(bap. Saluzzo, Piedmont, 24 May 1616; d Rome, 3 May 1690). Italian inventor, maker and player of musical instruments. He moved to Rome around 1636, and from 1650 to 1652 he was known as guardiano degli strumentisti for the Congregazione di Santa Cecilia (a very prestigious post, which later was held by musicians such as Carlo Mannelli, Arcangelo Corelli and Giovanni Lulier). He was a trombone player and organist with the Musici del Campidoglio, for whom he was decano from at least 1676 to 1684. He also played various kinds of bowed instruments in numerous public performances, and claimed to have built and introduced the ‘contrabasso di viola’ to Rome about 1646. He died in Rome and not in France, as was erroneously reported by J.-B. de La Borde. He had no children, and thus, contrary to earlier hypotheses, could not have been the father of Pietro Todini, a harpsichord-maker mentioned in 1675.
Todini is best known for the famous ‘Galleria armonica’, which he began to assemble in 1650 in his home near the Pantheon (via dell'Arco della Ciambella). According to his own description it was divided between two rooms. In the first room seven instruments (harpsichord, three types of spinet, organ, violin and lira ad arco) could be made to sound, alone or in various combinations, by means of a single controlling keyboard; this is depicted in Kircher's Phonurgia nova, although, according to Todini, in a completely fanciful manner. The second room housed wooden statues of Galatea and Polyphemus, the latter represented in the act of playing a ‘sordellina, or musetta’ whose mechanisms were activated by a harpsichord keyboard; the group was magnificently decorated with mythological imagery and in great part gilded.
After 1690 the Galleria armonica was transferred to the palace of the Verospi marquises (now the Palazzo del Credito Italiano), in the via del Corso. Bonanni describes it in its new setting, where it continued to attract many visitors. However, Burney reported that by 1770 it had already fallen into neglect. The machine was broken up and sold in 1796, the Verospi family having died out; only the Galatea and Polyphemus group is known after that time; it remained in Rome in disuse until at least 1859. Having been acquired by the Viscount of Sartriges, the French ambassador to the Holy See, it was then moved to Paris. Since 1889 it has belonged to the Metropolitan Museum, New York.
BurneyFI
WaltherML
A. Kircher: Phonurgia nova (Kempten, 1673)
M. Todini: Dichiaratione della galleria armonica eretta in Roma (Rome, 1676, repr. with an introduction by P. Barbieri)
F. Bonanni: Gabinetto armonico pieno d'istromenti sonori indicati e spiegati (Rome, 1722/R, rev. and enlarged 2/1776 by G. Ceruti with plates by A. van Westerhout; Eng. trans., 1969)
J.G. Keyssler: Neüeste Reise durch Teütschland, Böhmen, Ungarn, die Schweitz, Italien und Lothringen (Hanover, 1740, enlarged 2/1751 by M.G. Schültze; Eng. trans., 1756, 3/1760)
J. de La Lande: Voyage d'un françois en Italie, fait dans les années 1765 et 1766, iii (Paris, 1769)
J.-B. de La Borde: Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne, iii (Paris, 1780/R)
E. Winternitz: Musical Instruments and their Symbolism in Western Art (London, 1967)
R. Giazotto: Quattro secoli di storia dell'Accademia nazionale di S. Cecilia, i (Rome, 1970)
P. Barbieri: ‘Cembalaro, organaro, chitarraro e fabbricatore di corde armoniche nella Polyanthea technica di Pinaroli (1718–32). Con notizie sui liutai e cembalari operanti a Roma’, Recercare, i (1989), 123–209
S. Pollens: ‘Michele Todini's Golden Harpsichord: An Examination of the Machine of Galatea and Polyphemus’, Metropolitan Museum Journal, xxv (1990), 33–47
P. Barbieri: ‘Michele Todini's Galleria Armonica: its hitherto unknown story, since 1650’, EMc (forthcoming)
PATRIZIO BARBIERI