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Cantata from an anonymous MS in the Santini Collection Münster

Anon., attributed to A D Lignani

for soprano (f'-a''), recorder and continuo

Ref. no Anon 1A (in 'cantatas')      Price £ 9.00      sample page      cover page      To order:     

This work appears in a manuscript in the Santini Collection in the Diözesanbibliothek at Münster. This collection was formed by the Abbato Franceso Santini over the period from 1796 to 1856. Much of the collection is sacred music, but it is also an important source for the secular music of Alessandro Scarlatti, and others. Some of the collection was damaged as a result of the war, and of some of the manuscripts appear to have lost the attributions written at the top edge of the folios.

The present work is one of these: a title added later in a cancelleresca hand reads: Cantata a voce sola con flauto. However, it also appears in a manuscript collection in the Bodleian Library, where it has the attribution 'Sigr. Lignani' and specifies the oboe as the obbligato. We are obliged to Dr Rosalind Halton for pointing this out. We are indebted to M. Francois-Pierre Goy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, for pointing out that the Bnf catalogue shows Angelo Domenico Lignani, or more correctly, Legnani, as the maestro di capella in Turin from 1697 to 1700, and a manuscript of this work as 'Cantata a voce sola con violino'.

Two short recitatives are interspersed among four arias, only one of which is a da capo aria. The writing is lively and tuneful, with some passage-work that makes demands on the skill of both singer and recorder player.