Customer Reviews

Ornamentation in Baroque and Post-Baroque Music: With Special Emphasis on J. S. Bach

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Books concerning performance practice are by their very nature controversial, and we can't ask Bach, Handel, or Telemann what they actually meant when they used a short-hand symbol or expected a performer to improvise a decoration. Or can we? Professor Neumann has compiled a volume based on writings in the Baroque era that attempts (successfully in my opinion) to provide some clues to the sketchy musical notations of busy and prolific composers in the Baroque era. His ideas are indeed controversial, but I think that they are well-reasoned and often brilliant. His knowledge of sources in the Baroque is magnificent, and his arguments are keenly-reasoned. This is a book of somewhat limited readership. Performers and scholars who play or edit Baroque music will find this to be a useful reference with a strong idex, a good bibliography, and a helpful guide to solving questions of decoration. Those who don't have an active involvement with Baroque music will find the book cryptic.

This book is a must have for any serious musician who performs any Baroque music, even if you aren't a period performer. The text gets tedious, but the knowledge presented is well worth the work.

I do wish there was more research on earlier 17th Century ornamentation practices.

The methods and conclusions of Prof. Frederick Neumann's works (publ. in the decades 1970-1990) were rebutted by specialists in Early Music and other publications. This widely-read book makes fascinating and thought-provoking remarks. However (see full analysis in a recent publication: http://play.braybaroque.ie ) the main thesis of Prof. Neumann on Ornamentation (that there were frequent pre-beat trills and mordents in Baroque music) is thoroughly unfounded. This conclusion is not new, being agreed upon by all the present-day scholarly sources on Baroque ornamentation I have been able to find.