notes inegales d fuller j mus 1989
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Notes and inégales Unjoined: Defending a DefinitionAuthor(s): David FullerSource: The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Winter, 1989), pp. 21-28Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/763618Accessed: 23-01-2016 23:34 UTC
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Notes and inegales
Unjoined:
Defending
a
Definition
DAVID
FULLER
rederick
Neumann
(for
whom our
published
exchanges
have
not
prevented
me
from
developing
a warm
personal
regard
and
whose immense
contribution to our field I
gladly
acknowl-
edge)
has
invited me
to "rethink" certain of
my
ideas
about notes
inegales
as
they appear
in
two
essays
he is kind
enough
to
call
"important."l
It
is with
considerable
misgivings
that I
pile yet
another
utterance
on a
stack of
controversy
that-like
the
disputes
over
dot- 21
ting,
triplets, appoggiaturas,
and trills-has
long
since
outgrown
its
subject.
Even
though
inequality
occupies
an
amazing
proportion
of
the
space
in
many
French
treatises of the
eighteenth
century,
and
though
its
flagrant
defiance
of the
principle
of
Werktreue,
with which
most
of
us were
brought up,
has
fascinated
a handful of
the
curious
(including
me)
ever since
Eugene
Borrel
"discovered"
it
in
1912,
it
occupies
but
a
modest corner of the
performer's rhythmic
concerns
Volume
VII
*
Number
1
*
Winter
1989
The
Journal
of
Musicology
?
1989 by
the
Regents
of
the
University
of
California
"The Notes
inegales
Revisited,"
this
Journal
VI
(1988),
137-49.
I
would like to
believe that I
rethink
my
ideas
every
time
I
have to write about
them,
and
these
writings
include
besides
the two
essays
in
The New Grove and The
New Harvard
Dictionary
(the
latter not a
"condensation"
of
the former
but a
freshly
"rethought"
article that never-
theless contains the
principal
ideas of the
former)
a
little
piece
called "You
Can't Prove
it
by
Notation:
Thoughts
on
Rhythmic
Alteration,"
The
Diapason
LXXII
(1981),
March,
p.
3,
a much
longer
one,
"Rhythmic
Alteration-If
Any-in
Bach's
Organ
Music,"
The
American
Organist
XXI
(1987),
June,
pp.
40-48,
a short
report
on
Cappus's
Etrennesde
musique (1732-6),
Early
Music
XV
[1987],
384-85,
as well as a
facsimile edition
to
be
published by Minkoff,
and
a
discussion
of
the
subject
in an
essay
on
problems
of
Baroque performance
entitled
"Beyond
Notation: The Performer
as
Composer"
in the
forthcoming
New GroveHandbook
of
Performance
Practice,
ed.
Stanley
Sadie and
Howard
Mayer
Brown. I
have also
surveyed
persistent
written
dotting
in
"The 'Dotted
Style'
in
Bach, Handel,
and
Scarlatti,"
Bach, Handel,
and
Scarlatti:
Tercentenary
Essays,
ed.
Peter
Williams
(Cambridge,
1985),
pp.
99-117,
and referred to
inequality
in
some
of
my
work on automatic instruments.
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THE
JOURNAL
OF
MUSICOLOGY
by comparison
to such
vital
and elusive matters
as the
declamatory
and
choreographic
aspects
of musical
delivery,
the
shaping
of
the
musical gesture, and the expressive nuance.2 Nevertheless, since Pro-
fessor Neumann's
article
has
me
failing
to
escape pitfalls (p.
141),
swaying (p.
145),
and
falling
victim
to a snare
(p.
148)
like
some
boozy
rabbit,
I
felt
I
ought
to
try
to
show that
my footing
is
surer than he
claims and that
owners of Grove and The
Harvard
Dictionary
need not
regret
their
investment after all.
The
central
idea that
I
am to rethink
is
that
inequality
is a
rhythmic
phenomenon
n
sounding
music
independentof
questions
of
notation,
and
that it is not
always
and
necessarily
the
unequal
rendition of
notes
written in equal value, as Professor Neumann insists that it should be
considered.
My
definitions
might
have
passed
unchallenged
if
they
had
not been followed
(in
Grove)
by
the
warning
that
"to insist
that
notes
inegales
are
...
always
written
equal
is
to
mask a
great
deal of
evidence
that can
help
in
mapping
the
geographical
extent of
the
convention ..
." and
(in
Harvard)
by
the assertion
that
passages
of
written
dotting
in
Purcell,
Corelli,
Bach, Handel,
and
Alessandro
Scarlatti are
sometimes
to
be
understood as
written-out
inequality.
22
The
danger
in
my
"dangerous
assumption"
(the
expression
is
Neu-
mann's) was that it opened chinks through which the virus of score-
tampering
might
seep
out
from
quirky
France into
the
performance
of
world
masterpieces.
I
seemed
to
be
saying
that if
Purcell's
streams
of
dotted
eighths
in
3
time
were
written-out
notes
inegales,
then
per-
haps
streams of
undotted
eighths
could
be
dotted in
performance,
or
if
Bach could
write the
ritornellos
of
the
"St.
Anne"
prelude
as
he
did,
maybe
a similar
relentless
jerking
could
disfigure
some
other
piece
by
him.
This was
not
the
reasoning
that
led
Dolmetsch to
decree notes
inegales
in
Bach
and
Handel;
he was
mainly
extrapolating (unjusti-
fiably, I agree with Professor Neumann) from Quantz. And it was not,
in
fact,
what
I
wrote. But
the
implications
seemed to
glow
with the
baleful red
of the
"early
music
movement,"
a
color
calculated
to un-
muzzle the
whole
array
of
the
Neumann
artillery,
as no
one who
heard his
paper
at the
1988
meeting
of
the
American
Chapter
of the
New
Bach
Society
can
doubt.
If,
with
Frederick
Neumann,
you
state
as
a
principle
that
inequal-
ity
can
exist
only
in
passages
that
are
written
even,
then
there can
be
no
such
thing
as
inequality
apart
from
notation-that
it
is
indeed a
2
A
new book on
Dance
Rhythms
of
the
French
Baroque by Betty
Bang
Mather
(Bloomington
and
Indianapolis,
1987)
and articles
by
Patricia
Ranum,
notably
"Au-
dible Rhetoricand
Mute Rhetoric:
he
Seventeenth-Century
rench
Sarabande,"
Early
MusicXXIV
(1986),
22-39,
can
convey
some idea of
the
range
of
rhythmic
problems
in this
repertory
that
are
only
beginning
to
be
addressed n
the
literature.
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NOTES AND
INEGALES
UNJOINED
matter
of notation. But
then
you
must
agree
that the
lilting rhythms
in
the double
you
have
just improvised
on a courante
by
Chambonnieres,
though they may have sounded just like the notesinegalesthat lent such
grace
to the
written double
by
D'Anglebert
that
you
played previously,
were
not notes
inegales
at
all,
since
your
double was not
written down.
Let us
now
suppose
that
you
want
to write out
your
double
using
dotted
figures
to
suggest inequality.
The dotted
passages
are
still
not
notes
inegales
according
to
Neumann because
they
are not
written
equal.
If
you
had
written them
equal
and said
"pointez"
over
them,
then
they
would be.
In
1690
Gilles
Jullien,
organist
of Chartres
cathedral,
published
a
Livred'orguewith a great many passages of even eighths and almost no
dotted
ones-except
in a Trio
pour
une
elevation,
written
almost
entirely
in dotted
eighths
and sixteenths.
In the
preface
he
wrote,
"I
have
put
the dots after
first
eighths
[of
each
pair] only
in
the
piece
on
f.
51
[the
trio]
to serve
as an
example
of
dotting
the others
in
the
same
way,
more
or less
lightly,
according
to the
tempo
which
is
marked."3 Fre-
derick Neumann
would
not,
I
believe,
deny
that
in this
case
the dot-
ting
is written notes
inegales,
since
the
intent is
clearly
explanatory,
and
he
admits
that "authors of manuals
explained
notes
inegales
with dot-
23
ted note illustrations." But only five years earlier a collection by the
Parisian
organist
Nicolas
Gigault
had
appeared
in
which most of
the
pieces
looked
very
much
like
Jullien's
dotted
one.
In
fact,
the number
of dots
in
this
collection is
staggering,
and the
composer
invites the
organist
to
add
still more
"to animate his
playing"
It seems to me to
require
a resolute
suspension
of common sense
(and
a
very
deficient
knowledge
of this
repertory)
to see these
rhythms
as
anything
but
notated
notes
inegales,
and indeed
I
have
recommended
them
every
chance
I
have
had to
anyone wanting
to
observe how
inequality
was
actually used in pieces of music at this period.4 Gigault was not a very
good
composer,
but he was
far from
being
a
non-entity
and
very
much in the musical
mainstream,
having
been one
of
Lully's
teachers,
among
other
things.
3
Ed. Norbert
Dufourcq
with facsimile
of
composer's preface,
Publications de
la
Societe
francaise
de
musicologie
XIII
(Paris,
1932).
4
Archives
des maitresde
l'orgue,
ed.
Alexandre Guilmant
and Andre
Pirro,
IV
(1902,
repr.
New York,
1972).
What is
especially
illuminating
about this collection is the
variety
of
figures
that are
combined
in some
pieces.
A
fugue
(p.
133)
combines
copious
dotted
eighths
and
sixteenths
with occasional even
eighths
and
sixteenths,
but the
dotting
gradually
ceases
toward
the
end.
In
a
trio,
p.
64,
there
is more
short-long
than
long-short
dotting.
A
Fugue poursuivie
a la
maniere
italienne
(p.
77)
has,
as one
might
expect,
almost
no
dotting.
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THE
JOURNAL
OF
MUSICOLOGY
And
Lully
himself-did
he
not dictate
his
operas
to his secretaries
according
to Le Cerf?
If the
story
is
true,
how
would
they
have
de-
cided in the rush of keeping up with their employer whether the
uneven
notes
he
played
on his
filthy harpsichord
were
to be
written
with
dots?
Related
Lully
sources
show much
disagreement
in
dotting.5
Who
can
say
that
some
of it does
not
represent
notes
inegales?
The
use
of
dotting
to indicate
inequality
was
not without
prob-
lems,
of course.
On
the one
hand its look
of
rigidity
and
uniformity
ran counter
to the
expressive
flexibility
and
the
spontaneity
that
seem
to have been
important
features
of the
convention,6
and on the
other
it
usurped
the
notation
for
strict
dotting
where
the
composer
might
want that effect. Nor could it be distinguished from the inexact but
very
common
dotted
notation for
pairs
of notes assimilated
to
triplet
rhythm.
The situation
became
especially
confusing
if a careful com-
poser
wished to
use
dotting
in
a
cautionary
sense
to indicate
inequality
where
the character
of the
melody might suggest
even
delivery,
or
if
the
rhythm
was meant
to
change
back and
forth between
equal
and
unequal,
or
if
one hand
was
to
be
played
equal
and the other
unequal.
By
far
the most
common
problems
for
today's performer
arise
in
24
passages
theoretically
eligible
for
inequality
and written
in
a mixture
of even and dotted notation that does not seem to correspond to any
plausible
pattern
of contrast between
mild
and
sharp inequality.
Is
the
dotting
redundant?
A
reminder
to make
the
rest
unequal?
An indi-
cation
that the undotted
notes
are to be
played
as written?
Perhaps
it
is
up
to le
bon
gou't
to
decide,
but
in that
case,
where
is the
rigor
of
Frederick
Neumann's
dichotomy?
A rare direct
reference
of this
kind of
uncertainty
(as
well as
to
the
dotting
of
undotted
music
outside of
France)
is to be
found
in
a
keyboard
tutor
by
the Amsterdamer
Leonard
Frischmuth
(1758).
After specifying unequal sixteenths in allemandes and unequal
5
Communication
from
Lois
Rosow.
6
I know
of one
statement
to the
effect that
dotting
should
be consistent.
It
is
in
an
anonymous
late
seventeenth-century
treatise
on
organ playing
(F-Pa
MS.3042.
ff.
1oo-119)
"that would
be
thrown out
of
court
in
any
civilized
society" (p.
145),
but
by
which
I nevertheless allowed
myself
to
be
"swayed"
on another matter.
In
fact,
it
contains
more detailed
and concrete
(though
sometimes
almost
undecipherable)
infor-
mation
on
organ
playing
of the
period-however
particular
and
idiosyncratic-than
any
other source
in
any
language;
it
appears
to have been taken
down
from dictation
by
a
semi-literate
student,
and whatever
its
applicability
to
anything
outside the
tribune
that
engendered
it,
it is
totally
convincing
as an account
of what was said
within. On
consistency
in
dotting
trios (which are
played
"boldly
but
very
slowly"):
"I1faut faire
une
grande
atention
a bien
pointer
et couller etc. mais
particullierement
a
pointer
toujours
de la mesme
force car cela est
de la dernierre
consequence
afin de maintenir
la
piece
dans
toutte sa suitte
de la
meme force dont
on
la
commancee
sans ce de
mentir
[sans
se
dementir]" (transcribed
and translated
by
William
Pruitt,
Early
Music
XIV
[1986],
237-51).
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NOTES AND INEGALES
UNJOINED
eighths
in
courantes he
continued,
"even
if
there
are
no
dots
(my
emphasis)
. . .
they
must be
played
as
if
they
were there." Pierre
Mar-
cou (1782) observed that there was not "perfect agreement" on
whether
notes
inegales
should
be
played
only
where
dotting
was written
or whether one
should dot even notes
lightly
and dotted ones
"in
a
more
marked fashion." Problems
or no
problems,
however,
disagree-
ments
or
no
disagreements,
there
are
countless
examples
of
contin-
uous
written
dotting
in French
baroque
music and
in
foreign
music
imitative
of
French
styles
which,
played
or
sung
with
any
musical
sensitivity,
will be
indistinguishable
to
the
ear from
notes
inegales
as
taught
in
French
manuals.7
Much of the case against me rests upon the author's notion of
notes
inegales
as
"a
unified,
fully
integrated, organic
unit"
(p.
137),
"a
unified
system,"
"an
organic, logical
whole,"
a
"complex, sophisti-
cated,
system"
which was
"mandatory,"
which
"held
together
over
a
period
of a
century
and a
half'
during
which
writers
"agreed
and
kept
agreeing
on
all
important points" (pp.
139-40).
It takes a
very
selec-
tive
reading
indeed
of the theoretical sources
and-again-a
serious
lack
of
experience
with
the music
to
come
up
with
a
description
like
this.8
In
Grove
I
spoke,
to
be
sure,
of an
"admirably
rational,
even
25
scientific code" emerging from the instruction books, but immediately
went
on to
say
how
illusory
it
was.9 First
of
all,
the
completeness
of the
sources
varies
from
something
as laconic
as
"Le
Duo se
jouie
viste .
. .
et le
pointer
quand
il
est
en croche"
(Andre
Raison,
1714)
to the
elaborate
treatments
of a Demoz
de La Salle
(1728)
or
a Mercadier
de Belesta
(1777)-"complex"
and
"sophisticated,"
up
to a
point,
but
in a
minority
and
far from
agreeing
on details.
You
cannot claim
agreement
on matters about which
many
of
your
sources are silent.
Secondly,
the area
of
agreement
between
even the
more
thor-
ough writers was narrow. The most fundamental rule was that ine-
quality applied
to
the
quarter-beat
in
duple
meters
and the half-beat
in
triple,
and its elaboration
through
all
possible
meters
and note-
values
is
what
gives
the
descriptions
their
look of
exhaustive
rigor.
(Dard,
1769,
specified
unequal
sixty-fourths
in
2/16 ).
But
even here
7
For
many examples
out
of an
infinity,
see G.
B.
Draghi,
Harpsichord
Music,
ed.
Robert Klakowich
(Madison,
Wisc.,
1986),
passim,
also
preface, pp.
xivf.
8
It
is, moreover,
a
gross
error of fact
to
say
that
"all
French texts
without
excep-
tion
.
. .
explained
the
system"
(p.
141).
A
quick
check
of
my
notes,
yields
the
following
practical
treatises
where one
might
expect
to find mention of
inequality
but which are
silent on the
subject:
Millet, 1666; [Nivers], Methodefacile, i666ff; Borjon de Scellery,
1672;
Jean
Rousseau's
singing
method,
1683ff;
Danoville,
1687;
Berthet,
1695;
"Principes
de
musique"
for students at
Saint-Cyr,
MSS
F-V;
Moyreau,
1753;
Berard,
1755;
Blanchet,
1756;
De
Lusse,
1761;
Francoeur,
1772;
Cupis,
1772;
Dellain,
1781.
There
are
certainly
many
others.
9
I also used
the word
"mandatory"
(p.
425),
but
wish I hadn't.
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THE
JOURNAL
OF
MUSICOLOGY
there was
disagreement
about
the
foreign-seeming
2/4, 4/8,
and
3/4
(as
opposed
to the native French
"3").
There was
also
uncertainty
about t and about the "descent" of inequality to smaller note-values,
especially
in
passages
of
mixed
values,
where
the
larger
values
were
supposed
to become
equal.
And there were
exceptions
even to
the
basic rules
(see
the
quote
from
Demoz
in
Grove,
p.
421).
Many
authors
indeed seem to
say
that
inequality
was
"mandatory"
except
under
certain
conditions,
but the lists of
conditions varied.
Dots over the
notes
(like
staccato
dots)
canceled
inequality,
but one could not
de-
pend
on
them.1o
The
quarter-
and half-beat
rules did not
emerge
until
the end of the
seventeenth-century
and had a
life of about a
hundred
years: half-beats in C were unequal in Nivers (1665) and Perrine
(1680),
as
well as
Gigault
(1685)
and
Jullien
(1690),
while
Jean
Rous-
seau
(1687)
was
perhaps
the first to
specify equal
eighths
and
unequal
sixteenths
in
C.11
Hardly
a
rule,
but
characteristic of
the
majority
of
sources that
mention
it,
was the
description
of
the ratio of
long
to
short as
being
milder than
the
3:1
of
strict
dotting.
A
few writers
distinguished
explicitly
between notes
inegales
and
sharper
written
dotting
(e.g.,
26
Vague,
1733,
and La
Chapelle,
1736).
But
David
(1737),
who
con-
suited with Campra and Rameau among others in the preparation of
his
treatise,
went to
some
length
to
explain
that
even
notes were
altered
to the
precise equivalent
of
dotted
ones.
Georg
Muffat
(1698),
describing
the
Lully
style
of
playing,
was
nearly
as
explicit,
and
several
others said
simply
that
one
played
eighths
"as
if
they
were
dotted."
Jean-Jacques
Rousseau
(Dictionnaire,
art.
"Pointer")
gave
it
both
ways:
after
describing
the strict
3:
1
dotting
of a
string
of
eighths
he
wrote,
"to
dot them in
performance,
one
takes
them
unequal
according
to
these
same
proportions,
even
if
they
are written
equal."
He
then
went
right
on to say that in French music one always dotted them "a little."
(Professor
Neumann
cites-characteristically,
I
am
afraid-only
the
last
bit,
which is
favorable
to his
argument,
p.
145).
There
are even
a
few
instances
(other
than
the
poor
organ
scholar
of the
Arsenal
MS)
that
suggest
overdotting,
e.g.,
"pique"
where
the
meaning
of
10
Cappus
(see
note
i)
said of
them,
"It
would be
desirable
if
all
composers
took
this
trouble." He also
authorized
the alteration "at
times" of
triplets
to
anapests
or
dactyls
(p.
25;
cf.
Neumann,
p. 139:
"never
ternary"),
and after
filling
five
pages
with
rules for
inequality
in
the various time
signatures,
blew
the whole
system
sky high by
saying
that
the
signatures
were
often
wrong
and in
the end it was
the contents of
the
measure that decided
(p.
14).
1
Though
it is
true
to
say
that
Bourgeois
(1550)
was the first to
make a connection
between
inequality
and
meter,
there is no
thread
of
theory
to
connect
him
with
late
seventeenth-century practice (p. 140).
His book was
written in
Geneva to instruct
Cal-
vinists
in
psalm singing,
and
so
far
as
I
know
was never
reprinted.
RISM
lists
only
three
surviving copies.
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NOTES AND INEGALES
UNJOINED
"staccato"
is ruled out
by
written
overlapping
(Dandrieu,
La
Lyre
d'Or-
phee,
second
harpsichord
book,
1728).12
Other features of the convention about which there was even less
unanimity
in the
theory
books were its limitation
to
stepwise
melodies
and
its
confinement to French music
(on
the latter
limitation,
see
Grove,
p.
424).
But
the
body
of written
theory
is a model
of
consistency
compared
to
the
music,
as
has been
suggested
already.
It is rare that
one comes
across a
piece
of French music
in
which
one
can
say
with
confidence
that this
passage
would have been
dotted,
that one
not,
these dots
are written notes
inegales
meant
perhaps
to
be
underdotted,
those
were meant
to
be
strict or
exaggerated.l3
(All
the
uncertainties
of text-transmission come into play here, needless to say, dotting be-
ing
one
of the
most
variable features
of
variant
readings-not only
of
Lully.)
Even
passages
that seem to
fit
some rule
may
turn out to flout
it,
as
for
example
the two-octave
arpeggios
in
the
left hand
of
Rameau's
La
Livri,
which are
certainly
disjunct
and therefore accord-
ing
to
some writers
ought
to be
played evenly.
But
when Rameau
arranged
this
piece
in
Zoroastre,
he dotted the
arpeggios.l4
It
is
a
different
matter
with
foreign
music,
which
was not
(so
far
as one can
tell
from the
theory
books)
subject
to
any
broadly
accepted
convention
27
of inequality. Ought we to dot the sarabande of Bach's French Over-
ture,
which
has
many
points
of
similarity
with
the
dotted,
quasi-French
sarabande
of the fifth Partita?
We
might,
Bach
might,
but
I
doubt
whether
he could have counted
on
purchasers
of the
Clavieriibung
o
do
so;
if he
really
wanted them
to
play
it that
way,
he
would have
had
to write out
the
dotting.
For
twenty-five
years
Frederick Neumann has
sought
to insure
that
Bach's sarabande
will not be
dotted,
and
that
the
12
Of the
trio,
the Arsenal scholar
(see
note
6)
says,
".
..
il
faut
que
ce
pointement
ce face avec
grand
feu et
grande
hardiesse
...
on ne
peut
dont
pas
trop
le
pointer;"
"il
faut
etremement
pointer
le
duo." God
forbid
that the reader should
imagine
that I
am
advocating sharp inequality
as a
norm;
I
am
simply
pointing
out
that not
everyone
distinguished
between written
dotting
and a
milder
inequality
(p.
144),
and the dis-
tinction
cannot
in
any
case
be used to
prove
that notes
inegales
were
never written
out
with
dotting.
13
See,
for
example,
Monteclair's
cantatas,
ed.
James
Anthony
and
Diran Akma-
jian,
(Madison,
1978)
for
a
treasury
of
both
puzzles
and
precise
indications
of
equality
and
inequality-the
puzzles
in
spite
of the fact that the
composer
was one
of
the most
prolific
and
lucid writers on the
problem.
14 The two versions are
printed
side
by
side in Pieces de clavecin, ed. Kenneth
Gilbert
(Paris,
1979),
pp.
106-07.
Since
the
meter
is
"2"
(2/2),
and the
arpeggios
are
in
eighths, they
satisfy
the
quarter-beat
rule
for
duple
time. Such dual versions are
always
subject
to the
interpretation
that
they represent
a
change
of
mind
and
not
rhythmic
alteration
of the undotted
original,
but
they
also show that
inequality
cannot
be
ex-
cluded
on the
ground
that dotted
rhythm
is
unsuitable
to the
context.
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THE
JOURNAL
OF
MUSICOLOGY
false ideas with which
the devotees of
Early
Music would
threaten
modern
"mainstream"
performing
traditions
will
be
"laid to rest"
(p.
138) forever. He has pursued this goal with prodigious energy, and
his
method has been to
surround the
masterpieces
of the
eighteenth
century
with an
impregnable
fortress of
rationalistic
"proof"
but-
tressed
by huge quantities
of
documentary
evidence. It is
a measure of
his
power
and
success that those who
would refute him
find them-
selves drawn into battle on
his
terms,
become
entangled
in
futile
argument,
and
retire discredited to
toot their
on-beat
appoggiaturas
and
jangle
their
upper-note
trills.
Here the battle is over the
nature of note
inegales,
and his
purpose
is not so much to learn how the convention might have graced the
music of the
past
as
it
is to define
that nature in
such a
way
as
to
demonstrate
conclusively
that it
could
not
have
been
applied
to
any
music
outside of France.
My
purpose
has
been not
to
argue
that
evenly
written
notes were
performed
unequally
in
other
countries
(though
I
think
they
probably
were,
unsystematically
and on
a
limited
scale,
in
some
places,
especially England)
but to show
that
Fortress
Neumann is
heavily
slanted
and
vulnerable to
close
inspection,
that it
28
cannot
protect
Bach from
open
minds,
and
finally,
that
my
dictionary
articles are not wrong in severing the arbitrary bond
tying
notes in-
egales
to
undotted notation and in
finding
their
effect in
passages
of
persistent
written
dotting.5l
State
University
of
New
Yorkat
Buffalo
15
Unlike
Professor
Neumann,
I
do
not,
however,
"stand
by
every
word"
of
these
articles
(p.
138).
In
Grove,
pp.
423f,
the mention of
inequality
in
a
barrel-organ per-
formance of the overture to TheMarriageof Figaro is wrong; the effect is probably due
to
wear and tear. The
reference
to
Couperin's
Offertoire
p.
423),
which is in
C-time,
is
inconsistent
with
my
presentation
of
the
quarter-beat
rule
on
p.
421.
It is the
latter
that
is
faulty,
as it omits
to
point
out
that
(on
the
evidence of
Nivers,
Perrine, Jullien,
and
Gigault;
see
above)
the
rule
had
not stabilized
when
Couperin
wrote
his
organ
music
and
eighths
were
often
unequal
in
4/4
measures.
Also,
though
I
do
agree
with
Neu-
mann
that
Walther's
quantitas
notarumhas
nothing
to
do with
notes
inegales (p.
141),
I was
wrong
in
implying
(Grove,
p.
423)
that French
writers never
connected
strong-weak
doctrine with
inequality.
See
for
example
Mercadier
de
Belesta,
pp.
66f,
and the
very
interesting
but
anonymous
Nouvelle
methode
pour
apprendre
jouer
du
violon,
(?c.
1760;
F
TLm),
p.
29.
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