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| The Society for Music Theory celebrated its 40th anniversary 2-5 November 2017 in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington D.C., USA. As part of the celebration, the society’s Executive Board decided to feature a session with invited scholars from Europe to bring to the occasion a range of perspectives from distinguished scholars who might not regularly participate in the SMT conference because of distance. I was fortunate to be one of these three invited scholars, together with Philippe Canguilhem and Giorgio Sanguinetti, all having research interests in music performance and/or improvisation. The conference program and abstracts can be found here. Details of the special invited session, which took place 2pm-5pm on Friday, 3 November, are re-produced below. |
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| It has been many years since I was at an SMT meeting, Toronto2000, when I presented my dissertation work on the spiral array. Since then, I have spoken at regional music theory meetings in the west coast and southeast, but not at SMT. Thus, it was a rare treat to re-connect with the music theory community. The highlight of SMT40 (for me) was meeting Chen Yi again, after 17 years, at the special session on her music sponsored by the Committee on the Status of Women, and the women who chaired and spoke at this session: Jennifer Bain, Marianne Kielian-Gilbert, and Nancy Rao (John Roeder was also a speaker). In a previous life, I conducted a field study on contemporary Chinese piano music under the aegis of the MIT International Science and Technology Initiative, which resulted in a series of concerts, including ones featuring Chen Yi's Ba Ban. |
Daphne Leong (University of Colorado-Boulder), chair
Philippe Canguilhem (Université de Toulouse)
The Teaching and Practice of Improvised Counterpoint in the Renaissance
Giorgio Sanguinetti (University of Rome–Tor Vergata)
Who Invented Partimenti? Newly Discovered Evidences of Partimento Practices in Rome and Naples
Elaine Chew (Queen Mary University of London)
Notating the Performed and (usually) Unseen
Roundtable on the following topics:
• the roles of notation in different types of musical practice: improvisation, performance, composition, and pedagogy
• the use of models in musical creation and pedagogy
• musical pedagogy and historical improvisation
• questions from the audience
Live, video, and audio demonstrations and performances will play a prominent role in the roundtable.
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Models in Improvisation, Performance, and Composition
Philippe Canguilhem (Université de Toulouse)
The Teaching and Practice of Improvised Counterpoint in the Renaissance
Oral counterpoint, currently known as cantare super librum, was widely taught and practiced within the choirs and chapels of many European churches throughout the 15th and 16th centuries. But how did the singers learn to sing in counterpoint, and what did their improvisations look like, when compared with the written-out compositions we have preserved from the same period ? To answer these questions, I will interpret a number of treatises that explain the teaching methods and didactic progression, as well as the techniques employed by the musicians to realize their counterpoints “in real time.” I will focus on the works of Coclico, Lusitano, and Zarlino, and I will also use some historical evidence, particularly the statement given by Correa de Arauxo in his fascinating letter of 1637.
Giorgio Sanguinetti (University of Rome–Tor Vergata)
Who Invented Partimenti? Newly Discovered Evidences of Partimento Practices in Rome and Naples
When dealing with the difficult issue of determining when and where partimenti came into use, I conjectured about a Roman origin. That was an elegant solution: in the early years of the eighteenth century Rome was probably the most advanced musical center in Europe, and the earliest signed partimenti manuscript collection, that by Bernardo Pasquini, originated here about 1707. A migration to Naples occurred later, following Alessandro Scarlatti’s move from Rome to Naples. As it turned out later, after my book The Art of Partimento came out, things seem to be more complicated. Newly discovered sources, such as the Regole o vero Toccate di studio del Sig. Abb[at]e Fran[cesc]o Mancini 1695 (F-Pn Rés. 2315) prove that partimenti were in use in Naples already at the end of the seventeenth century, and possibly earlier. In fact, the Mancini manuscript, and in particular the 21 Toccate for harpsichord, betray an impressive level of sophistication and virtuosity, which would be unlikely to have been reached in a short time. Other manuscripts, such as the coeval Rocco Greco manuscript (I-Nc 33.2.3) show that bass string majors studied partimenti at the keyboard, but also learned how to harmonically improvise diminutions on standard bass patterns on their instruments. Thus, musicological research helps us to better understand the origins of the practice, but also to find a solution for a the problem we face today when teaching partimenti to non-keyboard majors.
Elaine Chew (Queen Mary University of London)
Notating the Performed and (usually) Unseen
Music notation normally presents an abstract notion of time that largely ignores performed tempi, rhythms, and timing (rubato, agogic accents, and pauses). This has led to a schism between music as notated (in score time) and music as performed (in real time). I shall describe a series of experiments demonstrating a range of unconventional treatments of common music notation (CMN). In Practicing Haydn (2013), created in collaboration with composer Peter Child and conceptual artist Lina Viste Grønli, my sight-reading of a Haydn sonata movement is meticulously transcribed into a performable score, complete with all the starts and stops, errors and repetitions. In Stolen Rhythm (2009), Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s rapid-paced re-notation of the same sonata movement suggests a different hearing of Haydn’s original work. In pieces created by MorpheuS(*) (2016) the optimization software, a collaboration with Dorien Herremans, re-assignments of pitches to template rhythms hard constrained to follow recurrent patterns and mimic tonal tension profiles of an existing piece re-forms familiar pieces to create alternate musical universes. In Stolen Heartbeats (2017), electrocardiogram recordings of abnormal heart rhythms are transcribed semi-automatically to form rhythmic frameworks for assemblage pieces. The extent to which CMN can encode even abnormal physiological rhythms suggests new ways to represent and make evident the usually unseen creative work of performance.
Acknowledgement
The MorpheuS project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 658914.