The Useful Virtuoso

Abstract

In the contemporary musical practices, terms such as virtuoso or virtuose are frequently employed in order to qualify instrumentalists or singers whose advanced technical skills stand out by the apparently impossible, inconceivable and inexplicable. Such conception of virtue matches the nineteenth-century thought and is traditionally associated with the idea of genius. In the present text, we seek to recover the meanings of virtue proper to the 18th century. We trace a history of the term, looking for recontextualize it in the scope of the writings of two eighteenth-century musical theorists: the German Johann Mattheson (1681-1767) and the Italian British Francesco Geminiani (1687-1762). In this sense, it is clear that the idea of virtuosity does not constrain to the skills on the instrument nor the voice, but neither refers to the realm of the inexplicable: it depends, above all, on the moral conduct in a constant perfectioning process.