On inegal (from Ton Koopman's book)

Source: Barok Muziek: Theorie en praktijk by Ton Koopman, concerning the practice of inégal.

• the practice goes back as far as the 16th century.
• it was not limited to France, but the French mentioned it a lot in their writings.
• it is applied in diatonic melodic walks.
• Couperin wrote: we write these diatonic eight notes as equal, but they are to be performed slightly (!) punctuated.
• The principle of inégal is to turn equally noted notes from lightly inégal to punctuated.
• This inegal is mostly: first note slightly longer, second note slightly shorter, etc.
• Some sources mentioned a Lombardic approach: 1st note slightly shorter and 2nd note slightly longer. Frescobaldi mentions this in his preface to his Toccatas.
• Th. de Santa Maria introduces a 3rd method: four eight notes are played this way: the 1st, 2nd and 3rd somewhat shorter, and the 4th somewhat longer.
• A light form of inégal is called louré, and a shaper form is called piqué.
• B. de Bacilly says it very well: the reason the notes are NOT written as punctuated but as égal, is because if they were written as inégal, as punctuated, the performers would make these punctuations too sharp! (much sharper than intended).
• While I totally agree with this I would like to add, that in a way, you cannot adequately write inégal on paper. It's a musical attitude, a musical approach, not something that can be written down precisely.
• Therefore, interpret this inegal in a subtle and delicate fashion.
• Also, it is not necessary to apply inégal to an entire passage, but to take liberties, and leave some notes out, let them remain equal, for the goal is to make music and not to be legalistic.
• Thus you can mix égal and inégal.

Thank you for sharing this, Adri!

Thanks for writing that. "Dotted" is perhaps a little clearer than "punctuated."

There was a huge amount written about this by French harpsichordists, and there's a huge modern literature on it as well, again mostly with the harpsichord in mind. Probably the best single modern work is Frederick Neumann's Ornamentation in Baroque and Post-Baroque Music: With Special Emphasis on J.S. Bach, which is unfortunately stupidly expensive.

However, the takeaways are these: There's nothing in any of the French sources to indicate that inégalité is optional. It's mandatory in all applicable pieces. There's nothing in the sources to say you can mix and match; on the contrary, you have to apply it where you can.

There's a bit of disagreement on where it does apply; for example, some sources say that it doesn't apply in Allemandes, but these are a minority. It obviously doesn't apply if there's an indication to the contrary, such as "légérement" or in triple-time pieces or in very fast pieces. There's almost no indication that it was used outside of France except by a very few Fracophillic composers. Muffat comes to mind. I don't know about Blow and Purcell and the rest of the Francophilic court; would have to check. I can't think of anyone else offhand.

Davitt Moroney explains it as applying to diatonic consonant melodic lines which, as he says, is easy in practice but clumsy in explanation. So, you would apply it in running up a scale, but the melodic line doesn't have to be conjunct, as long as it's consonant. It applies only to one note value per piece, usually the shortest (non-ornamental) one.

The Lombard rhythms and so on have nothing to do with the French inégalité; these were more widespread, and often indicated with slurs or slurs to notes with "staccato" dots or some other symbol. There were many other Baroque rhythmic conventions, such as "double dotting" in certain kinds of pieces, but these also don't have anything to do with French inégalité.

Finally, Adri's point that inégalité can't be notated exactly because it's a musical attitude, is the most important point of all.

EDIT: As an indication of how different the French were from everybody else, I just remembered a paper I heard about, but didn't hear, from a musicological conference some years ago. Someone had found a mechanical clock from France with the ouverture for Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, and the pinning on the barrel indicated that the French played the sixteenth notes with inégalité. The presenter played a musical example, and supposedly for many years afterwards, when anybody went into the conference room in the quiet of the night, the faint echos of laughter could still be heard.

I'm wondering if inegalité is played in the right way, as there can be two explanations:

A) A note consists of the time the note sounds and the time it doesn't sound. By making the time it doesn't sound shorter, the note sounds longer, but still have the total length of the note the same. In this way you can emphasize some notes and it is one of the few techniques an organist can employ for musical expression (but a very powerful one!)

B) Truly make one note (and it's corresponding silence) longer and the other note shorter.

I wonder if people use method B, while actually method A was meant by the composers at that time.

Is there anyone willing to do audio/video demonstrations of this? Or point me to performances online where I can hear this in action?

Try Pierre Bardon playing Couperin on St. Max - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3bJ16VFKx0