Hi Andrew

Couple of things.  The nature of nationalism in the 17 and 18 century is very different from 19 century nationalims.  In the 17-18 century there were few Nations and both Italy and Germany were not among them. Though some critics in the later 18 century might boast a distance that allowed Germans to choose from various qualities it was not a nationalist pride. Nor in italy where competitions between Naples and Venice were felt as strongly as those with Paris. 

French hegemony is also not the nationalism we think of nor the one that Forkel calls upon when crowning Bach as the great German composer. Louis XIV and Colbert methodically created a propaganda machine to push Versailles style, Corneille, Lully, Mansart, LeBrun and Le Notre into the mouths and minds of Europe to the Glory of Louis.  At the end of his reign there is so powerful a reaction against him that Italian music is one flag marking factions of subversion to Versailles and its long hold on taste. Couperin Leclair monteclair clerembault are morphing because of italian music. 

Aristocratic Germanic States spoke French at court and the vernacular was vulgar until Mozart and romantic concepts of the nation.  The educated spoke and danced French and mostly listened to italian opera and concertos. After 1705 or so French music drops out of northern printing presses yet hundreds of volumes of italian music are engraved.  Most of vivaldi was printed in amsterdam.  Locatelli lives in holland. Geminiani in london. Caldara in vienna. St Petersburg is filled w italian composers as is Madrid because of Farinelli. 

When Burney evaluates Rameau he says that no one likes this music but the French.  I know this is later on but we see so few non french opera composers following in Rameaus path. (Dance music a different issue).  

So if French becomes the lingua franca of courtly and elite conversation, Corelli Vivaldi, Porpora and Pergolesi are that in music.  







Sent from my iPad

> On May 30, 2016, at 9:59 AM, Andrew Bernard <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> Hi Andrew,
> 
> The reason i find my question interesting (if I may say so) is that there
> seemed to be so much nationalism and fervour about the superiority of
> French music if you were French, German music if you were German, Italian
> music if you were Italian, and so on, for every nation you can think of. I
> would have expected it to be natural for German speakers to use German
> words for dynamics. Given that Italian was by no means a lingua franca
> across Europe at any time - although Latin was - I find it surprising how
> Italian terms came to prominence in musical notation all of a sudden, and
> why non-Italian speaking nations adopted the convention. Grove Online gives
> an argument in the article on dynamics suggesting something along the lines
> that dynamics were basically invented in Italian vocal practice, and the
> use of dynamics as a musical parameter or axis or dimension (my
> terminology) spread from there. That still does not imply that Italian
> terms should have automatically been applied to an Italian musical concept.
> 
> I note that Praetorius introduced ‘pian’ and ‘fort’. Perhaps as an
> influential German writer he started this off in Germany? Or was he merely
> reporting on already established practice?
> 
> Was it fashion? Like Prada and Gucci and Armani? The eternal appeal of
> Italian style?
> 
> Andrew
> 
> 
> On 30 May 2016 at 10:34:15 PM, Andrew Appel wrote:
> 
> Well. I wonder about terminology moving north! Schutz spent loads of time
> in Venice. Wrote those Italian madrigals. Froberger influenced by italian
> toccatas ricercares etc. Muffat and Corelli. Handel and italian everything.
> Bach and Vivaldi. Caldara in Vienna. Pizza!!!
> 
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