Hello fellow fiddlers Tommo and A -  thank you Tommo, for the info on Fullers.  If I read their site correctly, the Bärenreiter edition of the Telemann Fantasias is among the cheapest!  It's a pretty clean edition (Urtext, for what that's worth), and (if it hasn't changed in the past several years) has a priceless condescending introduction that concludes thus:  "The double stopping and chordal work can naturally only be tackled by a competent player."   


Oh dear, what have I started!  But I certainly wouldn't argue against it...   

I don't remember whether it was here or at S&M that I mentioned I'd shared a concert last weekend with the Swedish violinist Anna Lindal. I'd heard a couple of recordings of hers before but never a concert. Her half of the concert consisted of these unaccompanied pieces:

HIF Biber - Passacaglia
Hans Otte - Stundenbuch nr.13
Johann Helmich Roman - Assaggio no.4 in C minor
Helmut Lachenmann - Toccatina

which is about as various as solo violin music gets, but came across as an intelligent musically-planned sequence. She used a "modern" violin and what looked like a pre-Tourte bow for everything - the Otte piece sounded entirely idiomatic with "baroque" articulation and hardly any vibrato, and the Lachenmann uses hardly any conventional techniques anyway. I was rather startled initially by the extent to which she achieved a "Baroque violin" sound in the Biber - and I was sitting in the front row so I heard every detail. I hadn't heard any of Roman's solo violin music before - I wouldn't want to claim it's as interesting as Bach or even Telemann, but I thought there was something quite individual and rewarding about it which the violinists among us might enjoy spending some time with. Apart from all of that, her playing and stage presence were completely captivating from start to finish and I almost completely forgot I had to play in the second half of the concert.

Ho hum, procrastinating yet again.  Difficult to practise while the washing machine is running, of course.

Actually, quite a good project has landed on my plate.  I know it's one of the most derided, overplayed, love-to-hate-it-despite-loving-it pieces of music around, but I've never played the Four Seasons before.  I'm quite excited about having a chance to do it.  I just hope the British weather hasn't dulled my ability to evoke contrasts between spring/summer/autumn/winter, which are all virtually the same in these isles...

So I'm leaping to it like a salmon.  As soon as the washing machine stops.

This explanation of messa di voce, and similar ones in other treatises for both voice and instruments, has led to much debate.  Geminiani didn't say where the messa di voce should be applied - he was merely elaborating on how to create a beautiful sound on the violin in the course of explaining how to play the violin generally.  And in not specifying what exactly he meant by a "long note," he's left us with a very grey area.

Vocally, the messa di voce seems to have been used almost as a cadenza - a moment when the music is suspended so the singer can sit on a single note and spin out a controlled crescendo-diminuendo meant to captivate the audience.  But if you apply messa di voce in the course of the music every time you see a note a minim or longer, you can get a horrible bulging sea-sick effect.

You can also inadvertently work against the harmonic interest.  Imagine you have 1st and 2nd violins playing a chain of suspensions, offset against each other.  Say the 2nds create the resolution when their note changes, the 1sts create the clash when they change.  If both sections do a messa di voce on each note, the tension created when the 1sts change will be completely lost.  If the 2nds do some messa di voce on each note, while the 1sts give each note a strong front, the clashes will be pleasingly emphasised.

Many players now interpret Geminiani's words to mean that one should avoid clicking, crunching or accenting every bow change; take care over how notes are started and finished; and pay attention to how a note ought to be "shaped" in its harmonic context.  His own examples later in the book, where he has a little "crescendo" sign over every crotchet in a series of eight or more, seems to imply this.  Sometimes the "shape" of a true messa di voce works well, but ought to be used sparingly.  Sometimes it makes more sense to crescendo throughout, to diminuendo throughout, or even to do the opposite of a messa di voce (dim then cresc - this is often very effective on pedal points).

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just saw richard barrett's post - yes, I'll be playing the solo part.  Not sure I can push their stultifying omnipresence away, though, seeing as I'll be doing them in St Martin in the Fields, where they seem to get an outing at least twice a week...  But I'm trying to see that as an extra challenge to make them exciting and fresh.    And I do know that Pachelbel's Canon will not form part of the programme.  (Maybe we should do the grossly neglected Gigue as an encore, if required?)  I'll let everyone know about it closer to the date (not for a few months yet).

hmm, the washing machine seems to have stopped...

I'd definitely like to come.

I've only performed Spring and Summer as soloist.  It was good fun learning them, largely because of deciding what to do in the slow movements.  I suspect HIP enthusiasts would not like it (I know very little about performance at Vivaldi's time that would mean I had created something historically performed, so the only chance that my ornamentations are HIP would be if there was some latent talent that spawned it, which I doubt), but I'm very fond of my ornamentation for the slow movement of summer, which adds embellishment to each successive phrase, and ends up with a ridiculously ornate passage just before the final presto.

I'm sure you will be a good deal more tasteful, strina   Have fun creating  / experimenting / living teh moment and seeing where your fantasy takes you.

Tommo

 Will certainly come and see-hear the Vivaldi, strina, do tell us as soon as you know the date .... please 

A