Ricordi.

Italian firm of publishers.

1. History.

2. Publications.

CATALOGUES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

RICHARD MACNUTT

Ricordi

1. History.

The firm of Ricordi was founded in Milan in 1808 by Giovanni Ricordi (b Milan, 1785; d Milan, 15 March 1853); it was directed from 1853 to 1888 by his son Tito (i) (b Milan, 29 Oct 1811; d Milan, 7 Sept 1888), from 1888 to 1912 by Tito’s son Giulio (b Milan, 19 Dec 1840; d Milan, 6 June 1912) and from 1912 to 1919 by Giulio’s son Tito (ii) (b Milan, 17 May 1865; d Milan, 13 March 1933). The firm was managed from 1919 to 1940 jointly by Renzo Valcarenghi and Carlo Clausetti, from 1940 to 1944 by Valcarenghi and Alfredo Colombo and from 1944 to 1952 by Colombo, Eugenio Clausetti and Camillo Ricordi. In 1952 it became a limited company, under the presidency first of Colombo, then of Guido Valcarenghi (from 1961), Carlo Origoni (from 1976), Gianni Babini (from 1982) and Guido Rignano (from 1988 to 1995). In June 1995 the company merged with BMG Ariola forming a new company BMG Ricordi S.p.a., of which Casa Ricordi is a division managed by Mimma Guastoni.

Giovanni Ricordi, a violinist, was leader of the orchestra of a small Milanese theatre, the Fiando. Probably in 1803 he had started a copisteria(copying establishment) beneath the portico of the Palazzo della Ragione. From 1804 to 1807 he was under contract as official copyist and prompter to the Teatro Carcano and in 1807 to the Teatro Lentasio. In 1807 he spent several months in Leipzig studying the techniques of Breitkopf & Härtel and, after returning to Milan, on 16 January 1808 he formed a publishing partnership with Felice Festa, an engraver and music seller. Their first, and probably only, joint publication was a duet from Farinelli’s Calliroe, which they issued as the first in a series entitled Giornale di musica vocale italiana; the imprint gave Ricordi’s address as Contrada di S Margherita (not mentioning the house number, 1108) and Festa’s as Pantano no.4705. The partnership was terminated on 26 June 1808, and at about the same time Ricordi took a shop at 4068 Contrada di Pescaria Vecchia, from which address his plate number 1 (Antonio Nava’s Le quattro stagioni) was issued. In 1811 he was appointed publisher to the Milan Conservatory. In the following year, probably in August, he moved to 1065 Contrada di S Margherita, and in the winter of 1815–16 to no.1118 of the same street. About 1824 the shop, which he used as his publishing address, transferred to Ferdinando Artaria’s former premises, favourably located opposite La Scala (Dirimpetto all’I. R. Teatro alla Scala no.1148) and in 1828 he moved his printing works from 1118 Contrada di S Margherita to 1635 via Ciovasso. From 1838 Ricordi’s imprints read ‘1720 Contrada degli Omenoni’, but after about 1860 the firm’s address was normally omitted from its publications. In 1844 a new shop was opened at the side of La Scala, ‘di fianco alla Scala’, and soon became known as the Casino Ricordi. By 1867 the main offices, and probably the works too, were at 1 via Omenoni; from 1875 at the latest there was a shop at the Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele; in 1884 new printing works were erected at 21 viale Porta Vittoria; and in January 1889 a shop was opened at 9 via S Margherita. In 1910 the works were moved to 42 viale Campania and the offices to 2 via Berchet. Both these premises were bombed in 1943, with the loss of machinery and the stock of unsold copies, hire material and almost all the non-autograph manuscripts. The reconstructed via Berchet premises were reopened in February 1950. The most valuable of Ricordi’s rich archives survived the war and are still in the possession of the firm; they include some 4000 music manuscripts (chiefly autograph), a large quantity of correspondence, and approximately 25,000 printed editions; details of much of the collection are listed at the Ufficio Ricerca Fondi Musicali (the Italian RISM centre) in Milan.

During his first decade in business Giovanni Ricordi issued an average of 30 publications a year; in his second the yearly average was about 300. This expansion was largely the result of a succession of contracts starting from December 1814, which he won as prompter and exclusive copyist to La Scala, giving him the right to publish the music performed there; in 1825 he purchased their entire musical archives. In 1816 he had a similar contract as copyist to the Teatro Re, and in the 1830s and 1840s concluded highly favourable agreements with the opera houses of Venice and Naples. By the end of 1837 he had not only purchased the stock and plates of Ferdinando Artaria but was able to boast more than 10,000 publications, the exclusive rights to operas written for Milan and Naples, an archive of 1800 autograph manuscripts and a branch in Florence. The latter, Ricordi Grua & Co., was opened towards the end of 1824; its name was changed to Ricordi Pozzi & Co. (1827), to G. Ricordi & Co. (1828) and to G. Ricordi & S. Jouhaud (c1840). In 1860 the association with Jouhaud terminated, and in 1865 Tito (i) opened an independent branch in Florence. A London branch, Grua Ricordi & Co., had been opened (1824), but it was closed four years later. In December 1840 Ricordi purchased the small business of Gaetano Longo (of Este). Expansion within the firm continued at such a rate that by his death in 1853 Giovanni had issued 25,000 publications.

Tito (i), a good pianist, had worked in the firm since 1825. Under his management, new printing methods were introduced, branches in Naples (1860), Rome (1871), London (1875), Palermo and Paris (both 1888) were opened, and the substantial businesses of Clausetti (1864), Del Monaco and Guidi (both 1887) and finally Lucca (30 May 1888) were taken over. The acquisition of Lucca, which had been Ricordi’s chief rival from the 1840s and had itself between 1847 and 1886 absorbed five firms (including Canti), brought to the Ricordi catalogue some 40,000 editions as well as the Italian rights to Wagner’s operas.

Shortly before his death, Tito (i) gave over the management of the firm to his son Giulio, a highly cultured man and the best musician in the family. Usually under the pseudonym J. Burgmein (or sometimes Grubmeni), he composed many piano pieces and songs as well as some orchestral music and stage works, culminating in a comic opera La secchia rapita, performed at Turin in 1910. He worked for his father for a short time from 1856 and permanently from 1863. It was he who regularly dealt with Verdi on the firm’s behalf (from c1875) and who played a central role in Puccini’s artistic development. Under his management, branches at Leipzig (1901) and New York (1911) were opened, part of the stock of Escudier, Ricordi’s former Paris agent, was acquired (1889), and the firms of Pigna and Schmidl (both 1902) and Carelli (1905) were taken over. His son Tito (ii), who succeeded him, appears to have lacked both charm and judgment. He and Puccini disliked each other, and Puccini had La rondine published by Ricordi’s rival Sonzogno. When Tito (ii) retired in 1919, the management of the firm passed out of the hands of the Ricordi family. Business expansion continued, however, and in South America the publishers Breyer-Hermanos (1924, Buenos Aires; Breyer had been representing Ricordi since 1885), Canulli (1925), Harrods (1928), Oerthmann (1935), Balerio y Bonini (1940) and Romero y Fernandez (1947) were all taken over; the Walter Mocchi musical archives were acquired in 1929, and the Naples firm of Pasquariello absorbed in 1946. Further branches were set up in São Paolo (1927), Basle (1949), Genoa (1953), Toronto (1954), Sydney (1956) and Mexico City (1958). Currently there are foreign branches bearing the Ricordi name in Buenos Aires, São Paolo, Feldkirchen (Germany) and Colonia Narvarte (Mexico). By 1996 Ricordi had published more than 137,000 editions; gramophone records, light music and plays are now in its catalogue.

Ricordi

2. Publications.

The firm’s earliest editions were printed from engraved plates, but in 1822–3 several publications were printed by lithography. About 1824 Ricordi took over Ferdinando Artaria’s lithographic department, and a year or so later Tito (i) was sent to Germany to study the process. Nevertheless the firm only rarely used lithography, and printing direct from engraved plates remained the normal practice until the 1870s, when chromolithographic and offset processes were introduced. In their publications of vocal music Ricordi invariably used, until about 1844, the soprano and tenor clefs in addition to the treble and bass, and it was a further 20 years before the former were finally dropped. In 1877 the firm devised a new modification of the treble clef to indicate a line sung an octave lower, by a tenor. Ricordi’s plate numbers are in general reliably chronological (but certain caveats are sounded by Gossett and Hopkinson). The sudden leap in 1890 from about 55,000 to about 94,000 is explained by the application in that year of Ricordi numbers to their recently acquired Lucca stock. Another useful Ricordi practice was the blind-stamping of dates on most of their publications issued between about 1860 and 1932; in all probability these stamps related not to the date of printing but rather to that of the binding or wrappering of a particular batch of copies. In the Ricordi archives there is a further valuable source of precise chronological information – a series of manuscript notebooks giving the dates on which many works to be published by the firm were sent, apparently, for engraving or printing.

Ricordi’s first catalogue (1814) lists his first 176 publications. These were mainly piano arrangements of and variations on operatic tunes, pieces for one and two guitars (including several by Antonio Nava), and the operatic numbers that formed part of his Giornale di musica vocale italiana(which did not run beyond its fourth volume). The most notable single items from these early years were Asioli’s Trattato d’armonia and Pollini’s Metodo per forte-piano o clavicembalo, both published for the Milan Conservatory, and Ricordi’s first complete vocal score, Mayr’s Adelasia ed Aleramo, issued in association with the firm of G.C. Martorelli. Several supplementary catalogues were printed during the next few years, and then, in 1825, appeared a major catalogue of Ricordi’s total production (more than 2300 items) to the end of 1824. By this time the firm was offering a range of instrumental music by international composers, methods and theoretical works for students, a large selection of Italian operatic numbers for piano solo and piano and voice (including many pieces by Rossini), and dance and ballet music for piano solo. Especially noteworthy are the first appearances of Paganini’s works in print (opp.1–5), many pieces for violin by Rolla and for guitar by Nava and Giuliani, and vocal scores of five complete operas. The catalogue lists in full score about 60 operatic excerpts but only two complete works: Weigl’s cantata Il ritorno d’Astrea and Beethoven’s Christus am Ölberge. Much of the music in the catalogue first appeared in the series Biblioteca di Musica Moderna, a periodical collection offered by subscription in four (1820) and six (1821–30) categories, three consisting of piano music and one each of vocal, violin and flute music.

The next general catalogue appeared in 1838 and advertised the firm’s 10,000 publications to the end of 1837. During this period Ricordi had, through his connections with opera houses, established both an extremely powerful position for himself in the operatic world and a highly profitable business. Rossini had effectively retired and Bellini was dead; but Ricordi had published vocal scores and was in a position to hire out performing material of 19 operas by Rossini and eight by Bellini. Donizetti was still flourishing, and Ricordi either already had published, or was about to publish, all but a handful of his works composed after 1830. Also on Ricordi’s books were the best of the other Italian opera composers – Mercadante, Vaccai, Pacini and Luigi and Federico Ricci – as well as Meyerbeer, whose Il crociato in Egitto had been published by the firm in 1824 and whose French operas were now achieving widespread success. In 1839, by publishing Verdi’s first opera, Oberto, conte di S Bonifacio, Ricordi took the most significant single step in the entire history of the firm. Except for Attila, I masnadieri and Il corsaro, published by Lucca between 1846 and 1848, Ricordi published all Verdi’s remaining operas (for illustration see Printing and publishing of music, §II, 3, fig.38), the Requiem and, after 1848, almost all his smaller works.

Shortly afterwards Italy’s first regular musicological and critical journal, the Gazzetta musicale di Milano, was founded by Ricordi. From 2 January 1842 it was weekly, with monthly musical supplements that were reissued annually, until 1848, in a series entitled Antologia classica. For a short time in 1848 it appeared as the Gazzetta musicale di Milano ed Eco delle notizie politiche, the greater part being given over to political comment, but, after a break in publication, it reverted in 1850 to exclusively musical content. Apart from occasional breaks, it survived until 25 December 1902, after which it merged with Ricordi’s Musica e musicisti, which had been started in June 1902. This was renamed Ars et labor – Musica e musicisti from 1906 until December 1912, when it merged with Il secolo XX. From 1865 to 1883 the firm had published a second periodical, the Rivista minima, a fortnightly review of politics, literature, art and theatre; it was edited until 1874 by Verdi’s librettist Antonio Ghislanzoni, then by Ghislanzoni and Salvatore Farina, and from 1878 by Farina alone. In 1919 Musica d’oggi was launched, quarterly for its first year and thereafter monthly, until 1942, when it lapsed temporarily. From 1951 to 1957 it reappeared as Ricordiana and in 1958 reverted to Musica d’oggi; it ceased publication in December 1965.

The Italian passion for operatic and vocal music coupled with the paucity of original instrumental works composed in Italy during the 19th century was, not unnaturally, reflected in Ricordi’s catalogues, and during the second and third quarters of the century a large proportion of the immense quantity of instrumental music, especially for piano, put out by the firm consisted of operatic arrangements. Especially large contributions were made by Czerny, Liszt, Döhler, Henri Herz, the Strauss family, Golinelli, Prudent, Truzzi, Adolfo Fumigalli, Ascher, Bonamici and Martucci; the firm also published numerous methods and exercises for all instruments. The Ricordi catalogue of 1875 advertised the Biblioteca di musica populare, which came to be known as the Edizioni economiche. Designed to be produced inexpensively, this at first consisted only of vocal and piano scores of opera, printed in a new smaller format (subsequently used for all Ricordi’s vocal scores); later, publications in all genres were added to the series. This catalogue shows that in the second half of the century the firm was maintaining its operatic tradition. Pedrotti and Boito had already been taken on, and from the 1870s operas by Ponchielli and Catalani were published. In 1884 Ricordi published Puccini’s first opera, Le villi, after it had been turned down by Sonzogno; and, apart from La rondine, the firm went on to publish all Puccini’s operas. After Verdi, Puccini has been Ricordi’s most valuable asset by far. Sonzogno, however, proved to be their strongest rival since Lucca; the firm was the main publisher of Puccini’s most successful contemporaries, Mascagni and Leoncavallo, leaving Ricordi the less profitable Alfano, Franchetti, Montemezzi and Zandonai.

After World War I the character of Ricordi’s catalogue altered: much more emphasis was now given to new editions of earlier composers, both Italian and foreign. These undertakings included editions of Domenico Scarlatti, Beethoven and Chopin, and an anthology of early music; in 1947 an important collected edition of Vivaldi’s instrumental works was launched. At the same time Ricordi continued to publish, though with far more competition and perhaps rather less energy and inspiration than in the 19th century, the works of contemporary Italian composers, including operas and other music by Pizzetti, Malipiero, Respighi, Wolf-Ferrari, Rocca, Tosatti, Rossellini, Bettinelli, Rota and Testi, and non-operatic works by Arrigo, Bussotti, Casella, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Gentilucci, Ghedini, Maderna, Mannino, Nono, Petrassi, Turchi, Veretti and Zafred. A department dealing in American popular music was set up in Italy after World War II, while the New York branch, under the directorship of Franco Colombo, operated as a publishing house rather than an agency for the parent firm, and issued the music of such composers as Creston, Dello Joio, Hoiby, Kubik, Menotti, Thomson and Varèse. The Buenos Aires branch, as a continuation of the Breyer firm, similarly issued popular and serious music for the local market. Ricordi’s output of literature has generally been small but has expanded in the 1980s and 90s; the more substantial items include Franco Abbiati’s useful biography Giuseppe Verdi(1959) and the Enciclopedia della musica, edited by Claudio Sartori (1963–4).

Between 1700 and 1770 Italian music publishing was in eclipse. Marescalchi and Zatta brought about a temporary revival, but both had retired before Giovanni Ricordi opened his business in 1808. At this time Italian music normally circulated in manuscript copies; it needed a man of Ricordi’s training, taste, energy and ambition to realize, after himself spending four years as a copyist, that through publication music could be circulated much more accurately, widely, swiftly and cheaply, as well as far more profitably, to everybody’s advantage. His rise to power in his first 20 years seems to have been achieved with a simplicity and orderliness that are hard to believe; it is interesting to speculate what sort of opposition, if any, he encountered in clinching the useful appointment to the conservatory and his vital contracts with La Scala and other theatres. The fact is, however, that he brushed aside, and continued to brush aside, almost all competition, just as his son and grandson were to do after him. All three had the happy knack of recognizing quality when they saw it; they also had the tact, the persistence and the influence to patronize and market it. In the entire history of music publishing there has been no other firm that through its own efforts, astuteness, initiative and flair has achieved a position of dominance such as Ricordi enjoyed in Italy in the 19th century, nor of power such as it has been able to maintain (on account of its rights on Verdi’s and Puccini’s operas) in the 20th.

It must be noted, however, that Ricordi has been criticized for allowing considerations of art to take second place to those of commerce. Verdi himself complained bitterly about the elder Tito’s sanctioning, for financial gain, mutilated performances of his works. There is a clear moral obligation for the publisher owning the rights and autograph manuscripts of almost every one of Verdi’s and Puccini’s operas to make those works available, and in correct texts; but Ricordi was extremely slow in fulfilling that obligation. The firm’s 1975 catalogue advertised the full scores of only seven Verdi operas; the others had never been put on sale and were available only for hire. Further, there was a widely held view that the existing scores of these composers’ operas, whether on sale or for hire, contained inaccurate texts. From 1958 to 1963 there raged a battle almost as fierce as the Querelle de Bouffons between, on the one hand, Denis Vaughan and his supporters, who maintained that the scores were riddled with actual errors (Vaughan claimed to have counted 27,000 in Falstaff) and, on the other, Ricordi and its defenders, who held that the alleged divergences between autograph and printed texts were authorized modifications that had gradually evolved over successive contemporary performances and productions. This dispute could be resolved only by Ricordi’s allowing unfettered access to their Verdi and Puccini archives and publishing a critical edition of the works of both composers. Happily, a critical edition of Verdi’s works is now in progress under the general editorship of Philip Gossett: five operas and the Requiem are already issued (1997). Ricordi has also launched a Rossini edition, again under Gossett, of which eleven operas and five other works are in print, and a Donizetti edition, under Gabriele Dotto and Roger Parker, of which the first volume appeared in 1991. All three editions are published jointly with the University of Chicago Press. Puccini has been less favourably treated: Ricordi publish full scores of all but his first two operas, but no critical edition has been announced.

Ricordi

CATALOGUES

(selective list)

all published in Milan

Ricordi

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ES (C. Sartori)

FuldWFM

MGG1 (C. Sartori)

RicordiE

SartoriD

E. Rosmini: Legislazione e giurisprudenza sui diritti d’autore (Milan, 1890)

Internationale Musik- und Theater-Ausstellung 1892 … Wien, G. Ricordi & C. (Milan, 1892)

N. Tabanelli: ‘Giurisprudenza: la causa Ricordi–Leoncavallo’, RMI, vi (1899), 833–54

N. Tabanelli: ‘Giurisprudenza teatrale: la ditta Ricordi contro il tenore Bonci’, RMI, viii (1901), 703–14

‘Fascicolo dedicato al centenario della ditta Ricordi & C. di Milano’, Risorgimento grafico, v/10 (1908)

G. Cesari and A.Luzio, eds.: I copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi (Milan, 1913/R); Eng. trans., abridged, 1971, as Letters of Giuseppe Verdi, ed. C. Osborne

G. Adami, ed.: Epistolario di Puccini (Milan, 1928; Eng. trans., 1931, rev. 2/1974 by M. Carner)

G. Adami: Giulio Ricordi e i suoi musicisti (Milan, 1933)

A. Luzio, ed.: Carteggi verdiani (Rome, 1935–47)

G. Adami: Giulio Ricordi, l’amico dei musicisti italiani (Milan, 1945)

O. Vergiani: Piccolo viaggio in un archivio (Milan, 1953)

E. Gara, ed.: Carteggi pucciniani (Milan, 1958)

C. Sartori: Casa Ricordi 1808–1958: profilo storico (Milan, 1958)

D. Vaughan: ‘Discordanze tra gli autografi verdiani e la loro stampa’, La Scala, no.104 (1958), 11–15, 71–2

G. Gavazzeni: Problemi di tradizione dinamico-fraseologica e critica testuale, in Verdi e Puccini (Milan, 1961) [in It., Eng. and Ger.]

C. Hopkinson: ‘Bibliographical Problems concerned with Verdi and his Publishers’,Studi verdiani I: Venice 1966, 431–6

C. Hopkinson: A Bibliography of the Works of Giacomo Puccini (New York, 1968)

H.M. Plesske: ‘Bibliographie des Schrifttums zur Geschichte deutscher und österreichischer Musikverlage’, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Buchwesens, iii (1968), 135–222

P. Gossett: The Operas of Rossini: Problems of Textual Criticism in Nineteenth-Century Opera (diss., Princeton U., 1970), 594

T.F. Heck: ‘Ricordi Plate Numbers in the Earlier 19th Century’, CMc, no.10 (1970), 117–23

T.F. Heck: ‘The Role of Italy in the Early History of the Classic Guitar: a Sidelight on the House of Ricordi’, Guitar Review, no.34 (1971), 1–6

F. Cella: ‘L’opera di Verdi nella corrispondenza col suo editore italiano’, Studi verdiani III: Milan 1972, 532–45

J. Budden: The Operas of Verdi (London, 1973–81, 3/1992)

C. Hopkinson: A Bibliography of the Works of Giuseppe Verdi (New York, 1973–8)

M. Chusid: A Catalog of Verdi’s Operas (Hackensack, NJ, 1974), 192

D. Rosen: ‘The Staging of Verdi’s Operas: an Introduction to the Ricordi disposizioni sceniche’, IMSCR XII: Berkeley 1977, 444–53

C. Sartori: ‘I sospetti di Puccini’, NRMI, xi (1977), 232–41

H. Heinsheimer: ‘Great Publishing Houses: Casa Ricordi’, ON, xliv (1979–80), 8–12

F. Cella and P. Petrobelli, eds.: Giuseppe Verdi, Giulio Ricordi: correspondenze e immagini 1881–1890 (Milan, 1982)

A. Pasquinelli: ‘Contributio per la storia di Casa Lucca’, NRMI, xvi (1982), 568–81

F. Degrada and others: Musica, musicisti, editoria: 175 anni di Casa Ricordi, 1808–1983 (Milan, 1983)

G. Cardini: ‘Un musicista ritrovato: Giulio Ricordi’, NRMI, xviii (1984), 572–88

J.J. Fuld: ‘The Ricordi “Libroni”’, Festschrift Albi Rosenthal, ed. R. Elvers (Tutzing, 1984), 139–45

P. Gossett: ‘The Ricordi Numerical Catalogues: a Background’, Notes, xlii (1985–6), 22–8

A.Z. Laterza: ‘Le edizioni Ricordi in Pazdirek Handbuch’, FAM, xxxiii (1986), 240–44

C.M. Mossa: ‘Le lettere di Emanuele Muzio alla Casa Ricordi’, Studi verdiani, iv (1986–7), 167–201

A. Kuerthy: ‘L’histoire du rapport de Liszt et de la Casa Ricordi refletée par leur correspondance’, SM, xxix (1987), 325–42

A. Polignano: ‘La storia della Gioconda attraverso il carteggio Ponchielli-Ricordi’,NRMI, xxi (1987), 228–45

P. Petrobelli, M.Di Gregorio Casati and C.M. Mossa, eds.: Carteggio Verdi-Ricordi, 1880–1881 (Parma, 1988)

F. Perruccio: ‘La fortuna di Chopin in Italia: dalle Gazzetta musicale di Milano (1842–1902)’,NRMI, xxii (1988), 24–39

L. Jensen: Giuseppe Verdi & Giovanni Ricordi with Notes on Francesco Lucca: from ‘Oberto’ to ‘La Traviata’ (New York, 1989)

S. Scherr: ‘Editing Puccini’s Operas: the Case of Manon Lescaut’, AcM, lxii (1990), 62–81

P. Bloom: ‘Berlioz à Ricordi: dix lettres inédites’, RdM, lxxxii (1996), 155–67

M. Twyman: Early Lithographed Music (London, 1996), 449–55