Emanuele Barbella (1718-1777): Tinna Nonna, per prender sonno (Lullaby)
Larghetto, Sempre legato e sotto voce
Emanuele Barbella was a late Baroque/early Classical composer and violinist from Naples, mainly known in the mandolin world for his mandolin concertos and sonatas which are part of the standard repertoire for our instrument.
In his time, however, he was mainly known as a violinist and this lullaby is the most moving piece of his violin music that has survived. It was originally published in 1789 in the third volume of Charles Burney's epic "A General History Of Music From The Earliest Ages To The Present Day", which is available as a free PDF from Google Books.
Burney's was a close personal friend of Barbella, from his travels in Italy and France, and has included a moving two-page tribute to Barbella in his history, followed by this piece as a rare musical example in the otherwise predominantly narrative text. I have attached these pages to this post (for some reason, they appear below in reverse order -- if you want to read, start with the last attached page).
Burney's description of the piece, and the way it was played by Barbella, is:
"Among the violin players of the old school, it would be unjust not to bestow a few words on my late friend Emanuele Barbella, of Naples. (...) And as a small memento, I shall, on the following plates, insert a Tinna Nonna, or Lullaby, of his composition, which he was famous for playing among his particular friends; for though he seemed never to have had sufficient force to lead an orchestra, his tone and manner were marvellously sweet and pleasing in a room, even without any other accompaniment than the drone-base of an open string."
Burney's description of an unaccompanied performance sits somewhat at odds with the score following it, which is not unaccompanied and while there are plenty of drone harmony notes in the violin part, most of them are not on an open string. It is difficult to see how they can be played on a single instrument (I certainly can't), so I have interpreted the score as a trio of two melody instruments with bass.
Burney's notation is not very readable, but there is a better performing edition from 1857 at IMSLP (wrongly identified as for violin and piano):
http://imslp.org/wiki/Tinna_Nonna_(Barbella,_Emanuele)
Although Burney describes this as an original Barbella composition, I suspect it is a variant of the Neapolitan lullaby "Ninna Nanna".
My recording is arranged for two mandolins (my Embergher, double-tracked) and mandocello, with the melody line played tremolo and the accompaniment single stroke.
1915 Luigi Embergher mandolin (x2)
Suzuki MC-815 mandocello
Martin
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