Italian Baroque Sonatas for the Recorder and the Flute. (Detroit Studies in MusicBibliography, No. 37) by Richard A. McGowanReview by: Betty Bang MatherFontes Artis Musicae, Vol. 25, No. 3 (1978 Juli-September), pp. 277-278Published by: International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres(IAML)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23505270 .

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Comptes-Rendus /Besprechungen /Reviews 277

This slender, indispensable volume supple ments the German original of 1961, compiled by O. E. Deutsch. It is arranged in the same

chronological order and is presented on identi cal principles of typography. Its contents fall into several clear categories. There are corrections of verbal slips and literals which escaped Deutsch's

eagle eye in proof, but were noted by him and others after publication. Considering the size of

his volume, these are few on the whole. Then

there are additions which were collected by Deutsch himself and published in various articles.

Such, for instance, are his clarifications to the entries for Zinzendorf s diaries for which he also

supplied an improved text in places. There is a

good deal of additional information intercalated from Mozart. Briefe und Aufzeichnungen. This is, of course, an invaluable source of amplification within the framework of the documents. Another source of new information is the prefaces to the NMA volumes and the critical reports.

Many of the details are, of course, small ones but sometimes they may be crucially important. One that caught my eye was on the verso of the

title-page to the present volume, where it is stated that the date of Lange's unfinished oil

painting of Mozart (reproduced again on the

wrapper) is spring 1789. This corrects the previous dating of '1782/83 (?),' which has been generally given hitherto. The source of the correct date is to be found in Briefe und Aufzeichnungen VI, p. 381, where a statement about the portrait in a

letter is subjected to new and searching re-exami nation.

No doubt new information about Mozart will

continue to come to light from time to time. Per

haps I may be allowed to mention here something I noticed myself and to repeat the text of it from

the paper, "Some Aspects of Recent Mozart

Research", which I read to the Royal Musical Association in November 1973 and which was

published in Vol. 100 of its Proceedings a year later. The following passage appeared in a book

One Man's Music by Peter Gammond (London: Wolfe Publishing, 1971): "It was a hot day, but

Mozart was quite formally dressed. He had been

hard at work on some compositions for string

quartet but seemed not at all put out at being

interrupted. Indeed, he continued to put down

occasional notes during our conversation. I was

surprised, when he rose, to find him of not more

than about five feet and four inches in height and

of very slight build. His hand was cold but his

grip was firm. His face was not particularly strik

ing, rather melancholy until he spoke, when his

expression became animated and amused and his

eyes, which constantly darted from Klein to my

self, were full of kind concern in our doings, about which he enquired with obvious interest. He had not been to London since a boy but seemed to remember it well and spoke of his old

friend Bach, who had died some three years past and was greatly interested in my dealings with him. I think he could have chatted of this and that for many hours but as we had later appoint ments that day, Klein turned our talk to the busi ness in hand." The writer of the above passage, quoted in Gammond's book, was probably John

Pettinger (1759-1831), an amateur of music who worked for various publishers and visited

Europe at regular intervals between 1783 and 1826, and kept a diary. It seems pretty certain that he visited Mozart in the summer of 1785 and the description of him is most valuable be cause it corroborates other accounts, notably the famous one written by Michael Kelly, who was himself w ith Mozart just a little later. This find is characteristic of the very stuff of which Mo zart's biography is made.

A. Hyatt King

Richard A. McGowan: Italian

Baroque Sonatas for the Recorder and the Flute. (Detroit: Information Coordinators, 1978). 70 p., $7.50. (Detroit Studies in Music Bibliography, No. 37).

This bibliographical study, based on a Ph. D. dissertation of the same title (University of

Michigan, 1974), performs two functions. (1) It

gives complete bibliographical information on

manuscripts, 18th-century editions and modern editions of the works considered. (2) Wherever

possible, it correlates the manuscripts and modern editions with their 18th-century published coun terparts according to opus number and tonality.

McGowan's book covers only baroque solo sonatas by Italian composers living either in Italy or as immigrants in other European countries. Furthermore, it covers only works whose titles indicate they are "specifically or primarily" in tended for flute or recorder. For instance, it in cludes Leonardo Vinci's Twelve Solos for a Ger man Flute or Violin but not Antonio Vivaldi's "II Pastor Fido" Sonates pour la Musette, Viele, Flûte, Hautbois, Violon. It includes nine anony mous recorder works, which McGowan suspects were originally intended for violin, and the 18th

century transcription for flute of Marcello'sOp. II sonatas for recorder but does not include the

anonymous transcriptions for recorder of some of Albinoni's Op. VI and Corelli's Op. V violin sonatas.

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2 78 Comptes-Rendus/Besprechungen/Reviews

The book is divided into two parts. Part I lists

18th-century editions and manuscripts (the latter

primarily taken from printed library catalogues). It also includes dedications of the early editions, information on the composers' lives and music, and research on dating the early editions. Part II

lists modern editions. By correlating the two parts we learn, for instance, that the three flute sonatas

by Giovanni Platti published by Schott in the 1920's and 1930's in editions by Philipp Jarnach are Nos. 2 (G major), 3 (E minor) and 4 (A major) of the composer's Sei Sonate, Op. III (1743?); that in the 1950's Deutscher Ricordi published No. 1 (D major) in an edition by Gustav Scheck and Hugo Ruf and No. 4 in an edition by Ruf

alone; and that in 1963 Schott published No. 6

(G major) in an edition by Ruf. McGowan notes that Franz Vester's Flute Catalogue lists two other sonatas by Platti, one in G major and one in C

minor, both published by Deutscher Ricordi. He

suggests that the G major sonata in question may be Op. Ill No. 2 or 5 (probably "5" should read

"6," the sixth sonata being in G major) and that the C minor sonata is probably Op. Ill No. 5, which sonata he notes is actually in C major.

The author apparently has not updated the

listings in Part II since the completion of his dissertation in 1974. Under the entry for Pietro

Locatelli, for example, he does not include all the modern editions of this composer's sonatas listed in Wayne Wilkins' Index of Flute Music (1973) and its supplements. Omitted are twelve sonatas

published by Zerboni, four by International, two

by Peters and one by Schott. In his Introduction, McGowan discusses some

of the difficulties he encountered in compiling this bibliography and stresses the need for further research into this area of woodwind literature. His book commendably paves the way for future studies.

Betty Bang Mather

An Ives Celebration. Papers and Panels of the Charles Ives Centennial Festival-Conference. Edited by H. Wiley Hitchcock and Vivian Perlis

(University of Illinois Press, 1977). 282 pp. Full

cloth. $ 11.95.

The title of this valuable contribution to the

growing literature on Charles Ives gives an excel lent clue to the contents. As at all conferences, not all that is spoken is pure gold; the scholarly and informational value of the papers and discus sions is correspondingly uneven. The word "cel

ebration" is indicative of the tenor of the numer ous longer, shorter and very short contributions

by a host of American and foreign participants in this Centennial Festival-Conference of 1976.

All of the contributions are, in varying degrees, laudatory; in some the praise verges on fatuity. The book's weakness, it seems to me, lies in the

basically uncritical approach underlying most of

its contents. But Ives has become a cult, and this dubious distinction becomes neither the man nor

his music. (I feel I have ervery right to say this, for I was "plugging" Ives, with reservations, in

lectures, broadcasts and print long before the cult

developed.) In all events, Ives is no longer considered to

be a "freak", as he once was. And this is all to the good. Perhaps the most thought-provoking chapters are those which attempt to "place" Ives in his time and society and to establish relation

ships between Ives and contemporary moving forces in American culture. Robert M. Crunden, for example, sees Ives as "a creatively functioning artist resembling other innovative pioneers of his own time in many ways" - as a representative of the "Progressive Era" (roughly the early 1890's to the end of the first War) in company with John Dewey, Theodore Roosevelt and Jane Ad dams. Crunden put his finger on one of the many contradictions in Ives' personality. He states

quite rightly that Ives was "deeply influenced by the evangelistic, revivalistic religious current." But

although Ives was a regular churchgoer, he "had no illusions about the stuffiness of churches".

Frank R. Rossiter, in his chapter Charles Ives: Good American and Isolated Artist points out still other anomalies: Ives was "isolated because he succumbed to enormous pressures that his so

ciety and culture brought to bear on him". To this extent, Ives' decision to make insurance rath er than music his career was an act not of valour but of conformity. Rossiter stresses (overstres ses?) the point that Ives was a product of Yale

University. But while conforming outwardly he was "seething inwardly with political and social

rebellion, just as he was with musical revolt". Rossiter observes, with some justice, that Ives' ideas were often too simply the opposite of those he encountered daily among his peers - an obser vation that sometimes seems applicable to the music as well. Interestingly enough, Rossiter

compares Ives' music with the political and social ideas of William Lloyd Garrsion and Henry David Thoreau. Neely Bruce traces resemblances between Ives and Walt Whitman - an opinion that finds little support in these pages.

The volume is divided thematically into five

parts: Ives and American culture; Ives viewed

from abroad; On editing Ives (with fascinating remarks and hair-raising descriptions by John

Kirkpatrick of the difficulties involved); On

conducting and performing Ives; Ives and present

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