Mecenatismo musicale e poesia per musica a Roma nei primi decenni dell’Arcadia

Musical patronage and poetry for music in Rome in the first decades of Arcadia has been the subject of critical essays as well as conferences. Many scholars have seen ‘arcadian’ influences in the new stylistic elements of the music of the early eighteenth century or have assigned to a common movement the transformations of the different artistic manifestations of the age, including the ideals and activity of Arcadia, up to identifying a common denominator in the ‘invention of good taste’. Others have instead retreated from conclusions of this kind, considered too generic and vague, instead focusing on the intellectual, social and professional differences between the world of literature and that of music. The relationships between Arcadia and music, which can be investigated in terms of ideal references as well as in relation to concrete musical activity, were supported by extraordinary musical patronage aimed toward celebratory propaganda, including events promoted by ambassadors, princes and cardinals. The article also includes various recapitulatory tables of music patrons and the composers supported by them, political orientations, a view of musical activity in Rome in the first two decades of the eighteenth century, the main music chapels and musical activity with political values during the War of the Spanish Succession.