The Solfeggio Tradition: A Forgotten Art of Melody in the Long Eighteenth Century

How did castrati manage to amaze their eighteenth-century audiences by singing the same aria several times in completely different ways? And how could composers of the time write operas in a matter of days? The secret lies in the solfeggio tradition, a music education method that was fundamental to the training of European musicians between 1680 and 1830 — a time during which professional musicians belonged to the working class. As disadvantaged children in orphanages learned the musical cr...