2. Mottetto per San Paolino
Notes
The hymn set to music by Puccini is devoted to Saint Paolino, the legendary first bishop of Lucca and that city’s patron saint, whose festival is celebrated on 12 July. The author of the text is unknown. It probably dates from the second half of the 19th century, and was perhaps specifically written for Puccini’s composition.
The first performance, on 29 April 1877, is substantiated by a review in the journal La Provincia di Lucca published on 4 May 1877. During Puccini’s student days, there were at least three other performances of the Mottetto in Lucca, always on the occasion of the festival of Saint Paolino, attesting to the contemporary esteem in which the work was held. On 12 July 1877 it was referred to as “Mottetto dopo il ‘Credo’” (see La Provincia di Lucca of 3 August 1877); on 12 July 1878, in the church of San Paolino, it was sung with the soloist “Rev. sig. Zenoni Baritono”, performed together with the new Credo (4) (see La Provincia di Lucca of 13 July 1878), and on 12 July 1880, it was inserted after the Credo in Puccini’s complete Messa (6) (see La Provincia di Lucca of 10 July and 24 July 1880, where it was incorrectly called the “mottetto ... con cori a tre per baritono”).
2.B.1, however, is clearly dated 1878. Puccini either wrote down the wrong year while making the fair copy of the full score (that theory would correspond to the date of 25 April, four days before the first performance in 1877), or he wrote out a new fair copy of the manuscript about one year after the first two performances — perhaps to be used for the upcoming third performance.
After 1880, the work as preserved in 2.B.1 was never again performed. That manuscript was acquired in the 1950s by a Swiss collector (probably at the auction of the firm of Rauch, Geneva, 29/30 April 1957),Note: As early as May 1927, 2.B.1 was offered for sale in a catalogue of the Luccan “Libreria Antiquaria di Alberto Pellicci” (see Niccolai 1999, p. 36 and Riproduzione 2). In the early 1950s, it was in the possession of a certain Paola Ojetti (see Bonaccorsi 1950, p. 24, footnote 14). who permitted the Italian-American priest Dante Del Fiorentino to have a copy of it.Note: In Puccini’s last years, when Del Fiorentino was a young curate in Torre del Lago, he knew the composer. Del Fiorentino had the score copied by hand (2.C.1), and after his death it devolved to I-MTa as part of his estate.
The first published edition (2.E.1) is based on a comparison of 2.C.1 and 2.B.1, but is not critically correct in every detail.