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In the Forum: Musical Discussions
In the Thread: Tools, Materials and Personnel
Post Subject: More lost souls?Posted by rowuk on: 5/26/2026
The Gabrieli/Venice dimension is the most primitive part. The conductor in your link, scratched on the early baroque style being ornate - but his musicians just played the basic notes - everything that Gabrieli would expect for his musicians is simply not present. The musicologists have this all figured out and there are quite a few places that one can go to study this. This is not a small thing as the compositions themselves were created with musical shorthand and the musicians of the period were trained to decipher the patterns. It is no secret and the conductor in your example is simply missing too much. His musicians are perhaps not capable of deciphering the shorthand but it is easy enough to write out - just like we do for high school jazz bands sometimes when the improvised chorus is written out. My point is that in the 1980s we already had the information that we need and it only got better after that. I think that this "primitive" play is by choice and I find it disturbing.

Diminution (or ornamentation) is the Renaissance and early Baroque practice of breaking down long, simple musical notes into rapid, florid passages. Because the cornetto mimics the agility of the human voice, it was considered the ultimate instrument for this highly virtuosic, improvisatory technique.The Golden Age of the CornettoDuring the late 16th and early 17th centuries, particularly in Venice, cornetto players were celebrated for their masterful ability to embellish melodies. Players were expected to take a basic melody and spontaneously generate intricate, fast-moving scales, turns, and arpeggios over it.Historical TreatisesMany historical instruction manuals (treatises) detail exactly how performers applied these diminutions. Key texts include:

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