Handstil 128 i Romansamlingen och gåtan om den Berlinska musiken till 1751 års kröning

Abstract

The Stockholm royal funeral and coronation 1751 were richly decorated with music for which the composer Johan Helmich Roman was responsibel, assisted by the conductor of the royal orchestra Per Brant. Especially around the coronation which took place in the Stockholm Skt. Nicolai on November, 26th, the sources are flowing as ceremoanials, written music, copyist’s bills and statements about performers. Yet, all parts of the solemnities are not examined from the musicological point of view, and all the music performed and all the copyists who wrote the scores and parts used are not mirrored in the court accounts, nor has all this music been preserved. During this work to identify the 1751 music the possibility opens to reconstruct the music library of the royal orchestra for the period ca 1720-ca 1770 (i.e. between the Düben and the Royal Opera collection) which has been considered to be lost. Thus, sets of numbered music appears especially around Per Brant. To her coronation the new queen Lovisa Ulrika ordered a piece of music from Carl Heinrich Graun in her native town Berlin. Yet, it has been considered that this music never was composed. But a German problem is that another Berlin composer Johann Gottlieb Janitsch is said to have written this music and that it was performed at the Stockholm coronation. Also, in Swedish sources this so called ”Berlin music” is mentioned which has for a long time been a riddle in our music history. Among the 1751 preserved music there is a choir composition Beati omnes which the former librarian at the Library of the Royal Academy of Music F. A. C Söderman (1838-1883) attributed to Roman. By analyzing handwritings, autographs by Janitsch appear among the Beati material (parts; Roman collection handwriting no. 128). Concerning musical style, Beati omnes fits well into the Berlin school and taste. Thus, the musical world has lost a composition by Roman but regained a choir composition by Janitsch, indeed the only preserved by him.