Hasse, Johann Adolf.

in two parts, comprising an introduzione and sixteen unnumbered sections, scored for five solo voices, SSATB, and SATB chorus, flutes, oboes, bassoons, horns, strings, notated in brown ink by a single scribe on systems of varying length, with manuscript title ("...Sant'Elena al Calvario. Oratorio. Fu posto in Musica. da Giov:^{i Adolfo Hasse. Primo Maestro di Capella. di S.R.M."), 156 leaves, oblong 4to (c.23.5 x 32cm), 10-stave paper, watermarks including fleur-de-lis over "ICH" with letters "KB" as countermark, gatherings numbered '1'-'19', and one unnumbered gathering, title on separate single leaf, number in red crayon at head of title ("239"), cancelled inscription to lower right-hand corner of title ("von...Jan 1808[?]"), no place or date [Dresden, mid eighteenth century], some leaves lacking in final chorus, containing bb. 18-107, title leaf in two halves, crudely repaired with translucent adhesive tape, light staining to outer edges of first leaf of music}

Condition is described in the main body of the cataloguing where appropriate.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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Johann Adolf Hasse (1699-1783) was one of the most important composers of vocal music during the third quarter of the eighteenth century and without doubt the most celebrated throughout Europe. Known as 'il caro Sassone', he was the favoured composer of the great librettist Metastasio, and Charles Burney described him as 'the most natural, elegant, and judicious composer of vocal music, as well as the most voluminous, now alive'. While autograph manuscripts by Hasse are of the utmost rarity at auction (the sale of the Regina Coeli concertata a 4 in these rooms on 6 December 1996, lot 110, provides the only auction record of autograph music by the composer that we have traced since the last war), hardly less scarce in the sale-room are eighteenth-century copies of his scores (the last we have traced being a manuscript of the opera Il re pastore: sale in these rooms, 11 November 1981, lot 44).

Hasse's oratorio Sant'Elena al Calvario (St. Helen at Calvary) was first performed at the Dresden court chapel on 9 April 1746, being later revised for performance there (and in Munich?) in 1753. A third major revision was undertaken in connection with the work's performance by the Vienna Tonkünstler-Societät in 1772 (TNG). Indeed the work seems to have circulated widely in the eighteenth-century, and it is probable that Hasse's use of the chorale melody 'O Lamm Gottes' in the Pilgrims' chorus influenced Mozart in his use of a church melody in the final chorus ('Lodi al gran Dio') of his 1771 oratorio La Betulia liberata, K.118.

The relationship of the present score to any of the above-mentioned stages in the work's performing history remains to be established, although the watermarks of the score (pointing to the papermaker Johann Christian Hertel, owner of a mill at Kirchberg between 1714 and 1748) indicate that the manuscript was probably prepared in Dresden. Manuscript sources for the work, unpublished according to TNG, are recorded in fifteen European libraries, as well as in the Library of Congress, Washington, and the Newberry Library, Chicago.