Ficta and it's application to Palestrina

[Mark Rimple]

I wonder if a discussion of Ficta and it's usage in the late renaissance,
particularly in Palestrina and Victoria, would be interesting to anyone.
I sing at St. Clement's choir in Philadelphia, where we often perform
Palestrina masses. I also have a good amount of training in Renaissance
and Baroque music (and medieval music, for that matter) and have read
many of the most important articles and writings about Ficta at one time
or another.

I know of most discussions of ficta revolve around the Netherlands school
and earlier. Palestrina is closer to the Baroque, and it seems to me
that MOST of the chromatic pitches are specified in the scores. However,
the older editions often treat Palestrina either like Josquin or like
Baroque music. I realize this issue sits the fence in many ways, but I
am not aware of any scholarly attempt to investigate it.

The most problematic issue is in the chromatic alteration of a lower
neighbor tone. In the collected edition of Palestrina, there are many
raised neighbor tones which don't resolve to the tonic of the following
sonority. When an f is rasied to an f# in a chord which resolves to a c
major chord, isn't this a bit past the "pulchritudinis" issue?
Especially if later in the bar an f# could be used to move to the
following tonality of G?

The related problem I've seen in this is that often secondary dominants
are introduced through ficta which then effect a sort of circle-of-fifths
movement. I dont' think I've seen this in Palestrina's accidentals as
much as in the editors.

Lastly, I know that the modes were slowly becoming subservient to our
idea of major and minor, but isn't one of the problems in introducing
lots of flatted 4ths in the lydian mode that it no longer sounds
lydian? And that if the tunes and motets are marked "in the X mode"
shouldn't they be in that mode?

--
Yours,

Mark Rimple
mri...@astro.ocis.temple.edu

[Peter Urquhart]

On 26 Apr 1996, Mark Rimple wrote:

> I wonder if a discussion of Ficta and it's usage in the late renaissance,
> particularly in Palestrina and Victoria, would be interesting to anyone.

>[....]

> I know of most discussions of ficta revolve around the Netherlands school
> and earlier. Palestrina is closer to the Baroque, and it seems to me
> that MOST of the chromatic pitches are specified in the scores. However,
> the older editions often treat Palestrina either like Josquin or like
> Baroque music. I realize this issue sits the fence in many ways, but I
> am not aware of any scholarly attempt to investigate it.

I've discussed some Palestrina passages in an article in the Dutch
journal TVNM (1993; pp. 19, 20, 36, 37). You're right in saying most of
the discussions are on Franco-Flemish music; this passage is about a
Palestrina parody mass based on a Johannes Lupi motet, a Fr-Flem. Still,
my conclusion was that the Italian editor (Bianchi; Le Opere Complete) was
too quick to add inflections wherever he spied cadence-like behavior in
Palestrina, or any whiff of cross-relation. I don't remember now, but was
not the earlier Werke of Haberle quite different in these matters?

I'm not sure what you mean by "treats Palestrina like Josquin" unless
you're suggesting that too many inflections are added in older editions.
I agree that this is true in general, but I also think it is true (often,
if not in general) in editions of Franco-Flemish music.

> The most problematic issue is in the chromatic alteration of a lower
> neighbor tone. In the collected edition of Palestrina, there are many
> raised neighbor tones which don't resolve to the tonic of the following
> sonority. When an f is rasied to an f# in a chord which resolves to a c
> major chord, isn't this a bit past the "pulchritudinis" issue?
> Especially if later in the bar an f# could be used to move to the
> following tonality of G?

Perhaps specific examples need to be raised in order to discuss this
sensibly. I have a lot of trouble with generalizations based on language
about "chords", since the individual performer's perspective is not
chordal, but linear. If in your example, that F is "cadential", that is,
primed to move to G and then stop, cued with a dissonant suspension with
another voice, especially one that is moving down from A to G, then
(IMHO) an inflection ought to be added by the singer. What difference
could it make *to the singer on that part* with the F whether another
voice harmonizes the cadence goal of G with a C below. This might result
in the 'C-major chord' you mention; then again, does this happen very
often in Palestrina? We need a specific example to wrangle over.
Unfortunately this text-only electronic medium isn't very good for that
purpose.

> The related problem I've seen in this is that often secondary dominants
> are introduced through ficta which then effect a sort of circle-of-fifths
> movement. I dont' think I've seen this in Palestrina's accidentals as
> much as in the editors.

To translate your comment into another language, are you saying that you
think that some cadences should be inflected, but others should not be?
If Palestrina sets up clear and obvious cadences (yes, there's lots of
wrangling implied right there admittedly) one after another on, say, A,
then D, G, and C, under a no-flat signature, should the A, D and G
cadences not be inflected? Or should the D and G cadences receive
inflections, but not the one on A? These are the kinds of distinctions
implied by performances (of Josquin and Obrecht) by the Tallis Scholars.
Again, we'll need to point to a specific example to get clear. Here's
one, unfortunately not Palestrina, but Josquin: Missa Pange Lingua, Qui
tollis mm. 50, 52, 54 (or 6, 8, 10 depending on your edition), cadences
on D, G, and C. The Tallis Scholars did not inflect the cadences on D or
G; there is even a source sharp (a rare event) on the D cadence according
to Smijers. Then again, the recording by the TS of Pange Lingua and La
sol fa re mi was an experiment; they didn't add any inflections to any
cadences on D, G or A. The buying audience didn't seem to mind, but a
lot of people with experience on the matter did (me for one).
Examples such as this should be cited in Palestrina; then we can
get right down to specifics.

> Lastly, I know that the modes were slowly becoming subservient to our
> idea of major and minor, but isn't one of the problems in introducing
> lots of flatted 4ths in the lydian mode that it no longer sounds
> lydian? And that if the tunes and motets are marked "in the X mode"
> shouldn't they be in that mode?

This is too big a can of worms for me to want to open in public. You will
find that "lydian mode" pieces often have explicit signature flats written
in, others have explicit accidentals on the fourth degree, and still
others have linear tritones between the final and the fourth degree in
such numbers that softening the fourth degree seems inevitable much of the
time. That doesn't mean the piece is any less "Quinti" or "Sexti toni".
Enough on that.

>I sing at St. Clement's choir in Philadelphia, where we often perform

Hey, my brother-in-law sings in that choir too (Eric Sw...). E-mail me
directly at peter.u...@unh.edu.

Yours, Peter Urquhart

[Olivier Bettens]

At 18:30 26.04.96 GMT, Mark Rimple wrote:
>I wonder if a discussion of Ficta and it's usage in the late renaissance,

>particularly in Palestrina and Victoria[...]

>
>I know of most discussions of ficta revolve around the Netherlands school
>and earlier. Palestrina is closer to the Baroque, and it seems to me
>that MOST of the chromatic pitches are specified in the scores. However,
>the older editions often treat Palestrina either like Josquin or like
>Baroque music. I realize this issue sits the fence in many ways, but I
>am not aware of any scholarly attempt to investigate it.

Petrucci's edition of Josquin, though indicating with a relative precision
flat notes that avoids a tritone (causa necessitatis), seems completely
ignore the sharp sign. Generally, printings of the second half of the 16th.
c. are much more precise and note a lot of sharps. Does it reflects a
fundamental change in performance, or only in editorial practice, or both ?
I cannot answer.

>The most problematic issue is in the chromatic alteration of a lower
>neighbor tone. In the collected edition of Palestrina, there are many
>raised neighbor tones which don't resolve to the tonic of the following
>sonority. When an f is rasied to an f# in a chord which resolves to a c
>major chord, isn't this a bit past the "pulchritudinis" issue?

The "causa pulchritudinis" is a matter of taste. It means that each 16th c.
cappella probably had its own approach of this type of musica ficta. Adding
sharp notes belongs to ornamentation. IMO, there were never universal rules
in this domain, but only varied styles. Each modern editor also develop his
own style in suggesting musica ficta: no performer is forced to follow it...
I share Peter Urquhart reservations about using a "tonal" or "harmonical"
model for polyphonic music of the Renaissance. The presence (or absence) of
a "perfect V-I harmonical cadence" is, I agree, not always determining.

On the other hand, sharp notes, in Palestrina's music, are not always
resolved on the upper note, they have sometimes the function of "picard
thirds" on (more or less) final chords and, consequently, are not resolved
at all. See for example, in the _Crucifixus_ of the Missa Papae Marcellis,
the (originally noted) g sharp on the word _nobis_ in the altus part (on a E
of the bassus), immediately followed by a (natural) G in the superius part.

>Especially if later in the bar an f# could be used to move to the
>following tonality of G?

I don't understand exactly what you mean by "moving to the tonality of G" in
the context of Palestrina's music.

>The related problem I've seen in this is that often secondary dominants
>are introduced through ficta which then effect a sort of circle-of-fifths
>movement. I dont' think I've seen this in Palestrina's accidentals as
>much as in the editors.

There also, the concept of "dominant" is probably not accurate for such
music. Contrary to modern tonal theory in which sharps and flats are
rigorously symmetrical, early theory doesn't put them on the same plane:
the flat sign implies a movement from a hexachord to another (_mutatio_),
and could be considered as analogous to what you mean by "circle-of-fifths
movement". In principle, the inverse movement should be noted by a "natural"
(_b quadratus_) sign (in practice, the things are much more confused!). On
the other hand, the sharp sign represents a fundamentally different
phenomenon : an ornamental chromatic note temporarily inserted into a
diatonic structure (Zarlino uses the term "inspessatione"). This means that,
for a 16th c. mind, a G sharp would never have been interpreted as a true
_mutatio_ (or, if you prefer, a "circle-of-fifths" movement) but only as a
superficial ornamentation.

In some cases, these two different phenomenons (_mutationes_ and chromatic
inflexions) may affect the same note in a given piece. For example, in a
transposed dorian mode (b flat signature, ending in G), a b natural may
result either from the _causa necessitatis_ (when there is an E in the bass
voice an it avoids the diminished fifth E-b flat) or from the _causa
pulchritudinis_ (when the b represents a "picard third" upon G). In
principle, the first case, which is a true _mutatio_ should be noted by a _b
quadratus_ sign, and the second, which is "chromatic", by the sharp sign.
According to V. Galilei, there were a tendance to consider the "natural" b
as being one syntonic comma higher than the "sharped" b, which is logical
according to the "just intonation" principles of Zarlino.

>Lastly, I know that the modes were slowly becoming subservient to our
>idea of major and minor, but isn't one of the problems in introducing
>lots of flatted 4ths in the lydian mode that it no longer sounds

>lydian? [...}

What does mean "sounding lydian" for a man of the Renaissance? Personally, I
think that, concerning polyphonic music, the standard description of the
lydian (I also include hypolidian) mode would be : ending in F. So, a piece
ended in F sounded "lydian" regardless of its proportion of b flat. On the
same way, a piece ended in D sounded "dorian" even if there were a lot of b
flat. There is a difference between these two examples : polyphonic pieces
in the dorian mode had usually no b flat signature, because it was reserved
to the transposed dorian (ended in G). Such transposition didn't exist for
the lydian mode and putting a b flat signature was not ambiguous.
Consequently, I would bet that most of the "lydian" pieces of Palestrina (or
of his contemporaries) have a b flat signature.

The above remark is valide in the traditional system of 8 modes. In the 12
modes-system adopted by Glareanus (and Zarlino), the thinks are different :
a "dorian" mode with "a lot of flats" will be considered as a transposed
"aeolian" (the not-transposed "aeolien" ends in A) an a b-flat signature
will be added. A standard "lydian" mode with b flat signature, in the other
hand, will no longer be considered as "lydian", but as a transposed "ionian"
mode (the not-transposed "ionian" ends in C). This terminological war
doesn't affect Palestrina's work (and our comprehension of it) : he did'nt
practically experiment the 12 modes-system.

Claude Lejeune gives probably the most famous example of composing following
the 12 modes-system : in his _Dodecacorde_, as in his _Octonaires_, he
conciously and systematically explores this system. For example, he indeed
considers the traditional "lydian" (with b flat signature) as a transposed
"ionian" and he tries hard to compose "true lydian" pieces, avoiding almost
completely the use of b flat.

Olivier Bettens
Cossonay, Switzerland E-mail obet...@worldcom.ch
Tel. +41 21 863.22.39 (bet...@dial.eunet.ch)
Fax. +41 21 863.22.35

[John Howell]

Mark: The most cogent questions regarding the late 16th century sacred
composers would seem to be whether they are beginning to think in tonal
terms (as many of the secular composers clearly were) and, even more
important, whether they are using anything resembling functional harmony.
On the former question I'd hazzard a guess that they were still thinking
modally, especially since this is precisely the point in history when
sacred music began to be acknowledged as more conservative and "old
fashioned" than secular.

On the latter, I would start by assuming that the harmonic movement in
these works is NOT a result of functional harmony but is not all that
different from the harmonic movement in Josquin et alia. As a working
hypothesis, then, I would assume that the standard rules of ficta as taught
and used by everyone at the time would still apply to this music. (Then I
would see whether I like the results!!)

I would, in other words, solmize the parts and look carefully for any
"notas super la." I would carefully plot the cadence structure and add
ficta where obvious cadences call for obvious adjustments. HOWEVER, the
structure I would search for is the structure of Medieval/Renaissance
2-voice cadences as described by the theorists of the time, and NOT 19th
century harmonic cadences. (Secondary dominant? What that? Never heard
of it!) There ARE no rules requiring alteration of neighboring tones
except for "super la" and cadences.

(If the 2-voice cadence is not a familiar concept, George Houle's study of
"Doulce Memoire" settings explains it briefly and clearly.)

Causa pulchritudina I would view with great skepticism. One person's
pulchritude is another person's blandness. Wili. Apel seemed determined to
make everything in HAM into F major, because he felt it should be. Well, F
major may be as old as the "Sumer" canon (and there's lots of C major in
Hildegard), but as you suggested, I most often prefer to retain the modal
angularity. And aside from liking it, I do think it was what was intended.

Can't say it too often: never trust a naked editor!

>I wonder if a discussion of Ficta and it's usage in the late renaissance,

>particularly in Palestrina and Victoria, would be interesting to anyone.

>Yours,
>
>
>Mark Rimple
>mri...@astro.ocis.temple.edu

John

John & Susie Howell (John....@vt.edu)
Virginia Tech Department of Music
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240
(540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034

[Richard St. Clair]

Olivier Bettens wrote:
Mark Rimple wrote:
>>I wonder if a discussion of Ficta and it's usage in the late renaissance,
>>particularly in Palestrina and Victoria[...]

>I share Peter Urquhart reservations about using a "tonal" or "harmonical"

>model for polyphonic music of the Renaissance.

Reservations are fine, but let us not blindside ourselves. The renaissance
composers *did* think harmonically - they had to. They were not as interested
in it as the baroque composers, but the music shows a keen sense of vertical
as well as linear organization, and some composers are more effective at
it than others.

> The presence (or absence) of
>a "perfect V-I harmonical cadence" is, I agree, not always determining.

In the Dufay era, the de facto "perfect V-I cadence" was quite commonplace
("If it walks like a duck and sounds like a duck it is a duck"),
and one sees a lot of it in the heavily Dufay-influenced Missa l'ami baudichon
of Josquin. However, Ockeghem's influence seems to have carried the day in
driving harmony into more elusive terrain for the latter part of the 15th
century and Josquin rode on that bandwagon as a primary practitioner of it.
There was a swing back to the more 'perfect cadence' proto-diatonic type in the
16th century, clearly heard in the Venetian school and thence to Palestrina,
from which point it became transubstantiated into diatonic harmony in
the early Baroque.

Richard St. Clair

[Olivier Bettens]

At 20:07 30.04.96 GMT, Richard St. Clair wrote:
[...]

>The renaissance
>composers *did* think harmonically - they had to. They were not as interested
>in it as the baroque composers, but the music shows a keen sense of vertical
>as well as linear organization, and some composers are more effective at
>it than others.

They certainly had a more or less developped *feeling* of what we mean today
by *harmony*. But they lack of the most elementary tools to *think*
harmonically. In particular, a concept so simple and so evident (for us) as
that of *chord* was unknown to them.

Concerning V-I cadences : I agree that, already in Dufay (probably before),
we can find patterns that we today analyze as V-I perfect cadences. The
question remains to know whether, in such patterns, the "third upon the
dominant" has systematically to be inflected or whether it may be a matter
of taste. To my knowledge, there is no definitive answer!

Olivier Bettens
Cossonay, Switzerland E-mail obet...@worldcom.ch
Tel. +41 21 863.22.39

Fax. +41 21 863.22.35

[Alice V. Clark]

Olivier is of course right: there are sonorities in Dufay and elsewhere
that sound the same as dominant chors--even with the "seventh" (Don
Randel wrote a piece once called "Emerging Triadic Tonality in the
Fifteenth Century" on such things). The thing is, though, they don't
function that way: the primary voice-leading is not 5-1 or 7-8 (insert
those little carats that signal that those are scale degrees), but the
sixth that expands to an octave (2-1 and 7-8)--according to all the
theorists going all the way back, that sixth must be major in
cadences. Whether that is done by raising the upper member (say f# going
to g) or by lowering the lower (bb going to a) in some sense doesn't
matter. Again, the sound is the same, but the meaning differs.

Alice V. Clark
Princeton University
avc...@phoenix.princeton.edu

[Mark Rimple]

: On the latter, I would start by assuming that the harmonic movement in

: these works is NOT a result of functional harmony but is not all that
: different from the harmonic movement in Josquin et alia. As a working
: hypothesis, then, I would assume that the standard rules of ficta as taught
: and used by everyone at the time would still apply to this music. (Then I
: would see whether I like the results!!)

: I would, in other words, solmize the parts and look carefully for any
: "notas super la." I would carefully plot the cadence structure and add
: ficta where obvious cadences call for obvious adjustments. HOWEVER, the
: structure I would search for is the structure of Medieval/Renaissance
: 2-voice cadences as described by the theorists of the time, and NOT 19th
: century harmonic cadences. (Secondary dominant? What that? Never heard
: of it!) There ARE no rules requiring alteration of neighboring tones
: except for "super la" and cadences.

I hope I didn't give the impression that I was looking for
functional harmony in the baroque sense! I think that the editor of the
early Palestrina edition which is often used as a secondary source for
editions used a 19th century concept of cadence. That is the
problem. Of course, any informed musician performing such music should
question the editorial aims of any edition if it seems to be
contradictory to the work in question. It is precisely this
circle-of-fifth interpretation by the editor which is distorting the
primarily linear aspects of this music (to my ears).

[Laura E Conrad]

In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.960504112139.18282A-100000@morpheus> Peter Urquhart <purq...@minerva.cis.yale.edu> writes:

(Olivier Bettens wrote:)
>many editors claim to choose definitively *the* right solution. They
>try to distinguish, behind the sources, the "original" meaning of the
>composer. Concerning pre-1500 Mass music, I would argue that

Some of the cautionary aspects of Olivier's viewpoint are reasonable.
But I doubt that accidental usage varied as widely then as does now. If

I've been avoiding contributing to this thread, although I find it
very interesting, because I know there are dozens of contributors to
this list who have studied the subject of ficta much longer and harder
than I have.

However, as a choral singer, I can make a point which some of the
musicologists may be forgetting in the heat of the argument.

An editor who suggests a ficta decision is not necessarily claiming to
know the "definitive" answer. However fascinating the improvisational
nature of an individual performer's on-the-spot ficta decisions may
be, I don't think many of us would care to hear a chorus with 4 or 5
voices on a part all making on-the-spot ficta decisions. I believe,
and I think most modern editions concur, that the editor's ficta
decisions should be distinguished notationally from the composer's
accidentals. If I were conducting a chorus, I would retain the right
to disagree with the editor, but I would appreciate having at least
some suggestions that I wouldn't have to transmit orally to the chorus
(and then do it again at the next rehearsal for the benefit of those
who missed the first one...).
--
Laura (lco...@world.std.com)
(617) 661-8097
233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139

[Peter Urquhart]

A few days ago, Richard St. Clair wrote:
>However, I have decided to make certain ficta decisions when
>absolutely necessary, such as in the correction of vertical
>cross-relations and linear tritones. There will be an occasional
>recommended cadential ficta, but I will try to keep it to a minimum.

and John Howell wrote:
>I would suggest that the mandatory ficta at 2-voice cadences are the most
>important. I can't really remember simultaneous cross-relations as
>being a big problem in Josquin, but perhaps I remember incorrectly.

and Olivier Bettens wrote:
>Concerning V-I cadences : I agree that, already in Dufay (probably before),
>we can find patterns that we today analyze as V-I perfect cadences. The
>question remains to know whether, in such patterns, the "third upon the
>dominant" has systematically to be inflected or whether it may be a matter
>of taste. To my knowledge, there is no definitive answer!

All of these comments concern cadential performer's accidentals. While
most everyone shows an understanding of the basic concept (2-voice
framework, major 6th to 8ve or min. 3rd to unison; the "causa
pulchritudinis" or closest approach doctrine of Marchettus is the
background; cadences are the actual site of the performer's activity in
the 15th/16th c.), there seems to be resistance to the idea, best
described by Olivier B.

>The "causa pulchritudinis" is a matter of taste. It means that each 16th
>c. cappella probably had its own approach of this type of musica ficta.
>Adding sharp notes belongs to ornamentation. IMO, there were never
>universal rules in this domain, but only varied styles.

>many editors claim to choose definitively *the* right solution. They

>try to distinguish, behind the sources, the "original" meaning of the
>composer. Concerning pre-1500 Mass music, I would argue that

>there is *no* original solution : composing his Missa Gaudeamus,
>Josquin, as composer, had probably precise ideas neither about
>underlay nor about ficta. He left that to the appreciation and to
>the taste of his singers.

Some of the cautionary aspects of Olivier's viewpoint are reasonable.
But I doubt that accidental usage varied as widely then as does now. If

it did there would have been little sense of a particular *sound* to this
music, and therefore little relationship between what went on in a
composer's mind of those days versus now. The abstract notion of
Renaissance counterpoint is most likely our own problem, not their's. My
view on the matter is that cadences were inflected throughout this
period, and that composers such as Josquin were fully aware that this
would occur, and wrote their music with that understanding in mind. The
theorists speak of such inflections (albeit in their own coded language),
the intabulations are quite generous with such inflections, and, for the
most part, the music "allows" them and implies that such cadential
inflections were a regular feature of performance. So what's the problem?
Problems:
1) What exactly is a cadence? - A cadence is a place of relative
repose, one that a singer would recognize as such. The ones we expect
singers to mark with inflections have the 6th to 8ve 2-voice framework (or
3rd to unison). Look at all those "V-I" cadences in Dufay, Josquin and
even Palestrina, and you will see that 2-voice framework; it is remarkable
how consistent composers were in this regard. In a no-flat context, the
cadences to the pitches D, G, and A would require performers' accidentals
in order to conform to the ideal of the *major* 6th moving stepwise to the
8ve, or *minor* 3rd to unison. If the singer can recognize that the
cadence is occurring, then he could inflect. Typical features composers
used at cadences were 1) rests after the close, 2) suspensions marking the
approach to the 6th (or 3rd), and 3) elaborations like the 7-7-6 figure
(the so-called 'Landini' or 'Burgundian' cadence, very common in Josquin).
We can be sure that singers would recognize and therefore inflect cadences
that had at least some of these features. For other weaker cadences, it
depended on the singer's awareness of the cadential event, or even simply
his whim. But this is not the same as claiming that there were "no
universal rules in this domain," or "no precise ideas in the composer's
head about ficta." That's our problem, not their's (IMHO).
2) What happens when the cadence is "obstructed" by another voice?
Given the perspective outlined above--that the individual singer on his
own line was responsible for the inflection, most typically the one
moving up to the cadence pitch ("7-8")--things that happen after the
decision to inflect the cadence cannot be considered "obstructions."
Thus, deceptive cadential moves in other voices are immaterial; if the 2v
framework is intact, the cadence may be inflected. Similarly, pitches
coinciding with the inflected tone should not be considered to be an
obstruction. From the perspective of the singer, these other pitches are
merely colorful elaborations of the event, the marking of the cadence
with the inflected pitch; in fact, cadential clashes most often occur
after the decision of whether to inflect or not has already been made.
In Tallis and Byrd, we accept these cross-relations as the "English
clash." But in Franco-flemish music, the so-called "rules of musica
ficta"--especially the one labelled most often as "mi-contra-fa"--have
prevented us from believing the harmonic results of cadential
accidentals. The assembly, and particularly the *ordering* of these
rules, is a modern invention; but that's a topic for another day.

So I basically believe that non-notated inflections were common,
and that they sometimes caused clashes to occur. Some examples may help
show what I have in mind. The Tallis Scholars, in their 1983 recording
of a Palestrina mass, included the model for the mass, the motet Nigra
sum by Jean Lheritier (c.1480-c.1552). The work has many cadences on the
pitch D, where the application of the subsemitone C# is often obstructed
by C-naturals in a lower voice. The editor of the modern edition of
Lheritier, in line with modern practice, had carefully avoided these
clashes by not supplying editorial accidentals to these cadences. The
Tallis Scholars, however, ignored the editorial suggestions and did what
comes naturally to a choir steeped in music by Tallis and Byrd: they
inflected the cadences, and thus produced clashes at the cadences. The
results were marvelous and convincing. Furthermore, their decision
brought out an interesting contrast between the Franco-flemish motet and
the Palestrina mass based upon it. Palestrina had avoided every one of
Lheritier's clashes when they came up in his parody, by *rewriting the
counterpoint*. The Italian reception of Franco-flemish style altered a
few things.

Unfortunately, the Tallis Scholars turned away from this bold but
logical approach when they got to Clemens (1987) and Josquin (1986).
They tried the opposite approach, denying cadential accidentals
entirely. The result is a monotonous "modal" coloring for the Josquin
masses Pange lingua, La sol fa re mi, and L'homme arme sexti toni. Only
in the Missa l'homme arme super voces musicales did they relent and allow
cadential accidentals, probably in order to ensure that the piece had a
chance to establish the pitch D as a final (the CF moves about). What
made the Tallis Scholars decide to hyper-modalize Josquin is obscure to
me. There are very few cadential clashes in Josquin; it mostly happens
in the next generation. The most celebrated one is at the end of the
first section of the sexti toni L'homme arme mass, and, following Jeremy
Noble's Josquin Choir recording, the TS sang that clash!

That is not to say that there are no cross-relations in Josquin;
they are everywhere, and would be a recognized aspect of Franco-Flemish
style were it not for the heavy intervention of editors. Most often
these cross-relations are in contiguous harmonies, not often
simultaneous. Note the end of the Kyrie in L'homme arme sexti toni (m.
71); the Tallis Scholars do it *right*, despite Smijers' having missed
the point of this cadence.
I am particularly interested in the simultaneous clashes, not
because they are so characteristic, but because they might help us throw
off the yoke of that absurd mi-contra-fa "ficta" rule. It's a fine
counterpoint rule, but is it meant for singers to adjust while reading
from notation? That's for another day. Note the following passages:
they are not "impossible", they are simultaneous cross-relations.
Ockeghem: Missa L'homme arme AD III (m. 125)
Ockeghem: Missa Fors Seulement KY (mm. 24 & 65)
Josquin: Credo De tous bien playne end (m. 198)
Josquin: Missa Malheur me bat Credo end (mm. 211 & 214-5, contiguous)
Josquin: Missa L'ami baudechon, AD I (m. 12)
Josquin: Missa De beata Virgine--Christe end (m. 59)
--Gloria (mm. 121, 243)
--Credo 1st part (mm. 36 &44; slight)
2nd part end (m. 158)
and while we are it, the Gaudeamus mass that started this thread has an
interesting problem once pointed out by Jeremy Noble. It relates to the
"una nota" rule, and forces the question of diminished 5ths in Josquin.
See the end of the ADIII, mm. 129 & 131.

If you come upon some others, would you be willing to send them
my way? I'm collecting; I'll publish them sometime. Thanks.

--Peter Urquhart <peter.u...@unh.edu>, who is trying to write a book
on this sore subject, and directs Capella Alamire in his spare time.

[John Howell]

Peter Urquhart <peter.u...@unh.edu> writes, lucidly and knowledgeably:

>My
>view on the matter is that cadences were inflected throughout this
>period, and that composers such as Josquin were fully aware that this
>would occur, and wrote their music with that understanding in mind. The
>theorists speak of such inflections (albeit in their own coded language),
>the intabulations are quite generous with such inflections, and, for the
>most part, the music "allows" them and implies that such cadential
>inflections were a regular feature of performance.

Two small points. Of course the composers knew their singers and what they
would do! But they also controlled the music. Josquin is perfectly
capable of going for three entire pages (in a modern edition) without ever
ALLOWING a cadence to occur. DuFay similarly controlled his cadences. (It
is instructive to see what he did in the four sectins of "Nuper rosarum
flores-Terribilis est locus iste.") The cadences simply didn't happen
unless the composer wanted them to happen.

Secondly, there is always a heirarchy of cadences. (This is not my idea.
I was first exposed to it at Stanford from George Houle, and perhaps Putnam
Aldrich before him, and it comes from the theorists themselves.) Some
cadences are more "candential" than others, and it is what the other voices
are doing that controls that, as Peter pointed out in detail. Some
function as "passing" cadences, some sound like they will be cadences but
they are avoided, and some are strongly prepared and mark major structural
points in the music. In Josquin's generation the strongest, most final
cadences were still, for the most part, open 5ths. Later on, composers
used thirds in their final cadences, but they were turned into major
thirds. (The 18th century "Piccardy third" was, in reality, a holdover
from 16th century "cause pulchritudina.")

I look forward to Peter's book!

[Duff Kennedy]

On Sat, 4 May 1996, Laura E Conrad wrote:

> I believe,
> and I think most modern editions concur, that the editor's ficta
> decisions should be distinguished notationally from the composer's
> accidentals.

Ficta is printed above the note, out of the staff, just so you'll know
it's editorial.

Surely the original poster didn't mean s/he intended to make ficta
indistinguishable from whatever sharps/flats may be in the original!?

Duff-

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Duff Kennedy, Ph.D.
Chapman University

[Olivier Bettens]

At 11:32 4.05.96 -0400, Peter Urquhart wrote:

> I am particularly interested in the simultaneous clashes, not
>because they are so characteristic, but because they might help us throw

>off the yoke of that absurd mi-contra-fa "ficta" rule. [...]

> If you come upon some others, would you be willing to send them
>my way? I'm collecting; I'll publish them sometime. Thanks.
>

My first contact with this type of clash was singing Janequin's "Le chant
des oiseaux" from the partbooks with some friends many years ago (I was
still beardless...). On the words "Le dieu d'amour vous sonne", there is a
fine example (b flat signature):

Super. : c' b a g
Contra : a g f(#) g
Tenor : f g d f e-flat d
Bassus : - - - G G G G

This music is repeated two or three times on other words.

In the same piece, there is another clash (c-c#) on "destoupez vos oreilles"
("unblock your ears!"-Is it an incitement to hear the clash?!), also
repeated on other words.

I remember that we spontaneously sang the clashes, and that we became aware
of them only after some performances. So, we had a lively discussion and
finally decided to keep them.

One interesting thing : the above citation is taken from the 1528
Attaignant's printing. The same publisher gives in 1537 an a shortened
version of this chanson where the former clash is consciously "corrected",
the Tenor becoming : f g d c e-flat d (2 occurrences). The c-c#
clash is also removed from this bowdlerized version. I don't know whether
Janequin himself revised his work, or whether it's an "editorial digest".
Anyway, this change seems to show that such clashes were problematic for
certain performers in the 16th c. Note also that a 3-voices setting of the
same chanson by N. Gombert, printed in 1545 by Susato, keeps the original clash.

This piece also provides interesting examples of successive (or intermixed)
2-voices cadences at various pitches ("A ce premier jour de mai"). But what
to do when exactly the same melodical phrase of the superius, ended by : d'
c' d' is repeated, the first time in a 6th to 8ve framework and the second
time without it?

++++

In the same posting, Peter also wrote, replying to one of my remarks:

>We can be sure that singers would recognize and therefore inflect cadences
>that had at least some of these features. For other weaker cadences, it
>depended on the singer's awareness of the cadential event, or even simply
>his whim. But this is not the same as claiming that there were "no
>universal rules in this domain," or "no precise ideas in the composer's
>head about ficta." That's our problem, not their's (IMHO).

In my enthusiasm to give the problems of musica ficta and underlay back to
the performers, I adopted (rhetorically) a radical point. I fully accept
Peter's more qualified opinion about ficta (concerning text underlay, it
would probably be hard to find an equivalent consistance for pre-1500 music).

>Some of the cautionary aspects of Olivier's viewpoint are reasonable.
>But I doubt that accidental usage varied as widely then as does now. If
>it did there would have been little sense of a particular *sound* to this
>music, and therefore little relationship between what went on in a
>composer's mind of those days versus now. The abstract notion of
>Renaissance counterpoint is most likely our own problem, not their's.

One of *our problems* is that we are unable to know the implicite rules that
the singer of that time inevitably used, as instinctively. This is of course
a strong argument for considering as restricted the variability of the
practice of musica ficta.

But we have another problem : we are widely unaware of *our* own implicite
rules. Behind the apparent diversity of modern editions and performances, we
probably all share (as 20th c. people with a certain musical background and
an HIP perspective) a feeling of what is (or should be) the particular
*sound* of renaissance music. This feeling could leads us to more or less
consciously avoid certain solutions (as exaggeratedly "tonal" or, inversely,
too "modal") which wouldn't have been avoided by 16th c. performers; for
them, this "modal"-"tonal" dichotomy didn't exist: they had not to
distinguish between renaissance music and other styles... This could be an
argument for admitting that the range of variability was perhaps more wide
than we imagine it.

Anyway, it's absolutely impossible, I believe, to quantify precisely this
range of variability, which on the other hand was not constant: for example,
the appearance of printed editions, with a more wide (and less controled)
diffusion of the written sources, probably favoured the flowering of
atypical performing behaviours, whereas, when a manuscript piece remained in
the repertory of a small nomber of "cappella", the stability of its
performance was surely better.

[Richard St. Clair]

Duff Kennedy wrote:
>On Sat, 4 May 1996, Laura E Conrad wrote:
>> I believe,
>> and I think most modern editions concur, that the editor's ficta
>> decisions should be distinguished notationally from the composer's
>> accidentals.

>Ficta is printed above the note, out of the staff, just so you'll know
>it's editorial.

Such is the convention in editions with any degree of scholarly responsibility.

>Surely the original poster didn't mean s/he intended to make ficta
>indistinguishable from whatever sharps/flats may be in the original!?

There are problems which go beyond this convention. For example,
cautionary accidentals. There are often reiterations of an accidentalized
note with one or two notes intervening in the original source, but without
a new accidental. Did the composer mean to undo the accidental so quickly or
was there some sense that an added accidental carried for some length,
however brief, after its application? Does this fall in the category of
'ficta' or 'cautionary accidentals'? Of course, it is all contextual, so it
probably can't be boiled down to a rule or a principle - but it begs an
interesting question. And are these to be notated as ficta or as cautionary
accidentals?

Richard

[Richard St. Clair]

Peter Urquhart wrote:

....much fine material skipped to get to this:

> So I basically believe that non-notated inflections were common,
>and that they sometimes caused clashes to occur. Some examples may help
>show what I have in mind. The Tallis Scholars, in their 1983 recording
>of a Palestrina mass, included the model for the mass, the motet Nigra
>sum by Jean Lheritier (c.1480-c.1552). The work has many cadences on the
>pitch D, where the application of the subsemitone C# is often obstructed
>by C-naturals in a lower voice. The editor of the modern edition of
>Lheritier, in line with modern practice, had carefully avoided these
>clashes by not supplying editorial accidentals to these cadences. The
>Tallis Scholars, however, ignored the editorial suggestions and did what
>comes naturally to a choir steeped in music by Tallis and Byrd: they
>inflected the cadences, and thus produced clashes at the cadences.

One hears this clash in Wylkynson and others in the Eton Choirbook.
But what interests me is the precedent for this in the Burgundian school -
note the two 'signatures' in Dufay's Missa L'Homme Arme, in which there
are *notated* clashes of b-natural and b-flat throughout. I think Faugues'
Missa L'homme Arme has the same technique (I'll check that). In other
words, I doubt that the Franco-flemish composers would have winced
at all over such clashes.

There was a time in my transcribing past that I sought out opportunities for
such clashes but thought that it was too wild or perverse. I'm glad to see
these issues being discussed openly here. The ficta problem is a daunting
one for the Josquin M. Gaudeamus which I'm preparing.

>The results were marvelous and convincing. Furthermore, their decision
>brought out an interesting contrast between the Franco-flemish motet and
>the Palestrina mass based upon it. Palestrina had avoided every one of
>Lheritier's clashes when they came up in his parody, by *rewriting the
>counterpoint*. The Italian reception of Franco-flemish style altered a
>few things.

Agreed on the last sentence in particular. The Italians of the 1st half of
the 16th century at least seemed to have a more diatonic palette than the
Franco-flemish composers - which accounts (in my mind) for the
conservatism of Palestrina. This is not to say that the Italians weren't chromatic.
Willaert's Italian contemporaries (and his slightly younger Italian students)
were a lot more adventurous with chromatic harmony than he was. But again,
their chromaticism is more harmonically felt than the Franco-flemings.
The same can be said for later French composers like Claude Le Jeune,
whose chromaticism is clearly harmonically conceived (albeit linear in
consequence). The chromatic concept of the Flemish school has a premiere
example in Willaert's famous "Quidnam ebrietas" motet in which one of
the lines passes through the 'circle of fifths' chromatically using ficta - the
only way to realize this line.

One can see the effects of the Flemish/Italian synergy (so to speak) in
the transition in the work of Willaert, a leading F-F composer
who, as a mature composer, took over the cappella at San Marco in Venice
in 1527 and stayed there until his death in 1562. In Italy, he became musically
acclimated (probably climatically as well <g>) and his music becomes
perceivably warmer and less chromatic. Also, in some sense, less interesting.
He preserved his penchant for studied counterpoint a la the Flemings, but
he seems to have lost something in the process. The Counter-Reformation
climate may have also forced a number of changes in his (and others')
style as well.

> Unfortunately, the Tallis Scholars turned away from this bold but
>logical approach when they got to Clemens (1987) and Josquin (1986).
>They tried the opposite approach, denying cadential accidentals
>entirely. The result is a monotonous "modal" coloring for the Josquin

Many of the Planchart Capella Cordina performances suffer from this
same monotony...

>masses Pange lingua, La sol fa re mi, and L'homme arme sexti toni....

>There are very few cadential clashes in Josquin; it mostly happens
>in the next generation. The most celebrated one is at the end of the
>first section of the sexti toni L'homme arme mass, and, following Jeremy
>Noble's Josquin Choir recording, the TS sang that clash!
>
> That is not to say that there are no cross-relations in Josquin;

I am finding a surprising number of these clashes in M. Gaudeamus,
mostly contiguous but quite strong.

>they are everywhere, and would be a recognized aspect of Franco-Flemish
>style were it not for the heavy intervention of editors.

Agreed.

> Most often
>these cross-relations are in contiguous harmonies, not often
>simultaneous. Note the end of the Kyrie in L'homme arme sexti toni (m.
>71); the Tallis Scholars do it *right*, despite Smijers' having missed
>the point of this cadence.

<nodding>

> I am particularly interested in the simultaneous clashes, not
>because they are so characteristic, but because they might help us throw
>off the yoke of that absurd mi-contra-fa "ficta" rule.

Emphatically agreed.

> It's a fine
>counterpoint rule, but is it meant for singers to adjust while reading
>from notation? That's for another day.

<quietly chuckling>

> Note the following passages:
>they are not "impossible", they are simultaneous cross-relations.
> Ockeghem: Missa L'homme arme AD III (m. 125)
> Ockeghem: Missa Fors Seulement KY (mm. 24 & 65)
> Josquin: Credo De tous bien playne end (m. 198)
> Josquin: Missa Malheur me bat Credo end (mm. 211 & 214-5, contiguous)
> Josquin: Missa L'ami baudechon, AD I (m. 12)
> Josquin: Missa De beata Virgine--Christe end (m. 59)
> --Gloria (mm. 121, 243)
> --Credo 1st part (mm. 36 &44; slight)
> 2nd part end (m. 158)
>and while we are it, the Gaudeamus mass that started this thread has an
>interesting problem once pointed out by Jeremy Noble. It relates to the
>"una nota" rule, and forces the question of diminished 5ths in Josquin.
>See the end of the ADIII, mm. 129 & 131.
>
> If you come upon some others, would you be willing to send them
>my way? I'm collecting; I'll publish them sometime.

I'm working on it!

> Thanks.
>
>--Peter Urquhart

Thank you for this erudite post!

Richard St. Clair

[Richard St. Clair]

Olivier Bettens wrote:
>Richard St. Clair wrote:
>>The renaissance composers *did* think harmonically - they had to..

>>the music shows a keen sense of vertical as well as linear organization,
>>and some composers are more effective at it than others.

>They certainly had a more or less developped *feeling* of what we mean today
>by *harmony*. But they lack of the most elementary tools to *think*
>harmonically.

I disagree. The most elementary tools, in my mind,* include* a 'feeling'
for harmony as well as the instinct to build triads and other vertical sonorities
for expressive effect. In the tutorship of budding composers, I am sure there
must have been orally communicated 'rules of thumb' as part of the 'secret
guild' of composers. I think theorists would have articulated those tools
if they felt it was important enough. They weren't interested in elaborating
harmony to the extent that later renaissance and especially early baroque
composers did, so there was no need for a dedicated harmonic 'technology'
at that time. Common practice elements rarely need explaining. As music became
more complicated harmonically, the technology arose to meet it.

>In particular, a concept so simple and so evident (for us) as
>that of *chord* was unknown to them.

I find that difficult to believe. So much of the music, quantitatively, is
structured using triads. But in the absense of 'keys' or of much harmonic
motion in any direction away from the mode in use, the harmonies were
so self-evident as not to require conceptualization in a treatise, for example.
Those needs were met through musica ficta.

>Concerning V-I cadences : I agree that, already in Dufay (probably before),
>we can find patterns that we today analyze as V-I perfect cadences. The
>question remains to know whether, in such patterns, the "third upon the
>dominant" has systematically to be inflected or whether it may be a matter
>of taste. To my knowledge, there is no definitive answer!

I agree, but whenever the music is performed, there must be answers
of one kind or another.

>Olivier Bettens

Richard St. Clair

[Olivier Bettens]

At 20:25 6.05.96 GMT, Richard St. Clair wrote:

>Olivier Bettens wrote:
>>They certainly had a more or less developped *feeling* of what we mean today
>>by *harmony*. But they lack of the most elementary tools to *think*
>>harmonically.
>
>I disagree. The most elementary tools, in my mind,* include* a 'feeling'
>for harmony as well as the instinct to build triads and other vertical
sonorities
>for expressive effect.

I believe we disagree about the meaning of the word "to think". For me,
"thinking" (Fr. "penser") implies a high degree of formalization that
requires almost inevitably the participation of a language. What I cannot
*name* (or at least *describe*) belongs for me to the *feeling* (Fr.
"sentir"). I admit that this distinction is perhaps not universal...

On the other hand, we should be careful considering expressions as "to build
triads... for expressive effect". IMO, it makes little sense in the context
of Josquin-Palestrina. What does express a sequence of triads, even with
some cadential dissonances ? I wouldn't claim that renaissance music is
basically and absolutely inexpressive, but it seems to me that 16th c.
composers had not the same image of themselves and of their work as romantic
composers, for whom the expression (of sentiments) was a primordial need and
objective.

>In the tutorship of budding composers, I am sure there
>must have been orally communicated 'rules of thumb' as part of the 'secret
>guild' of composers. I think theorists would have articulated those tools

>if they felt it was important enough. [...]

The training of novice composers had two sides : theoretical and practical.
In their practical training, their were immersed in music, by singing,
copying their parts, imitating the accomplished composers : they learned
music as a mother tongue, with no (or very few) formalization. In their
theoretical trainig (which was complementary), they learned the same
concepts and rules as we today find in early theoretical treatises. I
believe they *really* learned solmization with the Guidonian "manus" and
counterpoint with the complex set of rules that we know from the treatises.
This theoretical background (added to intuitive practice) was IMO sufficient
to allow them to write the music that they wrote. Postulating that occult
"harmonical" rules circulated is, I believe, gratuitous and even misleading:
this blurs our comprehension of this music by projecting on it irrelevant
concepts.

>
>>In particular, a concept so simple and so evident (for us) as
>>that of *chord* was unknown to them.
>
>I find that difficult to believe. So much of the music, quantitatively, is

>structured using triads. [...]

It's extremely easy to build a coherent serie of "triads" without using the
concept of "chord". Take a strict faux-bourdon, add to it contrapuntally a
bass voice, keep sometimes the parallel third, sometimes the parallel sixth
and modify (contrapuntally) the remaining voice to avoid the parallel fourth
: you will get your sequence of triads.

I would bet that novice musicians used analogous tricks to produce coherent
compositions.

[Richard St. Clair]

Peter Urquhart wrote:
[much eloquent detail deleted]

> I am particularly interested in the simultaneous clashes, not
>because they are so characteristic, but because they might help us throw
>off the yoke of that absurd mi-contra-fa "ficta" rule. It's a fine
>counterpoint rule, but is it meant for singers to adjust while reading

>from notation?... [examples deleted]

>and while we are it, the Gaudeamus mass that started this thread has an
>interesting problem once pointed out by Jeremy Noble. It relates to the
>"una nota" rule, and forces the question of diminished 5ths in Josquin.
>See the end of the ADIII, mm. 129 & 131.

I gave that passage a close look today. The problem is not merely 'una nota
super la' but also the fact that the 'nota' in question is also the fourth note
of the Gaudeamus chant (which opens with the following ascending intervals:
M2-P5-m2), which - in the transposition in question - *must*
be a b-flat, rendering a vertical diminished 5th inevitable. Not that there aren't
major-6th leaps in M. Gaudeamus - there are, but they don't invite
ficta (not the ones I'm thinking of) either as cadence elements or as
'fa above la'.

Maybe Josquin was forcing the dim.5th in the 'dona nobis pacem' as a
subtle text-painting to suggest that 'pax' is a bitterly elusive commodity.
It is quite a shocker to *my* ear, at any rate.

Richard St. Clair

[Richard St. Clair]

Olivier Bettens wrote:
> Richard St. Clair wrote (on renaissance harmonic 'technique'):

>>The most elementary tools, in my mind,* include* a 'feeling'
>>for harmony as well as the instinct to build triads and other vertical
>>sonorities for expressive effect.

>I believe we disagree about the meaning of the word "to think". For me,
>"thinking" (Fr. "penser") implies a high degree of formalization that
>requires almost inevitably the participation of a language. What I cannot
>*name* (or at least *describe*) belongs for me to the *feeling* (Fr.
>"sentir"). I admit that this distinction is perhaps not universal...

To my 'thinking', this falls under the 'right brain/left brain' rubric. One
side of the brain is cognitive and the other is intuitive. To me it is all
'mind.' Sometimes the results of the intuitive mind appear to be the
results of cognition, so there must be an interface somewhere. Anyway,
this is very hard to pin down. What you are stressing (I have snipped it
out only because I don't want to get into it right now) is the elements of
training of musicians and composers judging from the accounts left to
us by the extant works of then-contemporary theorists. As a composer
who has passed through academia, I can vouch for the limited value of
rules - and recall the age-old maxim for artists: "Learn all the rules, then
break them." (or reject them, whatever...)

As an analogy in our own century, the treatises/explinations on 12-tone
music in our own time merely give basic principles - and localized
applications through looking at selected examples - on how to construct
music using tone-rows - but the composer defines how that construction
takes place (a cognitive process which cannot be unerringly deduced from
the music and assuredly cannot be attributed to rule-books).

I guess my point is this: the absence of treatises and rulebooks from the
renaissance dealing with harmonic concepts does not mean that the
decisions composers made about harmony were not cognitive decisions.
Merely that there was not apparent need for pinning those technical issues
down, owing to the relatively simple harmonic framework in use at that time.
This is all my opinion, of course. :)

Richard

Richard St. Clair http://web.mit.edu/stclair/www/

[ECrownfiel]

Thank you, Olivier, for such a cogent response to the "harmonic" can of
worms! You made most of the points I was thinking of. I'd just like to
add a couple of things:

Richard, you'd be surprised at how late our "modern" conception of chordal
harmony is FULLY developed. I once wrote a graduate paper on Brossard's
_Dictionnaire_ of 1703 and, in reading through the whole _Dictionnaire_,
was surprised to find how much modal language still lingered, how little
of our familiar harmonic vocabulary was present, and how much Brossard had
to beat around the bush to explain concepts that we would sum up in a word
or two today. At the same time he was quite forward-looking in a lot of
his theoretical language, and anticipated Rameau in certain observations
concerning triads. (It's been a few years and I can't remember all the
details.) My point here is that even by 1703, when we think of music as
being fully tonal, its own practitioners did not. Older ways of thinking
were much more pervasive and long-lasting, and much less familiar to us
today, than we give them credit for.

Moving back into the Renaissance, I think you are thinking of "harmony"
and "chords" as identifiable, definable entities in a way that doesn't
reflect the real thinking of the period. Certainly Ren composers thought
about the sounds their voices would make when sung together. It does NOT
follow that you can call these sounds "chords" or "triads," still less
that you can apply any or all of the theoretical apparatus designed for
later periods. Nor can you lump all Ren composers together and say that
"they" thought this or that. Some composers were much more interested
than others in what we might call harmonic considerations, but even so
this interest manifested itself in ways that are quite unfamiliar today.
The same is true of the theorists of the period.

Part of the problem is the way both music and theory were studied till
recently: one attempted to find the "origin" or "invention" of some modern
notion like tonality. This led to a very distorted view of musical
thinking, in which a concept like, say, a triad would be tracked down in
search of its earliest reference but never examined to see if it was a
single "thing" at all. Thus, Zarlino is sometimes credited with
discovering or inventing the triad as a theoretical concept, but his whole
harmonic theory is all about number and proportion, not at all about the
kind of "harmony" that is taught in schools today. His remarks on triads
only make sense in _his_ context and do not imply _any_ of the later
theories of harmony.

Similarly, Z is sometimes quoted as saying that the bass is the foundation
of the harmony, and so he does--in the context of a comparison between the
4 voices of a piece and the 4 elements. Having compared the bass to
Earth, he goes on to define the tenor in terms of Water, the alto Air, and
the superius Fire. He describes each voice as having the characteristics
of its corresponding element, so that while the bass is the foundation,
the superius is the lightest and most mobile and fiery, etc. Yet people
have often quoted his comments on the bass and left out all the rest, and
claimed that he had "discovered" the "truth" that the bass must be the
foundation of the harmony.

Interestingly enough, a half century later Campion does repeat Z's bass
metaphor without the other elements. By this time quite a lot had changed
and Campion was much closer to our idea of chords as abstract entities,
though many differences still remained. So these concepts are changing
all the time. What they don't do is emerge fully armed from anyone's head
and then march on through history as one big unalterable lump.

I just think we need to be very suspicious of assumptions about how
composers "must have" thought. It's a subject that has fascinated me for
a long time, so please forgive me if I've become a bit forceful and more
than a bit long.

Elizabeth Crownfield

In article <1996050809...@worldcom.ch>, obet...@WORLDCOM.CH
(Olivier Bettens) writes:

>At 20:25 6.05.96 GMT, Richard St. Clair wrote:
>>Olivier Bettens wrote:
>>>They certainly had a more or less developped *feeling* of what we mean
>today
>>>by *harmony*. But they lack of the most elementary tools to *think*
>>>harmonically.
>>

>>I disagree. The most elementary tools, in my mind,* include* a 'feeling'

>>for harmony as well as the instinct to build triads and other vertical
>sonorities
>>for expressive effect.
>
>I believe we disagree about the meaning of the word "to think". For me,
>"thinking" (Fr. "penser") implies a high degree of formalization that
>requires almost inevitably the participation of a language. What I cannot
>*name* (or at least *describe*) belongs for me to the *feeling* (Fr.
>"sentir"). I admit that this distinction is perhaps not universal...
>

[snip]
>
>>[RSC:] In the tutorship of budding composers, I am sure there

>>must have been orally communicated 'rules of thumb' as part of the
'secret
>>guild' of composers. I think theorists would have articulated those
tools
>>if they felt it was important enough. [...]
>

>[OB:] The training of novice composers had two sides : theoretical and

[Richard St. Clair]

Elizabeth Crownfiel wrote:
>Richard, you'd be surprised at how late our "modern" conception of chordal
>harmony is FULLY developed.

You are redefining the discussion. I wasn't imposing a 'modern' conception
of chordal harmony upon renaissance music or its composers. I merely
point out that they were aware - in fact, sensitively and *acutely* aware -
of building vertical sonorities which in recent centuries we have called
triads. Looking through the music of the renaissance masters one is (well,
*I* am) struck by the total mastery of these great geniuses. They didn't
leave anything out, including an acute sense of vertical organization of
pitches - as a matter of fact, their sense of vertical spacing shows great
instinctive feel for what sounds good in 'harmony' as we now call it.
The fact that they did not have our 'modern' name for these 'chordal'
entities does not mean that they did not use them. In fact, the best composers
of this time (and they are legion!) have a particularly wondrous feel for
the vertical, both item by item *and* in 'progressions'.

> I once wrote a graduate paper on Brossard's
>_Dictionnaire_ of 1703 and, in reading through the whole _Dictionnaire_,
>was surprised to find how much modal language still lingered, how little
>of our familiar harmonic vocabulary was present, and how much Brossard had
>to beat around the bush to explain concepts that we would sum up in a word
>or two today.

That is very interesting but drifts away from the topic here. You are quite
right, of course. Have you looked at Samuel Scheidt (e.g. Gorlitzer Tablaturbuch)
- very very modal music despite the 'Bach chorale' appearance of *some* of
it. And that is mid/late 17th c. I once did a study of the chorale in the 17th
and 18th centuries. Bach is one of the least modal composers (but he does
have his modalisms), and most of the other significant composers of chorales
are *much* more modal.

> My point here is that even by 1703, when we think of music as
>being fully tonal, its own practitioners did not.

Theory has a strange way of taking a long time to catch up with
practice, though. One can find completely 'tonal' (i.e., diatonic)
examples of music much earlier than 1703. And not all composers
are 'in vogue' - Alessandro Scarlatti was quite 'antique' in his approach
to composing a lot of his sacred music.

> Older ways of thinking
>were much more pervasive and long-lasting, and much less familiar to us
>today, than we give them credit for.

I know. We have so much music and music history between us and them
that the subtleties of the earlier systems get lost. We have lost a lot
of sensitivity around the so-called 'classical' and 'baroque' styles, too,
though probably not nearly quite as much as with the renaissance,
ars nova, and ars antiqua (in increasing degrees backward).

>Moving back into the Renaissance, I think you are thinking of "harmony"
>and "chords" as identifiable, definable entities in a way that doesn't
>reflect the real thinking of the period.

True, but that doesn't mean the analysis is not valid. I'm sure Beethoven
didn't think in terms of Schenker graphs when he wrote his music, but
Schenker's analyses have their own hindsight kind of validity.

> Certainly Ren composers thought
>about the sounds their voices would make when sung together.

Which is all I am really saying.

> It does NOT
>follow that you can call these sounds "chords" or "triads," still less
>that you can apply any or all of the theoretical apparatus designed for
>later periods.

I can call them triads, but everyone who knows about this music will know
that the appellation is retrospective and projective. That still doesn't make
it wrong - it is just anachronistic, but even anachronisms can be useful tools
of analysis. BTW, I'm not about to do a 'chordal I-IV-V-I'
style analysis of Josquin <g>. I'm just noticing that chords exist, even
though Josquin may not have had a name for them, or maybe he had
a word for it that the privileged guild of renaissance composers didn't let out
of the"shop".

> Nor can you lump all Ren composers together and say that
>"they" thought this or that. Some composers were much more interested
>than others in what we might call harmonic considerations, but even so
>this interest manifested itself in ways that are quite unfamiliar today.
>The same is true of the theorists of the period.

I believe I said very early on in this thread that some renaissance
composers were much more interested in vertical 'harmony' and
were more interesting (by that standard) than others. I don't believe
I ever lumped all renaissance composers together.

>Part of the problem is the way both music and theory were studied till
>recently: one attempted to find the "origin" or "invention" of some modern
>notion like tonality. This led to a very distorted view of musical
>thinking, in which a concept like, say, a triad would be tracked down in
>search of its earliest reference but never examined to see if it was a
>single "thing" at all.

I don't get what you mean by "a single 'thing'". However, up to that point
I agree. A seductive opportunity (to which many have fallen) is the use
of 14th-c English faburden or fauxbourdon 'chords' in parallel 'first inversion'.
It was really just a heterophonic embelllishment of the chant line, but people
educated in 19th and 20th-century academic music schools see chords.
We don't even know what their intonation system was back then - so it
may not even have sounded like 'chords'.

>Thus, Zarlino is sometimes credited with
>discovering or inventing the triad as a theoretical concept, but his whole
>harmonic theory is all about number and proportion, not at all about the
>kind of "harmony" that is taught in schools today. His remarks on triads
>only make sense in _his_ context and do not imply _any_ of the later
>theories of harmony.

Correct. I think, by 'harmony' he was referring to how elements of musical
composition work together. Anyway, he is just looking at 'chords' from
the bass up, not discussing how they progress and what 'weight' accrues
to certain 'chords' vis a vis others, which is what 'modern harmonic theory'
does. But his work does represent a nascent awareness of the vertical element
in music, which had become very important to composers of the middle
and latter 16th c.

>Similarly, Z is sometimes quoted as saying that the bass is the foundation
>of the harmony, and so he does--in the context of a comparison between the
>4 voices of a piece and the 4 elements. Having compared the bass to
>Earth, he goes on to define the tenor in terms of Water, the alto Air, and
>the superius Fire. He describes each voice as having the characteristics
>of its corresponding element, so that while the bass is the foundation,
>the superius is the lightest and most mobile and fiery, etc. Yet people
>have often quoted his comments on the bass and left out all the rest, and
>claimed that he had "discovered" the "truth" that the bass must be the
>foundation of the harmony.

It reflects a growing cognitive awareness of what composers did all along
instinctively.

>Interestingly enough, a half century later Campion does repeat Z's bass
>metaphor without the other elements. By this time quite a lot had changed
>and Campion was much closer to our idea of chords as abstract entities,
>though many differences still remained. So these concepts are changing
>all the time. What they don't do is emerge fully armed from anyone's head
>and then march on through history as one big unalterable lump.

Correct.

>I just think we need to be very suspicious of assumptions about how
>composers "must have" thought.

Heavens! I would *never* make such an assumption! As a composer,
it is hard enough for me to figure out how *I* think about my *own*
music!

> It's a subject that has fascinated me for
>a long time, so please forgive me if I've become a bit forceful and more
>than a bit long.

No problem. I can take it! I don't really want to go any further with this,
though, because I think we are spending too much time discussing
the history of concepts rather than the actual mechanics of music. I
realize that I am inevitably going to project a 20th-century perspective
upon *any* early music I look at, but that's only human. But it's a lot
more fun and interactive with the music than trying to understand what
Zarlino or Gaffurius or Glareanus *really* meant (which only leads to
another kind of projecting). <g>

Take care,
Richard

[ECrownfiel]

In article <4n8edm$a...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>, "Richard St. Clair"
<an23...@anon.penet.fi> writes:

>>[me:] Thus, Zarlino is sometimes credited with

>>discovering or inventing the triad as a theoretical concept, but his
whole
>>harmonic theory is all about number and proportion, not at all about the
>>kind of "harmony" that is taught in schools today. His remarks on
triads
>>only make sense in _his_ context and do not imply _any_ of the later
>>theories of harmony.
>
>Correct.
>

[snip]

>
>>Interestingly enough, a half century later Campion does repeat Z's bass
>>metaphor without the other elements. By this time quite a lot had
changed
>>and Campion was much closer to our idea of chords as abstract entities,
>>though many differences still remained. So these concepts are changing
>>all the time. What they don't do is emerge fully armed from anyone's
head
>>and then march on through history as one big unalterable lump.
>
>Correct.

Thank you; I realize it is correct. That was why I wrote it. Do you have
any idea how patronizing you sound?

I wrote a long response to your posting but then my computer was down for
a couple of days so I didn't get it sent; now I'll spare you most of it.

It all boils down to this: just because it walks like a duck doesn't mean
it quacks like one. You have to be extremely careful about equating
superficially similar concepts over long periods of time. Looking closely
at the history of a concept or phenomenon is not an empty academic
exercise but an essential part of working in early music.

Elizabeth Crownfield

[Richard St. Clair]

ecrow...@aol.com (ECrownfiel) wrote:
>In article <4n8edm$a...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>, "Richard St. Clair"
><an23...@anon.penet.fi> writes:

Richard St. Clair did NOT write this:
>>>[me:] Thus, Zarlino is sometimes credited with

>>>discovering or inventing the triad as a theoretical concept, but his whole
>>>harmonic theory is all about number and proportion, not at all about the
>>>kind of "harmony" that is taught in schools today. His remarks on triads
>>>only make sense in _his_ context and do not imply _any_ of the later
>>>theories of harmony.

he *did* write this,
>>Correct.
>>
>[snip]

Ah, that 'snip' conceals quite a lot: Unexpurgated, this is what I wrote:

"Correct. I think, by 'harmony' he was referring to how elements of musical
composition work together. Anyway, he is just looking at 'chords' from
the bass up, not discussing how they progress and what 'weight' accrues
to certain 'chords' vis a vis others, which is what 'modern harmonic theory'
does. But his work does represent a nascent awareness of the vertical element
in music, which had become very important to composers of the middle
and latter 16th c."

Richard St. Clair did *NOT* write this:

>>>Interestingly enough, a half century later Campion does repeat Z's bass
>>>metaphor without the other elements. By this time quite a lot had changed
>>>and Campion was much closer to our idea of chords as abstract entities,
>>>though many differences still remained. So these concepts are changing
>>>all the time. What they don't do is emerge fully armed from anyone's head
>>>and then march on through history as one big unalterable lump.

>>Correct.

>Thank you; I realize it is correct. That was why I wrote it. Do you have

>any idea how patronizing you sound?

Elizabeth. Dear Elizabeth. Goodness - After my extremely lengthy and
respectful reply to your interesting post, which I quote in full below
because you prefer to jump on a single word, you criticize me for what you
feel sounds patronizing.

I was agreeing with you, and expressed it with brevity in order to move
along to the next issue in my mind. If you feel that is patronizing, think again.

I respectfully submit that you have a very thin skin and don't cotton to people
with differences of personality that deviate much from yours. That's too bad.
And NO, I do not see my comments as patronizing. At all.

>I wrote a long response to your posting but then my computer was down for
>a couple of days so I didn't get it sent; now I'll spare you most of it.

>It all boils down to this: just because it walks like a duck doesn't mean
>it quacks like one.

Meaning what?

> You have to be extremely careful about equating
>superficially similar concepts over long periods of time.

You know, this really sounds presumptuous to me. AND patronizing!
How do you *know* what "concepts" really were 500 years ago, 400,
300, 200, or even 100?? You go by a few treatises and interpretations
of those treatises by musicologists of our era (note, musicologists - most of
whom are not composers and do not know what it is to "think like a composer").

I am not equating concepts, because I really don't claim to have any
privileged insights about those concepts. I just notice interesting relationships,
historical echoes, peculiarities that hit me in an interesting and exciting way.
If I see a 'chord' in Josquin, to me it is a chord. I don't know - does *anyone*
know (did Josquin?) what he thought about simultaneous vertical sounds?
Now if you want to pick this point to death, be my guest.

MY ENTIRE POINT is that Josquin is a consummate master of *all*
meaningful and relevant parameters of music. What he did not have a
literary grasp of, he had an intuitive grasp of. This is true of *ALL* great
composers. It doesn't take a musicologist's mind to write music - in fact,
the less encumbered by theory the more expressive and real the music tends
to be. Gustave Reese couldn't write music to save his soul. (He tried, too.)
People go into professional musicology largely because they can't write
music themselves. The musicologist's temptation is to put themselves above
the music, above the composer: *we* know what was going on in the
composer's mind, *we* know what was really going on in history. That's
a lot of hooey. Arrogant, presumptuous hooey. And don't tell me lots of
musicologists aren't guilty of it, because I know they are and so do you.

Now you've got me ranting. I know what I'm talking about. Music is about
*both* feeling *and* intellect. We have 2 brain hemispheres. Just because
one side of the brain is the rational/literal-minded one doesn't mean that it
makes all the decisions. It may just be that most of the important decisions
are made by the emotional side of the brain.

> Looking closely
>at the history of a concept or phenomenon is not an empty academic
>exercise but an essential part of working in early music.

Which is *precisely* what I have been doing and talking about - though
it doesn't fit *your* conception. Kindly have the courtesy to tolerate
(if not lovingly embrace) other viewpoints than your own, because it
just might be that you are occasionally wrong.

Richard St. Clair

[Michelle Dulak]

Richard St. Clair writes:

[snips]

>People go into professional musicology largely because they can't write
>music themselves. The musicologist's temptation is to put themselves above
>the music, above the composer: *we* know what was going on in the
>composer's mind, *we* know what was really going on in history. That's
>a lot of hooey. Arrogant, presumptuous hooey. And don't tell me lots of
>musicologists aren't guilty of it, because I know they are and so do you.

You know, I was really with you up 'til this paragraph. But..."people

go into professional musicology largely because they can't write music

themselves"? Richard, what on earth qualifies you to speculate about
my motives for doing the work that I do? How do you know whether I
(or any other musicologist) can or can't "write music"; whether I (or
any other musicologist) even *want[s]* to write music?. Maybe some of
us study the history of music because...we enjoy studying the history
of music. You might as well say that people who sing professionally do
so only because they don't know how to compose. (Or, for that matter,
that people who compose do so only because they aren't capable of
doing competent music-historical work...)

And you complain of others' "arrogance." Sheesh.

Michelle Dulak

[Leslie K. Valente]

<<Richard St. Clair writes:

[snips]

>People go into professional musicology largely because they can't write
>music themselves. >>

Gee and I thought they chose it because they love music so much that they
want to know EVERYTHING they can about it...

-leslie valente
Westchester County, NY

[Eyolf |strem]

Leslie K. Valente (Fores...@AOL.COM) wrote:
: <<Richard St. Clair writes:

: [snips]

: >People go into professional musicology largely because they can't write
: >music themselves. >>

: Gee and I thought they chose it because they love music so much that they
: want to know EVERYTHING they can about it...

That apparently shows how mistaken one can be (one or the other)

eyolf ostrem
musicolgist

[Gabe M. Wiener]

In article <4nqp8q$4...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>,

Richard St. Clair <an23...@anon.penet.fi> wrote:

> People go into professional musicology largely because they can't write
> music themselves.

What a stunningly ignorant and idiotic statement!

Where ever did you get the condescension to determine why anyone
chooses their field? Plenty of musicologists are very fine composers
and performers. How do you know that professional musicologists even
*want* to write music themselves?

--
Gabe Wiener Dir., PGM Early Music Recordings |"I am terrified at the thought
A Div. of Quintessential Sound, Inc., New York | that so much hideous and bad
Recording-Mastering-Restoration (212) 586-4200 | music may be put on records
ga...@pgm.com http://www.pgm.com | forever."--Sir Arthur Sullivan

[ECrownfiel]

I have responded privately to the personal aspects of Richard's post, but
I agree with Leslie and Michelle that the musicology part deserves public
rebuttal. I offer a personal perspective here not because this is about
me but because I am a typical musicologist in that I am unlike any other.

Speaking for myself, I'm neither a composer nor a failed composer. I'm
not even a failed performer. I chose musicology as an outlet for my
musical instincts because I have always been drawn to that unbridgeable
gap between music and words. In Richard's right/left brain formulation, I
have a profound experience of music that involves both sides of the brain,
and I want to find ways for those two sides to talk to each other.

By the same token, I am fascinated by earlier writings on music because
they address that same problem. I don't care about "theory" if "theory"
means some abstraction arbitrarily imposed on music by someone who is
neither practicing nor appreciating it. (Lest theorists start flaming me,
I don't really think that's what it is.) I do care about people who loved
music and wrote about it, especially in the Renaissance. I have a passion
for Renaissance music and I want to understand it more and more; I want to
know what it sounded like and how people thought about it and how they
came to write it the way they did. I'll never know all that; we can't.
But we can come, inch by inch, a little closer. That's what musicologists
do.

Some musicologists specialize in finding the music, transcribing it,
sorting out its authorship, problems of notation, and many other things.
Without them you wouldn't have the music to perform, or know how to
perform it, or be able to put it in any kind of historical context at all.
Others analyze it and try to understand how it "works." Others research
problems of performance practice; still others, the social or historical
context in which music was practiced. I read what people wrote about
music because for me it addresses many of these problems, and because I am
fascinated by the solutions people came up with to that impossible
question of how to put musical experience into words. There are many
paths in musicology, but most (if not quite all!) :) are followed by
people who love and understand music as well as any performer or composer.
(Really!)

As I've said before, I think it's partly that ugly word, "musicology/ist,"
that makes it so easy to dismiss us with a sneer. Judging by this
newsgroup, I hardly think we're more arrogant than some of the
non-musicologists I've seen! ;)

More seriously, I think it's very important to recognize that performers
and scholars bring two different, equally essential perspectives to bear
on the same subject. We shouldn't be having a contest between the two
groups to see whose side wins, but a fascinating conversation in which
each learns from and complements the other. At its best, that's just what
this newsgroup is.

Elizabeth Crownfield

[Peter Wilton]

In article <4nsguo$i...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, ECrownfiel
<ecrow...@aol.com> writes

>More seriously, I think it's very important to recognize that performers
>and scholars bring two different, equally essential perspectives to bear
>on the same subject. We shouldn't be having a contest between the two
>groups to see whose side wins, but a fascinating conversation in which
>each learns from and complements the other. At its best, that's just what
>this newsgroup is.

What has never ceased to amaze me, as one who dabbles in both worlds, is
that they often seem just that - worlds apart!
--
Peter Wilton

[Odhecaton_Z]

Richard,

Excuse me, but aren't many of those pesky lil' treatises from past ages
actually written by *composers* (i.e. Morley, Rameau, de Vitry, Vicentino,
Caccini, etc.)!?

Was Hindemith just "dabbling" in musicology and editing Monteverdi only
when his creativity was in a state of remission? Was Bartok engaged in
what we would now term ethno-musicology because he couldn't write music?
Come to think of it, even the great Palestrina musicologist Knud Jeppesen
was equally, if not *better* known during his lifetime in his native
Denmark as a *composer* than as a musicologist!

As someone who is primarily a composer, I find this suggestion that
musicologists are simply frustrated composers incredibly arrogant,
inaccurate, and reactionary.

Yes, there are inept musicologists who seem to go astray and focus on
everything *but* the music itself. Let's not forget, however, that there
are just as many inept composers (from the past and present) who couldn't
compose their way out of a paper bag. It is also a highly speculative
(if not downright spurious) claim to say that great composers from the past
*or* present have a grasp of "every" aspect of composition, even if it's
in an intuitive manner because a particular concept or concepts weren't
"invented" or "fleshed out" yet. Do you suppose Josquin had a grasp of
timbre in the way Debussy did (or Beethoven, for that matter), or rhythm the
way Carter does? He intuitively "understood" set theory? Combinatorial
tones? Interval vectors? How about concepts so "simple" as theme and
variation or development as we understand them? As Wayne and Garth say,
"Not!"

Just because someone was without a doubt a "master" composer in no way
means that they somehow had omnipotent knowledge of music. Do you?

Please let's be careful of who and what we knock and what we claim in a
knee-jerk manner.

Lansing McLoskey

[Leslie K. Valente]

Brava Elizabeth! As a performer, not a musicologist, I feel extremely
indebted to those scholars who delve further than I either can or am able to.
I OWE musicology...I never forget it!
-leslie

[Richard St. Clair]

ga...@pgm.com (Gabe M. Wiener) wrote:
>In article <4nqp8q$4...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>,

>Richard St. Clair <an23...@anon.penet.fi> wrote:
>
>> People go into professional musicology largely because they can't write
>> music themselves.
>

>What a stunningly ignorant and idiotic statement!

What a stunningly emotionalistic and nonresponsive statement!

>Where ever did you get the condescension to determine why anyone
>chooses their field?

Not really determining why they choose it - just that they seem to fall into
musicology by default. Seeing that doesn't take any condescension.

> Plenty of musicologists are very fine composers and performers.

I know of a few, and I acknowledged that in my post. Musicology is
a necessary evil. If we want music to be preserved or restored, we have
to rely upon the continuing profession of musicology. But it becomes a
thing unto itself, a kind of neo-idolatry where the rituals are more
important than the content. For those few musicologists who are
fine musicians and composers, I am thankful - for they enrich the
profession and keep it honest.

> How do you know that professional musicologists even
>*want* to write music themselves?

I rather imagine that most don't. Schnabel (that's Artur) felt that all
performers should at least try composing. Frankly, I think that should be
extended to musicologists. There is an interesting text (I have the workbook
but not the textbook) that is aimed at giving musicologists first-hand
experience at trying to compose in ancient styles and with ancient techniques,
including isorhythm, franconian notation, cantus firmus, canon, &c. That
should be a universal requirement. Unless a musicologists can compose
a passable isorhythmic motet, they should not be given an academic degree.
As it stands, musicologists, by and large, make up for their lack of
competency in this regard by a proportionate degree of arrogance and
presumptiousness about what music is, means, and does.

Oh, in case you think this is an unreasonable requirement for musicologists,
as a composition student I had to pass rigorous courses in music history
given by musicologists. Turnabout's fair play.

Richard

[Richard St. Clair]

Michelle Dulak wrote:
>Richard St. Clair writes:

>>People go into professional musicology largely because they can't write
>>music themselves. The musicologist's temptation is to put themselves above
>>the music, above the composer: *we* know what was going on in the
>>composer's mind, *we* know what was really going on in history. That's
>>a lot of hooey. Arrogant, presumptuous hooey. And don't tell me lots of
>>musicologists aren't guilty of it, because I know they are and so do you.

>You know, I was really with you up 'til this paragraph. But..."people

>go into professional musicology largely because they can't write music

>themselves"? Richard, what on earth qualifies you to speculate about
>my motives for doing the work that I do? How do you know whether I
>(or any other musicologist) can or can't "write music"; whether I (or
>any other musicologist) even *want[s]* to write music?.

The point is that musicological training doesn't *require* being able to learn
basic compositional skills. Well, maybe there are departments here and there
that *do* require it, but one can get a musicology degree on intellectual
achievement alone. In the field of music, that is well-nigh heresy. It
shouldn't be allowed, but somehow it is not seen objectionable that
musicologists can be dummies about composing if they so with - whereas
composers in music programs are *required* to pass music history
courses like everyone else. Please explain to me this discrepancy and I'll
reconsider your comment.

> Maybe some of
>us study the history of music because...we enjoy studying the history
>of music.

I don't mind that, but if you then get a PhD and become a music teacher
who teaches not only budding musicologists but also budding performers
and budding composers, is the preparation adequate if only founded on
intellectual and 'esthetic' expertise? I think not.

> You might as well say that people who sing professionally do
>so only because they don't know how to compose. (Or, for that matter,
>that people who compose do so only because they aren't capable of
>doing competent music-historical work...)

Well, musicologists *generally* get involved in their work because they
don't have a compellling desire or talent for composing or performing.
That's their business, of course, but I sure would hate to go through
academia again studying with idiots-savants-apparent who know everything
about the Winchester Troper and nothing about what it is to *write* a fugue
or ricercar or isorhythmic motet.

>And you complain of others' "arrogance." Sheesh.

It is a valid complaint. Being a musicologist, you understandably would
project upon it this way.

Richard

[Erling Sandmo]

I suggest that we leave this discussion. Richard's suggestion that
musicologists are what they are because they can't write their own music
(which becomes a slightly curious argument when he claims at the same time
that they have no wish to do so) is part of the age-old bashing of
intellectuals/academics: the "get-a-taste-of-real-life",
"why-should-we-pay-them-to-find-out-what-we-already-know" arguments that are
about as old as the university system itself. They have been hurled at
musicologists, literary critics, historicists, linguists, sociologists - you
name them. And they have bored more people to death than any known Bruckner
symphony - and are equally open to a sensible debate.

Who, by the way, do we have to thank for the EM revival? Composers?

Erling

[redrick]

Fores...@AOL.COM (Leslie K. Valente) wrote:

><<Richard St. Clair writes:
>
>>People go into professional musicology largely because they can't write

>>music themselves. >>
>
>Gee and I thought they chose it because they love music so much that they
>want to know EVERYTHING they can about it...
>

If you're talking about scholarly musicologists- all of them can
and most of them do write serious music. They just choose to
work academically in an area they love rather than writing movie
music or advertising jingles.

If you're talking about pop-musicologist-critic-pundits, these
are a mixed bag. A very few deserve the same credit as the above
scholars, but most not only couldn't write music- it is doubtful
if they can even read it.

Cheers, -Rick

--
red...@az.com
/ // /// ///// /////// /////////// ///////////// / // ///

[ECrownfiel]

In article <4ntdfa$s...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>, "Richard St. Clair"

<an23...@anon.penet.fi> writes:
>
>The point is that musicological training doesn't *require* being able to
>learn basic compositional skills.

Well, umm, yes it does. Where did you get that idea?

>Well, maybe there are departments here and there
>that *do* require it, but one can get a musicology degree on intellectual
>achievement alone.

You really shouldn't give people set-up lines like this. :) No . . I'll
leave it.

>In the field of music, that is well-nigh heresy. It
>shouldn't be allowed, but somehow it is not seen objectionable that
>musicologists can be dummies about composing if they so with - whereas
>composers in music programs are *required* to pass music history
>courses like everyone else. Please explain to me this discrepancy and
I'll
>reconsider your comment.

The real discrepancy is between your post and the facts. Every
musicologist I have ever met has taken courses in composition (me
included). I can't imagine where you got these inacurate horror stories.

>I don't mind that, but if you then get a PhD and become a music teacher
>who teaches not only budding musicologists but also budding performers
>and budding composers, is the preparation adequate if only founded on
>intellectual and 'esthetic' expertise? I think not.

Let me get this straight. I'm not proposing to teach composition or
performance. Are you seriously suggesting that being a musicologist
disqualifies me to teach music history, but being a composer would qualify
me to do so? This is really getting weird.

>Well, musicologists *generally* get involved in their work because they
>don't have a compellling desire or talent for composing or performing.

I'll ask again: who are these imaginary musicologists you keep describing?
Nobody I know. Show of hands: anybody here go into musicology because
they don't have a compelling desire or talent for composing or performing?
Not me; believe it or not, I did it 'cause I have a compelling desire
(and maybe even talent) for studying music history!

Richard, I just don't understand. Were you bitten by a musicologist when
you were a baby? Why are you so insistent on turning us into stage
villains twirling our mustaches and hissing? Try listening to what we
actually say about ourselves instead of making things up to suit your
prejudices. If you do, I for one promise to do the same for you. When
you don't, I'm afraid people find it hard to take you seriously.

Elizabeth Crownfield

[Richard St. Clair]

erling...@HI.UIO.NO (Erling Sandmo) wrote:

>Who, by the way, do we have to thank for the EM revival? Composers?

Yes - composers by the name of Machaut, Dufay, Josquin, Ockeghem,
Adam de la Halle...

[Richard St. Clair]

mclo...@HUSC.HARVARD.EDU (Odhecaton_Z) wrote:
>Richard,
>
>Excuse me, but aren't many of those pesky lil' treatises from past ages
>actually written by *composers* (i.e. Morley, Rameau, de Vitry, Vicentino,
>Caccini, etc.)!?

I already noted that. Some of them are pretty bizarre too - like Gaffurius.
BTW, most of them are 2nd-rate composers on a scale of 1 to 2 (1=masters,
2=others). Okay, Morley is great, if light-weight. But de Vitry is an
intellectual composer bound by rigid constructions. Vicentino is of little account.
Caccini, likewise. Rameau, very secondary talent. Tinctoris' Missa Trium
Vocum is a fine piece - I don't know his other music (I gather he didn't
write much - maybe too much academia! <g>).

Any treatises by first-rate med/ren composers? Name some.

A number of modern composers have taken to writing about music as well,
e.g. Sessions, Schoenberg, Piston. They should have kept writing music on
those 'bad hair days' that they felt obliged to squirt their theories into
the ether.

>Was Hindemith just "dabbling" in musicology and editing Monteverdi only
>when his creativity was in a state of remission?

Maybe, maybe not - who knows? Hindemith would have been better off *as* a
musicologist, IMO.

>Was Bartok engaged in
>what we would now term ethno-musicology because he couldn't write music?

He was having fun - and collecting fodder for his own music. What he
gathered, what he touched, he turned to gold. He was also exploring his
own ethnic roots. Very spiritual search tied directly to his own creativity.

>Come to think of it, even the great Palestrina musicologist Knud Jeppesen
>was equally, if not *better* known during his lifetime in his native
>Denmark as a *composer* than as a musicologist!

Never heard his stuff. Any good?

>As someone who is primarily a composer, I find this suggestion that
>musicologists are simply frustrated composers

just a frigging minute - I never said that!! I said that *most* musicologists
can't write music, so they write *about* it instead. Got a problem with that?

> incredibly arrogant,
>inaccurate, and reactionary.

The way *you* phrase it, it would be. But since you misquote me, your words
the the ones that are incredibly inaccurate and arrogant.

I also said, if you will read back a few posts, that the few good composers and
good musicians in musicology keep the profession honest. I stand by that.

>Yes, there are inept musicologists who seem to go astray and focus on
>everything *but* the music itself. Let's not forget, however, that there
>are just as many inept composers (from the past and present) who couldn't
>compose their way out of a paper bag.

True. Also, some of the 'technocrat musicologists' actually perform a
vital service in getting inaccessible music out to the public in a usable
form. That's fine - it is a science, and that's musicology at its best, IMO.

> It is also a highly speculative
>(if not downright spurious) claim to say that great composers from the past
>*or* present have a grasp of "every" aspect of composition,

DID I SAY THAT?? DID IT?? If some of you hotheads on this newsgroup
are going to criticize me, PLEASE quote me correctly and don't rephrase
my words in such a way as to fit your flamethrowing diatribes. That goes
for others, not just you.

Besides, this newsgroup is about early music - not about people sitting
in libraries studying it.

> even if it's
>in an intuitive manner because a particular concept or concepts weren't
>"invented" or "fleshed out" yet. Do you suppose Josquin had a grasp of
>timbre in the way Debussy did (or Beethoven, for that matter), or rhythm the
>way Carter does?

Josquin was master of all parameters that were needed for his work to be
completely successful. All great composers can be similarly described.
Every composer puts a different 'spin' on music according to their particular
sensitivities.

>He intuitively "understood" set theory? Combinatorial
>tones? Interval vectors? How about concepts so "simple" as theme and
>variation or development as we understand them? As Wayne and Garth say,
>"Not!"

Isn't this being a little silly? Why would Josquin *need* to know set theory?
And how do you know he didn't know his own kind of set theory? Ever seen
the analyses of Obrecht masses all according to mathematical series and
what-not? (If you want, I'll get you a reference on it.) The point is that composers
choose certain techniques and, implicity, disregard others or simply aren't
aware of them owing either to the information level of their times or their
own lack of exposure to or disinterest in current techniques that are valued
by some. For instance, I as a composer have no interest in set theory (I've done
12-tone writing and probably will do more, but 'set theory' is totally irrelevant
to me and bores me silly), I have no interest in minimalism 'techniques' because
I think minimalism is not suited to my expressive needs, etc.

>Just because someone was without a doubt a "master" composer in no way
>means that they somehow had omnipotent knowledge of music. Do you?

You are being completely silly and petty here and you know it. Stunning
mastery within one's artistic domain does not imply omnipotent knowledge.
Puhleeze.

>Please let's be careful of who and what we knock and what we claim in a
>knee-jerk manner.

Speak for yourself.

Richard

[Michelle Dulak]

Richard St. Clair writes:

[snips throughout...]

>Rameau, very secondary talent.

This alone makes me anxious. I can understand (at least I can
accept) your not liking Rameau. But if you want to *rank* him,
you need to give us a little more info. Are you allergic to the
18th-c. French baroque? Or do you just think he wan't an especially
impressive figure in it? If so...care to tell us what you
dislike?

[various sillinesses snipped]

>>As someone who is primarily a composer, I find this suggestion that
>>musicologists are simply frustrated composers

>just a frigging minute - I never said that!! I said that *most*
>musicologists can't write music, so they write *about* it instead.
>Got a problem with that?

Yes, in fact. It assumes, for one thing, that musicologists "really"
want (or "really" *should* want--I can't tell which) to write
music, but aren't capable of it. IOW, composition is the highest
and most natural calling of anyone interested in music; those
who do other things (including performance?) "really" want to
compose, but are incompetent, so they descend down the ladder
of being to "merely" studying history. By the same logic,
military historians "really" want to be generals, and political
historians "really" want to be in Congress, and art historians
would all be artists if they weren't so damned inept.

[snips]

>True. Also, some of the 'technocrat musicologists' actually perform a
>vital service in getting inaccessible music out to the public in a usable
>form. That's fine - it is a science, and that's musicology at its best, IMO.

What do you mean, "usable form"? Aren't "practical musicians" all-
capable? (And if editorial work is a "science," why are you having
to make so many local, contingent decisions in your Josquin edition?)

[snip]

>Besides, this newsgroup is about early music - not about people sitting
>in libraries studying it.

I see. What about people sitting in libraries making editions? Do
they count? Or do you sit somewhere else when you do your work? ;-)

Michelle Dulak

[Michelle Dulak]

In article <4ntdfa$s...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>,
Richard St. Clair writes:

>The point is that musicological training doesn't *require* being able to

>learn basic compositional skills. Well, maybe there are departments here

>and there that *do* require it, but one can get a musicology degree on
>intellectual achievement alone.

Ooh boy. Where to begin?

First, I would not be so quick to imply that being able to compose
music is not "intellectual achievement." Second, there are a number
of music-related skills not covered by your opposition of "composition"
and "intellectual" (meaning, I suppose, "writing about music"). Every
music history program I've ever heard of requires evidence of
basic musicianly skills. Here at UCB, I had to take an exam
involving dictation, four-part chorale writing, species counterpoint,
sight-singing, etc., even to get into the program.

Third, UCB at least requires a course in composition for all
its Ph.D. candidates in music history. My understanding is
that all major musicology departments require the same. I can
write a nifty Bach-style fugue. Does that place me among the elect?

>In the field of music, that is well-nigh heresy. It
>shouldn't be allowed, but somehow it is not seen objectionable that
>musicologists can be dummies about composing if they so with - whereas
>composers in music programs are *required* to pass music history
>courses like everyone else. Please explain to me this discrepancy and
>I'll reconsider your comment.

Well, as I just said, in my department this is not so. But what
can I say? The things are different. To take an example you use
below: perhaps I cannot "compose an isorhythmic motet." (I think
I could, given time--but not at the drop of a hat.) Does this lack
materially affect my ability to write about, or teach, the late-
18th-c. string quartet, which is my particular subject? OTOH,
I would think that a composer would *want* to have some grasp of
the history of music.

>
>> Maybe some of
>>us study the history of music because...we enjoy studying the history
>>of music.
>

>I don't mind that, but if you then get a PhD and become a music teacher
>who teaches not only budding musicologists but also budding performers
>and budding composers, is the preparation adequate if only founded on
>intellectual and 'esthetic' expertise? I think not.

Once again, you assume that "musicologists" don't know squat about
composition or performance, which is simply not true. At least 80%
of the students here in the graduate program at UCB perform, in
one faculty or another, at a professional level. Indeed we have
no choice, since after a certain date we get no University support.
*Most* of us are freelancers. I play modern and baroque violin and
viola. I'm playing in the upcoming Berkeley Festival--playing in
Alessandro Scarlatti's _L'Aldimiro_, having also done roughly
half of the editorial work necessary to produce a performance
edition. (Yes, I'm a copyist too--but of course a copyist is
only a frustrated composer--right?)

>> You might as well say that people who sing professionally do
>>so only because they don't know how to compose. (Or, for that matter,
>>that people who compose do so only because they aren't capable of
>>doing competent music-historical work...)

>Well, musicologists *generally* get involved in their work because they

>don't have a compellling desire or talent for composing or performing.

>That's their business, of course, but I sure would hate to go through
>academia again studying with idiots-savants-apparent who know everything
>about the Winchester Troper and nothing about what it is to *write* a fugue
>or ricercar or isorhythmic motet.

Can you generalize with a trifle more evidence, please? Your description
fits no one in *my* department, at least.

>>And you complain of others' "arrogance." Sheesh.

>It is a valid complaint. Being a musicologist, you understandably would
>project upon it this way.

Oh, I see. I'm "projecting."

Richard, I've been doing quite nicely as a freelance violinist
and violist. I object to the suggestion that I turned to musicology
because I simply wasn't good enough at anything else. (Perhaps
my undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering will make
this more convincing?)

Michelle Dulak

[Kiran Wagle]

Richard St. Clair <an23...@anon.penet.fi> wrote:
> ga...@pgm.com (Gabe M. Wiener) wrote:
>>Richard St. Clair <an23...@anon.penet.fi> wrote:

>>> People go into professional musicology
>>> largely because they can't write music themselves.

>>What a stunningly ignorant and idiotic statement!

> What a stunningly emotionalistic and nonresponsive statement!

But he's right. Your claim is both ignorant and stupid.

And since it seems typical of your postings and claims *plonk*

> should be a universal requirement. Unless a musicologists can compose
> a passable isorhythmic motet, they should not be given an academic degree.

> Oh, in case you think this is an unreasonable requirement for musicologists,

> as a composition student I had to pass rigorous courses in music history
> given by musicologists. Turnabout's fair play.

So what you're really exhibiting here is bitternesss, because THEY didn't
have to study composition but YOU had to study music history? Or perhaps
you are simply so lacking in natural talent that you had to STUDY a
subject (composition) that most composers just DO?

See, anyone can make stupid and ignorant claims,

but some of us know when we're doing it.

~ Kiran <ent...@io.com>

--
"Make two lists: one, a list of things you want out of life,
the other, a list of the people who have those things.
Then you can go about taking them away in an organized fashion."
--Anna Russell, _The Power of being a Positive Stinker_

[Kiran Wagle]

mal...@best.com (Michelle Dulak) wrote:

> Richard St. Clair writes:

>>People go into professional musicology largely because they can't write
>>music themselves. The musicologist's temptation is to put themselves above

> You might as well say that people who sing professionally do

> so only because they don't know how to compose. (Or, for that matter,
> that people who compose do so only because they aren't capable of
> doing competent music-historical work...)

Actually, he might as well say that people who study composition do so
because they lack the natural talent to actually shut up and write good
music.

(In fact, I suspect most of the great composers simply played, listened,
and wrote--they didn't need professors of composition to teach them what
to do.)

~ Kiran <ent...@io.com>

[Kiran Wagle]

Richard St. Clair <an23...@anon.penet.fi> wrote:

> The point is that musicological training doesn't *require*

> being able to learn basic compositional skills. [but]

> composers in music programs are *required* to pass music history
> courses like everyone else. Please explain to me this discrepancy and I'll
> reconsider your comment.

It's because folks who CAN compose don't need to be part of a "music program."

The people who have to study composition in order to compose are just too
stupid to actually learn about music and music history on their own.

~ Kiran "fire sale on stupid and ignorant claims today" <ent...@io.com>

--
"History is made at night; and character is what you are in the dark!"
--Dr Emilio Lizardo/Lord John Whorfin in _Buckaroo Banzai_

[Odhecaton_Z]

I cast my vote with Erling Sandmo that we kill this thread -

The discussion has reached new heights of irrelevance and absurdity,
while certainly not setting any standards as far as politeness or respect
are concerned (quips and "same-to-you" rejoinders being the standard fare).
I think it is rather clear where Richard stands, and there is clearly no
shaking him from his position...which is A-OK, as far as I'm concerned.

The entire thread amounts to a bunch of people preaching to the choir
while one guy runs up and down the aisles during the sermon tossing atheist
propoganda pamphlets at the congregation. In the end everybody is
wasting their time: the choir don't need preachin' to cuz they already
believe, and the guy is...well, he's simply in the wrong building if he's
looking for converts. If he's not looking for converts, then perhaps he
should save the paper...

Richard has the right to think what he may - right or wrong - as we all do.

Let's move on.

Lansing McLoskey

[Erling Sandmo]

I've already called for an end to this discussion, but I just can't leave it
alone -

In reply to my question

>>Who, by the way, do we have to thank for the EM revival? Composers?

Richard St. Clair wrote

>Yes - composers by the name of Machaut, Dufay, Josquin, Ockeghem,
>Adam de la Halle...

If they're still active in the musical field - I love this mix of philosophy
of history and ghost stories - why did they choose to make editions of their
works for just us, just now? Did Guillaume stand behind Dart, whispering in
his ear? Does Ockeghem tour with the Hilliard ensemble? This may have been
valid historical explanation in the early 19th century - though I doubt it -
but if this is a reflection of your knowledge of historical studies
(musicology included), your criticism of research doesn't count for much.
Of course the composers are to thank for the music, for what is being
revived; but you need something or someone else to explain the revival
itself. If you don't, there's no way you can explain that the revival didn't
take place in the 16th or 18th centuries. Or, if you think that the music
itself explains everything, you get a problem with explaining that it hasn't
been present on stage in every moment in history.

But let's do what Lansing says. Move on.

Erling

[Gadfly]

In article <entropy-2205...@192.0.2.3>,

Kiran Wagle <ent...@io.com> wrote:
>So what you're really exhibiting here is bitternesss, because THEY didn't
>have to study composition but YOU had to study music history? Or perhaps
>you are simply so lacking in natural talent that you had to STUDY a
>subject (composition) that most composers just DO?

Well, they may not have taken courses in music theory/composition/appreciation
at a modern university, but they did usually study both counterpoint and
rhetoric from other masters of the craft. Few could be called self-taught.
Does *anybody* just *do* anything--other than eat and sleep?

>See, anyone can make stupid and ignorant claims,

Yep.

>but some of us know when we're doing it.

Really?

*** ***
Ken Perlow ***** ***** Bell Labs / Lucent Technologies
****** ****** 23 May 96 [4 Prairial An CCIV]
***** ***** gad...@bell-labs.com
** ** ** **
...L'AUDACE! *** *** TOUJOURS DE L'AUDACE! ENCORE DE L'AUDACE!

[Richard St. Clair]

mclo...@HUSC.HARVARD.EDU (Odhecaton_Z) wrote:
>I cast my vote with Erling Sandmo that we kill this thread -

>Richard has the right to think what he may - right or wrong - as we all do.
>
>Let's move on.

You make good sense, Lansing - I concur!

Richard

[Richard St. Clair]

ent...@io.com (Kiran Wagle) wrote:

>(In fact, I suspect most of the great composers simply played, listened,
>and wrote--they didn't need professors of composition to teach them what
>to do.)

Weeellll, not quite true, but in essence true. Ever look at Beethoven's
counterpoint exercises with Altbrechtsberger? There are hundreds of them,
all meticuously corrected (though there weren't grades or pass/fail).
LvB put up with a 'prof' because he wanted to learn counterpoint. But only
for that. I agree, the greats of the past didn't submit to profs in music schools,
but they didn't have music schools back then either! (Actually, Debussy
went through a music school and did brilliantly, and he *also* turned out
to be a great composer.)

When I was in school, I just wanted the composer 'teach'es to
just give some basic nuts & bolts advice and encouragement, but instead
I got incredible mindbending 'criticisms' which would baffle psychology
experts in terms of meaning and relevancy. I *wanted* to just write music,
but they wouldn't let me! (I did anyway though - and it drove them kind
of nuts, as I didn't play the good academic 'game' the way they wanted.)

Not that I'm equating myself with Beethoven...just a cranky individualist
who strongly resonates with your comments.

Richard

[ECrownfiel]

In article <4nvj75$m...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>, "Richard St. Clair"
<an23...@anon.penet.fi> writes:

>erling...@HI.UIO.NO (Erling Sandmo) wrote:
>
>>Who, by the way, do we have to thank for the EM revival? Composers?
>

>Yes - composers by the name of Machaut, Dufay, Josquin, Ockeghem,
>Adam de la Halle...
>

Did they communicate with us by channelling and ouija boards, or was there
perhaps a m*s*c*l*g*st or two involved somewhere along the line?

EC

[Eyolf |strem]

Kiran Wagle (ent...@io.com) wrote (in response to what we all know St. Clair
wrote):

: Actually, he might as well say that people who study composition do so

: because they lack the natural talent to actually shut up and write good
: music.

: (In fact, I suspect most of the great composers simply played, listened,

: and wrote--they didn't need professors of composition to teach them what
: to do.)

: ~ Kiran <ent...@io.com>

I don't think I can agree completely to that. OK, Mozart surely had no
porfessor of composition to teach him, but he had his father, and even that
little genius would have come nowhere without a thorough training (and here I
include also his numerous travels throughout Europe.
In earlier periods it is even more obvious that not only the composers, but
even the performers (which of course was often one and the same) had a
thorough professional training. Many/most of them were clerics on some degree
and had attended "practical classes in applied musicology" from their early
years in the church choir.
This does not mean that they did not treat this knowledge with artistic
freedom and creativity, but that is a different matter.
Even in the period of the genius, the 19th c., it has been shown that authors
who allegedly wrote from divine inspiration, in fact knew their rhetoric to
their fingertips.
So don't look down on the professors of composition - they occupy an important
place in our music culture.

--
Eyolf Ostrem (who is *not* a professor of composition)
Eyolf....@musik.uu.se
Department of Musicology, Uppsala University, Sweden

[Elizabeth Randell]

Erling Sandmo (erling...@HI.UIO.NO) wrote:
: Does Ockeghem tour with the Hilliard ensemble?

Well, not in the 80s he didn't. I can't say for now.

--Elizabeth
identifies with patrons rather than composers, thank you very much

--
Elizabeth Randell Upton (Mrs.)
eran...@email.unc.edu

[Andrew Zartmann]

Eyolf Ostrem wrote:
> OK, Mozart surely had no
>porfessor of composition to teach him, but he had his father, and even that
>little genius would have come nowhere without a thorough training (and here I
>include also his numerous travels throughout Europe.

In fact, Mozart himself said: "People err who think my art comes easily to
me. I assure you, dear friend, nobody has devoted so much time and thought
to composition as I. There is not a famous master whose music I have not
industriously studied through many times." - Sounds a little bit like
musicology, no?

(Quote from _Mozartiana_ - doesn't tell where the quote was taken from.)

[Kiran Wagle]

Erling writes:

> Richard's suggestion ...is part of the age-old bashing of

> intellectuals/academics: the "get-a-taste-of-real-life",
> "why-should-we-pay-them-to-find-out-what-we-already-know" arguments

Indeed, but it's composers who are those unreal intellectuals in the late
20th century, not musicologists. Musicologists ARE a part of real life;
they write liner notes.

~ Kiran <ent...@io.com>

[Nicholas Bodley]

It hadn't quite broken to the surface of my consciousness before this
that a moderator in a newsgroup can be useful; I don't routinely read any
others (this one keeps me busy!). R.m.e. seems to manage decently (if not
always courteously or concisely) without one.

NB Nicholas Bodley Autodidact & Polymath |*| Keep smiling! It makes |
Waltham, Mass. Electronic Technician |*| people wonder what |
nbo...@tiac.net Amateur musician |*| you have been up to. |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------*

[Nicholas Bodley]

On 24 May 1996, ECrownfield wrote:

{snips}

>
> Did they communicate with us by channelling and ouija boards, or was there
> perhaps a m*s*c*l*g*st or two involved somewhere along the line?
>
> EC

How about r**nc*rn*t**n ? Having been born to a Theosophist, it seems
quite plausible to me that some of the best of the living people in e.m.
might have more experience than one lifetime's worth. I'm well aware that
my outlook is a minority one, and not out to proselytize!

[Richard St. Clair]

Nicholas Bodley <nbo...@sunspot.tiac.net> wrote:
> How about r**nc*rn*t**n ? Having been born to a Theosophist, it seems
>quite plausible to me that some of the best of the living people in e.m.
>might have more experience than one lifetime's worth.

I know someone who was (is?) convinced that he is the r**nc*rn*t**n of
Machaut, Dufay, Willaert, and Carissimi (also King David and Pythagoras).
He ended up in the back ward of an insane asylum for a year. (This is
all true, BTW).

Richard

[Richard St. Clair]

Kiran Wagle wrote:
>... it's composers who are those unreal intellectuals in the late
>20th century, not musicologists.

Maybe the composers *you* hang with - but not *this* one <g> (I'll gladly
send you some of my music & you can decide for yourself if I'm
unreal!)

> Musicologists ARE a part of real life;
>they write liner notes.

LOL! Thanks, Kiran - I needed that!

Richard

[Richard St. Clair]

mu...@strix.udac.uu.se (Eyolf |strem) wrote:

>In earlier periods it is even more obvious that not only the composers, but
>even the performers (which of course was often one and the same) had a
>thorough professional training. Many/most of them were clerics on some degree
>and had attended "practical classes in applied musicology" from their early
>years in the church choir.

And they probably yawned and giggled all the way through it! <G>

>This does not mean that they did not treat this knowledge with artistic
>freedom and creativity, but that is a different matter.

Not a *different* matter - *THE* matter!

>Even in the period of the genius, the 19th c.,

The 19th century is "the period of the genius"? I always thought it
was the period of the *sick* genius!

>it has been shown that authors
>who allegedly wrote from divine inspiration,

I've never seen any such allegations - most of them were secular composers
who occasionally wrote religious music...unless you're just being sarcastic :)

> in fact knew their rhetoric to their fingertips.

Hmmm. Maybe. They knew what they needed to know for their own
purposes, at least, which is about all that accomplished composers are ever
really involved with.

>So don't look down on the professors of composition - they occupy an important
>place in our music culture.

I don't get the train of thought leading to this. Not that I disagree, I just
don't come to the same conclusion - actually, I don't come to *any* conclusion
here!

Richard

[Richard St. Clair]

Kiran Wagle wrote:
>The people who have to study composition in order to compose are just too
>stupid to actually learn about music and music history on their own.
>
>~ Kiran "fire sale on stupid and ignorant claims today"

I'll give you a farthing for the above. Composers of any value who
have the karma to be born in this godawfull century and probably the
next one as well *have* to go through the ordeal of university educations
to get things called "degrees" which are lingua franca for any professional
advancement today. They don't go to school to learn how to compose -
they (I having been one of them) go to school to get a 'license' and to
learn how to word-fence with cranky word-mongerers called music
professors - which is probably a good survival skill for composers facing
the gauntlet of flaming critics 'out there' in the so-called 'real' world.

Richard

[Richard St. Clair]

Erling Sandmo) wrote:
> Of course the composers are to thank for the music, for what is being
>revived; but you need something or someone else to explain the revival
>itself. If you don't, there's no way you can explain that the revival didn't
>take place in the 16th or 18th centuries.

You seem to be under the delusional impression that musicologists alone
are responsible for musical revivals from earlier epochs. This is false.
Stravinsky was very interested in Baroque music at a time when the
musical airwaves were saturated with romanticism - one of his pieces
(Pulcinella) is a reworking of specific baroque compositions (and he
completed a Gesualdo work in his Monumentum). Mendelssohn's
revival of Bach is legendary. Beethoven brought back Handel in his
own Missa Solemnis (the "And He Shall Reign for Ever" fugue subject,
e.g.). Ever look through Brahms' MS tract on parallel fifths and octaves -
it cites examples back to Marenzio! True, Burney and Hawkins were
interested in Josquin, but Bach loved Palestrina. One could go on.

I guess musical revivals of earlier epochs are thanks not to a profession
or sub-class within a profession but to specific music-loving individuals,
whether they be composers, musicologists, or anyone else you can
think of.

Richard

[Erling Sandmo]

Re Richard's reply to Eyolf -

please don't start again, Richard. You're out of arguments and I'm sure most
of us are out of patience. Your comments aren't even snappy anymore.

Erling

[Stephen Wilcox]

On Tue, 28 May 1996, Richard St. Clair wrote:

> You seem to be under the delusional impression that musicologists alone
> are responsible for musical revivals from earlier epochs. This is false.

I don't suppose that anyone would claim that. But the *current* boom in
EM revivalism (and, after all, it's the current boom which is the biggest
and the longest-lasting) has been largely musicology-led. Whether the
people involved are solely musicologists or
musicologists-who-also-compose or -who-also-perform doesn't alter the
fact that musicological research has had a hell of a lot to do with the
popularity of everything from Anonymous 4 to the 4 Seasons.

> I guess musical revivals of earlier epochs are thanks not to a profession
> or sub-class within a profession but to specific music-loving individuals,
> whether they be composers, musicologists, or anyone else you can
> think of.

But it is the musicological research which has provided the impetus for
those revivals. Without some poor bugger going into dusty libraries and
digging out original editions and manuscripts you wouldn't get half of
the EM recordings and performances that you have today. Think of an EM
`big name' conductor, and you'll find someone who started out as a
musicologist or who has done extensive research into primary and
secondary sources. You remember the Cardinall's Musick, who credit two
people on their CD covers: the conductor Andrew Carwood and the
editor/transcriber David Skinner?

------
Stephen Wilcox ** Since singing is so good a thing,
wil...@maths.ox.ac.uk ** I wish all men would learne to sing.

[Eyolf |strem]

Richard St. Clair (an23...@anon.penet.fi) wrote:
: mu...@strix.udac.uu.se (Eyolf |strem) wrote:

: >In earlier periods it is even more obvious that not only the composers, but
: >even the performers (which of course was often one and the same) had a
: >thorough professional training. Many/most of them were clerics on some degree
: >and had attended "practical classes in applied musicology" from their early
: >years in the church choir.

: And they probably yawned and giggled all the way through it! <G>

Sure, and then they were spanked and had to pay fines to the oh so slim
chruch treasury...

: >This does not mean that they did not treat this knowledge with artistic

: >freedom and creativity, but that is a different matter.

: Not a *different* matter - *THE* matter!

Nope. *THE* matter is that at least up to the time of Cage (well, maybe I am
over-stretching my point, but what the heck!) it was taken for granted that
in order to deal with artistic work above (or beside) the level of minstrels
and story-tellers, one needed "the basics".

: >Even in the period of the genius, the 19th c.,

: The 19th century is "the period of the genius"? I always thought it
: was the period of the *sick* genius!

Beins sick does not change their status - it supports it ("the pure soul,
who is not limited by the carnal prison"-thing).

: >it has been shown that authors

: >who allegedly wrote from divine inspiration,

: I've never seen any such allegations - most of them were secular composers
: who occasionally wrote religious music...unless you're just being sarcastic :)

OK, divine is the wrong word. (And I am *never* sarcastic.) My point
stems from the following: In treatises of letter-writing of the 19th c.
the authors emphasise (in opposition to earlier times) that one needs no
rhetorics to write a letter, just follow your inspiration - that will
bring about the best result. At the same time these same authors in
writing their treatises follow the rhetoric models rigourously (and they are
of course thoroughly trained in the art).

(BTW, this wasn't origianlly written in polemics agianst *you*!

--
Eyolf Ostrem

[Roy Brewer]

Yours is the neatest contribution to this silly thread so far!
BTW you might like to visit my Musicology Today homepages. URL:

ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/allegro/

Roy Brewer

[Elizabeth Randell]

Richard St. Clair (an23...@anon.penet.fi) wrote:

: You seem to be under the delusional impression that musicologists alone

: are responsible for musical revivals from earlier epochs. This is

: false. [etc.]

You can't fault musicologists for not being involved before the mid-19th
century: musicology as a field of academic study was only invented in
the mid-19th century. We're a baby discipline, perhaps that's why we get
no respect ;)

Remember, there have been plenty of educated musical folks who weren't
professional musicologists.

(oh and by the way, I wasn't able to post this earlier and I forget who
brought it up in the first place, but Philippe de Vitry didn't write a
treatise. The body of "ars nova" theoretical writings--chiefly concerned
with rhythmic notation--may represent his thinking and his teachings, but
he never wrote a formal treatise himself. Vitry seems to have written
music (and been interested in music theory) as a young man. He never
held an "official" posting as a composer (professional composers,
identified as such, first show up in the 15th century), he was a bright
and talented cleric. And he ended up as a Bishop! He wrote poetry too.
Sarah Fuller and Andrew Wathey have been doing wonderful research on
Vitry over the past decade.)

--Elizabeth

[Richard St. Clair]

wil...@MATHS.OX.AC.UK (Stephen Wilcox) wrote:

>On Tue, 28 May 1996, Richard St. Clair wrote:
>
>> You seem to be under the delusional impression that musicologists alone
>> are responsible for musical revivals from earlier epochs. This is false.
>

>I don't suppose that anyone would claim that. But the *current* boom in
>EM revivalism (and, after all, it's the current boom which is the biggest
>and the longest-lasting) has been largely musicology-led.

It comes in waves, IMO. Yes, the current boom *is* the biggest, and it
shows every sign of getting bigger. I wouldn't say it is 'largely
musicology-led'. I would, rather, say that musicology has gotten onto
the bandwagon and taken a role of responsibility in making music of the
past a practical matter for performance, publication, and general cultural
dissemination. It's "applied musicology" that is leading the boom, not
musicology as a whole. At the core of any of the fine performing groups of
EM is usually a 'resident musicologist' (at least one, at any rate).
But I hasten to add that there are still musicologists - like some composers,
btw! - who prefer the sanctuary of academia and its captive audiences
and don't take the kinds of risks that Cap. Alamire, Cap. Pratensis, Tallis
Singers, EMC, The 16, Peres, and many others are doing or have done
in the performance and recording realm(s). I think that's a fairly safe
assessment.

This is not to trash people who live protected academic lives, either -
if that's what floats your boat, fine. But in terms of 'where the action
is', it seems like a sad second place situation. To each their own.
After all, the monks and clerics that transmitted much of the great
EM to us lived protected 'academic'-style lives, and we have them to
thank for the very existence of this music today.

>But it is the musicological research which has provided the impetus for
>those revivals. Without some poor bugger going into dusty libraries and
>digging out original editions and manuscripts you wouldn't get half of
>the EM recordings and performances that you have today.

The initial revival in early music really started with Charles Burney and
John Hawkins in the mid/late-1700s, but not much really happened at that
time. Not much of a revival. Not much musicology, either! Anyway, it
broke the ice and got people thinking about where their music came from.
Then along came Classicism and suddenly nobody cared about anything
except the 'latest'.

A major move was the Romantic era revival of interest in the music of
Bach (J.S., of course), which was given great impetus by Felix Mendelssohn,
a composer. It was after this that the musicology profession really got going,
with researchers like Coussemaker, Haberl, and Ludwig. But Brahms was
also a musicologist of a sort and performed early music in his choral
concerts (there are archival records of this). The 19th century was
a period in Europe when people started looking back at their past, their
heritage. It was the rise of nationalism and ethnicism, so there was a lot
of interest in national cultural heritages. It was also, in art, a period of
intense neoclassicism, a looking back not only to classical antiquity but to
renaissance revivals of classical antiquity. Naturally, the renaissance
works of music and art began to attract a lot of interest. That's when most
of the great manuscripts of the med/ren eras were first catalogued.

Your point is well taken, that a lot of the music that remains buried has to be
ferreted out by some hard-working drone who performs a largely
thankless task. I've done a fair bit of 'droning' myself and am doing it
now <g>. There is an inner reward that comes from it, of course - the 'front
row center' seat witnessing the resurrection of music that has lain dormant
and ignored for centuries.

Good ideas. Thanks!

Richard St. Clair

[ECrownfiel]

In article <4onjoe$2...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>, "Richard St. Clair"
<an23...@anon.penet.fi> writes:

>It's "applied musicology" that is leading the boom, not
>musicology as a whole.

I think you need to give some credit to the "boring" musicologists who lay
the groundwork for the "applied musicologists." Musicological discoveries
don't pop up out of nowhere any more than music itself does. Today's
musicologists and performers can reap the benefits of all those "life and
works" dissertations of the 60s and 70s that made us aware of composers
we'd never heard of, and all that tiresome notational trivia and the
minute details of performance practice that are now being realized by
today's performing groups.

The thing is, there are 2 different issues involved in "good" or "bad"
musicology (well, ok, more than 2!). One is the intellectual value of the
work in itself--its interest to others, its contribution to the community
of thought. The other is the utilitarian benefit of someone's
discoveries. A lot of musicology that doesn't meet one criterion does
meet the other. Plenty of really dull, poorly thought-out work presents
new facts and evidence to the world; plenty of other work may present no
new facts but may revolutionize the way you think of a composer, a period,
or an issue.

As a musicologist myself, my approach is to take whatever value I can get
from either type of work. Some non-musicologists, on the other hand, are
tempted to see only the down-side of each side, to criticize the one for
being boring and dull and the other for being "irrelevant" because it
presents no new facts. I would suggest, though, that you'll get more out
of it if you take the first approach.

Elizabeth Crownfield

[Gordon Jones]

In article <Q1A41F57@pchf144>, Erling Sandmo <erling...@HI.UIO.NO>
writes

>Does Ockeghem tour with the Hilliard ensemble?

I haven't seen him so far!
--
Gordon Jones

[Richard St. Clair]

ecrow...@aol.com (ECrownfiel) wrote:
>In article <4onjoe$2...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>, "Richard St. Clair"
><an23...@anon.penet.fi> writes:
>
>>It's "applied musicology" that is leading the boom, not
>>musicology as a whole.
>
>I think you need to give some credit to the "boring" musicologists who lay
>the groundwork for the "applied musicologists."

I did that in another thread (I forget which one). References to the painstaking work
of Coussemaker, Ludwig, Haberl & others. Actually, I wouldn't call them
boring at all, just incredible 'wonks' as we called them in college. :)

> Musicological discoveries
>don't pop up out of nowhere any more than music itself does.

Actually, it's more like the scientific world. There is a lot of sheer, thankless
drudgery, then someone comes along with a bright idea and *blam* there is
a 'revival' or whatever. Everyone involved is important (assuming they
are competent, of course! :) )

>Today's musicologists and performers can reap the benefits of all those "life and
>works" dissertations of the 60s and 70s that made us aware of composers
>we'd never heard of, and all that tiresome notational trivia and the
>minute details of performance practice that are now being realized by
>today's performing groups.

I agree.

>The thing is, there are 2 different issues involved in "good" or "bad"
>musicology (well, ok, more than 2!). One is the intellectual value of the
>work in itself--its interest to others, its contribution to the community
>of thought. The other is the utilitarian benefit of someone's
>discoveries. A lot of musicology that doesn't meet one criterion does
>meet the other.

What I think you're driving at here is the 'cross-fertilization' motif that
you mention a little later, and I agree.

>Plenty of really dull, poorly thought-out work presents
>new facts and evidence to the world; plenty of other work may present no
>new facts but may revolutionize the way you think of a composer, a period,
>or an issue.

Right! The beginning of a long journey begins with a single step - often
a stumbling step. Imagine the confusion when people in the 18th or 19th c
tried to first figure out staff-neumes and square notation. Even today
there is some awkward guesswork going on, but we try.

>As a musicologist myself, my approach is to take whatever value I can get
>from either type of work.

Beethoven - not to stray off-topic too far - snorted at a less gifted
composer (by *his* standards, at any rate) and said, "I use ideas that
you throw away." Judging from his duller sketches, which metamorphosed
into 'great themes', I'd agree. The musicological process is a kind of
creativity in itself, not original creation of music per se (though sometimes
it seems that way), but original thinking about music in ways that put
us in more sentient contact with distant and perhaps otherwise inaccessible
musics. Again, it's like science (hence the "-ology") -- and Einstein said
that in science "Imagination is more important than knowledge" [assuming
one must make a choice between them, and of course one needn't and
mustn't!]

>Some non-musicologists, on the other hand, are
>tempted to see only the down-side of each side, to criticize the one for
>being boring and dull and the other for being "irrelevant" because it
>presents no new facts.

Actually, I've seen musicologists put each other down as well, none too
charitably I'd add. So it isn't just non-musicologists vs. musicologists!
(Lowinsky and Kerman 'had at it' in JAMS some years back, I seem to
recall!)

>I would suggest, though, that you'll get more out
>of it if you take the first approach.

Thanks - I agree, and I certainly don't look down at even mediocre
scholarship if it advances my information level and opens up doors if
only a crack.

Richard

[JMullhaupt]

In article <4okf7f$m...@newz.oit.unc.edu>, eran...@email.unc.edu
(Elizabeth Randell) writes:

>You can't fault musicologists for not being involved before the mid-19th
>century: musicology as a field of academic study was only invented in
>the mid-19th century. We're a baby discipline, perhaps that's why we get

>no respect ;)

I am just a private teacher of flute and recorders (Eastman grad of many
years). I certainly will give you some respect and have been enjoying the
informative parts of the back and forth discussions you and Richard have
been having.

Joan M. Mullhaupt, Mus. Dir. Buffalo Recorder Soc.

[Brian Blood]

Maybe the problem is far more general - few if any academic gets respect
these days :-)

[Elizabeth Randell]

Brian Blood (br...@be-blood.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: Maybe the problem is far more general - few if any academic gets respect
: these days :-)

Sad but true. But I get the sense that even within academia musicology
is seen as less (interesting, important, serious, whatever) than the rest
of the humanities.

Of course, this could just be dissertation depression spillover ;)

--Elizabeth
over a decade as a grad student, for WHAT?

[JMullhaupt]

In article <31b92510...@news.demon.co.uk>, br...@be-blood.demon.co.uk
(Brian Blood) writes:

>Maybe the problem is far more general - few if any academic gets respect
>these days :-)

It's not just in music. My husband is as academic a scientist as one can
be in industry, yet over the years people of his ilk get short shrift from
the "Harvard Bean Counters" who can only think of this quarter's bottom
line. Various technical and academic people I hear of all are suffering
similar fates. Money can be found for stadiums and sports teams, but not
for philharmonics or schools. I awoke this morning to news that (I think)
the county comptroller has suggested 150 facuty positions be eliminated
from the county community college to save money.. Next we will probably
hear there is no need for maintenance staff since there are no classes!

Joan M. Mullhaupt, Mus. Dir., Buffalo Recorder Soc.

[Richard St. Clair]

eran...@email.unc.edu (Elizabeth Randell) wrote:

>Richard St. Clair (an23...@anon.penet.fi) wrote:

>: You seem to be under the delusional impression that musicologists alone
>: are responsible for musical revivals from earlier epochs. This is

>: false. [etc.]

>You can't fault musicologists for not being involved before the mid-19th
>century: musicology as a field of academic study was only invented in
>the mid-19th century. We're a baby discipline, perhaps that's why we get
>no respect ;)

Tut tut. What about Dr. Burney and John Hawkins, who published their
respective histories of music - containing a lot of nuts and bolts together with
numerous transcriptions of early music - as early as the 2nd half of the
18th century? (Sometime around 1770s, I forget exactly when). Burney
traveled around Europe, did a lot of 'field work.' Perhaps the first
ethnomusicologist. Hawkins was a more conservative gent, and his work
is a lot better written. The story goes that Burney pirated a lot of material
from Hawkins and rushed 'his' history into print in advance of Hawkins
in an act that must rank in scholastic realm as the moral equivalent of
the Pearl Harbor attack. What ego and greed will do to some people.

>Remember, there have been plenty of educated musical folks who weren't
>professional musicologists.

I don't need to be reminded of that. Some of the best educated musical folk
are, astoundingly, the composers. We composers do what others only talk
about. [donning my asbestos suit]

Richard St. Clair

[ECrownfiel]

In article <4phqmc$l...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>, "Richard St. Clair"
<an23...@anon.penet.fi> writes:

(quoting Elizabeth Randell):

>>Remember, there have been plenty of educated musical folks who weren't
>>professional musicologists.

>I don't need to be reminded of that. Some of the best educated musical
folk
>are, astoundingly, the composers. We composers do what others only talk
>about. [donning my asbestos suit]

Please accept this in the gentle spirit in which it is intended, but-- we
musicologists also do what others only talk about--that's why you keep
asking us questions! :-)

'Nuff said (please!)

Elizabeth Crownfield

[Richard St. Clair]

Elizabeth Crownfield wrote:
>Richard St. Clair writes:
> We composers do what others only tallk about....

>Please accept this in the gentle spirit in which it is intended, but-- we
>musicologists also do what others only talk about--that's why you keep
>asking us questions! :-)

Touche' !

>'Nuff said (please!)

<g>

Richard

[Elizabeth Randell]

Richard St. Clair (an23...@anon.penet.fi) wrote:

: >You can't fault musicologists for not being involved before the mid-19th

: >century: musicology as a field of academic study was only invented in
: >the mid-19th century. We're a baby discipline, perhaps that's why we get
: >no respect ;)

: Tut tut. What about Dr. Burney and John Hawkins, who published their
: respective histories of music - containing a lot of nuts and bolts together with
: numerous transcriptions of early music - as early as the 2nd half of the
: 18th century?

They were amateurs, in the best and true sense of the word. They did not
found university departments of music or musicology. I repeat, musicology
*as a field of academic study* was invented in the mid-19th century.

: >Remember, there have been plenty of educated musical folks who weren't
: >professional musicologists.

: I don't need to be reminded of that. Some of the best educated musical folk

: are, astoundingly, the composers. We composers do what others only talk

: about. [donning my asbestos suit]

That's terrific, really. I'm glad that there are composers.

But do remember that musicologists do a whole lot more than just talk
about what composers do (that would be theorists, perhaps, or more
specifically analysts). There's what performers do (and did), and what
audiences do (and did), for starters. Few would argue about music's
importance in Western culture; the space in which music interacts with
poetry and literature, with religion, with society, with history, etc. is
very rich territory indeed. Mining it is just *part* of what good
musicology can do these days. Sorry, it's far more than just composer
bios, music analysis and transcriptions.

And on top of all that, we musicologists must be informed about the range
of music history, with research and information more up-to-date than what
was taught in undergraduate surveys in 1966.

Richard, I don't know if you're trolling us, looking for fights for your
own amusement, or what. If you can't bring yourself to behave civilly,
perhaps you can find some other newsgroup to pester. The Kibologists
are amused by trolling, my dear friend 'Jesse Garon' enjoys encounters
with people convinced of their own importance, various of the
talk.politics groups just adore flamewars. There's a place for everyone
here in Usenet, have fun! explore!

[Elizabeth Randell]

Richard St. Clair (an23...@anon.penet.fi) wrote:

: But I hasten to add that there are still musicologists - like some composers,

: btw! - who prefer the sanctuary of academia and its captive audiences
: and don't take the kinds of risks that Cap. Alamire, Cap. Pratensis, Tallis
: Singers, EMC, The 16, Peres, and many others are doing or have done
: in the performance and recording realm(s).

My newsfeed is so slow--has anyone pointed out that most of these groups
are founded and led by people with musicological training? To fault
academics for *being* academics (and not participating in commercial
performance), while at the same time failing to acknowledge the academic,
musicological connections of many performers or directors of ensembles is
shabby and argumentative.

: This is not to trash people who live protected academic lives, either -

: if that's what floats your boat, fine. But in terms of 'where the action
: is', it seems like a sad second place situation. To each their own.

Some of us think that academia is "where the action is," hardly a sad
second-place situation. In my experience, those who profess to dismiss
academia as unreal or irrelevent are often those who have failed to find
employment therein.

[Richard St. Clair]

Elizabeth Randell wrote:

>Richard St. Clair wrote:
>: But I hasten to add that there are still musicologists - like some composers,
>: btw! - who prefer the sanctuary of academia and its captive audiences

I haven't heard any denials of this

>: and don't take the kinds of risks that Cap. Alamire, Cap. Pratensis, Tallis
>: Singers, EMC, The 16, Peres, and many others are doing or have done
>: in the performance and recording realm(s).
>
>My newsfeed is so slow--has anyone pointed out that most of these groups
>are founded and led by people with musicological training?

Yes.

>To fault academics for *being* academics (and not participating in commercial
>performance),

No one is faulting anyone for being themselves.

> while at the same time failing to acknowledge the academic,
>musicological connections of many performers or directors of ensembles is
>shabby and argumentative.

It would be shabby and argumentative if it were so, which it isn't in the
present case.

You're just getting hissy over some deep-seated issue of your own. You aren't
responding to what I said, just to what you project upon what I said.

>: This is not to trash people who live protected academic lives, either -
>: if that's what floats your boat, fine. But in terms of 'where the action
>: is', it seems like a sad second place situation. To each their own.

>Some of us think that academia is "where the action is,"

I agree that research is fun and exciting, and accomplishes important
things which *lead* towards musical results. It is a means, not an end.
Those who make musicology an end in itself miss the whole point of
doing it, IMVHO.

> hardly a sad
>second-place situation. In my experience, those who profess to dismiss
>academia as unreal or irrelevent are often those who have failed to find
>employment therein.

Again, you are projecting. I never said "unreal or irrelevant" - just less
exciting that the concert scene where music happens. Sure, thinking about
music and writing about music is fun and necessary if progress in under-
standing is to be achieved.

As to the last statement, now who is making blanket remarks? Frankly, I've
been *out* of academia for 20 years and never looked back. I might
consider a teaching post at some time, but I'm hardly begging and crawling
for an entry-level position. I've never been turned down for an academic
post, either, BTW.

Richard

[Augustus Carp]

In article <4psb9j$2...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>, "Richard St. Clair"
<an23...@anon.penet.fi> (in 'real' life stc...@mit.edu) wrote:

[snip shabby and argumentative remarks from RStC]

>As to the last statement, now who is making blanket remarks? Frankly, I've
>been *out* of academia for 20 years and never looked back. I might
>consider a teaching post at some time, but I'm hardly begging and crawling
>for an entry-level position. I've never been turned down for an academic
>post, either, BTW.
>
>Richard

Rick seems to be posting from mit.edu which implies an academic leaning
somewhere (unless they are now a commercial ISP).

These days performers are likely to be less than totally excited at the
prospect of an amateur musicologist's work unless new ground is being
broken. There is a place for amateur musicologists, IMHO, which is working
at the edges of the EM repertoire. There is so much music awaiting
publication that it is futile to argue about existing editions even from
the beginning of the century - the intellectual effort involved in
reworking 'academic' editions to produce 'performing' editions is not
great - even composers can manage it.

Making lists of composers who have been (amateur) musicologists is pretty
futile too (has anyone mentioned Britten, Warlock and Pearsall BTW?).
Perhaps Rick could stick to rec.music.compose where the style of
discussion seems to be for composers to hang around in gangs on street
corners & hurl rocks at anyone who disagrees with them (and even pass
snide comments about their reception when they stray into other
newsgroups)

As a performer my main concern is to have dots on paper which I can turn
into music. There is little to be gained from arguing that edition A of
Josquin's Missa X is 'better' than edition B - I have performed as much
Byrd and Tallis from TCM as from any other editions, and the long note
values + daft irregular barring don't matter.

--
Augustus Carp Esq
Ca...@monrepos.demon.co.uk

[Richard St. Clair]

Ca...@monrepos.demon.co.uk (Augustus Carp) wrote:

> the intellectual effort involved in
>reworking 'academic' editions to produce 'performing' editions is not
>great - even composers can manage it.

This misses the point. The existence of an earlier academic edition can be
valuable in making a new edition. People become accustomed, for example,
to the old Smijers Josquin edition in terms of measure numbers for
citations. If one create an edition that is markedly divergent from that
numbering system, there ought to be a very good reason for it, not
neophyte unawareness.

The implication that composers are at a lower level of competency in preparing
early music editions deserves to be challenged. Who prepared the great
Choralis Constantinus edition of Isaac? - Anton Webern, one of the leading
composers of the 20th century. H. Colin Slim consulted composers for their
expertise on the 10-odd missing part reconstructions for his "Gift of Madgrigals
and Motets" edition. At least *he* had the humility to respect and value the
expertise of a qualified musical creator.

>Perhaps Rick could stick to rec.music.compose where the style of
>discussion seems to be for composers to hang around in gangs on street
>corners & hurl rocks at anyone who disagrees with them (and even pass
>snide comments about their reception when they stray into other
>newsgroups)

True, it is more emotionally honest than the often rarified and stuck-up
'airs' of this newsgroup. But hey, everyone has their personality defects.
I went to Hahvud - I can be as snotty as you if I wanna. ;)

>As a performer my main concern is to have dots on paper which I can turn
>into music. There is little to be gained from arguing that edition A of
>Josquin's Missa X is 'better' than edition B - I have performed as much
>Byrd and Tallis from TCM as from any other editions, and the long note
>values + daft irregular barring don't matter.

Which is why I've basically chucked all the preciosa of "to bar or not to bar"
and gone with traditional barlines and 1/2 note-values in my M. Gaudeamus
edition. Let's face it - it's gonna be easier to sight read. If the conductor
doesn't have the smarts to get his/her singers to avoid singing 'plunkily'
then it's their fault, not mine.

Richard

[Richard St. Clair]

eran...@email.unc.edu (Elizabeth Randell) wrote:
>Richard St. Clair (an23...@anon.penet.fi) wrote:

>: >You can't fault musicologists for not being involved before the mid-19th
>: >century: musicology as a field of academic study was only invented in
>: >the mid-19th century. We're a baby discipline, perhaps that's why we get
>: >no respect ;)

>: Tut tut. What about Dr. Burney and John Hawkins, who published their
>: respective histories of music - containing a lot of nuts and bolts together with
>: numerous transcriptions of early music - as early as the 2nd half of the
>: 18th century?

>They were amateurs, in the best and true sense of the word.

Hmmm. Maybe Leo Treitler, Alfred Einstein, Murray Lefkowitz and a host
of others are really amateurs in the worst sense of the word.

> They did not
>found university departments of music or musicology.

Ah, a "strict construction" use of the term. Well, they didn't have liberal
arts colleges in Burney's day, so it wasn't really an option then. The fact
that musicologists are holed up and on the university payroll doesn't make
their work valid. This is really a meaningless side issue.

> I repeat, musicology
>*as a field of academic study* was invented in the mid-19th century.

It was necessary to get it started, however. Burney & Hawkins set a precedent.
It created a niche in the collective conscious for musicology to sprout in
academia once there was a bourgeois academia in which it could grow.
But the 'history of academia' is not one of my strong suits, so I'll leave it
at that.

>: >Remember, there have been plenty of educated musical folks who weren't
>: >professional musicologists.

>: I don't need to be reminded of that. Some of the best educated musical folk
>: are, astoundingly, the composers. We composers do what others only talk
>: about. [donning my asbestos suit]

>That's terrific, really. I'm glad that there are composers.

I am glad to hear that. After all, if there weren't or hadn't been any,
you wouldn't have a job!

>But do remember that musicologists do a whole lot more than just talk
>about what composers do

yes, (waiting for specifics)...

> (that would be theorists, perhaps, or more
>specifically analysts). There's what performers do (and did), and what
>audiences do (and did), for starters. Few would argue about music's
>importance in Western culture; the space in which music interacts with
>poetry and literature, with religion, with society, with history, etc. is
>very rich territory indeed. Mining it is just *part* of what good
>musicology can do these days. Sorry, it's far more than just composer
>bios, music analysis and transcriptions.

That all sounds wonderful...please continue, tell on... :)

>And on top of all that, we musicologists must be informed about the range
>of music history, with research and information more up-to-date than what
>was taught in undergraduate surveys in 1966.

Of course. It's hard to shake off those memories of musicology abuse,
however, and when I see testiness and superior attitudes from musicologists
in the present day my ability to be charitable towards them evaporates.

>Richard, I don't know if you're trolling us,

"us" is it, now?

> looking for fights for your
>own amusement, or what. If you can't bring yourself to behave civilly,
>perhaps you can find some other newsgroup to pester.

Ah, I am just pestering this newsgroup, am I? My lengthy and knowledeable
posts on renaissance transcription, musica ficta, notation, composer
and recording news...all this is just pestering to you? Come now.
Evidently you've never seen a troll. Someone who speaks plainly, with
conviction, and a propos the subject of a newsgroup is not a troll. Clearly
you do not like my personal style. I cannot change that. But your
accusations of nefarious purposes on my part is wholly out of proportion
with the supposed crimes which you lay at my feet. If you feel inclined
to continue this pettiness, email me privately - the newsgroup doesn't need
this kind of irrelevancy.

[snip]

Richard

[Peter Wilton]

In article <4q4hms$j...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>, "Richard St. Clair"
<an23...@anon.penet.fi> writes

>This misses the point. The existence of an earlier academic edition can be
>valuable in making a new edition. People become accustomed, for example,
>to the old Smijers Josquin edition in terms of measure numbers for
>citations. If one create an edition that is markedly divergent from that
>numbering system, there ought to be a very good reason for it, not
>neophyte unawareness.

Which Josquin edition? Why, the CHEAPEST, of course!
--
Peter Wilton

[Lori Jones]

> Ca...@monrepos.demon.co.uk (Augustus Carp) wrote:
>
> the intellectual effort involved in
>reworking 'academic' editions to produce 'performing' editions is not
>great - even composers can manage it.

That is a very insulting statement. I'm not a composer and I found it
offensive. I know someone who has composed some things I really like a
lot and I would not consider him inadequate to produce a performing
edition of a piece if he chose to do so.
>

>As a performer my main concern is to have dots on paper which I can turn
>into music. There is little to be gained from arguing that edition A of
>Josquin's Missa X is 'better' than edition B

(snip)

Maybe the edition doesn't matter in vocal music, but it DOES matter in
instrumental music. Surely the edition is important for ALL musicians.

The entire flute community has been, for years, playing Poulenc's "Sonata
For Flute And Piano" from an edition with which the composer himself had
express dissatifaction. A new edition had just come out that corrects
some really obvious mistakes and distinguishes between what Poulenc had
on his original score, marks he added later after having it performed by
Jean Pierre Rampal and again by Gareth Morris, those editorial marks
added after listening to recordings of Rampal and of Morris playing the
piece. This edition is now the best available. In this case, the
edition definitely matters and I would debate with anyone who thought
otherwise.

To relate this to early music, however - there are some editors who do
such a bad job of adding articulations and ornaments to Baroque music,
that if that name appears, I refuse to buy the music at all. The pieces
sound almost Romantic. My teacher and I have to change so many markings,
that I may as well get an urtext copy and do it myself, for which task I
am not yet qualified. (Soon, I hope, but not quite yet.) So, I really
do believe that debating the merits of different editions is important.
If you have two or more editions available, you can take the best from
each. Or, through debate, choose the one that is best.

Lori Jones

PS: If you want to flame me over this or otherwise respond, please do it
NOW. I am going offline for the next month or so, and I won't get to see
it if it is not done by Wednesday morning.

LAJ

[Elizabeth Randell]

Richard St. Clair (an23...@anon.penet.fi) wrote:

: >They were amateurs, in the best and true sense of the word.

: Hmmm. Maybe Leo Treitler, Alfred Einstein, Murray Lefkowitz and a host
: of others are really amateurs in the worst sense of the word.

"Amateurs do it because they love it." Treitler, Einstein, et al
are/were professionals (I can't speak about Einstein as he predates me,
but Treitler, with whom I had a seminar at Columbia, clearly loves his
work even if he does get paid for it).

: > They did not found university departments of music or musicology.

: Ah, a "strict construction" use of the term. Well, they didn't have liberal
: arts colleges in Burney's day, so it wasn't really an option then.

My goodness, have you never heard of Oxford? The liberal arts institute
of higher learning (be it a college, university, whatever) was invented
in the 12th century! The first one was in Paris. HTH.

Musicology (the term is a translation of the german "Musikwissenschaft")
as a discipline was invented in the 19th century, in Germany (I don't
remember exactly when and where, perhaps someone can help me here).
Before that time, there were music historians, music journalists and the
like who wrote about music, very well even. But I would maintain that
they were not musicologists.

: The fact

: that musicologists are holed up and on the university payroll doesn't make
: their work valid. This is really a meaningless side issue.

What is not meaningless is the idea of professional standards, the kind
that an academic discipline evolves. I would not deride the very real
and admirable accomplishments of Burney and Hawkins. But they were
individuals writing about music. They were not musicologists, a term
which implies a certain kind of professional training. If you want, you
can think of them as proto-musicologists, but I think it best to call
them "historians of music" and leave it at that. Terminology (and the
related clarity of thinking and distinction of concepts) is never a
meaningless side issue.

: >And on top of all that, we musicologists must be informed about the range

: >of music history, with research and information more up-to-date than what
: >was taught in undergraduate surveys in 1966.

: Of course. It's hard to shake off those memories of musicology abuse,
: however, and when I see testiness and superior attitudes from musicologists
: in the present day my ability to be charitable towards them evaporates.

Do not blame all musicologists for the shortcomings of any particular
individual(s). As for "superior attitudes," I for one admire superiority:
don't you think talent and accomplishment are valuable? Testiness most
often comes from expectations (of knowledge, understanding, and maturity)
that are all too often dashed.

: Ah, I am just pestering this newsgroup, am I? My lengthy and knowledeable

: posts on renaissance transcription, musica ficta, notation, composer
: and recording news...all this is just pestering to you?

Lengthy perhaps. Knowledgeable, no.

: Evidently you've never seen a troll. Someone who speaks plainly, with

: conviction, and a propos the subject of a newsgroup is not a troll.

No. By suggesting that you were trolling, I was giving you the benefit of
the doubt. Flattering you, even. Practiced trollers push people's hot
buttons (or, alternately, espouse stupid or factually incorrect opinions)
for the amusement that ensues when newbies take them seriously. Someone
who delights in insulting the profession and/or interests of a large
proportion of a newsgroup's participants is a boor and a buffoon.

I have no more time to waste on you. Ta ta!

[Rick]

eran...@email.unc.edu (Elizabeth Randell) wrote:

I wrote:
>: Evidently you've never seen a troll. Someone who speaks plainly, with
>: conviction, and a propos the subject of a newsgroup is not a troll.
>
>No. By suggesting that you were trolling, I was giving you the benefit of
>the doubt. Flattering you, even.

Oh sure, calling someone a troll is a compliment. Duh.

>I have no more time to waste on you.

Since your insults didn't phase me, I imagine you would want to move
on to more likely pickings. Good riddance.

Richard

[Michelle Dulak]

Apologies to all. I meant to send this privately, but I find
that all of Mr. St. Clair's posts currently on my server have
only his "anonymous" address, and I forgot to save his "real"
one. I don't need or want a generic Finnish ID any more than
Hope Ehn did.

Richard St. Clair writes:
>It's hard to shake off those memories of musicology abuse,
>however, and when I see testiness and superior attitudes from
>musicologists in the present day my ability to be charitable towards
>them evaporates.

...and later...

>Ah, I am just pestering this newsgroup, am I? My lengthy and knowledeable
>posts on renaissance transcription, musica ficta, notation, composer

>and recording news...all this is just pestering to you? Come now.

>Evidently you've never seen a troll. Someone who speaks plainly, with

>conviction, and a propos the subject of a newsgroup is not a troll. Clearly
>you do not like my personal style. I cannot change that. But your
>accusations of nefarious purposes on my part is wholly out of proportion
>with the supposed crimes which you lay at my feet. If you feel inclined
>to continue this pettiness, email me privately - the newsgroup doesn't need
>this kind of irrelevancy.

Richard, the complaint is not about your "personal style"; it's about
your scantily-justified diatribes against musicology and musicologists.
You complain of "testiness and superior attitudes [attitudes of
superiority?]." But the only one to claim superiority here was...you.
Composers "do what musicologists only talk about." Musicologists
live sheltered, academic lives. Musicologists and musicology itself
are pedantic and uninteresting. Etc.

You are of course welcome to think of history and aesthetics and
reception and the like as subjects interesting only to mediocrities.
Feel free to regard teaching as the thing we all fall back on when
we can't manage more important tasks, like (say) making records or
writing scores. But please don't be surprised if (or rather, when)
people disagree with you; and don't be surprised, either, if they
get annoyed when you then say (as you did to me) "Oh, well, as a
musicologist of course you would say that."

Michelle Dulak
(a performer--we do what composers merely *tell* us to do...)

[Michelle Dulak]

Richard St. Clair writes:

>The implication that composers are at a lower level of competency in
>preparing early music editions deserves to be challenged. Who prepared
>the great Choralis Constantinus edition of Isaac? - Anton Webern, one of
>the leading composers of the 20th century.

Not the best example, I fear. The Webern that made the edition wasn't
a world-famous composer; he was a young musicologist just beginning
compositional studies. We have very little music of Webern predating
his doctorate, and what there is, though good, doesn't much foreshadow
mature Webern. Even by the time the edition was published Webern had
just completed his Op. 1. You might as well argue that Webern's case
shows that musicologists are quite capable of composing. ;-)

>H. Colin Slim consulted
>composers for their expertise on the 10-odd missing part reconstructions
>for his "Gift of Madgrigals and Motets" edition. At least *he* had the
>humility to respect and value the expertise of a qualified musical creator.

Clearly, an editor who composes his own completions without being
a full-time composer himself is the kind of guy who has nothing but
contempt for the expertise of "qualified musical creators." I wonder
only whether the "qualified musical creators" may be distinguished
from the mere musicologists by the quality of the reconstruction
alone.

(Tell ya what, Richard: we have this Alessandro Scarlatti
opera here at UC/Berkeley, newly-discovered and revived for the
Berkeley Early Music Festival this summer. My fiance and I made a
performing edition from the ms. for the occasion. There's one incomplete
ritornello, with only the first few notes of the upper parts
and a bassline. I'll complete it myself, if you like, and then
send you *all* the ritornelli. I'm sure you'll be able to distinguish
instantly the work of a master composer from that of a musicological
hack...right?)

Anyone who has dealt with the Malipiero Monteverdi edition (grateful
though we must be that there's a reasonably complete edition at all!)
or the late-19th-c. Rameau editions of d'Indy & co. knows that
even composers can produce lousy editorial work.

Michelle Dulak

[Rick]

mal...@best.com (Michelle Dulak) wrote:
>Richard St. Clair writes:
>
>>The implication that composers are at a lower level of competency in
>>preparing early music editions deserves to be challenged. Who prepared
>>the great Choralis Constantinus edition of Isaac? - Anton Webern, one of
>>the leading composers of the 20th century.
>
>Not the best example, I fear. The Webern that made the edition wasn't
>a world-famous composer;

Nor was the young J.S. Bach who prepared organ transcriptions of
Vivaldi concerti.

> he was a young musicologist just beginning
>compositional studies. We have very little music of Webern predating
>his doctorate, and what there is, though good, doesn't much foreshadow
>mature Webern.

I agree, it's pretty lame stuff.

>Even by the time the edition was published Webern had
>just completed his Op. 1. You might as well argue that Webern's case
>shows that musicologists are quite capable of composing. ;-)

Okay, I see your point. However, the Webern that did CC was the great
composer in utero spiritu, i.e., he carried the potential for becoming a great
composer, and his life in music proved that his skills in both composing and
musicology were formidable (not to say conducting, at which he also
excelled, a fact little remembered). Anyway, I believe my argument was
that talents for musicology and for composing can coexist comfortably
and even thrive in (some) people. At least that's the point I'm making now :)

>>H. Colin Slim consulted
>>composers for their expertise on the 10-odd missing part reconstructions
>>for his "Gift of Madgrigals and Motets" edition. At least *he* had the
>>humility to respect and value the expertise of a qualified musical creator.

>Clearly, an editor who composes his own completions without being
>a full-time composer himself is the kind of guy who has nothing but
>contempt for the expertise of "qualified musical creators."

I don't see the reasoning here. E.E.Lowinsky composed a completion for
Willaert's Quidnam Ebrietas motet (a.k.a. "Chromatic duo", actually a
4-v piece, as Lowinsky discovered), for which one part was missing.
I talked with him about it, and he was quite humble, even embarrassed,
when I (genuinely, not butt-suckingly) complimented him on his effort.
I doubt if he would have wanted to bother Stravinsky for advice. I don't
take his enterprising reconstruction to be contemptuous of musical
creators at all. In fact, it's a fairly competent musical line in good
stylistic consistency with the piece and the era. Anyone else is free to
write their own reconstructed parts, after all. It would be right in keeping
with renaissance music.

Slim consulted John MacIvor Perkins on some of the completions for
"A Gift of Madrigals and Motets". He also consulted other musicologists.
The thing is, if only one voice - particularly an inner voice - is missing
from a renaissance piece, it doesn't take great genius to fill it in
in a manner that is competent, unobtrusive, and allows the piece to
live once again. Of course, some solutions will be better than others. I
like to think my completion of a Brumel chanson is quite good. But anyway,
I think Colin Slim's completions (or whatever parts of them he
is responsible for) are quite adequate. Probably in performances no one
could tell the difference if given a blindfold test. What makes renaissance
polyphony 'go' is the gestalt of all the voices, anyway.

>I wonder only whether the "qualified musical creators" may be distinguished
>from the mere musicologists by the quality of the reconstruction
>alone.

Doubtful. BTW, I never demean musicologists per se as "mere". It is a
vitally necessary occupation. I just don't like some of the attitudes I have
seen displayed. That's all.

>(Tell ya what, Richard: we have this Alessandro Scarlatti
>opera here at UC/Berkeley, newly-discovered and revived for the

Title, please? Where discovered? Sorry, I'm not up on all these things.

>Berkeley Early Music Festival this summer. My fiance and I made a
>performing edition from the ms. for the occasion.

Great! Congratulations!

>There's one incomplete
>ritornello, with only the first few notes of the upper parts
>and a bassline. I'll complete it myself, if you like, and then
>send you *all* the ritornelli. I'm sure you'll be able to distinguish
>instantly the work of a master composer from that of a musicological
>hack...right?)

I didn't call you a musicological hack, you did <g>. If you insist, okay. But
I don't know beans about Al Scarlatti's music and have only a general
knowledge of his style, so I probably couldn't tell if it was his or not,
if it were a half-decent attempt. There is a 50-50 chance I might spot
the ersatz ritornello, but I'd rather not expose my self-confessed
ignorance in this area to open ridicule!

>Anyone who has dealt with the Malipiero Monteverdi edition (grateful
>though we must be that there's a reasonably complete edition at all!)
>or the late-19th-c. Rameau editions of d'Indy & co. knows that
>even composers can produce lousy editorial work.

Oh, sure they can. There was a feeling in the 19th century of tremendous
emotional momentum, where things could be rushed into print and/or
rushed into performance - which impulse we are learning to circumscribe
in our, um, modern wisdom. Hopefully, these egregious wunderwerken
are a thing of the past. But 19th century editions *generally* suck, whether
by composers or anyone else. So what's the point?

Richard

[Rick]

mal...@best.com (Michelle Dulak) wrote:
>Richard, the complaint is not about your "personal style"; it's about
>your scantily-justified diatribes against musicology and musicologists.
>You complain of "testiness and superior attitudes [attitudes of
>superiority?]." But the only one to claim superiority here was...you.

Again, as with a few other flappable members of the ng, you are misquoting
me to prove your own projection, or else disagreeing with truisms. To wit:

>Composers "do what musicologists only talk about."

Composers compose music, musicologists
deal with the music once it's composed. True or false?

> Musicologists live sheltered, academic lives.

No, I said that *some* do. I also said that many musicologists are very
actively involved in performance and put their ideas into practice.
Because I said some do, doesn't equate that I said *all* do, 'kay?

> Musicologists and musicology itself are pedantic and uninteresting.

Sorry, wrong. I never said that at all. There are some musicologists
who *are* pedantic and uninteresting, and worse, but the same is
true of some composers, and some musicians. That is something I've
seen some of the musicologists around here agree with or posit on
their own initiative.

>You are of course welcome to think of history and aesthetics and
>reception and the like as subjects interesting only to mediocrities.

Never said that either. I'm very involved with history and aesthetics.
I have to be - I'm a composer. It's the air I breathe.

>Feel free to regard teaching as the thing we all fall back on when
>we can't manage more important tasks, like (say) making records or
>writing scores.

It is a more passive profession. I prefer the more active profession
of writing and performing music. True, I don't think much of passive
professions, but I don't deny that they have their place.

> But please don't be surprised if (or rather, when)
>people disagree with you;

People are free to disagree with anyone they want to. If people disagree
with me, fine. It's a free country and we still have free speech. I just get
ticked when people attach moral judgments to my opinions and act as though
they are better than me because I don't agree with them, which is really
what this all comes down to.

And don't think there isn't composer-bashing going on around here, because
there is.

> and don't be surprised, either, if they
>get annoyed when you then say (as you did to me) "Oh, well, as a
>musicologist of course you would say that."

I usually am snide only when people are snide to me first, and after I've
made reasonable attempts to be reasonable. I have my limits.

>(a performer--we do what composers merely *tell* us to do...)

And if they didn't, you merely would have no music to play.

Richard

[Peter Wilton]

In article <4q9pe8$k...@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>, Rick
<an23...@anon.penet.fi> writes

>>Feel free to regard teaching as the thing we all fall back on when
>>we can't manage more important tasks, like (say) making records or
>>writing scores.
>
>It is a more passive profession. I prefer the more active profession
>of writing and performing music. True, I don't think much of passive
>professions, but I don't deny that they have their place.

But why do you find it necessary even to *feel* that making such a
distinction is important, let alone to express it? It never occurs to
me to measure what I happen to do or not to do against what somebody
else does in that way. I can't help thinking that you do want to stir
things. You must be thoroughly im.penet.ent! .fi on you!
--
Peter Wilton

[Kiran Wagle]

Richard St. Clair writes:

> >Ah, I am just pestering this newsgroup, am I?

Yes, that's exactly it. You're perceptive for a composer.

> My lengthy and knowledeable posts on renaissance transcription, musica ficta,

> notation, composerand recording news...all this is just pestering to you?

Lengthy, anyway.

>Evidently you've never seen a troll. Someone who speaks plainly, with
>conviction, and a propos the subject of a newsgroup is not a troll.

I could write a troll that was written plainly, with conviction and a
propos the subject of a newsgroup. However, in your case, I don't think
it *IS* a troll; you really believe this crap you spew about
musicologists.

> Of course. It's hard to shake off those memories of musicology abuse,

Ah, so you ARE taking out some alleged childhood abuse on this newsgroup?

> however, and when I see testiness and superior attitudes from musicologists
> in the present day my ability to be charitable towards them evaporates.

It is unfortunate that we don't have a canonical killfile for this group,
so we could vote you into it and be rid of you forever. One little
*plonk* and we'd no longer have to see your lengthy and knowledgeable
attacks on musicologists (which are quite amusing coming from what passes
for a "composer" in the late 20th century) and your other random false
claims.

~ Kiran <ent...@io.com>

[John F. Anderies]

Hi,

I'm developing a women in early music course to be taught here at
Indiana University in the spring of 1997. I could use a little help
on a few listening items still. If anyone has information on any of
these topic areas, PLEASE E-MAIL ME; I don't always read the list.
What I am still looking for:

1. Recording(s) of women singing *monophonic* Gregorian chant
(**not** Hildegard). For instance, contemporary nuns would be great!

2. Recording(s) of Francesca Caccini *besides* those by Ars Femina.

3. Jacquet de la Guerre Canatata recording(s) *besides* those by
Sophie Boulin, Isabelle Poulenard, sopranos, et al. on the Arion
label.

The more professional and stylish the performances and sound
qualities, the better! So, please don't bother with references to
recordings for Briscoe's _Historical Anthology of Music by Women_ or
Diane Jezic's _Women Composers: The Lost Tradition Found_, etc.
Sorry if this offends anyone, but I am committed to giving early
music/women's music a good name not a bad one; these recordings have
served their purpose, but it's time for new ones. :^)

Thanks so much!

Sincerely,
John Anderies
jand...@indiana.edu
Indiana University

[Angela Malek]

Hi Mark,

One might come at Palestrina sacred motets from the history of chant and how motets are often based on these modes. Sacred music always lagged behind in terms of practice. Also, in the church modes leading tones are purposefully avoided due to what they considered sentimentality. That the church music was seeking to distinguish itself from the secular, it would probably apply church mode rules over baroque leading tones.


On Friday, April 26, 1996 at 2:00:00 AM UTC-5, Mark Rimple wrote:
> I wonder if a discussion of Ficta and it's usage in the late renaissance,
> particularly in Palestrina and Victoria, would be interesting to anyone.
> I sing at St. Clement's choir in Philadelphia, where we often perform
> Palestrina masses. I also have a good amount of training in Renaissance
> and Baroque music (and medieval music, for that matter) and have read
> many of the most important articles and writings about Ficta at one time
> or another.
> I know of most discussions of ficta revolve around the Netherlands school
> and earlier. Palestrina is closer to the Baroque, and it seems to me
> that MOST of the chromatic pitches are specified in the scores. However,
> the older editions often treat Palestrina either like Josquin or like
> Baroque music. I realize this issue sits the fence in many ways, but I
> am not aware of any scholarly attempt to investigate it.
> The most problematic issue is in the chromatic alteration of a lower
> neighbor tone. In the collected edition of Palestrina, there are many
> raised neighbor tones which don't resolve to the tonic of the following
> sonority. When an f is rasied to an f# in a chord which resolves to a c
> major chord, isn't this a bit past the "pulchritudinis" issue?
> Especially if later in the bar an f# could be used to move to the
> following tonality of G?
> The related problem I've seen in this is that often secondary dominants
> are introduced through ficta which then effect a sort of circle-of-fifths
> movement. I dont' think I've seen this in Palestrina's accidentals as
> much as in the editors.
> Lastly, I know that the modes were slowly becoming subservient to our
> idea of major and minor, but isn't one of the problems in introducing
> lots of flatted 4ths in the lydian mode that it no longer sounds
> lydian? And that if the tunes and motets are marked "in the X mode"
> shouldn't they be in that mode?
> --
> Yours,
>
> Mark Rimple
> mri...@astro.ocis.temple.edu