Prejeto / received: 23. 10. 2019. Odobreno / accepted: 30. 10. 2019. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, DOI: 10.3986/dmd16.1.03 VIVALDI OR NOT VIVALDI? THE UNRELIABLE ATTRIBUTION OF THE SONATA RV 34 MICHAEL TALBOT University of Liverpool Izvleček: Odkar je Johann Georg Pisendel Abstract: Ever since Johann Georg Pisendel prepisal solo sonato v B-duru za violino (ali copied, and took back to Dresden in 1717, the solo morda oboo), ki jo je pripisal Antoniu Vivaldiju, sonata in B flat for violin (or perhaps oboe) at- in kopijo leta 1717 odnesel nazaj v Dresden, je tributed by him to Antonio Vivaldi, the authorship avtorstvo tega dela veljalo za nesporno. Sonata of this work has been uncontested. Designated ima v standardnem katalogu Vivaldijevih del RV 34 in the standard Vivaldi catalogue, it is a oznako RV 34 in je priljubljeno delo med izva- popular piece among performers. But there are jalci. Posamezne zunanje in notranje značilnosti persuasive external and internal features estab- dela pa nedvomno nakazujejo na to, da je bil lishing almost beyond doubt that its true author njegov pravi avtor v resnici beneški amaterski was the Venetian amateur composer Diogenio skladatelj Diogenio Bigaglia (1678–1745). Pisen- Bigaglia (1678–1745). Pisendel’s incorrect at- del je delo najbrž pripisal Vivaldiju na podlagi tribution may have been an error inherited from napačnih podatkov, ki jih je povzel iz neavto- a non-autograph source. The article takes the grafskega vira. V članku so predstavljene nove opportunity to add details about Bigaglia’s life podrobnosti Bigagliinega življenja in opisane and describe his musical style. značilnosti njegovega glasbenega sloga. Ključne besede: Antonio Vivaldi, Johann Georg Keywords: Antonio Vivaldi, Johann Georg Pisen- Pisendel, Diogenio Bigaglia, solo sonata, del, Diogenio Bigaglia, solo sonata, ‘multi- »večnamenska« sonata purpose’ sonata On the Trustworthiness of Attributions It is normal to accept without too much scrutiny attributions of works to composers that are written in their own hand in their own autograph manuscripts. Cause for fur- ther investigation arises only when there is a suspicion that a composer has dishonestly claimed for himself music penned by someone else. The early eighteenth century is in fact full of instances where composers put their own names to music partly (but not wholly) composed by another person and/or which they adapted or elaborated in some way – in either case doubtless persuading their conscience that they had made at least some original contribution to the end-product. Since this article will be dealing partly 57 De musica disserenda XVI/1 • 2020 with Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741), we can suitably draw a typical example from his cata- logue of works. His Credidi à 5 à Capella RV Anh. 35b (formerly RV 605), copied out in his own hand, contains the expected attribution to himself in its most familiar, succinct form – “Del Viualdi” – on the title page.1 This work turns out, however, to be largely a rather straightforward arrangement of an anonymous and probably considerably older five-voice Lauda Jerusalem (RV Anh. 35) in his personal archive (but perhaps acquired in the first instance by his violinist father), which he retexted, adding doubling string parts and in places redistributing the material between the voices.2 But from bar 40 to bar 51 (the single movement runs in its new version to 157 bars) he inserted a quieter, “Andante” episode whose sensitive chromatic harmony shows up the stiff, antiquated counterpoint of the borrowed music. This intercalated section, made necessary by the longer text of the substituted psalm, redeems, up to a point, the silent theft and the claim to sole authorship, lending a degree of plausibility to the notion of “repaying a musical borrowing with interest” so often advanced over the centuries in Handel’s defence. It is important to note, however, that no case has yet come to light where Vivaldi deceitfully attributed to himself music entirely by another composer to which he himself had made no significant alteration. If a composer’s autograph can almost in principle be regarded as correctly attributed, the same is normally true for a copy made by a known amanuensis or person sufficiently close to the composer to count as a household member. In Vivaldi’s case, such a person existed. He was Giovanni Antonio Mauro (1682–1737), his brother-in-law and a profes- sional music copyist.3 Between 1713 and the mid-1730s Mauro served as Vivaldi’s principal scribe, especially for presentation copies and other copies of calligraphic character.4 Many of his copies contain supplementary details, corrections of errors or last-minute changes in the composer’s hand. This intimacy between composer and copyist, which between 1990 and 2018 misled the entire community of Vivaldi scholars into believing that the copyist in question was not Mauro (whose profession at that time was a mystery), but the composer’s own father Giovanni Battista Vivaldi (c. 1655–1736), suggests that Mauro came to work in the Vivaldi family home when not carrying out scribal tasks for opera houses or other persons.5 It is hardly surprising that among the exceedingly numerous 1 The author would like to thank Colin Timms and Nicholas Lockey for reading and comment- ing on early drafts of this article. Ryom (RV) numbers, created originally by Peter Ryom and periodically updated with corrections and additions by Federico Maria Sardelli, are presented in their most recent form in Ryom and Sardelli, Antonio Vivaldi: Thematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis. 2 RV 35a, not discussed here, is an earlier, much more straightforward reworking by Vivaldi that retains the Lauda Jerusalem text. 3 On Mauro’s life, see especially the very full account in Ambrosiano, “I Mauro e Antonio Vivaldi”. 4 Good examples of presentation copies of collections of compositions by Vivaldi written out by Mauro are his Manchester Violin Sonatas (Manchester, Central Library (GB-Mp), MS 624.1 Vw 81) and his Paris Concertos (Paris, Bibliothèque du Conservatoire (F-Pc), Ac e4 346, A-D). 5 The first person to give a name to the scribe now known to be Mauro was Karl Heller, who in 1971 called him “Schreiber e” (Heller, Deutsche Überlieferung). In Paul Everett’s classifica- tion system of eighteenth-century Italian hands transmitting Vivaldi compositions the same person became “Scribe (or Hand) 4”, and in 1990 a seminal article by Everett on these hands 58 Michael Talbot: Vivaldi or Not Vivaldi? copies of works attributed to Vivaldi by Mauro – usually in an extended, rather respectful form such as “Del Sig.r D. [for “Don”] Antonio Viualdi” – not one, to my knowledge, has ever had its authenticity questioned. Slightly – but only slightly – less trustworthy are attributions made by musician col- leagues of Vivaldi who were practised in music notation but not themselves professional copyists. Chief among these was the German violin virtuoso Johann Georg Pisendel (1687–1755). Pisendel first came to know of, and copy, Vivaldi’s music while still a choir- boy in Ansbach.6 As a young member of the Hofkapelle in Dresden, which he entered at the start of 1712, he will have shared in the general enthusiasm all over Germany for the concertos of Vivaldi’s collection L’estro armonico, Op. 3, which had appeared in 1711. In April 1716 he had a chance to meet his hero in the flesh. Together with a small group of Dresden musicians, he travelled to Venice in the retinue of the visiting electoral prince (Kurprinz), the future Friedrich August II (who was also King Augustus III of Poland).7 The purpose of Pisendel’s presence in Italy was threefold: first, he served the prince as a member of his chamber ensemble (Kammermusik); second, he participated in the concert and operatic life of Venice as a violinist; third (and most important for the future), he was allowed to treat his visit to Italy as a study tour that in the first part of 1717 took him out- side the confines of Venice to such major cities as Bologna, Rome, Naples and Florence. In Venice he took lessons on the violin and in composition from Vivaldi, whose close friend he became; in Rome from Antonio Montanari; in Florence from Martino Bitti. He purchased or was given autograph manuscripts of several composers, including Vivaldi, who inscribed five violin sonatas and six violin concertos to “M[onsieu]r Pisendel”.8 During his stay in Italy, which lasted until September 1717, he also accumulated a vast stock of music procured by more conventional means. Some items were bought from dealers, but most were copied by him, sometimes in extreme haste, with or without facilitation on the part of the respective composers. The nine identified solo sonatas by Vivaldi that Pisendel wrote out, all on Venetian music paper and presumably in Venice itself, and which are today preserved under individual shelfmarks in the Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden (abbreviated as SLUB, with RISM siglum D-Dl), are listed in Table 1.9 Note that the headings and attributions in the table are transcribed provisionally concluded, mainly by elimination and at the time in an entirely convincing manner, that he was Vivaldi senior (Everett, “Vivaldi’s Italian Copyists”, 33–37). Up to the appearance of Ambrosiano’s article in 2018, this identification with Giovanni Battista Vivaldi was never challenged, and all those who, like myself, came to regard it as proven must now eat humble pie for the many false assumptions we made. 6 See Talbot, “On the Cusps of Stylistic Change”. 7 The fullest and most accurate account of Pisendel’s life and music currently available is Köpp, Johann Georg Pisendel. 8 Sonatas RV 2, 6, 19, 25 and 29; concertos RV 172, 205, 237, 242, 328 and 340.