Ferdinando Giorgetti (23 June 1796 in Florence, Italy – 23 March 1867 in Florence, ItalyGiorgetti, Ferdinando, in Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti, edited Alberto Basso, serie II: Le biografie, vol. 3: FRA-JA, Torino, UTET, 1986, p. 210.) was a composer, violinist, educator and Italian publicist.
Life Child prodigy and royal teacher
Giorgetti, a child prodigy, started studying violin with Giovanni Francesco Giuliani at five years old and continued on this path for 9 years. However, nothing is known regarding his education of composition, so it is most probable that he was self-taught. The publications from that time mention him as the private violin instructor of Carlo II of Borbone-Parma, but no specific dates are given. Rumors originate from the fact that Giorgetti, in 1840, dedicated a complex sacred oratorio for choir and a large orchestra, Le turbe nel deserto, to Carlo II. The frontispiece of the autograph (today found in Parma, see Sources) affirm being given to the prince «i primi elementi di musica e restommi scolpito mai sempre nel cuore» («I gave the Prince his first education in music, and he remained struck in my heart»). Research into the lives of both of them indicates that it is probable that the dates of their lessons were 1808, so, if this is in fact true, twelve-year-old Giorgetti taught the 9-year-old prince.Claudio Paradiso, La vita e l'opera, in Claudio Paradiso (ed.), Il cavalier Ferdinando Giorgetti musicista romantico a Firenze, Roma, Società Editrice di Musicologia, 2015, pp. 17-79.
First soloist experiences and paralysis
In 1811, Elisa Bonaparte hired him as her personal violinist («Chamber Violin of the Queen of Etruria»), and he traveled with her in Spain and France until 1814, the year in which two central occurrences took place in his life: the fall of Napoleon and the contraction of a mysterious disease affecting his nervous system which left him paralyzed from the hips down.A condition of disability that some scholars observed to be perfectly contemporary to that of Giacomo Leopardi. See Marcello De Angelis, Introduzione to Claudio Paradiso (ed.), Il cavalier Ferdinando Giorgetti musicista romantico a Firenze, Roma, Società Editrice di Musicologia, 2015, pp. 9-17. Because of the loss of his job, and above all, his paralysis, he was forced to leave his career as a soloist and dedicate his efforts to composition, teaching, musical publicity, and the organization of events and performances.
First success as a composer
It was from that moment in his life that he perfected counterpoint with Disma Ugolini (1755-1828), learning the methods in practice, derived from the experienced didactics of Antonin Reicha, who was a classmate of Beethoven and teacher of not only Ugolini, but also Franck, Adam, Berlioz and Liszt. In 1817, despite his paralysis, he traveled to Germany to publish his compositions in Leipzig, at Breitkopf & Härtel publishers (their relation lasted until 1825). In 1818, he composed a concerto for flute, extraordinarily and curiously similar to the second concerto that Saverio Mercadante wrote for the same instrument in 1819. In 1825, he won (tied with Luigi Ferdinando Casamorata) a competition by the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze centered around the putting to music of the cantata Il Ciclope by Pietro Metastasio.
Publicist and Fame: the union between German tradition and Italian singability
In 1828, the fame of Giorgetti as a composer, teacher, and publicist was established in Florence because he most furiously participated in a written debate regarding German influence in the didactics of Italian music. In the periodicals, space was given to the prevalent idea that there was an excessive penetration of German taste inside the classrooms of the conservatories, while Giorgetti, on the contrary, affirmed that the study of Germans of the Classical period (Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven) was instead essential in acquiring the necessary knowledge that permitted Italian singability to be expressed well. Giorgetti proposed a sort of union between German and Italian style, which in this era were considered to be incompatible. He pointed to Gioachino Rossini as the ultimate example of that union. Rossini was taught through German examples during his education in Bologna; indeed, he was given the nickname “"il tedeschino" (the little German). Giorgetti was given the nickname “il tedescone" (the big German) for his fondness of Teutonic artistry. That fondness found fertile ground in the Germanophile Tuscany, ruled by Habsburg-Lorraine.Marcello De Angelis, Firenze - Vienna. Un magico incontro, in Antonio Carlini (ed.), Accademie e Società Filarmoniche. Organizzazione, cultura e attività dei filarmonici nell'Italia dell'Ottocento. Atti del convegno di studi nel Bicentenario di fondazione della Società Filarmonica di Trento (Trento 1-3 dicembre 1995), Trento, Provincia di Trento/Società Filarmonica di Trento, 1998, pp. 439-446. In 1827, on the frontispiece of Tre trj di una difficoltà progressiva (dedicated to Paganini) he indicates «first violin of the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany», and thanks to the support of the court (members to which Giorgetti dedicated numerous compositions), he began promoting instrumental music and cultured European musical language, an activity to which he dedicated all of his energy as a composer, teacher and orchestral conductor.
Preference for the quartet
The quartet was a privileged object of interest in his work, and was, at that time, used infrequently by Italian composers. He considered the quartet to be the maximum expression of the art of music (and believes to be heir of the great European approach to the quartet, which at the time a myth considered created in ItalyIn the 1800s the nationalistic certainty that the quartet was invented by the following Italians, Giuseppe Cambini, Filippo Manfredi, Luigi Boccherini and Pietro Nardini circulated. A conviction fed by the fact that one of the first to ever speak about the quartet, in a written text, both regarding formation and genre, was Giuseppe Cambini in 1804. This belief was considered to be truth for a long time, but today, given the difficulty in proving so, was put into perspective by historians. On this topic see Dieter Lutz Trimpert, Die Quatuors concertants von Giuseppe Cambini, Tutzing (Baviera), Schneider, 1967; Chappell White, Jean Gribenski, Amzie D. Parcell, Cambini, Giuseppe Maria (Gioacchino), in The New Grove of Music and Musicians. Second Edition, edited by Stanley Sadie, executive editor John Tyrrell, vol. 4: Borowski to Canobbio, London, Macmillan, 2001-2002, pp. 858-86; and the introduction of Marcello De Angelis to Claudio Paradiso (ed.), Il cavalier Ferdinando Giorgetti musicista romantico a Firenze, Roma, Società Editrice di Musicologia, 2015, pp. 9-15.). He promoted many performances of quartets (often for their first Italian performance Paolo Paolini, Beethoven a Firenze nell'Ottocento, in «Nuova rivista musicale italiana», V/5 (1971) e V/6 (1971), Torino, ERI, 1971, pp. 753-787 e pp. 973-1002.), as well as for private events organized by Giorgetti himself, which were often held at his house (in Via Ricasoli in Florence). In addition, he created incentives for popularized the genre with arrangements from the great German quartets, and he himself composed eight string quartets.Ennio Speranza, Una pianta fuori di clima. Il quartetto per archi in Italia da Verdi a Casella, Torino, EDT, 2013.Ennio Speranza, Il cavaliere del quartetto, in Claudio Paradiso (ed.), Il cavalier Ferdinando Giorgetti musicista romantico a Firenze, Roma, Società Editrice di Musicologia, 2015, pp. 125-134.Sergio Martinotti, Ottocento strumentale italiano, Bologna, Forni, 1972. However, Giorgetti didn’t disregard other genres of instrumental and symphonic music,Antonio Rostagno, La sinfonia italiana nel periodo di Rossini. Comportamenti, teoria e pratica, in Antonio Carlini (ed.), Accademie e Società Filarmoniche in Italia. Studi e ricerche, Trento, Filarchiv/Società Filarmonica di Trento, 2003, pp. 203-275. and like many orchestral conductors (one of the last “director-violinists”, before becoming solely a conductor like Teodulo Mabellini, his compatriot and contemporary, and Angelo Mariani), performed sacred masterpieces by Haydn and Rossini in Florence in order to demonstrate that a same substance connected both German and Italian tradition. In addiction, Giorgetti rediscovered numerous composers of the past.
Affinity to other composers
His commitment gained favor of many composers, from Louis Spohr to François-Joseph Fétis, from Antonio BazziniSome letters from Bazzini to Giorgetti are preserved in the Ricordi Archive in Milan, where they have been digitalized. They are available on Internet Culturale . See also Claudio Sartori, L'avventura del violino. L'Italia musicale dell'Ottocento nella biografia e nei carteggi di Antonio Bazzini, Torino, ERI, 1978. to Giovanni Pacini, to Giuseppe Poniatowski, to whom Giorgetti dedicated works and offered hospitality in his villa in Via Ricasoli. He maintained sincere friendships with Niccolò Paganini, for whom he composed many pieces for violin, with Franz Liszt, who he met in Florence in 1838Gregorio Nardi, «Mon cher monsieur Giorgetti»: l'incontro con Franz Liszt a Firenze nel 1838, in Claudio Paradiso (ed.), Il cavalier Ferdinando Giorgetti musicista romantico a Firenze, Roma, Società Editrice di Musicologia, 2015, pp. 81-103 and, above all, with Gioacchino Rossini. When he was a guest of Giorgetti’s in Florence, Rossini was at the mercy of his depression and nervous crises, which Giorgetti tried to help remedy by showing Rossini his own greater suffering caused by his paralysis.Mario Fabbri, Ignoti momenti rossiniani: le segrete confessioni a Ferdinando Giorgetti e le sconosciute variazioni per Alessandro Abate (1817), in «Chigiana», vol. XXV, serie 5 (1968), Firenze, Olschki, 1968, pp. 265-285. Sui rapporti tra i due vedi anche Franco Schlitzer, Contributi all'epistolario rossiniano: giudizio sopra un sestetto di Ferdinando Giorgetti, in «Bollettino del Centro rossiniano di studi», 2 (1956), Pesaro, Fondazione Rossini, 1956, pp. 29 ssgg.
Refusal of opera
The national tendency of the public, however, remained that of developing a passion for lyric opera instead of for instrumental music, which was a fact that threw Giorgetti into a rage. He stigmatized the exaggerated patronage of opera of his compatriots, and believed that the young Giuseppe Verdi was a corruptor of Italian musical traditions, and that Ricordi publishers was a guilty accomplice (in 1856 Giorgetti also interrupted his fine and at that point good relations with the Milanese publisher because of his operatic inclination).
Teaching
He continued to promote instrumental music throughout his life, both as a teacher and as a publicist. Some of his students were Luigi Bicchierai, Luigi Laschi, Carlo Verardi and Jefte Sbolci, to whom he dedicated many studies and for whom he wrote a few methods (the most famous is the method for viola written in 1854, and then printed again by Ricordi in 1902).Franco Sciannameo, Riflessioni sul «Metodo per esercitarsi a ben suonare l'alto-viola», in Claudio Paradiso (ed.), Il cavalier Ferdinando Giorgetti musicista romantico a Firenze, Roma, Società Editrice di Musicologia, 2015, pp. 105-124.
The Rivista Musicale of Florence: influence on Basevi