Frank, Thanks for making this MS available. Ive just been looking through it and trying some of the pieces on a Russian guitar in G tuning (I just pretended the fifth string didnt exist and it reproduces the tuning exactly).
The MS is quite faded in places and its difficult to make out some of the notes. The first piece, an Allemande, is straightforward enough. A simple little piece and it sounds pleasant enough on the Russian guitar and would sound equally pleasant on a Norwegian sister. But one would expect a GBDGBD tuning rather than a DGDGBD tuning for a cittern type instrument. But again, later German citterns, from about 1800 had a similar tuning for the top five strings (or courses): CGCEG, i.e. omitting the lower major third. Maybe this tuning in the Bang MS is a Norwegian variant. I dont know what cultural interchange there was between Swedes and Norwegians in the latter half of the 18th century. The Swedes sometimes called their version of the guittar, the luta. (I think this spelling is right!) If Norwegians did too, then this really could be the Peter Bang lute MS!. But guittar/cistre music in Britain, France, Sweden and elsewhere is not in tablature ( maybe it was in tab in Germany?) so that might suggest the music is not for a sister. And Ive never seen the second tuning before, lowering the second string/course to get a minor chordal tuning. (I havent sorted out the final tuning.) I agree that 1679 seems very unlikely. The music, as you suggest, is more like a century later. The first piece, the Allemande, now a very simple little country dance, was very popular in the guittar and cistre repertoire of 18th century Britain and France. I can see a few mistakes in the tablature. The piece on page 12 (your numbering) in the second bar, the last note should be a line lower. And there is a very strange chord on the second half of bar 8 of the same piece a mistake surely. The piece on page 20 (your numbering) is very familiar. In one English guittar source it is called the Laughing Minuet and the music has the (ridiculous) instruction that the piece should be accompanied by laughter. I think its also in the French cistre repertoire too. Is this music for the lyra viol? I know absolutely nothing about this instrument. Was it popular in the second half of the 18th century? No doubt this music could as well be bowed as well as plucked and there are some strange signs in the music which might settle the matter. Sometimes open strings have a dot under them. Sometimes theres a slur with two vertical lines cutting through it. Sometimes theres a wavy horizontal line below a note. Maybe these are some kind of bowing indications which prove the music is for a bowed instrument? ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.ntlworld.com Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
