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Home again, home again, jiggity jig
Just returned from the Piffareschi workshop, formerly known as the Indiana Early Double Reed and Sackbut workshop. This year they added a cornettist to the faculty, so there were several cornetto students added to the roster. Also several shawm and/or dulcian and/or sackbut students who haven't come to this workshop before (one of whom is a well-known professional cornettist who wanted to get better on the shawm).
Because the group was larger and more diverse than in previous years, the organizers invited students to choose one of four "trajectories": 15th-century alta capella, 16th-century "high" wind band with treble shawm on top, 16th-century "low" wind band with bombard (aka alto shawm) on top, and "high" wind band with cornetto on top. We opted for the 15th-century alta capella, as did several of the other SCA-folk in attendance.
Some of the new students were pretty weak, but most of them were competent musicians, trying hard and learning quickly how to play a new-to-them instrument. In addition, ensembles with shawms in them traditionally play a step above notated pitch (or equivalently, at A=492), so everybody in such an ensemble (shawm or otherwise) is expected to sight-transpose up a step (or sometimes up a 5th), and that was a challenge for many of the newcomers. So some of the small ensembles were frustrating. But some of the small ensembles we were assigned to were skilled, musically sensitive, and capable of working together; the results sounded glorious, and we played a lot of amazing 15th-century music.
Most of the music was provided not only in modern editions but in facsimiles of the original 15th-16th-century notation, and students were encouraged to read from the facsimile whenever possible.
As always, a large portion of the educational program was Bob-sensei talking about basic early-double-reed technique: how to breathe, how to hold your body, how to hold your mouth, how to warm up, how to invent exercises for technical problems, etc. Almost everything he said I had heard before, but I always forget some of it from one year to the next, and I always benefit from being reminded of it. I hope to pass on some of this valuable technique stuff in classes at Pennsic (after all, there's no way to learn something like teaching it).
Because the group was larger and more diverse than in previous years, the organizers invited students to choose one of four "trajectories": 15th-century alta capella, 16th-century "high" wind band with treble shawm on top, 16th-century "low" wind band with bombard (aka alto shawm) on top, and "high" wind band with cornetto on top. We opted for the 15th-century alta capella, as did several of the other SCA-folk in attendance.
Some of the new students were pretty weak, but most of them were competent musicians, trying hard and learning quickly how to play a new-to-them instrument. In addition, ensembles with shawms in them traditionally play a step above notated pitch (or equivalently, at A=492), so everybody in such an ensemble (shawm or otherwise) is expected to sight-transpose up a step (or sometimes up a 5th), and that was a challenge for many of the newcomers. So some of the small ensembles were frustrating. But some of the small ensembles we were assigned to were skilled, musically sensitive, and capable of working together; the results sounded glorious, and we played a lot of amazing 15th-century music.
Most of the music was provided not only in modern editions but in facsimiles of the original 15th-16th-century notation, and students were encouraged to read from the facsimile whenever possible.
As always, a large portion of the educational program was Bob-sensei talking about basic early-double-reed technique: how to breathe, how to hold your body, how to hold your mouth, how to warm up, how to invent exercises for technical problems, etc. Almost everything he said I had heard before, but I always forget some of it from one year to the next, and I always benefit from being reminded of it. I hope to pass on some of this valuable technique stuff in classes at Pennsic (after all, there's no way to learn something like teaching it).