Monica Hall wrote:
I was tempted to point out early on in this discussion that skips
of a 7th and 9th in scale passages (known as campanellas)
Campanellas are not necessarily skips of 7ths and 9ths. That's not
how they're defined.
I didn't say that they are. What I said was
"skips of a 7th and 9th in scale passages (known as campanellas) are
commonplace in baroque guitar music.
It is the scale passages that are known as campanellas not the skips of a
7th etc.
Otherwise the sentence would have read
"skips of a 7th and 9th (known as campanellas) in scale passages etc....."
Grammar is everything...
I think one should be rather cautious about assuming that something
that doesn't match our pre-conceived ideas about what 17th century
music might have sounded like would necessarily have been a problem
to 17th century players.
Short of radical brain surgery, we have no choice but to approach the
question with pre-conceived ideas. The more significant question is
where we get those ideas. If I want to form an idea of how a
composer meant passages in 17th-century guitar or theorbo music to
sound, do I form those ideas from other 17th-century guitar or
theorbo music, or do I spend a lot of time with the vocal music that
the composer would have spent his time listening to, accompanying,
composing and (probably) singing?
I would suggest that you start off first and foremost by asking what would
work in practice with the kind of strings which might have been available in
the 17th century.
This is surely the reason why the 1st and 2nd courses on the theorbo were
tuned down an octave - at least that is what I have always understood.
Tuning them to the upper octave was incompatible with the string length.
You seem to be suggesting that instrumental music was still essentially the
same as vocal music in the 17th century but surely the whole point is that
instruments have their own idioms which reflect what they are capable of.
They don't simple imitate vocal music - even when they are accompanying it.
Have you ever tried singing Bach's unaccompanied violin sonatas? Or John
Bull's keyboard music?
Monica
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