Re: vibrato

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

Two wonderful books dealing with this subject are:

Ornamentation in Baroque and Post-Baroque Music (Frederick Neumann)

and Early Recordings and Musical Style (Robert Philip)

Josh


>From: Judith R Cohen <judithc (at) YorkU(dot)CA>
>To: World music from a Jewish slant <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
>Subject: vibrato
>Date: Fri, Feb 1, 2002, 3:04 AM
>

> Hi, I don't have Erica's detailed knowledge about history of bowed
> strings vibrato, but everything I've learned over the years would
> confirm what she says.
>
> You can't really sing or play a bowed instrument "without vibrato" as
> the voice and the bowed strings produce sound by vibrating: it's more a
> question of (1) how "wide" the vibrato is (i.e. how much the listener
> perceives it as vibrato - when it's "narrower" it's sometimes perceived
> as being "no vibrato") and (2)  how much and how continuously it's used.
> As Erica says, through the Baroque it was more used as an ornament , an
> increasingly prominent one, than as a constant feature. As far as we
> know, this is also true for vocal vibrato.
>
> I learned a Spanish narrative ballad from the province of Aragón last
> summer to match up with a Moroccan Sephardic ballad (same basic text,
> different tune, style and story details emphasis); and the most
> difficult part of it - since I learned it from a field recording and
> have never seen it transcribed - was a section where wide vocal vibrato
> is used only over one long held syllable, as an ornament, cheers, Judith
>
>

---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+