Madrid Roda

Description

Provenance: Personal collection of Cecilio de Roda (1865-1912), a distinguished music critic and musicologist, who served as director of the Madrid Conservatoire from 1912 to 1913. The manuscript was graciously donated by his family to the Conservatoire in 1966. 

Description: landscape manuscript 22.5 x 30 cm; 78 pages, of which the first 76 are numbered; late nineteenth- or twentieth-century binding with marbled boards. Ten staves per page. 

Inscriptions: on page 76, ‘Este cuaderno es para el uso de / Don Antoñito Navarro Colegial Leandro Su / Maestro Don Indalecio Soriano y Fuertes. Comenzo a copiarlo dia / 24 de septiembre y lo concluyo dia 22 de octubre de 1818’. This inscription is followed by the name ‘Mirete’ in a different hand (copyist B) who has also written in the bottom right-hand corner: ‘Mirete es un / caga nidos’ [Mirete is a nest shitter]. On page 78 copyist B has also written: ‘Antonio el salto’, and below: ‘Quaderno de Sonatas sin gusto pa[ra] el uso de D[o]n Antonio Navarro / Amigo de los hombres Año de 1822’. And in the bottom right-hand corner: ‘Es de Antonio Navarro / amigo / mio’. 

Copyists: Indalecio Soriano y Fuertes (1787-1851) is the principal copyist (A). Another hand (B) is responsible for some of the inscriptions, as detailed above. From 1811, Soriano y Fuertes held the position of professor to the Seises at the Colegio San Leandro of Murcia Cathedral. Between 1832 and 1835, he served as the chapel master at the Royal Chapel of King Fernando VII. 

Copying dates: 1818 and 1822. 

Comments: this manuscript contains the repertoire that Soriano Fuertes taught to his pupil Antonio Navarro, a student at the Colegio de San Leandro, during his period of service at Murcia Cathedral. It encompasses keyboard pieces by composers from the latter half of the eighteenth century. A significant portion of the manuscript —specifically, twenty sonatas— consists of music by Jose Lidón (1748-1827), who served as the organist and director of the Royal Chapel from 1805 until his death. Additionally, the manuscript features pieces by Joseph Haydn, Luigi Boccherini, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Basilio de Sessé (1756-1816), Joaquín Sánchez and Fernando Sor.  

For a complete list of the contents, see the catalogue of the RCSMM Library at https://rcsmm.eu/acceso-catalogo. 

The two sonatas attributed to Scarlatti appear in the last third of the manuscript and were transcribed and published for the first time by Malcolm Boyd (Boyd 1986, 239-52). 

Compass of the two spurious sonatas: d, – e’’’