A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Vallotti, Francescantonio

by William Smyth Rockstro

VALLOTTI, P. Francescantonio, was a native of Piedmont, where he must have been born about the year 1700, since Dr. Burney, who saw him in 1770, says that he was then 'near seventy years of age.'^[1] He had long before this time attained a high reputation as the best Organist, and one of the best Church Composers, in Italy. To his skill on the Organ he owed the appointment of Maestro di Cappella, at the Church of S. Antony, at Padua, which he held with honour until his death. His Compositions for the Church are very numerous. In 1770 he composed a Requiem for the funeral of Tartini; but his magnum opus was a theoretical work, entitled 'Della Scienza teorica, e pratica, della moderna musica.' The original plan of this treatise embraced four volumes: Vol. I., treating of the scientific or mathematical basis of Music; Vol. II., of the 'practical elements' of Music, including the Scale, Temperament, the Cadences, and the Modes, both ecclesiastical and modern; Vol. III., of Counterpoint; and Vol. IV., of the method of accompanying a Thorough-Bass. Vol. I. only was published, at Padua, in 1779; and its contents are valuable enough to make the loss of the remaining portions of the work a subject of deep regret. In this volume, the mathematical proportions of the consonant and dissonant Intervals are described with a clearness for which we seek in vain in most of the older treatises on the same subject—not excepting that of Tartini himself. To the contents of some of these treatises, and the views set forth in them, allusion is frequently made, during the course of the work. Chapter XXXII. contains a lucid refutation of the theory of the Minor Seventh propounded by Rameau, whom Vallotti characterizes as 'otherwise, a respectable and meritorious writer'; and, at the close of the introductory section, which consists of a series of definitions, given in the form of a Musical Dictionary, the reader is referred for farther information to the Dictionary of Rousseau, which he is told would be still more valuable than it is were it not adapted to Rameau's defective system. But the chief interest of the treatise lies in the fact that it belongs to a period at which the study of the Ecclesiastical Modes was combined with that of the modern scale, for the obvious reason that the more modern Tonality was not, and could not possibly be, antagonistic to the older one, since it was based, not upon the abolition of the Modes, but upon the employment of the Ionian and Æolian forms to the exclusion of all the others. We have shown elsewhere that the last great teacher who advocated this system of instruction was Haydn; and that Beethoven was the last great pupil to whom Haydn appears to have imparted it. It would be an interesting study to trace the influence of the system upon the work of these two great composers. The task, we believe, has never been attempted; but it is admitted, upon all hands, that the art of developing the resources of a given Key, within its natural limits, is a far higher and more difficult one than that of restlessly modulating from one Key to another—and this is the most prominent characteristic of the method in question. Vallotti's 'Treatise on Modulation,' which Dr. Burney saw in MS.^[2] might perhaps have thrown some light upon the subject; but this unhappily has never been published.

An attempt to complete Vallotti's great work was made after his death by his disciple and successor, P. Luigi Antonio Sabbatini;^[3] and his system of teaching was continued by his talented, but somewhat eccentric pupil, the Abbé Vogler.

[ W. S. R. ]

1. 'Present State of Music in France and Italy.' By Charles Burney, Mus.D., pp. 130–132. (London 1771.)
2. Present State of Music in France and Italy, p. 131.
3. Sabbatini, P. Luigi Antonio, was a native of Padua, and a pupil of P. Martini, under whom he studied, for some time, at Bologna. He completed his musical education, however, in his native town under P. Vallotti, whom he succeeded, about the year 1780, as Maestro di Cappella at the Church of S. Antony at Padua; and whose system he endeavoured to perpetuate in a work entitled 'La vera idea delle Musicali Numeriche Segnature' (Venice, 1799). He also wrote a 'Trattato sopra le Fughe Musicali,' in two vols. (Venice, 1802), illustrated by an exhaustive selection of Fugal Subjects and Devices culled from Vallotti's Compositions for the Church; and another theoretical work, entitled, 'Elementi teorici e pratici di Musica' (Roma, 1790). His best Composition was a Mass, written for the Funeral of Jommelli. He died at Padua in 1809.
   The editor is indebted to Dr. A. L. Peace, of Glasgow, for the use of a fine copy of the two first-named works, which are now very difficult to procure, and for that of the rare and perfect copy of Vallotti's work which forms the subject of the present notice.