The Pathetick Musician
Moving an Audience in the Age of Eloquence
1st Edition
Published on 8. March 2016
320 pages
978-0-19-937376-5 (ISBN)
Description
What is rhetorical music? In The Pathetick Musician, Bruce Haynes and Geoffrey Burgess illustrate the vital place of rhetoric and eloquent expression in the creation and performance of Baroque music. Through engaging explorations of the cantatas of J.S. Bach, the authors explode the conventional notion of historical authenticity in music, proposing adventurous new directions to reinvigorate the performance of early music in the modern setting. Along the way, Haynes and Burgess investigate intersections between music and oratory, dance, gesture, poetry, painting and sculpture, and offer insights into figural elaboration, articulation, nuance and temporality. Aimed primarily at performers of Baroque music, the book situates the study of performance practice in a broader cultural context, and as much as an invaluable resource for advanced study, it contains a wealth of information that pertains directly to anyone working in the field of early music.
Based on a draft sketched by celebrated Baroque oboist and early music scholar Bruce Haynes before his death in 2011, The Pathetick Musician is the fruit of the combined wisdom of two musicians renowned equally for their contributions as performers and scholars. Drawing on an impressive array of Classical treatises on oratory, musical autographs and performance accounts, it is an essential companion to Haynes' controversial The End of Early Music. Geoffrey Burgess has taken up the broader claims of Haynes' philosophy to create a practical, accessible text that will be stimulating for all musicians interested in the rediscovery of early music. With copious musical examples, contemporaneous works of art, and a companion website with supplementary audio recordings, The Pathetick Musician is an invaluable resource for all interested in exploring new expressive possibilities in the performance and study of Baroque music.
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05/2016
Oxford University Press Inc
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Persons
Baroque oboists Bruce Haynes and Geoffrey Burgess established reputations as authorities on the history of their instrument with their co-authored book The Oboe, voted an outstanding achievement by the American Music Instrument Society. Haynes' writings, notably The End of Early Music, are known for pioneering new approaches in historical performance practice and inspiring healthy debate among scholars and performers of early music. Burgess, an instructor at the Eastman School of Music, recently published Well-Tempered Woodwinds: Friedrich von Huene and the Making of Early Music in a New World, which combines the biography of a leading manufacturer of historic instruments with a history of the emerging early music scene in America. Bruce Haynes passed away in May, 2011.
Content
Foreward: Aus der Tiefe (Geoffrey Burgess)
Acknowledgements
List of Musical Examples and Figures
List of Audio Examples
Preface: Pipe Dreams (Bruce Haynes)
Part I
Introduction: The Eloquent Musician (BH)
The Truth in Eloquence
Rhetorical Music
The Pathetick Musician
'Ut pictura poesis'
The Officers of Rhetoric
Style Coaches
Further Reading
Chapter 1: In the Realm fo the Passions (GB)
Humanism and the Rhetorical Ethos
Seconda pratica
Of Æsthetics and Beauty
Autonomous Music and 'Art for Art's sake'
Personally expressing passions or Passionately expressing persons?
Further Reading
Chapter 2: The Principles of Eloquence: The Artist's Toolbox (GB)
The Offices of Rhetoric
Structuring Rhetoric
The Sense of Music
On the possibility of a Figurenlehre
Further Reading
Chapter 3: Bach's Expressive Universe (GB)
Imitation: Portraying and Evoking the World
'Clear running water': Schweitzer's Legacy
Figuring Bach's World
Bach the Poet, Bach the Painter
Onomatopoeia
Landscapes and 'Paintings of Life'
Further Reading
Chapter 4: Bach's Passionate Inner world (GB)
General and Particular Expression
Reading Bach's Passions
Fear and Tremolo
Antithesis: At Odds with oneself
Polyphonies of Passions: Passions in Polyphony
The Proximity of Opposites
Further Reading
Part II
Chapter 5: Enhancing Eloquence in Performance (Elocutio) (GB)
The 'Intentional Fallacy' Fallacy: Whose Intention?
Elocutio: the Essence of Performance Practice
'Humouring' the score
Tempo and Affekt
Light and shadow
Further Reading
Chapter 6: Figures: Spinning straw into gold (GB)
Public Speaking, Public Musicking
Declamation as Figurative Speech
Figures as Glosses and Ornamentation
Essential Graces
Graces as Glosses
The Salt of Music: the Spice of Dissonance
Graces as Passionate Expression
Structuring Ornaments: Passaggi and Paraphrase
Ornaments in History
Further Reading
Chapter 7: The expressive Gesture (GB)
Audible architecture
Articulating the Musical Gesture
The Breath of Life
Agogics
The Agogic Accent,
The Agogic Pickup,
The Agogic Placement,
The Hesitation
Finding the Poetry in the Notes
Pause to Reflect
Gesture and Character
Gesturing towards the Phrase
Further Reading
Chapter 8: Kairos: Expressive Timing (GB)
Chronos and Kairos: Two kinds of time
The metronome and the modern tendency toward Chronos
The beat, or pulse in Baroque Music
'The true motion of the Bass'
Tempo Fluctuation
Borrowed time
Kairos: Isolating Musical Events
Timing in Dance Music
Further Reading
Chapter 9: To Kindle the Heart: Engagement in Performance (GB)
The sovereign Audience
Authentic Ears
Music in the Body
The Meaning of Vortrag
'The Unutterable Ravishing Soul's Delight'
Dance: Une poësie muette
Sincerity in Performance
Mental Multitasking
Further Reading
Chapter 10: Analysing Expression in Recordings of Bach's cantatas (BH)
Appendix: Bibliography of the Writings of Bruce Haynes
General Bibliography
Index
