A thematic catalogue of the compositions by Francesco Pollini (1762–1846)
Francesco Pollini (1762–1846) was an amateur composer, tenor, pianist, and fortepiano teacher who shaped his education in Vienna during the 1780s, where he met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Born in Ljubljana, after his initial training in his hometown and in the capital of the Empire, he moved to Milan around 1792 where he settled permanently. There, he was active as a teacher and composer, producing an influential piano method and a substantial number of works for the piano, vocal chamber music, but also – particularly in the first twenty years of his artistic life – large-scale sacred music and dramatic works.
In the early 1800s, Pollini began publishing his works in Paris and Zurich. However, the majority of Pollini’s compositions were published in Milan after the establishment of Giulio Ricordi’s publishing house. Almost all the printed sources are preserved at the Library of the Milan Conservatory (I-Mc), and many are also held in Vienna, in the library of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (A-Wgm). In 1850, Antonio Gasparini, Pollini’s nephew and a doctor at the Milan Conservatory, donated all the music he still had from his uncle and aunt’s household – Pollini himself and his second wife, the harpist Marianna Gasparini, had no children – to the Conservatory library, including a substantial amount of Pollini’s autographs.
An overview of Pollini’s work involves an assessment of his achievements and allows us to place his personality in the context of the professional strategies of a musician of his time: as a teacher, composer, and performer. However, due to his family’s activities (his father had developed a remedy for syphilis, the “eau de Pollini”), he was not reliant on income from the musical world. Evaluating Pollini’s compositional output, his life strategies, and his self-understanding as a musician also allows for an investigation of concepts of nationality in instrumental music of the period. The early Italian piano school, from the late 18th century to the early 19th century, had a direct lineage from the classical Viennese piano school: in this context, Pollini represents the ideal bridge between these traditions and the new virtuosic styles of the 1830s.
The publication of Pollini’s thematic catalogue (in preparation on this page) is part of the research results from the project Francesco Pollini and the Early Italian Piano Tradition (Swiss National Science Foundation, Grant No. 182222, 2019–2022).
Figure: Sara Andreacchio, Cristina Arcos Cano
