Ferdinando Giorgetti

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.

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. 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.

It was from that moment in his life that he perfected counterpoint with Disma Ugolini (1755-1828)[1], 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.

• Illustration — Commemorative plaque placed on the Giorgetti’s villa located at Via Ricasoli 47 in Florence, in front of the entrance to the Galleria dell'Accademia. 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. 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.

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 Italy). He promoted many performances of quartets (often for their first Italian performance), 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. However, Giorgetti didn’t disregard other genres of instrumental and symphonic music, 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.

His commitment gained favor of many composers, from Louis Spohr to François-Joseph Fétis, from Antonio Bazzini 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 1838 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.

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).

Getting weaker and weaker from his paralysis, he became interested in the destiny of old musicians. He donated many of his earning to institutions that offer assistance. His involvement as a teacher and publicist continued almost until his death, but he almost completely ceased to compose after 1862. He died in his house in Via Ricasoli in 1867.

The institution that preserves the greatest number of his autographs is the Conservatory Luigi Cherubini in Florence followed by the Palatina Library in Parma, and the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels. In Brussels, at the Royal Library of Belgium, you can also find the autograph of the third quartet, which Giorgetti dedicated to Fétis. The autograph of the Ouverture I, dated 1840 and dedicated to Poniatowski, was found by the pianist Gregorio Nardi in Florence and today is looked after in his private Florentine archive. The Pacini Collection of the Carlo Magnani Library in Pescia, and the Conservatories of Brussels and Florence all look after an autographed copy of Dies Irae, the only piece that remains of the Messa da Requiem which Giorgetti dedicated to Giovanni Pacini in 1843: on the frontispiece of these documents, there is a note from the composer which indicated how counterfeit copies are made lacking his autograph. The Philharmonic Academy of Bologna preserves the autograph of the Gran quintetto, at one time dedicated by Giorgetti to the librarian Masseangelo Masseangeli, then published by Ricordi in 1847 and rededicated first to the students and then to Poniatowski. The Greggiati Collection in Ostiglia contains the autograph of the Ave Maria, op. 35 in a version arranged for orchestra (the autograph of the original version for piano, harp or quartet is at the Conservatory of Florence). The autograph of the seventh quartet for strings was only recently discovered at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

The majority of the contemporary manuscripts of his work are at the Conservatory of Florence and the Hofburgkapelle in Vienna. After which, manuscripts are found at the Noseda Collection of the Conservatory of Milan, the Capitolary Archive in Pistoia, the Sasso Collection at the Accademia Santa Cecilia of Rome, the Paganini Conservatory of Genoa, and Arezzo Historic Archive. A unique contemporary copy of Giorgetti’s works are preserved at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice, in the Greggiati Collection in Ostiglia, at the Biblioteca Statale in Cremona, at the Biblioteca Domenicini in Perugia, at the Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella in Naples, and, abroad, at the Abteilung Musik, Theater, Film della Universitätsbibliothek «Johann Christian Senckenberg» in Frankfurt, at the Sibley Music Library part of the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester (New York), and in the Galeazzi Collection at the Irving Gilmore Music Library at Yale University in New Haven (Connecticut).

Giorgetti mostly composed for violin (2 concerti) and for strings (eight quartets and numerous pieces for two violins, and violin and viola), but he also dedicated his time to sacred music with messe and oratorios, and some symphonic experiments. He arranged many themes by Vincenzo Bellini, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Louis Spohr for strings. He also composed songs for soprano, as well as compositions for harp, piano, clarinet and flute (the concerto from 1818).