Ferdinando Giorgetti
Rumors originate from the fact that Giorgetti, in 1840, dedicated a complex sacred oratorio for choir and a large orchestra, Le turbe nel deserto, to Carlo II.
[2] In 1811, Elisa Bonaparte hired him as her personal violinist («Chamber Violin of the Queen of Etruria»),[1] and he traveled with her in Spain and France until 1814, the year in which two central occurrences took place in his life: the fall of Napoleon and the contraction of a mysterious disease affecting his nervous system which left him paralyzed from the hips down.
[3] Because of the loss of his job, and above all, his paralysis, he was forced to leave his career as a soloist and dedicate his efforts to composition, teaching, musical publicity, and the organization of events and performances.
[2] In 1828, the fame of Giorgetti as a composer, teacher, and publicist was established in Florence because he most furiously participated in a written debate regarding German influence in the didactics of Italian music.
[10] His commitment gained favor of many composers, from Louis Spohr to François-Joseph Fétis, from Antonio Bazzini[12] to Giovanni Pacini, to Giuseppe Poniatowski, to whom Giorgetti dedicated works and offered hospitality in his villa in Via Ricasoli.
He maintained sincere friendships with Niccolò Paganini, for whom he composed many pieces for violin, with Franz Liszt, who he met in Florence in 1838[13] and, above all, with Gioacchino Rossini.
[2][14] The national tendency of the public, however, remained that of developing a passion for lyric opera instead of for instrumental music, which was a fact that threw Giorgetti into a rage.
Together, Giorgetti and Basevi created large instrumental organizations, among which were Mattinate beethoveniane (concerts that brought the Tuscan reception of Beethoven to the forefront and which were first performed in front of his house in Via Ricasoli, in 1859, and then at the Lemonnier Institute in via S. Egidio), Concerti popolari (created by Basevi and Teodulo Mabellini in 1863), and Società del quartetto (with the publisher Giovanni Gualberto Guidi), which in 1861 finally made Giorgetti’s dream of having a Florentine “house” for the quartet come true.
The autograph of the Ouverture I, dated 1840 and dedicated to Poniatowski, was found by the pianist Gregorio Nardi in Florence and today is looked after in his private Florentine archive.
The Pacini Collection of the Carlo Magnani Library in Pescia, and the Conservatories of Brussels and Florence all look after an autographed copy of Dies Irae, the only piece that remains of the Messa da Requiem which Giorgetti dedicated to Giovanni Pacini in 1843: on the frontispiece of these documents, there is a note from the composer which indicated how counterfeit copies are made lacking his autograph.
[18] The Philharmonic Academy of Bologna preserves the autograph of the Gran quintetto, at one time dedicated by Giorgetti to the librarian Masseangelo Masseangeli, then published by Ricordi in 1847 and rededicated first to the students and then to Poniatowski.
[21] A unique contemporary copy of Giorgetti’s works are preserved at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice, in the Greggiati Collection in Ostiglia, at the Biblioteca Statale in Cremona, at the Biblioteca Domenicini in Perugia, at the Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella in Naples, and, abroad, at the Abteilung Musik, Theater, Film della Universitätsbibliothek «Johann Christian Senckenberg» in Frankfurt,[22] at the Sibley Music Library part of the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester (New York), and in the Galeazzi Collection at the Irving Gilmore Music Library at Yale University in New Haven (Connecticut).
The first edition from 1856 of his methods for viola is preserved at the Conservatories in Milan, Florence, Bergamo and Rome, at the Biblioteca Comunale in Finale Emilia and at the British Library in London.
