CHAMBER MUSIC
2014/2015
PREREQUISITE: Admission requires musical skills and a real vocal or instrumental mastery
equivalent to a 5th level of a music conservatory. Selection takes place at the end of January, on a
date to be announced. Students should bring a prepared piece of their choice to this audition.
TEACHER: Maria Manuela Toscano
COURSE UNIT AIMS. (Purpose of the course using broad, general terms)
a) To know how to create an appropriate performance of a musical work in aesthetic, rhetorical,
expressive, stylistic and technical terms.
b) To acquire analytical skills, to develop a musical sensitivity and a capacity to engage
autonomously with the musical world of the piece.
c) To know how to combine the individual performance within the chamber ensemble, grasping
the specificity of the work, its inner balance and the dynamics of reciprocal interaction.
d) To master visual and gestural communication with the other members of the ensemble.
e) Awareness of the musical and expressive dynamics of language in vocal music, understanding
how decisions about word modulating, pronunciation, articulation, energy and tempo affect
interpretation.
COURSE UNIT CONTENT. (Main topics covered in the course)
a) Performing previously prepared vocal and/or instrumental pieces. Repertoire from the 16th to
the 21st century.
b) Discussing the aesthetics, style, atmosphere, character of the pieces performed.
c) Embodiment of performing gesture as source of musical meaning. Focusing on different kinds of
silence, breath and propulsion in musical phrasing, sonority, plasticity, attack and energy.
d) Coaching rhetorical and temporal organization of the performance, enhancing both the
beginning and end of the
piece, phrase transitions, building of climax, pausing and silences.
e) Working the semantic, phonetic, musical and expressive potential of languages involved in vocal
music, as well as its possible interplay with the instrumental tissue.
TEACHING AND LEARNING METHODS
a) Gestural expression and movement in space directed towards the musical ideal, the rhythmical
energy and plasticity of musical phrases that present persistent performing difficulties.
b) Technical problems: training in slow motion always aimed at musical and expressive goals;
c) Linking interpretative questions to comparable situations in other musical works.
WEEKLY HOURS
4
ASSESSMENT
Individual assessment in a performance by the chamber group at the end of the semester.
Continuous assessment, using the following criteria: personal commitment, capacity to work and
positive development in prior preparation of tasks set, quickness to respond and ability to interact
musically and humanly in a group.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BERNAC, Pierre, The Interpretation of French Song, London,Norton & Company, 1976.
DONINGTON, Robert, The Interpretation of Early Music, London, Faber Ed., 1990.
FASSINA, Jean, Lettre à un jeune pianiste, Paris, Fayard, 2000.
HERR, Sophie, Geste de la voix et théâtre du corps, Paris, L Harmattan, 2009
TRANCHEFORT, François-René, Guide de la musique de chambre, Paris, Fayard, 1989.