The stage – setting the scenes (1870)

Act 5: Two proposals for a historically informed approach to Mercadante’s flute works

At this point of my research, and given the premises I explained in the intermezzo, I was forced to re-imagine my approach to Mercadante’s flute works. A mechanical copy-paste of information I could have found in a source was not possible anymore. I was looking at an extraordinary amount of highly virtuosic compositions while having a limited amount of time to sufficiently assimilate and experiment with them.

My first decision was then to focus only on Mercadante’s two most popular pieces: the variations on “Là ci darem la mano”1 and the Rondò russo from the flute quartet2 (and concerto)3 in E minor. In this way, I thought, I could try to “debunk” some standardised performance practice elements and try to shed a new light on them.

However, the bias jungle in which I found myself while practicing was way too dark to be able to see something. I had been listening to recordings of those pieces for all my teenage years and the impression of such standard practices was still very strong in my imagination. I could not conceive them in a different way than with rallentando at every cadence and vibrato even on 16^th notes. My canvas was not white enough to create a new picture: I could only colour the existing drawing.

I felt that I would not have managed to reach the other side of the jungle without the proper tools given to me by some sources. I therefore decided to create a detour and to work on two pieces that shared several characteristics with the above-mentioned ones but were also different enough to allow me to create my own interpretation from scratch.

Instead of the variations on “Là ci darem la mano”, I chose the ones on “Ah nati è ver noi siamo”4, which set itself apart from the others for its refined writing and expressive possibilities, while sharing some variation elements with my original choice.5

Instead of the Rondò russo, I chose the final movement (Rondò, Allegro brillante) from the flute duet op. 156 n. 2,6 which formal structure and thematic punctuated rhythm immediately reminded me of Mercadante’s most popular piece, although with a completely different instrumentation.

Satisfied with my choice, I decided on the conditions for my two experiments:

• My colleague and I would have played a modern copy of an 8-keyed flute after Grenser, which is the only instrument that we own that we could use for a performance of early 19^th-century music. However, given its high flexibility, I decided to treat it as a 4-keyed French-style flute, as this still seemed to me the favourite model for flute players of the time when considering the surviving instruments.7 As a consequence, I did not use the high C and the long F keys.8 Moreover, I used fingerings that typically work on French instruments and are presented in French methods, such as the C2 as OXX/OOO/o,9 instead of the German long fingering OXO/XXX/o.

  
  

• Nevertheless, I also knew that I should have not been too French. For this reason, I decided I would avoid the fingerings for the notes sensibles that raise the pitch of leading notes since they were so characteristic of French flute players.10

   

• Finally, I would have trusted my taste while making artistic choices, but I would have also looked for some further inspiration in Pustlauk’s dissertation.

Scene 1: Varied aria Nell’Opera Ricciardo e Zoraide

Firstly, I decided to get acquainted with the opera Ricciardo e Zoraide by Giacchino Rossini, nowadays almost completely unknown. Interestingly, it premiered at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples on December 3^rd, 1818,11 and was therefore probably still quite fresh in the memory of the audience when Mercadante published his third collection of variations a few months later.

Ricciardo e Zoraide is the story of Ricciardo, a Christian knight trying to rescue his lover Zoraide, Asiatic princess captured by the tyrant Agorante. At the beginning of Act 2, the two lovers are finally able to meet again and confirm their feelings to each other:

My first step was then to place the text in Mercadante’s arrangement, using the original manuscript score kept in the conservatory library in Naples as a guide.12

Interestingly, Mercadante skips the upbeat (“Ah”) and begins directly on “nati”.

The text placement highlighted the different affects of the short 12-bars melody. The first four bars could represent “love”, culminating with the sweet ornamentation on “amarci”. In the following four, the minor section and the paired slurs could switch the atmosphere to “desire”, and in fact the verb “bramare” is repeated twice. Finally, the recognition of mutual love, the dots and the high register seemed to me a representation of joy. In the first performance of the theme, I then kept in mind such distinctions:

The text placement process allowed me also to recognise some rhythmical deviances from the original notation. Mercadante’s transcription not only halves the note values but also lacks the two following elements:

• In bar 1 and 2, a break after “ver” and “siamo”. It was perhaps obvious for flute players of the time that the two Gs would have been played short. It is indeed also how I would have played it intuitively.

• The dotted rhythm in bars 5, 7, and 9. Since the opera was performed for the first time only a few months before the publication of the varied aria, I would assume that flute players had in mind how the original sounded. However, I tried both to keep the equal rhythm and to add some inégalité. In the end, I decided to keep a dotted rhythm since it better expresses the sense of desire and, later, joy in the text.

Furthermore, Mercadante added an appoggiatura in bar 8. Singers of the time might have naturally done it as an extemporary ornamentation, and I therefore decided to play it less rhythmical and more expressive by slightly prolonging it.

To create more variety, I also decided to add a little ornamentation in bar 7, which would have otherwise been identical to bar 5.

Then, I moved on to the first variation. Mercadante does not give a precise tempo indication, but the fact that all others have one (“cantabile e più lento”, “espressivo”, and “1^o tempo”) could indicate that the tempo should remain more or less the same as in the theme.

Right at the beginning of this variation, I had to decide whether I wanted to play a strong metrical accent13 and to respect the hierarchy of the bar

Or to follow the ascending melody. The first option seemed to me a too conservative one, rather suited for 18th-century repertoire than for a virtuoso 19th-century solo piece. Therefore, I chose to play a crescendo towards the middle of the bar.

Since I found this solution quite convincing, I applied it also to other similar bars, such as 6 and 8 (and kept it in mind throughout the whole piece).

Bar 3, however, raised the question of what accents on weak beats mean in Mercadante’s music.

Does he want dynamic accents (i.e. playing louder and keeping the tempo)

or oratorical accents (i.e. slightly prolonging such notes)?

Despite the idea that Neapolitan flute players played in a “virile” way (whatever that means), I find the first solution too mechanical. At least in this specific context, I would consider them as oratorical accents.

The last problem that I encountered in practicing this variation concerned the transition between bars 8 and 9, where the change of affect from “desire” to “joy” happened.

I felt a breath was needed (both for technical and expressive reasons), but I was not sure whether it would have been better to stay strictly in tempo

or to play a small rallentando to prepare the comma.

The second solution seemed to me the most natural. However, what does “natural” mean? Personally, I tend to consider it a synonym of “conventional”, of what I am used to hear and play, and therefore to challenge my choices every time this word pops in my head. Does this slight rallentando actually reflect the taste in Naples in the 1810s? Unfortunately, I have no available documentation as a devil’s advocate for the other choice. To deliver a convincing performance of it, however, I can only accept what feels better for me right now.

Variation 2 presents what I would consider another oratorical accents in the first bar: since the B is the highest point of the slurred group, I prolonged his value and shortened the following G.

Bar 3 seemed also to offer another possibility for an oratorical accent, which I then implemented in my performance.

Bar 5 and 7 introduce an element of variety in the otherwise identical repetition:

No such variety is explicitly written in other variations. In fact, it could simply be a typo,14 but a different articulation might have also been an artistic choice. I personally found it convincing and decided to keep it and to use it as an inspiration to introduce a small ornamentation in bar 8 as well to differentiate it from the identical bar 6.

Variation 3 seemed to have a missing slur over the four 16-notes of bar 3.

Given the expressive character of the minor variation, separating all the notes seemed to me not very convincing.

The choice was then essentially between articulating two and two notes (as in the following bar)

or all four.

I found the last solution the most plausible, since it is a group of four descending notes that could be incorporated in one single gesture.

Moreover, the sforzato on the high E flat suggested me the possibility to use a breath vibrato15 to highlight such a dramatic passage.

Bar 5 and 7 of this variation are identical. However, since I previously chose to introduce some variety in the respective section of the previous variation, I decided to add some finger vibrato on of the first note of bar 7.

Since the first time I played the piece, I felt that the descending semitone between bar 8 and 9 would have been a perfect place for a glissando,16 both technically (through the simple sliding of the fingerings from OOO/OOO/o to OXX/OOO/o) and musically.

In bars 9 and 10 I kept interpreting the accents as oratorical ones. However, I also prolonged the respective notes more than before to highlight the expressive character of the variation.

Variation 4 is, inevitably, the most virtuosic. In bar 5, I felt that the use of an alternate fingering was necessary.

Due to the repeated fast connection with the C, I thought that using the standard B fingering XOO/OOO/o would have resulted in moving too may fingerings to keep the “dolce” character. I therefore used XOO/XXX/o, which not only allowed an easier connection between C and B at the beginning of bar 5, but also raised the pitch of the Bs in bar 6, which I could then play with more grace.

The following video recording of the whole varied aria summarises my aesthetic choices.

Scene 2: Rondò from Duetto op. 156 n. 2

Unlike the variation sets, no extra-musical material is available for the duets. All the historical information I had is that the Duetti op. 156 were published in Naples in 1818. I could only rely on the musical text and, partially, on my previous experiment with the variations.

As the first flute, in the first bar I decided to respect the hierarchy of the bar instead of following the ascending melody, as I did for the previous piece. The goal is to mark the appoggiatura (and, therefore, the dissonance) that the C creates at the beginning of bar 2.

The accompaniment of the second flute (my colleague Gaspar Polo Baader) is based on a regular eight notes. Mercadante, however, notated a slur only in the first bar.

As a general rule to integrate slurs in the eight notes accompaniment, I decided to keep four notes slurred together only in the case when all of them where ascending or descending, as in bar 2; when the regular movement of such notes was broken, I slurred the notes in pairs. This seemed to me to be the most effective way to imitate the left hand of a keyboard player.

A further challenge concerned bar 10-11: their metrical regularity sounded purely mechanical and not much in line with the lively character of the piece.

To solve this problem, I introduced some agogic flexibility by accelerating in the first three beats and slowing down in the last one to prepare the fermata.

Also the following fermata presented a similar problem to solve: the dialogue between the two flutes seemed somewhat repetitive and hollow, and the transition between the dialogue and the new “dolce” theme too abrupt.

For this reason, in the second and third bars of this passage I used two simple ornamentations (a fast appoggiatura, and a turn followed by a “cercar della nota”). Moreover, I added a short, freely played scale that could lead to the new theme with a smoother transition.

In order to achieve a better contrast between the “scherzando” main theme and the “dolce” secondary one, we played the latter slightly slower and less articulated. However, the following syncopations seemed to already express a new idea, less “dolce” and more “scherzando”, so to say. For this reason, we accelerated a bit towards them and then relaxed again on the final appoggiatura.

After the repetition of the “dolce” theme by the second flute, a new brilliant section creates a great contrast, thanks also the trills played by the second flute.

Interestingly, such trills are missing in the first flute’s imitation. However, since they seem quite effective in changing the atmosphere, I integrated them and corrected a possibly wrong slur to keep the ornamentation until the end of the passage.

Quite some trouble was caused to us by the “calando” right before the reprise. We initially thought that it might have implied a strong rallentando, and we therefore tried several ways to make it sound convincing, with no convincing result.

In the end, we tried to consider it a simple diminuendo and to slow down as a consequence of it, not as if it was the cause. This seemed to work better.

In the reprise, I felt I had to do something: the same would have been just boring. Then, I thought: better kitsch than boring. For this reason, I played the rubato card by prolonging quite much the C in bar 70 while the accompaniment remained steady.

A later passage required a double action. Firstly, the rather obvious integration of some slurs.

Moreover, my intuition of taking a breath in the large leap seemed not really effective. In fact, it disturbed the perception of the dissonant seventh leap.

Instead, I took a breath before the slurred group and played tenuto over the sforzato to enhance the dissonant effect.

In the coda, the same material is repeated by the two flutes without any explicit variation. Therefore, I decided to be consistent with my previous choices and to introduce again a little variety. The perfect spot seemed to me the second C of the phrase, since it is by itself a repetition of musical material inside the four-bar half phrase.

I applied some finger vibrato,

while Gaspar played a free descending scale.

The following four bars allowed us to introduce a special effect as well: in the progression towards the cadenza, we slowed down to underline the strong dissonance of the augmented sixth.

Finally, I integrated the flute part with the trills I took from the second flute part, symmetrically to the related previous section. Moreover, I decided to finish the movement without any sort of rallentano to keep the “scherzando” character until the very end.

This video summarises our aesthetic choices:

[To Epilogue]