Ricordi, Giovanni
Ricordi Giulio, *19 December 1840 Milan, †6 June 1912 Milan, Italian music publisher, Tito’s eldest son. He worked in the publishing house from 1863 and managed it in 1888–1912. In 1889, he purchased the Escudier publishing house in Paris, in 1902 he purchased the following companies: A. Pigna in Milan and Carlo Schmidl in Trieste and Vienna, and in 1905 the B. Carelli company in Naples. In 1901, he opened a branch in Leipzig, in 1903 in Genoa and in 1911 in New York. He was also a composer, writer and painter. Under the pseudonym J. Burgmein (sometimes Grubmeni), he composed 160 opuses of piano, chamber, orchestral and stage music, including the comic opera La secchia rapita (performed in Turin 1910). He was friends with Verdi and played a significant role in the artistic development of Puccini, who became the most important composer after Verdi, and almost all of his works were published by Ricordi. In 1879, Giulio Ricordi founded the Società Orchestrale della Scala. The catalogue for the 100th anniversary of the publishing house included 110,000 titles; in addition to the dominant contemporary opera works, it also included editions of early music (including “L’Arte Musicale in Italia” edited by L. Torchi) and a few book studies.
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.