The idea to assemble an Album Amicorum Albert Dunning - a Festschrift to celebrate the 65th birthday of the distinguished musicologist - came from within the Faculty of Musicology of Pavia University. And to accomplish that aim, thirty scholars - colleagues, friends and pupils - have brought together their separate skills. Dunning’s long career dedicated to musicology has spanned at least four decades; and throughout, it has had a specifically international character. His studies at the University of Amsterdam were crowned in 1969 with a doctorate and a dissertation entitled Die Staatsmotette: 1480-1555. The work was duly published and immediately established itself as a Standardwerk. There followed the years of research in Vienna and Munich, then those of teaching and research at Tubingen, Syracuse (NY) and Poitiers. A brief interlude in Frankfurt was succeeded by a longer period in his home country at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam, the Rijksuniversiteit of Utrecht and the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies of Wassenaar. Since 1988 Albert Dunning has been a professor of History of Modern and Contemporary Music at the University of Pavia’s Faculty of Musicology, based in the city of Cremona. The essays collected in the present volume pay a tribute to Albert Dunning’s preferred fields of research: the vocal music of the Humanist and Renaissance period and the music of the 18th century, with a special partiality for Mozart and Locatelli. Regarding Locatelli, Dunning has not only issued the fundamental monograph Pietro Antonio Locatelli: der Virtuose und seine Welt, but also directed the (recently completed) critical edition of the great violinist’s Opera Omnia. The bulk of this Album Amicorum is therefore devoted to contributions on the music of the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical periods. The occasional incursions into other areas of inquiry are to be understood as a reflection of the broad interests that Dunning has constantly cultivated, especially in his teaching.
