City in Italy, formerly centre of the Roman Empire and, since 1420, the undisputed physical centre of the Roman Catholic Church. Since 1870, when Italy was united, Rome has been its capital.
GÜNTER FLEISCHHAUER (I), JOSEPH DYER (II, 1), RICHARD SHERR (II, 2), JEAN LIONNET (II, 3(i)), M. MURATA (II, 3(ii)(a)), LOWELL LINDGREN (II, 3(ii)(b)), PETER ALLSOP (II, 3(iii)), BIANCA MARIA ANTOLINI (II, 4)
2. Music in religion and ritual.
Historians of ancient Roman music once devoted themselves almost entirely to two limited areas of investigation, late classical music theory and organology, drawing their evidence from Greek and Roman authors. Consequently, writers of general music histories did not dispute the widely held views of the ‘unmusicality’ of the Romans and the ‘decline’ and ‘decadence’ of music after the Hellenistic period. These views, maintained even after the discovery of musical documents from the Hellenistic and Roman periods, arise from an uncritical bias towards Hellenism and Roman culture.
Since the 1930s, through the systematic evaluation of literary and epigraphical references and archaeological sources, scholars (Machabey, Scott, Wille, Fleischhauer, Baudot, Guidobaldi etc.) have increasingly begun to appreciate the importance of music in Roman life. From the era of the Kings (c750–510 bce) and in the early republic (509–265 bce), the Romans had liturgical and other public music, military music and work songs.
Moreover, Roman music was subject to foreign influences: at an early date that of the Etruscans, later that of the Greeks, and, during the late republican and the imperial periods, that of the orient. The Romans assimilated, modified and extended the music of the nations they conquered. From the 2nd century bce, after the subjugation of the Hellenistic kingdoms in Macedonia, Syria and Egypt, various musical genres developed under sustained Hellenistic and oriental influences.
The greatest efflorescence of Greco-Roman music occurred (so far as can be judged from literary, epigraphical and archaeological sources) during the Augustan principate (27 bce to 14 ce) and under the imperial dynasties of the Julio-Claudians (14–68 ce), the Flavians (69–96 ce) and the Antonines (96–192 ce). Professional virtuosos, mainly of Greek origin, sang and played at festivals; outstanding Egyptian and Syrian pantomimi performed in public; Greek and Roman musicians and actors constituted professional guilds at Rome and in all the larger cities; dancers and musicians were imported as slaves from all parts of the Empire; musical instruments and musical scholarship were developed; and the participation of music lovers in public events increased.
At the same time writers, philosophers and historians, including Seneca, Plutarch, Juvenal and Tacitus, attacked the demoralizing and effeminate effects of theatrical music, and the ‘decline’ of music in the service of luxury, on national, social, musical and moral grounds. Many actors, dancers and musicians continued, nevertheless, to enjoy public favour, despite their low legal and social position. Even after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 ce they became the means by which the instruments and musical practice of antiquity were transmitted to the itinerant musicians (joculatores) of the Middle Ages.
The Romans imputed an extraordinary importance to the magical functions of music in ritual. The companies (sodalitates) of priests known as the Salii were founded as early as the legendary era of the Kings and survived into imperial times, when the group consisted of 12 members of the nobility; under a leading singer (vates) and a leading dancer (praesul) they performed archaic armed dances and responsorial carmina (songs), in honour of Mars and Quirinus, according to a strict ritual (Livy, i.20.4). Another ancient priestly company, the Arval Brethren (fratres Arvales), even as late as the early 3rd century ce, still performed their traditional ritual song, the carmen Arvale, intended to banish malevolent influences during a procession around the sacred grove.
Tibia players (tibicines), probably originally from Etruria, constituted one of the oldest professional organizations at Rome (Plutarch, Numa, xvii) and their participation in the ritual also had a magical function; their playing was intended to render inaudible any maleficent noises during the rigidly prescribed Roman sacrificial rites (Pliny, Naturalis historia, xxviii.2.11), to banish evil spirits and to summon up benevolent deities. For similar reasons during the Empire, tibia players invariably accompanied funeral processions and ceremonies and sacrifices, whether made by peasants or on the highest state occasions; they were frequently represented in reliefs on altars, triumphal arches, sarcophagi (see fig.1; see also Tibia, illustration) and on coins (Vorreiter, 1977). The tibicines were sometimes supported by lyre players (fidicines); however, the tibia (originally a bone pipe with three or four finger-holes, and later, like the Greek aulos, a double-pipe reed instrument with two pipes made from ivory, silver or boxwood) remained the national ritual instrument of the Romans (Wille).
The tibicines owed their esteemed position to the part they played in the sacred rite (Ovid, Fasti, vi.657–61); they enjoyed state privileges, and commemorated their legendary strike of 311 bce (Livy, ix.30.5ff) every year in Rome with a guild festival, processions and a public feast in the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol. During the later days of the republic and in the early Empire the members of the municipal Roman collegium tibicinum were freedmen (liberti), whereas the trumpeters of the state religion (tubicines sacrorum populi Romani) held the rank of priest. From the 2nd century bce choirs of boys and girls sang, after the Greek fashion, in processions of atonement or supplication; during the secular games of Augustus in 17 bce these choirs sang alternate strophes of the Carmen saeculare composed by Horace. Similar choirs sang hymns of mourning at the funeral of Emperor Pertinax in 193 ce.
The musical culture of the Romans was influenced by the mystery religions of Cybele (the magna mater), Dionysus (Bacchus) and Isis, which originated in Phrygia, Greece and Egypt respectively.
The cult of Cybele was officially introduced at Rome as early as 204 bce; festivals, lasting for several days and accompanied by scenic games (ludi Megalenses), were held annually to commemorate the dedication of her temple on the Aventine. The priests carried the cult-idol of the goddess in triumphal procession to the music of bronze cymbala, frame drums or tympana, cornua and ‘Phrygian auloi’ or ‘Berecyntiae tibiae’ (i.e. tibiae pertaining to Cybele) whose deeper-sounding left pipe had an upturned bell (see fig.2; see also Aulos, fig.1; and Tympanum (i)). These instruments were also played during the orgiastic dances of the priests in the temples (Catullus, lxiii.19ff).
Livy gave an account (xxxix.8.8) of the ecstatic nature of the music in the cult of Dionysus: the loud beating (by hand) of the tympana and cymbala drowned the cries of those being violated. Despite the proscription of Dionysiac festivals by Senate decree in 186 bce, they were repeatedly held during the last century of the republic and during the early Empire. Pompeiian wall paintings and a few sarcophagal reliefs of the 2nd and 3rd centuries clearly show the orgiastic and cathartic nature of this music in many depictions of different kinds of wind and percussion instruments (tibiae, transverse flutes, cymbala, tympana, foot-clappers, small bells etc.; see Fleischhauer, 1964, 2/1978, figs.39–45).
After the conquest of Egypt in 30 bce, the cult of Isis also spread through the Roman Empire; this process continued during the reigns of the Flavians, the Antonines and the Severans, in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd centuries ce. The characteristic and traditional instrument of the Isis cult was the sistrum, a bright-sounding metal rattle, which was used to banish the influence of malevolent spirits (see Isis, illustration); Old Egyptian vertical long flutes and angular harps were also played during processions, sacrificial ceremonies and mystery rites of the cult. As in the cults of Cybele and Dionysus, instrumentalists and hymn singers were attached to the temples.
There was an ancient tradition of military music in Rome. Trumpeters (tubicines) and horn players (cornicines) are mentioned as early as the constitutional reforms (attributed to Servius Tullius) of the 6th century bce. The Romans inherited their instruments from the Etruscans: the straight tuba, a bronze or iron tube with a small bell (see fig.3); the long-stemmed lituus with a hook-shaped bell that was bent back (see Tibia, illustration); and the cornu, which was circular with a crossbar attached diagonally (see Cornu, illustration). There are originals and modern reproductions of these instruments in museums in Rome, Naples, Mainz and elsewhere (see Behn, 1912).
The duties of the Roman military musicians were described in the late 4th century ce by Vegetius (Epitome rei militaris, ii.22), whose account is corroborated and supplemented by literary and iconographic evidence of earlier centuries, such as the reliefs on Trajan's Column at Rome (see Tuba (ii), illustration). The trumpeters gave fixed signals to sound the alarm, break camp, attack or retreat. They signalled changes of the watch and also played on the march, at funerals and in triumphal and sacrificial processions. The lituus players generally belonged to the cavalry and auxiliary cohorts, whereas horn players gave special signals to standard-bearers during the legion's tactical manoeuvres and are therefore frequently represented standing near them (see Fleischhauer, 1964, 2/1978, fig.31).
In battle the sharp ringing sounds of the trumpets would have mingled with the dark, coarse noise of the horns, the combined sound (concentus) of the instruments being designed to encourage the Roman ranks and to confuse the enemy (Livy, xxx.33.12; Tacitus, Annales, i.68.3). In the army hierarchy, the military musicians ranked among the ‘non-commissioned officers’ (principales); under Septimius Severus (193–211 ce), in order to improve their position, they formed themselves into bodies with common funds. This is attested by inscribed statutes (leges) and by membership lists of trumpeters and horn players of the 3rd Augustan Legion in Lambaesis (Numidia) (G. Wilmanns, ed.: Inscriptiones Africae latinae, Berlin, 1881, no.2557, p.295).
Literary references from several centuries show that the Romans had many folksongs and work songs in everyday use (Varro, Saturae Menippeae, 363): singing and instrumental music provided a rhythmical accompaniment for rowing, reaping, treading grapes, weaving and so on. Traditional folksongs of the following types are attested: table songs, songs of mourning (e.g. the nenia), lullabies, nursery rhymes, soldiers' victory songs, birthday and wedding songs (e.g. the fescennini), songs of love, joy, invective and satire (Wille, 1967; 1997). Satirical songs were popular in pre-literary times, as is shown by their prohibition in the Twelve Tables (the earliest Roman code of laws, drawn up in 451–450 bce); and they repeatedly served as mass political songs in the last days of the republic (e.g. Cicero, Pro Sestio, lv.118).
After the Roman expansion during the Punic Wars (3rd and 2nd centuries bce) and the annexation of kingdoms in the eastern Mediterranean (Macedonia, Syria and Egypt), the Hellenistic and oriental features in Roman musical culture became more firmly established and widespread, and the following centuries saw the development of various genres of theatrical, dance and entertainment music. In Rome, as early as 364 bce, Etruscan histriones or ludiones (actor-dancers) had performed pantomimic dances to the accompaniment of tibiae at a sacred festival; the young people of Rome were stimulated to emulate this (Livy, vii.2.4ff).
However, from the middle of the 3rd century bce, Roman theatrical music was decisively and increasingly influenced by the Greek theatre. Latin adaptations of Greek dramas were produced in Rome for the first time in 240 bce, by Livius Andronicus, a Greek from Tarentum. Then Plautus (c254–184 bce) incorporated features of Hellenistic song and Euripidean monody, together with the literary style of Greek comedies, in his Roman comedies, which included sung portions (cantica), monodies and duets. Tibicines performed a prelude at the beginning, accompanied the cantica and various (spoken) verse passages of the actors and singers, and provided music between the acts as well as an accompaniment for dance interludes. Tibicines from the slave classes were commissioned to compose the accompanying music for Plautus's Stichus and for the six surviving comedies of Terence (c190–159 bce).
After the conquest of Macedonia in 167 bce and the destruction of Corinth in 146 bce, Greek actors and musicians came to Italy in vast numbers; initially they appeared in the triumphal games of Roman generals such as L. Anicius Gallus (167 bce) and L. Mummius (146 bce). Their organized guilds of ‘Dionysiac artists’ (Dionysiaci artifices, or in Greek Sunodoi tōn peri Dionuson technitōn) included all the types of artist necessary for staging public festivals: tragic and comic poets and actors, musicians, players of the kithara and tibia, trumpeters and stage personnel. The existence of these Technitai meant that Roman organizers of games (Sulla, Antonius etc., and later the emperors) could easily present musical and theatrical festivals; the latter increased in numbers and became more widely diffused in the early days of the Empire and caused the founding of local theatrical organizations. The majority of the Dionysiac artists, predominantly Greeks, formed a ‘union with all the members of the world’ (sunodos tōn apo tes oikoumenēs peri ton Dionuson … technitōn), centred on Rome at least from the time of Claudius (41–54 ce); they cultivated and disseminated theatrical and musical works in festivals, and also in the imperial cult, in all the larger cities of the Empire. Augustus, Claudius, Hadrian, Septimius Severus, Caracalla and Diocletian (d 316 ce) granted and confirmed their old privileges of immunity, freedom from taxation etc.
Following the example of the Greek musicians, Roman actors joined together as parasiti Apollinis, probably as early as the middle of the 2nd century bce, to improve their position in society. The growing number of theatrical and musical performances during state-sponsored games (such as the ludi Romani or ludi Apollinares) also helped to unite these artists. Despite their legally dishonourable status (infamia), some outstanding actors, such as Q. Roscius, and some foreign pantomimi enjoyed the favour of all classes in the early Empire, and cities and communities issued decrees and erected statues in their honour (H. Dessau, ed.: Inscriptiones Latii veteris latinae, Berlin, 1887, no.2113, p.199; no.2977, p.319).
During the later days of the republic, Hellenistic art song was introduced to Rome with immediate success. Women playing string instruments of all kinds, among them harpists (psaltriae sambucistriaeque), and itinerant singers (cantores, both male and female) from Greece and Asia Minor performed lyric poems to instrumental accompaniment.
Vocal settings were made first of the elegies of Valerius Aedituus, Porcius Licinus and Q. Lutatius Catulus (late 2nd and early 1st century bce), and soon after of other genres of poetry. Virgil's Eclogues came to be interpreted by singers in the theatre; the hendecasyllables of Pliny the Younger (62–113 ce) were sung to the lyre or kithara (Pliny, Epistulae, vii, letter 4.8–9) and similar performance may be assumed for some of the lyric poems of Catullus (c87–54 bce) and the odes of Horace (65–8 bce).
Actor-singers and itinerant kitharodes appeared increasingly as performers of Greek music at public events, such as the musical competitions (agones) established at Rome by Nero in 60 ce and Domitian in 86 ce. For their performances of Greek hymns, and of dramatic and pathetic solos from tragedies in concert performance, they received enormous fees (Suetonius, Vespasian, 19) and the privileges of honorary citizens. Their audiences praised brilliant performances with enthusiastic applause and criticized mistakes (e.g. rhythmic inaccuracy). Emulating them, many amateurs (among them senators and emperors such as Caligula, Nero, Hadrian, Commodus, Elagabalus and Severus Alexander) cultivated singing and playing solo instruments (kithara, trumpet, tibiae, hydraulis, bagpipes etc.); they took instruction with famous virtuosos (e.g. Terpnus, Diodorus) and even competed, as did Nero, with professional artists in public (Suetonius, Nero, 21ff). Some performers were also celebrated composers, such as the Cretan kitharode Mesomedes, who served at the court of Hadrian.
At the beginning of the Augustan principate the pantomime was established in Rome and Italy. Foreign solo dancers represented mythological figures or individual characters, or mimed well-known scenes from Greek tragedy. The instrumental accompaniment for these dancers ranged from a single pair of tibiae, preferred by the famous Alexandrian pantomimus Bathyllus, to an ensemble with chorus, which is supposed to have been introduced by Pylades of Cilicia, his rival, in 22 bce (Macrobius, Saturnalia, ii.7.18).
The pantomime was further developed by dancers from Egypt, Syria and other provinces and during the Empire acquired a stylized repertory of gestures and dance figures for the interpretation of mythological and dramatic material. Even in late Roman times pantomimi were accompanied by the tibiae, syrinx, kithara and other instruments; the dancers, singers and instrumentalists were directed rhythmically by tibia players with foot-clappers (scabillarii; see fig.4).
From the late republican period the mime was the most popular form of Roman theatre, not only with slaves and freedmen but also with citizens. Male and female mimi without masks realistically acted scenes from everyday life and also imitated events and characters borrowed in part from Greek comedy. That their acting was sometimes supplemented by interludes of dance and song is confirmed by stage directions of the 2nd century ce which indicate the use of crotala and tympana in the Charition mime (B.P. Grenfell and A.S. Hunt, eds.: The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, iii, London, 1903, no.413, pp.41ff).
After Roman campaigns and conquests in Greece and Asia Minor, the influx of foreign musical entertainers and street musicians increased in the 1st century bce. Chrysogonus, a wealthy favourite of Sulla, surrounded himself with singers and tibicines by day and night; at the health resort of Baiae the guests took pleasure in vocal and instrumental performances (acroamata), and Caesar also enjoyed music at table (Macrobius, Saturnalia, ii.4.28). It was mainly the hired slaves who sang and played string instruments at the domestic concerts of Roman music lovers.
The increasing luxury of the ruling classes attracted even larger numbers of foreign artists during the early Empire. Famous (and notorious) female dancers (saltatrices) from Egypt, Syria and Spain performed their exotic dances in taverns, on the street and in the squares to the varied accompaniment of crotala, cymbala, tympana, and foreign wind instruments such as the Syrian ambubaiae (Horace, Satirae [= Sermones], i.2.1). Their example, and the impetus that came from the theatrical dancing of the pantomimi, furthered dancing in all levels of society, despite the constant criticism of conservative Romans (Cicero, Seneca, Juvenal, Tacitus and others); dancing schools flourished, and the nobility employed dancing and music teachers (Wille, 1967).
The extent of the passion for dancing and music even in late Roman times can be seen from the frequent condemnation of popular music, and of the music of the theatre and the pagan cults, by early Christian ecclesiastical authors, and also from the telling piece of information that, during the famine of 383 ce, foreign tutors of general subjects had to leave Rome, whereas 3000 female dancers were allowed to remain in the city with their choirs and instructors (Ammianus Marcellinus, xiv.6.19).
The multifarious character of Roman musical life is reflected in the musical instruments, as pictorial representations, literary references and some surviving instruments show (Wardle, 1982). The cosmopolitan musical culture of Rome, from the last days of the republic to the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 ce, was stimulated by foreign influences fostered by trade and traffic, wars, and by the immigration of musicians, virtuosos and slaves who came to Italy and Rome from all the countries of the Empire, importing their own instruments and music. The Romans adopted Etruscan, Greek and oriental instruments, and perfected and developed them (Scott, 1957). The number of strings on the lyre and kithara was increased, and their bodies were enlarged (see fig.5); this was important for the art music of the virtuosos. The angular harp with a vertical soundbox, and the long-necked lute, originating in the orient and popular in late Roman times, were further developed for use on public and domestic occasions. Frame drums or tympana, bronze cymbala and other instruments were introduced to Rome with the Hellenistic mystery cults and were used in the popular music of the theatre, the dance and entertainment in general. Small bells, foot-clappers and transverse flutes were used in the cult of Dionysus, and the sistrum and the Old Egyptian long flute were still used in the Isis cult. The combination of crotala and cymbala produced forked cymbals, whereas foot-clappers (scabella) were favoured for marking dance rhythms in the accompaniment of pantomimi (see fig.4 above). Military instruments of Etruscan origin (the tuba, lituus and cornu) were played by the Romans in processions, at funerals and public games (e.g. gladiatorial combats).
To increase its technical and acoustic possibilities the Phrygian pipes or ‘Berecyntiae tibiae’, used mainly in the cults of Cybele and Dionysus and in the theatre, were given an attachment of movable metal rings (Horace, Ars poetica, 202) by means of which the increased number of finger-holes of both pipes could be opened or closed for transposition (see Metabolē) when necessary (see Aulos, fig.2); this meant that the desired scale could be engaged more easily. Originals from Pompeii and Herculaneum and pictorial representations (reliefs, wall-paintings and mosaics) demonstrate the technical refinement of this widely used wind instrument.
The hydraulis, an invention attributed to Ctesibius, an Alexandrian engineer (3rd century bce), later came into favour as an instrument for domestic music at Rome and in the provinces, and because of its loud volume it was also used in amphitheatres (see Hydraulis, fig.1, and Organ, §IV, 1). It was supplemented with a register-like series of open and stopped pipes in various scales (as in the organ of Aquincum near Budapest, dating from 228 ce; see Organ, fig.23); in the 4th century ce, portable pneumatic (bellows) organs were also in vogue (Wardle, 1982).
Solo instrumental music was practised in public and private by famous virtuosos and by Roman amateurs with the aim of achieving artistic perfection. Groups of instrumentalists formed small ensembles to accompany singers or dancers, or larger ensembles (after the fashion of Alexandria and the orient) to perform in theatres (Seneca, Epistulae morales, lxxxiv.10) and at popular spectacles (Vopiscus Carinus, xix.2).
Some Romans tried to make the heritage of Greek music theory their own, to propagate it in their writings and to make it available for other disciplines (rhetoric, architecture and medicine). Music was accorded its distinguished position in the educational system of the liberal arts as early as the 1st century bce by Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 bce), in more detail by Augustine of Hippo (late 4th century ce) and, in allegorical guise, by Martianus Capella (early 5th century ce). The tradition of applying an encyclopedic approach to music was continued in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages by Cassiodorus (c480–575) and Isidore of Seville (c560–636), whose writings on music transmitted some of the basic definitions, classifications and harmonic knowledge of Greek and Roman antiquity to the Middle Ages.
The poet-philosopher Lucretius (c98–55 bce) devoted himself to the history and psychology of music. Cicero (106–43 bce) recommended that orators should receive musical education, and expounded Stoic and Epicurean musical aesthetics. The architect Vitruvius (c84–14 bce) described the acoustical problems of theatre construction (see Acoustics, §I, 7) and organ building, and Quintilian (c35–96 ce) dealt with voice training and musical delivery by orators.
In some later Latin writers on music, such as Censorinus (3rd century ce) and Macrobius, there is a widening gulf between theory and contemporary practice, for Neoplatonic and neo-Pythagorean influence prompted a tendency towards a speculative and mystical attitude. The De institutione musica by Boethius (c480–524), is the most substantial Latin treatise on music. The work was conceived as part of a series of books on the mathematical arts, and subsequently became the most influential of the ancient music treatises during the Middle Ages.
See also Etruria and Greece, §I.
Rome, §I: Ancient: Bibliography
MGG1 (G. Wille)
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A. Baudot: ‘La tradition musicale à Rome’, Cahiers des études anciennes, iii (1974), 5–16
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H.H. Scullard: Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic (London, 1981)
M. Bonaria: ‘La musica conviviale dal mondo latino antico al Medioevo’, Spettacoli conviviali dall' antichità classica alle corti italiane del '400: Viterbo 1982 (Viterbo, 1983), 119–47
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J.-N. Robert: Les plaisirs à Rome (Paris, 1983)
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S. Colella: ‘La presenza e la funzione della musica nel teatro fliacico’, Rendiconti dell' Academia di archeologia, lxi (1987–8), 49–67
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H. Rahn: ‘Römische Lieder in Attischen Nächten’, Studien zur Instrumentalmusik Lothar Hoffmann-Erbrecht zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. A. Bingmann and others (Tutzing, 1988), 11–32
A. Bélis: ‘Néron musicien’, Comptes rendus de l'Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres (1989), 747–68
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H.J.W. Tillyard: ‘Instrumental Music in the Roman Age’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, xxvii (1907), 160–69
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U. Schweitzer: ‘Eine selten grosse römische Glocke’, Ur-Schweiz, x (1946), 18–22
W. Apel: ‘Early History of the Organ’, Speculum, xxiii (1948), 191–216
H. Hickmann: ‘Cymbales et crotales dans l'Egypte ancienne’, Annales du service des antiquités de l'Egypte, xlix (1949), 451–545
H.G. Farmer: ‘An Early Greek Pandore’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1949), 177–9
H. Hickmann: ‘The Antique Cross-Flute’, AcM, xxiv (1952), 108–12
T. Schneider: ‘Organum hydraulicum’, Mf, vii (1954), 24–39
A. Buchner: Hudebni nástroje od pravěku k dnešku [Musical instruments through the ages] (Prague, 1956; Eng. trans., 1956, 4/1962)
R.P. Winnington-Ingram: ‘The Pentatonic Tuning of the Greek Lyre’, Classical Quarterly, new ser., vi (1956), 169–86
Z. Raheva-Morfova: ‘Instruments de musique de l'antiquité dans les trouvailles archéologiques de Bulgarie’, Bulletin de l'Institut de musique Sofia, v (1959), 77–122
G. Fleischhauer: ‘Bucina und Cornu’, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg: gesellschafts- und sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe, ix (1960), 501–6
F. Harrison and J.Rimmer: European Musical Instruments (London, 1964)
J. Perrot: L'orgue de ses origines hellénistiques à la fin du XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1965; Eng. trans., 1971)
H. Becker: Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der antiken und mittelalterlichen Rohrblattinstrumente (Hamburg, 1966)
V. Cosma: ‘Archäologische musikalische Funde in Rumänien’, BMw, viii (1966), 3–14
M. Klar: ‘Musikinstrumente der Römerzeit in Trier’, Kurtrierisches Jb, vi (1966), 100–09
D. Schuberth: ‘Der Anteil von Musikinstrumenten an der römischen Kaiserehrung’, Kaiserliche Liturgie: die Einbeziehung von Musikinstrumenten in den frühmittelalterlichen Gottesdienst (Göttingen, 1968), 18–93
F. Collinson: ‘Syrinx and Bagpipe: a Romano-British Representation?’, Antiquity, lxiii (1969), 305–8
M. Duchesne-Guillaumin: ‘L'emblema: description’, Annales archéologiques arabes syriennes, xx (1970)
W. Walcker-Mayer: Die römische Orgel von Aquincum (Stuttgart, 1970; Eng. trans., 1972)
M. Klar: ‘Musikinstrumente der Römerzeit in Bonn’, Bonner Jb, clxxi (1971), 301–33
G. Tintori: Gli strumenti musicali (Turin, 1971), 561–7
G. Walser: ‘Römische und gallische Militärmusik’, Festschrift Arnold Geering, ed. V. Ravizza (Berne, 1972), 231–9
B. Janda: ‘Žesťové hudební nástroje římského vojska’ [Brass instruments of the Roman army], Listy filologické, xcvi (1973), 217–32 [incl. Ger. summary]
W. Stauder: Alte Musikinstrumente in ihrer vieltausendjährigen Entwicklung und Geschichte (Brunswick, 1973)
M. Kaba: Die römische Orgel von Aquincum (3. Jahrhundert) (Budapest, 1976)
L. Vorreiter: ‘Musikinstrumente des Altertums in Moesien, Pannonien, Dakien und Sarmatien’, Archiv für Musikorganologie, ii (1977), 95–112
M.A. Schatkin: ‘Idiophones of the Ancient World’, Jb für Antike und Christentum, xxi (1978), 147–72
M. Ginsberg-Klar: ‘The Archeology of Musical Instruments in Germany during the Roman Period’, World Archaeology, xii (1981), 313–20
M.A. Wardle: Musical Instruments in the Roman World (diss., U. of London, 1982)
M. Ilari: ‘Gli strumenti musicali del mondo romano’, Il Lazio nell' antichità romana, ed. R. Lefevre (Rome, 1983), 627–43
R. Meucci: ‘Riflessioni di archeologia musicale: gli strumenti militari romani e il lituus’, NRMI, xix (1985), 383–94
C. Vendries: ‘Flûte traversière, cornemuse, trombone et guimbarde dans la musique romaine impériale’, Sources: travaux historiques, ii (1985), 21–34
A. Bélis: ‘L'aulos phrygien’, Revue archéologique, xlviii (1986), 21–40
E. Hickmann: ‘Die Darstellung alexandrinischer Musikinstrumente und die spätantike Terminologie’, Studia organologica: Festschrift für John Henry van der Meer, ed. F. Hellwig (Tutzing, 1987), 217–28
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A. Bélis: ‘Studying and Dating Ancient Greek Auloi and Roman Tibiae: a Methodology’, The Archaeology of Early Music Cultures [II]: Berlin 1988, 233–48
A. Bélis: ‘L'organologie des instruments de musique de l'antiquité: chronique bibliographique’, Revue archéologique, li (1989), 127–42
R. Meucci: ‘Roman Military Instruments and the Lituus’, GSJ, xlii (1989), 85–97
J. Braun: ‘Die Musikikonographie des Dionysoskultes im römischen Palästina’, Imago musicae, vii (1991), 109–33
R. Meucci: ‘Musica e strumenti dell' antichità classica’, La collezione di strumenti del Museo Teatrale all Scala, ed. G. Bizzi (Milan, 1991), 144–9
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L. Cervelli: La galleria armonica: catalogo del Museo degli strumenti musicali di Roma (Rome, 1994), 11–51
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Rome, §I: Ancient: Bibliography
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C. Schmidt: Quaestiones de musicis scriptoribus romanis, imprimis de Cassiodore et Isodore (Darmstadt, 1899)
H. Abert: Die Musikanschauung des Mittelalters und ihre Grundlagen (Halle, 1905/R)
H. Edelstein: Die Musikanschauung Augustins nach seiner Schrift De musica (diss., U. of Freiburg, 1929)
T. Gérold: Les pères de l'église et la musique (Paris, 1931/R)
G.W. Pietzsch: Die Musik im Erziehungs- und Bildungsideal des ausgehenden Altertums und frühen Mittelalters (Halle, 1932/R)
C. Bouvet: ‘Censorinus et la musique’, RdM, xiv (1933), 65–73
R. Schäfke: Geschichte der Musikästhetik in Umrissen (Berlin, 1934/R)
H.I. Marrou: Mousikos anēr: étude sur les scènes de la vie intellectuelle figurant sur les monuments funéraires romains (Grenoble, 1938/R)
O.J. Gombosi: Tonarten und Stimmungen der antiken Musik (Copenhagen, 1939)
L. Schrade: ‘Music in the Philosophy of Boethius’, MQ, xxxiii (1947), 188–200
P.R. Coleman-Norton: ‘Cicero musicus’, JAMS, i/2 (1948), 3–22
H. Antcliffe: ‘What Music Meant to the Romans’, ML, xxx (1949), 337–44
W. Gurlitt: ‘Zur Bedeutungsgeschichte von “musicus” und “cantor” bei Isidor von Sevilla’, Abhandlung der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur in Mainz, Geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse, no.7 (1950), 539–58
H.I. Marrou: Histoire de l'éducation dans l'antiquité (Paris, 1950, 6/1965; Eng. trans. of 3rd edn, 1956/R)
H. Hüschen: Untersuchungen zu den Textkonkordanzen im Musikschrifttum des Mittelalters (Habilitationsschrift, U. of Cologne, 1955)
A.J. Neubecker: Die Bewertung der Musik bei Stoikern und Epikureern: eine Analyse von Philodems Schrift De Musica (Berlin, 1956)
P. Thielscher: ‘Die Stellung des Vitruvius in der Geschichte der abendländischen Musik’, Das Altertum, iii (1957), 159–73
H. Potiron: Boèce, théoricien de la musique grecque (Paris, 1961)
J. Mountford: ‘Music and the Romans’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, xlvii (1964), 198–211
L. Richter: ‘Griechische Traditionen im Musikschrifttum der Römer’, AMw, xxii (1965), 69–98
U. Mueller: ‘Zur musikalischen Terminologie der antiken Rhetorik’, AMw, xxvi (1969), 29–48, 105–24
W.H. Stahl: Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts (New York, 1971)
H. Chadwick: Boethius: the Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy (Oxford, 1981)
V. Buchheit: ‘Lukrez über den Ursprung von Musik und Dichtung’, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, cxxvii (1984), 141–58
D. Restani: ‘Problemi musicali nel XIV libro dei “Deipnosophistai” di Ateneo’, La musica in Grecia, ed. B. Gentilli and R. Pretagostini (Rome, 1988), 26–34
E. Pöhlmann: ‘Zur Erforschung der antiken Musik: Tendenzen und Desiderata’, Beiträge zur antiken und neueren Musikgeschichte (Frankfurt, 1988), 9–22
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M. Albrecht: International Journal of Musicology, iii (1994), 98–114
1. Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.
2. The Renaissance (1420–1600).
Very little is known about the music of Rome during the first 1000 years of the Christian era. While the evidence allows certain conclusions to be drawn about sacred music and its performers, the loss of documentary material limits what can be learnt about the musical institutions of the medieval city. Secular music has left no trace whatsoever.
From the time of its establishment at Rome, the Christian community had access to places large enough for meeting and celebrating the Eucharist. (The idea that Mass was celebrated clandestinely in the catacombs outside the walls is a 19th-century fantasy.) Although persecution was not a constant threat, it was not possible for a complex liturgy with a lavish musical repertory to develop. Christians met in large houses belonging to wealthy members of their community; churches built later, either on the same property or nearby, came to be known as ‘tituli’ after the nameplate (titulus) of the owner customarily affixed to the outside wall of Roman houses. The names of the benefactors became confused with those of early Christian martyrs, and these benefactors were retroactively ‘canonized’ in the names of the churches (e.g. the ‘titulus Praxidae’ became the ‘titulus sanctae Praxedis’, now S Prassede).
The status of the Church at Rome changed markedly after Constantine attributed his victory over Maxentius in 312 to the intervention of the Christian God. Constantine constructed both an episcopal residence for the bishop of Rome, Sylvester I (314–355), and a magnificent church, the Basilica Salvatoris, later known as S Giovanni in Laterano. The emperor also built another grand basilica on the Vatican hill, the supposed site of the martyrdom of St Peter (later S Pietro). These two basilicas, far distant from each other, were to be the most important ecclesiastical sites of medieval Rome. Towards the end of the 4th century an imperial basilica was erected over the supposed burial site of St Paul, and Pope Sixtus III (432–40) founded a basilica in honour of the Virgin (later S Maria Maggiore). Besides the major basilicas and titular churches there were many smaller churches in medieval Rome, whose diminished population was concentrated in the Tiber bend and across the river in Trastevere.
The location of the Basilica Salvatoris, some distance from the populated areas of medieval Rome, led to the development of a special kind of liturgical observance, known as ‘stational liturgy’. On certain days of the liturgical calendar, mostly during Lent, the pope or his representative gathered with the clergy and the faithful – residents and pilgrims visiting Rome – at a ‘collect’ church. After a short prayer all proceeded singing antiphons, psalms and a litany to the stational church of the day, where Mass was celebrated.
Certain popes founded monasteries at the papal basilicas and at some titular churches to assure the singing of the Divine Office, day and night. Four important monasteries charged with this obligation were situated near the basilica of St Peter. The Office of the basilical monasteries served not only as the model for other Roman churches but also as the Office in the Rule of St Benedict (c530). A large number of antiphons and responsories had to be created to accompany psalms and readings in the evolving liturgy. However, monasticism had only a tenuous foothold in Rome, and when Alberich, ‘prince’ of Rome, commissioned Odo, abbot of Cluny (926–44) to reform the Latin monastic communities in the city, there were few remaining monasteries. Eventually, the monastic foundations attached to the great basilicas were transformed into communities of canons.
Given the large number of liturgical books that must have been required to supply the needs of Roman churches and monasteries during the Middle Ages, comparatively few have survived to the present. Manuscripts earlier than the 11th century are extremely rare. Books that could be put to multiple use (e.g. homiliaries containing patristic sermons or legendaries with the lives of the saints) are preserved in far greater numbers than sacramentaries, books for the Office, or pontificals that could be rendered obsolete by liturgical change (see Liturgy and liturgical books, §II). Virtually none of these manuscripts contains musical notation of any kind. Beginning in the 7th century, Roman liturgical practice was emulated in parts of northern Europe, and some manuscripts from these areas preserve early evidence of the Roman liturgy, albeit adapted to different circumstances.
Despite the grave loss of liturgical documentation, five manuscripts (three graduals and two antiphoners) have survived with virtually the entire repertory of medieval urban chant, known to scholars as Old Roman chant. Before the 11th century, this chant was transmitted orally, and the oldest surviving book of Old Roman chant is a gradual from the church of S Cecilia in Trastevere (CH-CObodmer C.74), dated 1071. Even at this early date, however, chants from the Gregorian tradition (e.g. tropes) had been added to the traditional urban repertory. Of slightly later date (11th–12th century) is the gradual I-Rvat lat. 5319. Two manuscripts, one from S Pietro (I-Rvat S Pietro B.79) and the other believed to be from the Roman church of S Croce in Gerusalemme (GB-Lbl Add.28899), preserve the Old Roman repertory for the Office. The last Roman manuscript with the traditional urban repertory for the Mass (I-Rvat S Pietro F.22) dates from the 13th century.
Although it shares a common textual basis with Gregorian chant, Old Roman chant differs radically in its musical style, displaying affinities with other old Italian chant repertories. While it seems likely that Old Roman chant was sung outside Rome, particularly in dioceses of Italia suburbicaria that were directly under the metropolitan authority of the pope, no conclusive evidence of such dissemination has heretofore come to light. Attempts to portray Gregorian chant as originally ‘papal’ chant, created to distance the papal court from urban musical practice, have not been convincing. Later, however, clerics who joined the papal court (curia) came from all over Europe, and would have been familiar only with Gregorian chant, not with Old Roman chant. This ‘internationalization’ of the curia and the many decades during which the popes travelled outside the city led to the eventual neglect of the city’s traditional musical idiom by the pope and his circle. By the mid-12th century, the pope’s own cathedral, S Giovanni in Laterano, had abandoned the traditional urban repertory for Gregorian chant. By the pontificate of Innocent III (1198–1216), if not considerably earlier, the papal chapel had definitively adopted the Gregorian melodies for the Office. The Franciscans, who had adopted the reformed liturgical books of the Roman curia, also contributed to the dissemination of Gregorian chant in the city. Finally, Pope Nicholas III (1277–80) arranged for the destruction of many older books of the Roman liturgy. By the time the papal court left Rome for Avignon with the French pope, Clement V (1305–14), Old Roman chant was a dying tradition.
Important witnesses to liturgical practice at Rome are the Ordines romani, guides to the celebration of Mass, the Divine Office, the observances of Holy Week, clerical ordination and other rituals. All of the ordines (I–XLIX ed. Andrieu, and L ed. Vogel and Elze) were recopied from older Roman originals north of the Alps beginning in about 800. Though very few ordines remained untouched by northern emendation, several preserve a nearly ‘pure’ Roman character. Among the latter is Ordo romanus I, a description (c750) of the solemn procession on Easter Day to S Maria Maggiore and the subsequent papal Mass. All the chants of the Proper and Ordinary of the Mass are mentioned along with meticulously detailed rubrics to guide the pope and other ministers.
One observance unique to Rome was the splendid Paschal Vespers sung in Old Roman chant on Easter Day and throughout the following week. In 832 a northern visitor to Rome, Amalarius of Metz, described this ‘glorious Office’ in his Liber de ordine antiphonarii (chap.52). All the music for this impressive ceremony has been preserved in one of the Old Roman graduals (I-Rvat lat.5319), which can be supplemented by the detailed rubrics of Ordo romanus XXVII. Vespers began in S Giovanni in Laterano with three psalms, a great alleluia, the Magnificat and a collect. Subsequent parts of the ceremony took place in the baptistery, its chapel dedicated to St John the Evangelist, and at the neighbouring oratory of S Croce (demolished in 1588). In each of these locations a psalm, great alleluia, Magnificat and collect were chanted.
Paschal Vespers owed not a little of its grandeur to the singing of the Schola Cantorum (i), which was of central importance in the creation and stabilization of a fixed musical repertory for the liturgy at Rome. The Schola was a body of singers charged with providing music for papal ceremonies, with training singers and with preparing young clerics to serve the Church of Rome in subordinate functions. (Allegations that several popes graduated from the Schola Cantorum rest on faulty assumptions.) The papal Schola Cantorum, whose administrative structure was modelled on other Roman ecclesiastical bureaucracies, seems to have been officially established, most likely on the basis of an antecedent group of singers in papal service, towards the end of the 7th century. A 9th-century legend crediting Pope Gregory the Great (590–604) with the foundation of the papal Schola cannot be confirmed (a pre-Gregorian foundation of the Schola has been defended by Bernard, 1996). The chief officer of the Schola, the primicerius, was assisted by other adult singers of the choir, the secundus, tertius and quartus. The singers were also called paraphonistae, but without any necessary suggestion of polyphonic performance (see Paraphonia). Boy choristers of the Schola (paraphonistae infantes) collaborated with the adult singers, at least on some occasions. The prestige of the Schola Cantorum declined from the 9th century, and it was virtually defunct by the end of the 13th before its suppression by Pope Urban V in 1370.
Modern scholars have assigned to the Schola Cantorum an important role in the formulation of the Old Roman chant repertory and the organization of portions of the liturgical year. A legend transmitted by Ordo romanus XIX credits eight popes and three abbots (Catolenus, Maurianus and Virbonus, from one of the monasteries of S Pietro) with contributions to the creation of an annual cycle of chants.
Evidence about the provision of music at the Roman titular churches and churches of lesser importance is rare and difficult to interpret. In many cases members of the clergy with no special musical training formed the choir. For daily services at the smaller churches the ‘choir’ might have consisted of a single cleric, perhaps an alumnus of the Schola Cantorum. On solemn occasions when the papal court celebrated a liturgical observance at one of the Roman basilicas, the resident canons collaborated with the singers of the Schola. Professional, presumably clerical, singers provided for the more intensive needs of the major basilicas. The 11th-century Liber politicus of Canon Benedict of S Pietro claims that four singers were assigned to S Pietro, to S Maria Maggiore and to S Lorenzo for this purpose by Gregory the Great. A description of the Vatican basilica a century later refers to a dwelling for singers near the steps leading up to the church. This dwelling for ‘cantores basilicae’ was several times restored before being demolished during the pontificate of Pius IV (1559–65).
Rubrics indicate that Roman singers improvised polyphony, probably in the simple note-against-note style attested elsewhere in Italy. Sometimes the occasions on which polyphony was to be performed are specified, but the direction ‘sine organo’, implying a flexible, widespread practice, is also encountered. Adémar de Chabannes (988–1034) believed that Romans taught the Franks the principle of the ars organandi. No manuscript evidence confirms the existence of more elaborate forms of polyphony in medieval Rome.
On 11 November 1417 the Great Schism ended in Konstanz with the election of Cardinal Oddo Colonna as Pope Martin V. Three years later, in September 1420, the new pontiff made his official entry into Rome, which became once again the permanent home of the papacy. The succeeding two centuries saw the city return to its former architectural and artistic glory and also become one of the most vibrant musical centres in Italy. The principal musical institution of the papacy was the choir of the papal chapel, an organization that existed long before the construction of the Cappella Sistina, which now gives the choir its name. This choir had certain peculiarities. It was made up entirely of adult singers, the soprano part sung at first by falsettists and, from the mid-16th century, increasingly by castratos (at the turn of the 17th century almost all the sopranos were castratos); the two attempts, in 1425–7 and 1436–7, to add boy choristers came to nothing. The choir was unique in singing totally a cappella when it performed in the Vatican, although it is still not clear exactly how many singers sang at a time. It has been suggested that the norm was one or two to a part no matter how large the choir was. Although dominated by northerners in the 15th century, by the 16th the choir also included significant numbers of Spanish and Italian singers; by the end of the century they constituted the majority. Beginning in Martin’s reign, composers enter the singers’ ranks, the most famous of these being Guillaume Du Fay. In the late 15th century other important composers, chief among them Josquin Des Prez, became members of the choir, which tended thereafter to have at least one composer constantly in residence, although the most famous composer of sacred music in 16th-century Rome, Palestrina, stayed in the chapel for only a few months in 1555. Recent studies suggest that it was not until the end of the 15th century that the papal choir became engaged in any serious way with the sustained performance of elaborate polyphony (settings of the Mass Ordinary and motets), although the singers were certainly capable of singing complicated polyphony as the motets of Du Fay composed for papal occasions attest. At least by the 1480s the papal chapel possessed manuscripts containing masses by Busnoys, Ockeghem, Du Fay and others, and in the late 1490s the position of scribe was added to the chapel in order to deal with the ever-increasing library of manuscripts of polyphony. In 1566 the singers declared that their duties included singing the Mass in polyphony every day. Nevertheless, the majority of the music sung by the papal singers continued to be Gregorian chant.
The papal choir was by no means the only sacred musical institution in Rome, although it was always considered to be the most prestigious. S Pietro had a choir which, to judge by the manuscript I-Rvat S Pietro B80, was capable of singing polyphony in the mid- to late 15th century. Other major churches and basilicas in the city also supported singers and, in contrast to the Vatican, used boys, organs and instruments in the celebration of the liturgy; the extant evidence of this, beginning in the 16th century, shows an ever-expanding complex of musical institutions. By the late 16th century the choir of S Pietro (since 1513 constituted as the Cappella Giulia) rivalled the Cappella Sistina in size and ability, and major choirs, often led by well-known composers, were to be found in S Maria Maggiore, S Giovanni in Laterano, S Luigi dei Francesi and other churches. Palestrina himself began his career as a choirboy in S Maria Maggiore and ended it as maestro di cappella of S Pietro. The cultivation of sacred music in 16th-century Rome was further enriched by the many confraternities, such as Santa Trinità dei Pellegrini, which employed singers on a regular basis when their finances allowed it and often had recourse to papal singers for special celebrations in their personal churches and oratories and for processions (the papal singers developed particularly close relations with the Philippine Congregazione dell’Oratorio). Moreover, the major Jesuit seminaries, such as the Collegio Inglese and the Collegio Germanico, supported music; Victoria, never a member of the papal chapel, was employed by the Collegio Germanico in the 1570s. In 1584 the musicians in Rome formed their own confraternity, the Compagnia dei Musici di Roma, an organization considered such a threat by the papal singers that they forbade their members to join it. Almost all the major composers in late 16th-century Rome belonged to the confraternity, which is the ancestor of the Accademia di S Cecilia.
Sacred vocal polyphony performed within the liturgy was by no means the only music heard at the papal court. Instrumentalists were always present in the band of pifferi attached to the Castel S Angelo. The Medici Pope Leo X (1513–21) not only built up the papal choir to an unprecedented size (about 30 singers), but also appointed a composer (Elzéar Genet, known as Carpentras) to head it and supported a large number of private musicians including singers and instrumentalists. These musicians were heard in non-liturgical settings, at banquets and theatrical performances. On 27 September 1520, for instance, Leo and his guests were entertained by 50 singers and other musicians dressed as doctors (medici) on the occasion of the feast of the physician saints Cosmas and Damian. Succeeding popes, with the possible exception of Clement VII and Paul III, did not maintain such large private musical establishments, but Rome, as an international political centre, afforded the opportunity for a wide network of patronage of music and musicians created by cardinals and members of the Roman nobility. Even during the Great Schism, cardinals in Rome were a source of employment for singers. The end of the Schism saw a concentration in the city of cardinals, many of whom lived extremely lavishly. If we can believe the advice given by Paolo Cortesi in his De cardinalatu libri tres of 1510, music, both sacred and secular, became an indispensable part of the daily life of princes of the church by the 16th century. In 1544 Cardinal Alessandro Farnese had ten musicians in his service. In the late 16th century the patronage of certain cardinals, like Luigi and Ippolito II d’Este, Aldobrandini and Montalto, was extensive. In these princely households secular music and instrumental music was at least as important as sacred polyphony. The great madrigal composer Marenzio spent a good deal of his career in Rome, never in the employ of a church or of the pope, but always supported by cardinals or members of the nobility. There was also a large underclass of musicians scraping by in the city, including the accomplished cornett player Benvenuto Cellini, who was once drafted into an ensemble to play before Clement VII, and Bernardino Pedroso, a Spanish keyboard player who in 1559 was working as a freelance musician, giving private music lessons and playing at parties. He eventually attempted to elope with one of his female students and was caught, imprisoned and tortured. This last example is a reminder of the still largely hidden world of domestic music in non-noble Roman households (a recent study of household inventories dating from 1590 and drawn up by people of all ranks shows 66 listing some musical instruments or books of music among the various possessions) and the role that women played as consumers and performers. The market for music also supported music printers such as Andrea Antico and later Valerico Dorico, although Rome never rivalled Venice as a centre of music printing. In short, by the end of the 16th century Rome provided a wealth of opportunity for musicians of all types.
From the early 15th century to the middle of the 16th the music sung in Roman sacred venues was probably little different from that sung in similar venues all over Western Europe. Extant Roman sources of the period show a sacred repertory dominated by the great northern composers, some of whom had been members of the papal chapel. But during the years of the Counter-Reformation a more inward-looking and antiquarian approach to repertory seems to have been cultivated, particularly in the papal chapel, with much more emphasis on composers who were ‘Roman’. The most ‘Roman’ of all composers was Palestrina, who never left the city or its close environs, who was appointed official composer to the papal chapel in 1565 (an appointment made without consulting the papal singers), and whose style defined Renaissance music for centuries. But there was still room for influences from other places: for instance, in the 1570s polychoral music (not a Roman invention) became hugely popular. In the realm of secular music, which operated out of the control of ecclesiastical institutions, the Rome–Florence axis created by the Medici popes in the 1520s was instrumental in the development of the Italian madrigal; indeed, Arcadelt, Festa and Verdelot, the three most important composers in the early history of the genre, all worked, or at least were present, at some time in Rome, and the first appearance of the term ‘madrigal’ is in a Roman print of 1530. It was also in Rome that a long tradition of humanistic scholarship contributed to some of the decisive steps that led to a radical change in musical style about 1600. Vicentino’s L’antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica was published in Rome in 1555, and the seminal letter about Greek music that Girolamo Mei sent to Vincenzo Galilei was written in Rome in 1572.
Rome, §II, 3: The Christian Era: The Baroque
Between the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 18th, Rome produced more sacred music than any other European city. The new taste of the 16th century – monody with accompaniment and polychorality – developed rapidly, encouraged by a unique set of circumstances. The spiritual revival of the Catholic Church ater the Council of Trent made itself felt in Rome in the founding and development of new congregations, influenced by some outstanding personalities: Robert Bellarmine of the Jesuits, S Filippo Neri and his Oratorians, the nursing order of St Camillus de Lellis, the Scolopi or Order of Clerks Regular of Religious Schools founded by St Joseph Calasanz, and the Theatines. In addition, the Papal States were still profiting by the administrative and financial reforms introduced by Sixtus V (1585–90), and for a century the city developed steadily: the population grew (except during the great plague of 1656); churches, palaces and monasteries were built, restored or decorated; academies and devotional confraternities were founded; and the University of La Sapienza was reformed. In this context sacred music occupied an important place: the ecclesiastical reforms introduced since the Council of Trent encouraged the enhanced ‘ornamentation’ of liturgical ceremonies. Furthermore, the large staff of the papal court, the Curia, provided a fruitful source of patrons.
(b) The Congregazione dei Musici di Roma.
(g) The litanies of the Virgin.
(i) Sacred music drama and oratorios.
Rome, §II, 3(i): The Christian Era: The Baroque: Sacred music
The pope, the great basilicas and a large number of churches maintained permanent musical ensembles. The papal chapel had been reformed by Sixtus V in 1586, and its status hardly changed until the end of the 18th century. It was placed under the protection of a cardinal who exercised sole control over it, and in theory it consisted of 24 choristers in minor orders, engaged for life and recruited by competition every time a place fell vacant. Its ‘officers’ – the maestro di cappella, the camerlingue and the timekeeper – were elected annually. During the first 30 years of the 17th century the papal chapel represented an élite of Italian sacred music. Between 1600 and 1610 its members included several composers: G.M. Nanino, Francisco Soto, Arcangelo Crivelli, Orazio Griffi, Ruggiero Giovannelli, Teofilo Gargari and Vincenzo De Grandis (i), as well as Felice Anerio, who was appointed composer to the cappella papale. The ensemble sang Mass and the Office daily in the chapel of the palace where the pope was residing (the Cappella Sistina in the Vatican or the Cappella Paulina in the Palazzo del Quirinale, the principal residence of 17th-century popes), and it accompanied the pope when he celebrated divine service in the city. It always sang a cappella; this refusal to adopt the use of basso continuo led to a petrification of the repertory, and the composition of new material for both Mass and Vespers ceased in about 1620, except for the ‘Secret Vespers’ sung four times a year to the pope in his own apartments, when music written for the occasion by the maestro di cappella or other composers was sung to organ accompaniment. The papal chapel had lost its prestige well before the end of the century, as is evident from the fact that composers no longer competed for vacant places in it. Although Stefano Landi was admitted in November 1629 the appointment was by order of Pope Urban VIII, and Landi had to share his salary with Gregorio Allegri, who was appointed by competition a few days later. Only four other composers were admitted to the papal chapel during the 17th century: Mario Savioni by order of the pope in March 1642; Isidoro Cerruti in February 1658, also by order of the pope; Antimo Liberati in November 1661, after two previous rejections; and Matteo Simonelli in December 1662. The staff of the other cappelle belonged to the Congregazione dei Musici.
Rome, §II, 3(i): The Christian Era: The Baroque: Sacred music
Claiming that they could acknowledge only one authority, the singers of the papal chapel always refused to join the Congregazione dei Musici di Roma, which was placed under the protection of St Cecilia and was recognized by Sixtus V in 1586. The Congregazione was a kind of professional organization ruling the musical life of the Roman churches, and it united all the city’s musicians. It was governed by a maestro di cappella, an organist, an instrumentalist and a singer. These ‘officers’ were elected by the general assembly every year. The organization also had a secretary, a camerlingue to manage its finances, and nurses to visit sick or imprisoned musicians. Unfortunately the archives of the Congregazione before 1650 have not been preserved, and there are still large gaps in the archives from 1650 to 1680. The Congregazione di S Cecilia regularly provided music for services in the church where it met, first S Paolo alla Colonna, then the church of S Cecilia, then S Maddalena, and finally S Carlo di Catinari, where it still has its chapel today. Musical responsibility for the weekly litanies and for the Mass for the Forty Hours’ Devotion organized by the Congregazione was often entrusted to young musicians enabling the maestri di cappelle to assess their abilities. Members paid a joining fee and an annual subscription.
These musicians performed chiefly in the permanent cappelle of the Roman churches. A document of the Congregazione di S Cecilia of the year 1666 gives a list of churches where there was a regular musical service at least once a week. The list names 21 churches, to which had just been added the Concerto di Castello, an instrumental ensemble also known as the Trombetti di Campidoglio. With the exception of the Cappella Giulia, which provided music for the basilica of S Pietro and consisted of 18 choristers, a maestro di cappella and an organist, the usual number of singers in the cappelle ranged from ten to a mere two or three. Apart from their organists, 17th-century Roman churches employed no instrumentalists paid on a regular basis, except for S Luigi dei Francesi, where two instruments were played until 1624. Some churches, including S Giacomo degli Spagnoli, made do with a permanent organist whose responsibility it was to engage further musicians for the great church festivals. While organists often remained for many years in their posts, maestri di cappelle and singers tended to move from one cappella to another. Churches engaged extra musicians for certain important festivals. The festival of the patron saint of a church was the occasion for musical performances by several choruses with instrumental accompaniment for the three traditional services – first Vespers, solemn Mass and second Vespers.
Other institutions also employed musicians: for instance, the orphanage of S Maria in Aquiro had a maestro di cappella, a singing master and an organist. Certain convents with schools for young girls had music masters who also taught the novices; some nuns were excellent singers and attracted a large congregation to the convent church. The most important cardinals also employed several musicians, who often belonged to a regular church cappella as well. The great princely families also maintained a number of musicians.
On average there were at least 20 maestri di cappelle active during the 17th century to whom must be added several organists and instrumentalists who were also composers. They had to provide the new music required by the institutions for which they worked and for institutions with no maestro di cappella of their own, a situation which led to a certain amount of rivalry.
Musical training began at the age of eight or nine: after a boy had been examined by the maestro di cappella he was engaged by the chapter until his voice broke. The large cappelle (the Cappella Giulia, S Maria Maggiore, S Luigi dei Francesi etc.) maintained from five to eight children who were supervised by the maestro di cappella, assisted by a grammar master. The increasing employment of castrato sopranos in the first half of the 17th century led to changes in the system: the churches ceased to take responsibility for these small schools, which were now personally run by the maestri di cappelle. The contracts made between the child’s parents and the master always stipulated that any money earned by the boy would remain in the hands of his master, who thus had an interest in ensuring that his pupils could read their parts as soon as possible. As a result, the old system of training in solmization was abandoned in favour of modern solfeggio, which enabled choirboys to learn to read music rapidly. The most gifted children also learned to play the organ and harpsichord.
Rome, §II, 3(i): The Christian Era: The Baroque: Sacred music
Associations of laymen for devotional and charitable purposes had existed since the Middle Ages, but the old confraternities now revived their activities at the same time as new associations were being founded, perhaps because of the example set by Filippo Neri and his oratory. The confraternities of S Lucia del Gonfalone, the SS Crocefisso di S Marcello, S Giovanni Decollato, the Orazione e Morte and the more recent confraternity of the Trinità dei Pellegrini were now joined by, among others, those of S Girolamo della Carità, the Oratorio di S Filippo Neri, the Angelo Custode and the Stimmate. In general these confraternities had no permanent maestro di cappella; even the SS Crocefisso, famous for the Latin oratorios it performed during Lent, made do with a musical adviser, traditionally chosen from the members of the papal chapel, whose only responsibility was to organize the music for the great annual procession on the evening of Maundy Thursday. Music played an increasing part in the meetings of these confraternities. At the end of the 16th century they still often sang Lauds on the traditional model, but during the Baroque period musicians were increasingly brought in to sing motets, cantatas and later, oratorios.
Rome, §II, 3(i): The Christian Era: The Baroque: Sacred music
In the strictly liturgical field the maestri di cappelle had to provide music for the usual services, in addition to two Vespers services and a Mass for large forces (comprising several choirs and instruments) at least once a year. Plainchant, almost always with organ accompaniment, remained the basis of the repertory for Mass and Vespers, sung every Sunday in many churches, and if there was no regular musical ensemble the chaplains would be required to intone in the fauxbourdon style. Almost all cappelle practised strict counterpoint, contrapunto a mente, particularly for singing the antiphons at Vespers. In some churches the litanies of the Virgin were sung regularly every Saturday evening, as the list of Roman musicians made by G.P. Colonna in 1694 shows. His list mentions 19 regular cappelle and six others which provided only the service of ‘la Salve’, that is, the litanies. Colonna, who probably obtained his information from the secretary of the Congregazione dei Musici, also mentions the instrumentalists: 40 violinists, seven players of violette, 20 cellists and ten double bass players, together with eight players of lute or theorbo, five trumpeters and six trombone players. Maestri di cappelle also had to compose new liturgical works to keep the repertory constantly refreshed.
It is difficult to form a precise idea of the repertory sung in Roman churches. Music collections that have been preserved, such as those of the Cappella Giulia, S Giovanni in Laterano and S Maria in Trastevere, have suffered serious losses. Moreover, it seems that the maestri di cappelle kept only music that could easily be re-used, and as tastes changed they even threw away compositions that were out of fashion or too complex. This would explain why there are almost no musical sources extant containing psalms or settings of the Magnificat in the concertato style, although such settings were regularly sung on special occasions. They could not be simply performed again as they stood, and in any case it was thought better to present something entirely new every year. Nevertheless, these collections are valuable because they contain a number of works in separate manuscript parts and thus provide information on aspects of performing practice in the cappelle, particularly relating to the use of the double chorus, which seems to have been widespread as soon as there were at least eight singers in a cappella. They also contain compositions by musicians unable to publish their music in the increasingly difficult publishing climate of the 17th century.
Rome, §II, 3(i): The Christian Era: The Baroque: Sacred music
Roman music publishers apparently took little interest in new masses, although if the music collection of S Maria in Trastevere is any indication, such works were regularly written by maestri di cappelle. Of the 40 or so masses in separate manuscript parts contained in this collection, some 15 are for double choir in eight or nine parts, a type of work often described as a messa concertata. The majority of these are anonymous. Benevolo’s masses for two, three or four choirs exist only in manuscript scores probably copied around 1700 or later. Nevertheless, a number of masses were published during the 17th century: those dedicated to the pope by Francesco Soriano in 1609, the first book of masses in four, five and six parts by Arcangelo Crivelli in 1615, the masses for two and three choirs by Vincenzo Ugolni in 1622, the mass for four choirs by A.M. Abbatini in 1627, the mass In benedictione nuptiarum by Landi in 1628, three masses by Stefano Filippini in 1656, the two volumes of masses by Francesco Foggia in 1663 and 1675, two posthumous volumes of masses by Bonifatio Gratiani in 1671 and 1674, and the masses of Domenico Dal Pane in 1687. However, this pales by comparison with the published volumes of psalms and settings of the Magnificat for Vespers, or in particular the many volumes of motets. This discrepancy is illustrated by the series of collections compiled by Florido de Silvestris and issued by various Roman music publishers between 1643 and 1672. There are 18 such collections, including two of secular music: only one, published by Collini in 1651, is devoted to four masses by four maestri di cappelle: Benevolo, Carlo Cecchelli, Silvestro Durante and Graziani. Another collection, published in 1662 by Ignazio de Lazzari, contains 15 psalms for three voices; all the others consist of motets for forces ranging from one to four voices. In 1619 G.F. Anerio published three Masses by Palestrina, one of them the Missa Papae Marcelli in an arrangement for four voices. These masses were reprinted six times, probably for educational purposes; similarly, Arcadelt’s first book of four-part madrigals had four editions in Rome in the first half of the 17th century. For the most part, however, Mass was sung in plainchant, with alternating interludes for the organ, usually improvised by the organist.
Rome, §II, 3(i): The Christian Era: The Baroque: Sacred music
The importance allotted to Vespers from the beginning of the 17th century is evident from the number of psalms, antiphons and settings of the Magnificat published by Roman maestri di cappelle. Settings for double choir were particularly apt for this repertory. After 1625, however, the proportion of published psalms for double choir in relation to those written for smaller forces (from three to five parts) rapidly decreased. Roman maestri di cappelle published at least 60 volumes of this nature during the 17th century. Of all these published works only one volume, by Paolo Tarditi (Rome, 1620) contains psalms with instrumental accompaniment. There are far fewer psalms for Compline in both the published volumes and the manuscripts. The traditional psalmody of plainchant had not been abandoned by the early 17th century, but ornamented fauxbourdon had become the norm, as we know from the Passagi sopra tutti li salmi (Venice, 1607) by G.L. Conforti, a singer in the papal chapel, and the Salmi passaggiati (Rome, 1615) of Francesco Severi, also a member of the papal chapel. The large polychoral works from this period are mostly lost; however, two settings of the Magnificat for four choirs by Stefano Fabri and a Dixit Dominus for six choirs by Benevolo have survived.
Apart from the four Marian antiphons, the antiphons were much less frequently set to music than the psalms. However, there are three collections extant, by G.F. Anerio (1613), Giuseppe Giamberti (1650) and Graziani (published posthumously in 1666). Only one volume of antiphons contains music that may have been performed at Vespers services on special occasions: the antiphons for 12 basses and 12 tenors arranged in eight chori for the festival of St Domenico by Abbatini and published in 1667. By far the majority of antiphons in the manuscript collections are written for small numbers of soloists, sometimes with instruments. As a rule, only three of the five antiphons contained in the breviary were set to music, the others being sung in contrapunto a mente.
The hymns, too, were seldom set to music, no doubt because Palestrina’s settings were still in use. Palestrina wrote his hymns to a set pattern: the first strophe begins in plainchant and continues with a four-part setting for the second verse; the hymn then alternates between a strophe in plainchant and one set for several parts, the forces involved sometimes varying from strophe to strophe. The last is usually in five parts. This model was followed by composers of the papal chapel such as G.M. Nanino, Vincenzo De Grandis and Arcangelo Crivelli, whose hymns were sung at the papal Vespers. Graziani’s hymns are much freer and include parts for soloists, while still respecting the strophic form of the poem. At the end of the century G.O. Pitoni introduced a new model: strophes sung by a soloist in concertato style alternating with polyphonic strophes in the stile antico.
Volumes of music for the offices of Holy Week are even rarer. Felice Anerio published one in 1606 and Francesco Soriano another in 1619. The volume of four-part responses by Graziani published in 1663 was reissued in 1691.
Rome, §II, 3(i): The Christian Era: The Baroque: Sacred music
Devotion to the Virgin of Loreto was very strong in Rome; there was even a church dedicated to her. Saturday evening Compline was often replaced by a paraliturgical Office organized around the singing of litanies and the appropriate Marian antiphon: the service was known as ‘la Salve’, due to the fact that the Salve regina was the antiphon sung during the greater part of the church year, from the end of the Easter period to the beginning of Advent. The litanies of the Virgin were also sung at the oratory of S Filippo Neri. All this explains why Roman maestri di cappelle composed so many versions of these litanies throughout the 17th century. The texts lent themselves well to settings for double choir: Antonio Cifra and Lorenzo Ratti even published versions for three choirs. Other composers, including Francesco Foggia, wrote settings for between two and four voices in the concertato style. Graziani composed two volumes of antiphons, published posthumously in 1665 and 1675, for between three and eight voices.
Rome, §II, 3(i): The Christian Era: The Baroque: Sacred music
Of all genres, the motet was by far the most popular with music publishers. At the beginning of the 17th century motets for five or more voices were quickly supplanted by settings for one to four voices, the first of which appeared in 1609. The same year Robletti agreed to publish three books of petits motets by Antonio Cifra and a book of two-part motets by Girolamo Bartei, maestro di cappella at S Agostino. The form of these motets was very flexible: the texts could be either liturgical or biblical, and were often assembled from different sources. Some motets even set newly written texts. Motets were sung in Rome on various occasions. During Mass one motet could be sung at the offertory and another at the elevation; during solemn Vespers, when each antiphon was sung before and after the psalm it accompanied, some of these repeated antiphons could be replaced by a motet; and motets could also be sung during processions, during the Forty Hours’ Devotion, at meetings of confraternities and at the beginning of the service of ‘la Salve’. All composers active in Rome during the 17th century produced motets. Two Roman musicians were particularly active in preparing collections by composers working in the city: Fabio Costantini, who published a series of motets between 1614 and 1639, and Florido de Silvestris, whose collections appeared between 1643 and 1672.
Rome, §II, 3(i): The Christian Era: The Baroque: Sacred music
Sacred music drama, inaugurated in 1600 with Cavalieri’s Rappresentatione di Anima, e di Corpo, achieved some popularity during the pontificate of Urban VIII because of the librettos of Giulio Rospiglioso; Landi’s setting of his Il Sant’Alessio was first performed at the Palazzo Barberini in 1632. The last examples of the genre were Sant’Agnese, set to music by Mario Savioni in 1651 for the Pamphili family, Marco Marazzoli’s La vita humana, published by Mascardi in 1658, and possibly Santa Cecilia by G.A. Carpani, which we know was performed at the seminary of S Pietro in 1660.
The musical repertory of the confraternities developed progressively throughout the 17th century. Dialogo Pastorale al presepio di N[ost]ro Signore (1600) was the first example of a genre which gradually evolved into the so-called ‘cantata per oratorio’. The French viol player André Maugars describes a Lent meeting of the confraternity of the SS Crocefisso in 1638 when two such ‘cantatas’ were sung, the first on a text from the Old Testament and the second on a passage from the Gospels. The texts of these cantatas contained a prominent part for a narrator known as historicus, or testo, and sung by either a soloist or a small ensemble. Many works of this type are contained in the volumes published by Domenico Mazzocchi between 1638 and 1664. In the closing decades of the 17th century the oratorio texts evolved towards a more dramatic form, and the narrator disappeared. The two genres, the ‘cantata per oratorio’ and the more dramatic two-part oratorio, co-existed for a time, and Carissimi wrote works in both genres. Another important composer of cantatas was Mario Savioni, who published a volume of concerti morali e spirituali for two and three voices in 1660. In about 1700 composers began to write oratorios containing parts for allegorical figures such as Divine Love, Profane Love, Charity, and so on. It is difficult to estimate precisely the number of oratorios written in Rome between 1650 and 1720; but the surviving librettos indicate that at least ten new works were performed in the city every year, sometimes many more. On the other hand, very few scores have been preserved. Oratorios were performed not only in the confraternities but also in the palaces of cardinals, in the colleges, and sometimes in monasteries, and virtually all the Roman maestri di cappelle of the time contributed to the genre. One reason for the marked increase in the production of oratorios after 1697 may be the closure of the Tordinona and Capranica theatres, where operas had been given at Carnival time; this increased demand also provided opportunities for visiting composers, including Handel, whose La Resurrezione was composed for Marquis Ruspoli in 1708.
Rome, §II, 3(i): The Christian Era: The Baroque: Sacred music
In the first half of the 16th century music publishing in Rome seemed to be flourishing; however, distribution outside the city was limited, while the technical quality of publications was distinctly below that of Venetian publishers, suggesting that the financial situation was never very stable. Moreover, printing costs seem to have been higher in Rome than anywhere else. There may simply have been too many music publishers in Rome; there were five, for instance, in 1620: L.A. Soldi, Bartolomeo Zanetti, Paolo Masotti, G.B. Robletti and Andrea Fei, to whom must be added Nicolò Borboni, who published music engraved by himself, and Lodovico Grignani, who pursued his trade at Ronciglione, near Viterbo, before settling in Rome about 1622. Except for Fei, who began publishing in 1619, none of these firms was still active in 1640. Music publishing seems to have been only a supplementary activity for Roman publishers, which may explain why composers did not always publish with the same house. The 18 collections of motets made by Silvestris from 1643 to 1672 were published by ten different firms. Only Vitale Mascardi published as many as four of them, two in 1652 and one in each of the next two years. Robletti published three (1648–50), as did Ignazio de Lazzari (1662–4). Other publishers issued only one each. After the plague of 1656–7 there were never more than two or three music publishers in business at the same time. At the end of the century G.G. Komarek published many oratorio librettos as well as volumes of music by Corelli. By this time, however, music publishing in Rome had greatly declined, and during the following century it became virtually non-existent.
Rome, §II, 3(i): The Christian Era: The Baroque: Sacred music
Almost all Roman churches possessed at least one small organ. For the holy year of 1600 the chapter of S Giovanni in Laterano ordered a large organ from the organ builder Luca Biagi. Organ builders at the beginning of the century had a great deal of work to do in lowering the pitch of church organs, which from about 1620 were almost all tuned at the Roman corista pitch (a' = approximately 392). Giovanni Guglielmi was Biagi’s only serious rival at the beginning of the century. Subsequently Pompeo Dedi, Ennio Bonifazio and the Testa family worked in Rome; most of them also repaired and tuned harpsichords. Many maestri di cappelle owned small organs which they would hire out for special musical occasions.
The churches engaged a few other instruments for the major festivals and the Forty Hours’ Devotion. At the beginning of the century these were usually confined to a violin and a cornett, accompanied by one or two theorbos or archlutes. One or two trombones were also sometimes required. A violone was used to provide the basso continuo after about 1630. The harp was also employed as a continuo instrument. In the second half of the 17th century the instrumental ensemble employed for the great church festivals gradually grew into a small orchestra comprising two solo violins, a solo cello and a ripieno of violins, violette, cellos and double basses. Trumpets were used on special occasions between 1670 and 1680 and reappeared at the beginning of the 18th century, when oboes were first introduced. The instrumental ensemble required for the Forty Hours’ Devotion was always much smaller, usually consisting merely of two violins and continuo.
Many instrument makers worked in Rome, leaving their mark in the name of the Via dei Leutari. Lamb’s-gut violin strings made in Rome were famous throughout Europe.
Rome, §II, 3(i): The Christian Era: The Baroque: Sacred music
Roman libraries preserve large collections of liturgical and sacred music from several institutions. The Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana holds the collections of the Cappella Sistina and of S Pietro (the Cappella Giulia), which also contains the collection of G.O. Pitoni. The collections of the Barberini, Chigi and Ottoboni families are also in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. A more recent stock, known as the Vaticani Musicali, has been built up from the collection of Raffaele Casimiri; it also contains some 17th-century manuscripts. The music collection of S Maria in Trastevere is housed in the Archivio del Vicariato di Roma, as is the collection of S Giovanni in Laterano. The archives of S Maria Maggiore also hold part of its music collection. The Biblioteca Casanatense houses the collection made by Giuseppe Baini at the beginning of the 19th century, and more recently has also acquired several manuscript and printed scores of sacred music. There are further large collections of Baroque sacred music in the library of the Accademia di S Cecilia, in the Corsiniana library (of the Accademia dei Lincei), the Vallicelliana library and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele II. The S Girolamo della Carità archive in the Archivio di Stato di Roma contains a collection of oratorios in manuscript. The music collection of the Collegio del Nazareno is in the Archivio Generale delle Scuole Pie di S Pantaleo, and the Spanish College of Rome also possesses a large collection of sacred music. Many facsimiles and modern editions of Baroque works are housed in the libraries of the Pontificio Istituto di Musica Sacra and the Istituto Storico Germanico. The collection made in Rome in the early 19th century by Fortunato and Prospero Santini is now in Münster, Germany, while L.K.J. Feininger’s large manuscript collection of 17th-century Roman sacred music is in the Museo Provinciale d’Arte in Trent.
Rome, §II, 3: The Christian Era: The Baroque
Rome, §II, 3(ii): The Christian era, The Baroque., i) Secular vocal music.
All visitors to Rome were able to hear both old and new music in churches and oratories. Few were privileged, however, to enjoy the music performed in palaces and gardens for invited guests, concerts given by gentlemen’s academies, intimate chamber concerts (almost the only venue for women performers after about 1626), presentations with music in the numerous Roman colleges, such as the Latin melodramas of Leone Santi, or the music performed at events such as annual prizegiving ceremonies. Public forms of secular music were occasional, and included music performed in open carrozze at carnival time, public tourneys and other types of open-air festivities.
Formal evenings of social dancing often included costumed, representational sketches with vocal music. Private presentations of spoken plays were frequent during the carnival season. The two genres coincided early in the century in the musical drama. Members of the Peretti-Montalto family, for example, and other noble youths offered a costumed play on the tale of Psyche in February 1611 which included music-making in stage clouds and ballettas; the titled guests danced and took refreshment after the play. In 1614, however, Cardinal Montalto’s presentation of Amor pudico, a libretto by Jacopo Cicognini in five acts with music by various composers, was sung throughout and performed by professionals. Full-scale opera became the most elaborate form of such private spectacle from 1620, when Filippo Vitali’s Aretusa was performed, followed by the various melodrammi to librettos by Ottavio Tronsarelli given in the 1620s by Cardinal Maurizio of Savoy, and the nine Barberini operas given annually between 1631 and 1639 and 1641 and 1643. It was adopted by the French ambassadors in Rome from 1638 to 1642, who staged Italian librettos by Ottaviano Castelli (with scores by Angelo Cecchini, Filiberto Laurenzi and himself). Notable also is Taddeo Barberini’s 1638 carnival presentation of L’acquisto di Durindana, a narrative ballet based on Ariosto with the music partially or wholly by Marco Marazzoli.
Principal presenters of operas in the period 1650–70 were the Barberini family, Pompeo and Lorenzo Colonna (who presented an Orontea, presumed to be by Cesti in 1661), Filippo Acciaiuoli, who staged Jacopo Melani’s Il Girello in 1668 and Alessandro Melani’s L’empio punito the following year and who would continue as an impresario into the next decade, Queen Christina of Sweden and the Rospigliosi family; the queen and Clement IX (a Rospigliosi) were instrumental in establishing the first public theatre for opera in Rome, the Tordinona, which opened in 1671.
The Roman operas were set to music by composers whose chamber works for voice were more frequently heard. Giovanni Kapsberger, who composed the score for the 1622 anniversary spectacle at the Collegio Romano, the choral cantata on The Victory of Prince Ladislaus in Wallachia for the academy of Maurizio of Savoy in 1625, and the opera Fetonte (1630), issued seven books of villanellas for one, two and three voices between 1610 and 1640. His first book of solo arie passeggiate (1612) exemplifies the ornamented recitational style of early Roman chamber monody. Madrigals, arias, musiche, scherzi and sonnet settings for between one and five voices appear in a diversity of publications in the first quarter century by Antonio Cifra, Lorenzo Ratti, G.F. Anerio, Giuseppe Olivieri, G.D. Puliaschi, Nicolò Borboni, Stefano Landi, Filippo Vitali, Raffaello Rontani, Paolo Quagliati, Alessandro Capece and others. Compositions for solo voice appear along with graceful, lively strophic settings for two and three voices, which never disappeared from the Roman chamber repertory. Settings in strophic variations as well as extended forms in sections of contrasting metres or melodic styles responded to nuances in poetic diction.
While similar collections continued to be issued in print, the music of the virtuoso singers – from the households of the Peretti-Montalto, Maurizio of Savoy, the Barberini and later the Chigi establishments – exists in scattered manuscript volumes which remain for the most part unedited. The lyric and plangent new style of composers like Orazio Michi and Luigi Rossi was promulgated by a new generation of castratos and stupendous basses who sang for Roman patrons and their visiting guests. Poems for music were designed to be set in several ways, all of which may be classified as cantatas, but which received various designations in contemporary sources – canzone, canzonette, concerti, ariette, recitativi, estrivigli (a rondo refrain form) – or none at all. In them, aria-like sections may contrast by the use of different metres; recitative sections range from more narrative to highly expressive styles. Their variety and unpredictability allowed each setting to be a spontaneous expression of its individual poem, no matter how conventional the sentiments. The flexible, melodious mid-century styles of Luigi Rossi, Giacomo Carissimi, Marc’Antonio Pasqualini, Marco Marazzoli, Mario Savioni, G.F. Tenaglia and Carlo Caproli were expanded and continued by the next generation of composers, represented by Alessandro Stradella, Antonio Cesti (who set local poets while in Rome from 1658 to 1662), P.S. Agostini, Ercole Bernabei, G.C. Rossi, the Melani brothers, Carlo Rainaldi, Antimo Liberati, Fabrizio Fontana, Lelio Colista and others. What remains unknown is the chamber music sung by the many celebrated women singers whose gifts but not repertories were extolled: Leonora and Catarina Baroni and their mother Adreana Basile, Lucrezia Motti, Anna Valeria, Maddalena Lolli, Anna Renzi, Angela Voglia and others.
Several academies had strong musical interests of a historical or experimental nature. Cardinal Francesco Barberini maintained a viol consort that performed madrigals by Gesualdo, Nenna and Marenzio, and in 1640 sponsored a reconstruction of Seneca’s Troades for which Virgilio Mazzocchi wrote the choruses. Pietro Della Valle and G.B. Doni collaborated to construct musical instruments that performed new compositions requiring chromatic and enharmonic pitches based on ancient scales and tuning systems. Domenico Mazzocchi’s Virgilian dialogues and chromatic and enharmonic madrigals of 1638 belong in this context. Castelli, however, experimented with equal-tempered tuning in compositions for the Academici Trascurati. Unaccompanied madrigals old and new were performed at the music academies of Antonio Maria Abbatini in the 1660s. The music performed for the academies of Queen Christina is also unknown; but these academies provided a select public for the many fine singers who passed through her household (Cametti, 1911).
Rome, §II, 3(ii): The Christian era, The Baroque., i) Secular vocal music.
During the years 1670–1730 Rome's music differed from that of many other Italian cities in that cantatas, serenatas and oratorios outnumbered operas. Rome's first public opera house, the Teatro Tordinona (also known as the Tor di Nona), was open for only four seasons, 1671–4, before the pope ordered its closure. If Roman nobles wished to sponsor operas, they did so in their own palaces (as did Prince Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna, d 1689) or outside the city (as in Arricia, where the Accademici Sfaccendati produced works in 1672–3). They could instead subsidize spoken tragedies or comedies, which were often performed with musical prologues and intermezzi at Roman colleges (the Clementino, Nazareno and Romano). They celebrated birthdays, visits of foreign dignitaries and notable political events with lavish serenatas, which were produced outside their palaces in warm weather, and thus were free events open to the public. They employed and often housed composers who wrote cantatas or sonatas for chamber performances given within their palaces. A few patrons opened their doors to the public one day each week for such performances, which were called ‘conversations’ or ‘academies’. During this period the most noted patrons were queens Christina of Sweden (d 1689) and Maria Casimira of Poland (d 1715), cardinals Benedetto Pamphili (d 1730) and Pietro Ottoboni (d 1740), and Prince Francesco Maria Ruspoli (d 1731). Pamphili and Ottoboni, who wrote texts for many of the works heard at their own academies, began to sponsor performances in 1677 and 1689, respectively. When Maria Casimira and Ruspoli started their patronage in the early 1700s, public academies were available four days of each week. In addition to these secular genres, religious vocal genres flourished in Rome. During the years around 1700, about ten oratorios were splendidly produced during each Lenten season, and saints' and other feast days were celebrated with vocal works in many Roman churches.
In Rome, the first late Baroque phase extends from 1671 to 1697, when native Roman composers, such as Cesarini and Lanciani (who respectively served Pamphili and Ottoboni), were joined by young ‘foreigners’, who came to profit from the vibrant musical life of the papal city: Pasquini had arrived by 1650, Alessandro Scarlatti by 1672, Corelli by 1675, Lulier by 1679, Severo De Luca by 1688, Gasparini by 1689, Giovanni Bononcini by 1692, Mancia by 1695 and Mancini by 1696. Bernardo Pasquini (d 1710) was the most sought-after composer and continuo harpsichordist from 1670 to 1700, but Scarlatti (d 1725), in spite of his frequent employment outside Rome, was favoured by erudite Roman patrons from 1679 until his death. It is notable that these two composers and Corelli were, in 1706, the only musicians to be accepted into the Arcadian Academy, and that they typically wrote scores containing a wealth of intricate detail. Such detail is often replaced by a dance-like tunefulness in works by their contemporaries, who gained favour about 1690, when opera was once again allowed at the Tordinona by Pope Alexander VIII. Two other theatres, the Capranica and Pace, began to produce operas in 1692 and 1694 respectively. Roman vocal works composed and performed in 1694 include an unknown (but presumably large) number of cantatas, 14 serenatas, ten operas, nine oratorios and four spoken plays with musical scenes. During the 1690s the influential Arcadian Academy (founded in 1690) recommended ‘reformed’ opera plots, concerning pastoral Arcadians or heroic rulers of bygone days, undisturbed by the excruciating incidents and raucous comedy frequently found in the swashbucklers di spada e cappa (‘of sword and cloak’) that were favoured during the two previous decades. Ottoboni, who had been named a cardinal in 1689 by his great-uncle Alexander VIII, soon became the chief patron of opera in Rome, and he tried to emulate Arcadian ideals in his first librettos: Statira (set by Scarlatti in 1690) is heroic; Il martirio di S Eustachio (set by Lanciani, also in 1690) is a staged, three-act oratorical drama; and L'amore eroico fra pastori (composed by Cesarini, Lulier and Bononcini in 1696) is pastoral. Ottoboni also commissioned for production in Rome La clemenza di Salomone (G. Frigimelica Roberti and C.F. Pollarolo, 1695), a ‘reformed’ work written in his native Venice.
Although Arcadian reforms were a significant force, they were not dominant on the Roman stage during the 1690s. For example, even though Stampiglia was among the founding members of Arcadia, he showed little interest in its ideals; both his rewrite of the 40-year-old libretto for Xerse (1694) and his Rinovata Camilla regina de Volsci (1698) delighted audiences with rowdy comedy and bawdy servants. Audiences were also delighted by novel foot-tapping tunes in da capo form (which largely supplanted strophic and ostinato forms) and by incredible scenic transformations, such as those in an intermedio depicting hell, which Acciaiuoli devised for the Capranica in 1695. Opera had indeed become so popular in Rome that the Capranica and Tordinona were, respectively, enlarged and refurbished for the carnivals of 1695 and 1696. The austere Pope Innocent XII ordered the destruction of the Tordinona in August 1697, after which all roads led composers away from Rome: the pope tried to prohibit all carnival entertainments in 1698–9, the Holy Year prohibited them in 1700, the War of the Spanish Succession ‘opposed’ them in 1701–9, Pope Clement XI declared a Holy Year to forestall them in 1702, wretched weather and earthquakes prevented them in 1703, a penitential resolution passed by the cardinals banned them in 1704–8, and papal preparations for battle with the Austrian army prevented them in 1709. With the exception of a few works produced in the palace of Queen Maria Casimira, there was virtually no staged drama in Rome between 1698 and 1710. Composers who remained in Rome wrote a few serenatas, many cantatas for academies and many oratorios. In 1707 only two serenatas, but perhaps as many as 18 oratorios, were produced. One of the latter, Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, was written by Pamphili and Handel. In 1708 Handel was employed by Ruspoli, for whom he wrote his Oratorio per la Resurrezione (text by Capece) and more than 50 cantatas.
Beginning in 1710, a more hospitable environment for opera meant that all roads once again led Italian musicians to Rome. Composers who began to write musical drama in the 1680s remained the most highly favoured, and Alessandro Scarlatti, Gasparini, Bononcini, C.F. Pollarolo and Caldara composed at least 34 of the 63 operas produced in Rome between 1710 and 1722. Their style would have seemed outmoded in other centres, as Mattheson noted in Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre (1713): the Venetian style was based on a lighthearted melody, the Roman on a fully developed harmonic structure; the former was more galant, the latter more reelles (substantial). Pier Jacopo Martello, in Della tragedia antica e moderna (Rome, 1715), recognized the distinguished character of Roman librettos when he named nine authors of admirable works: Moniglia of Florence, De Lemene of Lodi, Zeno of Venice, Manfredi of Bologna and five Romans: Capece, Ottoboni, Stampiglia, Bernini and De Totis. These five ‘Romans’ (who include the Venetian-born Ottoboni) all collaborated with Scarlatti. Since even his late operas continued to exude the counterpoint and pathos that were more suited to chamber works, his Roman operas staged at the Capranica in 1718–22 represent the culmination of the reelles tradition: Telemaco (1718), Marco Attilio Regolo (1719), Tito Sempronio Gracco (1720), Turno Aricino (1720), La Griselda (1721) and Arminio (1722).
The galant style overwhelmed Rome after 1720, when the featured operas were by a new generation of composers: Porpora, then Vinci at the Alibert (1721–9), and Vivaldi, then Leo at the Capranica (1723–7). The Alibert, built in 1716–17 by Antonio Alibert, changed its name to the Teatro delle Dame after its grandiose enlargement for carnival 1726, which featured Vinci's Didone abbandonata, the first Roman production of an opera libretto by the great Roman named Metastasio. The other genres continued to be well represented: e.g. 14 serenatas (often called cantatas), eight oratorios and eight operas were produced in 1721. Many of these works feature galant style, in which an unobtrusive orchestra supports (and often doubles) a virtuosic vocal line. This had replaced the texture which had predominated at Rome in 1670–1722 and had featured polarized vocal and continuo lines, with motivic interplay frequently added by treble instruments.
Rome, §II, 3: The Christian Era: The Baroque
With its abundant sources of patronage, both sacred and secular, Rome became a Mecca for instrumentalists, but many of these, such as the ‘nobile Alemanno’ Kapsberger, Frescobaldi and Corelli, were not Romans by birth but by adoption, while others such as the Neapolitan Alessandro Scarlatti passed through the city intermittently. Roman instrumental music was neither consistently more conservative nor less secular than elsewhere but reflected the particular dictates of individual pontiffs. Despite Clement VIII’s reiteration in his Caeremoniale episcoporum (1600) of the Council of Trent’s ban on instruments other than the organ, instrumental music flourished in Roman churches. Before 1600 the Collegio Germanico was already famous for its sinfonie and André Maugars rapturously described the instrumental music in S Marcello in 1639. However, these were not permanent salaried ensembles as in Venice and Bologna, but were hired for specific events, considerable control lying in the hands of the Congregazione di S Cecilia in the choice of musicians. Its statutes of 12 May 1684 drew attention to the equality of status between singers and instrumentalists.
Such sporadic employment could not provide a steady source of income for instrumentalists, and the periodic closure of the public theatres also affected their lot. They therefore sought more secure accommodation in the princely households of the Barberini, Pietro Aldobrandini for whom Frescobaldi was direttore di camera, and successive patrons of Corelli – Queen Christina of Sweden, Benedetto Pamphili and Pietro Ottoboni. Under this system of patronage the best instrumentalists, like the lutenist Lelio Colista, became fabulously wealthy. The occasional nature of many performances, plus the fact that a noble household would employ its own copyist, meant that instrumental composers in Rome, even of the stature of Stradella and Lonati, normally felt no compulsion to publish their music, which circulated in manuscript. Much of this material has subsequently been lost, while that which remains often involves almost insuperable problems of ascription. It is therefore difficult to trace continuous lines of development in any of the main instrumental genres before Corelli. In keyboard music only Frescobaldi and Pasquini are well represented, despite the plethora of organists in the city, notably Amadori, Fontana, Piccini, Simonelli and Spoglia. Similarly, just one volume of extremely unadventurous solo violin sonatas survives in print before 1700 – G.A. Leoni’s Sonate di violino (1652), while other virtuosos such as Mannelli, Corelli, Lonati, Lulier and Valentini must have written copiously for their own instruments. In this regard, the lack of a competitive music printing industry comparable to that of northern Europe was a significant factor, for its antiquated technology hindered the publication of much complex music. The violinist Giuseppe Valentini complained in the preface of his Idee (1706–7) that he could not publish the Sonate a due e tre corde on account of the great expense it would entail. In manuscript sources trios are relatively well represented, most often entitled ‘sinfonia’ (‘simfonia’, etc.), and by the late 17th century these are among the most substantial and ambitious ensemble compositions of the period. One notable feature of this repertory is the inclusion of binary dance movements along with ‘canzonas’ (fugues) in free sinfonias, perhaps indicating a lack of a definitive functional differentiation.
In the early 17th century Agostino Agazzari’s Del sonare sopra ’l basso (1607) and Vincenzo Giustiniani’s Discorso sopra la musica (after 1628) attest to the wide variety of instruments in general use in the city, and the civic bands of the Concerto dei Musici di Campidoglio and the Musici de Castello provided the usual contingent of cornetts and trombones. Plucked instruments were particularly favoured (lutes, guitars, harps, etc.) so that as late as Mannelli’s Sonate a tre (1682, 1692) the specified melodic bass is liuto rather than a bowed instrument. In 1639 the ensemble mentioned by Maugars consisted only of two or three violins, archlutes, harpsichord and organ, but at the turn of the 18th century trumpets, transverse flutes, oboes and bassoons were not unusual, while in 1739–40 Brosses cited horns, trumpets, flutes, harp, viola d’amore, archlutes and mandolin. By 1700 orchestras could total 150 players, and at least from the 1670s – well before Muffat’s encounter with Corelli in 1682 – they were commonly divided into concertino and concerto grosso. While the constitution of these orchestras varied considerably, the number of violins normally equalled the total of all other strings employed. Roman instrumentalists achieved a zenith of international renown under Corelli, but the exodus of a number of his best-known successors – Castrucci, Vincenti, Cosimi and Haym – seeking lucrative employment elsewhere led to its decline.
Rome, §II, 4: The Christian era, Since 1730.
In the 1730s three new theatres joined the Capranica, the Alibert and the Pace, which had been in regular use in the first decades of the 18th century; these were the Teatro Argentina, the Teatro Valle and the rebuilt Tordinona. Musical productions were also staged in the Pallacorda and, more sporadically, in the Granari, Saponari, Ornani and Pioli theatres and also in the Collegio Clementino and the Collegio Germanico.
Between 1730 and the end of the century there were almost always two theatres where opera seria was performed, only during the carnival season as a rule; two operas, interspersed with ballets, would be presented at each of them. At the Teatro Alibert there were spring seasons only in 1731, 1732, 1738 and 1780, and between 1734 and 1737 only the Tordinona put on opera seria. For the rest the Capranica, Argentina and Alibert alternated in such productions until the middle of the century. An edict of 1740 ordered that the three theatres should take turns, decided by lot, and that the one remaining closed should receive compensation. In 1755 the pontifical authorities decided that only the Argentina and Alibert could stage serious works while the Capranica was being rebuilt. The Argentina was more regularly used for opera seria, whereas in 1760, 1765, 1772–9 and 1781 the Alibert presented drammi giocosi with ballets.
The Argentina, built in 1731 to a design by Gerolamo Theodoli, belonged to the Sforza-Cesarini family. In 1741 it was renovated and improved by D.M. Vellani. The theatre was managed at first by the impresario Polvini Faliconti, then on his death in 1741 by Count Francesco Maria Alborghetti and in 1746–7 by the librettist Gaetano Roccaforte. It seems, however, that in the second half of the century there was a corporate management in which several Roman nobles participated, including Marquis Angelo Gabrielli, who in 1761 headed the Società e Compagnia di Cavalieri; composed of about 30 Roman nobles, this functioned until 1771. Thereafter the theatre was managed by professional impresarios who were also active elsewhere, such as Giuseppe Compostoff (1773–82), the choreographer Onorato Viganò (1783–8) and Andrea Campigli and his heirs (1789–95). It is possible that Roman nobles and citizens were also involved during these years.
The Alibert had been acquired in 1725 by a group of people (including the marquises Maccarani and Antonio Vaini, prior of the order of Malta) who managed the theatre for most of the century, along with people from outside the ownership. The Capranica, which passed between various members of the Capranica family during the course of the century, was also often under the management of its owners.
In the second half of the 18th century the Valle, Capranica, Pace, Pallacorda and Tordinona theatres all staged prose dramas interspersed with intermezzos and comic operas. The Valle belonged to the Capranica family; a season of opera seria was put on there in 1730, but from the late 1730s its activities were confined to spoken dramas and intermezzos. Built in 1726 to a design by Tommaso Morelli, and smaller than the Argentina and the Alibert, it was restored by Mauro Fontana in 1765 and again in 1791. It was the only theatre in Rome which in 1782, and regularly from 1786, offered operatic performances in the spring and autumn seasons as well as at Carnival. The Capranica (latterly a cinema), with its complicated history of ownership, underwent a number of restorations in the 18th century. The theatre known as the Pallacorda di Firenze, which no longer exists, was designed by Nicolò Michetti and built in 1714 opposite the Palazzo Firenze in the present Via Pallacorda; it was restored in 1786 by Vincenzo Mazzoneschi. The Teatro Pace, also no longer in existence, was built at the end of the 17th century in the present Via del Teatro Pace and altered several times. The Teatro Tordinona, on the bank of the Tiber opposite Castel S Angelo, was rebuilt in 1732 at the instigation of Pope Clement XII to provide Rome with a government-run theatre. After being destroyed by fire in 1781, the theatre was reconstructed to the plan of Felice Giorgi, but not completed until 1795. The new building was named the Teatro Apollo and was at first used for comic opera.
The opera seria repertory in 18th-century Rome centred on texts by Metastasio, some of which (Catone in Utica, Semiramide riconosciuta, Alessandro nell’Indie, Artaserse) were actually heard for the first time there. Metastasio’s librettos were frequently set to new music, with the usual modifications, and librettos by Zeno, Roccaforte, Pizzi, Cigna-Santi, Sertor and others were also used. In the last quarter of the century it became more usual to stage operas that had been composed for performance elsewhere. The musicians engaged were mostly trained in Naples; among them were well known composers such as Vinci, Porpora, Leo, Hasse, Pergolesi, Piccinni, Sacchini, Anfossi, Guglielmi and Sarti. Some of them stayed in Rome for some time (Jommelli was there from 1749 to 1753), and so became involved in the general musical life of the city, both secular and religious. Roman composers, many of them maestri in the city churches, wrote mostly comic operas, farsette, intermezzos and the like; they included Rinaldo di Capua, G.B. Casali, P.M. Crispi, Giovanni Cavi, Giovanni Masi, Agostino Accorimboni, Girolamo Mango and Marcello Bernardini. There were also performances, especially at the Teatro Valle, of comic operas by Galuppi, Piccinni, Anfossi, Sacchini, Paisiello, Guglielmi and Cimarosa. Throughout the 18th century female singers were prohibited from appearing in public theatres in Rome, and all their roles were taken by men.
There were regular winter seasons of oratorio in Rome throughout the 18th century at the oratories of the Chiesa Nuova and S Girolamo della Carità. Each put on about 30 performances each season, including several newly composed works, although the number of new oratorios declined somewhat during the course of the century. The composers included Roman musicians, sometimes already working in the service of those institutions, such as Casali (maestro at the Chiesa Nuova), Crispi (maestro at S Girolamo), Antonio Aurisicchio and Mango. Cantatas and oratorios were also performed annually in other institutions: at the Collegio del Nazareno (from 1704 to 1784, for the solemn feast of the Nativity of Our Lady), at the Collegio Clementino (for the Assumption of the Virgin), at the Collegio Germanico-Ungarico, at the Collegio Capranica (for the feast of the Resurrection), and at the Congregazione della SS Natività di Maria Vergine at S Lorenzo in Lucina (on Good Friday).
Music had an important role in the festivities organized by ambassadors (especially Spanish and French) to celebrate important events such as births and marriages. There was usually a cantata on an allegorical theme, and the festivity was celebrated with orchestras playing in the open air. Those who frequently promoted musical entertainments were the Spanish ambassador Cardinal Troiano Acquaviva d’Aragona, who was in Rome between 1735 and 1747 and employed the services of the composers G.B. Costanzi and David Perez, and the French ambassador Cardinal Pierre de Bernis, who was in Rome from 1769 onwards. There were also special musical events to mark state visits to Rome.
Musical entertainments in the form of vocal and/or instrumental accademie often took place at the homes of noble or bourgeois families: for example, Prince Giorgio Andrea Doria Pamphili (who had three instrumentalists in his service) held regular accademie during the period 1764–78; Charles Burney, who visited Rome in 1770, noted musical entertainments at the homes of the Duke of Dorset, the Russian General Schuvaloff, the Forbes family, the musicians Wiseman and Crispi and the painter Pompeo Batoni; and in 1786 there were musical entertainments at the houses of Lady Flaviani, Charles Edward Stuart and the director of the Accademia di Francia Lagrenée (Ferrari, Aneddoti piacevoli e interessanti).
Although the number of musically active churches declined in the 18th century, several still maintained musical establishments. In the middle of the century these included S Giovanni in Laterano, S Pietro, S Maria Maggiore, S Lorenzo in Damaso, S Maria in Trastevere, Il Gesù, S Giacomo degli Spagnoli, the Chiesa Nuova, S Agnese in Agone, Madonna dei Monti, S Apollinare, S Giacomo in Augusta and the Castel S Angelo. Religious services with music also took place in other churches in Rome on special occasions. The Cappella Sistina, which kept alive the Palestrina tradition, maintained its special status during the 18th century: the Holy Week services in the chapel attracted visitors from all over Europe.
Rome, §II, 4: The Christian era, Since 1730.
The years of French rule (1809–14) brought a number of changes to musical and theatrical life in Rome. These included an attempt to set up a conservatory and an imperial chapel which would be the focus for performances of music for religious services; the prolongation of the theatre season into Lent, with performances of operas on sacred subjects; the direct involvement of the French administration in running the theatres; and the extension of the repertory to embrace non-Italian music: in 1811, for instance, there was a performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Valle, while in 1812 Haydn’s The Creation was performed at the house of Ruffini.
After the Restoration, however, musical life in Rome continued much as it had done before the French invasion. Opera was regularly presented at the Valle, the Argentina and the Apollo theatres. The Valle, which was entirely rebuilt in 1821, was open for the carnival, spring and autumn seasons. It was chiefly intended for opera buffa and opera semiseria, which were interspersed with prose comedies; from about 1830 opera seria was staged with increasing frequency. A new opera was performed there nearly every season, including Rossini’s Torvaldo e Dorliska and La Cenerentola, Mercadante’s Il geloso ravveduto, Donizetti’s L’ajo nell’imbarazzo, Olivo e Pasquale, Il furioso all’isola di San Domingo and Torquato Tasso, Pacini’s La gioventù di Enrico V and Luigi Ricci’s L’orfana di Ginevra, Il sonnambulo and Chi dura vince, as well as many works by relatively unknown or local composers. From the middle of the century the Valle staged only spoken drama.
In the first quarter of the 19th century the Teatro Argentina regularly presented operas and ballet during Carnival (usually opera seria, though in 1816 the première of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia took place there), but between about 1825 and 1840 performances were more sporadic, the theatre being used mainly for spoken drama and concerts. Opera then reappeared; the premières of I due Foscari (1844) and La battaglia di Legnano (1849) were given there, as well as the first Roman performances of many other works by Verdi. Until the end of the century opera buffa and operetta were performed at the Argentina during Carnival, and in the spring and autumn seasons melodramas by Donizetti, Verdi, Meyerbeer and later Thomas and Bizet. In this period there were few premières except of works by local composers. In 1868 the theatre was taken over by the Comune of Rome.
The Teatro Apollo, which at the beginning of the 19th century had presented opera (often comic opera) from time to time, was the principal theatre in the city from 1828, giving regular performances of opera seria with ballet during Carnival until 1858, and then also in spring and autumn. From 1870 the carnival season was prolonged through Lent and the autumn season through Advent, but from 1874 opera occupied only the carnival-Lent season. In the course of the century the Apollo staged works mainly by Rossini, Ricci, Mercadante, Donizetti, Pacini, Verdi, Petrella, Meyerbeer, Gounod, Thomas and Massenet; premières were few but included Rossini’s Matilde di Shabran (1821), Donizetti’s Adelia (1841), Pacini’s Il corsaro (1831), Furio Camillo (1839) and Gianni di Nisida (1860) and Verdi’s Il trovatore (1853), as well as the first Italian performances of Fidelio and La forza del destino. Wagner’s music was first heard in Rome at the Apollo with Lohengrin in 1878, and in 1883 the entire Ring was performed in German. The theatre was demolished in the course of alterations to the Lungotevere in 1889.
The management of Roman theatres in the first decades of the 19th century had some unusual characteristics: the involvement of several aristocratic proprietors (Sforza-Cesarini at the Argentina, Bartolomeo Capranica at the Valle, the Torlonias at the Apollo); the monopoly granted to a single impresario (alternately Cartoni and Paterni); and the lack of government subsidies, which were granted only after the 1830s and only to the Apollo for opera seria. For 40 years from 1840 theatrical life in Rome was dominated by Vincenzo Jacovacci, who was first impresario at the Valle and the Apollo and then also at the Argentina (1847–73). Another characteristic feature of opera in Rome in the 19th century concerns the many alterations made to librettos by the censors, especially after the 1840s.
In 1821 the Accademia Filarmonica Romana was founded by a group of amateur musicians. Its members gave a series of public concerts every year, including concert performances of complete operas (often heard in Rome for the first time) by Mayr, Rossini, Donizetti and Mercadante. They also gave many private concerts in which members performed operatic extracts with piano accompaniment and instrumental potpourris. The Accademia was disbanded for political reasons in 1849; after being reconstituted in 1856, it gave more frequent performances of Classical instrumental works. It was again dissolved for political reasons in 1861, and reconstituted in 1868.
In the first half of the century vocal and instrumental accademie were occasionally given by local musicians or visiting artists (such as the violinist Antonio Bazzini in 1847) in theatres and in the Palazzo dei Sabini and the Palazzo Braschi. Classical instrumental music was confined mainly to foreign audiences. Performances of chamber music by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven were organized by Pierre-Auguste-Louis Blondeau at the Accademia di Francia in the Villa Medici during the years of Napoleonic rule, and in February and March 1833 by the cellist Pietro Costaggini in the palace of the Marquis Lepri; in the 1830s a German musician, Ludwig Landsberg, also gave weekly winter soirées devoted to the German Classical repertory.
Concerts of sacred music in Rome were no longer limited to a single performance during Holy Week, and were often heard in the city. In 1821 Giuseppe Baini put on three concerts of sacred music in order to finance the edition of Palestrina’s works; and from the 1830s Giuseppe Sirletti and, later, Abbot Fortunato Santini organized concerts in their own residences devoted to the music of Palestrina and other Italian Renaissance composers. In 1846–7 Pietro Ravalli organized public concerts of sacred music in a hall in the Via dei Pontefici; and between 1843 and 1846 Landsberg put on seasons of mainly German sacred music in the Palazzo Caffarelli.
After a few sporadic attempts in the 1850s, annual seasons of chamber music dedicated to the Classical and Romantic repertory were inaugurated in 1860 by the violinist Tullio Ramacciotti and Ettore Pinelli and the pianist Giovanni Sgambati. These Roman musicians received considerable support from Liszt, who moved to the city in 1863. His Dante Symphony was given in the Sala Dante in 1866, and his oratorio Christus was performed there the following year. In 1866 Sgambati conducted Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony, also in the Sala Dante.
In 1870 Sgambati and Pinelli founded a Liceo Musicale at the Accademia di S Cecilia, with two classes in piano and violin. This was officially inaugurated in 1877, in the presence of the king and queen, and in 1923 became a state conservatory.
During the 19th century there were various small music publishing houses in Rome which, as well as printing standard editions of operatic extracts for voice and piano, produced several important publications. The firm of Ratti and Cencetti (1821–43) printed eight operas by Rossini in full score, and from 1838 to 1846 Pietro Alfieri oversaw the publication of a monumental Raccolta di musica sacra, in seven volumes, containing mainly compositions by Palestrina.
The first specialist periodical on music and theatre was the Rivista teatrale (1831–47), followed by L’Eptacordo from 1855. Music criticism also appeared in the city’s official political newspaper, Diario di Roma–Notizie del giorno.
Rome, §II, 4: The Christian era, Since 1730.
Musical life in Rome after 1870 was dependent on the city’s new role as capital of a united Italy. During the last decades of the 19th century the Apollo theatre had been demolished, the Valle was used only for plays, and the Argentina remained in use for opera. To satisfy the new requirements of Rome, now the capital city, the Argentina was joined by new theatres built to hold larger audiences. The Teatro Drammatico Nazionale (built in 1886 and demolished in 1929), the Politeama Romano (built 1862, demolished 1883), the Teatro Manzoni (opened in 1876) and the Politeama Adriano (later the Teatro Adriano, opened in 1898) put on ballet, operetta and opera performances, often of a popular kind, as well as spoken drama. Among the theatres constructed at the end of the 19th century the Teatro Costanzi, built by the entrepreneur Domenico Costanzi to the plans of Achille Sfondrini in the new Esquiline district, acquired particular prestige. It was inaugurated on 27 November 1880 and until the end of the century was usually used in spring and autumn so as not to compete with the municipal theatre in the carnival-Lent season. Various impresarios worked there (including Sonzogno in 1888–90) until 1899, when, under the direction of Enrico Costanzi, the theatre’s activities were expanded and regulated, the season being prolonged from the end of December to April or May. On the death of Costanzi the theatre was bought by a company, Stin, connected with South American theatres and directed by Walter Mocchi. From the 1911–12 season, by which time it began receiving an annual grant from the city, the theatre was directed by Emma Carelli until it was sold to the municipal administration in 1926. During this period the theatre’s principal season, from the end of December to the end of April, included 12 to 15 operas; there were also occasional spring, summer and autumn seasons with popular programmes and regular seasons of spoken plays (usually in June–July and October–November) as well as operetta and ballet performances (including some by the Ballets Russes). The première of Puccini’s Tosca took place at the Costanzi in January 1900 and the Italian première of Wagner’s Parsifal in 1914.
The theatre was restructured in 1926–7 to plans by Marcello Piacentini and reopened in 1928 as the Teatro Reale dell’Opera, now the Teatro dell’Opera; it was then organized as an autonomous institution and subsidized by the state. In addition to the usual operatic repertory, between the wars it staged premières of operas by Zandonai, Casella, Pizzetti, Wolf-Ferrari, Respighi, Alfano, Mulè, Malipiero and other Italians. The 1942 season was devoted entirely to contemporary works. Beteen 1937 and 1993 the Teatro dell’Opera organized an outdoor summer season at the Caracolla baths.
Rome’s role as a capital city from 1870 onwards was also reflected in its concerts, both chamber and symphonic, which became progressively more varied and numerous. In 1874 the Società Orchestrale Romana was founded by Ettore Pinelli, and until 1899 put on regular seasons of symphonic concerts, usually at the Sala Dante. From 1885 to 1921 the Banda Municipale, conducted by Alessandro Vessella, was active in promoting Classical and Romantic music, particularly the works of Beethoven and Wagner. From 1881 the concerts of the Società del Quintetto, founded by Sgambati and with Queen Margherita as patron, replaced the chamber music seasons of Sgambati and Pinelli. In 1893 the group became the Regio Quintetto di Corte and was active at the Palazzo Reale until 1900 and at the Palazzo Margherita until 1908. There were also increasingly frequent concerts of chamber music at the Sala Costanzi (annexed to the theatre and inaugurated in 1881), the Sala Pichetti, the Teatro Adriano and in other halls in Rome. From 1895 to 1906 the Sala Costanzi also hosted concerts given by the Bach Society, founded by Alessandro Costa and Uberto Bandini, which promoted the music of J.S. Bach, Palestrina and other Renaissance and Baroque composers.
Between 1874 and 1899 the choral and symphonic repertory was promoted by the Società Musicale Romana, an amateur association organized on the model of the Accademia Filarmonica. However, the Accademia, reconstituted in 1869, underwent a period of crisis during the last decades of the 19th century, when its activities were limited to annual performances at the Pantheon of a funeral Mass for Vittorio Emanuele II, and a concert of sacred music on Maundy Thursday.
During the 19th century the Accademia di S Cecilia became increasingly international in its outlook, and conferred honorary membership on many well-known foreign musicians. In 1895, the Sala Accademica was inaugurated, making it possible for the Accademia to launch important musical performances. In 1908 a new concert hall, the Augusteo, was opened, and remained in use – with its own orchestra and subsidy from the municipal authority – until its demolition in 1936. In later years, orchestral concerts were given at the Teatro Adriano (1936–46), the Teatro Argentina (1946–58) and the Auditorio Pio (1958–9). After 1908 the Sala Accademica was used almost exclusively for chamber music. From the 1930s an annual season of concerts was broadcast from Rome, organized by Italian radio, later Radio-televisione Italiana (RAI). RAI’s own symphony orchestra was discontinued in 1994. In 1920 the Accademia Filarmonica became a concert association, and is still active today. It promotes varied seasons, with particular emphasis on contemporary music, early music, ballet and 18th-century opera. In 1957 the Accademia founded one of the first Italian centres for electronic music. The Istituzione Universitaria dei Concerti, formed in 1944, offers regular seasons of chamber music.
During the 20th century several institutions were created in Rome specializing in contemporary music. Alfredo Casella founded the Società Italiana di Musica Moderna (1917–19) which later became the Corporazione delle Nuove Musiche (1923–8) and later still the Italian section of the ISCM. From 1928 the Sindacato Nazionale Fascista dei Musicisti promoted festivals of contemporary music; and from 1937 to 1943 compositions by contemporary Italians (Casella, Malipiero, Petrassi) received their premières at the Teatro delle Arti (founded by Anton Giulio Bragaglia), which also hosted the Italian premières of works by Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky and Falla. Casella, and later Petrassi, fought to have contemporary music performed in Rome. The 33rd festival of the ISCM was held in Rome in 1959, and from 1962 the city hosted the festivals and the annual exhibitions of the Nuova Consonanza. Performances of contemporary music were also promoted by the RAI and the Sindacato Musicisti Italiani, founded by Petrassi in the mid-1950s.
Rome holds important musical resources in its many historical libraries, as well as in the archives of ecclesiastical institutions. The largest specialist music library is the library of the Conservatorio S Cecilia, in which is kept a copy of all musical material printed in Italy. The most important collections of musical instruments are in the Museo Nazionale degli Strumenti Musicale, in the Museo Missionario–Etnologico and at the Accademia di S Cecilia. Other important musical institutions in Rome include the Discoteca di Stato, the Istituto di Ricerca per il Teatro Musicale (IRTEM), the Istituto di Bibliografia Musicale (Ibimus), the Istituto Italiano per la Storia della Musica, the Fondazione Italiana per la Musica Antica and the Società Italiana di Musicologia. The Accademia di S Cecilia also pursues a broad range of cultural and editorial activities.
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