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SANTO LAPIS LA STRAVAGANZA & 12 HARPSICHORD SONATAS LUIGI ACCARDO TRACKLIST P. 2 AN EXPORT-BRANDED MUSICIAN ENG P. 4 UN MUSICISTA FORMATO ESPORTAZIONE ITA P. 10 Santo Lapis (1699-1765) 2 Home AD 107 La Stravaganza & 12 Harpsichord Sonatas Sonnates pour le clavessin 10 Sonata X – Vivo e distacato 3’37 1 Sonata I – A piacere. Allegro 3’27 11 Sonata XI – Tempo di Menuet 4’09 2 Sonata II – Vivace. Tempo di Menuet 3’55 12 Sonata XII – Allegro 4’00 3 Sonata III – Spiritoso 3’29 4 Sonata IV – Vivo e distacato 4’10 La Stravaganza per il cembalo 5 Sonata V – Menuet affetuoso 4’10 13 Andante 3’00 6 Sonata VI – Andante 5’17 14 Vivo e fugato 3’32 7 Sonata VII – Con spirito 3’51 15 Menuet variato 8’42 8 Sonata VIII – Allegro 2’58 9 Sonata IX – Spiritoso 3’06 Total length 61’33 3 Luigi Accardo harpsichord Keith Hill, Manchester, 2001 (after anonymous, Germany early 18th century) www.luigiaccardo.com Sources: tSonnates pour le clavessin, The Hague, 1746. tLa Stravaganza per il cembalo, The Hague,1757. Recorded 22-23 October 2016 at Cascina Bugatti, Gerre de’ Caprioli, Cremona, Italy. Executive Producer: Luigi Accardo Recording Producer: Enrico Bissolo Recording Engineer, Mastering & Editing: Matteo Costa ௚ 2017 Luigi Accardo, under exclusive licence to Outhere Music France / ©2017 Outhere Music France 4 Home An Export-Branded Musician “I wish to to inform you that Signor Santo Lapi has run off with a young woman to Germany, some say Vienna and others elsewhere; he has left his poor wife in such distress that she tried to throw herself out of a window”. This is understandable: seduced and abandoned with a young child to care for... In spite of his baptismal name, there was nothing of the saint about this Santo Lapis, whose career brings to mind many of Goldoni’s “Honourable Scoundrels”, male and female contemporaries of Casanova, part cultural ambassadors, part business men and women, and in private life sufficiently libertine to pass as free spirits. The European establishment regarded them with suspicion but was unwilling to deprive itself of their artistic talents. Received at court today and lionized in fashionable salons, maybe in prison tomorrow for debts or some peccadillo; and in no time at all back again, once more the darlings of society, ready to take off to new pastures and live on the credit inherited by right of birth. Italians, refined masters of manners and life-style by definition, if sometimes contrary to the evidence. In spite of the meticulous archival research undertaken by Rudolf Rasch and Mario Armellini, lacunae remain in the biography of Santo Lapis. Born in Bologna, both forename and surname suggest a family of Sicilian origins; or possibly Tuscan, if one accepts the variant “Sante Lapi”, more rarely encountered but still attested in documents that concern him. His date of birth is only circumstantial, being based on the minimum age of twenty required for enrolment in the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna as a “novice”; besides which – despite German Wikipedia’s editors giving the date of his baptism as 27 April 1699 – no entry appears in the centralized register in Bologna’s cathedral, the Metropolitana di San Pietro, where it should have been. It is possible that he was born elsewhere and that either his father or he himself acquired by naturalization the Bolognese citizenship referred to in all contemporary documents. In 1733, when the castrato Giovanni Antonio Ricieri reported the flight from Venice in a letter to the famous Padre Martini, Santo had already held respectable if not top-flight professional posts as organ- ist in one of the several churches that form the basilica of Santo Stefano in Bologna, followed by that of music teacher at the Venetian Ospedale dei Mendicanti – a post from which he was dismissed as being “too young”, and therefore a danger to the young orphan girls he was supposed to teach. He was finally engaged as a tenor in the Doge’s chapel in San Marco, at the same time as giving private lessons, being attached to the San Cassiano theatre as an auxiliary opera composer and providing the Venetian aristocracy with celebratory cantatas for their private entertainments. 5 English In “Germania” – a term which for Italians at this flourishing market for amateurs of middling abil- time included parts of the Hapsburg empire name- ity and dealing in scores and strings for stringed ly Austria, Hungary and Bohemia – he allied him- instruments. In 1757 he was on his travels again, self with a touring opera company managed by a this time to the British Isles, which had now be- Venetian family, the Mingotti, comprising the broth- come the most important European centre of mu- ers Pietro and Angelo plus Pietro’s wife Marina. sic consumption thanks to a complex network of Between 1736 and ’39 in Graz, Klagenfurt and connections between publishers and impresarios, Prague, thriving provincial centres which repre- not only in London but also in the major provincial sented the springboard to Vienna, Lapis continued cities, which could count on an extensive middle- to work as an impresario, composer and arranger class market freed from both the favour of royal of operatic pastiches. Rather like Vivaldi, who had courts and individual wealthy patrons. found a generous patron in Prague in the person Here as elsewhere, Santo set forth the wares of Count Anton von Spork, owner of an important he was importing. He published various sets of private theatre in which Lapis now staged several vocal and instrumental chamber music; from opere serie. A promising beginning, but – just as 1760 he directed, from the harpsichord, an opera in Vivaldi’s case – the disastrous war of Austrian company which, in 1763 and ’64, performed in succession which broke out in 1740 ended any Edinburgh, York and Dublin. It was during these hopes he might have had of establishing himself incursions in the northern periphery of the Old in Vienna. He probably had a fleeting experience of World that we lose track of him. A register in the Germany proper when he arranged for his Sonate Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna, of which he da camera a due, violino e basso, Opera prima had been a member since 1719-20, reports his to be printed in Augsburg. At the end of 1741 he decease in 1765 but gives no information about reappears as a keyboard recitalist in The Hague, where he died. Had he been a few years younger, capital of the prosperous Republic of the Seven who knows what could have happened. His roving United Provinces of the Netherlands. spirit might have inspired him to try his luck in the The time our friend Lapis spent in the British colonies on the other side of the Atlantic, Netherlands, which lasted until 1757, marks the where as early as 1713 a concert hall had been high point of his career. He was organizing sub- opened in Puritan Boston. scription concerts and seasons of opera, mostly One cannot say that the world has cherished opera buffa, in Amsterdam, Haarlem, Leiden and his artistic legacy to any great extent. The only The Hague, giving private singing and harpsichord works preserved in manuscript are scattered lessons, publishing privately works aimed at the between Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria 6 and Hungary and consist of one complete operatic the affairs of State under four rulers from Peter score (La generosità di Tiberio, Venice 1729, in the Great to Anna Ioannovna. This had made him collaboration with Bartolomeo Cordans), a hand- fabulously wealthy without, however, impinging ful of detached arias, one duet and an Ave Regina one iota on his uncouth manners or his ridiculous coelorum. Of the eighteen printed sets mentioned avarice. in publishers’ catalogues of the time, six are lost His third son, Aleksandr Gavrilovi (1688- and of the others only a very few copies survive. 1762), was, however, a skillful diplomat who was Modern editions are even scantier: a selection of posted to Berlin as a Russian plenipotentiary three Sonatas from Op.1 (Mainz 1956) and, ed- while still very young (1711-27), then to Paris ited by the aforementioned Rudolf Rasch, these (1727) and finally to The Hague (1731). Elisabeth Sonnates pour le clavessin (Utrecht 2001) offered Esperance, the third of his ten children, was on the present CD in a world premiere recording born in Berlin in 1726 to his consort Catharina which is, however, based on the original edition Henriette Burgravine zu Dohna-Ferrassières, of 1746. scion of a branch of a Prusso-Belgian family that could boast of origins dating back to a paladin Sonates pour mademoiselle Lisette in the service of Charlemagne. Unfortunately the These twelve Sonatas described as “for harp- resounding heraldic titles, the auspicious middle sichord but can serve equally well for other instru- name (Esperance), the good education and the ments” (one thinks immediately of the fortepiano) praise of Santo Lapis were not enough to protect are dedicated to “Lisette Golowkin &c &c”. In his the poor girl, who died unmarried at The Hague dedication to this young daughter of a Count, in late 1748. Santo Lapis praises her illustrious birth as well as On the title-page of the set dedicated to her, her “perfect taste and discernment” in matters mu- the composer describes himself as “Maître de sical. Almost certainly one of his pupils, since he Musique Italienne à la Haye”, a trademark which had already heard her playing them to their mutual in this specific context refers to a particular tradi- satisfaction, we know no more than this about her tion quite distinct from the contemporary French musical talent, but there was no exaggeration in and German schools of keyboard composition.

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