Maria De Martini, Salvatore Carchiolo - Mancini: XII Solos Vol. 1 - Recorder Sonatas (2021)

Following his period there, Francesco obtained a place at the Royal Chapel, and soon began his compositional activity with some Cantatas, his first drama per musica (1696) and his first oratorio (1698). These genres were to become his favourites in the following years, and earned him fame and glory not only in his own Naples, but in many other important Italian cities. However, most of his operatic works were later conceived for the flourishing tradition of the Neapolitan theatres: about ten of them have been preserved and bear witness to the evolution in his musical style.
At his time, Naples was in the midst of political turmoil: at first under Spanish rule, it passed under Austrian domination in 1707. When this change was taking place, the master of the Royal Chapel, Alessandro Scarlatti, was on leave in Rome. With political shrewdness, Mancini demonstrated his staunch support for the Austrians, and was appointed Chapel master instead of Scarlatti. Understandably, Scarlatti was not flattered by this move, and, upon his return to Naples, he claimed and obtained his reinstatement. Nevertheless, Mancini maintained the salary he had requested as a Chapel master, along with the promise that he would succeed Scarlatti at his death.
The Austrian rule did not merely overturn the political balance of the city, but also opened its culture to new foreign influences; Mancini adapted, reworked and reinterpreted both libretti and already-written operas coming from the Viennese court. He did not disdain other provenances, however, and arranged an opera by Handel written for the Venetian theaters.
His operatic style is particularly touching in the pathetic pieces; he demonstrates care and skill in the instrumentation, as well as a keen feeling for the harmonic aspects; his recitatives are intense, expressive and diversified, and his arias show his progressive evolution in the direction of an increasing complexity of style and structure.
Along with his secular output, Mancini also wrote many sacred works, especially for the Neapolitan Confraternities, composing numerous liturgical pieces (such as Masses, Vespers and Te Deum) as well as motets, hymns, sequences and antiphons. His output was also rich in the instrumental and in the chamber music field, both instrumental and vocal (200 chamber cantatas), and his collection of Flute Sonatas recorded here was so admired and appreciated that its second edition would be prefaced by Geminiani. Similarly fascinating are his Sonatas for flute and strings, which demonstrate his contrapuntal skills and his interest in creating a dense and at the same time light texture of polyphony, whose complexity does not preclude their charm and amiability.
Mancini’s comparatively long career was abruptly terminated when, in 1735, he suffered apoplexy and remained paralyzed thereafter. Two years later, on September 22nd ,1737, he died in his Naples, where his career had flourished and whose musical culture owed so much to his talents and gifts.
Notes by Chiara Bertoglio

We present here a reinterpretation of Francesco Mancini’s Sonatas for flute or violin and continuo. Due to its specificity, this recording is unique within the (actually scarcely populated) discographic panorama dedicated to this composer, who was one of the most significant Neapolitan musicians of his generation.
We started from the indication on the London edition of these Sonatas – dedicated to John Fleetwood, the English General Consul to the Kingdom of Naples – which indicates them as “proper lessons for the harpsichord”. The habit of admitting, on the title-page, a possible adaptation for the keyboard of Sonatas for a solo instrument and continuo is certainly due to commercial astuteness, with the aim of increasing the number of potential buyers of the publication. However, this also reveals an attitude encouraging the reworking of these pieces on the basis of specific functions to which they may bend themselves, such as, for example, the purpose of highlighting the performer’s virtuoso skills. These pieces are therefore conceived as multifunctional musical objects. These Sonatas are destined first and foremost for an audience of advanced amateurs, such as Consul Fleetwood probably was. Mancini defines these dilettanti as “Amatori dell’Harmonia”, “lovers of harmony” in the collection’s dedication: they represented a large and commercially attractive public in London. At the same time, however, when these Sonatas are conveniently handled, they are also destined for the virtuosi. By intervening on the musical text with freedom and fantasy, within the boundaries of a well-defined language, music professionals would have transformed them into pieces suited for letting one’s bravura emerge, along with the composer’s creative invention.
Starting from these considerations, we oriented our interpretive interventions following some precise directions. Firstly, the flute part is enriched (particularly in the slow movements) by a florid Italianate ornamentation. This practice was generally inaccessible to the amateurs, for whom ornamentations were written in full in certain cases (but not in that of these Sonatas), particularly in the case of publications conceived for the London market. On the contrary, virtuosos were expected to ornament with skill, fantasy and abundance.
We decided to reserve some movements of this performance to the harpsichord alone, following the indication of the printed edition; we have reworked and adapted them to the instrument’s features with a certain freedom, without simply reproducing the printed text on the keyboard.
In all other movements we opted for a performance in which the harpsichord contributes with a realization of the continuo bass line whose elaboration makes it an obligato component of the composition, to the point that it occasionally appropriates the flute part. The result is that these pieces are transformed into true concertante Sonatas, following a stylistically consistent perspective, which aims at accompanying and showing the openness of Mancini’s language toward a more modern and galante style.
Actually, a precise and pertinent witness of this florid and concertante style of continuo realization is easily found in the examples given by Francesco Geminiani in his The Art of accompaniment (London, n.d.). The treatise’s examples and instructions all aim at overcoming the simple chordal realization of the continuo. Rather, a manner of playing is proposed which can give to the ear “the Pleasure of a continued and uninterrupted Melody”; this goal can be reached by deriving “diversified and agreeable singings” from the harmony.
This path would lead, within a few decades, to the partial abandonment of the sonata for a melodic instrument with continuo, in favour of the new Sonatas with concertante keyboard; here, the relationship between keyboard and melodic instrument is radically reconceived, up to a nearly complete overturning of the hierarchies.
This approach also led us to renounce the contribution of an instrument such as the cello or bassoon for supporting the bass line. On the one hand, this is due to the fact that, in the contemporaneous chamber sonatas, the joint performance of the bass was an exception rather than a rule. On the other, a rich and dialoguing realization of the continuo such as the one we chose makes the reinforcement of the bass line superfluous within the economy of an efficacious balance of the parts.
So-called Historically Informed Performance, in its most advanced ramifications, has since long and rightfully overcome the delusive and misleading concept of Werktreue. This is a useless tool within a context in which the work does not represent the motionless witness of the composer’s will, but rather a living organism capable of adapting to diverse circumstances and uses, and also a formidable instrument for stimulating the instrumentalist’s creativity and virtuosity. Within this perspective, our operation aims at replacing a sterile purpose of “authenticity” in the reproduction of a written text. We rather aim at a bold fidelity to a complex of living practices and musical cultures, marking a continuity and an almost affective bond linking generations of musicians so distant in time.