46: Nicholas Mann

In this episode, I am joined by eminent professors Robert O. Gjerdingen, Giorgio Sanguinetti, Peter van Tour, and Rosa Cafiero, in a special panel session about the subject of partimento. We discuss the history of its modern research, the definition of partimento, why partimento died out, the problem with modern harmony instruction in conservatories today, the practical applicability of partimento in modern times, the future of partimento, and more.

Today we have a special episode dedicated to Solfeggio, featuring Professors Nicholas Baragwanath, Job IJzerman, Robert O. Gjerdingen, and Peter van Tour. The famed students of the 18th-century Neapolitan conservatories undertook an extensive 3-year course of hexachordal solmisation using guidonian syllables before they were allowed to touch an instrument. This excellent training preceded partimento and written counterpoint studies. We discuss all aspects of this pedagogy, whether it is worth learning today, its benefits, and answer numerous audience questions.

I'm delighted to share this interview recorded yesterday with the great Professor Robert O. Gjerdingen, focusing greatly on Music Schema Theory as revealed in his groundbreaking 2007 monograph "Music in the Galant Style". In addition, we discuss Roman Numeral Analysis, Harmonic Function Theory, Hugo Riemann, Tonality, Dahlhaus, and Schenker, and he answers numerous audience questions, enjoy!

0:00 Intro

0:36 Start

1:59 St. Pius X's Motu Proprio "Tra Le Sollecitudini"

5:16 How did the Council of Trent affect Gregorian chant?

5:54 What do you think of Organum and composers like Léonin and Pérotin?

6:45 Johann Joseph Fux

14:53 Knud Jeppesen

26:54 Did Palestrina improvise or play the organ?

28:39 Bach played on the accordion

30:36 The Lute

31:44 Exultate iusti by Viadana, sung by the Sistine Chapel in 1925

36:34 Historically Informed Performance Practice

39:33 Has improvised counterpoint pedagogy become more prevalent in today's university music curriculums?

41:29 Professor Schubert's YouTube Channel/s

43:07 19th century counterpoint

47:03 Nadia Boulanger

50:07 Counterpoint for modern composition

52:59 Wrapping Up

53:20 Outro

0:00 Intro

0:36 Start

1:29 Refinements in approach to teaching with "Harmony, Counterpoint, Partimento" since last interview

6:21 Understanding the patterns in the book as "pure sounds"

9:59 Domenico Scarlatti: Sonata K. 82

10:25 Thinking of cadences as schema and things that are polyphonic rather than modern terminology like PAC or IAC

16:58 Joseph Haydn: "Surprise" Symphony No. 94

18:41 Thinking of 3-part harmony as complete instead of 4-part harmony missing a voice?

26:52 Antonio Vivaldi: La Primavera

39:32 Where do you typically take your musical examples from in the book?

41:08 Joseph Haydn: Symphony No. 43 ("Mercury"), 4th mvt

47:09 How does someone learn the different ways to accompany a melody line?

50:16 Francesco Durante partimento

52:28 Francesco Durante partimento realized as a duo live example

55:35 Arcangelo Corelli: tempo di gavotta

56:41 Arcangelo Corelli: tempo di gavotta, live example

1:01:16 In the early 18th-century, nobody spoke of "half cadences", which was a term that didn't exist

1:03:39 Did they think in terms of modes in the early 18th-century for composition?

1:04:43 The Discant Cadence

1:06:43 Job plays Bach BWV928 excerpt live

1:10:47 On the fluidity of voices dropping in and out versus strictly having 4-voices SATB "chorale-style"

1:13:13 Richard Wagner: Tristan Vorspiel

1:18:58 Richard Wagner was a musical great-grandchild of Padre Martini

1:24:13 Robert Schumann

1:25:29 Johannes Brahms

 1:26:47 Tchaikovsky

1:29:52 How do new conservatory students react to your method?

1:32:29 How have other colleagues and professors reacted to your method?

1:34:20 Some conservatories have taken HCP as a compulsory book for 1st and 2nd year students

1:36:55 EXCLUSIVE: New Renaissance Counterpoint Book announced!

1:39:07 Wrapping Up

1:39:35 Outro

0:00 Intro

0:36 Start

1:26 When did you start your YouTube channel, and when did you shift from recording performances to research into Whole Beat?

6:22 Which composers used the clavichord?

9:01 Did playing the Clavichord change the way you played Organ?

11:06 What is the Clavichord's touch like?

12:55 Piano vs Clavichord

18:21 What if we had to reconstruct jazz without having access to any sound recordings but rely only on written transcriptions

30:21 Weren't there musical mechanical clocks during Haydn's time that captured authentic 18th-century musical performance practice?

34:22 What is the Whole Beat Metronome Principle (WBMP)?

36:45 Wim responds to people playing Czerny at single beat tempo

47:18 If Whole Beat is true, why do students and eye-witnesses of the great composers play so fast?

54:31 Was Beethoven's metronome broken?

57:56 Don't the flyers and concert bills that advertise the concerts of these composers invalidate Whole Beat because the concerts would be too long as opposed to their actual advertised length?

1:03:11 What has been the general response to your research overall?

1:08:57 Injuries: The unspoken dark side of performance careers in Classical music

1:14:55 Beethoven recording gets canned because the musicians' careers got threatened

 1:15:48 The most powerful classical music agent Ronald Wilford wouldn't allow Cyprien Katsaris to record/perform piano transcriptions if under contract

1:16:22 What does Wim think of partimento and classical improvisation?

1:20:46 Wim's favorite composers

1:23:13 Great compositions sound great slowed down, maybe even better than how they are typically played fast today

1:30:46 Whole Beat can't work because vocal music is impossible if singers have to hold notes that long

1:38:42 Carl Czerny: Whole Beat or Single Beat?

1:38:46 Beethoven: Whole Beat or Single Beat?

1:38:50 Mozart: Whole Beat or Single Beat?

1:39:04 Franz Liszt: Whole Beat or Single Beat?

1:39:14 Did Paris Conservatory graduates historically think in terms of Whole Beat?

1:39:28 Alkan: Whole Beat or Single Beat?

1:39:39 Tchaikovsky: Whole Beat or Single Beat?

1:39:49 Rachmaninoff: Whole Beat or Single Beat?

1:40:54 Debussy and Ravel: Whole Beat or Single Beat?

1:43:50 Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky: Whole Beat or Single Beat?

1:44:13 What tempo should people play Bach?

1:45:23 Wrapping Up

1:47:10 Outro

PETER SEIVEWRIGHT has received a Special Judges’ Citation in The American Prize Ernst Bacon Award for the Performance of American Music competition, in the professional solo artist division. Peter Seivewright, honored for “Championing American Piano Music,” was selected from applications reviewed recently from all across the United States and the United Kingdom, and the citation awarded for his Divine Art album ‘American Piano Sonatas‘. Peter Seivewright has performed extensively as a recitalist and as Piano Concerto soloist with leading professional Orchestras throughout Great Britain, Ireland, Norway, Austria, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Denmark (eight recital tours), Latvia, Estonia, Malaysia, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Australia (four recital tours), China, India, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Trinidad and Tobago, the United States of America, Russia, and the Donetsk People’s Republic.

Peter Seivewright’s CD discography is extensive and includes: The Complete Piano Music of Carl Nielsen (2CDs – Naxos), Contemporary Scottish Piano Music, (Merlin), the major piano works by the Danish Romantic composer Victor Bendix (1851-1926) (Rondo Records, Copenhagen), and several CDs issued by The Divine Art Recordings Group, for whom he now records exclusively.

Peter is working through a series of CDs for Divine Art featuring the complete Piano Sonatas of Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1785), the last great composer of the independent Venetian Republic. In 2007 Divine Art released a double CD comprising the major piano works of the Danish composer Louis Glass (1864-1936).Other Divine Art recordings include a disc of J.S.Bach Piano Concertos and a CD featuring American Piano Sonatas, which was exceptionally critically well-received, and which is currently a finalist for the Ernst Bacon Award in THE AMERICAN PRIZE 2018. Future recording plans include several more sets of American Piano Sonatas, more J.S.Bach and music by Reger, Cyril Scott, and Olivier Messiaen.

0:00 Start 
1:34 How has the book, "The Solfeggio Tradition", been received? 6:43 Italian solfeggio explained in 4 minutes 
11:41 Should children delay singing solfeggio until their voice has broken? 
14:15 Did 18th-century plainsong sound more like galant music rather than medieval music? 
16:10 What about Palestrina? 
19:35 An example of a lesson in Italian solfeggio 
22:33 How do you learn to accompany a melody line by sight with the correct harmony? 
28:00 How do you follow the rules of counterpoint when switching between hexachords? 
32:33 How do you know when there is a change of syllable vs a continuation of a melisma? 
34:57 Does the appoggiatura take the target note's syllable or have its own? 
36:20 Up 4th Down 5th Bass Motion in Italian Solfeggio 
37:19 Mozart improvisation solfeggio lesson (K. 545) 
41:19 Notation is the curse of the modern musician 
48:02 Did Mozart know Italian solfeggio? 
51:10 Why did the Germans complain about the Italians keeping solfeggio as a trade secret? 
53:11 Were violinists like Paganini, Corelli and Vivaldi familiar with Italian solfeggio? 
57:11 Did the Italian Maestros abandon teaching solfeggio syllables if the students struggled with pitch? 
59:11 Did Italian solfeggio completely die out in the 19th-century? 
1:00:49 Did Italian musicians think of the bass in terms of solfeggio syllables? 
1:05:56 What was the 18th-century Italian understanding of Keys and Tonality? 
1:09:02 What are good solfeggio manuscripts to practice to with and how much proportion of time is spent worrying about syllable placement vs actual singing? 
1:12:10 Do we have access to 18th-century plainchant that doesn't sound like medieval music? 
1:17:19 Is there any value to practicing solfeggi exercises with "Ah" even if we don't know which syllables to use? 
1:18:45 What are your favorite solfeggi collections? 
1:19:46 What's your opinion on Johann Fux and his method of teaching counterpoint? 
1:21:19 What do you think of Nicola Sala's counterpoint treatise? 
1:22:39 How does your solfeggio expertise inform the way you would teach partimento? 
1:25:08 Are those manuals of singing by maestros who changed to Fixed Do still useful for learning diminution? 
1:25:57 What's the state of Italian solfeggio research today?

0:00 Intro

0:36 Start

1:58 What made you want to analyze Bach's 48 preludes?

4:26 Every prelude in the book has been transposed to C or Am

6:22 Is there one perfect analysis of Bach's compositions?

8:30 "The Walled Park of Closely Related Keys"

12:11 Would Bach go from C major directly to E minor?

12:42 Bach's use of closely related keys in the preludes

14:35 Looking at an example from the book 17:23 Talking about the nature of modulations in the 18th-century

22:02 Is Bach a galant musician, old school, or a transitional figure?

25:30 Do Heinichen and CPE Bach share any similarities in their systems of thoroughbass?

35:42 What is Bach's typical behavior in employing satzmodelle (schema theory)?

40:31 Is there anything controversial about your analysis of these preludes?

42:57 What would you say to someone who analyzes music with roman numerals and harmonic function theory about your book?

47:23 Which of the 48 preludes was the hardest to analyze?

58:23 What's the best way to realizing figures correctly?

1:04:40 How do you memorize all these rules of thoroughbass?

1:09:54 Reading Furno and learning that music is composed of consonances and dissonances

1:11:53 Does your interpretation of repertoire change from knowing thoroughbass?

1:16:24 What is the state of music theory in music education, how has it changed?

1:22:17 What future research would be good for thoroughbass?