Hi Danny and the b-List, thanks Danny for your very interesting subject! I've been waiting for eager comments, but nothing have I seen yet... So I must start, and perhaps also provoke a little... :)
It really is quite ambigious to put borderlines between the "periods" of music, and it is even more difficult to name those periods. Everything mixes and blands, always. In your case: Ennemond G. is clearly in the "hard core" French style, perhaps Dennis too. But what about Mouton, not to speak of Gallot le jeune. And then we have the German Reusner, still very French most often. And then we come to Losy, a little less French, but very far off Weiss. And from Losy we go to the other names you listed (see below). Not yet rococo, not any more so French, much more "cantabile italiano"... I think that perhaps the adjective "Austrian" or perhaps even "Imperial" (;-) could be used. At least most of the places, where this style flowered were governed by the Hapsburger Kaiser living in Vienna...;-) Another view is that - in my opinion - a period shoud not be named by its neighboroughing periods: "transition between Gaultier and Weiss" mocks and lessens the value of the wonderful period we are talkig of! Agree? And as far as I have understood, the word "transitional" in the case you talk, refers mostly to the changing tunings in that time. So even that period is not "transitional" in musical sense, but only in the technical sense: testing the tuning alternatives. There are actually here and there some of the very same pieces in different tuning patterns. So my suggestion is "Austrian". It is not optimal, I agree, But neither is the word "French" referring to the vast repertoire in that style composed around our Europe. And are we going to save the adjective "German" to refer to Weiss, Falkenhagen and their gang of 13's? Comments? All the best (= Alles gut) Arto On Sun, 12 Sep 2010 12:36:45 -0400, Daniel Shoskes <dshos...@mac.com> wrote: > Having spent much happy time on my 11 course lute playing the music of > Reusner, Conradi, Kellner, Weichenberger and St. Luc, it dawns on me that > we don't really have a good descriptor for the period. It is after the > French precieux and Brise styles (but has some elements), brings in more of > a cantabile Italian relationship between melody and bass line but doesn't > go all the way to the Gallant emphasis on melody (I am sure I have made > many a musicologist cringe with my oversimplifications here). Many > recordings that include pieces from the period are titled "German Baroque > Lute Music", or something similar, but that of course doesn't give a fair > geographic representation to the Czech, Silesian, Swedish and Belgian > composers. "Transitional" would be a good descriptive term but alas has > already been coapted by those funny tuning systems between Renaissance and > d minor. > > Any ideas? > > Danny > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
