81: Nicholas Baragwanath

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