IL SOFFIO DI PARTENOPE - Music for woodwinds from Eighteenth century Naples 

It is recognized more and more clearly that a strong and solid school of wind instrument players began to establish itself in Naples during the 1670s. These musicians, who occupied the centres of power of the most important Neapolitan educational institutions – the famous Four Conservatories – were, in fact, poly-instrumentalists, able to play all the wind instruments with skill.

The first of the Neapolitan conservatories where the use of the recorder and the bassoon is documented, is the Poveri di Gesù Cristo. However, during the following thirty years or so, also the other Neapolitan institutions began to buy recorders, bassoons and to introduce the teaching of these instruments in the job descriptions of their teachers. 

At the end of the Seventeenth century, the recorder began to establish itself in Italy as a preferred tool for cultured entertainment, linked to the Arcadia literary circles. This trend, partly because of changes in aesthetic and cultural choices, connected, of course, with the social and political use of culture and the arts, resulted in a series of attitudes and fashions that had one of their most active centres in the Academy of Arcadia – a movement which informed all the arts, from music to literature, to painting. These pastoral ideals, reminiscent of the harmonic and natural world of Virgil’s Eclogues, did probably constitute the aesthetic and cultural setting for the development, in Italian aristocratic circles, of a real fashion for the recorder, and then, towards the 1730s, also for the flute. 

However basson was also played in Naples since the end of the Sixteenth century and for over two hundreds years in the most important musical venues of the city. This explains the strong teaching tradition of this instrument among the Four Conservatories. During these two centuries, the city had more than twenty-five active bassoonists and they were not only playing "basso continuo", but also obligato parts and solo concertos. At the beginning of the Eighteenth century, oboe appeared in the city and it was very soon the most important woodwind instrument taught in the Four Conservatories: nowadays we could say that every woodwind player in Naples could play oboe!

This recording project presents a small sample of the Neapolitan repertoire for wind instruments and offers a glimpse of a period that goes, roughly, from 1717 to 1759, touching authors who have written important compositions for woodwinds, including Alessandro & Domenico Scarlatti, Nicola Fiorenza, Ferdinando Lizio, Aniello Santangelo and others.

This very important musical project has a lot of expenses: we are over 15 musicians with travel and hospitality costs, a church to rent for the recording, an organ and a harpsichord to rent and transport, as well as all the recording costs. We have pooled together our resources, however the cost of preparing for and realising this important musical research has still not been met. 

With your help, we can do it!