Ligurian Organ Treasures, Vol. 3: 17th & 18th Century Organ Toccatas & Versets

Ligurian Organ Treasures Vol. 3

A manuscript such as A.7b.63 Cass. records the continuing activity of musicians who copied, selected, corrected and reused music according to the requirements of worship and the instruments available to them. The third volume of Ligurian Organ Treasures enters this history at its most tangible point. The music survives in the old collection of the Genoa Conservatory Library; its present sound is entrusted to organs belonging to the regional tradition within which the manuscript may once have circulated. Source and instrument illuminate one another, while retaining the uncertainties that make such a document historically revealing.

The volume is an oblong anthology written on both recto and verso by several hands, from the second half of the seventeenth century to approximately the middle of the eighteenth. Each page contains two systems in Italian keyboard intavolatura: six lines for the right hand and eight for the left. This notation distributes a polyphonic texture between the player’s hands. The physical arrangement of the book embodies its purpose: it is a performer’s object, designed to place music before the eyes and under the hands.

Its contents strengthen this impression. Versets, offertories, music for the Elevation, a piece for the Epistle and a Post Communium follow the articulated time of the liturgy. Directions involving the pedals connect written gesture with the particular resources of an organ. The hypothesis that the manuscript belonged to a religious house, where successive organists added music over many years, cannot presently be proved; it nevertheless offers a plausible explanation for the number of hands, the range of dates and the uneven condition of the texts. What appears heterogeneous from the perspective of a modern collected edition may have possessed a clear unity in use.

The names written into the source must be read within this practical history. Seven toccatas in its first part are assigned by the copyist to Scarlatti or to ‘Hendel’. A study published by Giorgio Pestelli in 1972 was devoted specifically to the resulting problems of attribution. Some concordances point towards Alessandro Scarlatti; one movement belongs to a known Handelian Capriccio, while another appears to combine material of different origins. The designations Toccata 5a Hendel and Toccata 6a Hendel preserve the manuscript’s own ordering. Such headings show how music was named, transmitted and understood by those who possessed it, even where modern scholarship cannot turn the name into an unequivocal authorial signature.

The anthology also preserves a change in musical language. Its earlier layer is associated principally with late seventeenth-century Roman practice, while later additions move towards a more openly instrumental idiom, sometimes touched by the rhythms and rhetoric of opera. Counterpoint remains a structural resource, as the Toccata con fuga makes clear, yet it no longer defines the collection’s entire horizon. Indications such as Allegro quanto si può and Spiritoso ma non presto address the player with a new directness. They prescribe energy and character, asking the organist to shape time with the flexibility of contemporary instrumental performance.

This stylistic transition finds a particularly eloquent medium in the Ligurian organ. During the seventeenth century, builders from Lombardy, the Veneto, Piedmont and France worked in the region. The arrival in Genoa of the Flemish Jesuit Willem Hermans between 1656 and 1663 introduced important contacts with northern construction. Tommaso I Roccatagliata, who collaborated with Hermans outside Liguria in the early 1670s, founded a local tradition continued by the Roccatagliata descendants, the Ciurlo family, Filippo and Felice Piccaluga, Antonio Corsi and Giacinto Rossi. Their activity extended across Liguria towards southern Piedmont and Corsica.

The characteristic Ligurian instrument retained the clarity of the Italian organ while giving it a local inflection. A single manual with a short bass octave and a pedalboard normally coupled to the keyboard placed the player in contact with a concentrated tonal design. The Principale and the separate ranks of the Ripieno supplied brilliance and architectural definition; flutes, the three-rank Cornetto and the gently beating Voce Umana gave melody different degrees of intimacy. Trumpets, the pedal Trombone and colouristic accessories appeared in larger instruments. A medium pitch, generally between A = 420 and 430 Hz, and forms of meantone temperament sharpened the identities of intervals and keys. Registration becomes part of musical syntax, articulating function, scale and affect through changes of colour.

The three organs heard here offer complementary perspectives on that inheritance. The instrument at San Pietro in Davagna, dating from the eighteenth or nineteenth century and attributed to Filippo and Felice Piccaluga, recalls one of the principal Genoese workshops. At the Sanctuary of Nostra Signora dei Miracoli in Cicagna, the organ built by Tommaso II Roccatagliata in 1788 gives the recording its clearest late eighteenth-century centre. The anonymous nineteenth-century instrument in the Oratory of San Bartolomeo at Staglieno extends the history into a period of increasing contact with Lombard and Tuscan models. Together, the organs reveal a tradition through continuities and transformations.

The two alternatim sequences make the liturgical life of the manuscript immediately perceptible. In the Magnificat versets, the organ occupies the places of successive portions of the canticle: Magnificat, Quia respexit, Et misericordia, Deposuit, Suscepit Israel and Gloria Patri et Filio. The written pieces presuppose what lies around them, whether chant or another vocal continuation. Each verset is complete in its appointed moment and incomplete by design, because its meaning comes from alternation. The organ answers, prolongs and re-colours a text that remains present even when words are no longer heard.

The Ave maris stella sequence works through the same principle on a smaller scale. A full Ripieno announces the hymn’s public dimension; the succeeding verses, Solve vincla reis, Virgo singularis and Sit laus Deo, invite more differentiated responses. The brilliance of the chorus, the definition of the Principale and the inward colours of flute or Voce Umana can give timbre a ritual function, ordering contrasts within devotion.

Around these liturgical cycles, the toccatas explore the act of beginning. The opening Toccata del primo tono and the Introduzione al Primo Tuono establish tonal territory; elsewhere, a Toccata sopra i pedali draws attention to the bass as a physical and structural presence. On an Italian and Ligurian instrument, the coupled pedalboard reinforces foundations, marks cadences and alters the weight of a texture. The Toccata di Ripieno directs attention towards the principal chorus, allowing figuration and harmony to disclose the density of its separate ranks.

Shorter designations reveal how closely genre and occasion remained connected. Per l’Elevazione suggests a suspended and contemplative span within the Mass; Per l’Epistola, Per l’Offertorio and Post Communium locate music at distinct points in the rite. These titles guide the performer’s sense of proportion, movement and sonority. A compact composition can acquire breadth when its cadence inhabits the church acoustic, while a brilliant passage may serve as a threshold between liturgical actions.

The final Pastorella brings another current into view. Pastoral pieces occur repeatedly in the anthology, sometimes incorporating the outlines of popular dances and the widely circulating Girolmetta melody. Their drones, lilting metres and evocations of pipes connect the organ with sounds beyond the church while remaining at home in the Christmas repertory. Here the instrument’s sustained bass and differentiated flute colours allow an imagined rustic music to be remade through pipes, wind and temperament. The boundary between cultivated and popular idioms becomes a field of memory and transformation.

Bringing this material into performance has required more than the transfer of old notation into a modern score. Some pieces were copied with considerable precision; others contain missing clefs, errors or passages preserved in an almost schematic state. The transcription has involved different degrees of intervention, including substantial reconstruction in two especially problematic works. Fidelity depends on recognising what the source gives, what it leaves unresolved and where an editor must make a responsible musical decision. Performance continues that process through touch, articulation, registration and acoustic response.

The particular value of A.7b.63 Cass. lies in the convergence of these histories. A layered manuscript from Genoa meets instruments shaped by Ligurian builders and by the changing musical expectations of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Familiar liturgical forms encounter anonymous invention; celebrated names survive beside local musicians and unidentified copyists. Through this third volume, the manuscript becomes audible as a living collection, formed by repeated acts of transmission and renewed whenever a player allows its incomplete traces to speak again.