On Jul 8, 2005, at 5:50 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:
And my bet is that Chopin didn't play his quintuplets with all 5
notes having exactly the same length. That is in contrast to what I
understand many of today's composers to be asking for.
No, he didn't want them equal. But he didn't want them randomly
inaccurate either. To play Chopin's quintuplets musically, you first
have to be able to play them precisely, and then have sufficient
control to distort them in a desired direction by a desired amount
according to your interpretation. The task is thus *more* difficult
than a strict quintuplet would be.
Rhythms at this level of complexity appear in a large body of music
from the late 14th-early 15th centuries. Should these be ignored?
. . . music that we have no idea if it was actually performed or not,
and music that if it was actually performed, we have no idea how
those rhythmic complexities were actually realized -- literally or
according to some kind of oral tradition.
I don't think any serious scholar today doubts that the ars subtilior
repertoire was meant for performance and was in fact performed. There
is certainly no evidence to the contrary, save for the complexity of
the rhythms themselves. Since the music is performable today (as
numerous recordings attest), there is absolutely no reason to doubt
that it was performable 600 years ago.
The same goes for any purely hypothetical oral tradition. The evidence
we have is in the notes, and in commentaries from the time, and neither
suggest anything other than that the music was meant to be played, and
to be played as written. I might add that the musical results when
these works are performed support the viability of such a conclusion.
Andrew Stiller
Kallisti Music Press
http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/
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