Full Description
This volume is a multi-disciplinary study of the Neapolitan tradition of nineteenth-century song or "Canzona napoletana." It is based on primary (original music manuscripts) and secondary (correspondence, diaries, and varied historical materials) sources recovered from Neapolitan archives, libraries, and private collections. The book takes as its focus the figure of Guillaume Cottrau (1797-1847), a musician and publisher who left a significant breadth of original songs and arrangements issued in the song collection and series entitled Passatempi musicali. Cottrau was a cultural auteur, who integrated his diverse activities as editor, folklorist, and patron of salon music and musicians (including the commissioning of original works and adaptations) to establish a tradition of Neapolitan song. This repertory was disseminated throughout Europe and ultimately the United States to great acclaim through the publication of the Passatempi musicali. The songs presented in the Passatempi musicali remain within the international repertory affiliated with Neapolitan song, including "Fenesta vascia," "Lo guarracino," "Cannetella," and many others. They are, moreover, closely linked to the historical, cultural and linguistic identity of Naples and the Neapolitan diaspora. This volume is the first of its kind in the English language and offers original, unpublished research about the endeavors of Cottrau, the contemporary cultural environs, the artists and their music that established the international fame of the Neapolitan canzona.
Contents
List of figures and tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Pasquale Scialò, Francesca Seller, and Anthony R. DelDonna
1. Haunts of an armchair traveler: the variegated world of the letters of Guillaume Cottrau
Massimo Distilo
2. Origins, authorship, and new hypotheses about the Passatempi musicali
Pasquale Scialò
3. The role of Neapolitan song in comedic dramaturgy of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
Paologiovanni Maione
4. After the Golden Age: considerations on the nature of nineteenth-century Neapolitan theater
Francesco Cotticelli
5. Guillaume Cottrau, a French-Neapolitan entrepreneur
Francesca Seller
6. Musical traditions and matrices in the Passatempi musicali of Guillaume Cottrau
Raffaele Di Mauro
7. Musical instruments in the early nineteenth-century Neapolitan salon
Francesco Nocerino
8. Considerations on the Neapolitan language today and at the time of the Passatempi musicali by Guillaume Cottreau
Giovanni Vitale
Bibliography
About the contributors
