Alongside the library, the Centro Studi has an interesting historical archive.This can essentially be divided into a section related to musical sources between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and a more modern one relating to sources from the 20th Century, with a large collection dedicated to Luigi Dallapiccola. With regard to the first section, the Centro Studi possesses a collection, the result of acquisitions made over time, of manuscript and printed musical sources from the period between the 18th and 19th centuries, among whose authors stand out names such as Luigi Boccherini, Giovanni Battista Viotti, Luigi Ferdinand of Prussia, Johann Baptist Cramer, Ferdinand Ries, Daniel Steibelt, Muzio Clementi, Jan Ladislav Dussek, Ignace Pleyel, Giovanni Mane Giornovichi and Bonifazio Asioli. The genres included in the archive are those typical of the classical and pre-Romantic period and range from piano concertos and orchestral sonatas to accompanied sonatas, from solo pieces to chamber music.
In addition, one can find many sources on minor theatrical genres and opera arias arranged for ‘domestic’ ensembles as well as reels, songs and tunes from Anglo-Saxon culture and published extensively by publishers of the period. We all know that the development of music publishing in the final years of the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th century had a decisive and far-reaching influence on every facet of the musical profession, and the study of its path through different technologies and commercial strategies is key to shedding new light on the circulation of music and related cultural exchanges in Europe.
Therefore, to study this archive is to immerse oneself in the kaleidoscopic world of the development of music publishing at the end of the 18th century, which produced and distributed every genre of music, from the most ephemeral and circumstantial to the most complex and wide-ranging. We believe that this section of the archive may be of particular relevance to those who wish to delve into the study of musical circulation at the turn of the century. Specifically, we can claim to possess the most substantial collection of works by Jan Ladislav Dussek present in Italy.
The Centro Studi started a collaboration with RISM – Répertoire Internationale des Sources Musicales two years ago and the archive’s music sources are present in the database under the name I-LOVcs.
There are currently more than 400 sources. I would like to point out that many of our specimens can be found in very few international libraries and about 56 are unique sources belonging to our archive. Of these, some are new sources of already known works, others are works that were unknown before they were included in the RISM, which makes our archive an important resource for the accessibility of these sources. The Centro Studi has been editing three national editions of the complete works of Pietro Antonio Locatelli, Luigi Boccherini and Muzio Clementi for many years now; to this end, the institute has collected a large number of sources from the most important European institutions and libraries. In addition, in order to draw up the catalogue of Jan Ladislav Dussek’s works it has been ordering further reproductions of many works of the Czech composer.
The collected sources number in the hundreds and consist of reproductions in paper and digital format. Naturally, these sources, as they are not the property of the Centro Studi, can only be made available to scholars who wish to consult them there, so as not to infringe copyright on reproductions that do not pertain to our institute. A section of the website is dedicated to a list describing both the source itself and its international location.
The consultation of the document directly on site will be available. The historical archive also consists of a section that could be described as ‘modern’ and that is mainly related to documents, letters and works dating back to the musical world under the fascist regime. Of particular relevance is the Luigi Dallapiccola Collection, which includes librettos, programmes, scores, autographs, photographs and a large section of 36 letters by and to the composer.