Auctor incertus: Issues of authorship and anonymity around Missa Inviolata (ca. 1520s)
(2024)
author(s): Isaac Alonso de Molina
published in: KC Research Portal
A six-part polyphonic setting of the ordinary of the Mass survives as a unicum in manuscript 1967 of the Biblioteca Central de Barcelona, Spain. Although it is clearly the most significant piece in the manuscript, it has received considerably less attention from specialized ensembles than the rest of the repertoire contained therein. This may be due to several factors, chief among them being that the manuscript provides no indication of the composer’s identity. Such anonymity is quite common when dealing with early repertoires. This research aims to address this situation critically and offer several practical, performer-oriented strategies to overcome it.
Rosa García Ascot’s works for piano solo
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Irene Comesaña Aguilar
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The name of Rosa García Ascot (1902-2002) started to appear in essays and recordings a few years ago, and not numerously. She was an outstanding pianist and composer, as assured by influential people like Manuel de Falla, who was her teacher, Maurice Ravel, or Igor Stravinsky. Nevertheless, her name fell into oblivion and her music remained unpublished or lost for many years. It was my aim with this research to bring back the figure of Rosa García Ascot by investigating her life story and analyzing some of her piano pieces and to re-discover a performance practice that has been lost, applying interpretative ideas into my performance of her music. Despite the shortage of available information and resources –many of them have been lost, uncatalogued, or simply don’t exist–, I found different strategies to achieve my goal. Through her piece Petite Suite (1935-1938) I studied its neoclassical style and the influence of the harpsichord. For the performance practice of this repertoire, I took references from Joaquín Nin’s edition of Spanish 18t h -century keyboard music, applying some indications to Ascot’s score. The related performance practice of other composers that had a connection with Ascot, like Stravinsky and Prokofiev, also serve as a source of information for other pieces studied in this research: Una Cosita III and Pieza para piano IV. On top of this, expert consultation with Ignacio Clemente and Paula Ríos, musical and recording analysis and self- experimentation complete the research process of understanding the performative style of Rosa García Ascot through her works.
