Squalid and Obscure: Timbral Word Painting at the Arpa Doppia

Hannah Rose (Kit) Spencer

Name: Kit (Hannah Rose) Spencer Main Subject: Baroque Harp Research Supervisor: Kate Clark Title of Research: Squalid and Obscure: Timbral Word Painting at the Arpa Doppia Research Question: Can timbral refinement, through synthesized notation and subsequent technical exercises, enhance contrast and word painting in arpa doppia continuo realisations of Seconda Prattica songs? Summary of Results: While functionally versatile, the arpa doppia, an Italian harp of imposing size with multiple layers of resonating strings, revealed its nature as fondamento, in the subtle art of continuo. Direct contact with the open strings gave singers, accompanying themselves on the harp, unparalleled control over the instrument’s timbral potential. This is reflected in the role of the instrument within musica secreta, private concerts at the courts of Ferrara and Modena stylistically favouring word painting and chromaticism, in ensembles such as the concerto delle donna and Baroni sisters. The expressive freedom of their art influenced poets and composers and contributed to the development of the seconda prattica at the turn of the sixteenth century. Indeed, voice and harp were held up as the ideal way to perform epic poetry, a reflection of the mesmerising contrast and colour their combined forces could deliver. How do we find this unique skill-set today from a broken line of tradition, contending with limited, conflicting primary resources? There is very little surviving repertoire specific to the instrument, and other sources such as paintings are static representations with considerable variation in position and placement of the instrument, body and hands, making it hard to replicate. In the years dedicated to exploring the arpa doppia, we harpists uncover these insights through shared motions and motivations of our forebears— finding a way to play like them by trying to vividly colour the text as they did. This is a way artistic research can bring to life the spectrum of lost practice and technique. My research has resulted in the creation of timbral notation for the arpa doppia, easily added to music notation and publishing software. This notation is designed to help recreate as much as possible all the timbral refinement found by the hands of masterful singer-harpists. It documents, builds upon and preserves the invaluable research of historical practitioners, using visual, contact-based diagrams to provide clarity in understanding this evocative and highly specialised art form. With this foundation of timbre and text, it aims to reconstitute the virtuosity, influence and innovation of the original arpa doppia players, through our shared practice today.  Biography: While playing as the Australian Youth Orchestra's Principal Harpist, and as a fellow of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Kit Spencer's Honours degree culminated in studying Berio's infamous Sequenza II with its foremost interpreter, Alice Giles. Her passion for colour, gesture and bass lead her to arpa doppia, beginning with Andrew Lawrence King's St. Petersburg production of Landi's La Morte d'Orfeo and Monteverdi's L'Orfeo in Bauska Castle, Latvia.

At the beginning of Figure 4.42, Andrew Lawrence King can be seen leaning over the soundboard to reach the very bottom of the bass strings to maximise the attack. At the beginning of the song, you can hear him using this lower part of the strings to lead the downbeat and create impulse. He also plays with his nails, creating a commanding brightness and harder attack that cuts through the sustain of other louder instruments’. While he doesn’t typically use the fingerpad as much, he has great control over attack speed,

In Figure 4.43, Sarah Ridy begins with her thumb bent slightly back, using lower contact on the thumb to create a warmer sound in the treble melody, counteracting the brightness the thumb’s typically higher string height placement from the fingers and creating very well balanced trills. Throughout the piece you can observe her changing the string height to enhance the expression, for example 2:00 you can hear the left hand dropping closer to the soundboard to create a darker sound, with the right brighter on the fingertips but also lower on the strings. At 2:18, both her left and right hands move to the middle of the strings to create a longer sound with less attack.

In these three examples, it is evident that controlling and changing the three elements of timbre is already an integral natural part of historically informed performance of the arpa doppia, though outside of direct tuition, it largely goes unstudied or recorded.

In the Keyboard map (Figure 4.45) all of the different characters are shown. From left to right the attack speed increases, from bottom to top the string height rises and the finger contact alternates from high, medium and low from left to right in each section of speed.

The download link can be found below.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwIuH36xVs8NclJjSjJGUUdVTmV4ZDVRU2FFYlNuY0RZMHQ4

5.1 Epic Application of Timbral Word Painting

4.4. Keyboard Map and Download Link

There are many variations just on the extremes of each element, but of course each one has its own subtleties. These are useful, not only in creating contrast, but also problem solving when there are more logistical elements to it, for example, while playing in the low bass, necessitating height of contact closer to the soundboard to prevent overstriking, a harsh attack can be negated with lower finger contact and a slower speed, or if playing in the trebles requiring higher contact to project, a stronger attack can be created with have a faster speed, with contact high on the finger. With all of these elements, a lot of it comes down to purpose and the taste of the player, and it is one of the reasons why historical harpists today sound very different from one another.

In Figure 4.41, Mara Galassi begins with a harder sound at the fingertip to command attention. As she continues, her left hand has quite a high placing more on the pad of the finger, which facilitates imitation and creates a longer, sustaining line in the bass to facilitate voicing. When she begins the ascending scalar pattern at 1:00, she keeps it lower on the string as it is passed between the voices, ensuring that it is well articulated and with added attack to create focus, with the other lines played higher on the strings to allow them to ring and create longer phrases. This is an excellent example of using timbre to create more distinct voicing at the harp.

As you can see from Figure 4.44, just with the three variations of three timbral elements, there are 27 different combinations, each one given assigned and keyboard mapped so that it could be typed into music notation and office software.

Figure 4.41— Mara Galassi. Fantasia by Francesco da Milano.

Nestortor. ‘Mara Galassi, "Voluptas Dolendi: I Gesti del Caravaggio"’ Online video clip. Youtube. Uploaded 22 Dec. 2010. Web. Accessed January 16, 2017.

Figure 4.44—Table of three variations of three timbral elements

Figure 4.45— Keyboard map of font figures.

Figure 4.42—Andrew Lawrence King in Claudio Monteverdi’s L'Orfeo: Act 1 Prologue "Dal mi permesso", conducted by Jordi Savall (Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona, Spain)

DrMarkAlburger. ‘Claudio Monteverdi - L'Orfeo: Act 1 Prologue "Dal mi permesso."’ Online video clip. Youtube. Uploaded 3 October 2010. Web. Accessed January 16, 2017.

Figure 4.43—Sarah Ridy. Monica by Bernardo Storace.

Hoffer, Eitan. “Storace - Monica” Online video clip. Youtube. Uploaded 23 January, 2015. Web. Accessed January 16, 2017.

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