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Vivaldi's ‘Manchester’ Sonatas
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 1977
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Charles Jennens (1700–73) is best remembered as the friend and protector of Handel who was also the composer's literary collaborator in Messiah, Saul, Belshazzar and L'Allegro. A connoisseur and collector of music, Jennens subscribed to all Handel's published scores from 1725 to 1740 and had a large number of works by his friend especially copied for him. An understandable predilection for Handel's music did not, however, lessen his curiosity about the works of Italian composers, some of whom were Handel's colleagues or rivals in England. This interest is fascinatingly charted in the surviving correspondence, spanning the years 1729–46, between Jennens and the Latin poet and classical scholar Edward Holdsworth (1684–1746), which was acquired by the Gerald Coke Collection in 1973. Jennens's letters – at least, those written from 13 November 1735 onwards – were returned to him after Holdsworth's death, so that the two sides of the correspondence are today united.
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- Copyright © 1979 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors
References
NOTES
1 See Hicks, Anthony, ‘An Auction of Handeliana’, The Musical Tunes, cxiv (1973), 892–3. I am grateful to Mr Coke for facilitating my study of the correspondence and permitting quotations from it, and to Mr Hicks for his assistance and advice.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Holdsworth (London) to Jennens (Gopsall), 5 September 1745 (Old Style).Google Scholar
3 Holdsworth (Lyons) to Jennens (London), 24 December 1729.Google Scholar
4 Letters of 24 December 1729 and 8 November 1732.Google Scholar
5 Holdsworth (Venice) to Jennens (no address given), 13 February 1733.Google Scholar
6 Jennens (Gopsall) to Holdsworth (via Paris), 10 July 1741 (Old Style).Google Scholar
7 Holdsworth (Antwerp) to Jennens (no address given), 16 July 1733.Google Scholar
8 Jennens (London) to Holdsworth (via Paris), 4 February 1742 (Old Style).Google Scholar
9 Holdsworth (Venice) to Jennens (London), 4 May 1742.Google Scholar
10 Jennens (address not given) to Holdsworth (via Paris), 14 May 1742 (Old Style). Pietro Ottoboni (1667–1740) was made a cardinal at the age of 22 and held a variety of senior ecclesiastical posts in Rome.Google Scholar
11 Jennens was a first cousin of Mary Fisher, wife of the 2nd Earl of Aylesford.Google Scholar
12 The sale catalogue of this auction provides evidence for Jennens's ownership of the Vivaldi publications cited above.Google Scholar
13 Sale Catalogue of Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, 13th May 1918, 41, Lot 325.Google Scholar
14 The Aylesford Handel Manuscripts: a Preliminary Check-list', Manchester Review (October 1965), 230–2.Google Scholar
15 Publ. Manchester Public Libraries (Manchester, 1972).Google Scholar
16 Edmund van der Straeten refers briefly to some of the concertos in The History of the Violin, its Ancestors and Collateral Instruments (London, 1933). A summarized description of the non-Handelian manuscripts of Aylesford provenance from the former Flower collection appears in Michael Talbot, ‘Some Overlooked Manuscripts in Manchester’, The Musical Times, cxv (1974), 942–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17 Opere strumentali (Milan, 1947-).Google Scholar
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20 Antorιo Vivaldι. The Manchester Violin Sonatas, ed. Michael Talbot, A–R Editions (Madison, 1976).Google Scholar
21 There is no reason to impute a heraldic significance to the fleurs-de-lis, a very common emblem, yet (to anticipate later discussion) Cardinal Ottoboni's rôle as Protector of France would make their presence very appropriate, if the volume were destined for him.Google Scholar
22 In his introduction to Antonio Vivaldi: vιer Sonaten für Violin und Basso continuo ‘falto per il Maestro Pisendel’ (VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig, 1965) the editor, Hans Grüss, cites the trefoil (Kleeblattstengel) as a frequent countermark on the paper used for these autograph works copied out in 1716–17 or earlier. A and C do not appear, however, among the flanking letters and figures identified by Grüss.Google Scholar
23 The only other volume among the non-Handelian manuscripts of the Newman Flower collection to include the letters MZ in its original shelfmark is the one with extracts from Veracini's Adriano.Google Scholar
24 Cf the measurements 60 cm × 44·5 cm cited by Klaus Beckmann for the parts of RV 275 preserved in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (shelfmark EM 148e) in ‘Zur Echtheitsfrage des Concerto RV 275’, Vivaldi Informations, ii (1973), 12, and those cited by Karl Heller in Die deutsche Überlieferung der Instrumentalwerke Vivaldis (Leipzig, 1971), 23–5 and passim.Google Scholar
25 ‘Watermarks are Twins’, Studies is Bibliography, iv(1951–2), 57–91.Google Scholar
26 Broken straight lines represent chainlines, unbroken straight lines the gutter. Leaves are identified by the number of the gathering followed by a subscript number denoting the position of the leaf within that gathering. 24v is thus the verso of the last leaf of the second gathering.Google Scholar
27 Cf Tracings 863–80 in E. Heawood, Watermarks, maιnly) of the 17th and 18th Centunes (Hilversum, 1950), all of which feature three crescents.Google Scholar
28 See Jander, Owen, ‘Staff-line Identification, a Technique for the Age of Microfilm’. Journal of the American Musicological Association, xx (1967), 112–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
29 Information from Peter Ryom (private correspondence). See Heller, op. cit., 51, 84, 96, 120, where the copyist is designated ‘Schreiber e’.Google Scholar
30 ‘Vivaldis Opern in Mantua’, Vivaldi Informations, i (1971–2), 84–5.Google Scholar
31 The alterations are recorded in the Critical Notes to Antonio Vivaldi The Manchester Violin Sonatas.Google Scholar
32 Ibid, Preface.Google Scholar
33 Capital letters denote major keys, small letters minor keys.Google Scholar
34 This through-composed sarabanda is the only one of the 48 movements not in binary form. Many of the dance-titles seem, as in this case, to have been added by rule of thumb to movements conceived abstractly – hence, perhaps the unusual occurrence of two correnti in Sonatas IV and VI.Google Scholar
35 Les manuscrits de Vivaldi (Copenhagen, 1977), 246.Google Scholar
36 Respectively: Dresden, Sächsische Landesbibliothek, Mus. 2389/R/7(3), 2389/R/7(2), 2389/R/10(d); Brussels, Conservatoire Royal de Musique, XY 15.115.Google Scholar
37 Venice, Conservatorio di musica B. Marcello, fondo Giustinian 16.046.Google Scholar
38 Pisendel was one of four Dresden musicians attending the Saxon Kurprinz, Friedrich August, during his Venetian sojourn.Google Scholar
39 A decree of 11 January 1712 stripped Ottoboni of his noble tide and condemned him to banishment from Venice for serving a foreign power (as Protector of France at the Vatican). Antonio Benigna's Libro di memorie (MS, Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Cod. It. VII-1620 (=7846), f. 31r) records Ottoboni's triumphant return in its entry for 21 July 1726.Google Scholar
I am greatly indebted to Don Gastone Vio for the information that the minutes books of the Pieta's governors record a visit by Ottoboni to the Pietà on 13 November 1726 (Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Ospedali e Luoghi Pu, Busta 691, Notatono 0/13, f. 49). Since Vivaldi was certainly resident in Venice at the rime, as shown by his contract of 13 October 1726 with the singer Lucrezia Baldini, he can hardly have failed to meet the Cardinal.Google Scholar
40 MS 580 Ct 51, plus a stray volume in London, British Library, R.M.22 c. 28.Google Scholar
41 I am indebted to Paul Everett for the identification of the provenance of the paperGoogle Scholar