Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2007-01-20 15:58
clarinetwife wrote:
>> I was wondering though, historically speaking, whether the execution of a turn at the end makes any difference in whether an ornament is termed a trill or a shake. Or, for that matter, whether the shake involves a smaller number of oscillations between pitches where the trill lasts the whole duration of the note.>>
The answer to both of these questions, I find, is no. The terms 'trill' and 'shake' are synonymous, the latter falling into disuse with the passage of time.
Mr Friedland is coining his own usage of the word 'shake' and applying it not to the musical effect but to the physical execution of the effect, which of course he is perfectly entitled to do.
>> Any historical performance-type people care to comment?>>
My being a 'historical performance-type person' in this regard consists entirely of my having bothered to look up (and marvelled again at the pages and pages of) what the scholar Robert Donington writes in his article on 'Ornamentation' in (not the latest) Grove. Incidentally, he hints there that the dropping of the term 'shake' is perhaps mildly to be regretted, as there is another earlier use of the word 'trillo' that refers instead to vocal vibrato -- though the confusion is obviously minor.
I should say that if it should turn out that some other scholar finds some text in which some past author uses the words differently, then I'm sorry to have misinformed you -- but the discovery will clearly make about as much difference in both of our lives as Mr Friedland's different usage of the word 'shake' does.
On the other hand, knowing the different possibilities offered by trills/shakes does make a difference; for example, realising that some trills/shakes are 'prepared' (usually for harmonic reasons) and others 'unprepared' (for usually melodic reasons) is an important musical insight that impacts performance -- and more importantly, impacts the EFFECTIVENESS of performance.
In passing, not related particularly to this thread, there is an acronym, HIP, which stands for 'Historically Informed Performance'. I think it should lose the initial 'H', and come to be just 'Informed Performance'; and then the 'I' and the capital, and come to be just 'performance': that is, what we expect of performers in general, as a matter of course.
Consider the following analogy: anyone who wants to learn something about topography (or something else) from ANY map, of ANY period, would obviously be foolish not to bother to investigate the conventions of map-making being used by the person who drew it. I see no reason why we shouldn't take the same attitude to musicians who read the scores of composers, past or present, without similarly 'informing' themselves.
There is a difference between deciding to do something different from what's written in a score because you CHOOSE to, and doing something different from what's written by accident, because you simply can't be bothered to ask yourself and then investigate what it originally meant.
Phrase marks in Beethoven are another example of that, whatever Mr Dow thinks.
Tony
Post Edited (2007-01-20 20:19)
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