I know of two period sources for the Rosti Boli tune, both monophonic (one in Ebreo or Domenico, I forget which, and the other in the Burgundian basse-dance repertoire), but the "arrangement" was in line with what we know about 15th-century ornamentation practices, and in line with lots of recordings by professional groups that have done more research than I have. I didn't have a problem with it.
I didn't have a problem with it either - it seemed in excellent style. I'm trying to figure out what the hell they were thinking.
And I have a hypothesis that Denis said, "Hey, let's do a program of 16th cen French dance music! Hey, we could get dancers." And that order of things has consequences.
I'm not sure how much you've wrestled this yourself: the fundamental conflict in the heart of early dance is that we have dance sources and we have music sources and they don't match. The dance sources often don't have much in the way of music - from the Brussels mss tenors to Orchesography's melodies - performance is either monophonic, polyphonic found in a music source, non-matching polyphonic, or modern arranged or improvised. The music sources, such as Susato's part books, which are thoroughly composed, not only don't have choreographies, they are for different repertoires than the dance books. The intersection of the set of extant choreographies and the set of extant thorough composed part music is small. In that set, often there is some problem with the part version of the music such that it doesn't match the dance (e.g. Bransle de Guerre in Phalese vs Arbeau). The set of choreographies and composed part music that match is, IIRC, Lorraine Alman and the Spanish Alman.
Squaring that circle is what I did for 11 years.
But I was in Carolingia, so it was, "Tibicen, we want to dance this: come up with some music".
It's looking like this was, "Hubert, we want to play music for some dances: come up with some dances."
So it's looking like the one place they did something actually authentic, it was when they did it the Carolingian way: start with the dance repertoire, and figure out how to do the music as periodly as possible.
The problem, it would seem to me, is that when you start with a strict adherance to the dance, and tell the early musicians to go figure it out, the early musicians have this whole community of practice and analytic language and, like, standards. If you do something dumb musically, the other early musicians with notice and say something like, "What are those inversion chords doing there? Aren't we in the 16th century?" (And also not play your arrangements, which is something we care about in the SCA.) There's just more people around who know what it's supposed to sound like, who will bust your chops if you do something too ungrounded.
But out in the mundane early music world, apparently nobody knows enough for early dance to realize what nonsense something like this is and halt it in its tracks. I can notice, "What's that mirror symmetry doing there? Aren't we in the 16th century?" and have the language to express that, but I spent my 20s in a living vital community of practice of early dance scholars and fans. But apparently nobody on this production was in a position to evaluate Hubert's work - the truth claims or decisions he was making.
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Date: 2019-06-19 05:28 am (UTC)I didn't have a problem with it either - it seemed in excellent style. I'm trying to figure out what the hell they were thinking.
And I have a hypothesis that Denis said, "Hey, let's do a program of 16th cen French dance music! Hey, we could get dancers." And that order of things has consequences.
I'm not sure how much you've wrestled this yourself: the fundamental conflict in the heart of early dance is that we have dance sources and we have music sources and they don't match. The dance sources often don't have much in the way of music - from the Brussels mss tenors to Orchesography's melodies - performance is either monophonic, polyphonic found in a music source, non-matching polyphonic, or modern arranged or improvised. The music sources, such as Susato's part books, which are thoroughly composed, not only don't have choreographies, they are for different repertoires than the dance books. The intersection of the set of extant choreographies and the set of extant thorough composed part music is small. In that set, often there is some problem with the part version of the music such that it doesn't match the dance (e.g. Bransle de Guerre in Phalese vs Arbeau). The set of choreographies and composed part music that match is, IIRC, Lorraine Alman and the Spanish Alman.
Squaring that circle is what I did for 11 years.
But I was in Carolingia, so it was, "Tibicen, we want to dance this: come up with some music".
It's looking like this was, "Hubert, we want to play music for some dances: come up with some dances."
So it's looking like the one place they did something actually authentic, it was when they did it the Carolingian way: start with the dance repertoire, and figure out how to do the music as periodly as possible.
The problem, it would seem to me, is that when you start with a strict adherance to the dance, and tell the early musicians to go figure it out, the early musicians have this whole community of practice and analytic language and, like, standards. If you do something dumb musically, the other early musicians with notice and say something like, "What are those inversion chords doing there? Aren't we in the 16th century?" (And also not play your arrangements, which is something we care about in the SCA.) There's just more people around who know what it's supposed to sound like, who will bust your chops if you do something too ungrounded.
But out in the mundane early music world, apparently nobody knows enough for early dance to realize what nonsense something like this is and halt it in its tracks. I can notice, "What's that mirror symmetry doing there? Aren't we in the 16th century?" and have the language to express that, but I spent my 20s in a living vital community of practice of early dance scholars and fans. But apparently nobody on this production was in a position to evaluate Hubert's work - the truth claims or decisions he was making.