Ariosti, Attilio (Malachia [Clemente]) [Frate Ottavio]

(b Bologna, 5 Nov 1666; d London, before 3 Sept 1729). Italian composer. From about 1672 to about 1684 he was a chierico (altar boy) at S Petronio, where he most likely received his musical training. By 1682 he had substituted Clemente for his baptismal name Malachia. As Frate Ottavio he entered the monastic Order of Servites on 25 July 1688, and he served as organist at their basilica, S Maria dei Servi, in Bologna. He became a deacon in 1692, and he preceded his name with ‘frate’ in dedications and correspondence. Yet he was usually termed ‘padre’ by contemporaries, so he may have attained the rank of priest. He dedicated his first two oratorios (1693–4) and his Divertimenti da camera (1695) to noble patrons. These works presumably attracted the attention of the music-loving Duke of Mantua, since Ariosti entered his service by March 1696, when the libretto for a Mantuan oratorio names its composer as ‘P[adre] Attilio Ottavio Ariosti, virtuoso della [duca di Mantova]’. In the autumn he was perhaps responsible for one act of the opera Tirsi, which was dedicated to the duke. After composing his first complete opera in 1697, he was sent by the duke to the Berlin court of Sophie Charlotte, Electress of Brandenburg, whom he served as maître de musique (according to his title in the text of the serenata Mars und Irene). Since her court was Protestant, the Servite Order was highly displeased by this move and repeatedly commanded his return to Bologna. He had, however, quickly managed to become Sophie's favourite musician, and she successfully manoeuvred to extend his visit, enlisting Italian dukes and cardinals as well as the German philosopher Leibnitz to support her cause. Leibnitz reflected that Ariosti was not easy to replace, because he could sing, perform on several instruments and write dramatic texts as well as music. For Sophie he wrote the music for two operas and three shorter works, as well as the text for Giovanni Bononcini's Polifemo. After Sophie capitulated, Ariosti prudently declared his readiness to return to his order by way of Vienna, even though – as she wrote to Leibnitz – ‘he is dying for fear of returning to his monastery’.

Having contrived to extend his Berlin sojourn to six years (until October 1703), Ariosti stretched his time in Vienna to seven and a half years. While there, he composed one opera, three oratorios, five serenatas and at least 23 cantatas (those in A-Wn 17575 and 17591). He was greatly esteemed by Joseph I, who accepted ‘P[adre] Attilio Ariosti’ as his servant, according to the attribution in the libretto for Nabuccodonosor (1706). In 1707 Joseph gave him the portfolio of imperial minister and agent for all the princes and states of Italy. As such he was received by his order at Bologna in May 1708, and during the last four years of Joseph's reign he may well have spent more time as a diplomat in Italy than as a composer in Vienna. In June 1711, 12 composers wrote music for the conveyance of the relics of St Gaudentius to Novara, and ‘Ariosti, Vienna S[ua] M[aestà] C[esarea]’ is the first composer listed. A Bolognese memoir of 1711 (I-Bu 770) records indignantly that the monk Ariosti, on returning to Italy, wore a secular costume with gold brocade and a grandiose hat, and received visitors with such pomp that Wilhelmina, the widow of Joseph I, evicted him from the Austrian realm and asked the pope to evict him from all Catholic lands. Leibnitz provided a far better explanation of events in 1711: Ariosti's post as imperial agent in Italy ended with the death of Joseph I, after which he ‘entered the service of the Duke of Anjou, with a huge salary’. This duke was none other than the future Louis XV, whose government Ariosti conjecturally served as a roving agent. All that is known about his career during these years is contained in a letter he wrote from Paris on 15 February 1716 to his brother Giovanni Battista (Frate Odoardo, b 1668): ‘I have been received with great honour by all rulers wherever I went, that is, Bavaria, Württemberg, Durlach, Baden, Lorraine, and, at present, by the Duke of Orléans, regent of this realm, where I will not stay long … I will go to England, and from there to Portugal and Madrid … I could tell you a great deal of news, but I dare not, because – like all who act circumspectly – I must not convey it’.

Ariosti's career during the two decades before he sailed to England is thus filled with diplomatic intrigue, by means of which he sidled with surprising ease from one lofty court position to another. The extent of his output as a composer does not match that of his prolific contemporaries (Caldara, Vivaldi, G. Bononcini or Handel), undoubtedly because his attention was often focussed on teaching, religious and diplomatic duties, or on his vocal, organ, harpsichord, viola d'amore and cello performances. His stage works written before 1716 are effective dramatically, and von Besser related that the chromaticism and dissonance in the ‘infernal symphony’ of L'Inganno vinto dalla Costanza (1700) depicted the rage and despair of Atys so successfully that listeners were alternately overcome with horror and pity. In La fede ne' tradimenti (1701), recitativo semplice is rendered expressive by the occasional passage-work and triple-time sections; considerable variety is found in the accompanimental techniques, textures, instrumentation and aria forms; and the ombra and sleep scenes exhibit Ariosti's descriptive skills. When Ariosti was in Vienna novel effects produced by solo wind instrumentalists were common, and his scores exemplify them very well. Amor tra nemici, his Viennese opera of 1708, was brought by the imperial ambassador to London, where, as Almahide (1710), it became the first opera sung entirely in Italian on the London stage. The editors, however, manifested their usual lack of reverence for an original score by replacing all but 11 of Ariosti's 43 arias, mainly with pieces drawn from recent Viennese compositions by Giovanni Bononcini. Thus Ariosti's score was not responsible for Almahide's extended run of 25 performances in 1710–12, though its success perhaps paved the way for his arrival.

Ariosti's first appearance in London was on 12 July 1716, when he played his ‘New Symphony … upon a New Instrument call'd Viola D'Amour’ between acts of Handel's Amadigi. On 27 May 1717 he wrote to Carl Philipp, the new Palatine elector, asking to be made his agent in England. His first dramatic work written in London was Tito Manlio, which ended the 1716–17 season. In addition to the typical genres (da capo arias alternating with recitativo semplice), Tito Manlio has nine long accompanied recitatives and five duets. All but four of the 35 arias and all the accompanied recitatives employ unusually colourful scorings to underline the affect in each scene, for example pizzicato and tremolos depict madness. This striking work presumably prompted the directors of the Royal Academy of Music to commission a new opera from Ariosti for their first season in 1719–20; but Ariosti was still active as a diplomat and did not write an opera for the Academy until its fourth season. (Even in 1733, four years after his death, an anti-popish pamphleteer wished that ‘his mischievous Negociations could sleep with him’.) At the beginning of 1720 he was in Paris for a state wedding, and he might have stayed there until a few months before the production of his Caio Marzio Coriolano in February 1723. This was by far the most successful of the operas he composed or reworked for the Royal Academy, and it was the only one revived in London. Its original success owed a great deal to the prima donna, Francesca Cuzzoni, who had made her sensational London début one month earlier (in Handel's Ottone), but it likewise owed much to Ariosti's expressive setting of Pariati's excellent libretto. The dramatic peak is the prison scene for the title character (portrayed by Senesino) in the middle of Act 3. The chromatic accompagnato with which it begins was cited by Rameau in his Génération harmonique (1737) as an admirable example of the ‘enharmonic genre’. The ensuing aria, in F minor, begins with a largo section, but continues with a furious, modulatory Presto. Hawkins found this scene ‘wrought up to the highest degree of perfection that music is capable of’ and noted that it was ‘said to have drawn tears from the audience at every representation’. The success of the work led Ariosti to publish an almost complete collection of its numbers; in 1724 he did the same for his next opera, Vespasiano.

In 1723–4 Ariosti was at the height of his popularity in London, and he took advantage of it by publishing a collection of six cantatas and six lessons for the viola d'amore, dedicated to George I (brother of his former patron Sophie Charlotte). Even though the cost was ‘a fiendish two guineas’ per volume, there were 764 subscribers, including 42 dukes and duchesses, 105 earls and countesses and 146 other lords and ladies. 133 of them were subscribers to the Royal Academy, presumably for the 1723–4 season. All the pieces in the volume are clearly Baroque rather than pre-Classical in texture, and they ‘abound with evidences of a fertile invention, and great skill in the art of modulation and the principles of harmony’ (Hawkins). The six lessons are printed in a unique scordatura system designed to allow their performance with violin fingerings on the viola d'amore. 15 similar, but untitled, pieces survive (in ordinary staff notation) in a manuscript copied in England about 1718 by the Swedish composer Johan Helmich Roman.

A ‘renowned triumvirate’ (Burney) of composers was employed by the Royal Academy: Handel during all eight seasons, Ariosti during six (1722–8) and Giovanni Bononcini during five (1720–24 and 1726–7). Ariosti's success was already on the wane during his second season, when he wrote Vespasiano. It marked a significant turn away from the vigour of the Baroque (which the British favoured, as demonstrated by their fondness for Handel), towards the languor of the pre-Classical idiom. The satirical Session of Musicians expressed Londoners' disappointment: ‘Of Ti[tu]s Ma[nli]us you may justly boast, but dull Ves[pasi]an all that Honour lost’. Among his later operas, only Artaserse received more than six performances. The ‘Favourite Songs’ that John Walsh published from these works display either plaintively sweet melodies or extremely tempestuous roulades, which incorporated ‘all the furbelows, flounces, and vocal fopperies of the time’ (Burney). In spring 1727 the directors of the Royal Academy resolved to commission operas in turn from Handel, Ariosti and Bononcini, so that their theatre, which could ‘boast of the three best Voices in Europe [Senesino, Cuzzoni and Faustina], and the best Instruments’, would likewise have ‘three different Stiles of composing’; but the Academy closed one year later, when it was insolvent, and may have paid Ariosti poorly, because he was reportedly living in poverty at the beginning of 1728. He may, however, have been a spendthrift, for Paolo Rolli declared in his mordant epitaph: ‘Here lies Attilio Ariosti, he'd borrow still, could he accost ye. Monk to the last, whate'er betide, at other's cost he lived – and died’.

WORKS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

LOWELL LINDGREN

Ariosti, Attilio

WORKS

stage

music lost unless otherwise stated

serenatas

music lost unless otherwise stated

oratorios

cantatas

for soprano and basso continuo unless otherwise stated

dates are of earliest known MS copy unless otherwise stated

other works

Ariosti, Attilio

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BDA

BurneyH

DBI (R. Nielsen)

HawkinsH; LS

SartoriL

J. von Besser: Schrifften (Leipzig, 2/1720), 348–62

The Sessions of Musicians (London, 1724; repr. in Deutsch, 1955, pp.163–70)

G. Tondini, ed.: Paolo Rolli: Marziale in Albion (Florence, 1776)

A. von Weilen: Zur Wiener Theatergeschichte: die vom Jahre 1629 bis zum Jahre 1740 am Wiener Hofe zur Aufführung gelangten Werke theatralischen Charakters und Oratorien (Vienna, 1901)

A. Ebert: Attilio Ariosti in Berlin (1697–1703): ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Musik am Hofe König Friedrichs I. von Preussen (Leipzig, 1905)

A. Einstein: ‘Italienische Musiker am Hofe der Neuberger Wittelsbacher, 1614–1716’, SIMG, ix (1907–8), 336–424, esp. 412–17

C. Sachs: Musik und Oper am kurbrandenburgischen Hof (Berlin, 1910)

E. Wellesz: ‘Die Opern und Oratorien in Wien von 1660–1708’, SMw, vi (1919), 5–138, esp. 85–8

L. Frati: ‘Attilio Ottavio Ariosti’, RMI, xxxiii (1926), 551–7

R. Casimiri and A. Vicentini: ‘Attilio Ottavio Ariosti: nuovi documenti’, NA, ix (1932), 1–20

D. Boyden: ‘Ariosti's Lessons for Viola d'amore’, MQ, xxxii (1946), 545–63

O.E. Deutsch: Handel: a Documentary Biography (London, 1955)

U. Kirkendale: Antonio Caldara: sein Leben und seine venezianisch-römischen Oratorien (Graz and Cologne, 1966), 61–3

W.C. Smith: ‘“Do you know what you are about?”: a Rare Handelian Pamphlet [of 1733]’, MR, xxv (1964), 114–19

G.L. Dardo: ‘La Passione di Attilio Ariosti’, Chigiana, xxiii, new ser., iii (1966), 59–87

G. Weiss: ‘57 unbekannte Instrumentalstücke (15 Sonaten), von Attilio Ariosti in einer Abschrift von Johan Helmich Roman’, Mf, xxiii (1970), 127–38

L. Lindgren: ‘Parisian Patronage of Performers from the Royal Academy of Musick (1719-28)’, ML, lviii (1977), 4–28

L. Lindgren: ‘Six Newly Discovered Letters of Attilio Ariosti, O.S.M. (1666-1729)’, Studi storici dell'Ordine dei Servi di Maria, xxx (1980), 125–37

E.R. Voggenreiter: Untersuchungen zu den Opern von Attilio Ariosti (1666–ca.1729) (Bad Godesberg, c1980)

L. Lindgren: ‘Ariosti's London Years, 1716–29’, ML, lxii (1981), 331–51

L.E. Bennett: ‘The Italian Cantata in Vienna, 1700–1711: an Overview of Stylistic Traits’, Antonio Caldara: Essays on his Life and Times, ed. B. Pritchard (Aldershot, 1987), 184–211

L. Lindgren: ‘The Accomplishments of the Learned and Ingenious Nicola Francesco Haym (1678–1729)’, Studi musicali, xvi (1987), 247–380

L. Lindgren: ‘Musicians and Librettists in the Correspondence of Gio. Giacomo Zamboni’, RMARC, xxiv (1991) [whole issue]