Corelli ‘inedito’: composizioni dubbie o senza numero d’opera. Percorsi tra fonti, attribuzioni e fortuna della trasmissione

Abstract

The study of Corelli’s compositions not included in his six printed collections is still at its beginnings. Fifty years after cataloguing Corelli’s works for the new critical edition, an examination of some of his sonatas considered to be doubtful reveals that there is an urgent need for rethinking both the classification criteria and the boundaries that have been established between the dubious compositions and the ones without opus number, at least as far as the oldest, most authentic sources are concerned. In this study, I present arguments to confirm authorship of some of Corelli’s unpublished works (e.g., Anh. 19 and Anh. 33), based in the first place on data gathered from the material transmission of the compositions under consideration. In addition, I propose a few basic premises to tackle the study of the large body of English sources, including some of the earliest manuscripts that contain unpublished Corelli sonatas that can be dated with some precision. These English sources offer, in addition to trio sonatas (including Corelli’s WoO 5), several ‘sonate a violino solo e basso’ not found on the continent: their attribution to Corelli seems in many cases to be correct, or at least plausible; in any case, it should be pondered seriously in light of the extensive musical exchanges between Rome and England.