29th August 2025

What did symphonies and operatic arias sound like in the theatres and salons of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Europe? And how did singers and instrumentalists of this period convey the passions of text and drama to their audiences? Without a time-machine we will never know with certainty. But what we do know is that performers of Mozart’s and Handel’s day drew on a wealth of expressive techniques to project story, sentiment, and affect directly to the listener. Whether in the concert hall, opera house or aristocratic salon, they moved their audiences through ingenious manipulations of tempo, rhythm, articulation, colour, and ornamental detail — tools of communication that extended far beyond the written score.

What did Mozart’s youthful Symphony No. 18 in G major, written at the astonishing age of sixteen, sound like when first performed in Salzburg in 1772? How did Handel’s heroines move their audiences to tears, or Gluck’s Orfeo break hearts with his plaintive “Che farò senza Euridice”? And how, through the artistry of Domenico Corri — singer, teacher, publisher, and advocate of expressive performance — did these works continue to live and breathe in the hands of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century performers?

We cannot travel back to those premières, but we do know that before twentieth-century modernism intervened, musicians treated musical works not as fixed monuments but as living texts — pliable, expressive, and open to invention. Their task was to tell stories through sound, an approach Corri himself called the Promethean fire of expression.

The explorations you will hear tonight form part of the Australian Research Council Discovery Project DP220101596 The shock of the old: rediscovering the sounds of bel canto 1700–1900, led by Neal Peres Da Costa, with colleagues Helen Mitchell, Paul McMahon, Robert Toft, and Clive Brown.

The Classical-Romantic Continuum of Expressive Practice

Musicians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries performed with a freedom that would almost certainly seem shocking to us today. We have some idea of this revealed in sound recordings from the turn of the twentieth century capture performances of nineteenth-century trained musicians born as early as the 1820s. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, in 1753, insisted that the performer’s essential tools were “the loudness and softness of notes, accentuation, portamento [audible slides], vibrato [trembling effects], arpeggiation, sustaining, holding back, and pushing forward”, practices not necessarily indicated by the composer, but essential to a declamatory delivery style: music was meant to speak, to breathe, to plead and exclaim. Bach’s words capture the broad pillars of expressive performance which remained consistent through to the beginning of the twentieth century in a continuum of practice.

In terms of declamatory style, Domenico Corri, one of London’s most influential singing teachers, warned that technique alone was not enough. In The Singer’s Preceptor (1810), he set out four requisites for a singer: “The formation of the voice — a knowledge of words — of the phrase — and of style.” And he cautioned that “those who sing without expression, tho’ they may surprise by the agility of their execution, will never delight, or touch the heart.” Words, he insisted, must be delivered according to their character — sacred, grandeur, anger, sentiment, gaiety, or grief — each carrying its own sound world.

Manuel García II carried these traditions forward in his Traité complet de l’art du chant (1840/47). He also described chiaroscuro as the alternation of timbre clair (bright, open vowels) and timbre sombre (dark, shaded vowels), writing:

“Every vowel sound may receive a bright or sombre character. The bright is clear, brilliant, ringing; the sombre is veiled, hollow, profound. The skilful union of these two qualities produces a round, vibrant, and mellow tone.”

He also detailed a means ofaccentuating (martellato)important words (whether marked by the composer or not), achieved by “an impulse of air, produced by pressure of the diaphragm and dilatation of the pharynx, swelling and diminishing with perfect equality, without shock, and without interrupting the line.” In García’s world, every note was aflame with light and shade, with expressive tension.

Recent scholarship bridges these historical sources with contemporary understanding. Clive Brown’s monograph, Classical and Romantic Performance Practice 1750–1900 (2nd ed., 2025), shows how scores were meant to prompt expression, not to constrain it. Robert Toft’s Bel Canto: A Performer’s Guide (2013) reveals how singers shaped phrases with portamento, vibrato, ornamentation, and rhetorical nuance. And in my own book, Off the Record: Performing Practices in Romantic Piano Playing (2012), I argue that these expressive practices survive in early recordings, dissolving the boundary between “Classical” and “Romantic.”

All this underscores a Classical–Romantic continuum of practice: from Handel to Mozart, from Gluck to Martines, through to the nineteenth century. Performers cultivated individuality, risk, and imagination. The score was a framework, not a cage. Tonight’s program seeks to reawaken that expressive tradition.

Overture: Mozart Symphony No. 18 in G major, K 130 — I. Allegro

We begin with the sparkling first movement of Mozart’s youthful symphony, cast tonight as an overture. Its brilliance sets the stage for our miniature opera, establishing the energy and expectation of drama about to unfold.

Handel: Lascia ch’io pianga and Dove sei amato bene

The opera proper opens in lament. Lascia ch’io pianga pleads against cruel fate, its simplicity enriched by Corri’s ornaments, portamenti, and expressive nuance. Dove sei amato bene deepens the mood: Bertarido’s aching cry for his absent beloved. Here, the chiaroscuro vowel shading and vibrazioni described by García bring the music alive with grief and yearning.

Intermezzi: Mozart Symphony No. 18 — II. Andante grazioso

Placed as instrumental divertimenti, Mozart’s graceful Andante and courtly Menuetto act as interludes within the unfolding “opera.” They give contrast and balance — like instrumental entr’actes — allowing us to breathe between vocal laments and arias, just as eighteenth-century audiences would have expected.

Gluck: Orfeo ed Euridice

No opera is complete without confrontation. Gluck’s Orfeo offers extremes of passion: the furious resistance of the Furies, the serene comfort of the blessed spirits, and Orfeo’s agonised Che farò senza Euridice. These three scenes form the dramatic heart of our miniature opera, confronting us with rage, solace, and despair.

Intermezzo: Mozart Symphony No. 18 — II. Andante grazioso & III. Menuetto

Marianna Martines: Perché, se tanti siete

The drama resumes with virtuosity and resilience. Martines’s aria, written in Vienna in the 1760s, takes sighs and sorrow and transforms them into dazzling brilliance. It is a turning point in our drama, where grief is transmuted into energy. This performance is enriched by the research of Anna Fraser, whose doctoral project reimagines Martines’s bel canto idiom in dialogue with our ARC project.

J. C. Bach: Cara, la dolce fiamma

A lyrical interlude follows: Johann Christian Bach’s aria of tender, enduring love. Its calm flame offers repose after Martines’s brilliance. Mozart’s own embellishments to this aria remind us that invention was integral to its meaning.

Finale: Mozart Symphony No. 18 — IV. Allegro molto

Our “opera” concludes with Mozart’s finale, heard tonight as a final chorus. Its exuberance brings all the drama, lament, and longing to a jubilant close. The symphony brings the journey to a close, its youthful energy recalling the operatic stage yet pointing forward to Mozart’s symphonic mastery. In this way, the program unfolds like a miniature opera: a sequence of lament, fury, love, and renewal, ending in the ensemble-like brilliance of Mozart’s youthful symphony.

Research, Continuum, and the Present

The research of Petra Kirschner (on Galant compositional techniques — schema, partimento, and solfeggio, building on the work of Gjerdingen, Sanguinetti, and Baragwanath) and Anna Fraser (on bel canto expression and Martines) reminds us that theory and performance were inseparable in the eighteenth century. Improvising required expressive nuance, and performance was enriched by a grounding in compositional grammar.

By uniting Galant compositional training with the Classical–Romantic expressive tradition, our project paves new pathways for historically informed performance (HIP). Crucially, this is not about “re-enacting the past,” but about expanding expressive possibilities in the present. Drawing on methods of artistic research — practice-led inquiry, archival emulation, and creative reconstruction — we explore ways that historical traditions can inform living performance today. In this way, the palette of expression available to musicians is broadened, offering new horizons for performers and audiences alike.

Further Reading

For those interested in exploring the traditions and scholarship behind tonight’s program:

• Clive Brown, Classical and Romantic Performance Practice 1750–1900 (2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 2025).
• Robert Toft, Bel Canto: A Performer’s Guide (Oxford University Press, 2013).
• Neal Peres Da Costa, Off the Record: Performing Practices in Romantic Piano Playing (Oxford University Press, 2012).
• Robert Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style (Oxford University Press, 2007).
• Giorgio Sanguinetti, The Art of Partimento: History, Theory, and Practice (Oxford University Press, 2012).
• Nicholas Baragwanath, The Solfeggio Tradition: A Forgotten Art of Melody in the Long Eighteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 2020).

Acknowledgements

This concert is co-directed by Rachael Beesley, violinist, conductor, and co-artistic director of the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra. Rachael contributes a wealth of knowledge in animating historical performance practices in sound, enriching the interpretive world of the program and providing our students with invaluable professional standards.

Heartfelt thanks to string tutors Rachael Beesley and Daniel Yeadon, and to Nathan Cox for his expert tuning and preparation of the historical keyboards used tonight. We are especially delighted to perform on an original English square piano, c.1840, by Collard & Collard (London), from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music’s Historical Keyboard Collection. The ensemble performs at a historical pitch of A = 430 Hz, a tone vividly rooted in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century practice.