Un inedito manoscritto della Staatsbibliothek di Berlino: la «Musica per la vestizione del Santo Bambino composta da Bellini»

The manuscript of the «Musica per la vestizione del Santo Bambino» preserved in the Berlin National Library is catalogued as autograph of Rosario Bellini, to whom the composition too is ascribed. The attribution of the manuscript and the music to the father of Vincenzo Bellini dates back, as far as it is possible to track it, to the catalogue made by Georg Kinsky for the previous owner of the document, Wilhelm Heyer, perhaps on the basis of the date shown on the frontispiece (1818). The analysis of the music manuscript suggests instead that both the manuscript as the music have to be ascribed to Vincenzo Tobia Bellini (the father of Rosario), a prominent figure in Catania’s musical life. The composition is strongly related to its production context, the cult of Jesus the Child spread in the whole Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and especially promoted since the beginning of the 18th century by the Benedictine Monastery of San Nicolò l’Arena in Catania, that indeed commissioned this music for a particularly significant ceremony.