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Michael Uy (Music Major)
“The Baroque Viola and Improvisational Style”
Sponsor: Professor Davitt Moroney, Music
Project Description
The harmonic and practical foundations for the performance of Western Classical music were laid during the Baroque period (c.1600–c.1750). However, little is known about how viola players improvised their parts when playing music written only for a trio, such as two violins and a cello. The main hypothesis is that these musicians were improvising harmonies derived from figures written by the composer above the bass line. Michael will first spend his summer in intensive training on the Baroque viola, in addition to mastering the rules and principles of figured bass. He will then draw on historical treatises written by musicians, as well as material in UC Berkeley’s recently ‘re-found’ and unanalyzed “Tartini collection” of unpublished Italian music manuscripts to construct a better understanding of how the instrument adapted to orchestral settings when there was no specific written viola part.
Scholar's Photo
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Baroque viola Sébastien had viewed,
his player Michael in research imbued.
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Scholar's Journal
On one of my email correspondences with my mentor, Professor Davitt Moroney, he explained to me that doing research is like searching through a candy store with all of the lights turned off. In the beginning you’re stumbling around, hitting this stand and that. Your feet shuffle slowly across the floor. You don’t know what kind of candy is there or if it’s even worth finding, but the goal is to develop your own sense of intellectual smell. Eventually you begin to rely on that and less on your sense of sight.
I don’t think he could have explained it better. I spent most of my summer at the Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library on UC Berkeley campus. The library was only recently built and had a large collection of works, both written and composed, that were helpful to my project. The first few weeks I was tracking down all the resources I could find on the origins of the viola and possibly how it may have been used from the beginning. Unfortunately I came to the quick realization that this was not as easy as it is to google “Origins of the Viola” on the internet. It took me awhile to sort through the jungle of 1) viola da gamba versus viola da braccio and 2) diminutives and abbreviations of “violin and viola” in both Italian and French.
Along my journey some of my finds were not based on diligent researching but on mere chance. For example, an important article about “Agostino Agazzari’s improvising orchestra” was found one day when I was looking for a completely separate article about the tenor violin through JSTOR, an article database. I was haphazardly clicking the links of “author” and “journal,” when I came across the Agazzari article. No amount of time meticulously editing my search entries or looking up references could have led me to this seemingly misplaced article. I was fumbling in the dark and came across a piece of candy worth eating. Indeed I had found other such candies when I was searching through books and recalling microfilms from the North Regional Library Facility (NRLF), but it was the way I found this one in particular that made it all the sweeter and made me more excited about the research I was doing.
Fortunately for my own sanity, my project had both performance and academic aspects. If I spent too much time in the library poring over books and microfilms, then I had an outlet of taking a break and practicing Sebastién, my newly-christened baroque viola, in one of the practice rooms in Morrison, a mere pace or two from Hargrove. Likewise, once my arms grew tired from playing, or my mind tired from trying to improvise off of bass lines (which usually happened first), then I could head back to the library.
I do feel the summer was extremely rewarding and despite the setbacks of unexpectedly having to go home for my grandmother’s funeral and having jaw surgery, I was able to get a lot of work done. This doesn’t mean the coming fall semester will be any easier. I’m sure there is further tripping and stumbling in the darkness coming my way.
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