# Italian non-opera music after Boccherini?



## PaHaydnAdventure (Dec 27, 2019)

Compared to the folks on this site, I'm definitely a classical music novice. As I have a chance to take in more pieces and from different eras, I wonder, what happened in Italian music other than opera during the 1800's? Between say Boccherini and Respighi, nearly all the big composer names are famous for their operas.

Would you have recommendations for non-choral orchestral music, concertos, chamber music from Italy during the 1800's?


-Mostly a lurker, first time poster here, thanks!


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

I'm sure others will give you more obscure composers to look into, but the only non-operatic Italian composer of the 19th century that springs immediately to my head is Niccolo Paganini, by all anecdotes the greatest violinist of all time though his compositions usually leave me cold.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Tough one. There's Luigi Cherubini, whom Beethoven regarded as an equal. I'm not familiar with his music but there are those here who really like his work. There's Ferruccio Busoni, but he may have been more prolific in the 20th century than the 19th, but still at least he's older than Respighi. I would say that the Italians' heyday in music was the late Renaissance, all of the Baroque, and then the 20th century and on. 

Following the thread because I'm curious myself.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Cherubini string quartets






Clementi, one of the most influential keyboardists of the Transition period- his Gradus ad Parnassum Op.44 (1817~1826) influenced Chopin in various Etudes and Preludes such as Op.10 No.6


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

You might try the music of Giuseppe Martucci who as a composer and teacher was influential in reviving Italian interest in non-operatic music. Unlike most Italian composers of his generation he wrote no operas. He was an internationally renown pianist. He taught composition to Respighi. Fellow composer Gian Francesco Malipiero said of Martucci's second symphony that it was "the beginning of the rebirth of non-operatic Italian music."


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

*Muzio Clementi *(1752-1832) wrote at least 4 symphonies, a piano concerto, and piano music worth hearing. His Grand National Symphony (No. 3) is the most often played, well known and liked. I like the D'Avalos recording with Philharmonia Orchestra. There are many recordings; one is attached.

*Niccolo Paganini *(1782-1840) wrote a famous violin concerto No. 1 and caprices for violin everyone plays and many record. I especially enjoy his Violin Concerto No. 1 that Kreisler amended into a single movement concerto, especially Alfredo Campoli's rendition that was once on a London LP.

*Giovanni Viotti* (1755-1824) wrote a bunch of violin concertos; many record No. 22. He also wrote a double concerto for violin and piano I greatly enjoy. I most enjoy Suzanne Lautenbacher's recording, now probably only available via download.

The famed opera writer *Giocchino Rossini *(1792-1868) wrote piano music including Sins Of My Old Age, a not very well known Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra whose origin may be dubious, and a half-dozen Wind Quartets that are delightful. Seems to me the quartets started life on another or other instruments but the wind versions are most popular.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Mauro Giuliani (1781 – 1829) was an Italian guitarist, cellist, singer, and composer best known for his guitar music.

Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848), prolific opera composer, also wrote piano music, chamber music, and a requiem.

Giovanni Bottesini (1821–1889) was a double bass virtuoso who wrote works for that instrument, most notably concertos.

Giovanni Sgambati (1841-19140 composed for piano, chamber ensembles and orchestra, avoiding opera altogether.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Not mentioned yet I think, but Amilcare Ponchielli (1834-1886), most famous for his opera La Gioconda, composed interesting orchestral music, including a euphonium concerto.


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## PaHaydnAdventure (Dec 27, 2019)

Thank you for the replies!

It seems interesting to me that there was such a gap. Did musicians and/or the public really lose interest in non-operatic music to such a degree?


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

I don't know. Wikipedia says this about18th century Italian music: 

"The physical plant for composition and performance of music in Italy advanced greatly during this century. It is the period in which the great opera houses in Naples and Milano were built: the San Carlo Theater and La Scala, respectively. It is the age, as well, of the rise to prominence of the Neapolitan—and then Italian—Comic opera. Important, too, is refinding of some sense of balance between text and music in opera, largely through the librettos of Metastasio."

We know musicians everywhere tend to follow trends.


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## AeolianStrains (Apr 4, 2018)

PaHaydnAdventure said:


> Thank you for the replies!
> 
> It seems interesting to me that there was such a gap. Did musicians and/or the public really lose interest in non-operatic music to such a degree?


i wonder if it might not have been due to the political climate. Late-18th and early-19th-century Italy (and France) was in turmoil from revolution. Post-Napoleon, the Hapsburgs, centered in Vienna, largely controlled Italy, so the money to pay for composers largely went there or Germany, which was again aristocratic. I think this is why we also see a flourishing of eastern European composers in the 19th century. Some Italians went elsewhere, like Salieri to Vienna.

But opera was rather profitable, far more than other outputs from what I understand, so it survived more healthily in Italy than other forms.

Again, just an idea.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

PaHaydnAdventure said:


> It seems interesting to me that there was such a gap. Did musicians and/or the public really lose interest in non-operatic music to such a degree?


It seems to have been partly owing to the influence of French and German Enlightenment ideas concerning music as expressed in the _Encyclopedie_, a work which had great influence over all aspects of European cultural thought, including Italy, and the thought of Hegel and Kant. D'Alembert, for example, wrote that absolute music, i.e. music that portrays nothing, was 'mere noise, scarcely more pleasurable than a succession of sonorous words lacking proper order and interconnection'. Rousseau, an impassioned Italophile who was very influential among cultured Italians, tells how music had declined because 'whilst melody had begun by being closely modeled on speech, it gradually took on a separate existence, and music became increasingly independent of words.' Kant viewed musicians with some suspicion as being limited in culture. He called music in itself 'more entertainment than culture' and that it attained the status of a fine art only when it served as a vehicle for poetry.

Many people influenced by these and similar ideas came to see music by itself as an art of no great consequence. Italians of the time had little use for instrumental music since it was devoid of poetry, an attitude which was in keeping with a rich tradition of thought that viewed with regret the separation and independence of the arts.


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