ABSTRACT
When the relatively obscure composer Antonio Piantanida died in 1761, 1 the position of maestro di cappella at Santa Maria della Scala in Milan became vacant. 2 As was customary in Italy at that time, a concorso was held in which three young composers competed for the post. The circumstances surrounding this competition and the decision of the church officials created so great a controversy that it involved men like Johann Christian Bach and Giovanni Battista Sammartini in Milan and Padre Martini in Bologna and generated several hundred pages of documents, letters, and music, now in the archives of San Francesco in Bologna. 3 What follows is a reconstruction of the events from my reading of these documents.
