1 Juliet's question in Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 2.ii.1–2, here as an instance of verbal ambiguity, a theme to be pursued below. Translations from the Latin or Italian are the author's.

2 The first from a collection of Concerti ecclesiastici a otto voci (1595), the second from a collection of Sonate a 2, e 3 (1655).

3 Sartori, Bibliografia della musica strumentale italiana stampata in Italia fino al 1700, 2 vols. (Florence, 1952–68), ii, 241–56 (‘Indice delle composizioni con titoli derivati da nomi di famiglie, di musicisti, di località, o comunque caratteristici’).

4 With few exceptions, among them Emily H. Green, ‘Between Text and Context: Schumann, Liszt, and the Reception of Dedications’, Journal of Musicological Research, 28 (2009), 312–39.

5 To be sure, many did not, among them Giovanni Battista Bassani (c.1650–1716), Giovanni Bassano (c.1558–1617), Stefano Bernardi (c.1577–1637), Giorgio Buoni (1647–93), Giovanni Battista Degli Antonii (1636–98) and Giuseppe Torelli (1658–1709).

6 See Don Harrán, ‘What to Make of “the Pickled Jewess” (la Ebrea marinata) in a Sonata by Marco Uccellini (1645)?’, Italia: studi e ricerche sulla storia, la cultura e la letteratura degli ebrei d'Italia, 21 (2011), 42–78.

7 Some five miles from Forlì (in the region Emiglia-Romagna).

8 On Uccellini as a ‘probable pupil’ of Buonamente, see Peter Allsop, Cavalier Giovanni Battista Buonamente, Franciscan Violinist (Aldershot, 2005), 2, 19 (the book signals numerous formal and stylistic relations between their works, as they pertain to those of Salamone Rossi, ‘a trilogy of composers’, to quote Allsop, that ‘stretches from the early seventeenth century across three generations, providing one of the most consistent lines of development in instrumental music of the entire seventeenth century’; 179).

9 Francesco I (1629–58), Alfonso IV (1658–62), after whom his widow Laura Martinozzi acted as regent until their son became of age to head the duchy as Francesco II (1674–94).

10 See, for example, William S. Newman, The Sonata in the Baroque Era (4th edn, New York, 1983), 41.

11 Ibid., 144, 146. For Colombi on the payrolls of the Modenese court (for 1648, 1650 and 1653), see Fred M. Pajerski, ‘Marco Uccellini (1610–1680) and his Music’ (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1979), 33. Colombi only sparsely used labels, among them ‘La Confusa’ and ‘Retorno del Re’ in his Balli diversi a Basso solo, Lib. 21° (Modena, Biblioteca Estense, G. 56), fols. 2^v and 5^r. Bononcini was more prolific, at least in one collection: of the 24 works in op. 4 (Arie, corrente, sarabande, gighe & sarabande, 1671), 18 have individual designations (La Molza, La Palavicina, La Strozza, etc.).

12 For Uccellini in Modena, see Gino Roncaglia, La cappella musicale del duomo di Modena: catalogo delle musiche dell'archivio (Florence, 1957), 113–27. Other, more general sources on the composer are the entries (under his name) by Thomas D. Dunn in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, 29 vols. (2nd rev. edn, London, 2001), xxvi, 24, and by Bernhard Schrammek in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Ludwig Finscher, 29 vols. (2nd rev. edn, Kassel, 1994–2008), Personenteil, xvi, 1167–9. For a detailed consideration of his works, see Willi Apel, Italian Violin Music of the Seventeenth Century, originally Die italienische Violinmusik im 17. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden, 1983), trans. and enl. Thomas Binkley (Bloomington, 1990), 99–119; Peter Allsop, The Italian ‘Trio’ Sonata: from its Origins until Corelli (Oxford, 1992), 116–23; and Pajerski, ‘Marco Uccellini (1610–1680) and his Music’, 69–126. There is an important volume with proceedings of a conference on Uccellini: Marco Uccellini da Forlimpopoli e la sua musica (Forlimpopoli, 26–27 October 1996) (Lucca, 1999), but it contains nothing of relevance to the dedications in his works.

13 Salmi a una, a tre, quatro, et a cinque, concertati, etc. Other works in the collection are a Magnificat and a Litany for the Virgin Mary, both for five voices and instruments.

14 More specifically, opp. 2 (1639), 3 (1642), 4 (1645), 5 (1649), 7 (1660), 8 (c.1661) and 9 (1667). Op. 7, it might be mentioned, bears the title Ozio regio (Royal Leisure).

15 ‘Opera quarta. Di D.[on] Marco Uccellini musico, e capo degl'instromentisti del Serenissimo Sig:[nor] Duca di Modana [sic] dedicata all'altezza ser:[enissi]ma del Sig:[n]or Prencipe di Modana [sic]’. Sartori catalogued op. 4 in his Bibliografia della musica strumentale italiana, i, 399–400, as 1645f. A full copy can be found in the Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica, Bologna, under the shelfmark CC.59: see Gaetano Gaspari, comp., Catalogo della Biblioteca del Liceo Musicale di Bologna, 5 vols. (Bologna, 1890–1943; repr. Bologna, 1961), iv, 154–5.

16 This is clear from the dedication where son and father are differentiated. Uccellini writes there that ‘it certainly appears that you will protect me with the benignity that, easily discerned in you, is worthy of the noble blood and the glorious examples that you also daily receive in these parts from the Most Serene Lord Duke, your father and my most benign lord’ (‘Di tanto certo par che mi affidi la benignità, che in lei ci scorge, degna del suo gran sangue, e de gli esempi gloriosi, ch'anche in questa parte giornalmente riceve dal Serenissimo Sig.[nor] Duca suo Padre, e mio benignissimo Sig.[nore]’).

17 The dedicatees of the various collections were Uldorico, count of Carpegna, titular cardinal of Santa Anastasia and bishop of Todi (op. 2); the duke of Modena (op. 3); his son Alfonso (op. 4); [Alderano] Cybo, papal legate of Romagna (op. 5); Don Ferrando Gonzaga III, duke of Guastalla, Luzzara and Reggiolo and prince of Molfetta (op. 6); Cardinal Mazzarini (op. 7); and Ranuccio II [Farnese], duke of Parma, Piacenza, Castro, etc. (op. 9). Op. 8 lacks a dedication.

18 For recent studies on patronage, including the ways to remunerate composers, see Claudio Annibaldi, ‘Towards a Theory of Musical Patronage in the Renaissance and Baroque: The Perspective from Anthropology and Semiotics’, Recercare, 10 (1998), 173–80; and idem, ‘Frescobaldi's Primo libro delle fantasie a quattro (1608) – A Case Study on the Interplay between Commission, Production and Reception in Early Modern Music’, Recercare, 14 (2002), 31–63.

19 Sometimes the dedicatee of the collection also has one or more works within it as a mark of homage. See Appendix, Table III, where the Giunti, to whom Biagio Marini dedicated his Affetti musicali, are further signalled in the first number, the balletto ‘Il Zontino’. In Buonamente's Settimo libro di sonate, sinfonie, gagliarde, corrente, et brandi (Venice, 1637), the dedicatee was Giovanni Francesco Cavazza, whom the composer honoured in two sonatas (the third and the eighth ‘detta la Cavazza’) and one sinfonia (the seventh ‘detta la Cavazza’).

20 For exceptions in Uccellini's works, see op. 4, with two names in the masculine: ‘il Caporal Simon’, in the aria undecima, and, in the aria duodecima, ‘Bigaran’, of which the full title reads (after the original poem from which it was drawn): ‘Nearby there stands the great soldier Bigaran who made the discovery’ (‘Le stà quel gran solda(to) Bigaran che à fatto la scoperta’); for more on ‘Bigaran’, see below. As a general principle, there seems to be a correlation between instrumental types in the feminine (e.g. sonata, sinfonia, corrente) and feminine word endings, and similarly between instrumental types in the masculine (e.g. ballo, balletto, brando) and masculine word endings, thus, from the general literature, for the first, ‘Sinfonia detta la Serra’, ‘Corrente la Riccazola’, and for the second, ‘Ballo il Bonfigliolo’, ‘Brando il Bianchino’. Many titles, however, have a pronoun in the feminine or masculine to match the instrumental type, yet a family name in the opposite gender or in the plural: ‘Sonata il Corisino’, ‘Ricercata la Brancadoro’, ‘Sonata la Campori’, ‘Ballo il Campeggi’, ‘Capriccio il Calderini’, etc. (see under the ‘Indice’, mentioned above, in Sartori, Bibliografia).

21 The two letters are transcribed in Pajerski, ‘Marco Uccellini (1610–1680) and his Music’, 150, 154. Poggi was the duke's advisor.

22 For their transcription, see ibid., resp. 157, 157, 158, 156. The cardinal is to be distinguished from Prince (and later Duke) Rinaldo d'Este (1655–1735), to whom Marco and his nephew Camillo refer in a letter to Isabella d'Este (1664); ibid., 156–7.

23 In his Settimo libro (1637), apart from the works dedicated to Cavazza (see above, n. 19), there are others with dedications to Monteverdi, Rovetta, Videmana, Strozzi, Barbera, Mazzoratta, Sagreda, Serra and Molli.

24 See letter of the same Briganti to an unknown recipient, assumed (by Pajerski) to be Duke Francesco II d'Este; in Pajerski, ‘Marco Uccellini’, 178.

25 Or so Pajerski surmised; ibid., 93.

26 To be differentiated from the work by Banchieri, mentioned at the outset, and seemingly dedicated to a female.

27 Three of the dedicatees were musicians, two in the employ of Francesco I d'Este, duke of Modena: Marzio Herculeo, Gioseffo Paini, referred to as ‘Mag.[ister] Giuseppe Paino, musico et aiutanto di cam.[er]a’ in the court records for 1651–9 (Pajerski, ‘Marco Uccellini’, 33; Tiraboschi lists him as Giuseppe Paini in Biblioteca modenese [for full citation, see below, n. 31], vi, 597) and one in that of Ferrante III Gonzaga, duke of Guastalla: Alfonso Petenari (absent from the Biblioteca). The fourth, Horatio Tardini, was a priest. See, in order, Salmi 7, 9, 10 and 12 (of the 12 psalms in the collection).

28 In the ‘Symphonia septima detta la Gianina’ (op. 8).

29 For details, see Roncaglia, La cappella musicale del duomo di Modena, 104–9 (also Pajerski, ‘Marco Uccellini’, 26–7, 30).

30 See Sartori, ‘Une pratique des musiciens lombards (1582–1639): l'hommage des chansons instrumentales aux familles d'une ville’, in La musique instrumentale de la Renaissance, ed. Jean Jacquot (Paris, 1953), 305–12.

31 A number of sources are relevant to the treatment of Uccellini's biography in correlation with his dedications, namely: Giovan Battista Spaccini (1570–1636), Cronaca di Modena, ed. Albano Biondi, Rolando Bussi and Carlo Giovannini, 6 vols. (Modena, 1993–2008); Lodovico Vedriani (1601–70), Dottori modonesi di teologia, filosofia, legge canonica, e civile, con i suoi ritratti dal naturale in rame; et altri letterari insigni per l'opere, e dignità loro; celebrati da vari potentati, e scrittori (Modena, 1665); Girolamo Tiraboschi (1731–94), Biblioteca modenese; o, Notizie della vita e delle opere degli scrittori natii degli stati del […] duca di Modena; raccolte e ordinate dal cavaliere ab.[ate] Girolamo Tiraboschi […], 6 vols. (Modena, 1781–6); Francesco Forciroli (1560–1624), Vite dei modenesi illustri, ed. Sonia Cavicchioli (Modena, 2007), of interest for sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century antecedents of the Modenese families in Uccellini's time; Albano Biondi, Modena metropopoli dello Stato: storie e microstorie di primo Seicento (Modena, 2003); and of more specific coverage, Spaccini (as above), Il registro di guardaroba dell'Infante Isabella Savoia d'Este (1617–1630), ed. Grazia Biondi (Modena, 2000) (Isabella was the consort of Alfonso III d'Este, duke of Modena, 1591–1626) and Giovanni Maria Sperandini, Feste, spettacoli e tornei cavallereschi della Modena di Cesare d'Este, 1598–1628 (Modena and Nonantola, 2008). Forciroli is absent from the Dizionario biografico degli italiani, ed. Alberto Maria Ghisalberto (Rome, 1960–; 74 vols. until Miraglia in 2010), as is Vedriani, despite his various publications, from the Enciclopedia italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti, 36 vols. (Rome, 1929–2001; plus appendices 1–5 until 2000): these publications include, beyond the ‘Modenese doctors of theology’ mentioned above, one on Modenese cardinals (Vite e elogii de cardinali modonesi, cavati da vari autori, 1662), another on Modenese saints (Memorie di molti santi martiri, confessori, e beati modonesi, e di tutti i corpi santi, che riposano nelle chiese di Modena & in altre ancora del suo territorio con le sue figure in rame, 1663) and a third on Modenese bishops (Catalogo de vescovi modonesi, 1669) (for an extended study – 182 pages – on Vedriani, see Luigi Lenzotti, Intorno la vita e le opere di Lodovico Vedriani, sacerdote ed istoriografo modenese [Modena, 1882]). Of all of these, I checked in detail the six volumes of Tiraboschi's Biblioteca modenese, based in large part on the writings by Vedriani.

32 Which I consulted on 18 November 2011.

33 Namely, Torelli, Reggiani, Rinaldi, Leoni or Leone, Febre to be read possibly as Fabri or Fabbri, Angeli, Padovani, Vittale to be read possibly as Vitali or Vitale, Mattioli, Carlucci or Carluccio, Castiglioni or Castiglione, Simoni.

34 Marcello, Fortunati, Torello or Torella, Prosperini, Angelo, Rovetto or Rovetta, Padovano, Brocha to be read possibly as Brocca or Brocco or Brocchi, Gianino, Tavola, Mattiolo, Gallani, Todeschini, Foschini, Carissimi, Vice-comita to be read possibly as Viceconti, Rangoni (or sometimes Rangone, in Uccellini's time a well-known Modenese family, owners of the Rocca Rangoni, or Rangone fortress; Tiraboschi, Biblioteca modenese, has nearly 50 listings for Rangone), Ghirardini, Gudoni or Guidone/Guidoni, Arditi or Ardito, Salvia or Salvio, Tassoni (Tiraboschi has several persons with this cognomen), Balia, Gardino, Briganti, Bandi. Pajerski names an Agostino Guidoni among the musicians for c.1651 in the court of Duke Francesco I (‘Marco Uccellini’, 27); the same Guidoni is absent, however, from Tiraboschi's Biblioteca, which has other members of the family (Aldrovandino, i, 58; Antonio, ii, 47; Nicolò, I, 89; Niccolò, iii, 34).

35 Poggia, Calcagnino, Marcella, Fortunata, Tartaruca to be read possibly as Tartarughi or Tartaruga (for ‘tartaruca’ as a descriptive title, see below, end of section 3), Abbatini or Abbatino, Cinagli or Cinaglia, Prosperina or Prosperino, Angela, Rovetti, Vesi or Vesa, Padovana, Gianina or Gianini, Vittale, Tavolo or Tavoli, Mattiola, Gallano or Gallana, Todeschino, Perdieri, Foschino, Sempre Viva to be read as Sempreviva or Semprevivo, Melibeo, Filisteo, Gaibari or Gaibara, Cintia to be read as Cinzi or Cinzio or Cinzia, Corsetto or Corsetta, Simona, Balio or Bali, Gardina, Banda or Bando.

36 ‘Symphonia trigesima prima detta la Pegasea’ (op. 8). Yet, alternatively, Pegasea might simply have been an imaginative title, as in the ‘Fantasia detta Pegasea’ that Bellerofonte Castaldi (1581–1649) wrote for his Capricci a due stromenti cioè tiorba e tiorbino e per sonar solo varie sorti di balli e fantasticherie (1622), though here, with tongue in cheek, the composer alluded to his first name. For an edition, see Castaldi's Capricci a due stromenti, ed. David Dolata, 2 vols. (Middleton, WI, 2006), ii, 12–16.

37 ‘Symphonia decima ottava detta l'Argonauticha’ and ‘Symphonia vigesima quinta detta la Cetralira’, both in op. 8.

38 In the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, 3rd edn, 3 vols. (Florence, 1691), buccina is defined as a ‘strumento di fiato militare antico’, ii, 245.

39 ‘Sonata seconda detta la Bucefalasca’, op. 3; ‘Sonata prima a violino e trombone’, op. 2; and ‘Sonata decima terza a violino e trombone’, op. 7. But what is one to make of the portion falasca? ‘Falasco’, or sedge, ordinarily refers to a plant that outwardly resembles grasses or rushes, but Uccellini obviously had something else in mind. If the sonata was meant to signal military prowess, there is a vague possibility that ‘phalastic’ was a fictitious adjective for phallus, Italian fallo (penis); Il nuovo Zingarelli: vocabolario della lingua italiana, ed. Nicola Zingarelli (11th edn, Bologna, 1983), defines it as ‘an emblem of the male organ that, in Greco-Roman religion and many other ancient and primitive religions, represents the divine powers of generation and of human, animal and agrarian fecundity’ (667).

40 Similarly indistinguishable is the writing for violin and trombone in ‘Sonata prima a violino e trombone’, op. 2. Both pieces divide into three sections under different metres (C, 3/2, C), with the canzona figure prominent in section 1.

41 ‘Symphonia vigesima sesta detta la Cretense’, op. 8.

42 ‘Symphonia vigesima prima detta la Caferonia’, op. 8. Garfagnana is a region in northwest Tuscany. Another reading of Caferonia is Ca’ Feronia, or the Palace of Feronia, a goddess invoked in ancient Rome for her powers of fertility and (agricultural) abundance. Uccellini may have intended the goddess as a character in a play, reminiscent of the plot for the joustings in Ferrara for the marriage of Duke Alfonso d'Este to Barbara of Austria in 1566: Agostino Argenti (though his authorship has been questioned), Cavalerie della Città di Ferrara: che contengono Il castello di Gorgoferusa, Il monte di Feronia, et Il tempio d'Amore (Ferrara, 1566; of the three joustings, ‘The Mountain of Feronia’ is the second).

43 ‘Symphonia vigesima septima detta l'Arcadicha’, op. 8.

44 ‘Symphonia vigesima octava detta la Suavissima’, in op. 8; ‘Sonata quarta detta la Trasformata’ and ‘Corrente terza detta l'Inconstante’, both in op. 3.

45 ‘Sonata decima quinta a doi violini detta la Burnagina’, op. 4.

46 ‘Symphonia decima sesta detta la Granciflora’, ‘Symphonia decima nona detta la Malcumira’ and ‘Symphonia vigesima detta la Virmingarda’, the three in op. 8.

47 For a similar combination, see autocratico (autocratic) or fallocratico (phallocratic, a show of masculine power).

48 Op. 2, Sinfonia 6; op. 9, Canon 2.

49 Op. 3, Sonata 12 (Figure 6 in this article).

50 Op. 9, Canon 1, with the caption: ‘Canon Comunis est via, à due violini questo sudetto Canon, uno sonarà tutte le note dalla righa di mezo in su, l'altro sonarà tutte le note dalla righa di mezo in giù, avertendo, che tutte le note, che sono nella righa di mezo, tutte due le Parti sono obligate à sonarle.’

51 Allsop, Cavalier Giovanni Battista Buonamente, Franciscan Violinist, 181–2.

52 ‘[…] huomini più virtuosi […] bramando rendere il nome loro immortale, si diedero à queste laboriose fatiche, stimando senza queste non poter conseguire il nome di perfetto compositore, per esser i Canoni realmente il vero esame del Contrapunto’; Artificii musicali, from the letter to the reader (‘Amico lettore’), 5.

53 ‘Aria undecima detta il Caporal Simon’, ‘Aria duodecima detta Bigaran’ and ‘Aria decima terza sopra questa bella Sirena’, from op. 3. ‘Aria quarta sopra la Ciaccona’, ‘Aria quinta sopra la Bergamasca’ and ‘Aria sesta sopra un Balletto’, from op. 4.

54 Giamberti, Duo tessuti con diversi solfeggiamenti (Rome, 1657): ‘Duo I. Perfidia [i.e. persistent repetition of a figure] sopra Ut re mi fa sol la a due canti’; ‘Duo VIII. Ballo di Mantua a due canti’; ‘Duo V. Fra Iacopino a canto e tenore’.

55 ‘Symphonia trigesima quarta detta la Gran Battaglia’ (op. 8).

56 ‘Aria nona’ (op. 3).

57 With Hymen in Italian ordinarily Imene.

58 The Capriccio was printed in Farina's second book of instrumental works: Ander Theil Newer Paduanen, Gagliarden, Couranten, Frantzösischen Arien, etc. (Dresden, 1627), no. 27, entitled ‘Kurtzweilig Quodlibet’. On this work, see Rebecca Cypess, ‘“Die Natur und Kunst zu betrachten”: Carlo Farina's Capriccio stravagante (1627) and the Cultures of Collecting at the Court of Saxony’, The Musical Quarterly, 96 (2012), 139–92, esp. 142, 144, 149, 159, 161, 162, 179 n. 11 (for the various animals). In addition to animals, the Capriccio imitates instruments (lira, pifferino, trombetta, clarino, gnachere, flautino, fifferino della soldadesca, tamburo, chitarra spagniola).

59 Sonate a 2. 3. 4 istrumenti, de’ quali una è composta in canone, & un'altra ad imitatione di versi sogliono fare diversi animali bruti, op. 8 (Venice, 1679); 12 sonatas in all.

60 Couperin (d. 1733), ‘Le gazoüillement’ (Second livre de piéces de clavecin, 1716–18); ‘Le rossignol-en-amour’ and ‘Le rossignol-vainqueur’ (Troisiéme livre de piéces de clavecin, 1722).

61 Banchieri, Vivezze, ‘La rondinella concertata’, ‘Usignolo concertato’, ‘Farfalla concertata a chori’ and ‘Ape amorosa non concertata’ (all for six voices), 2–5; Croce, Triaca, ‘Canzon del cucco e rissognuolo con la sentenza del papagallo’, in four parts (for five voices), 5–8.

62 See Pajerski, ‘Marco Uccellini (1610–1680) and his Music’, 103; and Allsop, The Italian ‘Trio’ Sonata, 116–17.

63 Pajerski, ibid., 90. The six sonatas are scheduled to be published under the title Marco Uccellini: Six Solo Sonatas, Op. 4 (1645) for violin and basso continuo, ed. Harrán (Bologna, forthcoming 2014).

64 ‘Sonata overo Toccata sesta a violino solo detta la mia Signora’.

65 One can rule out ‘his wife’, for Uccellini was a priest (hence the appellation Don Marco Uccellini).

66 Sartori, Bibliografia della musica strumentale italiana, i, 409–10 (item 1650a), for ‘the beautiful Celia’ (l'Hermosa Celia), a corrente; ‘the lovely Lisarda’ (la Bella Lisarda), a corrente; and ‘the beautiful Hyacinth’ (la Hermosa Iacinta), a canciona (sic). The collection, entitled Il primo libro di canzone, sinfonie, fantasie, capricci, brandi, correnti, gagliarde, alemane, volte per violini, e viole, overo altro stromento à uno, due, e trè con il basso continuo, is by Andrea Falconieri (d. 1656).

67 Referring again to the listings in the White Pages checked on 18 November 2011, I found, as family names, 281 instances of Vittoria, 228 of Vittorio, 1,137 of Vittori; 6 of Ortensia, 15 of Ortensio, 71 of Ortensi; and 178 of Laura, 2,064 of Lauro, 851 of Lauri.

68 ‘Sonata prima a violino solo detta la Vitoria trionfante’.

69 ‘[…] praesidio Perusiae imposito, legationibus Etruriae amicitiam petentibus prae se Romam ad senatum missis consul praestantiore etiam quam dictator victoria triumphans urbem est invectus’ (italics mine); cf. Livy, Ab urbe condita libri, IX.40, 2nd edn, ed. Wilhelm Weissenborn and Mauritius Müller, 6 vols. (Leipzig, 1885–1905), iii, 155–6 (156).

70 For example, Giacopo Nardi's translation entitled Le deche di T. Livio padovano delle historie romane: tradotte nella lingua toscana, etc. (Venice, 1540, and several later editions).

71 ‘Sonata seconda a violino solo detta la Luciminia contenta’.

72 ‘Ergo igitur cum in isto cogitationis salo fluctuarem aliquanto longius frondosi nemoris convallem umbrosam, cuius inter varias herbulas et laetissima virecta fungentium rosarum mineus color renidebat. Iamque apud mea usquequaque ferina praecordia Veneris et Gratiarum lucum illum arbitrabar, cuius inter opaca secreta floris genialis regius nitor relucebat’; cf. Apuleius, Metamorphoses, IV.2, ed. and trans. J. Arthur Hanson, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1989), i, 184.

73 Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, 1st edn (Venice, 1612): ‘Diciamo, marinare il pesce, e anche altri cibi, che è quando è fritto, mettervi su dell'aceto, per conservarlo’, 511.

74 Il nuovo Zingarelli: vocabolario della lingua italiana: ‘Tener immerso in liquido a base di vino o d'aceto pesce fritto o altro, per insaporirlo o conservarlo; far macerare la selvaggina in vino o aceto ed erbe amoratiche, per toglierle in parte l'odore di salvatico’, 1,110.

75 Vocabolario della lingua italiana, 4 vols. (Rome, 1986–94): ‘mettere a marinare una persona o una cosa’, i.e. ‘custodirla gelosamente, tenerla chiusa’, iii, 87.

76 Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, ed. Salvatore Battaglia and Giorgio Bàrberi Squarotti, 21 vols. (Turin, 1961–2002): ‘mettere da parte, serbare’, ix, 806; Cambridge Italian Dictionary, ed. Barbara Reynolds, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1962), i, 465.

77 Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca (1st edn, 1612), 511: ‘marinare diciamo anche all'avere un certo interno cruccio, per cosa, che ci dispiaccia’. Clearly, Jews, as a persecuted minority in post-Tridentine Italy, would have had many reasons – social, economic, personal – to be ‘annoyed’.

78 Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, ix, 808: ‘mal partito, ridotto a mal partito, malconcio’ or (jokingly) ‘rammollito’, ‘sfigurato’.

79 John Florio, Queen Anna's New World of Words, or, Dictionarie of the Italian and English Tounges (London, 1611), 301.

80 These and other explanations have been treated in ‘What to Make of “the Pickled Jewess” (la Ebrea marinata) in a Sonata by Marco Uccellini (1645)?’ (see above, n. 6), 56–9. Beyond them I pursue the implications of the sonata as an illustration of the stylus phantasticus described by Athanasius Kircher in his Musurgia universalis, 2 vols. (Rome, 1650; repr. Hildesheim, 1970), I.vii.585 (‘What to Make’, 62–8).

81 The chances of an orthographical error are difficult to gauge: op. 4 was republished, in a 2nd edn, in 1663, with the same marinata; and if there were a misprint in the first edition, one might think that Uccellini would catch it in the second. But since Italian publishers undertook later editions for commercial reasons without receiving authorization from composers, and since, in the case of Uccellini's op. 4, the second edition was printed in Antwerp by the heirs of Pierre Phalèse, and transalpine publishers customarily reissued Italian collections without requesting permission from their original Italian publishers, Uccellini was clearly not involved in its preparation. I owe this information on transalpine printing practices to Jane Bernstein, as I do on the possibility that Uccellini could have missed errors, especially textual ones, in reviewing the proofs of the first edition.

82 ‘Typographical’ because the editor might have assumed, from the irregularity of the epithet ‘l'Ebrea ma rinata’, that the composer erred, hence rewrote it as ‘marinata’ (again the composer might have missed it in reviewing the proofs of the first edition).

83 Symptomatically Jews, after conversion to Christianity, were often renamed Rinato, especially in its Latin spelling Renato. An example is Abramino Levi, the grandson of Abramo Levi, and like him a harpist, who, after his conversion in July 1588, appeared in the salary register for the Mantuan court, in the same year, as Bernardino San Benedetto Renato (Bernardino was the name that the Mantuan Duke Guglielmo chose for him and San Benedetto the place where he was baptized). See Harrán, ‘The Levi Dynasty: Three Generations of Jewish Musicians in Sixteenth-Century Mantua’, in Rabbi Judah Moscato and the Jewish Intellectual World of Mantua in the 16^th–17^th Centuries (Leiden and Boston, 2012), 161–98 (181–4).

84 To uncover the sources of the sonatas in Uccellini's op. 4, as well as all other enigmatic titles to his and other seventeenth-century Italian composers’ instrumental works, I went through the collections of canzonette and villanelle (and related types: villotte, napolitane, gregesche, etc.) in Emil Vogel, Alfred Einstein, François Lesure and Claudio Sartori, comp., Bibliografia della musica italiana vocale profana pubblicata dal 1500 al 1700, 3 vols. (Staderini, 1977), as I did similar works, in manuscript, in the holdings of the Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica, Bologna: Gaetano Gaspari, comp., Catalogo della Biblioteca del Liceo Musicale di Bologna (details above), and of the Biblioteca Estense, Modena: Pio Lodi, comp., Catalogo delle opere musicali: città di Modena, Biblioteca Estense (Parma, 1923; repr. Bologna, 1967). For canti popolari, I consulted Alessandro D'Ancona, La poesia popolare italiana (2nd enl. edn, Leghorn, 1906; repr. Bologna, 1967); idem, Saggi di letteratura popolare: tradizioni, teatro, leggende, canti (Leghorn, 1913); Costantino Nigra, Canti popolari del Piemonte (Turin, 1888); Giuseppe Tigri, Canti popolari toscani (Florence, 1856); and, rich in references to ‘la bella Franceschina’, Girometta and other tunes, Warren Kirkendale, ‘Franceschina, Girometta and their Companions in a Madrigal “a diversi linguaggi” by Luca Marenzio and Orazio Vecchi’, Acta musicologica, 44 (1972), 181–235. The results were paltry: only one instrumental work could be traced to a vocal source (see under last section, Figures 7–8).

85 ‘Sonata quarta a violino solo detta la Hortensia virtuosa’.

86 ‘Hortensia vero Q.[uinti] Hortensi filia, cum ordo matronarum gravi tributo a triumviris esset oneratus nec quisquam virorum patrocinium esi accommodare auderet, causam feminarum apud triumviros et constanter et feliciter egit: repraesentata enim patris facundia impetravit ut maior pars imperatae pecuniae his rimitteretur. Revixit tum muliebri stirpe Q.[uintus] Hortensius verbisque filiae aspiravit, cuius si virilis sexus posteri vim sequi voluissent, Hortensianae eloquentiae tanta hereditas una feminae actione abscissa non esset’; Valerius Maximus (early first century), Facta et dicta memorabilia, VIII.iii.3, ed. John Briscoe, 2 vols. (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1998), ii, 511–12.

87 Quintilian, for one, wrote that ‘Hortensiae Q.[uinti] filiae oratio apud triumviros habita legitur non tantum in sexus honorem’ (The speech that Hortensia, the daughter of Quintus Hortensius, delivered before the triumvirs is read not merely in honour of her sex); Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (first century), Institutio oratoria, ed. M. Winterbottom, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1970), I.i.6.

88 See A Latin Dictionary, rev. and enl. Charlton T. Lewis (Oxford, 1879, in its imprint from 1980), 1997.

89 Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca (1st edn, 1612), 941: ‘Che ha virtù, valoroso, eccellente’ (Someone who has virtù is courageous and outstanding). Florio, Queen Anna's New World of Words (1611), said of ‘vertù’ that in addition to ‘virtue, honesty, grace, hatred of vice’, it means ‘the power, vigour, strength or property in or of any thing’ (596).

90 L'Amfiparnaso comedia harmonica (Venice, 1597); mod. edn by Cecil Adkins (Chapel Hill, NC, 1977). Vecchi has his place in Modenese music not only because the madrigal-comedy (with a dedication to Alessandro d'Este [d. 1624], later cardinal and bishop in the diocese of Reggio-Emilia) was first performed in Modena in 1594, but also because he served as maestro di cappella at the Cathedral during the years 1584–6. See Roncaglia, La cappella musicale del duomo di Modena, 29–36 (plus 37–72, with further data on his relations with Modena).

91 Hortensia: ‘E ch’è quell'importun che chiama Hortensia? […] Vatene in mal'ora, / Vecchiaccio ribambito! / Credi ch'io sia una donna da partito?’ L'Amfiparnaso, ed. Adkins, 21–5 (Act I, scene i).

92 ‘Sonata over Toccata quinta a violino solo detta la Laura rilucente’.

93 ‘Quand'io son tutto volto in quella parte / Ove 'l bel viso di madonna luce, / Et m’è rimasa nel pensier la luce / Che m'arde et strugge dentro a parte, / I’ che temo del cor che mi si parte, / Et veggio presso il fin de la mia luce, / Vommene in guisa d'orbo, senza luce’, etc. (from Sonnet 18); Francesco Petrarca, Rime, trionfi e poesie latine, ed. Ferdinando Neri et al. (with Neri the editor of the Rime) (Milan, 1951), 20.

94 ‘Come a forza di venti / Stanco nocchier di notte alza la testa / A’ duo lumi ch’à sempre il nostro polo, / Così ne la tempesta / Ch'i’ sostegno d'Amor gli occhi lucenti / Sono il mio segno e ‘l mio conforto solo’ (from Canzone 10); ibid., 108–11 (109–10 for lines 46–51).

95 Caccini, Nuove musiche e nuova maniera di scriverle (Florence, 1614), 42; mod. edn by H. Wiley Hitchcock (Middleton, WI, 1978), 92–3. In the editor's introduction, the author is said to be ‘unidentified’ (xxii), but the poem, in its four stanzas, can be traced to Francesco Rasi; see his Opere poetiche (Mantua, 1614), 38, with the dedication ‘Al medesimo’ (to the same one) referring to the dedicatee of the previous ode, ‘Vincenzo, Duca di Mantova’ (the volume exists in a unique copy in Como, Biblioteca Comunale, under the shelf mark 51.5.31/VI). Other composers of the poem were Giovanni Gabrieli, Dialoghi musicali a 7–12 (Venice, 1590) and Madrigali a otto voci (Antwerp, 1596); Francesco Rasi, Vaghezze di musica (Venice, 1608); Orazio Brognonico, Primo libro di madrigali a tre voci (Venice, 1612); Lucrezio Ruffolo, Il terzo libro di madrigali a cinque voci (Venice, 1612); and Flaminio Corradi, Le stravaganze d'amore (Venice, 1616).

96 Ibid., stanza 1:5–6: ‘O mia luce, o mia vita, / O mia gioia infinita’.

97 ‘Salutano gli Uccelli col proprio canto il Sole ne suoi albori, ed io, che da quegli prendo il cognome, riverisco colle mie melodie, quali esse si sieno, l'Altezza vostra Serenissima che spunta come nuovo sole all'Italia.’

98 See Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca (3rd edn, 1691), ii, 178, where the phrase ‘Aver l'aura della corte, del popolo, o simili’ (To have the aura of the court, the people or similar things) is explained as referring to ‘one who has the applause and the favour of the court, of the people, etc.’ Aura also connects with aurare, to deck with gold or to gild, which may reinforce the notion of the Crown Prince as a new ‘sun’.

99 The first of Francesco's three wives. Upon Maria Caterina's death in 1646, Francesco married her sister Vittoria Farnese (could she have been the one whom Uccellini celebrated, in 1645, in the sonata ‘detta la Vittoria trionfonte’?). Vittoria died in 1649, and in 1654 Francesco married Lucrezia Barberini. So Uccellini, in attending the duke, served his three wives, whom he would have called ‘la mia Signora’.

100 True, there is more to the four sonatas in Figure 5 than their openings (of which three show the usual gestures of the canzona da sonar and one displays typical soloistic figuration); but the continuation of these and the two other solo sonatas in op. 4 is hardly informative of their titles.

101 For 12 different melodies to the hymn, see John R. Bryden and David G. Hughes, comps., An Index of Gregorian Chant, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA, 1969), i, 233–4, the first of them from the Liber responsorialis (Solesmes, 1895), the remainder from Hymnen I: die mittelalterlichen Hymnenmelodien des Abendlandes, ed. Bruno Stäblein (Kassel, 1956). Uccellini's version resembles five of the 12 in its opening three notes, though has a different continuation. Monteverdi composed two works to ‘Iste confessor Domini sacratus’, each of them to still another reading of the chant: see his Selva morale e spirituale (1641), ed. Denis Stevens, 2 vols. (Cremona, 1998), ii, 780–2 (for one voice, two violins and continuo), 783–7 (for two voices, two violins and continuo).

102 On this sonata, see Pajerski, ‘Marco Uccellini (1610–1680) and his Music,’ 112. Since the third violin finishes the melody before the first one, it repeats it, starting from the middle of the piece (bar 43).

103 The Tartaruga or Tartarughi may also have been a family, in which case the composer illustrated its name by slow motion.

104 Turini, Madrigali a una, due, tre, voci con alcune Sonate a due, et a tre: libro primo, 31–4; Rossi, Il quarto libro de varie sonate, sinfonie, gagliarde, brandi, e corrente per sonar due violini, et un chittarrone o altro stromente simile, 9; Buonamente, Il quarto libro de varie sonate, sinfonie, gagliarde, corrente, e brandi per sonar con due violini, & un basso di viola, 40–1 for two upper parts and 38–9 for bass.

105 ‘Costantino dilitioso’, Sartori, Bibliografia della musica strumentale italiana, i, 127–8 (item 1605b, Giovan Battista Calì); ‘la Gata melata’, ibid., i, 380–2 (1642b, Antonio Croci da Modena); ‘l'Infante archibizzarra’, ibid., i, 409–10 (1650a, Andrea Falconiero); and ‘la Nobile congratulante’, ibid., ii, 167–9 (1682i, Gioseffo Placuzzi), a corrente to a balletto entitled ‘il Cavagliere consolato’ (the comforted cavalier).

106 ‘Notte d'amore’, Sartori, Bibliografia, i, 242–4 (1618c, Lorenzo Allegri, Primo libro delle musiche); for the libretto, by Francesco Cini, see his Notte d'amore (Florence, 1608). Maurizio Cazzati's Trattenimenti per camera d'arie, correnti, e balletti, op. 22 (1660), though not assignable to a particular event, seems to have been performed as a series of balletti, to judge from its dances entitled ‘Ballo delle Dame’ (the ladies’ dance), ‘Ballo de’ Cavaglieri’ (dance of the cavaliers), ‘Ballo de’ Contadini’ (dance of the peasants), ‘Ballo de’ Tedeschi’ (dance of the Germans), ‘Ballo de’ Satiri’ (dance of the satyrs), etc.

107 ‘Discordia concors’, Sartori, Bibliografia, i, 440–1 (1667d, Giovanni Maria Bononcini, Delle sonate da camera e da ballo a 1. 2. 3. 4, op. 2 no. 8); the first violin is tuned to g-c'-g'-c”. Bononcini uses scordatura in two other gigues (nos. 6–7) and in the last piece in the collection, an aria (no. 37, where the composer, in a feat of display, tunes the two violins to g-d'-g'-d” and the viola to c-g-d'-g’).

108 Il Verso, Il primo libro della musica a due voci (Palermo, 1596), in Sartori's Bibliografia, 1596e, mod. edn by Paolo Emilio Carapezza in Scuola polifonica siciliana: musiche strumentali didattiche (Rome, 1971). On ‘Babilonia’, ‘Scilla e Cariddi’ and ‘Cecus non iudicat’, see Diego Cannizzaro, ‘La musica per organo e clavicembalo nei regni di Napoli e di Sicilia tra XVI e XVII secolo’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Università degli studi di Roma, La Sapienza, 2004), 30. ‘Cecus non iudicat’ appears to be an ancient proverb: John Gower (d. 1408) quotes the Latin in his Confessio amantis, ed. Russell A. Peck (Kalamazoo, MI, 2004), line 2489, and Chaucer (d. 1400) anglicized it as ‘A blind man can nat Iuggen wel in hewis’ in Troilus and Criseyde, II.21.

109 Berardi, Sinfonie a violino solo […] libro primo, opera settima (Bologna, 1670); in Sartori's Bibliografia, 1670c.

110 Neither of the two modern redactions of Berardi's Sinfonie, one edited by Manfredo Zimmermann (Münster, 1993), another by Gregorio Carraro (Bologna, 2011), says anything in the introduction about the relation of mottos and content.

111 Vecchi, Selva di varia ricreatione (Venice, 1590), a collection of madrigals, capricci, balli, arie, giustiniane, canzonette and fantasie. Of the four stanzas, the first reads: ‘Margarita dai Corai / Leva su che cant'i Gai / E mi che non ghe penso / la la diridon’ (Margarita from the corals, / Wake up for the cock is crowing, / Yet I don't think about this: / la la diridon!).

112 See, for example, Paul D. McLean, ‘A Frame Analysis of Favor Seeking in the Renaissance: Agency, Networks, and Political Culture’, American Journal of Sociology, 104 (1998), 51–91; idem, ‘Patronage, Citizenship, and the Stalled Emergence of the Modern State in Renaissance Florence’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 47 (2005), 638–64; and Peter Burke, ‘Humanism and Friendship in Sixteenth-Century Europe’, in Friendship in Medieval Europe, ed. Julian Haseldine (Stroud, 1999), 91–98.

113 ‘Roma santa’, ‘Brescia armigera’, ‘Capo d'Istria unica’, ‘Venezia vergine’, ‘Mantova virile’, ‘Siena allegra’, etc.: altogether 19 cities (in a collection by Gabriello Puliti, Lunario armonico perpetuo calculato al meridiano, & delle principali città d'Italia, 3 vv, 1615; Sartori, Bibliografia della musica strumentale italiana, i, 207–8).

114 With extensions beyond Italy to be sure, as, for example, in pieces for harpsichord by François Couperin. What did he mean, to name a few, by ‘Les baricades mistérieuses’ (Mysterious barricades), ‘Le petit-deüil, ou les trois veuves’ (Slight mourning, or the three widows), ‘La linote-éfarouchée’ (The startled featherbrain) or ‘La petite pince-sans-rire’ (The maiden of dry wit)? On these four works, see Jane Clark and Derek Cannon, ‘The Mirror of Human Life’: Reflections on François Couperin's ‘Pièces de Clavecin’ (2nd edn, London, 2011), 136, 159, 144, 181.