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From: Jeffrey Snider
To: VOCALIST <vocalist>
Subject: Re: Cantique de noel: musicologists' answers to rhythm question (long-ish)
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JRL wrote:

>>A composer would have to be insane to write dotted
quarter-sixteenth when he could easily have written this in triplets.

>I'm no musicologist, but I think this was done quite often in >certain past
>times. Baroque period perhaps?

Baroque composers did NOT write quarter note/eighth note triples. Instead
they wrote dotted eighth-sixteenth figures which are almost universally
believed to be performed as triplets i such cases. The concept is called
"assimilation." A good example is the "Sanctus" of the Bach "B minor Mass."
I've actually heard an older recording where the dotted rhythms are
interpreted as written and it is quite odd sounding!

How late this practice continued is debatable, however. There has been some
discussion pro and con as to whether this would go as late as Schubert. (I
will have to look up the references, but they were listed in the Jackson
Performance Practice Bibliography.)

Hope this helps.

Jeffrey Snider, DMA
Chair, Division of Vocal Studies
College of Music
University of North Texas
Denton, TX USA
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