WoO 99 No. 12 – Salvo tu vuoi lo sposo?: Beethoven’s Early Italian Song and Its Three Versions

Of this Song we have: a version for solo Soprano, completely crossed out in pencil, which is found in Berlin at the State Library, manuscript Artaria 166a, page 7. In bar 7 Beethoven indicates a triplet on the first beat and then, on the second, two quavers; Julia Ronge considers this figure as a dotted quaver followed by a semiquaver. For me the correct figuration is that of the two quavers because, as can be seen in the figure below, the sign found under the second quaver — F♯ — is a tie mark joining the two vowels found in the text “la-scia la cu-ra a me”; as further confirmation, see in the complete score the third bar “salvo lo spo-so a-vrai” and the last bar of the third stave — “tut-to il mio cor non sai”.

This care in highlighting the connections between vowels leads me to think that Salieri, in this group of lessons, wished to work on syllabification and on the careful analysis of the Italian text; and this leads me to think that, given also the proximity to the preceding song “Fra tutte le pene”, “Salvo tu vuoi lo sposo” too should have been composed during the first lessons.

Manuscript Artaria 166a page 7

Manuscript Artaria 166a (detail)

J. Ronge Version

The second version, which we find in Vienna in manuscript A69, folio 1 recto, is very messy, especially in the Soprano part; at the end of the piece we find two rewritings, again of the Soprano part.
In all three of these A69 versions it is worth noting Beethoven’s lack of familiarity with the accentuation of the text, with a usage that would sound more or less like this (the underlined accents correspond to those at the beginning of the bar):

“Sal- vò tu vuoi lo spò- so
sal- vò lo spo- so a vrài
la- scià del tuo ri- po’- so
la- scià la cu- ra-a mè
I dùb- bi tuoi per- dò- no
tut- tò-il mio cor non sài
ti spiè- ghe rà chi sò- no
quel ch’ìo farò per tè
ti spiè- ghe rà chi sò- no
quel ch’ìo farò per tè”

In the absence of access to the original manuscript regarding the metre, I will base myself — especially for the Soprano part of the first version — on the version written by W. Hess.