The Music Library of a Noble Florentine Family: A Catalogue Raisonné of Manuscripts and Prints of the 1720s to the 1850s collected by the Ricasoli Family now housed in the University of Louisville Music Library ed. by Susan Parisi, John Carr, Caterina Pampaloni, and Robert Lamar Weaver (review)

The title page of this book contains (in addition to the main title) further information about its contents and the individual contributions of those named above: ‘With essays on the History of the Collection and on Music in the Ricasoli Chapels and Households by Robert Lamar Weaver. Edited by Susan Parisi. Catalogue compiled by John Karr, Caterina Pampaloni, and Robert Lamar Weaver’.

In her preface, Susan Parisi explains the recent history of the collection catalogued here. In 1984 an antiquarian bookdealer in Florence began offering for sale a large number of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century musical manuscripts and prints. Robert Weaver, who has devoted his life to the study of music in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Florence, quickly recognized that this music came from a single private collection, which turned out to be that the Ricasoli family of Tuscany. Weaver felt strongly that the Ricasoli Collection should remain intact and accessible to scholars. He embarked on a campaign to raise money for its purchase, and as a result of his efforts the collection (except for the items sold individually before the purchase organized by Weaver) is now preserved at the University of Louisville, where Weaver taught for many years.

This book reflects the research that Weaver and his colleagues have devoted to the Ricasoli Collection during the quarter-century since its arrival in Louisville. It begins with two essays by Weaver. The first follows the complex history of three interweaving branches of the Ricasoli family, associating the largest and most important part of the collection with the musical activities of the branch known as the Ricasoli Zanchini, and in particular the music-loving Pietro Leopoldo Ricasoli Zanchini (born in 1777) and his wife Lucrezia Rinuccini (born in 1779). The second essay uses documents from the Ricasoli family archive to explore the music-making of Pietro Leopoldo and his family and the lavish programmes of church music (open to the public) that they sponsored in their private chapel. The essays are full of valuable new information, but organized a little haphazardly.

The catalogue follows the organization of an inventory of the Ricasoli Collection made in 1879. It divides the collection into three categories: Secular Music; Sacred Music; and Method, Theory, and History Books. Within each category the catalogue arranges works and sets of works by composer, in alphabetical order (with anonymous works at the end), assigning a number to each work or set of works. Included in the catalogue (and identified with an asterisk) are items bought from the collection before the University of Louisville acquired it. Their presence here is useful, making the catalogue a record of the collection not only as it is now but also as it was when more or less complete in 1879.

The catalogue gives musical incipits for manuscripts, except in the case of works by composers whose works are well documented in thematic catalogues and modern editions. Each entry provides a detailed description of the item. It quotes from Florence’s Gazzetta toscana announcements of the publication or performance of works in the Ricasoli Collection. It provides bibliographical references. The catalogue concludes with a comprehensive bibliography and index.

Some numbered items consist of individual pieces of music, varying greatly in length (for example, Secular Music No. 79 is the keyboard part for a single quartet for keyboard and strings by Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi; Secular Music No. 196 is a manuscript copy of Antonio Sacchini’s aria ‘So che fedel non è quel core’; and Secular Music No. 142 is...