A Toccata Of Galuppi's
Oct. 11th, 2022 10:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloBrowning's A Toccata Of Galuppi's is one of my favourite poems- and it hit me yesterday how odd it was that I'd never sought out Galuppi to see if his music had the same effect on me as he does on Browning's persona.
Note: none of the speakers in Browning's poems represent the poet himself- except on those very rare occasions when he tells you they do.
No-one knows whether Browning had a particular piece in mind but this fits the bill. It's chorambic and spooky- "Like a ghostly cricket/ Creaking where a house was burned." I like it a lot.
One of the commentators on the original post said they'd have it for a ring-tone. Me too.
Galuppi had a European reputation in his day. He wrote over 100 operas, plus sacred works and all sorts (and we think Prince was prolific!) He worked in his native Venice, in London and Russia. Wikipedia says the decline in his reputation is Napoleon's fault (a lot of things are) because when he systematically looted Venice Galuppi's archives were dispersed and destroyed. By the way, "Baldassare" is wrong; it should be "Baldassaro". This could be Browning's honest mistake or it could be a quite deliberate hint that the poem's speaker- a man who prides himself on being one of the intellectual elite- knows less than he thinks he knows.
Note: none of the speakers in Browning's poems represent the poet himself- except on those very rare occasions when he tells you they do.
No-one knows whether Browning had a particular piece in mind but this fits the bill. It's chorambic and spooky- "Like a ghostly cricket/ Creaking where a house was burned." I like it a lot.
One of the commentators on the original post said they'd have it for a ring-tone. Me too.
Galuppi had a European reputation in his day. He wrote over 100 operas, plus sacred works and all sorts (and we think Prince was prolific!) He worked in his native Venice, in London and Russia. Wikipedia says the decline in his reputation is Napoleon's fault (a lot of things are) because when he systematically looted Venice Galuppi's archives were dispersed and destroyed. By the way, "Baldassare" is wrong; it should be "Baldassaro". This could be Browning's honest mistake or it could be a quite deliberate hint that the poem's speaker- a man who prides himself on being one of the intellectual elite- knows less than he thinks he knows.
