FERRANDINI «AL SANTO SEPOLCRO»

Discretion is a characteristic and impressive feature of Giovanni Battista Ferrandini’s life and works and it may be said, at least until twenty years ago, that he remained well hidden amongst the host of anonymous minor Italian musicians working abroad during the 18^th century. He owed his good fortune to the Bavarian Wittelsbach electoral family in Munich.

Who exactly was Giovanni Ferrandini? Over the past twenty years I have tirelessly attempted to bring him out of the shadows and, without claiming unqualified success, I believe to have brought about a change of opinion in critical and philological circles and, despite myriad ­difficulties (typical, according to Walter Benjamin, when a historian contradicts tradition and challenges false certainties and erroneous conventions which remain, sadly, all too resistant), interest in his work has grown. Firstly, it is useful for the listener to know that Ferrandini was born on 12^th October 1709 in Venice, not in 1710 (the date given in current biographies) and that his father Stefano, originally from the Friuli region, played the oboe in Venetian theatres and assiduously visited the house of Vettor Dolfin, a nobleman with whom Vivaldi also associated and to whom he dedicated his famous collection of concerti opus 4 entitled «La Stravaganza» in 1715 or 1716. It was Stefano who brought the thirteen year-old Giovanni Battista to Munich in 1722, who probably already played both oboe and traverso excellently, instruments for which he subsequently published two excellent collections of sonatas. The young man’s career developed quickly and happily despite the reversals in princely fortunes as a result of political and military vicissitudes, and he ended up being elected as councillor and ennobled (Giovanni de’ Ferrandini). Given such a close relationship to the House of Wittelsbach, it was only natural that the composer should write a small body of sacred cantatas for solo voice and instruments «for performance at the Holy Sepulchre» which was reproduced in the Munich electoral chapel. It is a small but precious collection consisting (as far as we know today) of three cantatas.