> But one should not "practice" them - ideally they should be > improvised in the moment, responding to each unique performance situation.
That applies, I suppose, to the Italian manners, rather than to the French. Improvisation is confined, though. For both kinds or embellishments one needs training of *taste*, i. e. experience of where to and how to. > Thus, to practice a piece in a relatively unornamented fashion (or more or > less as it is written) does not strike me as contradictory okay, let me put it another way. We probably agree, that French ornament signs are abbreviations of fixed formulae that are supposed to be applied in certain ways. Gallots explains his ornament signs on the very next page after his general playing advices. Sometimes, you can find certain ornaments written out, e. g. there are manuscript versions of pieces that have the separees written out instead of the vertical chords with strokes between the letters. (Andreas Schlegel's article on the Rhetorique des Dieux is a treasure of insights reagarding this.) Anyway, they are not graces that can possibly be added when players feel like adding them, or be left out when players feel like leaving them out. Just the opposite, they're an integral part of the music and cannot be omitted. In French baroque lute music, there is no relatively unornamented fashion to play a piece. Best, Mathias -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
