oa Sacred Music Production and Circulation in Sixteenth-Century Palermo: The Inventories of Giovanni Santoro (1550) and Luis Ruiz (1595)

The importance of inventories for the study of musical life in Palermo has only recently been recognized. Despite the fragmentary nature of the data, these documents provide remarkable information about musical editions, instruments, the material culture that produced them, and the circulation of music. Considering the lack of surviving Sicilian musical sources from between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, Palermo’s inventories offer evidence of the presence in the city of no-longer-extant music books, particularly printed music, but also manuscripts and liturgical books.

This essay focusses on two significant inventories from the sixteenth century. The first is the inventory of Giovanni Santoro, a Palermo bookseller, who in 1550 owned dozens of volumes, including antiphoners, breviaries, as well as polyphonic music prints (madrigals, motets, canzoni villanesche). The second inventory was compiled in 1595 after the death of Luis Ruiz, a Spanish musician documented as maestro di cappella at the Royal Chapel of St. Peter (or Cappella Palatina), the most important musical institution in sixteenth-century Palermo. Ruiz’s inventory is particularly important because it includes reference to several music sources used at the Cappella Palatina. Indeed, this is the sole source of information about the repertory performed by this institution during the period.