Breathtaking: A Voice and a Cornetto Entwined

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the cornetto was fabled for its remarkable ability to imitate the human voice. This concert is a celebration of the affinity of the cornetto and the human voice – an exploration of how they combine, converse and complement each other, whether responding in the manner of a dialogue or entwining as two equal partners in a musical texture. This perceived similary of the voice and the cornetto encompassed not only the instrument’s clear and bright sound timbre, but also its agility, expressive range, dynamic flexibility, and articulation, which could make it sound almost as though the player were speaking through his instrument. Our program, which puts this imitation center stage, is called “breathtaking” both because the voice and the cornetto literally make music with the breath, and because the imitation, we hope, can will literally take the listener’s breath away.

We explore the connection between this instrument and the voice in several musical styles: small-scale motets and madrigals of the early and mid-17th century, arias from operas and oratorios from the very end of the century, and a contemporary work by Calliope Tsoupaki commissioned especially for our project.

Our program begins at the turn of the 17th century, when the cornetto was at the absolute summit of its development. Both singers and cornettists were expected to be skillful improvisers, and while singers took the lead in defining the style of ornamentation (even called gorgie for the use of the throat in articulating the quick notes), cornettists were famed for their embellishments as well. This virtuoso ornamentation soon found its way into solo music of the new kind with basso continuo. In these pieces cornettists would have carried on a musical conversation with singers, constantly imitating and echoing their musical phrases and their embellishments as if the voice and the instrument were “entwined.”

The third part of our program explores the final phase of this story. At the very end of the 17th century, the cornetto enjoyed a late flowering, playing obbligato parts of often staggering difficulty in operas and oratorios by such composers as Alessandro Scarlatti, Giovanni Battista Bassani, Giovanni Bononcini, and Giacomo Antonio Perti. It is literally the last breath of the cornetto.

As a centerpiece for our program, we invited the Greek composer Calliope Tsoupaki to write a new work exploring the affinity of the cornetto and the voice. This new composition, which sets the Song of Songs text Nigra sum in Byzantine Greek (Mélena imí), is inspired by the 17th-century idea of a voice and a cornetto in dialogue. The composer has described the piece as a “serene antiphonal lyric moment” between the cornetto and the voice.