David, et al,
Here's a hypothetical: Imagine that a few hundred
years from now NO audio recordings of jazz have
survived, just some good written descriptions, "teach
yourself to play jazz saxophone/guitar/tuba" method
books, and a fair number of lead sheets. What kind of
jazz would our descendants really be playing without
ever having heard it? What would a 20th century
jazzer, zapped into the future, think of it? (I can
imagine that he or she might find the future jazz
stiff and academic, lacking imagination - maybe even
"all wrong." I doubt our jazzer would be very
impressed.)
The jazzers in the future would probably be able
to re-construct the gist of it, but would any of the
future folks ever gain the ease and suppleness of
style - "the feel" - that a contemporary jazz master
intuitively understands and ineffably puts in
practice? Maybe. But they'd be unlikely to get there
just by following the steps in something like a "Play
just like John Coltrane" book.
That's us with the French style. While I think
David's points are valid and it is important to
investigate all of these, there is a danger here.
Style in any form of music is possible to decribe in
writing but utterly impossible to teach solely in
writing. Its very easy to trick oneself into
believing that if you play French-style elements A, B
and C the way that writers X, Y, and Z have described
them that you're actually playing the style. The old
ones didn't learn French style from books, afterall.
Chris - prepared for time travel.
--- David Tayler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> That'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 different genres
> 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
> distinguish
> rhythmic inegal from articulation inegal--this is
> where it always goes wrong.
> 3. Read up on the "gout"
> 4. Learn all the agreements. Most people know 2 or
> 3, some know half
> a 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 the
> trill as a starting point--the grace note is the
> long note, not the
> other way around
> 7. Distinguish between the weight of medial and
> final cadential
> trills and ornaments, the lighter ones are often at
> the end, not the
> other 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 used
> in 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 for
> harpsichord, 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" of
> >Baroque music? I don't mean particularly stile
> brise, notes inegall
> >etc. Those are obvious, and to me insufficient
> explanations to
> >convey the French Baroque. It seems to me there's
> more to it than
> >that. Are there, for example, considerations in
> the French style
> >that 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
>
>
>
