Dear Howard,
Who were "they"?
Absolute strict time was certainly unknown to them (musicians), we take
this idea for granted nowadays because of the mechanical age we live
in. Absolute precision is our game not theirs...
If "they" were dancers, they probably valued musicians who kept strict
time.
Sure, when playing together we must be together. The example given is
of a solo performance by Mr. North. Solo music by nature allows us to
be freer in time.
I imagine a group of amateurs playing or singing multi-part music
would keep fairly strict time just in the interest of staying together,
unless there were good reason (in the words, for example) to alter the
tactus.
Exactly, not just amateurs but professional too.
These were musical activities far more important than solo lute
music, and lute players participated in them.
Well, by the sheer number of 16th century solo publications for lute, I
wouldn't be so sure of such statement.
Nobody spent the bulk of their musical time practicing solo lute
music, which is something we can easily forget if solo music is the
biggest part of our own musical efforts.
Oh yes, who is nobody? Amateurs or professionals? Well, the duties of a
professional included to compose, arrange, teach, play solos, acompany
singers, play continuo and much more. But did the amateurs have the
same duties? Maybe playing solos was indeed very common, and
people spent a good deal of time on it.
It seems that Lully paid a high price trying to keep musicians playing
in absolute strict time...
2013/4/9 howard posner <[1][email protected]>
On Apr 8, 2013, at 7:26 PM, Bruno Correia <[2][email protected]>
wrote:
> How absolute metric time could have been acheived in the
Renaissance?
> The tactus was a constant pulse behind the rhythm, but it was an
> organic motion not a strict measured time like a metronome.
> Actually, the only genre of music (which comes to my mind) that
really
> plays in time is pop music... How do we know they valued
absolute
> strict time in the Renaissance?
Who were "they"?
If "they" were dancers, they probably valued musicians who kept
strict time. I imagine a group of amateurs playing or singing
multi-part music would keep fairly strict time just in the interest
of staying together, unless there were good reason (in the words,
for example) to alter the tactus. These were musical activities far
more important than solo lute music, and lute players participated
in them. Nobody spent the bulk of their musical time practicing
solo lute music, which is something we can easily forget if solo
music is the biggest part of our own musical efforts.
I don't mean to suggest that you should set your metronome at the
beginning of a polyphonic fantasy and stick doggedly with it. I
think that variation in tempo would have been part of an approach
that relied heavily on understanding music in the rhetorical terms
that were part of an educated person's vocabulary. You might, for
example, vary the tempo if you perceive a phrase as an anadiplosis
or an anaphora, and two players might have differing views about
such things.
So there might not actually have been a "they." Is there any reason
to think there weren't just as many views about how to play
something as there are now? This was, after all, an age utterly
without the homogenizing influence of recordings and radio.
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Bruno Correia
Pesquisador autonomo da pratica e interpretac,ao
historicamente informada no alaude e teorba.
Doutor em Praticas Interpretativas pela
Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro.
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