Composers identified in Dresden's royal music collections

Nina Eichholz

Thursday, April 2, 2015

This article is by Nina Eichholz (SLUB Dresden) and originally appeared on the Hofmusik in Dresden(Dresden Court Music) project website. It is reprinted here with kind permission.

In the DFG project Hofkirche und Königliche Privat-Musikaliensammlung (Dresden Court Church and Royal Private Music Sheet Collection), which has been underway for the past year and a half, scholars working on the project have already made numerous new identifications. Composers of anonymous works have been identified and incorrect attributions were corrected–particularly in the extensive collection of arias and cantatas–and individual arias have been matched to their operas.

For example, a collection of cantatas that was previously thought to be by Agostino Steffani was identified as being a composition by Carlo Luigi Pietragrua, who was kapellmeister in Dresden in the late seventeenth century before moving on to Düsseldorf. Additional identifications fill out more pieces of the puzzle concerning the activities of musicians at the Dresden Court: Parts to a “Sub tuum praesidium” by August Uhlich, court violinist and organist, were found on the back of parts to a different piece, and an opera identified as Il secolo vendicato (premiered in 1773 in Rimini) by Niccolò Savini was also found. This decoratively bound Italian manuscript was dedicated to Countess Maria Antonia Walpurgis, who was also a composer and was in all likelihood a patron of the Philharmonic Society in Rimini during her travels in Italy in 1772.

Category: Library collections