It's a nice idea, but I don't think so, not in any established or traditional way. If you look at the long titles, there's often a list of instruments for which the music is suitable. I've never seen lyra viol mentioned.
Doc Original Message: ----------------- From: Frank Nordberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 10:38:59 +0200 To: [email protected] Subject: [CITTERN] Re: The Peter Bang manuscript Seems we're back to lyra viol as the instrument for the Bang ms. ;-) I had David Saphra, the webmaster of http://www.newtunings.com/ look at it. He he offered some very convincing arguments for the lyra viol and was able to explain just about every puzzling notation, tuning and arrangement feature. Only those curvy lines under some open string notes still point vaguely towards the cittern, but they're far from unambigious and not nearly enough to shift the balance of evidence anyway. This leads me to another question. I know this is rather far-fetched and speculative so please feel free to shot it down if you like - should at least be good target practice for high-flying-theory hunting. ;-) Did the baroque cittern and the lyra viol have a shared repertoire? With the two instruments coexisting in more or less the same environment and the music for the two virtually indistinguishable from each other it's a very compelling idea. Of course, we can be fairly sure that somebody picked up one instrument to play music intended for the other now and then on informal occasions. Question is if it was an established tradition or just happened ad hoc. It seems one notable feature with 18th C. English guittar repertoire is that chord notes are always - or practically always - on adjacent courses. It's easy to explain this with the earlier plectrum tradition and the instrument does sound very nice played that well. Even so, it's hard to imagine that the composers never ever felt the need to venture outside that frame. Could they have an additional motiv? Maybe the lyra viol was still popular enough that writing the music to be playable on that instrument too would boost sales significantly? Similar arguments can be found for earlier lyra viol publications. Did the publishers and composers have the cittern players in the back of their minds as well? Too small a market for many tailor-made publications, but quite a nice little extra source of income for the lyra-viol books. This might also shed some new light on Geminiani's guittar school. As most list members probably know, it was published with the lead part in parallel notation for the violin and the guittar. It's easily explained by the fact that Geminiani was a violinist himself, but maybe there's more to it than that? Maybe he also conformed to an established tradition of shared repertoire between plucked and bowed instruments? [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I had a quick look at information on the lyra viol. It seemed to have flourished more in the 17th century than the 18th. That's right, and that makes Moe's dating considerably more credible. The fact that two of the pieces were popular 18th C. cittern pieces are a bit puzzling though. Did the tunes remain popular for almost a century? It's worth noting that the manuscript most likely comes from the Hardanger region of Norway, a region with a local fiddling tradition that even today retains some of the 17th century French chordal/polyphonic style. Frank Nordberg http://www.musicaviva.com http://www.tablatvre.com To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ .
