Few accounts of the musical eighteenth century fail to acknowledge the tremendous success and influence of singers and opera composers trained in Naples. But comparatively little attention has been given to the Neapolitan instrumental tradition and its broader impact on European culture, especially during the earlier part of the century. Guido Olivieri’s book, drawing from nearly thirty years of work and extensive archival research, aims to do more than merely fill that gap. Indeed, the author aspires to something more far-reaching: as noted on the back-cover description, ‘this book examines the crucial contribution of Neapolitan string virtuosi to the dissemination of instrumental music and to the development of string practices and musical culture in Europe’ and ‘places the cultivation of Neapolitan instrumental music at the center of aesthetic and cultural developments across eighteenth-century Europe’.
To support these claims, Olivieri relies on multiple forms of documentary evidence – iconography, financial records, biographical references, public notices, and formal and stylistic analysis of musical works transmitted in published and manuscript sources – and a contextual framework that situates the musical life of Naples within the broader struggles and changing alliances of European political powers and the cultural milieu that each sought to employ to promote their values and self-image. In turn, the author shows how Neapolitan string virtuosos adapted their practices to suit the interests of the local ruling class when they travelled to other major European centres and, through their success, had an impact on cultural developments in their adopted homes. The book highlights individual figures and uses specific musical works as case studies, rather than giving a systematic survey or detailed analysis of either.
In many ways, this is a daunting task. As Olivieri acknowledges, the lack of a robust music-printing industry in Naples appears to have caused most Neapolitan string compositions to be transmitted primarily in manuscript form, leaving a relatively small but still noteworthy corpus to examine. Likewise, many of the key individuals – performers, composers, pedagogues and patrons – have left very isolated documentary traces, and some vanish completely from the record for several years at a time. Nevertheless, enough information – some of it presented here for the first time – survives to allow Olivieri to reconstruct important phases in the careers of many influential figures from the year of Alessandro Scarlatti’s arrival in Naples (1684) to the end of Austrian Habsburg rule (1734).
The Introduction presents a compact overview of the main historical events affecting Naples during the period in question, followed by a critique of the long-standing belief that Naples was a relatively provincial cultural centre compared to other European capitals. The first few chapters are then designed to focus on major Neapolitan institutions in order to ‘validate the existence of a true Neapolitan instrumental school’ (11). This is led by a chapter which, despite being entitled ‘Music Institutions in Naples’, is focused almost exclusively on the Capella Reale, demonstrating how this auspicious organization played a crucial role in shaping public perceptions of the state in major ceremonial events. Drawing on records of the growing numbers of and payments made to the membership, Olivieri makes a case for viewing the viceroy’s chapel as a demonstration of all the same qualities one finds in the other major royal chapels of Europe. The second half of the chapter focuses on the life and music of the violinist Pietro Marchitelli, one of the most respected members of the Capella Reale, in order to demonstrate how the political-cultural climate of Naples influenced the opportunities afforded to such a virtuoso. The discussion of his music, aided by some recent reattributions, seeks to define a specifically Neapolitan string-sonata tradition that was influenced by Roman models but tended to favour stricter counterpoint.
The second chapter examines Neapolitan conservatories and the surviving evidence of their approaches to string pedagogy, arguing that most of these institutions contributed to the formation of a distinctive Neapolitan tradition by favouring continuity and uniformity. Chapter 3 contributes to the ongoing re-evaluation of the origins and standardization of the modern violoncello, zeroing in on Naples as a prime point of dissemination for the development of the cello as a distinct instrument, with its own repertoire and a virtuoso technique that was on a par with that of the violin. In one of the book’s strongest moments, Olivieri makes particular use of two manuscripts discovered fairly recently, both of which contain clues to pedagogical methods and the ongoing formation of a solo-cello repertoire. He then traces the lives of a few Neapolitan-trained virtuoso cellists who settled in other capitals, arguing that they had a profound effect on shaping the understanding of the instrument in those centres.
Chapters 4 and 5 together present a fascinating look at the political and cultural relationships between Naples and France through the perspective of commentators and musicians in the years when Naples was under Bourbon rule. Olivieri frames the arrival of Neapolitan-trained violinists as a crucial step in heightening the debate between French and Italian styles within French (particularly Parisian) culture. He clarifies that the understanding and appreciation of Italian string sonatas in the writings of Évrard Titon du Tillet and others depended on the arrival of violinists trained in Italian performance practice. With a spotlight on the solo sonatas that Giovanni Antonio Piani published in Paris in 1712, the author argues that Piani and similar Neapolitan-trained violinists displayed a particularly special range of bowing techniques that made their style of playing very different, one that gradually came to influence French violinists. Turning his attention to the works of Giovanni Antonio Guido and Michele Mascitti, Olivieri also finds that by demonstrating ways to combine French and Italian tastes, the sonatas of these Neapolitan violinists helped French players to establish a native violin school and a repertoire that appealed to Parisian upper classes, who were looking to forge an identity independent from the conservative traditions of the court at Versailles.
The final two chapters focus on the ties between musical activities in Naples, Barcelona and Vienna during the years of Austrian rule over Naples, demonstrating the complex intersections of Habsburg networks and the careers of Neapolitan string players. As with each previous chapter, the documentary evidence points to the privileged, often celebrity status enjoyed by these performers, who occupied some of the most prestigious positions in Charles VI’s chapel orchestras. Olivieri takes a particular look at the small but significant proliferation of sonatas for three violins and continuo among Neapolitan composers in the early decades of the eighteenth century, proposing that this was a reflection of the interests of Austrian rulers, especially for music with sacred connotations.
Taken as a whole, this book makes a strong case for repositioning Neapolitan instrumental traditions within our broader views of eighteenth-century culture. Among its greatest strengths is the way Olivieri contextualizes the lives of many largely overlooked individuals in the midst of broader political and cultural relations between Naples and other European centres. When reconstructing the careers of these figures, such as the highly respected Giovanni Carlo Cailò, Olivieri effectively weaves together the many diverse and scattered clues preserved in archival records, written testimonies and surviving compositions, offering a glimpse of how musical life in Naples was closely connected with cultural activities elsewhere.
Olivieri succeeds in making a case that Naples must have been a powerful musical centre with a distinctive native string tradition that exerted a notable influence on musical developments and cultural trends across Europe. However, the book leaves some uncertainty as to whether the Neapolitan string tradition merits the full degree of distinctiveness and centrality that the author proposes. In some cases, the evidence presented is simply too thin to support the weight of the claims or is not presented in a particularly striking manner. To be fair, the author refers to many additional studies in the footnotes, but with the potential far-reaching consequences of the new perspectives on Neapolitan string virtuosos, each biographical case study and every one of the musical sources discussed carries a heavy burden to prove the arguments; therefore it is difficult to decide whether these particular examples are sufficient to prove the broader claims or are part of a larger pool of evidence that the reader must examine elsewhere. Considering the need for compelling evidence to address the scale of the claims, especially in positing a specific Neapolitan sonata style, and given the relative unfamiliarity of sonatas by the composers highlighted, it is odd that some of the music examples are accompanied by little more than one or two sentences of description (while, conversely, a symbol used in the Corrente of Piani’s Sonata Op. 1 No. 4 is described rather than shown).
More significantly, the book has too singular of a focus on Neapolitan perspectives. Rarely giving more than passing reference to the presence or absence of other Italian-trained musicians (and their compositions) when discussing centres outside Naples makes it difficult to ascertain how much of a predominant force Neapolitan-trained instrumentalists were in shaping perceptions of the cello, imparting the proper performance practice of Italian music and providing foundational compositional models for composers in cities such as Paris and Vienna. For instance, the presence of Neapolitan-trained cellists in several courts throughout Europe helps account for the existence of some works with concertante cello parts, but they were not the only cellists on the scene. This makes it difficult fully to gauge the significance of their role when there is little or no comparison made to the careers and potential impact of other cellists.
Yet the book is, as admitted in the epilogue, an ‘early step’ in reassessing the importance of Neapolitan instrumental music. It is therefore perhaps more realistic to accept that the picture it provides is tantalizing and that Olivieri’s real accomplishment here is to provoke a broader reassessment. Even if the fragmentary evidence may ultimately make it difficult to establish just how central Neapolitan instrumental music was within the city itself and beyond, the book makes obvious the need to shift our views and raises exciting possibilities that will hopefully spur continued research.
