G. B. Sammartini and His Musical Environment, edited by Anna Cattoretti, 1 vol., xvi+692pp., ISBN 2-503-51233-X, € 150
The
career of Giovanni Battista Sammartini (Milan, 1700/1701?-1775) fully reflects
the important stylistic developments that took place in Europe during the 18th
century: from the Baroque style, through the galant idioms and right up to the
early days of classicism. His was an exceptional musical personality, which
remained on the international musical scene for a good fifty years without ever
yielding to the blandishments of fashion. Instead
Sammartini continued to open out new paths for the younger contemporaries with
whom he came into contact: Gluck, Boccherini, Mozart, etc. Though his name is
associated above all with the origins of the symphony, the earliest examples of
which date back to the 1730s, his output (both instrumental and vocal) was
extremely varied and included some early essays in utterly new genres such as
the quartet and quintet for strings. This volume assembles studies by all the
major scholars who have hitherto devoted their attention to this composer, who
has been viewed — both in the past and by modern musicologists — as a
crucial link between different eras in the history of music. List of the authors
contributing to the volume: Eugenia Bianchi, Marco Brusa, Anna Cattoretti,
Bathia Churgin, Mariateresa Dellaborra, Cosetta Farina, Ada Gehann, Jehoash Hirshberg, Sarah
Mandel-Yehuda, Simon McVeigh, Adena Portowiz, Filippo Ravizza, Umberto
Scarpetta, Tova Shany, Maria Grazia Sità, Marina Toffetti,
Marina Vaccarini Gallarani, Charles Verble, Eugene K. Wolf.