Uccelli [née Pazzini], Carolina Uccellini, Marco

Ugolinus, Blasius [Ugolino, Biagio]

(b Venice, c1700; d Venice, 1771). Italian theorist. He may originally have been Jewish, though apostatized, eventually becoming a monk in the Franciscan order. As a scholar of Hebrew and other ancient languages, he was well qualified to compile and edit a vast anthology of writings, mainly by 17th- and 18th-century Christian authors, including himself, on Jewish antiquities, named Thesaurus antiquitatum sacrarum (Venice, 1744–69). Amounting to 34 volumes in folio, the compilation includes Latin translations of numerous tractates from the Mishnah, the Babylonion and Palestinian Talmud and rabbinical writings. Volume xxxii (1767) is entirely dedicated to learned disquisitions on biblical music and related topics; it contains 46 essays (in Latin), many of them excerpts from larger treatises, by 34 scholars, among whom the names of Marin Mersenne, Athanasius Kircher, Augustin Calmet and Augustus Pfeiffer indicate the breadth of Ugolinus's reading. Of special importance is Ugolinus's own Latin translation of the polyhistor Abraham Portaleone's Shiltei ha-giborim (‘Shields of the Mighty’, Mantua 1612), with its partly factual, but more often fictitious, descriptions of the Ancient Temple and its music. The title of Mersenne's posthumous tract De musica hebraeorum is misleading inasmuch as it contains the first translation (into Latin) of the ‘Book of creation’ (Sefer yetsirah, written between the 3rd and 6th centuries, though with later interpolations), among the earliest sources of Jewish Kabbalah. In historical perspective Ugolinus's bold encyclopedic enterprise may be considered a first step towards a comparative study of ancient folklore and a harbinger of the ‘higher criticism’ which burgeoned in scholarship only one or two generations thereafter.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Steinschneider: Catalogus librorum hebrorum in Bibliotheca Bodleiana (Berlin, 1852–60/R)

A. Sendrey: Bibliography of Jewish Music (New York, 1951/R)

Encyclopaedia hebraica (Jerusalem, 1959–67), i, 641–2

C. Roth: The Jews in the Renaissance (Philadelphia, 1959/R), 315–16

ERIC WERNER (with DON HARRÁN)

Ugolinus de Maltero Thuringi.

See Anonymous theoretical writings (Cat. no.107).

Ugoni, Francesco

(b ? Maleo, nr Milan, bap. 24 Aug 1587; d after 1616). Italian composer and organist. He is known only by Giardinetto di ricreatione: canzoni et madrigali … libro primo (Milan, 1616; ed. M.G. Genesi, Trento, 1997), for one to five voices and continuo, from which it appears that he was priest and organist of the collegiate church of Maleo Lodigiano. He dedicated the collection to Bernardo Belloni, who was principe of the Accademia dei Novelli at nearby Codogno, judge of Maleo and Cavacurta, and author of most of the 22 texts. The single instrumental French chanson in the collection is entitled La Bellona in his honour, and some of the madrigals are dedicated to other members of the Accademia dei Novelli. According to Schmitz, ‘all of Ugoni's work seems to be an artistically productive fusion of the stile nuovo and Renaissance polyphony, although with a distinct predominance of the latter’. A canzone entitled La Ugona, which appears in a collection of Floriano Canale (Venice, 1600), possibly refers to Ugoni.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EitnerQ

SchmidlD

E. Schmitz: ‘Zur Geschichte des italienischen Continuo-Madrigals im 17. Jahrhundert’, SIMG, xi (1909–10), 509–28, esp. 516

M. Donà: La stampa musicale a Milano fino all’anno 1700 (Florence, 1961), 33–4

M. Toffetti: ‘“Et per che il mondo non entri in sospetto di adulatione […]”: titoli e dediche delle canzoni strumentali sullo sfondo dell'ambiente musicale milanese fra Cinque e Seicento’, Ruggiero Giovannelli e il suo tempo: Palestrina and Velletri 1992, 601–36

SERGIO LATTES (with AUSILIA MAGAUDDA, DANILO COSTANTINI)

Ugrino.

German firm of music publishers. In 1921 Gottlieb Harms and Hans Henny Jahnn founded the firm in Hamburg; in 1923 it was registered as an ‘association for safeguarding the interests of the Ugrino religious community, publishing section’. Hilmar Trede joined the firm in 1925 as director. The first undertaking (in 1921) was a complete edition of the works of Vincent Lübeck which was followed by complete editions of Scheidt and Buxtehude. Jahnn was forced to emigrate in 1933, and apart from works already in preparation when he left, which continued to appear until 1935, publishing did not resume until his return in 1952. In 1956 the firm was again incorporated in the commercial register. After Jahnn’s death in 1959 it was taken over by his daughter Signe Trede. On 1 October 1971 the VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik in Leipzig acquired the publishing rights of Ugrino, which still continues to produce works by Buxtehude, Gesualdo, Scheidt, Schlick and others. On 1 January 1992 Breitkopf & Härtel acquired Deutscher Verlag für Musik, but it still exists in Leipzig as an independent firm.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Musikverlage in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und in West-Berlin (Bonn, 1965), 69–70

THEODOR WOHNHAAS

Uhde, Hermann

(b Bremen, 20 July 1914; d Copenhagen, 10 Oct 1965). German baritone. He studied as a bass at Philipp Kraus’s opera school in Bremen, where he made his début as Titurel in Parsifal (1936). After some years at Freiburg and Munich he first appeared in baritone roles at The Hague in 1942. A prisoner-of-war from 1944 to 1947, he then sang regularly at Hamburg, Vienna and Munich. He scored a great success at Covent Garden with the Munich company as Mandryka in Arabella (1953), and later with the resident company as Gunther and Telramund, roles in which he was generally recognized as unsurpassed in his lifetime. He sang at Bayreuth and Salzburg, and made a particular impression at the Metropolitan Opera with his Wozzeck, sung in English. He created many roles, including Creon in Orff’s Antigonae (which, like his performance of Wagner’s Dutchman, is still impressive on record). He died during a performance of Bentzon’s Faust III. (A. Williamson: ‘Hermann Uhde’, Opera, xii (1961), 762–9)

J.B. STEANE