Thanks, Martin for that very helpful "mise au point". Are there any
paintings in which we can see clearly a 7c with the 4th with Octave?
I am not questioning that this existed, but just thinking that it
would give another piece of evidence. In the Caravaggio painting the
lute seems too oblique to allow this sort of analysis.
Of course you are right that most evidence from the music is only
suggestive of a particular tuning (an octave jump might just be what
the musician wanted), so that the more examples, and different sorts
of evidence the better. Nevertheless, in the absence of conclusive
proof, every performer is free to come to a particular conclusion
through their own sensitivity to the issue, well at least that is
what I would think.
Best regards
Anthony
Le 24 mai 08 à 14:03, Martin Shepherd a écrit :
Dear Anthony and All,
Just a couple of things to add:
One of my examples from Cutting (not in the message you quote, I
think) is the Pavan "Sans per" and its galliard, which makes
extensive use of a 7th at D but only makes sense with an octave on
the 4th course. This suggests he had good enough strings to be
able to do complicated stuff with the 7th course but still used an
octave on the 4th (out of tradition? habit? because he simply liked
it that way?).
Dowland also makes extensive use of the 7th at D and I think he
must have had a decent string to do it with, also in the 1590s (it
seems that most of Dowland's solo music was written before 1600).
My favourite example from Dowland (which was in the message you
quoted) is "K.Darcy's galliard", written before 1591, but usually
known to us as "Queen Elizabeth's Galliard" because it acquired
that name later and is styled thus in VLL.
Sometimes notes do resolve at the "wrong" octave, so one can't be
too categorical about assuming a particular tuning on the basis of
a particular piece of tablature. I do find it highly suggestive,
though.
Best wishes,
Martin
Anthony Hind wrote:
Dear Rob, John and Martin
Martin Shepherd says "The music often suggests octaves
when a cadence is resolved at the "wrong" octave, or a scale
passage jumps octave for no apparent reason,
or a note which is needed for correct voice leading or point of
imitation is apparently missing but supplied by the upper octave
of a lower course. "
The examples Martin give seem to be for 6 course lutes, but they
include Cutting, Dowland, and Holborne where "Octaves on courses
4 and 5 solve the problem."
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg19978.html
(Incidentally, I don't have the 6th in unison, as Martin had
understood, but I do have the 5th.)
Of course, it might be that the phenomenon mentioned by Martin is
only to be observed on 6 Course lutes.In which case perhaps there
was a strong conservative tradition for all 6 course lutes to be
tuned in this way, but not for
7 course lutes (Although, absence of such examples, if in fact
none can be found, are not proof in themselves of a change in
stringing to unisons).
However, Martin's examples do at at least seem to suggest that
octaves on the 4th were most probably used in English Renaissance
music (at least on 6c lutes); and if you want to keep the 4th
with Octave for the period from earlier Italian to Elizabethan,
why not.
See also, http://www.luteshop.co.uk/stringsoctaves.htm
It might however, be the case (but I am just musing here), that
this type of octave stringing went together with conservative TI;
and the change to TO could also have been strongly associated
with the change to Unison which itself could have had something
to do with better bass strings (encouraging the change to unison
on the 4th and the 5th). Together, better basses, TO, and
Unisons could have allowed better exploration of the bass
register. Martin's words, here, could suggest something like that,
"Sorry, the bit about English lutenists being backward was just
my little
joke - but they were far from the centres of string production, and
Dowland complains about the inferior quality of some of the strings
available in England. If the English found it more difficult to get
really good strings, this may have slowed the adoption of unison
stringing in England."
In which case, perhaps my unisons on the 5th course do not go so
well with my use of TI; but on the other hand, TO, might not go
so well with the use of Octaves on the 4th.
Indeed, this article by John Edwards, suggests that Dowland's
change from TI to TO could have had something to do with a search
for increased treble-bass polarity.
http://www.jstor.org/pss/3128435
A change to bass unisons could be part of the same tendency, but
this could surely only have been permitted by improved string
technology.
Perhaps, also the real cut off point might have been the change to
9 and 10 course lutes; but I am not sure to what extent Dowland's
music does show the increased polarity, that JE mentions. POD
seems to suggest that such a musical change can be observed more
clearly in the tablature of Bacheler (influenced by French
practises).
POD implies this in his notes to his Bacheler recording, "At any
rate , Bacheler switched from the standard 8 course Elizabethan
lute to the French 10 course instrument (..)
and his works frequently explore the rich sonorities of the low
basses of the new lute".
However, this does not necessarily mean, that a change was not
already beginning in the 7c music of Dowland. Indeed, it does
seem possible that loaded strings might have been introduced
around the same period as the 7c lute, judging by the dark red
bass on this famous painting,
http://tinyurl.com/3xcmt9
but were very good loaded strings available in England, at the
time of Dowland's 7c lute creations? Martin's words above seem to
imply, perhaps, they were not.
Sorry, I didn't have time to make this shorter. I have to rush.
Regards
Anthony
Le 24 mai 08 à 00:55, John Lenti a écrit :
Hi Rob. Thanks! I'm not actually playing anything from the
Pesaro ms--I make most of my living on continuo lutes and so I
have for the time being only one rather beat-up 7-course that I
use for all renaissance music. I'm preparing a concert including
a bunch of mid-16th century French and Italian solo music, so
I've got the 4th- course octave right now. The thing about
Pesaro, compiled sometime in the 1480-90s, is that it has
several lute pieces written on 7- line tablature, using all 7
lines, that is to say, all 7 courses. I too am a fan of the
octave on the 4th--also of adding the odd 7th- course note to
earlier music, since who's to say Francesco never saw one, given
that they'd attached 7th courses to lutes by the late 15th century.
Best,
John
________________________________
Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 19:49:13 +0100
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [LUTE] Re: 4th course octave on 7c?
CC: [email protected]
Hi John,
You should post more often. That was an interesting comment.
John Dowland complaining...imagine that! Seriously though, it
is interesting you are playing the Pesaro ms on a 7c - or, on
re- reading your comment, you are considering it. I like the
octave on the fourth and lament its abscence from almost all 7c
lutes I've heard.
Rob
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