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I found a fourteen volume set of Tosti's complete songs at the UC Berkeley music library from Ricordi. It turns out that nearly all the songs are reprints of earlier Ricordi editions and are therefore PD. I'm making it a personal project to upload all fourteen volumes, within the limit of the law and IMSLP's rules. This thread is here to give updates on the project, as well as enlist the help of others as needed.

So far, I've scanned, processed and uploaded volume 1, minus two songs. It turns out that Buon Capo d'Anno and Vuol note, o banconote are new typesets and cannot be uploaded per IMSLP's 25 year rule. I have checked out volumes 2 and 3 from the library, but I haven't had a chance to scan them, as I've been home sick from work all week. I'll get that started on Tuesday.

As to the two songs I wasn't able to upload, the complete edition lists its sources, and they were both published in Italian magazines in the 19th century. I want to be as completionist as possible with this project, so I'm trying to track down copies of these magazines. This is rather tricky and is where I could use some help.

Buon Capo d'Anno was published in Capitan Fracassa in the January 1, 1882 issue. WorldCat turned up nothing, but I was able to find the ACNP, a catalog of Italian periodicals. From there it looked like the library at Universitaria Alessandrina had a copy. I've sent them an email, but I have not received a response.

Vuol note, o banconote was published in Cronaca Bizantina in the February 1, 1882 issue. It appears that this was a much more important publication, and will likely be easier to track down. WorldCat shows several hits which I'm still sifting through.

If anyone can help me track down these two songs, it would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: Below is a list of songs in the Ricordi complete edition of Tosti songs that cannot yet be uploaded. This is a temporary measure until I get around to creating a wiki page for the collection.

La Rinnovazione, Vol. 4. - Retypset in this edition.

haydenmuhl wrote:it looked like the library at Universitaria Alessandrina had a copy

It's located in Rome, at the main university ("La Sapienza", where I graduated some centuries ago...), so it's quite easy for me to visit. It's quite a hectic period for me, but I hope I can spare some time sooner or later, and take a look there.

Max

Oh, that's fantastic. Let me know when you find time to take a look. It's no great hurry.

It looks like the same library has copies of both periodicals. They have some historical periodicals scanned and available online, but not the two I'm looking for. I'm going to try to get them through interlibrary loan, or at least get copies.

Choralia, I'll post back here if I'm able to get them. I don't want you making a trip to the library if you don't have to.

haydenmuhl wrote:I don't want you making a trip to the library if you don't have to.

For other reasons I was nearby the library last Saturday, and I had the opportunity to take a look. It was almost the closing time of the library, so I was aware that it wouldn't be possible for me to get a copy the same day. Anyway, I wanted to exploit the opportunity and check whether "Capitan Fracassa" was actually reported on the physical catalogue of periodicals. The catalogue confirms that "Capitan Fracassa" of year 1882 is available at the library location "EFF.C.5" . It's a daily newspaper, published until 1913, quite large size (48 cm, about 19"), not available for loan. I'll probably have another opportunity to go to the library for a longer time next Saturday, so maybe I can get copies of both periodicals if you prefer this with respect to interlibrary loan.

Max

Okay, if you're going that soon I'll hold off. Thanks for doing this. If you do get scans of the two songs, you can either upload them yourself, or pass them along to me to clean up and make into PDFs. Once they're uploaded, I'll likely reset them using Lilypond.

Finished scanning volume 3. I'll start processing it soon. Next up is volume 2, then I'll have to get more from the library.

Finally got around to finishing and uploading volume 3.

Volume 2 is next on my list, and I have at least one more volume scanned and ready to process.

Nice work - and an important part of the Italian vocal rep is now available.

I found something interesting in the appendix of volume 3. The song "Canto napoletano" (link) seems to have been originally been a setting of an English text, then someone came along afterwards and wrote an Italian text to the melody. The English version, "Neapolitan Song", is in volume 11, so it will be a while before I get there. How should these be organized? Two work pages with references to each other? Should there be one work page with both scores? Should the work page be for the English or the Italian version?

Bear in mind, this was written in Italian, and my Italian is quite rudimentary. I may have the order of composition backwards.

It should go under the original version. If the first version composed was entitled "Neapolitan Song", that should be the title of the work page. "Canto napoletano" should be move to "Neapolitan Song" and then listed as a version (four equal signs) ====Canto napoletano (Italian text)==== if it was published as a separate score later.

Volume 2 has been uploaded. There were several songs that I couldn't upload due to issues similar to Buon Capo d'Anno. They were published in some format that was not suitable for Ricordi to reprint, so they reset them. Though these songs are public domain, the IMSLP policy on new typesets prevents their upload for a few years more. I'm also running across a handful of scores that are still under copyright for various reasons. Is there any good place to make note of these songs?

If nothing else, I could start keeping track of them in the first post of this thread.

You might want set up a special category page for the complete 14-volume edition similar to what has been done with the Mikuli Chopin edition (and a number of others). That way, you'll have a nice description of the edition and a complete list of the contents - even those items not yet eligible to be posted at IMSLP.

Is this what you're referring to?

http://imslp.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ri ... orte-Werke

I could make a page called something like "Francesco_Paolo_Tosti:_Romanze_per_canto_e_pianoforte"

Exactly. A 14-volume set like this is big enough to warrant its inclusion in the "editions" category.