#period performance

[gasparodasalo]

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) - Concerto for 2 Flutes, Bassoon, Strings and Basso continuo in e-minor, TWV 52:e2, II. Presto. Performed by Karl Kaiser, flute, Michael Schneider, flute & direction, Marita Schaar, bassoon, and La Stagione on period instruments.

[tfblovesmusic]

How the 24 Italian Songs and Arias and the Suzuki Violin School Are Similar, Pt. 1

As someone who partook in many spring concerts, I for one have encountered at least one instance of a classmate performing a chestnut from the 24 Italian Songs and Arias.

That instance occurred in 8th grade, in 2004, when I was clarinetist in the concert band and violist in the orchestra. One of my classmates - who previously played Ti Moune in my middle school's production of Once on This Island to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling - sang Giovanni Bononcini's "Per la gloria d'adoravi."

Fast forward 20 years later - to March 29, 2024. Beyonce Knowles made an allusion to another selection from the 24 Italian Songs and Arias in her gripping, country-infused ballad about domestic violence, "DAUGHTER." That time, it was Giuseppe or Tommaso Giordani's early Classical concert vocal piece, "Caro mio ben:"

Several vocal studio students, voice coaches, voice major undergrads, and pro classical vocalists took to social media upon the song's release and shared memories - both good and traumatizing - of singing excerpts from "that yellow book."

"(I'm looking forward to hearing and seeing) impressionable young singers trying to work those melismata into their renditions at a local National Association of Teachers of Singing festival," a voice teacher sarcastically commented on Facebook.

"('Caro' was) The very first aria I heard in an American theater camp," another vocalist recalled, "and they made us sing it! Mmm, flashbacks."

"(Sing 'O Del Mio Dolce Ardor' from Christoph Willibald Gluck's Paride ed Elena) next, Bey," soprano Josephine Shaw beseeched in her caption of her video on TikTok, "I'm begging you."

Unsurprisingly, Beyonce herself was an alumnus of the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in her native Houston, TX. Thus, she and her sister Solange had their fill learning and reciting "Caro" and other chestnuts from the "yellow book" as voice students.

For this early music and historically informed performance (HIP) hound since 5th grade, "DAUGHTER" unlocked that very core memory of hearing my classmate sing Bononcini's "Per la gloria d'adoravi" in person, accompanied by piano, at a middle school spring concert, despite me being in band and orchestra as opposed to choir.

But Beyonce's "DAUGHTER" wasn't the only time the 24 Italian Songs and Arias was referred to in pop culture. Terri Fletcher (portrayed by Hilary Duff) struggles through "Caro mio ben" in her voice lessons in the 2004 musical film Raise Your Voice.

BuzzFeed ranks "Caro" as a topper for their list, "A Definitive Ranking Of 24 Italian Songs And Arias." Nina Mohan described it as the "bread and butter of classical singers. Everyone's done it, and everyone loves it." (Notably and wryly, the subheading in the article plays a pun on "Tu lo sai," an aria from a lost Giuseppe Torelli cantata.)

Photo via The Drunken Tenor on FB.

But the iconic yellow book has some thorns. Some alumnus vocal students call it a "source of torture." Some others criticized the use by students who are especially tyros in Italian diction. Some musical theater majors who are forced to trudge through it to hone and improve their vocal skills love to set it in a pit with other fuel and kindling and roast their whole sucking pigs (aka mga lechon) over it. (After all, they must be proficient in dancing, acting, AND singing.)

"My problem," a Redditor said, "is that I just don't like the songs. It's not like I haven't tried them either - I started my training with 'the 24' during my first stage of voice lessons when I was 11-14 years old. I've also sang a few of them in recitals. As I'm discovering my musical preferences, though, I'm realizing that I strongly prefer the German and French song repertoire, especially Richard Strauss, Francis Poulenc, Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré, and Cecile Chaminade, as well as German Volkslieder."

For many early music and historically-informed practice scholars, the issues with the 24 Italian Songs and Arias musicologically and historically run MUCH deeper than mere indifference and animosity.

To better understand how they are problematic, let's make an analogy to a similar pedagogical set of books for violin students: the Suzuki VIolin School. But before that, let's look at the "yellow book's" parent predecessor, Alesandro Parisotti's Arie Antiche.

"Parisotti collected these antique arias in what was the 19th century vogue for discovering forgotten old or antique music from the classical and baroque eras," reads a Wikipedia article.

"The taste for rediscovered music was de rigueur among musicians and audiences of the nineteenth century, with composers lesser than Mendelssohn and Brahms participating as well. Parisotti found forgotten scores and arranged their arias (or duets) for solo singer and piano accompaniment. Parisotti romanticized the pieces by altering word placement, chordal structure and/or adding ornamentation to the vocal line."

It's worth noting at the time of Arie Antiche's publication in 1885 and G. Schirmer's American edition, Anthology of Italian Song of the 17th and 18th Centuries', publication in 1894 that those arrangements of the airs were pieces of a Romantic Era umbrella music subgenre: parlor music.

"Parlor music," a Library of Congress article reads, "became very fashionable as increased importance was placed on musical proficiency as a hallmark of good taste and moral reputability. Musical prowess, particularly keyboard playing, was highly prized, and a commonly-held value was that a proper education was incomplete without the study of music."

"Parlor music repertoire frequently included sentimental songs about romantic and maternal love, odes and tributes to historical figures and leaders of the day, and patriotic songs."

Arrangements of ancient airs - as it was the case with Arie Antiche and Anthology of Italian Song of the 17th and 18th Centuries - were also included in the parlor music canon.

Around the same time when parlor music was on the rise, editors of instrumental music also romanticized Baroque music for especially amateur string players. "When Johann Sebastian Bach's Cello Suites received their first publications in Paris in the 1820s," cellist Sarah Freiberg wrote in Strings Magazine, "they were renamed 'Sonatas (or Solos).' Heavily edited with tempo markings and dynamics, essentially they were updated for the mostly budding cellists who were likely to buy them."

"There was not another edition until 1866, when Friedrich Grützmacher tried his hand at it. He’s now remembered for 'updating and improving' a Luigi Boccherini cello concerto to make it more palatable for the Romantic era, and he did something similar for the cello suites. He thought his revisions would allow hopelessly old-fashioned, otherwise forgotten works to remain in the repertoire—and his Boccherini edition is still performed today."

"Grützmacher’s 'performer’s edition' of the Bach Cello Suites is so heavily edited, arranged, and re-harmonized that it is listed under arrangements and transcriptions on the IMSLP website. His objective, as quoted in Bradley James Knobel’s 2006 dissertation on the suites, was 'to reflect and to determine what these masters (Schumann and Mendelssohn) might have been thinking, and to set down all they, themselves, could have indicated.'"

"As to Bach, Grützmacher pointed to successful performances of his own edition as 'something that would have been impossible with the bare original in its primitive state.'"

It wasn't surprising that violin and piano transcriptions of Baroque music were heavily edited at the time. Even more unsurprising was that those were the pieces pedagogue Shinichi Suzuki based the pieces of the Suzuki Violin School on.

One of them was Arthur Bent's and Norman O'Neill's violin-piano transcription of the 10th movement of the first suite from Joseph-Hector Fiocco's Pièces de clavecin, Op. 1. Perhaps Dr. Suzuki might had learned the above 1928 recording by Yehudi Menuhin and Louis Persinger by ear or read the score while he studied violin in Germany in the 1920s before teaching it in turn in his native Japan.

Just as Parisotti and the G. Schirmer publications initially pandered to amateur singers, most of whom domestic entertainers with occupations outside the music fields, Dr. Suzuki's Violin School initially pandered to student violinists who intended to make music solely for recreational purposes. "What I intend is not education for creating prodigies, but rather a mode of cultivating the abilities of children by means of the violin," he stated.

Though the intentions of edits of Baroque music in Arie Antiche; Anthology of Italian Song of the 17th and 18th Centuries; 24 Italian Arias and Songs; and the Suzuki Violin School are beneficial for respectively budding vocalists and violinists, they often deviate from the original manuscripts.

More will be explained in Part 2.

[ai-wa]

Welcome back

[shadyhouse]

if anyone is able to help me out i'd appreciate it, im still broke as hell. this month has been really difficult for me. i worked a total of 5 days all month and my bank account is in the negatives again after paying bills and getting some living essentials. i dont know how im going to pay my rent like this. i applied to a financial relief fund from a local trans advocacy group but it's going to be a few weeks until anything comes from that. if you have literally anything to spare it would help me out a lot 😭🙏 i feel bad ive been asking for help so often and i know everyone is struggling, im working on getting my life back in order but everything fucking sucks and is difficult right now :( even just spreading this is a huge help

pp: paypal.me/bewearrr vnm: tobias_leviathan

thank you 💕💕

[funfactory]

chaeyoung ♡ attitude (230609)

[eobard-thawne]

FAVORITE SCENES FROM BECOMING ELIZABETH: 5/∞" Lord Dudley! I'm sure my brother could increase your income if need be. There is no need for you to resort to robbery. Now, Mary, it is entirely within your power for this to be the last we ever speak of it. The louder you protest, the more you fracture an already fractured country. I suggest then you give me nothing to protest. You think I can concede to this plan? Marry a foreign heretic, be shipped away to a Protestant court? A woman's family arranges her marriage, and a subject obeys her king. If you protest, you protest the natural order of things as set out by God. You're protesting God. I will marry any man my brother sees fit, as long as I will be permitted to practice my faith. Perhaps you will. May I suggest you ask him nicely."

[antirepurp]

delivering controversial takes to the "the gang plays minecraft" discussion

[cyanvalour]

Not me managing to somehow transfer my period to Dark for a day

(inspired by this post)

[nnaalluuaa]

The Beginning of the End (1995 - 2000), Mariko Mori

“ Starting in 1995, I went to 13 cities around the world with my Body Capsule for the ‘Beginning of the End’ series, including Angkor Wat, Teotihuacan, Tokyo, and Manhattan. In the final work, completed in 2000, all the cities are connected — east and west, as well as past, present, and future. ”

[hood-ex]

Also, it bugs me that in TT's interpretation of Dick's past, Dick apparently hasn't even been on the trapeze yet as a 7 year old.

[gasparodasalo]

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) - Trio Sonata for 2 Violins and Continuo in b-minor, Op. 2 No. 1, HWV 386b, II. Allegro ma non troppo. Performed by London Baroque on period instruments.

[tfblovesmusic]

COMING SOON!!!

[verypersonalscreencaps]

GILLIAN ANDERSON as Lily Bart THE HOUSE OF MIRTH (2000, dir. Terence Davies)

[rb19]

f1 tracks :: Circuit of the Americas Photo by Darren Heath

[skitskatdacat63]

His bullfighting days aren't over quite yet.

+

[victorian-nymph]

The Palmer thing scene but someone put california girls on the playlist before doing the blood tests