Pietro Antonio Locatelli

Pietro Antonio Locatelli (b. Bergamo, 1695–d. Amsterdam, 1764) was an Italian composer and a virtuoso violinist. He started his career in his hometown, among the violinists of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo. In 1711 he moved to Rome, probably to study with Arcangelo Corelli, the maximum musical authority of the time. The severe illness and the death (1713) of the great master frustrated the young violinist’s plans, however. Probably Locatelli had to fall back on Giuseppe Valentini, a virtuoso violinist trained at Corelli’s school. In the meantime, Locatelli worked in many places and institutions. His first employment was with Michelangelo X Caetani, duke of Cisterna and Sermoneta and prince of Caserta; he then performed with the musical chapel of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni and Monsignor Camillo Cybo, the latter the dedicatee of Locatelli’s Op. 1. From 1716 to 1722 he was a member of the Congregatione generale dei musici di Santa Cecilia. Locatelli was in Rome until the spring of 1723. He then started a tour that led him to the main European musical centers. In 1723 Locatelli was in Venice, where made the acquaintance of the patrician Girolamo Michiel Lini, Op. 3’s dedicatee. In 1725 he was in Mantua, where was appointed “virtuoso di camera” by Philipp von Hessen-Darmstadt. In 1727 Locatelli left Italy, never to return. He had short stays in Munich (1727), Berlin, Frankfurt, and Kassel (1728). In 1729 he moved to Amsterdam, where remained until his death. There he started to print his nine Opus numbers composed during the years of pilgrimage. Locatelli wrote only instrumental music, in the genres of concerto grosso, violin concerto, violin sonata, and trio sonata. Le Cène, Van der Hoeven, and Covens were the publishers of his orchestral works, while his chamber works were instead published at his own expense. In addition, he gave weekly private concerts, taught a few rich patricians of the city, and traded in prints, books, and musical items. Studies on Locatelli’s time, life, and works are covered in several book-length studies, a complete edition, and numerous articles.

Bartók and the Violin Music of Maramureș

The Second Rhapsody, one of Bartók’s technically most demanding concert pieces for violin, arranges archaic-improvisatory bagpipe imitations for concert performance. The arrangement itself shows a well-designed, coherent structure: the succession of dances, tonally and motivically related between each other, outline a kind of evolutionary progression from free motive-structure to strophic form. Bagpipe-music had a long-term influence on Bartók’s violin music, figuring as episodes in original works like the two Violin Sonatas or the Violin Concerto; but none exploits the genre to such an extent as the Second Rhapsody. The violin pieces with motive-structure of fascinatingly wild and virtuoso character were among Bartók’s major discoveries of the collecting trips to the Maramureş region. For the Rhapsody Bartók chose melodies from the one-time Ugocsa county, whose music, closely related to that of Maramureş county, was considered by him “the most interesting in our country [i.e., Hungary of the time], due exactly to its primitive character.” In Maramureş these melodies are less eccentric; instead, the violinists have a broader and more varied repertoire of dance music. In my article I discuss the different types of violin music of this region, focusing on structural, melodic, or interpretational elements that were of special interest for the composer. For this investigation I have made use of the primary sources of the respective collections: phonogram recordings, field notations, later transcriptions.

The Decade of the Violin Concerto: New Music and the Performer in the 1930s

The 1930s saw an unusually rich harvest of violin concertos. An examination of this group of works provides a singular and seldom-considered angle from which to view the music history of the interwar period. In spite of the widely divergent styles and personal approaches, the works are united by certain factors that result from the choice of genre, with an attendant set of historical and technical constraints. In addition, the violinists who commissioned and performed the concertos influenced the compositions to a greater extent than often realized; therefore, in order to understand the works, we must take into consideration the artistic personalities of the respective performers as well. Many of the concertos were written for a new type of soloist, mostly from the younger generation, who had made a firm commitment to new music – something that some superstar violinists were unwilling to do. The concertos offer good opportunities to study the relationships between composer and performer, still a somewhat neglected topic in musicological studies.

The Appearance of the “Ideal” and Other Topoi in Bartók’s Two Sonatas for Violin and Piano nos. 1–2

The early Violin Concerto (1907–1908) dedicated to the young violinist, Stefi Geyer, is regarded as one of the most personal compositions by Béla Bartók. The transparent structure, and the ethereal, unearthly tone of the first movement, probably inspired by Stefi Geyer’s playing, belongs to the warmest and most intimate tone used by the composer. Presumably, its re-emergence in certain passages of the two Violin-Piano Sonatas (1921 and 1922) was not by chance. It might have been the composer’s reaction to Jelly d’Arányi’s violin playing that evoked the memory of the early concerto and its source of inspiration. However, despite their similarities the “ideal” tone of the Sonatas is not the same as that in the Violin Concerto. It is still recognisable, but it has a different, perhaps more mature character and, furthermore, within the material surrounding it, we can detect the kernel of those Bartókian types which gain their definite form only in his 1926 emblematic piano pieces, for instance some elements of his “night music” type, his mourning song type, and some characteristic traits of his “chase” music. In the present article, besides following the process of transformation of the “ideal,” I make an attempt to identify the newly developed musical types, and to find an explanation of all these changes.

CHALLENGING THE WORK CONCEPT: METAPHOR, EMBODIMENT AND STRUCTURE IN MUSIC ANALYSIS

<p>Metaphorical depictions, embodied experiences, and by extension structures within the music, are distinct between performances of both the same works and across works of different styles. Traditional forms of musical analysis focus on the score as a discrete, concrete “object”, replete with meaning and fully representative of the composer’s intentions. As a result, performance has been treated as inessential and not recognized for its significant role in the co-creation of music and its ability to generate meaning. This research examines performative differences through close listening in recent recordings of Bach’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in G Minor BWV 1001, Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 7 in C Minor Op. 30 No. 2, and the Sibelius Violin Concerto Op. 47 in D Minor. With regard for the effects of metaphor, embodiment and structure, it shows how interpretive decisions within performance have profound implications on our emotional experience and perception of the music, well beyond what is notated in the score.</p>

CHALLENGING THE WORK CONCEPT: METAPHOR, EMBODIMENT AND STRUCTURE IN MUSIC ANALYSIS

<p>Metaphorical depictions, embodied experiences, and by extension structures within the music, are distinct between performances of both the same works and across works of different styles. Traditional forms of musical analysis focus on the score as a discrete, concrete “object”, replete with meaning and fully representative of the composer’s intentions. As a result, performance has been treated as inessential and not recognized for its significant role in the co-creation of music and its ability to generate meaning. This research examines performative differences through close listening in recent recordings of Bach’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in G Minor BWV 1001, Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 7 in C Minor Op. 30 No. 2, and the Sibelius Violin Concerto Op. 47 in D Minor. With regard for the effects of metaphor, embodiment and structure, it shows how interpretive decisions within performance have profound implications on our emotional experience and perception of the music, well beyond what is notated in the score.</p>

Transgressive Gestures: Women and Violin Performance in Eighteenth-Century Europe

<p>Studies concerning eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century women musicians abound within recent musicological scholarship, but the focus on singers and keyboard players – whose musical activities are understood to have “affirmed” their femininity – has had the effect of obscuring players of less typical instruments. Violin-playing, frequently cast as a man’s activity and imbued with indecent associations, was a case in point. Yet despite the connotations of the instrument, a small but significant group of women did play the violin: it is these violinists that this thesis takes as its central focus. Looking first at the complex reasons behind objections to women’s violin performance, a number of factors that restricted women’s access to the violin – including the influence of the male gaze and limits placed on women’s physical movement – are revealed. Particular conditions nevertheless enabled certain women to play the violin, namely the personal, educational, and economic support available from diverse sources such as family members, patrons, and institutions like convents and the Venetian ospedali. In addition to placing women violinists in their historical context, this thesis centres on an analysis of a violin concerto by one of the most well-known female violinists of the era, the Italian virtuoso Regina Strinasacchi. The analysis of Strinasacchi’s Violin Concerto in B flat major is strongly performance based and focuses on the issue of gender and physical movement (performance gesture), topics which were of much interest to eighteenth-century commentators who witnessed women violinists performing. As such the analysis engages with concepts from “embodied” musicology. In exploring Strinasacchi’s concerto we see that female violinists could experiment with a variety of gendered roles through violin performance, embodying both masculinity and femininity through their transgressive gestures. By taking a closer look at women’s violin performance and experiences, this thesis aims to show that these violinists were not as peripheral to the workings of the wider musical community as is sometimes implied. Furthermore, it aims to put women violinists more firmly at the centre of their own stories, challenging the tendency to treat female violinists as novel anomalies.</p>

Transgressive Gestures: Women and Violin Performance in Eighteenth-Century Europe

<p>Studies concerning eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century women musicians abound within recent musicological scholarship, but the focus on singers and keyboard players – whose musical activities are understood to have “affirmed” their femininity – has had the effect of obscuring players of less typical instruments. Violin-playing, frequently cast as a man’s activity and imbued with indecent associations, was a case in point. Yet despite the connotations of the instrument, a small but significant group of women did play the violin: it is these violinists that this thesis takes as its central focus. Looking first at the complex reasons behind objections to women’s violin performance, a number of factors that restricted women’s access to the violin – including the influence of the male gaze and limits placed on women’s physical movement – are revealed. Particular conditions nevertheless enabled certain women to play the violin, namely the personal, educational, and economic support available from diverse sources such as family members, patrons, and institutions like convents and the Venetian ospedali. In addition to placing women violinists in their historical context, this thesis centres on an analysis of a violin concerto by one of the most well-known female violinists of the era, the Italian virtuoso Regina Strinasacchi. The analysis of Strinasacchi’s Violin Concerto in B flat major is strongly performance based and focuses on the issue of gender and physical movement (performance gesture), topics which were of much interest to eighteenth-century commentators who witnessed women violinists performing. As such the analysis engages with concepts from “embodied” musicology. In exploring Strinasacchi’s concerto we see that female violinists could experiment with a variety of gendered roles through violin performance, embodying both masculinity and femininity through their transgressive gestures. By taking a closer look at women’s violin performance and experiences, this thesis aims to show that these violinists were not as peripheral to the workings of the wider musical community as is sometimes implied. Furthermore, it aims to put women violinists more firmly at the centre of their own stories, challenging the tendency to treat female violinists as novel anomalies.</p>