Music and communication in Enlightenment Rome: doctrine, instruction, socialization, and style in the vocal works of the Collegio Nazareno (1704-1784)

Abstract

This is a cultural and stylistic study of the main corpus of unpublished musical works currently preserved in the Archivio Generale Storico delle Scuole Pie (AGSP), in Rome. This corpus is primarily made up of forty-nine Italian-texted, religious cantatas, oratorios (or componimenti sacri), and pastorales, commissioned by and performed at the Collegio Nazareno, in Rome, as part of the accademie literarie that took place annually there, at least, between 1681 and 1784. The Collegio Nazareno, a Piarist educational institution founded in 1622, became a prestigious school during the eighteenth century. A leading school, as far as the practice of letters and empirical sciences is concerned, it also hosted important Jansenist-influenced theologians. This cultural environment is commensurate with the intellectual, religious, and political aims of the so-called Catholic Enlightenment. The highly elaborated librettos, musical compositions, and performances produced in this institution were an essential part of a series of specific practices and rituals embodying that cultural atmosphere. They were thus important communicational vehicles for doctrine, instruction, and socialization. In this regard, and with heavy reliance on rhetoric, semiotics, and social theory, special attention is paid to how theological, literary, and scientific elements were combined and presented in the musical compositions. Particularly, Niccolò Jommelli’s oratorio Giuseppe glorificato in Egitto (1749) and Rinaldo di Capua’s L’angelo di Tobia (1768) are analyzed as musical portrayals of St. Joseph Calasanz, in correspondence with Catholic-Enlightenment ideals of holiness. References to music-style features, based on period theory, principally Joseph Riepel’s theory of musical phrase, run across this study also in connection with broader cultural aspects.