Giovanni Battista Sammartini and His Musical Environment
Anna CATTORETTI

The career of Giovanni Battista Sammartini (Milan, 1700/1701?-1775) fully reflects the important stylistic developments that took place in Europe during the 18th century: from the Baroque style, through the galant idioms and right up to the early days of classicism. His was an exceptional musical personality, which remained on the international musical scene for a good fifty years without ever yielding to the blandishments of fashion. Instead Sammartini continued to open out new paths for the younger contemporaries with whom he came into contact: Gluck, Boccherini, Mozart, etc. Though his name is associated above all with the origins of the symphony, the earliest examples of which date back to the 1730s, his output (both instrumental and vocal) was extremely varied and included some early essays in utterly new genres such as the quartet and quintet for strings. This volume assembles studies by all the major scholars who have hitherto devoted their attention to this composer, who has been viewed - both in the past and by modern musicologists - as a crucial link between different eras in the history of music. List of the authors contributing to the volume: Eugenia Bianchi, Marco Brusa, Anna Cattoretti, Bathia Churgin, Maria Teresa Dellaborra, Cosetta Farina, Ada Gehann, Jehoash Hirshberg, Sarah Mandel-Yehuda, Simon McVeigh, Adena Portowiz, Filippo Ravizza, Umberto Scarpetta, Tova Shany, Maria Grazia Sita, Marina Toffetti, Marina Vaccarini Gallarani, Charles Verble, Eugene K. Wolf. This volume assembles studies by all the major scholars who have hitherto devoted their attention to the career, work and exceptional musical personality of Giovanni Battista Sammartini (1700/1701?-1775).