On Nov 25, 2011, at 6:20 AM, Sandy Hackney wrote:
> [...] Froberger's Tombeau de Blancrocher. The "B" part with the
> descending scale at the end - clearly poor Blancrocher's tumble down
> the stairs - should in my not-so-humble opinion not be repeated.
> And if you hear the terrifying scale that Leonhardt plays at this
> point - Blancrocher and the piece are both finished!
Why is the scale "clearly" the tumble down stairs? Isn't this a modern
idea? We know that Blancrocher died after falling down the stairs, but
why does that tell us anything about the scale? A performance with a
rushed descent at the end destroys the musical effect of this most
moving piece in a way that I find unbelievable. More objectively, it
also seems to me to be an offense against the important concept of
stylistic decorum, as it was understood in Rhetoric in the seventeenth
century. Even Froberger (with all his wild imagination) didn't do that.
Since the Blancrocher lament is a musical "tomb" (that's what
"tombeau" means literally) here we perhaps simply have a musical "mise
au tombeau", a putting into the tomb -- in other words, a burial. If
so, playing the scale fast would be the inconceivable equivalent of
disrespectfully just throwing the body into a deep hole. But I think
there's another explanation, a better one.
The ascending C major scale at the end of Froberger's tombeau for
Ferdinand IV(1654), going to the top note of the instrument, is an
explicit counterpart to the descending C minor scale in the
Blancrocher piece (1652), going down to the bottom note. We can
understand each scale separately by understanding them both together.
In the case of the Ferdinand piece, we know specifically what the
rising scale depicts since in the margins of the Vienna source, which
is an autograph manuscript, there's a cherubic little angel shown up
in the clouds near the highest note: so the scale depicts the 21-year
old young prince (who'd just died of smallpox) being taken up into the
clouds. It's a classical gesture of apotheosis. (There is no need to
understand it as referring specifically to any Christian concept of
"heaven").
This suggests that the descending C minor scale in the Blancrocher
tombeau has nothing to do with his having died after falling down some
stairs. Rather, it probably evokes a descent -- not into the Christian
"hell" (frankly, that would be a very strange concept to incorporate
into a musical tribute to a good friend), but simply down into the
Underworld of classical mythology. So this musical tribute seems to be
the opposite of an apotheosis, more of a musical epitaph. It ends with
a descent into the Elysian Fields with the Shades, down where Orpheus
searched for Eurydice.
Even within the parallel between the tombeau for Blancrocher and the
lament for Ferdinand, Froberger seems to have observed the niceties of
traditional stylistic decorum. Ferdinand, son of the "divine" Holy
Roman Emperor, is immortalized by being taken up into the heavens, as
were the mortal children of Zeus; but Blancrocher, definitively a mere
mortal, must descend into the Underworld, as did Eurydice. (And as
would Charpentier in his own "Epitaphium Carpentrarii", and Lully and
Corelli in François Couperin's two "Apotheoses".)
It makes musical sense to see the scale this way. And I think it
implies that the scale should not be played fast, but rather slow,
even reluctant. After all, no one ever plays the rising C major scale
fast, just to push young Ferdinand quickly up into the clouds; it
would be musically ridiculous; it's always played almost reverentially
as a serious kind of floating upwards into the stratosphere. The C
minor Blancrocher scale is a grave and dignified sinking down. Or, to
borrow the words of Monteverdi's Orfeo as he goes down into the
Underworld: "Addio terra, addio cielo, e sole, addio" (Farewell earth,
farewell sky, and sun, farewell).
Best wishes,
DM
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
========================================================================
Davitt Moroney
Professor of Music; University Organist; Director, University Baroque
Ensemble; Musical Director, Chalice Consort
Department of Music, 210 Morrison Hall, University of California,
Berkeley, CA 94720-1200, USA
email: [log in to unmask]
Office Fax: +1-(510) 642 8480
http://music.berkeley.edu/Moroney.html
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
========================================================================
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Note: opinions expressed on HPSCHD-L are those of the individual con-
tributors and not necessarily those of the list owners nor of the Uni-
versity of Iowa. For a brief summary of list commands, send mail to
[log in to unmask] saying HELP .
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
|
