Music-selling in seventeenth-century Rome: three ... - Patrizio Barbieri

Music-selling in seventeenth-century Rome 143Table 4. Number of musical works published by Italian publishers (data from carter, “Musicpublishing in Italy, c.1580-c.1625”, p. 21).year sacredno.secularno.instrumentalno.1585 29 66 41600 35 54 31620 62 30 52.3. The music: sacred vs secular. In Table 3 we see that in the 1586 inventory secularmusic is more than double sacred music, and this ratio is still more favourable to thesecular sector with reference to the average of music published in Italy in those years(Table 4). This fact is also recorded in Florence for the same period. 44 In the 1621inventory, on the other hand, the opposite is true and the ratio inverse, and here tooit is in harmony with the average given by Table 4: this imbalance however is alwayssuch as to attenuate the penalty suffered by secular music during this period (in Table4 the sacred-secular ratio is slightly higher than 2, while in Table 3 it is slightly lower).This difference is decidedly attenuated in the 1633 inventory. It thus appears that thebooksellers’ customers preferred secular music.The churches probably had other procurement channels, possibly through themaestri di cappella themselves. This is the case, for example, of Francesco Soriano,magister of the basilica of St. Peter’s: in a deed dated 1612, we learn that he had employedGiovanni Battista Robletti to print for him “some of his musical works” andthat, in the same year, he collected from the said printer 25 “volumes of masses”composed by him, at the price of two scudi each. 45 This business relationship musthave gone on for years, since another deed dated 1628 tells us that Soriano had leftRobletti 20 scudi for the correction of some of his musical works. 46 Consequently,it is clear for this very reason that, strangely, a well-known composer like Soriano(1549–1621) does not appear in the inventories of 1621 and 1633 (= 1625). The samecan be said – although to a lesser extent – of Palestrina and Giovanni Luca Conforti,since some of their works were printed at their own expense. 47 To such a list wemay add the instrumental compositions by Girolamo Frescobaldi, by whom only asingle work appears in the 1621 inventory (the Toccate, printed at his own expense in1615–16), while in the 1633 inventory is totally absent. 48 The Franzini-Carampelli do44. carter, “Music-selling in late sixteenth-century Florence”, p. 490.45. AS, 30 Not. Cap., uff. 9, vol. 94, f. 601, 5.12.1612.46. AS, 30 Not. Cap., uff. 13, vol. 244, f. 58, 6.7.1628.47. barbieri, “Music printers”, p. 88. See also bernstein, “Publish or perish? Palestrina and printculture in 16th-century Italy”, p. 233.48. On the first volume of the Toccate, see arnaldo morelli, “Nuovi documenti frescobaldiani: icontratti per l’edizione del primo libro di Toccate”, Studi musicali, xvii, 1988, pp. 255–265. Also with regardto the second edition of the Recercari (Roma, B. Zannetti, 1618), in a private letter in that year, weread: “Io pensavo che se ne trovassi a’ librari, non c’è altri che lui [= Frescobaldi] che li venda comeopera sua”: gabriele giacomelli, “Fortuna dell’opera frescobaldiana in Toscana attraverso il carteggiodi Francesco Nigetti (1618–1657)”, L’organo, xxv-xxvi, 1987–88, pp. 97–112: 99 (on pp. 106–107 we learnthat as late as 1625 the situation was unchanged).