Lawes: Fantasia for 6 viols - Turner viols of Orpheon

[MELONMOVIES]

I'm just loving the way that everyones comment is with proper English and how people are having proper discussions without making a scene. You don't usually find that on YouTube... :)

[peteacher52]

Very interesting and informative. So Turner must have been to the gamba family what Gagliano and Gofriller were to violas and cellos.

I think the sound of the gambas compared to the violin family is rather like the comparison between reed and flue pipes in an organ.

[Bennisimo1]

wooooow......... fantastisch!!!

[tykun101]

music was better in the renaissance too. it was so free. it was "before it's time", because music was so restricted by the courts for the next 200 years.

[lichtbroeder]

I'm pretty sure that though this music sounds "free", most of it is set down on paper and played as intended by the composer. And if music was restricted by royal courts for the next 200 years, how do you explain the likes of Bach? His music soars, falls, meanders, marches, whispers and shouts.

[wcbroccoli]

@tykun101 Lawes was born 1602, died 1645, the same year J. S. Bach's father was born, and just 40 years before Bach himself, a figure of the LATE Baroque, was born.

The Baroque began in the late 1500s.

What's makes you think this Lawes is music of the renaissance?

And just who do you think this music was written for, if not royalty or nobility?

HINT: Lawes spent ALL his adult life in the employ of the English court!

[DarkwingScooter]

@wcbroccoli To be fair this is more in the late Renaissance tradition than the Baroque one. Stile Antiqua as opposed to Stile Nuovo.

The Baroque designation actually doesn't make much sense for most of the Baroque. How is Telemann more like Lawes than Haydn?

The time-defined style periods are very weakly supported in practice.

[wcbroccoli]

@DarkwingScooter I play in viol consorts so I know a thing or 2 about the history of the genre. The style in this Lawes work -- the harmonic language, the overtly instrumental style, the use of organ continuo -- has much more in common with the Baroque stile moderno than the Renaissance. BTW: "stile antico" refers to music that is historically aware and can even apply to 20th c. music. Even Late Baroque composers like Bach and Telemann composed in stile antico from time to time.

[DarkwingScooter]

@wcbroccoli "Stile antiqua" was a term, invented by Monteverdi if I I am not mistaken, to compare his "stile nuovo". It is the old imitative contrapuntal style, not related to harmony.

In the same way as the term "Baroque" is a function of the classical era to describe what came before it.

Baroque is not, as is often mistakenly thought, related to continuo. Mozart conducted some of his symphonies while playing continuo on the harpsichord, even if the parts were not scored. Same for earlier.

[wcbroccoli]

@DarkwingScooter Monteverdi used the term "seconda pratica" to distinguish his music from the so-called "prima pratica" of Palestrina and Zarlino. "Stile moderno" was used by Caccini to describe his monodies with basso continuo. The Baroque is very much related to basso continuo.(BC). You find organ continuo even in the 19th c. The fact that BC is used in later periods doesn't mean it's not related to the Baroque period.

[wcbroccoli]

@DarkwingScooter Which of these 2 Late Baroque works from the Musical Offering ---- the 3- and 6-part ricercars --- reflects the then modern styles, and which modern styles? Which work reflects stile antico?

What did the term "ricercar" mean in Bach's era and how did it apply to these works?

[DarkwingScooter]

@wcbroccoli If I had to force the distinction the 6 part ricercar would be stile nuovo and the 3-part stile antico. It is somewhat forced distinction in this music though.

"Research", it is an imitative piece which develops a theme, but the term is very loosely used.

A mistake often made in textbooks is to assign absolute status to things which particular composers did on a whim. Bach no more set the fugue in stone (or the ricercar with these two examples) than Telemann did the fantasia.

[wcbroccoli]

@DarkwingScooter The original meaning of "ricercar" referred to an IMPROVISED prelude or a kind of fantasy requiring much skill of the performer. The 3-part ricercar is an elaboration of the fugue Bach improvised for the king. It reflects improvisatory manners and develops and expands, in long interludes, typical motivic elements of the galant and empfindsamer Stil understand by the young Berlin court musicians.

[DarkwingScooter]

@wcbroccoli As for Caccini/Monteverdi as the source of the new style. You don't think the fact that the two men were working in close proximity on the same kind of stuff at the same time means that could have been referring to the same kind of thing?

(Caccini's Nuovo Musiche 1602, Monteverdi's Fourth book 1603)

[wcbroccoli]

@DarkwingScooter The fact the these 2 ricercars are fugues or involve imitative counterpoint has absolutely nothing to do with whether their style is old, new or modern.

[DarkwingScooter]

@wcbroccoli Cont. Extract from the article "Monteverdi" in the 1954 edition of Grove's. I hardly think my connection of the new style to a less severe contrapuntal style is reading too much into anything. The fact that the whole thing represents a wonderful paradox is another matter.

I would like to see a source for ricercars originally being improvised, that seems highly unlikely to me, Fantasias fit the bill much better.

[wcbroccoli]

@DarkwingScooter Stylistically, the 6-part ricercar is the complete opposite ot the 3-part ricercar. It's written in motet style! Stile antico! It is deliberately aware of the Palestina style, though the harmonic language is very different from Palestrina's. And unlike the 3-part ricercar, it does not pay homage to modern styles. The 6-part ricercar fits the defintion of ricercar in Bach's day: an elaborate fugue worked out after much thought.

[DarkwingScooter]

@wcbroccoli On the topic of textbooks...

"In the new and revolutionary style of music to which Monteverdi subscribed, and which he labelled seconda practica, the poetic word is the master of harmony..., whereas in the old style of prima practica ... the harmony was considered the mistress of the word. This deliberate shift in emphasis from the preconceived polyphonic pattern to the expressive requirements of speech necessitated in turn the creation of of recitative..." Cont.

[wcbroccoli]

@DarkwingScooter You incorrectly believe "old" means counterpoint and "new" means no counterpoint. That is why you think you have to force a distinction.

Your assignment of old and new to the ricercars bears no relationship to the reality of the very different stylistic features ot these works.

[DarkwingScooter]

@wcbroccoli Which motet style? The term doesn't even have a consistent stylistic implication for Bach meager output. I know them intimately, as well as (btw.) Palestrina's works.

I think this is simply a case of you having read a textbook which read too much into these things and tried to assign absolute meaning to things which have none.

[wcbroccoli]

@DarkwingScooter You want to assign absolute meanings. You think "motet style" refers only to motets. The term is frequently used in the literature. The early music professional I know instantly understand the term to refer to works in a style of counterpoint similar to Palestrina's, i.e., a predominantly vocal style of 16-17th c. counterpoint. The 6-part Ricercar has patently motet-like charactersitics. The 3-part Ricercar does not.

[DarkwingScooter]

@wcbroccoli In Bach's time Palestrina's counterpoint was practically defined as being like that of Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum (3-part ricercar). Which one of the fololwing works would you say is in the "motet style": watch?v=D5pVrVXG9CY watch?v=SlmBND9Srb0 watch?v=w64w5s1HVbM watch?v=FYFNEedcvbs watch?v=uvloqQPu2l4 watch?v=v1IWIYj7ELc watch?v=HZYgPx031pA watch?v=gyQAkKHvBFo watch?v=_WXx5tttwGo What you refer to as the "motet style" is the same as the prima prattica. Diminution counterpoint.

[wcbroccoli]

@DarkwingScooter Bach's estate included copies of works by Palestrina, as well as works of other early masters & contemporaries of Bach. I worked thru an annotated edition of Gradus ad Parnassum. The galant triplets and apoggiaturas in the 3-part Ricercar don't fit the examples in Gradus. But the entire 6-part Ricercar, with "its patently motet-like characteristics" [C.Wolff], does.

Stile antico and prima pratica. The chordal triplets are not at the vocal style of "Gradus" or "Praeneste".

[DarkwingScooter]

@wcbroccoli More on the motet style: there is no entry on this in the New Grove or anywhere else I can find, it is a very loose term related to Gombert).

The big problem is that even among Bach's own motet's there is only one that can be seen as being mostly in this style (Jesu Meine Freude), and this one is by far the most modern of the Motets. Calling the 6-part Ricercar Motet-like is actually apt, but it is not in "Motet style".

You seem completely obsessed with classifying things.

[DarkwingScooter]

@wcbroccoli *Edit* Not Jesu meine Freude" (apologies) I should say Lobet den Herrn.

[wcbroccoli]

@DarkwingScooter "Diminution counterpoint"? How about "augmentation counterpoint"? .Do you even understand the terms you use?

You naively assume anything with "motet" in the title represents what musicologists call "motet style." I already explained the term elsewhere in my comments.

C. Wolff and I already identified the 6-part Ricercar, with "its patently motet-like characfteristcs", as an example. Here's a vocal example:

watch?v=vn15Ib-mgRw&feature=re­lated

[DarkwingScooter]

@wcbroccoli So as an example of motet-like characteristics of a Bach ricercar you cite a Bach Kantata? Motet style is identified with Gombert, a style that is very much prima prattica.

I agree that this Kantata is in the Gombert style.

In Bach's time the term "Motet style" is meaningless for distinguishing between old and new practice.

My trusty Grove's (1954) gives the definition of diminution (3) as equivalent to "division". How would you describe Fux's counterpoint if not as divisions?

[DarkwingScooter]

@wcbroccoli Incidentally, as a flautist I know the works of the Court of Friedrich the Great intimately, the 3-part ricercar is not a homage to that style.

This is though:

watch?v=ue1_BTXSHXM

This kind of stylistic analysis inevitably ends up in nothing more than a ball of contradiction.

[wcbroccoli]

@DarkwingScooter Christoph Wolff -- one of the world's foremost Bach authorities, William Powell Mason Prof. of Music & Dean of the Grad. School of Arts & Sciences, Harvard U. --- would disagree with your flautist.

E..g.: mm.38-45 and mm. 107-116 of the 3-part Ricercar.

watch?v=MJSmL97FZ8k&playnext=1­&videos=C7cWzPy_OMM&fmt=18

Your example contradicts nothing I've said. The fact that you cite it as a contradiction suggests you don't understand the issues.

[DarkwingScooter]

@wcbroccoli "would disagree with your flautist"

The E-flat major Sonata has long been identified with C.P.E Bach precisely on stylistic grounds even though it sounds wholly out of place in C.P.E's oevre.

Recently it has been admitted into J.S's work list, largely on the grounds of excluding the g minor, which is very similar.

With watch?v=aiEflPws0RI you may have a point, but is a thinly stretched one.

Spare me the titles, I don't take kindly to name dropping, good reasoning will suffice.

[wcbroccoli]

@DarkwingScooter "The 3rd movement of the sonata [from M.O.] stresses even more [than the 3-part Ricercar] the references to this characteristic style of the Berlin school in the 1740s and 1750s. Here we have the only pieces of Bach in which he uses the delicate expressive musical language of the generation of his sons...These sylistic elements of the Empfindsamkeit...manifest how well the old capellmeister understood the music of the young Berlin court musicians."-C. Wolff

[DarkwingScooter]

@wcbroccoli Here is an example of Gombert's "Motet Style":

watch?v=dTGfkPvH_nU

And an extract from the New Grove identifying your "Motet Style" with Madrigalisms (Article on Monteverdi 6):

"To a modern observer the most obvious use by Monteverdi of imitationo doubt occurs in his Missa a 6 voci ... sv205 (1610) based on points of imitation, in the other, modern sense, drawn from Gombert’s motet In illo tempore... written in an austere, archaic style, avoiding madrigalisms or word-painting... "

[DarkwingScooter]

@wcbroccoli Ideally though you should listen to pre-baroque composers such Guami to see that the distinction is not so clear running backwards either.

Also, see the Madrigal tradition which forms a much better analogue to the new style than the chronological definition does.

[wcbroccoli]

@tykun101 How is it "so free"? This IS tighly written, imitative polyphonic music for the royal English COURT!

[wcbroccoli]

@tykun101 Restricted by the courts HOW?

Well into the 19th c. MOST musicians had a royal, noble, municipal or ecclesiastical employers. Few worked for the stage.

[wcbroccoli]

@tykun101 Bach was Kapellmeister to the Prince of Anhalt-Koethen, Weimar court organist & concertmeister, Royal Polish & Saxon Electoral Court Composer, etc.. Haendel was Kapellmeister to the Elector of Hanover. Mozart worked at the Salzburg court. Haydn was Kapellmeister to Count Morzin & later, Prince Esterhazy. Beethoven had noble patrons. So did Tchaikowsky.

[ShinAkiraX]

Viols sound more pleasant to the ear than modern strings. The ensemble sounds more choir like, all the voices merging into one.

[rufieoud]

Is there a Portative organ on this recording? Stunning and truly evocative. thank you for such beautiful music.

[aelfricbetera]

wonderful sound;.. this is true musicianship...viols make great listening..

[wcbroccoli]

Played this fantasy just last week at viols workshop!