edited by Massimiliano Sala, Turnhout, Brepols, 2014 (Speculum Musicae, 26), pp. XII+414, ISBN 978-2-503-55326-9.
The volume aims to investigate the world of the piano in France, and the evolution of the instrument between the ancien régime and the Restoration. Particular attention will be devoted to the circulation of central European pianists at the turn of the nineteenth century, their influence on the development of piano culture and technique and the impact this had on French musical tastes.
Nineteen contributions will explore the piano industry, aspects of performance practice and the bravura tradition, and will investigate certain lines of interaction between publishers, composers, institutions and concert venues between the French Revolution and the first Industrial Revolution. The ultimate aim will be to determine more comprehensively the role of piano culture within nineteenth-century Parisian musical life.
Massimiliano Sala is currently Vice President of the Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini and President of the Italian Institute of Applied Musicology. Graduated in musicology from the University of Pavia (Italy), he received a M.Mus in piano from the Conservatory of Cesena. He is President of the Italian National Edition of Pietro Antonio Locatelli’s Complete Works, and member of the Board of the Italian National Edition of Muzio Clementi’s Complete Works (Secretary Treasurer) and the Italian National Edition of Luigi Boccherini’s Complete Works. He is also a founder of Ad Parnassum. A Journal on Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Instrumental Music, General Editor of the series ‘Contemporary Composers’, ‘Music, Science and Technology’ (Brepols Publishers) and Quaderni Clementiani (Ut Orpheus Edizioni), and member of the editorial committee of the series Boccherini Studies (Ut Orpheus Edizioni), His publications include books, critical editions, journal articles and book chapters on eighteenth- to twentieth-centuries music, dictionary entries for Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart 2 and Oxford Bibliographies Online (OUP).
