Matteo Giuggioli
AbstractBellini’s instrumental works, particularly in the field of the symphony, composed during his formative years between Catania and Naples, suggest that the history of instrumental music in Italy during the period of his education constitutes an important background for understanding his artistic beginnings. Moreover, the relationships that his early symphonies establish with his first operatic projects, starting with Adelson e Salvini, demonstrate that instrumental music also played a significant role in Bellini’s earliest attempts as an opera composer. The historical development of instrumental music in Italy during this period, and more broadly between the late eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century, has so far been addressed only in a number of significant yet isolated studies, although it is attracting increasing musicological interest. This still largely unexplored chapter in music history is further burdened, as is well known, by the reductive, if not outright negative, historiographical assessment that became entrenched between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Taking the “instrumental Bellini” as its ideal point of arrival and drawing upon the historical framework established by scholarship on this complex subject, the present essay focuses on the historiographical question of instrumental music in Italy during the first three decades of the nineteenth century. In particular, it examines its functional and dynamic character, issues of periodization and terminology, and the influence of models and archetypes on compositional practice, with particular reference to Bellini and his teacher, Niccolò Zingarelli.
Keywords
Sinfonia, Bellini, funzionalità, Zingarelli, Napoli.
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