New findings on the possible copyists and owners of the Scarlatti sonata manuscripts in Munster: the role of Antonino Reggio

Abstract

IN his unpublished 1970 dissertation on Domenico Scarlatti, Joel Sheveloff identified four major collections of the keyboard sonatas of Scarlatti, two Spanish and two Italian in origin.1 Since there are no known autograph copies of Scarlatti's works, the two copies that originated in Spain have been accepted as the definitive sources. These are identified by the names of the places where they currently reside, Parma and Venice.2 The two Italian manuscripts, one held in the Santini collection in the Diözesanbibliothek, Münster,3 and the other in the Bibliothek der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna,4 were identified by both Walter Gerstenberg (1933)5 and Sheveloff (1970)6 as being important sources, due to their relative completeness. Both sets were owned by the Roman bibliophile Fortunato Santini (1778–1861).7 Sheveloff established that the Münster copies are among the most important sources of Scarlatti's sonatas, agreeing with commentators such as Gerstenberg and Ralph Kirkpatrick.8 Sheveloff identified nine scribes in the five volumes. The most significant are M1, who copied the first three volumes, and M2, who copied the fourth volume and a significant part of the fifth.9 The fourth and the fifth volumes contain works not included in the first three. The identification of M1 is still a mystery: it would appear that this scribe was not a professional copyist. There are many errors and it appears that his volumes were copied in haste.