“Play what is written on the score!” When musician plays the wrong notes or play something other than the score during the orchestral rehearsal, the conductor will always request the players to follow back the score and don’t compose thing. However, in Baroque period, orchestral players can really add ornaments in the original melody during the performance.
As “baroque” is a style fulled of expression and freedom, improvising ornaments was a common practice in the Baroque period to show their taste and contribute more decorations to the original plain music. But the question “Who should lead the ornamentation?” came out. Obviously the string section was the dominant at that time as they played the main melody most of the time. Therefore, German composer Johann Adolph Scheibe pointed out that concertmaster should be the representative to lead the other violinists the play ornaments and the rest of the players played the original melody marked on the score. This texture is called heterophony which is traditional texture in Chinese music. Facing different composer work, they also had different ornaments adding to the music.
Nevertheless, Baroque German flutist Johann Joachim Quantz condemned this idea. For instance, in a ritornello part of a concerto grosso, music should be played without any addition since dissonance without preparation or resolution may result. Especially in a slow piece, the disorder could be listened very obviously.
To conclude, there are so many says about the performance practice of baroque orchestra and the opinions are very opposite. It’s really lucky that nowadays, orchestral players do not have to decide how to “re-composer” the music.
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