On 22 Dec 2005 at 15:19, John Howell wrote: > OK, this sent me scrambling to the "ornaments" > article in New Grove, where I found, as I > expected to, that the terminology is anything but > cut and dried! > > "Ornaments, III: Shakes, 2. The Vibrato (Fr. > plainte, flattement, langueur, aspiration, > tremblement mineur, tremblement sans appuyer, > pincé, battement, Ger. Bebung, Schwebung, It. > vibrato. This Embellishment, also called the > close shake or sting, consists of a more or less > noticeable fluctuation of pitch through all or > part of the duration of a note." > > OK, so far all that means is the pincé can mean a > kind of vibrato. If it were just that simple! > > "On string instruments two techniques for vibrato > were recommended by later Baroque authorities. > The first, that of rocking a single finger, > produces the normal modern vibrato, which may > vary in rapidity or intensity from a scarcely > perceptible enlivening of the tone to a > distressing exaggeration. The other Baroque > technique, that of rocking one finger while > allowing a second finger to beat lightly upon the > string as nearby as possible, usually produces a > prominent effect and is capable of still more > extreme exaggeration. Simpson (1659, p. 11) > describe the two-finger vibrato under the name > 'close-shake'." > > That's the ornament I'm talking about all right, > but it isn't associated with the term pincé. > However: > > "Marais (Pieces de violes, 1696) gave 'Pincé ou > flattement' for the two-finger vibrato and > 'Plainte' for the one-finger vibrato. In his > music the former is frequently indicated by a > thin, horizontal wavy line and the latter by a > vertical wavy line; but the player may of course > also use his own initiative. Jean Rousseau > (1687, pp. 101-2) used 'plainte' for a portamento > and 'langueur' and 'batement' for both the one- > and two-finger vibrato."
Marais is often quite at variance with other usages, and there are a lot of symbols for ornamentation used in his works that are not found elsewhere. This is also true of his fingerings, which are like nobody else's (he seems to have chosen the harder of any two alternatives, when given the chance, which suggests to me that he was explicitly trying to show off his virtuosity). In any event, I don't speak French and lack a good French dictionary, but "pincé" has always been defined to me as "pinched" (my dictionaries list "pincer" for pliers, and related meanings), and that seems to me to be more in line with the basic root of the word than a vibrato definition. I can sort of see defining a pincé as a single-cycle vibrato down, but that would assume there's some kind of multi-cycle vibrato down on the gamba, and I know of no such definition. Perhaps Marais defined something in that regard, and was therefore forced for symmetry's sake to include the pincé along with the flattement. > OK, that gives us an authoritative use of pincé > as a 2-finger vibrato. The problem is that later > in the article: > > "In effect the difference between an inverted > mordent and a trill is sometimes merely one of > degree (hence one French term for trill: pincé > renversé--inverted mordent." > > This must be the usage you are used to. > Expecting original sources to agree on ANYTHING > is wishful thinking, even without the various > language differences! Well, finding one highly idiosyncratic source for the vibrato meaning of pincé does not contradict an otherwise fairly widespread definition. One of the main issues here is that the modern concept of vibrato is itself completely different than anything that they had in many periods in the past. There are terrible difficulties of understanding any descriptions of vibrato and tremolo and related terms. Last of all, I'm not sure I trust Grove articles to acurately represent distinct traditions, since it is, by definition, something of an effort to abstract a coherent set of meanings from the welter of data from the past. In this case, I'm not sure all scholars would agree. But at least there is justification for your citation of the term for this form of vibrato, even though I'd never encountered it (Marais is way beyond my technical capabilities!). -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
