Musicologica Brunensia (Dec 2018)

Deconstructing Daniel Speer's Philomela angelica (1688) to reconstruct Chiara Margarita Cozzolani's Scherzi di sacra melodia (1648)

  • Marina Toffetti

DOI
https://doi.org/10.5817/MB2018-2-6
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 53, no. 2

Abstract

Read online

Starting from the case of six motets for solo voice and basso continuo by Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, originally printed in a collection that has come down to us without the basso continuo part (Scherzi di sacra melodia, 1648) and later reworked and published in a collection (Philomela angelica, 1688) attributed to Daniel Speer, the present article will focus on the problems that emerge when the editor of a musical edition must intervene with the criteria of destructive restoration, which consists in the deconstruction of later reworkings, in an attempt to recover one or more previous musical layers of a work. The main questions that arise are the following: is it possible to reconstruct the six motets of Chiara Margarita starting from the subsequent reworkings of Daniel Speer? Is this a philologically legitimate operation? And, if so, how can we present the results of this operation in a critical edition? After dealing with some interdisciplinary and methodological issues, the paper will show how Cozzolani's compositions have informed Speer's subsequent reworkings and how, through the de-construction of the latter, it is now possible to reconstruct a convincing hypothesis of the basso continuo line and to re-propose to modern audiences the compositions of Cozzolani that have not been performed for centuries due to the lack of the basso continuo.

Keywords