JAVS Spring 2022

Additionally, Campagnoli’s scores, like composers of his day and earlier, feature virtually no dynamic markings or other expressive markings. It was up to the performer to interpret the music for themselves. And because many performers were also composers, this was not a hard ask. Using the first edition, I could see exactly what the composer had written—or not written—and discovered the caprices just as if they were hot off the press. I wanted to be as true to Campagnoli’s scores as I could, and where interpretation was needed, I wanted to use my own ideas. For me, a natural question came to the surface: whether to perform these caprices on a period viola with gut strings for a more authentic sound, or on a modern instrument. It quickly became clear that as much as I love playing period viola, the gut strings—notoriously unreliable and prone to random squeaks and frequent tuning—were not an option for a single take recording. I also wanted the recordings to reach their intended audience of viola students. An “authentic” performance on a period instrument would make the Caprices feel less, not more, accessible to an aspiring audience. I was quickly gaining an appreciation for the difficulty of the Caprices. Since I was preparing to play them in one take for a video recording, any noticeable mistake

would mean I’d have to scrap the take and start over. My practicing became razor focused. Most of it happened at night, in our bathroom. My husband, our baby, our cat, and I lived in a glorified studio at the time, and the baby slept in the generous closet of our bedroom. The bathroom was the only soundproof area of our 550 square-foot apartment. Unlike my conservatory days, when hours of my day were available for practice, I discovered I rather liked having a time limit of 30 minutes to an hour per night. I practiced more efficiently and better than ever before. With limited time, I could still prepare about three caprices in two or three months. After Caprices 17 and 33, I began working from the beginning of the book, and noticed something striking about numbers 1-4. Played back-to-back, they fit together, likewise sounding incomplete when played apart. This is because each caprice ends on a half cadence, which resolves on the downbeat of the next caprice. No. 1 ends on a D major chord, which resolves to no. 2’s G major opening. No. 2 ends on a E major, which resolves to the note A in no. 3, and so on. The tempo order of these pieces is not unlike a late Baroque composition: Largo – Andante con moto – Allegro moderato – Andante maestoso. I wonder if

Figure 3: Campagnoli, 41 Caprices, no.1, mm.44-47

Figure 4: Campagnoli, 41 Caprices, no.2, mm.1-4

Figure 5: Campagnoli, 41 Caprices, no.2 mm.41-44

Figure 6: Campagnoli, 41 Caprices, no.3, mm. 1-3.

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 38, No. 1, Spring 2022

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