495 research outputs found

    The Venetian Instrumental Concerto During Vivaldi’s Time

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    It is the first monograph in which the concertos of all composers active in this field in the Republic of Venice in the years 1695–1740 are methodically discussed. The Venetian instrumental concerto from Vivaldi’s time is portrayed here through an extensive and thorough survey of the most complete and representative musical material that allowed for the making of conclusions as to its typology, form, style and technique. The concertos discussed here include 974 works by fifteen composers active in Venice, Brescia, Bergamo and Padua. Such an approach not only gives an exhaustive but also a more objective view on the history of the Baroque concerto in its Venetian variant. It shows Vivaldi’s work in a new and broad context, which allows us to better understand its unique character

    The Venetian Instrumental Concerto During Vivaldi’s Time

    Get PDF
    It is the first monograph in which the concertos of all composers active in this field in the Republic of Venice in the years 1695–1740 are methodically discussed. The Venetian instrumental concerto from Vivaldi’s time is portrayed here through an extensive and thorough survey of the most complete and representative musical material that allowed for the making of conclusions as to its typology, form, style and technique. The concertos discussed here include 974 works by fifteen composers active in Venice, Brescia, Bergamo and Padua. Such an approach not only gives an exhaustive but also a more objective view on the history of the Baroque concerto in its Venetian variant. It shows Vivaldi’s work in a new and broad context, which allows us to better understand its unique character

    Going Old School: Using Eighteenth Century Pedagogy Models to Foster Musical Skills and Creativity in Today\u27s Students

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    Recent research has illuminated a pedagogical approach to keyboard improvisation of the Italian conservatories of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, namely that of partimenti: single-stave, multiple clef exercises in which students were trained to improvise (Gjerdingen 2007, Sanguinetti 2012, van Tour 2015). This approach was passed down through oral instruction until the mid-twentieth century, when pedagogical priorities shifted away from improvisation and compositional creativity towards virtuosity, technique and adherence to the printed page. Simultaneously, the tradition of decade-long musical apprenticeship was replaced with semester-long courses in music theory and harmony. The existing research on partimenti presents a compelling historical narrative of its tradition, but fails to provide a comprehensive method for modern day application and study. In his Music in the Galant Style, Robert Gjerdingen guides readers in the process of understanding partimenti as a concatenation of his schemata; memorable musical patterns idiomatic to and ubiquitous throughout music of the Galant period (approximately 1720–1770). Giorgio Sanguinetti, in his The Art of Partimento: History, Theory and Practice, explains that these partimenti were first introduced through the study of regole or “rules:” musical events such as cadences and suspensions. By practicing the rules, students of the Galant period internalized the very patterns on which partimenti were based, thereby building their musical vocabulary and fluency within the galant language. While manuscripts of these exercises, primarily from student notebooks, or zibaldone, have been resurrected from the archives of European libraries and catalogued, there remains very little regarding the oral tradition of how rules and the improvisational realization of partimenti were taught. Gjerdingen’s website, Monuments of Partimenti (http://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/partimenti), boasts a catalogue of known regole and partimenti. Like the manuscripts on which they are based, there is little to no verbal instruction on how to approach these exercises. Without the assistance of a trained teacher (a current rarity), the interested student would be overwhelmed and lost, not knowing where to begin. Therefore, there is a need for a comprehensive pedagogical method that aids modern-day students with independent rule study towards the goal of partimenti realization. Utilizing the rules of Francesco Durante (1684–1755), a leading Italian conservatory maestro of his day, this paper presents a step-by-step approach towards working through this historical method of teaching keyboard improvisation and composition. I discuss activities that may help the modern-day student in working through the rules and combining them into a complete partimento, including figured bass realization, study and performance of scores in trio-sonata texture, as well as “play-and-sing” activities. Additionally, it addresses voicing, invertible counterpoint, transposition, texture, and issues of ambiguity such as deciphering the figured bass and errors within the manuscripts. In addition to a comprehensive approach to Durante’s rules and their historical context, this paper presents a review of present literature on both historical and modern-day keyboard improvisation teaching methods, as well as suggestions for their applications. Through the rediscovery of the teaching method that trained some of history’s most remembered composers for several hundred years, students, with the tools provided in this paper, can single-handedly reconnect to a rich lineage of pedagogy traditions, developing musicianship skills seldom synthesized today and discovering what can be learned from the past. In addition to partimenti study, I introduce schemata analysis (Gjerdingen, 2007) as a springboard for compositional creativity. By stripping a piece down to its schemata, one is left with a skeleton of the piece or “lead sheet” on which to improvise. I demonstrate the prevalence of schemata in music throughout the eighteenth century by presenting analyses of varying solo keyboard works of the period and demonstrate a written-out improvisation from such an analysis

    Keyboard instruments and their repertoire, 1560-1780

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    The eleven chapters included here are the outcome of interactions between many aspects of musical study, including historical musicology, music analysis, archival work, data management, editing, organology, performance and teaching. Keyboards and their music are a valuable area of study, as their uses and design are critically related to the development of music and performance over several centuries. This was a period that saw the rise of the public concert, significant technological developments in organology, the development of notated teaching methods and the origins of idiomatic instrumental composition. The four sections cover repertoire, composers, sources and instruments from the mid-16thto the late 18th centuries. Discussion of the virginalists includes a fundamental reexamination of the surviving information relating to ornamentation and performance practice, together with a historiographical discussion of Giles Farnaby and his music. Four studies of Bach include practice-led research project, a consideration of a neglected group of pieces with intermittent pedal parts, a typological analysis of cadence types in Bach’s cantata recitatives, and an edition of all the surviving keyboard duos by J. S., W. F., C. P. E. and J. C. Bach. The third section describes a late 17th-century liturgical organ book and an early 18th-century teaching manuscript, while the fourth, devoted to the clavichord, includes a comprehensive discography, a discussion of the role the instrument may have played in French musical culture, and an examination of the sole surviving English clavichord

    An exploratory study on the acoustic musical properties to decrease self-perceived anxiety

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    Musical listening is broadly used as an inexpensive and safe method to reduce self-perceived anxiety. This strategy is based on the emotivist assumption claiming that emotions are not only recognised in music but induced by it. Yet, the acoustic properties of musical work capable of reducing anxiety are still under-researched. To fill this gap, we explore whether the acoustic parameters relevant in music emotion recognition are also suitable to identify music with relaxing properties. As an anxiety indicator, the positive statements from the six-item Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, a self-reported score from 3 to 12, are taken. A user-study with 50 participants assessing the relaxing potential of four musical pieces was conducted; subsequently, the acoustic parameters were evaluated. Our study shows that when using classical Western music to reduce self-perceived anxiety, tonal music should be considered. In addition, it also indicates that harmonicity is a suitable indicator of relaxing music, while the role of scoring and dynamics in reducing non-pathological listener distress should be further investigated

    A Comparison of Two Methods of Teaching Music Appreciation.

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    Alessandro Scarlatti and the Italian chamber cantata

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