Handwritten correspondence was a vital means of communication during the 18th Century. Through their letters, people kept in touch with family and friends, exchanged information, sought patronage, and did business. By frequently corresponding with each other, scholars, scientists and artists formed a flexible, self-regulating and international conglomerate of networks spanning the whole of Europe: the “Republic of Letters”. People became part of this community by the very act of writing letters: those who failed or refuse to establish sustained lines of communication, could be not reckoned as citizen of this Republic. It was like social media today: if you are not connected, you are not part of the community
The MARTINET project deals with the crucial role which epistolary exchanges play in the reconstruction of musical contexts all over Europe in the 18th century. Musicians’ correspondence bears witness to every aspects of musical life, from the performers’ education and careers, to the transfers of professionals and repertoires, to the questions about the construction of musical thought and the historical performance practices, as well as to socio-economic issues related to music production and listening.
The ultimate objective of this research is to provide a representation of European musical environment during the 18th Century, through the lens of Giambattista Martini’s epistolary network. This objective is approached through the innovative study of Martini’s correspondence and of his personal archive.
MARTINET is structured around 3 research objectives (RO):
RO1 to reconstruct Martini’s epistolary exchanges, through an extensive archival investigation, gathering the extant letters not included in his collection and compiling an index of the entire correspondence based on the main archival categories of description (sender, receiver, date, place, language, repository, reference). This RO was pursued by a philological approach combined with Digital Humanities indexing tools.
RO2 to analyse the letters’ content in order to answer to specific heuristic questions: which are the main topics and epistolary styles? How did Martini and his correspondents intend and use correspondence? Why and how he sent/received letters from his correspondents? Which are the formulas used and their connection to different social relations? How did the letters are part of Martini’s research method? Which cultural and musical European network emerge from the epistolary exchanges? Overall, which is the role of music in the cultural identity building process of modern Europe? This RO was achieved through a cultural historical and musicological approach and will produce academic articles and the digital critical edition of the most relevant letters.
RO3 to produce a searchable and interactive Open Access database of Martini’s network, mapping specific features of 18th-century cultural and musical life to achieve multifaceted representation of 18th-century European society through music and the global circulation of letters through using three key themes identified in Martini’s correspondence: 1. the social aspects of musicians training and professional networks; 2. the production and circulation of repertoires; 3. the relationship between music, art and the “Republic of letters”. This RO was fulfilled through a faceted classification, capable of ordering the large amount of information, and by applying the SNA methodology and tools to map and visualize with infographics the “big data” provided by the letters.
