Performing Baroque Music

by Mary Cyr

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Summary

Mary Cyr's Performing Baroque Music is unique as a practical guide devoted in its entirety to the most important issues of baroque performance practice. Listeners, performers, students, and instructors will find here, carefully explained and thoroughly documented, the analytical tools they need to understand and interpret musical evidence from the baroque era. Cyr, an acclaimed baroque musician as well as a noted scholar, considers "both the boundaries and the freedom that were inherent in baroque performing techniques." Chapter 1 introduces the field of performance practice and its goals, the limits of "authenticity, " and the characteristics of baroque sound. Chapters 2 through 8 explore issues critical to the performance of baroque music: tempo, dynamics, pitch and temperament, the basso continuo, articulation, rhythm and notational conventions, and appropriate ornamentation. Readers will find new material on continuo playing, as well as extensive treatment of singing and French music. Scores for eleven works, many reproduced in facsimile to illustrate the conventions of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century notation, are included for close study. These works are also available on the cassette tape offered as a companion to this book, featuring recent performances by musicians of international reputation. The literature on baroque performance practice has grown to such vast proportions in recent decades that this thoughtful volume serves also as a concise guide to reference materials. Extensive annotated bibliographies of modern and baroque sources will be useful to performers and fans. During the baroque period, performer and composer shared a more equal role in the compositionalprocess than is typical today, so that interpretation in performance is particularly important. Mary Cyr's work contributes greatly to our understanding of the creation of baroque sound and to the shared goal of effective and enjoyable performance.

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