PART 3: Video Intro

Do you like to dance? Or do you prefer to just listen to dance music, like hip hop or disco? People in the 17^th and 18^th centuries loved dancing, or just listening to dance music. In fact, dance music became so popular that composers started making collections of dances, called suites (or partitas, or in France, ordres.) These suites of dances were mostly just for listening, and not particularly for dancing, so that musicians now refer to them as "stylized" dances.

The first suites were a simple affair: just three dances, the Allemande, Courante, and Sarabande. Those first two dances you may remember from the Renaissance lecture: the Allemande was a stately dance in duple time while the Courante was a livelier dance in triple time.

But the Sarabande—what to say? Well I suppose that every age has its slow-and-sexy dance--and this was it for the Baroque era. In fact, lest you think that I'm jesting, I should tell you that during the 17th century in Spain the Sarabande (which was sometimes danced with castenets) was outlawed because of its indecency. Anyone caught doing this lascivious dance could be jailed! The music of the Sarabande was characterized by very strong, passionate emotions, ranging from anger to tenderness. The dance movements included swaying the hips, waving the arms, and holding up the pinky finger of each hand delicately. Dancers also interpreted the emotions of the dance with facial expressions such as rolling the eyes upward and parting the lips.

 

As mentioned in the Renaissance lecture, dances were always in binary form, meaning AB, or if repeated, AABB. Repeats were (and still are) fun to do because they offered the performer a chance to spontaneously ornament or embellish the music (meaning that the music was generally played straight the first time through and ornamented on the second time around.)

Numerous treatises of the time exist that teach performers how to ornament using all sorts of little plug-in type decorations. Today's musicians still study those old treatises to learn how to vary the music appropriately—it can really make the music come alive.

For the most part ornamentation was seen as the discretionary tool of every fine musician and performers were expected to improvise their own embellishments. Some composers, however, wrote out the ornamentation for performers (either because they didn't trust the performer to come up with something good enough, or because the performer asked them for help). Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) offended many people by writing out his ornamentation in great detail—but modern day performers are very grateful for this because it gives us insight into how he handled embellishment.

Let's stop here for a moment now, and listen to some excerpts from a Bach suite (the English Suite in G minor): here are the Allemande, Courante, and Sarabande. In each case try to pick out the AABB shape. There is something very satisfying about the symmetrical, balanced shape of these dances.

Try to listen for when you think each A section is over . Also, listen for if/when the repeat starts (and the same for the B section).

Bach: G minor English Suite
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande

A fourth dance was soon added to the suite—the gigue, most commonly a bouncy dance in triple meter (usually 6/8, 3/8, 9/8 or 12/8). Though the gigue was at first inserted before the Sarabande it later took its place at the end of the suite. It makes a nice closing—very upbeat.

The Allemande-Courante-Sarabande-Gigue format eventually became standard for the suite, partita and ordre. Though other dances were added in and around these four basic ones, they remained the heart of the suite.

Some of the common additional dances included the minuet, a light dance in triple meter which was a favorite of royalty and which sustained its popularity longer than any other dance of the era. At royal balls the minuet was danced by one couple at a time, in full view of the king and queen plus all the hundreds of attendees! The steps to it were prescribed and—believe me, I've tried them—they were not easy. Heaven help you if you messed up in public, because it would be reported throughout society the next day!

In addition to the extra dances added in and around the basic four, it also became the fashion to start a suite with a large opening movement. Sometimes this was a toccata (a piece showing a lot of finger dexterity or virtuosity), or an ouverture (a grand movement that projected solemnity at first, and then moved on to a faster, contrapuntal section).

Some French composers favored the unmeasured prelude (excerpt shown below).     These movements are great fun to play because, as you can see from the illustration there were no barlines, rhythms or meters notated. The performer was free to interpret the harmonies as they wished. This Prelude is one of my favorites--I used it to open my Carnegie Recital Hall debut in 1983.

All of this freedom given to the Baroque performer (freedom to interpret unmeasured preludes, freedom to embellish and ornament on repeats, freedom to improvise figured bass accompaniments) would seem to be very exciting for modern-day players. But actually, there has been a lot of controversy in this area about how music was performed in its own time (recall our discussion previously of Performance Practice, also called Historically Informed Performance or HIP, for short.) Obviously, since there are no recordings of 18^th century players it is hard to know exactly how the music was interpreted. A whole field of inquiry has therefore sprung up just in the last 25 years or so, and to that end performers nowadays

• read old treatises to learn what composers said about the interpretation of their music.

examine old paintings to see what they can learn about the instruments in use at the time and how they were held .  This type of study is called iconography. Notice in this painting, for example, how the person playing the cello holds it between his legs, rather than using an endpin, and holds the bow higher than it is today held; the violin has no chinrest or shoulder rest, and the musician holds the instrument on the collarbone; the hornist uses his hand in the bell of the horn.

• try to recreate the music on the instruments it was originally designed for--this is called "using Period Instruments." For instance, Bach had a harpsichord, clavichord and organ, but not the modern grand piano; he used the wooden flute and recorder, but not the silver flute; his violins were built differently from today's instruments and the bows were significantly different in design and weight. And many of his cello works were actually written for the viola da gamba, an instrument which, while not exactly obsolete, is today only played by specialists.

 

A HIP QUIZ

Here's an example of the variety of interpretation that can occur when two performers of vastly different training and opinion play the same work. I'll give you an excerpt of the E Major Violin Sonata of J.S. Bach (first movement):

Performer Number One
Performer Number Two

Which performance to you think would reflect a historically informed approach? Which would you dub the more 'conservative?'  Which example would you say used a Baroque violin, or a "period instrument?" Which used the modern violin? Did you hear any embellishment in either performance? Which performance do you prefer and why? Why not email me and share your opinion? Click here for the answer!

This zeal for authenticity, the buzzword of Performance Practice advocates, has had repercussions in other fields as well. For instance, there are a number of film makers who pride themselves on reproducing the details of historical periods, from furniture and costumes to manners and accents. The many films of Merchant/Ivory are an example, as is James Cameron's Titanic. To make her "look" authentic when she played the harpsichord in the movie Jefferson in Paris, film makers Merchant and Ivory hired me to coach the actress Gwyneth Paltrow. Obviously I could not teach her to play the harpsichord in 2 months, but I did teach her a few pieces and helped her to look natural at the keyboard. In the interests of authenticity she also had to study French and practice wearing a corset!

In theatre one can see Shakespeare in full Elizabethan regalia at one company, and in a 1940s zoot-suit production at the next. Periodically critics complain about the updating of such classics, but the idea itself is not that offensive in theatre.

These are issues that don't generally come up in the world of popular musics, where, aside from technical copyright issues, the right to arrange, update, or reinterpret a song is taken for granted and is even regarded as flattering to the original composer/performer.

In the world of classical music, however, there have been acrimonious fights about whether early music sounds better on modern-day instruments or old instruments, or whether trying so hard to recreate the composer's intentions gets in the way of the modern performer giving their view of the music.

The idea of authenticity raises fundamental questions that go to the heart of the performer's relationship to the composer. When it comes right down to it, whose interpretation should prevail, that of the composer or the performer? Is every performer entitled to some license in interpreting a work? It's a good topic for a café chat--or an email to me! What do you think?

The first example was played by a violinist using a modern instrument and a modern approach. The second performance was played by a violinist using a Baroque instrument and Baroque bow and interpreting the music according to how he thinks it might have been played in the 18^th century. Click here to return to lecture.