Similarly, the word gitviolin doesn’t exist.
Keep in mind when you’re challenged by the devil, bring your fiddle!
:dubious: If I understand what you’re saying, you’re dismissing anyone who sees the difference as purely semantic as a “stupid twat.” I gotta ask for a cite on that: one what authority would you make such a dismissal? A link to an essay by a world-class instrument maker, conductor, violinist, or fiddler would be a good start.
I may have misunderstood what you were saying, in which case, my apologies.
Daniel
I’m saying that it sounds like a story designed to dismiss non-classical music in a rather condescending way, ascribed to someone who should (and indeed probably does) know better.
That’s bizarre - I read the story in exactly the opposite way - that Perlman is telling people not to get hung up on nomenclature and just go with the music. I read it as him treating both genres of music equally, produced by the same instrument. :dubious:
I don’t really see how what Perlman allegedly said is in any way “condescending” to non-classical music. He simply noted that the difference between a violin and a fiddle is in the type of music that’s played on them.
I think you may be picking up the “condescending” vibe from the anecdote’s contrast between “played a beautiful passage from Mozart” and “sawing away with a hornpipe”. However, even if that really was meant to be dismissive of hornpipes or other non-classical music, it’s merely an interpretation supplied by whoever told the anecdote. It’s got nothing to do with what Perlman himself is alleged to have said.
Yikes–in retrospect I can see that. When I played, I certainly preferred playing folk musics–Irish traditional songs especially as well as Scottish ones in that weird semiminor key called Menodian or something (I forget the name). The verbs in the anecdote were all supplied by me, and I did not in any way mean them to be dismissive of traditional music. Sorry for giving that impression!
Daniel
Mixolydian mode? (It’s sometimes said that the GHB use Mixolydian mode (although others dispute that) so that might be why you associate it with Scottish tunes.)
Mixolydian’s the one! I remember four of my favorite melodies used Mixolydian: Loch Lavan Castle, something called Coralan or something like that, Peggy’s Doozy, and one that starts with an ominous, heavy DGDADbabcD (the caps are quarter notes, the lowers are eighth notes, the last D is high). The first and the last were definitely Scottish, although the second may have been Irish and the third may have been written by my fiddle teacher.
Daniel
if it makes anyone feel better, I’ve heard Perlman elsewhere express much admiration for talented fiddle players.
Probably one of the tunes of Toirdhealbhach Ó Cearbhalláin - Turlough O’Carolan, the blind Irish harpist.
One of the most well-known is Carolan’s Quarrel with His Landlady - click on the link at the bottom to hear a midi version.
Lovely tune and great guy, but not what I’m thinking of. I believe the song I’m thinking of begins
eA.aabCBeE.dcbaabCBEE
with the caps as longer notes, and the periods as slight pauses. The first e would be a low E, the middle a high E, and the melody going in these first few bars from low to high and back again.
Daniel
I wonder if mixolydian had anything to do with the development of the american pentatonic scale. Once I posted the notes to a melody I had written, asking if it might be in mixolydian mode, to be told that it might, or it could be in the blues progression. (The second made more sense to me, given that it sounded like a solo from The Wall, which were heavily blues-inspired.)
Mixolydian and Dorian are the most that most resemble the blues scale. Especially Dorian, with the minor tonic and major subdominant. Since the third in a blues scale isn’t fixed but can vary within a quarter tone range between major and minor, Dorian and Mixolydian are the nearest approximations of the blues. The flatted fifth, though, is found only in the Locrian mode. The Locrian is found on paper, but not actually used AFAIK, because it lacks the tonic-dominant perfect fifth that underpins all Western scales and harmony. Folk music may employ different scales and harmony, but the tonic-dominant perfect fifth is found there too just the same. The blues scale optionally uses a smeared fifth similar to the smeared third. The Locrian is the only mode I know with a lowered fifth, but if you play it, there’s no resemblance to the blues.
I know somebody who went through everything written by Hildegard von Bingen, tallying the various finals…and surprisingly, a small number behaved in what can only be described (in modern modal terms) as locrian.
The important factor is the role of the fifth degree…in my limited experience, myxolydian and dorian folk music often give the cadential role to the (‘flattened’) seventh. Whether this also parallels blues, I’m not in a position to say. But there’s certainly the possibility that some of the musical language of the black American south was indeed influenced by European styles, cajun & zydeco music being obvious present-day examples of how things have developed over time.
Very much so in Irish pickin and fiddlin, you’re right. However, Magyar folk fiddling uses the circle of fiths a lot, with more emphasis on dominant-tonic progressions than in any other folk music I know of. Yeah, I’ve been listening to The Bartók Album by Márta Sebestyén and Muzsikás.
Basic 12-bar blues harmony ordinarily uses the dominant chord in bar 9. I invented an Aeolian-mode variant in which the flat VII replaces the V.
According to a buddy of mine that plays violin in a symphony orchestra and plays Celtic fiddle in a band, the difference is this:
If you carry it in a case, it’s a violin.
If you carry it in a gunny sack, it’s a fiddle.
How funny, there’s a joke in Reader’s Digest this month that addresses this very question.
Paraphrasing here:
Person goes into a pawn shop looking at violins. Asks cashier the difference between fiddles and violins. Is told that if customer is selling to pawnshop it’s a fiddle; if pawnshop selling to customer, it’s a violin.