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Zweig MS 37
- Record Id:
- 040-001945786
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-001945746
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000195.0x0001f1
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100158971051.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Zweig MS 37
- Title:
-
George Frideric Handel: ‘Floridante’, opera in three acts (libretto Paolo Antonio Rolli): final chorus ‘Quando pena la costanza’ from Act III
- Scope & Content:
-
Autograph full score. Written in ink on systems of nine staves. No tempo direction. Headed ‘Coro’ (f. 1r) and with ‘Fine dell’ Opera à Londres ce 28 de Novembre 1721’ at the end (f. 4r). Part of Handel’s composition score of the opera.
The discovery of this hitherto missing conclusion to the composition score confirmed Handel’s own dating for the completion of work on ‘Floridante’; a note of the date had been added by Charles Jennens to an early manuscript copy full score. The first performance of the opera took place at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, 9 December 1721 (Dean and Knapp, Handel’s Operas, p. 400). In his introduction to the facsimile edition Hopkinson states both that the manuscript was ‘found by me in London’ - reputedly he had found it in one of the trays of second-hand material at Foyles bookshop in Charing Cross Road - and that it had ‘until recently’ belonged to the family of the Earl of Aylesford, and so must have been one of the Handel manuscripts formerly in the possession of Jennens. Sotheby’s sale catalogue, 16 March 1937, states that the manuscript ‘comes from a family closely associated with Handel’. This information was of course supplied by Hopkinson, and it appears again in the First Edition Bookshop catalogue. Zweig (Add. MS 73167) accepted and noted the Aylesford and Jennens connections. However, Burrows and Ronish (A Catalogue of Handel’s Musical Autographs, p. 301) point out that though this provenance is possible, there seems to be no evidence to substantiate it, and the ownership of the manuscript before 1936 must be considered unknown.
- Collection Area:
- Music Collections
- Project / Collection:
- Stefan Zweig Collection
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-001945746
036-001945747
040-001945786 - Is part of:
- Zweig MS 1-218 : Stefan Zweig Collection: Music, literary and historical manuscripts
Zweig MS 1-131 : Stefan Zweig Collection: Music manuscripts
Zweig MS 37 : George Frideric Handel: ‘Floridante’, opera in three acts (libretto Paolo Antonio Rolli): final chorus ‘Quando pena la… - Hierarchy:
- 032-001945746[0001]/036-001945747[0035]/040-001945786
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Zweig MS 1-218
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- 1 volume (4 folios)
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100158971051.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English
Italian - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1721
- End Date:
- 1721
- Date Range:
- 1721
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
- Restrictions to access apply please consult British Library staff
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- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
- 235 x 295mm. f. 4v ruled with staves but otherwise blank. Structure: 4; ff. 1 and 4 now detached. Numbered ‘7’ at top right of 1r. 10-stave paper ruled in pairs, span 30.5mm. (see Burrows and Ronish, A Catalogue of Handel’s Musical Autographs); total span ranges between 190-200mm. Watermark: Burrows and Ronish B10. In a box covered with blue morocco, gold tooled, by Rivière and Son, with the ‘spine’ lettered ‘HANDEL MANUSCRIPT / FINALE FROM THE OPERA FLORIDANTE / 1721’.
- Custodial History:
-
Cecil Hopkinson, London, circa 1936; offered for sale by Hopkinson through Sotheby’s, London, 16 March 1937, lot 385 (bought in, see unpublished correspondence between Hopkinson and A. H. King in British Library); purchased by Zweig through H. Eisemann, from Hopkinson’s First Edition Bookshop, March 1940 (Zweig’s record card, Add. MS 73167, f. 20; see also Add. MS 73171, ff. 109-117, and memorandum of Zweig’s purchases in 1940 in Add. MS 73174).
- Administrative Context:
-
Exhibited: British Library 1986 (75 Musical and Literary Autographs).
- Information About Copies:
-
Digitised copy available on British Library Digitised Manuscripts: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Zweig_MS_37
- Publications:
-
Published: London: Walsh and Hare, [1722], as part of full score.
Reproduced: Complete photographic facsimile, with an introduction by Cecil Hopkinson, as Manuscript of the Finale from Floridante by George Frederic Handel, privately printed edition of ten copies, (London: the First Edition Bookshop, 1936); ff. 1r, 4r, Sotheby’s Sale Catalogue of 15-16 March 1937; ff. 1r, 4r, Arthur Searle, The British Library Stefan Zweig Collection: catalogue of the music manuscripts (London: The British Library, 1999), plates XXXVII-XXXVIII; f. 2r, Oliver Matuschek, Ich kenne den Zauber der Schrift (Vienna: Inlibris, 2005), p. 371.
Bibliography: Introduction to facsimile (see above); W.C. Smith, ‘Recently Discovered Handel Manuscripts’, Musical Times, vol. lxxviii (1937), pp. 312-5; Addenda to cat. 25, First Edition Bookshop, London, May 1937; Alec Hyatt King, Some British Collectors of Music (Cambridge, 1963), p.99; ibid., Handel and his Autographs (London, 1967), pp. 9-10; Winton Dean and J. Merrill Knapp, Handel’s Operas, 1704-1726 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 385-417; Donald Burrows and Martha J. Ronish, A Catalogue of Handel’s Musical Autographs (Oxford, 1994), pp. 31-2, 301; Oliver Matuschek, Ich kenne den Zauber der Schrift (Vienna: Inlibris, 2005), p. 369; Nicolas Bell, ‘A British Museum Book Order Ticket in the Hand of Stefan Zweig’, Brio, 45/1 (2008), pp. 58-59.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)