Dear Michal, It would be wise to read what Jon Banks has to say before forming an opinion.
When one is faced with a piece, such as Roelikin's setting of "De tous biens plaine", which has a range of notes from a low G to high e" flat, one has to consider what instrument can cope. Wind instruments cannot, because their range is too small, but the lute is a strong contender. The low G would be played as the open 6th course, and the high e" flat as the 8th fret on the first course. Admittedly not all the ranges are as extreme as Roelikin's composition, but that piece does suggest that the lute was used for such music. I confess I have a personal interest in this repertory. I was one of the lutenists who played for Jon's talk a few years ago to the Lute Society, and I played on the recording he made of these pieces. I find his arguments very convincing. Many years ago, I came to the conclusion that the upper part of Henry VIII's setting of Tandernacken was ideal for the lute. It falls so well under the hand. My attempts at trying to intabulate the lowest two parts on one lute failed. The result was unplayable. However, if, instead, I had thought of using three lutes, as Jon has for this piece, the result would have been very different. It sounds lovely on three lutes. There may also be a case for having the long tenor notes played on a viol. In your message you refer to the problem of sustaining long notes on the lute. There is no reason why you shouldn't use your discretion in re-iterating some of these notes to make them last. In this context, Edward Paston springs to mind, whose intabulations always re-iterate long notes. For example, he would intabulate the breves of an In Nomine as two semibreves. I would add that much of the music under discussion is extremely complex rhythmically. If it is to work, it has to be played incisively, and exactly in time. I doubt whether viols (which have a similar range to the lute) would be as successful. When the Lute Society first considered publishing some of these pieces, it was thought a good idea to present the music in tablature. I tried preparing parts, but soon decided that tablature was absolutely hopeless, at least for this repertory. With tablature you dictate the pitch of the instrument, as well as where on the neck individual notes are to be played. For example, do you intabulate g' as a1 or f2? It could as well be f1 on a lute tuned a 4th lower, or f3 on a lute tuned a 4th higher. Tablature becomes a hindrance, not a help. The complex, syncopated rhythms of this repertory, if represented as flags in tablature, are extremely hard to read. Jon and Chris Goodwin agreed with me that publishing the pieces in staff notation was the only viable option. I also made the point, that if a lutenist wasn't up to reading from staff notation, he probably wasn't up to playing this music, which requires quite a high standard of musicianship. It is no coincidence that lute tablatures appeared at a time when lute players were trying to play more than one melodic line at a time. If you superimpose two or more polyphonic lines, the overall rhythm represented by tablature rhythm signs, becomes simpler. For example, if one part has |\ |\ |\ |\ | |\ | |\ |. | |. | __a_______________ ______d__c___a__|_ ________________|_ ________________|_ ________________|_ ________________|_ and another has |\ |\ |\ |\ |\ | |\ | | |. | | ____________________ __________________|_ __d__c__a_________|_ ____________c__a__|_ __________________|_ __________________|_ you have a total of eight rhythm signs. If, on the other hand, you put them together for one lute to play, those eight different flags are reduced to one: |\ |\ | __a_________________________ ___________d__c________a__|_ __d__c__a_________________|_ _________________c__a_____|_ __________________________|_ __________________________|_ which is much easier to read. In a nutshell, staff notation is generally better for a single line, whereas tablature is better for sustaining polyphony. When considering what music we should play on the lute, it is worth bearing in mind that we shouldn't restrict ourselves to music notated in tablature. Music in staff notation is fair game too, even if, at first sight, it doesn't look like lute music. Best wishes, Stewart McCoy. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michal Gondko" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "[LUTE]" <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu> Sent: Friday, February 17, 2006 12:17 AM Subject: [LUTE] Re: Jon Banks lute trios and early bass lutes > > I still can't quite believe this is genuinely lute music as opposed to > > music that is multiply realisable. There are many sustained notes, > > sometimes over two bars. > > It doesn't look like lute music. > > I don't know Banks' work and his arguments (yet), but unless there is a firm > evidence that these specific pieces were performed on lutes, claims that > this is genuine music for a lute ensemble are overstatements. Indeed, this > music *could* have been performed by such an ensemble but also by any other > family of instruments (not to mention mixed groups) provided that ranges of > parts fit ranges available on the instruments. As far as I know there is a > consensus among scholars about 'portability' of much of this textless > repertoire of the late fifteenth century. I fail to see why Segovia pieces > would be specifically lute ensemble music but, again, I haven't read Banks > and maybe the answer and concrete evidence is there. Otherwise, one is > inevitably lead to suspect that it *needs* to be lute music because the > publication is addressed to a largely amateur lutenist market. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
