Instrumental Music and 'Conversazione' in Early Seicento Venice: Biagio Marini's 'Affetti Musicali' (1617)

In entitling his debut publication of 1617 Affetti musicali, Biagio Marini became the first composer to use the suggestive term affetti in the title of a book consisting entirely of instrumental music. Marini indicated that the book grew out of live music-making among a progressive group of Venetian listeners. Consideration of these social musical events in the context of early modern theories of friendship and civility—especially those articulated in Stefano Guazzo’s Civil conversazione (1574)—sheds light on Marini’s project. His compositions may have been intended as ‘test’ pieces, meant to inspire conversation among his listeners, thereby arousing their affetti. In its published form, the Affetti musicali constitutes a record of those discussions and the affetti they inspired, as well as a public model for emulation by other like-minded listeners

Translation and the Idea(s) of Early Music

Discusses the idea of "translation" and applies it to the flexibility of performance in early music

"Esprimere la voce humana": Connections between Vocal and Instrumental Music by Italian Composers of the Early Seventeenth Century

Several points of intersection exist between vocal and instrumental music by Italian composers of the early seventeenth century. First, like books of vocal monody with an overt pedagogical purpose, volumes of instrumental music may have been designed to instruct the performer in the conventions of the modern style. Specifically, many books published in the 1610s and '20s offer their users a window on the changeable, fluid idiom of the stile moderno, in which contrast of musical material and a posture of invention assumes primary importance. Second, as in recitative and other vocal styles, much of the vocal and instrumental music of the early seventeenth century is dominated by a metrical flexibility that similarly contributes to an air of immediacy, and that seems designed to highlight the emotional qualities of the music--to convey and move the affetti . And third, whereas the theatrical nature of vocal music of the period--especially music destined for the stage--may appear obvious, some instrumental music of the period may be equally theatrical, containing instructions for interaction with an audience, staging, imitation, and role-play. These points of intersection in particular suggest a relationship between the instrumental stile moderno and the vocal stile rappresentativo, prevalent in operas, ensemble madrigals, and solo songs in the early 1600s. Although no single, exclusive definition of the stile rappresentativo exists, it is nevertheless possible to trace a constellation of features associated with that term through a variety of works. Despite the divergence of the specific musical language of the vocal and instrumental repertoires, some of the vocal features are analogous to elements of instrumental music discussed in the article

"Die Natur und Kunst zu betrachten": Carlo Farina's Capriccio stravagante (1627) and the Cultures of Collecting at the Court of Saxony

Discusses the Capriccio stravagante by the Italian violin virtuoso Carlo Farina, as court Konzertmeister at the court of Saxony in Dresden. Suggests that the model for the Capriccio may be found in the many collections at the Dresden court and in the early modern strategies of learning, knowing and experiencing the world through the act of collecting. Shows that the Capriccio was not without precedent; other works of music and music theory may also be related to the practices of courtly collecting, and so offer a context for understanding Farina's work. (Quotes from original text

ANCIENT POETRY, MODERN MUSIC, AND THE WECHSELGESANG DER MIRJAM UND DEBORA: THE MEANINGS OF SONG IN THE ITZIG CIRCLE

An essay is presented which explores the work with the exlibris of Zippora Wulff which survives in the collection of the Sing- Akademie: the Wechselgesang der Miijam und Debora by Justin Heinrich Knecht. It mentions that the relationship between ancient poetry and modern music. It mentions that Messias had already been held up by both Jewish and non-Jewish critics for its encapsulation of the spirit of the poetry of the Hebrew Bible

'Memento mori Froberger?' Locating the self in the passage of time

Connections between Johann Jacob Froberger's harpsichord laments and other genres of keyboard and lute music (the unmeasured prelude, the tombeau and some allemandes) are by now well known. However, the 'Méditation faite sur ma mort future' (Meditation made on my future death), stands out for its connection-overlooked until now-with the French literary meditation, a popular devotional genre that enabled the reader to contemplate death and reform his behaviour through increased awareness of the march of time. Froberger's 'Meditation' is a musical cognate for that literary genre; through this autobiographical work, Froberger seems to have sought a meditative experience similar to one that might have been enabled by the reading of literary meditations. Indeed, it was through this work that Froberger's student and patroness, the Princess Sibylla of Wurttemberg, sought comfort upon the death of her teacher

KEYBOARD-DUO ARRANGEMENTS IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY MUSICAL LIFE

It is well known that the instrumentation of eighteenth-century chamber music was highly flexible; composers frequently adapted their own works for a variety of instruments, and players often used whatever combinations they had available. One type of arrangement little used today but attested to in both verbal description and musical manuscripts of the period is that of trios and other chamber works adapted for two keyboard instruments. Players often executed such keyboard-duo arrangements on instrumentswith differentmechanisms and timbres – for example, harpsichord and piano together – thus capturing something of the variety of timbres available in a mixed chamber ensemble. Keyboard duos were often played by members of a single family, or by teachers and students together, a practice that allowed for the construction of a sense of ‘sympathy’ – mutual understanding through shared experience and sentiment – between the players. These players shared common physical gestures at the instruments, which reinforced the emotional content of the music; this fostered the formation of a sympathetic connection even as players retained their individual identities

Giovanni Battista Della Porta’s Experiments with Musical Instruments

A section of Giovanni Battista Della Porta’s Magia naturalis (1589) celebrates the powers of musical instruments. Most of these powers are rooted in neo-Platonist natural magic: Della Porta explains that the materials of instruments retain their original properties, shaping the body and soul of the listener through their mutual sympathy or antipathy. In a series of three demonstrations presented at the end of this section on music, however, Della Porta uses musical instruments in a different fashion: like telescopes and other scientific instruments of the early modern era, his lyra—likely a lira da braccio, which held pride of place in Italian academies of the sixteenth century—becomes a vehicle for open-ended discovery and the creation of new knowledge

‘It Would Be without Error’: Automated Technology and the Pursuit of Correct Performance in the French Enlightenment

Marie-Dominique-Joseph Engramelle’s treatise La tonotechnie, ou l’art de noter les cylindres (1775) claimed that automated instruments driven by pinned cylinders would grant listeners direct access to music as the composer conceived it. Standard notation was insufficient, as it did not capture the music’s mouvement – its temporal flexibility from moment to moment. Denis Diderot provided an aesthetic justification for automated instruments in terms that linked them to materialist philosophy. Like android automata, which simulated life through automated motion, automated musical instruments encoded live music to simulate the ideal performance of a composer. Yet Engramelle’s collaboration with the composer Claude Balbastre, which resulted in a pinned-cylinder notage of one of Balbastre’s keyboard pieces, raises crucial questions about the effectiveness of the technology and its notation, and about Engramelle’s claims and his own musical skill. Engramelle’s project is best understood as a performance unto itself – a manifestation of the cultures of public science that were widespread in the European Enlightenment

Biagio Marini: Madrigali et Symfonie. By Aurelio Bianco and Sara Dieci.

Review of Biagio Marini: Madrigali et Symfonie, ed. Aurelio Bianco and Sara Dieci. pp. 217. Épitome Musical. (Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, 2014)