Suchergebnisse

The music in the Collegio dei Cantori e degli Innocenti (College of Chorists and Innocents) in Turin between 1575 and early sixteenth century and the beginnings of Botto Brothers as organ builders. The Collegio degli Innocenti (i. e. 'College of Innocents', the choirboys) in the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, an institution founded in 15th century but whose documentation has come down to us from 1499, was a self-sufficient entity. Beside that, there was a staff of adult male singers. This study is a part of a wider study about this institution. The author has devoted himself to the prior period (1500-1575) and to the following one (1600-1650) in two specific articles. In this article he focuses how in the last quarter of 16th century, the music in this institution was influenced by two important processes: on one side Turin became the capital city of the Savoy; on the other side recent Counter-Reformation's trends were implemented also in the field of church music (repertories, organs, etc.), not strongly as in Milan and in the rest of Italy but anyway significantly. With respect to the political aspects of this change, one of the most important relic owned by the Duke of Savoy - the Holy Shroud - served as both political and religious symbol, since it was publicly exhibited sometimes between 1578 and 1586, in circumstance where music was present. Furthermore, it became increasingly ordinary that court musicians appeared among the musicians in the Cathedral, as Claude Vyosses, music master at the court (from 1562) and moreover master of the choirboys in the Cathedral (from 1575). As consequence of the post-Trent Council measures and the foundation and diffusion of centers for the spiritual education of youth, in these twenty-five years also in Turin the Seminar became definitively the place in which the pueri resided. Instead, about the musicians of the religious institutions, the article focuses the following chapel masters as Giorgio Borgia and especially Simon Boyleau (who taught from 1583 to 1586), having been paid for his compositions: it is supposed that one of these pieces could be O sacrum convivium in I-Tn, transcribed in the article, a short piece with a characteristic opening vocalize and a central section in triple time, having the effect of greater fluency. A look to the chief Simeon Cocquard and to the maestri di cerimonia (i. e. 'ceremony masters') concludes the span here investigated. Some episodes in the early life of the organ built by Benedetto Antegnati - started in 1567 and ended in 1573 - are reconstructed, especially the complex events of budget assignments by the Chapter house in order to complete the payments (the final one was prolonged until 1578) and also the first maintenance works by Graziadio Antegnati or the removal and rehang of the instrument in the spring of 1587 by Giovanni Battista Stagnoli. A restoration to the bellows of the Antegnati in 1600 is the first organ building work by Giovanni Giorgio Botto, member of a family of theretofore cabinetmakers. He and his brother Pietro realized that Piedmont was becoming a fertile terrain to install a business of organ construction and assistance, so they took the know-how from more famous organ builders Vitani brothers from Pavia and in the following fifteen years they built several instruments in medium-sized cities in Piedmontese provinces. The author retraces the repositioning of the organ from the previous location (that he deduces upon the wall of the today no-longer-existing ancient choir) to the new one (on the southern wall of the transept). The repositioning was wanted by the Duke, in view of the baptism of his son - and connected Ostension of the Holy Shroud. Organists were Giovanni Pietro Cottone (from 1570 to 1573 and also in the following years, with another span then between 1582 until his death in 1593), spaced out by Frediano Frediani (from 1576 to 1582: Frediani stood in Turin for some year). In those years purchasing of musical prints increased, as marked in the archival accounts, here transcribed and annotated: music of Magnificat and motets by italian - and to a lesser extent french - composers, today no longer preserved in the archives. It is worth considering that instead some musical editions of spanish composers have been conserved. This can be connected with the close relationships between Carlo Emanuele Duke of Savoy and the Kingdom of Spain, sealed with the marriage (1585) to Catalina Micaela, daughter of Philip II. These authors are Francisco Guerrero and Tomás Luis de Victoria, whose Magnificat and Hymni of 1581, as well as Officium defunctorum of 1585 are preserved in Turin Cathedral archives. Victoria dedicated to Carlo Emanuele the Motecta Festorum Totius Anni (Rome, Ex tipographia Dominici Basae, 1585): parts of the significant dedication and of an epigram (probably written by Giovenale Ancina, also friend of Victoria) are translated and discussed. From them, the author concludes that Victoria maybe aimed at an important position in court or church music at the court of Savoy. Other musicians of Iberian origins sung sometimes in the choir, among them the castrato singer Francisco Garcia: from December 1587 to July 1589, the same period when Boyleau composed O sacrum convivium: maybe the opening vocalize may have been written to stand out his ability. The paper ends with the plague of 1599. In a final tabel an accurate chronological list of chapel masters, organist, chorists, choirboys, grammar masters and musicians is given, together with their geographical provenance and salary. In the appendix (pp. 97-119) full documents from Archivio Capitolare (℅ Archivio Arcivescovile in Turin) are transcribed and commented.

This commentary, part of the book symposium on Katharina Pistor's The Code of Capital, focuses in particular on the epistemic dimensions of the phenomena she describes. Knowledge can be coded as capital, through intellectual property rights, and these can be done in ways that unjustly favor privileged actors at the cost of the common good, as Pistor demonstrates with regard to the patenting of genetic markers. Interestingly, however, knowledge can also be appropriated without the use of legal tools, simply by appropriating data from consumers, as Zuboff, for example, has argued. A second epistemic dimension of Pistor's work lies in the fact that the legal coding of capital is itself little know and receives little public discussion. This, of course, plays into the hands of those who benefit by problematic forms of such coding. By putting these issues up for debate, The Code of Capital fulfill itself an important epistemic role, which can be categorized as a form of "democratic professionalism", i.e., professionals enabling a critical public discourse about the activities in their own field.