On 15.01.2011, at 21:52, David W. Fenton wrote:
> On 15 Jan 2011 at 14:41, Eric Fiedler wrote:
>
>> It's not that difficult. Try giving your viol ensemble facsimiles of
>> the original parts (without barlines of course) and then " while
>> playing " each player marks and/or _remembers_ the main cadences,
>> which are then used as rehearsal marks.
>
> This would eat up a HUGE amount of rehearsal time.
Not really. It goes pretty fast once you get used to the idea. _And_ it's an
excellent way to get to know the piece (see below.) and to break it up into
manageable sections. And it's good training for the group.
>
> Secondly, the singers would have to spend a huge amount of time
> deciphering the Fraktur and figuring out which notes the syllables
> actually belonged under.
This is true to a point, and in general I _would_ therefore recommend
transcriptions for todays singers, who also usually have a more difficult time
with the old clefs. On the other hand — and looking at the problem from a
historical point of view — if you're dealing with one-to-a-part ensembles, the
exact text underlay isn't that critical, and probably wasn't then either. But
you're right, it does mean more work for the singers.
> I think it would be fine for small pieces, but for a 25-minute work,
> as in the present instance, it just wouldn't work, in my opinion.
But it _did_ work back then, you know. It had to. What this says about the
level of performance then is, of course, another story for another day.
>
> And, of course, defining where the cadences are and putting in
> rehearsal marks there doesn't solve the problem of how to start at
> points between the cadences, in order to work out problems that occur
> there.
Sure it does. You just need to start at the cadence before the section to be
worked on.
>> You can be pretty sure that
>> this is the way they did it back in the good old days " and (very)
>> occasionally one finds such markings in the parts.
>
> Well, the Fraktur problem is likely not one the people at the time
> would have had an issue with, and I'm sure there are lots of other
> things that would have made it substantially easier for them, such as
> an innate sense of the musical style that came from living in an age
> in which you mostly made music in only a couple of well-defined
> musical styles with well-known and familiar conventions. They
> wouldn't need to be told where cadences where
>
>> That there are not
>> more of these is surely due to the fact that (1) musicians seem to
>> have seldom carried pencils or other writing instruments with them,
>> and (b) they had better memories than we do, living in an only
>> partially alphabetized world. I have been using this trick for years
>> with my ensembles " even with children " and it works perfectly. We've
>> taken to calling such markings "now places" ("Jetzt-Stellen"), as
>> someone, usually the leader, has to shout "now!".
>
> I'm sure it's a helpful thing in some respects, as I know that my
> group plays differently when playing from parts than when playing
> from score (it takes me longer to learn the piece when working from a
> part, but I more quickly understand how my part fits into the texture
> because I have to LISTEN to get it instead of LOOK).
Exactly! That's the whole point. By the second or third run-through you have an
_acoustical_ score in your head instead of just dots in front of your eyes.
> It's usually faster to work from score, but I feel like I play better
> ensemble-
> wise when playing from parts.
ditto
This feeling doesn't seem to extend to all the members of our group,
>
> unfortunately! I've been shocked to note people who get lost and
> can't find their place when reading from SCORE (and it has included
> players whose principle instrument is keyboard, so it's not something
> about being hardwired to not read from multiple staves), so I'm not
> surprised at anything.
>
> No, the score and parts need to be as clear and unambiguous as
> possible so that rehearsal time is taken up with getting the notes
> off the page, not figuring out how the notes on the page relate to
> each other. I'm sure that if we played from original notation all the
> time, we'd develop lots of useful skills and it would be much easier,
True, very true.
>
> but I don't see any point in time at which we could take of a year or
> so of no performances and make the transition.
Well, if your concert calendar is that full, you may have a point (although:
the old New York Pro Musica under Noah Greenburg, certainly no slackers, used
to pride itself on being able to play from facsimiles — and on doing so as
often as possible ...)
But why not give the way muaicians rehearsed at the time the music was composed
a try, at least in your spare time?. It has worked well for us, and has opened
a number of new and exciting ways of approaching early music. And, as you very
rightly remark, performances from parts (wether new or old) are almost _always_
better than from scores, simply because you have to listen more, not just look.
All the best for your ensemble work!
Eric
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