er, that's it for now, I have to go out, I just wanted to start this thread before I forgot, having broached the subject briefly in another place. What do we think about this? (in live performance? on recordings? instrumental? vocal? overdone? underdone? etc.)

At what point did ornamentation begin to develop as a distinct entity in its own right, as opposed to divisions?

as always, curiosity places me in jeopardy

What I was really getting at was ornamentation in modern performance and recording (and specifically of Baroque music). For example, some are of the opinion that one ought to be more "controlled" with ornamentation in the studio than before a live audience, because it isn't appropriate to petrify something ephemeral and "of the moment" for repeated listening. It certainly jars on my ears to hear again and again an ornament that I don't like. On the other hand I can never get enough of one that I do like. In any case it seems to me that performers of baroque music ornament less, and less freely, than they used to, judging from recordings of the 1960s and 1970s. Is this a matter of more available and better understood scholarship, or more a matter of fashion? (like the synchronising between parts of the short notes in Bach's "French" overtures, which performers seem not to do these days, since Reinhard Goebel reasonably pointed out that there was no evidence for it having been done in Germany at that time).

I wonder whether it's a consideration for performers (especially with less familiar music) that the original text should be "inferrable" by ear from the ornamented version.

Under ornamentation we could also think about basso continuo realisations (and the instrumentation thereof). Returning to Bach again, it's tempting to assume that his continuo playing was far from just playing the figures, given his ability to organise musical material spontaneously by having an immediate perception of its developmental and combinatorial potential. This I suppose is why some players (Ton Koopman being a prime example) take an "interventionist" approach in these matters, but I feel there's a danger there of sounding (as he sometimes does) somewhat ridiculous, like a Bach impersonator rather than... rather than what, actually?

So I started the thread thinking I'd give myself a chance to put a few thoughts in order before continuing with it, and as you see I haven't got to that stage.

Goebel's suggestions are rather old now - that whole subject (and all aspects of 'French' style in Bach) was examined exhaustively by Stephen Hefling in his book Rhythmic Alteration in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth- Century Music: Notes Inegales and Overdotting , which on the basis of an extremely intensive study of all the evidence, definitively concludes that music in the French style was indeed played with the types of overdotting, synchronisations, etc., that were known in performances of 'actual' French music (I don't have a copy to hand, or else I would give more details - I know it's widely regarded as the most authoritative text on the subject). I haven't heard of anyone having seriously challenged Hefling's conclusions since he wrote the book (which is not to say they might not be challenged).

The main anti-over-dotter was (and still is?) Frederick Neumann I believe (as Goebel acknowledges in his notes for the MAK recording of the Bach overtures). In any case I suspect we often nowadays take a much more literal approach to dotted figures than would have been the case not only with Bach but in practically anything before Brahms or so. Which isn't to say that one should overdot Mahler of course, just that I reckon such distinctions as for example that between [crotchet-quaver under a triplet] and [dotted quaver-semiquaver] wouldn't have existed for that all that many composers until the late Romantic repertoire. The notation of crotchet-quaver under a triplet wasn't in general use until surprisingly late anyway...

(Worth looking at Schubert's manuscript for Wasserfluth from Winterreise - the dots and triplets are written directly over each other. On the other hand Czerny said Beethoven told him not to line up the dots and triplets in the first movement of the Moonlight sonata. Anyway.)

Er, nothing to do with ornamentation, sorry.

And not only that repertoire. When I first heard the Salomon quartet's recording of the Haydn G minor quartet (op. 74/3?) I similarly thought Simon Standage might have been making up some of the more elaborate decorations that come late in the slow movement. When I finally saw a score I was very pleased to see them there in black and white.

What Goebel does is adopt Occam's Razor in the absence of evidence either way.

I certainly like my Grosse Fuge with a distinction made between those rhythms. But then it isn't exactly a typical piece for its time (or any other).

Something that's often forgotten in discussions of baroque performance style (although Reiner's first post here does bring it up) is that the contradictions which seem to exist between primary sources aren't some problem that needs to be resolved, but are actually contradictions between playing styles current in different places and different times. Bach may have had his own ideas about dotting which he communicated to his Leipzig players without further comment (he certainly had his own ideas about not letting his performers indulge in indiscriminate ornamentation and preferred them to stay close to what he'd written, if contemporary critics are to be believed), while, just over 100km away in Dresden, Heinichen's court musicians might have had quite different ways of doing things. The most important idea Goebel picks up from Neumann is a deeper appreciation of the fact that "authenticity" or whatever one calls it is a 20th century phenomenon and not an 18th century one. Being neither a musicologist nor a baroque musician I prefer to keep an open mind.