Donaudy’s 36 Arie di Stile Antico

I INVITE YOU TO JOIN US! We all yearn for a little more Sweetness, and a bit of Romanticism in our Musical Lives especially now! This seminar will keep our artistic souls alive, flourishing, and satisfied,and to inspire us to bring our interpretive skills to a new level!

These songs, some labeled with names like Madrigale, Frottola, Arietta, Canzonetta , etc. are written in the last part of the 1800s through the first years of the 1900s when Donaudy was writing, teaching voice and playing in his native Palermo. Considered a minor composer, nevertheless these 36 are beloved of singers around the world.

Some are, of course, much more famous that others, but the relatively lesser known ones contain many gems: songs that are romantic, capricious, lamenting, sorrowful, vengeful, and plenty of emotional variety in between.

Not hard to sing technically, and the challenge and fun lies in the interpretative, musical and linguistic nuances. They are good for men and women; they're not very range-y and the original keys are very accessible for most high and medium voices.

If YOU WANT TO JOIN THIS PROJECT: You will find a few albums on Youtube or Spotify, where you can listen to them all……if you have the complete Ricordi Volume (in both High and Low keys) of all 36, listen along. If not IMSLP has them too but only the high keys.

(You might want to contribute a few dollars to IMSLP for providing them to you conveniently and quickly during this pandemic.)

JOIN US: once you decide which song(s) you want to tackle, you can do a runthrough/coaching with me, (maybe 20-30 mins /per song) using commercially available accompaniment tracks or some I can make them for you at low cost.

Consider this: Find a handful (3-5 songs), and be sure choose at least one from each volume so we'll have coverage of the whole collection. Please don’t choose the 5 famous ones that we'd all like to sing. As we’ll be sure to cover those in a master class, as well as 3 songs each…. By all means, sing the famous ones as well, if you can’t resist, as kind of a personal bonus; but choose 3-5 as I mentioned above.

I’m sure many of you could name the famous ones: Vaghissima sembianza, O del mio amato ben, Amorosi miei giorni, Spirate pur, spirate, and others…… (I'll referee all choices, if need be, to avoid overlap-—shouldn't be hard if we all have access to all 36).

TIME FRAMEWORK

First, during this month, NOVEMBER, you’ll choose and study your songs on your own, then work through them with me, and finally in mid DECEMBER, we'll all meet on a few Zoom group sessions to sing for one another in a master/class  group. AND memorization NOT necessary, though encouraged)

The number and length of the group sessions depends on the number of participants who sign up. I intend to keep the costs down low for this project to make it more attractive and accessible. Possible scholarships for administrative work may be available.

A special group session will be offered gratis to all for the working of the Italian texts. After translating them, we’ll working on reading them aloud as poems of the Romantic era. That will be the best way to rev up your Romantic engines for the singing sessions !

singthrough@verizon.net or 646-342-1504 for more info or to join the project