Well, stairway to heaven brings up an interesting issue of music, and
that's imitation. How many kids learned that old saw without having a
clue of what they were doing? (I can name one for certain...) To ask
it a bit more politely, how often is theory invoked to explain what we
already imitate anyway? And so even the more educated players --
certainly those of today, but why not those back then -- have nothing
against merely imitating a phrase or a piece, and maybe digesting the
theoretical implications later. Or to consider it at yet another
level, how much of the striving and arriving at the optimal beauty for
a piece was a product of imitation, slight mutation, and a statement
that is itself imitated. It's wonderful to think that all of art
music's development was theoretical and pure, and never sullied by the
iterative cycles of cultural acceptance we ascribe to folk and ethnic
music. Somehow I'm not convinced.
But you thankfully give the reminder that our ears are already trained
to accept a harmonic orientation that didn't necessarily exist in the
early Baroque. So without the benefit of theoretical underpinnings,
what could the criteria have been for mutation and evolution? I see a
happy tension between these issues.
cud
__________________________________________________________________
From: Lex Eisenhardt <eisenha...@planet.nl>
To: Vihuelalist <vihuela@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Wed, November 17, 2010 9:42:03 AM
Subject: [VIHUELA] Re: Valdambrini's evidence
Dear Martyn,
> You write '.....how can you find the chords to a song if you have
no
idea of counterpoint and voice-leading at all...' . Surely this is
why
a such a basically simple chordal instrument is so popular even today
-
once you've mastered a few chords and have a reasonable ear you're
ready to tackle the mainly straightforward repertoire of songs
alfabeto
was used for.
Our ready ear is very much influenced/spoiled by functional harmony,
I'm afraid. I suppose it went wrong so often (then) because the trick
of finding the appropriate harmonies was to add 'middle voices' to a
bass and soprano.
> Of course, odd clashes would have occurred occasionally which is
why
more than just a few alfabeto chords are used in some songs. But I
wonder how much it mattered to the 'non-expert' player that a passing
dissonance which was soon resolved was not slavishly harmonised.
True, but I was thinking of the expert player.
> And again you write '.... I would prefer to take in account that an
experienced theorbist-guitarist would perhaps have tried to expand
the
system of alfabeto from within....'. But surely when looking at
most
simple alfabeto accompaniments we are not speaking of these expert
practitioners but the more general strumming public who may not have
been up to improvising more than the basic three tonal chords....
If we are trying to figure out what was possibly done in the 1620s
and
30s, to reach an optimal performance of the most beautiful songs,
respecting the
ambience they were performed in, then we should not only think of
what
the general strumming public did. That could of course also
be interesting information (for a gig in 17th c costume).
> Finally if you've ever performed Cesare Morelli's (Pepys guitar
teacher) arrangement of 'To be or not to be....' (an experience of
novelty rather than artistic merit I can tell you) from the later
17th
century you'd not rush to suggest strumming to songs was little
employed by then - little written down maybe. And Morelli,
supposedly
a 'professional' of sorts often gets the harmonisations
'wrong'........
No, but I've done Stairway to heaven, does that count?
Lex
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