Sonate Sinfonie: Canzoni, Passemezzi, Balletti, Correnti, Gagliarde, & Ritornelli, a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 voci per ogni sorte di stromento, Opera VIII (review)

With this imprint we finally have modern editions of most of Biagio Marini's instrumental music. For the same publisher in 1990 Franco Piperno edited Op. 1 (Affetti musicali (1617)), and in 1996 Ottavio Beretta edited Op. 22 (Per ogni sorte di strumento musicale, Libro terzo (1655)); now Maura Zoni gives us what is perhaps the most significant of the three extant instrumental volumes, Op. 8, serendipitously first published in 1629. A facsimile reprint of Op. 8 appeared in 2004 (Studio per edizioni scelte, no. 89); it was made from the only extant copy, held by the Biblioteka Uniwersytecka at Wrocław. Although well restored in 1972, the copy is imperfect, lacking pages in the the Canto primo and Basso continuo partbooks. To supplement the missing pages of the musical text, Zoni has had recourse to the transcription made early in the last century by Alfred Einstein, which is held at Smith College, Northampton, Mass.

Op. 8 is plagued by confusion regarding its date of publication. The dedicatory letter is dated July 1626 in four of the six partbooks and October 1626 in the Canto secondo; the Canto primo is undated. Zoni asserts that the dates printed on the title pages, MDCXXV (Canto primo) and MDCXXVI, were later altered to read MDCXXVIIII. She constructs a plausible version of the tortuous publication history: begun in 1625 with the printing of Canto primo, then delayed while Marini sought a new patron (hence the missing dedication page in Canto primo), continued in 1626 with a dedication to the Spanish Infanta and Archduchess of Austria, Isabella Clara Eugenia (whose Brussels court Marini had visited in 1624), then held up again as a result of problems at the Venetian press of Bartolomeo Magni. Volumes by Dario Castello (Libro 2, 1629f ), Ottavio Maria Grandi (1628d), and Marini's own Opp. 7 and 9 were also delayed during those years (Zoni, pp. xiv-xvi). Unaccountably, the facsimile reprint replaces the dedication page dated October with the July version—a salutary reminder not always to rely on such reprints for bibliographic study, however convenient they may be for access to the musical texts more or less in their original state. The confusion surrounding the date of publication is also reflected in Claudio Sartori's revision of his original (ironically, correct) catalogue entry from 1629g to 1626m (Bibliografia della musica strumentale italiana, Vol. 2 (1968)).

As well as unravelling the publication history, Zoni has added to our knowledge of Marini's biography, building on the substantial groundwork laid down by Beretta in the preface to his edition of Op. 22. (Unfortunately, both of these prefaces and that of Piperno are given only in Italian, which may limit the readership.)The standard reference books and earlier editions of Marini's music have proposed a birth date anywhere between 1587 and 1603. Marini was actually born on 3 February 1594, as indicated in the baptismal record registered three days later (Beretta, p. xviii). His death certificate states that he died 'after being ill for twenty days with fever'on 17 November 1663 'at about seventy-six years of age' (Beretta, pp. xvii-xviii)—hence the references to a birth year of 1587. Yet, long after that document had been made known several sources continued to assert that the composer died in 1665 or 1666.

Zoni has now tried to fill in the lacunae between Marini's employment as a young man inVenice, Brescia, Parma, and Neuburg an der Donau (1615-28) and his permanent return to northern Italy by 1648. Marini was recruited for the palatine court of Wolfgang Wilhelm in Neuburg when Giacomo Negri, the maestro di cappella there, visited Parma in 1620. Documents Zoni introduces suggest that Marini and Negri were continually at odds, which may help to explain why the young violinist was back...