(It. Venezia).
Italian city, capital of the Veneto region.
GIULIO ONGARO (1), ELEANOR SELFRIDGE-FIELD (2), LUCA ZOPPELLI (3)
That Venice achieved its importance as a musical centre much later than other cities in northern Italy was probably due to several of the factors that contributed to its remarkable political stability: its electoral system for public offices ensured that no individual family achieved overwhelming prominence; appointments to important military and civil offices were often spread among several of the noble families; Venetian customs and sumptuary laws discouraged excessive displays of wealth and power by an individual or family, thus limiting private patronage of music. Little is known about music in Venice during the Middle Ages, but there is evidence of the development of a chant based on the liturgy of Aquileia which diverged considerably from the Gregorian. Most of the documents about music from the period up to the late 15th century are related to service at the ducal church of S Marco or to ducal politics. This accounts in part for the fact that until relatively recently the history of music in Venice to the end of the Renaissance has been viewed primarily as a history of music at S Marco. The ducal chapel was undoubtedly the most important musical institution of the city, completely overshadowing the cathedral of S Pietro di Castello, and it was the natural centre of that combination of religion and politics so evident in Venetian pageantry and liturgy.
Research continues to deepen our knowledge of music at other institutions and of private music-making, and a fuller picture is emerging of musical life in Venice, especially for the period beginning in the late 15th century.
The earliest musical document related to music at S Marco is the appointment of a ‘Mistro Zucchetto’ as organist in 1316. The first mention of a choir is in a document of 1403 recording the establishment of a singing school to provide the choir with trained singers of Venetian birth. Music was certainly performed at important ceremonies and processions well before the 15th century: a liturgical drama was performed for the Feast of the Annunciation in 1267, and there are other sporadic references to music. A tradition of motets celebrating the authority of the doge seems to have been established by the early 14th century, when a motet, probably by Marchetto da Padova, was written for the Doge Francesco Dandolo (1329–39); one anonymous motet was written for the Doge Marco Corner (1365–8), and one, apparently by Landini, was dedicated to the Doge Andrea Contarini (1368–81). Although no motets survive from the last three decades of the 14th century, it is likely that the tradition continued. In the early 15th century motets praising the doge were written by Johannes Ciconia, Antonio Romano (the first known master of the choir school at S Marco), Christophorus de Monte and Hugo de Lantins. These pieces were probably not heard at the doge's inauguration, as previously thought, but their composition was often tied to important ceremonial events early in the doge's reign. Minor figures, such as Johannes de Quadris, can be shown to have been in Venice in the 15th century; but no native composers of distinction worked in the city during the century and no major appointments of Franco-Flemish composers and singers, customary elsewhere, occurred here.
The first surviving list of the singing chapel of S Marco, compiled on 28 April 1486, shows an establishment comparable in size to that of other leading musical centres, with ten adult singers (four of them probably of foreign provenance) and 12 choirboys: the choir was headed by an ‘oltramontano’, the unknown Alberto francese. It is not known how long a choir of this size had been the norm at the church, but it seems that the late 1480s were a time of increased music-making at S Marco: between 1486 and 1490 four new adult singers were added to the choir, and a second organ was built and staffed by an additional organist. Alberto's successor, the little-known Petrus de Fossis, might have also been a French composer: although no works of his are extant, he was praised by contemporaries for his singing and for his compositional skills. Virtually no sacred music survives from this period, but there are a few frottolas composed by musicians from S Marco, for example by the organist Francesco d'Ana.
Musical performances of sacred music were not restricted to S Marco: the city's scuole (the charitable confraternities) were already active musically in the 15th century. Less important churches within Venice, especially monastic churches, also had musical establishments, although of much smaller size than S Marco. The activities of the scuole and of the churches of the city became progressively more elaborate in the course of the 16th century. Instrumental music seems also to have flourished in Venice at the turn of the century, establishing a tradition that was kept alive well beyond the Renaissance. In the early part of the 16th century Venetian instrumentalists, especially the members of the pifferi del Doge (see fig.2), the state instrumentalists, were widely sought: Pope Leo X wrote directly to the doge to obtain the temporary services of Zuan Maria del Cornetto, and King Henry VIII of England recruited several instrumentalists – the most famous among them being the members of the Bassano family – for his court. Silvestro Ganassi, the author of two of the most important instruction books on Renaissance instrumental music (the Fontegara of 1535 on recorder playing, and the Regola Rubertina of 1542–3 on the viola da gamba), was hired as a member of the pifferi in 1517. Little documentation survives as to the repertory of these musicians, but a letter of 1494 from one of the pifferi to Francesco Gonzaga discusses instrumental arrangements of motets, a practice that might explain the features of some of the untexted pieces found in the collections printed by Petrucci.
The appointment in 1527 of the Flemish master Adrian Willaert to head the chapel of S Marco (created a basilica in 1520) should be seen as a culmination of the growth of the musical establishment there in the preceding decades. It was also part of a conscious cultural policy of the Venetian government, and especially of its doge Andrea Gritti, that sought to enhance the status of the city through public patronage of the arts. Upon his arrival Willaert found a rather large choir, which included a number of foreign singers, and he apparently felt no need to press for any immediate changes. With Willaert the Venetian government finally had a director of music of international renown; undoubtedly his presence in Venice, and his increasing reputation as a teacher, were important factors – although by no means the only ones – in the growth of the public and private musical world of the Serenissima. In addition to his importance as a composer of sacred music, for which he was held up as a model by Zarlino, Willaert helped establish a ‘Venetian’ madrigal, and his works in the lighter secular genre of the villanella and his instrumental ricercares were imitated in Venice and abroad.
A vital factor in the growth of Venetian musical life was the number of music publishing houses in the city. The first print of polyphonic music was published in Venice, by Ottaviano Petrucci, in 1501, but a more modern and commercially successful music publishing industry was established in the 1530s by the house of Scotto and by the Frenchman Antonio Gardane. By about 1545 Venetian music publishers were by far the most important in Italy, and their activities made a large body of music readily available to local musicians. Scotto and Gardane printed music by nearly every significant composer, and many musicians visited Venice specifically to oversee publication of their works, thus enhancing the international character of the republic's musical life. The music publishing trade also provided an outlet and an incentive for local composers, who were sometimes directly involved in the business as publishers and editors.
Instrument making also flourished in Venice. There were numerous harpsichord makers, organ makers and makers of plucked and wind instruments, many of them of foreign birth. Italian harpsichord makers active in Venice included Alessandro and Vito Trasuntino, G.A. Baffo and Domenico da Pesaro; more of Domenico's keyboard instruments survive than of any other 16th-century maker. Documents from the 16th century show that there were several lute-making shops, whose total output was considerable – the inventory of a single shop lists over 500 lutes – making it likely that much of it was intended for the foreign market.
When Willaert died in 1562 the procurators of S Marco sought to appoint another foreign composer of international fame. Their choice was Rore, a pupil of Willaert, and thus already known in Venice: but after only slightly more than a year in the position, Rore left Venice, apparently dissatisfied with the complicated administrative arrangements originally designed to relieve Willaert of some of his teaching duties. The procurators used the period after Rore's departure to reorganize the chapel, eliminating the division between cappella piccola and cappella grande, and then appointed as maestro another pupil of Willaert, and a native of the nearby town of Chioggia, Gioseffo Zarlino. Zarlino had no great international reputation as a composer, but the publication of his Le istitutioni harmoniche in 1558 had already established him as one of the most important theorists of his time. Zarlino does not seem to have been greatly interested in composition, but a number of musicians at S Marco, notably the organists Claudio Merulo and Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, and the singers Giovanni Croce and Baldissera Donato, were composers of distinction. The period of Zarlino's direction saw a gradual expansion of the size and the duties of the chapel. The major change that occurred during Zarlino's tenure (1565–90) was the appointment in 1568 of a permanent group of instrumentalists to assist in the celebration of the most important feast days, a formalization of an existing practice. In subsequent decades the procurators added to this group: some of the instrumentalists were required to support the voices of the choir, others seem to have been hired exclusively to play instrumental music. On all major feast days this nucleus of instrumentalists was supplemented by anything from four to 14 additional players. The size of the choir varied, reaching a low point during the great plague of 1575–6, but often numbering close to 30 singers. The increase in the size of the performing forces, which continued into the early 17th century, mirrored the growing use of polychoral (cori spezzati) writing by Venetian composers, an idiom which dominated Venetian sacred compositions from the 1570s until well into the next century. Contrasts of sonority, of tessitura and of instrumental colour among the various groups became a distinctive trait of the Venetian style; Venetian composers also favoured lavish settings of texts found outside the Ordinary of the Mass. The amount of spatial separation between the choirs of instruments and voices used by composers such as Giovanni Gabrieli has often been overstated. Vocal polychoral pieces a due cori were generally performed with no spatial separation of the performing forces, but with a division between soloists and ripieno; the total number of singers could be as few as 12. Some of the most extravagant late 16th-century performances saw one group in each of the organ lofts, situated on either side of the altar, and a third group on a specially built temporary stage on the main floor of the church, not far from the main altar. This grandiose style, found both at S Marco and at the celebrations of the scuole, can be seen as the musical counterpart of the political writings that were establishing the so-called ‘myth of Venice’, a trend given great impetus by the aftermath of the victory at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571: this major naval defeat of the Ottoman Turks, in which the Venetian fleet played a leading role, was a source of civic pride and spurred the production of literary and artistic tributes.
The other notable presence on the Venetian musical scene was that of the scuole. The scuole grandi, the largest and most important of these charitable confraternities, employed from the late 15th century a group of singers and instrumentalists to assist in a variety of celebrations. These institutions provided a focus for the civic activities of a large segment of the population that was otherwise excluded from the exercise of political power. Competition among the scuole was fierce, sometimes creating heated exchanges over the order of precedence at official processions, and during the 16th century the scuole grandi resorted to increasingly magnificent pageantry, which included music commissioned from the best composers and performed by the best singers and instrumentalists in the city. The English traveller Thomas Coryat, visiting Venice in 1608, described a musical performance at the Scuola Grande di S Rocco with a group of 20 singers and 24 instrumentalists, whose music made him feel ‘rapt up with Saint Paul into the third heaven’. This was very profitable work for Venetian musicians, and the procurators of S Marco used the existence of these opportunities as a recruiting tool: in a famous letter to Alessandro Striggio the younger, written in 1620, Monteverdi estimated that he could earn from commissions received from the scuole a sum equal to half of his basic salary as maestro at S Marco.
Musical life in the minor churches of the city could not equal the magnificence of that at S Marco or the scuole grandi. However, many of the most important churches maintained a musical establishment: among the maestri di cappella in the 16th century were Ludovico Balbi at the Franciscan church of S Maria Gloriosa dei Frari (where Monteverdi was later buried) and Ippolito Baccusi at the Augustinian church of S Stefano. The size of their choir was often very small, with no more than four or five singers; but by the late 16th century efforts were made to improve the quality of the establishments, while some emulated S Marco in hiring a small group of instrumentalists to play at important feasts.
Venice in the 17th and early 18th centuries provided one of the richest and most varied environments for music-making of the past millennium. Around 1600 Venice could bask in the glory of its political prestige. A signal event was the republic's stand-off with the Church of Rome in 1607; in questions of liturgy as in questions of ecclesiastical rule, Venetians did things in their own way. Semi-detachment from Rome had three chief consequences for sacred music in the first half of the 17th century: the (Friulian) rite of Aquileia prevailed in S Marco; the mood of religious piety converged with the new idiom of monody to produce poignantly expressive works for solo voice; and Counter-Reformation pleas for uncluttered settings of liturgical texts were ignored.
The rite of Aquileia varied from that of Rome in such details as the psalm texts prescribed for Vespers. Vespers for certain feasts made elaborate use of music, particularly polychoral psalms utilizing not only the two choirs of professional singers maintained by the basilica but also a choir of young priests. Instrumental works of various kinds may have been interleaved with vocal works, but the practice is better documented at monastic churches, where the Roman rite was in use. The cult of St Mark that took root in Aquileia was a joyous one that celebrated its beliefs in song and dance. The rapt attention paid to music in S Marco was in character with the tradition associated with its name.
It may be because of its retention of this older rite that S Marco so regularly avoided engaging maestri from outside the Veneto in the 17th and 18th centuries: Rovetta (1644–68), Cavalli (1668–76), Monferrato (1676–85), Legrenzi (1685–90), Volpe (1690–91), Partenio (1692–1701), Biffi (1702–32), Lotti (1736–40), Antonio Pollarolo (1740–46) and Giuseppe Saratelli (1747–62) all came either from Venice itself or from outlying parts of the republic. Monteverdi was the sole ‘foreigner’ in this succession; his predecessors Zarlino, Donati (1590–1603), Croce (1603–9) and Martinengo (1609–13) were all Venetians.
A curious aspect of Monteverdi's impact on music in Venice is that, while many of those in his charge (Grandi, Berti, etc.) wrote poignant sacred monodies (collected principally in two anthologies – the Ghirlanda sacra of 1625 and Sacra corona of 1636), his own monodies were confined almost entirely to dramatic works. It was incumbent upon the maestro to write for the great mass of personnel employed by the basilica. It is the savouring of the experience of performance itself that emanates from the solo motets of the lesser composers of the time: they abound with runs, passage-work and written-out ornaments, with unexpected harmonies, melismas on key words and a stylistic freedom that stood in contrast to the techniques of paraphrase and formal design in which maestri and organists were trained. Monody became a second language for musical expression.
If composers in Venice did not defer to Roman injunctions, they nonetheless set texts with great care. While Monteverdi's influence on the development of monody was immense, the publication of his most celebrated sacred works, the Vespro della Beata Vergine of 1610, predated his appointment as maestro di cappella at S Marco by three years. The chapel of the court he had vacated in Mantua was much less public than the ducal basilica in Venice, where the adjoining piazza was traversed by Venice's large nobility, by sailors and merchants and by revellers visiting the city during Carnival.
There were, however, foreign influences on music at S Marco in the 17th century. In the 16th century it had fallen to the second organist of the basilica to organize wind music for important ceremonies, and this tradition may well have continued through the following century. An indoor ensemble, modelled on the famous piffari who played straight silver trumpets in processions (until the practice was terminated in 1706), was officially added to the church's ranks in 1614, but it is clear that such a group had existed informally since 1568 or earlier. Most of Giovanni Gabrieli's ensemble canzonas, in which trombones are consistently mentioned, seem to have been composed for this group. The works were probably conducted by Gabrieli during his tenure as second organist (1585–1612). The idea of assembling masses of ten or 12 (or 15 or 21) instrumentalists may have blended elements of Venetian and Bavarian ceremonial life, as the Gabrielis and some members of the instrumental group had encountered them at the court in Munich, where they stayed in the 1570s.
Over the course of the 17th century, the composition of the ensemble (originally consisting chiefly of cornettists, trombonists and bassoonists) gradually shifted to include violinists (starting with Rovetta in 1614) and double bass players (also from 1614), cellists (from 1638), viola players (from 1656), trumpeters (from 1691) and players of bowed instruments with sympathetic strings (from c1690). It may be assumed that as the ranks of string players increased, those of trombonists decreased. In 1698 the cornett was officially replaced by the oboe. Until 1750 no flutes (which were considered to have lascivious associations) were used in the basilica. Many instrumental works were accompanied on the smaller second organ, while positive organs were used to support multiple groups in polychoral works. During Monteverdi's tenure several singers who could also accompany themselves on the theorbo were hired. The practice of accompanying the lessons during Holy Week on the harpsichord can be traced back at least to 1615. The use of a violin solo at the Elevation of the Host for masses at Christmas and Easter was instituted at about the same time. Thus did monody make its inroads. Young musicians who wished to pursue the polychoral style after the death of Gabrieli (among them Valentini and Priuli) seem to have found better opportunities in Austria where Monteverdi, through his Mantuan connections, also retained ties.
Within its six districts, Venice housed a great range of other venues in which music was produced. These included parish churches, convents and monasteries; scuole grandi e piccole (the former confraternities of merchants, the latter clubs of artisans and tradesmen); the ospedali which cared for (chiefly female) orphans; the palaces and gardens of the nobility; public and private theatres; gambling casinos; and the canals themselves. By 1750 a different musical genre could be associated with each venue.
Among all of these, it was the theatres that brought the greatest challenges to the stability of Venetian musical culture. Although their activities were severely controlled by government decrees, theatres defied the musical status quo for various reasons. The singers could be women. The audience for opera was less specifically Venetian than it was for other genres. The message of the text could be conveyed through the use of mechanically operated scenery, so that the burden of purely aural communication was diluted. While there was relatively little difference in musical idiom between sacred and secular monodies, the recitatives through which secular texts were declaimed had no analogues in the church repertory. Theatre orchestras were small (usually consisting of five strings and two harpsichords) throughout the century. Venetian operas almost always concentrated on solo singing. In the last three decades there was an increasing use of trumpets in sinfonias and of oboes (or occasionally of theorbos) in obbligatos; simple continuo accompaniments were gradually superseded by orchestral accompaniments in important arias. Choruses were rarely used in Venetian opera. To give a sense of culmination to individual acts, mock battles or imaginative dances were often introduced in the later 17th century. These gave way in the 18th century to other incidental entertainments such as comic intermezzi at S Cassiano or violin solos between acts at S Angelo. Gods and goddesses descended to earth in prologues and returned to heaven in finales with the help of elaborate machinery.
Until the end of the 17th century S Marco managed to hold its own in the general scheme of musical life. It never lacked for gifted performers or for new music from its maestri. The international visitors that opera brought to Venice duly noted the basilica's embarrassment of musical riches, and the ranks of the cappella were raided over and over by foreign diplomats seeking to fill orders for captivated employers, even though opera singers sang in the basilica only (if at all) on Christmas Eve. Many maestri (Monteverdi, Rovetta, Cavalli, Legrenzi), nearly all vicemaestri starting with Sartorio, 1676–80 (e.g. Legrenzi, 1681–5; Partenio, 1685–91; C.F. Pollarolo, 1692–1723; Antonio Pollarolo, 1723–40; Saratelli, 1740–47; and Galuppi, 1748–62) and several organists (Cavalli, 1639–69; P.A. Ziani, 1669–77; and Lotti, 1692–1736) were also opera composers. The need to create new works for the theatres created unprecedented pressures: a typical opera production lasted from three to five hours, and the ink on the score was often barely dry at the first performance. The composition of new sacred works for S Marco dropped off sharply in the later part of the 17th century, although Rovetta and others began to create Passion settings with choruses.
As a group, the musicians of S Marco were most likely to compose for the Teatro S Giovanni Grisostomo. S Giovanni, which opened with great fanfare in 1678, was the showpiece among Venice's numerous theatres (fig.6). The Grimani brothers, who operated it, catered especially for the tastes of dignitaries visiting from lands important to Venice's political interests. S Giovanni was the most extravagant theatre in matters of staging, the most expensive, the most prestigious and the most conservative in its musical tastes. Pallavicino (1678–88) and C.F. Pollarolo (1692–1722) were among the composers most consistently active at S Giovanni.
Among the other theatres, S Cassiano, which opened in about 1637, enjoyed the distinction of having been the first ‘public’ theatre. ‘Public’ meant that the theatre was operated by an impresario for a paying public. Boxes were typically let by the year, and many remained within families for several generations. S Cassiano suffered from several fires, and was eclipsed in the later 17th century by S Salvador (also called S Salvatore or S Luca), which had the reputation of providing excellent singers; by SS Giovanni e Paolo (1639; fig.7), which had many of the aspirations ultimately achieved by S Giovanni Grisostomo; and by S Angelo, which opened in 1677. S Angelo was a theatre that struggled more than most to survive financially, and therefore sought less costly ways of producing operas. In that role it was upstaged at the turn of the 18th century by the small Teatro S Fantin, near the site of the later Teatro La Fenice.
These differences of profile had important implications for the kinds of opera that were presented. Until 1714, when Gian Carlo Grimani died, the most ambitious works (often glorifying some figure from antiquity) were being given at S Giovanni, which presented the stars of the time – Faustina Bordoni, Vittoria Tesi, Santa Stella, Nicola Grimaldi, Domenico Cecchi and, in the late 1720s, Carlo Broschi (Farinelli). According to one critic, Farinelli's musical acrobatics rendered his performances close to solo concerts. But Farinelli's English admirers, prodded in part by the collapse of the Royal Academy in London, followed in his wake and brought fresh (English) patronage to S Giovanni. This did not prevent the lavish scenery from being criticized for depicting situations unrelated to the plots for which it was used. The unity of subject, scene and song which had been sought so rigorously over the past half century disintegrated within a few years.
The revived Teatro S Cassiano relied heavily on the works of Albinoni and Gasparini. It seems to have formed a symbiotic relationship with the Teatro di Via del Cocomero in Florence, for many works enjoyed productions in both places. This connection with Florentine theatre may help to explain S Cassiano's important role in implanting the comic intermezzo, which flourished for three decades from 1706 in Venice. Albinoni's Pimpinone (1708) enjoyed a particular success. S Moisè and S Angelo were lower-budget theatres; both seem to have maintained numerous ties with patrons abroad, in the former case with Bohemia and the ruling house of Brunswick, in the latter with Saxony and the Rhineland. Vivaldi had ties to both but was chiefly active at S Angelo. S Angelo was a haven for Bolognese singers; they (as well as Vivaldi and Orlandini) are among the many victims of Benedetto's noted satire on Venetian opera, Il teatro alla moda (1720).
Dramatic changes in Venetian comedy resulted from the collapse of the Duchy of Mantua in the first decade of the 18th century. The comedy troupes of S Salvador and S Samuele, which had survived as extensions of commedia dell'arte since the late 16th century, were forced to adopt new strategies for survival. Troupes became larger and developed stronger skills in singing and dancing. Improvised lines were replaced by scripts. Spoken comedy with musical numbers came into its own in the 1730s. Goldoni elevated comedy to a position of respectability that enabled it to compete successfully with serious opera. Serious operas of the 1730s and 40s rarely involved new libretti but instead relied on recycled texts. The reasons were partly economic: singers' salaries had become so audacious that little was left for sets, costumes, dancers, librettists or composers. Serious opera gave way to pastorales and satirical works, and they in turn gave way to opera buffa.
Venice's four ospedali – the Incurabili, Mendicanti, Derelitti (or Ospedaletto) and Pietà – all maintained musical chapels in the 17th century. These reached their peak in the early 18th century. Virtuosity was widely cultivated in the ospedali, although its promoters would have maintained that its purpose was to encourage devotional thoughts in the listener. The cultivation of organ playing and singing skills was expanded in the late 17th century to include string ensembles. Piffari instruments were maintained at the Mendicanti, where music was directed by a series of maestri (Monferrato, Legrenzi and Partenio) associated with S Marco. Most of the music written for the Mendicanti, as well as for the Derelitti and Ospedaletto (the latter served by Pallavicino and Pollarolo), is lost.
Proficiency on many more unusual instruments (such as the viola d'amore) was cultivated at the Pietà, from which much music, chiefly by Gasparini and Vivaldi, survives. The paramount musical genre of the conservatories (as the ospedali can more accurately be called) was the oratorio. Although in its musical idiom the oratorio was similar to the opera, it was supposed to represent a purer form of communication, one unsullied by commercial motives and unaided by elaborate scenery. Instrumental colour was a substitute for scenery, and composers rose to the challenge. Vivaldi's oratorio Juditha triumphans (1716), celebrating Venice's victory over the Turks, shows the genre at its best. Vivaldi's innovations in locating performing groups in the galleries of the church for the performance of instrumental pieces gave impetus to the concerto, a genre to which he contributed abundantly.
The rapid development of orchestras of mixed timbres in Venice in the early 18th century was stimulated in part by the mixture of musical cultures. Woodwind players seem in several cases to have come from France, but the practice of having winds double string parts was cultivated especially in Dresden, which sustained numerous interchanges with Venice through such figures as Schütz and Pallavicino in the 17th century, and through Heinichen, Pisendel and Lotti (as well as Pallavicino's son, the librettist Stefano) in the early 18th century. The idea of framing virtuoso solos (or ensembles) of wind players, however, is one that seems to have originated in Venice itself.
Despite Venice's many public venues for music, there was no shortage of splendid music for private gatherings. Musical dialogues and instrumental pieces were written for ducal banquets in the 17th century. Nuns formed brass ensembles and wrote and performed in musical plays within convents. On the feast of St Cecilia (22 November), more than 100 members of the musicians' guild would perform a celebratory concert. Pedagogy, like instrument manufacture, flourished. Serenatas and instrumental pieces were written (in many cases by Albinoni and Vivaldi) in the 18th century for diplomatic events of many kinds and for weddings of the nobility. Daughters from noble families were sometimes given tuition by S Marco musicians prior to taking the veil. Marcello's celebrated psalm settings in Estro poetico-armonico (1724–6) were set in the vernacular to suit chamber performance. Candlelit serenades were given on the Grand Canal on summer evenings. Strolling ensembles entertained visitors in Venice's numerous casinos. Venetians excelled in every aspect of music-making; yet the Republic's gradual loss of political power during the course of the 18th century led to the disintegration of many of its institutions, causing even its most celebrated musicians to seek their fortunes elsewhere.
There were clear signs of crisis in the final years of the republic, although there was still a great deal of operatic activity. The Teatro S Giovanni Grisostomo came to be considered too large, and was replaced as the city's leading theatre by the smaller S Benedetto, constructed by the Grimani family in 1768 and rebuilt in 1774 by a new group of box-owners. Following a lawsuit, they abandoned the S Benedetto in 1787 and built the Teatro La Fenice, on a plan by G.A. Selva. The new theatre was the first in Venice to proclaim its status in its elegant façade, and was inaugurated in 1792 with Paisiello's I giuochi d'Agrigento. The lesser theatres were mostly devoted to comic opera. However, Venice continued to be a centre of theatrical experiment: the type of dramma giocoso which Goldoni devised in the 1750s and 60s became a model throughout Europe, and in the 1780s and 90s librettists such as Giuseppe Foppa, Simeone Sografi and Alessandro Pepoli were responsible for the revival of opera seria. The one-act farsa, inspired by French models from the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, also flourished in Venice.
The situation with the ospedali was more serious. When the Incurabili went bankrupt in 1776 it caused the immediate bankruptcy of the others, with the exception of the Pietà, which managed to survive until the early 19th century through private donations. At S Marco a radical reform of the choir and orchestra was carried out in 1765–6, during Galuppi's directorship; standards were raised, and the layout, still tied to 16th-century practice, modernized. The practice of having famous singers perform solos at S Marco during the Christmas festivities continued well into the 19th century.
The succession of occupying foreign powers (France 1797, Austria 1797–1805, France 1805–14, Austria 1814–66) confirmed Venice's status as an economic and political backwater. Many of the minor theatres closed: S Angelo in 1803, S Cassiano in 1804 and S Moisè in 1818, soon after staging the premières of Rossini's first farse. Important Rossini premières (L'italiana in Algeri, 1813; Eduardo e Cristina, 1819) also took place at the S Benedetto (later the Gallo, then the Rossini, and finally converted into a cinema). But, like the S Salvador (later the Apollo and the Goldoni), the S Giovanni Grisostomo (later the Malibran) and the S Samuele (later the Camploy, demolished in 1894), the S Benedetto was gradually obliged to produce more popular forms of entertainment. The exception was La Fenice, burnt down and rebuilt in 1837, which managed to remain one of Italy's leading theatres. Librettists such as Gaetano Rossi and Francesco Maria Piave, and designers such as Giuseppe Borsato, Francesco Bagnara and Giuseppe and Pietro Bertoja, were among those employed by the theatre. Many famous premières were given there, including Cimarosa's Gli Orazi ed i Curiazi (1796), Rossini's Tancredi (1813), Sigismondo (1814) and Semiramide (1823), Meyerbeer's Il crociato in Egitto (1824), Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi (1830) and Beatrice di Tenda (1833), Donizetti's Belisario (1836), Pia de' Tolomei (1837) and Maria di Rudenz (1838), and Apolloni's L'ebreo (1855). Verdi composed five operas for La Fenice: Ernani (1844), Attila (1846), Rigoletto (1851), La traviata (1853) and Simon Boccanegra (1857), of which the last two were decidedly mixed successes. Crispino e la comare by the Ricci brothers, the last successful example of the Italian opera buffa tradition, was one of the works which received its première in the smaller theatres (Gallo, 1850). In the final years of Austrian domination (1859–66) La Fenice remained closed as a sign of protest.
The cappella of S Marco was directed by Ferdinando Bertoni from 1785, by Bonaventura Furlanetto from 1808 and then, from 1817, by Giovanni Agostino Perotti, a musician and theorist of conservative stamp, and one of the intellectuals associated with the neo-classical circle of the Accademia di Belle Arti of Leopoldo Cicognara. While Perotti was unable to halt the decline of the cappella that had begun in the final years of the 18th century, he was responsible for encouraging the protection of its archives and library, a display of a typically Venetian historical awareness. From 1855 the maestro di cappella was Antonio Buzzolla, formerly an opera composer in the Rossini mould. His successors included the composer and musicologist Giovanni Tebaldini and Lorenzo Perosi, appointed in 1894 by the Patriarch Giuseppe Sarto, the future Pope Pius X, with whom he had close ties.
Composers such as Simon Mayr, Giovan Battista Perucchini and Buzzolla made 19th-century Venice a centre of liriche da camera (chamber songs) to both Italian and dialect texts, in part inspired by the pseudo-folk canzoni da battello, or gondola songs, beloved of foreign visitors. Between 1816 and 1818 Andrea Erizzo organized a number of important academies, in the course of which Haydn's late oratorios were performed – with obvious pro-Austrian political implications – as well as Handel's Messiah. Haydn's symphonies had been played at amateur academies in the city from the end of the 18th century. The public concerts given in the Piazza S Marco by Austrian military bands played an important role in popularizing music. Lastly, the city's modest instrumental tradition produced at least one able performer and composer, the pianist Antonio Fanna (1792–1845).
During the 19th century no attempt was made to found a quartet society or institute regular orchestral concerts. Because of the city's increasing provincial isolation and the classical prejudices of influential figures such as Perotti, Perucchini, Buzzolla, Luigi Plet (Boito's first teacher) and the critic Tommaso Locatelli, Venice remained behind the prevailing trends in European taste. On the other hand, nostalgia for the glories of the republic prompted some pioneering work in music history from scholars such as Francesco Caffi and Pietro Canal. For much of the 19th century Venice was unable to create a permanent institution for music teaching: succeeding each other with equal lack of success were the Istituto Filarmonico founded by Caffi (1811–16), the Orfanotrofio dei Gesuati, the Scuola di Canto e Ballo del Teatro La Fenice (1831–46), the Istituto Musicale Privato (from 1838) created by the impresario Giuseppe Camploy and directed by the teacher Ermagora Fabio, and a Scuola Comunale di Musica (from 1856).
Italian unification did not draw Venice out of its provincial isolation. Financial difficulties obliged theatres to remain closed for long periods, and also caused an overall lowering of standards. The city where Wagner died in 1883 saw the Italian première of the complete Ring in the same year, performed by Angelo Neumann's travelling company, but generally Venice was slow to take on new works both from Italy and abroad. There were few important premières at La Fenice, with the exception of Leoncavallo's La bohème in 1897. In 1935 the proprietors of the opera house sold it to the Comune; after restoration La Fenice reopened in 1937 under the management of Goffredo Petrassi.
Music disappeared almost entirely from all the other theatres in the city. However, Venice played a crucial role in the rediscovery of Italian music of the 17th and 18th centuries, from Monteverdi to Galuppi. At the forefront of this activity was the Liceo Musicale Benedetto Marcello, founded in 1876 and made a state conservatory in 1940. Notable directors include Marco Enrico Bossi (1896–1902), Wolf-Ferrari (1903–9), Malipiero (1939–52) and Renato Fasano (1952–60).
In keeping with Venice's new role in the second half of the 20th century as an international tourist and cultural centre, the Teatro La Fenice rose again to the level of the leading Italian opera houses. The Fenice has also played an important role in collaboration with the Festival Internazionale di Musica Contemporanea, later renamed the Biennale Musica. Founded in 1930, it developed after the war into one of the most prestigious festivals of its kind. Under its auspices world premières have been given of works by composers such as Stravinsky (The Rake's Progress, 1951, Canticum sacrum ad honorem Sancti Marci Nominis, 1956, Threni, 1958), Britten (The Turn of the Screw, 1954), Prokofiev (The Fiery Angel, 1955), Nono (Intolleranza 1960, 1961, La fabbrica illuminata, 1964, Prometeo, 1984), Maderna (Hyperion, 1964), Bussotti (The Rara Requiem, 1969–70, Lorenzaccio, 1972), Ferneyhough (Firecycle Beta, 1976), Sciarrino, Castiglioni, Manzoni, Rihm, De Pablo, Guarnieri and others. Performances by the Fenice and the Biennale Musica have occasionally been held in other locations, such as the Teatro Malibran (reconstructed in 1919) and the Teatro Goldoni (restored in 1974 and generally used for straight theatre). On the night of 29 January 1996 La Fenice was completely destroyed by fire, depriving the city of its most important musical venue. The theatre was in the process of being rebuilt at the turn of the century.
The last three decades of the 20th century saw a spectacular growth in musicological research in Venice, due to the expansion of the university and the activities of private institutions which promote conferences, publications and major research projects: the Fondazione Giorgio Cini (which includes the Istituto per le Lettere, il Teatro e il Melodramma, the Istituto per la Musica and the Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi) and the Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi. There is important musical material at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (including the 17th-century operas in the Contarini collections and the librettos of A. Zeno's collection), the Fondazione Cini (librettos from the Rolandi collection, source material on Boito, Respighi, Milloss, Casella, Malipiero and Rota), the Fondazione Levi (which also houses the Archivio Storico del Teatro La Fenice and the archive of the cappella of S Marco), the conservatory (housing the material belonging to the Museo Correr), the Istituti di Ricovero e di Educazione (IRE), which holds the archives of the ospedali, the Casa Goldoni (librettos), the Biblioteca Querini-Stampalia, the Archivio Storico delle Arti Contemporanee della Biennale and the Archivio Luigi Nono.
A General. B Sacred music. C Theatre. D Instruments and instrumental music. E Teaching institutions.
ES (M.T. Muraro)
C. Ivanovich: Minerva al tavolino (Venice, 1681, 2/1688)
P. Canal: ‘Della musica in Venezia’, Venezia e le sue lagune, i (Venice, 1847), 473
G. Bernoni, ed.: Canti popolari veneziani (Venice, 1872)
V. Malamani: ‘La musa popolare veneziana del Settecento’, Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, xii (1888), 109–80
T. Wiel: I codici musicali contariniani del secolo XVII nella R. Biblioteca di San Marco in Venezia (Venice, 1888)
A. Solerti: ‘Le rappresentazioni musicali di Venezia dal 1571 al 1605 per la prima volta descritte’, RMI, ix (1902), 503–58
C. van den Borren: Les débuts de la musique à Venise (Brussels, 1914)
K. Jeppesen: ‘Ein venezianisches Laudenmanuskript’, Theodor Kroyer: Festschrift, ed. H. Zenck, H. Schultz and W. Gerstenberg (Regensburg, 1933), 69
R. Lunelli: ‘Contributi dalmatini e sloveni alla rinascita e alla diffusione dell'arte organaria veneziana settecentesca’, Archivio veneto, 5th ser., xxx–xxxi (1942), 194
G. Damerini: ‘Venezia al tempo di Monteverdi’, Musica II (Florence, 1943), 105
D. Arnold: ‘Music at the Scuola di San Rocco’, ML, xl (1959), 229–41
L. Ronga: La civiltà veneziana nell'età barocca (Florence, 1959)
A. Della Corte: ‘La Musica’, La civiltà veneziana del settecento: Venice 1959, ed. D. Valeri and others (Florence, 1960), 153–86
D. Arnold: ‘Music at a Venetian Confraternity in the Renaissance’, AcM, xxxvii (1965), 62–72
R. Giazotto: ‘La guerra dei palchi’, NRMI, i (1967), 245–86, 465–508; iii (1969), 906–33; v (1971), 1034–52
L. Bianconi and T. Walker: ‘Dalla Finta pazza alla Veremonda: storie di Febiarmonici’, RIM, x (1975), 379–454
E. Rosand: ‘Music in the Myth of Venice’, Renaissance Quarterly, xxx (1977), 511–37
MT, cxix/April (1978) [Venice issue, incl. D. Stevens: ‘Ceremonial Music in Medieval Venice’, 321–7; D. Arnold: ‘Venetian Motets and their Singers’, 319–20; M. Talbot: ‘Vivaldi's Venice’, 314–19]
E. Selfridge-Field: ‘One Hundred Venetian Arias of the Late Seicento in the Bodleian Library’,Notes, xl (1983–4), 503–09
F. Passadore and I. Cavallini, eds.: La musica nel Veneto dal 16. al 18. secolo (Adria, 1984)
Galuppiana: Venice 1985
D. and E. Arnold: ‘Russians in Venice: the Visit of the Conti del Nord in 1782’, Slavonic and Western Music: Essays for Gerald Abraham, ed. M.H. Brown and R.J. Wiley (Ann Arbor and Oxford, 1985), 123–30
E. Selfridge-Field: Pallade Veneta: Writings on Music in Venetian Society, 1650–1750 (Venice, 1985)
G. Morelli: ‘La musica a Venezia nel tempo della Restaurazione’, Il Veneto e l'Austria: vita e cultura artistica nelle città venete, 1814–1866 (Milan, 1989), 462–5
G. Vio: ‘Musici veneziani dei primi decenni del Seicento: discordie e busterelle’, Rassegna veneta di studi musicale, v–vi (1989–90), 375–85
H. Dörge: Musik in Venedig: ein moderner Stadtführer zu den Zeugen der Musik und Bildenden Kunst (Wilhelmshaven, 1991)
D. Launay: ‘La musique à Venise vers 1645: Ismael Boulliau, astronome français, mélomane et voyageur’, RdM, lxxvii (1991), 269–77
R. Carnesecchi: ‘Cerimonie, feste e canti: lo spettacolo della “Democrazia veneziana” dal maggio del 1797 al gennaio del 1798’, Studi veneziani, new ser., xxiv (1992), 213–318
D. Stevens: ‘Musicians in Eighteenth-Century Venice’, EMc, xx (1992), 402–8
J.L. Baldauf-Berdes: Women Musicians of Venice: Musical Foundations, 1525–1855 (Oxford, 1993)
M. Laini: Vita musicale a Venezia durante la Repubblica: istituzioni e mecenatismo (Venice, 1993)
E. Rosand: ‘Venice, 1580–1680’, The Early Baroque Era: from the Late 16th Century to the 1660s, ed. C. Price (London, 1993), 75–102
E. Selfridge-Field: ‘Venice: Musical Expression in an Era of Political Decline’, The Late Baroque Era: from the 1680s to 1740, ed. G.J. Buelow (London, 1993), 66–93
A. Carlini: ‘Le bande militari austriache a Venezia: dieci anni di concerti tra il 1856 e il 1866’, Rassegna veneta di studi musicali, ix–x (1993–4), 215–52
R. Carnesecchi: ‘Venezia sorgesti dal duro servaggio’: la musica patriottica negli anni della repubblica di Manin (Venice, 1994)
S. Mamy: Les grands castrats napolitains à Venise au XVIIIe siècle (Liège, 1994)
A. Bernardi: ‘Il Mecenatismo musicale a Venezia nel primo Settecento’, Intorno a Locatelli: studi in occasione del tricentenario della nascita di Pietro Antonio Locatelli (1695–1764), ed. A. Dunning (Lucca, 1995), i, 1–128
G.M. Ongaro: ‘All Work and No Play? The Organization of Work among Musicians in Late Renaissance Venice’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, xxv (1995), 55–72
S. Mamy: La musique à Venise et l'imaginaire français des Lumières (Paris, 1996)
R. Miller: ‘New Information on the Chronology of Venetian Monody: the “Raccolte” of Remigio Romano’, ML, lxxvii (1996), 22–33
F. Caffi: Storia della musica sacra nella già cappella ducale di S Marco dal 1318 al 1797 (Venice, 1854–5/R, repr. 1931), ed. E. Surian (Florence, 1987)
F. Fapanni and G. Fantoni: ‘La cappella musicale’, La Basilica di San Marco in Venezia, ed. C. Boito (Venice, 1880–93; Eng. trans., 1888–95), i, 72–90
La scuola veneta di musica sacra: rivista liturgica musicale (Venice, 1892–5)
E. Hertzmann: ‘Zur Frage der Mehrchörigkeit in der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts’, ZMw, xii (1929–30), 138–47
G. d'Alessi: ‘Precursors of Adriano Willaert in the Practice of Coro Spezzato’,JAMS, v (1952), 187–210
D. Arnold: ‘Ceremonial Music in Venice at the Time of the Gabrielis’, PRMA, lxxxii (1955–6), 47–59
D. Arnold: ‘The Monteverdian Succession at St Mark's’, ML, xlii (1961), 205–11
E. Selfridge: ‘Organists at the Church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo’, ML, l (1969), 393–9
D. Bryant: ‘The cori spezzati of St. Mark's: Myth and Reality’, EMH, i (1981), 165–86
J.H. Moore: Vespers at St. Mark's: Music of Alessandro Grandi, Giovanni Rovetta, and Francesco Cavalli (Ann Arbor, 1981)
J.H. Moore: ‘The Vespro delli Cinque Laudate and the Role of Salmi spezzati at St. Mark's’, JAMS, xxxiv (1981), 249–78
O. Termini: ‘Singers at San Marco in Venice: the Competition between Church and Theatre (c.1675–c.1725)’, RMARC, no.17 (1981), 65–96
J.H. Moore: ‘Bartolomeo Bonifacio's Rituum ecclesiasticorum ceremoniale: Continuity of Tradition in the Ceremonial of St. Mark's, Venice’, IMSCR XIII: Strasbourg 1982, iii, 365–408
D. and E. Arnold: The Oratorio in Venice (London, 1985)
H. Geyer-Kiefl: Aspetti dell'oratorio veneziano nel tardo Settecento (Venice, 1985)
G. Cattin: Musica e liturgia a San Marco: testi e melodie per la liturgia delle ore dal XII al XVII secolo, dal graduale tropato del Duocento ai graduali cinquecenteschi (Venice, 1990–92)
A. Chegai: ‘La musica a San Pietro in Castello, duomo di Venezia, fra XVI e XVII secolo: notizie da una fonte settecentesca’, Recercare: rivista per lo studio e la pratica della musica antica, iii (1991), 219–29
P.G. Gillio: ‘Saggio bibliografico sui libretti di mottetti pubblicati dagli Ospedali di Venezia (1746–1792)’, Rivista internazionale di musica sacra, xiv (1993), 118–91
La cappella musicale di S. Marco nell'età moderna: Venice 1994
J. Bettley: ‘The Office of Holy Week at St. Mark's, Venice, in the Late Sixteenth Century’, EMc, xxii (1994), 45–60
F. Passadore and F. Rossi: San Marco, vitalità di una tradizione: il fondo musicale e la cappella dal Settecento ad oggi (Venice, 1994–6)
E. Quaranta: Oltre San Marco: organizzazione e prassi della musica nelle chiese di Venezia nel Rinascimento (Florence, 1998)
C. Bonlini: Le glorie della poesia e della musica (Venice, 1730/R) [catalogue of operas performed in Venice]
A. Groppo: Catalogo di tutti i drammi per musica recitati ne' teatri di Venezia dall'anno 1637 in cui ebbero principio le pubbliche rappresentazioni de' medesimi, fin all'anno presente 1745 (Venice, 1745/R)
A.M. Fabris: La Fenice (Venice, 1868)
G. Salvioli: ‘Saggio di drammaturgia veneziana’, Archivio veneto, xii (1876), 193–203, 432–40; xiii/1 (1877), 451–67; xv/2 (1878), 195–213, 374–403
L.N. Galvani [G. Salvioli]: I teatri musicali di Venezia nel secolo XVII (1637–1700): memorie storiche e bibliografiche (Milan, 1879/R)
T. Wiel: I teatri musicali veneziani del Settecento (Venice, 1879/R)
H. Kretzschmar: ‘Die venetianische Oper und die Werke Cavallis und Cestis’, VMw, viii (1892), 1–76
D. Forti: ‘I drammi pastorali del 1600 e le rappresentazioni a Venezia prima del teatro’,Ateneo veneto, xxvi (1903), 25–40
H.C. Wolff: Die venezianische Oper in der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1937/R)
S.T. Worsthorne: ‘Venetian Theatres: 1637–1700’, ML, xxxix (1948), 263–75
S.T. Worsthorne: ‘Some Early Venetian Opera Productions’, ML, xxx (1949), 146–51
S.T. Worsthorne: Venetian Opera in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1954/R)
W. Osthoff: ‘Maske und Musik: die Gestaltwerdung der Oper in Venedig’, Castrum Peregrini, lxv (1964), 10–49
P. Petrobelli: ‘L' “Ermiona” di Pio Enea degli Obizzi e i primi spettacoli d'opera veneziani’, Quaderni della RaM, no.3 (1965), 125–41
L. Zorzi and others: I teatri pubblici di Venezia (secoli XVII–XVIII) (Venice, 1971) [exhibition catalogue]
Venezia e il melodramma nel Seicento: Venice 1972
Venezia e il melodramma nel Settecento: Venice 1973–5
N. Mangini: I teatri di Venezia (Venice, 1974)
J. Glover: ‘The Peak Period of Venetian Public Opera: the 1650s’, PRMA, cii (1975–6), 67–82
H.S. Saunders: The Repertory of a Venetian Opera House (1678–1714): the Teatro di San Giovanni Grisostomo (Ann Arbor, 1985)
T. Bauman: ‘The Society of La Fenice and its First Impresarios’, JAMS, xxxix (1986), 332–54
M. Brusatin and G. Pavanello: Il Teatro la fenice: i progetti, l'architettura, le decorazioni (Venice, 1987)
D. Lazzari: La censura teatrale nel Veneto degli anni della Restaurazione (diss., U. of Venice, 1987)
H. Leclerc: Venise et l'avènement de l'opéra public è [sic] l'age baroque (Paris, 1987)
S. Mamy: ‘I rapporti fra opera e ballo a Venezia nel Settecento’, Danza italiana, v/6 (1987), 17–33
L. Trezzini: ‘Venezia, la Fenice, la Biennale nell'Europa musicale’, L'Europa musicale: un nuovo rinascimento, la civiltà dell'ascolto, ed. A.L. Bellina and G. Morelli (Florence, 1988), 297–316
M. Girardi and F. Rossi: Il Teatro la Fenice: cronologia degli spettacoli, 1792–1936 (Venice, 1989)
G. Vio: ‘Una satira sul teatro veneziano di Sant'Angelo datata “febbraio 1717”’,Informazioni e studi vivaldiani, x (1989), 103–30
M.G. Miggiani: ‘Il teatro di S. Moisè (1793–1818): cronologia degli spettacoli’,Bollettino del Centro rossiniano di studi, xxx (1990), 5–213
B.M. Antolini: ‘Cronache teatrali veneziane, 1842–1849’, Musica senza aggettivi: studi per Fedele d'Amico, ed. A. Ziino (Florence, 1991), 297–322
E. Rosand: Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: the Creation of a Genre (Berkeley, 1991)
M. Girardi and F. Rossi: Il Teatro la Fenice: cronologia degli spettacoli, 1938–1991 (Venice, 1992)
I. Alm: Theatrical Dance in Seventeenth-Century Venetian Opera (diss., UCLA, 1993)
F. Mancini, M.T. Muraro and E. Povoledo: I teatri del Veneto (Venice, 1995–6)
D.E. Freeman: ‘La guerriera amante: Representations of Amazons and Warrior Queens in Venetian Baroque Opera’, MQ, lxxx (1996), 431–60
E. Selfridge-Field: ‘La Guerra dei Comici: Mantuan Comedy and Venetian Opera c.1700’, Recercare, x (1998), 209–48
W. Shewring: ‘Organs in Italy: Venice, Treviso, Trent’, The Organ, xxxvi (1956–7), 18–31
R. Lunelli: Die Orgelwerke von San Marco in Venedig (Mainz, 1957)
S. dalla Libera: L'arte degli organi a Venezia (Venice, 1962)
D. Arnold: ‘Orchestras in Eighteenth-Century Venice’, GSJ, xix (1966), 3–19
E. Selfridge-Field: ‘Annotated Membership Lists of the Venetian Instrumentalists' Guild, 1672–1727’,RMARC, no.9 (1971), 1–52; no.12 (1974), 152–5
E. Selfridge-Field: Venetian Instrumental Music from Gabrieli to Vivaldi (Oxford, 1975, 3/1994)
G. Vio: ‘Documenti di storia organaria veneziana’, L'organo, xiv (1976), 33–131; xv (1977), 41–95; xvi (1978), 169–200; xvii (1979), 181–207
E. Selfridge-Field: ‘Venetian Instrumentalists in England: a Bassano Chronicle (1538–1660)’,Studi musicali, xiii (1979), 173–221
M. Talbot: ‘The Serenata in Eighteenth-Century Venice’, RMARC, no.18 (1982), 1–50
G. Morelli and E. Surian: ‘La musica strumentale e sacra e le sue istituzioni a Venezia’, Storia della cultura veneta, v: Dalla Controriforma alla fine della Repubblica, ed. G. Arnaldi and M. Pastore Stocchi, i (Vicenza, 1985), 401–28
G. Ongaro: ‘Sixteenth-Century Venetian Wind Instrument Makers and their Clients’, EMc, xiii (1985), 391–7
S. Toffolo: Antichi strumenti veneziani, 1500–1800; quattro secoli di liuteria e cembalaria (Venice, 1987)
M.C. Bradshaw: ‘The Influence of Vocal Music on the Venetian Toccata’, Musica disciplina, xlii (1988), 157–98
T. Bauman: ‘Musicians in the Marketplace: the Venetian Guild of Instrumentalists in the Later Eighteenth Century’, EMc, xix (1991), 345–55
G.M. Ongaro: ‘The Tieffenbruckers and the Business of Lute-Making in Sixteenth-Century Venice’,GSJ, xliv (1991), 46–54
D. Arnold: ‘Orphans and Ladies: the Venetian Conservatoires (1690–1797)’, PRMA, lxxxix (1962–3), 31–47
D. Arnold: ‘Instruments and Instrumental Teaching in the Early Italian Conservatoires’,GSJ, xviii (1965), 72–81
S.H. Hansell: ‘Sacred Music at the Incurabili in Venice at the Time of J.A. Hasse’,JAMS, xxiii (1970), 282–301, 505–21
P. Verardo, ed.: Il Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello di Venezia, 1876–1976: centenario della fondazione (Venice, 1977)
G. Ellero, J. Scarpa and M.C. Paolucci: Arte e musica all'Ospedaletto: schede d'archivio sull'attività musicale degli ospedali dei derelitti e dei mendicanti di Venezia (sec. XVI–XVIII) (Venice, 1978) [exhibition catalogue]
D. Arnold: ‘Music at the Mendicanti’, ML, lxv (1984), 345–56
M. Talbot: ‘Musical Academies in Eighteenth-Century Venice’, NA, new ser., ii (1984), 21–65
E. Selfridge-Field: ‘Music at the Pietà before Vivaldi’, EMc, xiv (1986), 373–86
D. Arnold: ‘Music at the Ospedali’, JRMA, cxiii (1988), 156–67
P.G. Gillio: ‘La stagione d'oro degli Ospedali veneziani tra i dissesti del 1717 e 1777’, Rivista internazionale di musica sacra, x (1989), 227–307
J.L. Baldauf-Berdes: Women Musicians of Venice: Musical Foundations, 1525–1855 (Oxford, 1993)
B. Over: Per la gloria di Dio: solistische Kirchenmusik an den venezianischen Ospedali im 18. Jahrhundert (diss., U. of Bonn, 1993)
F.S. Tanenbaum: The Partbook Collection from the Ospedale della Pietà and the Sacred Music of Giovanni Porta (diss., New York U., 1993)
M. Talbot: ‘Tenors and Basses at the Venetian Ospedali’, AcM, lxvi (1994), 123–38