On 5 Jan 2004 at 9:53, Harold Owen wrote: > At 3:39 PM +0100 1/5/04, Barbara Touburg wrote: > >Hear, hear! I've sung in a specialized Renaissance choir for > >several years and I can testify that *not* reducing note values > >makes all of the difference! We need to see the original notation. > > Note the words "specialized Renaissance choir." As a member of an > early music consort for many years and director of a Collegium > Musicum, I always insisted on performing from scores that were > closest to the original notation - and even performed from > facsimiles when I could get them. However, there are many more > school and church choirs out there who find the earlier notation > daunting. If there were time for them to get used to it, I would > give them the music with all those white notes, but there isn't. > With my own church choir, I was happy to use modern performance > transcriptions to save time and frustration. I have had published a > number of transcriptions intended for such groups. My publisher did > not want to take the chance of losing sales by my insisting on > original meters and clefs.
Er, who said anything about original meters and original clefs? I said that certain rhythmic reductions (4/1 or 4/2 -> 4/4, for instance) will cause more problems than they solve for experienced musicians. I do believe that 4/1 is better for modern musicians transcribed to 4/2, but that 4/2 should be left alone, and that neither should be further reduced to 4/4, precisely because of all the 16th-notes (and even 32nd notes) that result. I think it would be worthwhile for a choir to learn to be able to read 4/2 and 3/2 transcriptions. If they developed the ability to cope with such rhythmic values in that Renaissance repertory, they would also gain skills that might be of value in other repertories as well. They'd certainly be better musicians for the experience. And it can be done with amateurs. When I lived in Cleveland, I had the good fortune to be involved in a choir that sang Latin mass every Sunday, with a full polyphonic ordinary (drawn from both the great Renaissance repertory and from modern composers) and plus 1 to 3 polyphonic motets, with the rest of the proper sung in Gregorian chant for direct from the Liber Usualis. The group rehearsed for 3 hours on Sunday night and performed the service at noon on Sunday. The group consisted of a number of professional and professionally- trained musicians, but also had a core of church members who had started out in 1974 with no experience of such repertory (and some did not even read music at that time). The choir director trained his choir over the course of the years so that 10 years later, when I joined, they were doing simply amazing things, and had a huge repertory of works that they had sung many times. I'm not suggesting that every situation requires such an approach, but that by coddling your singers, you're taking away an opportunity to learn something new, to expand their musical abilities and musical horizons. You're also restricting yourself to editions that make the reductions, or forcing yourself to do the work of making them. While that's not all that difficult with Finale, it's still work that you wouldn't have to do if the musicians learned the skills, instead. My experience with teaching, especially in volunteer circumstances, is that people rise to your expectations -- expect little and you get exactly what you expect. Treat them as though you expect professional levels of accomplishment and you would be surprised what they accomplish. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
