[MUSIC PLAYING]

-Welcome to this week's expert insight segment of the module.

Today we'll be speaking with Brian Zeger,
the artistic director of
the Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts
here at The Juilliard School and a frequent collaborator
with internationally renowned musicians.
We are going to speak about how the Italian language
in vocal style influenced Viennese composers
of the Classical era.
We'll also have the pleasure of hearing
Dominik Belavy, a senior undergraduate student here
at The Juilliard School.
He is an operatic baritone from Detroit, Michigan.
Enjoy.
-So thank you for being here with us, Brian.
We've been talking about articulation and phrasing
in the Classical era.
And I know today you're here to talk
to us a little bit about how the Italian language can impact
our understanding of articulation and phrasing
in this Classical period.
-That's right.
You know, when I was a piano student growing up,
I fell in love with the piano works of Haydn and Mozart
and Beethoven and then got to love their symphonies
and chamber music.
And at the same time, I was really interested
in Italian opera.
But it never occurred to me until much later
that those two worlds are really connected.
I began to realize that there are things
about the Italian language that influenced the way Viennese
composers, like Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, set their music.
And learning about the vocal music
gave me a kind of a different point of view
on the instrumental music.
-What is it about the Italian language
that really impacts that?
-Well many Italian words, multi-syllabic words,
have their accent on the next-to-last syllable and then
release or weaker syllable for the last syllable.
So, in other words, a four-syllable word
like amoroso, which means amorous,
you hear the third syllable, amoroso.
The "ro" is very long.
And the "so" is short and unaccented.
-Kind of like Don Giovanni.
-Exactly.
Or gelato.
Or linguini.
Those are three-syllable words, but still the same idea
that the penultimate syllable, the one right before the last,
is the one that gets the stress.
But I think what was kind of a revelation to me when
I started to really look at this music is the fact that shaping
of the Italian language has so much to do with the way
that musical phrases began to be shaped.
And I'd like to show you an example from Mozart's
<i>The Marriage of Figaro</i>.
And I have with me a very gifted baritone
is a Juilliard undergraduate, Dominik Belavy,
who is going to sing just a few phrases from Figaro's first act
aria from Mozart's <i>The Marriage of Figaro</i>.
[MUSIC - MOZART, <i>THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO</i>]
So, Michael, you notice the way in amoroso again,
there's that stress on the next to last syllable
and then a sense of release.
So the way Mozart set it, amoroso, it's
natural for the last syllable to be softer in dynamic and also
a little bit shorter in time.
I always think there's a kind of a parallel
to like an expression if I was singing in English, I am going.
If someone sang, going [UNSTRESSED], it would sound really square.
-It doesn't make any sense.
-It would sound wrong, exactly.
And I think that sense of a stress and a release,
particularly when a stress hits a strong beat becomes
a vital part of 18th century phrasing.
-Might you have any examples that you could play for us
that would be from the solo piano literature?
-Well I do.
In fact, I looked at the repertoire for this course.
And the Clementi Op. 36 No. 5 Sonata, the G major,
is a much quicker example of the same kind of thing.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So you notice
[PIANO PLAYING]
There is one
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Again we could think amoroso or I am going.
It would be really artificial if you heard
[MUSIC PLAYING]
It just doesn't breathe in the same way.
So I think there's a sense with that stress release
that you could lean on the strong beat
and then release off the weak beat.
And it immediately becomes graceful.
It has a sense of wit about it.
And to me, it sounds also more like speech in a way.
-And it sounds beautiful the way you do it, that's for sure.
-Well I really think it's built into the music.
Because the thing to remember is that,
for instance, Haydn and Mozart between them
composed over 20 operas in Italian,
as well as many other vocal works.
So they were really working in Italian all the time.
And I think that sense of fluency, of phrasing, of stress
just became baked into the way that they looked
at articulation and phrasing.
-Great, great.
Do you have any other examples?
-Well I do.
And I'd like to talk about appoggiaturas.
So appoggiatura means, comes from the Italian verb appoggiare,
which means to lean.
So this sense, for particularly for an appoggiatura,
is that you're leaning on a dissonant note.
-And even the word, appoggiatura.
-Yeah, exactly.
That's got the exact same phrasing.
But I'm going to play a little Beethoven example for you
from the slow movement of the Op. 22, the B-flat sonata.
Let me play it first.
Then we'll talk about it.
OK.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So here there are two prominent appoggiaturas.
they're both dissonant notes.
Notes which don't belong in that harmony.
In other words, [MUSIC PLAYING] and you
can hear, just as with amoroso or going, you have
to stress and then release.
You just couldn't possibly [MUSIC PLAYING] grow on that one.
It wouldn't make sense.
And similarly, later the example [PIANO PLAYING]
you feel the stress and then that release.
There's a natural diminuendo.
-And can I just observe what you're doing technically
at the piano as well.
You're dropping your weight on that F-sharp,
that last one that you did.
And in order to have that two-note slur,
you're coming up with your wrist,
which is how to create that very natural sound at the piano.
-And for me, it also just creates a kind of phrasing off.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Now I'm ready for a new phrase.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
It just creates a sense of diction for the whole line.
There's a sense in which the whole line has the sense,
just like a verbal phrase, it's got a climax and then a fall.
So for me, it just creates a really natural approach
to phrasing, which comes from the Italian language.
You don't even need to know that really.
I think you can also just feel it
in the harmonic texture of the music.
-Brian, that was absolutely fantastic.
Thank you so much for all of that insight.
I know that we'll all take so much
away from this conversation.
Thank you so much for being here with us.
-My pleasure.