Musical Monticello: Classical Music and America
(2022)
author(s): Jasper Snow
published in: KC Research Portal
Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello plantation is here used as a case-study examiningclassical music’s foundations in the United States. Among other titles, Jefferson was a statesman, diplomat, slave master, and avid violinist. He is remembered as the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and third U.S. President. Early documentation suggests he was a gifted musician, reading notation at age nine and practicing “no less than three hours a day” for “a dozen years”. Music played an important role in the courtship of his wife, Martha Skelton Wayles, a harpsichordist and singer. They parented six children, of which two daughters survived to adulthood. Both received substantial keyboard training and their eldest inherited her father’s “taste and talent for music”. Upon their mother's death in 1782, Thomas began a complicated relationship with his late wife’s enslaved half sister, Sally Hemings. She became pregnant at sixteen and bore six of Jefferson’s children, four of which survived to adulthood. While Jefferson’s white daughters learned keyboard, two of his enslaved black sons were taught violin. It is likely that Jefferson himself taught them using the treatises of his expansive musical library, notably Geminani’s “Art of Playing the Violin”. A year after Jefferson’s death, the two sons were given their freedom; the youngest’s profession is listed as “musician” in the 1850 census; he is remembered as an “accomplished caller of dances”. These sons span the full stylistic gamut available in 19th century American music: from fiddle to violin. Thomas Jefferson and his family represent the kernels of America’s musical traditions, and the way they have morphed in parallel with America itself. The musical ecosystem of Monticello plantation is a dynamic location to discuss colonial music’s intersections with class, race, gender, and national identity.
An Approach to Romantic cello playing in Brahms's time
(2020)
author(s): María Cadenas Rodríguez
published in: KC Research Portal
The revolution of sound recording at the beginning of the 20th century influenced classical performance practice, setting definitive interpretations and eradicating more personal approaches to music-making. Many fundamental expressive devices were lost over the years and thus Romantic musical performance was no longer understood in the same way. This is why my research tries to look backwards in time with the aim of exploring the main attributes of Brahms’s Romantic style in music for string instruments. My research aims to: (1) understand lost Romantic expressive devices and how they worked, and (2) explore ways of using them today. I first analysed primary and secondary literature to establish context. Then I examined historical edited cello scores by Brahms, using them to show the different fingerings and slurrings provided by the main cellists of the period, which give us a clear idea about the use of portamenti, for example. Finally I listened to cello and string quartet early recordings to hear sonic evidence of these techniques, before applying them in Brahms's chamber music for cello. The main outcome I found is that diverse and emotional approaches to music-making made the Romantic period unique. I hope these tools can encourage today’s cellists and string players in general to create new, more personal, freer and more creative approaches to playing Romantic repertoires.
Emancipation of the Clarinet (1720-1760)
(2018)
author(s): Adrianna van Leeuwen-Steghaus
published in: KC Research Portal
Name: Adrianna van Leeuwen-Steghaus
Main Subject: Historical Clarinet
Research Supervisor: Inês de Avena Braga
Title of Research:
Emancipation of the Clarinet 1720-1760
The transforming role of the two and three keyed clarinet in Sacred Music of the Late Baroque Period
Research Question:
Can we trace the Baroque Clarinet's role in Sacred Music and is there an obvious progression in the way composers wrote for the instrument beginning in the early 18th century to the instruments demise in the mid 18th century?
What was the Baroque Clarinet's role in Sacred Music? Did composers intentioanlly use this instrument and if so for what purpose?
Summary of Results:
When speaking about the clarinet, the first period of music we naturally associate with it is the Classical. However, few realise that the history of the clarinet begins much earlier in the Baroque, with an instrument that we would today describe as ‘primitive’. The Baroque clarinet was developed around 1700 in Germany. It's repertoire and legacy is confined to about 50 years of music history. Colloquially called the 'Mock Trumpet', the Baroque Clarinet is characterized by a bright and brilliant sound.
Some research has been done on the instrument already, particularily on its general history and repertoire. However what remains missing is uncovering the Baroque Clarinet's role in sacred music. Sacred music, particularily cantatas dominated musical life in the 18th century. Cantatas were performed every Sunday as well as on special feasts throughout the ecclesiastical calendar. Over the past two years, I have discovered a trove of cantatas containing parts specifically written for the Baroque Clarinet, some by well-known composers such as Telemann and Graupner and others unknown until now, such as Seibert and Kurz. Coincidentally, most of the composers are of German origin, employed by various cities and/or courts across the German-speaking lands.
This research examines the repertoire and attempts to find a progression in the clarinet's use and role. The instruments characteristic timbre meant it shared a symbiotic relationship with the trumpet, but did it ever shed its trumpet association and find its own voice? Through analysis of the various cantata parts, I uncover that the clarinet was in some ways the 'perfect compromise'; able to sound brassy and brilliant when required, while also able to produce a sweet and singing tone. The clarinet was also techinically more capable then its trumpet counterpart, because it was less confined to the harmonic series and able to play quicker notes melodically with more stepwise intervals.
In November 2017, the Royal Consrvatorie's Early Music Department premiered two of Telemann's cantatas with clarient parts; Lobet den Herrn TWV 1:1061 and Der Tod ist verschlungen in den Sieg TWV 1:320.
Biography:
Adrianna van Leeuwen-Steghaus, is a Canadian clarinettist specialising in historical instrument performance. She is a member of two successful chamber ensembles, the Swedish based trio Boxwood & Bows and the Dutch based duo The Küffner Gals. Adrianna graduated with distinction from the University Of Calgary (CAN), obtaining her Bachelor’s degree in modern clarinet performance. She moved to the Netherlands in 2012, to complete a second Bachelor’s degree in Historical Clarinet and Chalumeaux at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag. Currently, she is busy completing her Master’s degree and thesis under the tutelage of Professor Eric Hoeprich in the Netherlands.
Fontegara as researcher
(2014)
author(s): Nuno Atalia
published in: KC Research Portal
Name: Nuno Galego Marques Atalaia Rodrigues
Main Subject: Recorder
Research Coaches: Paul Scheepers and Rebecca Stewart
Title of Research: Ganassi as researcher, Practice based research and new horizons for HIP
Research Question: What changes when I start reading treatises of the past as the result of a practice based research not unlike my own?
Research process: The following questions have guided my research and relationship with the XVII century recorder treatise La Fontegara: Was Ganassi an artistic researcher? Can his 1535 treatise, La Fontegara, be thought of as the result of sixteenth century practice based research? What will change in our relationship to documents of the past once we look at them as analogous to our own artistic concerns? What could this understanding of artistic research as a trans-historic event mean for Early Music in particular?
My research and thesis leads me to a close reading of Ganassi’s recorder and diminution treatise La Fontegara, trying to go beyond the text and its possible literal meanings and tracing the lost instrumental practice of diminution. With this first treatise of its kind, Ganassi inaugurates an age of instrumental literacy, which has irrevocably shaped our perception of musical practice.
By linking the document to its biographical, social, theoretical and practical roots I try to sketch out the possible influences and projects (both political and artistic), which took part in making this work possible, helping to understand the trans-historic significance of research in defining a place for the artist within broader society. Also, I take the chance to reflect how this critical intimacy I establish with the work changes the very core of my identity as a recorder player by shaping my practice as a dialogue with a distant and mostly silent past.
Summary of Results: The goal of this research is to stress the importance of research in the arts in redefining the role of the musician within society and of opening up a new wave of debate with which to vitalize the historically informed performance movement. Ganassi’s La Fontegara is a document that holds a far greater importance than that of a simple recorder tutor, which positioned it as the first document in the project of emancipation of instrumentalists and their music. Furthermore, the document should be seen as a vital part of the XVII century propaganda project of diffusing the myth of Venice through its use of speculative music tropes such as the theory of proportions. FInally, I wish to rethink our present relationship to these documents as performers. They were not musical cookbooks but rather crystallizations of a continuous struggle between the performer’s knowledge and his need to describe it. To read La Fontegara, is to go beyond the treatise and speculate on the oral practice from which it stems.