Klarinet Archive - Posting 000418.txt from 2001/06

From: Bilwright@-----.net (William Wright)
Subj: Re: [kl] Phrasing and cocktail party theory
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001 13:49:12 -0400

Ann,

You may be interested in looking at
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PRanum/Page10.html

This web page discusses differences between French and British woodwind
phrasing in relation to French and English speech dynamics. (emphasis
on Baroque, but it discusses other periods as well)

Obviously Britain and France were only a few hundred miles apart (and I
assume they still are, heh! heh!), and yet major differences arose.
This raises the question of whether a biological or acoustic
*imperative* exists for a certain type of phrasing.

Here's a quote from the web page:

===============================
Most English words are accentuated by force; and in short words this
stress accent tends to fall at the beginning of the word: VER-y [big
snip] The situation is reversed on the other side of the Channel, for
the French accentuate the final syllable of a word. and they do it by
length, not by strength. This means that the strong note of the musical
measure must support the end of a word. In other words, it is not
altogether clear that the strong beats of a musical measure meant the
same thing to a 17th- or 18th-century Frenchman that it meant to an
Englishman (or an Italian or a German).
==================================

I am not arguing that one type of phrasing is better than another.

Nor am I disputing a point of history (such as who played what or how).

But it seems unrealistic to me to propose a biological or acoustic
imperative for beginning-oriented phrasing. Perhaps an artistic or
historical imperative, but not a biological or acoustic imperative.
There are many ways of separating musical phrases that are played
simultaneously or in succession. (see the web page cited above)

I suspect that if we broadened the conversation to include Eastern and
microtonal music, the concept of a biological or acoustical imperative
would become even more questionable.

Cheers,
Bill

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