FWIW, I play Pittoni with first two courses down, but refinger some passages
to make 'more sense' in a melodic way. I'm aware that it is my sense, not
Pittoni's, that I'm adjusting the music to. Here I am reminded of a wise
lesson of Bob Spencer: Any alteration you make in an original, you should do
with red pencil. Red, because everytime you play the passage, you should be
reminded it's not as it was printed, so you should rethink your earlier
decision. Pencil, because you can erase it again when you've come to your
senses and understand the original better. A humbling lesson.
David
****************************
David van Ooijen
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.davidvanooijen.nl
****************************
----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Roland Hayes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Jerzy Zak"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Lute Net" <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2008 12:00 AM
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Pittoni's theorbo?
Roland,
There are also John Wilson's pieces and other
English works that just use the single re-entrant
tuning. Unfortunately for Melli and Pittoni, this may
solve extremely disjunct voice leading problems in
some places but it will create more problems in
others.
In Pittoni and Melli, the second course is
musically somehow both ABOVE the third course and
BELOW the first. Its also above the fourth course.
Descending melodic lines may begin on the 3rd course,
continue down to the 1st course and then proceed to
the 2nd course. In other contexts (often within the
same piece) lines can begin on the 2nd course and
continue "downwards" to the 3rd course. In still
other cases, we find that runs begin on the 2nd course
and continue to the 5th course. Obviously, things go
the opposite way when dealing with ascending lines...
In this repertoire, the situation is in fact 100%
clear: the 2nd course always eschews obfuscation
except when it does the opposite, which is true in all
cases. :-)
Chris
--- Roland Hayes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
What about a lowered 1st on what we would otherwise
consider a large
archlute? I seem to remember an archlute piece (Doni
ms.) that does not
use a chanterelle. To me this implies that the first
course was
problematic at times at least (a la french 11 c.
pieces w/o chanterelle)
and may have been replaced with a string an octave
lower for both
continuo and solo pieces.
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 2:36 PM
To: Jerzy Zak; Lute Net
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Pittoni's theorbo?
Jurek,
There are many problematic areas in regard to
this matter. I
believe that the most satisfactory solution is the
second course in
octaves since it seems sometimes to act as a
"normal" low string and
sometimes like it in the high octave. I've been
playing around with
this for the past month or so (on my "toy") and its
quite musically
worthwhile. (For the record, I've got my octave
string in the upper
position like a baroque guitar.)
We're forgetting about Melli. Without the octave
2nd, there are whole
pieces that disintegrate into annoying leaps. Take
these examples from
the 'Corrente detta la Strasinata per la Tiorba'
from his Libro Quinto
of 1620.
The piece opens with a 16th-note run from the 1st
course to the second.
Fine for standard double re-entrant tuning. In bar
6, however, there is
a trill (marked "T") above the dotted quarter on the
open second course.
The real problem comes with the fact that the trill
also has a
written-out termination. There are two 16ths: a '3'
on the third course
followed by a '0' on the second course which leads
into a '1' in the
next measure. How to make sense of this leap up a
minor seventh smack
in the middle of the concentrated gesture of rapid
neighboring tones
that make up a trill? The idea of the thing going
something like
"FEFEFEFEFE - D up a 7th - E down a 7th - F" in the
space of about a
second is ludicrous. And if Melli really wanted the
D as part of the
figure, why not just write an open 5th course?
These sorts of trills
happen all over.
The figure at m.12 is problematic for standard
re-entrant tuning as
well. There is another four-note run in 16ths. In
this case the run
begins on an open second course and continues "down"
to '3-2-0' on the
third course. A leap up a minor seventh for no
reason. Why not just
write '5-3-2-0'?
So far we might be able to argue that the piece,
although labeled "per
la Tiorba" has in fact been written for a lute or
"theorbo" with only
one or no re-entrant strings (then not a theorbo at
all, of course).
Measure 20 presents problems with this solution.
Here there is a
typical theorbo-ism - a 16th-note run divided
between strings. The
figure begins with a '3-1' on course 3, continues to
a '1' on the 1st
course, and moves on to a '2' on the 4th course
before finishing with a
'1' back on the 1st course. Such a figure would be
pointless in lute
tuning. Why not write those 1st course '1's' as
'3's'
on the 3rd course?
Is single re-entrant tuning intended? There are
problems with that,
especially with what follows. The piece ends with a
nice set of
sequences using the 16th-note figure:
m. 22 - '3-1-0' on course 1; '3' on course 2
m. 24 - '0' course 2; '3-2-0' course 3
m. 26 - '3-1-0' course 3; '2' course 4
m. 27 - '3-1-0' course 2; '3' course 3
m. 28 - '0' course 1; '3-2-0' course 2, incidentally
ending with '0' on
the 5th course.
This happens in the short space of a few measures
within ONE piece by
Melli. Many more such examples abound.
Clearly he thought of the second course as musically
neighboring either
the first course, third course, OR 4th course. I've
found that having
the octave string closest to the third course allows
me to sometimes
emphasize the lower octave and sometimes the higher
one. (Having it
closest to the 1st course made it difficult to bring
out the low
octave).
Its been fun working with it. And of course it
works nicely for
Pittoni, too!
Chris
--- Jerzy Zak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Martyn,
>
> Indeed, the Liste archives give ample exemples the
'Pittoni case' is
> an unsolved problem. Of course you know, the
problem is not only on
> page 43, but on almost every page of this
interesting from several
> points of view publication. I've played in concert
one of the sonatas
> and have a score of it, and now I've examined the
whole volume again.
>
> There are several types of scalic passages. The
ones before cadences
> with lips of a seventh presents no problem at all,
they are idiomatic
> to any instrument of the time. But there are many
others which are
> broken around the second course. Some are
explicable by common
> practice of braking passages, say, like in
transcriptions from one
> medium to another - eg. JS Bach's own converting
traverso flute part
> to a flauto dolce part in one [or more] of his
cantata, or many
> adaptations of violin music to a traverso flute in
the XVIIIth C. But
> some others seems less hit home and it's either
Pittoni's laziness to
> get the 'proper' tone on the 3rd c. in high
position or he had the
> second in octave. In this case a matter of 'taste'
> in evaluation is
> inevitable...
>
> On the other hand Pittoni is a virtuoso and he
knows well the very
> 'tiorbistic' campanella devises and is using them
readily, often high,
> using the 1st, the 3rd and the 4th c. (but I
spoted also campanella
> with 2nd). Sometime the campanellas are just
neighbouring with the
> 'spoiled' scalic passages ...In fact almost any
possible situation you
> can finde on the 44 + 40 pages of quite dense
music.
> There is no point for citations, it would have to
be a long paper
> including a fair number of statistics - not for a
mailing liste.
>
> I do not have an easy answer but I feel the second
course
=== message truncated ===
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