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'Music Printing in Early Eighteenth-Century Bologna: The Case of Giuseppe Antonio Silvani and Pirro Albergati (1716-1717)'

Following on from Churnside_01, this article also considers the transmission and circulation of music at the turn of the eighteenth century. There has been recent interest amongst musicologists in music printing and publishing in Italy during the period, and particularly in the city of Bologna (e.g. Barnett (2008), Cipollone (2010) Collarile (2011), Giovani (2011)). The author builds on these studies, adding a new insight based on previously unexplored archival documents relating to the Silvani firm. Under the direction of Marino Silvani this was one of Italy’s most successful music printing businesses in the late seventeenth century, but by 1716 his son Giuseppe Antonio was facing financial difficulties and entered into a partnership with a local aristocrat, Count Pirro Albergati. A substantial amount of hitherto unstudied documentation survives, including account books, legal documents and correspondence (some of which is transcribed in appendices). From these it is possible to construct a picture of the business, including a knowledge of the size of print runs, the financial arrangements made with composers, the rate of sale and distribution of the works. Silvani’s correspondence with a Venetian maker of moveable type also suggests differences in attitude towards void notation at the time. On this point, Churnside’s research relates directly to that of Thompson and Sadler (qqv.) in their work on seventeenth-century Italian and French notation, in particular Sadler in Thompson_01. Comparison with an inventory made after Silvani’s death makes it possible to identify trends in the market for particular composers and genres. This study has implications for our understanding of the printing and reception of music more widely during the period.