Keyboard Fingerings and Articulation Ex.3 Büchner, 'Quem terra pontus', bb.l5I8 CHAPTER IX Keyboard Fingering
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Keyboard Fingerings and Articulation Ex.3 Büchner, 'Quem terra pontus', bb.l5I8 CHAPTER IX
Keyboard Fingerings and Artìculation MARK LINDLEY
Why have the old keyboard techniques been more talked about than put into use? The answer is, presumably: because in taking up some early style of fingering, anyone with a good modern technique has deepset habits to overcome and no longer feels at home with the instrument a condition not only wanting in historical verisimilitude but also so annoying that the exotic appeal (which has to sustain the first stages of this kind of recreation) is soured. Thus many of the best players have tended to forgo the best method of research, the mastering of pieces which are fingered throughout in the original sources, in favour of a selective reading of the old tutors^, taking what they like perhaps Diruta's placing of the wrist but not his fingerings, some of Santa Maria's scale fingerings but not his style of articulation, François Couperin's substitutions, certain remarks about the thumb from C. P. E. Bach etc — and saying that the more troublesome fingerings are less significant than a broad synthesis of this kind. This approach is now going out of fashion, ' but for quite a few years it helped to preserve a naïve contrast between 'primitive' and modern. A closer look at the evidence suggests rather that there was a great variety of techniques in Germany, Italy, Spain and England during the 16th and early 17th centuries, and that early 18th century playing was, like the music, as different from ours as from that of the Renaissance.
exx.2 and 3, the actual duration of the first bass note (which completes a phrase) has to match the crotchet or quaver in the middle voice. If various other minims are not also to be truncated drastically, the hand must perform some rather novel gymnastics (see fig.l). Probably the semiquavers in ex.4 want to be played with the back of the fingers facing left and the tips .touching the keys as shown in fig. 2. Only a player quite at home with manoeuvres of this kind can hope to distinguish between interesting finger ings and the mistake in ex.2, where the c was overlooked and the c' fingered accordingly. The proper emendation is to play the octave with 5 and 1, like all the other octaves; but b is still played with 3, as in the next bar.
Ex. 1 Summary of the rules for quick notes in Buchner's Fundament Buch 4
3
2
S
4
S
S
S
2
3
4
3
' ^ 1 1 « 2
3
4
3
3
3
3
3
4
2
3
2
3
1 1'^ 3
2
3
4
3
3
3
Ex.2
' ' C
3
3
^ S
^
3 3
3
The oldest known fingering rules for fast notes, summarized in ex.1, are from a manuscript of Hans Buchner's Fundament Buck, dated 1551 (some 13 years after his death).^ Did he really reserve 3 for weak notes, or is it only that none of these groups begins in the middle of a threenote span? Fortunately the manuscript gives the fingering for an entire piece. Here 3 takes all notes which have a mordent, and various minims weak or strong; but is generally reserved for weak crotchets, quavers and semiquavers. In 186
(a)
(b)
1 Likely leßhand position (a) for the seventh in bar 5 of Buchner's 'Quem terra pontus' (middle of the first bar of ex.2, opposite) and likely righthand position (b) in the first half of bar 10 of the same piece (middle of the third bar of ex.3, above).
2 Likelypoints of contact with the keys in ex.4.
187
ill
Keyboard Fingerings and Articulation
The Baroque Era Ex.5 Erbach, Ricercar, bb.23 (r.h.), 67 (l.h.)
(Ä) Ul 41232323 4323 2323
234323232
Ex.6 Erbach, Ricercar, b.l3
1