Francesco Pollini (1762–1846) was an amateur composer, tenor, pianist and fortepiano teacher. Born in Ljubljana, after receiving his early education in his hometown, he completed his musical training in Vienna in the 1780s, where he had the opportunity to meet Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In 1793, Pollini settled permanently in Milan, where he was very active as a teacher and composer, producing an influential method for piano and a large number of piano works, vocal chamber music, and, in the first twenty years of his artistic life, a wide range of sacred music and dramatic works. In the early 19th century, Pollini began publishing his works in Paris, Vienna and Zurich. Subsequently, most of Pollini’s compositions were published in Milan by the Ricordi publishing house. Pollini’s social and economic position was unusual: thanks to the proceeds from the sale of a preparation for syphilis, known as “Pollini’s waters”, whose invention earned Francesco’s father the title of baron in 1784, he did not have to depend on income from music. This financial independence had a direct impact on his compositional choices and on the opportunities for performing and disseminating his music.

This thematic catalog of Francesco Pollini’s works was created with the aim of offering, for the first time, a systematic survey of the composer’s entire output, based on a direct examination of the currently known manuscript and printed sources. It is a valuable tool for gaining a deeper understanding of the developments of the early Italian piano school, which, between the late 18th and early 19th centuries, emerged from the Viennese classical piano school and, with the contributions of composers such as Pollini, moved towards the new virtuosity of the 1830s.

The publication is part of the results of research carried out within the project Francesco Pollini and the early Italian piano tradition (Swiss National Science Foundation, no. 182222, 2019-2022). The individual entries were created using Muscat software, the RISM database tool, and the publication was made possible thanks to the RISM Digital Centre in Bern. A list of all currently known sources for Francesco Pollini’s compositions, both manuscript and printed, up to around 1900, compiled as part of the catalog, can be found on Zenodo.

Version 1.0.0 10.5448/rism-catalogs-001

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