By the mid-eighteenth century, Naples was considered by many the premiere music center of Europe. French president Charles de Brosses, writing in 1739, declared it "the capital of the world's music." But because European musical culture in succeeding centuries increasingly has valued pan-German music, Neapolitan music has been the subject of comparatively little serious study. Since World War II, Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven studies have benefitted tremendously from close scrutiny of their sources. So little is known about sources in eighteenth-century Naples, however, that as recently as 1983 an entire collection of eighteenth-century Italian manuscripts could be published in facsimile, edited by one of the world's leading musicologists, but containing little information about the provenance of those sources, the handwriting found therein, or how they relate to similar sources.
In this presentation, I will share the results of research undertaken in archives throughout Western Europe and the United States on the sources of works by Nicola Fago, an early eighteenth-century Neapolitan composer. The manuscripts I will discuss were produced in Naples during three periods: the active career of Nicola Fago (1700-1745); the active career of his son Lorenzo, who revised some of his father's works (1730-1790); and the period during which Giuseppe Sigismondo made copies of Fago's works (1790-1825). Generally, I will describe changes in the sources over the course of the years in question; specifically, I will discuss the characteristic watermarks and rastra* found in those sources.
*A rastrum is an instrument (handmade in the eighteenth century and thus unique) used to supply music staves on raw paper. (Back to top)