Hi, David. I agree with your interpretations of compound vs. simple subdivision. But,
> >Of course, in early music, you often must just make a guess. I think >all the people who try to make complex and exact conversions between >the old meters are making a huge mistake -- all you need to do is >absorb the feel of the music involved and the conversion basically >takes care of itself. Rigidly attempting to maintain a metronomic >equivalence is itself going to be anachronistic in that context, >whatever particular theorists may have said. >David W. Fenton I know exactly what you're saying, but I can't completely agree with it. The "rules" or conventions or performance practices or whatever they were did exist, musicians were raised learning them and knowing them, and we have to start by assuming they were observed in practice, our inheritance of 19th century subjectivity notwithstanding. My own approach is to do the scutwork of figuring out the tempo relationships according to the theory, and then simply try it and see whether it works and makes musical sense. Most often it does; sometimes it doesn't. They weren't any less prone to making exceptions than we are! But there's a section in the early, happy part of Monteverdi's "L'Orfeo" where you really have to do the math, figure out the exact proportions, and then practice your part because the dance sections go like the wind! It works musically. >Theorists were, after >all, theorists, so they often rigidly define things that were not at >all strict in practice. No, they were not simply "theorists" in the 20th century sense. There was no job description for a "Music Theorist," any more than there was for a "Composer." If you were a musician, you were first and foremost a musician. You performed, and you were hired to perform. Zarlino was in charge of the music at San Marco and one of the organists if I remember correctly. Every composer whose work we know from the manuscripts and prints was a working musician who sang or played for his supper every day. Composing was a sideline or added bonus. I agree completely that sometimes they worked extra hard to make a theoretical system complete, and that they took a rather long time to catch up to what other musicians were actually already doing, but when they wrote about what musicians were actually doing, they did so from their own personal experience, not because they had to publish or perish. You're right in that early music you must often make a guess. I just happen to think that an educated guess is better than a random or subjective one. John John & Susie Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:John.Howell@;vt.edu) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
