Turners' Guilds of Northern Italy: Their Role in Enabling Woodwind-Instrument Manufacture from 1680 to 1844

Abstract

The craft guild system from the Middle Ages to the mid-nineteenth century was responsible for the transmission of specialist knowledge, while simultaneously providing a mechanism for controlling various aspects of society: the economy, social security and welfare of its members. The primary aim of this thesis is to re-assess the function of craft guilds in Italy from 1680 to 1844, with specific reference to the woodwind instrument makers of Venice and Northern Italy, by way of challenging current conceptions of the function of musical-instrument guilds. I have not applied a single methodological approach to the contemporary statutes of the guilds and related archival documents. Rather, I have used a scavenger method of examination, which includes: archival search techniques; translation into English from Italian and related dialects; relevant techniques of organology; and political, economic, and biographical enquiry. A significant part of the research includes collation of the data into three bibliographies: the Italian makers, with their geographic distribution; extant woodwind instruments of the period, with their location; and Italian music composed for woodwind instruments during the eighteenth century. Information emerging from the Italian archives around a leading instrument-making family – the Anciutis of Venice – has enabled me to provide a specific case study as a central component of this thesis. Two generations of bone turners from this family established a tradition prior to the more famous instrument maker Giovanni Maria Anciuti. The data on this family, together with the constitution of the guild and other known information, support a theory that Giovanni Maria Anciuti completed his apprenticeship in Venice, within his own family. Prior to the earliest generation of Anciutis, the turners’ guild in Venice divided into three specialist factions, using their own tools and materials. In the case of the ivory turners, this gave woodwind instrument makers the freedom to use materials and tools without restraint, along with establishing a skills base necessary for the crafting of new designs of woodwind instruments. This finding challenges contemporary belief in the predominantly restrictive nature of the guilds. Further documentation places the maker Domenico Perosa and the family name Castel within the same guild that supported the Anciutis, upholding a central hypothesis that the guild restricted the number of apprentices trained but not the technology available to the members. Furthermore, it emerges that free makers with private clients were able to make a higher class of instruments since patronage enabled them to indulge in finer materials and to be more generous with time. Finally, an argument is made that the craft of woodwind instrument making in Italy was more buoyant than has been assumed.