In order to understand Galuppi’s legacy and posthumous role as the personification of Italian music abroad, it is useful to take a closer look at the progression of rhetoric about him in music journalism immediately following his death. Although falsehoods and misunderstandings about the composer had made their way into print during his lifetime, biographical inaccuracies proliferated after his death as well, beginning with the publication of his
23 Garcin, Traité, 258. "La réflexion paroîtra un peu sévère peut-être: mais est-ce Galuppi ou Métastase qu’on va entendre au théâtre? Si c’est le musicien, pourquoi choisir un lieu où les plaisirs de l’oreille sont nécessairement divisés, confondus, distraits, par les décorations, les personnages, le dialogue, les entr’actes, l’action, l’intrigue & le dénouement du Drame? Si c’est le poëte, n’est-il pas convenable de ramener tout ce qui est représanté, aux vues du poëte, de corriger tout ce qui en éloigne, de pousser en un mot la vrai-semblance aussi loin qu’elle peut aller? Vaut il donc mieux que le musicien
entasse les contresens? Toute sa tâche consiste-t-elle à anéantir l’effet théâtral, & n’est ce que par dérision que l’on parle dans le discours & dans les ecrits, de l’union de la poësie avec la musique?"
obituary in the Saturday, February 19, 1785 Venetian edition of the Florentine
Notizie del Mondo.
Saturday, February 19, 1785 Venice
Last Saturday in the Church of the Augustinian fathers the funeral of the recently deceased Sig. Baldassar Galuppi took place with magnificent pomp. We publish the following paragraph about this famous man handed down by an admirer of his rare merit.
On January 3rd of this year died in this domain at the age of 82 years the celebrated Sig. Baldassare Galuppi, otherwise called Buranello from Burano his home island, which belongs to the duchy of Venice. Born with the most fortunate talents for music, he sought from the beginnings of his youth to educate himself in the most renowned schools of Venice, of Rome, and of Naples under the direction principally of Giuseppe
Amadori, of Allessandro Scarlatti, and of Nicolò Porpora. He competed with the most famous masters of his time. Equally great in the genre of comic opera as in opera seria, fortunate in the choice of his motives, brilliant and full in the accompaniments, fertile in imagination, excellent regulator of the instruments of the orchestra, and especially faithful observer of the suitability of musical traditions, he will always occupy a shining place among the maestri of the eighteenth century. After having enriched Italy with many excellent productions, he also carried the glory of the Italian name throughout all Europe.
For many years he supplied the Reggio Teatro di Madrid under Ferdinand VI with operas. He stayed in London, and there produced compositions that were well applauded. In 1790 he was chosen as maestro of the Ducal Chapel of Venice. In 1765 the sublime genius of Katherine II, current empress of Russia, requested him from the government as composer in the Imperial Theater of Saint Peters-burg, and distinguished him with particular honors. Then, returned back to this domain, he reassumed his assigned post, which he occupied for twenty-five years, after which, with sadness, he paid the usual tribute to human frailty.
The music, the life of which he had so represented, contributed to honoring his death. Sig. Ferdinando Bertoni, successor of the deceased, composed an excellent Mass. The most talented musicians sang, among them the distinguished Sig. Gasparo Pachierotti, and the tenor Sig. Matteo Babini. More than one hundred maestri, musicians, and singers religiously attended the beautifully executed funeral at the sole expense of the musicians of San Marco. Sig. Matthias Buttorini, the very cultured Latin poet, expressed the public sentiments in the following epigram.
Quae quondam, in numerum passim spirantibus auris Laeta tuos cecinit musica turba modos.
Nunc ad feralem tumulum, quem moesta paravit, Inferias celebrat, docte Galuppe, tuas.
Si tibi, dum sonitus astrorum, Balthasar, audis, Non possunt veteres forte placere chori,
Te moveat saltem socioruni antiqua voluntas, Quique alto gemitus pectore ducit amor.25
25 Notizie del Mondo, February 19, 1785. "Sabato scorso con pompa magnifica nella Chiesa de PP. Agostiniani di questa Città furono esequiti i Funerali
all'ultimamente defunto Sig. Baldassar Galuppi. Pubblichiamo intorno a questo celebre uomo il seguente paragrafo trasmessoci da un ammiratore del suo raro merito. Ai 3. Gennaro del corrente anno morì in questa Dominante nell'età di 82. anni il celbre Sig. Baldassar Galuppi altrimenti detto Buranello da Burano sua Patria Isoletta, che
appartiene al Dogado Veneto. Natto per i più felici talenti per la Musica, cercò fin dalla prima sua giovanezza di coltivarsi nelle piu rinomate scuole di Venezia, di Roma, e di Napoli sotto la direzione principalmente di Giuseppe Amadori, d'Alessandro Scarlatti, e di Nicoló Porpora. Gareggiò coi più famosi Maestri del suo tempo. Egualmente grande nel genere Buffo, che nel Serio, felice nella scielta dei motivi, brillante, e pieno negli accompagnamenti, fecondo nelle invenzioni , meraviglioso nella espressione, regolator eccellente delli Istrumenti nell' Orchestra, e sopratutto osservator fedele della
convenienza del costume Musicale egli occuperà sempre mai un posto luminoso fra i Maestri del Secolo Decimottavo. Dopo aver arricchita l'Italia di molte produzioni
eccellenti portò altresì la gloria del nome Italiano per tutta l'Europa. Fornì per molti anni d' Opere il Reggio Teatro di Madrid sotto Ferdinando Sesto. Soggiornò in Londra, e vi lavorò molte applauditissime Composizioni. L'anno 1760. fu scielto per Maestro della Cappella Ducale di Venezia. Nel 1765. il sublime genio di Catterina II. attuale
Imperatrice della Russia lo richiese al governo per Compositore nell' Imperiale Teatro di Pietroburgo, e lo distinse con particolari onori. Indi ritornato in questa Dominante riassunse l'accennato impiego, che occupò per 25. anni, dopo i quali, con generale rincrescimento pagò il solito tributo all' umana caducità. Fù sepolto nella Chiesa di S. Vitale ed i ed i Funerali si celebrarono nella vicina Chiesa di S. Steffano de' Padri Agostiniani. La Musica cui egli avea tanto illustrato la vita, contribuì ad onorar la sua morte. Il Sig. Ferdinando Bertoni successore del Deffunto vi compose un eccellente Messa. Cantarono i più valenti Professori, tra' quali l'egregio Sig. Gasparo Pachierotti, e il Tenore Sig. Matteo Babini. Più di cento tra' Maestri, Suonatori, e Cantanti asistettero religiosamente all' Esequie magnificamente eseguite a spese dei soli Professori di S. Marco. Il Sig. Mattia Buttorini assai colto Poeta Latino espresse i publici Sentimenti nel seguente Epigrama."
The information for the article was contributed by “an admirer” of the composer and contains some reckless inaccuracies. For example, Giuseppe Amadori, who was the composer and organist for Cardinal Ottoboni in Rome, is not known to have ever gone to Venice. Scarlatti died in 1725, when Galuppi was nineteen years old, and his only recorded visit to Venice was in 1707. Porpora took up residence in Venice in 1726 and was there until 1733. Franco Piovano observes, "All of this leads us to believe that the ‘admirer’ was very badly informed regarding Galuppi's studies."26
In the decades immediately following the composer's death but preceding Caffi's publication of La storia della musica sacra, there appeared a number of anecdotes about Galuppi which snowballed from simple misunderstandings into wildly inaccurate misinformation. Haydn biographer Giuseppe Carpani did not mention Galuppi's year of birth nor where he studied in his 1812 anthology of letters, Le Haydine, Ovvero lettere su la vita e le opere del celebre maestro Giuseppe
Haydn. The portions pertaining to Haydn had been based on the 1810
publications of Dies and Griesinger, but for his information about Galuppi Carpani had clearly relied on Burney's The Present State of Music.27 Carpani
recounted only one anecdote not found in Burney's book: that Galuppi used to intentionally introduce errors into his scores to see if his students would notice
26 Piovano, “Baldassare Galuppi,” (1906): 685. "Tuttociò induce a credere che l'ammiratore fosse assai mal informato riguardo agli studi di Galuppi."
27 Daniel Heartz, Mozart, Haydn and Early Beethoven, 1781-1802 (New York:
them. "Even Galuppi used to commit similar misdeeds in his masses, and would then say to his students, ‘Did you hear that? Did you catch that? But you have to be Galuppi to get away with it.’"28 The issue of Galuppi’s unpolished, “no-frills”
compositions is taken up in greater detail in chapter eight, but this much seems to be true: Galuppi did indeed permit blatant errors in some of his sacred
works—obvious, rudimentary mistakes in counterpoint, such as parallel fifths, as in Example 3.1, below. But the reliability of anecdotes such as this is inversely proportional to their quaintness. For that reason, Heartz does not consider Carpani's accounts entirely reliable.29
Example 3.1. Parallel fifths in Galuppi’s F-major In convertendo Dominus (II/22)
28 Carpani, Le Haydine, 102. "Anche il Galuppi soleva commettere di simili misfatti nelle sue Messe, e diceva poi agli scolari "Avete sentito? Avete notato?" Ma bisogna esser Galuppi per farlo."
Ten years later one can see from the writing of Count Gregorii
Vladimirovich Orlov in his 1822 Essai sur l'histoire de la musique en Italie that even though most of his information had come from Burney, both the composer's incorrect year of birth and the myth of Galuppi studying at the Incurabili (both of which had appeared first in 1790 in Gerber’s Historisch-biographisches Lexicon der
Tonkünstler)30 had become commonplace:
The eighteenth century opened and produced, from its dawn, in Venice, the greatest as well as the most amiable composer of the famous school of this city. …He composed one opera after the next on leaving the
conservatory of the Incurabili, in which he had entered, and produced nothing other than compositions as learned as they were ingenious. …Gifted with the most brilliant and rich imagination, it is less due to purity of style as to originality that this composer has managed to earn the colossal and well-deserved reputation he has acquired.31
Two years later biographer Bartolommeo Gamba produced his 1824
Galleria dei Letterati ed Artisti illustri delle Provincie Veneziane. Gamba had been
employed as chief censor in Alvisopoli and later worked as provvisorio at the
30 Gerber, Historisch-biographisches Lexicon, 469-470. Anthony Chiuminatto
suggests that the three-year discrepancy for the year of Galuppi’s birth stems from the difference between the Venetian and Gregorian calendars. This is incorrect. (Anthony L. Chiuminatto, “The Liturgical Works of Baldassare,” PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1959, 38).
31 Grigorii Vladimirovich Orlov, Essai sur l'histoire de la musique en Italie depuis les temps les plus anciens jusqu'à nos jours (Paris: P. Dufart, 1822) 301-302. "Le dix-huitième siècle s'ouvre et produit, dès son aurore, dans Venise, le plus grand comme le plus aimable compositeur de l'école célebre de cette ville. […] Il composa
successivement d'autres opéra au sortir du Conservatoire des Incurabili, dans lequel il était entré, et ne produisit plus que compositions aussi savantes qu'ingénieuses. […] Doné de la plus brillante et de la plus riche imagination, c'est moins par la pureté du style que par l'originalité, que ce compositeur est parvenu à obtenir la réputation colossale et méritée qu'il a acquisé."
Biblioteca Marciana, and as such, corresponded with a great many scholars of his time who could have set him straight.32 Yet he not only perpetuated the same
misinformation as previous authors, but he added his own on top. In addition to misstating Galuppi's studies at the Incurabili he built upon the false birthdate to miscalculate Galuppi's age at the premiere of his Gl'Amici rivali, claiming it was the work of the composer as an eighteen-year-old.33
The next year, when Giovanni Battista Missiaglia published his 1825
Biografia universale antica e moderna, the author of the entry on Galuppi, a certain
M. F. Delaulnaye, built even further on this unstable foundation. After misstating Galuppi's birthdate, place of study, and age at his first opera premiere, he
extrapolated even further to confuse Galuppi's age in Russia and to claim that Galuppi had become head of the Incurabili. He also claimed that none of Galuppi's works had ever made it into print.34
As noted in the previous chapter, Emmanuele Cicogna attempted to dispel the Incurabili myth once and for all in 1842 in his Delle inscrizioni
Veneziane, but nobody seems to have noticed.35 Caffi, writing in 1854, hoped to
32 Bartolommeo Gamba, Alcune operette di Bartolommeo Gamba bassanese
(Milan: G. Silvestri, 1827), v-viii.
33 Bartolommeo Gamba, Galleria dei letterati ed artisti illustri delle provincie veneziane nel secolo XVIII (Bologna: A. Forni, 1975), 70.
34 M. F. Delaulnaye, Biografia Universale antica e moderna: ossia storia per alfabeto della vita pubblica e privata di tutte le persone che si distinsero per opere, azioni, talenti, virtù e delitti Vol. XXIII (Venice: Missiagliam, 1825), 150.
35 Emmanuele Antonio Cicogna, Delle inscrizioni Veneziane 5 (Venice:
resolve the confusion about Galuppi's birth year, writing, "A recent biography, written, as they are today, by many and used, frankly, by too many, assigned Galuppi's birth to the year 1703. The senior priest, whom I textually transcribe here, will remove any doubt: S. Martino di Burano, the 26th of October, 1706."36
But both these misperceptions have persisted in print well into the twentieth century, along with many others.