On 18 Feb 2006 at 15:42, Andrew Stiller wrote: > 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.
Er, we have virtually no evidence for a whole class of music, the secular popular music that was mostly not notated at all, even for the non-percussionists. > 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?). . . There were 18th-century harpsichords with drum stops. It's not that I'm suggesting that this indicates that drums should be used, only that the question as asked is not really about the historical context, but about our modern expectations for it. That's entirely the problem here, that our modern expectations may or may not reflect historical practices. > . . . --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. What's the evidence for it being "highly limited?" I'm not doubting it (I'd expect it to be limited to dance music or clearly defined "stage music"), I'd just like to know what the factual basis is for your assertions. > 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. I don't buy that one. I'm not sure what the explanation is, but yours seems highly dependent on a rather impoverished idea of what the Classical Style was about -- it seems rather an assertion about musical style drawn from a Grout-level conception of the Classical style. Brilliant and florid violin parts did *not* go out of style, at least in stile antico church music, so it is unclear to me why florid clarino parts would have been subject to esthetic banishment and the similar florid writing for other instruments would not. > 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. A plausible explanation, assuming that the belief that percussion was intended to be a special effect is true. Evidence for this? -- 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
