Giulio Caccini: the good, the bad and the unclear
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- Опубликовано: 3 окт 2024
- For the footnotes and other extra information see the following link:
www.earlymusic...
For the new bilingual edition of Caccini's published writings (PIE Vol. 2) see the following link:
www.earlymusic...
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Created by Elam Rotem, Lisandro Abadie and Tim Braithwaite May 2021.
Musical examples: Jacob Lawrence (tenor), Ori Harmelin (theorbo), Karel Valter (sound engineer).
Caccini caricature by Vincent Flückiger [Facebook page: L'Ambiance va être chouette / vincentflueckiger ]
Special thanks to Andrés Locatelli, Iason Marmaras, Domen Marincic and Anne Smith.
www.earlymusicsources.com
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This channel is a jewel, how lost does a person have to be to give it a thumbs down 🤯
🎵 there's a unique style to all these videos... i'd describe it as... relaxed sophistication
love them all... thanks Elam 👊🎵
Yes! Relaxed sophistication, exactly.
Indeed, there is some "sprezzatura" to it. 😂
This is an absolutely super channel! Keep up the good work!
Thank you for the video. I really enjoyed it. Brilliant!
I wasn't expecting this, a pleasant surprise!
NOBODY expects the Caccini Inquisition! 😉
A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.
Me too
Your description of Sprezzatura, especially with your operatic example, sounds an awful lot like an early description of what would become Recitativo in opera! Some degree of ignoring or altering the rhythm, singing that is spoken, dissonances allowed over a held bass, all could equally describe Recitativo. ✨
I thought the same!
Giving only one like to a video like this feels like a crime.
The embellished performance of the song gave me goosebumps - so beautiful! ( Love the little green
parrot (?) on the harpsichord ) Thanks for another very enjoyable episode!! = )
I love the ornamentations he uses in the example at the end, very graceful indeed! What good fortune that we have an unornamented version to compare it with too.
I really love Caccini’s work. He was ahead of his time. I’ve always felt that his music is moving and what I’d like to think is “movie” like focusing on something eventful in a story.
I feel the imperious necessity to give thanks to you in every video you upload, that are marvelous both visual and content. And as it is natural, this one is not an exception. Thanks Elam!
Thank you for this wonderful video! Fascinating as always to see how and why the contrapuntal rules relaxed over time. Your work is invaluable.
Thank you so much. I'm finally able to sit and watch, study and learn. Only one of these videos can take us to a long adventure of research , practice and maturing.
Fantastic as usual!
Vielen Dank für diese tolle Folge! Werde mir daraufhin meinen Caccini nochmal zu Gemüte führen :)
Every time I listen your video, I have the inspiration for a new piano track🎉
Excelent episode, the song is lovely.
Wonderful. I’m going to use it in my Baroque course. תודה רבה!
I did enjoy it, thank you!
Brilliant and fascinating, as always!
You messed up. As a spammer, you’re supposed to plagiarise someone else’s comment when responding to me, not just repeating my comment back to me!
Another excellent (and very informative) video! Thanks so much.
Wonderful video again! Thank you for your fantastic work, Elam Rotem and colleagues, we are all learning so much and enjoying it :D
thank you
Wonderful, many many thanks!
I have been deep into the Chopin Competition. What a blessed relief this is.
Excellent lectures on early music! So witty and full of good information. I try to watch one every day! Keep up the great work!
Como siempre, muy interesante y bien documentado. Gracias por hacer vídeos tan buenos.
Many thanks for this miniature master class and greetings from sunny Seattle!
Great recommendation
Dear Elam, congratulations for another great video lecture! Kind regards, Igor P.
Thank you for the expert discussion of a pivotal figure and publication. This program, undoubtedly due to the complexity of the matter, appears a bit rushed. The entire can of worms that is Caccini might be a bit much for one episode. Especially the musical examples are but very brief glimpses. Tentative demonstrations of Caccini's terms would be very appreciated. Couldn't the esteemed colleagues Lawrence and Harmelin make complete recordings of both versions of the example piece like Perrine Devillers previously did?
Great video, I immediately subscribed. But please consider to use some audio examples for next videos, it would be so useful and entertaining :)
Bravo!
I just love your videos!! Your graphics are wonderfully educational!! Thank you!!💕🌷
A pleasure as always. When can we expect a Dolcissimo sospiro recording video?
Thank you Elam, you reminded me Couperin’s Bon Gout for harpsichord playing. It is confusing and vague, but can be guessed by intuition, based on what my teachers told me, beyond the same Couperin’s explanations. By he way, as a native Spanish speaker, based on musical intuition, I “feel” sprezzatura as an ad Libitum micro cadenza, apologies for being so daring and unacademic. Very best.
Omg!!! I Just did an Essay about IT LAST YEAR!!!! I loved this video ❤️😍❤️😍❤️😍😍
17:20 It was clearly a graceful revision when Fancy Pooh appears in agreeance. As informative as these videos are, it's also wonderful that Elam and his team inject a sense of humor in each episode.
When you described Caccini's esclamazione, the ending of the Patti rendition of the Sonnambula aria came to my mind: ruclips.net/video/lfQYMLTvSnY/видео.html Her exclamation on the penultima is definitely effective in moving the listener, although a bit unusual for our modern ears.
She uses many features of the old elegant style, which must have origins centuries before, probably even as far as Caccini's time :)
Unfortunately the traditions got lost (in practice), but there are some oldest recordings showing us the remainings of the art.
Great stuff, as always from your channel‼️ Thank you very much!
🤩🤩
Glorious as always! Where can we listen to them perform the whole song?
I'm a classical singer trained in bel canto, and my technique is based on texts and books written in the 1800s and books written in the early to mid 1900s by authors who were masters of the old school bel canto tradition of the 1800s. I have some questions regarding the singing in the final example:
In all texts I have encountered, aspirated fioritura - adding a H sound between notes, effectively singing "ha-ha-ha..." instead of "a-a-a...", is frowned upon and seen as flawed technique and bad singing.
In the last sung example (and most of the singing on this channel) all the fioriura is aspirated with clear "ha-ha-ha" singing; is this way of singing supported by texts from the period or seen as good practise?
Also, if you listen to the very last melisma on half speed, you can clearly hear that the E on the first 8 notes and the last D and C of the following 8 notes are sung about a semitone lower than written, sounding almost like Eb, Db, and Cb. As this would be seen as unacceptable according to what I've read, is this acceptable to the stylistics of the period?
Thank you for an amazing channel!
Hey ! Early music singer (in training) here and first of all I'd like to say that I actually disagree with you that they sound like aspirated notes ! For me it sounds more like a flapping motion in the throat rather than a consciously pronounced H ! I actually used to think that to execute this ornament was to literally sing an H, boy was I wrong.
I have to admit that I am not the most well versed in this subject as I am in music history, but I have read some treaties on singing, among them are Mancini, Bérard, Tosi and Mengozzi.
Currently I have a 1776 French translation of Mancini's 1774 Treaty "Pensieri e riflessioni..." under my eyes. In relation to the "trillo", the first page of Article VIII says that "l'on doit battre le trill tout d'une haleine, par un léger mouvement du gosier" --> "We must flap/beat the trill in on breath, with a light movement of the trachea".
Now, I have to be honest that I have not listened to an important amount of XIX and XXth c. music, surely not as you whom I've seen on various "bel canto" videos. From what I've heard, recordings of the XXth c. of these works tend to favour really slow and legato trills. Even the cadenzas of the first attempts at HIP were in that style if I'm not mistaken. For me, subjectively, that doesn't really correspond to the "light movement" that Mancini suggested.
Later, in the same book, Mancini remarked that there are some students who instead of executing the trill correctly, produce a sound that is akin to either the "scream" of a goat or of a horse: "Les défauts du trill sont le chevrottementn et le hennissement". He explained that what these students do wrong is only doing the "light movement of the trachea" while NOT SUPPORTING enough. To me, this seems like the trill that Mancini is referring to seemed to be something that calls for some rapidity. The next paragraph also confirms my thought, as he mentions there the "ingrate" trills of the singers who beat the trill too slowly and the ones who strangle themselves whilst attempting to sing them.
Sorry if my comment dragged on for so long for only one source on one particular aspect of singing. My interests are largely French and Italian baroque from around let's say 1680 to 1740-50 so I can't speak much for the repertoires of Peri, Caccini, Monteverdi, Castaldi, &c.... One anecdote though, I used to sing in front of the Countertenor Robest Expert (who has also published researchs on registration) Lully's "Ô tranquille sommeil" (1682). During that private course, I actually sung it as if I was singing Caccini, with wayyyy too much of the type of trill you hear here ! I actually found it to be really relaxing to my throat and a lot of teachers, including Marc Mauillon and Julie Hassler, share my opinion and advise me to TRAIN with it. Of course, it's to be used for the appropriate repertoire only :P
I also made an analysis of Mengozzi's 1804 posthumous and collaborative treaty for an university course. However, I remember it focusing way more on style and declamation than vocal technique. Got to check it out again....
@@tenor-haute-contre Thank you for your extensive answer! I'm an information junkie, so no apologies required. 😊
The trachea is a 10 cm tube below the larynx, and has no part in singing (except providing air of course!), so it's hard to know what he actually means. Its actually very hard to know what any of the quotes you provide means since they don't really comply with the science or anatomy of singing. That, of course, isn't unexpected since technique at the time was based on sensations rather than empirical knowledge due to the lack of science.
From a technical standpoint, the fioritura in the example is aspirated, since it's not accomplished by mere quick adjustments of the vocal folds, but by some other muscular function (which I frankly don't know the mechanics behind) that inserts 'edges' between the tones to separate them as not to become just a rapid glissando.
That, to me, is also the explanation to the odd intonation on the last run.
This is an incredible historical insight into one possible performance practice of the time. Also, Jacob Lawrence's singing.... graceful indeed.
That Theorbo tho
Castiglione himself, or rather one of his characters, applies the concept of sprezzatura to music at the beginning of the 28th chapter of Book I. Intervals of a second or a seventh, described as "cosa sprezzata", are praised for avoiding the affectation of excessively frequent cadences. Even though Caccini is writing seventy years later, I think he must have had in mind this passage from Castiglione.
Your English is great, but I still had to laugh when you said at 9:00, "a single peach, or more than one peach."
"Ogni dolcezza fiocca" non ogni dolcezza fioca 😓 fa anche rima con il verso precedente!
So, is sprezzatura an early precursor to the recitative in opera?
I think you are right. And he's matched exactly by Giambattista Mancini 175 years later, who stressed that recitative should be spoken, not sung. The only problem with the spezzatura as performed, is that a lot of it was sung, with vibrato, which must be wrong.
Segunda Practica…. Florentine camarata…. Music must have one affect…. Music history cram session memories… where’s my therapist 😅
13:55 "speaking in music" (x2 faster) ... what, no rap music memes here?
It's a piece, not a song heheheh
I'm pretty sure that all the musical examples in the video ARE in fact songs.
How is that I missed this episode? I must have been on holiday or something :-/