At 11:53 PM -0700 3/16/10, Mark D Lew wrote:
On Mar 16, 2010, at 7:05 PM, John Howell wrote:
Not at all, Jef. It's a plain fact that a number of pieces were
once considered unplayable, until a new generation of players came
along and took them up as a matter of course.
I heard that Monteverdi's string players griped when he asked them
to do pizzicato. Or is that just a myth?
That's probably a myth, since lute, bass lute, and a whole bunch of
other plucked stringed instruments were in common use and he would
have been imitating them, but he was the first to write bowed tremolo
(measured, not unmeasured, just as trills were measured in his day)
in his "Madrigals of War and Love" of the late 1630s, and the
fiddlers might have taken exception to that.
What we have to remember is that violin in the early 17th century was
still considered a dance band instrument, with about the same social
status as the sax in the early 20th century, and the players weren't
yet the stuck up guys we are today!
John
--
John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music
Virginia Tech Department of Music
College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[email protected])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
"We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition
of jazz musicians.
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