Thursday 27 February 1661/62

Annotations

• N andy on Mon 28 Feb 2005, 08:35am

  we fell to angry words

  a clash of egos between a 29 year old flying too high for his station and his musical master.

• N Xjy on Mon 28 Feb 2005, 11:43am

  we fell to angry words
  I think Sam was in complete control here. He’d got what he wanted from the music man, and needed to dump him. What better way than to provoke him and get him to flounce out. Puts all the onus on the other guy. Poor Sam deprived of his music by the caprice of a tradesman ;-)
  I love the cool way he organizes what he’s learnt from B the second B has stormed off in a huff.
  Shows decided diplomatic skill in manipulating others. Sam’s station is superior enough to the musician’s to make this display of bad temper all fall on the musician, leaving Sam appearing innocent and aggrieved.

• N Ruben on Mon 28 Feb 2005, 11:47am

  for those interested in Birchensha’s rules that have the privilege to be in Ireland the 2 of April 2005 see: http://www.nuim.ie/academic/music/conference17/programme.pdf
  go to the conference and tell us later what was said there.

• N Philip on Mon 28 Feb 2005, 05:48pm

  Berkenshaw’s theory and rules were never published. I wonder whether Pepys’s rendition, put down this day, may survive in his papers.

• N Mary on Mon 28 Feb 2005, 05:54pm

  Pepys’s ‘editon’ of Berkenshaw.

  Never traced, according to L&M.

• N Ruben on Mon 28 Feb 2005, 06:06pm

  see what Robert Louis Stevenson had to say about the relationship between the Music Master and Samuel at:
  http://www.underthesun.cc/Classics/Stevenson/SamuelPepys/SamuelPepys3.html
  a paragraph: ” Mr. Berkenshaw was not altogether happy in his pupil. The amateur cannot usually rise into the artist, some leaven of the world still clogging him; and we find Pepys behaving like a pickthank to the man who taught him composition.”

• N Ruben on Mon 28 Feb 2005, 06:21pm

  Berkenshaw’s book on theory was not published but the manuscripts are still around and cited (to be find somewhere in an English archive).
  You can also see: http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/ow/d71ee1a48e819df4a19afeb4da09e526.html
  for an essay published by Berkenshaw in 1672.
  and another one in 1664 :http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/ow/abdc6693deaa3fcf.html
  

• N vicenzo on Mon 28 Feb 2005, 06:31pm

  Diplomatique? maybe, Thrifty, Certainly a yes. “…and it is not for me to continue with him at 5l. per month….”
  

• N Todd Bernhardt on Mon 28 Feb 2005, 07:25pm

  Sam cracks me up!!

  “I could not persuade him to grant wherein they were somewhat lame, we fell to angry words”…

  As a musician who’s played in many bands, and co-written many songs, all I can say is, ‘twas ever thus!

  “Dude, c’mon, admit it, music is about *breaking rules,* you know? Your attempts at constraining the Muse are somewhat lame, my man.”

• N Eric Walla on Mon 28 Feb 2005, 08:34pm

  Vicenzo strikes the proper note here. Yesterday is all about settling debts and casting up accounts, whereas today we find Sam intending to “put him off” even without argument. I see a good amount of rationalization and mental bookkeeping in Sam’s entry: “Hmmm, is what I’m getting from Berkenshaw worth 5l. a month?”

• N Stolzi on Mon 28 Feb 2005, 09:23pm

  “and so there remains not the practice now to do me good”

  This construction seems curious. I would guess Sam is thinking “Now that I know his rules, all I really need to do is practice regularly, and why do I need him (at 5 pounds the month!) to listen to me practice?”

  But for that, I would have expected “and so there remains only the practice now to do me good.”

• N dirk on Mon 28 Feb 2005, 09:39pm

  “and so there remains not the practice now to do me good”

  A misread for “but the practice…” ?
  

• N Bradford on Mon 28 Feb 2005, 10:37pm

  One is still curious about just what these “rules” consisted of. They wouldn’t be just the ordinary constraints of counterpoint (“Avoid consecutive fifths”), since they had to do with setting texts.
  Perhaps pointers about avoiding long notes on unimportant words, or high ones for sharp syllables (no soprano wants to have to sing a Q# in alt on a word like “stream”), or how to match the mood of a vocal line to the the mood of the words?
  All useful to know, but indeed once pointed out, the main thing is to practice putting them into practice. Which Sam thinks he is now fully equipped to do, especially if he can copy down this wisdom in a morning’s transcription.

• N Mary on Mon 28 Feb 2005, 10:43pm

  “and so there remains nothing but practice now to do me good”

  is the L&M reading.

• N Todd Bernhardt on Mon 28 Feb 2005, 11:00pm

  re: “They wouldn

• N Pauline on Tue 1 Mar 2005, 12:44am

  Mr. Berkenshaw and “setting popular verse to music”
  No howling, please, as I step into something I know nothing about. This all makes me think of the chord discipline I did many years ago with a piano teacher. Major, minor, raised 5th, lowered 3rd, augmented something or other—I remember little. So I was thinking a system for the notation of the melody notes and then the accompanying notes that support and give the melody “depth”. My subsequent serious piano teacher thought little of Miss Chalupa’s teaching this, as it (supposedly) provided her pupils with predictable show-off strumming along with whatever they were putting together at the piano. (It all went over my head.)

• N Australian Susan on Tue 1 Mar 2005, 01:47am

  Ruben - thanks for the link to RLS’s essay - insightful,well-written and entertaining!

• N Ramona on Tue 1 Mar 2005, 03:38am

  I second Australian Susan, thank you, Reuben, for the marvelous piece by Robt. L. Stevenson. It is refreshing to see Mr. Pepys anew through an acuity of observation by RLS.

• N Pauline on Tue 1 Mar 2005, 03:57am

  “the marvelous piece by Robt. L. Stevenson”
  Here on our site for many months in Background information:
  http://www.pepysdiary.com/p/2430.php

  We amass a lot of good information in Background, but tend to not actively use it. Ideas?

• N Ruben on Tue 1 Mar 2005, 02:56pm

  Pauline:
  you are so right!
  I think this annotation belongs somewhere else, but I do not know where.
  Jews read the Bible a piece at a time. It takes them a year till they go back to Genesis and begin again.
  In our case we have Pepys writing almost every day for 10 years! After two years it became nearly impossible to digest and remember all the information cited.

  “Backgroud info” is difficult to use because it works like an old, pre digital-memory theme dictionary.

  May be that, like in Bible studies we should have some kind of “Digital Concordance Enciclopaedia Pepsiana”.
  It should include all the words and tipycal phrases (“and so to bed”, “the best I ever…”), and in which day they where used by Pepys. This information I think, can be harvested by a scanning computer program, but I have no idea how it is done. May be a little like a Google for Pepys?
  More ideas, please!

• N Todd Bernhardt on Tue 1 Mar 2005, 03:51pm

  re: “a Google for Pepys?”

  Ruben, there’s always the site’s search engine, which is actually quite useful.

  In addition, you can find another resource here:
  http://www.pepysdiary.com/about/archive/2004/09/24/3109.php

  It looks to me as if Kal’s resource would provide the keyword/phrase index you’re looking for.

• N Ruben on Tue 1 Mar 2005, 05:28pm

  Thank you, Todd!
  I never tried Kal

• N Todd Bernhardt on Tue 1 Mar 2005, 06:27pm

  re: The site’s search engine

  Ruben, click the Help link next to the search box. Though I agree that things are getting harder to find as we get more content on the site, you can use Boolean expressions, or look for exact phrases, and that should help focus your results. (Type “rome” in Google and see how many results you get there! :-)

• N john lauer on Wed 2 Mar 2005, 02:46am

  There is also the site/domain option in google’s advanced features that can be exactly what you want on occasion.

• N Patricia on Mon 24 Jul 2006, 12:28am

  Isn’t this just like Sam! He tells the painter how to paint, he supervises his workmen to make sure everything is done to perfection, now he’s telling the musician his rules aren’t perfect. I don’t see this as a clever way of ditching the music teacher, just as Pepys usual obsessive behaviour.