From the Glicibarifono to the Bass Clarinet.Pdf
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From the Glicibarifono to the Bass Clarinet: A Chapter in the History of Orchestration in Italy* Fabrizio Della Seta From the very beginnings of opera, the work of the theatre composer was carried out in close contact with, if not founded upon, the performer. At least until half-way through the nineteenth century, a composer would be judged in large part on his ability to make best use of the vocal resources of the singers for whom he was writing in a given season, to model his music on their individual qualities in the same way as (in terms of an often- repeated image) a tailor models the suit to the contours of his client's body, or (to use a more noble comparison) as a sculptor exploits the particular material characteristics of a block of marble. Even Verdi at the time of his greatest prestige, when he was in a position to impose his dramatic ideas in an almost dictatorial manner, drew inspiration from the abilities of respected performers, e.g. from Teresa Stolz for Aida or Giuseppina Pasqua for Falstaff. To a less decisive extent, but according to a concept similar in every respect, the same principle had been applied to the instrumental aspect of opera since the early decades of the eighteenth century, when the orchestra began to assume growing importance in the structure of a work. Often the presence in the theatre orchestra of a gifted instrumentalist would lead the composer to assign to him a prominent solo, almost always as if competing with voice as an obbligato part, and there were cases in which instrumentalist and composer coincided, as happened in certain operas by Handel. In Mozart's La clemenza di Tito, we owe the existence of the marvellous arias with clarinet and basset horn obbligato to the playing of Anton Stadler; in Rossini's Neapolitan operas it was the virtuosity of the San Carlo orchestral principals in the 1810s that persuaded him to multiply the instrumental introduction to arias and ensemble pieces, an example that was followed by all his successors up until Verdi. And a propos of Verdi, the violin solo in the Trio in I Lombardi alla prima crociata, written for Eugenio Cavallini, should also be mentioned in this context, along with the Prelude with obbligato cello in I masnadieri for Alfredo Piatti, principal cello of the orchestra at Her Majesty's Theatre, London, and, even as late as 1862, the clarinet solo that introduces the third act of La forza del destino, for Ernesto Cavallini. That these passages were valued by the public can also be deduced from the fact that the best instrumental soloist enjoyed the privilege, traditionally reserved for singers, of taking part in the various gala and benefit concerts that formed a corollary of the opera season. * This essay was published in Italian in Bianca Maria Antolini, Teresa Gialdroni, and Annunziato Pugliese (eds.), «Et facciam dolçi canti». Studi in onore di Agostino Ziino in occasione del suo 65° compleanno, II, (Lucca, 2003), p. 1111-1132; there may be found the original documents in Italian which in this present article era published in English translation only. I am grateful to the editors and to the publisher for permission to publish this version in English. Financial support for this research was provided by the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research and by the University of Pavia. From the Glicibarifono to the Bass Clarinet This tradition, however, had consequences that went beyond individual productions. Apart from being one of the ways in which a taste for playing and listening to instrumental music was cultivated in Italy, for composer the opportunity of assigning a prominent passage to a given instrument was also a way to exploring its technical and expressive characteristics, of trying out new timbral combinations; in sum, of developing a characteristic orchestral style. Only recently has this aspect begun to receive the attention it deserves,1 and the documents and music presented here are by way of a small contribution to this research.2 In organological histories and specialised dictionaries, one comes across the name of "glicibarifono", described (by one of the most authoritative) thus: A bass clarinet. It was invented by Catterino Catterini, a clarinet maker active in Padua (possibly also in Bologna), who first performed on the instrument in Modena on 12 February 1838 [?]. Pitched in C and built of boxwood with brass and copper mounts, a surviving specimen (Oxford, Bate Collection) has 24 keys with elaborate mechanism and an unusual bore. It is constructed with a double parallel bore in a single block of wood of oval section. The mouthpiece is attached by a curved crook and a bell is mounted on the top of the rising tube.3 1 The subject was the object of research sponsored by the Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani in Parma in the context of "Musical life and musical institutions in Europe (1660-1900)", a project co-ordinated by Franco Piperno. See Piperno et al., "Le orchestre dei teatri d'opera italiani nell'Ottocento. Bilancio provvisorio di una ricerca", Studi Verdiani 11 (1996), p. 119-121, which includes reference to the scarce previous bibliography. 2 I should like to take this opportunity to offer a general thank-you to all the people who have furnished me with information or made suggestions for my research: Alessandra Campana, Michele Girardi, Elisabetta Pasquini, Antonio Rostagno, Gloria Staffieri, and Anna Tedesco, Stefano Bianchi, curator of the Civico Museo Teatrale Carlo Schmidl in Trieste, Hélène La Rue, curator of the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments of the Faculty of Music of the University of Oxford, and Anne Meurant, in charge of iconography at the Musée des Instruments de Musique in Brussels, all gave permission for photographs of instruments in their respective collections to be reproduced here. Especially warm thanks to Renato Meucci for both the quality and quantity of the material he shared with me, to Franco Rossi, librarian of the Fondazione Ugo and Olga Levi in Venice, for facilitating my research in the archives of the Teatro La Fenice, and to Gabriele Dotto for permitting me to work in the Archivio Storico Ricordi in the difficult time preceding its move from where it had been housed for more than forty years. 3 Niaal O'Loughlin, "Glicibarifono", in: The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, (London, 1984), vol. 2, p. 52. Another, more accurate description, also based on the example in the Bate Collection, is to be found in F. Geoffrey Rendall, The Clarinet.Some Notes in Its History and Construction (London-New York, 1971), p. 143: "This ingenious instrument is made from a single block of boxwood of oval section, some 23 inches [58.42 cm] in length. Two parallel bores are pierced in it in the manner of the butt-joint of a bassoon. A long brass crook carries the mouthpiece, while the other end of the bore terminates in a widely-flared upstanding bell of wood. Twenty-four cleverly contrived brass key, mounted in saddles, cover correctly-located tone-holes of adequate size. These with a biggish bore of modern dimensions, give a tone of no mean vigour and quality. The specimen examined by the writer is pitched in C and extended downwards chromatically to c [sic]". Rendall adds that the glicibarifono attracted the attention of the Franco-Greek clarinettist Hyacinthe-Éléonore Klosé (1808-1880) who pointed it out to Jean-Georges Kastner, who in turn mentioned the instrument in the Supplement to his 1844 Cours d'instrumentation. Fabrizio della Seta The description is based on the example, one of Catterini's originals, preserved in the Bate Collection (see figs. 1 and 2).4 Figures 1-2: Glicibarifono by Catterino Catterini (c. 1830), Bate Collection, Music Faculty, University of (Oxford (by kind permission). 4 Inventory no. 496.The index card in the collection's catalogue provides information to complete that given above: the instrument is 80cm long in total, with 25 (not 24) brass keys, 8 for the thumbs, 17 for the other fingers, two of which are elongated to form levers that can be operated by any of the fingers. Engraved upon it is the following stamp: "N° 3. / Premiata invenzione / di / CATTERINO CATTERINI / IN / PADOVA". From the Glicibarifono to the Bass Clarinet At least two further examples, by different makers, are however in existence: one in the Musée des Instruments de Musique in Brussels (fig. 3),5 another in the Museo Teatrale Carlo Schmidl in Trieste (fig. 4).6 Figure 3: Glicibarifono by Paolo Maino, Figure 4: Gicibarifono (mid-nineteenth Musée des instruments de musique, century), Civico Museo Teatrale Carlo Brussels (by kind permission). Schmidl, Trieste (by kind permission). 5 Inventory no. 941, cf. Victor-Charles Mahillon, Catalogue descriptif et analytique du Musée instrumental du Conservatoire de Bruxelles (Gand, second edition, 1909), 222-223. "This instrument, which carries the stamp 'P [aolo] Maino à Milan' is none other than a bass clarinet in C, with a double vertical bore. [...] The bell, the neck into which the crook fits and the crook itself are made of brass, the other parts are wooden. The lower section, to which the bell is attached, and the upper section, into which fits the neck, are joined together by two fastening at the double-bored part of the instrument called the butt-joint. As with the bassoon, the two bores are connected at the bottom of the butt-joint by a conduit. The glicibarifono is pierced by 22 lateral tone-holes; nos. 1, 2, 5, 7, 12, 17 and 19 have open keys, nos. 4, 9, 11, 14 and 16 are free; nos.