Ricordi, Giovanni
Ricordi Tito I, *29 October 1811 Milan, †7 September 1888 Milan, Italian music publisher, son of Giovanni. He worked in the company from 1825 and managed it in 1853–88. He was an engraver, copperplate engraver and lithographer, as well as a pianist. In 1842, he began publishing “Gazzetta musicale di Milano,” the first Italian music magazine also devoted to music criticism. He published scores and piano reductions of operas by Bellini, Donizetti, Puccini and Rossini. He was friends with Verdi, Liszt, Meyerbeer and Schumann. In 1864, he bought the publishing house of the Clausetti brothers in Naples, and in 1865, he reopened a branch in Florence. In 1871, a branch was established in Rome, in 1875 in London, and in 1888 in Palermo and Paris. In 1887, he purchased the G. Guido company in Florence and the Del Monaco printing house in Naples. In 1888, he bought the publishing house of F. Lucca in Milan, with the right to publish works by R. Wagner in Italy, and named the company G. Ricordi & Co. Thanks to this purchase, the number of the publishing house’s publications increased to approximately 94,000. From the 1870s, Ricordi began to use the offset printing technique. From 1875, in the “Biblioteca di Musica Popolare” series, he published cheap piano reductions in small formats; in 1884, he published the score of G. Puccini’s first opera Le villi. He was one of the founders of the Società del Quartetto (1863).
Literature: C. Sartori Casa Ricordi 1808–1958, Milan 1958; F. Degrada et al. Musica, musicisti, editoria. 175 anni di Casa Ricordi 1808–1983, Milan 1983.