do handel's cantatas matter? - BOLbusiness

5] «Cantate, que me veux-tu?», or: Do Handel’s cantatas matter? 217
missioned for that purpose. But this is conjecture. In fact, trying
to connect Handel’s introduction to Rome with a single
patron is simplistic, and probably futile, as Handel was quickly
drawn into a network of patronage.
A copying bill for music by Handel appears in the accounts
of the Marquis Ruspoli by May 1707, and Ursula Kirkendale
suggests a still earlier relationship in her hypothesis that a
copying bill in the Ruspoli accounts of the previous December
for «una cantata nuova» (no title or composer is given)
refers to Handel’s Arresta il passo12 . Sometime in the spring
of 1707, Handel also must have been commissioned by Cardinal
Carlo Colonna for the psalms and motets that were composed
for the Festival of Our Lady of Mount Carmel on 16
July. The patron who plays the biggest role in Mainwaring’s
account of Handel’s Roman tenure, however, is none of these
but rather Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, about whose relationship
with Handel little can be said definitively. Colonna and
Pamphili are mentioned by Mainwaring more briefly, Ruspoli
not at all. Mainwaring identifies Ottoboni as one of Handel’s
«greatest admirers» and specifically mentions the importance
of the cardinal’s «large library of Music» and the «excellent
band of performers», which included «the illustrious Corelli»
13 . It seems increasingly clear that in Rome, if not in Italy
more broadly, one must speak of a complex system of artistic
patronage.
Regular gatherings at the houses of patrons or musicians
and more formal concerts both in private homes or churches
supported a shared culture of intellectual thought and values.
A description of Handel in Rome, published in 1737 (by an
anonymous author reporting on the memoirs of a friend),
ing (although later, p. 337, she depends on handwriting analysis as evidence
for her otherwise unsupported claim that Rodrigo and Agrippina were both
composed before 1707).
12
KIRKENDALE, Handel with Ruspoli, pp. 305-306.
13
MAINWARING, Handel, pp. 54-55.