A Catalogue Raisonné of Manuscripts and Prints of the 1720s to the 1850s collected by the Ricasoli Family now housed in the University of Louisville Music Library. With essays on the History of the Collection and on Music in the Ricasoli Chapels and Household by Robert Lamar Weaver. Ed. by Susan Parisi. Catalogue compiled by John Karr, Caterina Pampaloni, and Robert Lamar Weaver.
The University of Louisville Music Library is the repository of some 400 manuscripts and prints of music, and a number of music books, collected between about 1750 and 1860 by three branches of the Ricasoli family of the high nobility of Florence. Largely a performing collection, the scores and pedagogical books were used in the Ricasoli residences and chapels by family members and the musicians they employed. Amounting to over 1,400 compositions, there are operas, oratorios, masses, organ toccatas, sacred and secular songs, ballet music, sinfonias, concertos, violin and keyboard sonatas, sonatas, variations, character pieces, and opera transcriptions for keyboard alone, works for piano four-hands, and harp compositions. Many scores are by Tuscan composers, and a considerable number are autographs. In several of the manuscripts alterations and performance indications are visible.
Principal composers represented in the collection include Handel, Marcello, Pergolesi, Jommelli, J. C. Bach, Pleyel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Clementi, Dussek, Guglielmi, Mysliveček, Paisiello, Rossini, Mayr, Paer, Cimarosa, Cherubini, Kozeluch, Schroeter, Vanhal, and Wagenseil, among others. Some of the Tuscan composers are Barbieri, Buccioni, Campion, Favier, B. Felici, A. Felici, Giuliani, Ligniville, Mabellini, Magnelli, Meucci, Moneta, Panerai, Pelleschi, G. M. Rutini, Gaspero Sborgi, Gaetano Sborgi, Sodi, and Valenti.
The present volume brings together important documentary studies on the Ricasoli music by Robert Lamar Weaver and a comprehensive catalogue of the complete contents, arranged by category: Secular Music; Sacred Music; and Method, Theory, and History Books. Weaver’s two essays trace the history of the collection and its cultural background, and examine liturgical services and music in the Ricasoli chapels and residences. Both the catalogue and the essays draw on a wealth of contemporaneous documents from the Ricasoli archives in Florence.
The Ricasoli documents corroborate the musical evidence and shed light on musical activity in the household, and the musical inclinations and talents of family members. Accounts record the music teachers who were employed, and expenses for liturgical services, theatrical performances, and recitals. Significantly, notices also reveal information about specific items in the collection: dates of purchase; names of copyists and dates of copying; dates of performances, and the composers and performers engaged.
Twenty-seven illustrations accompany the text.
About the editor
Susan Parisi is Research Scholar in Music at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
About the compilers
John Karr is Associate Professor of Music History at California State University, Fresno.
Caterina Pampaloni is a Laureate in Music History of the Università degli Studi di Pisa.
Robert Lamar Weaver is Professor Emeritus of Music History at the University of Louisville. His research saved the Ricasoli Collection from dispersal.
DMM/SM 59 / 496p / 0-89990-158-1 / Hardcover / $85.00 / January 2012
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