Carnal Musicology in a New Edition of Luigi Boccherini's Cello Concerto in D Major G. 478

• Main Author: Johnson, Samuel Converse
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01.01.2020
• Subjects: Aesthetic Education; Computer Assisted Instruction; History; Intention; Libraries; Music; Music Education; Musical composition; Musical performances; Musicians; Oral History; Pedagogy; Personality Traits; Primary Sources; Pronunciation; Reference Materials; Rock Music; Singing; Teaching Methods; Translation
• ISBN: 9798535576244

The music of Luigi Boccherini has experienced a slow and steady revival over the last half century, yet few of his twelve cello concertos are widely published. This document presents a newly engraved edition of Boccherini’s ​Cello Concerto in D major G. 478,​ including solo parts and full score. I use carnal musicology to support a historically informed editorship of the cello part. In doing so I critique the anachronistic ways in which Boccherini’s music has been edited and published, particularly by Friedrich Grützmacher in his late 19th century Boccherini concerto mash-up. Grützmacher’s widely accepted version compromises the techniques that would have been implicit in Boccherini’s music, such that these inventions are lost in modern cello pedagogy and performance. My approach offers a new way of teaching and historicizing music that is faithful to Boccherini and caring toward the cello playing body.This project provides resources for the well-being of musicians and their bodies through a musicology that re-centers practice as community rather than isolation. The primary historical contributions I make to what we know of Boccherini are embodied and transcribed into the performance edition itself. This carnal musicology serves as the connective framework between history and embodied feeling, such that musicians and students can feel both the music and the history.The practice guide develops an analytical teaching methodology toward mastery of Boccherini’s unique musical style and technical inventions. The ​Concerto G. 478 serves as a case study by which I teach historical performance using contemporary research methodologies of formal and harmonic analysis, topic theory, and carnal musicology. I offer insight for feeling, interpreting, and translating these components of text and history through the sound of the cello. I invent practice strategies that engage the student in technical and musical inquiries of the ​Concerto​ that allow them to take ownership of their performance.Finally, the score portion of the document prints a new edition of Luigi Boccherini’s ​Concerto in D major G. 478,​ including the full orchestra score, a performance edition of the solo cello part with original cadenzas by the editor, and a clean copy of the solo part.