Le 19 juin 08 à 23:59, Mathias Rösel a écrit :
I for one learned a lot by intabulating harpsichord music by Nicolas Lebegue (1637, 1st print of harpsichord music in France). To me, French baroque tunes in lute or harpsichord music are deeplyaffiliated to oratorical singing. There's a gesture to be found in everymotif. As for lute music in particular, I hasten to add that George Torres composition on French melodies and their relation to French contemporaneous poetry was enlightening to me, as well as Catherine Liddell's booklet to her Gallot CD (La Belle Voilée).My perception of what French style actually is, was confused by ancientrecordings of our forefathers of blessed memory. They used to play French lute music as it consisted but of arpeggios, more or less. YetI've come to insist that there _are_ parts, that there is imitation andthat this must must be played with the strongest possible distinction. Rather slow down than play muddily.
I think frequently in imitative learning the learner perceives one or two aspects of what they are trying to acquire, and a form of caricature develops. This is probably a normal learning pattern. We see this in actors trying to adopt a foreign accent, and even children learning their own language. We can see a similar process of caricature in the RH positions adopted by lutists over the last 80 years or so, as they latched on to, and generalized, a position that they had seen in certain iconography. When a tradition has been lost it is almost inevitable that performers will slip into a sort of easy pastiche, until a new tradition can develop, which hopefully can surpass this tendency.
The choice of isntrument and strings can go along way to making the playing less muddy. Comparing a very large-bodied exuberant Durvie Maler in synthetics and metal wounds, compared to the smaller bodied SG Warwick in gut with new loaded strings, shows a far greater rhetorical clarity in the second (I am not putting that down to Maler/ Warwick, I don't think there would be any noticeable difference between the two, if they are of comparable size, structure, and with the same wood). Interestingly, it is not that there is lack of sustain in my lute, but there is sustain and clarity. This is what Jakob Lindberg says about his Rauwolf, and perhaps Stephen has benefitted from working on that model and hearing how it speaks.
AnthonyPS My questions about tuning my Baroque lute to 6th comma meantone, was not in anyway theoretical, just purely practical. I had no time to think about resetting frets, or to wonder about what the ideal slightly off equal temperament, or whatever, might work best for this music. My lute arrived with unequal fretting, and I could not escape from my other obligations, for sufficient time to deal with the question in any theoretically correct way. There is a similar problem in that my lute is strung for 415Hz, while I actually would have like it to be at 392Hz, not just for saving top strings. Perhaps most lutists ask this from Stephen, and he probably forgot what I actually
told him, or else he feels the instrument would just work better at 415.However, the cost of changing most of those expensive gut strings, will make me hesitate. I don't think I can just tune down. I could perhaps shift my loaded strings an increment towards the top, 11c to 10c (etc), but I have not had time to see whether a change from 415 to 392 makes this sort of shift possible. Meanwhile the sound is very nice at 415, and many players do use that, but more French Baroque lutists are tending towards the lower diapason, I believe, and not just for gut.
Anthony
Mathias "Roman Turovsky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb:Nah, the duck is far more important, i.e. phrasing, syntax, melodic andharmonic rhythms etc. I.e. the drivetrain. Your list is chromeplating. RT ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Tayler" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "lute-cs.dartmouth.edu" <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu> Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2008 4:38 PM Subject: [LUTE] Re: French StyleAll the things on this list are uniquely French; they give the music the character. For French music, the truffle is more important than the duck.A ground bass can have the exact same harmony in France as an Italianone, but the sauce is different. dt At 01:08 PM 6/19/2008, you wrote:This is all truffle sauce, but it tells you nothing about the wild boar underneath. RT----- Original Message ----- From: "David Tayler" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: "lute-cs.dartmouth.edu" <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu> Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2008 3:59 PM Subject: [LUTE] Re: French StyleThat's a terrific question for which there is no easy answer. Here's a few basic starting points:1. It is different at different times--don't conflate the differentgenres 2. Inegal is the most misused and most misunderstood. Read the original sources, don't rely on secondary sources. At a minimum,Distinguish between coule & pointe, and distinguishrhythmic inegal from articulation inegal--this is where it always goeswrong. 3. Read up on the "gout"4. Learn all the agreements. Most people know 2 or 3, some know halfa dozen, few know them all.You need to know at least a dozen, to put an arbitrary number on it.5. Learn the three parts of the trill--the starting note, the repetition, and the escape. Most people don't play their trills right, or play them "evenly". 6. Use the 2/3rds rule for grace notes and the first note of thetrill as a starting point--the grace note is the long note, not theother way around 7. Distinguish between the weight of medial and final cadentialtrills and ornaments, the lighter ones are often at the end, not theother way around. 8. At a minimum, read Monteclair on the agreements, especially for the port de voix, the ornament which is most often performed backwards (enough here for a separate post)9. Also read the following which describes the actual ornaments usedin Rameau's time: Author: MCGEGAN, Nicholas; SPAGNOLI, Gina Singing style at the Opera in the Rameau period. (Paris: Champion; Geneve: Slatkine, 1986) Music. In French. See RILM 1987-00887-bs. Collection: Jean-Philippe Rameau 10. You are right about the language, lots to investigate there. 11. Listen to a few recordings of unmeasured preludes forharpsichord, then arrange them for lute. A new take on stile brise.dt At 12:35 PM 6/19/2008, you wrote:I'm wondering: what is it that makes up the "French style" ofBaroque music? I don't mean particularly stile brise, notes inegalletc. Those are obvious, and to me insufficient explanations toconvey the French Baroque. It seems to me there's more to it thanthat. Are there, for example, considerations in the French stylethat have to do with the cadences and general kinds of rhythms of the French language itself? What things does one need to understand /appreciate in order to make effectively rhetorical music in the French style? Anybody got any ideas on this? Best, David Rastall [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html__________________________________________________ D O T E A S Y - "Join the web hosting revolution!" http://www.doteasy.com__________________________________________________ D O T E A S Y - "Join the web hosting revolution!" http://www.doteasy.com
