The Wrong Trousers: can new training re-purpose Early Music skills for Historically Informed Performance?

There are significant differences in music-making, not only between mainstream and Early Music approaches, but also between today’s Early Music and what musicians of former centuries actually did back then.

Most of us recognise that Historically Informed performers should renounce any claims to ‘authenticity’: we will never know everything about earlier styles of performance, and there are some historical practices (e.g. producing castrati to sing soprano) that we would not wish to repeat, historical attitudes to race, gender or religion that have no place in modern-day society. But whilst researchers continue to unearth and decipher ancient sources of new information, there is already a considerable gap between what we know about Historical Performance Practice and what we do in the standard practices of Early Music today.

In the context of modern-day performances of 19th-century repertoire, Clive Brown referred to ‘the yawning chasm between contemporary practice and historical evidence’. His critique was aimed not at mainstream musicians, but at the current Early Music approach, and it could apply equally well to many performances of renaissance and baroque repertoires.

The search for Authenti-City: abandon hope, all ye who enter here!

In my very first post back in 2013, I compared the hot topics of modern-day Early Music debates – vibrato, pitch, temperaments – with (more inspiring) historical priorities proclaimed by Caccini:

Music is Text and Rhythm, with Sound last of all. And not the other way around!
Caccini ‘Le nuove musiche’ (1601)

Vocal Scores

For renaissance polyphony and baroque opera, singers nowadays use scores, as opposed to the individual parts used for nearly all repertoire pre-1800.

‘Pulchra es’ from Monteverdi’s (1610) Vespers: Cantus 1 part-book incipit

Our best consort singers have acquired high levels of skill in score-reading. This skill facilitates ensemble unity, entry making, pitch finding etc, and underpins two commonplace directorial interventions: at phrase ends, unifying the duration of final notes and/or pronunciation of final consonants; adjusting the ensemble balance from phrase to phrase by having individual singers switch from one part to another.

I was privileged to observe one of the UK’s most experienced Early Music singers, tenor John Potter, coaching vocal ensembles in the subtle interactions of one-voice-to-a-part consort singing. He encouraged singers to scan the score, and “wait for your colleague to sing his bit, before you move on to sing your bit”. Even when there is a conductor, today’s elite vocal ensembles acheive their high-precision unity of timing by such ‘give and take’ between individual singers, combining attentive listening with skilled score-reading.

That is all very well, but none of it is historical. Not only did Monteverdi’s singers not have scores, but Zacconi (1596) describes clearly that “vertical alignment”, the unanimity of timing seen in modern scores and demanded by record producers, was not desired circa 1600. Rather, each individual singer was allowed the liberty of arriving late on an expressive note, whilst the underlying Tactus continued steadily: like Ella Fitzgerald syncopating around a steady beat. Read more about ‘Making Time for Beautiful Singing’ here.

And when we stop to think about it, it is unlikely that musicians of the period would have prioritised ‘consistent vocal balance’ (is that even desirable?) over the traceable self-consistency of individual polyphonic strands within the strict rules of renaissance counterpoint. Rather than switching parts to boost a quieter voice, perhaps the other singers listened harder, or sang more softly themselves.

Singing from individual parts creates a different set of listening skills within the ensemble, and imposes new demands for rhythmic clarity: your colleagues don’t know what you are supposed to sing, so you have to communicate the underlying Tactus, whatever the superficial notes might be. And once you add the period practice of spontaneous Divisions (melodic ornamentation in shorter note-values), then even the partial scores that the continuo might have (for example for the Monteverdi (1610) Vespers) will not show visually what is actually happening aurally.

‘Pulchra es’: differences between score for BC and individual part-books

In fact, the continuo scores for some solo moments in the Vespers are significantly different from the vocal part-books, even before the singers add spontaneous Divisions and Zacconi-style delays. If the continuo attempt to “follow”, placing their bass-notes as seen vertically underneath the appropriate solo-notes as heard, a train-wreck inevitably ensues [ok, there were no trains in 1610, but you know what I mean]!

Reading from scores, those with long notes end up ‘following’ the voice with the most activity, whereas historically, it was the voices with notes in Tactus-values (minims and semibreves) that determined the rhythm: fast-moving Divisions must fit in (read more about Passaggi).

Historically, soloists were guided by the accompaniment [see Peri (1600) here]. If this seems controversial (and it is controversial in mainstream choirs and most of today’s Early Music), compare it to jazz, where the rhythm section keeps the groove steady whilst soloists syncopate, “having fun and improvising counterpoint” [Agazzari sopra’l basso1607, more on Agazzari here]

Conductors

Conducting in Early Music is the elephant in the room, the emperor’s new clothes, the glaring anachronism that no-one dares name, the dinosaur waiting for an incoming comet of historical information.

Period treatises, eye-witness reports and iconographical evidence [see also Peter Holman’s recent book on the subject] show beyond all possible doubt that before c1800, ensemble music was not conducted in the modern sense, but was guided by Tactus (which is quite different, read more about Tactus here and in many articles within this blog).

That ‘yawning chasm’ between modern-day habits and historical practice is seen all too clearly in the current phenomenon of the ‘director from the keyboard’, who conducts modern-style whilst using a harpsichord or chamber organ as something between a fig-leaf and a very expensive music-stand.

Working with conductors, today’s Early Music performers have developed the skills to follow a varying beat and – when the going gets tough – to stay together by reference to the score. In particular, continuo-players have learnt to play without committing themselves to any clear rhythmic impulses, in order to follow soloists and/or accommodate themselves to a conductor’s interpretation of the beat. Deprived of their historical role of ‘guiding the whole ensemble’ (Agazzari 1607) and ‘directing the singers’ (Gagliano 1608), today’s continuo-players amuse themselves with divisions and embellishments, often simultaneously (but not quite together) amongst several performers, a horror condemned by Agazzari as ‘soup and confusion’ or a ‘flock of noisy sparrows’.

Historically, there was Tactus-beating for solo lute-songs, vocal consorts and polychoral ensembles, but no hand-waving at all for opera and dramatic music (in genere rappresentativo). The steady down-up of Tactus-beating imitates the stability of the cosmos and creates Time itself (according to Aristotelean philosophy, read more here). Just to read Zacconi’s list of Tactus qualities will assure any consort-musician that it differs fundamentally from modern conducting:

Tactus is regular, solid, stable, firm… clear, sure, fearless and without any perturbation
Zacconi ‘Prattica di Musica’ (1592/1596)

Transferrable skills

Of course, we can get Early Music onto the stage (or into the recording studio) fast, by using vocal scores and modern conducting. But if we want to apply Historical Information to our performance, there needs to be time for experimentation, acquiring new skills, and consolidating experience in unfamiliar modes of musicking. Indeed, this kind of re-imagining how to make music is what HIP is all about.

Nevertheless, it is especially challenging to deal with individual ensemble members’ fundamental habits of ensemble practice. How much easier just to conduct everything, just to continue with those social media debates about vibrato, pitch and temperament!

If tomorrow’s Early Music is to be Historically better Informed than today’s, we must invest time in experiment and training for subtly different musicianship skills. This cannot be done within a normal rehearsal: we need to create un-pressured time and a safe space for individual musicians to let go their normal habits and take the risk of trying something fundamentally different. But perhaps we can progress more quickly by re-purposing the (slightly off-target) skills we already have…

Today’s Early Musicians are highly skilled at following a visual beat (no matter how unreliable or unsteady!), at listening to each other with reference to a vocal score, and at using aural cues to follow wayward soloists.

Visual beat

Historically Informed Tactus-beating is both a visual cue and an embodied practice: musicians need to become familiar with both aspects. We can practise with the whole group simultaneously beating Tactus: relaxed arm hinged at the elbow, palm outwards, down for one second, up for one second. There is no leader, no followers, the group mission is to remain together.

We can play through some (not too demanding) ensemble music, with each member of the group taking their turn to beat Tactus, whilst the others play to the beat. The role of the Tactus-beater is not to “interpret the music”, but to give the steadiest, most equal beat they possibly can. A wise coach can use this exercise to re-balance relationships of “leaders” and “sheep” within the ensemble…

Working alone, a musician can synchronise their Tactus-beating, and (later) their playing/singing to a home-made pendulum. A 1-metre length of string will produce a 1 second beat (Mersenne, 1636). Notice that the movement of a pendulum, and the feeling this movement creates, is quite different from the sharp click of a metronome.

The chandelier in Pisa cathedral where Galileo supposedly first observed the steady beat of the pendulum effect.

Just as jazz singers swing their arms and/or snap their fingers, not to conduct each other, but in order to inhabit, embody, to make physical the shape of Time itself, the groove of Music, so these simple exercises help us internalise the slow, steady beat of Tactus. Some musicians may need frequent reminders and extra practice, to think and move in a slow minim = 60 pulse, rather than sub-dividing into today’s more typical crotchet = 120.

See the Tactus Workshop Manual for more suggestions.

Listening without a score

We listen in a different way, when we do not have the visual reference of a score to guide us. When I teach a master-class, I always listen to the piece the first time without looking at the score. This places me in a similar position to an audience-member, who should understand the performance aurally, without a score, perhaps without any previous knowledge of the work.

For Early Music consorts, listening without a score invites us to maintain ensemble unity by understanding the underlying Tactus, since we cannot know the significance of individual notes (which might anyway have been ornamented or otherwise changed spontaneously). Playing/singing to colleagues who have no score challenges performers to show more clearly how those individual notes relate to the underlying Tactus, shaping long-notes across several Tactus beats, lightening-up fast-moving ornamentation so that it flows without disrupting the Tactus beat, articulating syncopations appropriately so that they are correctly understood.

An elementary, but surprisingly powerful exercise, is to ask the whole group to beat Tactus (without seeing a score) whilst one person plays/sings their individual part (this also works for solo pieces, e.g. a harpsichord or harp solo). Everyone becomes more aware of Tactus, more skilled at maintaining it in spite of aurally suggested changes (this is the Tactus-beaters’ role) and at avoiding unwanted changes (this is the performer’s task).

When this becomes too easy, then the performer can be invited to add divisions and impromptu variations, and/or to apply Zacconi’s expressive delay, the accento. Read more here.

Meanwhile, everyone is getting more (much needed) experience of the visual and embodied practice of Tactus. Period musicians would have been beating Tactus all their lives, from their first lessons to learning new material as full professionals even as elite soloists and ensemble directors. For Early Musicians today, Tactus cannot be learned by studying historical treatises, not even by reading my blog! You have to Do It Yourself.

Another way to add complexity is to combine two performers, whilst the majority of the group continue to beat steady Tactus. This builds the habit of trusting the embodied movement of Tactus, not following wayward aural cues. The crucial assumption is that the music continues in steady Tactus, rather than ‘follow anything that moves!’.

Alternating playing/listening exercises between different members of the group prepares for the next level.

Directing

Who directs, and how? Historically, and (it would be desirable) also for our modern-day Early Music, the role of coaching an ensemble and making artistic decisions (maestro di capella) should be distinguished from the role of administering the Tactus-beat (summinstrar il tatto). Coaching and making artistic decisions happens in rehearsal. In performance (including playing-through during rehearsals) the primary task of the Tactus-beater is to maintain a steady beat, and not to be swayed by any temporary aural deviations.

This does not mean an aggressive tug-of-war between leader and followers, but a mutual recognition of the cosmic, humanist and practical significance of the Tactus (i.e. the doctrine of the Music of the Spheres, in which the entire universe is turned in slow steady rhythm by the hand of God, the primum mobile).

The perfect movement of the heavens is reflected in microcosm in the harmonious nature of the human body, and imitated in earthly music-making.

If your pulse stops, the music also dies…

Nevertheless, there is freedom for an individual performer to depart momentarily from the Tactus, providing they rejoin it promptly. Zacconi expects accento-singers to be back on Tactus-track by the next beat.

Taking turns to beat Tactus, and with the director/coach observing, ensemble members can experiment with maintaining unity by visual cues from the Tactus-beater, by their own embodied experience of Tactus-beating, and by listening to aural cues that indicate the underlying Tactus (not the movement of individual notes).

Listen to the bass (in polyphony), to the continuo, to a simple or slow-moving part, to what appears to be ‘accompaniment’ rather than to ‘soloists’. Basses, continuo-players, performers of simple slow-moving parts and anyone who might be (temporarily) ‘accompaniment’ must learn to maintain Tactus reliably, to guide and direct the whole ensemble, and (a tough call) not to ‘follow’ the soloist, a fast-moving or complex part.

This ensemble skill of maintaining Tactus rather than following soloists takes a lot of practice. The aim is to go beyond any initial stiffness or sense of confrontation, and find a flowing, embodied sense of rhythm in the slow steady Tactus beat. The mantra is: “soloists are free to depart from the beat, but the beat will not change to accommodate them”. Be inspired by Ella Fitzgerald.

As the whole ensemble gets good at this, soloists can throw in deliberate ‘bending’ of the rhythm, around the steady beat. Indeed, soloists should only ever bend the rhythm deliberately, not by accident or mis-management. If a tricky moment cannot be performed accurately, then it needs more practice. It’s always worth learning a crucial turn of phrase precisely as notated, before adding any rhythmic alteration. (See Caccini for suggestions of rhythmic alteration to short notes, within the steady Tactus).

Solo players, who often have to present a complete polyphonic texture within a single instrument (harpsichord, lute, harp, even violin in J. S. Bach’s Partitas), need to learn first the basic skill of maintaining Tactus whilst they play a single line. The temptation is for the beat (maintained perhaps by the foot if your hands are busy) to follow the performance, but it should be the other way around! Use a pendulum if necessary, to control this.

The more advanced skill is to have Tactus in the bass, in the continuo, in the accompaniment, direct the solo line in Measure. This requires significant mental re-organisation and artistic re-prioritising. When you can do this well, then you can add Caccini-style or Zacconi-style rhythmic alterations to the solo line, whilst keeping the accompaniment steady.

Aural training

Students – and many experienced performers – like to learn from aural examples. But we have very few aural examples of Tactus in today’s Early Music that we can imitate. This well-documented historical practice is not yet reflected in most modern-day recordings or concert performances. Nevertheless, we can still benefit by learning from, and practising with, aural examples.

Make your own home recording of the accompaniment of your piece, check that it really is in Tactus (this is itself an educational exercise, which may need repeated attempts!), and then play the solo line along with your own Tactus-measured accompaniment.

If you are making a lock-down-style multi-track ensemble recording, record the bass first. Or even create a “Historical Click Track” (to be removed from the final mix), not with a click, but with an aural signal that is more akin to a pendulum swing. For example, just say ONE…. TWO with a sustained, slow-articulated ‘one’ and a crisper ‘two’ (the sounds of the English language work well for this). Or a drum track, DUM-bak.

Many modern-day performances use a slow, resonant large drum to create a steady groove, and the steady-calm-strong feeling of renaissance rhythm (think Pavan, for example). I would say that this feeling is historically appropriate, and certainly following an aural cue works well for today’s musicians. Nevertheless, period evidence shows that pavan percussion was a more active rhythm in shorter note-values on a small, less resonant, tabor-like drum. See Arbeau Orchesographie here. The slow-steady-calm-strong beat is the appropriate feeling for historical Tactus, but we need to create it for ourselves rather than relying on the wrong kind of drum!

But we could use that modern pavan-drum as a training aid for high-style polyphony, or seicento monody, to instill that sense of Measure, of reliable Tactus that is needed even when the beat is not dancing to the beat of shorter note-values. This distinction (Tactus in long note-values for serious music, happy dances with regularity extended even to short note-values) is what lies behind Peri’s remark about differing circumstances in which the soloist should not, or should ‘dance to the rhythm of the bass’. More about Peri’s Tactus bass here.

Pre-requisites

In order to begin this development, and move today’s Early Music one step closer to Historically Informed Performance, individual musicians need to hone their Tactus skills, their ability to control rhythm with a slow, steady count. And conductors need to learn the essential historical skill required for their role: a simple down-up beat maintained equally and reliably, without any pertubation (Zacconi, Il Corago c1630 etc).

In Monteverdi’s (1610) Vespers, we would not play continuo on a Steinway, we would not play baroque violin with a modern bow, we would not admit a cornettist who had not learnt the basic fingering-system of his instrument. Why should we accept conducting that eschews the fundamental period technique of the Tactus-hand, that is Historically Un-informed about the historical role of Tactus-beater?

A key pre-requisite for better Informed Performance is proper Historical training for Early Music ensemble directors: no more dinosaurs, no more modern-interpretative-dance in front of a keyboard instrument!

Time-beating lays down the tracks that the perfomance will follow. As Early Musicians, we can make Historically Informed decisions about how to lay down those tracks, and we can follow those tracks in newly-discovered and period-creative ways, offering our listeners a thrilling and surprising ride. Until then,

Mind the Gap!

Laying down new tracks?
Who follows what?
The chase-scene from ‘The Wrong Trousers’

You can watch a video of the train-chase scene that inspired the title of this post here I hope you’ll enjoy the sequence where Gromit the dog lays down new tracks to shape his own journey, despite fierce resistance from the villainous penguin, FakeHip McBaton (or whatever the baddie’s name really is).

Altri canti senza battuta: Madrigals of Love, War & Tactus

Posted by Andrew Lawrence-King

Altri canti d’Amor, tenero Arciero… di Marte io canto.
Others sing of Love, the tender Archer… I sing of Mars!

Altri canti di Marte e di sua schiera… io canto amor.
Others sing of Mars and of his army… I sing of Love!
set by Claudio Monteverdi

Others sing without Tactus…
ALK

Modern-day performances of the concerted madrigals of Monteverdi’s Eighth Book Madrigali Guerrieri ed Amorosi (1638) usually adopt one of two strategies: a modern onductor; or no conductor at all, perhaps with some leading from the first violin. Tempi are chosen at the performers’ whim. None of this corresponds to period practice.

This repertoire is precisely the ‘difficult’ genre of ‘modern madrigals’ discussed by Frescobaldi, where there are contrasting movements (passi) and passionate vocal effects. Frescobaldi Rules, OK? here.

In this period, rhythm was almost always directed by Tactus-beating from within the ensemble. The Tactus-beater is usually a singer, because instrumentalists’ hands are occupied.

Nevertheless continuo-players have the role of ‘guiding and supporting’ the entire ensemble of voices and instruments [Agazzari 1607, here]. And Frescobaldi’s rules – formulated for keyboard players – remind us that Tactus is present as a guiding concept even when it is not physically realised. Many sources recommend that instrumentalists beat Tactus with a foot.

All this matters because the sound and feeling of Tactus-led music-making are very different from modern conducting AND from modern-day chamber-music playing. Tactus-beating maintains a minim-pulse that is “regular, solid, stable, firm, clear, sure, fearless and without any perturbation.”

In contrast, most modern conductors make a free choice of which note-value to beat, and apply rallentando and other speed variations (deliberately, or otherwise!). The requirement to synchronise with a steady Tactus guards ensembles against rushing or dragging, and against the lurching changes associated with the oft-heard comment “this phrase goes towards such-and-such a note”. The concept of “goes towards” is not found in period sources: rather the Tactus is stable, and within that stable beat individual notes are Good or Bad, Long or Short. The Good, the Bad and the Early Music phrase, here.

So much for the canti senza gesto – the songs without action. But Monteverdi’s Book VIII also includes some ‘short episodes’ in genere rappresentativo, in show-style, in theatrical style. For those pieces, the convention was not to use any visible Tactus-beating, since the singers were representing dramatic characters. They might well use their hands to gesture expressively, but nobody beats time. This devolves the responsibility for time-keeping to the continuo, who in this style ‘rule’ or ‘regulate’ (reggono) ‘guide’ or ‘drive’ (guidano) the singers.

The *genere* *rappresentativo* in Monteverdi’s Book VII *Concerto* (1619)

Read about the difference between the ‘tempo of the hand’ and the ‘tempo of the heart’ in the Lamento della Ninfa, here.

Fundamental Tactus: minim = 60

In all these pieces, in both chamber-music and dramatic genres, Monteverdi’s notation indicates a basic tempo which might be tweaked to exaggerate contrasts of affetto (mood, emotion) and of musical activity. This basic tempo is regulated by a fundamental Tactus in mensuration mark C of approximately minim = 60: a human (and therefore subjective) feeling for the misura of Time itself. The usual way to beat was simple: down for a minim, up for a minim.

Proportions

Altri canti d’amor is one of the few pieces to include all three triple-metre Proportions: slow Sesquialtera, medium-fast Tripla and fast Sestupla. As Carissimi observed, the note-values in each of these proportions have the same quantitative duration, but the emotional quality of the movement is very different. More on Quality Time here.

Sesquialtera Semibreve = 90 Movement based on semibreves

Others sing of love…

Tripla Dotted semibreve = 60 Movement based on minims

Sestupla Dotted semibreve = 60 Movement based on semi-minims

Binary Tactus – ternary metre

Altri canti di Marte has a short section with an unusual notation that creates the impression of ternary metre, but in the steady speed and black notation of regular crotchets.

The Tactus beat here is the standard down-up at minim = 60, but the word-accents do not coincide with the Tactus beats. Reading from unbarred part-books, singers are not threatened by the ‘tyranny of the bar-line’. Similarly in the choral recitation of Hor che ciel e la terra.

Now that heaven and earth and the wind are silent…

Another binary notation with ternary effect is seen in Act II of Orfeo. Again, the beat is the standard minim = 60, producing a slower movement than would result from Proportional notation.

Look, I really do return to you, dear woods and beloved shores…

Tweaking the Tactus

Frescobaldi recommends listening to the music (with the standard Tactus and Proportions) before deciding how to tweak the Tactus between sections, according to the emotional quality, or affetto. In Monteverdi’s madrigals, we can discern the intended affetto not only from the sound of the music, but also directly from the sung text.

Words with particular emotional content can help us position the affetto within the historical framework of the Four Humours: Sanguine (love, courage, hope, enjoyment of good things), Choleric (anger, desire), Melancholic (pensive, unlucky in love, sleepless, ‘the blues’), Phlegmatic (cold, damped-down, a ‘wet blanket’).

The composer will already have responded to the affetto, with appropriate melodies, harmonies and rhythms. Jacopo Peri explains that in dramatic monody, the affetto is composed into the continuo bass: the singer’s pitches and rhythms represent (in musical notation) the way this text would be declaimed by a fine actor in the spoken theatre. More on Peri here.

None of this is ‘improvisatory’: it is not a ‘sketch’ to be completed by the performer. Rather, the composer has written down in musical notation the period conventions of dramatic delivery. Monteverdi, ‘the divine Claudio’, was acknowledged by his contemporaries to be the master of moving the audience’s passions by his expressive harmonies and precisely notated rhythms. Much more about Monteverdi’s genius for word-setting and theatre in Tim Carter’s inspiring book on Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre, here.

Changing the Tactus according to the affetto

When we (as performers) respond to the affetto, we should expect to find ourselves adding to the contrasts that the composer has already written in. If the affetto of the text is agitated, the composer will have written fast notes, and we should perform these with a faster Tactus. If the affetto of the text is calm, the composer will have written slow notes, and we should perform these with a slower Tactus.

Even (especially) if the affetto is extreme, the change to the Tactus can only be small, since the composer will already have used extreme note-values, This famously agitated moment in Monteverdi’s Combattimento simply cannot be taken very much faster than standard Tactus, which is already 16 syllables per second!

So the performers’ tweaking of the Tactus is subtle, and should be percieved by the listener as an emotional change, rather than an alteration of tempo as such. These changes happen between contrasting movements – passi – section by section, not word by word.

The change of Tactus between sections is managed by means of the Tactus itself. Frescobaldi explains how: the Tactus hand is momentarily suspended on the upstroke, and then the new beat begins ‘resolutely’. No rallentando or accelerando, rather a decisive ‘gear-change’. Exciting, disturbing…. this is how to muovere gli affetti, move the listeners’ passions.

Change of affetto word by word

Zacconi explains how to manage changes of affetto for a particular word, within one movement, i.e. within a section at steady Tactus. The singer can delay the expressive syllable, but the Tactus (and the continuo) continue steadily. The singer should be back on track by the next Tactus beat. Read more about this c1600 ‘Ella Fitzgerald rule’ here.

A tender affetto is expressed with accenti (read more here). A robust affetto avoids acccenti, but might encourage passaggi (though not in theatrical music, where passaggi were generally discouraged). It is important to sing passaggi in tempo, i.e. according to Tactus. More on passaggi here.

Words full of expressive affetto can be ornamented with effetti: the single note trillo, an exclamatione (diminuendo-crescendo on a single note), a gruppo (two-note trill and turn). These ornaments are used sparingly in the theatrical style.

And we should avoid not only that ornament, but the entire modern-day habit of ornamenting the final cadence. What? Really? Yes, really! Read more here.

Caccini explains how to manage small notes within the steady Tactus: in syllabic melody, the good syllable is slightly longer, the bad syllable slightly shorter; in melismatic passaggi, long notes can be extra long, short notes exta short; ornaments accelerate from slow to fast. More on Caccini here.

Caccini also defines the priorities for music-making in this style: “text and rhythm, with sound last of all (and not the other way around!)”. So instead of obsessing over vibrato, pitch and temperament, let’s engage with the period priorities of text and rhythm. Read how Music expresses Emotions here.

My advice to modern-day rehearsal directors is to begin with the text, and coach performers to manage that text in Tactus-rhythm. When the music is difficult, follow Frescobaldi’s Rules, and use the omnipresent Tactus to facilitate the performance, tweaking that Tactus (subtly) when a new movement starts, when the mood (affetto) changes..

In a forthcoming series of short articles, I’ll apply that advice, i.e. these historical principles to some favourite Libro VIII Madrigals. LInks will be posted below.

ALTRI CANTI D’AMOR

HOR CH’EL CIEL E LA TERRA

LAMENTO DELLA NINFA

MOVETE AL MIO BEL SUON

ALTRI CANTI Di MARTE

GIRA IL NEMICO

COMBATTIMENTO DI TANCREDI E CLORINDA

BALLO DELLE INGRATE

Madrigals: Warlike, Amorous & Theatrical

Music of an Earlier Time: in respect of before and after

Posted by Andrew Lawrence-King

Andrew Lawrence-King offers an online practical workshop that explores how Time might have felt to 17th-century musicians, hosted by Amherst Early Music Festival on Saturday June 5th, 2021: further details here.

More than a century after Einstein’s annus mirabilis of 1905, in which he published four paradigm-shifting papers on Quantum Theory, Brownian Motion, Mass/Energy Equivalence and Relativity, most of us still consider the implications of Relativistic Time to be paradoxical.

We live our everyday lives and make music within a pre-1900 understanding of Time ‘like an ever-rolling stream’. This is Newton’s concept of Absolute Time, first published in his 1687 Principia, and bitterly contested amongst mathematicians for decades afterwards. Amongst 18^th-century musicians and the general public, acceptance of Newtonian ideas must have lagged even further behind, just as for most of us today, Hawking’s Brief History of Time (1988) remains counter-intuitive.

In this sense, the works of Josquin, Dowland & Monteverdi, even Lully & Purcell, are ‘music of an earlier Time’. Until Newton, Time was defined by Aristotle’s Physics (4^th cent. BC) as ‘a number of change/motion in respect of before and after’.

At this participatory workshop, everyone is sure to have a Good Time. Andrew leads some mind-games and musical practice, exploring how it might feel to make pre-Newtonian music. What can we discover, not just quantitively, but about the quality of Aristotelean Time? Dare we follow Phaeton’s example, and seize the reins of Apollo’s time-chariot? What about ‘unmeasured’ genres? What really counts in Early Music?

Open to singers and all instrumentalists, relevant to all repertoires up to at least 1800. Instruments are optional, but please bring with you an open mind and a free hand (or foot)!

Looking for a Good Time?

Posted by Andrew Lawrence-King

This article is a personal summary and commentary on the Colloquium presented online on Sunday May 2nd 2021 by Aapo Häkkinen and Domen Marinčič and hosted under the aegis of the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra in collaboration with the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts – more details, and a video of the live event, here. Where I have reproduced citations given by presenters, I ask the reader to bear in mind that I was taking hasty notes from a live talk, and to consult the video and the original sources for authoritative details.

The event’s subtitle Tempo Rubato – Use, Flexibility and Modification of Time deserves further comment (see below), appearing to threaten a presentation of only one side of a debate which – like discussions of Vibrato in Early Music – all too often features campaigning for fixed personal opinions, rather than investigation of historical evidence. But as various speakers gave their papers, there was ample consideration of temporal structures, and if anything was missing, it was investigation of how rhythm might be ‘malleable’ (to use a word that emerged during the event).

In general, questions of What and When were examined carefully, and Jed Wentz gave an impeccably concise and impressively persuasive account of ‘How to do Affekt‘ in the mid-18th century: otherwise, questions of how to apply the rich information provided were left for another occasion.

One such future occasion might be my presentation on Music of an Earlier Time for Amherst Early Music, which will offer participatory exercises exploring how the period philosophy of Time can be applied to practical music-making, using historical terminology, conceptual frameworks and embodied practices: Saturday June 5th 2021, read more here.

The event image was an 1851 illustration of the motto Tempus fugit (Time flies). The metaphor dates back at least to Classical Antiquity, and is cited in the opening phrase of the first ‘baroque opera’, Cavalieri’s Anima e Corpo (1600) read more here. The context of this motto, in Virgil’s Georgics (29 BC), Cavalieri’s drama, and in general (including this 19th-century illustration) is memento mori, a reminder that our life-time is short, with the implied challenge to use time well.

Other images from earlier periods address the specific question of the relation of Time and Music (significantly, Movement is usually – always? – also featured). One of my favourites is Poussin’s Dance to the Music of Time (c1635), rich with iconographical symbolism: you’ll notice Time playing his music on Earth, but don’t miss Apollo’s Time-Chariot in the sky above.

I also have a favourite early 20th-century image which would seem to express most aptly the ‘malleability’ of Tempo Rubato in this period, Dali’s The Persistence of Memory (1931). And indeed the first paper at this Colloquium examined the strong focus on metronomic precision in this very period, but with little mention of the strong advocacy of Tempo Rubato in precisely the same period.

Terminology

Rubato?

We should take great care with the term Rubato. Paderewski’s views on Tempo Rubato were first published in 1909: the term is also strongly associated with Chopin (1810-1849). In a very quick online search, the earliest dictionary reference I found was 1883.

The standard work on the subject is Hudson Stolen Time. Hudson (from page 43) declares Tosi (1723) to the be the first to use the term, in the phrase rubamento di tempo, and in the context of the aria patetica (passionate aria): Tosi specifies that this happens ‘exactly on the true motion of the bass’ (as translated by Galliard in 1743). Hudson cites Roger North’s terminology of “breaking and yet keeping time”, found in several sources, the earliest being an untitled MS c1695, shortly after Tosi’s visit to London.

It is clear that these citations c1700 refer to occasional freedom for a soloist to anticipate or (more usually) delay, whilst the bass continues steadily. Galliard’s mid-18th-century footnote draws attention to Tosi’s repeated insistence on regard for, and strictness of Time, and to the ‘singular’ [rare, unusual, isolated] application of ‘stealing the time’: again we read that “the bass goes an exactly regular pace” and that the soloist “returns to exactness, to be guided by the bass”.

The bass goes an exactly regular pace (Tosi/Galliard 1743)

Hudson also cites Quantz Versuch (1752) illustrating eine Art vom Tempo rubato, again with anticipations and delays to the solo flute, whilst the continuo-bass remains steady.

Froberger’s c1710 marking a discretion and the notation of preludes non mesurées show that some music was indeed unmeasured, and more work is needed to explore how such music would have been realised, for example by careful examination of sources that combine specific note-values with (seemingly contradictory) indications of being ‘un-measured’. See my take on Senza misura in baroque music, here (scroll down the article until you see the Cuisenaire Rods!)

Even with an improved understanding of how to play unmeasured music, the case has certainly not been proven that such an approach should be applied to measured music. Indeed, the quality of being ‘measured’ is the essential defining quality of most early music. See Time: the Soul of Music, here.

Use?

Before 1800, the concept of ‘using Time’ seems to be found exclusively in the context of how one makes best use of one’s lifetime, rather than in music-making. Thus Herrick’s (1648) Gather ye Rose-buds while ye may / Old Time is still a-flying concludes …. use your time for love and marriage, following the motto carpe diem. In the musical context, Time is characterised as measuring music, indeed for Zacconi (1592) the terms tempo, misura, battuta and tatto (Tactus) are synonomous.

But the word ‘use’ also had a particular meaning in the context of 17th-century Arts. ‘Art’ itself was defined as a collection of rules, a set of organising principles. What we nowadays mean by ‘art’ – those mysterious, ineffable beauties that transcend everyday experience is renaissance ‘Science’. In this period terminology, ‘Use’ is the nitty-gritty of what was actually done in practice – we might almost think of it as ‘technique’. In general, period sources tell us more about period ‘art’ – the rules – than about period ‘use’ – how to do it. More about Science, Art, Use here.

In this particular sense of ‘techniques related to Time’, the ‘use of Time’ is a fascinating topic for historical investigation: we should be careful not to equate this with any period assumption that Time was a commodity available for musicians to use as they chose to.

Historical discourse rarely (if ever?) characterises Time as ‘flexible’, before the period Paderewski, Dali and Bergson, whose interlinking of psychological Time and Freewill dominated the philosophy of culture in the early 20th century. Read more here.

Modification?

Although ‘modification’ of Time has come to be an accepted phrase in modern-day discussions of Metre in Music (see for example George Houle’s essential book (1987) here), this is not historical terminology nor a period concept of the relationship between humans and Time. There is no doubt that something of this nature was practised – as Domen Marinčič showed in his presentation – but the period phraseology was of “guiding” or even “driving” Time: the Italian word guidare is also used for driving a chariot. We can catch a glimpse of the period concept when we consider the myth of Phaeton, who seized the reins of Apollo’s time-chariot, but was unable to control it and crashed spectactularly. Early Music welcomes careful drivers…

Careful consideration of terminology is vital, if we are to avoid imposing modern-day assumptions when we glibly apply modern-day vocabulary to earlier periods; and if we wish to understand how the rules of period ‘Art’ were embedded in historical philosophies, in order to appreciate how those old rules felt ‘natural’ to musicians back then.

Tempo?

In discussions of Historical Performance Practices related to Musical Time, there is also a need to distinguish clearly between two – interlinked – questions: tempo as the ‘speed’ of music; tempo as the regularity or otherwise of rhythm at any given speed. In both these aspects, tempo is closely related to Affekt. And underlying all of this, but not addressed in this Colloquium, is the question of Time itself, since Science, Philosophy and general perceptions have changed significantly over the centuries that separate Aristotle, Newton, Einstein and Hawking.

Alexander Bonus on ‘metronomic’ Tempo

This paper was concerned with the use of the metronome to establish rhymthic regularity, not with questions of ascertaining musical speed. Although Maelzel’s metronome was patented in 1815, and Loulié’s chronometre was describle in 1696, AB made the point well that the use of machines to train musicians to play in ‘metronomic rhythm’ became prominent only in the early 20th century. He did not address the prominence of discussions of Tempo Rubato in this very same period: surely these two phenomena are closely interlinked.

AB’s message seemed rather to be that ‘metronomic’ playing is undesirable, but is a phenomenon of the 20th century. It is hard to disagree with those points, although I readily confess that I greatly appreciate the excitement and emotional power of late 20th-century rock music (but my favourite vintage pre-dates the routine use of click-tracks in popular music, and this may well be crucially significant).

AB was greatly concerned that “the belief that tempo is defined by clock technology” is “so central… to performance… even to the reading of notation”. I would agree that this is largely a 20th-century phenomenon, as is the contermporary (over-) reaction against any kind of rhythmic regularity. Both are a feature of modern-day Early Music, and that is regrettable in both instances.

Citing Hofmann in 1905 “keeping of absolutely strict time is thoroughly unmusical and deadlike”, AB also gave highly negative spin to such phrases as “the inexorable beat”, and “the beat is the steady pulse”, even to the whole notion of musicians being beholden to “external tempo”, to rhythm “not depending on the will”,

Here AB went too far, in trying to limit regularity to the 20th-century alone. The inexorable character of Time itself is expressed by Virgil (the tempus that fugit – flies – does so inreparabile, unrecoverably), and the steadiness of the renaissance Tactus beat is strongly characterised in many period sources, for example Zacconi.

Zacconi’s person who administers the Tactus’ would create an ‘external tempo’ for all other members of an ensemble. And the ancient concept of the Music of the Spheres, still current in the 17th century, implies that human ‘free will’ is a lower priority than the divine perfection of heavenly music, which we should imitate in our earthly performances. According to the religious views of the time, “free will” is in general a concept fraught with dangers.

The concept of the Music of the Spheres also connects good music-making to physical, spiritual and moral health. AB noted that in 1895 regular rhythm “equates to good, healthy behaviour”. No doubt, Dowland would approve.

AB also mentioned a crucial distinction: in 1889 “by accurate rhythm is not meant metronomic accuracy”.

Here is the gateway towards a much more productive approach than mere trash-talk about metronomes. In what way was Zacconi’s and Dowland’s measure ‘equal’, and precisely where was there room for what we would nowadays call ‘freedom’?

Julia Dokter on German organ music c1700

Julia Dokter’s presentation outlined the central conclusions of her book, published in the last few days, Tempo & Tactus in the German Baroque, here. Her approach was an exhaustive survey of theoretical sources, applied to case-studies of various musical compositions, all within a specific genre. She was most properly cautious about extending specifics from this particular repertoire and genre to other countries, periods or genres. Nevertheless, the concepts she introduced seem to reflect fundamental practices related to musical time in this period. Notably, her results were strikingly parallel to those presented in Aapo Häkkinen’s paper, addressing another repertoire and with different methodology.

JD focussed on Tempo transitions, informed by three types of period notation: time-signatures, note-values and tempo-words.

Looking at Baroque time-signatures, as they evolved from renaissance mensuration marks, she first cited Michael Praetorious in the early 17th century, explaining two notational systems for duple metre: Motets in C/ time, counted as two semibreves; and Madrigals in C time, counted as two minims. These two notations are NOT proportional: the minim-beat in C is neither twice as fast, nor the same as the semibreve-beat in C/. Rather, the difference is ‘about one and a half’: we should bear in mind that the period concept of a ‘half’ is not necessarily as strictly 50%, but rather more loosely as some part less than the whole and more than nothing. So we beat C/ somewhat slower (and that beat represents semibreves), and C somewhat faster (and this beat represents minims). This is similar to what we read in Zacconi, who warns that the Tactus-beater should not mistake his mensuration marks and give the beat at the ‘other speed’, as this would probably crash the entire ensemble.

JD explained that this is consistent with a general principle in Baroque practice, that time signatures denominated in smaller note-values (i.e. 3/8 compared to 3/4) have a slower Tactus, so that the small note-values go faster, but not twice as fast. Her later examples extended this principle to a general principle that passages in very small note-values would be assumed to require a slower Tactus – in order to be playable at all!

JD applied another early 17th-century practice, the triple-time proportions of Sesquialtera (slow), Tripla (medium fast) and Sestupla (very fast) to her case-studies in high Baroque organ-music.

Her conclusion is that there were effectively two systems of notation (and execution) of duple Tactus, each with its three associated triple-time Proportions. Similarly, each faster Proportion might be only somewhat faster, not necessarily twice as fast as the slower Proportion.

So whether in duple or triple, smaller denominations of time-signatures and smaller note-values in what JD calls the ‘surface activity’ both suggest a slower Tactus. The result is faster surface activity, but not so much as twice as fast.

This is a principle we see at work as early as Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers, where at Et exultavit in the Magnificat there is the marking va sonato tardo, perche li doi tenori cantano di semicroma (will be played slowly, because the two tenors are singing semiquavers).

Nevertheless, as became clear in Domen Marinčič’s presentation (below), this period principle is contra-indicated by other early 17th-century indications also observed by Julia Dokter in the later repertoire, that changes to faster surface activity may require a faster Tactus, to heighten the contrast.

JD noted that the “demise of the Proportional system” described by Kirnberger in 1776 can already be seen in the music of J.S. Bach c1740. As C becomes a quadruple metre, with four crotchet beats (whereas c1600 it was a duple metre with two minim beats, see above), the old system of proportions collapses. I would add that the emergence of fashionable French dances, many of them in triple metre but with subtly different speeds, rhythmic structures and subjective affekts, also contributed to the slipping of the gears of the old Proportional system.

Nevertheless, JD proposed strict proportions for JSB’s Eb Major “St Anne” Organ fugue (the associated Prelude has passages in alla Francese ‘overture’ style), with the constant beat transferring from semibreve to dotted minim to dotted crotchet.

I would add to this, citing Carissimi’s comment in Ars cantandi published in German translation in many editions around 1700, about the affektive quality of proportions:

The triple-metres all agree with regard to quantity, division and proportion, as is easily understood, but in the slow or fast quality, known by the Italians as tempo and by the French as mouvement, they are utterly different.
Carissimi Ars Cantandi (1692 etc)

Here Carissimi contrasts the quantitative – “mathematical” – elements of beat (constant), note-values (consistent between different triple mensurations), proportion (simple ratios of the underlying duple metre) with the affektive quality that results. Although the duration of any given note-value (e.g. a minim) is the same in Sesquialtera, Tripla or Sestupla, the contrasts in harmonic motion and surface activity create very different feelings for triple metres of three semibreves, three minims, or twice-three crotchets. And this qualitative, affektive element is ‘known by the Italians as tempo and by the French as mouvement‘. And in German, Bewegung.

So we are considering not only speed of beat, and the surface activity within that beat, but also the affektive quality that results. Read more on Quality Time here.

Depending on context, we may choose (or be encouraged by tempo words) to exaggerate contrasts by over-doing Proportional changes (see DM below). Or we may need (with the support of tempo words) to reduce the contrast as calculated mathematically, whilst (presumably) still acheiving an effective contrast of Affekt.

In the conference, JD expressed the opinion that – in the later repertoires she studied – tempo words that appear to suggest heightened contrast merely warn against a more common practice of automatically reducing contrast. DM gave clear evidence – mostly in earlier repertoires – that tempo words exaggerate the expected contrasts. I would suggest that we have evidence to show that proportions could be precise, lessened or heightened in various contexts, and that tempo words help us judge which way to go, with affektive contrasts as the end-goal, and playability as an inevitable limitation.

Domen Marinčič on variations in Tactus speed

Domen Marinčič summarised his excellent paper on Now faster, now slower, citing sources that incontravertibly show changes of Tactus speed, starting with Vicentino (1555) changing measure according to the text. He suggested that this practice of changing the Tactus was only one of many options, such as “agogic freedom”, “rubato”, “managing rhythm expressively”, but he did not cite evidence for or discuss in detail these other options.

Whilst Mersenne (1636) gives a default tempo of around one beat per second (i.e. a one-metre pendulum), DM reminded us that Mersenne also considered the pendulum an ineffective tool, since so many different lengths would be required for the slightly different speeds that are required. Nevertheless, DM’s suggestion that it is left up to performers to choose their own tempo is unsatisfactory: the period discourse asssumes that there is a correct tempo, and the performers’ job is to find it, not choose their own. Of course, we don’t always have enough, and clear enough, information to find the tempo for sure, but nevertheless, that is what we are supposed to try to do!

I would add here that Frescobaldi gives us a practical method for finding the correct tempo, a method that is quite different from the mathematical calculations and abstract musical analysis that we tend to use nowadays. Frescobaldi’s instructions are to play the music through (in some default tempo, presumably considering a standard Tactus and the apparent surface activity): as one listens, one will understand what Affekt the music has. And for how to proceed from Affekt to execution, see Jed Wentz’s paper (below). More on Frescobaldi Rules OK?, here.

Frescobaldi also gives us vital information and essential practical advice. The information is that even ‘difficult’ music with changes of Tactus is facilitated by using a Tactus beat. This contra-indicates any assumption of general rubato in this repertoire, replacing it with highly specific instructions for when and how to change the beat. The practical advice is therefore to study by physically beating Tactus with the hand, and play keyboards etc whilst physically beating Tactus with the foot. Tactus is not just a theoretical concept, it is an embodied practice.

DM cited Glareanus increasing the speed (not necessarily in strict mathematical proportion) by changing mensuration mark. Banchieri beats both C and C/ with a minim-beat, but at different speeds. Other sources change the note-value associated with the Tactus beat (e.g. Zacconi, who also changes the beat-speed accordingly). Praetorius uses a variety of time-signatures to indicate different tempi. An Entrée in L’Amour Malade has exceptionally many changes of time signature, and therefore, tempo.

DM pointed out exampes in very well-known repertoires where even highly respected modern editions have ‘rationalised’ or suppressed differences in time signatures that would seem to indicate tempo contrasts: between successive Minuets and Bourées in J.S. Bach’s Cello suites, and the Minuets in the first Brandenburg Concerto. This idea was echoed, from a very different approach, in Jed Wentz’s paper.

I urge readers to consult DM’s published article here.

Discussion

In discussion amongst the presenters, AB reiterated his central points, that the intense application of the metronome to music education, the mimicking of the ticking metronome as the model of rhythm, and the concept that a mechanical standard should be followed, are all 20th-century phenomena.

JD added a fascinating observation from her comparisons of sources of J.S. Bach’s works, that the composer seems to have changed his priority from trying to notate speed, to trying to notate Affekt. This fits well with Carissimi’s ideas of durational Quantity and affecktive Quality (see above).

JD also suggested that strict mathematical proportions might be just the outline structure and the theoretical basis: “in practice, it becomes more malleable”. In the sense that the proportional change itself might be slightly greater or less than the mathematical ratio, this suggestion is thoroughly supported by period evidence, including many citations presented during this event.

A written comment by an online listener expressed disappointment at so much talk of notation and structure, opining that all this had been heard before from Willem Retze Talsma in 1980, and interested to hear about “freedom, departing from those “absolute” tempi… that is the accelerando and ritardando from the basic tempo, gradually”.

Certainly, all the evidence heard during this Colloquium fitted excellently with the notion of well-structured Tempo Giusto, though with different quantitative speeds according to mensuration marks; and with systems of Proportional relationships for triple metre, but with the possibility of ‘tweaking’ those mathematical ratios one way or another in particular circumstances. No evidence was presented at this event for any general “freedom”, nor for gradual changes of accelerando/ritardando. Indeed Frescobaldi clearly states that changes of Tactus are executed by suspending the Tactus momentarily in the air, and then starting the new movement resolutely. Based on all the evidence I have seen, my coaching mnemonic for ensembles and students is “use the gear-shift, not the accelerator/brake”.

I had the opportunity to meet, hear and talk with Talsma in the early 1980s, and this was my first encounter with the concept of Tempo Giusto. Of course, the ‘double-beat metronome’ theory for Beethoven etc has by now been totally exploded more here, but my research findings utterly support the fundamental concept of a (more-or-less) fixed speed (but ‘fixed’ subjectively, not with any kind of clock) in mensuration mark C [although this changes during the 17th-century from a duple to a quadruple measure, see above]. Indeed, Beethoven himself comments on this concept, wishing to be free from it (and thus confirming its strong presence until then).

But, in spite of the remarks of the online listener, the application of Tempo Giusto nowadays differs sharply from Talsma’s version in the 1980s, in that we measure the ‘correct tempo’ with a slow Tactus, avoiding the ‘sewing-machine’ effect of Talsma’s measuring of small note-values. During recent decades, there was even an idea that counting in ever-larger note-values might be better and better (still supported by Robert Hill amongst others). Roger Mathew Grant’s excellent book on Beating TIme and Measuring Music (2014) shows that measuring (by the Tactus hand) was done at a particular note-value (c1600 the minim in C, and the semibreve in C/; c1700 the crotchet in C).

Inja Stanovic‘s paper on the technologies of early recording, though valuable and interesting, seemed to me to belong to another occasion. Of course, the recording industry has had a most powerful effect on modern-day Early Music, supporting it immensely, especially with the arrrival of the CD in the 1980s. But my personal experience is that the technologies of the late 20th century had less influence on performer choices than did record producers. Almost invariably, young HIP ensembles making their first recordings were supervised by more senior ‘classical’ producers, and the process was dominated by seeking to control tuning, vertical unanimity of rhythm, and the avoidance of any surprises. We used to joke that our task was to play until something woke up the producer and he called “Cut”.

By the time a new generation of producers with Early Music experience emerged, the expectations of record companies, the listening public, and even of performing musicians, had been firmly set in a certain path. Seriously, we can well consider how today’s Early Music might have turned out, if all those thousands of CDs had been commanded by jazz producers, who might have prioritised groove and swing over vertical unanimity, drama and emotion over bland smoothness.

One of the presenters (AB?) cited Roger North’s remark that chronometers are very ‘whimmish’, that there is nothing better than a roll of paper in the [human] hand. Daniel Friderici (editor of the 1625 print of the Finnish Piae Cantiones, more here, and recent Finnish recording here) was also cited “some beat time like a clock, and this is an error”. All this encourages us to investigate precisely how the practice of Tactus-beating differed from clockwork, given the overwhelming weight of evidence that the character of the Tactus was steady, equal, unchanging etc.

Jed Wentz on ‘the Art of Acting’ (1753)

This was an inspiring and well-structured presentation, summarising Aaron Hill’s instructions to mid-18th-century actors on how to acheive the appropriate body, facial and vocal expression for a particular Affekt. JW began with Kirnberger’s re-iteration of the doctrine of ‘moving the Passions’ i.e. that motion and emotion are connected (in German, Bewegung and Gemüthsbewegung], with Bewegung as ‘what the French call mouvement‘ i.e. musical Tempo (see my remarks on Carissimi, above): “and the composer must properly hit on this Movement, according to the nature of the feeling” – Die Kunst Part II page 106 – and my thanks for JW for his exemplary citations during a speedy online session). “This is a study that lies outside the music.”, a study which “the composer shares with the poet and orator”.

Hidden in these citations is a vital point: whilst both composers and performers must employ the art of Rhetoric, they each have different responsibilities. The determining of Tempo (in response to the Affekt of the text) is the responsibility of the composer, who notates it as precisely as the period systems allow (and though more precise indications by chronometres were available, it seems they were not wanted): the performer’s responsibility is to understand the composer’s notation and follow it. We read in Quantz that the performer should also be like an orator, and Quantz’s highly detailed instructions on how to do this do not suggest altering the notated tempo, or any kind of general rubato, but rather explain how to structure musical time with a ‘pulse’ around 80 bpm.

JW cited Coeffeteau’s requirement in A Table of Human Passions (1621) page 17 that there should be ‘perceptible changes to the body and voice” of the person feeling the emotion. JW then showed the methodology of theatrical director Aaron Hill, who also produced Handel’s Rinaldo in 1711, as published in the first (posthumous) edition of his Art. The actor should not attempt to ‘imitate a passion’ (by speaking his lines) until “fancy has conceived so strong an image or idea of it…. as to move the same impressive springs within his mind”. Imagination must conceive a strong idea, which (by the action of Energetic Spirits of Passion transmitting from the brain to the body) impresses its form on the muscles of the face; instantly the same impression is felt in the muscles of the body; and the those muscles (whether ‘braced’ or ‘slack’) transmit their own sensation to the sound of the voice and the disposition of the gesture.

Extending the ancient doctrine of the Four Humours, Hill categorises 10 Dramatic Passions (and Love, the ancient Quintessential, can be mixed with any of these): Joy, Grief, Fear, Anger, Pity, Scorn, Hatred, Jealousy, Wonder, Love. JW referred to Hill’s concept of the “quality of the eye”, and the sequence of this technique: reflecting on the idea in the mind, feeling it idea in the body; a physical response of the eyes and nerves; only then should the actor speak.

In this way, the actor avoids the danger of “overleaped distinctions” – missing emotional contrasts. And on stage, these “beautiful and pensive pausing places will appear to be the natural attitudes of thinking”. Without the application of this technique, the audience will remain unmoved.

JW concludes that pauses in performance are therefore essential.

I would comment that Hill’s methodology contrasts sharply with the usual operating procedure in most modern-day HIP productions of ‘early opera’. Usually the focus is on teaching hand, and perhaps body, movements, with the danger that these – however beautiful – strike the audience as being ‘stylised’ and passionless, not genuine expressions of emotion. But Hill’s concepts are ancient, based on Quintilian’s theory of “visions” and the doctrine of Enargeia. Rather than manipulating the voice or the body directly, the first step is to create an imagined Vision of what is described in the text.

In first rehearsals of a new play, actors often struggle to ‘change gear’ quickly enough. But good coaching, effective private practice and sufficient rehearsal should empower an actor to make strong changes of Affekt as quickly as needed. Indeed, many sources on Early Opera emphasise how powerful an effect such sudden strong contrasts have on the audience, see Cavalieri for example. It requires careful judgement to decide how much ‘beautiful and pensive pausing’ to allow in performance.

And in theatrical music (or indeed any passionate musical performance), that careful judgement has already been exercised by the composer, and the appropriate amount of pause has been notated. Samuel Pepys praised Henry Lawes for his precise notation in musical rhythm of ‘every pointing comma’. Monteverdi varies how each speech starts: with the continuo directly, before the continuo, shortly after, after a longer pause. Cavalieri notates the space for affektive changes during the silences at the end of each phrase [last notes notated long are conventionally sung short, see Doni – giving time for reflection, gesture etc within the regular Tactus].

I would argue that since the composer has already notated the appropriate Movement for the emotion at hand (as described by Kirnberger, also in 1600 by Peri and by Pepys in the late 17th-century), the performer’s task is as Hill requires, to create the response in his body and voice before singing, yet to do so within the dramatic timing carefully notated by the composer. Otherwise, we risk spoiling the pauses and continuations carefully notated by the composer: think of a waiter enthusiastically adding salt to potatoes that were already salted to perfection by the chef! More on Pavans and Potatoes here.

But see also JW’s discussion on Mattheson, below.

Aapo Häkkinen on 18th-century tempo relationships

It was most interesting to note that AH reached very similar conclusions to Julia Dokter, albeit in somewhat different repertoire and with an utterly different, yet properly thorough, methodology. His approach was to examine large-scale works and construct – not a pyramid of tempi, based on the slowest tempo – but what he called an ‘hour-glass’ of tempi, centred on a fundamental Tempo Giusto in C-time in the area of 60 to 80 bpm.

From this starting point, the denominators of time-signatures indicate for example that 3/8 is faster than 3/4. And then Tempo words modify (to a lesser extent) the broad indication given by the time-signature. Both these principles are well accepted in modern-day musicology, and the speed-order of the Tempo words is not significantly in doubt. And during the course of say a Handel opera, there are so many movements, each carefully marked with time-signature with or without additional tempo word, that we end up with a large number of tempi in a well-defined order.

If we seek the central speed of Tempo Giusto, and avoid impossible extremes of fast or slow, yet create an appreciable distinction (at least a few bpm) between each and every tempo, there is, as AH put it “very little leeway in choosing tempi if one takes all the tempo words into account”.

And his findings indicated sets of tempi related by proportions, just as JD found by her, rather different, investigation.

For the application of this methodology – ordering the tempi of a large-scale work, and hence determining a fairly precise tempo for every movement – to Handel’s Orlando see here.

In their parallel, but independent, investigations, JD and AH implicitly relied upon two essential period principles, which have guided all serious study in this area, but which many performers are reluctant to accept. Firstly, the historical role of performers was not to choose their own tempo, but to find the correct tempo, which the composer’s notation was intended to convey. And secondly, two movements from the same large-scale work, or two pieces from the same repertoire, that have the same indications of tempo (mensuration marks or time signatures, level of activity i.e. characteristic note-values, time words, dance type etc) are intended to have the same tempo, as near as humanly possible.

One can make a lot of progress in any well-defined repertoire, by looking for as many pieces as possible with the same indications, and finding the range of tempi in which all of them work. As AH put it, if you have enough data, there is usually very little “leeway”. It is possible to find the correct tempo, if we take the trouble to look hard enough, rather than just inventing our own.

Interlude

The Colloquium’s halfway point was marked with a musical performance from Domen and Aapo, before each presenter gave a second talk. In this segment there was also discussion between the various presenters, and some questions posted by online listeners were answered.

Jed Wentz again

JW warmed to his theme, emphasising the embodied experience of affektive performance. “The Actor feels the Affket in his body”.

JW looked at Mattheson’s discussion of Affekts. I note that Mattheson, as with Hill and other 18th-century sources, goes beyond and even contradicts the 17th-century categorisation into Four Humours. As JW reported, Mattheson describes Joy as a spreading out of our animal spirits (an outward, sanguine humour – ALK), whereas Sorrow is a contraction (ALK – inward, Melancholy); Love is based on a scattering of the spirits (outward, sanguine – ALK).

JW turned to Mattheson’s analysis of Hope, famously applied to an innocent little Courante. Hope is an elevation of feeling, whereas Desperation a complete collapse of the same [outward, warm sanguine humour, inward cold phlegmatic – ALK]. These Affekts can be very naturally represented with sounds, above all when the other factors, especially Zeitmasse (the amount of Time, a different word for a different shade of meaning of Tempo – ALK) play their part.

Mattheson shows how the Affekt might change to Desire in certain phrases of the Courante, which as JW pointed out, might suggest a pause for transition and/or a different tempo for the new Affekt. JW was also properly cautious with this suggestion, since it contradicts the instructions for dance-music found in many period sources. I would also mention that Mattheson’s switch to Desire implies a gross change to a Choleric Humour, that earlier sources would not regard as consistent with (Sanguine) Hope.

One possible approach that might square these circles is to follow JW’s advice and apply the historical technique for creating Affektive contrasts. Modern-day performers tend to make an intellectual decision to change the tempo, “because there is a change of Affekt”. But the historical practice was to feel the Affekt in the body, and allow changes of timbre, tempo etc to happen as a consequence. I would translate this as “you try to keep steady measure, and you genuinely believe you are doing so; but the changes of Affekt you experience create a change of tempo, as measured by a dispassionate observer (or indeed, a metronome, that most dispassionate observer of all!”

Sources cited by JW are very firm that conventional tactics (e.g. changing tempo) alone will have little emotional effect on the listeners. The essential first step is for the performer to change their own affektive state, and this is what moves the passions of the listeners. My comment is that if this goes well, both performer and audience will feel that the tempo was the constant, it was their affektive state that changed.

JW continued with various citations: one can form an emotional [Sinnliche] idea of all the emotions [Regungen] and form one’s inventions to it – this was directed to composers.

Dealing with Sorrow, much more than with the other emotions, anyone [ALK, this is addressed to composers, but could well be apposite for performers also] who would represent sorrow in sound must feel and experience it himself; otherwise all the so called loci topici [musical clichés] are useless. I would read this as a warning against the kind of Rhetorical Studies that focus on finding and naming those clichés, as if this alone will make the performance more communicative for listeners. Very few courses on Rhetoric spend time teaching students to imagine and feel within the body each of the Four Humours: though I consider this essential fundamental training in Historical Performance.

For example, coaching Continuo-players (on theorbos, lutes, harps etc) to respond to text, I show how obvious cues from the text can be realised with simple changes to instrumental timbre (corresponding to Hill’s “braced” or “slack” muscles!): nearer the bridge/soundboard (more gritty) or further up the string (sweeter); relaxed or tensed fingers etc. But the more significant technique is just to create mental visions of the text as it goes by, as if creating a video-film to the sung text as a script, and allow those mental visions to change the physical aspect of your fingers, so that the sound of the instrument changes as a result. This is hard to specify in technical detail, but has a stronger effect for listeners.

JW cited Diderot Memoires (1748) page 192 as opposing the use of clock-like tempo devices for anything more than a few bars to establish the tempo. After that the player should continue alone: “nothing more than the pleasure of the harmony suspends him”. I’m reminded of Frescobaldi’s advice: if you want to know how a piece of music feels, than just play it (see above).

Domen Marinčič on Tempo words

DM referred to Milan El Maestro (1536) as an early example of tempo words that modify the effect of the musical notation. This is in the context of a particular style of fantasia, that contrasts harmonies in long notes – consonancias – with fast passagework – redobles. As DM mentioned, vihuela sources contain a lot of information on tempo, and Milan gives a specific tempo – in words – for each of his fantasias. More on Milan here. More on the 16th-cent Spanish Art of Time here.

DM cited sources stating that purely mathematical proportions fail to observe decorum, text, or harmony.

Decorum is a technical term of Rhetoric, the requirement that every detail be consistent with the Rhetorical purpose – ALK.

In some English 17th-century sources, ‘soft’ is linked to ‘drag’. In 1619, Praetorius links ‘piano’ to slowly. A 1613 source asks for certain passages to be softer and faster. Türk (1789) asks for certain passages to be softer and slower.

Much more in DM’s published article.

Julia Dokter on Tempo words

JD had a slightly different take on the effect of Tempo words. “Tempo words either reiterate or modify information otherwise communicated” i.e. by changes of time-signature and/or note values.

This idea, that Tempo words might merely reiterate what the musical notation has already told us, is controversial. DM considers that a tempo word that ‘goes the same way’ as a change of notation does not simply reiterate, but rather intensifies the change. I am inclined to agree with DM, as I see this usage going back all the way to Milan 1536, where the wording is unambiguously about changing the Tactus to exaggerate the change in note-values.

It could be interesting to look for examples of a single work with proportional changes, some with modifying tempo-words, others without such words, to see whether proportional changes were always ‘tweaked’, or might sometimes be left plain and ‘mathematical’.

And perhaps this is the moment for me to add that the sung text itself can be full of “tempo-modifying words”. It would indeed lack decorum, to sing ‘Drop, drop slow tears’ in a ‘default tempo’ un-modified by slow, lacrimose affekt. My take on this is the “LY” principle: how do you sing any given text? Take the emotionally significant word and add “LY”. So we sing “Drop, drop slow tears” not necessarily softly, but certainly slowly and tearfully. We sing “Awake sweet love” not necessarily louder, but certainly wakefully, sweetly and lovingly. And so on.

Conventional dynamics, mp, mf, piano and forte are hopelessly gross and unrefined – no wonder they are little used in 17th-century music. But the sung text provides highly specific performance instructions. And – as reported by JW – treatises on the Art of Acting tell us how to put those instructions to work, by applying techniques of Vision and Enargeia (the emotional power of detailed description).

JD emphasised that in passages of Stylus Phantasticus, the Tactus Tempo is drastically slower, whilst note-values are much shorter.

I questioned JD’s assumption that Sytlus Phantasticus should be performed with ‘malleable tempo’. She mentioned Mattheson’s characterisation of the style as full of all kinds of surprises and changes, including temporal effects. But surely – these are notated already. Nobody is proposing to create additional harmonic surprises by treating the notated pitches as ‘malleable’…

And I think this comparison of notated pitch, and notated rhythm, is most useful. There is a 20th-century tendency to treate notated pitches seriously, whereas tempo and rhythm are the performer’s free choice. Rather like Autobahn driving: we respect the one-way signs, but choose our own speed, unless the Authenticity Police are present. 🙂

Seriously, we now understand that the written pitches can be changed historically (history of A) systematically (transposition according to chiavette) or creatively (divisions, according to style rules and historical models). I would suggest that tempo and rhythm are notated to a similar extent, and that any changes a performer introduces should be historical (the changing speed of Tempo Giusto etc over the centuries), and within one repertoire either systematic (as JD, AH and DM all showed) or – if creative – should follow style rules and historical models (as JD and DM are investigating). There is no ‘freedom’ for rhythm, any more than there is for pitch: just a lot of historical information to be understood and applied.

JD’s other argument for ‘malleability’ in Stylus Phantasticus was subjective, and none the worse for that, based on her rich experience of this repertoire. When you play this stuff, some adjustments seem necessary, to make sense of the wierd music. I’m sure she is right. But I suspect that those adjustments can be made within a steady Tactus – there is plenty of space to do this, since the note-values are so very small and the Tactus beat (crotchet, presumably) so very slow. Indeed, with such very slow Tactus, and so much surface activity, one’s perception/control of the Tactus diminishes.

DM noted a sequence of markings adagio – a battuta, which might imply ‘malleability’ in the adagio. I would be inclined to take this literally, that the singer would not beat time with the hand during the adagio, and would start again – for beating time was the standard practice – afterwards. I would link this to the prohibition on beating time in theatrical music (since it distracts from the stage action, and from believing that the onstage character is ‘real’), which is gradually extended to passionate solo songs in general. And it’s also practical – whilst you are singing small note-values and/or affektive ornaments etc, you don’t want to be beating a super-slow Tactus with your hand, it’s physically inconvenient and distracting for everyone.

Alexander Bonus mentioned the boom in sales of pocket-watches in the time of Roger North. There is a far bigger story here of the circa 1800 glorification of machines, musical machines, dolls etc that moved by mechanical means, and the imitation of natural and human movement by machines. The admiration of the semitone mechanism of the late 18th-century pedal harp, harpe organisée is part of this story. Such machines were prized because they successfully imitated the perfection of the Clockwork of the Heavens. This is an uncomfortable topic for the anti-metronome brigade, as is the desire of earlier philosophers to make astronomy more regular than it really is. The wish that planetary orbits be circular blocked scientific advance until Kepler established ellipses beyond doubt, and Newton provided a mathematical model for this.

Just as with the Vibrato debate, we cannot hide behind over-simplistic black-and-white positions. Historical Tempo was both regular and irregular – we have to understand how this worked in each repertoire, and we are unlikely to find a ‘one size fits all’ solution. But just as Jed Wentz made the case for an embodied approach to Affekt, I would suggest that we can only begin to understand Tempo if we embody it as they did back then, with the physical movement of the Tactus Hand. If we try to solve problems only by abstract thinking, we are certainly going to ‘overleap distinctions’…

AB cited Brower (1929) advocating a “metronome in one’s head”. I’m not so appalled by this: but what I want to have in my head is a vision/memory of a Tactus Hand, with visions of the changing, text-based Affekts projected onto it!

Descartes comments on the particular significance of ‘first part of the measure’ were cited. Good stuff, and let’s also keep in mind the influence of French dance, Lully’s down-bow on the down-beat etc on how time felt for his contemporaries. We cannot generalise 18th-century concepts of the hierarchy of the bar back into the early 17th-century, when most music was unbarred anyway.

Nevertheless, we do need to seek an (embodied) understanding of how time felt for musicians of the past. This Colloquium made a valuable contribution to advancing such understanding, and the organisers and contributers should be warmly thanked for their work.

Introduction to French Baroque Dance: Muffat on ‘Vrai Mouvement’

Posted by Andrew Lawrence-King

This article was written for a course on HIP for Harps taught for the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. It offers a very brief introduction based on Muffat (1698) and focussed on the typical movements of baroque suites.

Period discourse about music around the year 1700 was much concerned with contrasts in National Style, specifically Italian and French. Italian style (imitated also outside Italy, of course) favoured drama and virtuoso display in such genres as Opera, Toccata, Sonata & Concerto. French style (also imitated abroad) preferred descriptive character pieces to abstract sonatas and celebrated above all the noble art of Dance.

French theatrical music (especially Ballets), chamber music (in particular, Suites) and social activities were unified by the elegance and energy of dance, and depended for variety on the contrasting characters of distinctive dance-types. As modern-day performers of these repertoires, our understanding of the music is enormously increased if we know something of the dancing that inspired it.

I strongly recommend every student of Historically Informed Performance to go to class and learn some dances from the appropriate period of music. It isn’t necessary to become a great dancer: right from the beginning you will start to notice from the inside what it feels like to dance the music you love. No amount of teaching or demonstration can replace this personal, embodied experience.

At the very least, watch as much baroque dancing as you can, so that you have a clear visual inspiration to guide your playing. Play for dance rehearsals, in order to learn what their art requires of your delivery. The ideal in this period was that the music should appear to be produced by the action of the dancers’ feet striking the floor. Strong moments in the dance move upwards, preparatory energy is gathered by sinking in order to expand and rise again. And watching good baroque dancers, we can imagine that our sustained notes are similarly suspended in the air as if weightless, like a elegantly poised dancer, balanced and seeming to float almost off the ground.

Watch here 1: Introduction

Watch here 2: Suite

Watch here 3: Minuet etc

For a more substantial audio/visual introduction, I warmly recommed Paige Whitley-Baugess’ Introduction to Baroque D ance videos, available here.

French period sources suggest that many subtleties of le bon gout – Good Taste – can only be acquired by studying with a fine teacher, born into the culture of Louis XIV’s France. As foreigners from the 21st century, we can all be thankful for Georg Muffat’s (1698) systematic analysis of French style, describing le bon gout in terms of a coherent set of principles, just as grammar-books describe the use of language. Indeed, this concept of a collection of rules is precisely how Art itself was defined, in this period. Read more about period philosophy of art here.

Muffat’s First Observations on the French style of playing dance-tunes according to the method of Monsieur Lully are presented in four languages (Latin, German, Italian, French) as the introduction to his second Florilegium collection, available free online here. The four versions are not identical, and it is worth studying fine points of detail across all four texts. David Wilson’s English translation is here. My summary below follows the French text.

For an alternative path through Muffat & French Baroque Dance, see my 2020 article here.

“Here you can discover the principal secrets in a few words”

“Two functions admirably well linked together:

“To charm the ear
“Simultaneously, to mark so well the movements of the dance, that one recognises immediately which type each tune represents, and one feels irresistibly inspired to dance.”

This is Muffat’s reworking of the classic Three Aims of Rhetoric: to delight, to explain and to move the passions. The musician’s purpose is literally to move listeners’ feet, and thereby to affect their emotions.

The word mouvement has a wide semantic field that includes the physical movements of dancing, contrasting formal sections (e.g. the movements of a suite), the speed of the music, the emotional Affekt of the music and the dancing, and the rhythmic structure of a particular dance-type. All these elements are interdependent.

“Five requirements:

“To play in tune”
“Bowing”
“To keep constantly/constant the True Movement of each piece”
“To observe certain usages of repeats, notations, style and dancing”
“Ornamentation”

Muffat’s insistence on le vrai Mouvement – True Movement – goes further than simply keeping the beat and maintaining constant tempo. This mouvement is also what a jazz musician would call the ‘groove’ of the dance, a characteristic rhythmic pattern, not necessarily strictly mathematical (often the first beat of the bar needs to be long), but established from the beginning and maintained until the end, and strongly linked to the particular physical movements and emotional Affekts associated with each dance-type.

For example, the Chaconne is usually a celebratory, festive, theatrical ‘party’ dance often marking the happy ending of a music-drama, or associated with the comedy clown, Harlequin. It is usually constructed in double-units of four-bar phrases featuring a descending bass-line, with hemiola at significant cadences, and a groove running across the bar-lines: 2 3 1, 2 3 1. The first beat is long, giving space either for a breath between mini-phrases, or for an expressive dissonance on the first beat resolved on the second.

The Minuet is a formal social dance, often marking the presentation of a couple to the assembled company. It is usually constructed with a great deal of symmetry: four-bar and eight-bar phrases; eight-bar or sixteen-bar repeated sections etc. The basic unit is two bars, which corresponds to one minuet-step. The groove mixes, often alternately, rhythmic patterns of crotchet-minim [short-long] and minim-crotchet [long short].

Both these dances are usually notated in 3/4, and could plausibly be played within a similar range of tempi according to circumstances. In this, they might appear very alike. But once you’ve played a few of each type, and (ideally) learnt to dance them too, you will be able to distinguish them from the very first few notes, just as Muffat writes. This is the significance of vrai mouvement, much more than just ‘constant speed’.

“Play in tune”

Muffat singles out the diatonic semitone mi-fa as the usual source of problems for inexperienced players. At an elementary level, violinists have to learn to position their fingers to create a narrower spacing for the semitone than for the tones. Failure here is a serious assault on the listener’s ears.

At a higher level of sophistication, Muffat’s hint to raise the mi may be linked to the ongoing transition from the pure thirds of Quarter-comma Meantone towards the slightly wider thirds of Sixth-comma Meantone, as the accepted practice for ‘being in tune’. Most 18th-century ‘circulating temperaments’ (for keyboard instruments) were derived from Sixth-comma Meantone, so it is highly plausible that slightly wider thirds became generally accepted.

Muffat also mentions that ornaments should not be false. Sometimes ornaments require chromatic alteration to fit within the local harmonies, and whichever notes one chooses to play, they must be in tune, of course. Playing an ornament in the wrong place also offends the ear. Squeaks and noises are also to be avoided.

In contrast to the lengthy debates amongst today’s Early Musicians on the subject of Temperament, Muffat writes that there is only one accepted way of being in tune. He deals with the whole subject in 14 lines.

Bowing

Muffat devotes about 100 lines – more than two pages, plus two pages of musical examples to this crucial topic. Bowing for string instruments corresponds to tonguing syllables for wind-players and fingering for keyboards, harp, lutes and guitars. Strict rules of style create characteristic patterns of articulation: Good and Bad notes, legato or separation between one note and the next, contrasting qualities of onset-attack for individual notes.

Muffat states that unanimity of bowing is essential. This translates for harpists and others into a requirement for intense scrutiny of note-by-note articulation patterns.

In this French style, the first beat is always given a down-bow, even if the previous note was also down-bow. This creates silences of articulation before some down-beats. But Muffat marvels how, “in spite of so many down-bows and retakes” (lifting the bow up again, to facilitate two successive down-bows with the very short French Baroque bow), “one never hears anything disagreeable or coarse, but rather a wonderful combination of speed and the length of the bow-strokes; of admirable equality of measure and diversity of phrasings; of tender sweetness and vivacity of playing”

What I have translated here as ‘phrasings’ is yet another appearance of the word mouvemens, here suggesting the movement of the bow, as well as of the notes and of the dancers’ feet, and of the emotions that all these work together to produce.

This rule of “first-beat = down-bow” takes precedence. After this, Good and Bad notes get down- and up-bows respectively, as far as possible. In triple metre, three crotchets to the bar (for example), the last note could be taken down-bow (in slow tempo) or up-bow (in fast tempo). Two successive up-bows can be divided – craquer – to articulate the final note clearly. In very fast tempo, a group of notes can be played ‘upside-down’ if necessary. In a passage of dotted notes alternating with short notes, one should not slur short-long, but might slur long-short.

If you have any skill at all on the violin, it’s worth playing through Muffat’s examples to see how they feel and sound. If not, you can create a similar effect by singing Frank Sinatra style with dooby-doo. Use ‘doo’ for a Good note, down-bow. Use ‘bee’ for a Bad note, up-bow. Advancing in sophistication, you can imitate craquer with the syllables ‘beeper’, making more or less of a seperation between ‘beep’ and ‘per’ as you judge appropriate.

Muffat avoids down-bow on the second beat, so the combination crotchet and two quavers at the beginning of a bar forces you to craquer the two quavers. Thus the famous Minuet from the Anna Magdalena Bach Notenbuch would not go “Doo dooby dooby / doo dooby” but (more elegantly) “Doo beeper dooby / doo beeper”, when played in the French style.

Muffat gives a few examples of how Italian violinists played Minuets, often starting with an upbow on the first note. The Anna Magdalena Minuet comes out very nicely with alternate bows, starting up-bow, but sounding very different in that Italian style: “Bee dooby dooby / doo-bee-doo”

Groove

The mesure (a bar, yes, but also the time-span measured by the regular down-up movement of the Tactus hand-beat) can have different mouvements. A jazz-musician might express this by saying “a steady count can have all kinds of different grooves”.

Muffat gives “three requirements:

“Understand well the vrai mouvement – the groove – of each piece
“Once you’ve understood it, be able to keep it for as long as you play the same piece, always with the same regularity, without changing, slowing or rushing it.
“Give certain notes some swing, to make it sound more cool.”

“To understand better the groove of each piece… knowing how to dance is a great help. Most of the best violinists in France are very good dancers, so it’s not surprising that they are so well able to find and maintain the groove of the beat.”

“Having understood and started the beat, not everyone is able to keep it precisely constant for the entire duration of the piece.”

Muffat does not accept playing the whole piece slower or faster one time than another [his next paragraph suggests that this refers to playing a dance several times through consecutively, rather than to separate performances on different occasions] He also disapproves of alterations to the groove bar by bar or note by note.

“Reject the abuse of playing whatever kind of piece the first time very gently, then gradually faster and faster, and the last time very fast and rushing”
“Don’t wait at the cadence more or less than the note-values indicate”
“Don’t rush the ending”
“Don’t panic when you see short note-values”
“Don’t shorten the last note of the bar”

Playing for dancers is an excellent way to learn how to ‘phrase-off’ and ‘breathe’ at cadences, without disturbing the vrai mouvement. Muffat’s 5th rule is equivalent to ‘Don’t crowd the downbeat’.

Muffat defines precisely – “diminutions of the first order” – which note-values should be ‘swung’, with examples for various metres. A succession of short notes written as equal are performed long-short, approximately as if the first, third, fifth note etc were dotted, and the following notes shortened accordingly. We should keep in mind that a Baroque Dot is itself a variable quality, according to context we might over-dot or under-dot. The appropriate amount of swing varies with the dance-type: more vigorous for a fast dance with popular origins, more subtle for a slow, courtly dance.

I consider that Muffat’s insistence on conserving the vrai mouvement implies maintaining the same swing for the duration of a particular piece, as jazz-musicians tend to do nowadays. Many of my illustrious colleages disagree with me on this, but it must be said that most of them choose not to maintain vrai mouvement at all. Muffat makes it abundantly clear that vrai mouvement must be maintained: but there is room for legitimate debate as to whether the ‘swing’ of notes inégales comes under this rule or not.

The complete rhythmic identity of a given dance – its characteristic vrai mouvement – is thus constructed on several levels. The slow count of Tactus, the mesure, is steady (as in all Baroque music, with the exception of préludes non mesurées and plainchant). The principal division of the bar (into two or three) also carries the groove. So a Gavotte typically has two minim beats per bar, and the principal division structures the groove as short-short-long (crotchet crotchet minim). If you tap your feet and clap to this groove, you’ll probably find yourself wanting to sing We will, we will rock you! The quavers are swung – waving your banner all over the place. The emotional power comes from the dance-energy, which is stoked by maintaining the count, groove and swing steady from beginning to end. Temps di Gavotte Anglais (1977) here.

Because they experienced Lully’s airs as dance-music, violinists of Muffat’s time were more likely to rush towards the end. Modern-day early musicians regard Lully as art-music, and are more in danger of applying inappropriate 19th-century rallentando. Muffat is crystal-clear: keep the vrai mouvement from beginning to end. And just as I do here, Muffat repeats this point many times (otherwise, he rarely repeats any of his remarks).

Good Delivery

“Finish tuning before the audience arrrive.”
“Dont make noise” nor practise your party pieces before the show starts
“French pitch is a tone, or for opera a minor third, lower than German pitch”
“Balance up the band”, “don’t have everyone play first violin!”
There are usually two viola parts: “viola 1 is better on a small viola than on a violin”. Viola 2 is played by a large viola. Muffat approves adding a double-bass, but the French were not yet using double-basses in dance-music in 1698.
“Observe the repeats” (notice the French habit of a short repeat – petite reprise – at the end of the last section)
“It is very useful for keeping the precision of the mesure to give each [downbeat] with a small movement of the foot, as the Lullists do.”

It is interesting to notice how difficult modern-day players find it, to tap their feet on the down-beat (and only on the down-beat). I recommend it to students, and frequently request it from my ensembles, just as Muffat does.

Ornaments

Instrumental ornaments for dance-music are mostly derived from vocal ornamentation. There are many more than one would imagine, and Muffat gives only a brief introduction. Nevertheless, this is the largest chapter of his essay, occupying three pages of text and another three pages of music examples.

Pincement – lower mordent, starts and ends on the written note, usually descending by a semitone, usually short, usually without additional repercussions.

Tremblement – short trill from above, starts from the upper auxiliary, can be simple, or turned, may end early or continue into the next written note

Both these are played on the beat.

Muffat describes many more ornaments and how to execute them. He then addresses the question of where each ornament-type can be applied. His ten detailed rules depend on whether the note is Good or Bad, ascending or descending, moving by step or leaping, with exceptions for a mi and special conditions for the first note of a piece, of a significant section, of an ascent or descent. At cadences certain notes require a tremblement, others refuse it.

He gives some examples of diminutions (improvised variations), and warns that two tremblements are generally not used in succession, though he lists specific exceptions to this rule.

Muffat asserts that the whole secret of French ornamentation is codified in his 10 rules. These ornaments bring the “sweetness, vigour and beauty” of the Lullian method.

“The melody suffers if ornaments are omitted, inappropriate, excessive or badly executed. Omission leaves the melody and harmony naked and undecorated; inappropriate playing is rough and barbaric; excessive ornamentation sounds confused and ridiculous; poor execution sounds heavy and constrained.”

“The slightest failure in ornamentation betrays the would-be Lullist as inexperienced in this style.”

Muffat’s approximately ten ornament types (it depends how you count the sub-types) and ten rules are an amazingly concise encapsulation of the bon gout of the subtle and elegant French Baroque style. And if you apply his rules to Lully’s (sparsely marked) orchestral scores, the result is strongly consistent with (very detailed) ornament-markings in D’Anglebert’s harpsichord transcriptions of those same scores.

See also Quantz on ornamentation, here.

The Suite

Many Suites are not intended to be danced. It is acceptable to take a different speed (a complex piece of chamber music may need to be played slower than the corresponding movement would be danced), but whatever the chosen tempo might be, it is maintained throughout. In late 17th-century England, Mace details a practice of making pauses and then an a tempo conclusion to (fast) Sarabandes, but otherwise there is no period evidence to support the application of tempo rubato to Baroque dance-music.

The Allemande that begins many Baroque suites was not danced. I speculate that the title refers to a German way of playing with arpeggios (the modern term is style brisé) dance-music of the type that the French used for Entrées. Characteristic figures include the short upbeat “Ta-dah!” found as a head-motive in many dance-types, alternations of dotted and short notes, and a three-note upbeat figure.

The Courante was an old-fashioned, noble dance – ‘the dance of Kings’. It has the most complex rhythms of all, contrasting, combining and creating ambiguity between 3/2 and 6/4, with a “Ta-Dah” opening; groups of crotchet, dotted crotchet, quaver ambiguously accented on first or second note; and a decisive shift to 6/4 at significant cadences.

The Italian Corrente is different, with continuous running notes in the melody, and without the complex cross-rhythms of the French type.

The Sarabande was a fast dance that slowed down over the decades. Choreographies are characterised by held balances and sudden spins or leaps into a new pose. Often the music has a similar sharp contrast in note-values and amount of activity. The groove has a strong and/or sustained second beat of three.

Gigues vary in speed and groove – see Quantz and others for details. French Gigues often begin with imitation between treble and bass, and have a strong sense of the upbeat. The Italian Giga tends to flow more continuously, and without marking the upbeats.

The Loure is a slow-motion Gigue.

The Passpied is a high-speed Minuet.

Bourée and Rigaudon might have had their origins in popular, rural traditions, but had become a highly sophisticated, courtly protrayal of Pastoral. Looking at the musical notation, it is impossible for us to distinguish between the two types, but in the period they were sharply differentiated: we don’t know how. Two quavers on the upbeat, groove (often in the bass) with three crotchets and a rest, final bars with crotchet, two quavers, crotchet (or four quavers & crotchet) over that groove; all of this with strong duple (minim) count and vigorous swing on the quavers.

Period writers disagreed as to whether Passacaille and Chaconne could be distinguished, and if so how. You are in good company if you consider Chaconnes to be major mode, Passacailles minor, but perhaps the most famous Chaconne of all is from Bach’s D minor Partita.

The Musette is a courtly imitation of a pastoral bagpipe tune, usually in 6/8. The Tambourin imitates a tambourine.

The Sicilienne is a slow 6/8 with groups of dotted quaver, semiquaver, quaver. The Canarie is a fast 6/8 with the same rhythmic grouping.

Conclusion

If you are studying a dance-movement, I strongly recommend that before starting to “interpret” the particular piece at hand, you first become familiar with the general characteristics of that dance-type. So before going too deeply into Bach’s famous violin Chaconne, first play lots of (simpler) Chaconnes (and Passacailles), watch Chaconnes being danced, learn to dance one yourself, and generally make yourself at home with the identity of the Chaconne as a dance-type.

Work through Muffat’s 10 ornament rules and apply them to your particular piece.

You will now have a much clearer idea of how Bach’s composition resembles all Chaconnes, and where its particular individuality lies. Above all remember Muffat’s two essential functions: the listeners have to recognise the dance from the very first notes, and they have to feel inspired to dance themselves. Even in such complex and profound music as Bach’s, this spirit of the dance must live, energised by the constant flow of vrai mouvement.

It’s some 20 years since I recorded dance-music from Feuillet’s (1700) Chorégraphie. CD here. My research for that recording started me on the paths that I have followed since, of Rhythm & Rhetoric; Tactus, Text, Gesture and Ornamentation. And in the intervening years I’ve had the opportunity to play this repertoire with fine orchestras (both modern and early), and see it danced by experts. Nowadays, I would play some of the movements a little faster, and most of them with more dance energy, a little less chamber-music reticence, and with – I hope – a stronger and truer sense of mouvement.

Writing this article also gave me the opportunity to re-read Muffat, and glean a little more detail of his bowing rules, resulting in ‘Doo beeper dooby’ above and a rewrite of the discussion of the same Minuet in my 2020 article, here. It’s always worth re-reading a source that you think you know already. What you have discovered since the previous reading will have changed your viewpoint, and you may well notice something that you previously overlooked.

Baroque FAQs for Modern Musicians

Posted by Andrew Lawrence-King

This is the last in a series of articles following up classes on Early Music on Modern Harps that I taught this semester for the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London. Although our case-studies come from harp repertoire, the principles we explored are relevant for any Historically Informed performer. This article could make a useful introduction for any modern instrumentalist or singer.

Previous articles in the series discuss Historical Principles & Online Resources, Principles & Practice, Ornamentation and Dance Music. Our focus was on the 18th century (specific works by J. S. Bach, Handel, C.P.E. Bach, Mozart) and the principal sources consulted were the three Versuch publications around the middle of the century (Quantz, CPE Bach, Leopold Mozart), the Essai for harp by Meyer, and (back in 1698) Muffat’s remarks on French dance-style in Florilegium Secundum. Links to all of these sources and more, in the previous posts.

The questions below were asked by students in the final class, and/or arose from work-in-progress recordings of their baroque pieces that they sent me for private comments. Whereas in previous articles, the agenda was set by the historical priorities of period sources, in this post the questions were posed by today’s students. This is a significant distinction: what we today think is a high priority may not have been so important back then. It’s always good to assess from historical sources how significant your question was, in the dialetic of the period.

What are Good & Bad notes, are they just loud & soft?

The concept of Good/Bad notes is fundamental to renaissance and baroque music, and is given a lot of attention in historical sources. The underlying principle is that instrumental music imitates the human voice, playing as if the music had a text. In vocal music, the sung text is of paramount importance. Caccini (1601) writes that Music is “text & rhythm, with sound last of all. And not the other way around”. The structure of each mid-18th-century Versuch is a short introduction to musical fundamentals, followed by a large section on what Early Musicians call “articulation”: how to start a note, how to join or separate notes into short groups. For flute, this articulation is done with tonguing syllables; string instruments do it with bow-strokes; keyboard and harp do it with fingering patterns. This is a high priority question for period writers. See Principles & Practice.

Good & Bad Syllables

Good/Bad notes in music correspond to Good/Bad syllables in speech. In music and in poetics, these syllables are sometimes called Long/Short: Good is Long, Bad is Short. In modern terms, we would say accented and unaccented syllables. In the mediterranean languages, the accented syllable is not hit suddenly on the intial consonant, but gets its accent from a sustained weight on the vowel: this corresponds to Leopold Mozart’s description of a slow start to the bow-stroke, even on a loud note.

Thus, baroque violin teachers will often coach modern string-players to use a slow bow-stroke where an “accent” is needed. Similarly on the low-tension strings of early harps, a Good note can have a slow finger-movement. This is not so easy to apply to modern harp, where the heavy strings need a certain amount of snap in the finger-action. But imagining that the note has a slow bloom, rather than a percussive attack is already very helpful.

Comparing Good/Bad to language gives us the clue that it does not have to be exaggerated: it just has to be the right way around. When we say the word “around”, we do not make a large, or conscious accent on the second syllable. But we would notice immediately if someone accented the first syllable instead. This is what is needed for our Good/Bad notes too.

Good & Bad Beats

During the 18th century, the idea developed of an intrinsic heirarchy of the bar. Today, we learn this in our elementary music education. In common time, beat 1 is strong, beat 2 is weak. Beat 3 is medium-strong, but less than beat 1. Beat 4 is weak, or could be energised as an upbeat. This is the basic shape of Time, although particular pieces will make artistic variations around this underlying structure. The principle extends to sub-divisions of the beats: ONE + two + THREE + four + And to the next level of subdivision: ONE a + a two a + a THREE a + a four a + a. In 3/4 time: ONE a + a two a + a THREE a + a.

Good/Bad is definitely not forte/piano. But there is something of Long/Short about it, in two inter-related ways: how long is the note, and how long is the time-space it can occupy.

If we think about the repeated quavers in the Left Hand of CPE Bach’s Sonata, we could beat Tactus as quaver-down, quaver-up. These gives a pair-wise groove of Good-Bad. Time itself has this groove, so that ONE is imperceptibly longer than +. This intrinsic hierarchy of the bar gradually becomes the main focus of 18th-century discussions of Good/Bad, for example in Marpurg (1755).

Good & Bad Notes

Meanwhile, the notes we play into this grooved Time have a patterning of their own, the ONE is definitely a long note and the + is a short note. This relationship between notes was the focus of 17th-century discussion of Good/Bad, for example in Muffat (1698).

These two effects combine so that ONE is a long note fully occupying a long space; whilst + is a short note only partially occupying what is anyway a shorter space.

Quantz gives two ways of counting a slow 3/4, in quavers or in crotchets. If we count in crotchets, the groove is ONE two THREE, or Long Passive Short. So the downbeat quaver is a long note in the longest space; beat two has a long passivity; beat three is a long note in a short, actively upbeat space. All the offbeat quavers are short/bad. We could pronounce as a mantra something like the words “PLAYer, Silence, BEATer” to get the feeling of the combination of pairwise quavers with triple-metre crotchets.

And we need to practise the Left Hand, with any continuo realisation we might add, until this fundamental rhythm is absolutely correct.

Whilst it’s easy to grasp the intellectual idea of Good/Bad, it needs lots of practice to acheive it effortlessly and without exaggeration. That practice is training the ears to listen for Good/Bad and to spot any wrong-way-around relationships; and training the fingers to execute the phrasing as if automatically, and at a very subtle level. Ears and fingers must be trained in partnership.

A particular case of Good/Bad, and similarly linked to the scansion of poetry, is the idea that the last Good note in a phrase has the Principal Accent. Usually, this is not the very last note of the phrase, one or more Bad notes follow. A useful general rule therefore, is that for almost every phrase, the Last note is short and un-accented.

How to create ‘mini-phrases’?

In Baroque music, long passages of semiquavers are not ‘moto perpetuo‘, but are built-up from many short phrases. CPE Bach calls these Figuren (figures) the most short-term units (say 3 to 5 notes), and Gedanken (thoughts, ideas), perhaps linking two or three Figuren. One passage of semiquavers may contain several Gedanken, each containing several Figuren. Just as in Rhetorical Speech, we need to join together what belongs together, and separate each group of notes from the next group. These words occur very frequently in the Versuch, this is an important concept in this period.

Typically, this joining and separating creates rhythmic patterns that are maintained until there is a clear change. But from one unit to the next, even whilst the basic pattern is maintained (i.e. the same number of notes starting with the same relation to the Tactus, on-beat, after the beat, or before the beat) the sequence often continues by contrasts. A legato group is followed by an arpeggio group, a staccato group etc. See Principles & Practice.

Useful guide-lines are: “Last note short“, “Breathe after the one“, “Stepwise motion ~ legato, jumps ~ staccato“. A jump can also show the place for a mini-break. The mini-phrases are defined by mini-breaks, often between two successive semiquavers: the Tactus beat in crotchets or minims continues without faltering.

If the notes are not whizzing by too quickly, it may be possible to shorten the last note of a mini-phrase by damping, create an actual silence, and start the next mini-phrase with the appropriate Bad or Good articulation.

In allegro semiquavers, there will not be time for this. But the separation between one mini-phrase and the next can be communicated with an unaccented last note of the old phrase, a sliver of time for a mini-breath (but without disturbing the Tactus), an energised re-start of the new phrase, and a clear sense of repeating a unit, and of any contrast between the previous unit and the new one.

What about historical fingering?

This is another crucial concept for this period. After a short introduction, CPE Bach’s Versuch devotes almost a third of the book, pages 15-50, to fingering.

For harps and keyboards, 18th-century fingerings often clarify join/separate: the principle is to move the hand only in the mini-breaks, and keep each mini-phrase ‘in the hand’. This principle is utterly different from the modern concept of fingering, which seeks to make a passage as safe and efficient as possible. On the contrary, historical fingerings introduce deliberate ‘inefficiencies’, in order to discourage smooth joining of what is supposed to be separate.

In the following examples of harp-fingerings, I apply the principles of historical fingerings (from Meyer 1763 – see Online Resources – and – specially recommended, and now available free online – Cousineau 1784) to examples from CPE Bach’s harp Sonata and Mozart’s flute & harp Concerto.

[My Cousineau link takes you to the second ‘imperial’ edition, c1803. The Fuzeau facsimile publication states 1784 for the first edition, the US Library of Congress (who have online images of each page) says ‘1786?’ The title pages are undated. At the time of writing, an original second edition was being sold for €1,000]

An efficient modern fingering for CPE Bach second movement facilitates joining the third note D to the next G, with a hand-movement before the B [as shown by the square brackets].

EXAMPLE 1 CPE Bach

The guideline “breathe after the one” would suggest a separation after the D, making three upbeats to the middle of the bar. This is supported by the Figur in the LH, which has three upbeats at the end of the bar. So my historically informed fingering moves the hand “after the one”.

EXAMPLE 2 CPE Bach/Cousineau

In red, I show the Abzug (phrase-off, forte/piano, see below) in the Appoggiatura, recommended by many sources. CPE himself says that it is the most important element. Quantz gives detailed dynamic contrasts for each note within ornaments. Leopold Mozart instructs violinists to hineinschleifen (sneak into, slide into) the main note (piano).

After the second appoggiatura, we should also observe the good/bad relationship of F#-G, especially because the ornamented F# is the Principal Accent of the phrase, after which the guideline applies: “last note short, no accent”.

For a scale, Meyer gives two alternative fingerings. If there is nothing else afterwards, the standard fingering jumps the thumb to make the long note different from the run of short notes. Notice that within the scale, the hand jumps “after the one”. This is his default fingering. The alternative, more familiar to modern eyes, can be applied when the notes are very fast, but it lacks the detailed phrasing of the default option.

EXAMPLE 3 after Meyer & Cousineau

But the alternative becomes preferable, if the top note is not to be distinguished as ‘different’, but joined into the scale, with a break “after the one”. See Example 4.

In this passage from the first movement of the Mozart, the first note of the scale (treble C) is on the beat, so it is a Good. The next note D is also a good. For flautists (after Quantz): “Di diddle”, for – old fashioned – violinists (after Muffat): Down, down-up. (Leopold Mozart would probably apply some interesting slurred bowing). For harp, perhaps 4 4321321 encouraging a separation after the first note; rather than the ‘more efficient’ 4 3214321, which would join irrevocably after the first note.

EXAMPLE 4 Mozart

I have adjusted the beaming. The fingering follows the smallest units of Figuren, and // marks the caesura between one Gedanke and the next.

The pattern of “breathe after the one” continues with a caesura after the high a, facilitated by fingering, and similarly after the g in the third bar. But the music imposes a new pattern, also clarified by my historically informed fingering, at the beginning of the last bar. Red f_p shows two more examples of Abzug.

Between the 1760s and the 1780s, the standard Good/Bad descending fingering for harp 12323232 (familiar also from 17th-century Spanish harp technique) is gradually superseded by Join/Separate fingerings using all four fingers. You start with the thumb, and the last, lowest four notes get 1234. In between, you use as many fingers as needed for the number of notes you have. So a seven-note descent would be 123 1234.

The adjustment takes place at the upper end of the scale, so that the last, lowest notes use all four fingers 1234. This results in a distinctive fingering for a five-note descent, in which you hop the thumb: 1 1234. [Fully-fingered sources feature a LOT of repeated thumb-strokes in this period.]

EXAMPLE 5 Mozart/Cousineau

In Example 5, I apply Cousineau’s (1784) fingering principles to Mozart’s (1778) descending scales in parallel tenths: This fingering encourages “breathe after the one” between the two Figuren of the first bar, shown by my changes to the beaming. The octave leap indicates a stronger “breathe after the one” between two Gedanken, shown by my // caesura mark.

It would not be inappropriate to use ‘old-fashioned’ 32 descending fingerings. These would ensure correct Good/Bad relationships, but would leave the player to create Join/Separate between Figuren.

EXAMPLE 6 Mozart/Meyer

Contrariwise, ‘fashionable’ Cousineau-type fingerings (mentioned as an alternative by Meyer 20 years earlier, so certainly not excluded from Mozart’s Concerto) prioritise Join/Separate, and leave the player to take care of Good/Bad. As Leopold Mozart makes clear in his detailed instructions for varying the pressure from note to note, within a single bow-stroke, 18th-century music requires both Good/Bad and Join/Separate.

What about the Bass?

Period sources pay great atttention to the continuo bass. The second edition of CPE Bach’s Versuch has an additional and longer book, 355 pages entirely devoted to Generalbass, including a final chapter which extends realisation of a continuo-bass towards improvisation of a free Fantasia.

Modern harpists tend to focus on the right-hand melody, viewing the music from the top down. Baroque music is constructed from the bottom upwards: the bass is no mere accompaniment, but rather provides the fundamental framework of rhythm and harmony that defines the structure for the ornamental melody. The heritage of Renaissance polyphony is that music is woven from the strands of individual ‘voices’; each strand has its own integrity, character and logic. The typical texture of Baroque music is the polarisation of treble and bass, i.e. 2-voice polyphony with a continuo-realisation filling-in the mid-range.

From the beginning of the Baroque period (Agazzari 1607) to the transition into the Classical (Leopold Mozart 1756), period sources assign to the bass the role of maintaining Tactus. The continuo does not follow the soloist, rather the bass creates a dependable rhythmic structure – like the rhythm section of a jazz-band. As with a jazz-band, it is acceptable for a baroque soloist not to be together with the bass, for the sake of elegant expressiveness around the steady groove: it is not acceptable for the groove to falter. See Monteverdi & Jazz. This is of course the opposite of today’s standard practice, even amongst most Early Music ensembles.

Harpists, lutenists and keyboard players must combine the roles of soloist and bass-section in one person. Modern players might need reminding to play the bass more strongly (as an equal partner), and to maintain the bass rhythm in Tactus (whatever technical challenges, complex ornaments, or expressive moments the melody might have).

Flow

My research in Consciousness Studies suggests that the optimal strategy could be to place one’s conscious attention on the bass, focussing on tight connection to the steady Tactus. Assuming sufficient advance practice, the melody can be better left to the unconscious mind, letting the fingers ‘do it for themselves’. Trills, for example, go better when you don’t think about them. Like a hypnotist’s swinging pocket-watch, or a meditation mantra, the constant down-up of Tactus (physically enacted in rehearsal, or imagined in solo performance) entrains the mind into Flow.

The paradoxical instruction to “Listen more than you play” can help the mind find that state of consciousness where mindful Observing facilitates ‘personal best’ performance, without a conscious sense of Doing. In baroque music, you can achieve this by “being the continuo-player”, creating the rhythm whilst listening to the solo (even though, you are actually playing that solo yourself).

Imagining, or even physically beating, a complete Tactus (down-up) to start yourself off (i.e. give yourself “a bar for nothing”) is an excellent way to connect yourself to the power of Tactus, to the Music of the Spheres, as you start to play.

What to do with Long Trills?

In a word, practise. Long trills are described in detail in all the mid-18th-century sources under discussion here. Harp sources admit that they are difficult, and they are more difficult still on modern harp.

So practise. Practise trills non-metrically, with a long appoggiatura, and then repercussions accelerating from slow to fast and all the way into the final turn and last note.

Then practise this beautifully shaped trill, whilst playing a simple bass in crotchets. The bass maintains Tactus, the trill is not aligned note-for-note with the bass, but you find the last note simultaneously. If the trill is long enough, combine it with messa di voce. But don’t try to be super-loud whilst trilling, and don’t try for too many reiterations. Shapeliness in the trill, and Tactus in the bass, are the priorities.

Frederick the Great plays a flute concerto in Sans Souci Palace. CPE Bach accompanies at the harpsichord, Quantz looks on at his pupil’s performance.

What is Abzug?

This is another central concept in period discourse about ornamentation. Literally “pulling off”, Abzug is the forte/piano contrast between an appoggiatura and its main note.

Leopold Mozart describes it as sliding into, sneaking into the main note (see the music examples above). Quantz describes a slight swelling of the sound on the ornamental note (so not an aggressive attack, but a slow-blooming sound; for violin a slow bow-stroke), with a smooth, soft transition into the main note.

On lute, one could literally “pull-off” from the fingerboard with a left-hand finger, in order to play the main note without any plucking action of the right hand. On harp, we can imitate this with a slow but firm finger-movement on the ornamental note, and a very passive action on the main (second) note, avoiding any articulate start-noise whatsoever.

Practise it.

The same forte/piano effect is needed every time from dissonance to resolution, as well as for any melodic moment with a pair of notes that function like a written-out appoggiatura. In the first music example above, as well as the Abzüge marked in red for explicit appoggiaturas, a subtle version of the effect is needed in the second bar on the high c-b, a-g, and (especially) f#-e pairs, and on the b-a pair at the end of the previous bar.

You need Abzug again and again. CPE Bach considers this the most important element of ornamentation. Indeed, the entire repertoire of the Empfindsamkeit period is characterised by the sensitive gesture of Abzug: every piece is full of opportunities to apply it. A missed Abzug is like marching into San Souci Palace in your muddy boots – you have just trampled on what should have been an occasion for the most elegant sophistication.

Don’t forget to pull them off!

Appoggiatura onto a Triplet?

The standard rule is that the appoggiatura takes half of the value of the written note (two-thirds, if the written note is dotted). So the realisation of an appoggiatura onto a triplet divides the first note in half. But the more important element is – all together now: the Abzug. The appoggiatura itself needs a slow bloom, and the written note is soft; the remaining two notes of the triplet should be light, since they are Bad notes. It should sound like “Play-a Trip-let”, not “Da doo-ron-ron”!

EXAMPLE 7 CPE Bach

The (appropriate) tendency to lengthen the appoggiatura results in a rhythm that approaches the sound of a quadruplet, though still with the first note louder and slurred to the second. Some sources recommend this quadruplet realisation, others condemn it. Best practice is probably to keep some semblance of a triplet, but with a nice long appoggiatura and plenty of Abzug.

How to play a Short Trill?

There are lots of short trills in this repertoire, and longer or turned trills can legimately be simplified into short trills. So it’s a significant element of the style and a most useful skill to acquire.

The historical fingering is 2311, and the Abzug requires a decrescendo from first note to last. CPE Bach recommends you to schnellern (quicken, enliven) the first note, to make the ornament crisp and light. It should sound like “Tickle my toes!” and not “before the beat“.

EXAMPLE 8 Short Trill

Short Trills in Mozart

Practise this until you can fire off a whole chain of ‘flying short trills’ as Genlis (1802) teaches and Mozart requires. [The link is to the second edition of 1811].

Genlis’ second example (above) is not a realisation of the first example, but a preliminary exercise for those ‘flying trills’, at half speed and with extra time between each Figur.

As Genlis explains: ‘the two slurred notes are done by sliding the thumb on these two strings’. What I deduce from the third thumb stroke that follows each time (where one might have expected finger 2), is that after the two slurred notes, the sliding thumb comes to rest against the next string (continuing the movement onto the next string helps the slide flow nicely). At this point the exercise takes extra time, to teach you to apply a caesura here, before starting the next Figur. When you do restart, your thumb is already placed on the string you are going to need.

For the real thing, the full speed ‘flying trills’, each Figur starts with an upbeat, continuing the pattern of the first two notes. As one would expect from Muffat and others, the trills are on the Good notes – this is confirmed at the end of the sequence.

EXAMPLE 9 Genlis/ALK

Mozart introduces his flying trills with a preliminary longer trill, turned so that its Figur ends on the second (crotchet) beat of the bar. The autograph staccato on this d indicates “Last note short”, allowing you to “Breathe after the one”. The staccato on the following c indicates it is an upbeat, and the Gedanke is now Genlis-style flying trills, each Figur having an upbeat to a Good-note trill.

EXAMPLE 10 Mozart/Genlis

This upbeat pattern continues into the next bar, which has rapid Alberti 64 harmonies in the left hand and bold downward leaps in the right (first you must “breathe after the one”), leading to a whole bar Long Trill over the same rapid Alberti pattern, now on the dominant seventh.

All these fireworks signal the end of the movement. After this comes the improvised cadenza (Quantz’s Easy and Fundamental Instructions show how 2 players can improvise together) and final tutti.

Short Trills in Handel

There is a tricky short trill on a dotted note in the Handel Concerto. Although it is difficult to execute this correctly in the time available, it should start with upper auxiliary (not the main note) on the beat (not before), so that the complete Figur has the crisp sound of a demanding publisher: “Prrrint today!” [the rolled r represents the repercussions of the trill] and not a lazy: “What about next week?”.

EXAMPLE 11 Handel

How should I damp?

This is a harp-specific question, and is discussed in several period Harp treatises, but with insufficient detail. The suggestions below are based on my personal experience.

For modern harpists, you might first consider threading a strip of felt through the very lowest strings – you don’t actually play these in Baroque pieces, and it might be better to lose the excessive resonance that they add.

Second, learn the Baroque way to damp by having your finger (and/or thumb) return to the string after playing (same finger, same string). This allows you to damp specific notes really quickly, rather than moving both hands to cuddle the strings and damp the whole instrument, which is very slow. You can damp individual notes or entire chords, in either hand.

Sometimes you can add rhythmic energy by damping where a rest is written on the beat. Damp crisply, precisely on the beat, even get some percussive noise from your fingers contacting the sounding strings.

EXAMPLE 12 Handel

Sometimes you need to damp to control bass resonance. If you damp between each note and the next, you produce a staccato effect: this would not be the optimum phrasing for movement by step.

But if you play, play the next note and then quickly damp the previous one, you produce a strong effect of legato.

You can mix these two ways to damp [legato, staccato] in order to create legato pairs, each pair separated from the next. This long-short sound is appropriate for Good/Bad.

EXAMPLE 13 Handel

The last note of any phrase could be damped, to make it short. If you play it without accent (as you nearly always should), the damping will be less abrupt, and might not even be necessary.

Any upbeat could be damped to create a “silence of articulation”, this throws the accent onto the next note.

Often you will need to damp to clarify a rising melody in the bass. This frequently applies at perfect cadences, if the dominant rises to the tonic; but it can also occur at the beginning of the phrase.

The bass cadence with an octave leap on the dominant implies staccati for that octave leap.

In every instance, you can adjust the damping [legato or staccato, and how much] to produce the most appropriate phrasing.

EXAMPLE 14 Handel

Combining all these techniques results in a LOT of damping, subtly adjusted, for various desired results. Such frequent damping is supported by the (limited) historical information available. The greater resonance of the modern instrument makes damping even more necessary than on baroque harp.

Damping with the left hand can establish the “groove” of a dance, or a dance-like movement. In the third movement of the Handel Concerto, the groove is the reverse triple metre, short-long, quaver-crotchet. You can make this energetic and clear by playing the downbeat strong and damping crisply, to produce a repeating groove effect that sounds like the words “Short Phrases”.

Notice how the semiquavers create a Figur across the bar-line, “breathe after the one”: both hands have a short note in the long space of the downbeat, but for different reasons.

EXAMPLE 15 Handel

All this takes practice. You need to train your ears and hands simultaneously, to hear the need for, and effect of damping, and to create the effects you want.

How to simplify Ornaments?

Period sources recognise that it is harder to play trills on harp, than on harpsichord. It’s even harder on modern harp than on baroque instruments. So it can be a great help to simplify ornaments. Certainly, it is better to simplify the composer’s ornament, than to omit it, to play it wrongly, to play the wrong type of ornament, or (heaven forbid!) to play an ornament without Abzug.

In place of a long trill with initial appoggiatura and final turn, you can make things easier for yourself with these three steps (in this order of application):

Reduce the number of reiterations of the trill.
Omit the final turn
Omit the initial appoggiatura

If you needed to apply all three three steps, you will be left with a Short Trill, and you should have practised this sufficiently to be confident in it for any eventuality.

If you are really under pressure, you can convert a turned Trill into a simple Turn (upper auxilary, main-note, lower-auxiliary, main-note). Make the first (upper) note long and remember the Abzug.

It’s not so good to change a Short Trill into a simple Appoggiatura, because the Short Trill is meant to sound lively and brilliant, whereas the Appoggiatura should melt, languishing. A Turn could be a better solution: there are still four notes to play, but the fingers can manage them faster. For a fast Turn, try 1231, which should come out crisper than 1232.

How does Continuo-experience help one’s Solo-playing?

The great harpsichordists and composers of the baroque were also expert continuo-players: JS and CPE Bach lead the way!

The best way to progress rapidly as a harpist or keyboard-player studying baroque repertoire is first to acquire basic continuo skills. Playing in ensembles will inform your ears and mind, with the opportunity to hear the same fundamental principles applied in subtly different ways by different instruments and voices. Ensemble-playing also provides an energetic group dynamic and a supportive social group, and gives access to exciting large-scale projects. Don’t miss the chance to play in a baroque opera or orchestra.

As a continuo-player, you can adjust realisation to your (gradually increasing) level of skill, contributing something useful right from the start, without needing to be exposed as a soloist until you are ready.

For harpists, a single-action harp is likely to be accepted by HIP training-ensembles, even in 17th-century repertoire, and for a modern player presents less of a barrier to immediate gratification: double and triple harps are more challenging. It is to be hoped that an open-minded training ensemble would admit a keen student even on modern harp, either as a stepping stone towards baroque harp, or as a way to gather experience for solo-playing on the modern instrument.

The experience of playing continuo will transform your view of the role of your left hand. And the continuo-player’s view of ensemble music, from the bottom upwards, is the best approach to baroque solo-playing.

Familiarity with figured and un-figured basses will consolidate your understanding of baroque harmony, and help you recognise the character of dissonances and sequences: the excitement of rising 5 6, the subtleties 6 5 and 5b dissonances, the sweet melancholy of chains of 7s.

EXAMPLE 16 Handel

How can I give my performance more clarity and more character?

See above: Tactus, Good/Bad, Join/Separate.

For harpists: damping. For modern harpists, a basic position somewhat près de la table: for baroque harps, this position is standard.

For anyone: “Long notes long, short notes short”, and “Last note short, no-accent”. Ornaments on the beat. Contrast one Figur with the next.

How can I make my performance more expressive?

See above. Sensitise yourself to the flavour of each dissonance, and show the tension-release of each dissonance-resolution.

For harpists, move your fingers down, even more près de la table, for a dissonance, and up (higher than normal) for resolution. A basic position somewhat près de la table results in small changes down or up making a big difference to tone-colour.

Apply Abzug to appoggiaturas. Search for the particular character of each Figur.

Should I play marked Repeats?

Yes.

Should I add Rallentando?

No.

Muffat and Leopold Mozart clearly state that the same tempo should be maintained from beginning to end. There is historical evidence for rallentando, but not in dance-music, and perhaps only when it is specifically notated. It tends to occur where the note values get smaller and smaller at the end of a section; or where there is a final cadence after a silence (e.g. Hallelujah Chorus). Meanwhile, Leopold says simply, keep exactly the same tempo from beginning to end.

Remember, “what everyone does today” and “my favourite CD” are NOT historical evidence. Leopold Mozart is.

If you are keen to add rallentando, find a source to support your wish. [Student challenge!] But… also beware of the temptation to look into the sources to support a decision you have already taken. A better strategy is to read the sources with an open-mind, and then decide. If you read the whole of Leopold Mozart, you will have plenty to think about and apply, before you need to go looking for another source in order to explore exceptional cases and outlier opinions.

Summary

18th-century style calls for a enormous amount of short-term detail, many contrasted Figuren, many presentations of dissonance-resolution, and many, many Abzüge. All the while, you maintain the groove of steady Tactus in the bass.

Harpists: see my article on Empfindsamkeit and Single Action harp.

Historically Informed Performance is not what I say, not what Early Musicians do today, not what you hear on CDs, but performance based on historical information. Use IMSLP to get original scores, and use the mighty Versuch publications as reference books to answer your performance practice questions. Harpists: read Meyer, Cousineau and (for elite soloist-level skills) Genlis.

Try to establish a habit of checking what you are told (including what you have read here!), and checking your own assumptions. The state of knowlege advances when someone has the courage to question the status quo.

Dare to be different!

Congaudentes (Happy Together)

Posted by Andrew Lawrence-King

This post reports on an open, free online multi-track recording project, presented by OPERA OMNIA Moscow, coming out of an online workshop on Medieval Improvisation organised in collaboration with the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London. Thank you to everyone who took part: this article is one way of showing appreciation.

Participants from all over the world (see below) sent in their improvised tracks, which were mixed into the sound of a medieval Conductus. The workshop and recording-project are linked to the International Baroque Opera Studio’s training production of LUDUS DANIELIS, planned for the end of August 2020. As always, that production will be Historically Informed not only in the musical approach, but also in the staging. You can follow OPERA OMNIA on Facebook.

Here is a video of the Workshop.

Here is an illustrated video discussion of Performance Practice questions for Ludus Danielis, with clips from the 2011 production in Copenhagen.

Here is a video summary of Medieval Improvisation Techniques for Conductus.

And here is the final audio/video multi-track mix of the Gaudentes project.

Additional links to various sectional mixes are below.

untitled 201.tif

Ludus Danielis

The Play of Daniel, Ludus Danielis, was created in the late 12th century at Beavais Cathedral in northern France, and notated in the early 1200s in the Egerton MS 2615, now in the British Library. William Smoldon, who edited it for the Plainsong and Medieval Musical Society in 1960, described it as a ‘medieval opera’: academically, it would be categorised as Liturgical Drama. The work was made famous in the USA in Noah Greenberg’s operatic production, premiered in Washington’s National Cathedral in 1958, which gave many spectators their first experience of Early Music. [In another context, I’m honoured to be a recipient of the Noah Greenberg prize for musicological/performance collaboration.]

Whilst the Play certainly is medieval, and does have all the ingredients we would expect to find in opera – script, music, action, plot, drama, characters, costumes, illusion, pathos, humour, entertainment – it can only be understood in the context of its liturgical setting. As the monks chanted the long night-office of Mattins, suddenly a chorister interrupts the service and sparks off a participatory drama in which clerics and children act out to lively popular melodies the Bible stories of Belshazzar’s Feast, the Writing on the Wall and Daniel in the Lions’ Den.

Daniel is of course saved from the Lions, who devour the Evil Counsellors instead. The prophet foretells the coming of Christ, and an Angel announces the glad tidings of Christmas. The Angel’s music was the finale to earlier dramas too, and it neatly leads into a joyful Te Deum, picking up the thread of the liturgy again.

So ‘this medieval opera’ takes it narrative from the Bible, has clerics and choristers as actors, and the cathedral itself as stage and scenery. Most likely, the Bishop’s seat became the Throne for King Belshazzar.

Certainly, it was tripudium – a party. The rubric (liturgical instructions written in red ink) requires a monk to dress as the Queen, the apparent ‘murder’ of King Belshazzar, a running race between two monks in the role of invading soldiers, and the prophet Habakkuk to be dragged by the hair of his head to bring refreshment to Daniel in the Lions’ Den, as well as the Lions (presumably played by young choristers) eating up the Evil Counsellors (senior clerics). When messengers (probably the teenage Sub-Deacons who managed the whole production) were sent to find Daniel (perhaps the Choirmaster), we can readily imagine an extended game of Hide & Seek in the darkness of the Cathedral. In the long nights of early January, there was plenty of time…

Nevertheless, all this fun was for a sacred purpose, celebrating yet another feastday in the exhausting cycle of Christmas holy days. For this special day, there was lively enaction of colourful Bible episodes, helping to teach youngsters to know their Saints, understand their Latin, and comprehend the complex doctrine of Old Testament prophecy and New Testament gospel, which the Play presents from the divine perspective of a ‘now’ that unites Past and Future in the eternal Present.

Modern-day History of Emotions studies help us understand the psychological function of this (carefully ordered) foolery. The ceaseless round of the Daily Office, singing psalms, reciting scripture and chanting prayers even through the night, intensifies with Advent’s rich music and liturgy, long dark nights of solemn chant with little to eat during the traditional fast. Then comes Christmas, with a blaze of candle-light and even longer services, singing joyfully all day and all night, and continuing with celebrations of saints’ days all week.

The accumulated social tensions of sleep deprivation, intermittent nutrition, and overwork, all within a strictly disciplined and hierarchical single-sex institution could be released, under control, in a party that was not chaos, but ordo: a form of liturgy, literally keeping order, maintaining the social and mental health of a religious Order.

Producing the Play

I first produced Ludus Danielis in the 1970s, in Guernsey’s Town Church, the Cathedral of St Peter Port, performed by members of the church choir. This production thus had something of the medieval group dynamic of a set of teenage choristers within the small community of a religious institution, and featured the many processions in which the historical action bursts out of the confines of the choirstalls to occupy the whole building.

The Harp Consort’s CD recording in 1998 was inspired by Margot Fassler’s research into popular traditions of the Feast of Fools, in Plainsong in the Age of Polyphony (1992), which showed connections between medieval party-games and Biblical episodes enacted in the Play. The Kalamazoo publication (1996) of Critical Essays on the Play included a monochrome facsimile of the MS and a neutral transcription (which however followed all previous editions in assigning the wrong octaves to the Queen’s speech and to Daniel’s lament, see below.)

Our recording project also established the outline of a historical informed pronunciation of c1200 northern French Latin, guided by Harold Copeman. With a superb ensemble of instrumental and vocal soloists, we extended to the whole group the techniques of medieval improvisation I had developed playing harp and psaltery in Paul Hillier’s Trobador and Trouvère recordings.

This concept of ensemble improvisation was taken even further in The Harp Consort’s Edison Award-winning CD (2003) of written and improvised polyphony from the closely related repertoire of Gautier de Coincy’s Les Miracles de Notre Dame.

In 2007, The Harp Consort’s musical approach and my processions-production combined with director Akemi Horie’s exquisite Japanese minimalist design for performances in Kings College Chapel, Cambridge and Southwark Cathedral, London.

Many of the same cast performed in a fully HIP production in York Minster for the 2008 York Early Music Festival, broadcast live by BBC Radio Three. A BBC sound engineer followed our processions around the church with an array of microphones mounted cross-wise on a long pole, like some kind of high-tech crucifer. In place of the usual pre-concert talk, we taught audience members the basics of medieval improvisation in the splendid acoustic of the Chapter House.

By 2011, we had added a lot of detail to the historical action, and developed a new dramatic ‘frame’ for a production in collaboration with Ars Nova, Denmark. To the essential elements of processions and partying were added medieval gesture, including St Benedict’s seven postures of prayer, and better stylised, more sharply defined movement styles for monks, courtiers and soldiers. See Schmitt La Raison des gestes (1991). Medieval art provided inspiring images of powerful gestures, for example when Darius commands that Daniel be brought out of the Lions’ Den, and the Evil Counsellors thrown in!

A possible gesture for “Danielem educite, et emulos immitite!”

As the audience entered, the endless chanting of the year-long liturgy was already in progress, and at the end of the play, kings and queen, soldiers and courtiers faded back into their daily lives, under the strict control of monastic discipline. As one of the cast commented: “Game over.”

In a resonant acoustic, we found that just three multi-instrumentalists from The Harp Consort (plus a sinfonye-playing Daniel) could provide all the support and variety of colour needed for the entire choir. I made a new edition, and thought anew about questions of pitch and pitch relations. This project also marked the first performance in modern times of Daniel’s famous Lament, in the written octave: all previous editions had transposed it down an octave.

In this medieval Psalter, God hands down from heaven musical intervals, perhaps even specific pitches, to bell ringers, to King David and to more lowly instruments. Ladders represent hexachord scales.

In 2014, the production came to the Galway Early Music Festival, with St Nicholas’ Church as the venue and the church choir as the core cast. So once again there was that sense of medieval community and, for the first time, the show involved a large number of youngsters, who brought wonderful energy to the performance. I will never forget one of the junior choristers leaping to grab the scholar’s hat off the head of one of Belshazzar’s none-too-clever Wise Men, played by the Choirmaster, nor the sight of some two dozen young Lions waiting to devour the hapless Evil Counsellors.

Enargeia – the emotional power of detailed description

In that same year of 2014, Max Harris’ book on Sacred Folly re-assessed source materials for Feast of Fools practices, downplaying the extent of louche behaviour and emphasising the religious message behind all the dramatised action. Harris re-interpreted Fassler’s work on medieval games and religious ordo as a response to secular New Year celebrations in the city, rather than as a reaction against depraved behaviour in church.

Harris singles out The Harp Consort’s recording of Ludus Danielis for special praise, and also recommends another version in which the singers are accompanied only by ‘discreet percussion’. Whilst I’m grateful for his kind words about our work, it must be pointed out that there is no logic in allowing drums rather than harps! The rubric specifically calls for harpers, but not for drums.

Drums are mentioned in the sung text that describes King Darius’ entrance Ecce Rex Darius. ‘Look, here comes King Darius with his nobles; and his court resounds with happiness and partying…. Let all celebrate as the drums resound: the harpists strike the strings, and musical instruments resound to herald him!’ The usual assumption in historical drama is that stage action represents, within the limits of practicality, what is spoken/sung in the script/libretto.

Indeed, this is the period principle of Enargeia, by which detailed verbal description (often signalled with Ecce!, Ecco! Siehe! Behold! etc) creates mental images for the audience, the emotionally affective Visions described by Quintilian. To the spectators’ ‘imaginary puissance’ is added the visual detail enacted by the performers and the aural effects of appropriate tone-colours of speech, music and stage noise. All this unites (according to Rhetorical Decorum) and combines to ‘move the passions’ with Energia, the spirit of emotional communication that links mental and physical responses to emotion. Visions and sound-effects produce emotional Affekt; performed details of enargeia produce emotional energia. Following this principle, in Ludus Danielis we would expect to see and hear drums, harps and other musical instruments in Darius’ procession; clapping and dancing at Belshazzar’s Feast.

With an unconvincing argument relying on 20th-century Anglicanism, Harris considered rejecting the principle of Enargeia. But this would rule out the drum, whilst the rubric confirms the presence of harps. And any medieval hierarchy of liturgical and clerical instruments would begin with bells and King David’s harp, and descend to via fiddles and sinfonyes to lowly wind instruments and drums. See Christopher Page Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages (1987) [sadly, this is out of print, and I could find no online access or purchase options: try academic libraries].

Medieval hierarchy of instruments: King David, crowned in gold, sits with his harp on a golden throne; a lowly piper sits on the ground.

In short, for Ludus Danielis harps are obligatory, and drum-only makes no sense at all.

Controversy

Two crucial questions about Ludus Danielis remain controversial. Did instruments take part at all? And, to put it simply, how much fun did the monks allow themselves?

At a Medieval Events conference in Budapest in 2015, the standard of music-scholarship was woefully low, and I was disappointed that the chairman of the Daniel session gave – as if with authority – simplistic answers, “no” and “not much”, to these deep questions. Perhaps he was still following the musicological mood of the 1990s, or had too hastily skimmed Harris’ conclusions, but it must be said that he offered neither academic arguments nor historical evidence.

And there is evidence. The rubric of the Egerton MS clearly requires harpists. Statim apparebis Darius Rex cum Principibus suis venientque ante eum cythariste et Principes sui psallentes hec. ‘Suddenly King Darius appears with his nobles, and the harpists and nobles come before him ‘psalming’ like this.’ Psallentes (which I translate literally as ‘psalming’) suggests singing and playing instruments associated with King David the Psalmist: harps and psalteries. The real-life Norman tradition of medieval harpists striking the first blow at battles (read Wace on Taillesfer at the Battle of Hastings) supports the identification of cythara specifically with Harp.

The Egerton rubric also gives ‘stage directions’ for many other actions that would be unthinkable within the normal order of the liturgy. So we may well ask: in an enactment that includes pretending to kill King Belshazzar, a monk dressing up as the Queen, and Counsellors being utterly devoured by Lions, would it be utterly out of the question for King Darius’ harpers – we know they are there – actually to play? The notion that the harps are silent stage props seems out of keeping with the straightforward and energetic (one might say, enargetic) story-telling required by the rubric throughout.

Furthermore, it can be argued that psallentes is an instruction for singing to instrumental accompaniment. For King Belshazzar’s procession, the rubric is different: Dum venerit Rex Balthasar, Principes sui cantabant ante eum haec prosam. ‘When King Belshazzar comes, his nobles sing before him this prose’. Prose and singing for one King, psalms and harpistry for another?

Later in 2015, scholars opposed to what has been dubbed the ‘English a cappella heresy’ sent me references to use of instruments in medieval churches, many of them associated with liturgical enactments for particular feasts. Unfortunately I can’t cite these references here, because my notes from these years were lost when my laptop was stolen in 2018. So I’ve started that search again. In the meantime, Daniel Leech Wilkinson The modern invention of medieval music (2002) explains how and why the topic of instrumental participation occasioned such passionate scholarly and artistic disagreements.

Widening our gaze beyond the narrow question of musical instruments, it is very difficult to define in detail what behaviours, normally proscribed, would have been permitted, even required, for this unique outburst of medieval religious energy. We may never know what actually happened. But the investigative lens of History of Emotions Studies focuses on a different question: how did it feel for those medieval monks to participate in this Play? Fassler’s and Harris’ work shows that there was a social and artistic tension between dramatic shock and religious awe, between tripudium and ordo. There is no doubt that, whatever it was that happened back then, it must have stretched the limits of monastic habitus.

Certainly therefore, a bland or discreetly tasteful performance is inauthentic. As Harris writes: “a little controlled disorder can sometimes enhance rather than diminish devotional effect…. the Play of Daniel was inspired, at least in part, by the same creative impulse [as in other less complex plays] to employ ludic means for devotional ends”. Circa 1200, the novices’ religious duty was to enact immorality and violence, as part of the sacred ritual and of their religious instruction. In medieval dramas, as in any school nativity play today, someone might have to play an evil character, notably Herod. In such a role, you are required to behave badly. So were the actors playing Belshazzar’s courtiers and Darius’ Evil Counsellors.

To appreciate Ludus Danielis, modern-day performers and audiences need to perceive the sanctity of the regular liturgy, the ludic energy of the Play, and the tension between these two elements. It is not enough for them to read a learned article about the Daily Office or Feast of Fools celebrations: they should feel the impact of this collision of values. A HIP production has to search for ways to convey an experience of what was appropriate in the medieval cathedral, and (more challengingly) what might have been appropriately inappropriate!

For the upcoming production with OPERA OMNIA, I hope to explore further another paradox of this ‘medieval opera’. There was no ‘audience’ at Mattins in medieval Beauvais. For a liturgical drama enacted in the middle of the night in early January, there might not even have been any lay congregation. Most probably, Ludus Danielis was a participatory ‘happening’, in which the entire monastic community took part, singing the well-known melodies, joining the processions, taking on the ‘chorus’ roles of courtiers and soldiers, even if they did not play a principal character. In previous productions, I invited audience members to imagine themselves as time-tourists, visiting medieval Beauvais and witnessing the extraordinary events there, one certain night of the year. But perhaps the audience can themselves become medieval monks, and feel the shock of transforming themselves into courtiers and soldiers, and the indescribable emotions of returning to the ceaseless daily round of prayer when the Play is over.

This video illustrates and expands on some of the performance practice questions discussed in this article.

Conductus

Many medieval liturgical dramas feature a procession. The episodes dramatised in Ludus Danielis are punctuated by no less than eight formal processions accompanied by music: for King Belshazzar, the Sacred Vessels, the Queen, Daniel, the Queen’s exit, Daniel’s exit, Darius’ invasion, and Daniel’s re-entrance. In addition the Wise Men have to make an entrance, and the rubric suggests considerable comings and goings of messengers, Habbakuk’s flying visit to the Lions’ Den, and the Evil Counsellor’s repeated spying missions, going to and fro between Darius’ throne and Daniel’s house, wherever these might have been located within the cathedral.

When clergy had to move solemnly around the chancel, for example to the position for reading the Gospel, they would process as a group. Latin conductus is the past participle of conducere, from con = with, and ducere = to lead. Conductus was a way to sing with clear rhythm that would unify everyone’s steps. Conductus poetry was written with short lines and strong, regular metrics, suiting this kind of rhythmic singing.

Once the rhythm was stable, it became easier to improvise additional voices over the written melody, and the words remained clear, since the independent voices moved in the same rhythm. So conductus became a particular type of polyphony, usually in two or three parts.

At major feasts, singers would return to their home town, bringing with them the latest polyphonic ideas from Notre Dame de Paris and the Paris University. And the region around Beauvais was famous for Trouvère lyrics and for Gautier de Coincy’s transformations of popular songs into religious conductus in Les Miracles de Notre Dame. In this atmosphere of experiment and creativity, it is highly plausible that singers introduced unwritten polyphony into the conductus processionals of Ludus Danielis.

As historical models for such improvised polyphony, surviving written sources are almost certainly intended for performance one-to-a-part. We can only speculate whether the singers of Ludus Danielis reserved certain passages for duos or trios (the classic sound of Parisian early polyphony), if one or two soloists provided improvised discants over the massed voices on the written tenor, or if there was a rich heterophony of simultaneous improvisation, unified by the note-against-note syllabic style and strong rhythm of conductus. The raison d’etre of the event, dramatising Bible history and religious doctrine, keeping sufficient order whilst enacting appropriate inpropriety, suggests that limits might have been stretched in this area of performance, as in others.

In our May 2020 workshop, we rehearsed the essential period techniques: parallel organum in octaves and fifths and a constant drone. Jerome of Moravia’s fiddle treatise suggests that one can create a harmony for occasional notes, otherwise remaining on the written tune. [Note that this is quite different from an alternating drone, in the fashion of Irish ‘double-tonic’ tunes] We rehearsed typical movement at cadences, with a dissonant third or sixth resolving to a consonant fifth, unison or octave.

Jerome of Moravia also suggests a more demanding option, providing a harmony for every note of the written tune, i.e. a entire new polyphonic voice. We practised ways to do this using ‘fifthing’ – moving from unison towards a drone fifth, or parallel fifths, and back to unison; and by contrary motion, ‘mirroring’ the contours of the written melody.

We discussed the use and abuse of thirds, and attitudes to dissonance/resolution generally. Historical examples show that a lot of passing dissonance seems to have been accepted, sometimes even at the ends of intermediate phrases.

Here is a video summary of medieval improvisation techniques for Conductus.

Free, open, online multi-track recording project

For the recording project, I provided as a backing track a neutral harp-solo version of the second Conductus Danielis, which has the appropriate incipit Congaudentes – rejoicing together. Each participant listened to this track on headphones, whilst recording their own performance around it. Some played in duo, some sent in multiple tracks, one singer recorded 7 independent tracks. The project was free and open, and everyone who submitted a track had their work included. The list of participants is below, and I thank them all again!

Here is the same Congaudentes chorus, from The Harp Consort’s 1998 recording.

Here is the backing track for the May 2020 multi-track project, in case you would like to practise with it.

Participants came from many countries. Some are internationally known, one made her first ever recording for this project. This authentically reproduces the situation in c1200 Beavais, where experienced singers of polyphony and senior clerics sang alongside the young choiristers who presented the show.

The standard of all the tracks was remarkably high; all the more so, if one bears in mind that individual performers did not hear each other until the whole thing was mixed and uploaded. In the following report, I attempt to offer some academic analysis and helpful comments, without exposing anyone to personal criticism or undue individual exposure in what was from beginning to end an ensemble project.

Recording yourself and listening critically, and repeating this process intensively, as one does in a professional CD recording, creates a very steep learning curve. I greatly appreciate the work of record producers who have guided me through this process, and I would recommend it to any student or professional who is keen to improve, at whatever level.

For this project, in the course of many, many hours of audio and video editing, I listened to every individual track several times, and also heard how different combinations of soloists fitted together. All of the improvisations were plausible and fitted well with the stylistics we had studied, and there was a delightful variety of individual approaches, all with a lively energy appropriate to the context within the Play. The following comments are therefore from the perspective of a listening editor.

There were in the end 56 audio tracks (Audacity) and 38 video tracks (Nero video) to be mixed. For anyone else who might be contemplating a similarly large-scale multi-track project, I would recommend the technique that I fell upon only at the end, when I needed a technical fix. Trying to manage more than 30 video tracks simultaneously, my video editing software and/or my laptop had slowed to a crawl, and I could no longer review the results of my edits reliably. So I mixed 7 video tracks into one block, which I rendered as a single track. I should have done this from the outset for both audio and video mixes: group the tracks into blocks by sections (high voices, low voices, bowed, plucked and percussion instruments) and mix each block first. Then mix just 5 blocks into the final print.

I asked participants to record (audio/video) a clap synchronised with a click on the backing track, but in the end this was not really needed. The quickest way to synchronise audio tracks was by playing them simultaneously, and lining them up by trial and error. And the quickest way to synchronise video to audio was also by ear, using the audio track associated with each video simultaneously with the full audio mix. Once the tracks are synched, you can lock them and silence the individual audio tracks to leave only the proper audio-mix.

Since everything was synched to the original backing track, the major limitation of Audacity for ‘classical’ audio editing, that you cannot easily drop-in patches from alternative takes of slightly different duration, was not a factor. Most of the problems I had to fix were temporary disturbances of rhythmic precision, and Audacity’s sophisticated “change tempo without changing pitch” function allowed me to make the necessary adjustments. As I often find in live music-making, rhythmic precision is a very high priority, and good rhythm leads to confidence and to improvements in other performance variables. This is especially relevant to Conductus, of course.

For anyone who hasn’t tried it before, it’s surprisingly difficult to keep precisely together with a backing track heard through headphones. So I make no criticism of those who needed a helping hand during audio editing: all of us who ever made a CD are eternally grateful to the skills of professional producers. With the advantage of ‘hindsight’ and repeated listening, I noticed that some performers maintained ensemble by ‘checking in’ with the backing track every so often, for example at phrase-breaks, but sometimes drifted apart for a while in the middle of a phrase. This suggests that the operating strategy was attention-switching between listening and playing, rather than continous monitoring while playing.

I did not find this problem with vocal tracks, which might indicate that the sound of the harp’s backing track was easier for singers to hear, contrasting more with their own sounds, than for instrumentalists.

I also used Audacity’s ‘change pitch without changing tempo’ and reverb functions to transform Tanja Skok’s small frame drum into a mighty medieval battle drum.

There were two pairs of performers who sent duo tracks. I’m very happy that they could enjoy the chance to make music in company, during this time of social distancing, and this was an important element of our project, reflecting also the medieval performers’ celebrations of community spirit as they met, some of them perhaps only once a year, in Beauvais. But – obviously – if there is any moment when a duo track is not precisely together, there is no way to re-align the two individuals in post-production! This is a problem regularly faced by editors trying to clean up live performances, where the sound of one instrument spills onto another player’s microphone. As far as possible, editors want to have each instrument/voice isolated on its own track, even though project directors prefer to have happy participants!

There were few problems of tuning that showed through seriously, once everything was aligned and everyone was playing, though I discreetly faded out a couple of murky moments. Where tuning was off, a common feature seemed to be notes stopped further up the fingerboard of bowed and plucked instruments with necks (with or without frets). Open strings, index and middle stopping fingers were noticeably more reliable than ring fingers and pinkies. There are many factors here: finger position, fret position, string quality, as well as the bowing/plucking action.

In spite of the challenge of – sometimes quite adventurous – improvisation, most of the invented material was delivered accurately. The most difficult moment is between phrases, where, in addition to all the usual demands of solo performance and ensemble music-making, one has to decide what to do next and get fingers/voice to some newly invented note, precisely on time. This is an area I would focus on, in face-to-face rehearsal of live ensemble improvisation.

This connects to another element that can only be practised in real-time ensemble work: overall texture. Ideally, each performer should be assessing the culmulative result of all the improvising, and adjusting their own contribution accordingly. Is there enough basic melody? Too much drone? Enough high, mid-range and low? Is it too bland, or over-complicated? Such monitoring and adjusting requires enough rehearsal time for a group to learn to work together, to communicate and negotiate not by discussing, but by singing/playing and listening.

Ms 638 Paris 1244-11254

The plethora of multi-track projects that have been created during the current health crisis make an interesting contribution to the study of rhythm in Historically Informed Performance. Suddenly, principles of steady Tactus and reliable rhythm have become practical, even essential. Even though we cannot work together in real time – perhaps, because of this – listening has become more important than watching a conductor. Paradoxically, we are also more aware of the emotional power of making music as a group, since we cannot actually meet.

At the original happenings of the medieval Play (for a liturgical action without audience, I shy away from the word ‘performance’), there would have been no modern conductor, also no renaissance/baroque tactus. The misura technique of early polyphony, where a singer on the slow moving tenor-part, standing at the back, taps on the shoulder of a fast-moving cantus-part singer in front of him, is also impractical during processions and dramatic action.

But in Conductus all the singers pronounce the words simultaneously, even if some improvise polyphony. [And by the way, as a practical point, instrumentalists have to find a way to play on the move, for all these processions around a cathedral-sized building.] Meanwhile, the beat is given by everyone’s feet, shuffling, walking, dancing or marching (according to character roles) in procession.

The other meaning of conduct (pronounced with the accent on the first syllable), as a noun signifying the way one behaves, is also present in the medieval French word conduis. In the context of processions, this recalls psalm verses about ‘walking with God… not in the way of the ungodly’. In the Miracles, Gautier de Coincy endlessly explores connections between similar-sounding words with different meanings, and multiple meanings of the same word, so that continual repetitions of a certain sound become a hypnotic mantra, leading the mind into a semantic maze of meditative suggestion. In Ludus Danielis, the way to behave, the way to walk, the way to ‘do conductus‘ in every sense, varies from one procession to another, as the monks embody Belshazzar’s courtiers, the Queen’s handmaidens, Daniel’s co-religionists, or an invading army.

For a HIP staged production, there is much work to be done in exploring the connections between character, movement, text and music for each procession; as well as in presenting the dramatic action of each scene, once the actors have reached ‘centre stage’.

Links

Full ensemble final mix with video

Giulia Amoretti x 7 with video

List of Participants

OPERA OMNIA TUTORS

Anastasia Bondareva [Russia]

Xavier Diaz-Latorre [Catalunya]

Ekaterina Liberova [Russia]

Tanya Skok [Slovenia]

Wolodymyr Smishkewych [Republic of Ireland]

Evgeny Skurat [Russia]

Andrew Lawrence-King – Director [Guernsey]

[*track = audio only, no video]

WOMEN’S VOICES

Giulia Amoretti – voice x 6, *voice [Russia]

Anastasia Bondareva – voice [Russia]

Lyubov Denisova – voice, *voice [Russia]

Olga Domagatskaya – *voice [Russia]

Alexandra Grebenyukova – voice, *voice [Russia]

Ekaterina Liberova – *voice [Russia]

Daniela Rico – *voice [Mexico]

MEN’S VOICES

Aleksandr Grebenyukov – voice [Russia]

Andrew Lawrence-King – *voice x 2 [Guernsey]

Timur Musaev – *voice [Russia]

Evgeny Skurat – voice [Russia]

Wolodymyr Smishkewych – “Daniel”, voice x 3 [Republic of Ireland]

BOWED STRINGS

Barbara Ceron – Harp x 3 [Mexico]

Alexandra Maglevanaya – Bass Viol x 2 [Russia]

Daria Maglevanaya – Medieval Fiddle x 3 [Russia]

Patricia Ann Neely – Medieval Fiddle [USA]

Wolodymyr Smishkewych – Sinfonye [Republic of Ireland]

Olga Zhukova – *Treble Viol [Russia]

PLUCKED STRINGS

Hannah Brockow – Irish harp, *Irish harp x 5 [Canada]

Barbara Ceron – Harp x 3 [Mexico]

Xavier Diaz-Latorre – Medieval lute [Catalunya]

Julia Grab – Rebec [Russia]

Atsuko Kunishige – *Medieval harp [Japan]

Andrew Lawrence-King – Harp, *Harp [Guernsey]

Ekaterina Pripuskova – Mandolin x 2 [Russia]

Evgeny Skurat – Medieval harp x 2 [Russia]

Boris Steinberg – Ud [Russia]

PERCUSSION

Xavier Diaz-Latorre – Tambourine [Catalunya]

Tarkviniy Gramsci – Darabuka [Russia]

Tanya Skok – Frame drum [Slovenia]

The OPERA OMNIA training production of Ludus Danielis for the International Baroque Opera Studio is planned for August-September 2020. At the time of writing, we still hope to be able to go ahead.

To beguile, or not to beguile: Purcell’s ‘Music for a while’

Posted by Andrew Lawrence-King

Music for a while is one of Purcell’s best-known and most loved songs, published posthumously in Orpheus Britannicus, Book 2 (1702). Listen here.

The tortured chromaticism of the ground bass and dark references to Alecto, the Fury from Hell with snakes for hair and a whip in her hand. indicate that there is more here than just a pretty melody. So it comes as no surprise to discover that the song was written for a revival in 1692 of Dryden & Lee’s 1679 Tragedy Oedipus, loosely based on Sophocles.

But what was the function of this music in the play? What is happening on stage ‘for a while’? And what happens next, when Music can no longer ‘beguile’? Whose ‘cares’ and ‘pains were eas’d’? The clue is that Alecto should indeed ‘free the dead from their eternal bands’.

At the time of writing, the best secondary sources freely available online were a couple of GCSE commentaries, which fail to address these questions and mislead on the placement of the song within the play, as well as by hinting that Alecto might even be a character in the drama. She is not, but the mythological reference to her is utterly appropriate for the dramatic situation.

A dark Grove

Fortunately, a primary source is only a click away. The library of the University of Michigan has made the full play-script of Oedipus, including the song-text (divided amongst several singers), available free online.

Purcell’s Music was composed for Act III, set in a dark Grove.

Following an argument and sword-duel between Creon and Adrastus, Haemon sets the scene:

Nor Tree, nor Plant

Grows here, but what is fed with Magick Juice,

All full of humane Souls; that cleave their barks

To dance at Midnight by the Moons pale beams:

At least two hundred years these reverened Shades

Have known no blood, but of black Sheep and Oxen,

Shed by the Priests own hand to Proserpine.

The blind prophet Tiresias enters with a group of aged Priests, all clothed in black habits. In rites “full of horrour” Tiresias invokes the ghost of Lajus (Oedipus’ father) to declare who it was who murdered him. A trench is dug near Lajus’ grave and a black, barren heifer is sacrificed. Blood and milk are boiled together.

And now a sudden darkness covers all,

True genuine Night: Night added to the Groves;

The Fogs are blown full in the face of Heav’n.”

Tiresias calls for “such sounds as Hell ne’re heard / Since Orpheus brib’d the Shades” and the Priests’ first song evokes tormenting demons:

Taskers of the dead,

You that boiling Cauldrons blow,

You that scum the molten Lead.

You that pinch with Red-hot Tongs;

You that drive the trembling hosts

Of poor, poor Ghosts,

With your Sharpen’d Prongs;

Music for a While itself is addressed to the rising ghosts, who are then ordered to “Come away… obey, while we play”. Sure enough, in a flash of lightning, ‘Ghosts are seen passing betwixt the trees‘.

The Priests and Tiresias call on Lajus to “hear and obey”, and ‘The Ghost of Lajus rises arm’d in his Chariot, as he was slain. And behind his Chariot sit the three who were murdered with him.’ Lajus refers to his “pains” in hell (recalling the line from the song, ‘wondering how your pains were eas’d”), and accuses Oedipus of parricide.

The Ghost descends, as Oedipus enters asking “tell me why My hair stands bristling up, why my flesh trembles.”

To beguile, or not to beguile

In this play and in this scene, there are many parallels to Shakespeare’s Hamlet (c1600). Dryden’s introduction make it clear that public taste insisted upon a Ghost and a Murder, and Oedipus was a great success.

In The Player’s Passion (1985) published by the same University of Michigan whose library makes Dryden’s play available online, Joseph Roach describes Shakespeare’s ‘most celebrated scene played by the greatest actor of his time, perhaps of all time’:

The name of Perkins, hair-dresser and wig-maker, enters into the history of the eighteenth-century stage on the strength of a technical contribution to David Garrick’s Hamlet… When other spectators marvelled that Hamlet’s hair actually seemed to stand on end as the ghost appeared, they testified to a fact. The ingenious Perkins had engineered a mechanical wig to simulate the precise physiognomy of mortal dread. On the line “Look, my lord, it comes”, the hairs of this remarkable appliance rose up obligingly at the actor’s command.

In Purcell’s semi-operas and incidental music for plays, incantation scenes are often the excuse for songs, and ‘priests’ with few or no spoken lines are brought on stage to do the singing. The first scene of King Arthur is a good example: “Woden, first to thee a milk-white steed in battle won, we have sacrificed“. And like the Ghost of Lajus, the Cold Genius similarly comes “from below“, is made to “rise, unwillingly and slow’ in chromatic harmonies, and then allowed to “freeze again to death“.

The power of music to ‘beguile’ cares and ‘soothe the savage breast’ is part of the historical Science of the Four Humours. Music is Sanguine: the live-giving flow of warm blood, open-handed and generously offering love, courage and hope. Music frees us from the cold, dry grip of Melancholy cares and pains.

At least, for a while…

Listen here.

Vrai mouvement – Introduction to French Baroque dance-music

Posted by Andrew Lawrence-King

This is another in a series of posts following up a course on Early Music for Modern Harpists that I am teaching for the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, but it should serve any performer as a first introduction to French baroque dance-music and the movements of the Suite. See also Introduction to 18th-century Ornamentation, Principles & Practice, and Online Resources.

To a great extent, Baroque dance-music is French, and French Baroque music is dances. French style is also associated with the delicate subtlety of ornamentation, so that the energy and physicality of the dance co-exists with the intricate sophistication of precise control. As Muffat writes for violinists in Florilegium Secundum (1698),

‘In spite of so many retakes and down-bows, one never hears anything harsh or crude, but on the contrary one finds a marvellous combination of great speed and long bow-strokes; of an admirable consistency of Tactus and a diversity of movements; and of a tender sweetness and vivacity of Play.’

Muffat’s essay, originally printed in French, Latin, Italian and German, is probably the best period Introduction to this style, which he associates with Lully’s violinists. In spite of the preference of modern opera houses and baroque orchestras for Rameau (1683-1764) and Rebel (1666-1747), Lully’s music remained the reference in 18th-century France. And the instrument most associated with the noble style of French baroque dance was the violin: the dancing-master’s minature pochette or the 24-strong violin band (with all sizes of violin-family instruments).

Even if you are not a string player, consideration of the implications of Muffat’s rules for Lulliste bowing is a fast-track to creating appropriate short-term phrasing (what Early Music players call ‘articulation’) for French dance-music on any instrument.

Each dance-type has its own characteristics, and in performing this repertoire, getting a feel for the family resemblance between all Menuets (for example) is more important than trying to ‘interpret’ the particular minuet at hand. Muffat again:

Concerning the different dance-movements, three things are required. 1: To know well the true movement of each piece. 2: Having recognised it, knowing how to keep it as long as one plays the same piece, always with the same consistency, without change of slowing or accelerating. 3: To adjust and compensate for the value of certain notes, for greater beauty.

Muffat’s vrai mouvement is much more than just the speed, though finding a suitable speed is important. Quantz (see Online Resources) gives tempi based on a notional MM 80 ‘pulse’ for various dance-types in Versuch (1752) from page 268 , and Saint-Lambert (Lully’s father-in-law) calibrates his indications to an average walking pace, see Les Principes du Clavecin (1702).

The French term mouvement also implies the Affekt, the emotional character, and (as Muffat’s requirements indicate) this depends on finding rhythmic subtleties and maintaining them consistently all the way through each piece. So in addition to the regularity of Tactus, in dance-music we have additional consistency of patterning within the Tactus. And this patterning is subtle – every note is not the same, smaller-note values may be unequal within the beat – but it is maintained consistently from bar to bar. We can think of this as the rhythmic “groove” of each dance-type: the pattern is distinctive, possibly assymmetrical, often subtle, and this pattern is established from the outset and kept strongly throughout.

There are four levels of rhythmic patterning. Often the whole bar corresponds to the early 17th-century concept of Tactus, and you can beat time one bar down, one bar up. This beat is equal and regular, though with the subtlety of arsis/thesis, see The Practice of Tactus.

Phrases are nearly always symmetrically organised in 4-, 8-, 16-bar groups, with repeats of each section. Don’t omit repeats, and don’t vary them either. Rather play the whole dance a second time, with repeats again, but in a varied version – French sources call this a Double.

Within the bar, the individual beats (often crotchets) have a characteristic organisation of good/bad and join/separate. So in a Sarabande beats 1 and 2 are Good; in a Chaconne one links together beats 2-3-1. These beats usually correspond to dance-steps, and the connection between feet and beat in French music led to a concentration on this level of rhythmic organisation. So the Menuet can also be beaten with an unequal (but reguarly maintained beat), 1-2 down, 3 up.

At the next subsidiary level of rhythmic organisation (often quavers), equally-written note-values are performed unequally, pair-wise, usually long-short. The amount of swing in this inégalité is crucial for establishing (and maintaining) the character of each dance: robust country-dances get a vigorous swing, sad noble dances get a very subtle swing. The bible of baroque swing is Betty Bang Mather Dance Rhythms of the French Baroque (1997).

Muffat’s word mouvement also reminds us that Baroque dances were not just music: there was dancing, too! The best way to understand any dance-type is to learn to dance it, even if you think you have two left legs! I would regard an introduction to historical dancing as an essential element to any HIP musician’s training – and as great fun, too! The standard introduction to the physical embodiment of this music is Hilton Dance and Music of Court and Theatre (1997).

Court and Theatre were the principal milieux for the noble style of dancing, but many of these dances had their origins in the street or the countryside. Mattheson describes the contrasting characters of various dance-types. You can develop your own feeling for the area of emotions associated with each dance-type by reading song-texts set to particular dance-metres, and simply by playing many examples of the type you wish to study.

For each dance-type, you need to have a feeling for tempo, metre (duple or triple), groove, social milieu, area of Affekt and typical dance-steps. Some dances are essentially stylised walking, others are mostly leaps, others mix leaps, spins and held balances. The New Grove Dictionary entry on a particular dance-type can be a good jumping-off point for further reading.

Dance-music was often published and performed as chamber-music in Suites, linked by a common tonality. The core of the baroque suite is the Allemande–Courante–Sarabande group, often with a Gigue afterwards. A Chaconne might be added at the end; a Prélude or Ouverture at the beginning; Bourée, Rigaudon and other country-dances towards the end; and theatrical or programmatic pieces were introduced for variety. For social dancing, long sets of a single dance-type (especially minuets) were often needed.

Handel’s first opera, Almira (1705), listen here has a ball-room scene, set at a French-style Assemblée, in which a sequence of dances is interspersed with conversational recitatives and arias, a theatrical presentation of social dancing at court.

Case-study: the Menuet

The Menuet was a court dance, each couple would have to dance their formal minuet in front of the judgemental gaze of their aristocratic superiors, as they entered the hall of an Assemblée. The step is a stylised walk, and the dancers’ paths trace out geometrical patterns on the floor. There are also many theatrical minuets, and many pieces that feel minuet-like, even though they are not actually dances: the slow movement of Handel’s Harp Concerto would be an example.

Muffat’s rules for violin-bowing can help us find the vrai mouvement, the ‘groove’ of this dance, and I take Christian Petzold’s well-known menuet copied into the Anna Magdalena Bach Notenbuch as a case-study.

Baroque violins have lower string-tension than modern instruments. And French baroque violins had even lower string-tension. French violins were significantly smaller, but had lighter strings and were tuned a tone or a minor-third lower than in Italy. All these differences combine to produce very low string tension: it’s like playing on rubber-bands! And to coax these slack strings into sound, they had very short bows.

Long & Short notes

At this point, you can experiment for yourself, by using a pencil as an imaginary, short French-style violin bow. To sustain a long note, you will have to be very sparing with the bow, and the string will take some time to ‘speak’. The result is a very drawn-out messa di voce, with a lot of intensity and a sensation of tension waiting to be released as you hope that you can get through such a long note with such a short bow.

For a short note, you’ll have to move the bow with a sprightly action, to get the floppy string to speak promptly – it’s almost like a bowed pizzicato. So the first result is that long and short notes are utterly different from one another: a long note is not just a short note sustained, it’s a completely different animal!

Bowing and inégalité

Muffat’s detailed bowing rules can be summarised as

1. Down-bow on the down-beat;

2. Down/Up bows for Good/Bad notes, respectively.

So French violinists would take the first note of Petzold’s minuet with a down-bow (Italians would play it Up). The next note is a Good, so it might seem also to require a Down-bow. With a short bow, two successive Downs will require lifting the bow back Up again in-between (what violinists call a Retake), and this necessarily shortens the first note, creating a staccato effect. Nevertheless, this is acheived with elegant lightness, like a dancer leaping high but landing lightly.

However, in the fine detail of Muffat’s bowing rules, he gives precisely this rhythmic pattern (crotchet quaver-quaver) at the beginning of the bar, marked ‘down up push’. The preference for up-bow on the second note of the bar outweighs the desirability of down-bow on a Good note. Nevertheless, the downward leap of the fifth d’-g supports a detached first note.

The quavers that follow would be played pair-wise long/short, good/bad and down/up, quite legato within each pair, but with a small separation between one pair and the next. Within each pair, the second note is unaccented – the swing is gentle and elegant, not spiky!

Groove: le vrai mouvement

We can beat Tactus bar by bar, down/up. This gives us the first level of equal movement, corresponding to the dotted minims that we find in the bass from bar 2 onwards. In general, we expect to find the fundamental rhythmic structure in the bass, and subdivisions in the treble.

We can also beat Tactus in crotchets, 1 2 down, 3 up. This gives us minim-crotchet unequal movement, that we see in the bass of the first bar and elsewhere.

The harmonic rhythm of bar 15 is the reverse of this: crotchet-minim. The mixture of these two patterns, long-short and short-long, is characteristic of the Minuet.

Baroque theorists linked these structural patterns, often heard in the bass-line of dance-music, with the metrical “feet” of poetic scansion. Long-short is Trochaic, and short-long is Iambic: the combination of these two feet creates the essential structure of the minuet’s vrai mouvement.

In the melody, the initial leap followed by stepwise movement produces a crotchet-minim Iambic structure for the first bar, with the minim sub-divided into swung quavers. So in this bar, the minim-crotchet, Trochaic bass has one of the Minuet’s two typical structures, whilst the melody has the other.

In bar 2, the bowing would be Muffat’s standard: down-up push. This might tend to create a joining between beats 1-2, and a separation before beat 3. But the downward leap again suggests a detached first note. Although I’m accustomed to hearing this bar structured Trochaically minim-crotchet, perhaps the downward leap should encourage us towards Iambic crotchet-minim again.

Bars 3-4 have the same structure in the melody as the first two bars. The ornament on the second note of bar 3 confirms the Iambic crotchet-minim structure of this bar, so similar to bar 1.

The next three bars have the note-values of the first bar, but without the initial leap. This suggests more legato between first and second note, whilst the harmonic shift on the second note of each bar implies a crotchet-minim Iambic structure.

In bar 8, Quantz’s rule for Appoggituras tells us to make the ornamental note two thirds of the length of the written note, and to resolve quietly and smoothly into the written note. The structure is therefore Trochaic minim-crotchet, breaking the pattern of the previous 3 bars. There are couple of bars with swung quavers all the way through in the melody and a Trochaic minim-crotchet structure in the bass, and the harmonies show the structure of the penultimate bar also to be Trochaic minim-crotchet.

There are no other patterns in this minuet. Muffat’s strictly maintained mouvement can be understood by superimposing all the allowed patterns, and ‘weighting’ them according to how often each is heard. You can listen to the result here.

As you listen, imagine yourself dancing with elegant steps and graceful balances along the floor, in smoothly curved patterns, wearing 18th-century courtly dress, and with the assembled aristocracy looking on, and subdued conversation in polite French, with period pronunciation of course. By now you are well on the path towards developing a feel for the vrai mouvement of the menuet.

Beyond Versailles

We find French dances in English, German and even Italian music, and of course in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, see Jenne & Little Dance and the Music of J. S. Bach (1991/2009). Their first publication addressed works by Bach that bore the names of dances―a considerable corpus. In the second, expanded version they study also a great number of his works that use identifiable dance rhythms but do not bear dance-specific titles.

There is a glossy online Introduction to French Baroque Music presented in English by the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles. Their view appropriately contrasts French and Italian approaches, but they seem unaware of the richness of Spanish dance-culture, which brought together Old and New World, even African music, popular and courtly styles.

Hispanic culture contributed one of the most famous dances of Baroque France, Les Folies d’Espagne as well as the Canaries dance-type. As in France, so in Spain, Portugal and the New World, standard dance-types and (more than in France) the ground basses associated with them defined the territory for much chamber, theatrical and (also more than in France) even sacred music. Ribayaz’s 1677 book Luz y Norte offers a ‘guiding light and North star by which to explore all Spanish music’ – listen here.

English late-17th-century Country Dances became well-known in the 20th-century folk music revival. With simple steps and formulaic group choreographies, they were much, much easier for amateur dancers than the technically demanding solo dances in which French aristocrats emulated professonal theatre dancers. Country dances became popular in France as contredanses: Les manches vertes is Greensleeves.

This article can only be a brief Introduction. The next step is to become familiar with various dance-types, by reading more about them, and – even better – by playing and dancing them.

For a slightly different take on Muffat and French Baroque Dance, see the 2021 approach to this subject here.

Movement & Baroque Music: Mind, Body & Spirit

Posted by Andrew Lawrence-King

MUSIC

In 17th-century philosophy, the movement of the stars creates a perfect Music of the Spheres, which is reflected in the harmonious nature of the Human body, and imitated in actual music, played or sung.

This is a hierarchical connection, with heaven at the highest level. Human-beings are a microcosm, the cosmos reflected in minature. Musical performance imitates the perfect movement of the cosmos.

“Ex motu Armonia” – “The movement of the heavens creates Harmony” Detail from the frontispiece of Agazzari’s “Del sonare sopra ‘l basso” (1607).

TIME

The movement of the stars also defines Time, which is measured in musical notation, perceived as the feeling of tempo and the quality of movement, and indicated by the beat of the Tactus-hand. [All of these were far more precise than period clocks.]

Again, there is a hierarchical connection with heavenly time at the highest and slowest level of years (Sun), months (Moon), days (Earth). Embodied time (pulse, heartbeat and the Tactus-hand) imitates cosmic perfection at a human level of seconds. Music sub-divides this time into even shorter durations, faster movement.

Musical notation – i.e. Measure – is calibrated to real-world Time at the level of the Tactus-Beat (Zacconi 1596). Tempo literally means Time – not the ‘speed’ of a performance, but the duration in real-world Time of a Measure. In this philosophy, musical Time imitates the constancy of cosmic Time.

There is a gradual change during the 17th & 18th centuries from this Renaissance concept (that musical notation is a representation of real-world Time, defined by the cosmos) towards the modern assumption that Tempo is subjective, a perception of speed. Another modern assumption takes hold in the 19th century, that performers can choose their own speed, even vary the speed from bar to bar.

MOVEMENT & SOUL

Baroque Time is not Newton’s Absolute Time, “like an ever-rolling stream”, it is Aristotle’s “time as a number of motion”. In Aristotle’s Physics, this movement (and therefore, Time itself) can only be perceived by a Soul.

When Baroque writers call Time “the Soul of Music”, they mean that Time gives the dry numbers of musical-notation meaning in the real world, transforming them into living sound, what we would call ‘live Music’.

Vocal Scores

Conductors

Transferrable skills

Visual beat

Listening without a score

Directing

Aural training

Pre-requisites

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Fundamental Tactus: minim = 60

Proportions

Binary Tactus – ternary metre

Tweaking the Tactus

Changing the Tactus according to the affetto

Change of affetto word by word

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Terminology

Rubato?

Use?

Modification?

Tempo?

Alexander Bonus on ‘metronomic’ Tempo

Julia Dokter on German organ music c1700

Domen Marinčič on variations in Tactus speed

Discussion

Jed Wentz on ‘the Art of Acting’ (1753)

Aapo Häkkinen on 18th-century tempo relationships

Interlude

Jed Wentz again

Domen Marinčič on Tempo words

Julia Dokter on Tempo words

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“Here you can discover the principal secrets in a few words”

“Two functions admirably well linked together:

“Five requirements:

“Play in tune”

Bowing

Groove

Good Delivery

Ornaments

The Suite

Conclusion

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Good & Bad Syllables

Good & Bad Beats

Good & Bad Notes

Flow

Short Trills in Mozart

Short Trills in Handel

Summary

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Ludus Danielis

Producing the Play

Enargeia – the emotional power of detailed description

Controversy

Conductus

Free, open, online multi-track recording project

Links

List of Participants

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A dark Grove

To beguile, or not to beguile

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Case-study: the Menuet

Long & Short notes

Bowing and inégalité

Groove: le vrai mouvement

Beyond Versailles

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