Greg’s Pleasure Garden

The Flute’s Pleasure Garden

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 14:27:23 +1000

Jacob Van Eyck and Der Fluyten Lust-hof

The FLUTE’S PLEASURE GARDEN

Full of Psalms, Pavanes, Allemandes, Courantes, Ballets, Airs, &c.

Artfully and delightfully arranged, with many variations.
By the Honourable Mr Jacob van Eyck,
Musician and Director of the Carillons in Utrecht, &c.

The second edition, carefully revised, improved, and expanded by the author, with Psalms, Pavanes, Allemandes, and the newest voices, and various pieces to be used with two upper voices.

Useful for all lovers of the art of the flute, wind and all kinds of musical instruments.

I’ve been playing Van Eyck’s recorder solos for over 50 years. They are a joy to play and a gift to all recorder players.

The title of Van Eyck’s magnum opus — Der Fluyten Lust-hof — is the inspiration for the title of this blog.

Der Fluyten Lust-hof comprises over 140 pieces, making it the largest surviving collection of solo music for a wind instrument from the 17th century. It is unprecedented for its time.

It provides a practical guide to 17th-century performance practice and the art of improvising variations on psalms and popular songs and dances.

Jacob van Eyck (c. 1590–1657)

We know little of van Eyck’s life. He was of noble birth on his mother’s side and blind. In 1624 he was appointed beiermeester (chime master, i.e. player of the carillon) at Utrecht cathedral in Holland, but appears to have made a name for himself mainly as an organist and recorder player.

In 1648 he was given an increase in salary on condition that every now and then he should divert ‘the people promenading on the churchyard with the sound of his little flute.’

Such a lovely idea. I assume he only played in the churchyard in the summer months.

Jacob van Eyck (Wikipedia)

Listen

Doen Daphne d’over schoone maeght is an English folk song that appears in several sources as When Daphne did from Phoebus fly.

This is from a CD recording I made in 1995 with shakuhachi player Anne Norman: Breath of Creation – Flutes of Two Worlds.

Digital Garden

Sun, 15 Dec 2024 14:31:04 +1000

A serene 18th-century garden as imagined by my digital AI buddy.

A Digital Garden is a hybrid between a notebook and a blog: a place to cultivate and share evolving ideas, notes and resources. It’s dynamic and non-linear.

A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden (Maggie Appleton)

Pleasure Garden

Sun, 15 Dec 2024 14:10:45 +1000

Vauxhall Gardens by Rowlandson (1785)
A singer and orchestra (with organ) are performing from the balcony.

A Pleasure Garden is a park or garden designed for public recreation and entertainment.

Think of the Vauxhall Gardens in London.

18th-Century Musicians Saw Themselves as Craftworkers

Wed, 24 May 2023 09:11:47 +1000

18th-century metalworkers

The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.

— L.P. Hartley: The Go-Between (1953)

In the 18th-century people thought differently about music (and the arts) compared to the 19th and later centuries. Neither way is better or more correct than the other, but a deeper appreciation of 18th-century music can come with an understanding of the motivations and ideals of 18th-century musicians.

Musicians (and other artists) saw themselves as craftworkers. Even Bach.

They produced works of art for specific occasions or audiences.

They were creating for their present and had no concept of creating something for posterity.

They strove to perfect their craft (skill) for the betterment of society.

A strong motivation was the desire to communicate directly with the audience in front of them, to move them and persuade them, to educate and entertain them. To share with them.

This way of thinking contrasts markedly from that of the 19th century and later.

Several revolutions took place at the end of the 18th century and into the 19th century:

Industrial Revolution (c.1760–1840)
French Revolution (began 1789)
Romantic Revolution (Romanticism)

These revolutions led to changes in ideals and ways of thinking. There were paradigm shifts in aesthetics and other areas.

Before these revolutions music and the arts were based on values and practices that seem fundamentally different to those we today call ‘modern’.

We take our modern ideas for granted or as givens. Not only do we assume our way of thinking applies universally but also that it is somehow better or superior.

So the 19th century has created a veil between us today and the 18th century. The differences are often difficult to appreciate or even to see.

Telemann’s Flute Fantasias

Tue, 23 May 2023 12:14:02 +1000

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1676) played the flute (among several other instruments), which explains his understanding of the capabilities of the instrument and his ability to write so idiomatically for it.

Flute players regard the Fantasias as some of the best music ever written for solo flute.

What is a fantasia?

Telemann uses the term in the sense described by J.G. Walther in his Musical Lexicon (1732):

in a Fantasia ‘one plays what one wills, or composes to please oneself’.

There was a rich tradition of keyboard, lute and guitar fantasias, improvised or improvisatory music, going back to the sixteenth century.

The flute fantasias continue the tradition of free flights of fancy combined with strict contrapuntal (fugal) writing. Each is in a different key and has a different format. However they all do have a similar overall loose structure: one or more opening movements followed by a dance movement.

The opening movement(s) tend to be more serious and the concluding dance movements are lighter in character (see below).

Telemann’s Fantasia for Flute in B minor

This fantasia has a two-part structure.

In the first part you will hear alternating slow (largo — broad) and fast (vivace — jaunty) sections.

The vivace sections use free fugato writing: that is, the main theme is repeated a number of times in different related keys.
Each statement of the theme is followed by attractive passages that have the flute playing both a melody and an accompanying bass line through the use of many large leaps.
This compound-line technique is found throughout the fantasias and is one of the many technical challenges the flute player has to face.

In the second part you will hear a French-style gigue (allegro — cheerful).

This light and playful movement also uses the compound-line technique and suits the flute beautifully.

Watch and listen => YouTube Video (4 minutes)

Newman College Chapel, Melbourne University

What is Historically Enlightened Performance?

Mon, 22 May 2023 14:34:54 +1000

Adolph von Menzel: Flötenkonzert Friedrichs des Großen in Sanssouci (c.1850)

Historically Enlightened Performance (HEP) is a term I recently coined to describe what I’ve been working towards for the last 40 years or so. The lockdowns have given me a lot of time for reflection. 😀

When I started out as a performer I played Early Music: music from the Middle Ages to the 18th century. In the early 1980s I was in an ensemble (of two) called the Early Music Duo. We did many concerts and tours for Musica Viva around Australia and even in South East Asia.

Early Music Duo: Greg Dikmans and Max Hynam in 1982

I was a proud member of what was called the Early Music Revival.

After returning from postgraduate studies in Europe, I started teaching in universities and conservatoriums. I taught what became known as Historical Performance (aka Performance Practice or Performance Practice Studies).

Historical performance studies takes seriously the huge amount of historical information available to us. It acknowledges that there is no unique historical truth that is valid for all times, places, styles, genres and composers.

This is why the term ‘authentic’ performance did not stand the test of time. It was really just a marketing term.

I have always thought of my approach as artistic research intended to lead to practical outcomes: that is, performances.

At some point another essentially marketing term gained traction and is still used widely today: HIP (Historically Informed Performance). Some prefer Historically Inspired Performance.

HIP is cool. HIP is fashionable.

I now prefer HEP (Historically Enlightened Performance).

Not only is HEP an older version of the word HIP—in the 1930s a hep-cat was a stylish or fashionable person, especially in the sphere of jazz or popular music—but it better encapsulates what we should be trying to achieve.

Being Informed versus Being Enlightened

The classic How to Read a Book (1940, rev. ed. 1972) by Adler and Van Doren makes the important distinction between being informed and being enlightened:

To be informed is to know simply that something is the case.

To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about: why it is the case, what its connections are with other facts, in what respects it is the same, in what respects it is different, and so forth. …

Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it.

— Adler and Van Doren

To be enlightened is to have a deep understanding. Understanding leads to insight and comfort with the data.

For a deeper exploration of this topic see the discussion on my historical performance website:

What is Historically Enlightened Performance?

Greg’s Pleasure Garden

The Flute’s Pleasure Garden

Jacob Van Eyck and Der Fluyten Lust-hof

Jacob van Eyck (c. 1590–1657)

Listen

Related Links

Digital Garden

Pleasure Garden

18th-Century Musicians Saw Themselves as Craftworkers

Related Links

Telemann’s Flute Fantasias

What is a fantasia?

Telemann’s Fantasia for Flute in B minor

Related Links

What is Historically Enlightened Performance?

Being Informed versus Being Enlightened