Ferrari, Benedetto (EN)

Ferrari Benedetto, also known as Benedetto dalla Tiorba *ca. 1604 Reggio in Emilia, †22 Octobre 1681 Modena, Italian composer, theorbist, and man of letters. He received his education in Rome.

From 1619 to 1623 he was active as a musician (theorbist) in Parma. In 1637 he co-authored and co-organized the first Venetian staging (at the Teatro San Cassiano) of a dramma per musica (L’Andromeda, music by F. Manelli). In the following years, until 1644, he wrote and co-organized further productions in Venice, staged in an increasing number of theatres (Teatro San Cassiano, Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Teatro San Moisè), and also performed in them as a theorbist providing instrumental accompaniment. In the spring seasons of 1639 and 1640, his La maga fulminata and Il pastor regio were revived in Bologna by the same Venetian performers. Around 1643 Ferrari sought employment at the court of Władysław IV in Warsaw, but without success; he also dedicated to the king the printed text of his Il prencipe giardiniero. 

In 1645 Ferrari became maestro di cappella at the ducal court in Modena, and at the end of 1651 he entered service at the Austrian court as a musician and co-organizer of spectacles. In 1653 he returned to Modena, where he worked until his death, with a break in the years 1662–73. His later works (texts or music) were staged in Modena as well as in Bologna, Parma, and Ferrara. He also wrote a number of ballet introductions for Modena and Vienna. 

All of Ferrari’s dramatic music is considered lost. His dramatic texts written for Venice do not represent a uniform style: they draw on a wide range of traditions, from early courtly melodrammi to models derived from commedia dell’arte scenarios, with a strong emphasis on effective stage situations. His oratorio Il Sansone is regarded as one of the more distinguished works in the genre. Three collections of his published solo works, mostly set to his own poetry, are important for the development of the cantata. The sharp distinction between the solo madrigal and the aria, so clear in the works of the Florentine composers, disappears here. Most of Ferrari’s works are in two parts, typically consisting of a section in duple meter with recitative-like melody, followed by a section in triple meter, not yet a full aria but highly lyrical in character. Some pieces are explicitly titled “cantata,” such as Cantata spirituale (from the 1637 collection), a four-part work in which each section is based on a descending major-mode tetrachord bass of the chaconne type. Characteristic features of Ferrari’s style include a close relationship between the vocal line and the basso continuo, often through imitation, as well as a varied continuo line ranging from sustained notes of several semibreves, through walking bass patterns, to rapid, virtuosic passages. Elaborate ostinato constructions also appear frequently.

Literature: E. Schmitz Geschichte der weltlichen Solokantate, Leipzig 1914, 2nd ed. 1955; F. Vatielli Operisti-librettisti…, “Rivista Musicale Italiana” 43, 1939; A. Szweykowska Dramma per musica w teatrze Wazów 1635–1648, Krakow 1976.