composer with two letters to the Palermo authorities from September 1835, reproduced by Cicconetti, defending Raimondi on the grounds that he had gone to Naples at the command of the Prince, and not on a whim.21 Though ostensibly in Naples "in the service of His Royal Highness," Raimondi was occupied above all as an opera composer during this trip. Neither of the two abovementioned operas he produced at the time found a warm reception. A similar visit to Naples toward the end of the year 1836 brought similarly disappointing results, with the added difficulty that Raimondi this time lacked the royal command of Prince Leopold as an excuse for his absence. The mangagement of the Teatro Carolino in Palermo countered by withholding some of his salary during his absence.

His

longtime supporter Pisani strenuously argued in Raimondi's defence,22 but by late 1836 he too had grown weary of Raimondi's obvious lack of commitment to his theater position in Palermo, and suggested that contact be made with the composer Carlo Coccia, whom Pisani had considered for the post before settling on Raimondi, to take the latter's

"Filippo Cicconetti, Memorie, 43-4. "See his letter to Duca Sammartino, Secretary of State in Sicily, dated 23 January 1835 in I-Pas I.S. 2477. 160

place.23 Of Raimondi's Neapolitan operas from the mid-to-late 1830s, Isabella

degli

Abenanti

(S. Carlo, 26 September 1836)

found the most encouraging reception, enjoying enthusiastic reviews and a revival for the Carneval 1837 season—after which, however, it disappeared from the repertory. From here his operatic fortunes declined precipitously.

He made

a further professional journey to Naples during each of the two following years. In 1837 he introduced several new operas, including Vinclinda,

"una caduta in tutte le

forme;"24 and a sequel to II ventaglio maritata,

entitled

Palmetella

hardly more successful, though one journal

reported that the composer was called onstage after several numbers.25 The Neapolitan correspondent for the musikalische

Zeitung,

Allgemeine

long a strong supporter of Raimondi,

found positive things to say about Isabella (26 Sept. 1836) and II tramonto

degli

Abenanti

(8 April 1837), but could

not help noting that "Gli artifizi [Spring 1837] machte fiasco, und Vinclinda [May 1837] fiascone." Raffaele D'Urbino

Sanzio

(17 March 1838) also met with an extremely weak

reception. The critic from Passatempo

per la dama tried to

put this in the best possible light, saying that it

"See Pisani's letter to Prince Leopoldo, Luogotenente in Sicilia, of 16 August 1836 (I-Pas I.S.2477). 24

I1 pirata,

Anno II no. 100 (13 VI 1837).

2B

Omnibus, 6 IX 1837. 161

merely suffered the same fate as Rossini's Donna del

lago,

not having been fully understood at its first hearing, and indicated that it was beginning to be better appreciated. But the reviewer in II lucifero

approved only of a few of

the instrumental passages, noting that "la parte vocale della musica par che non ecceda la mediocrita."26 His uncomfortable situation in Palermo led Raimondi to seek a position elsewhere, as several documents printed in Cicconetti attest. In 1836, he applied for the post of instructor of composition at the Paris conservatory left vacant by the death of Reicha. The director of the conservatory, Luigi Cherubini, answered him on August 8, explaining apologetically that Reicha's successor had already been named to the post. He continued:

It is then with great regret that I am compelled to advise you that your hopes, and mine, cannot at present be realized. It is a great displeasure for me that the affair did not have the result which you desired, while furthermore our Conservatory would have been glorified to possess a man of your great talent, as your compositions make clear.27

26

Anno I no. 8, 28 III 1838.

27

Cicconetti, Memorie, 50: [...] Sono dungue, con gran rammarico, forzato di prevenirlo, che le sue speranze, e le mie non potranno aver luogo presentamente. Ho un gran dispiacere che l'affare non abbia avuto l'esito da lei desiderato, mentre d'altronde il nostro Conservatorio si sarebbe glorificato di possedere un uomo del suo gran talento, come le di lei composizioni denotano. 162

An obscure reference in a letter of Paganini indicates that Raimondi had considered a transfer to Parma that same year.28

It is not known what position in Florence, if any,

Raimondi was pursuing when he requested permission of the Palermo authorities to make a trip there in 1837. But during Raimondi's trip to Naples the same year, Francesco Basily wrote him there to alert him to the possibility of succeeding him as director of the Milan Conservatory when Basily took up his duties at the Cappella Giulia in Rome, to which he had recently been named.

Being solicited this time

by the very man he hoped to replace, Raimondi must have been confident of success in his application for the directorship. It will be recalled that in 1831 he had claimed in a letter to Baron Pisani in Palermo that the Milan Conservatory was anxious to have him as director; the hopeful exaggeration of five years earlier now seemed an imminent reality. Raimondi responded immediately to express his great interest in the position, imploring Basily to do all in his power to secure the job for him. The only result, however, was another apologetic letter, dated April 28

Cited in Arturo Codignola, Paganini intino, Genova, 1935, Letter XLXXXII (May 3 1836) to Luigi Guglielmo Germi: Tanto meglio se il giovine Raimondi non pub favorire guesta f[ess?]issima citta, piena di nobilita ignorante ed imbecille, ed e un peccato che pessiedano una sovrana tanto [p.465] eccelsa e di un buonissimo cuore; peccato per6 che manchi di memoria [So much the better if young Raimondi cannot favor this f[oolish?] city, full of ignorant and imbecilic nobility, and it's a shame that they possess such an outstanding sovereign [Duchess Maria Luigia] with such a good heart, and a shame that they have no memory. 163

4: Basily had written Raimondi merely as a friend, letting him know of the vacancy because he recalled their having discussed the matter years before. Unfortunately, he was in no position to guarantee Raimondi the directorship of the Milan conservatory, the decision being entirely in the hands of the school's Governors, based on the results of an open competition.29 A brief respite from the relentlessly negative reception of his operas came with the music he supplied for a performance in Palermo of Donizetti's L'elisir

d'amore

in

the Spring of 1838. According to Stefano Mira, Marchesino di San Giacinto,

L'elisir was received with more pleasure, especially the introduzione, the duet with [Irene] Secci[-Corsi] and [Giovanni Battista] Milesi, the first-act finale, the duet with Milesi and [Paolo] Casali, and the duet with Secci and [Francesco] Vinco (sung by the first with immense grace and by the other with true Jbrio); these pieces were all crowded by repeated cries of "ewiva." And then, right in the middle of the score, as we too could not help noticing, Signora Secci wished for us to enjoy a new scene, which the renowned maestro Pietro Raimondi had written especially for the occasion. The scene consists in an instrumental introduction of extremely beautiful design, a martial chorus followed by the aria di sortita of Secci, who is dressed as a warrior, and a duet between the same and the tenor Milesi. Though the first movement and the largo of this duet do not rise above the commonplace, the same cannot be said of the cabaletta, which is of very great effect, one of those cabalettas that seem to rip the applause right out of the hands of the Cicconetti, Memorie, 24. 164

audience. And applause there was, and cries of "ewiva," and repeated demands for the maestro at the end. The public called the maestro out on stage no less than four times, both alone and in the company of the singers who had executed his music with such skill and commitment.30

The following number of the journal provided additional information:

Following the music written for Secci, Maestro Raimondi has composed a new trio. It was very much applauded—the cabaletta is magnificent, and it had seemed impossible with this arch-beautiful one to top the beautiful one of the duet.31

3

°Passatempo

per

la dama, Anno 6 no. 22, 2 VI 1838:

L'elisir fu ascoltato con piu piacere, massime l'introduzione, il duo della Secci e del Milesi, il finale del primo atto, il duo del Milesi e del Casale, e quello della Secci e del Vinco (dall'una cantato con immensa grazia, ed agito dall'altro con vero brio); quali pezzi furon tutti coronati da ripetuti ewiva. A mezzo dello spartito, noi pure vel dicemmo, la signora Secci ci voile far gustare una nuova scena, che a bella posta avaele scritto il rinominato maestro Pietro Raimondi. Essa consiste in una sinfonia di bellissima fattura, in un coro marziale seguito dell'aria di sortita della Secci che vestina il carattere di un guerriero, e in un duetto tra la medesima e il tenore Milesi, di cui il primo tempo e il largo non si elevano dal comune cosi non puo dirsi della cabaletta ch'e di grandissimo effetto, una di quelle cabalette che strappano a viva forza delle mani gli applausi; ed applausi, ed ewiva, e ripetute chiamate ebbe il maestro alia fine; ne il pubblico ristette dall'applaudire e dal gridar fuori il maestro, se nel rividde per ben quattro volte sulla scene, e solo, ed in campagnia di cantanti, che impegno e valore avean eseguite la novella musica. 31

Passatempo

per

le

dame,

anno 6 no. 23, 9 VI 38: Un

nuovo terzetto ha scritto il maestro Raimondi in seguito della musica fatta per Secci. Esso fu applauditissimo—la cabeletta e magnifica, e pareva impossibile nascerne una arcibellissima dopo la bellissima del duetto. 165

Encouraging as this must have been, there was little getting around the fact that the success of Raimondi's music had come on the coattails of the delirious reception of Donizetti's opera. By August of 1838, Raimondi's fortunes as an opera composer in his own right had sunk to an alltime low. His letter to Barbaja in Naples of August 4 opened as a recommendation for the soprano Irene SecciCorsi, but concluded with a barely disguised plea for an operatic commission—emphasizing, typically, the urgency of a speedy reply, since he wanted to hear Barbaja's decision before responding to all the other offers which had come his way. I have kept myself, my dear Barbaja, from responding to various offers which have come from Italy until the moment that I hear your decision. Believe in your friend, and you will not be sorry [...]32 Raimondi wrote only one further opera for Naples, and the review in Lucifero received: "II Previdente

was perhaps the most cutting he ever Disgraziato

[...] e disgraziato

dawero."" It is more than likely that the precipitous decline of

32

Caro Barbaja io vi ho impedito di rispondere a varie offerte che vi sono venute d'Italia, fino al momento che non sentiro la vostra decisione. Credete al vostro amico, e ne sarete contento [... ] [The original is located in the Piancastelli collection at the Biblioteca Comunale of Forli.] "Anno I no. 40 (4 XI 1838). 166

of Raimondi's theatrical career in the mid-to-late 1830s was at least in part responsible for his turn to musical experimentation during the same period. The generally sorry reception of his operas, moreover, provides a revealing context for his renewed efforts in the fields of pedagogy and sacred music.

It is striking that even during the same

month (July 1833) that Raimondi was publicly criticized for his absence from the first performances of Mercadante's La Donna Caritea,

there appeared in the official Palermitano

journal the following detailed description, undoubtedly based on information provided by Raimondi himself, of the counterpoint class he was to organize in his home:

The counterpoint teacher Pietro Raimondi, having had the honor of being called to this illustrious capital to direct the Royal Conservatory, and knowing how far the taste for music is advancing here, and how large a number there is of those who, furnished with lively intellect, lovingly cultivate [music], not in vain has thought to open a composition school by which to animate all the more the study of this beautiful art, and to hasten in this way its progress. For which he believes it is his duty to announce to this cultured public his intention, and flatters himself, or rather holds the firm opinion (not withholding himself from any agreement for the good of those who will wish to be involved in this enterprise) that his labors can only bring about a harvest of advantageous and honorable products, not only for himself, but for this most happy land, and for all of Italy as well. It will be of use to note that this School of composition will take place the first day of August of this year in the home of the above-mentioned Maestro Raimondi situated at Piazza S. Nicold degli Scalzi, number 4. The days for lessons shall be Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday from 8:30 to 11:30 AM 167

French time.34

Raimondi's activities at the conservatory itself encompassed more than the teaching of counterpoint. As director, he inaugurated a program of regular performances of music by "maestri classici" in the school theater, with concerts of orchestral music taking place the first Tuesday, and sacred music the third Tuesday, of each month.35 Similarly contrasting with the lackadaisical attitude toward his theater post is Raimondi's enthusiastic involvement in music for the church, a field in which he had 34

La Cerere, 26 VII 1833: II Maestro di Contrapunto Pietro Raimondi, avendo avuto l'onore di essere stato chiamato in questa illustre Capitale per la Direzione del R. Conservatorio e conoscendo quanto vada innanzi il gusto per la musica, e quanto grande sia il numero di coloro, che di vivace ingegno forniti, con amore la coltivano, non invano ha seco pensato di aprire una scuola di composizione, onde animare vieppiu lo studio di quest'arte bellissima, ed affrettarne in tal modo i progressi. Per la qual cosa si crede egli in dovere di manifestare a questo colto Pubblico la sua intenzione, e si lusinga, anzi parta fermissimma opinione (non risparmiandosi a verun patto per lo bene di quelli, che vorranno accingersi a questa intrapresa) che delle sue fatiche non avra a raccogliere che prodotti vantaggiosi, ed onorevoli, per se stesso non solo, ma per questa felicissima terra, e per 1'Italia tutta sinanco. Giovera percid non ignorare, che la detta Scuola di composizione avra luogo il primo giorno di Agosto di questo corrente anno nella casa di abitazione del mentovato Maestro Raimondi sita Piazza S. Nicol6 degli Scalzi num. 4. I giorni destinati per le lezioni saranno il martedi, il giovedl, ed il sabato dalle otto e mezza alle undici e mezza, ore di francia antemeridione. 35

Federico di Maria, II R. Conservatorio di Musica di Palermo, Florence, 1941, 49-50. Di Maria asserts that the repertoire was exclusively Italian, but provides no documentary support. 168

no professional obligations in Palermo. The mass performed on St. Cecilia's day of 1833 in the church of D. Nicolb da Tolentino was especially well received:

Friday [November] 22 in the Church of the Fathers of St. Nicolo of Tolentino, as we announced, there was performed a large mass in honor of St. Cecilia, music by the great composer Sig. Pietro Raimondi, director of the Royal Teatro Carolino, and of our musical conservatory: he himself directed the large band of performers. The people attended in very great number, and among them were not a few distinguished persons. All eyes were directed at the author, everyone pointed him out, knowing he was such a famous man. The music was found by all to be of prodigious effect, and indeed nothing else could have been expected from a Composer who has today perhaps no one to equal him in this genre of music. It was seen in what manner a fugue may be so well conducted as to give rise to as much pleasure as the most exquisite and gratifying cantilena; the extreme clarity and facility rendered it both intelligible and pleasing to the ear not only to those learned in the art but to the unlearned as well: everyone recognized in Raimondi the sublime author of the four fugues in one for sixteen voices. We do not doubt that such students of our conservatory, who have natural ability [...] are sure to have a great success under the discipline of such an outstanding director, if only the scandalous financial restrictions of this commendable institution, shall not impede such an outcome.36 36

II Passatempo per la Dama, 30 XI 1833: Venerdl 22 nella Chiesa de' Padri di Santo Nicolb da Tolentino, siccome abbiamo annunziato, e stata eseguita, in onore di Santa Cecilia, una gran messa, musica del sommo Maestro sig. Pietro Raimondi, direttore del Real Teatro Carolino, e del nostro Conservatorio di musica: egli se stesso diresse il grande stuolo di esecutori. II popolo vi e accorso in grandissimo numero, e fra'l popolo non poche persone distinte. Tutti gli occhi erano dirette all'autore, ognuno lo additava per conoscere un uomo di tanta rinominanza. La musica e stata trovata generalmente di un effetto prodigioso, come non altrimenti potea attendersi da un Maestro, che sopratutto in questo genere di musica non trova 169

Nor was Raimondi's activity in this field confined to his own music, as may be seen in his note to the singer Giuseppe Siesto written August 20, 1834.37

This same year also saw

the publication of Pacini's memoirs, which, while noting Raimondi's great success with II ventaglio,

singled him out

as one of the few excellent composers of sacred music in Italy.38 Once the furor over Raimondi's lengthy absence from the conservatory in 1835 had died down, his didactic activities were appreciated. When Raimondi returned to Palermo in 1838

forse oggedl un emulo. Si e veduto in che maniera pub una fuga cosi ben condotta recar tante piacer guanto la piu sguisita e lusinghiera cantilena; l'estrema chiarezza, e facilita la rendea intelligibile, e piacevole all'orecchio cosi de' dotti nell'arte che degl'indotti: ognuno ha rawisto nel Raimondi il sublme autore delle quattro fughe in una a sedici voci. Noi non dubitiamo, che que' tali degli allievi del nostro Conservatorio, che 'anno naturale abilita, come non ne mancano, fossero per fare un'ottima riuscita sotto la disciplina di cotale insigne direttore, se pure le scandalose ristrettezze di finanze di questo commendevole stabilimento, non attraweseranno in tanto bene. 37

I-Rsc A. Ms. 714: I'm asking you a favor, and that is to sing in the piece that Barbieri is writing for Friday morning at S. Caterina, and also to ask Jemetti in my name. I'm sure you won't deny me this pleasure [Ti prego un favore, ed e quello che per Venerdl mattina Barbieri fa una Musica a S. Caterina onde tu ci devi Cantare ed oltre di cid devi pregare a mio Nome anche Jemetti. Son sicuro che non mi negherai questo piacere]. 38

Giovanni Pacini, Le mie memorie artistiche Lucca, 1834). 170

(Milan:

following his trip to Naples for the failed Raffaelo di Urbino,

Sanzio

he was greeted warmly by his conservatory

students, and was so touched by their reception that he decided to write for them a Miserere

with wind-instrument

accompaniment.39 But before proceeding to his first experiments proper— the "double mass" of 1836 and the two-, four- and five-fugue combinations included in Fughe diverse discuss his 1835 publication Bassi

in 1838—I will

fugati

imitati.40

ed

Though in no way experimental, this didactic work reveals much of Raimondi's attitudes toward learned composition, the field in which his later experiments were his primary contribution. This in turn calls for some preliminary remarks about Raimondi's position within the world of early nineteenth century theory and pedagogy.

Leisti

and

Durantisti

Francesco Florimo's writings on composers active in Naples in the 19th century include frequent references to a supposed rivalry between the schools of Leonardo Leo and Francesco Durante, referred to as the leisti 39

Passatempo

and the

per le Dame, Anno 6 no. 12 (24 V 1838),

95.

*°Bassi imitati

per uso de' suoi 1835).

e fugati

scolari

divisi

in tre libri

composti

(Naples/Milan: Girard/Ricordi, 171

durantisti,

dating from the time that these two men were

teaching at the conservatories of the Pieta and S. Onofrio respectively.*1

But anyone attempting to investigate the

nature of the disagreements between these two composers and their respective pupils must contend with two singular obstacles. First, there are only the scarcest printed references to this supposed rivalry before the midnineteenth century, a hundred years after the death of the two capiscuola

in question—a silence particularly

noticeable given the fame they enjoyed.

Eighteenth-century

commentators such as Rousseau, who praised Durante extravagantly in his Dictionanaire,

and Gerber, who wrote

vaguely of the two "Schule," but said nothing of the differences between them, are of little help in the matter.42 The same may be said of Emmanuele Imbimbo's preface to his 1817 edition of the durantista partimenti,

Fenaroli's

which nevertheless mentions Leo and the leista

Sala as composers who fulfilled the ideals he espouses, and of Alexandre Choron's preface to his published collections of partimenti, in which he states that it is useful "to form a methodical collection of the precepts and exercises in accompaniment which Leo, Durante, and their successors

41

Florimo, La scuola

music ale

di Napoli,

Naples:

Morano, 1881-83, vol. II pp. 80-81. "Ernst Ludwig Gerber, "Durante," Neues biographisches

Lexikon

der Tonkiinstler,

Breitkopf, 1790. 172

Historisch-

Vol. I. Leipzig:

intended for the use of their students [..];" Choron included to this end exercises by both these composers alongside of their respective disciples Sala and Fenaroli, without a hint of any sort of opposition between "schools."43 As to the mid-nineteenth century commentators who spoke directly to the question of stylistic differences between Leo and Durante, not all of them refer to a rivalry. F6tis, for example, who based his remarks upon his own examinations of scores (and not the commentaries of La Fage or Villarosa, both unavailable to him in 1840), considers the division as one of style.

For F6tis, Leo's church music

has no less majesty than that of Durante, and more charm; it touches the heart and impresses it with the impulse of tender devotion. And further: In his concerted and accompanied church music, Leo preserves simplicity, and arouses admiration by the beauty of the expression.44 F6tis, who retained both of these judgements in the second

ecoles

"Alexandre E. Choron, Principes d'accompagnement d'ltalie (Paris: Imbault, [1804]). 44

des

Francois Joseph F6tis, Biographie Universelle, vol. VI, Brussels and Mayence, 1840, 114-6: [The music of Leo] n'a pas moins de majesty que celle de Durante et elle a plus de charme; elle touche le coeur et lui imprime des 61ans de tendre devotion. 173

edition of his Biographie

Universelle,

had a precedent for

these observations in Rousseau's dictionary, where the brief article on the term "compositeur" placed Leo among a group of musicians guided above all by taste and expression, while Durante is singled out instead as learned—a notable contrast with later formulations of the stylistic differences between Leo and Durante, as will be shown below.49 Even among commentators who spoke of a rivalry based on actual disagreement between the two schools, there are significant inconsistencies. The two nineteenth-century sources which are the earliest witnesses to the rivalry present in fact entirely divergent descriptions of it. The Marchese de Villarosa, whose small volume on composers of the Neapolitan school was so replete with factual errors that Florimo was compelled to devote much of his own massive work on the subject to correcting them, characterized the difference between leisti and durantisti as concerning two technical matters, both, perhaps not coincidentally, involving the number 4: the proper harmonic accompaniment for scale degree 4 in the bass, and the question of whether the interval of a fourth was consonant or dissonant.46 But

45

Jean-Jacque Rousseau, Dictionnaire 1768, 109. 46

de musique,

Paris,

Carlo Antonio de Rosa, Marchese de Villarosa, Memorie dei compositori di musica del regno di Napoli (Naples: Stamperia Reale, 1840), 72. 174

Villarosa's description arouses suspicion on several counts. First, its vagueness is troubling: in limiting his report to the issues supposedly under contention, he omits any mention of the specific positions taken by Leo and Durante or their respective schools, i.e. whether it was the leisti or durantisti who held the fourth to be consonant, and which school favored which harmonization of the fourth scale degree in a bass line. Secondly, neither theoretical point seems borne out by a critical comparison of the available source material. With regard to the consonant or dissonant nature of the fourth, the only indication we have comes from Raimondi's teacher, Giacomo Tritto, often cited by Florimo as an upholder of the leista tradition. Tritto sums up his position in the following dialogue:

Maestro: In the ascending scale [in the bass], the second note may be harmonized, as you just said, with the third and the major sixth. In addition it may also be given the interval of a fourth. Disciple: Of this fourth I have heard various opinions. There are those who hold it to be a consonance, others a dissonance; but I find no reason for either position. Maestro: Here is the reason. When the fourth [above a bass note] is heard in union with the third and major sixth, or if above the bass there is formed a chord of the fourth and the sixth, then the fourth is a perfect consonance, since the tone sounding a fourth above the bass in both these chords is really the octave above the fundamental bass. When the fourth is heard [above a bass tone] among the configuration of intervals of the second, fourth and fifth, or the second, 175

fourth and sixth, or the second, fourth, fifth and major seventh, then it is a dissonance, since it 47 needs to resolve.

No examples of the last three chords mentioned are given in this passage. All would appear to result from melodic motion above a stationary bass, including the 6/4/2, which would therefore not be interpreted as a thirdinversion seventh chord.

(It is not clear why Tritto

neglected to consider a fundamental bass explanation for this chord as well: this would have shown the sounding bass tone to be the dissonant tone of the chord, thus supporting his argument that the tone a fourth above it was consonant in this context.) Tritto returns to the topic of the interval of the fourth at a later point of his treatise in connection with descending scales. Now the disciple would like to know whether a fourth is legitimate as an interval

47

Giacomo Tritto, Scuola di contrappunto ossia teorica musicale (Milan: Artaria, 1816), pp. 9-10: Maestro: Nella scala in ascendere avete detto, che alia seconda del tono se li da terza e sesta maggiore. Oltre a gueste, si puol dare ancora la guarta. Discepolo: Su guesta quarta sento varie opinioni: chi dice, ch'ella sia consonanza, e chi dice dissonanza; ma ragion non trovo, che possa capacitarmi. Maestro: La ragione e guesta. Quando la guarta e in unisono colla terza e sesta maggiore; oppure se sul Basso si formasse l'accordo di guarta e sesta, allora la quarta e consonanza perfetta, mentre dando a questi due accordi il Basso fondamentale, i quale deve essere l'istesso tono della guarta, guesta diventa ottava del Basso fondamentale; per conseguenza e consonanza perfetta. Quando la guarta si ritrova fra gli accordi di seconda, guarta e quinta, oppure di seconda, guarta, sesta minore e settima maggiore, allora e dissonanza, perche ha bisogno di risoluzione. 176

above the bass as part of the resolution of the double suspension 7-6/5-4, i.e. whether such a suspension may resolve into a 6/4/3 chord, or whether it is preferable, as some composers maintain, to double the third above the bass of a 6/3 chord instead. Tritto is strongly opposed to the latter solution.

In this case, he feels, the fourth above

the bass is not merely permissible (because consonant in this context, as in the 6/4/3 chord described above), but strongly to be recommended. Once again it is fundamentalbass theory which he uses to buttress his opinion:

Maestro: Tell me: is it permitted for the seventh [above a root] to resolve upwards? Disciple: No, it must necessarily descend to resolve properly. Maestro: And may the diminished fifth resolve upwards? Disciple: No, for between the parts there would result two consecutive fifths. Maestro: This suffices to demonstrate the error into which these composers have fallen, not having kept in mind the implied fundamental bass.48 **Scuola di contrappunto, 49: Maestro: Ditemi: e permesso che la settima vada a salire. Discepolo: No; perche deve a forza discendere per essere risoluta. Maestro: Ed alia guinta falsa si permette di farlo. Discepolo: Neppure; perche tra le parti si troverebbere due quinte. Maestro: Cid basta per far discernere l'errore, in cui tali Maestri sono caduti, non avendo essi tenuto presente il Basso implico fondamentale. [...] [As is made clear in the accompanying example of Tritto's treatise (top of page 50) the consecutive fifths mentioned by the disciple result only if one of the doubled thirds above the bass lay in the highest part. For Tritto, unlike more tolerant theorists such as Asioli, moving from a diminished to a 177

If the consonant or dissonant nature of the fourth had been a primary bone of contention between leisti and durantisti,

one might expect to find an opposing view in the

writings of the latter.

Instead, in his Regole

musicali,

the 'durantista' Fenaroli also prescribe the fourth as desirable as part of the chord harmonizing the second scale degree in both ascending and descending scales.49 It is true that Zingarelli, another supposed durantista, includes no such fourth in any of the ascending or descending scales in Part II of his own partimenti, specific about this.50

but he says nothing

We are similarly at a loss in

locating a difference between the two schools with regard to the other point mentioned by Villarosa, that of the proper harmonization of the fourth degree of a scale; Fenaroli and Tritto describe a generally similar plurality of options in this regard, including both a 6/5/3 and a root position triad for the ascending scale and both a 6/4/2 and a root position triad for the descending scale.61

Indeed, if

perfect fifth is no more permissible than from one perfect fifth to another.] 49

Federico Fenaroli, Regole

musicali,

Naples 1774, 8-

10. '"'Nicold Zingarelli, Partimenti [1833]), vol. II pp. 20-21. sl

(Milan: Ricordi,

Fenaroli, Cours complet d'harmonie et haute composition (Paris: Launer, 1817), pp. 18-22; Tritto, Scuola di contrappunto, 9-12. 178

prescriptions for scale harmonizations among the various authors of partimenti are to be taken as the basis for their classification into "schools," then there are certainly more than two of these. This is made clear in the recently published researches of Rosa Cafiero on the history of the keyboard harmony exercise known as the partimento in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.52 In addition to bringing to light an archival document of 1812 referring to three "schools" in existence at the Naples conservatory (that of Leo represented by Tritto, that of Durante by Fenaroli, and that of Carlo Cotumacci by Giovanni Furno), Cafiero provides a helpful table of scale harmonizations proposed by Scarlatti, Cotumacci, Paisiello, Fenaroli, Tritto, and Furno, allowing for easy comparisons between them.53

Here, even supposed representives of the

same school are shown to have markedly different ideas about the proper method of harmonizing a bass scale. Villarosa's contentions thus stand uncorroborated by either leisti or durantisti texts. Another mid-nineteenth century informant on the leista/durantista rivalry is Adrien de La Fage, a Parisian

"Rosa Cafiero, "La didattica del partimento a Napoli fra Settecento e Ottocento: note sulla fortuna delle 'Regole" di Carlo Cotumacci," in Maria Caraci Vela, Rosa Cafiero, Angela Romagnoli, eds., Gli affetti convenienti

all'idee,

studi

sulla

musica vocale italiana

(Naples:

Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1993, 549-79. "Cafiero, "Didattica," 559-60 (note 41), 567. 179

critic and musicologist who had studied with Choron, himself an avid promulgator of the ideals and methods of the "Italian school;" La Fage's observations are found in his essay on Giacomo Tritto, dating from early 1841, though not printed until several years later. In his account, the two technical matters raised by Villarosa are not mentioned at all.

Instead, La Fage in his remarks emphasizes the

different stylistic orientations of Leo and Durante, amounting to an opposition in "doctrine" which continued with their respective pupils:

The school of Leo favored above all a rich and imposing harmony, while that of Durante believed in sacrificing everything in order to obtain a clear and correct melodic line [cantilene] in each of its parts. [The school of Leo] authorized licenses rejected by [the school of Durante] [. • - ] . 5 4

It is La Fage's conception of the differences between leisti and durantisti which is familiar to us through numerous references in Florimo's La scuola Napoli,

musicale

di

and later in an article by Edward Dent.55 Though

54

J. Adrien de La Fage, Miscellanees masicales (Paris, 1844), 180-1: L'ecole de Leo favorisait surtout une harmonie riche et imposante; celle de Durante croyait que l'on devant tout sacrifier a obtenir une cantilene correcte et limpide dans chacune de ses parties; la premiere autorisait des licences que rejetait la seconde [. . . ] . ss

Edward Dent, "Leonardo Leo," Sammelbande der Internationalen Musik-Gesellschaft, Jahrgang 1906-07, 55066. 180

their conception of the differences between the two schools are essentially similar, it is interesting to note a strong difference in tone: Dent's purpose was in part to demonstrate the superiority of Leo over Durante, and was thus fundamentally at odds with the position of Florimo, who never missed an opportunity to extoll the school of Durante at the expense of the school of Leo. Both, however, characterize the differences between the schools in language similar to that of La Fage. Almost imperceptibly recasting the durantista/leista distinction of clarity vs. erudition into one of beauty vs. pedantry, Florimo writes:

At the time when Leonardo Leo and Francesco Durante directed as primi maestri respectively the Conservatories della Pieta dei Turchini and those of S. Onofrio and S. Maria di Loreto, two large parties were formed in Naples, the Leisti and the Durantisti. They were in disagreement regarding the system of teaching and composition. The Leisti stressed richness of chords, harmonic combinations, the interweaving of parts, countermelodies, in a word those qualities owing more to artifice and skill than to spontaneity. The Durantisti, on the contrary, regarded the principal aims to be melody, the clear disposition of the voices, simple modulations, the elegance of harmony, and effect, as the means most appropriate for composition that will 5delight rather than surprise [emphasis added]. * This last system, which is that which triumphed, has made the

56

See Florimo's use of the identical formula in his remarks on Raimondi's 'triple oratorio' in his brief chapter of "osservazioni artistiche" on the Conservatorio della Pieta dei Turchini in La scuola musicale di Napoli, II, 345. 181

Neapolitan school famous.

According to Dent,

The disciples of Leo aimed at richness of harmony, at part-writing and counterpoint—in short, at scientific composition, in the best sense of the word. Durante's disciples were all for clearness and facility.58

In all of these passages, it is evident that the qualities associated with leista instruction, i.e. the centrality of imitative and many-voiced counterpoint, are far easier to trace than the grace and elegance supposedly typical of the durantisti. Thus, while the best known leista pedagogues, Nicola Sala, Giacomo Tritto, and Raimondi, left, as has been shown, unmistakable evidence of

57

Florimo, La scuola musicale di Napoli, II, 80-1: Nel tempo in cui Leonardo Leo e Francesco Durante dirigevano come primi maestri l'uno il Conservatorio della Pieta dei Turchini e l'altro quello di S. Onofrio e di Loreto, due grandi partiti si formarono in Napoli, dei Leisti cioe, e dei Durantisti. Essi non s'intendevano sul sistemo d'insegnamento e della composizione. I Leisti tenevano alia ricchezza degli accordi, alle combinazioni armoniche, agli'intrecci delle parti, alle contronote, in una parola piu all'artifizio ed al magistero che alia spontaneita. I Durantisti al contrario miravano, come a scopo principale, alia melodia, alia chiara disposizione delle voci, alle facili modulazioni, all'eleganza delle armonie ed all'effetto, come i mezzi piu adatti a comporre musica che diletasse piu che sorprendesse. Quest'ultimo sistemo, ch'e quello che ha trionfato, ha reso celebre la scuola napolitana. 58

Dent, "Leonardo Leo," 565. 182

their preoccupation with contrapuntal complexities, the supposedly durantista instruction of Fenaroli or Zingarelli is difficult to define other than negatively, that is, in terms of the leista characteristics absent from it. Still, the negative definition is sufficiently precise, and sufficiently verified by both musical and anecdotal evidence, as to constitute an objective core, a starting point for any further investigation. As to Raimondi's place in the leista

category, there can be no doubt. A

particularly valuable anecdote, transmitted independently of Florimo and yet agreeing with his formulation of the rivalry, was related by the composer and conductor Giovanni Moretti (1807-1884), who studied with both Tritto and Zingarelli at the Naples conservatory.69

Raimondi had been

speaking to Zingarelli about his compositions for large numbers of voices, when Zingarelli protested, one supposes good-naturedly:

"My Godi

even taking great pains, we do

not always succeed in providing enough work for four persons to live on—how are you going to provide enough to eat for eight or sixteen singers?"60 Raimondi responsed:

"I will

provide enough even for thirty-two, and you will always

"Reported in the fifth installment of Guido Pannain's "Saggio su la musica a Napoli nel secolo XIX," Rivista musicale italiana, Anno XXXVIII (1931), 204. 60

Dio dell'anima, noi a mala pena e non sempre possiamo dare da mangiare a guattro persone, e voi come fate a dar cibo a otto, seidici parti ad un tempo? 183

remain a fine contrapuntist."61 The latter exchange took place in the 1820s or '30s. The terms of the rivalry in the eighteenth century, however, are less clear, and it is interesting to speculate on the reasons behind the nineteenth century views of the origins of the two schools. Perhaps one factor in the La FageFlorimo conception of Leo's style was the relatively greater accessibility of a number of his mature works for the church as opposed to his operatic music, which had long since ceased to be performed. The eight-part Miserere

of 1739 in

particular was known and esteemed by musicians well into the nineteenth century, its very status as "classic" church music safeguarding it from the changing tastes of the theatrical public, while his popular comic operas enjoyed no such immunity.62 The dense and imposing Miserere

thus

gradually took on a misleading appearance as especially characteristic of Leo, simply because it was one of his only compositions with which people were at all familiar. By a curious coincidence, this distorted image of Leo began to prevail just as Fenaroli, a presumed durantista, was subjected to the reverse misrepresentation as a lightweight

61

Io daro da mangiare pure a trentadue persone, e voi resterete sempre un fe — lice contrappuntista." 62

In addition to its continued fame in Italy, Leo's Miserere was published in Paris (Le Due, 1808) in an edition by Choron, and sections of it were included in the third volume of Friedrich Rochlitz, Sammlung vorziiglicher Gesangstucke [—], Mainz, Paris, Antwerpen, 1840. 184

by a number of editions of his partimenti published in the nineteenth century, discussed in detail below. Florimo's division of the Neapolitan composers into stylistic schools corresponds to a large extent to the groupings based on the conservatories with which they were primarily associated as students (not as teachers). His first descriptions of a division into leisti and durantisti are found not, as might be expected, in his biographies of Leo and Durante, but rather in the sections entitled "artistic observations" within the brief chapters devoted to the S. Maria di Loreto and the Pieta dei Turchini conservatories respectively. The two questions are so closely identified that Florimo's history of the Pieta amounts virtually to a history of the leisti, likewise for his chapter on S. Maria di Loreto and the durantisti.63 His schematic ideas regarding schools and influences extends to the very organization of his work, categorizing all composers under discussion by association with a particular conservatory—including composers who never studied at any Neapolitan conservatory.

The sole exception is Alessandro

Scarlatti, whose biography is given before all of the biographies grouped by conservatory, on the grounds that he is the seminal figure, a sort of musical Adam, from whom all

63

Florimo, La scuola

musicale

35. 185

in Napoli,

II, 28-30, 34

later Neapolitan composers were somehow generated.64 But Scarlatti's son and grandson, Domenico and Giuseppe Scarlatti, as well as Johann Adolph Hasse, are grouped among the musicians trained at the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesu Cristo despite their never having studied there, simply on the grounds of an association with Alessandro (who had only tenuous ties to that school in any case)—partially true in the case of Hasse, an accident of birth in the case of the other two.65

In his brief chapter on the history of

the Pieta, Florirao even discussed—as "the last of this school"—Placido Handanici, though the latter was only a small child at the time that this conservatory was finally closed, since he had studied privately with Raimondi, a student.66 Valentino Fioravanti also is

former Pieta

placed by Florimo among the students of the Conservatorio della Pieta dei Turchini, because he had taken some lessons with Pieta

instructor Nicola Sala; naturally the association

with the Pieta

was extended also to Valentino's son

Vincenzo—despite the latter's having embarked upon a 64

Florimo, La scuola

musicale

in Napoli,

II, 161.

"Florimo, La scuola masicale di Napoli, II 174-6. This second edition included a note from Florimo explaining his reasoning in altering the format of the first edition, in which composers trained outside the conservatories but nevertheless associated with Naples were listed at the end of the book, to the new arrangement in which they are classified under the conservatories "of which they had learned to follow the precepts." 66

Florimo, La scuola

masicale

128. 186

di Napoli,

II, 35; III,

musical career only after overcoming his father's violent opposition.67 This casts even further doubt upon Florimo's decision to group composers by the conservatories "of which they had learned to follow the precepts."68 Fioravanti's approach to pedagogy was so far removed from that of the traditional conservatories that he actually became angry when, in his first encounter with his private pupil Nicola d'Arienzo, he noticed a copy of Fenaroli's partimenti piano.

on the

Fioravanti exclaimed:

With that text, and the way in which it is explained, it is impossible to learn anything. You are very ignorant of harmony, and will never know anything of it if you continue with this system. This is my firm conviction."69 And yet even d'Arienzo is grouped with the composers of the Pieta, a school dissolved decades before his birth, and home of an approach to music theory from which he was 67

Florimo, La scuola

musicale

di Napoli,

III, 132.

"Florimo, La scuola musicale di Napoli, II, 174: "[...] ci e sembrato [...] opportuno il classificare gli allievi degli allievi alia fine di quel Conservatorio in cui hanno appreso i loro maestri, sembrandoci che cosl anche'essi potessero essere ascritti in quella scuola, di cui hanno imparato a seguire i precetti. 69

Florimo, La scuola musicale di Napoli, III, 140: "Con questo testo, e nel modo come si spiega, non si potra imparar mai nulla. Tu d'armonia sei ignorantissimo; ne sapia mai niente, se continui con questo sisterna. Ne ho ferme convinzione." Florimo gives no source for this quotation; possibly it was a letter from Fioravanti he mentions elsewhere (III, 66). Fioravanti was in any case Florimo's teacher, and the quotation may be accepted as authoritative even if textually inexact. 187

immeasurably distant as evidenced not only by his doubtful pedagogic pedigree but by his own published contributions to the field.70 Even if the inquiry is simplified by limiting the field to Florimo's accounts of authentically conservatory-trained musicians, the sharpness of the division between leisti and durantisti bears up poorly under scrutiny, which reveals, first of all, a significant number of composers who studied with both Leo and Durante or with disciples of both composers. A related difficulty is that even some musicians whose only maestro

di composizione

was a member of one (as

opposed to the other) school also studied partimenti

with

Giovanni Furno. The latter must be reckoned (if we accept Florimo's terms) a sort of hybrid instructor, since he included partimenti by both the durantista Fenaroli and the leista Sala, as well as by Leo himself, in his lessons, according to Florimo's direct testimony.71

One of the most

serious flaws of the pedagogical geneology given by Florimo is Fenaroli himself, a particularly weak link in the alleged chain of durantista influence which ran from Durante through Fenaroli, Zingarelli, and Bellini: though admitting that Fenaroli studied with Leo as well as Durante, Florimo

70

See his Introduzione del sistema tetracordale nella musica moderna (Milan: Lucca, 1878), a labored proposal for the theoretical admission of a new mode to stand alongside major and minor. 71

Florimo, La scuola

musicale 188

di Napoli,

II, 292.

nevertheless is content simply to count him, and hence anyone who studied with him, as a durantista. Francesco Ruggi, for example, is labeled a durantista for no other reason than his having studied with Fenaroli.72 As for Florimo's flat assertion of the triumph of the durantisti over the leisti, it must naturally be seen in the context of the general orientation toward his subject. Aside from his own background as a student of Zingarelli, the preeminent durantista of the early nineteenth century, Florimo is well known for his fanatical devotion to Bellini, and for his tenacious defense of his idol in the face of even the most innocuous and respectful criticisms. This attitude colored more than the treatment of Bellini in Florimo's writings, and in fact determined his overall conception of the Neapolitan school. This Florimo strove to depict as a single glorious trajectory of creative genius extending from Alessandro Scarlatti, whose connection with *

the Neapolitan conservatories is now known to have been guite limited, through Vincenzo Bellini, via a supposed pedagogical genealogy of Scarlatti-Durante-ZingarelliBellini. Alongside Florimo's passionately held prejudices, there are objective factors which support both of Florimo's notions, that of a division into two schools and triumph of the durantisti, 72

factors which underscore the curious

Florimo, La scuola

musicale 189

in Napoli,

II, 444.

position occupied by Florimo's history on the borderline between an invaluable primary source and a deeply flawed secondary one. Several excerpts from Florimo regarding Leisti and Durantisti will illustrate this. His biographical entry for Federico Ricci tells of the latter musician's studies with Zingarelli. He continues:

When Pietro Raimondi and Francesco Ruggi came to occupy the post left vacant by the death of Giacomo Tritto, Zingarelli desired to lighten his pedagogical duties, and ceded several of his pupils, chosen at random, to the newly arrived maestri. Among these pupils, Federico Ricci fell to Raimondi, under whose direction he continued and completed his studies. Raimondi, though arid as a composer and pedantic as an instructor, was nevertheless a learned contrapuntist and conscientious teacher. He gave all of himself in imparting to Ricci the doctrines learned in the school of Leo, Sala, and Giacomo Tritto, and Ricci, as Raimondi used to repeat, showed the greatest readiness to learn them.73

The instruction of Giuseppe Curci followed a similar sequence, according to Florimo, with the significant

73

Florimo, La scuola musicale di Napoli, vol. Ill, 344: Venuti Pietro Raimondi e Francesco Ruggi ad occupare il posto rimasto vacante per la morte di Giacomo Tritto, lo Zingarelli voile in parte sgravarsi dell'istruzione dei suoi discepoli, cedendo alcuni di essi estratti a sorte ai maestri nuovi venuti. Fra questi, Federico Ricci toccb al Raimondi, sotto la cui direzione continud e finl i suoi studi. Raimondi, arido come compositore e pedante come istitutore, non lasciava percid di esser un dotto contrappuntista e conscienzioso insegnante. Si diede a tutt'uomo ad insegnare al Ricci le dottrine apprese alia scuola di Leo, Sala e Giacomo Tritto, ed il Ricci, come il Raimondi ripeteva, mostrava la piu grande attitudine ad apprenderle. 190

difference that this time it was the pupil himself who requested that he be switched from Zingarelli to Raimondi. This indicates that the relations between the two schools were not necessarily bitter or mistrustful, a less surprising conclusion when one recalls the role which Zingarelli had in promoting Raimondi's career:

[Curci] was placed in the class of Giovanni Furno for the study of partimenti and harmony, and then passed into the class of Zingarelli to learn counterpoint and composition. When Pietro Raimondi came to teach at the college in 1825, Curci wished, under the direction and with the full assent of Zingarelli, to study also the method which Raimondi taught, that is, that derived from Leonardo Leo.74

In Carlo Conti we have instead an instance of a student moving gradually from leista to durantista instruction, to Florimo's evident approval:

Advancing further in these severe studies, he was admitted to the class of Tritto, where he began his apprenticeship in counterpoint according to the teachings of Leonardo Leo. When several years had passed, in order to know the beauties of the school of Durante, without abandoning Tritto, he began to study counterpoint with Fenaroli, and then completed his studies under Nicolb 74

Florimo, La scuola musicale di Napoli, III, 335: Fu messo alia scuola di Giovanni Furno per istudiare partimenti ed armonia, e passd di poi in guella dello Zingarelli per imparare contrappunto e composizione. Venuto Pietro Raimondi per maestro in Collegio nel 1825, il Curci voile, sotto la direzione e coll'assenso dello Zingarelli, studiare anche la scuola che il Raimondi insegnava, guella cioe derivata da Leonardo Leo. 191

Zingarelli, the affectionate teacher and precepter who knew so well how to guide and direct him in vocal composition, pointing out to him the true and pure founts of beauty, those where the inestimable treasure of Italic harmony were to be recovered.75

Also revealing are Florimo's remarks on the education of Lauro Rossi, which suggest that switching from one "school" to another was actually encouraged to some extent in the Naples conservatory, not merely to lighten the teaching load of an individual instructor (as in the case of Federico Ricci described above) but for pedagogical reasons:

After the class of Zingarelli he passed into that of Raimondi, as almost all of the young composers of the conservatories used to do in order to know the two schools; nor did this give rise to disagreements among the teachers, who on the contrary agreed on the usefulness of this promiscuity of instruction.76

75

Florimo, La scuola musicale di Napoli, III, 135: Inoltrandosi in tali severi studi, venne ammesso alia scuola del Tritto, ove incomincid il tirocinio del contrappunto secondo i dettami di Leonardo Leo. Trascorsi alcuni anni, per conoscere le bellezze della scuola di Durante, senza abbandonare il Tritto, si mise a studiar contrappunto col Fenaroli, e finl di compiere gli studi di composizione sotto Nicolb Zingarelli, il maestro e precettore affettuoso, che seppe assai bene guidarlo e dirigerlo nella composizione vocale, additandogli le vere e pure fonti del bello, quelle ove potesse rinvenire l'inestimabile tesoro dell'italica armonia. 7

*Florimo, La scuola musicale di Napoli, III, 357: Dopo quella di Zingarelli, passb anche alia scuola del Raimondi, come solevano fare quasi tutti i giovani compositori dei Conservatorii per conoscere le due scuole; ne cid portava dissapori tra i maestri, che anzi convenivano sull'utilita che apportar potea questa promiscuita d'insegnaraento. 192

Florimo's pro-durantista prejudice shows itself also in his discussion of the education of Nicola Manfroce, an extremely promising composer who died in 1813 at the age of twenty-two. Though Manfroce's only composition teacher during six years of study at the Conservatorio di San Sebastiano was Tritto, Florimo nevertheless lists Zingarelli as his teacher, since the latter musician, while serving as maestro

di cappella

at the Vatican in 1810, gave some advice

to the nineteen-year old Manfroce, who was in Rome to produce an opera at the Teatro Valle. Though Manfroce's consultations with the durantista Zingarelli could not have lasted more than a very brief period compared to his studies with the leista Tritto, Florimo nevertheless makes the dubious assertion that the young composer "learned from Zingarelli, at the time a composer at the Vatican, all the practices, and the manner of composing, of the famous school of Durante."77

It was apparently enough for Florimo to be

impressed by the quality of Manfroce's music to make him wish to represent him as a recipient of durantista influence. In his account of Bellini's conservatory experience, finally, one can almost hear Florimo sighing with relief as he recalls his idol's switch from Tritto to Zingarelli: 77

Florimo, La scuola musicale di Napoli, III, 102: Piu tardi, recossi in Roma, ed apprese dallo Zingarelli, maestro allora nel Vaticano, le pratiche tutte della famosa scuola del Durante e la maniera di comporre. 193

For counterpoint, in turn, he was placed under the wise guidance of Giacomo Tritto, whose school, however learned a teacher he may have been, had little in common with the melodic tendencies of young Bellini, who, after several years, in 1822, passed to instruction in the school of Zingarelli, who was also director of the College. Zingarelli, with that instinct all his own, immediately understood the beautiful disposition of the young Catanese, and began with true interest and paternal love to cultivate that elect genius, first with the severity of good studies, and then guiding and directing him to consider and meditate upon the classic and celebrated maestri who have brought such luster to the art of music.78

If Florimo was not the first to think in terms of a durantista/leista division among Neapolitan composers, then, he nevertheless made a much more ambitious claim for its significance. While La Fage and Villarosa wrote vaguely of two schools of composers, Florimo named names, and lots of them; indeed, there is hardly a musician associated with Naples in the second half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth who is not classified by Florimo as belonging to one or the other school.

78

Florimo, La scuola musicale di Napoli, III, 178: [...] pel contrappunto, a suo tempo, fu posto sotto la savia scorta di Giacomo Tritto, la cui scuola, guantungue fosse dottissimo maestro insegnante, poco si affaceva alle tendenze melodiche del giovinetto Bellini. II quale, dopo qualche anno, nel 1822, passd ad apprendere nella scuola dello Zingarelli, che era pure direttore del Collegio. Lo Zingarelli, con quel senso tutto proprio, comprese tosto la bella disposizione del giovane Catanese, e comincid con vero interesse ed amore paterno a coltivare quell 'eletto ingegno, prima colla severita di buoni studi, e poi guidandolo e dirigendolo a considerare e meditare le opere dei classici e celebri maestri che tanto illustrarono 1'arte. 194

We have yet to consider Florimo's assertion that the durantisti triumphed over their adversaries. If the admittedly enormous assumption is made that all of Florimo's classifications of composers as leisti or durantisti are accurate, it follows that the last product of relatively pure leista

instruction to enjoy notable success in opera

was Gaspare Spontini, whose achievements were already beginning to fade by the mid-nineteenth century. Others who had received an even partly leista training, such as Jomelli and Piccinni, belonged to an even remoter period of history. Paisiello's reported remark that no good composers had ever come out of the Pieta conservatory may seem an extremely unfair exaggeration (at the very least Leo and Spontini ought to be exempted from the generalization), but the fact remains that successful composers of opera trained at the schools of S. Maria di Loreto and Sant'Onofrio were far more numerous.79 Also relevant here are the circumstances surrounding the replacement at the Conservatory in 1824 of the reigning leista representative of the early nineteenth century, Giacomo Tritto, mentioned above in Florimo's account of the education of Federico Ricci. When Tritto

"Salvatore di Giacomo, II conservatorio

di

Sant'Onofrio a Capuana e quello di S. Maria della Pieta dei Turchini (Palermo: Sandron, 1924), 230-1. Di Giacomo suggests that Paisiello was both partisan and disingenuous, since he was obviously aware of the number of fine composers, Spontini at their head, who were trained at that conservatory. The quotation, at any rate, has little documentary support, and even if accurate, might predate Spontini's success as an opera composer. 195

died his position and salary were divided between two teachers. One was his disciple Raimondi. The other was Francesco Ruggi, a former student of Fenaroli, and thus, as shown above, a durantista by Florimo's reasoning. By this double-hiring the remaining leista influence of the Conservatorio di S. Pietro a Najella was cut effectively in half; less than a decade later Raimondi's departure for Palermo left the Naples conservatory without a single leista representative on its faculty—while Bellini's star was rising to unprecedented heights. These circumstances alone might be thought to justify the thesis of durantista triumph, but to clinch the argument, Florimo has ready a surprise witness in the person of Rossini. During Florimo's 1867 visit to Rossini at the latter's villa in Passy, the great composer is said to have uttered these words:

Modern writers of counterpoint methods and harmony courses wrote better than the older ones, but the older ones made better [music]; and those chatterboxes who speak to me of the French school or the German school make me laugh. I answer them without pity that I know no other school than that of Durante, and that I know of two species of music only: good, which I love, and bad, which I detest. "° •°Florimo, La scuola musicale di Napoli, II, 53 n.l: I moderni scrittori di metodi di contrappunto e corsi d'armonia scrissero meglio degli antichi, ma gli antichi pero fecero meglio dei moderni; e mi fanno ridere guei ciarloni che mi parlano di scuola francese e scuola tedesca, ecc. Io rispondo loro impitoyablement che non conosco altra scuola che quella del Durante, e che non conosco che due specie di musica, la buona che amo, e la cattiva che detesto. 196

Florimo may have been willing, even happy, to accept this endorsement at face value, but there is no reason for us to follow him. Rossini may have intended "la scuola del Durante" to simply to mean the traditional school of Italian music (accurate enough if we consider the importance of Paisiello and Cimarosa for the development of his style), or he may perhaps have wished to flatter his guest. In view of Zingarelli's well-known alarm over the pervasive influence on young composers of Rossini, the latter's endorsement of the durantista

school rings hollow.

It is

only surprising that Florimo did not make more of Verdi's teacher Lavigna as a pupil of Fenaroli to buttress further his view of the triumph of the durantisti. But then, after the divine Bellini, what need of Verdi to demonstrate this triumph? There may very well have been a simple professional jealousy between Leo and Durante, and between their students respectively, which did not necessarily involve issues of style or theory. To accept the La Fage/Florimo definition of the rivalry and reject Villarosa's is not to deny either the existence of a controversy among musicians and theorists regarding intervals and scale-harmonizations or a simple rivalry between students at different conservatories or of different teachers. What is at issue here is the validity of accounting for the former by means of the latter. In 197

view of the two sharply differing accounts of the leista/ durantista rivalry, each in its own way highly problematic, it is understandable how modern commentators may be tempted into dismissing it as an unsubstantiated rumor; at least one writer has done so explicitly."

But as the above summary

has demonstrated, there are good reasons for resisting this temptation. Leaving aside the intractable issue of the nature of this rivalry in the 1730s, a century before its earliest documentation, it is indisputable that the concept of divergent leista and durantista approaches to music was very much part of contemporary thinking in the Naples conservatory in the early to mid-nineteenth century, and that Raimondi's contemporaries in Naples had not the slightest hesitancy to categorize him as a leista.

Bassi Imitati

e Fuaati

Raimondi's first published didactic work belongs to the genre of partimenti.

The use of exercises known by this

name in the training of musicians, a tradition of the Neapolitan conservatories from the 18th century onwards, has been defined as roughly equivalent to the study of figured bass, and for Florimo the study of partimenti

is virtually

synonomous with "armonia suonata," i.e. harmony to be played

"Giuseppe A. Pastore, Leonardo Leo, Galatina, 1957, 130. 198

(unlike the study of counterpoint, which was primarily to be notated).

An examination of the many exercises printed

under the rubric of partimenti

reveals both of these

definitions to be something of a distortion of their true nature. One notable difference is that they were generally written for keyboard alone rather than as an accompaniment of voices or instruments.

Though Choron wrote specifically

of accompanying singers in both of his anthologies of Italian partimenti

and other exercises,82 the Italian

authors of the exercises he anthologized were silent on the matter, and his Principes d'ltalie

d'accompagnement

des

ecoles

merely reprints the exercises for solo keyboard by

Fenaroli, Sala, and others.

This is sometimes obscured by

the occasional use of the word "accompaniment" in published partimenti,

which, however, almost always refers, as in the

Mandanici citation given below, to the right-hand accompaniment of the left-hand bass line, in the sense in which Pietro Gianelli describes it in his published reference works.83 The notion of an essential equivalence between partimenti and the traditional study of figured bass is particularly unconvincing in the case of Fenaroli's "Alexandre E. Choron, Principes d'accompagnement des ecoles d'ltalie, Paris [1804], 102-3; Principes de Composition des ecoles d'ltalie,, Paris, [1811], vol. I, 102. "Pietro Gianelli, "accompagnare il basso," Dizionario della musica, Venice, 1820, Vol. I, 30-39; "accompagnare il basso," Grammatica della musica, Venice, 1821, 51-58. 199

exercises, by far the best known and most widely used of the genre, since one of his clearest aims is the eventual abandonment of figures as a guide for the student. Fenaroli thus restricted the use of figured-bass numerals to the earlier sections of the collection. These include a preliminary group of exercises in the proper accompaniment of scales and cadential figures, followed by figured basses designed to be realized by consonant chords alone. (The consonance in question was defined in a strictly practical sense as not requiring preparation; the exercises often do require the use of chords containing dissonant intervals.) This was followed by a series of partimenti

to be realized

with dissonances properly prepared and resolved. A third section focussed on the possible realizations, whether consonant, dissonant, or mixed, of a variety of bass patterns: ascending or descending diatonically in a major or minor scale, ascending chromatically, alternating ascending fourths with descending thirds, etc. The principal aim of these latter exercises is to prepare the student for the next sections of partimenti,

in which the figures drop out

altogether. Having diligently worked his way through a number of bass patterns with the aid of figures, the student is to apply what he has learned to the unfigured exercises. Finally, the partimenti

include passages in imitation, as

well as outright fugues. The latter are given either as an entire bass line of a fugue or, more typically, with 200

occasional passages in one or two other voices as indicated by the clef employed. In the latter case, the different clefs, in addition to indicating different lines of the desired contrapuntal texture, may also have been a sign that the exercises were to be written and not played; this is the interpretation put forth by Pastore.84 below, is one instance of this.

Example 3.1, given

It is not impossible,

however, that even those exercises printed with more than one clef could be realized at the keyboard. Once these last exercises are mastered, the student is presumably ready to advance to the study of fugue properly speaking, i.e. the composition of orignal fugues on a given subject. Generations of teachers apparently found this clear organization of material to be pedagogically sound, for Fenaroli's partimenti

were reprinted throughout the 19th

century, not only in Italy, but in France as well, where they formed basis of Choron's Principes ecoles

d'ltalie

des ecoles

d'accompagnement

(Paris, 1804) and Principes

d'ltalie

Fenaroli's partimenti

(1808).

de

des

composition

For various reasons, however,

were often found less than fully

satisfactory in their original state. First, the strictly practical nature of instruction in the Italian conservatories, of which these exercises are a prime example, while retaining some supporters, came under increasing criticism in the 19th century. Florimo cites "Pastore, Leonardo Leo, 129. 201

Rossini's complaint that when he asked his teacher Stanislao Mattei for an explanation of a rule, the invariable reply was "Abbiamo l'uso di scrivere cosl;" which led in part to Rossini's abandoning the field of "severe composition."85 What Rossini found objectionable in the instruction of Mattei corresponds to what many students disliked in the traditional musical instruction of the Neapolitan conservatories. Florimo quotes the very similar replies of both Durante and his own teacher of partimenti

Giovanni

Furno when asked by their students for an explanation of. some rule, correction or prohibition. Durante was reported to have said:

My dears, do it thusly, because this is the way that it is done. It must be thus, because the true and the beautiful are one. I am not mistaken. I cannot tell you the reasons which you ask of me, but you may be sure that maestri who come after me will find them, and will develop infallible rules from the precepts I give you now.86

If Florimo's citation seems an unsubstantiated fictionalized monologue supposed to have been delivered a century earlier, 8S

Florimo, La scuola

musicale

86

di Napoli,

II, 51.

Florimo, La scuola musicale di Napoli, II, 180-1: Miei cari, fate cosl, perche cosl va fatto. Dev'essere cosl, perch6 il vero ed il bello e uno, e non m'inganno. Io non so dirvi le ragioni che mi dimandate; ma siate pur certi che i maestri che verranno dopo di me le troveranno, e dei precetti che ora vi do, essi faranno tanti assiomi che diverranno regole infallibili. 202

he could claim more authority when quoting his own teacher Giovanni Furno:

Do it thusly, as I tell you, for this is how my teacher Cotumacci taught me to do it. Why search for reasons, when in music the first and most important reason is that of effect? Listen, [Furno] used to say to all of us [including Florimo] in his class, how beautifully this chord sounds above this note in the bass: what other reason do you want, better than the effect it produces? Believe me, search no more for reasons, and work87with courage in order that you may become artists.

In keeping with such pedagogical attitudes, Fenaroli planned his volume as a simple collection of exercises, entirely lacking in any theoretical apparatus.

He apparently

considered his slim volume of J?egole musicali,

with its

laconic "musical axioms" regarding which chords ought to accompany the various scale degrees sounded in the bass, to be sufficient as an outline of principles and procedures.88 But most nineteenth century redactors of Fenaroli's partimenti

felt compelled to provide a more thoroughgoing

set of instructions and explanations. Often these merely 87

Florimo, La scuola musicale di Napoli, II, 292: Fate cosl e come io vi dico, perche cosl m'insegnd di fare il mio maestro Cotumacci. A che investigare ragioni, quando in musica la prima e piu forte ragione e l'effetto? Sentite, egli diceva a noi tutti della sua scuola, sentite com'e bello quest'accordo sopra questo basso: nee volete altra ragione meglio dell'effetto che produce?... Credete a me, non cercate di piu, e lavorate con coraggio, che diverrete artisti. 88

Fedele Fenaroli, Regole

musicali, 203

Naples, 1774.

integrated a somewhat more detailed version of Fenaroli's own Regole musicali

with the specific exercises exemplifying

them, adding musical examples to illustrate the "axioms" Fenaroli had only indicated verbally.89

Additionally, an

editor might explain in detail what Fenaroli simply assumed would be pointed out by the instructor, facilitating use of the partimenti

for self-instruction.

Thus the edition of

Fenaroli's partimenti made by Raimondi's pupil Mandanici (1868) has Fenaroli's exercises sprinkled with footnotes indicating the proper solutions—specifying, for example, which notes in the bass were passing tones not to be harmonized.90

The comments and observations attached to

the edition of Fenaroli's partimenti

by Luigi Felice Rossi

amounted to a full-fledged treatise.91

Often, the

innovations introduced into editions of the partimenti were intended frankly to make them easier.

The frequently

reprinted Canti edition commits the absurdity of providing occasional figured-bass numerals even for Book III,

89

See, for example, the bilingual edition by Imanuel Imbimbo (Paris, c.1800), the Ricordi edition (pl.no. 24034), Milan, s.d., and the often reprinted Canti edition (Milan, s.d.). 9

°Fedele Fenaroli, Partimenti e regole musicali per quelli che vogliono suonare coi numeri e per i principianti di Contrappunto. Nuova edizione corretta ed illustrata con annotazioni ed esempj dimostrativi di P. Mandanici (Milan: Ricordi, 1868). 91

Fedele Fenaroli, Partimenti ossia bassi numerati del celebre maestro Fedele Fenaroli e trattato d'accompagnamento di Luigi Felice Rossi, 3rd ed. (Ricordi: Milan, 1875). 204

Fenaroli's "partimenti senza figure," while retaining the original chapter title. The furthest extreme in this direction was reached in the edition by Emmanuele Guarnaccia (1851), which provided complete realizations, on opposite pages, for all of Fenaroli's partimenti volume.92

included in the

It was undoubtedly this edition which Raimondi's

pupil Placido Mandanici had in mind when he wrote:

If all of the 44 exercises of the fourth book and those of the following books had been arranged with their [upper-voice] accompaniments, imitations, etc. (something which the author has not done), it would not have been a teaching method, but a practical exemplar, and this would have done more harm than good for the pupil (who needs to search on his own for the correct 93 solutions) .

Yet, Mandanici himself had come under almost identical criticism upon the publication of his own edition of Fenaroli's partimenti: 92

Metodo nuovamente Maestro Fedele Fenaroli completa Imitazione dal facile intelligenza de' procurare nozioni esatte Ricordi, [1851].

riformato de' Partimenti del arrichito di schiarimenti e di una maestro Emmanuele Guarnaccia a piu Partimenti medesimi, e reso atto a intorno al Contrappunto, (Milan:

93

Fenaroli, Partimenti,

illustrata...da

P. Mandanici,

Nuova edizione

corretta

67: Si awerte [...]

ed che se

tutti i 44 numeri del quarto libro e gli altri dei libri seguenti si fossero disposti con i loro accompagnamenti imitazioni ed altro (cosa che non ha fatto l'autore) non sarebbe stata allora una scuola, ma un esemplare pratico; e cid porterebbe pittosto nocumento all'allievo (che ha bisogno di ricercare da se) e non giovamento. 205

Placido Mandanici wished to illustrate Fenaroli's work with "annotations and demonstrative examples," and though these were done very carefully, it would nonetheless not be prudent counsel for it to be studied by the young, who thus finding their task made easy by these very examples, would find it difficult to sharpen their wits in searching for something new in harmony.94

A similar sentiment was expressed by Raimondi's teacher Tritto in his Scuola

di contrappunto,

in which he pointedly

left all exercises to be solved by the pupil:

In conclusion I believe it very necessary to answer those who may perhaps criticize this book, saying that all of the lessons contained in it having bass-lines alone could have been improved if realizations in four or more voices had been explicitly illustrated. My answer is this: if the above mentioned lessons had been thus arranged, this book would have deserved the title Osservazioni rather than Scuola. In arranging and entitling the work as I have done, I have kept in mind the method of teaching belles-lettres by presenting to the students books by Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Ovid etc., in order that the students may explain and translate them from Latin into Italian, having to labor at the task; now if these books were [already presented to the students] in Italian, what profit would they

*4Florimo, La scuola musicale in Napoli, II, 353 n.2: II maestro Placido Mandanici voile illustrare ancora 1'opera del Fenaroli con annotazioni ed esempi dimostrativi; e benche siano molto accuratamente fatte e calcolate, pure non sarebbe prudente consiglio il fame fare lo studio ai giovani, i quali trovando gia in quegli esempi la via spianata, difficilmente aguzzerebbero il loro ingegno per trovare gualche cosa di nuovo nelle ricerche dell'armonia. 206

derive from the study?*5

The dissatisfaction with Fenaroli's exercises involved more than their exclusively practical format. Those partimenti

of Fenaroli designed for contrapuntal

realizations, whether actual fugues or merely exercises containing passages in imitation, presented a more serious problem in what was perceived as a degree of difficulty far out of proportion to the value to be derived from them. As the polyphonic textures of the early and mid eighteenth century receded further into the past, the time and effort required for the completion of such exercises seemed increasingly pointless. The aristocratic amateur composer Giuseppe Staffa (1807-1877) insisted that they be excluded from the normal course of study, since they could only be executed by advanced pupils of organ or composition, and

"Tritto, La scuola di contrappunto, 69-70: Per conchiudere poi credo molto necessario di prevenire coloro, che forse potranno criticare guesto mio lavoro, che tutte le lezioni in esso contenute co' semplici Bassi, potevano esser migliori se spiegate erano colle quattro, o piu voci. La risposta e questa; se le suddette lezioni fossero state cosi formate, questo libro non doveva portare il titolo di Schola, ma quello di osservazioni: avendolo dunque cosi composto ed intitolato, ho avuto presente il metodo come si apprendono le belle lettere, siccome offre alia gioventu Cicerone, Virgilio, Orazio, Ovidio ec. per spiegarli, e trasportarli dal latino in italiano, e che il giovane studente deve sopra di essi faticare; or se questi libri fossero in lingua italiana qual profitto si potrebbe da essi ricavare? 207

were thus out of place in the preliminary curriculum.96 The same attitude is implicit in the Canti edition mentioned above, which omits Fenaroli's fugal exercises altogether. And an anonymous preface to the posthumously published collection of partimenti

by Stanislao Mattei pointed out

their great utility in the following terms:

Before Hattei, the numerous exercises used throughout Italy for the the study of figured bass accompaniment were unable to answer to the needs of this science. The partimenti of Durante, Fenaroli, Sala, Valloti, estimable though they were, had become insufficient following the abandonment of the old church style [emphasis added] in which many of them were written, and after the increasingly frequent and almost continous use of chords and formulas employed by these older writers only with extreme reserve. The basses of Mattei came to fill this lacuna, without obscuring the importance of other works of the same genre, whose study is still useful for beginners, and has given to the 97 science of harmony a new impulse throughout Italy. 96

Staffa, Giuseppe, Metodo del la Scuola Napolitana di Composizione musicale (Naples: Stabilimento tipografico di F. Azzolino, 1849), ix. It is hardly coincidental that this attack on the complexities of partimenti come from one who had studied with the leista Tritto (see Staffa's necrologia, Regio Istituto Musicale di Firenze, Atti dell'Aceademia, Anno XVI (1877), 23. "Stanislao Mattei, Pratica d'accompagnamento sopra bassi numerati e contrappunti, (Milan: Ricordi, [1891]), ix: Prima di Mattei, i numerosi esercizi d'accompagnamento per mezzo del basso numerato sparsi in Italia non potevano sopperire ai bisogni della scienza. I partimenti di Durante, di Fenaroli, di Sala, del P. Valloti, per quanto stimabili fossero, erano divenuti insufficiente dopo l'abbandono dell'antico stile ecclesiastico, sul quale molti di essi erano fondati, e dopo l'uso frequente e quasi continuo di accordi e di formole per lo avanti non adoperate se non con estrema riserva. I bassi del Mattei vennero a riempire questa lacuna e senza far dimenticare le opere 208

Aside from the excessive difficulty of Fenaroli's partimenti,

there were other perceived disadvantages,

including the relatively restricted harmonic vocabulary; all of the editions mentioned thus far therefore included various harmonic devices not mentioned by Fenaroli, such as additional chords, variants of cadences, and different types of pedal. The general trend, however, was toward the simplification of musical study. This trend, as well as the conservative reaction against it, included representatives of both schools. But the facilitated editions of the partimenti

of the durantista

Fenaroli, as well as other

similar published collections other members of the same school, were so large a part of the trend toward simplification that the false notion of simplicity and grace as a characteristically durantista (as opposed to leista) ideal gained ground.

Zingarelli's collection of

partimenti,

for example, closely follows the curricular sequence of Fenaroli—with, however, a greatly reduced place given for the study of fugal writing. Paisiello's collection has even fewer examples calling for imitation than Zingarelli's, and no fugues whatever.98 dello stesso genere, il cui studio e sempre utile ai principianti, diedero alia scienza armonica un nuovo impulso in tutta 1'Italia. •"Giovanni Paisiello, Regole per ben accompagnare il partimento, o sia il basso fondamentale sopra il cembalo ([St. Petersburg]: Kaletsky, 1782); Nicola Zingarelli, 209

Raimondi's attitude to these developments was precisely what one would expect of the last reigning leista. By devoting an entire volume of exercises to these more difficult and archaic partimenti—a

volume presenting

nothing but practical exercises, lacking any theoretical explanations whatsoever—Raimondi was, in more ways than one, staking out an essentially conservative position, striking a blow for the continued vitality of the leista school (notwithstanding his diplomatically worded praise for Durante and several of his followers in his preface). As indicated above, it was the drastically reduced role for the thorough study of counterpoint in the training of musicians which most aroused the concern of Raimondi. He explained his motives in the preface as follows:

While brilliant masters of harmony such as Choron, Marpurg, and others have only hinted at a method of bassi d'imitazione, this useful teaching has always been neglected. Nor has a collection of basses ever been gathered for the instruction of youths dedicating themselves to the art of music, thus making smooth the way leading to the study of fugue. Now while I reflected seriously upon this interesting object of study, which may be called the true logic of harmony, I heard from some ill-advised youths, with great regret, that in order to compose works of any genre it was enough simply to have knowledge of the disposition of the parts, and practice solfege exercises, nor was it necessary to lose much time in the study of fugues, which by now were considered almost useless. With this musical heresy, they would seem to imply that the sublime founders of our school, and the regenerators of the same, such as Scarlatti, Durante, Leo, Pergolesi, Sala, Zingarelli, Tritto, and many other great masters Partimenti

(Milan: Ricordi, [1833]). 210

of the last century had vainly engaged youth, for long years, in arid studies! Anyone with common sense may recognize easily the absurdity of this proposition, the deadly reason for the decadence of the current state of the Italian school of music. This notwithstanding, the above mentioned names will always be sacred to the members of the true family of harmony, and those who proclaim the study of fugue and counterpoint unnecessary will only repent later, though uselessly, of the time they have lost and the fatal maxim they had adopted. Without knowledge of imitation and fugue, music would now be deprived of many masterpieces of art and of genius; nor would it have had the Creation of Haydn, the Miserere of Leo, and that of Zingarelli, the Stabat of Pergolesi, and the treasure of classic works by Durante and Scarlatti. Even without going so far back in time, in more recent times had music not been studied regularly, we would have have been able to hear the famous Credo of the eminent Cherubini and the Grand Mass of Mozart. With regard to theatrical works, leaving aside those ancient ones by so many outstanding composers, many of whom have made themselves immortal, and regarding our own age, without the School of Fugue the beautiful finales of the operas of Rossini would certainly not have been written; the same may be said of the trio from L'esule di Roma and the quartet from Parisina by Donizetti; and the ensemble pieces of Bellini, Mercadante, and Coccia, for whom the finale of Eduardo in Iscozia is enough by which to value his learning. Nor should one forget the works of Persiani, particularly in his Danao. Now could these renowned Masters have composed such models of musical composition without the profound knowledge of counterpoint, and with no more than a knowledge of the disposition of parts? Amidst these reflections of mine, [having been] appointed by Sovereign clemency as Directer and teacher of counterpoint and composition at the Royal College of Music in Palermo, my first activity on behalf of those students was to dedicate myself to drawing up a study of Bassi d'imitazione, of which we have a positive dearth. These basses, however, have been written by me for those already experienced in counterpoint, and it is important to advise young scholars that they must have occupied themselves with committment to the study of partimenti of various authors, and then begin to compose; otherwise their labors shall be fruitless. I will consider it my great fortune if this work, whatever it may be, can be useful in part in encouraging youths who wish decisively to apply 211

themselves to musical composition, and to keep distant from their minds at the same time any ideas harmful to their talent. I have also considered it useful to add at the end of this little work a number of fugal subjects with their answers, to facilitate the students' work, repeating that without [the study of] fugues one will be unable to conduct any piece of music with regularity, since they form the true Logic of music. Live happily." "Sebbene i chiarissimi Maestri dell'Armonia CHORON, MARPURG, ed altri avessero accennata soltanto la scuola dei Bassi d'imitazione, pure quest'utile insegnamento e [sic] stato mai sempre trascurato, ne si e finora redatta una raccolta di Bassi, per istruire i giovani che si dedicano all'arte musicale, e cosl rendere loro agevole la strada per passare alle Fughe. Or mentre io seria riflessione facea su guest' interessante oggetto di studio, che pud chiamarsi la vera Logica dell'Armonia, con sommo rammarico intesi da taluni mal consigliati giovani, che per comporre delle opere in gualungue genere, bastava semplicemente aver conoscenza della disposizione delle parti, e far dei solfeggi, ne dovesasi perder lungo tempo nello studio delle Fughe, le quali ormai si erano conosciute quasi inutili. Con questa eresia musicale vorrebbero sostenere, che i sublimi fondatori della nostra scuola, ed i rigeneratori della stessa, come SCARLATTI, DURANTE, LEO, PERGOLESI, SALA, ZINGARELLI, TRITTO, e tanti altri gran maestri del passato secolo avessero invano trattenuta la gioventu per lunghi anni in aridi studi! Chiunque ha buon senno, a colpo d'occhio pub conoscere l'assurdita della proposizione indicata, cagion funesta della decadenza, in cui oggi trovasi la Scuola di Husica Italiana; ma, non ostante cid, i nomi de' succennati Maestri sacri sempre saranno alia vera famiglia dell'Armonia; e coloro i quali asseriscono esser lo studio delle Fughe e del contrapunto non necessario tardi, ma inutilmente, si pentiranno del tempo perduto e della fatale massima adottata. Senza la conoscenza delle imitazioni, e delle Fughe, priva la musica tuttora sarebbe di tanti capi di opera dell'arte e del genio, ne sariansi acquistati la Creazione di HAYDN, il Miserere di LEO, e quello di ZINGARELLI; lo Stabat del PERGOLESI, ed il tesoro delle opere classiche di DURANTE e SCARLATTI. Anzi senza immergersi in epoca cosi remota, se nei tempi piu a noi vicini non si fosse studiata la musica regolarmente, non si sarebbe inteso il famoso Credo dell'esimio CHERUBINI, e la Gran Messa di MOZART. Riguardo poi alle opere teatrali, tralasciando le antiche di tanti sommi Maestri, molte delle quali si son rese immortali, e riflettendo all'eta nostra risulta che, senza la scuola delle Fughe non si sarebbero al 212

This lively display of invention and ignorance may be faulted on a number of counts. For instance, a mass by Mozart (probably the JReguiem), along with Cherubini's Credo, completed in 1806, are held to belong to a less remote period than Zingarelli's Miserere

of 1827, and it is

glaringly inconsistent for Raimondi to lambast the current decadence of the Italian school only to follow his remarks with fulsome praise for the outstanding composers of that school, Bellini, Mercadante, and Donizetti. But the preface

certo scritti i bei Finali delle opere di ROSSINI; il Terzetto dell'£sule di Roma ed il Quartetto della Parisina di DONIZETTI; ed i pezzi a concerto di BELLINI, di MERCADANTE, e di COCCIA, pel quale basta il solo finale dell'Eduardo in Iscozia, onde valutar la sua dottrina; ne da parte por si debbono i lavori del PERSIANI, particolarmente nel suo Danao. Or tutti guesti rinomati Maestri potevano senza la profonda conoscenza del contropunto, e con la semplice disposizione delle parti comporre siffatte musiche di modello? In mezzo a gueste mie riflessioni, eletto per Sovrana clemenza a Direttore, e Maestro di Contropunto, e composizione del Real Colleggio di Musica in Palermo, la mia prima occupazione a profitto di quegli alunni fu di dedicarmi a redigere uno studio di Bassi d'imitazione, di cui abbiamo positiva penuria. Questi Bassi perd sono stati da me scritti per coloro i quali gia sono provetti nel Contrapunto, e fa mestieri di awertire i giovani studiosi, che devono precedentemente occuparsi con impegno nei partimenti dei vari Autori, e poi cominciare a comporre, altrimenti infruttuose riesciranno le loro fatiche. Io ascriverb a mia gran fortuna, se guest'opera, qualunque essa sia, pud esser tale da giovare in parte all'incoraggiamento dei giovani, che decisivamente vogliono applicarsi alle composizioni in musica, ed allontanare nel medesimo tempo dalla loro mente tutte le idee nocive al loro genio. Ho creduto altresl giovevole di soggiungere in fine dell'operetta taluni soggetti di Fughe con le loro risposte, per facilitar viemmaggiormente gli studiosi; ripetendo qui che senza le Fughe non si pud condurre con regolarita qualunque pezzo, mentre queste formano la vera Logica della musica. Vivi felice. 213

does make clear Raimondi's attitude toward the study of counterpoint at this juncture of his career as composer and theorist: since counterpoint embodies no less than "the logic of music," the utility of contrapuntal partimenti

is

not restricted to the traditional forms of imitative writing such as fugue. These exercises, rather, yield beneficial results in a variety of forms, styles, and genres. This assertion is not so much demonstrated as paraphrased and exemplified by references to acknowledged masterpieces of Raimondi's contemporaries and the generation immediately preceding.

It hardly needs to be proved in the examples he

cites from the repertoire of sacred music, where fugal textures were de rigeur,

but the operatic citations call for

comment. Even setting aside the inherent vacuity of his rhetoric (how is it possible to verify the proposition that Rossini would not have been able to compose his

finali

without having studied imitative counterpoint during his youth?), some of Raimondi's examples—such as the vague citation of "Rossini's beautiful finales"—are too general to permit the type of scrutiny necessary to determine whether there is any validity in his argument. The same may be said of his reference to the ensemble pieces of Bellini, with the added objection that the remark, in view of the Bellini letter reproduced above, is probably disingenuous. But there are two telling exceptions to this generalization, both operatic ensembles of Donizetti. Neither the trio from 214

the latter's Esule

di Roma nor the quartet from Parisina

fugal in the full sense of the word.

is

The common artifices

of fugue—subjects with tonal or real answers, invertible countersubjects, stretti

which bring subjects or

countersubjects together at closer intervals, etc.—are nowhere to be found in these ensembles, which are nevertheless held to have been impossible for Donizetti to compose had he not endured the rigors of a "scuola di fuga." What Raimondi may have had in mind was rather the consistently contrapuntal texture of certain passages of these numbers, where all of the solo parts share equally the melodic interest and participate in the contrapuntal working-out of the composition. One example of such a passage is the G major conclusion of the largo quartet from Parisina

of the

(ex. 3.2). Another is the stretto

of

the same number, which even begins analogously to a fugue (ex. 3.3): the tenor's opening theme in A major calls forth a bass response in the dominant. But this may be due to other factors, such as the very fact that an imitation at the fourth below works well for the two voices in question, tenor and bass.

Soon, at any rate, even this vaguely fugal

organization disappears as the quartet gives way to a very generalized contrapuntal texture. Another weakness of Raimondi's argument is that the principle behind Donizetti's organization of the scene is so clearly dramatic (Azzo's interruption of the pleas for mercy on the part of Ugo, 215

Parisina and Ernesto), and thus rather far removed from any purely musical conception such as a fugue. Much the same may be said of the other Donizetti example Raimondi cites, the terzetto

finale

of L'Esule

di

Roma, Act I (Ex. 3.4 pp. 140). Though the three vocal parts of Settimio, Argelia, and Murena are given plenty of independence in the passages where they are joined, there is no more properly fugal writing for them than in the

Parisina

citation. Here again there is a dominant response to a tonic theme, but this is neither subjected to contrapuntal elaboration nor even presented in a contrapuntal texture; such instances of imitation as occur are fleeting and incidental to the structure of this trio. And once more, considerations of vocal range may have been more important for Donizetti than any abstract formal scheme: the tenor Settimio is first imitated at the octave by the soprano Argelia before the theme is taken up by the bass Murena in the dominant key. Raimondi's invocation of the operatic successes of Donizetti and others is, in any case, secondary to the overall conservatism of his sentiments, which strongly echoes that expressed in Tritto's Scuola 1823.10°

di contrappunto

of

What is perhaps most noteworthy about this

invocation is its total disappearance in the preface of his

Tritto, Scuola

di contrappunto, 216

30 and

passim.

next didactic text, Fughe diverse,

where the only models he

mentions are those of the "old school," and where the practice of fugal composition is implicitly defended as valuable in itself, not merely as a study preliminary to writing an opera such as II barbiere

di

Siviglia.xo*

The organization of Raimondi's imitative exercises represents a compromise between the demanding format used for the sixth book of Fenaroli's partimenti

and their

excessive facilitation by Guarnacci or the anonymously compiled Ricordi edition: as Raimondi explains in an opening "awertimento," only the first of the three books of exercises includes asterisks indicating the appropriate starting points for imitation. (Another bit of assistance which Raimondi provides the struggling student, which he does not mention in his awertimento,

is the occasional hint

regarding particular suspensions or intervals of imitation practicable in certain exercises.) Books II and III lack any such indications, it being desirable "that the young scholar himself find the point where [another voice] must respond [che il giovine studioso trovi egli stesso il punto, dove deve rispondere]."

The only other hints offered by

Raimondi are that the imitations may be at any interval, and that not all imitations are suitable for four-part passages in which one part answers the bass while the other two make xol

Pietro Raimondi, Fughe diverse divise in tre libri, Milan, 1838. This work, along with Raimondi's explanatory preface, is discussed in Chapter 5. 217

a

controimitazione. The nature of the solutions Raimondi had in mind for

these exercises also calls for commment. The term partimento

undoubtedly has as its primary definition the

keyboard realization of a given bass line. This is in line with Florimo's frequent use of "armonia suonata" (i.e. as opposed to "armonia scritta") as an expression synonymous with partimento,

and is in fact the only definition provided

by the one musicologist seriously to explore the repertoire of partimenti,

Karl-Gustav Fellerer.102 But parallel to

the increasing provision of theoretical explanations as supplementary material for editions of partimenti

was a

tendency for this type of exercise to move beyond the practical confines of a keyboard, forming an exercise in written composition rather than keyboard harmony. Various libraries in Italy contain manuscripts of three- and fourpart realizations of these exercises, including more than a few passages quite unplayable on the piano, and many of the published realizations of Fenaroli's exercises by Guarnacci mentioned above share this characteristic. Beginning as a

102

Karl-Gustav Fellerer, "Le partimento et l'organiste au XVIIIe siecle," Musica Sacra, XLI n.4 (December 1934), 250-254. A German version of this article, considerably expanded, formed the introduction ("Das Partimento, seine Geschichte und Verwendung") to the 1940 collection of eighteenth-century partimenti edited by Fellerer. Here, too, his conception of the partimento is strictly oriented toward the keyboard, despite a detailed examination of the same changes of clef which suggested to Pastore the broader definition mentioned above. 218

study preliminary to that of composition, it gradually grew to assume the function of a mode of teaching composition; this usurpation was noticed and criticized.103

Raimondi's

exercises, not containing the slightest reference to the keyboard as the intended mode of realization, may be seen as the culmination of this trend, the furthest distance removed from eighteenth century contributions to the genre by Fenaroli, Paisiello and Zingarelli, all of whom make explicit their exclusive orientation to the keyboard by references to positions for the right hand. An idea of how Raimondi's basses were employed as skeletal models for composition rather than keyboard exercises may be obtained by examining several manuscripts in two Italian libraries. The written realizations of twelve of Raimondi's exercises by Vincenzo Fiodo, a Neapolitan composer and teacher,104 are found in a manuscript in the Milan Conservatory Library.105 Fiodo's solution to exercise #27 from Raimondi's Book I (example 3.5) shows a not overly resourceful technique: he misses the obvious opportunity for imitation at the ninth (particularly 103

Giuseppe Staffa, II metodo della scuola composizione musicale (Stabilimento tipografico Azzolino, 1849), ix.

napoletana di F.

104

di

Fiodo (1786-1863) studied with Raimondi's teacher Tritto, and showed a Raimondi-like predilection for multiple choruses and orchestras (see Florimo, La scuola di musica di Napoli, III, xx-xx). 105

I-Mc Noseda Th.C. 142b. The completed exercise is dated 1858. 219

inexcusable in that the exercise is accompanied by a note explicitly calling for this interval of imitation) in the opening measures, while his own imitations are sporadic and unsustained. More impressive is the realization, including a nicely handled stretto, by Raimondi's pupil Carmelo Fodale106 of exercise #51 (ex. 3.6); note the passages not playable on the piano, such as mm. 23-24.107 Bassi

imitati

e fugati

proved to be one of Raimondi's

few modest claims to immortality, remaining in use into the twentieth century. Ricordi reprinted it many times through the nineteenth century, eventually repackaging it as part of the Biblioteca

Didascalica,

a series of theoretical and

pedagogical works, after the turn of the century. Cesare De Sanctis pointed to Raimondi's bassi

as an indispensable

preparation for his own important method. Raimondi's exercises "are excellent for the study of imitations, and serve at the same time, not only to remove the dryness of contrapuntal exercises, but to put the given rules into 106

Fodale is mentioned as a student of Raimondi in Federico di Maria, II R. Consevatorio di Musica di Palermo (Florence, 1941), 48. Fodale later became an instructor of "accompaniment" at the Florence conservatory (see Adelmo Damerini, II R. Conservatorio di Musica "L. Cherubini" di Firenze, Florence, 1941, 36), and years after Raimondi's death took part in the Florentine performance of the triple oratorio (he is listed as a participant on the last page of the libretto). His response to Gamucci's review of Abramo Basevi's Nuovo sistema d'armonia in Regio Istituto Musicale di Firenze, Atti dell'Accademia di Belle Arti, Anno XVIII (1880), 51-77, shows him to have been a theorist of strong training. 107

I-Pc, R38. 220

practice, and gradually to prepare for the study of fugue;" later in his treatise De Sanctis asserts that Raimondi is "the greatest contrapuntist of our epoch."108 And Cesare Dobici, finally, whose indebtedness to Raimondi is evident in the very title of his own similar collection of imitative partimenti,

stated in his preface that his exercises were to

be taken up only after obtaining mastery over Raimondi's.109

108

Cesare de Sanctis, La polifonia nell'arte moderna spiegata secondi i principi classici (Milan: Ricordi, 1902), Vol. Ill, 17: Sara poi utilissimo l'unire contemporaneamente agli esecizi contrappuntistici l'armonizzarzione dei bassi fugati ed imitati del maestro Raimondi (edizione Ricordi), che molto si prestano alio studio delle imitazioni, e servono nello stesso tempo, oltre a togliere l'aridita degli esercizi contrappuntistici, a mettere in pratica le regole date, ed a prepararsi gradatamente alia composizione della Fuga. 109

Cesare Dobici, Bassi imitati e fugati per lo studio del Contrappunto, appendice ai Bassi imitati e fugati i Pietro Raimondi, (Milan: Ricordi, 1904). Vol. II contains the realizations to the basses of Vol. I. 221

Ex. 3.1 Federico Fenaroli, Cours complet d'harmonie et haute composition (Paris: Launer, 1817), 164 (Book VI no. 38)

M M-\$k$ 222

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