Note sul processo creativo nel primo Seicento: le due edizioni dei Concerti all’uso moderno di Giovanni Ghizzolo (Milano, 1611 – Venezia, 1623)

A minor Conventual friar active at several centers in Northern Italy, Giovanni Ghizzolo was a versatile and up-to-date composer, and is today considered one of the most representative figures of the transition phase between the Renaissance and the Baroque. His second book of Concerti all’uso moderno, first published in Milan in 1611, was reprinted in Venice in 1623 – the year of the composer's death – with a number of changes attributable to the author himself. A comparison between the two editions highlights several points of reflection on the evolution of the sacred concerto in a crucial phase of its history and on the peculiarities of the creative process of Ghizzolo himself. The article opens with an excursus on studies concerning the creative process, and in particular those dealing with the beginning of the seventeenth century, among which one of the most studied cases is that of the first book of instrumental canzonas by Girolamo Frescobaldi, published in 1628 in two independent editions and re-issued in 1635 (1634 more veneto). In the second part of the article, Ghizzolo's second book is contextualized against the background of the Milanese musical environment at the beginning of the seventeenth century through the examination of the numerous dedications found in individual compositions. The third part discusses the concertos being re-elaborated in the second edition, showing how these reveal not only a change in the modus operandi of the composer (made evident by the passage from the score adopted in the first edition to the basso continuo adopted in the second), but also a change in compositional taste. Though it cannot be ruled out that at the death of the composer the work of revision was still ongoing, the concertos featuring structural variants are only six out of twenty-two. Types of intervention range from eliminating varied repetitions of sections or fragments, to replacing long counterpoint episodes with shorter solo episodes. Some motets have been corrected or modified, others abbreviated; but, contrary to what the printer says, no motet has been extended. The composer sought to simplify and streamline the structure and eliminate redundant elements in the name of a more vertical and expressive style. The two editions of Ghizzolo’s second book of motets can be thus inserted within a path that in the early decades of the seventeenth century, starting from a counterpoint writing of Renaissance style, led to compositional attitudes that reveal the assimilation of a more modern monodic style.