Ornamentation 5, Practice example: Terry B. Ewell presents a practice example from Galliard's Second Sonata and critiques five ornamented versions. Bassoon Digital Professor video #62, 2reed.net.

<Music: “Il Sonno” from Vivaldi's Concerto for Bassooon “La Notte”>

So this last video will give you a chance to practice ornamentation and to compare it to ornamentation that of some of my students and I have done in the past. What I suggest you do is start the tape [video], when I tell you to stop the tape [video] (and look at some of the examples there) you should stop it and do some work. Then return to the tape [video] after you've done the work. You will learn the most by practicing this yourself.

You can find all these examples on www.2reed.net. I am showing you the link in this video later.

I hope you enjoy it, bye.

Well it is now time to test your knowledge, to see if what you've learned in the prior four videos on ornamentation will put you in good stead for this example.

I have a few suggestions here for you, so let's begin. Be sure that you consider the harmony.

In the example I give here, the practice example, you have the harmony I am giving to you (so you will understand that). But in the future when you ornament Baroque music you will need to look at the figure bass or if you have a realization look at what the editor has provided for you as the other notes.

Now be sure you think as a composer. Make the ornamentation interesting. It should be a beautiful melody. Create a melody that logically leads from the beginning to the end of the segment.

Make sure it's interesting above all, and captivates your listener.

Try out your melody by playing it. It should fit well on your instrument. You should be comfortable with it, after all it is your melody. Test it out with a keyboard instrument also to make sure that the harmonies work.

Now here's the practice example I have made available for you. You can get that practice example by going to www.2reed.net/bdp--that's BDP for bassoon digital professor--and you can see here that we got "#ornamentation."  So it will be on the page, there will be videos there, but [most importantly there will be materials that you can download that accompany these videos.

What you find here in the picture below is your assignment. Notice the rectangle with a red border around it, that's your assignment. If you look at the notes here it really isn't very interesting. In fact this is sort of a skeleton of a melody, the bones, if you will.  Now you need add flesh and sinew to this making it a beautiful lyrical line.

So you'll be working on this assignment. You start the beginning go to the end and will even finish on that note [Bb3] there.

OK let's look at the harmony. Now if you're not familiar with figure base you wouldn't be able to read this assignment here very well. We have a G and the bass and there is no number given with it, no figures. That means it's in root position. So a chord in root position built on that G is a G major triad. You have a G-B-D as part of that triad.

The next chord we find--this is in a measure 14--is a D in the bass and that chord also is without a figure. Therefore it is in root position, a D major chord.

All right it is now time to get to work. Be sure you play your example before you start this video again.

Well, how did you do? I hope that was interesting for you and you had very many creative ideas working through this problem here, this little melody.

Now what I want to do is download the responses from www.2reed.net and take a look at those on your instrument or piano. Compare them to what you wrote. What is it you like about what you wrote? What is it you like about the responses? What problems do you see in what you wrote and in the responses?

In a moment I will be commenting on each response, giving you the ideas that I have found;but I want to know to study them before you hear my responses so that you're learning from these.

Well this is the first response and frankly it's the most disappointing of the bunch. Its boring. There wasn't a lot of originality that when in to it. In this case we just added a quarter note in each measure to the notes that were given. It's] very dull, it is not very inspiring and as such it should be rejected and something better should be done.

Now let's move onto the next response.

Well, response number two is a significant improvement over response number one. The author of this one has left the first measure pretty much alone--not a bad idea--and then created some ornamentation here that really flows in nicely as a line with one problem, however.

We have a G major harmony in the first measure and probably that harmony continues to the second measure. If not then you need to consider a chord that meets the D major harmony in this measure better. The E natural, the leap to the E natural, however,  does not sound like it fits with the harmony. It really does create a problem in this measure so it needs to be revised.

We move to D major here. This measure works quite nicely.

But again we have a harmonic problem in this measure going down the E doesn't seem to match a D major harmony or does it quite match a harmony that seems to lead well to the next measure. So that would need to be revised as well. But there are a nice ideas here: The melody flows. There's a mix of steps and skips that look quite appealing.

OK, let's go on now to response number three.

Here we have response number three with many admirable ideas, but there are few corrections we need to make in this to bring it more into practice with the Baroque period. Leaving the first measure alone is just fine. Again you are changing the other measures, showing variation after the first measure, that's fine. The leap of the tritone is a little bit awkward. You do occasionally see these leaps in Baroque music, but for the most part you want avoid those. Leaps that are difficult
to sing may be ones that you need to avoid using in your composition. So that's a little bit of awkward and it should probably be revised here. This articulation, slur two tongue two, is almost never used in the Baroque period. [Notice repeated twice.] I had trouble thinking of where I had seen that articulation [repeated]. It would make much more sense to slur these  three adjacent notes
and then tongue the third. That is a very common Baroque articulation and brings out the fact that you have three notes that are step wise, one with a skip. Slurring steps together and tonguing skips would be a very good idea there.

Now this last measure I flagged not because it's necessarily wrong or bad or anything like that, but actually I find it really quite interesting and it does work quite well. Now we have a D major chord starting in this measure here and presumably continuing on into this fourth measure here in this example. But there's no reason why you can't vary that a little bit. The author here has a D
major implied chord on the downbeat or perhaps the A [chord] goes there. But then has this arpeggio then leading back to D. Actually this works nicely. In this context the A chord leads back to the D, this being a D7 chord which then resolves back to the G major chord, the "I" [chord]. So this is a nice idea of some merit here. I wanted to point that out for you. OK, now on to response number four.

Well here we have one of the most innovative of the responses, certainly an adventuresome response to this a compositional problem here. This composer took the first measure and did some variation on it with the lower D here. We move to the second measure which moves nicely with steps, trills. Notice with it being approach from above you don't need to have the appoggiatura on this trill so leaving that off is really a good idea.

This is quite unusual to go to the upper A (A4). If there is any weaknesses [in this ornamentation] it is the fact that I usually reserve the higher register for later in the composition rather than introducing early on as a way to show more of a climax later. But this is really quite expressive.

Then we end of this last measure with a nice articulation here, nice slurring. There's one weakness I found here. You have a lot of eighth notes, you have a lot a motion going forward and then all of a sudden we stop on this one beat. It's better to have longer value notes in the beginning and as you come to the and of your segment, or the end of phrases, or the end of the piece to make the
motion move forward. It seems to be a bit of an abrupt halt here, which I think with eithereighth notes are maybe two quarter notes could be very, very easily fixed. This is a very nice response and really has a lot of merit. OK, let's go one to response number five.

Here we have response number five. This does a good job of varying with ornamentation the given line. We've got some changes to the first measure. We then have a repetition of the first measure with further development. See how these two [measures} naturally lead [one from another]. The third measure here seems to harken back to our first measure. We then have some variation and then the fourth measure has the most complication of all. You can see how these eighth notes move through to the last trill here. So this is a very strong response. If
there's any weakness to this response it is the fact that all of the ornamentation is done through arpeggios or arpeggiation. This is fine for these four measures, but if all the ornamentation in this movement is just arpeggiation than that will be a very, very boring. So you do needsome stepwise motion mixed in at times. But this is a very strong of response that does show creativity to it and would work really quite well.

Well, I hope that this been helpful. That you can see different ways in which you can ornament.

Understand [that there] is not necessarily right or wrong ornamentation, but there are better and there are worse solutions.

You want to find solutions that are historically viable, are expressive, and bring forth just the very best of your playing in your personality.

I hope you have enjoyed this. God bless you, bye.