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Newly discovered sketches for Puccini's Turandot at The Pierpont Morgan Library
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 August 2008
Extract
Among the Puccini materials at The Pierpont Morgan Library in New York (hereafter NYpm), there is a single folio that contains three previously unknown sketches for Puccini's final opera, Turandot. No doubt the sketches have escaped notice up to now because the folio on which they appear had inadvertently been included with a large series of sketches and drafts devoted to another of Puccini's operas, La fanciulla del West. The folio was included in the collection catalogued as Koch 989, where it stood as Item No. 8 among a series of twenty other folios and/or bifolios (forty-five pages of music in all) that transmit both preliminary sketches and more fully developed short-score continuity drafts for La fanciulla. Now, thanks to J.
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References
1 For an otherwise complete list of the Puccini holdings at NYpm – sketches, short-score continuity drafts and full orchestral scores – see Turner, J. Rigbie, ‘Music Manuscripts in The Pierpont Morgan Library: A Catalogue’ (1989)Google Scholar, which remains unpublished. I should like to thank both Mr Turner, Curator of the Music Collection, and the staff of NYpm for their unfailing kindness during my visits to the library.
2 Koch 989 is not among the Puccini materials listed in Turner, , ‘Nineteenth-Century Autograph Music in The Pierpont Morgan Library: A Check List (II)’, 19th-Century Music, 4 (1980), 169–70.Google Scholar Another folio of Fanciulla sketches appears in Koch 282 (see n. 6). I am currently preparing a study of the Fanciulla sketches and drafts in Koch 989 and Koch 282 as part of a larger project on Puccini's compositional process.
3 The twelve-stave format immediately sets the folio apart from the well-known stock of sketches and drafts that Puccini left unrealised for the conclusion of the opera. These sketches, which consist of thirty-six pages of music and which are preserved at the archives of G. Ricordi & Co., Milan, are all written on ten-stave paper. For a detailed study of these sketches, including reproductions of seven of the pages, see Maehder, Jürgen, ‘Studien zum Fragmentcharakter von Giacomo Puccinis Turandot’, Analecta musicologica, 22 (1984), 298–379;Google Scholar Maehder's study has also been printed in Italian and English (the latter in a condensed version): ‘Studi sul carattere di frammento della Turandot’, Quaderni pucciniani, 2 (1985), 79–163;Google Scholar and ‘Puccini's “Turandot”: A Fragment– Studies in Franco Alfano's Completion of the Score’, in John, Nicholas, ed., Turandot: Giacomo Puccini, English National Opera Guide, 27 (London and New York, 1984), 35–53.Google Scholar For further comment on the sketches for the conclusion of the opera, see Maguire, Janet, ’Puccini's ‘Version of the Duet’ and Final Scene of Turandot', Musical Quarterly, 74 (1990), 319–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which, however, proceeds without even mentioning Maehder's work.
For reproductions of still other Turandot sketches, some of which also appear on twelve-stave paper, see Celli, Teodoro, ‘Scoprire la melodia’ and ‘L'ultimo canto’, La Scala, 18 (04 1951), 40–3;Google Scholar 19 (May 1951), 32–5. The facsimiles in Celli's articles are reproduced far more clearly in Candida, Federico, ‘La “Incompiuta”’, La Scala, 109 (12 1958), 68–74.Google Scholar
4 It is possible, however, that Puccini used the ‘outer’ pages of the bifolio as a single, open sheet of paper (as opposed to the inside-the-‘booklet’ format just assumed), in which case the sketches would occupy folio Ir with the material preceding Sketch I appearing on folio 2v. That Koch 989.5 lacks a ‘brandname’ is not evidence of its being either folio 1r or folio 2rof the bifolio. None of the complete bifolios with either Turandot or Fanciulla sketches has a manufacturer's trademark.
5 Puccini used an alphabetic foliation at times; for instance, folios 170r–194r in the autograph full score of Tosca were originally foliated ‘A-BB’. However, as I note in ‘Puccini's Tosca: A New Point of View’, Studies in the History of Music, 3: The Compositional Process (New York, 1991), n. 31Google Scholar, the use of the alphabet there was intended as a temporary measure.
Nevertheless, a foliation system that used even multiple passes through the alphabet would have breen impractical for the large number of folios/pages of sketches and drafts that Puccini probably produced for an opera. Although the collection of Fanciulla materials in Koch 989 now numbers forty-five pages of sketches and drafts, Item No. 14, a single folio that transmits a draft of the beginning of the Act II poker game, bears the numbers ‘160’ and ‘161’ – in Puccini's hand – on its recto and verso. Yet this is the only folio in Koch 989 to have page or folio numbers, and, significantly, the paper for this folio differs from any other in the collection. Thus we must at least consider the possibility that there were no fewer than 161 pages of sketches and drafts on this odd paper-type alone.
6 All three stages are represented among the Fanciulla materials at NYpm: stages 1 and 2 are intermingled, though never on the same folio, in Koch 989 and Koch 282 (see above and n. 2), while stage 3 appears in an unnumbered 347-page manuscript that is part of the Robert Owen Lehman Collection (on deposit at NYpm). This last item is cited in Turner (see n. 2), 169–70, and one of its pages (p. 172) is reproduced in Turner, , Four Centuries of Opera: Manuscripts and Printed Editions in The Pierpont Morgan Library (New York, 1983), 99.Google Scholar
7 See the facsimiles of the sketch in Celli (n. 3), 42, and Candida (n. 3), 72. References to locations in Turandot are to the current Ricordi vocal scores (any language) and indicate rehearsal number (in bold) plus or minus the number of bars after or before the rehearsal number. Passages that begin right at the rehearsal number are cited with that number alone (as above).
8 The Mandarin's proclamation is quoted in near-literal fashion, though at a faster pace, in Act II/Quadro 2, just before ‘In questa reggia’. There can be no doubt, though, that Sketch I was conceived in connection with the Act I passage. This is confirmed both by the sketch's use of dotted rhythms – present in the Act I version but lacking in that of Act II – and by Puccini's reference to the passage in a letter of 10 May 1921 (see p. 190), where chronological considerations leave no doubt that Puccini is referring to Act I. Finally ‘In questa reggia’ was itself conceived at a later date.
9 On the difference in key – D major in the final version, E major in the sketches – see my article, ‘Belasco and Puccini: Old Dog Tray and the Zuni Indians’, to appear in The Musical Quarterly, 75 (1991).Google Scholar
10 That we can relate Sketch II to Liù's ‘Tu, the di gel sei cinta’, Turandot's ‘O Principi’, and the orchestral motif in Act I fits nicely with the observation in Ashbrook, William and Powers, Harold, Puccini's ‘Turandot’: The End of the Great Tradition (Princeton, 1991), 107ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, that those three passages are related. On the other hand, Garner, Mosco, ‘The Score’, in Turandot: Giacomo Puccini (see n. 3), 27–8Google Scholar, believes that the Act I orchestral melody might – on stylistic grounds – be from ‘a much earlier period, possibly [from] the time of Manon Lescaut’. Garner's claim seems unconvincing.
11 The Act I orchestral passage eventually moves chromatically through G minor (at 5) and up to A flat minor (at 6).
12 The page that contains the draft of the beginning of this section is reproduced in Garner, , ‘Puccini (5) Giacomo’, The New Grove, XV, 436Google Scholar, and in Maguire (see n. 3), 323.
13 Maehder, ‘Studien’ (seen. 3), 316: ‘Es ist kaum vorstellbar, daβ keinerlei Uberleitung zwischen dem verklingenden es-Moll-Akkord nach dem Tod Liùs und den heftigen Akkordschlägen des Duet-Beginns geplant war’.
14 Ashbrook and Powers (see n. 10), 134.
15 Garner, , Puccini: A Critical Biography, 2nd edn (New York, 1974), 486–7.Google Scholar
16 The Mandarin sings the very words ‘al sorger della luna’ in his opening proclamation. However, since the words in Sketch III constitute a ‘cue’ rather than sung dialogue, the possibility that the sketch refers to the Mandarin's words is remote, something confirmed by the Sketch III music itself, which is unlike that for the Mandarin.
17 This direction had been prepared by an earlier stage direction: ‘la folla scruta il cielo the a poco a poco si é oscurato’. On Puccini's meticulous attention to matters of lighting, especially in the latter stages of his career, see Greenwald, Helen, ‘Dramatic Exposition and Musical Structure in Puccini's Operas’, Ph.D. diss., The City University of New York (1991), esp. Chapter VI.Google Scholar
18 The three subsequent statements set ‘O testa mozza’ on E flat, ‘O faccia pallida’ on E and ‘Dilaga in cielo’ on F.
19 See, for example, Carner, Puccini (n. 15), 284.
20 See Greenwald (n. 17), Chapter VI.
21 The letter is printed in Adami, Giuseppe, Giacomo Puccini: Epistolario (1928; rpt. Milan, 1982), 173 (No. 192);Google Scholar trans. in Letters of Giacomo Puccini, rev. edn by Carver, Mosco, trans. Makin, Ena (London, 1974), 284;Google Scholar it carries no specific date other than ‘Sunday’. Note that at the time Puccini wrote the letter he was thinking of Turandot as an opera in two acts.
22 The outline that follows is based on Adami (see n. 21), 174 (No. 194); Makin, 286ff.; Gara, Eugenio, Carteggi puccinian (Milan, 1958), 490ff.;Google Scholar Ashbrook and Powers (see n. 10), 62ff; Ashbrook, , The Operas of Puccini (1968; rpt. Ithaca, 1985), 198ff.;Google Scholar and Lo, Kii-Ming, ‘“Turandot” auf der Opernbühne’, Ph.D. diss., Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg (1988), 449ff.Google Scholar, which contains a number of previously unpublished letters from Puccini to Renato Simoni, reproduced on 396ff. In the outline, I cite specific sources only in connection with quoted material.
23 Lo (see n. 22), 407. This antedates by two months Puccini's well-known letter to Adami of 25 September 1920: ‘I filled a good number of music sheets with jottings and indications of ideas, harmonies and tempos’; see Adami (n. 21), 169 (No. 182); Makin, 275f.
24 Gara (see n. 22), 506 (No. 797). The reference to the ‘Marcia funebre’ must, of course, be to the Act I funeral march for the Persian Prince.
25 The outline is based on the sources cited in n. 22; again, specific citations are for quoted material only.
26 Gara, 495 (No. 774).
27 Gara, 496 (No. 777); the English translation is taken from Ashbrook (see n. 22), 201–2, who translates Puccini's entire description of the scene.
28 Adami (see n. 21), 182 (No. 206); Makin, 300.