Colson Lambert. New perspectives on the performance practice of cornetti in the 16th and 17th centuries.
The cornetto is an instrument well established in the world of early music. For example, it is regularly heard at prestigious festivals and concert halls. The challenge, therefore, does not lie in rediscovering a forgotten instrument. However, historical playing practices and traditions have only exceptionally influenced current cornetto performance practices. This PhD research by Lambert Colson focuses on a particular member of the cornetto family: The mute cornetto. By studying the strong local traditions in a specific period, a specific repertoire will be linked to historical musicians and preserved instruments. Thus, modern facsimiles of some historical cornetti will be made, studied and played.
The first part of the research will be devoted to the Court of Kassel in the time of Moritz van Hessen-Kassel (1592–1627) and will explore the repertoire of the cornetti mutti as well as the Kasseler Zinken preserved in Leipzig. One of these instruments bears the mark of Georg Graumann, an acclaimed cornettist active at the Kassel court. For the second part of the research, the focus shifts to sixteenth-century Verona and the instruments as well as the scores preserved in the Accademia Filarmonica di Verona.
De Winne Jan. In search of a lost sound.
The doctoral research, conducted by Jan De Winne, will address both the creative aspects of copying eighteenth-century flutes and the choices a musician makes when performing a concert in the spirit of Historical Informed Performance Practice (HIPP). Two case studies of flutes built by Johann Joachim Quantz and Carlo Palanca are central to this research. Starting from the artisanal details of the instrument maker, a more complex question of authenticity in the production and recreation of historical instruments will be developed, as well as an extrapolation of that problem from the perspective of a performer.
Gonzalez Maria. The basso continuo practice in Venice (1590–1630), based on the foundations of counterpoint.
Concurrent with the birth of basso continuo, a few genres of music grew up together. Each genre required a different approach to playing basso continuo. Indeed, although the various genres are based on counterpoint rules, they differ in their compositional concept. Early seventeenth-century Italian sources have left us a great deal of information. However, it is seldom pedagogically presented as we would expect today, their contents being rarely explicit. Much implicit knowledge is contained in both these sources and the repertoire.
Considering the high contrapuntal training of early seventeenth-century keyboard players, the question arises as to how skilled keyboard players should be in this field today. A good example is the Fontana Sonatas (c. 1640), which contain several types of bass lines and basso continuo solos requiring similar contrapuntal realizations to the examples described by Spiridionis (1670) and thus blurring the boundaries between basso continuo and composition.
This PhD research by Maria Gonzalez aims to shed light on the different approaches to basso continuo practice in Venice between 1590 and 1630 by defining and applying them to performance according to historical sources and practices. The theoretical insights thus gained will be put in a broader perspective in which musical experimentation will be a fundamental asset. Concerts, recitals, and recording sessions will complete the valorization and dissemination of this research project.
Madeuf Jean-François. Historically informed performance practice on natural trumpet.
This PhD project by Jean-François Madeuf focuses on the in-depth artistic and theoretical research of the historical trumpet: its playing techniques and style, its historical context, its literature, and its repertoire. The research will not only be based on historical research but will also assess from the researcher’s own performance practice whether the information available in historical treatises and other sources is also valuable for the technique of the instrument and for the interpretation of the historical repertoire.
Naessens Bart. Claviorganum, a curiosity?: Investigating the impact of the claviorganum on historical music-making practice
We can conclude from historical source material that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century instrument building experienced a tremendous explosion of varied instrumentation, partly due to the continuous search of the theorist, musician, and instrument builder for new instrument-technical and resulting extra-musical possibilities. Yet today within historical performance practice we often see the use of a standardized set of instruments. The applicable keyboard instruments are thereby reduced to organ and/or harpsichord as continuo and/or solo instruments. However, this polarised use of an organ (positive) or harpsichord is not historical. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the musician’s search for a more expressive instrument that was in line with his basic musical intentions or an experimental vision of a theoretician and/or instrument builder often led to a new concept and/or expansion of the actual possibilities of the keyboard at hand.
This doctoral research by Bart Naessens wants to test the use of the claviorganum within the active music making practice. A hybrid instrument in which both harpsichord and organ sound together can solve many idiomatic problems of both instruments and provide new insights, ideas, and aesthetic horizons. The focus is on the implications of the use of the claviorganum, how the instrument relates to the two separate components, and how this “combination instrument” can play its role within current music-making practices.
Robert Christophe. Pierre Gaviniès (1728–1800): The revolution of the violin.
Pierre Gaviniès (1728–1800) is one of the most important figures in the history of the violin: as a player, as artistic director of the ensemble Le Concert Spirituel, as a teacher, and as a composer. While he was widely admired during his lifetime, he is little known today, although his violin studies, known as the 24 Matinées, are still performed.
Gaviniès is not just another rediscovery; he is a key figure in the evolution of the making, playing, and composing for the violin in the eighteenth century. Between his first appearance as a prodigy in Le Concert Spirituel to the already mentioned 24 Matinées in the 1790s, violin making and playing changed completely.
The French Revolution brought with it a new artistic élan and the Conservatoire de Paris was founded. At that juncture, the “modern violin,” as it is now called, was born in Paris. Reconstructing old Italian instruments, new bows (e.g. by François-Xavier Tourte) and new playing techniques; Paris became a leader in Europe in violin innovation. Gaviniès was one of the driving forces behind these changes. How, why and when exactly all this happened forms the starting point of this PhD project by Christophe Robert.
Van Heyghen Peter. The performance of early seventeenth-century Italian recorder music.
This doctoral research by Peter Van Heyghen focuses on the period between ca. 1600 and 1670, an era in which Italian composers and performers took the lead in developing new compositional techniques, musical genres and performance modes. Since ad-lib practices, including a certain freedom regarding instrumentation, were quite common, some of the repertoire–e.g., madrigals, motets, and sonatas–was regularly performed by recorder players, both professionals and amateurs, in Italy and abroad.
Yet this period was by no means a high point in the history of the recorder. Although the recorder continued to be played throughout Europe, the instrument was given a less prominent role than before or since; less music was written for it, a relatively small number of instruments survived, and only a handful of relevant references remain in literary sources. Furthermore, in terms of recorder construction, this is a transitional period in which builders experimented fully with transforming the quasi-standardized sixteenth-century recorder models into the classical three-part concept that made its appearance throughout Europe at the end of the seventeenth century.
In light of the historical ambiguities above mentioned, two important questions arise: 1) Exactly what music was considered appropriate to be performed on recorder; 2) What sizes and types of instruments were used? A thorough study of historical tracts on music theory and performance practice, a careful examination of preserved instruments, and the search of numerous music libraries make it possible to find substantiated answers to these questions.
Historically & Culturally Informed Performance Practices
The central focus of the research group Historically & Culturally Informed Performance Practices is the aural (and, when relevant, also visual) reality of the performance of West European historical music within its original cultural context, and the relevance thereof for present-day performances.
HIP/CIP research topics will cover typical elements of historical performance technique and style such as: instrumental / vocal techniques; acting / staging techniques; ornamentation & improvisation; tuning / temperament & pitch; tempo / metre; articulation / bowing; rhetoric / agogic; instrumentation, and ensemble disposition.
Equally acceptable, however, are topics of a more interdisciplinary character such as: the development of instrument making; aspects of music notation, theory, and composition; historical pronunciation; acoustics of historical venues; the relation performer-audience, etc.