Ricciardi Receives International Recognition for Tasso in Music Project

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Assistant professor of music history Emiliano Ricciardi recently received international recognition for the Tasso in Music Project, a National Endowment for the Humanities-funded digital edition of the early modern musical settings of poetry by Torquato Tasso. Ricciardi is director of the Tasso in Music Project.

In November, Ricciardi was invited to Italy to give presentations on the project at the Centro di Studi Tassiani of Bergamo, the Biblioteca Ariostea of Ferrara, and the University of Ferrara. These visits took place in conjunction with a recent announcement of honorary sponsorship for the Tasso Project by the University of Ferrara and earlier endorsements from the Centro di Studi Tassiani and the Italian Ministry of Culture’s National Committee for the 500th Anniversary of Ariosto’s “Orlando Furioso.”

The honorary sponsorship granted from the Centro di Studi Tassiani, the foremost center worldwide for scholarship on Tasso, recognizes the Tasso project’s contribution to the study of the poet’s influence on the music of his time.

On granting the sponsorship, the director of the Centro di Studi Tassiani, professor Luca Bani (University of Bergamo), commented, “The Tasso in Music Project is of special relevance for the activities of the Centro di Studi Tassiani because it investigates the relationship between Tasso and music, which so far has received only limited attention. The project will help to us to better understand the wide resonance of Tasso’s work in the musical culture of his time.”

The sponsorships from the Italian Ministry of Culture and from the University of Ferrara recognized the project’s contribution to the study of the literary and musical culture of Ferrara, where Tasso spent most of his adult life.

While in Italy, Ricciardi also gave talks on Tasso and early modern music at the University of Bologna and at the Ateneo of Brescia.