Description
Provenance: Christian Wenster (the elder (1704-1779) or the younger (1735-1823)? See Comments below). Emanuel Wenster donated the Wenster collection to the Lund University Library in the 1830s. An account of the Wenster family’s influence on musical life in Lund can be found here (in Swedish).
Description: A collection of twenty-three of the Essercizi (in a different order) and a Minuet with variations attributed to Chelleri (here written ‘Kelliri’).
Titles: The title page reads ‘Sonata per il Cembalo / composte da Scharlatti’. All sonatas are titled ‘Sonata’ followed by a Roman numeral, though this Roman numeral is not the same as those found in Essercizi or Witvogel (as the sonatas in Wenster are out of order).
Copyist: A single copyist copied out the entire collection. The copyist gives his name as ‘Possessor Christian Wenster’ on the title page (below the introduction to the Essercizi by Scarlatti).
Comments: It is unclear whether Christian Wenster the elder or the younger was the first possessor of this copy or even its copyist. According to Boel Lindberg, Christian Wenster the elder ‘collected valuable manuscripts of older and contemporary music’ and acquired the sheet music left by Gottfried Lindemann (d. 1741). The collection was first inherited by his son, Christian Wenster the younger, who in 1774 was referred to as ‘Collega Scholae Herr Magister’ and in 1777 as ‘Cantor and Collega Scholae Magister’. At the time of birth of his youngest son, Wenster the younger had the title of ‘Herr Directeur Musicus Magister’. What complicates matters further is that Christian Wenster the younger’s first son was also called Christian.
Another score in the Wenster collection in Lund, Wenster J:47, is an original composition by ‘Christiano Wenster / Senior’; however, this copy is attributed to Christian Wenster the younger in the catalogue entry. The handwriting in this copy appears to be similar to that found in the Scarlatti copies. A more thorough consultation of the Wenster collection should lead to a more satisfactory answer to this question of provenance and who the copyist was.
There are two versions of K20 in this collection. The first version is the complete piece; the second version is at the end of the manuscript which has only the end of the first part and the complete second part of this sonata. The versions are almost identical; the most obvious difference between them is that the copyist wrote out repeated material slightly differently (using a slur and bis); also, occasionally the copyist writes ‘t’ instead of ‘tr’ for trills.
Based on several variant readings, it is likely that Wenster belongs – at least to some degree – to the Witvogel tradition. Witvogel appears to have been the exemplar of several other Swedish extant manuscripts (Stockholm 1 and Stockholm 3). Interestingly, Scarlatti is also referred to as ‘Scharlatti’ on the title page of Stockholm 1, though this misspelling of Scarlatti is also present in other unrelated sources.
Date: A range of 1740-1780 is suggested based on the uncertainty surrounding the copyist and original owner of this manuscript.
