I started out on classical violin, but I didn't like any of the music except the Baroque stuff (I absolutely loathe Romantic music). Much later I fell in love with fiddling, Irish fiddling in particular.
There seem to be a lot of fiddlers who like Baroque.
Just what is the connection, really? I'm really curious about this.
To me Baroque music has a driving, foot-tapping rhythm...for example, the first movement of Brandenburg #3.
Any other fiddlers around here who love Baroque? Where is the connection, exactly? Is it just that Baroque is early enough to have a strong connection to fiddling?
I really feel that there's a connection between Baroque music and modern fiddling, but I'm not sure why that is. The music is so different, but there seems to be something in common that I can't put my finger on.
Structurally, there is a lot to be said about similarities between trad and Baroque, but the thing I always latch onto is the prominence of ornamentation and personal reinterpretation. Like in Irish trad, Baroque manuscripts only show the skeleton of the tune; musicians were not only encouraged but expected to embellish the notes and play them differently almost each time through. As vibrato did not yet exist, much of the ornamentation is closer to grace notes and rolls, and the overall sound is simply very trad-y.
Now, I do realise that Wikipedia isn't the be-all-and-end-all ... Nevertheless, it isn't true that vibrato "didn't yet exist" in the baroque era.
My take on the similarity is again that, essentially, Baroque music is based - sometimes loosely - on dance music. It's also more rooted in melody than some later classical and romantic music. The combination of a base in dance and a melodic slant to the music mean that, In particular, there is often an insistent use of answering 8-bar phrases, which is distinctly reminiscent of trad tunes.
I don't wish to be irreverent but Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring", if sped up, is a natural slip jig (9/8 time). And consider some of the Irish/Baroque vocabulary similarities: jig/gigue; reel, apparently, comes from quadrille. Anyway, here's Celtic Woman treating Bach with due reverence.
Turlough O'Carolan-contemporary Baroque composer and harpist using traditional Irish and Baroque idioms:pieces of his fit alongside Corelli, Bach and Vivaldi, others you could play for a dance or session with the other jigs, slip jigs etc. He is still being played-I am not sure if this is due to a continuous tradition or to his pieces being rediscovered and reintroduced with the revival of interest in traditional Irish music a century ago or so-(O'Neill's, etc)
And they sound lively on fiddle.
Well, it’s been proposed by Official Smart People that a lot of the familiar aspects of ITM were adopted during the Baroque period. The ornamentation is certainly similar and, of course, the dance association.
On the other hand, recorded history is 3% fact and 97% speculation, extrapolation, fiction, guesswork and wishful thinking.
Official Smart People....... Ha!
We touched on this a couple of weeks ago........
I agree with all of the above........... Baroque has more complex melodies than Romantic (Romantic often using only 4 or more notes transposed all over the keyboard); Baroque has some of the same question/answer qualities as Trad...
And it isn't overly emotional like Romantic can be. Trad & Baroque also happen to lack the pretentiousness of alot of Classical music.
Vibrato became quite fashionable in the later Baroque. I think that all the musical boundaries are far more blurred than a lot of "scholars" would have us believe. Mozart loved nothing better than to write a few country dances, and Beethoven had a go at setting some Scottish folk songs (ahem - not your finest hour actually, Lud!) I know that Beethoven isn't Baroque, but there's a grand jig right in the middle of the Grosse Fuge!
Like Screetch, I'm very fond of baroque music (Tartini and Bach in particular) and have had my fill of the emotional excesses of much Romantic-era music.
Listen to Manze or Wallfisch playing Tartini violin sonatas sometime. These sonatas are chock-full of very "fiddle" sounding folk-derived dance melodies with variations.
By all means no, monkey440. Not mechanical.
Alot of the most lyrical, beautiful music I've ever heard has been among the Trad and Baroque (especially Bach & in my opinion M. Hayes). I said *over* emotional. Romantic is well known for pushing the boundries of emotionalism.
Have a listen to the J S Bach unaccompanied wotsits for fiddle. Basically taking fiddle tunes to one extreme of development. (Don't usually get played with much lift though.)
I don't play fiddle, but had pretty much the same experience with flute. I love Irish music, and since college have gotten into Baroque music. I don't care for Romantic or Classical music quite so much though, at least not on flute anyway.
SOME "Romantic" music may well wear its heart on its sleeve a little too much, Mr Star, but that is a very blanket dismissal of yours in that post. Much extremely fine, expressive and lyrical music was composed in the 19th and early 20th centuries that does not go over the top with mawkish sentiment. Have a crack at late Beethoven, almost any Mendelssohn, Schumann's piano music, Smetana, Dvorak, even the late piano works of Brahms. The "Romantic" soubriquet has, in my view, been assigned in an unfortunate broad-brush way to a certain period of time in classical music instead of to particular works by particular composers.
And may you long be lauded for your depth of scholarship in the matter of the Bach violin partitas (I bet he wished he could have come up with "wotsits!"), chadmills. Where's that bloody eye-rolling emoticon when you need it.
Love it - "wotsit". Almost as good as a "jobby" - which I used to use as a generic name for any impromptu piece of music. I stopped using that one when I found out that it's also a Scottish expression for a turd.
You don't think "Bach's sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin, (BWV 1001-1006)" might have sounded a tiny bit pretentious in this setting, Steve?
There are very good and logical reasons why the apparent parallel between Baroque music and British Isles fiddling is much more than simply "apparent."
For starters, the firm dividing line between so-called "classical" (art, whatever) music and folk/popular/whatever else music simply did not exist in previous centuries. Sure, there were genres and so forth, but the firm demarcation line that we have drawn around classical music was simply unknown in the past. Bach regularly employed instrumentalists for his church perfomances who otherwise played in taverns and other town places. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Mrs.B mentioned O'Carolan above. Here was a traditional bard/harper of the most Gaelic of persuasions, and yet he rubbed shoulders with the likes of Geminiani. Check out the dhm release "Carolan's Harp" by the Harp Consort/ Andrew Lawrence-King for a *fantastic* folk/classical crossover album.
And look at technique -- a lot of Scots and Irish fiddle technique in use today is exactly the same as what is prescribed in early violin tutorials (Tartini, Geminiani, Leopold Mozart..), be it position of the instrument on the shoulder, bow technique, or prejudice in favor of first-position and open strings.
The baroque dance-forms all stem from country dances. Gigue = jig and all the rest (allemande, courante, sarabande, rigaudon, hornpipe, bouree, gavotte...) have humble origins, re-invented in city and courtly circles.
If you go back to the Renaissance, the lines are even more closely drawn. And remember, Vivaldi, Corelli, James Oswald, Bach, and the rest were much closer in time to the Elizabethans than to us.
There is a FANTASTIC book out called "Scottish Fiddle Music of the 18th Century" that really sets out well the fact that STM/ITM and baroque music styles have some common ancestry. They are not one and the same, of course, and one shouldn't overdo the parallels, but there is much more exploration down this avenue than has thus far been taken advantage of.
And don't knock Romanticism too quickly, either -- think about Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony, or Max Bruch's Scottish Fantasty (which makes use of Scots Wha' Hae), or any number of pieces by C.V. Stanford -- the traditional strain is alive and well in 19th century music, albeit moving farther and farther away from its roots.
Baroque Music and Fiddling
Baroque Music and Fiddling
I started out on classical violin, but I didn't like any of the music except the Baroque stuff (I absolutely loathe Romantic music). Much later I fell in love with fiddling, Irish fiddling in particular.
There seem to be a lot of fiddlers who like Baroque.
Just what is the connection, really? I'm really curious about this.
To me Baroque music has a driving, foot-tapping rhythm...for example, the first movement of Brandenburg #3.
Any other fiddlers around here who love Baroque? Where is the connection, exactly? Is it just that Baroque is early enough to have a strong connection to fiddling?
I really feel that there's a connection between Baroque music and modern fiddling, but I'm not sure why that is. The music is so different, but there seems to be something in common that I can't put my finger on.
# Posted on October 4th 2007 by Marklar
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
Structurally, there is a lot to be said about similarities between trad and Baroque, but the thing I always latch onto is the prominence of ornamentation and personal reinterpretation. Like in Irish trad, Baroque manuscripts only show the skeleton of the tune; musicians were not only encouraged but expected to embellish the notes and play them differently almost each time through. As vibrato did not yet exist, much of the ornamentation is closer to grace notes and rolls, and the overall sound is simply very trad-y.
Random thoughts.
--DtM
# Posted on October 4th 2007 by Dan the Man
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
Baroque music is basically for dancing. I think that's why it's rhythmic just like Irish music. http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=vt__em0aKFM
Anyway, I'm not a fiddler myself and not familiar with fiddling techniques in general. Wait for "Lazyhound" to enlighten us.
# Posted on October 4th 2007 by slainte
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibrato
Now, I do realise that Wikipedia isn't the be-all-and-end-all ... Nevertheless, it isn't true that vibrato "didn't yet exist" in the baroque era.
My take on the similarity is again that, essentially, Baroque music is based - sometimes loosely - on dance music. It's also more rooted in melody than some later classical and romantic music. The combination of a base in dance and a melodic slant to the music mean that, In particular, there is often an insistent use of answering 8-bar phrases, which is distinctly reminiscent of trad tunes.
# Posted on October 4th 2007 by ethical blend
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
I don't wish to be irreverent but Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring", if sped up, is a natural slip jig (9/8 time). And consider some of the Irish/Baroque vocabulary similarities: jig/gigue; reel, apparently, comes from quadrille. Anyway, here's Celtic Woman treating Bach with due reverence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPeVIuRjUi4
# Posted on October 4th 2007 by lukegarry
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
I'm sure they are miming................'keep it live'
# Posted on October 4th 2007 by curlew
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
Turlough O'Carolan-contemporary Baroque composer and harpist using traditional Irish and Baroque idioms:pieces of his fit alongside Corelli, Bach and Vivaldi, others you could play for a dance or session with the other jigs, slip jigs etc. He is still being played-I am not sure if this is due to a continuous tradition or to his pieces being rediscovered and reintroduced with the revival of interest in traditional Irish music a century ago or so-(O'Neill's, etc)
And they sound lively on fiddle.
# Posted on October 4th 2007 by mrs.b
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
Ooops- I meant "lovely" on fiddle, although lively suits too.
# Posted on October 4th 2007 by mrs.b
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
Get the CD Bach meets Cape breton, posted here by Yours Truly. By Puirt A Baroque. It says it all.
# Posted on October 4th 2007 by pennhorse
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
Makes me think of "Bach Goes to Limerick" on the Best of Steeleye Span CD. Wonderful tune.
# Posted on October 4th 2007 by Pirate-Fiddler
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
Well, it’s been proposed by Official Smart People that a lot of the familiar aspects of ITM were adopted during the Baroque period. The ornamentation is certainly similar and, of course, the dance association.
On the other hand, recorded history is 3% fact and 97% speculation, extrapolation, fiction, guesswork and wishful thinking.
# Posted on October 4th 2007 by Bob himself
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
Official Smart People....... Ha!
We touched on this a couple of weeks ago........
I agree with all of the above........... Baroque has more complex melodies than Romantic (Romantic often using only 4 or more notes transposed all over the keyboard); Baroque has some of the same question/answer qualities as Trad...
And it isn't overly emotional like Romantic can be. Trad & Baroque also happen to lack the pretentiousness of alot of Classical music.
# Posted on October 4th 2007 by morning star
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
Vibrato became quite fashionable in the later Baroque. I think that all the musical boundaries are far more blurred than a lot of "scholars" would have us believe. Mozart loved nothing better than to write a few country dances, and Beethoven had a go at setting some Scottish folk songs (ahem - not your finest hour actually, Lud!) I know that Beethoven isn't Baroque, but there's a grand jig right in the middle of the Grosse Fuge!
# Posted on October 4th 2007 by Steve Shaw
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
>And it isn't overly emotional like Romantic can be
Huh? What is it then, mechanical?
# Posted on October 5th 2007 by monkey440
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
Like Screetch, I'm very fond of baroque music (Tartini and Bach in particular) and have had my fill of the emotional excesses of much Romantic-era music.
Listen to Manze or Wallfisch playing Tartini violin sonatas sometime. These sonatas are chock-full of very "fiddle" sounding folk-derived dance melodies with variations.
# Posted on October 5th 2007 by Layers
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
'Baroque music is basically for dancing. I think that's why it's rhythmic just like Irish music.'
i think slainte may well have nailed it there in that pithy sentence.
mind you,neither baroque nor irish fiddle music *has* to be scratchy all the time,lol.
# Posted on October 5th 2007 by biggus dave
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
By all means no, monkey440. Not mechanical.
Alot of the most lyrical, beautiful music I've ever heard has been among the Trad and Baroque (especially Bach & in my opinion M. Hayes). I said *over* emotional. Romantic is well known for pushing the boundries of emotionalism.
# Posted on October 5th 2007 by morning star
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
Have a listen to the J S Bach unaccompanied wotsits for fiddle. Basically taking fiddle tunes to one extreme of development. (Don't usually get played with much lift though.)
# Posted on October 5th 2007 by TomB-R
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
I don't play fiddle, but had pretty much the same experience with flute. I love Irish music, and since college have gotten into Baroque music. I don't care for Romantic or Classical music quite so much though, at least not on flute anyway.
# Posted on October 7th 2007 by redoxmusic
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
SOME "Romantic" music may well wear its heart on its sleeve a little too much, Mr Star, but that is a very blanket dismissal of yours in that post. Much extremely fine, expressive and lyrical music was composed in the 19th and early 20th centuries that does not go over the top with mawkish sentiment. Have a crack at late Beethoven, almost any Mendelssohn, Schumann's piano music, Smetana, Dvorak, even the late piano works of Brahms. The "Romantic" soubriquet has, in my view, been assigned in an unfortunate broad-brush way to a certain period of time in classical music instead of to particular works by particular composers.
# Posted on October 7th 2007 by Steve Shaw
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
And may you long be lauded for your depth of scholarship in the matter of the Bach violin partitas (I bet he wished he could have come up with "wotsits!"), chadmills. Where's that bloody eye-rolling emoticon when you need it.
# Posted on October 7th 2007 by Steve Shaw
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
Love it - "wotsit". Almost as good as a "jobby" - which I used to use as a generic name for any impromptu piece of music. I stopped using that one when I found out that it's also a Scottish expression for a turd.
# Posted on October 8th 2007 by Mark Harmer
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
Wot's "wotsit" in German?
You don't think "Bach's sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin, (BWV 1001-1006)" might have sounded a tiny bit pretentious in this setting, Steve?
# Posted on October 9th 2007 by TomB-R
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
Not at all, if that's what they're called! Now excuse me, I am in the middle of listening to Brahms' Third Racket.
# Posted on October 9th 2007 by Steve Shaw
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
Is that the 3rd Concerto for Racket and Orchestra?
# Posted on October 9th 2007 by TomB-R
Re: Baroque Music and Fiddling
There are very good and logical reasons why the apparent parallel between Baroque music and British Isles fiddling is much more than simply "apparent."
For starters, the firm dividing line between so-called "classical" (art, whatever) music and folk/popular/whatever else music simply did not exist in previous centuries. Sure, there were genres and so forth, but the firm demarcation line that we have drawn around classical music was simply unknown in the past. Bach regularly employed instrumentalists for his church perfomances who otherwise played in taverns and other town places. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Mrs.B mentioned O'Carolan above. Here was a traditional bard/harper of the most Gaelic of persuasions, and yet he rubbed shoulders with the likes of Geminiani. Check out the dhm release "Carolan's Harp" by the Harp Consort/ Andrew Lawrence-King for a *fantastic* folk/classical crossover album.
And look at technique -- a lot of Scots and Irish fiddle technique in use today is exactly the same as what is prescribed in early violin tutorials (Tartini, Geminiani, Leopold Mozart..), be it position of the instrument on the shoulder, bow technique, or prejudice in favor of first-position and open strings.
The baroque dance-forms all stem from country dances. Gigue = jig and all the rest (allemande, courante, sarabande, rigaudon, hornpipe, bouree, gavotte...) have humble origins, re-invented in city and courtly circles.
If you go back to the Renaissance, the lines are even more closely drawn. And remember, Vivaldi, Corelli, James Oswald, Bach, and the rest were much closer in time to the Elizabethans than to us.
There is a FANTASTIC book out called "Scottish Fiddle Music of the 18th Century" that really sets out well the fact that STM/ITM and baroque music styles have some common ancestry. They are not one and the same, of course, and one shouldn't overdo the parallels, but there is much more exploration down this avenue than has thus far been taken advantage of.
And don't knock Romanticism too quickly, either -- think about Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony, or Max Bruch's Scottish Fantasty (which makes use of Scots Wha' Hae), or any number of pieces by C.V. Stanford -- the traditional strain is alive and well in 19th century music, albeit moving farther and farther away from its roots.
# Posted on November 4th 2007 by drperm