Some Unknown Embellishments of Corelli's Violin SonatasAuthor(s): Hans Joachim Marx and Laurence Dana DreyfusSource: The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Jan., 1975), pp. 65-76Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/741685Accessed: 26/04/2010 17:56

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SOME UNKNOWN EMBELLISHMENTS OF CORELLI'S VIOLIN SONATAS

By HANS JOACHIM MARX

N the early and middle years of the eighteenth century discus- sions concerning the state of music continually emphasized that

Italian music was differentiated from French music essentially by the style of its performance. Quantz, like Mattheson and Schiebe before him, recognized and described this difference between the divergent conceptions of the executio of music. In his Versuch einer An-

weisung die Flote traversiere zu spielen he defines the "Italian man- ner of playing" as "capricious, eccentric, affected, and obscure, likewise oftentimes audacious and bizarre," and he stresses this music's difficulty in performance; it is music that permits "a con- siderable addition of embellishments" and thereby necessitates "a fair knowledge of harmony."' When describing the Italian taste, Quantz points out the well-known fact that during the performance of a notated piece the instrumentalist embellishes the melodic line with ornaments ("Manieren"). He classifies the ornaments as essen- tial or fixed ornaments ("wesentliche Manieren") and arbitrary or extempore variations ("willkiirliche Veranderungen"), the latter be- longing to the art of improvisation and in principle lying beyond what is established by notation.

Yet when Quantz talks about notated embellishments in the chapter on cadenzas and refers there to Arcangelo Corelli's violin sonatas, which he possessed in the ornamented version,2 this implies a changed attitude in the eighteenth century toward the impro-

1 (Berlin, 1752). Facsim. of the 3rd, 1789 ed. (Kassel, 1953), p. 323. 2 Quantz referred here to the edition by Estienne Roger, which was published in

Amsterdam in 1710. Cf. the particulars in the Appendix to this study.

65

The Musical Quarterly

visational practices of the late Seicento. To musicians outside of

Italy at any rate, the "essential ornaments," like the "arbitrary vari- ations," were not self-evident. Rather, they were - to borrow a term from Fritz Rothschild - a lost tradition. Therefore, it is no wonder that Corelli's sonatas are transmitted in some handwritten, orna- mented versions that date from the first half of the eighteenth cen-

tury. In a lecture at the Bydgoszcz Congress not long ago David D.

Boyden assayed the five versions now known to be in existence.3 It seems worth pointing out that the traditional embellishments were notated by composers (almost without exception Italians) who lived and worked in England. This is as much the case with Francesco Geminiani and Matthew Dubourg as it is with the "Walsh Anon-

ymous" discovered by Boyden. Belonging to this English tradition of ornamenting in the style of the Italian gusto are the embellished movements of the sonate de camera from Corelli's Opus 5 that come down to us in a Handel manuscript in Manchester. Since this manu-

script has until now been inaccessible to research, let me describe it briefly.

The manuscript comes from the estate of the famous Handel scholar Sir Newman Flower (1879-1964) and is today held by the

Henry Watson Music Library in Manchester. The sturdy 148-page volume carries the call number MS 130 Hd 4 v.313. The format

(290 x 230 millimeters) corresponds to opera and oratorio scores of the time. The pages are ruled with ten staves. The format was ap- parently chosen with a view to writing down the orchestrally ac-

companied arias from Handel's operas that fill the greater part of the volume.

Inside the front cover of the manuscript one finds a penciled-in note that provides an important clue as to the provenance of the volume. It reads: "Musical MS of some / 22 Compositions by Handel all / in the handwriting of his amanuensis / J. C. Smith."4 This en-

try makes it clear that Handel's copyist, John Christopher Smith

(1683-1763), is the scribe of the volume and that the volume itself is to be associated with Handel's circle. According to the most recent

3 "The Corelli 'Solo' Sonatas and Their Ornamental Additions by Corelli, Gem- iniani, Dubourg, Tartini, and the 'Walsh Anonymous,'" Musica Antiqua, III, Acta scientifica (Bydgoszcz, 1972), pp. 591-606.

4 A similar reference is on the end paper, across from the table of contents: "All these compositions by Handel / are in the autograph of / John Christopher Smith the elder / amanuensis and legatee of Handel."

66

Embellishments of Corelli's Violin Sonatas

investigations, Smith the elder was active as Handel's copyist from 1716 or 1717 until 1763.5 A comparison of the scribal hand of the Manchester manuscript with that of Handel's so-called conducting scores, now in the Staats- und Universitatsbibliothek in Hamburg, confirms that Smith was the scribe. In addition, since the watermarks of the comparable manuscripts are in part identical, one must as- sume that the volume kept today in Manchester belonged to Han- del's music library.6

The Manchester manuscript begins with the entry of two move- ments from Corelli's sonata Opus 5, no. 2. Both movements are unornamented, though the compositional structure has been tam- pered with. Without entering into the problems connected with this, it may be pointed out that this could be a question of "arbi- trary variations" in the widest sense. The changed melodic lines and the altered modulatory progress of whole measures allow one to surmise that the same effect was to be achieved with these devia- tions from the musical structure as with the performance of em- bellishments: the listener was supposed to have the thrill of the new, the not yet experienced, which he expected even from a performance of older music.

On pages 9-21 of the manuscript, following these two move- ments, there next comes a series of ornamented versions of the sonate da camera in Opus 5, which we shall deal with in particular. Just as little is known about the dating of these ornamented versions as is known about their composer, who apparently played these versions in the concert hall.7 But on the basis of both the Handel arias in the second part of the volume and the watermarks of the single sheets an approximate date of origin can be ascertained for the manuscript and the ornaments it contains.

The second part of the volume contains arias from Handel's operas of the London period exclusively. Viewed chronologically, they range from Radimisto to Alcina, and thus from 1720 to 1735.

5 Hans-Dieter Clausen, "Handels Direktionspartituren (Handexamplare)" (diss., Hamburg, 1969) = Hamburger Beitrage zur Musikwissenschaft, No. 7 (Hamburg, 1972), p.269.

6 The watermark of the Manchester manuscript is in accordance with that men- tioned in Clausen, op. cit., p. 268, which is taken from a Hamburg manuscript.

7 The catalogue of the Flower collection (Arthur D. Walker, George Frederick Handel: The Newman Flower Collection in the Henry Watson Music Library [Man- chester, 1972], p. 50), skips the Corelli sonatas, presumably because of their anonymous transmission.

67

The Musical Quarterly

Consequently, Smith could not have undertaken the copying of the arias before the year 1735. This date, then, seems to be the terminus

post quem for our manuscript. This dating is also arrived at by an

inspection of the watermarks. In several sheets in the volumes a combination of the fleur-de-lis and the cross-beamed shield appears with the letters LVG,8 for which Heawood has established the date 1748.9 Accordingly, it would not be incorrect to place the Man- chester manuscript around 1750.

The manuscript offers no information concerning the composer of the ornamented versions of the Corelli sonatas. To begin with, it might be supposed that here are the oft-cited and long-sought embellishments by Nicola Mattei to which Quantz alludes in his Versuch. In footnote in the chapter on cadenzas Quantz remarks that shortly after the publication of Corelli's agrements "the famous violinist Nicola Mattei, formerly in Austrian employ," set down "still other ornaments." Quantz says that these embellishments, like those of Corelli, have been in his possession "for over thirty years."10 It therefore follows unequivocally from the dates that in no case could the composer of the Manchester versions of Opus 5 be Mattei. Furthermore, it is hardly necessary to add that Mattei (according to Quantz) ornamented the slow movements of only the first part of the solo sonatas, while our manuscript contains movements from the second part exclusively. So the question of who composed these "varied" settings still remains. In the absence of specific proof I would like to advance the conjecture that the violinist Pietro Castrucci (1679-1752), a pupil of Arcangelo Corelli, "composed" the embellishments. Supporting this conjecture is the fact that Castrucci was for some time concertmaster of Handel's opera or- chestra and, according to Burney, also appeared as a violin vir-

tuoso.1l Yet, so long as no verification can be produced for this

81 would like sincerely to thank Mr. L. W. Duck of the Henry Watson Music

Library for providing me with a microfilm of the manuscript, as well as with the

tracing of the watermarks. 9 Edward Heawood, Watermarks Mainly of the 17th and 18th Centuries, Monu-

menta Chartae papyriceae historiam illustrantia, I (Hilversum, 1950), p. 66, and water- marks, no. 98. The watermark matches almost exactly that which Clausen calls Type Cml, which can be dated "ca. 1748-50." Cf. Clausen, op. cit., p. 250.

10 Quantz, op. cit., p. 152 11 Cf. the article "Castrucci," by Anthony Ford in MGG, Vol. XV (1973 supple-

ment), col. 1374. Concerning Castrucci's period spent in Rome, I have put forth some assertions in my study "Die Musik am Hofe Pietro Kardinal Ottobonis unter Arcangelo Corelli," Studien zur italienisch-deutschen Musikgeschite, V (Cologne, 1968)), 165.

68

Embellishments of Corelli's Violin Sonatas

assumption, we shall be obliged to refer to the author of the orna- mented versions in our manuscript as the "Manchester Anonymous."

In contrast to the sources already known, the Manchester manu-

script contains only the violin parts of Corelli's sonatas; the basso continuo is missing. The fact that the melodic line alone exists

permits the conjecture that we are here dealing primarily with some-

thing designed to be used for study purposes. Besides, the pedagog- ical character of the first part of this manuscript is evidenced in the fact that four movements are written down in more than one ver- sion, with the versions being set down directly under one another. The several versions seem to be arranged according to their level of technical difficulty. From the nine movements the Manchester Anon- ymous offers fourteen versions in toto, as the following table makes clear:

No. of Sonata No. Movement Versions Pages

7 Preludio (Vivace) 2 9-10 Corrente (Allegro) 11-13 Sarabanda (Largo) 2 13

8 Preludio (Largo) 14 Allemanda (Allegro) 14-15 Sarabanda (Largo) 3 16-17

9 Preludio (Largo)12 2 18-19 10 Preludio (Adagio) 20 11 Preludio (Adagio)l3 21

From this table- in addition to its indicating that the manuscript was used for didactic ends -one gathers that sonatas No. 7 and No. 8 were to be ornamented completely, by way of example (ex- cept for their gighe). Possibly Geminiani's ornamentation presented itself as a prototype for this. In contradistinction to Geminiani, how- ever, the Manchester Anonymous offers no "arbitrary variations" of the gighe, which may be connected with the fast tempo of this

stylized dance. In describing the style of embellishment of the Manchester

Anonymous, one must point first of all to the abundance of orna- ments indicated by sign, supplementing the written-out "arbitrary

12 "Adagio" in the original. 13"Largo" in the original. Another ornamented movement in E-flat major ap-

pears on page 22, but does not belong to the Violin Sonatas, Opus 5.

69

-4 C)

Manchester, Public Libraries, MS 130 HD 4 v.313, page (9).

Page (16) of the same manuscript.

The Musical Quarterly

variations." Like Corelli and, after him, the violin virtuosos Geminiani and Dubourg, the Manchester Anonymous often makes use of (1) trills, which he indicates by the abbreviation tr or x. The

(2) mordent, likewise indicated by tr appears more often than the trill in the narrow sense and as a rule is played on the penultimate note of the cadence, as is made clear by Ex. 1 (from Sonata No. 9, first movement):

Ex. 1 (Largo)

The (3) appoggiatura is also frequently used, is shown in notes of a smaller size, and appears in various forms, most often the short

appoggiatura from above. (Nachschldge do not appear.) Less often one finds the (4) two- or three-note Schteifer or "slide," which occurs

chiefly before long notes and is written, like the appoggiatura, with smaller notes.

Besides these ornaments, the Manchester Anonymous also gives several articulation signs, which seem similarly to have been in- tended for pedagogical purposes. Thus he consistently distinguishes between two kinds of thrusts of the bow, the (a) staccato and the

(b) portato, by means of small strokes--slanting and horizontal,

respectively-as Ex. 2 (from Sonata No. 7, first movement) clearly demonstrates: Ex. 2

(Allegro)

b. i I \ . - ' ~f- - \ Dt (i) b3,_.. f ,_

4,, .wili I - " I

3-

In the slow movements as well as the fast, the written-out "arbi-

trary variations" are clearly different from the embellishments of,

say, Dubourg. Although both embellish in a considerably more virtuosic way than does Corelli or even Geminiani, Dubourg only hints at the rhythmic configurations of the embellishments, while the Manchester Anonymous notates them exactly. The problem of how to interpret, for instance, Dubourg's thirty-second-note pas- sages, the problem of which note in the violin part falls on which beat of the basso continuo - this does not exist for the Manchester

72

Embellishments of Corelli's Violin Sonatas

Anonymous, since the rhythmic relationships of the upper voice to the lower are formulated precisely. But for both settings, Dubourg's and that by the Manchester Anonymous, the question of what

tempo to use does arise. As the following example from the begin- ning of the slow Preludio of Sonata No. 11 shows, the eighth-notes in Corelli's violin part are subdivided into thirty-second-notes, replete with trills on the second and fourth notes and similar figuration: Ex. 3

Adagio . --r. '7 r ;i a f'- r.

I A 'wl I I'I

6 7 7 6 5

So that each and every ornament can be observed the tempo of the embellished version ought to be taken somewhat more slowly than Corelli's original version. Perhaps this explains why the Man- chester Anonymous marked the movement "Adagio" and not

"Largo," as Corelli had directed. For the performance of the embellished fast movements the

question of tempo proves to be even more pressing. Strangely, the same "arbitrary variations" with the same rhythmic values are pre- scribed in the three fast movements in the manuscript as in the slow movements. For instance, observe the opening Vivace of Sonata No. 7:

Ex. 4

a. Vivace 5 [L

A! "

JkJ 'I'I l- lml1 I I- ]

.(. .r .......- - -,

......... r_ e- "P 8F "r

$ 6 7 $ 5 4 6 6 7 6 L

73

The Musical Quarterly

In this connection a single violin part in the University Library in Cambridge must be mentioned. The anonymous part is found in the manuscript Add. 7059, folio 67.14 The sheet contains an orna- mented version of the first movement of Corelli's Sonata No. 9. The ornamentation technique of the Cambridge Anonymous resembles Geminiani's treatment, as the accompanying synoptic compilation of the opening measures shows (see Ex. 5). Both clearly evidence a

predilection for dallying with a note by using suspensions and

adjoining trills as well as for quick runs that fill in intervals. In summation, we can establish that the hitherto unknown em-

bellishments of the Manchester Anonymous belong to the small number of English sources that afford us a glimpse at the way Corelli's solo sonatas were performed in the mid eighteenth century. The excess of ornaments and "variations" may create the impression that the Manchester Anonymous was one whom Mattheson would have characterized as a "Frenchified hairdresser" and that the classic

beauty of Corelli's sonatas was obscured by him. But we must re- member that the eighteenth century had a different aesthetic posi- tion than ours toward music set down in notation. Around 1750 Friedrich Wilhelm Riedt defended the art of ornamentation in these words: "The more variety the performer brings to a melody, the more beautiful the performance."'5 Corelli's violin sonatas ulti-

mately owe their popularity and unending vitality to this aesthetic dictum. The Manchester Anonymous, too, properly belongs to the historical existence of Arcangelo Corelli's works.16

(Translated by Laurence Dana Dreyfus)

APPENDIX

Embellished Versions of Corelli's Violin Sonatas, Opus 5

1. ARCANGELO CORELLI: twelve slow movements from sonatas Nos. 1-6.

Source: Print by Estienne Roger, Amsterdam (3rd ed., 1710). In an advertise-

14 I would like to thank Prof. Edward Melkus (Vienna) most cordially for pointing out the manuscript. The University Library kindly allowed a microfilm to be made, and I am greatly obliged to them for sending this to me.

15 Cited by Hans-Peter Schmitz, Die Kunst der Verzierung in 18. Jahrhundert: Instrumentale und vokale Musizierpraxis in Beispielen (Kassel, 1955), p. 26.

16 This study is an expanded version of a paper delivered at the Second Interna- tional Congress for Corelli Studies, held at Ravenna-Fusignano, September 5-8, 1974.

74

Ex.

non.

5 Sonata, No. 9

Preludio Lar Ag t4

Geminianii id

' - f_ -- .- IY " V

Dubourg J A-i PI I F| tsv I

Tartini AV

Anon. WalshiF- J'- J |

Manchester (1)* b t._

non. Manchester (2)

Anon. Cambridge [ I

-_ Al a

** * *. 1 *.1

^I ; P r- - -I ,,,

._ II 1 .4

f I V

Corelli

- , w I .. ' g J $ .

^^l~ v f r 6 J ~~~$ 1 2L=~ ly

-f r I

A

A

3 0-

CA

O

c'

rD cn Pt

-.

O..

f

h:

." " .`4

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~--f

Jb k .-b4; *.. ,

11 rt r

L-p /: i -- f

S^-r'3^

ir _

! e1 .

= _-m

The Musical Quarterly

ment (Courant, Amsterdam, Vol. XXII [May, 1710])a it states: "Corelli opera quinta met manieren hoe men d'Adagio moet spelen door Corelli onlangs gecomponeert om gedrukt te werden." Reprints of the Roger edition by Pierre Mortier, Amsterdam (ca. 1710), and by John Walsh and John Hare, London (ca. 1711).

2. FRANCESCO GEMINIANI: Sonata No. 9, complete. Source: John Hawkins, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (London, 1776), II, 904-7 ("copied from a manuscript in his own

handwriting").

3. MATTHEW DUBOURG: nineteen fast and slow movements from sonatas Nos. 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. Originating ca. 1725. Source: Paris, Library of Marc Pincherle (from the collection of Alfred

Cortot).b

4. WALSH ANONYMOUS: twenty fast and slow movements from sonatas Nos. 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. Originating ca. 1720. Source: Berkeley, California, Library of David D. Boyden.

5. GIUSEPPE TARTINI: five movements from sonatas Nos. 1, 7, 8, and 9. Orig- inating ca. 1730. Source: Padua, Biblioteca Antoniana, MS 1896.

6. MANCHESTER ANONYMOUS (Pietro Castrucci?): fourteen versions of nine movements from sonatas Nos. 7-11. Originating ca. 1750.

Source: Manchester, The Public Libraries, Henry Watson Music Library, MS 130 Hd 4 v.313 (from the collection of Newman Flower).

7. CAMBRIDGE ANONYMOUS: one movement from Sonata No. 9. Source: Cambridge, University Library, MS Add. 7059 (fol. 67).

a Fran(ois Lesure, Bibliographie des editions musicales publiees par Estienne Roger et Michel-Charles Le Cene (Amsterdam, 1696-1743) (Paris, 1969), p. 48.

bMarc Pincherle was the first to point out this manuscript in his article "De l'ornamentation des sonates de Corelli," Feuillets d'histoire du violon (Paris, 1927), pp. 137-43. David D. Boyden offers a detailed description in his study "Corelli's Solo Violin Sonatas 'Grace'd' by Dubourg," Festschrift Jens Peter Larsen (Copenhagen, 1972), pp. 113-25.

76