Very few topics are debated and yet not debated as inequality and equality in French music--after all, they also carefully marked (croches egales) some notes to be played equal, no one ever talks about how to play those notes. Chris is right (as usual) in that it existed in the renaissance, and of course the early editors including Lumsden commented that in renaissance music subsequent versions had more ornaments, of which one was invariably dotting--Lachrimae of Dowland is a good example of this.
Certainly the "mannerist" notations of the late fourteenth century, eg Solages, Senleches, contain many examples of written out rubato, and this is surely a kind of rhythmic inegales. What is very clear is that if you look at recorded history of French baroque--and baroque in general-- in the 20th century you will see gigantic, planetary variations in the way the rules are applied, and that certainly less than ten percent of these apply a comprehensive interpretation based on the different types that are clearly described in the sources. What you also see is that from the 70s, to the 80s, to the 90s, very different interpretations that follow some kind of collective reasoning, so that just as you can date a renaissance manuscript by the number of ornaments, you can date a recording by the the "notes inegales". It would be counterproductive to say that this means that our interpretation is "modern", some of it is very modern, but I think it shows that it is changing rapidly. There is no reason to believe that it will not *continue* to change rapidly, so the question becomes not what is the "right" way, but what "will" be the way as it develops, and how do we fit in to that if we wish to play on the historical side (those not concerned with the historical side can just go with the flow--maybe that is better anyway). Anyone playing professionally has to sort of keep track of this as it goes along. Lest one be oudated within five years. This situation is basically the result of oversimplifying the style. You can see now in modern historical performance of late 16th and early 17th c.that a lot of the style issues have been elevated to a fairly high level by the winds players, particularly at Basel, so that you can have a class that centers on the subtle differences say between ornamenting a passage in Bassano style or Virgiliano. Nothing widescale like that exists presently for French baroque style, but it will fairly soon as the information becomes easily accessible and people really work on it at the conservatories and the professional level. Many winds players who were trained at the Hague also have a very complete knowledge of the sources, but I think the situation is much more developed for the earlier materials than the French baroque. I mention the winds players as they historically have had a very strong interest in the ornamentation sources. Of course many of the other players were trained as well in these styles. Another funny little twist is that editied versions of recordings have less and more uniform inegales than the actual recorded material. So there is a discrepancy in the way we like to perform it and the way we think it "should" sound. I have no idea what this means, but it is still interesting--perhaps yet another argument in favor of doing away with heavily edited recordings and only doing video. It certainly proves unequivocally that we have two competing styles of interpretation within the same piece played by the same player. The information is available, we just don't use very much of it, But as far as that is concerned, I see a new renaissance in style now. All of the material is going online. As the material develops, we will probably see very distinct schools emerge in interpretation, just as we now have informal schools of thought based on players. The basic elephant in the room as far as inegales goes, is the difference between rhythmic inegales and articulation inegales. And here the modern practice has been to ignore one in favor of the other. Which is a shame, because if you focus on the articulation side, you can make a case that the lute players had it earliest in the notational record simply by the use of the alternating thumb and finger. But it is a big topic--you can't just dot or swing the notes and say, well, that is Le Bon Gout. It's just goo. If you haven't tried it, do try reverse inegales--they have almost a Scottish snap! Yet very French.... dt At 10:14 AM 4/17/2009, you wrote: >On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 6:23 PM, Eugene C. Braig IV <[email protected]> wrote: > >> What I learnt is to never trust anything somebody else writes or says, > > > ..But also weigh primary sources with a similar degree of skepticism. > >Obviously. > >David > >-- >******************************* >David van Ooijen >[email protected] >www.davidvanooijen.nl >******************************* > > > >To get on or off this list see list information at >http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
