Autumn
Workshop 2009
*****
The Versatile Recorder
Leader Tina Chancey
A workshop celebrating the many
musical styles played on the recorder, including
Medieval, Irish, Sephardic, New World Spanish, and 14th century
French. The workshop, suitable for lower
intermediate to advanced players, will include both part music and tunes,
with a section on 'Arranging Christmas Music' and another on
'Having more fun with your recorder by sharpening your skills.'
Saturday, Oct
31, 2009 from 10am to 5pm at the Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church, 9601 Cedar Lane, Bethesda, MD
20814
For
more information including a registration form, click flyer.
Spring
Workshop 2010
Shelley Gruskin April 24, 2010
Keep posted here for further details
*****
Workshop Reviews of the 2008-2009
season
*****
Shelley
Gruskin Workshop
Review (2009)
by
Jayme Sokolow
Shelley Gruskin Redux!
On
Saturday, April 25, Shelley Gruskin directed a challenging but very
enjoyable recorder workshop. It was his 35th workshop for WRS,
and as always Shelley was both instructive and entertaining.
We
began by studying and then practicing several important ornamentations
and the musical rules for inegale from the influential Baroque composer
and recorder teacher Jacques Hotteterre (1674-1763). We also
looked at several copies of Hoteterre’s original scores and compared
them to the modern editions we were using. We then played a
Hotteterre sarabande and gavotte, a chaconne from Louis Antoine Dornel,
and a piece from a ballet by Jean-Baptiste Lully.
After
lunch, we left the Baroque period and began moving backwards in time
with a charming piece by Clémant Janequin (1485-1560), “La Plus
Belle de la Ville,” and Josquin Des Prez’s well-known “Petite
Camusette.” The workshop ended with a most unusual anonymous late
fourteenth-century French religious piece.
While
participants played three lines on the soprano, alto, and alto, two
tenors played a ground in four sections. In each section, the
tenors first played a line at tempo, then played the same line
backwards at double tempo, and then played the same line forwards at
double tempo before moving on to the next line. Miraculously,
under Shelley’s direction everyone finished the piece together on the
final chord!
What
is WRS without an annual Gruskin workshop?
Gwyn Roberts Workshop Review (2008)
by
Jane
Udelson
How
to Play Baroque Dance Music
On
Saturday, November 17, Gwyn Roberts led 16 recorder players, both WRS
members and non-members in a delightful workshop devoted to the playing
of French Baroque dance music. Not only did Gwyn show us how to play
various dance styles, but she also illustrated some of the dance steps,
which affect how the music should be played, including its tempo. She
helped us learn to distinguish various dances from each other, based on
meter, rhythm and tempo.
The
morning was devoted to an exploration of three- four- and five-part
orchestral and chamber music arrangements of minuets, sarabandes,
gavottes, bourees, and rigodons. Probable the most familiar to us was
the minuet, which has a step on every beat and whose minimum dance unit
is two measures in length. Gwyn referred to this dance as “traveling
around on toes.” In a suite of dance music, the minuet is typically
performed first or early, because everyone knows it. She used a minuet
by Lully to illustrate the characteristics of a minuet.
Gwyn
illustrated the sarabande with pieces by Marin Marais, Dornel, and
Boismortier. Like the minuet, the sarabande is also in three-quarter
time, but is slower that the minuet, with a more complex “up down”
dance step, involving a “lift” that should be reflected in the way the
musicians play the dance. The second beat of the measure is typically
dotted.
The
gavotte was illustrated with short works by Lully, Boismortier, and
Dornel. The gavotte is in two or four beats, with an upbeat or two that
should not be accented. Phrases typically end and begin in the middle
of measures. Some gavottes are written in rondeau form, in which the
first section is repeated within the piece and at its end.
An
exerpt from a dance suite by Dornel illustrated the rigodon, which is
typically played in the middle of a suite of dances. Basically there is
no distinction between a rigodon and a bouree, both of which are in
two-two time with a pick-up to the first beat. The rigodon reflects and
“aristocratic desire for the rustic,” in Gwyn’s words.
In
the afternoon Gwyn handed out parts from two orchestral suites -
Telemann’s Water Music and a work by Pez - to illustrate how the
different baroque dance pieces are and might be incorporated into a
dance suite. We spent some time focusing on the overature in each of
these works. Overatures are not composed as dance music, typically have
a slow and heavily ornamented section, and may include a fast (allegro)
section.
All
in all, the workshop was both enjoyable and challenging.
******