Doni, Giovanni Battista (EN)

Doni Giovanni Battista, *1594 Florence, †1 December 1647 Florence, Italian music theorist.

He studied in Bologna and Rome, and from 1613 at the University of Bourges. In 1618 he received a doctorate in law from the University of Pisa. In 1621 he accompanied the papal legate on a journey to the French court, during which he met M. Mersenne. In the years 1623–40 he stayed in Rome at the court of Cardinal Francesco Barberini, whom he accompanied on travels to Paris and Madrid. From 1629 he also served as secretary of the College of Cardinals. Using the collections of the Vatican, he deepened his studies of ancient culture. In 1640 Archduke Ferdinando II de’ Medici brought him to the University of Florence to take up the chair of rhetoric.

Doni’s writings consist mainly of theoretical reflections on ancient music, which he regarded as the ideal model of the art. He devoted most attention to problems (already discussed in the 16th century by humanists) concerning the ethos of Greek modes and their expressive possibilities in contemporary music, as well as investigations into the reconstruction of the Greek genera: diatonic, chromatic, and enharmonic. He opposed the interpretations of N. Vicentino, including his division of the tetrachord in the chromatic and enharmonic genera realized on the model of an instrument called the archicembalo. Doni himself proposed different divisions, which he demonstrated on his own models of viols, organs, and a lyre (which, in honor of his patrons, he called lyra barberina). In general, Doni’s research is close to the views of V. Galilei in his Dialogo della musica antica et della moderna, but more detached from contemporary musical practice. His instrument designs also never entered practical use. Today, Doni’s best-known work is his Trattato della musica scenica, in which he reflects on the performance of ancient stage drama and criticizes the form of the melodramma as an improper continuation of this tradition, arguing that only monologues and choruses should be sung in drama. He highly valued contemporary developments in dramatic music, especially those of Peri and Caccini, but wanted to restrict them to the idyllic genre of pastoral drama and did not foresee future development for this form. His reflections in this area constitute a kind of early history of opera. He also devoted several observations to contemporary solo singing and its performance practice, introducing a systematic distinction between the styles recitativo and rappresentativo, the latter of which he considered appropriate for the stage.

Literature: F. Vatielli La Lyra Barberina di Giovanni Battista Doni, Pesaro 1909; C. Gallico Discorso di Giovanni Battista Doni sul recitare in scena, “Rivista Italiana di Musicologia” III, 1968; P. Ledda Giovanni Battista Doni, il „De praestantia musicae ueteris”, in: Claudio Monteuerdi e il suo tempo, proceedings of the congress, Venice 1968, Verona 1969; C.V. Palisca Giovanni Battista Doni’s Lyra Barberina. Commentary and Iconographical Study, Bologna 1981; S. Leopold Das Madrigal und die wahre Theatermusik. Die Stillehre Giovanni Battista Donis, “Musiktheorie” IV, 1989; S. Schaal Musica scenica. Die Operntheorie des Giovanni Battista Donis, «Europäische Hochschulschriften» XXXVI, Frankfurt am Main 1991; C.V. Palisca Giovanni Battista Doni. Musicological Activist, and His Lyra Barberina, in: Studies in the History of Italian Music and Music Theory, New York 1994; Sz. Paczkowski Nauka o afektach w myśli muzycznej I połowy XVII wieku, Lublin 1998.