Description
Provenance: Unknown. According to recent research by Biddau 2025, one of the former owners may be Gustav Nottebohm, though the volume then existed in a different configuration (‘deutsche Abschrift’?); Johannes Brahms re-arranged and re-bound the contents and gave the volume the letter G; Brahms then bequeathed it to the Archiv der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien (1893).
Description: A collection of unrelated fascicles containing in total fifty-five sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti (including all duplications) as well as three Fugues by Alessandro Scarlatti.
Rastrum: The paper used for the various fascicles varies significantly; stave size ranges from 6-10mm; distance between staves ranges from 6-20mm; total stave span ranges from 181-196mm.
Watermarks: While the presence of several watermarks was noticed, conditions in situ made it hard to identify them accurately.
The closest (and perhaps possible) match we have been able to find for a string of letters on pages 101, 109, 112, and 134 (NOLD?) is the papermaker Joseph Anton Unold who was active in Wolfegg from 1740-1785. Unold’s paper was in use until at least 1810 and was also used by Beethoven; an example can be found here. We must add that it is unclear that this is the exact watermark we saw, as only part of it was visible.
On page 142 (K8 insert) we identified a tre lune motif with selenometry 86/12. The closest match in Alan Tyson’s watermarks catalogue for the Neue Mozart Ausgabe has measurements 85/12 and 87/13 for paper used by Mozart in 1781. However, the Mozart paper has other marks which we did not locate (letter Z; letters AS / C / REAL). Therefore, this partial match may be a coincidence.
Titles: Various forms for Scarlatti’s name are used throughout (e.g. Dominico Scarlati; Scharlaty; or simply ‘Domenico’).
Copyists: While Sheveloff 1970 suggested that this entire volume was copied by a single copyist (W3), Choi 1974 already noted that this was not the case, suggesting that it was copied by ‘more than one scribe’. Biddau suggests that up to four copyists were responsible for the different fascicles.
Comments: The most detailed study of this manuscript and its relationship to other sources in the Archiv der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde is Biddau 2025.
Date: Based on the watermarks identified, as well as the close relationship to the Vienna Q/Berlin 19681 collections, a tentative dating to c1780 is suggested.
