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Author Topic: Ornamentation  (Read 560 times)
Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #15 on: 15:08:14, 28-01-2008 »

I would be interested in hearing cases and examples from the pre-1750 period, instead of after it?

For example in the Monteverdi/Caccini/Cavalli repertoire, in Frescobaldi, in Lawes and Locke and Purcell?? 

By way of discussing the issue of "improvisation made permanent" in recordings, there's a discussion in the "News" section of the boards about the "Dionysian" aspect of live performance versus the "Apollonian" perfection of recordings,  which picks-up a philosophical approach to music on which baroque performers and composers could not have have reasonably held any opinion Smiley
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
-  Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
richard barrett
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« Reply #16 on: 15:29:33, 28-01-2008 »

As far as I can remember, Caccini's Le nuove musiche came with an extensive introduction dealing with ornaments proper to (his concept of) the emerging art of monody. (As did publications by Ortiz, Bassano, Rognoni and Ganassi from the previous century.) I don't know what there is from the later 17th century and somehow I doubt whether there's anything from England apart from a few clues here and there like the comment about Purcell's "'Tis Nature's Voice" having been sung "with incredible graces by Mr Purcell himself", which (leaving aside the question of whether it was sung by Purcell at the first performance) suggests that the elaborate vocal line of the piece was understood to incorporate "graces" (ie. ornaments), which therefore perhaps were thought of as a more "incredible" version of the kind of thing which might otherwise have been extemporised at that time and place. Which in turn might suggest a more florid approach to performing Purcell than one normally hears.
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #17 on: 16:39:39, 28-01-2008 »

which therefore perhaps were thought of as a more "incredible" version of the kind of thing which might otherwise have been extemporised at that time and place. Which in turn might suggest a more florid approach to performing Purcell than one normally hears.

I have certainly always interpreted that remark in that way.  There are quite a few sources on the ornamentation of C17th music, particularly Italian music, but they are hardly in general circulation.  Ganassi was discussing the matter as early as the 1530s, but I think the most comprehensive treaty is Francesco Rognoni's "Selva de varii passaggi" (1620).  From this one can conclude that the degree to which instrumental music - particularly the top-lines of ensemble music - was decorated was already extensive from before the begining of the C17th, and that such decoration continued as societal norm for the rest of the century.
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
-  Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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