Learning Leo the Historical Way, Without a Score: Eighteenth-Century Solfeggio in Contemporary Cello Practice

Abstract
The past decade has witnessed groundbreaking insights into music practice in 18th-century Europe. Research into solfeggio, partimento, and counterpoint has shed new light on the ways that performers in the past also composed, and how improvisation was integral to practice. Music apprentices had to undergo several years of singing hexachordal 'solfeggio' before they were allowed near an instrument. In modern 'classical' music culture, by contrast, improvisation and composition are peripheral at best.

In this presentation, cellist Elinor Frey (McGill, Accademia de’ Dissonanti) and musicologist Nicholas Baragwanath (Nottingham Uni) ask how these findings might be applied in practice by a professional modern performer. They discuss their collaborative project to develop a creative and historically-informed way to learn and perform Galant-style European music. By working together on a cello concerto by Neapolitan maestro Leonardo Leo (1694-1744), without a score, they seek to show modern performers how to experience a concerto (or sonata or solo) not as a fixed page of instructions but as a recipe for improvisation, in which they may ‘speak’ in their own musical voice, or compose their own works as a vehicle for their careers.

Singing and playing standard melodic formulas through the logic of hexachordal solfeggio, combined with exploring correlating harmonies and basses, has the potential to give today’s musicians a deep and intuitive sense of style, form, and balance, and shows how it was (and therefore still is) possible to learn and perform music by creating it on the spot.

Biographies

Dr Elinor Frey
Born in Seattle and living in Montréal, Elinor Frey is a leading American-Canadian cellist, viola da gambist, and researcher. Her albums on the Belgian label Passacaille and Canadian label Analekta – many of which are world premiere recordings – include Giuseppe Clemente Dall’Abaco Cello Sonatas, winner of a Diapason d’Or, and Early Italian Cello Concertos, winner of the 2023 JUNO Award for Classical Album of the Year (small ensemble). Her critical editions of Dall’Abaco’s cello music is published in collaboration with Walhall Editions.

Elinor is the artistic director of Accademia de’ Dissonanti, an organization for performance and research. She has performed throughout the Americas and in Europe in recital and with numerous chamber ensembles and orchestras (Rosa Barocca, Constantinople, Les idées heureuses, Il Gardellino, Tafelmusik, Pacific Baroque Orchestra, etc.). As a guest leader, conducting Galant and early-Classical ensemble repertoire from the cello, she has worked with London Symphonia (Ontario), Kingston Baroque Consort, Dorian Baroque, Siren Baroque, and others. Elinor has recently performed concertos with Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Mercury Chamber Orchestra (Houston), and the Telemann Suite for viola da gamba and orchestra with Symphony Nova Scotia.

Recipient of dozens of grants and prizes supporting performance and research, including the US-Italy Fulbright Fellowship (studying with Paolo Beschi in Como, Italy) and a recent research residency at the Orpheus Institute in Ghent, Elinor holds degrees from McGill, Mannes, and Juilliard. She teaches Baroque cello and performance practice at McGill University and the Université de Montréal and is a Visiting Fellow in Music (2020–2023) at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University. Frey was awarded Québec’s Opus Prize for “Performer of the Year” in 2021.

Professor Nicholas Baragwanath
Nicholas Baragwanath is a pianist and scholar of music history and theory. His research focuses on how musicians in the past learned skills in improvisation and composition. He has published books on The Italian Traditions and Puccini (2011), The Solfeggio Tradition (2020), and The Ocean of Sopranos: Luigi Marchesi (2024), as well as a special edition of the journal Music Theory and Analysis (2024) devoted to his research. He won the Jack Westrup Prize in 2006 for his work on critical theory and the Marjorie Emerson Prize in 2014 for an essay on Mozart. He is Professor of Music at the University of Nottingham.