The Solfeggio Tradition

The Solfeggio Tradition

A Forgotten Art of Melody in
the Long Eighteenth Century

N IC HO L A S BA R AG WA NAT H

1
 3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

Names: Baragwanath, Nicholas, author.
Title: The solfeggio tradition : a forgotten art of melody in the long
eighteenth century / Nicholas Baragwanath.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2020. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020017866 (print) | LCCN 2020017867 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197514085 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197514108 (epub) |
ISBN 9780197514115
Subjects: LCSH: Solmization—History—18th century. |
Sight singing—History—18th century. |
Music—Instruction and study—History—18th century.
Classification: LCC MT44 .B4 2020 (print) |
LCC MT44 (ebook) | DDC 782.04/2—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017866
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017867

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
For Isaac
 Contents

List of Figures ix
Acknowledgments xi
Glossary of Technical Terms xiii
1. Introduction: Discovering Solfeggio 1

I . C O N T E X T: A P P R E N T IC E SH I P,
P L A I N C HA N T, A N D T H E RU D I M E N T S
2. Sepperl’s Story: A Case Study in Music and Social Mobility 23
3. The Church Music Industry 31
4. Eighteenth-​Century Plainchant—​For Beginners 37
5. Canto Fermo and Canto Figurato 58

I I . T H E O RY A N D P R AC T IC E :
L E S S O N S I N T H E A RT O F M E L O DY
6. Speaking Solfeggio 85
Solmization Solutions 113
Appendix: Ambiguities, Complexities, and Supplementary Guidelines 120
7. Singing Solfeggio 128
8. Learning la-​sol-​fa-​mi, with Some Hints on Musical Grammar 156
9. Solano and Sabbatini on Modulation 213

I I I . T H E S O L F E G G IO R E P E RT O RY:
T Y P E S , ST Y L E S , A N D G E N R E S
10. Defining Solfeggio 239
11. Unaccompanied Solfeggio 249
12. Accompanied Solfeggio 266
13. Solfeggio and Partimento 288
14. Epilogue: Alternative Systems and the End of the Great Tradition 298

Notes 309
Bibliography 339
Index 399
 Figures

2.1. Georg Balthasar Probst, L’ouïe, c. 1740 29

7.1/​Ex. 7.5. Niccolò Zingarelli, Solfeggi 140
7.2/​Ex. 7.7. Pasquale Cafaro, Solfeggi 143
7.3. Niccolò Porpora, Solfeggi di Soprano 147
7.4/​Ex. 7.10. Leonardo Leo, Solfeggi, 1756 148
7.5. Saverio Valente, Solfegi [sic] 149
7.6./​Ex. 7.12. Carlo Cotumacci, Principij e Solfeggi, c. 1755 150
8.1/​Ex. 8.4. Pasquale Cafaro, Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano 172
8.2/​Ex. 8.5. Pasquale Cafaro, Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano 173
8.3/​Ex. 8.6. Leonardo Leo, Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano 175
8.4/​Ex. 8.7. Carlo Cotumacci, Principij e Solfeggi, c. 1755 176
8.5/​Ex. 8.8. Leonardo Leo, Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano 178
8.6/​Ex. 8.9. Pasquale Cafaro, Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano 181
8.7/​Ex. 8.10. Leonardo Leo, Solfeggi, 1756 183
8.8/​Ex. 8.13. Leonardo Leo, Solfeggi 187
8.9/​Ex. 8.14. Pasquale Cafaro, Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano 188
8.10/​Ex. 8.20. Carlo Cotumacci, Principij e Solfeggi, c. 1755 196
8.11/​Ex. 8.21. Pasquale Cafaro, Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano 198
8.12/​Ex. 8.22. Pasquale Cafaro, Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano 199
8.13/​Ex. 8.23. Pasquale Cafaro, Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano 200
8.14/​Ex. 8.24. Pasquale Cafaro, Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano 201
8.15/​Ex. 8.25. Carlo Cotumacci, Principij e Solfeggi, c. 1755 204
8.16/​Ex. 8.26. Carlo Cotumacci, Principij e Solfeggi, c. 1755 208
9.1/​Ex. 9.14. Niccolò Porpora, Solfeggi di Soprano 233
 Acknowledgments

I owe a special debt of gratitude to Robert O. Gjerdingen for his help and support
over the course of the nine long years it took to bring this book to print. Not only did
he produce the research that inspired me to study eighteenth-​century solfeggio, but
he also offered invaluable critical insights as the work progressed. Special thanks go
also to Rosa Cafiero, Giorgio Sanguinetti, Paolo Sullo, and Peter van Tour for their
friendly encouragement and pioneering research in related fields.
Many of the rough findings drawn from manuscripts were refined by means of
collaboration with music students because they seemed best placed to identify what
might once have worked in practice and what probably did not. The Dutch-​Flemish
Society for Music Theory was instrumental in this respect. By appointing me as
their music theorist in residence in 2018, they enabled me to test my findings in
partnership with the following expert educators and their students: Job Ijzerman
and John Koslovsky at the Amsterdam Conservatorium, David Lodewyckx at the
Maastricht Conservatory, and David Burn at the Catholic University of Leuven.
Margaret Faultless and Robert O. Gjerdingen also invited me to work with their
students at the Royal Academy of Music (London) and at Northwestern University
(Chicago). I am grateful, as well, to Tobias Cramm for inviting me to work with
young musicians at his “MentiParti” summer school in Basel.
I am delighted to thank a number of my students at the University of Nottingham
for their contributions to this book. Eric Boaro taught me much about early
Neapolitan intermezzi. Caterina Moruzzi worked with me on publicizing the findings
to a broader audience and, through her radical philosophical discovery of “musical
stage theory,” went some way toward confirming my suspicion that in the eighteenth
century the performance was the work. Marco Pollaci, truly a “Miss Marple” of ar-
chival investigation, located and photographed countless obscure sources for me that
would otherwise have remained inaccessible. Marina Bain, Catherine Dennison, Jake
Gerzimbke, Rebecca Sarginson, Mei Tee, and Mark Winckley were the first students to
undertake an extended course of study on historical solfeggio with me in Nottingham
in 2019. Their positive feedback was both gratifying and instructive.
Many others have provided me with advice, comments, and reproductions of
archival materials. In alphabetical order, they are Gregory Barnett, Maria-​Luisa
Baroni, Thomas Christensen, James Cook, Felix Diergarten, Stefan Eckart, Dinko
Fabris, Annika Forkert, Marianne Gillion, David Ledbetter, Nicoleta Paraschivescu,
Claire Roberts-​Schäfer, and Gesine Schröder.
I am grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) for funding
this research through a Research Leadership Fellowship (2013–​15) and to the
University of Nottingham for additional funding and support.
 Glossary of Technical Terms

/​A rising solidus indicates a mutation to a higher hexachord; for instance, in the ascending
octave scale do-​re-​mi-​fa-​sol/​re-​mi-​fa.
\ A falling solidus indicates a mutation to a lower hexachord; for instance, in the descending
octave scale fa-​mi\la-​sol-​fa-​mi-​re-​do.
Amen rule. The first way to vocalize a melismatic passage in solfeggio. When a solmized
note is followed by diminution (see below), it should be sung throughout to the vowel of
its first syllable. In other words, the flourish should receive syllables on only its opening
and closing notes, just like an Amen in plainchant.
Appoggiatura rule. The second way to vocalize a melismatic passage in solfeggio. When
a solmized note is preceded by diminution (see below), the singer should anticipate its
syllable. In other words, the flourish should begin with the syllable of its goal note. The
appoggiatura rule applied not only to single accented pitches displacing a note but also to
any other kind of prefixed on-​the-​beat ornament such as the cercar della nota (see below).
Canto fermo (fixed melody; /​plainchant). Canto fermo referred not only to ecclesiastical
plainchant but also to its associated system of notation involving a medieval four-​line
staff and square noteheads. Because Catholic churches needed choirs to sing plainchant
for services, the first rudiments of music continued to be taught via canto fermo for much
of the eighteenth century. Knowledge of canto fermo is essential for understanding how
solfeggists read multiple clefs and keys by identifying their latent fa-​clefs (see below).
Canto figurato (figured melody; /​modern notation). A versatile system of notation used
for all types of music except plainchant. It involved seven fixed clefs on a five-​line staff,
symbols for rhythm and performance, and an ability to represent scale transpositions be-
yond a single flat. Bar a few minor changes, it is still in use today.
Cartella. An erasable tablet used by apprentice musicians in conservatories. It was usually
made of wood covered with whitened varnished leather.
Cercar della nota (search for the note). A stepwise ornament prefixed to a syllable-​note
from above or below; an appoggiatura expanded to encompass several notes.
Church tones (psalm tones). The eight standard plainchant melodies for singing psalms.
They were heard so often in daily services that they came to represent tonalities,
characterized by incomplete key signatures missing one sharp or flat. Tone I, for instance,
with a final on G, employed only the notes G, A, B, and C and did not include an F. This
meant that Greco (c. 1700–​28; I-​Nc, 1.9.15/​1) could add basses to it and compose organ
versets on it that were clearly in G major without needing to include an F♯ in the key
signature.
Circle of fifths. A graphic representation of all twelve chromatic keys arranged in intervals
of perfect fifths to form a “circle” from C to C. Its origins lie in solfeggio. Because each
scale or key was defined by its fourth-​note “fundamental fa” and seventh-​note “funda-
mental mi” (the only notes with one possible syllable name), altering fa to mi or mi to fa
led to a modulation by fifth.
Clausula vera (tenor cadence). A weak type of perfect cadence with the bass pattern 3-​2-​1
(mi-​re-​do) or 1-​2-​1 (do-​re-​do). See Gjerdingen (2007), 164–​66.
xiv Glossary of Technical Terms

Comma (fa-​mi). A weak inflection that, like a comma, sets a syntactical unit apart from
what comes next. In melodic terms, it involves scale degrees [5]‌-4​ -​3 ([sol]-​fa-​mi) set
against 7-​1 (mi-​fa) in the bass. See Gjerdingen (2007), 156–​58.
Compound scale (scala composta). A pair of interlocking hexachords related by the interval
of a fourth or a fifth. In its authentic aspect, it was usually depicted as a C major scale
spanning a tenth from c1 to e2 that consisted of hexachords on C and G. In its plagal
aspect, the scale encompassed a ninth from g1 to a2 with hexachords on G and C. The
compound scale managed to distill the entire Guidonian system down to its most fun-
damental property. It created a conceptual model for transposition to each of the twelve
available pitches. The authentic ordering became established as standard for melodies
having ut/​do as a final (major modes), while the plagal ordering was maintained as the
basis for melodies with re as a final (minor modes).
Diapason. The just octave in Pythagorean tuning; the octave interval that defines a mode,
for instance, D to D in Dorian mode.
Diapente. The interval of a fifth from the final of a mode to its dominant, for instance, D-​E-​
F-​G-​A (re-​mi-​fa-​sol-​la) in Dorian mode.
Diatesseron. The interval of a fourth from the dominant of a mode to its final, for instance,
A-​B-​C-​D (re-​mi-​fa-​sol) in Dorian mode.
Diminution (division). The process of elaborating individual notes by dividing them
into shorter values, for instance, by applying ornaments, leaps, runs, and arpeggios.
In solfeggio, the syllable-​note retained its identity regardless of the number or range
of vocalized pitches. Agricola (1757) and Hiller (1780) specified two ways to perform
divisions: detached (battuto), or staccato, and slurred (scivolato), or legato.
Evovae. A set of formulaic endings appended to psalm tones. The word is made up of the
vowels contained in the ending of the lesser doxology (a customary expression of praise
for the Holy Trinity): “sæculorum. Amen” (the ages of ages. Amen).
Fa above la (fà sopra la). To avoid having to mutate for the sake of one extra note, the sem-
itone above la in a hexachord was always sung as fà, by analogy with the fa a half-​step
higher than mi within the scale.
Fa-​clef. Clef used in plainchant, which made use of three clefs marking the location of the
notes B♭, F, and C. All three indicated the position of fa within the scale to enable singers to
locate the fa-​mi semitone. They could shift to any part of the staff to avoid the need for leger
lines. Eighteenth-​century musicians read modern notation by visualizing fa-​clefs, which
enabled them to read multiple clefs and key signatures with the same layout of notes on
the staff.
Fa/​do lead-​in. A common way to introduce a Prinner (see below) by using the tonic note, for
instance, in C major, C (fa) leading to A-​G-​F-​E (la-​sol-​fa-​mi).
False soprano cadence (fa\mi-​fa). A common syllabic deception (see below at Inganno),
which involved singing the last two notes of the usual soprano cadence 2-​1-​7-​1 (sol-​fa-​
mi-​fa) in the dominant rather than the tonic key (sol-​fa\mi-​fa); for instance, in C major,
the cadence D-​C-​B-​C becomes D-​C-​F♯-​G.
False tenor cadence (la-​sol\fa). A cadence that occurs when the usual tenor cadence 2-​3-​2-​1
(sol-​la-​sol-​fa) is subject to a deception (see below at Inganno) in which the same syllables
shift to the hexachord above; for instance, in C major, D-​E-​D-​C (sol-​la-​sol-​fa) becomes
G-​A-​G-​C (sol-​la-​sol\fa).
Fa\sol modulation. A device commonly found toward the end of solfeggi. It features an “ex-
plicit” mutation on a single note: scale degree 1 (fa) in the dominant key transforms into
scale degree 5 (sol) in the tonic key. It can be experienced in C major by singing F♯-​G as
mi-​fa followed immediately by G-​F♮-​E as sol-​fa-​mi.
 Glossary of Technical Terms xv

Fenaroli (mi-​fa-​sol-​la). A schema involving an ascent through scale degrees 7-​1-​2-​3 (mi-​
fa-​sol-​la), usually set against 4-​3-​7-​1 (fa-​mi\mi-​fa) in the other voice. See Gjerdingen
(2007), 462.
Fixed do and moveable do. The two broad categories of modern solmization. In fixed do,
each syllable corresponds to the name of a specific note; for instance, in French solfège do
is always C, re is always D, and so on. In moveable do, each syllable corresponds to a scale
degree, which means that it remains the same regardless of transposition; for instance,
the first four notes of a major scale are always do-​re-​mi-​fa, whatever the key.
Fonte (sol-​fa, fa-​mi; fount, source). A schema used to ground a key by sounding the minor
harmony (chord ii or re-​fa-​la) followed by the major harmony (chord I or do-​mi-​sol) in-
herent in its hexachord. In melodic terms, it usually featured a pair of dyads: scale degrees
5-​4 (sol-​fa) followed by 4-​3 (fa-​mi). See Gjerdingen (2007), 456.
Fundamental fa and mi. The fourth note fa and the seventh note mi of an authentic com-
pound scale (see above), which were the only notes that possessed one syllable name.
For instance, in C major, F can only be called fa and B can only be called mi. These came
to define the key as its fundamental fa and mi. There were, accordingly, two principal
techniques of modulation. Sharping the fourth of the scale by singing fa as mi transposed
the key up a perfect fifth, and flatting the seventh by singing mi as fa transposed it
down a perfect fifth. In effect, the altered fourth became the seventh of the new key, and
vice versa.
Galant Romanesca. A schema commonly used as an opening gambit. Its melody usu-
ally emphasized scale degrees 1 and 5 over a bass that descended through 1-​7-​6-​3. See
Gjerdingen (2007), 454.
Galant schema (pl. schemata). In Gjerdingen’s definition (2007, 6), “stock musical phrases
employed in conventional sequences.” A schema can be understood in three ways: first,
as a prototype, an idealized version of a common pattern; second, as an exemplar, a single
pattern that resembles the prototype; and third, as a theory, an explanation of a com-
monly occurring musical event.
Gamut. The twenty notes of “true music” (musica recta), from low G to high e2. It encompassed
three registers—​low, high, and very high, each starting on G—​and seven hexachords or
“deductions,” starting on G (the hard scale), C (the natural scale), and F (the soft scale). It
was named after Gamma-​ut, or ut on G, the lowest note in Guido of Arezzo’s system.
Grand cadence. A drawn-​out close typical of late eighteenth-​century music involving a me-
lodic descent through scale degrees 1-​6-​5-​2-​1 (fa\la-​sol-​re-​do) over a standard bass ca-
dence, 3-​4-​5-​1 (mi-​fa-​sol-​do). See Gjerdingen (2007), 152.
Guide (guida). A series of passing notes that fill in an interval as a “guide” for the singer.
Guidonian. Pertaining to the six-​syllable system accredited to Guido of Arezzo.
Hard melody (canto di bequadro or cantus durus) and soft melody (canto di bemolle or cantus
mollis). For melodies that went beyond the six notes of the simple scale, it was necessary to
combine two or more hexachords. There were two ways to do this. Merging the hard hexa-
chord on G with the natural on C gave rise to “hard melody.” Merging the soft hexachord on
F with the natural on C gave rise to “soft melody.” These formed the two main tonal systems
of Renaissance and early Baroque music, one with no key signature and the other with a
single flat.
Hexachord. The pattern of intervals defined by the syllables do-​re-​mi-​fa-​sol-​la. It was known,
after Ramos (1482), as a “hexachord” and after Tinctoris (1495) as a “deduction,” be-
cause it was “deduced” from the entire range of available notes. By the sixteenth century
it was more commonly described by means of the metonym “scale,” meaning “steps or
xvi Glossary of Technical Terms

stairs.” The “hard” scale started on G and was named after ♮ (bequadro), an angular square
symbol for B (or, in German, h), the precursor to the modern natural sign. The “natural”
scale started on C and did not include the problematic note B. The “soft” scale, so called
because of its rounded symbol ♭ (bemolle) for B♭, started on F.
High 2 drop/​other sol (fa/​sol\fa-​mi). A melodic cliché of the galant style that served as a
conventional sign of impending closure. It enlivened the otherwise plain stepwise me-
lodic ­figure 4-​5-​4-​3 (fa-​sol-​fa-​mi) by swapping sol on scale degree 5 for the other sol
within the compound scale, on scale degree 2. This resulted in a leaping sixth, or what
Gjerdingen (2007, 74) calls a “high 2 drop,” sung to the same syllables.
Indugio. Literally, a tarrying or lingering on the pre-​dominant harmony to create a teasing
delay to a cadence; it usually involves a prolongation of chord ii in first inversion. See
Gjerdingen (2007), 464.
Inganno (deceit, deception, or jest). Singing a syllable or syllables from one hexachord to
the corresponding pitch or pitches from another. This was a common way to develop
melodies and extend their range without departing mentally from one hexachord. For
instance, the syllables do-​re-​mi-​fa could be sung to scale degrees 1-​2-​3-​4 or, as do-​re\mi-​
fa, to scale degrees 1-​2-​7-​1.
Invertible counterpoint. A contrapuntal texture in which the voices can appear in any reg-
ister, the melody as well as the bass.
La/​mi modulation. A variant of the mi/​mi modulation (see below). It usually involves a step-
wise ascent from the fundamental mi of the tonic key (scale degree 7) to the la above
(scale degree 3), followed by a whole-​step onto the new fundamental mi of the dominant
key, for instance, B-​C-​D-​E/​F♯ in the key of C major.
La-​sol half cadence. A species of musical punctuation that halts on the dominant harmony
without proceeding to closure on the tonic. In solfeggio, it falls on scale degrees 3-​2 and
could also be sung as mi-​re.
Lettura (reading). The first lessons of music theory, which involved speaking aloud note
names while beating time. In Naples, apprentices usually spent a whole year speaking
notes in rhythm. Lettura was a synonym for solfeggio.
Meyer (fa-​mi/​fa-​mi). A schema fashionable during the period 1760–​80 that was often
chosen for important themes. It was characterized by two events: the harmonically open
descending semitone 1-​7 (fa-​mi) and its answer, the harmonically closed semitone 4-​3
(fa-​mi). See Gjerdingen (2007), 459.
Mi/​mi modulation. A common way to introduce a turn toward the dominant, involving a
whole-​step from the mi of the tonic key (scale degree 3) up to the fundamental mi of the
dominant key (a new scale degree 7), for instance, from E to F♯ in the key of C major. The
two mis were often merged together within a running passage and sung to just one mi
syllable.
Mode. Eighteenth-​century Italian musicians recognized eight church modes. If a chant
ended on a final D, then its mode was the first type (Dorian/​Hypodorian), called Protus
after the ancient Greek word for “first.” If it ended on E, then its mode was the second
type, or Deuterus (Phrygian/​Hypophrygian). If it ended on F, then the mode was the
third type, or Tritus (Lydian/​Hypolydian), and if on G, then its mode was the fourth type,
or Tetrardus (Mixolydian/​Hypomixolydian). Each mode was defined by a particular for-
mation comprising a diapason or octave species divided into two component parts: the
diapente, or fifth, and the diatesseron, or fourth (see above). Although the modes
endured in theory as a means for classifying chants, in reality they were subject to so
 Glossary of Technical Terms xvii

many accidentals that their defining intervallic profiles became meaningless. They were
indistinguishable from major or minor keys. See c­ hapter 5 for more detail.
Monte (mount). A schema involving a rising stepwise sequence, often involving a 5-​4-​3 (sol-​
fa-​mi) melody over a 7-​1 (mi-​fa) bass. See Riepel (1755) and Gjerdingen (2007), 458.
Musica ficta, musica recta (false music, true music). “False” or ficta pitches are those that lie
outside the system of “true” or recta music, as defined by the gamut of Guido of Arezzo.
Today, the term ficta is often loosely applied to all unnotated inflections that must be
inferred from the musical context and added by an editor or a performer.
Mutation. The practice of switching from one hexachord to another in solmization. The ge-
neral rule was to mutate on re when ascending and on la when descending; for instance,
a C major octave scale was sung as do-​re-​mi-​fa-​sol/​re-​mi-​fa ascending and fa-​mi\la-​sol-​
fa-​mi-​re-​do descending. The majority of mutations in eighteenth-​century solfeggio were
of the kind that Renaissance theorists called “implicit”; that is, the change of hexachord
took place imperceptibly between one note and another, rather than through an “ex-
plicit” mutation on the same note. Eighteenth-​century musicians learned to mutate by
memorizing the syllables that fell between the fa-​clefs in plainchant: The “mutation at the
fourth” (alla quarta) encompassed the notes fa/​re-​mi-​fa (scale degrees 1-​2-​3-​4), and the
“mutation at the fifth” (alla quinta) encompassed the notes fa-​sol/​re-​mi-​fa (scale degrees
4-​5-​6-​7-​8).
Obbligo (constraint, obligation). A pedagogical method established in seventeenth-​
century Rome and later taken up by Francesco Durante and his followers at the Onofrio
Conservatory in Naples. An obbligo is a prescribed condition that obliges a melody to
accept strict limitations. These range from particular rhythmic values as in Johann Fux’s
(1725) five species of counterpoint to fixed isometric tenors, given cantus firmi, and me-
lodic patterns repeated and varied as an “obstinacy” (perfidia). Obstinacies were often
defined by solmization syllables and could betoken puns and dedications.
Other fa. The act of generating melodic movement by altering an expected stepwise pro-
gression onto fa with the fa from the other hexachord of the compound scale. This often
results in an upward leap of a fourth, as in fa/​fa-​mi (1-​4-​3) or sol/​fa\fa-​mi (5-​8-​4-​3). It is
also commonly found in the converging half cadence as fa\fa-​mi-​re (8-​4-​3-​2) and in the
Prinner when the usual la-​sol-​fa-​mi is rendered as la-​sol/​fa\fa-​mi (6-​5-​8-​4-​3).
Other sol. The act of generating melodic movement by altering an expected stepwise pro-
gression onto sol with the sol from the other hexachord of the compound scale. This often
results in an upward leap of a sixth, as in the “high 2 drop” fa/​sol\fa-​mi (4-​2-​4-​3).
Partimento. A sketch, written on a single staff, that is primarily intended to be a guide for the
improvisation of a composition at the keyboard. See Sanguinetti (2012), 14.
Passo indietro (step backwards). A weak cadence, characterized by a rising mi-​fa (7-​
1) in the melody set against a falling fa-​mi (4-​3) in the bass. See Gjerdingen (2007),
173–​74.
Permutation. An abrupt shift between two hexachords, typically by chromatic stepwise in-
flection on the same syllable (fa/​mi, for instance B♭ to B♮). It is similar to the category of
“explicit” mutation (see above). Permutation could also occur by leap, usually a tritone
from mi to fa. See Afonso de André (2005), 197.
Prinner (la-​sol-​fa-​mi). A schema commonly used as a riposte to an opening gambit. Its
melody emphasizes a stepwise descent through scale degrees 6-​5-​4-​3 (la-​sol-​fa-​mi), set
against 4-​3-​2-​1 in the bass (fa-​mi-​re-​do). Each key contains two Prinners: a Tonic type
(6-​5-​4-​3) and a Dominant type (3-​2-​1-​7). See Gjerdingen (2007), 455.
xviii Glossary of Technical Terms

Puer cantor. A “boy singer,” or pupil in the care of a religious institution. In return for edu-
cation, food, clothing, and shelter, he normally had to work as choir singer, musician, and
all-​round servant of the church.
Quiescenza (fa-​mi/​mi-​fa). A schema in which a descending semitone ♭7-​1 (fa-​mi) is
answered by an ascending semitone ♮7-​1 (mi-​fa). See Gjerdingen (2007), 460.
Quiescenza cadence. A cadence schema commonly found in Type 3 solfeggi. It combines
three discrete schemata: a Quiescenza involving a sol-​fa-​mi feint toward the flat side of
the key (1-​♭7-​6) that is instantly countermanded by a mi-​fa correction (♮7-​1) and rounded
off with a conventional fa-​sol-​fa cadence (1-​2-​1).
Simple scale (scala semplice). The hexachord (see above).
Sol/​do lead-​in. A common upbeat gesture preceding a Prinner, involving scale degree 5 (sol/​
do) leading to 6-​5-​4-​3 (la-​sol-​fa-​mi).
Sol-​fa-​mi. A schema made up of scale degrees 5-​4-​3 of a major scale. It was often used to
ground a key or to modulate because it ends with a “comma” that incorporates the funda-
mental fa of a compound scale.
Soft melody (canto di bemolle or/​cantus mollis). See above at Hard melody and soft melody.
Solfeggiamento. A seventeenth-​century precursor to the eighteenth-​century solfeggio. The
earliest collection is Giovanni Gentile’s (1642). The solfeggiamento was a two-​part con-
trapuntal ricercar to be sung rather than played (see Type 2 solfeggio).
Solfeggio. A didactic melody for one or more voices, spoken, sung, or conceived in terms of
syllables. Solfeggi were either unaccompanied (Types 1 and 2) or accompanied (Types 3
and 4) by a bass part intended for realization at the keyboard.
Solmization. Naming notes using a system of syllables. The three main systems in use in the
eighteenth century, according to Rousseau (1768), were (1) a version of Guido of Arezzo’s
original hexachordal system (sistema antico); (2) the updated Italian system of transpos-
able compound scales (sistema moderno); and (3) the fixed-​do seven-​note scale with si.
Soprano cadence. A cadence figure incorporating scale degrees 1-​7-​1 (fa-​mi-​fa).
Tenor cadence. A cadence figure incorporating scale degrees 3-​2-​1 (mi-​re-​do/​la-​sol-​fa) or
1-​2-​1 (do-​re-​do/​fa-​sol-​fa).
Tessitura (form, weave). In modern Italian, “weaving” or “fabric.” It is related, via its Latin
root textura, to the English word “texture.” But in Italy c. 1650–​1880 it referred to the
shaping or structuring of musical material, what might today be broadly described as
“musical form.” Sources from Giamberti (1657), Berardi (1690, 1693), and Martini (c.
1750; I-​Bc, HH.16) to Ruta (1877) use tessitura to signify musical construction. Mancini
(1777, 206) used a related word when recommending that a solfeggio “not be woven
[tessuto] from regular intervallic leaps.”
Trait (tratto). A short flat stroke of the pen or pencil, commonly found in solfeggio
manuscripts, that instructs the singer to maintain a syllable through its diminutions. All
notes that fall within a trait are governed by one main note, either the first (according to
the Amen rule) or the last (according to the Appoggiatura rule).
Transmutation. Borrowing a syllable-​note from another hexachord without effecting a full
mutation. For instance, fa above la, or mi for an isolated leading note below do.
Type 1 solfeggio. A didactic melody for one unaccompanied voice, spoken, sung, or
conceived in terms of syllables. These are usually encountered in lessons for canto fermo,
rudimentary theory, score-​reading, and scales and leaps for beginners.
Type 2 solfeggio. A combination of didactic melodies for two or more unaccompanied
voices, spoken, sung, or conceived in terms of syllables. These normally resemble
renaissance-​era ricercars, contrapuntal duos and trios, and imitation fugues.
 Glossary of Technical Terms xix

Type 3 solfeggio. A didactic melody for one voice, spoken, sung, or conceived in terms of
syllables and accompanied by (a) unfigured bass, (b) figured bass, or (c) keyboard part.
This is the most familiar type, encompassing styles as diverse as aria and fugue.
Type 4 solfeggio. A combination of didactic melodies for two or more voices, spoken, sung,
or conceived in terms of syllables and accompanied by (a) unfigured bass, (b) figured
bass, or (c) keyboard part. This is the least common type. It usually encompasses vocal
duets and ensembles that are either imitative or cantabile in style.
Vocalizzo (vocalise). An instructional melody sung to vowels or a simple text.
Wrong fa (fa-​mi\fa). A deception (see Inganno), in which the final fa of the fa-​mi-​fa (1-​7-​1)
soprano cadence was sung as a flat seventh, fa-​mi\fa: for instance, in C major, C-​B-​C
becomes C-​B-​B♭, substituting an expected confirmation of the tonic with a surprise mod-
ulation down a fifth.
 1
Introduction
Discovering Solfeggio

Whoever can sing, can play.

Old saying traditionally observed at the Naples conservatories

There are many thousands of manuscripts known as solfeggi.1 More than four hun-
dred separate collections have been gathering dust in archives since the early nine-
teenth century. Some contain only a handful of folios, whereas others fill entire
bookshelves.
This vast store represents merely the tip of an iceberg. Because writing a solfeggio
for a lesson cost an eighteenth-​century maestro just a few minutes’ labor, for every
one preserved hundreds more must have been discarded or erased from writing
tablets. Each manuscript tells a tale of survival.
Once, these yellowed pages were alive with the sound of singing and the bustle of
daily music classes. Now, they are silent—​enigmatic remnants of a vanished world
of music making.
How were they used? What did they teach? Could solfeggi hold the key to
unlocking the trade secrets of a forgotten art of melody in the long eighteenth
century?
These were the questions that sprang to mind when I first became aware of the
scale of manuscript sources awaiting discovery in archives across Europe and the
United States. Judging by sheer quantity, I reasoned, they must have been impor-
tant. Scholars had only just begun to take note of solfeggi, primarily in connection
with partimenti—​single-​staff guides to the improvisation of a composition at the
keyboard—​which were much better understood, thanks to the pioneering work
of Gjerdingen (2007) and Sanguinetti (2012). From their findings, I knew that the
most common type of solfeggio consisted of a melody, or sometimes a vocal duet
or trio, to be sung using some kind of syllables in conjunction with a bass line to be
played as a keyboard accompaniment. A typical beginner’s lesson can be seen in
e­ xample 1.1.
This solfeggio exists in two separate manuscript collections in the library of the
Naples Conservatory, one assigned to Leonardo Leo (1694–​1744) and the other to
Niccolò Porpora (1686–​1768). Multiple attributions are common among solfeggio
manuscripts, owing in part to the guesswork of later archivists and in part to the

The Solfeggio Tradition. Nicholas Baragwanath, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197514085.001.0001
2 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 1.1 Leo, Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano (c. 1734–​37), no. 1, fol. 161v

way they were cascaded through the student body. They may also have been copied
for private lessons or preserved by some conscientious student with access to paper
and ink. Because Leo and Porpora did not serve together in the same faculty, it is
doubtful that the lesson presented in ­example 1.1 could have issued from both of
them. The dual attribution probably arose because two copies of a solfeggio from
the same lesson became separated and were misattributed when the central Naples
Conservatory library was established in 1791.2
This melody was most likely intended for the young boys at the Turchini
Conservatory in Naples, where Leo served as second-​class maestro from 1734
to 1737. At that time, he oversaw the initial three years of study, during which
apprentices were required to master the rudiments through solfeggio. Eighteenth-​
century maestros “would never sit youngsters at the harpsichord unless they had
already received three years of instruction in solfeggio.”3 This tallies with Florimo’s
later claim that “after the training in solfeggio, which lasted for as many years and
as long as the maestro deemed necessary, each student decided, according to his
own inclination—​and in keeping with the old saying traditionally observed at the
conservatories, that whoever can sing, can play—​whether to sing, compose, or learn
the instrument that most appealed.”4
Finding out any more about solfeggi turned out to be challenging. In fact, it
seemed that almost nothing was known about them. The most illuminating source
I could find was a concise beginner’s guide, available online as part of Robert
O. Gjerdingen’s website “Monuments of Solfeggi,” and even this page openly
acknowledges the limits of our current understanding:
 Introduction 3

As far as is known today, the boys in the Neapolitan conservatories sang the
melodies of solfeggi, and either they or more likely a maestro played the bass and
accompaniment at the harpsichord or other keyboard instrument. We do not
know if solfeggi were sung solo or by a group. In fact we know hardly anything
about the performance details of solfeggio practice.5

In his historical overview, Gjerdingen nevertheless offers some reflections on

how solfeggi might have contributed to the curriculum taught at the conservatories:

Solfeggi and partimenti (instructional basses) were two sides of the same poly-
phonic coin. Partimenti provided a bass to which the student added one or more
upper voices in a keyboard realization. Solfeggi provided exemplary melodic ma-
terial, always in the context of a bass (and most probably a harmonic accompani-
ment). Thus the melody-​bass duo at the heart of eighteenth-​century music was
taught and reinforced from both the top and the bottom. Collections of solfeggi
were thus like a lexicon of stylistically favored melodic utterances. For the future
improviser, whether of whole compositions or merely of ornamented reprises and
cadenzas, solfeggi provided a storehouse of memorized material from which the
performer or composer could later draw.6

This interpretation makes good sense. Singing hundreds if not thousands of

solfeggi over the course of several years probably did equip students with an in-
stinctive feel for correct and tasteful melody and bass combinations, as well as pro-
vide them with a storehouse of memorized melodic material that could be called on
to assist composition and improvisation. In this respect, solfeggi can be defined as
“exercises in style for voice and basso continuo, providing a storehouse of contra-
puntally and harmonically contextualized melodic exemplars useful in partimento
realizations and free composition.”7
But I suspected that there was more to solfeggi than this. To me, they held out
the promise of an answer as to how professional musicians in the past managed to
compose so fluently, to improvise and embellish instantaneously, and to switch ef-
fortlessly between seven clefs.
Proving it was going to be difficult. I was facing an immense, uncharted ocean of
primary source material without so much as a compass to guide me. Any attempt
to tell the story behind these thousands of manuscripts would mean starting from
scratch.
At first, I searched for clues in contemporary accounts of solfeggio practice.
These turned out to be either frustratingly vague or concerned more with litur-
gical plainchant than with Galant melody. Next, I attempted to trace the origins
of manuscript collections and to research their histories. There were dead ends
at every turn. Finally, I fell back on my default response as a stumped musicol-
ogist: analysis. I besieged dozens of solfeggi with every analytical weapon in
my armory, breaking them down into conglomerations of themes, harmonies,
4 The Solfeggio Tradition

counterpoints, phrases, motives, schemata, rhythms, functions, cadences,

gestures, agents, topics, pitch-​classes, and genres. When I stepped back to inspect
the results, I was astonished to find that my efforts had left hardly a dent. I was
no closer to identifying the distinguishing features of solfeggi or to working out
their didactic uses than I had been before I started. They appeared to respond
to analysis in much the same way as any other contemporary composition. In
seeking to identify typical solfeggio forms or melodic contours, for instance, one
might as well try to find typical patterns for all eighteenth-​century music. Some
solfeggi resemble short instrumental sonata movements and exhibit the same
degree of variety, whereas others follow the conventions of genres as diverse as
arias, duets, and dance movements. Many are constructed in fugal episodes, like
anachronistic Renaissance ricercars. Analyzing them may give rise to interesting
interpretations, but no more so than might be found in any other eighteenth-​
century repertory. In other words, modern methods of analysis can provide a
great deal of insight into the structures of individual solfeggi, but they struggle to
come up with convincing, let alone historically grounded, answers as to how they
were used, what they taught, and how they helped prepare apprentices for profes-
sional lives as composers and performers.
While contemplating ways to get around this obstacle, it dawned on me that my
hard-​won knowledge of modern music theory might be the very thing holding me
back. After all, in the lost world of eighteenth-​century solfeggio, I was a complete
novice. I knew less than a seven-​year-​old on her first day at school. To engage with
the material on its own terms, I would have to go back to basics. I would have to
train myself as an apprentice (see box 1.1).
Without a maestro or textbook to guide me, I decided that the only way to do this
was to sing as many solfeggi as possible in emulation of the five-​year-​old Giuseppe
Sigismondo, who, over the course of four months in 1744, “sang around one hun-
dred solfeggi, some devised on the spot by [his] own master [Giuseppe Geremia,
a student at the Loreto Conservatory] and others by [Francesco] Feo.”8 Getting
to know the material as a performer might conceivably foster some intuitive un-
derstanding of its educational significance. Fortunately, several collections were
arranged as a progressive series of “lessons,” which meant that I could follow in
the footsteps of real students. It was also relatively easy to pick out the most basic
solfeggi from other collections. Soon, stacks of photocopied manuscripts by half-​
forgotten maestros such as Francesco Durante (1684–​1755) and Carlo Cotumacci
(1709–​85) began to rise like paper stalagmites from the floor of my study. At this
stage I had no idea what they might reveal, other than my tolerance for untidiness.
But these ghostly lessons would at least be brought to life once more, by the voice of
an apprentice and the hands of an accompanist, probably for the first time in more
than two centuries.
I sat down at the piano and opened my first lesson (­example 1.1). It looked
simple enough, with encouragingly long note values and limited melodic move-
ment. No sooner had I opened my mouth to sing, however, than I closed it again in
 Introduction 5

Box 1.1 Apprentice, Journeyman, Master Craftsman

An apprenticeship was the traditional route into work for children from poor
backgrounds. Initiation into the mysteries of a craft usually involved the imita-
tion and repetition of practical tasks, with minimal spoken instruction.
In the regular system of skilled apprenticeships, relatively affluent parents paid
a premium to a master, who undertook to train their child for a set number of
years. This agreement was recorded in an indenture. On completing the period
of training, an apprentice normally became a journeyman: a skilled practitioner
employed by another. The word comes from the French journée, signifying “paid
by the day.” Journeymen were known in English as jacks or knaves, hence the ex-
pression “Jack of all trades, master of none.”
In order to rise to the rank of master craftsman and join a guild, a journeyman
had to complete a masterpiece worthy of the masters’ approval. Were he to fail, he
would likely remain a journeyman for the rest of his life.
Apprenticeships sponsored by the church, alternatively, came to be used
as a way of providing for poor, illegitimate, and orphaned children of both
sexes. Most musicians learned their trade by these means at church schools
and orphanages. Others were trained in the family or underwent indentured
apprenticeships with a maestro at a church or chapel. The majority of profes-
sional musicians in the eighteenth century were journeyman singers and players,
not maestros. Beethoven’s father Johann, for instance, was employed as a choral
singer at the court chapel in Bonn.
This book uses the term apprenticeship in a broad sense to signify practical
vocational training in return for unpaid labor, irrespective of the particular
circumstances.

befuddlement. Which syllables should I use? Could I sidestep the issue by vocalizing
with a vowel? Did it matter? I raced to my shelves. No one appeared to know.
From the primary sources I was able to ascertain that Neapolitan maestros in
the 1730s relied on a system of syllables for solfeggio lessons. Of that there was
no doubt. They may occasionally have had recourse to an easier option, namely,
vocalizing on a vowel, but only when working specifically on intonation or ad-
vanced vocal techniques. Evidence for this can be found in sources such as Mancini
(1774, 55) and Corri (1810, 8). Progression to vocalization (singing melodies with
open vowels) depended on first having mastered the syllables of solfeggio.
The other easier option—​singing to French (modern) solfège, that is, do-​re-​mi-​
fa-​sol-​la-​si, with do always on C, re always on D, etc.—​would not have been used by
Leo and his pupils. Although in common usage in France from the mid-​1700s, it
did not have any significant impact on Italian musical life until the very end of the
eighteenth century (as documented in Chapter 14).
6 The Solfeggio Tradition

In any case, I was not interested in singing Leo’s solfeggio in the manner of an
amateur fifty years after the event or like a student at one of the new public lycées
of the Napoleonic era. I wanted to re-​create the lesson as an apprentice of the time
may have undertaken it in order to understand how it may have taught a set of
fundamentals that underpinned professional skills. The sources indicated that this
meant singing it to a set of syllables derived from the medieval system of Guido of
Arezzo (c. 991–​c. 1033), which appears to have developed over the course of seven
centuries of unbroken tradition.
Only Gjerdingen had shown any interest in this Galant solmization system. He
pointed out that Giuseppe Tartini, the violin virtuoso from Padua, defined the
“usual Italian solfeggio” by means of the syllables “ut, re, mi, fa, sol, re, mi, fa” in his
1767 treatise on harmony.9 Because these eight syllables map onto a major scale as-
cending through the octave, for instance, from c1 to c2 (as shown in e­ xample 1.2),
they confirm that Galant musicians continued to rely on “mutations” between the
medieval hexachords. (Brief definitions of technical terms such as this can be found
in the glossary in the frontmatter). As soon as sol on G was reached, a mutation
occurred: G-​sol overlapped with the G-​ut of a new hexachord, meaning that the
scale finished with the syllables A-​re, B-​mi, C-​fa. This process is highlighted in
­example 1.2 (and throughout the book) by added stroke symbols: /​indicates a mu-
tation to a higher hexachord, whereas \ indicates a mutation to a lower. That Tartini’s
“usual solfeggio” originated in traditional theory was confirmed by earlier sources
such as the Key to Music (1677) by the Viennese organist Johann Jacob Prinner,
which set out the normal ways to solmize ascending and descending scales using
Guido of Arezzo’s ancient categories of “hard,” “soft,” and “natural” hexachords
(again, definitions of these terms can be found in the glossary).
Tartini’s major scale was derived from the medieval Guidonian system and
conceived in terms of two overlapping ut-​re-​mi-​fa-​sol-​la scales, with the tra-
ditional ut (commonly sung as the more melodious do)10 located on its first and
fifth notes. However confusing it may appear today, musicians in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries were taught to think of the major scale as a fusion of
two six-​note scales beginning on what would now be called its tonic and domi-
nant notes. Material stated in the tonic and dominant, therefore, such as the subject
and real answer of a fugue or the transposed themes of a sonata, would have been
regarded as identical in terms of syllables. In C major, do-​re-​mi signified both C-​D-​
E and G-​A-​B.

Ex. 1.2 Tartini’s “usual Italian solfeggio” (De’ principj dell’ armonia musicale, 1767)
 Introduction 7

Tartini’s solmization reminded me of Johann Agricola’s (1757) commentary

to the Observations on Canto Figurato (1723) by the retired Bolognese castrato
Pierfrancesco Tosi, in which the same syllables—​ut-​re-​mi-​fa-​sol/​re-​mi-​fa—​were
shown to begin on any note. Similar illustrations of annotated transposed scales
can be found in many other sources, for instance, Samber (1704); Münster (1748);
Cotumacci (c. 1755); Solano (1764); Panerai (c. 1780); and L. Sabbatini (1789–​90).
In Guido’s system ut was limited to just three notes: G, C, and F. Over the centuries
the number of permissible finals increased. By the eighteenth century, ut could be
any chromatic note, giving rise to a moveable double do system quite different from
its medieval precursor, in which a “compound scale” made up of two overlapping
six-​note “simple scales” could be transposed onto any one of the twelve major keys.
In the key of G major, for instance, the syllables do-​re-​mi signified the notes G-​A-​B
and D-​E-​F♯, whereas in the key of D♭ major they signified D♭-​E♭-​F and A♭-​B♭-​C. This
mind-​boggling network of hexachords and scales was my second discovery.
Equipped with this minimal knowledge, which admittedly made little sense at
the time, I resumed my apprenticeship. The journey was slow and arduous. Most
basic solfeggi turned out to be constructed around a single hexachord, allowing the
student to become familiar with this essential building block of melody and to dis-
cover its various ambitus or boundary pitches (e.g., major melodies circumscribed
by do-​sol or minor ones by re-​la) and cadence points (e.g., closing on do and fa or
on re and la). More troublesome were the mutations between different hexachords,
which often seem alien and bewildering to modern musicians. But they could
at least be practiced. The most problematic features were the accidentals and
modulations, which appear to have been introduced at a surprisingly early stage of
the learning process.
Take, for instance, Leo’s rudimentary solfeggio, transcribed in e­ xample 1.1 and
speculatively solmized in ­example 1.3. Its melody circles around the six notes of
the hexachord G-​A-​B-​C-​D-​E, requiring no mutation beyond the old convention
of singing the semitone above la (in this case, F) always as fa. In spite of its ap-
parent simplicity, it includes several chromatic notes and, in m. 9, a clear cadence
into a minor key. Neither Tartini nor Agricola gives any hint for dealing with these
matters. Should all the sharps be sung as mi? Where does the modulation take place,
exactly? How should one solmize a minor key?
The process of singing solfeggio was radically different from anything I had come
across before. Because the singer had to rely on the vocal part, rather than the bass,
modulations between scales must have been cued melodically. But where were the
cues? Drawing on contemporary guides to solmization as well as my experience
as a performer, I tried to work out the most plausible readings, ones that would
make pedagogical as well as practical sense. I soon realized that the syllables were
not included merely to provide an even circulation of vowels and consonants for
singers to practice their diction. They were central to each lesson. They functioned
as mnemonic aids. The same patterns occurred again and again, helping the stu-
dent acquire an instinctive feel for the “right” ways to enliven a melody with tasteful
8 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 1.3 Leo, Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano (c. 1734–​37), no.1, with suggested
realization of the figured bass and solmization by the author

chromatic touches, to color it by shifting from major to minor mode and vice versa,
and to modulate from one scale to another. By singing these solfeggi with some-
thing close to their original syllables, I was learning how to create music like an
eighteenth-​century apprentice—​learning the traditional way, by singing.
The experience of singing these didactic melodies and hearing their associ-
ated basses seemed to have given me an insight into the creative process behind
the music. It felt as if a veil had been lifted from the manuscripts in front of me.
Freed from the distorting lens of twentieth-​century harmonic theory, the syl-
labic foundations of familiar patterns and devices, realized in all manner of florid
styles, leapt off the page. I could see at a glance that the solfeggio by Leo shown in
­example 1.3, for instance, was not a piece in C major that modulated to A minor but
 Introduction 9

a most basic exercise in how to create a characterful and varied melody using only
the six syllables of a single hexachord, without modulating. This short composition
demonstrates how musicians of the time were able to summon up sophisticated
melodies with a minimum of effort. They were not burdened with the weight of the-
oretical baggage that prevents modern classically trained musicians from achieving
similar feats. To create a melody like the one shown in e­ xample 1.3 required little
more than an ability to keep a six-​note scale in mind while applying a few simple
rules and conventions. These were acquired more by practice and familiarity than
by rote learning.
The technique is analogous to that used by modern jazz musicians. Taking a
chord progression as a conceptual framework, they are able to create music of as-
tonishing complexity and variety by applying a few rules such as associated modes,
chord substitutions, and guide tones. The essence of the method is to keep in mind
a simple framework while subjecting it to conventional transformations that do not
alter its substance. The mental image of the chord progression remains unaffected
by changes to its musical realization.
Singing ­example 1.3 to its original syllables, analogously, teaches one how to
form a basic melody by keeping in mind the simple six-​note scale as an unchanging
framework while exploiting its many possible interpretations. Eighteenth-​century
apprentices knew, for instance, that in this exercise do could be sung as either G
or G♯, depending on melodic context. They understood that fa and sol could like-
wise be sharped without changing the syllable, as confirmed by the original “traits”
(not slurs, as explained in Chapter 7) that connect C with C♯ and D with D♯ in m. 6.
In addition to these didactic functions, the melody familiarized apprentices with
the archaic stile antico associated with Palestrina, which was still very much in use
in church music.11 In short, this example demonstrates just how much could be
achieved with a single hexachord.
Although such conventions will seem unfamiliar to readers at this stage, the
lesson embedded in ­example 1.3 taught beginners the essential identity of a major
key and its relative minor and the basic method for dealing with accidentals. It may
be paraphrased in modern terms as follows:

1. Use only the syllables do-​re-​mi-​fa-​sol-​la. These represent the first six pitches of
the major scale. If required, a semitone above la may be added and sung as fa.
2. In order to project a major mode (known as do-​re-​mi or do-​mi-​sol), shape the
melody within the notes G-​do and E-​la and lead it toward a cadence on G-​do
or C-​fa.
3. In order to evoke a contrasting minor (known as re-​mi-​fa or re-​fa-​la), bring
out A-​re and E-​la as both boundary notes and cadential goals.
4. When approaching a cadence from below, closing, for instance, on A-​re or E-​
la, sharp the leading note (without changing the syllable).
5. Sliding chromatically between syllables is permitted, provided that it is done
tastefully and not overused.
10 The Solfeggio Tradition

6. Note-​for-​note solmizations such as this are found only in beginners’ solfeggi.

Most were realized in a very different manner, to be explained in Chapter 7.

In the eighteenth century much could be achieved with only six syllables—​by
those in the know. Modern classical musicians have no such basic framework. If
they wish to conjure up a comparable melody, they must take into account complex
modulations between different keys, as well as the distinction between notes that do
and do not belong to a governing scale.
After a few months of self-​directed apprenticeship, having sung through sev-
eral hundred solfeggi with something like their original syllables, I began to per-
ceive eighteenth-​century music in a new way. Everywhere I looked, I saw standard
patterns: a mi-​fa-​mi-​fa here, a fa-​mi-​fa-​la there. By force of habit, I could not help
but rank a succession of accidental sharps and flats into those that required a change
of syllable and those that did not. I appreciated the punchlines of musical jokes
more keenly, because so many were recycled from didactic ruses such as the “wrong
fa” originally devised to catch out unsuspecting apprentices (see ­example 9.15).
Even classic works took on new meanings. The opening seven bars of Beethoven’s
“Waldstein” Sonata op. 53, for instance, feature a common Neapolitan solfa lesson
in modulating up then down a fifth (as explained in connection with e­ xample 13.4).

Back to Basics

All the while, I continued to rummage through library catalogues and databases in
search of contemporary sources. I was particularly eager to find a textbook or trea-
tise connected to the Italian orphanage-​conservatories whence most of the man-
uscript collections originated. Surely some information about how to sing these
lessons must have survived? Curiously, I could find almost nothing on solfa other
than countless rudimentary guides to ecclesiastical plainchant (canto fermo). Their
gothic-​looking square noteheads and four-​line staves seemed far removed from the
rococo arabesques of eighteenth-​century solfeggi.
As I became more familiar with these sources, however, I realized that the elusive
“textbook” had been hiding in plain sight from the start. It was to be found in any
number of cheaply produced booklets and handwritten notebooks setting out more
or less the same rules of liturgical canto fermo for novice choirboys and trainee
clergy. These sources chronicled a world of eighteenth-​century music education
that went far beyond the Italian conservatories to encompass just about every pro-
vincial church school, monastery, and convent in Catholic Europe.
This came as something of a surprise. The central role of the church in eighteenth-​
century music education tends to be overlooked nowadays, in part because of a pre-
occupation with the fashionable courts and theaters that gave rise to the bulk of
our classical canon and in part because of an emphasis on composers who were
born into musical dynasties and trained within the family, like Domenico Scarlatti,
 Introduction 11

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and J. S. Bach and his sons. Their home schooling has
obscured the fact that most other professional musicians, who were not so fortu-
nate, learned their craft in exchange for singing at religious institutions.12
The reasons for this are easy to grasp. Catholic churches needed singers,
instrumentalists, and organists to deliver the chants and musical alternatives that
formed the cornerstone of daily service. Disadvantaged children and orphans
needed an education in order to get on in life. The two arrived at a mutually bene-
ficial arrangement. In return for a basic education and training in music—​as well
as food, shelter, and spiritual sustenance—​children labored for free in choir stalls
and organ lofts. This explains why most music schools were run by the church, why
most music teachers belonged to the clergy, and why most children began music
lessons by learning to sing plainchant with traditional medieval solmization.
The Styrian maestro and pedagogue Johann Joseph Fux offers a representative
example of this educational system. Born a lowly peasant, he was trained by his
local Catholic cantor before being accepted as an apprentice by a Jesuit order in
Graz. He began his professional life as an organist from 1696 at the Schottenkirche
on the Freyung in Vienna. His famous teaching method of species counterpoint, set
out in the Steps to Parnassus (1725), relies on traditional Guidonian solmization (al-
though this aspect is rarely mentioned today).
Similarly, the celebrated Viennese theorist Johann Georg Albrechtsberger,
who taught Beethoven, began his career as a seven-​year-​old puer cantor (boy
singer) at the Augustinian monastery in Klosterneuburg before progressing to the
Benedictine abbey at Melk and the Jesuit seminary in Vienna (see box 1.2). From
1772 he worked as regens chori (choirmaster) at the Carmelite church of St. Joseph
in the Laimgrube, Vienna, teaching the rudiments to choirboys.
Even the Austrian violinist and pedagogue Joseph Riepel learned traditional
Guidonian solfa as a child, despite the fact that he later railed against the unneces-
sary complexities in both its original “Latin” form and its newer “Italian” transpos-
able form (which had been in use, he claimed, since the fourteenth century). While

Box 1.2 Puer cantor

Orphans and boys from poor families who were taken in by church schools were
expected to contribute toward the cost of their education and upkeep, usually
by singing in choir and serving in church. They were generally known by the
Latin term pueri cantores (literally, “boy singers”), although they did more than
sing. They combined the roles of pupil, junior cantor, altar boy, and all-​purpose
servant of the church.
The extent of their musical education depended on the needs and culture of
the institution. All pueri had to learn to sing plainchant, but they were not neces-
sarily taught to play instruments. A fortunate few went on to become clergymen,
choirmasters, organists, and sometimes maestros.
12 The Solfeggio Tradition

advocating German letter names in place of Italian solfa syllables, Riepel added the
following aside: “Incidentally, I have tried to find the ut re mi fa that I learned in
my youth, but almost every schoolteacher has a different method for instructing
his students. One replaces ut with do, another replaces mi with a French si, etc.”13
The precedence of the old-​fashioned ut and B-​mi over the newer do and B-​si in this
formulation suggests that he continued to think in terms of the Guidonian system.
It also testifies to the increasing acceptance of French fixed-​do solfège among
German-​speaking musicians during the 1750s.
From these and many other composers’ life stories, I began to appreciate that,
for those who were unlucky enough to come from a family that possessed nei-
ther wealth nor a Kapellmeister, music education in eighteenth-​century Catholic
Europe necessarily began with traditional solfa and plainchant.
It followed that Italian solfeggi could not be understood in isolation. They
represented specialized variants of a much wider tradition centered on church
schools. The stylish and sophisticated lessons documented in most Neapolitan sol-
feggio manuscripts did not require written instructions because they presupposed a
solid grounding in sight-​singing for Divine Service.
In eighteenth-​century terms, I had begun my apprenticeship at least a year too
late. I needed to go back to the real basics. This meant working through contempo-
rary guides to canto fermo.
Although these differ in the presentation of chants, they evince a remarkable
consistency of approach. Essentially the same basic teachings can be found in
“cantorinus” textbooks from many parts of Europe, as I discovered from leafing
through scores of sources.
Undergoing a course of instruction as an eighteenth-​century puer cantor helped
me solve many puzzling aspects of solfeggio. It explained, for instance, how little
boys and girls managed to master skills that can seem beyond the reach of most
modern musicians. For them, mutating between hexachords and switching clefs
was, quite literally, child’s play. They were accustomed to reading multiple clefs
from their very first lessons because they learned to read notation through just four
simple patterns (encircled by fa syllables and called “mutations at the fourth and
fifth”) that unlocked any staff, clef, or key signature. Solfeggio manuscripts assisted
their transition from archaic canto fermo to the modern five-​line staff of canto
figurato (otherwise known to us as normal notation)14 by superimposing these four
patterns onto different clefs and key signatures.
The precise workings of this remarkably efficient method of score-​reading are
explained in Chapter 5. In order to experience it in anticipation, look to the opening
of a solfeggio by the retired castrato Girolamo Crescentini (1762–​1846) shown
in ­example 1.4(a). When scanned in bass clef with no key signature, it presents a
straightforward melody in A minor (bounded, in typical fashion, by the notes re
and la), yet when scanned in treble clef it reads with identical syllables in the keys of
F or F♯ minor, as well as fitting perfectly onto many other clefs and keys, as indicated
in the example. Musicians trained in this way could, in fact, read up to eighty-​four
Ex. 1.4 Crescentini, Raccolta d’Esercizi per il Canto all’ uso del Vocalizzo (1811; I-​Nc,
Solfeggio 109), fol. 12r, no. 8

(a) Theme, mm. 1–​8, preceded by a guide to reading it in different clefs

(b) Theme and three variations compared

14 The Solfeggio Tradition

combinations of clefs and key signatures with just two basic staff layouts. Evidence
as to how this method was applied can be found in a complete Italian course of
study used by the girls at the College of San Miguel of Belem in Mexico City during
the 1770s. Each of their practice melodies was introduced with two or more dif-
ferent clefs.15

Learning to Sing

Thus far I had uncovered a system of note naming based on the medieval hexachords
and developed over the course of centuries into a twelve-​key matrix of compound
scales. This facilitated musicking by allowing practitioners to label discrete patterns
of pitches with the same names whatever the key and wherever they occurred
within a scale. A rising tone-​semitone-​tone, for instance, was always re-​mi-​fa-​sol
whether it fell on D-​E-​F-​G, A-​B-​C-​D, or any other transposition of the same pat-
tern. This naming system gave rise to an associated technique of score-​reading in
which multiple clefs could be read with the same layout of notes. But these insights
relate primarily to the first stage of apprenticeship, to the discipline of “spoken sol-
feggio” (solfeggio parlato), in which initiates learned basic theory by speaking notes
aloud and beating time. They increased understanding of the rudiments as taught
to eighteenth-​century musicians but offered little to help me achieve my real aim: to
reconstruct the practice of “sung solfeggio” (solfeggio cantato).
This came next with the discovery of how to interpret cryptic performance
markings that regularly feature in solfeggio manuscripts. As recounted in Chapter 7,
linking Penna’s (1679) recommendation that bare intervals be sung with embellish-
ment, “like an Amen,” with the common German practice of singing solfeggi to the
word Amen led me to speculate that the many straight pen strokes that appeared
above the melody in manuscripts might indicate melismatic “Amens” attached to
main syllable notes. And so it proved. These markings mapped directly onto what
later writers described as “traits of vocalization”: short lines that show where one
syllable ends and another begins. It turned out that when contemporary maestros
spoke of the need to master solmization before progressing to vocalization, they
did not mean to suggest that advanced students should sing simple vowels in place
of syllables. They meant to describe the practice of vocalizing on the syllables, or
in other words, performing them with embellishments and diminutions. Learning
the art of melody began where solmization left off, because knowing how to add
syllables to a melody was only the first and most basic foundation. Real musical skill
lay in knowing how to sing them in a multitude of stylish ways and to weave them
together into a coherent discourse.
The way this worked in practice can be sampled by comparing the theme from
Crescentini’s solfeggio in ­example 1.4(b) with its three subsequent variations,
presented in vertical alignment for ease of viewing. The variations exhibit pro-
gressively more elaborate diminutions, while preserving the fundamental syllabic
 Introduction 15

structure of the theme. Knowing where the syllables fall reveals the underlying
structure of the melody: its punctuation, rhythms, and cadence points. Apprentice
musicians, initially as singers and later as instrumentalists, would learn thousands
of ways to realize basic patterns of syllables (or solfeggi) like this with different
“traits of vocalization,” stitching them together to create an extended melody.
Remarkable evidence as to how this was done can be found in a collection of fifty-​
three solfeggi by the Neapolitan maestro Pietro Pulli, dating from the 1740s. The
manuscript begins with ten ascending C major scales in plain half notes, each with
an additional staff above containing florid variations on its syllables.16
Performing a melody in multiple contrasting ways or constructing a melodic
composition by vocalizing a solfeggio was a profound trade secret. A detailed ac-
count of how it was done must wait until Chapters 7 and 8. But to whet the reader’s
appetite, its broad outlines can be sampled in advance from an historical account of
Galant solfeggio written by the nineteenth-​century Neapolitan maestro and music
journalist Michele Ruta. Motivated largely by provincial pride and innate con-
servatism, Ruta promoted himself as a champion of the old Neapolitan school. In
hindsight, he could be said to have taken a last stand against an emerging interna-
tional consensus in music education that eventually succeeded in consigning the
achievements of the Italian tradition to the margins of history. From 1855 onward
he published many articles purporting to describe genuine teachings. His claim
to authority rested on his studies at the Naples Conservatory from 1841 to 1847
under Carlo Conti and Saverio Mercadante, both of whom followed the teachings
of Niccolò Zingarelli, who had trained at the Loreto Conservatory during the 1760s
and who was widely regarded as “the last custodian of the great traditions of the
ancient Neapolitan school.”17 Unless Zingarelli or his students departed radically
from the teachings they had received, which seems unlikely, there are grounds to
consider a direct line of provenance from the practices of the mid-​1700s to Ruta’s
description of them.
Ruta noted that the Neapolitan school did not use a textbook for learning the art
of melody. It demanded, instead, long years of practical apprenticeship. By singing
solfeggi, apprentices would gain an instinctive feel for the right ways to shape an ex-
tended melody. By composing them, advanced students would gradually acquire a
working knowledge of how to develop a musical thought and to apply appropriate
forms, modulations, and melodic contours. Ruta’s account is given here in full:

The ancient Neapolitan school did not have a written textbook for that study [the
study of so-​called free composition]; nevertheless, they traditionally adopted, for
this part of the instruction, the study of the composition of solfeggio, which they
regarded in educational terms as a study in musical logic and aesthetics. Thus,
through solfeggio they taught how to develop a musical thought, which tessitura
[“weave,” i.e., shaping or structuring] is appropriate for a melodic phrase, which
modulations are befitting for a melody, the correctness of the bass, and in addi-
tion the nature of human voices and their specific characteristics. . . . It is difficult
16 The Solfeggio Tradition

to prescribe tessitura in abstract terms; if prescribed, it would become a template

with which the student would structure his compositions. This would be the same
as learning to paint with a compass: it would destroy art. But if a taxonomy of spe-
cific forms must be banished from teaching, one can nonetheless profitably rec-
ommend general norms of fine music as a guide to young students. The ancient
masters of our school did not establish these norms, but through the practice of
solfeggi they transmitted them to disciples, according to the student’s own melodic
phrase; in doing so, they educated the particular taste of the disciple through a long
practical apprenticeship, carefully avoiding a conventional thesaurus of phrases.18

There was no substitute for the treadmill of apprenticeship. Any attempt to dis-
till the creative process of solfeggio into a simplified textbook with easily digestible
rules and ready-​made templates would “destroy art.” If Ruta’s second-​hand account
can be believed, then the basis for a solfeggio lesson—​at least in Zingarelli’s com-
position class at the Naples Conservatory—​was the weaving of a musical discourse
from “the student’s own melodic phrase.” The student invented a theme and the
maestro guided her, by way of practical demonstrations and exercises, to turn it into
a piece. In this process, there was no place for “a taxonomy of specific forms” or “a
conventional thesaurus of phrases.”

Practice Makes Perfect

Having arrived at the end of my quest to understand a large and perplexing body
of manuscripts, the main thing I had learned, beyond the intricacies of a forgotten
technique of solfeggio singing, was that professional music making in the eight-
eenth century was above all a practical activity. Would-​be maestros had none of
the “piano arrangements, manuals of harmony, and other royal roads to medioc-
rity” available to later generations.19 Their skills were acquired through years of la-
borious imitation, variation, and repetition. Even apparently theoretical concepts
such as keys, modulations, and time signatures were instilled by practice.
The pre-​ industrial method of learning to make music—​ to improvise or
compose—​relied not so much on the classroom model adopted by later institutions
and still in use today as on what Lucy Green (2017, 5) calls “informal music learning
practices.” These involve neither teachers, nor textbooks, nor actually being taught.
Rather, they are the means by which young musicians develop creative skills by
means of a kind of cultural osmosis grounded in listening and copying. Green’s
observations relate, of course, not to classically trained composers but to pop-
ular musicians, who are able to play instruments and create songs with little or no
formal instruction. An analogy can be made with eighteenth-​century musicians,
notwithstanding their far more rigorous training regime. Most of them acquired
skills in composition without ever having received a “composition lesson,” much
 Introduction 17

like the Beatles’ John Lennon, for whom performing in a skiffle group was the cross-​
cultural equivalent of singing solfeggi and playing partimenti.
Pamela Burnard (2012) argues more forcefully against the modern “fetishiza-
tion of composition” (p. 2) and makes the case that musical creativity, as defined
in her nineteen case studies of real-​world industry professionals, cannot be ac-
quired by classroom teaching. It arises, instead, from a variety of practices based
primarily on listening and doing. Although her aim is to show how these practices
can be observed and replicated in order to develop socially responsive teaching
and learning methods, her findings offer insights into how eighteenth-​century
composers learned their trade and how I, in my small way, managed to pick up skills
in Galant composition purely by singing.
It is no more feasible to learn the art of solfeggio from a book than it is to learn to
dance salsa by reading about it. In order to apprehend eighteenth-​century music in
ways that might at least be considered comparable to those of contemporary maes-
tros, it is necessary to do as they did.
This book invites the reader to embark on a similar journey of discovery by
experiencing the real lessons of an eighteenth-​century apprentice. Speaking and
singing the exercises that follow is essential if they are to hold any meaning. It is
not enough to glance at them while trying to digest the accompanying text. This
will make no sense. Readers must be prepared to experience the lessons with their
voices and to compare their interpretations with mine.
Part I looks into the social and historical contexts of the solfeggio tradition,
in particular, its significance as a well-​trodden musical path out of poverty. In
Chapter 2 the true story of a little boy who undertook a standard apprenticeship in
music, Joseph Haydn, is taken as a case study to explore the social background to
the Catholic educational system and the importance of the Church in musical life,
in order to explain the continued reliance on an archaic solmization system. Haydn’s
experience was typical for its time, albeit unusually well documented. In return for
up to ten years of unpaid apprenticeship, his poor parents managed to secure for
him a basic education and training in music in the hope that one day he might be-
come a clergyman. Until the age of seventeen, his daily routine involved singing
and playing for an interminable round of church services. Chapter 3 explores the
nature of these services in more depth, while Chapter 4 offers an introduction to the
surprisingly uncharted world of eighteenth-​century plainchant, which remained a
cornerstone of Divine Service. Plainchant was performed in updated “tonal” and
rhythmic versions so as to appear modern and conventional, as opposed to an-
cient and exotic, as it usually sounds today. This helps explain the persistence of
hexachordal solmization as the basis of music education.
Chapter 5 surveys these rudiments in their original medieval Roman notation.
These were the first (and often only) music lessons taught to choristers in Catholic
Europe. Scholars of early music will find few surprises here, although they may be
taken aback to discover that these lessons in the gamut and musica ficta derive from
18 The Solfeggio Tradition

sources written centuries after the Guidonian system is commonly presumed to

have disappeared from history.
Overall, Chapters 2–​5 aim to provide a counterweight to prevailing assumptions
about eighteenth-​century music by deliberately marginalizing activities at court,
theater, and home and emphasizing instead the centrality of the church and plain-
chant in the daily routines of apprentices and most professionals.
Learning to solfa the eighteenth-​century way begins in Part II with lessons in the
art of melody. Chapters 6–​8 set out the fundamentals of the method and are in that
respect the most important in the book. They are also the most difficult, demanding
focused practical engagement with real historical solfeggio lessons. In order to
ease the burden, readers who are prepared to take my proposed solmizations on
trust may skip Chapter 6, which provides instruction in how to name notes in the
eighteenth-​century manner by a process known as “reading” or “spoken solfeggio.”
Apprentices spent more than a year merely adding syllables to melodies.
Once the syllables were thoroughly ingrained through spoken solfeggio,
apprentices would be taught hundreds of different ways to sing them. The real busi-
ness of learning to sing and make music thus begins in Chapter 7, with the sung or
played realization of fundamental syllable-​notes.
Singing solfeggio allowed students to experience melody as a kind of language
and to acquire fluency in it by means of experience rather than conscious learning.
In order to try to reimagine this pedagogical process, as well as to demonstrate how
to decipher complex solfeggio manuscripts, Chapter 8 surveys some of the many
ways in which a common stock pattern of syllables was realized in song. Chapter 9
completes the overview of lessons by outlining the main ways to modulate in sol-
feggio by singing fa as mi and vice versa. Its discussion of two important sources
provides supporting evidence, for those who require it, to back up the reconstruc-
tion of solmization put forward in earlier chapters.
Part III moves away from the mechanics of the method toward an interpretation
of the primary sources, classifying solfeggi into four main types and outlining their
historical origins, characteristic features, and pedagogical purposes. They range
from plainchants and Renaissance-​style contrapuntal ricercars of the sort that con-
tinued to inform liturgical music in many churches to flamboyant rococo arias by
Mozart and Farinelli. Some conjure up a courtly world of sparkling musical wit and
captivating conversation, while others evoke the drab conventionality of lessons in
provincial church schools. Chapters 11–​13 present examples of the different types,
requiring us (as apprentices) to shift rapidly from major to minor and to modulate
fluently between keys, all the while avoiding witty didactic traps set by the maestro.
Our vocal skills (in theory, at least) will develop to the point where we can tackle
the kind of florid, aria-​like solfeggi normally reserved for castrato singers, who oc-
cupied the top floor of conservatory buildings and who were the only pupils spared
the indignity of having to practice in crowded dormitories. Their subtle vocal craft
demanded the luxury of an individual room. By the end, we will have learned how
to develop themes in a variety of styles, including imitative fugues, and to fashion
 Introduction 19

them into multi-​movement “cyclic” forms arranged into slow-​fast pairs. We will, in
short, know how to create music on the spot, like an eighteenth-​century solfeggist.
The book concludes in Chapter 14 with a brief survey of alternative solmization
systems, which arose largely as a result of Protestant attempts to break free from
Roman oversight, before tracing the inexorable rise of French seven-​note solfège
and its role in the demise of the great tradition. Owing to its ease of use for amateurs
and classroom teaching, by the early nineteenth century fixed-​do solfège had deci-
sively supplanted the old craft methods.

***
Given that there is no longer any call for exquisitely skilled maestros to conjure up
concertos and arias at a moment’s notice for noble gatherings, or for virtuosos to
sing the same song or play the same piece in countless different ways, or (thank-
fully) for armies of child laborers to provide music for all-​day schedules of church
services, there seems little incentive for resurrecting their methods. In this book
I do not seek to promote a return to the past by advocating a revival of defunct
apprenticeships in solfeggio. Rather, I aim to shed light on a central yet long-​
forgotten aspect of eighteenth-​century music, one which can truly be understood
only via practice, and to encourage readers to seek out ways to exploit it to enhance
and inform present-​day musical life. Devotees of historical authenticity may, for in-
stance, be interested in restoring Galant solfeggio as a living practice for performers
of eighteenth-​century music, just as Wegman (1992, 274) recommends for earlier
music. Mainstream performers may be encouraged to experiment with a new kind
of authenticity by varying a piece in order to “speak” it with their own voice, as
eighteenth-​century composers would have expected, or to realize it in multiple
contrasting versions so that listeners might experience it anew. Others, with ped-
agogical expertise, might perceive ways to mine the old methods for strategies to
enhance the teaching of aural skills, musicianship, and composition.
In attempting to account for the many thousands of surviving solfeggio
manuscripts, I hope also to make a contribution to our understanding of one of
the greatest rags-​to-​riches stories never told, thanks to the heavily edited version of
music history passed down to us from the nineteenth century. Solfeggio formed the
foundation of training that worked as a powerful engine of social mobility, lifting
many disadvantaged children out of poverty and propelling others to unimaginable
heights of fame and fortune. Knowing more about how this was accomplished will,
I hope, fill a gap in music history and benefit approaches to music pedagogy and
performance today.
 PART I
C ON T E XT
Apprenticeship, Plainchant, and the Rudiments
 2
Sepperl’s Story
A Case Study in Music and Social Mobility

Young people can see from my example that something can indeed come
from nothing; that what I am has all come from the direst poverty.
Joseph Haydn, 1805

When Anna Maria Haydn and her husband Mathias bade farewell in 1738 to their
six-​year-​old son, never to live with him again, they did not despair. They rejoiced,
safe in the knowledge that little Joseph, or “Sepperl,” as he was known, had been
granted a precious chance to rise above his humble origins and to lead a life more
comfortable and prosperous than that of his father, a common wheelwright. Like
many couples from peasant or artisan stock, they willingly gave up the care of their
child in the hope of securing a better future for him.1
Their story is typical for its time. Were it not for their son’s later success it would
also be forgotten, like thousands of others. In this chapter, the well-​documented
early life of Joseph Haydn is taken to stand as a representative example of one of the
most common routes into a musical career. It presents a case study of an average
puer cantor to explain why traditional solmization remained central to music edu-
cation in the eighteenth century. It thus deals with the essential foundations of the
solfeggio tradition rather than the advanced art of singing or playing melody with
graces, which must wait until Chapter 7.
For Mathias Haydn and his ilk, almost anything was preferable to the daily grind
of manual labor. Although he enjoyed a degree of status in the village of Rohrau as
master craftsman and local magistrate, his work was physically demanding and he
earned little more than did the unskilled farmhands who toiled in the fields.
His son would not endure the same fate. He possessed a golden ticket that would
lift him out of poverty, one that had helped countless other poor children over the
centuries. He could sing.
Everyone in the village knew what this meant. A good voice and ear could trans-
form a young life, break down social barriers, and unlock a world of opportunity.
Education was almost exclusively in the hands of the church, and churches needed
choirboys. For those who could not afford to pay, singing was the surest route for

The Solfeggio Tradition. Nicholas Baragwanath, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197514085.001.0001
24 The Solfeggio Tradition

their child to gain a place in school. To be accepted as a puer cantor was to embark
on a life-​changing journey.
This explains why Anna Maria and Mathias Haydn, having noticed Sepperl’s
talent for picking up popular ditties and for mimicking the rhythms of the folk
fiddle, sought to have him auditioned at the age of five by schoolmaster Franck from
nearby Hainburg an der Donau, who happened to be a relative. In return for ten
or more years of unpaid apprenticeship, living apart from his family and receiving
“more thrashings than food” (as he later recalled), Sepperl would be clothed, fed,
and—​most important of all—​educated. He would learn to read and write in Latin
and German, perform basic arithmetic, get to know the Catholic catechism and lit-
urgy, and play instruments and sing. One day, his parents dared to hope, he might
even become a clergyman—​ein geistlicher Herr.
In order to understand why this pitiful trade-​off was sufficient to console the
Haydns as they waved goodbye to their eldest son, it is necessary to try to see the
world as they saw it. With a large family to support, an artisan could not pro-
vide worthwhile and rewarding careers for each child. Opportunities for social
advancement were few and far between in pre-​industrial Europe. In the pictur-
esque hamlet of Rohrau, close by the Danube about thirty miles southeast of
Vienna, class distinctions were rigorously observed. Those who were born peas-
ants or artisans rarely escaped their allotted role. There were, however, as else-
where, two main sources of power and patronage through which an ambitious
and energetic young lad might seek a better fortune: the landed gentry and the
church.
Looking westward up the hill from their cottage, the Haydns could see the com-
manding façade of Rohrau Castle, ancestral home to Count von Harrach und
Thannhausen. The local economy depended on selling him goods and services.
Before her marriage, Anna Maria Haydn, née Koller, had worked in the castle as
a cook (or, more likely, scullery maid). Mathias’s wheel business could scarcely
have survived without the steady supply of work generated by the local aristocrat’s
stables. The castle provided employment for many of the villagers, from grooms,
servants, and craftsmen to rank-​and-​file musicians for entertainments.2 Yet few of
these paths would lead them away from a life of relative poverty and servitude, un-
less the count needed to fill a specialized vacancy and sent one of them away to be
educated.
Looking eastward from their cottage toward the center of the village, the Haydns
could see the bell tower of the local church. This held more promise. The church
oversaw both the spiritual and social needs of the parish. It occupied the central
place in the life of any town or village. Clergy enjoyed relatively high social status,
were spared hard physical labor, and benefited from secure lifelong employment
with the potential for significant promotion. Because of these perks, it was “cus-
tomary among those artisans with large families to earmark one of their children
right from birth for the priesthood, in order to enjoy various privileges connected
with that state.”3
 Sepperl’s Story 25

A career as a clergyman was much coveted in the eighteenth century. It was the
limit of the Haydns’ ambition. It never occurred to them that their son might pursue
a career in music beyond the confines of the church. The glamorous haut monde of
courts and theaters was a closed book to them. Were it not for a quirk of fate, Joseph
may well have carried on along the path chosen for him and ended up as a priest or
regens chori (choirmaster) in provincial Hainburg.
Not long after taking up his place at cousin Franck’s church school, a chance
occurrence lifted him out of the sleepy little town and placed him at the heart of
the Hapsburg capital. Imperial Kapellmeister Georg Reutter (1708–​72) happened
to be passing through and on the lookout for recruits for his choir at St. Stephen’s
Cathedral (box 2.1). The six-​year-​old was summoned to audition. He performed
a few “Latin and Italian strophes” to show off his vocal ability. Encouraged by the
rare treat of a handful of cherries, he even managed a trill. Sufficiently impressed,
Reutter undertook to take the boy to Vienna, but only at the end of his eighth year.

Box 2.1 Georg Reutter (1708–​72) and the “Italian” Chapel

in Vienna

For much of the eighteenth century, Vienna outdid even Rome in its political
and cultural conservatism and slavish adherence to doctrinaire Catholicism
(White 2015, 581).
The court music Kapelle, into which Reutter was born, was a prime enforcer
of this absolutist worldview. It was an outpost of papal authority, dominated by
Italians. Before the death of Emperor Leopold I in 1705, Marc’ Antonio Ziani,
Carlo Agostino Badia, and Giovanni Battista Bononcini were appointed to mod-
ernize the Kapelle under the aged Antonio Draghi. Shortly after Johann Fux’s
elevation to deputy Kapellmeister in 1711, more Italians arrived, including
Francesco Bartolomeo Conti, Giuseppe Porsile, and Antonio Caldara.
The musical culture of the court was an amalgam of Roman, Venetian, and
Neapolitan influences. Fux’s appointment was the exception that proved the rule,
and he, too, acknowledged the superiority of Italians. According to an anecdote
recounted in old age by Ignaz Holzbauer (1711–​83), Fux once rebuked a student
with the words: “Go to Italy, where you will clear your head of superfluous ideas”
(Köchel 1872, 263).
Reutter trained under Caldara and with his father, whom he succeeded in
1738 as First Kapellmeister at St. Stephen’s Cathedral. One of his duties involved
the management of the choir school, where pueri cantores included Joseph and
Michael Haydn and Ignaz Holzbauer. From 1741 he assisted Luca Antonio
Predieri, First Kapellmeister at the imperial court, with church music. Until his
death in 1772 he helped uphold the dominance of Italian musical traditions in
Vienna.
26 The Solfeggio Tradition

In the meantime, he was instructed to “cultivate a pure, firm, and flexible voice” by
practicing scales.4
Joseph Haydn spent the remainder of his childhood working as an unpaid mu-
sician at St. Stephen’s. For nine years he sang and played from dawn until dusk in
that “dark, dirty and dismal old Gothic building,” retiring each night to the attic of
the Capellhaus facing its southwestern corner, where he shared a dormitory with
five other choirboys.5 His reward for these long years of service was to be thrown
penniless onto the streets at the age of seventeen, when he could no longer dis-
guise the fact that his voice had broken. His one consolation was that he had at
least managed—​albeit narrowly—​to avoid castration, which likely would have
condemned him to a lifetime as a church soprano.
Was all the sacrifice worth it? Anna Maria and Mathias Haydn thought so. They
took pride in the fact that their son had received enough of an education to qualify
for initiation into holy orders. Failing that, they knew that he could pursue a re-
spectable career as a deputy schoolteacher or choirmaster. From their perspective,
these were enviable choices.
Joseph had other ideas. He resolutely refused to become a priest, despite intense
pressure from his parents, and he had little interest in teaching. His heart was set on
what must, at the time, have seemed an impossible adolescent dream. He wanted to
compose music, to become a Kapellmeister.
Unfortunately, as everyone knew, he lacked the necessary skills. His apprentice-
ship had not prepared him to compete for a salaried position other than as a rank-​
and-​file church singer or instrumentalist. He had been provided with just as much
training as was necessary for him to carry out his duties, no less and no more. He
had been taught to sing and to deputize at one of the organs scattered throughout
the cathedral and to play the violin or viola in ad hoc ensembles. His musical
education—​though of the highest quality, delivered by some of the most accom-
plished masters in Vienna—​was exclusively practical. During his nine years at St.
Stephen’s he could recall receiving only two lessons from Kapellmeister Reutter
“in der theoretischen Musik,” by which he presumably meant the study of written
counterpoint and composition.
Even two seems indulgent. Why would the eminent Reutter have wasted time
teaching composition to a peasant boy who had no need for it, given his predestined
career as a choir singer or, at most, cantor or priest?
He probably did it to humor the naïve and idealistic young lad, who was al-
most certainly the instigator of these theoretical lessons. Determined to teach
himself the art of composition, Joseph spent his precious free time experimenting
with the “motets and Salves” he had to sing in church and working through the
few sources available to him at the Capellhaus. These included the traditional five-​
species counterpoint method called Steps to Parnassus (1725) by the former St.
Stephen’s Kapellmeister Johann Fux (1660–​1741) and the up-​to-​date compendium
of teachings to be found in The Complete Kapellmeister (1739) by the Hamburg dip-
lomat, part-​time cantor, and all-​round musician Johann Mattheson (1681–​1764).
 Sepperl’s Story 27

Yet these books, though full of useful information, were not sufficient in them-
selves to produce marketable results. Any attempt to turn himself into a professional
maestro by reading Fux and Mattheson was bound to fail, as he soon found out.
When he ventured to show Reutter some of his amateurish counterpoint exercises,
fancifully conceived in up to sixteen parts, he was ridiculed and told that he had
better first learn to write correctly in two parts.
After a total eleven years of service, having been denied the real guidance of a
maestro, Joseph Haydn would have had a poor ability to compose tasteful melodies
at the keyboard or on paper in comparison with his fluency in solmization and
knowledge of liturgical repertory. Hearing good-​quality music day in, day out, and
knowing how to sing solfeggio and play figured bass had, of course, equipped him
with skills in improvisation and composition, but not to the level required for a
career as a maestro. He acknowledged as much in an autobiographical sketch in
1776. On being dismissed from St. Stephen’s he admitted, “I wrote diligently but
not in a well-​founded way until, finally, I had the good fortune to learn the true
fundamentals of composition from the celebrated Herr Porpora (who was at that
time [1753] in Vienna).”6
The eventual completion of his apprenticeship thus rested on a chance encounter,
four years after his expulsion from the educational system, with a semi-​retired
Neapolitan maestro who was prepared to divulge the “true fundamentals of com-
position” in exchange for having his boots polished, his clothes pressed, and his pri-
vate singing students accompanied.
In terms of the curriculum taught by Porpora at the Neapolitan conservatories—​
which, unlike the choir school at St. Stephen’s, did regularly succeed in producing
marketable maestros and virtuosos—​Haydn had undertaken no more than the first
three or four years of training in solfeggio and the rudiments, together with a few
additional years of singing and instrumental playing. He had not yet started the
classes in counterpoint and composition.7
This was the norm for music education in the eighteenth century. Some chil-
dren earmarked for the clergy received only the first third of a full Neapolitan-​
style apprenticeship, which covered basic singing and score reading via
solmization and liturgical conventions. Many others undertook the next third,
reaching the intermediate level of journeyman by improving their ability to sing
with tasteful graces, learning to play various instruments, and to realize figured
bass at the keyboard. Mozart taught at this level at the Salzburg Capellhaus in
1779 as part of his duties as court organist.8 Unless journeymen could display
conspicuous talent and/or the right family connections, they were deemed un-
worthy to progress to the last stage, which was taught individually or in small
groups to budding master craftsmen and involved specialized finishing courses
in counterpoint, composition, and performance. In modern terms there was a
glass ceiling that prevented all but a chosen few from having a realistic chance of
rising to the top. It could be bypassed only by means of exceptional ability, a for-
tunate birth, or plain luck.
28 The Solfeggio Tradition

The Neapolitan conservatories flourished because they exploited the first of these
qualities. Unlike rival church schools abroad, they operated genuine meritocracies.
“Where real musical talent existed,” observed Vernon Lee, “it was usually made the
most of.”9
Leaving aside the small number of fee-​paying boarders (pensionaristi) and
wealthy amateurs and noble daughters who paid for occasional lessons, conserva-
tory students were unlikely to benefit from inherited privilege. They had to rely on
hard work and the effectiveness of their solfeggio and partimento methods, which
had been developed by the most talented among them over the course of genera-
tions. Each year they had to run the gauntlet of rigorous exams to justify the cost
of their upkeep. Failure meant instant dismissal or, for orphans, demotion. On top
of that, maestros were given an incentive to seek out and cultivate the most able by
claiming, mafia-​style, a percentage of their lifelong earnings. The more successful
the student, the greater the profit.10 Even with these efficiencies, however, relatively
few were granted the kind of intensive supervision in counterpoint and composi-
tion required to make it beyond the rank of skilled journeyman to that of maestro.
Hitting the big time as an opera composer, star castrato, or music director at a
major court was tantamount to winning the lottery. Only a tiny minority achieved
this level of success. No less sought after were senior church appointments such
as maestro di cappella, maestro di canto fermo (choirmaster), and organist. At im-
portant institutions they attracted the most talented musicians of the age. When
Alessandro Scarlatti, for instance, decided to leave Naples in 1703 owing to
insecurities arising from the Spanish War of Succession, long after he had estab-
lished a successful career as a chamber and opera composer, he accepted the po-
sition of maestro at the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome. And as late as 1789,
Pasquale Anfossi chose to end a spectacular run of operatic triumphs by taking up
an appointment as maestro di cappella at the Roman church of St. John Lateran.
The lives of those who failed to make it onto this A List are seldom remembered
in music history. The spotlight tends to fall on the most outstanding composers and
performers, rather than the large numbers of musicians working in their shadows.
The names of the majority of eighteenth-​century musicians, if they survive at all, are
to be found listed as little more than expenses in church and chapel ledger books.
For every maestro or virtuoso there were scores of less successful career musicians,
most of whom had undergone very similar training in solfeggio and instrumental
playing.
Haydn’s experience at Hainburg and at St. Stephen’s is typical in many respects
(save its eventual outcome), which explains why it has been described above at such
length. Few boys were granted both the talent and the opportunity to justify the
extra effort required to train as a maestro (unless, like Reutter, their father happened
to be the Kapellmeister, in which case opportunity alone was required).
Two factors in particular conspired to deny Haydn and others like him the op-
portunity to study composition at his church school. First, there was insufficient
demand to cover the investment. A church or court chapel usually had need of
 Sepperl’s Story 29

numerous singers, instrumentalists, and cantillating priests but only one composer.
At St. Stephen’s, for instance, a total of thirty-​three musicians were employed under
the direction of a single maestro: six boy choristers, nine other vocalists, three
“Extra-​Vocalisten,” one “Subcantor,” an organist, eleven string players, one cornet
player, and one bassoonist. Trumpets, trombones, and kettledrums were leased on
demand from the imperial household.11
That this arrangement was fairly typical for important courts and churches in the
1740s can be seen from L’Ouïe (The Hearing), a painting by Georg Balthasar Probst
(1673–​1748) that shows a similar gathering of thirty or so musicians at an open
practice session. The lone Kapellmeister could be the figure in the lower right-​hand
corner sporting a silver-​tipped cane and flattering the ear of an opulently dressed
woman with a fan, perhaps the lady of the house; or he could be standing beside the
organist in the background, waving what appears to be a baton. The only singers
in the picture are four small boys (Kapellknaben) clustered around a lectern in the
center and overseen by a Pädagog-​Kantor (see figure 2.1).12
In Italy the proportion of rank-​and-​file singers and players to maestros was still
greater. One witness reported in 1756 that “the number of musicians is so prodi-
gious that on a single day, in five or six different churches, and not just in Rome,
I have seen music created by fifty, sixty, and eighty musicians.”13 During a visit to
Naples in 1770, the English tourist Charles Burney observed that many church

Fig. 2.1 Georg Balthasar Probst (1673–​1748), L’ouïe (c. 1740). By courtesy of the Library
of Congress, https://​www.loc.gov/​item/​miller.0209/​.
30 The Solfeggio Tradition

musicians were castratos who had been turned down by the opera theaters or con-
servatory students dismissed halfway through their courses for want of sufficient
“genius.”14
As if this competition were not bad enough, to add insult to injury boys like
Haydn were disadvantaged from the start by their nationality. Throughout Europe,
home-​grown talent was habitually overlooked in favor of ready-​made imports from
Italy. By reputation alone, Italian and Italian-​trained maestros were able to sweep
aside rivals in the race for the top jobs, making it that much less worthwhile to pro-
vide training opportunities for local children. Witness the appointment in 1763 of
the unremarkable Bolognese singer Giuseppe Maria Lolli (1701–​78) as Salzburg
Kapellmeister over the heads of far more accomplished German-​speaking court
musicians such as Leopold Mozart and Anton Adlgasser. To call oneself a maestro
napoletano, veneziano, or bolognese was to invoke a powerful fashion brand, a glam-
orous guarantee of quality and audience appeal, for which patrons were prepared to
pay a high price.
Given the scarcity of high-​ranking positions, the rampant nepotism it fueled,
and the dominance of Italian-​trained maestros, it is hardly surprising that poor
Sepperl from Rohrau—​notwithstanding his abundance of talent, hard work, and
ambition—​failed to persuade his teachers in Vienna to invest in his future. They
took it for granted that he would join the army of journeyman singers and players
that kept religious services supplied with music.
 3
The Church Music Industry

The Church remained by far the largest provider of employment for musicians in
the eighteenth century. In comparison, there were relatively few steady or well-​paid
jobs in the fashionable world of opera theaters and aristocratic courts and chapels.
One study estimates that at the close of the Council of Trent in 1563 there were
a staggering three thousand separate congregations in Naples and its immediate
vicinity.1 In the older parts of many Catholic towns and cities it is still scarcely pos-
sible to stroll a hundred yards without coming across some kind of religious insti-
tution. In the eighteenth century, each of these would have maintained a cappella
musicale consisting at the least of an organist and a small choir, probably hiring
additional musicians for Sundays and feast days. The larger churches could em-
ploy whole orchestras. In 1700, twenty-​three of the five hundred or more churches
that festooned the city center of Naples hosted internationally renowned music
establishments.2
The intended audience for this music was essentially passive. Catholic
congregations sat and listened. Unlike Protestants, they did not join in.
The music was not closely synchronized with the liturgy.3 It was for pleasure—​
the listener’s as well as God’s. It helped “raise the Heart to heaven, and to celebrate
with greater Solemnity the divine Praises.”4 Whether in the form of plainchant or
an extended operatic movement for soloist and orchestra, it served to transport the
faithful into rapturous sympathy with the mysteries of the sacrament and, in con-
sequence, to inspire them to donate more generously.5 Ecclesiastical music was, in
this respect, not only a means for expressing liturgical texts in a way that instilled
devotion but also a kind of entertainment industry, which provided livings for tens
of thousands of employees and channeled profits to the Catholic Church. Travel
journals of the time testify to its appeal as a major tourist attraction, with even clergy
unable to resist taking advantage of sightseers. In Venice in 1739, for instance, the
visiting French jurist Charles de Brosses complained that a priest named Antonio
Vivaldi had pressured him to buy souvenir concertos and lessons at inflated prices.6
This explains why secular musical influences proved so hard to resist throughout
the eighteenth century and why musicians were able to ply their trade equally well
in church, theater, and court. In its aim to gratify and uplift, ecclesiastical music
performed much the same function as other types of Galant music. Aside from the
solemn rituals enacted around the altar, church services resembled concerts and
academies. It is worth remembering that the concert, in the modern sense, came
about primarily because of restrictions placed on church music during Lent. No

The Solfeggio Tradition. Nicholas Baragwanath, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197514085.001.0001
32 The Solfeggio Tradition

longer willing to endure forty days of musical abstinence, congregations in Paris

and Vienna began to frequent various types of concerts spirituels. Major concertlike
events were also held in churches at other times of the year, for instance, to celebrate
the name day of an important local saint or to mark a significant aristocratic visit or
military success.
By the second half of the eighteenth century, secular and ecclesiastical styles were
largely indistinguishable. When Charles Burney visited Paris in 1770, for instance,
to hear the celebrated organist Claude Bénigne Balbastre at his church on the Rue
Saint Honoré, he reported that

he performed in all styles in accompanying the choir. When the Magnificat was
sung, he played likewise between each verse several minutes [minuets], fugues,
imitations, and every species of music, even to hunting pieces and jigs, without
surprising or offending the congregation, as far as I was able to discover.7

In 1776 the traveling man-​of-​letters Pierre d’Ange Goudar complained that the
traditional plainchant he expected to hear at the orphanages in Venice had be-
come “infected with the stylistic corruption that had overtaken secular music.”8
Orchestras in church could behave much as they would elsewhere. In 1830, visiting
student Hector Berlioz described the scene during a Mass celebrated in Rome as
follows:

While the priests chanted their plainsong, the performers, unable to contain the
demon of music that possessed them, tuned up loudly, with unbelievable sang-
froid. The flute executed little flourishes up and down the scale of D major; the
horn blew fanfares in E flat; the violins practiced elegant gruppetti; the bassoon
rattled its large keys and self-​importantly displayed its bottom notes; and the
organ, warbling over all, added the final touch to a gallimaufry reminiscent of [the
grotesque paintings of] Callot.9

Several parts of the liturgy offered singers an opportunity to express themselves

operatically. The “most touching and moving moment” of a Catholic Mass, for
instance, according to an eyewitness account from 1784 by the Lutheran cantor
Christian Carl Rolle, “is the Benedictus, qui venit in nomine Domini. . . . Since this
occurs during the Elevation, the singer is accustomed, out of reverence, to sing his
part on bended knees.”10
The temptation for maestros to exploit the latest (Italian) dramatic style and its
overriding principle of cantabilità proved irresistible, even in churches that clung
to vestiges of the old traditions and proffered the occasional stile antico polyphonic
setting. The ever-​increasing popularity of secular styles prompted frequent (and
usually ineffective) interventions by church authorities. In 1749, for instance, Pope
Benedict XIV (reigned 1740–​58) issued an encyclical letter, Annus qui, in which he
tried to curb the “abuse” of music in the liturgy: “On certain days of the year sacred
 The Church Music Industry 33

buildings are the theatre for sumptuous and resounding concerts, which in no way
agree with the Sacred Mysteries which the church, precisely on those days, proposes
to the veneration of the faithful.”11 The effect of this edict, like so many others is-
sued throughout the century, was limited and short-​lived. Similarly, Empress Maria
Theresa made numerous unsuccessful attempts to curtail the excesses of Viennese
church music.12 As long as an appropriate sense of decorum was upheld, there was
little difference between most of the music composed for church and that heard at
the theater.
The quantity of music making required by the church was extraordinary. Each
institution’s weekly schedule of worship was set out in a bespoke version of the
Breviary, which remained essentially unchanged from the Tridentine revisions
of Pope Pius V in 1568 to the reforms of Pope Pius X in 1911. Clergy were duty-​
bound (in theory, at least) to perform eight daily “offices,” running from Vigil before
bedtime through Lauds at dawn, Prime, Terce, Sext, and Nones during the day to
Vespers and Compline in the evening. These offices were made up of psalms and
canticles (songlike passages from the Old and New Testaments) encircled by associ-
ated antiphons, lessons followed by responsories (consisting of a respond and verse
alternating between soloist and chorus), versicles with responses and prayers, and
hymns. Each church, monastery, or religious order would oversee the chanting of a
complete cycle of 150 psalms every week. In addition, Mass was offered at least once
each day.
Morning and evening offices and Mass always involved some kind of music,
increasing in elaborateness in proportion to the significance of the occasion. There
was a strict correspondence between the level of solemnity of a particular day and
the quantity and quality of music and performers.13 On ordinary, or ferial, days of
the week, services were normally adorned with little more than plainchant sung by
clergy, choir, or both. On “festal” days, including all Sundays and designated feasts,
more ostentatious spectacles were required.14
A convoluted network of church calendars ensured that there was no shortage
of festal days on which to stage grand musical celebrations. The normal weekly
cycle was subordinate to two interacting annual cycles. The first was the Temporale,
or Proprium de Tempore (Proper of the Time), which set out a schedule of sea-
sonal festivals commemorating the life of the Savior. It ran from Advent (the
fourth Sunday before Christmas) to Epiphany (January 6) and from Septuagesima
Sunday (the ninth before Easter) through Lent and Passiontide to Pentecost week.
Although it could run on for up to twenty-​five subsequent Sundays, its large-​scale
musical activities were concentrated around Christmas and Easter. The second, the
Sanctorale, or Proprium Sanctorum (Proper of the Saints), commemorated specific
saints’ and martyrs’ days throughout the year, as well as the feste di precetto (oblig-
atory feasts) not already covered by the Temporale. As if this weren’t complicated
enough, the “octave” of each feast was celebrated one week later.15
Most churches opened their doors to the public for Mass, Vespers, and Compline,
although some also welcomed audiences at Lauds. The so-​called Little Hours from
34 The Solfeggio Tradition

Prime to Nones were comparatively brief and simple. This meant that choirboys and
minor clergy were normally obliged to serve only during mornings and evenings,
leaving them free to pursue other activities throughout the day.
Titled priests (titolati), such as cardinals and archbishops, and those who held
permanent salaried appointments (beneficiati), such as cantors and rectors, had
neither the time nor the need for second jobs. Minor priests, by contrast, often were
motivated to supplement their meager incomes by moonlighting. “Church juniors”
(giovane di Chiesa), who were commonly addressed as Abate, and members of or-
ders of clerks regular (Jesuits, Theatines, Barnabites, and so on) frequently earned
additional money as freelance teachers and musicians. All candidates for the
priesthood had to know how to sing plainchant (canto fermo) in accordance with
a requirement introduced by the Council of Trent and reiterated in Benedict XIV’s
Apostolicum Mysterium (1753), and many had undertaken additional studies in
up-​to-​date “figured” music (canto figurato) as part of their education. Professional
“priest-​singers” (preti cantori) and ordained “players” (suonatori) were a common
sight in eighteenth-​century churches. They even appeared on stage in operas until
the Holy See officially banned the practice in 1720.16 Some errant monks appear
to have found a way around this injunction, though they were forbidden to work
in the world. Charles Thompson, a visitor to Venice in 1744, reported that “the
scandalous lives of the Monks are notorious; and during the Carnival they wear
Masks, sing upon Stages, and fall into many other Practices unbecoming their
Profession.”17
As for the apprentice choirboys, when not singing in church, sitting in class, or
practicing, they were hired out for privately sponsored events such as weddings,
funerals, and the profession of nuns.
Financial records for the Poveri di Gesù Cristo Conservatory in Naples for the
years 1673–​78 chronicle 1,387 “servizi musicali” carried out by the boys, about
50 percent of which were for singing at churches and chapels in the Naples area
(mostly masses and some Vespers and motets), 30 percent for civic events including
street processions and funerals, 20 percent for monasteries and convents, and a
handful for private residences.18
A document of 1680 describes the musical duties of apprentices at the Poveri
Conservatory in greater detail.19 Younger children usually served at Mass in a
number of churches. They also took part in the funerals of children dressed as “little
angels” (angioletti), a term that takes an ironic twist when one reads in the rules of
the establishment that students were only allowed to use a blunt-​pronged wooden
fork at meals for fear of stabbings. As soon as they were able to sing in an ensemble
they joined one of many organized groups of strolling singers known as paranze,
presumably named after fishing boats for their effectiveness at reeling in donations
from passers-​by. They also provided choruses for ceremonies, Masses, and some-
times operas. Older students took part in larger choral processions called flottole
(“fleets” or, according to Florimo, a corruption of frottole, an antiquated dance
type), which marked the more important festivals and saints’ days.20
 The Church Music Industry 35

Burney witnessed a nine-​day festival in Naples held annually at “the church of

the Franciscans” (San Luigi di Palazzo) in honor of St. Irene and St. Emygdius at
which music was provided from dawn to dusk by more than one hundred conserv-
atory students free of charge—​in return for a tax rebate on wine.21 The “Rules and
Statutes” of 1746 for the Turchini Conservatory stated that all students had to at-
tend a rehearsal for such public performances every Saturday evening.22
A ledger for recording the income and expenditures of the Poveri di Gesù Cristo
Conservatory for the year 1725 contains an entry showing that a fifteen-​year-​old
singer referred to as “Jesi” after his native town but known today as Giovanni Battista
Pergolesi (1710–​36) was “selected from among our pupils” to sing at a special ser-
vice for the nearby church of Santa Patrizia. His fee of “2 grane e 20 tarì” went di-
rectly into the coffers of the conservatory.23 Given that senior maestros at that time
typically earned about 100 or 120 “grains” (grane) per month (equivalent to one
ducato or one piastra), and assuming that this was roughly comparable to the £9–​
10 per month received by guildsmen and high-​ranking servants in 1720s London,
Pergolesi’s fee can be estimated to be worth about £25 or $31 at 2020 prices. Multiply
that by the hundreds of pupils involved in solo or ensemble external engagements
on a regular basis, and it is not difficult to see why the conservatories continued to
rely on plainchant as the foundation of music education.
According to Florimo’s seminal study of music in Naples, “it is beyond doubt
that the main object of all musical institutions [in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries] was ecclesiastical music, and the Conservatories were governed in the
same way as seminaries. Each of them had a public church served by the students
of the establishment.”24 The school uniforms were designed to make them look like
“little priests” (preterelli), with detachable angel wings added for special occasions.
The four great ospedali (orphanages) in Venice also looked to the church as their
main source of employment. Opportunities for freelance work were plentiful. The
scale of ecclesiastical music making in the city over the course of a year was truly
astounding.25
A memorandum of 1677 preserved at the Correr Museum reveals that members of
the cappella at St. Mark’s Cathedral were required to participate in 492 “obligations”
throughout the year, mostly Masses and Vespers, plus a few processions, other serv-
ices, and special feasts.26 Their busy performance schedule in praise of the Almighty
also succeeded in attracting large numbers of wealthy tourists to the collection
plates.
An overview of the bustling Venetian music scene in the year 1700 survives in a
travel guide by Vincenzo Coronelli, Franciscan friar and official cosmographer to
the Most Serene Republic, resident for much of his life at the monastery of Santa
Maria dei Frari in the heart of the city. It confirms that music functioned both as a
source of spiritual solace for the devout and as a lucrative tourist attraction.
Coronelli whets the appetite of prospective visitors by boasting that music
in Venice is “more popular than in any other city in Europe, particularly when
nuns take the habit or their vows, and for the particular solemnities of many
36 The Solfeggio Tradition

churches. . . . There is not a single day on which, with great pomp, the Holy Sacrament
is not exhibited or there is not a major feast in one church or another.”27 Not to
be missed on Wednesdays, he advises, is the “Mass in music [performed] by the
girls and women of the [Ospedale della] Pietà for the commemoration of the dead.”
Saturdays promised two must-​see events: The daughters of all four ospedali could
be heard performing Litanies of the Blessed Virgin, and the musicians of St. Mark’s
sang Mass. As an added incentive for tourists, Coronelli mentions that these church
services coincided with ball games, riding, opera, comedy, and—​a guaranteed
crowd-​pleaser—​anatomical theater. Eyewitness accounts of these musical-​religious
spectacles can be found in a number of travelers’ journals.28
For contemporary tourists, church music was not some dull and uninspiring
backwater far removed from exciting innovations at court and theater. This is
a modern viewpoint grounded on an ideology of stylistic progress toward a
predetermined end (our classical canon). In the eighteenth century, singing the
Lord’s praise was akin to a major business with thousands of employees that needed
to keep its paying clients happy. To this end, the Catholic Church recruited many of
the greatest maestros and promoted the biggest and best ensembles of the age. As
we shall discover in Chapter 4, this explains the continued reliance on traditional
solmization as the foundation of music education.
 4
Eighteenth-​Century
Plainchant—​for Beginners

Plainchant formed the cornerstone of the unremitting schedule of worship re-

quired of students. The demand for singers to perform it was such that music
education in Catholic schools always began with canto fermo and hexachordal sol-
mization. Strange as it may seem, in the eighteenth century the rudiments of music
continued to be taught using a medieval method devised for training clergy and
choirs to sing plainchant. The teachers more often than not were monks, nuns, and
priests. The gamut—​together with its traditional six syllables, four-​line staff, and
square noteheads—​was not some discarded relic of a bygone age. It was the foun-
dation of a vibrant living tradition. This “Guidonian diatonic,” as Harold Powers
described it, “crystallized in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as a control on
singers’ perceptions of intervallic relationships and tonal functions; with some
changes in emphasis but never in principle, it continued to function that way for
five hundred years, as the didactic substratum for making music (both performing
and composing) and contemplating music.”1
Its survival into the eighteenth century and beyond can be explained by the eco-
nomics of supply and demand, as discussed in the preceding chapters. The Italian
conservatories, for instance, taught Guido’s method not only because they always
had and because they needed to populate their church choirs, but also because it
was essential for earning income by hiring out indentured boys and young men for
religious services, processions, and festivals.
The claim that plainchant formed an integral part of everyday musical life is
therefore central to the main argument advanced in this book, which holds that
its affiliated educational system—​the solmization method attributed to Guido of
Arezzo—​continued to form the basis of rudimentary training and, in an updated
and radically revised format, to provide musicians with a conceptual framework for
dealing with a fully chromatic system of scales and keys. Without an active culture of
plainchant singing, the old hexachords would likely have faded into insignificance.
Yet very little is known about this aspect of eighteenth-​century music history. The
first chapter of Zon (1999) provides a useful survey of mainly French treatises as a
background to the revival of Catholic plainchant in Georgian England, which is re-
flected in Chapter 3 of Muir (2008). Aside from a handful of studies of the Baroque
grand motet and colonial churches in the Americas, however, few other sources ven-
ture beyond the usual cutoff year of 1600, and these are more interested in revivals

The Solfeggio Tradition. Nicholas Baragwanath, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197514085.001.0001
38 The Solfeggio Tradition

and offshoots than in the core Catholic tradition. The 798-​page Cambridge History
of Eighteenth-​Century Music (2009) touches on plainchant only once, as part of a
discussion of French reforms, and even this does not merit a mention in the index.
Responsibility for this neglect rests primarily on the medievalists and revivalists
of the nineteenth century, whose obsession with finding and transcribing the
earliest, most “authentic” versions of Gregorian chant led them to dismiss contem-
porary practices as corrupt and thus worthless. Rich traditions that had developed
over the course of centuries, especially those stemming from the Tridentine reforms
of the Counter-​Reformation, were swept aside.2
Among the first to call for a restoration of genuine plainchant, or, rather, a purge
of recent human interactions with it, were Alexandre-​Étienne Choron (1771–​1834)
in Paris and Pietro Alfieri (1801–​63) in Rome. But the most active scholars in the
field were the monks at the Benedictine Abbey of St. Peter in Solesmes, established
in 1833. Their endeavor started out as a Romantic dream, epitomized in the work of
the first chief editor, Dom Pothier, of restoring the sounds of an imagined Middle
Ages to the renovated abbey. But it ended up as a secularized scientific discipline
exemplified by the comparative philology of Dom Mocquereau. Uniting these two
poles, which Bergeron (1989) characterizes as “Gregorian Art” versus “Gregorian
Science,” was a disdain for any source that postdated the Tridentine reforms. In ef-
fect, both Romantics and Positivists at Solesmes dismissed out of hand any source
that might reflect a Catholic tradition that was either current or within living
memory. Contemptuous of pre-​revolutionary “Neo-​Gallican” church music (to
be explained more fully below), they scoured archives for ancient manuscripts in
an attempt to create authoritative quasi Urtext editions of chant. As a result, their
compendiums, such as the Liber Usualis (1896/​1961) and Graduale Romanum
(1908), cannot be trusted to correspond to the chants actually used at particular
churches in the eighteenth century. Their legacy lives on not only in the modern
conventions of notating plainchant without rhythm and of singing it in predomi-
nantly equal syllables with a self-​consciously pellucid “medieval” vocal timbre but
also in the widespread assumption that it somehow ceased to have any historical
relevance after the Counter-​Reformation or before its supposed rediscovery by the
Romantics.
If the basic lessons in canto fermo that follow in Chapter 5 are to make sense,
then it is essential to understand how they once related to a living culture of church
music. This chapter scans the evidence to try to determine how plainchant was
performed in the eighteenth century. It argues that on most occasions chants were
arranged so as not to sound too archaic to eighteenth-​century ears, because this
would have distracted them from the act of worship. Chants would have sounded
more like simple conventional melodies, performed with regular rhythms,
ornaments, and accidentals that reduced their most jarring modal inflections. This
contrasts sharply with the usual modern way of performing Gregorian chant, which
deliberately sets out to conjure up a distant, alien sound world evocative of Gothic
arches and hooded monks by preserving modal intervals and restricting melodies
 Eighteenth-Century Plainchant—For Beginners 39

largely to syllables of artificially equal duration. This “medieval” veneer makes it all
the more difficult for us to appreciate the currency of plainchant during the age of
Haydn and Mozart.
In order to introduce readers to the notion of Galant canto fermo, this chapter
surveys its many modes of performance, from solo cantillation to accompanied po-
lyphony, and speculates on the significance of Gregorian cantus firmus melodies for
multivoiced compositions. It also investigates the different types of chant then in
use and scrutinizes a typical example from a 1761 service book, published in Turin,
to try to decipher its notation. Symbols for rhythm and meter were just as cryptic
and disputable in eighteenth-​century plainchant as they were in earlier repertories.
Finally, the chapter ends with a brief taste of the way canto fermo was taught to
choirboys and girls, as a prelude to the lessons that will be encountered next.

Performing Plainchant

Little is known about how plainchant was performed in the eighteenth century,
whether sung solo, in unison, in several contrapuntal parts, or as a basis for con-
certed compositions. Practice appears to have differed from church to church.
Normally a priest would speak the words of the Mass, reading quietly to him-
self the parts indicated in the missal or gradual by “rubrics,” passages traditionally
marked out with red ink to be sung by choirs of men and boys. Chanting by the
clergy was usually confined to special occasions, although Burney reported a Mass
at St. Mark’s in Venice that was sung entirely by priests.3
Plainchant could alternate between choirs, soloists, and organ versets
(versetti: brief instrumental interludes that replaced familiar antiphons and verses).
Small groups of singers were sometimes positioned around the church next to port-
able organs (organetti) to obtain an agreeable echo effect.
A predictably conservative tradition was preserved by the eighteen singers of the
papal choir at the Sistine Chapel. When Joseph Mainzer, a German music critic,
former priest, and subsequent founder of The Musical Times, visited during the
1830s, he heard them perform “an ancient, dignified plainsong of the utmost sim-
plicity and devoid of all accompaniment.”4
At the equally conformist St. Stephen’s in Vienna, conversely, the choir sang
chants in four parts, sometimes by improvising harmonies using the ancient tech-
nique of falsobordone (essentially, by adding parallel thirds and sixths). Vienna also
kept the tradition of the a cappella Mass setting, which preserved many features
of Renaissance polyphony.5 Burney reported on a Mass celebrated there in 1770,
noting, “All the responses in this service, are chanted in four parts, which is much
more pleasing, especially where there is so little melody, than the more naked canto
fermo used in most other catholic churches.”6
In France it was customary for an organist to provide a harmonized accompani-
ment to sung plainchant or for an instrument such as a serpent or bassoon to double
40 The Solfeggio Tradition

the melody. Hillsman (1980) further reports that ornamentation was integral to this
performance practice. Prim (1961) documents the technique of chant sur le livre,
an extended and highly ornamented combination of descant and improvised coun-
terpoint, in which a low voice sang the chant while higher voices adorned it with
decorative countermelodies.
At the chapels of Catholic embassies in London, chants were performed in
rhythms that approximated speech accents, with stark dynamic contrasts and
block chords on the organ, as documented in Vincent Novello’s first publication, A
Collection of Sacred Music as performed at the Royal Portuguese Chapel in London
(1811).7
Most services made use of a mixture of several different styles from solo can-
tillation, unison singing, and a cappella counterpoint to fashionable duets and
choruses. Catholic congregations were used to hearing the medieval and the
modern side by side long before the rise of “classical” concert culture in the nine-
teenth century. A simple unadorned chant might be followed by a Renaissance-​style
motet, a Baroque antiphon, and a jaunty aria indistinguishable from those on offer
at the latest opera buffa. A common feature of up-​to-​date ecclesiastical music, from
Handel and Vivaldi to Mozart and even Beethoven, is the contrast between the old-​
fashioned chantlike rhythms and note-​against-​note polyphony employed by the
chorus and the rapid “concertato” string accompaniments of the orchestra. The
opening movement of Vivaldi’s Gloria (RV 589) is representative in this respect. It
gives the impression of a modernized, amplified, jazzed-​up version of canto fermo.
The proportion of old to new styles, and thus of plain to elaborate settings,
depended on the importance of the day: the lesser the occasion, the simpler the
plainchant. A concise description of eighteenth-​century practice can be found
within an amateurish music treatise titled L’Arte armonica penned for the London
market in 1760 by the Milanese nobleman Giorgio Antoniotto. He explained
how days in the liturgical calendar were divided into two classes, ferial and festal,
and how celebrations were divided into simple, double, and solemn. Plainchant
remained plain only on ferial days, he claimed, when it was sung unaccompanied
by the minor clergy; this, however, is once again contradicted by Burney’s account
of a Mass in Vienna at which “there were violins and violoncellos though it was not
a festival.”8 During simple festivals, the choir joined in with additional contrapuntal
parts. Elaborate “figured” music (i.e., in modern notation) featured only during
double and solemn festivals.
As Antoniotto explained:

Sacred music in the greatest churches, particularly of the Roman and Ambrosian
[Milanese] communion in Italy and in Germany, as metropolitans, cathedrals,
and colleges, is commonly divided in ferial or coral, in simple and double festivals
and solemn. The coral or ferial in simple canto fermo, as it is called, is performed
on every common day called ferie, by all the assistants to the great choir of the
church, as canons, chaplains, and prebendaries. The simple festival is so called,
 Eighteenth-Century Plainchant—For Beginners 41

when on some ferial day happens to be commemoration of a common saint; and

the prayers, psalms, &c. are sung partly by the assistants of the great choir, as
above, in canto fermo, and partly by musicians in canto Gregoriano harmonized,
in three, four, or more parts. The double festival is performed in figured music, al-
most all the prayers by musicians, with the addition of one motetto for one, two, or
more voices, in commemoration of the particular saint; and the solemn music is
practised in all the churches on the occasion of some particular great feast, as for
thanksgiving to the Almighty with a solemn Te Deum.9

Canto Fermo as Cantus Firmus

In the unaccompanied stile antico, a style intended to emulate the “perfect music”
of Palestrina, it was traditional to place a version of the chant melody in the tenor
(from the Latin tenere, “to hold,” referring to the fixed tune). Deliberately anti-
quated settings of this sort persisted in conservative churches throughout the eight-
eenth century, most notably in Rome and Bologna. Knowing how to transform
plainchant into “figured” music for simple festivals remained a crucial skill for a
would-​be choirmaster.
On April 21, 1745, for instance, an examination was held at the royal chapel in
Naples to appoint a successor to the recently deceased maestro, Leonardo Leo. The
panel of examiners who would fill this prestigious position consisted of Giovanni
Battista Constanzi of Rome, Giacomo Antonio Perti of Bologna, and Neapolitan
masters Niccolò Jommelli and Johann Adolph Hasse. They required the nine short-​
listed applicants to turn an unseen chant in canto fermo into a multivoice compo-
sition in canto figurato (modern notation).10 In order to make it more challenging,
they selected an obscure chant from the third line of Psalm 63, designated for the
double feast of St. John Before the Latin Gate, which the applicants were unlikely
to have set beforehand: Protexisti me Deus (“Thou hast protected me from the as-
sembly of the malignant”). Its opening is shown in e­ xample 4.1(a). Although the
original manuscript paper was pre-​ruled with five-​line staves, the panel managed
to notate the chant on the usual four-​line canto fermo staff by simply ignoring the
lowest line.
The transcription of this chant by applicant Francesco Durante into figured
notation, including rhythmic equivalents for its “long” and “short” symbols, can

Ex. 4.1 A master’s exam of April 21, 1745, at the royal chapel, Naples (I-​Nc, Rari
1.6.15/​18), fol. 1r

(a) The opening of a canto fermo assigned to applicants by the panel of examiners
42 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 4.1 Continued

(b) Durante’s “figured” setting in five parts

be seen in the tenor part of ­example 4.1(b), where it is clearly marked “Canto
fermo.” The additional marking “f. 7.a” indicates its mode—​Mixolydian with a
final on G—​which was commonly referred to in plainchant textbooks as the “sev-
enth arrangement” (formazione settima or formazione del settimo tuono, the first
formazione being authentic Dorian on D, the second plagal Dorian on A, the third
authentic Phrygian on E, and so on). Freely imitative counterpoints surround the
chant in ­example 4.1(b), similarly identified by mode, although the accidental
sharp that appears in bar 2 (and in 51 other bars of the total 116) demonstrates
that this mode did not, in reality, determine the harmony. It was, as Powers (1981,
1992) argues, more a way of classifying the chant. On the following page (and not
shown in the example), Durante wrote “below” (sotto) to indicate that the chant
 Eighteenth-Century Plainchant—For Beginners 43

had shifted to the bass part. He then indulged in increasingly sophisticated con-
trapuntal devices.
This test piece of eighteenth-​century stile antico plainchant practice displays ex-
quisite craftsmanship and beautiful simplicity. It testifies to the continued impor-
tance attached to canto fermo in professional music circles within the church.
Two decades later Niccolò Piccinni was still teaching his apprentices at the
Onofrio Conservatory how to add restricted (or “species”) counterpoints to
Gregorian chants. A notebook from his class of 1767 belonging to a Bergamese stu-
dent called Francesco Salari contains chant melodies written in breves in a section
titled “Contraponto Obbligato Canto Fermo.”11 An old-​style cantus firmus motet
by Salari survives from 1771, probably his final year at the Onofrio Conservatory. It
uses the hymn melody Ave Maris Stella as a cantus firmus in all four voices: first in
the bass line, then in the cantus, the alto, and finally the tenor.
In the early 1800s, professional maestros working at churches in Italy were still
expected to use both plainchant and contemporary styles on a daily basis. Many
examples can be found. Johannes Simon Mayr (1763–​1845), for one, maestro at the
cathedral in Bergamo from 1802 until his death, produced a great deal of up-​to-​
date liturgical music explicitly founded on traditional plainchants. The Angelo Mai
Library in Bergamo (I-​BGc) preserves many of his short compositions for choir
and orchestra, with titles such as “Benedictus on the Iste confessor chant” or “Lauda
Ierusalem on a monastic canto fermo.”
In 1805, at the age of twenty-​eight, Vito Antonio Raffaele Cozzoli (1777–​1817)
succeeded the late maestro at the cathedral in Molfetta, a small town not far from
Bari near the heel of Italy. In order to prove his worthiness for the position, he was
required to pass an examination in “canto gregoriano.” It still survives in the local
diocesan archive, together with manuscripts of chants on four-​line staves and
Neapolitan-​style settings for choir and orchestra.12
Chants were similarly recorded in medieval notation in 1829 by Giovanni
Ghelucci and Michele Puccini (father of Giacomo) for liturgical use at the church of
San Michele in Foro, Lucca.13
As late as 1850, maestro Giovanni Battista De Vecchis was teaching his
apprentices at the Abbey of Montecassino how to transfer chants to the tenor and to
surround them with contrapuntal parts in white-​note a cappella style. De Vecchis
also described an antiphon from “one of many manuscripts spared the ravages of
time” at that ancient abbey as being both “from the era close to Guido of Arezzo and
very similar to that which is sung today in the Choir of this Monastery.”14
In more up-​to-​date settings of psalms at Vespers, the Ordinary of the Mass
(especially the Kyrie, Gloria, and Credo), and a variety of hymns and antiphons,
chants could be transformed into (or replaced by) fully concerted compositions.
These served to convey an appropriate mood to those present, while the priest
murmured the necessary text under his breath. The precise relation between
this kind of Galant Catholic music and Gregorian melody is little understood.
Contemporary composers are sure to have known the substituted chants, yet they
44 The Solfeggio Tradition

did not always make the connection explicit. Some opted to quote the traditional
tune directly in their compositions in a way similar to that in the exam piece shown
in ­example 4.1(b), whereas others chose to refer to it obliquely or not at all.15
The first two movements of Haydn’s Symphony no. 26 (c. 1768) offer a glimpse
into the ways in which chant could form the basis of an instrumental composi-
tion. The title of the oldest manuscript source (in Herzogenburg Abbey), “Passio
et Lamentatio,” makes clear that the chant was composed for Holy Week festivities,
although most likely meant for concert performance rather than liturgical use. In
order to comply with the demands of the season, the symphony features melodies
taken from a medieval Passion play, sung entirely in Latin plainchant and well
known to congregations in Austria.16 Yet these chant melodies are not at all ob-
vious, even to those who may have known them. They are concealed in inner
parts. From bar 17 of the first movement, a chant sung by the character of Mark
the Evangelist occupies the second violin and oboe (traditionally representative of
the human voice). The second movement Adagio begins with one of the “Alphabet
lamentations” found in the Passion drama, again in the second violin. It is signifi-
cant to note that this chant is embellished, suggesting that it was common practice
at the time to apply ornaments in performance.
Evidence that chant could be performed in an up-​to-​date style, complete with
embellishments, can be found in an edict issued by Cardinal Francesco Pignatelli to
the convents of Naples for Holy Week 1705:

Be warned, that the Passion is only permitted to be sung by clergy, and that each of
these should sing her part only, in plainchant. It is expressly prohibited for the said
clergy to sing the part of the Crowd as a trio, or to remove even a single note of the
plainchant. The Offices, Lamentations, Lessons, and Responsories should be sung
in plainchant, without trills and ornaments of any sort, and without organ, only by
professed nuns without any non-​professed girls or women.17

Given the difficulty involved in identifying a chant buried deep within the har-
mony and disentangling it from added flourishes and accidentals, it seems likely that
many more canto fermo “tenor” parts could be discovered in eighteenth-​century
compositions. Attempting to identify them is, however, fraught with difficulty. Not
only would they have been concealed in inner voices, but they may also have been
known in embellished or chromaticized versions that differ from those found in
service books. The eight standard melodies for singing psalms (the “church tones”),
for instance, appear with various combinations of added accidentals in handwritten
sets of rules from the period.18 It seems certain that chants were rarely heard ex-
actly as notated. They were altered to make them sound more agreeable to con-
temporary ears. Performance practices associated today with Renaissance musica
ficta were alive and well in eighteenth-​century churches, as Durante’s written-​in
accidentals in ­example 4.1(b) attest. To give another example, in a digression on the
nature of the modes Manfredini (1775) cited a Phrygian chant for Psalm 113 “as
 Eighteenth-Century Plainchant—For Beginners 45

repugnant to one person as to another,” which, he proposed, should be performed

with accidentals so that it might sound “more natural, more useable as a good bass,
and [sung] far better.”19 As we shall discover in Chapter 5, in eighteenth-​century
Italy the Phrygian mode lacked its characteristic “Phrygian second” from F to E. It
was always sung as F♯ to E. The Lydian mode likewise lacked its defining “Lydian
fourth” from F to B because it was always sung as a perfect fourth.

Types of Chant

Chants came in a variety of types ranging from straightforward recitation formulas

for prayers and lessons to more complicated antiphonal and responsorial chants
with call-​and-​response structures. A thorough survey of the chief genres, forms,
and styles of medieval chant can be found in Hiley (1993, 46–​286). Typical features
include predominantly stepwise motion and limited melodic range. From their
origins in monotone recitation many chants incorporate a repeated reciting note
(tenor or tonus) encircled by an opening gesture (incipit) and closing gesture
(terminatio), interspersed with a variety of punctuation marks, decorations, and
cadences.20
In 1702 the Franciscan priest Domenico Scorpione, maestro di cappella, e del
canto at the seminary in Benevento, not far from Naples, and a significant pro-
vider of teaching materials for the Turchini Conservatory, divided “ecclesiastical
or Gregorian chant” into three species: (1) Fixed Chant (Canto Fermo), meaning
the formulaic and largely monotonous recitation of direct psalmody, (2) Plain
Chant (Canto Piano), which was likewise sung in unison but with greater melodic
variety, and which included antiphonal and responsorial chants, and (3) Mixed
Chant (Canto Misto), which treated measured verse by borrowing three “figures”
(rhythmic note values) from conventionally notated canto figurato.21
In 1788 another Franciscan priest, Onorato Rosa da Cairano, set out a more de-
tailed fivefold classification. He put forward seven synonyms for plainchant: Canto
Fermo, Canto Divino, Canto Angelico, Canto Piano, Canto Armonico, Canto
Ecclesiastico, and Canto Corale.22 The first two of his five species corresponded to
Scorpione’s category “fixed chant,” separated into (1) Distinguished Order (Ordine
Differente), “granted to the most perfect cantilena,” and (2) Undistinguished Order
(Ordine Indifferente), encompassing “those that do not contain every perfection.”
In order to qualify as perfect, a melody had to map neatly onto the diapente (fifth)
and diatesseron (fourth) that defined its modal octave. Scorpione’s category “plain
chant,” incorporating all chants with more than one note to a syllable, was relabeled
by Rosa da Cairano as (3) Prose Order (Ordine di Prosa). Scorpione’s third and final
category “mixed chant” was divided to take account of mode as well as rhythm as
species of (4) Metrical Order (Ordine Metrico), which included hymns and other
texts in verse, and (5) Common Order (Ordine Commune), involving “mixed and
commingled modes.”23
46 The Solfeggio Tradition

Owing to the absence of accompanying examples in these texts, it is no easy

matter to assign their various labels to particular chants. Frequent meddling by
church authorities and differences between local traditions meant that, by the eight-
eenth century, the separate categories of chant no longer held any real meaning. As
Zon points out, the entire repertory was “essentially an amalgam.”24 The main di-
viding line appears to fall between two broad categories: those that include some
kind of rhythmic notation and those that do not. “By the end of the seventeenth
century,” Zon explains, “chant rhythm was written with either metrical or non-​
metrical notation, either in proportional units (i.e. with regular ‘bars’ and tactus) or
free rhythmic units (i.e. having no apparent tactus).”25
In order to understand why this was so, it is necessary to sketch the radical re-
form of plainchant that took place toward the end of the Renaissance. The melodies
known to composers and congregations in the eighteenth century differed from
those found in medieval manuscripts. Most had been “corrected” during the
Counter-​Reformation to accord more closely with prevailing notions of classical
prosody and modal theory. In 1577 Giovanni Perluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525–​94)
and Annibale Zoilo (c. 1537–​92) were commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII to re-
vise, purge, and reform the chants for the new post-​Tridentine editions of the bre-
viary (1568), missal (1570), and other service books, which, according to a papal
brief, had been “filled to overflowing with barbarisms, obscurities, contrarieties and
superfluities as a result of the clumsiness or negligence or even wickedness of the
composers, scribes and printers.”26 They made adjustments to ensure that long notes
coincided with long syllables, to reduce the length of melismas, and to transpose
any chant deemed to have faulty tonality. The task was continued by a committee
in 1608 and eventually completed with the publication of the Medicean Gradual
(1614–​15), printed by Giovanni Raimondi under the supervision of a committee
headed by Felice Anerio (1560–​1630) and Francesco Soriano (1549–​1621).27 This
edition made further adjustments, including the reshaping of cadential patterns,
the association of melodic clichés with certain words, and the insertion of acci-
dental flat signs.
The first significant publication to issue from this lengthy process was Giovanni
Guidetti’s Directorium Chori (1582), which appeared in at least ten editions until
1737. Under the supervision of his teacher Palestrina, Father Guidetti (1530–​92)
developed a hybrid form of notation akin to fifteenth-​century “fractional chant”
(canto fratto or cantus fractus), which made use of several note values derived from
mathematical divisions of the tempus.28 In his preface he defined four rhythmic
values: (1) the semibreve, indicated by a diamond or rhombic notehead and equal
to half of one main beat (tempus); (2) the breve, indicated by a square notehead
and equal to one full main beat; (3) the square breve capped by a semicircle, worth
one and a half main beats, and (4) the square breve capped by a semicircle with a
dot inside (similar to a modern pause sign), worth two main beats. He did not use
traditional neume forms, opting instead to indicate a melisma on a single syllable
 Eighteenth-Century Plainchant—For Beginners 47

with a string of breves placed flush against each other as if ligated. From the 1604
edition onward, the two types of modified square were conflated into a single long
(a square with a right descender). Context determined the note’s exact duration,
just as it did in polyphonic mensural music. It was a reduced long of one and a half
beats if followed by a semibreve or a full long equivalent to two beats if followed by
a bar line or breve.29 These three values—​the tailed square (long), square (breve),
and diamond (semibreve), in the nominal proportion 4:2:1—​became standard fol-
lowing their inclusion in the Medicean Gradual of 1614–​15. They remained the
usual symbols for rhythm in plainchant in Italy throughout the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. The same three figures in the same proportions can still be
found, for instance, in the passion play Cantus ecclesiasticus sacræ historiæ passionis
domini nostri Jesu Christi (1763, 4), in Solano’s treatise (1764, appendix, 36–​47), and
even in Alfieri (1835, 5–​6).
This system took hold toward the end of the seventeenth century in France
and Germany. In general, French churches pursued a bewildering variety of local
traditions because exceptionally large numbers of them had opted to take advantage
of the papal bull Quod a nobis (July, 9, 1568), which allowed any church that could
demonstrate a continuous liturgical tradition of more than two hundred years to
apply for exemption from the imposition of Roman usage. This fueled the nation-
alist “Gallican” movement that took root during the reign of Louis XIV (1643–​1715)
and led to a wholesale reform of traditional Gregorian melodies.30 In the 1680s
new editions of the Roman antiphonary and gradual were issued by Guillaume-​
Gabriel Nivers (1632–​1714). Under the leadership of Charles-​Gaspard-​Guillame
Vintimille du Luc, archbishop of Paris from 1729 to 1746, newly composed chants
on neo-​Latin texts were added to liturgical books, and many traditional melodies
were revised beyond recognition. By the end of the eighteenth century almost all
French churches had adopted some version of neo-​Gallican chant. Only the prov-
ince of Avignon still observed the Roman rite.
Most French chants were notated in chant mesuré, a version of the Medicean
system that made use of three or four rhythmic symbols, often, and inexplicably,
pegged one value higher than their Italian counterparts: tailed square (maximus),
square (long), diamond (breve), and angled diamond (semibreve). There was also
a dotted square to indicate a pause at cadences.31 A more fully notated variant of
measured chant was known as chant musical or figuré, a term clearly derived from
the Italian canto figurato. It made use of additional “figures,” or notational symbols,
including indications for tempo, expression, ornamentation, and accidentals.
Given that the majority of eighteenth-​century plainchant features some kind
of rhythmic notation, classifying it according to whether it is metric or nonmetric
achieves little. And it must be admitted that, within the metric variety, the notation
more often than not resists straightforward interpretation. Because various types
of bar line could be used to demarcate individual words as well as entire phrases
separated by breaths, they rarely match up with an assumed tactus. There is also
48 The Solfeggio Tradition

evidence that vestiges of the Renaissance mensuration system and perhaps even of
the medieval rhythmic modes remained in use. The absence of any kind of mensu-
ration sign or time signature in plainchant invokes a medieval concept of rhythm
in which the value and relative duration of each note is determined not by the note
itself but by its position within a larger rhythmic series, or mode, consisting of a
patterned succession of long and short values. In support of this conjecture is the
fact that the three usual note values established by the Medicean Gradual were
supplemented by an array of ligatures left over from much earlier medieval nota-
tion, each with its own specific rhythmic connotations featuring patterns of longs
and shorts.32 These difficulties explain why the first two of Zon’s three categories of
eighteenth-​century plainchant, cited below, assume a free or partly free reading of
the notated rhythm:

(1) a loosely accent-​based system in which the rhythmic notation attempts to

convey accentuation without tactus . . . ,
(2) a semi-​proportional system in which either (a) a tactus is established and
the rhythmic configurations are possibly distorted to conform to that tactus,
or (b) a tactus is maintained only periodically with rhythmic configurations
adapting proportionately when necessary . . . ,
(3) a rigidly metrical system.33

Modern scholars and performers adopt one of three positions when it comes to
deciding which of these options best corresponds to a given chant. The simplest
and easiest is the equalist stance, in which almost every note is performed with
an equal value, with some prolongation allowed for final notes and punctuation
points. Opposing this is the pseudo-​mensuralist stance, headed in spirit by Antoine
Dechevrens (1898), which applies a knowledge of Renaissance mensuration to de-
cipher fixed metrical schemes. The third is the declamatory-​rhythmic interpreta-
tion, which breaks the monotony of equal values by incorporating figures based
on the accents of Latin prosody.34 Of the three, the equalist theory is the least con-
vincing. Would cantors and choirs really have ignored the richly varied notation so
completely as to sing an entire church service in dull plodding beats? Similarly, the
declamatory-​rhythmic theory, envisaging a rendition that followed the speech-​like
accentuation of the words or that drifted in and out of regular meter, would only
work for a solo voice or for enclosed groups of singers and instrumentalists (such
as monks and nuns) accustomed to practicing together on a daily basis. It is, of
course, possible that choirs, too, were sufficiently well rehearsed to fashion their
own idiosyncratic rhythmic traditions based on accent and custom. But this would
have meant that any newly appointed musician from outside the local region, such
as an organist, could not have accompanied the choir without mishap. It stands to
reason that only a metrical system or one with agreed rhythmic conventions could
be performed successfully by a multivoice choir, especially if accompanied by an
organ or instruments.
 Eighteenth-Century Plainchant—For Beginners 49

Performing a Plainchant from 1761

Example 4.2 shows a typical plainchant from a service book. It is a hymn for the fes-
tival of the Madonna on Passion Sunday taken from the Office of the Blessed Virgin
Mary, published in Turin in 1761.35 The imprecise underlay of the text and the hy-
phenation of one word are reproduced from the original source. The melody is
written on a four-​line staff using an archaic F-​clef (a letter C preceded by a virga, or
square note with descender) and square noteheads. This form of notation had been
standard for liturgical plainchant since Ulrich Han’s first printing of the Catholic
missal with music in Rome in 1476, although its origins lie in the thirteenth century.
Even for complete novices, this ancient notation is disarmingly simple to inter-
pret. The F-​clef at the left of the stave indicates that the note F (equivalent to the
syllable fa) is situated on the second line from the top. This means that the melody
starts on a re syllable (D) on the line below, as shown in the modern transcription.
Although the printed chant lacks accidental sharps or flats, the transcription
of the chant includes three suggested C♯s. The lower neighboring-​note figures
D-​C-​D have been altered from tones to semitones “for the sake of beauty,” in the
Renaissance manner. Had the melody risen any higher, it may have been neces-
sary to sharp a G to lead to a cadence on A or to flat a B to avoid a tritone. Such
adjustments would have been added routinely in performance, just as they were
to the ostensibly Dorian counterpoints found throughout Fux’s Steps to Parnassus
(1725). The historical evidence for applying accidentals to chants (to be outlined in
Chapter 5) is overwhelming. Pitch adjustments served to mitigate the most glaring
archaisms of the notated chants and to transform them into melodies more accept-
able for listeners accustomed to hearing major and minor keys. In e­ xample 4.2, for

Ex. 4.2 Officio della beatissima Vergine Maria (1761), 440, with suggested transcription
in modern notation
50 The Solfeggio Tradition

instance, the C♯s give the opening and closing phrases an unmistakable feel of D
minor, making the central cadence on C♮ in m. 13 sound more like the dominant
harmony of its relative F major than a return to the Dorian mode.
Had the chant been delivered by a solo cantor, it may well have featured a free
rhythm based loosely on the flow of strong and weak accents arising from the Latin
text. Were it to be sung by more than one person or accompanied by instruments,
alternatively, it would have needed to be measured against a fixed pulse to enable
performers to synchronize or at least to have had some agreed rhythmic profile. Yet
the original notation of e­ xample 4.2 seems to support neither hypothesis. It makes
use of two of the usual three note values: a tailed square indicating a long and a
square indicating a breve. But the longs do not always coincide with strong accents
in the Latin text: “sàcro” and “fùsas” each receive two longs, while “quadragenàrio”
receives one on each of its first three syllables and none on its actual main accent. By
the same token, the succession of longs and shorts does not appear to suggest any
readily discernible metric grouping.
Although this chant has been chosen for its simplicity, lacking minims and com-
plex ligatures, deciphering how it was realized in performance presents a number of
challenges. As Anna Maria Busse Berger points out, mensuration, proportion, and
tempo—​what we tend to conflate nowadays as time signatures—​are “one of the least
understood and most controversial topics in music history.”36 Battles continue to
rage between equalists, mensuralists, and declamatory rhythmicists. In the eight-
eenth century, two modes of performance appear to have been employed: a free(-​
ish) mode for solo cantillation, and measured for everything else.
Evidence for measured plainchant can be found in sources containing exemplars
for trainee organists such as Lorente’s Explanation of Music (1672, 1:109) and Greco’s
keyboard accompaniments for psalm tones (before 1728), both of which pre-
sent standardized versions set in long note values with bars and time signatures.37
Lorente used 3/​2 for his examples, whereas Greco opted for 2/​1, reinforcing the
suggestion that canto fermo notation was understood to possess mensural perfec-
tion (subdivision into three beats) or imperfection (subdivision into two). But these
may have been didactic adaptations for teaching how to improvise organ versets
rather than transcriptions from practice.
More significant is the evidence of French plainchant treatises. Their chant
mesuré appears to have been conceived as a simplified version of post-​Tridentine
Italian chant. Not only did treatises such as those by La Feillée (1760) and Poisson
(1789) dispense with the complex and outdated ligatures found in the Medicean
Gradual and its successors, but they also provided time signatures of 3 or 2, as if
equivalent to the old mensural signs for perfect and imperfect tempus or major
and minor prolation. Their methods influenced the English plainchant revival,
which drew largely on Flemish and French sources. In his Diverse Chants for
Sundays and Festivals Through the Year (1751), for instance, John Francis Wade
notated the famous seventeenth-​century hymn “Adeste Fideles” (later translated
by Frederick Oakeley as “O Come, All Ye Faithful”) on a four-​line staff using the
 Eighteenth-Century Plainchant—For Beginners 51

three traditional Medicean note values, with bar lines indicating what looks like
a triple meter.38
That chant was performed to a regular beat in Naples in the early eighteenth
century can be ascertained from the Harmonic Reflections (1701, 20–​39) and
Instructions in Plainchant (1702) of Domenico Scorpione, who accounted for
the rhythmic performance of canto fermo by way of a detailed overview of the
Renaissance mensural system. His former student Fabio Santoro, choirmaster at the
Church of Saint Sofia in what is now the Naples suburb of Guigliano, at first refuted
this claim in his School of Canto Fermo (1715) but went on to perform a spectacular
U-​turn. In a contrived dialogue between master and pupil, he began by denying
any kind of meter in chant, only to end up recommending a regular beat. Similar
contradictions arise in other treatises such as Belli’s (1788, 65–​66), which grants
proportional difference to notated values but denies them regular meter on the
ground that meter, as an attribute of canto figurato, cannot be allowed to trespass on
the sacred domain of fermo. This blatant doublespeak testifies to a profound unease
within the Church concerning the issue, perhaps brought about by a reluctance to
confront the potentially damaging question of fidelity to Pope Gregory’s original
tunes. It seems that performing chant with meter was preferred as long as no one
admitted it too openly.
Santoro’s dialogue opens with a forthright question from the pupil: “Are the notes
of canto fermo all equal, or are there differences in value?”39 The master responds
with what appears to be an unequivocal answer: “Notes of unequal value must only
be used in measured [music] and not in chant. And the tail, attached to a few notes,
is only for ornament, and diversion of the ear.”40 But a slip of the pen gives the game
away. How can a notated tail divert the ear if it is inaudible? Seemingly oblivious to
this discrepancy, the master then restates his avowal that the note values are not in-
dicative of any measure, only to contradict himself in the very next sentence:

In truth, I do not propose to subject plainchant to some rigorous tempo or beat,

nor do I want it to resemble some kind of measured music, but here I mean to
make the observation that I have only done what both ancient and modern plain-
chant books do, that is, make use of various types of notes. Nor should I believe
that they have been placed there on a whim, because if so (as some freely assert)
then why have these many note-​values not been corrected and removed? So it is
neither a whim, nor for diversion, but on purpose, with meaning.41

He traces this meaning to reforms brought in during the 1500s, when humanist
scholars took pains to ensure that the long and short syllables of Latin texts were
pronounced correctly. Owing to the need to distinguish between accented and
unaccented syllables, “the difference in note values in canto fermo is therefore
necessary.”42
Thus far, Santoro has backtracked from his initial position only to the extent that
he allows some purpose to rhythmic values in chant. They are not just for ornament.
52 The Solfeggio Tradition

They indicate the natural accents of the text. In the next passage of dialogue, how-
ever, he performs a complete volte-​face without betraying the least embarrassment.
Citing Penna (1689) and Frezza (1698), he declares that a strict tactus should be
observed in chant. This traditional tactus consists of an up-​and-​down motion of the
hand—​literally an upbeat and a downbeat—​moving at the rate of a normal human
pulse. The two motions can be either equal in duration, indicating duple time, or
unequal (i.e., the downbeat lasts twice as long as the upbeat), indicating triple time.
Santoro accordingly values a breve at one full tactus (i.e., an upbeat and a downbeat,
equivalent to a modern bar with a time signature of either 2/​1 or 3/​1), a semibreve
at half a tactus (i.e., an upbeat or a downbeat, equivalent to a modern semibreve in
either 2/​1 or 3/​1), and a long at two tacti. “And one cannot deny,” he concludes,

that a chant guided by such a regular beat is more pleasing to the ear than one
that is free and without regulation. So I would say that when a regular beat can be
observed by copying good Cantors, one is obliged to use it, because things made
with a clear and determined rule seldom fail, but often shine. And if it is not pos-
sible to observe a regular beat because of a lack of [good] Cantors, then one can
at least aim to proceed together equally, with one [singer] following [the beat of]
another, so that one avoids creating dissonances, as when on a few occasions one
hears half the choir singing quickly and the other half beating time more slowly,
not without grave disturbance to the devoted ear of the faithful listener.43

Santoro describes a performance practice in which an experienced cantor would

set a beat for all other musicians, whether by singing solo or by leading the choir. If
the cantor or lead singer failed to set a clear beat, then the choir members were ex-
pected to mark each other until their sounds eventually coalesced into one. In both
cases, the rhythmic notation must have guided the way musicians made the chants
conform to a regular meter.
Returning with these insights to ­example 4.2, the tactus would appear to be set
at the level of the tailed square. If one accepts this, then each tailed square can map
onto one bar in modern notation. It only remains to decide how the tailless squares
fit within the bars. Here, Santoro offers further assistance. He mentions that some
maestros place the tail on the right to indicate “major tempo” (worth three shorts)
and on the left to indicate “minor tempo” (worth two).44 Although this notational
device does not appear in the example, it does support the theory that the notation
was interpreted according to a version of the mensural system, with perfect (triple)
and imperfect (duple) proportions. In addition, Santoro describes a rhythmic figure
called a “double” (doppia), which consists of two conjoined squares, ascending or
descending. It can be seen four times in all in the example (including the one above
“jejunio,” which is separated in the original as a result of careless printing). Like the
ancient ligatures from which it derives, this figure can be performed as either two
equal notes or an unequal combination of longer and shorter notes. Together with
the single squares and the series of three just before the final note, this suggests that
 Eighteenth-Century Plainchant—For Beginners 53

each tailed square should be taken to represent an unequal tactus, subject to triple
division. In the transcription in ­example 4.2, one tailed square, or long, therefore,
equals one dotted minim, equivalent to a full measure in 3/​4 time. The squares, or
breves, fit neatly within these bars as crotchets. The final breve in the example is
presumed to be a misprint on the assumption that the general principle was to pro-
long the last note.
This lengthy investigation into how to read eighteenth-​century plainchant no-
tation has been undertaken in an attempt to show that chants would have sounded
similar to conventional melodies of the time, far removed from the rarefied,
sanitized, exotic versions that we usually hear today. Imagine e­ xample 4.2 sung in
a normal voice, possibly with added vocal gestures (ornaments), and accompanied
by the organ or other instruments: It does not seem very distant from contempo-
rary musical styles. In consequence, when choirboys started their first lessons in
canto fermo they would not have regarded them as especially archaic or alien. They
were learning how to sing simple conventional melodies using the same hexachords
that applied to more complex, up-​to-​date music.

First Lessons, from a 1762 Notebook

The first stage of an apprenticeship contained more or less the same lessons irre-
spective of where it was taught or by whom. Owing to the ingrained conservatism
and far-​reaching influence of the Catholic Church, everyone from the lowliest choir
singer to the most illustrious maestro started out with near-​identical instruction
in the rudiments. Uniformity was enforced by the Roman curia, which sought
to ensure that trainee clergy and juvenile choirs under its control were literally
singing from the same hymn sheet. Evidence for this can be found in any number
of seventeenth-​and eighteenth-​century textbooks and manuscripts setting out
preliminary lessons in music, often titled cantorino (cantor’s manual), Wegweiser
(guide), or regole (rules) for singing canto fermo and canto figurato. Although the
liturgy could differ from place to place, these sources testify to a remarkable consist-
ency of approach in how to read music and sing, extending all the way from Rome
to the furthest corners of Europe.
In 1786, for instance, when superstar opera composer Giovanni Paisiello noticed
on his return from St. Petersburg that music students in Poland lacked a suitable
textbook of basic rules, he commissioned a Franciscan friar in Naples to produce
one and send it to them.45 There was no need to discuss its contents or to get in-
volved in its pedagogical method. Both men would have understood that the es-
sential foundations of music practice remained the same whether intended for use
at the elite Onofrio Conservatory, where Paisiello had studied under Durante, or at
ordinary choir schools in rural Poland.
For the same reason, it makes little difference which textbook Haydn—​once
again standing in as our “everyman” apprentice—​would have used when he joined
54 The Solfeggio Tradition

the beginners’ class at St. Stephen’s in 1740. He and his fellow choirboys may have
used the manuscript copy of Johann Fux’s Singfundamente (c. 1710) preserved in
the archive of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. Given the dominance of Italian
maestros in Vienna, they may instead have relied on the more traditional Cantorino
by Felice Barsanti (c. 1730), currently held in the Austrian National Library. Or
perhaps Kapellmeister Reutter kept faith with the Useful Instruction of Bernhard
Scheyrer (1663), which had been endorsed in its preface by Johann Caspar Kerll,
maestro to his father, Georg Reutter senior. All three sources present variants of the
same basic teachings, which involved Guidonian solmization.
To know any textbook of canto fermo is thus to know the rudiments that were
taught to almost every eighteenth-​century musician. It is to enter a radically unfa-
miliar world shaped by daily religious activities that were carried out without major
change from the fourteenth century until the Napoleonic dissolution of monasteries
and confraternities in the early nineteenth century. Within this vanished musical
landscape, modern norms of music theory and pedagogy can impair rather than
assist understanding.
What did the first stage of an apprenticeship entail? To start with, everything
rested on singing. If a child could not sing in tune or keep time then there was no
point in contemplating a musical future. “Whoever can sing, can play,” as they said
in Naples.
Like most professional musicians of the time, Haydn owed his career to his in-
nate singing talent, which enabled him to imitate his father’s simple harp songs
and thus attract the attention of the local Schulrektor. Until the age of seventeen,
he was first and foremost a professional singer. Only after the loss of his soprano
voice was he compelled to earn a living as a freelance teacher, viola player, and
street busker. The first years of training for every apprentice relied entirely on the
voice. Corroboration of this can be found in a chronicle of Neapolitan musical life
compiled by Giuseppe Sigismondo in 1820:

And here I repeat most assuredly, that he who truly wishes to become a great
maestro in the art of music must devote himself to becoming a great singer from
an early age. I speak from experience. Many of the finest composers started out
as very fine singers. As recent proof of this, I would mention the most excellent
Haydn, a great and well-​respected composer of both vocal and instrumental
music, who since his early youth was an excellent and renowned singer. I relate this
from the words of the late Jommelli, who got to know him personally in Germany
and who praised his taste and intelligence highly.46

The pedagogical method of progressing from spoken to sung solfeggio differs sig-
nificantly from many of those in common use nowadays. Children normally started
much later, at about the age of nine or ten, and they learned to read music for sev-
eral years before being allowed to sing, let alone touch an instrument. Accuracy
in pitch, tone, and rhythm was essential. By the time they came to the keyboard
 Eighteenth-Century Plainchant—For Beginners 55

or other instrument, they were thoroughly familiar with current musical language
and a large repertory of melodies. Today, by contrast, children usually start lessons
much earlier, at about the age of five, and normally learn on an instrument. Singing
features tangentially, if at all, for many. Accuracy in pitch, tone, and rhythm remains
essential, but it is harder to achieve when combined with the technical difficulties
of playing. In addition, children are seldom familiar with either the language or
the repertory of the “classical” style that informs basic lessons. It is remarkable that
many of these differences were noted as early as 1818 by singing master Giacomo
Gotifredo Ferrari (1763–​1842) in his comparison of music education in England
and that in Italy:

The English System of teaching Music, is to begin by instructing the pupils to play
on some instrument, when they are only five or six years old, pronouncing the
time with numerals.
In Italy they are first taught solfeggios at the age of nine or ten years, beating
time with the hand.
The latter System is the easiest, but, in some instances, the former may be more
prudent, for if children, with tender constitutions, only five or six years old, were
to practise solfeggios intensely, they might create a danger of injuring their voices
and their health.47

A typical Italian course of instruction in the rudiments can be found in a note-

book preserved in the archives of the Vittorio Emanuele II Library in Rome titled
“Elements of Canto Fermo LC 26 June 1762” (MSS musicali 55). It was presum-
ably jotted down by an unknown apprentice or choirmaster with the initials “L.
C.” It belongs to an important collection of late seventeenth-​and eighteenth-​
century liturgical plainchant associated with a Benedictine Order known as the
Vallombrosans, which is catalogued under the name “Vallombrosan Setting”
(Ambiente Vallombrosiano).
The lessons begin with basic clef signs on the four-​line staff and rules for adding
solmization syllables to scales. In order to consolidate skills in score reading, there
follows a series of practice melodies featuring regular leaps. The exercise for the
interval of the third is reproduced in example. 4.3. Each bar consists of a guide
to the interval—​basically, filling it in with a passing note so that it forms part of a
scale—​followed by the leap without the guide. A glance at its clef sign shows that

Ex. 4.3 Practice melodies for leaps of a third from Elements of canto fermo L. C. 26
June 1762 (I-​Rn, MSS musicali 55), fol. 2v
56 The Solfeggio Tradition

fa is situated on the second line from the top, which means that the melody starts
on do. It would have been sung to the syllables do-​re-​mi-​do-​mi, re-​mi-​fa-​re-​fa, and
so on. The same exercise appears in countless sources, at least as early as Samber
(1704, 23).
As soon as apprentices had gained sufficient expertise in sight-​reading syllables,
they were taught the essentials needed to participate in religious services. Preparing
them for work in church was a priority.
It was not simply a matter of getting to know the chants. There were, for instance,
eight Gregorian psalm tones (melodic formulas for the 150), each with a bewildering
assortment of variants and alternative cadences (differentiae). Knowing which ones
to use on a given day required an ability to classify chants by mode, using patterns
of syllables as mnemonic aids. The choice of psalm tone depended on the mode of
the antiphon with which it was coupled in a particular liturgy. In the course of a year
the same psalm might be sung more than fifty times, almost always with a different
antiphon.
The extract transcribed in example. 4.4 shows the first of the eight psalm tones
paired with the text most commonly encountered at Vespers, “Dixit Dominus
Domino meo,” from Psalm 109. The single breve at the beginning of the staff
indicates the final note, D-​re, of the preceding antiphon, as pointed out by the
original caption (Ultima nota dell’ Ant.). Knowing the syllable of the final was es-
sential, because it allowed choir singers to judge where to pitch the ensuing psalm
tune. In the first church tone, the interval between antiphon and psalm was re-​fa,
a minor third.48 At the end of this example, after the penultimate double bar line,
can be seen one of the formulaic endings that were appended to chants. These
were known as “evovae” after the vowels contained in the final words of the lesser
doxology: “sæculorum. Amen” (unto the ages of ages. Amen). In the first church
tone, the interval between the end of the antiphon and the beginning of the final

Ex. 4.4 The first melodic formula for intoning psalms, from Elements of canto fermo
L. C. 26 June 1762, Intonazioni de’ Salmi. Tuono Primo (I-​Rn, MSS musicali 55), fol. 13v
 Eighteenth-Century Plainchant—For Beginners 57

cadence formula was always re-​la, a perfect fifth. The psalm tone itself is notated
in breves and semibreves and partitioned by a breath mark in the form of a bar
line. In e­ xample 4.4 this notation has been rendered into modern 3/​4 time for the
reasons set out above. An accidental flat sign has been added to the B above the
word “Domino” because it is inconceivable that this would have been sung as a B
natural, encircling the melody with a tritone. Apprentices would have known the
rule for evading a tritone by adding a flat, as set out more fully in Chapter 5.
Similar lessons in the use of these psalm tones can be found toward the end of
countless eighteenth-​century guides to canto fermo. They suggest that the first
aim of music education was to put choirboys and choirgirls to work as quickly as
possible.
 5
Canto Fermo and Canto Figurato

From the start, conservatory apprentices had to learn how to read and write music.
This was essential if they were to earn their keep by participating in church serv-
ices. Each child received for this purpose a small rectangular tablet called a cartella,
off-​white in color and encased in a wooden frame. One side was devoid of all
markings; the other contained several rows of pre-​ruled lines. Owing to the prohib-
itive cost of paper before the industrial revolution, such erasable tablets were com-
monly used in conservatories.1 There were many varieties. Some were small and
portable, whereas others were huge and used as a blackboard. The normal size of
cartellas for apprentices in music was nine to twelve inches by six inches. They were
usually constructed from wood, although thick paper, leather, or stone could also
be used. The writing surface was treated with plaster to lighten its color before being
finished with wax or varnish. A simple stylus, dipped in soot or whatever happened
to be at hand to concoct a rudimentary ink, sufficed for a pen.
Johann Walther left a description of one of these erasable tablets, which he called
a palimpsestus, following a trip to Italy in 1732. The entry in Rousseau’s Dictionary
(1768) provides further details about the “cartels” manufactured in Rome and
Naples:

CARTELS. Large sheets of asses-​skin prepared for the purpose, on which are
drawn the lines of the scale, for the benefit of marking thereon every thing nec-
essary for composition, and rubbing it out at pleasure with a spunge: The other
side, which has no scale, may serve for scribbling, and is rubbed out in the same
manner, provided that the ink is not left to dry. With a cartel, a diligent composer
may be supplied for ever, and spare many quires of ruled paper; but there is this
inconvenience, that the pen passing continually on the engraved lines, easily wears
out and softens.2

The first lesson to be etched on the cartella taught how to read the six notes on a
canto fermo (plainchant) musical staff. An illustration can be seen in e­ xample 5.1,
taken from a typical handwritten set of rules from the period. In order to help
beginners find the six different notes among the lines and spaces it introduced two
keys, known as clefs, which unlocked the staff. One was called the C-​clef (looking
like a letter C) and the other the F-​clef (a C preceded by a square note), but they
both indicated the position of fa. Whichever of these two clefs appeared on the left

The Solfeggio Tradition. Nicholas Baragwanath, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197514085.001.0001
 Canto Fermo and Canto Figurato 59

Ex. 5.1 The canto fermo staff and its clefs; Rules of Music (I-​Rn, MSS Musicali 137),
fol. 25v

of the staff, and whatever line or space it occupied, it showed where to find fa, with
mi immediately beneath it and the other notes of the scale radiating outward from
it. For good measure, the anonymous author of this lesson also pinpointed the clefs
by placing grave accents on their associated syllables, dò and fà. The bar line, which
in many sources appears as a little “tick” symbol, relates not to meter but to punctu-
ation. It indicates where to pause for a breath or to end a phrase.
Early sources used a red line to illustrate the process of reading the staff. This
device was first proposed by Guido of Arezzo in a treatise called Prologus in
antiphonarium (vv. 60–​108, cited in Pesces 1999) as a way to help singers find the
fa by following the F-​clef, together with a yellow line to find the fa connected with
the C-​clef. Although the use of colors had gone out of fashion by the eighteenth
century, the medieval four-​line staff, square notes, and clefs were still in common
use for beginners’ lessons.3 They were ideally suited for learning to read melodies
quickly and easily. A choirmaster would have been able to teach a young boy or girl
to read simple chant melodies in a matter of days.
To consolidate skills in sight-​reading, apprentices would practice naming notes
in simple melodies. One of these is reproduced in ­example 5.2 from an autograph
notebook written in September 1759 by Giacomo Tritto titled Rules for Singing
Finely in Plainchant.
Tritto was taken in by the Turchini Conservatory at the age of ten or eleven in
1743 and remained there in various capacities for the rest of his life. By his late teens
he had begun a lifelong teaching career, initially as primo maestrino to Pasquale
Cafaro. On the evidence of this notebook, one of his duties for 1759 involved
instructing a class of beginners in the basics. In the remainder of this chapter,
Tritto’s rules are taken to represent elementary eighteenth-​century music lessons in
general, backed up, where necessary, with reference to other sources.

Ex. 5.2 Tritto, Rules for Singing Finely in Plainchant (1759; I-​Nc, 15.7.21), fol. 12v, in
modern transcription and original notation
60 The Solfeggio Tradition

Tritto could have drawn his rules from any number of post-​Renaissance sources.
Essentially the same teachings can be found in textbooks from Scaletta’s Musical
Scale of Utmost Necessity for Beginners (1595, in print until 1698) through Frezza’s
Ecclesiastical Cantor (1698), Fabricio’s General Rules of Canto Fermo (1708),
Samber’s Explanation of Choral Music (1710), and Tettamanzi’s Brief Method (1756)
to Luigi Sabbatini’s Theoretical Elements of Music (1789–​90). Tritto appears to
have relied for the most part on Fra Giovanni d’Avella’s Rules of Music . . . for Canto
Fermo and Figurato (1657), which, although naïve and incorrect in matters of his-
tory, could be said to represent the kind of teachings typical in church schools in
the region between Rome and Naples, then known as the Terra di Lavoro. Much
the same material can be found in Bernardo Pasquini’s condensed guide to canto
fermo, which was inserted by some later archivist into a collection of his partimenti
(1715).4 In many respects, the general contents of Tritto’s notebook would not have
seemed out of place in the fifteenth century.
Canto fermo notation was designed to capture the typical ambitus, or range, of
a chant, notated for ease of reading by a particular voice type. Melodies like that
shown in e­ xample 5.2 only really make sense in the original notation, which was
designed to fit particular chants neatly within the lines of the staff. Transcription
to modern treble clef, as shown above the original in this example, may be
helpful for readers unfamiliar with medieval notation, but it does away with the
rich variety of settings adapted to suit given melodies. The original canto fermo
encompasses the chant far more intuitively and elegantly than does the modern
five-​line staff, which, owing to the fixed position of the clefs, requires ungainly
leger lines.

The Gamut

The six notes of the scale were not fixed to a specific set of pitches. They were sung
higher or lower depending on the range of a particular voice. In order to be able
to name all the places where the scale could be sung, from the lowest bass to the
highest soprano, the next thing to jot down on the cartella was the gamut.
The gamut represented the sum of all available notes in plainchant. Notes found
within the gamut constituted “true music,” or musica recta, whereas those excluded
from it constituted “false music,” or musica ficta. The gamut made use of the seven
letters of Saint Gregory: A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. There were twenty in total, divided
into three registers: low, high, and very high. The low register extended from the
first G (the bottom line of the staff) to the first F, the high from the second G to the
second F, and the very high from the third G to E. Thus there were seven low letters,
seven high, and six very high, although many theorists extended the gamut by a few
extra notes.5
An illustration of what this lesson looked like can be seen in e­ xample 5.3. On the
left are the seven letter names associated with the low register. These were normally
 Canto Fermo and Canto Figurato 61

Ex. 5.3 The three registers of the gamut; Rules of Music (I-​Rn, MSS Musicali 137),
fol. 35v

indicated by upper-​case letters, from low G—​traditionally a Greek letter gamma—​

to the F above. The F-​clef occupies the top line of the staff to allow sufficient space
for the low notes. It is the precursor to the modern bass F-​clef. In the central bar
of ­example 5.3 are the seven lowercase letters of the high register, from g to f. For
this voice type, the fa is singled out by a middle C-​clef on the second line from the
top. The gamut comes to a close on the six very high notes, indicated by double
lowercase letters from gg to ee. The C-​clef on the lowest line is the precursor of the
modern soprano clef.
These three divisions of the gamut were taken from a more familiar vertical rep-
resentation of the grand staff, which showed every available note as a grand stair-
case or scale. Tritto’s version can be seen in ­example 5.4. The notes of the three
registers occupy the staff exactly as shown in ­example 5.3. The two clef signs used in
­example 5.3 rest near the center of a grand staff, which encompassed ten lines. The
F-​clef indicated the middle F and the C-​clef the middle C, just as they do in modern
treble and bass staves.6
Once the letter names were known, the next step was to find out how the six notes
mapped on to them. The scale could start on the letter G, which meant that each of
the three registers encompassed one hard scale: G-​ut, A-​re, B-​mi, C-​fa, D-​sol, and
E-​la. Ut could also start on the letter C, giving rise to a natural scale that crossed
from the low register to the high, and another that crossed from the high register to
the very high: C-​ut, D-​re, E-​mi, F-​fa, G-​sol, and A-​la. These five scales can be seen
above the letter names in e­ xample 5.4.
There were two more scales located within the gamut, but in order to find them
apprentices needed first to learn how to banish tritones from sacred chants.

Ex. 5.4 The gamut on the grand staff, with hard and natural scales
62 The Solfeggio Tradition

Sharps and Flats

For centuries the Church regulated the singing of the tritone, otherwise known as
the augmented fourth or diminished fifth. In plainchant and polyphonic settings
in the strict style, it was thought to possess a strange dissonant quality that was in-
compatible with devout thoughts. Santoro (1715), for instance, called it “unbear-
able” and considered it “of such harshness, that it gives rise to an unpleasant and
appalling effect which cruelly offends the ear, besides being irksome to sing.”7
In the partial gamut shown in e­ xample 5.4 the tritone occupies the three whole
steps between the notes F, G, A, and B or, in terms of syllables, fa, sol, and la from the
natural scale and mi from the hard scale. The outer syllables fa and mi defined the
offending interval and gave rise to the ancient dictum: “Mi against Fa is the Devil in
Music” (Mi contra Fa est Diabolus in Musica).
Musicians learned early on to turn it into a perfect fourth by applying accidentals.
Tritto began his version of this lesson as, shown in ­example 5.5(a), by writing out
the notes of the tritone three times, ascending, descending, and ascending again,
and marking the note B in the first and last bars with the syllable mi. Next, he
demonstrated two ways to remedy it.8
The first way was to turn the offending mi into a fa by flatting the uppermost whole
step, thereby transforming the dissonant interval into a more harmonious perfect
fourth, F-​B♭. This meant that the mi on the note B of the hard scale was not simply
flatted but transformed into a different syllable, fa on B. Example 5.5(b) thus taught
both how to lower an offending note by a half step and that there were two types of Bs
within the gamut. The first was B-​mi from the hard scale. It had its own special symbol,
a “square B” ♮,9 which Tritto added to the first bar of ­example 5.5(b). The second was
B-​fa, represented by a “soft B” ♭, which Tritto added to the second bar. This example
taught that whenever a mi came into conflict with a fa in canto fermo and threatened
to unleash a tritone, it was possible to obviate the unpleasantness by swapping the po-
tential mi for a fa. Rosa da Cairano (1788) explained this rule as follows: “To temper

Ex. 5.5 Banishing the Diabolus in Musica

(a) The tritone; Tritto (1759), fol. 13v (with a minor slip of the pen rectified)

(b) The tritone corrected with a flat

 Canto Fermo and Canto Figurato 63

Ex. 5.5 Continued

(c) The tritone corrected with a sharp

(d) Elements of Canto Fermo, 1762 (I-​Rn, MSS Musicali 55), fol. 7r

and dispel the Tritone, one must place the ♭ (if it does not run counter to the nature of
the melody) onto the syllable mi, so as to read fa instead of mi. This is called a perfect
fourth, and instead of fa sol re mi one must sing fa sol la fa.”10
In real canto fermo the two Bs were never placed next to one another. Tritto’s
­example 5.5(b) was purely for guidance. To sing B♮ as mi followed immediately by
B♭ as fa, or vice versa, would be to commit the offense of “permutation,” which was
frowned on by every authority.11 As a matter of principle, it was forbidden to change
both pitch and syllable on two adjacent notes that possessed the same letter and oc-
cupied the same line or space on the staff.
Tritto taught the second way to remedy a tritone by way of ­example 5.5(c). If an
approaching mi could not be transformed into a fa by lowering it a half step, then
its problematic fa could be converted into a feigned mi. This was achieved with the
aid of the ♯, or diesis, which was invented by Marchetto of Padua in the early 1300s.
The symbol instructed the singer to raise the note to its right by a half step, or in
other words to sing it as if it were a mi, but without altering the syllable.12 Unlike
the ♭, which belonged within the realm of musica recta, the ♯ sign was not part of the
gamut. It could not therefore alter one of its syllables.13
Tritto went on to note that the same rules applied when the tritone appeared
not as an augmented fourth but as a diminished fifth, for instance, from B to the F
above. The remedies remained the same. Either the B had to be flatted or the F had
to be sharped in order to transform the diminished fifth into a perfect fifth. The
choice of accidental was dependent on contextual factors that resisted reduction to
simple rules, as explained in a plainchant manual of 1828 for use in church schools
in Segovia:

It is not easy to give a fixed rule on this, because the nature of melody obliges
the sign of alteration to sharp F in one place and to flat B in another, in order to
avoid the tritone. Some authors say that the tritone in third and fourth [Phrygian]
modes [on E] should always be avoided, by sharping F so as not to despoil its own
diapente [the perfect fifth from E to B], rather than flatting B as in other modes.
64 The Solfeggio Tradition

But this rule is not founded on any reason, because experience is needed to dem-
onstrate through examples the true laws of the nature of melody.14

In some chants the tritone arose so frequently that every B-​mi had to be changed
into a B-​fa. In order to achieve this without having to waste ink on writing the fa
symbol before each affected note, a flat was added to the left end of the staff. Just as
the C-​clef indicated the position of C as fa and the F-​clef the position of F as fa, so too
did the addition of a B♭ key to one or the other clef indicate the position of B as fa. As
can be seen in the first bar of ­example 5.5(d), the ♭ key usually occupied the top space
of the staff above an F-​clef on the second line from the bottom or below a C-​clef on
the top line. An analogous F♯ key would also have saved much ink, but it was for-
bidden in canto fermo and thus lacked the status to command the staff in chants for
Divine Service. Both clefs did, of course, feature as the first key signatures in profane
music (canto figurato), one denoting the key of F major and the other G major.
One last lesson connected to the practice of singing mi as fa or fa as mi to miti-
gate a tritone concerned its potential for setting off a chain reaction. The author of
­example 5.5(d), for instance, added a second bar to show that correcting one tritone
by flatting B could give rise to another, occurring between B♭ and E. In this guise,
the treatment remained the same. Either the E-​mi had to be flatted to become an
E-​fa (E♭) or the B-​fa had to be sharped to become a B-​mi (B♮).15 Although E-​fa did
not exist within the gamut, it was tolerated in canto fermo because of its usefulness
for quelling the tritone between B♭ and E. Out of respect for the place of the flat
within musica recta, a flatted E was not ignored in terms of the syllables, as sharped
notes were. It was usually sung as fa, giving rise to a “false” hexachord starting on
B♭. Yet flatting E could itself give rise to another tritone, that between E♭ and A, and
flatting A could in turn create yet another tritone between A♭ and D, and so on.
This peculiarity of the canto fermo system led inevitably to the notion of a circle
of modulations by fifth, which was remarked on by Renaissance theorists but only
fully integrated into practice over the course of the seventeenth century, as religious
dogmatism waned and the sharp became ever more acceptable as a transposed
equivalent of B♮. (Until 1600, it should be noted, sharp and natural signs were largely
interchangeable.) Cerone (1613) summarized the process as follows: “All the acci-
dental formations [i.e., scales that lie outside the gamut] are caused by saying fa in
place of mi, by the force of the ♭ symbol; or, by saying mi [in place of fa], by the force
of that other ♯ symbol, which is of the square B.”16
Cerone’s dictum includes both flatward and sharpward modulations around the
circle of fifths. If an F-​fa, for instance, sharped to F♯ to sound like a mi, came into
contact with the note C from the gamut, it would give rise to yet another tritone.
And if this C-​fa were sharped to remedy it, a clash between C♯ and G would be
generated, and so on. In canto fermo, however, accidental sharps did not alter the
syllable, unlike accidental flats, which changed a mi into a fa.
Although accidental sharps and flats were seldom notated in eighteenth-​century
canto fermo, other than for the benefit of beginners, they were commonly used. The
 Canto Fermo and Canto Figurato 65

practice of applying unnotated accidentals in performance, including musica ficta,

was alive and well in churches,17 as we shall see in e­ xample 5.10 below. Tritto (1759)
did not add the flat symbol to an essential B♭ explicitly marked as fa in his lesson
notes (fol. 9v), presumably because it would have been obvious to any musician of
the time. Surviving guides confirm that sharped leading notes (subsemitones) were
regularly employed at cadences “for the sake of beauty,” in the Renaissance manner.
This rule is clearly illustrated in Buttstett (c. 1716), Greco (c. 1720), and Tettamanzi
(1756).18 Tritto’s lesson notes (fol. 9v) include a C♯ clearly marked as fa, to be sung
half a step higher but to the syllable of its parent C♮. Other notes were altered “for the
sake of necessity,” for instance, to avoid ugly clashes between mi and fa.19
The disdain shown to the sharp in canto fermo explains why in Galant solfeggio
some maestros—​most notably, Saverio Valente20—​stuck to the old plainchant rules
and ignored it in terms of solmization, while others regarded it as an instruction to
change scale, i.e., to modulate as if it were a new mi equivalent in authority to a “hard
B.” The Sienese maestro Fausto Fritelli complained about the confusion in 1744: “In
Naples, especially, there are many maestros who all teach differently to each other.
There are some who never alter the syllable whatever sharp they encounter, but only
alter the voice.”21 Others pointed out that ignoring sharps undermined the whole
premise of the Guidonian system, since it broke the essential connection between
the semitone and the syllables mi-​fa.22
Sharps and flats were thus applied in a variety of ways to the simple scales in
canto fermo. They were essential for correcting dissonant intervals, desirable for
enhancing cadences, and useful for rendering tunes more fitting for contemporary
taste. Knowing how and when to apply accidentals allowed apprentices to fashion
a wide range of sophisticated melodies from only six syllables plus the false fa.
Modern manuals cloud this historical reality by insisting that all sharps are foreign
to plainchant.

The Guidonian Hand

Having learned how to deal with tritones in canto fermo, apprentices were ready
to complete the gamut on their cartellas. They already knew that the six notes
could start on G to form a hard scale and on C to form a natural scale. Now that
they recognized the rounded B-​fa, they knew also that there was one other scale
starting on F. All seven scales of the gamut can be seen in Tritto’s illustration in
­example 5.6(a), which depicts them on the ten-​line grand staff as a sweeping stair-
case of notes.
It may look bewildering to the uninitiated, but in practice singers only ever
encountered the two or three scales that occupied their particular voice range.
A boy soprano would only have needed to read the hard, soft, and natural scales in
the high and very high registers. The gamut as a whole was used for naming notes,
especially, in canto fermo, as an aid to identifying the modes of plainchants. Its
66 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 5.6(a) The complete gamut, with hard, soft, and natural scales; Tritto (1759), fol. 4r
(corrected)

Ex. 5.6(b) The complete gamut in modern notation

letters and syllables combined to provide each note with a fixed name, as will be
explained in Chapter 6.
To come to the aid of readers, e­ xample 5.6(b) sets out the gamut in modern nota-
tion. The twenty names can be read in vertical alignment with their corresponding
 Canto Fermo and Canto Figurato 67

notes. The seven deduced scales are assigned their own staves, with their type indi-
cated on the left. These three types were known as the “properties” of melody, in the
Aristotelian sense that their characteristic feature—​i.e., whether they possessed a
B♮, a B♭, or no B at all—​was essential to their identity. A melody using B♮ thus had the
property of “hardness” whereas one using B♭ had the property of “softness.”
The seven names associated with the high register were especially important be-
cause they were used to identify not only their own specific note but also to refer to
that pitch class in general. In the eighteenth century, they were also taken to refer
to tonalities based on these notes. Thus A-​lamire did not refer so much to an indi-
vidual pitch as to the idea of a major scale on A.23 The choice of the high rather than
the low register to determine the names of scales and keys testifies not only to the
primacy of the Guidonian system for teaching the rudiments of music but also to a
continuing acceptance of their melodic origins.
In order to memorize the names of the twenty notes, apprentices were taught
to read the Guidonian Hand. We shall do the same. Hold out your left hand and
turn it so that the palm is facing upward. Observe that the thumb has two visible
joints, and the fingers have three. All five digits possess in addition a fingerprint.
The notes fall on the joints and the fingerprints, in a spiral pattern. Place the index
finger of your right hand on the fingerprint of your left thumb. That is number 1,
G-​ut or Gamma-​ut, from which the system takes its name. Now count the joints
below with your index fingers: 2, A-​re, and 3, B-​mi. From the base of your thumb,
move your finger from left to right to trace an arc across the lowest joints of your
fingers. These are 4, C-​faut; 5, D-​solre; 6, E-​lami; and 7, F-​faut. That completes the
low register, covering only the thumb and the lowest joints. Your finger should now
be resting on the lowest joint of your little finger. Move it upward through its joints
until you reach its fingerprint, counting as you go: 8, G-​solreut; 9, A-​lamirè; and 10,
B-​fabemì. Next, count the remaining fingerprints from right to left and finish on
the highest joint of the index finger: 11, C-​solfaut; 12, D-​lasolrè; 13, E-​lamì; and 14,
F-​faut. The notes of the high register form a counterclockwise arc from the base of
the little finger across the top of the hand. This mirrors the clockwise arc of the low
register, from the thumb to the little finger, and makes it easy to see where the low
and high registers sit on the hand. Finally, the very high register occupies the cen-
tral joints of the fingers. With your right index finger on the highest joint of the
left index finger, count one joint down: 15, G-​solreut. Now count two joints to the
right: 16, A-​lamirè, and 17, B-​fabemi. The joint above is 18, C-​solfa, and the joint to
its left is 19, D-​lasol. Now tap the top of your middle finger, on the fingernail. That
is 20, E-​la.
In theory, it was not possible to descend below the Greek gamma (Γ) on the
lowest line of the bass clef or to ascend above the highest note, E. In practice, how-
ever, melodies commonly ventured extra manum, “beyond the hand.” Ugolino’s
early fifteenth-​century account of the gamut extended it all the way down to
C. Renaissance theorists frequently added extra notes to the hand, usually resorting
to the available spaces below the thumb and above the middle finger.
68 The Solfeggio Tradition

Preparing for Work

Having acquired fluency in reading syllables, naming notes, and applying the
rules for sharps and flats, apprentices were ready to learn a few essential liturgical
conventions. Although they were not yet able to sing melodies with more than six
notes by combining two different scales on a staff and “mutating” between them
(a skill taught below), they could already cope with reasonably sophisticated
plainchants. The sooner they began to familiarize themselves with the formulas for
pairing them with intonations, terminations, and other chants, the better. These
formulas were taught as early as possible, presumably to minimize the time it took
before children could be set to work. As discussed in preceding chapters, the main
purpose of basic musical training in the eighteenth century was to prepare children
for singing in church and chapel.
The first and most crucial skill was to identify the mode of a plainchant. Knowing
the mode was essential for working in church. Antiphons were paired with psalms
or canticles according to mode, and there were many alternative endings, called
differentiae. Relative pitch levels were determined by the interval between the end
of one chant and the beginning of the next, and each mode stipulated its own pecu-
liar intervals.
The simplest method for identifying the mode, according to Tritto (fols. 2r–​3r)
and other eighteenth-​century masters, involved naming the letter of its closing
note, or final. If a chant ended on a final D, then its mode was the first type (Dorian/​
Hypodorian), called Protus after the ancient Greek word for “first.” If it ended on
E, then its mode was the second type, or Deuterus (Phrygian/​Hypophrygian). If
it ended on F, then the mode was the third type, or Tritus (Lydian/​Hypolydian),
and if it ended on G, it was of the fourth type, or Tetrardus (Mixolydian/​
Hypomixolydian).24
The letters of the gamut were used in canto fermo only for naming notes, never
for singing. They came into their own at a later stage of training, during instru-
mental lessons. Keyboard playing, for instance, depended on them for dealing with
the twenty-​four major and minor scales.
In canto fermo, by contrast, once the final of the mode had been established, the
letter names became superfluous. Because the four finals of the church modes—​D,
E, F, and G—​corresponded to the syllables re, mi, fa, and sol (from the natural scale
on C), it was possible to determine intervallic relationships without further refer-
ence to the letters. Tritto’s rudiments relied almost entirely on the six syllables of the
simple scale.
This held true even when learning the structure, or “formation,” of the different
modes. Tritto never used letter names when discussing their individual characteris-
tics. He observed traditional teachings, unchanged for centuries. He acknowledged
eight modes in total, ignoring the four new ones with finals on A and C proposed
by Heinrich Glarean in his Dodecachordon (1547). Each was conceived as a dia-
pason, or octave, divided into two component parts: the diapente, or the fifth, and
 Canto Fermo and Canto Figurato 69

the diatesseron, or the fourth. The diapente spanned the notes between the final and
the dominant above, and the diatesseron spanned the notes between the dominant
and the final above. In a Protus mode starting on D (i.e., Dorian), for example, the
diapente encompassed the notes D-​E-​F-​G-​A and the diatesseron the notes A-​B-​C-​
D. This formation defined the mode. When the fourth was situated in the lower half
of the octave, the mode was considered to be plagal, with its final on the fourth note
from the bottom. When the fourth was situated in the upper half of the octave, the
mode was considered authentic, with its final on the lowest note. There were, there-
fore, two types of mode for each of the four finals, making eight modes in all. They
were numbered from one to eight, the odd numbers being authentic and the even
numbers plagal. Modes I and II shared a final on D, III and IV a final on E, V and VI
a final on F, and VII and VIII a final on G.
All of this was explained by Tritto without recourse to any letters other than the
four finals. The modes were conceived in terms of the syllables that characterized
their component fourths and fifths. Tritto’s illustration of the four species of
diatesseron, for instance, reproduced in ­example 5.7, classifies them according to
their place within the six notes of the simple scale. Modes I and II, ending on D, in-
corporate the first species of diatesseron, re-​mi-​fa-​sol, in both authentic and plagal
orderings. Modes III and IV, ending on E, contain the second species, mi-​fa-​sol-​
la, and modes V and VI, ending on F, can be recognized by their inclusion of the
third species of diatesseron, do-​re-​mi-​fa. Modes VII and VIII, ending on G, have the
fourth species, similar to the first. The diapente was likewise categorized into four
species, starting on D, E, F, and G and distinguished by syllables.
Modes were thus conceived as two sets of syllables spanning an octave. They
were typically found in this formation at the start of duo solfeggi (as will be seen in

Ex. 5.7 The four species of diatesseron; Tritto (1759), fol. 8r, in original notation and
modern transcription
70 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 5.8 Evovae formulas added to antiphons in Modes I and II; Tritto (1759), fol. 2r, in
original notation and modern transcription

e­ xample 11.4). The authentic Dorian mode from D to D, for instance, was under-
stood to comprise a perfect diapente corresponding to the syllables re-​mi-​fa-​sol-​la
from the natural scale on C, beneath a diatesseron made up of the syllables re-​mi-​
fa-​sol from the hard scale on G. Typical cadence points fell on the first syllable of the
diapente, re, representing the final of the mode, on the third syllable or “mediant,”
fa, and on the fifth syllable or “dominant,” la/​re.25
Knowing the syllable of the final allowed choristers to judge where to pitch the
formulaic endings (evovae) that were appended to antiphons. Example 5.8 shows
Tritto’s guidance for singing these closing formulas at the end of antiphons in modes
I/​II. The first bar indicates the final, re, of the antiphon; the second bar highlights
the first syllable, la, of the evovae. In this way, apprentices learned that in mode I the
interval between the antiphon and its termination formula was re-​la, or a perfect
fifth. For mode II, the interval was re-​fa, or a minor third. For mode III it was the
minor sixth mi/​fa, for mode IV the fourth mi-​la, and so on. For those who had to
perform a cappella in a church choir, memorizing these intervals would have been
crucial.
Although the modes endured in theory as a means for classifying chants, in re-
ality they were subject to so many accidentals that their defining intervallic profiles
became meaningless. They were indistinguishable from major or minor keys. In
the Phrygian mode with a final on E-​mi, for instance, the fa on F was always sung as
an accidental fa♯, so as to soften the tritone inherent between F-​fa and B-​mi. Tritto
characterized this as another instance of a “false fa,” in addition to the one above
la.26 Flatting the B was not recommended in the Phrygian mode because doing so
would bring it into conflict with the final, E-​mi.27

Ex. 5.9 A practice chant in mode I; Rules of Music (I-​Rn, MSS Musicali 137), fol. 28v,
with original annotations translated from the Italian
 Canto Fermo and Canto Figurato 71

In order to round off these preliminary lessons before moving on to mutation,

­example 5.9 shows a typical practice plainchant that was used to prepare apprentices
for working in church. It is in mode I, with a final on D, and is made up of three sep-
arate phrases, delineated by breath marks in the form of bar lines. The first phrase
is framed by the diapente, re-​la, and ends with an intermediate cadence on F, the
mediant of the mode, a third above the final. The second phrase sharps the leading
tone and cadences on the dominant, A, a fifth above the final. The third phrase also
features a sharped leading tone, which comes to rest on the final. By singing simple
chants like this with accidentals and punctuation, eighteenth-​century musicians
cultivated an instinct for correctness and taste in the most pure form of melody.

Mutation

The technique of mutating from one scale to another is much easier to grasp in
plainchant than it is in Galant melody. That explains why apprentices were first
introduced to it through lessons in canto fermo. The simple patterns they learned
to conceptualize in chants could be transferred wholesale onto more complicated
scores. Because the four-​line staff neatly encompasses the span of an octave, there is
usually only one mutation to deal with in any given chant. And it is possible to learn
the places where this mutation most often falls.
Example 5.10 sets out the three most common mutations for chants notated on
an F-​clef staff as taught by Tritto. From their ranges or ambitus, it is possible to see
at a glance that each scale outlines an octave. These “compound scales” (consisting
of two overlapping hexachords) all encompass eight notes, from the outermost

Ex. 5.10 Mutations on an F-​clef, with original syllables, from Tritto (1759), fols. 5r–​5v

(a)

(b)

(c)
72 The Solfeggio Tradition

space of the staff to the furthest line, and present the notes of hard and natural scales
(known as hard melody) or soft and natural scales (known as soft melody) in ei-
ther authentic or plagal formation. The first example (a) is the authentic compound
scale starting on C. It demonstrates the standard solmization for any major scale,
whether notated in plainchant or figured melody. It is, in fact, Tartini’s “usual Italian
solfeggio.” Observe that both mutations occur on the third note from the top. The
second example (b) presents the standard solmization for a compound scale in
plagal formation. The descending mutation to la occurs on the third note from the
top, just as it does in the authentic scale, but the ascending re falls one note lower.
The third and final example (c) adds a flat key signature to the F-​clef, indicating
that its notes are those of soft melody, merging the scales on C and F. Nonetheless,
the layout remains identical to that of the previous melody. Example 5.10(c) can
be sung to precisely the same syllables as e­ xample 5.10(b), and its mutations fall in
the same places. On the next few pages of the manuscript (fols. 6r–​7r) Tritto noted
a further series of examples showing different scales on the C-​clef and with a flat
key signature, all solmized to the same patterns of syllables. Reading the mutations
in canto fermo thus called for nothing more demanding than memorizing two
standard solmizations. The first technique for mutating in canto fermo ensured that
choristers had no need to engage in complex mental calculations as long as they
could identify the standard authentic and plagal compound scales on the staff.
In some chants it was not so easy to picture compound scales on the page, for
instance, when the ambitus outlined the interval of a seventh or a ninth. To deal
with such cases there was a second technique, which relied on the simplest lesson
of canto fermo (as illustrated in ­example 5.1): the ability to locate fa by tracking the
line or space that corresponded to a fa-​clef. In hard melody, which combined the
hard and natural scales, fa always fell on the letters C and F, in alignment with the
clefs. In this sense, clef and fa were one and the same. Hence the rule: “Wherever
you find the letters C and F, sing fa.”28 Once the fa syllables were found, any melody
could be solmized by memorizing the four patterns illustrated in e­ xample 5.11.
Because the interval between each fa could only be a fourth or a fifth (from C to F

Ex. 5.11 Rules of Music (I-​Rn, MSS Musicali 137), fol. 25v, with original syllables

(a) Mutation at the fourth

(b) Mutation at the fifth

 Canto Fermo and Canto Figurato 73

and F to C in hard melody, or F to B♭ and B♭ to F in soft melody), apprentices only

had to know two ascending patterns and two descending patterns. The mutation at
the fourth, set out in ­example 5.11(a), was always sung fà/​re-​mi-​fà ascending and fà\
la-​sol-​fà descending. (It was customary to add a grave accent to fà when alluding
to its equivalence with the clefs, to distinguish it from the surrounding notes.) The
mutation at the fifth was always sung fà-​sol/​re-​mi-​fà ascending and fà-​mi\la-​sol-​fà
descending. This led to the common rule: “The mutation begins on fà and finishes
on fà. The mutation at the fourth has four notes and the mutation at the fifth has five
notes. This is the most essential rule for solmizing and for singing well.”29

The Devil in the Detail

To conclude these basic lessons in canto fermo, ­example 5.12 reproduces an ex-
ercise that encapsulates the rules and skills learned so far. The lack of a flat in the
key signature indicates that it is in hard melody, and the position of the F-​clef
announces that it should be sung to exactly the same syllables as Tritto’s exemplar in
­example 5.10(a), in other words, to the “usual Italian solfeggio” with a lower hexa-
chord on C and an upper hexachord on G. This means that the first note can only be
solmized as fa from the natural scale on C. There is no other possibility.
In order to prevent it from forming the “devil’s interval” with B, the third note
of the melody is flatted. But this B♭ cannot be shrugged off as a passing fa above la.
The note below it is not a la. It does not lead downward. It clearly leads the melody
upward, beyond the notes of the natural scale. This means that the B-​fa commands
the solfeggist to switch from hard to soft melody. The note that follows it, therefore,
must be A-​mi from the soft scale. For this reason the first four notes of this chant are
fa and sol from the natural scale on C followed by fa and mi from the soft scale on F.
The ensuing B-​mi reverses the process, restoring the underlying system to
hard melody, before B-​fa once again usurps it. The first eight notes of the chant
thus outline a conspicuous pattern of semitones: fa-​sol/​fa-​mi/​mi-​fa\mi-​fa. These
modulatory zig-​zags were obviously intended to test the student’s ability to switch
between hard and soft melody when faced with a change from B-​mi to B-​fa and
vice versa. So common was this pedagogical device that it found its way into Galant
music, where its effect of hinting in one tonal direction only to turn toward another
appears to have appealed to listeners’ sense of humor.30

Ex. 5.12 Elements of Canto Fermo, 1762 (I-​Rn, MSS Musicali 55), fol. 12r, with
syllables and letter names added by the author
74 The Solfeggio Tradition

Singing fa-​mi on B♭-​A followed by mi-​fa on B♮-​C is not the same as a mutation
between two simple scales conjoined to form a compound scale. It is a change of
scale system, a switch from one type of melody to another. It is directly analogous to
what is commonly called a modulation in eighteenth-​century music. In conceptual
terms, it involved a leap of a perfect fifth from one compound scale to another. For
modern musicians, it might help to think of the process as alternating between the
notes of C major and F major. When a B♭ appeared in a melody based on natural and
hard scales, for instance, to avoid a tritone, the singer would shift the syllables down
a fifth to fall on the soft and natural scales. This temporary excursion to soft melody
lasted until the appearance of a B♮ signaled a return to hard melody. The episode
(or modulation) could be as brief as two notes or it could endure for the remainder
of the chant. Similarly, the appearance of a B♮ in soft melody instructed the singer
to shift the underlying compound scale up a fifth. There were no firm rules for
changing scales on a particular note. The switch had to be made wherever the new
scale was deemed to begin, and it continued until the return of the original scale.
The historical connection between the function of an accidental B♭ in plain-
chant and a flatward modulation around the circle of fifths is borne out in one of
the manuscripts used to illustrate this chapter. One of its Galant solfeggi modulates
from B♭ major to E♭ major by flatting the seventh of the tonic scale from A to A♭ (i.e.,
A-​mi to A-​fa). The first two accidentals are merely fas above la, but the third effects
a modulation, as confirmed by a handwritten comment: “This solfeggio has been
copied out to show how a third accidental ♭ changes the key.”31
Returning to ­example 5.12, the remainder of the melody after the last B♭ is more
straightforward. It keeps to the notes of the natural scale on C. But it does incor-
porate one further lesson. Whenever a singer encountered a lower neighboring-​
note motion that spanned a whole tone, for instance G-​F-​G, the lower note was to
be sung sharp “for the sake of beauty” without altering its syllable. Example 5.12
graphically demonstrates this rule by juxtaposing sol-​fa♯ with sol-​fa♮. In this way
the chant cleverly encapsulates the rules for dealing with flats and sharps in
canto fermo.

Canto Figurato

In order to grasp the full significance of Tritto’s lessons in medieval plainchant for
the class of 1759, it is necessary to see how the same system was later adapted to pro-
duce a more practical and versatile type of notation, known since the Renaissance
as figured melody, or canto figurato. This differed from canto fermo in its use of
seven fixed clefs on a five-​line staff, its extra symbols for rhythm and performance,
and its ability to represent scale transpositions beyond a single flat. Bar a few minor
changes, it is still in use today. Modern music notation is, in essence, eighteenth-​
century canto figurato.
 Canto Fermo and Canto Figurato 75

Its erroneous association with “florid song” can be traced to Pierfrancesco Tosi’s
preoccupation with this style of music to the exclusion of all others, which, although
perhaps understandable for a retired castrato, had the unfortunate consequence of
persuading a certain Mr. Galliard to mistranslate the term throughout the English
edition of Tosi’s Observations on the Florid Song (1743).
The pairing of fermo and figurato was central to music in Catholic regions
throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It arose originally as a result
of the development of rhythmic notation in the Middle Ages and the subsequent
distinction made between plain music (musica plana, i.e., plainchant) and meas-
ured music (musica mensurata). Some Baroque writers continued to use the con-
temporary Italian terms musica piana and musica mesurata as synonyms for fermo
and figurato.32 German-​speaking authors generally substituted the Latin terms
Musica Choralis and Musica Figuralis.33 As countless sources made clear, figurato
was distinguished from fermo primarily by its use of additional figure (figures), or
notational symbols such as bar lines, pauses, ties, ornaments, time signatures, and
rhythmic note values.
Numerous eighteenth-​century sources set out more or less the same list of basic
notational figures to teach beginners how to read canto figurato.34 Because readers
of this book are assumed to know these already, there is no need to dwell upon
them at length. The brief guide appended to Bertalotti’s Solfeggi for Soprano and
Alto (1764) will serve as a representative example.
It begins by spelling out the seven letters from A to G, the six syllables from do to
la, and the seven note names from “A. la, mi, re” to “G. sol, re, ut.” Then it provides
illustrations of the following:

• The seven clefs of canto figurato: bass, baritone, tenor, contralto, mezzo-​
soprano, soprano, and violin
• The eight “ancient” rhythmic figures plus two modern ones, together with
their corresponding rest symbols: the maxima (8), the long (4), the breve
(2), the semibreve (1), the minim (1/​2), the crotchet (1/​4), the quaver (1/​8),
the semiquaver (1/​16), the fusea (or biscroma) (1/​32), and the semifusea (or
funseca) (1/​64)
• The six time signatures, divided into various species:
1. Minor tempo (common time or 4/​4, called “cut” (tagliato) if alla breve)
2. Duple (2/​4)
3. Major triple (3/​1), minor triple (3/​2), triple of quarter notes (3/​4), and
triple of eighth notes (3/​8)
4. Sextuplet of quarter notes (6/​4) and sextuplet of eighth notes (6/​8)
5. Nonuplet (9/​8)
6. Dodecuplet (12/​8)
• The eight (actually nine) “accidentals,” meaning occasional symbols for di-
verse purposes: (1) the flat, (2) the sharp, (3) the natural, (4) the bar line, (5) the
cautionary sign, which shows where the first note on the next system will fall,
76 The Solfeggio Tradition

(6) the slur, (7) the repeat sign, (8) the corona, which indicates an ending to be
taken “as you please,” that is, with a cadenza, although it looks like a modern
hold sign, and (9) the dot, which increases the value of a note by one half

The tendency to conserve ancient teachings in Italy led to a great deal of confu-
sion about rhythmic terminology. Renaissance mensuration continued to appear
in treatises as a necessary precursor to more up-​to-​date rhythmic systems. The
bar, or principal beat (battuta), was still described in terms of an even or uneven
up-​and-​down motion of the hand coinciding with the pulse of a normal human
heartbeat.35 The Neapolitan friar Girolamo Ruffa used the adjectives “major” and
“minor” as synonyms for “perfect” (triple) and “imperfect” (duple) prolation,
while also describing the process of coloration, or the halving or rhythmic values
from white to black notes, in terms of a transition from the “perfect” tactus at the
breve to the “imperfect” tactus at the semibreve.36 It must have proved an ideal for-
mula for misunderstanding. What he called the “minor perfect Proportion” signi-
fied the equivalent of modern 2/​1, rather than some triple division.37 Many Italian
musicians used similar terms in utterly contradictory ways. In Sabbatini’s sum-
mary of the rudiments, for instance, the symbol C for common time was described
as “Minor tempo, commonly called Ordinary and Perfect. . . . It is called Minor
because it is the only tempo to consist of one simple note-​value within its bar;
Ordinary, because it is used in melodies more frequently than the other tempos;
and Perfect because it has equal halves.”38 Like Bertalotti, he considered the symbol
C intersected by a vertical line to be a species of the same duple “minor tempo,”
known as “cut” or a Cappella.
Another early eighteenth-​century rhythmic practice commonly encountered in
solfeggio manuscripts involved leaving out some of the bar lines, so that a piece
with a 3/​4 time signature might be partly or fully notated as if in 6/​4. Porpora fre-
quently made use of this technique in his solfeggi and operas.39
To assume that plainchant notation was restricted to church music whereas fig-
ured music developed primarily to deal with secular genres such as sonatas and
concertos is an oversimplification. Canto figurato could apply to any style of music,
from an a cappella mass setting by Palestrina to a bravura aria by Farinelli. Nor is
it justified to presume a rigid division between a strict old-​fashioned contrapuntal
style for the church and a free modern style for the chamber and the theater.40 As
Barnett (2008) convincingly demonstrates in his study of music in late seventeenth-​
century Bologna, both fermo and figurato systems were intended for use mainly
in church. In reality, there was little discernible difference between Brossard’s (c.
1708) categories of church sonata and chamber sonata (da chiesa and da camera).41
Some of the more frivolous dance types were, however, frowned on for litur-
gical use. According to Scorpione, who was closely associated with the Turchini
Conservatory in Naples, canto figurato was the normal system for every type of
music save traditional plainchant. He defined it as “that which, by means of figures
of different kinds and values, progresses through either faster or slower movements
 Canto Fermo and Canto Figurato 77

harmoniously through diatonic and chromatic intervals, and which is used in

Churches, Theaters, and in every place.”42 Scorpione listed the “figures” of conven-
tional notation under the heading of musica pratica, for everyday use.43
It is difficult to determine exactly when and where the five-​line staff of canto
figurato began to replace the archaic four-​line staff of canto fermo for rudimen-
tary lessons. Evidence from cartellas and blackboards vanished long ago. Whereas
Tritto continued to use a four-​line staff, a manuscript of basic solmization lessons
attributed to Leo (I-​Nc, 34.4.13), who flourished a generation earlier, made use of
a five-​line staff, albeit with hybrid plainchant clefs, which suggests that he assumed
that his pupils possessed prior knowledge of canto fermo. When Carlo Cotumacci
took up the position of second-​class master at the Onofrio Conservatory in 1755,
he set out his Principles and Solfeggi using a five-​line staff. But he was careful to
highlight the fa-​clefs of canto fermo within this conventional notation, which, for
reasons explained below, hints that he too expected his charges to have been fa-
miliar with plainchant beforehand. The same could be said for Angelo Bertalotti’s
textbook of elements (1698/​1764) for the church schools of Bologna. Although it
taught the basics in modern notation, it clearly assumed an understanding of canto
fermo. An anonymous collection of basic rules dating from the middle of the eight-
eenth century (I-​Rn, MSS Musicali 137) separates “rules of canto fermo” from
“rules of sung solfeggio,” again suggesting that pupils mastered plainchant notation
before progressing to figured song.
The picture is obscured by the fact that the initial lessons of canto figurato
duplicated many of those of canto fermo, differing only in terms of notation. An
anonymous booklet of instructions for church singers dating from the mid-​
eighteenth century (I-​Fn, Magl. XIX, 43), for instance, sets out the medieval rules
for hard and soft scales in modern notation, much as they appear in earlier sources
such as Cerone (1609), yet it is impossible to know whether this was designed for
those already familiar with plainchant as an aid for learning to read the five-​line
staff or whether it was an introduction to score reading.
In the absence of conclusive evidence either way, it is, of course, possible that
some eighteenth-​century institutions, especially large music chapels with substan-
tial ensembles, dispensed with traditional plainchant notation and began lessons
with a five-​line staff. Perhaps the rules of canto fermo were reserved for trainee
clergy, for whom they remained indispensable. Or perhaps they were taught to
apprentices alongside, or after, lessons in modern sung solfeggio.
This seems unlikely. For one thing, it is reasonable to presume that appren-
tice musicians in church schools were taught canto fermo for as long as they were
needed to sing it in church services. For another, the contemporary system of chro-
matic solfeggio makes little sense without a grounding in canto fermo. Its rules
for solmizing sharps and flats, for instance, follow directly from those outlined
above. Canto figurato was a variant of canto fermo, both historically and ped-
agogically. The essential connection between the two was spelled out in 1770 by
Gaetano Latilla, choirmaster at the Pietà orphanage in Venice, in an outline of the
78 The Solfeggio Tradition

two-​hundred-​year history of the institution as recounted to visiting tourist Charles

Burney, who recalled that “at first the girls were only taught psalmody and canto
fermo (as our parish girls are) [and] that in the process of time they learnt to sing in
parts, and at length joined instruments to the voices.”44
The available evidence indicates that knowledge of canto fermo was generally
considered a prerequisite for lessons in singing up-​to-​date melodies and that this
way of teaching the rudiments began to decline toward the end of the eighteenth
century as a result of the waning of the church music industry and its affiliated
schools. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church continued to promote the old canto
fermo rules well into the nineteenth century.45
Plainchant notation did not merely coexist with what is presumed to have been
its successor. It was its foundation. When beginners were first introduced to figured
notation, their teaching materials helped them navigate the new system by pointing
out the location of old-​fashioned moveable fa-​clefs on fixed modern staves. How
was this done?

Reading Any Clef and Key Signature with Ease

Apprentices trained in canto fermo were able to read any staff effortlessly, regardless
of its clef or key signature, by reducing it to one of four layouts. Because solmization
syllables were transposable, there were only four established ways to notate an oc-
tave scale on a staff: It could start with fa on either a space or a line and could prog-
ress to the two other fas above by either the fifth and the fourth or the fourth and the
fifth. For singers, the letter names of the notes were completely irrelevant because
the syllables remained the same in every major and minor key.
For this reason, canto fermo proved an ideal tool for mastering sight-​reading
and solmization. The horizontal lines on the page were conceptualized not as fixed
guides linked to specific pitches, as they are in the modern system of treble, bass,
and other named clefs, but rather as snapshots of parts of the gamut, or grand staff,
which (in theory) contained every available note. Its ten adjacent lines are shown in
­example 5.13. It may help readers to visualize the grand staff as a compressed ver-
sion of the modern bass and treble staves: The lowest line indicates G in bass clef,
the fa-​clef on F on the fourth line above corresponds to the modern bass clef, and
the C-​clef above that indicates middle C.

Ex. 5.13 Fa syllables on the grand staff. Read from lowest to highest, they give rise to
the four patterns used for naming notes in both canto fermo and canto figurato
 Canto Fermo and Canto Figurato 79

In the eighteenth century, these ten lines were read by dividing them up into
three-​or four-​line segments denoting the intervals of a fourth or a fifth that lay
between one fa syllable and another. The fa syllables themselves were indicated by
C-​clefs and F-​clefs. When read from lowest to highest, the intervals from one fa to
another delineate four characteristic patterns, which were used for naming notes in
canto fermo. They are unfolded horizontally in e­ xample 5.13.
This notational oddity meant that apprentices only had to learn four patterns of
notes in order to be able to read any staff.46 Whatever the key or clef, scale degrees
1-​2-​3-​4 of a major scale were always fa/​re-​mi-​fa and occupied three lines, as either
a line leading to a space or a space leading to a line, whereas scale degrees 4-​5-​6-​7-​8
were always fa-​sol/​re-​mi-​fa and occupied four lines, as either a line leading to a line
or a space leading to a space.47 Unless instruments were involved, there was no need
to pinpoint the actual pitch with a letter name. Musicians trained in canto fermo
thus conceived notation in a way that is difficult for us to imagine. They could adapt
instantaneously to any clef in any key because each one contained exactly the same
three-​and four-​line patterns encircled by fa syllables. In modern music theory and
solfeggio, by contrast, each clef has to be painstakingly learned anew.
To illustrate this point, ­example 5.14(a) reproduces typical “relationships of the
violin clef ” as set out in an anonymous mid-​eighteenth-​century primer.48 The ini-
tiate would learn to read the treble clef at the left of the staff not as a violinist would,
by learning the position of G indicated by the G-​clef, but as a singer, by locating
the position of the three fas that marked out an octave scale. Here, the lowest fa sits
within the first space on the staff, but it could just as well sit on the first line. The
intervals of fourth and fifth could also switch places, giving rise to four potential
patterns in all. Each coincided with numerous other arrangements of clefs and key
signatures, meaning that they could all be read in the same way. In ­example 5.14(a),
for instance, the fas in the treble clef on the left occupy identical places in the six
alternative clefs and keys presented to the right. Take, for instance, the F (fà) in the

Ex. 5.14(a) Relationships of the violin clef; Anon., Rules of Music for Learning to Sing
(I-​Rn, MSS Musicali 137), fol. 8r

Ex. 5.14(b) Mutations at the fourth and fifth; Anon., Elements of Canto Fermo, 1762
(I-​Rn, MSS Musicali 55), fol. 5v
80 The Solfeggio Tradition

lowest space of the treble clef, marked with an accent to indicate the location of an
imagined fa-​clef. That note symbol can be reinterpreted as A♭ (fà) in the bass clef, C
(fà) in the baritone clef, E♭ (fà) in the tenor clef, G (fà) in the alto clef, B♭ (fà) in the
mezzo-​soprano clef, and D (fà) in the soprano clef.
The manner in which eighteenth-​century musicians conceptualized these dif-
ferent staves is made plain in e­ xample 5.14(b), which reproduces (with one slight
adjustment) a lesson from an anonymous manuscript of rudimentary lessons
from Rome dated 1762. It depicts the mental image that enabled solfeggists to read
the multiple clefs and keys shown in ­example 5.14(a) as if they were one and the
same. That it employs a five-​line staff, at odds with the medieval fa-​clefs and square
noteheads, attests to the pedagogical transition from fluency in canto fermo to
reading any kind of clef or staff.
This method of reading notation is so lucid and efficient that it is hard to see
why it ever went out of fashion, aside from the fact that it depends on mastery of
hexachordal solmization. There is no direct modern equivalent, but the experi-
ence of reading all eighty-​four possible staves (seven clefs multiplied by twelve key
signatures) using only four simple patterns must have been similar to the experi-
ence of the popular musicians nowadays who notate every piece in C major and rely
on technology to adjust it to the required pitch level.
A more practical demonstration of note naming in canto figurato can be seen
in ­example 5.15, taken from the same anonymous primer. The fàs are highlighted
in the original, as are the intervals of a fifth and a fourth, and mutations receive
black noteheads. This example was designed to show how the three fà syllables in
­example 5.14(a) sit at the center of a broader spread of notes encompassing an extra
do-​re-​mi below and sol-​la above. In other illustrations elsewhere in the textbook, the
syllables dò and fà were marked out with grave accents to help readers pinpoint the
fà clefs on the staff. This common practice can be seen, for instance, in Cotumacci’s
practice scales from his Principles and Solfeggi (c. 1755), shown in ­example 6.13, as
well as in pedagogical compositions that feature syllabic word games. A trio canon
by Altieri dating from 1769, for instance, was set to the text: “I want to sing the
scale: do re mi fà sol la.”49
Sabbatini (1789–​90) opted to highlight fa-​clefs with black noteheads rather than
accented syllables, as can be seen in ­example 6.16(a). Panerai (c. 1780) used the same
device in his illustration of “the way to read all the clefs, in the Italian style,” which
is reproduced in ­example 5.16. It incorporates two of the four patterns described
above, with fà starting on the first space of the staff then shifting to the first line for
the second staff. The top staff can be used to read melodies not only in the key of C

Ex. 5.15 Anon., Rules of Music for Learning to Sing (I-​Rn, MSS Musicali 137), fol. 8r
 Canto Fermo and Canto Figurato 81

Ex. 5.16 “The way to read all the clefs, in the Italian style,” Panerai (c. 1780), 5

major with treble clef and F major with mezzo clef, as shown, but in twelve other
major keys plus their relative minors, for instance, D♭ or D major with alto clef, A♭
or A major with soprano clef, and B♭ or B major with tenor clef. The pattern of note
names in the lower staff fits melodies not only in C major with soprano clef and F
major with alto clef but also in A♭ or A major with treble clef, C♯ or C major with bass
clef, B♭ or B major with alto clef, and so on.
Having surveyed the basic rules of canto fermo and canto figurato, we are now
ready to begin training in spoken solfeggio. For the ease of readers, the lessons that
follow bypass the eighteenth-​century technique of visualizing fa-​clefs and instead
assume familiarity with the modern treble clef.
 PART II
T HE ORY A N D PR AC T ICE
Lessons in the Art of Melody
 6
Speaking Solfeggio

During their initial months of training, in Naples at least, apprentices learned

to read music by beating time and naming each note aloud to the syllables of
the Guidonian scale. This process was known as reading (lettura) or spoken sol-
feggio (solfeggio parlato). It could last up to a year or more, depending on the
aptitude of the student.1 Its purpose was to enable initiates to score-​read flu-
ently in any clef and to etch a mnemonic map of pitch relations indelibly onto
their minds.
Hiller (1780) misleadingly omitted this stage of training in his description of the
method, writing: “In the Italian schools they spend over a year just solmizing, i.e.,
singing with letters and the Guidonian syllables.”2 Imbimbo (1821) clarified the
vague reference to “singing with letters” in a more detailed first-​hand account of
teaching at the conservatories:

During the first years the students practiced solmization without singing, they
only named the notes and marked the beat. When the voice had matured, after
the critical period of change in voices of both sexes, they were to solmize indi-
vidually by singing; for it was certain that [the voice] could not be known and its
weaknesses corrected, other than by making them sing individually. To strengthen
the students’ intonation, they were trained in ensemble pieces, without the aid of
instruments.3

If Imbimbo can be believed, then it appears that apprentices spent more

than a year practicing nothing but spoken solmization. Formal study normally
began between the ages of eight and ten, and voices rarely break before the age
of twelve. Florimo concurred by paraphrasing Imbimbo: “During the early years
the students solmized without singing; they merely named the notes and beat
time.”4
As outlined in Chapter 5, they began with the archaic and rudimentary notation
system called canto fermo. Because acquiring fluency in reading plainchant nota-
tion is a time-​consuming business, however, and patience is a virtue that is apt to
become fatigued through exercise, we start from the point at which apprentices, still
speaking their solfeggi, became familiar with the more versatile system of notation
called canto figurato.

The Solfeggio Tradition. Nicholas Baragwanath, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197514085.001.0001
86 The Solfeggio Tradition

Although an essential preparation for later lessons, reading solfeggi note-​for-​

note was a dry theoretical exercise that bore little relation to the way they would
eventually be sung. For this reason, readers who are prepared to take my proposed
solmizations on trust may skip to the next chapter to find out about the more
diverting practice of vocal improvisation.
The seven lessons that follow are intended to provide readers with a simplified
guide to reading music with eighteenth-​century note names, in other words, to im-
part the basics of Galant solmization. In keeping with the original method, they
cover not only note-​naming but also basic aspects of theory such as time signatures,
key signatures, and modulations.
The method set out below applies to melodies from the era of Arcangelo Corelli
to that of Vincenzo Bellini, or roughly 1680–​1830. It takes account of syllables found
in manuscripts5 and draws on a multitude of sources, most notably the rudimen-
tary lessons bound within Gaetano Greco’s Partimenti (c. 1720), Leonardo Leo’s
First Elements or Hexachordal Solfeggio (1730s?), Carlo Cotumacci’s Principles and
Solfeggi (c. 1755), Johann Agricola’s commentary to Tosi’s Observations on Canto
Figurato (1757), Francisco Solano’s New Instruction (1764), Francesco Feo’s sixty-​one
exercises for the girls at the San Miguel de Belem school in Mexico City (1773–​79),
Luigi Sabbatini’s Theoretical Elements (1789–​90), and several anonymous contem-
porary primers with titles such as Rules of Music. There were many local variants,
as well as alternative systems and dissenting voices, but certain guidelines hold gen-
erally true for Galant solmization in most parts of Catholic Europe and German-​
speaking regions. For reference, the main rules can be summarized as follows:

• There are six notes: do, re, mi, fa, sol, and la, corresponding to a hexachord or
the first six notes of a major scale.
• They can be transposed to start on any note.
• A major key is made up of two overlapping sets of six notes, one starting with
do on the first scale degree and the other with do on the fifth scale degree.
• Switching from one hexachord to another occurs on /​re ascending and \la
descending.
• An exercise in a minor key is sung to the same syllables as its parent
relative major.
• The fourth and seventh degrees of a major scale are its fundamental fa and mi.
If they are altered, a modulation occurs.
• Most other accidentals are ignored as vocal inflections, mere “sweetenings” of
the voice.6

Bear in mind that the note-​for-​note solmizations below pertain primarily to

speaking solfeggio, not to singing it. That involves a quite different process, in which
one syllable may encompass several notes. The way to sing a solfeggio is explained
in Chapter 7.
 Speaking Solfeggio 87

Lesson 1: The Simple Scale

“There are six notes in music. From lowest to highest, they are called do, re, mi, fa,
sol, la.”7
Thus began almost every apprentices’ initiation into the craft of music, following a
time-​honored path trodden by generations. The six syllables, known in Latin as voces
and in Italian as note, had been at the heart of European musicking for centuries. Their
status as fundaments was as certain and indisputable as was any other aspect of Catholic
dogma. According to legend, they had been fashioned from the eighth-​century hymn
“Ut queant laxis” by the Benedictine monk Guido of Arezzo sometime around the year
1026.8 As anyone familiar with the Latin Bible would have known, this hymn was par-
ticularly apt for teaching singing because of its dedication to St. John the Baptist, who
appears for the first time in the Gospel of Mark with the word “Voice” (Vox).
The pattern of intervals defined by the syllables do-​re-​mi-​fa-​sol-​la was known, after
Ramos (1482), as a “hexachord” and after Tinctoris (1495) as a “deduction,” because it
was deduced from the entire range of available notes.9 By the sixteenth century it was
more commonly described by means of the metonym “scale,” meaning “steps or stairs.”
The essence of the system was the association of the semitone with the syllables
mi-​fa. It accounts for an axiom commonly observed in German-​speaking re-
gions until the time of J. S. Bach and beyond: “Mi and Fa are the whole of music.”10
Knowing the six-​note scale and being able to locate its semitone was sufficient to
enable choirboys and junior clergy to sing basic chants. In 1723 Tosi continued to
emphasize the importance of learning to identify the semitone. He railed against
“singers who, in a cappella compositions, are unable to distinguish the mi from the
fa without the organ” and insisted on the precise intonation of semitones, which,
following Tevo (1706), he divided into “major” and “minor” depending on whether
they consisted of four or five “commas.”11
The six notes were traditionally associated with characteristics that assisted me-
lodic thinking, and there is good reason to presume that these persisted for as long
as the system remained valid. The hexachord was split into two corresponding
halves: do-​re-​mi was favored for ascending motion and la-​sol-​fa for descending. Do
and its correlative fa were soft and feminine, re and sol natural or average, and mi
and la hard and masculine. And yes, the relationship between mi and fa was some-
times described in sexual terms.12
Example 6.1, probably dating from the 1730s, shows Leonardo Leo’s first
lesson on the simple scale. By speaking aloud these six syllables, novices

Ex. 6.1 The simple scale, from Leo, Canto fermo (first elements or hexachordal
solfeggio) (1730s?; I-​Nc, 34-​4-​13), fol. 1r: “There are six notes.”
88 The Solfeggio Tradition

acquired skills in sight-​reading. They also learned to think of the scale in terms
of its ambitus, or range, and the functions of its syllables. The semitone was
usually mi-​fa (as highlighted in e­ xample 6.1 with original slurs), and re-​do
normally signified a cadence. Do-​mi-​sol outlined the major triad and re-​fa-​la
the minor.
Reading a melody at sight called for little more than an ability to spot the
central fa-​mi semitone. In this respect the original notation, shown in the in-
cipit to the left of ­example 6.1, is more intuitive and easier to grasp than our
fixed treble and bass clefs. It uses a moveable F-​clef to indicate the position of
fa. (Leo’s name for it—​F-​fa-​ut—​will be explained in Lesson 7 below). Although
this clef sign could shift to any part of the staff to avoid the need for leger lines,
a singer had only to glance at it to know the location of fa, with mi immediately
beneath it.
The manuscript employs an unusual hybrid form of notation in which canto
fermo is set to the five-​line staff and C-​clef of canto figurato. Together with the low
register, this suggests that it was designed to introduce modern notation to trainee
clergy who were already familiar with canto fermo.13 Similar annotations pointing
out the location of fa-​clefs were commonly added to five-​line staves in eighteenth-​
century teaching materials. They testify to the fact that lessons started with plain-
chant and that students continued to read the modern clefs using the four patterns
outlined in e­ xample 5.13.
Students became accustomed to the hexachord by reading practice
melodies made up of scales, leaps, and cadences. One such exercise is shown
in ­example 6.2(a), taken from an anonymous eighteenth-​century collection of
rules of music. Using only the six notes of the simple scale on C, it offers a typical
lesson in leaps of the third, initially through plain intervals and then with a guide
in the form of passing notes. The original syllables have been removed to allow
readers to try to speak the melody while remembering to observe the rhythm.
Solutions to all the exercises in this chapter can be found below under the heading
“Solmization Solutions.”

Ex. 6.2(a) “Leaps of the third,” from Rules of Music (I-​Rn, MSS Musicali 137), fol. 3v,
original syllables removed
 Speaking Solfeggio 89

Lesson 2: Hard, Soft, and Natural Scales

Although a knowledge of canto fermo is not essential for learning to read Galant
solfeggio, it does help explain its many quirks. The complexities of the practice only
make sense when understood as the outcome of centuries of development as an
updated transposable version of Guido’s plainchant method. For this reason, lessons
2 and 3 combine straightforward instruction in eighteenth-​century note-​naming with
overviews of its historical origins and reminders of material encountered in Chapter 5.
There were three simple scales (or hexachords) in canto fermo, as illustrated by
­example 6.3.14 Each encompassed exactly the same set of intervals, sung to the same
syllables. The hard scale started on G and was named after ♮ (bequadro), an angular
square symbol for B (or, in German, h), the precursor to the modern natural sign. The
natural scale started on C and did not include the problematic note B. The soft scale,
so called because of its rounded symbol ♭ (bemolle) for B♭, started on F.
For melodies that extended beyond the six notes of the simple scale, it was neces-
sary to combine two or more hexachords. There were two ways to do this. Merging
the hard hexachord on G with the natural on C gave rise to “hard melody” (canto di
bequadro, or cantus durus). Merging the soft hexachord on F with the natural on C
gave rise to “soft melody” (canto di bemolle, or cantus mollis). These formed the two
main tonal systems of Renaissance and early Baroque music, one with no key signa-
ture and the other with a single flat.15
For the sake of ease, it may help to think of hard melody as similar to the modern
key of C major and soft melody as similar to F major. Remember, though, that they
were commonly encountered in both authentic and plagal aspects. Hard melody
could start with do on C (authentic) or on G (plagal), and soft melody could start
with do on F (authentic) or C (plagal). Also, they differed from modern keys in that
the final (akin to a tonic note) did not have to fall on either C or F. It could fall on
any note. With applied accidentals, this meant that both systems could host a mul-
titude of tonalities. Powers (1981) counted twenty-​four “tonal types” based on two
standard clefs and six possible finals within each transposition system.
Shifting from one hexachord to another in hard and soft melody is called mu-
tation. It can seem difficult to grasp at first, but it is essential for reading notes in
the eighteenth-​century manner. It explains, among other things, the commonplace
practice of answering a statement in the tonic with a response in the dominant. To
the contemporary musical mind, they possessed identical syllables. In the key of C
major, for instance, the melodic figure do-​mi-​sol could be grounded just as well on

Ex. 6.3 The three types of simple scale in the old Guidonian system
90 The Solfeggio Tradition

the note G as it could on C. Both descending scale segments A-​G-​F-​E and E-​D-​C-​B
could be represented by the syllables la-​sol-​fa-​mi.
In this lesson we will learn the essential technique of mutating between simple
scales. First, try speaking the separate hexachords in ­examples 6.4(a) and 6.4(b)
by reading each boxed set of six horizontal syllables in turn, including those in
parentheses: do-​re-​mi-​fa-​sol-​la ascending and la-​sol-​fa-​mi-​re-​do descending. Get a
feel for the location of do on C and G in hard melody and on C and F in soft melody.
Next, ignore the syllables in parentheses and follow only the others to mutate
from one hexachord to another. In ascending motion, the change takes place on
the syllable re. In other words, as soon as you encounter a potential do (i.e., do not
speak it as do), the next note will be pronounced as re from the hexachord above.
This means that ascending stepwise mutations will always be either sol/​re or fa/​re. In
descending motion, the change takes place on the uppermost la syllable of the lower
hexachord, encompassing either fa\la or mi\la. So the rule for mutations is: Change
scale on re when ascending and on la when descending. In this book—​but not in

Ex. 6.4(a) Hard melody (canto di bequadro or cantus durus)

Ex. 6.4(b) Soft melody (canto di bemolle or cantus mollis)

 Speaking Solfeggio 91

the original sources—​mutations are marked by a solidus, indicating a shift to a hex-

achord either above (/​) or below (\).
Because in stepwise motion mutations necessarily occur on every fourth or fifth
note, they were known in the eighteenth century as being either “at the fourth” (alla
quarta) or “at the fifth” (alla quinta).16
The manner in which the mutations were actually taught to clergy can be
ascertained from ­example 6.5, which is taken from an anonymous handwritten
set of basic lessons dating from the early 1700s, preserved in the National Central
Library of Florence.17 The novices first sang three simple scales, covering the en-
tirety of their range: for hard melody, the natural and hard scales on C and G, and
for soft melody, the natural and soft scales on C and F. Practicing the scales sepa-
rately helped clarify the technique of mutation by imprinting the two locations of
ut (or do) firmly in the mind. Once this structure had been sufficiently grasped,
students would make the same three simple scales overlap in order to turn them
into a continuous compound scale with mutations, as indicated by the original
syllables. In this way they quickly acquired a sense of familiarity with the two sys-
tems, in particular, their configuration of two hexachords related by ascending fifth
or descending fourth and grounded on dual ut syllables.
Owing to limitations in vocal range, the scale in soft melody shown in e­ xample 6.5
had to appear in its plagal form, starting on C. This equivalence between authentic
and plagal orderings of the scale persisted throughout the eighteenth century as a

Ex. 6.5 Anon., Principles of Music (c. 1700; I-​Fn, Magl. XIX, 43), fols. 5r–​5v, with
original syllables and annotations (translated from the Italian)
92 The Solfeggio Tradition

direct result of its origin in the Guidonian system. In 1789 Sabbatini still considered
both plagal and authentic versions of hard melody to belong to the “natural scales
of C-​sol-​fa-​ut,” by which he meant something like the modern understanding of the
key of C major.18
In seventeenth-​century practice, it was common for hard melody to venture oc-
casionally onto the soft hexachord and for soft melody to incorporate a similar ad-
ditional hexachord. This meant that hard melody was often made up of overlapping
hexachords on F, C, and G and soft melody of hexachords on B♭, F, and C.19 Within
these aggregate scale systems, the final could be shifted onto different notes. It could
fall just as easily on re or sol as on do. But these expanded versions of hard and soft
melody were no longer relevant in the eighteenth century. By then, the three simple
scales and their two derived scale systems were firmly identified with a single
pairing of hexachords, as explained in the next lesson.

Lesson 3: The Compound Scale

In the conservative musical circles attached to the churches of Bologna, the rules for
medieval plainchant and more up-​to-​date figured notation continued to be taught
to choristers as a single entity until the early nineteenth century. The most influen-
tial singing teacher at the school connected to the central Basilica of St. Petronius
was Angelo Bertalotti. He occupied the position from 1693 to 1747 following a
brief spell as a choral singer at equally conservative churches in Rome. In his Most
Useful Rules for budding Bolognese choirboys, published anonymously in 1698
and reissued several times until 1820, he listed the usual notational figures together
with the rudiments of plainchant under the same heading as “Elements of figured
music.”20
This stubborn adherence to tradition meant that music theory preserved many
outdated relics that had long fallen into disuse and, confusingly, continued to teach
them alongside more current elements. In order to demonstrate how to com-
bine two hexachords in canto figurato and to mutate between them, for instance,
Bertalotti provided his students with the traditional “three properties of melody”
shown in e­ xample 6.6. It showed how the three simple scales could be paired to give
rise to hard, natural, and soft compound scales. This process of generating three
scales from the three hexachords was common to any number of treatises.21 It con-
tinued to appear in textbooks as late as De Vecchis (1850), in which the same three
properties were also described as “fundamental tonalities.”22
Although it made sense in theory to generate three scales from their corre-
sponding hexachords, Bertalotti’s illustrations were hopelessly impractical and
out-​of-​
date for everything other than unaccompanied plainchant. Since the
Renaissance, the everyday practice of transposing liturgical music at the organ had
created the need for a fixed referential scale against which different transpositions
 Speaking Solfeggio 93

Ex. 6.6 Bertalotti, Solfeggi for Soprano and Alto (Bologna, 1764), 74: “Elements of
figured music,” with original syllables and annotations (translated from the Italian)

could be pegged. Guido’s hard, soft, and natural scales were fine for a cappella singing
but inadequate when paired with transposable instrumental accompaniments.
As the notational devices needed to signify the required transpositional levels
grew ever more complicated, the realization gradually dawned that hard and soft
scales were redundant because they could both be regarded as transpositions of the
natural scale. By the beginning of the seventeenth century a stable reference point
had been found in the natural compound scale (scala composta).23 Its most usual
form can be seen in Bertalotti’s natural melody in e­ xample 6.6. To a modern musi-
cian it looks like a C major scale outlining a tenth from middle C to E in the octave
above. But to an eighteenth-​century musician it was a reduced version of the old
hard melody, consisting of two interlocking hexachords a fifth apart, one on C and
the other transposed onto G.
The way it was taught can be deduced from e­ xample 6.7, which shows Leo’s
method for teaching the natural compound scale. Its origins in hard melody are
apparent. Novices were first introduced to each simple scale in turn, before they
combined them via mutations into a single extended scale. Try speaking it several
times to get used to the idea that what we think of as an integrated octave scale
was conceived by eighteenth-​century solfeggists as a merger between two separate
scales. Tonic and dominant tonal areas were, in this respect, far more closely associ-
ated than modern theories allow.
With the image of a single pair of interlocking hexachords, this compound scale
managed to distill the entire Guidonian system down to its most fundamental property.
It created a conceptual model for transposition to each of the twelve available pitches.
At various times and places in the second half of the seventeenth century the authentic
ordering of the Guidonian scales, as depicted in ­example 6.7, became established as
standard for melodies having ut/​do as a final (major mode), and the plagal ordering was
94 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 6.7 The natural compound scale from Leo, Canto fermo (1730s?; I-​Nc, 34.4.13),
fol. 1r, with original syllables and annotations

maintained as the basis for melodies with re as a final (minor mode), as will be explained
more fully in the next lesson. The primacy of the authentic arrangement was already
established by the time Penna (1679) summarized the new system by means of an anal-
ogous great scale (scala grande) made up of two hexachords or “little scales” (scalette
picciole) separated by a fifth and explicitly labeled “lower” and “higher.”24
Example 6.8(a) offers an opportunity to practice naming the notes of the nat-
ural compound scale in a contemporary exercise by Porpora’s principal maestro,
Gaetano Greco (1657–​1728). A solmized version (­example 6.8[b]‌) can be found
under the heading “Solmization Solutions” below. It begins with the lower hexa-
chord and switches midway onto the higher. It also introduces a common feature
in solfeggio known in early sources as “fa above la”25 and in eighteenth-​century
Naples as the “false fà.”26 To avoid having to mutate for the sake of one extra note,
the semitone above la was always sung as fà, by analogy with the fa a half step
higher than mi within the scale. This rule applies to the high F in the second staff of
­example 6.8(a), which appears to lie outside of the simple scale on G but belongs to
it as an additional, adjunct fa.
Rudimentary exercises in sight-​reading often included the extra fà as if it were an
integral part of a seven-​note scale: do-​re-​mi-​fa-​sol-​la-​fà. Some sources advocated an
extension of this pragmatic device, known to modern scholars as “transmutation,”
in order to allow any whole tone above la or semitone below do to be solmized invar-
iably as mi, but this does not appear to have been used for solfeggio in eighteenth-​
century Italy.27
The model of the compound scale made the process of solmization easier, es-
pecially with regard to leaps. Although it was a relatively straightforward matter
to identify mutations in the kind of stepwise exercises that featured in textbooks,
melodies in real chants or compositions were seldom so obliging. The difficulty was
overcome by imagining the scale as two matching sets of six syllables.28 Sabbatini
 Speaking Solfeggio 95

Ex. 6.8(a) A practice melody from Greco, Partimenti (c. 1720; I-​Nc, 45.1.65), fol. 6r,
“Soprano Clef ”

provided a more detailed explanation involving the “Correspondence of Leaps

between the two [simple] scales, which, being made up of the same intervals,
are intoned by the same syllables.”29 He demonstrated the technique as shown in
­example 6.9, which, in the original, continued the leaps of the third and the fourth
shown here with leaps of the fifth and the sixth. It shows clearly how the solmized
leaps in the lower hexachord map exactly onto those in the higher hexachord. This
peculiarity of the Guidonian system explains why some sixteenth-​century theorists
advocated speaking leaps of the octave and a fourth or a fifth to the same syllable,
usually, by way of example, mi-​mi or fa-​fa. It was customary, in addition, to attach
a guide (guida) to leaps by voicing the passing notes between them. This helped
novices arrive at the correct syllable.30 From the solmization patterns printed in
Scaletta (1626), it seems likely that only the principal outer notes of each guided
leap would have received a separate syllable.31
To practice leaps of the fourth, try speaking the notes of ­example 6.10(a) in
rhythm. This exercise is taken from an anonymous textbook of rules with its
original syllables removed. The solution can be found below in e­ xample 6.10(b).
Observe that the melody requires only two mutations to the upper hexachord and
that the fleeting B♭ in the second staff is not a modulation but, rather, a fa above la,
conjoined to the hexachord on C.

Ex. 6.9 “Corre‌spondences between the leaps,” from Sabbatini, Theoretical Elements
(1789–90), 1:53, with original syllables and annotations (translated from the Italian)
96 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 6.10(a) “Leaps of the fourth,” from Rules of Music (I-​Rn, MSS Musicali 137), fol.
3v, original syllables removed

Sabbatini’s mooted “correspondences” prove their worth in ­example 6.11(a),

which reproduces an exercise in leaps of the fifth from the same mid-​eighteenth-​
century source. Because the syllables of the simple scale replicate at the fifth, leaps
that cross from one hexachord to another, as in mm. 5 and 7, can be dealt with
by simply speaking the same syllables. The original annotations are restored to the
melody in e­ xample 6.11(b) below.
As the final exercise in speaking the notes of the compound scale, ­example 6.12(a)
reproduces a duo canon by Bertalotti. It is little more than a compilation of formu-
laic scales, leaps of the third and the fourth, and cadences that helpfully draw the
student’s attention to correspondences between the hexachords. Example 6.12(b)
offers a suggested solmization.
The natural compound scale encapsulates the concept of a key in eighteenth-​
century solfeggio. It formed a conceptual model for all twelve chromatic keys. By
dispensing with two of Guido’s three types of hexachord, the fundamental com-
pound scale could be conceived as one natural scale on C bound together with
another natural scale transposed onto G. Each key was then regarded as a transpo-
sition of this natural compound scale. Thus the key of C♯ major encompassed two
“natural” simple scales with do on C♯ and G♯, the key of D major encompassed two
simple scales with do on D and A, and so on. In an F♯ major scale, do was located on
F♯ and C♯,and in a G♭ major scale, it was located on G♭ and D♭.
To gain some familiarity with this system, try naming the notes of the transposed
compound scales reproduced in ­example 6.13(a). They are taken from a beginner’s
guide to solfeggio by the Neapolitan maestro Carlo Cotumacci. For apprentices

Ex. 6.11(a) “Leaps of the fifth,” from Rules of Music (I-​Rn, MSS Musicali 137), fol. 3v,
original syllables removed
Ex. 6.12(a) A duo canon from Bertalotti, Solfeggi for Soprano and Alto (1764), 3 [75]

Ex. 6.13(a) Transposed compound scales, from Cotumacci, Principles and Solfeggi (c.
1755; GB-​Lbl, Add. 14241), fol. 4r, original syllables removed
98 The Solfeggio Tradition

accustomed to plainchant, these scales would have been understood as extensions of

soft melody, with analogous interlocking hexachords. Note how flexibly Cotumacci
treats the component scales. The examples do not have to begin and end on the do
which, for us, would be the tonic (in ­example 6.13(a), from the highest system to the
lowest: F, B♭, and E♭). Cotumacci uses plagal and authentic orderings interchange-
ably. The solution may be found below in e­ xample 6.13(b).
Some musicians still considered the compound scale on F as an additional “nat-
ural” scale, by analogy with soft melody, and pegged flatward transpositions against
it. This explains why Cotumacci began his flat scales from F major, rather than C.

Lesson 4: Minor Keys

There were two ways to sing a simple scale.32 Starting on its first note (do) gave
rise to a major-​sounding melody, whereas starting on its second note (re) created a
minor-​sounding melody. A natural hexachord on C, for instance, was understood
to encompass two melodically unfolded, interlocking triads corresponding to C
major and D minor. Framing a melody with do-​mi-​sol (1-​3-​5) gave the impression
of a major key. Emphasizing re-​fa-​la (2-​4-​6) evoked a minor key.
The two types of melody can be heard side by side in Monteverdi’s portrayal of
“La Musica” in the prologue to Orfeo (1607). The opening toccata is based on do-​
mi-​sol (C-​E-​G) and features the trumpet in honor of the muse Calliope, mother of
Orfeo, who recorded and celebrated heroic deeds. The following string ritornello is
based on re-​fa-​la (D-​F-​A) and depicts Apollo, god of harmony and father of Orfeo.
This is underscored by the use of the violin, which was one of the Renaissance
equivalents for the ancient lyre.
That this practice was still observed in Rome, Naples, and Venice in the early
eighteenth century is affirmed in Gasparini’s Practical Harmonist (1708), which
provides a clear summary:

All compositions are formed with either the major or minor third. In the case of
a major third, starting from precisely that note on which the composition is built,
read: ut, re, mi; in the case of a minor third: re, mi, fa. I leave out consideration of
the third and fourth [Phrygian] modes, which must be read mi, fa, sol, since this
is not applied rigorously by present-​day composers with its original structure.33

A similar distinction between major and minor modes was made at roughly
the same time in German-​speaking regions. The Thuringian organist Andreas
Werckmeister (1687), for instance, explained the division of scales into major and
minor as follows: “Since music of today (as already imagined) is much different, and
only around four modes are in use, as Ionian with Mixolydian [the ut modes] and
Dorian with Aeolian [the re modes], they are more often mixed in the ambitus of
the fourth, so that not more than two modes can be established.”34
 Speaking Solfeggio 99

This meant that a minor-​key melody was conceived and read using precisely the
same syllables as its parent major scale. It simply finished on re instead of do. In this
sense, minor keys were not independent tonalities. They were, as both Sabbatini
(1789–​90) and De Vecchis (1850) remarked, “born from” their parent compound
scale and distinguished only by their characteristic re-​fa-​la triad and re-​mi-​fa
minor-​third. 35
In this lesson we will learn the difference between do-​mi-​sol and re-​fa-​la melodies
and how minor keys in the eighteenth century were thought to begin on the sixth
degree, re, of a major scale.
Examples 6.14(a) and 6.14(b) illustrate the historical origins of the process
with extracts from a guide to singing fugues by the Thuringian pastor Cyriacus
Schneegaβ (1546–​1597). Brackets have been added to highlight the component
hexachords. In the first, the compound scale is sung in the usual way, with ut on C
(soon to be replaced by the more singable do). In the second, the same scale begins
on its second note, re, creating a minor-​sounding type of melody.
The old-​fashioned practice of beginning the minor scale on the second note of
an authentic major scale was still in use in some German regions during the early
eighteenth century. The resulting “minor” scale was identified as the Dorian
mode and taken to form the basis for transpositions. This explains why in Fux’s
Steps to Parnassus (1725) the scale of E minor (understood as Dorian mode
starting on E-​re) possessed the same two-​sharp key signature as its parent scale,
D major, whereas the scale of A minor (understood as Dorian mode starting on
A-​re) required a key signature of one sharp, in recognition of its parent scale of
G major.36
In Italy, by contrast, minor keys were associated with the plagal ordering of
their parent scales. They began with re on the sixth note rather than the second.
For instance, A minor was sung to exactly the same syllables as a C major scale
starting with an imagined do on G (as opposed to C). The reason for this is clearly

Ex. 6.14(a) The first way to sing a compound scale, from Schneegaβ, Isagoges Musicæ
Libri Duo (1596), appendix, with original syllables and annotations

Ex. 6.14(b) The second way to sing a compound scale, from Schneegaβ, Isagoges
Musicæ Libri Duo (1596), appendix, with original syllables and annotations
100 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 6.15 Tonal ambiguity that could result, according to Sabbatini (1789–90), from
starting a minor scale on the second rather than the sixth note of its parent major scale

Ex. 6.16(a) The simple minor scale, from Sabbatini (1789–90), 1:36, with original
annotations and added solidi

Ex. 6.16(b) The compound minor scale, from Sabbatini (1789–90), 1:36; with original
annotations and added solidi

set out in Calegari’s Dissertation (1732) and Sabbatini’s Theoretical Elements

(1789–​90). Because the white-​note octave scales starting on C and D had to be
sung using exactly the same syllables for the key-​defining fourth G-​A-​B-​C (sol/​
re-​mi-​fa), the scale on D was understood to educe both minor and major (see
­example 6.15 for a demonstration). It was therefore ruled out as the conceptual
model for the octave minor scale, leaving the scale on A (from the plagal ordering
of the C major compound scale) to take on the role. Sabbatini illustrated this by
means of e­ xamples 6.15, 6.16(a), and 6.16(b) and explained it as follows:

The minor keys have their own scale, which starts from the syllables re mi, etc.
Since the semitone must occur twice in every compound scale, and because the
 Speaking Solfeggio 101

minor key must begin on this syllable [re], it is inevitable that in ascending mo-
tion the ensuing mi will be repeated on the notes E and B, and that one of these
must come first. If I begin the natural scale of C major from the note D, then the
mi will fall without fail on E—​but then what? After the F, before reaching the
other mi on the note B, I must say sol re mi [on G-​A-​B] and as a consequence
give rise to the key of [C]‌major. Here we have a scale partly in major and partly
in minor. So if I wish to continue this scale in the minor key it is necessary to
begin on A. In this form, the two mi syllables will fall on B then E, always with
the interval of one [whole-​tone] syllable and a semitone syllable between the
first and the third, just as the key demands if it is to be minor [i.e., the re-​mi-​fa or
minor-​third segments of the scale on A-​B-​C and D-​E-​F are adjacent, as shown in
­example 6.16(a)]. Now, since A is the sixth of the natural key of C major, it is very
easy to understand what the Maestros mean when they say that every minor
key not only depends on, but is born from, the sixth syllable of the major key.
Thus the same accidentals that regulate the major keys will also regulate those in
minor. . . . The key of A minor is therefore related to, and arises out of, that of C
major.37

To practice solmizing minor-​key melodies, try speaking aloud the exercise by

Greco reproduced in e­ xample 6.17(a). It requires only an awareness of the hexa-
chord on G, conceived as the top half of a compound scale on C. Simply by starting
on re and finishing on la—​the outer notes of the minor triad—​the melody gives an
unmistakable impression of being in the key of A minor. Greco’s original syllables
are restored to the melody in e­ xample 6.17(b) below.
In order to consolidate skills in reading the minor mode, e­xample 6.18(a)
presents a complete accompanied solfeggio attributed to Paisiello. A couple of clues
are given in square brackets to assist with solmization and to dissuade readers from
consulting the solution offered in e­ xample 6.18(b) too soon. Although there is no
key signature, the tonic of e­ xample 6.18(a) is clearly D minor, which means that it
should be read using the syllables of its parent relative major, the compound scale
on F with do on F and C. There is a modulation to A minor in mm. 10–​21, de-
manding a shift to the compound scale on C, followed by two further modulations
in quick succession: D minor/​F major in mm. 22–​23 and G minor/​B♭ major in mm.

Ex. 6.17(a) A re-​mi-​fa melody based on the simple scale on G, from Greco, Partimenti
(c. 1720; I-​Nc, 45.1.65), fol. 6r, original syllables removed
102 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 6.18(a) Solfeggio no. 4, “On the effect of interim [chromatic] syllable-​notes,” from
Paisiello, Principles of Music (1804; US-​Eu, Ceccarelli Collection, Ms. 1234; Gj5804)

24–​25. From there until the end, the melody returns to D minor. Identifying this
tonal scheme depends not so much on interpreting subtle cues in accidentals and
melodic contours as on the fact that the same basic solfeggio formula is repeated
in each key: la-​sol-​sol-​fa-​fa-​mi descending and mi-​fa-​fa-​sol-​sol-​la ascending. In
minor keys, fa and sol—​scale degrees 6 and 7 in the modern octave minor scale—​
each encompassed two pitches, one diatonic and the other sharped, while la and mi
remained constant.
So common were these two sharped chromatic notes in minor keys that they
were given a special name: “the two unchanging syllables.”38 They were exempt
from the rule that sharping the fourth note of a major scale, for instance from F to
F♯ in C major, normally triggered a modulation. Solano demonstrated this excep-
tional status by means of e­ xample 6.19, in which he singled out the notes F♯ and G♯
and labeled them as “unchanging.” Other annotations in this example include stac-
cato wedges to highlight the places where mutations fell and arrows with the word
 Speaking Solfeggio 103

Ex. 6.19 “An example of the two unchanging syllables in ♮ Melody [i.e., C major] and
the nature of the two successive sharps, together with the relevant mutations for this
Melody” from Solano (1764), 69, with original syllables and annotations translated
from the Portuguese

“fundamental” to affirm that fa and mi continued to define the key even though fa
was sharped (to be explained more fully in Lesson 6 below).

Lesson 5: Accidentals

The general rule for accidentals was to ignore them in solmization. Fully annotated
examples of the way this principle was derived from sixteenth-​century practice can
be found in Johann Pepusch’s Treatise on Harmony, published in London in 1731.39
As he put it, “no accidental Sharp, or accidental Flat, alters the Solmization, except
in this Fa [above la].”40 Any sharp, flat, natural, double sharp, or double flat that did
not belong to the governing scale was sung at the notated pitch but to the same syl-
lable as its diatonic equivalent, as if it were merely a vocal inflection. In a melody in
C major or A minor, for instance, both G♯-​A and G-​A♭ could be read as sol-​la, and
the syllables do-​re could apply just as well to C♯-​D as C♮-​D. There were, however, im-
portant exceptions to this rule, as described in Lesson 6.
One of Leo’s initial exercises for dealing with accidentals is reproduced in
­example 6.20(a). It uses only the natural hexachord on C, plus an extra B♭ fa above
la. Although there is no flat in the key signature, the natural scale here calls to mind
soft melody, with do on C and F. By the end of the first staff, the final (akin to a tonic)
has clearly shifted from C-​do to D-​re, giving rise to a scale starting on re that sounds
like the modern key of D minor. Try speaking this part of the example to get a feel

Ex. 6.20(a) An exercise in ignoring accidentals, from Leo, Canto fermo (1730s?; I-​Nc,
34.4.13), fol. 1v
104 The Solfeggio Tradition

for the shift from the do-​re-​mi arrangement of the scale to the re-​mi-​fa. Note that
the C♯ before the first cadence (indicated by a pause mark) retains the syllable do
even though it is sharped when sung. This do♯-​re interval is commonly encountered
in minor scales, although it may seem odd to musicians today.
The re-​fa-​la or “minor-​key” ordering of the scale remains in charge until the end
of the extract. Three further sharped dos appear in the lower staff of e­ xample 6.20(a).
Toward the final cadence, F-​fa is also sharped. As F♯, it leads more intensely to G-​sol
without departing from the syllables of the governing scale.
As can be seen from the incipit at the left of e­ xample 6.20(a), Leo’s lesson used
the hybrid system of notation mentioned earlier. It combined the traditional fa-​
clef from canto fermo (the little flag symbol) with the C-​clef and five-​line staff
of canto figurato. It also borrowed three rhythmic values to fashion a peculiarly
Neapolitan metrical form of canto fermo. The original syllables can be found in
­example 6.20(b).
As Leo’s exercise and many other sources attest, it was perfectly feasible to sing
elaborate chromatic passages using only the syllables of hard or soft melody. Even
the chromatic scale could be accommodated in this way. Try solmizing the exercise
presented in ­example 6.21(a). It is taken from Sabbatini’s textbook for his young
apprentices at the Church of St. Anthony in Padua. Again, the original syllables can
be found in e­ xample 6.21(b).
The rule for ignoring accidentals made basic sight-​singing very easy. Rank-​and-​
file choir singers only had to know two scales, one with do on C and G, and another
with do on C and F. What would, for us, be a melody in G major, for instance, would,
for them, have been hard melody with do on C and G, a final on G-​sol/​G-​do and an
F-​fa to be sharped.
The application of accidentals to these basic frameworks was probably learned
by ear, following rules and exemplars put forward in rudimentary textbooks (see,
e.g., ­example 11.1). There is evidence to suggest that well-​schooled musicians
added accidentals intuitively in performance. The practice of musica ficta (in
the simplified sense of accidentals that were sung but not notated) seems to
have survived well into the eighteenth century.41 Proof can be found in solfeggio
manuscripts. When Neapolitan maestros supplemented their incomes by offering
private singing lessons, often to well-​to-​do ladies in big cities such as Paris and
Vienna, they used solfeggi that were originally written for apprentices. The copies
made for amateurs contain numerous accidentals that are absent from earlier
versions.42
To clear up the confusion surrounding the issue of accidentals, Sabbatini pro-
vided his students with “an Ariadne’s thread to find a way around every hindrance”
in the form of five simple rules. They established that accidentals were in general
to be ignored in terms of solmization, save those that were understood to be fun-
damental to a key. Moreover, every key was to be regarded as analogous to the
Ex. 6.21(a) The chromatic scale, from Sabbatini, Theoretical Elements (1789–90), 3:33,
with original syllables removed and a realization of the figured bass added
106 The Solfeggio Tradition

“natural” scale of C major, transposed onto one or other of the remaining eleven
notes of the keyboard or chromatic scale:

Rule 1: Whether the key is major or minor, the syllables of the scale are the same.
Rule 2: But how should one read the accidentals on the sixth and seventh of the
minor key [as in e­ xample 6.16(b)]? As if there were no sharps. Since they are
not fixed, mutating their syllables would give rise to confusion. It is enough
simply to raise the notes by a semitone when singing.
Rule 3: In the previous example of the minor key [­example 6.16(b)], two notes [G♯
and A] were added at the end of the scale and named as do-​re below the staff and
sol-​la above. This was meant to show that when one comes across the accidental
note immediately beneath the first of the key, either stepwise or by leap, it is left
to the whim of the singer to decide which of these two options is preferable.
Rule 4: In regard to accidentals that do not belong fundamentally to the key, the
second rule is observed; i.e., the syllables are not altered but the notes are raised
or lowered by a semitone, according to whether the accidentals are sharp or flat.
Rule 5: Reading the syllables of the 12 different major keys is accomplished by
reducing them to [i.e., reading them in the same way as] the single key of C
major, but in seven clefs.43

Lesson 6: Keys, Modulations, and the Circle of Fifths

There were important exceptions to the rule for ignoring accidentals. In many
contexts, sharping the fourth degree of an authentic compound scale turned it into
the seventh degree of the compound scale a perfect fifth above, prompting a modu-
lation. Sharping F♮ to F♯ in C major, for example, changed the key to G major. Flatting
the seventh degree reversed the process by turning it into the fourth degree of the key
situated a perfect fifth below. Flatting B♮ to B♭ in C major, for example, changed the
key to F major. As documented in more detail in Chapter 9, Sabbatini characterized
these techniques of modulation as the “altered fourth” and “altered seventh.”44 They
grew from an inherent property of the medieval system for singing plainchant.
In this lesson we will learn how each scale, or key, was defined by its fourth-​note
“fundamental fa” and seventh-​note “fundamental mi,” how altering either of them
normally led to a modulation, and how the ancient technique of swapping fa for mi
and mi for fa gave rise to twelve keys around the circle of fifths.
Example 6.22 depicts the compound scales of hard and soft melody. Owing
to overlaps between the hexachords each note possesses two alternative syllable-​
names, with the significant exceptions of the fourth, fa, and seventh, mi. These can
only be read as fa and mi. For this reason, they defined the scale and were called
its fundamental fa and fundamental mi. Altering one or other of them changed
the key. In this sense, a scale was defined more by its fourth and seventh notes
than by its dual do syllables on the tonic and the dominant. Hard melody was
 Speaking Solfeggio 107

Ex. 6.22 A key was defined by its fundamental fa and fundamental mi

Ex. 6.23 Changing the fundamental mi into fa turned hard melody into soft, in effect
transposing the scale down a fifth. Changing the fundamental fa into mi reversed the
process, transposing soft melody up a fifth

differentiated from soft by having its fundamental fa and mi on F and B, rather

than on B♭ and E.
Traditionally, choral singers had to switch frequently between hard and soft sys-
tems. This was accomplished conceptually by switching mi for fa and fa for mi, not
at the level of individual notes but at the level of the scale as a whole. As e­ xample 6.23
demonstrates, singing the fundamental fa (B♭) of soft melody as mi turned it into the
fundamental mi (B♮) of hard melody. By the same token, singing the fundamental
mi (B♮) of hard melody as fa turned it into the fundamental fa (B♭) of soft melody. In
effect, changing fa into mi modulated up a fifth, and changing mi into fa modulated
down a fifth. This principle formed the basis for modulation in eighteenth-​century
solfeggio. Sharping the fourth of any scale (as if from B♭ to B♮ in the gamut) effected
a modulation to the key a fifth above, whereas flatting the seventh (as if from B♮ to B♭
in the gamut) modulated to the key a fifth below.
By extension, the technique of singing B-​fa as B-​mi could apply analogously to
the F-​fa of hard melody.45 As F-​mi (i.e., F♯), it became the fundamental seventh of
the key of G major, a fifth above. See the central staff of e­ xample 6.24 for an illus-
tration of this process. Similarly, the technique of singing B-​mi as B-​fa could apply
equally to the E-​mi of soft melody. As E-​fa (i.e., E♭), it became the fundamental
fourth of B♭ major, a fifth below. This peculiarity of the system led inevitably to
108 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 6.24 To sing mi in place of fa or fa in place of mi was synonymous with the circle of
fifths

the circle of fifths, which must have existed in practice centuries before Johann
Heinichen’s seminal 1711 diagram of twelve key signatures arranged in a circle
(which probably had more to do with tuning in fourths and fifths than modula-
tion, in any case).
Sharp keys were generally presented as ascending by fifth from C major, by dint
of its association with the old hard melody, through G, D, A, and B to F♯ major. They
were understood to result from the technique of swapping fa for mi. Flat keys were
presented as descending by fifth from F major, the compound scale derived from
soft melody, through B♭, E♭, A♭, and D♭ to G♭ major. They resulted from the technique
of swapping mi for fa. Chapter 9 explains this theory in more detail.

Lesson 7: Naming Keys

Eighteenth-​century musicians employed an antiquated set of terms for musical

notes and the scales and keys based on them. They were named after the letters
(litterae) and syllables (voces) of Guido’s hard, soft, and natural scales. They used the
notes of the high register to refer to keys, rather than those of the bass. This testifies
to their melodic origin in solfa training. This short lesson will provide a list of note
and key names.
Each note received one of Saint Gregory’s seven letter names followed by the var-
ious syllables it occupied within the three scales. Because C, for instance, could ap-
pear as sol in the soft scale on F, fa in the hard scale on G, and ut (i.e., do) in the
natural scale on C, it was called C-​solfaut. Because E could appear as la in the hard
scale and mi in the natural scale, it was called E-​lami.
 Speaking Solfeggio 109

As described above, the technique of singing mi in place of fa led to a series of

sharpward modulations through the circle of fifths. In this respect, the sharp sign
sometimes meant “fa turned into mi” and at other times “sharp the note without
changing syllable.” Starting from the natural compound scale (i.e., C major), the
seven sharp keys were named as follows:

C-​solfaut C major and A minor

G-​solreut G major and E minor (1♯)
D-​lasolrè D major and B minor (2♯s)
A-​lamirè A major and F♯ minor (3♯s)
E-​lamì E major and C♯ minor (4♯s)
B-​mi B major and G♯ minor (5♯s)
F-​faut diesis F♯ major and D♯ minor (6♯s)

Keys based on sharped notes used the same names as these but with the word
sharp (diesis) added. Thus C♯ major and A♯ minor belonged the scale of C-​solfaut
diesis and G♯ major and E♯ minor to G-​solreut diesis.
Italian authors often conflated the letter name and syllables into a single word
to reflect normal pronunciation. Thus C-​sol-​fa-​ut became cesolfaut and F-​fa-​ut be-
came effaut. The general name for B, taking account of both flat (B-​fa) and natural
(B-​mi), was befabemì. Grave accents on rè and mì as final syllables appear in some
sources for emphasis.
F major (F-​faut) was the usual starting point for flatward modulations around the
circle of fifths. This was a leftover from the old system of soft melody, as was the use of
the syllable fà to indicate a flatted note-​name, by analogy with B-​fa. In this sense, the
flat sign meant “mi turned into fa.” Only accidental flats received a grave accent on fà.
Because flatward scales were conceived in descending order through the circle
of fifths, those that began with one of the three possible la syllables (which marked
downward mutations in hard and soft melody, on E, A, or D) also had la appended
to their names. Thus E-​la, flatted to E♭, became E-​la-​fà. Flatted notes that did not fall
on a la were called simply G-​fà (G♭), C-​fà (C♭), and so on. The seven flat keys were
thus named as follows:

F-​faut F major and D minor (1♭)

B-​fa B♭ major or G minor (2♭s)
E-​lafà E♭ major or C minor (3♭s)
A-​lafà A♭ major or F minor (4♭s)
D-​lafà D♭ major or B♭ minor (5♭s)
G-​fà G♭ major or E♭ minor (6♭s)
C-​fà C♭ major or A♭ minor (7♭s)
110 The Solfeggio Tradition

Testing Our Skills

Having worked our way through these seven lessons, we should now be equipped
to solmize the eighteenth-​century way. To put this to the test, the main part of this
chapter ends with three exercises, the first of which is shown in ­example 6.25(a).
It is an adaptation of the famous duet between Don Giovanni and Zerlina from
Mozart’s opera. To prepare to turn it into a spoken solfeggio, look initially at the
guide above the staff. It illustrates one of the hexachords belonging to the key of
A major plus its extra fà above la. The melody uses only these notes. Incidental
chromaticisms such as the one in m. 11 have no effect on the syllables of the un-
derlying scale. This practice melody thus requires knowledge of the simple scale,
transposed to fit within one of the twelve keys as part of a compound scale, its fà
above la, and the rule for ignoring chromatic inflections. A solution is provided in
­example 6.25(b).
Example 6.26(a) tests the ability to mutate between the hexachords of the
compound scale. It is an arrangement of the famous Serenade in C major, once
attributed to Haydn as the Andante cantabile from his String Quartet op. 3, no. 5
but now known to have been composed by Roman Hofstetter, a priest and choir-
master at Amorbach Monastery. Look first to the guide to refresh your memory of
the syllables in this key before reading the melody aloud. Its hexachordal shapes
are clearly projected, so much so that they trump the usual rule for mutating on

Ex. 6.25(a) An arrangement of “Là ci darem la mano” from Mozart’s Don Giovanni
 Speaking Solfeggio 111

Ex. 6.26(a) An arrangement of the Andante cantabile from Hofstetter’s String Quartet
op. 3, no. 5 (Hob.III:17)

Ex. 6.27(a) An arrangement of the melody from Haydn’s String Quartet op. 76, no. 3,
Poco adagio

la in mm. 3 and 5. These bars present four notes from one hexachord followed by
the corresponding four notes from the other, as set out in the solution found in
­example 6.26(b). The ways in which melodic context and punctuation could over-
ride the usual rules for mutation are explained more fully in the appendix to this
chapter.
The final exercise (6.27(a)) tests the ability to spot a modulation to a new key,
in addition to consolidating skills in mutation. It is taken from Haydn’s anthem
112 The Solfeggio Tradition

to Holy Roman Emperor Francis II, “Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser,” which also
appears in the second movement of his String Quartet op. 76, no. 3 and, of course,
as the German national anthem. In order to accommodate the F♯ mi in m. 2 it has
to begin with fa rather than the more intuitive do. The requisite fà above la is indi-
cated in m. 1. One further clue is provided by the solidus in m. 7, which reveals a
very common modulation pattern that proceeds directly from the mi belonging to
the tonic key onto a new mi belonging to the dominant, as shown in the solution
in ­example 6.27(b). This “mi/​mi modulation” will be described in more detail in
Chapter 8.

***
The rules and guidelines set out in this chapter provide a minimal summary, to be
fleshed out in the remainder of the book. They offer merely a starting point from
which to explore the repertory of solfeggio and counterpoint. Only by applying
them to numerous individual exercises can a credible method for reconstructing
eighteenth-​century solmization be pieced together. In this process, some degree of
informed guesswork is unavoidable. For this I make no apology. When faced with a
profusion of unknowns and very little concrete evidence to go on, as with the fun-
damentally oral tradition of solfeggio, it is all too easy to shrug one’s shoulders and
declare the problem irresolvable. This leads nowhere. I recommend instead a scien-
tific approach, devising the most plausible theory available to present knowledge,
putting it to the test again and again, and adapting or rejecting it in light of new
discoveries. Through a combination of continuing archival research and trial and
error, it should be possible to rediscover the workings of the eighteenth-​century art
of melody. This chapter begins the task, but leaves much still to be done.
 Speaking Solfeggio 113

Solmization Solutions for Chapter 6

The grave accents added to some of the syllables in ­example 6.2(b) give an indication
of how the maestro may have taught it. In the first staff, the accents on rè, fà, and là
serve to differentiate the notes of the minor triad (D-​F-​A) from those of the major
(C-​E-​G), and the accents on the final dò-​rè-​dò cadence in mm. 7–​9 draw attention
to the two ways of singing the scale: by starting on either dò or rè (as described in
Lesson 4 above). In mm. 10 and 16–​17, the scribe again highlights these two notes
and, in the remainder of the melody, places accents on only the notes of the minor
triad. From this it seems reasonable to presume that ­example 6.2(b) was conceived
as a lesson on the dò and rè modes derived from a single hexachord.

Ex. 6.2(b) “Leaps of the third,” from Rules of Music (I-​Rn, MSS Musicali 137), fol. 3v,
with original syllables and grave accents

Ex. 6.8(b) A practice melody from Greco, Partimenti (c. 1720; I-​Nc, 45.1.65), fol. 6r,
“Soprano Clef,” with syllables added by the author

Grave accents have been added to every type of syllable except mi and sol in
­example 6.10(b). They suggest a multitude of teaching points. Those on dò and fà
in mm. 1, 4, and 11–​12 probably served to emphasize latent fa-​clefs, just as they did
in Cotumacci’s scales in ­example 6.13. Throughout, the syllables seem to pick out
the notes of the minor triad, rè-​fà-​là. The octave leap to C-​fà in m. 5 appears to be
a kind of transmutation: it spells out the octave dò/​fà without any further notes in
the higher hexachord. In mm. 7–​8, the accents may have drawn attention to the ap-
pearance of fà on three different pitches: F-​fà from the hexachord on C, its fà above
114 The Solfeggio Tradition

la on B♭, and C-​fà from the higher hexachord on G. It is worth noting that in m. 8
the G was not solmized as do. This lowest syllable was generally avoided, unless
the melody possessed a clear hexachordal shape. The mutation takes place on the
ensuing fà and returns to the lower hexachord on A-​là in m. 10.

Ex. 6.10(b) “Leaps of the fourth,” from Rules of Music (I-​Rn, MSS Musicali 137), fol.
3v, with original syllables and grave accents

Once again, the grave accents in this solfeggio (example 6.11[b]) appear to single
out the notes of the minor triad, rè-​fà-​là, and to differentiate them from the major triad
founded on dò. I am unable to account for the upper-​case Mi in m. 6, and I cannot say
with any certainty which of the two choices proffered for the G in m. 9—​dò or sol—​would
have been preferable. Given that mm. 5–​10 consist almost entirely of same-​syllable leaps
to different notes (“deceptions” or inganni, described in relation to ­example 6.28), it
seems reasonable to presume that both D and G in m. 9 would have been read as sol.

Ex. 6.11(b) “Leaps of the fifth,” from Rules of Music (I-​Rn, MSS Musicali 137), fol. 3v,
with original syllables

The obvious imitations and hexachordal contours in this duo (example 6.12[b])
occasionally override the rule for mutating on /​re ascending and \la descending.
The final A in the soprano part of m. 8, for instance, does not switch to /​re because
that would obscure the deliberate parallel between mm. 7–​8 and 9–​10. The same
goes for the G in the soprano part of m. 12; it is solmized as do rather than \sol to
underscore the clear hexachordal shape within the melody. The “explicit” change of
syllable on a repeated note in mm. 19 and 20 testifies to the priority of phrasing and
punctuation over the usual rules for mutation.
 Speaking Solfeggio 115

Ex. 6.12(b) A duo canon from Bertalotti, Solfeggi for Soprano and Alto (1764), 3 [75],
with syllables added by the author

Observe how Cotumacci highlights the dò and fà syllables of each scale with grave
accents in example 6.13(b). These helped the student relate the modern canto figurato
notation to the more familiar canto fermo by emphasizing the location of potential
F-​and C-​clefs. In the initial F major scale, Cotumacci also placed an accent on là,
presumably to draw attention to the descending mutation.
116 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 6.13(b) Transposed compound scales, from Cotumacci, Principles and Solfeggi (c.
1755; GB-​Lbl, Add. 14241), fol. 4r, with original syllables and grave accents

Ex. 6.17(b) A re-​mi-​fa melody based on the simple scale on G, from Greco, Partimenti
(c. 1720; I-​Nc, 45.1.65), fol. 6r, with original syllables

When reading solfeggio, every note was allotted a syllable. When singing,
however, some notes were vocalized to the vowel of another, as we shall find out
in Chapter 7. In this melody (example 6.18[b]), the chromatic passing notes in
mm. 2–​3 and elsewhere would not have been sung as sol-​sol-​fa-​fa but simply
as so-​ol fa-​a. The syllable re in m. 18 would probably have been maintained
through the leap of the third in m. 19, to form the first note of a simple 1-​2-​1
re-​mi-​re cadence running across mm. 18–​21. Similarly, m. 30 should be sung
to two syllables at the half note, mi and fa, forming part of a larger mi-​fa-​mi-​re
(2-​3-​2-​1) cadence.
Ex. 6.18(b) Solfeggio no. 4, “On the effect of interim [chromatic] syllable-​notes”, from
Paisiello, Principles of Music (1804; US-​Eu, Ceccarelli Collection, Ms. 1234; Gj5804),
with syllables added by the author

Ex. 6.20(b) An exercise in ignoring accidentals, from Leo, Canto fermo (1730s?; I-​Nc,
34.4.13), fol. 1v, with syllables added by the author
118 The Solfeggio Tradition

In keeping with its function as a reading exercise, Sabbatini added a syllable to

every note in this melody (example 6.21[b]). If it were sung, the chromatic passing
notes would likely be vocalized to the vowel of their parent diatonic note, as attested
by markings in manuscripts to be discussed in Chapter 7.

Ex. 6.21(b) The chromatic scale, from Sabbatini, Theoretical Elements (1789–90), 3:33;
with original syllables
Ex. 6.25(b) An arrangement of “Là ci darem la mano” from Mozart’s Don Giovanni,
with syllables added by the author

Ex. 6.26(b) An arrangement of the Andante cantabile from Hofstetter’s String Quartet
op. 3, no. 5 (Hob.III:17), with syllables added by the author

Ex. 6.27(b) An arrangement of the melody from Haydn’s String Quartet op. 76, no. 3,
Poco adagio, with syllables added by the author
120 The Solfeggio Tradition

Appendix to Chapter 6: Ambiguities, Complexities,

and Supplementary Guidelines

From its drawn-​out evolution and accumulated jumble of features, the Galant
solmization system inevitably gave rise to multiple potential readings. For those
trained to speak solfeggio, this was its strength. It allowed them to name familiar
note patterns wherever they occurred. For those like us, however, who lack the
guidance of a fluent maestro, it can lead to ambiguities. Because the six-​note scale
is made up of two intervallically identical subsets—​do-​re-​mi and fa-​sol-​la—​and be-
cause the dual hexachords of the compound scale overlap, it is sometimes difficult
to determine which of two or three viable options a contemporary musician would
have preferred. When closing a melody with scale degrees 3-​2-​1, for instance, would
an apprentice typically have read them as mi-​re-​do or la-​sol-​fa? Would an initial
tonic have been conceived as do or as fa from the hexachord a fourth below? Where
there is no clear stepwise contour leading upward to re or downward to la, on which
syllable should a mutation occur? What determines whether an accidental should
be ignored or should trigger a modulation? Where exactly should a change of key
take effect?
Answers can be sought in contemporary sources that contain syllables and other
performative annotations (to be discussed at length in Chapter 7), but the picture
they paint is by no means uniform. Joseph Münster’s Instruction in Music (1748), for
instance, contradicts almost every other source by recommending that ascending
mutations occur on ut rather than re.46
Although this may be dismissed as just one of many local idiosyncrasies, evidence
suggests that solmization practice could differ more significantly according to the
maestro’s progressive or conservative inclinations. The practice of transposing the
syllables of the natural compound scale to effect a modulation was documented as
early as Banchieri (1611),47 and sources from Samber (1704) and Agricola (1757)
to Solano (1764) and Sabbatini (1789–​90) made clear that musicians were expected
to recognize twelve major keys, each with its own distinct pairing of transposed
hexachords. Yet some maestros resisted this innovation and continued to use the
Renaissance-​era antico system, employing hard and soft melody and ignoring
all accidentals. They refused to acknowledge sharps as anything more than vocal
inflections and continued to regard their implied transpositions as false music
(musica ficta), to be denied recognition within the true music (musica recta) of the
gamut sanctioned by the Church. A solmized canon in C major by Paolo Altieri, for
instance, dating from 1769, underlays an F♯ with the syllable fa rather than mi, as
if it were in hard melody.48 Traetta’s solfeggi conspicuously ignore sharps, treating
cadences in G major as if they remained in C major unless subsequently confirmed
by a firm perfect cadence. In general, the antico system lingered on only in plain-
chant and old-​fashioned counterpoint, but the Neapolitan maestro Saverio Valente
appears to have used it for all kinds of music as late as the second decade of the nine-
teenth century.49
 Speaking Solfeggio 121

Despite these challenges, a plausible solmization can be reconstructed in most

cases by applying the rules set out above, testing alternatives for their pedagogical
coherence and singability via practice and reflection, and inferring general princi-
ples from the surviving evidence. Seven such principles are set out below. Because
they attempt to explain and justify the solmization choices made in subsequent
chapters, and because they touch on highly complex aspects of practice, for the
second time I recommend skipping directly to Chapter 7 to find out how solfeggi
were sung. Those inclined to question the suggested solmizations may then refer
back to the guidelines below, which informed my efforts to reconstruct the most
likely readings of eighteenth-​century solfeggi.
1. The Galant age favored simplicity rather than complexity. It follows that
solmizations should encompass as few mutations as possible. Solfeggi were
conceived with syllables in mind, which meant that melodies tended to favor the
shape of the hexachord, extended by its fa above la. Where a mutation was una-
voidable, it usually followed a comprehensible shape of its own. Melodic units
seldom flitted between different hexachords in rapid and erratic ways, because to
do so would have made solmization unnecessarily tiresome and, more to the point,
would have sounded unstylish.
2. An important exception to this principle arose through the technique of
generating a “deception” (inganno), which involved singing a syllable or syllables
from one hexachord to the corresponding pitch or pitches from another.50 This
was a common way to develop melodies and extend their range without departing
mentally from one hexachord. For instance, to enliven the otherwise plain stepwise
melodic ­figure 4-​5-​4-​3 (fa-​sol-​fa-​mi), as shown in ­example 6.28(a), singers would
sometimes swap sol on scale degree 5 for the other sol within the compound scale,
on scale degree 2. This resulted in a leaping sixth, or what Gjerdingen calls a “high
2 drop,”51 sung to the same syllables. The remainder of e­ xample 6.28 illustrates sev-
eral other common syllabic deceptions, which will be explained more fully later in
connection with specific solfeggio examples. Although technically these leaps in-
volve mutation, or rather, transmutation, from my own practice I surmise that they
would have been learned and conceived as variant readings of the main hexachord.
There were, after all, only six possible deceptions within any given scale, and they
were easily learned. Because such sudden shifts often gave rise to shocks, surprises,
and jests, in subsequent examples I label the transmutated syllable as the “other” sol,
fa, or whatever it happens to be.
3. As a general rule, syllables were determined by the need to avoid running out of
them. Singers would look ahead to ensure that they did not find themselves stranded
on an outlying do or la with nowhere to go. These boundary syllables were used spar-
ingly, unless the melody was obviously circumscribed by a hexachord. In descending
motion, the subset la-​sol-​fa was favored over mi-​re-​do because it allowed the melody
to continue downward. This was especially important at perfect cadences because
the tonic was frequently confirmed by a 1-​7-​1 soprano cadence, which could only
be solmized as fa-​mi-​fa (never, as far as I know, by transmutation, as do\mi/​do).52
Ex. 6.28 Some common deceptions (inganni)

(a) The “high 2 drop”

(b) The “other fa” converging half cadence

(c) The “false soprano cadence,” fa\mi-​fa

(d) The Prinner with syncopated “other fa”

(e) The “false tenor cadence,” la\​sol-​fa

 Speaking Solfeggio 123

In ascending motion, do-​re-​mi or its equivalent fa/​re-​mi was preferred to fa-​sol-​la,

for similar reasons.53 By and large, do was avoided, even at the beginnings and ends
of melodies. This can be explained in part by the frequency of the lower 7-​1 mi-​fa
semitone at cadences and in part by the way musicians learned to read notation. In
plainchant an initial do was solmized as fa by default so as to align with the clefs. The
first of the eight standard tunes used for singing psalms, for instance, the so-​called
first church tone, encompassed only four notes: F-​G-​A-​B♭. To a modern observer, it
seems reasonable to assume that they would have been solmized as do-​re-​mi-​fa from
the soft scale. But all sources agree that the melody was to be identified as fa-​sol-​la-​fa,
presumably so that its outer notes coincided with the fa-​clefs.54
4. Vocal quality provided an equally compelling reason for choosing fa instead of
do. The vowels a and e were considered most suitable for singing, whereas o, i, and
u were little more than tolerated. Indeed, they were explicitly excluded from florid
melismatic passages. This meant that fa and la were everywhere preferable to do and
mi purely for their pleasing vowels. This predilection for a shows through in a feature
common to both solfeggi and contemporary arias, which I call the fa-​flourish: a short
opening cadenza built on the tonic. A typical example can be seen in the Cantabile ex-
ercise by Leo shown in e­ xample 6.29, which begins with an unaccompanied arpeggio
rising from the tonic followed by a staggered ornamental run up the octave, similar to
the “double sprint” described by Mancini (1777).55 Given that this virtuosic celebra-
tion of the tonic hits a high B♭, it is unlikely that it would have been sung to the syllable
do instead of fa. It follows that, as a general rule, and particularly on high, prolonged,
or embellished notes, fa and la were the preferred options where possible.
5. The majority of mutations in eighteenth-​century solfeggio were of the kind
that Renaissance theorists called “implicit”; that is, the change of hexachord took
place imperceptibly between one note and another, rather than by an explicit muta-
tion on the same note.56 When mutating in ascending motion from sol on 5 to /​re on
6, for instance, it was not necessary to pronounce both sol from the lower hexachord
and do from the upper. Do was simply imagined.
There were, however, two exceptions to this principle. First, obvious punctua-
tion points and pauses in the melody took precedence over the /​re and \la rules
for implicit mutation. This meant that explicit mutations could occur on the same
note if separated by a conspicuous break. Many examples in Solano (1764) dem-
onstrate this procedure. Example 6.30 shows, for instance, a solfeggio by Perez

Ex. 6.29 Leo, 50 Solfeggi (D-​Dl, Mus. 2460. K. 500), no. 7, mm. 1–​4
124 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 6.30 An extract from a solfeggio by Perez, annotated by Solano (1764), 119

that Solano annotated with three syllables: la, re, and fa. They are highlighted in
bold type to distinguish them from my additions in brackets. The la indicates that
the note B belongs to the hexachord on D, within the key of G major (G-​solreut).
After an eighth-​note pause, it switches to the re from the hexachord on A, within
the dominant key of D major. The C-​fa in m. 3 cancels out the preceding C-​mi
and returns to the tonic key. The mutation in m. 2 is therefore “explicit”: B-​la
becomes B-​re.
Second, in certain circumstances an explicit mutation could take place on a re-
peated note without the need for a break or pause. This type of mutation is com-
monly found in Leo’s solfeggi for beginners and appears to have developed into
a special device for garnering applause toward the end of a melody. It involved
intoning a single pitch while the bass transformed its harmonic meaning. A typ-
ical instance can be seen in ­example 6.31, taken from the final bars of a solfeggio
by Farinelli. Having modulated to D major in m. 17 by way of a vocal leading tone
to tonic, or mi-​fa, the bass proceeds to undermine the new key by reversing the
process through a fa-​mi in G major. The repeated D in the melody thus mutates
explicitly from scale degree 1 in the dominant key to scale degree 5 in the tonic, or,
in eighteenth-​century terms, from D-​fa in D-​lasolrè in m. 17 to D-​sol in G-​solreut
by the beginning of m. 18. For this reason I call it a flatward fa\sol modulation.
Farinelli no doubt performed this technique with due aplomb by intensifying and
accelerating the trill toward the modulation, as suggested by the notation. (The

Ex. 6.31 Farinelli [Carlo Broschi], Solfeggi (US-​SFsc, M2.5 v.71), no. 6-​1, Gj5311, mm.
16–​19, with bass added by the author
 Speaking Solfeggio 125

dotted line in m. 18, called a “trait,” indicates the prolongation of a syllable by

vocalized embellishment).
Other instances of explicit mutation may well have occurred in Galant solfeggio.
A partly solmized fragment of a duo dating from the early 1800s, for instance, spells
out a mutation on a single pitch from the la belonging to one hexachord of the key
to the mi belonging to the other.57 In this case there appears to be no clear rationale
for the switch. The solmization may represent a Tyrolean anomaly or it may simply
have been worked out by an inexperienced beginner.
6. The bass line never came first in solfeggio. It was always created in response to
a melody. There are many solfeggio manuscripts with missing or incomplete bass
lines, but none with a bass and no melody. This means that the bass often contains
clues to help with solmization. Because these usually indicate when and when not
to add a syllable to a note, rather than the choice of syllables themselves, they will
only become fully comprehensible after Chapter 7. I include a few comments here
for the sake of completeness.
Sometimes it is difficult to tell whether two notes a step apart are harmoni-
cally independent, requiring two syllables, or whether they form an appoggiatura,
requiring one. In the first extract in e­ xample 6.32, for instance, without the bass
it would be difficult to tell whether the melodic E-​D in the second bar should be
solmized as mi-​re or whether the E should be ignored as an appoggiatura. The bass
confirms that both E and D relate to the same harmony (G major) and should there-
fore be sung to one syllable, re.
In the second extract in e­xample 6.32, conversely, both A-​ G and F-​ E are
harmonized with independent notes, in this case forming a standard Prinner bass:
F-​E-​D-​C. This suggests that they should each receive a separate syllable. Without the
aid of the bass, they might just as plausibly have been solmized as appoggiaturas over
a tonic pedal, as indicated by the alternatives in parentheses beneath.
7. Textbooks taught that modulations in solfeggio were occasioned by alterations
to the fundamental fa and mi of a key. Yet in practice they seldom took effect on
exactly those notes. Some rudimentary solfeggi did juxtapose a fundamental fa
against its modulatory new mi to prove a point, as in m. 4 of the basic theme by
Porpora shown in e­ xample 6.33, but this kind of explicit mutation rarely occurred
in more sophisticated melodies.58 The modulation usually took effect well before

Ex. 6.32 Extracts from Leo (I-​Nc, 34.2.6/​2, Solfeggio 247), fol. 49v, no. 23, mm. 6–​7,
and Cafaro (D-​B, Mus. ms. 2704), 170, mm. 1–​2, both transposed to C major
126 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 6.33 An example of an “explicit” modulation/​mutation from Porpora, Solfeggi for

Soprano (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 335), fol. 5r, mm. 1–​6. The ligatures in mm. 1 and 2 instruct
the singer to maintain the same syllable while sharping the second note of each pair.
In this way the melody illustrated the difference between these incidental chromatic
passing notes and the solmized modulation (without ligature) in m. 4.

the new accidental appeared, if indeed it appeared at all. Returning to ­example 6.30,
for instance, Solano switched from G major to D major not on the new fundamental
mi on C♯ but on the re that began the new phrase. This underscores an important
point: The precise location of a modulation was entirely dependent on melodic con-
text. Musicians were just as able then as they are now to tell when a new key took
control by means of a combination of ambitus, accidentals, phrasing, and melodic
cues such as cadences and punctuation points.
In judging when the syllables should switch from one compound scale to an-
other, I have found it useful also to consider melodic formulas similar to the “key
endings” (terminazioni di tono) used by keyboard players to identify modulations.59
Because these derive from the four main melodic cadences outlined in contempo-
rary sources—​soprano, alto, tenor, and bass60—​it makes sense to presume that they
originated in solfeggio and later migrated to the bass for lessons in partimento. In
the key of C major, these cadences, categorized in terms of note names, numbered
scale degrees, and solfa syllables, were as follows:

Soprano cadence: C-​B-​C; 1-​7-​1; fa-​mi-​fa

Alto cadence: G-​F-​E; 5-​4-​3; sol-​fa-​mi
Tenor cadence: E-​D-​C; 3-​2-​1; mi-​re-​do
Bass cadence: [E-​]F-​G-​C; [3-​]4-​5-​1; [mi-​]fa-​sol-​do

In minor keys the melodic cadences were slightly different. They allowed for
more leeway in terms of chromaticism. Taking the key of A minor as an example,
the four melodic cadences can be listed as follows:

Soprano cadence: A-​G♯-​A; 1-​7-​1; la-​sol-​la or re-​do-​re

Alto cadence: [D♯-​]E-​D-​C; [4♯-​]5-​4-​3; [sol-​]la-​sol-​fa
Tenor cadence: C-​B-​A; 3-​2-​1; fa-​mi-​re
Bass cadence: F-​E-​A; 6-​5-​1; fa-​la-​re; alternatively D-​E-​A; 4-​5-​1; sol-​la-​re
 Speaking Solfeggio 127

Ex. 6.34 An “extraordinary modulation,” Solano (1764), 115

A passing allusion to one or another of these cadence figures in a melody could

be enough to induce a modulation. In guides to partimento playing, they were usu-
ally reduced to two-​note formulas. On encountering a descending semitone, for
instance, players were advised to treat it as scale degrees 6-​5 in a minor key and to
modulate accordingly. The same held true for solfeggio singing. Thus in C major
the notes F♯-​G could imply a 7-​1 soprano cadence in G major, the notes C-​B could
imply an alto cadence in G major (4-​3, fa-​mi), A-​G a tenor cadence (2-​1, re-​do),
and C-​D a bass cadence (4-​5, fa-​sol). Deciding when to invoke the “key ending”
depended on context.
This close tie between the key endings of partimento and melodic cadences points
to a profound relation between soprano and bass in eighteenth-​century music. The
parts were often interchangeable. And both could be understood in terms of solfa
syllables, as we shall find out in Chapter 13.
Example 6.34 reproduces a passage from Solano (1764) to demonstrate the mul-
tiple factors that need to be taken into account when reconstructing modulations
in solfeggio. It shows a change of key from A major to G major, presented here in its
relative guise of E minor. Solano accounts for this “extraordinary” modulation in
theoretical terms by pointing out that G♮ and C♮ cancel out two of the sharps within
the A major key signature, in effect modulating instantaneously down one fifth to D
major then down another to G major. This explanation neatly fits the standard “mi
becomes fa” model outlined in Lesson 6 above, but it seems unlikely to correspond
to the way fluent solfeggio singers would have approached the passage. For them,
the most telling detail would have been the half cadence in m. 3 on a sharped do: a
sure sign of a minor, or re, mode. Together with the ambitus of the scale in m. 2,
which opens with a minor third A-​C and a bass-​cadence key ending C-​B, and which
accentuates the minor triad from la to re, e­ xample 6.34 suggests that modulations
beyond the circle of fifths were determined more by a range of melodic factors than
by changes to fundamental fas and mis.
 7
Singing Solfeggio

Niccolò Porpora was arguably the greatest vocal teacher of the eighteenth century.
He was certainly the most successful, having produced not one but an entire cast of
international superstars.1
Legend has it that he wrote all his singing exercises on one sheet of paper, or so
claimed a prominent early nineteenth-​century music encyclopedia.2 Its story was
taken up and expanded by a number of authors, most notably the Belgian music
scholar François-​Joseph Fétis, who recounted it as a dramatic scene complete with
dialogue. He told how Porpora once conceived a friendship for a young pupil and
asked him whether he was prepared to persevere in a course of study, however te-
dious and demanding it might prove to be. “Upon his answer in the affirmative,
the master noted, upon a single page of ruled paper, the diatonic and chromatic
scales, ascending and descending, the intervals of third, fourth, fifth, etc., in order
to teach him to take them with freedom, and to sustain the sounds, together with
trills, groups, appoggiaturas, and passages of vocalization of different kinds.”3 For six
years they worked on nothing but this single page. The master would demonstrate
practical examples and the pupil would follow his lead. In the final year, Porpora
added to it some lessons in articulation, pronunciation, and declamation. The pupil,
who supposed himself still to be learning the elements, was much surprised when
his master at last announced to him that he had nothing more to learn and was in
fact the finest singer in all Italy, and thus the world. “He spoke the truth, for this
singer was Caffarelli.”4
The oft-​told myth may or may not be true. There is no way of telling. At best,
it seems a gross exaggeration, an improbable tale devised to extol the benefits of
singing daily scales and intervals. At worst, it seems to defy common sense. How
could a single page of lessons have sufficed to produce one of the greatest singers of
the eighteenth century, famed for his improvisatory skills?
Yet Fétis stood by his account. In a later retelling he even added a comment that
underscored the historical reality of Porpora’s one-​page method by contrasting it
with the modern tendency to learn to sing only from given scores: “This mode of in-
struction is no longer pursued. A pupil who places himself under the care of a master,
only goes to him to learn such an air or such a duet. . . . So that we have no more
Caffarellis.”5 I argue that Fétis’s unlikely fable represents a poetically condensed but
fundamentally accurate description of the eighteenth-​century Neapolitan method
of solfeggio training. In keeping with the evidence of manuscript sources, his anec-
dote relates that singing was taught by way of practical example, that it began with
scales and leaps that later were enhanced with all manner of ornamentation, and, as

The Solfeggio Tradition. Nicholas Baragwanath, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197514085.001.0001
 Singing Solfeggio 129

inferred from his remarks about the final year, that it progressed from solmization
through vocalization to actual text.
This three-​stage process had been the norm for basic musical training for
centuries. Countless sources specify that students should first become thoroughly
fluent in solmization before progressing to simple vowels. Only after mastering
the vocalization of divisions and ornaments should they be allowed to underlay
melodies with text.6
The crucial part of the story is the mention of a few “passages of vocalization,”
which were said to have occupied the final space on Porpora’s page. The English
word passages was borrowed directly from the original French version of the story
(1811), but Fétis replaced it with “traits de vocalisation.” The word traits denotes
features, characteristics, or traits and can also convey the idea of tracing a line. Most
tellingly of all, it means a short stroke of the pen or pencil of the sort that are com-
monly found in solfeggio manuscripts.7
In order to understand how these traits provide the key to the Galant art of
melody, it is necessary first to ask why so many maestros had their students
sing Amen.

Amen

In a handwritten copy of a solfeggio collection by Leo, a German scribe underlaid

the opening Largo e cantabile with “A-​” beneath its initial note and “-​men” beneath
its first significant cadence in the dominant key. She then placed a second “A-​” on
the note immediately following the cadence and maintained it until the appearance
of another “-​men” at the close of the next movement, an Allegro.8
It appears that the practice of vocalizing solfeggi in this way was commonplace in
eighteenth-​century Germany. A manuscript attributed to Carl Heinrich Graun, for
instance, contains melodies set to Amen, and Johann Hiller used the same word for
a series of basic vocal exercises.9 Several solfeggi in Tommaso Traetta’s collection (I-​
Rama, Accademico A-​Ms-​3777) are similarly annotated. According to Corri, even
Porpora made his students sing Amen for vocalizations.10
Why did they use this particular word, as opposed to any other with a similarly
prominent a vowel? The answer, as so often with the solfeggio tradition, must be
sought in church. The word Amen features in the early scriptures and is usually
rendered in English as “so be it” or “verily.” It is associated with the Hebrew word
for truth. In church services, it is frequently encountered as a closing formula for
prayers and hymns to affirm their content and to express agreement. In plainchant,
it is ubiquitous as the signal for a cadenza.
Of all the words in the liturgy, Amen is most likely to be sung to a melismatic
flourish. That explains why the Bolognese maestro and monk Lorenzo Penna chose
it to illustrate the rule that melismatic passages should be sung throughout to the
vowel of their first syllable. They should receive syllables only on their opening
130 The Solfeggio Tradition

and closing notes, just like an Amen in plainchant. Penna’s comments occur at the
very end of his treatise, and he makes clear that the real business of learning to sing
begins where his text leaves off: with practical lessons delivered by a maestro in how
to render a notated melody in a stylish and pleasing manner, or in other words, how
to turn it into music. “Because singing the notes and words on the beats in a simple
way without any embellishment does not gratify the ear,” he declared, “one must
learn to sing with some graces.”11 His example of what I shall henceforth call the
Amen rule is shown in ­example 7.1. It demonstrates how two notes separated by
the interval of a minor third could be performed in either a “natural” manner, with
each note receiving one syllable (re-​fa or A-​men), or “with movement,” with the first
syllable encompassing several notes. In Penna’s words: “Sometimes a composition
is made up of long white notes of one or more beats, especially if it is in a cappella
style. Breaking these up every now and then creates a beautiful effect. It is a good
idea to add some movement above them, to break the long notes up and turn them
into smaller ones, without losing the notated time. In other words, to sing them like
an Amen.”12
The real study of singing thus began where the note-​for-​note solmization of
basic exercises and canto fermo gave way to the free diminutions of contemporary
canto figurato. Once a student had learned to read the scales and leaps as individual
syllables, the next step was to turn these plain intervals into music. The gap between
re and fa, for instance, could be realized in countless ways—​more than enough to
fill six years of study. The art of solfeggio was, in this sense, an essential prepara-
tion for composition. It taught how to elaborate simple syllabic note patterns akin,
but not identical, to Gjerdingen’s (2007) Galant schemata, enabling those who had
progressed through additional lessons in partimento and counterpoint to harmo-
nize and notate them as finished compositions. The Italian school of melody was
grounded in the sung realization of syllable-​notes. That is why Manfredini could
so casually observe that after “rigorous and continuous study for three years, one
should know how to sing with improvisation, this not being very difficult.”13
The progression from speaking syllables note-​for-​note, as outlined in Chapter 6,
to singing syllables to more than one note, as outlined below, and from there to
singing actual texts, was described by the Neapolitan maestro Giuseppe Bozzelli
in his “Inaugural address on the Italian school of singing according to national ar-
tistic traditions from Nicola Porpora to Girolamo Crescentini,” published to mark
his appointment to a professorship at the Milan Conservatory in 1880. Given that
Crescentini retired from the stage in 1812 and came to represent the last of the great

Ex. 7.1 Penna, The First Musical Preliminaries (1679), 42

 Singing Solfeggio 131

eighteenth-​century castratos, Bozzelli’s intention was clear. He meant to remind his

readers that he was heir to the golden age of bel canto and in doing so to bolster his
own teaching credentials. Having studied in Naples during the 1850s, Bozzelli was
party to information that may well have come from aged musicians who had been
trained according to the old method, or at least from those for whom it remained a
living memory:

Vocal melody [in the eighteenth century] was a progressive and methodical
course of study. It began with [1]‌preliminary technical theory [spoken solfeggio].
From there it passed onto [2] the proper ways to treat the voice, through various
exercises in scales, leaps, and diverse combinations—​diatonic and chromatic—​of
two, three, or four notes, etc., with a broad execution, sustaining the sounds well
so as to obtain a pure, equal, and intense emission; to unite the vocal registers; to
acquire a long and relaxed exhalation, to regulate and conduct [the sounds] while
phrasing correctly. . . . Then, after the aforementioned [1] preliminary theory
and [2] so-​called preparatory practical exercises, there followed another prac-
tical pathway (of the utmost importance) called [3] sung solfeggio, which means
naming the notes: an exercise that, while imprinting the sound of the note in the
mind, also helps one to acquire, from the start, that incisive accent (by means of
the articulation of the vowels), which opens up a route for the student to follow to
be able to sing with words.14

The most revealing passage relates to the crucial interim stage, which has gone
largely unrecorded in archives, between speaking syllables (preliminary theory)
and sung solfeggio proper. Bozzelli gives a clue as to what these improvised “pre-
paratory practical exercises” involved by recommending that the scales and leaps be
sung in combinations of two or more notes “while phrasing correctly.” Well before
they encountered notated solfeggi, in other words, students would practice singing
scales and leaps by arranging them into coherent phrases of various lengths. Leaps
of the third, for instance, could be performed in countless ways, whether in twos
(e.g., do-​mi, re-​fa), threes (e.g., do-​mi-​re, re-​fa-​mi), or fours (do-​re-​mi-​do, re-​mi-​fa-​
re), and with all manner of ornamentation, repetition, and chromaticism.
A hint as to how this was done can be found in an account of the teaching method
of Giuseppe Aprile, renowned castrato and maestro to Cimarosa. He was said to
have started his course of solfeggio by giving “lessons for the intervals, both quick
and slow, and the divisions most frequently met with.”15 Divisions refers to estab-
lished ways to elaborate individual notes by dividing them into shorter values, for
instance, by applying ornaments, leaps, runs, and arpeggios.16 In this process, the
syllable-​note retained its identity regardless of the number or range of vocalized
pitches.
Agricola (1757) provided a clear and concise description of the way divisions
were executed in his commentary on Tosi’s earlier treatise on singing. Although
Agricola dealt primarily with texted arias, his advice applied equally to solfeggio
132 The Solfeggio Tradition

practice. Indeed, it almost certainly derived from it. Agricola distinguished two
ways to sing divisions, in both of which, and in accordance with the Amen rule,
“one articulates the vowel only on the first note” and maintains it “unchanged to
the end.”17 In his first category, detached (battuto) divisions, corresponding to
Hiller’s “staccato” ornaments,18 the vowel of the syllable was repeated “gently on
every note” in the manner of a light laugh, as in la-​a-​a-​a. The trick was to avoid too
overt a glottal stop, which could lead to the dreaded sgagateata, or clucking like
a chicken: la-​ga-​ga-​ga. In Agricola’s second category, slurred (scivolato) divisions,
corresponding to Hiller’s “legato” ornaments, the vowel of the first syllable was sus-
tained “(without repetition and in one breath) through as many of the notes which
follow are to be slurred.”19
The first mode, “detached” performance, offers valuable clues for interpreting
solfeggio manuscripts because it allows ornaments to encompass a variety of ar-
ticulation and phrasing marks, including staccato dots and multiple slurs, while
remaining governed by one syllable. It was Agricola’s preferred method, and he
deplored the new legato style being introduced by “the most modern schools,”
which “tend to slur almost all, even the liveliest divisions.”20
Learning to sing the Italian way by converting solmized scales and intervals into
coherent chains of little Amens, either detached or slurred, rested on the skill of
the maestro in demonstrating practical examples for the pupil to follow. Both Tosi
(1723) and Veracini (c. 1730) confirm as much, Tosi going so far as to declare that
verbal instruction was quite useless for learning to sing.21 The practical nature of
the method explains why it vanished so completely with the demise of castratos and
conservatory-​orphanages at the end of the eighteenth century.
It also bodes ill for my attempt to reconstruct it. Not only am I a poor substi-
tute for a Porpora or a Caffarelli, but I am also inaudible. The reader must rely
on verbal instruction after all. And since neither of us has any hope of being able
to hear the original exercises, how can I offer a plausible interpretation of their
content?
The answer lies in many thousands of solfeggio manuscripts. They record
compilations of sung lessons, usually conceived by a maestro and written down as
exemplars for a pupil to sing but sometimes originating, as I argue, in the pupil’s own
improvisations in class. Restoring the missing syllables to these melodies reveals
how they relate to simple patterns of scales and leaps as featured on Porpora’s page.
Knowing which syllables govern the busy “surface” ornaments uncovers the music’s
underlying frameworks, like some historically informed version of Heinrich
Schenker’s reductive analytical theory. A few old-​fashioned contrapuntal solfeggi
appear to have been solmized more or less note-​for-​note, like the two-​part counter-
point exercises from which they derive, but those in florid Galant style teem with
elaborately performed syllables, each sung like a little Amen. Although I cannot
demonstrate what these may have sounded like in practice, I can at least provide
a theoretical basis for others to understand them or, better still, to try to re-​create
them in song.
 Singing Solfeggio 133

“Scales and leaps,” incidentally, which form the foundation of the method,
were standard for rudimentary lessons throughout the eighteenth century. The
earliest mention of the term appears in either the “Elements” appended to Angelo
Bertalotti’s Solfeggi for Soprano and Alto (1698) or Cristoforo Caresana’s Solfeggi
on the Intervals of the Scale (1690s), although the origins of the technique appear
much older. The Santini collection at the diocesan archive in Münster includes, for
instance, eleven sixteenth-​century manuscripts attributed to Palestrina and titled
“Scales” (D-​MÜs, Sant Hs 2981) that contain basic lessons in solfeggio and counter-
point that clearly prefigure Bertalotti’s “Elements,” as do the exemplars in Giovanni
Bernardino Nanino’s treatise on improvised counterpoint (c. 1606). Many later sol-
feggio compilations encompass similar arrangements of scales and leaps, without
necessarily naming them as such. The term gained currency toward the end of
the eighteenth century in titles of amateur primers for singing. The Milanese ped-
agogue Bonifazio Asioli neatly summarized their use, for instance, in his Scales,
Leaps, and Other Preparations for Solfeggio (1816).22
In what follows, we shall pass over the grueling years that real apprentices spent
learning to solmize scales and leaps and take up the study of solfeggio at the point
where basic note-​naming began to give way to traits of vocalization. This means
that readers will need to read the syllables off the page, rather than conjuring them
up at sight as eighteenth-​century musicians were wont to do. They must also take
my proposed solmizations on trust. The rationale behind them was explained in
Chapter 6, in particular the closing supplementary guidelines, and additional cases
will be explored in subsequent chapters. For now, it is necessary to put forward
the claim that although these reconstructions inevitably involve a degree of guess-
work, which is openly acknowledged, they nonetheless represent the most plausible
interpretations, based on evidence drawn from the following: (1) an understanding
of hitherto unremarked performance indications that regularly appear in sol-
feggio manuscripts, (2) a thorough knowledge of contemporary solmization and
its founding principles, (3) familiarity with a broad range of contemporary vocal
repertory and singing treatises, and (4) consideration of the practical demands and
pedagogical purposes of each solfeggio.

The Do-​re-​mi of Solfeggio

The first staff on Porpora’s legendary page of exercises almost certainly would have
contained a major scale. For up to a year or more, students would speak its syllables.
There was no escaping this stricture until they could prove their worth in solmi-
zation. As Tosi maintained, the teacher “should never weary of having the student
solfege as long as he sees the need. If he lets him sing too early only on the vowels, he
does not understand how to teach.”23 The reason for enforcing this tedious activity
was that solfeggio imprinted a map of named intervallic patterns indelibly onto the
mind, a map that remained valid not only in any key but also in any part of the
134 The Solfeggio Tradition

scale and on any staff. In the Galant system, patterns of intervals that could be used
as bases for variation only had to be learned once. That was the secret to its suc-
cess. The ascending intervallic progression tone-​tone-​semitone, for instance, which
occurs twice in every major scale on degrees 1-​2-​3-​4 and 5-​6-​7-​8 (e.g., in C major,
C-​D-​E-​F and G-​A-​B-​C), was known as simply do-​re-​mi-​fa. A descending version of
the same tone-​tone-​semitone progression, which occurs on scale degrees 6-​5-​4-​3
and 3-​2-​1-​7 (e.g., in C major, A-​G-​F-​E and E-​D-​C-​B), could be conceived every-
where as la-​sol-​fa-​mi. Where two or more solmizations of the same interval pattern
were possible, they usually helped the singer distinguish between its different con-
ventional uses. The exact choice of syllables depended on a variety of contextual
factors. This naming system meant that eighteenth-​century musicians could engage
their knowledge of conventional patterns wherever they fell, regardless of key or
clef and without having to consider multiple varieties.
Once the solmized scales and leaps had become second nature to students, they
began to learn how to realize them in song. Evidence as to how this was done can be
found in two extraordinary manuscripts containing teachings by Saverio Valente,
one titled Music Theory, or explanatory principles of all that may occur in learning
music, both vocal and instrumental (I-​Mc, Fondo Noseda Q.13.20; partial auto-
graph in Q.13.19) and the other titled Introduction to Song, or lessons for simple
and compound leaps; with explanations and other theoretical matters pertaining to
the mechanism of singing (D-​Hs, MA 829).
Thanks to the recent research of Maria Luisa Baroni,24 we now know that Valente
entered the Loreto Conservatory in Naples on March 12, 1755, at age twelve, and
that he studied under Fenaroli. From 1767 he worked there as third-​class maestro
and, a decade later, as second-​class maestro with responsibility for teaching sol-
feggio. When the conservatory closed in 1797 he continued in the same role at the
Onofrio Conservatory. Because Valente did not use the honorary title Accademico
Filarmonico before 1811, his autograph textbook “Music Theory” must have been
written for classes at the newly amalgamated Royal College of Music in Naples,
which superseded the last remaining conservatories in 1806. This would explain
why it contains detailed and explicit performance markings of a kind rarely found
in earlier sources. It was meant for the classroom instruction of fee-​paying students,
as opposed to practical lessons with institutionalized apprentices. Among its many
carefully annotated performance signs, which presumably record on paper what
Valente and others taught orally years earlier at the conservatories, are those for
legato, for singing staccato dots or spikes, for ornaments such as acciaccaturas and
mordents, for appoggiaturas from both above and below, for runs encompassing
various intervals, for upper and lower trills of various sorts, and for interrupted
(half) and final (perfect) cadences.25 Together, these signs give some idea of the
subtlety and richness of basic solfeggio training.
Example 7.2 shows the beginning of one of Valente’s many exercises for singing
the scale. It progresses by semitone, in accordance with the second item listed by
Fétis on Porpora’s fabled page.26 The markings have been faithfully transcribed
 Singing Solfeggio 135

Ex. 7.2 Valente, Music Theory (I-​Mc, Fondo Noseda Q.13.19, fol. 2v and I-​Mc, Fondo
Noseda Q.13.20, 17), mm. 1–​4

from the original, with the exception of the dotted slurs and the syllables. It is worth
dwelling on this brief example at some length because it may be taken to represent
in microcosm the entire art of solfeggio.
The first things to note in e­ xample 7.2 are the traits of vocalization, the lines that
Valente added beneath the melody. In manuscript sources these usually appear
straighter than normal slurs and ties, which are markedly curlier. A glance at any of
Zingarelli’s many collections of autograph solfeggi (available online) would reveal
countless classic traits as well as a few examples of their opposite, the enlarged dot,
to be explained in connection with e­ xample 8.26. Several typical examples of traits
can be seen throughout this chapter. Although for clarity I have transcribed them in
­example 7.2 (and elsewhere in this book) as lines that cover all the notes belonging
to their associated syllable, in the original handwritten sources they seldom pin-
point boundary notes with accuracy. Judgment must be made afresh in each case,
using melodic context as a guide.
Traits perform a very particular function. They instruct the singer not to
change syllable. All notes that fall within them are, in effect, governed by one main
note, either the first (according to the Amen rule) or the last (according to the
Appoggiatura rule, described below). In advanced solfeggio, traits may encompass
whole roulades of notes. Here, in ­example 7.2, they serve merely to show that the
syllable do controls both C and C♯ and that re controls D and D♯; in other words, the
chromatic passing notes should not be solmized but, rather, vocalized. Similar traits
connecting sharped notes to their natural fundamentals can be found in many sol-
feggio manuscripts.27 In conceptual terms, they taught that chromatic vocalizations
could be used to enhance a melody, even one as simple as a do-​re-​mi, without
altering the underlying scale.
That the intervals from do to re and from re to mi in ­example 7.2 were sung as
integrated two-​measure legato phrases, as suggested by the editorial dotted slurs
and in spite of the apparent break suggested by the trait, can be inferred from the
command to sing them in one breath (in un fiato). Valente frequently appended this
directive to his scale exercises, especially in connection with two-​measure units.
Throughout his lessons he used this expression to designate legato phrases, often in
combination with traits that indicate the vocalization of complex melodic shapes
136 The Solfeggio Tradition

including arpeggios and octave scales. The term fiato performs a similar function
in the solfeggio by Porpora reproduced in ­example 6.33, where it appears to tell the
singer how to vocalize a descending octave flourish at a cadence point (i.e., slurred,
in one breath).
In ­example 7.2, the breaths serve to punctuate the scale into two-​note units: do-​
re and re-​mi. Learning to group basic patterns into meaningful shapes (Bozzelli’s
“diverse combinations—​diatonic and chromatic—​of two, three, or four notes,
etc.”) was fundamental to the art of solfeggio. There were countless ways to par-
tition scales, leaps, and cadences. The scale could, for instance, be divided into
three-​note units (do-​re-​mi, mi-​fa-​sol, and so on) or four-​note units (do-​re-​mi-​re,
re-​mi-​fa-​mi, and so on). Or it could be sung to two-​note units with repetitions (do-​
do-​re, re-​re-​mi, and so on). In each case, the punctuation gave rise to a basic phrase
structure that began the process of turning a plain series of notes into a workable
melody.
But it was not enough simply to apportion scales and leaps into coherent phrases.
They had to sound sufficiently natural and expressive, like heightened musical
evocations of the accents and inflections of speech. There was no such thing as a
technical exercise in the modern sense. From the first lessons, students were taught
to sing as if before an audience. Sigismondo gives some idea of this in his account of
early training:

When solfeggio is taught one should pay attention to intonation, tempo, breath,
correctness of appoggiaturas, trills, mordents, and especially to expression, but
above all to the arrangement of the singer’s presentation. What use is a singer
who moves and waves his head as he warbles, and contorts his neck and his entire
person as if he is having a fit? And what of others who cause a fright when taking a
breath, as if they suffer from asthma?28

When singing historical exercises such as e­ xample 7.2 or, as I recommend, con-
juring up our own remodelings of scales and leaps, care should be taken to animate
the results with good musical sense. Bozzelli concluded his summary of eighteenth-​
century solfeggio practice by stressing this very point:

In the study of solfeggio it was also expected that the student learned to express the
music well with pure phrasing [i.e., simple syllable-​notes arranged into phrases,
with no embellishment of any sort]. Therefore it was important to know where
musical phrases indicated the need to take a breath and how to distribute them.
From solfeggio was thus obtained the way to execute legato, staccato, and vibrato;
the various ways to accentuate extra-​metric groupings [triplets, sextuplets, and so
on] and syncopation; and the value of time in the measure required by musical
embellishments, and how to perform them; and finally it informed the pupil, above
all, of the general accents and inflections of the voice involved in the performance
of music.29
 Singing Solfeggio 137

There were only two major ways to turn basic phrases of pure syllables into expres-
sive melodies, both of which can be experienced in e­ xample 7.2. Whereas the first
bar invokes the Amen rule, according to which the first sung pitch provides the
syllable for the subsequent vocalization, like an Amen in plainchant, the second bar
invokes the complementary Appoggiatura rule, according to which the first sung
pitch anticipates the syllable of a goal note.
Agricola once again provides guidance as to how these decorations were
performed: “When a syllable falls on a main note, which itself is notated with an
appoggiatura or any other ornament, then it [the syllable] must be pronounced on
the appoggiatura.”30 Hiller, too, is clear on this point: “A note and its appoggiaturas
must fall on the same syllable.”31 Accordingly, the miniature C♯ in m. 2 (overlooking
its characteristic missing accidental, which is typical of solfeggio manuscripts)
was solmized as re and the full-​size D was vocalized to its vowel. While pitching
C♯ the singer conceptualized it as re, as nothing more than a sliding vocal gesture
attached to D. That it slid rather than leapt onto the main note, notwithstanding the
absence of a notated slur, can be inferred from Agricola’s further comment that “all
appoggiaturas must be slurred to their main note.”32 The appoggiatura comprised
one note, not two. As an ornament, it did not have an independent identity. It was
an act of “leaning” on a note from either above or below, named by analogy with the
Italian verb appoggiare, to lean on or prop up.

Ex. 7.3(a) Banchieri, The Little Book of Banchieri (1623), 24

Ex. 7.3(b) Scaletta, Musical Scale (1626), 24

138 The Solfeggio Tradition

Agricola’s qualifier “or any other ornament” and Hiller’s plural “appoggiaturas”
hint at the broad application of the Appoggiatura rule. It applied not only to single
pitches displacing a note but also to any other kind of prefixed ornament such as the
“compound appoggiatura”—​leaning on a note from pitches both below and above—​
or the old-​fashioned “search for the note” (cercar della nota), a kind of prefatory
glissando starting at a distance of up to a sixth. It may even have applied to more
extended flourishes, if practices from the seventeenth century can be presumed
to have lasted into the eighteenth. Banchieri’s Little Notebook of Figured Music
(1623), for instance, illustrates the “many accents for giving grace and character
to notes” by way of ­example 7.3(a).33 This shows how notated melodies could be
sung with “accents” that postponed the arrival of a note but anticipated its syllable.
Scaletta described the practice as follows in his Musical Scale of Utmost Importance
for Beginners (1626, in print until 1698) and illustrated it with the before-​and-​after
melody transcribed in ­example 7.3(b) with reference to the whole notes ut-​re-​mi-​
fa: “If there are four notes ascending by step, then the accent is made upon the last
note [of each prefatory ornament], not the others, and the syllable is pronounced a
third lower than the note one wishes to give the accent.”34 Similar anticipatory leaps
of a third are commonly encountered in eighteenth-​century music, as subsequent
examples will show.
The convention of singing some pitches to the syllable of another may look coun-
terintuitive on the page, but it makes a great deal of sense in practice. It allowed
singers to keep a goal note in mind while illuminating its entrance with all manner
of introductory ornamentation. Valente’s simple grace note in ­example 7.2, which
requires C♯ to be sung to the syllable of D, unlocked a wealth of potential ways for
beginners to add embellishments before a note, in the manner of an appoggiatura,
just as the trait from C to C♯ taught them how to add embellishments after a note, in
the manner of an Amen.
Taken as a whole, e­ xample 7.2 can be described as a lesson in how to apply a par-
ticular type of ornament to the first three notes of the scale. But what type? It could
be an example of what Mersenne (1636) called the “carriage of the voice” (port de
voix, in Italian portamento della voce), in which “the voice flows from re to mi as
if it pulled the re along while continuing to fill the whole interval.”35 This tallies
with Corri’s later definition of the portamento as a “sliding and blending of one note
into another with delicacy and expression.”36 Or it could perhaps be Tosi’s “drag”
(strascino), which Hiller characterized as a slurred chromatic division.37
The reason for the confusion is that almost everything in Italian solfeggio can
be classed as some kind of ornament. When Giuseppe Sigismondo undertook to
give lessons to a wealthy amateur, for instance, he began by bringing her “three
volumes of solfeggi, which included all possible embellishments.”38 Manuscripts re-
cord a thousand different ways to traverse the intervals from do to re and from re
to mi in a tasteful, pleasing, and musical way, each with its own nuanced take on
archetypes such as the appoggiatura, turn, or mordent. Labeling these ubiquitous
performative gestures accurately or even adequately proved beyond the capabilities
 Singing Solfeggio 139

of eighteenth-​century writers. Agricola, for instance, though a thorough and com-

petent scholar, frequently had to resort to disclaimers such as the following com-
ment appended to his description of the messa di voce crescente, an imperceptibly
smooth raising of the voice toward the half step above corresponding to the first
measure of e­ xample 7.2: “This is, of course, more easily demonstrated by singing
than described in words if one has no prior conception of it.”39 If a straightforward
semitone slide needs to be heard to be fully grasped, what hope is there of forming
an accurate impression from words alone of more complicated ornaments, espe-
cially given that they were performed in free tempo rubato that resisted capture in
notation?40 This is where solfeggio manuscripts prove their worth. Their notes re-
cord these practices more comprehensively than any number of words.
In its exploitation of both the Amen rule and the Appoggiatura rule to elaborate
a simple pattern of intervals, e­ xample 7.2 encapsulates the whole art of solfeggio. In
order to appreciate its significance, it is necessary to sing it to its original syllables,
maintaining do through the swell toward the chromatic passing note and releasing
its energy on the resolving dissonance of re. Only then can we experience the crea-
tive process that once unlocked an unimaginable variety of melody from a humble
do-​re-​mi.
Telltale pen strokes that indicate traits of vocalization are commonly encountered
in manuscripts, but they usually occur in only a few measures of any given solfeggio.
Several sources contain no traits at all. Their rarity may attest to the maestro’s skill
in teaching by way of practical example. In most instances, however, the solmized
notes and their attached vocalizations would have been obvious to students without
the need for traits, because they were introduced gradually over the course of ele-
mentary training.
At first, lessons were delivered in whole notes in order to strengthen the voice and
develop skills in intonation and breathing. Later, these began to give way to simple
diminutions in half and quarter notes. Because these diminutions were applied
to the same basic patterns of scales and leaps, students would instinctively have
vocalized them rather than alter familiar arrangements of syllables. Manfredini
(1797) hinted at this process in his advice for teaching beginners, writing that “the
solmizations should always be adapted to the intelligence and age of the pupils.
Above all, for beginners they should be clear, easy, and made up of large notes, that
is, of long duration and mostly of equal value, especially at the beginning. After
a year of such study, I would almost say that there is no need to solmize, but only
vocalize.”41

Ex. 7.4 Cotumacci, Principles and Solfeggi (GB-​Lbl, Add. 14241), fol. 8v, no. 21,
mm. 1–​3
140 The Solfeggio Tradition

The transition from note-​for-​note solmization in semibreves to vocalization in

half and quarter notes can be surveyed in remarkable detail in Carlo Cotumacci’s
Principles and Solfeggi (c. 1755; GB-​Lbl, Add. 14241). This is one of the most signif-
icant sources for the study of eighteenth-​century solfeggio. It most likely dates from
Cotumacci’s time at the Onofrio Conservatory, where he served as second-​class
maestro from 1755 until 1774. It records his course of study from initial elements
through scales and leaps to 115 graded melodies in various styles.42 Example 7.4
shows the opening bars of its twenty-​first lesson, in which half notes give way to
quarter notes for the first time. Although there are no traits, the outline of do-​re-​mi
is unmistakable. As the editorial dotted slurs indicate, the melody traces a circling
motion around its first two structural syllables. Moving away from a note and re-
turning to it at the end of a bar or beat was a standard way to turn a single syllable
into a melismatic Amen. Although it is conceivable, in the absence of traits, that
students solmized every note of ­example 7.4, it makes far more pedagogical sense
to presume that, having already undergone intensive instruction in singing scales,
leaps, and twenty rudimentary solfeggi, they would have understood this melody as
a series of diminutions on the scale.
This supposition is backed up by several of Zingarelli’s basic solfeggi, which in-
clude traits that bind whole notes into divisions of a single syllable. One of these
is shown in ­example 7.5. The original lines added above the staff indicate that this
simple pattern of whole notes on the hexachord was to be sung in groups of three.
Whether the groups were sung according to the Amen rule or the Appoggiatura
rule is difficult to determine. If the former, then the singer would have solmized
the first note of each group, mi in m. 1, fa in m. 4, sol in m. 7, and so on. If the latter,
as illustrated by the editorial syllables in e­ xample 7.5, then the singer would have

Ex. 7.5 Transcription of Zingarelli, Solfeggi (I-​Nc, 19.5.23), fol. 170v, no. 382,
mm. 1–​15. Courtesy of the San Pietro a Majella Conservatory in Naples, no further
reproduction allowed
 Singing Solfeggio 141

anticipated and “leaned on” the structural notes do-​re-​mi-​fa in mm. 3, 6, 9, and 12,
in the manner of Banchieri’s old-​fashioned accents. This interpretation is supported
by the usual preference for a strong key-​defining note at the start of a melody and
by the dot that Zingarelli placed above m. 6 at the end of the second trait, which
appears to emphasize the final note of the grouping.
The trait affixed to the bass clef in mm. 4–​6 of e­ xample 7.5 could support ei-
ther view. It also suggests that in solfeggio lessons Zingarelli sang, spoke, or at least
discussed the bass part, as well as the melody, in terms of syllables. This would make
sense, given that his students did not yet have any knowledge of partimento. Indeed,
he often marked contrapuntal imitations between melody and bass with identical
traits,43 which argues strongly in support of the claim that the bass was actively in-
volved in learning solfeggio.
Traits were added only where the scribe thought they were needed to clear up a
potential ambiguity. The first to appear in Cotumacci’s course of solfeggio occurs,
for instance, in the thirty-​sixth lesson (fol. 12r), where it alerts the singer to the need
to divide a roulade of eight notes into two sets of four by sounding the syllable twice
(see ­example 8.26).
Another instance of a cautionary trait can be seen in ­example 7.6, which shows
the opening of a solfeggio from a large eighteenth-​century collection held at the
present-​day Naples Conservatory.44 The traits in the first measure appear shorter
than slurs in the original and are positioned directly above the sixteenth notes.
They instruct the singer not to solmize these notes but, rather, to vocalize them to
the vowel of the initial syllable. Presumably, without the trait, there was a danger
that students might treat the sixteenth-​note figure as an anticipation (enhanced
with its own appoggiatura) of the following note: do-​re-​re-​mi. Although the
second measure contains no traits, the manner of its performance would have
been self-​ evident to students at this level of training. Similar syncopated
flourishes, beginning with on-​the-​beat sixteenth-​note displacements, regularly
receive traits in solfeggio manuscripts.45 This suggests that they were always
vocalized. In any case, having ascended through do and re in the first measure to
reach mi in the second, the subsequent stepwise return through re to do would
have been obvious.

Ex. 7.6 Leo, Solfeggi for Solo Soprano (I-​Nc, 34.2.6/​2, Solfeggio 247), fol. 38v, no. 13,
mm. 1–​2
142 The Solfeggio Tradition

This is not a basic exercise. It is a carefully crafted and sophisticated didactic

composition akin to a mini-​aria. Yet the creative process employed to generate its
main theme is exactly the same as that required to realize Valente’s basic lesson on
the scale. Instead of a chromatic slide and an appoggiatura, the singer realizes the
syllabic pattern through decorated anticipations in the first measure and consonant
leaps in the second, syncopated and adorned with appoggiaturas and a passing note.
By increasing the division of note values and harmonic rhythm throughout the
arch-​shaped contour of the phrase, it achieves that wonderful balance, so character-
istic of refined Galant music, between static architectural symmetry and dynamic
momentum. It is a theme of beautiful simplicity. It demonstrates what could be
achieved by students who knew that there was more than one way to sing do-​re-​mi.
Once the principle of turning scales and leaps into sung music had been grasped,
the divisions could become as extravagant as the singer’s technique allowed. Among
the more virtuosic examples are 104 solfeggi by Pasquale Cafaro preserved at the
State Library in Berlin (D-​B, Mus. Ms. 2704). In 1735 Cafaro entered the Turchini
Conservatory, where he studied under Nicola Fago and Leonardo Leo. He appears
never to have left Naples, serving at the conservatory as a member of teaching staff
from 1759 to 1785. This manuscript collection was presumably compiled from
his solfeggio classes. The paper and handwriting suggest that it was copied during
the 1770s and bound within contemporary covers at some point in the nineteenth
century, presumably by its erstwhile owner, the music theorist Johann Heinrich
Bellermann, who appears to have been responsible for bringing it to Germany.
Whatever the provenance of the manuscript, Cafaro’s solfeggi must have
been intended for a young student with extraordinary vocal agility, as can be
ascertained from the opening of lesson 102, a “tasteful” Andantino, transcribed
in ­example 7.7. The traits are original and show that the syllable do was not held
for the entirety of the first bar but repeated on its second half note. This is of in-
terest because it grants an insight into how one of the most common schemata of
the mid-​eighteenth century was conceived by contemporary musicians. The first
measure of ­example 7.7 presents a variant of the Galant Romanesca, in which the
tonic note is prolonged as a melodic pedal over a bass that descends through scale
degrees 1, 7, 6, and 3. On the evidence of this solfeggio, in such cases the tonic
was treated as two notes rather than one, corresponding to the two root-​position
harmonies of the schema. As expected, in the second measure the Romanesca
merges into a cadence to conclude the theme,46 which is nothing other than an
embellished do-​re-​mi sung over two measures, no different in kind from Valente’s
exercise on the scale in e­ xample 7.2.
How Valente himself learned to sing his do-​re-​mi can be ascertained from a col-
lection of fifty-​six solfeggi by Fenaroli (I-​Bc, NN.21), who was appointed to teach
the beginners’ class at the Loreto Conservatory in 1755, the same year Valente
enrolled as a student. Fenaroli remained there as a second-​class maestro until
1777 and presumably wrote these solfeggi for his classes, although, from its careful
 Singing Solfeggio 143

Ex. 7.7 Cafaro, Solfeggi (D-​B, Mus. Ms. 2704), 216, mm. 1–​2. © bpk-​Bildagentur/​State
Library of Berlin

penmanship, the manuscript looks likely to have been prepared “for the use of ”
(per uso di) an amateur client, in the same way as his surviving sets for Lady Teresa
Caracciolo.
The opening of the twenty-​ third lesson, a florid Largo aria, is shown in
­example 7.8. No traits were deemed necessary to illustrate the mode of the per-
formance, since its theme clearly subjects the first three notes of the scale to a pat-
tern of vocalized embellishment based on a filled-​in upward leap of the fifth. As in
Valente’s scale exercise, the melody employs both the Amen and the Appoggiatura
rule to pass from one syllable to another.
The F♮ in measure 2 may or may not have signified a modulation down a fifth
to the key of C major. Because the hexachord on G was common to G major and
C major, together with its F♮ “fa above la,” it made no difference whatsoever to the
solmization. In eighteenth-​century terms, what modern music theory would call a
secondary dominant seventh on G belonged equally to both keys.
144 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 7.8 Fenaroli, Solfeggi for Solo Voice and Bass (I-​Bc, NN.21), fol. 23v, no. 23,
mm. 1–​3

After the do-​re-​mi, in the second measure the melody continues upward onto
fa before tracing a compressed arch-​shape back to its initial note by way of what
Gjerdingen (2007) calls a “step backward” (passo indietro) in the form of a weakly
supported sol-​mi-​fa melodic cadence. This is a rudimentary example of an inganno,
as described in Chapter 6. It was presumably intended to provide a moment of
light relief during the lesson, as well as to impart a witty little trick for developing
a melody. As the student gradually ascended through the scale for the umpteenth
time, do-​re-​mi-​fa . . . , it must have been entertaining to discover that the next note,
sol, was not on D, in an expected stepwise continuation of the melody, but on A, the
other sol. Leaping from one note to another with the same syllable was a common
way to elaborate a melody.
In m. 2 of e­ xample 7.8, Fenaroli alerted the student to what was about to happen
by altering the level of the subdivision of the beat from quarter note to eighth note,
as shown by the beams attached to the sixteenth and thirty-​second notes. This
meant that the divisions attached to fa fell into two groups, suggesting that the
singer should repeat the syllable on the first note of the new group. The sudden al-
teration in syllabic rhythm would have signaled a change of melodic direction, a
thwarting of expectations. Beams, like traits, could be used to indicate patterns of
solmization and vocalization.47
Before taking leave of the do-​re-​mi, one last example will suffice to show just
how far the Amen rule could be taken. The eight bars of ­example 7.9 contain
only three syllables. The rest is vocalization. This gives rise to two important
considerations, which will need to be revisited several times over the course of the
next few chapters.
 Singing Solfeggio 145

Ex. 7.9 Jommelli, Solfeggio (Gj5202; D-​MÜs, Sant Hs 2285), mm. 1–​8

First, unless Jommelli conceived this solfeggio as an exercise in singing rapid

passagework to unsuitable vowels, it seems unlikely that it was actually sung to
the syllables do-​re-​mi. Italians at that time had a peculiar aversion to hearing ex-
tended melismatic passages sung to vowels other than a or e. Maintaining a dull o
through the thirty-​six notes of mm. 1–​3 and a bright i through the higher runs in
mm. 7–​8 would have taxed the ears of the most insensitive maestro. Given also that
this solfeggio was clearly designed to develop skills in vocal agility and the bravura
style, it makes sense to presume that it was sung throughout to the vowel a, with or
without concluding “-​men.” But this is not to say that the syllables were irrelevant.
Although students at this level of accomplishment would probably long since have
been given leave to vocalize, their formative years of training in solmization would
have made it impossible to conceive this music as anything other than an expanded
do-​re-​mi. In this respect, vocalization prepared them for professional careers on the
146 The Solfeggio Tradition

opera stage or in church. It taught how to keep conventional patterns of syllables in

mind as guides to improvisation while singing them aloud to any given text.
Second, the formulaic and repetitive nature of the figuration in ­example 7.9
marks it out as more like a vocal exercise than a polished theme. Transposed by
step through the scale, it resembles an elaborate version of the kind of prelimi-
nary warm-​ups that can still be heard in singing lessons today. Did Jommelli re-
ally compose this crude and uninspired melody from scratch for a student to read
off the page? Or did he recall the student’s extempore vocalizations on do-​re-​mi
from an earlier lesson and fashion them into a compilation of more challenging
exercises? The answer to both questions could be yes, since they are not mutually
exclusive. There is no doubt that maestros regularly wrote solfeggi for individual
students. Mancini, for instance, who studied for two years in Naples with Leo, re-
ported, “This great man used to write a new solfeggio every three days for each
of his students, reflecting on, and adapting them to, the strengths and ability of
each.”48 But the lessons did not necessarily have to be original. While reflecting on
the pedagogical needs of students, what could be more natural than to summon up
their own ways of singing intervals and to seek to reinforce and enhance existing
strengths? This leads to an important distinction: that between a solfeggio that was
in effect (if not always in reality) invented by a maestro (i.e., first encountered as
an unfamiliar notated composition purportedly by Leo, Durante, or some other)
and a solfeggio that was partly or wholly conjured up in song by a student from
the kind of materials featured on Porpora’s legendary page and later refined by a
maestro.
Although musicians today might naturally assume that solfeggi were com-
posed by a maestro, noted down on paper, and placed on a music stand for a stu-
dent to read, it is just as likely that lessons began with a blank manuscript to be
filled with the student’s sung elaborations of a given series of syllables. Notated
solfeggi may also have been used as exemplars, for instructive comparison at the
end of a lesson.
Evidence for this kind of collaborative effort can be found at both chronolog-
ical extremes of the tradition. Of the fourteen didactic duos set out in the earliest
known collection of solfeggiamenti (1642) by the Roman maestro Giovanni Gentile,
one is attributed to his student Marco Desideri and another to his grandson and
student Carlo Gentile. They presumably produced these compositions in the
course of learning to sing. At the opposite end of the (very) long eighteenth cen-
tury, Zingarelli’s use of solfeggio to teach composition is well documented. Florimo
(1881–​83) recounts that the young Vincenzo Bellini would bring him two freshly
composed solfeggi every day and that the maestro would justify his approach
as follows: “This is the truest and best way to form melody. If you sing in your
compositions, you can be more confident that your music will please.”49 Students
who had undergone a course of training in solfeggio likely would have taken the
recommendation to sing in their melodies literally, not figuratively. To turn syllables
into song was to compose melody.
 Singing Solfeggio 147

Traits, Slurs, and Articulation

In general, performance markings in solfeggio manuscripts are carelessly drawn.

The mordents seen in ­example 7.9, for instance, may or may not have indicated a
conventional upper neighboring-​note motion because the squiggly line was used
as a catch-​all symbol for ornamentation. It could just as well have denoted a trill
or turn as a mordent. In any case, the precise mode of execution for each orna-
ment within a specific melodic context and in a specific style would have been
demonstrated by the maestro, and there is no way to access this information. For
this reason, the transcriptions in this book distinguish different species of squiggle
only where they are clearly identifiable as such in manuscripts. Otherwise, the mor-
dent serves to signify each and every ornament.
This indeterminacy extends also to slurs and traits. When is a trait not a trait but
a legato slur? When does a staccato dot or wedge indicate a detached style of artic-
ulation within a division, and when does it prompt a change of syllable? Because
notated performance markings increased in frequency and detail throughout the
eighteenth century, the later the manuscript, the more pressing these questions
become.
That there was a distinction between slurs and traits can be corroborated by
manuscripts that include both, sometimes simultaneously. A lesson by Porpora
(­figure 7.3), for instance, includes a run of six sixteenth notes slurred into three
pairs and overlaid with a single long trait in m. 3. The slurs indicate how to artic-
ulate the passage while the trait dictates that it should be vocalized to one syllable.
A remarkable instance of traits resembling slurs can be seen in e­ xample 7.10,
which is taken from an important collection of seventy-​one solfeggi attributed to
Leo (GB-​Lbl, Add. 31617). The manuscript was copied in 1756 and bound together
with a harpsichord sonata “by the same” in 1783, presumably by its erstwhile owner
Philip Hayes, who succeeded his father as professor of music at Oxford University
in 1777. Hayes was a keen antiquarian and amassed a large library of scores and
manuscripts.
Example 7.10 shows a written-​out cadenza that marks a significant modula-
tion to the dominant within an Allegro in F major. Both the label “cadenza” and
the precisely positioned slurs have been faithfully transcribed from the original.
At first glance, these slurs appear to indicate nothing more than how to shape the

Fig. 7.3 Porpora, Solfeggi di Soprano (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 335), fol. 15r. Courtesy of the San
Pietro a Majella Conservatory in Naples, no further reproduction allowed
148 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 7.10 Leo, Solfeggi (1756; GB-​Lbl, Add 31617), fol. 52v, mm. 30–​35. By permission
of the British Library

melismatic flourish. On closer inspection, however, they reveal how this particular
cadenza was taught, conceived, and executed. The key to deciphering it lies in the
approach in mm. 30–​31. Here, the singer lands on the 4 of the obligatory six-​four
chord by way of an emphatic bass cadence: a descending fifth, sol-​do. These syllables
provide the “motive” for what follows. Treating the seeming slurs as traits uncovers
a pattern of alternating sol and do syllables ascending and descending through the
octave, which culminates in a final stepwise descent from sol to do. In m. 32 the trait
purposefully begins on G rather than C, suggesting that both notes were solmized
separately, as indicated by the editorial syllables.
Whether the traits in e­ xample 7.10 functioned also as slurs by default and outlined
a pattern of phrasing is a matter for debate. The general rule in the eighteenth cen-
tury was that vocal cadenzas should be sung in one breath. This suggests that the
entire flourish would have been sung legato from start to finish, smoothing over
the changes of syllable. A similar written-​out cadenza from a solfeggio by Valente
(­figure 7.5) begins with a tonic C marked “fa-​” and maintains its vowel through the
entire melisma until a D marked “sol” falls onto the final C.50
Manuscripts from the 1800s often include detailed performance markings that
run counter to obvious patterns of solmization. Example 7.11 shows the beginning
 Singing Solfeggio 149

Fig. 7.5 Valente, Solfegi [sic] (I-​Mc, Fondo Noseda I.88.8), fol. 23v. By permission of the
Library of the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory, Milan

Ex. 7.11 Leo, Solfeggi (1820; D-​B, Mus. Ms. 12835), 11, mm. 1–​10

of a G minor Allegro from another collection of solfeggi by Leo (D-​B, Mus. Ms.
12835), which is liberally furnished with slurs and wedges, as might be expected
from a manuscript carrying a date of 1820. These surely indicate a manner of per-
formance, but could they also signify traits and changes of syllable? The slur in m. 1
might serve both to shape the melody and to instruct the singer to maintain the syl-
lable re through three eighth notes, thereby reducing the main theme to little more
150 The Solfeggio Tradition

than a run up and down the first three notes of the minor scale: re-​mi-​fa. From m. 4
onward, reading the wedges and slurs as traits would discover underlying stepwise
octave descents behind the busy surface elaborations. This seems unnecessarily
complicated, however, given that mm. 6–​8 present a straightforward sequential de-
scent through notes 6-​5-​4-​3 of the G minor scale, each prolonged by a pattern of
descending thirds, as indicated by the dotted slurs added to e­ xample 7.11.
In other manuscripts, traits appear to contradict conventional patterns of slurs.
In ­example 7.12, for instance, Cotumacci drew long flat pen strokes over the
sixteenth-​note flourishes of the melody. These are unlikely to have indicated legato
phrasing because repeated notes cannot easily be sung legato and the melodic con-
tour suggests an obvious division into two-​note units. Had slurs been applied, there
would almost certainly have been four in m. 1 and four in m. 3.
As it is, the traits reveal a simple syllabic framework: la prolonged until fa-​la,
then fa prolonged until another fa-​la. The theme is premised upon an inganno that
takes advantage of the appearance of the same syllables (fa-​la) on scale degrees 6-​5
and 3-​1 of a minor key. In technical terms, for those who require further proof, the
key of F minor was sung to exactly the same syllables as its parent relative A♭ major,
which means that in e­ xample 7.12 the singer chose to replace a final fa-​la (D♭-​C)
belonging to the hexachord on E♭ with its namesake (A♭-​F), which arises from a de-
scending mutation from the hexachord on E♭ to that on A♭.51
Understood as a schema for generating a minor-​key theme, ­example 7.12
presents a sophisticated variant of a simple prototype: in modern terms, what might
be called a 5-​6-​5, that is, 5-​6-​5 over chords i-​iv-​i, followed by 6-​6-​5 over chords V-​i.
Or, in the more lucid and elegant language of eighteenth-​century music: la-​fa-​la;
fa-​fa-​la. This schema may well have been known as a “butterfly,” from its similarity
to the Italian word farfalla.52

Ex. 7.12 Cotumacci, Principles and Solfeggi (c. 1755; GB-​Lbl, Add. 14241), fol. 22r,
no. 75, mm. 1–​4, with suggested keyboard accompaniment. By permission of the
British Library
 Singing Solfeggio 151

In keeping with ­example 7.11 above, the original staccato dots and slurs in mm.
4–​5, 7, and 9 of the G major Allegro by Leo shown in ­example 7.13(a) bear no rela-
tion to traits. They can only have related to articulation because they are too phys-
ically (and mentally) challenging to solmize at a quick tempo. They were probably
executed to syllables at the level of the half note, using a combination of Agricola’s
detached and slurred modes of delivery.53
Excellent diction and vocal agility are required to articulate the opening theme,
a do-​re-​mi-​fa-​sol incorporating leaps of the third that change direction midway. In
m. 3 this fast-​paced motive is answered by a more leisurely Prinner riposte: la-​sol-​
fa-​la on the notes E-​D-​C-​B. The harmonization is unconventional. Rather than
starting with a root position five-​three chord on C a tenth below the melodic la and
descending through notes 4-​3-​2-​1 of the scale, the schema opens with a weak six-​
three chord on G. The reason for this becomes clear in the second half of the bar,
where, in a commonplace syllabic jest, the melody leaps upward onto the other sol
on A before quickly regaining the expected stepwise sol on D. The usual bass pro-
gression of parallel tenths would not fit below this deviation, which explains why it
was replaced by a passo indietro. This points toward an important conclusion: the
identity of the Prinner as a schema rested primarily on its four melodic syllable-​
notes, which were subject to countless vocal tricks and embellishments but never
fundamentally altered. The bass, by contrast, was freely adapted to accommodate
whatever melody the singer threw at it.
The offbeat chromatic appoggiatura on C♯ in m. 3 provides an insight into the
contemporary psychology behind the gesture of the other sol. By anticipating the
beat, it gives the impression of an all-​too-​hasty correction, and by displacing the
corrected note with an impertinent semitone, it underscores the comedy, as if to
bestow a knowing wink on the listener that says “No, not that sol!” Singing this sol-
feggio to something like its original syllables reveals the source of a witticism that
listeners may otherwise sense only instinctively in this Galant melody.
The final two notes of the Prinner, fa-​la, are repeated in mm. 4–​5 in a display of
vocal agility that culminates in a swift perfect cadence in the tonic key: sol-​fa-​mi-​fa.
It is interesting to observe how the singer-​composer of this solfeggio opted to split
the schema into two halves by moving from la to sol in one way and from fa to la in
quite another.
An expected modulation to the dominant ensues. It is introduced by yet another
syllabic jest. The essential melodic progression of m. 7, devoid of ornamentation,
is B-​C♯-​D. The B that starts the bar is mi in G major, the tonic, and the C♯ that ends
the first half note is a modulatory new mi in D major, the dominant. One syllable
thus suffices to cover both notes. Interpreting the dot and slur in m. 7 as syllable
and trait, however, would suggest that two mis were required: one to separate the
staccato B from the ensuing legato phrase, and another to highlight the impending
modulation with a lengthy anticipatory run, solmized in accordance with the
Appoggiatura rule. This seems unnecessarily complicated. In ­example 7.13(a)
only one mi represents either B or C♯, or both. As we shall see, this conjoined mi/​
Ex. 7.13(a) Leo, Solfeggi for Solo Soprano (I-​Nc, 34.2.6/​2, Solfeggio 247), fol. 30v,
no. 6, mm. 1–​11
 Singing Solfeggio 153

Ex. 7.13(b) Leo, Solfeggi for Solo Soprano, fol. 30v, no. 6, mm. 1–​11, reduction to
syllable-​notes

mi modulation was ubiquitous in solfeggio. The lead-​up to the modulation at the

end of m. 6, incidentally, includes a trait to suggest that fa should be maintained
throughout the half note.
The second trait in m. 7 appears as two distinct flat lines in the manuscript,
one above the first D and the other above the second. Because they seem to align,
suggesting that the break was not deliberate but caused by a lightweight nib skip-
ping over a furrow on the page, they have been transcribed as a single slur in
­example 7.13(a). In any case, two traits would make little difference to the solmiza-
tion because both quarter-​note Ds would be sung as fa.54
The solmization of the half cadence in m. 8 is more open to question, since
there are no original markings. One thing is certain: a note-​for-​note rendition
would sound ludicrously overloaded. This raises the possibility that the entire oc-
tave descent was taken in a single sweep governed by its framing sol on A. Other
interpretations are feasible. Only Leo or his student would have known for sure
which one was preferable.
A fa-​mi comma in mm. 9–​10 resumes the earlier dot-​and-​slur figuration before
drawing to a close with a reminiscence of the principal theme, embodied in the
rapid syllables and reversed third leaps of the final mi-​re-​do.55

***
Having so painstakingly scrutinized the articulation marks and their relation to im-
plicit traits of vocalization, I must now ask readers to sing e­ xample 7.13(a), initially
as written, so as to experience a real Galant lesson in the bravura style, and then
by pitching only the fundamental notes with their syllables, ignoring all vocalized
elaboration.
The result is e­ xample 7.13(b): a simple cantus firmus, no different in kind from
those that were spoken aloud during the first weeks of solfeggio training. Leopold
Mozart may have had something similar in mind when he described good musical
organization as il filo, the thread that binds a composition together.56 Here, the
thread is made manifest as a cantus firmus that links many discrete and contrasting
combinations of syllables. Its first half, in the tonic key of G major, is little more than
a run up and down the notes of the hexachord, and its second half, in the domi-
nant key of D major, is scarcely more sophisticated. It modulates by climbing to the
154 The Solfeggio Tradition

fundamental mi-​fa of the new key, C♯-​D, and rests on a half cadence on sol before
descending to a full cadence on do.
This reduction cannot easily be dismissed as a coincidence or a result of errors
in the reconstructed solmization because similar underlying cantus firmi are ap-
parent in many solfeggi. They can also be discovered in contemporary arias and
instrumental melodies by reverse-​engineering them into the chains of syllabic
note-​names that composers and singers would have perceived.
The existence of such cantus firmi underlying the rich surface detail of
eighteenth-​century melody begs many questions. Was the cantus firmus conceived
as a pre-​compositional (or pre-​improvisational) template, complete in all its parts
and ready to be realized in whatever style was required? If so, should eighteenth-​
century Italian-​style melody be understood as a kind of highly embellished plain-
chant, unimaginably transformed through centuries of development? Or did the
endings of individual schemata signal a limited range of preferred options for con-
tinuation, which together determined the eventual shape of the overall pattern
of syllable-​notes? Were the separate schemata interlinked in an unbroken chain
through the underlying syllabic thread, or were they bound together by some kind
of connecting material, like pearls on a string? If the latter, then what characterizes
the connecting material?
Answers to these questions will be suggested in the next chapter. For now, one
remarkable conclusion to be drawn from ­examples 7.13(a) and 7.13(b) is that they
would have been regarded by practitioners of the art as essentially the same sol-
feggio, sung in two different ways. The distance between them would have been
measured in terms of stylistic knowledge and vocal ability acquired gradually
over years of diligent practice. Any beginner could have solmized an exercise like
­example 7.13(b) note-​for-​note, and many more knew how to insert vocalized leaps,
appoggiaturas, and other ornaments between its syllables. But only a few had the
talent and schooling to sing it as it appears in e­ xample 7.13(a). Such a student would
not have required a score to turn an opening do-​re-​mi-​fa-​sol into any number of fit-
ting allegro themes. Singing an elaborate la-​sol-​fa-​mi as a suitable riposte and con-
tinuing on to a sol-​fa-​mi-​fa cadence would likewise have presented no difficulties.
And were she to get bored with this particular manner of singing the notes of the
cantus firmus, she could try another, or perhaps switch to a different style such as
the florid Largo realization of the same do-​re-​mi-​fa-​sol, with an added jest, shown in
e­ xample 7.8 above.
The connection between Leo’s Galant melody and its underlying syllabic
framework may explain what Marcello really meant when he complained about
“solfeggists” in 1720:

They will use, like all the virtuosos, the same few solfeggi, carried over into var-
ious keys, clefs, tempos, etc. according to their needs. They will make use of them
 Singing Solfeggio 155

for many years longer than the usual variations of la into re ascending, and re
into la descending, upon various syllables as determined by the major or minor
accidentals required.57

To a modern reader, “the same few solfeggi” naturally implies a repertory of

pieces to be performed off the page. To Marcello’s generation, conversely, it most
likely signified stock patterns of syllables arranged into melodies.
Knowing how to sing solfeggi the eighteenth-​century way explains how castratos
managed to amaze audiences by singing the same aria five or six times in com-
pletely different ways.58 After years of solfeggio training, they could doubtless have
performed it a hundred more times. And everything they needed to execute this
remarkable feat could be confined to one sheet of paper.
By observing the evidence of traits and other markings in manuscripts and
singing eighteenth-​century solfeggi to their original syllables, we, too, may be
able to acquire the stylistic knowledge (if not the vocal talent) of a Caffarelli or a
Farinelli. “Perhaps,” as Gjerdingen muses at the end of his online overview of the
solfeggio tradition, “with the evidence of actual eighteenth-​century pedagogy be-
fore us, we can envision the emergence of a ‘historically informed’ style of instruc-
tion, one that focuses on the accumulation of stylistic knowledge rather than on a
gymnastics of syllables.”59
In Chapter 8 we shall put this idea to the test by asking what solfeggio can teach
us about the ways in which eighteenth-​century musicians set just four notes to work
and the various (musical) accents they employed to speak them in different styles.
 8
Learning la-​sol-​fa-​mi, with Some Hints
on Musical Grammar

The journey is long through rules, but short and efficient through examples.
Seneca

Learning solfeggio was like learning a language. It took about the same amount of
time, used similar means, and was best mastered by children.
In the eighteenth century, this was no mere analogy. It was a living fact. Over the
course of generations maestros had developed a system of education that exploited
the innate human ability to acquire language. Like all musicians at the time, they
took it for granted that melody was, in origin and effect, a heightened form of
speech. “It does not just imitate, it speaks,” averred the philosopher Rousseau, “and
its articulate but lively, ardent, passionate language has a hundred times more en-
ergy than speech itself.”1
With this in mind, maestros taught their students to acquire skills in solfeggio
intuitively, by hearing, reading, and speaking it, much as a parent would help a child
pick up her first language. This proved easier and more effective than learning the
hard way, by studying rules from a textbook.
Instead of addressing their lessons primarily to the conscious mind, with its
propensity for rational analysis and problem solving, solfeggio masters let the
subconscious do most of the work. From the start, sung lessons employed mean-
ingful musical utterances rather than simplified abstractions, usually pitched just
above the student’s level of comprehension to avert boredom and to stimulate the
language-​acquiring faculties within the brain. Total immersion from an early age
allowed students to accrue musical knowledge imperceptibly, without the need for
reflection. There was no stopping to question and correct. From prolonged expo-
sure to repetitive exercises—​spoken, sung, heard, and read—​they absorbed new
knowledge while revising old. By engaging daily with melody as a language, they
amassed an inner lexicon of its words and phrases and a natural feel for its grammar
and styles.
Domenico Corri underwent just such a course of study under Porpora during
the 1760s. He later explained that solfeggio training offered an “early opportunity
of hearing good music,” which fostered an instinctive grasp of the entire medium.
It allowed students to “speak” music flawlessly without the impediment of having

The Solfeggio Tradition. Nicholas Baragwanath, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197514085.001.0001
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 157

to think: “The intervals of sounds thus early habituated are, like their oral language,
learned without study.”2
This pedagogical approach shares uncanny similarities with Stephen Krashen’s
theory of second-​language acquisition, as expounded in multiple publications in
the past four decades.3 Krashen starts from the observation that humans become
fluent in a language either by acquiring it by a subconscious process, usually as chil-
dren, or by taking pains to learn it by conscious study. Of the two routes, acquisition
is by far the easier, as anyone who has tried to learn a language from a teach-​yourself
book will attest. Children assimilate language effortlessly, whereas trying to mem-
orize vocabulary lists, verb tables, and grammatical rules can be forbiddingly dif-
ficult. Krashen asks, therefore, how one might subconsciously acquire a second
language as opposed to consciously learning it. The crucial factor, he maintains, is
sufficient exposure. The more a person reads and listens, the sooner she will achieve
a degree of fluency. Only after gaining familiarity with simple words and short
phrases by reading and listening should she attempt to speak. In this process there
is no need to analyse mistakes or monitor progress because the brain absorbs the
language by itself, just as children iron out grammatical faults over time without the
need for intervention.
In terms of the specifics of the method, Krashen suggests that the material should
follow a “natural order,” starting with things that are simple to grasp and progressing
step by step toward constructions that are more complex. Most important, at every
level of accomplishment the material should be sufficiently entertaining to en-
courage participation. There is no place for dry artificial exercises, detached from
real communication. Acquiring a second language, according to Krashen, should
occur as a byproduct of enjoyable engagement with compelling content.
Although debates rage about the merits of Krashen’s theory and how it might
be applied, the evidence of eighteenth-​century solfeggio would appear to prove its
worth. As long, that is, as one is willing to grant that the many historical writers who
described melody in terms of speech had good reason for doing so and that Galant
music shares enough characteristics with language to make the comparison valid.
Just as Krashen recommends reading and listening before speaking, in order to
familiarize oneself with basic words and phrases, so too did apprentice musicians
begin by reading aloud their ABCs in the form of the six Guidonian syllable-​notes,
as well as by hearing the language all around them in church, chamber, and chapel.
The syllables would remain as fundamental to their future music making as the al-
phabet would to their reading and writing. Once recognizing notes in any clef had
become second nature, after a year or so of spoken solfeggio, the next step was to
turn them into the musical equivalent of speech acts. At first, these involved nothing
more than singing intervals arranged into scales and leaps: the most rudimentary
musical “words” (not to be confused with linguistic words).4 Over time, patterns of
two or more notes began to take on the role of syntactic units or, more accurately,
frameworks that would later function as schemata for phrase structures. One of
these, the do-​re-​mi, was discussed in the preceding chapter. As soon as students
158 The Solfeggio Tradition

began to sing these syllable patterns they were required to subject them to divisions
by the Amen and Appoggiatura rules, as seen in Valente’s simple do-​re, re-​mi exer-
cise in ­example 7.2. By learning and memorizing thousands of different vocalized
versions of the syllables in various styles, they built up a working knowledge of me-
lodic words and phrases that could later be combined to form sentences, in accord-
ance with rules of grammar and punctuation that were acquired last of all.
The ability to speak eighteenth-​century music thus rested on knowing intuitively
how to transform basic syllables and stock phrases into a vast vocabulary of mean-
ingful sounds and to string them together to form an extended discourse. This aim
was achieved by a process of gradual acquisition “without study,” involving pro-
longed exposure to the language and daily exchanges with competent speakers.
For a modern musician seeking to explain this process, it is tempting to assume
that solfeggio singers kept the unadorned syllables in mind as some sort of schema
prototype and subjected them to processes of variation to generate different types
of melodic material. This may well be true of the early stages of training and of
straightforward elaborations and repetitive figurations. A do-​re-​mi, for instance,
could be filtered through the process of adding leaps of a third with passing notes
and appoggiaturas to give rise to a viable cantilena. But such simplistic type-​token
thinking seems better suited to producing neat reductive analyses than learning
how to “speak” Galant melody. Conjuring up sophisticated musical discourses in
real time, as performers and composers are known to have done, requires more than
a mental store of schema prototypes and a toolbox of variation techniques. Like
spoken language, it demands an extensive vocabulary of real words and phrases that
can be instantaneously adapted to suit any situation. By singing solfeggi, eighteenth-​
century musicians experienced a vast array of real musical utterances and com-
mitted them to memory. They learned them whole, down to the last detail. They did
not reduce or analyze. This meant that when they encountered, say, the syllables do-​
re-​mi as a florid cantabile theme in one lesson and as an old-​fashioned fugue subject
in another, they probably would have perceived them as separate musical entities
with completely different meanings; just as native English speakers would instinc-
tively distinguish between common and communicate in a sentence without having
the least awareness of their shared root. Analysis can show that many English words
derive from the Latin communis, and that many musical “words” derive from do-​re-​
mi, but such insights are useless for knowing how to speak either language fluently.
The way solfeggio was acquired is perhaps best understood in terms of a con-
struction grammar, as set out in Gjerdingen and Bourne (2015). They define a “con-
struction” as a unit of language that possesses “a conventionalized form, one that is
generally paired with a particular meaning or function associated with a common
situation in human communication.”5 In order to qualify as a construction, a unit
must communicate a relatively coherent meaning that is (or is assumed to be) in-
tended by a speaker or writer and likely to be understood by a competent listener
or reader. There are no other requirements. A construction may contain as many
elements as it needs to get its message across, and it does not necessarily have to
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 159

follow established grammatical rules or even accepted definitions. Gjerdingen and

Bourne give as an example the colloquial phrase “He finally kicked the bucket,”
which to fluent English speakers conveys the idea “He finally died,” although this
meaning cannot be fathomed by looking up the individual words in a dictionary
(unless it includes antiquated Norfolk dialect). More important, the phrase cannot
be reduced or substituted without losing its subtleties of meaning. It conveys a
sense of familiarity and mild dark humor that is absent from similar but never-
theless distinct phrases such as the euphemistic “He passed away” or the dismis-
sive “He croaked.” Such constructions are not immanent in phonemes but are the
products of learning and human memory.6 Construction grammars depend on
rich experiences giving rise to rich memories, which operate on both the short-​
and the long-​term levels. The act of speaking draws on a vast store of memorized
constructions to set in motion a complex interplay between verbatim recall, sche-
matic recall, adaptation, and combination involving single words, “collocations”
(significant pairings of words), and “collostructions” (correlations between subsid-
iary features within a construction).
Construction grammar can help explain how eighteenth-​century apprentices
acquired the language of melody in six main ways: First, it allows any grouping of
notes to be classified as a meaningful unit, from an unaccompanied melisma on a
single syllable to a pairing of two syllables with bass or complex patterns of mul-
tiple syllables with vocalization. Precisely how a melody is segmented depends on
context. There are no artificial constraints because constructions resist definition
in terms of fixed objective properties. In a comic aria, for instance, a descending
six-​note scale might function as a unified closing gesture over a few beats, whereas
in a serious aria the same six notes might be expanded to form several discrete
phrases over a long span. Galant musical constructions are most readily observed
in arias because they tend to map closely onto the linguistic constructions of
the verse.
In the analytical reductions that follow, I use slurs to isolate the smallest mean-
ingful groupings of solmized notes within a melody. These are, I contend, its
grammatical constructions. They are identifiable by their component syllables
and rhythmic contours. They mark out the punctuation of the discourse, with
or without notated rests, in a way that is far too subtle and intangible to be ade-
quately represented by crude symbols such as the comma and semicolon or by
labels such as Marpurg’s different kinds of “breaks” (Absätze).7 Only by singing the
melodies to their original syllables can one get a feel for the richness of the mu-
sical discourse and the nuances of its punctuation, which Heinrich Koch aptly (and
vaguely) described as “resting points of the spirit.”8 Nevertheless, to pay homage to
eighteenth-​century accounts and to draw attention to their emphasis on musical
punctuation, the solmizations presented in this chapter and the remainder of the
book use the comma (,) to mark minor resting points, the semi-​colon (;) to indicate
significant divisions between constructions, and the period (.) to highlight perfect
cadences.
160 The Solfeggio Tradition

Second, the function of a construction is determined not by its words and syntax
or notes and rhythm but by its communicative intention. It means whatever the
speaker intends it to mean or whatever the listener takes the speaker to mean. This
allows a single note pattern to have multiple potential functions. It could, for in-
stance, be spoken with irony, sarcasm, or mock sincerity. The same basic contour
could sound presentational in one setting and transitional or cadential in another
(as we shall see later in this chapter). Function as intention explains why syllabic
frameworks in solfeggio do not always conform to expectations.
Third, Gjerdingen and Bourne (2015) follow Givón (2001) in conceptualizing
language as a three-​level, non-​uniform hierarchy. At the low level words code se-
mantic content; at the middle level clauses code propositional information, and at
the upper level multi-​propositional structures code discourse coherence.9 There is
no straightforward correspondence between the levels. For example, the low-​level
semantic content of the word rain is not easily reconciled with the meaning of its
collocation in the mid-​level clause “I’ll take a rain check,” and neither provides any
indication as to how it might be incorporated into an upper-​level sentence. In sol-
feggio, analogously, a do-​re-​mi from a low-​level scale contains no inherent property
to suggest how it might be transformed in the middle level into a bravura study
like the one by Jommelli seen in ­example 7.9, and there is no rule to account for the
placing of either within an extended melody. Clauses and their combinations must
be learned and memorized from lived experience.
That said, in solfeggio, as in language, there are occasions when a low-​level sign,
in conjunction with norms of grammar, contains the seeds of its own mid-​level col-
location. The “Quiescenza” melody (♭7-​6-​♮7-​1 or, in eighteenth-​century terms, fa-​
mi/​mi-​fa),10 for instance, can arise spontaneously from the application of a basic
grammatical rule of modulation to a plain fa-​mi semitone (singing its fa as a new
mi, as discussed in Chapters 6 and 9). In this scenario there does appear to be a di-
rect correlation between the low-​level content of fa, taken to signify “descend to mi”
in a scale, the corresponding content of mi as “ascend to fa,” and the fusion of the
two within the Quiescenza schema. Even if this pattern were to have arisen from a
collision of scale steps and grammar rules at the low level, however, singers would
still have needed to learn exemplars to be able to use it in practice.
Fourth, because construction grammars depend on usage-​based knowledge ac-
quired by experiencing language in real contexts, they can account for (and justify)
the high degree of similarity that exists between the utterances of different speakers.
Approximately 50 percent of adult speech and writing consists of “prefabs”
(prefabricated expressions).11 This comes as no surprise to those who accept that in-
dividual communications are brought about by a reshaping of preexisting materials,
a synthesis of myriad constructions and their subsidiary features. Pervasive origi-
nality is neither feasible nor desirable if language is to be readily comprehensible.
Idiosyncrasies in style, persona, and meaning reside not so much in the creation of
new constructions as in the manipulation and combination of old ones.
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 161

Precisely the same may be said of solfeggio. The Galant art of melody, like the
Galant art of conversation, rested not on saying something fundamentally new but
on developing mutually recognizable themes in a sophisticated, playful, and tasteful
manner. Listeners judged quality by the finesse of the detail and the weaving to-
gether of the whole. That solfeggi share numerous underlying constructions shows
only that they spoke the same language, not that they were formulaic or unoriginal
or that they arose by the operation of hypothetical deep-​level rules as products of
some generative grammar.
Fifth, constructions are not closed, self-​contained building blocks. They interact,
forming networks of relationships. When a larger construction encompasses a
smaller one, for instance, it inherits some or all of its meaning. The same goes for
a less common pattern associating with a common one of similar size. In speech
and writing, these complex interactions allow new or subtly altered meanings
to develop over time and preferred options to crystallize at given moments.
The constructions in solfeggio behave in a similar way, giving rise to nested and
overlapping patchworks of schemata and subsidiary features.
Finally, “the order of constructions in discourse is flexible but not random.
Implications from one pattern can suggest dependencies that constrain pos-
sible continuations by other patterns. And the learned statistics of construction
successions can similarly affect what follows what.”12 Put another way, each con-
struction presents its speaker with perceived “affordances,” that is, latent possibilities
for interaction with other constructions and for continuation.13 Individual units di-
rect a speaker to choose (and a listener to expect) one of several customary follow-​
ons. When solfeggio singers arrived on the syllable mi at the end of a phrase, for
instance, they often continued downward to a half cadence on re or to a full ca-
dence on do, but they never leapt a major seventh. To do so was not an available
option. In this respect, local factors at the middle level determined discourse at the
upper level.
Yet this final observation leaves an important question unanswered, one that goes
to the heart of modern studies of eighteenth-​century music. What part did large-​
scale predetermined schemes play in shaping melodic discourse? Granted that
musical constructions present a range of conventional options for continuation,
some preferable to others, it seems implausible that solfeggio singers/​composers
thought no further than the next phrase. Tonal plans surely regulated the flow of
constructions. Most major key solfeggi start in the tonic, proceed to a cadence in the
dominant, and continue in the dominant for a while before returning to the tonic.
And what of the cantus firmus uncovered in ­example 7.13? Did it arise coinci-
dentally as a result of inter-​construction affordances, or was it conceived prior to
the act of composition or improvisation as some sort of template or map?
In what follows, I argue that the simple patterns of scales, leaps, and cadences
picked up by students during their first weeks of sung solfeggio training remained
essential throughout their professional lives as mental frameworks that facilitated
162 The Solfeggio Tradition

composition and improvisation. The exercises set out on Porpora’s page never left
them. They endured as a substratum for every utterance.14
That is not to say that every melody followed a map resembling some bland step-
wise chant. Some did, but others encompassed more sophisticated arrangements
of syllables, which may well have arisen from the implications embodied in indi-
vidual constructions. Nor is it to claim that solfeggists generated original melody by
transforming plain notes into intricate vocalizations, like extempore variations on a
hidden theme. Learning and memorizing existing constructions was more efficient
than conjuring up new ones from scratch, and they came ready-​made to map onto
established underlying contours. Whatever construction a student encountered,
however elaborate it may have been, it always fitted somehow onto a familiar syl-
labic pattern of scales, leaps, and cadences. Knowing how to create a musical dis-
course must have involved both mental processes: mapping constructions onto a
preconceived overall thread and shaping the discourse into coherent and flowing
moments by respecting the inherent tendencies of the material.
Although construction grammar can help account for many enigmatic aspects
of solfeggio, in the end it reinforces the claim that it was an acquired language,
governed by rules that could be mastered only by a long process of reading, lis-
tening, and speaking.

The Prinner

After so enthusiastically extolling the virtues of acquiring a language by

experiencing and memorizing its myriad words and constructions, it may seem odd
to have to declare that that is precisely what we are not going to do in the remainder
of this chapter. With neither a solfeggio-​speaking maestro to hand nor several years
to spare for a proper apprenticeship, we must (for now, at least) learn to read the
language of eighteenth-​century melody the hard way, by conscious study.
The analyses that follow nevertheless offer an opportunity to marvel at the
breathtaking ingenuity and artistry displayed by professional musicians at that
time. They learned to play on syllable-​pitches as master poets on words. Bringing
their dead language back to life reveals, for those interested in music, beauties and
surprises every bit as exciting as the secrets once surrendered by cuneiform tablets
or Egyptian hieroglyphs. Thanks to the level of detail conveyed by music notation,
moreover, performing a solfeggio with its original syllables allows us to resurrect
the three-​hundred-​year-​old voice of a music student and to hear her speak with a
degree of certainty that would be difficult to achieve in other forgotten languages.15
In order to limit the scope of the material, in what follows I take one of the most
common stock phrases of eighteenth-​century music, the descending scale seg-
ment la-​sol-​fa-​mi, and look to solfeggio manuscripts to find out some of the ways in
which it could be “spoken” (i.e., sung or played) as music.
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 163

How the basic la-​sol-​fa-​mi was taught to beginners can be ascertained from
­example 8.1, which shows the opening of Cotumacci’s initial lesson in triple time
from his Principles and Solfeggi (c. 1755). Although his course of study had already
reached a high degree of complexity by this point, for some reason he opted to re-
turn to simple stock phrases set in whole notes. The introduction of a new time sig-
nature appears to have persuaded him of a need to revise the basics.
After an initial ascent through the tonic triad, the vocal melody in e­ xample 8.1
begins a long staggered descent through the two sets of la-​sol-​fa-​mi syllable-​notes
that belong to the key of G major: in mm. 2–​5, E-​D-​C-​B from the hexachord on G,
functioning as a continuation of the brief triadic gesture, and in mm. 6–​9, B-​A-​G-​F♯
from the hexachord on D, functioning as a turn toward the dominant.
To explain this lesson in full would take a great deal of time and effort. It is fortu-
nate, then, that Gjerdingen (2007) has already completed much of the task. Using
mainly modern terms and scale-​degree numbers, his account of the schema he calls
the Prinner corresponds very closely to what solfeggists would have known as a
group of model melodies that shared the core syllables la-​sol-​fa-​mi, framed and ex-
panded with a variety of other syllables. In ­example 8.1 its archetypal form can best
be seen in the circled scale degree numbers attached to the suggested keyboard ac-
companiment. The melody descends through notes 6-​5-​4-​3 of the scale, while the
bass accompanies it in parallel tenths with notes 4-​3-​2-​1. An inner voice outlines

Ex. 8.1 Cotumacci, Principles and Solfeggi (c. 1755; GB-​Lbl, Add. 14241), fol. 13v,
no. 41, mm. 1–​9, with suggested keyboard accompaniment
164 The Solfeggio Tradition

the soprano clausula 1-​7-​1, reinforcing the sense of arrival on the tonic chord in
m. 5. For the sake of clarity, I label this as the tonic Prinner to distinguish it from
the dominant Prinner, which ends on the dominant chord. This follows in m. 6,
where the melody continues to descend stepwise through notes 6-​5-​4-​3 of the D
major scale.
Eighteenth-​century solfeggio singers would not have recognized such a sharp
distinction between tonic and dominant in this melody. For them, the dominant
Prinner belonged equally to both keys as a shared la-​sol-​fa-​mi. It could continue in
either direction, as we shall see.
Despite the absence of traits in the manuscript, the pattern of solmized notes and
vocalized embellishments is unmistakable. Cotumacci surely devised this theme as
an introduction to the two forms of Prinner and the ways in which they were typi-
cally used: as riposte to a theme and a turn toward the dominant, respectively. Why,
then, do I describe his lesson using Gjerdingen’s modern term rather than histori-
cally more authentic syllables?
The Prinner is more than just a label. It encapsulates an existing body of know-
ledge and a growing field of research that explains how melodies with la-​sol-​fa-​mi at
their core were usually treated in Galant music, from typical bass accompaniments
and common variants to frequency and popularity at given times and places. To
dispense with it would mean starting from scratch and repeating findings that
have been dealt with elsewhere. On the evidence of solfeggio practice, Prinners, to-
gether with the many other mental frameworks for composition and improvisation
surveyed in Gjerdingen’s ground-​breaking theory of Galant schemata, should no
longer be regarded as theoretical constructs but as historical facts.
The way they were acquired, varied, and conjoined to form coherent musical
discourses can be reconstructed in detail from solfeggio manuscripts. Cotumacci’s
lesson in the Prinner (­example 8.1), for instance, reveals that there was no abstract
prototype removed from its multiple instantiations. This most basic form of the
schema is not basic at all, in modern terms. It contains elaborations that turn it into
a genuine theme. It is decorated with descending leaps of the third, the central ones
filled in with passing-​note guides and the final one left bare. On its second appear-
ance Cotumacci mixes things up a little, reversing the direction of the leap in m. 6
and substituting the expected third in m. 7 for a fifth. Even at this stage, by speaking
this real melody in song, students acquired the means to vary melodic formulas and
to turn them into meaningful music. To sing the bare bones of a Prinner would have
been akin to speaking without accent or inflection, rendering the words meaning-
less for a learner.
Beyond basic scales and plainchant, e­ xample 8.1 was about as threadbare as a
la-​sol-​fa-​mi could get in solfeggio singing. Even in the archaic fugal style students
spoke these syllables from the outset as real musical utterances. They learned
to pronounce them, as it were, with an accent suitable for use in conservative
church music.
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 165

Consider the opening phrase of the solfeggio fugue for two sopranos and bass
shown in e­xample 8.2(b). It was attributed to the Neapolitan maestro Davide
Perez but copied in 1787, nine years after his death, at a time when he was widely
regarded in Italy and beyond as one of the finest composers in the strict ecclesias-
tical style. Although this manuscript copy was most likely made for lessons with
an amateur (“for the use of E. H.”), it appears at first sight to feature counterpoint
of a complexity that would require more than nine lessons to master. Singing only
the solmized notes and omitting all vocalization, however, as illustrated by the re-
duction presented in ­example 8.2(a), reveals a simple underlying pattern of the
sort that would have appeared in what Bozzelli called the “preparatory practical
exercises” that bridged the gap between spoken and sung solfeggio. In this sense
­examples 8.2(b) and (a) relate not so much as score and analytical reduction but
as snapshots of student progress taken several months or years apart. The reduc-
tion shown in (a) represents the kind of basic arrangement of scales and leaps that
students would have invented “while phrasing correctly,” as Bozzelli put it, soon
after they graduated from the spoken theory class, whereas the solfeggio shown
in (b) represents the kind of advanced lesson they would have encountered at a
later stage.
Although the reductions to syllable-​ notes and grammatical constructions
presented in the remainder of this chapter may not capture exactly the treatment
of scales and leaps during the interim phase of training, they are the best way I can
come up with to condense several years’ worth of daily lessons into a series of short
examples to be scanned in an instant. In what follows, I ask readers always to prac-
tice the simplified reductions shown in (a) first, in order to get a feel for the basic
grammar and vocabulary of Galant melody, and then to sing their corresponding
solfeggi given in (b) to experience what it must have been like, after several further
years of study, to be able to turn essentially the same melody into a sophisticated
composition. If readers take pains to experience and memorize the reductions,
then the solfeggi should make perfect sense and my commentaries should seem
self-​evident. Indeed, I challenge readers to judge my insights in comparison with

Ex. 8.2(a) Reduction of (b) to syllable-​notes and grammatical units

166 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 8.2(b) Perez, Duet Solfeggi for Two Sopranos and Bass (I-​Nc, 34.6.6/​1, Solfeggio
324), fol. 25r, no. 9, mm. 1–​17
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 167

Ex. 8.2(b) Continued

their own. If, however, they choose to read without first singing, for each example,
(a) followed by (b), then the text alone will seem both impenetrable and exasper-
ating. In this respect, the chapter is fundamentally an introduction and inducement
to practical music making.
We shall start with ­example 8.2(a), treating it as a simple combination of scales,
leaps, and cadences that students eventually would be able to develop into some-
thing like Perez’s fugue. The key is E♭ major, meaning that the dual do syllables of the
compound scale fall on E♭ and B♭. The first soprano sings the la-​sol-​fa-​mi belonging
to the hexachord grounded on B♭ while the second sings the other one belonging
to the hexachord on E♭, starting one measure later (if the fundamental measure is
understood to encompass two notated bars in 2/​1, rather than one in 2/​2, as seems
appropriate). Together, they form a straightforward chain of suspensions.
The imitative upper voices are underpinned by a variant of the usual Prinner bass
(scale steps 4-​3-​2-​1) expanded into a regular intervallic motion of the fourth up
and fifth down, otherwise known as a sequential circle of fifths.16 In terms of scale
degrees, this presents a convoluted jumble of numbers. In solfeggio, by contrast, it
was sung (or conceived, if played) simply as fa-​mi-​re-​do, alternating two sets of the
same syllables from the two hexachords of the key, as shown in ­example 8.2(a).17
The upward leaps of the fourth are generated by the technique of applying an
inganno, echoing the same syllables on different pitches. Once again, singing the
bass with original syllables proves a more effective way to learn it than any amount
of analysis and description.
In the actual lesson (­example 8.2[b]‌), each singer elaborates these syllables with
similar patterns of formulaic vocalization in a way not very far removed from the
simple leaps of the third seen in Cotumacci’s lesson (­example 8.1).18 While one
singer leaps to the sixth below and returns through an arpeggio in half notes, the
other leaps to the fourth above and returns through a running passage in quarter
notes. It is not difficult to imagine how beginners could have internalized this
complex counterpoint by practicing its two ways of singing each syllable before
168 The Solfeggio Tradition

memorizing them together as a mid-​level grammatical construction attached to an

upper-​level descending scale pattern. Reading and speaking the lesson for them-
selves would have been more effective than having it explained to them, especially
if couched in the technical language of voice leading, prepared dissonance, and
the like.
In ­examples 8.1 and 8.2 the Prinner has been described as a self-​contained schema
consisting of four melodic syllable-​notes of roughly equal duration. Cotumacci
realized it as a straightforward cantabile built on a regular intervallic pattern of de-
scending thirds, and Perez transformed it into a contrapuntal model that could be
adapted for use in antiquated church music. Yet the syllables were not always evenly
spaced, and there were often more than four of them. In order to understand how a
Prinner formed an integral part of the overall thread of a melody, it is necessary to
take account of the notes that led to and from it.
In ­example 8.1, for instance, singers surely would have treated the triadic ascent
toward sol in m. 1 not as a detachable prefix but as an integral part of the opening
phrase. Indeed, as indicated, the entire measure was most likely sung to sol, as an
ornamental approach to D from below (cercar della nota) operating in accordance
with the Appoggiatura rule.19 The frequency of sol as a lead-​in to the Prinner in sol-
feggio argues strongly for its inclusion as part of the schema, or at least as a common
subtype. Sol was a common lead-​in because, like fa, it occupied one of the two do
syllables of the key: in G major, G-​do could be sung as G-​fa and D-​do as D-​sol,
hence my terms “fa/​do lead-​in” and “sol/​do lead-​in.”
Turning now to the lead-​out from the schema, in e­ xample 8.1 the final fa-​mi
“comma” of the Prinner is rounded off with a vocalized drop of a third. This was a
common way to impart a greater sense of finality to an otherwise weak imperfect ca-
dence. In ­example 8.2(b), by contrast, the Prinners do not stop on their supposedly
final mis in either m. 13 or m. 15. They continue on to a perfect authentic cadence.
Although the upper part of ­example 8.2(a) sounds the dominant Prinner of the
key, it clearly enunciates a presentational phrase that begins and ends firmly in the
tonic.20 The upper part proceeds to a soprano clausula, fa-​mi-​fa, while the middle
part descends to a tenor “clausula vera,” do-​re-​do. Again, for a solfeggio singer these
syllables were not extraneous additions. They formed an intrinsic part of the phrase.
Following simple procedures that would have been learned within weeks of starting
work on exercises similar to those contained on Porpora’s page, they showed how
to lead both types of Prinner to closure on the tonic. By singing ­example 8.2(b)
students learned not only how to fashion a passage of antico counterpoint from four
syllables but, more profitably, how to turn it into a complete opening “sentence”
rounded off by an approved cadence and suitable for use in church. This solfeggio
enabled them to acquire a working knowledge of two constructions at the middle
level (the paired invertible figurations and the final cadence) in relation to another
construction (la-​sol-​fa-​mi) operating at the upper level.
Apart from old-​fashioned church music, the perfect authentic cadence was not
a common way to continue a Prinner. In what follows, we shall get to know some
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 169

of the more popular alternatives, such as the fa-​mi comma and its companion
the fa\mi-​fa false soprano cadence, the la-​sol half cadence, the mi/​mi and la/​mi
modulations, and all manner of entertaining tricks and jests. We shall also explore
the ways in which Prinners were expanded and integrated into long-​range melodic
plans by means of lead-​ins and internal punctuation. To conclude we shall tackle a
couple of complete solfeggi.
This constitutes the narrative structure of the remainder of the chapter, such as it
is. Because the examples have been chosen primarily for their traits, so as to back up
my suggested solmizations with manuscript evidence, they do not readily fall into
a logical order. Below, they are grouped under subheadings according to how they
lead out from the Prinner. But each excerpt warrants its own detailed commentary,
leading to frequent digressions from this main thread. Taken together, however, the
many separate case studies should provide an adequate overview of the pedagogical
method.

The Fa-​mi Comma and the False Soprano Cadence, Fa\mi-​fa

Example 8.3 introduces one of Gjerdingen’s common mid-​eighteenth-​century

variants of the Prinner21 as found in the opening section of a solfeggio by Leo.
Please sing the reduction shown in (a) several times to learn its basic constructions.
Ignore the small stemless noteheads at first (these provide hints as to how the frame-
work might be embellished) and concentrate only on the main solmized notes.
Following an initial do-​re-​mi, the melodic phrase in mm. 2–​4 is clearly seperated
into two events: la-​sol and its answer, fa-​mi. This is a two-​stage Prinner, performing
its standard role as an elegant riposte to a theme.
Once the pattern of syllables is committed to memory, sing ­example 8.3(a) again,
this time trying to incorporate the small notes. They represent potential places
where a singer might insert anticipations (m. 1), leaps of the third (m. 2), and
arpeggios (mm. 3–​4). They have been left deliberately rhythmless to allow readers
to experiment with different ways of realizing them, just as apprentices would have
done. Try varying them vocally with additional appoggiaturas, chromaticisms, and
passing notes.
Next, compare your efforts with Leo’s melody, presented in e­xample 8.3(b).
His elaboration of the simple arch from do to mi is delightfully stylish (as already

Ex. 8.3(a) Reduction of (b) to syllable notes and grammatical units

170 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 8.3(b) Leo, Solfeggi for Solo Soprano (I-​Nc, 34.2.6/​2, Solfeggio 247), fol. 38v,
no. 13, mm. 1–​4

described in connection with ­example 7.6). In the Prinner’s first stage, starting on
the upbeat to m. 3, he lengthens the syllable la through an arpeggio figure rising to
the octave above. This is what Gjerdingen calls the “la-​to-​sol flourish,” citing a strik-
ingly similar example from Mozart’s Sonata K. 9a.22 The second stage features a re-
ciprocal lengthening of the syllable fa, resolving eventually onto mi with the added
support of a common bass variant: an interpolated scale degree 5 (G) between 2
and 1.23
To an observer attempting to understand mm. 3–​4 of this solfeggio, it makes
sense to isolate the main structural notes (the circled numbers 6-​5-​4-​3 found
in ­example 8.3[b]‌) from the busy surface of the music and to presume that they
functioned as a prototype for the actual melody. But to a solfeggio singer, such re-
ductive analysis would have been worse than useless. It would have interfered
with the learning process. Singing the reduction given in e­ xample 8.3(a) will have
shown that the pattern underpinning the melody is not an abstract la-​sol-​fa-​mi. It
is a real sol-​la-​-​-s​ ol; sol-​fa-​-​-m
​ i: a two-​stage, six-​note Prinner, inseperable from its
rhythmic and melodic profile. This is highlighted by the analytical slurs and punc-
tuation marks of e­ xample 8.3(a), which outline the grammatical units that govern
the paired constructions.
To acquire this melody as a usable construction meant to sing it whole, taking in
every last detail. In this process, the syllables were essential. They gave the mind a
memorable shape to grasp onto. The first sol-​la-​-​-​ stood for an upbeat lead-​in to a
flourish. The answering appoggiatura on sol represented a weak punctuation point
that divided the phrase, like one of Marpurg’s “masculine” cadences in the musical
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 171

prose of recitative.24 The ensuing sol-​fa-​-​-​ indicated a fresh upbeat lead-​in to an-
other flourish, and the final mi symbolized a firmer punctuation point, its appog-
giatura turn figure sounding more conclusive than the previous phrase ending. The
importance of detail shows through also in the rising octave figure on la, which
“motivates” the transposition of the entire second stage up an octave. The principle
of drawing on features introduced early on as motivators (or, in musical terms,
motives) for variants at a later stage is a defining characteristic of the Galant art of
melody.
In regard to the bass that accompanies the melisma in m. 4 of ­example 8.3(b),
the melodic syllable fa is partnered by D, which suggests that Leo and his students
would have regarded the interpolated bass note G not as the root of a structural
harmony but as a decorative addition, because it did not support a melodic syllable.
In eighteenth-​century solfeggio, the bass functioned as a subordinate counterpoint
to a melody made up of fundamental syllable-​notes. In the modern theory of har-
monic function, conversely, the dominant chord is always considered structural in
a cadential progression.
One final point of interest in ­example 8.3(b) concerns the trait that can be seen
above the first group of thirty-​second notes in m. 4. Why did this passaggio re-
quire a trait when the less conspicuous one in the preceding measure did not?
The answer requires a considerable effort to fathom, I’m afraid, but offers
valuable insights into the astonishing subtlety of solfeggio as a language. It
rests on its similarity to a common cadence with a syllabic deception. Without
the trait, and overlooking the return to F-​fa toward the end of the melisma
in m. 4, a singer might easily have mistaken its fa-​mi comma for what I de-
scribe below as the false soprano cadence, fa\mi-​fa. This raises an important
point concerning the primacy of performative act over notated text. The way a
singer realized a solfeggio construction could be more crucial to determining
its communicative function than the notes fixed in a score.25 Because func-
tion is synonymous with intention in construction grammars, overlooking this
trait could have meant singing the same pitches to the same rhythm with the
wrong meaning.
In order to understand the subtle distinction between the two constructions, we
need to experience the trick fa\mi-​fa cadence and compare it with the fa-​mi comma
that ends the Prinner.
A basic version can be seen in e­ xample 8.4(a), drawn from a solfeggio by
Cafaro. After a simple opening gambit consisting of little more than an ascent
through the do-​mi-​sol of the triad, the melody continues as if to close with a
weak comma cadence: A-​G-​-​-​F♯ sung to sol-​fa-​-​-​mi. But on reaching fa in m. 3
it leaps instead down a tritone to the other mi of the key, on C♯, before rising to
a firm perfect cadence. The two constructions are thus entirely different. The
fa-​-​-​mi comma in m. 4 of e­ xample 8.3 ends inconclusively with an imperfect ca-
dence, while the fa\mi-​fa in mm. 3–​4 of ­example 8.4 closes with a strong perfect
172 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 8.4(a) Reduction of (b) to syllable notes and grammatical units

Ex. 8.4(b) Cafaro, Solfeggi for Solo Soprano (D-​B, Mus. Ms. 2704), 122, mm. 1–​4. ©
bpk-​Bildagentur/​State Library of Berlin

cadence. Yet, remarkably, a solfeggist could have sung them both to exactly the
same pitches.
Evidence to support this extraordinary claim can be found in the traits
appended to m. 3 of ­example 8.4(b). Had there been just one, the entire octave
descent from G to G would have been sung as fa, resolving onto mi on F♯ in the
following bar. The riposte would have been little more than an expanded imper-
fect authentic cadence, sol-​fa-​-​-​mi, like the second stage of a Prinner. The scribe
added two traits to m. 3, however, leaving no doubt that both its intial G and its
central C♯ were to be solmized, as fa from one hexachord and mi from the other.
Invoking the Appoggiatura rule, this mi resolves onto an elaborated fa on D in
m. 4. The riposte is in fact a false soprano cadence with a sol lead-​in: sol-​fa\mi-​fa.
This conclusion is all the more convincing because there was no such thing as a
cadence leaping a fourth or fifth from one mi to another in eighteenth-​century
music. To solmize the F♯ in m. 4 of ­example 8.4(b) as mi would be to break fun-
damental rules of counterpoint and voice-​leading (including the one prohibiting
parallel fifths).
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 173

Ex. 8.5(a) Reduction of (b) to syllable notes and grammatical units

Ex. 8.5(b) Cafaro, Solfeggi for Solo Soprano (D-​B, Mus. Ms. 2704), 116, mm. 1–​3. ©
bpk-​Bildagentur/​State Library of Berlin

Cafaro devised a solfeggio (­example 8.5) to enable singers to experience both

constructions side by side and to appreciate their subtly different degrees of clo-
sure. Sing the reduction shown in (a) several times to familiarize yourself with its
constructions, then sing the actual melody presented in (b). The opening theme in
mm. 1–​2 is a two-​stage tonic Prinner. Its first stage begins with a fa flourish that is
curtailed by a punctuating la-​sol. As mentioned above, prefixing a tonic Prinner
with a fa/​do (or, alternatively, sol/​do) lead-​in allowed it to function as an initiating
phrase. The fact that the bass harmonizes the eighth notes A and G in m. 1 with func-
tional chords argues against interpreting them as an appoggiatura upon a single sol,
as does the fact that they initiate a familiar la-​sol-​fa-​mi schema. The second stage of
174 The Solfeggio Tradition

the Prinner begins an octave higher with a syncopated sol at the end of m. 1 leading
to a long fa that is capped off by a weak punctuation point on mi. The entire two-​
stage, six-​note Prinner can be spoken in solfeggio as fa-​--​ ​la-​sol, sol-​fa-​--​ ​mi.
It is answered in mm. 2–​3 by a varied repeat of its second stage in the form of
a false soprano cadence, as indicated by two traits in the manuscript and a corre-
sponding re-​beaming of the bass. This version is noticeably more final-​sounding,
although it shares an identical bass line and similar melodic contour. Singing
­example 8.5(b) to its original syllables reveals how eighteenth-​century musicians
would have perceived the two endings. Closing a Prinner with a simple appoggia-
tura at the end of fa-​-​-m
​ i left it partly open and in need of continuation, whereas
closing it with a firmer three-​note appoggiatura (cercar della nota) at the end of fa\
mi-​fa left no room for further comment.
Having experienced both constructions, apprentices would instantly have under-
stood the meaning of the single trait in m. 4 of ­example 8.3(b), notwithstanding its
brevity and imprecision. They knew that it instructed them to maintain F-​fa through
the phrase until the change on E-​mi. Without the trait, they might easily have mistaken
the B that coincides with the bass note G as a mi, resolving in the following measure
onto C-​fa. More experienced singers would not, however, have needed a trait. They
would have seen that the flourish in m. 4 of e­ xample 8.3(b) returns to a prominent
fa on F, whereas the one in m. 3 of e­ xample 8.5(b) does not, and that its punctuating
Amen on mi lacks the finality of the appoggiatura on fa in ­example 8.5(b).
These features testify to the extraordinary subtlety of the language, as perceived
by fluent speakers. To a solfeggio singer, such minute details must have been as es-
sential to the meaning of a phrase as accents in spoken language. For us today, how-
ever, they pass largely unnoticed.

The La-​sol (or Mi-​re) Half Cadence

A half cadence can be defined as a species of musical punctuation that halts on the
dominant harmony without proceeding to closure on the tonic. It was one of the
most common ways to round off a Prinner. In order to appreciate why, try singing
la-​sol-​fa-​mi and continuing downward with an accented appoggiatura on re. In
many melodies, that was enough to form a half cadence.26 Stepping one note fur-
ther onto do led to a full cadence.
For reasons bound up with melodic context, in solfeggio the mi-​re (3-​2) of the
half cadence was more commonly sung as la-​sol (3-​2). Its basic outline can be seen
in the final measure of ­example 8.6(b), where it serves to close the initial phrase of
a Larghetto by Leo. As the melody proceeds from the final syllable of the Prinner
(sung here as la rather than mi) to a metrically accented appoggiatura on sol, the
accompanying bass leaps a tritone to the sharped fourth before stepping up a semi-
tone onto the fifth of the key.27
Before we survey the rest of this melody, please sing the reduction in
­example 8.6(a), sounding only the principal syllable-​notes. When these are secure,
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 175

Ex. 8.6(a) Reduction of (b) to syllable notes and grammatical units

Ex. 8.6(b) Leo, Solfeggi for Solo Soprano (I-​Nc, 34.2.6/​2; Solfeggio 247), fol. 49v,
no. 23, mm. 1–​7. Courtesy of the San Pietro a Majella Conservatory in Naples, no
further reproduction allowed

try inserting the leaps suggested by the small noteheads in whatever ways spring to
mind. Be as inventive as you can. Finally, compare your results with Leo’s melody in
e­ xample 8.6(b).
Weighed against the lengthy preceding phrase, the cursory half cadence in
m. 7 leaves the melody strangely unbalanced. The traits above mm. 2, 3, and 4 in
­example 8.6(b) show that the initial sol held sway for a full two measures and that
each syllable of the Prinner occupied one measure. With a nod to the two-​stage ver-
sion of the schema, on reaching fa in m. 5 the figurations change and the harmonic
rhythm accelerates. The entire melody embodies a single grammatical construction
176 The Solfeggio Tradition

that performs an initiating function, starting on the tonic and progressing with
increasing momentum toward a weak cadence on the dominant. In this respect,
the initial sol should be considered neither an opening theme nor a lead-​in. It is the
first part of a much longer six-​note unit that encompasses both the Prinner and the
closing half cadence. A solfeggio singer would have conceived it as sol-​la-​sol-​fa\la-​
sol. Again, the subsidiary features are integral to the meaning of the construction.
Because the opening sol represents the tonic harmony (as sol/​do), it descends to the
other do of the key (G as fa/​do) and highlights it with a turn figure, A-​G-​F♯-​G. This
motivates the vocalization of the next syllable (in m. 3), which condenses the same
turn figure and shifts it up an octave.
Galant musicians were seldom content to repeat formulas like the half cadence
without customizing them to suit their surroundings. They sought to keep their
musical conversations fresh by enlivening them with novel descriptions, surprise
turns, and sparkling wit. In the final nine measures of the B major solfeggio shown
in ­example 8.7(b), Cotumacci demonstrated one way to achieve this by subjecting
the usual stepwise contour of the la-​sol (3-​2) half cadence to an inganno on the first
beat of m. 31, which motivated a more far-​reaching jest at the closing la-​sol-​fa (3-​2-​
1) perfect cadence starting in the middle of m. 34.
This is an advanced lesson that demands a high degree of skill. If readers
are to stand any chance of grasping it, they must first master the reduction in
­example 8.7(a). Again, sing it initially with only the principal syllable-​notes, then
restore the inganno leaps to stepwise contours by singing the notes in brackets, and
finally try to embellish it in various ways using as guides the consonant leaps indi-
cated by small noteheads.
The excerpt from the original shown in ­example 8.7(b) should now begin to
make sense. It begins with a very common combination of three constructions: a
theme derived from the scale, a la-​sol-​fa-​mi continuation, and a cadence. The short
theme takes the form of an embellished scale segment, do-​re-​mi-​fa. The initial oc-
tave leap on do provides a motive for what follows. This theme is answered by a
tonic Prinner, which begins with a typical sol/​do lead-​in and accelerates towards a
half cadence, reaching the dominant at the start of m. 31.28 Rather than coming to
a halt on sol (C♯), however, which a seasoned and attuned listener would have ex-
pected, the melody recalls the descending octave leap from the theme. This results
in a classic inganno. The singer sounds the right syllable to the wrong pitch: the half
cadence ends inconclusively in m. 31 on the “other sol” (F♯), leaving the phrase open,
in keeping with its function as the first half of an antecedent-​consequent pair. The
Ex. 8.7(a) Reduction of (b) to syllable-​notes and grammatical units

Ex. 8.7(b) Cotumacci, Principles and Solfeggi (c. 1755; GB-​Lbl, Add. 14241), fol. 25r,
no. 85, mm. 28–​36, with suggested bass. By permission of the British Library
178 The Solfeggio Tradition

corresponding consequent phrase ensues, beginning with an ascent through the

complete hexachordal scale. Its figurations appear to be motivated by the triplets of
the theme in m. 28. On reaching its uppermost note la, the singer breaks out into
two extended flourishes.29
What happens next is remarkable. To complete the la-​sol half cadence left
hanging from mm. 30–​31, in mm. 34–​36 its stepwise descent continues onto the
evaded fa, closing the melody with a full perfect cadence, la-​sol-​fa (3-​2-​1). But the
memory of the earlier inganno lingers. It acts as a motive for development. On
reaching fa on B at the start of m. 35, the melody soars once again to the other sol
on F♯, even recalling the octave leap. This false sol threatens to commandeer the
melody with a la-​sol-​fa of its own, in the wrong hexachord and thus the wrong key.
Order is restored in the final bar, with a return to the correct fa on B.30 The outlines
of the trick were experienced in the “false tenor cadence” in e­ xample 6.28(e).
Knowing the syllabic thread of this melody, as depicted in e­ xample 8.7(a), reveals
a beautiful symmetry. The initial section up to the half cadence in m. 31 consists of
a theme and riposte, filling in the same F♯ octave that appears at the motivic surface.
Its connotations as an antecedent phrase prompt a consequent variation in which
the four-​note scale segment extends upward to la and the half cadence is made
whole, but not without a fleeting reference to both the inganno in m. 31 and the start
of the Prinner in m. 29. Very little of this meaning can be inferred from the score
unless one knows how to see it through the eyes of an eighteenth-​century appren-
tice and to sing its syllables, differentiating them from their attached vocalizations
and recognizing their implications for voice-​leading.
Before tackling the formidable-​looking solfeggio presented in ­example 8.8(b),
it is necessary to return to the very beginning. As mentioned in connection with
­example 5.1, young choristers were first introduced to music notation by learning
how to read the medieval F-​or C-​clefs that showed where to find the syllable fa.
There were always three of them in textbooks because the distance between the
outer line and outer space of a four-​line plainchant staff encompassed an octave (in
Ex. 8.8(a) Reduction of (b) to syllable-​notes and grammatical units

Ex. 8.8(b) Leo, Solfeggi for Soprano (I-​Nc 34.2.6/​3), fol. 63r, no. 1, mm. 1–​8. Courtesy
of the San Pietro a Majella Conservatory in Naples, no further reproduction allowed
180 The Solfeggio Tradition

order to accommodate the ambitus of a mode). In recognition of the clefs, an initial

do was always solmized as fa in plainchant.
The simplest way to orient oneself to a given staff was first to sing its boundary
octave fas, then to count up the scale to locate the inner fa, and finally to pinpoint
its crucial semitone by descending a step onto mi. An illustration of this typical
layout can be found in e­ xample 5.14. Once the position of the three fa syllables
had been noted, singing the scale involved nothing more than memorizing the
two patterns of steps that connected them: these (as set out in ­examples 5.15 and
5.16) were called the “mutation at the fourth,” fa/​re-​mi-​fa (e.g., in C major, C-​D-​
E-​F), and the “mutation at the fifth,” fa-​sol/​re-​mi-​fa (e.g., F-​G-​A-​B-​C). Many ru-
dimentary lessons document this process graphically by indicating three fa clefs
at the start of the staff.
To seasoned apprentices, therefore, the opening of ­example 8.8(b) must have
appeared absurdly childish. Leo’s motive in writing it was presumably to mimic
the familiar sound of rank beginners struggling to make out the notes on a staff.
Sing the reduction in ­example 8.8(a) to familiarize yourself with its constructions.
The singer begins by picking out the ambitus of the G major scale with an octave
leap, fa-​fa-​fa, as if tracing the boundary fa-​clefs of the staff. This overlaps with a
more melodious phrase in the following bar, which also has three fa syllables. But
they are not the same ones. The unusual paired traits, clearly visible in mm. 2–​3
of the manuscript,31 instruct the singer to proceed from fa on G to fa on C before
rounding off the figure with a fa-​mi comma decorated with appoggiaturas. The ef-
fect is one of a beginner counting up the scale, eventually finding fa, and marking its
mi with a simple appoggiatura cadence. By repeating this figure in m. 3, Leo invests
the theme with a conspicuous symmetry: three fa syllables sounded three times,
encompassing three corresponding pitches from the key of G major.
The motive of the three fa clefs also informs the la-​sol converging half cadence.
By leaping back to fa on high G at the end of m. 3 and descending stepwise to fa on
C, the singer inverts the preceding progression from low G to C. This is a classic case
of the “other fa” (see e­ xample 6.28[b]‌), used here by Leo to present the familiar la-​
sol half cadence in an unfamiliar light.
In response to the turn to the dominant implied by the half cadence, in mm. 4–​6
the melody ascends through the hexachordal scale on D, embellished by leaps of the
sixth. It is answered in the usual way by a Prinner, but with an unusual twist. Taking
its cue from the theme, this Prinner adopts the same rising scale figure with paired
traits to create a remarkable echo effect. By solmizing the notes a fourth above each
of its steps, the singer anticipates their syllables, as indicated by the eighth notes
attached to the main melody in the reduction in e­ xample 8.8(a). The result is an ex-
quisite lesson in how to switch between hexachords to develop a melody. Precisely
the same device appears in a beginner’s solfeggio by Leo.32
The addition of figured bass “6” symbols in mm. 6 and 7 of the manuscript of
­example 8.8(b) implies that Leo (or the scribe) regarded this as a special case,
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 181

requiring the partimento player to make unconventional alterations to the usual

Prinner harmonization.

The Mi/​mi Modulation

When Prinners did not lead to a cadence, either half or full, they often continued
with a device that I call the mi/​mi modulation. Although this could occasionally
be sung as re-​mi, calling it mi/​mi provides a conceptual hook that captures its es-
sence: an upward step of a whole tone from one mi to another.
It can be seen in m. 4 of ­example 8.9(b), in a setting by Cafaro that is remark-
ably similar to the one by Leo already encountered in m. 7 of e­ xample 7.13 and
to several others awaiting discovery later. On reaching the last syllable of the
Prinner’s la-​sol-​fa-​mi, the melody skips up a whole tone onto a modulatory
new mi. The defining characteristic of the schema is a running passage that
encompasses both the mi from the tonic key and the new mi, sung to one syllable
over the same bass note. In effect, it prompts a weak “passo indietro” modulation
to the dominant.
Turn now to the reduction in e­ xample 8.9(a) to experience its constructions
through your voice and to see how many different versions you can conjure up by
playing with the leaps suggested in small noteheads. When your melodic imagina-
tion starts to founder, look to e­ xample 8.9(b) to see how Cafaro rendered the same
solfeggio. The theme is a tonic Prinner introduced by a sol/​do lead-​in and extended
by cadential repetitions of its final fa-​mi. While the traits in m. 1 of the manuscript
clearly instruct the singer not to bother solmizing the echappé sixteenth-​note fig-
ures, their absence in the following measures means that my suggested solmization
must stretch the Appoggiatura rule to its limits. Although there can be little doubt
that the core melody of mm. 2–​3 outlines an imperfect authentic cadence moving
from C over the dominant harmony to B over the tonic, these notes are obscured
by elaborate vocalization. I suggest that the singer would have kept fa-​mi in mind
throughout this passage, as indicated in ­example 8.9(b) by both the solmization and
the suggested right-​hand keyboard accompaniment.
Ex. 8.9(a) Reduction of (b) to syllable notes and grammatical units

Ex. 8.9(b) Cafaro, Solfeggi for Solo Soprano (D-​B, Mus. ms. 2704), 170, mm. 1–​6. ©
bpk-​Bildagentur/​State Library of Berlin
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 183

Another typical intance of the mi/​mi modulation can be seen in a solfeggio by Leo
given in ­example 8.10(b), where in m. 10 it leads out from a Prinner. It also forms a
crucial part of a deeper lesson embedded in this melody, which taught students yet
another way to motivate a musical discourse by revisiting earlier features. Within
the opening theme, both the solmization pattern mi-​fa-​sol and its characteristic
syncopated rhythm inspire later developments.
To find out how, first sing the reduction in ­example 8.10(a) several times and play
with the embellishments hinted at by the small noteheads. The melody begins with
a leap onto a syncopated mi on G in the tonic key of E♭ before immediately step-
ping up a whole tone onto a modulatory mi on A, belonging to the dominant key
of B♭. This is a rudimentary mi/​mi modulation, highly unusual so early in a piece. It
gives rise to an inganno in mm. 1–​3: a passing modulation through mi-​fa-​sol in the
key of B♭ succeeded by a return to E♭ through another mi-​fa-​sol. Exactly the same
syllables appear in mm. 9–​12, as indicated by the brackets and double arrow shown
in ­example 8.10(a), although they are elongated through vocalizations to become
part of a half cadence.

Ex. 8.10(a) Reduction of (b) to syllable notes and grammatical units

184 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 8.10(b) Leo, Solfeggi (1756; GB-​Lbl, Add. 31617), fol. 36v, mm. 1–​13. By
permission of the British Library

The syncopated accent on the second quarter note of m. 1 is a hallmark of the

entire theme. It continues into the Prinner-​type soprano cadence at the end of
m. 3 but then disappears with the arrival of a more conventional Prinner in m. 6.
The bar-​length traits added to mm. 6 and 8 in the manuscript confirm that the syl-
labic rhythm here becomes slower and more straightforward. But the “motive”
encapsulated in the theme prompts a spectacular departure from this freshly es-
tablished meter. In m. 7 a premature fa interrupts sol, all the more shamelessly for
being on the wrong pitch. This E♭ is an inganno, the other fa (see ­example 6.28[d]‌),
which winds its way back to the correct fa on A♭ at the very end of m. 8. The trait
instructs the singer to maintain the same syllable for both pitches. Finish, as usual,
by singing through e­ xample 8.10(b).
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 185

The La/​mi Modulation

A key feature of the Prinner is its apparent certainty of direction. Each major scale
possesses one that closes on the tonic harmony and another that closes on the domi-
nant. Once set in motion, their tonal destinations seem as predictable as clockwork.
This inspired Galant musicians to seek ever more ingenious ways to thwart expec-
tations and to keep listeners guessing. In their hands, Prinners could go either way.
Some of the more elaborate trick cadences to be found in solfeggi will be
discussed in the next subsection. For now, the main conventional lead-​out devices
are summarized in ­example 8.11. Whereas the la-​sol half cadence shown at the top
tends to reinforce the expected tonal goal, the mi/​mi modulation, shown second,
engineers a surprise reversal. It diverts a tonic Prinner toward the dominant. In
order to heighten the effect, solfeggists often made use of a subsidiary feature in-
cluded in ­example 8.11. An extra fa-​mi comma served to underscore the finality of
the Prinner, only to be flatly contradicted by a subsequent new mi.33
In order to keep these jokes fresh, musicians also exploited a type of continuation
that conformed to expectations by remaining within the key implied by the final mi

Ex. 8.11 Common melodic continuations of the Prinner

186 The Solfeggio Tradition

of the Prinner. I call this the la/​mi modulation, though it could occasionally be sung
as re-​mi. Two versions of it can be seen in ­example 8.11. Rather than stepping up a
whole tone from the final mi of the Prinner, this device retraced the four steps of the
schema to arrive back at its initial la. Only then did it step up a whole tone onto a
new mi. The result was a weak (passo indietro) cadence in the same key as that es-
tablished at the end of the Prinner.
A classic instance of the la/​mi modulation in action can be seen in mm. 27–​28 of
­example 8.12(b), which shows the opening phrase of the aria “I am like a heaving
sea,” composed by Riccardo Broschi for his brother, the castrato Farinelli, who used
it to bring the house down at the London premiere of Hasse’s Artaserse in 1734.
Naming its notes—​in other words, reverse-​engineering it into a solfeggio, as in
the reduction in (a)—​allows us to see it as if through his eyes. Farinelli would have
recognized this melody at a glance as an amalgam of standard melodic devices
commonly found in contemporary solfeggi (including his own).
The theme of the aria is a pairing of two Prinners from the key of G major,
introduced by a sol/​do lead-​in. Its underlying thread is identical to the one already seen
in Cotumacci’s white-​note solfeggio for beginners (­example 8.1), with even simpler
vocalized adornments. In order to strengthen the tonal connotations of the Prinner as
an opening theme, Broschi employed a common variant of its accompanying bass: the
root-​position I-​V-​I progression in mm. 23–​24 of e­ xample 8.12(b).34

Ex. 8.12(a) Reduction of (b) to syllable notes and grammatical units

Ex. 8.12(b) Riccardo Broschi, Favourite Songs, “Son qual nave ch’agitata,” mm. 23–​28
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 187

On reaching the final mi (F♯) of the second Prinner in m. 26, Broschi shifted the
melody back to its initial la (B), ready for the step up to a new modulatory mi (C♯)
in the following bar, as shown by the lower set of parenthetical syllables and dashed
arrow (la-​--​ ​la/​mi) seen in ­example 8.12(a). He tonally reinforced both events (and
mitigated their potential parallel fifths and octaves) by prefacing them with their
complementary fa notes, vocalized in the old-​fashioned manner with a search for
the note from a third below.
Example 8.13 demonstrates a slightly different way to present a la/​mi modula-
tion. This solfeggio by Leo seems to have been designed as a lesson in advanced

Ex. 8.13(a) Reduction of (b) to syllable notes and grammatical units

Ex. 8.13(b) Leo, Solfeggi (D-​B, Mus. Ms. 12835), 31, mm. 12–​16. © bpk-​Bildagentur/​
State Library of Berlin
188 The Solfeggio Tradition

score reading, since it frequently switches between soprano, tenor, and violin
(treble) clefs. The reduction given in e­ xample 8.13(a) overlooks these changes in
order to allow readers to focus on the constructions. The Prinner is decorated with
repeated leaps up to a melodic pedal note F, as implied by the small noteheads. At
the end of the Prinner in m. 15, the jump back to its initial la is unmistakable, as is
the subsequent step up to a new mi. The decorative leap to a high B♭ in m. 15, which
intersects the modulation, receives its own syllable in parentheses in recognition of
its status as a common variant: la/​(fa)\mi.
Try to beautify this plain solfeggio with as many different improvised
ornaments as you can before singing Leo’s original (­example 8.13[b]‌). Its ornate
Prinner, clearly picked out by traits in the manuscript, begins in m. 13 with a
typical sol lead-​in, without, however, a sol. The sixteenth-​note vocalizations were
presumably still sung to this syllable, which was carried over from the previous
bar. The leap from the final mi of the Prinner in m. 15 back to its initial la occurs
with little ceremony, although it does incorporate a welcome change of melodic
figuration in the form of the characteristic variant mentioned above. In order to
avoid parallel root-​position harmonies between the la (D) and the new mi (E),
Leo interpolated a leap to a false fa (B♭)—​false because, unlike the more conven-
tional fa on F, which would have descended by semitone to mi (as in mm. 27–​28
of ­example 8.12), it generates a tritone fa\mi that emphasizes the key-​defining
notes of F major (as occurred also in the false soprano cadences in e­ xamples 8.4
and 8.5).
In the next example of a la/​mi modulation, the process of retracing the steps
of the Prinner back to its initial la is made explicit. The reduction given in
­example 8.14(a) could scarcely be clearer. Following a Prinner in mm. 12–​19,
which invites bravura enhancements through upward leaps of the sixth as in-
dicated in small noteheads, in mm. 19–​21 the harmonic rhythm quickens and
the melodic direction reverses. Original traits in the manuscript confirm that
this passage was sung to the same four syllables. Even the bass revisits the same
notes, rising from D to G. The la to mi half cadence in mm. 22–​23 once again
incorporates a leap to the other fa, presumably to disguise the parallel harmonies
from chords IV to V.
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 189

Ex. 8.14(a) Reduction of (b) to syllable notes and grammatical units

Ex. 8.14(b) Cafaro, Solfeggi for Solo Soprano (D-​B, Mus. Ms. 2704), 126, mm. 13–​23.
© bpk-​Bildagentur/​State Library of Berlin

In ­example 8.15(b)35 Leo made something of a feature of the characteristic rising

contour of the la/​mi Prinner continuation. Sing through the reduction in (a) until
you are confident enough to improvise on its suggested leaps. It begins with a fa-​
mi-​fa soprano cadence, enlivened, if you wish, with a swoop up a sixth. This simple
theme is answered by a pair of Prinners, the first providing a conventional riposte
and the second a turn toward the dominant, just as in Cotumacci’s beginners’ exer-
cise (­example 8.1). As soon as the closing B-​mi of the second Prinner is reached in
m. 10, the melodic direction reverses and returns to E-​la, ready for the modulatory
F♯-​mi in the following bar. This process is illustrated by the lower set of parenthet-
ical syllables and dashed arrow (la-​--​ ​la/​mi) in ­example 8.15(a). Here, however, the
schema is not sung to la/​mi. Its elaborate succession of inganni only makes sense if
Ex. 8.15(a) Reduction of (b) to solmized notes and grammatical units

Ex. 8.15(b) Leo, Solfeggi for Solo Soprano (I-​Nc, 34.2.6/​1, Solfeggio 247), fol. 15v
[bis], mm. 1–​14
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 191

conceived in terms of a different set of syllables, the first five notes of the D major
scale: do-​re-​mi-​fa-​sol. The lead-​in in m. 10 encompasses both do notes of G major,
a perfect fifth apart on G and D. This motivates an elaboration of the scale over the
next four bars. As soon as re is sounded in m. 11, it slips down to the re from the
other hexachord of the key, a fifth below. The same procedure is repeated for mi and
fa in mm. 12–​13. On reaching the goal of the progression in m. 14, a half cadence on
sol, the upper note vanishes altogether, leaving only the lower. Leo underscored the
comedy of the situation by transposing this other sol down an octave.
Compare your finest sung version of this solfeggio with Leo’s, as shown in
­example 8.15(b). Although his are invariably better, you should by now have
learned to sing simple patterns of scales, leaps, and cadences with correct phrasing
and at least some vocal accent (i.e., embellishment). The small trait above m. 2 in
the manuscript, incidentally, instructs the singer not to repeat the initial fa above
the second root-​position harmony of the Galant Romanesca bass, as seems (from
­example 7.7 and similar cases) to have been customary. The longer trait attached to
the ascending run is taken to relate to the entire circling motion of mm. 2–​3, though
it covers only a small part of it on the page.
To conclude this survey of la/​mi continuations, the solfeggio by Leo shown
in ­example 8.16(a)—​divested of its vocalizations to represent an earlier phase of
training—​presents an alternative realization of the commonplace melodic thread
already seen in Cotumacci’s beginner’s lesson (­example 8.1) and Farinelli’s “heaving
sea” aria (­example 8.12). Its opening theme in mm. 1–​3 is likewise a tonic Prinner
with a fa/​do rather than sol/​do lead-​in and a flourish on sol rather than the more
usual la. This Prinner-​theme is answered in mm. 3–​5 by an altered version of itself,
eloquently affirming the observation made earlier about the priority of communi-
cative intention over function in construction grammars. This overlaps with the
start of a dominant Prinner in m. 5, which introduces new decorative figuration

Ex. 8.16(a) Reduction of (b) to solmized notes and grammatical units

192 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 8.16(b) Leo, Solfeggi for Soprano (B-​Br, Ms II 4153 Mus Fétis 5694), fol. 10v,
mm. 1–​8

and an octave inganno on the syllable fa. The addition of a prefatory fa to the la/​mi
modulation in mm. 6–​7 has the effect of transforming it into a Quiescenza schema.
A solfeggio singer presumably would have conceived this not so much as a fixed
pattern as a passing joke, the fa on D seeming to confirm la as belonging to A major,
only to confound expectations with a surprise mi-​fa in E major.

Having the Last Laugh

Sometimes a melody required a more overt injection of humor than a simple

inganno or modulatory twist could provide. In such cases, solfeggists could call on a
bewildering array of stock devices including comprehensive shifts to the other hex-
achord, multiple misreadings of the mi-​fa cadence, and flamboyant digressions (as
if in parentheses) to chromatic or mixed-​mode regions.
A rupture that occurs in an early keyboard sonata by Haydn (­example 8.17)
represents one such instance. As Caplin notes, this melody “shows that a potential
Prinner cadence can be undermined by the appearance of new material that deflects
the music away from a real sense of closure. . . . This second Prinner is abandoned,
and entirely new music brings about a modulation to the key of the dominant.”36
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 193

Ex. 8.17 Joseph Haydn, Keyboard Sonata in F, Hob. XVI/​9 (1758), first movement,
mm. 5–​11

Yet this new material is not entirely new. The trite and unassuming theme appears
to offer no hint of what is to come aside from a barely noticeable inganno in m. 5,
where its stepwise progression from sol to fa is animated by an anticipatory leap
to the other fa, itself motivated by the vocalization attached to the earlier la. This
subtle departure from melodic order provides the motive for a much more extrav-
agant deception. At the precise moment when the inganno leap to fa should occur
within the second sounding of the theme, in m. 7, the melody erupts into a euphoric
outburst, as if unable to contain itself. It seems to start a new Prinner on the other
hexachord, festooned with sparkling slides from above and below that recall the
old-​fashioned search for the note from the third. This lasts only until the sol-​fa in
m. 10, which instantly slips back to the other sol-​fa of the key in the “correct” hex-
achord. The passage presents a deliberately overstated instance of a device already
encountered in m. 35 of Cotumacci’s solfeggio (­example 8.7).
None of this artifice shows through in the finished product. Galant musical taste
favored elegant simplicity more than studious complexity. Clever, witty, and sophis-
ticated musical thoughts presented with apparent ease were more highly valued
than overt displays of learning. At times, this quest for naturalness lent melodies an
air of faux-​naïveté, a pretense of childish innocence. Such is the case with the sol-
feggio by Leo shown in e­ xample 8.18(b). Its opening theme is disarmingly simple: a
long held do leaping a fourth to fa before cadencing onto mi. The accompanying
bass suggests that the melody is underdetermined. Its rudimentary framework
could imply either a Prinner or a Galant Romanesca. The Prinner riposte that
194 The Solfeggio Tradition

follows in m. 3 is likewise straightforward, employing the same decorated leap of

the sixth for each of its steps.
These simple gestures are offset by a surprise turn to a decidedly overdetermined
cadence halfway through m. 4, which sounds the closing formula mi-​fa no fewer
than four times to four different combinations of notes. The reduction given
in e­ xample 8.18(a) shows the mechanics of the trick. Because the key of F major

Ex. 8.18(a) Reduction of (b) to syllable notes and grammatical units

Ex. 8.18(b) Leo, Solfeggi for Soprano (B-​Br, Ms II 4153 Mus Fétis 5694), fol. 6v, mm. 1–​5
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 195

possesses two separate mi-​fa semitones, on A-​B♭ and E-​F, the singer simply switches
between their pitches while retaining the same syllabic pattern: mi-​fa, mi\fa, mi/​fa,
mi\fa-​--​ ​re-​mi.
A more sophisticated take on the same device can be seen in e­ xample 8.19, drawn
from another solfeggio by Leo. Its overall thread, laid out for singing in the reduc-
tion given in (a), should by now be familiar. The opening theme is a do-​re-​mi, with a
repeated do that implies (and receives) the accompaniment of a Galant Romanesca
bass, as in e­ xample 7.7. It is answered at the end of m. 2 by an elaborately embellished
but otherwise straightforward Prinner, which overlaps with the other Prinner of the
key to arrive at the dominant chord, F major, in m. 7. Here, a trait outlines the re-
versal of this Prinner back to its initial la, ready for the step up to a new mi.37 Read
as an appoggiatura, it would have been sung as conceived, as a la/​mi modulation. As
an Amen, it would have been sung in the same way as a mi/​mi modulation.
The conventionality of the melody up to this point acts as a foil for the joke to
follow. Its agreeable lyricism and calming blandness make the sudden twists and
turns of m. 8 all the more diverting. On reaching the modulatory mi on E, the
melody immediately drops onto the other fa on B♭, setting up two simultaneous
cadences that play out over the next two measures: one rising from E to F and the
other falling from B♭ to A. Again, the mechanics of the trick can best be understood
by experiencing the reduction in e­ xample 8.19(a) in song.
Galant musicians often used unproblematic material to set listeners up for a
surprise. When everything seems to be proceeding normally, shifts in mood or
discourse appear in higher relief. In the solfeggio shown in ­example 8.20, for in-
stance, Cotumacci began with a cliché that was unlikely to raise any eyebrows. As
can be experienced by singing the reduction given in (a), the thread underlying the
opening two phrases of the melody is identical to the one already encountered in
­example 8.3: an opening theme based on an accelerating arch shape through the do-​
re-​mi, sung here to its “affinity” syllables within the scale, fa-​sol-​la, followed in mm.
2–​4 by a basic two-​stage Prinner.

Ex. 8.19(a) Reduction of (b) to syllable-​notes and grammatical units

196 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 8.19(b) Leo, Solfeggi for Solo Soprano (I-​Nc, 34.2.6/​1, Solfeggio 247), fol. 22r,
mm. 1–​10

But at the end of m. 4 something unexpected occurs. The melody shakes off its
plain garb and launches into a flamboyant chromatic octave descent. This would
have been solmized, according to Solano (1764), with two sets of fa-​mi\fa-​la
syllables.38 The first lands on a tonic B major harmony in the middle of m. 5, and the
Ex. 8.20(a) Reduction of (b) to syllable notes and grammatical units

Ex. 8.20(b) Cotumacci, Principles and Solfeggi (c. 1755; GB-​Lbl, Add. 14241), fol.
19r, no. 64, mm. 1–​8, with suggested keyboard accompaniment. By permission of the
British Library
198 The Solfeggio Tradition

second modulates to the dominant F♯ major by way of a brief foray into the minor
mode. To explain this modulation in detail would be to overcomplicate matters.
Singing D♮ as fa (from D major/​B minor) in this context would have seemed quite
natural to an experienced solfeggist. In any case, the octave descent was one of
many familiar “off-​the-​shelf ” patterns that composers could call on to offset an eve-
ryday Prinner.
This sudden outburst of anguished chromaticism has the effect of casting the
apparent tranquility and order of the beginning in a new light. Its innocence is no
longer immanent but remembered, as if with a nostalgic sense of loss. The device
became something of a cliché in late eighteenth-​century music, as exemplified
by the alarming outbreak of tragic sighs within the otherwise genteel and unflus-
tered theme of the Andante from Mozart’s Piano Concerto K. 467 or the subtler
yearning sighs that undermine the idyllic pastoral gavotte of the Romanze from
his Eine kleine Nachtmusik K. 525. In the lesson shown in e­ xample 8.20, the ef-
fect is short-​lived. At the end of m. 6, Cotumacci restores the cheerful, carefree
mood of the opening with one of his favorite trick cadences, a run up the do-​re-​
mi-​fa from one hexachord of the key followed by a run down the fa-​mi-​re-​do from
the other.

Letting Go of La

Realizations of the syllables la-​sol-​fa-​mi account for a surprisingly high percentage

of music created in the eighteenth century. This simple scale segment was so rich
in potential that it encompassed several subsets that can be considered important

Ex. 8.21 Cafaro, Solfeggi for Solo Soprano (D-​B, Mus. Ms. 2704), 174, mm. 1–​8. ©
bpk-​Bildagentur/​State Library of Berlin
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 199

Ex. 8.22 Cafaro, Solfeggi for Solo Soprano (D-​B, Mus. Ms. 2704), 140, mm. 1–​3. ©
bpk-​Bildagentur/​State Library of Berlin

schema prototypes in their own right, most notably the sol-​fa-​mi, the sol-​fa, fa-​mi,
and the plain semitone fa-​mi.39
The simplest form of the sol-​fa-​mi can be seen in the solfeggio by Carafo shown
in ­example 8.21. Harmonized with chords I-​V-​I, it serves as a rudimentary theme
akin to a do-​re-​mi. The punctuating flourishes on mi are clearly marked by traits in
the manuscript.
The close relation between this schema and the Prinner can be appreciated by
singing e­ xample 8.22. Here, the three syllables are punctuated into two pairs: sol-​
-​-​sol, fa-​-​-​mi. An appoggiatura on sol at the beginning of m. 2 very nearly turns
the melody into a Prinner with a sol/​do lead-​in, but the static tonic bass suggests
that the latent la on C should be treated as a vocalization rather than a gen-
uine note. This demonstrates how a single syllable could function as a coherent
phrase divided into a melodious flourish and a punctuation point. In the man-
uscript, the vocalizzo on sol in m. 1 was not considered to be in need of a trait,
whereas the one on fa in m. 2 was. Its two separate lines appear in this instance
to indicate a single trait, both because the angled line, once started, could not be
continued without forming a slur-​like arch, and because reading it as two traits
makes no sense.
The two traits attached to the theme in m. 1 of example 8.23(b) do, by contrast,
indicate a repetition of the syllable, as shown in the reduction in (a). This serves to
balance the phrase by dividing it into two corresponding halves: sol-​--​ ​sol-​fa, sol-​-​-​
fa-​mi (note that the key is E major, in spite of the missing D♯ in the “church tone” key
signature). To energize the simple stepwise structure, in m. 2 the singer begins the
answering phrase by leaping up to the other sol and winding back to fa by way of its
search-​for-​the-​note appoggiatura a third above.
200 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 8.23(a) Reduction of (b) to syllable notes and grammatical units

Ex. 8.23(b) Cafaro, Solfeggi for Solo Soprano (D-​B, Mus. Ms. 2704), 144, mm. 1–​4. ©
bpk-​Bildagentur/​State Library of Berlin

While singing ­example 8.23(a) to learn this construction, observe that it

is based on nothing more than three notes of a descending scale. It represents,
I contend, one potential outcome of the preparatory studies of scales and leaps
recorded in Valente’s Introduction to Singing and Musical Theory and described
by Bozzelli (1880). After graduating from the spoken solfeggio class, students
presumably would have been set to work improvising different ways to realize
the syllables sol-​fa-​mi in “diverse combinations—​diatonic and chromatic,” as
Bozzelli put it, “of two, three, or four notes, etc. . . . while phrasing correctly.”
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 201

Example 8.23(a) is an example of a short scale segment grouped into three-​note

phrases. Example 8.23(b) shows how a student may have sung the same arrange-
ment after much further study.

The Modulating Sol-​fa-​mi

Variants of the same syllables arranged into two-​note phrases (sol-​fa, fa-​mi) could
function as presentational themes in Galant melody, but more commonly they were
used to modulate or to ground a key. Riepel’s Fonte schema,40 for instance, is defined
by punctuation points on these same syllables, sol-​fa landing on a minor chord (ii)
and fa-​mi on a major chord (I). Because these function together as a consolidating
statement of both the minor and major harmonies inherent in the six-​note scale,
re-​fa-​la followed by do-​mi-​sol, I translate the Italian word fonte as “source” (as in
“natural spring” as well as “origin”) rather than the usual “well.” The Fonte is literally
the fount of all harmony, embodying what J. S. Bach called “both the major third Ut
Re Mi and the minor third Re Mi Fa.”41
The syllables sol-​fa-​mi were also standard for Riepel’s Monte (“mount”)
schema,42 in which they were transposed by step to form a rising sequence.

Ex. 8.24(a) Reduction of (b) to syllable-​notes and grammatical units

202 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 8.24(b) Cafaro, Solfeggi for Solo Soprano (D-​B, Mus. Ms. 2704), 189, mm. 22–​28.
© bpk-​Bildagentur/​State Library of Berlin

Example 8.24(b) reproduces the central part of Cafaro’s lesson in how to use them
to modulate. Please sing the reduction in (a) several times before attempting the
original.
It is remarkabe that the entire passage makes use of only three syllables. Six
repetitions of them imply changes of key by virtue of their different fa-​mi semitones.
The initial B♭-​A belongs to F major, the ensuing C-​B♮ to G major, and the answering
F-​E to C major. The cadence in mm. 26–​28 employs the Quiescenza schema to re-
turn to F major before swerving abruptly back to C major.
Cafaro evidently conceived this solfeggio as an advanced lesson in exploiting
the modulatory implications of sol-​fa-​mi. Although his melody did, of course,
convey a number of different ways to vocalize these core notes, from de-
scending flourishes to syncopated rhythmic distortions, its main purpose was
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 203

to consolidate a few crucial grammatical rules. The original trait in m. 23 of the

manuscript indicates, for instance, that the entire thirty-​second note vocalization
should be taken under a single syllable, giving rise to a sol-​fa-​-​-​mi comma in the
key of F major. In m. 24 two similar traits confirm that the transposition of the
same passage up a step should be sung as an answering sol-​fa-​-​-​mi in G major.
Traits at the start of mm. 25 and 26 highlight the shift from the F-​mi (F♯) of G
major to the F-​fa (F♮) of C major, the tonic around which the modulatory steps of
the previous Monte revolve. In spite of the syncopations and octave leaps, mm.
24–​26 present two statements of sol-​fa-​-​-​mi that respond to and balance those
from the previous two bars.
At the end of m. 26 the B-​mi of C major shifts once again down to the B-​fa of F
major before returning to the tonic in m. 27 by way of a mi/​mi modulation from
A to B♮. Overall, the grammatical construction encompasses a classic cadential
Quiescenza schema involving a feint toward the flat side of the key (sol-​fa-​mi) that
is instantly countered by a correction (mi/​mi) and rounded off with a conventional
fa-​sol-​fa cadence, here expanded into an elaborate descending gesture brought
about by an octave displacement. This mid-​level “collocation” of three grammat-
ical constructions is so common—​especially in arias for castratos—​that I propose
naming it the Quiescenza Cadence: sol-​fa-​mi/​mi-​fa-​sol-​fa.

Two Complete Lessons by Carlo Cotumacci

Every solfeggio embodies a specific lesson. To impart it effectively, it needs to inte-

grate its educational message seamlessly into a coherent and satisfying overall dis-
course that fits within a limited time frame. It should also offer sufficient interest
and enjoyment to encourage participation and, ideally, familiarize the learner with
at least one fashionable or marketable style.
In this respect, solfeggi belong to the pedagogical tradition of the obbligo, or con-
straint, a method established in seventeenth-​century Rome and later taken up by
Francesco Durante and his followers at the Onofrio Conservatory in Naples.43 An
obbligo is a prescribed condition that obliges a melody to accept strict limitations.
Among the more familiar are the five species of counterpoint set out in Fux’s Steps
to Parnassus (1725), which restrict melodies to particular rhythmic values. The first
species uses only whole notes, for instance, and the second uses only half notes. But
there were many other types of “obligation.” A didactic composition might have to
work around a fixed isometric tenor or a given cantus firmus, or it might be limited
to one melodic pattern, repeated and varied as an “obstinacy” (perfidia). These were
often defined by solmization syllables and could betoken puns and dedications
such as “You make me mess up” (La-​mi-​fa-​fa-​la-​re for Lei mi fa sbagliare) or “Only
I know how to do this” (La-​mi-​la-​sol-​sol-​fa-​re for La so fare solo io).44
The obblighi that regulate basic solfeggio lessons are usually easy to spot. They
focus on singing scales, leaps, and cadences; reading different note values such
204 The Solfeggio Tradition

as dots, syncopations, and suspensions; dealing with accidentals, mutations, and

modulations; and developing vocal techniques such as the trill, sustained notes, and
ornamentation. Observing these simple constraints makes improvisation much
easier. The imposition of a restriction can act as a stimulus to creativity, just as a rigid
rhyme scheme in poetry can inspire a more fitting choice of words. Improvising a
florid melody on the syllables la-​sol-​fa-​mi, for instance, can seem daunting when
there are an unlimited number of potential paths to explore, whereas adding, for
example, downward leaps of the fifth to each of its steps and filling them in with
passing notes seems a relatively straightforward task. In general, this method works
well as an introduction to solfeggio improvisation: Identify one particular con-
straint (e.g., an interval leap, rhythm, melodic shape, ornament, or chromaticism)

Ex. 8.25(a) Reduction of (b) to syllable-​notes and grammatical units

Ex. 8.25(b) Cotumacci, Principles and Solfeggi (c. 1755; GB-​Lbl, Add. 14241), fol. 23r,
no. 79, with suggested bass accompaniment. By permission of the British Library
206 The Solfeggio Tradition

and then apply it to a simple grammatical unit of syllables. The results can be
improved with slight adjustments.
Without the maestro’s verbal commentary, however, more advanced melodies
often defy classification. Many of them appear to encapsulate individual lessons in
how to “conduct a musical thought,”45 or perhaps, even more vaguely, to offer an op-
portunity to practice a particular style of melody.
What lesson did Cotumacci have in mind, for instance, when he wrote his
seventy-​ ninth solfeggio, reproduced in its entirety in ­ example 8.25(b)? Sing
through the reduction in (a) then the actual melody in (b) and try to come up with
an answer.
Its opening theme would scarcely have taxed singers at this level of accomplish-
ment. It ascends through the notes of the triad, do-​mi-​sol, with the addition of a few
circling neighboring-​note motions. Its close on a half cadence does, however, ini-
tiate a turn to the dominant that is consolidated in mm. 4–​5 with a Monte schema.
Perhaps this was the focus of the lesson—​how to ground the move to a new key with
a rising sequence of sol-​fa-​mis reinforcing chords IV and then V. Or did Cotumacci
mean to direct the student’s attention toward the decorative drop from the inganno
“other sol” on the first notes of mm. 4 and 5 as an elegant way to adorn the otherwise
plain stepwise syllables?
The first half of the solfeggio closes in mm. 6–​8 as expected, with a firm cadence
in the dominant key, G major. It too encompasses a lesson in the form of an elabo-
rate deception. In m. 6 the melody descends to fa-​mi on C-​B, hinting at a soprano
cadence (fa-​mi-​fa) in the key of C major. Before it can reach closure on the C-​fa at
the beginning of m. 7, however, the other mi on F♯ intervenes, throwing the cadence
into confusion. This device is highlighted by two conspicuous traits in the manu-
script. C-​fa is revealed in m. 7 as the fourth of G major rather than the tonic of C
major, and quickly descends to a perfect cadence.
The second half of ­example 8.25(b) begins in the middle of m. 8 in exemplary
fashion, with a repeat of the main theme in the dominant. This means that it ends
with a half cadence on a D major chord, the dominant of the dominant. In a more
extended composition, this would have provided a cue for further development.
Here, however, the melody must remain within the bounds of a normal lesson,
so Cotumacci chose instead to consolidate the new dominant key with a classic
Fonte schema in mm. 11–​13. Its underlying syllables, sol-​sol-​-​-​fa, fa-​fa-​-​-​mi, are
set in relief against the busy vocalizations by yet more original traits in the man-
uscript. As mentioned above, the Fonte served to reinforce the scale by sounding
its component minor (re-​fa-​la) and major (do-​mi-​sol) triads. As if to affirm this
“source” more overtly, the same scale on G then appears in straightforward me-
lodic form, rising through syncopated ornaments in mm. 13–​14. At this point,
Cotumacci decided to close the melody with another off-​the-​shelf device. In the
final measures of ­example 8.25(b) he exploited precisely the same Quiescenza
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 207

Cadence as the one used by Cafaro in ­example 8.24, infusing it with more verve
and brio.
This raises the question of influence. Did one maestro emulate the other? It
seems unlikely. Cotumacci studied from 1719 with Alessandro Scarlatti (according
to Burney’s account) and perhaps before then at the Poveri Conservatory in Naples,
whereas Cafaro belonged to a slightly later generation, having entered the Turchini
Conservatory in 1735 to study under Nicola Fago and Leonardo Leo. Cotumacci
was thus associated with the school of Durante, and Cafaro with the rival school
of Leo.46 The former taught at the “Durantist” Onofrio Conservatory from 1755,
the latter at the “Leist” Turchini Conservatory from 1759. The occurrence of the
same characteristic cadence in their solfeggi does not, therefore, attest to a bor-
rowing but, rather, to the fact that they spoke the same melodic language. In terms
of construction grammar, the Quiescenza Cadence sol-​fa-​mi/​mi-​fa-​sol-​fa was a
common prefab. Basic-​level readers like us tend to notice similarities between its
multiple occurrences, whereas fluent speakers like Cafaro, Cotumacci, and their
students would have been keenly alive to differences. To them, the endings of
­examples 8.24(b) and 8.25(b) probably would have sounded completely different,
one spoken with a Turchini accent and the other with an Onofrio accent.
The final trait in m. 16 of ­example 8.25(b) brings to light another general obser-
vation concerning the way fluent speakers conceived solfeggio. By instructing the
singer to repeat the syllable fa just before the cadential fall from sol to fa, it reveals a
scarcely perceptible punctuation point that separates the mi/​mi-​fa modulatory re-
turn in m. 15 from the fa-​sol-​fa cadence in m. 16. Solfeggists evidently were highly
sensitive to divisions between grammatical units, even when they overlapped and
commingled to form larger constructions.
Taken in its entirety, ­example 8.25 may have been intended as a lesson in using
the syllables sol-​fa-​mi to frame a tonal structure. In the first half, they reinforce a
move toward the dominant by way of a Monte schema, and they also form the me-
dial cadence in mm. 7–​8. In the second half, they consolidate the new key with a
Fonte schema and bring the composition to a close through the teasing twists of the
Quiescenza Cadence.
In the end, however, this kind of solfeggio is too complicated, too rich, and too
real in its communicative intent to be reduced to a single obbligo. By this stage of
training, solfeggists must have been accustomed to recycling their acquired lexicon
of basic patterns in different settings and alternative guises. Each solfeggio provided
an exemplar of how to conduct a musical thought in a particular style. Students no
longer had need of targeted lessons in vocabulary and grammar because they could
already speak fluently.
In earlier lessons, conversely, such as Cotumacci’s thirty-​ sixth solfeggio,
shown in e­ xample 8.26(b), traces of the obbligo linger. This melody is packed with
Prinners. Even its opening theme incorporates one. It starts on a fa/​do lead-​in,
which is interpreted here as a swooping appoggiatura to la, the fundamental me-
lodic note corresponding to the single implied harmony. As a dominant Prinner, it
208 The Solfeggio Tradition

then descends from the tonic, A major, to the dominant, E major. A close inspection
of the manuscript reveals a striking curiosity: above the third eighth note of m. 2,
Cotumacci added a conspicuous dot, too large to be a staccato mark. As mentioned
in Chapter 6, this symbol instructs the singer to depart from the usual solmization

Ex. 8.26(a) Reduction of (b) to syllable-​notes and grammatical units

 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 209

of the la-​sol-​fa-​mi by inserting a re on F♯ (with appoggiatura). The reason for this

becomes clear in the following bar, where the syllables re-​mi are subject to two
inganni that outline a la/​mi modulation: re-​mi /​re-​mi /​re-​mi, mi-​fa.
In order to set this playful theme in relief, in mm. 4–​6 Cotumacci embarks on a
surprise modulation to B minor reminiscent of the device already encountered in
his sixty-​fourth solfeggio (­example 8.20). In eighteenth-​century terms, this pas-
sage belongs to the key of D major (Delasolrè), the subdominant. It takes the form
of a sharply staggered descent built on a simple inganno. In both major and minor
keys, the falling fifth of the bass cadence (4-​5-​1) represented the most perfect
close. In major keys, it was sung as fa-​sol-​do and, in minor keys, one step higher

Ex. 8.26(b) Cotumacci, Principles and Solfeggi (c. 1755; GB-​Lbl, Add. 14241), fol. 12r,
no. 36, with suggested keyboard accompaniment. By permission of the British Library
210 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 8.26(b) Continued

as sol-​la-​re. The B minor version in m. 4 of e­ xample 8.26(b) begins as expected on

E-​sol, but rather than progressing to F♯-​la in m. 5, it drops instead onto the other
sol-​la on A♯ and B. (The sharp was regarded as merely a vocal inflection in this
context.) Order is swiftly restored with a return to the correct pitches, albeit an
octave lower.
The workings of this hexachordal zig-zag can best be seen in the reduction in
­example 8.26(a), where the missing pitches are reinstated in parentheses. It results
in a forceful gesture of tumbling, as if from a height, onto a firm cadence in B minor.
A chromatic tetrachord, or “lamento bass,” consolidates this modulation in mm.
6–​7. It too is a kind of Prinner in that it involves the same syllables, la-​sol-​fa-​mi. As
every student would have known, converting them into a chromatic fourth required
only two minor vocalizations: expanding the central sol and fa into semitones, while
leaving the encircling la and mi unchanged.
From here, Cotumacci returned to normality in mm. 7–​9 by way of a Monte
schema in the dominant key. By changing the order of its syllables from the usual
sol-​fa-​-​-m
​ i (5-​4-​3) to sol-​mi-​-​-f​ a (2-​7-​1), he contrived to strengthen its two-​step se-
quence from chord IV to chord V.
 Learning la-sol-fa-mi 211

At this point, it would have been conventional to confirm the direction of the
Monte by proceeding to a firm cadence in the dominant, E major, thus drawing
the first part of the melody to a close. But Cotumacci had other ideas. In mm. 9–​11
he reversed its tonal direction with a corresponding Meyer schema47 that swung
the key firmly back toward A major. Its two sol-​fa-​-​-m ​ i phrases traversed the key-​
♯ ♯
defining semitones A-​G (1-​7) and D-​C (4-​3). As if to acknowledge the disap-
proving murmurs that would have greeted this seemingly inept return to the tonic
coming so soon after a resolute move toward the dominant that had been under way
since m. 2, Cotumacci filled m. 12 with a strange rumbling tonic pedal. Eventually
accepting the turn of events, it erupts into a joyous reversal of the previous Meyer
schema, D-​C♯ to G♯-​A, to land on a firm perfect cadence in m. 14.
Having negated the modulatory promise of the opening dominant Prinner by
concluding the first half of the solfeggio in the tonic key, Cotumacci began the
second in mm. 15–​16 with a tonic Prinner. This means that it starts in the subdom-
inant, a feature that may relate it to a small number of sonata recapitulations that
arrive in that key. Its effect is, however, momentary. It soon returns once again to the
dominant by way of a self-​consciously conventional Prinner riposte in mm. 17–​18.
At last, in mm. 19–​20, the modulation to the dominant is established—​ironically,
by the very same Prinner theme that first established the tonic! To underscore the
point, I harmonize it in ­example 8.26(b) as a I-​V-​I progression, although it is just as
likely to have been accompanied by the same bass used in its original appearance.
Cotumacci drew attention to the joke by snapping the book shut with one of his fa-
vorite punchlines (as already seen in ­example 8.20): an ascent through the do-​re-​mi-​
fa from one hexachord followed by the fa-​mi-​re-​do from the other.
Closing a solfeggio in the dominant key was quite normal, especially in the
form of a half cadence or when accompanied by an instruction to proceed imme-
diately to the next lesson (usually by way of the letters v. s. for volti subito, “turn
the page immediately,” or siegue, “follow straight on”). In ­example 8.26, however,
reaching the dominant appears to be the whole point of the lesson. The melody
teems with feints and unexpected twists on the syllables la-​sol-​fa-​mi and sol-​fa-​
mi that thwart any convincing modulation. Surveying the grammatical units laid
bare in ­example 8.26(a) reveals, for instance, Prinners that progress from tonic to
dominant (mm. 1–​2, 17–​18) in both major and minor (mm. 6–​7), from subdom-
inant to tonic (mm. 15–​16), and from tonic to tonic (mm. 19–​20), as well as sol-​
mi-​fas that lead to the dominant (mm. 7–​9) and sol-​fa-​mis that lead to the tonic
(mm. 9–​11).

***
If you struggled to comprehend that last sentence, you are probably not alone.
Trying to describe the complexities of eighteenth-​century solfeggio in words can
be tortuously difficult for both reader and writer. Yet the children who once sang
­example 8.26(b) under the guidance of a fluent maestro would have understood all
of these features instinctively, and probably many more besides that have slipped
212 The Solfeggio Tradition

past me unnoticed. They never had to learn the language of melody by reading
(or, worse, writing) about it. They acquired it gradually over a period of years,
accumulating knowledge without study by singing ever more advanced solfeggi.
Although we cannot lay claim to the same level of acquired skill, we should by
now be equal to reading solfeggio melodies, however falteringly, once their syllables
have been restored. The many examples surveyed in this chapter offer a glimpse
into how singers transformed the syllables la-​sol-​fa-​mi into countless versions of
the Prinner schema, prefacing them with a sol/​do or fa/​do lead-​in, continuing them
with a la-​sol half cadence or a mi/​mi or la/​mi modulation, dividing them into co-
herent grammatical units with all manner of internal punctuation, and combining
their two locations within the compound scale to generate complex counterpoint.
The chapter also touched on the treatment of the sol-​fa-​mi, including its role within
the Monte, Fonte, and Meyer schemas, as well as the function of its reversal, mi-​fa-​
sol, as a half cadence and a modulation.
In every case, the melodies reveal a language of extraordinary subtlety and so-
phistication. What may appear to us as insignificant tweaks at the musical surface
may, at the time, have served to distinguish an open fa-​mi comma from a closed false
soprano cadence, fa\mi-​fa. Eighteenth-​century musicians played on the syllables
with supreme virtuosity. They flipped effortlessly between the two hexachords of a
key, giving rise to trick cadences on the mi-​fa semitone and all manner of inganni,
featuring “other” pitches on every syllable. They marshaled syllabic constructions
and the devices used to manipulate them to produce agreeable, satisfying, and,
above all, entertaining musical discourses. Deviations from the norm gave rise to
“motives” for development, feigned naïveté made surprise twists all the more sur-
prising, and contrasting passages in parentheses recontextualized surrounding ma-
terial to reveal it in a new light.
All this took place within coherent overall structures made up of individual
grammatical constructions, punctuated and threaded together to form funda-
mental cantus firmi. Their status and function remain something of a mystery. Were
they conceived before the act of composition or improvisation as frameworks—​
colorful remnants of a centuries-​old tradition of cantus firmus elaboration? Or
were they cumulative chains, pieced together from the flexible flow of constructions
from moment to moment? Whatever the answer, solfeggists can hardly have been
unaware that their vocalized syllables gave rise to well shaped underlying patterns.
Perhaps the answer lies in singing enough solfeggi to acquire a degree of flu-
ency sufficient to grant an insider’s view into the culture. Achieving that, however,
depends on first accumulating a body of knowledge and experience broadly equiv-
alent to the information once stored in the mind of a seasoned maestro. And that,
unfortunately, means continuing the task begun in this chapter—​learning to read
the hard way.
 9
Solano and Sabbatini on Modulation

Angelo Catelani was already twenty years old when he traveled from Reggio Emilia
to Naples in 1831 in the hope of learning the secrets of the once-​great tradition at
the conservatory. His initial impressions, as recorded in a short autobiographical
memoir, were decidedly inauspicious. He was appalled not only by the wretched
state of the buildings but also by the lack of discipline among the boarders. The
director, the aged Niccolò Zingarelli, wearily advised him to return home and not
to waste his time and money. But he persisted. After inspecting a sample of his
compositions, Zingarelli agreed to accept him as a student. Catelani recounted his
first lesson as follows: “[Zingarelli:] ‘You shall begin from the scale in two voices;
and remember, in harmony the fourth descends, and the seventh ascends, like this.’
And he wrote on a piece of paper the following example:

I did not then understand this theory, the cornerstone of every modulation, and
kept silent.”1
Zingarelli’s emphasis on the fourth and the seventh reflected the conventional
understanding of key (tuono) and modulation as taught to professional musicians
throughout Catholic Europe in the eighteenth century. It rested on the tendency of
semitones to resolve either upward from mi to fa or downward from fa to mi. This
meant that a key, conceived as the transposable compound scale, was defined not so
much by its tonic and dominant as by its fourth and seventh notes. Zingarelli would
have understood the example above as a demonstration of how the fa and the mi,
the F and the B, were the fundamental indicators of the key of C major.
A full explanation of this concept of key can be found in Luigi Sabbatini’s
Theoretical Elements (1789–​90). Sabbatini was a Franciscan priest who com-
posed only sacred music. Following a period working and studying alongside
Padre Martini in Bologna, he spent the greater part of his career as a maestro di
cappella in his native Rome, from 1767 at the collegiate Church of San Barnaba in
the nearby town of Marino and from 1772 at the Franciscan Church of the Twelve
Holy Apostles. His Theoretical Elements therefore reflects conventional Roman
and Bolognese (Franciscan) teachings of the mid-​eighteenth century, though
it was presumably compiled for the benefit of the pueri cantores at the church of

The Solfeggio Tradition. Nicholas Baragwanath, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197514085.001.0001
214 The Solfeggio Tradition

San Antonio in Padua, where he took up his final appointment in 1786. That its
teachings were uncontroversial can be assumed from its use as a textbook at the
Naples Conservatory after 1816.2
Although Sabbatini clarified his explanations with material borrowed from
the Paduan theorist-​priests Francesco Antonio Calegari and Francesco Antonio
Vallotti, in this work, as his preface makes clear, he set out to draw on thirty years’
teaching experience to reframe the standard rudiments in a way that would make
them more appealing to children. He achieved this aim principally by setting the
rules as little canons to be sung in class and by providing a fresh set of solfeggi
that were more up-​to-​date and entertaining than the usual dry exercises taught in
church schools.
Sabbatini explained the idea behind Zingarelli’s definition of key by citing “the
Castrati,” who “put it very well when they say that the fourth is by nature minor and
the seventh major.”3 He went on to say that although key could sometimes be used
to signify an individual note,

for the Masters of this art, the word key usually expresses that continuous stepwise
motion of syllables [i.e., notes] either to the fourth or to the seventh, without any
alteration by means of accidentals. Thus if I start my scale on C and reach F, i.e.,
the fourth, and do not alter it with an accidental, then I am said to be continuing
in the same key. But if I alter it, then I have changed the key. The same is true of the
seventh.4

Ex. 9.2 Sabbatini, Theoretical Elements (1789–90), 1:29: “On Keys . . . Three-​Part
Canon,” with English translation
 Solano and Sabbatini on Modulation 215

Sabbatini impressed this definition of key upon his students by means of the in-
genious little three-​part canon reproduced in e­ xample 9.2. Although the English
translation added below the original text does not scan perfectly onto the melody, it
nevertheless shows how Sabbatini contrived to match the words seventh and fourth
with their corresponding notes B and F in mm. 1–​2 and 9–​10. It also confirms that
these notes served to define the key. Altering either of them led to a modulation.
Singing the canon in class ensured that Sabbatini’s eight-​to ten-​year-​old apprentices
were unlikely to forget this lesson.
Because a key was defined by the nature of its fourth and its seventh, there were
accordingly two principal techniques of modulation. Sharping the fourth of the
scale transposed the key up a perfect fifth, and flatting the seventh transposed it
down a perfect fifth. In effect, the altered fourth became the seventh of the new key,
and vice versa. Sabbatini explained the rudimentary solmization principle under-
lying this practice as follows:

If one places a ♯ on the fourth it becomes (or, if you prefer, is equivalent to) the sev-
enth. In reality the fourth in the natural [compound] scale is fa and the seventh is
mi; but when we add a ♯ to the fourth it becomes mi, i.e., the same as the seventh.
For the same reason, when we add a ♭ to the seventh it becomes a fourth—​and
why? Because in the natural [compound] scale the fourth is fa and the seventh is
mi, but the seventh with a ♭ becomes fa and is thus equivalent to the fourth. This
may seem scarcely worth knowing, until you perceive its almost constant useful-
ness. Raising the fourth with a ♯ or lowering the seventh with a ♭ instantly changes
the key. The reason is clear, for the same definition of key given above. As soon as
the order of the syllables in the natural scale is changed, i.e., in place of fa we say mi
and in place of mi we say fa, then the ♯ and ♭ will produce their effect.5

This observation seems so obvious—​“scarcely worth knowing,” as Sabbatini

acknowledged—​that its historical significance has largely been overlooked. Anyone
nowadays who can read music and who understands key signatures and their re-
lation to the circle of fifths will know that modulating from C major to G major
involves sharping the fourth, from F to F♯, and that modulating from G major back
to C major involves flatting the seventh from F♯ to F. Sutcliffe regards this process
as “almost too fundamental to be mentioned” in his study of the keyboard sonatas
of Domenico Scarlatti. In the sonatas K. 410 and K. 418, for instance, he describes
how the “move to the dominant is only securely completed after a prolonged play of
harmonic indicators, in both cases pivoting around the crucial fourth scale degree;
when raised, it pushes us towards V, when flattened again we are drawn back towards
I.”6 Yet, like the purloined letter hiding in plain sight in Edgar Allan Poe’s story, the
commonplace appearance of this device conceals its real significance. Scarlatti was
toying with the most basic rudiments of his art in a way guaranteed to divert and
amuse Galant patrons. The same methods had proved so effective over the years
that they were exploited by countless other Neapolitan alumni busy garnering favor
216 The Solfeggio Tradition

and elbowing out rivals at courts and theaters. Solfeggio manuscripts substantiate
the claim that altering the fourth and the seventh, or saying mi in place of fa and fa
in place of mi, formed not only “the cornerstone of every modulation,” in Catelani’s
phrase, but also one of the main foundations of eighteenth-​century compositional
technique.
The origins of the altered fourth and seventh are bound up with solmization.
A basic feature of the Guidonian method for learning to sing plainchant involves the
distinction between the dual (yet combinable) systems of hard and soft melody. The
former possesses B-​mi (B♮) within the hard hexachord on G and the latter B-​fa (B♭)
within the soft hexachord on F. Altering B-​mi to B-​fa by flatting it transforms hard
melody into soft, and sharping B-​fa to B-​mi reverses the process. Because melody
in the Guidonian system was normally conceived as an octave species, by analogy
with the church modes, at some early stage in its history it must have been noted
that soft melody starting on F could be transformed into hard melody starting on C
by sharping its fourth note from B♭ to B♮, in effect transposing it up a fifth, and hard
melody on C could be transformed into soft on F by flatting its seventh note from B♮
to B♭, in effect transposing it down a fifth. This would have been an essential skill for
singers as early as the fifteenth century, when it was common to notate the higher
voices of a composition in hard melody and the lower in soft.
Gafurius (1492) described two versions of this process. Placing B♭ and B♮ next
to one another in a melody was called “permutation” and was to be avoided at all
times. But switching from the scale system with B♭ to the scale system with B♮ “in
order to ascend” and doing the reverse “in order to descend” were sometimes nec-
essary. This “mutation of quality” was, in effect, a kind of modulation, a transposi-
tion up or down a fifth:

Most authorities agree that on b fa and b mi no mutation [i.e., swapping one

note for the other] is possible since the syllables do not both have the same
pitch. . . . When, therefore, we produce that b fa-​b mi mutation out of necessity,
a mutation both of quality and of quantity will result. I speak (1) of quality, that
is, of soft melody into hard by changing fa into mi in order to ascend [a fifth], or
conversely, in order to descend [a fifth], and (2) of quantity, that is, passing from
a lower to a higher sound by means of fa into mi at the distance of this apotome
[Pythagorean major semitone] or conversely, mi into fa, descending from a
higher to a lower pitch. Since this [second] progression [i.e., permutation] is dif-
ficult and highly dissonant, the schools of music have advised that it be avoided
with every ingenuity.7

Over the course of the seventeenth century it became more and more acceptable
to apply the effect of the flat and the natural to equivalent notes in transposed scales.
In a scale on C, for instance, F-​fa is analogous to the B♭-​fa in a scale on F. If B-​fa can
be changed into B-​mi in order to transpose the scale system up a fifth, then why not
F-​fa into F-​mi? Eric Chafe summarizes this development as follows:
 Solano and Sabbatini on Modulation 217

The semitone above the sixth tone of the hexachord, the tonal event identified by
the old catch phrase una nota super la semper est canendum fa, signifies “modula-
tion” or mutation in the flat direction. . . . the quadro [♮] sign signifies the opposite,
modulation in the sharp direction via the change of the “fa” of the old scale into the
seventh degree or subsemitonium (“mi”) of the new by raising its pitch a semitone.
Thus Lorenzo Penna, in the 1670s, describes the role of increasing flats and sharps
in key signatures as changing “mi” into “fa” and vice versa.8

From the practice of altering B-​fa into B-​mi in plainchant, it followed that by
applying an analogous sharped fourth to hard melody based on C, raising its F♮ to F♯,
it could be transposed up a fifth onto a scale using hexachords on G and D (akin to
the modern G major), and by flatting the seventh of soft melody based on F from E♮
to E♭, the process could work in the opposite direction, transposing the scale down
a fifth to a scale using hexachords on B♭ and F (akin to the modern B♭ major). As late
as 1850, Zingarelli’s student De Vecchis continued to acknowledge the origins of
the modern sharp sign in the “square” B-​mi of plainchant, writing: “In the semitone
that passes between the major seventh and octave, the seventh should be named
with the syllable mi, just as the fourth of the key should be named with the syllable
Fa. . . . Please note that the B♮ in Canto Fermo has the same function as the sharp in
modern music.”9
As an intrinsic property or perhaps an inevitable outcome of the Guidonian
system, the circle of fifths—​which is synonymous, in effect, with the practice of
changing fa into mi and mi into fa—​must have been known and used long before
it began to appear in publications at the turn of the eighteenth century. Indeed,
seven years before Johann David Heinichen published what is usually considered
to be the first graphic depiction of the circle of fifths in his thoroughbass treatise of
1711, the conservative Salzburg organist Johann Baptist Samber was ordering his
transpositions of the “natural” compound scales conventionally from one to nine
accidentals, in both sharpward and flatward directions around the circle of fifths.10
Similar strategies of modulation have long been recognized in Renaissance music.11
Unaccompanied singing could be transposed to any comfortable pitch level
without too much trouble, but as soon as instrumental accompaniments were
added it became necessary to establish some kind of agreed system. According to
Ledbetter (2002), the first known circumnavigation of what appear to be the twenty-​
four major and minor keys—​actually transposed Guidonian scales beginning on
do and re—​occurred in a 1567 manuscript of passamezzo and saltarello pairs by
the blind Trieste lutenist Giacomo Gorzanis.12 He did not require a system of key
signatures, however, because these accompaniments were notated using hand-​
shape symbols in tablature. Similar guidelines for adapting accompaniments to suit
a singer’s vocal range appeared in sixteenth-​century Spanish guitar tutors, specifi-
cally by showing how to play major (naturales) and minor (B mollados) chords on
each of the twelve keys encompassed by the white and black notes of the keyboard.
By the early 1600s complete cycles of transposed Guidonian scales were printed in
218 The Solfeggio Tradition

keyboard works known as “musical labyrinths” such as John Bull’s famous “Ut re mi
fa sol la” from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.
The first circular illustration of the “fa becomes mi and mi becomes fa” principle
of transposing Guidonian scales appears to have been constructed by the Jesuit
mathematician Athanasius Kircher and published in Rome in 1650. Werckmeister
(1697) mentioned a lost canzona by Froberger that may have been intended as a
practical realization of Kircher’s ordering of the circle of fifths.13 As Jensen (1992)
argues, Diletskiy’s Grammatika of 1677–​81 provides the first clear proof that the
circle of fifths (resulting from the rule of the altered fourth and seventh) was by that
time established as a model for the standard techniques of modulation. In his ad-
vice to composers, Diletskiy stated unequivocally that “in any letter which you see
on the organ you may find and create ut, re, mi, fa, sol, and la. . . . Any Fantasia you
wish to change through all the keys [klyuchi] in the alphabet, with a flat signature
[bemoliarnyia] or a sharp signature [diezisovyia], [go through] twelve times and
then return around, going to the first letter from which you began.”14 Although his
music examples demonstrated the “sad” flatward route around the circle, the alter-
native “happy” sharpward option was implicit in his advice.
Not long afterwards the first modern listing of the twenty-​four major and minor
keys in chromatic order appeared in Key to a Great Wealth of Music (1701) by the
Prague organist and lexicographer Tomáš Baltazar Janovka.15 As mentioned above,
the classic diagram of the circle of fifths, as illustrated in music theory textbooks to
this day, was published by Heinichen (1711).16 It was taken up soon afterward by
Mattheson (1713). Heinichen’s circle of fifths, written before his studies in Venice
and Rome, was very likely drawn from his lessons with Johann Kuhnau at the
Thomasschule in Leipzig. Kuhnau was well versed in Guidonian solmization. In
his correspondence with the progressive-​minded Mattheson, he insisted that it was
still necessary to know the ut-​re-​mi and re-​mi-​fa system for indicating scales with
major or minor third in order to communicate with Catholic musicians, in partic-
ular south Germans, Austrians, and Italians.17 The fourteen partitas contained in
Kuhnau’s Keyboard Exercises (1689/​92) are arranged as seven major-​third ut-​keys
on the letters of the Guidonian gamut (C, D, E, F, G, A, and B♭) followed by seven
minor-​third re-​keys on the same first six notes plus the “hard” B♮.
Similar arrangements were being contemplated decades earlier by Italian
musicians, with the addition of a further fourteen scales in plagal ordering. “As the
Galant fellow would say,” wrote friar Giovanni d’Avella in 1657,

the Lord cannot deny that the letters of the [Guidonian] hand are not seven, be-
cause each letter has its own set of seven, as can be seen from the circles [depicting
octave species in hard and soft melody]; and that it is possible to compose on a
key either above or below, such that there are 14 keys: seven authentic and seven
plagal. To this I would add that if there are 14 keys belonging to the seven letters
in hard melody and a further 14 belonging to the letters in soft, because they make
 Solano and Sabbatini on Modulation 219

a different kind of melody, then there are 28 keys, and many others which may be
composed with accidentals; thus it goes on to infinity.18

Owing to the dependence of minor re-​scales upon their parent do-​scales, in

eighteenth-​century Italy the circle of fifths was conceived primarily in terms
of twelve major keys (or transpositions of the compound scale): six arranged
sharpward from C to F♯ and six flatward from C to G♭. The clearest guide to the
way they were understood and used in composition can be found once again in
Sabbatini (1789–90).
Concerning the rule of the altered fourth, he stressed how important it was for
singers to be able to judge instantaneously the relative strengths of accidentals.
Whereas most sharps were to be ignored in solmization, an altered fourth almost
always demanded a change of syllable to mi and a modulation to a new key. For him,
this explained why the antico system of Guido remained preferable to the ostensibly
simpler French system with its seven-​note fixed-​do scale. Singing everything as if
there were no accidentals could prove disastrous, he claimed, because it would ob-
scure the fundamental identity of keys and modulations.19
He introduced the rule for the altered fourth by emphasizing the need to gauge
whether or not an accidental sharp belonged “fundamentally” to a key:

We have seen so far that the key changes when the fourth and seventh are altered,
and furthermore that the fourth can be altered only by a sharp and the seventh by
a flat. Thus when an accidental falls on any other note, the key does not change.
It is therefore necessary that we note from the outset the ranking among these
accidentals so that it can be immediately determined whether or not they belong
fundamentally to the key. We shall speak first about keys generated by the altered
fourth.20

Sabbatini drummed this rule into his young students by having them sing the
three-​part canon shown in e­ xample 9.3. It demonstrates in an artistic way how
the F♯ first appearing in m. 5 “leads you outside the key,” as well as teaching that
this accidental was not in itself sufficient to consolidate a modulation. It required
a confirming cadence, which coincided helpfully in mm. 6–​8 and 15–​17 with the
words “as you find yourself now.”
By extension, the rule of the altered fourth, or “fa becomes mi,” formed the basis
of sharpward modulations around the circle of fifths. Sabbatini illustrated this by
means of the table reproduced in ­example 9.4, which showed the “formation of every
key produced by the altered fourth and the subsequent order from the first sharp, to
be born [from it], to the sixth.”21 In other words, it showed how the application of the
altered fourth led to a cycle of modulations from C major through G, D, A, E, and B
major to F♯ major. He stopped the process of transposition before reaching the key of
C♯ because this was the furthest key likely to be required in practice.
220 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 9.3 Sabbatini, Theoretical Elements (1789–90), 1:30: “Three-​Part Canon”

In the left-​hand column of e­ xample 9.4, Sabbatini represented each key as an

ascending octave species with letter names drawn from the three registers of the
Guidonian gamut. In conformity with the C-​and F-​clefs of plainchant, their real
and potential fa syllables were emphasized with black noteheads to help apprentices
read the staff. Indeed, Sabbatini declared openly that he considered the first note of
a key (the tonic) to be in reality a fa syllable, regardless of the fact that it was often
sung as do. In the next column of the table he began the same ascending scale but
halted it on the altered fourth to illustrate his earlier observation that the original
key could not continue beyond this point. This altered version of the scale was al-
ready solmized in the new key, which was highlighted in the third column by a
blackened fa a fifth above the original. To the right of this Sabbatini provided a
model for an alternative modulatory descent through the scale, likewise halting on
the altered fourth and already solmized in the new key. The observation at the top of
the far right-​hand column declaring that this descending formula “stabilizes what
Ex. 9.4 Sabbatini, Theoretical Elements (1789–90), 1:49: “Formation of every key produced by the altered fourth”
222 The Solfeggio Tradition

follows” suggests that he regarded it as a cadential phrase necessary for confirming

the modulation.
Countless surviving solfeggio manuscripts attest to the teaching of essen-
tially the same lessons earlier in the century at Naples. Often, the details must be
reconstructed from the music alone, because the theoretical aspects covered by
authors such as Solano and Sabbatini were left for the maestro or deputy to de-
liver orally. A typical sequence of lessons can be inferred from a number of basic
guides to solmization. Greco’s guide of c. 1720, for instance, presented the boys at
the Poveri Conservatory with a brief survey of the rudiments followed immedi-
ately by a series of practice melodies to be solmized, initially in simple hard melody,
similar to the modern C major, then in the re-​mode or A minor version of the same
scale, overlooking accidentals, and finally with a modulation to the scale on G by
means of the altered fourth.22 A similar layout can be seen in Cotumacci’s Principles
for the Onofrio Conservatory of c. 1755. The melodic exercises without key signa-
ture introduced accidentals to the apprentice musician in a progressive order, in-
itially through a C♯ to be ignored (fa does not become mi), then through an F♯ to
modulate to the fifth above (fa does become mi), and finally through a B♭ to mod-
ulate to the fifth below (mi becomes fa), followed by a B♮ to reverse the process (fa
becomes mi).23
The way in which this rudimentary modulation technique worked in practice
can be seen in the opening of a solfeggio by Porpora shown in e­ xample 9.5. It begins
with a simple ascent through the first five notes of C major, rounded off by a half
cadence that exploits the “other fa” within the scale. There follows in mm. 4–​6 a
conventional regular intervallic pattern of a fourth up and third down. Although
the manuscript lacks traits, the deliberate beaming into eight semiquavers indicates
how to sing this passage. In effect, it comprises a decorated and truncated version
of the original ascent from the first to the fifth of the scale: C (A) to D (B) to E (C),
and so on. This means that at precisely the point where an F♮ is expected to continue
the established pattern, on the first beat of m. 7, the altered fourth (F♯) appears. This
is just the kind of mirth-​inducing reversal brought about by a witty play on expec-
tations that made the Neapolitan style so popular in Galant society. It is only one of
many didactic ruses that made their way from solfeggio lessons to the real world of
commercial music making.
Sabbatini’s corresponding table of flatward modulations around the circle of
fifths is given in ­example 9.6. It served to illustrate the “formation of every key
produced by the altered seventh and the subsequent order from the first flat, to be
born [from it], to the sixth.” He explained the progression of descending fifths from
C major to G♭ major as the result of keys “born from the altered seventh.” The pro-
cess can be seen at work in the first staff of e­ xample 9.6, which shows how to modu-
late down a fifth from C major to F major. In the first column, the key is represented
by an ascending octave scale with the real and potential fa syllables marked with
black noteheads to show how to read the clef. The accidental flat affixed to the note F
is an “escorial” symbol, intended only to emphasize that this note is a fa rather than
 Solano and Sabbatini on Modulation 223

Ex. 9.5 Porpora, Solfeggi for Soprano (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 335), no. 14, mm. 1–​9, syllables
and annotations added by the author

to suggest any flatting of the pitch.24 The second and third columns demonstrate
the main technique for applying the altered seventh as part of a descending scale,
which leads onto the tonic of the new key. To the right of the diagram, an alternative
ascending approach to the altered seventh appears to suggest that a second appli-
cation of the technique was considered necessary in order to stabilize the new key.
Reduced to simplified tables and considered in isolation, the rules for the fourth
and the seventh may seem straightforward. Together, in “natural” form, they served
to define a key. Altering one or the other of them gave rise to a modulation to the
fifth above or below. Yet in practice matters were seldom so simple. Sabbatini
alerted his students to the complexities that could arise when the altered fourth, al-
tered seventh, and the many other varieties of accidental were combined by means
of a didactic four-​part canon reproduced in e­ xample 9.7. Its text spells out a now-​
familiar lesson: “This flat sign has the effect that from here on it will tell you: that
the seventh changes into the fourth of the new key, to which it belongs.” The flat sign
in question appears in mm. 1–​2, where it does, indeed, occasion an unproblematic
modulation from C major to F major by flatting the seventh. Glancing through the
Ex. 9.6 Sabbatini, Theoretical Elements (1789–90), 1:50: “Formation of every key produced by the altered seventh”
 Solano and Sabbatini on Modulation 225

Ex. 9.7 Sabbatini, Theoretical Elements (1789–90), 1:31: “Four-​Part Canon”

remainder of the canon reveals, by contrast, a bewildering array of accidentals. How

can these be accounted for by the elementary rule encapsulated in the text?
Sabbatini provided an answer by solmizing the entry of the fourth voice from
m. 25. In spite of its liberal sprinkling of sharps, it was to be sung entirely to the
syllables of the natural hexachord on C. All accidentals were ignored. No mutation
was deemed necessary.
The two accidentals in ­ example 9.7 that did provoke a modulation were
highlighted in the text: In m. 10 the word seventh coincides with the modulatory B♭,
and the word fourth in m. 12 coincides with the returning B♮ in m. 4. In spite of its
intricate chromaticism, this canon was evidently intended to teach students to seek
out the fundamental accidentals pertaining to the fourth or the seventh of a key and
to ignore the rest. It demonstrated how to modulate from C major to F major and
back again.
The derivation of the circle of fifths and its associated system of key signatures
from the properties of B-​fa and B-​mi in Guidonian solmization would have been
226 The Solfeggio Tradition

obvious to any eighteenth-​century musician trained in the conventional way, by

singing melodies to syllables. The Neapolitan maestro Francesco Ricupero con-
firmed as much in his guide to partimento playing (1803). Following a series of
standard cadences and rules of the octave in every key, arranged first in ascending
order through the cycle of fifths from the “first sharp” in G major to the “seventh
sharp” in C♯ major and then in descending order from C major to the “sixth flat” in
G♭ major, he justified the profusion of keys by citing traditional training in solfeggio:

The reader should not be surprised to see so many key signatures being used in the
foregoing exercises on the scale, because my system is that taught by our famous
and renowned masters, who would never sit youngsters at the harpsichord unless
they had already received three years of instruction in solfeggio.25

What that instruction involved can be reconstructed not only from Sabbatini’s
Theoretical Elements (1789–​90) but also from Francisco Solano’s New Instruction for
Portuguese musicians (1764), which sets out in unparalleled detail the theory of key
and modulation as taught at Naples in the mid-​eighteenth century. It substantiates
the idea that Neapolitan apprentices encountered neither bass line nor keyboard
during their early years of training in solfeggio. They learned to conceptualize keys
and to modulate between them entirely by singing instructional melodies.
Solano’s New Instruction was the product of a radical transition under way at the
court in Lisbon from the Renaissance-​era “diatonic or natural” Guidonian method
to the latest Italian transposable “chromatic” solfa.26 Similar changes had taken
place elsewhere in Europe decades earlier.
Letters of recommendation appended to Solano’s prologue testify to the zeal for
reform among local maestros. Their support was hardly surprising, given that sev-
eral of them had studied at one or another of the conservatories in Naples and that
the renowned Neapolitan pedagogue Davide Perez had been working in Lisbon
since 1752 as “Maestro to their serene highnesses the Princess of Brazil and the
Princesses of Portugal.”27 Perez also contributed an enthusiastic letter of endorse-
ment to Solano’s new textbook, thereby affirming its claim to represent genuine,
up-​to-​date Italian methods.
Thanks to the perceived need for a resource that would help professional
Portuguese musicians catch up with their enviably fashionable Neapolitan rivals,
Solano’s New Instruction preserves many aspects of eighteenth-​century solmiza-
tion that may otherwise have disappeared forever. His lengthy compilation of short
commentaries amounts to the most detailed contemporary guide available.
Nevertheless, it leaves many (modern) questions unanswered, especially in re-
gard to Galant approaches to long-​range structures, unorthodox modulations,
and far-​reaching key schemes. This is because traditional methods of craft training
sought neither to construct nor to engage with hierarchical, orderly, all-​embracing
systems. They instilled practical skills by means of the daily imitation and repe-
tition of progressively more advanced exemplars, relying on unwieldy conceptual
 Solano and Sabbatini on Modulation 227

frameworks that had coalesced through centuries of use. In this process many
questions (of interest to twenty-​first-​century musicians and scholars), especially
those of a predominantly theoretical nature, never would have arisen. It was enough
to know how to deal quickly and effectively with any likely professional eventuality.
Solano’s numerous individual case studies, like the solfeggi on which they drew,
were designed to help students accumulate expertise without the unnecessary dis-
traction of having to fit each real particular into a hypothetical universal. They also
attest to the predominantly nonverbal nature of craft training in their attempts to
impose unconvincing retrospective justifications on musical events that presum-
ably would have made perfect intuitive sense to fellow professionals. Solano’s il-
lustrative syllables, appended to excerpts from the latest didactic solfeggi, betray a
fluency and confidence that can only have been acquired by years of practice. His
forays into theoretical territory, by contrast, seem embarrassingly inept in their self-​
conscious reliance on pseudo-​scholarly prose to put forward explanations that are
haphazard and, at times, comically inadequate.
Solano’s most basic rule concerned the structure of the “usual Italian solfeggio,”
or compound scale, do-​re-​mi-​fa-​sol/​re-​mi-​fa, and in particular the “fundamental”
fa and mi syllables on its fourth and seventh notes. Solano labeled these using the
Portuguese terms fà certo and mì certo, which I translate as “fundamental” (in the
sense of “right” or “correct”).
His “new instruction” involved transposing this compound scale onto all twelve
available pitches. Although this would hardly have been considered new in Italy,
Portuguese musicians were evidently behind the times. They continued to limit
themselves to the old hard and soft scales, which could only be made to comply
with contemporary Galant music by ignoring accidentals in solmization. Solano
reassured them that the familiar plainchant rules for dealing with B-​fa and B-​mi
merely required a few tweaks to bring them up to date.28 The crucial thing to bear
in mind when modulating to distant keys, he stressed, was the need to identify the
fundamental fa and mi common to all scales:

When dealing with melody with accidentals, or Chromatic Keys, . . . you will see
that a much simpler concept arises, which, in those Melodies [with accidentals],
leads inevitably to a knowledge of the same Mutations by virtue of a fundamental
fa and a fundamental mi in all Melodies; and that these two fundamental syllables
will facilitate Mutations, as well as [knowledge of] all the other syllables, which
I will explain later.29

Once the fundamental fa and mi had been identified—​by analogy with the B-​fa
and E-​mi or the F-​fa and B-​mi of the old soft and hard melody—​it was a simple
matter to alter them in order to effect a change of key by singing mi in place of fa or
fa in place of mi. Only two simple rules were needed to explain the process of mod-
ulation: “The ♯ sign denotes an accidental mi, when it takes the fundamental place
of fa. . . . The ♭ sign denotes fa, when it takes the fundamental place of mi.”30 From
228 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 9.8 Solano, New Instruction (1764), 67: “Example of the two fundamental syllables
in ♮ Melody with one ♯ [i.e., G major], and its relevant mutations”

this followed the circle of fifths, which Solano described (starting from the key with
the first accidental sharp, like Ricupero) as follows: “In natural melody with a ♯ or a
fundamental mi on F and a fundamental fa on C [i.e., G major], place the second ♯
[on C]. In melody with two sharps [i.e., D major], in which the last note C[♯] is a fun-
damental mi, and the fundamental fa is on G, place the third ♯ [on G, and so on].”31
Moving flatward around the circle of fifths involved a similar procedure, applied
not to the fourth but to the fundamental seventh of a scale: “In natural [soft] melody
the ♭ or fundamental fa is on B and the fundamental mi is on E [i.e., F major]. In
melody with two flats [B♭ major] the fundamental fa is on E[♭] and the fundamental
mi is on A [and so on].”32
Solano illustrated these techniques of modulation with a series of annotated scales
in each key, the first of which is reproduced in ­example 9.8. Aside from grounding
the scale on an initial Do and marking the ensuing mutations with staccato wedges,
the original annotations draw attention primarily to the two fundamental fa and
mi syllables on the fourth and seventh notes. In keeping with Sabbatini’s four-​part
canon in ­example 9.7, this seems to suggest that an ability to pick out the funda-
mental notes of a key was a crucial skill for musicians. If they ranked the relative
strength of accidentals, they had only to consider changes to two specific notes
within a key. The rest could be ignored, however intricate the chromaticism.
Whereas Sabbatini provided systematic tables of modulations through the circle
of fifths (­examples 9.4 and 9.6), Solano conveyed essentially the same lesson by
means of an extraordinary series of Type 1 solfeggi that were “not meant to be sung,
but intended for the understanding.” His melody for teaching the “general rule for
sharps” is shown in ­example 9.9. It illustrates the bare mechanics of the process,
divested of all but the most rudimentary trappings of style. Every time a funda-
mental fa is encountered, in the next bar it is sharped to mi. Thus the fundamental
F-​fa of “natural melody” (C major) in m. 1 becomes the fundamental F-​mi of G
major in m. 2; the fundamental C-​fa of G major in m. 2 becomes the fundamental
C-​mi of D major in m. 3, and so on. By way of revision at the end of the lesson,
all seven resulting sharps are compressed into a closing flourish in m. 8. A com-
panion solfeggio shown in e­ xample 9.10 demonstrates how to reverse the process
by applying natural signs to each sharp in turn, in effect transforming the new fun-
damental mi back to its original state as a fundamental fa. Every time a fundamental
mi is encountered, in the following bar it is flatted to become a fa.
Ex. 9.9 Solano, New Instruction (1764), 108: “An Example . . . to impart knowledge of
the general rule for sharps”

Ex. 9.10 Solano, New Instruction (1764), 109: “An Example . . . to impart knowledge of
the general rule for ♮ in regard to sharps”
230 The Solfeggio Tradition

An analogous pair of solfeggi intended to illustrate the “general rule for flats”
is reproduced in ­examples 9.11 and 9.12. These purely theoretical melodies pro-
vide similarly repetitive models for modulating flatward through the circle of fifths.
In ­example 9.11, every time a fundamental mi is encountered, in the next bar it is
flatted to become a fundamental fa. The seventh of one scale becomes the fourth of
another, situated a fifth below. Thus the B-​mi of C major in m. 1 is transformed into
the B-​fa of F major in m. 2. Solano labeled this as the “first” accidental flat in order

Ex. 9.11 Solano, New Instruction (1764), 136: “An Example . . . to impart knowledge of
the general rule for ♭”

Ex. 9.12 Solano, New Instruction (1764), 137: “An Example . . . to impart knowledge of
the general rule for ♮ in regard to flats”
 Solano and Sabbatini on Modulation 231

to underscore the derivation of the system of key signatures from this most basic
operation of Guidonian solmization. Example 9.12 shows how to reverse the pro-
cess by applying natural signs to the seven flatted notes in turn, restoring them from
fa back to mi.
The cumulative evidence of these rudimentary lessons suggests that the tonal
system remained conceptually simple, however complex its results. This is hardly
surprising, given that it was designed to turn eight-​year-​olds into commercially
marketable performers and composers by their early teens. The Renaissance prac-
tice of knowing when to sing culturally acceptable ficta notes remained alive and
well during Sabbatini’s lifetime, although less was left to chance in terms of nota-
tion. Because sharps and flats were considered to be fundamental only when as-
sociated with the fourth and the seventh of a scale, by analogy with the B-​fa and
B-​mi of plainchant, all others could be dismissed as mere vocal or instrumental
inflections, including those that belonged to what would now be called secondary
dominants and augmented sixth chords, as in Sabbatini’s canon in ­example 9.7. The
complex theories devised in the nineteenth century to accommodate and explain
these many accidentals would have been completely unnecessary for the musicians
who actually knew how to use and interpret them. This is not to claim that complex
modulatory schemes did not exist in eighteenth-​century music. On the contrary,
maestros exploited a range of extended techniques every bit as intricate as those
conjured up by modern theorists. For now, however, it is necessary to keep to the
basic cornerstones of modulation and to explore how they were used in practice.

Fa and Mi Rules in Neapolitan Solfeggi

In their efforts to entertain Galant patrons, Neapolitan court composers never

seemed to tire of comical effects arising from the elementary rules for modulation
they had learned as children. Sharped fourths and flatted sevenths offered irresist-
ible opportunities to hint playfully at a new key without actually reaching it or to
confound expectations by swerving suddenly from an established path. Toward
the end of countless solfeggi, maestros would set traps designed to test the singer’s
ability to distinguish fundamental fourths and sevenths from feints and other in-
consequential chromaticisms. These didactic ruses probably provided a welcome
moment of light relief toward the close of a lesson, as well as hammering home the
essential rules of key and modulation. They went on to form the punchline of many
a musical joke in compositions for the chamber or theater.
A typical instance occurs at the end of an arioso solfeggio by Cotumacci
reproduced in ­example 9.13. In order to understand this advanced lesson, please
sing the two basic musical constructions set out in the uppermost staff. The first
is a two-​stage Prinner ending on the dominant key, E major, and the second is a
Prinner ending on the tonic key, A major, continuing downward through the scale
onto a perfect cadence. One way to realize these simple frameworks is recorded
232 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 9.13(a) Reduction of (b)

Ex. 9.13(b) Cotumacci, Principles and Solfeggi, fol. 17v, no. 56, mm. 20–​31, syllables
and annotations added by the author

in Cotumacci’s manuscript. The sol-​--​ ​la-​sol in mm. 20–​21 was performed with a
straightforward downward leap, but the expected fa-​mi in mm. 21–​23 was thwarted
by a series of syllabic deceits, as if the maestro had asked: “On which other notes
might this semitone fall?” The first two fa-​mis form a Meyer schema that anchors
the key firmly within E major by emphasizing its defining notes, the major sev-
enth D♯-​mi and perfect fourth A-​fa. By means of a droll and understated subter-
fuge, however, the altered seventh, D♮, of the answering gesture in m. 24 allows the
key to slip surreptitiously back into the tonic. This unleashes a Prinner festooned
with cascades of celebratory falling thirds in mm. 25–​27, which leaves no room for
doubt that the tonic key of A major has returned. But the singer has one last trick
in store before the solfeggio can reach its close. When a descending scale appears in
m. 28 to signal the start of a finishing flourish, the singer proceeds onto an altered
fourth, a fa-​turned-​mi on D♯, by way of precisely the same melodic pattern that
 Solano and Sabbatini on Modulation 233

Sabbatini used to demonstrate how to stabilize a new key. It is in fact the pattern
already described in Chapters 6 and 8 as a false soprano cadence. This modulation
back to E major is canceled out almost immediately by a corresponding altered sev-
enth, D♮, in the following bar.
The pedagogical juxtaposition of the altered fourth and seventh toward the end
of a solfeggio became one of the most commonplace witticisms in the Galant reper-
tory. It remained rooted in solfeggio practice even when it appeared in partimento
basses. Partimento masters would have conceived it as a routine pedagogical device
with which to demonstrate the basic modulatory technique for turning mi into fa
and fa into mi. Niccolò Zingarelli had this in mind when he observed in his second
rule for partimento playing that “one can apply the flatted seventh in partimenti just
as if it were to proceed in the nature of the fourth of the key.”33 By “fourth of the key”
he did not mean to indicate the chord of the subdominant but rather to alert players
to the possibility of flatting the seventh to turn it from mi into fa (and thus into the
fourth of the key a fifth below, which by its “nature” resolved downward), prior to its
return sharpward to its original position as the unaltered seventh, mi.
One final matter that calls for comment in e­ xample 9.13 is the unusual appear-
ance of the C symbol before the 3/​4 time signature. An explanation can be found
in Cotumacci’s survey of the rudimentary figures for canto figurato, with which he
began this collection of solfeggi. It shows that he understood C to signify “tempo
medio,” whereas a C intersected by a vertical line indicated tempo “a cappella.” In
essence, C performed the redundant function of informing the singer that the triple
division of the time signature was to be notated in black quarter notes rather than
the white half notes of “Tripola minore” (3/​2) or whole notes of “Tripola maggiore”
(3/​1). To add to the confusion, Cotumacci’s normal term for a 3/​4 time signature
was “Tripola trinaria.”34
One last example of how modulation technique was put to use in Neapolitan
solfeggi can be seen in e­ xample 9.14(b). It shows two variants of the same basic ca-
denza formula. This remarkable testimony allows us to witness directly the process
of turning plain syllables into elaborate melodies. Please sing and internalize the
reductions in (a) before attempting Porpora’s original in (b).
Despite their superficial differences, both cadenzas launch with an octave ascent
from the tonic note fa, continue with a teasing zig-zag through the altered fourth
234 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 9.14(a) The two alternative cadenzas in (b) reduced to syllables and constructions

Ex. 9.14(b) Porpora, Solfeggi for Soprano (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 335), no. 3, mm. 22–​26,
syllables added by the author. By courtesy of the San Pietro a Majella Conservatory in
Naples, no further reproduction allowed

and flatted seventh, and come to rest on a standard fa-​sol-​fa (1-​2-​1) cadence. In the
first version of the cadenza, in the top staff of e­ xample 9.14(a), the singer fills in the
opening octave with a scale that fails to reach its goal. Understood as traits, the slurs
in the original suggest that each scale step would have been solmized. If interpreted
as articulation marks, conversely, then the entire ascent would have been sung to
 Solano and Sabbatini on Modulation 235

Ex. 9.15 Joseph Haydn, String Quartet op. 33, no. 2 (1781), fourth movement, mm.
62–​73, with analytical annotations

the vowel of its initial fa. In the second version of the cadenza the opening leap is
more exposed, with a hint of what is to come in the form of a chromatic appoggia-
tura from B♮ to C. In both, the central modulatory twist demonstrates how the most
basic rudiments of modulation were exploited in order to generate surprise effects.
No one put these rudiments to better use than the undisputed master of surprise,
Joseph Haydn. From his early training in the Catholic cantoral tradition, as well as
his experience of solfeggio lessons with Porpora, he would have conceived the al-
tered fourth and seventh as the standard means of modulation. Instances abound
in his works.
The passage shown in e­ xample 9.15 is drawn from the closing rondo of his String
Quartet op. 33, no. 2 (“The Joke”). It features the transition to the return of the
principal theme after the first contrasting episode, which begins in m. 36. At first,
it appears to consolidate the tonic key of E♭ major in mm. 62–​63, with a conven-
tional pairing of the fa-​mi from the fourth of the key (A♭-​G) in the melody with
the mi-​fa from the seventh of the key (D-​E♭) in the bass, which Gjerdingen calls the
Comma. In a less sophisticated genre this affirmation of the tonic key might have
236 The Solfeggio Tradition

continued with a stronger cadence leading directly back to the principal theme. Yet
in a classic reversal, Haydn seeks to tease his listeners with a sudden altered fourth,
A♭ transformed into A♮, indicating an unmistakable modulation to the dominant
key of B♭ major. The ensuing repetitions of this new mi-​fa over a pedal note appear
calculated to establish the key in the most irrevocable way. Indeed, a firm cadence is
reached through an emphatic mi-​fa in m. 68, only to be confirmed yet again by the
mi in the uppermost part of m. 69, which, by convention, should resolve to a final
fa over a B♭ major chord. But the sudden drop to a hushed piano hints that not all
is as it should be. Sure enough, by a compositional sleight of hand, an altered sev-
enth, A♭, usurps the expected cadence in m. 70. This same device presumably would
have occasioned much hilarity when it arose during solfeggio lessons because it
directed the student to complete a standard fa-​mi-​fa (1-​7-​1) soprano cadence with
the wrong fa. This may help explain Haydn’s ensuing pause. Students likely would
have ground to an embarrassing halt at such moments, perplexed as to whether
the surprise altered seventh should be treated as a fundamental modulation or as
an accidental inflection. After a few moments of consideration, the reappearance
of the theme in m. 72 informs us that a decision has been reached to treat this A♭-​fa
as a genuine altered seventh. The same “wrong fa” ruse returns in comically ex-
tended form in mm. 128–​40 of this rondo to allow for a wry turn toward the tonic
following a firm cadence in the dominant key. It derives, ultimately, from a basic
didactic snare frequently encountered in Neapolitan solfeggi.
 PART III
THE SOL F E GGIO R E PE RTORY
Types, Styles, and Genres
 10
Defining Solfeggio

The word solfeggio derives from the lexeme sol-​fa, which takes two of the six
Guidonian syllables and combines them into a shorthand symbol for the system
as a whole. Together with its synonym sol-​mi, it gives rise to an array of word
forms from solfa, solfatio, and solfizare to solmization, solmifatio, and solmisieren.
All of these represent either texts or acts stemming from the pedagogical method
attributed to Guido of Arezzo.
In strictest terms, therefore, a solfeggio is a melody (or combination of melodies)
that for instructional purposes makes use of a system of note-​naming based on, or
developed from, Guido’s original ut-​re-​mi-​fa-​sol-​la. Its distinguishing features are
syllables and didactic function. Everything else pertains to melody more generally.
This definition is at odds with those that dismiss or downplay the relevance of
solfa to solfeggio. But they offer little or no justification for the assumed license to
disregard the syllables, relying instead, it seems, on an instinctive comparison with
nineteenth-​century singing exercises and with the meaninglessness of syllables
in fixed-​do solfège, the method most commonly taught today. On this assump-
tion rests the casual dismissal of Durante’s surviving solfeggi as “nothing more
than singing exercises for two or three voices, present in various collections and
miscellanies.”1 The entry “Solfeggio” in the New Grove (2001) repeats the common-
place assumption that seventeenth-​and eighteenth-​century solfeggi “were too elab-
orate to be sung to solmization syllables, and single vowel sounds were used.”2 On
this questionable basis, it draws a distinction between rudimentary solfeggi used
for learning to name notes and more advanced ones designed to impart skills in
singing, thereby consigning syllables to irrelevance in all but the simplest exercises.
This contravenes the evidence of eighteenth-​century sources, in which the word for
reading notes, lettura, could be used as a synonym for all types of solfeggio, as in
Sabbatini’s “On reading the notes, or solfeggio.”3 Many collections of solfeggi prog-
ress seamlessly, without any indication of a change in method, from basic slow-​
moving exercises to elaborate and highly ornamented melodies obviously designed
for advanced singers. Cotumacci (c. 1755), for instance, prefaced his graduated
course of sung lessons with a beginner’s guide to transposable solmization, which
was just as relevant to the flamboyant final arias as it was to the initial cantus firmi
in uniform semibreves. Bertalotti (1764) appended an elementary guide to reading
notes to his collection of intricate chromatic solfeggi for use in Bolognese church
schools, with the clear implication that the same system should apply to all of them.
These and many more sources indicate that complicated solfeggi were sung to

The Solfeggio Tradition. Nicholas Baragwanath, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197514085.001.0001
240 The Solfeggio Tradition

exactly the same syllables as basic ones, albeit with a greater application of what
I defined earlier as the Amen and Appoggiatura rules.
Both syllables and didactic function must be considered essential to any work-
able definition of solfeggio. Ambiguities arise, however, because the term was (and
still is) applied to other types of pedagogical melody by extension, convention, or
analogy. When is a solfeggio not a solfeggio?
In the eighteenth century it was common for students who had thoroughly
mastered solmization and who were destined for singing careers, as well as for
amateurs who would never master solmization, to vocalize solfeggi to a vowel or
simple text so as to concentrate on aspects of technique. Valente instructed his
students to sing an expressive Larghetto solfeggio first “with the notes” and then
“vocalized.”4 Agricola implied that solfeggi were routinely sung to a vowel by his
compatriots because only Italians had the wherewithal to apply the syllables prop-
erly: “The term solfeging (or solmizing, as we call it) literally means, for the Italians,
to sing the names of the notes with the Guidonian syllables. It can also mean [for
non-​Italians] singing all the notes of a piece on a single vowel, without syllables or
words. Pieces intended for this practice are called solfeggi.”5
Beginners could also be excused from the requirement to solmize if the maestro
felt that it was hindering them from singing in tune. Mancini (1777) maintained
that Greco, maestro at the Poveri Conservatory in Naples until 1728, dispensed with
syllables when they interfered with intonation.6 For amateur lessons, traditional
solmization was always replaced by some simpler scheme. When Caroline Lucretia
Herschel (1750–​1848) first took singing lessons in Bath in 1772, for example, with
a view to joining her organist brother as a church performer, she sang her “solfeggi”
to an Italian text incorporating two prominent a vowels meaning “it gives me peace”
(pace mi dà).7 In Paris, the first published collection of Italian didactic melodies,
Solfèges d’Italie (1768), frequently released students from the obligation to apply the
seven-​note fixed-​do system by way of the instruction “without solfa-​ing the notes.”
It recommended in general that “after the pupil has solmized long enough to have
run through all the intervals correctly, we advise him to abandon the syllables and
to sing all solfeggi to the vowels a and e.”8
But an instructional melody sung in this way without syllables is properly called a
vocalise (vocalizzo). It retains its identity as a solfeggio only by virtue of association
with an earlier pedagogical function. In other words, it should be defined either
as a solfeggio sung as a vocalizzo or as a vocalizzo that has appropriated the name
for convenience. The term is seldom encountered in manuscripts because vocalizzi
were almost always fashioned from existing solfeggi, removing the need for a sepa-
rate text with an alternative title.
Unlike note-​naming solfeggio, the vocalizzo had only one main didactic func-
tion: as a singing exercise. This distinction began to break down toward the end
of the eighteenth century, when a looser definition emerged as a result of the
increasing demand for simplified singing methods. Lessons for a new market of
middle-​class amateurs usurped the meaning of solfeggio, reducing its scope from a
 Defining Solfeggio 241

multifaceted teaching tool with origins in ancient traditions of sung counterpoint to

a study in score reading or vocal technique with piano accompaniment. This can be
seen in an unrealized 1816 plan to impose a more Parisian curriculum at the Naples
Conservatory that recommended the appointment of one “Professor of solfeggio,
or musical elements” and another “Professor of solfeggio proper, or vocalizzo.”9
Maestros often adapted existing solfeggi as vocalizzi for private singing lessons,
although, with sound business sense, they seldom got round to changing the label.
After all, who wanted to study mere vocalises when opera stars were known to have
acquired their skills through solfeggi? Rossini avoided the issue by coming up with
the exotic-​sounding title Gorgheggi and Solfeggi for his published collection of am-
ateur singing exercises, but he gave the game away by clarifying its meaning in a
subtitle: “vocalises and solfeggios to render the voice more agile and to learn fine
singing.”10
This broadening of the term meant that by the mid-​nineteenth century a sol-
feggio was, indeed, understood to signify nothing more than a kind of textless song
for learning to read music and for training the voice. If sung to fixed-​do French
solfège or some alternative system of syllables, then it could be classified as a gen-
uine solfeggio, although its syllables had no pedagogical relevance beyond ensuring
a circulation of consonants and vowels. But if sung to vowels or a token text, without
any system of syllables, then it should correctly be defined as a vocalizzo.
By the same token, solfeggi adapted as instrumental studies retain their iden-
tity only by dint of association with their former pedagogical function. Johann
Quantz’s solfeggi for transverse flute, C. P. E. Bach’s for keyboard, and Alessandro
Rolla’s for two violins are not really solfeggi at all but, rather, instrumental lessons
for beginners named by analogy with the more familiar category of sung lessons
for beginners. The practice of adapting solfeggi for instruments was common-
place in the eighteenth century.11 It already had a long history. One of the earliest
references can be found in the dedication of Agostino Licino’s collection of forty-​
five duo canons (1545–​46), which specified that these sung counterpoints were
useful not only for practicing the “musical alphabet” but also for “learning to play
stringed instruments.”12 As the contrapuntal duo developed into the solfeggiamento
in the seventeenth century, it retained its function as a source of material for in-
strumental studies. The usual progression from simple scales and leaps to more ad-
vanced melodies meant that it was well suited for the purpose. This explains why
Cotumacci (c. 1755) took it for granted that his melodies would be “solmized, sung,
or played”13 and why Tonelli (1762) recommended that students who chose to spe-
cialize in playing rather than singing treat their instrument as if it were a voice and
practice on the same exercises.14 Tartini’s Art of the Bow (1768) shows how this
was done by subjecting a simple theme from Corelli’s Violin Sonata op. 5, no. 10
to thirty-​eight variations. Just as in sung solfeggio, the underlying syllabic shape
of the theme, as identified in ­example 10.1, provides a framework for increasingly
elaborate realizations. Paganini’s compositions betray a similar origin in solfeggio
training. His famous Caprice no. 24 in A minor, for instance, is built on a basic
242 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 10.1 Tartini, L’Arte del Arco (1768), theme and variations 5 and 38, with underlying
solfeggio added by the author

Ex. 10.2 The theme from Paganini’s Caprice no. 24 in A minor, reduced to a solfeggio

minor-​mode solfeggio spanning a fifth from re to la, which is transformed through

a series of inganni. A reduction to syllable notes can be seen in the upper staff of
­example 10.2, together with Paganini’s alterations in the lower.
An instrumental solfeggio can be considered similar in status to a vocalizzo. If
adapted from an existing sung exercise, then it may be considered to belong to the
genre indirectly, as an offshoot: a solfeggio played as a study. But if it was composed
expressly for an instrument, then its claim to qualify as a solfeggio rests on nothing
more than a tenuous metonym—​unless, of course, it was subsequently solmized, as
appears to have happened on one occasion sometime between 1765 and 1769 when
the castrato Ferdinando Mazzanti decided to sing the first movement of a violin
sonata composed by his friend Emanuele Barbella. The incident was witnessed as
follows:

Examining it for some time, Mazzanti returned it to him saying: “Very good, signor
Barbella, you have written a good piece of solfeggio.” Barbella was astounded, and
replied: “Don Ferdinà, are you mad? How is this sonata a piece of solfeggio?” “A
solfeggio indeed,” replied Mazzanti; and Barbella: “So will you sing it?” Mazzanti
replied: “Honestly! Is there anything unusual in this?” . . . And so he set the key and
 Defining Solfeggio 243

began the allegro con brio. . . . Mazzanti demonstrated his ability by finishing the
piece, and all were stunned and applauded him.15

This account does not make clear whether Mazzanti sang the melody to syllables
or to a vowel. If the former, then he did, indeed, transform an instrumental sonata
into a genuine solfeggio. If the latter, then he doubly misappropriated the term by
using it as a shorthand for a vocalizzo masquerading as a solfeggio, which existed
only by implication of the selfsame vocalizzo.
The reason for this semantic wrangling is to isolate the definition of solfeggio
given at the start of the chapter and to demonstrate that what may at first appear to
be separate varieties, requiring their own discrete definitions, are in fact extensions
of a core concept. Vocalises and instrumental studies that claim the title of solfeggio
are more accurately described as solfeggi once removed, retaining their identity by
association.
This restrictive definition also helps disentangle the various types of instru-
mental accompaniment that were routinely added to solfeggi in the eighteenth
century, from unfigured and figured bass lines to keyboard parts. It dictates that
accompaniments of any sort should be regarded as extraneous to the pedagog-
ical melody, which alone constitutes the solfeggio. The distinction appears to be
corroborated by the way many title pages in eighteenth-​century collections care-
fully separate “Solfeggi” from the supplementary phrase “with the accompaniment
of the bass,” or, as Errichelli (1757) puts it, “with keyboard.” In all likelihood, these
addenda referred not to any intrinsic feature of the lesson but to the discretionary
inclusion of a notated aid to teaching it. In other words, there was no such thing as a
“solfeggio with bass,” only a “solfeggio, with bass.”
Manuscripts that lack an accompaniment in ink did not necessarily lack one in
practice. Copyists may not have had access to written-​out bass lines or may simply
have grown weary of including them. The eighteenth and final solfeggio in a col-
lection attributed to Leonardo Leo, for instance, is the only one that lacks a bass.16
Another collection by Leo includes a bass part with only one completed bar followed
by five pages of empty staves, suggesting that the scribe ran out of time or stamina.17
Beyond the actions of copyists, it seems reasonable to presume that maestros ha-
bitually improvised keyboard accompaniments for solfeggio lessons. Cotumacci
probably did not need notated bass lines, which would explain why they were
omitted from his course of study (c. 1755). At the keyboard, he could gauge how
much support a student required and adapt the accompaniment accordingly. Many
of Zingarelli’s autograph solfeggi have partial or missing bass lines, although pre-
sumably they were performed complete at the piano during his classes at the Naples
Conservatory. The omission appears to have been the result of haste rather than in-
tention. Zingarelli always wrote the melody first, saving the bass for later and some-
times neglecting to finish it.
Titles of manuscript collections can also provide clues to the practice of
improvising bass lines. Just as the exceptional nature of the term “without keyboard”
244 The Solfeggio Tradition

(senza organo or cembalo) in eighteenth-​century music implies that continuo was

expected elsewhere as a matter of course, so too does the instruction “without ac-
companiment” suggest, by virtue of its rarity, that accompaniments were added to
solfeggi even when absent from manuscripts. As a general rule, only old-​fashioned
contrapuntal solfeggi carry the unequivocal designation “without accompaniment.”
Examples include the collection of seven duos for “unequal” voices (soprano and
bass) and “equal” voices (two sopranos) by Durante and nineteen imitative duos
by Martini.18 A set of archaic solfeggi for soprano and alto attributed to Alessandro
Scarlatti advises users to perform them “with and without accompaniment.”19 A set
of thirteen duos by Durante excludes continuo “in order to accustom the voices to
good intonation.”20
Maestros appear to have disagreed about the benefits of providing an accompa-
niment to help students sing in tune. Valente followed Durante in recommending
that they sing all the “natural scales with mutations and semitones as well as all
the intervals” without keyboard, to assist them in acquiring correct intonation. In
a later lesson, he instructed students to “sing first with voice alone and then with
bass.”21 Mancini claimed, conversely, that a really loud keyboard or, better still, an
organ pedal was needed for this purpose.22
In amateur lessons, a (texted) melody plus accompanying bass could serve a dual
purpose. Durante’s twelve duets for the use of his private student Teresa Masi were
characterized as “for the study of how to sing and for exercises in accompanying at
the keyboard.”23 While Teresa honed her vocal skills by singing the melody, the re-
cipient of the lessons in accompaniment appears to have been one Giovanni Masi,
presumably a husband or brother drafted to assist with her practice sessions. In a
manuscript copy of 1776, he wrote out the basses together with what he claimed
were the “correct diminutions according to the author.”24 This plainly illustrates
the pedagogical distinction between melody, as solfeggio or vocalizzo, and bass, as
partimento.
But matters are not always so clear-​cut. Although it seems safe to assume that
notated (and improvised) bass lines were normally realized by maestros at the key-
board as multivoiced harmonic accompaniments, on occasion they may have been
played, or perhaps sung, solo, more or less as written. In solfeggio fugues, in partic-
ular, it makes pedagogical sense to presume that the contrapuntal imitations be-
tween bass and melody were conceived (or sung?) in terms of the same syllables.25
As we saw, Zingarelli often applied identical traits to themes appearing in both parts
(see ­example 7.5). Whereas a few collections were specifically designated for two
voices rather than solfeggio plus accompaniment—​for instance, the set of duets for
soprano and bass by Porpora26—​others lack precise instructions, making it diffi-
cult to determine with certainty whether the bass was intended as a continuo or a
vocal part.
Sabbatini (1789–​90) offers an insight into this dual function of the bass in a com-
mentary on solfeggio canons. Conceding that his figured bass lines may seem un-
usual to readers in that they “lack that necessary harmony and melodic contour, or
 Defining Solfeggio 245

motion, that seems natural,” he excuses them for not following everyday procedures
on the ground that the canon is a special case.27 It has both a harmonic foundation,
being based on a key or mode, and a contrapuntal foundation, being governed by
rules that regulate the combination of its voices. This means that the bass line must
be versatile enough to fulfil two very different requirements. On one hand, realized
as a normal keyboard continuo part, it provides singers with harmonic support
in the form of “an accompaniment col Basso.” On the other, realized as a solo bass
melody, with or without the canonic vocal parts doubled by the accompanist’s right
hand, it reinforces the contrapuntal structure and furnishes it with a tuneful coun-
tersubject. It is worth noting that Sabbatini’s inclusion of figures above the bass as
a guide for continuo players did not preclude the possibility of playing it as a solo
countermelody. “Further to this reflection,” Sabbatini concluded, “the said Basso
could be called an accessory [harmonic] foundation to another [contrapuntal]
foundation, which governs the [melodic] part that appears in more than one voice.”
In both capacities, the bass makes a significant contribution to the pedagog-
ical aim of the solfeggio. Played as a standard accompaniment it assists intona-
tion, helps foster a sense of rhythm, and familiarizes the student with typical
harmonic frameworks for melodic schemata. As a solo countersubject it reveals
the places where imitative counterpoints may fall, accustoms the student to
voice-​leading norms, and highlights bass-​melody patterns essential to composi-
tion. If, in order to underscore contrapuntal relations between parts, the maestro
were to sing or speak aloud the syllables of the bass or merely ask the student to
conceptualize them in terms of syllables, then the lesson would no longer be an
accompanied solfeggio but a solfeggio for two voices. Several early eighteenth-​
century guides to partimento playing provide evidence to support this theory by
annotating the bass with solmization syllables. The line between accompanying
bass and additional voice is sometimes blurred. Judgement must be made afresh
in each case.
Bass lines cannot, therefore, be dismissed altogether as extraneous appendages.
They often form an integral part of the pedagogical function of a solfeggio, whether
as essential halves of bass-​melody frameworks or as equal contributors to contra-
puntal interplay between the parts. For this reason, the fundamental division of sol-
feggio shown below backtracks somewhat from the strict definition given at the
start of this chapter and takes into account the difference between accompanied
and unaccompanied melodies as well as the number of voices. This gives rise to four
main types:

Type 1. A didactic melody for one unaccompanied voice, spoken, sung, or

conceived in terms of syllables. These are usually encountered in lessons for
canto fermo, rudimentary theory, score-​reading, and scales and leaps for
beginners.
Type 2. A combination of didactic melodies for two or more unaccompanied
voices, spoken, sung, or conceived in terms of syllables. These normally
246 The Solfeggio Tradition

resemble Renaissance-​era ricercars, contrapuntal duos and trios, and imita-

tion fugues.
Type 3. A didactic melody for one voice, spoken, sung, or conceived in terms
of syllables and accompanied by (a) unfigured bass, (b) figured bass, or (c) a
keyboard part. This is the most familiar type, encompassing styles as diverse
as arias and fugues.
Type 4. A combination of didactic melodies for two or more voices, spoken,
sung, or conceived in terms of syllables and accompanied by (a) unfigured
bass, (b) figured bass, or (c) a keyboard part. This is the least common type.
It usually encompasses vocal duets and ensembles that are either imitative or
cantabile in style.

Cutting across these types are numerous subvarieties whose categorization depends
on whether the solfeggio was published or unpublished, was aimed at professionals
or amateurs, was written for general classroom teaching or for a bespoke lesson with
an individual student, or was sung, spoken, or thought. These properties are, how-
ever, of limited use in classifying solfeggi because they often apply simultaneously
to the same melody. An unpublished exercise written expressly for a trainee pro-
fessional singer may, for instance, have been published later in a method targeted
at amateurs or in a textbook designed for classroom teaching. Leaving aside Type
1 canto fermo exercises for use in church schools, unpublished manuscripts are
most often copies of Type 3 and Type 4 lessons that were once delivered at Italian
conservatories. In origin, therefore, they can be considered to relate to professional
training. But some were sold publicly for amateur singing lessons, as attested by the
booksellers’ particulars that appear on title pages.28 Others were later engraved for
inclusion in singing methods.
A more promising basis for classifying subvarieties can be found in didactic
function. By definition, the primary purpose of every solfeggio is educational.
Many collections follow a similar pattern, starting with scales and regular leaps be-
fore progressing through lessons that introduce increasingly complex note values,
time signatures, key signatures, and notational symbols. This is the tradition that
Ermanno Picchi had in mind when, in 1853, he summarized the purpose of sol-
feggio as “reading the notes, intonation, and the values [both pitch and rhythm] of
the sounds.”29 Once the lessons went beyond these basics and started to resemble
real pieces of music, they turned to matters of style and technique, as signaled by
markings such as “arioso” and “staccato” that can be seen in some of Cotumacci’s
later solfeggi (c. 1755).30 Salini (1804) specified that the first five melodies in his
course of instruction were “to form the intonation” whereas the rest were lessons “in
style.” The first page of Corri (1810) lists the styles to be taught by his solfeggi: “the
sacred, the serious, the comic, anacreontic, cantabile, bravura, &c.”
By the late eighteenth century, the need to cater to a broad amateur market meant
that many collections spelled out the main objective of each lesson in a descriptive
title. Caroline Herschel’s solfeggi are, for instance, variously titled (in Italian) “for
 Defining Solfeggio 247

the anticipation,” “for the dissonant suspensions,” “for the falsetto voice,” and “for
the syncopation.” The first part of Solfèges d’Italie (1768) advances through named
combinations of note values and expanding intervals before reaching its first lesson
in technique, a study in applying the messa di voce (a vocal swell, soft-​loud-​soft)
called “No. 34 Andante. For learning to thread the notes.” Sabbatini (1789–​90)
offers still more specific titles, starting with exercises on the scale “for mutations”
and for assorted intervallic leaps and note values. His later lessons incorporate
the following descriptions: “a scale broken up by changes of motion and rhythmic
values,” “for practicing the seven clefs,” “for accidentals” (involving a tour through
all twelve major and twelve minor keys), a “solfeggio with very long notes to ex-
pand, consolidate, and stretch the voice,” “for falsetto,” “for the trill,” and a “solfeggio
made up of appoggiaturas and syncopations.” Similarly literal titles can be found
in the collection of forty-​two tenor solfeggi attributed to Paisiello (but composed
mainly by Baldassare La Barbiera).31 The third one offers a lesson “on the effect of
the syncopation” and the fifth “on the effect of the trill.” Catrufo (1822) provides ex-
traordinarily precise captions such as one for an “exercise in the quadruple triplet
over one beat” (p. 122), which offers students the opportunity to practice singing
twelve notes in the time of one.
In theory, it should be possible to categorize solfeggi according to their didactic
functions. A Type 1 solfeggio might be defined as a lesson in, say, dealing with
accidentals or realizing dotted notes. A Type 3 might be labeled as an exercise in
applying appoggiaturas, coping with rapid runs, singing in the affettuoso style, or
modulating. Issues arise, however, in the multiplicity of educational purposes to
which any one solfeggio could be put. There was no straightforward divide between
theory, performance, and composition. Sanguinetti (1999) emphasizes that sol-
feggio taught both performance skills and composition:

The “solfeggio,” as we know, was in the eighteenth century a composition for voice
and basso continuo, devoid of text and intended predominantly for the teaching
of singing rather than composition. In the eighteenth-​century mind, however, the
separation of performance and composition did not yet exist, and therefore the
same means could be used to teach both singing and composing for the voice.32

A sung solfeggio could not help but impart a multitude of skills, whatever the
maestro’s principal intention. Take, for example, a Type 3 solfeggio specifically
identified as an exercise in singing trills. It offers opportunities to practice the req-
uisite physical techniques, of course, but it cannot avoid also reinforcing students’
visceral awareness of where trills should apply in a particular style and how they re-
late to particular melodic contours, as well as increasing their store of more generic
knowledge such as melody-​bass combinations, voice-​leading norms, permissible
counterpoints, harmonic progressions, patterns of modulation, score reading, in-
tonation, and familiarity with styles. In short, even where it is possible to determine
one main didactic purpose, a solfeggio will inevitably fulfil many others.
248 The Solfeggio Tradition

One fundamental division that does cut meaningfully across the four types
involves divergent historical traditions. As Sullo observes, seventeenth-​and
eighteenth-​century solfeggi can be split into two broad categories: one essen-
tially contrapuntal, with roots in the ricercar, and the other essentially cantabile,
stemming from opera and cantata.33 Classifying a source as either a solfeggio-​
ricercar or a solfeggio-​aria makes good sense, but there is too significant a gray
area to allow this to become a fundamental determinant of type. In general, Type
2 solfeggi resemble old-​fashioned imitative counterpoints whereas Type 3 solfeggi
are more often like Galant arias. But Sabbatini’s Type 2 unaccompanied canons are
strictly contrapuntal and at the same time cantabile in style, and Zingarelli’s Type
3 accompanied solfeggio fugues are strange hybrids drawing on both traditions.
The discussion of the four types in Chapters 11–​13 acknowledges this division and
attempts to untangle the many historical threads that lead to solfeggi.
 11
Unaccompanied Solfeggio

The most basic type of solfeggio is also the oldest. Its origins extend all the way
back to Guido of Arezzo. When he described his radical new method for teaching
novices to sing in a letter of c. 1033 to a fellow monk at the Abbey of Pomposa
called Michael, he made clear that it was meant to apply to unaccompanied chants.
By memorizing the hymn “Ut queant laxis” and noting where the initial syllable of
each poetic line fell on the staff, choirboys could use the resulting six positions to jot
down unfamiliar melodies on first hearing. They would then be able to sing them
at sight. For the next seven centuries, essentially the same method continued to
be used to teach beginners to read, notate, and sing music, thus leading to the first
major classification of solfeggio:

Type 1

A didactic melody for one unaccompanied voice, spoken, sung, or conceived in terms
of syllables. These are usually encountered in lessons for canto fermo, rudimentary
theory, score-​reading, and scales and leaps for beginners.
Every new choir member or church initiate had to sit through classes in canto
fermo, speaking and singing chants or chantlike monodies to solmization
syllables, whereas only a select few were granted the opportunity to graduate to
the accompanied Type 3 aria-​solfeggi that tend to define the genre today. For this
reason, Type 1 solfeggi were probably those that were most commonly encountered
in the eighteenth century, either etched on erasable tablets at conservatories or
printed in textbooks for church schools.
A typical Type 1 lesson from an eighteenth-​century beginner’s guide can be seen
in ­example 11.1(a). It is a practice melody on a single hexachord taken from the
1756 edition of Tettamanzi’s Short Method for Learning Canto Fermo Thoroughly
and Easily (1686). By solmizing it to the syllables added beneath the staff, students
would learn how a melody in the sixth mode—​Hypolydian, running from C to C
with a final on F—​must be “imperfected” by one foreign note, in this case a B♭ fa
above la, to correct an otherwise objectionable tritone between F and B (the so-​
called Lydian fourth, which was rarely sounded). They also would have learned that
this melody received one other accidental in performance: a ficta C♯, as indicated
by the symbol in brackets above the staff. Eighteenth-​century cantors were almost
as squeamish as their medieval forbears about notating sharps in canto fermo be-
cause the “true music” of the gamut contained no such sign. Sharps were evidently

The Solfeggio Tradition. Nicholas Baragwanath, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197514085.001.0001
250 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 11.1(a) Tettamanzi (1756), 31, with suggested solmization

Ex. 11.1(b) Tettamanzi (1756), 48, with suggested solmization

fine to sing but not to record in ink. This explains why even in ­example 11.1(b),
which reproduces one of Tettamanzi’s rules for sharping notes in canto fermo, the
accidental signs are compelled to languish above the staff rather than sit within it.
They show nonetheless how the melodic cadence figure mi-​ut-​re (E-​C-​D) should
be sung as E-​C♯-​D in both the second bar of e­ xample 11.1(b) and toward the end of
e­ xample 11.1(a).1
Archaic Type 1 solfeggi like this were used for basic canto fermo lessons
throughout the eighteenth century. They were not composed expressly for indi-
vidual student needs but written out on manuscript paper or printed in textbooks
as generic classroom exercises. They were usually notated in the thirteenth-​century
manner on a four-​line staff with square notes and fa-​clefs, in conformity with the
first Roman missal to feature engraved music (1476). But they could also be notated
on the more familiar five-​line staff of canto figurato. This modern trend appears
to have taken hold at the Naples conservatories during the economic downturn of
the 1770s, when student numbers plummeted and standards fell.2 With the imposi-
tion in 1791 of compulsory administration headed by royal delegate Saverio Mattei,
traditional plainchant was swiftly restored. At the Turchini Conservatory a new
“maestro di canto fermo” was appointed to teach the “learned, agreeable, and de-
vout church tones” of the psalms.3

Ex. 11.2 Solano (1764), 103

 Unaccompanied Solfeggio 251

If used for classroom teaching, Tettamanzi’s plainchant exemplars were prob-

ably spoken aloud to syllables before being sung. But they may also have been
contemplated in silence by a reader. All three modes of study were equally valid.
Speaking a solfeggio in rhythm, singing it at pitch, and conceptualizing it from a
score each satisfied a different pedagogical need. Most of the Type 1 solfeggi found
in Solano (1764), for instance, were meant to be studied on the page as illustrations
of various theoretical points. Their note-​for-​note solmizations in rapid tempo are
often impractical to read aloud, let alone sing. Example 11.2 reproduces one of these
study solfeggi, intended to show “how and when mi and fa can appear on the same
note.” This is Solano’s typically convoluted way of describing the descending chro-
matic scale segment fa-​mi\fa-​la, which began on the first or the fifth note of a scale.4
The simplest Type 1 solfeggi are those that set out standard scales and leaps, as
described earlier. Mancini (1777) explained this aspect of training as follows:

After the student has been tested as to his capacity and ability to sing in tune, and
after having found him able and disposed to succeed, then, in order to secure him
in this, he must solmize stepwise notes, that is, the first compound scale [g1 to a2]
up then down, and the second [e2 to c1] down then up. All this must be executed
with scrupulous attention, ensuring that every tone is perfectly in pitch: after this
study must follow that of solfa-​ing the notes of the regular leaps.5

It is not clear, however, whether these single-​staff exercises in solmization and

intonation were accompanied by the maestro at the keyboard. If they were, then
they should be classified as incomplete Type 3 solfeggi and as Type 1 on paper only.
Once the scales and leaps give way to simple melodies, this distinction becomes
yet more equivocal. One such melody, from Cotumacci’s course of study, is shown
in e­ xample 11.3 with a suggested bass line. Like most solfeggi that lack a written
bass, it has one principal pedagogical purpose: in this case, a lesson in composition.

Ex. 11.3 Cotumacci, Principles and Solfeggi (c. 1755; GB-​Lbl, Add. 14241), no. 10, fol.
6v, with suggested bass
252 The Solfeggio Tradition

It taught the student how to construct a complete minor-​key piece from the four-​
note melodic formula la-​mi-​fa-​re. This pattern occurs twice within the scale of
D minor, starting on either the tonic (D) or the dominant (A). In the first system
of ­example 11.3, they are arranged so that the harmony progresses from tonic to
dominant, leading to a firm perfect cadence in the new key in mm. 9–​12. In the
second system the order is reversed, allowing the melody to reach a cadence in the
tonic. To assist with memorization the solfeggio exploits a special variety of obbligo
(compositional constraint), in this case a play on words arising from the syllables.
To Italian-​speaking students, each half of the melody would have conjured up the
phrase “She makes me, she makes me solmize” (La mi fare solfamire).

Type 2

A combination of didactic melodies for two or more unaccompanied voices, spoken,

sung, or conceived in terms of syllables. These normally resemble Renaissance-​era
ricercars, contrapuntal duos and trios, and imitation fugues.
Had Giovanni Gentile not taught at a church that happened to be near a printing
press, he might never have published fourteen of his two-​part unaccompanied
singing lessons as the earliest known collection of Type 2 works, titled Solfeggiamenti
and Ricercars for Two Voices (1642).6 His inaugural use of the term solfeggiamento
(in print, at least) suggests that it was already current in Rome as a synonym for
vocal ricercar. Gentile’s dual title did not so much allude to two distinct genres as it
publicized the versatility of his duos, which could be both sung (as solfeggiamenti)
and played (as instrumental ricercars).
The origins of Type 2 solfeggi are thus to be found in long-​established traditions
of sung counterpoint. The term ricercare first appeared in a 1579 Italian reprint of
Lassus’s Several new songs based on delightful well-​known ones (1577). It signifies
a technical exercise in creating a contrapuntal composition, either by singing or
playing (i.e., what would today be called improvisation), or by writing it down. It
is related to the English word research and implies discovery. From the late six-
teenth century vocal duos in imitative style were commonly used for lessons in
solmization, singing, and making music. Examples include Metallo’s Ricercars for
two voices, to play or sing (Venice, before 1591), Frescobaldi’s Ricercars and French
canzonas upon various constraints (Rome, 1615), Bartei’s First book of ricercars for
two voices (Rome, 1618), and Banchieri’s Boy-​beginner, in two voices (Venice, 1625).
At some point during the sixteen years between the publication of De Spagnolis’
Ricercars for two voices (Naples, 1626) and Gentile’s collection, the vocal ricercar ac-
quired the supplementary name solfeggiamento, which would later be abbreviated
to solfeggio.
Bornstein (2001) provides a thorough study of this didactic duo repertory, taking
account of more than sixty sets published in Italy from 1521 to 1744.7 He concludes
that it changed very little during that period. Collections of ricercars from the 1500s
 Unaccompanied Solfeggio 253

were still on sale in Bologna as regular teaching materials during the early 1700s
(ibid., 7). Each of these duos may be regarded as an explicit or occasional Type 2 sol-
feggio, regardless of what it was called or whether it included a poetic text. Maestros
would market their publications to the widest possible readership by providing
pieces that could be solmized or played for teaching purposes, as well as sung to
lyrics or performed as chamber music (ibid., 57). It mattered little whether they
were called ricercars, capriccios, fantasias, counterpoints, or solfeggi. After 1650,
however, their primary function increasingly became solmization and singing
(ibid. 39).
In order that we can experience a solfeggiamento lesson, e­xample 11.4(b)
reproduces the opening of Gentile’s first duo with a suggested reconstruction of its
solmization. As in Chapter 8, I strongly urge readers first to sing the reduction in
(a) to become familiar with its constructions, concentrating mainly on the upper
part, before attempting to tackle the lesson in (b).
It exhibits all the features that typify the Type 2 ricercar-​solfeggio. It is in common
time (as opposed to alla breve, the other option), its clefs are related by octave (alto
and bass or soprano and tenor), and it has a key signature of no more than one flat
that signifies either hard or soft melody. Its vocal range is limited, seldom exceeding
a tenth, it projects a clear modal structure, and in total it is long enough to fill a one-​
hour lesson. Like most duos, it avoids overt displays of vocal skill and uses chromat-
icism sparingly. (Viviani’s Solfeggiamenti [1693] are exceptional on both counts.)
It is not known whether the maestro improvised a bass during the lesson, turning
a Type 2 solfeggio into a Type 4. This seems unlikely for the 1640s but was more

Ex. 11.4(a) Reduction of (b) to solmized notes and grammatical constructions

254 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 11.4(b) Gentile (1642), Ricercata no. 1, mm. 1–​8

plausible sixty years later. Magini (Rome, 1703) stated that his duos would be better
with a harmonic bass and appended figures to the lower voice for this purpose, as
did Cini (Siena, 1708).
According to Bornstein (2001), two-​part didactic music served three consistent
and well-​defined functions:8

1. At the lowest level it was used as a reading or singing exercise, fostering a com-
mand of solmization, intonation, and rhythm.
2. At the intermediate level it enabled students to accrue skills in interpretation,
either by performing it on instruments or singing it to a text. This level cannot
be clearly differentiated from chamber music.
 Unaccompanied Solfeggio 255

3. The highest level identified with the study of counterpoint and composition.
Beginners could take their masters’ duos as contrapuntal models and imitate
them, producing original works of their own.

Strategies for teaching composition by means of a duo included the use of either (1) a
fixed voice, made up of scales and leaps or an existing tune (cantus prius factus), or
(2) a variety of prescribed constraints (obblighi). These alternatives map neatly onto
the two main eighteenth-​century Neapolitan counterpoint traditions, as defined by
van Tour (2015). The former pertains to the school of Leonardo Leo at the Turchini
Conservatory, where students added counterpoints such as scales or chant-​like
subjects (soggetti) above and below a given cantus firmus. The latter corresponds to
the school of Francesco Durante at the Onofrio and Loreto Conservatories, where
students repetitively varied and manipulated prescribed “obligations.”9 The term
obbligo can be found in sources from Gioseffo Zarlino’s Le istitutioni harmoniche
(1558) to Angelo Berardi’s Documenti armonici (1687), which, as van Tour has
shown, exerted considerable influence on Durante’s teaching methods.10 It denotes
a fixed device to be manipulated and varied, often contrapuntally, as an exercise in
developing compositional skills. An obbligo could take many forms. It could, for
instance, be determined by a popular bassadanza such as the bergamasca, folia,
or ruggiero, by the repetition of rhythmic or melodic patterns, by canons, or—​in
what was commonly known as an “obstinacy” (perfidia, pertinacia, or ostinazione)
or “deceit” (inganno)—​by reiterations of the same solmization syllables on dif-
ferent notes.11 In general, an obbligo exercise was made up of a series of episodes or
“reflections” (ripercussioni) in which the chosen device was treated in a variety of
instructive ways. Both types of duo—​soggetto and obbligo—​are common in the rep-
ertory. The selection by Gentile in e­ xample 11.4(b) is an obbligo solfeggio.
The way it was taught can be ascertained from sources such as Scaletta (in
editions from 1596 to 1698), Bianco (1610), Banchieri (1614), and Giamberti
(1657).12 These authors agree that the maestro would sing the lower part, making
occasional observations and explanations, while the pupil would take the upper
part. In e­ xample 11.4(b), this is attested by the fact that the lower part introduces
the theme to be imitated and is considerably more sophisticated than the upper.
The pupil undertook a simple lesson in melodic construction while the maestro
demonstrated how to add counterpoints beneath it.
It is remarkable that this founding solfeggiamento conforms closely to
instructions given by maestros working at both chronological ends of the tradition.
Before citing them, it may be helpful to provide some insights into the Renaissance-​
era harmonic theory that underpinned the didactic duo.
Example 11.4(b) is not in the key of F major or D minor. The key signature
indicates soft melody, with hexachords starting on F and C. Within this notational
system, “major” modes (scales beginning with a major third) started with the syl-
lable do on F and C, and “minor” modes (scales beginning with a minor third)
started one step higher with the syllable re on G and D. These re-​scales correspond
256 The Solfeggio Tradition

to the Dorian-​on-​D and Aeolian-​on-​A modes of hard melody, transposed down a

fifth. As the reduction in ­example 11.4(a) shows, Gentile’s students (his grandson
and Marco Aurelio Desideri) first sang the Dorian scale on G followed by the
Aeolian scale on D. Each mode was divided into two unequal halves: the first five
notes of its authentic ordering formed what was called the diapente and the last four
notes, corresponding to steps 5-​6-​7-​8 of the mode, the diatesseron. The diapente of
a minor mode was solmized as re-​mi-​fa-​sol-​la and the diatesseron as re-​mi-​fa-​sol.
The overlapping fifth note la/​re was the dominant of the mode. This demonstrates
how crucial syllables were to the learning process.13 The upper part of Gentile’s
solfeggiamento clearly outlined these scale segments, and the remainder of his
lesson progressed through contrapuntal “reflections” on them, episodes based on
different ways to treat the same syllables.
This arrangement of octave scales into fourths and fifths was standard for
beginners’ counterpoints. Zarlino (1558) outlined the basic rules for splitting
modes into diapente and diatesseron and demonstrated their use in a series of con-
trapuntal duos in all twelve modes, corresponding to Type 2 solfeggi.14 The specific
device used in e­ xample 11.4(b) was singled out by Banchieri in the eighth duo of
his textbook (1625) and named as the double obligation (obbligo duplicato: re-​mi-​
fa-​sol) and the triple obligation (obbligo triplicato: the entire minor scale). Roughly
eighty years later, Scorpione (1701) described it in detail. His account closely
matches that of Gentile’s duo:

To “research” [ricercare] means nothing other than to introduce two or more parts,
which engage in mutual exploration. This can only be done with the imitation of
several subjects, with inversion of the parts, and with contrapuntal devices: this
is the true way to “research.” But I do not expect this from the beginner now.
Just a simple ricercar, without too many subjects and with inversions, will be of
great benefit. . . . First, before all else, determine the Mode upon which the com-
position will be based, and then take the species of Fifth and Fourth that belong
to this Mode, and with them make the parts proceed by step or by leap, as you
wish . . . observing that the Fifth begins in the lower part and the Fourth in the
upper, proceeding freely as the composition progresses.15

The solfeggiamento tradition appears to have been confined mainly to

Rome until the beginning of the eighteenth century, when it migrated south to
Naples and north to Bologna. It incorporated both soggetto and obbligo in equal
measure. Giamberti’s Duos weaved with diverse solmizations, jokes, obstinacies,
and constraints (Rome, 1657), for instance, teems with fixed melodies and other
obligations. His title also suggests that he understood solfeggiamento to signify
a specific pattern of syllables rather than a genre in its own right, unlike Gentile
with his earlier pairing of the term with ricercar16 or Pompeo Natale’s subsequent
collections of Solfeggiamenti for two and three voices to sing and play (Rome, 1674
and 1681).
 Unaccompanied Solfeggio 257

Natale was a priest and maestro at the Roman church of Santa Maria Maggiore.
His Type 2 solfeggi emphasize both the versatility and the inherent conservativism
of the pedagogical tradition. Published in part books without bar lines and suitable
for either singing or playing “on violin, bass viol, flute, etc.,” they would not have
seemed out of place a century earlier, as acknowledged by the homage to Palestrina
in the title of his 1681 collection.
Cristoforo Caresana’s Duos (1681) and Solfeggi (1693) feature archaic pieces
based on sacred tenors, with the texts appearing sporadically above the upper line.
But they also include conspicuous examples of simpler soggetto counterpoint in
which one voice outlines a scale or a series of regular leaps while the others weave
intricate counterpoints around it. That Caresana worked mainly in Naples until
1709 identifies him as a significant precursor to the school of Leo at the Turchini
Conservatory and to the broader Italian tradition of counterpoint on scales and
leaps that lasted until the end of the nineteenth century.
By the 1700s the solfeggiamento seems to have lost its appeal in Rome. Few
collections were published after Magini (1703), the last being Girolamo Chiti’s
Ricercars and Solfeggi (1718) and Giuseppe Jannacconi’s Ricercars on the six notes
of the diatonic scale (1780). The ancient contrapuntal tradition lived on mainly in
Bologna, as evinced by three volumes of ricercars by Piochi (1671, 1673, and 1675),
Bertalotti’s two-​part solfeggi (1698, 1744, and 1764), Baroni’s twenty-​four canons
(1704), Ferri’s solfeggi in two parts (1713), Clari’s solfeggi and duets for solmiza-
tion (1730s?), Beretti’s canons and solfeggi (1730s?), and Bernacchi’s extravagantly
experimental solfeggi incorporating whole tone scales (c. 1738–​56). As late as the
1780s Padre Martini was still composing two-​part imitation fugues that resemble
Type 2 singing lessons. He defined solfeggiamenti solely in terms of fixed-​voice
soggetto counterpoint, as “works based on subjects made up of scale progressions
using all intervals from the second to the octave . . . written with the greatest skill yet
with the characteristic ease of solfeggio exercises.”17
In Naples, some time after Strozzi published his antiquated canons (1683), the
solfeggiamento shook off its contrapuntal past and adopted the latest fashion-
able styles. Witness the playful three-​part solfeggio presented in ­example 11.5(b),
attributed to Pergolesi, who evidently intended it to be sung by advanced students.
It is not easy. The reduction shown in (a) should be mastered first by singing it using
a contemporary technique called alla bastarda, which meant skipping between
the parts to convey the gist of a multipart piece with a single voice. Bach’s cello
suites could, for instance, be regarded as alla bastarda renditions of three-​or four-​
part compositions. As can be inferred from ­example 11.5(a), Pergolesi’s solfeggio
taught how to modulate sharpward by introducing a new mi (♯), reaching the key
of A major by m. 3, and to modulate flatward with a sol-​do bass cadence, returning
to C major in mm. 5–​10. Its clear tonal plan marks a decisive break from the modal
tradition represented by Gentile’s solfeggiamento.
Durante’s Type 2 solfeggi are similarly modern in style. Example 11.6 reproduces
the final movement of one of his slow-​fast lessons, which starts in G major and ends
258 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 11.5(a) Reduction of (b) to syllables and grammatical constructions

in G minor without a change of key signature. The sprightly dotted rhythms relate
it to the topic of the pastorale or siciliano, which became fashionable during the
1720s. In terms of solmization, e­ xample 11.6 sounds the minor and then the major
triads belonging to the key of F major in mm. 34–​35 and proceeds to explore the
outer reaches of its hexachords: the one on F in mm. 36–​38, the one on C in mm.
39–​40, and the one on F from m. 40 until the end. The ricochet figures in mm. 39,
42, and 44 explicitly delineate the boundary notes of these scales.
The unaccompanied contrapuntal duo or trio became increasingly rare as the
eighteenth century progressed. But the tradition of sung counterpoint endured
in the form of the solfeggio fugue. By the mid-​eighteenth century many such
 Unaccompanied Solfeggio 259

Ex. 11.5(b) Pergolesi, Solfeggi à tre Voci: Canto, Alto e Basso (1720s?; I-​Nc, Rari 1-​6-​
29/​4 olim 18-​3-​3/​21), no. 9, mm. 1–​10

works resembled partimento fugues improvised at the keyboard. Their bass lines
call to mind pianistic figurations rather than vocal melodies. But the true sol-
feggio fugue involves two or more voices engaged in imitative combinations of
syllable-​notes with or without instrumental accompaniment. A typical one can
be seen in ­example 11.7, which presents the exposition of one of Zingarelli’s many
fugues.18 According to Sullo (2014d), exercises like these were used for lessons in
composition.
Even if its bass line were played on the piano rather than sung, it must have
been at least discussed in terms of syllables during the lesson. Otherwise the ex-
ercise makes no sense. Like all solfeggio fugues it features invertible counterpoint,
with subjects and countersubjects switching between the parts. Its main theme,
highlighted with a bracket above the staff in mm. 1–​4, is little more than a descent
through the hexachordal scale on C. After an upbeat lead-​in, the first three notes of
this scale (A-​G-​F) are each embellished with inganno leaps to the alternative same
syllables within the key, and the ensuing descent to the tonic is rounded off with
260 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 11.5(b) Continued

a fa-​mi-​fa soprano cadence. The theme then shifts to the hexachord on G for its
second entry in the bass part of m. 4, adapting its upbeat to conform to the old rule
that obvious dominant notes in the head of a fugal subject must be altered to tonic
notes in the answering statement. Zingarelli created a counterpoint to the theme in
the upper part of mm. 4–​7 by simply doubling the scale at the third and syncopating
it to form a chain of suspensions.
Solfeggio fugues typically feature multiple invertible subjects, rather than
the single subject and regular countersubject that characterize Bach’s key-
board fugues, because each layer of the counterpoint could be vocalized (i.e.,
embellished) in different ways. One common strategy for generating a solfeggio
fugue was described in connection with ­example 8.2, in which Perez elaborated a
simple melody-​and-​bass Prinner framework by adding inganno leaps to the bass
and another la-​sol-​fa-​mi as an inner voice. Had he chosen to embellish the bass
to the same extent as the upper parts, he would have created a fugue with two
Ex. 11.6 Durante, Solfeggi a due Voci (I-​Mc, O-​48-​21), no. 11, mm. 33–​46
262 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 11.7 Zingarelli, Solfeggi per contralto, solfeggio fugue (I-​Nc, 19.5.23), no. 182,
mm. 1–​15

subjects rather than one. And had he decorated the inner voice differently, to con-
trast with the upper voice rather than imitate it, he would have created a fugue
with three subjects.
Whenever the separate voices of the contrapuntal framework differ in terms of
intervallic content, the resulting fugue will inevitably have the potential to form
multiple subjects. This is the case, for instance, in the common strategy of using
cadence figures as bases for invertible counterpoint. One part takes the soprano
cadence fa-​mi-​fa (1-​7-​1), another the tenor cadence mi-​re-​do (3-​2-​1) or its re-
versal do-​re-​mi, and the third the bass cadence mi-​fa-​sol-​do (3-​4-​5-​1); they can be
stacked in any order and embellished to form three independent themes. Haydn
used this device to great effect at the beginning of the first movement of his string
quartet op. 20, no. 2 (1772), which may be considered an instrumental rendition of
a solfeggio fugue. In fact, much of Haydn’s overtly contrapuntal writing resembles
the Type 2 solfeggio. This has led to confusion, with some authors questioning
whether his fugues warrant the title.19 Considered as solfeggio fugues, however,
 Unaccompanied Solfeggio 263

Ex. 11.8(a) Reduction of (b) to solmized notes and grammatical constructions

they are classics of the genre. Take, for instance, the opening of the final “fugue with
three subjects” from his string quartet op. 20, no. 6, as shown in ­example 11.8(b).
Reducing it to syllables, as in (a), reveals that its complex texture is founded on one
of the simplest solmization frameworks: descending octave scales starting on the
tonic, third, and fifth of the key.
The origins and functions of Type 2 solfeggi make them difficult to distinguish
from exercises in counterpoint. According to the definition proposed in Chapter 10,
any contrapuntal study spoken, sung, or conceived in terms of syllables can be
regarded as a solfeggio. Indeed, there is evidence that students regarded them as
one and the same. Francesco Salari’s counterpoint notebook of 1767, for instance,
Ex. 11.8(b) Haydn, String Quartet op. 20, no. 6, fourth movement, mm. 1–​13
 Unaccompanied Solfeggio 265

dating from his time at the Onofrio Conservatory in Naples, contains the following
handwritten note: “Ciorlante [a fellow student] composed this solfeggio.”20 The
use of the term in this context is hardly surprising, given that counterpoint lessons
depended on syllables and usually were delivered by singing masters in the eight-
eenth century. The difference between a counterpoint exercise and a Type 2 sol-
feggio was not one of kind but of application.
 12
Accompanied Solfeggio

The origins of accompanied solfeggio are bound up with the general turn toward
solo chamber monody in the late sixteenth century and the concomitant rise of
basso continuo. Although popularly ascribed to the activities of the Florentine
Camerata, and in particular to Giulio Caccini’s madrigals and arias in a self-​
proclaimed new style (1602), this transformation in taste had already been under
way decades earlier.1 Fueled by the fashion for musical stage works with songs and
recitatives, by the early 1600s it created a pressing need to train singers to perform
the new repertory. This task was accomplished by means of an embryonic version of
the sung solfeggio method outlined in Chapter 7.
According to Hill’s (1998) research into early Roman monodies, the maestro
would present the student with a plain sketch (abozzo) of an aria—​a kind of
syllabic framework with bass—​and would then demonstrate how to perform
it with the appropriate accent, speech rhythm (sprezzatura), and ornamenta-
tion. There was no single correct realization. The sketch could be tailored dif-
ferently to suit each individual singer’s abilities.2 Multiple versions of the same
monody testify to this practice. As “vocal improvisations, idealized or actual,
more or less specifically notated,”3 they can be considered the first Type 3 di-
dactic melodies.

Type 3

A didactic melody for one voice, spoken, sung, or conceived in terms of syllables and
accompanied by (a) unfigured bass, (b) figured bass, or (c) a keyboard part. This is the
most familiar type, encompassing styles as diverse as arias and fugues.
The accompanied solo solfeggio thus began as an exercise drawn from and
intended to teach one particular aria, only later developing into a generic tool
for learning an entire art of melody. It evolved in parallel with the partimento,
which also appears to have started out as an exercise drawn from existing
compositions.4
The bulk of the teaching was carried out orally, just as it continued to be in the
eighteenth century. Singers typically learned their arias by rote because notation
was insufficient to communicate the essential elements of the style. Scores were
used primarily as reminders for those who happened to be performing away from
their maestro. When, in 1614, for instance, a Roman impresario asked for a score to
be sent for a young singer to perform, her maestro complained,

The Solfeggio Tradition. Nicholas Baragwanath, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197514085.001.0001
 Accompanied Solfeggio 267

I was reserving it for myself to demonstrate it to Signora Francesca, so that you

might hear it from her in the manner in which I would like it to be sung. For
I argue that demonstrating it is not easy for someone who is not well practiced
in it, because . . . in many places it must be sung with a specific mood (cantato
con affetto) and in others with held syllables [i.e., by the Amen rule], accents [i.e.,
by the Appoggiatura rule], and other niceties (con tenute di voci, accenti, et altre
diligenze) that cannot be written but require the spoken word.5

The most basic techniques for performing plain syllable-​notes were described as
aspects of “intonation,” from the Italian verb intonare. This had nothing to do with
accuracy of pitch. It signified the various ways in which notes were to be “intoned,”
or realized in the new solo style. The first of these, according to Caccini’s preface
to The New Music (1602), was an appoggiatura from the third below, which con-
temporary theorists referred to as a type of “accent” (see ­example 7.3). The second
was the vocal swell, which came to be known as the messa di voce. The similarities
between these techniques and Valente’s exercises on the scale, written two centuries
later (see ­example 7.2), are obvious. From the start, the solo aria–​solfeggio taught
singers how to turn a series of plain syllables into an eloquent and expressive canti-
lena by applying different types of ornament and delivery.
It is not possible at present to determine when singing lessons began to be
delivered using bespoke solfeggi rather than arias adapted for the purpose, or when
these new teaching materials were codified into the kind of comprehensive peda-
gogical system evident in sources such as Cotumacci’s Principles (c. 1755) and the
seventy-​one examples in Leo’s Solfeggi copied in the year 1756. The evidence points
to Naples as the epicenter of this development and to the generation that came
to the fore during the 1720s as the first to produce verifiable Type 3 solfeggi. The
earliest manuscripts contain pieces by Johann Hasse and Leonardo Leo.6 Solfeggi
attributed to Alessandro Scarlatti conceivably could date from the 1680s, but they
are known only from much later copies.
In truth, almost nothing is known about the historical development of the
accompanied solfeggio. Judging by the sheer quantity of surviving sources, the
finger points at Leo as its chief architect and to his successors Cafaro, Fenaroli,
Porpora, and Sala as its main proponents. But the sources may not present an accu-
rate picture.7 The vast majority have not survived, and many others surely remain
to be discovered.
Because the pedagogy embodied in the Type 3 solfeggio has already been
explored extensively in Chapters 7 and 8, in what follows I discuss only three
examples to provide an overview of its main didactic functions: (1) an expert cri-
tique of Italian bel canto in the form of a parody by Mozart, (2) a typical object
of its mockery in the form of a bravura study by the great castrato Farinelli, and
(3) a lesson in composition by Zingarelli. I then investigate the closeness of the re-
lation between the contrasting solfeggi that made up multi-​movement lessons by
comparing slow-​fast pairs by Leo and Cafaro. Did they record alternative renditions
268 The Solfeggio Tradition

of the same underlying cantus firmus? Can they add to our knowledge of the pro-
cess of “cyclic integration” that connects the separate movements of Galant works
(cf. Webster (1991))?

Didactic Functions

Mozart was always an outsider to the privileged cabal of Italian maestros who ruled
the music industry in the eighteenth century. Yet he knew their methods, not only
from his studies with the castrato Giovanni Manzuoli in London in 1764 but also
from his many contacts with professional singers. His unrivaled ear granted him
access to their every craft secret. When called on to compose a few solfeggi for his
wife, accordingly, he could not resist having some fun at the Italians’ expense. His
five surviving essays in the genre (K. 393) are expert parodies of the contemporary
art of bel canto, as well as virtuoso displays of his ability to beat the maestros at their
own compositional game. They contain as many witty devices as would normally
be found in a whole course of lessons. For that reason, they are ideally suited for
shining a light onto the hidden didactic uses of the Type 3 aria-​solfeggio.
In the exercise shown in ­example 12.1, for instance, Mozart contrived to con-
dense the entire method into only six measures. It starts in the same way as any
number of beginners’ exercises, with plain leaps of the third in half notes. These
accelerate as they rise through the hexachord, making it difficult to continue
solmizing every note. On reaching a classic fa-​mi/​mi-​fa modulatory twist in m. 4,
the rhythm ratchets up another notch, compelling the singer to resort to two-​note
traits of vocalization that emphasize the shape of the schema. By the final fa, the
melody rockets through the scale toward a high C. This progression from individ-
ually solmized leaps through paired traits and the basic rule for modulation to a

Ex. 12.1 Mozart, 5 Solfeggi (c. 1782), K. 393 (K6. 385b), no. 2, Gj5351, mm. 1–​6
 Accompanied Solfeggio 269

virtuosic fa-​flourish presents an apt illustration of the educational journey from

beginner to professional singer.
The F major solfeggio shown in e­ xample 12.2(b) teems with similar insider’s
jokes. It is a pastiche, in fact, so rich in invention, so subtle in wit, and so well
constructed that it is too clever to pass for a genuine Neapolitan solfeggio. In order
to show what Mozart was up to, some preliminary observations may prove helpful.
The melody begins with a straightforward two-​measure opening gambit, which
highlights the location of its fa-​clefs and one mutation and never returns. It then
executes one of the simplest lessons in all solfeggio: in mm. 3–​13, a run up and down
the first five notes of the scale, do-​re-​mi-​fa-​sol followed by sol-​fa-​mi-​re-​do. The trick,
of course, was not to exhibit this bare scaffolding but to transform it into diverting
and pleasurable music. Practitioners of the art knew hundreds if not thousands of
ways to sing these syllables. But they seldom used quite so many of them in one
place as Mozart did in e­ xample 12.2(b). A swift glance at the score reveals a ludi-
crously exaggerated accumulation of fermata symbols above mm. 8–​11.
I ask readers now to sing the reduction in (a) several times so as to familiarize
themselves with its constructions and to experiment with the potential elaborations
indicated in small noteheads before reading through the score in (b). They should
then be equipped to judge my interpretation, as set out below, against their own.

Ex. 12.2(a) Reduction of (b) to syllables and grammatical constructions

270 The Solfeggio Tradition

The solfeggio proper begins in m. 3 with a do-​re-​mi. As the carefully placed

original trait indicates, its third syllable is absurdly ornate in comparison with the
first two. More than that, it breaks the rules by blundering through two separate
harmonies. Correctly solmized, there should be two notes in m. 4. The first half
should receive a mi on A over a tonic F major chord and the second an appoggiatura
to fa on B♭ over a C major dominant chord (as, indeed, happens immediately after-
ward in mm. 6–​7). Yet the trait in the manuscript is unequivocal. It connects A to
A in exactly the way reproduced in ­example 12.2(b). Why would Mozart have made
such a mistake?

Ex. 12.2(b) Mozart, 5 Solfeggi (c. 1782), K. 393 (K6. 385b), no. 3, Gj5352
 Accompanied Solfeggio 271

Ex. 12.2b Continued

The syllable mi offers a clue, which appears to be backed up by events that occur
later in the piece. Mozart exaggerated the personal pronoun “me” to poke fun at the
vanity of Italian singers. He deliberately allowed the melody to ride roughshod over
the harmony at the very moment when the vocalist pronounced do-​re-​ME-​-​-​. The
joke appealed to him so much that he recalled it at the end, in mm. 23–​24, where me-
ticulously positioned traits instruct the singer to maintain mi through the three-​note
cadence figures although the correct solmization should obviously be mi-​fa\mi-​fa
(as restored in ­example 12.2[a]‌). The effect of a singer’s forcing the words “me-​--​ ​
me-​-​-​” through the two semitones of a key must have seemed highly comical to
those in the know.
272 The Solfeggio Tradition

Returning to the opening phrase, in m. 5 the singer embarks on the same scale
once more, this time with added trills. Although the mi is yet again extravagantly
embellished, the original trait and altered slurring in the bass show that on this oc-
casion it proceeds as expected onto fa. On reaching sol in m. 7, Mozart immediately
begins the descent back through the scale, or rather, to thwart it in as many creative
and playful ways as possible. The first of these involves the leap up to the other fa
of the key in m. 8, which is highlighted by a brief cadenza. This interrupts the step-
wise flow to the half cadence in m. 9: sol-​(fa?)-​mi-​re. If some readers are inclined to
doubt the lengthy appoggiatura leading to G-​re in m. 9 on the ground that the initial
C seems more prominent, I would point them toward two further occurrences of
the same “search for the note” from the fourth above within the cadences in mm. 13
and 19. It was probably no accident that these surface ornaments parallel the pro-
longed descent from C to F in mm. 7–​13.
In m. 10 the singer embarks on a fresh attempt to descend stepwise from sol. It
goes farcically wrong, landing once again on the other fa of the key and grinding to
a halt on another misplaced cadenza. To underscore the comedy, a cheeky flatward
slide follows in m. 12 through a modulatory E-​fa, which is swiftly reversed. (The
same stock device returns to begin the coda in mm. 22–​23, with a classic Quiescenza
schema set to the rhythm of mm. 14–​16). Finally, in m. 13 Mozart ceases this relent-
less teasing and closes the first half of the solfeggio with an unceremonious mi-​re-​do
cadence.
As if to celebrate the delayed arrival of the tonic, the second half starts with an
ornamented ascent through the scale that results in a jubilant flourish on la. The
phrasing into pairs is typically Italian, as are the leaps of the third and multiple
appoggiaturas that mask the underlying stepwise contour. To conclude, Mozart
resorts to a variety of grand cadence, descending from the octave above the tonic.
It is divided in typical fashion by an incomplete close in m. 19 and a full close with
final flourish in m. 21.
In its efforts to outdo the most flamboyant castrato by flaunting a dazzling array
of tricks of the trade, Mozart’s melody showcases the Type 3 solfeggio as an exer-
cise not simply in stylish singing but, more significant, in generating melody from
scales, leaps, and cadences. Yet, as hinted above, it does it too well. It is hard to im-
agine Mrs. Constanze Mozart (or anyone else) mastering each of its devices in a
single lesson. In that respect, it is a superb parody but a poor solfeggio. The genuine
article typically made use of far fewer devices and prioritized quality of delivery
over richness of invention.
Compare, for instance, Farinelli’s G major Adagio, shown in e­ xample 12.3(b).
It includes only two instances of the kind of sophisticated compositional play
found throughout Mozart’s Adagio. In terms of structure, it could hardly be less
adventurous. It is little more than a compilation of clichés strung together in a con-
ventional order. Sing through the reduction given in (a) in order to experience
these constructions. The first is an ascending octave scale, the second a predict-
able Prinner riposte. A mi/​mi modulation then leads an ascent back to the upper
 Accompanied Solfeggio 273

Ex. 12.3(a) Reduction of (b) to syllables and constructions

boundary note, G, before the melody descends to a perfect cadence in the dom-
inant. The second half begins with the first gimmick of the sort lampooned by
Mozart. In mm. 10–​11 the opening theme returns over a dominant D major har-
mony, as if intending to continue in that key, but a surprise slip onto C♮ (which is
unlikely to have surprised anyone) redirects the melody onto a Prinner in the tonic.
The Fonte schema that follows in mm. 14–​16 makes little effort to cover its tracks as
a somewhat ill-​fitting off-​the-​shelf insertion, and the final cadence, incorporating
both sol syllables a fifth apart on the penultimate note, is a commonplace. It is, how-
ever, introduced by a second castrato stock in trade: the gradual transformation
of the single pitch D from a dominant fa to a tonic sol in mm. 17–​18, which was
described earlier in connection with ­example 6.31.
Interacting with schemas, themes, and harmonies to generate a cleverly
constructed composition rich in internal logic was not the main point of a virtuoso
solfeggio such as e­ xample 12.3(b). At this level of expertise, the underlying syl-
labic thread was but a dependable (albeit skillfully assembled) platform on which
to display vocal prowess. This much becomes obvious as soon as one attempts to
sing the solfeggio. How should the repeated mordents and dotted rhythms in the
274 The Solfeggio Tradition

first measure be executed? The notation suggests that this gesture, which occurs
throughout the piece, was a kind of specialist vocal technique that only a Farinelli
could successfully bring off. It presumably constituted the main lesson subsumed
within the solfeggio.
Today, classically trained musicians, unlike fans of popular music, tend to value
what a composition is more than how it is performed and would thus rank Mozart’s
precocious inventiveness higher than Farinelli’s vocal fireworks. But they never had
the opportunity to hear Farinelli.

Ex. 12.3(b) Farinelli, [16] Solfeggi (US-​SFsc, Frank V. de Bellis Collection, M2.5 v.71),
no. 6, Gj5311, with suggested bass
 Accompanied Solfeggio 275

Ex. 12.3(b) Continued

Our last stop on this brief tour of didactic functions is the alto solfeggio by
Zingarelli reproduced in ­example 12.4. As an exercise in vocal skill and embellish-
ment it is of negligible use. But as a lesson in how to compose a minuet, it makes
good sense. The syllables that begin and end each regular four-​measure phrase out-
line a basic form and guarantee an appropriate degree of finality to the cadences.
The first phrase begins and ends on mi, for instance, ensuring that its cadence will
be imperfect (i.e., lacking the tonic note in the melody), and the second ends on
do to close the opening eight-​measure period with a perfect cadence. The next six-
teen bars make up the central section of a larger ternary form and present several
strategies for the student to follow.
Zingarelli’s reliance on the Type 3 solfeggio to teach composition is well
documented.8 As mentioned in Chapter 7, he would have his students compose
daily solfeggi, telling them that “this is the truest and best way to form melody.”9
One of his students, Giovanni Battista De Vecchis, went on to record some of these
teachings in a treatise (1850), and similar exercises can be found in his classmates’
notebooks.10 Many other nineteenth-​century Neapolitan masters wrote about the
solfeggio as a tool for learning to compose. Michele Ruta (1856a), for instance,
276 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 12.4 Zingarelli, Solfeggi per contralto (I-​Nc, 19.5.23, Solfeggio 421), no. 82, fol.
26v (numbered 12v in the manuscript)

emphasized “just how important solfeggio is for teaching musical composition: we

would say that it is an exercise through which one learns to develop and conduct a
musical thought, to order and weave together a piece, not just to acquire a full and
profound understanding of singing voices.”11
Yet solfeggi composed by students are nowhere to be found before the early
1800s, when Alessandro Speranza and Niccolò Zingarelli began to set them for
the revised curriculum at the newly amalgamated Naples Conservatory. Van Tour
 Accompanied Solfeggio 277

(2015) claims that the only eighteenth-​century Neapolitan solfeggi that can be clas-
sified with certainty as student works are the nine by Giuseppe Gherardeschi, who
wrote them while he was studying under Sala at the Turchini Conservatory in 1782
(I-​PS, B.99 n.3). Gherardeschi dedicated them, however, to one Signore Cavaliere
Domizio Tonti, a nobleman from his hometown of Pistoia, which indicates that
they were not classroom exercises but something else, perhaps materials for private
singing lessons or a gift. In the latter case, there appears to be no contemporary ev-
idence whatsoever to support the claim that eighteenth-​century students learned
to compose by writing solfeggi, apart from a few hints in Mancini (1777).12 Was
Zingarelli, then, the first to use them for this purpose?
It seems unlikely. Zingarelli learned his craft at the Loreto Conservatory during
the 1760s under the direction of Alessandro Speranza, Pasquale Anfossi, Antonio
Sacchini, and Fedele Fenaroli, and there is nothing in his biography to suggest
that he would have departed from their instructions and struck out on a radically
new pedagogical path. Indeed, Sullo (2011) demonstrates convincingly that some
solfeggi by Leo from the 1730s follow essentially the same formal template as that
set out by De Vecchis in 1850.13 So why are there no solfeggi from the 1760s com-
posed by Zingarelli or his fellow students?
One answer may be that it was not the teaching method that changed but, rather,
its recipients. The rigid curriculum and clear division between professors and
students at the Naples Conservatory in 1813 bore no relation to the fluid moni-
torial system that flourished before the Napoleonic invasions. At the original
conservatories, the line between student and teacher was broad and porous. At the
apex of the educational pyramid, a senior maestro would teach the day’s lesson to
lower-​ranking maestros, who would then pass it on to a handful of selected senior
students. In their capacity as junior masters (mastricielli) they would in turn deliver
it to four or five less accomplished students, who would do the same until it reached
the beginners’ level.14 In this way, one second-​class maestro could teach solfeggio to
a hundred or more students, while they in turn gained valuable teaching skills as an
integral part of their education.
Any student deemed talented enough to teach new pupils or amateur singers
would have been expected to compose bespoke solfeggi for the purpose. When
Giuseppe Sigismondo taught a young girl the rudiments in the 1760s, for instance,
he took it for granted that he would need to write solfeggi for her: “In six months
I made her sing many of my solfeggi adapted to her voice, her vocal range and the
scope of her breath.”15 He received his first music lessons in 1744 from Giuseppe
Geremia, a student at the Loreto Conservatory, who would devise solfeggi “on the
spot” for him.16 In this respect, solfeggi did appear as casual exercises in composi-
tion for low-​ranking teachers from at least the early 1700s. Junior faculty members
at the conservatories in Naples were required to provide solfeggi for daily lessons,
which presumably served also to hone their skills in composition. But this is not to
suggest that solfeggi were included in the composition or counterpoint curricula of
conservatories before the 1800s. Van Tour (2015) has found no trace of solfeggio in
278 The Solfeggio Tradition

Neapolitan and Bolognese counterpoint notebooks throughout the period 1730–​

1800. Indeed, he argues that the appearance of solfeggio in composition lessons
after 1800 was a result of the increasing acceptance of Rameau’s basse fondementale
in Italian theory.
Although able apprentices at all levels could be called on to tutor small groups
of fellow students, only exercises that ended up being used for general teaching ap-
pear to have been deemed worthy of preservation. That would explain why no early
solfeggi by Zingarelli survive: He was never employed as a second-​class master. Yet
unless one assumes that he took a refresher course in 1813—​hardly likely for an
internationally famous authority—​then he must have learned to compose solfeggi
during the 1760s.
The missing “student” compositions are thus hiding in plain sight. Both Leo
and Cotumacci honed their skills in composition as young second-​class masters
by churning out solfeggio courses. Their once-​exclusive training, taught individ-
ually to a select few, became standard fare for Zingarelli’s composition class at the
French-​style reformed conservatory.

Slow-​Fast Pairs

Collections of Type 3 solfeggi often are grouped into slow-​fast pairs. In some
sources these are specifically designated as individual lessons (lezioni) and are easy
to spot even where such headings are absent. Paired solfeggi are usually in the same
key (or in closely related keys, such as minor-​to-​major), have some degree of the-
matic similarity, and often are linked together by a rhetorically dramatized half ca-
dence at the end of the first movement, which functions rather like a slow prelude to
a dance suite or a slow introduction to a symphony.
As most music teachers would grant, it makes sense to vary a standard hour-​
long lesson with pieces in different styles. In this respect, the slow-​fast solfeggio was
a conveniently packaged ready-​made lesson plan. But its separate movements did
more than merely contrast. They demonstrated how to vary material and to develop
it into new forms, as well as different ways to continue a piece. In Ruta’s phrase, they
taught how to “develop and conduct a musical thought.” The examples that follow
should speak for themselves if sung with sufficient application. I therefore keep my
commentary to a minimum in the hope that readers will focus attention on the
reductions and excerpts.
Paired movements rarely interact as straightforward variations on exactly
the same syllabic thread. Their connections are far more subtle. In order to ex-
perience one such pairing, please sing the reduction of Leo’s Cantabile shown in
e­ xample 12.5(a).17 Its opening fa-​flourish is decorated initially with a rising triad,
the contours of which return within the pastoral theme in 6/​8 time. This explains
why I have chosen to maintain the same pattern of vocalization and to solmize only
the first note of the arpeggio in m. 5. A clear strategy emerges: The theme juxtaposes
Ex. 12.5(a) Reduction of (b) to syllables and constructions

Ex. 12.5(b) Leo, [71] Solfeggi (GB-​Lbl, Add. 31617), fol. 33v, mm. 1–​14
280 The Solfeggio Tradition

the fa-​mi (1-​7) semitone belonging to the key of B♭ major with the other key-​
defining semitone on fa-​la (4-​3). A standard Prinner follows—​similar, in fact, to the
statistically derived prototype in Symons (2012)—​divided into two-​note units by a
series of original traits, in much the same manner as the central section of Mozart’s
solfeggio, discussed above.
Turn now to the reduction of its affiliated Allegro in ­example 12.6(a). The intro-
ductory solo fa-​flourish has been replaced by a comically reduced bass cadence,
sol-​do, which performs a similar function but with far less pomp. The theme that
follows makes a play on these initial syllables by leaping from sol to the other do
of the key before ascending, first, to the central fa of the hexachord on F, then to
the upper fa-​above-​la, which alone resolves down a semitone onto la. The pattern

Ex. 12.6(a) Reduction of (b) to syllables and constructions

Ex. 12.6(b) Leo, [71] Solfeggi (GB-​Lbl, Add. 31617), fol. 34v, mm. 1–​6
 Accompanied Solfeggio 281

is the same as the Meyer in ­example 12.5 but lacks one note: fa-​[mi]/​fa-​la. As in
the previous melody, this theme is followed by a standard Prinner riposte, suitably
embellished.
The two solfeggi are clearly related, but not in any straightforward way. Having
sung through the Cantabile, the maestro presumably would have drawn the student’s
attention to the miniaturized opening solo gesture of the Allegro and made some
comment along the lines of “less can sometimes be more.” The theme itself is a var-
iant not of the same cantus firmus but of the same basic idea: a melody constructed
around the two semitones that define a key, or in terms of Galant schemata, the 1-​7
and 4-​3 semitones that make up the Meyer.
In other pairings the two melodies demonstrate alternative ways to achieve
the same harmonic-​structural outcome. Please sing the reduction of Cafaro’s
“graceful” Andantino in ­example 12.7(a). After its conventional Romanesca-​
and-​Prinner opening, a variant of the same tonic Prinner directs the melody
toward a halt on a la-​sol half cadence (as described in Chapter 8). The roman
numerals added beneath the staff highlight the progression from chord IV at
the start of the construction to chord V at its end. Compare this with the re-
duction of its companion piece in ­example 12.8(a). The opening Romanesca
and Prinner are identical save for a few minor adjustments to the bass, but the
Prinner leading to a half cadence has been replaced by a Monte schema, entirely
different, which projects a more overt progression from chord IV to chord V in
order to achieve the same harmonic goal. The student would have come away
from this lesson with two strategies for driving a composition toward a weak
close on the dominant.
The lengths to which this pedagogical method could be taken may be sampled by
singing Cafaro’s dual lesson in ­examples 12.9 and 12.10. The Andante is transformed
into the Allegro in an extraordinary way. The relation between the two melodies

Ex. 12.7(a) Reduction of (b) to syllables and constructions

Ex. 12.7(b) Cafaro, [41] Solfeggi a voce solo di soprano (I-​MC, 1-​C-​18), fol. 11v,
no. 11, mm. 1–​6

Ex. 12.8(a) Reduction of (b) to syllables and constructions

Ex. 12.8(b) Cafaro, [41] Solfeggi a voce solo di soprano (I-​MC, 1-​C-​18), fol. 12r,
no. 12, mm. 1–​5

Ex. 12.9(a) Reduction of (b) to syllables and constructions

284 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 12.9(b) Cafaro, [41] Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano (I-​MC, 1-​C-​18), fol. 37v,
no. 38, mm. 1–​9

attests to the claims made earlier that the language of melody was learned intui-
tively, without very much conscious reflection. Nothing else adequately explains the
unsystematic treatment of the material, the apparent randomness of the alterations,
and the reason why they seem to work when others do not. They are rooted in years
of vocal improvisation.
Table 12.1 sets the constructions that make up each movement side by side in
order to show this intricate process. Although I include below a few observations to
assist interpretation, I am loath to describe their connections in more detail because
Ex. 12.10(a) Reduction of (b) to syllables and constructions

Ex. 12.10(b) Cafaro, [41] Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano (I-​MC, 1-​C-​18), fol. 38v,
no. 39, mm. 1–​22
286 The Solfeggio Tradition

Table 12.1 Comparison between the constructions in nos. 38 and 39 of Cafaro,

Solfeggi for solo soprano voice (I-​MC, 1-​C-​18)

mm. No. 38, Andante mm. No. 39, Allegro

1–​3 I: Sol-​fa-​mi 1–​6 I: Sol-​fa-​mi

6–​8 I: Sol-​fa-​mi-​re, half cadence
3–​4 V: Meyer 8–​10 V: Meyer
4–​5 V: La-​sol-​fa-​mi, half cadence
5–​6 V: Leap from do to sol
6–​7 V: mi-​fa-​sol, Fenaroli
7–​9 V: Expanded Quiescenza 10–​15 V: Shortened Quiescenza cadence
cadence
16–​22 V: Leaps from do to sol, do to fa, do to
the other fa, resolving onto mi

they can only be fully understood by experiencing them in song. As usual, I recom-
mend singing the reductions in e­ xamples 12.9(a) and 12.10(a) before attempting
the actual solfeggi in (b). Their differing styles make comparison tricky.
The Allegro obviously borrows its material from the Andante, but it does so selec-
tively and not entirely in the same order. It appears to make some enhancements, as
if the master had asked: How can we improve this passage? For instance, the modu-
lation to the dominant in m. 3 of e­ xample 12.9(b) seems unprepared. Immediately
after a firm cadence in the tonic at the start of the measure, it launches into a weakly
articulated statement of the two key-​defining semitones of the dominant B♭ major
in which the crucial leading note A♮ is barely noticeable. This is rectified in the
Allegro by the insertion of an additional half cadence in the tonic in mm. 6–​8 and
by the reinforcement of the characteristic semitones: B♭-​A, E♭-​D.
A comparison between the opening themes is also instructive. The lesson
embedded within them concerns two ways of creating a tune from the syllables sol-​
fa-​mi (5-​4-​3) in contrasting moods. I urge readers to try this exercise in improvi-
sation for themselves, so as to appreciate Cafaro’s exquisite skill and artistry more
fully. In mm. 1–​3 of the Andante (­example 12.9[b]‌), the first syllable is held and
the remainder is subject to conventional circling embellishments. The uncertain
rising third that ends fa-​--​ ​mi creates a need for further closure, which is satisfied
by a repetition of these syllables finishing with a falling appoggiatura. This same
question-​answer relation between rising and falling mi syllables can be seen in mm.
1–​6 of ­example 12.10[b]. It attests to the fact that in solfeggio the meaning of a note
depended not so much on its syllabic or harmonic identity as on the way it was
sung. One fa-​mi ends conclusively, the other does not.
A final observation concerning these themes concerns the appoggiatura “accent”
placed on the syllable fa. In m. 2 of ­example 12.9[b]‌the singer leaps to the other fa
of the key, a fifth above the expected one, and returns to it through a chain of little
 Accompanied Solfeggio 287

sighing slurs. In the Allegro there is neither time nor need for this kind of expressive
delivery. A simple search for the note from the third above suffices.
Also of interest is the way the flamboyant vocal gesture in mm. 5–​ 6 of
­example 12.9(b)—​a prolonged rumbling on do followed by an athletic upward
leap—​is developed in mm. 16–​22 of e­xample 12.10(b). Singing both passages
reveals the transformation but not its rationale. To know that much would require
our presence at Cafaro’s lesson.
 13
Solfeggio and Partimento

The art of partimento –​generating a complete composition at the keyboard from a

bass line, as documented in Sanguinetti (2012) –​together with its sister disciplines
counterpoint and solfeggio, formed one of the three main pillars of music education
at the Italian conservatories. Yet the disciplines were not entirely self-​contained.
There were significant overlaps. In particular, and well into the eighteenth cen-
tury, solfeggio syllables governed both the individual voices of counterpoint and
the bass lines of partimento. From the mid-​sixteenth century onward, instru-
mental basses for solo monodies were conceived in terms of syllables, whether as
figured foundations for keyboard or lute accompaniments, counterpoints to upper
parts, or melodies in their own right. Tomás de Santa María (1565) insisted that
harpsichordists should know how to sing each voice with syllables. Hortensio,
Bianca’s music teacher in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, gave similar advice
on learning the lute by singing the gamut from the lowest note (act 3, scene 1,
ll. 1330–​49). The practice of numbering the notes of the bass from 1 to 7 as oc-
tave major and minor scales did not arise until the early 1700s. This meant that
throughout the eighteenth century there remained a significant gray area between
Type 2 and Type 3 solfeggi. Students may have conceived a bass in terms of syllables
when contemplating its contrapuntal relation with other parts and in terms of scale
degrees if called on to realize it as a full texture at the keyboard.
In this final part of our exploration of the Type 3 solfeggio, we shall survey the
historical evidence for solmizing figured and unfigured accompaniments and ask
what this might tell us about the functions of the bass. Two solfeggi by the cele-
brated partimento master Fedele Fenaroli will be examined in an attempt to shed
light on this obscure feature of eighteenth-​century practice.

Vocal and Keyboard Systems: Antithesis or Synthesis?

Reduced to essentials, partimento playing, as defined in contemporary rules such as

those by Fenaroli (1775), rests on the ability to read subtle cues in a given bass to re-
veal the missing intervals of harmonies that can be added above it. On encountering
a 7-​1 semitone in the bass, for instance, any decent partimentist would know to add
a sixth and a third above the 7 followed by a fifth and third above the 1. Singing sol-
feggio, by contrast, depends on an ability to conjure up melodies by piecing together
syllabic patterns of scales, leaps, and cadences and to perform them by means of
a rich array of learned constructions. The two theoretical systems that underpin

The Solfeggio Tradition. Nicholas Baragwanath, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197514085.001.0001
 Solfeggio and Partimento 289

them are usually presented in sharp antithesis, with hexachordal solfeggio grad-
ually fading into obsolescence from the 1600s onward and the keyboard model
gaining ascendancy and emerging victorious in the early 1700s. Harold Powers
locates the starting point of this dialectic in the practice of alternating between
organ and choir in the liturgical rendition of psalms at the turn of the seventeenth
century. In this way “two radically incompatible conceptual models, one vocal and
one instrumental, were brought into intimate contact and instructive conflict.”1 Yet
this supposed clash of irreconcilables is based on two erroneous assumptions: first,
that solmization was incapable of adapting to increased chromaticism and novel
techniques of modulation and second, that playing figured bass at the keyboard
necessitated an entirely new and different process of conceptualization.
Contrary to the first of these assumptions, transposed hexachords with
accidentals were classified as instances of “false mutation” by Ugolino of Orvieto as
early as the 1430s. By 1492 Domingo Marcos Durán was teaching Spanish choirboys
and clergy how to ground the ut of the hexachord on any note of the gamut to form
scales starting on A, B, D, and E as well as the traditional C, F, and G. Over the
centuries, sophisticated theories were developed to peg these transpositions against
fixed “natural” scales abstracted from traditional hard and soft melody. During the
seventeenth century—​perhaps more readily in urbane musical circles than in pro-
vincial churches—​the dual “natural” scales merged into the C major compound
scale, which came to serve as the reference point for all transposed keys.
These radical advances in theory and notational method, made as part of a col-
lective effort to catch up with longstanding performance practices involving trans-
position, modulation, and chromaticism, were conceived primarily in terms of
the prevailing theory of Guidonian solfa. They occurred well before the concept
of functional numbered scale degrees took hold. It follows that the origins of what
Powers alludes to as the instrumental model, by which he means the system of
twenty-​four major and minor keys, are far more closely bound up with the sup-
posedly bland, unchanging, and anonymous historical background of elemen-
tary training in Guidonian sight-​singing than they are with progressive beacons
such as Heinichen (1711) or revolutionary breakthroughs such as Rameau (1722),
which nowadays tend to attract the bulk of scholarly attention. A glance at almost
any seventeenth-​century textbook on canto figurato will confirm that the peculiar
characteristics of B-​mi and B-​fa in solmization inspired, more or less directly, the
principle of modulation encapsulated in the circle of fifths, the method for notating
transposed scales with accidentals, and the modern system of key signatures.
Hexachordal solfa was more than capable of taking all manner of chromaticism and
modulation in its stride.
In order to address the second of Powers’s assumptions—​that playing figured
bass at the organ called for a new conceptual approach to key and harmony, which
challenged and eventually overthrew the outmoded vocal model of tonality—​it is
important to acknowledge that well into the eighteenth century instrumental bass
lines were conceived in precisely the same way as melodies were, in syllables subject
290 The Solfeggio Tradition

to conventional rules of counterpoint. Historical evidence suggests that in most

parts of Europe every voice part, including the bass, was understood primarily in
terms of solfa until at least the 1680s, when the “Rule of the Octave,” a term coined
post facto in 1716 by the French guitarist and theorbist François Campion, began to
emerge as a standard method for learning how to realize bass lines.
Numbered scale degrees were a necessary byproduct of this new and effi-
cient pedagogical technique.2 Without them, learning the most elementary
thoroughbass skills, such as knowing which intervals to sound above which notes
of a bass scale, would have involved a great deal of superfluous complexity. Imagine,
for instance, that a maestro were to instruct a student to add the intervals of a third
and a sixth above “fa” in the key of C major. Because its compound scale possesses
two overlapping hexachords, the student would be compelled to ask which fa the
maestro had in mind: the one on C (from the hexachord on G) or the one on F (from
the hexachord on C). The former would normally support the chord of the third
and the fifth as a stable tonic, whereas the latter could take either chord as a stable
subdominant or an unstable predominant, depending on context. In order to avoid
this ambiguity, instruction in how to realize partimenti and thoroughbass came to
depend on the identification of scale-​degree numbers in the bass. Rules for adding
intervals above the “first” of the scale or key, followed by the “second,” the “third,”
and so on, are familiar today from Rameau’s Treatise on Harmony (1722, 199) and
any number of eighteenth-​century thoroughbass manuals from François Campion
(1716), Louis-​Nicolas Clérambault (1716), and Jean-​François Dandrieu (1718) in
France through Johann Heinichen (1711), Johann Mattheson (1713), and Friedrich
Niedt (1721) in German regions to Francesco Gasparini (1708), Bernardo Pasquini
(1715), and Francesco Durante (c. 1730) on the Italian peninsula. Gasparini’s bass
scales of 1708 clearly attest to the persistence of hexachords, but by the late eight-
eenth century the idea of seven distinct scale degrees was firmly established in theo-
retical writings and practical partimento treatises such as Fenaroli (1775), Paisiello
(1782), and Azopardi (1786). Nowadays, it seems so fundamental that it is difficult
to conceive of figured bass or, indeed, tonal harmony without it.
Back in the early seventeenth century, conversely, when Brother Adriano
Banchieri could still describe figured bass as a “new way to play,”3 musicians had
little choice but to conceive it in terms of current practice. This meant Guidonian
scales and syllables. Drawing on Roman sources such as Agazzari (1607), Banchieri’s
brief dialogue on this fashionable new method in Playing the Organ (1611) began
by stressing the need for beginners to possess the usual ability to sing at sight using
traditional hexachords and mutations, especially in the relatively unfamiliar key-
board layout with bass F-​clef. Beyond these requisite score-​reading skills, it was a
simple matter to count upward by following the figures and to add consonances
above the bass in a kind of Fuxian “first species” counterpoint:

For the beginner at the organ who wants to play in harmony above a basso con-
tinuo, it is assumed that he has practical knowledge of the keyboard scoring for
 Solfeggio and Partimento 291

the hands, and similar skills in reading and singing with the bass F-​clef, in soft as
well as hard melody with their mutations, both ascending and descending, and, by
possessing such practical skills, he can train initially with the fingers note-​against-​
note, and in this simple way accompany the voice with harmony.4

This advice was put into practice using a series of simple scale exercises, one of
which is reproduced in ­example 13.1. It was designed to assist students in reading
the soft scale in bass clef. This explains why the mutations, re for ascending and
la for descending, are helpfully marked out with black noteheads. The student or-
ganist was expected to play this scale with the left hand while accompanying with
the right, initially by adding a single melodic part in simple consonances and even-
tually two or more parts.
Banchieri’s bass scales for harmonization practice at the keyboard are obviously
direct forerunners of the Rule of the Octave. Yet in ­example 13.1 they are explic-
itly underlaid with solmization syllables. Even the rules for harmonizing them de-
rive from traditional Guidonian conceits. For instance, Banchieri anticipates the
common partimento rule requiring the first note of a rising semitone in the bass to
receive a chord of the sixth by recommending the same device as a way to avoid the
dreaded “mi contra fa” tritone (i.e., by placing a sixth, C, above a bass note E instead
of a fifth, B♭). Much of his advice reveals a grounding in canto fermo and an incli-
nation to think of harmony in terms of additions to a fixed melodic voice. When he
describes how to accompany a falling fifth in the bass with a mi-​fa cadence in the
upper part, for example, Banchieri presumes that the student will know to sharp the
semitone without the need for “superfluous accidentals” in the figures.5
Over the course of the following decades, basso continuo developed into
a sophisticated craft of keyboard playing with an extensive body of rules and
conventions. Nevertheless, in 1679 the Bolognese theorist Lorenzo Penna con-
tinued to understand it primarily in terms of Guidonian scales and syllables. His
account of the rudiments of canto figurato showed how hexachords could appear
in each voice part, including the bass (14), and his more advanced guide to figured
bass in the third book was still conceived in terms of syllables and counterpoint.
He demonstrated standard ways to realize the “most commonly used” figures in
basso continuo by adding basses to given melodic motifs, rather than the other way
around (161–​64).

Ex. 13.1 Banchieri, L’Organo suorino (1611), 6, with original syllables

292 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 13.2 Buttstett (c. 1716), music examples to p. 68, “P. 1 E. fol: 68”

In the early eighteenth century keyboard players in Catholic areas still conceived
the bass in terms of the same syllables as the melody. The Salzburg Kapellmeister
Johann Baptist Samber began his Organ Manual (1704) not with keyboard exercises
but with a thorough survey of the rudiments of canto fermo. He regarded the ability
to solmize fluently as a prerequisite for understanding bass lines at the keyboard.
Not only did he postpone the introduction of thoroughbass until the student had
undergone eighty-​nine pages of instruction in singing, but he also underlaid his
keyboard bass lines with Guidonian syllables. In the second part of the Organ
Manual (1707) Samber illustrated many standard figured bass patterns by adding
solfa syllables beneath the staff. He used the contemporary Italian system of trans-
posable “cantus naturalis,” as summarized in Agricola (1757), which made sense of
complex keys by conceiving them as transpositions of the natural white-​note com-
pound scale. Minor scales remained dependent on their parent major keys, even in
Generalbass. Near the beginning of his simple scale exercises Samber introduced a
series of ascending minor scales in the bass from the first note of the key to fourth
under the heading “Through the Solmisation Re, Mi, Fa, Sol,” and from the first note
to the sixth under the heading “Re, Mi, Fa, Re, Mi, Fa.”6
Further north in Erfurt, the capital of Protestant Thuringia at the center of
modern Germany, Johann Buttstett, a pupil of Pachelbel, reaffirmed the use of sol-
mization syllables for figured bass in his rebuttal of Mattheson’s progressive ideas.
His conservative manifesto, Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, tota Musica et Harmonia Aeterna
(c. 1716), provides evidence that the old ways remained the norm for followers of
the German organ tradition, and not only in southern regions. In e­ xample 13.2,
which is drawn from the music examples appended to his book, Buttstett wrote
out an everyday comma schema, first in C major, then in F major, and finally in
D major. Although these examples were intended to support a comparison made
in the text between two alternative harmonizations of the diminished-​fifth pattern
(by highlighting the injudicious application of two mi notes to the first chord of
each pair), the bass motion of a semitone was clearly marked with the Guidonian
syllables mi-​fa. It follows that Buttstett and his contemporaries would likely have
known this chord sequence as a “mi-​fa” in the context of thoroughbass playing.
Elsewhere in the book, he rationalized other sequences of chords and standard
four-​part cadences in a similar way by underlaying their bass parts with syllables.
On the basis of these representative examples there can be little doubt that Buttstett
thought in much the same terms as did his southern counterparts, conceiving keys
 Solfeggio and Partimento 293

through transpositions of the natural compound scale. He even treated minor keys
as dependent re-​scales, notwithstanding his awareness of Bononcini’s (1678) divi-
sion of hexachords into three “happy” major types and three “sad” minor types.7 As
late as 1732, the Venetian theorist-​priest Francesco Calegari was still underlaying a
bass Rule of the Octave with traditional solmization syllables.8
These Guidonian origins of eighteenth-​century keyboard harmony have gone
largely unremarked by modern scholars, who tend to concentrate on more fa-
miliar evidence relating to incipient scale-​step functionality found in, for in-
stance, Werckmeister (1697) and Brossard (c. 1703). One author brushes aside
Penna’s reliance on solfa for basso continuo with the assertion that his “rules are
based on simple and what are to us arbitrary features of the musical surface.”9 For
contemporaries brought up on traditional solfa singing, there was nothing arbi-
trary about Penna’s rules. They make perfect sense when read against commonplace
teachings at the time.
As hinted above, this vast continent-​wide backdrop of lessons in canto fermo
and figurato at religious institutions, so seemingly settled, dull, and uniform after
the vigorous debates of the sixteenth century, has in recent times been rendered ef-
fectively invisible by a fixation on teleological progress and a resulting emphasis on
exciting innovations that stand out from everyday norms. Hence the preoccupation
with new keyboard systems, especially from the 1700s onward. The history of har-
mony still tends to be framed retrospectively as a process of development toward
a predetermined end involving the emergence of chord functions built from a no-
tional keyboard bass and the twenty-​four major and minor keys.
Against this, the endurance of Guidonian solfa in elementary musical training
and the essential relativity of the outer parts in countless solfeggio manuscripts
suggest the need for a revision to Powers’s widely accepted thesis, which proposes
that from approximately 1600 to 1725 a keyboard-​based model of tonality, centered
on the notion of numbered octave scale degrees in the bass and reflected in the
seven syllables of French solfège and the seven letters of German tablature, grad-
ually surpassed and replaced the vocally based Guidonian solmization, which was
unable to keep pace with increasing chromaticism and modulation. In Powers’s
own words:

Only by the second quarter of the eighteenth century was the vocally based scheme
of reference for a purely aural control of pitch relationships and tonal function,
as represented in the Guidonian diatonic and its epicyclic extensions, completely
replaced by a pre-​compositional and pre-​theoretical background scheme whose
conceptual referential base was physically tied to the keyboard as visual model.10

The assertion that Guidonian scales were “completely replaced” by 1725 is ques-
tionable, even for German-​speaking regions, and as a crossover date it is at least a
century too early in the case of Italy. In the years immediately following Powers’s
proposed paradigm shift, theorists were taking to print to put the case for the status
294 The Solfeggio Tradition

quo. The Dutchman Quirinus Van Blanckenburg took both Rameau and Mattheson
to task in his Elementa musica (1739), explicitly countering their theories with tra-
ditional Guidonian concepts.11 The French harpsichordist Laurent Gervais had still
not grasped the supposed new orthodoxy in his keyboard Méthode (1733), in which
he numbered the scale backwards in descending order from one to eight. Joseph
Riepel’s discussion (1755) of different systems for naming notes still assumed Guido’s
ancient “Latin” system and its more recent “Italian” transposable variant as obvious
starting points, although he recommended replacing them with either letter names
or French solfège.12 In 1784 Mozart was teaching fugal technique to his student
Barbara Ployer by means of the syllables “ut re mi fa sol la,” written beneath an as-
cending hexachordal fugue subject in bass clef.13 As for that invisible historical back-
drop of everyday music lessons in churches, chapels, and monasteries, many carried
on teaching proven canto fermo methods regardless of developments elsewhere.
In its capacity as the traditional foundation for professional music making in
the eighteenth century, the dependable old system of Guidonian solfa coexisted
and intermingled with more fashionable thoroughbass methods. In particular, the
twelve minor scales began to gain acceptance as keys in their own right, no longer
conceived in terms of dependent re finals but in terms of independent tonics.
Powers’s presumed antithesis between “two radically incompatible conceptual
models” was, in reality, a prolonged synthesis. Contemporary sources make refer-
ence to both systems, and not only in discipline-​specific textbooks about canto fermo
and figured bass. In 1715, for example, a student copy of Bernardo Pasquini’s Rules
for partimento playing denoted the degrees of the scale as first, second, third, and so
on while Alessandro Scarlatti’s Principles of the same year included an ascending G
major scale in bass clef explicitly marked with the syllables “do, re, mi” and so on.14

Ex. 13.3 Fenaroli, [56] Solfeggi a voce sola, e Basso (c. 1762–​77; I-​Bc, NN.21), no. 43,
mm. 1–​16
 Solfeggio and Partimento 295

In order to demonstrate by way of practical example how an accompanying bass

could be treated as both partimento and solfeggio, I turn now to two lessons by
Fenaroli that probably date from his time as a second-​class maestro at the Loreto
Conservatory between 1762 and 1777. Example 13.3 shows the opening of an
Allegro in which melody and bass (labeled A and B) switch freely. In the first four
measures the singer traces the fa-​mi-​re-​do (4-​3-​2-​1) of the Prinner schema while
the bass plays its reciprocal la-​sol-​fa-​mi (6-​5-​4-​3). In the answering phrase from
m. 8 the parts swap places. There can be little doubt that in order for the lesson to
work this bass line must have been conceived in the same way as the vocal melody.
The solfeggio was designed to show how they could be combined. Yet the title of

Ex. 13.4(a) Fenaroli, [56] Solfeggi a voce sola, e Basso (c. 1762–​77; I-​Bc, NN.21),
no. 53, mm. 1–​19
296 The Solfeggio Tradition

Ex. 13.4(b) Reduction of (a) to syllables and constructions

Fenaroli’s collection makes clear that it was “for solo voice, and bass.” The bass was
most definitely for playing at the keyboard, not for singing. This suggests that the
maestro either drew attention to its contrapuntal significance in discussion or
simply played it without comment, allowing the student first to hear it as an in-
strumental countermelody and then to experience it in song. The bass was thus a
partimento when played by the maestro and a solfeggio when sung by the student.
One final example that will press home this point is presented in e­ xample 13.4,
taken from the beginning of another Allegro by Fenaroli. This time please sing
the actual solfeggio shown in (a) first, taking careful note of the relation between
melody and bass. The letter symbols added to the reduction in (b) show that they
 Solfeggio and Partimento 297

frequently change places. In the fourth phrase (m. 12), what was previously melody
shifts to the bass, and vice versa. The syllables highlight the process.15
In harmonic terms, this is an unusual solfeggio. It begins with an instance of what
is sometimes called in nineteenth-​century music studies a “non-​tonic opening.”
The governing key is C major, yet the solfeggio starts with comma cadences that
point to G major (V) and F major (IV). It achieves its tonic only at the end of a ca-
dential phrase in m. 8. This wayward opening can be explained as a standard ped-
agogical illustration of the two main techniques of modulation as they apply to the
key of C major: the altered fourth F♯ followed by the altered seventh B♭ (as explained
in Chapter 9). The melody makes explicit the mutation from B-​mi to B-​fa and the
bass highlights the replacement of an expected F-​fa with an F-​mi. When the parts
switch in mm. 12–​15, this common lesson in modulation is identical to the progres-
sion in the opening seven bars of Beethoven’s “Waldstein” Sonata op. 53 (1803–​4).16
The accompanied solfeggio in e­ xample 13.4(a) is not so much a lesson in singing
as it is an exemplar of invertible counterpoint. In other words, it is a lesson in com-
position, no different in kind from the many to be found in coursebooks penned
by his student Zingarelli, which stand at the end of a two-​hundred-​year synthesis
between the ancient Type 2 contrapuntal solfeggio (or counterpoint) and the newer
practice of accompanying solo song by improvising on a bass line. Zingarelli’s
habit of adding traits and dots to themes regardless of whether they appeared in
the melody or the bass bears eloquent witness to this historical synthesis. Because
partimentists had to have mastered solfeggio, when they encountered a bass line
like the one given in ­example 13.4 they must have perceived it as a melody, on an
equal footing with the one in the vocal part, unless they chose to ignore the imi-
tative texture and accompany only in block chords—​an option that can be largely
ruled out by the two-​part contrapuntal nature of surviving partimento realizations.
The Type 3 solfeggio did not cause two incompatible systems to clash. It was the
foundation for both.
 14
Epilogue
Alternative Systems and the End of the Great Tradition

Rousseau (1768) listed three solmization systems as being in common use during
his own age: the medieval method “by mutations,” its updated Italian variant “by
transposition,” and the fixed seven-​note scale with si, which he called “the natural
way.” The “first method is the most ancient,” he declared, “the second, the best; and
the third, the most usual in France.”1
It is remarkable that all three preserved Guido of Arezzo’s syllables. Protestant
attempts to establish an alternative to this Catholic legacy ended mostly in failure
or at best in narrow regional influence. One exception was the German custom
of singing the seven letter names, which nonetheless remained faithful in part to
Guido’s Gamut.
In this chapter we shall briefly survey a few of the innovations that arose in re-
sponse to both the Reformation and the increasing dominance of Italian musicians2
before passing over Rousseau’s first two systems (which are dealt with elsewhere in
the book) and concentrating instead on the third, in particular, the part it played in
the demise of the Italian solfeggio tradition. Owing to its simplicity, this “natural
way” to solfège turned out to be ideally suited to the needs of a rapidly expanding
amateur market, which demanded readily performable sheet music and the ability
to read it rather than onerous craft training. It also provided simplified teaching
methods and classroom materials for the new public music schools that emerged
from the upheavals of the Napoleonic era.

Ousting Guido

In 1482 Bartolomé Ramos de Pareja put forward the first workable alternative to
Guido’s method. He proposed a new set of eight syllables fashioned from the rather
unimaginative Latin phrase “it is sung with these syllables” (psal-​li-​tur per vo-​ces
is-​tas) that mapped onto an octave scale from C to C. Psal indicated the lower C
and tas the higher, while is signified both B♭ and B♮. Ramos defended his proposal by
claiming that the assonant r linking the final consonants of tur and per helped locate
the semitone E-​F and that the assonant s linking ces, is, and tas drew attention to the
tricky semitones from B♭ to A (is-​ces) and B♮ to C (is-​tas).3 He gave few further hints
as to how the system should be used and reverted to traditional solmization for the
remainder of his treatise. It is not surprising that rival theorists roundly attacked the

The Solfeggio Tradition. Nicholas Baragwanath, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197514085.001.0001
 Epilogue 299

suggestion. Not even Ramos’s devoted pupil Spataro took it up, and it remains little
more than a historical curiosity.
More significant were a number of Protestant attempts to break free from reli-
ance on Roman authority from the turn of the seventeenth century. These seem
to have been motivated as much by professional rivalry as by religious difference.
Arising roughly eighty years after Martin Luther nailed his theses to the door of
the Wittenberg church, they coincide squarely with the rise of the new Italian style
of melody called seconda pratica by Monteverdi, stile moderno by Caccini, and
early Baroque by recent authors. As recounted in Chapter 12, the demand to train
singers to perform this cantabile repertory led Italian maestros to develop radical
approaches to teaching that eventually crystalized into a comprehensive system of
transposable solfeggio. From the start, reliance on oral instruction meant that its
secrets were confined to an elite guild of practitioners. Outsiders might decode its
complex rules, but they would never be able to use them to improvise or to generate
melody with a comparable degree of fluency. For many musicians north of the Alps,
already resentful of the seemingly unstoppable advance of Italian competitors, this
proved a step too far. In protest, they began to formulate systems based on fixed
octaves rather than moveable hexachords.
Agricola captured something of the motivation behind their defiance when he
objected to the Italian habit of leaving scores bereft of ornamentation on the ground
that non-​Italians, who were excluded from lessons in solfeggio, were unable to per-
form them in an appropriate style:

Some of us German singers on the other side of the mountains would prefer, in the
event of not being able to invent something clever ourselves, to be guided by the
composer or, at least, by the accompanist. . . . Those whose own invention and sen-
sitivity makes them capable of performing good variations should not be denied
the opportunity regardless of their native homeland.4

Among the first to moot an alternative was the Flemish musician Hubert
Waelrant (c. 1517–​95). Though largely forgotten today, he is credited with a number
of important innovations. Not only did he introduce in 1574 the syllables sy and
ho (later spelled si and o) to represent the seventh and eighth notes of a major oc-
tave scale (more on this below), but he also devised the seven-​note system called
bocedization, or “Belgian syllables,” as shown in table 14.1. This fixed-​octave scale
combined selected letters of the alphabet—​[A]‌B C D [E F] G [H I J K] L M N—​with
the vowels of the seven-​note scale—​do-​re-​mi-​fa-​sol-​la-​si—​to produce a fresh set of
seven syllables. The letter B merged with the syllable do produced bo, for instance,
and C merged with re produced ce. These mapped onto the authentic octave scales
of hard and soft melody (akin to C major and F major).5
Waelrant’s proposal was initially taken up in print by the Leipzig Kapellmeister
Seth Calvisius (1600) and heavily promoted in his later publications.6 It found
supporters in the Protestant theologian Johannes Lippius (1612) and Calvisius’s
300 The Solfeggio Tradition

Table 14.1 Bocedization, or “Belgian syllables”

Bo Ce Di Ga Lo Ma Ni

C D E F G A B
F G A B♭ C D E

student Nikolaus Gengenbach (1626), but it does not appear to have established
a lasting presence, even in Belgium. Like all fixed-​octave solmization systems, its
syllables are meaningless in every key but one (or, in this case, two). Worse than
that, starting the scale with a syllable beginning with B makes it difficult to reconcile
with both its existing letter names, C-​D-​E, and so on, and the more intuitive poten-
tial link between A-​B-​C and do-​re-​mi.
Bocedization was in any case overtaken by bebization, the chromatic solmization
system pioneered by the Protestant pastor Daniel Hitzler in Stuttgart (1628). He
began by adding the vowel e to the conventional seven letter names to indicate that
they should be sung as ce, de, and so on. Because this did not work for the vowels e
and a, he prefixed them with the consonants m and l, borrowed from the mi and la
of Italian solfeggio. As table 14.2 shows, Hitzler offered no separate symbol for flats
but signified sharps by altering the vowel from e to i, which made the letters sound
similar to an Italian mi: Thus C♮ was ce and C♯ was ci. This meant that only the most
common accidentals were included in the system. There was, for example, an F♯
but no G♭.
Although Hitzler’s system warranted favorable mentions in Gibelius (1659) and
Mattheson (1717), it does not appear to have inspired any real adoption. It did,
however, influence the innovation that eventually succeeded in replacing the Italian
method with a viable German alternative: the chromatic letter system shown in
table 14.3. It dispensed with Hitzler’s superfluous e vowel on the natural letters but
retained his distinction between e and i by using the suffix -​es to signify flatted notes
and -​is to signify sharped notes. This system remains standard today in Scandinavia
and in many parts of central and eastern Europe.

Table 14.2 Bebization: Daniel Hitzler’s (1628) chromatic scale

Ce Ci De Di/​Me Mi Fe Fi Ge Gi Le Be/​Bi

C C♯ D D♯/​E♭ E F F♯ G G♯ A B♭/​B

Table 14.3 German note names

Cis Dis Fis Gis Ais

C (C♯/​D♭) D (D♯/​E♭) E F (F♯/​G♭) G (G♯/​A♭) A (A♯/​B♭) H
Des Es Ges As B
 Epilogue 301

It appears to have taken hold in German regions during the 1640s,7 just as the
Venetian model of public opera began to proliferate throughout Europe and a new
breed of Italian singers began to ply their trade at courts and theaters. In a textbook
of basics for the music schools of Breslau, Ambrosius Profe (1641) recommended
the abolition of Roman syllables and the adoption of seven letters.8 The Hamburg
cantor Thomas Selle (see Carter 2002) followed suit in a textbook for his students at
the St. Johannis School (c. 1642),9 as did Wolfgang Hase (1657) in Brandenburg. By
the time Johann Ahle (1690) published a revision of his father’s singing treatise in
Mühlhausen, he could claim that the traditional solfeggio system had fallen out of
use during his lifetime.10
Yet the transition to singing letters was by no means clear-​cut. Compliance with
Bugenhagen’s School Regulations of 1634 meant that boys of all ages and abilities
still had to be trained in Italian canto fermo and figurato.11 Selle’s manual, for in-
stance, included Roman psalms and antiphons (25). Sixty years later, both Feyertag
(1695) and Beyer (1703) continued to use Italian solfeggio. Vestiges of the old ways
endured well into the eighteenth century.
One reason for this was that not everyone agreed with the new direction. Many
found the sound of Teutonic letters unpleasant. In a Short Report on the Musical
Syllables (1659), Otto Gibelius complained that “ABC-​ing” (abcedieren), as he called
it, sounded ghastly in comparison with the more mellifluous do-​re-​mi. A century
later Rousseau echoed this sentiment, observing (somewhat offensively) that “this
method of solfa-​ing is so rough and confused, that one must be a German to make
use of it.”12
In order to remedy the perceived fault, Gibelius proposed a revised chromatic
version of the traditional syllables, fixed and extended to fill an octave from C to
C. It is summarized in table 14.4. He added ni for the seventh note B, kept Hitzler’s
i vowel to indicate sharps, and used a or o to indicate flats. Others, such as Johann
Caspar Lange, a Kantor in Hildesheim, sought to improve the letter names by
transforming them into more melodious syllables: cel, del, el, fel, gel, al, b.13
Well into the eighteenth century, this tension between the effectiveness of
the familiar letter names for learning to read music and their unsuitability for

Table 14.4 Otto Gibelius’s solmization system (1659)

Do Di Re Ri/​Ma Mi Fa Fi Sol Si/​Lo La Na Ni Do

C C♯ D D♯/​E♭ E F F♯ G G♯/​A♭ A B♭ B C

Table 14.5 Damenization: Carl Heinrich Graun’s solmization system, c. 1750

Da Des/​ Me Mes/​ Ni Po Pes/​ Tu Tes/​ La Bas Be Da

Mas Nas Tas Las

C C♯/​D♭ D D♯/​E♭ E F F♯/​G♭ G G♯/​A♭ A B♭ B C

302 The Solfeggio Tradition

learning to sing bel canto led to yet more proposals for new and improved solmi-
zation methods. In 1763, for instance, Marpurg recommended the “damenization”
system concocted by Carl Heinrich Graun, Kapellmeister to Frederick the Great.14
As can be seen from table 14.5, it proposed a set of seven syllables anchored on
C, all new apart from la and be for A and B: da-​me-​ni-​po-​tu-​la-​be. These could be
sharped by adding the suffix -​es and flatted with the suffix -​as. It is difficult to de-
termine whether anyone actually tried to use these syllables, although they were
recommended in passing by Hiller (1780).
The singability of German letters was not the only problem. The Italian system
could boast a proven track record of success and possessed an inherent intervallic
logic that facilitated score-​reading and improvisation, whereas the syllables in a
fixed chromatic octave were useful only for learning to read notation on a single
staff. This shortcoming was recognized in the anonymous Guide (Vermehrter und
nun zum zweytenmal in Druck befördertet kurtzer jedoch gründlicher Wegweiser,
1693) used in most German choir schools throughout the early eighteenth century.
It described letter names as the “first manner” of singing, the fixed scale with a sev-
enth si as the “second manner,” and the usual Italian solfeggio as the “third manner.”
But it expressed concerns about the agreeableness of the first and the fact that it did
not teach “the difference between [the semitone] mi and fa, [the whole tone] re and
mi, etc.,” while pointedly observing that the third was “the surest and most usual
manner used by all famous castratos in the whole of Germany and Italy.”15
Matters came to a head in the debate between the progressive-​minded Johann
Mattheson, who favored singing German letters, and the archconservative Johann
Buttstett, who did not.16 Mattheson’s appeal to cast aside the old hexachords in his
Newly Instituted Orchestra (1713) was fiercely challenged by Buttstett’s avowal,
spelled out in his title, that Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la are the whole of music and eternal har-
mony (c. 1716). Mattheson responded with a scathing put-​down in The Orchestra
Defended (1717), which appears to have persuaded Buttstett to refrain from further
public comment.
By the 1730s an inability to catch up with the Italian art of solfeggio meant that
letter names became commonplace in German-​speaking regions, as witnessed by
the following account of Joseph Haydn’s first music lessons in Hainburg:

Since neither his schoolteacher nor anyone else in the little town was acquainted
with the do, re, mi, etc. of the Italian method, however, there was no one to instruct
the eager boy. What does genius do in such a case? . . . Joseph found out the most
natural method, became his own teacher, and sang daily simply C, D, E, F, G, and
so on, observing all the rules of solfeggio without knowing it, and made such great
strides that Reutter at the end of the appointed time was astonished.17

This anecdote was related to Albert Dies, the least musically knowledgeable of
Haydn’s contemporary biographers. He evidently had no idea what the old man
meant by “all the rules of solfeggio.” From reading between the lines it appears that
 Epilogue 303

Haydn had been bragging about his intuitive ability as a child to realize plain note
patterns in a variety of musical ways, in keeping with the Italian method described
in Chapter 7, despite being hampered by having no maestro to emulate and being
compelled to sing meaningless fixed letters rather than moveable syllables. That
Haydn held a low opinion of the German method of singing can be inferred from
subsequent comments reported by Dies.
The English, meanwhile, had developed their own pragmatic version of the antico
system, dispensing with the superfluous syllables ut and re and replacing them with
an additional fa and sol (or sol and la), so that everything could be solmized using
only four syllables: mi-​fa-​sol-​la.18 Despite its apparent simplicity, it retained many
features of the old Guidonian system, which led to confusion. In 1655, for instance,
Playford set forth a didactic rhyme to help readers locate the fundamental fa and
mi of the compound scale, especially as it passed through a series of downward
transpositions by fifth by the operation of singing mi as fa (see Chapter 9). Yet the
four-​syllable system did not allow for the fundamental mi to be sung as fa! In order
to resolve the issue, Butler (1636) had to invent a ludicrous homophone, pha, to in-
dicate a flatted seventh.
Later, the English would come up with quick and easy methods for teaching sight-​
singing such as the Norwich Sol-​fa invented by Sarah Ann Glover (1835), which
used a moveable scale based on a version of French solfège: do-​re-​mi-​fa-​so-​la-​ti.
It forms the basis of many modern moveable-​do methods. The Congregationalist
minister John Curwen (1843) developed it into the popular Tonic Sol-​fa with hand
signs for each note, heavily Anglicized syllables (doh, ray, me, fah, soh, lah, te), and a
basic rhythmic system employing bar lines before strong beats, half bar lines before
medium beats, and semicolons before weak beats. Variants of Curwen’s method re-
main in use at North American colleges and universities, and it finds a modern
counterpart in the moveable-​do system of the Kodály method.

The Seventh Syllable: Si

The failure of Protestant alternatives to catch on in the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries was compensated by the inexorable rise of si. According to Kiesewetter’s
pioneering study of Arabic music (1842), the syllable originated in fourteenth-​
century Persia. Lange (1899) debunked this claim only to put forward a more out-
landish one: that it arose in Arabic Spain during the reign of Pope Gregory I in the
sixth century, together with an eighth syllable, ba, which signified the equivalent
of B♭.19
Whatever their provenance, both syllables (or variants of them) found their
way into Europe in the sixteenth century and were assimilated into the Guidonian
system, especially in France, during the seventeenth. The Belgian musician Maillart
(1610) attributed the invention of sy and ho, as mentioned earlier, as stand-​ins for
the old-​fashioned mi and fa that fell on the seventh and eighth notes of an authentic
304 The Solfeggio Tradition

major scale to an unnamed musician working in Antwerp in 1574, whom later

sources identified as Waelrant.20 Many others mistakenly credited Alsted’s Universal
Encyclopedia (1620) with the innovation, occasionally mixing him up with an ob-
scure “Don Anselmo,” who may have been a Flemish cleric in the service of the
duke of Bavaria.21 A host of alternative names vied for acclaim as the creator of si.22
On the basis of the evidence, it seems reasonable to presume that si started out
not as an individual discovery but as a more general Flemish, French, or German
adaptation of bi, the usual Italian name for the letter B. Italians, too, were aware of
the possibility of using this letter to construct an octave scale. Puteanus (1599), for
instance, working in Milan, used bi for the seventh syllable.23 A few years later in
Bologna, Banchieri recommended bi for B♮ and ba for B♭.24 The earliest actual men-
tion of si as a stand-​in for the seventh note of a major scale appears in Burmeister’s
Commentary on Music and Poetry (1599),25 which declared that in German regions
musicians pronounced B as si and B♭ as se.
Untangling these historical threads is made immeasurably more complicated by
a proliferation of alternative solmization syllables. Rousseau (1768), for instance,
recorded that bi and ba could be replaced not only by si and sa but also by ci, di, ni, fi,
or—​as found in French sources from Mersenne (1623) to La Feillée (1748)—​za. The
Spaniards Ureña (1669) and Lorente (1672), both based near Madrid, employed bi
for B♮ and na or ba for E♭.26 An antiphoner published in Paris in 1681 included sa for
B♭, ma for E♭, and fi for F♯.27 Van Blanckenburg (1739) proposed a version of French
solfège in which the minor scale beginning on D-​re included an additional it for C♯
and sa for B♭.28
Leaving aside these confusing variants, it is important to understand that the
syllable si existed long before the arrival of fixed-​do solfège in the early eighteenth
century. At first, it was added atop the old six-​note Guidonian scales. Orgosinus
(1603), for instance, following Burmeister (1599), transformed the natural and soft
hexachords on C and F into octave species by adding si and o, and the hard scale on
G (in plagal formation) by adding se and o.29 In France this coalesced into the so-​
called double scale, as set out in an Easy Singing Method, attributed to Nivers (1666),
which simplified hard and soft melody into octave scales on C and F and solmized
them both as do-​re-​mi-​fa-​sol-​la-​si. According to Bisaro (2015), this system was in
common use in France until the end of the seventeenth century. It is intriguing that
it developed into a variant form that could cope with transpositions to different
keys akin to modern moveable-​do solfège. Loulié (1696) solmized compositions
with sharps or flats in the key signature by singing the last sharp (i.e., the seventh of
the scale) always as si and the last flat (i.e., the fourth of the scale) always as fa. This
meant that scales in every key could be sung to the same seven syllables. For reasons
that are not clear (to me, at least), this promising challenger to the Italian system “by
transposition” was supplanted by the single fixed scale on C. It resurfaced only with
the introduction of moveable-​do methods in the twentieth century.
How did Italian musicians take to the “natural” French way to solfège? Tevo
(1706) provides a representative response by dismissing all additional syllables
 Epilogue 305

out of hand as “bizarre inventions devised to make solmizing easier, without

mutations.”30 Indeed, the seven-​note scale did not begin to make significant inroads
into Italian musical life until the last quarter of the eighteenth century. As Bornstein
concedes, “[Bolognese pedagogue] Martini [1706–​84] and all the other theorists of
his time continued to conceive music using hexachords and the old solmization.”31
Maestro Fausto Fritelli’s attempt to introduce Loulié’s (1696) moveable-​do version
of solfeggio alla francese into Siena Cathedral in 1744 was a one-​off that was in-
stantly challenged in print by one of his own choir singers, a local knife maker called
Francesco Provedi (1744). Martini sided with Provedi in the dispute.32 It achieved
little more than a thirty-​page follow-​on pamphlet penned anonymously in 1746 by
a Sienese nobleman, Marquis Fulvio Chigo Zondolari, who advocated a fully chro-
matic version of the French system.33
As Barnett concludes, “It is clear that in the 1740s heptachordal solmization was
both new and as yet little disseminated in Italy.”34 Thirty years later, the debate be-
tween Mancini (1774, 1777) and Manfredini (1775, 1797) suggests that change
was in the air, although both authors were in many respects exceptional.35 They
spent the bulk of their careers working as singing teachers to daughters of the ar-
istocracy, Mancini in Vienna and Manfredini in St. Petersburg, where there was a
strong French influence at court. In the following decade, the Florentine maestro-​
priest Vincenzo Panerai still felt the need to introduce the French system as if it
were new to readers of his Principles of Music (1780), as did Ignazio Foglietti in his
Ecclesiastical Cantor (1788) and Luigi Sabbatini in his Theoretical Elements (1789–​
90). All three expressed a preference for the old method.36
That Italian-​trained maestros found it difficult to keep to the French way can be
inferred from a mistake in Azopardi’s 1786 treatise The Practical Singer. Because
it was prepared for publication in Paris he was careful to use the fixed seven-​note
system, though he had been trained in the Italian method at the Loreto Conservatory
in Naples. By page 5 of the manuscript, however, he had inadvertently slipped back
into old habits, annotating a rising fourth G-​A-​B-​C with the syllables of the hard
hexachord, ut-​re-​mi-​fa.37

The End of the Great Tradition

The coup de grâce of the “usual Italian solfeggio” was dealt by occupying Napoleonic
regimes from 1798 onward via their policy of wresting education from the Church’s
control and their outlawing of castration and the castrati. The conservatories were
reinstituted as secular schools and compelled to adopt French solfège.
Nonetheless, pockets of resistance remained. Zingarelli continued to teach
using the traditional system until the 1830s. He clearly indicated the old syllables
and mutations in an autograph collection of solfeggi for tenor voice although
the opening page sets out the officially sanctioned post-​Napoleonic seven-​note
solfège.38 Elsewhere, the old note names lived on in common parlance, as witnessed
306 The Solfeggio Tradition

by Calegari’s (1828) comment that “these notes are also vulgarly named as
follows: Cisolfaut for DO, Delasolrè for RE, Elamì for MI, [and so on].”39
Napoleon may have hastened the demise of the solfeggio tradition, but the
main reason for its disappearance surely rests on a loss of patronage. The social
circumstances that gave rise to the method changed over the course of the eight-
eenth century, and its sources of income declined. Neither the Church nor the ar-
istocracy could keep up the payments needed to maintain their dedicated music
industries. Attention inevitably shifted to a new market of middle-​class audiences
and amateurs. In order to cater to their well-​financed needs, the art of solfeggio was
whittled down to its current state: short melodies for teaching the basics of nota-
tion and vocal technique, sung as vocalises or to a simplified form of octave-​based
solfège.
The decline began in earnest during the 1760s, partly in response to the rise of the
fortepiano. As an increasing number of amateurs began to demand lessons on this
cleverly marketed new gadget, and as the opportunities for patronage dwindled,
ancient skills in singing and playing gradually withered away. In a world of cheap
printed scores, pre-​annotated with performance instructions that promised to make
the purchaser sound as tasteful and stylish as a professional, there was little need
to undergo the vicissitudes of apprenticeship. A new industry arose for producing
step-​by-​step beginners’ methods and textbooks for curricula at music colleges. The
demand for ready-​made scores contributed in turn to a profound change in taste, as
described by Goehr (1992), in which the reified musical work was accorded privi-
leged status over the actuality of performance.
By the 1830s the art of melody that had contributed to the international dom-
inance of Italian maestros and virtuosos from about 1680 to 1830, from Scarlatti
and Corelli to Bellini and Paganini, was all but lost.40 Without a steady supply of
apprentices trained the traditional way, it could not survive. Like all endangered
languages, it endured only as long as its native speakers did, and they were silenced
by the forced closure of conservatories and church schools in the early 1800s. The
aged Rossini recalled these events with wonderful clarity many years later in con-
versation with Wagner:

[The castrati] were incomparable teachers. . . . The teaching of singing in the

master schools attached to the churches, and supported at the churches’ expense
generally, was entrusted to them. Some of these schools were famous. They were
real singing academies. The pupils flocked to them, and some of them abandoned
the choir loft to devote themselves to theatrical careers. But after a new political
regime was installed throughout Italy by my restless contemporaries, the master
schools were suppressed and replaced by conservatoires in which, though good
traditions existed, absolutely nothing of bel canto was conserved.41

Once the supply of speakers of solfeggio dried up, it took little more than a gen-
eration for the entire language to vanish. Because its purpose and effectiveness only
 Epilogue 307

become apparent to initiates after years of punishing practice, later writers viewed
it as an unnecessarily complex, irrational, and pointless aberration of history. Why
use fiendishly difficult mutations between six-​syllable units to account for seven-​
note scales?
No wonder the nineteenth-​century professors who created our history of music
chose to ignore it. In their grand narrative of spontaneous genius, national spirit,
and masterworks, there was no room for an ancient Italian craft of solfeggio that
they did not (wish to) understand. They were no more prepared to put themselves
through the rigors of apprenticeship than we are, unless that apprenticeship involves
ten years of martial-​arts-​style training on an instrument aimed not at learning how
to compose or improvise but, rather, how to sonorize an inviolable score as flaw-
lessly as possible. The nineteenth-​century fixation on “great composers” and their
“masterpieces” laid the foundations for this museum culture that we call classical
music, but in the process it airbrushed from history the real story of how a handful
of Italian orphanages managed to produce the majority of the world’s greatest maes-
tros and virtuosos for almost two centuries.

Concluding Remarks

Teachers generally consider it a job well done when their students no longer need
them. Whether I have succeeded in this respect is not for me to say, but I end the
book in the hope that readers have acquired the tools, confidence, and interest to
engage productively with the eighteenth-​century solfeggio tradition. The first
part provided some context by outlining a typical apprenticeship in music and
acknowledging the central role of the Church in music education. Its patronage kept
alive the ancient practice of teaching the rudiments via plainchant, which instilled
the hexachordal solmization method that would later form the foundation for skills
in performance, improvisation, and melodic composition. The second part pro-
vided instruction in how to read a score with contemporary solmization syllables,
acknowledging a number of challenges and uncertainties. Though this in itself may
be of limited use, when combined with an ability to interpret handwritten traits of
vocalization and solmization dots, it allows us to shine a light on the long-​forgotten
craft of solfeggio training and to understand how musicians acquired the ability
to “speak” music through lived experience, singing and playing it like a language
with its own vocabulary and grammar. The third part sketched the beginnings of a
history of the solfeggio tradition, tracing its development through multiple strands
stemming from plainchant, counterpoint, and accompanied monody. These mixed
origins gave rise to a profound relativity between the different parts of a solfeggio,
requiring musicians to treat them alternately as melodies, counterpoints, and fig-
ured basses depending on didactic need.
Of course, much remains to be discovered and worked out. Further archival and
bibliographical research is needed to determine the extent of current holdings,
308 The Solfeggio Tradition

rectify cataloging errors, and try to answer myriad questions concerning prov-
enance, authorship, dating, and dissemination. More theoretical and historical
sources need to be consulted in order to refine the interpretive method proposed in
this book. Quantitative studies involving data analysis of the treatment of syllables
in thousands of sung lessons could grant valuable insights into the style and struc-
ture of eighteenth-​century music. Finally, so that the sources are available for study
and use, philological activity is required in order to produce scholarly and practical
editions, and applied research is needed to determine how they might inform cur-
rent approaches to music education, performance, and composition.
Now that the solfeggio tradition is no longer a completely forgotten art of melody,
I hope that it will find a place once again within a living culture of music making.
It has the potential to be more than simply a historical curiosity, of interest only to
academics. Its success as a pedagogical method, turning countless street children
into marketable professionals by encouraging them to speak music as a language,
surely merits the attention of educators. Could some degree of similar training give
today’s students the skill and assurance to create their own melodies and to person-
alize scores with individual touches, rather than simply realizing notes exactly as
they appear on a page? Instead of aspiring to produce performances that are vir-
tually identical to thousands of others and that never quite do justice to the com-
poser, students might, with historical solfeggio, be freed from the burden of getting
a piece right or wrong and empowered to express it with their own voice, just as an
eighteenth-​century maestro would have expected. Tests are already under way at
several European conservatories to see how students take to the method, and it has
been successfully tried with learners of all ages at summer schools. It might also be
worth putting to the test as a model for composing and teaching composition, as
it affords the capacity to adapt to accommodate a variety of styles. And having ex-
perienced just how central individual creativity was to eighteenth-​century music
practice, performers, too, might experiment with a new kind of authenticity by
rendering the same piece in multiple contrasting versions, as musicians did in the
past. Knowing that there was, and therefore still is, more than one way to sing do-​re-​
mi opens up a world of musical possibilities.
The solfeggio tradition tells a story not of preternatural beings born to create mu-
sical works that lesser mortals can only marvel at—​like the Bachs and Mozarts of
popular imagination—​but, rather, one of ordinary and often disadvantaged chil-
dren who were trained to make the most of their talents by means of an exception-
ally efficient pedagogical system developed by sustained mutual effort over the
course of generations. It is a story of human accomplishment achieved by means
of a fortuitous convergence of necessity, altruism, collaboration, opportunity, and
sheer hard work. It deserves to regain the place it once held in the minds of all who
swooned over Farinelli or marveled at Paganini as the foundation of one of the great
monuments of Western culture.
 Notes

Chapter 1

1. Peter van Tour’s UUSolf, The Uppsala Solfeggio Database, includes more than twelve thousand
individual items (http://​www2.musik.uu.se/​UUSolf/​UUSolf.php; accessed August 2019).
The bibliography lists additional sources.
2. Example 1.1 also survives in a collection of solfeggi attributed to Porpora, held in the archives
of the Minoritenconvent in Vienna: Solffeggi fugatti Del Sig.re Porpora Nicolo (A-​Wm, VI.
12834). Felix Diergarten (2011) makes the case that this manuscript may have been used in
private lessons given by Porpora during his stay in Vienna in 1753, when Haydn was earning
his keep by accompanying at the keyboard. Several features indicate that it was copied from
a master document (similar to those currently located in Naples) by a German-​speaking am-
ateur. The title page manages to mis spell both “solffeggi” and “fugatti” and includes a char-
acteristic marking over the letter u that was used to assist in the reading of Kurrent script;
the solfeggi contain copious performance markings and accidentals of the sort needed by
amateurs, especially in numbers 9 and 10; the “arpeggiato” solfeggio found in two Neapolitan
collections (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 333, no. 8 and Solfeggio 335, no. 10) is mistakenly entitled
“apoggiato”; and, most telling of all, not one of them resembles a genuine solfeggio fugato,
examples of which feature in Chapters 8, 9, and 11. In describing this collection as “fugatti,”
the anonymous copyist got it doubly wrong.
3. Ricupero (1803), 50: “i quali non mettevano mai i giovani al cembalo, se prima pel corso di
trè anni non si fossero istruiti nel solfeggio.” I am grateful to Nicoleta Paraschivescu for this
reference. All translations are the author’s unless stated otherwise.
4. Florimo (1869), 107 (emphasis in the original): “Dopo l’esercizio del solfeggio, che durava
per più anni e tutto il tempo che i maestri giudicavano necessario, giusta l’antico detto, reso
tradizionale nei Conservatorii, che chi canta suona, ogni alunno si dedicava, a seconda della
propria inclinazione, o al canto, o alla composizione, o ad imparare quello strumento che più
predileggeva.” Paraphrased in Florimo (1881–​83), 2:78.
5. The page is available at http://​faculty-​web.at.northwestern.edu/​music/​gjerdingen/​Solfeggi/​
aboutSolfe/​beginnersGuide.htm (accessed January 2019).
6. The page is available at http://​faculty-​web.at.northwestern.edu/​music/​gjerdingen/​Solfeggi/​
aboutSolfe/​histOverview.htm (accessed January 2019).
7. Gjerdingen (2011), 191.
8. Sigismondo (1820), translated as Apotheosis of Music (2016b), 6.
9. Gjerdingen (2007), 34–​40, cited from the preface to Tartini (1767): “comune Italiano sol-
feggio, ut, re, mi, fa, sol, re, mi, fa.”
10. The earliest mention of this practice occurs in Doni (1640), who apparently borrowed the
first syllable of his surname for the purpose, but Rousseau (1779, 366) claimed that “Italians
have always used do in place of ut.” The original ut nevertheless continued to appear in books
out of respect for tradition. Both Bononcini (1678, 35) and Penna (1679, 16) acknowledged
the everyday use of do while referring to it as ut.
11. The resemblance to its Renaissance archetype runs deeper than mere surface features.
Although ­example 1.3 can be dated to sometime between 1725 and 1744, it demonstrates
310 Notes

an awareness of mensuration practices more commonly connected with the late fifteenth-​
century writings of Tinctoris and Gafurius and traceable ultimately to Boethius. Not only
does its alla breve time signature indicate just that—​a tactus, or structural beat, at the level
of the breve rather than the more usual semibreve—​but it also involves notational devices
akin to mensuration. In m. 11 the two semibreves that make up the even division of the tactus
encompass six rather than four half-​notes. In Renaissance terms, “tempus imperfectum cum
prolatione imperfecta,” corresponding to the modern simple time signature of 2/​1, momen-
tarily switches to “prolatione perfecta,” similar to the modern compound time signature of 6/​
2. By marking the fundamental two-​part division of the bar, the tied crotchets on la rule out an
alternative interpretation of bar 11 as “tempus perfectum,” or three semibreves to be sung in
the time of two. Similar instances of mensuration in other solfeggi in stile antico suggest that
it cannot simply be dismissed as the result of missing triplet symbols. It presumably relates to
a curious revival of the antiquated alla breve time signature in the middle of the seventeenth
century. Bornstein (2001, 125) notes that whereas earlier composers favored the C symbol for
modern common time, collections of didactic duos for solmization from Giamberti (1657)
onward returned to the older system. The five trios in Piochi (1671) were printed first with a C
time signature and afterwards alla breve, with all rhythmic values doubled.
12. To cite a representative example, David Schulenberg (1995, 171) marginalizes the findings
of John Butt’s Music Education and the Art of Performance in the German Baroque (1994) by
claiming that it deals only with music education “as taught to boys, that is choristers in church
schools—​not the education of music professionals, such as organists or instrument makers.”
Instrument and cabinet makers aside, it is worth asking where organists were trained, if not
in the family or in church schools.
13. Riepel II (1755), 1–​18, at 11: “Ich habe übrigens das ut re mi fa hervor gesucht, welches ich
selbst in meiner Jugend gelernet. Denn fast jeder Schulmeister hat eine andere Art, seine
Knaben darinn zu unterweisen. Einer macht anstatt ut ein do, der andere anstatt mi ein
französches si, & c.”
14. Translations such as “figural chant” and “polyphony” are unsuitable for this book because
the notational system of canto figurato could apply to plainchant as well as up-​to-​date
compositions. I generally translate it as “figured melody” or “modern notation.”
15. The Archivio Histórico del Colegio de las Vizcaínas contains records from three colonial-​era
girls’ schools in Mexico City (see Lanam 2018). Of particular interest are sixty-​one exercises
in score reading by Francesco Feo, preserved in a “Calfskin-​bound Notebook of Lessons”
(MEX-​Mahn, Ms. 26-​I-​18).
16. Pulli (c. 1740; D-​MÜs, SANT Hs. 3351). Peter van Tour drew my attention to this important
source just as this book was going to press.
17. De La Fage (1854), 19.
18. This translation, adapted from Sanguinetti (2005), 462–​63, is notable for the omission of
the word form for tessitura. In modern Italian this translates as “weaving” or “fabric” and is
related, via its Latin root textura, to the English word texture. Ruta obviously uses tessitura
to refer to skills in shaping or structuring musical material, but this does not map precisely
onto the modern form, with its connotations of templates and functional units. Ruta (1877),
145–​47: “L’antica scuola napoletana, quantunque non avesse avuto un metodo scritto per
tale studio [lo studio della composizione cosiddetta ideale, cioè la teoria della forma] pure,
tradizionalmente adottava, per questa parte della scuola, lo studio della composizione del
solfeggio, il quale veniva nell’insegnamento riguardato come uno studio di logica e di estetica
musicale. Quindi nel solfeggio essi insegnavano lo svolgimento di un pensiero musicale, la
tessitura di cui è capace una frase melodica, le modulazioni che si addicono ad un canto, la
correttezza del basso, ed altresì la natura delle voci umane, ed il loro speciale carattere. Essi
calcolavano che la gioventù spinta dalla propria vivacità, e dalla poca esperienza, facilmente
 Notes 311

può scambiare la varietà di un pensiero melodico svolto da tutti i suoi lati, con la molteplicità
dei vari pensieri, in danno del vero bello e della unità; e con lunga pratica, empiricamente
ammaestravano a dominare questa vivacità, ed a guidarla secondo le leggi dell’arte: ed in
questa esercitazione insegnavano altresì la tessitura che costituisce il pezzo di musica. La tes-
situra è difficile prescriverla astrattamente; e prescrivendola, diverrebbe una falsariga su la
quale l’addiscente formerebbe le sue composizioni: questo sarebbe lo stesso che imparare a
dipingere, disegnando col compasso, ciò ucciderebbe l’arte. Ma se nell’insegnamento si deve
bandire un formolario per le speciali tessiture, benissimo si possono dettare di norme generali
del bello musicale, le quali sieno di guida al giovane studente. Quantunque i vecchi maestri
della nostra Scuola non avessero determinate queste norme, pure con la pratica esercitazione
del solfeggio dettavano le loro norme a tenore della frase melodica del discepolo medesimo;
di maniera che educavano il gusto speciale dell’allievo col lungo tirocinio del fare, evitando
con cura il frasario convenzionale.”
19. Lee (1887), 91.

Chapter 2

1. The account of Joseph Haydn’s early life is reconstructed from the biographies by Griesinger
(1810, 6–​14), Dies (1810, 11–​41), and Carpani (1812, 13–​31), with additional information
from Pohl and Botstiber (1878, 1–​198), including Haydn’s autobiographical note of 1776
(381). Translations of Griesinger and Dies can be found in Gotwals (1968).
2. The Harrach family possessed a large collection of Neapolitan music for this purpose, ac-
quired by Count Alois Thomas Raimund Harrach while he was viceroy of Naples from 1728
to 1733; see Fabris (2013), 115.
3. Villeneuve de Listonay (1756), 104: “Il est d’usage parmi les Artisans qui ont une nombreuse
famille, de destiner dès le berceau un de leurs enfants à la Prêtrise pour jouir de quelques
privilèges attachés à cet état.”
4. Dies (1810), 21: “fleißig die Tonleiter singen, um die Stimme rein, fest, und geläufig zu bilden.”
5. Burney (1775), 244. The Capellhaus and adjoining buildings were demolished in 1804.
6. Haydn to Mademoiselle Leonore, July 6, 1776, cited in Pohl and Botstiber (1878), 381: “Ich
schriebe fleißig, doch nicht ganz gegründet, bis ich endlich die Gnade hatte von dem
berühmten Herrn Porpora (so dazumal in Wien wäre) die ächten Fundamente der Setzkunst
zu erlehrnen”. Translation from Diergarten (2011), 53. With the exception of Diergarten
(2011), scholars have been reluctant to accept Haydn’s unequivocal statement that Porpora’s
teachings were central to his development as a composer. See, e.g., Wyn Jones (2002, 289),
which attempts to reconcile the claim “Haydn received any formal instruction from Porpora
is doubtful” with Haydn’s own claim, recorded in Griesinger (1810, 14), that he “greatly
profited from Porpora in singing, in composition, and in the Italian language.”
7. van Tour (2015, 89) provides an outline of the curriculum based on Imbimbo (1821). Giovanni
Angelini Bontempi’s Historia Musica (1695, 170) gives an account of a castrato’s daily round
of lessons in Roman singing schools: “The schools in Rome required the students each day to
undertake one hour of singing difficult and complicated things [solfeggi?], in order to acquire
experience; another hour in the execution of the trill; another in that of passaggi; another in
the study of language; and another in the mastery and training of singing, in the presence of
the Maestro and in front of a mirror, to accustom them to avoid unwanted motions of the
body, face, eyelashes, or mouth. And all of this took place in the morning. After midday they
undertook half an hour of training in theory; another half hour of counterpoint on a canto
fermo; one hour receiving and working on exemplars of counterpoint upon their erasable
312 Notes

tablets; another hour in language studies; and the rest of the day exercising upon the harp-
sichord, and composing a few psalms, motets or canzonettas, or other types of melody in an
approved style” (my translation). Cardinal Pignatelli’s “Rules” (1728, 78–​79) for the Poveri
di Gesù Cristo Conservatory in Naples set out a detailed daily itinerary. The precise hours
shifted so as always to start with sunrise. Taking the waking hour to be 06.00, the daily routine
was as follows: “06.00 wake-​up; 06.45 mental prayer; 07.15 breakfast; 07.45 grammar lesson;
09.45 chapel lessons [i.e., in music]; 11.45 end of lessons; 12.00 lunch; 12.30 recreation; 13.00
rest; 13.30 wake-​up; 14.00 grammar lesson; 14.30 chapel lessons [i.e., in music]; 18.00 rosary
[prayer] of B. V.; 18.15 dormitory study; 21.00 dinner; 21.30 recreation; 22.00 examination of
conscience; 22.30 bedtime” (my translation).
8. Deutsch (1966), 184.
9. Lee (1887), 91.
10. Fabris (2007), 220.
11. Landon (1980), 56.
12. The term is borrowed from the Hesse-​Darmstadt court, where, in 1760, Albrecht Ludwig
Abele was employed as organist and “Pädagog-​ Kantor” to teach the rudiments to
“Kapellknaben.” See S. Owens, Reul, and Stockigt (2011), 362.
13. Villeneuve de Listonay (1756), 103: “Le nombre des Musiciens y est si prodigieux, que j’y
ai vû, ainsi qu’à Rome, en une même jour dans cinq ou six Églises différentes, une Musique
formée de cinquante, soixante & quatre-​vingts Musiciens.”
14. Burney (1773), 314.

Chapter 3

1. Sanguinetti (2012), 39, citing Bono (1988).

2. Gianturco (1993), 115.
3. Ursprung (1931, 203–​21) describes the loosening of the link between liturgy and figural music.
4. Challoner (1737), cited in Zon (1999), 5.
5. Bryant and Quaranta (2015), 97. To juxtapose music’s spiritual and mundane functions is not
to disparage the Church. All religious institutions need to fund their activities somehow.
6. Kolneder (1982), 81–​82.
7. Burney (1773), 37.
8. Goudar (1777), 48–​65.
9. Berlioz (1990), 137.
10. Rolle (1784), 73.
11. Pope Benedict XIV, Annus qui (1749), translated in Hayburn (1979), 104.
12. Black (2007), 5–​21.
13. See Coronelli (1700), cited in Bryant and Quaranta (2015), 97.
14. Hiley (1993), 12; Talbot (1995), 63–​64.
15. Harper (1991), 45–​57; Hiley (1993), 7–​22.
16. Talbot (1995), 30–​37.
17. Thompson (1744), 247, cited in Talbot (1995), 55.
18. Fabris (2007), 28.
19. Di Giacomo (1924), 88–​95; Sanguinetti (2012), 39.
20. Florimo (1869), 102–​14.
21. Burney (1773), 304. The usual wine drunk by the students at the Poveri di Gesù Cristo was
called Castelnuovo. Castratos enjoyed the higher-​quality “Tears of Christ” (Lacryma Christi)
from vineyards on Mount Vesuvius.
 Notes 313

22. Anon., Regole e Statuti del Real Conservatorio della Pietà dei Torchini da osservarsi dalli
Ministri, Maestri, Alunni e Serventi, Anno Domini 1746 (I-​Nc, 5.5.4/​7).
23. Introiti si hanno in questo Cons[ervatorio]rio de Poveri di Giesù Xto a’ p[ri]mo Gen[na]ro 1725
D. Oronzio Imbriani [Rettore], (I-​Nasd, D 41): “2 grane e 20 tarì . . . Ric[evu]to da S. Patrizia
per servizio di una voce mandata de’ nostri figlioli, e fù Jesi.” Quoted in Cafiero (2005),
247–​48 n. 17.
24. Florimo (1869), 108.
25. A list of church services with music that took place in Venice in 1700 can be found in Bryant
and Quaranta (2015), 99–​117. The orders of service for the four ospedali are set out in Groppo
(1752).
26. Talbot (1995), 87.
27. Coronelli (1700), 26, 35, cited in Bryant and Quaranta (2015), 92–​93: “Cospicue sono le
musiche di questa città, e più frequentate che in ogn’altra dell’Europa, particolarmente nel
vestirsi e far professione di monache e nelle solennità proprie di molte chiese. . . . [N]‌on vi è
giorno in tutto l’anno che con molto apparato non si esponga il Venerabile, e le feste in luoghi
diversi.”
28. Edward Wright (1730), I, 44–​100 (relating to the years 1720–​22); Johann Georg Keysler
(1758), 4:151–​60, 185–​204 (for the 1730s); Karl Ludwig von Pöllnitz (1734–​38); Charles de
Brosses (1799), 3:243 (for 1739–​40); Samuel Sharp (1767) (for 1765); and Charles Burney
(1773), 143–​98 (for 1770).

Chapter 4

1. Powers (2000), 276.

2. In many German regions Tridentine chant was embraced as a catalyst for reform. It persisted
in some orders into the nineteenth century, especially among Dominicans.
3. Burney (1773), 147.
4. Cited in Berlioz (1990), 134.
5. Riedel (1977), 72–​145. See also Wyn Jones (1996).
6. Burney (1773), 214.
7. See Olleson (2000).
8. Burney (1773), 214.
9. Antoniotto (1760), 1:105; italics in the original.
10. The applicants were Francesco Durante, Domenico Auletta, Carlo Cotumacci, Giuseppe Di
Majo, Nicola Sala, . . . Galletti, . . . Granucci, Giuseppe Marchitti, and M. Valentini. Di Majo
was appointed to the post. Sala’s test piece was reprinted in his Regole (1794), 1:143–​45. See
van Tour (2015), 179.
11. Francesco Salari, “Secondo Libro di Contraponto,” fols. 14r–​15v. The term contraponto ob-
bligato relates to a long tradition of obbligo counterpoint, that is, a technical constraint or
“restriction” consisting either of note values (as in Fux’s five species), pitch, or rhythm. The
method is outlined in Zarlino (1573, chap. 40) and documented fully in Berardi (1687).
According to van Tour (2015), 198–​99, Salari (1751–​1828) probably began his career as a boy
soprano at the cathedral in Bergamo, later studying under Carlo Cotumacci, Joseph Doll, and
Niccolò Piccinni at the Onofrio Conservatory. He is remembered today chiefly for having
taught Donizetti to sing.
12. Archivio Diocesano di Molfetta, Piazza Giovene, 4, Molfetta; see Magarelli (2006), 9–​58.
The style of Cozzoli’s concerted music lends weight to the claim that he studied with Fedele
Fenaroli at the San Loreto Conservatory in Naples.
314 Notes

13. Giovanni Ghelucci and Michele Puccini, “Officium Sanctissimi Cordis Jesu A. D. 1829” (I-​Li,
M.37). This manuscript is on display at the Museo di Celle dei Puccini in the village of Celle,
near Pescaglia. The “Fondo Puccini” at the library of the Istituto Musicale Luigi Boccherini,
Lucca, contains a representative selection of Italian ecclesiastical music from approximately
1730 to 1870.
14. De Vecchis (1850), 1:86–​88: “l’Antifona . . . in uno dei tanti manoscritti, salvati dalle vicende
dei Tempi . . . e quasi dell’Epoca di Guido di Arezzo, ed è del tutto simile, a quella che oggi si
canta nel Corale di questo Monistero.” The chant was likely Beneventan.
15. Ursprung (1931), 228–​39 surveys the parallel concertante and antico traditions of eighteenth-​
century church music.
16. Cantus ecclesiasticus sacræ historiæ passionis domini nostri Jesu Christi, secundum quatuor
evangelistas (Ex Ducali Campidonensi Typographeo: per Andream Stadler, 1763), discussed
in Landon (1978), 291–​92.
17. My emphasis; Vicario delle Monache (I-​ Nasd, 259 D), cited in Fiore (2015), 105–​
6: “Avvertendo, che non si ammettano à cantare il Passio altri, se non che Sacerdoti, ed
ogn’uno di essi canti di canto fermo, e la sua parte solamente. Proibendo espressamente a’
detti Sacerdoti di cantare la parte della Turba in terzetto, ma che non recedeno, né pure una
nota dal canto fermo. L’Offici, Lamentazioni, Lezzioni, e Responsorii, si cantino di canto
fermo, senza trilli, e passaggi di sorte alcuna, e senza Organo, dalle Monache solamente, e
non dalle figliuole secolari.”
18. See, e.g., the anonymous eighteenth-​century Regole della Musica Imparate à cantare (“Rules
of Music,” I-​Rn, MSS Musicali 137, fol. 32v), which adds a variety of accidentals to render the
tunes more “tonal” in character. The first church tone, in authentic Dorian mode, includes
cadences from F♯ to G and from G♯ to A.
19. Manfredini, quoted in Zappulla (2013), 122.
20. Lundberg (2011), 7–​9.
21. Scorpione (1702), 2.
22. Rosa da Cairano (1788), 7.
23. Ibid., 9.
24. Zon (1999), 20.
25. Ibid., 36.
26. Papal brief of October 25, 1577, cited in ibid., 16.
27. Hiley (1993), 615–​16.
28. See Veltman (2004), 53, 73–​74. Because the Italian adjective fratto pertains to mathemat-
ical fractions, I translate the term as “fractional chant” rather than the more usual “broken
song.” Santoro (1715, 40) opposes canto fratto to fermo and defines it as that which includes
“modern” rhythmic figures such as dotted notes, the crotchet (semiminima, a black dia-
mond with tail), the quaver (croma, a black diamond with hooked tail), and the semiquaver
(semicroma, a black diamond with doubly hooked tail).
29. Zon (1999), 21–​22. The Roman gradual of 1668 added a fourth rhythmic symbol: an angled
diamond, worth half a true diamond.
30. See Montagnier (2006) on the political background of these reforms.
31. Zon (1999), 37–​42.
32. The notation in the Medicean Gradual regularly features the following ancient neumes, the
rhythmic connotations of which are indicated here by B (breve) and L (long): podatus and
clivis (BL), porrectus and torculus (BBL), and descending two-​or three-​note diagonal beams
(obliquae), with or without stem.
33. Zon (1999, 37–​38). Zon illustrates these three categories with chants from pages 270, 277, and
289 of La Feillée (originally published in 1748). But his transcriptions contain numerous cru-
cial differences with the same chants as presented on pages 350, 359, and 368 of the “revised
 Notes 315

and corrected” third edition (1760): They omit the “3” time signatures and place many bar
lines and tailed notes in different positions. This suggests that engraved chants in editions of
La Feillée should be treated with caution by scholars.
34. Hiley (2009), 184–​93. Veltman (2004, 136) argues in favor of the declamatory-rhythmic
interpretation.
35. North, Officio della beatissima Vergine Maria (1761), 440.
36. Busse Berger (1993), 1.
37. Some German organists continued to notate the chant in canto fermo and the accompanying
bass in canto figurato. Ursprung (1931, 202) presents an example of this from a “Directorium
chori organicum” used at the Bavarian monastery of Weyarn in 1723.
38. See Muir (2008), 68. The familiar common time version of the hymn derives from a tran-
scription into modern notation by Samuel Webbe the Elder, in his Motetts and Antiphons
(1792).
39. Santoro (1715), 34: “Le Note del Canto Fermo sono tutte uguali, ò pure vi è l’inegualità trà
di loro?”
40. Ibid., 35: “Solamente si devono usare le Note d’ineguale valore nel metrio, e non nel Canto
profatico; e che la coda, che tengono alcune Note, sia solamente per ornamento, e per
vaghezza dell’orecchio.”
41. Ibid., 35 (emphasis in the original): “Vero è, che non pretendo soggettare il Canto Fermo à
qualche rigoroso tempo, ò battuta, nè voglio assomigliarlo à qualche altra specie di Canto
misurato, ma solo quì intendo dimostrare l’osservazione, che hò fatta, così negl’antichi, come
moderni libri Corali, quali tutti sono composti con varie sorte di Note; nè devo credere, che
siano state poste à capriccio, perche se fusse [sic] così (come alcuni gratis asserunt) per qual
ragione non sono state corrette, e levate via tante forme di Note? Dunque non è il capriccio,
nè la vaghezza, ma vi sarà il fine, avendo il significato.”
42. Ibid., 35: “Dunque è necessaria l’inegualità del valore delle Note nel Canto Fermo.”
43. Ibid., 36–​37: “E poi non può negarsi, che è più grato all’Orecchio il Canto guidato con tal
regolata misura, che senza regola, e sciolto: onde à mio giudizio direi, che quando può
osservarsi la regola della battuta per la copia de’ buoni Cantori, si deve usare, perche quelle
cose fatte colla certa, e determinate regola difficilmente falliscono, anzi maggiormente
risplendono; e quando poi per la scarsezza de’ Cantori non può osservarsi il regolato tempo,
s’abbia almeno la mira à caminare [sic] uguale, e l’uno presti l’ubbidienza, & orecchio all’altro,
acciò non si commettano le dissonanze, come alcune volte si sente cantare la metà del Coro
speditamente, e gl’altri più tardamente battere le Note, non senza grave disturbo dell’orecchio
devoto de’ fedeli ascoltanti.”
44. Ibid., 7. The terms major and minor usually referred to the proportion of minims to
semibreves, called “prolation” in the mensural system. Santoro specifically uses them in re-
lation to longs and breves in plainchant and further muddies the water by describing this as
“tempo,” which normally referred to the proportion of semibreves to breves.
45. This story is told in the prefatory dedication to Paisiello in Rosa da Cairano (1788).
46. Sigismondo (1820), 2:148–​49: “E qui ripeto con accertanza, che quelli che veramente nell’ arte
Musica vuol divenire gran Maestro, bisogna che di buon ora attenda a divenir gran cantante.
Parlo per esperienza. Molti de’ più eccellenti Compositori, sono stati prima eccellentissimi
cantanti, e ne porto in esempio l’ultimo eccellentissimo Haiden, grande, e rispettabile
compositore per vocale, e strumentale, che nella sua gioventù fu ottimo, e rinomato cantante;
parlo per bocca del fu Jommelli, che avendolo conosciuto in Germania, e me ne vantava il di
lui merito, gusto, ed intelligenza.” Translation adapted from van Tour (2015), 86.
47. Ferrari (1818), page B.
48. Porterfield (2014, 185–​95, 231–​325) explains the origins and applications of this technique as
the “re-​la, re-​fa rule.”
316 Notes

Chapter 5

1. For a full account of “erasure tablets,” see Owens (1998), 74–​107.

2. Rousseau (1768), trans. Waring (1779), 55.
3. A few guides to canto fermo, such as Cerone (1609), used a five-​line staff from the start.
4. Pasquini (1715), fols. 22r–​30v.
5. By the 1400s, the largest conceivable gamut contained sixteen pitches in an octave: seven
white notes plus flats on B, E, A, D, and G and sharps on F, C, G, and D. Prosdocimus de
Beldemandis (c. 1425) added a sharp on A to create a seventeen-​note octave. The largest
gamut for practical use contained twelve notes per octave: seven white notes plus flats on
B, E, and A and sharps on F and C (see Berger [1989], 109). Belli (1788, 63) cites Martini
(1774–​76, 1:30) to argue that canto fermo should use only the “diatonic genera,” i.e., the nat-
ural gamut, although he concedes on pp. 88–​89 that many modern maestros make use of
the “chromatic genera” up to two sharps (on F and C). In his accompanying examples he
transposes hexachords to ensure that mi always falls on a sharp. Lazaro Venanzio Belli was
canon and choirmaster at the episcopal seminary in Tuscolano, Rome.
6. In individual chants, the clefs did not necessarily indicate middle C and the F below it. There
were three C-​clefs, one for each of the three registers, and two F-​clefs, one low and one high.
7. Santoro (1715), 78–​80: “Tritono, ò quarta maggiore insopportabile . . . è di tanta asprezza,
che partorisce un dispiacevole, e pessimo effetto, che crudelmente l’udito ferisce, oltre l’essere
scabrosissimo à cantarsi.” Hughes (1972, 85–​86) argues, “Almost no evidence of the period
[1350–​1450] supports the conventional modern claim that melodic tritones were prohib-
ited in early music.” This does not hold true for eighteenth-​century canto fermo. Countless
sources rail against the tritone. There were, however, exceptions, as acknowledged by Nerici’s
three categories of tritone (“natural, tolerable, and dissonant”) and four rules for their use
(1874, 30–​36). An anonymous treatise of 1777, cited in Ruiz Torres (2013), 289—​Breve
explicación que sea canto llano y sus divisiones (E-​Mn, sig. M/​1779, fol. 16v)—​maintains that a
melodic tritone is acceptable if separated by a comma or period.
8. These standard rules for avoiding tritones are set out in countless sources; see, e.g., Tettamanzi
(1756), 20; Rosa da Cairano (1788), 82–​87; and Belli (1788), 142–​47.
9. The natural sign is made up of two “square” B signs, one pointing upward and the other
downward. It graphically represents the ability of the square B to effect a modulation both
sharpward and flatward around the circle of fifths, as explained in Chapter 9.
10. Rosa da Cairano (1788), 83: “Per moderare, e scanzare detto Trittono [sic], dovrassi porre il
b. molle (quando la natura del Canto non ricerca il contrario) nella voce mi col leggere fa in
vece di mi, e si chiamarebbe quarta minore, ed in vece di dire fa sol re mi; si dovrà dire fa sol
la fa.”
11. See Afonso de André (2005), 166–​89.
12. This rule is explained clearly in Rosa da Cairano (1788), 87.
13. Some eighteenth-​century maestros did, however, allow limited modulation to occur in canto
fermo. Belli (1788, 88) complained that they treated the ♯ sign as if it had the power of B-​mi
and sang sharped notes as mi, resulting in chromatic hexachords on D and A (in effect, the
modern scale of D major). On p. 157 Belli countered this by providing an example to illus-
trate that the notes F♯ and C♯ should not alter the syllables in canto fermo.
14. Larramendi (1828), 15, as cited in Ruiz Torres (2013), 287: “No es fácil dar una regla fija sobre
esto, pues la naturaleza del canto obliga á hacer el signo de alteración unas veces sustenido en
fa y otras veces bemol en si para evitar el tritono. Aunque algunos autores dicen que el tritono
en tercero y cuarto tono se debe evitar siempre, poniendo sustenido en fa por no destruir su
propio diapente, el que suponen que debe guardarse, y en los demás tonos haciendo bemol
 Notes 317

en si; pero esta regla no está fundada en razón alguna, porque la esperiencia es menester que
demuestre con ejemplos las verdaderas leyes de la naturaleza del canto.”
15. Tritto (1759), fol. 12v, gives an alternative lesson on avoiding the E-​B♭ tritone.
16. Cerone (1613), chap.25, “Epilogo de los terminos y formaciones de los xij Tonos accidentales,
con unos aiusos tocantes à esta materia,” 925: “Aduiertan que todas las formaciones
accidentales, se causan con dezir Fa en los Mies, por la fuerça desta ♭ señal de be mol; ò con
dezir Mi, con la fuerça desta otra ♯ señal, que es de be quadrado.”
17. In the Spanish Empire, ficta practice persisted at least though the turn of the eighteenth
century. See, e.g., Andrés Lorente’s (1672) treatise El Porqué de la Música, which discusses
hexachordal solmization with ficta as a living practice as late as 1672. The rule for singing flats
always as fa in cycles of fifths is set out on pp. 39–​49 of book 1. Cashner (2015) shows that
throughout the seventeenth century Spanish villancico manuscripts relied on performers to
supply unnotated accidentals. He focuses on two pieces, one from Puebla, Mexico (1657) and
another from Montserrat in Catalonia (c. 1660), which use the “cautionary sharps” identified
by Don Harrán. These tell the singer when not to add a sharp. He also explores a piece from
Zaragoza (c. 1700) that takes “false” music as a poetic conceit and identifies a large number of
pieces with poetic texts that play on solmization syllables.
18. Buttstett (c. 1716), 132–​43; Greco (c. 1720), fol. 6r; Tettamanzi (1756), 48.
19. Bent (2002, 32–​33) provides a list of prioritized rules, inferred from Aaron’s appendix to the
Toscanello in Musica (1529), and on pp. 77–​78 provides melodic rules drawn from five early
fourteenth-​century treatises by Jean de Muris. Afonso de André (2005, 277) cautions against
assuming fixed rules for musica ficta. He points out that there never was a single cohesive
strain of regulatory language governing all musical situations.
20. Valente’s Scale for Soprano or Tenor (c. 1811; I-​Nc, 18-​3-​1/​Solfeggio 416), fol. 1v, includes a
G major scale solmized to hard melody, ignoring all sharps. His Solfeggi and Little Duets (I-​
Mc, Noseda I-​88-​1), fol. 1v, solmizes scales of D major and E major in the same way. This may
explain why the authorities at the Loreto Conservatory disciplined him about his teaching
in 1788.
21. Frittelli (1744), 19–​20: “In Napoli particolarmente vi sono più maestri i quali tutti insegnano
diversamente l’uno dall’altro. Vi sono per fine alcuni che non usano giammai cambiar lettura
in qualunque diesis che incontrino, ma solamente alterano la voce.”
22. See, e.g., Agricola (1757/​1995), 62; Tonelli (1762), fol. 18v.
23. See Solano (1764), 1–​15; L. Sabbatini (1789–​90), 1:39.
24. Chants in modes 1 (Dorian), 3 (Phrygian), and 7 (Mixolydian) could sometimes end on a
“subfinal,” one note lower than the final. Eighteenth-​century textbooks seldom mention this.
25. Tritto (1759), fol. 15r, also taught how to identify the modes from the first notes of the
standard intonations. Mode I typically began with fa-​sol-​la, for instance, whereas modes II
and VIII started with do-​re-​fa.
26. This lesson on modes III/​IV occurs in Tritto (1759), fol. 12r.
27. Further evidence that the Phrygian mode was heard as a minor key in the eighteenth cen-
tury can be found in Bertalotti, Regole utilissime (1713), which states that the minor is related
to modes finishing on re and mi: “Maestro: I meant to speak about other kinds of Modes
[Tuoni]; I mean those that number two, eight, or twelve. Disciple: I have learned that those
who count two [modes] speak as they do in general discourse, of the minor mode and the
major mode: the minor has the minor third and [relates to] those that terminate on Re [D or
A] and on Mi [E]‌; and the major has the major third and [relates to] those that terminate on
Do [C or G] and Fa [F].” Translation from Brover-​Lubovsky (2008), 27.
28. Elements . . . 1762 (I-​Rn, MSS Musicali 55), fol. 6v.
29. Rules of Music (I-​Rn, MSS Musicali 137), fol. 3v: “La Mutazione principia dal fà, e termine nel
fà. Dicesi di 4.a che è di Quattro note di 5.a che è di cinque, e questa è la regola più necessaria a
318 Notes

solfeggiare, e cantar bene.” Belli (1788, 71–​84) provides a clear explanation of this technique,
with diagrams. See also Panerai (1780), 2.
30. It is directly related to the schema called the 8-​♭7-​6-​♮7-​8 in Hepokoski and Darcy (2006) and
the “Quiescenza” in Gjerdingen (2007).
31. Rules of Music (I-​Rn, MSS Musicali 137), fol. 24r: “Questo solfeggio, è stato replicato, per far
conoscere, che un terzo B:Moll accidentale muta Tono.”
32. See, e.g., Kircher (1650), vol. 1, bk. 5, 216–​17; Tevo (1706), 8; and Veracini (c. 1730), 207.
33. See, e.g., Samber (1704), 1–​38. In keeping with Johann Bugenhagen’s Schulordnung of 1634,
boys of all ages and abilities were trained in musica choralis and musica figuralis. They also
maintained the medieval tradition of singing Latin hymns at the beginning and end of each
school day; cf. Carter (2002), 24–​25.
34. Representative and corresponding accounts of the figures that characterized canto figurato
can be found in Scaletta ([1626]), 1–​5; Penna (1679), 28–​40; Greco (c. 1720), fol. 6r; Ruffa
(1701), 2–​5; Scorpione (1701, 95); Fattore (c. 1710), fol. 3r; Cotumacci (c. 1755), fol. 1v–​
3r; Bertalotti (1764), 73–​74; and Sabbatini (1789–​90), I, 7–​20. Ruffa (1701, 21–​55) gives a
lengthy account of the relation between renaissance mensuration symbols and modern time
signatures.
35. E.g., Ruffa (1701), 21.
36. Ibid., 23–​30; see Apel (1949), 98.
37. Ibid., 30.
38. Sabbatini (1789–​ 90), 1:14: “Questo è il Segno del tempo Minore detto comunamente
Ordinario, e Perfetto . . . Dicesi Minore, perchè questo è l’unico tempo che dentro il
termine della sua battuta porti il valore di una semplice figura: Ordinario, perchè viene più
frequentemente degli altri tempi usato nelle cantilene: Perfetto, perchè à le sue parti eguali.”
39. In a contemporary manuscript copy of Porpora’s Germanico in Germania (I-​MC, 1.A.15–​17),
for instance, which was composed in 1732 for the carnival season in Rome, the orchestral
dance that concludes the sinfonia is notated as if in 6/​4 with a 3/​4 time signature (Act I, fol.
6r), as is the allegro aria “Saggio è il Cultor che suelle pianta di vane foglie” (Act III, fol. 35v).
The aria “Al sole i lumi” is notated as if in 6/​8 with a 3/​8 time signature (Act I, fol. 30v), and
Ersina’s aria “Se possono i tuoi rai vedermi ogn’or penar” (Act III, fol. 13r) has an alla breve
time signature indicating two semibreves to the bar.
40. The dual categories of contrappunto osservato and commune originated in the second part of
Diruta’s Il Transilvano (1609) and were developed further by Scacchi (1649) and especially
Berardi (1681). Their significance is often overstated in modern music studies owing to the
importance placed on Fux’s (1725) five species of strict counterpoint, which can be traced
through Zacconi (1622) back to Diruta (1609).
41. Barnett (2008), 163–​97.
42. Scorpione (1702), 2: “Il Canto Figurato è quello, che con figure differenti di forma, e di
valore, hora con celeri, ed hora con tardi movimenti procede armoniosamente per Intervalli
Diatonici, e Cromatici, e viene usato nelle Chiese, ne’ Teatri, ed in ogni luogo.”
43. Scorpione (1701), 95.
44. Burney (1969), 77.
45. See Magarelli (2006), 9–​58; Romano (1842), 2:88. According to Butt (1994, 60) choralis no-
tation was replaced by figuralis in Germany around the year 1700, although both systems
appear in Quirsfeld (1675), which was reprinted until 1717.
46. So-​called clefless compositions in the fifteenth century used a very similar system of fa-​clefs
that specified the pattern of fourths and fifths between fa syllables on a staff while leaving the
choice of pitch open; see Christofferson (2009).
47. Exactly the same reading process applies to plainchant staves with fa-​clefs on F and B♭. Of
course, this system only worked for singing. When apprentices learned an instrument, they
 Notes 319

had to identify specific pitches on the staff by letter name. In order to make this process easier,
each instrument was associated with a particular clef.
48. Similar illustrations appear in many sources, e.g. Arcadelt (1603), app. E, 10; Penna (1679),
24–​25; Anon., Primi Elementi di Musica (c. 1707; I-​Bc, G.48), 14–​15. Sabbatini (1789–​90,
1:41, paragraph 79) explains his adaptation of this rule.
49. Altieri, Canone finitu ad unisonu tribus vocibus (1769; I-​NT): “Io vo’ cantar la scala do re mi
fà sol la.”

Chapter 6

1. Agricola (1757/​1995), 8; Hiller (1780/​2001), xxix, 47; Ricupero (1803), 50; Imbimbo (1821),
6; Florimo (1869), 107.
2. Hiller (1780), xxix: “In den italiänischen Schulen wird länger als ein Jahr blos solmizirt, das
ist, mit Buchstaben, und den guidonischen Sylben gesungen.” Beicken’s translation (2001,
47–​48) mistakenly implies that they solmized “alone.”
3. Imbimbo (1821), 6: “Dans les premières années, les élèves solfiaient sans chanter; ils
nommaient seulement les notes, et battaient la mesure. Lorsque la voix était formée, après
l’époque critique où chaque voix mue chez les deux sexes, on les faisait solfier séparément,
et en chantant; car on était persuadé qu’on ne pouvait connaître et corriger ses défauts, qu’en
la faisant chanter seule. Pour affermir les élèves dans l’intonation, on les exerçait dans les
marceaux d’ensemble, sans le secours des instruments.”
4. Florimo (1869), 107: “Nei primi anni gli alunni solfeggiavano senza cantare: essi nominavano
solamente le note e battevano la misura.” Paraphrased in Florimo (1881–​83), 2:78.
5. These are often difficult to spot. The seventy-​one solfeggi in Leo (1756; GB-​Lbl, Add.
31617) contain numerous typical examples: the sol attached to G in m. 34 of the C major
Allegro on fol. 17v; the re attached to A♯ in m. 16 of the E minor Larghetto on fol. 19r; the sol
attached to A in m. 16 of the B minor Cantabile on fol. 21r; and the mi attached to G♯ in m. 34
of the B minor Allegro on fol. 21v.
6. As in Banchieri (1623), 22: “L’accidente ♯ diesis altro non è, che un adolcir la voce.” In the
fourth solfeggio in Paisiello (1804; see ex. 6.18), chromatic passing notes are described as
“interim syllable-​notes” (mezze voce) because they occupy the vocalized spaces between fun-
damental solmized notes (which were called voces in the gamut).
7. Tritto (1759), fol. 3r; Leo, Canto Fermo (First Elements or Hexachordal Solfeggio (1730s?;
I-​Nc, 34.4.13), fol. 1r.
8. A representative account can be found in Gafurius (1492), bk. 5, chap. 6.
9. Mengozzi (2006), 440.
10. “Mi und Fa sunt tota Musica.” Cited as an “old proverb” (altes Proverbio) in Gengenbach
(1626, 6) and reaffirmed in the title of Buttstett (c. 1716).
11. Tosi (1723), 53, citing Tevo (1706), 61; paraphrased from Chiodino (1610), 1:7.
12. Smith (2011), 26–​27. Bonnie Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-​Strevens discuss this sexual
aspect in their edited volume Eroticism in Early Modern Music (2015).
13. Although most surviving sources of basic lessons were intended for girl and boy trebles and
use the soprano clef, they rarely include syllables. Sources employing the tenor clef that were
intended for trainee clergy, on the other hand, commonly contain fully annotated examples,
which explains why I have opted to cite them in this chapter. Eighteen-​year-​old novices were
evidently slower learners than apprenticed children.
14. Johannes Afflighemensis (c. 1100) was the first major theorist to refer to this system, but it
was not fully described until the thirteenth century.
320 Notes

15. Some theorists accounted for frequently encountered transpositions of these scales, as well
as accidentals required to avoid faulty intervals in polyphony, by means of a third type with a
two-​flat key signature called cantus fictus, or “false melody.”
16. See, e.g., Anon. (c. 1700–​30; I-​Fn, Magl. XIX, 43), fol. 3v; Avella (1657), 8–​13; Penna (1679),
21; and Sabbatini (1789–​90), 1:23–​24.
17. Anon. (c. 1700–​30; I-​Fn, Magl. XIX, 43). The unknown cantor who penned this brief guide
did not bother to fill in the notes of the high natural hexachord, which explains their inclu-
sion in ­example 6.5 in square brackets. Another hastily sketched guide to solmization from
the early eighteenth century appears in an anonymous manuscript collection of solfeggi (D-​
MÜs, Sant Hs xy 80), fol. 1r (“how to read in b. molle”) and fol. 2v (“how to read [a minor
scale] in b. molle”).
18. Sabbatini (1789–90), 1:51.
19. This is explained by Chafe (1992).
20. Bertalotti (4th ed., 1764), 73–​74.
21. It appears, for instance, in Banchieri (1614), 66; Avella (1657), 15; and Penna (1679), 13. It
also underpins the Galant Neapolitan method set out in Solano (1764), 31–​41.
22. De Vecchis (1850), 1:82: “Tuoni fondamentali.”
23. This is described in, e.g., Banchieri (1614), 13–​14; Ruffa (1701), 6; Sabbatini (1789–​90), 1:53;
and Valente (I-​Mc, Noseda Q-​13-​19), fol. 1r.
24. Penna (1679), 21. See also Penna (1689), 15–​17, where the plainchant origins of his scala
grande are made explicit.
25. Ornithoparcus (1517, 1:5, 21); Praetorius (1614–​20 [1619], 3:3, 31). See also Bononcini
(1678), 35–​37.
26. Tritto (1759), fol. 5r: “fà finto.” Although this Italian term translates most closely as “feigned,”
I have opted to use “false” to convey the sense of “not the real fa.” See also Anon., Elementi del
Canto Fermo [ . . . ] 1762 (I-​Rn, MSS Musicali 55), fol. 2r. Tritto distinguishes the false fà from
the real fa by adding a grave accent. Most sources place an accent on fà to highlight the posi-
tion of the canto fermo clefs and to help with mutation (see Chapter 5).
27. See Guilliaud (1554), cited in Allaire (1972), 45.
28. This process is analogous to Lanfranco’s “imagined mutation” (1533, 16).
29. Sabbatini (1789–​90), 1:53: “Corrispondenza de’ Salti compresi nelle due descritte Scale, i
quali essendo composti dalli medesimi intervalli, vengono perciò intuonati dalle medesime
sillabe.”
30. See Penna (1679), 26.
31. As reproduced in Bornstein (2001), 185.
32. A concise summary of this lesson can be found in Penna (1679), 28–​29.
33. Gasparini (1708), 73–​74. The translation is from Stillings (1963), 66.
34. Werckmeister (1687), 124, as cited in Stein (2002), 298. See also Fux (1725), 222–​23.
35. Sabbatini (1789–​90), 1:36; De Vecchis (1850), 1:83: “From the three Properties [the hard,
soft, and natural hexachords], or major modes, are born a further three minor modes, which
resemble them by being read with the same syllables” (Dalle tre Proprietà, o Tuoni in terza
maggiore, nascono altri tre Tuoni in Terza minore a questi somiglianti, per la lettura delle
Silabe [sic]).
36. Fux (1725), 222–​23.
37. Sabbatini (1789–​90), 1:35–​36: “I tuoni di terza minore anno la loro scala, che incomincia
dalle sillabe re mi, ec.: siccome dunque in ogni scala composta due volte ricorrer deve il
semituono; è perciò necessario, che incomincj il tuono di terza minore da quella lettera, da
cui ascendendo si venga a replicare il mì; ma questo è posto nell’E.lamì, e Bmì; dunque in una
di queste deve cadere il primo mì. Se io incomincio la mia scala (si osservi nella Tavola I la
mia scala di C.solfaut naturale) da D.lasolrè, il mi cade sicuramente in E.lamì; ma che? Dopo
 Notes 321

il F.faut, prima che giunga all’altro mi, ossia al B.mì, debbo dire sol, rè, mi, ed in conseguenza
fare il tuono di terza maggiore; ecco pertanto una scala parte in terza maggiore, e parte in
terza minore. Acciò dunque si possa a piacimento continuare il tuono di terza minore, sarà
necessario, che io incomincj la scala di questo dall’A.lamirè. In tal guisa cadranno i due mì
in B.mì, ed in E.lamì sempre coll’intervallo di una voce, ed una semivoce fra la prima, e la
terza, come appunto esige il tuono, acciò sia di terza minore. Ora essendo A.lamirè la sesta del
tuono naturale di C.solfaut in terza maggiore, benissimo s’intende ciocchè dicesi da’ Maestri,
cioè che ogni tuono di terza minore non solamente dipende, ma nasce dalla sesta voce del
tuono di terza maggiore. Dunque quegli stessi accidenti, che stabilmente competono a’ tuoni
di terza maggiore, competeranno ancora a quelli di terza minore. [ . . . ] Il tuono dunque d’
A.lamirè terza minore à relazione, e nasce da quello di C.solfaut terza maggiore.”
38. Solano (1764), 69: “dous nomes infalliveis.”
39. Pepusch (1731), 207–​27.
40. Ibid., 71; italics in the original.
41. Ficta practice, as described by Lorente (1672, 1), persisted at least until the turn of the eight-
eenth century in the Spanish Empire. Cashner (2015) demonstrates that seventeenth-​century
Spanish villancico manuscripts relied on performers to supply unnotated accidentals. He
discusses two pieces, one from Puebla in Mexico (1657) and another from Montserrat in
Catalonia (c. 1660), which use “cautionary sharps” to tell singers not to add them as they nor-
mally would. He also presents a piece from Zaragoza (c. 1700) that takes “false” music as a
poetic conceit.
42. Compare, e.g., Italian copies of Porpora’s solfeggi (I-​Mc, Noseda M 36-​13 and I-​Nc, Solfeggio
247, 333, 334, and 335) with the copy that was presumably prepared (as Diergarten [2011]
surmises) for his private teaching in Vienna (A-​Wm, VI 12834).
43. Sabbatini (1789–​90), 1:40–​41: “Ecco dunque il filo d’Arianna per uscire da ogni impaccio.
Regola 1. O il tuono sia in terza maggiore, o sia in terza minore, la lettura della scala è la
stessa. . . . Regola 2. Ma essendo accidentata la sesta, e la settima nel tuono di terza minore, come
si dovranno leggere? Come se non vi fossero i ♯ diesis; mentre non essendovi stabilmente,
mutandone la lettura, ne nascerebbe confusione; basterà dunque che intuonando le note, si
accrescano di mezza voce. Regola 3. Negli esempj precedenti di terza minore al fine d’ogni
scala si sono aggiunte due note co’ nomi di do, re sotto, e sol, la di sopra, acciò s’intenda, che
dovendosi toccare o di scala, o di salto la nota accidentata posta immediatamente sotto la
prima del tuono, è in arbitrio del Cantante darle de’ due accennati qual nome più gli piace.
Regola 4. Circa gli accidenti, che non appartengono essenzialmente al tuono si osservi
la regola seconda, cioè non sí muti lettura di note; solo le accidentate si accrescano, o si
diminuiscano di mezza voce secondo che ànno il ♯ diesis, o il b. molle. Regola 5. La lettura
di 12 tuoni in terza maggiore tutti fra loro diversi si reduce a saper leggere il solo tuono di
C.solfaut, ma in sette chiavi.”
44. Sabbatini (1789–​90), 1:29–​49.
45. This explains why the natural sign and the sharp sign (introduced in the early fourteenth cen-
tury) were identical in meaning at least until Aaron’s Lucidario in musica (1545).
46. This practice was recommended also by Bourgeois (1550) and Gengenbach (1626, 82–​96).
Joseph Münster (1694–​1751) was choirmaster at Bad Reichenhall in Bavaria, one day’s ride
from Salzburg. In his preface, he acknowledged the influence of Salzburg Kapellmeister
Joseph Samber (1654–​1717). Münster’s Instruction (1748) recommends the contemporary
Italian chromatic system of twelve keys (pp. 21–​25), although his key signatures inexplicably
include one or two more sharps than do modern ones.
47. Banchieri (1611, 12) provides a chart of transpositions of hard and soft melody. Gengenbach
(1626, 120) presents a melody based on the notes of A major solmized with both “the syllables
322 Notes

themselves” (voces per se, ill-​fitting hexachords on C and G) and “false syllables” (voces ficta,
hexachords on A and E).
48. Canone finitu ad unisonu tribus vocibus 1769 (I-​NT), mm. 10–​11. According to a hand-
written note on the frontispiece of a copy of Russo (1913) held at the Prince Villadorata
Library in Noto, Sicily, Altieri studied under Durante and Fenaroli at the Loreto Conservatory
in Naples before taking up a position in Noto in 1766.
49. See Traetta (I-​Rama, Accademico A-​Ms-​3777) and Valente (I-​Mc, Noseda Q-​13-​20 to 26 and
I-​88-​1, and I-​Nc, solfeggi 415 and 416).
50. Bornstein (2001, 169–​80) gives several examples of inganni from sixteenth-​and seventeenth-​
century duos. See also Torrefranca (1939), 128–​34. The inganno was described in the second
part of Artusi (1603, 45–​46) as follows: “The deception takes place whenever one part begins
a theme and another follows it without using the same intervals but still retaining the same
names of the syllables or notes” (Lo inganno si fa ogni volta, che una parte incominciando un
soggietto il consequente, la seguita non per gl’istessi gradi; ma si bene per gl’istessi nomi di
sillabe, ò de’ suoni). The term also appears in the fourth ricercar from Trabaci (1603): “Fourth
tone with three fugues and inganni.” Berardi (1687, 41) explained it thus: “Expert castratos
often use a kind of fugue called a deception-​fugue, which occurs every time one part begins
a subject and the other follows it not with the same pitches but with the same syllable names”
(Usano i musici periti una sorte di fuga chiamata fuga d’inganno, quale si fa ogni volta che
una parte comincia un soggetto e il conseguente la seguita non per gli stessi gradi, ma sebbene
per gli stessi nomi di sillabe o di tuoni).
51. Gjerdingen (2007), 74.
52. See Afonso de André (2005), chap. 6.
53. Smith (2011), chap. 3, makes a similar observation with regard to Renaissance music.
54. Vanneus (1533, fol. 36v) included a mnemonic Latin poem to remember the church tones,
which Wiering (2001, 68) dates as early as 1375. The poem identifies the first three notes
of each tono. It begins: “The first and sixth [tones] shall always have fa sol la” (Primus cum
sextus fa sol la semper habebunt). Similar lessons appear in Samber (1710), 62.
55. Leo, 50 Solfeggi (D-​Dl, Mus. 2460. K. 500), no. 7. This Cantabile appears no fewer than
twenty-​eight times in multiple sources (see van Tour, UUSolf). On the “volatina raddoppiata,”
see Mancini (1777), 195–​96.
56. See Afonso de André (2005), chap. 3.
57. Anon., 26 Solfeggi (c. 1800; A-​ST; Rism ID. no. 650011594).
58. The same juxtaposition of fa and new mi can be found in Hasse, Solfeggi a voce sola di so-
prano (D-​MÜs, Sant Hs 1993, no. 3, Gj5253) and in Porpora, Solfeggi, e Duetti (I-​Nc,
Solfeggio 333), fol. 2v.
59. See Sanguinetti (2012), 158–​64.
60. Gjerdingen (2007, 139–​76) provides a comprehensive overview of melodic cadences.

Chapter 7

1. Florimo (1869, 1:364) lists Porpora’s most celebrated singing students as “il Farinelli [Carlo
Broschi, 1705–​82], il Porporino [Antonio Hubert, 1719–​83], il Cafforelli [Gaetano Majorano,
1710–​83], il Galimberti [Felice Galimberti?], l’Annibale [Domenico Annibali de Macerata,
1705–​79], il Monticelli [Angelo Maria Monticelli, c. 1710–​64], la Salimboni [Felice Salimbeni,
1712–​55], l’Emilia Molteni [Benedetta Emilia Molteni, 1722–​80], the Queen Monghetti [?]‌,
the famous Caterina Gabrielli [1730–​96], etc.”
2. The story appears to originate in Choron and Fayolle (1811), 5.
 Notes 323

3. Fétis (1830), 386: “Sur sa réponse affirmative, il note sur une page de papier réglé les gammes
diatoniques et chromatiques, ascendantes et descendantes, les sauts de tierce, de quarte, de
quinte, etc., pour apprendre à franchir les intervalles et à porter le son; des trilles, des groups,
des appogiatures, et des traits de vocalisation de différentes espèces.” Translation from Fétis
(1846), 185–​86. See Porpora (1858) and Haböck (1927), 382–​85, for a reconstruction of the
famous page.
4. Gaetano Majorano (1710–​83), who performed under the stage name Caffarelli, was one of
the most celebrated male sopranos of the eighteenth century.
5. Fétis (1846), 186, translated from Fétis (1836), 179: “Ce n’est plus ainsi qu’on s’y prend
maintenant. Un élève qui se confie aux soins d’un maître ne se rend au-​près de lui que pour
apprendre tel air, tel duo. . . . Aussi n’avons-​nous plus de Caffarelli.”
6. Tosi (1723), 18. On the three-​stage method see Bornstein (2001), 9; Butt (1994), 58;
Manfredini (1797), pt. 3, 74–​75.
7. The Italian term is tratto. See, e.g., these entries in Altieri’s Italian-​English Dictionary (1726,
vol. 1): “Tratto (quel segno, che si fa in fregando o strisciando) [Trait (a sign, made by rubbing
or sliding)]: a track, stroke, touch, or dash. Tratto di penna: a stroke or dash of a pen. Tratto di
pennello: a stroke or touch of a pencil.”
8. Leo (D-​Dl, Mus. 2460 K.500), nos. 1–​2. See also no. 43.
9. Graun (D-​B, Mus. ms. 8260); Hiller (1780), 12. Gustav Wilhelm Teschner (1800–​83), who
studied in Italy with Crescentini, underlaid his copy of a Largo e cantabile solfeggio by Leo
with “a-​-​-​men” (US-​SFfc, De Bellis Collection, M2.5 v. 48).
10. Corri (1810), 8.
11. Penna (1679), 41: “Perché il Cantare le Note, e le Parole à battuta così alla semplice, senza
alcuno abbellimento, non si renderebbe grato all’orechio [sic], perciò devesi imparare il
cantare con qualche gratia.”
12. Penna (1679), 42 (my emphasis): “Alle volte la Composizione, particolarmente à Cappella, è
fatta di Note bianche, e grosse, cioè di una, ò più Battute, che rompendole alcuna volta, fanno
bellissimo effetto, però sarebbe bene, farci sopra qualche movimento, col spezzare le Note
grosse, e farne di minute, senza perdere il Tempo della Nota, che stà scritta, come sarebbe à
dire, hà da cantare questa Parola Amen.”
13. My translation of Manfredini (1797), 3:74–​75: “Dopo un esatto e continuo esescizio [sic] di
tre anni dovrebessi saper cantar all’improvviso, non essendo questa una cosa tanto difficile,
come ho detto altrove.”
14. Bozzelli (1880), 7: “Il canto era uno studio graduato e metodico. Principio di esso erano le
teorie tecniche preliminari. La [sic] ci passavasi ai mezzi di trattare convenientemente la voce,
di qui agli esercizi diversi di scale, salti e combinazioni varie—​diatoniche e cromatiche—​di
note a due, a tre, a quattro, ecc., con larghe esecuzioni, sostenendo bene i suoni per ottenere
la emissione pura, eguale, intensa; per unire i registri; per acquistare una lunga e tranquilla
respirazione, per giustamente regolarla e condurla, correttamente fraseggiando. . . . Quindi
coll’accennata teorica preliminare e cogli esercizi pratici per così dire preparatori, seguiva
altro istradamento pratico (questo di somma importanza) sul solfeggio cantato, s’intende
nominando le note: esercizio che così fatto, mentre imprime nella mente il suono della
nota, fa acquistare altresì sin da principio (per mezzo dell’articolazione del nome delle i o
e) quell’accento incisivo, per cui l’allievo si trova poi spianata la via per quando egli debba
cantare colle parole.”
15. Sainsbury (1827), 25.
16. The practice of singing or playing simple melodies with elaborate divisions has a long history.
The eight types of division illustrated in the recorder treatise by Silvestro Ganassi (Venice,
1535), for instance, closely resemble later solfeggio exercises in scales and leaps. They follow a
familiar pattern, departing from and returning to each individual note.
324 Notes

17. Agricola (1757/​1995), 151–​53, 158.

18. Hiller (1780/​2001), 103. He uses the word passaggi.
19. Agricola (1757/​1995), 153.
20. Ibid., 157.
21. Tosi (1723), 8; Veracini (c. 1730), 66–​67.
22. Collections of scales and leaps include P. Aulicino (?1700), Giovanni Martini (c. 1750),
Giacomo Insanguine (c. 1780), Vito Millico (c. 1790), Ferdinando Paër (c. 1800), Francesco
Ceccarelli (c. 1800), Giuseppe Elia (c. 1824), and Carlo Valerio (1800s).
23. Tosi (1723), cited in Agricola (1757/​1995), 85.
24. Baroni (2019), chap. 4.1, “Der Zögling und der Maestrino” and chap. 5.4, “Solfeggio von
Saverio Valente.”
25. Valente’s index lists the signs as follows (I-​Mc, Fondo Noseda Q.13.20), 92: “Segno di ligar
la voce; Segno di staccare; Segno di picchetare; Segno dell’appoggiature, si da sopra come da
sotto, e quanto si devono sostenere; Segno dell’acciaccature; Segno de’ mordenti; Segno delle
volatine [volate] di 2a, 3a, etc.; Segno del trillo da sopra, e da sotto di variente maniere, cioè
interotto, e finale; Segno della comune interotta, e finale.” Contemporary sources that include
similar diminutions of the scale and profuse performance markings include Aprile (I-​MC,
1.B.2/​16a–​m) and Balducci (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 33). Both were written for amateur lessons.
  Among the more cryptic markings to be found in solfeggio manuscripts is “dol.” followed
a few measures later by “F.” In Cotumacci (c. 1755; GB-​Lbl, Add. 14241) it appears from the
sixty-​fourth lesson onward (nos. 64, 67, 69, 72, 77, 81, 83, 84, 87, 88, 89, 90, 93, 95, 97, 99,
102, 103, 106, 108, 112, and 114) and most often occurs in slow melodies marked Arioso,
Amoroso, Andante, or Largo (although nos. 83 and 88 are Allegros). It can also be seen in
a Cantabile in D major by Leo (GB-​Lbl, Add. 31617, fol. 68v, m. 10). My best guess is that
it means “sing softly and sweetly” (dolce) until the signal to sing loudly again (forte). The
marking dolce is commonly found in contemporary opera manuscripts. Exactly how dolce
and forte differed from piano and forte, as indicated in Cafaro (D-​B, Mus. ms. 2704, p. 140) by
the symbols p: and f:, must remain a matter for speculation. It is intriguing that the markings
almost always relate to passages of elaborate chromaticism. In Leo (I-​Nc, 34.2.6/​3, fol.
70v), for instance, “dol.” appears above an unusual slur in the bass that encompasses both
B and B♭ within the harmonic context of a C major “comma” cadence. The letters could in
these instances be read as “sod.,” implying “sing with solid intonation” (as in Valente’s “con
soda intonazione,” from I-​Nc, 18.3.1[13], fol. 1v), or as “sol.,” meaning “[with or without?]
solmizing the notes” (from the Italian solfeggiare).
26. Mancini (1777), 198–​99, explained how the chromatic scale was used to impart agility to
the voice.
27. They are especially common in two collections of solfeggi attributed to Porpora (I-​Nc,
Solfeggio 333, 335). For a theoretical explanation, see Solano (1764), 90–​93.
28. Sigismondo (1820/​2016), 117.
29. Bozzelli (1880), 8: “Nello studio del solfeggio si attendeva pure a che l’allievo apprendesse, con
fraseggio puro, ad esprimer bene la musica; quindi importava sapere dove dalla frase musi-
cale veniva indicata la presa del fiato e il modo di distribuirlo: dai solfeggi dunque ricavavasi
[sic] lo stradamento per la esecuzione legata, staccata, vibrata; indi le maniere diverse di
accentuare le note sovrabbondanti e la sincope; indi il valore di tempo nella misura, spettante
agli abbellimenti musicali, e il modo di eseguirli; ed infine informavasi l’allievo, a tutta prima,
agli accenti in genere ed alle inflessioni di voce, riguardo alla esecuzione della musica.”
30. Agricola (1757/​1995), 93.
31. Hiller (1780/​2001), 75. Julianne Baird (in Agricola 1757/​1995, 14) describes how Quantz
(1752) recommended that appoggiaturas between descending thirds, the couler des tierces
of the French style, be taken from the time of the preceding note, but this was challenged by
 Notes 325

C. P. E. Bach (1762). There was also a debate between Marpurg and Agricola about the execu-
tion of an appoggiatura preceding three sixteenth notes.
32. Agricola (1757/​1995), 97.
33. Banchieri (1623), 24: “Gl’Accenti per dar gratia & attitudine alle noti, sono molti.” I am
grateful to Clémence Destribois for this reference. Similar examples of “fioretti” and “accenti”
can be found in Banchieri (1614), 50.
34. Scaletta (1626), 24: “Se ci fusse Quattro note, che ascendessero per grado, l’accento và fatto sù
l’ultima, & non all’altre, pronuntiando la voce una terza più bassa di quella nota, alla quale si
vuol dare l’accento.”
35. Mersenne (1636), pt. 2, Traitez des consonances, bk. 4, De l’art de bien chanter, 355–​56: “La
voix se coule & passe de ré à mi comme si elle tiroit le ré après soy & qu’elle continuast à
remplir tout l’intervale.”
36. Corri (1810), 3.
37. Tosi (1723), 32; Hiller (1780), 83. Galliard’s example in the appendix to his 1743 translation of
Tosi shows (erroneously?) a downward octave leap. The Neapolitan word strascino, inciden-
tally, is richer in meaning than the English “drag.” It connotes the act of heaving an unwilling
subject, especially a woman being dragged by her hair.
38. Sigismondo (1820/​2016), 48–​49, my emphasis. The amateur was Luisa De Marco Battaglini,
and her solfeggi can be found in Selvaggi, Scuola di Canto (1809).
39. Agricola (1757/​1995), 90–​91. Burney (1789, 381) made a similar point in connection with
Farinelli’s performance: “Of his taste and embellishments we shall now be able to form but an
imperfect idea, even if they had been preserved in writing, as mere notes would only show his
invention and science, without enabling us to discover that expression and neatness, which
rendered his execution so perfect and surprising.”
40. Corri (1810), 6, on tempo rubato: “If we are to credit the wonderful effects produced by
music amongst the ancients, as related by historians, we shall find no reason to presume they
knew anything of time. The rhythm of time appears, therefore, to be an invention of modern
date, and from hence it has arisen, that melody being shackled and restrained within its
strict limits, the energy or pathos of singing, and the accent of words, have become as it were
cramped and fettered.”
41. My translation of Manfredini (1797), pt. 3, 74: “I solfeggj siano sempre adattati all’intelligenza
ed all’età degli scolari; ma sopratutto per li principianti siano chiari, facili, ed intrecciati
di note grandi, cioè di quelle note che son di lunga durata; e taluni ancora di note uguali,
specialmente i primi. Dopo un anno di un tale studio direi quasi, che non si dovesse più
solfeggiare; ma vocalizzar solamente.” Although Manfredini used seven-​note solfège, his ad-
vice applies also to the Italian system. Mancini (1777), 124–​25, comments on the use of long
notes to train the voice and to develop breathing skills.
42. Marco Pollaci discovered three complete autograph courses of solfeggi by Paolo Altieri
(1745–​1820) in the archives in Noto, Sicily. They were written in 1800 and 1804. Altieri
studied in Naples until 1766, when he was invited to take up a position in Noto.
43. See, e.g., Zingarelli (I-​Nc, 19.5.23), fol. 58v, no. 162; fol. 145v, no. 334; and fol. 149v, no. 342.
44. The appoggiaturas in the second measure of ­example 7.5 have been faithfully transcribed
from the original, even though the first miniature eighth note should read as a thirty-​second
note if it is to fit within the melodic rhythm. In general, appoggiaturas were carelessly notated
in solfeggio manuscripts. They often appear as eighth notes regardless of the actual rhythm
required. Where shorter values are indicated, it is hard to tell the difference between a short
acciaccatura “snap” and a sixteenth note because they were both notated as eighth notes
crossed through with a diagonal line. That this solfeggio also appears in Sala (I-​Nc, Solfeggio
386; R.8.19) makes the attribution to Leo suspect.
326 Notes

45. See, e.g., Leo (I-​Nc, 34.2.6/​2), fol. 34v, from the same collection, or Leo (GB-​Lbl, 31637),
fol. 45r.
46. Gjerdingen (2007), 32.
47. In a manuscript of solfeggi by Porpora (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 335), for instance, sixteenth notes in
common time are sometimes grouped into fours and at other times into eights, seemingly
to indicate the length of vocalizations (see fols. 5v and 13r). A similar notational device can
be seen in Zingarelli (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 442), fol. 4r. Florimo (1818) features a solfeggio in 3/​
4 time with eighth notes alternately grouped into twos and sixes (see fol. 94r). My doctoral
student, Eric Boaro, recently discovered that beams in early eighteenth-​century Neapolitan
Intermezzo manuscripts sometimes conform not to the given poetic text but to underlying
solmization patterns, especially at cadences.
48. Mancini (1777), 250–​51: “Questo grand’uomo costumava di scrivere ogni tre giorni un
nuovo solfeggio a ciascun suo scolare, ma con riflessione di adattarlo alle forze ed all’abilità di
ciascuno.”
49. Florimo (1881–​83), 1:412: “Questa è la vera e la miglior via di formarsi il canto. Se canterete
nelle vostre composizioni, siate più certo che la vostra musica piacerà.”
50. The frequency of written elaborations of final cadences in solfeggio manuscripts suggests that
they were embellished as a matter of course. See, e.g., Leo, [56] Solfeggi (I-​Bc, GG.98), fol.
11v, mm. 22–​25.
51. The missing flat in Cotumacci’s key signature is a common feature of Italian eighteenth-​
century music. Partial key signatures probably derived from the church psalm tones, which
were taken to project tonalities but which used only a limited number of notes from the scale.
Tone I, for instance, transposed to a final on G, employed only G, A, B, and C and did not
include an F. This meant that Greco (c. 1700–​28; I-​Nc, 1.9.15/​1) could add basses to it and
compose organ versets on it that were clearly in G major without needing to include an F♯ in
the key signature. On the church tones, see Barnett (1998).
52. Puns and dedications devised from solmization syllables were types of obblighi, to be
explained in Chapter 11. The Neapolitan maestro Gregorio Strozzi used the “Butterfly”
obbligo in his fixty-​sixth canonic duo (1683), rendering the text “The only butterfly [who]
makes me sleep” (La sola farfalla mi fa dormire) in notes as la sol la fa fa la mi fa do mi re.
53. The same solfeggio appears with no traits at all (and several minor errors) in Leo (D-​LEb,
Go. S. 651), 4–​5. Another example of slurs resembling traits can be seen in Leo (1773; I-​Nc,
34.2.5), fol. 25v, where they pair together the sixteenth-​note figurations attached to an ob-
vious Prinner.
54. That one lengthy trait could be split into two halves is corroborated by Paisiello (1804), no. 31,
Gj5831, in m. 16 of which a run (volatina) up and down an octave scale is clearly marked with
two traits. These can only have been a shorthand for the passage as a whole.
55. The copy of this solfeggio in Leo (D-​MÜs, Sant. 2369), Gj5012, has D-​C♯-​B in the bass part of
mm. 10–​11 instead of D-​D-​D.
56. As discussed in Gjerdingen (2007), 374–​97.
57. Marcello ([1720]/​1841), 42. Translation adapted from Pauly (1949): “SOLFEGGIATORI. Si
serviranno, con tutte le virtuose, de’ solfeggi medesimi, trasportandoli in vari tuoni, chiavi,
tempi, etc. conforme il bisogno delle medesime. Le tratterranno più anni sopra le solite
variazioni del là in rè ascendendo, e dal rè in là discendendo, sopra letture diverse, a riguardo
degli accidenti maggiori o minori, che occorrono.”
58. Grosley (1764), 667–​68 (my translation), describing an encore during a performance of
Hasse’s Demofoonte: “The orchestra then begins the prelude anew, the castrato walks around
in circles and sings the aria again, and, after another round of applause, repeats it yet again.
This sometimes happens five to six times, and in these repetitions the singer exhausts all the
 Notes 327

tricks of nature and art, applying all possible changes in tone, modulation, and everything
that depends upon the expression.”
59. http:// ​ f aculty- ​ w eb.at.northwestern.edu/ ​ m usic/ ​ g jerdingen/ ​ s olfeggi/ ​ a boutSolfe/​
histOverview.htm (accessed 12/​2018).

Chapter 8

1. My translation of Jean-​Jacques Rousseau, “Essai sur l’Origine des Langues,” in Collection

complète des œuvres (Geneva: 1780–​89), vol. 8, 415: “La mélodie . . . elle n’imite pas seulement,
elle parle, & son langage inarticulé, mais vif, ardent, passionne, a cent fois plus d’énergie que la
parole même.” The association of language and music in the eighteenth century is discussed
in Evan Bonds (1991) and, as metaphor, in Spitzer (2004). Vial (2008) explores the related
issue of musical punctuation. Her appendix B cites sixty-​one sources on musical commas,
semicolons, colons, and periods. See also Baragwanath (2014) on melodic (speech-​)accent.
2. Corri (1810), 1; my emphasis.
3. For an overview, see VanPatten and Williams (2015).
4. To pursue the analogy between melodic units and words (at the level of semantic content) too
closely is to misunderstand the nature of musical signification. Galant melody comprises a
closed system (albeit one with porous borders), a semiosphere or “world of signs” that is, like
any language, accessible only to those who know how to interpret its codes. Musical meaning
is often dismissed as vague, but this is a feature it shares with language. The word sigh, for in-
stance, has no more connection to a real sigh than does sospiro, Seufzer, or vzdokh. It is an ar-
bitrary signifier that conjures up in the mind of a suitably conditioned subject one particular
signified among countless possibilities (because no two people conceive the word in exactly
the same way). Likewise, a competent listener understands a musical sigh as one particular
signified within a defined range of musical meanings, often perceiving it as emotionally more
powerful than analogous words. Musical signs are not directly comparable to linguistic signs.
Translation from one system to the other is always inadequate. For a more eloquent account
of musical semantics, see Monelle (2000), 1–​14.
5. Gjerdingen and Bourne (2015), 1.1.2.
6. Ibid., 3.1.2.
7. Vial (2008, 233–​59) translates Marpurg’s lessons on musical punctuation from his Kritische
Briefe über die Tonkunst, vol. 2 (1762). She concludes her study of eighteenth-​century
phrasing (p. 233) by acknowledging that “except for didactic purposes, it is not, after all,
desirable to insert directly into musical notation the punctuation marks of language; these
are, in effect, already implicit in the notation.” Contemporary (mainly German-​speaking)
theorists who attempted to categorize the diverse stylistic, logical, grammatical, and rhetor-
ical components of musical punctuation were writing for an amateur market far removed
from the real business of music making.
8. Koch (1787), 273–​82.
9. Gjerdingen and Bourne (2015), 2.2.2.
10. See Gjerdingen (2007), 181–​96.
11. Gjerdingen and Bourne (2015), 5.1.2.
12. Ibid., 3.1.2.
13. Gjerdingen (2009) discusses how Donald Norman’s 1988 concept may apply to sonic objects
as perceived affordances in eighteenth-​century music.
14. Zbikowski (2017, 128) describes such conventional patterns of pitch and rhythm as “ref-
erential frameworks” that equip musicians with “syntactic structures (stored in long-​term
328 Notes

memory) that provide perceptual anchors for sonic analogs.” In other words, solfeggists used
their acquired vocabulary and rules of grammar to help them translate dynamic processes
such as dance movements and speech gestures into music. “They are thus an emergent pro-
perty of, rather than a precondition for, musical practice.”
15. To go beyond the notation and attempt to reconstruct the original sounds of solfeggio would
require the input of performers, a harnessing of their body-​instrument (or body-​voice)
interactions and associated cognitive processes, as envisaged by De Souza (2017).
16. Gjerdingen (2007), 54–​58, gives several examples of Prinners expanded into cycles of fifths.
Caplin (2015, 28–​29) categorizes this as the “sequential” Prinner, the second of his three
types, and seeks to ascribe to it a “medial” formal function articulated primarily by the bass,
as harmonic foundation.
17. In contrapuntal solfeggi the bass was conceived in terms of syllables and likely sung, as will
be argued in Chapters 10 to 13. That the title of Perez’s collection specifies two sopranos “and
bass” rather than the usual “with bass” supports this assumption.
18. I solmize the upper soprano part in m. 1 of ­example 8.2(b) as la by analogy with the ensuing
sequential pattern, as if in relation to an initial missing G. The first syllable-​note (E♭-​fa) of the
lower soprano part in m. 1 is omitted from the example.
19. Like many solmized patterns in solfeggio, this maps closely onto a Schenkerian analysis. Here
D would be the primary tone (Kopfton) of the phrase.
20. Caplin (2015, 17) claims that only the Prinner ending on the dominant chord can have an
initiating function. This is incorrect. With a sol/​do (or fa/​do) lead-​in, the tonic Prinner often
functioned as an opening theme, as demonstrated by seven of the examples in this chapter.
21. Gjerdingen (2007), 49.
22. Ibid., 347.
23. Because the harmonies in m. 4 of ­example 8.3 outline a cadential progression (pre-​dominant/​
dominant/​tonic), Caplin (2015, 30) categorizes this variant as the “Prinner Cadence.”
24. See Vial (2008), 234–​36. Contemporary attempts to classify musical phrase endings proved
futile, because in practice they are as rich and varied as those in spoken language.
25. Leech-​Wilkinson’s website www.challengingperformance.com (2016) presents a body of re-
search by various authors that shows how performative intention can have more influence on
perceived musical meaning than do the actual notes performed.
26. The other main type of half cadence in Galant music is defined by Gjerdingen (2007, 159–​62)
as the “Converging Cadence.” In solfeggio, it meant coming to a halt on fa-​mi (1-​7) rather
than mi-​re (3-​2).
27. Solano (1764, 98) confirms that the bass cadence 4-​5-​1 was always solmized as fa-​sol-​do,
regardless of whether or not fa was sharpened. Accordingly, the C♯ in the bass part of m. 6
of ­example 8.6(b) remained, in conceptual terms, the raised fourth scale degree of G major
rather than the seventh of D major.
28. Throughout this book, I transcribe appoggiaturas and acciaccaturas faithfully from
manuscripts. This can lead to ambiguities. In mm. 30 and 34 of ­example 8.7(b), for instance,
what look like grace note acciaccaturas should actually be executed as normal sixteenth notes
because the symbols were interchangeable. Likewise, appoggiaturas often appear as eighth
notes regardless of their actual sounding rhythm.
29. In Cotumacci’s manuscript, the first of these appears to possess two traits but the second has
only one. This makes little sense. Either each la was sung twice at the level of the quarter note,
first as an Amen and second as an appoggiatura, or an intended single long trait was broken
up into two parts, the second indicating “continuation.” This latter reading is strengthened by
the trait over the cadential flourish in the final bar—​it too is in two parts, but it can scarcely
have indicated a change of syllable.
 Notes 329

30. The trait on the first fa of the standard fa-​sol-​fa (1-​2-​1) cadence in m. 36 of e­ xample 8.7(b) is
a relatively common feature in manuscripts. It appears to have been used to mark the start of
the concluding punctuation point. There were three main forms of this cadence, each with an
ornament on sol: (1) fa-​sol-​fa (1-​2-​1), with three notes of equal duration; (2) fa-​sol-​-​-​fa (1-​2-​
1), with sol lasting twice as long as the surrounding notes; and (3) fa-​sol-​-​-​fa (1-​5-​2-​1), with a
drop from the initial fa to an inganno “other sol,” rising a fifth to the correct one. Lodewyckx
(2015) defines a common harmonization of this cadence (with a six-​four chord supporting its
initial fa) as “Marpurg’s Galant Cadence.”
31. Exactly the same traits appear in Leo (GB-​Lbl, Add. 31617), fol. 39v. The version titled
Lezione 16.a Largo in Leo (I-​Nc, 34.2.5, fol. 25r) has no traits, presumably because it was
intended to be vocalized by amateurs. This manuscript was prepared for publication by the
Merola Press in 1773, during a time of economic crisis in Naples when maestros would have
sought additional means of income.
32. Leo, (1773; I-​Nc, 34.2.5; Solfeggio 248), fols. 3r–​3v, lesson no. 3 [first movement], mm. 10–​13.
33. This device formed the basis of what Gjerdingen (2007, 345) described as the “Quiescenza
Prinner.”
34. Gjerdingen (2007, 56) gives a similar example from De Charrière.
35. The numbering of folios in the manuscript is flawed. Because fol. 3v is incorrectly numbered
4, recto and verso switch for the remainder.
36. Caplin (2015), 45.
37. A copy of the same solfeggio, in Leo (I-​Nc, 34.2.6/​5), fol. 112v, contains many additional
ornaments, including four mordents on each note under the trait in m. 7.
38. Solano (1764), 103.
39. Gjerdingen (2007, 258) discusses variants of sol fa mi.
40. Riepel (1755), 46, discussed in Gjerdingen (2007), 61–​72.
41. Title page of book 1 of The Well-​Tempered Clavier (1722): “Præludia, und Fugen durch alle
Tone und Semitonia, So wohl tertiam majorem oder Ut Re Mi anlangend, als auch tertiam
minorem oder Re Mi Fa betreffend.”
42. Riepel (1757), 1, with commentary in Gjerdingen (2007, 89–​106).
43. See van Tour (2015), 132–​36. He associates Durante’s school with Angelo Berardi’s teachings
(1687) and the perfidia tradition in partimento and counterpoint.
44. Bornstein (2001), 152–​79, 242, surveys these many “obstinacies.”
45. As described by Ruta (1856b), 334: “condurre un pensiero musicale.”
46. On the significance of these two schools in eighteenth-​century Naples, see van Tour
(2015), 25f.
47. See Gjerdingen (2007), 111–​28. In melodic terms, the Meyer schema progresses from 1-​7 to
4-​3, paired against 1-​2 and 7-​1 in the bass.

Chapter 9

1. Valdrighi (1893), 14–​16, cited in Sanguinetti (2005), 452.

2. In a pamphlet titled “Plan for Reform at the Royal College of Music of Saint Sebastian, 23
December 1816” (Piano di riforma del Real Collegio di Musica di S. Sebastiano del 23 dicembre
1816 [I-​Na, fondo “Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione,” fasc. 86]), Sabbatini’s Elements was
singled out as the best “modern” method; see Cafiero (1999b), 464–​65.
3. Sabbatini (1789–90), 1:26: “Dicono benissimo i Musici, che la quarta è di sua natura minore, e
la settima maggiore.”
330 Notes

4. Ibid., 1:25: “Ma presso i Maestri di quest’arte la voce tuono ordinariamente ci esprime quella
continuata gradazione di voci o fin’ alla quarta ovvero perfino alla settima senz’ alterazione
alcuna di accidenti; cosicchè se io incominciando la mia scala dal C. sol, fa, ut, giungo al F. fa,
ut, ossia alla quarta, e non l’altero con un accidente, dico di continuare lo stesso tuono; ma se
l’altero, ò variato tuono. Dicasi lo stesso della settima.”
5. Ibid., 1:26: “Dicono benissimo i Musici, che la quarta è di sua natura minore, e la settima mag-
giore. . . . Se alla quarta si dà il ♯, essa diviene, o equivale, come vogliamo, alla settima: in fatti
nella scala naturale la quarta è fa, la settima mi; diamo ora il ♯ alla quarta, essa diviene mi, cioè
la stessa che la settima. Per la stessa ragione quando alla settima diamo il b.molle, essa diviene
quarta, e perche? Perchè nella scala naturale la quarta è fa, la settima è mi; ma la settima col
b.molle diviene fa; dunque equivale alla quarta. Ciò sembra poco necessario a sapersi, ma
orora se ne vedrà il vantaggio. Se si accresce la quarta col ♯, o la settima col b.molle, subito si
muta tuono, e la ragione è chiara per la stessa difinizione del tuono mentre immediatamente
si varia la gradazione delle voci, che si è data alla Scala naturale, cioè nel luogo del fa dovremo
dir mi, e nel luogo del mi dovremo dir fa, acciò il ♯, e b.molle producano il loro effetto.”
6. Sutcliffe (2003), 340.
7. Gafurius (1496/​1969), 33.
8. Chafe (1992), 362.
9. De Vecchis (1850), 1:82: “Per il Semituono che passa fra la Settima maggiore, e l’Ottava, la
Settima deve chiamarsi colla Sillaba mi, come ancora la Quarta del tuono deve chiamarsi con
la Sillaba Fa. . . . Si avverte che il Bquadro nel Canto Fermo, vale lo stesso come il Diesis nella
Musica moderna.”
10. Samber (1704), 39–​88.
11. The earliest example I know is Fétis’s analysis (1879) of Luca Marenzio’s madrigal “O voi che
sospirate a miglior note” (1581), which reduces a chromatic passage to a chain of descending
fifths. Klaus Hübler (1976) explained Lassus’s chromaticism in “Prophetiae Sibyllarum” sim-
ilarly, as a Sprung or leap to a distant harmony followed by a progression through the circle of
fifths.
12. Ledbetter (2002), 107. In Chapter 5, “All the Tones and Semitones,” 104–​25, he surveys the
prehistory of the twenty-​four major and minor keys as set out in Bach’s Well-​tempered Clavier.
13. Werckmeister (1697), 37, cited in Ledbetter (2002), 107.
14. Jensen (1992, 320; rev. 2009, 142).
15. See Lester (1989), 98–​106, where he also mentions in this connection Ozanam (1691), 659.
16. Heinichen (1711), 261.
17. Ledbetter (2002), 120.
18. Avella (1657), 83: “Disse il Galant’huomo, Padre non potrai negare, che le lettere della mano
non siano sette, & hauendo ogni lettera il suo settenario, come si scorge dalle tue ruote al cap. 6
e potendosi comporre un tuono all’in sù, & un’altro all’in giù, dunque sono 14 tuoni: sette
autentici, sette placali. Ed io soggiunsi, si per le sette lettere per ♮ si componeno 14 tuoni, per le
lettere per ♭ se ne compongono 14 altri, perche fanno diversa melodia, dunque sono 28 tuoni,
e tanti altri se ne possono comporre accidentalmente, dunque s’anderà all’infinito.”
19. Sabbatini (1789–90), 1:42.
20. Ibid., 1:29: “Noi finora abbiam veduto, che i tuoni variano quando la quarta, e la settima
vengono alterate, e che inoltre la quarta è alterabile solo col diesis, e la settima col b. molle.
Dunque in qualunque altra nota cadano gli accidenti, il tuono non si muta; è necessario
dunque, che indichiamo l’ordine, che questi accidenti conservano fra loro nel nascere, acciò
possa subito distinguersi, se al tuono sostanzialmente appartengano, o nò. Discorriamo
prima de’ tuoni nati dalla quarta alterata.”
21. Ibid., 1:49: “Tavola I: Stabilmento d’ogni tuono in particolare, che produce la quarta alterata, e
l’ordine successivo dal primo ♯ diesis, che nasce, fino al sesto.”
 Notes 331

22. Greco, Partimenti (c. 1720; I-​Nc, 45.1.65), fol. 6v. Greco’s rudimentary guide to solmization
was carelessly bound into this collection of partimenti. On fol. 7r a change of handwriting
marks the beginning of a series of partimenti notated in bass clef. They ignore the soprano
clefs that evidently were already marked on each staff, presumably for further solfeggi. The
solmization melodies from fol. 7r resume on fol. 9r.
23. Cotumacci (c. 1755), fol. 6r.
24. See Mengozzi (2008), 59.
25. Ricupero (1803), p. 50: “Non si meravigli il leggitore di veder praticare nelle sudette scale
tante chiavi diverse, poiché il mio sistema è quello appunto de’ nostri celebri, e rinomati
maestri, i quali non mettevano mai i giovani al cembalo, se prima pel corso di trè anni non si
fossero istruiti nel solfeggio.”
26. Solano learned the system from Giovanni Giorgi (c. 1700–​62), an Italian maestro who taught
at the Seminario Real in Lisbon from 1725.
27. See Carlos de Brito (1989), 77–​79. According to Prota-​Giurleo (1923), Charles of Bourbon,
King of Naples (1735–​59) and later Charles III of Spain, ordered that the score of each new
opera produced at the San Carlo Theater in Naples be sent to his sister Marianna in Lisbon.
This collection was destroyed by an earthquake in 1755.
28. Solano (1764), 47–​59.
29. Ibid., 41: “Quando tratar das Cantorias accidentaes, ou Tons Chromaticos no segundo
Discurso, onde propriamente dou principio ao novo Methodo, e então se verá huma
idéa muito mais facil, que naquellas, e nestas Cantorias conduza forçosamente para o
conhecimento das mesmas Mutanças em virtude de hum fá, a hum mí certo em todas as
Cantorias; e com estes dous nomes certos se facilitarão as Mutanças, e todos os mais nomes,
como logo mostrarei, porque não he ainda aqui lugar proprio para me explicar mais.”
30. Ibid., 59: “♯ denota mí accidental, quando se assina no lugar certo de fá. . . . O ♭ denota fá,
quando se assina no lugar certo de mí.”
31. Ibid., 61: “Na Cantoria de ♮, e ♯ he o mí certo em F., (pois he unico) e o fá certo em C., lugar do
2.o ♯. Na Cantoria de dous ♯♯ o ultimo he o mí certo, que he C., e o fá certo em G., lugar do 3.o ♯.”
32. Ibid., 63: “Na Cantoria de Natura, e ♭ fá certo em B., e mí certo em E. Na Cantoria de dous ♭♭ fá
certo em E, e mí certo em A.”
33. Zingarelli, Partimenti (c.1810-​20; I-​Mc, Fondo Noseda I.140.II), 2: “Si puo dar partimenti la
settima minore come si andasse nella natura della quarta del tuono.”
34. Cotumacci (c. 1755), fol. 1v–​3r. The term “tripola minore” also appears in a collection of
partimenti by Gaetano Franzaroli (D-​MÜs, SANT Hs 1540), fol. 14v.

Chapter 10

1. Tortora (1993), 111–​12: “Nient’altro che essercizi di canto a due o tre voci, presenti in varie
raccolte e miscellanee.”
2. Jander (2001), 23:639.
3. Sabbatini (1789–​90), 1:22 (chap. heading): “Della lettura delle note, ossia del Solfeggio.”
4. Valente (I-​Mc, Fondo Noseda I.88.1), fol. 6r: “con le note e poi vocalizzando.”
5. Agricola (1757/​1995), 65.
6. Mancini (1777), 85–​86.
7. See the fourteen pages of singing exercises in Herschel’s Music Book (c. 1772–​81; US-​NHub,
Hanover royal music archive, OSB MSS 146, box 824).
8. Bêche and Levesque (1768), xxii.
332 Notes

9. Francesco Saverio De Rogati and Johann Simone Mayr, Piano di riforma del Real Collegio di
Musica (I-​Na, fondo “Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione,” fasc. 86). For an assessment, see
Cafiero (2016).
10. Rossini (1827). The title of the French edition altered “fine singing” (bel canto) to “singing in
the modern style” (selon le goût moderne). The Italian word gorgheggio derives from the verb
“to trill or warble” and signifies exercises in singing florid cadenzas and extended ornaments.
11. Krones (1997) surveys the tradition of using sung lessons as instrumental studies.
12. Cited in Bornstein (2001), 3.
13. Cotumacci (c. 1755), fol. 4v: “E per finale riflessione deve molto avvertire lo scolaro avanti,
che porga à solfeggiare osservare nella Chiave, che lui solfeggia, canta, o suona.”
14. Tonelli (1762), fol. 16v.
15. Sigismondo (1820/​2016), 1:16.
16. Leo (I-​Nc, 34.2.6/​7), fol. 170r.
17. Leo (I-​Nc, 34.2.6/​5), fols. 136v–​139r.
18. Durante (I-​MC, 7-​A-​28/​8a–​fbis); Martini (I-​Bc, HH 81).
19. Scarlatti (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 253).
20. Durante (D-​MÜs, Sant Hs 1423).
21. Valente (I-​Mc, Q-​13-​19), fol. 1v and (I-​Mc, Q-​13-​20), p. 16: “scale naturali composte e
semituonate come ancora tutti i salti.” Valente (I-​Mc, Q-​13-​19), fol. 10v: “si canta prima sola
voce: poi col Basso.”
22. Mancini (1777), 74.
23. Durante (I-​Rsc, G. Ms. 302).
24. Durante, Duetti (1776; GB-​Lcm, Ms. 181/​2).
25. Sullo (2011) was the first to observe that in normal solfeggio the bass functions as an accom-
paniment, whereas in fugal solfeggio it equals the melody.
26. Porpora (I-​BGc, Mayr/​Fald377/​24).
27. This discussion is drawn from the following passage in Sabbatini (1789–​90), II, 4: “Il Basso,
che vien posto per accompagnamento alle seguenti Scale, e Solfeggi, sembrerà a taluno non
esser egli il vero fondamento, che servir deve di base alle parte cantante sotto la quale vien
collocato, trovandosi questo in varj luoghi scarso di quella necessaria armonia, e cantilena,
o moto, che sembra naturale poter egli formare sotto la parte che accompagna. Come altresì
sarà specie trovarlo fornito d’una numerazione aliena da quella, che usualmente si pratica
nelle date corde del tuono, sui quale s’aggira. Cesserà per altro l’ammirazione, quando questo
tale si sarà a considerare la proprietà, ed essenza del Canone, il quale ricerca, che essendo egli
formato a due, o più voci, una di queste debba sempre far base all’altre in maniera tale, che
fra loro abbiano a sostenersi senz’altro fondamento. Ammesso, e concesso questo principio, e
dovendo nel nostro caso dare un ajuto d’accompagnamento col Basso a’ seguenti Canoni, si è
procurato formar di esso una nuova base, che sostenga ogni solfeggio, in qualunque maniera
venga eseguito, cioè a solo, o con altre voci che formino il Canone, dandogli un moto che sia
cantabile, e fugga l’incontro d’uniformarsi con alcuna di esse voci. Sopra tal riflesso dunque
potrà dirsi essere il detto Basso un fondamento accessorio ad altro fondamento, che porta
seco la parte che apparisce, venendo questa eseguita a più d’una voce.”
28. See Sullo (2012), 125.
29. Picchi (1853), 35: “la lettura, la intonazione, ed il valore dei suoni.”
30. Cotumacci (c. 1755), fol. 17r (no. 55, “arioso”), fols. 18r and 40r (nos. 59 and 118 “Andante
staccato”), fol. 37r (no. 109, “staccato, ed amoroso”), and fol. 38r (no. 111, “Andante spatioso”).
31. Paisiello (1804; US-​Eu, Ceccarelli Collection, MS 1234).
32. Sanguinetti (1999), 138–​39: “Il ‘solfeggio,’ come si sa, era nel Settecento una composizione
per voce e basso continuo, priva di testo e destinata prevelentemente alla didattica del canto, e
non alla composizione. Nella concezione settecentesca tuttavia la separazione tra esecuzione
 Notes 333

e composizione non esisteva ancora, e perciò lo stesso mezzo poteva essere usato sia per
insegnare a cantare, sia per insegnare a comporre per la voce.”
33. Sullo (2012), 412.

Chapter 11

1. This corresponds to common Renaissance teachings about altering pitch in performance

such as Guillaud (1554), chap. 6, fol. 6: “There are many cadences with suspensions that must
be performed with half step in la-​sol-​la, sol-​fa-​sol, and re-​ut-​re, etc.”
2. Cafiero (2009), 12.
3. Di Giacomo (1924), 263. See also Del Prete (2014).
4. A similar lesson, annotated in both melody and accompaniment, can be found in Zingarelli
(I-​Nc, Solfeggio 435), fol. 5r.
5. Mancini (1777), 77–​78: “Fatta dunque che sia una volta l’esperienza sopra la disposizione
e capacità dello scolare rispetto all’intonazione, e ritrovatolo abile e disposto per riuscirvi,
dovrà questi per bene assodarsi alla medesima, solfeggiare note di grado, cioè la prima scala
composta col moto retto, e la seconda graduata col modo retrogrado. Tutto ciò dev’ esser
eseguito con una scrupolosa attenzione, al fine ch’elleno siano perfettamente intonate: a
questo studio deve seguire quello di solfeggiar le note, che formano i salti regolari.”
6. This is implied by a report of December 13, 1729, from an inventory of works by the Roman
printer Sebastiano Testa reproduced in Barbieri (1995).
7. In German-​ speaking regions, Lutheran Latin schoolteachers called the didactic duo
a bicinium. It too was used as a Type 2 solfeggio, albeit with a variety of alternative note-​
naming systems.
8. Bornstein (2001), 181.
9. van Tour (2015), 132–​36. Oddly, Orloff (1822, 276) reverses this categorization, claiming that
Leo invented the “obstinacy” or “obligation” aria (aria d’ostinazione or airs obliges).
10. van Tour (2015), 28.
11. See Bornstein (2010), 157–​62.
12. Ibid., 4–​10, 118.
13. Mengozzi (2007) argues that solmization syllables were peripheral to the study of counter-
point during the Renaissance. On pp. 210–​16 he discusses the Del Lago–​Spataro debate of
1529 and provides examples of contrapuntal imitations in which (he claims) the syllables
do not match. I consider these to be exceptions that prove the rule. Solmization is integral to
the didactic duo, explicitly so in the many that feature a syllabic obbligo such as the repeated
la-​sol-​fa-​re-​mi with inganni annotated in the eighth duo of Banchieri (1625; reproduced in
Bornstein [2001], 388–​89).
14. Zarlino (1558), pt. 4, chaps. 18–​29, as discussed in Bornstein (2001), 110–​111.
15. Scorpione (1701), 143–​44: “Il ricercare non è altro, se non introdurre due, ò più parti, le
quali scambievolmente si ricerchino, il che non si può fare, senza qualche imitazione con
più soggetti, con rivoltamenti delle parti, e con artificiosi Contrappunti, ch’è il vero modo di
ricercare. Io però qui dal Principiante non voglio questo, ma solo un semplice ricercare, senza
tanti soggetti, e con rivoltamenti, e sarà di grandissimo giovamento al medesimo. . . . Prima,
dunque, di ogni altra cosa si veda sopra qual Tono si vorrà stabilire la compositione, e doppo
si prendano le specie di Quinta, e di Quarta spettanti ad esso Tono, e con esse si faccino
procedere le parti, ò di grado, ò di salto, come si vuole. . . . Avvertendo, che fu’l principio la
specie di Quinta deve havere il luogo grave, e la Quarta il luogo acuto, e nel progresso della
compositione poi, come si vuole.”
334 Notes

16. Gentile (1642), preface: “In ogni principio di Ricercata, ò Solfeggiamento.”

17. Martini (1774), 1:31–​33.
18. In this substantial compilation of solfeggi (I-​Nc, 19.5.23), Zingarelli discarded several incom-
plete drafts of the fugue shown in ­example 11.7. These show in fascinating detail how he
went about composing them, first penning the subject entries in both parts before adding
counterpoints and cadence-​like fill-​in material.
19. Grier (2010), 82, for instance, concludes that the “three fugal finales of Op. 20, therefore, con-
stitute Haydn’s advanced study not so much in fugal procedure as in the practice of invertible
counterpoint.”
20. Salari (I-​BGc, Mayr Fald. 250/​2, fol. 3v): “Ciorlante è padre di questo solfeggio,” cited in van
Tour (2015), 206. According to Sullo (2011, 411), solfeggi appear as counterpoints in Raffaele
Giannetti’s Studio e Corso di Contropunto e Solfeggi (I-​Nc, 33.1.14/​1, olim 16.6.72), written
during his lessons with Gaetano Donizetti in about 1837, and Cesare Minciotti’s Solfeggi da
Cesare Minciotti sotto la direzione del Celebre Maestro Sig.r Cavaliere Saverio Mercadante
(1858; IAf, Fondo Minciotti Busta 21).

Chapter 12

1. See Hill (1998) and Coelho (2003). Pirrotta and Povoledo (1982, 36) gives an example of ex-
pressive solo song from 1488. Basso continuo probably originated in Spanish alfabeto guitar
notation in the second half of the sixteenth century; cf. Tyler (2003).
2. Hill (1998), 129. Zanetti (1978), 3:1547–​48, describes the early seventeenth-​century solfeggio
in these terms, as an aria taught to a professional singer by its composer.
3. Hill (1998), 139.
4. van Tour (2015, 208–​20) presents evidence to suggest that the partimento arose out of the
practice of basso seguente, in which a keyboard player would follow the lowest part of a score.
5. Cesare Marotta to Enzo Bentivoglio, March 3, 1614 (I-​FEas, Archivio Bentivoglio, Mazzo
9–​73, fol. 427r); translation adapted from Hill (1998), 128.
6. The earliest Type 3 aria-​solfeggi I know are the fifty-​three unique and exquisitely beautiful
melodies found in Leo’s lessons for Giovanni Covezzi (I-​Fc, E.VIII.891), which probably date
from the 1720s.
7. Overviews of the main Neapolitan collections and their origins can be found in Florimo
(1881–​83), 2:1–​84; Di Giacomo (1918); Sullo (2011), 125–​28 and (2012); and Fabris (2013).
8. Sanguinetti (2005); Sullo (2014d).
9. Florimo (1881–​83), 2:412: “Questa è la vera e la miglior via di formarsi il canto.”
10. Sullo (2009, 99) shows that similar teachings are evident in Raffaele Giannetti’s notebook (I-​
Nc, 33.1.14/​1). Giannetti studied in Naples from 1837 to 1844.
11. Ruta (1856a, 318): “Di quanta importanza sia il solfeggio nello insegnamento della
composizione musicale: e dicemmo essere questo una esercitazione con la quale s’impara a
sviluppare e condurre un pensiero musicale, a ordire e tessere un pezzo, non che ad acquistare
la piena e profonda conoscenza delle voci cantanti.” See also Ruta (1876), 1:9.
12. Mancini (1777, 206): “Solfeggio must not be woven with regular leaps, but rather broken up
by irregular ones, so that the student does not find in the future anything that embarrasses
him.” This advice confirms not only that solfeggio required a mixture of leaps but also that it
was the product of a collaborative effort. Mancini clearly assumed that it was the student—​lo
scolare—​who wove the solfeggio, not the maestro.
13. Sullo (2011), 103–​4.
14. Florimo (1881–​83), 2:79.
 Notes 335

15. Sigismondo (2016b), 37.

16. Ibid., 6.
17. This solfeggio exists in twenty-​eight separate versions, each with minor differences. Almost
all have traits over the thirty-​second notes in mm. 7, 9, 11, and 12. The transcription given
in ­example 12.5(b) borrows the tie over the bar line in mm. 6 and 8 from Leo, Solfeggi a
voce sola di soprano (1773; I-​Nc, 34.2.5), which is assumed to be more complete because
it was copied for the amateur singer Clotilde Capece Minutolo, one of three daughters of a
retired general who later donated his music library to the Naples Conservatory (see Fabris
[2013], 112).

Chapter 13

1. Powers (2000), 275–​76.

2. The idea of numbered scale degrees with specific functions, familiar from eighteenth-​century
thoroughbass treatises and Jean-​Philippe Rameau’s basse fondamentale, should not be con-
fused with simply numbering a scale. Conceiving the scale numerically has a history far
longer than that of the Rule of the Octave. It is implicit in the octave species of the modal
system and in the traditional A to G letter names of the gamut. As a concept, it must have
occurred to many musicians, especially keyboard players, before the arrival of basso con-
tinuo. The Musica Practica (1482) of the Spanish theorist Bartolomé Ramos de Pareja refers
throughout to scales in terms of numbered notes. Several scholars trace the origins of con-
tinuo not only to bass parts copied from existing compositions and known as basso seguente
but also to Spanish guitar or vihuela treatises, especially from the mid-​sixteenth century on-
ward, though these were primarily notational systems geared more toward showing where
to place the fingers than conceptualizing scales and keys. An early example of the numbered
octave scale as an aid to composition can be found in Antoine Parran’s Traité de la musique
théorique et pratique (1639), but it relates to the three positions of ut in the Guidonian system
rather than to the idea of freely transposable scale degrees. An expanded system dealing
with twelve modes appeared in Athanasius Kircher’s Musurgia universalis (1650, vol. 2, bk.8,
51) but only as an “arcane” abstraction.
3. Banchieri (1611), 11: “Questo nuovo modo di suonare sopra il Basso.”
4. Ibid., 5: “Il principiante Organista, che desideri suonare sopra il Basso continuo nell’ Organo
in concerto si presuppone, che sappia in pratica l’ intavolatura per l’ accomodamento delle
mani, similmente leggere, & cantare sicuramente le chiavi del Basso di F.fa ut, così di b.molle
come di ♮.quadro con le di loro mutationi, così ascendenti, come discendenti, & ritendo in se
pratica tale esercitarsi prima cogli deti di tasto in tasto, & accompagnar la voce all’ Armonia,
così semplicemente.”
5. Ibid., 10.
6. Samber (1707), 36, 44.
7. Buttstett (c. 1716), 121–​22, citing Bononcini (1678), 55–​56.
8. Calegari, Dissertazione (1732; I-​Bc, F.70/​Olim Cod. 031:10), cited in Barnett (2008), 52.
9. Lester (1992), 70.
10. Powers (2000), 277.
11. See the summary argument in his foreword ([4–​11]). Van Blanckenburg was well read in con-
temporary theory and provides a fascinating account of current debates about scales and solfa
systems, letters, numbers, and the relation of the Guidonian B-​fa and B-​mi to modern sharps
and flats (14–​25). He derided French and German theory in general (cf. 80) and François
Campion’s Règle de l’Octave in particular, dismissing the idea of numbered scale degrees (37).
336 Notes

12. Riepel (1755), 1–​18.

13. Mozarts Unterricht in der Composition: Unterrichtsheft für Barbara Ployer, K. 453b (1784; A-​
Wn, Mus. Hs. 17559 Mus), fol. 17r. Diplomatic transcriptions appear in the Neue Mozart
Ausgabe edited by Helmut Federhofer (1978–​79). Lester (1992), 183–​86 discusses the pro-
gressive aspects of Mozart’s teaching.
14. Pasquini (1715), fol. 6v; Scarlatti (1715), fol. 13r.
15. A note on the solmization of e­ xample 13.4(b): The melody in mm. 1–​4 is read as fa-​mi\fa-​la
(as opposed to fa-​mi\fa-​mi) because that is how Solano (1764) spells it. The final la also allows
the melody to flow smoothly into the inganno between la-​sol on A-​G and E-​D in mm. 5–​8.
The bass in m. 3 would normally be read as re-​mi in the key of F major but, by analogy with
m. 1 and because the merged mi/​mi modulation in rapid passagework is so common in sol-
feggio, I use one syllable for both D-​mi in B♭ and E-​mi in F.
16. Scholars have speculated that Beethoven, while working as an assistant to the court chapel
in Bonn from 1781 to 1792, may have been influenced by the Italian Andrea Luchesi (1741–​
1801), who served as Kapellmeister from 1774 until the invasion of French troops in 1794.
The same modulatory schema can be found in many Neapolitan solfeggi. See, e.g., Zingarelli’s
Fuga for solo soprano (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 440), no. 9.

Chapter 14

1. Rousseau (1768), 445: “par Muances, par transposition & au naturel. . . . La première méthode
est la plus ancienne, la seconde est la meilleure, la troisième est la plus commune en France.”
2. A comprehensive chronological overview can be consulted in Lange (1900).
3. Ramos de Pareja (1482/​1993), 96–​99.
4. Agricola (1757/​1995), 92; emphasis in the original.
5. For a full account of bocedization, see Jesse Ann Owens (1997).
6. Calvisius (1611) discusses both the seventh syllable si (121–​23) and bocedization (147–​53).
7. The first to adopt letter names for notes was the Carthusian monk Johannes Gallicus (c. 1415–​
73), whose gamut dispensed with all but one syllable; see Gallicus (1458–​64), fol. 50r, cited in
Long (2008), 283–​86. Mengozzi (2007, 184) identifies other fifteenth-​century theorists who
expressed doubts about Guido’s method.
8. See Butt (1994), 59–​60.
9. See Carter (2002).
10. Ahle (1690), Anmerkungen, 25–​26. Lange (1900, 612) lists a number of textbooks that
adopted letter names: Funccius [Funcke] (1673), Mylius (1686), Uhlich (1687), Speer (1687),
Falk (1688), Quirsfeld (1688 [1675]), Lange (1688), and Printz (1689 [1678]).
11. Bugenhagen, Schulordnung (1634), transcribed in Hoche (1879), 3:66–​113.
12. Rousseau (1768/​1779), 366–​67.
13. Lange (1688), cited in Lange (1900), 613.
14. Marpurg (1763), 39–​43. Hiller (1780, xxx, 10) advocated the use of “Die Graunischen Sylben.”
15. Anon. [Johannes Speth?], Wegweiser (1693), 3: 7–​9.
16. Adlung (1783) sets out a contemporary history of solmization in Germany (203–​12) and an
account of the debate between Mattheson and Buttstett (212–​19). See also Lester (1977), 37–​
62, who follows Lange (1900, 613) and many others in universalizing this local dispute to
represent the demise of the old ut-​re-​mi in general.
17. Dies (1810), 21–​22: “Weder sein Schullehrer noch irgend eine Person im Städtchen, war
jedoch mit Do, Re, Mi &c. der italienischen Methode bekannt; der witzbegierige Knabe
konnte also von niemand den erwünschten Unterricht empfangen. Was thut das Genie in
 Notes 337

solchen Fällen? . . . Joseph erfand sich die natürlichste Methode; ward sein eigener Lehrer;
sang täglich, schlichtweg, C. D. E. F. G. &c. beobachtete daben alle Regeln des Solfeggio, ohne
es selbst zu wissen; that so mächtige Fortschritte, daß Reutern, nach Verlauf der bestimmten
Zeit, in Erstaunen gerieth.” Translation adapted from Gotwals (1968), 85.
18. See Herissone (2000), 84–​98. Angelini Bontempi (1695) proposed a similar system in
Perugia.
19. Lange (1899), 19–​23 or (1900), 552–​55. Some claim that si stands for the text “Sancte Ioannes”
(Saint John) that ends the eighth-​century hymn “Ut queant laxis,” which Guido of Arezzo
used as the basis of his solmization system.
20. Maillart (1610), 61, repeated in Mersenne (1623), chap. 4, verse 24, art. 14. Sweertius (1628,
350) referred to Hubert Waelrant. See Owens (1997), 379.
21. Zacconi (1622a, 10) claimed that “Don Anselmo of Flanders” invented si and hò and ridiculed
the idea mercilessly. Angelini Bontempi (1695) described a seven-​note scale with bi or si,
citing Alsted as his source.
22. Among the suggested inventors were Ericius Dupuis in the eleventh century and Jean de
Muris in 1330 (Rousseau 1779, 361–​62); Anselm of Flanders (Manfredini 1797); Erycius
Puteanus (Agricola 1757/​1995, 64, and Nathan 1836, 318); an obscure early seventeenth-​
century castrato called Sieur Le Maire (Brossard c. 1703, Schizzi 1833, 11, and Nathan 1836);
and Jean-​Baptiste Lully (Veracini c. 1730, 388 [346]).
23. Puteanus (1599), 79, 107.
24. Banchieri (1614), 18–​24. In deference to him, Manfredini (1775/​2013, 115) restored si to the
original bi.
25. Cited in Lange (1900), 607. Butt (1994, 59) notes similar systems in Keiser (1601, 1602),
Orgosinus (1603), Kretzschmar (1605), and Kraft (1607).
26. Lorente (1672), 55. See McNaught (1892–​93), 40.
27. Lebeuf (1741), 6.
28. Van Blanckenburg (1739), 64.
29. See Orgosinus (1603), chap. 3.
30. Tevo (1706), 90–​91: “bizzare [sic] inventioni ritrovate per facilitare il Modo di solfeggiare,
senza Mutazioni.” See Barnett (2013), 53.
31. Bornstein (2001, 157) claims, without offering any evidence, that between the two coexisting
systems there was a “strong bias” toward the French one.
32. Although Martini acknowledged deficiencies in the old solmization, especially in regard to
up-​to-​date music (canto figurato), he nevertheless preferred it to seven-​note solfège, which,
“although it offers great simplicity, lacks, however, such qualities [of the old system] that its
advantage is cancelled-​out.” Provedi to Martini, March 23, 1743; Martini to Provedi, March
31, 1743 (Parisini [1888], 112–​16).
33. See Zondolari (1746). His chromatic scale ascending from C reads ut, pa, re, bo, mi, fa, tu,
sol, de, la, no, si. The title page names the author as a “Shepherd of Arcadia.” Mancini (1774,
56) attributed it to Zondolari, who, as a Sienese nobleman with an interest in music, would
presumably have known of Fritelli’s project. Johann Hasse witnessed this system in use in
Cortona and mentioned it to Mancini in 1761, but he was unable to provide a description;
see Mancini (1774), 56. Remarkably, a manuscript of solfeggi by Durante held in the Royal
Library in Copenhagen (Dk-​Kk, mu. 6403.2132) contains annotations by “J. Koës, Rome
1810” that indicate Zondolari’s solmization system.
34. Barnett (2013), 55.
35. The dispute began in 1775, when Manfredini attacked some of the ideas in Mancini (1774)
and advocated the French seven-​note system. Mancini responded (1777, 64–​86) with a de-
fense of Italian solfeggio, to which Manfredini again objected (1797, 3:55).
338 Notes

36. Even where French fixed-​do solfège held sway, the practice of vocalizing embellishments on
the vowels persisted. A series of solfeggi on the scale by Samuel Wesley with a watermark of
1834 (GB-​Lbl, Add. Ms. 35003, fol. 37) includes a si scale with each note embellished with
octave runs.
37. Azopardi (1786; M-​Vnl, ms. 328), 5.
38. Zingarelli, Solfeggi (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 430), fol. 6r. I am grateful to Claire Roberts-​Schäfer for
this observation. In ascending motion, Zingarelli mutates not on the usual D-​re but after E-​la,
presumably because scales were normally practiced up to a boundary of either E-​la or A-​la.
39. Calegari (1828), 3.
40. The end of the old tradition in Spain can be dated very precisely to Eslava’s Complete Method
(1830), which was adopted at the Madrid Conservatory.
41. Rossini and Wagner speaking in 1860, as cited in Michotte (1968), 74–​75.
 Bibliography

Library Sigla

Austria A-​Eh Haydn-​Haus, Eisenstadt

A-​ST Zisterzienserstift, Bibliothek und Musikarchiv,

Stams
A-​Wb Burgtheater, Archiv, Wien
A-​Wbb Klosterkirche der Barmherzigen Brüder, Wien
A-​Wgm Archiv der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Wien
A-​Whk Hofburgkapelle, Wien
A-​Wkpu Provinzarchiv der Wiener Kapuziner, Wien
A-​Wm Minoritenkonvent, Klosterbibliothek und Archiv,
Wien
A-​Wn Österreichische Nationalbibliothek,
Musiksammlung, Wien
Belgium B-​Br Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, Bruxelles
B-​Gu Universiteitsbibliotheek, Gent
B-​Lc Conservatoire Royal de Liège, Bibliothèque
Switzerland CH-​Bu Universitätsbibliothek, Musiksammlung, Basel
CH-​Gc Conservatoire de Musique, Bibliothèque, Genève
Germany D-​Au Universitätsbibliothek, Augsburg
D-​B Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz,
Musikabteilung, Berlin
D-​Bsa Sing-​Akademie zu Berlin, Notenarchiv, Berlin
D-​Dl Sächsische Landesbibliothek/​Staats-​ und
Universitätsbibliothek, Dresden
D-​DO Fürstlich Fürstenbergische Hofbibliothek,
Donaueschingen (most sources now in D-​KA)
D-​LEb Bach-​Archiv, Leipzig
D-​Hs Staats-​und Universitätsbibliothek, Musikabteilung,
Hamburg
D-​KA Badische Landesbibliothek, Musikabteilung,
Karlsruhe
340 Bibliography

D-​KNhi Joseph Haydn-​Institut, Köln

D-​Mbs Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Musikabteilung,
München
D-​MÜp Diözesanbibliothek, Münster
D-​MÜs Santini Bibliothek, Münster (now in D-​MÜp)
D-​SWl Landesbibliothek Mecklenburg-​Vorpommern,
Musikaliensammlung, Schwerin
D-​WRz Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek-​Studienzentrum,
Weimar
Denmark Dk-​Kk Det Kongelige Bibliotek, København
Spain E-​Mn Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid
France F-​Pn Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département de la
Musique (et fonds du Conservatoire), Paris
Great Britain GB-​Cfm Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
GB-​Lbl The British Library, London
GB-​Lcm The Royal College of Music, London
Hungary H-​Bn Országos Széchényi Könyvtár, Budapest
Croatia HR-​Dha Povijesni Arhiv, Dubrovnik
Italy I-​Baf Accademia Filarmonica, Archivio Biblioteca,
Bologna
I-​Bc Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica di
Bologna, Bologna
I-​BGc Civica Biblioteca, Archivi Storici Angelo Mai,
Bergamo
I-​BGi Civico Istituto Musicale Gaetano Donizetti,
Biblioteca, Bergamo
I-​Bl Conservatorio Statale di Musica G. B. Martini,
Biblioteca, Bologna
I-​Bsp Archivio Musicale della Basilica di San Petronio,
Bologna
I-​CHc Biblioteca Comunale Cristoforo Sabbadino,
Chioggia
I-​Fc Conservatorio di Musica Luigi Cherubini,
Biblioteca, Firenze
I-​Fn Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Firenze
I-​Gl Conservatorio di Musica Niccolò Paganini,
Biblioteca, Genova
I-​IE Biblioteca Comunale, Jesi
I-​Lcr Crocefisso, Archivio, Lucca
I-​Li Istituto Musicale Luigi Boccherini, Biblioteca, Lucca
I-​LUCcm Museo Civico Giuseppe Fiorelli, Lugo
I-​Mb Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, Milano
I-​Mc Biblioteca del Conservatorio Statale di Musica
Giuseppe Verdi, Milano
 Bibliography 341

I-​MC Monumento Nazionale di Montecassino, Biblioteca,

Montecassino
I-​MOe Biblioteca Estense, Modena
I-​Na Archivio di Stato, Napoli
I-​Nasd Archivio Storico Diocesano (Curia), Napoli
I-​Nc Biblioteca del Conservatorio di Musica San Pietro a
Majella, Napoli
I-​Nf Biblioteca Oritoriana dei Gerolamini (Filippini),
Napoli
I-​Nn Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III, Napoli
I-​Nt Archivio Musicale del Teatro San Carlo, Napoli
I-​NT Biblioteca comunale Principe di Villadorata, Noto
I-​OS Opera Pia Giuseppe Greggiati, Biblioteca, Ostiglia
I-​PAc Biblioteca Nazionale Palatina, Sezione Musicale
presso il Conservatorio di Musica Arrigo Boito,
Parma
I-​PAp Biblioteca Nazionale Palatina, Parma
I-​Pca Biblioteca Antoniana con Archivio Musicale, Padova
I-​PO Biblioteca Provinciale, Potenza
I-​PS Biblioteca dell’Archivio Capitolare, Pistoia
I-​Raanc Biblioteca e Archivio Musicale dell’Accademia
Nazionale di S. Cecilia, Roma
I-​Rf Padri dell’Oratorio Chiesa Nuova (Filippini),
Archivio, Roma
I-​Rig Istituto Storico Germanico di Roma, Sezione Storia
della Musica, Roma
I-​Riis Istituto Italiano di Storia della Musica, Roma
I-​Rli Biblioteca dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei e
Corsiniana, Roma
I-​Rlippmann Biblioteca Privata Friedrich Lippmann, Roma
I-​Rn Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele II,
Roma
I-​Rrostirolla Biblioteca Privata Giancarlo Rostirolla, Roma
I-​Rsc Biblioteca Musicale Governativa del Conservatorio
Santa Cecilia, Roma
I-​Rsg Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano, Archivio
Musicale, Roma
I-​Rvat Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Città del Vaticano
I-​Tn Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, Torino
I-​Vc Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello,
Biblioteca, Venezia
I-​VIb Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana, Vicenza
342 Bibliography

I-​Vnm Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venezia

Malta M-​Vnl National Library of Malta, Valletta
Mexico MEX-​Mahn Ciudad de México, Archivo Histórico José María
Basagoiti Noriega del Colegio de San Ignacio de
Loyola Vizcaínas
Portugal P-​Cug Biblioteca Geral da Universidade de Coimbra
P-​Ln Biblioteca nacional de Portugal, Lisboa
Russia RUS-​McM Gosudarstvennyj Tsentral’nyj Muzej Muzykal’noj
Kul’tury im. M. I. Glinki, Moskva
RUS-​Mm Gosudarstvennaya Publichnaya Istoricheskaya
Biblioteka Rossii, Moskva
RUS-​Mk Nauchnaya Muzykal’naya Biblioteka im.
S. I. Taneeva Moskovskoj Gosudarstvennoj
Konservatorii im. P. I. Chajkovskogo, Moskva
RUS-​SPe Nauchnaya Biblioteka Gosudarstvennogo
Ermitazha, Sankt Peterburg
RUS-​SPia Gosudarstvennyj Tsentral’nyj Istoricheskyj Arkhiv,
Sankt Peterburg
RUS-​SPk Biblioteka Gosudarstvennoy Konservatorii im. N. A.
Rimskogo-​Korsakova, Sankt Peterburg
United States US-​Cn Newberry Library, Chicago, IL
US-​Eu Northwestern University, Music Library, Evanston,
IL
US-​LAum University of California, Music Library, Los Angeles,
CA
US-​NHub Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript
Library, New Haven, CT
US-​SFsc San Francisco State University Library, San
Francisco, CA
US-​Wc Library of Congress, Music Division, Washington,
DC
 Bibliography 343

Primary Sources I: Solfeggio Collections

Published sources are ordered by date, from earliest to latest; undated

manuscripts are ordered alphabetically by library sigla.
Agus, Henri, and Charles-​Simon Catel, Luigi Chérubini, François-​Joseph Gossec, Honoré
Langlé, Étienne Méhul, and Henri-​Joseph Rigel. Principes élémentaires de Musique arrêtés
par les Membres du Conservatoire pour servir à l’étude de cet établissement; suivis des Solfèges
par M. M. Agus, Catel, Cherubini, Gossec, Langlé, Lesueur, Méhul et Riegel. Premiere Partie.
Paris: L’imprimerie du Conservatoire, 1799. Livre 1: Principes élémentaires de musique; Livre
2: Abrégé des Principes suivi de gammes et solfèges faciles; Livre 3: Recueil de solfèges d’une
difficulté progressive.
Agus, Henri, and Charles-​Simon Catel, Luigi Chérubini, François-​Joseph Gossec, Honoré Langlé,
Étienne Méhul, and Henri-​Joseph Rigel. Principes élémentaires de Musique [. . .] Solfèges pour
servir à l’étude dans le Conservatoire de musique par les Citoyens Agus, Catel, Chérubini, Gossec,
Langlé, Le Sueur, Martinj, Méhul et Rey. Seconde Partie. Paris: L’imprimerie du Conservatoire,
1802. Livre 4: Recueil de solfèges d’une difficulté progressive à une voix; Livre 5: Recueil de solfèges
à deux, trois et quatre voix.
Ajello, Raffaele. Esercizi di Canto per Voce di Soprano del M.o Raffaele Ajello (19th-​c.; I-​Mc,
Fondo Noseda A.6.9).
Altieri, Paolo (1745–​1820). Canone finitu ad unisonu tribus vocibus 1769 (1769; I-​NT).
Altieri, Paolo. Solfeggi di Soprano con accompag:to del Basso. Del Sig:r D. Paolo Altieri 1800
(1800a; I-​NT).
Altieri, Paolo. [14] Solfeggi di soprano, accompagnati col Basso. Del Sig:r D. Paolo Altieri. Nel
1800 (1800b; I-​NT).
Altieri, Paolo. Raccolta di solfeggi di soprano, Del Sig:r D. Paolo Altieri. Nel 1804 (1804; I-​NT).
Anon. “Corso elementare completo di lettura musicale, in brevi solfeggi, di R. Boucheron.”
L’Armonia 5 (9) (1858, May 15): 129.
Anon. [26 Solfeggi] (c. 1800; A-​ST; Rism ID. no. 650011594).
Anon. “Plusquam bestia, quem non afficit musica” [6 Solfeggi for soprano and bass with basso
continuo, one with obbligato violin] (c. 1800; A-​ST; Rism ID. no. 650011594).
Anon. [20] Solfeggi per Voce di Soprano (1800–​49; D-​DO, Don Mus. Ms. 2712).
Anon. [33] Solfeggi [and keyboard pieces] (D-​MÜs, Sant Hs. xy 80).
Anon. Principi di musica con Solfeggi, ed altre Regole che contengano [sic] in questo libretto e
cadenze per tutti i tuoni (before 1760; I-​Bc, II.239).
Anon. Primi Elementi di Musica prattica per gli Studenti Principianti di tal Professione. A’ quali si
sono aggiunti alquanti [16] Solfeggi a due voci in partitura, d’ eccellente Autore. Venice: Antonio
Bortoli a S. Maria Formosa in Calle Longa, c. 1707) (I-​Bc, G.48).
Anon. Principi di Musica (1700–​30; I-​Fn, Magl. XIX, 43).
Anon. La Musica e la scienza de’ toni. I principi della Musica sono tre: Toni, Figure e Tempi
[seguono 57 solfeggi] (I-​IE, Mus.ms.Conv-​12).
Anon. [30] Solfeggi per soprano in un libro (I-​Li, Inventario Generale [Il Direttore, Giovanni
Pacini, 22 January 1852], p. 3).
Anon. [Pasquale Cafaro?], Elementi di musica (I-​MC, 6-​F-​20/​1). Part 1 (fols. 1r–​33v) contains
the rules of music, part 2 (fols. 34r–​55v) contains 7 solfeggi and 8 duetti for soprano, and part 3
(fols. 56r–​71v) contains 12 exercises for keyboard.
Anon. Solfeggi (I-​Nc, 0.7.84).
Anon. [52] Solfeggi per Soprano e Contralto con e senza acc: di B.C. senza nome d’A[utore] (I-​Nc,
Solfeggio 253).
Anon. Principii e Solfeggi di Soprano (I-​Nc, 22.5.3).
Anon. Opere didattiche di vari autori [Bonifazio Asioli, Girolamo Crescentini, and Niccolò
Zingarelli] (I-​Nc, Oc.3.35 and Oc.3.31).
Anon. [Ad uso del Sig. Montini Studente] Esercizj per Canto di Basso (19th c.; I-​OS, Mss. Teoria
B 39/​2).
344 Bibliography

Anon. [Alberto Franchetti?] Esercizi di Canto (late 19th c.; I-​OS, Mss. Teoria B 40).
Anon. Grammatica musicale con diversi solfeggi per basso (I-​Rf, E.III.13).
Anon. Regole della Musica Imparate à cantare, in tutte le chiavi con gli Accidenti più usitati doppo
i quali, s’aggiungono vari solfeggi (1730–​50; I-​Rn, MSS Musicali 137): fols. 1r–​4r, “regole di sol-
feggio cantato”; fols. 4r–​24v, “solfeggi”; fols. 25r–​40r, “regole sul canto fermo.”
Anon. N.o Dieciotto Solfeggi Basso (1711–​40; owned by Luigi Braschi Onesti [1745–​1816]; I-​Rsc,
Fondo Governativo G Mss 353).
Anon. Principi di Musica (1750–​80; I-​Vnm, It.IV, 476).
Anon. [Leonardo Leo, Davide Perez, Vincenzo Righini], [29] Solfeggi (US-​SFsc, Col. Frank V. de
Bellis Collection, M2.5 v. 48). Contains Solfegi [sic] a due Del Sig.r David Perez; Solfeggi di Leo;
Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano con Cembalo Obligato.
Aprile, Giuseppe (1732–​1813). The Modern Italian Method of Singing with a Variety of Progressive
Examples, and Thirty Six Solfeggi by Sig. D G. Aprile. London: R. Birchall, c. 1795.
Aprile, Giuseppe. Venti [20] solfeggi (I-​Bc, LL.30).
Aprile, Giuseppe. Trentasei [36] solfeggi per soprano Col Basso numerato (I-​MC, 1-​B-​2/​6a–​zj;
I-​Mc, Fondo Noseda A.60.3).
Aprile, Giuseppe. [13] Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano (I-​MC, 1-​B-​2/​16a–​m).
Aprile, Giuseppe. [36] Solfeggi per voce di Soprano, Contralto, e Basso del Sig.r Giuseppe Aprile.
Divisi in 3 parti. (I-​Mc Noseda A 60-​4a–​A 60-​7c).
Aprile, Giuseppe. [5] Solfeggi Del Sig.r Gius. Aprile (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 3; for soprano, but written in
violin clef).
Aprile, Giuseppe. [36] Solfeggi Per voce di Soprano Con accompagnamento di Basso del Signore
Giuseppe Aprile In Napoli Strada Toledo No. 177 Sotto le Reali Finanze (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 4,
olim Od.1.15).
Aprile, Giuseppe. [10] Solfeggi per uso di contralto (I-​Rsc, Governativo G-​Mss-​2652).
Aprile, Giuseppe. [24] Solfeggi a Voce di Basso (I-​Rsc, Governativo G-​Mss-​364).
Asioli, Bonifazio (1769–​1832). Primi elementi di canto. Milan: G. Ricordi, 1809.
Asioli, Bonifazio. Scale, Salti ed altre preparazioni pel solfeggio. Milan: Gio. Ricordi, 1816. (I-​Nc,
Solfeggio 19/​42.1.17–​45.2.28).
Asioli, Bonifazio. Solfeggi a tre (I-​Mc, A. 38.16.10).
Asioli, Bonifazio. Solfeggi facili da potersi cantare anche con parole (1816; I-​MOe, Mus. F. 1813).
Aulicino, P. Scala e solfeggi per soprano (I-​Mc, Fondo Noseda A.39.7).
Bach, Johann Christian (1735–​82). Solfeggi per voce sola di soprano. In Genova 1781 (I-​Gl,
SS.A.2.7.G.8).
Bailleux, Antoine (c. 1720–​ 98). Solfèges pour apprendre facilement la musique vocale et
instrumentale, ou tous les principes sont dévelopés avec beaucoup de clarté. Nouvelle édition,
augmentèe des nouveaux Solfèges d’Italie, avec la Basse; par M.rs Leo, Durente [sic], Piccini,
Sacchini, Cafaro, La Barbiera, Stefani, et autres. Paris: chez M. Bailleux M.d de Musique, 1760.
(I-​Bc, LL.68/​1-​3).
Balducci, Giuseppe (1796–​1845). Studio di canto . . . alla sua scolara Clotilde Capece Minutolo
(1811-​40; I-​Nc, Solfeggio 33).
Banchieri, Adriano (1568–​ 1634). Il principiante fanciullo a due voci. Venice: Bartolomeo
Magni, 1625.
Baroni, Filippo Anconitano. Canoni a due voci Parte all’ Unisono chiusi, et altri risoluti,
et alcuni alla dritta, e alla riversa, et in diverse forme. Bologna: Stamperia delli Peri, 1704.
(I-​B c, DD.115).
Bartei, Girolamo (1565–​ 1617). Il primo libro de’ ricercari a due voci. Rome: Bartolomeo
Zannetti, 1618.
Basili [Basily], Francesco (1767–​1850). No. 10 Solfeggi per Basso Del Sig.r Francesco Basily (I-​
BGi, G 4760).
Basili [Basily], Francesco. Solfeggi per basso composti dal sig. Maes.o Fran.co Basilj censore dell’
I. R. Conservatorio di musica in Milano (I-​Mc, A. 38-​18-​12).
Bêche, Jean-​Louis, and Pierre-​Charles Levesque, eds. Solfèges d’Italie avec la Basse chiffrée,
composés par Leo, Durante, Scarlatti, Hasse, Porpora, Mazzoni, Bernacchi, David Perez &c.
 Bibliography 345

dédiés a Messeigneurs Les Premiers Gentils-​Hommes de la Chambre du Roi, et recueillis par S.rs
Levesque & Bêche. Paris: Cousineau, 1768. (I-​Mc, Fondo Benvenuti).
Bêche, Jean-​Louis, and Pierre-​Charles Levesque, eds. Solfèges d’Italie avec la Basse chiffrée,
composés par Leo, Durante, Scarlatti, Hasse, Porpora, Mazzoni, Caffaro, David Perez &c. Et
recueillis par S.rs Levesque & Bêche. A Messeigneurs Les Premiers Gentils-​hommes de la Chambre
du Roi. 2nd ed. Paris: Cousineau, 1778.
Bêche, Jean-​Louis, and Pierre-​Charles Levesque, eds. Solfèges d’Italie avec la Basse chiffrée,
composés par Leo, Durante, Scarlatti, Hasse, Porpora, Mazzoni, Caffaro, David Perez &c. dédiés
a Messeigneurs Les Premiers Gentils-​Hommes de la Chambre du Roi, et recueillis par S.rs Levesque
& Bêche. 3rd ed. Paris: Cousineau, 1782.
Bêche, Jean-​Louis, and Pierre-​Charles Levesque, eds. Solfèges d’Italie avec la Basse chiffrée,
composés par Leo, Durante, Scarlatti, Hasse, Porpora, Mazzoni, Caffaro, David Perez &c. Et
recueillis par S. Levesque & Bêche dédiés à la Jeunesse Française. 4th ed. Paris: Sieber, 1786.
Bêche, Jean-​Louis, and Pierre-​Charles Levesque, eds. Solfèges d’Italie avec la Basse chiffrée,
composés par Leo, Durante, Scarlatti, Hasse, Porpora, Mazzoni, Caffaro, David Perez &c. Edition
augmentée Des premiers Elémens de Musique, d’une maniere plus intelligible et plus détaillée que
dans les précédentes; ce qui rend cet ouvrage complet et le meilleur guide de l’instruction musicale
des leçons de Musique ont etés entierement conservées. 5th ed. Paris: 1790.
Benelli, Antonio [Maria Pellegrino] Peregrino (1771–​1830). Regole per il Canto figurato o siano
Precetti ragionati per apprendere i principj di Musica con Esercizi, Lezioni et infine Solfeggi
per imparare a cantare da Antonio Benelli. Gesanglehre oder Gründlicher Unterricht in den
Lehrsätzen der Musik mit erläuternden Uebungsbeispielen, Lectionen und Solfeggien, zur
Erlernung des Gesanges; von Antonio Benelli. Dresden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1814. (D-​B, 55
NB 41-​1).
Beretti, Pietro (1705–​59). [70] Solfeggi a varie voci e canoni Beretti (D-​MÜs, Sant Hs 443).
Bernacchi, Antonio Maria (1685–​1756). [36] Solfeggi a Soprano di Antonio Bernacchi Celebre
Maestro della Scuola Bolognese (c. 1738–​56; D-​MÜs, Sant Hs 458).
Bernacchi, Antonio Maria. [36] Solfeggi (D-​MÜs, Sant Hs 459).
Bernacchi, Antonio Maria. 4 Solfeggi a Voce Sola di Soprano Del Sig.r Bernacchi (I-​Nc,
Solfeggio 40).
Bertalotti, Angelo Michele (1666–​1747). Solfeggi a Canto e Alto dati alle Stampe per comodo delli
Putti delle Scuole Pie di Bologna Dedicati agl’ Illustrissimi Signori Governatori di detta Opera
da Angelo Bertalotti musico Decano della Perinsigne Collegiata di S. Petronio, Accademico
Filarmonico, e Mastro del Canto nelle suddette Scuole. Bologna: Lelio dalla Volpe, 1744. First ed.
1698. (I-​Bc, DD.145).
Bertalotti, Angelo Michele. [65] Solfeggi a Canto, e Alto dati già alle stampe per comodo delle Scuole
Pie di Bologna da Angelo Bertalotti Accademico Filarmonico. Nuova Edizione con aggiunta degli
Elementi, del Solfeggio, e de’ Terzetti. Bologna: Lelio della Volpe, 1764. (I-​Nc, 34.1.35. Solfeggio
41; modern ed. Budapest: Ed. Musica, 1995).
Bertini, Salvatore (1721–​94). Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano e basso del sig. D. Salvatore Bertini
maestro di cappella Palermitano (I-​Gl, M.1.1).
Bianco, Giovanni Battista (fl. 1610–​21). Musica a Due Voci Utilissima per instruir i figliuoli à cantar
sicuramente in breve tempo, & commodi per sonar con ogni sorte di strumenti. Venice: Giacomo
Vincenti, 1610.
Bona, Pasquale (1808–​78). 50 duetti senza parole di P. Bona adattati per due Clarinetti con un
terzo d’accompagnamento da B. Carulli. Per uso della scuola del R. Conservatorio di Musica
(I-​Mc, A.34.11.6).
Boucheron, Raimondo (1800–​76). Corso completo di solfeggi per soprano (I-​Fc, D.VI.252).
Boucheron, Raimondo. Corso elementare completo di lettura musicale in brevi solfeggi. Opera
composta per gli alunni della Scuola Metropolitana di Milano da R. Boucheron (I-​Mc,
A.38.30.9).
Cafaro [Caffaro], Pasquale (1715/​16–​87). [104] Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano Con cembalo
oblig[a]to Del Sig.r D. Pasquale Cafaro (D-​B, Mus. Ms. 2704); once owned by Johann Heinrich
Bellermann (1832–​1903).
346 Bibliography

Cafaro [Caffaro], Pasquale. 77 Solfeggi Di Soprano Fatti Per uso di S. M. La Regina delle due
Sicilie (D-​MÜs, Sant Hs 711).
Cafaro [Caffaro], Pasquale. [23] Solfeggi di Soprano con Basso del Sig.r Pasquale Caffaro (HR-​
Dha, I/​29).
Cafaro [Caffaro], Pasquale. Solfeggi del celebre maes: Caffaro della scuola di Napoli con
accompagnamento completo di Piano-​forte, di A. E. Bianchi (Bologna, 1860; I-​Bc, DD 217).
Cafaro [Caffaro], Pasquale. Cafaro Pasquale [12] Solfeggi per Basso. Solfeggi per uso di me
D. Antonio Rizzoni. Anno Domini 1772. Note on fol. 1r: “Solfeggi a Basso solo del Sig.r
D. Pasquale Caffaro Napolitano, Maestro di Musica della Chiesa di S. Barbaziano Vescovo, e
Martire” (1772; I-​Bc DD 218).
Cafaro [Caffaro], Pasquale. [63] Solfeggi a voce sola di Soprano del Sig.r D. Pasquale Cafaro (I-​
MC, 1-​C-​18).
Cafaro [Caffaro], Pasquale. [41] Solfeggi per Voce sola di Soprano con l’accompagnam.to del
Basso Del Sig.r D. Pasquale Cafaro. Per uso dell’ill.ma Sig.ra Ermengilda Gabelloni. Proprietà
della Litografia Patrelli (I-​Mc Noseda D 17; see also I-​MC, 1-​C-​18).
Cafaro [Caffaro], Pasquale. [27] Solfeggi a voce sola di Soprano unito col Basso di Cafaro (I-​Mc
Noseda D 22-​1).
Cafaro [Caffaro], Pasquale. [103] Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano col basso (I-​Nc, Od.1.2).
Capotorti, Luigi Giuseppe (1767–​1842). Esercizi di gorgheggio secondo il Metodo del maestro
sig.r Capotorti (I-​Nc, Od.2.19).
Capotorti, Luigi Giuseppe. [14] Solfeggi Per la voce du Contralto secondo il Metodo Del Maestro
Sig.r Capotorti (I-​Nc 22-​5-​3/​3).
Capotorti, Luigi Giuseppe. [14] Solfeggi Per la voce di Contralto secondo il Metodo del Maestro
Sig.r Capotorti (I-​Nc, 55.5.3).
Carapella, Tommaso (1655–​1736). [10] Canzoni a due voci. Naples: Camillo Cavallo, 1728. (B-​Br,
Ms. Mus. Fétis 2458).
Carapella, Tommaso. [32] Arie gravi per scola di ben cantare [. . .] di Tommaso Carapella (GB-​
Lbl, Add. MS. 14243).
Caresana, Cristoforo (c. 1640–​1709). Duo. Naples: Novello de Bonis, 1681.
Caresana, Cristoforo. [65] Solfeggi a due, tre e quattro voci; libro primo, opera seconda.
Naples: Novello de Bonis, 1693. (I-​Bc, X.228).
Caresana, Cristoforo. Solfeggi sopra gli intervalli delle scale (I-​Fc, E.V.173).
Casamorata, Luigi Ferdinando (1807–​81). Esercizi, Solfeggi, Inno (I-​Fc, E.VIII.861).
Catelani, Angelo. Studio fatto sotto la direzione del Maestro Zingarelli: Solfeggi fugati, 3 vols. (I-​
MOe, Mus.F.162).
Catena, Antonio (1735–​90). Settantacinque solfeggi a soprano (1814; D-​MÜs, Sant Hs. 1023).
Catena, Antonio. Raccolta di [7] diversi Solfeggi Per una sola Voce di Soprano, e Basso Del sig.r
Antonio Catena In Napoli presso Luigi Marescalchi (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 93/​34.2.9).
Catrufo, Giovanni (fl. 1820–​22). Vocalizzi o Studi per la voce. Milan: Ricordi, 1820.
Catrufo, Giovanni [Jean]. Nouvelle Méthode de Solfège Progressif Applicable à un, ou plusieurs
Élèves à la fois. Paris: Au Magasin de Musique de Pacini, 1822.
Ceccarelli, Francesco (1752–​1814). [18] Scale e salti variati fatti da me Ceccarelli (US-​Eu, Ms.
1336[/​1], pp. 1–​16).
Cerruti, Domenico. [41] Solfeggi (c. 1760–​90; I-​Raanc, Fondo Accademico A-​Ms-​3991).
Cherubini, Luigi (1760–​1842). [65] Solfeggi (D-​B, L.117).
Cherubini, Luigi. [29] Solfeggi (D-​B, L.134).
Cherubini, Luigi. [3] Solfeggi (D-​B, L.227).
Cherubini, Luigi. [35] Solfeggi (D-​B, L.324).
Cherubini, Luigi. Rondò: Musica del Sig.r Luigi Cherubini, Cantato Dal Sig.r Luigi Marchesi,
messo in Parafrasi dal Sig.r Wenceslao Pichl, mentre che il sudetto Sig.r Marchesi lo eseguiva à
Mantova la Primavera 1784 (1784; F-​Pn, D. 17319).
Cherubini, Luigi. 74 Solfeggi (c. 1829–​34; F-​Pn, Ms. 1691/​1).
Cherubini, Luigi. [6] Solfeggi per contralto (I-​BGi, IX.D.189, 2385).
Cherubini, Luigi. Solfeggi, Fughe, Canone (I-​Fc, E.VIII.881).
 Bibliography 347

Chiti, Girolamo (1679–​1759). [84 Solfeggi] 1721 Romæ factus Pro Modulatione In Voce Altus
vel contraltus Principij di Musica per Imparare a Solfeggiare bene [. . .] D. Girolamo Chiti [. . .]
faceva per studio [. . .] (includes dates 1721, 1722 and 1741; I-​Rli, Mus. C 11).
Chiti, Girolamo. N.o 8 Solfeggio à 3 voci. C. A. e B. Del Sig. D. Girol.o Chiti. Roma 1741 (1741;
I-​Rli, Mus. P 13).
Chiti, Girolamo. [2] Ricercari, e [7] Solfeggi a voce sola. Roma 1718. Libro P.o. D.n G. Chiti Rom.ae.
In Siena [6] Solfeggi a voce sola di Canto, o Basso ed in ogni chiavetta [6] Solfeggi facili a 2 C. C.
1723 (1723; I-​Rli, Mus. P 15).
Cimarosa, Domenico (1749–​1801). 64 Solfeggi a più voci con duetti (I-​Fc, D.VI. 406–​407).
Cimarosa, Domenico. Venti solfeggi per canto, per voce di soprano o tenore (I-​Gl, B.5.14).
Cini, Giuseppe Ottavio (fl. 1708). Solfeggiamenti a due voci Opera postuma del Molto Reverendo
Signor Giuseppe Ottavio Cini Sacerdote Sanese maestro di Cappella della Metropolitana di Siena.
Lucca: Stamperia Musicale per Bartolomeo Gregorii, 1708. (I-​Bc, EE.104).
Clari, Giovanni Carlo Maria (1677–​1754). [11] Duetti, terzetti, aria (B-​Lc, 43440).
Clari, Giovanni Carlo Maria. [24] Solfeggi a due voci del Clari (D-​MÜs, Sand Hs. 1186; ms. copy
in I-​PS).
Clari, Giovanni Carlo Maria. [15] Duetti (GB-​Lbl, Add. 14110, fols. 43r−92r).
Clari, Giovanni Carlo Maria. [98] duetti (1730s; GB-​Lbl, Add. 14110, fols. 93r–​148v).
Clari, Giovanni Carlo Maria. [20] Solfeggi a due voci di Carlo Maria Clari, maestro di cappella
nella cattedrale di Pistoia (I-​Bc, EE.120).
Clari, Giovanni Carlo Maria. Venti Duetti per Solfeggiare di Gio. Carlo Maria Clari [Solfeggi,
vol. 18] (copyist Fortunato Santini; RUS-​Mk, XI-​370).
Corbisiero, Francesco (c. 1733–​c. 1802). [9] Solfeggi per Voce di Mezzo Soprano (late 18th c.; I-​
Mc, Noseda E 27.22).
Corti, Stefano (fl. 1685). Ricercari a due voci. Florence: Stamperia di S. A. S. alla Condotta, 1685.
Cotumacci, Carlo (c. 1709–​85). 22 Partimenti [recte: Solfeggi] Del Sig. D. Carlo Cotumacci (D-​
MÜs, Sant Hs. 1341).
Cotumacci, Carlo. I.M.I. [71] Solfeggi a due del Signor D. Carlo Cotumacci. Originale (F-​Pn,
L 7338).
Cotumacci, Carlo. 14 Canoni [. . .] Originale di Carlo Cotumacci (c. 1760; F-​Pn, Ms.1710).
Cotumacci, Carlo. Principij e [115] Solfeggi a solo di Soprano Del Sig. D. Carlo Cotumacci (c.
1755; GB-​Lbl, Add. 14241).
Cotumacci, Carlo. Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano (I-​Fc, D.VI.254).
Cotumacci, Carlo. 11 Solfeggi a voce sola di Basso per uso del Nuovo Liceo di musica di Firenze
(I-​Fc, D.VI.356-​359).
Crescentini, Girolamo (1762–​1846). [26] Solfeggi (D-​B, Mus.ms.4300).
Crescentini, Girolamo. [25] Solfeggi di Crescentini per uso di Chiara Camprilli (D-​B, Mus.
ms.4300).
Crescentini, Girolamo. [7] Solfeggi di Girolamo Crescentini (1810-​20; F-​Pn, L-​7339), extracts from
Recueil d’exercices pour la vocalisation musicale avec un discours préliminaire par M. Jérôme
Crescentini. Paris: Imbault, [1811?].
Crescentini, Girolamo. [24] Solfeggi per Canto di Crescentini (I-​Li, Inventario Generale [Il
Direttore, Giovanni Pacini, 22 January 1852], p. 4).
Crescentini, Girolamo. Raccolta di Esercizi per il Canto all’ uso del Vocalizzo. Con discorso
preliminare del Sig. G. C. cav. della Corona di Ferro ed Accademico Filarmonico di Bologna. Con
l’ aggiunta di 12 solfeggi composti dal M.o Righini, come pure altrettanti composti da varj autori.
Paris: Imbault, 1811. I-​Mc, Fondo Benvenuti; see Fétis 2:390).
Crescentini, Girolamo. Solfeggi facili per soprano col Basso d’Accompagnato (I-​Mc, Fondo
Noseda A.42.19).
Crescentini, Girolamo. Solfeggi a voce sola di Basso con accompagnamento di Basso. Del Sig.r
Girolamo Crescentini (I-​Mc Noseda E 64-​7a–​64-​14).
Crescentini, Girolamo. Solfeggi per voce di Tenore, Contralto, Basso Del Cav.e Gir.o Crescentini
(I-​Mc Noseda E 65-​1–​14, 16).
348 Bibliography

Crescentini, Girolamo. Esercizi e Solfeggi per Soprano, Mezzo Soprano e Contralto (I-​Nc,
34.1.30; Od.2.19; Oc.3.32).
Crescentini, Girolamo. [7] Solfeggi di soprano col Basso. Del Sig.r D. Girolamo Crescentini (I-​Nc,
68-​6-​23, pt. 1).
Crescentini, Girolamo. [26] Nuovi Solfeggi per voce di Mezzo Soprano o Contralto Composti dal
Cav. Girolamo Crescentini (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 105).
Crescentini, Girolamo. [16] Nuovi Solfeggi per voce di mezzo Soprano o Contralto. Composti dal
Cav.re Girolamo Crescentini (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 106).
Crescentini, Girolamo. [4] Solfeggi per voce di soprano. Composti Da Girolamo Crescentini.
Libro 1.o (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 107).
Crescentini, Girolamo. [10 Solfeggi] Raccolta di Esercizii Per il Canto al’uso del Vocalizzo Con
discorso preliminare Del Sig.r Girolamo Crescentini (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 108).
Crescentini, Girolamo. Esercizj per canto. 18 Solfeggi inedite (12 di carattere autografo) del Cav.
Girolamo Crescentini composti per la Sig.a Elisabetta Ricciardi (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 109).
Crescentini, Girolamo. Raccolta completa di esercizi di Musica all’uso del vocalizzo. Naples: Reale
teatri, n.d. (I-​Nc, Q.3.25, Solfeggio 111).
Crescentini, Girolamo, and Luigi Corbisieri. [7] Solfeggi Di Soprano col Basso Del Sig.r
D. Girolamo Crescentini; [11] Solfeggi a due Soprani e Basso [Crescentini]; [11] Solfeggi Di
Soprano col Basso Del Sig.r Corbisiero (I-​Nc, 68.6.23).
Dal Bello, Bartolomeo (fl. 1750). [12 Solfeggi] (I-​ Nc, 34-​ 2-​
6/​
5, Solfeggio 247). On fol.
131r: “Sieguono del Sig.r Bellona.” Peter van Tour has determined that the last solfeggio (fol.
139v) is by Leonardo Leo.
Dal Bello, Bartolomeo. Solfeggi per B. e cembalo, 4 vols. (1788; I-​Vnm, Cod.It.IV.1300).
Deems, James M. (1818–​1901). An elementary and progressive method of vocal music comprising
the art of reading music at sight, according to the best Italian systems . . . duetts and trios for soli or
class singing. Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1871.
De Spagnolis, Giovanni Camillo (fl. 1626). Il primo libro delle recercate a due voci (Naples: Ottavio
Beltrano, 1626).
Durante, Francesco (1684–​1755). No. 18 Duetti Di Solfeggi per Soprano, e Contralto Del Sig.re
Francesco Durante (Rome 1810; Dk-​Kk, mu 6403.2132).
Durante, Francesco. 14 Solfeggi per Due voci di Basso composti dal Sig. Leonardo Leo [sic] (DK-​Kk,
Rung 568 C1, 905); the first thirteen solfeggi are by Durante and the fourteenth is possibly by Leo.
Durante, Francesco. XVIII Duetti per Solfeggiare di Francesco Durante, ed. Fortunato Santini
(1800; D-​Mbs, Mus. ms. 758).
Durante, Francesco. [29] Duetti (D-​MÜs, Sant Hs. 1382).
Durante, Francesco. [13] Duetti di Soprano Del Sig.r D. Francesco Durante senza
accompagnamento per avvezzare le Voci a ben intuonare (1700–​10; D-​MÜs, Sant Hs. 1423).
Durante, Francesco. [4] Duetti per Solfeggiare Del Sig.r Francesco Durante (1700–​10; D-​MÜs,
Sant Hs. 1424).
Durante, Francesco. 18. Duetti per solfeggiare del Sig.r Francesco Durante Dodici a due Soprani si
a due Alti (D-​MÜs, Sant Hs. 1425).
Durante, Francesco. [34] Solfeggi di Soprano Solo (18th c.; D-​MÜs, Sant Hs. 1427).
Durante, Francesco. [5] solfeggi (D-​MÜs Sant Hs. 2368, fols. 1r−3r).
Durante, Francesco. [17] solfeggi for two basses (D-​MÜs Sant Hs. 2368, fols. 3v−20r).
Durante, Francesco. [59] Solfeggi del Sig.r Cicco Durante (F-​Pn, L 7408).
Durante, Francesco. [11] Solfeggi per due voci di soprano di Francesco Durante (F-​Pn, L. 7409).
Durante, Francesco. [4] Canoni e [13] Solfeggi a due voci di Francesco Durante (F-​Pn, L.7409/​2).
Durante, Francesco. XI Duetti di Soprano Del Sig.r D. Francesco Durante (GB-​Gbl, Add. 14110,
fols. 149r-​158r).
Durante, Francesco. [12] Duetti per Studio di maniera di cantare, e per Esercizzio d’accompagnare
al cembalo del Sig.r Francesco Durante Ridotti nelle sue giuste diminuzzioni secondo l’autore
da Gio. Masi (“Finis Laus Deo à di 1 Decembre 1776”; GB-​Lcm, Ms. 181/​2). This is a copy of
I-​Rsc, G. Ms. 302 (see below).
 Bibliography 349

Durante, Francesco. [21] Solfeggi Del Celebre Sig.r Francesco Durante (I-​ BGc, XI.I.537,
Galliciolli 7781).
Durante, Francesco. Duetti del Sig. D. Ciccio Durante (I-​Gl, A.8.4).
Durante, Francesco. Solfeggi di soprano e basso (I-​Gl, M.1.1).
Durante, Francesco. [7] Solfeggi a due voci diseguali: Soprano e Basso, e voci eguali: 2 soprani
senz’accompagnamento del celebre maestro Compositore Francesco Durante (I-​MC, 7-​A-​28/​
8a-​fbis).
Durante, Francesco. [83] Solfeggi per Voce sola di Basso [and duets] Del Sig. D. Franco Durante
In Napoli (I-​Mc, Noseda F 42).
Durante, Francesco. [7] Solfeggi a due Voci di soprano Del Maestro Durante (I-​Mc, Noseda F 44).
Durante, Francesco. [11] Solfeggi a due Voci del M.o Durante (I-​Mc, Noseda O-​48-​21).
Durante, Francesco. Canoni e solfeggi a due voci (I-​MOe, Campori A p.II, 2566/​Campori γ
L.9.29).
Durante, Francesco. [17] Solfeggi a due Bassi del Sig.r d. Francesco Durante. Per uso della Scola di
D. Salvatore Fighera. Nicoletta d’Alesandro [. . .] (I-​Nc 22-​5-​3/​2, olim Solfeggio 178).
Durante, Francesco. [20] Solfeggi di Basso. Libro primo, e secondo Del Sig.r Francesco Durante e
Del Sig.r Pascale Caffaro. Appartenenti al Sig.r Giuseppe Sigismondo. Per uso di me Francesco
Petr. . . [?] (I-​Nc, 22-​5-​3/​1, olim Solfeggio 179).
Durante, Francesco. [9] Solfeggi A Voce sola di Basso del Sig.r Francesco Durante. Sigismondo.
(I-​Nc 22-​5-​3/​3, olim Solfeggio 180). Uncertain attribution.
Durante, Francesco. [11] Solfeggi A due Voci Soprano, e Basso Del Sig.r D. Francesco Durante.
D. Giuseppe Sigismondo Padrone (I-​Nc 22-​5-​3/​4, olim Solfeggio 181). Uncertain attribution.
Durante, Francesco. [12] Duetti per Studio di maniera di cantare E per esercizio di accompagnare
al Cembalo Del Sig.r Francesco Durante Per uso Della Sig.ra Teresa Masi (I-​Rsc, G. Ms. 302; see
also GB-​Cfm, Mus Ms. 97-​30-​F-​6; GB-​Lcm, Ms. 181/​2; D-​Hs, M.A826 [Friedrich Chrysander
library]; and D-​Au, HR III 4 1/​2 4°174).
Durante, Francesco. [32] Solfeggi a soprano (RUS-​Mk, XI-​380/​pt. 3).
Durante, Francesco. [13] Solfeggi a due voci (RUS-​Mk, XI-​380/​pt. 4).
Durante, Francesco. [18] Solfeggi a due voci (RUS-​Mk, XI-​380/​pt. 5).
Durante, Francesco. [17] Solfeggi a due Bassi di Leonardo Leo [sic] (RUS-​Mk, XI-​388, pp. 243–​86).
Elia, Giuseppe (fl. 1824). 24 Solfeggi (“20 Marzo 1824”; I-​MC, 1 B 20 a–​zd).
Elia, Giuseppe. Celebri solfeggi di soprano del sig.r D. Giuseppe Elia, 2 vols. (I-​Mc, Noseda F.100).
Elia, Giuseppe. Scale e salti con solfeggi di soprano del sig. Don Gius. Elia (18th c.; I-​Nc).
Errichelli, Pasquale (c. 1730–​75). [24] Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano con Cembalo del signor
D. Pascale Errichelli Maestro di Cappella napolitano. 1757 (I-​Nc, Cantate 110/​2). The final part
contains solfeggi that reappear in Leo, I-​Nc, 34.2.5 (1778).
Farinelli [Broschi, Carlo] (1705–​ 82). Sammlung von [6] Arien für Gesang mit
Instrumentalbegleitung (1753; A-​Wn, Mus. Hs. 19111).
Farinelli [Broschi, Carlo]. [16] Solfeggi del Signore Carlo Broschi detto Farinelli (US-​SFsc, Frank
V. de Bellis Collection, M2.5 v.71).
Fattore, Filippo Antonio del (fl. c. 1710). [Rudiments and Solfeggi for two voices] Philippus
Antonius Fact . . . ensis, Musicus G. . . . libri hujus modulationum binis vocibus Dominus
Filippo Anton. Del Fattore P.ne (c. 1710; GB-​Lbl, Add. Ms. 14242).
Fenaroli, Fedele (1730–​1818). [56] Solfeggi a voce sola, e Basso Del Sig.r D.n Fedele Fenaroli (I-​Bc,
NN.21).
Fenaroli, Fedele. [29] Solfeggi a voce sola, e Basso del Sig.r D. Fedele Fenaroli (“Per uso di S. E. La
Sig.a D. Teresina Caracciolo de’ Duchi di Castel di Sangro”; I-​Mc, Noseda O40-​14).
Fenaroli, Fedele. [29] Solfeggi di Soprano, e Basso Del Sig.r D.n Fedele Fenaroli (I-​Mc, Noseda
O40-​15).
Fenaroli, Fedele. [29] Solfeggi di Soprano col accop.to del Basso Del Sig.r D.n Fedele Fenaroli (“Per
uso di S. E. La Sig.a D. Teresa Caracciolo”; I-​Mc, Noseda O40-​16).
Feo, Francesco (1691–​1761). [29] Solfeggi a Voce di Soprano Del Sig.r D. Francesco Feo (I-​Mc,
Noseda L 24-​1).
350 Bibliography

Feo, Francesco, Leonardo Leo, and Ignacio Jerusalem y Stella (1707–​69). Vezerro de Lecciones
Solas y con Basso; varios Dúos, Canones, à tres à quatro y à cinco vozes, con Ligados y
semicopados. Barias partidas en todas Claves, de los S.s Maestros q.e son el S.r Feo, el S.r Leo
y el S.r Jerusalem, con todas sus explicaciones para Solfear en todas las Claves (MEX-​Mahn,
Rism: 1001041982; Archivio Histórico del Colegio de Vizcaínas, Mexico City, 26-​ I-​
18;
reproduced in Lanam 2018).
Ferri, Francesco Maria da Marsciano (fl. 1713). Solfeggi a due per i Principianti commodi per tutte
le Parti di Fra Francesco Maria Ferri da Marsciano Minor Convent., già maestro di Capella in
S. Francesco di Bologna, della Catedrale d’Ascoli, et al presente maestro di Capella nella Catedrale
di Todi. Rome: per il Mascardi, 1713) (I-​Bc, EE.209).
Florimo, Francesco (1800–​1888). Solfeggi (1818/​1826; I-​Nc, 29-​1-​2).
Florimo, Francesco. Studio di Contrapunto composto da me Francesco Florimo sotto la
direzione del sig. D. Nicolò Zingarelli, Gran Maestro, e Direttore del Real Collegio di Musica di
S. Sebastiano (I-​Nc, 31-​1-​19).
Fontana, Ignazio (fl. 1783–​87). Solfeggi diversi per soprano con uno in fine a tre voci, due canti e
basso e coll’ accompagnamento del basso continuo (I-​Bc, EE.238).
Frescobaldi, Girolamo (1583–​1643). Recercari et canzoni francese fatte sopra diverse oblighi in
partitura. Rome: Bartolomeo Zannetti, 1615.
Fux, Johann Joseph (1660–​1741). Singkunst, Del Signore Autore Josepho Fux (c. 1710; A-​Wgm,
712/​Schulen); Gesang-​Schule von Joh. Jos. Fux. k. k. Hofkapellmeister in Wien 1742 (D-​B, Mus.
ms.6822); published as Gründlicher zur Gesangslehre unumgänglich nothwendiger Unterricht in
der Solmisation. Vienna: Diabelli, 1832.
Gambaro, Giovanni Battista (fl. 1790–​1800). [95] Solfeggi per Primo Tenore (c. 1790; I-​CHc,
B 11.2).
Generali, Pietro (1773–​1832). [18] Solfeggi (early 19th c.; D-​B, Mus.ms.autogr. Generali, P. 2 M).
Generali, Pietro. Principii e [23] Solfeggi di Generali e Nava (I-​Li, Inventario Generale [Il
Direttore, Giovanni Pacini, 22 January 1852], p. 4).
Gentile, Giovanni (d. after 1649). Solfeggiamenti et ricercari a due voci. Rome: Lodovico
Grignani, 1642.
Gherardeschi, Giuseppe (1759–​1815). [IX] Solfeggi a due Di Giuseppe Gherardeschi Ad uso Dell’
Ill.mo Sig.re Cav.e Domizio Tonti 1782 (I-​PS, B.176 n.2).
Giamberti, Giuseppe (1600–​1662/​64). Duo tessuti con diversi solfeggiamenti, scherzi, perfidie, et
oblighi. Rome: Amadio Belmonti, 1657.
Giannetti, Raffaele (fl. 1840–​60). Studio e Corsi di Contrappunto e Solfeggi del M.o Raffaele
Giannetti (1840–​60; I-​Nc, 33.1.14/​1, formerly 16.6.72).
Gibert, Paul-​César (1717–​87). Solfèges ou leçons de musique sur toutes les clefs, dans tous les tons,
modes et genres avec accompagnement d’une basse chiffrée, très utiles aux personnes qui veulent
apprendre l’accompagnement du clavecin, et qui désirent acquérir l’accompagnement du clavecin,
et qui désirent acquerir l’usage de s’accompagner elles-​mêmes. Paris: 1769.
Graun, Carl Heinrich (1703–​59). Solfeggi del Sig. Graun (D-​B, Mus.ms. 8260).
Graun, Carl Heinrich. [29] Solfeggi (D-​Bsa, SA 1671; owned by Carl Zelter).
Greco, Gaetano (c. 1657–​1728). Partimenti di Greco Gaetano (c. 1720; I-​Nc, 45-​1-​65, fols. 6r–​9r;
olim 33.2.9).
Greggiati, Giuseppe (fl. 1797). Solfeggi vecchi ma pregevoli e belli assai (1797; I-​OS, Mss.Teoria
B 37/​1-​2).
Guami, Francesco (b. 1543). Ricercari a due voci. Venice: Angelo Gardano, 1588.
Guarino, Pasquale. Solfeggi per voce di Soprano di Basso e di Tenore Anno 1877 (Naples: auto-
graph, 1877; arranged by Nicola D’Arienzo, I-​Nc, 34.1.2).
Händel, Georg Friedrich (1685–​1759). Solfeggi, bassi e fughe: Georg Friedrich Händels Übungen
zur Satzlehre. Edited by Ludwig Holtmeier, Johannes Mencke, and Felix Diergarten.
Wilhelmshaven: Noetzel, 2013.
Hasse, Johann Adolf (1699–​1783). 12 Solfeggi: für eine singstimme oder Instrumente (Bläser
oder Streicher) und Basso Continuo. 2 vols. Edited by Dietrich Knothe and Kurt Janetzky.
Heidelberg: Willy Müller, 1982.
 Bibliography 351

Hasse, Johann Adolf. [12] Solfeggi del Sig.r Gio. Adolfo Hasse (D-​Dl, Mus.2477-​K-​500).
Hasse, Johann Adolf. [12] Solfeggi del Sig.re Hasse (D-​Hs, M/​A413).
Hasse, Johann Adolf. [6] Solfeggi a voce sola di Soprano del Signore Adolfo Hasse detto il Sassone
(D-​MÜs, Sant Hs. 1993).
Hasse, Johann Adolf. [8] Solfeggi del Sig.r Giov. Adolf Hasse detto il Sassone (1728?; D-​MÜs, Sant
Hs. 1995).
Herschel, Caroline Lucretia (1750–​1848). Music Book [14 pages of solfeggio exercises] (c. 1772–​
81; US-​NHub, Hanover royal music archive, OSB MSS 146, box 824).
Insanguine [Monopoli], Giacomo (1728–​95). [16] Solfeggi del Sig Giacomo Insanguine detto
Monopoli (D-​B, Mus. Ms. 11170). According to van Tour (2016), three of these solfeggi are by
Nicola Sala.
Insanguine [Monopoli], Giacomo. [23] Solfeggi del Sig.r Giacomo Insanguine detto Monopoli
(D-​B, Mus. Ms. 11170/​1).
Insanguine [Monopoli], Giacomo. [5] Solfeggi à Due con il suo Basso del Maestro Insanguine
Monopolo (D-​MÜs, Sant Hs. 2196).
Insanguine [Monopoli], Giacomo. [2] Solfeggi a due voci del Maestro Insanguine Monopoli (D-​
MÜs, Sant Hs. 2197).
Insanguine [Monopoli], Giacomo. [12] Solfeggi di Soprano del Sig.r Giacomo Insanguine d.to
Monopoli (I-​Mc, Noseda M 25-​5).
Insanguine [Monopoli], Giacomo. [15] Solfeggi di Soprano del Sig.r Giacomo Insanguine d.to
Monopoli (I-​Mc, Noseda M 25-​6).
Insanguine [Monopoli], Giacomo. [5] Scale, Salti, e [21] Solfeggi, per voce di Basso Del Maestro
G. Insanguine detto Monopoli divisi in Due Parte (c. 1780; I-​Mc Noseda M 25-​7).
Insanguine [Monopoli], Giacomo. [12] Solfeggi per voce di Basso del. M.o G.mo Insanguine detto
Monopoli divisi in tre parti. Parte 2.a (I-​Mc Noseda M 25-​8).
Jannacconi, Giuseppe (1741–​1816). Kontrapunkt, Generalbaßstudien, Solfeggien (D-​B, Mus.
Ms. Theor. 1292).
Jannacconi, Giuseppe. [6] Salti Di terza, quarta, e quinta, sesta, settima, e ottava armonizati a 4.o
(c. 1790; D-​MÜs, Sant Hs. 2186).
Jannacconi, Giuseppe. Incominciamenti Musicali (ovvero Teoria e Solfeggi) del Sig. Giuseppe
Jannacconi Maes.ro di Capp.la Rom.o per uso del Sig.r Abb.e Giuntotardi (I-​Rsc, G.Mss.97,
pp. 123–​38).
Jannacconi, Giuseppe. [6] Ricercari sopra le Sei note della Scala Diatonica a tre voci pare per uso
delle buone Scuole di Giuseppe Jannacconi composti l’an. 1780 Dominus legifer noster a tre
Alto Tenore e Basso N.B. fu Maestro in S. Pietro in Vaticano dall’ an. 1811 alli 16 Marzo 1816
(copyist Fortunato Santini; RUS-​Mk, XI-​412).
Jommelli, Niccolò (1714–​74). [6] Solfeggi del Sig.r Niccolò Jommelli (D-​MÜs, Sant Hs. 2285).
Jomelli, Niccolò, and Carlo Cotumacci. 3 manuscripts attached to Sala’s Regole (GB-​Lbl, mss.
Add.11589, Add.11590, and Add. 11591).
La Barbiera, Baldassare [“Il Siciliano”] (fl. 1785–​1810). Solfèges pour apprendre facilement La
musique Vocale et Instrumentale ou tous les Principes sont dévelopés avec beaucoup de Clarté
[. . .] composés Par M. Bailleux. (Nouvelle Edition, Augmentée des nouveaux solfèges d’Italie avec
la Basse Par M.re Leo, Durante, Piccini, Sacchini, Cafaro, La Barbiera, Stefani, et Autres. Paris,
1784; first ed. 1770), pt. 2: set of 29 solfeggi by Baldassare La Barbiera, pp. 130−73.
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [20] Solfeggi per Studio a Voce di Soprano del Sig.r D. Baldassare la
Barbiera Siciliano (D-​MÜs, Sant Hs. 301).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [11] Solfeggi Del Sig. D. Baldassare La Barbiera (D-​MÜs, Sant Hs. 302).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [6] Solfeggi (I-​Fc, D.VI.248).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [29] Solfeggi (I-​Fc, D.VI.249).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [20] Solfeggi (I-​Fc, D.VI.250).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. Solfeggi Libro I e II (I-​Fc, D.VI.283−287).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [28] Solfeggi (I-​Fc, D.VI.309).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. Solfeggi (I-​Fc, D.VI.505).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [41] Solfeggi (I-​Fc, D.VI.656).
352 Bibliography

La Barbiera, Baldassare. [19] Solfeggi di Barbieri (I-​Li, Inventario Generale [Il Direttore, Giovanni
Pacini, 22 January 1852], p. 4).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [45] Solfeggi per voce sola di Soprano col Basso. Del Sig.r Baldassare la
Barbiera. Maestro di Canto del Real Conserva.ro (I-​Mc, Noseda P 47-​1).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [12] Solfeggi per voce di Soprano del Signor Baldassaro La Barbiera (I-​
Mc, Noseda P 47-​2).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [2] Solfeggi. Proprietà della Litografia Patrelli (I-​Mc, Noseda P 47-​3).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [32] Solfeggi Per Voce di Soprano del Sig.r Baldassare la Barbiera (I-​Mc,
Noseda P 47-​4).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [23] Solfeggi Per Voce di Soprano Con accompagnamento di Basso. Del
Sig.r Baldassare la Barbiera (I-​Mc, Noseda P 47-​5).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [10] Solfeggi Per Voce di Soprano del Sig.r Labarbiera. Proprietà dell
Litografia Patrelli (I-​Mc, Noseda P 47-​6).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [15] Solfeggi A Voce sola di Contralto e Basso Del Sig.r D. Baldassare La
Barbiera. Detto il Siciliano (I-​Mc, Noseda P 47-​7).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [23] Solfeggi A Voce Sola di Soprano. Musica Del Sig.r D. Baldassare L[a]
Barbiera. In Napoli (I-​Mc, Noseda P 47-​8).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [22] Solfeggi per Soprano di Baldassare La Barbiera divisi in due parti
(I-​Mc, Noseda P 47-​9).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [10] Solfeggi di Soprano Del Sig.r D: Giuseppe Sigismondo [sic] (I-​Nc,
Solfeggio 396).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. Quattordici [14] Solfeggi con l’ accompagnamento del Basso del Signor
Baldassarre Labarbiera (I-​PAc, RSM 46).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [44] Solfeggi per voce di Soprano Del Sig.re Baldassar La Barbera [sic]
(I-​Rsc, Accademico A Ms. 42).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [15] Solfeggi a voce di Soprano col Basso Del Sig.r Baldassar la Barbiera/​
Di Terea Graziani (I-​Rsc, Accademico A Ms. 414).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [12] Solfeggi (I-​Rsc, Accademico A Ms. 3178).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [32] Solfeggi per Soprano e Basso di Don Baldassare La Barbiera detto il
Siciliano (18th c.; US-​Cn, Case Ms.7Q 55).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [42] Solfeggi del Signore Maestro Paisiello [sic] (Ms: US-​Eu Ceccarelli
Collection, Ms. 1234).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [24] Solfeggi del Signore Maestro Paisiello [sic] (US-​Eu, Ms. 1336[/​2],
fol. 15v–​41r).
La Barbiera, Baldassare. [35] Solfeggi a Soprano del Sig.r Baldassar La Barbiera Maestro di Canto
nel Real Conservatorio della Pietà de’ Torchini in Napoli (18th c.; US-​SFsc, Colonel Frank V. de
Bellis Collection, M2.1 M270).
Lassus, Orlande de (1532–​94). Novae aliquot et ante hac non ita usitatae ad duas voces cantiones
suavissimae. Munich: Adam Berg, 1577.
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore (1694–​1744). Solfeggi (A-​Wn, Fonds Kiesewetter, SA.67.E.32,
Mus 25); includes a few by Hasse and Porpora.
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [43] Solfeggi per Soprano (B-​Br, Ms.II 4153, Mus Fétis 5694).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [37] Solfeggi del Sig. Leonardo Leo (1820; D-​B, Mus.
Ms. 12835).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [2] Solfeggi Del Sig Leonardo Leo (1820; D-​B, Mus. Ms.12835/​1).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [52] Solfeggi a Canto Solo Del Sig.re Leonardo Leo Carloni del.
Bombelli sculp. (D-​B, Mus. Ms.12835/​2).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [23] Solfeggi (D-​B, Mus. Ms.12835/​5).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [50] Solfeggi (D-​Dl, Mus. 2460. K.500).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [7] Solfeggi (D-​Dl, Mus. 2460. K.501).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [72] Solfeggi del Sig.r Leonardo Leo A Mademoiselle Benedetta
Bonfil (D-​Dl, Mus. 2460. K.502).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [10] Solfeggi Del Sig. Leonardo (1760–​70; D-​LEb Go. S. 651).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. Sig. N. N. [6] Solfeggi (1760-​70; D-​LEb Go. S. 652).
 Bibliography 353

Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [17] Solfeggi (D-​MÜs, Sant Hs. 2367).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. XII solfeggi a voce sola di soprano con basso (D-​MÜs, Sant
Hs. 2369).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. No. 118 Solfeggi Per Soprano col Basso Del Sig.r Leonardo Leo
In Napoli Si ritrovan vendibili presso Luigi Marescalchi (c. 1750; D-​WRz, Mus. V: 205).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. Quaranta cinque [45] Solfeggi ad uso di Giuseppe Siboni 1794
(DK-​Kk, C I 570). Van Tour (2016) identifies Leo as the author of several of these.
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. Solfeos de Leo para los principiantes de musica. Por direccion
de D.n Fernando Blumenstein (E-​Mn, R.7.726/​2425).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [71] Solfeggi del Sig.r Leonardo Leo, Copiati l’Anno 1756.
Compositions for the harpsichord by the same (1756; GB-​Lbl, Add. MS. 31617). At the end is a
sonata, dated 1783, formerly the property of Dr. [Philip] Hayes, professor at Oxford.
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. Solfeggi per voce sola di soprano con basso numerato (I-​Bc,
GG.97).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [56] Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano con basso numerato per l’
accompagnamento (I-​Bc, GG.98).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [59] Solfeggi per tenore col basso numerato (I-​Bc, GG.99).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [11] Scelta di solfeggi per soprano (I-​Bc, GG.100).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [53 solfeggi] Dizionario Del Sig.r Leonardo Leo Napolitano
(“Per studio di Giovanni Covezzi”; 1720s?; I-​Fc, E.VIII.891).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [55] Vocalizzi per Basso di Leo e Solfeggi per Contralto
di [Michele] Puccini (I-​ Li, Inventario Generale [Il Direttore, Giovanni Pacini, 22
January 1852], p. 3).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [56] Solfeggi di Leo (I-​Li, Inventario Generale [Il Direttore,
Giovanni Pacini, 22 January 1852], p. 4).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [12] Solfeggi per Canto di Leo (I-​Li, Inventario Generale [Il
Direttore, Giovanni Pacini, 22 January 1852], p. 4).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [36] Solfeggi per Alto di Leo (I-​Li, Inventario Generale [Il
Direttore, Giovanni Pacini, 22 January 1852], p. 4).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [48] Solfeggi Durante [sic] (c. 1766; I-​MC Mss. Mus.
116.16).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [67] Solfeggi di Soprano del Sig.r D. Leonardo Leo (1750–​1800;
I-​MC, 3-​D-​9 a-​zzo); very similar to I-​MC, 3-​D-​10; compiled by Vincenzo Bovio.
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. Solfeggi A Voce sola di Soprano con accompagnamento di
Basso Del Sig.r Leonardo Leo (Frontispiece: “In Napoli presso Merola Strada di Chiaja N.o 202
nel Vicoletto N.o 5”; I-​Mc, Noseda P.15.2).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [40] Solfeggi del Sig.r Leonardo Leo (I-​Mc, Noseda P.17.1).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. Fughe (I-​Nc, 1.9.21/​33; copyist Salvatore Ortensio). Contains
material from Cerone (1613).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [33] Solfeggi di soprano Del Sig.r D. Leonardo Leo (I-​Nc,
Solfeggio 251).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. Studio intero di n. 28 Solfeggi per voce di soprano con basso
(I-​Nc, 22-​2-​7, Solfeggio 254).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [84] Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano con Cembalo del Sig.r
Leonardo Leo 1773 (used by Clotilde Capece Minutolo; I-​Nc, 34-​2-​5, Solfeggio 248).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [25] Solfeggi a voce sola di Soprano del Sig.r Leonardo Leo (I-​
Nc, 34-​2-​6/​1, Solfeggio 247, fols. 1r–​23r).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [33] Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano del Sig.r D. Leonardo Leo
(I-​Nc, 34-​2-​6/​2, Solfeggio 247, fols. 25r–​62r).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [24] Solfeggi di soprano Del Sig.r Leonardo Leo Mas.ro Nap.no
(I-​Nc, 34-​2-​6/​3, Solfeggio 247, fols. 63r–​82v).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. Libro Secondo [19] Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano del Sig.r
Leonardo Leo Copiati nel mese di settembre 1778 Copista Leone (1778; I-​Nc, 34-​2-​6/​4,
Solfeggio 247, fols. 83r–​110v).
354 Bibliography

Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [26 Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano] (note on fol. 125r: “Li 1 9bre
1779”; I-​Nc, 34-​2-​6/​5a, Solfeggio 247, fols. 111r–​131r).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [15 Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano] (I-​Nc, 34-​2-​6/​6, Solfeggio
247, fols. 141r–​160r).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [18 Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano] (I-​Nc, 34-​2-​6/​7, Solfeggio
247, fols. 161r–​170r).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [46] Solfeggi Per Voce di Contralto. Opera Del Sig.r Leonardo
Leo. Scritti Per Uso dell’Illustre Sig.ra D. Elisabetta Capasso 9 (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 249).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. Libro secondo [47] solfeggi Del Sig.r Leonardo Leo (1773; I-​
Nc, Solfeggio 250).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. Solfeggi di Soprano Per uso di Francesco Paola Mouton
nell’anno 1805 (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 252).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. Studio intero di N.o 28 Solfeggi Per voce di soprano, con Basso
del. M.o Lionardo Leo (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 254).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. 1.o Esercitazioni sulle Mutazioni di L. Leo. 2.o Canto fermo
(primi elementi o solfeggio esacordale) (1730s?; I-​Nc, 34-​4-​13). The copyist may have been
Gaetano Bellipanni.
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [56] Solfeggi In chiave di Soprano del Sig.re Leonardo Leo (I-​
PAc, Borb. 1574).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [55] Solfeggi del Celebre M.o Sig.e Leonardo Leo (I-​PAc, Sanv.
B. 44).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. Solfegio [sic] di Soprano del Sig.re Leonardo Leo (P-​Ln,
C.N. 321).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. Solfeggi Leonardo Leo (P-​Ln, F.C.R. 109/​2).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. Solfejos do Sno. Leonardo Leo para uso de Manuel Gomes
Ribiero, 2 vols. (P-​Ln, M.M. 4844 and 4845).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [17] Solfeggi a Soprano con Basso accompagnamento di
Leonardo Leo (RUS-​Mk, XI-​388, pp. 153–​92).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. Dodici [12] Solfeggi a Soprano col Basso continuo di Leonardo
Leo (RUS-​Mk, XI-​388, pp. 193–​242).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore. [5] Solfeggi (US-​SFsc, M2.1 M292).
Leo, Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore, and Davide Perez. [45] Solfeggi a voce sola di Tenore e di
Soprano di Leonardo Leo (I-​Rsc/​G. Mss. 108).
Magini, Francesco (fl. 1758). Solfeggiamenti a due voci Canto, e Tenore. Rome: Mascardi, 1703.
(Copy dated 1758 in I-​Rli, RM0418 Musica M 21.)
Malerbi, Giuseppe (fl. 1800). Precetti musicale e solfeggi (I-​LUCcm, Istit. Mus., Malerbi A.625).
Manna, Gennaro (1715–​79). [1] Solfeggio del Sig.r Gennaro Manna (1740–​60; D-​MÜs, Sant Hs.
2470). Uncertain attribution.
Manna, Gennaro. [16 solfeggi] (I-​PAc, Torrigiani Ms. Tor. 48).
Marchesi, Tommaso (1773–​1852). 18 Solfeggi per Basso del Sig.r Tommaso Marchesi (I-​Baf,
Fondo antico 2349/​d).
Martini, Giovanni Battista (1706–​84). Canoni, ovverossia Soggetti per tesser canoni a due, tre e
più voci (c. 1750; I-​Bc, HH 16).
Martini, Giovanni Battista. Mi viene a noia il solfeggiar. Canone a 4, chiuso per soprano (I-​Bc,
HH 18/​253; cf. RUS-​Mk, E-​36).
Martini, Giovanni Battista. [51 Compositions] F. G. B. Martini Motetti a una, e più voci
con Strumenti. Versetti volanti a voce sola con Strumenti. [6] Solfeggi a 3 Voci Graduali;
Responsori, Inni. etc. a più voci. Sanctus Deus. a 4o Conc. con Violini. (I-​Bc, HH 24). A large
miscellaneous eighteenth-​century collection containing a “solfeggio bizzarro” for bass.
Martini, Giovanni Battista. Ventitre [23] solfeggi in chiave di violino col basso d’ accompagnamento
(I-​Bc, HH.73).
Martini, Giovanni Battista. Solfeggi venti [20] in chiave di soprano, con 9 altri solfeggi in chiave di
tenore. Tutti col basso per accompagnarli (I-​Bc, HH 74).
Martini, Giovanni Battista. 22 Solfeggi per soprano con basso numerato (I-​Bc, HH 75).
 Bibliography 355

Martini, Giovanni Battista. Scale e salti con basso numerato e senza per la pratica dell’
accompagnamento e della buona disposizione degli accordi, sopratutto in quelli che alle
consonanze accoppiano una o più dissonanze (I-​Bc, HH 78).
Martini, Giovanni Battista. 19 Solfeggi a due voci in imitazione e senza alcun accompagnamento
(I-​Bc, HH 81).
Martini, Giovanni Battista. Mi viene a schifo il solfeggiar. Canone a tre tenori (I-​Bc, LL.27/​2).
Martini, Giovanni Battista. [37] Solfeggi a Violino, e Basso, del molto [illegible] (1771; cop-
yist: Girolamo Landi; US-​Wc, M218.M28).
Mazzanti, Ferdinando (c. 1725–​1805). [3] Solfeggi per Voce di Basso (c. 1790; I-​Mc, Fondo
Noseda L.36.3).
Mazzanti, Ferdinando. [9] Solfeggi per Due Voci di Soprano con Accompag.to del M.o David
Perez (I-​Mc, Fondo Noseda L.36.5).
Mazzoni, Antonio Maria (1717–​1785). Solfeggi per voce di Soprano di Antonio Mazzoni 1770
(US-​SFsc, M2.1 M324).
Mazzoni, Antonio Maria. Solfeggi per voce di Tenore di Antonio Mazzoni (US-​ SFsc,
M2.1 M325)
Mazzoni, Camillo (1764–​?). [6] Solfeggi in Soprano (c. 1790; I-​Mc, Noseda L.33.14).
Mercadante, [Giuseppe] Saverio [Raffaele] (1795–​ 1870). Studio a più Voci, da cantarsi
all’improviso. Naples: Girard, 1813.
Mercadante, [Giuseppe] Saverio [Raffaele]. Saggio per l’esame. Naples: Girard, 1859.
Mercadante, [Giuseppe] Saverio [Raffaele]. Solfeggi. Naples: Girard, 1861.
Metallo, Grammatio (1540–​1615). Ricercari a due voci, per sonare e cantare. Venice: Ricciardo
Amadino, 1605. Produced before 1591.
Millico, Vito Giuseppe (1737–​1802). [Scale e 9] solfeggi per voce sola di soprano del Sig.r
Giuseppe Millico (late 18th c.; I-​Mc, Noseda L-​5-​18).
Minoja, Ambrogio (1752–​1825). Lettera sopra il canto. Milan: Luigi Mussi, 1812.
Minoja, Ambrogio. 45 leichte Solfeggien für Sopranstimme mit Klavierbegleitung. Edited by L.
Benda. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1890.
Minoja, Ambrogio. [15] Solfeggi (D-​B, Mus. ms. 14491).
Minoja, Ambrogio. Solfeggi a due (I-​Mc, Noseda).
Minoja, Ambrogio. Solfeggi per mezzo soprano (I-​Nc, 22.2.7).
Molter, Johann Melchior (1696–​1765). “Plusquam bestia, quem non afficit musica” [Whomsoever
music does not affect is no more than a beast: 6 Solfeggi for soprano and bass, with bass accom-
paniment; one with violin obbligato] (1735–​45; D-​KA, Mus. Hs. 1129).
Montuoli, Giuseppe (fl. 1700–​40). Lettioni per noteggiare à voce sola con il suo Basso Continuo
del signor Giuseppe Montuoli, Mastro di Cappella della Serenissima Republica di Lucca.
Lucca: Bartolomeo Gregori, 1702. (I-​Bc, BB 17).
Monza, Gaetano. Solfeggi in contralto del signor Gae.no Monza (18th c.; I-​Gl, A.1.14).
Mozart, Wolfgang (1756–​91). Solfeggi, K. 393 (K6.385b), in Philipp Spitta ed. Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozarts Werke, Serie XXIV: Supplemente, vol. 2, No. 49. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1885.
Natale [Natali], Pompeo (fl. 1674-​81). Solfeggiamenti a due, e tre voci per cantare, e suonare del
Signor D. Pompeo Natale dalla Ripa Transona, Composti da lui in diverse occasioni per li suoi
scolari, e da quelli poi raccolti, e dati in luce per beneficio di chi desidera fondarsi bene nel tempo, e
sicurezza del tuono. Opera Utilissima. Rome: Gio. Angelo Mutii, 1674. (I-​Bc, BB 31).
Natale [Natali], Pompeo. Libro Secondo de’ Solfeggiamenti a due, e tre Voci; per cantare, suonare
con diversi stromenti, Violino, Violone, e Flauto, ecc., composti da D. Pompeo Natale Dalla
Ripatransona per li suoi Scuolari in varie occorrenze per instruirli nella Battuta, e Tuono. Nel
fine si è posto il modo per intendere il tempo della messa de l’ Homme Armé del Palestrina. Il
Rincontro delle Chiavi. La valuta delle Legature per intendere li libri antichi sì del Palestina, come
di altri. Rome: Apud Mascardum, 1681. (I-​Bc, BB 32).
Nava, Gaetano. Scale e 38 Solfeggi per contralto (I-​Lcr, A.19).
Nava, Gaetano. Principii e [23] Solfeggi di Generali e Nava (I-​Li, Inventario Generale [Il Direttore,
Giovanni Pacini, 22 January 1852], p. 4).
Pacini, Giovanni (1796–​1867). Esercizi e solfeggi per contralto (I-​Fc, D.VI.296).
356 Bibliography

Paër, Ferdinando (1771–​1839). XXIV Exercises Pour Voix de Soprano ou Ténor: Gammes variées et
solfèges. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1822.
Paër, Ferdinando. Scale, salti e solfeggi. Per voce di soprano (I-​Mc, Noseda N.30.11).
Paër, Ferdinando. Esercizi per voce di Soprano o Tenore o Siano Variazioni progressive sulla scala
e solfeggi, per scogliere la voce (I-​Nc, 45.2.28).
Paisiello, Giovanni (1741–​1816). [43] Solfeggi per Soprano (B-​Br, Ms.II 4153, Mus Fétis 5694).
According to van Tour (2016), this is falsely attributed; see Leo, Leonardo.
Paisiello, Giovanni. Principi di Musica in Tenore è [sic] [42] Solfeggi del Sig: Paisiello è [sic] XII
Duetti del Sig: Asioli. Dresden, 1804. (US-​Eu, Ceccarelli Collection, Ms. 1234). According to
van Tour (2016), nos. 19–​41 are by Baldassare La Barbiera.
Paisiello, Giovanni. [18] Solfeggi del Sig.r Maestro Paisiello (US-​Eu, Ms. 1336[/​1], fols. 2v–​15v).
Paluselli, Stefan. [8] Solfeggi for soprano and 2 Solfeggi for alto (c. 1770; A-​ST, Rism ID. No.
650003131).
Panerai, Vincenzo (fl. 1750–​90). Solfeggi in tutti i Tuoni, e Tempi con Basso Continuo. Florence:
Rinaldo Bonini, c. 1770.
Pedota, Giuseppe (fl. 1778–​1800). Scala a due e solfeggi per Basso del Sig. Giuseppe Pedota
Maestro all’ attual servigio dell’ Insigne Cattedrale di Orvieto (I-​MC, Mss. Mus. 67/​10).
Pellegrini Celoni, Anna Maria (fl. 1810). Grammatica o siano regole di ben cantare di Anna Maria
Pellegrini Celoni Romana. Rome: Pietro Piale, e Giulio Cesare Martorelli, 1810. (I-​Bc, O
137) with contributions from Luigi Caruso, Pietro Guglielmi, Giuseppe Nicolini, and Niccolò
Zingarelli.
Perez, Davide (1711–​78). [22] Solfeggi a due canto e alto del Sig.re David Perez (owner’s initials
“H. H.”; B-​Lc, 1042445, fols. 45r–​68r). Van Tour (2016) suggests that Henri Hamal was
the owner.
Perez, Davide. Duetto Quinto (B-​Lc, 1042446, fols. 69r–​80v).
Perez, Davide. XII Solfeggi a Due Voci del Sig.re David Perez (1770; D-​Hs, M/​A413).
Perez, Davide. [8] Duetti (1733–​65; D-​MÜs, Sant Hs. xy 7).
Perez, Davide. [19] Duetti [solfeggi] per Due soprani e Basso [e per Soprano Contralto e Basso]
del Sig.e David Perenz [sic] (“per uso di E. H. 1787”; I-​Nc, 34-​6-​6/​1, Solfeggio 324, fols. 1v–​56r).
Perez, Davide. [22] Solfeggi a due Canti, e Basso (owner [Giuseppe] Sigismondo [1739–​1826];
c. 1780; I-​Nc, 34-​6-​6/​2, Solfeggio 324, fols. 142v–​188r).
Perez, Davide. [6] Solfeggi a due Voci Del Sigr David Perez Per uso di Ottaviano Astolfi (I-​
Rrostirolla, Ms.MUS 353).
Perez, Davide [and Leonardo Leo]. [37 Solfeggi] (I-​Rsc, G.Mss.108).
Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista (1710–​36). Solfeggi a due e tre voci (copy dated May 27, 1862; I-​Mc,
Noseda G 2).
Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista. [20] Solfeggi à due voci: canto e alto; [64] Solfeggi a tre voci: canto,
alto e basso; [22] Solfeggi a due voci: alto e basso (c. 1725; I-​Nc, Rari 1-​6-​29/​4, olim 18-​3-​3/​21).
Uncertain attribution.
Perla, Michele (c. 1750–​?). [18] Solfeggi a Voce Sola di Soprano del Sig.r D. Michele Perla per uso
di S. E. La Sig.r D. Emmanuela . . . (c. 1790; I-​Mc, Noseda P 21-​1).
Piccinni, Niccolò (1728–​1800). [33] Solfeggi del Sig.r Piccinni (1775–​99; D-​SWl, Mus. 4238).
Piochi, Cristofano (c. 1600–​75). Ricercari a due e tre voci: Libro primo. Bologna: Giacomo
Monti, 1671.
Piochi, Cristofano. Ricercari a due voci: Libro secondo. Bologna: Giacomo Monti, 1673.
Piochi, Cristofano. Il terzo libro de’ ricercari a tre voci. Bologna: Giacomo Monti, 1675.
Porpora, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio Giacinto (1686–​1768). Solfeggi fugati di N. Porpora, 2 fascicoli.
Edited by Gaetano Nava. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, n.d. [?1858].
Porpora, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio Giacinto. Porpora’s Elements of Singing. Adopted by Righini
and All Eminent Masters Since His Time. Extracted from the Archives at Naples. Edited by Marcia
Harris. London: Addison, Hollier, and Lucas, 1858. (GB-​Lbl, Music collections H.2245).
Porpora, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio Giacinto. 25 vocalizzi ad una voce e a due, fugate, con
accompagnamento di cembalo o pianoforte. Edited by Paolo Mirko Bononi. Milan:
Ricordi, 1957.
 Bibliography 357

Porpora, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio Giacinto. [26] Solffeggi fugatti [sic] Del Sig.re Porpora Nicolo
(c. 1753; A-​Wm, VI 12834).
Porpora, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio Giacinto. [19] Duetti [e] Solfeggi Del Sig.or Nicola Porpora
per Soprano e Basso (I-​BGc Fondo Mayr, D.4.11.2.1).
Porpora, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio Giacinto. [23] Duetti Solfegi [sic] Del S.or Nicola Porpora per
Soprano e Basso [and 10 by Agostino Tinazzoli] (I-​BGc, Fondo Mayr, D.4.11.2/​5; Fald. 377/​
24). This is a modified version of I-​BGc, Fondo Mayr, D.4.11.2.
Porpora, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio Giacinto. [12] Solfeggi e [2] Duetti del Sig.r D. Nicola Porpora.
Proprietà della Litografia Patrelli. Naples: Giuseppe Bucciardi, [1811–​1840]. (I-​Mc Noseda, M
36-​13).
Porpora, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio Giacinto. Solfeggi di Basso con accompagnamento di b (I-​Mc,
Noseda).
Porpora, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio Giacinto. Solfeggi di Soprano [1 o 2 voci con b.c.] (I-​Nc,
22-​2-​7).
Porpora, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio Giacinto. Duetti [solfeggi] per Due soprani e Basso [e per
Soprano, Contralto e Basso] del Sig.e David Perenz. [sic] Per uso di E. H. 1787 (I-​Nc, 34-​6-​6/​1,
olim Solfeggio 324, fols. 56v−133r). These 21 solfeggi appear to be by Porpora.
Porpora, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio Giacinto. Solfeggi a due Canti, e Basso (I-​Nc, 34-​6-​6/​2, olim
Solfeggio 324, fols. 134r−142r). These 8 solfeggi appear to be by Porpora.
Porpora, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio Giacinto. [12] Solfeggi e [2] Duetti a’ voce sola di soprano del
Sig.r Nicola Porpora (I-​Nc, Solfeggi 333, olim 38-​4-​5). The same twelve solfeggi appear in a
set of eighteen attributed to Leonardo Leo (I-​Nc, 34-​2-​6/​7). The copyist’s hand appears also in
Speranza, [14] solfeggi (I-​Nc, 22-​2-​7).
Porpora, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio Giacinto. Solfeggi (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 334).
Porpora, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio Giacinto. [36/​7] Solfeggi di Soprano di Porpora (c. 1790; I-​Nc,
Solfeggio 335); incorporates I-​Nc, Solfeggio 334.
Porpora, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio Giacinto. Solfeggi e Duetti a voce di Soprano del sig. D. Nicola
Porpora (I-​Nc, 47-​5-​20).
Porpora, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio Giacinto. Solfeggio (1880s?; I-​Nc, 66-​8-​4).
Prota, Giovanni (c. 1786–​1843). Solfeggi di soprano con accomp. di basso, 2 vols. (I-​Nc,
Od.3.14-​15).
Pulli, Pietro (c. 1710–​59). [53] Solfeggi del Sig.r Pietro Pulli (c. 1740; D-​MÜs, Sant Hs. 3351).
Pulli, Pietro. [2] Solfeggi Del Sig.r Pietro Lulli [sic] Napolitano (c. 1740–​59; I-​Vc, Fondo Correr
Busta 11.9).
Quantz, Johann (1697–​ 1773). Solfeggi. Pour la Flûte Traversiere avec l’enseignement par
Monsieur Quantz (Dk-​Kk, C I 45 box A 8.4015).
Rieschi, Luigi (fl. 1830–​40). 26 Solfeggi per mezzo soprano o contralto con Basso numerato (I-​
BGi, XI. G. 373.4748).
Righini, Vincenzo (1756–​1812). Solfeggi for Pianoforte (GB-​Lbl, Add Ms. 31751).
Rispoli, Salvatore (c. 1736/​45–​1812). [6] Solfeggi a due voci di D. Salvatore Rispoli (GB-​Lbl, Add.
Ms. 14241, fols. 41v–​62v).
Rispoli, Salvatore. [4] Solfeggi per due soprani e basso, trasportati per due bassi Del Sig.r Maestro
D. Salvatore Rispoli (I-​Mc, Noseda P 6-​8).
Rolla, Alessandro (1757–​1841). Ventiquattro Scale per il Violino ed altrettanti piccoli Solfeggi
progressivi con accompagnamento di altro violino. Milan: Giovanni Ricordi, 1816. Modern
ed. in Paolo Sullo, ed., Alessandro Rolla, 24 Scale per violino e 24 Solfeggi progressivi con
accompagnamento di un secondo violino. Rome: SEdM, 2016.
Rossini, Gioacchino (1792–​1868). Gorgheggi e Solfeggi per rendere la voce agile e imparare il bel
canto. Milan: Tito di G. Ricordi, 1827.
Rossini, Gioacchino. [4] Solfeggi (D-​MÜs, Sant Hs. 4038).
Sala, Nicola (1713–​1801). [48] Solfeggi di Soprano con Basso del Sig. d. Nicola Sala (D-​MÜs, Sant
Hs. 3492). Santini notes that these are by Leo.
Sala, Nicola. Solfeggi per voce di soprano del Sign. D. Niccola Sala (19th-​c. copy; I-​MOe, Campori
γ L.9.35, App.II, 2726).
358 Bibliography

Sala, Nicola. [75] Canoni a 2.e voci Del Sig.re D. Nicola Sala M.ro di Cappella Napolitano (I-​Nc,
20-​6-​1/​9, olim 46-​1-​28).
Sala, Nicola. Solfeggi in chiave di basso del Sig.r D. Nicolò Sala 1778 (I-​Nc, I.2.13, Solfeggio 385).
Sala, Nicola. [81] Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano Del Sig. D. Nicola Sala (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 386;
R.8.19).
Sala, Nicola. Solfeggi di soprano col basso del signor Nicola Sala fatti per uso della S. Casa della
Pietà de’ Torchini (I-​Nf, partiture).
Salieri, Antonio (1750–​1825). Originalhandschrift von Antonio Salieri. K.K Hofkapellmeister
in Wien Geb. 29. August 1750. 3 7. Mai 1825. Solfeggio fugato a 2 Voci. Partitura (CH-​Bu,
Geigy-​Hagenbach 1645).
Salini, Giovanni (1739–​1825). [81] Solfeggi di varie specie del M.o di Cappella D. Giovanni Salini
per uso degl’ alunni del Rl. Conservatorio della pietà de’ Turchini (“Napoli 30 Luglio 1804”;
I-​Nc 20-​6-​18, Solfeggio 387).
Savinelli, Angelo (fl. 1850). Corso elementare teorico-​pratico di divisione e Solfeggio. Milan: Ricordi,
c. 1850.
Savinelli, Angelo. Solfeggi per tenore e basso . . . messi per due Controbassi (I-​Mc, A.30.31.3).
Scarlatti, Alessandro (1660–​1725). XVIII Duetti per solfeggiare di Francesco Durante [sic] (D-​
Mbs, Mus. ms. 758). Van Tour (2016) attributes these duets to Scarlatti on the basis of their
publication in Bêche and Levesque, Solfèges d’Italie (1768).
Scarlatti, Alessandro. Quindici [15] Fughe a Due [copiata da Sala] del Sig. Cav.e Alessandro
Scarlatti (I-​Nc, 34-​4-​13).
Scarlatti, Alessandro. Quindici [15] Fughe a Due Del Sig.e Cav.e Alessandro Scarlatti (I-​Nc,
46-​1-​29).
Scarlatti, Alessandro. Solfeggi per Sopr. e Contralto con e senza acc. di B. C. Senza nome d’A
(I-​Nc, Solfeggio 253). Donated to the Naples Conservatory by Agostino Roche in November
1926. Attribution uncertain.
Scarlatti, Alessandro. Solfeggi by Alessandro Scarlatti, Leonardo Leo, and Francesco Durante (I-​
Tn, Foà-​Giordano 405).
Selvaggi, Gaspare (1763–​1847). [44] Solfeggi Per voce di Soprano Del Sig.r G. S. D.te [Gaspare
Selvaggi Dilettante] (I-​Nc Solfeggio 393).
Selvaggi, Gaspare. Scuola di Canto composta da G. S. D. per uso della Sig.ra D. Luisa De Marco
Battaglini 1809 (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 394; formerly 22.2.7).
Sigismondo, Giuseppe (1739–​1826). Studio di Cantare per Soprano, o Tenore. Opera del
Sig.r D. Giuseppe Sigismondo Dilettante pel Sig.r D. Gennarino Natale (1824; I-​Nc,
Solfeggio 395).
Sigismondo, Giuseppe. [25] Solfeggi per voce di Soprano Del Sig.r Giuseppe Elia Sigismondo.
Libro Primo (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 397).
Soffi, Pasquale (1732–​1810). Solfèges pour apprendre facilement La musique Vocale et Instrumentale
ou tous les Principes sont dévelopés avec beaucoup de Clarté [. . .] composés Par M. Bailleux.
(Nouvelle Edition, Augmentée des nouveaux solfèges d’Italie avec la Basse Par M.re Leo, Durante,
Piccini, Sacchini, Cafaro, La Barbiera, Stefani, et Autres. Paris, 1784. (first ed. 1770).
Soffi, Pasquale. [34] Solfeggi per Canto di Soffi (I-​Li, Inventario Generale [Il Direttore, Giovanni
Pacini, 22 January 1852], p. 4).
Soffi, Pasquale. Solfeggi No. 34 Del Sig. Pasquale Antonio Soffi di Lucca (1800; I-​PAp, Fondo
Sanvitale, Sanv.B.45); contains solfeggi by Quilici.
Soffi, Pasquale. [Without title, c. 1775]. This manuscript was copied from Bêche and Levesque,
Solfèges d’Italie (1768) and contains sixteen solfeggi by Leonardo Leo, Francesco Durante, and
Alessandro Scarlatti (I-​Tn, Foà-​Giordano 405).
Solano, Francisco Ignacio, and Davide Perez. Solfejos de Soprano (P-​Cug, M.M. 488).
Soriano, Francesco (1548–​1621). Canoni, et Oblighi di cento, et dieci sorte, sopra l’ Ave Maris Stella.
Di Francesco Soriano Romano Maestro di Cappella della Sacra Basilica di S. Pietro in Vaticano.
A tre, quattro, cinque, sei, sette, et otto voci. Rome: Gio. Battista Robletti, 1610. (I-​Bc, U.204).
Speranza, Alessandro (c. 1728–​97). Vari Solfeggi (I-​MC, 6-​F-​20/​3).
Speranza, Alessandro. Studii di D. Alessandro Speranza (I-​Nc, 20-​1-​20).
 Bibliography 359

Speranza, Alessandro. [14] Solfeggi Per voce di Soprano Del Sig.r D. Alessandro Speranza (I-​Nc,
22-​2-​7/​13, Solfeggio 399). The same copyist penned Porpora, I-​Nc, Solfeggio 333.
Speranza, Alessandro. [17] Solfeggi Per voce di Soprano Del Sig.r D. Alessandro Speranza (I-​Nc,
Solfeggio 400).
Steffani, Agostino (1653–​1728). [14] Duetti Steffani (B-​Lc, 1043496).
Strozzi, Gregorio (1615–​87). Elementorum Musicae Praxis (Solfeggi in forma di canone) (1683;
I-​Nc, 54.3.36–​37).
Tartini, Giuseppe (1692–​1770). L’Arte del Arco ou L’Art de l’Archet Contenant 38. Variations
Composées sous la plus Belle Gavotte de Corelly. Paris: Leclerc, 1768.
Tartini, Giuseppe. L’arte dell’arco o siano cinquanta variazioni per violino, e sempre collo stesso basso
composte dal sig.r Giuseppe Tartini sopra alla più bella gavotta del Corelli opera 5. Naples: Luigi
Mareschalchi, [after 1785].
Traetta, Tommaso (1727–​79). Solfeggi a voce sola di soprano e basso (I-​Gl, M.1.4).
Traetta, Tommaso. Solfeggi n. 50 Del fu Celebre Sig.r Tomaso Traetta (I-​Raanc, Accademico
A-​Ms-​3777).
Valente, Saverio (c. 1743–​c. 1816). Solfeggi per Mezzo Soprano del M.o S. Valente (I-​Mc, Noseda
Q-​13-​21).
Valente, Saverio. Solfeggi di Contralto Del Sig.r Saverio Valente Con accompagnamento di Basso
per uso di Alessandro Busti (I-​Mc, Noseda Q-​13-​22).
Valente, Saverio. Solfeggi per Voce di Basso Per la divisione intonazione e Modulazione Composti
Dal M.o Saverio Mercadante Valente Dall’Editore di Musica in Milano Dedicati Al Sig.r Luigi
Lablache Parte 1.a (I-​Mc, Noseda Q-​13-​23).
Valente, Saverio. Solfeggi per Voce di Basso Per la divisione intonazione e modulazione Composti
Dal M.o Saverio Valente Dall’Editore di Musica in Milano Dedicati Al Sig.r Luigi Lablache
Parte 2.da (I-​Mc, Noseda Q-​13-​24).
Valente, Saverio. [10] Solfeggi di Basso, di Saverio e Giuseppe Valente (I-​Mc, Noseda Q-​13-​25).
Valente, Saverio. [4] Solfeggi per due bassi. Dedicati a Luigi Lablache (I-​Mc Noseda, Q-​13-​26).
Valente, Saverio. Solfegi [sic] num. 24 ed altri num. 9 di più Duettini con Rec.vo num. 8 di soprano
o tenore (I-​Mc, Noseda I-​88-​1).
Valentini, Carlo (c. 1790–​1853). Associazione ai [2] Vocalizzi del M.o Valentini (I-​Li, Inventario
Generale [Il Direttore, Giovanni Pacini, 22 January 1852], p. 4).
Valerio, Carlo. Scale, salti e solfeggi, per Mezzosoprano o Contralto (1800s?; I-​Mc, Noseda).
Venturini, Carlo. [6] Solfeggi in Soprano del Sig.r Don Carlo Venturini (1750s?; D-​MÜs, Sant
Hs. 4227).
Viadana, Lodovico [Grossi da] (c. 1560–​1627). [9 Solfeggi] Falsi Bordoni passegiati (1836, cop-
yist Raphael Kiesewetter; D-​MÜs, Sant Hs. 4236).
Vitali, Giovanni Battista (1632–​92). Principi musicali con alcuni solfeggi per soprano (I-​LUCcm,
Istit. Mus., Malerbi C.776).
Viviani, Giovanni Buonaventura (1638–​ 93). Solfeggiamenti a due voci utilissimi per chi
studia Potendo apprendere da questi in un tempo istesso la franchezza, ed il buon modo di
Cantare . . . Opera Ottava. Florence: Vincenzio Vangelisti, 1693. (I-​Bc, CC 142).
Wesley, Samuel (1766–​ 1837). A collection of antiphons, songs, solfeggi, glees, and other
compositions (c. 1834; GB-​Lbl, Add. 35003).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio (1752–​1837). [18] Solfeggi per voce di Contralto o Basso
composti dal M.o Zingarelli. Milan: F. Lucca, n.d. (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 443).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. [17] Solfeggi per Soprano con accompagnamento di
Basso . . . Al suo caro Amico e Discepolo di contrappunto Il Signor Francesco Pollini Socio
Onorarie dell’ I. R. Conservatorio di Musica in Milano Parte II Libro III. Milan: Gio. Ricordi,
n.d. (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 444).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. École moderne de Chant [24] Solfèges de Zingarelli Directeur
du Conservatoire de Naples Arrangés avec Accompag.t De Piano par Bergangini. Paris: Pacini,
n.d. (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 447).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. [23] Solfeggi di contralto coll’ accompagnamento del Basso
Del Signor Nicola Zingarelli (I-​Mc, Noseda R 31-​15).
360 Bibliography

Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. Solfeggi Del Sig.r D. Niccolò Zingarelli (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 24).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. Solfeggi di soprano (I-​Nc, 16.7.19, Solfeggio 420).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. [86] Solfeggi di soprano [e alto] (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 420/​09).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. [42] Solfeggi di soprano (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 420/​10).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. [41] Solfeggi di soprano (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 420/​11).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. [83] Solfeggi di soprano (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 420/​12).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. [45] Solfeggi di soprano (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 420/​13).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. [56] Solfeggi di soprano (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 420/​14).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. [392] Solfeggi per contralto (1826–​35; I-​Nc, 19.5.23,
Solfeggio 421).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. Solfeggi Zingarelli (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 426).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. Libro Secondo Solfeggi a voce sola Di Soprano del Sig.r
Maestro Zingarelli Alunno nel Real Collegio di musica in San Sebastiano in Napoli 1800 (I-​Nc,
Solfeggio 427).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. Solfeggi di Tenore (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 430).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. Solfeggi per Basso (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 432).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. Solfeggio orig[ina]li per Basso (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 433).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. Solfeggi per Basso (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 435).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. Scale e Solfeggi Per voce di Soprano Del Sig.r Nicola
Zingarelli In Napoli Strada Toledo N.177 (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 439).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. Solfeggi per voce di Soprano (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 440).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. [48] Solfeggi per voce di Soprano Del Maestro Nicola
Zingarelli (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 441).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. [15] Solfeggi per voce di Tenore Del Maestro Nicola
Zingarelli Primo Libro (I-​Nc, Solfeggio 442).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. Solfeggi (I-​Nc, 25.1.18).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. Solfeggi (I-​Nc, 38.4.6).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. Solfeggi (I-​Nc, 52.2.18).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. [46] Solfeggi di soprano (I-​Nc, A c.27r).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. Solfeggi (I-​Nc, Od.3.3.4/​1-​7).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. Raccolta di [69] solfeggi di Contralto Con accompag.to di
Basso Del Sig.r D. Niccolò Zingarelli (I-​Raanc, Fondo Accademico A-​Ms-​446).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. Solfeggi a sola voce di Basso (I-​Raanc, Fondo Accademico
A-​Ms-​1721).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. Elementi Musicali e Solfeggi per Canto (I-​Raanc, Fondo
Accademico A-​Ms-​445).

Primary Sources II: Contextual and Theoretical

Aaron, Pietro (1489–​1555). Compendiolo di molti dubbi, segreti et sentenze intorno al canto fermo,
et figurato. Milan: A. da Castelliono, c. 1545.
Adlung, Jakob, and Johann Adam Hiller. Anleitung zur musikalischen Gelahrtheit. 2nd ed.
Dresden and Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1783.
Agazzari, Agostino (1578–​1640). Del sonare sopra ’l basso con tutti li stromenti E dell’uso loro nel
conserto. Siena: Domenico Falcini, 1607.
Agricola, Johann Friedrich (1720–​74). Introduction to the Art of Singing. Translated and edited
by Julianne Baird. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Originally published as
Anleitung zur Singkunst. Berlin: George Winter, 1757.
Ahle, Johann Georg (1651–​1706). [Deutsche] kurze doch deutliche Anleitung zu der lieblich-​und
löblichen Singkunst. Mühlhausen: Christian Pauli, 1690; a revision of his father Johann Rudolf
Ahle’s Brevis et perspicua introductio in artem musicam (1673).
Aiguino, Frater Illuminato (c. 1520–​c. 1581). Il Tesoro illuminato di tutti i tuoni di canto figurato.
Venice: Giovanni Varisco, 1581.
 Bibliography 361

Alberti, Giorgio. Dialogo per imparare con brevità à cantar canto figurato. Venice, 1619; modern
ed. edited by F. Marri, E. Stipčević, and F. P. Russo. Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 1995.
Alfieri, Pietro (1801–​63). Saggio storico teorico pratico del canto gregoriano o romano per istruzione
degli ecclesiastici. Rome: Belle arti, 1835.
Alsted [Alstedius, Alstedt], Johann Heinrich (1588–​1638). Templum musicum: or the Musical
Synopsis, of the Learned and Famous Johannes-​Henricus-​Alstedius, being a Compendium of the
Rudiments both of the Mathematical and Practical Part of Musick. London: 1664, This is a trans-
lation by John Birchensha of bk. 20 of Ioan. Henrici Alstedii encyclopaedia universa, in quatuor
tomos divisa. Lyon: 1649; originally published in 1620.
Altieri, Ferdinando. Dizionario italiano ed inglese: A dictionary Italian and English, containing
all the words of the Vocabulary della Crusca, and several hundred more taken from the most
approved authors; with proverbs and familiar phrases. To which is prefix’d a table of the authors
quoted in this work, 2 vols. London: William and John Innys, 1726.
Ambiente, Vallombrosiano [Vallombrosan Order]. Cantorino (1700–​25; I-​Rn, Mss. Musicali
57); contains Versicoli introduttivi: Deus in adiutorium; Formule salmodiche; Formule per il
Magnificat; Ordinario del tempo; Proprio del tempo dalla prima Domenica d’Avvento all’ottava
del Corpus Domini.
Angelini Bontempi, Giovanni Andrea (1625–​1705). Historia Musica. Perugia: Costantini, 1695.
Angleria, Camillo (?–​1630). Regola del Contrapunto, e della Compositione. Nella quale si tratta
brevemente di tutte le consonanze, e dissonanze coi suoi esempi à due, trè, e quattro voci. Della
cognitione de’ Tuoni; secondo l’uso moderno, e la regola agli organisti per suonare trasportato
in vari luoghi bisognosi. Con due Ricercari l’uno à 4: e l’altro à 5. Dell’autore, & un Ricercare, e
Canoni à 2. 3. e 4. da cantarsi in vari modi del Signor Gio. Paolo Cima, al quale la presente Opera
è dedicata, e nuovamente data in luce dal Rever. Padre Fr. Camillo Angleria da Cremona, del
Terz’ Ordine di S. Francesco, discepolo di Claudio Merulo da Correggio. Milan: Giorgio Rolla,
1622 (I-​Bc, C.53).
Anon. [Johannes Speth (c. 1664–​1720)?], Vermehrter und nun zum zweytenmal in Druck
befördertet kurtzer jedoch gründlicher Wegweiser Vermittelst welches man nicht nur allein aus
dem Grund die Kunst die Orgel recht zu schlagen sowol was den General-​Bass, als auch was
zu dem Gregorianischen Choral-​Gesang erfordert wird erlernen und durch fliessiges üben
zur Vollkommenheit bringen. Augsburg: Jacob Koppmayr, 1692. Reprinted in nine editions
until 1753.
Anon. Istituzioni, ordini e regole, da osservarsi puntualmente da’ figliuoli di questo Real
Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini dentro, e fuori di esso. Naples: Vincenzo Mazzola, 1769.
Anon. Collezione di tutti i necessari rudimenti del Canto fermo Gregoriano distribuita in dodici
dialoghi. Naples: Angelo Trani, 1829. (I-​Nc, O-​7-​86 and 37-​6-​17).
Anon. “Tradizioni della musica italiana.” L’Italia musicale 5 (1853–​54), no. 23 (March 19): 91–​
92; vol. 5, no. 26 (March 30): 103–​4; no. 31 (April 16): 123; no. 36 (May 4): 143–​44; no. 38
(May 11): 151–​52; no. 41 (May 21): 163; no. 47 (June 11): 187; no. 57 (July 16): 227–​28; no. 70
(August 31): 279–​80; no. 73 (September 10): 291–​92; no. 82 (October 12): 327–​28; no. 83
(October 15): 331; no. 86 (October 26): 343–​44; no. 90 (November 9): 359–​60; vol. 6, no. 3
(January 11): 9–​10.
Anon. “Dei cantanti e dei maestri di canto,” L’Italia musicale 6 (1854), no. 9 (February 1): 33–​34;
no. 10 (February 4): 37–​38; no. 14 (February 18): 53–​54; no. 16 (February 25): 61–​62.
Anon. Regolamenti organico e disciplinare dello istituto musicale Pacini. Lucca: Giusti, 1872.
Anon. [Michele Ruta?] “La Melodia,” La Musica 4, no. 1 (January 1, 1883): 1–​2; no. 2 (January
15): 1–​2; no. 3 (February 5): 1–​2; no. 4 (February 19): 2–​3; no. 5 (March 5): 1–​2; no. 6 (March
19): 1–​2; no. 7 (April 2): 1–​3; no. 8 (April 16): 1–​2; no. 9 (May 7): 1–​2; no. 10 (May 21): 1–​2;
no. 11 (June 4): 1–​3; no. 13 (July 2): 1–​2; no. 14 (July 16): 1–​2; no. 16 (August 20): 1–​2.
Anon. Libro originale di maestro antichissimo che contiene le vere regole per insegnare il canto
fermo gregoriano. Capitale per li scolari. voce forte, buona orecchia, buon naturale. Capitale
per il Maestro (c. 1711–​40; I-​Baf, Fondo antico FA1 2755).
Anon. Regole del Canto fermo Gregoriano, Ecclesiastico, Corale (c. 1730; “Pel Seminario di
Bologna”; I-​Baf, Fondo antico FA1 3115).
362 Bibliography

Anon. Regolamenti stabiliti per gli studenti nel Liceo musicale di Bologna. Bologna: tipografia del
Governo, 1819. (I-​Bc, M.54).
Anon. Istituzioni e regolamenti pel Conservatorio di Musica in Milano (1816; I-​Bc, O.78).
Anon. Tractatus de musica plana (c. 1450; B-​Gu, 70), fols. 78vb–​140vb.
Anon. Piano di riforma del Real Collegio di Musica di S. Sebastiano del 23 dicembre 1816 (I-​Na,
fondo “Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione,” fasc. 86).
Anon. Regole e Statuti del Real Conservatorio da osservarsi dalli Ministri, Maestri, Alunni e
Serventi, Anno Domini 1746. (I-​Nc, 5.5.4/​7).
Anon. Modo facile per imparare il contrapunto (1766; once owned by Giuseppe Sigismondo; I-​
Nc 20.2.31).
Anon. Alcune regole del canto fermo e misto (c. 1711–​40; I-​Raanc, Accademico A-​Ms-​2124).
Anon. Regole per il Canto Fermo Righi e Spazi (1601–​ 1700; I-​R aanc, Governativo
G.Mss.3579).
Anon. Regole di Canto-​Fermo (18th c.; I-​Rn, Mss musicali 8).
Anon. Elementi del Canto Fermo L C. ad 26 giugno 1762 (I-​Rn, Mss musicali 55).
Anon. Regole della Musica Imparate à cantare, in tutte le chiavi con gli Accidenti più usitati doppo
i quali, s’aggiungono vari solfeggi (1760–​90; I-​Rn, Mss musicali 137).
Antoniotto, Giorgio (1680–​1766). L’Arte armonica. 2 vols. London: John Johnson, 1760.
Aprile, Giuseppe (1732–​1813). Die Singschule oder Solmisation, dergleichen noch keiner zum
Vorscheine gekommen, worinnen die nothwendigsten Regeln und eine Menge musikalische und
fugirte Stücke. Vienna: L. Hohenleitner, 1791.
Arcadelt, Jacob [Jacques] (c. 1507–​68). Il primo libro de madrigali a quattro voci. Perugia:
Pietroiacomo Petrucci, 1603.
Archainbaud, Eugène. L’École du Chant pour toutes les voix: Méthode theorique et pratique. Paris:
Enoch et Cie, 1900.
Artusi, Giovanni Maria (c. 1540–​1613). L’Arte del Contraponto ridotta in tavole da Gio. Maria
Artusi da Bologna. Dove brevemente si contiene i Precetti à quest’Arte necessarij. Venice: Giacomo
Vincenzi, et Ricciardo Amadino, compagni, 1586. (I-​Bc, B.20).
Artusi, Giovanni Maria. Seconda parte dell’ Arte del Contraponto. Nella quale si tratta dell’ utile &
uso delle Dissonanze. Divisa in due libri. Venice: Giacomo Vincenti, 1589. (I-​Bc, B.21).
Artusi, Giovanni Maria. Seconda Parte dell’Artusi ouero Delle Imperfettioni della moderna musica.
Venice: Giacomo Vincenti, 1603.
Asioli, Bonifazio (1769–​1832). Principj elementari di musica adottati dall’ I. R. Conservatorio di
Milano per le repetizioni giornaliere degli alunni. Milan: Giovanni Ricordi, 1826.
Asioli, Bonifazio. Il Maestro di Composizione, ossia seguito del Trattato d’armonia. 3 vols.
Milan: Ricordi, 1836.
Avella, Fra Giovanni d’ (fl. 1657). Regole di musica, divise in cinque trattati, con le quali s’insegna
il Canto Fermo e Figurato per vere e facili regole; il modo di fare il Contrapunto; di comporre
l’uno e l’altro Canto; di cantare alcuni Canti diffcili, e molte cose nuove e curiose. Composte dal
Padre fra Giovanni d’Avella predicatore de’ Minori Osservanti della Provincia di Terra di Lauoro.
Rome: Francesco Moneta, 1657 (I-​Bc, C.57).
Azopardi [Azzopardi], Francesco (1748–​1809). Le Musicien Pratique, Ou Leçons qui conduisent
les Élèves dans l’art du Contrepoint, en leur enseignant la manière de composer correctement
toute espèce de Musique; Ouvrage composé dans les principes Des Conservatoires d’Italie, & mis
dans l’ordre le plus simple & le plus clair, Par il Signor Francesco Azopardi, Maître de Chapelle de
Malthe. 2 vols. Translated by M. Framery. Paris: Chez Le Duc, 1786a.
Azopardi [Azzopardi], Francesco. Il Musico Prattico. Che conduce lo studente per l’arte Del
Contropunto insegnandoli la maniera di poter comporre con esatezza varie specie De’
Contropunti (1786b, M-​Vnl, ms. 328).
Azopardi [Azzopardi], Francesco. Le Musicien Pratique, ou Leçons graduées, qui conduisent
les élèves dans l’étude de l’harmonie, de l’accompagnament et de l’art du contre-​point, en leur
enseignant la manière de composer correctement toute espèce de musique. Ouvrage composé dans
les principes des Conservatoires d’Italie, Par il Signor Fr. Azopardi, Maître de Chapelle de Malte.
Translated by M. de Framery. Edited by M. Choron. Paris: chez l’editeur, 1824.
 Bibliography 363

Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel (1714–​88). Versuch über die wahre Art, das Clavier zu spielen, vol.
1. Berlin: Christian Friedrich Henning, 1753; vol. 2. Berlin: Georg Ludewig Winter, 1762.
Translated by William J. Mitchell as Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments.
London: Cassell, 1949.
Baini, Giuseppe (1775-​1844). Difesa del solfeggiamento regolato dalla variazione de’ tuoni, contro i
partigiani delle mutazioni, del setticlave e dell’unica lettura (1808; Ms. lost).
Balestra, Pietro Paolo. Il maestro del canto sacro che insegna colla maggior brevità possibile le
regole teoriche e pratiche del canto fermo non che l’essenziale del canto figurato corale per Pier-​
Paolo Balestra prete della missione maestro di canto sacro. 2nd ed. Florence: all’Insegna di
S. Antonino, 1869.
Banchieri, Adriano (1568–​1634). Cartella overo Regole utilissime à quelli che desiderano imparare
il Canto Figurato. Nuouamente da varie opinioni di musici eccellenti ridotte in vn piaceuole
Dialogo di maestro, et Discepolo. Et diuise in Due Parti per Adriano Banchieri Bolognese,
Organista di Santa Maria in Regola. Venice: Giacomo Vincenti, 1601. (I-​Bc, C.62).
Banchieri, Adriano. L’organo suonarino. Venice: Ricciardo Amadino, 1605. Second ed. 1611.
Banchieri, Adriano. Cartella musicale nel canto figurato, fermo, et contrapunto del P. D. Adriano
Banchieri Monaco Olivetano. Nouamente in questa terza impressione ridotta dall’antica alla
moderna pratica. Venice: Giacomo Vincenti, 1614. (I-​Bc, C.64).
Banchieri, Adriano. Direttorio monastico di canto fermo, per uso particolare della Congregatione
olivetana. Bologna: Giovanni Rossi, 1615.
Banchieri, Adriano. Cantorino, utile a novizzi, a Chierici secolari e regolari, principianti del Canto
Fermo alla Romana. Bologna: Heredi di Bartol[omeo] Cochi, 1622.
Banchieri, Adriano. La Banchierina: Overo, Cartella picciola del canto figurato. Venice: Alessandro
Vincenti, 1623.
Barsanti, Felice di Pietra Santa. Cantorino di Canto Fermo (18th c.; A-​Wn, Mus.Hs.4826 Mus).
Basevi, Abramo (1818–​85). “La melodia antica e moderna in Italia,” L’Armonia 1 (1856), no. 16
(April 15): 61–​62; no. 18 (April 29): 69–​70; no. 19 (May 6): 73–​74; no. 22 (May 27): 85–​86;
no. 23 (June 3): 89; no. 24 (June 10): 93–​94. Reprinted in Boccherini 10, nos. 1–​10 (January
24–​September 30, 1872).
Basili, Andrea (1705–​77). Musica universale armonico-​pratica dettata dall’istinto e dalla natura
illuminata dai veri precetti armonici opera utile per i studiosi di contropunto, e per i suonatori di
grave cembalo, ed argano esposta in ventiquattro esercizi. Venice: Scaccaglia, 1776.
Bathe, William (1564–​1614). A Briefe Introduction to the Skill of Song. London: Thomas Este,
c. 1596. Edited by Kevin C. Karnes (Woodham, UK: Ashgate, 2005).
Belli, Lazaro Venanzio (fl. 1788). Dissertazione sopra li preggi del canto gregoriano E la necessità che
hanno gli Ecclesiastici di saperlo con le regole principali, e più importanti per bene apprenderlo,
lodevolmente pratticarlo, ed in esso ancora comporre [. . .] Regole le principali: e più importanti
per bene apprendere, et lodevolmente pratticare il canto ecclesiastico gregoriano. Opera divisa in
tre parti. Frascati: Stamperia del Seminario Tusculano, 1788.
Berardi, Angelo (c. 1636–​94). Ragionamenti musicali, composti dal Sig. Angelo Berardi . . .
Bologna: Giacomo Monti, 1681.
Berardi, Angelo. Documenti armonici di D. Angelo Berardi da S. Agata, canonico nell’ insigne
collegiata di S. Angelo di Viterbo, nelle quali con varii discorsi, regole, et essempii si dimostrano
gli studi artificiosi della musica, oltre il modo di usare le ligature, e d’intendere il valore di
ciascheduna figura sotto qual sia segno . . . Bologna: Giacomo Monti, 1687.
Berardi, Angelo. Miscellanea musicale di D. Angelo Berardi da S. Agata, canonico nell’insigne
collegiata di S. Angelo di Viterbo, divisa in tre parti dove con dottrine si discorre delle materie
più curiose della musica: con regole, et essempii si tratta di tutto il contrapunto con l’intreccio di
bellissimi secreti per li professori armonici . . . Bologna: Giacomo Monti, 1689.
Berardi, Angelo. Arcani musicali svelati dalla vera amicitia ne’ quali appariscono diversi studii
artificiosi, molte osservazioni, e regole concernenti alla tessitura de’ componimenti armonici, con
un modo facilissimo per sonare trasportato. Bologna: Pier-​Maria Monti, 1690.
Berardi, Angelo. Il perché musicale, overo staffetta armonica nella quale la ragione scioglie
le difficoltà, e gli esempi dimostrano il modo d’isfuggire gli errori, e di tessere con artificio i
364 Bibliography

componimenti musicali; opera del canonico D. Angelo Berardi da S. Agata . . . Bologna: Pier-​
Maria Monti, 1693.
Berlioz, Hector (1803–​69). The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz. Translated and edited by David Cairns.
London: Cardinal, 1990.
Bermudo, Juan (c. 1510–​c. 1565). El libro llamado declaración de instrumentos musicales.
Osuna: Juan de Leon, 1555.
Bertalotti, Angelo Michele (1666–​1747). Regole utilissime per apprendere con fondamento, e
facilità il Canto Fermo Dato alle Stampe per comodo delli Giouani delle Scuole Pie di Bologna,
et a beneficio commune. Dedicato All’ Eminentissimo, e Reverendiss. Sig. Cardinale Giacomo
Boncompagni arcivescovo di Bologna, Principe del S. R. I. e zelantissimo Protettore di detta Opera
Pia. Da Angelo Michele Bertalotti Maestro in dette Scuole delli Canti Fermo, e Figurato, Musico
nella Perinsigne Collegiata di S. Petronio di Bologna, et Accademico Filarmonico. Ed in questa
nuova Impressione Corretto, et aumentato. Bologna: per li Fratelli Silvani, [1713]. (I-​Bc, F.21).
Beyer, Johann Samuel (1669–​1744). Primæ linæ musicæ vocalis, Das ist: Kurtze, leichte, gründliche
und richtige Anweisung [Anweisung zur Singekunst]. Freyberg: Elias Nicolaus Kuhfus, 1703.
Billings, William (1746–​ 1800). The Singing Master’s Assistant, or Key to Practical Music.
Boston: Drafer and Folsom, 1778.
Bismantova, Bartolomeo (1675–​c. 1694). Compendio musicale. In cui s’insegna a principianti il
vero modo per imparare con facilità le regole del canto figurato e fermo, come anche per comporre
e suonare il basso continuo, il flauto, cornetto e violino, come anche per acordare organi e cembali
composto del Pre. Bartolomeo Bismantova. Ferrara: 1677.
Bogentantz, Bernardinus. Rudimenta utriusque cantus Bernardini Bogentantz . . . Cologne: Apud
J. Gymnicum, 1535.
Bolognino, Giuseppe. Libro del Canto Fermo, per uso del Novizio. Giuseppe Bolognino della
Città di Conversano A. R. S. 1825 (1825; I-​Mc, Noseda T.12.1).
Bonlini, Giovanni Carlo. Le glorie della poesia, e della musica contenute dell’esatta notitia della città
di Venezia. Venice: Bonarigo, 1730.
Bononcini, Giovanni Maria (1670–​1747). Musico prattico che brevemente dimostra il modo di
giungere alla perfetta cognizione di tutte quelle cose, che concorrono alla composizione de i Canti,
e di ciò ch’ all’ Arte del Contrapunto si ricerca. 2nd ed. Venice: Gioseppe Sala, 1678.
Bourgeois, Loys (1510–​59). Le droict Chemin de Musique. Geneva: “avec Privilège,” 1550.
Bovicelli, Giovanni Battista (?–​1592/​4). Regole, Passaggi di Musica, Madrigali e Motetti passeggiati.
Venice: Giacomo Vincenti, 1594.
Bozzelli, Giuseppe. Brevi considerazioni sull’arte del canto. Lettera inaugurale della scuola di canto
italiana secondo le tradizioni artistiche nazionali da Nicola Porpora a Girolamo Crescentini.
Menaggio: A. Mastai, 1880.
Brazzini, Antonio. Regole di canto ecclesiastico o canto fermo. Florence: Brazzini, 1830. (I-​Vc,
Torrefranca S.A.I.VI.16).
Brazzini, Antonio. Principi di regole di canto fermo secondo il sistema musicale del Si.
Florence: Brazzini, 1844. (I-​PS, fondo Rospigliosi).
Broschi, Riccardo. The Favourite Songs in the Opera call’d Artaxerxes. London: I. Walsh, 1734.
Brossard, Sébastien de (1655–​1730). Dictionnaire de Musique. 3rd ed. Amsterdam: Roger, c. 1708.
First ed. c. 1703.
Brosses, Charles de (1709–​ 77). Lettres historiques et critiques sur l’Italie. 3 vols. Paris:
Ponthieu, 1799.
Brugnoli, Rocco Maria. Ammaestramenti e regole universali del canto fermo. Bologna: Peri, c.
1708.
Brunelli, Antonio (1577–​c. 1630). Regole utilissime per li scolari che desiderano imparare a
cantare, sopra la pratica della Musica, con la Dichiaratione dei Tempi, Proporzioni & altri
accidenti, che ordinariamente s’usono, non solo per imparar à cantarli, ma ancora à segnarli nelle
composizioni. Di Antonio Brunelli, maestro di Cappella, & Organista del Duomo di San Miniato.
Florence: Volcmar Timan, 1606. (I-​Bc, C.108).
Brunelli, Antonio. Regole et Dichiarationi di alcuni Contrappunti Doppii utili alli studiosi della
musica, & maggiormente à quelli, che vogliono far contrappunti all’ improviso. Con diversi
 Bibliography 365

Canoni sopra un solo canto fermo. Di Antonio Brunelli Maestro di Cappella del Duomo di Prato.
Florence: Cristofano Marescotti, 1610. (I-​Bc, C.109).
Bruschi, Antonio Filippo. Regole per il Contrapunto, e per l’accompagnatura del Basso Continuo
compendiate, e dilucidate da Antonio Filippo Bruschi Fiorentino Sacerdote Benefiziato nell’
Abbazial Collegiata di S. Maria di Carignano in Genova . . . Edited by Leonardo Venturini.
Lucca: Leonardo Venturini, 1711. (I-​Bc, F.60).
Burmeister, Joachim (1564–​ 1629). Hypomnematum musicae poeticae (Rostock,
Germany: Stephan Myliander, 1599.
Burney, Charles (1726–​1814). The Present State of Music in France and Italy. 2nd ed. London: T.
Becket, J. Ronson, & G. Robinson, 1773.
Burney, Charles. The Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands, and United Provinces. 2d
ed. London: T. Becket, 1775.
Burney, Charles. Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Abate Metastasio. London: G. G. and
J. Robinson, 1796.
Burney, Charles. A General History of Music from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period. [1776–​89]
Edited by Frank Mercer, London: Harcourt Brace, 1935.
Burney, Charles. Music, Men, and Manners in France and Italy 1770. London: Folio Society, 1969.
Butler, Charles (c. 1560–​1647). The Principles of Musik, in Singing and Setting. 1636. Reprint,
Amsterdam: Da Capo, 1970. Edited by Jessie Ann Owens as Charles Butler’s Principles of Music
(1636). Woodham, UK: Ashgate, 2009.
Buttstett, Johann Heinrich (1666–​1727). Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, tota Musica et Harmonia Aeterna,
oder Neu-​ereoffnetes, altes, wahres, eintziges und erviges, Fundamentum Musices, entgegen
gesetzt dem Neu eröffneten Orchestre und in zweene Partes eingetheilet. Erfurt: Otto F. Werthern,
c. 1716.
Caccini, Giulio (1551–​1618). Le nuove musiche. Florence: Giulio Marescotti, 1602.
Calegari [Callegari], Francesco Antonio (1656–​1742). Dissertazione di Fra Francescantonio
Callegari di Venezia. L’anno 1732. In Venezia. Li 30 ottobre (1732; I-​Bc, F.70 /​Olim Cod.
031:10).
Calegari [Callegari], Francesco Antonio. Parte prima della Latina, e moderna musica, ouuero
siasi concordanza, ed Ordine dell’armonico numero. Di Frà Fran.co Ant.o Calegari Maestro di
Capella nell’insigne celeberrimo sacro tempio della Gran’ Casa de Frari (I-​Bc, F.71/​Olim Cod.
050:2). Contains nineteenth-​century copies of two treatises by Calegari.
Calegari, Francesco (1757–​1828). Elementi generali della musica. Bologna: Cipriani, 1828.
Calegari, Francesco, and Gaspare Pacchierotti. Preliminari, ossiano, Modi generali del
canto: premessi alle maniere o modi onde adornare le spoglie melodie o cantilane: opera non
inutile. 2 vols. 1810. Translated by Stephen Acre Willer as The Modi generali del canto: A
Translation and Commentary (master’s thesis, University of Iowa, 1976).
Calvisius, Sethus [Kalwitz, Seth] (1556–​ 1615). Harmonia cantionum ecclesiasticarum.
Leipzig: Jacob Apel, 1597.
Calvisius, Sethus [Kalwitz, Seth]. Exercitationes musicae duae. Leipzig: Jacob Apel, 1600.
Calvisius, Sethus [Kalwitz, Seth]. Exercitatio Musica Tertia Sethi Calvisii. Leipzig: Michaël
Lantzenberger, 1611.
Calvisius, Sethus [Kalwitz, Seth]. Sethi Calvisii Elenchus Calendarii Gregoriani; In quo Errores, Qui
Passim in anni quantitate & Epactis, quae festa mobilia vitiosissime determinant, comittuntur,
manifeste demonstrantur; & Duplex Calendarii Melioris & expeditioris formula proponitur.
Frankfurt: Johann Eichhorn, 1612.
Campion, François (1686–​1748). Traité d’Accompagnement et de Composition, selon la règle des
octaves de musique. Paris: G. Adam, 1716. Reprint, Geneva: Minkoff, 1976.
Cantone, Girolamo. Armonia gregoriana in cui con brevità e chiarezza si spiegano tutte le regole più
importanti del canto fermo. Turin: Boetto-​Guigonio, 1701. First published in 1679.
Cantus ecclesiasticus sacræ historiæ passionis domini nostri Jesu Christi, secundum quatuor
evangelistas. Ex Ducali Campidonensi Typographeo: per Andream Stadler, 1763.
Capalti, Francesco (fl. 1774–​88). Il Contropuntista pratico, o siano Dimostrazioni fatte sopra
l’ esperienza da Francesco Capalti da Fossambruno, maestro Romano, al servizio dell’ insigne
366 Bibliography

Cattedrale dell’ antichissima Città di Narni. Terni: Antonino Saluzj stampator vescovile, 1788.
(I-​Bc, F.82).
Caposele, Orazio da. Pratica del canto piano, o canto fermo. Naples, 1625.
Carpani, Giuseppe (1751–​1825). Le Haydine ovvero Lettere sulla vita e l’ opere del celebre maestro
Giuseppe Haydn. Padua: Tipografia della Minerva, 1812. Reprint, Sala Bolognese: Arnaldo
Forni, 1969.
Carpani, Giuseppe. The Life of Haydn in a Series of Letters Written at Vienna etc. Translated by
Stendhal and William Gardiner. London: John Murray, 1817.
Carulli, Gustavo (1801–​76). Méthode de chant. Paris, 1838.
Cassata, Filippo. La musica ecclesiastica o sia il canto piano: Conforme alla luminosa teoria degli
Oltremontani. Palermo: Domenico Adorno, 1808.
Cavalliere, Giovanni Filippo (?–​1634). Il scolaro principiante di musica. Naples: Nucci, 1634.
Caylus, Comte de [Phillipe-​Claude de Thubières] (1692–​1765). Voyage d’Italie, 1714–​1715.
Edited by Amilda-​A. Pons. Paris: Fischbacher, 1914.
Caza, Francesco (d. 1492?). Tractato vulgare de canto figurato. Milan, 1492. Facsimile ed. Johannes
Wolf. Berlin: Martin Breslauer, 1922.
Cerone, Domenico Pietro (1566–​1625). Le regole più necessarie per l’ introduzione del canto fermo.
Naples: Giovanni Battista Gargano, e Lucretio Nucci, 1609.
Cerone, Domenico Pietro. El Melopeo y Maestro. Tractado de musica theorica y pratica: en que
se pone por extenso, lo que vno para hazerse perfecto Musico ha menester saber: y por mayor
facilidad, comodidat, y claridad del Lector, esta repartido en XXII. Libros . . . Naples: Juan
Bautista Gargano, y Lucrecio Nucci, 1613. (I-​Bc, C.128).
Cerreto, Scipione (c. 1551–​c. 1633). Della prattica musica vocale, et strumentale, opera necessaria
a coloro, che di musica si dilettano. Con le postille poste dall’ autore a maggior dichiaratione d’
alcune cose occorrenti ne’ discorsi Scipione Cerreto Napolitano. Naples: appresso Gio. Iacomo
Carlino, 1601.
Cerreto, Scipione. Dialogo Harmonico. Ove si tratta con un sol Raggionamento di tutte le
regole del Contrapunto che si fa sopra Canto Fermo, et sopra Canto Figurato, et anco della
Compositione di piu voci, de Canoni, delle Proportionj, et d’altre cose essentiali ad essa
Prattica musica. Fatto tra il Maestro, et suo Discepolo per Scipione Cerreto Napolitano (1631;
I-​Bc, C.131; I-​Nc, MS1626).
Challoner, Richard. The Catholick Christian Instructed in the Sacraments, Sacrifice, Ceremonies
and Observances of the Church. London: [Meighan?], 1737.
Chiodino, Giovanni Battista. Arte pratica latina et volgare di far contrapunto à mente, & à
penna: Divisa in diece libretti, brevissimi, ordinatissimi & facilissimi. Nel decimo trattasi delli
generi della Musica, Diatonico, Cromatico, & Enarmonico: materia utile, & necessaria per le
compositioni Musicali. Venice: Ricciardo Amadino, 1610.
Choron, Alexandre Étienne (1771–​1834). Considérations sur la nécessité de rétablir le Chant de
l’Église de Rome Dans toutes les Églises de l’Empire. Paris: Courcier, 1811.
Choron, Alexandre Étienne. Principes de Composition des Écoles d’Italie. 3 vols. 2nd ed.
Paris: Auguste le Duc, 1816.
Choron, Alexandre Étienne, and François Joseph M. Fayolle. Dictionnaire historique des
Musiciens, artistes, et amateurs morts ou vivans. 2 vols. Paris: Valade, 1810, 1811.
Cizzardi, Liborio Mauro. Il tutto in poco, overo il segreto scoperto. Composto da Liborio Mauro
Cizzardi sacerdote parmigiano, e residente nella chiesa collegiata di S. Vitale in patria, diviso
in cinque libri, ne’ quali si mostra un modo facilissimo, per imparare il vero canto fermo con
le giuste regole, e con alcune altre osservazioni necessarie ad un cantore. Parma: per Giuseppe
Rosati, 1711.
Clérambault, Louis-​Nicolas (1676–​1749). Règles d’accompagnement (1716; F-​Pn, Ms.2374).
Coferati, Padre Matteo (1638–​1703). Il cantore addottrinato, overo regole del canto corale, Ove
con breve, e facil metodo s’insegna la pratica de’ precetti più necessarj del Canto Fermo; il modo
di mantenere il Coro sempre alla medesima altezza di voce; di tipigliare dove resta l’Organo;
d’intonare molte cose, che fra l’Anno si cantano; ed in particolare tutti gl’Inni. Florence: Il
Vangelisti, 1682.
 Bibliography 367

Cordans, Giuseppe Maria. Regole per apprendere il canto fermo. Venice, 1744. (I-​Vnm, fondo
Canal).
Corfe, Joseph (1741–​1820). A Treatise on Singing. Salisbury: J. Corfe, 1799.
Coronelli, Vincenzo (1650–​ 1718). Guida de’ forestieri sacro-​ profana per osservare il più
ragguardevole nella città di Venezia, con la di lei pianta per passeggiarla in gondola, e per terra,
estratta dal tomo 1. De’ Viaggi d’Inghliterra . . . Protogiornale Veneto perpetuo. Sacro profano. Nel
quale si contengono le feste mobile, e stabili. Venice, 1700.
Corri, Domenico. The Singers Preceptor, or Corri’s Treatise on Vocal Music. London, 1810. Edited
by R. Maunder, New York: Garland, 1995.
Costantini, Antonio. Studio di Contropunto fatto Dal Padre Antonio Costantino Min.
Conventuale Sotto la direzione del Maestro Niccolò Zingarelli (I-​ Baf, Masseangeli
MSG-​I-​Costant-​Mus.2).
Costantini, Domenico (1709–​1785). Regole del canto fermo. Rome: S. Bosch, c. 1872. (I-​Rvat,
fondo Casimiri).
Cotumacci, Carlo. Principi e Regole di Partimenti con tutte le lezioni (c. 1760; I-​Nc, Rari 1.9.14/​
1; 5.7.21).
Curwen, John (1816–​80). Singing for Schools and Congregations: A Course of Instruction in Vocal
Music. London: Thomas Ward & Co, 1843.
Dal Lino, Giovanni. Compendio delle regole di canto fermo semifigurato e figurato.
Vicenza: Stamperia Mosca, 1824. (I-​VIb, Gonzati 445.2).
Dandrieu, Jean-​François (1682–​1738). Principes de l’Accompagnement du Clavecin. Paris: M.
Bayard, 1718.
De Champs, Ettore. Manuale per l’alunno delle Scuole di Solfeggio-​cantato nel R. Istituto musicale
di Firenze. Florence: Galletti e Cocci, 1885.
Dechevrens, Antoine. Études de science musicale. 4 vols. Paris: Chez l’auteur, 1898.
De La Fage, Adriano. “Niccolò Zingarelli [I].” Gazetta musicale di Firenze 2 (5) (1854): 19–​20.
Della Gatta, Marco. Breve ragguaglio delle principali regole del canto fermo gregoriano. Naples, c.
1720. (I-​Rvat, Fondo Casimiri).
De Rosa, Carlo Antonio [Marchese di Villarosa]. Memorie dei compositori di musica del Regno di
Napoli. Naples: Stamperia Reale, 1840.
Desideri, Marco Aurelio (fl. 1642). “Al benevolo lettore,” in Gentile (1642).
De Vecchis, Giovanni Battista. Compendio di contrappunto della antica e moderna scuola di mu-
sica napolitana. 2 vols. Naples: Domenico Capasso, 1850.
Dies, Albert Christoph (1755–​ 1822). Biographische Nachrichten von Joseph Haydn.
Vienna: Camesinaische Buchhandlung, 1810.
Diletskiy, Nikolai (c. 1630–​ p. 1680). Grammatika musikiyskago peniya. Smolensk, 1677.
(RUS-​Mm).
Diletskiy, Nikolai. Idea grammatikii musikiiskoi. Moscow, 1679. (RUS-​Mm).
Diletskiy, Nikolai. Grammatika peniya musikiyskago. Moscow, 1681. (RUS-​Mm).
Dionigi, Marco (?–​1668). Primi tuoni, overo Introduzione del canto fermo Con l’aggiunta d’altri
tuoni. Parma: Mario Vigna, 1667. First published in 1648.
Diruta, Girolamo (1554–​1610). Seconda Parte del Transilvano Dialogo. Venice: Alessandro
Vincenti, 1609.
Dol, Giuseppe [Joseph Doll] (c. 1720–​74). Regole per accomp[agnare] il Basso del Sig.r Giuseppe
Dol Napolitano (CH-​Gc, R253/​18).
Doni, Giovanni Battista (1595–​-​1647). Annotazioni sopra il Compendio de’ Generi, e de’ Modi
della Musica. Rome: Andrea Fei, 1640.
Doni, Giovanni Battista. “Progymnastica musicæ pars veterum restituta et ad hodiernam praxim
redacta liber primus. In quo vetus Systema Musicum, eiusque Diagramma proponitur atque
illustratur: novaeque Semaeographiae species Afferuntur.” In Lyra Barberina Amphichordos,
edited by Antonio Francesco Gori. Florence: Caesar, 1763, 205–​34.
D’Ortigue, M. J. Dictionnaire Liturgique, historique et Théorique de Plain-​Chant et de Musique de
l’église au moyen age et dans les temps modernes. Paris: L. Potier, 1854.
Durán, Domingo Marcos (c. 1465–​1529). Lux bella. Seville: Quatro alemanes compañeros, 1492.
368 Bibliography

Durante, Francesco (1684–​1755). Concorso fatto per la Real Cappella di Napoli a 21. Ap[ri]
le 1745: Sopra il seguente canto fermo [Me Deus protexisti] Del Sig.r D. Francesco Durante
(1745; I-​Nc, Rari 1.6.15/​18).
Durante, Francesco. Regole di partimenti numerati e diminuiti del maestro Francesco Durante
(c. 1730; I-​Nc, 34.2.4 and Oc 3.40).
Durante, Ottavio (fl. 1608–​18). Arie devote le quail contengono in se la maniera di cantar con
grazia, l’ imitazione delle parole, e il modo di scriver passaggi ed altri affetti. Rome: Simone
Verovio, 1608.
Duval, L’Abbé (1718–​75). Principes de la musique pratique. Paris: Cailleau, 1764.
Eisenhuet, Thomas (1644–​1702). Musicalisches Fundament. Kempten, 1682.
Eslava, Hilarión (1807–​78). Método completo de solfeo por D. Hilarión Eslava Maestro de la Real
Capilla de S. M. Madrid: Librería de Hernando y compañia, 1830.
Fabricio [Fabritii, Fabrizi], Pietro. Regole generali di canto fermo raccolte da diversi autori.
Rome: per il Mascardi ad istanza di Francesco Maria Rossi de’ Caifabri, 1661/​1708.
Falk, Georg. Idea boni cantoris. Nuremberg, 1688.
Fedeli, Giuseppe (1680–​1733). Regole di canto fermo, ovvero gregoriano presentate all’illustrissimo,
e reverendissimo monsignore Ignazio Maria Fraganeschi vescovo di Cremona, da don Giuseppe
Fedeli cremonese canonico nell’insigne Collegiata di Sant’Agata di detta città. Cremona: nella
stamperia di Pietro Ricchini, 1757.
Fenaroli, Fedele. Partimenti. 6 vols. (1775; I-​MC, 2-​C-​1).
Fenaroli, Fedele. Studio di contrapunto del Sig.r D. Fedele Fenaroli. L’ autore è il Maestro Fedele
Fenaroli (I-​Nc, 22.2.6/​2).
Ferrari, Giacomo Gotifredo (1763–​1842). A Concise Treatise on Italian Singing. London, 1818.
Ferraro, Ottavio. Opera nova di canto fermo nella quale s’insegnano varie regole & modi di cantare.
Composta da reverendo d. Ottavio Ferraro sacerdote da Gifuni. Dove si descrive in questo se-
condo libro come si possa cantar per arte, & comporre di canto fermo con osservazione e toni.
Naples: Castantino Vitale, 1620. (I-​PO).
Fétis, François-​Joseph (1784–​1871). Curiosités historiques de la Musique, complément
nécessaire de la musique mise a la portée de tout le monde. Paris: Janet et Cotelle, 1830;
The history of Music, or How to Understand and Enjoy its Performance. London: George
Routledge, 1846.
Fétis, François-​Joseph. La musique mise à la portée de tout le monde: exposé succinct de tout ce qui
est nécessaire pour juger de cet art, et pour en parler sans l’avoir étudié. Paris: Paulin, 1836.
Fétis, François-​Joseph. Traité complete de la théorie et de la pratique de l’harmonie. 12th ed.
Paris: Brandus, 1879.
Feyertag, Moritz (fl. 1695). Syntaxis Minor zur Sing-​Kunst, In welchem alle und jede Regulen der
Edlen Music mit beygefügten approbiertesten Authorn versehen, was am meisten das Singen
betrifft . . . Duderstadt: Johann jost Hunoldt, 1695.
Fischer, Johann Caspar Ferdinand (1657–​1746). Les pieces de clavessin. Augsburg, 1696.
Fischer, Johann Caspar Ferdinand. Ariadne Mussica. Schlackenwerth, 1702; 2nd ed.
Augsburg: 1715.
Florimo, Francesco (1800–​88). Cenno storico sulla scuola musicale di Napoli. Naples: Lorenzo
Rocco, 1869.
Florimo, Francesco. La Scuola musicale di Napoli e i suoi conservatorii. 4 vols. Naples: V. Morano,
1881–​83.
Florimo, Francesco. Studio di Contrapunto Composto da me Francesco Florimo Sotto la
direzione del Sig.r D. Nicolò Zingarelli Gran Maestro e Direttore del Real Collegio di Musica di
S. Sebastiano (I-​Nc, 31.1.19).
Foglietti, Ignazio Domenico. Il Cantore ecclesiastico, ossia Metodo facile per imparare il Canto
fermo secondo le regoli francesi Ridotte in italiana favella ed ampliate dal prete Ignazio Domenico
Foglietti, corista e musico dell’illustrissimo Capitolo della Chiesa metropolitana di Torino.
Pinerolo: Giuseppe Peyras e Giacinto Scotto, 1788.
Franzaroli, Gaetano (1733–​?). [83] Bassi Per Bene Accompagnare Al Cembalo Del Sig:r Gaetano
Franzaroli (D-​MÜs, Sant Hs. 1540).
 Bibliography 369

Frezza dalle Grotte, Giuseppe. Il Cantore ecclesiastico breve, facile, ed essatta notizia del
Canto Fermo Per Istruzzione de’ Religiosi Minori Conventuali [. . .] Padua: Stamperia del
Seminario, 1698.
Frittelli, Fausto. Il modo di solfeggiare all’ uso francese, ricavato da due lettere familiari, scritte da
uno ad un’altro amico in lingua toscana, introdotti nuovamente in Siena dal M. R. Signore Fausto
Frittelli sacerdote sanese maestro di cappella nella metropolitana di Siena. Siena: nella stamperia
del Pub., 1744. (I-​Bc, G.84).
Fröhlich, Johannes (1806–​60). Allgemeine Singschule nach den Grundsätzen der besten, über die
Singkunst bereits erschienenen Schriften. Bonn: Simrock, c. 1811.
Funccius [Funcke], David. Resp. De proportione Musica veterum et nostra. Præs. J. Riemer.
Jena: n.p., 1673.
Furno, Giovanni (1748–​1837). Metodo Facile breve e chiaro delle prime ed essensiali regole per
accompagnare Partimenti senza numeri del Maestro Giovanni Furno Per uso degli Alunni del
Real Conservatorio di Musica. Naples: Orlando Vico S. M. delle Grazie N. 25, c. 1817. (I-​NC,
33.2.33; see also I-​Mc, Noseda L.36.8).
Fux, Johann Joseph (1660–​1741). Gradus ad Parnassum, Sive Manuductio as Compositionem
Musicæ Regularem, Methodo novâ, ac certâ, nondum antè, tam exacto ordine in lucem edita.
Vienna: Johannis Petri Van Ghelen, 1725.
Gabellone, Michele (1692–​1740). Istituzioni o Regole del Contrappunto del Sig.r Leonardo Leo
[sic] (I-​Nc, 22-​2-​6/​3).
Gabrielli, Giovanni. [15] Esercizij Della Celebre Gabrielli Da farsi ogni mattina per buono studio
(1780–​1800; Dk-​Kk, mu 6405.1235).
Gafurius, Franchinus (1451–​1522). Theorica musicae. Milan: Giovan Pietro Lomazzo, 1492.
Translated by Walter Kurt Kreyszig as Franchino Gaffurio’s Theorica Musicae (1492): Edition,
Translation, and Study of Sources. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.
Gafurius, Franchinus. Practica musicae. Milan: Guillermus Le Signerre de Rouen, 1496.
Translated and edited by Irwin Young as The Practica musicae of Franchinus Gafurius.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969.
Galli, Eugenio (1810–​67). Prolusione al corso di contrappunto, detta il 13 dicembre 1839 dal
professore Eugenio Galli Maestro di camera e cappella di sua Altezza Reale l’ Infante Duca di
Lucca. Lucca: Giusti, 1840. (I-​Bc, N.97).
Gallicus, Johannes (c. 1415–​74). Ritus canendi vetustissimus et novus. Pavia, 1458–​64. Transmitted
in northern Italian manuscript by his student Nicolaus Burtius (GB-​Lbl, Add. 22315).
Ganassi [dal Fontego], Silvestro (1492–​1565). Opera intitulata Fontegara. Venice: n.p., 1535.
Facsimile in Bibliotheca Musica Bononiensis II, 18. Bologna: Forni, 1969.
Gasparini, Francesco (1661–​1727). L’armonico pratico al cimbalo. Venice: Antonio Bortoli, 1708.
Translated by Frank S. Stillings as The Practical Harmonist at the Keyboard. Edited by David L.
Burrows. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963.
Gasperini, Guido (1865–​1942) and Franco Gallo (1932–​). Catalogo delle opera musicali del
conservatorio di musica San Pietro a Majella. Bologna: Forni, 1934.
Gengenbach, Nikolaus (c. 1590–​1636). Musica Nova, Newe Singekunst, so wol nach der alten
Solmisation, als newen Bobisation und Bebisation. Leipzig: Eliae Rehefelds und Johan Grossen,
1626. Translated and edited by [Dale] Allen Scott as Nikolaus Gengenbach’s Musica nova, Newe
Singekunst: A Commentary, Critical Edition, and Translation. Ottowa: Institute of Mediæval
Music, 1996.
Gerbert, Martin (1720-​93). De cantu et musica sacra a prima ecclesiae aetate usque ad praesens
tempus. San Blasianis, 1774.
Gervais, Laurent (c. 1670–​1748). Methode pour l’accompagnement du clavecin.(Paris: Boivin, 1733.
Gervasoni, Carlo (1762–​1819). La Scuola della musica, in tre parti divisa. Piacenza: Niccolò
Orcesi, 1800. Reprint, Sala Bolognese: Arnaldo Forni, 1969.
Ghelucci, Giovanni, and Michele Puccini (1813–​1864). Officium Sanctissimi Cordis Jesu A. D.
1829 (I-​Li, M.37).
Gibelius, Otto (1612–​82). Kurtzer, jedoch gründlicher Bericht von den vocibus musicalibus, darin
gehandelt wird von der musicalischen Syllabication. Bremen: Jacob Köhler, 1659.
370 Bibliography

Giordano, Umberto (1867–​1948). Corso di Contrappunto a due voci (ms. I-​Nc, exam, July
20, 1883).
Glarean [Glareanus], Heinrich (1488–​1563). Dodecachordon. Basel: Heinrich Petri, 1547.
Glover, Sarah Ann (1785–​1867). Scheme for Rendering Psalmody Congregational; comprising a
key to the sol-​fa notation of music and directions for instructing a school. Norwich: Jarrold and
Sons, 1835.
Goudar, Pierre d’Ange (1708–​91). Le brigandage de la musique italienne. Paris: 1777.
Grechi, Francesco. Regole del canto fermo ridotte alla maggiore brevità. Bologna: Cipriani & C.,
c. 1830.
Greco, Gaetano (1657–​1728). Tuoni ecclesiastici con li loro Versetti Originale Di Gaetano Greco
(1700–​28; I-​Nc, Rari 1.9.15/​1).
Greco, Gaetano. Introduttioni per Cembalo, et Organo sopra varij suoni (I-​Nc, Rari 1.9.15/​2).
Griesinger, Georg August (1769–​ 1845). Biographische Notizen über Joseph Haydn.
Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1810. Translated by Vernon Gotwals in Haydn: Two Contemporary
Portraits. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968.
Groppo, Antonio (1743–​67?). Salmi che si cantano in tutti li vesperi dei giorni festivi di tutto l’anno
dalle figliuole delli quattro Ospitali di questa città. Venice: Groppo, 1752.
Grosley, Pièrre Jean. Nouveaux mémoires ou observations sur l’Italie et sur les Italiens par deux
gentilshommes suédois. 3 vols. London and Paris: Nourse, 1764.
Guidetti, Giovanni (1530–​1592), and the Catholic Church. Directorium Chori ad usum omnium
ecclesiarum Cathedralium, & Collegiatarum, à Ioanne Guidette olim editum. Rome: Stephen
Paul, 1604 [first ed. 1582].
Guillaud, Maximilian. Rudiments de musique practique, redvits en devx briefs traictez, le pre-
mier contenant les preceptes de la plaine, l’avtre de la figvree. Paris: Nicolaus de Chemin, 1554.
Reprint, Geneva: Minkoff, 1981.
Han, Ulrich (?–​ 1478), and the Catholic Church. Missale Romanum. Rome: Udalrichus
Gallus, 1476.
Hase, Wolfgang (1611–​73). Gründliche Einführung in die edle Music oder Singekunst Anfangs der
gemeinen Jugend zum besten und insorderheit für die Schule der Stadt Osteroda gestellet jetzo
aber vermehret und verbesset und zum andern mal dem Druck übergeben durch Wolfgangum
Hasen. Osteroda: N. Dunckern, 1657.
Heinichen, Johann David (1683–​1729). Neu erfundene und gründliche Anweisung . . . des General-​
Basses. Hamburg: Benjamin Schiller, 1711.
Herbst, Johann Andreas (1588–​1666). Musica moderna prattica, overo maniera del buon canto.
Frankfurt: Georg Müller, 1653.
Hering, Carl Gottlieb. Neue praktische Singschule für Kinder nach einer leichten Lehrart . . . zur
Vermehrung häuslicher Freuden . . . Leipzig: Fleischer, 1809.
Hiller, Johann Adam (1728–​ 1804). Treatise on Vocal Performance and Ornamentation.
Ttranslated and edited by Suzanne J. Beicken. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Originally published as Anweisung zum musikalisch-​ zierlichen Gesange. Leipzig: Johann
Friedrich Junius, 1780.
Hitzler, Daniel (1576–​1635). Neue Musica oder Singkunst. Tübingen, 1628.
Imbimbo, Emanuele (1756–​ 1839). Seguito de’ Partimenti ossia Esercizio d’Armonia Vocale
e Instrumentale Sopra i Bassi Fugati Composta da E. Imbimbo e al Sig. Fedele Fenaroli
Rispettosamente Dedicata. Paris: Carli, c. 1812. (D-​Mbs, 2 Mus. th. 248).
Imbimbo, Emanuele. Observations sur l’enseignment mutual appliqué à la musique, et sur
quelques abus introduites dans cet art; précédées d’une notice sur les Conservatoires de Naples.
Paris: Firmin Didot, 1821.
Janowka, Tomáš Baltazar (1669–​1741). Clavis ad Thesaurum magnae artis Musicae. Prague: Georg
Labaun, 1701.
Jost De Villeneuve, Daniel. Lettre sur la méchanisme de l’opéra italien. Naples/​Paris: Duchesne/​
Lambert, 1756.
Keysler [Keyssler], Johann Georg (1693–​1743). Travels through Germany, Hungary, Bohemia,
Switzerland, Italy, and Lorrain. 4 vols. London: J. Scott, 1758.
 Bibliography 371

Kiesewetter, Raphael Georg (1773–​ 1850). Die Musik der Araber, nach Originalquellen.
Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1842.
Kircher, Athanasius (1601–​80). Musurgia universalis, 2 vols. Rome: Francesco Corbelletti/​
Lodovico Grignani, 1650.
Koch, Heinrich Cristoph (1749–​ 1816). Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition, 3 vols.
Leipzig: A. F. Böhme, 1782, 1787, 1793.
Kretzschemar, Johann. Musica Latino-​Germanica, Cuius Adminiculo Pueri Puellaeque Facile
brevissimo temporis spacio integram recte & bene canendi scientiam assequi possunt: Musica
Deutsch und Lateinisch/​Dadurch beydes Knaben und Mägdlein leichtlich gar in kurtzer zeit die
gantze Kunst recht und wol zu singen vollkommentlich lernen mögen. Leipzig: Beyer, 1605.
La Feillée, François de (c. 1700–​63). Méthode nouvelle pour apprendre parfaitement les règles du
plain-​chant et de la psalmodie. 3rd ed. Poitiers: Jean Faulcon, 1760. First ed. 1748.
Lange, Johann Caspar. Methodus nova et perspicua in artem musicam. Hildesheim: Verlegung des
Auctoris, 1688.
Lanza, Gesualdo (1779–​1859). Lanza’s Elements of Singing: The Elements of Singing Abridged.
London: Chappell & Co., 1819. Originally published as Studi elementari di canto in stile ital-
iano e inglese [. . .] compilati con differenti estratti dagli autori I più classici. London: Chappell &
Co., 1813.
Larramendi, Ignacio de. Método nuevo para aprender con facilidad el canto-​llano y la salmodia,
seguido de algunas reglas de canto figurado y melodía, para uso de las Iglesias Catedrales,
parroquias y comunidades religiosas. Madrid: Hija de Francisco Martínez Dávila, 1828.
Lebeuf, l’Abbé (1687–​1720). Traité Historique et Pratique sur le Chant Ecclesiastique. Paris: J. B.
Herrisant, 1741.
Lederer, Joseph (1733–​96). Neue und erleichterte Art zu Solmisiren [1763]. Facsimile edition,
Stuttgart: Cornetto-​Verlag, 2001.
Leodiensis, Jacobus (c. 1260–​ 1330). Speculum musicae. 2 vols. Ed. Roger Bragard.
Holzgerlingen: Hänssler Verlag, 1955/​1961.
Liberatore, Raffaele. “Necrologia Niccolò Zingarelli.” Annali Civili del Regno delle Due Sicilie 14
(Naples: Real ministero degli affari interni, 1837), 134–​52.
Lippius, Johannes (1585–​1612). Synopsis Musicae novae omnium verae atque. Methodica uni-
versal in omnis Sophicae praegustum inventae, disputatae et propositae omnibus philomensis.
Strasbourg: C. Kiefer, 1612.
Lo Piccolo, D. Filippo. Il canto fermo esposto colla maggior brevità, e col modo più facile dal rev.
sacerdote D. Filippo Lo Piccolo uno de’ beneficiati della insigne basilica Della Prima Sede del
Regno Palermo. Palermo: Angelo Felicella, 1739.
Lorber, Johann Christoph (1645–​1722). Lob der edlen Music. Weimar, 1696.
Lorente, Andrés (1624–​1703). El porqué della musica, en que se contiene los quatro artes de ella,
canto llano, canto de organo, contrapunto, y composition, y en cada uno de ellos nuevas regulas,
razon abreviada, en utiles preceptos, aun en las cosas mas dificiles, tocantes à la harmonia mu-
sica, numerosos exemplos, con clara inteligencia, en estilo breve, que el maestro deleytar, y al
discipulo ensenan, cuya direccion se verà sucintamente anotada antes del prologo [. . .] Alcalà de
Henares: Nicolas de Xamares, 1672.
Lorenzini, Raimondo (c. 1735–​1806). Scala (D-​MÜs, Sant Hs. 2398).
Lorenzini, Raimondo. La Scala a quattro voci in forma di discorso familiare con Violini
Viole Tromba Corni e Basso di Raimondo Lorenzini (copyist Fortunato Santini; RUS-​Mk,
XI-​398).
Loulié, Étienne (1654–​1702). Éléments ou principes de la musique. Paris: Ballard, 1696.
Lusitano, Vicentio. Introduttione facilissima, et novissima, di canto fermo, figurato, contrapunto
semplice, et inconcerto. 3rd ed. Venice: Francesco Rampazetto, 1561.
Maillart, Pierre (1550–​1622). Les tons, ou discours, sur led modes de musique, et les tons de l’église,
et la distinction entre iceux, de Pierre Maillart Valencenois, chanter et chanoine de l’église
Cathedrale de Tournay. Tournay: Charles Martin, 1610.
Mainzer, Joseph (1801–​1851). Singschule, oder praktische Anweisung zum Gesange. Trier: Jakob
Mainzer, 1831.
372 Bibliography

Mainzer, Joseph. École chorale, contenant la grammaire musicale, la théorie des accords, le
contrepoint, l’imitation, la fugue, etc. Paris: Tantenstein, 1839.
Majer, André [Andrea]. Essai de littérature musicale concernant l’origine, les progrès et les
révolutions de la musique italienne, avec des rémarques critiques sur les véritables causes de sa
décadence et sur le nouveau style de Rossini. Translated from the Italian by Joseph de Valeriani.
Ratisbonne: J. S. Reitmayr, 1829.
Mancini, Giambattista Ascolano (1714–​1800). Pensieri, e riflessioni pratiche sopra il canto figurato.
Vienna: Ghelen, 1774.
Mancini, Giambattista Ascolano. Riflessioni pratiche sul Canto Figurato di Giambattista Mancini
maestro di Canto dell’ Imperiale Corte di Vienna, Accademico Filarmonico. Rivedute, corrette, ed
aumentate. 3rd ed. Milan: Giuseppe Galeazzi Regio Stampatore, 1777.
Manfredini, Vincenzo (1737–​99). Regole armoniche o sieno precetti ragionati per apprendere
i principj della musica, il portamento della mano, e l’accompagnamento del basso sopra gli
strumenti da tasto, come l’organo, il cembalo ec. Venice: a presso Guglielmo Zerletti in merceria
all’insegna della scienza, 1775. English translation by Robert Zappulla in Vincenzo Manfredini
Regole Armoniche. Edited by Massimiliano Sala. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013.
Manfredini, Vincenzo. Regole armoniche o sieno precetti ragionati per apprender la musica. 2nd
rev. ed. Venice: Adolfo Cesare, 1797. Part 3 translated in Virginia Croskery, The Bel Canto
War: A Critical and Annotated Translation of Vincenzo Manfredini’s Regole armoniche, Part
III (1797) with Relevant Essay DMA diss., University of Iowa, 2005.
Mannarelli, Giovanni. [19 counterpoint lessons] (D-​MÜs, Sant Hs. xy 124; belongs with D-​MÜs,
Sant Hs. 4490).
Marcello, Benedetto (1686–​ 1739). Il Teatro di musica alla moda. [Venice: 1720].
Florence: Guglielmo Piatti, 1841. Translated by Reinhard Pauly, Musical Quarterly 34 (1948),
371–​403 and 35 (1949), 85–​105.
Marchettus da Padova (c. 1275–​1320). Lucidarium in arte musice plane. 1317/​18. Modern ed: The
Lucidarium of Marchetto of Padua: a critical edition, translation, and commentary. Edited by
Jan W. Herlinger. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Marinelli, Giulio Cesare. Via retta della voce corale ovvero osservationi intorno al retto esercitio del
canto fermo. Bologna: 1671.
Marpurg, Friedrich Wilhelm (1718–​95). Historisch-​kritische Beyträge zur Aufnahme der Musik. 5
vols. Berlin: 1754–​78.
Marpurg, Friedrich Wilhelm. Anleitung zur Musik überhaupt, und zur Singkunst besonders.
Berlin: Arnold Wever, 1763.
Martini, Giovanni Battista (1706–​ 1784). Esemplare o sia Saggio fondamentale pratico di
contrappunto sopra il canto fermo. 2 vols. Bologna: Lelio dalla Volpe, 1774–​76.
Martín y Coll, Antonio (?–​c. 1733). Arte de canto llano, y breve resumen de sus principales reglas.
Madrid: García, 1714.
Mattei, Stanislao (1750–​1825). Studio di contrappunto dalle prime lezioni di nota contro nota
fino alle fughe a otto, compresi i canoni (1780s; I-​Bc, NN 250).
Mattei, Stanislao. Contrappunti a 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 voci sopra la scala ascendente e discendente di
terza maggiore e minore (1788; I-​Bc, NN 256).
Mattei, Stanislao. Pratica d’ accompagnamento sopra bassi numerati e contrappunti a più
voci sulla scala ascendente e discendente maggiore e minore con diverse fughe a quattro e 8.
Bologna: Cipriani e C., 1825.
Mattei, Stanislao. Canoni a tre, quattro e cinque voci (I-​Bc, NN 263).
Mattheson, Johann (1681–​1764). Das Neu-​eröffnete Orchestre. Hamburg, 1713.
Mattheson, Johann. Das beschützte Orchestre. Hamburg: Schiller, 1717.
Mattheson, Johann. Critica Musica. 2 vols. Hamburg: auf Unkosten des Autoris, 1722–​23, 1725.
Mattheson, Johann. Der vollkommene Capellmeister. Hamburg: Christian Herold, 1739. Reprint,
Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1999. Translated by Ernest Charles Harriss as Johann Mattheson’s Der
vollkommene Capellmeister: A Revised Translation with Critical Commentary Ann Arbor: UMI
Research Press, 1981.
 Bibliography 373

Mazzoni, Angelo. Breve Compendio delle Regole necessarie alla pratica Cognizione del Canto
Fermo, ossia Corale, ricavate dalli più accreditati Autori, dal Sacerdote D. Angelo Mazzoni
Mansionario della Metropolitana, Accademico Filarmonico, e Maestro di detto Canto nel
Liceo di Musica di Bologna (1701–​10; I-​Rrostirolla, Ms.Mus 1155).
Mei, Raimondo da Pavia. Teorica della Musica per apprendere il canto (late 18th c.; I-​Bc, HH 162).
Mei, Raimondo da Pavia. Méthodes adottate nel Conservatorio di Parigi e donate nel 1809 dal
Vicerè Eugenio de Beauharnais alla Biblioteca del Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi di Milano
(19th c.; I-​Mc, Ris.Mus.e.171).
Mersenne, Marin (1588–​ 1648). Quaestiones celeberrimae in Genesim. Paris: Sebastian
Cramoisy, 1623.
Mersenne, Marin. Harmonie universelle: contenant la théorie et la pratique de la musique, vol. 1.
Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy, 1636; vol. 2. Paris: Pierre Ballard, 1637.
Modona, Andrea di. Canto Harmonico: In cinque parte diviso, Col quale si può arriuare alla
perfetta cognitione del Canto Fermo. Modane: Cassiani, 1690. (D-​Mbs, 4 Mus. th. 30).
Molitor, Valentin. Directorium seu Cantus et Responsoria in Processionibus per annum et
Exequis defunctorum una cum tono Missalis et Psalterii iuxta Rituale et Missale Romanum pro
uniformitate Helveto-​Benedictinae congregationis. Saint-​Gall, 1692.
Montanos, Francisco de (c. 1528–​c. 1595), Arte de Canto Llano con Entonaciones de Coro y Altar,
y otras cosas. Zaragoza: Francisco Moreno, 1756. First published in 1592.
Mortimer, Peter (1750–​1828). Der Choral-​Gesang zur Zeit der Reformation, oder Versuch, die
Frage zu beantworten: Woher kommt es, daβ in den Choral-​Melodien der Alten etwas ist, was
heut zu Tage nicht mehr erreicht wird? Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1821.
Mozart, Wolfgang (1756–​1791). Mozarts Unterricht in der Composition: Unterrichtsheft für
Barbara Ployer, K. 453b (1784; A-​Wn, Mus. Hs. 17559 Mus); transcriptions in Neue Mozart
Ausgabe, edited by Helmut Federhofer (1978–​79), vol. 30, no. 3.
Muffat, Georg (1653–​ 1704). Regulae Concentuum Partiturae. Edited by Bettina
Hoffmann.Bologna: Associazione Clavicembalistica Bolognese, 1991. First published in 1699.
Münster, Joseph Joachim Benedict (1694–​1751). Musices Instructio in Brevissimo Regulari
Compendio Radicaliter data, Das ist: Kürtzist doch wohl gründlicher Weg und wahrer Unterricht
die Edle Sing-​Kunst Denen Reglen gemäß recht aus dem Fundament zu erlernen. 3rd ed.
Augspurg: Johann Jacob Lotters, 1748.
Mylius, Wolfgang Michael (1656–​1713). Rudimenta musices: Das ist: eine kurtze und grund-​
richtige Anweisung zur Singe-​Kunst. Gotha, Germay: Brückner, 1686.
Nanino, Giovanni Maria, and Giovanni Bernardino Nanino (c. 1543–​ 1607). Trattato di
Contrap[punto] con la regola per far Contrappunto a mente di Gio. Maria, e Bernardino
Nanini suo nipote (18th-​c. copies of a manuscript from c. 1606; I-​Bc, MS B 124 and 125).
Nanino, Giovanni Maria, and Giovanni Bernardino Nanino. Rudimenti e regole di contrappunto,
attribuite a Gio. Maria Nanini (I-​Bc, B 126).
Nathan, Isaac (1790–​1864). Musurgia vocalis, an Essay on the History and Theory of Music, and on
the Qualities, Capabilities, and Management of the Human Voice. 2nd ed. London: Fentum, 1836.
Nathan, Isaac. Lectures. N.p., 1846.
Navas, Francisco Marcos (fl. 1775–​85). Arte o Compendio General del Canto Llano, Figurado y
Órgano. Madrid, 1777.
Nemeitz, Joachim Christoph. Nachlese besonderer Nachrichten von Italien.
Leipzig: Gleditsch, 1726.
Nerici, Luigi (1831–​85). La scuola di canto fermo. 2nd ed. Lucca: Tipografia Giusti, 1874.
Niedt, Friedrich Erhard (1674–​1708). Musikalischer Handleitung. 2nd ed. Edited by J. Mattheson.
Hamburg: Bey Benjamin Schillers Wittwe und Joh. Christoph Kissner im Dom, 1721.
Nivers, Guillaume Gabriel (1632–​1714) [attr. doubtful]. Méthode facile pour apprendre à chanter
la musique. Paris: Robert Ballard, 1666.
Nivers, Guillaume Gabriel. Dissertation sur le chant grégorien. Paris, 1683.
Nivers, Guillaume Gabriel. Trois nouvelles méthodes pour le plain-​chant. Paris, 1685.
374 Bibliography

North, Roger (1651–​1734). Officio della beatissima Vergine Maria da dirsi nelle compagnie de’
secolari giusta la riforma del pontefice Pio 5., confermato da Gregorio 13., da Clemente 8., e da
Urbano 8., nuovamente riformato. [. . .] Di più si sono diligentemente rivedute, ricorrette, ed
accomodate a’ suoi propri luoghi le antifone, capitoli, inni, versetti, ed orazioni da dirsi tutto
l’anno con le commemorazioni de’ santi secondo il breviario romano, con li tuoni de’ salmi, inni,
antifone, ed altri in canto fermo. Turin: Maurizio Domenico Ponzone, 1761.
Orgosinus, Heinrich. Musica nova Qua Tam Facilis Ostenditur Canendi Scientia, Ut brevissimo
spacio pueri, foeminaeq[ue] artem eam absq[ue] labore addiscere queant. Leipzig: Mit
Privilegien, 1603.
Orloff, Grégoire. Essai sur l’histoire de la musique en Italie, depuis les temps les plus anciens jusqu’a
nos jours. 2 vols. Paris: P. Dufart, 1822–​23.
Ornithoparcus, Andreas. Musicae activae micrologus. Leipzig, 1517. (D-​Mbs Mus. th. 1185).
Ornithoparcus, Andreas. Andreas Ornithoparcus His Micrologus, or Introduction: Containing the
Art of Singing. Translated and abridged by John Dowland. London: John Adams, 1609.
Ortigue, Joseph-​Louis d’ (1802–​66). De l’Ecole musicale italienne et de l’administration de
l’Académie royale de musique, à l’occasion de l’opéra de M. H. Berlioz . . . Paris: au Dépôt central
des meilleures productions de la presse, 1839.
Ozanam, Jacques. Dictionnaire mathematique, ou idée generale des mathematiques. Paris: Estienne
Michallet, 1691.
Pacini, Giovanni (1796–​1867). Principj elementari di musica e metodo per l’insegnamento del
melo-​plasto. Lucca: Baroni, 1849.
Paisiello, Giovanni (1740–​1816). Regole per bene accompagnare il partimento o sia il basso
fondamentale sopra il Cembalo. Edited by Ludwig Holtmeier, Johannes Menke, and Felix
Diergarten. Wilhelmshaven: Florian Noetzel Verlag, 2008. (1782; I-​Nc, Rari 3.4.17).
Panerai, Vincenzo (fl. 1750–​90). Principi di musica teorico-​pratici dell’Ab. Vincenzio Paneraj
professore di cimbalo e d’organo, Maestro di musica e di cappella Fiorentino. Florence: R. Bonini
e A. G. Pagani, 1750.
Panerai, Vincenzo. Principj di musica: nei quali oltre le antiche, e solite regole vi sono aggiunte
altre figure di note, schiarimento di chiari, scale dei tuoni, lettura alla Francese, scale semplici
dello prime regole del cimbalo, violino, viola, violoncello, cantrabasso, oboe, e flauto. Florence:
Giovanni Chiari nella Condotta, c. 1780.
Panerai, Vincenzo. Principj per cimbalo, organo, e musica, ordinatamente raccolti, chiaramente
spiegati dal Signor Abate Vincenzio Panerai . . . A vantaggio dell sua scuola (Florence, second
half of the 18th c.; US-​Cn, Case Ms.4A 5).
Paolucci, Giuseppe (1726–​76). Arte pratica di contrappunto. 3 vols. Venice: 1765, 1766, 1772.
Parisini, Federico (ed.). Giambattista Martini: Carteggio inedito coi più celebri musicisti del suo
tempo. Bologna, 1888.
Parran, Antoine (1587–​1650). Traité de la musique théorique et pratique, contenant les préceptes de
la composition. Paris: Ballard, 1639. Reprint, Geneva: Minkoff, 1972.
Pasquini, Bernardo (1637–​1710). Regole del Sig. Bernardo Pasquini per bene accompagnare con
il Cembalo. Ad uso di Giuseppe Gaetani, da Fofi in Roma, dal dì 7 Gennaio 1715 (1715; I-​Bc,
Ms. D 138; olim Cod. 146), fols. 22r–​30v. This condensed guide to canto fermo was inserted by
a later archivist into a collection of partimenti.
Pellatis, Angelo (fl. 1667–​69). Compendio facile et utilissimo per imparare le regole del canto
fermo composto dal rev. Angelo Pellatis da Serravalle maestro di musica dell’ordine de’ minori
conventuali di San Francesco. Venice: Capo Francesco Bodio, 1667.
Penna, Lorenzo (1613–​93). Li primi albori musicali per il principianti della musica figurata.
Bologna: Giacomo Monti, 1679.
Penna, Lorenzo. Direttorio del Canto Fermo, dal quale con breuità si apprende il modo di Cantare
in Coro ció s’appartiene à Coristi, con la maniera di comporre il Canto Fermo, ad uno, due, e trè
Cori. Modana: Cassiani, 1689.
Pepusch, Johann Christoph (1667–​1752). A Treatise on Harmony, Containing the Chief Rules for
Composing in Two, Three, and Four Parts. 2nd ed. Translated by James Hamilton. London: W.
Pearson, 1731. Facsimile ed., Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1976.
 Bibliography 375

Perrino, Marcello (1765–​1814). Osservazioni sul canto. Naples: Stamperia Reale, 1810.
Picchi, Ermanno, “Sopra una riforma di solfeggio proposta dal Canonico Alessandro Figlinesi
d’Empoli.” Gazzetta Musicale di Firenze 1 (9) (11 August 1853), 35–​36.
Piccolo, Filippo lo. Il canto fermo esposto colla maggior brecita e col modo più facile.
Palermo: Angelo Felicella, 1739.
Picerli, Silverio (fl. 1629–​31). Specchio primo di musica. Naples: Appresso Matteo Nucci, 1630.
Picerli, Silverio. Specchio secondo di musica, nel quale si vede chiaro il vero e facil modo di comporre
di canto figurato e fermo, di fare con nuoue regole ogni sorte di contrapunti e canoni, di formare
li toni di tutt’ i generi di musica reale e finta . . . composto dal M.R.P.F. Silverio Picerli rietino [. . .]
Naples: Appresso Matteo Nucci, 1631.
Pignatelli, D. Francesco. Regole del Venerabile Conservatorio di S. Maria della Colonna, detto
de’ Poveri di Gesù Cristo. Riconosciute ed approvate, dall’eminentiss. e reverendiss. principe
D. Francesco Cardinal Pignatelli Vescovo di Porto, Decano del Sacro Collegio, Arcivescovo di
Napoli Nell’anno MDCCXXVIII. Naples: Novello de Bonis Stampatore Arcivescovile, 1728. (I-​
Nn, sezione manoscritti e rari, S.Q.XXVIII.K.62/​6). For an account of this ms., see Cafiero
(2005a).
Pignotti, Antonio. 22 luglio 1790 Io Antonio Pignotti da Gaglioli mano propria fece fare questo
libro a di 22 luglio 1790 Scolare del S. Michelangelo Pililiano per i principi di musica e cetera
(I-​Rrostirolla, 106).
Playford, John (1623–​86). An Introduction to the Skill of Musick. 2nd ed. Edited by Thomas
Campion and Christopher Simpson. London: for John Playford, 1655.
Poisson, M. Nouvelle Méthode pour Apprendre le Plain-​Chant. Rouen: N.p., 1789.
Pöllnitz, Karl Ludwig von (1692–​1775). The Memoirs of Charles-​Louis, Baron de Pollnitz. 4 vols.
London: Daniel Browne, 1734–​38.
Porpora, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio Giacinto. Partimenti (various copyists; 1740–​1800; I-​Mc,
R.F.31/​I-​Nc, 176).
Porpora, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio Giacinto. Germanico in Germania (1732; I-​ MC,
1.A.15–​17).
Porpora, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio Giacinto. Porpora’s Elements of Singing. Adopted by Righini
and All Eminent Masters since His Time. Extracted from the Archives at Naples. Edited by Marcia
Harris. London: Addison, Hollier, and Lucas, 1858.
Porta-​Ferrari, Carlo Antonio. Il canto fermo ecclesiastico spiegato a seminaristi di Ferrara.
Modena: Bartolomeo Soliani, 1739.
Praetorius, Michael (1571–​1621). Syntagma Musicum. 3 pts. Wittenberg: Johannis Richter,
1614–​20.
Prezza, Giuseppe dalle Grotte. Il Cantore ecclesiastico Breve, facile, ad essatta notizia del
Canto Fermo Per Istruzzione de’ Religiosi Minori Conventuali, e Beneficio commune di Tutti
gl’Ecclesiastici [. . .] Padua: Stamp. del Seminario, Opera di Giovanni Manetti, 1698.
Prinner, Johann Jacob (1624–​94). Musicalischer Schlissl (1677; US-​Wc Ms.Washington ML95.
P79).
Printz, Wolfgang Caspar (1641–​ 1717). Compendium musicae: In quo breviter ac succinctè
explicantur et traduntur omnia ea, quae ad Oden artificiosè componendam requiruntur. Guben,
Germany: Gruber, 1668.
Printz, Wolfgang Caspar. Musica Modulatoria Vocalis, Oder Manierliche und zierliche Singkunst
in welcher Alles, was von einem guten Sänger erfordert wird, gründlich und auf das deutlichste
gelehret [. . .] wird. Schweidnitz, Poland: Christian Ockel, 1678. 2nd ed. 1689.
Printz, Wolfgang Caspar. Exercitationes musicae theoretico-​practicae. Dresden, 1679.
Profe, Ambrosius (1589–​1661). Compendium musicum, das ist, Kurze Anleitung, wie ein junger
Mensch in weniger Zeit leichtlich und mit geringer Mühe ohne einige Mutation, möge singen
lernen. Breslau: Henning Kölern, 1641.
Prosdocimus de Beldemandis (c. 1380–​1428). Tractatus musicae speculative contra Marchetum de
Padua (ms. 1425); edited by D. Raffaello Baralli and Luigi Torri in “Il Trattato di Prosdocimo
de’ Beldomandi contro il Lucidario di Marchetto da Padova,” Rivista musicale italiana 20
(1913): 707–​62.
376 Bibliography

Provedi, Francesco (c. 1710–​p. 1755). Lettera di Francesco Provedi Coltellinajo Sanese ad un
suo amico in Roma, in cui si esamina qual sistema di musica sia più perfetto, o quello di Guido
Aretino o quello di Anselmo Fiammingo. Siena, 1744.
Puccini, Michele (1813–​64). Corso pratico di contrappunto da Michele Puccini per uso de’ suoi
allievi (1846; Ms.: Museo Puccini in Celle, Pescaglia).
Puteanus, Erycius [Eerryk de Putte; Errijck de Put; Eryck de Put; Henry du Puy; Hendrick van
Put; Hendrick van der Putten] (1574–​1646). Errici Puteani Sugambri, aud. Lips. Modulata
Pallas, sive, Septum discrimina vocum, ad harmonicæ lectionis: Novum & Compendiarum usum
aptata & contexta, Philologo quodam filo. Milan, 1599.
Quantz, Johann Joachim (1697–​1773), Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen.
Berlin: Johann Friedrich Voβ, 1752; trans. Edward R. Reilly as On Playing the Flute: The Classic
of Baroque Music Education. London: Faber & Faber, 2011.
Quirsfeld, Johann (1642–​86). Breviarum musicum, Oder: Kurtzer Begriff, Wie ein Knabe leicht
und bald zur Singekunst gelangen. Dresden, 1675. 2nd ed. 1688.
Quitschreiber, Georg (1596–​ 1638). Musicbüchlein für die Jugend. Jena, Germany: Johann
Weidner, 1607.
Rameau, Jean-​Philippe (1683–​1764). Traité de l'harmonie réduite à ses principes naturels.
Paris: Jean-​Baptiste-​Cristoph Ballard, 1722.
Ramos de Pareja, Bartolomé (c. 1440–​1500). Musica practica. Bologna: Baltasar de Hiriberia,
1482. Translated by Clement A. Miller, Musicological Studies and Documents 64.
Holzgerlingen: Hänssler Verlag, American Institute of Musicology, 1993.
Rauzzini, Venanzio (1746–​1810). A Sett of Twelve Solfeggi, or exercises for the voice to be vocalized.
Composed & Dedicated to his Scholars by Venanzio Rauzzini. London: Goulding, D’Almaine,
Potter & Co., c. 1808.
Ravenscroft, Thomas (1592–​ 1635). The Music Treatises of Thomas Ravenscroft: Treatise of
Practicall Musicke [1614] and A Briefe Discourse [c. 1607]. Edited by Ross W. Duffin. Woodham,
UK: Ashgate, 2014.
Remacha, Miguel López De. Arte de cantar, y compendio de documentos mùsicos respectivos al
canto. Madrid: Benito Cano, 1799.
Rhau, Georg (1488–​1548). Enchiridion musicae mensuralis. Wittenberg: Georg Rhau, 1538.
Ricupero, Francesco (fl. 1760–​1803). Studio di Musica istruzione pratica per utile, e vantaggio di
chi desidera divenire buon sonator di cembalo. Con un nuovo metodo di facilezza e chiarezza,
per poter giugnere in breve tempo alla prefezzione di suonare numerico e fugato il cembalo e
l’organo originale di Francesco Ricupero (autograph, 1803; I-​Nc, 46.1.27).
Riepel, Joseph (1709–​82). [I] Anfangsgründe der musicalischen Setzkunst [. . .] Erstes Capitel De
Rythmopoeïa, Oder von der Tactordnung. Regensburg and Vienna: Emerich Felix Bader, 1752.
Riepel, Joseph. [II] Grundregeln zur Tonordnung insgemein: Abermal Durchgehends mit
musicalischen Exempeln abgefaßt und Gespräch-​weise vorgetragen. Frankfurt and Leipzig: 1755.
Riepel, Joseph. [III] Gründliche Erklärung der Tonordnung insbesondere, Zugleich aber für die
mehresten Organisten insgemein [Musikdruck]: Wieder Durchaus mit musikalischen Exempeln
abgefaßt und Gespräch-​weise vorgetragen. Frankfurt and Leipzig: 1757.
Riepel, Joseph. [IV] Erläuterung der betrüglichen Tonordnung, nämlich das versprochene vierte
Capitel [Musikdruck]: Abermal durchaus mit musicalischen Exempeln abgefaßt und Gespräch-​
weise vorgetragen. Augsburg: Johann Jacob Lotter, 1765.
Riepel, Joseph. [V] Fünftes Capitel. Unentbehrliche Anmerkungen zum Contrapunct, über die
durchgehend-​verwechselt-​und ausschweifenden Noten etc. Theils auf Borg und theils auf eigne
Gefahr mit musikalischen Exempeln abgefaßt, und wieder gesprächweise vorgetragen. Augsburg
and Regensburg: Johann Jacob Lotter, 1768.
Riepel, Joseph. Harmonisches Syllbenmaß Dichtern melodischer Werke gewidmet, und
angehenden Singcomponisten zur Einsicht mit platten Beyspielen gesprächweise abgefaßt. 2 vols.
Regensburg: Johann Jacob Lotter, 1776.
Riepel, Joseph. [VII/​VIII] Basschlüssel, das ist Anleitung für Anfänger und Liebhaber der Setzkunst,
die schöne Gedanken haben und zu Papier bringen, aber nur klagen, daß sie keinen Baß recht
 Bibliography 377

dazuzusetzen wissen. Edited by Johann Caspar Schubarth. Regensburg: Johann Leopold

Montag, 1786.
Riva, Giuseppe. Avviso ai compositori, ed ai cantanti. London: Tomaso-​Edlin, 1728.
Rodio, Rocco (1535–​1615) and Giovanni Battista Olifante. Regole di musica di Rocco Rodio
sotto brevissime risposte ad alcuni dubij propostigli da un Cavaliero intorno alle varie opinioni
de contrapontisti con la dimostratione de tutti i canoni sopra il canto fermo, con li contraponti
doppij e rivoltati, e loro regole: Aggiontavi un’altra breve dimostratione de dodici tuoni regolari,
finti e trasportati: et di nuovo da don Gio. Battista Olifante aggiontovi un trattato di proportioni
necessario a detto libro. Naples: Giovanni Giacomo Carlino e Costantino Vitale, 1609. (I-​Mc,
lost); 2nd ed., Naples: A. Magnetta, 1626. (I-​Bc).
Rogers, William. A New and Easy Method to Learn to Sing by Book. London: William Rogers, 1686.
Rolle, Christian Carl. Neue Wahrnehmungen zur Aufnahme und weitern Ausbreitung der Musik.
Berlin: Wever, 1784.
Romano, Michele. Saggio sulla storia di Molfetta dall’epoca dell’antica Respa sino al 1840. Opera del
Dottor Fisico Michele Romano. Naples: De Bonis, 1842.
Rosa da Cairano, Onorato. Regole del canto fermo detto Gregoriano spogliate dell’ antica loro
oscurità, e registrate con brevità, e chiarezza. Naples: nella Stamperia degli Eredi di Moro, 1788.
Rossi, Luigi Felice (1805–​63). Metodo di lettura musicale e canto elementare di Luigi Felice Rossi,
ossia Dialoghi intorno ai principii elementari della musica ad uso degli alunni. Turin: Speirani e
Tortone, 1852. (I-​Bc, P.10; I-​Nc, Solfeggio 372).
Rousseau, Jean-​Jacques (1712–​78). Dictionnaire de Musique. Paris: Veuve Duschesne, 1768.
Translated by William Waring as A Complete Dictionary of Music. London: J. Murray, 1779.
Ruffa, Girolamo (1700?). Introduttorio musicale per ben approfittarsi nel canto figurato, con regole
utili a principianti, comodo e dilettevole a’ professori che insegnano. Quarta Opera composta dal
padre fra Girolamo Ruffa da Tropea de’ min. conv. di San Francesco. Naples: presso De Bonis
stampatore arcivescovale, 1701.
Ruta, Michele. “Pedagogia musicale: Il solfeggio.” L’Italia musicale 8 (80) (October 4, 1856a), 318.
Ruta, Michele. “Pedagogia musicale: Oltre il solfeggio.” L’Italia musicale 8 (84) (October 18,
1856b): 334; no. 85 (October 22): 338.
Ruta, Michele. “Solfeggio,” La Musica 1 (9) (1876), 1–​3.
Ruta, Michele. Storia critica delle condizioni della musica in Italia e del conservatorio di S. Pietro a
Majella di Napoli. Naples: Libreria Detken B. Rochol, 1877.
Ruta, Michele. “Considerazioni sulla frase musicale nella pedagogia del canto,” La Musica 5 (3)
(February 18, 1884): 1–​2.
Sabbatini, Luigi (1732–​1809). Elementi teorici della musica colla pratica de’ medesimi, in duetti, e
terzetti a canone. Accompagnati dal basso, ed eseguibili sì a solo, che a più voci, di f. Luigi Antonio
Sabbatini de’ minori conventuali. Già maestro di cappella nella Basilica costantiniana de’ SS. 12.
Apostoli in Roma, ed al presente in quella del Santo in Padova. 3 vols. Rome: Pilucchi Cracas e
Giuseppe Rotilj socio, 1789–​90.
Sabbatini, Pietro Paolo (1598–​1660). Toni ecclesiastici colle sue intonationi. Rome, 1650.
Sacchi, Giovenale (1729–​89). Vita del Cavaliere Don Carlo Broschi. Venice, 1784.
Sainsbury, John D. (1793–​1862). A Dictionary of Musicians, from the Earliest Ages to the Present
Time, Comprising the most Important Biographical Contents of the Works of Gerber, Choron, and
Fayolle, Count Orloff, Dr. Burney, Sir John Hawkins, &c. London: Sainsbury & co., 1827.
Saint-​Lambert, Michel de. Les Principes du Clavecin. Amsterdam: Estienne Roger, 1702.
Sala, Nicola (1713–​1801). Regole di contrappunto pratico. N.p.: 1794. In “Dr Burney’s Musical
Extracts vols. IX and X,” GB-​Lbl Ms.11589.
Sala, Nicola. Regole del Contrappunto pratico di Nicola Sala napoletano, Primo Maestro nel Reale
Conservatorio della Pietà de’ Torchini. 3 vols. Naples: stamperia Reale, 1794. (I-​Bc, Q.136; I-​Mc,
Ms.TM.40).
Salari, Francesco (1751–​1828). Secondo Libro di Contraponto, fatto da mè, Francesco Salari,
Sotto la direzzione Del Sig.r Nicola Piccinni, Celebre Maestro Napoletano. Sant’Onofrio,
Napoli, gli 26 Giuggno [sic] 1767 (I-​BGc, Mayr B.9.19.19).
378 Bibliography

Salini, Giovanni. Principi di Contropunto della Scuola del Sig.r D. Francesco Durante (c. 1759;
B-​Lc, 42826).
Samber, Johann Baptist (1654–​ 1717). Manuductio ad organum. Das ist, Gründlich-​und
sichere Handleitung durch die höchst-​nothwendige Solmisation, zu der edlen Schlag-​Kunst.
Salzburg: Johann Baptist Mayrs seel. Witwe und Erben, 1704.
Samber, Johann Baptist. Continuatio ad manuductionem organicam. Das ist, Fortsetzung zu der
Manuduction oder Hand-​Leitung zum Orgl-​Schlagen. Salzburg: Johann Baptist Mayrs Witwe
und Sohn, 1707.
Samber, Johann Baptist. Elucidatio Musicæ Choralis. Das ist, Gründlich und wahre Erläuterung
oder Unterweisung, wie die edle und uralte Choral-​ Music fundamentaliter nach denen
wolgegründten Reglen mit leichter Mühe möge erlehrnet werden. Salzburg: Johann Joseph
Mayr, 1710.
Santa [Sancta] María, Tomás de (c. 1510–​70). Arte de tañer Fantasía, assi para tecla como para vi-
huela, y todo instrumento. Valladolid: Francisco Fernández de Cordova, 1565.
Santini, Fortunato (1778–​1861). Catalogo della musica esistente presso Fortunato Santini in Roma
nel palazzo de’ principi Odescalchi incontro la chiesa de SS. XII Apostoli. Rome: Paolo Salviucci
e figlio, 1820.
Santoro [Santero], Fabio Sebastiano. Scola di canto fermo: in cui s’insegnano facilissime, e chiare
regole per ben Cantare, e Componere, non meno utile, che necessaria ad ogni Ecclesiastico.
Naples: Nella Stamperia di Novello de Bonis Stampatore Arcivescovile, 1715.
Santucci, Marco (1762–​1843). 112 Versetti per Organo per rispondere al Coro in tutti i tuoni del
Canto Fermo. Milan: Gio. Ricordi, c. 1830.
Savage, William (1720–​89). Solfaing Lessons for one, two and three Voices and A Treatise on
Singing. N.p.: 1799. (GB-​Lbl, Ms.31814). Incorporates works by Jommelli and Sacchini.
Saverio De Rogati, Francesco, and Johann Simone Mayr. Piano di riforma del Real Collegio di
Musica (I-​Na, fondo “Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione,” fasc. 86).
Scacchi, Marco (1600–​62). Breve discorso sopra la musica moderna. Warsaw: Pietro Elert, 1649.
Scaletta, Orazio (1550-​1630). Scala di musica molto necessaria per principianti. Sesta impressione.
Milan: Giorgio Rolla, 1647. First ed. 1595.
Scarlatti, Alesandro (1660–​1725). Principii del Sig.r Cavaliere Alessandro Scarlatti (1715; GB-​Lbl,
Add.14244).
Scheyrer, Bernhard. Musica choralis theoro-​practica, das ist: Ein nutzliche Underweisung, wie man
das ChoralGesang [sic] durch leichtes speculieren oder Nachdencken auch würcklich in kurtzer
Zeit ergreiffen möge . . . in Truck verfertiget durch Bernardum Schreyer. Munich: Jäcklin, 1663.
Schizzi, Folchino. Della vita e degli studi di Giovanni Paisiello. Milan: Gaspare Truffi, 1833.
Schmelz, Simpertus. Fundamenta musica. N.p.: 1752. Facsimile ed. Stuttgart:
Cornetto-​Verlag, 2002.
Schneegaß, Cyriacus [Snegassius, Cyriak] (1546–​ 97). Isagoges Musicæ Libri Duo. Tam
Theoricæ quám Practicæ studiosis inservire iussi. Annexo ad finem tractatulo, ex Poetica
desumto: paucisque de canendi elegantia observationibus: Nec non solmisandi execitio. Methodo
facili et perspicua ita conscripti, ut neque necessaria artis Præcepta, cum selectioribus Exemplis
omittantur, neque superuacanea discentibus obtrudantur. Erfurt, 1596.
Scorpione, Domenico (fl. 1672–​1703). Riflessioni armoniche divise in due libri. Nel primo de’
quali si tratta dello stato della musica in tutte l’età del mondo, e di materie spettanti al musico
specolativo. Nel secondo si dà il modo per ben comporre; si registrano con nuovo ordine sotto i
loro generi tutte le varie specie de’ contrapunti, delle fughe, delle imitazioni, delle consequenze, e
de’ canoni: e si danno le regole per rivoltarli, e roversciarli con ogni facilità per mezzo di numeri.
Composte dal padre fra Domenico Scorpione da Rossano, maestro in musica dell’ordine de’
Minori conventuali di S. Francesco. E consecrate all’ illustrissimo, et eccellentissimo signore d. Gio.
Domenico Milano, Franco, Ventimiglia, d’Aragona, della Tolfa, del Tufo, Pignatelli. . . . Opera
quinta. Naples: per il De Bonis stampatore arcivescovale, 1701.
Scorpione, Domenico. Istruzioni corali, non meno utili che necessarie a chiunque desidera essere
vero professore del canto piano: Opera settima date alla luce dal padre Frà Domenico Scorpione
 Bibliography 379

da Rossano, maestro in musica dell’ ordine de’ minori conventuali di S. Francesco, maestro di
cappella e del canto nel sagro seminario de Benevento. Benevento: Stamp. Arcivescovile, 1702.
Selvaggi, Gaspare. Trattato di armonia ordinato con nuovo metodo e co’ edato di tavole a
dichiarazione delle cose in esso esposte. Naples: Raffaele Miranda, 1823.
Sharp, Samuel. Letters from Italy, Describing the Customs and Manners of that Country, in the Years
1765, and 1766. To which is Annexed, An Admonition to Gentlemen who pass the Alps, in their
Tour through Italy. 2nd ed. London: R. Cave, T. Becket, and P. A. de Hondt, 1767.
Sigismondo, Giuseppe (1739–​1826). Apoteosi della Musica del Regno di Napoli in tre ultimi
transundati Secoli. Tome I: della Istitutioni de Conservatori di Musica. Tome II: del Comporre
pel Servizio Sacro. Tome III: del introduzione de Teatri dramatici. Tome IV: della cagioni della
parte decadenza. N.p.: 1820. (D-​B, Mus. Ms. Autogr. Theor. Sigismondo, G.1, MS). Edited
by Claudio Bacciagaluppi, Giulia Giovani, and Raffaele Mellace (Rome: Società Editrice di
Musicologia, 2016a). Translated by Beatrice Scaldini as Apotheosis of Music in the Kingdom of
Naples. Rome: Società Editrice di Musicologia, 2016b.
Sigismondo, Giuseppe. Principj di Musica spiegati dal Dilettante Giuseppe Sigismondo all Sig.ra
Irene de Marco 1810 (I-​Nc 46.1.43).
Siri, Giacomo. Lezioni di Contrappunto Di me Giacomo Siri (I-​Nc, 32.1.9).
Solano, Francisco Inácio [Felicio Joaquim de Soto Vale] (c. 1720–​1800). Nova instrucção musical,
ou theorica pratica da musica rythmica, com a qual se forma, e ordena sobre os mais solidos
fundamentos hum novo methodo, e verdadeiro systema para constituir hum intelligente solfista, e
destrissimo cantor, nomeando as nótas, ou figuras da solfa pelos seus mais proprios, e improprios
nomes, a que chamamos ordinario, e extraordinarios no canto natural, e accidental, de que
procede toda a difficuldade da musica. Lisbon: Miguel Manescal da Costa, 1764.
Solano, Francisco Inácio [Felicio Joaquim de Soto Vale]. Nova arte, e breve compendio de mu-
sica para lição dos principiantes, extrahido do livro, que se intitula Nova instrucção musical, ou
theorica pratica da musica rythmica. Lisbon: Miguel Manescal da Costa, 1768.
Solano, Francisco Inácio [Felicio Joaquim de Soto Vale]. Novo tratado de musica metrica, e
rythmica, o qual ensina a acompanhar no cravo, orgão, ou outro qualquer instrumento, em que
se possão regular todas as especies, de que se compõe a harmonia da mesma musica. Demonstra-​
se este assumpto prática, e theoricamente, e tratão-​se tambem algumas cousas parciaes do
contraponto, e da composição. Lisbon: Regia Officina Typografica, 1779.
Solano, Francisco Inácio [Felicio Joaquim de Soto Vale]. Exame instructivo sobre a musica
multiforme, metrica e rythmica, no qual se pergunta, e dá resposta de muitas cousas interessantes
para o solfejo, contraponto, e composição, seus termos privativos, regras, e preceitos, segundo a
melhor pratica, e verdadeira theorica. Lisbon: Regia Officina Typografica, 1790.
Soriano, Francesco, and Felice Anerio (1560–​1614), eds. Graduale de tempore, Iuxta ritum
Sacrosanctae Romanae Ecclesiae cum Cantu Pauli V. Pont. Max. iussu Reformato. Editio
Medicea. 2 vols. Rome: Medicæa, 1614.
Speer, Daniel (1636–​1707). Grundrichtiger kurtz-​leicht und nöthinger Unterricht der musikalischen
Kunst. Ulm: Georg Wilhelm Kühnen, 1687.
Stella [della Mirandola], Gioseppe Maria. Breve instruttione alli giovani per imparare con ogni
facilità il canto fermo, divisa in due parti. Nella prima s’assegnano le regole succinte d’esso Canto,
col vero modo di pratticarle. Il canto francescano, con una regola al chorista per ben regger’il
Choro, e un’altra all’Organista, per lasciar in Tono con l’Organo i Canti, ch’occorrono in tutto
l’anno. Nella seconda si pone tutt’il canto della Settimana Santa con quello per la Processione della
Purificatione della B. V. e quattro Credi nel fine. Del P. F. Gioseppe Maria Stella della Mirandola
Minor’ Osservante Lettore Teologo, Predicatore Generale, e Vicario del Choro d’Araceli.
Rome: Iacopo Fei d’Andr., 1665. First published in 1645.
Stierlein, Johann Cristoph (c. 1628–​93). Trifolium musicale consistens in musica theorica, pratica
& poetica. Das ist: Eine dreyfache Unterweisung Wie Primò. Ein Incipient die Fundamenta im
Singen recht legen solle; Sambt einen Anhang die heutige Manier zu erlernen. Secundò. Wie der
General-​bass gründlich zu tractiren; und Tertiò. Wie man arithmetice, und mit lauter Zahlen an
statt der Noten componiren lernen könne. Stuttgart: 1691.
380 Bibliography

Sweertius, Franciscus (1567–​ 1629). Athenæ Belgicæ, Sive Nomenclator Infer. Germaniæ
Scriptorum. Antwerp: apud Guglielmum a Tungris, 1628.
Tartini, Giuseppe (1692–​1770). De’ principj dell’ armonia musicale contenuta nel diatonico
genere dissertazione di Giuseppe Tartini. Padua: Stamperia del Seminario, 1767. Facsimile ed.,
New York: Broude Brothers, 1967.
Tenducci, Giusto Ferdinando [“Il Senesino”] (1736–​90). [21] Necessary Rules for Students and
Dilettanti of Vocal Music. London, c. 1785.
Testori, Carlo Giovanni (1714–​82). La musica ragionata espressa famigliarmente in dodici
passeggiate a dialogo [. . .]. 3 vols. Vercelli: Giuseppe Panialis, 1767, 1771, 1773.
Tettamanzi, Fabricio. Breve Metodo per Fondamentamente e con facilità apprendere Il Canto Fermo
diviso in tre libri. Nel primo si pongono breuemente le Regole del medesimo Canto, con il modo
di pratticarle: Nel secondo, il modo di Cantare l’ Hore Canoniche; Nel terzo, si pono l’ Officio in
Canto di tutta la Settimana Santa. Del Padre F. Fabricio Tettamanzi da Milano Predicatore de
Minore Osseruanti. Dedicato Al Reverendissimo Padre Nicolo Lomazi. Milan: nelle Stampe degl’
Agnelli, 1706; Per Beniamino Sirtori, 1756. First published in 1686.
Tevo, Zaccaria (1651–​c. 1709/​12). Il musico testore. Venice: Antonio Bortoli, 1706.
Thompson, Charles. The Travels of the Late Charles Thompson, Esq. Vol. 1. Reading: J. Newbery
and C. Micklewright, 1744.
Tinctoris, Johannes (c. 1435–​1511). Terminorum musicæ diffinitorum. Treviso, Italy: Gerardus de
Lisa, c. 1495.
Tomeoni, Florido (1755–​1820). Théorie de la musique vocale, ou règles qu’il faut connaître et ob-
server pour bien chanter, ou pour apprendre à bien juger par soi-​même du dégré de perfection de
ceux que l’on entend; avec des remarques sur la prononciation des langues françoises et italienne.
Paris: Chez Pougens, 1799.
Tonelli, Antonio (1686–​1765). Teorica musicale ordinata alla moderna pratica divisa in due parti
(1762; I-​Bc, ms. L.54); revised with corrections by Giovanni Battista Martini.
Torres y Martinez Bravo, Joseph de (c. 1670–​1738). El Arte Pratico de Canto de Organo Con
Motetes, o Lecciones Diversas, Por Todos Los Tiempos, y Claves, Por Don Joseph de Torres,
Organista Principal de La Capilla Real de La Magestad. Madrid, n.d.
Tosi, Pierfrancesco (1654–​1732). Opinioni de’ cantori antichi, e moderni; o sieno osservazioni sopra
il canto figurato. Bologna: Lelio dalla Volpe, 1723. Translated by John Galliard as Observations
on the Florid Song; or, Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers. London: J. Wilcocks,
1743. Facsimile ed., London: Travis and Emery, 2009.
Touchard-​Lafosse, Georges. Chroniques secrètes et galants de l’Opéra 1667-​1845 par G. Touchard-​
Lafosse. Auteur des chroniques de l’oeil de Boeuf, des Réverbeies, des chroniques de Tuileries, etc,
etc. Paris: G. Roux, 1846.
Trabaci, Giovanni Maria (1575–​1647). Ricercate, canzone francese, capricci, canti fermi, gagliarde,
partite diverse, toccate, durezze, ligature, consonanze stravaganti et un madregale passeggiato nel
fine: Opere tutte da sonare a quattro voci. Naples: Constantino Vitale, 1603.
Treiber, Johann Philipp (1642–​1719). Sonderbare Invention: Eine Arie [. . .] aus allen Tonen [. . .] zu
componiere. Jena, Germany: 1702.
Treiber, Johann Philipp. Der accurate Organist im General-​Bass. Arnstadt and Jena, Germany: 1704.
Tritto, Giacomo (1733–​1824). Regole di bellamente Cantare, in Canto Fermo, scritto da me
si[gnor] G[iaco]mo Tritto nello Reale Conservatorio della Pietà de[i] Torchini nell’ Anno 1759
(1759; I-​Nc 15.7.21).
Tritto, Giacomo. Scuola di Contrappunto ossia Teorica musicale. Milan: Ferdinando Artaria
Editore, 1816.
Trullench, Johannes Aegidius. De obligatione assistendi et canendi in choro, ut quisque suae
obligationi satisfacere possit et distributions mercatur accipere breve opusculum. Valencia, 1633.
Ureña, Pedro de (?–​1682). Arte nueva de Musica inventada anno de DC, por S. Gregorio,
desconcertada anno de MCCII. por Guido Arentino, restituida à su primera perfeccion anno
MDCXX. por Fr. Pedro de Urenna, reducida à este breve compendio anno MDCXLIIII. por Juan
Caramuel. Rome: Fabio de Tolco, 1669.
 Bibliography 381

Valdrighi, Luigi Francesco. Cataloghi della musica di composizione e proprietà del M.o Angelo
Catelani preceduti dalle sue memorie autobiografiche. Modena: Soliani, 1893.
Valente, Saverio (c. 1743–​c. 1816). Scala di soprano, o Tenore in #3.a mag.re e min.e con tutt’ i salti
e poi a quattro voci, a 5.a ed a 3.e Madricali Di Saverio Valente Accademico Filarmonico (c.
1811; I-​Nc, 18-​3-​1, Solfeggio 416).
Valente, Saverio. Madrigale musicale (1805?; I-​Nc, Solfeggio 414).
Valente, Saverio. Introduzione al Canto, ossia Lezioni pei sbalzi semplici, e composti; Con le
spiegazioni ed altre cose teoretiche Appartenenti al meccanismo del canto. Composta dal
Maestro Saverio Valente [“Ho acquistato quest’Op. nel meso di Giugno del 1836”] (D-​Hs,
MA 829).
Valente, Saverio. Teoria e Pratica Per formare un buon Cantante Professore Del Sig.r D. Saverio
Valente Accademico Filarmonico (I-​Mc, Noseda Q-​13-​19).
Valente, Saverio. Teoria Musicale O sieno Principj della spiegazione di tutto ciò Che potrà
accadere nell’imparare la Musica Si Vocale, che Strumentale Del Sig.r D. Saverio Valente
Accedemico Filarmonico (I-​Mc, Noseda Q-​13-​20).
Valente, Saverio. Scala armonica per due Soprani, o Tenore e Soprano, o due Tenori (I-​Nc,
Solfeggio 415).
Vallara, Francesco Maria (1607–​?). Scuola corale nella quale s’insegnano i fondamenti più
necessarii alla vera cognizione del canto gregoriano, composta dal Padre Francesco Maria
Vallara. Modena: A. Capponi, 1707.
Vallotti, Francesco Antonio (1697–​1780). Raggionamenti del Padre Francescantonio Calegari
che servono per sostenere il di lui sistema del Tuono minore musicale armoniale nella corda,
ed Ottava di D. la sol re contro il Padre Vallotti che lo vuole fondato nella corda, ed ottava di
A la mi re per le raggioni che si vedranno in risposta alle obbiezioni del sudetto Padre (1731;
I-​Pca, A.VI.537, fols. 1r–​15v).
Vallotti, Francesco Antonio. Trattato de Tuoni Modali si Ecclesiastici e Corali, che Musicali e
Armoniali del Padre Fr. Francescantonio Vallotti Min. Conv. Maestro di Cappella del Santo
in Padova 1733. Libro 2.do del Trattato de Tuoni Modali, in cui si tratta de dodici Tuoni
Ecclesiastici o Corali Padova addi 3 Ottobre 1735 (1733–​35; I-​Pca, A.VI.541).
Vallotti, Francesco Antonio. Trattato Teorico—​Pratico Della Musica. Del P. Francescantonio
Vallotti Min. Conle. Padova 1760 (1760; I-​Pca, A.VI.528).
Vallotti, Francesco Antonio. Della scienza teorica, e pratica della moderna musica. Padua: Giovanni
Manfrè, 1779.
Van Blanckenburg, Qurinus Gerbrandsz (1654–​1739). Elementa Musica, of Niew Licht tot het
welverstaan van de musiec en de bas-​continuo. The Hague: Laurens Berkoske, 1739.
Vanneus, Stephanus (1493–​1539). Recanetum de musica aurea. Rome: V. Dorico, 1533.
Vannini, Carlo. Regole di canto fermo, conformi al sistema moderno francese. Florence: Giovanni
Berni, 1826. (I-​Raanc, Accademico B85/​32).
Venini, Francesco. De i principi dell’ armonia musicale e poetica, e sulla loro applicazione alla teoria
e alla pratica della versificazione italiana. Dissertazione dell’ Abate Francesco Venini. Paris: Gio.
Claudio Molini, 1798.
Veracini, Francesco Maria (1659–​1733). Il trionfo della pratica musicale o sia Il maestro dell’ arte
scientifica dal quale imparasi non solo il Contrappunto ma (quel che più importa) insegna
ancora con nuovo e facile metodo l’ordine vero di comporre in Musica Studio di Francesco M.a
Veracino Opera III (c. 1730; I-​Fc, 736, CF.86, D.IV.2360, f.I.28-​29-​29bis). Modern ed. edited by
Helen Margaret Smith. PhD diss., Indiana University, 1963.
Viadana, Lodovico (1560–​1627). Per sonar nel’ organo li cento concerti ecclesiastici, A Una, a Due,
a Tre, & a Quattro voci. Con il Basso continuo per sonar nell’ organo Nova inventione commoda
per ogni sorte de’ Cantori, & per gli Organistici. 4th ed. Venice: Giacomo Vincenti, 1605.
Villeneuve de Listonay, Daniel Jost (fl. 1756–​61), Giacomo Durazzo and Ranieri Calzabigi. Lettre
sur le méchanisme de l’opéra italien. Naples and Paris: Duchesne, Lambert, 1756.
Vitali, Giovanni Battista (1632–​92). Artificii musicali ne quali si contengono Canoni in di-
verse maniere, Contrapunti dopii, Inuentioni curiose, Capritii, e Sonate di Gio. Battista Vitali,
382 Bibliography

Consacrate all’Altezza Serenissima di Francesco II Duca di Modona, Reggio, etc. Opera Decima
terza. Modana: per gli Eredi Cassiani Stampatori Episcopali, 1689. (I-​Bc, CC 135).
Vitarini, Francesco. Regole e principi di canto fermo: raccolte da diversi autori e messe insieme
dal sacerdote Francesco Vittarini, maestro pubblico di detto canto nella città di Perugia.
Urbino: Girolamo Mainardi, 1736.
Wade, John Francis. Cantus Diversi pro Dominicis et Festis per annum (1751; Stonyhurst College
Archive, Arundell Library, ms. CVI:7).
Walther, Johann Gottfried (1684–​1748). Praecepta der musicalischen Composition. Edited by P.
Benary. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1955. Original ms. 1708.
Walther, Johann Gottfried. Musicalisches Lexicon Oder Musicalische Bibliothec. 10 vols.
Leipzig: Wolffgang Deer, 1732.
Webbe, Samuel. A Collection of Motetts and Antiphons, for 1, 2, 3 & 4 Voices, or Chorus. Calculated
for the more Solemn Parts of Divine Worship. London: Published by his Permission, 1792.
Werckmeister, Andreas (1645–​1706). Musicae mathematicae hodegus curiosus: oder, Richtiger
musicalischer Weg-​weiser. Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig: Theodor Philipp Calvisius, 1687.
Werckmeister, Andreas. Hypomnemata musica. Quedlinburg, 1697.
Wesselius, F. Principia musica oder Gründlicher Unterricht zur Musicalischen Wissenschaft f. D.
Lateinische Schuljugend in [. . .] Schweinfurt. N.p.: 1726 and 1747.
Winter, Peter von (1754–​1825). Vollständige Singschule. 4 vols. Mainz: B. Schotts Söhne, c. 1825.
Wright, Edward. Some Observations made in Travelling through France, Italy, &c. In the Years
1720, 1721, and 1722. 2 vols. London: Thomas Ward and E. Wicksteed, 1730.
Zacconi, Lodovico (1555–​1627). Pratica di Musica utile et necessaria si al compositore per
Comporre i Canti suoi regolatamente, si anco al Cantore per assicurarsi in tutte le cose cantabili.
Venice: Bartolomeo Carampello, 1622a.
Zacconi, Lodovico. Pratica di Musica Seconda Parte. Venice: Alessandro Vincenti, 1622b.
Zappata, Maurizio (1640–​1709). Ristretto, ovvero breve discorso sopra le Regole di Canto Fermo.
Parma: Giuseppe Dall’Oglio e Ippolito Rosati, 1682.
Zarlino, Gioseffo (1517–​90). Le istitutioni harmoniche. Venice: Francesco de i Franceschi Senese.
2d ed., 1573.; facsimile ed., Ridgewood, NJ: Gregg Press, 1966. First ed. 1558.
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. Partimenti del Maestro Nicolò Zingarelli, 2 vols. (c. 1800–​
20; I-​Mc, Noseda, I.140).
Zingarelli, Niccolò [Nicola] Antonio. Partimenti composti dal celebre maestro D.n Niccolò
Zingarelli (I-​Nc, 34.2.10).
Zondolari, Marquis Fulvio Chigo. Riflessioni fatte da Euchero Pastore Arcade sopra alla maggior
facilità, che trovasi nell’apprendere il canto con l’uso di un solfeggio di dodici monosillabi, atteso
il frequente uso degli accidenti introdotto molto posteriormente alla primiera istituzione del sol-
feggio di sei monosillabi. Venice: Carlo Pecora, 1746.

Secondary Sources

Abbate, Alessandro. “Due Autori per un Testo di Contrapunto di Scuola Napolitana: Leonardo
Leo e Michele Gabellone.” Studi Musicali 36 (2007): 123–​59.
Adams, Kyle. “Theories of Chromaticism from the Late Sixteenth to the Early Eighteenth
Century.” Theoria 14 (2007): 5–​40.
Adams, Kyle. “A New Theory of Chromaticism from the Late Sixteenth to the Early Eighteenth
Century.” Journal of Music Theory 53 (2) (2009): 255–​304.
Adams, Kyle. “Music Theory and Its Purposes: A Response to Gregory Barnett.” Theoria 20
(2013): 185–​94.
Afonso de André, Clóvis. Inscribing Medieval Pedagogy: Musica Ficta in Its Texts. PhD diss.,
University of New York at Buffalo, 2005.
Allaire, Gaston G. The Theory of Hexachords, Solmization and the Modal System: A Practical
Approach. Musicological Studies and Documents. Stuttgart: Hänssler, 1972.
 Bibliography 383

Allaire, Gaston G. “Les énigmes de l’Antefana et du double hoquet de Machault: Une tentative de
solution.” Revue de musicologie 66 (1980): 27–​56.
Allaire, Gaston G. “Debunking the Myth of Musica Ficta.” Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke
Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 45 (2) (1995): 110–​26.
Allaire, Gaston G. “The Forgotten Art of Modulation in Renaissance Polyphony.” Revue Belge de
Musicologie 57 (2003): 5–​57.
Amstad, Marietta. “Das berühmte Notenblatt des Porpora: die Fundamentalübungen der Bel
canto Schule.” Musica 23 (1969): 453–​55.
Antolini, Bianca Maria, Friedrich Lippmann, and Wolfgang Witzenmann. Napoli e il teatro musi-
cale in Europa tra Sette e Ottocento. Florence: Olschki, 1993.
Apel, Willi. The Notation of Polyphonic Music, 900–​1600. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Mediaeval
Academy of America, 1949.
Apfel, Ernst. Geschichte der Kompositionslehre, von den Anfängen bis gegen 1700. Wilhelmshafen:
Heinrichsbogens, 1981.
Ayeda, Akio. Nicola Antonio Porpora als Instrumentalkomponist. PhD diss., University of
Vienna, 1967.
Ayeda, Akio. “Nicola Antonio Porpora und der junge Haydn.” In Der junge Haydn. Edited by Vera
Schwarz. Graz: Akademie Druck-​u. Verlagsanst., 1970, 41–​58.
Bacciagaluppi, Claudio, Giulia Giovani, and Raffaele Mellace. “Giuseppe Sigismondo and His
Magnum Opus.” In Giuseppe Sigismondo, Apotheosis of Music in the Kingdom of Naples.
Translated by Beatrice Scaldini. Rome: Societá Editrice di Musicologia, 2016, vii–​xviii.
Baragwanath, Nicholas. “Giovanni Battista de Vecchis and the Theory of Melodic Accent from
Zarlino to Zingarelli,” Music & Letters 95 (2) (2014): 157–​82.
Barbier, Patrick. The World of the Castrati: The History of an Extraordinary Operatic Phenomenon.
London: Souvenir, 1996.
Barbieri, Patrizio. “Musica, tipografi e librai a Roma: Tecnologie di stampa e integrazioni
biografiche (1583–​1833).” Recercare 7 (1995): 47–​85.
Barnett, Gregory Richard. “Modal Theory, Church Keys, and the Sonata at the End of the
Seventeenth Century.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 51 (2) (1998): 245–​81.
Barnett, Gregory Richard. Bolognese Instrumental Music, 1660–​1710: Spiritual Comfort, Courtly
Delight, and Commercial Triumph. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008.
Barnett, Gregory Richard. “Giovanni Maria Bononcini and the Uses of the Modes.” Journal of
Musicology 25 (3) (2008): 230–​86.
Barnett, Gregory Richard. “Sixteenth-​Century Modal Theory and Renaissance Ideologies: A
Response to Kyle Adams.” Theoria 20 (2013): 165–​84.
Baroni, Maria Luisa. Saverio Valente. Komponist—​Lehrer—​Theoretiker. PhD diss., Hochschule
für Musik und Tanz, Köln, 2019.
Basso, Alberto, ed. “Solfeggio.” In Dizionario della musica e dei musicisti. Turin: UTET,
1984, 4:342.
Bellini, Alice. “Music and ‘Music’ in Eighteenth-​Century Meta-​Operatic Scores.” Eighteenth
Century Music 6 (2) (2009): 183–​207.
Bent, Margaret. “Musica Recta and Musica Ficta.” Musica Disciplina 26 (1972): 73–​100.
Bent, Margaret. “Diatonic Ficta.” Early Music History 4 (1984): 1–​48.
Bent, Margaret. “Diatonic Ficta Revisited: Josquin’s Ave Maria in Context.” Music Theory Online
2 (6) (1996): n.p.
Bent, Margaret. “The Grammar of Early Music: Preconditions for Analysis.” In Tonal Structures in
Early Music. Edited by Christle Collins Judd. New York: Garland, 1998, 15–​59.
Bent, Margaret. Counterpoint, Composition, and Musica Ficta. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Berger, Karol. Musica Ficta: Theories of Accidental Inflections in Vocal Polyphony from Marchetto
da Padova to Gioseffo Zarlino. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Berger, Karol. “Musica Ficta.” In Performance Practice: Music Before 1600. Edited by Howard
Mayer Brown and Stanley Sadie. New York: Norton, 1989.
Bergeron, Katherine. Decadent Enchantments: The Revival of Gregorian Chant at Solesmes.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
384 Bibliography

Berkowitz, Aaron. The Improvising Mind: Cognition and Creativity in the Musical Moment.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Bernardoni, Virgilio. “La teoria della melodia vocale nella trattatistica italiana (1790–​1870).” Acta
Musicologica 62 (1990): 29–​61.
Bianconi, Lorenzo, and Renato Bossa, eds. Musica e cultura a Napoli del XV al XIX secolo.
Florence: Olschki, 1983.
Bisaro, Xavier. “Une Tradition en chantier: les méthodes de plain-​chant ‘nouvelles et faciles’ sous
l’Ancien Régime,” Acta Musicologica 87 (1) (2015): 1–​29.
Black, David Ian. Mozart and the Practice of Sacred Music, 1781–​1791. PhD diss., Harvard
University, 2007.
Blackburn, Bonnie J. “Book Review: Chromatic Beauty in the Late Medieval Chanson: An
Interpretation of Manuscript Accidentals by Thomas Brothers.” Journal of the American
Musicological Society 51 (3) (Autumn 1998): 630–​36.
Blackburn, Bonnie J. “Motets Based on Popular Songs and Solmization Syllables.” in The Josquin
Companion. Edited by by Richard Sherr. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 51–​88.
Blackburn, Bonnie J. “Music Theory and Musical Thinking After 1450.” In Music as Concept and
Practice in the Late Middle Ages. The New Oxford History of Music. Edited by Reinhard Strohm
and Bonnie J. Blackburn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, 301–​45.
Blackburn, Bonnie J., and Laurie Straus, eds. Eroticism in Early Modern Music. Farnham,
UK: Ashgate, 2015.
Bloem-​Hubatka, Daniela. The Old Italian School of Singing: A Theoretical and Practical Guide.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012.
Blombach, Ann. “Phrase and Cadence: A Study of Terminology and Definition.” Journal of Music
Theory Pedagogy 1 (1987): 225–​51.
Bogensberger, Josef von. Das Salzburger Kapellhaus: Reflexionen zur Geschichte sowie
musikpädagogische und juristische Überlegungen zur Wiedererrichtung des Kapellhauses
angesichts musikalischer Bildung im kirchlichen Österreich heute. PhD Diss., University of
Salzburg Mozartuem, 2003.
Bonds, Mark Evan. Wordless Rhetoric: Musical Form and the Metaphor of the Oration. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Bono, Giovanni. “Le confraternite nel Regno di Napoli dopo il Concilio di Trento,” Nord e sud 35/​
3–​4 (1988): 195–​297.
Borgir, Tharald. The Performance of the Basso Continuo in Italian Baroque Music. Ann Arbor: UMI
Research Press, 1987.
Bornstein, Andrea. Two-​Part Didactic Music in Printed Italian Collections of the Renaissance
and Baroque (1521–​1744). Bologna: UT Orpheus Edizioni, 2004. Revision of a PhD diss.,
University of Birmingham, 2001.
Boynton, Susan, and Eric Rice, eds. Young Choristers, 650–​1700. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and
Brewer, 2008.
Bramanti, Lapo. Preface to the transcription of Metallo’s collection (before 1591), Grammatio
Metallo: Ricercari a due voci per sonare et cantare. Musica Rinascimentale Italiana 12.
Rome: Pro Musica Studium, 1987.
Brandenburg, Daniel. “Francesco Florimo, la vocalità e la didattica vocale dell’ottocento.” In
Francesco Florimo e l’Ottocento musicale. Edited by Rosa Cafiero and Maria Marino. Reggio
Calabria: Jason, 1999, 163–​74.
Brandt, Stefan. Untersuchungen zur historischen Stellung der Opern von Nicola Porpora. PhD
diss. in progress, University of Basel.
Brofsky, Howard. “Martini’s Music School.” In Padre Martini: Musica e cultura nel Settecento
europeo. Edited by Angelo Pompilio. Florence: Olschki, 1987, 305–​13.
Brothers, Thomas. Chromatic Beauty in the Late Medieval Chanson: An Interpretation of
Manuscript Accidentals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Brover-​Lubovsky, Bella. Tonal Space in the Music of Antonio Vivaldi. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2008.
 Bibliography 385

Brown, Clive. Classical and Romantic Performing Practice, 1750–​ 1900. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999.
Bryant, David, and Elena Quaranta. “Music and Musicians in Late Seventeenth and Early
Eighteenth-​Century Venice: A Guide for Foreigners.” In Europäische Musiker in Venedig, Rom
und Neapel (1650–​1750). Analecta musicologica 52. Edited by Anne-​Madelaine Goulet and
Gesa zur Nieden. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2015, 87–​117.
Buelow, George J. A History of Baroque Music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.
Buhagiar, Vincent Spiridion. Francesco Azopardi (1748–​1809): A Maltese Classical Composer,
Theorist, and Teacher. PhD diss., University of Malta, 1999.
Burnard, Pamela. Musical Creativities in Real World Practice. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2012.
Busse Berger, Anna Maria. Mensuration and Proportion Signs. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1993.
Butt, John. Music Education and the Art of Performance in the German Baroque.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Cafiero, Rosa. “La didattica del partimento a Napoli fra Settecento e Ottocento: Note sulla fortuna
delle ‘Regole’ di Carlo Cotumacci.” In Gli affetti convenienti all’idee. Edited By Maria Caraci
Vela, Rosa Cafiero, and Angela Romagnoli. Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1993a,
549–​79.
Cafiero, Rosa. “Una biblioteca per la biblioteca: La collezione musicale di Giuseppe Sigismondo.”
In Napoli e il teatro musicale in Europa fra Sette e Ottocento: Studi in onore di Friedrich
Lippmann. Quaderni della Società Italiana di Musicologia 28. Edited by Bianca M. Antolini
and Wolfgang Witzenmann. Florence: Olschki, 1993b, 299–​367.
Cafiero, Rosa. “‘Se i maestri di cappella son compresi fra gli artigiani’: Saverio Mattei e una
‘querelle’ sulla condizione sociale del musicista alla fine del xviii secolo.” In Civiltà musicale
calabrese nel Settecento. Edited by Giuseppe Ferraro and Francescantonio Pollice. Lamezia
Terme: A.M.A. Calabria, 1994a, 29–​69.
Cafiero, Rosa. “Saverio Mattei Versus Giambattista Martini: Una disputa ‘sopra la musica’ nella
Napoli del XVIII secolo.” In Musicam in subtilitate scrutando: Contributi alla storia della
teoria musicale. Università degli Studi di Pavia. Scuola di Paleografia e Filologia Musicale di
Cremona. Studi e Testi Musicale. Nuova serie. Edited by Daniele Sabaino, Maria Teresa Rosa
Barezzani, and Rodobaldo Tibaldi. Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 1994b, 371–​83.
Cafiero, Rosa. “Il Collegio di musica di Napoli nel 1812: Un bilancio.” Analecta Musicologica 30
(2) (1998): 631–​59.
Cafiero, Rosa. “Istruzione musicale a Napoli fra decennio francese e restaurazione borbonica: Il
‘collegio di musica delle donzelle’ (1806–​1832).” In Francesco Florimo e l’Ottocento musi-
cale: Atti del convegno Morcone, 19–​21 Aprile 1990. Edited by Rosa Cafiero and Marina Marino.
Reggio Calabria: Jason, 1999a, 753–​825.
Cafiero, Rosa. “Metodi, progetti e riforme dell’insegnamento della ‘scienza armonica’ nel
real collegio di musica di Napoli nei primi decenni dell’Ottocento.” Studi musicali 28
(1999b): 425–​81.
Cafiero, Rosa. “Introduco un genere nuovo in Italia: note sulla drammaturgia coreutica de
L’assedio di Calais.” in Donizetti, Napoli, l’Europa. Edited by Franco Carmelo Greco and Renato
Di Benedetto. Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2000, 259–​75.
Cafiero, Rosa. “Teorie armoniche di scuola napoletana ai primi dell’Ottocento: Cenni sulla
fortuna di Francesco Durante fra Napoli e Parigi.” In Atti del convegno Giacomo Francesco
Milano e il ruolo dell’aristocrazia nel patrocinio delle attività musicali nel secolo xviii, Reggio
Calabria, 12–​14 ottobre 1999, a cura di Gaetano Pitarresi. Reggio Calabria: Laruffa, 2001a,
171–​98.
Cafiero, Rosa. “Un divulgatore di teorie armoniche della scuola napoletana a Parigi: Emanuele
Imbimbo (1756–​1839).” In Francesco Salfi librettista, Studi e testi a cura di F. P. Russo. Vibo
Valentia: Monteleone, 2001b, 191–​225.
Cafiero, Rosa. “Una sintesi di scuole napoletane: Il Tratto di Armonia di Gaspare Selvaggi (1823).”
Studi musicali 30 (2002): 411–​52.
386 Bibliography

Cafiero, Rosa. “L’archivio musicale di Giovanni Paisiello fra la Società Reale e il Collegio di
Musica di–​Napoli (1811–​1816).” Napoli nobilissima: Rivista di arte, filologia e storia 4 (5–​6)
(2003a): 224–​31.
Cafiero, Rosa. “Introduzione agli scritti teorici di Francesco Bianchi (Cremona, c. 1752–​Londra,
1810): Il Trattato di armonia teorico pratico.” In “Et facciam dolçi canti”: Studi in onore di
Agostino Ziino in occasione del suo 65° compleanno, vol. 2. Edited by Bianca Maria Antolini,
Teresa M. Gialdroni, and Annunziato Pugliese. Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2003b.
989–​1017.
Cafiero, Rosa. “Note su un regolamento del ‘venerabile conservatorio di S. Maria della Colonna,
detto de’ Poveri di Gesù Cristo’ (1728).” In Atti del convegno Leonardo Vinci: Architetture
musicali nella Napoli del Viceregno austriaco, Reggio Calabria, 10–​12 giugno 2002). Edited
Gaetano Pitarresi. Reggio Calabria: Iiriti Editore, 2005a, 243–​80.
Cafiero, Rosa. “Conservatories and the Neapolitan School: A European Model at the End of the
Eighteenth Century?” In Music Education in Europe (1770–​1914): Compositional, Institutional
and Political Challenges. Edited by Michael Fend and Michel Noiray. Berlin: BWV Berlin
Wissenschafts-​Verlag, 2005b, 1:15–​29.
Cafiero, Rosa. “La formazione del musicista nel XVIII secolo: Il ‘modello’ dei Conservatori
napolitani.” Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale 15 (1) (2009): 5–​25.
Cafiero, Rosa. “‘Please return to me the biography from the Calata del Gigante, which I previously
had, so that I may check some things about Jommelli and Piccinni’: The Apotheosi della musica
in the scriptorium of Giuseppe Sigismondo.” In Giuseppe Sigismondo, Apotheosis of Music in
Naples. Rome: Società Editrice di Musicologia, 2016a, xxiii–​xxiv.
Cafiero, Rosa. “Il ‘Piano per una riforma del Conservatorio di Napoli’ di Johann Simone Mayr
(1816).” In Mayr e la didattica della musica. Edited by Livio Aragona. Bergamo: Fondazione
Donizetti, 2016b, 163–​224.
Caplin, William. Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of
Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Caplin, William. “The Classical Cadence: Conceptions and Misconceptions.” Journal of the
American Musicological Society 57 (1) (2004): 51–​117.
Carlos de Brito, Manuel. Opera in Portugal in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989.
Carrer, Pinuccia. Francesco Durante: Maestro di musica, 1684–​1755. Genoa: San Marco dei
Giustiniani, 2002.
Carter, Joanna L. A Study of Two Seventeenth-​Century Teaching Manuals in Hamburg: Critical
Editions and Translations of Thomas Selle’s Kurtze Doch Gründtliche Anleitung Zur Singekunst
(c. 1642) and Heinrich Grimm’s Instrumentum Instrumentorum, Hoc Est, Monochordum Vel
Potius Decachordum (1634). PhD diss., Florida State University, 2002.
Cashner, Andrew A. Faith, Hearing, and the Power of Music in Hispanic Villancicos, 1600–​1700.
PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2015.
Catholic Church, The. The Liber Usualis with Introduction and Rubrics in English. Edited by the
Benedictines of Solesmes. Tournai, Belgium, and New York: Desclée et Cie, 1961 [1934].
Celletti, Rodolfo. A History of Bel Canto. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Chafe, Eric T. Monteverdi’s Tonal Language. New York: Schirmer, 1992.
Chan, Mary, and Jamie C. Kassler, eds. Roger North’s The Musicall Grammarian 1728.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Chiara di Gregorio, Maria, Marcello Mazzetti, and Livio Ticli. “Canto fermo, fratto e figurato in
Piemonte nel XIX secolo: Il Codex Musicalis Blanderatensis e l’MP.1 della collezione privata
Mazzetti-​Ticli.” Rivista Internazionale di Musica Sacra 36 (2015): 213–​49.
Christensen, Thomas. “The ‘Règle de l’Octave’ in Thoroughbass Theory and Practice.” Acta
Musicologica 64 (2) (1992): 91–​117.
Christensen, Thomas. “The Improvisatory Moment.” In Studies in Historical Improvisation: From
Cantare super Librum to Partimenti. Edited by Massimilano Guido. London: Routledge,
2017.
 Bibliography 387

Christofferson, Peter Woetmann. “Prenez sur moi vostre exemple: The ‘clefless’ notation or the
use of fa-​clefs in chansons of the fifteenth century by Binchois, Barbingant, Ockeghem and
Josquin,” Danish Yearbook of Musicology 37 (2009): 13–​38.
Coelho, Victor Anand. “The Players of Florentine Monody in Context and in History, and a
Newly Recognized Source for Le nuove musiche.” Journal of Seventeenth-​Century Music 9 (1)
(2003): n.p.
Colas, Damien. “Melody and Ornamentation,” translated by Cormac Newark. In The Cambridge
Companion to Rossini. Edited by Emanuele Senici. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004, 104–​23.
Conti, Carla. Nobilissime allieve: Della musica a Napoli tra Sette e Ottocento. Naples: Guida, 2003.
Cook Nicholas. Beyond the Score: Music as Performance. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Dahlhaus, Carl. On the Origins of Harmonic Tonality. Translated by Robert O. Gjerdingen.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
Dahlhaus, Carl, and Norbert Miller. Oper und symphonischer stil, 1770–​ 1820. Stuttgart:
Metzler, 1999.
Del Coral Morales Villar, María. “Lo que un cantor debe saber: The Italian School of Singing in
Spanish Music Treatises, 1754–​1799.” Early Music 40 (2) (2012): 209–​21.
Del Donna, Anthony R. Opera, Theatrical Culture and Society in Late Eighteenth-​Century Naples.
Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2012.
Della Corte, Andrea, ed. Canto e bel canto. Turin: Paravia, 1933.
Del Prete, Rossella. “Musical Education and the Job Market: The Employment of Children and
Young People in the Neapolitan Music Industry with Particular Reference to the Period
1650−1806.” In Entertaining Children: The Participation of Youth in the Entertainment Industry.
Edited by Gillian Arrighi and Victor Emeljanow. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Dent, Edward J. “Leonardo Leo.” Proceedings of the Musical Association 32 (1905–​6): 59–​71.
Deppert, Heinrich. Kadenz und Klausel in der Musik von J. S. Bach. Tutzing: Schneider, 1993.
Desler, Anne. Il novella Orfeo Farinelli: Vocal Profile, Aesthetics, Rhetoric. PhD diss., University
of Glasgow, 2014.
De Souza, Jonathan. Music at Hand: Instruments, Bodies, and Cognition. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2017.
Deutsch, Otto Erich. Mozart: A Documentary Biography, trans. Eric Blom, Peter Branscombe,
and Jeremy Noble. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966.
Di Benedetto, Renato. “Lineamenti di una teoria della melodia nella trattatistica italiana fra il
1790 e il 1830.” Analecta musicologica 21 (1982): 421–​43.
Diergarten, Felix. “Anleitung zur Erfindung. Der Musiktheoretiker Johann Friedrich Daube.”
Musiktheorie 23 (4) (2008): 299–​318.
Diergarten, Felix. “Time out of Joint—​Time Set Right: Principles of Form in Haydn’s Symphony
No. 39.” Studia Musicologica 51 (1–​2) (2010): 109–​26.
Diergarten, Felix. “The True Fundamentals of Composition: Haydn’s Partimento Counterpoint.”
Eighteenth-​Century Music 8 (1) (2011a): 53–​75.
Diergarten, Felix. “Romantic Thoroughbass. Music Theory Between Improvisation, Composition
and Performance.” Theoria 18 (2011b): 5–​36.
Dietz, Hans-​Bertold. “The Neapolitan School: Francesco Durante (1684–​55); Aspects of Manuscript
Dissemination, Misattributions, and Reception.” Musica perspectiva 2 (2) (2009): 7–​30.
Di Giacomo, Salvatore, ed. Catalogo Generale delle opere musicali [. . .] città di Napoli. Archivio
dell’Oratorio dei Filippini. Parma: Fresching, 1918.
Di Giacomo, Salvatore. Il conservatorio di Sant’Onofrio a Capuana e quello di S. M. della Pietà dei
Turchini. Palermo: Sandron, 1924.
Di Giacomo, Salvatore. Il conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo e quello di S. M. di Loreto.
Palermo: Sandron, 1928.
Dodds, Michael R. “Tonal Types and Modal Equivalence in Two Keyboard Cycles by
Murschhauser.” In Tonal Structures in Early Music. Edited by Christle Collins Judd.
New York: Garland, 1998, 341–​72.
388 Bibliography

Dodds, Michael R. The Baroque Church Tones in Theory and Practice. PhD diss., University of
Rochester, 1999.
Dottori, Maurício. The Church Music of Davide Perez and Niccolò Jommelli, with Especial Emphasis
on Funeral Music. Curitiba, Brazil: DeArtes–​UFPR, 2008.
Dragone, Luann R. “François Campion’s Treatise on Accompaniment: A Translation and
Commentary.” Theoria 6 (1992): 135–​62.
Duey, Philip A. Bel Canto in Its Golden Age: A Study of Its Teaching Concepts. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1951. Reprint, New York: Read Books, 2007.
Duffin, Ross. Chansons: Forty-​five Settings in Original Notation: from Oxford, Bodleian Library
ms. Canonici 213. Miami: Ogni Sorte Edition, 1984.
Duffin, Ross. “Mi chiamano Mimi . . . but my Name is Quarti toni: Solmization and Ockeghem’s
Famous Mass.” Early Music 29 (2) (2001), 165–​84.
Fabris, Dinko. Music in Seventeenth-​Century Naples: Francesco Provenzale, 1624–​1704. Aldershot,
UK: Ashgate, 2007.
Fabris, Dinko. “The Collection and Dissemination of Neapolitan Music, c.1600–​c.1790.” In New
Approaches to Naples, c.1500–​c.1800: The Power of Place. Edited by Melissa Calaresu and Helen
Hills. Woodham, UK: Ashgate, 2013, 103–​20.
Fallows, David, Elizabeth Eva Leach, Kate Van Orden, and Patrick Macey. “Recent Trends in the
Study of Music of the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Centuries.” Renaissance Quarterly
68 (2015): 199–​207.
Federhofer, Helmut, ed. Neue Mozart Ausgabe (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1978–​79), vol. 30, no. 3.
Fiore, Angela. “Musica nelle istituzioni religiose femminili a Napoli (1650–​1750).” Pergolesi
Studies 10 (2015): 99–​124.
Florimo, Francesco. La scuola musicale di Napoli e i suoi conservatorii. 4 vols. Naples: Morano,
1881–​83.
Foreman, Edward Vaught. The Art of Bel Canto in the Italian Baroque: A Study of the Original
Sources. Minneapolis: Pro Musica Press, 2006.
Fortune, Nigel. “Italian Secular Monody from 1600 to 1635.” Musical Quarterly 39 (1953): 171–​95.
Fugger, Dominik, and Andreas Scheidgen, eds. Geschichte des katholischen Gesangbuchs. Mainzer
hymnologische Studien 21. Tübingen: A. Francke Verlag, 2008.
Gambassi, Osvaldo. “Pueri cantores” nelle cattredrali d’italia tra medioevo ed età moderna: Le
scuole eugeniane; scuole di canto annesse alle cappelle musicali. Florence: Olschki, 1997.
García Gallardo, Cristòbal L., and Paul Murphy. “These Are the Tones Commonly Used: The
Tonos de Canto de Òrgano in Spanish Baroque Music Theory.” Eighteenth-​Century Music 13
(1) (2016): 73–​93.
Gianturco, Carolyn. “Naples: A City of Entertainment.” In The Late Baroque Era: From the 1680s
to 1740. Edited by George J. Buelow. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993.
Gillio, Pier Giuseppe. L’attività musicale negli ospedali di Venezia nel Settecento: Quadro storico e
materiali documentari. Florence: Olschki, 2006.
Gingras, Bruno. “Partimento Fugue in Eighteenth-​ Century Germany: A Bridge Between
Thoroughbass Lessons and Fugal Composition.” Eighteenth-​Century Music 5 (2008): 51–​74.
Giorgi, Paolo. “Pietro Gnocchi, musico bresciano (1689–​1775): Un nuovo capitolo della musica
liturgica del XVIII secolo.” Rivista Internazionale di Musica Sacra 30 (1) (2009): 157–​207.
Givón, Talmy. Syntax: An Introduction. 2 vols. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2001.
Gjerdingen, Robert O. “The Formation and Deformation of Classic/​ Romantic Phrase
Schemata: A Theoretical Model and Historical Study.” Music Theory Spectrum 8 (1986): 25–​43.
Gjerdingen, Robert O. Music in the Galant Style. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Gjerdingen, Robert O. “The Perfection of Craft Training in the Neapolitan Conservatoires.”
Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale 15 (1) (2009): 26–​49.
Gjerdingen, Robert O. “Gebrauchs-​Formulas,” Music Theory Spectrum 33 (2) (2011): 191–​99.
Gjerdingen, Robert O., and Janet Bourne. “Construction Grammar.” Music Theory Online
(2015): n.p.
Goehr, Lydia. The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
 Bibliography 389

Gordon, Bonnie. “The Secret of the Secret Chromatic Art.” Journal of Musicology 28 (3)
(2011): 325–​67.
Gotwals, Vernon. Haydn: Two Contemporary Portraits. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1968. Contains the translation of Dies (1810).
Goulet, Anne-​Madelaine, and Gesa zur Nieden, eds. Europäische Musiker in Venedig, Rom und
Neapel (1650–​1750). Analecta musicologica 52. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2015.
Green, Lucy. How Popular Musicians Learn: A Way Ahead for Music Education. Aldershot,
UK: Ashgate, 2017.
Grier, James. “The Reinstatement of Polyphony in Musical Construction: Fugal Finales in Haydn’s
Op. 20 String Quartets,” The Journal of Musicology 27 (1) (2010): 55–​83.
Guido, Massimiliano. “Giovanni Maria Trabaci and the New Manner of Inganni: A Musical
Mockery in the Early Seicento Ricercare.” In Interpreting Historical Keyboard Music: Sources,
Contexts and Performance. Edited by Andrew Woolley and John Kitchen. Farnham,
UK: Ashgate, 2013, 43–​64.
Guido, Massimiliano, ed. Studies in Historical Improvisation: From Cantare super Librum to
Partimenti. London: Routledge, 2017.
Haar, James. “False Relations and Chromaticism in Sixteenth-​Century Music.” Journal of the
American Musicological Society 30 (1977): 391–​418.
Haböck, Franz. Die Kastraten und ihre Gesangskunst: Eine gesangsphysiologische, kultur-​und
musik-​historische Studie. Leipzig: Deutsche Verlags-​Anstalt, 1927.
Hansell, Sven H. “Sacred Music at the ‘Incurabili’ in Venice at the Time of J. A. Hasse.” Journal of
the American Musicological Society 23 (1970): 282–​301, 505–​21.
Harper, John. The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy from the Tenth to the Eighteenth Centuries.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Harrán, Don. “New Evidence for Musica Ficta: The Cautionary Sign.” Journal of the American
Musicological Society 29 (1) (1976): 77–​98.
Hasty, Christopher. Meter as Rhythm. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Hayburn, Robert F. Papal Legislation on Sacred Music, 95 A.D. to 1977 A.D. Collegeville,
Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1979.
Haymoz, Jean-​Yves. “Discovering the Practice of Improvised Counterpoint.” In Studies in
Historical Improvisation: From Cantare super Librum to Partimenti. Edited by Massimiliano
Guido (London: Routledge, 2017).
Heartz, Daniel. Music in European Capitals: The Galant Style, 1720–​1780. New York: Norton, 2003.
Heartz, Daniel. Mozart, Haydn and Early Beethoven, 1781–​1802. New York: Norton, 2009.
Henderson, Robert Vladimir. Solmization Syllables in Music Theory, 1100 to 1600. PhD diss.,
Columbia University, 1969.
Hepokoski, James and Warren Darcy. Elements of Sonata Theory. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2006.
Heriot, Angus. Castrati in Opera. London: Calder, 1980.
Herissone, Rebecca. Music Theory in Seventeenth-​Century England. Oxford: Clarendon, 2000.
Hiley, David. Western Plainchant: A Handbook. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.
Hiley, David. Gregorian Chant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Hill, John Walter. The Life and Works of Francesco Maria Veracini. Ann Arbor: UMI Research
Press, 1979.
Hill, John Walter. Roman Monody, Cantata, and Opera from the Circles Around Cardinal Montalto.
2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998.
Hillsman, W. “Instrumental Accompaniment of Plain-​Chant in France from the late 18th
Century.” Galpin Society Journal 33 (1980): 8–​16.
Hoche, Richard. Die Ordnungen der St. Johannis-​Schule im 16., 17. und 18. Jahrhundert Beiträge
zur Geschichte der St. Johannisschule in Hamburg. Vol. 3. Hamburg: Meissner, 1879.
Hochstein, Wolfgang. Die Kirchenmusik von Niccolò Jommelli unter besonderer Berücksichtigung
der liturgisch gebundenen Kompositionen. Hildesheim: Olms, 1984.
Hübler, Klaus K. “Orlando di Lassos ‘Prophetiae Sibyllarum’ oder Über chromatische
Komposition im 16. Jahrhundert.” Zeitschrift für Musiktheorie 9 (1976): 29–​34.
390 Bibliography

Hughes, Andrew. Manuscript Accidentals: Ficta in Focus, 1350–​1450. Musicological Studies and
Documents 27. Stuttgart: Hänssler, 1972.
Jander, Owen. “Solfeggio.” In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Edited by Stanley
Sadie. London: Macmillan, 2001, 23: 639.
Jeffrey, Peter, ed. The Study of Medieval Chant: Paths and Bridges, East and West; In Honour of
Kenneth Levy. Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2001.
Jensen, Claudia R. “A Theoretical Work of Late Seventeenth-​Century Muscovy: Nikolai Diletskii’s
‘Grammatika’ and the Earliest Circle of Fifths.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 45
(2) (1992): 305–​31.
Jensen, Claudia R. Musical Cultures in Seventeenth-​ Century Russia. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2009.
Judd, Christle Collins. “Modal Types and ‘Ut, Re, Mi’ Tonalities: Tonal Coherence in Sacred
Vocal Polyphony from about 1500.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 45 (3)
(1992): 428–​67.
Judd, Christle Collins, ed. Tonal Structures in Early Music. New York: Routledge, 1999.
Judd, Christle Collins. “Renaissance Modal Theory: Theoretical, Compositional, and Editorial
Perspectives.” In The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory. Edited by Thomas
Christensen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 364–​406.
Karp, Theodore. An Introduction to the Post-​Tridentine Mass Proper. Middleton, WI: American
Institute of Musicology, 2005.
Kauffman, Deborah. “Fauxbourdon in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: ‘Le secours
d’une douce harmonie.’” Music and Letters 90 (1) (2009): 68–​93.
Keefe, Simon P. (ed.). The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-​Century Music. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2009.
Kendrick, Robert L. Celestial Sirens: Nuns and Their Music in Early Modern Milan. Oxford:
Clarendon, 1996.
Kleinman, Sidney. La solmisation mobile: De Jean-​Jacques Rousseau à John Curwen. Paris:
Heugel, 1974.
Köchel, Ludwig Ritter von. Johann Josef Fux: Hofkompositor und Hofkapellmeister der Kaiser
Leopold I., Josef I. und Karl VI. von 1698 bis 1740. Vienna: Alfred Hölder, 1872.
Kolneder, Walter. Antonio Vivaldi: Documents of his Life and Works, trans. Kurt Michaelis.
New York: Heinrichshofen Edition, 1982.
Konrad, Ulrich. Mozart: Catalogue of His Works; Compositions, Fragments, Sketches, Arrangements,
Manuscript Copies, Texts. Translated by J. Bradford Robinson. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2006.
Krombach, Gabriela. Die Vertonungen liturgischer Sonntagsoffertorien am WienerHof: Ein Beitrag
zur Geschichte der katholischen Kirchenmusik im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert. Munich: Emil
Katzbichler, 1986.
Krones, Hartmut. “Die Einheit von Vokal-​und Instrumentalmusik.” In Alte Musik und
Musikpädagogik. Vienna: Böhlau, 1997,
Lake, William Eastman. “Orlando di Lasso’s Prologue to Prophetiae Sibyllarum: A Comparison of
Analytical Approaches.” In Theory Only 11 (7–​8) (1991): 1–​19.
Lanam, Faith S. El Colegio de San Miguel de Belem: Mexico’s First Female Music Conservatory.
PhD diss., University of California Santa Cruz, 2018.
Landon, H. C. Robbins. Haydn Chronicle and Works. I: The Early Years, 1732–​ 1765.
London: Thames & Hudson, 1976.
Landon, H. C. Robbins. Haydn Chronicle and Works. II: Haydn at Eszterháza, 1766–​1790.
London: Thames & Hudson, 1978.
Landon, H. C. Robbins, and Howard Chandler, eds. The Collected Correspondence and London
Notebooks of Joseph Haydn. London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1959.
Lange, Georg Theodor Johann. Zur Geschichte der Solmisation. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, 1899.
Reprinted in Sammelbände der internationalen Musikgesellschaft 1 (1900), 535–​622.
Leach, Elizabeth Eva. “Book Review: Chromatic Beauty in the Late Medieval Chanson: An
Interpretation of Manuscript Accidentals by Thomas Brothers.” Music & Letters 80 (2) (1999);
274–​276.
 Bibliography 391

Ledbetter, David. Bach’s Well-​Tempered Clavier: The 48 Preludes and Fugues. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2002.
Lee, Vernon. Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy. London: Fisher Unwin, 1887.
Leech-​Wilkinson, Daniel (ed.). Challenging Performance: Classical Music Performance Norms
and How to Escape them (2016; www.challengingperformance.com).
Leech-​Wilkinson, Daniel. “Machaut’s Rose, lis and the Problem of Early Music Analysis.” Music
Analysis 3 (1) (1984): 9–​28.
Lester, Joel. “The Fux–​ Mattheson Corresponence: An Annotated Translation.” Current
Musicology 24 (1977): 37–​62.
Lester, Joel. Between Modes and Keys: German Theory, 1592–​ 1802. Stuyvesant,
New York: Pendragon, 1989.
Lester, Joel. Compositional Theory in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1992.
Lester, Joel. “Composition Made Easy: Bontempi’s Nova methodus of 1660.” Theoria 7 (1993).
Levy, Kenneth. “Gregorian Chant and the Romans.” Journal of the American Musicological Society
56 (1) (2003): 5–​41.
Lockwood, Lewis. “A Dispute on Accidentals in Sixteenth-​Century Rome.” Analecta musicologica
2 (1965): 24–​40.
Lockwood, Lewis. “A Sample Problem of Musica Ficta: Willaert’s Pater Noster.” In Studies in Music
History: Essays for Oliver Strunk. Edited by Howell S. Powers. Princeton: Princeton Legacy
Library, 1968, 161–​82.
Lodewyckx, David. “Marpurg’s Galant Cadence in Mozart: Theoretical Perspectives, Formal
Implications and Voice Leading,” Res Musica 7 (2015): 116–​26.
Lohr, Ina. Solmisation und Kirchentonarten. Zurich: Berichthaus, 1943.
Long, Michael. “Singing Through the Looking Glass: Child’s Play and Learning in Medieval Italy.”
Journal of the American Musicological Society 61 (2) (2008): 253–​306.
Lowinsky, Edward E. “The Function of Conflicting Signatures in Early Polyphonic Music.”
Musical Quarterly 31 (2) (1945): 227–​260.
Lowinsky, Edward E. Secret Chromatic Art in the Netherlands Motet. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1946.
Lowinsky, Edward E. “Conflicting Views on Conflicting Signatures.” Journal of the American
Musicological Society 7 (3) (1954): 181–​204.
Lowinsky, Edward E. “Adrian Willaert’s Chromatic ‘Duo’ Re-​Examined.” Tijdschrift van de
Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 18 (1956): 1–​36.
Lowinsky, Edward E. Tonality and Atonality in Sixteenth-​Century Music. Berkeley: University of
California, 1961.
Lundberg, Matthias. Tonus Peregrinus: The History of a Psalm-​Tone and Its Use in Polyphonic
Music. Woodham, UK: Ashgate, 2011.
Mac Dean, Jerry. A History of Solmisation and a Comparative Study of American Pitch
Verbalization Methods. PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1965.
Magarelli, Gaetano, ed. Vito Antonio Raffaele Cozzoli, Passio D. N. I. C. secundum Ioannem a più
strumenti, con Cori di Ripieno [1816]. Quaderni dell’archivio diocesano di Molfetta-​Ruvo-​
Giovinazzo-​Terlizzi 24. Molfetta: Mezzina, 2006, 9–​58.
Mamy, Sylvie. “Tradizione pedagogica del canto a Napoli: Giuseppe Aprile.” In Musicisti nati in
Puglia ed emigrazione musicale fra Seicento e Settecento: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di
Studi (Lecce 6–​8 dicembre 1985). Edited by Detty Bozzi and Luisa Cosi. Rome: Torre d’Orfeo,
1988, 281–​312.
Manén, Lucie. Bel Canto: The Teaching of the Classical Italian Song Schools; Its Decline and
Restoration. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004 [1987].
Mangani, Marco, and Daniele Sabaino. “Tonal Types and Modal Attributions in Late Renaissance
Polyphony: New Observations.” Acta Musicologica 80 (2) (2008): 231–​50.
Marcaletti, Livio. Manieren e trattati di canto: Didattica dei mezzi esspresivi vocali tra esempi
musicali ed espedienti linguistici (1600–​1900). PhD diss., University of Bern, 2015.
Markström, Kurt Sven. The Operas of Leonardo Vinci, Napoletano. New York: Pendragon, 2007.
392 Bibliography

McNaught, W. G. “The History and Uses of the Sol-​Fa Syllables.” Proceedings of the Musical
Association 19 (1892–​93): 35–​51.
Meeus, Nicolas. “La ‘Gamme double française’ et la méthode du si.” In Musurgia 3–​4
(1999–​2000): 29–​44.
Mengozzi, Stefano. “Virtual Segments: The Hexachordal System in the Late Middle Ages.” Journal
of Musicology 23 (3) (2006): 426–​67.
Mengozzi, Stefano. “Si quis manus non habeat: Charting Non-​Hexachordal Musical Practices in
the Age of Solmisation.” Early Music History 26 (2007): 181–​218.
Mengozzi, Stefano. “Clefless Notation, Counterpoint, and the fa-​Degree.” Early Music 36 (1)
(2008): 51–​64.
Mengozzi, Stefano. The Renaissance Reform of Medieval Music Theory: Guido of Arezzo Between
Myth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Michotte, Edmond. Richard Wagner’s Visit to Rossini (Paris 1860): An Evening at Rossini’s in Beau-​
Séjour (Passy) 1858. Translated and annotated with an introduction and appendix by Herbert
Weinstock. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968.
Miggiani, Maria Giovanna, ed. “Il canto di Metastasio.” In Atti del convegno di studi (Venezia 14–​
16 dicembre 1999). Bologna: Forni, 2004,
Monelle, Raymond. The Sense of Music. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 2000.
Monson, Craig. Divas in the Convent: Nuns, Music, and Defiance in Seventeenth-​Century Italy.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Montagnier, Jean-​Paul C. “Sacred Music and Royal Propaganda Under Louis XIV (ca. 1661–​ca.
1686).” Rivista Internazionale di Musica Sacra 27 (2) (2006): 83–​94.
Montford, Kimberlyn. “Holy Restraint: Religious Reform and Nuns’ Music in Early Modern
Rome.” Sixteenth-​Century Journal 37 (4) (2006): 1007–​26.
Moore, James H. Vespers at St Mark’s: Music of Alessandro Grandi, Giovanni Rovetta and Francesco
Cavalli. 2 vols. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981.
Morales Villar, María Del Coral. “Lo que un cantor debe saber: The Italian School of Singing in
Spanish Music Treatises, 1754–​1799.” Early Music 21 (2) (2012): 209–​21.
Muir, Thomas E. Roman Catholic Church Music in England, 1791–​1914: A Handmaid of the
Liturgy? Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008.
Murata, Margaret. “ ‘Singing,’ ‘Acting,’ and ‘Dancing’ in Vocal Chamber Music of the Early
Seicento.” Journal of Seventeenth-​Century Music 9 (1) (2003): n.p.
Nelson, Bernadette. “Alternatim Practice in 17th-​Century Spain: The Integration of Organ
Versets and Plainchant in Psalms and Canticles.” Early Music 22 (2) (1994): 239–​59.
Neubauer, John. The Emancipation of Music from Language: Departure from Mimesis in
Eighteenth-​Century Aesthetics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.
Nuti, Giulia. The Performance of Italian Basso Continuo: Style in Keyboard Accompaniment in the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007.
Olleson, Philip. “The London Roman Catholic Embassy Chapels and Their Music in the
Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries.” In Music in Eighteenth-​Century Britain. Edited by
David Wyn Jones. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2000, 101–​20.
Ortkemper, Hubert. Engel wider Willen: Die Welt der Kastraten. Berlin: Henschel Verlag, 1993.
Over, Berthold. Per la Gloria di Dio: Solistische Kirchenmusik an den venezianischen Ospedali im
18. Jahrhundert. Bonn: Orpheus Verlag, 1998.
Owens, Jessie Ann. “Waelrant and Bocedization: Reflections on Solmization Reform.” In Music
Printing in Antwerp and Europe in the Sixteenth Century. Edited by Eugeen Schreurs and Henri
Vanhulst. Leuven, Belgium: Alamire, 1997, 377–​93.
Owens, Jessie Ann. Composers at Work: The Craft of Musical Composition, 1450–​ 1600.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Owens, Samantha, Barbara M. Reul, and Janice B. Stockigt, eds. Music at German Courts, 1715–​
1760: Changing Artistic Priorities. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2011.
Pagano, Roberto. Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti: Two Lives in One. Hillsdale, NY:
Pendragon, 2006.
 Bibliography 393

Page, Janet K. “‘A lovely and perfect music’: Maria Anna von Raschenau and Music at the Viennese
Convent of St Jakob auf der Hülben.” Early Music 38 (3) (2010): 403–​21.
Page, Janet K. Convent Music and Politics in Eighteenth-​Century Vienna. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2014.
Palisca, Claude V. Music and Ideas in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 2006.
Paraschivescu, Nicoleta. “Una chiave per comprendere la prassi del partimento: La sonata
‘Perfidia’ di Francesco Durante.” Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale 15 (1) (2009): 52–​67.
Pasquini, Elisabetta. L’esemplare, o sia saggio fondamentale pratico di contrappunto: Padre Martini
teorico e diddatta della musica. Florence: Olschki, 2004.
Pasquini, Elisabetta. Giambattista Martini. Palermo: Società editrice L’Epos, 2007.
Pastore, Giuseppe. Don Lionardo: Vita e opere di Leonardo Leo.Cuneo: Bertola & Locatelli, 1994.
Pesces, Dolores. The Affinities and Medieval Transposition. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1987.
Pesces, Dolores. Guido d’Arezzo’s Regule rithmice, Prologus in Antiphonarium, and Epistola ad
Michahelem: A Critical Text and Translation with an Introduction, Annotations, Indices, and
New Manuscript Inventories. Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1999.
Petrucci, Giovanni. “Giuseppe Bozzelli: Il celebre musicista santeliano.” Studi Cassanati 3
(2011): 205–​8.
Pike, Lionel. Hexachords in Late-​Renaissance Music. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998.
Pirrotta, Nino and Elena Povoledo. Music and Theater from Poliziano to Monteverdi, trans. Karen
Eales. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982 [1970].
Pohl, Carl Ferdinand, and Hugo Botstiber. Joseph Haydn. Vol. 1. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1878.
Porta, Giovanni. Selected Sacred Music from the Ospedale della Pietà. Edited by Faun Tanenbaum
Tiedge. Madison WI: A. R. Editions, 1995.
Porterfield, Richard. Melodic Function and Modal Process in Gregorian Chant. PhD diss., City
University of New York, 2014.
Potter, John. “Vocal Performance in the ‘Long Eighteenth Century.’” In The Cambridge History of
Musical Performance. Edited by John Potter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012,
506–​26.
Powers, Harold, S. “Tonal Types and Modal Categories in Renaissance Polyphony.” Journal of the
American Musicological Society 34 (3) (1981): 428–​70.
Powers, Harold, S. “Is Mode Real? Pietro Aron, the Octenary System, and Polyphony.” Basler
Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis 16 (1992): 9–​52.
Powers, Harold, S. “From Psalmody to Tonality.” In Tonal Structures in Early Music. Edited by
Christle Judd. New York: Garland, 2000, 275–​340.
Preussner, Eberhard. “Solmisationmethoden im Schulunterricht des 16. Und 17. Jahrhunderts.”
In Festschrift Fritz Stein zum 60. Geburtstag. Edited by H. Hoffmann and F. Kühlmann
(Brunswick: Litolff,1939).
Price, Curtis, Judith Milhous, and Robert D. Hume. Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth-​Century
London: The King’s Theatre, Haymarket 1778–​1791. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995.
Prim, Abbé Jean. “Chant sur le Livre in French Churches in the 18th Century.” Journal of the
American Musicological Society 14 (1961): 37–​49.
Probst, Manfred. “Verzeichnis der gedruckten Ritualen des deutschen Sprachbereiches von
1700 bis 1760.” In Der Ritus der Kindertaufe. Reformversuche der katholischen Aufklärung des
deutschen Sprachbereiches. Trierer theologische Studien. Trier: Paulinus, 1988, 255–​97.
Prota-​Giurleo, Ulisse. Musicisti napoletani alla corte di Portogallo nel 700. Naples: Elzevira, 1923.
Reardon, Colleen. Holy Concord Within Sacred Walls: Nuns and Music in Siena, 1575–​1700.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Reardon, Colleen. “Launching the Career of a secondo uomo in Late Seventeenth-​Century Italy.”
Journal of Seventeenth-​Century Music 16 (1) (2010): n.p.
Reid, Cornelius L. Bel Canto: Principles and Practices. Boston: Coleman & Ross, 1950.
Ricci, Corrado. Farinelli: Quattro storie di castrati e primedonne fra Sei e Settecento. Lucca: Libreria
Musicale Italiana, 1995.
394 Bibliography

Ricci, Vittorio. Il bel canto: Florilegio di pensieri, consigli, e precetti sul canto. Milan: Ulrico
Hoepli, 1923.
Riedel, Friedrich Wilhelm. Kirchenmusik am Hofe Karls VI. (1711–​1740): Untersuchungen
zum Verhältnis von Zeremoniell und musikalischem Stil im Barockzeitalter.
Munich: Katzbichler, 1977.
Riva, Francesco. “La ‘Congregazione de’ Musici’ di Milano.” In La Musica Sacra nella Milano del
Settecento: Atti del convegno internazionale, Milano, 17–​18 Maggio 2010. Edited by Cesare
Fertonani, Raffaele Mellace, and Claudio Toscani. Milan: LED Edizioni Universitarie, 2014,
89–​138.
Robinson, Michael F. “Porpora’s Operas for London, 1733–​ 1736.” Soundings 2
(1971–​72): 57–​87.
Robinson, Michael F. “The Governors’ Minutes of the Conservatory S. Maria di Loreto, Naples.”
Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle 10 (1972a): 1–​97.
Robinson, Michael F. Naples and Neapolitan Opera. Oxford: Clarendon, 1972b.
Rostirolla, Giancarlo, ed. Clavis Archivorum ac Bibliothecarum Italicarum ad Musicam Artem
Pertinentium (CABIMUS): Guida alle biblioteche e agli archivi musicali italiani con la relative
bibliografia musicologica. Rome: Ibimus, 2004.
Routley Nicholas. “A Practical Guide to musica ficta.” Early Music 13 (1) (1985): 59–​71.
Ruiz Torres, Santiago. La monodia litúrgica entre los siglos XV y XIX. Tradición, transmisión y
praxis musical a través del estudio de los libros de coro de la catedral de Segovia. PhD diss.,
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2013.
Russo, Domenico. Indice alfabetico delle opera e della Raccolta musicale del M.o Paolo Altieri.
Noto: Tipografia populare, 1913.
Sanford, Sally A. “A Comparison of French and Italian Singing in the Seventeenth Century.”
Journal of Seventeenth-​Century Music 1 (1) (1995): n.p.
Sanguinetti, Giorgio. “I travagli del ‘celeste impero.’ La teoria della composizione a Napoli
nell’Ottocento fra tradizione e innovazione”; in G. Sanguinetti (ed.), Intersezioni. Quattro studi
di teoria e analisi musicale. Cosenza: università della Calabria, 1999, 137–​83.
Sanguinetti, Giorgio. “The Decline and Fall of the ‘Celeste Impero’: The Theory of Composition in
Naples During the Ottocento.” Studi musicali 34 (2005): 451–​502.
Sanguinetti, Giorgio. “La scala come modello per la composizione.” Rivista di Analisi e Teoria
Musicale 15 (1) (2009): 68–​96.
Sanguinetti, Giorgio. The Art of Partimento: History, Theory, and Practice. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2012.
Sanguinetti, Giorgio. “Partimento and Incomplete Notations in Eighteenth-​Century Keyboard
Music.” In Studies in Historical Improvisation: From Cantare super Librum to Partimenti. Edited
Massimiliano Guido. London: Routledge, 2017,
Sanguinetti, Giorgio. “Partimento Schemata in Pergolesi’s Sacred Music.” Studi pergolesiani
(forthcoming).
Schmalzriedt, Siegfried. “Kadenz.” In Handwörterbuch der musikalischen Terminologie. Edited by
Hans H. Eggebrecht. Mainz: Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz, 1975, 461–​80.
Scholtz, Hedvig. “Die theater-​ pflege der fürsten esterházy.” Eisenstadt, Austria: Amt der
Burgenländischen Landesregierung (1982): 240–​49.
Schröder, Gesine. “Johann Steurleins Fugae viginti ex solmizandi exercitio: Solmisationsübungen
aus Cyriacus Schneegaß’ Isagoges musicae libri duo.” In Proceedings of a Symposium on Johann
Steuerlein, Meiningen 2013. Edited by Maren Goltz. Beeskow, Germany: Ortus, 2014.
Schulenberg, David. “Music Education and the Art of Performance in the German Baroque by John
Butt.” Performance Practice Review 8 (2) (1995): 171–​76.
Scott, Allen. “Bobization and Bebization: Two Alternative Solmization Systems of the Early
Seventeenth Century.” Theoria 9 (2001): 25–​48.
Shearon, Stephen. Latin Sacred Music and Nicola Fago: The Career and Sources of an Early
Eighteenth-​Century Neapolitan Maestro di Capella. PhD diss., University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill, 1992.
 Bibliography 395

Skvirskaya, Tamara Z., and Vladimir A. Somov. “Materials of Foreign Musicians in the Manuscript
Department of the St. Petersburg Conservatoire: A Short Survey.” Fontes Artis Musicae 53 (3)
(2006): 143–​53.
Smith, Anne. The Performance of 16th-​ Century Music: Learning from the Theorists.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Spitzer, Michael. Metaphor and Musical Thought. Chicago and London: Chicago University
Press, 2004.
Stark, James. Bel Canto: A History of Vocal Pedagogy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.
Stein, Beverly. “Carissimi’s Tonal System and the Function of Transposition in the Expansion of
Tonality.” Journal of Musicology 19 (2) (2002): 264–​305.
Stella, Gaetano. “Le ‘Regole del Contrappunto pratico’ di Nicola Sala: Una testimonianza
sulla didattica della fuga nel Settecento napoletano.” Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale 15
(2009): 116–​38.
Strohm, Reinhard. Italienische Opernarien des frühen Settecento (1720–​ 1730), Analecta
Musicologica, no.16 (Cologne: Arno Volk—​Hans Gerig, 1976).
Strohm, Reinhard. “The Neapolitans in Venice.” In Studies in Italian Opera, Song and Dance,
1580–​1740. Edited by I. Fenlon and T. Carter. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, 249–​74.
Strohm, Reinhard. Dramma per Musica: Italian Opera Seria of the Eighteenth Century. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.
Strohm, Reinhard. The Eighteenth-​Century Diaspora of Italian Music and Musicians. Turnhout,
Belgium: Brepols, 2001.
Strohm, Reinhard, and Bonnie J. Blackburn, eds. Music as Concept and Practice in the Late Middle
Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Sullo, Paolo. “I Solfeggi di Leo e lo studio della forma nella scuola napoletana del Settecento.”
Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale 15 (2009): 97–​115.
Sullo, Paolo. “I Solfeggi di Alessandro Rolla nella didattica violinistica del XIX secolo.” in Nicolò
Paganini: Diabolus in Musica. Edited by Andrea Barizza and Furia Morabito. Turnhout,
Belgium: Brepols 2010, 457–​68.
Sullo, Paolo. I solfeggi della scuola napolitana del settecento. PhD diss., University of Rome Tor
Vergata, 2011.
Sullo, Paolo. “La fortuna europea delle raccolte di solfeggi di Leonardo Leo.” Studi pergolesiani
8–​9 (2012): 407–​33.
Sullo, Paolo. “Lo studio del solfeggio nella scuola napoletana del Settecento.” in Ars Sacra
2012: Cappelle Musicali, Suoni di Fede; Storia, Contesto e Liturgia. Edited by Luciano Rossi.
Rome, UniversItalia, 2013, 37–​54.
Sullo, Paolo. “L’insegnamento del solfeggio nella classe di composizione di Fedele Fenaroli.” In
Vincenzo Pucitta: Il tumulto del gran mondo. Edited by Annamaria Bonsante. Barletta: Cafagna
Editore, 2014a, 39–​57.
Sullo, Paolo. “I solfeggi di Alessandro Scarlatti e la tradizione didattica napoletana.” In Devozione
e Passione: Alessandro Scarlatti nella Napoli e Roma barocca. Edited by Luca Della Libera and
Paologiovanni Maione. Naples: Turchini Edizioni, 2014b, 323–​55.
Sullo, Paolo. “I solfeggi nella scuola di Nicola Zingarelli.” In Musica: Storia, analisi, e didattica. I
Quaderni del Conservatorio Umberto Giordano di Foggia 2. Edited by Antonio Caroccia and
Francesco Di Lernia. Puglia: Claudio Grenzi Editore, 2014c, 173–​98.
Sullo, Paolo. “Il sistema Abreu a Napoli: Nascita e sviluppo di Sanitansamble.” In Quando la mu-
sica cambia la vita: Conoscere e interagire con ‘el sistema’ Abreu. Edited by Antonio Caroccia
and Augusta Dall’Arche. Rome: Aracne Editrice, 2014d, 57–​68.
Sullo, Paolo. “Una raccolta di solfeggi di Giovanni Battista Pergolesi.” Studi pergolesiani 9
(2015): n.p.
Sullo, Paolo. “L’impostazione didattica di Nicola Sala, maestro di Gaspare Spontini.” In Musica e
spettacolo a Napoli durante il decennio francese. 1806–​1815. Edited by Paologiovanni Maione.
Naples: Turchini Edizioni, 2016a, 417–​54.
Sullo, Paolo. “La scuola di composizione di Alessandro Speranza: dal contrappunto al solfeggio.”
In Alessandro Speranza e la musica sacra a Napoli nel Settecento: Atti del Convegno nazionale
396 Bibliography

di studi (Avellino, 20–​21 novembre 2015). Edited by Antonio Caroccia and Marina Marino.
Avellino: Il Cimarosa, 2016b, 179–​88.
Sullo, Paolo, and Annamaria Sullo. La scuola di musica nel Reale Albergo dei Poveri di Napoli.
Grottaminarda: Delta3, 2007.
Sutcliffe, W. Dean. The Keyboard Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti and Eighteenth-​Century Musical
Style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Sutton, Everett Lavern. The Solo Vocal Works of Nicola Porpora: An Annotated Thematic
Catalogue PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1974.
Symons, James. “Temporal regularity as a key to uncovering statistically significant schemas in
an eighteenth-​century corpus,” Paper given at the Society for Music Theory, New Orleans, LA
(2012).
Taddie, Daniel. “Solmization, Scale and Key in Nineteenth-​Century Four-​Shape Tunebooks:
Theory and Practice.” American Music 14 (1) (1996): 42–​64.
Talbot, Michael. The Sacred Vocal Music of Antonio Vivaldi. Florence: Olschki, 1995.
Talbot, Michael, ed. Aspects of the Secular Cantata in Late Baroque Italy. Farnham,
UK: Ashgate, 2009.
Talbot, Michael. “Et in Italia ego: Musicians and the Experience of Italy, 1650–​1750.” In
Europäische Musiker in Venedig, Rom und Neapel (1650–​1750). Analecta musicologica 52.
Edited by Anne-​Madelaine Goulet and Gesa zur Nieden. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2015, 68–​86.
Tanenbaum, Faun. The Partbook Collection from the Ospedale della Pietà. PhD diss., New York
University, 1993.
Tilton, Mary C. “The Influence of Psalm Tone and Mode on the Structure of the Phrygian Toccatas
of Claudio Merulo.” Theoria 4 (1989): 106–​22.
Toft, Robert. Aural Images of Lost Traditions: Sharps and Flats in the Sixteenth Century.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992.
Toft, Robert. Bel Canto: A Performer’s Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Tonelli, Vanessa M. Women and Music in the Venetian Ospedali. Master’s thesis, Michigan State
University, 2013.
Torre, Robert Anthony. Ritual, Myth, and Performance in Naples, 1707–​1737. PhD in progress,
University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Torrefranca, Fausto. Il segreto del Quattrocento: Musiche ariose e poesia popolaresca. Milan: Ulrico
Hoepli, 1939.
Tortora, Daniela. “Durante, Francesco.” In Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. Rome: Istituto
dell’Enciclopedia Italia, 2003, 42:111–​12. [http://​www.treccani.it/​enciclopedia/​tag/​Durante,-​
Francesco/​Dizionario_​Biografico/​]
Tyler, James. “The Role of the Guitar in the Rise of Monody: The Earliest Manuscripts.” Journal of
Seventeenth-​Century Music 9 (1) (2003): n.p.
Ursprung, Otto. Die katholische Kirchenmusik. Potsdam: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1931.
Valdrighi, Luigi Francesco. Cataloghi della musica di composizione e proprietà del M.o Angelo
Catelani preceduti dale sue memorie autobiografiche. Modena: Solini, 1893.
VanPatten, Bill, and Jessica Williams, eds. “Early Theories in SLA.” In Theories in Second Language
Acquisition: An Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2015, 17–​33.
van Tour, Peter. “The Lost Art of Partimento.” Early Music 41 (2) (2013): 340–​41.
van Tour, Peter. Counterpoint and Partimento: Methods of Teaching Composition in Late
Eighteenth-​Century Naples. PhD diss., University of Uppsala, 2015. In Acta Universitatis
Upsaliensis, Studia musicologica Upsaliensia 25.
van Tour, Peter, comp. and ed. UUPart: The Uppsala Partimento Database. Launched 2015.
Uppsala: Uppsala University. http://​www2.musik.uu.se/​UUPart/​UUPart.php.
van Tour, Peter, comp. and ed. UUSolf: The Uppsala Solfeggio Database. Launched 2016.
Uppsala: Uppsala University. http://​www2.musik.uu.se/​UUSolf/​UUSolf.php[http://​www2.
musik.uu.se/​UUSolf/​.
van Tour, Peter. “Partimento Teaching According to Francesco Durante, Investigated Through
the Earliest Manuscript Sources.” In Studies in Historical Improvisation: From Cantare super
Librum to Partimenti. Edited by Massimiliano Guido. London: Routledge, 2017, 131–​48.
 Bibliography 397

van Tour, Peter. “Improvised and Written Canons in Eighteenth-​ Century Neapolitan
Conservatories.” Journal of the Alamire Foundation 10 (2018): 133–​46.
van Tour, Peter. “ ‘Taking a Walk at the Molo’: Partimento and the Improvised Fugue.” In Musical
Improvisation in the Baroque Era. Edited by Fulvia Morabito. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols,
2019a, 371–​82.
van Tour, Peter. “Some Reflections About ‘il metodo di Cotumacci.’” Pergolesi Studies 11
(2019b): 371–​82.
van Tour, Peter. “Integrating Aural and Keyboard Skills in Today’s Classroom: Modern
Perspectives on Eighteenth-​Century Partimento Practices,. In Keyboard Skills and Music
Education: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Edited by Derek Remes and Philipp
Teriete. Hildesheim: Olms Verlag, 2019c, 1–​27.
van Tour, Peter. “Learning Counterpoint and Composition Through Partimenti and Disposizioni.”
In The Organ Yearbook. Vol. 47. Edited by Paul Peeters. Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 2019d, 79–​98.
Velimirović, Miloš. “Russian Musical Azbuki: A Turning-​Point in the History of Slavonic Chant.”
In The Study of Medieval Chant: Paths and Bridges, East and West; In Honour of Kenneth Levy.
Edited by Peter Jeffrey. Cambridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 2001, 257–​68.
Veltman, Joshua Joel. Prosody and Rhythm in the Post-​Tridentine Reform of Plainchant. PhD
diss., Ohio State University, 2004.
Vial, Stephanie. The Art of Musical Phrasing in the Eighteenth Century. Rochester: University of
Rochester Press, 2008.
Walker, Frank. “A Chronology of the Life and Works of Nicola Porpora.” Italian Studies 6
(1951): 29–​62.
Webster, James. Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony and the Idea of the Classical Style: Through-​
Composition and Cyclic Integration in his Instrumental Music. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991.
Wegman, Rob C. “Musica Ficta.” In Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music. Edited by
Tess Knighton and David Fallows. London: Oxford University Press, 1992, 265–​74.
Weidenaar, Gary. “Solmization and the Norwich and Tonic Sol-​Fa Systems.” Choral Journal 46
(2006): 24–​33.
Weimer, Eric. Opera Seria and the Evolution of Classical Style, 1755–​ 1772. Ann Arbor,
MI: University Microfilms International, 1984.
Wertenson, Birgit Johanna, and Alan Dergal Rautenberg. “The Psalm Settings of the Venetian
Ospedali in the 18th Century: Considerations About an Extraordinary Repertoire.” Studi
musicali 3 (1) (2012): 73–​126.
White, Harry. “Johann Joseph Fux and the Imperative of Italy.” In Europäische Musiker in Venedig,
Rom und Neapel (1650–​1750). Analecta musicologica 52. Edited by Anne-​Madelaine Goulet
and Gesa zur Nieden. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2015, 571–​82.
Whittaker, Adam. “Signposting Mutation in Some Fourteenth-​and Fifteenth-​Century Music
Theory Treatises.” Plainsong & Medieval Music 26 (1) (2017): 37–​61.
Wiering, Frans. The Language of the Modes: Studies in the History of Polyphonic Modality.
New York: Routledge, 2001.
Wiesend, Reinhard. Die italienische oper im 18. Jahrhundert: Hinführung. Laaber,
Germany: Laaber-​Verlag, 2001.
Witzenmann, Wolfgang, and Bianca Maria Antolini, eds. Napoli e il teatro musicale in europa
tra sette e ottocento: Studi in onore di Friedrich Lippmann. Quaderni della Rivista Italiana di
Musicologia 28. Florence: Olschki, 1993.
Wyn Jones, David, ed. “Haydn’s Missa sunt bona mixta malis and the A Cappella Tradition.” In
Music in Eighteenth-​Century Austria. Edited by David Wyn Jones. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996, 89–​111.
Wyn Jones, David, ed. Oxford Composer Companions: Haydn. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2002.
Zager, Daniel. “From the Singer’s Point of View: A Case Study in Hexachordal Solmization as
a Guide to Musica Recta and Musica Ficta in Fifteenth-​Century Vocal Music.” Current
Musicology 43 (1989): 7–​21.
398 Bibliography

Zanetti, Roberto. La musica Italiana nel Settecento. 3 vols. Rome: Bramante Editrice, 1978.
Zappulla, Robert (trans.) and Massimiliano Sala (ed.). Vincenzo Manfredini Regole Armoniche.
Turnhout: Brepols, 2013.
Zaslaw, Neal, ed. The Classical Era: From the 1740s to the End of the 18th Century.
London: Macmillan, 1989.
Zbikowski, Lawrence M. Foundations of Musical Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2017.
Zon, Bennett. The English Plainchant Revival. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
 Index

Aaron, Pietro, 317n19, 321n45 Annibale di Macerata, Domenico

Abele, Albrecht Ludwig, 312n12 (l’Annibale), 322n1
abozzo (sketch), 266 Anselmo (Anselm of Flanders), Don, 304,
accent (grave), 59, 73, 80, 109, 113–​16, 320n26 337n21, 337n22
accent (musical or speech), 40, 48, 50–​52, antiphon, 33, 39, 40, 43, 45, 56, 68, 70,
131, 136, 155, 164, 174, 191, 207, 266, 301, 304
325n40, 327n1 Antoniotto, Giorgio, 40
accent (ornament), 137–​38, 141, 267, 286 Apel, Willi, 318n36
acciaccatura, 134, 325n44, 328n28 Appoggiatura rule, xiii, xviii, 135, 137–​40, 143,
accidentals, xvii, 7, 9–​10, 38, 42, 44–​47, 49, 151, 158, 168, 172, 181, 240, 267
57, 62–​65, 70–​71, 74, 75, 86, 89, 101–​06, apprenticeship, 5, 7, 10, 12, 14–​17, 19, 23–​30,
109, 117, 120, 126, 137, 155, 204, 214, 53–​54, 162, 306–​07, 311n7
217, 219, 222–​31, 236, 247, 249–​50, Aprile, Giuseppe, 131, 324n25
289, 291, 300, 309, 314n18, 317n17, Arcadelt, Jacob, 319n48
320n15, 321n41 artisan, 23–​24
accompaniment, 1, 3, 39, 40, 50, 93, 164, 195, Artusi, Giovanni Maria, 322n50
217, 241, 243–​45, 259, 288, 332n25 Asioli, Bonifazio, 133,
Adlgasser, Anton, 30 augmented fourth. See tritone
Adlung, Jakob, 336n16 Auletta, Domenico, 313n10
affinities within the scale, 87, 95–​96, 195, Aulicino, P., 324n22
120, 121 Avella, Giovanni d’, 60, 218, 320n16, 320n21
Afflighemensis, Johannes, 319n14 Ave Maris Stella (hymn), 43
affordances, 161, 327n13 Azopardi (Azzopardi), Francesco, 290, 305
Afonso de André, Clóvis, xvii, 316n11,
317n19, 322n52, 322n56 Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel, 241, 324n31
Agazzari, Agostino, 290 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 11
Agricola, Johann, xiv, 7, 86, 120, 131–​32, 137–​ Badia, Carlo Agostino, 25
39, 151, 240, 292, 299, 325n31, Bain, Marina, xi
Ahle, Johann, 301 Baird, Julianne, 324n31
Albrechtsberger, Johann Georg, 11 Balbastre, Claude Bénigne, 32
alfabeto notation, 334n1 Balducci, Giuseppe, 324n25
Alfieri, Pietro, 38, 47 Banchieri, Adriano, 120, 137–​38, 141, 252,
alla bastarda, 257 255–​56, 290–​91, 304, 319n6, 320n21,
Alsted, Johann Heinrich, 304, 337n21 320n23, 321n47, 325n33, 333n13
altered fourth and altered seventh, 15, 106, Baragwanath, Nicholas, 327n1
215–​16, 218–​23, 232–​36, 297 Barbella, Emanuele, 242
Altieri, Paolo, 322n48, 325n42 Barbieri, Patrizio, 333n6
ambitus, 7, 60, 71–​72, 88, 98, 126–​27, 180 Barnett, Gregory, xi, 76, 305, 326n51, 337n30
Amen rule, xiii, xviii, 129–​32, 135–​40, Baroni, Filippo Anconitano, 257
144, 267 Baroni, Maria Luisa, xi, 134
Anerio, Felice, 46 Barsanti, Felice di Pietra Santa, 54
Anfossi, Pasquale, 28, 277 Bartei, Girolamo, 252
Angelini Bontempi, Giovanni Andrea, 311n7, bassadanza, 255
337n18, 337n21 basse fondamentale, 278, 335n2
400 Index

bass lines in solfeggio, 1, 125, 174, 243–​51, Bull, John, 218

259, 288–​97 Burmeister, Joachim, 304
basso continuo, 3, 247, 266, 290–​93, 335n2 Burn, David, xi
basso seguente, 286, 334n4, 335n2 Burnard, Pamela, 17
Battaglini, Luisa de Marco, 325n38 Burney, Charles, 29, 32, 35, 39, 40, 78, 207,
battuta, 46–​52, 74–​76 313n28, 325n39
beams, as traits, 144, 174, 222, 326n47 Busse Berger, Anna Maria, 50
bebization, 300 Butler, Charles, 303
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 5, 10, 11, 40, Butt, John, 310n12, 318n45, 323n6, 336n8
297, 336n16 Buttstett, Johann, 65, 292, 302,
bel canto (fine singing), 131, 267–​75, 302, 319n10, 336n16
306, 332n10
Bellermann, Johann Heinrich, 142 Caccini, Giulio, 266
Belli, Lazaro Venanzio, 51, 316n5, 316n8, cadence
316n13, 317n29 alto cadence (sol-​fa-​mi), 126–​27
Bellini, Vincenzo, 86, 146, 306 bass cadence (mi-​fa-​sol-​do), xv, 126–​27,
Beneventan chant, 314n14 148, 209, 257, 263, 280, 328n27
Bent, Margaret, 317n19 converging cadence, xvii, 122, 180, 328n26
Bentivoglio, Enzo, 334n5 half cadence, xvi, xvii, 122, 127, 153–​54,
Berardi, Angelo, xviii, 255, 313n11, 318n40, 161, 169, 174–​81, 185, 188, 191, 206, 211,
322n50, 329n43 212, 222, 272, 278, 281, 286, 328n26
Beretti, Pietro, 257 imperfect cadence, 168, 171–​72, 181, 275
bergamasca, 255 incomplete cadence, 272
Bergeron, Katherine, 38 Marpurg’s Galant Cadence, 329n30
Belgian syllables. See bocedization perfect cadence, xiii, 120, 121, 134, 151,
Berlioz, Hector, 32 159, 171, 176, 178, 206, 211, 231, 252,
Bernacchi, Antonio Maria, 257 273, 275
Bertalotti, Angelo, 75–​77, 92–​93, 96–​97, 115, soprano cadence (fa-​mi-​fa), 126–​27
133, 239, 257, 317n27, 318n34 tenor cadence (mi-​re-​do or la-​sol-​fa; or do-​
Beyer, Johann Samuel, 301 re-​do or fa-​sol-​fa), 126–​27, 329n30
Bianco, Giovanni Battista, 255 cadenza, 3, 76, 123, 129, 147–​48, 233–​35,
bicinium, 333n7 272, 332n10
Bisaro, Xavier, 304 Cafaro (Caffaro), Pasquale, 59, 125, 142–​43,
Blackburn, Bonnie, 319n12 171–​73, 181–​82, 189, 198–​202, 207, 267,
Boaro, Eric, xi, 326n47 281–​87, 324n25
bocedization, 300 Caffarelli (Gaetano Majorano), 128, 132,
Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus, 310n11 155, 323n4
Bologna, 41, 76, 77, 92, 213, 253, 256–​57, 304 Cafiero, Rosa, xi, 313n23, 329n2, 332n9
Bonds, Mark Evan, 327n1 Caldara, Antonio, 25
Bononcini, Giovanni Battista, 25, 293, Calegari, Francesco, 306
309n10, 320n25 Calegari, Francesco Antonio, 100, 213, 293
Bornstein, Andrea, 322n50, 323n6, 329n44, Calvisius, Seth, 299
333n11, 333n13, 333n14, 337n31 Campion, François, 290, 335n11
Bourgeois, Loys, 321n46 canon (the classical), 10, 36
Bourne, Janet, 158–​60 canon (contrapuntal), 80, 96–​97, 115, 120,
Bozzelli, Giuseppe, 130–​31, 136, 165, 200 214–​15, 219–​20, 223–​25, 228, 231, 241,
bravura style, 76, 145, 153, 160, 188, 246, 267 244–​45, 248, 255, 257
Broschi, Carlo (Farinelli), 18, 76, 124, canto di bequadro or cantus durus. See
155, 186, 191, 267, 272–​74, 308, hard melody
322n1, 325n39 canto di bemolle or cantus mollis. See
Broschi, Riccardo, 186–​87 soft melody
Brosses, Charles de, 31, 313n28 canto fermo. See plainchant
Bryant, David, 312n5, 312n13, 313n25 canto figurato, xiii, 12, 34, 41, 45, 47, 51, 53,
Bugenhagen, Johann, 301, 318n33 64, 74–​81, 85, 88, 92, 104, 114, 130,
 Index 401

233, 250, 289, 291, 310n14, 315n37, and education, 5, 10–​12, 17–​18, 23–​28, 34–​
318n34, 337n32 37, 60, 63, 77
canto fratto or cantus fractus (fractional music industry, 31–​36
chant), 46, 314n28 and mixed musical styles, 31–​36
cantorino, 53–​54 Church tones, eight, xiii, 44, 56, 123, 199, 250,
cantus fictus, 320n15 314n18, 322n54, 326n51
cantus firmus, 39, 41–​43, 153–​54, 161, 203, Cimarosa, Domenico, 131
212, 255, 268, 281 Cini, Giuseppe Ottavio, 254
cantus prius factus, 254 circle of fifths, xiii, 64, 74, 106–​09, 127, 167,
Capece Minutolo, Clotilde, 335n17 215–​19, 222, 225–​30, 289, 316n9, 330n11
Caplin, William, 192, 328n16, 328n20, 328n23 Clari, Giovanni Carlo Maria, 257
Capellhaus, 26–​27, 311n5 classical music, 10, 40, 307
capriccio, 253 clausula vera. See cadence: tenor cadence
Caracciolo, Teresa, 143 clefless compositions, 318n46
Caresana, Cristoforo, 133, 257 Clérambault, Louis-​Nicolas, 290
Carlos de Brito, Manuel, 331n27 Coelho, Victor Anand, 334n1
cartella, xiii, 58–​60, 65, 77 collocation, 159–​60, 203
Carter, Joanna L., 301, 318n33, 336n9 collostruction, 159
Cashner, Andrew A., 317n17 comedy, 18, 36, 144, 151, 176, 191, 193, 222,
castrato, 7, 12, 18, 28, 30, 75, 131–​32, 155, 186, 233, 268–​69, 272,
203, 242, 267–​68, 272–​73, 302, 311n7, comma (fa-​mi), xiv, xviii, 153, 168–​71, 180,
312n21, 322n50, 326n58 185, 203, 212, 235, 292, 297, 324n25
Catelani, Angelo, 213, 216 comma (punctuation), 159, 316n7, 327n1
Catrufo, Giovanni (Jean), 247 comma (subdivision of a semitone), 87
cautionary signs, 75, 317n17 compound appoggiatura, 138
C-​clef. See fa-​clef compound scale (scala composta), xiv–​xviii,
Ceccarelli, Francesco, 324n22 7, 14, 71–​74, 91–​101, 106, 108–​10, 115,
cercar della nota (search for the note), xiii, 120–​21, 126, 167, 212–​13, 215–​19, 227,
xviii, 138, 168, 174 251, 289, 290, 292–​93, 303
Cerone, Domenico Pietro, 64, 77, 316n3 concertato style, 40
Chafe, Eric, 216, 320n19 concerts spirituels, 32
chain reaction of modulations by fifth, 64 conduct (musical discourse), 131, 206–​07,
Challoner, Richard, 312n4 276, 278
chant mesuré or figuré, 47 conservatory,
chant sur le livre, 40 Amsterdam, xi
Charles III of Spain, 331n27 daily activities at, 18, 27, 35, 37, 58, 85, 246,
Chiti, Girolamo, 257 249, 277–​78, 288, 305–​06, 311n7
Choron, Alexandre-​Étienne, 38, 322n2 Maastricht, xi
Christensen, Thomas, xi Madrid, 338n40
Christofferson, Peter Woetmann, 318n46 Milan, 130
chromatic genera, 316n5 Naples, 1–​3, 15–​16, 28, 134, 141, 213, 226,
chromaticism, 7–​9, 37, 44, 77, 96, 102, 241, 243, 276–​77
104–​06, 110, 116–​17, 119, 126, 128, La Pietà dei Turchini, Naples, 2, 35, 45, 59,
131, 135–​36, 138–​39, 142, 151, 169, 76, 142, 207, 250, 255, 257, 277
192, 196, 198, 200, 204, 210, 218, 225–​ I Poveri di Gesù Cristo, Naples, 34–​35, 207,
28, 231, 235, 239, 251, 253, 289, 293, 222, 240
300–​02, 305, 316n13, 319n6, 321n46, San Miguel de Belem, Mexico City, 14, 86
324n25, 330n11 Santa Maria di Loreto, Naples, 4, 15,
Church, 134, 142, 255, 277, 295, 305, 313n12,
calendar, 33, 40 317n20, 322n48
choirboys, 10–​11, 23, 26, 34, 39, 53–​54, 57, Sant’Onofrio a Porta Capuana, Naples, xvii,
87, 92, 249, 289 43, 53, 77, 134, 140, 203, 207, 222, 255,
daily services in, 11, 17, 31–​37, 39–​40, 265, 313n11
44–​46, 48 wine served to pupils, 312n21
402 Index

Constanzi, Giovanni Battista, 41 De Vecchis, Giovanni Battista, 43, 92, 99, 217,
construction grammar, 158–​62, 165, 168–​81, 275, 277, 320n35
188–​91, 203–​07, 212, 231, 253 development, xvi, 15, 121, 144, 178, 180, 212,
Conti, Carlo, 15 276, 278
Conti, Francesco Bartolomeo, 25 Diabolus in Musica (devil in music). See
contrappunto commune, 318n40 tritone
contrappunto obbligato, See obbligo diapason, diapente, and diatesseron, xiv, xvi,
contrappunto osservato, 318n40 45, 63, 68–​71, 256
converging half cadence, xvii, 122, diatonic genera, 316n5
180, 328n26 Diergarten, Felix, xi, 309n2, 311n6, 321n42
Cook, James, xi Dies, Albert, 302–​03, 311n1
Coronelli, Vincenzo, 35–​36 diesis. See accidentals
Correlli, Arcangelo, 86, 306 differentiae, 56, 68
correspondence of leaps, 95–​96 Diletskiy, Nikolai, 218
Corri, Domenico, 5, 129, 138, 156, Di Mayo, Giuseppe, 313n10
246, 325n40 diminished fifth. See tritone
Cotumacci, Carlo, 4, 7, 77, 80, 86, 96–​98, 113–​ diminution (division), xiii–​xiv, xviii,
16, 139–​41, 150, 163–​64, 167, 168, 176, 14, 129–​32, 138–​42, 147, 158, 244,
186, 189, 191, 193, 195–​98, 203–​11, 222, 323n16, 324n25
231–​33, 239, 241, 243, 246, 251, 267, 278, Diruta, Girolamo, 318n40
313n11, 324n25, 328n29 division. See diminution
Council of Trent. See Tridentine reforms do, in place of ut, 12, 309n10
counterpoint, 26–​28, 42, 112, 120, 130, 132, Doll, Joseph, 313n11
171–​72, 247, 260–​62, 277–​78, 288, 290–​ do-​re-​mi (schema), 133–​46, 157–​58, 160, 169,
91, 307, 311n7 195, 199, 263, 270
improvised, 40, 133, 165–​68, 212, 241, 248, dominant (of a mode), xiv, 69–​71, 256
252–​59, 260–​65 dominant (fifth of a key), xiv, xvi, xvii, 6, 50,
invertible, xvi, 259, 260–​65, 297 89, 93, 106, 112, 124, 143, 151, 161, 164,
Neapolitan schools of, 15, 207, 255 171, 174, 185, 189, 206–​08, 210–​11, 213,
obbligo counterpoint, 313n11 215, 231, 260, 328n20
soggetto counterpoint, 257 Doni, Giovanni Battista, 309n10
species counterpoint, xvii, 11, 26, 43, 49, Donizetti, Gaetano, 313n11, 334n20
203, 290 Dorian mode, xiv, 50, 70, 99, 314n18
Covezzi, Giovanni, 334n6 double scale, 304
Cozzoli, Vito Antonio Raffaele, 43, 313n12 Draghi, Antonio, 25
Cramm, Tobias, xi Dupuis, Ericius, 337n22
Crescentini, Girolamo, 12–​14, 130, 323n9 Durán, Domingo Marcos, 289
Curwen, John, 303 Durante, Francesco, xvii, 4, 41–​44, 53, 146,
cyclic integration, 267 239, 244, 257–​61, 290
Durante, school of, xvii, 203, 207,
damenization, 302 255, 329n43
Dandrieu, Jean-​François, 290
deceit or deception. See inganno Eckart, Stefan, xi
De Charrière, Isabelle, 329n34 Elia, Giuseppe, 324n22
Dechevrens, Antoine, 48 embellishment. See ornamentation
deduction. See hexachord Errichelli, Pasquale, 243,
Del Lago, Giovanni, 333n13 escorial flat, 222
Del Prete, Rossella, 333n3 Eslava, Hilarión, 338n40
De Marco Battaglini, Luisa, 325n38 evovae, xiv, 56, 70
Dennison, Catherine, xi
Desideri, Marco, 146, 256 fa above la (fà sopra la), xiv, xviii, 73, 94–​95,
De Souza, Jonathan, 328n15 103, 110, 112–​13, 121, 143, 191, 249, 280
De Spagnolis, Giovanni Camillo, 252 Fabricio, Pietro, 60
Destribois, Clémence, 325n33 Fabris, Dinko, xi, 311n2, 334n7, 335n17
 Index 403

fa-​clef, xiii–​xiv, xvii, 72, 77–​81, 88, 113, 123, Fux, Johann Joseph, xvii, 11, 25–​27, 49, 54, 99,
180, 250, 269, 318n46, 318n47 203, 290, 313n11, 318n40
fa/​do lead-​in, xiv, 168, 173, 176, 191, 207,
212, 328n20 Gabrielli, Catarina, 322n1
fa-​flourish, 123, 269, 278, 280 Gafurius, Franchinus, 216, 310n11
Falk, Georg, 336n10 Galant Romanesca, xv, 142, 191, 193, 195, 281
false soprano cadence (fa\mi-​fa), xiv, 122, Galant schema (pl. schemata), xv, 130, 150,
169–​74, 188, 212, 233 154, 157–​59, 161, 164
false tenor cadence (la-​sol\fa), xiv, 122, 178 Galimberti, Felice (il Galimberti), 322n1
falsobordone (fauxbourdon), 39 Gallicus, Johannes, 336n7
fa-​mi/​mi-​fa. See Quiescenza gamut, xiv–​xv, xvii, 17, 37, 60–​68, 78, 107, 120,
fantasia, 253 218, 220, 249, 288–​89, 298, 316n5, 319n6,
farfalla (butterfly schema or obbligo), 335n2, 336n7
150, 326n52 Ganassi, Silvestro, 323n16
Farinelli. See Broschi, Carlo Gasparini, Francesco, 98, 290
fa\sol modulation, xiv, 124 Gengenbach, Nikolaus, 299
Fattore, Filippo Antonio, 318n34 Gentile, Giovanni, xviii, 146, 252–​57
Faultless, Margaret, xi Geremia, Giuseppe, 4, 277
F-​clef. See fa-​clef German letter names, singing of, 12, 302
Fenaroli (mi-​fa-​sol-​la), xv, 286 Gervais, Laurent, 294
Fenaroli, Fedele, 134, 142, 144, 267, 277, 288, Gerzimbke, Jake, xi
290, 294–​96, 313n12, 322n48 Ghelucci, Giovanni, 43
Feo, Francesco, 4, 310n15 Gherardeschi, Giuseppe, 277
ferial and festal church days, 33, 40–​41 Giamberti, Giuseppe, xviii, 255–​56, 310n11
Ferrari, Giacomo Gotifredo, 54 Giannetti, Raffaele, 334n10, 334n20
Ferri, Francesco Maria da Marsciano, 257 Gibelius, Otto, 300–​01
Fétis, François-​Joseph, 128–​29, 134, 330n11 Gillion, Marianne, xi
Feyertag, Moritz, 301 Giorgi, Giovanni, 331n26
fiato (breath), 135–​36 Givón, Talmy, 160
filo, il (the thread of a composition), 153 Gjerdingen, Robert O., xi, xiii–​xix, 1–​3, 6, 121,
Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 218 130, 144, 155, 158–​60, 163–​64, 169–​70,
fixed-​do, xv, xviii, 12, 19, 219, 239–​41, 235, 318n30, 322n60, 327n13, 328n16,
304, 338n36 328n26, 329n33, 329n34, 329n39,
flottole (busking groups of singers), 34 329n40, 329n42
Foglietti, Ignazio, 305 Glarean, Heinrich, 68
folia, 255 Glover, Sarah Ann, 303
Fonte (sol-​fa, fa-​mi), xv, 201, 206, 207, Goehr, Lydia, 306
212, 273 gorgheggi, 241, 332n10
Forkert, Annika, xi Gorzanis, Giacomo, 217
fortepiano, 306 Goudar, Pierre d’Ange, 32
Franzaroli, Gaetano, 331n34 Graduale Romanum, 38
fraseggio puro (pure phrasing), 136 grand cadence, xv, 272
French (seven-​note) solfège, xv, 5, 12, 19, grand staff, 61, 65, 78
239, 241, 293–​94, 298, 303–​06, 325n41, grand tour, 313n28
337n32, 338n36 Graun, Carl Heinrich, 129, 301–​02
Frescobaldi, Girolamo, 252 Greco, Gaetano, xiii, 50, 65, 86, 94–​95,
Frezza dale Grotte, Giuseppe, 52, 60 101, 113, 116, 222, 240, 318n34,
Fritelli, Fausto, 65, 305, 337n33 326n51, 331n22
Froberger, Johann Jakob, 218 Green, Lucy, 16
Funccius (Funke), David, 336n10 Grier, James, 334n19
function as intention, 160, 171, 191, Groppo, Antonio, 313n25
286, 328n25 guide (guida), xv, 95
fundamental fa and mi, xiii, xv, xviii, 86, 106–​ Guidetti, Giovanni, 46
07, 125–​27, 227–​30, 303 Guidonian Hand, 65–​67, 218
404 Index

Guido of Arezzo, xiv–​xviii, 6, 37, 43, 59, 87, imitative counterpoint, 32, 42, 114, 141, 167,
239, 249, 298, 337n19 244–​45, 256, 297, 333n13
Guillaud, Maximilian, 333n1 improvisation, xvii, 1, 3, 27, 86, 130, 132, 146,
guitar, 217 154, 161–​62, 164, 204, 212, 252, 266, 284,
286, 302, 307
Han, Ulrich, 49 incipit (in plainchant), 45
hard melody (cantus durus; canto di bequadro) Indugio (schema), xvi
and soft melody (cantus mollis; canto di inganno (deceit, deception, or jest), xiv, xvi,
bemolle), xv, xviii, 72–​74, 89–​93, 98, 103–​ xix, 121, 144, 150, 167, 176–​78, 183–​84,
09, 120, 216–​18, 222, 227–​28, 253, 255–​ 192–​93, 206, 209, 255, 259, 262, 322n50,
56, 289, 291, 299, 304, 317n20 321n47 329n30, 336n15
Harrach, Count Alois Thomas Insanguine, Giacomo, 324n22
Raimund, 311n2 intonation (delivery with graces), 267
Harrán, Don, 317n17 intonation (pitch), 5, 85, 87, 136, 139, 240,
Hase, Wolfgang, 301 244–​47, 251, 254, 324n25
Hasse, Johann Adolph, 41, 186, 267, 322n58,
326n58, 337n33 Jander, Owen, 331n1
Haydn, Anna Maria, 23–​26 Jannacconi, Giuseppe, 257
Haydn, Joseph, 17, 23–​30, 39, 44, 53–​54, 110–​ Janovka, Tomáš Baltazar, 218
11, 118, 192–​93, 235–​36, 263–​64, 302–​03, jazz, 9
309n2, 311n1, 311n6, 334n19 Jean de Muris, 317n19, 337n22
Haydn, Mathias, 23–​26 Jensen, Claudia R., 218
Haydn, Michael, 25 Jommelli, Niccolò, 41, 54, 145–​46, 160
Hayes, Philip, 147 journeyman, 5, 27–​28, 30
Heinichen, Johann David, 108,
217–​18, 289–​90 Kapellknaben. See puer cantor
heptachordal solmization. See French (seven-​ Keiser, Reinhard, 337n25
note) solfège Kerll, Johann Caspar, 54
Herissone, Rebecca, 337n18 key (major and minor), xiii, xv, xviii, 7, 9,
Herschel, Caroline Lucretia, 240, 246, 331n7 14, 67, 70, 74, 86, 96, 98–​109, 124,
hexachord, xiv–​xviii, 6–​9, 12, 14, 37, 53, 64, 126–​27, 161
71, 73, 80, 86, 87–​106, 120–​25, 140, 143, key endings (terminazioni di tuono), 126–​27
high 2 drop or other sol (fa/​sol\fa-​mi), xvi, key signatures with missing accidentals, xiii,
xvii, 121 199, 326n51
Hiley, David, 45 Keysler, Johann Georg, 313n28
Hill, John Walter, 266 Kiesewetter, Raphael Georg, 303
Hiller, Johann Adam, xiv, 85, 129, 132, Kircher, Athanasius, 218, 318n32, 335n2
137–​38, 302 Koch, Heinrich, 159
Hillsman, W., 40 Kodály method, 303
Hitzler, Daniel, 300 Koslovsky, John, xi
Hoffstetter, Roman, 110–​11 Kraft, Georg Andreas, 337n25
Holford-​Strevens, Leofranc, 319n12 Krashen, Stephen, 157
Holzbauer, Ignaz, 25 Kretzschmar, Johann, 337n25
Hübler, Klaus, 330n11 Krones, Hartmut, 332n11
Hughes, Andrew, 316n7 Kuhnau, Johann, 218
Hypodorian, xvi, 68
Hypolydian, xvi, 68, 249 La Barbiera, Baldassare, 247
Hypomixolydian, xvi, 68 labyrinths, musical, 218
Hypophrygian, xvi, 68 La Feillée, François de, 50, 304, 314n33
la/​mi modulation, xvi, 169, 185–​92, 195,
Ijzerman, Job, xi 209, 212
Imbimbo, Emanuele, 85, 311n7 Lanam, Faith, 310n15
imitation fugue, xviii, 18, 244, 246, Lanfranco, Giovanni Maria, 320n28
252, 256–​59 Lange, Johann Caspar, 301, 336n10
 Index 405

Lange, Georg Theodor Johann, 336n2 Marcello, Benedetto, 154–​55

language acquisition, 156–​62, 212, Marchetto of Padua, 63
284, 307–​08 Marchitti, Giuseppe, 313n10
language, music as, 18, 55, 150, 156–​62, 171, Marenzio, Luca, 330n11
174, 207, 212, 284, 306–​08, 327n1, 327n4, Maria Theresa, Empress, 33
327n7, 328n24 Marotta, Cesare, 334n5
Larramendi, Ignacio de, 316n14 Martini, Giovanni Battista, xviii, 213, 244, 257,
la-​sol half cadence, xvi, 169, 174–​84, 212, 281 305, 316n5, 324n22, 337n32
Lassus, Orlando, 330n11 Masi, Giovanni, 244
Latilla, Gaetano, 77 Masi, Teresa, 244
la-​to-​sol flourish, 170 mastricielli (junior masters), 277
Lebeuf, l’Abbé, 337n27 Mattei, Saverio, 250
Ledbetter, David, xi, 217 Mattheson, Johann, 26–​27, 218, 290, 292, 294,
Lee, Vernon, 15, 28 300, 302, 336n16
Leech-​Wilkinson, Daniel, 328n25 Mayr, Johannes Simon, 43
Le Maire, Sieur, 337n22 Mazzanti, Ferdinando, 242–​43
Lennon, John, 17 McNaught, W. G., 337n26
Leo, Leonardo, 1–​2, 5–​8, 41, 77, 86–​88, 93–​94, Medicean Gradual, 46–​48, 50–​51, 314n32
103–​04, 117, 123–​25, 129, 141–​42, 146–​ Mengozzi, Stefano, 333n13, 336n7
49, 151–​54, 169–​71, 174–​75, 179–​81, mensuration, 48, 50, 76, 310n11, 318n34
183–​84, 187–​96, 207, 255, 257, 267, Mercadante, Saverio, 15
277–​80, 319n5, 323n9, 324n25, 325n44, Mersenne, Marin, 138, 304
326n53, 333n9, 334n6 messa di voce, 247, 267
school of, 255, 257 messa di voce crescente, 139
Lester, Joel, 330n15, 336n13, 336n16 Metallo, Grammatio, 252
lettura (reading), xvi, 85, 239 Mexico, 14, 86, 310n15, 317n17
lezioni (lessons), 278 Meyer (fa-​mi/​fa-​mi), xvi, 211–​12, 232, 281,
Liber Usualis, 38 286, 329n47
Licino, Agostino, 241 Mi contra Fa. See tritone
Lippius, Johannes, 299 Millico, Vito, 324n22
Lisbon, 226, 331n26, 331n27 mi/​mi modulation, xvi, 112, 169, 181–​84, 185,
liturgy, 24, 31–​32, 53, 56, 129, 312n3 195, 203, 212, 272, 336n15
Lodewyckx, David, xi, 329n30 Minciotti, Cesare, 334n20
Lolli, Giuseppe Maria, 30 minor mode, xiv, 7–​8, 86, 94, 98–​103, 106,
Lorente, Andrès, 50, 304, 317n17, 321n41 109, 126–​27, 198, 201, 209, 217–​19, 255,
Loulié, Étienne, 304–​05 256, 288–​89, 292–​93, 304
Lucca, 43, 314n13 minuet, 32, 275
Luchesi, Andrea, 336n16 Mocquereau, Dom, 38
Lully, Jean-​Baptiste, 337n22 modes, xvi
Lundberg, Matthias, 314n20 accidentals in, 42, 44–​45, 50, 63, 70, 99
Luther, Martin, 299 formation of, xiv, xvi, 42, 69–​71,
Lydian fourth, 45, 249 216, 255–​56
Lydian mode, xvi, 45, 68, 249 imperfected, 249
medieval rhythmic modes, 48
maestro di canto fermo, 28, 250 in plainchant, 45, 50
Magini, Francesco, 254, 257 practical use of, xvi, 56, 65, 68, 70–​71, 98–​99
Maillart, Pierre, 303 subfinal, 317n24
Mainzer, Joseph, 39 modulation, xiii–​xvi, xix, 7, 10, 15–​16, 64,
Mancini, Giambattista Ascolano, xviii, 5, 123, 74, 86, 95, 101–​02, 106–​09, 111–​12,
146, 240, 244, 251, 277, 305, 322n55, 120, 124–​27, 143, 147, 151, 153, 160,
324n26, 325n41, 334n12, 337n33, 337n35 169, 181–​92, 195, 198, 203–​04, 209–​12,
Manfredini, Vincenzo, 44, 130, 139, 305, 213–​36, 247, 268, 272, 286, 289, 293, 297,
323n6, 325n41, 337n22, 337n24, 337n35 316n9, 316n13
Manzuoli, Giovanni, 268 Molteni, Benedetta Emilia, 322n1
406 Index

Monelle, Raymond, 327n4 organ, xiii, 11, 26–​29, 31–​32, 39–​40, 44, 48,
Monghetti (the Queen Monghetti), 322n1 50, 53, 87, 92, 218, 244, 289–​92, 310n12,
monitorial system, 277 315n37, 326n51
monody, 266, 307 Orgosinus, Heinrich, 304, 337n25
Montagnier, Jean-​Paul, 314n30 Orloff, Grégoire, 333n9
Monte, xvii, 201, 203, 206–​07, 210–​12, 281 ornamentation, 40, 44, 47, 53, 75, 128–​32,
Montecassino, Abbey of, 43 134, 137–​39, 147, 154, 168, 188, 204, 206,
Monteverdi, Claudio, 98, 299 266–​67, 272, 299, 332n10
Monticelli, Angelo Maria (il Ornithoparcus, Andreas, 320n25
Monticelli), 322n1 ospedali. See Venice
Moruzzi, Caterina, xi other fa, xvii, 78, 122, 180, 184, 188, 193, 195,
motive, 148, 171, 176, 178, 184, 193, 212 222, 272, 286
moveable-​do, xv, 303–​05 other sol. See high 2 drop
Mozart, Leopold, 30, 153 Ozanam, Jacques, 330n15
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 11, 18, 27, 39,
40, 110, 118, 170, 198, 267–​74, 280, 294, Pachelbel, Johann, 292
308, 336n13 Pädagog-​Kantor, 29, 312n12
Muir, Thomas E., 37, 315n38 Paër, Ferdinando, 324n22
Münster, Joseph, 7, 120, 321n46 Paganini, Niccolò, 241–​42, 306, 308
musica ficta (false music) and musica recta Paisiello, Giovanni, 53, 101–​02, 116, 247, 290,
(true music), xv, xvii, 17, 44, 60, 63–​65, 319n6, 326n54
104, 120, 231, 249, 317n17, 317n19, Palestrina, Giovanni Perluigi da, 9, 41, 46, 76,
321n41, 322n47 133, 257
musicking, 14, 87 Panerai, Vincenzo, 7, 80–​81, 305, 318n29
mutation, xiii, xvii, 6–​7, 71–​74, 89–​91, 93, 95, parallel motion, 39, 151, 163, 172, 187–​88
102–​03, 109, 111, 114, 116, 120–​21, 204, paranze (busking groups of singers), 34
216–​17, 225, 227–​28, 244, 247, 269, 289–​ Paraschivescu, Nicoleta, xi, 309n3
91, 298, 305, 307, 320n26, 320n28 parody, 267, 272
at the fourth and fifth, xvii, 12, 72–​73, Parran, Antoine, 335n2
79–​80, 180 partimento, xvii, 3, 28, 126–​27, 130, 141,
implicit or explicit, xiv, xvii, 123–​26, 297 181, 226, 233, 244–​45, 259, 266,
Mylius, Wolfgang Michael, 336n10 288–​97, 334n4
Pasquini, Bernardo, 60, 290, 294
names of notes and keys, 108–​09 passo indietro (step backwards), xvii, 144, 151,
Nanino, Giovanni Bernardino, 133 181, 186
Napoleon [Bonaparte, Napoleon], 54, 277, pastiche, 269
298, 305–​06 pedagogy, xvii, 7, 16–​19, 53, 54, 73, 80, 133,
Natale, Pompeo, 256–​57 146, 157, 203, 233, 240–​45, 251, 267, 281,
Nathan, Isaac, 337n22 290, 297, 308
natural sign, xvi, 64, 89, 316n9, 321n45 Penna, Lorenzo, 14, 52, 94, 129–​30, 217, 291,
neo-​Gallican chant, 38, 47 293, 318n34, 319n48, 320n16, 320n21,
Nerici, Luigi, 316n7 320n24, 320n30, 320n32
neumes, 314n32 Pepusch, Johann Cristoph, 103
Niedt, Friedrich, 290 Perez, Davide, 123–​24, 165–​68, 226,
Nivers, Guillaume Gabriel, 47, 304 262, 328n17
Norman, Donald, 327n13 perfidia. See obstinacy
Norwich Sol-​fa, 303 performance practice, xi, 3, 14, 19, 38–​40, 44,
Novello, Vincent, 40 49–​52, 65, 104, 132–​34, 136, 141, 143,
147–​50, 247, 249, 289, 306, 308, 309n2,
obbligo (pl. obblighi; constraint or obligation), 324n25, 325n39, 326n58, 328n25, 333n1
xvii, 203, 207, 252, 255–​56, 313n11, Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista, 35, 257–​59
326n52, 333n13 permutation, xvii, 63, 216
obstinacy (perfidia), xvii, 203, 255, 333n9 Perti, Giacomo Antonio, 41
Olleson, Philip, 313n7 Pesces, Dolores, 59
 Index 407

Phrygian mode, xvi, 42, 44–​45, 63, 68, 70, 98, psalm tones. See Church tones
317n24, 317n27 Puccini, Michele, 43, 314n13
Picchi, Ermanno, 246 puer cantor (boy singer), xviii, 11–​12, 23–​27,
Piccinni, Niccolò, 43, 313n11 29, 213, 312n12
Pignatelli, Cardinal Francesco, 44 Pulli, Pietro, 15
Piochi, Cristofano, 257 punctuation, musical, xvi, 15, 45, 48, 59,
Pirrotta, Nino, 334n1 71, 111, 114, 123, 126, 136, 158–​59,
plainchant, xiii–​x iv, xvii, 3, 10–​1 2, 17–​1 8, 169–​71, 174, 199, 201, 207, 212, 327n1,
31–​3 5, 37–​7 8, 85, 88–​8 9, 92, 98, 327n7, 329n30
106, 120, 123, 129–​3 0, 137, 154, Puteanus, Erycius, 304, 337n22
164, 178, 180, 216–​1 7, 220, 227,
231, 250–​5 1, 307, 310n14, 315n44, Quantz, Johann Joachim, 241
318n47, 320n24 Quaranta, Elena, 313n25
Playford, William, 303 Quiescenza (fa-​mi/​mi-​fa), xviii, 160, 192, 202–​
Ployer, Barbara, 294 03, 206–​07, 272, 286, 318n30, 329n33
Poe, Edgar Allen, 215 Quiescenza Cadence, xviii, 203, 207
Poisson, M., 50 Quirsfeld, Johann, 318n45, 336n10
Pollaci, Marco, xi, 325n42
Pöllnitz, Karl Ludwig von, 313n28 Rameau, Jean-​Philippe, 278, 289–​90,
Pope Benedict XIV, 32 294, 335n2
Pope Gregory I (Saint Gregory), 51, 60, Ramos de Pareja, Bartolomé, xv, 87,
108, 303 298–​99, 335n2
Pope Gregory XIII, 46 reading music. See lettura
Porpora, Niccolò Antonio Giacinto, 1–​2, 27, recitative, 170, 266
76, 94, 125–​26, 128–​36, 146–​47, 156, 162, regens chori (choirmaster), 11, 25
168, 222–​23, 233–​35, 244, 267, 309n2, re-​la, re-​fa rule, 315n48
311n6, 318n39, 321n42, 322n58, 322n1, Reutter, Georg, 25–​28, 54, 302
324n27, 326n47 Reutter, Georg (senior), 54
Porporino (Antonio Hubert), 322n1 rhythm, xvi–​xvii, 15, 54–​55, 74–​76, 88, 95,
Porsile, Giuseppe, 25 142, 144, 159, 169–​71, 175, 183–​84,
port de voix (portamento della voce), 138 188, 202–​03, 245–​47, 251, 254–​55, 258,
Porterfield, Richard, 315n48 266, 303, 314n28, 314n32, 325n44,
Pothier, Dom, 38 327n14, 328n28
Povoledo, Elena, 334n1 in plainchant, 17, 38–​53, 75
Powers, Harold S., 37, 42, 89, 289–​94 and tempo rubato, 325n40
Predieri, Luca Antonio, 25 ricercar, xviii, 4, 18, 246, 248, 252–​57,
prefab (prefabricated expression), 160 322n50
Prim, Abbé Jean, 40 Ricupero, Francesco, 226, 228, 319n1
Prinner (la-​sol-​fa-​mi), xiv, xvii–​xviii, 122, 125, Riepel, Joseph, xvii, 11–​12, 201, 294
151, 162–​212, 231–​32, 262, 272–​3, 280–​ Riedel, Friedrich Wilhelm, 313n5
81, 295, 328n16, 328n20, 328n23, 329n33 ripercussioni (reflections on a theme), 255
Prinner, Johann Jacob, 6 Roberts-​Schäfer, Claire, xi, 338n38
Printz, Wolfgang Caspar, 336n10 Rohrau, village of, 23–​24, 30
Probst, Georg Balthazar, 29 Rolla, Alessandro, 241
Profe, Ambrosius, 301 Rolle, Christian Carl, 32
prolation, 50, 76, 310n11, 315n44 Rosa da Cairano, Onorato, 45, 62, 315n45,
properties of melody, three, 67, 92 316n8, 316n12
Proprium de Tempore (Proper of the Rossini, Gioacchino, 241, 306
Time), 33 Rousseau, Jean-​Jacques, xviii, 58, 156, 298,
Proprium Sanctorum (Proper of the 301, 304, 309n10, 337n22
Saints), 33 rubrics, 39
Prosdocimus de Beldemandis, 316n5 Ruffa, Girolamo, 76, 318n34, 320n23
Prota-​Giurleo, Ulisse, 331n27 ruggiero, 255
Provedi, Francesco, 305 Rule of the Octave, 290–​91, 293, 335n2
408 Index

Ruta, Michele, xviii, 15–​16, 275, 278, simple scale (scala semplice). See hexachord
310n18, 329n45 Sistine Chapel, Rome, 39
slur, xiv, 9, 76, 88, 132, 135–​38, 140–​41,
Sabbatini, Luigi, 7, 60, 76, 80, 86, 92, 94–​96, 147–​53, 159, 170, 199, 234, 272, 287,
99–​100, 104–​06, 117, 119–​20, 213–​26, 324n25, 326n53
228, 231, 233, 239, 244–​45, 247–​48, 305, Smith, Anne, 322n53
318n34, 319n48, 320n16, 320n23, 329n2 soft melody (canto di bequadro or cantus
Sacchini, Antonio, 277 mollis). See hard melody
Saint Gregory. See Pope Gregory I sol/​do lead-​in, xviii, 168, 173, 176, 181, 186,
Sala, Nicola, 267, 277, 313n10, 325n44 191, 199, 212, 328n20
Salari, Francesco, 43, 265, 313n11 sol-​fa-​mi, xviii, 126, 198–​203, 206–​07,
Salimbeni, Felice (la Salimboni), 322n1 211–​12, 286
Salini, Giovanni, 246 Solano, Francisco Ignacio, 7, 47, 86, 102–​03,
Salzburg, 27, 30, 217, 292, 321n46 120, 123–​27, 196, 222, 226–​31, 250–​51,
Samber, Johann Baptist, 7, 56, 60, 120, 217, 320n21, 324n27, 328n27, 331n26, 336n15
292, 321n46, 322n54 Solesmes, Abbey of St Peter at, 38
Sanguinetti, Giorgio, xi, xvii, 1, 247, 288, solidus, xiii, 91, 112
310n18, 312n1, 312n19, 322n59, 329n1 solfège. See French (seven-​note) solfège
Santa María, Tomás de, 288 Solfèges d’Italie, 240, 247
Santoro, Fabio, 51–​52, 62, 314n28, 315n44 solfeggiamento, xviii, 241, 252–​57
Sarginson, Rebecca, xi solfeggio, xviii
Scacchi, Marco, 318n40 for amateurs, 6, 19, 28, 104, 133, 138,
scala composta. See compound scale 143, 165, 240–​41, 244, 246, 277,
scale degrees (seven), 290 298, 306, 309n2, 324n25, 327n7,
scala semplice (simple scale). See hexachord 329n31, 335n17
scales and leaps, xviii, 128, 130–​36, 139–​42, aria-​solfeggio, 4, 18, 123, 142–​43, 154, 159,
157, 165, 200, 241, 245, 249, 251, 255, 203, 239, 248–​49
257, 323n16, 324n22 cantato (sung), 14, 128–​55
Scaletta, Orazio, 60, 95, 137–​38, 255, 318n34 collections of, 1–​4, 10, 55, 133, 135, 141–​42,
Scarlatti, Alessandro, 28, 207, 244, 267, 146–​47, 149, 239–​40, 243–​44, 246–​47,
294, 306 252, 256–​57, 278, 311n2
Scarlatti, Domenico, 10, 215 definition of, xviii, 239–​48
schema (pl. schemata). See Galant schema didactic functions of, 9–​10, 37, 203, 223,
Schenker, Heinrich, 132, 328n19 231, 236, 239–​40, 246–​47, 254–​55,
Scheyrer, Bernhard, 54 267–​76, 307
Schneegaβ, Cyriacus, 99 as exercises in composition, 3, 9, 15–​17,
Schröder, Gesine, xi 19, 27, 80, 130, 146, 206, 212, 241, 245,
Schulenberg, David, 310n12 247, 251–​52, 255–​57, 259, 267–​78, 281,
Scorpione, Domenico, 45, 51, 76–​77, 297, 307–​08
256, 318n34 as first years of training, xiii, 2, 11, 17, 27,
seconda pratica, 299 37, 53–​55, 67, 77–​78, 85–​86, 92, 94,
Segovia, Spain, 63 104, 133, 140, 157, 180, 214, 239, 277,
Selle, Thomas, 301 291–​92, 307
Selvaggi, Gaspare, 325n38 fixed-​do solfeggio. See French (seven-​note)
semiotic analysis, 198 solfège
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, 156 instrumental solfeggi, 241–​43, 252, 254, 263
sgagateata (clucking like a chicken), 132 paired, slow-​fast solfeggi, 19, 257,
Shakespeare, William, 288 267, 278–​87
Sharp, Samuel, 313n28 parlato (spoken), 14, 18, 54, 81, 85–​127,
si, the seventh syllable, xviii, 5, 12, 298–​305 131, 153, 156–​57, 165, 174, 200, 251, 265
siciliano, 257 ricercar-​solfeggio, xviii, 4, 18, 248, 252–​57
Siena, Italy, 254, 305 solfeggio fugue, 18, 165 –​67, 244, 248, 257–​
sight-​reading or singing, 78–​81, 178–​80, 59, 262–​65, 334n18
Sigismondo, Giuseppe, 4, 54, 136, 138, 277 Type 1 solfeggio, xviii, 228, 245–​47, 249–​51
 Index 409

Type 2 solfeggio, xviii, 245, 248, 252–​65, Thompson, Charles, 34

288, 297, 333n7 Tinctoris, Johannes, xv, 87, 310n11
Type 3 solfeggio, xviii–​xix, 246–​49, 251, tonal types, twenty-​four, 89
266–​78, 288, 297, 334n6 Tonelli, Antonio, 241, 317n22
Type 4 solfeggio, xix, 246, 253 Tonic Sol-​fa, 303
solmization, Torrefranca, Fausto, 322n50
alternative systems of, xviii, 298–​305 Tortora, Daniele, 331n1
ambiguities and complexities in, 120–​27 Tosi, Pierfrancesco, 7, 75, 86–​87, 131–​33, 138,
antico, 58–​83 319n11, 325n37
English, 303 Traetta, Tommaso, 120, 129, 322n49
Galant, moderno, or transposable, 85–​127 trait of vocalization (tratto), xviii, 9, 14–​15,
sonic analog, 328n14 125, 129, 133, 135, 138–​44, 147–​55, 164,
soprano cadence (fa-​mi-​fa). See cadence 169, 171–​75, 180–​81, 184, 188, 191, 195,
Soriano, Francesco, 46 199, 203, 206–​07, 222, 234, 244, 268,
sonata, 4, 6, 10, 76, 170, 192, 211, 215, 270–​72, 280, 297, 307, 323n7, 326n53,
241–​43, 297 326n54, 328n29, 329n30, 329n31,
Spanish Empire, 317n17 329n37, 335n17
Spataro, Giovanni, 299, 333n13 transmutation, xviii, 94, 113, 121
Speer, Daniel, 336n10 Tridentine reforms, 33, 38, 46, 50, 313n2
Speranza, Alessandro, 276–​77 tritone (mi contra fa), xvii, 49, 57, 61–​65,
Spitzer, Michael, 327n1 70, 74, 171, 174, 188, 249, 291, 316n7,
sprezzatura, 266 316n8, 317n15
square notation xiii, 10, 37, 46–​53, 58–​59, Tritto, Giacomo, 59–​74, 77, 317n15, 317n25,
80, 250 317n26, 320n26
stile antico, 9, 32, 41–​43, 168, 310n11, 314n15 type 1 solfeggio, type 2 solfeggio, etc. See
Strozzi, Gregorio, 257, 326n52 solfeggio
St Stephens Cathedral, Vienna, 25–​29, 39, 54
strascino (ornament), 138, 325n37 Ugolino of Orvieto, 67, 289
subfinal, 317n24 Uhlich, Johann, 336n10
subsemitone, 65, 217 unchanging syllables, two, 102–​03
Sullo, Paolo, xi, 248, 259, 277, 332n25, 332n28, Ureña, Pedro de, 304
334n20, 334n7, 334n10, 334n13 Ursprung, Otto, 312n3, 314n15, 315n37
suspension, 167, 204, 247, 262, 333n1 Ut Queant Laxis (hymn), 87, 249, 337n19
Sutcliffe, W. Dean, 215
Sweertius, Franciscus, 337n20 Valdrighi, Luigi Francesco, 329n1
Symons, James, 280 Valente, Saverio, 65, 120, 134–​38, 142–​43,
syncopation, 122, 136, 141, 142, 174, 183–​84, 148–​49, 158, 200, 240, 244, 267, 317n20,
202–​04, 206, 247, 262 320n23, 322n49, 324n25
Valentini, Marco, 313n10
tablature, 217, 293 Valerio, Carlo, 324n22
tactus, 46–​48, 52–​53, 76, 310n11 Vallombrosans, Benedictine Order of, 55
Tartini, Giuseppe, 6–​7, 72, 241–​42 Vallotti, Francesco Antonio, 213
Tee, Xin Mei, xi Van Blanckenburg, Quirinus Gerbrandz, 294,
tempo, 47, 50–​52, 75–​76, 136, 139, 151, 154, 304, 335n11
233, 251, 315n44 Vanneus, Stephanus, 322n54
tenor (fixed melody), xvii, 41–​45, 203, 257 van Tour, Peter, xi, 255, 276–​77, 309n1,
tenor cadence. See cadence 310n16, 311n7, 313n10, 313n11, 322n55,
terminatio, 45, 68, 70 329n43, 329n46, 334n20, 334n4, 348,
Teschner, Gustav Wilhelm, 323n9 351, 353, 356, 358
tessitura (phrase structure or “weave”), xviii, Veltman, Joshua Joel, 314n28, 315n34
15–​16, 310n18 Venice,
Tettamanzi, Fabricio, 60, 65, 249–​51, musical life of, 31–​36, 39, 98, 313n25
316n8, 317n18 ospedali (hostels/​conservatories),
Tevo, Zaccaria, 87, 304, 318n32, 319n11 32, 35, 77
410 Index

Veracini, Francesco Maria, 132, 318n32, Walther, Johann Gottfried, 58

324n21, 337n22 weave (phrase construction). See tessitura
verset (versetto), xiii, 39, 50, 326n51 Webbe, Samuel (the Elder), 315n38
Vial, Stephanie, 327n1, 327n7, 328n24 Webster, James, 267
vihuela, 335n2 Wegman, Rob C., 19
villancico, 317n17 Werckmeister, Andreas, 98, 218, 293
Villeneuve de Listonay, Daniel Jost, Wesley, Samuel, 338n36
331n3, 312n13 whole tone, 74, 94, 101, 181, 183, 186, 257, 302
Vintimille de Luc, Wiering, Franz, 322n54
Charles-​Gaspard-​Guillaume, 47 Winckley, Mark, xi
Vivaldi, Antonio, 31, 40 Wright, Edward, 313n28
Viviani, Giovanni Buonaventura, 253 wrong fa, (fa-​mi\fa), xix, 10, 236
vocalise (n. vocalizzo), xix, 13, 240–​44, 306 Wyn Jones, David, 311n6, 313n5
vocalize (v.), xiii–​xiv, 5, 14–​15, 116, 119, 125,
128–​29, 131, 135–​37, 139–​41, 143–​47, Zacconi, Lodovico, 318n40, 337n21
153–​54, 158–​59, 162, 164–​65, 167–​68, Zanetti, Roberto, 334n2
176, 181, 183, 186–​88, 191, 193, 199, Zarlino, Gioseffo, 255–​56, 313n11
202–​03, 206, 210, 212, 240, 262, 268, 307, Zbikowski, Lawrence, 327n14
319n6, 326n47, 329n31, 338n36 Ziani, Marc’ Antonio, 25
vowels, xiii–​xiv, xix, 5, 7, 14, 56, 116, 119, Zingarelli, Niccolò, 15–​16, 135, 140–​41, 146,
123, 129, 131–​33, 141, 145, 239–​41, 243, 213–​14, 217, 233, 243–​44, 248, 259–​62,
299–​301, 338n36 267, 275–​78, 297, 305, 325n43, 326n47,
333n4, 334n18, 336n16, 338n38
Wade, John Francis, 50 Zoilo, Annibale, 46
Waelrant, Hubert, 299, 304, 337n20 Zon, Bennett, 37, 46–​48, 312n4, 314n33
Wagner, Richard, 306 Zondolari, Marquis Fulvio Chigo, 305