David, would you care to give us a reading list of what you consider
to be the most important works for learning about the interpretation
of this music?
Doc
On Jun 20, 2008, at 7:56 PM, David Tayler wrote:
I think the good Jazz transcriptions are pretty good, and there are
lots of them, but would you want to live in an imaginary world with
no Jazz recordings?
If you did, would you prefer the transcriptions to no Jazz at all?
In the case of the brouderie sources, we have essentially
transcriptions, we can ignore them, of course. After all, we have no
proof that they are valid, other than the fact that someone really
wanted to write them down.
And the people who wrote them down were often learned, knowledgeable
and famous composers.
I think the issue for me, is that when I coach a French baroque music
ensemble at music workshops, I find that the students have not
studied the ornaments, they can't distinguish between coule and
pointe, they don't know that there are two types of inegal, one which
is not based on rhythm, and so on and so on. The singers can't sing
trills. And I find the same thing in professional recordings, where
the longest port de voix is at the end of the piece, and the grace
notes are backwards, the arpeggios upside down, even though the
ornament chart is in the front of the book.
This is all basic stuff. why don't they know it?
I'm not down on the performers, I'm just puzzled
Of course lute players know much more about ornamentation than the
majority of early music performers, and this is a good thing.
But for example, the article I cited, I have never met someone who
has read it.
I'm of the "read it and then throw it away, if you like" school.
dt
dt
At 06:20 AM 6/20/2008, you wrote:
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]
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