Projects

Chordal Accompanimental Practices on viol from intabulation to realisation

Harry Buckoke

Harry’s research work looks at the techniques and influence of chordal and polyphonic accompaniment on viola da gamba in the sixteenth century. Research methods include intabulations of works by composers linked to this manner of performance (Dalla Viola, De Bercherm, Tiburtino etc.), on viol and lirone, and analysis of the few sources detailing the practice. 

The project builds towards an understanding of how the instrument and its possibilities influence these adaptations both in terms of the structure (what notes are actually played) and manner of performance. This includes examining the instrument’s vocal but non-verbal properties and the aesthetic consequences of using an instrument as a proxy voice (or voices), removing language and incorporating multiple voices as one musician.

Reinventing the Stroh Violin

Maximilian Haft

The Stroh violin or “horn violin” is a relatively unknown instrument designed at the turn of the century, a time when sound recording was in its infancy and the Stroh was favourable over a standard violin. As recording technology improved, the Stroh violin fell into obscurity only to emerge decades later as a Transylvanian folk instrument.

LABORINTH Π

Arne Deforce

The thesis wishes to examine the pathways of thought underlying the creative act of music making and the performance practice of complex music from the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. The questions at stake in the case of a ‘new’ complexity score, that is to say what is the significance of the extreme complex notation, are the score and the music playable and do they work, and how and under what condition do they work, these are the issues to be resolved by the performer.

In the making: François Xavier Tourte and l’Archet de Viotti

Ellie Nimeroski

When bow maker François Xavier Tourte opened his workshop door to young Italian violinist Giovanni Batista Viotti, newly landed in Paris and blazing with ambition after his 1781 concert tour, their encounter literally set into motion the shaping of the “modern” violin bow.  Tourte’s fine design would lead French bow making to the height of its brilliant reputation—continuing to outshine the competition, even today—and this bow model would set the stage for the French school’s bowing technique. Viotti’s playing legacy, associated with this bow’s new technical possibilities, was also harnessed by the post-revolutionary Paris conservatoire, his expressive bowing being especially valued by Baillot.  At the closing of an epoch when violin bows were still identified by their players (rather than their makers), Viotti and Tourte were further bound by the bow’s name, given in Woldemar’s 1798 violin method as L’archet de Viotti.

Despite the clear connection between the two, their alleged encounter is only thinly described by Fétis in 1856, and historical records are at a loss.  How did the revolutionary form of the bow come to be?  What did the maker perceive in the player and how did it inspire him to render new musical intention into the materials? The artistic research delves into the early creative periods of both artists in ancien régime Paris, using my experiences in bow making and as a violinist to enact both perspectives and to propose a vivid theory of movement and mechanism, sounding out the ever-present conservatoire evaluation phrase, avoir de l’archet.