Materializing the Immaterial
Traces of the Affective Voice in Performance Documents of Early Music ca. 1900–1950
2024–2025
RFD20
The project aims to examine the significance of the affective voice in the rediscovery of early music in the early 20th century on the basis of performance materials, manuscripts and prints. The early 20th century saw a number of decisive rediscoveries of composers and musical repertoires from the 17th and 18th century that were crucial in establishing our current understanding of ‘early music’, before the birth of the ‘historical informed performance practice’ (HIP) in the 1950s/60s. The focus of research lies on aspects that has so far been less at the center of research, namely how these performances of early music were actually sung and what means were used at the time to create vocal affect, which was inherent in the music and of which the performers were well aware. Therefore the unusual approach is taken of not examining the musical recordings of the time, but rather looking at the material of the performances and searching for traces of vocal design in the materiality of the scores and piano scores used.
This project examines autograph, handwritten and printed scores and piano reductions of early 20th-century early music that were used in performances and that provide information on the vocal interpretation, especially in performances of early operatic music. The corpus of sources for the project consists of three parts. The first part focusses on Monteverdi’s operas, which were revived in several European countries, such as those of L’Orfeo by Vincent d’Indy (Paris, 1904), Carl Orff (Munich, 1929) and Paul Hindemith (Yale, 1943). Other adaptations and arrangements of Monteverdi's operas, such the arrangement of L’Incoronazione di Poppea by Ernst Krenek (Vienna, 1935) are also taken into consideration. The second part of the corpus will focus on Händel’s operas, which were rediscovered during the Händel Renaissance in Göttingen 1920 and onwards. The third part expands the corpus to performance sources of sacred music by Schütz, Bach and other composers.
People
Project lead: Morten Grage