Hi all,
Just wanted to share with you my latest blog posts about some discoveries of 18th century mandolin music at Yale University Music Library.
First of all, a general blog post about Yale University Music library and its historical mandolin sources:
https://www.vantichelen.name/2019/04...-introduction/
There are some of the usual suspects, such as the Leone and Denis methods, but also lesser known but already noted volumes like Mussolini or Lapis.
Next the first but rather minor discovery, a manuscript of educational solo music for mandolin for the courtesy of a certain Giulia Boccaccia by Matteo Fiorito (1796):
https://www.vantichelen.name/2019/04...occaccio-1796/
I might yet publish editions of this source later on, but had to determine what to spend my time on in terms of publishing editions and decided on the next two finds. Not that I want to discount the volume and its music, but not very captivating in terms of its musical or historical significance, especially when weighed against the next two volumes.
A milestone of a discovery is the volume of the Six Duos by Pietro Denis from Paris in 1764, which was known from advertisements but no copy was known until I found on in Yale:
https://www.vantichelen.name/2019/04...ro-denis-1764/
I've included modern and urtext editions of all duets.
A major discovery however is the big volume of six duets and and six sonatas by Constantino Palesi (Aix, 1775). Previously unknown as mandolin composer and quite a big bulk of music of high quality - so both in musical and historical perspective a surprising find:
https://www.vantichelen.name/2019/04...o-palesi-1775/
Again, I've included modern and urtext editions of all duets and sonatas.
Also interesting to see that the dedicatee actually spent time in Aix-en-Provence at the time the volume was created so we're pretty sure that date and time of the volume are correct. A bit of a puzzler is the nature of the volume, as it's mainly in manuscript, but title and dedication pages are printed. Combined with the rather nice give-away package of 6 duets and 6 sonatas it seems to suggest this might have been a volume in a first stage of preparation for printing.
Hope some of you will enjoy the music, I certainly did. Not all of the Denis duets are great, but some are well worth playing. I recommend trying out all of Palesi's music as he shows definitely better than average talent (compared to most other 18th century mandolin composers). I'm not quite convinced the sonatas can be played as duets with a second mandolin as most of the 18th century sonatas were conceived, so would recommend cello and/or harpsichord.
If any of you can help identify any of the arias used by Palesi, that would be great. So far I've only found correspondences with opera libretti, but never with the actual music of operas from the 1770s.
Kind regards
Pieter
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