“Passatempi musicali” by GuillaumeLouis Cottrau as the way Neapolitan song actualization in 19th century music
Authors: Yang Fuyin 
Published: January 2021

Background. In 19th century European music has been enriched by national phenomena, such as Polish mazurka, Austrian waltz, Hungarian czardas, which went into the academic genres system, expanded the boundaries of its intonational fund and audience perceptions. The Neapolitan song participated in this process. It was a real discovery for music lovers in different countries. Canzone Napoletana conquered the music salons area in France, from where it spread in all the Europe, and was reflected in the work of many composers. This genre phenomenon is not fully unraveled, probably due to the distortion of the ingrained ideas about it. This theme is mainly reflected in the publications of Italian experts in the second half of the 20 century D. Carpitella, E. De Martino, R. De Simone, and in the 21 century R. Di Mauro (2013). Interest in this genre intensified in the musical science of China also. This is due to the extraordinary melody of Neapolitan songs, which is consonant with Chinese samples. Chinese singers increasingly include the popular canzone Napoletana in their repertoire. In the musical science of China, this topic has been developed since the last decades of the 20th century in the studies of Song Jing (1985), Wu Shikai (1997), Pei Yisi (2011), Liu Shanshan (2007), Fang Yahong (2011), Chang Jinge (2018). However, many scientific works are of the same type, which is caused by the lack of direct access to the study of musical, poetic, bibliographic material. In the same time, the 19th century deserves attention as a period of the rapid spread of Neapolitan folk songs in the musical art of Europe. The outstanding role in these processes belongs to the representatives of the creative dynasty – Teodoro Cottrau (1827–1879), the author of the famous “Santa Lucia”, and his father Guillaume-Louis Cottrau (1797–1847). Given the current lack of knowledge on this topic, as the research goal of this article, we consider it necessary to get acquainted with the creative figure of G.-L. Cottrau, which contributed to the spread of Neapolitan folk songs in the European music of the 19th century. For the first time in the musical science of Ukraine and China, the collection of Neapolitan songs “Passatempi musicali” / “Musical entertainments” is used as an object of research compiled by G.-L. Cottrau, as well as selected fragments of operatic works by G. Paisiello and D. Cimarosa. In this work, the historicalcomparative and biographical research methods are used, as well as generally accepted models of musicological and performing analysis of music. Results. When studying the Canzone Napoletana, the research problem lies in the difficulties of reconstructing song samples of the 16th–19th centuries. It is necessary to restore their exact chronology, authorship, conduct a comparative analysis of numerous editions, and comprehend the processes of historical evolution. This situation is known to most ethnological scholars, who are actually engaged in musical archeology and bring back almost lost samples of the past from oblivion. Thanks to the processes of national self-determination that swept Italy in the second half of the 20th century, a decisive breakthrough was made in ethnomusicology in the study of the musical and poetic heritage of the Neapolitan region. This is a strong help for any researcher dealing with this topic. The composer and music publisher Guillaume-Louis Cottrau belonged to a famous surname in France. Hisfather served Joachim-Napol&#233;on Murat, Napoleon Bonaparte’s son-in-law. As a child, he ended up in Italy, in Naples, forever falling in love with this land and its culture. Subsequently, Guillaume-Louis adopted Neapolitan citizenship. Being engaged in the affairs of the music publishing house and composing, Guillaume-Louis made up and published in 1824 a collection of Neapolitan songs “Passatempi musicali” / “Musical entertainments”. This includes 104 Canzone Napoletana. Afterwards, the number of songs in different issues was increasing slightly (up to 113), the authorship of some fragments was clarifying, but the main block of tunes remained unchanged. This collection gained immense popularity in the music salons of France. It has been reprinted several times. According to R. di Mauro (2013), about sixty of the 104 songs in the first edition were written by G.-L. Cottrau, the rest are the result of processing of folk originals or songs by other authors. The essence of the undertaken arrangement consisted not only in recording musical and poetic texts (often in several versions), not only in creating a piano accompaniment part in the style of salon music-making. The composer personally collected these cantos and lyrics to them, communicating with servants, peasants, merchants, artisans, direct bearers of the oral musical tradition from different parts of the Neapolitan region. It includes old peasant songs, epic ballads, fragments from operas by G. Paisiello, D. Cimarosa, and other composers of the 18th century, which became truly people’s. This article compares the composer and folk versions of the Serenade of Pulcinella by Paisiello and Cimarosa, which were included in the first edition of the collection under the folk guise. Conclusions. The publication of the Neapolitan songs collection “Passatempi musicali” by G.-L. Cottrau played the role of actualizing this song genre in the musical space of the Romantic era. Its popularization outside Italy, repeated reprints made it possible to “legalize” the song South Italian folklore in the European musical space.