Thematic Catalog of a Manuscript Collection of Eighteenth-Century Italian Instrumental Music, by Vincent Duckles and Minnie Elmer, offers a richly detailed survey and contextual study of a uniquely intact body of manuscripts now preserved at the University of California, Berkeley. The collection—nearly 1,000 manuscripts comprising over 1,060 compositions by 82 named composers, plus an additional 75 anonymous or variant works—represents the largest surviving corpus associated with Giuseppe Tartini’s celebrated Padua circle, known as the “School of the Nations.” This catalog not only indexes and describes the music but also reconstructs its historical frame, provenance, and performance implications.

The Berkeley trove highlights the vitality of northern Italy’s instrumental tradition in the late eighteenth century, centered in Bologna, Venice, and especially Padua, in contrast to the southern Neapolitan dominance in opera. Its repertoire is anchored by Tartini, with 234 works, and his pupil Michele Stratico, with 283; together they account for nearly half of the holdings. Core genres include violin sonatas with bass, concertos, trio sonatas, and quartets, with contributions ranging from Corelli to Mozart, including Haydn’s quartets and works by international figures such as Saint-Georges, Touchemoulin, and Myslivecek. Beyond sheer volume, the manuscripts reveal performance practice—small ensembles, minimal orchestral parts, and flexible transformations of concertos into chamber forms—as well as pedagogical dimensions through Tartini’s treatise on ornamentation and 29 manuscripts of embellished variants aligned with it. Codicological analysis links the collection directly to the Basilica of St. Anthony in Padua, identifying known Tartini circle musicians as copyists, while provenance traces its path from Padua through private archives to its acquisition by Berkeley in 1958.

Taken together, the catalog documents the breadth of repertoire, circulation of manuscripts, and the pedagogical and performance practices of Tartini’s school, while providing scholars with thematic data, attributions, and concordances. It establishes a critical foundation for further research in eighteenth-century instrumental music, violin pedagogy, and historically informed performance.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1963.

Contributor: Vincent Duckles Enter the Author Bio(s) here.