Corbetta Chaconne

[Bill Brettschneider]

In the tablature for the autre Chaconne, there are s symbols with dots to mark repeated sections, as far as I can tell. every recording I have heard, people play some of them, but not all, and EVERY recording I have heard, people repeat from the end to the Batterie section, though I see nothing in the score to indicate that Corbetta intended this. Is there a clearly "Authentic" way to approach repeated sections, or am I looking for direction where performers freedom should be all the direction I need?

obviously, the question could apply to other pieces in the book, but I found lots of recordings of this one, so it was easiest to compare.

[sergio muselli]

Seems to be quite free ... There are even recordings of a chaconne played with mixed parts of different chaconnes

(I could send you the references) which  was(it seems) a quite frequent habit ....

[Bill Brettschneider]

Right. But just because it is the practice of YouTube performers today doesn't necessarily mean it was the practice 300 years ago. I was hoping for some historical hint.

[Bill Brettschneider]

Maybe if I word it differently. Is there some historical documentation that suggests Baroque period performers would follow or ignore repeats as they saw fit, and perhaps reprise sections, or delete sections, commonly? I am primarily interested in what high level performers in the 17th century or thereabouts would do, but if there was some documentation even that novices of that time did this, I would be very interested to read it.

[Monica Hall]

This is a difficult question to answer because there is very little evidence to go on.   Mostly they just put double bars at the end of sections but no dots as we do today.   Corbetta has  marked the sections which are to be repeated in the autre chaconne so presumably the other sections are not to be repeated.   His explanation in the introduction is not very clear.   Players today do all sorts of things but these are probably not authentic.

[Bill Brettschneider]

I I guessed this might be the cause with corbetta. The format of the Sanz book, and other similar books, suggested to me something almost akin to a modern fake book, like a jazz player might use. He began with the chord progressions, and the gave short examples of melodic material that fit the chord. It just begs for similar treatment, or at least it seems that way to me. From that (perhaps shaky) point of view, the modern YouTube performers willingness to freely re imagine the form of pieces like the chaconne seemed plausible. But I was hoping for evidence. I think that since many of these pieces are very short if you don't extend them somehow it is tempting to do this. How long do you think it took corbetta to perform this piece?

[Monica Hall]

It's impossible to tell how long Corbetta took to perform the piece.  Too many unknown factors in place.   I think you are right about Sanz - at least the pieces at the beginning of the book.   The passacaglias in Book 3 are a different matter.  It seems to me that these, and those of Guerau and especially Santiago de Murcia have a clear structural scheme and if you repeat the variations or play around with the order of them you destroy their logic.   In particular with Murcia they tend to start slowly, build up to shorter note values,  have a moment of repose in the middle and then take off into elaborate campanella passages.  Can't lay my hands on a copy of it at the moment but I wonder whether anyone would mess about with the order of the variations in Bach's famous chaconne from the unaccompanied violin sonatas.  I am not sure whether they would even repeat each variation because this would spoil the flow of the music.

[Bill Brettschneider]

The Bach example is an interesting point. I have a student who is working through it, and as we work on interpreting it musically, we've been referring to the best violin edition I could find, as well as recordings of violin players and guitarists. While none of the examples we have encountered do the form-related shenanigans we've been talking about, there are quite a few small differences from one performer or edition to the next, which caused us to wonder "which is most authentic?" I could not find an autograph for the whole thing, if anyone has a lead I would be grateful. But it was told to me in an authoritative manner that in many of the places that we hear different arpeggio patterns, the original had only block chords noted, and possibly some indication of the contour to follow. I would love to be able to compare with an original.

[Bill Brettschneider]

I suppose the difference between the pieces in the beginning of Sanz book one differ from the larger, thorough composed pieces in book three the way a lead sheet differs from a complete transcription.