The Baroque Violin & Viola: A Fifty-Lesson Course Volume I

Contents

• Foreword
• Introductory quotes
• Questions and Answers
• Part One
• The Basics
• Lesson One. Prelude
• Choosing a Violin - Choosing a Bow - Strings - Pitch.
• Lesson Two. Holding the violin
• How to hold the Baroque violin: a beginner's guide.
• Lesson Three. The Bow, Creator of Sound
• Holding the Bow.
• Lesson Four. First Sounds: Celebrating our Vocal Heritage
• Searching for our Vocal Roots - Exploring the Rhythm of words - Postscript.
• Lesson Five. Copying the Human Voice: Sweelinck's Garrulous Little Swallow
• Vowels - Dipthongs - Consonants - Double Consonants - Bowings - Postscript.
• Lesson Six. Five Exercises to Help Accustom You to 'Chinless' Playing
• Recalling These Exercises in a Performance Situation - Technical Factors - Emotional Factors - Nerves.
• Lesson Seven. More Basic Concepts and Techniques. 'A Division on a Ground' by Mr Faronell, from 'The Division Violin,' London, 1684
• The Importance of the Bass Line - Tempo and Rhythm - The Hierarchies and the Bow Impulses - Engramelle - Good Notes and Bad Notes - Varying the Articulation.
• Lesson Eight. Learning to Feel. Developing a heightened awareness of the Emotional Power of Sound and the Intervals
• Emotional Information: What Sound Tells Us - How to Prepare: Manipulating Our Emotions.
• Lesson Nine. The Inner Life of Sound: 'Messa di voce'
• Lesson Ten. Applying the Messa di voce. Arcangelo Corelli: Adagio from Sonata Opus V No 3
• Applying the 'Messa di voce' - Dissonances and Consonances - On Trills - In Praise of the Second Position - Hemiolas: To be Heard as Well as Seen? - A Note on Chromatic Fingering - Sound and Expression - Summary
• Lesson Eleven: Temperament and 'Historical' Intonation: an Outline
• How Do We Learn 'Pure' Intonation? - Leopold Mozart on Overtones - Peter Prelleur's Fingerboard.
• Lesson Twelve. Scale Exercises and Etudes for Shifting and Intonation
• Part One: Towards a Chinless Scale Book
• The Four Springs - Techniques of Displacement - Shifting and Expression.
• Part Two: Fifteen Exercises for the Methodical Study of Pure Intonation. Applying Pure Intonation to Geminiani's Scale Studies from 'The Art of Playing the Violin (1751)
• Lesson Thirteen. Bringing Fast Notes to Life: the Inequality of the Equal. Albinoni. Sonata Op V1 No 2, Allegro
• How to Play Equal Notes in a Flexible and Subtle Way - The Three Flexibilities - Rhythmic flexibility - Dynamic flexibility - Flexibility of articulation - Adding Slurs: a Misdemeanour? - Sequences.
• Lesson Fourteen. Learning to Feel Comfortable on Gut Strings. I) The Bow
• Lesson Fifteen. Learning to Feel Comfortable on Gut Strings. II) The Left Hand
• Slaves of our Inner Voice: the Fingers.
• Part Two
• Re-examining the Familiar: Sonatas by Vivaldi and Corelli
• Lesson Sixteen. The Starting-point of Interpretation: Learning to Observe
• Arcangelo Corelli: Sonata Op V no VII
• Interpretation: a Question of Taste? - Editions or Facsimiles? - Instrumentation in Corelli's Opus V Sonatas - Means of Expression - Choosing a Convincing Tempo - Preludio - Afterthought: What Happens Within.
• Lesson Seventeen. Corelli. Sonata Op V No VII. Corrente - Sarabanda - Giga
• Lesson Eighteen. Transforming musical decisions into sound
• Lesson Nineteen. In the Footsteps of Corelli. Antonio Vivaldi: Sonata Op 2 No 1
• Preludio.
• Gesture - Shifting: How, When and Whither? - Open Strings: Use or Misuse- Notes Essential and Notes Ornamental
• Lesson Twenty. In the Footsteps of Corelli. Antonio Vivaldi: Sonata Op 2 No 1
• Giga, Sarabanda Largo, Corrente.
• Emotional Information in Rhythm - Learning to Read Vivaldi's Sonata in the Original Notation
• Lesson Twenty-One. Nurturing Spontaneity: Ornamentation, Module One
• Ornamentation: Diversion or Essence? - Overcoming Our Fear of Playing the Unwritten - Ornamentation and National Styles - Composed Ornamentation - First Steps in Ornamenting: Corelli's Sarabanda - Ornamenting the Second Half of the Sarabanda - Corelli's S
• Lesson Twenty-Two. Straight from the Heart: the Great Vibrato Debate
• Lesson Twenty-Three. Rhetoric: the Power to Persuade
• The Origins of Rhetoric - Rhetoric and Music - The Musician as Orator - Rhetorical Playing Versus Pure Instrumentalism - Some Rhetorical Figures: Dynamics, Parenthesis, Repetition, Direction, Punctuation and Intonation - Tonality - Dissonance - Tessitura
• Notes to Lessons
• Bibliography
• Index
• Acknowledgements