Description
Book SynopsisA Performer''s Guide to Transcribing, Editing, and Arranging Early Music provides instruction on three important tasks that early music performers often undertake in order to make their work more noticeable and appealing to their audiences. First, the book provides instruction on using early sources-manuscripts, prints, and treatises-in score, parts, or tablature. It then illuminates priorities behind basic editorial decisions-determining what constitutes a version of a musical piece, how to choose a version, and how to choose the source for that version. Lastly, the book offers advice about arranging both early and new music for early instruments, including how to consider instruments'' ranges and various registers, how to exploit the unique characteristics of period instruments, and how to produce convincing textures of accompaniment. Drawing on methods based on early models (for example, how baroque composers arranged the music of their contemporaries), Alon Schab pays tribute to th
Trade ReviewA comprehensive and insightful examination of the origins of the historical performance phenomenon, what it has become today, and where it might be going in the future. Highly recommended. * Mark Kroll, Harpsichordist and Fortepianist; Professor Emeritus, Boston University; Editor, The Cambridge Companion to the Harpsichord *
Alon Schab urges performers of early music to cultivate a 'historic curiosity.' His book should inspire many to do so. With well-chosen examples and lucid explanations, Schab gets readers into the inner workings of processes often taken for granted to the detriment of truly knowledgeable and committed music-making. No one who follows him on the paths he sets forth will fail to come out with greater enlightenment * whether playing Van Eyck's recorder solos, recapturing the spirit of Ortiz's glosadas, reading critical editions critically, or mediating between new and old with arrangements and even original compositions.Joshua Rifkin, Director, The Bach Ensemble *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction 1. Historical Sources on the Concert Stage 2. The Musical Text as a Point of Departure 3. Different Works, Different Versions, Neither or Both? 4. "The ear must be chief umpire" (Intuition and Critical Editing) 5. Historically Informed Arrangement 6. Writing for Early Instruments Today Bibliography
