THE TRANSCRIPTIONS AND EDITIONS OF LUIGI SILVA AND THEIR
INFLUENCE ON CELLO PEDAGOGY AND PERFORMANCE
WITH THREE RECITALS OF SELECTED WORKS
BY BACH, BEETHOVEN, BARBER, BRIDGE,
HAYDN AND OTHERS
Phillip T. Young III, B.Mus., M.Mus.
APPROVED:
.ajP ofesso
Minor rof ssor
Commit ee member
Committee Member
Dean of the College of MuT
Dean of the Robert B. Toulouse School of Graduate Studies e6d
THE TRANSCRIPTIONS AND EDITIONS OF LUIGI SILVA AND THEIR
INFLUENCE ON CELLO PEDAGOGY AND PERFORMANCE
WITH THREE RECITALS OF SELECTED WORKS
BY BACH, BEETHOVEN, BARBER, BRIDGE,
HAYDN AND OTHERS
DISSERTATION
Presented to the Graduate Council of the
University of North Texas in Partial
Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of
DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS
By
Phillip T. Young III, B.Mus., M.Mus.
Denton, Texas
August, 1996 Young, Phillip T. III, The Transcriptions and Editions of Luigi Silva and Their Influence on Cello Performance and
Pedagoy, with Three Recitals of Selected Works by Bach,
Beethoven, Barber, Britten, Haydn and Others. Doctor of
Musical Arts (Performance), August, 1996, 60 pp., 4 tables, 6 musical examples, 71 references, 26 titles.
Virtually disregarded in contemporary discussions of cello performance and pedagogy is the name of Luigi Silva
(1903-1961.) Though he did not achieve fame as a performer to the same degree as his peers Leonard Rose (1918 - 1984), Emmanuel Feuermann (1902 - 1942) or Gregor Piatigorsky (1903
- 1976), Silva had an internationally-acclaimed performing career. Owing to his formidable technique on the instrument, he was known as the "Paganini of the cello." Through Silva's unparalleled ability to analyze technical problems in his students' playing and assist his students excel as performers and teachers, moreover, his students have populated faculties of most of the major American post-secondary schools of music and many of the principal chairs in important symphony orchestras. Of even longer-lasting significance is his enormous contribution to the literature for cello of over 100 transcriptions and scholarly editions of standard cello repertoire. By combining his own incredible artistry on the instrument and his extraordinary enthusiasm for teaching with his transcriptions of such works as the 24 Paganini Caprices, Silva helped raise the standard of cello technique to an unprecedented level and has impacted in one way or another every cellist in the twentieth century. This dissertation document describes the influences Silva's transcriptions and editions have had on cello playing and teaching in the 20th- century. Tape recordings of all performances submitted as dissertation requirements are on deposit at the University of North Texas Library.
iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many people have given very generously of their time in assisting in my research for this dissertation. I must first
thank two of my greatest mentors, Carter Enyeart, Professor of Cello at the University of North Texas and Dr. Robert
Hladky, Professor Emeritus of Cello at the University of
Oregon, for their tireless enthusiasm, advice and support; I also wish to acknowledge the support and encouragement of Dr. Michael Collins, Professor of Musicology and Mr. Jeffrey
Bradetich, Professor of Double Bass at the University of
North Texas. Janis Pardue, Special Collections Librarian at the Walter Clinton Jackson Library at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro which houses the Luigi Silva
Collection, has been of immeasurable assistance in providing me with photocopies of Silva manuscripts, out-of-print publications, etc., and Elizabeth Anderson, Professor of
Cello at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro was so kind to provide a compact disc of her performances of some of Luigi Silva's transcriptions. I wish also to thank the students of Luigi Silva who took time away from their busy teaching and performing schedules to provide me with insights into Silva's career: Timothy Eddy, Margery Enix, Cassell
Grubb, Avram Lavin, James Robert Hladky, Martha McCrory, Nino Rosso and Charles Wendt. Finally, I wish to thank my wife Laura for her endless love and support in all my endeavors.
iv PREFACE
"Silva Library Catalog" is the abbreviated title for the
catalog of the Luigi Silva Collection at the University of
North Carolina at Greensboro's Walter Clinton Jackson
Library, whose full bibliographic information appears on page three of the dissertation body of text.
V TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
RECITAL PROGRAMS...... viii
LIST OF TABLES...... xii
LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES ...... xiii
Chapter
1. INTRODUCTION...... 1
Biography of Luigi Silva Silva as Cello Teacher Silva as Scholar
2. SILVA'S PEDAGOGICAL TRANSCRIPTIONS AND EDITIONS ...... 16
The Kreutzer-Silva ztudes The Guerrini-Silva Caprices The Piatti Caprices The Servais Caprices The Popper High School of Cello Playing The Fuchs-Silva Caprices
3. SILVA'S TRANSCRIPTIONS OF VIOLIN CONCERT REPERTOIRE ...... 27
The Paganini-Silva Caprices The Paganini-Silva Moses Variations The Bonelli-Silva arrangements The Bartok-Silva Roumanian Folk Dances The Vitali-Silva Ciaccona Dukas-Silva's Alla gitana
4. SILVA'S TRANSCRIPTIONS OF REPERTOIRE FOR OTHER INSTRUMENTS AND VOICES ...... 37
Silva's transcriptions of keyboard music Silva's transcriptions of music for voice Silva's transcriptions of miscellaneous music Transcriptions of music by the Gabrielis Explanations for Silva's choice of repertoire
vi 5. CONCLUSION ...... 44
Silva's contributions to cello playing Silva's philosophy of teaching
APPENDIX A...... 48
APPENDIX B...... 51
APPENDIX C...... 54
APPENDIX D...... 56
BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 58
vii University of North Texas
,00%
*6
ff m m u/ se present
A Graduate Recital
PHILLIP TAYLOR YOUNG III, cello accompanied by Daniel McGee, piano
Monday, October 31, 1994 5:00 pm Concert Hall
Sonata for Violoncello and Piano in D Major, Opus 102, No. 2 ...... van Beethoven .Ludwig Allegro con brio Adagio con molto sentimento d'affetto Allegro fugato Variations on a Rococo Theme, Opus 33..... I. Tchaikovsky .'Peter
- pause - Sonata...... for 0.0. .0. Cello .Frank Bridgeand Piano .a...... Allegro ben moderato Adagio ma non troppo; Allegro moderato
Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts
viii University of North Texas
4, _JI presents
A Graduate Recital
PHILLIP T. YOUNG, 'cello accompanied by Greg Ritchey, piano
Monday, June 12, 1995 5:00 pm Recital Hall
Divertimento in D Major ...... Joseph Haydn . Adagio trans. Gregor Piatigorsky Menuet Allegro di molto
Suite in Eb Majorfor Solo 'Cello, BWV 1010 S. Bach .J. Prelude Allemande Courante Sarabande Bourrie I and II Gigue
- pause -
Sonatafor 'Cello and Piano,. . .Opus...0. .0. 6 . Samuel...... Barber . Allegro ma non troppo Adagio - Presto di nuovo -Adagio Allegro appassionato
Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts
ix University of North Texas
u Al presents
A Graduate Recital
PHILLIP T. YOUNG III, cello assisted by Madeline Adkins, violin * Greg Ritchey, piano Michael Schneider, piano
Monday, April 15, 1996 6:30 pm Recital Hall
Sonata in F Major, Opus 5, No. I ...... Ludwig van Beethoven Adagio sostenuto - Allegro Rondo: Allegro vivace
- pause -
Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello in D Minor, Opus 49 ...... Felix Mendelssohn Molto allegro ed agitato Andante con moto tranquillo Scherzo: Leggiero e vivace Finale:Allegro assai appassionato
Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts
x University of North Texas IV And r I fA L'7 r V21ihii V VWM L/ V I- AP' 7 ILw -1c JF w f
u Al presents
A Graduate Lecture Recital
PHILLIP TAYLOR YOUNG III, cello accompanied by S. Wayne Foster, piano Monday, July 1, 1996 6:30 pm Recital Hall
"THE TRANSCRIPTIONS AND EDITIONS OF LUIGI SILVA AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON CELLO PEDAGOGY AND PERFORMANCE"
Ciaccona in G Minor ...... attrib. Tomaso Vitali (1663-1745) trans. Luigi Silva
Twenty-four Capricesfor Violoncello Solo Niccol6 Paganini ... CapriceXIV (1782-1840) Caprice XX trans. Luigi Silva
Andante per Violoncello e Pianoforte .... Sebastian Bach .Johann (dalle variazioni a Goldberg) (1685-1750) trans. Lbigi Silva
Intermezzo, Opus 116, No. 6...... Johannes Brahms ... (1833-1897) trans. Luigi Silva
Variazioni di Bravura (su di una corda sola) ...... Niccolb Paganini su temi del "Mose" di G. Rossini (1782-1840) trans. Luigi Silva Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts
xi LIST OF TABLES
Page
Table 1. A representative list of Silva's pupils...... 12
Table 2. Kreutzer-Silva Etudes, their keys and areas of function...... 19
Table 3. Paganini-Silva Caprices, their keys and areas of function...... 28
Table 4. Composers represented in Ettore Bonelli's Classico del violino and which works were transcribed by Luigi Silva...... 32
xii LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES
Page
Figure 1. Kreutzer-Silva Etude No. 1, mm. 1-3 ...... 18
Figure 2. Piatti Caprice No. 1, mm. 1-3 ...... 22
Figure 3. Piatti Caprice No. 1, mm. 5-8 ...... 23
Figure 4. Representation of Silva's bowing variations for Piatti Caprice No. I...... 24
Figure 5. Vitali Ciaccona, mm. 53-60 ...... 34
Figure 6. Vitali-Silva Ciaccona, mm. 53-60 ...... 35
xiii CHAPTER I
A SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF LUIGI SILVA
Life in Europe
Luigi Silva was born in Milan, Italy on 13 November 1903 into a family of professional musicians. His father, Giulio
Silva, was known throughout Europe as a tenor and taught at a number of local conservatories; he also authored several books on singing and composed a few works as well. Very little is known about Luigi's mother, Rosina Mays Silva, except that she was an opera singer of Viennese origin.
Although it is unclear at precisely what age Luigi began cello lessons, he did begin studies in piano at the age of five; he was, however, playing the cello by the age of eight in 1911, and the family moved to Parma in 1912 when Giulio was appointed Professor of Singing at the Conservatory of
Parma, an appointment he held until 1916. In that year the family moved again, this time to Rome, and as Giulio began his tenure as Professor of Voice in Rome (it is not clear at which institution he was employed) Luigi took up study of the cello at the Rome Conservatory of Music. Silva probably finished his studies in Rome at the age of seventeen, feeling that he was ready to study with one of the great European teachers. He played auditions for several famous
1 2
cellists, likely including Hugo Becker and Julius Klengel,1 but was not accepted for study because his hands were, in the opinion of most teachers, too small.2 Consequently, Arturo
Bonucci, cello professor at the Liceo Musicale in Bologna, was the only teacher to accept Silva as a pupil. Around 1920 he was awarded a Bachelor's degree in performance from the
Bologna Conservatory, and in 1921 he received a Master's degree in cello pedagogy cum laude.
Silva's first professional employment was as cellist with the Rome Augusteo orchestra in 1920. As the result of a national competition he won in 1922, Silva was appointed
Principal Cellist of the Rome Theater Opera orchestra. He
continued with the orchestra for eight years and in 1930 left behind his career of orchestral musician, joining the very
successful Quartetto di Roma and eventually becoming its
leader. The ensemble toured throughout Europe extensively until the outbreak of World War II.
Silva's greatest claim to success as a young virtuoso probably came in 1933 when he won the Boccherini Prize in
Rome, the first national contest for young concert artists.
His life-long interest in the music of Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805) may well have stemmed from winning the
competition; he was passionately interested in scholarly
1 Hugo Becker and Julius Klengel, two of the greatest 19th-century cello pedagogues, each left significant volumes of pedagogical material still used today. 2 Luigi Silva, Luigi Silva [autobiographical statement) (unpublished typed manuscript), The Luigi Silva Collection, The Walter Clinton Jackson Library, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. [n.d.] 3
research throughout his life and, in fact, discovered as many as twenty-four Boccherini sonatas and eight concerti, regularly sending his own hand-copied manuscripts of those works to the Ricordi publishing firm right up until his untimely death in 1961.3 (Silva's other scholarship is further elucidated later in this chapter.) Among several former Silva students responding to my survey, Cassell Grubb has commented on Silva's Boccherini scholarship that
Silva couldn't tolerate what the 19th-century cellists had done to the Boccherini Sonatas. Therefore he wanted to write accompaniments from the original bass line that would be in the style of Boccherini. Style was of utmost importance to Silva.4
Silva's teaching career, for which he ultimately became most well-known and which would take over his performing career, began in 1933. From his Curriculum Vitae in the
Silva Library Collection at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, it is known that he was Professor of Cello at the Braga Musical Instituto in Teramo, in 1933; at the
Pollini Musical Instituto in Padova, from 1934 to 1935; at the Marcello Conservatory of Music in Venice from 1934 to
1938; and in Florence at the Cherubini Conservatory of Music
3 University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Walter Clinton Jackson Library, The Luigi Silva Collection (Greensboro: Walter Clinton Jackson Library, 1978): 1-16. Hereafter referred to in text and notes as "Silva Library Catalog." 4 Cassell Grubb, letter to the author, 23 April 1996. 4
from 1938 to 1940.5 At the end of 1939, Silva, his wife
(Nannelle Cappelli, to whom he was married on 22 October
1927) and his parents immigrated to the United States, taking up residency in northern California. Giulio was appointed
Professor of Music at the Dominican College in San Rafael,
California, continuing in the position until 1954.
Apparently Luigi also secured some sort of teaching post at the school soon after his arrival, because his Curriculum Vitae lists an appointment as cello instructor in the summer of 1940.6
Silva's first concerts in the United States were given in the San Francisco area in 1939 and 1940; these would prove to be his most consistently well-reviewed performances
(Virgil Thomson, writing for the New York Herald Tribune, would be the only music critic in New York to enthusiastically recognize Silva's abilities as cellist.)
Regarding Silva's first recital in this country on 23 June
1940, critic Alfred Frankenstein of the San Francisco
Chronicle commented
. . . for Luigi Silva is an extraordinary cellist. He has tremendous technical equipment, the utmost in virtuoso fire and dash and brilliance. He has a huge but beautifully refined tone, and an interpretive style that is both scholarly and vivid...7 5 Luigi Silva, Curriculum Vitae (unpublished typed manuscript), The Luigi Silva Collection, The Walter Clinton Jackson Library, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro [1959.] 6 Ibid. 7 Alfred Frankenstein, review of Luigi Silva Cello Recital. San Francisco Chronicle, 24 June 1940. 5
Hal Garrett, writing for the Monterey Peninsula Herald on 30
August 1940, summarizes Silva's abilities similarly:
The crowd came to hear a recital by an unknown cellist... .At the first number on the program the audience pricked up its ears, and continued pricking them up with each succeeding piece. I've heard nearly every great cellist in the past thirty-five years. To me, Luigi Silva, who played last night, seems the greatest of them all...8
In the fall of 1940 Silva and his family moved to New
York City in order that he begin teaching at the David Mannes
School of Music. His New York debut occurred on 5 April 1941 in Town Hall and was well-publicized beforehand: the New
York Times on 30 March printed a quarter-page picture of
Silva and Leopold Mannes performing together, and elsewhere in the same day's newspaper a weekly listing of concerts in the area announces Silva's program consisting of the Ciaccona of Tomaso Vitali, transcribed by Silva; a Sonata in C Major by Luigi Boccherini; the well-known A Major Sonata, Opus 69 of Ludwig van Beethoven; the F Major Sonata, Op. 99 of
Johannes Brahms; and three Caprices of Niccol6 Paganini, also transcribed by Silva. Silva's recital attendance was not helped by the simultaneous concertizing that afternoon of the visiting Boston Symphony Orchestra led by Serge Koussevitzky, at Carnegie Hall, or the New York Philharmonic-Symphony
8 Hal Garrett, review of Luigi Silva, 'Cello Soloist. Monterey Peninsula Herald, 30 August 1940. 6
Chamber Orchestra at Brooklyn Academy (Gerald Warburg, conducting.) "R.P.," reviewing Silva's debut recital for the
New York Times on 6 April 1941, described him only as an
"experienced and proficient player... always the master of the instrument, drawing from it a smooth, pure, expressive tone. He also showed that he was a musicianly interpreter, approaching each of the works in its own style. "9 Such lackluster reviews were unfortunately typical for Silva in
New York; indeed, none of these concerts were reviewed strongly for him to receive concert bookings, management offers, or billings with the major orchestras along the East
Coast. As mentioned above, the critic Virgil Thomson was singular in his unblemished praise of Silva's playing; he seems to have been the only critic in New York City who understood Silva's intentions as performer:
Luigi Silva is a unique and profoundly original cello-player. His originality lies in certain technical innovations about fingering and bowing. These are a carrying forward of the innovations of Pablo Casals, who revolutionized cello-playing by introducing violin fingerings and violin bowing style to that instrument. The musical advantages of these were many -- lightness, speed, accuracy of intonation, greater melodic smoothness, greater facility in the upper positions of all four strings. Mr. Silva's carrying forward of these innovations sets him apart both technically and musically from the rest of the cello-playing world... [This was] a
9 Review of Joint Recital Given By Silva and Mannes. New York Times, 6 April 1941, Page 46. 7
musical experience of the first water.10
Silva's reaction to the other, Less favorable reviews of his
New York recitals is not known, but by the spring of 1941
Silva was already inundated with his teaching schedule and could not prioritize his performing career any longer. He did, however, join his colleagues pianist Leopold Mannes and violinist Bronislaw Gimpel at the Mannes College in forming the Mannes-GiLmpel-Silva trio.
Later in the same year Silva joined the faculty of the
Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, becoming the
Head of the Cello Department and of the Chamber Music
Department, though for another year he commuted between the
Eastman School and the Mannes School in New York City.
Silva's contract at Eastman stated that he was permitted to be absent for a limited amount of time for concert engagements. However, his teaching load became so heavy at the school, especially since he was not afforded the luxury of a teaching assistant, that Silva could not maintain the nomadic life of the concert artist. Late-night lessons
(which he often taught after returning from a day or two in New York City, or following a recital) and six-hour-long masterclasses held on Saturday afternoons were a normal occurrence for Silva's pupils.11 By 1948, Silva had become discouraged with his job at the Eastman School and his ever-
10 Review of Extraordinary Cello Playing, by Virgil Thomson, New York Herald Tribune, 24 February 1941; reprint, Virgil Thomson, The Musical Scene (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), 221-223. 11 James Robert. Hladky, interview with the author, 30 April 1996. 8
growing class of cellists, combined with his limited schedule of outside performing engagements, kept him extremely fatigued.
At the end of the 1948-49 academic year, Silva and his family returned to New York City, and shortly after his resignation in Rochester he re-assumed the position of cello teacher at the Mannes College of Music (renamed in 1953 from its earlier title.) Perhaps for financial reasons, Silva took on additional, similar posts at a number of other east coast schools, creating an even more hectic schedule of teaching and commuting. These included the Mannes College of Music, from 1949 until 1960; The Juilliard School, from 1953 until
1961; Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, from 1955 to 1957 and from 1959 until 1961; and the Hartt College of
Music from 1956 until 1961. Silva also had a part-time teaching position at Yale University, both during the summers
(at the Yale Summer School of Music and Art in Norfolk,
Connecticut) and during the academic years 1951 to 1958, but he resigned from Yale that year. Luther Noss' A History of
the Yale School of Music describes Silva's resignation as stemming f rom conflicting professional commitments, 12 but according to Cowling, Silva was frustrated with the School's recent closure of its undergraduate program. 13 Silva's employment in the summers of 1940 until 1961 included several
12 Luther Noss, A History of the Yale School of Music 1855-1970 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 252. 13 Elizabeth Cowling, "A Tribute to Luigi Silva," Violoncello Society, Inc. Newsletter (February 1980), 5. 9
appointments but he seems to have diminished his summer teaching schedule somewhat af ter about 1949.14 During this period Silva also began an active correspondence with the recently-immigrated Croatian cellist Rudolf Matz, discussing in letters and during a number of personal meetings throughout Europe and the United States the possibility of a jointly-written Method of Cello Playing. Unfortunately the work was never completed.
On 28 June 1958 Silva was hospitalized for a throat hemorrhage, and a few weeks later in the same year he decided
to cancel a trip to Europe because of his failing health.
Though his physicians mandated that Silva stop smoking cigarettes, he continued after a short, unsuccessful attempt at overcoming the habit, and on 29 November 1961 Luigi Silva died in his studio in New York of a second throat hemorrhage.
Silva as Cello Teacher
Many students of Luigi Silva have occupied the first
chairs of major orchestras' cello sections, and others
continue his teaching traditions at some of the most
prominent schools of music in this country. Those who have
replied to my survey have commented on Silva's amazing
ability to instantly recognize the source of almost any
technical difficulty a student was having. He was known for his vast knowledge of the pedagogical literature and in
lessons he regularly adapted a particular etude to help solve
14 Ibid. 10
a student's technical deficiencies. Both Robert Hladky and
Cassell Grublb have both said that their mentor did not prefer
(the way many of his peers did, including the cellist Leonard
Rose) to take on students who already possessed a virtuoso technique, but instead enjoyed working with "good" cellists
(some even just learning how to play), assisting them in their development of a technique which would allow them to perform practically anything that could be played on the cello. Cowling adds that Silva did not agree with the Casals school of cello playing and its teaching of cello technique through the literature. 15 Instead, Silva's fascination with technique (possibly an outgrowth of his own small-hand problems in learning to play the cello) led him to examine much of the pedagogical literature, making amendments to it in the form of bowing variations and fingering exercises; these, he felt, would "fill in the gaps" of cello technique not covered in the original pedagogical material. 1 6 Silva published many of these amendments within his editions of the 12 Caprices of Alfredo Piatti; the 6 Caprices of Adrien
Servais; and his complete transcription of the 42 Etudes by Rodolphe Kreutzer, originally for violin. To augment chromatic fingering study material for the cello Silva, transcribed the 13 Etudes of Guido Guerrini (originally for the piano) for solo cello, though in these studies he did not include preparatory exercises. Perhaps partly as a vehicle
15 Cowling, Tribute, 5. 16 Luigi Silva, "Prefazione" of his ed. of 42 Studes by Rodolphe Kreutzer (Padova, Italy: Zanibon, 1964), 3. 11
for his own virtuosic technique but also as pedagogical/performance material for his students, Silva published a transcription of the 24 Caprices by Niccol6
Paganini, arguably the greatest virtuoso violinist/composer.
It is worth noting that the Paganini Caprices have become
standard in virtuoso cello literature, with numerous recordings being added recently (for example, Yo-Yo Ma's
outstanding recording for CBS Masterworks. )1 7 Silva was
committed to helping each student become the very best musician he or she could be, and, as Cowling has mentioned,
Silva sought to "guide each student into his potential as a performer, not make carbon copies of himself." 1 8 Timothy
Eddy, one of Silva's last pupils, has said that students of
the "Silva School" are accustomed to an organized schedule of practicing, with equal time spent in each of three areas:
(1) basic technical material, i.e. four-octave scales in
various bowings; scales in thirds, sixths, octaves and tenths
in a variety of ranges; (2) study material -- etudes,
caprices, etc.; and (3) concert literature.19 Eddy has
further commented that Silva's students anticipated their
lessons with great enthusiasm because they could be assured
that any problems Silva uncovered during in the next hour or
two would be easily remedied through some sort of "little
17 Niccol6 Paganini, Caprices (24) for solo Violin, Op. 1 (ca. 1805) Nos. 9, 13, 14, 17 & 24 performed by Yo-Yo Ma, CBS MK 37280, compact disc. 18 Cowling, Tribute, 5. 19 Timothy Eddy, correspondence with the author, 29 April 1996 12
trick" he had devised to make difficult actions easy.20
Margery Enix, another Silva pupil who has contributed greatly to scholarship about 20th-century cellists, comments that "I know now that those 'little tricks' were the result of a lifetime of study and analysis but he didn't go into that.
He showed me the trick and I learned to do it without realizing most of the time that it really was hard to do." 21
To illustrate the effectiveness Luigi Silva had as a teacher,
Table 1 (below) represents only a fraction of Silva's students and their positions. The majority of those listed are highly-respected artist/teachers in the United States today.
Table 1. Representative list of Silva's former stud- ents and their teaching/playing positions.
Ruth Condell Alsop New York City Opera Orchestra David Berger Boston Symphony Orchestra Elizabeth Cowling University of North Carolina at Greensboro Bruno DiCecco University of Alaska at Fairbanks Roger Drinkall Brigham Young University Timothy Eddy SUNY Stony Brook Margery Enix Chapman University Gordon Epperson University of Arizona Dorothy Fidler Hartt College of Music Martha Gerschefski The Georgia Academy of Music Cassel Grubb DePauw University Robert Hladky University of Oregon Eugene Hilligose University of Colorado Jerome Jelinck University of Michigan Irving Kauffman Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Joel Krosnick Juilliard String Quartet Avram Lavin New York Philharmonic Joan Mack University of North Carolina at Greenville Barbara Stein Mallow Concert Artist (Albert Kay Associates)
20 Ibid. 21 Cowling, Tribute, 6. 13
Table 1., cont'd. Representative list of Silva's former students and their teaching/playing positions.
Martha McCrory Sewanee Summer Music Festival Frederick Miller Ball State University Daniel Morgenstern Lyric Opera of Chicago Ruth Ralston Central State University (Edmond, Oklahoma) Florence Reynolds University of Montana Nino Rosso Los Angeles Philharmonic Eugenia Rust SUNY Fredonia Salvatore Silipigni Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Robert Sylvester Western Washington University Sally Wemot St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Charles Wendt University of Iowa
Silva as Scholar
Pertinent to the discussion of Luigi Silva's. contributions to cello pedagogy and performance is a brief description of his interest in musicology and, especially, early music (Chapters three and four expound on Silva's transcriptions of works before 1600 for various instruments.)
Indeed, Silva discovered what is believed to be the earliest existing literature for the cello, the twelve Toccate a solo of Francesco Scipriani (1678-1753), in the library of the
Conservatory of Music at San Pietro a Majella in Naples.
These works are bound together with what may be the earliest treatise specifically on cello playing (by the same author),
Principij da imparare a suonare il Violoncello (undated.)22
Silva's important discoveries of additional works for cello by Luigi Boccherini have been described previously.
22 Dmitry Markevitch, Cello Story (Princeton: Surmy-Birchard Music, 1984), 161. 14
Of the quintessential works for unaccompanied cello, the
six Suites of Johann Sebastian Bach, Silva had very strong
convictions concerning their proper performance. 23 One
example is Silva's ever-growing belief that the bow used for playing the cello in Bach's time was, curiously, a viola da
gamba bow,2 4 although the theory is supported by neither
Praetorius in his Syntagma Musicum (1618) or by Mersenne in
L'Harmonie universelle (1635.) Silva was also working on a
critical edition of the Suites in which he laid one above
the other the three contemporary sources (Westphal, Kellner
and Anna Magdelena Bach25 ) and his own edition (resulting in a
four-staff system), but this project was never finished. His
students have meanwhile said that they were not expected to 2 6 play the Bach Suites in the manner he preferred for himself.
A performance on 28 February 1943 of the C Minor Suite was
reviewed favorably by Virgil Thomson in the New York Herald
Tribune, but according to Cowling this was because Silva had 27 first explained to his colleague what his intentions were.
Silva's scholarly interests were not only in producing
literature for the cello but in the area of theoretical
writing as well. Among projects he had in mind were an
Encyclopedia of the Bowed String Instruments (unfinished
because a Rockefeller grant for which he had applied never
23 Cassell Grubb, letter to the author, 23 April 1996. 2 4 Cowling, Tribute, 2. 2 5 Silva Library Catalog, 1. 26 James Robert Hladky, interview with the author, 30 April 1996. 27 Cowling, Tribute, 2. 15
came through) and a "History of the 'Posture' of the Left
Hand in the Neck Positions of the Violoncello . . . " which was mostly complete, but lacking in some important information, according to Enix; at the time of his death Silva was about to conclude his treatise with a summary of the contributions of Rudolf Matz. 28 Enix has, meanwhile, admirably taken over a portion of that project, publishing the book Rudolf Matz
Cellist, Teacher, Composer in 1996;29 she also has finished a translation of Silva's manuscript, originally in Italian (as were all his writings.) Silva was particularly interested in
the application of left hand positions on various instruments
to cello technique, especially left-hand technique on the violin, and his transcriptions of pedagogical literature, discussed in the following chapter, reflect his interest in
the development of a "transcendental" performance technique
on the instrument. 3 0 Another theoretical work, his Vademecum, was a proposed methodical book on cello playing, advertised
as published by Guglielmo Zanibon 3 1 but in fact never
finished. Such a treatise would have been unparalleled in
its comprehensive coverage of technique on the cello.
28 Margery Enix, "Luigi Silva's Contribution to the History of Cello Technique," Violoncello Society, Inc. Newsletter (February 1980), 7. 29 ------., Rudolf Matz Cellist, Teacher, Composer (Ottawa: Dominis Publishing, 1996.) 30 Margery Enix, Luigi Silva's Contribution, 7. 31 Luigi Silva, Vademecum del violoncellista Esercizi giornalieri per lo svilupo e il mantenimento della technica violoncellista (Padova: Guglielmo Zanibon [n.d.]); this volume is advertised on the back cover of Silva's transcription of Rodolphe Kreutzer's 42 Ztudes. CHAPTER II
SILVA'S TRANSCRIPTIONS AND EDITIONS
OF PEDAGOGICAL REPERTOIRE
Pedagogical materials produced by Luigi Silva through his editions and transcriptions present a wealth of resources for cello teachers worldwide. 'Though Silva was more than capable of composing new material (he had studied with
Ottorino Respighi in Rome in the 1920s) he had such admiration for much of the pedagogical repertoire for violin and its practicality in the development of cello technique that he made arrangements for the instrument, augmenting it with additional exercises, variations and transpositions.
The most well-known of Silva's pedagogical contributions to the literature is his edition (published by Zanibon in
1936)1 of the forty-two etudes of Rodolphe Kreutzer (1766-
1831) which were originally published in 1796 in Paris. In his introductory remarks Silva states that
. . this transcription has been realized to respond to a double scope to begin and fulfill in part that which is missing and to intergrate [sic], with material taken from the violinistic literature such as Kreutzer, the Duport [21 Studies.]2
1 Rodolphe Kreutzer, 42 Studi per violoncello. ed. Luigi Silva. 3 vols. (Padova, Italy: Zanibon, 1936.) 2 Luigi Silva, "Prefazione" of his ed. of 42 Studi per violoncello by Rodolphe Kreutzer (Padova, Italy: Zanibon, 1936.) 16 17
Silva further acknowledges that his is not the first adaptation of the Kreutzer etudes to cello technique
(Siegfried Wilhelm Dehn, Claude Fievet and Arturo Cuccoli had all previously published versions of Kreutzer etudes.) It is, however, the first complete transcription of all forty- two etudes for cello. He also says of his edition that
[it is the] first [edition] that, remaining faithful to the original, has retouched only the indispensible and has, for that which concerns the different technical problems, realized the fact of proposing the violoncello with difficulty and not superior to that of the violin. 3
The Kreutzer-Silva etudes, dedicated to Diran Alexanian,
follow the progression of the original studies for violin exactly. Silva's edition is divided into three volumes
labelled Fascicolo I0 (1-13), Fascicolo 110 (14-27) and
Fascicolo unico (28-42) though, interestingly, the first two volumes are grouped into Ia Parte (senza pollice - capotasto) and the last volume 1 1 a Parte (con pollice - capotasto.)
Not, in all likelihood, coincidently, Silva provides for the
first 6tude
3 Luigi Silva, "Prefazione" of his ed. of 42 Studi per violoncello by Rodolphe Kreutzer (Padova, Italy: Zanibon, 1936.) 18
Figure 1. Kreutzer-Silva Etude No. 1, mm. 1-3.
Allegro moderato 2 2 2
M 0-a a !0 P 2K- ' X. L
(c) by G. Zanibon. Reprinted by kind permission of Casa Ricordi-Bmg Ricordi S.p.A., Milano. a total of forty-two bowing and articulation variations on the moto perpetuo. Included in his variations are
instructions for bowing with tutto 1'arco (with the whole
length of the bow), tallone (at the frog of the bow), punta
(at the tip of the bow) and meti (in the middle of the bow.) The bowing variations for this first etude alone make up two
full-length pages and contain virtually every conceivable
type of bowing articulation encountered in cello playing:
ricochet, saltellato, spiccato, tenuto, alla corda and a few
additional, "virtuoso" articulations including the "Viotti"
and the "Paganini" bowings (popularized by the great early-
19th-century violinists.) Silva also provides directions for
the student by indicating at what point along the length of
the bow the articulation is to be played (i.e., "M.I.",
indicated in the spiegazione dei segni (legend) as Meta
inferiore dell'arco (a short length of bow stroke, in the
middle of the stick.) Succeeding etudes in all three volumes
encourage the student not only to "reverse" the bowings
(beginning a strong beat with an "up-bow" instead of a "down- bow") in order to develop an "equality between the strokes."
Table 2 (on the following page) indicates key signatures in
the transcription and summarizes each 6tude's primary area of 19 focus.
Table 2. List of Kreutzer-Silva etudes showing Silva's keys and primary area of focus
No. 1 (C Maj.) First and second hand positions and extensions No. 2 (F Maj.) Third, fourth, fifth and sixth hand positions No. 3 (F Maj.) Up-bow and Down-bow staccato No. 4 (Ab Maj .) Extensions No. 5 (F Maj.) Broken arpeggios No. 6 (G Maj.) Broken octaves (string crossings) No. 7 (A Maj.) Broken arpeggios, in moto perpetuo No. 8 (Bb Maj.) Left-hand finger dexterity No. 9 (C Maj.) String crossings, extensions, shifting No. 10 (A Maj.) Shifting, sustaining of the bow speed No. 11 (C Min.) Arpeggios and double stops No. 12 (C Maj.) Bowing articulations (24 bowing variations) No. 13 (D Maj.) Sustaining of the bow, legato articulation
No. 14 (D Maj.) Trills (from above; with nachschlag) No. 15 (F Maj.) Trills (on pitch; without nachschlag) No. 16 (Eb Maj.) Trills (on pitch; short trills only) No. 17 (C Maj.) Trills (from above; with preceding gracenote) No. 18 (D Maj.) Trills (on pitch; descending scalar motion) No. 19 (D Min.) Trills (on pitch; mordent-like trills) No. 20 (Ab Maj.) Trills (on pitch; in various lower positions) No. 21 (D Maj.) A piacere passagework (improvisatory -style) No. 22 (G Min.) Bow control study: Crescendo to fortepiano No. 23 (G Min.) Recitative -style study (trills, double stops) No. 24 (F Maj.) legato bowing between strings No. 25 (Eb Maj.) staccato study with large string crossings No. 26 (C Min.) arpeggios with lower-neighbor tones No. 27 (C Min.) Vibrato study
No. 28 (G Min.) Octaves (shifting, fingered octaves) No. 29 (D Maj.) Octaves (broken, in scales) in thumb position No. 30 (C Maj.) Trills/high-register passagwork No. 31 (D Maj.) Scalar passages (scales in various modes) No. 32 (D Maj.) Double-stops in various intervals/chords No. 33 (D Min.) "Viotti" bowing/double-stops No. 34 (D Min.) Double-stops in various intervals No. 35 (F Maj.) Shifting between positions/registers No. 36 (C Maj.) Double-stops/two-voiced counterpoint No. 37 (F Maj.) Parallel thirds in thumb position No. 38 (D Maj.) Left-hand scalar passagework with double stops No. 39 (Bb Maj.) Increasing intervals in thumb position No. 40 (Eb Maj.) Trills No. 41 (F Maj.) Double-stops in lower positions/chords No. 42 (D Min.) Chords/double stops in lower positions 20
Silva's reason for including so many bowing and articul- ations in the Kreutzer transcription was not limited solely to "keeping his students busily practicing" (a theory some cellists have advanced) but instead rested upon his conviction that such intensive material aids in the development of a technique allowing one to play "practically anything Which could be played on the cello. "4 Skeptics have called Silva' s pedagogical contributions "unnecessarily difficult" since (correctly) there are etudes in the traditionally-used volumes of studies by Jean Louis Duport,
David Popper, and Julius Klengel which address a number of difficulties in cello technique. Far more comprehensive in their coverage, however, Silva's transcriptions and editions provide cellists with a much more intensive and far-reaching approach to problem-solving in cello technique.
Silva's other pedagogically-oriented transcriptions include the Thirteen Studies (originally for piano) of Guido
Guerrini (1890-1960) and Lillian Fuchs' Caprices (for solo viola) ;5 the latter are discussed below. The Guerrini-Silva studies (published in 1941 by Ricordi) somewhat duplicate material often seen throughout 'David Popper's well-known High
School of Cello Playing, a standard in most cello studios throughout the world. Every study in the Guerrini-Silva book with the exception of study number 13 is in the form of a moto perpetuo featuring constantly moving eighth-notes or
4 Cowling, Tribute, 5. 5 Owing to their contemporary popularity as performance material moreso than purely pedagogical material, the Paganini Caprices Silva transcribed are excluded from this list. 21 sixteenth-notes; Study 12 includes a cadenza including parallel thirds in chromatic scale passages. Study 13, however, may be considered a "chromaticized" version of Kreutzer's study number 23 (listed above as a recitative- style study), lacking the trills but including frequent double-stops and ascending and descending scalar passages.
In general the Guerrini-Silva etudes are left-hand oriented works designed for facilitating dexterity throughout various hand positions. A few of the etudes, however, make use of virtuoso bowing techniques such as up-bow staccato (in study number 6) and "asymmetrical" bowings sometimes encountered in
20th-century compositions which make use of meters such as
5/8, 7/16, etc. Virtually all of the Guerrini-Silva etudes feature meter changes from one bar to another. Though Silva does not include any preparatory exercises or bowing variations in the transcription, he does include directions for passages in each study which are to be articulated in a specific way. According to both Charles Wendt and Robert .
Hladky, Silva chose to transcribe the Guerrini etudes because he felt that cellists ought to have some pedagogical material in a more "modern" style than was previously afforded;
Siegfried Palm's excellent subsequent work of 1985 provides additional study material but highlights unconventional cello technique often found in contemporary scores.6
6 Siegfried Palm, Pro musica nova: Studien zum spielen neuer Mcisik fTr violoncello / mit Werken van Gnther Becker . . . [et al.] (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & H&rtel, 1985.) 22
Silva's contributions to pedagogical literature originally for cello are substantial. Two volumes in the standard repertory of which Silva made scholarly editions are
Alfredo Piatti's Dodice caprices per violoncello, op. 25
(first published in Berlin, 1875) and Sei capricci per
violoncello, op. 11 (Mainz, 1854) of Adrien Servais; one
often hears selected Caprices from either collection on
recital programs. Both publications include preparatory
exercises and bowing variations, as seen in the Kreutzer-
Silva etudes previously; specific to the Servais and Piatti
editions, additionally, is the division of exercises into
both left-hand -oriented and bow (right-hand) -oriented.
Previous, as well as subsequent, editions have not matched in
practicality Silva's editions of either composer's Caprices;
indeed, no other editor of cello music has produced as much
additional pedagogical material in a single volume of etudes
as Silva. (It is remarkable that Silva did not include the
customary second cello part in his edition of the Servais
Caprices.) In examining the opening of Piatti's Caprice 1
Figure 2. Piatti Caprice No. 1, mm. 1-3.
By permission of Hendon Music, Inc., a Boosey & Hawkes, company, agent in the USA for Casa Ricordi BMG Ricordi S.P.A., Milan Italy, publisher.
two aspects of technique are worthy of consideration: first, 23 that the technique of barriolage (alternating strings with the bow, with one string stopped and one string left open) is relatively simple in moving from a lower string to a higher
string as long as the motion is started with an up-bow, since
in this direction the bow moves toward the higher string; and
second, that in order to allow the "D" string to remain open
(unstopped) through measures five through eight, the cellist must ascend the "G" string in playing the pitches D, E-flat,
F-sharp, G and A in the higher positions of the neck.
Measures one through four present no major difficulties in
this manner since the pitches can be played in first
position. However, measures five through eight
Figure 3. Piatti Caprice No. 1, mm. 5-8.
By permission of Hendon Music, Inc., a Boosey & Hawkes, company, agent in the USA for Casa Ricordi BMG Ricordi S.P.A., Milan Italy, publisher.
require not only the high-position fingering just described but also overcoming a psychological "urge" to play pitches
higher than open D on the "D" string rather than continuing
on the "G" string. Silva includes exercises designed to
train the left hand in the proper intonation of high-register
passages by requiring the cellist to perform double-stops, thereby causing sonorities to sound on every bowstroke; he includes similar preparatory exercises in Caprices 2, 3, 10, 24
and 11. With a well-trained musical ear, the cellist can
adjust his left-hand position in order to obtain double-stops which are in tune. Further, Silva's instructions to include
an "accent" on every up-bow stroke train the cellist's bow-
arm to continue the prescribed motion despite the left hand's
ascension of the fingerboard into higher positions.
Additional bowing articulations are included with the first
Caprice to provide training in frequently-encountered bowing patterns, such as
Figure 4. Piatti Caprice No. 1 (bowing variations by Luigi Silva) , mm. 1.
~ >~.> )'~&13 1
By permission of Hendon Music, Inc., a Boosey & Hawkes, company, agent in the USA for Casa Ricordi BMG Ricordi S.P.A., Milan Italy, publisher.
which makes similar demands of right-hand independence from the left hand. Consistent with virtually all of his
pedagogical materials, Silva's editions of the Servais and
Piatti Caprices illustrate his credo that cellists should
possess a technique sufficient to perform virtually anything
written for the instrument.7
At the time of his death Silva was working on editions
(presumably to be published by Ricordi) of David Popper's
7 Cowling, Tribute, 5. 25
High School of Cello Playing, Op. 738 and, according to
Elizabeth Cowling, the Twenty-one Studies of Duport; the
Silva Library Catalog, however, does not include any reference in its list of holdings to Silva's planned edition of Duport's 6tudes. Sketches of preparatory exercises and bowing variations for the planned Popper edition exist in manuscript form and are accompanied by four pages of notes, on the backside of which is printed "Eastman School of
Music/Application for Admission to Summer Session/June 22--
August 15, 1942." Evidently Silva was quite close to completing the volume of 40 etudes; a sequential listing of exercises and variations for 6tudes 1 through 38 shows that
Silva had only two left. The directions Silva supplies in this work closely resemble those found in his other pedagogical editions (i.e., Kreutzer, Servais and Piatti) with regard to the proper manner of execution in certain passages. Appendix D includes a sample of Silva's sketches for the Popper volume.
The unpublished transcription of Lillian Fuchs' Caprices
(1950) for viola, dedicated to the cellist Fritz Maag, was also in progress at the time of Silva's death, though it is not known why he considered an edition of these works a worthwhile endeavor. A brief look at the manuscript in the
Silva Library, though, reveals that the edition must have been almost complete and ready to send to the publisher: the manuscript is extremely clean, illustrated copiously with performance directions and fingerings and Silva includes a
8 cowling, Tribute, 2. 26
"legend" of innovative symbols he uses including to designate the instructions "place the thumb on the string ahead of time." In general the Fuchs Caprices mirror the
Guerrini etudes in their abundant use of chromaticism and frequent change of hand position; Silva may indeed have been trying merely to provide some interesting material for cello students. CHAPTER III
SILVA'S TRANSCRIPTIONS OF VIOLIN CONCERT REPERTOIRE
Transcriptions by Luigi Silva of material originally for violin make up the largest portion of his total output: according to the Silva Library Catalog there are five unpublished, complete transcriptions and fifteen published transcriptions. 1 Of these, the greatest attention should first be paid to Silva's transcription of the 24 Caprices,
Op. 1 of Niccol6 Paganini; the works have become standard in the advanced cellist's literature over the last thirty years.
While Silva did provide transcriptions of all twenty-four
Caprices, he did not perform them all himself, though he demonstrated them for his cello students; according to
Hladky, Silva felt that the Caprices most successfully performed on the cello are numbers 5, 9, 13, 14, 17, 20 and
24.2 While Silva does not include preparatory exercises for the Paganini Caprices (as he does in the Kreutzer Etudes;
Charles Wendt says that Silva's students simply "went to him when we wanted to know how one of the Caprices goes" 3) he does give directions for the proper execution of certain passages (especially in Caprice 24) and, in some instances, bowing variations (for example, in
1 Silva Library Catalog, pp. 1-16. 2 James Robert Hladky, interview with the author, 30 April 1996 3 Charles G. Wendt, letter to the author 9 May 1996 27 28
Caprice 9.) Silva regularly makes references (by way of footnotes) to "Ricordi 1818", referring to the catalog number for Ricordi's publication of the original publication for solo violin. In Caprice 24 (Terma con variazioni) Silva also provides directions for the execution of several passages (in
Var. IX, for example, which contains alternations between bowing and left-hand pizzicato and percussion: the player must forcefully slap his finger onto the string in order to obtain a percussive "snap" on the notated pitch.) Throughout the twenty-four Caprices are found virtually every "advanced technique" on the cello, as summarized in Table 3 below. The table also indicates Silva's choice of keys for his transcription of the Paganini Caprices to account for tuning differences between violin and cello.
Table 3. Paganini-Silva 24 Caprices, Op. 1 showing key signatures in original and transcribed forms and advanced techniques employE d in each Caprice
Silva's Paganini's 4 Caprice No. Key Key Techniques Illustrated 1 G Major E Major Virtuoso "staccato" bowing; scales in thirds 2 D Minor B Minor High-register thumb tech- nique; string crossings 3 G Minor E Minor Octaves; chromatic passages 4 C Minor C Minor Thirds; sixths; octaves; tenths 5 A Minor A Minor Moto perpetuo; four-octave arpeggios; high- register thumb technique 6 G Minor G Minor Left-hand tremolo in thumb positions 7 A Minor A Minor Octaves; up-bow staccato; broken arpeggios 8 C Minor C Minor Octaves; scales in fingered thirds in thumb positions 29
Table 3, cont'd. Paganini-Silva 24 Caprices, Op. 1 showing key signatures in original and transcribed forms and advanced techniques employed in each Caprice
Silva' s Paganini' s Caprice No. Key Key Techniques Illustrated 9 G Major E Major Scales in fingered thirds; ricochet bowing 10 G Minor G Minor Up-bow staccato; octaves; sixths; trills 11 C Major C Major Double-stops (various intervals); ar- peggios; tenths 12 C Major Ab Major String crossings; high- register passagework 13 Bb Major Bb Major Fingered thirds; up-bow staccato; trills; octaves 14 G Major Eb Major Chords (2-note and 3-note); artificial & natural harmonics D Minor E Minor Octaves; broken arpeggios; up-bow staccato 16 B Minor G Minor Moto-perpetuo; string crossings 17 Eb Major Eb Major Very fast scales; fingered thirds, sixths and octaves in thumb position 18 C Major C Major Fingered thirds in thumb position 19 Eb Major Eb Major Staccato bowing 20 D Major D Major Trills; arpeggios; high- register passagework; string crossings 21 C Major A Major Sixths; up-bow staccato; broken arpeggios 22 F Major F Major Sixths; fingered thirds; tenths; string cross- ings 23 Eb Major Eb Major Octaves; thumb-position 24 A Minor A Minor Staccato; octaves; string crossings; scales in fingered thirds, sixths, octaves and tenths; left-hand pizz- icato and percussion; artificial harmonics; four-octave arpeggios 30
The Silva Library Catalog also Lists unpublished piano accompaniments Silva made for several of the Caprices, including Caprices 6, 9, 13, 14, 17, 20, 21 and 24,4 an indication that Silva felt these works to be at least of equal value in both performance and pedagogy.
Silva also published in 1937 a transcription of
Paganini's Sonata a preghiera con variazioni for violin and orchestra; the work's subtitle in the Silva Library Catalog further describes the work as Variazioni di bravura, su di una corda sola, su temi del "Mose" di G. Rossini (virtuoso variations, on only one string, on themes from G. Rossini's
Mos; translation mine.) It is interesting to note that on the violin, Paganini's composition is played entirely on the lowest string, the "G" string, which in its upper register tends to sound very muffled; Silva's transcription, however, is played entirely on the "A" string of the cello, traditionally the brightest and the uppermost. Although
Silva's edition is no longer in print, the cellist Pierre
Fournier made an edition (ca. 1974) for the International
Music [publishing] Company, presumably from Silva's transcription, in which he changed a few fingerings but left virtually all the bowings intact. The Moses Variations have also, in recent years, become well-known in contrabass virtuoso literature through the artistry of bassists such as Gary Karr and Jeff Bradetich.
4 Silva Library Catalog, 9. 31
Other compositions originally for violin and subsequently transcribed by Silva make up an eclectic grouping. The majority of these (totalling eight) are by
Italian composers of the 18th century (Luigi Borghi, Felice
Giardini, Pietro Nardini, Gaetano Pugnani, Giovanni Battista
Somis, Giuseppe Tartini and two anonymous composers)5 and are adaptations made by the violinist Ettore Bonelli, who also served as Zanibon's staff editor. How Bonelli altered his editions from the original works (the Silva Library Catalog indicates, for each Bonelli arrangement, the title of the work, followed by ricostruito ed elaborato per violino e pianoforte da Ettore Bonelli) but the prefazione in Bonelli's two-volume set of 20 of the adaptations remarks only that they were originally scored for violin and continuo and that the original works are to be found in la Biblioteca Nazionale
"Marciana" di Venezia. 6 Stylistically, the Bonelli adaptations are unified through their cantabile, lyrical qualities; one Silva student has advanced the theory that in choosing repertoire to transcribe, Silva preferred this lyrical quality in reverence either to his father (a singer) or to the music of Luigi Boccherini which stylistically resembles those in Bonelli's group. Perhaps the same Silva student was unaware that it was not Silva but Bonelli who first adapted the works. In any event, Silva's transcriptions of eight of Bonelli's adaptations were
5 Appendix B lists these composers and their approximate dates. 6 Ettore Bonelli, ed., Classici del violino deici ricostruzioni ed elaborazioni per violino e pianoforte di Ettore Bonelli (Padova: Guglielmo Zanibon, 1948.) 32 published by Zanibon in 1937 and subsequently republished in 1993 by Masters Music Publications. Of the latter
corporation, spokesman Clark McAllister acknowledges that
Masters Music bought Zanibon's printing plates from a
distributor in Germany and has no plans to print any
additional Silva transcriptions; he also allows that Zanibon
made no effort to renew their copyright on any pre-1950
publications. Table 4 (below) indicates Bonelli's twenty reconstructions published by Zanibon and those which Silva
transcribed for cello.
Table 4. Composers, dates and works represented in Ettore Bonelli's Classici del violino, sub- sequently transcribed by Silva7
B. Campagnoli (1751-1827) Andante - Presto *L. Borghi (18th century) Adagio *P. Nardini (1722-1793) Adagio *Anonymous (18th century) Allegretto grazi oso *G. Tartini (1692-1770) Andante affetuoso *G. B. Somis (1676-1763) Allegretto Anonymous (18th century) Largo - Allegro assai *Anonymous (18th century) Andante *G. Pugnani (1731-1798) Adagio *F. Giardini (1716-1795) Rondo A. Lolli (1730-1802) Adagio affetuoso Anonymous (18th century) Largo andante - Allegro assai L. Borghi (18th century) Rondo F. Giardini (1716-1766) Siciliano A. Porpora (1686-1766) Allegretto grazioso Anonymous (18th century) Adagio F. M. Veracini (1690-1750) Largo e Rondo G. B. Viotti (1753-1824) Allegro P. A. Locatelli (1695-1764) Adagio G. Tartini (1692-1770) Andante con variazioni
Note: an asterisk (*) preceding the composer's name indicates that the work was transcribed by Silva and published by Zanibon in 1937.
? Ibid. 33
A few other works for violin, subsequently transcribed by Luigi Silva, have become prominent in the concert repertoire for cellists, including Bela Bart6k's Roumanian
Folk Dances8 and Tomaso Vitali's Ciaccona. According to
Charles Wendt, the Bart6k transcription was completed by
Silva in the late 1950s.9 Wendt had heard Joseph Fuchs, concert violinist and brother of violist Lillian Fuchs, perform the original version for violin and piano some years earlier; so enthused was he with its possibilities as cello literature that Wendt began a transcription. Unable to complete the project, however, he approached Silva with the idea, and the transcription (completed by Silva) was published by Universal Edition in 1960. Robert Hladky notes, however, that he and Silva were talking about and playing the
Dances as early as 1948. In any event, Silva's transcription adheres closely to the violin version with only key signature differences (Silva lowers a few of the dances' signatures by a minor third to make them more idiomatic for the cello
through the use of the open "A" and "D" strings) and
differences in the articulations of several notes.
Curiously, as well, Silva dispenses with the first two bars
of the four-bar introduction, leaving only two bars'
8 Bartok's Roumanian Folk Dances were originally written for solo piano, but Szekely's arrangement for violin and piano was enthusiastically approved by the composer. It is most often heard in the latter version. 9 Charles G. Wendt, letter to the author, 9 May 1996. 34 introductory chords to set the heavy, languished mood of the piece.
Silva's transcription of Tomaso Vitali's Ciaccona has an interesting, if complicated history. No manuscript in
Vitali's own hand exists, but an unsigned copy from 1725 contains the title "Ciaccona per violino e basso/per/
Signore/Tomaso Vitalino" 10 ; it may be assumed that Vitali and
Vitalino are in fact the same person. Ferdinand David (1810-
1873), who first (erroneously, according to Wolfgang Reich1")
attributed the work to Vitali, made a reconstruction and
elaboration of the work12 ; it is this version of the work most
often heard in performance. The 1725 manuscript and David's
version differ primarily with regard to rhythmic articulation
and harmonic activity: in place of Vitali's dotted whole notes
Figure 5. Vitalino, Ciaccona, mm. 53 - 60.
David substitutes punctuating rhythms which add motion to the
developing tension created by the minor tonality of the work,
10 Tomaso Vitalino, Ciaccona per violin e basso (1725), facsimile edition ed. Wolfgang Reich (Leipzig: Zentralantiquariat der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, 1980.) 11 Wolfgang Reich, Die Chaconne g-Moll -- von Vitali ? Beitrge zur Musikwissenschaft VII (1965), 149. 12 Tomaso Vitali, Ciaccona for violin with figured bass, arr. Ferdinand David, rev. Henry Schradieck (New York: G. Schirmer, 1897.) 35 as illustrated here:
Figure 6. Vitali-David Ciaccona, mm. 53 - 60.
Silva's transcription follows the David elaboration very
closely. Although it is not notated in either David's or 1 3 Silva's editions, Silva (according to Hladky ) advocated a
cut in the middle of the work to shorten its length, removing
a total of 20 measures of high-register passagework. The
Ciaccona was one of Silva's favorite pieces, as well as many
of his students', and Silva played the work often in recital.
He also felt that the work could be performed equally well in
an unaccompanied manner, from which it has benefited greatly
by David's elaboration.
A few of Silva's transcriptions may simply be works he
thought would work as cello pieces. He probably made the transcription of Paul Dukas' Alla gitana to provide himself
an "encore" with which to conclude his recitals; since the
Dukas transcription was published in 1926 (when he was only
twenty-three years old) Silva was still pursuing a career as
soloist, entering competitions and taking auditions
regularly.
Silva's transcriptions of music originally for violin
13 James Robert Hladky, interview with the author, 25 May 1996. 36 dominate his output with a total of twenty additions to cello repertoire. 14 Chapter two has also illustrated Silva's interest in violin technique and its practicality in virtuoso technique on the cello, and it can therefore be hypothesized that Silva's preferred sources for his transcriptions were works originally for the violin.
14 five unpublished and fifteen published transcriptions. CHAPTER IV
SILVA'S TRANSCRIPTIONS OF REPERTOIRE
FOR OTHER INSTRUMENTS AND VOICES
Transcriptions of works for instruments other than the violin were made by Luigi Silva over a period of at least thirty-four years and include works originally for solo voice, chorus, operatic works, orchestra, piano, harpsichord, organ, viola da gamba, viola and brass ensemble;1 these are conveniently organized into three categories representing keyboard literature, vocal literature and literature for miscellaneous instruments. Of the total of thirty-eight non- violin transcriptions, nearly two thirds remain unpublished, though the Silva Library has ascribed a tentative date between 1950 and 1960 to their majority. Most of the published works, however, have publication dates between 1927 and 1939, indicating that Silva probably published these works prior to his arrival in the United States. A study of Silva's keyboard transcriptions yields no definable patterns, except that he seems to have preferred piano literature over the harpsichord and organ in the number of transcriptions he made: there are ten unpublished and
four published piano transcriptions; two unpublished organ transcriptions and three published harpsichord transcriptions. Chronologically, Silva's transcriptions
1 See Appendices A and B for listings. 37 38
represent all style periods. The only additional unifying factor, indeed among all his transcriptions, is that they are short, seldom exceeding eight minutes in total length. It is interesting that Silva chose to transcribe a Ricercar of
Andrea Gabrieli (1510-1586) for cello quartet; evidently he felt that the alternating contrapuntal texture of the work would be well-served through the voice of the quartet. Nine transcriptions of music for voice (including operatic works) made by Silva probably date no later than the early 1930s. As in the keyboard literature, a wide range of style periods is represented in this grouping, and since only three were published (the Bourree from Canteloube's Chants d'Auvergne, the Rameau Rigaudon from Dardanus and the
Pizzetti Movimento di danza) it is likely that these were not regarded by Silva as especially successful transcriptions.
Of the nine composers, however, two (Pizzetti and
Castelnuovo-Tedesco) were colleagues of Silva during his years in Italy and, curiously, several of the composers of
Silva's transcriptions (in all genres) were associated with the brief leadership of Alfredo Casella (1883-1947) in the
Italian avant-garde movement of the early 1920s. 4 Further,
Casella's later interest in promoting Italian baroque music may have had an influence on Silva's choice of repertoire for transcription, since he seems to have had an interest in Italian baroque violin music (as described in Chapter three.)
The third category into which a number of Silva's non-
4 "Casella, Alfredo," The Oxford Dictionary of Music, ed. Michael Kennedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 552. 39
violin transcriptions can be placed are "works for miscellaneous instruments" (indicated as "D. Miscellaneous repertoire" in Appendices A and B.) Works in this category
(whether published or unpublished) include the Renzo Bossi's Bianco e nero (c. 1780?) for orchestra; the Rodriguez Rondo, for which original instrumentation is not known, but which is bound together in Silva's unpublished transcription with the
Angles y Herrero Aria; and, curiously, the Giovanni Gabrieli Sonata pian e forte for eight unspecified instruments in two groups. Little is known about these works except that since Silva did not publish them, they probably were not highly- regarded by him (with the exception of the Gabrieli, discussed below).
An examination of both Gabrieli manuscripts at the Silva
Library suggests that these were transcriptions made between
1950 and 1960: each part of the Sonata pian e forte has one or more of Silva's students' names pencilled in the upper left-hand corner, indicating that he probably made the
transcriptions for his cello class at one school or another.
To complicate matters, however, parts for the work only
include first names (for example, "Bruno" and "Ruth") in
their upper left-hand corner, so it is difficult to be sure
which student was assigned each part in which year: the
author's father, Phillip T. Young Jr., has said that Silva student Bruno DiCecco studied at the Yale School of Music in
the early 1950s, 5 and according to Charles Wendt, Ruth
5 Phillip T. Young Jr., interview with the author, May 1996 40
Condell Alsop studied with Silva at the Mannes College in
1951. Two hypotheses can be drawn, as a result: Either
Silva sponsored inter-collegiate cello class "get-togethers"
for the purposes of reading cello ensemble repertoire (such
as the transcriptions of the Gabrielis) or Silva's students
travelled from one school to another for their lessons to fit
within Silva's teaching schedule. A third suggestion is
that the names were penciled in by Silva's students at the
memorial concert given after their mentor's death; the
handwriting on the parts, however, matches Silva's writings
on other documents, making that theory unlikely. It is not
known why Silva assigned a date of 1595 to his arrangement
for four celli of Andrea Gabrieli's Ricercar del primo tono
since Andrea died in 1586.
The question of why Silva chose to transcribe so many
works in different genres and style periods must be raised.
Each respondent to the author's survey of Silva students (see
Appendix C) returned a different opinion, making a definitive
answer difficult to obtain: Robert Hladky, for example, says
that Silva "was not nationalistically motivated. He loved
all sorts of music and I believe simply wanted to give
cellists a broader spectrum of music to choose from. "6 Martha
McCrory, however, believes that ". . .they [composers] were
fellow Italians whom he felt deserved some attention. "7
Hladky further suggests that "It might be well to note that
6 James Robert Hladky, letter to the author, 23 April 1996. 7 Martha McCrory, letter to the author, 29 April 1996. 41
fifty years ago works by Shostakovich, Prokofieff, Bloch, etc. were all new to the music public", 8 illustrating the growth in repertoire for cellists over the past 50 to 75 years. Elizabeth Cowling adds to this viewpoint that "I think we have sacrificed a great deal in our present custom of not playing shorter pieces... .a cello recital today means, for the most part, a recital of cello sonatas. This was not true back in the 1940s." 9 Cassell Grubb, however, offers that
"Silva transcribed music that he best liked and music that best fit his temperament and style of playing. Rarely would he program music from the romantic period." 1 0 Avram Lavin says that "the little pieces were merely 'fresh material' for student levels. Even teachers tire of using the same material endlesly." [sic] 11
An interesting possibility is suggested by Charles Wendt regarding Silva's activities in Rome in the 1930s. From the information in Appendices A and B, it is clear that a large portion of Silva's transcriptions were made in the 1930s, prior to his arrival in the United States. The transcriptions are also all short works. The biographical sketch in Chapter One also indicates that Silva's activities were to an extent based in Rome in the 1930s after he joined
the Quartetto di Roma. Since the Quartet was active in
touring throughout Europe, the ensemble almost of necessity
8 James Robert Hladky, letter to the author 23 April 1996. 9 Elizabeth Cowling, Tribute, 4. 10 Cassell Grubb, letter to the author, 23 April 1996. 11 Avram Lavin, letter to the author, 29 April 1996.
------42
would need to publicize itself, and it probably did this through performances on public radio. Wendt remarks, and is supported by his fellow Silva students, 12 that Silva made his transcriptions from such a wide array of sources because he was required to perform a short solo each week on Radio
Roma. 1 3 Though Silva's Curriculum vitae doesn't mention radio broadcasts of any kind, his unpublished autobiographical sketch does discuss his experience as performer, including radio:
As a cello player I have had practically all the experience that one can think of. From the school chamber music groups to the school orchestra, - the amateur quartet (always including some sort of flute player) - the accompanying of a singer - the moving picture orchestra - the little jazz band during the summer time at some swanky resort (while a student to earn money and have a good time), - the Symphony Orchestra (I was two years in the Rome Augusteo orchestra at the age of 21), - on the radio (I was among the very early performers through such means using it as a way to try my repertoire and getting free advice from all the cellists throughout the country) . . .14
Doubtless having known Ettore Bonelli through his connections with Zanibon, Silva probably approached Bonelli about playing some of his violin adaptations on the cello.
12 each of Silva's students contacted acknowledged Wendt's hypothesis as "very likely valid." 13 Charles Wendt, letter to the author, 8 May 1996. 14 Luigi Silva, Experience (autobiographical statement) (unpublished typed manuscript), The Luigi Silva Collection, The Walter Clinton Jackson Library, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro[n.d.] 43
about playing some of his violin adaptations on the cello.
On other occaLsions Silva appears to have called on his colleagues (for example, Casella, Guerrini, Castelnuovo-
Tedesco, and Petrassi) for material he could transcribe, and perhaps he even drew on repertoiLre from his childhood piano studies, accounting for the numerous keyboard transcriptions he made.)
Certainly not all of Silva's transcriptions were made between 1927 and 1940: the Bart6k works, those of the
Gabrieli family, and virtually all of the works labelled in this dissertation as "pedagogical" (Guerrini, Kreutzer, and
Paganini) were transcribed later, in the 1950s. However,
Silva's teaching schedule began to dominate both his professional and personal life after about 1948 and most of the transcriptions from this period are works for various cello ensembles (for example, the two Gabrieli works), a few encore pieces and some short, incidental works (Della Ciaja).
Silva's performing career, as a result of his teaching, had to take a lesser priority. It seems likely that with less frequent need for works with which to fill out a recital program Silva relaxed his quest for music to transcribe. CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION
This dissertation has described the numerous contributions to cello playing and teaching Luigi Silva made over the course of a forty-year period. Through his tremendous artistry as performer Silva shared with audiences around the world his interpretive skills in both the standard repertoire and through additions he made to it. He did this also for his pupils, serving as role model as well as mentor in the studio. As pedagogue Silva helped shape the careers of many students, the majority of whom are highly-regarded as players and teachers in the major orchestras and schools of music in this country (illustrated in Table 1.) Silva expanded the repertoire for cellists by over one hundred works through his discovery of several Boccherini sonatas and concerti, transcriptions he made of various works and works he commissioned. His editions of the major pedagogical repertoire for cello are unparalleled in their practicality and effectiveness. Finally, Silva's reputation among his peers was very high. In Cowling's Tribute, Leonard Rose comments on his association with Silva:
44 45
In my opinion, Luigi Silva was one of the greatest modern cello pedagogues I was privileged to know. During the period before his death when he taught the cello at the Juilliard School, we discussed and dissected many teaching problems. I spent many hours picking his brain, and I came away learning very much about teaching our beloved instrument. His contribution was enormous and very important.1
Perhaps most basic to Silva's method of teaching was his belief that a cellist ought to be able to play anything that possibly could be played on the cello. In order to
facilitate the concept, Silva studied the hand positions in guitar, violin and piano playing and tried to incorporate
these into a "transcendental" technique for the cello, developing a number of innovative fingering patterns and
expanding the expressive and functional capabilities of the left-hand thumb. Nino Rosso has said that Silva's main contribution, in fact, was in the exploitation of the thumb position in cello playing.2 Sensing the limitations of pedagogical repertoire as it existed until the 1940s, however, Silva embarked on a mission to create a repertoire
of etudes which would help each of his students pursue his or her full potential; the Kreutzer-Silva volumes were the first
such product. Seeing the intrinsic pedagogical value of more musically-satisfying collections such as the Servais and
Piatti Caprices, Silva created editions of these works to which he appended bowing and fingering variations and
1 Cowling, Tribute, 7. 2 Nino Rosso, interview with the author, 26 May 1996. 46 exercises. His transcriptions of the twenty-four Caprices of
Paganini serve two purposes: (1) as a vehicle for demonstrating technical prowess on the cello and (2) providing additional material with which an advanced student can perfect his or her technique.
The twentieth-century has seen an unparalleled rise in
the number of cellists we call "virtuosi" because of their
stunning technical command of the instrument. Luigi Silva,
through his innovative approach to technique on the cello
(which he passed on to his students through the use of
etudes, scholarly editions and performance literature),
elevated the standard of performance on the instrument higher
than had ever been reached previously.
It is quite possible that many contemporary students of
the cello are badly uninformed about historically-significant
cellists and their contributions to the instrument. The names of some of these important artists live on, owing to
their glowing reviews and award-winning recordings, however
Luigi Silva was not one of them (his Curriculum vitae,
however, describes recordings made for a number of prominent
recording companies, including Decca, Columbia, NRLP and
Electrola of Berlin.)3 Silva was a fantastic performer (as so
many of his students have recalled) and a truly phenomenal
teacher, for whom opportunity simply didn't present itself at
the right time or place; Margery Enix has summarized
3 Luigi Silva, Curriculum vitae (unpublished typed manuscript), The Luigi Silva Collection, The Walter Clinton Jackson Library, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. [1959?] 47 beautifully that
. . whenn Silva came to this country Feuermann and Piatigorsky dominated the concert stage among cellists. And of course, Casals was still very much alive. Later, our beloved Leonard Rose came to the fore. Silva was overshadowed by all these men in the public's eye, though not necessarily among connoisseurs of the cello, such as Virgil Thomson. Silva found a place for himself specializing in unusual cello literature, fiendishly difficult, but not greatly attractive to the general public. 4
It is therefore necessary to regard Luigi Silva's
significance in the history of the cello by assessing the
legacy he left behind through his transcriptions, editions,
and also his students: undoubtedly, one of the most
significant in more than 400 years of cello history.
4 Margery Enix, letter to the author, 25 May 1996. APPENDIX A
SILVA'S UNPUBLISHED TRANSCRIPTIONS
48 49
APPENDIX A.
Unpublished Transcriptions by Luigi Silva
A. Stringed Instrument Repertoire Composer Title of Original Composition Corelli, Arcangelo (1653-1713) Sonatas, Op. 5 (selections; 5 adagio movements) Corelli, Arcangelo (1653-1713) Sonata, Op. 5 No. 12, D Minor Fuchs, Lillian (1903-??) Caprices (1950) Paganini, Niccolo (1782-1840) Le Streghe, Op. 8 Ravel, Maurice (1875-1937) Vocalise en forme d'habanera Rolla, Alessandro (1757-1841) Concerto, Op. 3, E-flat Major Vivaldi, Antonio(1678-1741) Concerto, F. I. 138, D Major (selections)
B. Keyboard repertoire Composer Title of Original Composition Bartok, Bela (1881-1945) Bagatelles, Op. 6 (selections; nos. 1-8, 10-14) Bloch, Ernst (1880-1959) Visions and prophecies (selections; first five movements) Brahms, Johannes (1833-1897) Intermezzo No. 6 from Fantasies, Op. 116 Chopin, Frederic (1810-1849) Etudes, Op. 5, No. 2 Chopin, Frederic(1810-1849) Mazurka, Op. 17 No. 4, A Major Ferrari-Trecate, L. (1884-1964) I prode Anselmo Gabrieli, Andrea (1510-1586) Ricercar del primo tono Handel, G.F. (1685-1759) Concerto, Op. 4 No. 3, G Minor (selections; Adagio mov't) Phillips, Burrill (1907-??) A Set of Three Informalities Schubert, Franz (1797-1828) 20 Valzer (selections; from op. 9, 18, 33, 50, 127) Thomson, Virgil (1896-1989) Portraits (selections; four portraits)
C. Vocal repertoire Composer Title of Original Composition Angles y Herrero, R.(1730-1816) Aria in re minore Castelnuovo-Tedesco, M. (1895-1968) Vocalise (1928) Marcello, Benedetto (1686-1739) Estro poetico-armonico (selections; Salmo 21 [15, 36]) Petrassi, Goffredo (1904-??) Vocalizzo per addormentare una bambina Porrino, Ennio (1910-1959) Traccas, carri sardi trainati da buoi Zandonai, Riccardo (1883-1944) Vocalise (1929)
D. Misc. repertoire Composer Title of Original Composition Bossi, Renzo (1745-??) Bianco e nero Gabrieli, Giovanni (1557-1612) Sacrae symphoniae: sonata pian e forte (8 inst. in 2 grps) Rodriguez, Felipe (1759-1841) Rondo in si bemolle 50
Year of Trans. Orig. Instr. Silva's Instr. Remarks 19- violin, continuo cello, piano?
19- violin, continue cello, piano? score only 195- viola cello 19- violin, orch. cello, piano score only 19- violin, piano cello, piano? viola, orch. cello, piano score & part 1953 violin, orch. cello, piano
Year of Trans. Orig. Instr. Silva's Instr. Remarks 195- piano cello, piano ? cello part only
195- piano cello, piano? cello part only
195- piano cello, piano 195- piano cello, piano incomplete 19- piano cello, piano? score 195- piano four hands cello, piano cello part only 19- organ four celli score, four parts 19- organ cello, piano? cello part only
195- piano cello, piano score and part 195- piano cello, piano score
195- piano cello, piano in ed. with Bartok
Year of Trans. Orig. Instr. Silva's Instr. Remarks 195- voice, continuo cello, piano 1930 ? voice, piano cello, piano cello part only 19- voices, instr. four celli score, eight parts
19- voice, piano cello, piano score 195- voice, piano cello, piano score and part 19- cello, piano score & part
Year of Trans. Orig. Instr. Silva's Instr. Remarks orchestra cello, piano 19- eight inst. nine celli nine parts
195- ? cello, piano APPENDIX B
SILVA'S PUBLISHED TRANSCRIPTIONS
51 52
APPENDIX B.
Published Transcriptions and Editions by Luigi Silva
A. Stringed Instrument Repertoire Composer Title Anon. (E. Bonelli, arr.) (17xx-18xx) Andante Anon. (E. Bonelli, arr.) (17xx-18xx) Allegretto grazioso Bartok, Bela (1881-1945) Roumanian Folk Dances Borghi, Luigi (1745-??) Adagio Casella, Alfredo (1883-1947) Notturno Casella, Alfredo (1883-1947) Tarantella Dukas, Paul (1865-1935) Alla gitana Giardini, Felice (1716-1796) Rond6 Kreutzer, Rodolphe (1766-1831) 42 Etudes ou Caprices Mule, Giuseppe (1885-1951) Canzone e danza araba Nardini, Pietro (1722-1793) Adagio Paganini, Niccolo (1782-1840) 24 Caprices, op. 1 Paganini, Niccolo (1782-1840) Sonata a preghiera con variazioni ("Moses Variations"U) Pugnani, Gaetano i1732-1798) Adagio Somis, Giovanni Battista (1686-1763) Allegretto Tartini, Giuseppe (1692-1770) Andante affetuoso Tartini, Giuseppe (1692-1770) Concerto, A Major Tomassini, Vincenzo (1880-??) Scherzo Vitali, Tomaso Antonio (1665-?) Ciaccona
B. Keyboard Repertoire Composer Title Alfano, Franco (1876-1954) Danses roumaines Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750) Var. XXV (Andante) from Goldberg Variations Chopin, Frederic 1(1810-1849) ftude, Op. 10 No. 2, A minor Della Ciaja, Azzolino (1671-1755) Sonatas,Op. 4(selection; Toccata e Canzone) Guerrini, Guido (1890-1965) Caprices Mendelssohn, Felix (1809-1847) Lieder ohne Worte "Spinnerlied", Op.67 No.4 Scarlatti, Domenico (1685-1757) Sonatas (selections; "Suite" assembled by Silva) Thomson, Virgil (1896-1989) Portraits (selections; 4 portraits)
C. Vocal RepertjoiLe Composer Title Canteloube, Marie-Josephe (1879-1957) Chants d'Auvergne (selection; "Bourree") Pizzetti, Ildebrando (1880-1968) Movimento di danza (dal vocalizzo per voca acuta) Rameau, Jean Philippe (1683-1764) Dardanus (selection; Rigaudon)
D. Misc. Repertoire Composer Title Veretti, Antonio (1900-??) Una favola di Anderson (sel.; Minuetto & pastorale) 53
APPENDIX B. , CONT'D.
Published Transcriptions and Editions of Luigi Silva
Publisher Orig. Instr. Silva's Instr. Remarks Zanibon, 1935 violin, piano cello, piano republ. MMP, 1993* Zanibon, 1935 violin, continuo? cello, piano republ. MMP, 1993* Universal, 1960 violin, piano cello, piano not listed in SLC- Zanibon, 1935 violin, piano cello, piano republ. MMP, 1993* Ricordi, 1931 cello, orch. cello, piano Ricordi, 1931 cello, orch. cello, piano A. Leduc, 1926 violin, piano cello, piano Zanibon, 1935 violin, continuo cello, piano republ. MMP, 1993* Zanibon, 1937 violin cello Ricordi, 1932 violin, piano? cello, piano Zanibon, 1935 violin, continuo cello, piano republ. MMP, 1993* Ricordi, 1952 violin cello Zanibon, 1937 violin, orch. cello, piano
Zanibon, 1935 violin, continuo cello, piano republ. MMP, 1993* Zanibon, 1935? violin, continuo? cello, piano republ. MMP, 1993*t Zanibon, 1935 violin, continuo? cello, piano republ. MMP, 1993* Zanibon, 1938 gamba, orch. cello, piano Zanibon, 1937 cello, orch. cello, piano Zanibon, 1937 violin, continuo cello, piano Transcr. of F.David's adaptation
Publisher Orig. Instr. slvals Instr. R. Deiss, 1932 piano cello, piano Zanibon, 1937 harpsichord cello, piano Studio Mus. Ron. ,1927 piano cello, piano Ricordi, 1952 harpsichord cello, piano Ricordi, 1941 piano cello Zanibon, 1937 piano cello, piano Zanibon, 1934 harpsichord cello, piano
Schirmer, 1973 piano cello, piano in SLC, 5 Portraits listed but 4 included
Publisher Orig. Instr. Silva's Instr. A. Leduc, 1927 voices, orch. cello, piano Ricordi, 1932 voice, piano? cello, piano
Studio Mus. Roin. ,1927 opera cello, piano
Publisher Orig. Instr. Silva's Instr. Ricordi, 1938 cello, piano
* Masters Music Publishers, Boca Raton, Florida t Somis' Allegretto does not appear in the Silva Library Catalog as a published work. APPENDIX C
LETTER OF INQUIRY TO SILVA' S FORMER STUDENTS
54 55
425 Fulton St., Apt.210 Denton, TX 76201-3968 ph. (817) 3812761
17 April 1996 [name] [address] [city, state, zip]
Dear [Former Silva student],
My name is Ty Young, and I am presently completing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in cello performance at the University of North Texas. Professor Carter Enyeart is my teacher and advisor; before studying with him I completed Bachelor's and Master's degrees in performance as a student of Robert Hladky at the University of Oregon. My dissertation, The Transcriptions and Editions of Luigi Silva and Their Influence on Cello Pedagogy and Performance, is well underway and I am writing to you to ask for your assistance (Dr. Hladky was kind enough to provide your name as one of Silva's students -- if you know of others, I'd appreciate knowing!)
Elizabeth Cowling, in A Tribute to Luigi Silva (Newsletter of the Violoncello Society, Inc., February 1980) provides several testimonies from a number of Silva's students. One thing not addressed in her tribute, however, is Silva's choice of compositions for transcription. From your work with him, can you tell me of any interactions you may have had with Silva regarding his choice of compositions to transcribe, the manner in which he did so, or related issues? I know that some of the works (Paganini, 24 Caprices, for example) were transcribed so that Silva might have a vehicle for showing off his own technique -- as well as for providing challenging technical material for his students -- but, for example, what drove him to choose the Della Ciaja Toccata e Canzone of 1727? or the Pugnani Adagio ?
If you're able to shed any light on these issues, or even provide me with any anecdotal comments on Silva as teacher, colleague, friend, etc., I'd be extremely grateful. I'm anxious to complete the dissertation/lecture as soon as possible, so your timely response to this will be very much appreciated. I will gratefully acknowledge any and all contributions to my dissertation source material on the Acknowledgements page of my dissertation, in addition to the bibliography.
Thank you once again for your help!
Sincerely yours,
Ty Young APPENDIX D
EXCERPT OF MANUSCRIPT IN
LUIGI SILVA'S HAND FOR DAVID POPPER'S
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56 57
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oo BIBLIOGRAPHY
"Joint Recital Given by Silva and Mannes." New York Times, 6 April 1941, page 46.
"Casella, Alfredo," The Oxford Dictionary of Music, ed. Michael Kennedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985, 552.
Biringer, Gene. "Silva, Luigi," The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, 4 vols., ed. H. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley Sadie. London: MacMillan, 1980, IV, 226.
Bonelli, Ettore, ed. Classics of the Cello 18th-century Italian pieces for violoncello and piano reconstructed and arranged by Ettore Bonelli and Luigi Silva. Boca Raton, Florida: Masters Music Publications, 1993.
------. Classici del violino deici ricostruzioni ed elaborazioni per violino e pianoforte di Ettore Bonelli. Padova: Guglielmo Zanibon, 1948.
Cowling, Elizabeth. "A Tribute to Luigi Silva (1903-1961)," Newsletter of the New York Violoncello Society, February 1980, p. 1-7.
------. The Cello, 2nd ed. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1983.
Enix, Margery. "Luigi Silva's Contribution to the History of Cello Technique," Newsletter of the New York Violoncello Society, February 1980, 7-9.
------. "Turning Loss Into Gain: Cello Music Collections at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro," Journal of the American String Teachers' Association, August 1991, 85-88.
------. Rudolph Matz Cellist, Teacher, Composer. Ottawa: Dominis Publishing, 1996.
Hladky, James Robert. A Short History of Thumb Technique With Twelve Etudes. DMA dissertation, University of Rochester, 1958.
Kreutzer, Rodolphe. 42 Studi per violoncello. ed. Luigi Silva. 3 vols. Padova, Italy: Zanibon, 1936.
58 59
Markevitch, Dmitry. Cello Story (transl. from French by Florence W. Seder.) Princeton, NJ: Summy-Birchard Music, 1984.
Noss, Luther. A History of the Yale School of Music 1855- 1970. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.
Silva, Luigi. Curriculum Vitae. Archive/Manuscript Control of The Luigi Silva Collection at the Walter Clinton Jackson Library at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Box 12-, 1st folder.
------. Luigi Silva (autobiographical statement). Archive/ Manuscript Control of The Luigi Silva Collection at the Walter Clinton Jackson Library at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
------. Experience (autobiographical statement). Archive/ Manuscript Control of The Luigi Silva Collection at the Walter Clinton Jackson Library at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
------. Elizabeth Anderson plays Luigi Silva with Arthur Tollefson, piano. Greensboro, NC: University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 1991. (sound recording; no catalog number applicable .)
------. "Prefazione" of his ed. of 42 Etudes by Rodolphe Kreutzer. Padova, Italy: Zanibon, 1964.
Paganini, Niccolo. Caprices (24) for solo Violin, Op. 1 (ca. 1805.) Nos. 9, 13, 14, 17 and 24 performed by Yo-Yo Ma, cellist. CBS Masterworks MK 37280 (sound recording: compact disc.)
Palm, Siegfried. Pro musica nova: Studien zum spielen neuer Misik flr violoncello / mit Werken von Gnther Becker . . . Let al.] Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Hartel, 1985.
Reich, Wolfgang. "Die Chaconne g-Moll -- von Vitali ?" Beitr(cge zur Musikwissenschaft VII (1965), 149.
Thomson, Virgil. The Musical Scene. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945.
University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Walter Clinton Jackson Library. The Luigi Silva Collection. Greensboro: Walter Clinton Jackson Library, 1978. 60
Vitali, Tomaso. Ciaccona for violin with figured bass, arr. Ferdinand David, rev. Henry Schradieck. New York: G. Schirmer, 1897.
Vitalino, Toraaso. Ciaccona per violino e basso (1725), facsimile edition ed. Wolfgang Reich. Leipzig: Zentralantiquariat der Deutschen Demokratischen, Repuplik, 1980.