Francesco Bartolomeo Conti: His Life and Music (review)

Francesco Bartolomeo Conti: His Life and Music. By Hermine Weigel Williams. Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate 1999. [xiv, 281 p. ISBN 1-85928-388-8. $79.95.]

Even after several decades--the jacket note refers to Hermine Weigel Williams's "more than thirty years of research"--this book still betrays to some extent its origins as a dissertation (Columbia University, 1964). But it has been enhanced in many respects and brought up to date, taking in and sometimes arguing with recent research findings such as those of Reinhard Strohm ("Scarlattiana at Yale," in Händel e gli Scarlatti a Roma: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi (Roma, 12-14 giugno 1985), ed. Nino Pirrotta and Agostino Ziino [Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1987], 113-52). With regard to the discussion of the music, the focus in Williams's dissertation on the operas of Francesco Bartolomeo Conti has been widened to include all the main genres of his works. The result is an authoritative synthesis of information and ideas on Conti's life and music that is fully worthy of its author's intense dedication to her subject.

Although in some ways the book complements earlier studies of Antonio Caldara (Antonio Caldara: Essays on His Life and Times, ed. Brian Pritchard [Aldershot, Hants: Scolar Press, 1987]) and Johann Joseph Fux (Johann Joseph Fux, ed. Harry White [Aldershot, Hants: Scolar Press, 1992]), Williams has taken a more systematic "life and works" approach, with part 1 (chaps. 1-6) treating the biography, and the lengthier part 2 (chaps. 7-12), the music. The appendixes usefully provide a bibliography of some dozen pages, documentary materials, an index of Conti's works, and a general index. With the evidently conscientious assembling of all these elements, it is surprising to find misprints scattered throughout; although these are minor matters, they disturb the effect (e.g., "melsima," p. 110) and sometimes contradict the intended meaning (e.g., "How soon Conti actually resumed his court obligations remains known," p. 7). Yet the author herself is explicitly critical of others' errors, showing a tendency to correct these reprovingly. My overall impression of her own work, though, is certainly one of scholarly competence, and her general comments on Conti's music are founded on a deep knowledge that enables her to provide comparative perspective from within the oeuvre as well as from the broader context.

The writing is consistent in tone, but Williams's intended readership is somewhat uncertain; while her likely readers will presumably be specialists, Williams explains commonly understood phenomena such as the difference between French and Italian overtures (p. 83). (It is preferable, however, to offer possibly superfluous information rather than give too little explanation.) When considering complex issues, Williams is not always consistent in the position she takes. She refers to Conti's "progression toward the creation of sonata forms in his instrumental music" (p. 87) in connection with works as early as 1719, subsequently acknowledging the controversial nature of this assertion with reference to Charles Rosen's Sonata Forms (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980); she then formulates the point more cautiously (p. 91), but later wavers again, writing of a sinfonia in which "the design of sonata forms is operative in the first movement" (p. 101). Problems of anachronistic terminology surface here.

The Florentine-born Conti (1682-1732), who worked with Fux and Caldara at the highly Italianate musical establishment of the Habsburg court in Vienna, was mentioned by contemporary commentators (including Johann Adolph Scheibe) alongside respected figures like Benedetto Marcello, George Frideric Handel, and Johann David Heinichen. Conti made his most distinctive contribution to eighteenth-century musical life as a virtuoso theorbist; it was in this capacity, and also as a mandolinist, that he appeared on the London concert scene in 1707, as Williams documents. London audiences also heard Conti's stage music; Williams painstakingly traces the use of his music in pasticcio operas on the London stage, noting that his "involvement with musical events outside Vienna did not jeopardize his...