Repertorio inédito para tecla en la Barcelona de comienzos del siglo XIX: de la ópera al salón y el convento

The Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Barcelona preserves the Ms. 1378, a miscellaneous notebook of keyboard music belonging to the organist of the convent of San José in Barcelona, the Discalced Carmelite Fr. Joaquín de Jesús, María and José, with the secular name Joaquín Laposaría Alsina (1778-1839), dated in the beginning of the 19th century. The notebook contains seventy-nine pieces of various musical typologies, typical of keyboard literature from the last decades of the 18th century and the very first years of the 19th century, by authors such as Francesc Mariner (1720-1789), Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801), Johann Simon Mayr (1763-1845), Carles Baguer (1768-1808), Francisco Rodríguez (fl. 1778-1811), Joan Obradors (fl. 1798-1810),and anonymous pieces by the same compiler, Friar Joaquín de Jesús, María and José.

In this fourth volume, Consonantia is for the first time offering a critical musical edition, consisting of a modern score edition of keyboard music (piano and organ) from the late 18th and early 19th centuries of Ms. 1378 from The Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Barcelona, with two critical studies. In addition, this critical musical edition offers a “sound dimension” that allows you to listen to some of the pieces included in Ms. 1378, recorded on different keyboard instruments: two pieces recorded on a Miguel Slocker pianoforte (built in Madrid in 1831) from the Museu de la Música in Barcelona and two other pieces recorded on the historic organ from 1767 from the parish church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, in Cardenete (Cuenca).

The compositions collected in this volume present an amalgam of styles, a music that is based on the Spanish compositional tradition, and at the same time integrating other musical elements and international influences (Italian opera, the gallant style, Neapolitan keyboard works and the first Viennese classical style). This is surely

the type of keyboard music that prevailed in the last third of the 18th century and the first quarter of the 19th century in Catalonia. Thus, this rich and varied manuscript constitutes a splendid example of the coexistence of the local repertoire, originating in Barcelona, with the arrival and rapid adoption of the latest European musical trends that were being received.

And this is how Consonantia makes available to any curious or sensitive person to music, to simple music lovers, to musicians, to students and teachers (scholars of multiple areas of culture), a whole unpublished repertoire for keyboard, which will allow us to understand, a little better, and closely, the entry of music into the contemporary age in a city like Barcelona.