Music in Seventeenth-Century Naples: Francesco Provenzale (1624-1704).(COMPOSER STUDIES)(Book review)

Music in Seventeenth-Century Naples: Francesco Provenzale (1624-1704). By Dinko Fabris. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007, [xx, 310 p. ISBN-10 0754637212; ISBN-13 9780754637219. $99.95.] Illustrations, music examples, references, index.

In spite of the central role of Naples in the cultural and artistic life of seventeenth-century Europe and evident interest in the Neapolitan musical scene, only a few studies on the institutions, personalities, and events of music in Naples have been available in English. Hence the publication of Music in Seventeenth-Century Naples: Framcesco Provenzale (1624-1704) by Dinko Fabris is a significant addition to the literature. Given his deep knowledge and long familiarity with the sources of the history of music in Naples, Fabris was certainly the right person for the task. As the author points out in the preface, however, this volume is not a comprehensive history of seventeenth-century music in Naples; rather it examines the activity of the city's most representative musician, Francesco Provenale, whose works are discussed within the context of events and institutions of the time.

The succession of the eight chapters does not follow a traditional "life and work" arrangement, thereby rendering the book certainly more readable and entertaining, but also making it harder at times to retrieve the essential facts of Provenzale's biography. Fabris favors an anthropological approach which emerges particularly in his first chapter, "La citta della festa"--this title oddly enough remains untranslated, possibly as an homage to the multifaceted anthropological connotations implied in the Italian since Gino Stcfani's studies on the symbolic meanings of ritual celebrations. In this chapter the author gives a description of the countless festivities that marked the year through the famous account of Jean-Jacques Bourchard's travel in Naples in 1632. It is certainly interesting to browse through the month-by month plan of religious and civic events; however, as a result of focusing on Bourchard's account, Fabris overlooks or makes only passing mention of important aspects of political propaganda and public displays of power embodied in these ceremonials.

The book originated as Fabris's dissertation ("Music in Seventeenth-Century Naples: The Case of Francesco Provenzale (1624-1704)" [Ph.D. diss., University of London, 2002]) and this probably accounts for the lack of meticulous revision. In particular, chapter 3 ("The Four Conservatoires") and the second part of the first chapter remain in limbo, at times too speculative or too superficial in their descriptions of the main musical institutions in Naples. The author himself seems to be aware of the risks, when he warns that "this discussion ... only reveals an over-simplified collection of data which may constitute a danger" (p. 17). Disappointingly sketchy is also the discussion of "Neapolitan Instrumental Music in the Age of Provenzale" in the sixth chapter ("Chamber and Instrumental Music") probably due to the fact that "no pieces of purely instrumental music can with any certainty be attributed to Francesco Proven/ale" (p. 202).

The principal merit of the book is the extensive archival research done try the author and the wealth of documents (most previously unpublished) that he presents to support the discussion of Provenzale's activity. We can only regret the decision to omit "the impressive mass of about 600 documents" (p. xvi) that formed the appendix of the author's dissertation.

Notwithstanding the large quantity of documents scrutinized, the author does not shed new light on the obscure period of Provenzale's training and early activity, to the point that he is forced to acknowledge "the total absence of information" on Pro-venzale "prior 10 1658" (p. 35). I would like to mention here a brief document that seems to have slipped by Fabris's scrutiny and might help to partly disperse the dense fog surrounding the early Neapolitan years of Provenzale. A short entry included in the list of expenses of the Conservatory of S. Onofrio for 18 June 1653 records the payment of five carlini ...