Giovanni Maria Anciuti: a craftsman at work in Milan and Venice

The identity of Ioannes Maria Anciuti has represented a real puzzle for generations of organologists and no trace of this evasive maker was ever found, in spite of decades of research efforts. Actually only two instruments exist on which the full name is written, namely the contrabassoon dated 1732 of the Carolino Augusteum Museum in Salzburg,and a double recorder lost in Leipzig in 1943, whilst he signs himself as "Anciuti" on all other surviving instruments, most of which carry the year of manufacture that ranges from 1709 up to 1740. Until recently the archives in Milan, or elsewhere, did not provide any key for identifying a maker who was most likely well known and appreciated at his own time in a town, Milan, where good wind musical instruments were manufactured at least since the beginning of the eighteenth century. In fact already in 1706 the guidebook of Venice by Vincenzo Coronelli [Guida de' forestieri sacro e profana per osservare il più ragguardevole nella città di Venezia, De' Paoli, Venezia 1706] informed that in order to purchase oboes and other wind instruments one had to turn to Milan. The great craftsmanship of Anciuti produced some of the finest wind instruments ever built [see for instance: Marvels of Sound and Beauty, Italian Baroque musical instruments, by Franca Falletti, Renato Meucci, Gabriele Rossi-Rognoni, Firenze Giunti 2007]. The total lack of any documental evidence fed the hypothesis that the name Anciuti might have been a pseudonym, which links the Italian word "ancia", that means reed, to his ability in making double-reed instruments. In a project that aimed at investigating the production of wind instruments in Milan, a first document was found by Cinzia Meroni, who carries out the archive research in Milan. This paper proves the existence of Giovanni Maria Anciuti, son of Antonio, born in 1674 in a remote mountain village in a region at the time part of the Republic of Venice and married in Milan in 1699. Anciuti's origin may explain why his family name was not common in Milan, and perhaps unique at his time. The cues found by the aforementioned document provided the starting point for further investigations. In the following months several other documents have been traced in Milan and elsewhere. These allowed a reliable reconstruction of the family tree of Giovanni Maria Anciuti and the proposal of a suggestive hypothesis on the beginning of his activity.