Solfèges d'Italie. Vocal exercises of the Bel Canto by Ruth Kisch-ArndtReview by: Helen S. BoatwrightNotes, Second Series, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Sep., 1957), pp. 614-615Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/893732 .

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10 arie italiane del sei e settecento per canto e pianoforte. Realizzazione di Vittorio Negri Bryks. New York: G. Ricordi, 1955. [35 p., $1.50]

Ten arias are hardly to be cried up for a bounteous offering when one considers the inexhaustible mine of Italian vocal music of the Baroque era still untouched by publishers. Attention should be called to this slender volume, however, be- cause its material is both excellent in quality and mostly unavailable in pre- vious anthologies and performing editions -much, indeed, unavailable in any other publication.

The editor has omitted identification of the larger works from which the arias are excerpts, information that often con- tributes to proper understanding and per- formance and to enjoyment. Instead of a uniform distribution throughout the sei- and settecento there proves to be a decided center of gravity in the period ca. 1690-1739, the title notwithstanding. Of the earlier Baroque only Caccini and Monteverdi are present, each with a well- known excerpt, 1601 and 1608, respec- tively. The remainder is a group of arias, mostly da capo, by G. B. Bassani, A. Scarlatti (the splendidly squillante "Armati" from La Didone delirante, 1696), Aldrovandini (from the cantata da camera Chi mnai creduto havria), Gasparini (an impressive furia, possibly from one of his 50 operas, all as yet un- studied), Albinoni (48 operas, equally unstudied), Antonio Bononcini, Pergo- lesi ("Per queste amare lacrime" from his earliest opera seria, Salustia, 1731), and Francesco Maria Veracinl (a canzonetta from a collection published in 1739).

Realizations of thoroughbass and re- ductions of orchestral accompaniments are excellent. Objection must be taken only to the disfigurement (seen also in Floridia's anthology) of the Monteverdi excerpt: the passage given here is only a fragment of the unified and musically logical structure (ABCB) that closes 11 Rallo delle Ingrate, and the curtailment gives it the entirely misleading appear- ance of a free arioso. Also the Bononcini aria looks suspect: can it possibly be complete as given here?

EDwiN HANLEY

Ruth Kisch-Arndt: Solfeges d'Italie. Vocal exercises of the Bel Canto. New York: McGinnis & Marx, 1956. [44 p., $5.00]

In 1786, Levesque and Le Beche pub. lished under the title Solftges dItadie a compilation of vocal exercises used for the training of the pages of the chapel of Louis XV. Ruth Kisch-Arndt has re- printed here twenty-eight of these exer- cises by Levesque and Le Beche, Durante, Hasse, Leo, Mazzoni, and A. Scarlatti, and has written technical and historical introductions.

Miss Kisch-Arndt's technical introduc- tion is not specifically oonnected to the historical bel canto style shown in the exercises. It is, she says, "one method of teaching beautiful singing which the author has employed successfully for many years." This part of the book (which occupies only seven double pages) is practical and non-controversial advice from the voice studio, with the exception of one statement in the section on tone placement. Here Miss Kisch-Arndt says that "the front part of the palate is hard and bony, and therefore more suited to good resonance, while the soft palate is fleshy, so that a tone concentrated in this section sounds muffled as in a heavily draped room." There are many teachers anid singers who could disagree violently with this sort of voice placement; they feel that a tone concentrated on the hard palate, while resonant, is of inferior quality. However, neither Miss Kisch- Arndt's point of view nor any other could receive an adequate exposition in the space given here to vocal methods, so both possible harm and possible good from this part of the book are at a mini- mum.

The historical introduction intends to give an acoount of the development of bel canto, but it is very badly propor- tioned, giving three of its six pages of text and a full-page plate to Caccini and Le Nuove Musiche. This early treatise obviously has almost nothing to do with the flourishing vocalism of the Baroque period that we usually associate with the term bel canto, and which is so richly illustrated in the exercises of Solfe ges d'Itarie.

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The plates. in the historical section give the book a nice appearance,. and other useful gestures are a glossary of about thirty Italian terms with French and 1nglish equivalents, and. short biQ- graphical sketches of the composers. The value of the book, nevertheless, should lie mainly in the exercises. Sixteen of them are beautiful, wide melodic lines with figured bass accompaniments, but the realizations are student-like, and, besides errors of voice-leading and poorly arranged textures, .there are. a good many mistakes in accidentals. The only advan-

tage of the realizations is that even a voice teacher with a limited keyboard ability could play them.. Curiously, too, for a book which has historical and tech- nical discussions, there is no mention of the problem of performing the ornaments in the exercises. Since the exercises are the main reason.one might want to have this book, it is too had that they are realized so poorly, and that the other material is under the same cover, placing a higher price on the forty-four pages of music than might otherwise have been the case. HELEN S. BOATWRIGHT

CHAMBER MUSIC

Nicolo Paganini: Centone di Sonate (Sechs Sonaten) fur Violine und Gitarre. Hrsg. von Erwin Schwarz- Reiflingen, Nr. 3. (Peters Ed., No. ZM119.) Frankfurt am Main: Wil- helm Zimmerman; U. S. A.: C. F. Peters, New York, 1955. [Parts, $3.50] Filippo Gragnani: Sonate Nr. 1, Op. 8, fur Violine und Gitarre. [Parts, $1.50]; Mauro Giuliani: Grosse So- nate fuir Violine und Gitarre, Op. 25. [Parts, $1.50]; Leonhard de Call: Trio, Op. 134, fur Fl6te (Violine), Bratsch,, und Gitarre. [Parts, $1.50]; Luigi Boccherini: Erstes Quintett, in D-dur, fur zwei Violinen, Bratsche, Cello, und Gitarre. [Parts, $2.00] (Die Gitarre in der Haus- und Kammermusik, Ausgabe von Meister- werken der klassischen Gitarrezeit, von Heinrich Albert, Nos. 4, 7, 10, 17.) Frankfurt am Main: Wilhelm Zimmermann; U. S. A.: C. F. Peters, New York, [n. d.].

Historically superseded instruments are fated to be stripped of their social chic and thrust down to the world of popular usage and of musical childhood. Today the guitar, harpsichord, viol, and recorder, all with low Dun & Bradstreet ratings, suffer contempt from both professional and amateur practitioners of "acceptable" instruments and are rarely allowed to participate in music making with them. Zinunermann's guitar chamber music series is one of several straws in the wind indicating that a healthier regard

for plectral instruments and their music is developing. This trend goes hand in hand with the revival of the harpsichord and recorders, and is part of the current eclectic interest in every type of music.

There is, however, some difference in the guitar revival that should be of con- cern. Here, where there seems to be a paucity of literature, two trends become discernible. First there is the breeding of arrangements (often "derangments") in great quantity. While this is hardly in- herently vicious, as things work out, the bulk of such products are usually lack- ing in taste or good sense. More alarming is the trend to latch on to whatever original material can be found (even if it is from the barrel's bottom) in the delusion that it is the finest and greatest merely because original. Anyone with ex- perience in the recorder world knows how this compensatory mechanism oper- ates. Along with their enthusiasm, par- tisans of the guitar need to hew to standards. Incidentally there is no real lack of material, if the lute and vihuela repertoire are considered and if Baroque chamber music is furnished with well- realized continuo parts for guitar.

These strictures apply to the works under review except for the Boccherini Quintet, a delightful and very well-made piece, better known in its version for string quintet with two cellos. It should be a delight for guitarists to play, pro- vided they can find cellists willing to double on castanets for some measures of the fiery Fandango which Boccherini

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