Le 30 juin 2017
de 14h00 à 14h30
Le Patio (université de Strasbourg)
22 rue René Descartes, 67000 Strasbourg
salle 3202
Pré-acte / Acte
Auteur : Hans Aerts
The solfeggi of Leo and his contemporaries were written for the training of their pupils. But instead of being simple exercises, they are elaborate compositions. What makes those compositions a promising object of study is the pragmatic context out of which they arose: As “music for musicians” that helped to prepare them to produce (sing, play, improvise, and compose) music intended for public performance (like arias, sonatas, and symphonies), solfeggi can be supposed to mirror musical conventions of their time in a condensed fashion.
Some of the problems in investigating this repertoire concern the selection, definition, and categorization of ‘objects’ that deserve special attention. A particular hitherto overlooked voice-leading pattern in many of Leo’s solfeggi is a short digression to the dominant key that typically occurs within the run-up to the structural cadence and helps to postpone it. Because of its effect of momentary distraction and subsequent (re)focus on the cadential goal, I propose to call it “Svago”, following the spirit of the terminology of Riepel and Gjerdingen. This newly discovered schema shall serve as a case in point to reflect on the methodological questions mentioned above.
My research on Neapolitan music from the early 18th century is informed by approaches such as Historische Satzlehre, form-functional theory, Sonata Theory, schema and topic theory and aims at informing them, in widening their empirical base towards a repertoire that is generally accepted to be important for the development of ‘classical style’, but is in many of its details still terra incognita.
