Paganini's "Lesson" by Federico Mompellio (original) (raw)
Related papers
Paganini's Quest: The Twenty-four Capricci per violino solo, Op. 1
Nicolò Paganini (1782–1840) has long been viewed as an emblem of virtuosity, his music heard, if at all, through the variations and adaptations of other composers. This historical neglect and the Paganini mythos notwithstanding, the twenty-four Caprices, op. 1, published in 1820, establish his place as a serious composer whose innovations must be considered in any assessment of early Romanticism. In the Caprices, two voices seem to speak. The first is lyrical and draws on the vocal and operatic roots of Paganini’s musical upbringing. The second I have labeled the questive voice. Romanticism is an aesthetic of distance; the questive voice is a means of traversing the immensity that is the one essential feature of early Romanticism in its incarnations. This immensity manifests itself in the wide registral space opened and explored in the Caprices; in the motivically driven, asymmetrical construction of many passages found therein; and in the extensive harmonic reach of many of the Caprices. This article presents close readings of Caprices nos. 1, 2, 4, 9, and 10, drawing on Schenkerian methodologies and work by Ratner, Caplin, and Burnham to articulate the lyrical/questive dichotomy and interplay between technique and expression in these singular works by a singular composer.
Carlo Ambrogio Lonati (c.1645-post 1701), known as ‘Il gobbo della Regina’ (the hunchback of Queen Christine of Sweden) was a multifaced figure. He was a violinist, composer, and singer operating in Italy and elsewhere in Europe in the late seventeenth century, whose virtuoso violin music is considered among the most outstanding of the period. So far however, research has been limited to the study of only one collection of twelve sonatas, and lacks insight into his other violin pieces. Scholarship on Lonati’s violin music is thus in great need of a new integrated study of its stylistic features in relationship to performance practices. In this paper I will focus on newly discovered sources of Lonati’s violin music and demonstrate what performers can learn from it in terms of performance practice. The requirement of an enigmatic five-string instrument and the dazzling basso continuo writing, the extensive use of scordatura, chordal and polyphonic passages in double and triple stops, a fascination with arpeggios, bow vibratos, the appearance of pasticcio-sonatas are just some of the aspects I will take into consideration. Furthermore, my investigation — which will not be limited to the violin itself but also to other string and continuo instruments — will illustrate a wider approach to performance practices utilized in northern Italian areas, particularly in Bologna, Modena, Venice, and Milan at the turn of the eighteenth century. The methodological core of the paper lies in a strict relationship between (mainly manuscript) source study and performance practices with the purpose of showing how texts were handed down and how musical practice changed in time.
Eighteenth-century Music, 2009
The Voice of the Composer: Theory and Practice in the Works of Pietro Pontio, Volume 1
1989
The life, music, and theoretical writings of Pietro Pontio (1532-1596) yield considerable insight into questions of theory and practice in the late sixteenth century. The dissertation places Pontio within his musical and cultural milieu, and assesses his role as both theorist and composer. The first two chapters present an expanded biography based on new archival evidence. The course of Pontio's career is detailed, and corrections such as his exact date of death and his location and employment for the years 1569-1574 are presented. The documents also uniquely detail the working conditions and pedagogical methods and concerns of the sixteenth-century maestro di cappella. Chapter Three surveys Pontio's two treatises, the Ragionamento (1588) and the Dialogo (1595), outlining important issues addressed by Pontio. Chapter Four presents a brief survey of Pontio's music, hitherto unstudied, showing his work to be of consistent quality and inventiveness. Chapter Five discusses issues from the Ragionamento. Pontio's important discussion of the use of mode and psalm tone in polyphony suggests a hierarchical approach to cadential structure based on pitch, text relationship, and cadential type, and the author presents a system of cadential classification based on these constructs. The result is a clearer understanding of modal structure and distinctions of genre. Chapter Six examines the second section of Pontio's Dialogo as an early attempt at critical writing, similar in scope to that presented by Lodovico Zacconi in the second part of his Prattica di musica (1622). In both chapters, Pontio's theoretical writings are amplified by reference to his own musical works and those of his contemporaries. Chapter Seven assesses Pontio's influences on contemporary and later writers, and details the degree of influence Pontio's treatise had on Valerio Bona's Regole del contraponto (1595) and Pietro Cerone's El Melopeo y maestro (1613). Both are shown to be heavily dependent on many of the most original aspects of Pontio's work. A summary assesses the important role of Pontio in sharpening our understanding of critical aspects of theory and practice in the period. Volume Two presents an annotated works list for Pontio's compositions, transcriptions of archival documents used in the study, and transcriptions of representative musical compositions.
The Early Muzio Clementi’s Sonatas: At the Origins of London Pianism
2016
Purpose of the research is to determine the role of M. Clementi in the process of development of the "sounding image of piano " and the scale of his impact on the historical and artistic modernity, It also aims at finding the causes of oblivion of the personality and the works of the composer and pianist in the ХІХ century and the stages of his heritage Renaissance in the performing art and science of the ХХ century. The artistic heritage of the composer Muzio Clementi is considered from the point of view how various stages of the history of London's classicism and incipient Romanticism are represented in it. The study emphasizes that the composer predetermined the processes of the stylistic evolution, presented through the prism of the "sounding image of piano". Studying a creative personality and the piano work of the composer allows for the conclusion about the need for a systematic study of the heritage of Muzio Clementi, as a phenomenon of London pianism...
THE MUSIC FOR THE PIANO AFTER CLEMENTI
After Clementi, 2023
In this essay i will try to examine the liaisons between the works of Clementi and those of the Romantic Composers: Friedrich Chopin, Robert Schumann and Franz Liszt. I will also have a look at the works of Debussy and Prokovieff, to verify if there are also in the XX century some liaisons with the pianistic ideas of the italian master.
The Voice of the Composer: Theory and Practice in the Works of Pietro Pontio
1989
The life, music, and theoretical writings of Pietro Pontio (1532-1596) yield considerable insight into questions of theory and practice in the late sixteenth century. The dissertation places Pontio within his musical and cultural milieu, and assesses his role as both theorist and composer. The first two chapters present an expanded biography based on new archival evidence. The course of Pontio's career is detailed, and corrections such as his exact date of death and his location and employment for the years 1569-1574 are presented. The documents also uniquely detail the working conditions and pedagogical methods and concerns of the sixteenth-century maestro di cappella. Chapter Three surveys Pontio's two treatises, the Ragionamento (1588) and the Dialogo (1595), outlining important issues addressed by Pontio. Chapter Four presents a brief survey of Pontio's music, hitherto unstudied, showing his work to be of consistent quality and inventiveness. Chapter Five discusses issues from the Ragionamento. Pontio's important discussion of the use of mode and psalm tone in polyphony suggests a hierarchical approach to cadential structure based on pitch, text relationship, and cadential type, and the author presents a system of cadential classification based on these constructs. The result is a clearer understanding of modal structure and distinctions of genre. Chapter Six examines the second section of Pontio's Dialogo as an early attempt at critical writing, similar in scope to that presented by Lodovico Zacconi in the second part of his Prattica di musica (1622). In both chapters, Pontio's theoretical writings are amplified by reference to his own musical works and those of his contemporaries. Chapter Seven assesses Pontio's influences on contemporary and later writers, and details the degree of influence Pontio's treatise had on Valerio Bona's Regole del contraponto (1595) and Pietro Cerone's El Melopeo y maestro (1613). Both are shown to be heavily dependent on many of the most original aspects of Pontio's work. A summary assesses the important role of Pontio in sharpening our understanding of critical aspects of theory and practice in the period. Volume Two presents an annotated works list for Pontio's compositions, transcriptions of archival documents used in the study, and transcriptions of representative musical compositions.