Il Fasolo? Le Poème Harmonique- Vincent Dumestre

Il Fasolo? Le Poème Harmonique- Vincent Dumestre

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Album Description
Festive songs for the Venetian Carnival or Roman madrigals, Bergamask dances or chaconnes, refined poetry or songs from the commedia dell’arte: the exceptionally rich and varied works of the composer ‘Il Fasolo’ constitute an enigma in the history of Italian music. In 1627 a collection of airs entitled La Barchetta passagiera, by a certain ‘Il Fasolo’, was published in Rome. The only surviving printed version of this book, forgotten for two centuries, was rediscovered in 1886. Unfortunately it was destroyed during the First World War, and it was assumed that Il Fasolo's works had been lost for ever… Less than a century later, however, in 1991, a manuscript turned up miraculously in the library at Bassano del Grappa. But that still did not solve the mystery of the man behind the name Il Fasolo.

Musicological studies provide us with some elements of a solution. La Barchetta passaggiera comprises music in a very popular vein, settings of texts in dialects from various parts of Italy, as well as serious madrigals and Venetian songs. But is it really the only surviving collection of works by Il Fasolo? Several biographical details lead us to suppose that there is a correlation between Il Fasolo and a certain Giovanni Battista Fasolo. The latter, a composer of religious works, was a Franciscan friar in Palermo, Sicily: Il Fasolo (The Bean!) may have been the pseudonym that enabled him to compose secular pieces.

But the plot thickens. In 1970, having analysed and compared a piece by Il Fasolo, Il Carro di madama Lucia with a piece by the Venetian composer Francesco Manelli, La Luciata, the musicologist Elena Ferrari-Barassi came to the conclusion that they were the same piece, written by the same composer. Furthermore, in his preface Manelli explains that his Luciata was originally published under the title Il Carro trionfale.

It therefore transpires that the composer Il Fasolo, author of La Barchetta passagiera, published in Rome in 1627, Francesco Manelli, a composer who worked in Venice and played a key role in the development of public operatic performances in the city, and Giovanni Battista Fasolo, a Franciscan friar who retired to Palermo in Sicily and was the author of church music and arie spirituali, are one and the same person: Il Fasolo.

Il Fasolo? Le Poème Harmonique- Vincent Dumestre, Music, Il Fasolo

Il Fasolo? Le Poème Harmonique- Vincent Dumestre

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