On Mar 17, 2010, at 2:22 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:
This is one case where there's a lot less excuse for those who can't swing as opposed to those who can't play notes inegal -- we really don't know exactly what it sound like because all we have are written- down descriptions of how it was to be done (and many of those are contradictory).
There's at least one exception to that. In an early-19th c. French book about the proper pinning of barrel organs, there's a detailed illustration of the pinning for a barrel to play the overture to "The Marriage of Figaro." When the illustration is transcribed into MIDI and played back, the music turns out to be in very distinct (and rapid) notes inégales. If such performance was still common ca. 1820, then it seems to me that swing may very well be a direct continuation of the notes inégales tradition, via New Orleans. After all, only 30 years later Gottschalk was writing pieces that sound best when slightly swung, so such a connection is not at all implausible. (I have a CD of a German pianist playing Gottschalk w.o swing, and it is unbelievably stiff--like a mounted skeleton of the music.)
Andrew Stiller Kallisti Music Press http://www.kallistimusic.com/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
