That's a terrific question for which there is no easy
answer.
Here's a few basic starting points:
1. It is different at different times--don't conflate the
different genres
2. Inegal is the most misused and most misunderstood.
Read the
original sources, don't rely on secondary sources.
At a minimum,Distinguish between coule & pointe, and
distinguish
rhythmic inegal from articulation inegal--this is where
it always
goes wrong.
3. Read up on the "gout"
4. Learn all the agreements. Most people know 2 or 3,
some know half
a dozen, few know them all.
You need to know at least a dozen, to put an arbitrary
number on it.
5. Learn the three parts of the trill--the starting note,
the
repetition, and the escape. Most people don't play their
trills
right, or play them "evenly".
6. Use the 2/3rds rule for grace notes and the first note
of the
trill as a starting point--the grace note is the long
note, not the
other way around
7. Distinguish between the weight of medial and final
cadential
trills and ornaments, the lighter ones are often at the
end, not the
other way around.
8. At a minimum, read Monteclair on the agreements,
especially for
the port de voix, the ornament which is most often
performed
backwards (enough here for a separate post)
9. Also read the following which describes the actual
ornaments used
in Rameau's time:
Author: MCGEGAN, Nicholas; SPAGNOLI, Gina
Singing style at the Opera in the Rameau period. (Paris:
Champion; Geneve: Slatkine, 1986) Music. In French. See
RILM
1987-00887-bs. Collection: Jean-Philippe Rameau
10. You are right about the language, lots to investigate
there.
11. Listen to a few recordings of unmeasured preludes for
harpsichord, then arrange them for lute. A new take on
stile brise.
dt
At 12:35 PM 6/19/2008, you wrote:
I'm wondering: what is it that makes up the "French
style" of
Baroque music? I don't mean particularly stile brise,
notes inegall
etc. Those are obvious, and to me insufficient
explanations to
convey the French Baroque. It seems to me there's more
to it than
that. Are there, for example, considerations in the
French style
that have to do with the cadences and general kinds of
rhythms of the
French language itself? What things does one need to
understand /
appreciate in order to make effectively rhetorical music
in the
French style?
Anybody got any ideas on this?
Best,
David Rastall
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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