I agree that the gigue form, in French lute music could have
determined the degree of imitation possible when evoking the tocsein.
It might nevertheless be interesting to discover exactly what the
rhythm of the bell-toll might have been that could have been
imitated. I found this definition: "Tintement d’une cloche à coups
pressés et redoublés pour donner l’alarme, pour avertir du feu,
etc." (so fast and double); however, I also found that the tocsein
could have been originally given on a drum, and perhaps later was
used for other warning notes
"probably originally meant a signal given by tap of drum, but
subsequently always applied to a flourish or fanfare on a trumpet. "
http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/270732
Anthony
Le 30 déc. 08 à 06:02, damian dlugolecki a écrit :
I quite agree with Jorge Torres. After playing these pieces for a
while it really seems to me the accents are duple; accent on the
1st note of each semi-breve.
DD
Dear list:
A few thoughts concerning the French duple-meter gigue.
1) The two examples of Toxin are not in 4/4 there is no time signature
given. They are probably both in Binarie mineur or "cut time" or 2/2,
again, see Perrine's distinction between an allemande and a gigue in
his "pieces", p. 16-19. This makes a huge difference in the way we
would play them.
2) In this repertoire, Allemandes and Gigues are, at times, almost
indistinguishable, as evidenced by Perrine's distinction between an
allemande and a gigue in his "pieces", p. 16-19
3) There is no evidence to assume that these gigues should be played
very fast.
4) I would not force a a ternary subdivision as a uniform rhythm (6/8
or 12/8). The French had a ternary, gigue-like genre: the canarie
5) It is very likely that notes inegales were used in these pieces,
but to insist on them throughout the piece in order to change the
rhythm to something that sounds more like 6/8 or 12/8 seems pedantic
to me.
All the best,
Jorge Torres
On Dec 28, 2008, at 12:51 PM, Mathias Rösel wrote:
I would imagine it could be binary.
Both Tocxin by Denis Gaultier and Toxin by Charles Mouton are
gigues in
4/4 metre. I'd go so far as to say that there's a relationship
discernible between the pieces of master and student in that both
gigues
have a very similar opening motif and both share the same rhythmic
pattern in each measure of their respective second halves, i. e. with
the bass note off-beat on 2nd half of 1st beat. That repeated
bass note
even being a 4 in both pieces (notwithstanding that it means B with
Gaultier, C sharp with Mouton).
With what I heard with Froberger gigues transferred to these 4/4
gigues,
you would play them extremely inegale, IOW amounts of crotchets as
sharpened ternary units. Gaultier seems to indicate that way of
playing
by stating rhythm more precisely in each one but last measure of both
halves of his gigue.
Still, would you perform Tocsin "as loud and fast as possible", i. e.
raising connotations of alarm? Mouton seems to indicate something of
that kind by using means of chromatic escalation at the
conclusions of
the 1st half.
Mathias
Tocxin is tocsin in both French and English, an alarm bell which is
musically depicted by the repeated bass notes.
My former question was concerned with tempo. If it is agreed that
alarm
bells would usually be chimed as loud and fast as possible in
case of
emergency, was the gigue which bears that name supposed to be
played
that way, too?
It's a sequel, so to say, of a short discussion that we had in
December
2003 (Re: binary and ternary GIGUES).
Mathias
"Anthony Hind" <[email protected]> schrieb:
Damian
"Sonner le tocsin", meant roughly "to ring a peal of warning
bells ", but could also mean the bell used for such a warning.
This
would have come from earlier "touquesain" from Provencal
"tocaseneh".
It seems that "tocar" (or toquer), distantly related to "touch",
comes from Latin "toccre" make a sound like "toc".
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O27-touch.html
and "senh" could be derived from Latin "signum" a sign - a signal,
giving ancient French "seing", later "sein", and which took on the
meaning of "bell".
My source is the historic dictionary of the French language, le
Robert, but etymology of a single expression, even backed-up
by such
a dictionary is rarely safe.
Around 1570 and for a certain period, the expression
apparently took
on a metaphoric meaning (Bossuet) to allert public oppinion.
Best wishes
Anthony
Le 28 déc. 08 à 02:51, damian dlugolecki a écrit :
You are quite right David. I just looked up 'tocsin' in my OED
where the earliest usage in English is in 1598. I just
assumed it
was an earlier spelling of 'toxin' which led me to my incorrect
interpretation. Never encountered the word 'tocsin' with that
meaning. The OED reads, "an alarm signal, sounded by ringing a
bell or bells; used orig. and esp. in reference to France."
Thanks for clearing that up.
Damian
Subject: [LUTE] Re: le Tocsein de Gautier
I might have missed something here, getting into the discussion
late
(I rejoined today---hellew everyone), but doesn't the
English word
"tocsin" refer to the pealing of a bell? I always thought
"tocsin"
came from an old form of French. Could some form of the
word have
existed in French in the 17th century with a similar
meaning? Used
perhaps in similar sense to Vallet's piece depicting bells in a
village church.
Davidr
[email protected]
On Dec 27, 2008, at 7:48 PM, damian dlugolecki wrote:
At the moment this is only a guess, but I believe the
'tocsin' of
Mouton and that of D. Gautier have something to do with
disease.
The word 'toxin' only come into the English language during the
19th century. My OED defines it originally as
"A specific poison...produced by a microbe which causes a
particular disease.' By this perhaps we can infer that this
was closer to the original French meaning than to our current
understanding of the word 'toxin' as some kinde of poison.
There
were many diseases like typhus, smallpox, cholera etc. that
wiped
out large numbers of
people. I need to find a French dictionary like my OED. My
Larousse does not have historical meanings or etymologies.
In any case, the pieces by Gautier and Mouton are very similar,
and it seems to me that the Mouton piece is transposition
to f#m
of D. Gautier's piece in e minor. The repeated low 'B' has a
funerary feeling to me anyway and it appears throughout
Mouton's
piece as a low C#. But even though it is possible these
'tocsins'
were about disease, they are gigues and should be played at
faster
tempos. Played in the salons of Paris during recurrences of
'la
Peste' they were perhaps demonstrations of musical 'black
humor.'
To get on or off this list see list information at
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
Jorge Torres
Associate Professor of Music
237 Williams Center
Lafayette College
Easton, PA 18042
(610)330-5365
[email protected]
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