Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Neri de’ Soldanieri, Niccolò di.

See Soldanieri, Niccolò.

Neriti da Salò [Nerito], Vincenzo

(b Salò; fl 1593–9). Italian composer. He is described on the title-page of his Canzonette … libro primo (1593) as chaplain and musician to Emperor Rudolf II, and on that of the Magnificat settings published in the same year as ‘capellanus et sacellanus’ at the Carmelite monastery, Mantua, and as an imperial musician. He was maestro di cappella at the Chiesa Maggiore, Salò, when his second and third books of canzonettas were published, and presumably spent the intervening years there. (His name was not found in the archives by Guerrini, whose reliability, however, has been questioned by Sartori.)

It is significant that Neriti’s sacred works are omitted from the list of music books in the Chiesa Maggiore drawn up by Alessandro Savioli in 1615 (now in the Archivio del Comune, Salò). Neriti seems to have had close contacts with the Gonzaga family; the first book of canzonettas is dedicated to Enea Gonzaga and the other two books each contain pieces addressed to Francesco Gonzaga, Marchese of Castiglione delle Stiviere, whom Neriti might have met at the imperial court in Prague in 1587. His most popular works appear to have been the Magnificat settings and the first book of canzonettas; extracts from both were reprinted in anthologies and copied into manuscripts in Italy and northern Europe.

WORKS

Magnificat VIII, primi chori per omnes tonos, 4vv (Venice, 1593^1)

Canzonette … libro primo, 4vv (Venice, 1593)

Il secondo libro di canzonette, 4, 8vv (Venice, 1595)

Il terzo libro di canzonette, 4, 7, 8vv (Venice, 1599), inc.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

P. Litta: Celebri famiglie italiane, iii (Milan, 1834), Gonzaga family, table xvii

P. Guerrini: ‘La cappella musicale del duomo di Salò’, RMI, xxix (1922), 81–112

C. Sartori: ‘Giulio Cesare Monteverde a Salò: nuovi documenti inediti’, NRMI, i (1967), 685–96, esp. 688, n.3

IAIN FENLON

Nero, Emperor of Rome [Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus]

(b 15 Dec 37 ce; ruled 54–68 ce; d 9 June 68 ce). Roman ruler and musician. Our knowledge of his passionate concern with music comes from Tacitus (Annals, xiii–xvi), Suetonius (Nero) and Dio Cassius (lxi–lxiii). While still a boy he showed a dilettante's interest in musical performance, which had reached remarkable heights of technical perfection during this period. Immediately upon his accession, and encouraged by his tutor Seneca, he began studies with the famed kitharode Terpnus and undertook a severe regimen of dieting and purges, even wearing lead plates to strengthen his chest. So great was his commitment that six years passed before he would take part in a public musical competition. There is much testimony, moreover, to his elaborate and unfailing observance of every tiny detail of professional etiquette, carried out with the greatest apparent diffidence.

After predictable triumphs at Rome, he ventured to make appearances elsewhere, eventually in Greece itself. His repertory consisted principally of kitharoedic nomoi and lyric excerpts from tragedy; the latter he delivered in full costume and masked (as the blinded Oedipus, for example, or a woman in the pangs of childbirth), with appropriate miming. Such extravagances, it has been suggested, gave rise to the rumour noted by Tacitus (Annals, xv.39.3) that during the great fire of 64 ce he celebrated the catastrophe by singing The Destruction of Troy, possibly one of the nomoi. Suetonius (Nero, 38) and Dio Cassius (lxii.18.1) reported the rumour as fact, and Dio added that the emperor put on a kitharode's costume. He seems to have practised the composition of both poetry and music extensively; a collection of his works existed after his death.

Nero's voice was husky and lacked fullness (Suetonius, Nero, 20). Nothing indicates that his pretensions to professional competence were justified. He nevertheless believed in his talent to the end: qualis artifex pereo – ‘What an artist dies in me!’ – were his last words.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

B.W. Henderson: The Life and Principate of the Emperor Nero (London, 1903)

G. Wille: Musica romana (Amsterdam, 1967), 338–50

B.H. Warmington: Nero: Reality and Legend (London, 1969)

G. Wille: Einführung in das römische Musikleben (Darmstadt, 1977), 152–8

M. Griffin: Nero: the End of a Dynasty (London, 1984)

For further bibliography see Rome, §I.

WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN

Néron, Louis

(fl early 18th century). French organist and composer. Described on the title-pages of his compositions simply as organiste et maître de musique, Néron's talents as a performer must have been of a high order. He was organist at the Merci Church in Paris, and in 1726 was invited, together with Dandrieu and Daquin, to judge between Corrette, Toutain and Thomelin for the position of organist at Ste Marie-Madeleine. His only compositions were a few airs published in Ballard's Recueils, a musette and some cantatas. The latter are typical examples of the French form at that time.

WORKS

Airs in Ballard's Recueils d'airs sérieux et à boire (Paris, 1718, 1729, 1731)

Cants.: Le papillon (Paris, 1716); Les charmes de la voix (Paris, 1717); Diane et Actéon, 1720, F-Pn; Orithie, 1720, Pn

Reveillez-vous, ma musette, musette, in Mercure de France, June 1726

BIBLIOGRAPHY

La LaurencieEF

D. Tunley: The Eighteenth-Century French Cantata (London, 1974, 2/1997)

DAVID TUNLEY