Father Martini - the collector
The original core of the museum's musical collections is credited to the Franciscan
Father, Giovanni Battista Martini (Bologna, April 24, 1706 - August 3, 1784),
who was one of the most famous and complex personalities of the eighteenth-century
European music world. He was also a great scholar and collector, a theorist
and composer, and a teacher of counterpoint, where Johann Christian Bach and
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart were among his students.
At only 19 years old, he was nominated as the chapel-master in the Church
of San Francesco in Bologna, where his fame as an excellent teacher and connoisseur
of music began to grow when he "won" a type of dispute with the
scholar, Redi, regarding the interpretation of a mysterious canone dell'Animuccia
that existed in the choir gallery of the Santa Casa di Loreto, where Redi
himself was chapel-master. This first triumph of Martini's won him the total
admiration of the more important masters of that time, and his name began
to be known in Italy and abroad. At the same time, not content with being
only a scholar, he continued his music studies and affirmed himself as an
excellent composer of Sonatas for the harpsichord, canons, and about 500 unpublished
musical pieces.
From numerous letters conserved in the library (more than 30 volumes with
almost 6,000 letters), one understands how many, and which, famous people,
musicians, nobles, singers, and Cardinals had friendly and esteemed relationships
with him. Even when the Emperor of Austria passed through Bologna, he wanted
to meet Padre Martini. In addition to enriching his library day after day,
gathering manuscripts and musical works of various kinds, Padre Martini collected
portraits of musicians just as diligently. The images adorned the walls of
his library in the Convent of San Francesco, almost as if to have a sort of
visual and immediate reference to the contents within the library itself.
