La pratica degli affetti - The practice of affections

Elisa De Toffol

Research question: How the relationship between seconda prattica (Claudio Monteverdi) and poetica del gesto (Luciano Berio) can be absorbed in a singing study process and which are the practical results/vocal consequences? Abstract: This research wants to investigate through a personal vocal approach the nature of the connection between music and text in Claudio Monteverdi’s and Luciano Berio’s compositions. It started with my personal wish as a singer to be able to express feelings behind words in such a way that the relation between both becomes more clear. I found in the connection between these two composers the perfect ground to build this vocal study path which I documented with recordings. This vocal path has proven to be full of inspiration and stimuli: on one side the open, honest and modern full of love language of Monteverdi, which shapes the harmony according to the meaning of the text (pone l’armonia serva all’orazione). On the other side the inspiring, rich, creative and fascinating writing of Luciano Berio that with his poetics of the gesture seems to reveal in a direct and elegant way a world of infinite possibilities of colorful combinations between musical sounds and words. This research exposition, is divided in four main chapters. The first one is an introduction to Monteverdi and his seconda prattica in which the doctrine of affections is exposed with a special focus at the Lamento d'Arianna along with my research about vocal interpretation. The second chapter describes the musical context in Italy at the beginning of the 20th-century observing how the new composers looked back at the past and in particular at Monteverdi and his contemporaries; in the third chapter Luciano Berio's poetics of gesture will be exposed and it will be observed how some of his composition refer to Monteverdi's seconda prattica. A final chapter will show, with a video recording, my vocal research during the approach to their music.

Special thanks go to my singing teachers Rita Dams and Noa Frenkel, to my research supervisor Johannes Boer, to the theorbist Giorgia Zanin, to Roberto Gini for helping me to collect the material and sharing with me his knowlegde, and to Antonella Gianese and Jill Feldman for guiding me through the notes of the Lamento d' Arianna since the very beginning.

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Conclusions

The practice of affections: exploring through a personal vocal study path the nature of the connection between music and text in Claudio Monteverdi’s and Luciano Berio’s compositions.

This is the first sentence of this research paper.

To be able to reach an effective transmission of emotions, I started my vocal research from the study of Monteverdi's seconda prattica which revealed to me that expressing the deep connection between music and text is for singers the key to a direct and honest transmission of emotions, and this is something to do with “sprezzatura”. In light of this information, the Lamento d'Arianna has been analyzed with a special focus on the text meaning and his consequent elaboration into the emotional study process, by the performer. The parallel vocal study of Berio's compositions like Avendo gran disio and Sequenza III, led me to search for information regarding the connection between Luciano Berio and Claudio Monteverdi. After a closer look at the musical environment at the beginning of the Italian 20th-century, the Berio's poetics of gesture finds a connection with Monteverdi's seconda prattica, which is exposed in the video of chapter four.

Despite the years that separate these two composers, this side-by-side study process led me to deepen my relationship with singing. Exploring the text-music connection more deeply, allowed me to embrace new color possibilities in the voice and “take more risks” in terms of expression, but it also guided me closer to the wishes of the composers. At the same time, it is still challenging being completely able to define which is the limit between “feeling free” as a performer and “taking too much freedom” from the musical writing. But thanks to this research I understood that this limit has a name and it is “choice”. Our choices will make the difference between ours and others interpretation and they will define our artistic personality, which will always need to be fed by a deep knowledge of the music and the text.

The example of Cathy Berberian encouraged me to give space to a more fundamental research of my vocal sound; the connection between Claudio Monteverdi's and Luciano Berio's music stimulated in me the curiosity towards new musical languages and the awareness that there is always a way to go deeper in the music understanding. There are many ways to do that. This research chose to focus on the communication of the emotions contained in the music, as key-tool to increase the quality level of my performance. Even if I may say I am happy about my first outcomes, I recognize that this is an endless process, as it is studying music (fortunately). I wish this research can represent a stimulus to other singers to deepen the text-music relationship in their study process in order to enhance their performances, or simply be a shared witness of an honest musical study.

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