In tablatures, as pieces are copied and reprinted the mistakes become cumulative. That is, unless a mistake is glaring, it is not corrected. And so the number of mistakes in a piece is an indication of how far it is from the original. I noticed once that many English sources with continental music willhave the same mistakes as the same [pieces in Phalese, which is how I came to the idea that Phalèse was responsible for much continental music reaching Britian.
So what you propose can be instructive in drawing a stemma of sources. ----- Original Message ----- From: "David van Ooijen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Arthur Ness" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, July 23, 2006 3:45 AM Subject: [LUTE] Re: [LUTE] Phalèse's bookshelf > Dear Arthur > >> But I made the list you are thinking about for my >> "Sources of Lute Music" article in New Grove (but it >> was >> cut due to space limitations). These are the short >> titles to save me some typing (all except one in >> Brown). > > It looks much like the Brown-list, yes. But that list > doesn't tell us > everything. When Phalèse includes a piece in his 1563 > book, includes it > again in his 1568 book, and they both look pretty much > the same, we might > safely assume he copied the 1568 inclusion from the > 1563 version he already > had. But the first appearance is the same, according > to Brown, as it > appeared in at least two previous books by different > publishers. If you take > the trouble to compare these versions, you will find > small and perhaps even > great, differences. Due to copy errors, or some > different divisions or > ficta, due to the whim of the editor. Brown still > calls all these versions > the same. Carefull studt might reveal the lineage and > tell us which of those > two books Phalèse used. I'm doing this now with just > one piece, and it > reveals much that Brown doesn't mention, couldn't > mention in the scope of > his book, which is just a list. If it would be done > with _all_ the pieces of > Phalèse, we might get a pretty conclusive answers to > what was on his > bookshelves. > So I wondered, did anybody ever do something like this > before? > > David > > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html >
