In 1885, Alessandro Parisotti began compiling masterpieces from forgotten volumes of Italian music into a collection he named “Arie Antiche,” which means “ancient songs.”
This three-volume work, “Anthology of Italian Song of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” became a standard teaching tool for classical vocal students for generations. Since 1948, the larger 100-song three-part collection has been overshadowed in the United States by G. Schirmer’s reduced “24 Italian Art Songs and Arias” book.
