Le 03/08/2022 19:16, Jon Baxendale via The Jackrail écrit :
The problem with the two primary sources is in deciding which has the
authority. Like Claudio, my suspicion is that Bauyn is of a closer
generation to the autograph for several reasons:
Claudio wrote precisely the opposite:
“Parville appears to be contemporary with L. Couperin, thus earlier than
Bauyn.”
Watermark analysis demonstrates that Bauyn is the earlier of the
manuscripts by several years, though neither is likely to have been
copied from the autograph: each has the same mistakes which means they
share a common ancestry, though this was obviously corrupt in places.
Oddly, neither have thought that some of the notes in the preludes
might be wrong. The 12th LH note of the first prelude is a case in
point. It is clearly an error and should have been fixed by both
editors. /F/ makes more sense than /A/, which is banal and lacks a
rhetorical punch: with /F/ we have a lovely augmented chord that is
very characteristic of both Couperin and Froberger and it also follows
a pattern that Couperin follows time and again. If we think in terms
of a diapason course, /F/ provides a strong bass line that progresses
from to /F#/, /G/ and then sets up the dominant for the first
important cadence:
Sorry, but this is an ill-chosen example, because Curtis does give an F
here, whereas Moroney gives an A but explains at length why he thinks
this should be an A and not an F.
‘Let me add an interesting detail: HAC (Parville) appears to be later than ODM (Bauyn), as it adds ornaments for consistency with others that are already there (and vice versa are unlikely to have been omitted by Bauyn).’
Gustafson’s watermark analysis is also valuable and places it later. You’re quite right about Curtis’s F! I have been dealing with the manuscripts for 12 months and haven’t felt the need for the last six to consult the printed editions.
Looking at the facs. of Bauyn, which I downloaded ages ago from IMSLP, I see that the 12th l.h. note is clearly an f. I’ll try to attach a screenshot of this passage…
So I’m confused as to which note is in which modern edition for which reason. I don’t have Moroney’s ed. I don’t have Curtis’s ed. The only ed. I have on paper is Brunold’s ed. for l’Oiseau-Lyre “revu d’apres le manuscrit Bauyn”, copyright 1959, which gives an f.
This is where the problem lies. The first line begins with the F3 clef but the second goes (sort of) to F4. The scribe got things mixed up since you will notice that he’s amended the clef.
It’s a sort of chicken and egg thing. The three dots at the side of the bass/baritone clef are the problem.
Did he write A thinking it to still be the F3 cleft and then realise it was a wrong clef but forgot to change the note?
Parville has the same change of clef but not at a line break. Yet it’s still A. Could it be that their prototype had the same error? Moreover, F4 is a weird clef for 17th-century keyboardists and features mainly in basso continuo lines.
The scribe’s intention is clear here.
The apparent ‘F’ is at the start of a new system in which the clef has changed from f3 to f4.
The custos at the end of the first system shows the intended A.
Such slips at a change of clef are not uncommon.
An F below the A major triad for the right hand would make poor sense.
Le 03/08/2022 21:35, draak via The Jackrail écrit :
Looking at the facs. of Bauyn, which I downloaded ages ago from IMSLP,
I see that the 12th l.h. note is clearly an f. I’ll try to attach a
screenshot of this passage…
So I’m confused as to which note is in which modern edition for which
reason. I don’t have Moroney’s ed. I don’t have Curtis’s ed. The only
ed. I have on paper is Brunold’s ed. for l’Oiseau-Lyre “revu d’apres
le manuscrit Bauyn”, copyright 1959, which gives an f.
It’s quite simple. Parville has A, Bauyn has F, but considered as an
error as explained by DM in his critical notes. Colin Tilney in his
edition also gives A basically for the same reason as DM.
(Notice that the guidon at the end of the line in Bauyn gives A and not F.)
Le 03/08/2022 21:57, Jon Baxendale via The Jackrail écrit :
This is where the problem lies. The first line begins with the F3 clef
but the second goes (sort of) to F4. The scribe got things mixed up
since you will notice that he’s amended the clef.
The guidon at the end of the line is A and not F. Davitt’s note would
need to be quoted in full here.
Le 03/08/2022 22:02, Lewis Jones via The Jackrail écrit :
An F below the A major triad for the right hand would make poor sense.
This is nevertheless a very common harmony in Louis Couperin. See for
instance the end of the first section of the great A minor prelude, with
C in the bass and E, G#, B, D in the right hand.
They aren’t, actually. The scribe of Bauyn makes the same mistake several times, which suggests he was not used to keyboard music.
To be honest, it’s down to a matter of taste. My view that the bass should form a coherent line stands. Curtis, I realise, has made the same judgement call but doesn’t explain his reasoning. Moroney made a significant mistake by not altering the note because it’s really very uncharacteristic.
The big question is whether modern editors have the authority to make changes. I usually think not. But having studied and edited music from the grand siècle for 30 years, a judgement call is justified.
Le 03/08/2022 22:02, Lewis Jones via The Jackrail écrit :
An F below the A major triad for the right hand would make poor sense.
This is nevertheless a very common harmony in Louis Couperin. See for
instance the end of the first section of the great A minor prelude, with
C in the bass and E, G#, B, D in the right hand.
Nonetheless, in this particular case, the predictable descent through a fifth (e-A) as opposed to a seventh (e-F) is clearly shown by the custos at the end of the first system. The error occurs, understandably, at the disjuncture between the two systems.
It’s not necessary to posit a corrupt exemplar (as I understand Jon Baxendale to do) to explain such a commonplace copying error. Even in Louis Couperin, Occam’s razor had its uses.
Regardless of a few local points of disagreement, I find Jon’s post and future edition very welcome.
Jon rightly observes that both HAC and ODM are excellent editions.
However, he also notes that both are far from perfect and that better solutions can be produced.
I guess the goal is to fix the shortcomings: HAC for following Parville which includes so many additional ornaments that are surely not present in L. Couperin now-lost original, ODM for following Bauyn to the point of not even suggesting trills when obvious, e.g. cadential or with termination written out, thus introducing unnecessary difficulty for the student.
There is clearly a way to produce a middle-of-the-road solution that avoids both types of excesses.
Bauyn and Parville: which one is earlier? It depends whom you ask.
Googling it appears that Parville is mostly 20 years earlier.
Have not read Gustafson.
Anyway guess we all agree that the dates of the MSs are a moot point.
The point is which version they represent, and I guess we all also agree that Bauyn with its scarcity of ornaments precedes Parville with its plenty of ornamentation. (Btw., this is what I wrote yesterday).
Bauyn, as Jon points out, appears to show how L.Couperin would write for his milieu but not for publication, while Parville shows a score more adequate for more general readers, though perhaps too generous in added ornaments.
The big question is whether modern editors have the authority to make changes. I usually think not.
Would an editor without ‘authority’ be an editor at all? Where modern editors intervene, they (should) explain themselves. Not to do so would be to mislead.
A modern player reading from, to take the topical example, the Bayun manuscript surely has no less a responsibility to intervene (to ‘make changes’) where the scribe is evidently at fault.
It depends on the quality of the manuscript. I would say yes if there was reason to make an alteration. My Fitzwilliam Virginal Book edition (in cahoots with Francis Knoghts) has a commentary of about 5,000 entries. LC has about 1,700. Many are little differences between sources and are easily dealt with. However, to change even a single note is a big deal.Moroney was terribly young when he did his OL edition and probably didn’t have the balls to do anything radical. I’m old.
Amen. That said, I think Parville is inadequate when it comes to ornamentation. My suspicion is that it was a dilettante manuscript, whereas Bauyn was probably copied by a professional (they did exist!). If one compares the notated ornamentation in the preludes with the dances, it becomes clear how dense it should be. Moroney discussed this with some weird reasoning. But, in 1623, Jehan Titelouze said that his pieces are without ornaments because it would be a huge mission to add symbols. There’s no reason to think differently when jumping forward 4 decades.
Parville is very sensibly ornamented but the conditions/rules observed in Muffat — who spent his rudimentary years studying in Paris — demonstrate that what we think to be normal today is very sparse.
Amateur vs professional : we’ll never know but, jumping forward to 1716, would a character like a Lebègue follow Couperin’s often neurotic instructions?
The reason I say we’ll never know is because most professional musicians were illiterate when it came to notation. Granted, we have the Couperin, Nivers et al, but they represent the tip of the iceberg when it comes to music making. They were the results of apprenticeships and not learnèd schooling, though even François Couperin(II) learned his art by that path. One can tell from those who did put pen to paper how educated they were outside their music. Nivers was educated in other disciplines. André Raisin, less so. Boyvin comes over as semi-literate and François C II slightly better than most, though the quality of his French between l’Art de toucher I (1716) and 2 (1717) — the former was immediately pulled from same after publication — suggests someone helped his grammar.
Le 03/08/2022 23:15, Claudio Di Veroli via The Jackrail écrit :
The point is which version they represent, and I guess we all also
agree that Bauyn with its scarcity of ornaments precedes Parville with
its plenty of ornamentation. (Btw., this is what I wrote yesterday).
This is perhaps what you meant to write, but not what you wrote, which
was precisely the opposite: “Parville appears to be contemporary with L.
Couperin, thus earlier than Bauyn.”
The scribe’s intention is clear here.
The apparent ‘F’ is at the start of a new system in which the clef has
changed from f3 to f4.
The custos at the end of the first system shows the intended A.
Such slips at a change of clef are not uncommon.
An F below the A major triad for the right hand would make poor sense.
Regardless of which note is right or wrong, this a good point of
comparison between the two editions:
DM corrects the scribe’s “error” in Bauyn and adds a lenghty note to
explain why.
AC, who claims to follow Parville, doesn’t do so here and changes the A
to F without any kind of footnote or endnote explaining why.
Both are excellent editions, but one happens to be much more excellent
than the other.
I appear to disagree with both Dennis and Parville.
I agree with Curtis in finding Parville ornaments far from Jon’s “inadequate”, but actually very much in style.
Where I disagree with Curtis is that Parville’s ornaments appear to be a latter addition and as such should be marked on the score.
Vice versa, I also find that Curtis omits some ornaments that are in Bauyn and most likely also original.
Accordingly, if I had to produce my own edition (which I will not, rest assured!), it would be as follows, compared with the other ones I mentioned before:
Bauyn-Moroney (ODM):
Base score: Bauyn
Parville-Curtis (HAC):
Base score: Parville
Editorial trills/mordents : betwen brackets
Editorial slides: in small notes
Bauyn+Parville-Di Veroli (BPD):
Base score: Bauyn
Parville additional ornaments: between parentheses
Editorial additional ornaments: between brackets
I attach a comparison of a few bars of the same Sarabande I posted yesterday.
I understand that more purist views (Jon and Dennis) will not like it, but I find it to be the best comprehensive result, especially for most readers who are not specialists.
Again, let’s agree to disagree!
Not so. Let me reproduce what I wrote without omissions:
“Let me add an interesting detail: HAC (Parville) appears to be later than ODM (Bauyn), as it adds ornaments for consistency with others that are already there (and vice versa are unlikely to have been omitted by Bauyn). This is however inconsistent with their dates, c1670 for Parville, c1690 for Bauyn. Louis Couperin had been dead for a while, and therefore arguably both are copies of earlier (now lost) sources.”
I also later clarified:
“Anyway guess we all agree that the dates of the MSs are a moot point.
The point is which version they represent, and I guess we all also agree that Bauyn with its scarcity of ornaments precedes Parville with its plenty of ornamentation.”
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