On Apr 9, 2013, at 1:16 PM, Bruno Correia <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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 theirsÂ… *Absolute* precision is no more our game than theirs, unless electronic means are used in the actual music-making, rather than just practicing. The demands of dancing and marching haven't changed, and even orchestras led by superstar conductors and rock bands driven by superstar drummers will slow down or speed up unintentionally. > 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. Assuredly so. Jane Pickering and Margaret Board were serious devotees of solo music, but they would have spent lots of time dancing, because they didn't have television, football or video games, and they would have spent a lot of time singing because that's what musically literate people did. Song and dance informed solo music, because music was primarily about song and dance, and forms taken from song and dance. The galliard and allemande were in their physical memories, and the voice was the sonic ideal, as you've no doubt noticed from all the claims on behalf of one instrument or another that it, above all instruments, most closely approximates the voice. So when we ask what their approach to rhythm was, we have to start with song and dance, as any renaissance musician, amateur or professional, did. What they did with that approach was likely as variable as what we do. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
