Gaetano Brunetti (1744–1798): Catálogo crítico, temático y cronológico (review)

The musician or music historian whose interest in Gaetano Brunetti may have been fired by hearing one of Newell Jenkins’ recordings of the symphonies (this assuming she has a turntable: they were made in the 1960s)—or perhaps by some unusually adventurous programming on the part of a violinist or chamber group, working off the handful of published editions—will find her initial impressions tersely confirmed by the authors of the entry for Gaetano Brunetti in Grove Music Online, who aver the “unusual imagination” of this composer. (Alice B. Belgray and Newell Jenkins, “Brunetti, Gaetano,” Grove Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/04179 [accessed 19 February 2009]). This assessment is expanded upon in the Grove Music Online article on the Symphony:

Brunetti’s highly original symphonies . . . include a number of stormy works with an unusually high proportion of minor tonalities matched by abrupt rhythms and jagged melodic lines. His music is effective in performance and appealing for its Haydnesque rhythmic verve and taut continuity.

(Jan Larue, et al. “Symphony” [rev. 27 April 2006], Grove Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/27254pg1 [accessed 19 February 2009], at I/13: “Other Centres.”)

Should our musician or musicologist wish to follow up on her initial interest, however, with a more systematic perusal of Brunetti’s music, she will find herself directly in rather deep bibliographical waters—too deep for the great majority of those who might be in a position to make this music heard. Some of Brunetti’s music exists in modern editions—a signal effort was made thirty years ago, when Jenkins edited the symphonies (Newell Jenkins, ed., The Symphony: Gaetano Brunetti, in The Symphony, 1720–1840, ed. Barry Brook. Series A, no. 5. [New York: Garland, 1979])—but the selection of his other works currently available to performers can hardly be called comprehensive. As for aids to research: a catalog was produced in the nineteenth century by Louis Labitte, a Parisian collector; this has never been published. More recent catalogs have been partial and genre-based: Jenkins published a catalog of the symphonies in his edition, and there are two North American dissertations (Alice Belgray catalogs the violin sonatas in her “Gaetano Brunetti: An Exploratory Bio-bibliographical Study” [Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1970], while René Ramos essays another treatment of the symphonies in “The Symphonies of Gaetano Brunetti” [Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1997]). Neither dissertation has been published by a commercial or academic press.

This sketchy situation has been vastly improved by the 2005 publication of Germán Labrador’s catalog of the works of Brunetti. This is the first comprehensive treatment of the work of this interesting composer, and it is a model of responsible and thoughtful scholarship. The first half of the book consists of a thematic and chronological catalog of the 346 works whose existence Labrador has been able to confirm (some being lost, but attested in earlier thematic catalogs); the second half offers a composer biography, details of the sources and of the principles used in establishing chronology, and supplementary information about each genre of Brunetti’s work. A particular courtesy to Anglophone readers is the inclusion of a translated introduction presenting the current state of research and publication on Brunetti and handily summarizing editorial policy.

The catalog proper divides Brunetti’s production into instrumental and vocal music. Instrumental music, the great bulk of Brunetti’s production, is further sectionalized by instrumentation in increasing numbers, from violin sonatas through duos, trios, quartets, etc, up through symphonies; vocal music is divided into secular and sacred. Within each subsection, Labrador has attempted to establish chronological order, a particularly thorny undertaking, since almost all of the sources are in manuscript and only some are dated. Only in the symphonies does...