TO: Howard Posner, INTERNET:howardposneromcast.net Re: Re: Size of the lute world
Dear Howard, May I comment on a few thoughts you posted? Perhaps dividing them up. <<HP>>Tablature was the way solo lute music was notated for three centuries. It seems that for two of those centuries, no one even complained about it. In the one instance where a tablature system (German) became a problem, it was replaced not by staff notation, but by another tablature system. So it's hard to see it as a "failed system." <<AJN>>I am not certain that German tablature passed out of use because the players found it awkward to play from. It is some of today's players who dislike it tremenfously, but there are players today who consider German tablature to be their first choice. And there are modern tablature editions in German tablature which cater to those players (usually east European players). It really depends on what system you grow up with. <<AJN>>At the international conference on the lute and lute music held at Tours, I sat on a panel that was formed to put forward some recommendations for transcribing and editing lute music. Two lutenist/scholars from Poland and Hungary, advocated that all lute tabktues be done up in the German system. Their suggestion didn't didn't float, but is indicative of their being very comfortable with German tabkature. Probably their first choice. <<AJN>>But they had some very good points to make about that system. It i less likely to cointain mistakes because a given cipher means just one thing. And the German system can use heightened ciphers to show the voice-leading, as Ochsenkuhn does in in his book of lytre music. <<AJN>>Arne and Thomas will be the first to point out to readers of the List, that Drusina "translated" Italian tablature into German in several of his publications. And much lute music was issued in German tablature, much translated "into" German tabkature from otheer systems, up until the time when it fell into disuse, finally around 1620. <<AJN>>Thus a third of the Renaissance lute repertory comes down to us in prints and manuscrtips, some of them of immense size, using German tablature. <<AJN>>It is at this time that German sources start to include much French music. And I think the players adapted he French system because that was the system used in what had become a central French core in the "new" German repertory. <<AJN>>In other words, the change was an aesthetic one. Players and publishers wanted the appearance of their books to match the up-to-date French repertory that was so much in fashion in Germany, and almost everywhere else. I doubt that the system of notation had much to do with its disappearance. They just wanted to be fashionable. German tabkature represented in theiur minds an outmoded style of lute music. It is the same thing that happens at other times in the histury oif lute music, when a generation rejects the practices of the past. In with the "New" (French music), out with the "Old" (German music.) AJN
