School has been very tough lately. I'm a senior and I have to make sure my grades don't plummet too far before graduation.... But the work seems to be winding down, so I finally have time to write more lessons. I am absolutely determined to discuss the last few sorts of chromaticism and teach further about the sarabande. You WILL write a fantastic sarabande before our lessons end
. And unfortunately they will have to end sometime this summer as I begin to prepare for college. Until then, however, I will have plenty of free time.
I found both your examples fairly nice. They are awkward in some ways that we probably both recognize; for now I think we should leave them alone for a couple of lessons so that first we can review melody and keyboard textures meticulously. I will go back later and comment more specifically on your two phrases.
But I would like for you to post the other two attempts, even if they were "truly awful." They might help me understand what you struggle with the most.
So if my extended absence has not offended too much, allow me to present my thoughts on
MELODY
I won't preach again on the importance of melody . Admittedly the idea of working on thick counterpoint or chromatic harmonies sounds much more exciting, but we should remember both harmony and counterpoint depend on multiple melodies. Improving your ability with melody will later on greatly improve your ability with harmony and counterpoint.
As I may have mentioned in some previous lesson, I struggled with melody until very recently when I finally acknowledged that a detailed study of melody is essential to mastering Baroque styles. I found that with a heightened sense for characteristic Baroque melodic gestures, very idiomatic harmony and counterpoint appears almost spontaneously.
What I will discuss in this lesson deals with unaccompanied melody, or melody with a very simple chordal support. This will allow us to focus entirely on the melody without worries about harmony or counterpoint. Melodies with complex accompaniments or complex counterpoint require some differences in approach, but most of the underlying principles are the same. I will discuss those differences later.
Now a difficult question is, what melodies should I use as models for the next few lessons? My personal tendency would be towards the French style, since I've been playing lots of French music on the harpsichord lately, but I suspect that when you asked for instruction on Baroque style you wanted instruction on Bach's style. But Bach wrote very little simple homophony for the harpsichord, and I have a personal bias against him. I hope that you might be open to the ideas of using another German, Pachelbel's Hexachordum Apollinis, which I have also mentioned before.
You can hear the third air and all is variations on Track 7 at Janine Johnson: German Keyboard Masters. The entire collection Hexachordum Apollinis consists of six arias each with six variations. The name of the collection refers to Apollo's mythical lyre. It was fairly common to name collections of harpsichord music after classical myth; the most monumental example must be J C F Fischer's amazing collection
Musikalischer Parnassus with suites named after each of the nine muses, a work unfortunately difficult to find today.
I only plan to use the airs as models, if you don't mind. I have attached a public domain version of the entire collection because the Werner Icking Archive seems to be down. So I guess my first assignment is to
play through some of the arias taking careful notice of the melody.
I have also uploaded a terrible MIDI of the first aria and its variations. It might give you a vague idea of how the pieces should sound.