Haydn, Solfeggio, and the Art of Melody: A New Approach to the Classical Style

Solfeggi, or studies in melody, were central to the training of European musicians c.1670-1850. The method originated in Italian conservatoires for disadvantaged children, especially at Naples and Bologna. The presence of large ms. collections in European archives (almost 300 in Italy alone) testifies to the importance of this kind of exercise for composition and performance in the 18th and 19th centuries, including for the 'Classical Style' of Haydn and Mozart, which continues to underpin modern notions of art-music as an academic discipline and creative industry.
Despite its historical significance and its potential to enliven current debates, the tradition has featured fleetingly, if at all, in modern scholarship. The reasons for this are complex, but can be explained in part by a prevailing Germanocentric bias and a continuing reliance on 19th-century theories.
In mapping out a significant new direction for musicology, this project challenges ingrained attitudes founded on a dominant national(ist) meta-narrative, framed in 19th-century Germany. It demonstrates the importance of music as a mechanism of transnational cultural exchange, which in many ways transcends linguistic barriers. It explores a vanished network of cultural relations - a shared understanding of melody - that once brought together the poorest and richest on (almost) equal terms. Although the conservatoires that pioneered solfeggi produced musicians for the super-rich, to provide entertainment at courts and chapels, they were at the same time charitable institutions that offered vocational training for the poor and dispossessed. Many great musicians of the western tradition (including Haydn) rose to exalted status from humble backgrounds, primarily through the spread of these training methods.
This Fellowship will produce the first monograph on the solfeggio tradition, supported by a free online database, public engagement and networking activities. It will reconstruct a forgotten art of melody, drawing on primary source material not available elsewhere, to provide scholars with a framework for further studies and performers, teachers, and learners with new insights (by e.g. informing the development of curricula and music education software, facilitating collaboration through an international network, offering workshops at schools and conservatoires, preparing an international conference and exhibition, attracting PhD students, and mentoring a research assistant).
To focus its scope, the study investigates Haydn's operas and string quartets in light of the teachings of Neapolitan maestro Nicola Porpora, from whom he claimed to have learned 'the true fundamentals of composition'. This involves the construction of a new theory, which inverts the conventional modern understanding of western 'common practice' music by identifying the main compositional determinant not in the bass, as bearer of harmony, but in the melody, as bearer of form (or discourse). Solfeggi taught melodic writing and 'conduct', or what would now be called musical form.
The solfeggio tradition embodies the meritocratic spirit of the Enlightenment. It testifies to a shared European heritage of melody as a cultural practice (or a kind of language) that crossed national boundaries. Meaningful parallels can be drawn with contemporary popular music culture, which can similarly unite people across linguistic and social barriers. Haydn learned his craft busking on the streets and backing singers. His music was founded on the elaboration of simple well-known formulas, like modern pop music. Its aim was to entertain.
With appropriate leadership, this seminal study of the solfeggio tradition will contribute to an increased understanding of inter-cultural relations in terms of the influence of a transnational diaspora (primarily of Italian musicians, transmitting their practices across Europe through oral teachings) and the power of music as a common language of popular culture.

The publication of the first authoritative monograph on the solfeggio tradition and its relevance to Haydn and the Classical Style, written in a style accessible to non-specialists, will have a considerable and sustained international impact amongst all those with an interest in gaining fresh insights into classical musical in general, and 18th-century music and opera in particular. The research puts forward new insights into one of the most internationally successful composers in European history, and encompasses a substantial body of evidence to support new approaches to the study and performance of a vast repertoire of opera and instrumental music (cf. Pathways). This enormous breadth of exposure - which embraces concert-goers, opera-goers, CD and DVD purchasers, radio listeners, TV viewers and internet users, in addition to performing musicians of all levels of attainment, from children and amateurs up to world-class professionals - ensures that the research will reach a wide and diverse audience. Non-academic beneficiaries include the following:

(1) Professional performing musicians will find much of interest in my research, especially those who engage with historical practice. It will be of use in particular to singers, string players, conductors, and directors working for stage, concert hall, and radio - not just in terms of Haydn's music, but opera and 18th-century music in general. Solfeggi provide a key to the expressive embellishment of melody and to perceptions of its coherence as a mode of discourse or 'conduct' (cf. Pathway 1).

(2) Straightforward practical summaries of the research, together with material on the free online database and workshops in schools, will enable music teachers at primary and secondary levels to offer their pupils the opportunity to experience the same methods of musical training that were taught to children in the 18th and 19th centuries. These methods were so effective and easily grasped that children at the age of twelve or thirteen would commonly be able to improvise and compose fugues, sonatas, and other complex pieces to a near-professional standard (cf. Pathway 2).

(3) The project will provide a resource for critics, journalists, and other freelance writers working in the fields of music and opera criticism, who will be able to draw on it for occasional pieces and the preparation of programme notes, CD and DVD liner notes and articles for (e.g.) opera house or concert programme books - an area in which many academic musicologists are also highly active (cf. Pathway 3).

(4) The project will contain numerous details of previously unpublished primary source materials of interest to Arts festival and events programme-planners, including exhibition organizers, and will suggest avenues of exploration for all those concerned with mounting stage and concert performances of Haydn, opera, and 18th-century music in general. These resources will also be of use to those engaged in broader issues of cultural history during the Enlightenment (cf. Pathway 4).

(5) All members of the public with an interest in classical music and related cultural issues, who may include concert-goers, opera-goers, CD and DVD purchasers, radio listeners, TV viewers, and internet users. Knowledge of the solfeggio tradition encourages new ways of hearing and responding to classical music, in terms of the elaboration of standard patterns and forms, and the importance of a coherent and diverting sense of discourse (cf. Pathway 5).