You are quite right David. I just looked up 'tocsin' in my OED where the earliest usage in English is in 1598. I just assumed it was an earlier spelling of 'toxin' which led me to my incorrect interpretation. Never encountered the word 'tocsin' with that meaning. The OED reads, "an alarm signal, sounded by ringing a bell or bells; used orig. and esp. in reference to France."

Thanks for clearing that up.

Damian


Subject: [LUTE] Re: le Tocsein de Gautier


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.'





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