8 - The Functional Equivalency of the Two “Ordinary”Duple Meters in Later Seventeenth-Century OrganMusic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2022
Summary
The second part of this study is dedicated to theanalysis of musical scores. It moves much morestrongly into practical advice for performers, oftenincluding case studies of various works, in part orin their entirety. While treatises are certainly amajor source of evidence for various notationalpractises, not every musician may have followedthese teachings: perhaps they might not have been inagreement with treatise authors in every respect, orperhaps their tradition of notation never wasexplained in writing. Therefore, throughout part 2,teachings found in the theoretical treatises will beused as a starting point to explain the notationalconventions found in the organ scores of theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But whentreatises offer no clarification for certainnotational conventions, these issues must beaddressed from different angles, such as formalfunction and comparative/stylistic analysis.
In part 1, much effort was made to understand theintricacies of the allabreve signature, be it the large orthe small allabreve.Part 2 is not much different in this respect, asmany of the difficulties in source interpretationconcern the allabrevemeters and their application. The aim of thischapter—and chapter 10 as well—is to decipher themeaning behind the “small allabreve meter” with sixteenth notes—.Chapter 11 is devoted to the large allabreve and the“Kirnbergian” small allabreve .
In this chapter, we will examine [c|] and [¢|] in theorgan scores copied mainly in the second half of theseventeenth century. While treatise authors alwaystaught that ¢ was faster than c, evidence frommultiple sources shows that in this particularrepertoire at least, ¢ and c were equivalent, i.e.,they were merely signs for duple meter without temposignification. The investigation in this chapterwill be conducted according to the followingpoints:
1. A SURVEY OF THE USE OF [¢|] in baroque organscores. Here we will see that this meter and notevalue combination was used extremely often, andacross the entire Baroque era.
2. MATTHIAS WECKMAN AS A POINT OF DEPARTURE. Inorder to understand what this meter implies fortempo and proportion, we will begin with aninvestigation into the music of Matthias Weckman(ca. 1616–1674). This section outlines whyWeckman's music is an ideal starting point forthis investigation.
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- Tempo and Tactus in the German BaroqueTreatises, Scores, and the Performance of OrganMusic, pp. 255 - 288Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021