Nicholas Baragwanath

Nicholas Baragwanath is a British music theorist, musicologist and pianist. He is best known for his contributions to the compositional theory and practice of 19th-century Italian Opera.[1] He regularly writes and presents for BBC Radio 3.[2]

Education

Baragwanath trained as a pianist at the Royal Academy of Music and, under Ryszard Bakst, at the Royal Northern College of Music. In 1998, he completed his MA and D.Phil at the University of Sussex and lectured at the University of Wellington, New Zealand. In 2001, Baragwanath moved to the Royal Northern College of Music to become Head of Postgraduate Studies and later became the Dean of Research and Enterprise. Since 2010, he has taught at the University of Nottingham.[3]

Research on 19th century Italian Opera and 18th century pedagogy

Baragwanath's research into the Italian traditions of 19th century Opera has revised opinions as to how composition was learned by composers by offering a detailed analysis of the methods of the Italian conservatories, notably in Naples and Northern Italy.[4] These historical Italian methods of composition, grounded in solfeggio, partimento and counterpoint, offer an alternative method of analysis of Italian Opera to the standard Austro-German tradition.[5]

Baragwanath's latest book on the solfeggio tradition provides the first major study of the fundamentals of eighteenth-century music education. It recovers an entirely forgotten art of melody that allowed musicians to develop exceptional skills in improvisation, composition, and score-reading.[6]

Books
  • The Italian Traditions and Puccini: Compositional Theory and Practice in Nineteenth-Century Opera (2011). Indiana University Press.
  • The Solfeggio Tradition: A Forgotten Art of Melody in the Long Eighteenth Century (2020). Oxford University Press.

Awards
  • Westrup Prize (2006) - Musicology and Critical Theory: The Case of Wagner, Adorno, and Horkheimer.[7]
  • Marjorie Weston Emerson Award (2014) - Mozart’s early chamber music with keyboard: traditions of performance, composition and commodification in Mozart’s Chamber Music with Keyboard, edited by Martin Harlow (Cambridge, 2012).[8]

See also

References
  1. Davis 2014, p. 135, "Baragwanath has made a major contribution - one of the most major to date, in any language - not only to Puccini studies but also to the study of nineteenth-century Italian opera in general."
  2. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b041vg00
  3. University of Nottingham Faculty Profile
  4. Gjerdingen 2013, p. 127, "Taken together, these new books by Sanguinetti and Baragwanath offer us no less than a thorough reappraisal of how composition was learned by those who would actually become composers."
  5. Valenti 2013, p. 689, "Baragwanath's highly detailed study concentrates on a largely under researched area-Italian composition teachers in the nineteenth century.. Baragwanath’s study has greater ambition than simply filling in gaps in our knowledge of the nineteenth-century Italian opera tradition: he asserts that an understanding of composition training, and the ideals and values attached to the composition masters’ methods, can offer opera analysts an alternative approach to inherited Austro-German techniques, which are not always appropriate for examining Italian opera."
  6. Cafiero 2020, "Baragwanath's research into the craft of solfeggio training gives the reader a new and original insight into historical music pedagogy: esoteric teaching (and learning) codes are eventually cracked and explained in a lively prose."
  7. Music & Letters Westrup Prize
  8. Mozart Society of America Marjorie Weston Emerson Award

Bibliography
  • Davis, Andrew (2014), The Italian Traditions and Puccini: Compositional Theory and Practice in Nineteenth-Century Opera, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 11, pp 135-166
  • Valenti, Chloe (2013), The Italian Traditions and Puccini: Compositional Theory and Practice in Nineteenth-Century Opera by Nicholas Baragwanath (review), Music and Letters, Oxford University Press. 32(1), 283-290
  • Gjerdingen, Robert (2013), Review: The Italian Traditions and Puccini: Compositional Theory and Practice in Nineteenth-Century Opera. (PDF), Journal of Music Theory 57:1, archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-05
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