On Sat, Feb 18, 2006, Sean Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > > Dear Stewart, > >> >> I would add that much of the music under discussion is extremely >> complex rhythmically.
Typical for 15c material; including Hayne, Binchois, and Josquin, all of which I played extensively with the Collegium Musicum of the University of Maryland. We employed Lute, Viols, Recorders, Shawms, Rebec and Voice in a variety of orchestrations that had as much to do with the players and skills available as the resulting sounds. Some late 15c pieces were feasible on crumhorns (which are depicted at least as early as 1480), but part range usually dictated other orchestration. Midaeval fiddles were not always used with drone tones, ditto for rebecs. Bowed strings are certainly available for these works, as is brass. >> 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. Actually, the viol players in our group were often more facile than our lutenist (me); perhaps my aging fingers were to blame in that, but in any case, we managed to make some very good music. > 'playable on lutes'. --and that a lute trio makes it sound very > acceptable as well as being a solid HIP choice. one issue to be resolved, how does a lutenist deal with loooong notes, easy on a bow, they are a challenge to decorate while still maintaining suspension (especially if one has difficulty playing like ala balalaika). >> The complex, syncopated rhythms of this repertory, if represented as >> flags in tablature, are extremely hard to read. what makes things hard is the modern players reading skills, take out the barlines, end the tyrany of the strong downbeat, and work from parts instead of score et voila. > It's perfectly acceptable to present > the music as most efficient sometimes and let the player decide on the > tools to convey it and its tessitura. totally in agreement on this point. >> 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. yet, the player is still challenged to bring out the now quite thoroughly obscured conterpoint. IMNSHO tablature began as shorthand, and became popular with publishers as a way to get save paper. Teachers saw in it a great virtue of simplification of the challenge of 'reading'. Sure, when you collapse several lines of polyphony onto one time-line you appear to 'simplify' the task of marking time, but you also obscure the original polyphonys subtle stresses, the result is not always a good thing. Vocalized polyphony often brings out part-crossings by the simple expediant of having naturally contrasted voices, a performance of the same work on piano might be a dull succession of the apparantly repeated chords; the vocalized version is much more interesting to the listener. -- Dana Emery To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
