Autograph manuscripts by Umberto Giordano and Pietro Mascagni at the Foggia Conservatory archive

Abstract

The Umberto Giordano Conservatory library, Foggia, recently began reordering the material received from the former music high school. It reveals fascinating local history details, especially on the relationships the city entertained with some early 20th-century composers, especially its beloved compatriot, Umberto Giordano, and his estate. In Mensa regalis (1944), for choir and three mixed male voices, Giordano set to music a few stanzas from Thomas Aquinas’s sequence, Lauda Sion. The manuscript bears a dedication to Don Antonio Girola, then parish priest at Carmine Church, Luino. The piece begins with the choir, then solo voices enter for a first section in descending syllabic style, followed by a contrapuntal second section. Ritratto di fanciulla (“Portrait of a girl”, 1888), a mazurka with a trio, is Pietro Mascagni’s only known band piece. An early composition dating back to his Cerignola years, it was penned for the students of the Maria Cristina di Savoia provincial orphanage, Foggia, and probably commissioned by its Cerignola-born chairman, Achille Palieri. Students of the Cerignola city music school, conducted by Mascagni, first performed this accurately written and pleasantly catchy piece.