It would be nice to see that manuscript again. (Frank's digital files don't work for me.) Gustave Reese made an inventory of it, published in the Plamenac Festschrift (1969). Frank de Bellis (b. Bari, 1898 d. SF 1968) was a very, very wealthy man who made millions in San Francesco commercial real estate. As a hobby in his retirement he acquired thousands of rare books, scores, manuscripts and other Italian artifacts. And zillions of foreign 78 rpm recordings of Italian music (mostly madrigals, it seemed). He played them on his radio program, "Music of the Italian Masters." It went nationwide. We used to call him the "Little Old Wine Maker." Without realizing, it was his better known son, Frank de Bellis, Jr., who owned the winery. An hour of Italian madrigals played from scratchy recordings was hard to take. He had become a cult figure for the members of a youth symphony I played in. But it was fun to listen to him with his enthusiastic pronouncements. And where else back then might one have heard ten minutes of madrigals, let alone hours of them. Of course, he also played lots of Italian baroque music, which was little known at the time. The Vivaldi revival was soon underway, and surely he was a contributor. A memorable individual. Married to a music librarian. Arthur
On 08/23/14, John Robinson<[1][email protected]> wrote: Dear all I contacted the San Francisco State University recently to see if they had considered digitizing the be Bellis lute manuscript [Ms. M2.1 M3 'Ascanio Bentivoglio a| 1615' - one of the best late renaissance Italian manuscripts] and was pleased to hear that they planned to put it online in their digital collection - and then received the link yesterday! Not downloadable but looks good in colour - when you have fiddled about enlarging the images! You may have seen that I posted details on the Lute Group in Facebook too. And Chris, can it be included in the ainternet news' paragraph in the next Lute News as I promised Meredith Eliassen Curator of the Frank V. de Bellis Collection that I would spread the news? [2]http://digital-collections.library.sfsu.edu/cdm/compoundobject/colle ction/p16737coll4/id/1154/rec/1 Please share distribute and disseminate! best wishes - John References 1. mailto:[email protected] 2. http://digital-collections.library.sfsu.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16737coll4/id/1154/rec/1 To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
