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Re: meaning of "decomposez" in Jeanjean etudes

Author: kdk
Date: 2021-10-07 19:10

Philip Caron wrote:

> Is the term
> meant as an aid for less experienced players in teaching them
> to count evenly, or is it an instruction to performers to
> accent (or even articulate) the subdivisions of the written
> notes?

I think it's meant more as a way to indicate the real tempo. A composer might also want to emphasize that the subdivision is not a new meter. I.e., if the meter is 4/4 but the tempo of the quarter note is much less than 60 bpm, most people are apt to play too fast - allow too little time between each quarter note beat. It's easier to keep the overall slow tempo if you mentally think about the eighth notes that are twice as fast. But 8/8 might imply a different rhythmic feel - maybe a more even distribution or arch of accents - than 4/4 divided into beats and afterbeats.

I'm not sure that it's really productive to think too deeply about the instruction. For one thing, I don't think I've ever seen the Italian or German equivalent in composers who use those languages for instructions. For another, in my experience decomposez is used mostly by Debussy and Jeanjean, even among French composers. When you see it in either composer's work, I would just take it as permission to play very slowly by organizing the meter into beats and afterbeats.

Karl

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