"TOUS LES MATINS DU MONDE": POETRY OF FADING SOUND

The object of the article is Alain Corneau's feature film "All the Mornings of the World" ("Tous les matins du monde", 1991). The movie is considered as a work of art with strong postmodern tendencies. The director uses music written in the XVIIth century to create an image of the era. The image of the gambist de Sainte-Colombe is formed on the basis of the aesthetic and emotional perception of his works by the creators of the movie. The timbre of viola da gamba, one of the key features of which is rapid fading, defines the main philosophical idea of the film. The "disadvantage" of the instrument, which contributed to its short life in art, is perceived by the filmmakers as its original value. The rapidly fading sound becomes a metaphorical symbol of dying and rebirth, death and immortality being one. In addition, Baroque music performs the function of temporary "immersion". Using the music of ancient styles, the film industry gains a foothold in true values and an element of authenticity. In turn, by participating in cinema, it appropriates the features of mass culture: lightness, illusiveness, and easy accessibility. Such ambivalence is also characteristic of the plot, in which events that evoke completely modern feelings take place against a historical background far removed from the present moment.

The Early Modern Period

A viola da gamba made by John Rose in London c.1600 offers a focal point for setting in place five distinct frames for thinking about music in the early modern period: (1) ontology, (2) metaphysics, (3) physics, (4) rhetoric, and (5) ethics. Aristotle’s Categories provided early modern thinkers with a model for regarding Rose’s viol ontologically, as a physical object that could be used in certain ways for certain purposes. The metaphysics of a viol consisted in its being a stringed instrument capable of sounding out the ratios of cosmic harmony. Scientific attention turned to the physics of a viol and the vibrations it produced. Rhetoric as codified in the writings of Cicero and Quintilian was the usual model for investigating the emotional effects of music. Ethical considerations of music made social and moral distinctions among kinds of instruments, the people who played them, and social circumstances of performance and reception.

Cello in the Baroque, part 1

The article was based on a fragment of the author’s doctoral dissertation entitled The birth of cello as a solo instrument – instruments, practice, and selected literature examples (Academy of Music in Łódź, chapter The evolution of cello in the 17th century) and consists of two parts. The first part outlines of the evolution of cello from its birth in the 16th century to the 18th century (the text is supplemented with illustrations), whereas the second part describes the role and use of cello in music of that period. The introduction to the article includes a critical reference to the list of academic and popular science publications therein, in Polish and other languages, touching on the cello issue in the 17th and 18th centuries. The historical part touches on the circumstances of how the violin family emerged with a special attention paid to bass representatives of that group of instruments. Following a detailed analysis of preserved instruments, their reliable copies, luthier publications, illustrations and treatises from that period, the author discussed the construction of the earlies cellos. Apart from data concerning sizes and scale length of these instruments, the article includes information about their body, neck, fingerboard (with slope angle), bridge and tailpiece, materials they were made of, and types and gauge of strings used at that time. It also describes cello tuning methods. Moreover, the author mentions different types of cello (piccolo, da spalla, basse de violon) and different ways of how it was held. A separate issue are the bows, especially types of bows, their evolution and ways of holding. This part of the article is concluded with a list of different names of bass variants of the violin used in the 16th and 17th centuries before the name cello/violoncello finally settled. The second part of the article elaborates on the most important functions of cello: as a consort instrument, a universal continuo instrument or a solo instrument. Cello (along with viola da gamba or dulcian/bassoon) managed especially well as a melodic instrument co-rendering the continuo parts, and the result was that the basso continuo became the most important domain of cello in the Baroque, having a significant influence on the shape of playing technique and performance practice of that instrument. As one of melodic bass instruments, cello performed an important role in shaping the concertante style, along with the violin, shawm/oboe, cornet or flute. It was that practice combined with the improvisation practice developed simultaneously (which also influenced the development of the instrument itself) that the idea to write first autonomous compositions for the cello (solo, chamber or with basso continuo) emerged from at the end of the 17th century. Continuation of this article, which shall be devoted to Baroque works for the cello and their composers, will be published in the following issue of “Notes Muzyczny”.

“Ele militou no sonho de ver os músicos engajados politicamente”

Entrevista com Flávia Toni. Eleita em 2017 para a cadeira nº 40 da Academia Brasileira de Música, cujo patrono é Mário de Andrade, antes ocupada por Renato Almeida e por Vasco Mariz, Flávia Camargo Toni é mestre e doutora em Artes, livre-docente, pesquisadora e professora titular do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros (IEB/USP). Como musicóloga, especializou-se em questões envolvendo a literatura musical de Mário de Andrade, Modernismo e Música, e vida e obra de Camargo Guarnieri. Atuou em conjuntos musicais como instrumentista de viola da gamba e de violoncelo, e em 1973 participou da I Bienal Internacional de Música realizada em São Paulo. Fez cursos de especialização nos Estados Unidos e na França e atuou em congressos no Brasil e no exterior. É responsável pela edição crítica de obras de Mário de Andrade, bem como de sua correspondência com Luciano Gallet e com Camargo Guarnieri. Organizou o levantamento das fontes sobre as estadias de Villa-Lobos em São Paulo em estudo que trata da relação desse compositor com o autor de Macunaíma entre 1922 e 1945. Autora de vários livros e capítulos em obras coletivas sobre música, publicou dezenas de artigos em periódicos brasileiros e estrangeiros. Destaque especial merece sua atuação como orientadora e supervisora de dissertações de mestrado e teses de doutorado.