Name
Isabella Mercuri
Main Subject
Recorder
Research supervisors
Inês de Avena Braga and Frédérique Thouvenot
Title of Research
Music as an artificial language - an annotated collection of early music sources mentioning the relationship between instrumental music, singing, and speaking, questioning their relevance for today’s performers
Research Question
What do treatises of the Renaissance and Baroque period mention about the relationship between instrumental music, singing, and speaking and how can I use those indications in my playing?
Summary of Results
The collection of sources from the beginning of the sixteenth century until the middle of the eighteenth century showed that the indications given by the authors are often very similar to each other, although being written in a completely different time and environment. The following three main ideas appear in several treatises and were therefore examined more in detail:
- Imitation of the human voice or of a specific instrument
- Following a speech and using the means of rhetoric
- Underlying instrumental music with text
The practical application of those three ideas led to an enrichment of my palette of sound colours, to an improvement in making clear phrasings and gave me some inspiration to find the appropriate affections to communicate to the listeners.
This research paper and the included collection of sources might also be a starting point for further research exploring for instance more in detail one of the three main ideas mentioned above.
Biography
Isabella Mercuri was born in Switzerland, where she started studying the recorder with Kees Boeke and Matthias Weilenmann and completed her Bachelor of Arts in Music at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste in 2013. She then moved to the Netherlands to continue her studies with Daniël Brüggen at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, where she also studies the baroque oboe with Frank de Bruine.
Isabella Mercuri is active as a recorder teacher for children and adults and regularly performs in different chamber music settings in the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Serbia and Spain.