Monica Hall
Sun, 03 Jan 2010 13:09:38 -0800
Do keep at it as I love to hear other people's attempts to play my efforts. It inspires me to keep thinking about better ways of doing it.
Best wishes for the New Year - to everyone on the list. Monica----- Original Message ----- From: "Stuart Walsh" <s.wa...@ntlworld.com>
To: "Monica Hall" <mjlh...@tiscali.co.uk> Sent: Sunday, January 03, 2010 4:59 PM Subject: Re: [VIHUELA] Foscarini Passacaglio
Monica Hall wrote:Alas - I couldn't access the Youtube site so I can't listen to or comment on the performance. I don't know why. I put the original tablaure on my www.earlyguitar.ning.com page - in the photo section with the recomposed section enclosed in brackets and a staff notation version - which Django does automatically but very literally - with the scores. I think that the problem passage is like that because it does go up to the 10th fret - and if your guitar is like mine it doesn't actually sound too good up there. Also I find playing chords with a barre above the 5th fret awkward. The problem with a passage like this is that the note values are difficult to sort out - I have come to the conclusion that for reasons to do with the way music was engraved there isn't always a clear distinction made between the note values and you just have to make something up - and original composition has never been anything I would claim to be good at...suggestions for improvements are always welcome... The underlying harmonic progression is e b f# e B e i v ii i V i Not a very typical passacaglia progression - really just a take on i V i. It is very difficult to judge how talented a composer Foscarini really was with the music so badly printed. He is certainly one of the earliest if not the earliest guitarist to have published a sequence of passacaglie like this..... Can you put your recording onto your plucked turkey site as I would like to listen to it? Cheers MonicaI deleted the video. It really was painful to listen to in places! You must have spent a lot of time sorting out this music and your work -and it - deserves better than I was giving it. I got a bit engrossed with the video - I had to use a program I've never used before. I've attached a small version of it and it will look at it's best kept small (don't maximise it). The original was a huge file (youtube recommend that you send big files and let their software make the file smaller). Even at a small size I hope the little video amuses you. I'm sure you will recognise the images. Sometimes I think I ought to sell another instrument and get a better guitar. But it's nice having the guitar to blame for at least some of the sound. Stuart.----- Original Message ----- From: "Stuart Walsh" <s.wa...@ntlworld.com> To: "Vihuelalist" <vihuela@cs.dartmouth.edu> Sent: Sunday, January 03, 2010 11:02 AM Subject: [VIHUELA] Foscarini PassacaglioOn the ning site Monica wrote: 'Passacalles literally means "pass through the streets".' Interesting. And so you could be passing through the streets purposefully or perhaps just meandering about.At the beginning of his book (his collected works, as it were) Foscarini gives the 'Passacalli sopra tutti le lettere' which seem to be just four bars with four chords (not starting on first beat of bar). And, more or less, that's how most passacalles I've ever seen are structured: a four bar scheme endlessly repeated. (Some in the Gallot MS don't always fit, though) But Foscarini's own examples of the passacalles don't fit this at all. They really do seem to just meander about, always hinting at a typical passaccalles but never quite being it. Monica has had a go at an edited reconstruction of one in E minor. *http://tinyurl.com/y8mvxfd (page 17) -Passacaglio Variato sopra l'+* // There is no (easily discernible) repeated four bar structure and no (easily discernible) direction to the music. And it's in two parts! After 57 bars the first part ends and second part sort of carries on in more or less the same way for another 64 bars. And it's as if Foscarini really liked the sound and feel of certain chord changes - especially E minor at second position to B minor with a g in the melody on top. I've had a go at the first part. Technically it is not difficult piece but I always manage to make a pig's ear of one bit or another and my guitar runs out of tone in bars 16-19; it's like squeezing an orange with no juice left. But I suspect a good player could make something of the piece and the Part 2 would go yet deeper into the strange little world. Maybe the use of repicco and trillo would spice it up a bit? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XiJS0GVT5A Stuart To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html------------------------------------------------------------------------ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.comVersion: 8.5.431 / Virus Database: 270.14.124/2598 - Release Date: 01/03/10 09:41:00