When I encounter a particularly challenging passage, I find I must repeat it many times, often quite slowly. Through the accumulated familiarity my fingers come to know the combinations and patterns.
MIDI files allow great flexibility in controlling the playback. In particular they allow you to loop a passage so you can practice it in a concentrated way. This capability is built right into MuseScore. Next to the play/stop button is the loop button (see the image below). All you have to do is select the passage, click the loop button and then play! The image below shows a passage in the last movement of Telemann's trio sonata TWV42:g9 which is quite exposed and technically challenging. To select the passage, simply click at the start, then Shift-click at the end of the passage. To turn on looping click the loop button. Now click play (or hit the space bar to play/stop). The tempo can be easily changed via the Play Panel: click View in the main menu, then Play Panel. Move the tempo slider up or down to whatever tempo you wish.
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The scoring of music in the Baroque period was rather fluid. Composers would often designate the instrumentation with weak nominations such as "two violins or the like". Anthony Rowland-Jones said it very well In the article "The baroque chamber-music repertoire" in The Cambridge Companion to the Recorder: "Playing the music well, in a lively, committed and persuasive manner, was more important than what instrument it was played on..."
In the early 17th century Venice was the center of the development of the canzona francese, so-called because its form was derived from the French chanson. In his Primo Libro delle Canzoni (1628), Frescobaldi said that his canzoni were "to be played by all sorts of musical instruments". The 17 Canzoni of Canale that I posted today are fine examples of this form and work well on recorders, so I present them as music for recroders, although a quartet of any instruments with suitable ranges will also enjoy exploring these works. Today I posted a Telemann trio sonata for alto recorder, oboe and B.C. (Basso Continuo) which is a favorite of mine (TWV42:c2). It occurred to me to say something about what Basso Continuo means, as it was certainly a new concept to me not all that long ago.
If you watch a video of this or any other trio sonata on YouTube you will see 4 players, but it is a trio, so what is that about? Well, Telemann wrote out 3 parts, one for recorder, oboe and a bass line; hence it is a trio. However, the bass line is what is called a "figured bass" (also a thoroughbass); there are figures under some of the bass notes that indicate the chord that is in effect at that moment. There must be an instrument capable of playing chords to "realize" the figured bass; that is, to play the music as conceived by the composer. The bass line is often played by a bass viola da gamba or sometimes a bassoon. The fourth instrument (usually a harpsichord, but any instrument that can play chords will work), reads the figured bass line and fills in the chords extemporaneously according to the rules for a figured bass. This skill is not common today and so contemporary music will include a keyboard part, called a "realization of the figured bass", written by someone for the publication. If you look for a piece on IMSLP that has a Basso Continuo part, it will not include a realization of the figured bass. This is because the composer did not provide one; it was expected that the keyboard player would improvise it, very much like a contemporary jazz musician! It was a common practice for Quantz, Telemann and others to present a piece of music so that it could be played by either recorder or transverse flute players. By indicating the clef and key signature for each, a single piece of music works for both! This was a clever business device, as it allowed a single piece of music to be sold into two different markets. The clef and key signature on the left are used by recorder players, and the clef and key signature on the right are used by transverse flute players. In the piece below, the recorder player uses the so-called French violin clef with 2 flats, and the flute player uses the standard treble clef with 1 sharp. The French violin clef is little used today so it is likely that many recorder players are unfamiliar with it. The treble clef sign is also called a G-clef because the line that the curly-cue circles is where the G-note is (in fact, the treble clef sign is just a stylized G!). Notice that the French violin clef is just a treble clef sign centered around the bottom line, so the bottom line is a G.
It might seem a daunting task to learn the note names associated with this new clef until you realize that it is the same as bass clef! If you are familiar with the bass clef you are already familiar with the French violin clef, as the note names are the same. For example, consider the key signature on the left. The first flat sign is on the fourth line down, so it is a B♭. The second flat sign is on the second space down, so it is an E♭. If you are a recorder player, you can use this device to play any piece of flute music: add 3 flats to the key signature and read the notes as if the clef is a bass clef. It might seem like the change of key will be difficult, but a lot of flute music is in sharp keys, so adding 3 flats actually makes it into a recorder-friendly key. Perhaps you have seen how enthusiastic I am about the free music notation program MuseScore. A couple of the most significant reasons are that you can easily play MIDI files and also print out the sheet music parts. Because it is such a full-featured program the number of controls, menus, etc can be daunting, but the basic features are available with just a click or two of the mouse. Face your fear and you will be handsomely rewarded! The first order of business is to download and Install MuseScore (Windows, MacOS, Linux, BSD). There are many Tours and Tutorials, in case you wish to delve deeper, but for now... To play a MIDI file do this:
To print out a part do this:
If you run into trouble or have any questions, I will be glad to help out!
I just learned of MuseScore today, but it is a quite mature product. I installed it and was immediately blown away by its rich feature set! The notation quality is second to none that I could see, not Sibelius, not Finale.
Examples of the sheet music you can make with MuseScore can be seen here: VistaMare Musica It will import MIDI files and let you extract and print professional-grade sheet music from it! Any music you find on this site can be turned into sheet music with almost no effort. It will also play any score you import into it, and the synthesized instruments are much better than I have heard with any other MIDI player. It even has a "viola da gamba" instrument! Since I am just starting to get acquainted with MuseScore I would appreciate hearing what your experience with it is. Like it, loath it, notable or lacking features, ease of use, etc. |
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Formerly a successful software engineer and then Mathematics instructor, I am now retired and keep busy as an amateur musician of early music. Archives
August 2021
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