Francesco Bartolomeo Conti

His Life and Music

Hermine Weigel Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138317253
• eBook ISBN: 9780429838064
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Biografías musicales

First Published in 1999, Hermine Weigel Williams' study draws on more than thirty years of research to fill this noticeable lacuna, and presents here the first full scale life and works of the composer for over ninety years. Part One of the book surveys the biographical aspects of Conti's career. Appointed court theorist at the age of nineteen, Conti was promoted to court composer in 1713-14. Williams examines Conti's creative collaborations with some of the leading poet-librettists of the day, and the influence of his music that can be identified in works by Telemann, Bach and Handel. Part Two comprises close analyses of Conti's compositions: his instrumental music, cantatas, operas, intermezzos, oratorios and sacred music. Williams reveals Conti as a composer who constantly experimented with a wide range of French, German and Italian ideas and techniques to create his own diverse musico-dramatic style.

Part I

CHAPTER ONE

From the Medici to the Habsburgs

Francesco Bartolomeo Conti was born in Florence, Italy, on 20 January 1681/1682.¹ Little is known about his formative years except that before the age of seventeen he had become a highly esteemed theorbist in the service of the Medici family. Some measure of the young musician’s talent and activities is revealed in correspondence dating from 1699 to 1701. In a letter of 11 March 1699 Don Diego Felipez de Guzman, Governor of Milan, had Secretary Sesto thank Cardinal Francesco Maria de’ Medici for allowing Conti to participate in performances of the Carnival opera that season. Apparently the orchestra in Milan lacked a theorbist for the opera production and Cardinal de’ Medici was asked to help fill the position with a theorbist in his employ. So delighted was the Milan audience with Conti’s theorbo playing, Sesto asked if he might be engaged for the next Carnival season.²

A similar request for a theorbist came to Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici in 1700. This time it was from Cardinal Fulvio Astali, asking if Conti could participate in the festival of the Accademia della Morte in Ferrara.³ These letters, together with other correspondence between Cardinal Francesco and his nephew Prince Ferdinando, confirm that Conti played the theorbo for both sacred and secular performances, not only in his native city but also in other Italian cities as well.

In March of 1701 Conti travelled to Vienna, perhaps at the invitation of the Kapellmeister Antonio Pancotti. A letter written on 26 March 1701 by Marco Martelli, the Tuscan envoy in Vienna, to Cardinal Francesco Maria de’ Medici in Florence seems to be the only extant document to mention this visit.⁴ Martelli’s letter describes the honour paid by Emperor Leopold I and other members of the Habsburg court to the young theorbo virtuoso since his arrival there at the beginning of the month. The letter also sets forth Conti’s request to remain under the protection of the Medici family during what he described as his limited stay in the imperial city. On the basis of this request it appears that Conti had every intention of returning to Florence. What caused him to change his mind a few days after Martelli’s letter was written and to accept a position as court theorbist remains a mystery.

At the time of Conti’s appointment, the Hofkapelle included one lutenist, Andre Boor (Pohr), and two theorbists.⁵ Orazio Clementi was the principal theorbist, earning a monthly stipend of 100 florins. He had served the court as the sole theorbist from 1680 until 1697 when, because of his age, he required an assistant to help him shoulder the burden of the musical performances. Georg Reutter was appointed theorbist for this express purpose in 1697 with a monthly stipend of 25 florins.⁶

If Clementi had any hopes that Reutter might some day be his successor, he was soon to be disappointed. Reutter was far more interested in playing the organ than the theorbo and in August of 1700 he assumed an additional position as one of the court organists.⁷ This meant the Kapellmeister had to find a musician who could eventually replace Clementi. Conti surely would have been a prime candidate, given his reputation in Florence and perhaps that is why he happened to be in Vienna during the month of March. Obviously the emperor and the Kapellmeister were favourably impressed with his talent, for he was offered a position with the same stipend as Clementi.

By the beginning of the eighteenth century the Habsburg court was well served by Italian composers, instrumentalists, and singers. Therefore the addition of another Italian to the list of court musicians was not particularly newsworthy. The office of the Obersthofmeister recorded the appointment of Conti as court theorbist in the Hofprotokollbuch on 12 July 1701. This brief entry was followed by a recommendation from the Kapellmeister that a monthly stipend of 100 gülden be paid to the theorbist retroactively from 1 April 1701.⁸ Confirmation by the emperor that he agreed with this contractual arrangement appears in the Hofprotokollbuch on 23 August of that same year.⁹

Conti must have led a busy and interesting life during the final years of Leopold’s reign. As a theorbist, he would have been expected to participate in large-scale secular and sacred works as well as in more intimate chamber works. The theorbo was used either as a solo or as a basso continuo instrument, often supplanting the organ or harpsichord. It could also share the continuo part with other instruments such as bassoon, violoncello, and harpsichord.

Unfortunately, extant materials offer few clues about Conti’s musical activities in Vienna from 1701 to 1705. Only an occasional reference in the court’s financial records serves as a reminder that he continued to perform his requisite duties. For example, an entry in the Hofrechnungsbuch: 1702 credits ‘Franciscus Bartolomaeus Conti’ with 1800 florins. A notation beside this amount explains that Conti’s annual stipend is supposed to be 1200 florins, but since he had not been paid for his services at the court from the beginning of April 1701 until the end of September 1702, he was now entitled to eighteen months’ pay.¹⁰

That Conti received no payment for his services until October of 1702 should not surprise anyone acquainted with the financial problems which plagued the imperial realm. Often the court was so delinquent in the payment of wages that soldiers were forced to serve for four months or longer without pay. Musicians did not fare any better. They had grown accustomed to waiting long periods of time for the payment of their promised stipends. The situation was deplorable in 1701 and it did not improve with time. Throughout Conti’s entire tenure at the court, this same problem persisted. The passage cited from the Hofrechnungsbuch is only the first of many such notices regarding delinquencies in payment of his stipend.

One of the most difficult problems facing the Habsburgs for more than a century involved the procurement of funds for the imperial treasury. The manner in which this could be effected varied considerably. Leopold was dependent upon subsidies and upon the Peter’s pence which he received from the pope and for which he had to pay with his good conduct. He was dependent upon the reigning princes of the empire, or perhaps even more upon their business instinct, which extracted profits from every service rendered for as much as could be extorted by taxation.¹¹

Musicians did not always wait complacently until court officials paid their stipends. Conti resorted to written petitions; others found more expedient methods to gain the emperor’s attention. One author relates the following about the musicians serving Leopold I before 1690: ‘And if as might sometimes happen, their salaries were not regularly paid, they would strike’.¹²

The financial plight of the court musicians contrasts sharply with the opulence of the nobility. Many of the nobles amassed considerable wealth from spoils of war as well as from unscrupulous dealings at court. Display of this wealth fostered an architectural renaissance in Vienna, the fervour of which was not lessened by the War of Spanish Succession. The narrow alleys which still bore the scars of the siege of 1683 were slowly transformed into elegant streets lined with buildings built in the Baroque style. The Pestsäule (1682–86) on the Graben and the Lobkowitz palace (1685–87) present isolated, but none the less excellent, examples of this style as it manifested itself prior to 1700.

Changes were also taking place outside the medieval walls of Vienna. Fields and villages, burnt and devastated during the Turkish siege, once again breathed with new life. Revitalized vineyards covered the slopes of Klosterneuberg; heuriger taverns flourished in Grinzing. The countryside, however, was not simply restored to its former self; the nobles were bent on transforming the landscape here just as they had done in the city. They built palaces with extensive and costly gardens, using them as summer residences. Moreover, this penchant for ‘town and country’ living, already in vogue with the Habsburgs, was to persist among the wealthy classes for many generations. As the seventeenth century drew to a close, Vienna began to look more and more like the capital of an empire. Strangely enough this transformation took place during the reign of an emperor who was intent upon preserving the status quo.

When Leopold I ascended the throne in 1658, the Habsburg realm showed only faint signs of its future brilliance. Leopold gave no indication of strength as a ruler. Contemporary accounts describe him as a thin, sickly, and melancholy figure of pale complexion, hollow cheeks, and a gross underlip, a peculiar characteristic of the Habsburg family. He deplored change. He wished that nothing concerning his private affairs or those of the realm should be altered.

As to his interests, there seems to be general agreement among contemporary accounts. Abbé Pacichelli, an Italian tourist visiting Vienna between 1670 and 1680, described them in this way: ‘Next to the passion for hunting, with the concomitant sport of angling, Leopold’s second great hobby was music and the theatre’.¹³ The Duke of Gramont observed that ‘he is fond of music, and understands it so far, that he composes very correctly most doleful melodies’.¹⁴ The Habsburg family was indeed gifted with musical ability. Leopold composed and performed music for the court; his second wife, Claudia of Tyrol, played several instruments. In each of Leopold’s four residences – Hofburg, Laxenburg, Favorita, Ebersdorf – musical entertainments were regularly held, especially to celebrate birthdays and name-days.

Musicians in the employ of Leopold I had opportunities to participate in musical activities outside the imperial capital, sometimes even outside the Habsburg realm. When, in 1702, the initial phase of the War of Spanish Succession caused a cessation of musical entertainment in Vienna, Giovanni Bononcini decided to find another venue where he and his colleagues could perform. The place he chose was Berlin, residence of Elector Friedrich III of Brandenburg and his wife Sophie Charlotte. There, in the summer of that same year, Bononcini composed and presented his one-act opera Polifemo. Georg Philipp Telemann happened to be in Berlin when Polifemo was staged and his eyewitness account of the event, later printed by Johann Mattheson, mentions the names of some of the musicians playing in the opera orchestra. They include, among others, the composer and his brother, Antonio Maria Bononcini, playing cello, Francesco Conti playing theorbo, and Sophie Charlotte playing cembalo.¹⁵

The death of Leopold I’s daughter, Maria Josefa, on 14 April 1703 was followed by a requisite year-long period of mourning, thereby causing the ban on festive entertainments to be prolonged. A limited number of performances of secular and sacred dramatic works, however, were permitted at the court, albeit in more modest garb and this meant that once the turmoil over the war subsided some, if not all, of the musicians would have resumed their performance duties as needed.

How soon Conti actually resumed his court obligations remains known, but he was probably on hand to play the theorbo for the 1704 production of Attilio Ariosti’s opera I gloriosi presagi. It was not unusual for operas composed expressly for the Habsburgs to include an aria featuring the theorbo as a solo instrument. What is noteworthy about this particular opera is that in the aria ‘Bella mia, lascio ch’io vada’, scored for alto, theorbo, and basso continuo, there appears one of the most virtuoso parts ever written for a theorbist. Did Ariosti compose this aria with Conti in mind? That possibility certainly exists since, as librettist for Polifemo, Ariosti was involved with musical events in Berlin in 1702 at the same time as Conti was performing there.

That Conti possessed talents beyond that of being a virtuoso instrumentalist was first brought to light with Il trionfi di Giosuè. This pasticcio oratorio was created with music b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of examples
• List of tables
• Introduction
• Part I
• Part II
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index of works by Conti
• General index