Stewart, et al,
Of course, rather than worrying so much about open
basses, one could just as easily play troublesome
notes up an octave. From looking at the solo
repertoire for baroque lute alone, it seems this was
very standard practice. In these pieces in which the
composer had freedom to create his own line, we still
find many brief (and no so brief) octave
transpositions of the bass for anything from one note
to several measure's worth. Period continuo tutors
recommend this as well.
Period players apparently jumped octaves in the
bass when needed without giving it a second thought,
not worrying so much about the "loss of integrity" of
the bass line. I believe the idea that we should go
to a lot of extra trouble to play the notes exactly as
written is a modern one.
Chris
--- Stewart McCoy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Dear David,
>
> When we discussed Betrachte Meine Seele before on
> this list, it became clear
> that people have found many ways of playing it:
> theorbo, archlute,
> renaissance lute, baroque lute, and mandora; playing
> all the notes, omitting
> some notes, and omitting all the bass notes. One of
> the arguments in favour
> of using the mandora is that they bought a couple
> for the church at Leipzig
> when Bach was there. There were over 40 tunings for
> the mandora, and the
> number of strings can vary. I think I am right in
> saying that Lynda Sayce
> uses a mandora for this piece.
>
> I once counted the occurrences of the bass notes in
> Betrachte Meine Seele: C
> = 4; D = 14; Eb = 49; E = 8; F = 12; F# = 2; G = 20;
> Ab = 4; A = 8; Bb = 20.
> From that it is clear that one of the bass courses
> must be tuned to Eb.
> Ideally there would be an open G and an open Bb too.
>
> When I played the piece a few years ago, I used my
> 7-course bass lute in D
> as a substitute mandora, and tuned it as follows:
> d', a, f, c, G, Eb, C. It
> meant that I could play all the notes reasonably
> well, but it would have
> been easier to have had a couple more courses
> available to allow more bass
> notes to be played on open strings.
>
> The advantage of using an unfamiliar tuning, is that
> you can set the lute up
> in such a way that the music is at its most
> playable. There is no problem
> coping with an unfamiliar tuning, as long as it is
> notated in tablature. The
> disadvantage is, that you would have to intabulate
> any other movement you
> wanted to play along with, which would be
> time-consuming, and frustrating if
> your lute is drowned out by the rest of the
> orchestra.
>
> If I remember right, and I would need to check to be
> sure, there are
> something like four sources for this music, of which
> only one mentions the
> word lute. It seems to me somewhat extravagant to
> hire a lute player for
> just one piece, which should probably be played on a
> keyboard instrument
> anyway.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Stewart McCoy.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "David Rastall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "lutelist Net" <[email protected]>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2007 9:13 PM
> Subject: [LUTE] St. John Passion
>
>
> > Dear luters,
> >
> > I know we've discussed the topic of the lute part
> in "Betrachte Meine
> > Seele" from the SJP before, but at the time I
> never paid much
> > attention. Well, I've been asked to perform this
> with a bass
> > soloist, and so I'm now paying close attention to
> whatever I can find
> > out about it!
> >
> > Is there a written-out lute part available
> somewhere? I could
> > intabulate it directly from the piano reduction,
> but a part already
> > realized would be a huge help. Also, the singer
> wants to know if I
> > can suggest a second Bach aria to act as a
> companion-piece to
> > "Betrachte Meine Seele," probably to be performed
> with just the lute
> > continuo only: preferably Bach, or something that
> would fit into a
> > program of High Baroque arias. I don't know much
> about the vocal
> > solo repertoire of the High Baroque, especially as
> it relates to the
> > lute. Anyone got any ideas?????
> >
> > Best wishes,
> >
> > David Rastall
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>
> To get on or off this list see list information at
>
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
>
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