Re: Jesse McReynolds
Originally Posted by
sblock
Let's try to remember that ITM is folk music, and part of a great aural tradition -- and all that comes with that! It involves playing variations, ornamentations, cadences, and mixes of local styles and tune phrasing. It is NOT some of a classical, formal, and "written" tradition, and it never has been.
To capture ITM tunes -- and this was particularly true before the advent of electronic recording, which is quite recent! -- musicologists would write the tune down in standard notation, usually annotating the bare melody without most of the variations and ornamentations. Thousands upon thousands of ITM tunes were captured that way, and one can buy books full of these! But a great deal of the performance aspect -- and flavor -- of ITM was lost in the process, because these bare-bones, notated versions do not begin to capture the way such tunes were actually played.
NOTATION IS VERY POWERFUL, BUT IT IS INCOMPLETE. And the notation usually used for ITM is woefully incomplete. It typically does not capture the music particularly well, and it certainly does not capture the "aliveness" of the music that comes from subtle changes in emphasis and melodic variations.
Don't get me wrong: playing an ITM tune from some notation is a great starting point, if you have that skill! But it is just that: a starting point. Classically-trained players who read standard notation need to realize that the notes on the page can be a point of reference, but they are also a point of departure! They need to learn to respect the aural tradition, and all the richness that derives from that.
You're right about ITM, but are you sure you posted to the right thread?
And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')
C.S. Lewis
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