Tracing a History of the Neapolitan School. Giuseppe Sigismondo’s Apoteosi della musica from Naples to Berlin

The paper focuses on the relationship between the Viennese music collector Franz Sales Kandler (1792-1831) and Giuseppe Sigismondo (1739-1826), keeper of the music library created in Naples at the end of the 18th century at the conservatory of Santa Maria della Pietà dei Turchini and later due to become the core of the library in the collegio di musica. Sigismondo, whose role is definitely to be considered that of a historiographical milestone for the ‘invention’ and foundation of a paradigm of Neapolitan School at the beginning of the 19th century, provided Kandler with a wide range of information on the history of the Neapolitan conservatories and of the collegio di musica for his reportages on the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (1821) and awakened Kandler’s interest in a large number of scores. A copy of Sigismondo’s manuscript Apoteosi della musica, a monumental history of the Neapolitan School in four volumes, became part of Kandler’s library; after Kandler’s death (1831) Aloys Fuchs (1799-1853) bought the manuscript and later sent it to Berlin to Georg Pölchau (1773-1836).