Post by alanone1 » Saturday 21 May 2011, 14:07 pm

Thanks Cary



Actually, this is the kind of rendering I don't care for (Trevor Pinnock's is very similar). For example, playing fully coupled with the 4' as well, misses the lute sound. Playing fast and stiff (to me) misses the point of this piece. I will look for a version on YouTube that is more like I have in mind. For example, most baroque harpsichords have a "damper" stop (sometimes called a "lute stop" which lightly muffles the strings. This is very effective for the rondeau chorus on the "front 8" (the top keyboard). Then the more melodious "back 8" (like playing close to the sound hole on a guitar) can be used for the verses.



But of course, we all have different tastes about what we like. The French loved the langourous sensual sound of their instruments (similarly, with the viola da gamba music e.g. of Forqueray), and wrote a lot of music (especially in the 17th century) to take advantage of the connected sound possibilities plus fluid elastic rhythmic pulses. As another example, much of the gist of this style of music can be grokked by learning to play the unmeasured preludes of Couperin's Uncle Louis, who was a kind of rough supreme genius. A truly great, even revelatory, introduction to this kind of interpretation is Christopher Hogwood's CD of Louis Couperin's music played on a ca. 1640 instrument.



Cheers,



Alan