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Amyntor "Amintore" Flaminio Claudio Galli (12 October 1845 – 8 December 1919) was an Italian music publisher, Music journalism, historian, Musicology, and composer.
Born in the Marecchia valley, Galli was educated under Alberto Mazzucato at the Milan Conservatory. In 1874, he became artistic director of Edoardo Sonzogno's new , for which he directed several magazines. Galli distinguished Sonzogno by publishing renowned at affordable prices, and under his direction, it became one of Italy's leading musical publishing houses. He translated several librettos and wrote original . As Director of Il teatro illustrato, Galli oversaw Sonzogno's musical competitions, the second of which notably produced Cavalleria rusticana by his former pupil Pietro Mascagni, to whom Galli was particularly close.
Between 1878 and 1903, Galli was Chair of Counterpoint and Musical Aesthetics at the Milan Conservatory. Galli's students included Ruggero Leoncavallo, Umberto Giordano, Marco Enrico Bossi, Giacomo Puccini, and Francesco Cilea. He wrote multiple influential essays and treatises on musicology and music history, which are still studied in many Italian today.
Despite his illustrious career as a publisher, journalist, and academic, Galli's operatic compositions received cool receptions, and only two were ever performed in his lifetime. Galli is credited with composing the music of Filippo Turati's Workers' Hymn, a popular socialist anthem that was banned by successive governments. Galli died in Rimini in 1919. In May 1947, the city's semi-destroyed Victor Emmanuel II Theatre was renamed in his honour.
Though his parents wished him to study architecture or mathematics, Galli began his musical studies with his uncle, Pio, in Rimini; Pio was the director of the band in Talamello.
After graduating from Rimini's Liceo classico, in 1862, he enrolled in the Milan Conservatory. He was a pupil of Alberto Mazzucato, with whom he studied composition and the history of aesthetics and music. Galli was a contemporary of Arrigo Boito, and was introduced to the Scapigliatura artistic environment. While in Milan, Galli composed the aria Cesare al Rubicone to be performed in Rimini's Victor Emmanuel II Theatre in 1864 and 1865. In 1866, Galli enlisted with Boito, Franco Faccio, and Emilio Praga in Giuseppe Garibaldi's army, fighting in the Battle of Bezzecca.
In 1867, Galli graduated from the Milan Conservatory with the cantata Espiazione. For this cantata, he obtained the Conservatory's grand prize for composition. After graduating from the Milan Conservatory, he moved to Amelia, Umbria, where he became the director of a band.
From 1871 to 1873, Galli lived in Finale Emilia, where he directed the city band and the town's music school. Four of his band arrangements of compositions by great masters were performed in Finale Emilia.
In 1874, Sonzogno opened a musical establishment, the , of which Galli became artistic director, tied to Sonzogno's publishing house, . Galli sought to establish an editorial line distinct from those of Casa Ricordi and , his closest competitors, by publishing, in Galli's words, "a collection of economically priced masterworks by the great maestri". The first instalment of Il teatro musicale giocoso, one such series, offered the piano sheet music of Gioachino Rossini's The Barber of Seville for one lira. Galli wrote many piano reductions himself, as well as prefaces and explanatory notes. With his help, Sonzogno's publishing house acquired the rights to many foreign operettas, especially French. Thus, Galli translated many French opera librettos, including those of Hervé, Charles Lecocq, and Jacques Offenbach; his most sensational purchase was of Georges Bizet's Carmen in 1879. Galli would often set to music which originally had no accompaniment.
Between 1878 and 1903, while working for Sonzogno, Galli was appointed to his former teacher's Chair of Counterpoint and Musical Aesthetics at the Milan Conservatory. Among his pupils were Ruggero Leoncavallo, Pietro Mascagni, Umberto Giordano, Marco Enrico Bossi, Giacomo Puccini, and Francesco Cilea. Galli would acquire the works of his pupils, such as Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, Mascagni's L'amico Fritz, and Giordano's Andrea Chénier and Fedora; these works were performed in Milanese theatres, including La Scala, Santa Radegonda, and Canobbiana, which Sonzogno had specially purchased. Mascagni was particularly attached to Galli, who also wrote piano reductions for five of his other operas ( I Rantzau, Guglielmo Ratcliff, Silvano, Zanetto, and Le maschere).
In 1882, Galli became director of two of Sonzogno's periodicals: La musica populare, which he left in 1885, and Il teatro illustrato, which he left in 1892. In his latter capacity, Galli commissioned Sonzogno's four musical competitions, together with Amilcare Ponchielli and Giovanni Sgambati. Notably, in the second competition, advertised in July 1888 and judged by a panel including Galli and Antonio Ghislanzoni, Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana won first prize against seventy-two other operas.
Galli left the direction of Casa Sonzogno in 1904, though he was secretary of the committee judging its 1905 compositional competition. Evaluating his directorship, some critics reproach Galli for his inability to identify operatic successes, leading them to rivalling publishing houses, such as Andrea Chénier, which Galli described as "unrepresentable", while Puccini's Le Villi was disqualified from Sonzogno's first competition, advertised in July 1888, for submitting an illegible manuscript.
As a musical historian, Galli sought to move away from Biography historiography, represented in the methods of François-Joseph Fétis, to a framework reconstructing the evolution of musical language. While he was therefore closer to the chronological approach of F. Clement, Galli's essay La musica ed i musicisti (Milan, 1871) criticised how it insufficiently incporporated aesthetic-philosophical values in the creation of music, and his essay Appello al buon senso (Venice, n.d.) advocated linking the evolution of musical language to its environmental and cultural conditioning. Galli concerned himself with identifying the values that inform music's creation, reflecting on Kantianism in his Estetica della musica (Turin, 1900), in which he describes music as "a plastic audible arising from the idealisation of multiple states of feeling".
In Alberto Mazzucato, cenni commemorativi (Milan, 1897), Galli decried the "artistic perversion" presented in the "descriptive music" of composers who avoided Melody such as Jean-François Le Sueur and Hector Berlioz.
Galli's manuscripts are preserved in Rimini's Biblioteca Civica Gambalunga, including his last three essays, which he did not complete before his death: one on the 1600s and 1700s in Italian music; one on the precursors of musical aesthetics from Dante Alighieri to Giuseppe Mazzini; and one on singing in drama.
Among Galli's last compositions was Missa pacis (1919), which was performed on 14 September 1919 in Rimini's Church of San Giovanni Battista, directed by , during a solemn ceremony for the conclusion of the First World War. Following Galli's death, music critic wrote of the piece:
Lazzari recalled hearing Galli play the tune for the first time in February 1886, at his offices in Il Secolo, quietly to avoid the attention of its inimical contributors in the neighbouring rooms. The text of the anthem, which was later modified to fit the music, was published on 7 March 1886, and it was performed for the first time on 28 March 1886, at a conference of the Italian Workers' Party, which was led by Lazzari and supported by Turati.
The song became popular, particularly in socialist opposition to the Marcia Reale, the Kingdom of Italy's official national anthem. Galli was uncomfortable with his association to it, and kept his authorship of the music unknown: he did not want to enter a bitter rivalry between the Italian Workers' Party and the Italian Radical Party, and he feared repercussions from the Milan Conservatory and his professional circles. Besides, Galli was a practising Catholic Church, politically conservative, and a landowner.
Singing the Workers' Hymn was banned in public, and from 1892, it incurred a custodial sentence of at least 75 days as well as a fine of 100 lire. The song was banned again during the First World War, and after the Battle of Caporetto in autumn 1917, the prefecture of Milan forced Galli to withdraw copies of the anthem from the market at his expense. Galli was kept under police surveillance for his life, under suspicion of being a Subversion. The ordeal of the anthem led Galli to significant fear and stress in his later life, leading to an illness from which he did not recover. He was known to murmur: "Blasted hymn, how much you cost me!". The song was banned again under Fascist Italy, after Galli's death.
Initially, the music was attributed to "Giano Martelli", an anagram of Galli. Galli was first identified as the music's composer during a police report in 1894, and in 1917, a socialist publication publicly credited him. Some contend that the music was composed by , a composer from Amelia who was first credited in a Switzerland edition from 1894.
Galli died in Rimini on 8 December 1919. He was buried in the Monumental Cemetery of Rimini alongside his sister and wife, who was a Polish singer. Galli was survived by his son, Pericle.
Founded in September 1994, Rimini's choral association is named after Galli. Streets bear his name in Rimini and Novafeltria. Pope Benedict XVI was gifted a copy of his Missa pacis (1919). Amintore Fanfani, who served several terms as Prime Minister of Italy, was named after Galli.
In 2002, the publication of the book Rimini e Amintore Galli reappraised Galli's association with the city, discovering a deeper connection than was believed for an artist who spent most of his life elsewhere. On 20 September 2002, a plaque commemorating Galli was unveiled on the site of his final residence in the city.
On 27 June 2009, Galli's tomb was restored with funding from Rimini's rotary club. On 9 October 2011, Missa pacis was performed in Rimini's Tempio Malatestiano, its first time at the venue, in celebration of Saint Gaudentius, Rimini's patron saint.
In recent years, Rimini has hosted several conferences and events dedicated to Galli, including in 2002, 2018, and 2021.
Galli wrote the following librettos, which were never published and performed:
For Sonzongo's publishing house, Galli wrote piano reductions of works by other composers, principally Pietro Mascagni ( L'amico Fritz, I Rantzau, Guglielmo Ratcliff, Silvano, Zanetto, and Le maschere). Galli also wrote piano reductions of Achille Montuoro's Fieschi and Umberto Giordano's Andrea Chénier.
Galli authored several short treatises for Sonzogno's publishing house:
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