The Music Inventory of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy: (Milan, 1805-1814)/ Licia M. Sirch

This article presents the music inventory of the French Court at the time of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy (1805-1814) with Milan as capital, currently kept in the State Archives of Milan among the inventories of the properties already owned by the French court of Beauharnais, The detailed list includes sacred music for the court chapel, music for the academies, that is for concerts given at court-music particular to Prince Eugène and the compositions performed during Napoleon's coronation in Milan (26 May 1805). Most of the compositions in the inventory are currently preserved in two libraries: the Milan Conservatoire and the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich (known as "Sammlung Leuchtenberg. Eugéne Herzog von", 1781-1824), where Eugène retired to with his family with his-father-in-law, King of Bavaria, after the fall of the Kingdom of Italy. This study of the collection has made possible to establish that: 1) a large part of the sacred music (in the collection) was the work of Bonifazio Asioli, former chapel master and also master of the royal Napoleonic court of Milan, as well as first director and maestro of composition of the Conservatoire founded by Eugène; 2) that the Milanese nucleus constitutes the basic heritage of the Conservatoire Library; 3) the tastes of the court were strongly oriented towards Neapolitan theatre music (Pergolesi, Cimarosa, Gugliemi); 4) these tastes and this heritage strongly influenced the didactics of music, as can be seen in Asioli's Trattato di Armonia (1813), composed for the students of the Milan Conservatoire and dedicated to Eugène de Beauharnais.