Download Improvisation in Early Music Author(s): Ben Bechtel Source: Music

Improvisation in Early Music
Author(s): Ben Bechtel
Source: Music Educators Journal, Vol. 66, No. 5, (Jan., 1980), pp. 109-112
Published by: MENC: The National Association for Music Education
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3395787
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IN
EARLY MUSIC
Ben Bechtel
The student of Renaissance and
Baroque music needs to have a solid grounding in those styles' most essential improvisatory features so
that he or she can make spontaneous and musically appropriate
choices when performing music
written prior to 1750. However,
performers still must rely on a basic musical sense that in many respects has remained essentially unchanged through the ages. It is
really only necessary to increase
one's awareness of the interpretive
requirements of early music as they
are distinct from more contemporary practices, and to do so in an
The author is assistant professor of musicology at the Universityof Cincinnati.
orderly and logical way similar to
putting together a jigsaw puzzle.
In reconstructing a jigsaw puzzle,
though, one imitates, in a sense, the
arrangement of patterns, colors, and
shapes depicted on the box. This
procedure is analogous to finding a
recording by an acknowledged music authority and then imitating it.
Imitating a recording is often discouraged by teachers and often for
good reasons. On the other hand, in
a field such as Renaissance and
Baroque performance styles, where
all original performing tradition has
been lost, there is much to learn
from imitatingthe basic improvisatory
techniques of acknowledged specialists.
To return to our jigsaw puzzle
analogy, let us pretend that we have
lost the sample picture. What then?
The most logical solution would be
to find all the edge pieces that define the limits and basic shape. Next
we would look for salient shapes,
colors, and recognizable objects,
and compare the connecting links
in our process of compiling the
whole picture.
The jigsaw puzzle analogy is relevant because early music students
must deal with manners of performance that have not evolved
through an unbroken chain of practice or ongoing tradition. Yet even
if we possessed all the missing
links, we could not arrive at "standard," "complete" performing editions. The quintessential point
about early music is that no single
authentic interpretation exists; and
the most salient characteristics of
performances in the Renaissance
mej/jan '80
109
and Baroque eras were improvisation and spontaneity, the composer
and performer often being one and
the same person. In the history of
Western music the subsequent trend
toward greater specificity stands out
clearly.Composers graduallyusurped
the freedoms of the creative performer by detailing dynamics,tempo,
note values, and instrumentation.
Sixteenth-century
embellishments
In a sense, performing Renaissance and, to a certain degree, Baroque music requires questioning
every aspect of the music. For example, what instruments or voices
should be used? What pitch level?
What tempo? Where should dynamic changes occur? What kind of articulations are needed? What is the
overall character of the work?
Which voice part should be highlighted? Could a countermelody or
a drone be added? Would extra
notes or particular ornaments such
as trills, mordents, or slides increase the work's effectiveness?
Should notes be held for their full
written value or should some notes
be added where there are rests? Is
vibrato appropriate?What is considered to be "in tune"?Is a particular work suitable for church, outdoors, or after dinner? These considerations must all be "improvised"
because the composers rarely specified performance or interpretation
criteria.
Renaissance and Baroque musicians were nevertheless extraordinarily practical,possibly more out of
necessity than choice. Thus, as we
look at improvisation in the form of
typical embellishing and ornamentation practices in the Renaissance and
Baroque eras, a quote from Johann
J. Quantz is relevant:
Some personsbelieve thatthey will appear learnedif they crowd an Adagio
with manygraces,and twistthem
aroundin such fashionthatall too often
hardlyone note amongten harmonizes
with the bass,and little of the principal
air can be perceived.... Finally,they
are ignorantthatthere is more art in
sayingmuchwith little,thanlittlewith
much.'
'JohannJ. Quantz, On Playing the Flute, trans.
Edward R Reilly (New York: Schirmer Books,
1975), p. 120.
110
mej/jan '80
In a sense, performing
Renaissance and, to a
certain degree, Baroque
music requires questioning every aspect of the
music. Multiple considerations must be "improvised" because the composers rarely specified
performance or interpretation criteria.
In this great treatise originally published in 1752, Quantz frequently
stated that the performer should
embellish, ornament, or improvise
only to the extent that he or she
can do so effectively.
As early as 1529 writer and music
theorist MartinAgricola distinguished between embellishing and
ornamenting in his volume Musica
instumentalis deudsche. Embellishing takes the form of extensive and
elaborate melodic additions, including heterophony and countermelodies, whereas ornaments generally
are uniform or standardized units
of a few notes, such as trills, mordents, and turns, which often are
indicated by a sign or symbol above
the note to be ornamented.
The first printed treatise on the
subject of embellishment and ornamentation was Opera Intitulata
Fontegara by Sylvestro Ganassi,
published in Venice in 1535. This
manual introduced the basic patterns of melodic improvisation,
which were commonly known as
passaggio and diminution. The
practice of passaggio and diminution is thought to have originated as
early as the fourteenth century in
Europe, and could have been influenced by Near Eastern traditions.
In the sixteenth century diminutions were elaborate melodic insertions that were more interesting
than the composer's original notes.
They occasionally took the form of
fewer notes played in an interesting
rhythmic variation. The ornamentations were inserted so that the composer's original notes on the strong
beats were kept intact, while the
material in between was varied.
Stepwise movement often occurred
with larger intervals (usually thirds
or fourths) reversing the direction of the line. Rhythmicvariation often consisted of dividing an
original note into two, three, four,
five, six, or as many as eight even
notes with occasional dotted
rhythms and long-short-short
groups. Passaggio and diminution
were used anywhere within melodic phrases, but the most driving and
elaborate figures were saved for cadences. The most dramatic effect
within a work was achieved
through graduated degrees of improvisation that became more complex toward the end.
Most sixteenth-century writers
specified that each performer was
to make up his or her own improvisations according to facility
and the particular acoustic and
technical difficulties of a given instrument. Improvising usually took
place in music of two or more
parts, most often in the top parts,
but early composers warned against
simultaneous improvisation in more
than one voice part. Although most
of the instruction manuals were directed toward instrumentalists, improvisation practices are assumed
to have been applicable also to the
voice, since it was the model of expression that instrumentalists strove
to imitate. Another authoritativesixteenth-century source is Tratado de
Glosas by Diego Ortiz, published in
Rome in 1553. "Glosas" is Spanish
for "embellishments," and the examples included in this work should
be studied by anyone wishing to
learn the art of Renaissance improvisation.
Ornaments in Renaissance music
usually were not indicated by any
symbol over the note; they simply
were ad-libbed. Two popular ornamental figures were the tremolo
and the groppo. The tremolo is a
rapid alternation between the main
note and intervals of seconds or
thirds above or below. Tremolos
were easy to perform and therefore
used quite often, and their execution helped to generate passaggios
(improvised ornaments other than
scale passages or trill-like figurations) following their introduction
in a melodic line. A groppo is a trill
between the tonic and a half step
below. It is played at a cadence, often
starting on the tonic and ending by
passing to the third below the tonic
and returning stepwise. As an ornamental cadence, it was commonly
used throughout the sixteenth century. Other ornamental formulas
were developed during the 1500s,
but no universal standardization resulted. They may be studied in
greater depth in Howard Brown's
Embellishing Sixteenth Century
Music.
Baroque ornamentations
A gradual change in ornamentation and embellishing practices occurred in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, stimulated
primarily by Jacopo Peri, Giulio
Caccini, and Emilio del Cavalieri-
the leading composers of the Florentine Camerata.With the introduction of an opera-related
monodic style came the need to
subjugate music to a text. The dramatic delivery of the word and its
meaning in opera became an overriding concern among musicians.
Composers felt that excessive passaggios and diminutions interfered
with communicating specific emotions, which was an important aesthetic throughout the Baroque era
in both instrumental and vocal music. Even so, certain quick ornaments such as the groppo were retained and a few interesting new
ones were introduced, such as the
trillo (a gradually accelerated repetition of a single notated pitch) and
the technique of sliding up to a pitch
from a third below.
Thus by the mid-seventeenth century diminutions and passaggios had
lost favor and as a result short ornaments gained in popularityand development. "Smallnotes" printed between the main notes precisely
indicated the rendition of ornaments
in French music. Symbols indicating
which ornaments to use gradually
became more commonplace and increased the standardizationof the
style. The pinnacle of these trends
was the operatic recitative,with its
simple chordal accompaniment.As
FrederickNeumann points out in
Ornamentation in Baroque and
Post-BaroqueMusic, this endless, dry
recitative needed relief, which came
with the gradual introduction of
the aria, which in turn gave rise to
the bel canto style.2 When beautiful
melodic contours were again emphasized, lengthy passaggio-type ornamentations reemerged, and by the
early eighteenth century many composers included tables of the ornaments for use in their works. When
these tables are compared, they indicate many similarities and differences, but, as Neumann argues, they
tend to suggest a greater rigidity of
specific "on the beat" interpretations
than other commentaries from the
period would corroborate. Thus,
with so many opinions and divergent
trends evident in Renaissance and
Baroque improvisation, the final
2FrederickNeumann, Ornamentation in Baroque and Post-Baroque Music: WithSpecial Emphasis on J. S. Bach (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1978), p. 27.
arbiter in the embellishing and ornamenting of a work is good taste
gained through experience.
By the eighteenth century, ornamentation and embellishing practices had become quite varied. The
following generalized summary of
typical ornamentations gives a basic
framework for thinking about and
adapting them to modern performances of Renaissance and Baroque
music.
Single ornamental notes receive
varying rhythmic values, degrees of
accent, swelling, or shaping and
generally ascend or descend stepwise to, from, or between the principal notes, or are sounded simultaneously with the principal note. Double
notes generally are slurred to or from
the principal note or they connect
two principal notes. Trills are the
alternation between the principal
note and the diatonic second above.
Trills can begin on either the principal note or the auxiliary note, but
they always end on the principal
note. Trills can vary in the number
of alternations, speed, dynamic
shape, and emphasis, and may incorporate other ornaments at the
beginning or end. The mordent
consists of an alternation between
the principal note and a note a half
or whole step below. In a turn,
stepwise movement of at least three
notes occurs either through the
principal note from a step above or
below or from the principal note.
Manyother expressive elements
are appropriate to eighteenth-century music. These include the
swelling of notes by varying
amounts and with varying timings;
diminishing the volume at the end
of the note; flattement, a convention
similar to a trill but produced by
microtone intervals below the principal note; and vibrato.
In conclusion, it seems appropriate to quote musicologist Imogene
Horsley:
One of the paradoxesof contemporary
musicalstudyis the factthatthe student
by his very desire for historicallyauthenticperformancehas developed
habitsof thoughtwhich impede his
gaininga properunderstandingof the
musicof certainpast periods.His strict
trainingin accurateadherenceto the
notes of a compositionas writtendown
by the composerhas developedin him
mej/jan '80
111
such a reverence for those notes that it
is hard for him to add to them, or subtract from them, without a feeling of
guilt. While this attitude has produced
exemplary results in the performance of
music written after 1750, it has also led
to a complete misconception of the
performance ideals of much of the music written in the Baroque and Renaissance periods.
It is becoming general knowledge
that the simple appearance of much Baroque music is deceptive and that what
is seen on the printed page was often
merely an outline to be amplified in
performance according to regularized
patterns or improvised embellishment.3
Although regular patterns and
cliches were used in Renaissance
and Baroque improvisation, it was
the individual's skill of selection, interpretation, and execution, and his
ability to find a personal expression
in the music that in the end was the
significant measure of musicianship.
And while melodic ornamentation
and embellishing were not the only
aspects of early music subject to improvisation, they provide a good
starting point for beginning teachers and students who want to bring
a dimension to their music-making
at once both more individual and
more authentic.
'Imogene Horsley, "Improvised Embellishment
in the Performance of Renaissance Polyphonic Music,"Journal of the American Musicological Society
4 (1951): 7. Used with permission.
Selected
readings
from primary sources.
A Performer's Guide to Baroque Music. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1974.
This companion to The Interpretation of
Early Music is devoted exclusively to
Baroque music.
Ganassi, Sylvestro. Opera Intitulata
Fontegara. Edited by Hildemarie
Peter. Translated by Dorothy Swainson. Berlin: Robert Lienau, 1956.
Although just over 100 pages, this is
probably the most important single
original source from the sixteenth century. Mostly music examples of embellishment are given with only a small
amount of text.
Horsley, Imogene. "Improvised Embellishment in the Performance of
Renaissance Polyphonic Music."
Journal of the American iMusicological Society 4 (1951): 3.
This article was one of the earliest to
discuss the basic sources. It has many
music examples and serves as a clear
introduction to the subject.
Le Romain, Jacques H. Principles of
the Flute, Recorder, and Oboe.
Translated and edited by David Lasocki. London: Barrie & Jenkins,
1978. Distributed by Arco, 219 Park
Avenue South, New York City
10003.
This short treatise is essential reading
for anyone wishing to perform French
Renaissance and Baroque literature. It
covers tonguing, articulation, ornaments, and so on, and gives all the fingerings for flattement.
Brown, Howard Mayer. Embellishing Sixteenth-Century Music. London: Oxford University Press, 1976.
Mather, Betty Bang. Interpretation
of French Music from 1675-1775.
New York: McGinnis & Marx, 1973.
This eighty-page booklet is a concise
discussion of the sources, with ample
music examples.
This secondary source is thoroughly organized and gives a clear view of the
divergence of opinion that existed in
the Baroque era. It is replete with
charts, tables, and music examples,
which give the student easy access to
basic performance techniques.
Dart, Thurston. The Interpretation
of Music. New York: Harper & Row
Publications, Inc., 1969.
This classic offers a thoughtful discussion of the evolution of styles and
interpretation of medieval and Renaissance music.
Donington, Robert. The Interpretation of Early Music. Rev. ed.
New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc.,
1974.
This excellent source book organizes all
the basic elements of music, discusses
each in turn, and is backed up by an
encyclopedic quantity of quotations
112
mej/jan
'80
Neumann, Frederick. Ornamentation in Baroque and Post-Baroque
Music: With Special Emphasis on
J. S. Bach. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.
This large book (more than 600 pages
with an extensive bibliography) is a
scholarly, thorough, and exhaustive examination of Baroque ornamentation
practices. It is clearly written for
Bach enthusiasts and more advanced
students.
Ortiz, Diego. Tratado de Glosas.
Edited and translated by Max
Schneider. Cassel: Barenreiter,
1961. This treatise is also translated
into English by Peter Farrell in the
Journal of the Viola da Gamba Society of America 4 (1967).
Thisexcellentstudyis completewith
manysuggestedembellishmentfigures
and musicexamplesin the formof
diminutions.
Quantz, Johann Joachim. On Playing the Flute. Translated by Edward
R. Reilly. New York: Schirmer
Books, 1975.
Quantzwas consideredthe most knowledgeableand sensitiveperformerand
observerof his day.This book is the
definitivelexicon of Baroquemusic
stylesand ornaments.
Selected
recordings
The Amorous Flute (Argo ZRG 746);
David Munrow
Bach, J. S. Brandenburg Concertos
(ABC Records 67030, two discs);
Leonhardt Consort
Musical Offering (ABC Records 67007); Leonhardt Consort
English Musicfor Consort of the
Seventeenth Century (Das alte Werk
26.35286, two discs); Leonhardt
Consort
English Musicfor Recorders and a
Consort of Viols in the Sixteenth
and Seventeenth Centuries (Das alte
Werk 6.41074); Briiggen Consort
French Recorder Music (Das alte
Werk 6.41129); Briiggen, Boeke,
Hauwe, recorders
The Pleasures of the Royal Courts
(Nonesuch 71326); Early Music
Consort of London, David Munrow,
conductor
Rameau, Jean Philippe. Pieces de
Clavecin en concerts (Das alte Werk
6.41133); Frans Briiggen, Sigiwalk
Kuijken, Wieland Kuijken, Gustav
Leonhardt
Recorder Concertos by Vivaldi, Sammartini, Telemann, and Naudot
(Das alte Werk 6.41095); Concentus
Musicus Wein, Frans Briiggen, rei
corder