By Elena Hubert ’25
Among the documents on Dragonetti’s life from the Moldenhauer collection is this arrangement of Corelli Op 9, #5, which Dragonetti arranged to be played an octave lower.
With a name like “Domenico Dragonetti,” you would figure the world’s first virtuoso bassist would be as well-known as Ludwig van Beethoven, his 18th-century contemporary. And although Beethoven may have been influenced by Dragonetti’s virtuosity, the Venetian musician and his works have largely fallen into obscurity.
But a Northwestern Libraries archival project is looking to change that. Music Library curator Greg MacAyeal along with professional double bassist and Northwestern alumnus Jerry Fuller have compiled more than 250 documents related to Dragonetti, including written music and correspondence, for a digital exhibition that debuted this month. The documents are an important part of the Moldenhauer Collection, one of many significant archives held in the Music Library.
“Jerry has selected some individual documents that really tell the Dragonetti story in a compelling way,” MacAyeal said. “And at the same time, we’re linking to all of the collection so that researchers around the world can continue to study this amazing archive.”
The exhibit also features professionally recorded videos of Fuller and other musicians, several of them Northwestern faculty, performing some of Dragonetti’s arrangements in Alice Millar Chapel. In the style of the virtuoso, Fuller had his bass converted to three strings and used a first-edition score of the music.
In one recording, Fuller and organist Stephen Altop perform Bach’s Prelude in D Major (BWV 532) in a style believed to be an authentic recreation of Dragonetti’s practice. Fuller said there’s no documentation that, since Dragonetti’s time, anyone has performed the piece in this manner, which makes it a truly ground-breaking recording.
“What we’ve done is try, as best we can imagine, to recreate that sound world that Dragonetti had in 1836 when this was first published,” Fuller said. “We can recreate that anew here with the information we found in the Dragonetti collection, which is really exciting.”
Stephen Altop and Jerry Fuller perform Prelude in D Major BWV 532 in Alice Millar Chapel. The performance is available in the digital collections.
The curators said they are looking to expand Dragonetti’s legacy with a modern interpretation of his 18th-century materials.
“It’s not just stuffy letters in a box,” MacAyeal said. “It’s living through performance.”
Born in Venice in 1763, Dragonetti received his first principal position in an opera at the age of 13. Garnering high acclaim throughout Europe, he inspired the likes of Beethoven and Joseph Haydn to further develop double bass parts in their compositions.
A pioneer of his instrument, Dragonetti redesigned the bow and technique of the double bass. He used a bow that was characterized by a stick with little curvature, necessitating a grip with the palm of the hand face upward. This design increased the bow’s capacity for “clarity and sharpness of attack,” Fuller said. Draginetti also revolutionized the tuning system and played chords, which were innovations in that era.
“He was like a rock star performer of his time,” Fuller said. “That’s the first time a bass player ever did anything like that.”
One of the most well-known pieces of classical music, the “Ode to Joy” theme of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, is introduced by cellos and double basses. Based on the entries found in Beethoven’s journals, MacAyeal and Fuller hypothesize that after Beethoven heard Dragonetti perform, the composer altered the prominence and difficulty of his writing for the double bass.
Fuller says he is so excited about this project because it gives access to the vast repository of information about Dragonetti contained in the Libraries’ Moldenhauer Collection, and that out of this information, new scholarship is being created. The Moldenhauer Collection is a repository of 3,000 music manuscripts and documents compiled by 20th century German musicologist Hans Moldenhauer; Northwestern is one of nine institutions worldwide to hold a portion of this vast collection of scores, manuscripts, transcriptions, and correspondence spanning three centuries of musical history.
MacAyeal emphasized the value of continuing this research and allowing others to do the same.
“Regardless of the subject, hopefully, this exhibit will do a nice job demonstrating the kind of learning that can happen when scholars engage with primary source materials in this way,” MacAyeal said. “Hopefully, it will get other people interested in wanting to work with archives, regardless of the topic.”
Alongside selected documents with descriptions by Fuller, the hundreds of Dragonetti materials in the digital exhibit are open to scholars’ interpretations and further research.
“We’ve brought this up to a level that’s never been done before,” MacAyeal said. “Then, I just know there are going to be others who will take it far beyond us.”
Elena Hubert is a Medill School of Journalism junior