[BAROQUE-LUTE] Re: le Tocsein de Gautier
Dear list: A few thoughts concerning the French duple-meter gigue. 1) The two examples of Toxin are not in 4/4 there is no time signature given. They are probably both in Binarie mineur or cut time or 2/2, again, see Perrine's distinction between an allemande and a gigue in his pieces, p. 16-19. This makes a huge difference in the way we would play them. 2) In this repertoire, Allemandes and Gigues are, at times, almost indistinguishable, as evidenced by Perrine's distinction between an allemande and a gigue in his pieces, p. 16-19 3) There is no evidence to assume that these gigues should be played very fast. 4) I would not force a a ternary subdivision as a uniform rhythm (6/8 or 12/8). The French had a ternary, gigue-like genre: the canarie 5) It is very likely that notes inegales were used in these pieces, but to insist on them throughout the piece in order to change the rhythm to something that sounds more like 6/8 or 12/8 seems pedantic to me. All the best, Jorge Torres On Dec 28, 2008, at 12:51 PM, Mathias Rösel wrote: I would imagine it could be binary. Both Tocxin by Denis Gaultier and Toxin by Charles Mouton are gigues in 4/4 metre. I'd go so far as to say that there's a relationship discernible between the pieces of master and student in that both gigues have a very similar opening motif and both share the same rhythmic pattern in each measure of their respective second halves, i. e. with the bass note off-beat on 2nd half of 1st beat. That repeated bass note even being a 4 in both pieces (notwithstanding that it means B with Gaultier, C sharp with Mouton). With what I heard with Froberger gigues transferred to these 4/4 gigues, you would play them extremely inegale, IOW amounts of crotchets as sharpened ternary units. Gaultier seems to indicate that way of playing by stating rhythm more precisely in each one but last measure of both halves of his gigue. Still, would you perform Tocsin as loud and fast as possible, i. e. raising connotations of alarm? Mouton seems to indicate something of that kind by using means of chromatic escalation at the conclusions of the 1st half. Mathias Tocxin is tocsin in both French and English, an alarm bell which is musically depicted by the repeated bass notes. My former question was concerned with tempo. If it is agreed that alarm bells would usually be chimed as loud and fast as possible in case of emergency, was the gigue which bears that name supposed to be played that way, too? It's a sequel, so to say, of a short discussion that we had in December 2003 (Re: binary and ternary GIGUES). Mathias Anthony Hind anthony.h...@noos.fr schrieb: Damian Sonner le tocsin, meant roughly to ring a peal of warning bells , but could also mean the bell used for such a warning. This would have come from earlier touquesain from Provencal tocaseneh. It seems that tocar (or toquer), distantly related to touch, comes from Latin toccre make a sound like toc. http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O27-touch.html and senh could be derived from Latin signum a sign - a signal, giving ancient French seing, later sein, and which took on the meaning of bell. My source is the historic dictionary of the French language, le Robert, but etymology of a single expression, even backed-up by such a dictionary is rarely safe. Around 1570 and for a certain period, the expression apparently took on a metaphoric meaning (Bossuet) to allert public oppinion. Best wishes Anthony Le 28 déc. 08 à 02:51, damian dlugolecki a écrit : 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
[BAROQUE-LUTE] Re: le Tocsein de Gautier
Dear Jorge and others, Years ago I've placed the question of binary and ternary GIGUES on this list (11th Dec. 2003) and the discussion wasn't much conclusive then, I must say - you can read it in the archive. On 2008-12-29, at 16:22, Jorge Torres wrote: Dear list: A few thoughts concerning the French duple-meter gigue. 1) The two examples of Toxin are not in 4/4 there is no time signature given. In the whole Mouton book there are no time signatures (including copies in Milleran). They are probably both in Binarie mineur or cut time or 2/2, Funny names - where from are they? again, see Perrine's distinction between an allemande and a gigue in his pieces, p. 16-19. This makes a huge difference in the way we would play them. In most cases Perrine changes pairs of eights into a doted pair, which in turn can mean in performance inegale playing - doesn't it? 2) In this repertoire, Allemandes and Gigues are, at times, almost indistinguishable, as evidenced by Perrine's distinction between an allemande and a gigue in his pieces, p. 16-19 almost indistinguishable in notation, but not in performance, of course… 3) There is no evidence to assume that these gigues should be played very fast. There is at all no evidence how these gigues _should_ be played. Even an advice from an experienced historical dance specialist is of little use, as these are purely instrumental chamber private social (!) reminiscences of the dance. 4) I would not force a a ternary subdivision as a uniform rhythm (6/8 or 12/8). The French had a ternary, gigue-like genre: the canarie The French had ternary Courante, Menuet, Sarabande, Canarie…, why not also a Gigue? Each of them is different, also a Gigue. But only a Gigue causes so much problems becouse of the varied way of notating it. Only in one book of Reusner (1676) there are four ways of writing it down: in 4/4, 3/8, 3/4, 3/2. Who can explain the misterious diferences in perfomance? The French were even less explicite in notation, as is generally known. 5) It is very likely that notes inegales were used in these pieces, but to insist on them throughout the piece in order to change the rhythm to something that sounds more like 6/8 or 12/8 seems pedantic to me. That seems to you, perhaps the other way may seem to me, still someone can feel it slighty different… That's not the way to justify your point here. If you appeare on stage (not youtube) before a non-casual audience you take the responsibility of you interpretative choices. There you have a chance to be an Artist with your intuition. Here we are speculating verbally and are trying to find hard evidence, …but even on the territory of keyboard research (see e.g. a discussion on Froberger: http://sscm-jscm.press.uiuc.edu/v13/no1/schulenberg.html#_edn59 - f.58, and other links on the Society's page) there is no egreement what to do with the 4/4 specimen. Are there some news on the subject? Yours, Jurek ___ All the best, Jorge Torres On Dec 28, 2008, at 12:51 PM, Mathias Rösel wrote: I would imagine it could be binary. Both Tocxin by Denis Gaultier and Toxin by Charles Mouton are gigues in 4/4 metre. I'd go so far as to say that there's a relationship discernible between the pieces of master and student in that both gigues have a very similar opening motif and both share the same rhythmic pattern in each measure of their respective second halves, i. e. with the bass note off-beat on 2nd half of 1st beat. That repeated bass note even being a 4 in both pieces (notwithstanding that it means B with Gaultier, C sharp with Mouton). With what I heard with Froberger gigues transferred to these 4/4 gigues, you would play them extremely inegale, IOW amounts of crotchets as sharpened ternary units. Gaultier seems to indicate that way of playing by stating rhythm more precisely in each one but last measure of both halves of his gigue. Still, would you perform Tocsin as loud and fast as possible, i. e. raising connotations of alarm? Mouton seems to indicate something of that kind by using means of chromatic escalation at the conclusions of the 1st half. Mathias Tocxin is tocsin in both French and English, an alarm bell which is musically depicted by the repeated bass notes. My former question was concerned with tempo. If it is agreed that alarm bells would usually be chimed as loud and fast as possible in case of emergency, was the gigue which bears that name supposed to be played that way, too? It's a sequel, so to say, of a short discussion that we had in December 2003 (Re: binary and ternary GIGUES). Mathias Anthony Hind anthony.h...@noos.fr schrieb: Damian Sonner le tocsin, meant roughly to ring a peal of warning bells , but could also mean the bell used for such a warning. This would have come from earlier touquesain from Provencal tocaseneh. It seems that tocar (or toquer), distantly
