Riviste Polifonie/119_2005 n 2.pdf - Fondazione Guido d'Arezzo

MARCO GOZZI
library and the fact that it also acted as a college and seminary. 3
Both this early period of training and his study of counterpoint with the
Servite Salvatore Essenga can be seen as the vital factors behind Vecchi’s
great musical expertise and probably also his special regard for sacred music
and plainchant.
Vecchi’s sacred output has been scantly published, studied and performed.
Apart from Rüegge’s important work, written almost forty years ago, 4 there
are no thorough studies of his sacred polyphony. And yet for most of his life
he occupied positions as maestro di cappella, directing the chapels in Salò,
then Modena, Reggio Emilia (for just a few months), Correggio and again
Modena.
Neither the encyclopaedias nor the dictionaries make any mention of his
belonging to religious orders, but in the Capitolo autobiografico he mentions
wearing a habit. 5 Given that he was buried in the church of the Carmelites he
may indeed have been a Carmelite friar. In any case this is a matter that needs
further investigation, for it has considerable implications on his biography
and, more specifically, his liturgical training.
Among Vecchi’s sacred compositions there are also polyphonic works
based on plainchant, such as the Hymni qui per totum annum in Ecclesia
Romana concinuntur, Partim brevi stilo super plano cantu … elaborati cum 4
vocibus, published in Venice in 1604 (the year before his death). I will not,
however, dwell on these works (which could perhaps be the subject of another
paper), but will instead draw attention briefly to a didactic work entitled
Mostra delli tuoni della musica, which is in fact a treatise on polyphony, and
not on plainchant. 6 A manuscript copy of the work, dated 1630, is preserved
3
As Lazzarelli observed nel 1711: “continuamente alimentavansi molti giovani Monaci per
istruirli nelle Lingue Latina, e Greca, e nella teologia, sotto ottimi Lettori, com’è a tutti noto”,
MAURO ALESSANDRO LAZZARELLI O.S.B., Informazione dell'Archivio di S. Pietro di Modena, 11
voll. (1-7: final version, 8-11: draft), ms. in I-MOe, ital. 1001 = α.R 8.1-11, 1710-12 (voll. 1-
6), 1712-1729 (vol. 7), vol. 3, p. 50; Lazzarelli draw this information from a protest sent in
1567 by the monks to the bishop’s vicar in which they gave reasons for being exempted from
the contribution that the religious orders of Modena were called upon to pay for the establishment
of the city’s new seminary: among the reasons was precisely the fact that they themselves
carried out the functions of a seminary for the monks.
4
RAIMOND RÜEGGE, Orazio Vecchis geistliche Werke, Bern-Stuttgart, Haupt, 1967 (Publikationen
der Schweizerischen musikforschenden Gesselschaft, Serie II, 15).
5
“Fatti lingua, dico io, fatti d’acciaio / ch’a ragionar de’ vostri chiari gesti / bisogna ch’io mi
stracci e cavi il saio”, quoted in ROSSANA DALMONTE - MASSIMO PRIVITERA, Gitene, canzonette.
Studio e trascrizione delle Canzonette a sei voci d’Horatio Vecchi (1587), Florence, Olschki,
1996, p. 10.
6
ORAZIO VECCHI, Mostra delli tuoni della musica, introduction and transcription by Maria Pollastri,
presentation by Paolo Marenzi, Modena, Aedes muratoriana, 1987 (Biblioteca della
Deputazione di storia patria per le antiche provincie modenesi, N.S., 93).
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