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CLASSIFYING MISATTRIBUTIONS IN PERGOLESI’S SACRED MUSIC

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2015

CLAUDIO BACCIAGALUPPI
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On 16 March 1736 Giovanni Battista Pergolesi died from consumption at age twenty-six in the Franciscan monastery of Pozzuoli near Naples, leaving a considerable number of compositions in all genres: stage works, cantatas, instrumental music and sacred music. On account of the success these compositions had enjoyed in Italy during his life, and the extraordinary fame they achieved in the rest of Europe after his death, a multitude of works bearing his name continued to be disseminated, many of which had little, if any, connection with Pergolesi himself. This phenomenon invites us to question what mechanisms are at work when a piece of music is misattributed, for if spurious or doubtful works can be classified according to their origin, then the identification of recurring patterns may help disentangle similar cases. This essay aims to classify the origins of misattributed sacred works from the first decades of Pergolesi's posthumous reception.

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Eighteenth-Century Music , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , September 2015 , pp. 223 - 229
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

1 On the reception history of Pergolesi's works see Radiciotti, Giuseppe, G. B. Pergolesi: vita, opere ed influenza su l’arte (Rome: Musica, 1910), 203–253Google Scholar; Degrada, Francesco, ‘Linee di una storia della critica pergolesiana’, Il convegno musicale 2 (1965), 13–43Google Scholar; Degrada, Francesco, ‘False attribuzioni e falsificazioni nel catalogo delle opere di Giovanni Battista Pergolesi: genesi storica e problemi critici’, in L’attribuzione, teoria e pratica: storia dell’arte, musicologia, letteratura, ed. Besomi, Ottavio and Caruso, Carlo (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1994), 96Google Scholar; and Ottenberg, Hans-Günter, ‘Giovanni Battista Pergolesis “La Serva padrona” und “Stabat mater” im Spiegel des deutschsprachigen Musikschrifttums des 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhunderts’, Studi pergolesiani / Pergolesi Studies 8 (2012), 453–497Google Scholar.

2 See Degrada, Francesco, ‘Giuseppe Sigismondo, il marchese di Villarosa e la biografia di Pergolesi’, Studi pergolesiani / Pergolesi Studies 3 (1999), 251–277Google Scholar. Sigismondo's manuscript ‘Apoteosi della musica nel regno di Napoli’ (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung (D-B), Mus. ms. autogr. theor. Sigismondo), which contains the Pergolesi biography, is currently being edited by Claudio Bacciagaluppi, Giulia Giovani and Raffaele Mellace, with an introductory essay by Rosa Cafiero (Rome: Società Editrice di Musicologia).

3 Fétis, François-Joseph, Biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique (Brussels: Meline, Cans, 1835–1844), volume 7, 192–195Google Scholar (the work list remained unchanged in the second edition of 1860–1865); Schletterer, Hans Michael, ‘Giovanni Battista Pergolese’, in Sammlung musikalischer Vorträge, neue Reihe, ed. Paul, Count Waldersee (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1880), 141–175Google Scholar; Chrysander, Friedrich, ‘Giovanni Battista Pergolese’, Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung 17 (1882), columns 65–70Google Scholar, 81–85, 97–103, 113–122, 129–137, 145–149, 161–166, 177–180, 193–202, 209–219, 225–231, 893; Eitner, Robert, Biographisch-bibliographisches Quellen-Lexikon der Musiker und Musikgelehrten christlicher Zeitrechnung bis Mitte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1900–1904), volume 7, 366–371Google Scholar; and Radiciotti, G. B. Pergolesi.

4 Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista, Opera omnia, ed. Caffarelli, Filippo, twenty-six volumes (Rome: Gli amici della musica da camera, 1939–1942)Google Scholar.

5 Walker, Frank, ‘Two Centuries of Pergolesi Forgeries and Misattributions’, Music & Letters 30/4 (1949), 297–320CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Cudworth, Charles, ‘Notes on the Instrumental Works Attributed to Pergolesi’, Music & Letters 30/4 (1949), 321–328CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Brook, Barry S. and Paymer, Marvin E., ‘The Pergolesi Hand: A Calligraphic Study’, Notes 38/3 (1982), 550–578CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dietz, Hanns-Bertold, ‘Durante, Leo and Pergolesi: Concerning Misattributions Among Their Sacred Music’, Studi pergolesiani / Pergolesi Studies 2 (1988), 128–143Google Scholar; Degrada, Francesco, ‘Le messe di Giovanni Battista Pergolesi: problemi di cronologia e d’attribuzione’, Analecta Musicologica 3 (1966), 65–79Google Scholar. Degrada provided a summary of authenticity studies up to the 1990s in ‘False attribuzioni’.

7 The ‘Edizione nazionale delle opere di Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’ is based at the Centro Studi Pergolesi of the Università di Milano. To date, the first two volumes have appeared: Stabat mater, ed. Claudio Toscani (Milan: Ricordi, 2012), and La fenice sul rogo ovvero la morte di San Giuseppe, ed. Alessandro Monga and Davide Verga (Milan: Ricordi, 2013). Giovanni Polin is the editor of the thematic catalogue in progress.

8 Paymer, Marvin E., ‘Pergolesi Authenticity: An Interim Report’, Studi pergolesiani / Pergolesi Studies 1 (1986), 196–217Google Scholar, and Brook, Barry S., ‘The Pergolesi Complete Works Edition and the General Problems of Using Internal Analysis for Determining Authenticity’, in Opera incerta: Echtheitsfragen als Problem musikwissenschaftlicher Gesamtausgaben, ed. Bennwitz, Hanspeter, Buschmeier, Gabriele, Feder, Georg, Hoffmann, Klaus and Plath, Wolfgang (Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaft und der Literatur; Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1991), 319–334Google Scholar.

9 For an example of transmission see Bacciagaluppi, Claudio and Stockigt, Janice B., ‘Italian Manuscripts of Sacred Music in Dresden: The Neapolitan Collection of 1738–1740’, Fonti Musicali Italiane 15 (2010), 141–179Google Scholar. Stephen Shearon pioneered scholarship on Neapolitan copyists and paper types in his PhD dissertation ‘Latin Sacred Music and Nicola Fago: The Career and Sources of an Early Eighteenth-Century Maestro di cappella’ (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1993).

10 See Bacciagaluppi, Claudio, ‘Parodies in Pergolesi's Sacred Music: Some Reflections on Central European Sources’, Studi pergolesiani / Pergolesi Studies 8 (2012), 259–286Google Scholar.

11 Museo internazionale e biblioteca della musica di Bologna, Epistolario Martiniano, I.6.62a, Chiti to Martini, 27 April 1754, catalogued in Schnoebelen, Anne, Padre Martini's Collection of Letters in the Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale in Bologna: An Annotated Index (New York: Pendragon, 1979Google Scholar), number 1572. The correspondence is published in Settecento musicale erudito: epistolario Giovanni Battista Martini e Girolamo Chiti (1745–1759), ed. Giancarlo Rostirolla, Luciano Luciani, Maria Adelaide Morabito Iannucci and Cecilia Parisi (Rome: IBIMUS, 2010).

12 Rome, Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano, Archivio Musicale (I-Rsg), ms. mus. B.155a; see RISM A/II, ID No. 850500842, <www.opac.rism.info> (29 August 2014).

13 I-Rsg, ms. mus. A.305 (RISM A/II, ID No. 850505810); also preserved in a nineteenth-century copy by Fortunato Santini, Münster, Diözesanbibliothek, Santini-Bibliothek (D-MÜs), Hs. 3068 (RISM A/II, ID No. 451015680).

14 Naples, Biblioteca del Conservatorio di Musica San Pietro a Majella (I-Nc), 40.1.37/2, olim Mus. rel. 1524/2, and Milan, Biblioteca del Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi (I-Mc), M.S. ms. 215–6. A later source is found in D-B, Mus. ms. 17173 (RISM A/II, ID No. 455028474).

15 Washington, Library of Congress, Music Division (US-Wc), M2020.P36L2 Case, and Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département de la Musique, Bibliothèque du Conservatoire (F-Pc), D-14352. These belonged to Victor Rifaut (1798–1838); see Fétis, Biographie universelle, volume 7, 432–433. Rifaut states that he copied the scores in Rome. His exemplar may have been the Laetatus sum in the collection of the Cappella Giulia mentioned by Hucke, Helmut, ‘Pergolesi: Probleme eines Werkverzeichnisses’, Acta musicologica 52 (1980), 213CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Warsaw, Biblioteka Uniwersytecka (PL-Wu), RM 5013 (RISM A/II, ID No. 300514162). Moreover, the ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’ is a reworking of the ‘Sicut erat’ which will be discussed later (and which was itself a reworking of the original ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’).

17 Bergamo, Civica Biblioteca Angelo Mai (I-BGc), Mayr 536a (olim C.4.27) (RISM A/II, ID No. 850006420).

18 Prague, Archiv Pražského hradu: Knihovna metropolitní kapituly, hudební sbírka katedrály svatého Víta – hudební sbírka Kaple sv. Kříže katedrály (CZ-Pak), 972; RISM A/II, ID No. 550268171. The manuscript is also interesting because most other sources for the San Guglielmo reflect a later oratorio version rather than the original ‘dramma sacro’; see Niubo, Marc, ‘Giovanni Battista Pergolesi in Eighteenth-Century Bohemia’, Studi pergolesiani / Pergolesi Studies 8 (2012), 287–311Google Scholar.

19 The autograph score, preserved in New York, contains many passages corrected on the spot, before the completion of the score, proving that the movement passed from the Mass in F to the Mass in D and not vice versa (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, Department of Music Manuscripts and Books (US-NYpm), Cary 438 (RISM A/II, ID No. 000109152)).

20 Pergolesi later replaced the borrowed movement in the psalm setting with a freshly composed ‘Sicut erat’. For this reason, the parody ‘Sicut erat’ is today preserved separately from the rest of the score: the original ‘Sicut erat’ is in I-Nc, Rari 1.6.27, f. 46r–56v, while the rest of the Laudate pueri with the later ‘Sicut erat’ is in I-Nc, 18.3.3/20, olim Rari 1.6.29/2.

21 Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (attributed), Die sieben Worte des Erlösers, ed. Hermann Scherchen (Vienna: Ars Viva, 1952), based upon the manuscript partbooks in Zurich, Zentralbibliothek (CH-Zz), AMG XIII 735 & a–m (RISM A/II, ID No. 400008211). The collection of the Zurich Allgemeine Musik-Gesellschaft (AMG) preserves the music scores once owned by the local seventeenth- and eighteenth-century collegia musica.

22 Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista (attributed), Septem verba a Christo in cruce moriente prolata, ed. Fehling, Reinhard (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 2013)Google Scholar; see also Fehling, Reinhard, Septem Verba: ein Oratorium des ‘Signore Pergolese’ (Essen: Die Blaue Eule, 2011)Google Scholar. The work was recorded in 2013 by René Jacobs (Giovanni Battista Pergolesi: Septem verba a Christo in cruce moriente prolata, Sophie Karthäuser, Christophe Dumaux, Julien Behr, Konstantin Wolff, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, dir. René Jacobs, Harmonia Mundi HMC902155).

23 Ottobeuren, Bibliothek der Benediktiner-Abtei (D-OB), MO 690, and Regensburg, Fürst Thurn und Taxis Hofbibliothek und Zentralbibliothek (D-Rtt), Pergolesi 3 (see RISM A/II, ID Nos 450008617 and 450010281 respectively).

24 RISM A/I, P 1344–1346, with a later reprint, P 1347.

25 Rüegge, Raimund, ‘Die “Missa Romana” von Giovanni Battista Pergolesi: ein bedeutendes Sakralwerk’, Schweizerische Musikzeitung 117 (1977), 320Google Scholar.

26 Degrada, ‘Le messe di Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’, 75–79; Hucke, ‘Pergolesi: Probleme eines Werkverzeichnisses’, 217–218.

27 ‘Syllabus seu catalogus perutilis’, Prague, Národní muzeum – České muzeum hudby, hudebně-historické oddělení (CZ-Pnm), Osek, č. př. 65/52.3, f. 3v.

28 CZ-Pak, 975 (RISM A/II, ID No. 550268173).

29 The Dresden sources are an early nineteenth-century score and a soprano partbook (Dresden, Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek (D-Dl), Mus. 3005-D-16 and Mus. 3005-D-16a). The Swiss source is attributed to Franz Xaver Richter (Zug, Pfarrarchiv St. Michael (CH-ZGm), M 10/185; see RISM A/II, ID No. 400056295) – in fact, the misattribution of a misattribution.

30 See Nicole Schwindt-Gross, ‘Parodie um 1800’, Die Musikforschung 41 (1988), 16–45.

31 Einsiedeln, Musikbibliothek des Klosters (CH-E), 200,30 (RISM A/II, ID No. 400012776).

32 CH-E, 288,6 and 577,4 respectively. Another score of the Salve regina, copied in 1874 by Father Keller for Johannes Evangelista Habert, is now in Munich (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (D-Mbs), Mus. Hs. 62; RISM A/II, ID No. 455028145).

33 A typical scheme according to Marx-Weber, Magda, ‘Neapolitanische Andachtsmusik zur Zeit Händels’, Händel Jahrbuch 46 (2000), 52–53Google Scholar, is the following: ‘Salve regina’ (slow), ‘Ad te clamamus’ (fast), ‘Ad te suspiramus’ (slow), ‘Eja ergo’ (fast), ‘Et Jesum benedictum’ (sometimes a recitative) and ‘O clemens’ (slow).

34 Salve Regina, à deux voix . . . mis au jour par Huberty (Paris: Huberty, c1760–1770) and Salve Regina a Due Voce Composta dal Gio Battista Pergolese (London: Robert Bremner[, 1773]); RISM A/I, P 1387 and P 1388 respectively. The date for the Bremner edition is taken from the Catalogue of Printed Music in the British Library to 1980, ed. Laureen Baillie (London and Munich: Saur, 1981–1987), volume 44, 423.

35 Florence, Biblioteca del Conservatorio di musica Luigi Cherubini (I-Fc), E.I.132; Venice, Biblioteca del Conservatorio di musica Benedetto Marcello (I-Vc), Fondo Liceo-Società Musicale (LSM) 78/3.

36 Benedikt Johannes Poensgen, ‘Die Offiziumskompositionen von Alessandro Scarlatti’ (PhD dissertation, Universität Hamburg, 2005; <http://ediss.sub.uni-hamburg.de/volltexte/2005/2646> (18 September 2014)), 169–170 and 234–235; and Dinko Fabris, Music in Seventeenth-Century Naples: Francesco Provenzale (1624–1704) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 240–242 and 259.

37 I-Nc, Mus. Rel. 3147, olim 22.4.2/15 (RISM A/II, ID No. 850009074) and I-Nc, Mus. Rel. 1798, olim 22.5.22/14. There are also two nineteenth-century scores in the Noseda collection in the Milan conservatoire, but these are certainly copied from the Neapolitan sources.

38 Fabris (Music in Seventeenth-Century Naples, 240) suggests, unconvincingly, that the music may also be in his hand. Sample facsimile pages of the two manuscripts are published in Poensgen, ‘Die Offiziumskompositionen’, volume 1, 170, and volume 2, 130, and in Fabris, Music in Seventeenth-Century Naples, 277.

39 Fabris, Dinko, ‘La musica sacra di Francesco Provenzale’, Studien zur italienischen Musikgeschichte 15 (Analecta Musicologica 30) (1998), volume 1, 354Google Scholar, and Poensgen, ‘Die Offiziumskompositionen’, volume 2, 234–235.

40 This is a well-known fact as regards the pedagogical traditions of the Neapolitan conservatories; see, for example, Sanguinetti, Giorgio, ‘Decline and Fall of the “Celeste Impero”: The Theory of Composition in Naples during the Ottocento’, Studi musicali 34 (2005), 451–502Google Scholar. The nineteenth-century reception of compositions from the Neapolitan ‘classical’ age still await a deeper investigation; see, for example, Cafiero, Rosa, ‘Tracing a History of the Neapolitan School: Giuseppe Sigismondo's “Apoteosi della musica” from Naples to Berlin’, Musicologica Austriaca 30 (2011), 57–71Google Scholar.