In a message dated 4/19/2001 8:38:02 AM Eastern Daylight Time, linda@f... writes: linda@f... writes:
<< And if your taste is for Purcell sung by someone who is more at home with Wagner, to use an extreme hypothesis, then you go listen to them. What you don't do is dismiss whole areas of scholarship and tradition as worthless and tell everyone that it's a "given" (which is getting to sound like a more and more clumsy expression every time I type it; it was ok the first time when Isabelle used it - what is the word or expression I'm groping for here, someone?) >>
linda,
i believe the original point was to question the validity of the use of straight-toned singing in earlier music. the use of straight-toned singing seems to apply to females singing parts that were originally sung by either boys or castrati. as there are no legitimate models (one can't take moreschi as a model of baroque and earlier periods being too recent. isn't that a 'given'?), then any attempt at an historical rendering of this music is an educated guess. we know what forte-pianos sound like as they are still around. we can't say the same thing about the singers of previous eras.
mike
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