The Relation between the Fixed and Non-Fixed Musical Texts in the Italian Baroque Vocal Music: Theory and Performance Practice

Doctoral student: Rūta Vosyliūtė
Supervisors: Prof. Sigutė Stonytė, Prof. Dr. (hp) Gražina Daunoravičienė
Department: Singing
Intended duration: 2014–2018

Abstract

Rūta Vosyliūtė

The subject of Rūta Vosyliūtė’s artistic research paper “The relation between the fixed and non-fixed musical texts in the Italian baroque vocal music: theory and performance practice” reveals the phenomenon of partially or incompletely notographically fixed musical text in baroque music. The paper relies upon modern 20th-century research into the science of textology, which brings out a new approach to text – as notography which is recorded with signs and the acoustic form of music. The author seeks to systematise and offer a relevant interpretation of the technical instructions of fixed and non-fixed musical texts of Italian baroque, to reveal and give a sense to the correlations of vocal technique with the conditionality of the verbal text, the theory of affects and rhetoric situations as well as to provide a critical account of the traditions of improvisational art established by the authors of theories on baroque performance practice and performers/virtuosos from the point of view of the evolution of vocal technique. The aim of the present research is to reveal the specificity of the vocal technique of Italian baroque based on both historical studies of sources of the baroque vocal technique and the artistic research. This could enable the adequate ‘reading’ of the scores from that period and give rise to an authentic interpretation of a piece. The important practical interaction of musicological and artistic research results in a theoretically grounded mastering of the practice of improvised vocal techniques of Italian baroque and stylish performance of the vocal music by the Italian composers of the 17th and 18th centuries (Ignazio Donati, Sigismondo D’India, Alessandro Stradella, Giovanni Bononcini, Niccolo Jommelli).