Praetorius

[micrologus]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Michael Praetorius.
Michael Praetorius (probably February 15, 1571 – February 15, 1621) was a German composer, organist, and writer about music. He was one of the most versatile composers of his age, being particularly significant in the development of musical forms based on Protestant hymns.

Works

Praetorius was a tremendously prolific composer, his works showing the influence of contemporaries Samuel Scheidt and Heinrich Schütz as well as the Italians. His works include the nine volume Musae sioniae (1605-10), a collection of over a thousand chorale and song arrangements; many other works for the Lutheran church; and Terpsichore (1612), a compendium of over 300 instrumental dances, which is both his most widely-known work, as well as his sole surviving secular work. His three volume treatise Syntagma Musicum I and Syntagma Musicum de Organographia II (1614-20) are detailed texts on contemporary musical practices and musical instruments, and are important documents in musicology, organology and the field of authentic performance. (See Praetorius for other composers called Praetorius .)


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvzQcZtqQgQ&feature=related"]YouTube - Michael Praetorius - Dances from Terpsichore -Balle des coqs[/ame]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b6-oEx1GLc&feature=related"]YouTube - NYRF 2007 - Royal Pipers: Courante #3 (Praetorius)[/ame]

[Philidor]

FANTASTIC -- the German Renaissance.... and he's joined:

[micrologus]

Our new friend 'Praetorius' knows everything about these bagpipes

I hope he will reply to this thread

[Philidor]

I've written on his Profile in the hope of enticing him over.

[Alpha Centauri]

His sacred works are well-written, and deserve more attention. Mostly he's known for music he didn't write himself - the popular tunes in "Terpsichore" are mainly his arrangements of existing tunes, like "Die Schlacht", which is simply Praetorius's dance-band arrangement for "La Battaglia"... and the "Spanischer Tanz" is the "Paduan de l'Espagne" found in numerous other dance-books from up to 40 years before.

Syntagma Musicum interests me - he details these instruments in such loving detail. I wonder if he realised that he was living at the end of an era, and within 40 years most of these instruments would be entirely obsolete (crumhoms, racketts, shawms etc) - overtaken by the baroque strings + oboes line-up? I somehow suspect he knew he was documenting a dying tradition - the idea of playing instruments in homogenous consorts (viols, recorders, crumhorns), instead of orchestral line-ups. Of course the cornetts and sackbutts lasted a bit longer - but only because of their use in City Municipal Music as the Stadtpfeiferen (Eng - the Waits). Even then, it was all over for them by the second half of the C17th.

[Philidor]

Originally Posted by Reiner Torheit

I wonder if he realised that he was living at the end of an era, and within 40 years most of these instruments would be entirely obsolete (crumhoms, racketts, shawms etc) - overtaken by the baroque strings + oboes line-up? I somehow suspect he knew he was documenting a dying tradition - the idea of playing instruments in homogenous consorts (viols, recorders, crumhorns), instead of orchestral line-ups. Of course the cornetts and sackbutts lasted a bit longer - but only because of their use in City Municipal Music as the Stadtpfeiferen (Eng - the Waits). Even then, it was all over for them by the second half of the C17th.

Why did the change occur? It's such an obvious question but with no obvious answer I can think of.

[Alpha Centauri]

That's quite a deep-ranging question, isn't it?

With a strong "chicken & egg" flavour to it - did "baroque music" develop so quickly because of the new instruments available to play it - or did the instruments (and their technique) develop because of the demands made by composers?

I think it must surely be the former, though? As something of an ex-crumhorner myself, I know the "Terpsichore" dance collection quite well. Praetorius is usually careful to write all his inner and bass parts to fit the range of a 9th that compasses the instruments like the crumhorn and its kin. But he couldn't "rig" the tunes. Many of the older ones did fit that range (have a look at Susato's 1555 collection - they ALL do) but the newer music clearly didn't - so one has to imagine that the top line is being played by something which can manage the range of a 12th or more (a recorder? a violin? something with some carrying-power in a dancing hall, anyhow) and the other parts are then navigable on the older instruments.

NB I've forgotten to mention that the instrumental line-up isn't specified in ANY of these collections - it was a matter for the players themselves to decide, depending on what was available and the venue of the performance, indoor or outdoor, chamber or court. In the C16th many dance-collections appeared in multi-ensemble versions, with only the top 2-3 lines and bass being "necessary", and other lines marked "quintus", or "vagans" ("wandering" ie filler-in) which could be played to fill out the texture if players were available.

But if you look at what Brade was writing 10-20 years after Praetorius (Brade was an English emigre working in Germany - and a professional violinist) his dance-pieces not only have very agile top lines with wide ranges and "leaps" in the tunes, but equally "interesting" middle parts which the then-obsolete crumhorns etc couldn't play any longer - they go off the range, even allowing for some moderate "fudging" of odd notes here and there. It's true that the more agile of the renaissance instruments, like the cornetto or trombones ("sackbutts" - effectively the same instrument by this date) were as agile as the stringed instruments and could manage anything violins or viols could do - viz Monteverdi and the Gabrielis.

From the later C17th, pieces start appearing with specified or implied instrumentation - for a string ensemble. Anything with G-clefs (what we call a treble clef now) meant "violins". Alto-clefs were viola parts, and bass clefs could be either bass viols or cellos.

More than likely the volume of the new string instruments (remember that this is when Stadivarius lived - he and his contemporaries had turned all the various local fiddle designs into a standardised, powerful and versatile instrument that quickly gained popularity across Europe) was a major factor - a 5-6-player band of fiddles (initially with viols on the bass-line - esp in England, where 'cellos arrived much later - and then with cellos, and double-basses appearing in the last decade of the C17th) could fill a largish banqueting-hall with sound very economically, and play the most stylish modern music with ease. The top-line might be bumped-up by having two players - by the end of the C17th an oboe would be used to double-up the 1st and 2nd violins on the tutti sections, and sometimes given some solo moments of their own. Recorders held their ground, although marginalised (and played by the oboists, who doubled on both) until the mid-C18th... then fizzled-out against the competition from the (traverso) flute. Although it's interesting to note that when Handel writes "flauto" he means recorder - he only intends the flute when he carefully specifies "traverso". This seems to place the flag of claim on Water-Music Suite No 3 for the recorder-players ...with a sopranino being the "piccolo flauto" needed for the final numbers (although you have to skip one lower "d" in the last number - a slip-up, or is it really for a piccolo or fife? At this period the same player probably doubled on both instruments anyhow).

The either/or situation about the bass viol or cello continued in England for centuries. Thomas Hardy still refers to the bass line as the "bass viol", although in fact he probably means an instrument of double-bass size. In some parts of the USA the term "bass viol" is still used to refer to the double-bass, even today... presumably a reference to it being tuned in fourths, rather than in fifths as a member of the fiddle-family might be?

[Philidor]

Originally Posted by Reiner Torheit

That's quite a deep-ranging question, isn't it?

Yes indeedy. My reason for asking was pure laziness: I'm interested in what causes these radical cultural shifts and was trying to avoid reading a book on it! Presumably, the Protestant Reformation had something to do with it too: the power of the church was waning, giving composers a new freedom to experiment. Plus, as you say, the rise of the highly versatile violin, giving the same composers a new, demanding, technical resource to drive their work.

[Alpha Centauri]

Originally Posted by Philidor

the power of the church was waning, giving composers a new freedom to experiment.

I'm sure that's right. In parallel with that and arising from the same cause, music-making was passing out of the hands of the Professional Guild Players (whose rights in the matter were supported by the Church), and into the hands of the rising "middle classes" who could now afford music-making. Telemann, JS Bach, and Graupner all composed actively for student music societies - which hadn't existed before on anything like the same basis. Handel. Matheson and Keiser were all composing for Keiser's brand-new public Goosemarket Opera House in Hamburg - openly flauting the "religious" rules governing public entertainments with works like PORO and ALMIRA, and dependent entirely on box-office takings without a nobleman as sponsor or patron. Once again, it was the new middle-classes who were buying the tickets.