The Abandoned Mansion (South Carolina). Song for contralto voice and piano from the composer's cantata "Landscapes and Remembrances." Autograph musical manuscript signed. Ca. 1976

Small folio (313 x 237 mm.). Unbound. 1f. (recto autograph title, verso blank), 5 pp. (autograph musical score), [1] blank. Notated in pencil on 12-stave G. Schirmer Royal Brand music paper. Signed "G Menotti" on title.

With several erasures and instances of rewriting, with original musical notation still partially visible. Small check mark in blue pencil to upper outer corner of each page. Landscapes and Remembrances, a cantata for soloists, chorus, and orchestra to texts by Menotti, was first performed at Uihlein Hall in Milwaukee on May 14, 1976, with Judith Blegen (soprano), Ani Yervanian (contralto), Vahan Khanzadian (tenor), Gary Kendall (baritone), and the Milwaukee Symphony and Bel Canto Chorus, James Keeley, conducting.

"The nine-part Landscapes and Remembrances is a set of musical impressions drawn from the composer's life, ranging from his arrival in America as a teenager to his discovery of South Carolina, where he founded the Spoleto USA Festival in 1977 ... The structure of Landscapes consists of alternating choruses and orchestral songs, although several of the choral sections make use of solo voices as well. The titles in general reflect the geography of remembrance at the root of each ...

The Abandoned Mansion, the first song in Landscapes, is a brooding piece in E-flat minor ... infused with the past. Its constantly arcing melodic lines are supported by persistent tremolo figures that give way only briefly in the middle of the song to sustained chords--a section of quasi-recitative. The key to the song lies in these words: 'A visitor to the South is an intruder into the reigns of ghosts'. John Ardoin: The Stages of Menotti, pp. 129-131.

Menotti's autograph musical manuscripts are very rare to the market, with no examples of his manuscripts recorded at auction by ABPC since at least 1975.