Returning to the program is Professor Robert Gjerdingen, Professor Emeritus of Music at Northwestern University’s School of Music. He is well known for his research in Music Schemata Theory, Partimento and is an expert in music of the 18th century.

His previous book was the influential 2007 book “Music in the Galant Style” and he has a new book out entitled,”Child Composers in the Old Conservatories: How Orphans Became Elite Musicians”. He is also very actively updating his new website partimenti.org

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0:48 How did you come to write Child Composers? 2:43 Do you still conduct research in Music Schema Theory? 3:20 How long did you work with Alma Deutscher and what did you work on? 5:56 How do the elite child classical performers of today compare with the elite child musicians of these old conservatories? 8:22 What was the typical job description of a graduate of the Neapolitan conservatories? 9:44 Was fugal training overkill with regard to the work that the graduates would use in their professional lives in the 18th century? 11:24 What are the problems with Move-able Do in Solfeggio? 16:19 How were intavolature, beginning keyboard pieces, used at the conservatories? 18:12 What are some good, easy keyboard pieces that children today could use? 18:54 If I was a violinist, would I still need to sing and play the keyboard? 19:26 Even if I played guitar, cello, trumpet or any instrument I’d still be expected to sing and play keyboard? 19:37 Why did the Neapolitans place so much importance on singing? 20:23 How many hours a day did one of these child composers dedicate to music at the conservatories? 21:21 How many times a week would a class like partimento be taken a week? 22:04 Did Debussy study partimenti at the Paris Conservatory? 23:42 What is the difference between the Bologna and Naples traditions? 25:28 Henri Busser’s blackballing at his harmony entrance exam by Theodore Dubois 28:30 Did Rameau and his theories of fundamental bass have any influence on the Paris Conservatory? 29:46 If the Paris Conservatory was so emulated around the world and Walter Piston studied with Nadia Boulanger, why didn’t the old italian methods continue on in America in the 20th century? 32:58 Do things like submediants, supertonics then exist? 33:49 Are there modern theories of music with levels of harmony or is it just a serious study of counterpoint? 35:08 Are these 20th century college books of harmony just for learning “about” music and instead of real study of music would entail a serious multi-year course of counterpoint? 36:19 What is your opinion about classical music performance competitions? 39:14 How do these old Italian methods work with regular, non-prodigy children and people? 41:40 Have you seen a change in perception in music analysis with regard to music schema, partimento, figured bass over the years? 45:00 What about Heinrich Schenker’s popularity in music conservatories, didn’t he believe in counterpoint? 45:55 What’s your plan with partimenti.org? 46:11 Do you have new books and articles planned for the future? 46:28 Were you friends with Daniel Heartz who recently passed away? 47:33 Commenting on Music Schema with regard to form-functional analysis 48:46 How should a child start learning music?

I’m so pleased to introduce my guest today Harpsichordist, Improviser and Conductor, Professor Ewald Demeyere.

Professor Demeyere studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp obtaining his master’s degree for harpsichord in Jos van Immerseel’s class. On completion of his studies in 1997 he was engaged as a teacher of harmony, counterpoint and fugue by the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp. In 2002 he succeeded Jos van Immerseel as Professor of Harpsichord and he is also a professor at IMEP in Belgium.

A specialist in Early Music, Partimento and counterpoint, he was the winner of the CPE Bach Counterpoint Contest. As a recording artist he has recorded many albums including Tears, Harpsichord Laments of the 17th century, 18th century flemish harpsichord music, Telemann Les nations - Overture & Oboe concertos, Mozart’s Gran Partita, and many more.

Hey everyone, welcome to the Nikhil Hogan Show. I’m really excited to introduce my guest today, Professor John A. Rice.

Professor Rice studied music history under Daniel Heartz at the University of California, Berkeley (PhD, 1987) he taught at the University of Washington (1987–88), Colby College (1988–90), the University of Houston (1990–97), and the University of Texas at Austin (1999). More recently he has been a visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh (2010–11) and the University of Michigan (2012–13). He has received grants from the Alexander-von-Humboldt Stiftung, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Philosophical Society. He has written many articles, reviews of books and musical editions, entries in musical encyclopedias and dictionaries, and six books, one of which, Antonio Salieri and Viennese Opera, received the Kinkeldey Award from the American Musicological Society. Other notable books include “Music in the Eighteenth Century” and “Mozart on Stage” by Cambridge University Press.

He has lectured widely in both the United States and Europe. He has served as president of the Mozart Society of America and of the Southwest Chapter of the AMS and as a director-at-large of the AMS. He is an elected member of the Akademie für Mozart-Forschung in Salzburg. 

He runs a great YouTube Channel called Settecentista that provides many great examples of Music Schema and other topics. His research can be found on Academia.edu

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1:18 How did you come to your research? 2:00 Studying under Daniel Heartz 2:36 What was considered cutting-edge in music history research in 1987? 3:11 What’s the difference between Opera Seria and Buffa? 4:09 Do these genres stem from nationality? 4:40 How have views on Opera changed from a music history perspective? 5:47 How did Opera relate to popular entertainment in the 18th century? 7:03 On your Antonio Salieri project in Vienna 8:02 On the popular perception of Salieri vs his real standing 9:32 What was the contemporary reception of Salieri? 10:48 Essays on Opera 1750-1800 11:20 Was Opera the dominant popular entertainment at the time? 12:01 What does Settecentista means? 12:20 How did you get into Musical schema? 13:24 How did you find new schema? 14:10 What was the first new schema that you found? 15:20 Did you tell your professor that you named the schema after him? 15:31 The Lully schema 16:28 The Morte schema 16:53 How many times do you have to notice a schema before it becomes important enough to identify? 17:27 How does partimento relate to schema? 18:09 Are there more schema lurking out there yet to be discovered? 19:32 On the few attempts to apply schema analysis to Opera 20:33 Examples in opera where it’s difficult to apply current schema theory 21:45 On the ubiquity of rising lines in Opera, contrasted with the many falling line schemas 22:56 What was instrumental music used for in the 18th century? 24:11 The Monte-Romanesca 25:44 What is the sublime? 26:23 Does the rising nature of the Monte-Romanesca relate to that feeling of the sublime? 26:37 Analyzing the quartet in Idomeneo with schema theory 27:40 What are the limitations of schema theory? 28:27 What’s been the most surprising thing to you about your research? 29:08 Saint Cecilia 29:58 Who was Saint Cecilia and why is she significant? 32:34 Examples of musicians who were the first who started to use her as an inspiration 33:16 What text was used to accompany the music? 34:41 Where was that phrase found? 34:51 Why do you think she resonated with the musicians? 35:08 When did organs appear? 35:57 How widespread was her image? 37:14 Is she still invoked today in liturgy and music? 37:51 What is interesting to you about renaissance music? 38:57 Were musicians of the 18th century well versed in renaissance music and older? 40:36 Wasn’t Mozart more of a harbinger of the newer, more popular style? 41:29 Can you recommend some music that’s not well known but should be because it’s so great 42:27 What about great Operas that should be more known? 43:09 What do you have planned for 2020? 44:10 When will the new book be published? 44:20 Wrapping Up

I’m really happy to introduce my guest today, Professor Johannes Menke. In 2004, he received his doctorate with a thesis on Giacinto Scelsi at the TU Berlin.

From 1999-2009 he taught music theory and ear training at the Musikhochschule Freiburg and was also active as a radio author, organist and choirmaster. Since 2007 he has been Professor of Historical Theory at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.

From 2008 to 2012 he was President of the Society for Music Theory (GMTH). He is co-editor of the book series Sinefonia (Wolke-Verlag) and the journal Musik & Ästhetik (Klett-Cotta). His numerous publications deal mainly with questions of music theory and analysis, especially with regard to history and didactics. His focus is on the music of the 16th and 17th centuries. These are the book publications counterpoint I: The music of the Renaissance and counterpoint II: The music of the Baroque.

His work at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis includes subjects in the fields of Renaissance to Romantic music, Early Music, the History of Music Theory as well as supervising doctoral projects. He is also co-founder of the project series Klangwelt Renaissance and the Basel Forum for Music Aesthetics.

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1:02 When did the State of Germany come about? 2:03 Was it originally divided by religion or culture? 2:39 Siefried Dehn 3:52 How was Dehn trained? 4:17 Had generalbass existed in Germany at that time? 4:58 On parallels with Italian partimento and their differences 5:21 Adolf Bernhard Marx 6:36 How did Marx learn music? 7:00 Was his training similar to Dehn’s training? 8:05 What artist would represent the ancient regime? 8:29 Why would Marx say these things when many of old German masters studied generalbass? 9:16 What kind of music theory was Marx trying to promote to replace generalbass? 10:08 Does that include Roman Numerals? 10:31 Who came up with Roman Numerals? 10:50 Marx’s nationalist sentiments 11:37 Ferdinand Hiller 12:33 The reception of partimenti and Fenaroli in Germany 13:42 The perception that partimento was deficient because it appeared to lack chordal theory 14:28 Did Marx win the music theory wars? 14:59 Did Marx have successful students of note? 15:33 Was Dehn nationalistic as well? 16:05 Richard Wagner before Weinlig 17:09 Who was Christian Theodor Weinlig? 17:37 Weinlig called himself a Maestro, an Italian term 18:05 Wagner’s recollections in his autobiography about his lessons 19:41 Wagner being a grandchild of the Bologna tradition 20:07 Would Wagner have composed thinking more along the lines of generalbass? 21:27 How do we know that Wagner liked Bellini? 22:07 Did the love for Bellini stay with Wagner for his whole life? 23:14 What was the reception of Italian music, such as Opera, in Germany? 24:15 Is the word partimento mentioned in Germany in the 19th century? 25:08 Did the lack of figures in partimento influence generalbass or was it more like bologna, which had figures? 25:38 Is there an equivalent for the Rule of the Octave in Germany? 26:53 Was Partimento hard to be accepted because it was an oral tradition and lacked detailed treatises 27:54 What were the famous harmony books in Germany? 28:44 Gottfried Weber 30:03 How did Mendelssohn learn music? 30:49 Was Johann Georg Albrechtsberger familiar with the italian methods or was he more of a generalbass-ist? 31:46 On generalbass being thought of as just accompaniment rather than a complete method of composition and counterpoint. 33:03 If I was a student in the 19th century, how would I learn to be a composer? 33:31 Do different cities in Germany have different music theory traditions? 34:30 Did Germany have an equivalent to Italian Solfeggio and the study of melody? 35:46 How do you learn music in the generalbass way? 36:55 Franz Liszt being part of the generalbass tradition through Czerny 37:25 Where did the newer, progressive methods of music theory come from? 38:24 So do these ideas come from the new ideas of chordal thinking? 39:22 How do the traditional ideas of generalbass influence modern music education? 40:35 With so many music theory methods, what should the modern music student learn? 41:56 Would you use roman numerals to explain romantic music? 43:07 What music would be good to analyze with chord inversions and roman numerals? 44:26 Would you expect a student to learn all the tools? 45:22 Upcoming articles and projects for 2020 45:50 Where to find Professor Menke’s work 46:12 How would you reform music education? 46:52 Should everyone learn generalbass? 47:10 Wrapping Up

I’m so thrilled to be able to talk to my guest: Professor of Music Theory and Cognition, Professor Vasili Byros.

Professor Byros is a tenured Associate Professor of Music Theory and Cognition at Northwestern University. He researches the compositional, listening, and pedagogical practices of the long 18th century, with an emphasis on the music of Beethoven, J. S. Bach, and Mozart, using a holistic methodology that combines perspectives from schema theory.

A prolific scholar, his research articles can be founded in numerous scholarly publications and journals. Examples include, “Thinking in Bach’s language, Teaching in His Shoes”, “Mozart’s Vintage Corelli,: The Microstory of a Fonte-Romanesca”, “Prelude on a Partimento: Invention in the Compositional Pedagogy of the German states in the time of JS Bach” and many more.

His article “Prelude on a Partimento” received the Outstanding Publication Award from the Society for Music Theory in 2017. Also in 2017, he was awarded the Charles Deering McCormick Professorship, Northwestern University’s highest recognition of teaching excellence and curricular innovation. Finally, Professor Byros is currently writing a monograph on Late Beethoven.

I am so delighted to be able to talk to the lovely Yuriko Byers, the wife of the late great arranger, composer, trombonist and musician Billy Byers.

In a career that spanned over a 100 movies, dozens of Broadway shows and arrangements for hundreds of TV shows, Byers is regarded as one of the greatest arrangers in music history.

He’s worked with the biggest names in music such as Quincy Jones, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Sarah Vaughan, Diana Ross, Count Basie, and really, too many to count. Perhaps even more impressive, is the legacy he’s left outside of the entertainment industry, with a stellar reputation as a good person, a wonderful loving family and many friends.

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1:14 How much work did Billy Byers approximately ghostwrite?
2:50 Did Billy have to give up the piano in his youth because of early onset arthritis?
3:25 Writing in pen because it was easier on his arthritis
3:55 The Byers family
4:08 When did you meet Billy?
4:28 Are you a musician yourself? Is that how you met Billy?
5:20 Was Billy a down to earth type of person?
5:50 Who were Billy’s musical heroes and inspirations growing up?
6:46 Did he have a mentor or was he self taught?
7:45 Was it true that Billy’s father didn’t want him to do music?
8:12 Was the trombone his main instrument?
8:23 What was his history like before you were married?
9:57 Did you meet Billy in Vegas?
11:18 What were you studying in college?
11:36 Did you get married after that?
11:52 How many years were you married to Billy?
12:10 34 years of marriage
12:27 What was your family plan once you got married?
13:24 Why was it rough in New York at the time?
14:19 Was that the 70s or lates 60s?
15:26 Did he practice at home a lot?
15:44 Did he ever express any regret that he had arthritis?
16:32 Did he have perfect pitch?
16:47 In what way was perfect pitch not a blessing for him?
17:08 Writing music on a plane with no instruments
17:19 Was he a fast writer or did he take his time with it?
18:00 Did he have a schedule for writing, in the morning or night?
18:54 Was he a mentor to younger musicians?
19:19 On teaching Paul Newman to play the trombone for Paris Blues
20:07 Talking about Billy’s contributions to the movie The Sting
21:10 Johnny Mandel’s friendship with Billy
22:57 Who were Billy’s best friends in music?
25:20 Was he friends with Nelson Riddle?
25:36 On always being busy but still having time for family
26:20 Did he experience racism for being a white musician in jazz?
28:59 Dizzy Gillespie not caring about race
29:48 On recording two albums with Frank Zappa
30:43 Talking about Billy’s work in Broadway
33:32 Being a music director for big television specials
34:36 Going from Broadway to a Classical Orchestra
35:44 Did he go to all these award nomination ceremonies?
37:21 Talking about Joseph Curiale
38:28 Did Joseph Curiale meet Billy?
38:48 Talking about Sammy Nestico’s relationship with Billy
40:19 What did Count Basie think of Billy?
41:05 Working with Frank Sinatra?
42:07 What did Quincy Jones think of Billy?
42:29 On Quincy and Billy’s close friendship
42:45 Did Billy have an album or show that he did that he really found special
43:38 What were Billy’s favorite things to do in music?
45:51 How did he approach music with his kids?
47:42 On their successful family unit
48:38 What would be some good albums to check out to hear Billy at his best?
50:31 Did he have music that he personally enjoyed listening to?
52:12 Talking about Robert Farnon
52:33 Talking about Yuriko’s Yoga teaching career
55:04 More on the great example of the Byers family
57:17 Wrapping Up

We have a very special show today, returning to the show the master classical improviser Professor David Dolan, from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Also joining the program is Professor Henrik Jensen, from the Department of Mathematics at the Imperial College of London. He leads the Centre for Complexity Science, which engages in a range of research into the applied and fundamental aspects of complexity science.

For today’s show, we’ll be diving into the fascinating collaborative research that my two guests have doing for the last 10 years, involving studying the brain with improvised and non-improvised music and how it functions during each activity, quantifying improvisatory behavior, improvisation and communication between brains.

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1:13 How did you come up with the idea of the project? 2:35 Talking about levels of synchronization 4:43 Deriving information from the EEGs 7:01 Were the musicians from Guildhall? 7:36 Talking about the instrumentation of the players 7:51 Did you need a harmonic player like a harpist to provide structure? 8:55 Talking about the selection of the music 10:55 Million dollar question: Is the brain radically different between improvising and non-improvising musicians? 13:09 What does the index mean? 14:06 Talking about the Strict phase and the Let Go phase 17:02 In the Strict phase, was the music sight read or memorized? 18:12 How is memory different between the two phases? 19:11 Talking about sustained attention 22:58 Is the brain being used more when improvising or less, is the brain more relaxed during improvising? 25:46 Discussing levels of comfort and familiarity with improvisation? 27:20 The difference in brain function in the speed of the improvisation 31:26 What is happening when the brain is undergoing a “magic moment”? 32:39 Did you tell the audience that the improvisation was a secret? 33:07 Talking about the listener’s experience during improvisation and non-improvisation 34:42 The Let Go portion had more interest in the listeners 35:29 If you could re-do the experiment with unlimited funding, what would you do? 36:48 If you had told the audience there was improvisation, would it have affected their answers? 38:19 Is the idea that Strict a left brain thing and Let Go a right brain thing a myth? 39:52 Is it just more fun to improvise? 41:53 What can you recommend people check out to follow up on this research? 45:21 Any other key takeaways from this research that we should mention? 46:30 What hypotheses do you suspect are the possible conclusions of this research? 49:37 Wrapping Up

What a delight to introduce my guest today, GRAMMY Award-Nominated Composer, Arranger, Conductor and Educator, Richard DeRosa.

Earlier in his career as a performer, DeRosa toured and recorded with Gerry Mulligan, Bob Brookmeyer, Susannah McCorkle, Jackie Cain & Roy Kral, Chuck Wayne, and Marlene VerPlanck. Other employers include Marian McPartland, Gene Bertoncini, Warren Vaché, Larry Elgart, Peter Nero, and vocalist Chris Connor.

Since 2001 DeRosa has arranged and conducted music for Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to feature Toots Thielemans, Annie Ross, Willie Nelson, Norah Jones, Cassandra Wilson, Roberta Gambarini, and Renée Fleming among several other notable artists.

In 2012 the WDR Big Band in Cologne, Germany, invited DeRosa to conduct and present his music in concert and subsequently he served as their chief conductor and musical arranger from 2014-2016.

DeRosa received a GRAMMY nomination for Best Instrumental Composition in 2015 for his big band composition “Neil” which is dedicated to Neil Slater, the director of the One O’Clock Lab Band at the University of North Texas from 1981-2008.

In October 2018, DeRosa was the featured conductor and arranger for the concert productions of Joey Alexander with Strings which premiered at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

DeRosa is a full professor at the University of North Texas where he is the director of jazz composition and arranging. His former teaching positions were at William Paterson University, Manhattan School of Music, and The Juilliard School where he taught advanced jazz arranging for studio orchestra. He is the author of Concepts for Improvisation: A Comprehensive Guide for Performing and Teaching (Hal Leonard Publications) and Acoustic and MIDI Orchestration for the Contemporary Composer (Focal Press) co-authored with Dr. Andrea Pejrolo.

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2:12 When did you come to music?
3:06 Do you have absolute or perfect pitch?
5:00 What kinds of records did you grow up listening to?
6:41 Were drums the first instrument that you picked up?
7:52 Did your dad want you to be a great drummer or was more free and easy?
9:28 Was your father your first teacher?
9:53 Did you pick up the trumpet in school because the drum parts in school were too easy?
11:58 When did you start arranging?
15:19 Did you have any instruction in music theory in elementary school?
16:20 Did you look at big band scores to analyze them?
17:57 Is counterpoint a topic that’s very important to you?
21:31 Talking about the horizontal aspect of writing music?
23:54 Can you give an example of a student who perhaps thinks to vertically and the piece suffers?
25:49 How do you think of theory when you are composing?
29:15 How do you narrow down your musical choices when composing?
32:15 If you were writing for yourself, what considerations do you take? Using “Neil” as an example.
33:12 Was Neil Slater a mentor to you?
35:35 Are you a fast writer?
37:12 What’s the best way to develop orchestration?
40:09 How do you get to build that experience in orchestration?
44:01 How do you get better at composing or arranging?
46:36 What’s the best way to learn counterpoint?
48:54 Top 3 Jazz drummers?
49:26 Top 3 Jazz Trumpeters?
49:46 Top 3 Jazz arrangers?
50:59 Favorites composers for Jazz
51:33 Top 3 classical composers?
51:57 What was the hardest piece of music to arrange?
54:20 What was the easiest piece to arrange?
55:13 What’s your favorite instrument to write for?
55:30 Biggest regret in music?
57:06 Proudest musical moment?
58:04 If you could work with anyone in history that you haven’t worked with, who would it be?
59:29 What albums should the audience check out to start with your music?
1:03:24 Talking about Dr. Joseph Curiale
1:05:01 How would you reform music education?
1:09:57 Wrapping Up

My guest today is Professor of Music Theory, Lydia Carlisi.

She studied in Rome (Università di Roma 2/Tor Vergata) completing in 2010 a Bachelor Thesis on Leonardo Leo's Partimenti under the direction of Professor Giorgio Sanguinetti.

In 2015 she completed a Master in Music Theory in the class of Prof. Dr. Ludwig Holtmeier at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg (DE) with a thesis on Gaspare Selvaggi's «Trattato di armonia» (1823). During this time she was awarded a DAAD scholarship.

She worked at creating the Neapolitan canon project at the university of the arts Bern and she is now professor for music theory at the Conservatorio of Lugano, Switzerland. Her upcoming PhD thesis focuses on the French reception of Partimento.

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1:02 When was the Paris Conservatory founded? 2:39 Was Italian music very influential in France at the time? 3:26 Did France have it’s own music tradition separate from Italy? 4:02 How and why was the Paris Conservatory founded? 4:56 What happened in 1799? 5:47 Emanuele Imbimbo’s background 7:12 Fenaroli’s popularity in France 8:38 On French music theory 8:52 Talking about Honoré Langlé 9:32 Was Niccolò Piccinni the first head of the Paris Conservatory? 10:23 Did the French government send people to Naples to procure Italian music materials? 13:27 Was the Paris Conservatory interested also in German music at the time? 14:10 Gaspare Selvaggi’s massive collection of Neapolitan composers 14:55 Did people like to collect music scores? 15:33 Did the Paris Conservatory copy the Neapolitan model of Solfeggio and Partimenti? 18:02 Was the Paris Conservatory Solfeggio different from the Neapolitan Solfeggio? 19:50 Did other conservatories around the world copy the model of the Paris Conservatory? 20:46 On the separation of subjects within the Paris Conservatory curriculum 21:05 On Luigi Cherubini’s background and training 25:30 Was the word “partimenti” found in any of the French texts 26:18 Did Partimenti get “reborn” in France in the middle of the 19th century? 27:28 How did they learn counterpoint in the Paris Conservatory? 28:07 Did Choron have any influence on the Paris Conservatory? 29:03 Was partimenti viewed as old-fashioned or incomplete according to François-Joseph Fétis at the Paris Conservatory? 30:22 Was the Paris Conservatory approach to harmony similar to the Neapolitan method? 31:02 Were only composers and accompanists the ones who practiced improvisation? 32:00 Who was responsible for the fragmentation of the Neapolitan method in the Paris Conservatory? 33:10 Did accompanists like Debussy learn how to do “partimenti”-like exercises? 34:20 Were accompanists only practicing chords? 35:48 What were the important pedagogical books that the students would use at the Paris Conservatory? 36:40 Did the Charles-Simon Catel book erase the Neapolitan view of harmony? 37:43 What do you teach at the mentiParti? 39:07 How is the Partimenti composition class different from a more orthodox composition class? 39:53 What books can you recommend to people interested in developing their compositional training? 41:08 How do you improve your written counterpoint? 41:26 What are some basics for counterpoint that beginners can use? 43:12 Is renaissance-style counterpoint useful for learning galant music? 43:48 Is partimento counterpoint considered strict? 44:29 Are fugues at the end of the counterpoint study? 45:54 How do you introduce orchestration into composition study? 46:46 What are some common mistakes when learning the Neapolitan tradition? 48:05 Do you have unlearn a lot of information when learning partimento? 48:27 Who are your favorite Neapolitan composers? 49:00 Do you have favorite Partimenti? 49:29 What is the future for Partimento research? 51:06 Did Bach have Durante scores? 51:35 Is Partimento theory applicable for the 21st century? 52:22 If you could reform music education, how would you do it? 53:43 Can you learn to compose as an adult or is it too late? 54:37 Wrapping up

I'm so pleased to introduce my guest today: Professor of Music Theory and History, Professor Nicholas Baragwanath!

His book “The Italian Traditions and Puccini”, a major study of compositional theory and practice in 19th-century Italy, was published in 2011 by Indiana University Press. It surveys the once commonplace fundamentals, methods, and formulas that were taught at Italian music conservatories, and explores their significance for composition through case studies from Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti to Verdi, Boito, and Puccini.

His upcoming book, "The Solfeggio Tradition: A Forgotten art of melody in the long 18th century", will be released in the summer of 2020, published by Oxford University Press.

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1:17 What is your musical background? 1:35 What was your area of research in academia? 2:32 How did you end up researching solfeggio? 4:14 Authentic partimenti realizations tend to be rare but are solfeggi manuscripts complete by comparison? 5:16 Are there historical treatises on how to do Solfeggio? 8:03 Did they use “Ut” instead of “Do”? 9:49 What do you mean by 84, aren’t there just 7 clefs? 10:23 Would someone with absolute or perfect be bothered by this Italian solfeggio? 11:24 So does Italian solfeggio have similarities to moveable do? 11:36 If hexachord means six notes, where did that 7th note Si or Ti come from? 13:31 Are modes (like Aeolian or Dorian) relevant to solfeggio? 14:44 What are key differences between 17th, 18th and 19th century solfeggi? 16:20 Is solfeggio always tied with a bass? 16:59 How did students learn counterpoint and composition through solfeggio? 19:34 Talking about Solfèges d’Italie and how a single syllable could yield multiple notes of different pitches 20:49 Adding extra notes to Do and Re 22:05 Did the Neapolitan students study singing for 3 years or 6 years? 22:19 What is the difference between basic Lettura or note reading and l’arte del canto: Solfeggio cantato meant with graces? 25:32 Would these Neapolitan students be familiar with Music Schema like the Prinner? 26:28 Would you have to look at a lot of solfeggi examples to build that vocabulary? 27:21 What was the trickiest thing for you to learn, when you started doing solfeggio? 30:09 How should one start solfeggio training from the very beginning? 33:41 As a trained pianist, do you look at your old music scores differently with this solfeggio insight? 35:18 What’s the difference in style between the strict style solfeggi and the more popular style solfeggi? 36:37 Did you have choral training in your musical background? 37:05 What was the contemporary reception of Italian solfeggio? 38:12 Have you collaborated with people in historical performance regarding your research in solfeggio? 39:56 To prepare for your book, what should interested musicians and students practice and have prepared? 41:03 Going back to perfect pitch, would pitch matching be erased if someone learned the italian solfeggio way because of the similarities to moveable do? 42:06 Did they use “Do” or the letter “C”? 42:48 It’s a very moveable-doish sort of perception? 43:10 Is Italian solfeggio robust enough a system to tackle “progressive” 19th and 20th century music? 44:48 How does solfeggio tackle dissonance? 46:17 How did solfeggio die out? 47:43 You seem to have cracked the mastery of solfeggio.. are there more mysteries left to be uncovered? 50:46 What does it mean: singing the wrong pitch to the right syllable? 51:46 What musical tools and skills did you “discard”, as you’ve evolved as a musician? 53:38 Upcoming events 54:33 Wrapping Up