Classical & Baroque Improvisation

[BWV]

Anyone else who follows Nikhil Horgan's youtube channel notice he appears to be a sedevacantist? Maybe the whole revival of partimento is just part of a radical tradcath conspiracy...

[Christian Miller]

Anyone else who follows Nikhil Horgan's youtube channel notice he appears to be a sedevacantist? Maybe the whole revival of partimento is just part of a radical tradcath conspiracy...

TBF it WOULD improve the music. For yer Latin and Palestrina you actually need to go to high Anglicanism here.

tbh I find it a bit of an odd choice to mix the channel up in this way… but maybe you’re right lol

[BWV]

TBF it WOULD improve the music. For yer Latin and Palestrina you actually need to go to high Anglicanism here. I went to Catholic school. It was acoustic guitar strumming all the way, mass in modern English.

The whole high Anglican thing is extremely … hmmm. Could I explain this to a German for instance? Probably not. Henry VIII casts a long shadow.

true, I grew up HC Anglo-catholic, and got chanted mass, palestrina and improvised pipe organ voluntaries every Sunday when my parents dragged me to church, but the tradcaths get wonky fairly quickly - one minute they are talking about the Rite I mass then next thing you know, they are promoting geocentrism and praising the Ustace

[Christian Miller]

true, I grew up HC Anglo-catholic, and got chanted mass, palestrina and improvised pipe organ voluntaries every Sunday when my parents dragged me to church, but the tradcaths get wonky fairly quickly - one minute they are talking about the Rite I mass then next thing you know, they are promoting geocentrism and praising the Ustace

Hmm, I can imagine.

I’m not sure I’ve felt any leanings in those directions, but I’m only on book IV of Fenaroli.

[Christian Miller]

On a slightly less weird note, Michaels new vid has provided some inspiration.

i think what he says about the contrapuntal as opposed to chordal thing really makes a lot of sense to me. Guitar suits a skeletal harmonic approach and there’s a lot of value in playing two part counterpoint…

[Liarspoker]

Good idea Christian. Just downloaded Fenaroli Book I. Getting back into partimento but I think that I've a few gigs this week so practicing the repertoire instead ( Roll Eyes emoji here ).

I'll start working through the book once I get a chance.

[Christian Miller]

Good idea Christian. Just downloaded Fenaroli Book I. Getting back into partimento but I think that I've a few gigs this week so practicing the repertoire instead ( Roll Eyes emoji here ).

I'll start working through the book once I get a chance.

Doncha just hate it when playing music gets in the way of obscure and irrelevant practice goals?

[Christian Miller]

Good idea Christian. Just downloaded Fenaroli Book I. Getting back into partimento but I think that I've a few gigs this week so practicing the repertoire instead ( Roll Eyes emoji here ).

I'll start working through the book once I get a chance.

re Fenaroli books I and II you don’t actually have to know the RO or cadences or anything, is all in the figures. The rules are all in book III. So you see the stuff in a musical context first and learn the rules second.

clever teacher that guy…

[Liarspoker]

re Fenaroli books I and II you don’t actually have to know the RO or cadences or anything, is all in the figures. The rules are all in book III. So you see the stuff in a musical context first and learn the rules second.

clever teacher that guy…

That's grand Christian. I'll start at the start. It would be good to get my figured bass reading faster.

I actually did some Bach figures bass in the chorale book. Some nice stuff but I prefer to play the chorales themselves albeit somewhat slowly.

[pauln]

On a slightly less weird note, Michaels new vid has provided some inspiration.

i think what he says about the contrapuntal as opposed to chordal thing really makes a lot of sense to me. Guitar suits a skeletal harmonic approach and there’s a lot of value in playing two part counterpoint…

Still a little weird, I notice the chord type symbology is using capital "M" to indicate minor... e.g., @7:30

[Christian Miller]

Still a little weird, I notice the chord type symbology is using capital "M" to indicate minor... e.g., @7:30

Yeah, classical musicians eh. (It’s not chord symbols btw, he’s indicating keys.)

[Christian Miller]

That's grand Christian. I'll start at the start. It would be good to get my figured bass reading faster.

I actually did some Bach figures bass in the chorale book. Some nice stuff but I prefer to play the chorales themselves albeit somewhat slowly.

Have you got Peter Crotons Figured Bass book? (Great recommendation from Rob)

CROTON P. - Figured bass on the classical guitar (A practical approach based on historical principles) https://amzn.eu/d/ajt4b8R
(sorry for the Bezos link)

Other thing about Fenaroli - is that unlike Furno it can get a bit notey. proper classical guitar players into this stuff like Nicola P recommend transposing and simplifying the basses. I chose not to transpose them because I figure I’ll need to play in funny keys as a jazzer and the aim is more to learn more about harmony and counterpoint for me than do historical, idiomatic interpretations. But it’s worth bearing in mind.

I do simplify repeated notes and so on now, and after a couple of years of this I’m also better at spotting what the gist of the harmony is and what’s ornamentation as opposed to structure.

I think Nicola said he would be putting out a book at some point but no sign yet Afaik. I might do my own edited versions at some point. There needs to be a ‘Partimento for jazz guitarists’ IMO but I think at the moment there might be about three people in the world who would find that interesting haha.

[BWV]

On a slightly less weird note, Michaels new vid has provided some inspiration.

i think what he says about the contrapuntal as opposed to chordal thing really makes a lot of sense to me. Guitar suits a skeletal harmonic approach and there’s a lot of value in playing two part counterpoint…

makes me wonder about 4/2 chords where the bass is not held over from the previous note. It seems to be the case in Bach, but exceptions? Schumann approaches 4/2 from a 5th below in the 3rd bar of Arabeske (and he starts the piece on a 6/4). Burt Bacharach does hold the bass on Say a Little Prayer (the second chord in the chorus is a 4/2) - Eb7 to F7/Eb

[Jonah]

The way we listen to eighteenth century music is heavily conditioned by nineteenth century reinterpretation. It’s taken a long time to strip away that cultural baggage by scholars (not that the baggage is altogether a bad thing - it just changes the way we look a things)

But it’s also stuff like - we don’t hear the popular tunes Bach puts into the Goldberg variations. We can read what scholars have written about them and go ‘oh that’s interesting’ but it’s not immediate in way it would have been in the day. Instead Bach’s music seems austere and remote, made of marble.

The way we read Homer today - or Goethe used to read yesterday - or Dante the day before that (in Latin translation I believe) is so heavily conditioned by just the God knows what... maybe this is what is called culture?
The whole conception of trying to think 'how they heard it' makes an aesthetics per se which is heavily post-modernistic and conditioned by what we are today....

I am not arguing of course - I do early music and am interested in historical stuff too - just thinking out loud.. it is curious time we live in

[Christian Miller]

makes me wonder about 4/2 chords where the bass is not held over from the previous note. It seems to be the case in Bach, but exceptions? Schumann approaches 4/2 from a 5th below in the 3rd bar of Arabeske (and he starts the piece on a 6/4). Burt Bacharach does hold the bass on Say a Little Prayer (the second chord in the chorus is a 4/2) - Eb7 to F7/Eb

yeah I think you are dealing with a different paradigm with that music. When 4/2 becomes more of a chord on it’s own right, it’s treated differently. I daresay you could say that’s a trend in later music and most obviously, jazz and pop.

[Christian Miller]

The way we read Homer today - or Goethe used to read yesterday - or Dante the day before that (in Latin translation I believe) is so heavily conditioned by just the God knows what... maybe this is what is called culture?
The whole conception of trying to think 'how they heard it' makes an aesthetics per se which is heavily post-modernistic and conditioned by what we are today....

I am not arguing of course - I do early music and am interested in historical stuff too - just thinking out loud.. it is curious time we live in

well I like Peter Schuberts thing which is to acknowledge that we are interpreting old music in a modern age and just accept it. And he's a scholar/academic himself.

btw this is a great video of his, love this idea. I think you’d need some musically sophisticated kids though lol. Maybe undergrads?

[Jonah]

well I like Peter Schuberts thing which is to acknowledge that we are interpreting old music in a modern age and just accept it. And he's a scholar/academic himself.

btw this is a great video of his, love this idea. I think you’d need some musically sophisticated kids though lol. Maybe undergrads?

I like his videos.

But what I meant was rather that in any case we are what we are culturaly.
Furtwangler or Horowitz did not play early music wrong just because they understood as a part of their culture.
So the question is rather about integrity and authencity to me.

The conception of HIPP is very modern. And it actually reflects the culture of secong half of 20th century... but what makes me cautious about it is that it somehow contradicts the idea of artistic indentity to me.
Is it really possible to build upon it as powerful and involving artistic achievemnts as it was with those who did not question themselves whether they heard as those people those days had heard it?

I think actually some abstracy is a geniune quality of perception of great art - we are both involved in its realy and we question if it is real.
It is in the nature of art.
You forget everything and you live in a great book but you put you also get involved in some spiritual dialogue with an author.
Perception of art is not one way. And the idea that the author lives in his works is not just a metaphor.
Sensitive reader, listner, performer challenges the author - great piece of art reacts in real time, it lives when it is percieved with all the qualities of a liveing soul: passion, doubt, fear, love and so on.

In that sense it is important just what you are and you are able to do... and the conception of 'how they heard it' often gives a nice option to 'those who do not hear it themselves'.

Not quite the same thing but as a comparison ... after all Landi, Caccini created a conception of Greek monody revival (nothing wrong, very interesting and fascinating and started a great tradition of opera) but the highest achivement is still Monteverdi's who did not seem to care about it at all.

[Christian Miller]

Not improvisation, but I find writing things useful

[Christian Miller]

Trying to get into the habit of recording things again. I think it helps.

[Christian Miller]

There really needs to be a Dudley moore appreciation thread

[Christian Miller]

Some thoughts on structuring things

One thing I like about slogging on with this stuff is it shows different forms to improvise in. These are very simple ideas, and as I get more used to them I can see myself introducing more complexity.

I particularly like the Rondo form for improvisation (from jazz/Middle Eastern fusion it's very common in the Ottoman Longa repertoire) and here we have a French style Passacaille (see de Visee's Passacaille for a beautiful example) which is not a ground bass in this case as usual, but a rondo form.

There's no reason why one couldn't use these forms with more modern or jazz harmony.