Airs italiens à 3 voix: a recently identified autograph manuscript of Charpentier

Abstract

In the mid-1660s, the young Marc-Antoine Charpentier spent three years in Rome. Deeply affected by all that he heard there, he remained throughout his life strongly influenced not only by Carissimi and his oratorios, but also by the numerous other composers active in Rome at that time. His admiration for Roman music is clear from the many copies that he is known to have made of it, although until now only two were thought to have survived: the Missa mirabiles elationes maris sexdecimus vocibus by Francesco Beretta and the oratorio Jephte by Carissimi. However, the present authentication of an autograph manuscript entitled Airs italiens à 3 voix sheds new light on Charpentier’s taste for the music of Rome, in this case secular. This manuscript, conserved in the Music Department of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, shelfmark Vm7 18, contains pieces by Giacomo Carissimi and Lelio Colista on secular Italian texts, as well as two airs by Charpentier himself. It confirms Charpentier’s fondness for the music of Carissimi (while also supporting the attribution of these particular arias), and it reveals his taste for the works of Colista (here preserved as unica). The Airs italiens à 3 voix is the only surviving manuscript dating from Charpentier’s years in Rome and thus probably preserves his earliest known compositions.