Dear Tony, Yes, I do. A few days ago I drafted a posting about notation. In the end I didn't send it, because I thought other people had already covered the topic, and the thread had lost its way. However, I'll send it now after all, because it touches on your question.
Unsent message: Unfortunately the Byrd thread has gone off at a tangent, discussing the relative merits of staff notation and tablature. As I see it, musical notation has two purposes: 1) To record musical sound; 2) To enable a musician to recreate sound. Staff notation is more concerned with the former, and notates pitch. The musician thinks how that sound may be recreated on his instrument, and then sings or plays it. Tablature is more concerned with the latter, skipping the idea of pitch, and going straight to the idea of reproducing the sound on an instrument, i.e. giving details of which frets and strings are to be used. Both systems eventually overlap in their function. With time a musician will associate certain pitches with the strings and frets of his instrument, so staff notation eventually becomes a sort of tablature. I happily read the alto clef to play a tenor viol - with luck my fingers go straight to the right place - but I would struggle with the same clef on a classical guitar, where the association of clef and fingerboard has not been established. Similarly, with practice, tablature letters or numbers may become associated with pitch, assuming the tuning is a familiar one. Thus I can read French tablature in vieil ton straight onto the piano. Music for the lute, guitar, and other string instruments, has been notated in various ways. New notations emerge to satisfy the needs of musicians. For example, in the 15th century lutenists were no different from other musicians (pace keyboard players), and read from staff notation. Jon Banks has shown that the music from the Segovia manuscript (notated in staff notation) was almost certainly written with lutes in mind. Staff notation is usually preferable for single-line melodies, especially with rhythms as complex as those in those late 15th-century sources. Tablature comes into its own with polyphonic music, where a lutenist tries to sustain two or more voices. It is no coincidence that lute tablatures appeared at a time when lutenists were trying to play complex polyphonic music. There are, of course, many other notations apart from staff notation and tablature. Neither of those systems is suitable for notating strumming on the guitar, which is why alfabeto notation was invented. One advantage staff notation has over tablature is its ability to suit all instruments. The music published by Tielman Susato in his dance collection of 1551 is thought to have been compiled with crumhorns in mind, yet Susato writes that it is suitable for all instruments. I would add, suitable for lutes too. Music doesn't have to be written in tablature before you are allowed to play it on the lute. One tablature which was intended for different instruments is Spanish keyboard tablature, where each note of the diatonic scale is given a number. This system was used by Venegas de Henestrosa primarily, one supposes, for keyboard, although he says his collection of music is for keyboard, harp, or vihuela. It includes at least one fantasy by Francesco da Milano, which had been written for lute (or viola da mano?), alongside pieces which are more suitable for a keyboard instrument. Coincidentally a similar system of notation by numbers is commonly used in the East, from serious gamelan music in Malaysia, to pop music in Hong Kong. Best wishes, Stewart McCoy. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Chalkley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Howard Posner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2005 9:53 PM Subject: Re: Historical pitch (was lute notation) > P.S. Does anyone else who dabbles in different instruments experience the > same phenomenon as I do, one example of which is that I can play the gamba > from alto clef, but I can't read it on the keyboard? > > TC To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
