Dear Charles, There is an excellent account in Christopher Simpson's _Division-Viol_. Although it is geared towards the viol, it is still very useful for the lute. He describes five different ways of playing divisions:
1) Double the note at the unison or octave, e.g. |\ | | _a_ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ becomes |\ |\ | _a__a_ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ or |\ |\ | _a____ ______ ______ ____c_ ______ ______ See how Bach doubles notes an octave apart in the bass to his Air on G string. 2) Fill the gap, e.g. |\ | | | | | _____________ ________|_a__ ________|____ _c______|____ ________|____ ________|____ becomes |\ | |\ | |\ | _________________ _____________|_a_ ____a__c__d__|___ _c___________|___ _____________|___ _____________|___ 3) Go to other notes and come back to the one you started with before moving on, e.g. |\ | | | | | _____________ ________|_a__ ________|____ _c______|____ ________|____ ________|____ becomes |\ | |\ | |\ | _________________ _____________|_a_ ____a__c_____|___ _c________c__|___ _____________|___ _____________|___ 4) Use broken chords, e.g. |\ | | | | | _____________ ________|_a__ ________|____ _c______|____ ________|____ ________|____ becomes |\ | |\ | |\ | _________________ ____a________|_a_ _______c_____|___ _c________c__|___ _____________|___ _____________|___ 5) Combine all the ways you can, and with the divided note not necessarily at the start of the divisions. All this is off the back of my head, without checking for details in Simpson's book. The musical examples are mine. He does say one very nice thing to encourage us: if you are not very good at improvising divisions, work out some divisions beforehand, and even if everyone knows you are not making them up on the spot, they will still enjoy what you play, because it will be accurate after all your practice. If, on the other hand, you do improvise, and you play a few wrong notes, people won't mind, because they know you are making it up as you go along, and they will admire your invention. That's a case of heads you win, tails you can't lose. Best wishes, Stewart. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Charles Browne" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Lutelist" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 6:10 PM Subject: [LUTE] writing divisions > what are the 'rules' for writing divisions? > regards > Charles To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
