“Those rubins, those pearls, and those notes”. On some lute tablatures in a Palermo private book collection and a rediscovered printed edition of Ihan Gero

Abstract

The first part of this essay describes five printed music books in the Rubino collection. Composers are Giulio Abondante, Domenico Bianchini, Francesco da Milano, his pupil Perino Fiorentino, and Giacomo Gorzanis. They all wrote original lute music and arranged tablatures of other composers’ works. These editions, mostly published or accessible online, date between 1554 and 1565. They are interesting because of their origin—apart from Gorzanis’s pieces located in the Trieste area, no specimen is known to exist in Italian libraries, but this collection comes from central Sicily. Soon after WW2, in a Caltanissetta convent, it was donated to Giovanni Rubino, who passed it on to his children. How is this possible?
In recent decades, research traced the origins of the Sicilian polyphonic school. Its founder, Calabria-born Giandomenico Martoretta, dedicated its first opus to Francesco Moncada, Count of Caltanissetta, whose mansion was a high-level cultural center. The purchase and use of this material can be plausibly linked to it. Supporting evidence is, other music books issued between 1538 and 1540, now at Palermo Central Library, belonged to Moncada's son-in-law, Pietro Barresi, and then to the latter’s nephew, Vincenzo Branciforti. Examining these recently cataloged editions, the book with the Canto part of Ihan Gero's Primo libro di madrigali et canzoni francese a doi voci (Venice: Scotto, 1540) also came out—an unicum so far.