E quando mai potro cessar di piangere ? : an exploration of the links between arias with obbligato instruments and musical affects in Antonio Caldara’s oratorios composed between 1716 and 1736 for the Habsburg’s Hofmusikkapelle in Vienna

Maud Haering

Student Number 3262561 Supervisor Inês de Avena Braga Title E quando mai potrò cessar di piangere ? An exploration of the links between arias with obbligato instruments and musical affects in Antonio Caldara’s oratorios composed between 1716 and 1736 for the Habsburg’s Hofmusikkapelle in Vienna Research Question What is the link between obbligato instruments, text and affects in Antonio Caldara’s oratorios composed for the Vienna’s Hofmusikkapelle between 1716 and 1736? Sub-questions How can the creation of a descriptive catalogue of Caldara’s oratorios help uncover his choices for instrumentation in relation to the libretti and religious context? How does Caldara’s choice of obbligato instrument emphasize the affects already present in the text? Summary The aim of this research is to rediscover music that has been forgotten for centuries. Through the topic of making links between obbligato instruments and affects in the texts from the libretti in Caldara's oratorios written when he was a composer at the Vienna Hofmusikkapelle, I would like to shine a light on new arias for voice and obbligato instruments which are, in my point of view, very beautiful and which deserve to be highlighted. Antonio Caldara needed to adapt to the imperial court music taste and also to its available instrumentarium, and from the day he started to compose for Charles VI, he began to use different instruments in his way of writing arias in his oratorios. In order to keep the focus of the research on his oratorios composed in Vienna, I purposefully will not discuss the considerable number of operas he composed in the same period, and I will contextualize these works thanks to a descriptive catalogue of each of the oratorios, to the translations of the texts of the arias, and by paying attention to the Habsburg dinasty in Vienna. Short biography Maud Haering is a French soprano. After studying Medieval Music at the Sorbonne University of Paris (France), she decided to continue her specialization in the Early Music repertoire in singing more Baroque and Renaissance music. With several ensembles, she performed different baroques styles (Italian, German, English and French) of different periods (17th and 18th centuries) either secular or sacred. Always looking for new repertoire to discover and sing, she really enjoys going into libraries to see manuscripts or to explore the thousands of resources available online to find new pieces. This research about Caldara is one of her explorations.

This search for arias with obbligato instruments in the oratorios composed by Antonio Caldara between 1716 and 1736 for the Vienna Hofmusikkapelle brought me many benefits.

First of all, even though I am used to having contact with manuscripts and facsimiles, I must say that this virtual and physical plunge into the pages of the works of the Österreischiche Nationalbibliothek has pleased me a great deal. In fact, I bitterly regret that the current health crisis has prevented me from going back there since last August to leaf through the last three manuscripts I had to consult. This research in the virtual library or on the spot has given me a lot of autonomy in the search for new repertoire. First of all, to look for works, to find the libraries where they are kept, to try to find digital versions before going there if necessary. All this is an exciting research work, even if it takes a long time, with sometimes disappointments, or difficulties to find information, but also full of good surprises, such as discovering arias that are then considered "new".

The analyses of the different arias I have made have also taught me a lot about the role of the obbligato instrument, which is sometimes considered no more and no less than an accompaniment to singing. This research, and the different ways in which Caldara used these instruments, opened my eyes to the almost infinite possibilities of interweaving the voice and the obbligato instrument in the service of the text and the affects present in the text. I realise that I now analyse the arias I am about to sing much more carefully and deeply than before, that I am more attentive to any melodic inflections of the instrument and that I am also more aware of the affects highlighted in the piece.

Last but not least, this research has enabled me to find arias with instruments with which I had never sung before, such as the chalumeau, the trombone, or the combination of trombone and bassoon. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to record any of these arias before the publication of this research in the research catalogue, nor before my oral presentation, but there are plans for future concerts with some of these arias.

PROFESSIONAL APPLICATION OF MY RESEARCH

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