Vienna Q11432

Description

Provenance: Unknown. Choi 1974Choi, Seunghyun. 1974. ‘Newly Found Eighteenth-Century Manuscripts  of Domenico Scarlatti’s Sonatas and Their Relationship to Other Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Sources’. PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin.  suggested that this volume – also known as Raccolta after the title on the cover – was originally intended to become part of the Imperial music collection.

Description: Oblong volume, 220x310mm. Bound in leather, showing a plate on the outside cover with golden ornaments and an emblem which, according to Eva Badura-Skoda, is suppose to be the heraldic shield of the King of Hungary.

Certain folios have gone missing, either when the volume was first bound or afterwards; this fact is noted by a librarian on one of the flyleaves, but as Choi noted, there are several other missing pages.

Watermarks: Two watermarks are described by Choi:

• Tre lune motif (selenometry unknown);
• An eagle with a crown and a W above, as well as the letters GFA.

The second of these watermarks can be linked to the paper mill of Giovanni e Fratelli Andreoli in Luseti (or Lusetti), Toscolano.

While reproductions are provided in Choi 1974Choi, Seunghyun. 1974. ‘Newly Found Eighteenth-Century Manuscripts  of Domenico Scarlatti’s Sonatas and Their Relationship to Other Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Sources’. PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin.  , she was unable to link them to known watermarks except Eineder No. 520 (1802), which according to Choi is of a different size. Two of the closest matches to Choi’s reproduction we have been able to find are watermarks WM0127 and WM0128 in the MARCMUS dataset, both of which match the date for Eineder No. 520.

Titles: The separate fascicles of Q11432 all have a title page which shows the copyist was not an Italian speaker: ‘Opera I.mo / 6 / Sonates Per il / Clavi Cembalo / Del Sig:r Dominico Scarlati’. All other title pages are written similarly, with the ‘I.mo’ replaced by the sequential numbering.

Copyist: A description of the copyist is provided in Choi 1974Choi, Seunghyun. 1974. ‘Newly Found Eighteenth-Century Manuscripts  of Domenico Scarlatti’s Sonatas and Their Relationship to Other Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Sources’. PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin.  , accompanied by several examples of their handwriting. Choi notes a similarity between this copyist and that of Vienna Q15116 and possibly Vienna Q15118 but it is almost certainly not the same hand. Likewise, the notion that this copyist may be Italian based on the shape of the bass clef has to be rejected. The evidence points much more convincingly to an Austrian hand working in Vienna around 1800.

Comments: Q11432 is certainly closely related to the other manuscript collections in the Vienna 2 (or Q) series, as well as part of the Berlin 19681 set. By sorting our Great Table by Vienna Q11432, the order of sonatas in Q11432 is similar or identical to that found in the following witnesses:

1. Q15114 (or Berlin 19681-2?);
2. Q15120;
3. Berlin 19681-2 (or Q15116?);
4. Q15115;
5. Q15118 (or Berlin 19681-3?);
6. Q15126;
7. Q15113 + Q15112 (or a different source?);
8. Haffner 1? Or Q15117 + Q15116 (for K127 only)? Or even Berlin 19681-1?

Up until Q15113 and Q15112 – number seven in this order – all sonatas in Q11432 are in the exact same order as those found in the related collections, all of which appear to stem from an earlier decade.

Date: While Choi cites Eva Badura-Skoda’s handwriting analysis to date this collection to the 1780s, the watermark evidence appears to suggest a later dating of the first decade of the nineteenth century. This was already acknowledged by Choi with reference to the watermark Eineder No. 520 – which is dated 1802 – but rejected by her based on size differences.