On 27 Sep 2009 at 10:21, Christopher Smith wrote: > I imagine (perhaps wrongly!) > that the tempo might stay fairly solid for each section, but change > from variation to variation, maybe with a connection to what kinds of > subdivisions are in the top parts. David F., I hope you will point us > to a link with your findings once you have worked it all out.
I'm not very far into to the project yet, and have mostly listened carefully only to the earlier recordings (1960s, 1970s). I had thought that the idea of Baroque style was fairly inflexible back then, but what I'm finding is that this is just not true. The earliest recording I've analyzed, by Baumgartner (the second recording of the piece ever, and the one that probably brought the piece to the attention of those who made the recording that ended up as a breakout hit, c. 1970) is actually quite "interesting" from the standpoint of tempo. And I mean "interesting" in the sense of the old Chinese curse! It's average tempo is SLOW AS MOLASSES. Even with cuts of 10 bars, it is still the longest recording of any in the collection I'm looking at (I've currently collected 20 of the 21 I'm sure I'm going to evaluate, and am working on a 22nd; this is not by any means *all* of the recordings of the original, and I'm mostly ignoring arrangements, though not entirely). The average BPM is 36 (the fastest I've calculated, without listening yet, is 72), and it's just awful, awful, awful. The famous recording that launched the Pachelbel juggernaught was the EMI recording by Paillard that was released in the US by Musical Heritage Society, and that recording has an almost equally slow average tempo (37BPM), but without any of the wheezing and swaying found in the Baumgartner. Indeed, the overall sound conception and approach is a rather modern and clean, unfussy one -- dare I say it, but French? Anyway, it's been fascinating. I've made five posts on the subject so far, one an overview, and then four posts on the first four recordings I've listened to. I hope you enjoy reading. I'd certainly like feedback -- though my blog has no comments, you can email me via the link on the blog (or via this email address). -- 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
