Iacobus Leodiensis [Iacobus de Montibus, Iacobus de Oudenaerde]

5. 18th century.

(i) General observations.

(ii) Musicians' lives.

(iii) Opera.

(iv) Sacred music.

(v) Instrumental music.

Italy, §I, 5: 18th century art music

(i) General observations.

18th-century Italian music appears to have well-defined chronological limits: at one extremity stand Corelli and Zeno's operatic reforms, at the other the late works of Boccherini. This historical construct contains a measure of truth but is also misleading. The idea that the revolutions at the end of the 18th century released a spirit of artistic renewal was ideologically motivated: during the period of the Risorgimento critics condemned 18th-century music because of its hedonistic functions and as the expression of an élite class, and De Sanctis and Carducci judged Metastasian opera in the same light. Nevertheless, as early as the 19th century the music of Sammartini and 18th-century Venetian composers caught the attention of such theorists as Carpani, Gervasoni, Lichtenthal, Picchianti and Ruta. Asioli (1832) identified the counterpoint of Corelli and Marcello as instructive models of a style that was scholarly but not dry, but in doing so undervalued its purely aesthetic value. This view, a symptom of inadequate historic awareness, was repeated by Verdi's pupil, Emanuele Muzio, when he described Corelli's music as ‘tough food to digest’, but as a useful subject for study because it was ‘full of science’.

The re-evaluation of 18th-century instrumental music was the work of the 20th-century musicologists Torchi, Chilesotti, Vatielli and Torrefranca, followed by the composers Casella and Malipiero. In contrast, the genres of oratorio and cantata, more concerned with a specific function, aroused no interest in an intellectual environment so heavily influenced by Benedetto Croce. In recent decades, however, research into 18th-century Italian opera has afforded greater insight into its codes of communication and its system of production. The definition of 18th-century Italian music as an abstract, stylized art, a hedonistic diversion for a society which the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) consigned to the margins of history, has thus declined.

Three broad categories of places where music was performed in 18th-century Italy can be identified: the public, private and ecclesiastical, which correspond in general terms to the three genres of opera, instrumental and chamber music (including cantatas) and liturgical music. There was an uninterrupted growth in the number of opera houses, which took on the character of civic institutions and became points of reference in the layout of a city. The old system of court theatres was progressively replaced by one of theatres run by impresarios for profit. Instrumental concerts (‘academies’) were mostly given in private homes; since it did not involve the commercial mechanisms of the theatre, instrumental music was the exclusive province of the upper classes. Cathedrals and their chapels were affected by the opera house: performers often worked both in church and the theatre, and the idiom of liturgical music grew increasingly similar to that of opera.

The three genres have in common a diffused habit of inattentive listening: it was only with considerable effort that the idea of listening to music as a work of art became established in Italy, and for this reason many musical compositions go no higher than the level of ornamental, extemporary and occasional work. The ephemeral nature of musical expression entailed a high degree of improvisation in all three genres: from the opera house (where the singer improvised in the da capo sections of arias, and, as Giardini and Galeazzi document, orchestral players sometimes did likewise) to the church, where the organist had carte blanche to improvise, and private entertainments (in 1787 Hadrava describes an improvisation on ‘composed’ music, such as that by Mozart).

As the century progressed, music, without distinctions between genres, became the prevailing artistic expression in the daily life of the upper middle class: ‘the Italians may, perhaps, be accused of cultivating music to excess’ (Burney). The high rate of consumption led to greater conventionalism and periodic changes in taste: ‘musical taste in Italy changes at least every ten years’ (De Brosses, 256). With the spread of ‘profit-making’ opera houses, and the increased tendency to celebrate public occasions with music, the social range of consumers widened. This broadening of the social base of the ‘leaders of taste’ guided the choice of musical genres: the only really classless genre was opera, particularly comic opera after 1750. Although Stendhal, writing in 1817, still saw Italy as the land of music par excellence, this supremacy had diminished in the last decades of the 18th century, as can be seen in the exodus of players abroad and opera composers' search for success in the great capitals outside Italy.

In the middle of the century music started to be reconsidered aesthetically, no longer viewed as something ephemeral and occasional, but an art form with its own expressive worth. Algarotti, Tartini and Muratori, and later Baretti, Galeazzi and Carpani document the passage from a scientific concept of musical composition to an aesthetic one; from music as one of the liberal arts to music as one of the fine arts; no longer a craft (as Saverio Mattei was still maintaining in 1785), but an expression of character and affetti, a direct imitation of nature (Tartini/Algarotti).

Italy, §I, 5: 18th century art music

(ii) Musicians' lives.

Musicians were educated within the family circle, in the case of the professional musical families, or in the few institutional schools in Italy: these were the conservatories in Naples and Palermo (the famous ospedali for girls in Venice did not, with a few exceptions, prepare their pupils for a profession), the chapels of the great cathedrals like S Petronio in Bologna or, for 16th-century counterpoint, the Roman chapels and the Santuario della Santa Casa in Loreto. Lastly there was private teaching, the greatest example of which is provided by Tartini, ‘teacher to all the nations’, as well as the instances of Hasse with Scarlatti and Galuppi with Lotti. According to De Brosses (p.598), ‘the best seminaries of maestri di cappella are in Naples. … For voices, the best school is in Bologna; Lombardy excels in instrumental music’, and this is confirmed by Josse de Villeneuve (1756). Naples, where the majority of Italian composers were educated, had four conservatories: the Poveri di Gesù Cristo (closed in 1743), S Maria di Loreto and S Onofrio (which merged in 1797), and S Maria della Pietà dei Turchini. It is estimated that each conservatory had an average of about 100 pupils in a city of about 250,000 inhabitants. The subjects taught were counterpoint and figured bass (partimenti), while operatic and instrumental composition were learned orally and by imitation, a distinction between the educational and the professional (theory and practice) that remained unchanged until Verdi's day.

After completing his education, the young composer could make his début with short comic operas, liturgical pieces, or by writing arias for insertion into operas by others. After he made himself known, he could aspire to opera seria and the great theatres: the determining factors at this stage were the family ties and contacts of his own teacher. However, it was difficult to guarantee an income and regular work in writing for the theatre. Instrumental composition offered the composer two lucrative possibilities: a dedication to a member of the nobility, rewarded with a one-off gift, or in private sales of an independently printed work. Another possible employment was as maestro al cembalo (harpsichordist) in a theatre, as was probably the case with the young Galuppi at the Teatro S Angelo in Venice. As well as these personal sources of income a composer usually also held a permanent post in service to the nobility, in the church, or as a teacher. In these cases, too, the remuneration was modest. A composer in the mid-18th century being thus active in all genres meant that there was a continual stylistic cross-fertilization between them, a situation criticized by Tartini.

There are various examples of singers being born into professional musical families, such as the Mingotti, Ristorini, Baglioni and Laschi families. The greatest number of singing teachers is recorded in Bologna, although no institutional school of singing with a local stylistic identity was ever established there. In Rome the Collegio Germanico and the Seminario Romano, both Jesuit foundations, exported their pupils all over Europe. Because of the papal ban on women performing either in church or in the opera house, many castratos, often from humble backgrounds, began their careers in Rome.

Singers who did not succeed in entering the extensive operatic scene, which had its centre in Bologna, contented themselves with posts in the cathedrals. The first performers to reap the benefits of the nascent star system were singers, on whom every category of musical performance depended; they were thus the first element operatic administrators had to consider, and they were the highest paid, commanding up to ten times the fee of the composer. Later on, the composer also entered the open market: for example, Piccinni in 1770 could choose where to work according to the pay on offer. This was the point at which the composer became a cornerstone in the mechanism of opera production, and began his social ascent.

Italy, §I, 5: 18th century art music