Societe Belge de Musicologie

The Revival of Early Music in 18th-Century Italy: Observations on the Correspondence

between Girolamo Chiti and Padre Giambattista Martini
Author(s): Vincent Duckles
Source: Revue belge de Musicologie / Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Muziekwetenschap, Vol.
26/27 (1972/1973), pp. 14-24
Published by: Societe Belge de Musicologie
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3686536
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 THE REVIVAL OF EARLY MUSIC IN 18th-CENTURY ITALY:
OBSERVATIONS ON THE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN
GIROLAMO CHITI AND PADRE GIAMBATTISTA MARTINI

VINCENT DUCKLES

(Berkeley)

During the latter part of the i8th century, musicians began to become
aware of the incomparably rich resources Italy had to offer for the study of
the music of the past. Prior to that time Italy's chief attraction lay in the
direction of contemporary forms; namely, the Italian opera and the solo
sonata and concerto. The historical interest in music was a late development,
several generations behind the corresponding trend in the visual arts. Art
historians had long since discovered the living museum of architecture,
painting and sculpture presented by the Italian scene. Early in the century
the names of Raphael, Titian, and Michaelangelo were familiar terms to
travelers from the north to whom Dufay, Josquin, and even Palestrina were
still almost unknown. The opportunity to experience the historical panorama
of the visual arts at first hand brought hundreds of young gentlemen from
England, France, Germany and elsewhere to visit Italy on the traditional
Grand Tour. Not only did the arts of the Renaissance come under their
scrutiny. In I764 Johann Joachim Winkelmann in his Geschichte der Kunst
des Altertums had directed attention to the perfection of ancient Greek art
still visible in the ruins of Rome. It could be said that Winkelmann's influence
literally reshaped European culture, its buildings, paintings, even dress, in
the direction of neo-classicism. No such claims could be made for music.
Apart from opera, the search for antique models acted as a deterrent rather
than as a stimulent to change. Nothing of the early Greek musical practice
had survived save a few dispited fragments, but there was an abundance of
matter for speculation in Greek number theory, classic modes, and the doctrine
of ethos. As long as learned musicians occupied themselves with these mori-
bund themes, the application of modern historical methods to the art was
beyond their range.
The music historian was, of course, a new species in i8th-century
cultural history. He was foreshadowed in some degree in the compendia of
Praetorius, Kircher, and Mersenne in the 17th century, and in the early
efforts of Printz and Bonnet-Bourdelot, but it was not until men like Martin
Gerbert and Charles Burney turned their steps toward Italy in search of
their primary source materials that modern historical scholarship in music
came into existance. Italy's prime contribution to the I8th-century historio-
graphy of music was Padre Martini's Storia della musica, the first volume of
which appeared in 1757, followed by two more volumes in I770 and 1781.

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Other volumes were projected to cover the birth of Western polyphony but
never came to print. Musicologists have deplored Martini's history as a lost
opportunity to give a truly significant account of the progress of music from
the hand of a musician better equipped than any of his contemporaries for
the task. But if the work did not represent a new historical approach, its
impact as a symbol of learned musical investigation was far-reaching. Martini's
vision was far in advance of his grasp. When one considers the range of his
activities, this is not surprising. He was a practising theorist, composer, church
politician, and probably the most sought-after musical expert of his time.
But his work as an historian was inhibited by at least three factors : i. he was
a victim of the conventional patterns of erudition of his time that placed
undue emphasis on biblical and mythological sources; 2. his work was re-
stricted by the lack of bibliographical and biographical reference tools; what
tools he had, were largely of his own construction; and 3. he had to bring
together, almost single-handed, a body of musical evidence upon which
historical judgements could be based. In other words, the historian had to
wait in line behind the collector, editor, and lexicographer.
If one wishes to see the direction in which Martini's historical studies
might have taken him in the unpublished 4th and 5th volumes of his Storia,
the place to look is in the files of his correspondence preserved in the Civico
Museo Bibliografico Musicale in Bologna. These files have long been accessible
to scholars. Federico Parisini published I36 of the letters in his Carteggio
inedito del P. Giambattista Martini (I888) but the sheer bulk of the documents,
amounting to more than 5,000 items, has discouraged anyone from making
much more than a superficial survey of their contents. Within the past eighteen
months, an American musicologist working in Bologna has been engaged in
abstracting and indexing the total extent of the correspondence between
Martini and hundreds of his contemporaries. At this point I must acknowledge
my great indebtedness to Dr. Anna Schnoebelen for her generosity in making
the files of her ( work in progress ) available to me in the preparation of
this paper.
Not all of Martini's correspondence is concerned with matters related
to his work as an historian. Much of it has to do with the mundane affairs of
a church musician, with appointments, letters of recommendation, questions
on theory and liturgical practices. It demonstrates if nothing else that Martini
was extremely generous with his time and energy, never failing to respond
to the most varied requests for advice or information. But, at the same time,
there are segments of his correspondence that take us directly into the histo-
rian's workshop where we can see him actively collecting materials, organizing
them, copying treatises, scoring partbooks. No set of letters is more revealing
of this phase of his interests than the exchange between Martini and the
Roman church musician, Girolamo Chiti (I679-I759). The Chiti-Martini
file is one of the largest self-contained group of letters in the archive at
Bologna, comprising some 440 items and spanning a period of fourteen years,

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from 1745 to 1759. Moreover, it preserves to a large extent the voices of both
participants. Martini kept all of Chiti's letters along with numerous drafts
of his own. The presence of these drafts makes the correspondence virtually
complete, at least for the first several years.
Some words are necessary to clarify the role of Girolamo Chiti in this
relationship. Very little attention has been given to this comparatively obscure
church musician who nevertheless occupied one of the most important posts
in Rome for some 27 years. He was Maestro di Cappella of S. Giovanni in
Laterano from 1726 to 1753, and he held the additional appointment as
custode of the Corsini chapel and its library, part of the same ecclesiastical
establishment (1).
Chiti was a native of Siena and a close friend of the Chigi family of that
city. His teachers in Siena were Giuseppe Cini and Tomaso Redi. (Redi will
be remembered as the man who lost the contest with Padre Martini over the
resolution, in I732, of a famous canon by Giovanni Animuccia). In 1717, at
the age of twenty-eight, he went to Rome to study with Gioseppe Ottavio
Pitoni (1657-1743) the musician who shaped his style and inspired his life-long
adherance to the Roman tradition. I shall return for further discussion of
Pitoni's influence. By training and temperment Chiti was a conservative
whose musical world began and ended with Palestrina. He wrote a large
quantity of church music in both the a cappella and modern styles, but his
chief importance for the present discussion lies in the fact that he was a
discriminating and informed collector of early music. This was an interest he
pursued for more than fifty years, and he was ideally situated in Rome to
carry on such an activity. Whenever the Librario Pagliarini or some other
bookstore acquired a new stock of old music, he was the first to examine it
and report its contents to his friend in Bologna. Whenever one of his colleagues
in the Congregazioni dei Musici in Rome died, he was on hand to see if the
estate contained anything of musical interest. His accounts to Martini reveal
that a surprising number of the Roman musicians were collectors, apparently
a factor of the time and the place. Chiti himself left his imprint on two im-
portant music collections in Rome that have survived to the present day:
the archive of San Giovanni in Laterano and the Biblioteca Corsiniana. The
latter institution incorporates much of Chiti's personal music library, trans-
ferred in 1757 at the bequest of its owner (2). One of the most interesting
features revealed by his correspondence with Martini is the extent to which
Chiti contributed, directly or indirectly, to the Martini library in process of
formation in Bologna. If time permitted, it would be a fascinating exercise
to trace the books and music that passed through Chiti's hands on their way

(1) Chiti's activities as a composer of sacred music have recently been the subject of a monograph
bij Siegfried GEINWIESER : Girolamo Chiti, 1679-1759, eine Untersuchung zur Kirchenmusik in
S. Giovanni in Laterano (Kolner Beitrige zur Musikforschung, 47) Regensburg, 1968.
(') See Vito RAELI, , La collezione Corsini di antichi codici musicali e Girolamo Chiti *, in Rivista
Musicale Italiana, 25 (1918), p. 345-76; 26 (1919). p. II2-39; 27 (1920), p. 60-84.

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to Martini's shelves. It is safe to say that the total ran into the hundreds;
a few representative examples will be given below. Chiti was Martini's chief
book hunter in Rome, and his presence there helps to explain how a collector
in the comparatively small provincial center of Bologna could tap the resources
of a large municipality.
The relationship between the two musicians had its interesting aspects
from a purely human point of view. In 1745 when their correspondence began,
Martini was thirty-nine years old; Chiti was sixty-six. But the span of twenty-
seven years separating them was no obstacle to their long and congenial
exchange. Martini's letter of February I7, 1746, is characteristic. He lists
some fifty-four names of I6th and 17th-century musicians and asks Chiti to
favor him with any facts he might have regarding them, facts that only Chiti
could supply because of his proximity to the Vatican archives and other
resources in Rome. Martini even went so far as to consider the possibility
of enlisting Chiti's aid as a collaborator in his Storia della musica, the first
volume of which was still some eleven years in the future. In a letter of
February 17, I746, he writes : If only I could have had sooner the good
fortune to know and to correspond with a man so celebrated, so erudite, and
so accomplished as your illustrious person ... with how much more confidence
would I have embarked on a history of music ... two men versed in music
can accomplish far more than one in such an enterprise ,. The idea never
developed into a formal relationship, but on an informal basis Chiti was indeed
Martini's collaborator. If Martini had completed the volumes devoted to the
development of Western polyphony, his indebtedness would have been even
more clear. Chiti's attitude toward his younger colleague was marked by
admiration mixed with humility. He was a man of retiring disposition, who
avoided conflict and gained the greatest satisfaction from seeing his own views
reflected in those of a more vigorous personality. In a letter dated February 6,
1758, he looks back on their eleven years of letter writing as a period in which
he had been Martini's pupil by correspondence. In their long exchange of
music, ideas, and information, it was Martini who generally maintained the
commanding position, who had the last word in discussions, and who, on
occasion, used his friend to further his own aqusitive ends.
The man who actually brought Chiti and Martini together was Giuseppe
Ottavio Pitoni, Chiti's above-mentioned friend and teacher, and Maestro
di Cappella of St. Peter's in Rome. The introduction was a posthumous one.
On the occasion of Pitoni's death in 1743 Chiti had written a short biographical
sketch of his meastro, which Martini coveted for his files. The first letter of
their correspondence is a note from Martini, dated September I8, I745,
thanking Chiti for sending a copy of the memoir and requesting further
information about Pitoni and his music.
When the history of musicology in Italy is written, Pitoni will occupy
an important place at the outset of the narrative. He was a major figure in
the Italian Enlightenment, a man who combined the highest standards of

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professional musicianship with the systematic and inquiring mind of the
scholar. Martini refers to him as ( II Maestro de Maestri >, and credits him
with setting forth the principles, derived from Palestrina, on which the tree
of the Roman school of sacred composition was founded (< Ho dato principio
a formare un Albero della Scola di Roma incominciando da Gio. Pierluigi da
Palestrina >). Early in his career, when he was connected with the chapel at
Assisi, Pitoni first encountered the works of Palestrina and devoted himself
to scoring and studying them systematically. The link between Pitoni's
Palestrina research and that of a later maestro of the Cappella Giulia, Giuseppe
Baini, is too obvious to mention, but is is well to remind ourselves that Baini
did not discover Palestrina however much he may have created the image that
captivated the Igth-century music lover. The work of discovery was accom-
plished by such men as Pitoni, Chiti, and Martini beginning more than Ioo
years before the appearance of the Memorie critiche in I828.
As a theorist and teacher, Pitoni exerted a profound influence. It is
somewhat surprising to find among his pupils not only such Roman musicians
as Chiti and Bonporti, but the Neapolitans Leo, Feo, and Durante as well.
The only theoretical work by Pitoni that ever reached print was his Guida
armonica, published between I690 and I700. It survives in a unique but
imperfect copy in the Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale in Bologna (a
copy that can be traced directly to Chiti) (3). It was apparently a work planned
on a large scale, but only the ( Libro Primo )>, a systematic treatment of the
technique for harmonizing interval progressions, appears to have been issued.
The work, however incomplete, is doubly precious since it was undoubtedly
extracted from a lost compilation in thirty folio volumes containing counter-
point studies in all keys and styles taken from the works of the classic masters
of the Roman school. These volumes, bearing the title Opere de monumenti,
were left, according to Chiti's memoir, to the library of the German-Hungarian
college of S. Apollinare and did not survive the dissolution of that institution.
Perhaps Pitoni's greatest contribution to musical scholarship is an
8oo-page manuscript now in the collection of the Cappella Giulia of the
Vatican Library. This is his famous Notizie dei maestri di cappella si di Roma
che oltramontani, ossia notizia de contrapuntisti e compositori degli anni dell'era
christiana (4). This is nothing less than an early I8th-century forerunner of
Fetis's Biographie universelle, a monumental work of reference containing
entries for some 1,500 names of composers active between the years I,ooo
and 1700, with copious details concerning their careers and works. Since it
remained unpublished one cannot claim for it the range of influence exerted
by Walther's Lexicon (1732), for example, but the information in Pitoni's
Notizie was used heavily by those who were aware of its existance, including

(8) Pitoni, Giuseppe Ottavio DA RIETI. Guida Armonica di Gioseppe Ottavio Pitoni, Maestro di Cappella
di S. Lorenzo in Damaso, e di S. Apollinare in Roma. Libro primo. A volume of Io8 numered
pages, lacking frontispiece and introduction.
(4) Biblioteca Vaticana, Cappella Giulia, MSS I-2(z) and 1-2(2).

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the Abate Baini. It also caught the eye of Baini's French colleague, Adrian
De La Fage. Among La Fage's papers in the Biblioth6que Nationale is a
hand-written copy of the Notizie authorized for his use by the executor of
Baini's estate. Neither Chiti nor Martini ever ceased to be aware of the vital
role played by Pitoni in establishing and maintaining the standards of the
Roman tradition. His name runs like a leitmotif throughout the first several
years of their correspondence.
If Pitoni was a leitmotif in the Chiti-Martini correspondence, the figure
of Palestrina stands out as a principal theme. There is scarcely a letter that
passed between the two men that does not mention the founder of the Roman
school. Both were engaged in developing personal collections of Palestrina
scores. They carried on a continuous exchange of duplicates, and loaned each
other materials for copying, At one point (December 20, I747) Martini
remarks that Chiti's generosity had enabled him to acquire more than 30
Palestrina scores, all copied by the same hand and on the same kind of paper.
Chiti's privilege of access to the Vatican archives, with its famous book by
Pitoni (# famoso libro di Pitoni )) made him an invaluable source of factual
information. In one of his earlier letters (October i6, I745) Martini cites
twenty-two printed works by Palestrina, along with editions of Morales,
Soriano, and Metallo, and asks Chiti to inform him if he has other editions
of the same works, or copies that contain dated dedications.
With Chiti's aid, Martini was able to pursue his book hunting on the
widest possible scale, and one cannot but admire the patience and tenacity
with which he sought his objectives. For example, he worked for eighteen
months to secure scores of Books x and xi of the Palestrina masses, lacking
in his collection. This particular narrative began on October 2, I748, when
he wrote Chiti to ask him to arrange an exchange with a Roman colleague,
Domenico Ricci, who supposedly owned the missing volumes. Chiti promised
to investigate, but on December 6 sent word that Ricci denied that he ever
owned them. To this Martini responded that Ricci was either lying or being
deliberately uncooperative since he had seen the books with his own eyes at
Ricci's house. (No explanation is ever given as to why he did not approach
Ricci directly in this matter). Further inquiries led to further denials from
Ricci extending over a period of five months until Chiti discovered that copies
of the two volumes were to be found in the library of the Cappella della Chiesa
Nuova in Rome. There followed a long period, nearly a year, in which time
Chiti, with frequent prodings from Martini, arranged to have the books
scored. Finally, on April 4, 1750, they arrived in Bologna to take their places
on Martini's shelves.
Another rich area of common interest proved to be the collecting of
examples of the earliest music printing. Early in their exchange, Chiti offered
Martini an incomplete set of parts for the Motetti de la Corona (I5I4) which
he mistakenly called la prima stampa che uscisse di musica . Martini
accepted the work with gratitude and the conversation continued for several

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months on the theme of Venetian music printing of the early I6th century.
On April 26, I746, Chiti sent a list headed <le libre piu antiche d'editione
dati da D. Girolamo Chiti ... >. The list included two Antico prints of I516
and two by Moderne of I540-4I. He offers to send Martini a copy of the
Papal privilege given to Petrucci by Pope Leo X for music printing. Martini
responds in a letter of May 7, citing all of the Petrucci prints in his possession,
a formidable list indicating that by 1746 Bologna was already the world's
richest library as far as exemplars of Petrucci's printing was concerned.
Included are Canti B of the Odhecaton (I50I), masses by Brumel and Obrecht
(1503), Agricola (1504), De Orto (I505), Gaspar and Isaac (1506), and the
Lamentations (I5o6). In a somewhat later list he adds three books of Josquin
masses (I515, I516, and I5I8).
Martini likewise found in Chiti a musician who shared his interest in
what he called la Gara de Canonisti ). The intracies of polyphony fascinated
both of them, but for Martini in particular mastery of the arts of canonic
writing was virtually a trademark of his skill. You will recall that each chapter
in the Storia della musica began and ended with a handsome engraving of a
canon, and that his reputation as a learned musician was established in I732
by his convincing resolution of the ,Sancta Maria,) canon by Giovanni
Animuccia. The correspondence mentions nearly all of the classic works on
canonic artifice produced by composers of the Roman school during the
first half of the I7th century. Included are such prodigious displays of technique
as Francesco Soriano's I o Canons on the plainchant Ave Maris Stella (i 6 o) (5)
Francesco Valentini's demonstration of more than 2,000 resolutions on the
chant Illos tuos misericordes (I629) (6). Similar collections by Giovanni Maria
Nanino, Romano Micheli, and G.B. Vitali were traded and discussed (7).
Martini was well aware of the musical limitations of canonic writing but he
regarded it as an excellent discipline for students of counterpoint and took
pains to show that it could be practised in the modern as well as in the tra-
ditional strict style. Chiti's favorite examples in this genre were Giovanni
Briccio's Canoni enigmatici musicali (1632) (8). He had worked on the resolutions
under Pitoni's guidance some twenty years earlier and was anxious to compare
his results with Martini's. He proposed a combined musical and spiritual

(6) SORIANO, Francesco. Canoni et oblighi di cento et dieci sorte, sopra l'Ave Maris Stella. Roma, I6Io.
(6) VALENTINI, Pier Francesco. Illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converto canone di Pier Francesco
Valentini Romano con le sue resolutioni in piti di duemilia modi a due, a tre, a quattro, et a cinque
voci. Roma, I629.
(7) NANINO, Gio. Maria. Centocinquantasette contrappunti sopra un Canto Fermo (a manuscript copied
in the hand of Chiti).
MICHELI, Romano. Canone musicale a quattro voci, ad honore della Concettione della Beatissima
Vergine Maria, composto sopra le vocali di nuovo, e curioso artificio, ecc. Roma, I65o.
VITALI, Gio. Battista. Artificii Musicali ne quali si contengono Canoni in diverse maniere, Contra-
punti dopii Inventioni curiose, Capritii, e Sonate ... Modena, 1689.
(8) BRICCIO, Don Giovanni. Canoni enigmatici musicali, ... a due, tre, e quattro voci. Con un breve dis-
corso sopra i Canoni. Roma, I632.

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discipline by suggesting that his friend enclose the resolution of a Briccio
canon in each letter he wrote during Lent.
It would be a mistake to assume that the interests of the two collectors
were confined to sacred music. Traffic between Rome and Bologna was
equally heavy in madrigal collections. In the summer of 1747 the Roman
bookseller, Libraria Pagliarini, came into possession of a large collection of
secular vocal music, some 200 items in 14 volumes. Chiti lost no time in
sending an inventory of these materials to Bologna, and Martini returned the
lists carefully annotated to indicate what he lacked. The richness of the Martini
library in secular music bears witness to the fact that he collected music with
the broad interests of the historian, not merely with those of a church
musician.
In general the emphasis of the Chiti-Martini correspondence was centered
on pratical music. Theory was not neglected however. There was much
discussion of Gafurius, Zarlino, Cerone, and Bottrigari both as bibliographical
curiosities and as sources of ideas. One example will have to suffice of the
profound influence of theory on practice. The treatise involved was Marco
Scacchi's Cribrum musicum ad triticum Siferticum (9). This curious book,
written by a Roman musician living in Warsaw, and printed in Venice in
1643, exercised a profound influence on learned musicians throughout Europe.
Intended originally as part of a polemic between Kaspar F6rster and Paul
Siefert in Danzig (Scacchi took F6rster's part) it came to be regarded as a
definitive statement on middle baroque musical style in its three dimensions :
church, chamber, and theater (10). It was prized by the Roman musicians
because it offered the kind of authority for writing in the strict style that was
provided later by Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum, a work that did not appear
until I725, and not in an Italian translation until I76I. In his Cribrum musicum
Scacchi, using Siefert's Psalms as a point of departure, spelled out in precise
detail the requirements for writing acceptable counterpoint in the stile antico.
The principles outlined in his critique were anything but idle abstractions for
Martini and his circle, as we shall presently see. In any event, the book was
exceedingly rare. Chiti located a copy in the Libraria della Minerva in Rome,
andon June 3, I746 offered to have it transcribed by hand for Martini's use.
The copying process was apparently beset with unusual difficulties. The work
was in Latin, a language unfamiliar to many eccleastical functionaries, and
the combination of a literary text with numerous musical examples confused
the copyist. Chiti had to spend much time in correcting his work. Six months

(9) The full title is : Cribrum musicum ad triticum Siferticum, seu examinatio succincta psalmorum,
quos non ita pridem Paulus Sifertus dantiscanus, in aede parochiali ibidem organoedus in lucum edidit;
in qua clare et perspicue multa explicantur, quae summe necessaria ad artem melopoeticam esse solent.
Venezia, I643.
(10) Hellmut Federhofer has recently discussed Scacchi's work in its relationship to the theoretical
views of Heinrich Schitz and Christoph Bernhard. See his e Marco Scacchi's 'Cribrum Musicum'
und die Kompositionslehre von Christoph Bernhard ,, in Festschrift Hans Engel zum 70. Geburtstag.
Kassel, 1964, p. 76-90.

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after the title was first mentioned in the letters, it reached its destination in
Bologna, where it remains to the present day.
The precepts outlined in the Cribrum musicum had a direct bearing on
the career of a young musician named Carlo Delfini who aspired to membership
in the ranks of the maestri in Rome. The story of his efforts to gain admission
to that select group is one of the more interesting chapters in the Chiti-
Martini correspondence.
Carlo Delfini was born in the village of Stroncone near Terni. Nothing
is known of his early life until on August II, I747, he presented himself,
along with a certain Signor Aurisicchio of Napels, to take the required examina-
tion for membership in the Congregazioni dei Musicisti. Without this stamp
of approval no musician could serve as Maestro di Cappella in any of the
Roman churches. The rules for the examination, which had been prescribed
by Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni years before, called for the treatment of a given
cantus firmus in the strict style. Chiti was a member of the examining com-
mittee along with his Roman colleagues, Carpani, Foschi, and Valentini. On
the day after the examination Chiti sent Martini a letter containing samples
of the candidates' work and asked for an opinion. Martini replied with a long
critique that made it quite clear that Delfini's exercise did not meet the re-
quirements of the a cappella style. Among his criticism were that the applicant
failed to establish the mode or tone properly, that his fugal answers were not
correctly introduced, that his counterpoint was not in keeping with the stile
oservato. In short, the examination was a failure, but Delfini did not give up
easily. He made a second attempt on September 2, a third on September 24,
and a fourth sometime in October. Each time he was given a new cantus
firmus taken from the Cribrum musicum, and each time his treatment of it
was found wanting. One would be tempted to dismiss him as totally incom-
petent were it not for the fact that he sent copies of his work to the maestri
in Naples and won their complete approval. He also offered to seek the
judgement of un certo Martino, o S. Martino di Milano * (Chiti's phrase) (1),
a suggestion that brought forth indignant protests from his examining com-
mittee. But most troublesome of all, he solicited the views of the maestri
in Bologna through an appeal, not to Martini but to Giacomo Antonio Perti
who at the age of eighty-seven was still the dominent figure in Bolognese
musical life. Chiti had maintained the conservative Roman position throughout
the affair. Martini was ambivalent. In his letters to Chiti he sided with his
friend, drawing parallels between Delfini's defeat and Scacchi's refutation
of Siefert in the Cribrum musicum. But he could not bring himself to take a
stand in opposition to his old teacher, Perti. It was Perti who apparently
resolved the dilemma. Taking note of the fact that Delfini had entitled his
exercise as a # Ricercata >, Perti concluded that under such conditions his

(n) The reference, of course, is to Gian Battista Sammartini (I70I-I755) of Milan, well known as a
representative of the modern style of composition.

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counterpoint was not subject to the strict rules that must be applied to a
sacred vocal work such as an antiphon, psalm or motet. It was obviously a
piece of instrumental music; regarded in this light, Delfini's composition
could be accepted as being « assolutamente nel proprio stile >. Seven Bolognese
maestri, including Martini, signed the statement of approval on November 7,
1747.
But the Roman musicians refused to modify their position. Two years
later, on July 5, 1749, Chiti wrote complaining that Delfini was still making
difficulties about the judgement of his composition. Possibly he had gained
the support of some highly placed church dignitary, or had threatened some
kind of legal action. At any rate the Roman maestri appealed their case to
Bologna once more, this time directly to Antonio Bernacchi, Principe of the
famous Accademia Filarmonica. Martini asked to be excused from further
involvement in the controversy, feeling that the judgement made in I747
was sufficient, but he awaited the report from Chiti with great interest.
Finally, on October 18, I749, the verdict was handed down giving full support
to the Congregazioni dei Musicisti in Rome against the upstart, Delfini, whom
Chiti accused of making his own rules ( a capriccio ... et un contrapunto di
sua nuove inventione ). Bureaucracy had won the day, or, to put it in other
terms, the purity of the Roman tradition had been sustained.
A brief postscript must be added to this narrative. Although Delfini did
not win acceptance by the Roman Congregazioni, he continued to knock
on Martini's door. In November, I753, four years after the event, he wrote
asking Martini to sponsor his application for membership in the Accademia
Filarmonica in Bologna, a somewhat audacious act in view of his past ex-
perience with that august body. Martini's Carteggio contains three letters
from Delfini requesting this endorsement (12). Accompanying them is 4-voice
composition in strict style, submitted as a demonstration of his skill. Un-
fortunately we have no record of Martini's response to this request, but it
would have been characteristic of him to reply with friendly advice and some
practical suggestions as to how to acquire a firm technique in counterpoint.
Among Martini's manuscripts in the library at Bologna is a volume bearing
the title: Guida Armonica di Gio. Giuseppe Fux Stiro. Ove si trattano delle
Regole del Contrapunto in due libri diversi ... tradotto dalla lingua latina in
Italiana dal Sacerdote D. Carlo Delfini. Was this translation of Fux into
Italian a task assigned by Martini in a effort to accomplish what four examina-
tions and a bid for membership in the Accademia Filarmonica had failed to
do? If so, it was probably no more effective that the other trials of Delfini's
skill. Gaetano Gaspari, in his Catalogo della Biblioteca Musicale G.B. Martini,
Vol. I, annotates Delfini's Fux translation as follows : ((This translation by
Delfini is so badly made, and in such defective Italian, that it seems clear that
the writer was unable to penetrate the sense of the original Latin >.

(1a) Carteggio martiniano, tomo 33.

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 It should be obvious that there is enough material in the Chiti-Martini
correspondence to invite a wide variety of inquiries. This paper has stressed
the collecting activities of the two men, an area in which their personalities
came together in the most congenial and productive fashion. But the letters
also contain illuminating discussions of musical style, fascinating accounts
of the special liturgical practices in Rome and Bologna, observations on the
current seasons of the Roman opera, as well as much interesting biographical
detail. The maestri and compositori who move through these pages, sometimes
in harmony, sometimes in conflict with one another, add vividness to our
picture of Italian musical life in the mid-I8th century.
I have titled this paper «the revival of early music in I8th-century
Italy >. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to use the term < survival)
rather than « revival >, for without the efforts of men like Chiti and Martini,
the heritage of Western music might not have survived, at least in the degree
of richness and variety it presents to the 20oth-century musicologist. In their
own fashion, Martini and his colleagues sought to preserve and maintain the
performance traditions of I6th-century music, but their motives had little
to do with historical accuracy as we know it. The i 8th-century was notoriously
insensitive to authenticity in performance practice. This was the age of
accompanied plainchant, of the application of figured basses to Palestrina
motets, of the «improvement > of folk melodies by means of harmonization.
The day of the critical edition and of the historically valid performance was
yet to come. But when it did come in the early igth century, bringing scores
of inquiring scholars to Italy, men such as Bottee de Toulmon, Adrian de
La Fage, Franz Sales Kandler, Raphael Kiesewetter, and Francois Joseph
Fetis, they found their primary sources ready and waiting for them in the
magnificent collections founded by Girolamo Chiti, Padre Martini, and their
kind.

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