This kind of trill sounds to us
amateurishly ridiculous, while, on the contrary, the most admired rapid
trills of our best singers of today would probably have been called
"false shakes" a hundred and fifty years ago. Incidentally it may be
remarked that two hundred years ago people actually took pleasure in
trilling with the third instead of with the second; this, in the
eighteenth century, was only adhered to by bagpipers, while to our ear
it has become an absolute abomination and barbarity.
A hundred years ago it was considered very daring to perform an _adagio_
before the public in a concert hall. Contemporary musical authors utter
emphatic warnings against this experiment. A sustained, seriously
melancholy composition, dying away in quiet passion, was naturally just
as tiresome for the opulent merry company of those days as a fugue
composition is for the majority of our public. People sought to be
pleasantly incited by music, not thrillingly excited; therefore
comfortable slow tempo was demanded, but no _adagio_. If one did attempt
an _adagio_ in a gallant style of composition the player first had to
render it lively and amusing by all sorts of freely added adornments, by
means of passages and cadences, by improvised trills, _gruppettos_,
_pincements_, _battements_, _flattements_, _doubles_, etc. "In the
_adagio_," says Quantz, speaking of the mode of execution, "each note
must be, as it were, caressed.
Pages:
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621