Dear Stuart, Coincidentally I saw Jon Banks only yesterday, and talked to him about his book. He said he would be interested to know what people make of it, and hopes it won't lie forgotten on library shelves. He thinks it might be a while for serious reviews in journals to materialise, because the book has not long been in print.
Many of the pieces from that early repertory may appear rambling to us, but that's the way it was. My own view is that the word "ricercar" is important. I think of the composer looking for something in the music, trying out different musical ideas, exploring new sounds, experimenting with different textures, rather than superimposing voices over a cantus firmus of some sort, or fitting music to a text. Approaching the music in that way, helps me appreciate it more. You say that ricercars could be used to link pieces with a more formal structure. That may be so. Certainly I see the ricercars of Bossinensis in that light. They are very short pieces. There is not enough time to develop a range of musical ideas, but they do well to set a mood or a particular tonality, and act as preludes for the songs in his collections. Longer pieces, like Agricola's Cecus, are more substantial, and are pieces in their own right. The complex rhythms and interplay of the different voices can be fun. The lack of a formal structure has its own anarchic attraction. Best wishes, Stewart McCoy. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stuart Walsh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Denys Stephens" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Lute Net" <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, February 11, 2007 7:28 PM Subject: [LUTE] Re: Petrucci > 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
