Cremona, 2025
This Week in Classical Music: June 2, 2025. Cremona. In our newest Italian travels, we encountered a number of musically essential cities, and Cremona is one among them. Cremona is considerably uncommon on this respect. As a rule, music flourished on the courts of the highly effective dukes, because it did within the neighboring Mantua below the Gonzagas. Cremona by no means had a prince: throughout its lengthy and turbulent historical past, it fought many enemies, belonged to totally different events (the Guelfs, the supporters of the Pope, and typically to the Ghibellines, the allies of the Holy Roman Emperor) and at totally different occasions was occupied by the Duchy of Milan, the Genovese Republic, the French and the Spanish. And for some time, it was an unbiased commune, led by Capitano del Popolo. One factor it by no means had was a considerable court docket. Due to this fact, music-making was concentrated on the Cathedral, the Duomo. We should say that the Duomo is magnificent, top-of-the-line examples of Romanesque structure in Northern Italy. Subsequent to the Duomo stands the Torrazzo, the tallest pre-modern campanile (bell tower) in Italy and Cremona’s image. On the opposite aspect is the Baptistry. The cathedral was initially constructed within the 12th century within the then-current Romanesque model however was enlarged within the subsequent centuries, buying many Renaissance parts. It’s adorned with many fantastic sculptures, some relationship again to the 12th century. The Torrazzo has 500 steps, and if you happen to courageous them, you’ll be rewarded with a beautiful view from the highest.
Marc’Antonio Ingegneri was crucial composer to function the Maestro di Cappella on the Duomo, although we must also point out the Bishop, Nicolò Sfondrato, later Pope Gregory XIV, who was instrumental in selling music and humanities within the metropolis. Ingegneri was born in Verona someday round 1535 and moved to Cremona within the late 1560s. This was the time of the Counter-Reformation, and one of many circumstances imposed by the Council of Trent, which produced the Counter-Reformation program, was that the phrases in Latin plenty needed to be legible. This, as we all know, virtually killed the polyphonic mass, which survived due to Palestrina’s mastery. Ingegneri labored within the model of Palestrina (a few of his work was even attributed, incorrectly, to the nice Roman). Right here’s Ingegneri’s Salve Regina, carried out by the Choir of Girton Faculty, Cambridge, Gareth Wilson conducting.
However in fact, the true fame was delivered to Cremona by its luthiers: Cremona is rightfully thought-about the birthplace of the fashionable violin. The devices made by the Amati household, Antonio Stradivari, and Giuseppe “del Gesù” Guarneri within the late 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries are nonetheless thought-about nonpareil. The entire Cremonese violin makers discovered from one another: each Stradivari and Guarneri had been pupils of Nicolò Amati, who in flip apprenticed along with his father, Girolamo Amati. Girolamo’s father, Andrea Amati, born in 1505, is taken into account the primary grasp to make a contemporary violin.
Cremona has a beautiful Museo del Violino (Violin Museum). It has a bit devoted to the historical past of string devices and one on violin-making. All of it’s accomplished in good style. However crucial half is the gorgeous corridor displaying uncommon devices by the Amati household, Stradivari and Guarneri (there are different rooms with a whole lot of devices, some essential, for instance, from the luthiers like Francesco Rugeri and Carlo Bergonzi). The museum has a small however lovely auditorium, the place a number of occasions a month the magnificent devices from the museum’s assortment are showcased by younger musicians. For a small price, anyone can come and pay attention. And clearly, the violin-making continues to be flourishing in Cremona: as you stroll the streets of the town, you encounter many luthiers’ outlets, a few of them well-known world wide.
