Le Sonate da camera di Assisi: una nuova fonte corelliana?

The core of Arcangelo Corelli’s production consists of six printed collections. These works exhibit Corelli’s meticulous attention to details and a careful revision process, a characteristic of his compositional practice. For this reason as well as for the composer’s own will, manuscript testimonies of Corelli’s music are extremely rare and their authorship difficult to ascertain. The manuscript 177 in the Fondo Antico of the Biblioteca del Sacro Convento in Assisi includes a set of 12 Sonate da camera for violin and violoncello attributed to Arcangelo Corelli. Although the sonatas were copied in 1748 and the attribution remains uncertain, these sonatas present interesting characteristics related to Corelli’s style. The essay examines the origin of the manuscript and formulates some hypotheses that could confirm the ascription to Corelli of these sonatas. The characteristics of the collection, including mainly dances popular in the late Seicento in the Emilian area, could shed light on Corelli’s style during his apprenticeship in Bologna, a period on which we still have very scanty information.