866 jonathan glixon
often in two or more choirs, the technique known as cori spezzati. caffi,
in contrast, is concerned exclusively with demonstrating the lost musical
glories of the doge’s chapel by presenting an accurate history of the devel-
opment of the choir and instrumental ensemble and of the construction
and use of the two organs in the church. with the exception of the organs,
caffi’s view is that the chapel was not fully constituted until the appoint-
ment of the first maestro di cappella in 1490 (piero de Fossis), and even
then was in a primitive state until the appointment of the great willaert in
- A large part of the book consists of biographies of the main maestri
and organists. while most of those for the 16th century are very brief, four
figures dominate, as they would continue to do for at least a century: the
middle third of the century, 1527–62, is the age of willaert, succeeded by
the noted theorist (and disciple of his predecessor) gioseffo Zarlino. the
end of the century is, for caffi, the age of giovanni gabrieli (organist at
san Marco from 1583 to his death in 1612) and his uncle Andrea (organist
1566–86). the focus is clearly on these “great men,” whose biographies are
many times longer than those of all the other figures.
the nationalistic aspects of the two early books (praising the lost
glories of Venice, on the one hand, and seeking the origins of german
styles, on the other), re-emerge in the two earliest 20th-century writings.
giacomo Benvenuti, in a book published in 1931 with the blessing of Mus-
solini, strove to accomplish two goals: on the one hand, to correct and
expand caffi’s treatment of san Marco in the 16th century through thor-
ough documentation, and, on the other, to demonstrate, through a multi-
level approach, that the Venetian school of composition, of both sacred
and instrumental music, owed little to the Flemish school embodied by
willaert but was, rather, a truly italian accomplishment. Benvenuti pres-
ents accurately cited transcriptions of many of the documents regarding
the appointment of maestri di cappella, organists, and instrumentalists for
this period, something not done by caffi, and is able to straighten out
some of the confusion created by inaccuracies in the earlier work. this
was an important step forward. to achieve his second purpose, Benvenuti
discussed not only archival documentation but also the writings of Vene-
tian theorists, and the contemporary publications of instrumental music,
presenting also the first modern editions of a significant portion of the
repertoire. Despite the polemical aspect, there is much of value in this
study.
the other new work of the 1930s is much less polemical, although
national pride was certainly an impetus for the research. the Belgian
scholar rené lenaerts, in articles of 1935 and 1938, returned the focus to