At 2:34 PM +0000 2/7/09, Lawrence Yates wrote:
At the moment I am particularly interested in ornaments and inegale in
Handel, and, more specifically am looking at the two marches in Act 3 of
Rinaldo.
I have heard recordings both with and without inegale.
I conduct a Baroque orchestra formed from members of the youth orchestra I
conduct and would rather have more to go on than doing what I think sounds
best or most familiar, or simply mimicking the last recording I heard. This
is a period in music which seems to be sadly neglected by young players but
I would rather start them off on the right foot.
Thanks for the clarification, Lawrence. I find
myself in a similar situation, directing an Early
Music Ensemble at the college level, but one with
more recreational players than music majors, and
therefore with more to learn. I will say,
however, that even with the amount of expertise
on this list, you might find additional
information (and CERTAINLY additional opinions!)
on the Early Music List: [email protected].
(Of course you might also set off a small
brushfire war regarding performance practice, as
well!)
Although they are rather old, I still recommend
Donnington's books, "The Interpretation of Early
Music" and the later one focusing on the Baroque,
for two specific reasons. First, he went well
beyond the "Big Four" of Quantz, C.P.E. Bach,
Leopold Mozart, and Tartini from the mid-century.
(Tartini's publication date was later, but his
book circulated in manuscript for quite a while
before publication, and some of his explanations,
including how a violinist interprets notated
block chords as arpeggiations, are unique in the
literature.) He goes to earlier writers as
well--sometimes considerably earlier--so you can
understand where some of these things came from
as well as how they changed, and he goes to
primary source well outside the standard central
European ones.
And secondly, he makes it rather clear (as a good
scholar should) when he is quoting original
writers, when he is interpreting those writers,
when he is offering his own opinions, and when
something cannot be pinned down solidly from the
existing information at the time he wrote. His
books opened the entire question of performance
practice up to a whole generation, of which I was
definitely a member, who hadn't even known that
there were any questions, let alone a few answers!
I'm not familiar with Newman's book--perhaps
because I'm not a keyboard player; we are talking
about harpsichordist Anthony Newman and not some
other Newman?--but I do recall the controversy
when it first came out. "Idiosyncratic" was
perhaps the kindest comment. And I'm quite sure
that over the past 30 years there has been a ton
of good research done, but I'm not familiar with
those publications, either. (Too long since grad
school, and too long without working actively in
the field.)
Even though Handel's not known to have spent time
in France, he appears to have been quite familiar
with French style and forms, as witness his
masterful use of the French Opera Overture form
in so many of his works, and his use of the
French dance forms in his many suites (although
those would have been well known in England as
well). So my guess is that his use of inegale
would have been accurate, even if it was not
native. As to the general rule of thumb, as I
understand it, it is applied only to the
prevailing note value and not to those shorter or
faster, and it does not HAVE to be an exaggerated
"swing" or triplet feeling. Just a difference in
weight between the two notes in duplets can give
a very convincing inegalité. (We once played a
Brandenburg 4 in which we recorder players played
gently inegale in the 2nd movement, while our
violinist refused to do so. An interesting
combination, which actually worked!)
The best ever explanation of the "baroque trill"
I've ever come across was, I think, by Bruce
Haynes, although I can't remember where I read
it. It is a 3-part ornament, beginning with an
appoggiatura (often not notated), usually an
upper appoggiatura in German and Italian music
(although somewhat more often a lower
appoggiatura in French music). Then come the
repercussions, best thought of as repetitions of
the original appoggiatura (and historically
coming from exactly that source in renaissance
measured cadential trills), which should be
played at a speed appropriate to the movement and
not just as fast as possible. And finally, an
ending--turn, anticipation, mordent,
etc.--appropriate again to the Affekt of the
music and again often not notated.
The other thing is about baroque bowing (and I've
recently researched this to answer a question on
another list, using the New Grove I article on
bows and bowings), in that the baroque bow,
having less tension on the hair than the modern
bow, had a natural spring away from the attack on
a note, giving not a staccato articulation but an
individual shape to each note (what Cathy Meintz
at Oberlin calls "egg-shaped notes"!) rather than
the heavy and boring repetition of fast-moving
notes typical of high school players and amateur
players today. (We were working on this kind of
articulation in rehearsal just yesterday, and it
makes a HUGE difference in the sound of the
music; it cannot be done in the upper half of the
bow.)
Come to think of it, you can do a lot worse than
starting with the New Grove article (Ornaments or
Ornamentation--I forget which), and following up
with the various sources in its bibliography.
(And for our correspondents auf Deutschland, I'd
be very surprised if there were not a similar
article in MGG.)
I wish my own students had come out of a program
with someone like you, Lawrence, but we're all
teachers when it comes right down to it. And
the wonderful thing is that they are willing to
learn and can still absorb new ideas. Or better,
old ideas that are new to them!
John
--
John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music
Virginia Tech Department of Music
College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[email protected])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
"We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition
of jazz musicians.
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