Dear list:
A few thoughts concerning the French duple-meter gigue.
1) The two examples of Toxin are not in 4/4 there is no time signature
given. They are probably both in Binarie mineur or "cut time" or 2/2,
again, see Perrine's distinction between an allemande and a gigue in
his "pieces", p. 16-19. This makes a huge difference in the way we
would play them.
2) In this repertoire, Allemandes and Gigues are, at times, almost
indistinguishable, as evidenced by Perrine's distinction between an
allemande and a gigue in his "pieces", p. 16-19
3) There is no evidence to assume that these gigues should be played
very fast.
4) I would not force a a ternary subdivision as a uniform rhythm (6/8
or 12/8). The French had a ternary, gigue-like genre: the canarie
5) It is very likely that notes inegales were used in these pieces,
but to insist on them throughout the piece in order to change the
rhythm to something that sounds more like 6/8 or 12/8 seems pedantic
to me.
All the best,
Jorge Torres
On Dec 28, 2008, at 12:51 PM, Mathias Rösel wrote:
I would imagine it could be binary.
Both Tocxin by Denis Gaultier and Toxin by Charles Mouton are gigues
in
4/4 metre. I'd go so far as to say that there's a relationship
discernible between the pieces of master and student in that both
gigues
have a very similar opening motif and both share the same rhythmic
pattern in each measure of their respective second halves, i. e. with
the bass note off-beat on 2nd half of 1st beat. That repeated bass
note
even being a 4 in both pieces (notwithstanding that it means B with
Gaultier, C sharp with Mouton).
With what I heard with Froberger gigues transferred to these 4/4
gigues,
you would play them extremely inegale, IOW amounts of crotchets as
sharpened ternary units. Gaultier seems to indicate that way of
playing
by stating rhythm more precisely in each one but last measure of both
halves of his gigue.
Still, would you perform Tocsin "as loud and fast as possible", i. e.
raising connotations of alarm? Mouton seems to indicate something of
that kind by using means of chromatic escalation at the conclusions of
the 1st half.
Mathias
Tocxin is tocsin in both French and English, an alarm bell which is
musically depicted by the repeated bass notes.
My former question was concerned with tempo. If it is agreed that
alarm
bells would usually be chimed as loud and fast as possible in case
of
emergency, was the gigue which bears that name supposed to be played
that way, too?
It's a sequel, so to say, of a short discussion that we had in
December
2003 (Re: binary and ternary GIGUES).
Mathias
"Anthony Hind" <anthony.h...@noos.fr> schrieb:
Damian
"Sonner le tocsin", meant roughly "to ring a peal of warning
bells ", but could also mean the bell used for such a warning. This
would have come from earlier "touquesain" from Provencal
"tocaseneh".
It seems that "tocar" (or toquer), distantly related to "touch",
comes from Latin "toccre" make a sound like "toc".
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O27-touch.html
and "senh" could be derived from Latin "signum" a sign - a signal,
giving ancient French "seing", later "sein", and which took on the
meaning of "bell".
My source is the historic dictionary of the French language, le
Robert, but etymology of a single expression, even backed-up by
such
a dictionary is rarely safe.
Around 1570 and for a certain period, the expression apparently
took
on a metaphoric meaning (Bossuet) to allert public oppinion.
Best wishes
Anthony
Le 28 déc. 08 à 02:51, damian dlugolecki a écrit :
You are quite right David. I just looked up 'tocsin' in my OED
where the earliest usage in English is in 1598. I just assumed
it
was an earlier spelling of 'toxin' which led me to my incorrect
interpretation. Never encountered the word 'tocsin' with that
meaning. The OED reads, "an alarm signal, sounded by ringing a
bell or bells; used orig. and esp. in reference to France."
Thanks for clearing that up.
Damian
Subject: [LUTE] Re: le Tocsein de Gautier
I might have missed something here, getting into the discussion
late
(I rejoined today---hellew everyone), but doesn't the English
word
"tocsin" refer to the pealing of a bell? I always thought
"tocsin"
came from an old form of French. Could some form of the word
have
existed in French in the 17th century with a similar meaning?
Used
perhaps in similar sense to Vallet's piece depicting bells in a
village church.
Davidr
dlu...@verizon.net
On Dec 27, 2008, at 7:48 PM, damian dlugolecki wrote:
At the moment this is only a guess, but I believe the 'tocsin'
of
Mouton and that of D. Gautier have something to do with disease.
The word 'toxin' only come into the English language during the
19th century. My OED defines it originally as
"A specific poison...produced by a microbe which causes a
particular disease.' By this perhaps we can infer that this
was closer to the original French meaning than to our current
understanding of the word 'toxin' as some kinde of poison. There
were many diseases like typhus, smallpox, cholera etc. that
wiped
out large numbers of
people. I need to find a French dictionary like my OED. My
Larousse does not have historical meanings or etymologies.
In any case, the pieces by Gautier and Mouton are very similar,
and it seems to me that the Mouton piece is transposition to
f#m
of D. Gautier's piece in e minor. The repeated low 'B' has a
funerary feeling to me anyway and it appears throughout Mouton's
piece as a low C#. But even though it is possible these
'tocsins'
were about disease, they are gigues and should be played at
faster
tempos. Played in the salons of Paris during recurrences of 'la
Peste' they were perhaps demonstrations of musical 'black
humor.'
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Jorge Torres
Associate Professor of Music
237 Williams Center
Lafayette College
Easton, PA 18042
(610)330-5365
torr...@lafayette.edu
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