The tempos of danses chantées in Michel L’Affillard’s treatise (Paris, 1705)
Abstract
Several problems are discussed in this article. It was necessary first of all to show that many outstanding musicians (G. Schünemann, E. Borrel, R. Kirkpatrick, R. Harding, W. Mellers, C. Sachs and others) wrote about the problem of the exact tempo indications given by Michel L’Affillard published in his treatise as early as 1705. The transcription of L’affillard’s tempo indications of tierces de Tems into the metronome tempos in the works of the above-named authors were identical. In 1974, 1977, and later in 2001 E. Schwandt presented a new concept, where as a result it was stated that all the previous calculations were uncorrect, and the earlier calculated tempos should be two times slower. In 11993 (32003) K. Miehling and later in 2003 (NMGG) and also W. Auhagen (1993) came up with founded criticism of the new concept. Musicians and dancers now have to decide for themselves which calculations to chose. Thus arose the wish to try and find historically founded evidence/proof to approach a balanced judgement in this matter. The detailed study of L’Affillard’s treatise, the works of the mathematician J. Sauveur and mainly the publications of L-L. D’Ons-en-Bray [d’Onzembray], J. Mattheson, Fr. E. Niedt, the Musicalisches Lexicon by J. G. Walther and other sources including monographs and papers of contemporary authors provided an opportunity to arrive to a conclusion that the “new concept” was erroneous notwithstanding the fact that some tempo indications in L’Affillard’s work sometimes seem to be too fast for our perception. In the course of the study the author was obliged to appeal to the research in the field of terminology, for instance, to such terms as “vibration”, “tierces de Tems”, “courante”, “corrente”, and even the German word “allerernsthafteste” (which had been improperly used by some authors, including M. Little who based her judjement on the interpretation of this word, and stated that the French courante was the slowest of all early dances). The arguments provided in our paper do not confirm the validity of such assumptions as stated by M. Little, R. Donington and other authors.
Keywords:
L’Affillard, french baroque, tempo, courante
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