Zweig MS 87

Autograph score. Written in ink on systems of four staves. Title on f. 1r: ‘Credo a / Due Voci con / L’organo solo obbligato / Di / Gaspare Spontini’, with, also in the composer’s hand at top right, ‘Originale’. Scored for organ (written on the single uppermost stave), Canto (in soprano clef), Alto, and with a bass line on the lowest single stave. The bass unfigured except for 2 bars on 6v, but elsewhere includes written out harmonies. The organ stave includes instructions in Italian (f. 1v) to play the vocal lines where this upper stave is otherwise left blank. Music begins on f. 1v. The sections are ‘Andante’ ‘Credo in unum Deum’ (ff. 1v-2v), ‘Larghetto’ ‘Et incarnatus est’ (ff. 3r and v), ‘Allegretto’ ‘Et resurrexit’ (ff. 3v-4v), ‘Andante’ ‘Et in spiritum sanctum’ (ff. 4v-5v), ‘Allegro assai’ ‘Confiteor’ (ff. 5v-6v), and ‘Piu presto assai’ ‘Et vitam venturi’ (ff. 6v-7v).

This work does not appear in the lists given in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart and The New Grove, nor in the table of sources in Paolo Fragapane, Spontini (Florence, 1983). The presence of instructions for the performer in Italian suggests that the manuscript dates from Spontini’s early years in Italy, and this is born out by comparison with manuscripts from this period of his life reproduced in Bouvet and Ghislanzoni. It may date from his period at the Conservatorio di Santa Maria della Pieta in Naples (January 1793 to October 1795), where settings of sacred texts were frequently required from students. Zweig expressed doubts about the authenticity of this manuscript on his record card and in an annotation to the copy of it, but comparison with the reproductions in Bouvet and Ghislanzoni indicates that his doubts were unjustified.