[VIHUELA] Re: Typesetting scores (was Re: Le Cocq - scores)

[Monica Hall]

I appreciate the way you have done your scores -- I did have a peek
at your Corbetta edition in the Sept 06 LSA Quarterly before sending  off 
the posting.

Yes the originals can be very messy, unclear and have mistakes, too.  The 
last thing I want to have in front of me for performance is  something 
that is vague.

A transcription forces me to wrestle and commit to a musical text.

Yes!  It is essential to have a score which you can read easily if you are 
going to play the music!  The problem is that as soon as you start to make a 
copy the music you are actually committing yourself one interpretation of 
it, where as the original often leaves a number of problems unresolved.

I have just done a lot more pieces of the Corbetta which I hope to put on a 
web site shortly.  I am very conscious of the problems.  In fact I sometimes 
wonder how anyone decides how to play the music at all.

Mostly I like to think I am practical. For someone else who is also 
playing from a lot of tab from Just Jazz Guitar magazine (modern  guitar 
tab), perhaps inverting Italian tab is more...comfortable.

Yes - of course.   If you are playing all sorts of music this is probably 
the best option.  I was thinking more in terms of someone concentrating on 
baroque guitar.

(Isn't there Castillian lute tablature, or something, that is  basically 
Italian tab inverted?)

Well - it's the vihuela music of Luis Milan that's done like that. There is 
even the music of Milano where the open course is represented by 1, the 1st 
course by 2 and so on...just to make life doubly dificult.   I don't know of 
any baroque guitar music in Italian tab which is inverted..

I am curious about your wording "self defeating imposing a different 
concept on the notation".

What I was really trying to say is that if you want seriously to play the 
baroque guitar or the even the lute and start by doing something different 
from the original sources it is perhaps more difficult to change later. It's 
more difficult to unlearn something.  It is better to grasp the nettle.... 
But it is a good idea to be able to do things in a variety of ways.


I'm thinking the "concept" of French and Italian (and German lute tab  for 
that matter) is all the same -- to tell the player which notes  need to be 
played (for the moment leaving out the baroque guitar  issue of implied 
notes in strums). Is driving on the left side of the  road different  than 
driving on the right?

No - but you have to conform to what ever rule is in force in the country 
you are driving in!   I'd soon come to grief if I tried driving on the left 
after crossing the Channel!

But what is different are all the little details which tells us about 
performance -- graces, fingerings, marks for which strings to play  (or 
avoid) during a strum, tenuto, slurs, etc. It's interesting to  see how 
different composers (or publishers, or copyists) have dealt  with those 
details. Doesn't Bartolotti's positioning his on-staff  noteheads for 
starting a strum tell the player the same information  as Carre's dots 
which indicate strings not to strum? I think  Bartolotti's is an elegant 
solution, but basically both these  examples tell you which strings are 
played and which aren't.

Up to a point....!   Bartolotti's system doesn't tell you when to leave out 
the upper courses - and in some cases this is clearly what he intends. 
Also he seems to have had a problem using his system consistently!   It 
would have made a lot more sense if he (and everyone else)  just put in the 
zeros.  I think his system is a kind of "conceit" - he has used it because 
of it's visual effect.  It looks elegant on the page.  I wonder where he got 
the idea from.

Carre - and Corbetta and De Visee put dots on the line - when they 
remember - to indicate when courses should be omitted.

De Murcia also came to mind as a historic example of a guitarist  who 
took other music (from French sources) and put it into "his" Italian 
tablature.

Yes - but he didn't invert it!   There are lots of instances of pieces being 
transcribed from one form of tab to another.   Valdambrini even includes 
advice on how to do it.

Practice does make fluent. I think that players who can only read one 
system are missing a lot of great music.

I entirely agree with.  That is exactly the point I was trying to make.  It 
is better to get used to reading the different types of tablature used in 
the original right from the start.  Even better to be able to do it every 
which way.

The problem with the arrows for strums is a modern one as this is not how 
they were indicated in the 17th century.
There doesn't seem to be any agreement about this.  In the 17th century the 
strum signs in both French and Italian tab. indicate the physical direction 
of the stroke.   Looking at Craig Russell's transcription of Murcia it just 
doesn't seem at all logical to do it that way!

I have unearthed one example from a flamenco book  in which the arrows are 
the way I always do it.   For a down stroke - bass to treble the arrow is on 
the stave pointing from the lowest line up to the highest.

Monica

-- Rocky



On Jan 26, 2008, at 9:03 AM, Monica Hall wrote:

How do others prefer preparing their scores? I'm guessing there may
be preferences based on whether the intention is a score to  perform 
from or if it serves a more scholarly function.

I am confounded by the way some people use arrows with tablature  or  in 
transcriptions to indicate direction. Tyler's "Brief  Tutor", for 
example, notates pieces in French tab and has arrows  pointing towards 
the bottom the page to indicate a downstroke.  Russell's De Murcia 
transcription does the same thing. Doesn't it  make more sense for a 
downstroke arrow to go from the bass side  towards the treble string?

I must say I agree with you.  I use Django which doesn't support  FRench 
style notation so I put in arrows in the way you suggest.

I suspect however that doing it the opposite way is the way it is  done 
in standard classical guitar notation/flamenco notation of  which I have 
very little experience.

Otherwise it makes no sense to me to do it like that.

To me tablature or notation already sets up one spacial concept,  and 
this Tyler/Russell usage seems to create a second,  antithetical one.

I entirely agree.  The originals are not always very easy to read  so 
doing transcriptions is helpful but it seems to me self  defeating 
imposing a different concept on the notation.

For this reason I think it is a mistake, for example to invert  Italian 
tablature.

If you don't tackle the problem at the outset you are going to have  to 
relearn everything if you try to play from the originals.

Monica 



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