Ornamentation in mechanical music

Abstract

There is generally a high degree of surprise expressed by the musically aware of today at discovering that mechanical music can be complex and stylistically reflective of the idiom of a past era. It is a revelation to them to hear just how much musical ornamentation there is in these interpretations of 18th-century music. Those works that survive on mechanically played musical instruments are frequently cameos of very florid arranging. There are, indeed, those who would despair of ever hearing an air played on such an instrument without a tracery of extensive and fussy embroidery embellishing the whole in an almost architecturally baroque style. The corners appear to have been intentionally hidden beneath musical carving, crevice and cornice, putti and caryatid. This criticism is often supported avidly by the present-day performer who has to attempt to play the piece in transcription on a manual instrument. Invariably, either half the ornamentation has to be left out or the piece played at a much slower pace. Three questions emerge regarding such decoration: first, why is it there; second, how important is it; and third, what should be done regarding trying to interpret it today in either written score or performance? So often a thing that is obvious enough to reach the stage of being taken for granted becomes the hardest thing in the world to describe and analyse. It is inescapable that the style and form of music have altered very dramatically since the times of Handel, Haydn and Mozart. It is also true that the style of interpretation and the expectations of the listener have changed equally radically since those days. That styles have altered so much can be proved beyond doubt by listening, say, to the rare early cylinder phonograph recordings of once revered singers whose often forced voices, glissandi and uncertain intonation would see them off the platform today. Again, it is a mere 40 or so years since chamber music abounded with the same free portamento--a characteristic that we can still admire in the dated but nevertheless