Not everyone has a library within reach, and I happen to have the book from Ledbetter that seemed to have started this discussion, so here are a few lines by him to help people know what it's all about.
From Harpsichord and lute music in 17th-century France by David Ledbetter (Macmillan Press 1987) p. xi brisure A style of playing in which notes of two or more parts are sounded successively rather than simultaneously (noun from brisé) p. 33 The characteristic texture of 17th-century French lute music is commonly called the style brisé (broken style). On a purely technical level this denotes the process of playing the notes of music in two or more parts successively rather than simultaneously. But in the context of the repertoire as a whole it has much broader and deeper implications. It is in fact a principle which governs the very nature of the music. The style is based on subtle, attenuated allusion to common harmonic and contrapuntal formulae, on fluidly build-up melodic lines, and on intentionally vague harmonic direction; it is an aspect of an aesthetic which flavoured asymmetry and unpredictability above all else. [...] the style brisé has its roots in the technique of Renaissance lutenists [...]. Rhythmic displacement of the notes of the contrapuntal lines results in a constant rhythmic flow which is the essence of the brisé technique. The chapter continues by tracing the development of style brisé, starting with De Rippe (deemed too regular to be called proper style brisé, but showing its roots), through Francisque's Le Tresor d'Orphée (1600), Besard (1603), Hainhofer MS (1603-04), Ballard (1611, 1614), Herbert of Cherbury MS to René Mesangeau, who is [I quote:] 'generally credited with being its inventor'. Btw Ledbetter gives the earliest found use of the word 'luté' for French keyboard music in a 'Courante luté' by Gaspard le Roux (1705). This reference is in the same footnote that gives 1928 as the earliest source he found for the term style brisé, although in that source (L. de La Laurencie 'Les Luthistes', p. 109) the term is used in a way that implies it is in common use for some (?) time already. David - loves the music -- ******************************* 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
