Maybe Lex forgot to send it to the list?
> Thank you for this summary of your views Lex.
>
> After reading it I went to Corbetta 1648 and, indeed, the style of
writing (especially the use of chords on the three 'lowest' courses) does
seem rather different to his post 1671 stuff. I had previously thought this
was a just a stylistic (ie early Italian as against later French) trait but
I can certainly see yr point about bourdons on the 4th and 5th in the
earlier repertoire and am almost persuaded.................
>
> Just for clarification: when recommending the re-entrant tuning doesn't
Sanz (1674) remark that earlier guitarists (esp in Italy) used it?
Presumably this from his earlier time in Rome where he met Colista,
Corbetta, Granata and thus, one supposes, based his observation on a direct
recollection of the practice at that time. How does his observation fit with
your view of use of low basses pre-1671?
>
> regards
>
> Martym
>
> Lex Eisenhardt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > However, it
> > may simply turn out that these "theorbo" books are have no bearing on
the
> > guitar. They were intended for amateurs who were ambitious - and perhaps
> > wealthy - enough to invest in a leuto tiorbato. The guitar books were
> not.
>
> How should we decide if secondary evidence is irrelevant or not?
Bartolotti
> and Grenerin wrote for both instruments. It's obvious that if they would
> have taken great liberties with the rules on the theorbo we could expect
the
> same, or worse, in their guitar music.
>
>
> > > I avoid to speak about Corbetta's exercises because I think that they
> are
> > a
> > > complete mess.
> >
> >>
> > This style of accompaniment is characteristic of the guitar. Even
Matteis
> > freely uses standard chords in most of his exercises - including ones
> which
> > will be 6-4s.
>
> What is 'characteristic of the guitar'? Different composers, different
> styles. Grenerin or Sanz are different from Corbetta or Matteis.
>
>
> >
> > Your whole argument does (I have some reason to believe) rests on a
> premise
> > (which you haven't actually mentioned yet) - that many of the notes
> clearly
> > notated in the tablature are only there for decorative purposes and are
> > meant to be omitted. There is no physical evidence for this.
>
> As Richard Pinnell supposed in his thesis on Corbetta, there probably are
> tablature letters in barred chords, only notated 'for convenience', to
> indicate that a barre is needed. Pinnell's proposed solution is to leave
out
> one (or more) course(s) in the strum. A good example of the necessity to
do
> that is to be found in the first line of the Passacalle on p.56 from La
> Guitarre Royalle (1671). There are many more of such examples in this
book.
> 'Decorative purposes' is not how I would describe this, it rather is a
> fingering device that Corbetta had mixed in his tablatures, unjustly. It
is
> a misinterpretation of my words to say that 'my whole argument does rest'
on
> this premise. I don't have the impression that Bartolotti or Grenerin used
> this type of notation. In fact it probably was used by Carbonchi (1640)
and
> Granata and a few others before, but Corbetta used it on a much larger
> scale, in a book that is considered as one of the highpoints of the entire
> repertoire. That makes it an important issue.
> Performers today have a choice: play all that is written (and accept
> harmonies that resemble the style of the 'groupe des six' e.g. Darius
> Milhaud) or try to find a system with an internal logic, to make decisions
> about how to come closer to the supposed original intentions of the
> composer. It is hard to do, and not without risk, but the music deserves
it.
> A third choice would be not to play it.
>
> To turn to another point:
> Corbetta's words on the tuning ('add an octave to the fourth course') is
> always taken as a description of his own acts. Pinnell spoke of
'Corbetta's
> innovation'. We simply do not know enough of the situation to make firm
> statements like that. It is likely that there has been a group in France
of
> guitarists, tuning in re-entrant tuning (see Briceno, 1626 and Mersenne,
> 1636). Consider the next scenario: at some stage (1650? 1660? 1670?)
someone
> in France had begun to add a low d to the 4th course. Carre and Corbetta
in
> 1671, or before (I don't think it is useful to speculate on who was
first),
> supported this idea, as we can read in their books. As late as 1682 Robert
> de Visee found it necessary to stress the same point again.
> What would Corbetta's tuning have been? If he had a bourdon tuning before,
> as is often supposed, would his words mean that he 'dropped the low A from
> the 5th course'? It is not what he said. My observation is that going from
> bourdon tuning to French tuning can be seen as 'regression', whereas the
> step from re-entrant tuning to French tuning was considered as an
> improvement (according to Carre, Corbetta and Visee). Knowing Corbetta's
> music from before 1671, I would say that re-entrant tuning is unlikely for
> that part of his output. That is what Monica has supposed in her Lute
> Society Booklet. She thinks that Corbetta may have added a bourdon to the
> fourth course of his guitar in re-entrant tuning, somewhere in the 1650's.
> The problem that I have with this is that I find it hard to believe that
any
> of Corbetta's earlier books was written with re-entrant tuning in mind and
> it seems even more far-fetched to suppose that he started on bourdon
tuning,
> then made the step to re-entrant and finally converted to French tuning.
In
> her booklet Monica has suggested that 'the development of an elaborate
> treble-dominated style after 1640 led to a preference for re-entrant
> stringing'. I disagree with her on that point, in Corbetta's books the 4th
> and 5th courses are used as basses all the time, not so much as campanelas
> only. This ambiguity is part of the deceptive idiom of the baroque guitar.
>
> It is often supposed that the choice for re-entrant (or French-) tuning
has
> had something to do with campanelas. In fact that is the consequence of
what
> Sanz said about it. Should we therefore suppose that every work with
> campanelas is intended for re-entrant tuning? The argument can be
disputed,
> it is well possible to perform campanelas on a guitar in bourdon tuning.
It
> is a matter of proper technique, (nyl-) gut stringing of the basses and
> maybe even playing with nails (...) Besides, a guitar in French tuning
would
> still have one bourdon, that stays in the way. Therefore that tuning
really
> is not much better for the performance of campanelas. Sanz may be not
> exactly the best source of information on Italian practices; other
> composers, like Bartolotti and Granata wrote innumerable campanela
sections,
> Granata even for the Chitarra atiorbata', the guitar with extra bass
> strings.We may suppose that that instrument had bourdons on the 4th and
5th
> courses, used in the campanela sections.
>
> What do we know of Italian guitar tunings, from before 1671? Several
authors
> from our time have supposed that tuning charts and -checks (the tuning
> examples in tablature, many composers of mixed battuto-pizzicato music
from
> Italy have given tuning charts in one or more of their books) are all to
be
> considered as ambiguous. They only would provide us with the 'names of the
> notes'. I consider that as an unnecessarily negative approach. In a few
> cases there are indeed discrepancies between the charts and the texts, but
> overall the information from the charts seems unequivocal. Taken literally
> as a tuning instruction they result in a tuning with basses, with only a
few
> exceptions, like Valdambrini. All this gives the impression that the
guitar
> in Italy was predominantly tuned with bourdons. This tuning makes perfect
> sense for the works of Corbetta from before 1671. I indeed do suppose that
> Corbetta kept this tuning, that also was in use for basso continuo. He
could
> have kept the tuning on his own instrument, notwithstanding his advice to
> others to add an octave to the fourth course of a guitar in re-entrant
> tuning.
> It is a working hypothesis.
>
> As some of you may know, I recorded suites from this book (in 2003) on a
> guitar in bourdon tuning. One critic remarked that the low notes of the
5th
> course were disturbing and that it seemed to be something of the 18th
> century. The trouble is that people express views on a subject like this,
> based on a one-sided understanding of the course of events. As I see it,
> there is no single good reason to suppose that no guitarist in 1671 would
> have played Corbetta's music on a guitar with bourdons. Even the composer
> himself could have done that.
>
>
> Lex
>
>
>
>
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>
>
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