The art of diminution in the 16th century 

Now THAT's how you introduce diminutions!!

When Early Music Sources has a new video, I put my phone down, grab a cold drink, and play the video on the largest screen with the best speakers in my apartment. My neighbors don't even know my name after two years, but they could tell you that Elam Rotem is bringing some knowledge over at my place.

I was about to say something about being early but I was shocked by the beginning tune

This video has it all: A scientifically sound explanation of a complex subject, brilliant musical and visual presentation, a famous composer allegedly calling someone an ass and of course Chuck Norris. Who ever said that musicology wasn't friggin' AWESOME?

That intro piece felt like a shot of caffeine

As a tenor hell-bent on studying the singing of others, I am incredibly impressed by this guy. These skills I must learn

I’ve never clicked something so fast in my life

This is the best presentation on diminutions that I have ever come across - many thanks! And bravo to the singer!!

Very well done, as always. In Chinese tradition, this is called jiāhuā (加花, "adding flowers," i.e. melodic elaboration/ornamentation), adding notes and grace notes between the main notes of a melody. The opposite process, where a melody is simplified by removing notes, just leaving the important/structural tones, is called rànglù (让路, "to make way [for others"), and both processes are used spontaneously and complementarily in the performance of traditional genres like Jiangnan sizhu (江南丝竹, silk and bamboo music of the Jiangnan region), one performer/instrument getting out of another's way if the other is perceived to be adding more elaboration, in order to keep the music flowing in a balanced way.

Already the intro got me interested 😂

I would so love to spend the rest of the night upvoting this over and over again but all I can do is toggle my one, single, meagre upvote on and off and on and off and on again. Dang... Great job!!

You, EMS team, are a blessing to all of us. It's great to have you back. Thank you so much! (P.S.: by the way, your subtle humour in these videos is every bit as wonderful and irresistible as your all-round seriousness.) Pedro Almeida, composer, arranger, pianist, composition and music history teacher

I think the place you can hear something like this today is in jazz scatting.

Elam Rotem, thank you so much for the superb presentation on diminutions! Jacob Lawrence, you are a great renaissance singer! Your singing is a delight for the soul!

I just wanted to say that I appreciate, with how dry the scripts of these videos tend to be, I deeply appreciate how downright goofy and shitpost-y the illustration images chosen to go along with the text are, and seem increasingly so. It's wonderful.

It's interesting to ponder how the unwritten but common practice of diminution contextualize the development of the contrapuntal rules of composition that are still taught today. Most students learn these rules without proper historical context and so they come across as dogmatic rather than practical, and thus students lack the understanding to meaningfully disregard or relax those rules. Thank you for these videos and especially the composed examples along with the wonderful performance.

What a pleasure to start the day with a coffee and a new Early Music Sources video!

4:18 unornamented 5:10 little diminutions 6:20 shorter note values, variations in rhythm (lombard rhythm) 7:20 scale runs, greater ambitus 9:01 only graces 9:39 mix: fast diminutions and graces

I love how the intro piece was dimunuted as well

Haha ! That embellished intro jingle ! Cute ! - ( My favorite sound of every video is the typewriter ! ) :D

Fantastic and absorbing introduction to this concept. Impossible to improve on in a meaningful way. Perfect!

Jacob Lawrence is a "star singer" with a handsome voice and killer technique.

The way he sings those diminutions, well done, Jacob! Elam, amazing explanations! :)

Fantastic as always. And Jacob Lawrence is an amazing singer. I also appreciate that beautiful pineapple.

that guy singing has mad skills

Beautifully explained and beautifully sung... and I do love your music room: chaotic heaps of books and a healthy selection of drinks 😉👍

Show this to people who say jazz and classical music are not related

I'm realizing that my college music education (40+ years ago) omitted context almost entirely. Now I finally understand what diminution really is and why parallel octaves and fifths don't work. Thank you so much!

Thank you and the tenor did an admirable job.

Divine singing from Jacob Lawrence. Learning so much about early music and music generally from this site. Thank you so much.

Blown away by the tenor!

9:38 It's fascinating how similar this example of diminution sounds to the Greek improvisational style of _amanes_ (Αμανές/Αμανέδες) popularized during the Ottoman rule. el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Αμανές

Nice one Jacob!

Bruh, your singer is ridiculous good. Another very informative and interesting video once again.... your work is very under appreciated imo. I think any musician would greatly benefit from your videos.

Josquin Desprez is savage !

It reminds me of Indian/Carnatic music... "prescribed/implied ornamentation/improvisation within a rigid (yet flexible) system"... Various schools and styles, and attention to the smallest of details... Very similar, imo.

Note to self: 4:10 (4:18) Unornamented phrase 4:49 (5:10) Same phrase with diminutions 5:31 (6:20) Further diminutions on the same phrase 6:40 (7:20) Going further to add 16th-note diminutions to the same phrase 7:48 List of 'Graces' (9:01) Same phrase with graces added 9:26 (9:39) Mixing faster diminutions with graces

Amazing video as always. The tenor sounds so beautiful

Congratulations for the diminutions in the Bovicelli contest! And for this great informative video. Josué will love it!

Thank you very much for the information. Good to know! Thank you, David Lawrence, for your voice!

When education can be this beautiful... get me back to school now!! Thanks Elam 👊 🎶

Thanks for keeping us sane by providing such stimulating and erudite content!

I discovered this video today and it really made my day. From now on, every time I want to listen to 1500’s Italian music, I will listen to that masterpiece. Gets me the chills every time.

Thank you so very much for this video! We need that, and my pupils and me will be happy with this...

Have new earphones and almost peed my pants hearing Jacobs last example. So, at the end of the video I started it all over again and almost peed my pants again. The best 28 min I ever spent on RU-vid and I hope you are rewarded.

Amazing as always

Ahhh this golden channel ❤❤

I love diminutions and this is my favourite EMS video so far.

Wonderful series!

Still the best RU-vid Channel. Guys I appreciate your work a lot. Thanks for all the interesting informations in this and all your other videos. I‘m not sure if your videos thought me more than my theory lessons at my university in Freiburg :)

fascinating! especially the singing

great as always! Thanks!

I always enjoy your videos, but this one was especially good. My hat's off to the singer...wow!

Thanks for this.

this is great and clear, thank you!

Best explanation, as always.

Brilliant! Thank you!

Very nice episode and singing!

I love you guys !

Impressive and informative, as always. The diminished intro is very sweet, and Mr. Lawrence might seriously be one of the best early music tenors alive right now. When this pandemic is over, I hope he enjoys a serious international career. Someone really needs to entice him to be Telemaco in a production of Ulisse...

amazing Video!

A pianist friend of mine (a fantastic player who incorporated his own Jimi Hendrix arrangements into his Nordstrom's department store gig) once referred to the problem of too much diminution as "oversouling". I really like that term and I've used it ever since.

Great video, great performance, thank you a lot.. I love this channel

If I were a renaissance composer, I'd really want a way of saying “Just sing the long note here please. It won't kill you”.

In lute intabulations and pieces, there is a lot of variance, as mentioned in the video, between different styles, 'dialects' and composers. Some add a lot, making the piece feel fast and flowing. Others are more reserved with it, and mostly add graces and leave the diminutions to places where they feel they are more appropriate. Finally, some tabs are very plain, and have little to no diminutions or embellishments; I suspect that in many of these cases the composer/intabulator simply decided to leave them to the player, rather than prefer to have the piece played plainly, but of course, we cannot know since I'm not aware of any tab where the author left clear instructions about ornamentation. There is also a notable genre where a theme, frequently an arrangement of some popular tune, is presented, then followed divisions on it, a kind of a precursor of the theme and variations genre. I noticed that most times the first variations start with mild diminutions, which get more virtuosic as the piece goes on.

Bravo Jacob!

This is great Elam! Thank You !! I remembered some Monteverdi marks (in orfeo I think) : "come sta".

Great video, thanks

Super interesting thank you.

Holy Jesus, that diminutioned harpsichord tune just nailed that But Jakob did even better

Thank you very much for this video, it is very useful for my work👋

Fantastic. Someday, please do some in depth consideration of the "perfect" instruments and how they evolved. Clavichord especially.

What an interesting topic and so masterfully explained with beautiful graphics Also clearly shows the origins of what classical music would eventually become, for better or for worse, a dictatorship of the composer, in the sentiments of the likes of Deprez and Zarlino.

Lol, the intro actually made me laugh hard

I love your videos.

The intro sounds really good

Great as usual. RU-vid hosts much garbage but channels like yours bring it a kind of redemption. Keep up the good work, and thank you.

I would be thrilled if you ever made a video about the genius of Girolamo Frescobaldi 😔

This. Is. Gold.

Your videos are amazing !!! I play viola da gamba and its a great help

Guys,you’re the best! ☀️

Nice diminutions on the theme music!

I love you guys

diminuition creates that melismatic effect

O melhor sobre o assunto.

Gracias amigos!!!! por la información, entretenida y hermosa propuesta, ojalá incorporen el texto en español

lots of cambiatas!

Josquin des Préz, one of the most important composers of the Renaissance, hit the nail on the head :-) ( I have the same feeling when seeing some "arrangement" of an already perfect composition...) But the presentation and the singing are great!

Noticed that there have been more than several videos where diminutions are the main topic or are mentioned in accordance to practices at the time. I guess we can't get enough diminutions.

subbed.

Wow

Video molto interessante e divertente, as usual... Curioso che già Desprez, molto prima di Gluck (e Calzabigi) lamentasse l' irrispettosa vanità dei Virtuosi!!...

Thank you very much for the valuable information. What I have wanted to know about putting embellishment is for a line doubled B.C. such as Frescobaldi’s canzona per due bassi e B.C. particularly in their adagio sections. I was wondering if you’ve got any plan to make a video about this kind of thing.

Were there shredders? I'm beginning to gain another insight to my psychological barriers to singing. I was the kid that all choir teachers in our obligatory classes would instruct to move my lips and not make a sound. In university at the suggestion of an opera singer friend that had used me in several plays, encouraged me to train for a "stage voice". I signed up for Beginning Singing during summer school. I walked into the small room with the soprano professor who put a piece of 16th century music in front of me and asked me to sing along. I said I didn't sing. She then put a Renaissance song and asked me to sing. I said I didn't sing. She then asked me what I sang. I said excuse me? She asked bass, baritone, tenor, alto. I said I didn't sing. She then played several notes on the piano and told me to sing them back. She did high, middle low. She then replayed low, middle, high. She then stopped and asked if it was too late to get my money back. I was devastated. And I found out it was too late, so I returned for the second lesson. She profusedly apologized since she saw that the course was offered to Beginning singers, I had told her I didn't sing, and so I had a right to learn how to sing. She had done her research and taught me some of the fundamentals. But the damage had been done. When I started playing the piano last year I heard several people tell me that I should sing. My patient and friend the piano professor at our local conservatory also said I should sing. Nothing worked until I learned of the Rule of the Octave. Practicing Part-by-Part on the tonic, the third and the fifth and using the movement, I can at least imitate badly the changes in pitch. BTW I really appreciate your channel.

In Bach, eg B sections of Bwv 66, you find diminutions essentially written out.

Hahaha, I see what you did with the theme! I actually didn't know the term "diminutions" until watching this video, so I was just like "woah what the heck are they doing?" I guess I'm Zarlino 😎

Jacob Lawrence my gaaaaaaaad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If that anecdotal reference of Despres is true then it is very interesting as a view on smug performers from a "high-end" composer!

Around 6:53 with the semiquavers it sounds something like a Rossini opera...

the singers are amazing is there a course in early music singing is it harder than opera