Biography
Alessandro Parisotti (1853–1913) was a Roman composer, editor, collector and musical scholar whose three-volume Arie antiche became one of the most influential gateways to early Italian vocal music. Active in the orbit of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia and a pupil of Salvatore Meluzzi, Parisotti had already collected traditional Roman melodies by 1878 before beginning Arie antiche for Ricordi in 1885. His editions drew on older manuscripts and prints but supplied nineteenth-century accompaniments and sometimes unreliable attributions, helping both to revive neglected repertory and to reshape it for contemporary singers.
His most famous attribution problem is Se tu m'ami, printed by Parisotti as Pergolesi in 1885 but now widely credited to Parisotti himself; the precise circumstances of its composition and attribution remain insufficiently documented to infer motive. He also produced the Piccolo album di musica antica and, in 1911, a short treatise on acoustics, psychology and musical aesthetics. Parisotti has a substantial modern discographic presence through Arie antiche, with Se tu m'ami recorded by singers including Cecilia Bartoli, Angela Gheorghiu and Nathalie Stutzmann
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.