I might have missed something here, getting into the discussion late (I rejoined today---hellew everyone), but doesn't the English word "tocsin" refer to the pealing of a bell? I always thought "tocsin" came from an old form of French. Could some form of the word have existed in French in the 17th century with a similar meaning? Used perhaps in similar sense to Vallet's piece depicting bells in a village church.
Davidr dlu...@verizon.net On Dec 27, 2008, at 7:48 PM, damian dlugolecki wrote: > At the moment this is only a guess, but I believe the 'tocsin' of > Mouton and that of D. Gautier have something to do with disease. > The word 'toxin' only come into the English language during the > 19th century. My OED defines it originally as > "A specific poison...produced by a microbe which causes a > particular disease.' By this perhaps we can infer that this > was closer to the original French meaning than to our current > understanding of the word 'toxin' as some kinde of poison. There > were many diseases like typhus, smallpox, cholera etc. that wiped > out large numbers of > people. I need to find a French dictionary like my OED. My > Larousse does not have historical meanings or etymologies. > > In any case, the pieces by Gautier and Mouton are very similar, > and it seems to me that the Mouton piece is transposition to f#m > of D. Gautier's piece in e minor. The repeated low 'B' has a > funerary feeling to me anyway and it appears throughout Mouton's > piece as a low C#. But even though it is possible these 'tocsins' > were about disease, they are gigues and should be played at faster > tempos. Played in the salons of Paris during recurrences of 'la > Peste' they were perhaps demonstrations of musical 'black humor.' -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
