Complete Sonatas, Part 1; Part 2 (review)

These two volumes are the first publications in modern times of any works by Nicola Francesco Haym (1678-1729), and they deserve a warm welcome. Although he is best remembered today as an adapter of opera librettos for Handel (among them Ottone, Flavio, Giulio Cesare, Tamerlano, Rodelinda, Siroe, and Tolomeo), Haym was truly a man of both music and letters. His career embraced musical performance, literary authorship, both instrumental and vocal composition, and antiquities. He was among the finest cellists in Europe—according to his obituary 'deservedly famous for divinely touching the Violoncello'. From 1694 to 1700 he was employed as a cellist by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni in Rome. In 1701 he accompanied the violinist Nicola Cosimi to England as his continuo cellist, and became master of chamber music to the 2nd Duke of Bedford. He played the cello in opera productions in London until 1722, when he was appointed secretary of the Royal Academy of Music, a post he held for six years. When Italian opera was first introduced to London, Haym was on the scene, adapting Bononcini's Camilla in 1706 and Alessandro Scarlatti's Pirro e Demetrio in 1708. For the latter he retained just fourteen of Scarlatti's arias and composed twenty-one himself. During his second decade in London, when operas came to be performed exclusively in Italian, he probably adapted both text and music for many pasticcios, and first supplied Handel with texts, beginning with Teseo in 1713.

Haym was not a prolific composer, as composition was not his primary vocation, but he contributed to both vocal and instrumental genres. While in Rome he wrote two oratorios for Ottoboni. During his early years of employment by the Duke of Bedford he published two sets of trio sonatas (1703-4) and seven cantatas, of which only Lontan dall'idol mio (dated 1704) survives. For another of his patrons, James Brydges, Earl of Carnarvon (later 1st Duke of Chandos), he composed six chamber anthems in 1716, especially for the Earl's nine musicians. After this he composed no more large-scale works, instead concentrating on antiquarian pursuits, which bore fruit in 1719-20 when Il tesoro britannico appeared, containing illustrations and descriptions of hundreds of ancient coins and medals belonging to eighteen British collectors.

The volumes under review include all of Haym's sonatas. Part I contains his Op. 1 (published in 1703), which consists of twelve trio sonatas (divided into six sonate da chiesa and six sonate da camera), scored for two violins and basso continuo, and four sonatas from VI Sonate da camera (1710), scored for transverse flute, oboe or violin solo, and basso continuo. Part II contains Haym's Op. 2 (1704), Sonate a tre, cioe violini, flauti, violoncello e basso continuo per il cembalo (five are scored for two violins, four for two violins or twoflutes, two for violin and cello, and one for two flutes, all accompanied by basso continuo), two cello sonatas (Haym's earliest surviving works), two movements by Quirino Colombani, and one sonata for two violins, archlute, and basso continuo, which is the only known composition by Haym's elder half-brother Giovanni Antonio. Colombani's works are found in the same manuscript as Haym's cello sonatas. This little-known composer was born at Correggio c.1670 and studied in Rome with Giovanni Bicilli at the Chiesa Nuova. He was twice maestro di cappella at Rinciglione, and spent the intervening years in various Italian cities, including Rome, where he played as a freelance cellist in events sponsored by Cardinal Ottoboni. He died in 1711, shortly after resuming his post at Rinciglione. (Since the pieces by him and G. A. Haym are not mentioned in the title, this is truly an edition that cannot be comprehended by its cover.)

No one is better qualified in matters relating to Haym and his contemporaries than...