I’ve been reading Mattheson’s Der vollkommene Capellemister and written about it a bit in my blog in the entries Mattheson on Perfection, The Location of Paradise Revealed, The Origin of Music and What you really need to know about Angles. Today I’m reading chapter six, and I love how he writes about the need for good posture:

Can the attentive listener be moved to pleasure if he [….] sees a dozen violinists who contort their bodies as if they are ill? If the clavier player writhes hsi jaws, wrinkles his brow, and contorts his face to such an extent that it could frighten children? If many of the wind instrumentalists contort or inflate their facial features (one must not omit the lips of the flutist) so that they can bring them back to their proper shape and color in half an hour only with difficulty?

It is even said of Minerva, that she threw the flute away just because wind instruments have the misfortune that they distort the features; and is also known from history that Alcibiades, though he was otherwise a great lover of music, nevertheless hated flute playing for the cited reasons. The viola da gamba would have pleased him more: For there is, after the lute, hardly any instrument with which one can produce a more refined posture. Because of this, the French love both instruments before all others, since their strong inclination toward the bon air often goes so far that their zeal makes them seem comical.

During a visit to the coffee shop with Ulrik and Ketil recently, I learned that in the renaissance the zink/cornetto and the oboe are described as the instruments that are closest to the voice, so one can speculate if singing technique has changed from very nasal in the renaissance to a more “classic” ideal that is closer to the flute when Quantz writes On playing the Flute.

While discussing embouchure (Chapter 4, page 55) Quantz notes how close the flute is to the human voice and saying that working with chest voice and falsetto is just like tightening the lips when playing the flute (in his view it is this that makes the flute a natural instrument), he comes with the funniest attack on the French and their singing:

“The Italians and several other nations unite this falsetto with the chest voice, and make use of it to great advantage in singing: among the French, however, it is not customary, and for that reason their singing in the high register is often transformed into a disagreeable shrieking, the effect of which is exactly the same created when you do not cover the mouth hole sufficiently on the flute, and when you try to force out the high notes by blowing more strongly.”

Unfortunately I haven’t heared many (only one comes to mind) recordings where the singers have experimented with using shrieking or very nasal singing. Perhaps the contemporary ways of baroque singing is still too nice?

In my previous post from Quantz “On playing the Flute” I quoted:

“Whoever is aware of how much influence mathematics and other related sciences, such as philosophy, poetry, and oratory, have upon music, will have to own not only that music has a greater compass than many imagine, but also that the evident lack of knowledge about the above-mentioned sciences among the majority of professional musicians is a great obstacle to their further advancement, and the reason why music has not yet been brought to a more perfect state.”

What I find very interesting is that Quantz criticizes the contemporary music of having many flaws and would like music students to be more educated. I wonder what his take on the conservatory studies today would be as they in my mind are much more narrow than what my impression of those days requirements are. This is great so that we can spend more time with our instruments, but as Quantz recognizes it does not necessarily make us good musicians as much as able technicians. People often argue that they make music because they play what’s they feel. But if we do study the language, how do we know what the composers wanted us to feel? How can we hope to communicate these feelings to our audience when we do not know the subtleties the composer put into these feelings? Just to speculate a bit, does the fact that we miss out on a great many subjects contribute to the mysticism of music where so many claim not to understand it or even claim to be non-musical?

Hope no-one got offended, as usual this is my thinking out loud and hoping to get your comments on the matter.

I’ve studied computer science and then gone on to study the recorder and I’m currently busying myself with making the recorder able to control the computer. I love the combination, but wondered a bit about if I’ve chosen a favourable tradeoff. I’m happy so I guess I’m not doing to bad. But, when I started reading “On playing the Flute” by Johann Joachim Quantz (the book I’m referring to is the 2nd edition of the English translation by Edward R. Reilly published through Faber & Faber) I found that he had something to say on the issue. In chapter 1 (page 24) he writes:

“Furthermore, a musician must not occupy himself with too many other things. Almost every science requires the whole man. My meaning here, however, is by no means that it is impossible to excel in more than one science at the same time, but that this requires a quite extraordinary talent, of a kind that nature seldom produces.”

Ouch! But later in the same paragraph: “Yet if someone who gives himself to academic studies has sufficient talent for music, and devotes just as much industry to it as to the former, he not only has an advantage over other musicians, but also can be of greater service to music in general than others, as can be demonstrated with many examples. Whoever is aware of how much influence mathematics and other related sciences, such as philosophy, poetry, and oratory, have upon music, will have to own not only that music has a greater compass than many imagine, but also that the evident lack of knowledge about the above-mentioned sciences among the majority of professional musicians is a great obstacle to their further advancement, and the reason why music has not yet been brought to a more perfect state.”

So, apparently, nature seldom produces people that can do two things well, but there are many examples if the two things are music and academic studies. Of course, a good question is what Quantz recognizes as academic studies. Is what he writes considered academic by his contemporaries?

PS, happy new year!