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This book contains sixteen essays on Venetian music in its last great period, stretching from the second half of the 17th century to the fall of the Republic in 1797. Two essays deal with musical institutions (academies and conservatories), nine with the life and works of Antonio Vivaldi, and five with contemporaries of Vivaldi active in Venice (Albinoni, Marcello, Vinaccesi). A substantial supplementary chapter updates, and where necessary revises, the facts and arguments of the original essays, which collectively date from the years 1973-1995. All the essays are written in English, but many originally appeared in Italian journals and conference proceedings that are hard for English-speaking readers to obtain. The volume is carefully indexed, enabling the reader easily to make connections between the essays.
List of contents
Contents: Introduction; Acknowledgements; Music in Venice: Musical academies in eighteenth-century Venice; Tenors and basses at the Venetian Ospedali; Vivaldi: Vivaldi and the empire; Vivaldi's Serenatas: long cantatas or short operas?; Vivaldi's 'Manchester' sonatas; Vivaldi's conch concerto; A Vivaldi sonata with obbligato organ in Dresden; Lingua romana in bocca veneziana: Vivaldi, Corelli and the Roman School; Vivaldi and Rome: observations and hypotheses; Vivaldi's sacred music: the three periods; New light on Vivaldi's Stabat Mater; Other Venetian Composers: The function and character of the instrumental ritornello in the solo cantatas of Tomaso Albinoni (1671-1751); Albinoni's oboe concertos; The effects of music: Benedetto Marcello's cantata Il Timoteo; The Marcian motets of Benedetto Vinaccesi; The Taiheg, the Pira and other curiosities of Benedetto Vinaccesi's Suonate da camera a tre, Op. 1; Addenda and Corrigenda; Index of musical works and collections; Index of names.
