Musical Characteristics Op. 19, Fantaisie avec Variation sur l’Air ‘Au Clair de la Lune’ Op. 48, Twelve Monferrinas Op. 49
edited by Luca Lévi Sala, Bologna, Ut Orpheus, 2022 (Italian National Edition of Clementi’s Complete Works, vol. IX.2, CCE 4).
The Twelve Monferrinas Op. 49 and the Fantaisie Op. 48 belong to the vast production of domestic music that Clementi never ceased to compose during his lifetime. As Alan Tyson pointed out, Opp. 48 and 49 belong to the works that Clementi organized to have «published simultaneously by his own firm in London, by Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig and by Naderman in Paris» along with the Sonata Op. 46, the Two Capriccios Op. 47, the Sonatas Op. 50, and the ‘Batti Batti’ Op-sn 1.
The English editions of these works were all released between April 1820 and October 1821. According to Tyson, it is possible that even late reissues «by André in Offenbach, by Peters in Leipzig and by Ricordi in Milan also appeared with Clementi’s authority». Being not only meant for a domestic audience, Clementi’s Musical Characteristics Op. 19 — a collection of twelve preludes and six cadenzas «composed in the style of Haydn, Kozeluch, Mozart, Sterkel, Vanhall and the Author» — belong to the composer’s pedagogical works.
The first edition of Op. 19 was entered at Stationers’ Hall on August 9, 1787. Late identical print-runs of Op. 19 were eventually reissued by Longman, Clementi & Co. and, after 1801, by Clementi and Co. Op. 19 was published without authorization by numerous publishers in Paris, Vienna, Offenbach, Mainz, Milan, Berlin, and Leipzig. Publishers such as André even published a second edition 15 years after the first one, in 1803.
Clementi himself prepared, but never published, a revised version twenty years later after the first edition, in 1807, as attested by a preserved autograph manuscript, which is here presented in the Appendix to the volume; this was probably intended to be the last authoritative version of Op. 19.
Luca Lévi Sala PhD is Adjunct Assistant Professor at Manhattan College (NYC) and Visiting Scholar at New York University. He obtained his PhD from Poitiers University, and he was Visiting Teaching Professor at Jagiellonian University in Cracow (2021) and at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (2020-2021), former Professeur associé at Université de Montréal (2017-2020), Visiting Researcher at New York University (2017) and Visiting Research Fellow at Yale University (2015-2016). He has published a range of articles and chapters, reviews and reports (serving as peer-reviewer as well) in various international books and refereed journals, including Early Music, Journal of Musicology, Journal of Musicological Research, Notes, Revue de musicologie, Studi musicali, Journal of Jewish Identities, Rivista Italiana di Musicologia, Ad Parnassum Journal, Musica Jagellonica, Eighteenth-Century Music, Analecta Musicologica, Oxford Bibliographies Online, MGG, Grove Music Online. His book Music Criticism and Politics in the Italian Fascist State in the 1930s is in preparation.
