On 18 Feb 2006 at 15:08, Andrew Stiller wrote: > On Feb 17, 2006, at 7:15 PM, John Howell wrote: > > > Monteverdi specifies both contrabass violin and contrabass viol in > > the 1607 score to "L'Orfeo." > > This ensemble was not an orchestra by any meaningful definition.
That's actually my problem with your statement, Andrew. It seems to me to say a lot more than it does, since the "orchestra" strictly defined was not really a separate reified concept yet as it later came to be. The mere fact that we can recognize that the orchestras for church music included the 16' pitch through much of the period and in many locales shows, I think, that the extremely limited definition of "orchestra" is almost chosen specifically to circumscribe the ensembles it applies to sufficiently to make it true. I still believe that you can't make grand pan-European statements about practices everywhere. National and local traditions were strong and there was not that much standardized practice in any number of areas, including the voicing of instrumental music. > . . . The > violin-family instruments were not massed, nor did they dominate the > ensemble. Rather, the group was dominated by continuo instruments, as > was characteristic of almost all opera pit ensembles in the first half > of the century. It can't be stated too many times: the first composer > to accompany opera with an orchestra was Lully. Well, I consider that to be yet another example of the same ridiculously narrow definition. [] > > I would have to question any dogmatic statement that 16' > > instruments > > did not exist or were not used in the entire 17th century. > > Neither I nor anyone else has ever suggested (much less dogmatically) > that no 16' member of the violin family existed or was used in the > 17th c. I merely said it was not used in the orchestra, and this is > incontrovertibly true. Only with an incredibly impoverished definition of "orchestra," one that is, I would think, inappropriate to the time period. > > As to "massed sections," the numbers were certainly no more than we > > would call a chamber orchestra today. > > "Massed" means more than one on a part. The exact numbers are > irrelevant. At this point, I no longer even have a clue of what your definition of the term "orchestra" actually is. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
