Award for Minister Francesco Rutelli

The Casa Ricordi Lastra Award represents the creativity and hard work that have always characterized the Milan-based printing company. This award was founded by its founder Giovanni Ricordi, and is considered the top prize in the industrialisation of the music business in Italy and the rest of the world.

“ I am particularly honoured this year to be able to give Minister Francesco Rutelli the Casa Ricordi Lastra Award, engraved in 1906 with the beginning of Act III of the Aida.  This award is given to honour the special contribution Minister Rutelli has made to highlighting the richness and the heritage of the Ricordi Archive to the general public, thanks to initiatives such as Celeste Aida Exhibition shown when the opera was being carried out at the La Scala Theatre”, declared Tino Cennamo, President of Casa Ricordi.

The Casa Ricordi Lastra award will be granted annually during the three years of the Bicentennial Celebrations of Casa Ricordi, inaugurated by the Celeste Aida exhibition on 14th November 2006. The ex-President of the Italian Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, was the last person to receive such a recognition during the Verdi celebrations.

The 2006 Casa Ricordi Lastra award  is a hand-carved printing plate once used to print high quality musical and orchestral scores for musicians and bands. The Ricordi archive still has a few printing plates that date back to the beginning of the last century. At the start of the 1900s, in spite of the improvement of lithographic techniques and the emergence of offset machines, traditional printing methods using the hand carved printing plates continued to be used to print music until the computerised era of the 1990s.

At the 2006 award ceremony, Tino Cennamo, President of Casa Ricordi, awarded the 2006 Lastra to Minister Fracesco Rutelli. In 2002, the recipient of the first Lastra was the President of the Italian Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. President Ciampi and President Cennamo found an antique edition of “Pater Noster” by Giuseppe Verdi.

The “Lastra Casa Ricordi” is the most prestigious symbol of the famous Italian music printing company, and is awarded to the most important people in the musical, artist and cultural world.  The award is given annually during the three-year celebration of the two-hundred year anniversary of the founding of Casa Ricordi, that was inaugurated with the presentation of the Celeste Aida Exhibition on November 14^th, 2006 . The “Lastra Casa Ricordi” represents the creativity and hard work carried out by the music publishing house based in Milan that, starting with its founder Giovanni Ricordi, has always been a leader in the industrialization of music publishing both in Italy and throughout the world.

HISTORY

Since the 1500s, many music printing experiments have been made: xylography, mobile characters, lithography, etc. At the start of the 1800s, plate engraving involved printing musical scores using a metal printing plate and specific methods to transfer the music onto paper. This was the most popular method of transferring music onto paper since the results were of highest quality due to the precision of the printing. Copper was used to create the printing plates from 1500s to the 1700s, while afterwards it was substituted by  tin, lead and antimony, easier to use and more durable. At the beginning of his career as a publisher, Giovanni Ricordi imported his first plate engraved press from Leipzig.

At the beginning of the 1900s, despite the improvements of lithographic methods and the creation of offset printing machines, the traditional printing presses were still used to print music. Below are the steps followed during the printing process:

• The printing plates were carved using a chisel

• The initial print was done on vellum (transparent paper)

• A chemical process was used to  transfer the print from the transparent paper to a zinc plate

• Mounting the zinc plate onto the cylinders of an offset machine

The plate was engraved using complex system of geometric proportions marking where the musical symbols were required to appear on the musical score. Each sign was engraved onto the plate using a steel chisel with a wooden hammer, while the curved lines were traced freehand, using the same techniques as those used for illustrations. Precision and uniformity were a must, each sign needed to be of exactly the same depth as the others and of course the images needed to be printed on the reverse. Many years of training were required to become a qualified engraver. The advent of photo engraving only changed the change method of transiting to offset plates from the pewter printing plates that were formed using a mix of lead, tin and antimony. This technology did not really change much until the 1990s, when computerised graphics totally replaced manual engraving.

In the Ricordi Archives there are still a few printing plates that date back to the beginning of the last century until the 1960s, despite the fact that many of them have been lost over time and many have been restored. The musical printing plates, or rather, the musical matrixes are precious and unique testimonies to a rapidly disappearing art.