Denys Stephens wrote: > Dear Stuart, > Re: your comment: > > >> But on the face of it - and just as someone who is starting to look at >> this music: there does seem a big difference between the lute music >> around 1500 - which can very often seem rather unfocused and rambling - >> and the very tightly-wrought music in sources like the Odhecaton. It's >> like they are two different worlds, or two quite different genres. >> > > I understand what you are saying here, and it's a fair deduction from a > quick look at the evidence as it's presented to us today. I feel that some > of the anthologies of lute music published over the years have done some > disservice in presenting early recercars in isolation, as this tends to > obscure > their function. They certainly don't constitute the entire lute repertoire > at this time. All of the known early Italian sources of lute music contain > intabulations, and it's also clear the lutenists played dance music and song > accompaniments. Alongside this Jon Banks has argued very convincingly > that many of the polyphonic compositions such as those found in the > Petrucci publications were performed by lute consorts. So lute players at > this time performed a lot of highly structured music. In this context, it's > not > surprising that they developed a free form style of recercar that provided > a contrast to the more formal pieces. The recercars in the Spinacino and > Bossinensis books were clearly intended to be played alongside the > intabulations / songs, which presumably reflects common practice at the > time. > So it's my guess that the most loosely constructed of the early recercars > reflect the kind of improvised passages that were used to link and > intersperse more formal pieces. All part of the same world, rather than > different ones IMHO. > > Best wishes, > > Denys > > > > I wasn't only thinking of the recercars. The Lute News supplement has published some reconstructions of Pesaro by John Robinson including, for example, a long sprawling Bassadanza which doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.
I have Jon Banks' book. It's rather heavy-going when goes it into (very) great detail about sources. He has an elaborate answer for every possible objection to his thesis! (One begins to suspect ingenuity rather than discovery.) He calls one of the supposed plucked-trio genres, the 'consort ricercare'. In fact it was partly this that made me raise the issue above. The rambling, thoroughly idiomatic, lute recercars seem a disconcertingly long way from the careful, etched single lines of the 'consort ricecares'. (Maybe it's a tiny bit like imagining that future music historians, looking back a few centuries, and suggesting that rock guitarists performed string quartets.) I really like the idea that there is a hitherto unknown plucked repertoire. I've got his book, I've got the Lute Society publication, I'm practising plectrum technique etc. I've even started a blog, to log my progress! (http://www.15thcenturyplucked.com/) But I'm still sceptical. Why has it taken 500 years for someone to reveal this repertoire? As Jon admits on p.161, "it would be convenient if a wealth of literary and iconographical evidence could be produced" to support the plucked-trio thesis. And there isn't. Have any reviews of Jon Bank's emerged yet. It would be interesting to read what David Fallows says about it. Stuart To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
