Musical Autographs of Frescobaldi and His Entourage in Roman Sources

Abstract

This article reconstructs the circumstances through which the keyboard tablatures Q iv 24-9 and Q viii 205-6, now conserved among the manuscripts of the Chigi family in the Vatican Library, were acquired by this papal family. The point of departure for this reconstruction is the author's earlier studies on several of these tablatures and other Roman sources, studies that have allowed him to identify a series of autographs stemming from the entourage of Frescobaldi; among these are the first musical autographs attributable with certainty to the master himself. Following this path, it is possible to identify the principal scribe of the Chigi tablatures as Leonardo Castellani, one of Frescobaldi's favorite pupils; one can thus relate these sources to several documents from the Chigi administrative archive that name Castellani, even though they do not mention him as a professional musician. The resulting reconstruction of the transfer of Castellani's tablatures to Prince Mario Chigi has two notable results. On the one hand, it throws new light (and new shadows) on music patronage in Baroque Rome; on the other, it points toward further research possibilities in the Chigi musical archive, since other manuscripts belonging to Castellani are probably to be found there. Moreover, Castellani, a previously little-known musician, is now shown to be the link between Frescobaldi and the new stylistic tendencies that grew up in Rome in the second half of the seventeenth century.