Amongst European cities, only Paris could perhaps match Rome in regard to the liveliness of its cultural life: wealthy noble families, diplomatic representatives, cardinals aiming to establish themselves as possible candidates for the papacy, even a few exiled queens such as Cristina of Sweden and Maria Casimira of Poland – all considered that the best way to acquire prestige in town was by means of giving patronage to artistic activities and, among them, music was definitely regarded as a favourite art. As a result, they were promoting small and large gatherings – sometimes private, sometimes open to the whole town – in which the music was always present and, alongside with the rinfreschi (generous offer of food and drinks), it was often the centre of the event.
In the preliminary part of this research, I will dig a little into information that can be assembled by studying the records related to this type of events. In the perspective of this study, these noble gatherings are an ideal terrain of analysis not only because they often included instrumental music - which is the topic of this paper - but also because a number of different types of documents are related to them. 3 Not only we have plenty of descriptions of their splendour in contemporary chronicles and journals, but also drawings and paintings representing them have sometimes survived. Moreover, when the performance of a vocal composition was part of the event, a libretto was often printed, and we shall see how rich of musical information a libretto can be. Finally, as these performances usually involved a large number of players and some significant expenses for their promoters, several related bookkeeping documents exist. These type of records (pay lists of musicians hired for specific performances as well as payrolls of the players regularly employed by the richest family), are a major source of information regarding the instrumental bands active in Rome at the time.
Ideally, implementing all the findings from the above-mentioned sources into a performance of the actual scores, should create an aural result close to the original one heard by the Roman audience of the time. However, this is hardly possible, because when talking about Roman Sinfonie, particularly with trumpets, we are confronted with the problem that (almost) no scores of this repertoire have survived. Hence, in order to be able to apply the performance practices that can be inferred from the different types of primary sources available, a parallel speculation about how these lost scores looked like, should be carried on as well.
Before moving on to see what can be learned from the analysis of the sources mentioned above, it is worth looking into some semantic specificities of the literary ones. There are two terms in particular that deserve extra attention: Sinfonia and Musica . The term Sinfonia is used with two different meanings in the sources: it can either indicate a group of instrumentalists (large or small), or an instrumental composition. The best example of this is Giovanni Crescimbeni who, a few lines after having used the term Sinfonie to refer to instrumental groups (see note 2), adopts the same term in its alternative meaning of instrumental composition: “[Corelli] compose a suoi giorni infinite bellissime sinfonie […]; e tutte egualmente riuscivano dilettevoli, e maestose, come ben dimostra l'opera, che di esse diede alle stampe,” which means: “[Corelli] composed in his times countless awesome sinfonie […]; all of them very pleasant, and majestic, as it is well proven by the work that he gave to print.” 4 Another instance in which the term is used in its second meaning - i.e., instrumental composition - and also refers to Arcangelo Corelli, is the one adopted by Angelo Berardi da Sant'Agata who affirms: “I concerti di Violino, e d'altri Strumenti si chiamano Sinfonie & hoggi sono in preggio, e stima quelle del Sig. Arcangelo Corelli Violinista celebre, detto il Bolognese, nuovo Orfeo de nostri giorni,” which means: “Instrumental compositions for violins and for other instruments are called Sinfonie, and the ones of Arcangelo Corelli, famous violin player from Bologna, new Orpheus of our days, are nowadays particularly appreciated.” 5
This double use of the term Sinfonia will leave open, sometimes, a small ambiguity as, for instance, reading that Corelli was conducting a Sinfonia, might mean both that he was leading an orchestral band or a musical composition. In the perspective of my research about the use of trumpets in Roman Sinfonie , this little uncertainty will not be particularly harmful as, to a good extent, recreating the soundscape of the instrumental music of the time involves both understanding how the performing ensembles were constructed as well as determining which music they were playing. Hence, in this paper, I will use the term Sinfonia in both its ancient meanings, and the outcome of my research - ultimately, the audio and video material presented - should be considered as the sum of the music performed and the instrumental ensemble performing it.
If the term Sinfonia carries this ambiguity, the term Musica is, on the contrary, used very specifically in the sources, and it refers to a musical composition that includes both singer(s) and instrumentalists. The clarity of this dichotomy is important in order to discern if a document is relevant to our topic, instrumental music, or not.
Although Roman festive events included – more often than not – both Sinfonie and Musica , the amount of information that has been transmitted about the Sinfonie is more scant than the ones regarding the Musica . The reason for this is largely the difference of importance attributed to the vocal compositions in respect to the instrumental music. Indeed, while the former was often the centre of the event, the latter was only considered functional either to introduce the vocal composition itself, or to prepare the audience to listen to an official speech, or to give more splendour to the presentation of an award, but it was not considered so relevant on its own as to be passed on in all its details. A first consequence of this, is that many fewer scores of instrumental compositions have survived compared to the vocal works. Bearing in mind that a common scenario was the one in which the composer of the vocal work was not the same as the one responsible for the instrumental music, we are left with several doubts regarding purely instrumental music, its style and its paternity in Rome around 1700. One point, however, is undebatable: soon after his arrival in Rome and till the end of his activity, Arcangelo Corelli was a central figure in the Roman musical life. 6 Hence, my study about the Roman Sinfonie around 1700, will largely focus on him. 7
In the course of this study, starting from the analysis of primary sources and from an abundant literature on the subject, I proceeded as follows: 8
- Firstly, I looked at which instruments were most commonly playing in the instrumental bands of the time, and what was the typical balance between their internal forces.
- Secondly, I looked into evidence showing that Corelli was not only involved as a performer, but as a composer as well, and at the same time I dug into the question whether Corelli might have composed Sinfonie featuring wind instruments or not.
After these preliminary steps, and having shown the gap that exists between the findings of this investigation and the surviving scores, I have taken the following steps:
- I wrote a short literature review analysing the different proposals formulated by scholars and musicians on the possibility of identifying the lost scores of Corelli’s Sinfonie and on recreating their sound.
- I proposed my own ideas on the matter.
- I explained from which evidence and examples I have established my own versions of Corelli’s Sinfonie with trumpets and I stressed the fact that their aim is to recreate the soundscape of the original, admittedly lost, Sinfonie .
- I gave a short report of an orchestral production held at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague (NL) where I had the chance to bring to life my experiment and I have presented, through some audio/video material, the artistic result of it. 9
- I discussed the outcome of a survey conducted amongst the participants of the above-mentioned orchestral project and I have proposed to consider it as an extra element for assessing the result of the research. 10