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The Tasche of Lucca: 150 years of Political Serenatas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1984

Gabriella Biagi-Ravenni  and
Carolyn Gianturco
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Extract

The real rise of Lucca dates from the end of the twelfth century when many of the nobility moved within the city walls, declared themselves ready to defend them, and chose a Podestà as their head. But the ensuing centuries found Lucca often in conflict with other comuni such as Florence and Modena, with the Church especially over control of the Garfagnana mountains, and with the nearby sea republic of Pisa which sacked Lucca in 1314 in order to form with it a strong ghibelline force against Florence. Due to a series of unfortunate political manoeuvres, Lucca next found itself tossed from one owner to another. First it was sold to Francesco Castracani, then to Gherardo Spinola, to John of Bohemia, to the Rossi of Parma, the Scaligeri of Verona, and to Florence from where it passed back to Pisa in 1342. In 1369 Emperor Charles IV freed Lucca of Pisa, and although he kept it somewhat under himself, he allowed it to write a statute as a republic in 1372. Unfortunately independence soon gave way to domination by Paolo Guinigi who managed to keep control from 1400 to 1430. Only then was Lucca once again able to assert itself as a republic, a situation it guarded proudly and jealously for three centuries, until 1799 when France and Austria began. alternately to occupy it. In 1805 Napoleon installed his sister Elisa Bonaparte and her husband Felice Baciocchi as rulers of what then became the Principality of Lucca.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 111 , 1984 , pp. 45 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

1 A brief general history of Lucca may be read in ‘Lucca’, Dizionario Enciclopedico Italiano (Rome, 1957), i, 114–145; for more detail, see Berengo, Marino, Nobili mercanti nella Lacca del Cinquecento (Turin, 1965; reprinted 1975); Rita Mazzei, La società lucchese del Seicento (Lucca, 1977); and Christine Meek, Lucca 1369–1400: Politics and Society in an Early Renaissance City-State (Oxford, 1978).Google Scholar

2 The only general history of music in Lucca is Luigi Nerici, Storia della Musica in Lucca (Lucca, 1879; reprinted Bologna, 1979), an excellent work for its time but in need of revision; see also Gabriella Biagi Ravenni, ‘Lucca’, Dizionario Enciclopedico Universale della Musica e dei Musicisti (Turin, 1984). Although Nerici and Alfredo Bonaccorsi, Giacomo Puccini e i suoi antenati musicali (Milan, 1950) discuss the ‘Tasche’, neither is adequately informed as to what they really were either politically or musically.Google Scholar

3 Archivio di Stato of Lucca (henceforth A.S.L.), Statuti del Comune di Lucca 13: Statutum Regiminis Reipublicae Lucensis. Factum et compositum per XII cives justa decretum Consilii Generalis de die 27 octobris 1446. Quorum civium auctoritas fuit pluries confirmala (henceforth Statutum 1446).Google Scholar

4 A.S.L., Consiglio Generale 36: Riformagiom pubbliche, 30 August 1531, f.108v.Google Scholar

5 A.S.L., Libri di Corredo alle Carte della Signoria 1: Autorità degli Offizi, f.85v.Google Scholar

6 Statutum 1446, cit. The elections first took place during the two-month term of office of January-February.Google Scholar

7 Riformagioni, cit., f. 109. Elections were then held in November-December.Google Scholar

8 A.S.L., Anziani al tempo della liberta 767: Collegi degli Anziani, 5 December 1750, unnumbered folios. Elections alternated now between May-June and November-December.Google Scholar

9 A.S.L., Consiglio Generale 699: Intascati e membri del consiglio, 14 May 1773. Elections were held in May-June.Google Scholar

10 According to the Statum 1446, cit. and Autorità, cit., ff. 6–7v and 84–84v, the voters were to be 64 (although things could get under way with only a two-third majority). These were comprised of six ‘boni cives lucani’ selected from each section of the city by the Anziani in office, plus an election committee called the Council of 36, plus the Elders and Gonfaloniere presently in office. After swearing to do their best leaving aside personal likes and dislikes, each voter made a single nomination which was written down by a chancellor and two clerics chosen by the Elders from different religious orders. All voted then on each name, placing a ball either in the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ ballot box. After each name, the votes were counted and whoever had a majority had won; voting continued until all had been elected.Google Scholar

11 Autoritá, cit., f.84.Google Scholar

12 A.S.L., Consiglio Generale 472: Leggi decretate dal Consiglio Generale, Libro E, f.1', 3 March 1583; ibid., Consiglio Generale 484: Varie collezioni di leggi e decreti, ff.5v-6; also Collegi degli Anziani, cit. [f.3v].Google Scholar

13 A.S.L., Consiglio Generale 474: Leggi decretate dal Consiglio Generale, Libro G, 1618–1630, f.140, 13 December 1627.Google Scholar

14 See the preface to the libretto Marcantonio (I-Lst, y III f 11).Google Scholar

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16 A.S.L., Libri di corredo alle Carte della Signoria 79: Cerimoniali per le gilt t visite, 1685 al 1758, ff.2–7.Google Scholar

17 A.S.L., Deposito dell'Isrituto Musicale Pacini 1–3: Giacomo Puccini (from 1781 Antonio Puccini), Libro delle Musiche Annue ed Avventizie: 1763 (Libro B, f. 187), 1773 (Libro C, f.169v), 1781 (Libro D, f.128), 1785 (Libro D, f.182); also A.S.L., Archivio Amolfini 191–192: Louise Palma Mansi, Memoires ou Notices á L'usage de L.P.M.: 1793 (p. 32), 1795 (p. 53), 1797 (p. 77).Google Scholar

18 A.S.L., Offizio sopra l'entrate 519: Scritture, unnumbered folios. Nerici, op. cit., p. 317, states that Giovanni Lunardo Dalli (Salvatore Dalli, Cronica di Lucca per Salvatore Dalli rifatta e accresciuta dal canonico Gian Lunardo Dalli, con indici alfabetici e cronologici. Dall'origine di usa città fino alt'anno 1650, A.S.L., Biblioteca manoscritti 9–14) wrote that there was music at the Tasche in 1589, but Nerici is mistaken as the relevant remarks were not part of the letter sent in 1589 by Nicolao Tucci to Alessandro Guidiccioni and inserted by Dalli in his Cronaca, but were comments added by Dalli himself and therefore refer to the seventeenth century. Proof of this is that Dalli speaks of the spheres mentioned above as being of silver, something introduced in the seventeenth century (see note 12).Google Scholar

19 The two elections years for which we have no texts are 1639 and 1642. Copies of all extant libretti are in the Biblioteca Statale of Lucca (those of 1755 and 1758 catalogued B.sta 645/7 and B.sta 690/20 respecitvely, the rest y III f 10–14) except that of 1797 which is in the Biblioteca Capitolare of Lucca (Fondo Martini 183).Google Scholar

20 They are at the Istituto Musicale ‘L. Boccherini’ of Lucca, in the Fondo Puccini.Google Scholar

21 Such as happened for example in Alma luce del Cielo of 1636.Google Scholar

22 The work was entitled Dialogo ‘Cinta di sacri allori’.Google Scholar

23 Entitled Olà Piragamo, olà Sterope, e Bronte.Google Scholar

24 600 copies were printed in 1657, 795 in 1660, 793 in 1663, 1,000 in 1666, and 1,500 in 1675 (A.S.L., Anziani al tempo della libertà 263: Deliberazioni, f.254v; ibid., 266, f.231; ibid., 269, f.24v; ibid., 272, f.252v; and Offizio sopra l'entrate 588: Scritture, fascicle of 28 December, receipt n.12 respectively).Google Scholar

25 In La Visione.Google Scholar

26 In Giunto là dove il gran pastore Paolino.Google Scholar

27 Entitled Bruto Costante.Google Scholar

28 In Lucio Giunio Bruto, Primo consolo di Roma.Google Scholar

29 In Solone.Google Scholar

30 All'hor, che rinnovella.Google Scholar

31 Io che d'orgoglio accesa.Google Scholar

32 Al lampeggiar di questi raggi d'oro and Olà Piragamo, cit.Google Scholar

33 Decembre consacrato al supremo magistrato.Google Scholar

34 Marcantonio.Google Scholar

35 1693, 1699 and 1717.Google Scholar

36 The same historical account was used as the basis for La Costanza nell'amor della Patria (1708) and II Narsete (1770); Marco Manlio Capitolino (1755 and 1777); II merito riconosciuto (first day of 1672) and La confederazione dei Sabini (1765); Lucio Emilio Paolo (1705) and L'Emilio (1785); Curzio, cavaliere romano (1753) and Marzio Curzio (1791). The very same libretto was used although changed for Tarquinio Collatino (1747 and 1758); Dione Siracusano (1732 and 1750); and II Castruccio (1781 and 1797).Google Scholar

37 Two sacred plots appeared in 1651 (see notes 25–26) and one in 1660 (Gl'avvanzi fortunati).Google Scholar

38 Antonio Puccini, op. cit., 1783, Libro D, f.155.Google Scholar

39 L'Arminio, second day of 1763 and Marco Manlio, second day of 1777.Google Scholar

40 For example, Julianne. Baird, The Vocal Serenata of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, unpublished M.A. thesis for the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, N.Y., 1976 and Michael Talbot, ‘Vivaldi's Serenatas: Long Cantatas or Short Operas?’, Antonio Vivaldi: Teatro musicale. Cultura e Società, ed. L. Bianconi and G. Morelli (Florence, 1982), i. especially pp. 67–79.Google Scholar

41 Op. cit. Giacomo's Tasche notices are reponed for 1750–63 in Libro B; 1765–73 in Libro C; and 1775–79 are in Libro D. Antonio continues the notices in the same diary for 1781–85, also in Libro D.Google Scholar

42 Musiche, Paghe del Prencipe, ed Altro which covers the period 1777–91 (now at the Lucca, Istituto Musicale ‘L. Boccherini’: Fondo Puccini AAVV. 40.Google Scholar

43 Op. cit., for the years 1793, 1795 and 1797.Google Scholar

44 Antonio Puccini has left us a drawing of the arrangement in his diary, op. cit., of 1781, Libro D, f.127v.Google Scholar

45 That all received a libretto is clear from the many relevant notices in the Puccini diary, op. cit. The passage quoted is by Giacomo, 1753, Libro B, f.58; see also his remarks in 1765, Libro C, f.41.Google Scholar

46 In Al lampeggiar di questi raggi.Google Scholar

47 The New Grove Dictionary lists the following libretti as having been written by Sbarra for Cesti: Alessandro vincitor di se stesso (Venice, 1651, but given in Lucca in 1654, the same year as La Nave d'Argo), Ventre cacciatrice (Innsbruck, 1659), La magnanimità d'Alessandro (Innsbruck, 1662), Nettuno e Flora festeggiante (Vienna, 1666), Le disgrazie d'Amore (Vienna, 1667), La Germania csultante, an equestrian ballet (Vienna, 1667), and II pomo d'oro (Vienna, 1668). Much original information is contained in Paola Cristofani's unpublished laurea thesis for the University of Pisa, Francesco Sbarra, Librettista lucchese del Seicento (1976).Google Scholar