¹ This paper is an expanded version of my contribution to the round table on ‘Historiography’ at the 16th Congress of the International Musicological Society, held in London in August 1997. Like most panellists, I took as a starting point Harold Powers' ‘Musical Historiography from an Other Perspective’, to be published in The Journal of Musicology, which takes as a point of reference Goehr, Lydia's The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (Oxford, 1992).Google Scholar

² Dahlhaus, Carl, Die Musik des 19. Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden, 1980);Google Scholar English trans. Nineteenth-Century Music (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989), 8.Google Scholar

³ Dahlhaus, , Nineteenth-Century Music, 8.Google Scholar

⁴ See Whittall, Arnold, ‘Carl Dahlhaus, the Nineteenth Century and Opera’, this journal, 3 (1991), 79–88Google Scholar

⁵ Gossett, Philip, ‘Dahlhaus and the Ideal Type’, 19th-Century Music, 12/1 (1989), 49–56,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and also the present writer's ‘Affetto e azione. Sulla teoria del melodramma italiano dell'Ottocento’, in Atti del XIV Congresso della Società internationale di musicologia (Bologna, 27 agosto-1° settembre 1987) – Trasmissione e recezione delle forme di cultura musicale, 3, Free Papers (Turin, 1990), 395–400.Google Scholar Although Dahlhaus had no special competence in Italian language and culture, he never stopped elaborating and modifying his views of Italian opera. See his ‘Drammaturgia dell'opera italiana’, in Bianconi, Lorenzo and Pestelli, Giorgio, eds., Storia dell'opera italiana, 6, Teorie e tecniche. Immagini et fantasmi (Turin, 1988), 79–162;Google Scholarand ‘What is a Musical Drama?’, this journal, 1 (1989), 95–111.Google Scholar

⁶ Hepokoski, James A., Giuseppe Verdi: ‘Falstaff’, Cambridge Opera Handbooks (Cambridge, 1983), 54.Google Scholar

⁷ Powers, Harold S., ‘Classical Music, Cultural Roots, and Colonial Rule: An Indic Musicologist Looks at the Muslim World’, Asian Music, 12 (1979), 5–39,CrossRefGoogle Scholar quoted in his ‘Musical Historiography from an Other Perspective’ (see n. 1).

⁸ The most important is ‘ “La solita forma” and “The uses of Convention” ’, in Nuove prospettive della ricerca verdiana. Atti del convegno internazionale in occasione delta prima del ‘Rigoletto’ in edizione critica, Vienna, 12/13 marzo 1983 (Parma and Milan, 1987), 75–109Google Scholar (also in Acta Musicologica, 49 [1987], 65–90). On p. 76 of this fundamental study we read: ‘Our approach to analysis is generally both prospective and Germanic: we look at works as we hear them, and we think of each as a predecessor of all that follows, ultimately of us: furthermore, we approach them with perceptions trained on the analysis and criticism of instrumental music from North of the Alps’.

⁹ Bogatyrev, Petr and Jakobson, Roman, ‘Le folklore, forme spécifique de création’ (1929), in Jakobson, Questions de poétique (Paris, 1973), 59–72.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Bianconi, Lorenzo, La drammaturgia musicale (Bologna, 1987), 40.Google Scholar

¹¹ Feldman, Martha, ‘Magic Mirrors and the “seria” Stage: Thoughts toward a Ritual View’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 48 (1995), 422–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹² Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-century Music (see n. 2), 9–10. This opposition was already considered by a father of ‘classical’ aesthetics, for whom, however, it was the basis for an extremely elevated value judgement: ‘Thus when it is said, for instance, that Rossini makes things easy for the singers, this is only partly correct. Indeed, he makes it really difficult for them by so often referring them to the activity of their own musical genius. If this really is genius, the resulting work of art has a quite peculiar attraction, because we have present before us not merely a work of art but the actual production of one.’ Hegel, G. W. F., Aesthetics, trans. Knox, T. M. (Oxford, 1975), II, 957.Google Scholar

¹³ Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music (see n. 2), 1.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Strohm, , Die italienische Oper im 18. Jahrhundert (Wilhelmshaven, 1979), 17.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Strohm, 217–18.Google Scholar

¹⁶ I have dealt with this topic in my Italia e Francia nell'Ottocento, Storia della musica 9 (Turin, 1993), 40–3 and 51–2.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-century Music (see n. 2), 194. See also Dahlhaus, , Foundations of Music History (Cambridge, 1983), 140–1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁸ Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-century Music, 194 (original edn, pp. 160–1).Google Scholar

¹⁹ Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, trans. Anscombe, G. E. M. (Oxford, 1958), 32e.Google Scholar

²⁰ As vol. 16 of Analecta Musicologica (Cologne).Google Scholar

²¹ A report of the round table, with a ‘synoptic version's and Walker's paper, can be found in Heartz, Daniel and Wade, Bonnie, eds., I.M.S. Report of the Twelfth Congress Berkeley 1977 (Kassel, 1981), 680–711;Google Scholar the complete version is in Early Music History, 4 (1981), 209–96.Google Scholar Complementary to this study is the same authors' ‘Dalla “Finta pazza” alia “Veremonda”: storie di Febiarmonici’, Rivista Italiana di Musicologia, 10 (1975), 379–454.Google Scholar The topic was extended to the eighteenth century in the round table ‘Condizione sociale e intellettuale del musicista di teatro ai tempi di Vivaldi’, in a report published in , Bianconi and Morelli, Giovanni, eds., Antonio Vivaldi. Teatro musicale, cultura e società (Florence, 1982), 368–578.Google Scholar

²² Bianconi, Lorenzo, ‘Perche la storia dell'opera italiana’, Musica/Realta, 17 (08 1985), 29–48.Google Scholar Bianconi has also discussed these problems in ‘Storia dell'opera e storia d'ltalia’, Rivista Italiana di Musicologia, 9 (1974), 3–17;Google Scholar and in The Music in the Seventeenth Century, trans. Bryant, David (Cambridge, 1987), 45–104.Google Scholar

²³ Turin, 1987-. The series is being translated into German (Laaber, 1990-), French (Liège, 1992-) and English (Chicago, 1998-).Google Scholar Two important reviews are by Holmes, William C. in Journal of the American Musicological Society, 44 (1991), 120–8,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and by Murata, Margaret in II saggiatore musicale, 1 (1994), 227–38.Google Scholar

²⁴ In October 1994 a study seminar took place at the Fondazione Levi of Venice on ‘La storiografia dell'opera italiana’, the central theme of which was: how to bring the Storia dell'opera italiana to an end? The present considerations rise from a rethinking of the papers and discussion heard on that occasion.Google Scholar

²⁵ Bianconi, ‘Perche la storia dell'opera italiana’ (see n. 22), 39.Google Scholar

²⁶ See, among others, , Koselleck and Stempel, W.-D., eds., Geschichte - Ereignis und Erzählung, Poetik und Hermeneutik 5 (Munich, 1973);Google ScholarVeyne, Paul, Comment on écrit I'histoire (Paris 1971);Google ScholarTopolski, Jerzy, Narrare la storia. Nuovi prindpi di metodologia storica (Milan, 1997).Google Scholar In the musicological field the problem of the history as narrative has been discussed by Treider, Leo, ‘What Kind of Story is History?’, in his Music and the Historical Imagination, (Cambridge, Mass, and London, 1986), 157–75.Google Scholar

²⁷ de Brito, Manuel Carlos, in the preliminary paper to the round table on historiography (see n. 1, and Acta Musicologica, 69 [1997“, 22).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁸ Dahlhaus, Foundations of Music History, 133.Google Scholar

²⁹ Koselleck, , Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (Frankfurt am Main, 1979), 146–8.Google Scholar

³⁰ Segre, Cesare, Avviamento all'analisi del testo letterario (Turin, 1985), 44.Google Scholar

³¹ Segre, 45.Google Scholar

³² Bianconi, ‘Perché la storia dell'opera italiana’ (see n. 22), 38. This is true with the exception of the three published volumes of the Storia dell'opera italiana, which examine other kinds of system.Google Scholar

³³ See for example Corti, Maria, Principi della comunicavgone letteraria (Milan, 1976), 1ff.Google Scholar

³⁴ Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft (see n. 29), in particular the chapter ‘Darstellung, Ereignis und Struktur’ (Representation, event, structure), 144–57. Dahlhaus deals with these topics in very similar manner in Foundations of Musit History (see n. 17), esp. 132–3.Google Scholar

³⁵ Koselleck, , 146.Google Scholar

³⁶ Koselleck, , 150.Google Scholar

³⁷ Koselleck, , 151.Google Scholar

³⁸ Bianconi, , ‘Perché la storia dell'opera italiana’ (see n. 22), 43.Google Scholar

³⁹ Bianconi, , 43–4.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Bianconi, , 44.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Bianconi, (see n. 29), 357ff.Google Scholar

⁴² Bianconi, , 359.Google Scholar

⁴³ Koselleck, , 363–1Google Scholar

⁴⁴ na, ‘Perché la storia dell'opera italiana’ (see n. 22), 45.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ ‘[T]here is n o doubt that serial history offers a precise means to measure change, but in what way does it also permit us to think about change?’, wonders Furet, François in ‘Le quantitif en histoire’, Fain de I'histoire: Nouveauxproblems, ed. Le Goff, Jacques and Nora, Pierre (Paris, 1974), 46.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ An example in this direction, which concerns a repertory closely connected to the idea of modernity, is Gerhard, Anselm, Die Verstddterung der Oper. Paris und das Musiktheater des 19. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart and Weimar, 1992);Google Scholartrans. Whittall, Mary as The Urbanisation of Opera. Music Theater in Paris in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, forthcoming).Google Scholar

⁴⁷ As biological metaphors are often argued about in historical discussion, it is worth recalling that the rationale of modern (neo-Darwinian) evolutionarism excludes every kind of finality in nature; yet it accepts that the sum total of casual mutations predisposes the course of the following events. The appearance of the first hominidae does not ‘aim’ towards the necessary appearance of homo sapiens, yet it makes it much more probable. The analogy, however, stops there; indeed, it is a distinctive feature of the human species to have a sense of future, hence to foresee the possibility of change, and also, partly, to direct it.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ The birth and growth of the modern concept of progress, constantly at the centre of Koselleck's analyses, are widely scrutinised in , Koselleck and Meier, Christian, Fortschritt, in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1975). A similar semantic analysis of the concepts of progress, evolution, novelty and so on in the musical literature of the Modern Age would be highly desirable.Google Scholar