Baroque String Articulation à la Mode
There are so many elements that go into an interpretation of a work in performance that to speak about the changes in the direction of the bow or the choice of syllables for articulation seems woefully inadequate. There are other aspects of expression which can have at least as powerful an effect on the performance style as far as the listener is concerned, and which can enhance or diminish the effect of articulation choices. In fact, I once had a professional Baroque string player tell me that, for really good players who know the style, it doesn’t matter which way the bow is going. Still, understanding the mechanics of Baroque articulation can give anybody who isn’t a “really good player” some new ideas on how to make musical sense of a work and thus help the listener follow the logic of it more fully—appreciate it more, if you will.
The surviving evidence for bowings and tonguings is not great. It’s come down to us in the form of short examples in treatises. Most of us learned of their secrets from selections and distillations in such works as David Boyden’s great book on violin playing or Betty Bang Mather’s useful handbook on the interpretation of French music for woodwinds, etc. There, the already meagre evidence was sifted still further until the residue became little icons of truth in historical performance. Anyway, the only thing you really had to know was that the French observed the “rule of the down-bow,” as Geminiani called it in 1751, and that Hotteterre preferred “tu ru” while Quantz used “ti ri”.
What many don’t realize is that Boyden depended heavily in his book on the dissertation of Barbara Ann Garvey Seagrave. As it turns out, she discounted the importance of two theorists who actually make some interesting contributions to our understanding of French bowings. She also selected examples from treatises which tended to support her ideas on the relationship of bowing to the actual dance steps of the French Baroque—ideas which she inherited from her advisor Putnam Aldrich. All this is by way of saying that anybody who digests evidence and retransmits it to the world at large may have a hidden agenda which can drive their selectivity and obscure parts of “the truth.” That’s why it is so important for people to keep re-examining this material for new insights.
Finally, there is the problem that, for all their apparent usefulness, many of the examples in the treatises seem to be nicely worked out to illustrate a point without the complications of real music. Try applying some of this dogmatism to an actual piece and see what happens!
That brings us to the examples: a selection based on the notion that there are some useful treatises out there being ignored. Sometimes they raise more quetions than they answer, but never mind. I have given a few comments and observations on each of them.
N.B. the Montéclair and Dupont bowing examples are given in full and discussed by Herbert Myers in Geroge Houle, ed., Le Ballet des Fâcheux: Beauchamp’s Music for Molière’s Comedy (Indiana, 1991), pp. 11-24.