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‘Il vero modo di cantar’: the international transmission of the sound of Italian singing in early modern Europe
Get PDFIt has acquired the status of a myth: how Italy, land of song, in a process beginning sometime in the sixteenth century, harnessed its native people’s apparently inborn and irresistibly alluring singing style and so successfully exported it that by the mid-seventeenth century, it had achieved a European hegemony of art singing that would, before long, become world-wide. Behind the myth lies, naturally, plenty of fact: a rich historiography traces the colonisation by Italian musicians of vast swathes of European music culture, primarily through the dissemination of compositional genres, and migrations both out of and into Italy of singers, composers, teachers and consumers of music. Italian singing ultimately became the key driver of an intricate network of dynamic structures of music consumption across Northern Europe, feeding many dependent economies either directly, or indirect spill-overs from it. But attempts to account for this complex cultural history have, until recently, largely ignored what lies at its heart: the embodied acoustics of singing itself, and the commercialisation and international transmission of ‘Italian vocality’ through a complex interaction of emulation, local adaptation, professional instruction and self-teaching, supported more by specialised printed method books. This paper explores the process by which a highly elite style of vocalising first fostered in the secretive world of Italian courtly comportment, made its way into the cultural mainstream of European society, thanks both to the economic and social drivers of an emerging capitalist Europe, and the universality of the human voice with its capacity for being tamed and trained
Beyond physical practice: psychological skills training for enhanced performance [fact sheet]
No full textMinute
No full textFor piano and percussion, duration 1 minute.
This work was premiered by Stephen Gutman (piano) and Richard Benjafield (percussion) at the Royal Festival Hall
Hylas
No full textFor three flutes. This piece was first published by BMIC New Voices and remains part of their collection
Two elegies framing a shout
No full textFor soprano saxophone and piano, duration 14 minutes. This work was premiered on 12 January 1995 by Martin Robertson (saxophone) and Tony Gray (piano). It was recorded by the Nash Ensemble in 2001 (Black Box BBM1065), see https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/7922408--music-to-hear
Set to
No full textFor brass ensemble, duration 8 minutes. This piece was commissioned by the Aldeburgh Foundation with funds provided by the Arts Council of Great Britain. It was premiered on 24 August 1993 by London Brass conducted by David Purser at the Aldeburgh Proms. Other ensembles who have since performed this work include Sinfóníuhljómsveit Íslands (Iceland Symphony Orchestra), Grupo de Metais da Orquestra Nacional do Porto, Ensemble Windkraft, Stuttgart Radio Brass, Mahler Chamber Brass, DePaul Wind Ensemble, Philharmonia Brass, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Canadian National Brass Project, New World Symphony, and Bruckner Brassensemble.
It has also been recorded by brass partout conducted by Hermann Bäumer (BIS, BIS-1354 CD) see https://bis.se/conductors/baumer-hermann/black-castles-british-music-for-brass
Finding marking erasing
No full textFor cello and percussion, duration c.10 minutes. This work was commissioned by the G Project and first performed by Gabriella Swallow (cello) and Genevieve Wilkins (percussion) at the Forge, Camden on 15 April 2010
The breaking wheel
No full textFor clarinet and piano, duration 9 minutes. This work was commissioned by the Little Missenden Festival with support from the Friends of the Festival.
The first performance was given by Mark Simpson (clarinet) and Richard Uttley (piano) on 16 October 2017 at Little Missenden Church
