Research in Musicology
Musical Treatises
General Editor Lorenzo Frassà
Comitato Editoriale: Giacomo Baroffio (Cremona), Clive Brown (Leeds), Alexandre Dratwicki (Venezia), Giuseppe Gerbino (New York), Philip Gossett (Chicago), Miguel Angel Marin (La Roja), Rudolf Rasch (Utrecht), Michael Talbot (Liverpool)
Questa collana pubblica studi musicologici in lingua inglese o in francese relativi alla trattatistica musicale dal XIV secolo alla fine del XIX secolo, così come trattati in edizione moderna con introduzione storica e commento critico. La serie è pubblicata da Brepols Publishers (Turnhout, Belgio).
Proposte devono essere inviate elettronicamente (file word inviato tramite email) e devono includere le generalità e i contatti. Domande ed eventuali informazioni possono essere fatte al General Editor:
Lorenzo Frassà, Via delle Ville II/73, 55100 Lucca,
operaomnia@luigiboccherini.org, tel.: +39.339.2967826.
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In preparazione
Vol. 1: Descartes’s Compendium musicæ
edited by Benjamin Wardhaugh
René Descartes’s Compendium musicæ was one of the most widely-read texts on the mathematics of music in the second half of the seventeenth century. By contrast with the encyclopedic presentations of Mersenne and Kircher it offered a summary of the important ideas and calculations in a book of manageable size, and, at least in England, it seems to have been studied by nearly all of those who wrote on the subject over decades after its publication. It was translated into English, French and Dutch before the end of the century.
It is also a paradoxical work. Written in 1618 but not published until 1650, it is unique among the works of Descartes in surviving in a number of manuscripts which predate the published text. And it presents a somewhat idiosyncratic geometrical approach to the theory of music which drew criticism as well as admiration. Further, it embodies a logarithmic understanding of the sizes of musical intervals which proved intiguing to a number of later mathematicians, notably Nicolaus Mercator and Isaac Newton, who explored the mathematical issues raised by the text in manuscript treatises during the 1650s and 1660s.
Thus, the Compendium is a text which repays close historical study. The manuscripts have been studied in detail by Frédéric de Buzon and Matthijs van Otegem. The Latin text has been published in a critical edition by de Buzon. I have published an article discussing the responses of Mercator and Newton. Newton’s treatise on music has been published, with a commentary, by Peter Pesic, but the transcription used relies on only one of the three extant manuscript sources for the text. Translations of the Compendium into modern English and modern French have been published, but the translations made during the seventeenth century have never been edited.
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Vol. 2: The Complexities of Instrumentation as Revealed by Three Eighteenth-Century Treatises
edited by Beverly Jerold
Until the latter part of the eighteenth century, composers had little to guide them when writing for orchestral instruments. Thus there was a pressing need for the three earliest instrumentation treatises, all of which were published in Paris: Valentin Roeser, Essai d’instruction à l’usage de ceux qui composent pour la clarinette et le cor (1764); Louis-Joseph Francoeur, Diapason général de tous les instrumens à vent (1772); and Othon Vandenbroeck, Traité général de tous les instrumens à vent à l’usage des compositeurs (c.1793). What makes these manuals especially valuable is the advice offered composers about writing for the wind and brass instruments in particular. During this period, these instruments’ many limitations of both mechanism and intonation had to be taken into account when writing for them. Because most composers played keyboard or violin – which permitted much greater fluency in performance – they wrote for the winds and brass in the same manner as they did for their own instrument. Consequently, their wind and brass parts could not be executed adequately, and players were blamed for the poor results. The treatises address this problem by citing and illustrating passages that are difficult or unplayable on each instrument, notes on which ornaments are difficult or impossible, notes that cannot be played in tune, etc. In addition, they supply basic information about each instrument’s range and most favorable register, as well as the intricacies of writing for the horn and various clarinets. The contents of these treatises raise questions about performance standards of the day and whether unrealistic instrumentation may have affected the reception of a composer’s work.
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Vol. 3: The School of Porpora: Vocal Exercises from Domenico Corri as Taught by Isaac Nathan
edited by Thomas Goleeke and Graham Pont
Isaac Nathan (1792-1864) was the last significant male pupil of Domenico Corri, who was in turn one of the last pupils of the great Nicola Porpora. Nathan was apprenticed to the Italian master from c.1808-1812 and made such rapid progress that he soon became Corri’s assistant teacher. Within six years of leaving Corri’s school Nathan prepared these Exercises for his own teaching. They were engraved and printed in royal folio some time before 1819 but they did not appear until he published his Essay on the History and Theory of Music (London, 1823). They have never been reprinted and have received little attention from historians of vocal culture. This new edition is presented in the belief that these Exercises emanate from and genuinely preserve the vocal methods taught by Domencio Corri and that Corri’s success and fame as a singing master were founded on his studies with Porpora. Thus Nathan’s Exercises – a complete course for the preparation of a professional virtuoso – appear to be the unique surviving technical record of the Porpora method, as taught by Corri and Nathan.
The edition consists of a facsimile reprint of about 80 engraved pages of vocal exercises;
some English and Italian arias ornamented by Isaac Nathan (from rare sources held in Australia); an historical introduction to Nathan’s life and works and a technical commentary on the Exercises and annotated arias.
