Description:
<p>The procedure that I named in an earlier Early Music article ' dots for the band, not for the singer', and identified in the operas of Alessandro Scarlatti and Handel, is also to be found in their cantatas. It is found in the cantatas of other Neapolitan composers too, such as Mancini, Porpora and Leo, and in those of Bononcini. Surprisingly, this feature also occurs in the operas and cantatas of Rameau and in Montéclair's cantatas as well. In Rameau the diminutions are at the quaver level, however, though the Montéclair examples here have the usual semiquaver inequality of the Italians. ' Dots for the band' seems to die out with the advent of the Rococo style, at which point composers begin to write out their vocal divisions in full. Some movements by Handel and Alessandro Scarlatti begin with undotted diminutions and only later move into dotting. This indicates that the players must make an initial decision to play unequally. ' As rosy dawn' from Handel's Theodora is a case in point and actually shows the composer conveying expression through the controlled use of dotting. This is not adequately conveyed in Watkins Shaw's vocal score of the piece.</p>