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A Roman Concerto Repertory: Ottoboni's ‘what not’?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1983

Paul J. Everett
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Extract

The importance of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni of Rome in the history of early eighteenth-century Italian music is widely appreciated. We remember him as the illustrious patron of music and the other arts, and the benefactor of Corelli, Alessandro Scarlatti, Handel and a host of other musicians. It is a matter for regret, however, that so little is known of what became of his music library, which, by the time of his death in 1740, would have grown to enormous proportions. In the fifty years since he was created a cardinal he must have amassed a rich collection of vocal and instrumental pieces, for there was not a single genre which he failed to promote. He surely possessed settings of his own librettos and those of other dramas whose production he had supported, manuscript scores of cantatas and sacred works, presentation volumes given to him by grateful recipients of his munificence, numerous prints dedicated to him and all manner of material relating to the regular accademie and other performances at his establishment. Ultimately such treasures became dispersed; they were probably disposed of in the sale of Ottoboni's works of art to which Horace Walpole refers in a letter from Rome in 1740. We know, at any rate, that the collection did not remain intact.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 110 , 1983 , pp. 62 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

1 Dated 7 May. Quoted in The Letters of Horace Walpole, Fourth Earl of Orford, ed. Mrs Paget Toynbee (Oxford, 1903), i, 63.Google Scholar

2 I am grateful to Mr Coke for permitting the quotation of extracts.Google Scholar

3 For further details, see Talbot, Michael, ‘Vivaldi's “Manchester” Sonatas’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, civ (1977–78), 22.Google Scholar

4 By Puttick and Simpson, and Sotheby's, respectively. See Puttick and Simpson, Catalogue of a Collection of Music including the Musical Library of the late Earl of Aylesford, 25 August 1873, and Sale Catalogue of Messrs. Sotheby Wilkinson and Hodge, 13 May 1918.Google Scholar

5 They are summarized in Alec Hyatt King, Some British Collectors of Music c. 1600–1960 (Cambridge, 1963), 138.Google Scholar

6 See Arthur D. Walker, George Frideric Handel: the Newman Flower Collection in tie Henry Watson Library (Manchester, 1972), and, for a descriptive check-list of non-Handelian items, Michael Talbot, ‘Some overlooked MSS in Manchester’, The Musical Times, cxv (1974), 942–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 In Michael Talbot, ‘Vivaldi's “Manchester” Sonatas’, cit.; idem, “Charles Jennens and Antonio Vivaldi', Vivaldi Veseziano Europeo, ed. F. Degrada (Florence, 1980), 67–75; and Paul Everett, ‘Vivaldi Concerto Manuscripts in Manchester I’, Informazioni e studi Vivaldiani (Bollettive annuale dell' Istitute Italian Antanio Vivaldi), v (1984), 23–51. All extracts referring to the acquisition of music appear in the present writer's doctoral dissertation, The Manchester Cancerto Partbooks (University of Liverpool, 1984), 10–25.Google Scholar

8 Pollarolo: Sansone (MS F530 Ps41); Senle indemoniato (MS F530 Ps44); Postanale a 3 voci (MS 580 Ps41). Bencini: Il sacrificio d'Abramo and La Jezabel (MS 580 Bk51); Li due volubili (MS 480 Bk51).Google Scholar

9 The manuscripts in question, according to the Sotheby catalogue, are of the oratorios Cota evero Il primo emicidie (Venice, 1707), Il martirio di S Cecilia (Rome, 1708, to a text by Ottoboni), La Giuditta (Naples, 1693) and La Giuditta (either the 1693 work or the later version of c. 1705 with a text ascribed to A. Ottoboni). Few of the cantatas are identified; MS Q544 Bk51 in Manchester includes Pene amarose p(er) Lontenenza and Arde, arda d'amore, of which the former comprises Roman paper.Google Scholar

10 The tenth item in a cantata miscellany, MS Q544 Bk51, ff. 83–86.Google Scholar

11 See Marx, HansJoachim, ‘Die Musik am Hofe Pietro Kardinal Ottobonis unter Arcangelo Corelli’, Studien zur italienisch-deutschen Musikgesckichte, v, ed. F. Lippmann (Cologne, 1968), 114, 169 and Auszūge 33c, 37a, 83f and 93.Google Scholar

12 Bonj, Cantata … Per il SS: Natale Di Nostra Signore Giesù Christo (MS Q532 Br53); Bononcini, cantata Gelosia (fifth item, MS Q544 Bk51); Cesarini, Cantata à 2 … La Rosa, è il Gelsomne (MS Q544 Cj71) and the cantata ‘Non cessate Aquiloni’ (first item, MS Q544 Bk51); Della Porta, cantata ‘Vaghe Luci adorate’ (sixth item, MS Q544 Bk51); F. Scarlatti, cantatas ‘Belle pupille care’ and ‘Chi la speranza’ (second and third items, MS Q544 Bk51).Google Scholar

13 Boni's opera Il figlie delle selve and Gaffi's Cantate da camera, op. 1 (1700): lots 302 and 297 respectively.Google Scholar

14 Lot 284.Google Scholar

15 Printed collections of music by many Italian and English composers were sold in 1873 and 1918.Google Scholar

16 Fully described in Talbot, ‘Vivaldi's “Manchester” Sonatas’, cit., 22–7.Google Scholar

17 MS 580 Ct51.Google Scholar

18 RM.22.c.28.Google Scholar

19 The Manchester Concerto Partbooks, cit., 77–9 and 444–50.Google Scholar

20 They are fully discussed in Everett, The Manchester Concerte Partbooks, cit., 123–233 and 343–419.Google Scholar

21 Published as Antonio Vivaldi, Concerto ‘L'Ottavina’ per violino principale, due violini, viola e basso; FI, 240/RV 763, ed. Paul Everett and Michael Talbot, Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi (Ricordi, Milan, 1982).Google Scholar

22 For further information on the Vivaldi sources see Everett, ‘Vivaldi Concerto Manuscripts in Manchester I’, cit., and idem, ‘Vivaldi Concerto Manuscripts in Manchester: II’ in the same journal, vi (1985, forthcoming).Google Scholar

23 The classifications of paper-types, rastra and hands are those adopted in The Manchester Concerto Partbooks, cit.Google Scholar

24 Each rastrum (or, more precisely, its ruling) is classified first by the number of staves ruled in one stroke and second by its ‘span’, the distance in millimetres between the highest and lowest lines drawn, corresponding to the distance between the tool's outer nibs. Thus rastrum ‘5/77.25’, for example, is one which ruled, with 25 nibs, five staves at a stroke, whose span measured 77.25 mm. In practice, however, the ruling of each rastrum is classified by the recording of additional details, principally a cross-section of all lines drawn: only then may the data serve as reliable evidence linking - or distinguishing between - separate manuscripts. See Everett, Paul, ‘The Application and Usefulness of “Rastrology”, with particular reference to Early Eighteenth-Century Italian Manuscripts’, Musica e filologia, ed. M. Di Pasquale (Verona, 1983), 135–58.Google Scholar

25 See The Menchester Concerto Partbooks, cit., 237–45.Google Scholar

26 His op. 6 collection of solo violin sonatas, published in 1733, was dedicated to the cardinal.Google Scholar

27 Items 25, 28, 30, 31, 32–37, 59 and 65.Google Scholar

28 See Kirkendale, Ursula, Antonio Caldara. Sein Leben und seine venezianisch-römischen Oratorien (Graz-Cologne, 1966), 354.Google Scholar

29 In a letter of 16 November 1737 to the Marquis Guido Bentivoglio d'Aragona, transcribed in Remo Giazotto. Antonio Vivaldi (Turin. 1973). 283–4.Google Scholar

30 This concerto, in 1973 a new discovery, is now available as Antonio Vivaldi, Concerto per violino principale, due violini, viola e basso; F I, 239/RV 761, ed. Paul Everett and Michael Talbot, Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi (Ricordi, Milan, 1983).Google Scholar

31 I-Tn; Giordano 34, ff. 133–140, scored for oboe and violin soloists. The solo parts for item 87 are designated Violine Prime and Valine 2nd. Obbligate, an instrumentation which is more likely to reflect the absence of a suitable oboist in the Roman band at the time than a change of mind by Vivaldi.Google Scholar

32 The printed concordance of item 30, for example, gives tacet in the viola partbook.Google Scholar

33 Sven Hostrup Hansell, ‘Orchestral Practice at the Court of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, xix (1966), 399. The documents are preserved in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Archivio Barberini, vols. 1430–1620.Google Scholar