{"title":"Solfeggi and the Acquisition of Style","authors":"Robert O. Gjerdingen","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"In the old conservatories the equivalent of “music 101” was the class in solfeggio. This was where beginning students learned to read music, to distinguish the sizes of intervals, and to learn scales and arpeggios. Today syllables like “Do, Re, Mi” are connected with scale degrees (steps 1, 2, 3 respectively). This was not the case originally. “Mi,” for example, meant a tone with a whole step below it in the scale and a half step above it. Thus both “E,” “B,” and “F♯” were all “Mi.” Similarly, “F,” “C,” and “B♭” were all “Fa.” The chapter details how this worked and gives examples of lessons in the old style of solfeggio.","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":"129862295","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":"Affordance and the Musical Habitus","authors":"Robert O. Gjerdingen","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0015","url":null,"abstract":"In the terminology of design, an “affordance” is what we perceive an object as inviting us to do. Thus a doorknob invites us to turn it, a button on a computer screen invites us to click on it, and so forth. For the students in the old conservatories, specific patterns in basses and melodies invited specific completions in four voices. Using four contestants in the harmony contest of 1877 as a sample, we can judge the perceived strength of the affordances of the given melody by noticing how similar are the contestants’ responses. If three or four of the contestants realized a short passage of the given melody in the same way, it probably means that their educations and experiences had led them to hear that passage in the same way and with a very similar meaning.","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":"122692481","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":"Partimenti and the Power of Improvisation","authors":"Robert O. Gjerdingen","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"Like a lead sheet in popular music, a partimento gives a performer a single line of music to aid in the performance of a multivoice composition. Lead sheets provide a simplified melody and symbols for chords. Partimenti provide a bass and sometimes figured-bass numbers to indicate specific intervals. In both cases the reconstruction works well if the performer has a good knowledge of the style of music involved and a memory for the kinds of musical patterns needed. In Naples, children played the written partimento with their left hands at a small harpsichord. With their right hands they improvised the types of melodies, chords, and counterpoints implied by the bass. Beginners may have improvised mostly simple chords. Intermediate-level students improvised melodies and counterpoints. And advanced students developed highly contrapuntal realizations that included partimento fugues.","PeriodicalId":172483,"journal":{"name":"Child Composers in the Old Conservatories","volume":"141 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":"123579999","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":"Little Boys on Their Own","authors":"Robert O. Gjerdingen","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"The chapter traces the musical educations of Domenico Cimarosa, a contemporary of Mozart, in the 1760s and of Henri Busser, a contemporary of Claude Debussy, in the 1880s. Though born into quite different worlds, their experiences as fatherless boys taken in by conservatories were very similar. For both of them, instruction was largely nonverbal. They did not learn from reading about music. They learned by constantly imitating and creating music. That is, in modern terms, they learned predominantly “by ear,” although they also learned to read and write music.","PeriodicalId":172483,"journal":{"name":"Child Composers in the Old Conservatories","volume":"113 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":"129027035","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 Sickly Young Woman Speaks Elegant Harmony to One of the Immortals","authors":"Robert O. Gjerdingen","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0017","url":null,"abstract":"In the 1930s, the harmony classes at the Paris Conservatory were still segregated by gender. Jacques de La Presle was a teacher of “women’s harmony,” and in 1938 his student Colette Boyer won a first prize in the annual women’s harmony contest. The test bass had been composed by Henri Busser. Boyer’s realizations exhibit an elegance and refinement that must have impressed the judges. Henri Busser’s own realization of his bass is perhaps not quite as good as Boyer’s. Although the trauma of WWII led her to abandon music and seek refuge as a nun, her small artworks produced for the contests and classes in harmony remain testaments to her great talent. She knew nothing of the kind of harmony classes taught today in North America, but she was a minor master of the art of harmony as a living expression of a great European tradition.","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":"125864058","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":"Counterpoint and Collocation","authors":"Robert O. Gjerdingen","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0010","url":null,"abstract":"We know a lot about which words go together in our native language. In English we say “She caught a cold and then the flu.” We would never say “She caught the cold and then a flu.” Often we cannot articulate a rule for such knowledge—we just pick it up from hearing language in use. Counterpoint in music was learned the same way. Millions of combinations of tones were possible, but only certain combinations were preferred. Linguists call them “collocations,” meaning things co-located much more frequently than might be expected if combinations were random. The chapter surveys several contrapuntal collocations taught in Naples.","PeriodicalId":172483,"journal":{"name":"Child Composers in the Old Conservatories","volume":"18 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":"125583468","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":"Little Masters, Real Masters, and Masterpieces","authors":"Robert O. Gjerdingen","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0013","url":null,"abstract":"In the world of apprentices, journeymen, and masters, a masterpiece was a test piece completed as part of a claim to a master’s level of skill and status. In formal guilds there could be elaborate examinations, in which submitting a masterpiece was part of the process. In the Naples conservatories, advanced students could compose a large sacred work for chorus and instruments to demonstrate a professional level of skill. In between the masters who gave lessons to the conservatory children and the child apprentices who learned those lessons were a middle level of teaching assistants called “little masters” (mastricelli or maestrini). These were selected from advanced students who had passed qualifying examinations.","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":"131506927","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 Oval and Cross","authors":"Robert O. Gjerdingen","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0018","url":null,"abstract":"Just as apprentice musicians were taught a repertory of music schemas, so apprentice artists had to learn a repertory of visual schemas. One of the most common of these was the “oval and cross,” used to sketch the human head. The oval gave the outline of the skull while the cross (with religious symbolism) merged a vertical line for the nose with a horizontal line for the eyes. There was often a second horizontal line for the mouth. Apprentice artists had to learn to sketch the oval and cross in relation to any position of the head. Similar schemas were learned for eyes, ears, noses, hair, torsos, hands, feet, clothing, and so forth. Drawing manuals from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries provided examples to be copied.","PeriodicalId":172483,"journal":{"name":"Child Composers in the Old Conservatories","volume":"102 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":"115751206","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":"Intavolature and the Techniques of Instruments","authors":"Robert O. Gjerdingen","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0011","url":null,"abstract":"The notion of multiple voices coming together in harmony was deeply engrained in European ideas of fine music. For little hands playing a harpsichord, to capture the effect of multiple voices required some practice and special techniques. Intavolature were teaching pieces for beginning keyboard players. These pieces both introduced the basics of keyboard technique and demonstrated how to perform the most common schemas. Intavolature also provide us today with models for what the texture and level of difficulty might have been for realizations of partimenti.","PeriodicalId":172483,"journal":{"name":"Child Composers in the Old Conservatories","volume":"61 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":"130929635","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":"Masters Take Up the Challenge","authors":"Robert O. Gjerdingen","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653590.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"The early conservatories were trade schools. Over a period of about ten years they needed to transform orphans, then thought of as social outcasts, into skilled craftsmen who could earn a productive income and become self-supporting. So they developed practical methods to give boys the skills needed to become professional church organists, court composers, opera singers, orchestral musicians, or choir directors. The chapter surveys the historically most important music masters in Italy and the types of innovative lessons that they developed.","PeriodicalId":172483,"journal":{"name":"Child Composers in the Old Conservatories","volume":"25 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":"121834091","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}