{"title":"Learning Old Music in a New Age of Digital Reproduction","authors":"Robert O. Gjerdingen","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0022","url":null,"abstract":"There are over four hundred genres of popular music known in North America, and many more if one includes the favourite musics of recent immigrants. Which of these should be singled out and taught to children? There is no good answer to that question. Classical European music is a good alternative, one that has a rich history and is known, at least a little, all over the world. But instead of teaching children just to reproduce what is written on a page of music, why don’t we teach them to make classical music—to improvise and compose it. The rediscovery of the lessons from the old conservatories shows us how improvisation and composition can be taught to ordinary children, leading to extraordinary results.","PeriodicalId":172483,"journal":{"name":"Child Composers in the Old Conservatories","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124097027","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Beaux-Arts Framework for Music","authors":"Robert O. Gjerdingen","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0021","url":null,"abstract":"The methods for composing taught at the Paris Conservatory were similar to the three-stage, sketch-draft-refinement model of the School of Fine Arts. The chapter describes how four masters translated this model into music lessons. François Bazin shows how to sketch and elaborate the harmonization of a given melody. Édouard Deldevez takes an unfigured partimento bass by Fenaroli and makes an elaborate analysis of it to determine how it should be realized. André Gedalge demonstrates how to first sketch and then refine an episode of a fugue. Lastly, Maurice Ravel creates a stage-by-stage analysis of a difficult passage from his own Noble and Sentimental Walzes.","PeriodicalId":172483,"journal":{"name":"Child Composers in the Old Conservatories","volume":"52 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134442389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dispositions and the Mastery of Complexity","authors":"Robert O. Gjerdingen","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0012","url":null,"abstract":"What today we might term “orchestration” or “arranging” would have fallen under the term “disposition” in Naples. The same counterpoint, for example, could be realized as a “disposition in three voices” or “in four voices.” Each voice or instrumental part would be written on its own staff. Unlike in partimento playing, where small errors in counterpoint could be ignored, dispositions made every interrelationship visible and open to inspection and evaluation. The French four-voice realizations (realisations) in open score that figured so prominently in the contests for harmony and fugue at the Paris Conservatory were direct descendants of Neapolitan dispositions.","PeriodicalId":172483,"journal":{"name":"Child Composers in the Old Conservatories","volume":"160 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132702029","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Social Class","authors":"Robert O. Gjerdingen","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Distinctions of social class were very strong in the Europe of earlier centuries. Musicians were considered to be in the lower classes of people who worked with their hands (or voices). People in these lower classes were not welcome in the new type of universities pioneered in nineteenth-century Germany. So musicians went to conservatories and the youth of the upper classes went to universities or received private academic instruction. The decline of conservatories in the United States has led to aspiring musicians attending universities instead of conservatories. In the process they receive an amateur curriculum developed originally for European dilettantes.","PeriodicalId":172483,"journal":{"name":"Child Composers in the Old Conservatories","volume":"108 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116673235","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Institutionalized Apprenticeship","authors":"Robert O. Gjerdingen","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Apprenticeship was the normal way to learn a trade in past centuries. A typical master might have one or two apprentices, who lived in the master’s home like members of the family. A new path for apprentices opened up with the founding in London of the Inns of Court, four institutions to train future lawyers. The combination of famous teachers, a critical mass of talented students, and the experiences of seeing law practiced in a royal city all made this new type of apprenticeship superior to what came before. The same thing happened with music training in the four conservatories of Naples. Great teachers, strong competition, and world-class music in a royal city led to conservatory students winning the best music jobs in Europe.","PeriodicalId":172483,"journal":{"name":"Child Composers in the Old Conservatories","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132759261","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Predicting Creativity within a Tradition","authors":"Robert O. Gjerdingen","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0016","url":null,"abstract":"Creativity, in the context of traditional arts, is more about finding inventive combinations of well-known elements than about coming up with something entirely new. Within conservatories, the masters used annual contests to reward or weed out students who were good or bad at combining various learned schemas in artistic ways. The chapter examines some harmony assignments completed by Claude Debussy. While he was one of the most original composers in music history, he was also very good at combining traditional schemas in response to a given melody or bass. Two of his assignments for the class of Émile Durand are among his earliest known musical expressions.","PeriodicalId":172483,"journal":{"name":"Child Composers in the Old Conservatories","volume":"251 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123897176","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Contest Piece as a Probe of Memory","authors":"Robert O. Gjerdingen","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0014","url":null,"abstract":"At the end of the school year at the Paris Conservatory each class or studio held a contest. How a student did in the contests could determine whether or not he or she could continue in that class, advance to a higher class, or be dismissed. In the harmony contests, students would be unlikely to win any sort of prize if they could not reproduce the contrapuntal schemas suggested by patterns in the given basses or melodies. That is, a student was provided with just one of the four parts (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) and required to complete the rest of the parts. The test typically lasted six hours, with the student shut in a room without any keyboard instrument. By being sensitive to the cues in the given voice, students could retrieve from their memories the other voices of the appropriate marches harmoniques. These were descendants of the movimenti (bass motions) taught in the Naples conservatories.","PeriodicalId":172483,"journal":{"name":"Child Composers in the Old Conservatories","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129502751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Schemas, Exemplars, and the Treasure Trove of Memory","authors":"Robert O. Gjerdingen","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"One of the purposes of music training in the old conservatories was to stuff the students’ memories full of useful musical patterns. Psychologists often use the term “schema” to describe structured memories. In Naples, the masters taught dozens of schemas to the children. They taught three basic types of cadences, the so-called Rule of the Octave, the contrapuntal patterns known as suspensions, and a number of musical sequences categorized by the motions of their basses. These were explicit schemas in the sense of having names and being openly discussed. There were also implicit schemas—patterns learned through repeated similar experiences but not given specific names. Professional musicians seemed to know many patterns by name, whereas amateur musicians and concert listeners probably knew only a few names like “cadence.”","PeriodicalId":172483,"journal":{"name":"Child Composers in the Old Conservatories","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116771625","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Beaux-Arts Framework","authors":"Robert O. Gjerdingen","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0020","url":null,"abstract":"The Institute of France has for centuries controlled royal or public support for the arts in France. Under its wings it has both a School of Fine Arts for the visual arts and the Paris Conservatory for music, as well as many other institutions. The schools of fine arts and music were set up along the similar lines. The goal was to train the next generation of artists and musicians in the classic arts of a past golden age. For visual artists, sculptors, and architects, this meant the art of ancient Greece and Rome. For musicians, this meant the art of sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Italy. For young artists outside the official School of Fine Arts, instructional lithographs could be purchased and copied. These lithographs showed how to make a sketch, then to refine the sketch into a set of contours, and then to add shading and texture.","PeriodicalId":172483,"journal":{"name":"Child Composers in the Old Conservatories","volume":"57 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116288943","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Framework for Elaboration","authors":"Robert O. Gjerdingen","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0019","url":null,"abstract":"The bass motions known in Naples as movimenti, and the contrapuntal collocations associated with them, would rarely be presented plainly in a real composition. Apprentice composers needed to learn how to decorate and embellish the plain melodies. Because this usually involved inserting notes with lesser time values, these embellishments could be termed “diminutions.” Lessons from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries present dozens of ways in which to “diminish” a given melody or bass. Counterpoint itself could be thought of as a way of embellishing a given musical subject.","PeriodicalId":172483,"journal":{"name":"Child Composers in the Old Conservatories","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127558040","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}