(Re)Phrasing—Shaping Music with Modern Instruments 2022-2026
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Christian Stene
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This project aims to demonstrate how the affordances of modern musical instruments can influence phrasing. My goal is to expand on our understanding of these affordances and how this affects the way we express musical ideas.
Phrasing is how a musician shapes music. Phrasing is the performer's musical language and is strongly linked to how well one masters one's instrument and can communicate musical ideas and interpretations. Instrumentalists have seen technical developments and innovations over hundreds of years, leading to the instruments we use today. Modern orchestral instruments are often very different from their historical predecessors with the development generally being in the direction of more evenness through the registers, larger volume, and projection . The methodology of playing is also highly focused on evening out the idiosyncrasies of the instrument to make all notes through the registers have the same shape. But what happens when everything sounds the same? Has phrasing become a victim of evenness?
This project uses a period boxwood instrument, modern boxwood instruments, modern mopane instruments, and modern grenadilla instruments (which are the norm today) as tools for research on phrasing. By switching tools between these instruments, I have identified and related various techniques to establish how the affordances of the different instruments can influence phrasing.
Research questions:
1. What is the relationship between phrasing on a period instrument and a modern instrument?
2. How can phrasing from a period instrument be transferred to a modern instrument?
3. What is the future of phrasing on a modern instrument?
Vestito a ponti d'oro e a cento corde in seno - 'History, repertoire and playing-techniques of the Italian salterio in the eighteenth century'
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Franziska Fleischanderl
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The present study of Franziska Fleischanderl is the first comprehensive and fundamental compendium on the Italian salterio of the eighteenth century. It sheds light on its genesis in the ecclesiastical environment, its dissemination and use in all regions of Italy, its social rise to the highest circles of the aristocracy, its virtuoso professionals and noble amateurs, and last but not least, its original genre-spanning repertoire. It is a great peculiarity of the Italian salterio that it was played with three completely different playing techniques in equal measure. Either the strings were struck with two small hammers (battuto), plucked with the fingernails and fingertips (finger-pizz) or plucked it with plectra, that were fixed in metal finger rings and placed at the fingertips (plectra-pizz). The search for and reproduction of original playing utensils such as hammers and finger rings, as well as instructions for assigning the appropriate playing technique to the original salterio repertoire and mastering all three techniques, constitute the artistic research part of this study, which was conducted on an exceptionally well-preserved, beautifully decorated, original salterio made by Michele Barbi in Rome in 1725.