Style and Performance for Bowed String Instruments in French Baroque Music.

Justice, Andrew

Style and Performance for Bowed String Instruments in French Baroque Music. By Mary Cyr. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012. [xxi, 256 p. ISBN: 978-1-40-940569-6 (hdbk) $119.95. ISBN: 978-1-40-944234-9 (e-bk) $119.95]

Although there are some recent practical (i.e., how-to) texts regarding Baroque performance that are accessible to today's patrons (Jeffery Kite-Powell's second edition of A Performer's Guide to Seventeenth-Century Music comes to mind), Mary Cyr's Performing Baroque Music (1992) remains one of the fundamental resources for students and non-specialists alike. Perhaps the beauty of Cyr's book rests in its balance: each chapter plainly lays out its aims and accomplishes them step by step, with enough historical detail and citations to further satisfy the serious reader but delivered in an uncomplicated language and manner. The only potential criticism of Cyr's text (and it is clearly a question of scope) is that it does not delve too deeply into national styles and their particular executions, something especially important for French Baroque music, with its distinctive textures, gestures and significant origins in dance.

Luckily for us, Cyr has anticipated this need with a new volume focusing on bowed string instruments in the French Baroque, which functions as something between an introduction and a guide to research on French music for the violin and viol families in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. The first section discusses sources and styles, exploring questions of "the text" and what it represents when performing from facsimiles, as well as the Baroque separation of French and Italian style, citing primary sources from Francois Raguenet, Charles de Brosses, and Ancelet. Cyr then considers the instruments themselves and their function within ensembles, including parties de remplissage and petit / grand choeur as well as the sometimes thorny areas of basse de violon and contrebasse. A third section examines specific performance practice issues (articulation, tempo, character, inequality, ornamentation, pitch, temperament) from the ensemble (Muffat), chamber (violins bowing with viols) and solo contexts, with special mention of interpreting ornaments and special effects as well as realizing basse continue. The remainder of the book is comprised of profiles for Marin Marais, Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, Jean-Baptiste Barriere and Forqueray's Pieces de viole avec la Basse Continue.

For those generally familiar with the subject matter, Cyr's prose is poised between readability and occasionally bursting with fascinating content that motivates further study. The bibliographies are quite strong, and her extensive footnotes through allow for easy maneuvering through the citations. Since the book appears to have been written a level up from the Performing Baroque Music text, it often seems that Cyr revels in the opportunity to discourse in her area of specialty and focus more in-depth on bowed string issues. Since the only other major recent text focusing on French Baroque music is the 1997 revised and expanded edition of James Anthony's French Baroque Music (and it necessarily takes a top-down approach, allotting a respectable 59 pages to Instrumental Ensemble and Solo Music), Cyr's book offers an extremely important focus on a vital component of the era's musical history and so should be highly valued for that service alone.

Andrew Justice

University of North Texas