Musical sources

Abstract: The discovery of a new book for wind players [E-PAS s.s.] that had been used as paper lining for the wind ducts and bellows of the organ in the former collegiate church of Pastrana (Guadalajara) increases the short list of this type of musical source and enables us to go into greater depth regarding its specific typology. In this article, we aim to identify the fragments that we have been able to access and propose a credible reconstruction of their content, which we then analyze and relate to the other surviving Hispanic minstrel books in order to glimpse possible paths for the transmission of their numerous concordances, to highlight the compilation and the presence of certain patterns that are frequently detected in the copying and elaboration of such books. Finally, we situate the manuscript in the performative context of the ducal town of Pastrana and establish a particular affiliation with the Lerma Codex [NL-Uu 3.L.16], and the relation of both with the family of the Silva Mendoza, Dukes of Pastrana.

Il quarto volume della collana Le fonti musicali in Piemonte, dopo le uscite dedicate alla città di Torino, alla provincia di Cuneo e a quella di Asti, raccoglie i risultati della più completa ricerca sui fondi musicali della provincia di Alessandria condotta fin ora.
I collaboratori e il curatore hanno contattato capillarmente ogni ente culturale dei 190 comuni:  dagli enti comunali (archivi, biblioteche, musei) a quelli ecclesiastici e religiosi (parrocchie, chiese, confraternite, enti diocesani), fino agli ecomusei, alle pro loco e alle società di mutuo soccorso, per comprendere anche istituzioni specificamente musicali quali accademie e società filarmoniche, bande e corali, scuole di musica di ogni genere, senza trascurare infine alcune collezioni private.
Con gli auspici della Regione Piemonte e dell'Istituto per i Beni Musicali in Piemonte, il gruppo di lavoro si è dato l’obiettivo di tracciare una mappa in cui per ciascun comune, dopo un inquadramento storico-musicale, si dà conto del posseduto musicale di ciascun ente, dedicando una scheda alle raccolte in cui sono presenti manoscritti, edizioni o libretti musicali, ma anche audiovisivi, opere d'arte e fotografie a soggetto musicale e gli strumenti: moltissimi i riferimenti agli organi, ma considerando i maniera particolare i materiali della musica popolare,  le campane, etc.
Come rileva il curatore Stefano Baldi nella sua Introduzione, l'indagine è valsa come occasione per far emergere alcune tracce antiche quali frammenti musicali su pergamena, o per consolidare la conoscenza dei codici liturgici di canto piano di età medievale (conservati nei centri sede di diocesi) o di canto polifonico di età rinascimentale (quali quelli casalesi). Tutti questi elementi contribuiscono al discorso sulla musica religiosa in età moderna, in particolare l'attenzione costante all'interno del volume verso gli organi storici e no, intesi come realtà al confine tra bene musicale e artistico, e verso i musicisti gravitanti intorno a tali realtà.
Consistenti ritrovamenti hanno riguardato il Settecento, secolo in cui si affermarono - su entrambi i versanti, vocale sacro e strumentale violinistico profano - diversi nomi di compositori di operato locale ma ben noti nel resto d'Italia e fuori: Melchiorre Devincenti e Giuseppe Demachi, ma anche di Michele Alberto Ottone e Giovanni Antonio Guazzone, Giovanni Borra, Giovanni Battista Levis, Giovanni Bollo, Pietro Giovanni Ferretti, Giuseppe Cravanzola, Luigi Alessandro Molino e altri.
Gran parte delle fonti si riferiscono poi all'Ottocento, secolo in cui compaiono i repertori di danze e musiche ricreative, destinati al sempre maggiore pubblico borghese di musicisti amatori e intensificati dall'affermazione di diversi editori musicali, alcuni dei quali con sede in provincia. Secolo dell'associazionismo filarmonico, dei teatri nei centri di media grandezza e di operisti dall'origine locale (quali Emanuele Borgatta, Luigi Gibelli, Pietro Abbà Cornaglia, Romualdo Marenco), l’Ottocento fu anche il secolo della fondazione di tante bande ancor oggi attive (e in questo caso furono Giuseppe Tarditi e più tardi Giuseppe Terragni le espressioni peculiari), ma anche secolo di sensibilità dedite alla musica sacra (Giovanni Arcangelo Gambarana, Antonio Smoltz), sviluppatesi tra la fine del precedente e l'inizio del successivo Novecento, nel terreno favorevole delle cantorie ceciliane delle parrocchie sul territorio: le presenze di fonti musicali non solo in ambito sacro, legate - uno su tutti - a Lorenzo Perosi, sono significative in tale senso.
Ne è nato un quadro di fonti eterogenee, comprese le recenti e non più trascurabili fonti quali quelle digitali e demoetnoantropologiche, con tutta la complessità del caso: quadro che va ad alimentare l'idea dell'alessandrino come terra di frontiera e di periferia, terra policentrica. Anche se ogni fonte musicale è sempre di per sé una realtà che viene o va oltre i suoi confini. Il volume si conclude con una ricca bibliografia e con gli indici dei nomi, dei manoscritti, degli editori musicali e dei costruttori di strumenti.



After the issues dedicated to the city of Turin, the provinces of Cuneo and Asti, the fourth volume of the series "Musical Sources in Piedmont" collects the results of the most comprehensive research on musical heritage in the province of Alessandria conducted so far.
Coauthors and editor have contacted each cultural organization of 190 municipalities in the province: from municipal (archives, libraries, museums) to ecclesiastical and religious institutions (parishes, churches, confraternities, diocesan bodies), from the eco-museums to the local tourist societies and mutual aid societies, including specifically musical institutions such as academies and philharmonic societies, bands and choirs, music schools of all kinds of course, not to mention finally some private collections.
Under the auspices of Regione Piemonte (Piedmont) and the Istituto per i Beni Musicali in Piemonte, the working group has set itself the goal of drawing a map in which for each municipality (listed alphabetically), after a music history overview, an account of what each institution possess about music is given. Then, a record is dedicated to collections where there are manuscript or printed music, but also audiovideo documents, photographs at works of art with music iconographical subject and musical instruments: many references are made to the organs, popular music instruments,  church bells, etc.
The survey was an opportunity to bring out - as the editor Stefano Baldi points out in his Introduction - some early traces such parchment fragments with music, or to consolidate the knowledge of medieval codices for liturgical chant (held in the seat of diocese) or Renaissance polyphonic codices (like the ones in Casale Monferrato). All these elements contribute to the discourse about religious music in the modern age, especially the constant attention inside the volume to the historical organs (intended as the meeting point between music, fine arts and craftmanship) and to the musicians gravitating around them.
Significant findings concern 18th century, when local composers became more known also in the rest of Italy and outside Italy: Melchiorre Devincenti and Giuseppe Demachi (active in Alessandria), Michele Alberto Ottone and Giovanni Antonio Guazzone (active in Casale), Giovanni Borra, Giovanni Battista Levis, Giovanni Bollo, Pietro Giovanni Ferretti, Giuseppe Cravanzola, Alessandro Luigi Molino and Others, some of them rightfully belonging to the so-called 'piedmontese violin school'.
Later many sources refer to 19th century, when music and dance entertainment repertoires appeared, destined to increasing bourgeois audience of amateur musicians. These repertoires were intensified by the success of several music publishers, some of which are based in the province. This was also the century of philharmonic associations, theaters in medium-sized centers and local composers (such as Emanuele Borgatta from Ovada, Luigi Gibelli and Pietro Abbà Cornaglia from Alessandria, Romualdo Marenco from Novi and the century of the foundation of many bands active today (and for this cases composers Giuseppe Tarditi from Acqui and later Giuseppe Terragni from Carpeneto were peculiar expressions), but also the age of sensibility devoted to sacred music (Giovanni Arcangelo Gambarana and Antonio Smoltz from Casale), developed between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, in the favorable terrain of Cecilian parish choirs: the evidence of musical sources, not only in religious contexts, by - one for all - Lorenzo Perosi or related to him, is significant in this sense.
The result is a framework of heterogeneous sources, including the most recent and not negligible ones such as digital and demo-ethno-anthropological sources, with all the complexity of the case: a framework which feeds the idea that province of Alessandria is a sort of frontier, a suburban, polycentric and cross-boundary land. With full bibliography and indexes of names, manuscripts, musical publishers and music builders.

La Biblioteca de Catalunya holds a remarkable collection of liturgical music manuscripts, coming from different places and origins. In the centennial of its Music Department, a catalog of the manuscript music in Gregorian chant preserved in the Library has been dressed; it includes books compiled to be used in the mass and in the divine office, from the XIIth to the XIXth century. The catalog is divided in two parts: the present work, that describes manuscripts bequeathed, donated or bought by the Library, and a second one, that will describe the liturgical choir books entered in the Library during the Spanish Civil War. It is preceded by a state of the question in research and cataloging of medieval liturgical music and a brief explanation on the library collection, and followed by onomastical, toponymical, and typology indexes.

The papers included in this volume were presented, in much shorter form, at a conference entitled ‘Sources of Identity: Makers, Owners and Users of Music Sources Before 1600’ held at the University of Sheffield in 2013. The stated aim of the event was to leave aside the traditionally dominant view of early music sources as a means of access to medieval and Renaissance repertoires, focussing instead on the people who commissioned, made, owned and used music books, and on their reasons for so doing. In the terms proposed by a recent study of art patronage in the period, what was the ‘payoff’ enjoyed by individuals and groups who created and deployed such objects?