Performing Ornaments in English Harpsichord Music. Part I

Abstract

The article deals with the problems of interpreting English ornaments (embellishments, graces) of the second half of the 17th century in the process of their evolution. The authors consistently analyze the recommendations of the early English musicians Edward Bevin, Christopher Simpson, Matthew Locke, John Playford, and Henry Purcell. Emphasis in this study is allotted to the first ever published in England full table of ornaments with their execution written by Christopher Simpson in his The Division-Violist (London, 1659). Detailed consideration here is given to the ornament named “Shaked Beat”. It should be noted that the first full table “Marques des Agréments et leur signification” in France was enclosed only in D’Anglebert’s Pièces de Clavecin (c1689). For comparison, recommendations of the performance of ornaments are provided by some Italian, German and French composers and theorists of this time, such as Emilio del Cavalieri, Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers, Jean Rousseau, Gilles Jullien, Étienne Loulié and Johann Gottfried Walther. A critical revision of scholarly publications on the problems of this study beginning from Edward Dannreuther and Arnold Dolmetsch to the present time has been carried out. Serious inaccuracies were found in the works of modern researchers and in reference and encyclopedic publications, including The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.