Comments

It's nice to see these Laurie.  They offer a lot of insight into these.  Monica actually has one of the most extraordinary and unique bow arms I've seen.

I was playing in a concert in Vancouver with a baroque orchestra, and Monica was the guest.  It was all French baroque stuff.  The things she was doing with her bow were extraordinary.  She sort of prescribed these bowings for us, and literally nobody could do them.  I had to stand in awe of this.  (Complex series of up and down bow staccato - although not sticky and into the string - very refined.  What made it amazing was that she could use it amongst series of notes which had no pattern, and completely off the fly.

I liked the advice about the bariolage from the Preludio.  Any help with that I'll take,

 

David

Great job. Ms. Huggett is so wonderful and such an appealing speaker. I'm not sure I understand what she means by A = 465. I thought it was more like A = 415 or 430, but my understanding of baroque tuning is pretty shallow-- could you elaborate on that? 

 For some reason, videos 1, 2, and 4 are coming up as "private" right now, but the others work. The tiny flip camera does a decent job, even if it's sometimes a strain to hear what she is saying. Still, it's wonderful to be able to be a "fly on the wall" for a few minutes during these conferences.  

This is certainly a blog to bookmark and return to many times.

Thanks for letting me know, Karen. Sorry about that everybody, the videos should work now!

Thanks Laurie, how exciting that this world is opening up in NY.  New York musicians tend to be very weary of baroque style but with Monica Hugget being here it will open up a whole new world to us. 

Oh and also there is speculation about tuning - it is recently being discovered that in Italy around Vivaldi's time they were tuning up to an A-465.  This is new research though so I don't know how stable this information is yet.  I'm learning baroque violin now and mine is tuned to 415.

Indeed, if I am correct, the "A" started high (perhaps because of the limitations of the all-gut G string?) but then it was lowered. Both. If anyone has better info please chime in; Monica touched on this but only very briefly.

 These videos are truly enlightening, particularly in the way she uses the bow. The bow seems to float over the string, dipping into the string to give each note a very slight swell, much as is described in the writings of the period -- I think I read about that in CPE Bach or Quantz. Ms. Huggett achieves a natural and musical way of doing this that I find very convincing, and not grossly exaggerated like so many of the older generation of "authentic" players such as Harnoncourt & Friends.

Greetings,

when I were a lad I heard Ms. Hugget play many times.  She was great then. Now she is better!

But then look at thtatbeautiful smiling face.  This is someone who enjoys life.  Wonderful.

Cheers,

Buri

Thank you for posting this.  If I may point out a few things: The Biber sonata which Ms. Huggett played is not from the Roasary/Mystery Sonatas, it is from the eight Sonatae violino solo (1681).  The Passacaglia, however, is an independent movement which was published along with the Rosary Sonatas.  About the pitch question: There was no standard pitch in the baroque period.  Most present-day baroque groups use A=415 out of convenience, because this was Kammerton (chamber pitch) in Bach's Germany.  However, there was no standard pitch, and it could vary from a whole tone higher than modern pitch (in 17th-century Italy) to a tone lower than modern pitch (some areas of France, if I'm not mistaken).