On Feb 18, 2006, at 2:53 PM, Kim Patrick Clow wrote:
I asked the question in relation to new recordings of Baroque
music, using such percussion; and quite a few of these recordings are
by historically informed performance groups.
I mentioned the Naxos recording of the Fireworks and Watermusic. I
forgot to mention another recent CD that makes much more extensive
uses of these percussion instruments:
Ouverturen: Music for the Hamburg Opera. Jordi Savall's group also
used a lot of percussion instruments in their recordings of Lully's
ballet scores.
My question was more along the lines of, why would percussion
instruments be suddenly dropped from the Baroque era, when dance
movements and forms were such a major factor in almost all the
instrumental genres of that period. I just don't imagine on a fine
morning in 1680, someone woke up and exclaimed "Ok boys, time to put
away the percussion instruments. It's the Baroque and we aren't doing
those Renassiance dances anymore."
OK, now we're getting somewhere.
Percussion may be used in a historically-informed performance because
it is known to have been used for that specific piece, or by the
specific ensemble that originally performed it, or to have been used in
similar works under similar conditions. Percussion (except sometimes
timpani) were not notated in the scores because at the time
percussionists were musically illiterate. So, for example, we know that
side-drums and timpani were used in the Music for the Royal Fireworks
because contemporary accounts assert as much--but the parts are not
written down anywhere. An historically-informed modern performance will
include the drums both because Handel wanted them and because they are
what he got, and the parts will be improvised because they were so
originally and because what other choice have we?
Now, as to the Renaissance. You have, I think, greatly overestimated
the extent to which percussion were used in that period. Others have
addressed this issue, but I will merely state that *maybe* *some*
percussion was *sometimes* used to accompany *some* Renaissance dance
music--but not terribly often, and certainly not routinely.
Secondly, almost all the surviving Bq. dance music falls into two
categories: ballet music (for the stage) and dance-derived forms not
meant to be actually danced to at all. In both cases it is easy to see
why any (hypothetical) percussion might be dropped (can you really see
a Couperin harpsichord suite accompanied by drums?)--but in fact
percussion were (at certain times and places) used in the opera--but
such use was definitely highly limited; you wouldn't hear drums used
over and over within a single opera, but just in one or two numbers.
This brings up the third point, which is changing tastes. Consider a
later example: There are numerous brilliant and elaborate trumpet parts
in music of the late Baroque, but in the ensuing Classical period (at
least the high-classic style of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven) the trumpet
is reduced to discrete background toots and the occasional simple
fanfare. Why, you might ask, did composers not continue to write
brilliant clarino parts? The answer is that to the Classical taste,
such displays would have seemed vulgar and out-of-balance in an age
when balance and moderation were highly prized.
Percussion, to return to the topic at hand, was used very discretely
in Baroque opera because, you would have been told, a special effect
loses its effect when it ceases to be special.
Andrew Stiller
Kallisti Music Press
http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/
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