----- Original Message ----- From: Roman Turovsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 8:06 pm Subject: [LUTE] Re: Guitar and lute
> > I don't know...transcription is transcription. > > > Not all transcriptions are created equal. CG is sufficiently > removed from JSB's era to be in the same trnscription category as, say, > marimba. Actually, I kind of like Evelyn Glennie's approach to Bach on her marimba. Yes, the 6-string guitar is slightly removed from Bach's era (guitars after Torres a little more so), but transcription is still transcription, whether for lute, guitar, tromba marina, nose flute, whatever... You are absolutely correct that all transcriptions are not created equal, but I think the quality of transcription is more dependent upon the transcriber's ability to fit the music in an idiomatic, organic, expressive way to the instrument in question than the chronology of some instrumental configuration/set up or another; e.g., I also kind of like the way Glenn Gould handled J.S. Bach...or Byrd. > > However, I have always wondered why modern guitarists shun baroque > > guitar music in favor of transcription from music for wholly dissimilar > > instruments like cello or violin. > > > Because it makes no sense on CG, as was pointed by Herr Advokat. Still, I believe baroque music for guitar can be made to work as well on 6-string guitar as any baroque music if loosely approached, again, as transcription. It's dissimilarity to modern guitar doesn't seem to me to justify its total abandonment by players of the modern instrument. Of course, modern guitarists are more easily served to select punteado stuff that doesn't lean too heavily on campanella. There is a good deal of 5-course guitar music of decent quality that is a little heavier on the punteado than rasgueado and that is unknown to modern guitarists. An excellent example I can call to mind is de Visee's suite in C minor from his first guitar book that includes a fine tombeau on the death of Corbetta. I and a friend who I turned onto the work are the only two people I know to have played it, and I know of no recording of the work, modern guitar or otherwise. My lament remains: guitarists (who, it would seem, would rather put their transcription efforts into th e piano music of Albeniz or the cello suites of Bach) just don't seem to put much effort into knowing or loving the dedicated repertoire of their own instrument and its ancestors. Eugene To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
