Message-Id: <199810161414.KAA10836@xkey.com>
Subject: Re: minstrel: Bards -  longish and heading out of SCA purview
To: hrjones@socrates.berkeley.edu
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 10:14:10 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Greg Lindahl" <lindahl@pbm.com>
Cc: minstrel@pbm.com
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.96.981015205127.4500C-100000@socrates.berkeley.edu> from "hrjones@socrates.berkeley.edu" at Oct 15, 98 09:22:09 pm
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> It needn't be either of these. Keep in mind that, at the time he was
> writing, there was a positive value placed on "old" material, and there
> was a tendency to interpret things as "old" if at all possible.

In fact, you can see the same thing today, among Celtic-sorts of
groups. Among the Scots, there is the myth that small kilts and clan
tartans are "old" -- hence you get the film Braveheart. Some fraction
of the Scottish Country Dance community thinks it dates back to Mary,
Queen of Scots (3rd quarter of the 16th century), even though the
"blue book" (the bible of SCD) says (correctly) that it's 18th
century. And so on.

> As far as I can tell, all the ap Huw pieces alternate between two chords
> only, whereas 'Cynghansail Cymry' uses five different chords in a
> progression extremely reminiscent of (if not identical to) Pachelbel's
> Canon.

And if you play those 5 chords, you'll quickly discover everyone in
the room who's had to play that awful bass line too many times. I used
to read a book while playing it. It's fortunate that very, very few
period pieces have bass lines so dull.

> I don't doubt that the "theme and variations" style was a
> legitimate continuing tradition -- particularly since it would have been
> reinforced by influences from mainstream chamber music -- but I'm not sure
> you can say more than that.

Although the later "theme and variations" was much more free in
changing the length of the phrase and varying wildly in other ways. In
the typical 16th century theme and variations, the overall structure
of the theme doesn't change at all... if it's a dance, the result is
always dancable.

-- gb

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