Shepherd School festival celebrates composer Capuzzi

Shepherd School festival celebrates composer Capuzzi

BY JENNIFER EVANS
Rice News staff

In late 18th-century Italy, music lovers were tapping their toes to the likes of Mozart and Haydn, composers whose music still stirs the heart and soul today. But people were also humming tunes of countless other composers whose identities and works are lost in obscurity.

On a quest to rediscover some of those lost artists, Shepherd School Professor of Violin Kenneth Goldsmith and Shepherd School alumnus Zachary Carrettin undertook an expedition that would eventually lead them to rediscover one of the finest musicians and innovative composers of that time: Giuseppe Antonio Capuzzi.

In celebration of that rediscovery and of the 250th anniversary of Capuzzi’s birth, the Shepherd School is hosting a three-day festival Oct. 27, 29 and 30 featuring chamber music, concertos and ballet music by this long-forgotten master.

The concerts, which are free and open to the public, will begin at 8 each evening and will be held in Duncan Recital Hall, Alice Pratt Brown Hall. A lecture at 7 p.m. in 1133 Alice Pratt Brown Hall will precede each concert, giving a background of the composer and the sleuthing that brought him and his works to light.

Born in 1755, Capuzzi was known as a virtuoso violinist by the time he was 20. At age 25, he was concertmaster of three of the largest theaters in Venice. By 1785 he was a distinguished member of the orchestra at San Marco, and in 1792 he became the first concertmaster of the new Venetian opera theater, La Fenice. Later in his career, he moved to Bergamo, Italy, and as concertmaster and director of two orchestras and as a master teacher, he was one of the driving forces in the cultural life of the city.

Capuzzi’s fame took him to Vienna, Austria, and all the major cities of Italy. He traveled to London, where several of his ballets were produced, and he even was offered a prestigious musical post by Catherine the Great of Russia, which he declined.

How could such an amazing man and his works be forgotten?

“The whole style of music changed,” Goldsmith explained. “The same thing happened to Bach. Bach wasn’t played from the time he died [in 1750] until Mendelssohn resurrected him [in the 19th century]. Nobody played Bach; everything was fashion, the music of the day. In the time of Mozart and Haydn, they played Mozart and Haydn. They didn’t play baroque music — and there wasn’t anything else.”

Fortunately, however, a curious mind like Goldsmith’s compelled a look backward.

Seven years ago Goldsmith decided that Antonio Vivaldi, well-known for his “The Four Seasons,” could not have been the only composer in Venice between 1720 and 1800, and he was ready to find the others.

He compiled a list of more than 100 composers who worked in Venice during that period and went to Venice for some more in-depth study with Carrettin, his former pupil and teaching assistant. After reviewing hundreds of manuscripts, they came upon a piece by Capuzzi.
Goldsmith recalled, “I started reading it, and Zachary started reading it, and we started singing the parts, and we looked at each other and said, ‘This is really good stuff!’”

In 2001 they finally got the chance to perform Capuzzi. It was during a program of two-viola quintets that also included works by Boccherini, Mozart and Michael Haydn.

“Capuzzi was the hit of the program,” Goldsmith said. “Everybody’s loved these pieces when they’ve heard them. It’s really marvelous music.”

Knowing there was more to be found — and in preparation to mark Capuzzi’s 250th birthday — Goldsmith and Carrettin decided it was time to dig deeper.

Goldsmith recalled a wonderful library in Milan where he had done some music research nearly 30 years earlier and where there had been an old librarian who was an invaluable source of information. Goldsmith told Carrettin, “She was old then, but if she’s still there, she’d be a great resource.”

When Carrettin went to the Milan library in September 2004, he approached the oldest librarian he could find in the music section. He introduced himself as a colleague and student of the professor’s, and the librarian remembered Goldsmith immediately — even commenting on his 1976 visit. When Carrettin told her he was in search of Capuzzi manuscripts, serendipity struck yet again. She told him that early in the 1900s, one of the librarians spent years researching all of the manuscripts by Italian composers. Carrettin found a hand-copied card catalog with more than 100 entries under “Capuzzi.”

“It told us where everything was, and about 80 percent of his works were in Venice and Bergamo,” Goldsmith said.

In May, Goldsmith and Carrettin went to Bergamo and became the first people in 150 years to look at Capuzzi’s compositions.

“We found things that hadn’t even been catalogued, that weren’t even listed,” Goldsmith said.

For example, he said, the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians lists Capuzzi as having written only five violin concertos; in Bergamo, Goldsmith and Carrettin looked at 18.

“I have 15 violin concertos in my library in score that [Capuzzi] wrote between 1775 and 1817,” Goldsmith beamed.

He continued, “Five of Mozart’s greatest works are two-viola quintets. We have three by Michael Haydn and that’s about it.” With the addition of the six two-viola quintets by Capuzzi, he said, “we’ve almost doubled the number of important two-viola quintets.

“As far as violin concertos are concerned, we have three Mozart concertos that are played all the time. We have two Haydn concertos out of his three that are played. And now all of a sudden we have 15 by Capuzzi,” Goldsmith said. “Even if only three of them are good, that increases the number by 33 percent.”

Goldsmith said they may just be scratching the surface; there’s no telling what else lies out there. “We’ve found a lot of things that aren’t in any of the reference works,” he said.

He knows Capuzzi wrote 20 ballets, which were produced in England and elsewhere. However, only two have been found. (One of Capuzzi’s ballet suites will be performed during the music school’s festival.) All of Capuzzi’s operas are lost, but Goldsmith has some of his arias. “I’m sure there’s still music out there,” Goldsmith said. “I’m going to go back and do a lot more work.”

In the meantime, audiences can hear some of Capuzzi’s works at the upcoming festival or on a recently released CD on which Goldsmith and Carrettin joined with Shepherd School alumnus Gregory Ewer and chamber musicians Adam La Motte and Steve Estes to record Capuzzi’s “String Quintets, Op. 3.” All five will be performing at the festival — as will Shepherd School faculty and students — and they will be recording a second CD of Capuzzi’s works in January.