Since I left the Midwest and moved back to Philadelphia a couple of years ago, I haven’t made music with any period instrumentalists here. In early January this year, I debuted my violoncello da spalla, beautifully built by Dmitry Badiarov, in a concert of Bach cantata BWV 41 with the period instruments, but that was […]
This blog entry isn’t really about ketchup… it’s about vibrato, the intentionally produced pitch pulsation in a musical sound. Why ketchup then? Here’s the story. Recently I saw an image post on facebook by a musician from Germany. It was a picture of a page from a magazine or something, and the page had a
(Originally posted on February 20, 2011) Fairly recently on facebook, I commented on an online video clip that I watched earlier. It was of an European virtuoso violinist making a recording of Bach violin concertos. In the video this young violinist said: “I love to hear about authentic interpretation and baroque violins; however, we do
(Originally posted on April 18, 2010) In December 2001, I was in Brussels visiting my good oboist friend Katy. Thanks to her, I was able to sneak into the Flemish side of the conservatory and observe some of Mr. Sigiswald Kuijken’s baroque violin lessons. In between those lessons he taught (all in different languages), he
Why a Bach cantata ensemble needs a conductor Read More »
(Originally posted in March, 2010) By now we hopefully understand that the Pythagorean temperament is really a stack of pure perfect 5ths (Pythagorean 5ths) and can bring out melodic beauty, and the temperament based on the narrow 5ths, each tampered by a quarter of a syntonic comma (mean-tone 5ths), can bring out chordal beauty. Then
Appreciating 1/6-comma — Temperament Part III Read More »
(Originally posted in March, 2010) In the previous blog entry, I mentioned that you can characterize those temperament systems as either harmonic systems or melodic systems. The Pythagorean tuning is suited for monophonic lines because of the sharper mediants and leading tones, and thus it is a typical example of a melodic system. Not great
Hating and loving 1/6-comma — Temperament Part II Read More »
(Originally posted in March, 2010) If you just thought this title didn’t make sense, no, it does not make sense, at least to you and me. Perhaps some of you can help me understand this stuff better — I don’t have a mathematical mind and I can only go so far as to understand the
1/6-Pythagorean-comma mean-tone?? — Temperament Part I Read More »
(Originally posted in February 2010) Sometimes people ask me if I like any Bach performances on the modern instruments. Somehow they expect me to say ‘no,’ but my answer is actually ‘yes,’ with an asterisk. Those people who expected me to say ‘no’ might have heard me lightly criticize modern performances on some occasions.. I
Period Instruments and Bach Read More »
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