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Another reason for fixed fingering
Nov. 20th, 2006 08:17 amAnn Heymann is, I believe, one of the more famous and learned proponents of playing a harp with "fixed fingering." That is, you put your fingers on or above the strings and they stay there. Many traditional tunes have a range of about eight notes (or a little wider but on a gapped scale, so you still only need 8 fingers). This informs her "Coupled Hands" technique (I think), where it's less about "one hand treble, one hand bass" and more about "two hands sharing the melody and ornamental graces."
Over the summer, at Pennsic, I took a class on late-period ornamentation. There are excellent sources for this, especially for recorder players. People seriously would write down every interval or other common, basic musical figure they could think of, and then write out every possible way of ornamenting that figure.
I got much pity in that class, since it was "obvious" that my instrument "wouldn't let me" play trills or other rapid ornaments. I demonstrated that no, in point of fact, I can play them and probably play them faster than the woodwinds folks. The problem is, I can't do that on the fly. When I learn a basic melody, I learn a fingering to go with it. I'm not just playing (for example) an ascending fourth; I'm playing an ascending fourth with my third and first finger, say. The ornaments I can do for that fingering will be different than if I play the same interval with my fourth and first fingers. And I can't start swapping out fingers - there's usually a reason why they've been chosen, because something else comes after that second note and the entire subsequent arrangement assumes that I've played the note just before it with my thumb.
So, to produce a table of ornaments equivalent to that for the recorder players, not only would one have to cover every possible musical figure, but every possible fingering for that figure. And then you'd have to memorize all the ornamental fingerings into muscle memory if you wanted to be able to toss them in on the fly. (Of course you can cheat and arrange you piece with all the ornamentation, but I'm personally trying to work on improvisation techniques.)
Possible. More possible if you don't try to be comprehensive and just focus on the most common ones. But... if you're playing fixed-finger, suddenly the complexity drops enormously. Now the same finger plays the same note all the time, just like for woodwinds.
Something to think about... I wonder how my cantigas would sound without the bass accompaniment, but with more ornamentation? They're supposed to be monophonic anyway...
Over the summer, at Pennsic, I took a class on late-period ornamentation. There are excellent sources for this, especially for recorder players. People seriously would write down every interval or other common, basic musical figure they could think of, and then write out every possible way of ornamenting that figure.
I got much pity in that class, since it was "obvious" that my instrument "wouldn't let me" play trills or other rapid ornaments. I demonstrated that no, in point of fact, I can play them and probably play them faster than the woodwinds folks. The problem is, I can't do that on the fly. When I learn a basic melody, I learn a fingering to go with it. I'm not just playing (for example) an ascending fourth; I'm playing an ascending fourth with my third and first finger, say. The ornaments I can do for that fingering will be different than if I play the same interval with my fourth and first fingers. And I can't start swapping out fingers - there's usually a reason why they've been chosen, because something else comes after that second note and the entire subsequent arrangement assumes that I've played the note just before it with my thumb.
So, to produce a table of ornaments equivalent to that for the recorder players, not only would one have to cover every possible musical figure, but every possible fingering for that figure. And then you'd have to memorize all the ornamental fingerings into muscle memory if you wanted to be able to toss them in on the fly. (Of course you can cheat and arrange you piece with all the ornamentation, but I'm personally trying to work on improvisation techniques.)
Possible. More possible if you don't try to be comprehensive and just focus on the most common ones. But... if you're playing fixed-finger, suddenly the complexity drops enormously. Now the same finger plays the same note all the time, just like for woodwinds.
Something to think about... I wonder how my cantigas would sound without the bass accompaniment, but with more ornamentation? They're supposed to be monophonic anyway...
