Below is a transcript of our conversation with Dr. Alicia Valoti, Associate Professor of Viola, CMU’s School of Music
David Nicholas:
I'm David Nicholas, and this is Central Focus, a weekly look at research activity and innovative work from Central Michigan University students and faculty. When it comes to a particular member of the string family, you want to talk to Dr. Alicia Vloti, Associate Professor in CMU's School of Music. She defends her noble instrument as it lives in the shadow of the violin. She has been named a Fulbright U.S. scholar for 2025-26 to travel to Florence, Italy's Conservatory of Music to study a very important figure in the evolution of the viola…
Noting that you're continuing your research into the little-known 19th century composer Fernando Giorgetti, when did you first discover him and how long have you been studying his music?
Alicia Valoti:
That's kind of a two-fold question. So initially I became interested in some of the Campagnoli caprices for viola. And I got a little bit interested as to why this was a 19th century composition that was so virtuosic. Imagine kind of like a Paganini type situation for the viola, which during that time was very, very rare. And I started looking more into, okay, well, who were his teachers? Who was Campagnoli? He was actually a violinist. He actually wrote a method book for the viola, very typical at the time for violin, not so much for viola. But he wrote this book because he was teaching chamber music and all the violas were absolutely awful, abysmal. And he said, there's no way I can teach chamber music when these violas are not nearly to the standard that we need for this kind of repertoire. And so, he wrote a viola method book that included a lot of, it was sort of an instruction manual starting from Okay, this is the C string, this is the G string, you hold the viola in this way, going to these Paganini type caprices, etudes, things like that, and some really astounding composition for the viola. And from there, I was sort of hooked. I started following all of his compositions. And one of the really important things is you don't find hardly any of this repertoire out in the world. You can find it in some manuscript copies. You can find maybe the premiere printing that only occurred once and then never again in the 1800s. But it's not on IMSLP. It's not readily printable where you can find it and then be able to try it out to play it. You really have to do a lot of digging in order to be able to find all these compositions.
DN:
Are they, as you have found or as you are continuing to discover, housed there at the conservatory? Is there an archive where some of these original manuscripts, is that where there is a home for these? Or do you literally have to continue traveling to a lot of different places to find it?
AV:
I think a little bit of both, actually. So, some of those manuscripts, for example, the ones that I will be studying, are housed, I like to say, in the basement of the conservatory in Florence. They're not readily available to the public. You have to have credentials in order to be able to go in and view them and to work with them. And again, in the conservatory, you'll find those premier printings, the ones that occurred in Milan from the Ricardi Edition House, and they were never printed again. And so maybe some of those copies are the only extant copies of this literature. But I have also traveled to Brussels, for example, to Bologna, to Milan, to see both the manuscript copies and some of those only one print copies as well.
DN:
Was there a prevalent form that Giorgetti composed in?
AV:
Yes and no. There's a lot of literature for violin, whether that's in duo, in with piano. There are a lot of character pieces for violin. There are some concerti for violin as well. There is also a large variety of chamber music, of string quartets, also with piano or with double bass, depending. There are some compositions for wind instruments, including flute. And there are several orchestral compositions. And I believe that there are even some sacred compositions as well. But it's really all, I feel, still to be discovered. There's (There's) not a lot out there where we can find to listen to or even just to be able to consult in terms of the scores.
DN:
More on the musical legacy of Fernando Giorgetti next time on Central Focus.
