18th Century Music History

The paper proposes a survey through the essential theoretical contribution of J.P. Rameau, beginning with the famous "Traité de l'Harmonie", and enlarged with several other books devoted to the harmonic theoretical thinking, in which he evolves according to the scientific discoveries of the century.

Symposium: The Staatskapelle Berlin at 450 – A Review

“Crisis and Prosperity: The Development of Prussian Court Music from 1713 to 1806“

Venue: Staatsoper im Schiller Theater
Date: 7th- 9th October 2016

Call for Papers
Deadline: 1st April 2016

From 7th- 9th October 2016, the Staatskapelle Berlin will hold its second international symposium, in cooperation with the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation, Berlin-Brandenburg. The Staatskapelle celebrates its 450th anniversary in 2020, making it one of the oldest orchestras in the world. Ahead of this occasion, the Staatsoper is holding a series of annual symposia devoted to the history of the Staatskapelle Berlin and its international significance. This year’s topic, ‘Crisis and Prosperity: The Development of Prussian Court Music from 1713 to 1806’, places a focus on the 18th century, from the dissolution of the Prussian Court in 1713 to the collapse of the ‘old’ Prussia in 1806.

“[B]anish vile Italian tricks,” wrote Robert Fergusson in his 1772 poem “The Daft Days,” entreating the Hogmanay fiddlers of Edinburgh to “Gie’s Tulloch Gorum” instead. Two months later, the young poet would lament the loss of traditional music to adopted Italian repertoire in “Elegy, on the Death of Scots Music.” In his native Scots idiom, Fergusson denounced the “foreign sonnets […] fresh sprung frae Italy,/ A bastard breed!” The patriotism of this sentiment, however, is immediately complicated by Fergusson’s own enthusiastic involvement with the musical establishment of Edinburgh, in particular his participation as singer and librettist in the 1769 production of Arne’s opera Artaxerxes, starring the Italian tenor Tenducci. Susan Manning writes of Fergusson’s poetry that “there are not easy equations to be made between contemporaneity and Anglicisation, or tradition and Scots,” and in this paper I shall look at the complex satire of his supposed attacks on genteel “Italian” music in light of recent scholarship questioning the straightforward linguistic (and musical) nationalism of these poems. Fergusson’s musical vitriol must be seen in the context of post-Augustan literary convention and the eighteenth-century tradition of political and aesthetic satire. Furthermore, beyond the established relationship between his poem “Auld Reikie” and the urban pastoral of John Gay’s Trivia, I wish to draw an important connection to The Beggar’s Opera (1728) and the widespread British antagonism throughout the eighteenth century towards Italian opera and “foreign” musical forms. Without repudiating the claims for Fergusson’s nationalism and his defence of Scottish cultural identity, I intend to show that those “vile Italian tricks” were as much a part of Fergusson’s musical Edinburgh as a “canty Highland reel.”

Preface

Three centuries later, the debate still rages concerning which instrument –or instruments– Johann Sebastian Bach had in mind when he composed his 6ème Suitte a Violoncello Solo senza Basso, BWV 1012.
On the one hand, we know that the composer usually grouped his chamber works in homogeneous sets of six. On the other hand, we also know that Bach had a natural propensity to exploit the organological capabilities of the instruments for which he wrote.
But in the case of the Suites a Violoncello Solo BWV 1007-1012, the resulting ensemble seems to contravene one or other of these two tendencies. Not only have we the scordatura anomaly in the Quinta Suite, a modification that might be considered minor. In a further range of exploration, Bach –his copyists– specify that the Sesta Suite requires an instrument with five strings (à 5 cordes). If a different -and probably smaller- cello is required, this would imply that whoever wanted to play this volume of Suites would need two instruments. In this case, and following the reasoning of coherence, it would be more appropriate to say that Bach would have composed Six Suites a Violoncellist Solo.
If, on the other hand, we want to imagine that Bach composed these Six Suites for all of them to be played on a 5-stringed violoncello, this would clash with his penchant for using the full range of his instruments. Certainly, the first five suites contain some passages that are greatly favoured by the use of a smaller instrument, but in no case do they exploit this hypothetical high fifth string. In fact, this first five suites are works that systematically move in a medium-bass register –in contrast to his Sonatas & Partitas a Violino Solo BWV 1001-1006–.
The musical sources of other Bach works that feature violoncellos piccolos (arias from cantatas) divide this music alternately between the violinist's and cellist's particellas. This makes it equally acceptable for this Sesta Suite to be performed with a violoncello piccolo 'da gamba', i.e. between the legs, or with a violoncello piccolo 'da spalla', i.e. over the shoulder or chest.
In case the performer is not equipped with one of these violoncellos à 5 cordes, the possibilities are reduced to two:
The first option is to play it in the original key –D major–, which transforms it in an extraordinarily virtuosic piece. It would be the equivalent of playing the First Suite on a 3-stringed cello. Not at all impossible, but certainly far from the mood the composer seems to be looking for.
The other option, explored by several previous editions, consists of lowering the entire Sixth Suite by a descending fifth. This possibility is helped by the fact that –with the exception of the Prélude– it is reasonably easy to accomodate the low notes that we now have to give up.
The case of the Prélude is special, since its use of the lower register is more pronounced. The transposition to G major leaves many sections on the C string, something that Bach and other composers used to reserve for specific instances in their solo music. On the other hand, the original Prélude also explores the high register of the violoncello (to the extent that a sixth string would have been welcome), so the lowering of a fifth is still no assurance of ease and comfort in performance.
The present edition, therefore, has sought to homogenise the registers and the degree of difficulty so that this Prélude would be equivalent to the previous five. Some low passages have been raised by an octave –although they were feasible– and some bars have been lowered by another octave. In the same way, a chord has been added and notes not doubtful in any of the preserved sources have been modified. The aim has not been to respect the text but, in another divergent line, to recreate the hypothetical transcription by a 4-stringed cellist in Bach’s time.

In “Silver of Silver,” the poet Aogán Ó Rathaille was visited by a beautiful maiden named Ireland. The lady has been captured and forced to wed a false, monstrous king.  Composed in the eighteenth century, Ó Rathaille’s vision  poems or aislingí allegorized Ireland’s plight at the height of English colonization.  Under Hanoverian rule, Catholic  Irish could not inherit land, ordain priests, or teach/speak Gaelic. People with traditional roles in Gaelic society found themselves displaced, especially poets whose livelihoods were contingent on the patronage of Gaelic-speaking lords. The only hope for a free Ireland was that a Catholic would rise to the throne, but such hopes proved futile. This paper discusses how, by allegorizing Ireland as a maiden, Ó Rathaille conflates a population with a person who has a body and a gender, and how this is complicated by the maiden’s unfulfilled hope for the savior king. The king is absent, and the male poet is
powerless. The masculine players cannot enact their roles. Thus, Ó Rathaille matches a crisis of individual masculinity with a crisis of national identity, a conflation that may have bearings on our own country, in the language we, our politicians, and media use as another presidential race comes to fruition.

Drawing on theories of mediation and a wealth of primary sources, Beethoven 1806 explores the specific contexts in which the music of this year was conceived, composed, and heard. As author Mark Ferraguto argues, understanding this music depends on appreciating the relationships that it both creates and reflects. Not only did Beethoven depend on patrons, performers, publishers, critics, and audiences to earn a living, but he also tailored his compositions to suit particular sensibilities, proclivities, and technologies. More: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/beethoven-1806-9780190947187?q=Beethoven&lang=en&cc=us#

Lo scopo di questo breve saggio è ricostruire la presenza di Francesco Bianchi (1752-1810) a Genova, con particolare riguardo al rapporto con il Teatro di Sant’Agostino e a Il nuovo Don Chisciotte, opera che ebbe la sua prima – ed unica –
rappresentazione presso il Teatro di Villa Duchessa di Galliera di Voltri nel 1788.

An introduction to the color facsimile of Mozart’s autograph of "Le nozze di Figaro" published by the Packard Humanities Institute and Bärenreiter in 2007. The introduction begins by examining the compositional genesis of the opera. A close analysis of the paper-types in the autograph, in conjunction with a reassessment of the primary documentary evidence, strongly suggests that Mozart began to compose the opera in the summer or even the late spring of 1785, much earlier than previously thought. It appears that the opera was composed in two main stages. Mozart completed much of the work on the first two acts by November 1785, apparently with a view toward a premiere by the end of that year or the beginning of 1786. When that possibility failed to materialize, Mozart turned his attention to other projects for a few months, then finished the rest of Figaro within a period of just a few weeks before its premiere on 1 May 1786. The original orchestral parts and performance score from the first production show that revisions to the opera continued during the rehearsal period, and perhaps even after the premiere. My introduction also looks at the early reception of the opera, and Mozart’s revisions for the first Viennese revival in 1789–1791.

"The religious musical production in São Paulo and Minas Gerais, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has been studied under the concept that particular styles were employed according to different regions and epochs. As evidenced by musical manuscripts found in São Paulo and Minas Gerais, this work will reveal the existence of a religious repertoire produced according to the stile antico. Although the repertoire was produced and/or copied during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it kept compositional techniques of Western European Music of the Renaissance (sixteenth century). The style of these religious compositions contrasts with the techniques used in the stile moderno, which derive from operatic and secular instrumental repertoires. Based on a survey of ten different library holdings, 145 stile-antico compositions have been analyzed in order to understand their main features, and their functional role regarding the musical religious practice in São Paulo and Minas Gerais during the periods understudied. Three types of music notation were identified, as well as several types of composition for the same ceremonial function. The conclusion will show that compositions denoting stile-antico techniques, produced mainly for Holy Week celebrations, are mostly found among copies with no indication of authorship, and the employment of those techniques, either in São Paulo or Minas Gerais, was not due to mere aesthetic alternatives, but out of respect to liturgical prescriptions. The sources consulted also present copies of other stile-antico compositions produced in Europe (mainly in Portugal) prior to the eighteenth century, since their functional role in Catholic ceremonies had still survived.

A produção musical religiosa em São Paulo e Minas Gerais, nos séculos XVIII e XIX, tem sido estudada a partir da concepção de que foram empregados estilos únicos em determinadas épocas e regiões. Neste trabalho pretende-se demonstrar a existência, em acervos paulistas e mineiros de manuscritos musicais, de obras religiosas em estilo antigo, que exibem a manutenção de técnicas composicionais da música renascentista européia (século XVI), mas foram produzidas e/ou copiadas nos séculos XVIII e XIX: suas características são contrastantes com as das obras em estilo moderno do mesmo período, que utilizam técnicas originárias da ópera e da música instrumental profana. Após um levantamento em dez acervos, foram descritas e estudadas cento e quarenta e cinco composições em estilo antigo, procurando-se compreender suas principais características e sua função na prática musical religiosa paulista e mineira desse período. Além de terem sido detectados três sistemas de notação musical e vários tipos de composição para a mesma função cerimonial, concluiu-se que o estilo antigo concentra-se em cópias sem indicação de autoria, principalmente destinadas à Semana Santa, e que este não foi utilizado, em São Paulo e Minas Gerais, como mera alternativa estética, mas sim como uma forma conservadora de respeito às prescrições litúrgicas. Por ainda possuírem função nas cerimônias católicas, também foram copiadas, nessa época, composições em estilo antigo produzidas na Europa (especialmente em Portugal), em período anterior ao século XVIII."

In his autobiographical sketch Joseph Haydn claims to have learned the ‘true fundamentals of composition’ from Nicola Porpora. Porpora (1686–1768) was a student of Gaetano Greco at the Conservatorio dei Poveri in Naples and later himself became a maestro at the Conservatorio di San Onofrio, where Francesco Durante also taught. That Haydn’s teacher Porpora came from the centre of the partimento tradition, which has attracted increased scrutiny by music theorists in recent years, justifies examining Haydn’s relationship with this long-standing pedagogical method and compositional practice. In this essay I analyse the sources that shed light on Porpora’s relationship to the partimento tradition and on Haydn’s relationship to Porpora. Focusing on partimento counterpoint, I examine several of Haydn’s fugues in contrasting genres in order to illustrate how the principles of thoroughbass and partimento help to explain particular structural procedures in Haydn’s music, as well as the compositional processes that produced them.

The Concert champêtre on the 1628 Joannes Ruckers harpsichord, a rare testimony of the painted corpus by Robert Bonnart (1652-1733)

Marie-Christine ANSELM

The Museum of the Château de Versailles nowadays preserves one of the most beautiful specimens of the European harpsichord making, the Joannes Ruckers 1628 harpsichord, built in Antwerp and rebuilt (ravalé) in Paris in 1706, probably by the harpsichord maker Nicolas Blanchet, and then adorned with a sumptuous  decor.
It is exemplary of the model that would become in France the nec plus ultra for the amateurs until the end of the Ancien Regime, at the end of a process of appropriation with musical, organological, decorative, economic implications, a most interesting phenomenon in the history of taste.
Attributed to the ornemaniste Claude III Audran, its  external decoration with grotesques on a gilded ground celebrates both music and love. The inner side of the  lid is decorated with a painting depicting an italianate landscape, animated by a Small Concert champêtre whose protagonists wear  costumes from the Commedia dell’arte, and whose author was remained unknown until now.
From the role of paintings in French harpsichord decoration, this article looks into the iconographic sources of this representation of music, and traces our investigation based on a signature fragment, detected in 2008 at the occasion of the restoration of the harpsichord by Alain Anselm.
At the end of these investigations, we propose the attribution, or rather the return of this painting to Robert Bonnart (1652-1733). Former  collaborator of Van der Meulen and then a peintre ordinaire du Roi, he is still best known nowadays for  his preparatory drawings for the engravings marketed by his brothers. This restitution de facto leads up to attribute to the same painter another painting of landscape, quite similar in its italianate design, its composition and its pictorial treatment, the Danse champêtre on the Joannes Couchet 1652 harpsichord. This other prestigious Flemish instrument, extended in 1701 and redecorated for financier Charles Malon de Bercy, now belongs to the collections of the Musée de la musique in Paris. In the light of documents and recent work on the Bonnart dynasty, we can thus give back to this multi-talented artist a specific mode of practice of landscape painting, as part of the harpsichord decorations.
Finally, our identification does not exclude the involvement, for the  idiosyncratic figures of this little  Fête galante before the letter, of a young painter named Antoine Watteau, Claude III Audran's collaborator.

This article is the first in a series dedicated to this harpsichord, which will follow Le décor du clavecin Joannes Ruckers 1628 du Château de Versailles, and Un clavecin chez les Romantiques: le peintre Joseph-Fernand Boissard (1813-1866) et son clavecin Joannes Ruckers 1628.

This paper examines, for the first time as a whole, the twenty-plus instrumental variation sets that Vivaldi wrote, focusing on issues of genre, chronology, formal structure, and melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic detail.  The research finds that Vivaldi’s variation sets draw elements from both concerto and variation traditions but they combine them in ways that are rare, and perhaps unique, among variation sets of the early eighteenth century. Whereas many of his contemporaries emphasized the aesthetic value of individual variations, Vivaldi’s sets signal a shift towards a firmer conception of the set as a whole.
Contrast on the foreground level (between the individual variations) is
carefully arranged to enhance coherence on the background level (the set taken as a whole).  Of particular interest, also, is Vivaldi's use of variation-rondo hybrid structures and codettas featuring an independent part for a soloist before a final ritornello.  Finally, the cataloging of these works demonstrates the remarkable range of contexts where Vivaldi used variation technique as a rigorous formal device.  Published in Studi vivaldiani 6 (2006): 53-75; reprinted in Vivaldi, edited by Michael Talbot. Farnham (UK): Ashgate, 2010. pp. 365-386.

My dissertation, which is currently in progress, attempts to reconstruct the compositional pedagogy of Johann Sebastian Bach using historical sources. In the course of my research I have come across four manuscript sources linked to Bach. Since I have outlined the historical and music-theoretical context of Bach’s pedagogy in greater detail elsewhere, such commentary is kept to a minimum here.

The four sources are:

Friedrich Emanuel Praetorius (1623–1695): Kurtzer doch gründlicher Unterricht vom General-Baß (c. 1655–95); D-W, 2-3-10-musica;

Johann Valentin Eckelt (1675–1732): Diesen Kurtzen Unterricht wie man eine Fuga oder Præludium formiren und einrichten soll (1722); A-Wmk, 221/27;

Johann Valentin Eckelt: Kurtzer unterricht was einen Organist[en] nötig zu wißen seÿ (n.d.); A-Wmk, 546/39;

Johann Christian Kittel (1732–1809): Generalbass Schule (c. 1786–89); US-NH, LM 3911, ma21y11k652.

Not only do all four sources share an indirect relationship to J. S. Bach, they are also thematically and methodologically united in their use of keyboard thoroughbass as a pedagogical tool in the context of practical, example-based instruction. This commonality is of central importance for the reconstruction of Bach’s compositional pedagogy, since accounts of Bach’s teaching and surviving documents suggest that he too emphasized practical matters in his teaching. More importantly, Bach explicitly associated composition with thoroughbass and the keyboard. In a recommendation dated 1727, Bach attested that his student, Friedrich Gottlieb Wild (1700–1762), “has taken special instruction from me in the clavier, thoroughbass, and the fundamental principles [Fundamental-Regeln] of composition which are derived from them.” Yet unfortunately, Bach left only two brief sets of rules outlining his thoroughbass pedagogy. Moreover, the anonymous Vorschriften und Grundsätze (also called the Generalbasslehre of 1738 or the “Precepts and Principles”), which borrows sections from Friedrich Erhard Niedt’s Musicalische Handleitung (1700–17), cannot be conclusively attributed to Bach. The lack of robust evidence stemming directly from Bach forces any attempt to reconstruct his teaching to examine documents from his wider sphere of influence – hence the publication of the above four manuscript sources.

A revised and updated version of my commentary on a report from Vienna dated 5 Oct 1791 and published in the "Bayreuther Zeitung" that is the earliest known reference to the reception of Mozart's opera "Die Zauberflöte," which premiered on 30 Sep 1791. The report makes the hitherto undocumented claim that Mozart was awarded the gate receipts from the third performance of the opera.

This is the official pdf version of a commentary first published on the site "Mozart: New Documents," edited by Dexter Edge and David Black.

BERROCAL, Joseba . "Le ornamentazioni francesi a cavallo tra Sei e Settecento: fra invisibilità e persistenza di modelli non scritti" in 'Early Music. Context and Ideas II,  International Conference in Musicology,  11-14 September 2008. Institute of Musicology. Jagiellonian University'. Krakow: instytut Muzykologii Uniwersytetu Jagielloniskiego. 2008, p. 471-487. ISBN 9788370991579

The relationship between music and urban space has been a growing issue in the field of historical musicology since the 1980s. Current developments in urban history have shifted from viewing the city to be an organic totality to considering it a physical frame permitting a multiplicity of individual experiences. But focusing on the musical experiences of specific individuals implies encompassing other dimensions of urban life. In this study, I analyse musical life beyond the walls of the city, toward the urban hinterland, as well as, within the city, in the reduced geographic spaces of neighbourhoods and parishes. The wealth of detail furnished by the long journal (1769-1819) of Rafel d’Amat, baron of Maldà, an enthusiastic music-lover, makes it possible to outline the contours of his musical experiences, both within and outside the city. Other local sources, as well as the contemporaneous accounts of foreign travellers in Catalonia, complement Maldà’s descriptions of musical spaces. The first part of this study (“The Tone of Sarrià”. Music and Musicians between the City and its Hinterland) deals with regional festive and musical calendar, musicians’ mobilities and musical practices connected with the seasonal excursions of Barcelonans. In the second part (Barcelona. Cities within the City), accounts of foreign visitors are compared to those of Maldà in order to shed light on their different and very selective use of the opportunities offered by an urban musical culture. This dissertation demonstrates some of the ways in which it is possible to identify and describe, within a single city, a multitude of approaches to music. It invites a re-examination of urban musical life in Modern Europe based on the fecundity of its internal divisions rather than on the basis of a compact unanimity of taste and choice.

The Musical Archive of the Cathedrals of Zaragoza possesses an interesting early source for
the study of the music of Georg Friedrich Händel (*1685; †1759). It is a manuscript volume,
carefully copied and professionally and luxuriously bound in parchment, containing
a copy of the Suites de pièces pour le clavecin, which the Anglo-German musician would
print for the first time in London in 1720. This copy, made in Rome on 26 March 1727,
only seven years after his editio princeps, and owned by Francisco Xavier Nebra, bears witness
to the early knowledge of the best European music of the time in Spain as well as the
fluid musical connections between Italy and Spain.

BERROCAL. 'La viole et sa musique'. in Marin Marais violiste à l’Opéra (1656-1728). CMBV 2006
Textes réunis par Benoît Dratwicki. LIVRE-PROGRAMME ÉDITÉ À L’OCCASION DES GRANDES JOURNÉES MARIN MARAIS. CENTRE DE MUSIQUE BAROQUE DE VERSAILLES. AUTOMNE 2006 ISBN 2911239520. EAN 9782911239526