> Having been involved in 18th century music research for over 29 years, I
> have come to some conclusions concerning musicians. I feel that
> regardless of what era they lived in, they have always experimented with
> the melodies that they performed. Musicians have hearts, heads, souls,
> ears, and brains. All of these components work together to keep the
> musical performances interesting for the performer. Thats why in old
> music books and manuscripts, you may find several different versions of
> the same piece. For instance: I just down loaded a version of Derry
> Hornpipe that is played as straight eight notes. The version that I
> recorded with my music group is the one that has more of a strathspey
> feel to it. These aren't abberations. It happens all the time.
Mark,
I am talking not just about changing the values of the notes or the
accents but rather whole new melodies played over the basic chord
structures. The notes are in the scale of the original tune but they
are scrambled to produce something like a counter melody, not written
down, but just made up on the spot. In other words, I play the "head"
twice, then I make up new melodies based on the same scale and keep
doing this until I think I have played out all that I feel I have in me
at that time and then I head back to the basic "head" and play it out
one more time. I know I can do this and create musically interesting
stuff, but did people like Bach and Turlough O'Carolan do similar sort
of things when they played in non-formal settings? In public
performances, too? Or have such public performances been restricted to
the "notes on the page?" (I am putting it in quotes because obviously
O'Carolan did not read printed music.)